Speaker 1: Hey, this is Emily sowderback of Scarecrow Videos Viva Physical Media.
Speaker 2: All right, this is Matt Lynch, co host of Viva
Speaker 2: the Projection Booth. Podcast is sponsored by Scarecrow.
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Speaker 3: Oh ge is bot it?
Speaker 4: Show Die? People pay good money to see this movie.
Speaker 5: When they go out to a theater.
Speaker 6: They want cold sodas, hot popcorn, and no monsters in
Speaker 6: the projection booths.
Speaker 4: Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.
Speaker 7: In the future, after the Great War, our civilization lies
Speaker 7: and ruin. Government does not exist, Technology has been erased,
Speaker 7: and everything man remembers is gone. Out of the chaos,
Speaker 7: a lawless army will arise to prey on the few survivors.
Speaker 7: But two a people who have lost their hope. You
Speaker 7: are a dangerous man.
Speaker 5: I can see it in your eyes.
Speaker 7: He will give them courage.
Speaker 3: I have a feeling about you.
Speaker 7: He will restore their memories of the past. It's the
Speaker 7: individual that counts These people don't need dreams, they need help.
Speaker 4: Are you gonna bring them that good? I want him?
Speaker 3: Bout I want him, don't Well, he will unite them.
Speaker 4: You have a gift Postman with a.
Speaker 7: Message of freedom, my challenge for leadership of the clans.
Speaker 3: You know what I'm get you.
Speaker 6: What?
Speaker 7: Kevin Costner, Academy Award winning director of Dancers with Wolves,
Speaker 7: brings you an epic new vision of our future.
Speaker 3: There coulda be new on this coulda be pain.
Speaker 8: Welcome to the Projection booth. I'm your host. Mike White
Speaker 8: joined me once again as Ms Emily and Travia Hey.
Speaker 4: Hey.
Speaker 8: Also back in the booth is Ms Carol Bordon.
Speaker 9: Hey, how you doing.
Speaker 8: It's the epic adaptation of David Brynn's novel The Postman.
Speaker 8: Directed by and starring Kevin Costner. The nineteen ninety seven
Speaker 8: film runs almost three hours. It's a tale of a
Speaker 8: lone traveler who masquerades as a postman to bring hope
Speaker 8: and order to the tribes of post apocalyptic survivors. Unfortunately,
Speaker 8: he's opposed by the corporate reader General Bethlehem played by
Speaker 8: Will Patton, can American values topple the extremist movement or
Speaker 8: will the cinders of America be run by armed, racist
Speaker 8: survivalist assholes. Honey, I want to know the answer to
Speaker 8: that question right now. We will be spoiling this three
Speaker 8: hour extravaganza as we go along, so if you don't
Speaker 8: want anything ruined, please turn off the podcast and come
Speaker 8: back after you've made it through the wilderness. You have
Speaker 8: been warned. So Carol, when was the first time you
Speaker 8: saw The Postman and what did you think?
Speaker 9: Strangely enough, last week was the first time I saw
Speaker 9: The Postman on paper? It is such a me film.
Speaker 9: I enjoy westerns, I enjoy a slow burn. I like
Speaker 9: a post apocalyptic movie with a drifter guy, and I
Speaker 9: love usps like I am all about postal service. And
Speaker 9: I did not enjoy this movie at all.
Speaker 8: And Emily, how about yourself.
Speaker 4: I'd say, similar to Carol on or, I should have
Speaker 4: loved this movie and seen it when it came out.
Speaker 4: Not so much because I love a slow burn or western,
Speaker 4: but because I love a post apocalyptic story and I
Speaker 4: I guess it's a guilty pleasure, but I'm not embarrassed
Speaker 4: by anything I love. Kevin Costner stars in two of
Speaker 4: my favorite movies of all Time Field of Dreams and
Speaker 4: Robinhood Prince of Thieves, which I know is the mess
Speaker 4: of a movie. And I know Kevin Costner is not
Speaker 4: always a great artist or in any way a great actor,
Speaker 4: but I am charmed by him on screen generally, so
Speaker 4: there was no reason for me not to see him
Speaker 4: in a three hour post apocalyptic ethic. But when it
Speaker 4: came out, like I would have been fifteen, and it's
Speaker 4: not an age that I could have gotten any friends
Speaker 4: to go see this movie with me. So for years
Speaker 4: I would catch bits of it, because oddly enough, it
Speaker 4: used to air a lot. I lived in Korea for
Speaker 4: a year in two thousand and five six, and it
Speaker 4: was always on Korean TV. I don't know why they
Speaker 4: loved The Postman. So I would catch a lot of
Speaker 4: chunks of it, and I still couldn't piece the whole
Speaker 4: thing together. And I knew enough of common consensus that
Speaker 4: it was known to be dull, and I could not
Speaker 4: commit to giving myself three hours of dullness, even with
Speaker 4: all the other things that we're going to add up.
Speaker 4: So for me, the first time I sat down and
Speaker 4: watched it, granted in three sittings, was this weekend.
Speaker 8: I am also new to The Postman. This was a
Speaker 8: first time watch for me, watching it for the show,
Speaker 8: because I think by nineteen ninety seven I was kind
Speaker 8: of why. I don't want to say I was done
Speaker 8: with Kevin Costner, because I really liked a lot of
Speaker 8: his films when I was coming up in the world.
Speaker 8: I think I'm probably older than both of y'all, but
Speaker 8: really enjoyed things like you know, bul Durham, The Untouchables.
Speaker 4: Silver Auto, He's greated. Oh he's amazing, young, sexy, athletic.
Speaker 4: Kevin Costner was a really fun thing that was hard
Speaker 4: to resist, I think for us of a certain generation.
Speaker 8: And then you get into the nineties, where like I
Speaker 8: liked Dances with Wolves when I saw it, I don't
Speaker 8: think it deserved to win over Goodfellows for all the
Speaker 8: awards that year at the Oscars, but the Oscars a
Speaker 8: our whole other thing. Really enjoyed Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves.
Speaker 8: I liked JFK quite a bit. I mean it played
Speaker 8: into his soul as like boy scout persona, this Jim
Speaker 8: Garrison role he was playing. Never saw the Bodyguard, but
Speaker 8: I did see a perfect world, and I hated a
Speaker 8: perfect world and then I didn't see whyde Er, but
Speaker 8: I did see water World, and I actually really liked
Speaker 8: water World. I mean, I love all this apocalyptic stuff.
Speaker 8: And so I don't know why I never saw The
Speaker 8: Postman other than possibly tin Cup, which I hated worse
Speaker 8: than Poison. I don't know if you all remember the
Speaker 8: end of tin Cup where he just refuses to do something.
Speaker 8: He just is like the most pig headed person in
Speaker 8: the entire world, and I'm just like, fuck you, Like
Speaker 8: his character was one of the most annoying characters I've
Speaker 8: ever seen in my life. And yeah, I just hated
Speaker 8: that movie. So I think I kind of based on that.
Speaker 8: And then also, you know, I mentioned the three hour
Speaker 8: running time multiple times in the intro, which, you know, hey,
Speaker 8: three hour movie I have no problems with. You know,
Speaker 8: I talked about.
Speaker 10: Good three hours. That's fine, Yes, I'll watch that week
Speaker 10: seven Samurai. Yet there are so many good long movies,
Speaker 10: but The Postman. I felt every fricking minute of The Postman.
Speaker 10: It really is a slog.
Speaker 4: Part of it was. I will say this is a
Speaker 4: movie that benefits from breaking it up. I think sitting
Speaker 4: down for three hours and watching this would have been
Speaker 4: hard whereas watching it one hour and the next one
Speaker 4: hour and the next one hour helped a lot. And
Speaker 4: for me this this could have been a slog, but
Speaker 4: I think approaching it in this regard where reading a
Speaker 4: lot about the making of it, going into it knowing
Speaker 4: we were going to really be dissecting it allow me
Speaker 4: to watch it on one hand from a kind of Okay,
Speaker 4: I am taking notes, I am noticing little things, but
Speaker 4: also it somehow made it that much we're fascinating a
Speaker 4: watch with how much it fails. I guess because it tries.
Speaker 4: You cannot accuse this movie of phoning it. In this
Speaker 4: movie dries. Now everybody is not trying the same direction,
Speaker 4: and even Kevin Costner is not at time, like you
Speaker 4: wonder his efforts are going in one place. It feels
Speaker 4: like he has kind of, at this point in his
Speaker 4: career decided, I know I'm I don't need to worry
Speaker 4: about my performance. I know I'm good enough. I'm just
Speaker 4: gonna work on everything else. And so it's like Kevin
Speaker 4: Costner doing the same Kevin Costner things he's done in
Speaker 4: all of these movies that we're mentioning, and it doesn't
Speaker 4: work because this world is so weirdly ill defined for
Speaker 4: it being a post apocalypse.
Speaker 9: Also, like I hadn't thought about this before because I
Speaker 9: similarly watched it in three segments and I became interested
Speaker 9: in why it was not clicking with me and what
Speaker 9: they were trying to do. When you talk about Kevin
Speaker 9: Costner doing his Kevin Costner things, like, you, guys, I
Speaker 9: have Kevin Costner movies I really like. I have ones
Speaker 9: I don't like as much. I think once he got
Speaker 9: more control, like because he had become a big star,
Speaker 9: he miscast himself sometimes and this feels miscast to me.
Speaker 9: But also like, do you guys remember clip shows where
Speaker 9: like at the end of a season of television they'd
Speaker 9: be like, we're going to show you all the best
Speaker 9: bits from this season of the Office or whatever. When
Speaker 9: you were talking, I'm like, oh my god, it's like
Speaker 9: he's doing an actor's version of a clip show. Sometimes
Speaker 9: he's like, here's the part where I'm sexy and I'm
Speaker 9: smising into her eyes. And here's the part where I'm
Speaker 9: making like an off the cuff joke about how ridiculous.
Speaker 4: Yeah, here's where I'm doing a dad joke. Here's where
Speaker 4: I'm turning my hat backwards, but he doesn't have the
Speaker 4: cast on the same page as him.
Speaker 9: Like, he's trying a lot of things and he's not choosing,
Speaker 9: and he's the director, so he really has to be
Speaker 9: making those choices, and and he's making choices for the
Speaker 9: other actors because he's the director, and they all come off.
Speaker 9: Will Patton, who plays the fascist, white supremacist militia general
Speaker 9: General Bethlehem, because they called him Nathan, and I'm like,
Speaker 9: is he supposed to be like Nathan Bedford Forrest? And
Speaker 9: then I'm like, why don't they make that more clear?
Speaker 9: Because he kind of is.
Speaker 4: When the movie wants him to be more villainous, they
Speaker 4: make him more racist. It's almost that thing that I
Speaker 4: feel like a lot of shows have done the last
Speaker 4: couple of years, where when you've created anti heroes they've
Speaker 4: gone too far you have to bring in like white
Speaker 4: supremacists to make them look better, Like Breaking Bad does
Speaker 4: this some the matter? He did this, And it feels
Speaker 4: like a little bit with this where like Bethlehem seems
Speaker 4: that I mean, because I think he's a fascinating character.
Speaker 4: I mean, there's a very strong, flingering thing that I
Speaker 4: think we have to discuss about him, but the idea
Speaker 4: of him being racist feels really convenient to making him
Speaker 4: more villainous. Not to say this is a dumb thing
Speaker 4: to say, but like, oh, he feels too educated to
Speaker 4: be racist. You're a survivalist. How would really white supremacy
Speaker 4: help you in this scenario? It it doesn't feel like
Speaker 4: thought out with ultimately what we get on screen.
Speaker 9: I have a weird little background where I went to
Speaker 9: get my masters in anthropology, and what I was interested
Speaker 9: when I started my masters was not what I ended
Speaker 9: up writing about, but it was these kinds of groups, dominionism,
Speaker 9: white supremacist. David Brynn is on point with their white
Speaker 9: supremact general and you can see it now, like they
Speaker 9: all show up online with their Western traditional classical Greek
Speaker 9: sculptures things. They're all mad about the Odyssey. Now you know,
Speaker 9: they have to be good at everything and smart about everything,
Speaker 9: and it's almost always uh. He turns out they sell copiers.
Speaker 9: I think he was a copier salesman or something.
Speaker 4: He's a copy or salesman. The worst type of my
Speaker 4: father is a copy or technician. And growing up I
Speaker 4: have you know the things you know in life. One
Speaker 4: of them is my father has always said this, The
Speaker 4: worst person in the world is a copy your salesman.
Speaker 9: Oh my goodness.
Speaker 4: So it's very very smart idea to make your villain
Speaker 4: a former copy yourself.
Speaker 8: It's funny how often they talk about Rome too. There
Speaker 8: was an article about how often people talk about the
Speaker 8: Roman or think about the Roman Empire. These are the
Speaker 8: guys either, these are the guys that skew that number
Speaker 8: where it's like, well, I think about it all the time. Meanwhile,
Speaker 8: a normal human being what once a year maybe.
Speaker 9: And then he compares himself to Hannibal. He's like, I'm
Speaker 9: Hannibal at the Gates. Hannibals, you are know that because
Speaker 9: you're a woman. Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 4: The two things about the Bethlehem character are one. I
Speaker 4: think it is fascinating that it feels like Kevin Costner
Speaker 4: specifically made sure that this character was not more interesting
Speaker 4: or powerful or charismatic than he was, because I feel
Speaker 4: like the Dennis Hopper and water World who steals the
Speaker 4: movie from him that deliberately he goes for somebody that
Speaker 4: is not as physically imposing, But also like, do we
Speaker 4: think he's gay because he is so into Kevin Costner.
Speaker 4: When Kevin Costner first shows up, which and it feels
Speaker 4: very much of oh my god, finally there's somebody here
Speaker 4: with the brain, right. This guy knows Shakespeare. This is
Speaker 4: somebody I can talk to. This guy I haven't got
Speaker 4: to talk to anybody forever. And throughout the film it's
Speaker 4: constantly like, man, I really hope he doesn't comes back,
Speaker 4: and not in a way of like I hope he
Speaker 4: comes back so we can do it. There is clearly
Speaker 4: this sort of like crazy admiration. And what else do
Speaker 4: we learn in this movie is that he kidnaps Kevin
Speaker 4: Cost's love interest. Obviously she's the hot thing in the
Speaker 4: in the town. He's rating and what can he not do?
Speaker 4: He cannot sexually perform again.
Speaker 9: Homo Eraticism is such a part of this, and I
Speaker 9: think that it was being brought to Bethlohem's character. But
Speaker 9: the reason I hadn't thought about it is because Kevin
Speaker 9: Costner is not reflecting it back to him. And not
Speaker 9: that I need to have him have desire, but he's
Speaker 9: it's almost like he's deliberately, like you say, not recognizing
Speaker 9: him not.
Speaker 4: It's like the Ben Her story of how William Wiler
Speaker 4: and I forget the actor's name. They knew. They're like,
Speaker 4: this is yeah, this guy's in love with Ben her
Speaker 4: like this is a romance. But they knew. We cannot
Speaker 4: tell Charlton Heston right, we're going to play it this way.
Speaker 4: But do not let anybody suggested Chorlton Heston that this
Speaker 4: is what we're doing. He won't know, he won't figure
Speaker 4: it out. And he feels like Will Patton might have been, like,
Speaker 4: I have an idea for this. I know what I'm doing.
Speaker 4: I just cannot tell the straightest of all straight Ben
Speaker 4: Kevin Gosner about it. And it's ten kids who are
Speaker 4: in the movie.
Speaker 8: Well, even when you see Bethlehem, when he's hanging out,
Speaker 8: he's like painting pictures of himself. It's very you know,
Speaker 8: it's a very feminine thing to do, be interested in
Speaker 8: the arts and shakespeare battle, Like, I guess the nearest
Speaker 8: Shakespea your battle I had seen was maybe what Star
Speaker 8: Trek's six, The Undiscovered Country, you know, where they're going
Speaker 8: back and forth and even throwing out some of the
Speaker 8: same lines and everything. So I can totally see that,
Speaker 8: especially all of them dressed in their leather outfits and everything.
Speaker 8: I didn't realize that they were wearing the number eight.
Speaker 8: I kept thinking they were wearing a bee for Bethlehem,
Speaker 8: and then finally I was like, oh, that's an eight.
Speaker 8: I thought they were wearing eight ball jackets.
Speaker 4: In after that is the eight. I didn't I didn't
Speaker 4: get catch of that either, is eight laws.
Speaker 8: The eight laws? Oh right, right, yeah, which comes up twice? Right,
Speaker 8: They tell the laws and then later on they invoke
Speaker 8: the laws.
Speaker 9: Yeah, like two hours and thirty minutes later.
Speaker 8: And then they have a we're going to roll around
Speaker 8: on the ground fight, which is like one of the
Speaker 8: weirdest end battles I've ever seen, where they just roll
Speaker 8: over top of each other. So yeah, I think I'm
Speaker 8: right there with it, Carroll. As far as these characters.
Speaker 9: Being gay, the other thing I wanted to bring up
Speaker 9: real quick about the fight, if it's not dereeling more
Speaker 9: about the home eratus. I watched the fight, and I
Speaker 9: had a similar reaction to you, because it reminded me
Speaker 9: of like a bad TV fight, And on one hand,
Speaker 9: it was not a good fight, and on the other hand,
Speaker 9: it was not a pointedly bad fight. That was a
Speaker 9: criticism of using violence between leaders to decide who runs things.
Speaker 9: As the basis for America's future. Instead, it's just like
Speaker 9: two guys kind of rolling around on the ground.
Speaker 4: The other thing that really, I think frustrated me and
Speaker 4: also made me my theory on why Kevin Costner also
Speaker 4: deliberately made this character not know an alpha male is
Speaker 4: nowhere in the movie. Are we led to believe Kevin
Speaker 4: Costner is a warrior? Right? We understand he sees a
Speaker 4: survivor in the book. We know, you know, there's a
Speaker 4: different story to him in the book, but he's never
Speaker 4: seen as like a physical fighter, right. He survives by
Speaker 4: scavenger and doing Shakespeare and in this movie, like he
Speaker 4: seems to be good on a horse. Okay, that's you know,
Speaker 4: he learned that and figured that out. That's fine, and
Speaker 4: he's clever in you know, the steps he takes to survive.
Speaker 4: But there is nothing that makes sense. Where Where did
Speaker 4: he learn to punch? Where did he learn to train?
Speaker 4: Where did he learn to shoot? So the idea that
Speaker 4: he has all the confidence of the world to just
Speaker 4: physically take on this guy who has run an army
Speaker 4: now for many years and who we know has physically
Speaker 4: been challenged and overcome it, I don't know. I like
Speaker 4: to think that in a big surge of adrenaline, if
Speaker 4: somebody was trying to like hurt my niece or my cat,
Speaker 4: I would physically if all I had, and maybe gouge
Speaker 4: an eyeball out. But I have no reason to think
Speaker 4: that I could like take on Ronda Rousey in a
Speaker 4: fight and win. And it just doesn't make sense for
Speaker 4: the film to end on this note. Like I get
Speaker 4: that you need, oh, it's action, so we do need
Speaker 4: it to end in action, but it makes no sense
Speaker 4: for the even attitude.
Speaker 9: There's a certain class of movies that one of my
Speaker 9: friends used to call Holideck Adventures, and it feels like
Speaker 9: a little bit like that, Like I having watched a
Speaker 9: fan edit where they re edited it. They don't show
Speaker 9: him in being kidnapped and stuff until the end when
Speaker 9: he reveals the eight on his arm and challenges General
Speaker 9: Beth of the Heem. Then there's a flashback back to
Speaker 9: his training, so you can say, okay, he and you
Speaker 9: could do that with the regular edit that he learned
Speaker 9: how to fight then, but it doesn't feel like that
Speaker 9: it because it feels like Kevin Costner should be in
Speaker 9: charge and everyone should be listening to him and he's
Speaker 9: good at everything because he's the protagonist. I don't know
Speaker 9: if you noticed this as much as I did, but
Speaker 9: like around that time, that's also when he starts grabbing,
Speaker 9: Like he grabs that Scout and tells her she's not
Speaker 9: allowed to Scout, pulls her off the horse and shoves
Speaker 9: her away, and he's like really physical with the woman
Speaker 9: that he's in love with. And I don't know how
Speaker 9: your emotional arc of my leadership is. I'm a man
Speaker 9: and I'm standing up, and I'm using physical violence too,
Speaker 9: because it's the only thing that will stop another angry
Speaker 9: white man who uses physical violence. So this army I
Speaker 9: gathered doesn't get to do anything.
Speaker 4: It's so having it both ways because then he he
Speaker 4: doesn't kill Bethlehem, he doesn't let ordlg and Mercury do it.
Speaker 4: But yet, oh no, no, where it's okay because Breathlon's gonna
Speaker 4: try to shoot this other guy shoots him, We're fine.
Speaker 8: The guy who shoots him Joe Santos, the getty character
Speaker 8: who has been astrated by Bethlehem and had his tongue
Speaker 8: caught out right, And yeah, that's that whole thing. Like
Speaker 8: this is such a problem of these movies in the nineties,
Speaker 8: and I think still a problem today. The whole the
Speaker 8: good guy cannot kill the bad guy. The bad guy
Speaker 8: has to fall from a light and impale himself on
Speaker 8: a conveniently placed spiked fence, or somebody else has to
Speaker 8: kill the bad guy for him. I mean, even if.
Speaker 4: It's it's very Easecode esque in it.
Speaker 8: Yeah, even if it's Al Powell killing you know, the
Speaker 8: blonde guy and Diehard, you know. But yeah, like Geddy
Speaker 8: has to get that redemption because now he has to
Speaker 8: get his manhood back. He has to get his gun
Speaker 8: off somehow.
Speaker 9: It's such attention for me that it has to be
Speaker 9: about manhood when the problem is manhood in particularly white masculinity.
Speaker 8: Especially if we talk about the book, I mean Britain's book.
Speaker 8: I won't say it's the best thing I ever read
Speaker 8: in my entire life. He definitely feels very beholden. I mean,
Speaker 8: he makes a theater sturgeon reference at one point, like
Speaker 8: calls some you know, like a haul or something, names
Speaker 8: it after a sturgeon. It feels very pulpy. It feels
Speaker 8: like good pulp science fiction. And he does what a
Speaker 8: good pulp science fiction guy does. He explores a lot
Speaker 8: of interesting ideas and sometimes they work, sometimes they don't,
Speaker 8: but it is a science fiction book and so I
Speaker 8: like that. Towards the end, we find out that the
Speaker 8: Bethlehem character who's not named Bethlehem in the book, that
Speaker 8: he is an augmented human being. So him and his
Speaker 8: two generals or two captains.
Speaker 4: Or whatever siers super soldiers.
Speaker 8: Yeah, they're all augments. And then the guy George Powatan,
Speaker 8: he's also augmented, but he's like the next generation, which
Speaker 8: is kind of funny because they actually have a universal
Speaker 8: soldier playing in this movie that's as close to it as.
Speaker 9: We get, you know, like, and they hate it that
Speaker 9: the people they're like the his army and slaves and
Speaker 9: stuff who they're showing the movie for. Bethlin's people hate
Speaker 9: it and they love the sound of music.
Speaker 8: They just want the Julie Anders, which is so funny
Speaker 8: because we just covered Welcome to Whoop Woop earlier this year,
Speaker 8: which is a whole city in the outback where all
Speaker 8: they do is watch Rogerson's and Emmerstein musicals and there's
Speaker 8: a whole thing about the sound of music in there,
Speaker 8: which was hilarious to see this and have them play like,
Speaker 8: you know, shitty projected version of sound of music, and
Speaker 8: here we are, I think the same year they were
Speaker 8: doing this here for me, there are like three main
Speaker 8: things that are going on inside of Brin's book, and
Speaker 8: he even basically says it right towards the end of
Speaker 8: the book, as the Postman is thinking about things, He's like,
Speaker 8: all right, so, yeah, my whole thing about being this
Speaker 8: Postman has helped bring back society, you know, whether I
Speaker 8: liked it or not. He basically knows that his legend
Speaker 8: has been co opted and has become something that is
Speaker 8: becoming a fabric of this new world. But then there's
Speaker 8: two other things that are happening at the same time.
Speaker 8: One is there's a fake supercomputer called Cyclops, and Cyclops
Speaker 8: is basically it's like the Wizard of Oz was a guy, yes,
Speaker 8: behind the scenes who's giving answer.
Speaker 4: Very directly, because I think he said as man behind
Speaker 4: the curtain like five times in that chapter.
Speaker 8: I thought at first, when we got to cyclop said
Speaker 8: it was going to turn into Colossus, the Feben product. Yeah,
Speaker 8: and it would be like, oh, well shit, this guy,
Speaker 8: like this computer actually wants to take over everything, And
Speaker 8: I thought it would be a real like oh my god,
Speaker 8: how do I get out of here? Kind of thing?
Speaker 4: But no, it's funny.
Speaker 9: I thought. I was like, oh, it's more con people
Speaker 9: a con.
Speaker 8: It is another con. Yeah. And then the third part,
Speaker 8: which is actually very genuine, Like you know, I think
Speaker 8: at the beginning of the book he mentions less strata,
Speaker 8: and then that comes through the entire book, especially when
Speaker 8: it comes to this character of Dana. I think it
Speaker 8: is who I don't think she really has a character
Speaker 8: like that in this movie.
Speaker 4: No, no, yeah, there's no no here.
Speaker 9: They did standard sort of screenplaying where they're like, we
Speaker 9: need to have like efficiency of character.
Speaker 4: One woman, yes, yeah, we have one young woman love interest.
Speaker 4: And she will be beautiful obviously, and she will be
Speaker 4: strong in the sense of, you know, she can shoot well,
Speaker 4: and she's able to defend herself and able to be
Speaker 4: pregnant and doing a whole lot of physical things that
Speaker 4: probably a woman that pregnant in you know, an apocalypse
Speaker 4: wouldn't be able to do. And she'll be able to, like,
Speaker 4: you know, say things when they need to be said
Speaker 4: for Kevin Costner to hear. But the book and I
Speaker 4: don't think it's done overly well but I like I
Speaker 4: like the effort of it. What's interesting is whenever David
Speaker 4: brand all the entries I read with him about this movie,
Speaker 4: he has a lot to say about a lot of things,
Speaker 4: and he actually has the best attitude of a writer
Speaker 4: to an adaptation, which is like, look, the movie something different.
Speaker 4: I really like that. I think they captured the spirit
Speaker 4: and what I was. You know, this the the theme
Speaker 4: I was trying to tell. Do I think they did it? Well, No,
Speaker 4: but I appreciate it and it's fine. But he'll complain
Speaker 4: about certain aspects of the movie and choices that were made.
Speaker 4: But I didn't seem to ever really mention the Dina
Speaker 4: storyline because in the book it is it's basically these
Speaker 4: women saying this one woman who has been born in
Speaker 4: the apocalypse essentially like grew up without knowing experiencing much
Speaker 4: of the real world, but had books and had access
Speaker 4: to people who could tell her things and kind of
Speaker 4: comes to the conclusion that well, women never did enough.
Speaker 4: Women let this happen in a way because they didn't
Speaker 4: fight it. They always relied on the men to do it. So,
Speaker 4: you know what, we are going to do something different,
Speaker 4: and we are going to go fight, and she does
Speaker 4: and she and it works and doesn't work. It feels
Speaker 4: like the novel's kind of saying like it was nice
Speaker 4: of that idea, but it didn't really do much. But
Speaker 4: it also did because it gets like she sends letters
Speaker 4: saying what they're doing, which get intercepted but also get
Speaker 4: read by women who are kept at slaves who then
Speaker 4: also rise up. So there was kind of this like
Speaker 4: minor attempt at sort of feminism in the book we
Speaker 4: do not get in them.
Speaker 9: I'm actually glad we didn't get it in the movie.
Speaker 9: I watched one of the special features you sent us
Speaker 9: that was David Brinn talking about the movie, and he
Speaker 9: sort of indirectly talks about there were a lot of
Speaker 9: ideas in the book that didn't get to the movie,
Speaker 9: and I'm like, sir, you're so lucky. We're all so
Speaker 9: lucky that Dana and her like women should the guilt
Speaker 9: she feels on behalf of women, and the idea that
Speaker 9: women are all like there's three kinds of men. There's
Speaker 9: like good men, bad men, and then like middle men
Speaker 9: who are useless. And I'm like, honestly, I appreciate that
Speaker 9: he's trying, but it still sounds like a man talking
Speaker 9: about men. For the most part, like.
Speaker 4: It feels like a man writing a sci fi novel,
Speaker 4: which is what they almost always end up.
Speaker 9: Ya, especially in nineteen eighty two, where you have to have,
Speaker 9: like I have to share my very strange theories about
Speaker 9: society from my very rational science fiction perspective.
Speaker 8: Those are the big three pillars that the book is
Speaker 8: built around. And then they just cut out everything other
Speaker 8: than the Postman himself. And that's because we've got Costner here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but yet we don't cut out of what four
Speaker 4: minute love scene.
Speaker 8: Reading the earlier drafts of the screenplay because like, so,
Speaker 8: thank you so much for Carol for letting me know
Speaker 8: the original screenplay, or at least what the fifth draft
Speaker 8: I think of. Roth's screenplay is out on archive dot org,
Speaker 8: and I was expecting something completely different when I started
Speaker 8: reading it because of all of the bad things that
Speaker 8: Brynn had to say about Roth's screenplay. Brynn calls the
Speaker 8: Roth drafts the demonically horrific script of Eric Roth, a
Speaker 8: truly evil mishmash that reversed every moral message from the book.
Speaker 8: After that alone, I was positively disposed towards Kevin Costner
Speaker 8: and Brian Helgeland, and he bashes it quite a few times.
Speaker 8: There was like a ninth nineteen ninety eight essay that
Speaker 8: he wrote, and.
Speaker 4: What are some of the differences in that version?
Speaker 8: Frankly, I don't see a lot of differences. Like the
Speaker 8: differences for me were a lot of structural stuff like
Speaker 8: we don't have we don't meet Bethlehem until thirty minutes
Speaker 8: into the movie, so precisely right around the time that
Speaker 8: the first act should be over and the second act
Speaker 8: should be starting. Though it also runs one hundred and
Speaker 8: thirty seven pages, so it's also over long.
Speaker 4: Would have been very just the hell.
Speaker 8: Glenn draft as well. I think it's almost the exact
Speaker 8: same page count.
Speaker 4: But remember you have to add another thirty minutes because
Speaker 4: half of those scenes are in slowly.
Speaker 8: That's true. That's true. Or they do that strange cross
Speaker 8: fade effect a ton in this movie, and I'm like,
Speaker 8: what are oh?
Speaker 4: I love it itific seen nineties epicness of between the score,
Speaker 4: the SlowMo and some of those filming decisions. I will
Speaker 4: say this is one of those movies why I'm glad
Speaker 4: I watched it now and not ten years ago, twenty
Speaker 4: years ago, because I think there is something like we're
Speaker 4: we're in that perfect era where there is something incredibly
Speaker 4: charming about the mid nineties because it's long enough ago
Speaker 4: and we remember, like, oh I was a completely different
Speaker 4: age than so to experience it now it feels so
Speaker 4: charming and nostalgic and some of those things in terms
Speaker 4: of the filming style, they didn't get me in that,
Speaker 4: like the slow motion was not like, you know, welling
Speaker 4: tears in my eyes, but it was like I could
Speaker 4: I couldn't help but smile at how earnest. Some of
Speaker 4: those filming choices were just in being a mid nineties movie.
Speaker 9: It did not work for me, and I think they
Speaker 9: should have made some different choices. I appreciate that it
Speaker 9: is like we are in a formula rut now, like
Speaker 9: screenplays have never been I think, more formulaic than they
Speaker 9: are now. That is an effectual thing, I realized, but
Speaker 9: it it feels very much that way, and so I
Speaker 9: give it credit for that, and it's I appreciate watching it. Then,
Speaker 9: I just wish I had managed to find more personal
Speaker 9: charm in it, rather than thinking, imagine what Albert Pion
Speaker 9: could have done with this material.
Speaker 4: And this budget Carl, he's a postman.
Speaker 9: I was talking a little bit to Mike about how
Speaker 9: punishing I found the score. And it's not even like
Speaker 9: by itself, because I think by itself it's a fairly
Speaker 9: standard sort of neo Western sweeping this to score, but
Speaker 9: it's relentless, and it's like, we know that you might
Speaker 9: think it's funny and campy that he's a postman and
Speaker 9: we're showing slow motion romantic shops of post offices and
Speaker 9: mail delivering, but we want you to feel this the
Speaker 9: right way.
Speaker 4: It can only be so angry at a movie that
Speaker 4: is so earnest. There's a quote I'll I'll read it
Speaker 4: from one of the art I think it might have
Speaker 4: been David Brand's own, like either his essay about this
Speaker 4: movie or a quote he had to say about it,
Speaker 4: which was Watching Kevin Costner's three hour Epic is a
Speaker 4: bit like having a great, big golden retriever jump on
Speaker 4: your lap and lick your face while waving a flag
Speaker 4: tied to its tail. It's big, floppy, uncoordinated, over eager,
Speaker 4: sometimes gorgeous, occasionally a bit goofy, and so big hearted
Speaker 4: that something inside of you has to give. That is,
Speaker 4: if you like that sort of thing that's the novelists
Speaker 4: talking about this movie. And I mean, I think he's right.
Speaker 4: Like my dad a few years ago has always been
Speaker 4: somebody that had an American flag up, like my dad's
Speaker 4: a Vietnam vet, and he realized a couple of years
Speaker 4: ago how he got so nervous that him having a
Speaker 4: flag up would mean people think that he supports Trump,
Speaker 4: and so he made his own like he actually like
Speaker 4: drew a little like Biden sign underneath it at the time.
Speaker 4: But it is that idea of like, oh, when you
Speaker 4: like loving America and this is such an Americana movie
Speaker 4: right that it's soured just so unfortunate that you watch
Speaker 4: it today and like you want to just love the
Speaker 4: goofiness of it, But there is this other element watching
Speaker 4: it where you're like, oh, it's so like corny and
Speaker 4: it loves the USA and this and that, and then
Speaker 4: you sit back you're like, what kind of movie would
Speaker 4: this be if you made it today? Like we're like,
Speaker 4: who is this made for now? And the weird politics
Speaker 4: of its parts I don't know, like where they map
Speaker 4: to today is just this strange thing that it's easier
Speaker 4: not to think about because then you can still appreciate
Speaker 4: this as just a really goofy art effect if it's done.
Speaker 9: I feel like if it were made today, it would
Speaker 9: have like one of two endings. One would be the
Speaker 9: Tarantino they shoot Bathlon and the head and make sassy
Speaker 9: cool reference remark. The other one is what I wish
Speaker 9: they had done, since they weren't going to give us
Speaker 9: a good fight or an epic battle with the army
Speaker 9: that he apparently raised somewhere somehow, was a trial, like
Speaker 9: they have three hours, cut out a little bit of
Speaker 9: that slow motion time and give us frontier justice trial
Speaker 9: where Bethlehem is sentenced and then executed for what he's done.
Speaker 9: That's how I think slow motion jury selection for it. Yeah,
Speaker 9: the jury's slowly coming into the box.
Speaker 4: Gavele Gavel that.
Speaker 8: Was well he just did JFK. So yeah, he would
Speaker 8: have been right there in Jim Garrison mode. One of
Speaker 8: my favorite parts of the book is when they talk
Speaker 8: about after they've routed the three Augments, that they go
Speaker 8: around and hang every wholeness that they find, and I'm
Speaker 8: just like, wow, that seems like a really good way
Speaker 8: to get rid of these confederates. That just seems like
Speaker 8: a really smart thing.
Speaker 4: Well in the book has a lot more about kind
Speaker 4: of the politics of war, right about the propaganda that
Speaker 4: both sides start doing because the side, or you know,
Speaker 4: the protagonist's side, one of the things they started doing
Speaker 4: is desecrating female bodies to make it seem as though
Speaker 4: they're actually assaulted because they know that we'll rile their
Speaker 4: people up to fight, whereas if it's just specifically yeah,
Speaker 4: and again, really Glad Costner didn't go that route because
Speaker 4: I don't know that this movie was never gonna be
Speaker 4: quip for that. But at the same time, basically the
Speaker 4: bad guys who go around taking things because it's also
Speaker 4: the post amocalypse, that's kind of what you gotta do.
Speaker 4: And then you have like the good guys who are
Speaker 4: just blind dancing, and it's kind of very simple in
Speaker 4: that way. So I guess there's a part of me
Speaker 4: watching this movie thinking like, well, how are any of
Speaker 4: these people going to expect to like ever survive a
Speaker 4: winter when this was just going to keep happening, Like
Speaker 4: they had no defenses, they had no seem to have
Speaker 4: no plans. It seemed like the whole lists were very
Speaker 4: specific about who they took, which was only young men.
Speaker 4: Presumably they had women somewhere for other purposes. But watching
Speaker 4: it like you kind of understood why anybody would join them,
Speaker 4: because other wise you're just line dancing until you get
Speaker 4: raided and killed.
Speaker 8: Very much the grasshoppers versus the ants. It feels like
Speaker 8: the Wholeness actually have a plan, whereas the good guys
Speaker 8: quote unquote are just like happy little people. I mean,
Speaker 8: there is a moment where the Wholeness people come into
Speaker 8: town and I'm like, you know, you mentioned seven Samurai.
Speaker 8: I'm like, oh, this is just like the seven Samurai.
Speaker 8: They're coming in here, but they never raised the army,
Speaker 8: you know, they.
Speaker 9: Just have Yeah, well it's one guy. They just have
Speaker 9: one guy.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's basically you know, if you had just to
Speaker 8: Shiro Maffune or you know, like the goofy version of
Speaker 8: Tashiro Maffoune that's in Seven Samurai.
Speaker 9: And he makes the same mistake early on, like when
Speaker 9: they capture Ford Lincoln, Mercury, Ford Mercury Lincoln. I don't
Speaker 9: remember which order.
Speaker 8: No, you're right, the first way, Okay.
Speaker 9: When they capture him, he is the first postal inspector
Speaker 9: who's played who's called something different. I mean He's called
Speaker 9: the same thing initially in the movie, and then and
Speaker 9: then he takes on the Ford Lincoln.
Speaker 8: Mercury, Dame Johnny Stevens's got to be Johnny, just like
Speaker 8: Johnny good Boy from Battlefield Earth, which was another movie
Speaker 8: I kept thinking of.
Speaker 9: But when the Wholeness kidnap him and decide to hold
Speaker 9: him because of the psychological value he has because there's
Speaker 9: only one guy resisting him, and we never see him,
Speaker 9: he doesn't do any of the organizing. Ford Lincoln Mercury
Speaker 9: does all the organizing. But the Postman decides to disband
Speaker 9: his postal service, and the militia that they have also
Speaker 9: become like that's a solution, Like if he's just like, well,
Speaker 9: stop fighting you and then you'll stop. And you were
Speaker 9: talking about watching these things in these times, I feel
Speaker 9: like I've seen so many people with power, who I
Speaker 9: guess have never been subject to bullying or abuse or
Speaker 9: whatever making that same dumb fucking decision. It isn't an
Speaker 9: incentive to them to come in and attack them more.
Speaker 4: Well, I think it could have been, because you have
Speaker 4: I mean, Kevin Coster essentially realizes what have I done?
Speaker 4: I just wanted a hot meal and so I acted
Speaker 4: like a postman, and when I did that, suddenly I
Speaker 4: have changed all I have suddenly put all these people
Speaker 4: in danger because now everybody thinks there's a cause to
Speaker 4: fight for, and so they're fighting for it. We see
Speaker 4: it's mostly young people. It's you know, it's a lot
Speaker 4: of kids, a lot of teenagers, a lot of before
Speaker 4: they're famous people, Like he realizes, Oh, I shouldn't have
Speaker 4: I'm not responsible for this. But the problem is, because
Speaker 4: of the movie is three hours, there's not like it
Speaker 4: would have been really easy to tell that story tightly
Speaker 4: for him to have realized, oh, I went too far.
Speaker 4: I'm not equiped for this, we shouldn't be doing it.
Speaker 4: But so much has happened between when he started that
Speaker 4: and when he makes that decision that when he makes
Speaker 4: that decision, it feels like it comes out of nowhere,
Speaker 4: because nine things have happened over the course of forty
Speaker 4: five minutes in different subplots that you don't even know
Speaker 4: why he's doing this.
Speaker 9: Oh, I understood why he was doing it. I guess
Speaker 9: what I'm saying, though, is that the movie is in
Speaker 9: a trap that the Book of Boyds, because the book
Speaker 9: he has that same thing but he also eventually realizes
Speaker 9: that other people have agency and the Postman in this
Speaker 9: his solution to it is, I am always responsible. And
Speaker 9: it's like they took that question. They keep showing in
Speaker 9: the book, like who's responsible, Who's going to be responsible
Speaker 9: for them? Like they're also responsible from themselves as adults,
Speaker 9: Like they're making these terrible choices.
Speaker 4: But Kevin Costner has to be in charge in this movie.
Speaker 4: I understand why he would have wanted to make this movie.
Speaker 4: I understand why you would have wanted to star in
Speaker 4: this movie. The best thing he could have done was
Speaker 4: direct someone else, aside from the ego aspect of it,
Speaker 4: where obviously he could not see himself objectively while making
Speaker 4: this movie. He's clearly so determined to make the Postman
Speaker 4: this savior character who is torn and who doesn't want
Speaker 4: to do the wrong thing, and so he makes it.
Speaker 4: If he had been played by somebody that was for like,
Speaker 4: you could buy as fucking up so much more. If
Speaker 4: he was not a leading man type, it would have
Speaker 4: been so much like put Giovanni Ribisi in that role instead,
Speaker 4: and it would have been a more interesting vie. But
Speaker 4: Tom Petty and Tom Petty as the Postman. I'm there
Speaker 4: as an actor.
Speaker 8: Tom Petty's a really good musician.
Speaker 9: We're looking at the movie.
Speaker 4: We're looking at are you kind of love what they
Speaker 4: did there? Rile Like he's putting himself right, that's.
Speaker 8: Here, we're just thing because there's well, first off, he
Speaker 8: died in twenty seventeen. But the other thing is that
Speaker 8: he would have been like seventy according to the timeline
Speaker 8: of this, So maybe maybe Tom Petty's a vampire. Yeah,
Speaker 8: that was such a weird cameo to have, and just
Speaker 8: that whole like double i've heard of you and then oh,
Speaker 8: I've heard of you kind of thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've heard about you.
Speaker 4: I've heard of you, and even that that having Concer
Speaker 4: basically makes it so Tom Petty says, you're more famous
Speaker 4: than I am. Postman, like how much bigger ego?
Speaker 9: And Tom Petty actually in that scene comes off is
Speaker 9: less awkward to me, Like he actually seems more like
Speaker 9: the kind of guy that Kevin Costner's theoretically trying to play,
Speaker 9: but he's not because he's trying to play a good
Speaker 9: super hero. He's not playing like a con guy who
Speaker 9: feels a bit in over his head, but is like, well,
Speaker 9: I'm responsible for people now, which is exactly what Tom
Speaker 9: Petty is. He's like, I was a musician in a
Speaker 9: weirdo and now I run a town on the Hoover Dam,
Speaker 9: like where our little.
Speaker 4: Boy doesn't know what a postman is. Oh that moment,
Speaker 4: what's a postman? And everybody stops and turns. It turns
Speaker 4: and turns to look at a little boy. So they
Speaker 4: have to tell this little boy what a postman is.
Speaker 8: Just the pacing evidence stuff is so strange. It's like
Speaker 8: he he comes to the first town and is like, oh, hey,
Speaker 8: I just found this uniform. I'm going to pretend to
Speaker 8: be this postman. And it's interesting that this whole thing
Speaker 8: is just built on a lie. Like the first time
Speaker 8: I ever heard what the plot was, I was like, really,
Speaker 8: that's what this movie's about. But he comes to the city,
Speaker 8: finds the one person who actually does have a letter,
Speaker 8: and that's kind of his saving grace. The mayor of
Speaker 8: the town is still just like or sheriff is like
Speaker 8: I don't fucking believe you, you know, like no way, And
Speaker 8: I love that Grey. I love that character actor. And
Speaker 8: then he goes to the next town and and it
Speaker 8: feels like time is strange in this four three hour movie.
Speaker 4: This passage of time makes note. I wrote it because
Speaker 4: I was taking you know, so I was watching it
Speaker 4: and then I was like putting my nose together, and
Speaker 4: so I was like cutting and pasting and movies around,
Speaker 4: and I realized I had passage of time question mark
Speaker 4: three different ways in my notes because I didn't understand it.
Speaker 4: Because the opening of the movie, right you said, oh,
Speaker 4: you know he finds the bost outfit. No, that's like
Speaker 4: thirty five minutes in, because first he's kidnapped by Bethlehem's people,
Speaker 4: And how long ago was that? How long was he
Speaker 4: there for? Was that when he was trained to become
Speaker 4: a killer, Like he's there for what seems like a
Speaker 4: few days at most. You start building up relationships there
Speaker 4: where there's like intriguing characters that you're thinking, like, I
Speaker 4: forget the actor's name, but the guy who's in the
Speaker 4: wire and for some reason doesn't have an IMDb picture.
Speaker 4: You're like, oh, like this guy's like, oh great, he's
Speaker 4: in this movie. I can't wait. And then he dies
Speaker 4: very quickly, and I was sad, but that's thirty minutes.
Speaker 4: And then it's Postman and then postman to another town,
Speaker 4: post me to another town, and it's is it years
Speaker 4: or is it weeks? And you're thinking, oh, well, we'll
Speaker 4: be able to tell by a pregnant woman, thank you,
Speaker 4: But they just randomly tell us when she's pregnant enough you.
Speaker 8: For yeah, because you have a literal ticking clock in
Speaker 8: this movie with this woman's pregnancy. I didn't remember him
Speaker 8: stopping at two towns before the last one, Like I
Speaker 8: just thought he stopped at two towns, the one with
Speaker 8: the mayor sheriff that doesn't like him, and then the
Speaker 8: other one where it's like hey, yeah, welcome on in
Speaker 8: and we're reading mail and hope the enemies at the gate,
Speaker 8: and then we have this huge blow up and then
Speaker 8: like he sees Olivia Williams again, the abby character who
Speaker 8: he had slept with at the first town, and I'm like, okay,
Speaker 8: how like you said, how much time has passed because
Speaker 8: it's like she's all beaten to shit and she's like, oh,
Speaker 8: he came at me every night but he was never
Speaker 8: able to get me blah blah blah blah blah. And
Speaker 8: I'm like, well, how much time has passed? Like and
Speaker 8: again like is that you know? He even asked, is
Speaker 8: it my kid or is it Bethlehem's kid? You know,
Speaker 8: Oh well he could never get it up. Oh okay,
Speaker 8: so you know, questions his manhood and stuff. But I'm
Speaker 8: just like, how much time passed? And then they fuck
Speaker 8: off to that cabin for a long time, which is
Speaker 8: definitely not in the book, Like that's much more of like, Okay,
Speaker 8: now I'm gonna go find cyclops and do all this
Speaker 8: kind of stuff, and you know, the world turns as
Speaker 8: things are happening, Like Abby is left in the dust
Speaker 8: when it comes to the book, like she they have
Speaker 8: the same relationship, you know, but Michael doesn't die, her
Speaker 8: husband doesn't die. He's absolutely fine. He doesn't have to
Speaker 8: burn a flag, which you know is just like, oh
Speaker 8: my god. I had to look up, like when was
Speaker 8: the flag burning controversy in the US, because growing up
Speaker 8: in the nineties, that was a huge thing. It really
Speaker 8: came to a head in nineteen eighty five. They still
Speaker 8: talk about it today. They go off to this cabin
Speaker 8: and they're just hanging out there for the longest time.
Speaker 8: But again, I'm like, how much time is passed? Even
Speaker 8: when it comes to the snow falling on his face
Speaker 8: and then like dissolve and all of a sudden we
Speaker 8: are in snow. Just the continuity of this movie is
Speaker 8: so strange, even when it comes to like, you know,
Speaker 8: I mentioned the weird dissolves and stuff, there's that whole
Speaker 8: thing where he you know you mentioned this before, as
Speaker 8: far as him having to turn his hat around, like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 8: we used to do this when we were kids, turns
Speaker 8: his hat around, he rides off, and then smack dab
Speaker 8: before he goes to I guess it's Tom petty'stown, the
Speaker 8: one that he names Elvis, where it's on top of
Speaker 8: the big building and stuff. Suddenly his hats turned back
Speaker 8: around and he has that huge, maudlin fucking scene with
Speaker 8: that little kid who's holding up the letter do not you.
Speaker 4: Dare insult the best scene of this movie. It's me
Speaker 4: so great that they had to be showing you twice
Speaker 4: and immortalize it in Bronz's Emily as a person who
Speaker 4: has watched a shit ton of Hallmark movies, how hallmarky
Speaker 4: does some of this feel to you? Like, because I
Speaker 4: notice you're a little more impervious.
Speaker 9: To this than Mike and I.
Speaker 4: Oh, especially, I think the sort of like country wife
Speaker 4: aspect of it, where this sort of like simple way
Speaker 4: of living. Right, all the women in this movie look
Speaker 4: great considering it's an apocalypse, right, they all still have
Speaker 4: like there you have Peggy lived in there, who's always
Speaker 4: just perfect looking, and they all have like they figured
Speaker 4: out how to make it work, factionalize, and you get,
Speaker 4: you know, the kids who are all so earnest. So
Speaker 4: when you get a scene like that of that little boy,
Speaker 4: because it's not just oh there's a little no, no, no, no.
Speaker 4: First this little boy, here's the pitter pattern of the postman.
Speaker 4: And he grabs his letter and he runs outside. He
Speaker 4: stands there and he holds it up as his mother
Speaker 4: and again his mother was like this perfect blonde far woman.
Speaker 4: All their their hair like they have bangs, like it's
Speaker 4: like they've all taken care of themselves. And you know,
Speaker 4: he just holds it up and Kevic Concer just runs
Speaker 4: right by him. And a little boy is just so
Speaker 4: devastated standing there holding that letter and he his arm
Speaker 4: sliwly goes down as he turns to his mother and says,
Speaker 4: I was too late. But then somehow, somehow, which I
Speaker 4: don't know how, Keema Concert didn't see him when he
Speaker 4: was writing, because there's it's like the thing on the
Speaker 4: walking down had always drove me crazy. How there's no sounds, right,
Speaker 4: there's no traffic, there's no fire alarms, and yet a
Speaker 4: character can just be like sitting on a lake and
Speaker 4: all of a sudden, yeah, like his zombie comes u
Speaker 4: behind them and eats them. Why did they not hear
Speaker 4: the like shuffle them? And it feels like that, right,
Speaker 4: How did like kenn Costter's just like writing, how did
Speaker 4: he not see a kid standing in the middle of
Speaker 4: and I was looking for people with the letters exactly
Speaker 4: like the kid short, but he's he's got his letter
Speaker 4: up in the air and Schemagostter turns back and he
Speaker 4: just does a gallop and gallop and gallop and could
Speaker 4: have killed that child so easily and just grew himself.
Speaker 8: And he's galloping away from the kid. But then when
Speaker 8: they cut to him, like kind of realizing or whatever,
Speaker 8: he's not that far away at all. He's like just
Speaker 8: at the end of like the the fence post.
Speaker 3: How far are you going?
Speaker 6: Hey?
Speaker 3: Look, how far are you going to the end of this?
Speaker 11: Fans?
Speaker 6: Okay, I'm Naved Johnson.
Speaker 3: What's your name? There, who we are, okay, thanks for
Speaker 3: the company.
Speaker 4: And then when he charged, like he turns to get
Speaker 4: the letter and keeps going full speed the other way,
Speaker 4: and you're like, is he just you know, he's got
Speaker 4: to turn around, Like did he forget which way he
Speaker 4: was going?
Speaker 6: No.
Speaker 4: It is so corny and cheesy, and I loved it,
Speaker 4: and the fact that it comes up and it is
Speaker 4: the final shot of the movie, that we get a coda,
Speaker 4: and that we get that moment literally in a bronze
Speaker 4: statue and a little boy now grown up and which
Speaker 4: and also again passage of time, right, because I think
Speaker 4: we're led to believe that that should have been like
Speaker 4: how many years later, like thirty plus years. This guy
Speaker 4: somehow looks younger than Mary Stuart Masterson, who's playing Kevin
Speaker 4: Costner's daughter at that point. Just confusing, but that he
Speaker 4: says twenty forty eight and twenty thirteen, yeah, or maybe
Speaker 4: twenty forty three like the book I think was twenty
Speaker 4: forty eight, So that guy was in his early forties. Right,
Speaker 4: He looked great for an apocalypse. You look pretty good.
Speaker 8: They're now in Saint Rose, which I didn't even realize
Speaker 8: how many times he mentioned Saint Rose in the final film,
Speaker 8: because going back to that Roth script, Saint Rose is
Speaker 8: a big thing, and that's like his like I've heard
Speaker 8: about this town, and we're gonna find Saint Rose and
Speaker 8: it's gonna be fantastic. And then he actually finds the
Speaker 8: town towards the end of of the screenplay and then
Speaker 8: like that is the paradise that he was imagining, and
Speaker 8: that's where the final confrontation all takes place is in
Speaker 8: this Saint Rose. They do have electricity. They end up
Speaker 8: like cutting power lines and electric cuting these holensts.
Speaker 4: Clearly there's they still have like cotton production because they
Speaker 4: all are end up in these lovely pastel outfits that
Speaker 4: you can get it like coals or something, because you know,
Speaker 4: for a good like the twenty years of the First Apocalypse,
Speaker 4: everybody's wearing rags and they're all brown. But then when
Speaker 4: we get that code to everybody is in like an
Speaker 4: easter pastel and they look lovely.
Speaker 9: I think it might have been a fashion choice because like,
Speaker 9: clearly they didn't have sewing machines, but they had gromet
Speaker 9: presses because everything was grammited in lace together.
Speaker 4: But at the end, like Marysuerpastrin has like these perfect
Speaker 4: like silver earrings and a silver necklace over her like
Speaker 4: little cant suit like Pastel looks skirt thing. And it
Speaker 4: just again felt very like like we we turn things
Speaker 4: around pretty quickly after The Postman Saved the World.
Speaker 8: I would be very curious to watch this in terms
Speaker 8: of his facial hair as well, just because I feel
Speaker 8: like there is a yeah, he's got a lot of
Speaker 8: facial hair. He starts with the goatee, he comes to
Speaker 8: pine View with a full beard. I can't remember when
Speaker 8: he is suddenly he's clean shaven.
Speaker 9: I assume it's when he's after Abby, when he's sort
Speaker 9: of well, he's like trying to impress her a bit,
Speaker 9: all right, Yeah exactly, Yeah, yes, sir.
Speaker 8: And then when he's in the cabin he starts to
Speaker 8: grow it out again.
Speaker 12: Yeah.
Speaker 8: It's just like it changes all the time. It's kind
Speaker 8: of like the hat going backwards and forwards, you know,
Speaker 8: like it just the I mean, for a three hour movie,
Speaker 8: you would think you would have continuity, you know, pretty
Speaker 8: well licked.
Speaker 4: Or you'd have the complete lack of continuity, right because
Speaker 4: and I feel like that's true of like I think
Speaker 4: one of my first cases of being a kid, and
Speaker 4: like understanding that movies make mistakes was in Robin to
Speaker 4: Prince of Thieves, because there's a lot of moments like that.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of moments where like Kevin Costner sticks
Speaker 4: his right arm up and Morgan Freeman grabs his left arm.
Speaker 4: Like there's like a lot of little things like that,
Speaker 4: a cup being filled and the cup being empty, going
Speaker 4: back and forth. And I feel like, in some ways,
Speaker 4: the bigger your movie is sometimes the messier that gets,
Speaker 4: just because you end up shuffling so much around. I wonder,
Speaker 4: and I didn't get to read either of the screenplays,
Speaker 4: but was this always the order? Or were some things
Speaker 4: moved in different places? Because it doesn't make sense how
Speaker 4: the time flows. I wouldn't be unreasonable for scene seventy
Speaker 4: two to have been seen fourteen.
Speaker 8: Why I don't think the stuff of the statue is
Speaker 8: in either draft.
Speaker 4: Kevin Gosstner just needed that statue. Where do we think
Speaker 4: the statue is? Now?
Speaker 9: If it were a Hallmark movie, you'd know that it
Speaker 9: would be like in Jasper or like just out side Victoria,
Speaker 9: British Columbia or something, and they'd be like, oh, we
Speaker 9: found the perfect statue to.
Speaker 4: Make a movie around it in three days.
Speaker 8: The Roth script has well, it's kind of got the
Speaker 8: postman doing a little bit of narration, but it's him
Speaker 8: talking to his mules. There's he's got multiple mules.
Speaker 13: Ah Bill Bill gets butchered and fed to Kevin Cosler,
Speaker 13: just like the water buffalo gets fed to h Tank
Speaker 13: Girl in Tink Girls coming out the year prior.
Speaker 8: I think it was he's got the multiple mules in
Speaker 8: the Wroth draft, and then there is one point where
Speaker 8: a narrator just comes in and I don't think you
Speaker 8: ever find out who that narrator is. But then in
Speaker 8: the you know, the Helgelin version, and in the final film,
Speaker 8: which is pretty close, I would say to the Helgeland version,
Speaker 8: you've got Hope the daughter. Of course her name is Hope.
Speaker 8: It's got to be got to be Hope. You've got
Speaker 8: her narrating at the beginning, and then we come back
Speaker 8: at the end and she's talking about how brave he was,
Speaker 8: and she's there at the statue unveiling, but there is
Speaker 8: no statue, I don't think in the Helgelend version, and
Speaker 8: there's no kid saying it's me.
Speaker 4: As much as I had not seen most of this movie.
Speaker 4: I also just kind of assumed certain things about it,
Speaker 4: Like I assumed he died at the end once I
Speaker 4: read the book, and I assumed he was not going
Speaker 4: to be father to the child because he wasn't supposed
Speaker 4: to be. And so realizing watching the movie of like
Speaker 4: way he lives is the kid with that way it
Speaker 4: just ends in this traditional way. It was so disappointing,
Speaker 4: is it?
Speaker 9: Oh?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah?
Speaker 8: It made your family in a post nuclear apocalypse.
Speaker 4: It's an interesting thing of the novel that the idea
Speaker 4: of like a lot of men are sterile and probably
Speaker 4: women too because they're not getting vaccinated and it's the
Speaker 4: apocalypse and things are happening. So the idea that it
Speaker 4: would be like almost commonplace to have a body father,
Speaker 4: that's something, right, that's a concept, and this movie like
Speaker 4: gives that to you. And the scene like Olivia Williams
Speaker 4: first scene where she's like flirting with him, where he
Speaker 4: thinks she's flirting but really she's just trying to figure
Speaker 4: out if he's syphilist. Like, that's a funny scene. It's
Speaker 4: kind of cute, like and if the movie like stayed
Speaker 4: in that style and had fun with it, it could
Speaker 4: have also been something instead, it just ultimately, you know,
Speaker 4: twenty minutes labor later, Olivia Williams just has to be
Speaker 4: like the suffering woman.
Speaker 14: And it's a disappointment the problems that led to the
Speaker 14: wholeness and the apocalypse and everything can be solved by
Speaker 14: normative heterosexual white masculinity.
Speaker 9: Like they just weren't doing it right, like and now
Speaker 9: he's come around, right because.
Speaker 4: He because Bethelhem couldn't Bethelhem could not actually, you know,
Speaker 4: reproduce because you couldn't get it up with a woman.
Speaker 4: So there you go.
Speaker 9: The men just weren't many.
Speaker 4: They weren't no and if they hadn't men to I mean,
Speaker 4: Michael had to burn that flag because he was not
Speaker 4: a man. And we knew he wasn't a man because
Speaker 4: he had the mom syn couldn't produce semen.
Speaker 9: And that's interesting watching from now too, because like early
Speaker 9: I think the Turner Diaries were written in the seventies,
Speaker 9: but like clearly by nineteen eighty two, David Brynn had
Speaker 9: some familiarity with like militia groups and how particularly American
Speaker 9: white supremacist groups operated. By nineteen ninety seven, a lot
Speaker 9: of people did after like Waco.
Speaker 8: In the Oklahomama city.
Speaker 14: Yeah.
Speaker 9: Yeah, and so but they're just like no, no, what
Speaker 9: we need is more traditional values because that is the solution.
Speaker 8: This must just be a white supremacist dream here with
Speaker 8: all these tradwives running around. I mean when they come
Speaker 8: into the Wholeness camp, they're all just doing laundry and stuff.
Speaker 9: It's like, Okay, I was thinking about like how General
Speaker 9: Bethlehem only wanted boys between fifteen or like men between
Speaker 9: fifteen and fifty for his army, and I'm like, oh,
Speaker 9: it's the new US Army.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Yeah, they're basically ice rothscript gives name to what happened
Speaker 8: for the eclypse. It was the hole in the ozone
Speaker 8: layer which burned a bunch of stuff. And then the Wholenists.
Speaker 8: Nathan Holme, this survivalist guy who was very charismatic, wrote
Speaker 8: a bunch of books. Very not a Bill O'Reilly, not
Speaker 8: really a Tucker Carlson, but it's just like kind of
Speaker 8: along those lines. Basically, they have a second Civil War
Speaker 8: and it's almost like an insurrection, you know, it's almost
Speaker 8: there's even a storming of the capitol and everything. But yeah,
Speaker 8: like the postman actually gets like brought into their army
Speaker 8: and he's like, oh, yeah, I was captured in Saint
Speaker 8: Louis and I was there when Washington fell and that's great, Yeah, okay, cool.
Speaker 8: But the movie itself refuses to give name to anything,
Speaker 8: Like they talk about radiation, and they talk about the
Speaker 8: bad mumps, and they talk about these things, but they
Speaker 8: don't really ever say how the world collapsed. And I
Speaker 8: know that, you know, and they definitely talk about at
Speaker 8: quite a bit. They don't give us flashbacks. I don't
Speaker 8: think in the book they will talk about how he
Speaker 8: had I think just joined the army or something when
Speaker 8: the shit went down when he was seventeen, but he
Speaker 8: mostly talked about.
Speaker 4: Isn't he isn't in the novel is he a college
Speaker 4: students because he's like an actor, right, he's he's going
Speaker 4: to theater school.
Speaker 9: Yeah, And then he joins the militia and Saint Paul
Speaker 9: because it seems like there is basically like you have
Speaker 9: to do something stop these people.
Speaker 4: And in the novel too, I think, right, it's mentioned
Speaker 4: that like his commander was a woman, right, and that
Speaker 4: she was incredibly brave and that like she you know,
Speaker 4: did everything she had to keep them alive and her.
Speaker 9: Name implied she was Southeast Asian as well, which.
Speaker 4: Pointed it and feels like it was a deliberate choice.
Speaker 4: And I can't remember exactly in the novel what they
Speaker 4: what the cause of it is. It's sort of a combination,
Speaker 4: right of environmental and bio and then it just gets
Speaker 4: worse because of what people do.
Speaker 9: Yeah, like everything that could go wrong does go wrong.
Speaker 9: So it's it's like environmental stuff and it's war and
Speaker 9: then the wholeness break apart the lines between cities because
Speaker 9: they're insurrecting everywhere, and so then the illness starts to
Speaker 9: spread and people can't get vaccines.
Speaker 4: That's right. They block vaccines and block medical deliveries and
Speaker 4: things like that.
Speaker 8: So, yeah, it's not the Bethlehem character who's racist. It's
Speaker 8: like some of the guys that are on his army.
Speaker 8: Because the person that helps out the postman, one of
Speaker 8: the two people that helps out the postman the most,
Speaker 8: is a African American guy who like he's the one
Speaker 8: that mutilates the woman's body and is just like, you know, hey,
Speaker 8: you need to leave. I need to do this. We
Speaker 8: need to basically like send a message and make all
Speaker 8: of these guys super angry because these are just fucking
Speaker 8: plain folk who are not angry enough to actually go
Speaker 8: to war with these guys. And he comes back towards
Speaker 8: again and does a lot of damage to the Bethlehem
Speaker 8: character and his guys, and one of his guys is like,
Speaker 8: oh yeah, this black guy and blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 8: I don't even know if he uses the N word,
Speaker 8: but it's just like, I know, Bethlehem's character is like, hey,
Speaker 8: you know, that's small minded, like what are you doing
Speaker 8: kind of thing, Whereas it here, it's just like, oh yeah,
Speaker 8: like you said, like you thought he was bad, well,
Speaker 8: we're going to really make you feel, gonna make him
Speaker 8: racist and you know, talk about like mongoloid's and the
Speaker 8: N word and all this kind of stuff. I mean,
Speaker 8: James Russo always good for that. But it's so funny that,
Speaker 8: like I thought, just from the cast list, I was like, oh,
Speaker 8: James Russo's in this, Oh, Geo Bonni Rapisi's in this.
Speaker 8: Oh wow, this is this is great dead within thirty minutes.
Speaker 4: Which might not have been a bad thing in Giovanni
Speaker 4: Rubeci's case, Oh.
Speaker 8: My god, Rabisi, he was like totally the other sistering
Speaker 8: in this movie.
Speaker 4: He was going for it like he was he was trying.
Speaker 4: You want to be on set that day to just
Speaker 4: see like did he come with that or was Costner
Speaker 4: Like I need to push it harder just because I
Speaker 4: have a hard time watching Kevin Costner in this movie,
Speaker 4: who is such a like again, who can be a
Speaker 4: really charming screen presence. I don't know that he's ever
Speaker 4: really a great actor. I think he's one of those actors,
Speaker 4: like a better version of Mark Wahlberg in this where
Speaker 4: he is entirely dependent on what director is getting from him.
Speaker 4: But can he get things out of actors like you have? Again,
Speaker 4: it feels like will Patten came on here knowing what
Speaker 4: he was gonna do. Olivia Williams is a Shakespearean theater
Speaker 4: trained Brigdish actress who came in and said, well, okay,
Speaker 4: I'm just gonna take it seriously and hopefully it works.
Speaker 4: And so it's hard to imagine him giving directions to
Speaker 4: Giovanni Ribisi in that pull back or go harder.
Speaker 9: I feel like it's the kind of movie that usually
Speaker 9: you want to be bigger in, both as a Western
Speaker 9: and as opposed to apocalyptic movie and as a parable
Speaker 9: of America. And I'm not sure how he was directing them,
Speaker 9: but I feel like all the other actors did a
Speaker 9: good job understanding well they understood the movie in that
Speaker 9: kind of way we need to be a little bigger,
Speaker 9: except for Kevin Costner, and I feel like he has
Speaker 9: a level that he's comfortable at and it's almost I'm
Speaker 9: the normal guy reacting to things, and then sometimes I
Speaker 9: become the normal guy who's pushed too far and he
Speaker 9: has to become a hero, and he maybe he did that.
Speaker 4: I would be curious for a reading like I think
Speaker 4: you could do this again. I think you could do
Speaker 4: it as a mini series. I think you could do
Speaker 4: it as a film. And I think the movie made
Speaker 4: a lot of the right decisions in what they cut
Speaker 4: from the novel. I don't think the computer stuff would
Speaker 4: have worked. I think I don't think the super soldier
Speaker 4: stuff would have worked.
Speaker 12: To me.
Speaker 4: When I was reading, that was when I felt like, oh, right,
Speaker 4: this is why I don't really like reading a lot
Speaker 4: of sci fi novels that they end up just feeling
Speaker 4: so technically devoted to something, usually focusing on this specific
Speaker 4: story we want to tell at the cost of like
Speaker 4: good writing and characters and the supercilous stuff. I thought
Speaker 4: for a minute, I'm like, did I like skip a
Speaker 4: chapter because it felt so much like a different book
Speaker 4: by that point. So I think the movie made a
Speaker 4: lot of the right choices in the story was telling.
Speaker 4: It just ticklls it so poorly that you could do
Speaker 4: it again in another twenty years. Let's have a post woman.
Speaker 9: Yeah. I don't even mind the decision about we're going
Speaker 9: to conserve I mean, in general, I don't like the
Speaker 9: idea of like conservation of actresses, Like maybe they could
Speaker 9: just have more actresses doing things that aren't specifically woman
Speaker 9: things to do. But I don't mind that there was
Speaker 9: one love interest for him. I do think, like you say,
Speaker 9: it could have been handled better. And there's a lot
Speaker 9: in this I Mike shared that fan edit with us,
Speaker 9: and they cut out a lot of things, and they
Speaker 9: sort of make it much more what you would expect,
Speaker 9: where they introduce Bethlehem and his army and his predations
Speaker 9: very much like say a cattle baron in a Western
Speaker 9: or a warlord in a Mad Max movie. And then
Speaker 9: they introduce Kevin Costner's character as like a drifter, so
Speaker 9: you see him sliding in the mud and finding the
Speaker 9: postman out that they actually tighten up Abby's story together
Speaker 9: so you can see her arc and with him, and
Speaker 9: they show that works a lot better. And then at
Speaker 9: the end he reveals, like I said, that, ooh, all along,
Speaker 9: I had been in the army. And it works better
Speaker 9: as a coherent movie. But it's not the same movie,
Speaker 9: you know, And I don't think David Brinn would be
Speaker 9: happy with it because they made it more like.
Speaker 4: Other post amocalyptic violence.
Speaker 9: Yes, and I probably would have enjoyed it more. I
Speaker 9: wouldn't have found it so far frustrating or spent so
Speaker 9: much time trying to figure out what was going on
Speaker 9: with it and then what was going on with my
Speaker 9: response to it.
Speaker 4: But the definitive thing about this movie is that it
Speaker 4: is optimistic about America. And I think if you take
Speaker 4: that away, you did, it is I don't know what
Speaker 4: movie it would be.
Speaker 8: The optimism about America. We mentioned the burning and the flag.
Speaker 8: There's that little girl who just starts singing America the
Speaker 8: beautiful out of nowhere at one point.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much for bringing that up, because I
Speaker 4: almost forgot. And it's such a moment. Also, how did yeah,
Speaker 4: how does she even know that song? She went alive
Speaker 4: when we were singing that.
Speaker 8: Well, there's the thing where it's like the band in
Speaker 8: Pineview that is singing.
Speaker 4: There's a floutist. There's like a full out country band
Speaker 4: with classical but.
Speaker 8: They're playing songs that are modern as of nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 8: And at one point they start singing I think the
Speaker 8: very first time they start singing, and it sounds like
Speaker 8: they're singing the Cosmi Kids song like the not Going
Speaker 8: to Have a Good Time, And I was like, oh, okay,
Speaker 8: well they do that. In the book, there's a lot
Speaker 8: of like, oh, you know.
Speaker 4: Singing jingles, YEAHI pop culture, Yeah, well you.
Speaker 8: Know demolition Man like what we did. We've got the
Speaker 8: radio station that is just like the Armor hot Dog
Speaker 8: kind of songs and stuff. And I'm like, oh, well,
Speaker 8: that's interesting how they worked that. No, no, they're playing
Speaker 8: like you know, I can't even remember which the band is,
Speaker 8: but I'm just like, okay, yeah, I've heard this song before,
Speaker 8: just not in this kind of folksy way that they're
Speaker 8: doing at all. Right, But then that.
Speaker 9: Was a very hallmark moment too. They all they needed
Speaker 9: to be was in like a gazebo or something like that.
Speaker 4: Well, they had the little fire lights and everything. There's
Speaker 4: something too that I do find interesting about the apocalypse
Speaker 4: of how does culture survive? Right? For whatever reason, I
Speaker 4: think we're kind of led to believe in this movie
Speaker 4: that even though again target clothing will survive, books don't.
Speaker 4: It seems like right because nobody is reading, nobody is
Speaker 4: like that aspect does not seem to be a thing there.
Speaker 4: And so when Kevin Costner is this his his ability,
Speaker 4: his his trade is that he can perform Shakespeare kind
Speaker 4: of kind of not very well, not very well, but
Speaker 4: he's like the last guy alive who remembers most of
Speaker 4: the words to make beeth And again it does that
Speaker 4: thing that oh god, I forget, like when you are
Speaker 4: trying to show like somebody doing Shakespeare badly and the
Speaker 4: way they always go, it's like to be or not
Speaker 4: uh line line, that's what it feels like, right, He's
Speaker 4: like life is sold by it ore on. Yeah, that's it,
Speaker 4: like just like okay, like he could be good, like
Speaker 4: I guess, I mean, I don't know that I could
Speaker 4: buy Kevin Costner being good in Shakespeare. So maybe it's fun.
Speaker 4: The movie doesn't pretend he's actually good at what he's
Speaker 4: doing there, But there is something interesting about what would
Speaker 4: our how would how do we survive art without the
Speaker 4: things that we currently use for the medium? Right, It's
Speaker 4: like in Rain of Fire. I'm thinking of the Dragon movie,
Speaker 4: where the thing that they do right the way they
Speaker 4: entertain the children in it is they reenact Star Wars
Speaker 4: and the Empire strikes back. Because that's the thing we'd
Speaker 4: be able to tell our kids, like you're right, you
Speaker 4: know what, I can't recite at Tel of Two Cities
Speaker 4: to you, but I can reenact the entirety of problem
Speaker 4: Child if I need to. That's something that like would
Speaker 4: have also been more charming, because it again, you feel
Speaker 4: like you're going a certain direction with this movie of
Speaker 4: here's the world we're in, here's what survived. Again, it
Speaker 4: doesn't really work, but there's something there, but then it
Speaker 4: just gets mixed up in three more hours of a
Speaker 4: lot of other states. I think it's difficult, Like, I
Speaker 4: think it's difficult for two reasons, Like one, they don't
Speaker 4: really want to go there, Like I think that's like
Speaker 4: a whole class of stuff that in the book and
Speaker 4: to a lesser extent, but more by absence is like feminized,
Speaker 4: Like there's the work the women do in the books,
Speaker 4: and there's the work women we see them doing a
Speaker 4: little bit in the film.
Speaker 9: But it's also sixteen years out. I'm sure there are
Speaker 9: still librarians in their libraries organizing community. Like it's it's
Speaker 9: too soon for people to have completely forgotten Shakespeare or
Speaker 9: even like Danielle Steele, you know.
Speaker 8: The lady playing the piano seems to know all the lines. Yeah,
Speaker 8: she's cueing him and he keeps fucking up the keys.
Speaker 4: IINU it's very realistic of any society that you would
Speaker 4: have like the slightly older woman who totally could run
Speaker 4: everything and remembers everything and knows it all, but everybody
Speaker 4: like falls over for the attractive young white man.
Speaker 8: And that's also a character that's missing from the movie,
Speaker 8: is that I believe it's a woman.
Speaker 4: That Thompson the first woman who understands you're not a postman.
Speaker 4: I like, she calls him out on it immediately, But
Speaker 4: they have this kind of like these they became penpals,
Speaker 4: where he writes to her earnestly, but also it's like
Speaker 4: the one person he knows knows his secret and that
Speaker 4: she'll keep it because she realizes it's better for the
Speaker 4: world to hold onto it. Yeah, there's nobody like that here.
Speaker 4: I thought it was gonna be that character, but we
Speaker 4: don't have room for a woman to be beat and
Speaker 4: pel shit in this movie.
Speaker 8: I haven't thought it was going to be the guy
Speaker 8: that plays the sheriff, you know. I was like, oh, well,
Speaker 8: me too.
Speaker 4: I thought, oh, they've shifted it over to this guy,
Speaker 4: which again I'm sure, okay, the man would know.
Speaker 8: Kind of comes around after a while, but not fully.
Speaker 4: This is a case where I think it is an
Speaker 4: actor overcoming bad material because he's you know, he's there
Speaker 4: to be the guy, the one guy that really gets it.
Speaker 4: He's like, you're not a postman. I know you're not.
Speaker 4: I can tell. I'm older. I look at you. I
Speaker 4: know that this is bullshit. But then slowly, like has
Speaker 4: the scene where he's like, I still don't believe you,
Speaker 4: but you're good for this town. But then the next
Speaker 4: scene when Keavin cost is like, by the way, I
Speaker 4: have a letter from your sister. That scene is actually
Speaker 4: a really beautifully done scene because he takes it like
Speaker 4: just in one moment, this actor's eyes go from steely
Speaker 4: to welling up with tears, who says, I thought my
Speaker 4: sister was dead and he just walks away and reads
Speaker 4: this letter and you suddenly are like, there's a movie here,
Speaker 4: Oh there's okay. Can we just go with this guy?
Speaker 4: Can we follow him? Because it does feel like there
Speaker 4: is something genuine happening here and it's really lovely and
Speaker 4: I think it is purely a good actor being given
Speaker 4: two lines to make it work.
Speaker 8: What's funny because that guy, Daniel Van Bargain mostly plays
Speaker 8: sheriffs and chiefs of police like super Troopers, Chief Grady, oh,
Speaker 8: brother Waret, though he's Sheriff Cooley.
Speaker 4: I had just seen him on Seinfeld, so that's what
Speaker 4: was stuck in my head with him.
Speaker 8: Yeah, Seinfeld, he is fucking fantastic. I want to say,
Speaker 8: isn't he the guy from Malcolm in the Middle as
Speaker 8: well that that tortures Francis the Older And oh oh.
Speaker 4: He's the military guyana with the yeah, the yeah.
Speaker 8: And I think he even showed up in a Universal
Speaker 8: Soldier movie, which is kind of funny. But yeah, I
Speaker 8: was really thinking, Oh, he's going to be the guy.
Speaker 8: He's gonna, you know, see between the lines and all this.
Speaker 8: But yeah, you're right, that is a beautiful scene. There
Speaker 8: are moments in this movie where you're like, oh wow,
Speaker 8: this is actually like hitting, but those are so few
Speaker 8: and far between.
Speaker 4: And when you're a three hour movie.
Speaker 9: The Pony Express moment when when all the postal carriers
Speaker 9: are spluffed, yeah, yeah, that's a lovely and yeah.
Speaker 8: The Ford Lincoln Mercury character, I would say, is probably
Speaker 8: one of the strongest characters around. And he's the one,
Speaker 8: like you said, he's the one that organizes all this stuff.
Speaker 8: He's the one that really gets all of these people together,
Speaker 8: like he adapts the dream, like I think I referred
Speaker 8: to him in my notes as like he's basically the
Speaker 8: Paul of Tarsus of this whole movement. He's the one
Speaker 8: who gets hit on the road to Damascus and is like,
Speaker 8: I must spread the gospel of the postman. And he's
Speaker 8: the one that starts all of these Johnny Apple seeding
Speaker 8: all these different post offices all over the place.
Speaker 9: Yeah, we can have a better life.
Speaker 4: There's something lovely to that idea, because the you know,
Speaker 4: revolution to be in the hands of the young, right
Speaker 4: you want you don't want it to be these like
Speaker 4: old people. They're like, well, I remember how it was,
Speaker 4: now it could be again. Sure that's great, but it's
Speaker 4: much more important and powerful and sustainable if it's the
Speaker 4: young people saying I believe that the world could get
Speaker 4: better and I'm going to do something about it.
Speaker 9: And you also can't rely on I know, I feel
Speaker 9: like i'm harping on this, but you can't rely on
Speaker 9: one person. You have to build a community, no, unless Carol,
Speaker 9: that person is Kevin Potics. Yes, you're right, I'm sorry.
Speaker 8: Kind of reminds me of that line from Mad Max
Speaker 8: Fury Road where it's like they, you know, when a
Speaker 8: Morton Joe comes in and they've written like who broke
Speaker 8: the World or whatever, and it's like, yeah, all these
Speaker 8: young women are the ones that are going to be
Speaker 8: our saviors. It's not these old men who are just
Speaker 8: beholden to the old style of running things.
Speaker 4: And that's why I thought this movie was gonna end
Speaker 4: with Kevin Cosler dying with board Lincoln Mercury like putting
Speaker 4: on the Postmaster General flag, and Kevin Costner's daughter, who
Speaker 4: you know is taking over like the next level and
Speaker 4: so on, and all of that would have made more sense,
Speaker 4: but instead it still has to be in the hands
Speaker 4: of Like, isn't it great that Kevin Costner didn't kill
Speaker 4: that guy.
Speaker 9: During that moment? It made me briefly think of Grand
Speaker 9: Turino because I'm like, you know, I could see Clint Eastwood,
Speaker 9: who I think has different politics than Kevin Costner, pulling
Speaker 9: this movie off better.
Speaker 4: And they probably have the same politics. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 9: I haven't paid attention in a long time, but I
Speaker 9: was willing to give some continue to do that.
Speaker 4: That's the best way to live.
Speaker 8: I haven't seen Kevin Costner speak to any empty chairs,
Speaker 8: but I wouldn't be surprised. I mean, I haven't really
Speaker 8: kept up with him since I don't even know when
Speaker 8: the last time was.
Speaker 9: But one of the things that I appreciate about Grand
Speaker 9: Turno is that his character realizes he can't fix this
Speaker 9: and that in the end, the only thing he can
Speaker 9: do for these people is die, and that Kevin Costner character,
Speaker 9: like you said, there's an ending where the solution is
Speaker 9: he dies, his army gets pissed off seeing his dead body,
Speaker 9: and they have their victory. But no, they can't have
Speaker 9: their victory.
Speaker 8: I guess the last thing I saw him in was
Speaker 8: when he was playing paw Kent and had the most
Speaker 8: senseless death of.
Speaker 4: Oh my god ever. Oh this this scene where he
Speaker 4: just where he just chooses to die. Don't save me, Superman.
Speaker 4: I know you can save me, but don't save me.
Speaker 4: It's more important for you to let me die. Yes,
Speaker 4: I can't quite explain why.
Speaker 9: Because i'm your militia dad, and I have to teach
Speaker 9: you that humans are terrible and.
Speaker 4: You should never learn they're not worth saving, even though
Speaker 4: you're Superman, and that defies everything about Superman.
Speaker 9: Yes, yeah, I'm not going to go there. I'm gonna not.
Speaker 4: No, I forgot how mad I'm maybe. I don't think
Speaker 4: I'm a Superman person. I'm married to one who I
Speaker 4: can't believe he didn't walk out of that movie.
Speaker 9: I had a friend visiting it from out of town,
Speaker 9: and we went and saw at the Ford drive in
Speaker 9: because he was like, oh, you know, I like to
Speaker 9: see something in a drive in because he's from Toronto
Speaker 9: and there they're not very local drive in. So we
Speaker 9: went and saw that because it seemed like I was like,
Speaker 9: I don't want to see another Zack Snyder movie. But
Speaker 9: we saw it together there and we bitched so hard
Speaker 9: together in the car that we saw these people in
Speaker 9: this other card looking at us, and like that's.
Speaker 8: The perfect way to watch it, so that you could
Speaker 8: just bitch together and disturb them.
Speaker 11: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's weird. There's like little echoes of things that
Speaker 8: happened in this movie. I was just looking through my
Speaker 8: notes and there's that one moment where Bethlehem is just like,
Speaker 8: you know what, what separates okay men from great men?
Speaker 8: Or something? And he starts talking about like writing things
Speaker 8: down or journaling or something, and I'm like, what about it? Like,
Speaker 8: there is the whole thing about.
Speaker 4: The joy it makes you a good person in the book,
Speaker 4: that's a big part of it.
Speaker 8: Yeah, because the loses his journal, the postman loses his journle,
Speaker 8: and then that's what kind of outs him to the
Speaker 8: military guys to be like, hey, yeah, you're.
Speaker 9: You're a phony and a bad con man who wrote
Speaker 9: your con down.
Speaker 4: Every little girl who has a brothers learns very early
Speaker 4: you do not keep a diary. It will be used
Speaker 4: against you.
Speaker 8: And you were talking about what a good shot Abbey is.
Speaker 8: She's a good shot for one shot, and after that
Speaker 8: she becomes the worst shot in the world.
Speaker 4: No, she's a great shot for a movie. Oh yeah,
Speaker 4: because you have to prove yourself that you know how
Speaker 4: to hold the gun, you know, and can shoot to injure.
Speaker 4: And also yeah, you have to have the whole like
Speaker 4: Stormtrooper ability to not actually hit your primary target at
Speaker 4: all after that. So also, where are all these bullets
Speaker 4: coming from? There's a lot of bullets, and like they're
Speaker 4: they're not even like using them. Like at one point,
Speaker 4: right they when they almost let a guy get away,
Speaker 4: or Kenn concern wants to let a guy get away
Speaker 4: and the rest of the postmen do not and shoot
Speaker 4: the guy but then shoot him like fifty times each
Speaker 4: with their guns. And I'm watching it thinking like, don't
Speaker 4: you have to conserve Ammo, Like, shouldn't you be a
Speaker 4: little more thoughtful about this?
Speaker 8: I want to say. The guy she shoots in the
Speaker 8: head is the guy who gets booed at the dance
Speaker 8: contest and American astronaut. I haven't yet confirmed that though,
Speaker 8: but I was very happy about that. But yeah, in
Speaker 8: the book, they're so he's like, I have five bullets,
Speaker 8: you know, and I do not want to fire this.
Speaker 8: He ends up making a bow and arrow and he's
Speaker 8: just like, well, yeah, I'm gonna use this bow and arrows.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because he needs to shoot once to prove that
Speaker 4: it's loaded. But then after that he knows I'm done
Speaker 4: after these five bullets.
Speaker 9: And the final fight is hand to hand. But also
Speaker 9: like all all the troops they've learned, like the Wholeness
Speaker 9: are using knives because it's quiet and because they're reusable.
Speaker 4: Makes sense.
Speaker 8: And yes, that is Joseph McKenna, who was a Wholeness
Speaker 8: captain as well as the doorman from The American Astronaut,
Speaker 8: one of my favorite films, and I was really glad
Speaker 8: to see. At one point Kostner gets or the Postman
Speaker 8: gets heckled by a guy in the very first time
Speaker 8: he's performing, and he's just like, you suck, you know
Speaker 8: kind of thing. That's the guy from The Untouchables who
Speaker 8: is the bookkeeper that Sean Connery shoots the dead body
Speaker 8: in the head, and he's like, i'll tell you anything,
Speaker 8: I'll tell you anything. That's that same guy. I'm like, oh, okay,
Speaker 8: this is kind of nice. It's like Costner kind of
Speaker 8: you know, like, well, I'll use this guy from The Untouchables,
Speaker 8: I'll use Will Patten from No Way Out and also
Speaker 8: ironically the character that he plays in No Way Out
Speaker 8: gay and is just so in love with the Gene
Speaker 8: Hackman character in that movie.
Speaker 4: Probably why he cast Will Patten, because you want it's
Speaker 4: funny because every interview, the ones that were in there
Speaker 4: that I watched, Kennon Costner is trying, like whether he's
Speaker 4: trying hard or genuinely, Like when it comes to actually
Speaker 4: talking about himself, he seems very like, kind of embarrassed
Speaker 4: and kinda yeah, I mean I kind of had the
Speaker 4: star in the movie and you know, I really I
Speaker 4: know I'm not the best actor and so on, and
Speaker 4: it really like he just puts on this humble act
Speaker 4: of it just this is how we had to tell
Speaker 4: the stories, is what we had to do. And I
Speaker 4: don't really think of myself as anything great. And but
Speaker 4: yet every decision in this movie, right that casting like
Speaker 4: his love interest being younger enough than him but not
Speaker 4: so young that it's weird right that he like Will again,
Speaker 4: like I'll just keep going back to it, but like
Speaker 4: Will Patton being such a specific type of person to
Speaker 4: cast an in the part of your rival, right because
Speaker 4: he is not going to outshine you. And again, I
Speaker 4: think there is absolutely like homosexual undertones to it.
Speaker 14: I think he.
Speaker 9: Did, though, I think Will Patton outshine him.
Speaker 4: I agree. I think most of the spell trying him
Speaker 4: because she was really not good in this. Yeah, a
Speaker 4: lot a lot of before they're famous people too. Well.
Speaker 8: Will Penn's just a great actor. Some of the reports
Speaker 8: I read and now this is always folly when you
Speaker 8: read like, oh, well they almost cast this person because
Speaker 8: they didn't, you know, like I know there.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, who knows how will close any of that
Speaker 4: ever came?
Speaker 8: Roth said himself that he was writing it with Tom
Speaker 8: Hanks in mind, and there was talk of him coming in.
Speaker 8: Other people that they talked about. I know Dreyfus, Richard Dreyfus.
Speaker 4: Richard Dreyfus apparently really wanted to do it right. He
Speaker 4: was like crying like himself spearheading it.
Speaker 8: And I don't know if that was just for the rights,
Speaker 8: like if he would have been a producer, if he
Speaker 8: would have been the star. And then the other people
Speaker 8: I heard for starring in this. One of them I
Speaker 8: can't see, the other one I think would be perfect.
Speaker 8: The one I can't see is Robin Williams. The one
Speaker 8: I could see as Michael Keaton.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Michael Heaton would have been great.
Speaker 9: He has the right he has the good energy, and
Speaker 9: you know, like we were talking about his Shakespearean acting
Speaker 9: and it's sort of in retrospect. I'm like, oh, you
Speaker 9: know when you watch the Westerns and there's sort of
Speaker 9: the the loosh sketchy actor who comes into town who's
Speaker 9: overly broadly Shakespearean.
Speaker 8: Oh, yeah, you're Richard Harris.
Speaker 4: Yeah he was trying to.
Speaker 9: Yeah, he was trying to do that. And because he
Speaker 9: didn't do that, because I don't want to say he can't,
Speaker 9: I suspect it's not in his range, like that kind
Speaker 9: of like broad over the top kind of performing is
Speaker 9: a specific skill. But because he didn't do that, we're like,
Speaker 9: what does this have to do with like the time
Speaker 9: and what kind of education they have that they're relying
Speaker 9: on him? And but Michael Keaton could rip that shit up, Mike,
Speaker 9: he could be terrible Shakespearean actor who's super broad and
Speaker 9: then gets into a fight about whether or not he sucks.
Speaker 8: I mean, his character in much Ado About Nothing was
Speaker 8: fucking fantastic.
Speaker 9: Yeah, and I'd buy him as like a con man
Speaker 9: who eventually had to realize his con was true.
Speaker 8: I mean his character from Night Shift is a total
Speaker 8: con man type character and he eventually has to come
Speaker 8: around and that, yeah, Michael Keaton has ranged. You can
Speaker 8: have an arc, whereas like when Costner is like, hey,
Speaker 8: this was a bad thing, it's just like he is
Speaker 8: just so abrupt about it, and it's like you've got
Speaker 8: three hours to build this character and you just like
Speaker 8: turn out a dime here, and just like some of
Speaker 8: the weird decisions that they made, Like there's a I
Speaker 8: think the only extra that's on either the DVD or
Speaker 8: the Blu ray is available on YouTube fully, which is
Speaker 8: a breakdown of the special effects and who did they
Speaker 8: push out right towards the end. It wasn't the special
Speaker 8: effects person somebody else, but like the choices for the
Speaker 8: special effects were so odd because it was all stuff
Speaker 8: that seemed like it was practical. Like when Olivia Williams
Speaker 8: is in that freezing cold water, all of that snow
Speaker 8: was digital snow. I'm like what, Or like they'll do
Speaker 8: like big replacements of like mountain ranges and stuff, like
Speaker 8: when he at the very beginning he's in that dry
Speaker 8: lake bed and he's like hopping on a trampoline or
Speaker 8: something like all of the stuff behind him was replaced.
Speaker 8: And like they talk a lot in that Roth screenplay
Speaker 8: about how fucked up the sky is because of the
Speaker 8: Ozone layer, and I was like, well, that kind of
Speaker 8: would make sense if the sky was weird, but as
Speaker 8: it is, like I wouldn't mind vacationing to pine View,
Speaker 8: you know, not beholden to you know, like the post
Speaker 8: office being you know, almost torched and everything, but like
Speaker 8: these places seem very you know you're talking about the
Speaker 8: clothes and stuff and how great the clothes look. Yeah,
Speaker 8: things don't look dirty in this Like where's the the
Speaker 8: worn outness of things? Like it's so ironic that, you know,
Speaker 8: like and I think that's one reason too why they
Speaker 8: moved away from the Roth draft was things like the
Speaker 8: postman will go around and he collects bits of things
Speaker 8: from the pre war period and he'll like impress people
Speaker 8: with like here's a le leardo to teenage mutant ninja
Speaker 8: turtle figure. Well, that is so similar to what he
Speaker 8: was doing in water World when he would dive down
Speaker 8: and take you know, like dirt from the bottom of
Speaker 8: the ocean or any of that kind of stuff. And
Speaker 8: it's just like, oh, yeah, here's this thing that I found,
Speaker 8: and that becomes oh, you have paper, Oh my god,
Speaker 8: I haven't seen paper in forever. I mean, the one
Speaker 8: version of water World that I like even better than
Speaker 8: the theatrical version. It runs about three hours and it
Speaker 8: moves so much better than this movie does.
Speaker 4: Realizing this movie came out the same year as Contact,
Speaker 4: Starship Troopers and Titanic, and I remember at this time,
Speaker 4: like you know, most fifteen year old of the era,
Speaker 4: I was a big fan of the National Inquirer. I
Speaker 4: used to really like reading it, and every week there
Speaker 4: would be an article about Titanic, the same way three
Speaker 4: years earlier, every week there would be an article about
Speaker 4: water World, Right, water World is this disaster? I remember
Speaker 4: one short article about how talking about how much money
Speaker 4: Kevin Coster was spending. How they filmed a scene where
Speaker 4: he was supposed to fall in like a vat of
Speaker 4: like oil, and it was jello and it was cherry
Speaker 4: flavored jello, and Kevin Coster immediately yelled cut and said no,
Speaker 4: I said strawberry, and they had to reload it with
Speaker 4: strawberry jello. And I don't remember anything about the Postman
Speaker 4: because all of that attention was on Titanic. Every week
Speaker 4: it was Titanic's budgets now one hundred million, Titanic budgets
Speaker 4: now at one hundred and twenty million. And The Postman
Speaker 4: in some ways got so lucky because it was not
Speaker 4: the disaster it was not anticipated to be the disaster
Speaker 4: it was going to be because the world was waiting
Speaker 4: with bated breath for Titanic to fail. And what do
Speaker 4: you know, Titanic the most expensive movie at that time,
Speaker 4: but yet it's huge and The Postman does not at all,
Speaker 4: but is not. I don't know how much money had
Speaker 4: ultimately lost because it was it seems like they spent
Speaker 4: money on this movie, and apparently, if some of the
Speaker 4: articles are to be believed, like they wasted a lot of
Speaker 4: time and money on this too. Like there's article in
Speaker 4: how like Kevin Costner would like because he was in
Speaker 4: charge in so many ways that he was not looking
Speaker 4: at the weather forecasts. So they'd show up and be
Speaker 4: like it's raining today. He's like, Okay, I guess we're
Speaker 4: not shooting. I guess I'm gonna go golfing or something
Speaker 4: that it seemed like a little bit of do you
Speaker 4: understand how much your people's money you're spending by doing
Speaker 4: this movie. But again, the movie kind of like got Away.
Speaker 4: We talk more about water World being a failure than
Speaker 4: we do about The Postman being a failure. Water World
Speaker 4: made money in the end, the Postman did not.
Speaker 8: Yeah, well was it eighty million dollar budget? They say,
Speaker 8: and I'm made back thirty. I can't remember if it
Speaker 8: was britn because I watched all those interviews and one
Speaker 8: of the people said about Titanic. They're like, yeah, we
Speaker 8: ended up being the Titanic, And the Titanic movie was
Speaker 8: the Iceberg.
Speaker 9: The Iceberg, yep, I think that was Brendanah and.
Speaker 4: I know it was.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I saw in the theaters like for better or worse.
Speaker 8: I'm not a big fan of Titanic, but there's a.
Speaker 4: Lot to be said negatively about Titanic, But Titanic is
Speaker 4: an experience and that was a movie that ultimately, and
Speaker 4: it's been true of every James Cameron movie kind of
Speaker 4: before and after. It is easy to mock the man.
Speaker 4: It's easy to doubt the man. I'm sure he's a
Speaker 4: miserable man to like actually be around regularly, but he
Speaker 4: fundamentally he is confident in himself, and he knows what's
Speaker 4: gonna work, and he has always been right. Titanic was
Speaker 4: supposed to be a disaster, it was not. Terminator two
Speaker 4: was suposed to be a disaster, it was not. I remember
Speaker 4: everybody doubting Avatar, and I remember thinking, you're wrong, that's
Speaker 4: gonna be the biggest movie of all time, and it
Speaker 4: was and it you know, most people can't do that,
Speaker 4: and Kevin Costner certainly couldn't.
Speaker 9: I understand he's leaving Yellowstone to direct three more movies.
Speaker 4: I wonder, well, you know he did the one right,
Speaker 4: and he's still yeah, it was such a disaster. And
Speaker 4: did he film the second part? Or was it that
Speaker 4: it was like all prepped and because it was supposed
Speaker 4: to be like a three part epic.
Speaker 9: Thing, he's still trying to do it. I think he.
Speaker 9: I think he's going to have a difficult time.
Speaker 8: I thought Horizon and American Saga at Horizon and two
Speaker 8: already came out, or was it just part one?
Speaker 4: The first one came out and was like a miserable failure.
Speaker 4: I thought the second one was then supposed to go
Speaker 4: like straight to DVD or like I think whoever was
Speaker 4: backing the first one was like, oh you know what, No,
Speaker 4: we're we don't need to pick up this contract. Chapter
Speaker 4: two mom filming began. Yeah, I guess maybe it actually
Speaker 4: was filmed, but I don't think it's getting a cinematic release.
Speaker 4: Oh No. Premiered at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival
Speaker 4: in twenty twenty five, and it's the last time anybody
Speaker 4: who's ever talked about it.
Speaker 9: It's really difficult when you really want to do something
Speaker 9: and it is not your forte.
Speaker 4: When you have enough clout and money that you can
Speaker 4: do it, you can physically do it, somebody will give
Speaker 4: you the money to do it, somebody will give you
Speaker 4: the permission to do it, and you have too much
Speaker 4: confidence not to do it. It's a shame. I have
Speaker 4: actually not seen Dances with Wolves. It's on. It's one
Speaker 4: of those best pictures I've always meant to and just
Speaker 4: haven't yet.
Speaker 9: It's fine, it has lots of It's very beautiful in
Speaker 9: a lot of ways. It's very cool to see like
Speaker 9: West two Dy and Graham Groon and the whole old
Speaker 9: Western gang and I'll best actors in their bones.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's crazy to realize he has directed a
Speaker 4: lot less movies than I realized he has, because I
Speaker 4: think in my head I know how involved he was
Speaker 4: during in post production on Robin Hood and Water Like
Speaker 4: he recut Water World right. Ultimately, the theatrical version I
Speaker 4: think was his. So I think of him as a
Speaker 4: more of a director than he probably is on paper.
Speaker 4: He really wants to be, like I think that's what
Speaker 4: he wants to do and what he wants to be
Speaker 4: remembered for.
Speaker 8: He wants to be an auturist.
Speaker 9: Did you guys suffer? See Detroit Metal City?
Speaker 8: Mm mm.
Speaker 9: I always think about it in these situations because it's
Speaker 9: the first time I really consciously thought about, like what
Speaker 9: you wanted to be good at and what you were
Speaker 9: good at. And in this case, it's about a guy
Speaker 9: who wants to do Swedish what he calls Swedish pop,
Speaker 9: and he has like a little mushroom cut and he
Speaker 9: wants to sing these bright, cheerful songs. But what he's
Speaker 9: really good at is black metal, and he ends up
Speaker 9: being in a band trying to get his Swedish pop
Speaker 9: songs produced. But everyone loves Detroit Metal City, which is
Speaker 9: the name of his band. It's from a manga and
Speaker 9: he just looks so devastated in his face paint and
Speaker 9: his kiss boots and his Lord Yama's water buffalo on
Speaker 9: stage to frighten people at the image of death and
Speaker 9: engaged in a battle of the bands with Gene Simmons
Speaker 9: singing fucking him Palace.
Speaker 4: It's the opposite to me of the movie Rudy, which
Speaker 4: I hate. I know people love Rudy. I know people
Speaker 4: like have modeled their you know, goals and ambitions and
Speaker 4: pride on that movie. And I watch it and I'm like,
Speaker 4: but he's not good. You can't just get something because
Speaker 4: you really want it. Yes, sometimes you're not right for something,
Speaker 4: and you shouldn't be on the Notre Dame football team
Speaker 4: if you're five to three and can't actually play football,
Speaker 4: no matter how much you want it.
Speaker 8: Bat foot nothing, you weigh one hundred and nothing. I
Speaker 8: remember that trailer from Blockbuster a lot.
Speaker 4: And you don't get You don't get something just because
Speaker 4: you want it. And I mean you're Kevin Costner, so
Speaker 4: you yet the ability to direct films, and I mean
Speaker 4: Horizon was set to be people thought it might be
Speaker 4: the best picture when it was announced because it has
Speaker 4: a great cast. It was like, oh, Kevin Costner back
Speaker 4: to directing a western. This could this could be something.
Speaker 4: And I mean I remember it's showing up on a
Speaker 4: lot of like most anticipated lists, and then it came
Speaker 4: out and people are, oh, lead, this is the Postman,
Speaker 4: Kevin Costner. Not cancel the polls, Kevin Costner, I don't know,
Speaker 4: but give this to another director, give give this, yeah,
Speaker 4: another reboot. I'm all taken.
Speaker 8: Yeah, to your point, I think this would make a
Speaker 8: great television mini series or series.
Speaker 4: You could play around a lot with the genders. You
Speaker 4: could flip a lot of things. You could explore the
Speaker 4: racism or or not. You could make it more about
Speaker 4: physical ability and have it be that kind of story
Speaker 4: that's about ableism or something to that effect. Like there's
Speaker 4: a lot that you know, Again, I didn't love the novel,
Speaker 4: but I think there's a lot in that novel that
Speaker 4: I understand why a lot of people were drawn to
Speaker 4: it and said, I want to make this movie. I
Speaker 4: want to be in this movie. It's again I'm saying
Speaker 4: it's a shame. I think I probably enjoyed this a
Speaker 4: little bit more of the books of You, just from
Speaker 4: an entertainment point of view, because I can enjoy something
Speaker 4: that's trying really hard and failing, and that's what I
Speaker 4: feel like this movie does. But I still think like
Speaker 4: there's still there's there's wheels in this thing to give
Speaker 4: it another go.
Speaker 9: I'm a little confounded because I can almost always do that,
Speaker 9: and this is the first movie in a long time
Speaker 9: that I really had trouble with. I'm still thinking about, like,
Speaker 9: what is it about it? Because I enjoy zombie like
Speaker 9: say like which has terrible pacing and but but it
Speaker 9: has charm to it that and I feel like there's
Speaker 9: the smelding of Oscar level sensibility, Like there's Oscar level music,
Speaker 9: there's Oscar level cinematography all that. The cast is fantastic,
Speaker 9: and it's been merged into what I would normally see
Speaker 9: as a very low budget straight to video kind of thing.
Speaker 9: That would have been that way for if Kevin Costner
Speaker 9: hadn't been involved in nineteen ninety seven, Like you say, now,
Speaker 9: it could be a very cool prestige mini series. It
Speaker 9: could you know, like murder Bot or the Dune stuff,
Speaker 9: And instead we're trying really hard to elevate the material.
Speaker 9: And I don't know, maybe it's as simple as that
Speaker 9: that I can't deal with the elevating of the material.
Speaker 8: I mentioned things like the It's me line or the
Speaker 8: little girl singing America the beautiful. There are so many
Speaker 8: clunkers in this movie where you're just laughing out loud,
Speaker 8: like you give away hope, like you're giving away.
Speaker 4: Candy that one I might adopt. And that's where you're like,
Speaker 4: Olivia Williams, you pour a beautiful creature. I love the uh.
Speaker 4: There was one of the interviews with her, because this
Speaker 4: was her first Hollywood film, right, she basically came straight
Speaker 4: over on a plane from England and was like shoved
Speaker 4: on set and the you know interviewer it's like one
Speaker 4: of those typical like very like Hollywood talking it up
Speaker 4: and everything and favorite the exact line they say to
Speaker 4: her was something like, oh, you know, like, were you
Speaker 4: really was this what you were looking for? Were you
Speaker 4: excited to do it? And she's basically said, like, you know,
Speaker 4: you're an actor, you take what comes to you. Yeah.
Speaker 9: I liked I liked the part where she was like
Speaker 9: when they kept asking her trying to get her to
Speaker 9: be excited about it, She's like, well, I'm really looking
Speaker 9: forward to the good work I can get from this now,
Speaker 9: don't make her be any more damningly polite.
Speaker 4: I'm saying I'll never watch it again, but no, that's
Speaker 4: not true. If this is on cable one day, I
Speaker 4: will absolutely flick it on and be like, Okay, I
Speaker 4: guess I'm gonna whisk my eggs to the scene where,
Speaker 4: you know, whatever scene it is not in a way
Speaker 4: that like a Field of Dreams is on, I will
Speaker 4: stop whatever I'm doing and be like, all right, guy,
Speaker 4: start watching the rest of Field of Dreams again. With
Speaker 4: this one, I think it is watchable. I think it
Speaker 4: is I say that it's not watching able to sit
Speaker 4: down and watch it for three hours. But I think
Speaker 4: this is one that in passing. If I walked by
Speaker 4: and this was on TV, Okay, I'm gonna leave it
Speaker 4: on for a while, laugh a little kind of again,
Speaker 4: appreciate the horse three in the movie, and move on
Speaker 4: with my life. But it's fascinating to me in how
Speaker 4: much it wanted to do and how it was just
Speaker 4: in the wrong hands to do it.
Speaker 9: I would like to want to watch it while I
Speaker 9: did laundry. I think I will find some I think
Speaker 9: I'll turn to water World while I do laundry.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I'm glad that there was a fan edit of this.
Speaker 8: I think it's definitely stronger. I think they Carol you
Speaker 8: pointed out the a spark of hope subtitle. Yes given
Speaker 8: is really kind of overwrought, but that's very much in
Speaker 8: keeping with this movie.
Speaker 9: It's the same. Yeah, it might be appropriate.
Speaker 8: Yeah, but yeah, I even with that, I don't think
Speaker 8: it can really save what's here. It definitely makes a
Speaker 8: move faster, which thank you for that. Appreciate that one.
Speaker 8: But yeah, no, water is where it's at for me
Speaker 8: when it comes to this stuff. And there's a lot
Speaker 8: of other Costner films where I'm like, Okay, yeah, let's
Speaker 8: check this out. Like I would love to go back
Speaker 8: and rewatch Silverado. It's been way too long since I've
Speaker 8: seen that.
Speaker 4: That is a good time of a movie.
Speaker 8: Again, He's kind of like very minor to the cast,
Speaker 8: you know, compared to you know, like Kevin Klein or
Speaker 8: Danny Glover, these guys.
Speaker 4: It's a shame that he got so big so quick,
Speaker 4: because I think he is somebody that could have been
Speaker 4: a great supporting actor in a lot of things, or
Speaker 4: do like.
Speaker 9: A Chris Cooper, you know, like have some small ey
Speaker 9: movies that are like Buldeom and stuff.
Speaker 4: But just as soon as he got that power and
Speaker 4: could direct and star in his own projects, you can't
Speaker 4: do that if you don't have the ability to step
Speaker 4: outside yourself and and know your strengths and weaknesses. Like right,
Speaker 4: because I don't think he is an overly classically trained actor.
Speaker 4: I don't you know. And again, he is to me
Speaker 4: the definitive person when I think of like an actor
Speaker 4: who I think is a film actor who is charismatic
Speaker 4: but is not necessarily a good actor. And again, he's
Speaker 4: been good in film, But I don't think he is
Speaker 4: who he is because he is a trained actor with
Speaker 4: great instincts. I think he just has that thing that
Speaker 4: works really well on camera, and when it's done right
Speaker 4: and exploited right, it's really watchable and it can really
Speaker 4: make a movie better. And when it's front and center
Speaker 4: without any editing and directing around it, it is a
Speaker 4: three hour slog.
Speaker 8: He does have the honor of being in one of
Speaker 8: my least favorite movies ever, which I only made it
Speaker 8: through one time in the movie theater, which is Dragonfly
Speaker 8: from two thousand and two. I don't know if you've
Speaker 8: ever heard of this movie. It's a Tom Shadack film,
Speaker 8: and it's about a grieving doctor who's contacted by his
Speaker 8: deceased wife through her patients near death experiences. It is what.
Speaker 4: It sounds like, some wretch.
Speaker 8: It absolutely wretched.
Speaker 4: Oh you've so made me add this to Mike Cue
Speaker 4: Linda the Haunt and Gathy Bates. I just got I
Speaker 4: just skimmed like this synopsis. The first thing I see
Speaker 4: is when Joe arrives at his home, his parent goes
Speaker 4: into a rage. I mean you sold me on that?
Speaker 9: Do another feminine critique?
Speaker 4: Definitely, Yes, Yes, that's what we're doing.
Speaker 8: All right, guys, we're going to take a break and
Speaker 8: play your preview for next week's show right after these
Speaker 8: brief messages.
Speaker 1: Matt from Viva again and Emily looking for something superior
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Speaker 1: rediscover the wonders of physical meet Yeah, no.
Speaker 5: Sh shod, oh God, A thousand miles your own alone.
Speaker 7: You'll count back count some day, You'll count back home
Speaker 7: some day.
Speaker 13: You steal up.
Speaker 11: In costs, star shot and no Opera extracts.
Speaker 5: Come Back comes Day, You're a black Cosme.
Speaker 11: Day extras, no shust come back Concdays Consisday.
Speaker 4: Nay, that's right.
Speaker 8: We'll be back next week, kicking off a whole month
Speaker 8: of Western Discussions where we start with Massacre time. Until then,
Speaker 8: I want to thank my co hosts Emily and Jane. Emily,
Speaker 8: what's been going on with you?
Speaker 4: Well, obviously I'm going to be watching Dragonfly on to
Speaker 4: B because that's where it's streaming. But aside from that,
Speaker 4: you can find my writing at Deadly Dollshouse dot com
Speaker 4: and my podcast with the wonderful Christine nick These at
Speaker 4: The Feminine Critique. We just did an episode off in
Speaker 4: Christine had a great goal of watching more movies directed
Speaker 4: by women, So this somehow led us to pairing for
Speaker 4: Ephron's Julie and Julia with Julia Dick Harno's Titan. So
Speaker 4: that's our latest episode, the double pairing that was always.
Speaker 8: Meant to be and Carol, how about yourself?
Speaker 9: I will obviously be reading and listening to Emily's discussion
Speaker 9: of Dragonfly and you can find me at the Cultural Gutter.
Speaker 9: Strangely enough, my latest piece there is a nineteen ninety
Speaker 9: seventh film, The Office Killer, which is directed by a
Speaker 9: female director and art fine art photographer Cindy Sherman. And
Speaker 9: we've recently hired a new editor on, Michelle Kisner, who
Speaker 9: fans of the Projection Booth might be familiar with from
Speaker 9: her episodes here.
Speaker 8: Thanks again, folks for being on the show, Thanks to
Speaker 8: everybody for listening. If you want to hear more of
Speaker 8: me shooting off my mouth, check out some of the
Speaker 8: other shows that I work on. They are all available
Speaker 8: at Weirdingwaymedia dot com. Thanks especially to our Patreon community.
Speaker 8: If you want to join the community, visit patreon dot com.
Speaker 8: Slash Projection Booth. Every donation we get help some Projection
Speaker 8: Booth take over the world.
Speaker 12: I gave a letter to the postman, put it in
Speaker 12: his side, biting her. The next morning he brought.
Speaker 3: My letter back. She rode about it, returned in the cylinder.
Speaker 3: Had dress sudden No such number those such song we
Speaker 3: had had a bottom a love spat. I'm sorry, put
Speaker 3: my letter keeps coming back. So when I dropped it
Speaker 3: in the mail box, that's saying a special.
Speaker 7: Brit in her.
Speaker 3: The next morning he came right back to me.
Speaker 6: She rode upbout it returned in the cylinder. That dress
Speaker 6: sudden though those such person.
Speaker 12: Such this time, I'm going to take ad byself and
Speaker 12: put it in her head, and.
Speaker 3: It becomes black the very next time. Then along the
Speaker 3: step at this bottom go such number such return.
Speaker 1: Want to support physical media and get great movies in
Speaker 1: the mail, head over to Scarecrow Video dot Org and try.
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Speaker 6: Again.
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