The Year of Living Dangerously with Tracy Letts
2026-04-05 04:00:00 • 3:21:30
A podcast caught in the fire of revolution.
So that's the part.
That's the...
I'm not having a serious problem with the series.
Not because I'm trying to avoid doing an Australian accent.
I could nail it if I wanted to.
You ever did an Australian accent?
I haven't.
I'm told that the secret is really...
Or Riley.
Riley.
What's...
I feel like the one that's gotten really big when I see...
Riley.
Like, Australian accent Instagram says, no.
No.
No.
We're doing it terribly.
Yeah, we're doing it terribly.
But that they...
There's a no with an R.
We've been really upsetting the entire continent,
this entire series, just so you know what you're walking into, Tracy.
Luckily, this movie isn't said in Australia,
but we have been...
Our knowledge gaps about Australian history and culture have been exposed a little bit.
Look, we've heard some of your Australian prejudice.
I mean...
Oh, because I've been...
Admittedly.
Is that grew up in Britain?
Yes, okay, so you've heard.
Yeah.
I'm copying to it, you know?
And we thought it was a positive stereotype to assume that upon meeting
every Australian takes out a knife and compares whose knife is bigger than the others.
We did not think that was offensive.
Have you ever been to Australia?
I have.
You know what?
This has not come up much in this series.
You've been multiple times?
Or just the one time?
I've been two times.
Right.
Both for work.
No, once for fun.
I had a good friend growing up whose family relocated to Australia.
And I went to visit him when I was a teenager.
And then I went for work.
I was on a TV show, which no one should ever make.
I feel like you have some similar experiences or similar opinions on the process of making
a TV show, which is fairly brutal.
I don't know, it depends on the show.
Okay, you're right.
What show were you on?
It's called The Tick.
It was a superhero parody.
And we had an extended press tour that ended in Australia.
Oh, wow.
And they spoke to you to Australia?
They took me to Australia.
And it was a thing where the cast was an international press tour.
And every time we jumped a continent or a country, someone would drop off and be like,
either we're cutting the budget, we're reducing the cast, or I'm not available for another
week of this.
And so it got down to Australia.
And it was just me and the creator of the show.
And they were like, and you're down to do the Australia stop, right?
We'll fly you in.
It's just 36 hours and we'll fly you back.
And I was like, I'm not going to Australia unless you give me five days in a hotel.
It was one of my only flexes ever.
Were you in Sydney?
I was in Sydney proper, but then did some driving around, not me, people drove me around.
Yeah, he can drive.
I can drive.
Have you been to Australia, Dave?
Never been.
Would love to go in theory.
Have you been?
I have been three times, sir.
I went once, somebody was doing my play Killer Joe at an independent production.
And so I went for that.
I was impressed for that.
My play Augustos H. County was done at the National Theater when Kate Blanchett and
her husband were running the National Theater.
So we took our production to the same cast like you.
Yeah, the whole show went to our group down there.
And then the third time, oh, was when Kerry was shooting the leftovers, they shot season
three.
There were only three seasons.
They shot season three in Melbourne.
So I have a brother in Singapore.
We went, we got visiting him in Singapore, got terrible food poisoning, then went to Melbourne.
And we got there earlier than she was supposed to start work.
But we were there at the same time, the Melbourne International Film Festival was going on.
Very good festival like yet.
Mill, as a mill.
And we just became festival goers.
We got passes and just went to all the movies.
It was a great way to learn the city and learn the trains and stuff and we had a great
time and mouth.
Mill sounds like a real filth.
Festival, I'd like to frequent.
The thing you are teaming me up for here, unknowingly Tracy, which I somehow have not brought
up at all this series is my brother, James Newman, boarded a plane on New Year's Eve,
2025, and January 1st landed in Sydney, Australia, where he now works full time as the general
manager of the Sydney basketball team.
I feel like you have brought this up.
I think I haven't been in this series.
I can't remember because of recording order.
But my brother is now like an Australian resident or at least has a work visa.
What does he do for the basketball?
He is a general manager of the men's and women's teams in Sydney, Australia.
We are very different people, but I love him very much and I'm very proud.
There are very healthy people, Australians, regardless of their physical attractiveness.
They are always running and jumping in front of you.
There's a lot of running and jumping and biking and driving.
He was calling me and saying, you're the only person I know who's visited.
And I know you've only gone short trips and work stuff and whatever, but what's your take
away.
And I'm just like the quality of life there seems unbelievable and on average, not too
stereotypositively.
People seem happy.
They do.
It is like one of the least tense major cities I have ever visited.
There's a lot of running.
There's a lot of jumping.
There's every every animal can kill you.
Everything.
Every spider is a skeleton.
Yeah.
And they're just like running up.
We're out of antitoxins.
Yes.
Be careful when you're, you know, don't you dare bring in a green bee.
Yes.
They'll yell you, but that's why it helps to have a basketball in Sydney though.
You can just dribble it.
You can just dribble it.
You can just dribble it.
You can just dribble it.
You can just dribble it.
I mean, you know, I have a friend just from Brazil and I was talking to her about like the
stereotype, you know, that she, the cute stereotype.
Like, right, we're always just all on the beach all the time.
We're just dashing into the water.
That's how I feel about Australians, too.
I know it's not true.
Yeah.
But they're all just running up and down the beach and jumping in the water and firing
up the barbecue.
I mean, I'm almost definitely going to visit this year.
And for the foreseeable future, Sydney is probably a place I go to more than most places.
I mean, it's obviously a big commitment trip, but like if he keeps working there, I'm
going to good food.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yes.
Yes.
Big.
See food and some Asian influence and spice in the food.
It's good.
David, you held up one thing there.
Well, some of them were funny just to the retunee when I filmed those largely filmed in the
Philippines.
Yes.
Although they did shoot some in Australia.
It was basically an Australian production.
He treats witness as his first Hollywood film.
Even though a Hollywood studio came in and rescued this movie at the last moment before
production started.
But we're also talking about an Australian filmmaker, one of the canonical Australian
filmmakers.
And this is departure from Australian film.
Like this is really the full film.
Yes.
And we've been nailing all discussions of Australia up until this point and is continuing
on this episode.
What do we take a moment to pat ourselves on the back for how good of a job we've been
doing?
And can you cut in like the loudest thumping sound of all time or maybe toilet flushes
against this movie series?
This is Blanchett with Griffin and David.
I'm Griffin.
I'm David.
It's a podcast about filmography's directors who have massive success early on in their
career, such as basically leading the Australian new wave, being certainly one of the leaders
in guard.
I'm already throwing a flag on this.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He was not a massive success.
Well, he got there.
Yeah.
But the way you describe the ethos of Blanchett makes it sound like he had a massive success
and now he's but Tracy.
I know.
He just has suffered.
It's 12 years into this show.
We're a little bit out of those guys.
Not completely out.
It's almost like saving some of those guys are saying mostly we want to discuss interesting
filmmakers and we're.
He doesn't quite.
I mean, his what's his most runaway success?
I'm true and show.
It's true.
He's a witness.
This is guaranteed.
It happens right after this.
Witnesses that that's the guy got right.
The guarantors will call the hit that convinces them to hand you the Blanchett book.
And then I think he is a bit of a blank check filmmaker.
I do think his studio run, even though to a certain degree, he was a hired hand green
card, obviously more his personal passion project.
Right.
Look, the thing is Tracy, if we had a director on and we said we think that Hollywood gave
you a blank check.
You like you.
You talk.
Do you know how hard it is?
Even guys we talked about like Nolan or M. Night Shyamalan, who really did get a lot
of power.
And I'm like, who now is still very hard.
M. Night Shyamalan now literally funds his own movies and would be like there is no such
thing as a blank check.
Right.
But George Lucas.
I mean, he's the close.
He's the one who started original.
And you love him in his films.
Sure.
Especially.
He's got a lot of.
He's got a lot of.
Look, this is a best of success.
Early on the career is a given a series of blank checks make whatever crazy passion
projects they want.
Sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce.
Baby, this is a film.
A mini series on the film's a Peter Weir is called Podnic at hanging cast.
That's right.
Which I approve of.
Thank you.
Okay.
So then I give up because what was the other one?
Pudster and cast man or colon the pod side of the cast.
Really fucking bad.
Okay.
Okay.
You know what?
I can't fight that.
This is a man of letters here.
This is a fucking Pulitzer prize winner.
I'm not going to argue my writing is better.
It's podnic at hanging cast.
You will hear no further gripes from me.
Who did Gallipoli?
But it will have already aired by now.
Yes.
Jennifer Kent, the wonderful filmmaker Jennifer Kent made the Boba Duke and the tonight
night and Gale.
Yes.
We wanted an Australian filmmaker, especially for Gallipoli.
Yes.
We tried for several.
That's tough is that they live eight trillion hours away.
We did it.
It was like 9pm our time and it was like the next morning her time.
Yes.
She was on Zoom.
She was on Zoom.
We were taking night phones.
She was drinking coffee.
Right.
But she rocked.
She was drinking coffee.
She was drinking coffee.
She was awesome.
Do you like Gallipoli?
Very much.
Gallipoli.
I think I've heard it very very.
Phenomenal had never seen that before.
Had never seen this one before.
Both of the Mel Gibson films were blind spots for me.
I do have holes in my Peter Weer.
What are you all for?
What are you all for?
I mean, sorry.
I have holes.
I'm a master in Commander.
You've never seen that before.
I've never seen that before.
I've never seen that before.
As I learn more about you, you've been on our friend Sean's show.
Obviously, you've been on the big picture.
On third chair on the big picture.
Let's just say on third.
We should let's let's introduce with proper titles here.
Not only is he third chair on the big picture, not as only is he a Pulitzer prize winner
and drama.
Yes.
Tony Award winner as well as both writer and actor correct.
Correct.
You got to flex it.
But most importantly, he is the king of physical meat.
Yes.
I also, one point called him a bad bitch on this podcast.
Excuse me.
I believe we called him the boss bitch.
Maybe a boss bitch.
In our awards show episodes, we do annually.
I nominated you best supporting actor for indignation.
And I believe David responded, Tracy lets the boss bitch.
Because you'd had a good, really good year.
It was a good year.
You'd been in a lot of stuff that you, that's when you're in like,
oh, Christine and like weener dog and the lovers.
I don't know.
It was like a very, very sort of exciting treat.
When you meet hit maker and he gives you the secrets, he's like,
here's how you make a hit.
Wait, when did he meet?
When did they, Christine?
Christine, right, right, right, right.
Yeah, yeah.
And he was like, the women have to be little and it will go over $100 million.
Of course.
And you run to Greta Gerwig.
I'm holding the hot hand.
Tracy Letts is here in the studio.
Thank you very much for having Tracy.
Thank you.
And the blank check.
Now, you're saying that you've never seen Master in Commander before.
I was happy that this is the series that you came on for.
It is one of our great joys in life for David and I.
When we pick a new director, we put him on the schedule, we immediately crack our knuckles,
pull up Louray.com and go, what do I already have?
And what are the holes I have to fill?
And then what's the best addition?
And it used to be, oh, no domestic release of this.
Too bad I'm not going to have it.
I've started being a no matter what.
Like any means possible.
I'm getting all of them.
And this is a varied stack here.
We got Levotto, orange, pali.
This is a French copy of the cars that ate Paris.
Who's even the distributor here?
Esca Editions.
Yeah.
EFI about to reissue this and 4K.
Yeah.
Got this fucking Mando second site picnic at hanging rock box.
That's very nice.
It's a good box.
I just have the criterion of that.
But it's a very good one.
That only has the director's cut.
And this is the theatrical plus the book.
You get it's kind of like a better addition.
Yeah, I got them both.
I tried to convince.
I used this specifically to try to convince Amanda that physical media isn't ugly.
I was trying to combat your, I live in a game stop thing by being like, look, this is
nice.
No, there are nice ones.
There are nice ones.
But sometimes are you a little skeptical of the really nice ones?
Sure.
I mean, I have giant boxes of movies that are like freaking Congo.
I mean, maybe Congo is rude because I mean, the boxes are great.
And then you're like inside is really freaking, you know, Jay, like, which is a movie I like,
but doesn't belong in this.
I finally I just bought the umbrella 4k of the live action Super Mario Brothers, which
I think is $100 and contains more literature than like the encyclopedia Britannica.
A film that has four separate books.
A film that I enjoy, but like that most people involved with are like a stain on my
reputation.
It is objectively dog shit.
And I want to be clear.
I love that film.
It is objectively dog shit.
And it comes with a book that includes two different scripts, two rejected scripts for
that movie.
And that's one of only three books included in that box.
Last wave from the aforementioned umbrella of the fine folks.
Yep.
I got that.
We got Gallipoli has just a paramount, a pretty basic blue that only came out recently.
I'm glad they finally put it out.
I've got Gallipoli, but I want to look at my, okay.
I wonder if I'm wrong in this.
So what do you just reissue?
What do you use here?
This has a 2023.
I use something called CLZ.
I use that too.
Oh, there you go.
Very fond of that.
Let's see Gallipoli.
How do we spell that?
G-A-L-L-I-P.
Yeah, that's what I got.
Yeah.
From a place you've never heard of comes a story you'll never forget.
We both agreed in this episode.
Kind of a rude tagline.
Yeah, a bit.
But then I saw you on your letter box log where people were getting excited.
Oh, fuck is Tracy Let's doing your living dangerously.
I'm sorry.
I didn't realize when I logged it, that people were...
That's the fun of the sport.
Oh, no, it's good.
It's good.
I like that.
But you were posting an anger that you had to watch it on YouTube premium because it was
the only better option than the DVD you had.
The DVD?
I actually played them side by side.
You're aware of this.
What is that?
This is a Spanish blu-ray.
I've been a little suspicious that it's a bootleg, but it seems like it's not.
Have you watched it?
Yeah.
It looks okay.
Well, there's the whole thing.
I would not say it is reference quality.
It looks like probably YouTube premium just on a disc.
Why isn't this movie?
I don't know.
Fucking why do I have a fucking box for Congo on my shelf?
Yes.
Not the year of living days.
It's underground pictures.
They put this out.
What's the copy right here for the disc release?
I'll figure it out.
Yeah, it's got this is 2014.
I feel like often with these.
The only country in which any blu-ray release of this movie has happened it was 12 years
ago.
These MGM United artists, that's a tricky period for this right?
The rights will get weird, right?
Sure.
Isn't that always the answer?
I hate it.
No one can untangle.
Sometimes I also want to, we'll get into this, but I wonder if there's a feeling of
touchiness around this movie.
Sure.
If we restore this too thoroughly, it's spotlighted too much or people are going to get
up in arms.
I'm freaking Jane.
They're not touching about Jade.
Sorry.
There's other movies that get black.
That's a touching movie.
That's my people touching each other the whole time.
I remember so as grabbing everyone.
I got the rest of it.
I got the Arrow Witness.
I got the Dead Poets, the basic Disney release screen card team.
I don't own Dead Poets.
Do you not like it?
It's sims on the same page.
I'm at least familiar with it.
I think mine too.
Fearless I think is a Warner archive, Truman, Basic Paramount 4K, Mastering Commander
got the steel book, but I assume you don't have that yet.
I have it.
I just have a line of it.
Interesting.
And then way backs in image release.
I have that as well.
Yeah.
I don't think I've seen the way back.
Do you like Brit shit?
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
So like, Mastering Commander kind of passed you by just because it was like sort of a big
blockbuster at the time and you were like, yeah, like, how did it pass you by?
I wonder.
Based on those books, right?
I have no, I've never had any ground in the book.
No ground in the book.
To those books.
I don't go out to see a movie just because Russell Crowe's in it.
I don't not see a movie because Russell Crowe's in it.
He's not automatic.
He's not automatic.
Do you go out to see?
Exactly.
What about the sea?
You know, the China.
Are you a book guy?
The sea.
Yeah.
Is this the Midwesterner or new?
You're like, oh, shins there.
Thousands of miles away.
I have no good reason for not having seen Mastering Commander.
Maybe I'll go home and watch it tonight.
So it's the best.
It's so good.
It's one of David's favorite movies.
I have not rewatched it since I saw it in theaters.
We have not done that episode yet.
Can you say what your favorite where is?
My.
That one is certainly my favorite.
Yeah.
My favorite is.
But I love a lot of this film.
Huh.
Yeah.
What's your number one?
Is it Truman Schell?
That feels kind of lame.
But it feels like that might be my answer.
Is it this?
It's the year of living dangerous.
Yes.
Right.
I mean, we talked to you when we were planning this series being like Peter Weir,
does he spark interest in the year of living dangerously?
Was your Reno?
I believe you said it's one of my 50 favorite movies of all time.
You know, I made a list recently of my favorite movies.
I was going to be my top 100 list.
Yeah.
And it turned out to be about 160 something on my list.
Is it ranked or is it not ranked?
Okay.
Just what's in the pot chronological order and yeah, you're living dangerously is on
that list.
So it's basically at this point, it's like this is the canon.
These are the movies.
You were just sort of going through everything you've seen being like, these are my favorite
movies.
These are the things I will watch again that I know and love.
Now you might have sensed David and I both trying to sniff out some of your movie blind
spots, right?
What don't you like as much?
What what haven't you seen?
And for what reasons it's because we came into this loaded with a challenge.
Ben producer Ben who is not a physical media guy.
I've gifted him a couple of discs over the year, but this is not his beat.
When we lock down a day and a time to work.
I should say I have vinyl.
I have a big vinyl collection of love music.
As far as yeah, movies, I only really have a handful.
Yeah.
And he says, you know, it would be fun if we tried to gift Tracy with a disc that he doesn't
already have.
And I said, Ben, you don't understand the scale of the challenge you just proposed.
That's impossible.
And then the more we got into talking to him about how hard that would be, the more
we were like, wait a second, you should try.
You should try Ben.
You should see if you can pick out a movie he hasn't seen and or placed in his collection.
And then he bought three and it sparked a competition in David and we have also each bought
three movies for you.
And this is the Tracy Let's challenge.
There are nine discs that are about to be presented.
Oh, thank you.
And we want to know are any of these not already in the collection?
Oh, great.
Ben, I feel like you should go first since you spurred this whole thing.
So I want to shout out, we went to Night Owl video.
You ever been there?
It's a great place.
No, lovely little place.
Nice.
It's about a year old.
It's finally bringing physical media stores back to shout out.
Shout out to Night Owl video.
Yeah.
They got a very nice used collection, very, you know, and all the new stuff, obviously.
And their motto is Death to Streamers, Physical Media forever.
So they're definitely going for it.
I was trying to give Ben some help in strategizing.
He also went with our friend, Ben David Grubinsky, past and future guest, who was sort of guiding
Ben through the understanding of certain labels, have subscription programs.
Tracy might be pre-bying a full year.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He had mentioned your subscriber to Vinegar syndrome.
Right.
So I avoided those releases.
And we're looking for you want rigorous honesty.
Rigorous honesty.
Please.
Oh, please.
I'll read honesty.
Absolutely.
Because you have about what?
20,000?
No.
No, that's crazy.
11,000 plus.
Still a lot.
I appreciate you throwing out the number 20,000 makes it seem reasonable.
20,000 were sort of starting to approach the amount of movies that might exist.
This is why the challenge is fun.
Right.
But you buy a lot of stuff and kind of are like, I'll get to it or I have a completionist
surge or whatever.
I've seen perhaps 30% of the movies on my show.
Right.
Because I'm currently in this project.
I've got to fucking watch everything I own on disk that I've either never seen.
How many does do you have?
I have over a thousand.
I'm nothing like you.
But I have a lot.
I think I'm similar now.
And my wife is...
It goes in one room.
And so it's a little mysterious what's going on.
I think to her.
But like then she'll glimpse like...
What's...
And I'm like...
No...
You live in Brooklyn?
I don't know.
So your spaces...
You have...
Someone limited.
I'm going to need...
There's some shelving...
Conversations I'm going to need to have soon.
See, we bought this house and it had a basement that looked like a Marriott ballroom.
It's just like, oh, well, this is where we can put everything.
I mean, I'm very jealous.
Tracy, I need you to know that I now often repeat the phrase, all I want is the type of success
where I can have a Tracy Let's basement.
It has become basically the driving force of any professional ambitions I have is if I
can just get a Tracy Let's basement.
Imagine having a home where there was space for all of my sickness is the way I think
about it.
And you can pass your sickness on to your family.
Well, that's the real thing.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, and so on a preface as well, as far as curation, you saw my porch.
Yeah.
So just keep that in mind as a lick of kind of lens.
These are kind of three porch movies.
It just helps you understand the kind of sub love of porch movies.
So of course, first here, I have a limited edition steelbook of Ace Ventura pet detective.
I do not own this film.
You do not own this film.
Have you seen it before?
I don't think so.
Wow.
Wow.
You're in store for a good time.
Oh, great.
How do you feel about James Carey?
Funny.
Funny.
Well, then probably it's going to come up.
I mean, it's funny.
Obviously, not so funny that I've ever sought out Ace Ventura, which I think would be
one of the touchstone films in his launch pad.
Obviously.
I will say this was part of my strategy was thinking the 90s might have been the era
where you were dismissing certain commercial thumbs.
Definitely.
Definitely.
I started in the 80s, but certainly extended well into the 90s.
We'll get more into the 80s 90s discussion.
Great.
I will say that I just worked with Peter Farrowley.
I think shot a movie with him called I play Rocky.
Yeah.
Just coming out later this year.
And at one point, I got a note from him to take it down.
And I said, wow, the director of Dumb and Dumber just told me I was a little too broad.
That's incredible.
In a movie about making Rocky, who do you play?
And I play Rocky.
I play a fictional bad guy.
You'll never make this movie.
Yeah, I go that boxing movie.
Yeah.
No amount of shit.
I'll tell you Rocky will never win best picture.
You might have actually quoted a few of my lines.
Do you like to get that call?
Because like the Forverse for a great movie and you're very, very good in it.
But like, it's like, oh, fun racing.
Oh, no, no, you're the guy who shits on everyone in the office.
I think this movie sucks.
I wish this movie weren't happening.
But then what's great about Forverse for a row is you get the scene of the emotional breakdown.
Well, that's a version of that character.
I turned down a lot of those things.
Unless it's got that extra thing.
Yeah.
Oh, this is good.
I want to do that extra thing.
And so I play Rocky.
Has that?
No, I'm excited for I play Rocky.
I am a sucker for that kind of movie.
I like, I like.
I mean, the early word is good.
I'm excited about that.
Do you know that the young actor playing Sylvester Stallone in the movie is the same young
actor who played Al Pacino in the offer?
One of my obsessions of the last decade.
I have not seen it, but he's very good.
I almost bought you the offer on DVD.
And then I was like, it's TV and it's DVD.
This is offensive.
This is rude.
But the offer is one of the more bizarre things ever made.
Thank you for the Ace Ventura.
I will gladly.
Exactly.
And it's one of one right now, one out of one.
And so I should mention that was a shout release next we have.
This is Arrow Video.
It is a 4K of spawn.
I do not own that.
Wow.
That doesn't shock.
Have you ever seen spawn?
I have not.
Mark A.Z.
Dipay's spawn.
Are you familiar with the character?
Is he a vampire or a vampire hunter?
Oh, he hates the U.S.
Frontenification.
He has more demonel spawn.
Yeah.
He's a former like a whiteboard sky.
Yeah.
He dies.
He goes to hell and Satan is sort of like, I'll let you go back to earth.
But you do have to be kind of like a hellish superhero.
Was he originally a comic book?
Correct.
It's comic.
Todd McFarland, T Dogman.
90s.
Very 90s.
Very 90s.
A lot of chains.
And who directed the film?
Mark A.Z.
Dipay, who's a legendary special effects artist.
He's widely credit as being one of the two guys who really cracked CGI for Jurassic Park.
And they were like, well, that means you should make a whole movie.
And he did this.
And I believe he never directed a live action film ever again.
He directs direct to video Garfield's sequels now.
Yeah.
Then you're too for two, man.
Wow.
I'm thrilled.
This has theatrical directors cut on it.
I recommend directors.
Thank you.
I appreciate it.
And there's some really great special effects.
And that's all I'm going to say.
OK.
And then we have, we have, Trash Humpers by Harmony Current.
I do not own Trash Humpers.
Wow.
I knew that was going to be OK.
I believe that was the one that was borderline.
Harmony Current doesn't feel like quite your taste zone.
But I also got a couple of Harmony Current on the show.
This is the thing.
So I'm glad to have Trash Humpers on disc.
Hell yeah.
Yeah.
I'm a big fan of his work.
And I just, I can't believe three for three.
Well done, man.
Incredible.
David, would you like to go next?
Sure.
Why not?
All right.
OK.
First off, this is the most obvious one.
You might have this one.
This is arrows.
Yes.
4K release of Dominic Sendus film swordfish.
Oh, he's checking his database here.
He's checking his database here.
He's checking his database here.
It's checking, yeah.
Which is what I thought.
Where you, I doubt you've seen swordfish.
I have seen it.
All right.
You've seen it.
OK.
So I was wrong.
But one of those where I was like, did you buy it just because there's a nice new
addition out of a sense of completion?
I do not own.
OK.
Have fun.
Do not worry.
Do not worry.
Of course, John Travolta.
Don Chetel.
Yeah.
Don Chetel.
A role that you would play now in this movie where it made today Sam Shepherd's role as the
US Senator who sort of like, stop.
Yeah.
Travolta, you got to cut out your whatever it is.
I do.
I do.
You're right.
And Travolta said, it's interesting and shoots some death in like Utah or some, you know,
some extravagant location.
Just to make sure I'm thinking of the right film, Halli Berry, Newd Sing, very famous
man.
They leaked this, oh, terrible leak came out from the studio.
I was like, oh, she's filming a newd scene, an extra scene, his leaked.
Oh, who could have spilled this info.
I was also, I'm only, at least, someone sent them a long range tracking report.
They were like, can we leak the, can we pay Halli Berry another million dollars there
There's a moment in the trailer for her, I'm dressing.
I remember being surrounded by teenage boys,
being a teenage boy at the time people being like,
I hear she keeps taking clothes off.
Like it was, the buzz was really strong.
It's a scene in the film, her nude scene
that I would say doesn't feel entirely dramatically
so much to the-
But she's sunbathing, and then she just drops the cover.
I guess her breasts, I have seen the movie.
For about 60 seconds, I'm gonna put the back up.
The nude scene is what it's sort of known for.
I think this is a crazy text.
Like this is a bizarre, like when Hollywood was sort of like,
we should be doing like cyberpunk Tarantino movies.
And then like one year later they were like,
enough that we got to stop.
Who directed it?
Dominic Senna, who all right.
That's Senna, who made Gone in 30 seconds remake.
Yeah.
He was a fincher guy.
He was one of the fincher staples.
He always gets Senna and Simon West confused.
Right, well they were both fincher guys.
They're both, yeah.
He did that kind of nasty Brad Pitt movie, California.
If you remember that, like a serial killer movie.
Yeah.
He was, you know, all sizzle.
No, say mediums mediums just more.
You guys are four for four.
All right, all right.
Oh, he did season of the witch, which I love.
Have you ever seen season of the witch?
I have.
Great movie.
One of our finance.
All right.
Next up, this is a stranger.
And this is DVD.
Use DVD.
Wow.
Wow.
Scott Alexander and Larry Kyrzuski's screwed.
Oh, no.
Check in the database.
Now this is Griffin.
Yeah.
An exceptionally strange movie.
I agree with that.
Yes.
I believe it has never been released.
Oh, don't own it.
Wow.
Have you ever seen it?
No.
It looks light to medium use here.
We got some crinkling on this.
I'm sorry to give you that.
I think it is an odd kind of blank check movie
because they had had such success as screenwriters
that people went, we should let these guys make a whole film.
And it was trying to launch arguably three comedy stars
at the same time.
Look, it's trying to launch.
It's sort of trying with Norm again.
Norm McDonald around the dirty work era, right?
Like our little after.
I think it's almost contemporaneous.
And then Dave Chappelle, it's sort of half-baked era.
Yeah.
I'm talking, I mean, who's the third?
I was Arkansas or Silverman.
Yeah, yeah, sure.
Sure, she's in there.
But Larry doesn't disown this movie, right?
I mean, Larry is fond of...
I think they're both, it was, it was,
one of those movies they had no idea how to market.
It has one of the weirdest trailers.
They clearly just have no idea
what to tell you about this movie.
It is so odd.
It's quite odd and kind of vulgar.
I was gonna say, it's in this category.
I would classify as like big budget studio versions
of John Waters' material.
You know, and I think it's a little post like something
about Mary, people want gross out.
It is very dark.
It's very odd.
Oh, thanks.
Five for five.
Davido is great, man.
Doing great.
Finally, crank high voltage.
I've not seen crank high voltage.
Have you seen crank?
I haven't seen crank.
I've actually been on a bit of a stathom tear-wowling.
We've not seen anything new for you.
I've not gotten to it yet.
Both vital.
I'm sorry that I went for high voltage here
because the completionist in you now means
you'll probably end up buying crank as well.
This is the sequel, crank high voltage.
Is Joan Allen in one of these movies?
Joan Allen is in Death Race movie.
A movie I really fight for.
She plays the, no, I was gonna say she plays
the Tracy Lets.
I don't want you doing Death Race.
It is the opposite.
She is the evil prison warden.
And she's like, you mother fuckers better Death Race.
And there's a bit in that movie that I love
where Joan Allen goes on like a 30-second tear
and says every American curse word six times.
Nice.
Because she's answering how.
I've been breaking her system.
For a while, my treadmill watches were TV shows,
keeping up with the TV shows.
It just became too painful and so on.
I've been doing, because you're gonna fall asleep
watching the shows in 10 episodes before they do any plot.
Right, it wasn't an enticement to get back on the treadmill.
So I've been catching up on a lot of action.
Like trash action.
From 90s to 1000s.
That's action.
Like I've watched the equalizer series.
I saw you log in.
Yeah, stream like a Tracy stream.
I had to sit or find you the equalizer trilogy.
So I did some cross referencing.
We were just talking about those movies.
I love them so much.
They make me so.
Just to pitch you on crank.
Crank the first crank, the idea is it's speed
but with his heart.
So he has keep his heart rate above a certain.
You can crank Harry Baltege.
I believe he's been given an artificial heart.
So he has to literally like grab onto like,
like use electric cords and bite them to just wait.
Really?
Yeah.
The first one sounds fun.
And it was enough of a hit that justified the sequel.
Well, what if they put an electric cart in him?
But it resulted in one of the greatest taglines of all time,
which is he was dead, but he got a lot better.
Yeah, he got better.
Mr. Statham never made a movie that he couldn't find
his way to make a sequel.
Absolutely.
All doors are open in the world of Jason Statham.
I like this era of his better, which was more martial artsy
versus this new one where it's like, he's a gentle gardener.
But he used to and then like some nice old lady dies
and he has to go kill Hillary Clinton or whatever.
But be keepers.
Be keepers.
Have you seen be keepers?
I have seen be keepers.
Be keepers is just so insane in the world it establishes.
I forget which crank it is.
One of the cranks has one of my favorite gags,
which is Japanese guys talking to him.
And you see the subtitles.
And Statham is so out of it that you then cut to a reverse
of Statham looking at the subtitles.
Like the shot is reverse going like,
never been in Taylor.
All right, so I got three for three, two, three, two, three, six.
Six, four, six.
Okay, wow.
I took a very specific strategy.
And I was like, I feel like the 90s are the zone
where you were maybe not keeping up as um,
um, neverously with all the commercial sound effects.
I think that's true.
And be also, you talk about on your on your physical media
episode, so a big picture of the things
you were watching with your children.
And I was sort of trying to triangulate your children's tastes,
where things are going.
And I'm like, are there movies that I grew up with
that you would not have seen at the time?
But that might be good to introduce your children to.
I like that.
They can come Griff's stand.
I'm disagree with you.
They can also serve.
Maybe they, it knocks these discs a little higher up
on the watch list because there's a little bit
of an activity.
Okay.
So first of all,
Joe Dante's 1998 picture small soldiers.
Have you seen it?
I have not seen small soldiers.
And I assume that means you don't own it.
I do not own.
Okay.
Nor have I seen Joe, I didn't even know it was a Joe Dante movie.
You're making a Sherman-esque statement.
Tracy, that's exactly what I was betting on.
Because I went, I bet Tracy has respect for Joe Dante,
but he lost track of the last couple.
I did.
I did not know that was his film.
This incredible film about the military industrial complex,
uh, about the, the, the corporatization of a mayor.
Is that a person on the level?
So it is about a tech company,
a military tech company that buys a toy company
and they're endless sort of gobbling up,
a conglomeration of everything and decide to try to make.
This film's very relevant now.
Basically AI toys.
What if GI Joe's could actually do shit?
And they put military microchips in them
and they start literally waging war on our backyard.
The control rights sets.
Are there people?
Yes, there are.
Is not an anime film as a live action film.
This is Major Chip Hazard,
who is the main villain toy voice by Tommy Lee Jones.
And Franklin Gella, our chair leader of the Gorgonites.
But this film stars Cierce and Dunst, Gregory Smith.
Great Kevin Dunn.
Phil Hartman's final film performance, Dennis Leary, David Cross.
It's got, and Magnusson, it's, it's got a really good cast.
J. Moore, of course.
It was that era where we were trying to make that happen.
But it's, it's a, it's a wonderful film.
I think I think it's a razor sharp satire.
You guys are, very funny.
You guys are killing it.
Big action.
I'm going to show that to myself.
Yeah, I think I think he will like it.
It's got, it's not, I know he's very into Kiju film.
I know it is not a small, not big.
Right.
There's a similar.
Yeah, energy of chaos creature feature.
Kind of like the first question is always, is there a creature?
It is mostly very small animatronic puppets.
You know, of monsters fighting army.
Got it.
And humans being like the fuck is going on?
One of the best films of 1998.
Similarly, this comes from, this was Dreamworks.
When Dreamworks was launching and Spielberg was like,
we need a family slate.
We need Ambulin-esque pictures.
And he greenlit odd versions of Ambulin-esque pictures
that didn't quite perform as well as they should have at the time.
Gwarver Binsky's Mouse Hunt, his first film.
I do not own Mouse Hunt.
No, or have I ever seen that.
Wow, you like that.
That's the movie.
Quietly, one of the best film craft films of the 90s.
If this movie came out tomorrow, best cinematography,
best art direction, best sound, best editing,
people would be like, nothing has looked this good since the 50s.
Who directed Mouse Hunt?
Gwarver Binsky.
Oh, you just said that.
It is his first film.
It is him caching in the heat of directing the Budweiser frog
commercials.
And it's a script that's just, these two guys are trying
to catch a mouse.
And he's like, what if it has the aesthetics of Delecatesen?
He built an insane house.
He insisted on doing almost all of it with real mice.
They had like 60 mice who they trained as actors.
It's Nathan Lane and Lee Evans.
Lee Evans.
But it's also, it's Christopher Walkins in it,
Maurice Shakins in it.
Sure.
It's William Hickey's last performance ever.
Oh, yeah.
Wonderful film.
So it recently a film form.
It's great.
It's a beautiful fork.
This is reference quality.
If you score this last one, nine for nine.
This is my biggest swing, because this is more recent.
But I had a feeling that you just kind of opted out
on this whole series.
This is, I picked, it's an excellent adventure picture.
It's a family story done in a style.
I'd say almost heightened to melodrama with the broad,
kind of allegorical storytelling of your biblical
epics of your.
It is called Avatar the Way of Water.
I've never seen Avatar the Way of Water.
Did you blind by it?
I did not blind by it.
I do not own it.
Nine fresh discs.
Now did you see the first one?
Did you see the first one?
I've never seen one of the abyss.
It's my guess that you just went not my thing.
Yeah.
I've done, yeah, I haven't seen it.
There's a rip or an adventure about how we have lost touch
with nature.
So now I have to go by the first one.
This is the problem.
We're making homework for you here.
Find these sequels.
It's a boy and a whale.
A mighty piacan who you will be thrilled to meet.
How long is that movie?
Let's not talk about one time.
What is a runtime?
Well, just in terms of showing it to my son.
There are, your son will be into it.
I would imagine it.
There's someone be into it.
My husband played over a couple nights.
492 minutes long.
1992 fucking minutes.
There's longer than Lawrence of Arabia.
It's similar to Lawrence of Arabia.
It's longer than Lawrence of Arabia.
As your son seen Lawrence of Arabia.
That's a question.
Actually, you know what?
Lawrence of Arabia is longer.
Lawrence of Arabia is almost four hours long.
Is it really?
Yeah, it's really, really long.
This is four discs.
So after you watch the movie, you can go into the making of.
You know, recently Sean and Amanda on the big picture podcast.
We're talking about how even if you're not into it, it's undeniable that the, the, the
specialness of special effect are in fact kind of jaw dropping and beyond what you're
custom seeing when you watch a lot of a I slot.
I would agree.
Or CGI slot.
It is, it is very much.
Yes.
It stands in opposition to that.
And I, we, we agree that it is the best of the three.
Uh, yes, absolutely.
Really?
Yes.
I do think you could watch it hold.
It does a pretty good job of table setting at the beginning of the film.
And there's such a big time jump between the first and the second that there is a bit
of a clean entry point.
Now I have to say you guys have done absolutely beautiful work in collecting these nine discs.
I'm really impressed.
And I'm really happy to have them in my collection.
And I'm happy to give all of them a spin.
All of them.
Does anybody listening to this give a shit about what we're talking about?
Yeah.
Oh, very deeply.
Yeah.
You go on a Sean's podcast, which is bigger than this podcast.
And you guys, you know, speak at length on these matters.
I always assume that those episodes are just very niche that there's just a very, there's
a small but dedicated number of people.
But this is a growing area of interest for people I feel like I do feel like there's
this general person, you know, like just feeling amongst film fans of like it's just not
good out there.
It's bad.
And we need to take a stand and we need to do something.
So annoying sifting through these streaming services.
So annoying kind of like trying to find the best version of it, you know, and like it's
so satisfying to own something.
I don't know.
I can just hear a lot of pissed off film guys going, but he means he's never seen Ace Ventura.
What?
Who is this at all?
This is the balance of these things.
I mean, look, people got to come to blank check and understand this is the flow.
This is a natural order.
You know, have you ever had anybody on this show older than me?
Yes.
Your father.
My father.
Are you willing to say your age on Mike 60?
Yeah.
My father has been only on Patreon, but he is 73 now.
He's 73.
I believe Clint McElroy.
Oh, sure.
Amy Irving.
Amy Irving.
Amy Irving.
She was only on Patreon though.
Colin Quinn, I believed.
You know, I think Colin Quinn is older than you.
I would think I think Colin Quinn is six years older than you.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You don't get, you get to retain the crown as king of physical media.
Let me tell you a few people who are older than me.
I'll surprise you.
Yeah.
We do it with.
There's one last disc reveal.
Oh, yeah.
The remainder of the bag.
You mentioned, of course, your physical media episodes on the big picture, which started
out as just you and Sean and then grew to include Chris Ryan and Tim Hittmaker Simons
as well.
There is one person who has been desperately trying to make his way onto the physical
media high council.
Well, I'll read this note.
He left.
Mr. Letz, please accept this meager offering of physical media.
Sorry, it's hard to read his handwriting.
It's really chicken scratch here.
Representing some of my movies, only to our reference quality.
It's less about hoping you watch and enjoy and more of the honor of contributing my work
to the definitive archive.
Alex Ross Perry.
Oh, Alex Ross Perry.
Oh, lovely.
And what did he send?
He gave you three of his films, which is her smell, pavements and listen up, Philip.
Yes.
I own listen up.
You own this same deureka edition.
Yes.
Wow.
I own that.
I'll take it.
Wow.
I mean, this is, this is like an epic L for ARP that we went fucking nine for nine and
ARP gets up to bat and immediately you fucking imported one of his movies.
I haven't watched it.
I should watch it.
It's excellent.
I think you'd like it.
Incredible, John.
I think you'd take a nice performance.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Price is incredible in it.
I don't know if you have another, you know, a theater legend in his own right who also
did yellow face, which is important to our discussion today or whether you're dangerous.
Yes.
David.
Yes.
This episode is brought to you.
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It's a tripdick, right?
There's a New Jersey section, a Dublin section, a Paris section,
and obviously, Jarmusch has done some such storytelling
before, night on Earth, and such.
Coffee and cigarettes, Griffin.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay.
It's about the relationships between adult children,
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Music
By the way, the big picture has come up a couple of times here.
They did a 1988 draft.
I'm in the middle of listening to it as we speak.
I was not invited.
And I said to them, you know, I'm going on blank check tomorrow.
Right.
And maybe if the blank check guys adopt me,
you know, we're all New Yorkers.
We're New Yorkers.
Yeah, it's true.
I was like, maybe I wind up jumping ship.
And let me tell you, the text I got from Sean was pretty definitive.
If you even think you fucking ran for one fucking second,
I was having a fun time listening to it.
It's an interesting year, 88.
And I really, I respected Chris, Chris is buying there.
Chris Ryan's buying there of getting the number one pick,
where it's like, you're on the big picture.
You know, it's like you have to pick Die Hard.
That's sort of like the, and he lost midnight run.
And I felt from his midnight run.
Well, I sent them immediately upon conclusion.
I sent them a few movies they left off.
Okay. 1988 draft that I would have such as glad.
Well, Thin Blue line would be top of great.
He depended on me.
And it was just like, how is this not?
I mean, it would be a beautiful use of a wild card pack.
Yeah.
Did it get snobbed for best documentary?
Yeah, of course.
Yeah, it was, he was, right.
He wasn't doing what that branch appreciated.
You know, like he was doing something new.
So he was, they never liked it.
So you'd have to take it in wild card.
I think did he eventually win for a fog of war?
Like I feel like they eventually gave him a very, very nice.
And Oscar.
And then he also did the fucking, the stuff for the Oscar.
He did.
Those were fun.
Yeah.
He won for fog of war though.
That's his only ever Oscar nomination.
Wow.
Like they were, you know, they were always kind of like too snooty for him.
It's just one of the most incredible last and cultural artifacts is from Errol Morris doing
those, uh, that Oscar intro one year where he interviewed people about their favorite
movies.
We have the clip of Donald Trump looking into the, uh, in Tarotron.
Is that what he called Tarotron?
Yeah.
And he was talking about why he loves citizen Kane and misreading it.
Confident.
Right.
So move out of guy.
Happy in a big house.
I think he literally says it's a movie about a guy who gets everything.
That reminds me.
I was at, uh, I was at some, uh, party in Los Angeles and David Zaslov.
I was with Carrie and some of the other, uh, gilded age people.
Of course, Carrie's in the HBO family.
Of course.
Yes.
Queen of the HBO family.
She's on gilded age and Zaslov came up and he was so excited to see them.
We came to realize after a while.
I was like, Oh, the robber Baron are his heroes.
Of course, I hope you're right in that railroad right across America.
Yeah.
I got my favorite thing in the gilded age is anytime, uh, Morgan Spector's character is
just like, I feel like I need to go, you know, kill 10,000 railroad guys just to, just
to get my rocks off, you know, just really got to like go fight with JP Morgan about
something.
Um, I love the gilded age.
Sure.
Go to ages number one kind of show for me where I can Google after and like actually
and learn about the art.
David just said this in our way back episode with Alex Ross Perry.
Have you seen Peter Wears the way back?
One of his least seen films is final film.
The film about, uh, escapees from the gulag who trek to cross the Gobi desert all the
way to India.
I remember my mom watching it and saying, this is really good.
I don't know.
I didn't say this fucking.
It was completely ignored on release.
It's a fairly handsome, like, you know, solid.
It's not his best movie.
But David was saying he loves anything, any watch that can cause him to open up some
Wikipedia tabs and start digging out.
You know, I'm like, so going in the 50s, what was going on?
Yeah, like stuff like, um, I want to hear your other, uh, 1988 snubs.
Uh, let me consult, uh, my thing.
I'm guessing Akira wasn't picked.
I haven't finished the episode.
Akira was not picked.
It's awesome.
I think of like definitive 88 movies that probably are too knee sure.
They keep complaining about how bad the sequel slate is.
It was very bad.
And in fact, Amanda asked me specifically what my, uh, pick would have been.
It's really bad.
I suggested lady terminator, which is not actually, uh, right.
Uh, that one's not canon.
You have Halloween four hellraiser two nightmare four, but I'm just immediately here.
No one, even with thriller open, no one picked child's play and no one picked dead ringers.
Dead ringers was definitely on my list.
I think they mentioned it in their honorable mentions, but not good enough.
Another woman, uh, the Woody Allen, uh, movie, another woman, which, you know, that would
have been a surprising pick.
It would have been, but because I'd listened to the New York draft while he had to dance
the ring.
The rain drops on that one didn't pick Woody Allen.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no one picked Woody Allen.
I want to make a player.
Woody Allen's name was never settled or your movie.
You're more suspicious.
We are in front of a live audience.
Backstage, there wasn't like a blood pact like we all agree.
No one's going to utter his name.
It did not happen.
No, no.
I think if we were not in front of a crowd, I don't know though.
Like who knows?
Because the whole populous agenda of the drafts of like you're supposedly trying to win
the audience's favor.
I say like, I see.
I see, right?
I think I will say the other thing with Woody Allen in a New York movie draft is it's
like, okay, well, so do you figure Manhattan is the pick there?
There's other definitive New York movies.
Well, you know, what's the New York movie?
Right.
It's more of the canon than the idea of he has one film that feels most representational
of New York.
Right.
Then the one that's named after a borough and has a poster and has a great, he has some
great fucking photography.
Yeah.
And some really good movie movie.
Yeah.
Well, I would probably pick Manhattan.
But certainly if somebody picks Annie Hall in comedy or Hannah and her sisters, these
are not shocking.
No, not wrong.
Hannah and her sisters.
The Bear 1988.
Jean Jean Jean.
Yeah.
The Bear.
The Bear.
The Bear.
The great, the big Bear actor.
It's a great, yes, Bart the Bear plays the bear.
It is a, it's a nature film shot really from the bear's perspective.
It's very good.
I have never seen it.
It's a good director.
Oh, and that is a genre of movie that doesn't exist anymore.
It's a sort of gentle nature focus plot light, you know, kind of that.
That gentle.
That's the good thing.
Right.
Got some peril.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There's, there's, there's fucking in it.
There's psychedelic drugs.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
No, the bear's kind of.
But like the animal drama doesn't exist anymore, right?
Right.
Right.
On a tapestry from like, you know, Black stallion to the bear.
It used to just be like once or twice a year.
Yeah.
There would be a white, white, red, smooth.
We went to the jungle.
You're going to love it.
And we're like, we think we got this animal to act.
Never cry wolf.
You guys know that movie.
Oh, yeah.
I've never seen it.
I know it.
Beautiful movie.
And there's no good physical media.
That's Carol Ballard, right?
That's the kind of king of what we're talking about.
Terrific.
Yeah.
I had my neighbor, Toto Roe, but then Sean informs me.
Maybe that's not quite the right release.
It is tough.
I, you can call it an 88 movie, but to me, that's one where it's like, you can't go
by the American date because that movie was never properly released in America.
It got a fucking trauma release.
Yeah, right.
Yeah.
Hairspray.
Hairspray is a great movie.
Things change.
Never seen.
Never seen.
David Mammoth, Joe Mantania and Donna Michi, a very good, it's the poster where they're
in the back of the limo, right?
Yeah.
That's a very good movie.
And there's a good disc of that too.
I think it's an indicator.
It has a nice disc of that.
Cross the Dilancy to back.
I'm in a fucking trap.
Oh, shit out of cross the lane.
And my comedy pick, chicken and duck talk.
Never heard of it looking it up.
Okay.
That looks like it's a Chinese film.
Hong Kong, Hong Kong.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Michael Hui.
Very funny.
Don't know it.
Chicken and duck talk.
Okay.
I'll check it out.
I was pretty astounded that Fennacy didn't pick police story two.
He mentioned it as I considered it.
I'm like, yeah, you should have considered it and then picked it.
That's a good move.
Mystic pizza did that get picked?
Amanda chose crossing Dilancy over Mystic pizza.
This is really fun how we're relitigating.
I was gonna say that.
I was gonna say that.
And I will move out this right now.
But my last, Clint Eastwood's bird.
I think one of his best movies is an 88 film.
That's an incredible film.
It was not draft that.
They did not.
A little quick.
The one I want to ask you about Tracy,
because I feel like a couple times now big picture has done sort of a drive by of apathy
towards this movie.
And I like it quite a bit.
Clean and sober.
The Michael Keaton film.
I like it quite a bit too.
I think that's a very good film.
I think I mentioned it actually on their podcast.
On one of the physical media podcasts,
because I was talking about the value of Warner Archive.
Yes.
Which puts out sort of standard issue releases.
They're very clean.
There's no extras to speak of.
There's no giant boxes.
It's just, here's the movie in a nice clean presentation.
And it might not have been kind of a big deal movie at the time.
But I really like clean and sober.
I think it's a very good movie.
And as a person sober for a long, long time,
I have to say clean and sober is one of the movies that gets it right.
I get for a psychology of that right.
I was on the Michael Keaton fan.
Michael Keaton's maybe my favorite living actor.
But I was on the Michael Keaton Mount Rushmore.
Yes.
It was kind of a bad episode.
It was a fun episode with you guys talking about Keaton.
But like the four big Keaton movies was actually fairly easy for you guys to arrive.
The problem is it's easier and more interesting to pick eight to ten Keaton movies
than it is four,
because the four are always going to be pretty chalk.
But they were just like it was not in the conversation for them.
And I went in there being like clearly this is one of his key texts.
Well, they get weird about some of that stuff.
And I can say in fact to bring it back to Peter Weir,
it comes up with witness.
Amanda and I really love witness.
Amanda gets great movie.
We'll be on the witness episode next.
Sean gets.
Amanda is going to be on the witness episode.
Oh, yeah.
Absolutely fantastic.
We recorded it.
It's in the back.
It's like his ass is sucking lemons.
And he says, is it a great movie?
Yeah.
And I go now look, it depends on where, you know, it's all relative.
Right.
We could say Seven Samurai and Lawrence,
the bicycle thieves are great movies and these other movies are.
But if you're going to live in a world where you're telling me that a few good men
and Pelican brief are great movies,
and God damn right witness is a great movie.
Yes.
Yes.
I don't think that's.
I don't think that's.
It is analogous to a Kurosawa where you're like,
well, like making samurai movies in the Japanese film industry at that time
was akin to doing like a programmer.
And he was elevating it to such a high level.
I'm not saying witness is the Seven Samurai of cop movies.
But I think there is a similar, okay,
but what is the most thoughtful, intelligent, deliberate, nuanced,
detailed, lived inversion of this?
And it is what makes Peter Weir a blank check filmmaker.
Arguably, I would say not in this film where he had a little bit of a blank check
in the Australian film industry up until this point,
this starts to transition him, especially with Mel Gibson being a guy who had crossed over.
But then once he makes witness work at that level,
and here's just what should be a cop action movie drama that is now nominated
for best picture, best director gets Harrison Ford is only acting nomination.
It's like every a list actor in Hollywood wants to work with this guy.
They want to bring their passion projects to him,
because he can lend integrity to them.
But that is the next chapter of his career that ends with the film we're talking about today.
Well, I think he showed a particular skill at a kind of stranger in a strange land story,
which seems to be a theme running through a lot of Peter Weir's work.
Even something like dead poet society, like which is ostensibly an inspirational teacher.
Robin Williams is the stranger and a strange man there.
I have a card for sure.
Yes.
I have continued to say this kind of quickly,
because I lack the knowledge and the intelligence to make this point more thoroughly
let alone the historical context, but especially watching his early Australian films,
it feels very informed by a man who has spent a lifetime trying to reckon with
his relationship to the country he lives in.
Do I belong here?
What is my ownership over this place?
Does this place own me?
Who has been disposed in my favor?
You know, and it feels like his films are constantly cultures,
kind of budding up against each other and interrogating each other
and people crossing those lines and feeling out of sorts in their world.
Did I read correctly that this year of living dangerously is a recent rewatch for both of you?
He'd never seen it.
I saw this film several years ago, but I did rewatch it for this show.
And when did you watch it for the first time?
For the first time ever last night.
Yeah.
I like to be fresh and tasked.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I liked it quite a lot.
It is an interesting film.
I have so greatly enjoyed the exercise of this show where we cover someone's full
filmography at times, even when it's a great career, you start to get into a feeling of,
for like months, I've just been on this one guy's wavelength.
And it's starting to get a little samey even if I can extricate the values of each individual film.
I'm in a bit of a loop here.
And other times, the photography is so disparate that you're just like,
I'm swinging all around here.
I don't have any grounding force.
I have just by and large felt the cruising altitude of Peter Wear movies is so comforting to me.
There is this kind of like thoughtful patience to his films.
I love movies that feel like they have some answers that they're not sharing with you,
both in terms of actually the text but also the craft, that you can feel the intentionality
in the thought.
And that's forced you to sort of lean in and try to interrogate what the person is doing.
And this movie does have just such an incredible vibe to it.
In a very basic fundamental way, I don't know how many films I've seen that more accurately
than I've ever seen in a film.
I know there's a way of trying to capture the feeling of being in a foreign country.
Just the basic feeling of I have landed in a place
and trying to acclimate to how this place works.
And so much of this movie is the interrogation of who are the people who landed here
and act like they already own it, who are the people here trying to claim ownership,
a movie about a fairly, how would I put this?
He's not a weak lead character,
but he's almost irrelevant to the movie in a certain way.
He does not drive the action.
No, he's changed by the action or whatever.
He's changed by the action and the movie is,
okay, I guess I'm leaving this now.
He's pretty shallow.
He's pretty shallow.
Yeah, and he gains obviously some depth.
Right.
He's not going to gain some understanding
of the way things really work,
which is what I love about this movie.
I think this will be so good.
We're as early films,
which this thing we've discovered in doing this
is that he came out of a background of sketch comedy,
like performing and directing,
and then directing sketch comedy leads to directing theater
and then directing film.
And his early works, especially his short films,
feel way more kind of barbed and pointed
in their kind of satire of this kind of guy,
a sort of well-meaning liberal white man
who wants to be involved in causes,
who wants to help and doesn't quite get it.
And this feels like this interesting,
I mean, this movie's just the transition point
of like everything in his career,
but he's basically removed any of the satirical edge
from the character.
He is presenting it very earnestly,
but he is also presenting kind of how unimportant he is.
And even in the framework of it being like,
oh, right, he's not telling the story.
But I think it's also like about an Australian becoming
alienated from like where he's like,
it's about Australians becoming alienated
from like the Western world,
or like the way the Western world works,
and the way the Western world operates
on the rest of the world, right?
And he's going in there being like,
I'm like these British guys and these are merit, right?
Like I'm in this mix and then becoming alienated from
which I think is so interesting,
especially that it's weirds last Australian film
before he joins Hollywood.
And he does so well in Hollywood,
and I don't ever feel like he like,
you know, he never like made shit there, right?
Like he always did his own movies,
but it's interesting that he sort of says
farewell to Australia by with that sort of statement.
And the first four films are just so thoroughly
about him interrogating his own sense of identity
as an Australian of his generation
and how he sees the world from that experience.
Well, I mean the character of Guy
makes basically one ethical decision in the whole movie,
and it's the wrong one, right?
Totally fed by his ambition and without any sense
of context.
It's like I'm here to do this job,
and I don't care who gets hurt as a result
of me doing this job,
as long as it gets me what I'm after.
And yeah, I think you're gonna read that
as personal on the part of we're especially given,
as you say, he's about to go to Hollywood,
he's about to leave Australia, he's about to become,
that, I mean, he's gonna become quite a player
on the world cinema scene.
I don't know if he's making this film,
because we have a dossier of research,
I'm gonna open it up,
but like he'd been trying to make this for years.
This was a longstanding passion project,
so he's not making it in this sort of swan-songy way,
but it's interesting how it sort of worked out.
Have you ever read the book, the Christopher Koch book?
I have.
I think it's a coach.
I was about to say,
you know, that spelling you never know how.
Christopher Koch's 1978 book,
which is based on his younger brother's life.
His younger brother was a reporter in Indonesia during,
Is this the dossier?
Have you opened it?
I've opened it up.
Oh, it's not physical, you seem disappointed.
It's a good old novel.
Especially given the year of living dangerously,
you kind of want to write a big piece of the Mnela folder
right out of the file.
I'm not gonna shout out puppets.
So his brother, you know,
was in Indonesia for the fall of the Sikarna regime.
We are reads the book and buys, reads it in a single day
and inquires for the rights like immediately.
His quote is, I could smell the,
now what's this word,
Satan, I don't know what that is.
S-A-T-E.
Yes.
Interesting.
Not sure.
Just a different spelling of Sate.
The tang of Klobe cigarettes,
the distant sound of the Gamelan,
the exotic Japanese atmosphere.
Like he, he, you know, his whole thing,
I feel like with we're,
is he has these like aesthetic reactions to stories
or whatever.
It's like he'll read a script and be like,
yeah, that's interesting.
But then once in a while he reads a script,
he's like, oh, I can't stop thinking about the world.
Like the, how, you know,
and that's always seems to be why he's a pursuous approach.
He reads a thing, he goes,
this is overwhelming.
I could never touch this and then he can't stop thinking about it.
Like the liplily is him walking on the beaches, right?
In, in Turkey.
Yeah.
And seeing this like hand from an Australian like medication bottle.
Right.
Yeah.
And being like, oh my god.
And like that not being able to let go of like, right,
our boys were here with their shit.
And then last wave was basically the same thing.
Like literally finding an object in a space
and then going like, oh, so who is the person
who left this here?
David, it's scared.
Real me.
Yeah, right, Sate.
Okay, right.
It was just about differently.
Probably J.J.
It's probably fired.
Have you seen the last wave?
Obviously, single.
If we have you seen, yes, last was pretty cool.
Yeah.
And that was recently put on a disc, wasn't it?
Umbrella has had a disc out for quite a while.
That's right.
I missed out on the deluxe edition.
I know as Criterion is now also rewritten.
Criterion, it is had the old criteria.
The DVD.
They, they only have it on DVD.
They haven't announced, I think, a Blu-ray or a 4K yet.
It is a movie that they own outwrap.
Yeah.
So like it is a movie that domestically is owned by Criterion.
So I think it is coming soon, hopefully.
So we're, we're trying to make the Thornbirds,
which of course eventually got turned into a mini-series.
I don't know if you know this.
And then he gets sort of diverted onto Calipoli,
but then the, the vesters withdraw from Calipoli.
So then he turns to you're living dangerously.
Then Rupert Murdoch himself, funs Calipoli.
And so he gets put back to Calipoli.
So you're living dangerously as backburner.
He had visited Asia in the 60s,
briefly I guess in his sort of, he went to Colombo,
which is the Cavalry Sri Lanka,
while he was traveling up through Europe.
He was very intrigued by it.
Bali had become a vacation spot for him.
So Bali is obviously a different island in Indonesia.
I've never been to Indonesia.
I will admit now.
I have not either.
I have not.
Of course, it's been many times now.
Ben Ben, yeah, you're always going to be there.
I would love to someday.
Yes.
My wife's been to Indonesia,
but she lived in China for years.
So she's been everywhere.
My wife lived in China for years?
Yes. Do you not know that?
No.
Do you not know that my wife is fluent in Mandarin?
This is so surprising for someone I'm so close with.
Griffin has known my wife since, since they were teenagers.
I went to high school with David's wife.
So I like to contend correctly that I'm actually closer
with her than he is because I've known her longer.
Is that how you guys met?
Nope.
No.
Complete coincidence.
We became friends and he was like,
you want to hear something funny?
I'm going on a date tomorrow
with someone you went to high school with.
Oh, wow.
Oh, so you guys, your friendship actually predates
your relationship with your wife.
Correct.
Very much.
Here is the order.
Very much.
I meet his wife.
I meet David.
They meet each other.
I know both of them better than they know each other.
So true.
Three kids, hares.
But you don't know that she's fluent in Mandarin.
Or that she's lived in China.
That she lived in China.
Is it working as a teacher living in Hunan province?
Okay.
But because she lived in China, she was like,
I'm in China.
I'm going to go everywhere.
Yeah.
And so she's been to Indonesia.
She's been to Thailand and Cambodia, Japan.
Was this right after college?
Yeah, right after college.
So those are the years we fell out of China.
She was in freaking China.
It was hard to contact her, I think.
But she says it's very cool.
You know, she's, yeah, anyway.
Can I circle back to a thing?
I know we'll have covered this in Gallipoli,
but I think it's important kind of restating.
Rupert Murdoch invested all this money
into the idea of, we got to start weaponizing
what's coming out of the Australian new wave.
Not out of as much a sense of cultural pride,
national pride as, I think there's money in the mills.
All these good filmmakers seem to be making
an interesting stuff at an industry that is still so small.
Can we turbocharge that by throwing money into it?
And so that's how he ends up fully financing Gallipoli.
And it was part of what was supposed to be a company
that was going to be making this a larger project.
It is the only film they ever make.
But Gallipoli gets all this fucking investment,
his budget jumps way up from what he had done before
because of Murdoch.
And the other thing is that there's this energy.
It's why Gallipoli gets more of an American distribution deal
upfront with everyone post-Mad Max being like,
how do we get Mel Gibson to Hollywood?
How do we cross this bridge?
This guy is just clearly like a raw element of movie star.
If an Australian filmmaker has Mel Gibson,
they've like opened a bunch of doors into our offices.
Do we have a timeline for what is considered
the Australian new wave?
Great question.
I think it's basically like the first film
that is marked as like the Australian new wave
is like Waken fright or the comedy stork
in those of those 71.
Even though as we've been corrected,
Waken Fry is directed by Ted Khochev,
who is not in fact Australia.
This is the whole thing.
Walk about is also marked as an early one,
but that's also not directed.
But it's like at least those are films
where it's like they're filmed in Australia.
And then the adventure is a Barry McKenzie,
which is 72, which is a Bruce Barisford movie,
which is like a silly comedy.
But that's starting to spark like independent Australian cinema
again, like homegrown.
And so early 70s is where you market.
Cars that ate Paris is 74.
And that's a really, you know, that's a real Kickstarter.
And then that leads to Mad Max.
But this scene is kind of the beginning of the end,
because right after this you get into sort of like
brain-trenchered Smith more kind of like just genre plays,
Mad Max sequels, Cracket All Dundee.
Like the thing has become commercialized.
Correct.
And most of the breakout directors have gone to Hollywood.
Right.
That makes sense because, you know,
I grew up in a small town in Oklahoma
and I probably heard first heard of the Australian New Wave
around the year that this comes out.
So this comes out in American 83.
Right.
And by then there have been Mad Max's.
I don't know if Rod Warrior had like made it to America,
but it's probably around when it's still.
I had seen Rod Warrior in the theater definitely
before this.
And then like beyond Thunderdome is 85.
And that's that sort of thing where it's like,
well now this has gone Hollywood.
And then Dundee is 86.
Dundee is 86.
Yeah, I mean, that's over.
It's over.
And like you're saying, like all those guys,
so like Barrisford, Russell Mulcai,
like even the sort of lower level guys,
they've all gone to Hollywood.
Yeah, and they go to Phillip Nois right.
And they go make genre stuff mostly.
Right.
And then you have Peter Weir and George Miller
is the kind of like esteemed, you know,
whatever, like Hollywood big shot version of it.
Yes.
I mean, George Miller's the odd one
because he figures out how to basically keep.
But he still makes like witches of Eastwood.
Like he's still the one.
That's the one that like broke him where then he's like,
if I'm doing this, I'm doing it on my own terms,
even if I'm ultimately handing the product over
to Hollywood at the end of the day.
Now, did you see this film when you were, you know, in 83?
Like in Peter's.
Yeah, yeah.
So you would have been what?
17, 18 years old.
Yeah.
And what drove you to see it or was it just seeing everything?
Well, at that time I saw everything.
I knew who Peter Weir was.
And, you know, Mad Max,
or I should say the road warrior had announced
Mel Gibson as a movie star in the most profound way.
Just a theater full of people going,
that guy's a fucking movie star.
And I'll follow him anywhere.
And I want to see what he's got.
And of course, you're living dangerously was quite a calling card
for him in that.
It's like, oh, he's not just, he's not an action star.
He's not Dolph Lundgren up there.
He's smart.
He's, he can, he can play the male action star,
but he can also play the romantic lead.
He's smart.
He can also play a guy who's a bit of a son of a bitch, right?
He, there are a lot more arrows in his quiver.
We realized with year of living dangerously.
I was thinking watching this and not having seen it before.
This maybe feels like his most normal performance ever
because obviously here he's fighting against the Mad Max thing,
right?
And trying to show his range he has.
But then I feel like when his Hollywood persona
as a movie star settles, it's still using 10% of the mania,
you know, it's the lethal weapon,
it's the caged animal thing.
And then he can also still be in romcoms or dramas or whatever,
but he does have that odd kind of manic energy to him.
And this he is just so fucking steady, you know,
he's not Charmin and Schmousen in the way he is
and Gallipoli where he's such an exciting kind of thing.
Like an innocent sort of which it's like,
that's something he really did much.
He never played someone this kind of like simple in a way,
not simple in like a backhanded way.
I never saw the river that is he playing
a kind of this kind of guy in that?
Like I'm trying to think of a comparable.
No, the river he's playing a Midwestern farmer,
not completely convincingly,
but it's not an embarrassment either.
But yeah, he never really did the kind of slightly bright eyed,
you know, it was just making me think of how different
sort of Hollywood sees development of movie stars now,
where like you have a foreign export movie
that crosses over here.
Everyone points and goes,
that guy's a fucking movie star.
And Hollywood's like, okay, collectively,
how do we do this?
You know, and there is this feeling of,
it's not like one studio signs him to a 10 year deal,
but everyone's like, it is worth continuing to throw money
at movies that have Mel Gibson in them
so we can test them out and grow him incrementally.
Like he needs to be in spring training, right?
It helps if he's in a drama.
Audiences need to meet him in different flavors.
We need to test what he's good at and bad at
at a low enough budget level
that this will ultimately help all of us.
Versus your Taylor Kitch, your on Friday night lights,
and they're like, great,
you're the star of three, 200 million dollar movies.
But nobody's actually having,
nobody's actually saying that, right?
They're not.
No individual, right?
Yeah, circling it.
But it did feel like there was a kind of,
I don't know, you read about these things
like a collective unconscious in the period between
when the studio system kind of collapses
and the star contracts where people are literally saying,
we're buying this guy,
we're sending him to charm school,
we're molding him in our image, things dissipate,
but still there is a sense of like movie stars are rare.
If there is one potentially on the board,
it benefits all of us to just chip away at this guy.
Part of it I'm sure is also selfishly like,
will Mel Gibson look fondly upon us 10 years from now
because we financed one of his early films?
Not to mention what Mel himself wants, right?
Because he wants to be taken very soon,
you know, eventually he's gonna wind up making Hamlet,
he's gonna wind up making Braveheart,
he wants to be taken seriously in this way.
So of course, he's not gonna follow Road Warrior with,
I can't think of anything stupid enough.
Well, you're trying to think of like,
what's the dumb thing?
What would be the dumb thing he could do?
What's interesting is that he follows Road Warrior
and you're living dangerously with three prestige pictures,
none of which I feel like we're quite at.
Like there's the Donaldson bounty film,
just like pretty good.
It's like pretty good.
Everyone's, he gets to be opposite Anthony Hopkins.
And once I'll dressed up in yelling and it's fine.
And he does the river, which I feel like
didn't really make an impact,
but on paper, wait a second.
Who directed the river?
Mark Wright Dell.
All right.
So like, you know, he ain't done the Rose
that I got asked for an obviously uncalled and pond.
And then he does that thing, Mrs. Soffel with Dianne Keaton,
which I've never seen, but it's a Missy Armstrong.
He's a good director, but like a bomb.
But these are all stuck in, he's a little too earnest.
Yeah, and it feels like these are movies
that the bigger guys had passed on.
And it was like, well, let's gamble on the Australian guy
who's so handsome, like he'll make sense.
And playing him a little more romantic, maybe.
And then he does Thunderdome and then lethal weapon.
And then it's like, okay, it's off to the races.
Well, it's off to the races,
but it is him doing action for a while.
It's like Tequila's sunrise,
era America, like those, and then he grabs the prestige
with like Hamlet and Man.
I think what they dialed in with lethal weapon
and with Thunderdome in particular,
where he's older, where he's like a more haunted max
than everything is like, what's the right level of crazy
we want here?
Maybe we cleaned him up too much, you know,
with like your Missy Soft Tells and stuff.
Like let's get a little bit of the energy back in there.
And then those two movies, it's like, we got it.
We know who he is.
We have a handle on him off to the races.
How old is he when he does,
you're living dangerously?
Still.
It's a good question.
It's like young man.
Yeah.
If that film is made around the 81-82, he's,
let me do the math here.
27?
No, he's only.
No, man.
He was born in 56.
Yeah, no, you're right.
You're 26.
Yeah, he's really young.
Yeah.
He's only 70 now.
Yeah.
And it's obviously been around for my entire life.
I mean, he is so pretty in this.
It is kind of astounding just the serenity of his face.
Look, it's the magic of aging.
It means if you're Pacino or whatever,
that I can show someone like the Godfather
and they're like, I didn't realize
that you used to look like this.
And you're like, yeah, take a look.
Like, there's like, you know,
there was a reason everyone was going insane about this.
Apologies for the tangent, but I found recently,
I, through doing some Wikipedia rabbit holes,
do you know that Al Pacino is actually on the record?
As far as we are able to historically document these things,
as one of the 25 oldest fathers in human history.
Oh, wow.
Okay, well, good for him.
Good for him.
No, I didn't know that.
Everyone was like, oh, he had a kid really old.
I'm like, yeah, it doesn't happen like a lot though.
And it was like, no, he's like,
he's up there.
Here is a Wikipedia entry list of oldest fathers on record.
And a couple of them are questionable.
Like the top guy there, like that guy might have been adding
two decades to his age.
And I'm like, then throw him off this fucking list.
Let me tell you, the top 25 you don't know about.
They're not on record.
They're not bragging about it.
On record.
There's one guy also.
Tony Randall is on this list.
Tony Randall had a child at 77.
Yes, he was married to one woman for like 40 or 50 years.
She passed away.
He married a 20 something.
They pumped out two kids really fast and he passed away.
Tony Randall also from Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Wow.
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So the screenplay is written by three people, right?
So we're in David Williamson, R. One team,
they already had written Gallipoli together.
Playwright.
Playwright.
Playwright.
A great playwright, I feel like of the, you know,
and then, so it's coach or coach.
I think it's coach.
Right.
Coach wrote his own scripts and they kind of merged them,
but we're describes the relationship as bumpy.
But it was a little not exquisite corpse, but like these things
were happening, siloed processes that were then mushed together.
As it usually is, I think when you see multiple screenwriters on
a thing, somebody didn't meet somebody else.
I just think sometimes it's more iterative, where it's handed off
from one person.
I guess that's more exquisite corpse.
There's this, it was more like Frankenstein's monster, where
they're like, we got four bodies, which parts do we want to
pluck from each of them?
Though the movie does not differ from the book in any interesting
great way.
Yeah.
Different narrator, I suppose, is probably the biggest change.
It's not Billy in the book.
It's not Billy in the book.
Yeah.
It's another journalist in the book.
Okay.
Okay.
But that feels very telling.
Right.
So that was Weir's decision or that we are responded to someone else
suggesting that.
Yeah.
It does feel like kind of, no, it's a big, that's the most important
framework the movie provides.
Yeah.
Yeah.
For how to read it, in my opinion.
So, Coach says, you know, there was initial publicity that left his name
off.
He says he's sort of fought for the screenplay credit.
And that, you know, as I always is with these sort of screenwriting
disputes, everyone's got their story.
But Weir, he, Coach says, I gave, we were a screenplay.
He liked it.
He took it to CBS in America.
They didn't like the script.
And so, you know, there was a polish.
It turned into a rewrite.
And Coach is like, I know I'm not trying to be like the sensitive novelist here, but
like, you know, they had fucked up my story.
And I fought to put stuff back in.
And so Weir kind of rewrites the rewrite.
The rewrite was done by a guy called Alan Sharp, who is a, you know, wrote night moves
like a Hollywood guy.
We are rewrites the sharp script.
More in the direction of what Coach is interested.
CBS drops out.
Williamson then comes on board.
Coach's final estimates is that the script is 55% Williamson.
Weir 45% me.
Sharp excised, which was the stuff he really didn't like.
So, you know, he's moderately happy.
Peter Weir's take is, I ate the novel.
I digested it and it was delicious.
I can only recall the taste, but what I then spoke as a result of the experience was my
way of telling the story.
He really has a way with words.
Like a lot of guys sat down in front of a WJ panel or whatever.
And was like, well, I ate the script.
And I tasted, I will say in our months of reading and watching interviews with Peter
Weir.
As someone who loves to just drive a bit into the ground, his commitment to metaphors
in talking about his process, he will pick one and he will really stick with it and ride
it out to the end of the thought.
Right.
Yeah.
So, right.
They altered the quan character.
Weir says, these much less likable in the novel.
Would you agree?
Yeah.
And I guess he wanted sort of to alter the balance of that.
So, in what way is he not likable?
Is he just like more of a cynical kind of?
Yeah.
I think my recollection of it is that he's quan is more manipulative.
Yeah.
Because like this movie frames, it is a film that positions quan as the hero of the story.
It is almost kind of like a big trouble in little China.
In many ways of sort of like, here's your like fake lead at the center.
But actually this movie is being driven by this person who would never be allowed to
be the center of a story.
He also says he filled out Jill's character more in the book, the character's pregnant.
He felt like that was a little too much.
Like essentially, why would she be sort of throwing herself into all of this?
Why would Hamilton be interested?
You know, like in a further complication of that.
You know, like so they remove that.
And you know, it's just essentially like, I assume this is correct and we were saying
the book is more very much about the politics of the time.
And the movie is not really not that it's, it's how I try it.
Like it's like this movie could be set in other moments of sort of critical change in
a country, I guess.
You don't need to know anything about Indonesian history, which is in order to enjoy the
movie the year of living danger.
You need to, you know that there is essentially a sort of coup that happens at the end of
the film, but like this is a crazy and fascinating moment in Indonesian like history.
And it's only, and like the point is that he's only grasping little bits of it anyway.
I will say I'm the opposite of David in this regard where I more than anything value
a movie that can be in conversation with real historical events, but not require you
to open a bunch of Wikipedia tabs.
I don't look to those films as educational resources.
I don't walk out of them going clearly.
I know everything.
But I like the ability to sort of tell a story adjacent to in tandem with real hard history
that just kind of works as a complete close loop on its own dramatically.
Well, how well do you know Vienna, post World War II?
How well do you need to know it in order to enjoy the third man?
Yes, right.
I mean, we're going to give you just enough context so you know what the fuck is going
on.
Right.
I think we're in particular very good at that.
Almost all of his films are like in conversation with larger, thornier issues that are too
hard to compress down narratively, but he is telling one very clear emotional story within
that.
But of course, you've also got the problem.
The issue of Peter Weir and David Williamson and CJ Kosh and Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver
telling you a story said in exotic Indonesia.
Yes.
And I think that's a lot of this movie's tricky like standing at this present moment is
a, a, a, just taking a little cursory view a letter box.
I feel like there is a conversation for a movie that's a little bit lost.
And part of this is no proper physical media representation, not streaming in the regular
places.
Kind of a ruddy streaming.
Right.
Yeah.
It is, is this movie a peak example of kind of Hollywood exoticism, even though it was
not fully a Hollywood movie, or is this a movie that is actually kind of interrogating
that, which does not mean is not guilty of any of the attributes.
But I do think, and I, I especially think this in having watched the earlier Australian
films up until this point.
I do think that is very deliberately what he is doing.
I think he is very skillful at making movies where he is owning what his perspective is,
and the limitations of his perspective, and working that in textually and narratively,
and commenting within that.
But I think everything we're saying about the recentering of the Billy Con character,
which we will get to momentarily is its own major conversation is what he's really trying
to say here of like, here's a story of a guy who lands in a foreign country that is
under great turmoil and is primarily focused on advancing his own career with a sense of
kind of back patty.
I want to be doing the right thing and falls in love and has a hot fucking two movie stars
at the prime of physical specimen ship.
I mean, Sigourney is so stunning.
The two of them look unbelievable in this, but it's like they're just getting it on while
people are really fucking suffering.
And you know, but the movie is very conscious of it.
And the actual story is this Billy Con character trying to push these kind of useful idiots
into helping, rather than hurting.
But without, but Billy never wants to tip his hand, but like he cares too much, he's paying
too much attention to everybody that he's keeping his files.
Right.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
And you have access to the president.
You know, why do you have his ear that he's just sort of kept tabs on everything for any
moment he feels like he can move the chess pieces around the board to help the cause.
But of course, the tragedy of this movie is like Billy, Juan falls out a window and Sigourney
weaver and Mel Gibson get on a plane and get to go like, well, that was interesting,
but back to our normal life.
And they just leave the problem there.
That's right.
And does we get away with something because he's already established his liberal bonus
on the fides, his, the story points that you talk about, the colonialism in Australia.
Does, is he given us a little extra credit for that?
Whereas the people who made Casablanca or the third man are not given that kind of credit.
I mean, obviously when I saw this movie in 1983 in a movie theater, none of this should
ever cross my mind, right?
But I see it now in a different light, right?
40 years changes the perspective was, yes, I wonder what, yeah, right?
What the sort of discourse was at the time because this was a big ish film.
It was a well in Indonesia until like, well, that's not a country that I know, I know,
allowed discourse on its politics until the 21st, but also, and even after that, yes.
There was discourse and what was it?
Death threats against we're in Gibson from Muslims who believe the film would be anti-Islamic
force the production to move to Australia.
Yes, right.
Because they were going from the Philippines.
Yes, yes, yeah, because I believe it was supposed to film in Jakarta, which is in Indonesia.
Right.
Then it was denied.
So then it moved to the Philippines and then they had to end up filming the final chunk
of it in Sydney.
Got it.
Because all the actors, I believe, who are not the three principles or four principles
are Filipino actors.
Yes.
Ultimately, it's films financed by MGM.
The first of their Freddie Fields era of famous super agent who is the president of MGM
in the 80s, cost six million American, sorry, Australian dollars.
Don't know like what that translates to, but you know, sort of a small to medium spend,
I guess.
Sure.
About 10, I think, based on the math we did for Glypholi.
That was about to go through the other direction.
All right.
Good to know.
Okay.
I think they supported the Linda Hunt casting choice, which was sort of a fraught choice.
Yes.
So he cast David Atkins at first who is like Australian dancer in a national treasure.
And I assume they cast him more for sort of like a physical reason and then they like
start doing rehearsals with Gibson and they're like, oh, he cannot hold this.
This is what it's gives.
He was a small Caucasian man, but not a man with dwarfism.
Right.
And so they start like looking for, you know, anybody essentially they look in America
because they had, according to we are exhausted, they're casting like sessions in Australia
and Hong Kong and London, while the Sean tested, which is, oh my god, unbelievable.
And the other ones, Bob Ballabat.
Yes.
They were like, who are tiny guys with particular energies who can be pulling like Mel Gibson
and suit jacket?
I mean, beyond just the fact that Linda Hunt gives such a good performance in talking about
everything that is tricky about watching this performance today, it is, I just think,
helpful to envision how much worse it could have been.
Yes.
Because that's a nice, to imagine Wallace on doing this.
It's no disrespect to the great Wallace show.
Of course.
It's like, the film would be illegal.
A thing that Linda Hunt is famous for after this movie is Antan and Lemon, the Wallace
Sean play.
She's in, right?
Yes.
It's funny that they, I have no idea if this came up with like, what was your belief about
this?
I found the full interview with her where she was talking about and comparing notes with
him.
That's there you go.
Yeah.
So, you know, how did they are so bad casting session in LA?
He's reading the Gibson part, you know, for David, or David Atkins, we were saying,
Wallace, no, no, no, no, we're is like reading with people, he's reading Gibson's
lines, like everything sucks apparently.
Yeah.
And a casting director holds up a photograph and he was like, that's perfect.
And the cast director was laughing.
And it's like, no, this is a woman.
And we're is like, I was just desperate.
And I was like, I want to meet her.
Like, please, like, she had done one movie up until this point.
Right.
She had been in Robert Altman's Popeye as part of basically the ensemble of Sweet
Haven.
I think she is roundhouse's mother, maybe.
Right.
And she's, and she'd done Broadway.
She'd done some theater.
She'd done a lot of theater.
Right.
She'd gone to the theater school at DePaul University, formerly the Goodman School of
Drama.
And I believe she was cut.
I think she was cut from that program.
And then when she became very famous, they went back to her and said, would you mind if
we were, uh, fucking unbelievable.
And the lump.
Yeah.
She's a, she's a New Jersey native band.
But grew up in Westport, I believe.
Yes.
And she's, uh, as a teenager diagnosed with hypopatuitary dwarfism.
Right.
She's four nine.
Yes.
Um, she is a Caucasian woman.
This is so true.
This is unbelievably true.
Yes.
I couldn't be more true.
She asked, I think the sensitivity at the time was more that she was like, can we rewrite
this to be a woman?
Like, yes.
She was a little bit more like, I'm not sure I can pull off playing a guy.
Like, uh, I don't know how much unfortunately there was hand-ringing over like, you know,
putting someone in yellow face at the time.
When you read the response at the time where people talk about the making of the movie,
it felt like their concern was, will this look silly?
Not is this offensive.
Is this offensive?
Right.
Yes.
It was, this is a big swing.
And in a serious dramatic film, does it throw the entire thing off balance?
And the fact that it doesn't and that her performance is so good, it is, fantasy has
been talking about this a lot recently.
It is one of those rare examples of a best supporting actress, when that's basically
a cakewalk and the only nomination that movie got.
It's so crazy.
It's similar to the Amy Madigan weapons thing of just people being like, yeah, this is
just like this is kind of one and a million thing.
This immediately like a stuck in everyone's mind.
I mean, it's kind of hard to imagine you're living dangerously without Linda Hunt in
it.
It's just some kind of a finding element you make with the movie.
I think weirdly, David, that it's considered brown face.
It's a fair point.
Yellow face because she's portraying a South Asian, South East Asian person.
This is clearly something I'm very good at parsing out and talking about.
Like, no, you're right.
I mean, but no, nobody was concerned about that in 1982.
And nor am I going to yes, but the decision at the time, right?
We show the movies to our kids that come with the disclaimers now.
Yeah.
This was wrong at the time.
Sure.
It's wrong now.
Right.
And I believe that absolutely to be true.
Yeah.
And that's and that's how I feel.
The thing with this one that's so odd is it's not like breakfast at Tiffany's or whatever
where you're like, wow, this is plainly offensive at the time.
And it's just playing into a scary type of all this.
You know, like, Rima Williams, the adventure begins is only like a year or two after this.
It has Joel Gray playing a villainous character who is like borderline fuman shoe.
Right.
And that is the performance that gets like a golden globe nomination.
But that was Hollywood at the time.
They were like, zest with the stunt of.
Yes.
It was as if like, oh my god.
And this is, I'm choosing my language very carefully here.
I'm saying that this was their attitude at the time.
And this is exactly what the danger of the dehumanization was.
He was treated as, can you believe this human being convincingly played a dog?
You know that it was like, oh, they transformed into it.
They're crafting my friend and make up in a voice and they changed the whole thing.
And now we obviously have like an entirely different language for how we consider like
who should play what and how.
It is interesting that it feels like the gender part of this is the most interesting part
of the performance, the most powerful.
And I actually think would be seen as progressive today in my mind.
In that, in that light, it would.
I'll also tell you, you know, when you're the director and you're setting up the auditions
and you're working with the casting director and you say what we need from this character
is a Chinese, half Chinese, half Australian dwarf of a, yes, within a certain age.
Right.
And you set up the auditions and then you look out in the waiting room and you go, they're
not, they're not out there.
They're not, they're not coming in because not to say they didn't exist, but say there
are four of them out there, Chinese Australian people with dwarfism who are coming into audition
and maybe two of them are the wrong age and one of them is just terrible.
And one of them you're like, oh, maybe I'm not going to like rank the levels of
offensiveness of which things are touchier than others.
But it's like, what if you find the right guy and he's six foot seven and now he's like
walking with like shoes on his knees, you know, and it did feel like the part of this
that felt risky creatively was the gender element.
And it is the thing that gives this movie this like entirely different, like power and
text.
I don't know if it's just me watching this from for the first time yesterday, but it feels
like baked in.
And I was, it was this interview I found that Linda Hunt did with bomb magazine where
she's talking about having just done the run of the wall of Sean play.
And she said like that was deliberate in my mind that like I am playing a super personality.
That I am not trying to play a man.
And you watch this now and it it feels like there is a reading that is pretty easy to
get to of this character being like an Albert knobs of being someone who has assumed a
different gender identity, whether at a personal expression or at a means of survival.
And that is kind of like the secret the movie is holding.
And I think that was the thing that just made this performance so transfixing that, you
know, in an era where people are just doing kind of race swapped casting offensively without
any delicacy, playing into stereotypes without any larger gain.
This performance is not doing that or rather that's not the main driving force.
So people are just like fucking hand her the Oscar right away.
And as like a kid growing up in the 90s and trying to learn about Oscar history, it was
such a weird thing to stumble upon and be like in like the 80s they gave best supporting
actress to a woman playing a Filipino man.
And it's like someone I haven't heard of.
But now that you're pointing her out, she does just kind of pop up in things.
Does he?
Do you suppose there's any consciousness that he's indemnifying the brown face decision
by by doing that?
I do wonder.
I really think the way he presents it is more just the total desperation of we could not
find anyone even close to being good for this.
Right.
And it's such a unique and specific role.
And then he at one point was like, should I make the character even more physically
unusual?
Should I make it a hunchback?
Should I essentially just kind of transform it in a way that it might fit other actors?
Right.
And then he pulls back from that because he finds Linda Hunt.
I do think Linda Hunt went to the Oscar because she's good.
I do also think she wins because it was one of those kind of like well, like you said,
like, well, this has never happened before.
We have to sort of acknowledge what an unusual performance this is.
Who else was nominated?
That's a good question.
It's a weird year.
I was looking at because it's share for Silkwood who I think wins the Golden Globe.
The sag doesn't exist yet.
Right.
And that's shares on tray.
Right.
You know, like to being taken seriously.
With scene, right.
Maybe share was going to be the front runner.
This is the year.
So it's sharing Silkwood.
Amy Irving and Yantle, a lovely performance.
But probably not going to win.
Alfred Wooden Cross Creek, which is a great performance, but is a small movie.
And again, probably sort of like a welcome, welcome to the biz.
And then Glenn Close and the big chill, which is not like the definitive close performance.
But I feel like now they'd look back and be like, should we just fucking give it to
her for that?
This is what saves us the headache of every time they nominated her.
They were like, but we'll give it to her for the next one.
And she was the only actor nominated for the big chill, which is weird because she is
good in it, but she doesn't actually have a big role.
I think it just speaks to her status that she was so.
She is the scene where she cries in the shower, which is like a big oscarie kind of scene.
But like if I'm given someone an oscar for that movie, it's like Joe Beth Williams or
so I don't know it's someone else.
Well, it's absolutely the argument for an ensemble award.
Yeah, right?
I mean, that would have won best.
Big chill would have won it.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
And then who's the fifth nominee again?
It's Linda Hunt.
It's a Linda Hunt shared Glenn Close, Amy Irving, Alfred Woodard.
Right, right.
Okay.
Good year.
It's a great performance.
It's an interesting year.
It's an interesting year.
It's an interesting year.
Right.
And they run both of them in lead.
Yes.
So surely they put it in the pool.
So that's the thing.
They could have put today they would have put McLean in supporting.
No, I think they would have put Debra in supporting it would have been bullshit.
No, I think they might have put McLean in supporting, which is weird.
I think you're disregarding the kind of like, I know what your argument.
Elder statesman rule.
I would point to Carol as the analog.
Yeah, but but Officer and General Edna already come out.
That's Debra Winger was a big movie star and that movie is more about her and McLean
is the sparky supporting character like in this bullshit read of it.
Like I think Debra would have been lead and might have won.
Hmm.
Maybe they should have done some category.
They could have both won.
But Linda Hunt won.
Linda Hunt such an interesting actor who has such a crazy interesting career in some
ways.
Now, but it's also someone that like obviously Holly would never really knows what to
do.
No, there she's fascinating kind of like paycheck run and I don't say that disparaging
Lee board the studios are like this person's interesting.
How can we work her into our big movies?
And you're like, oh, she's like the Madame running the saloon in Silverado.
She's like the stern principal and kindergarten cop.
Like there's a good series of big studio paycheck gigs for her that all use her in an interesting
way.
Another one or two altman movies too, right?
She's in Predaportay.
And then she ends up on she was on a 90s legal show.
And then she was on NCIS.
She's on the practice.
Yes.
But as like one of the judges, but NCIS for 100 years, she was on the show for 100 years.
Los Angeles Los Angeles, right?
I was forget if it was New Orleans or Los Angeles.
This is a thing I discovered that I just I'm so happy.
I did the research and stumbled upon this myself.
Linda Hunt twice won the Teen Choice Award surfboard for choice.
I got a email TV star colon action for NCIS LA.
Yes.
Those are words, of course, sir.
Full of integrity imported on by action.
They give us surfboard.
You know, you know, you got a gun for one of these.
You got your Pulitzer.
You got your Tony's got to get a service.
You got to go up on stage and they give you a I was desperately trying to find a video
of her accepting the surfboard on her IMDb.
She has credited once as self at one of those ceremonies, but I could not find any video
of it.
Both years, I think the category was exactly the same.
I believe she beat Yvonne Strahowski for Chuck.
Maggie Q for the Lefemne Nikita TV show.
Like it's like four TV shows.
Here's so Shaline Woodley accepting a surfboard.
Oh, it's a full-size surfboard.
It's a full-size surfboard.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It was two years in a row, the exact same nominees.
I think I just like leave the absurd, but leave it in the like in the in a parking spot,
you know, outside just like, yeah, you got to ride that slide.
I just love that it was four women and high heels who kicked people and that both times
they were like the teens have spoken and they like Linda Hunt sitting behind a desk.
What if you don't surf?
This is my bad.
What are you going to do with a surfing board?
I'll frame it.
I'm going to tape it to your screen.
Do we call it a surfing board?
It's just a surfboard.
This is again, you're sort of you're not really a Hollywood guy.
I'm feeling here.
But to this point, it's like this wasn't an anointment of a career.
He was basically unknown to most of Hollywood.
She was, you know, established in theater, but had done almost no on camera work.
And then Hollywood is like, I guess we got a cast or in stuff, but she never becomes,
you know, like you look back and go like, oh, that makes sense that Linda Hunt has an
Oscar.
She got a Tony nomination for End of the World.
A play I don't really know in the release.
I don't know.
That's about.
Yeah.
Anyway, she's in the film.
Harrison obviously was the choice to begin with.
Apparently he was vaguely wary of the character.
I think because he'd never done that kind of a thing, right?
The sort of more cool detachable.
Just the whole dissent or thing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So Gordney Weaver, he'd have real like the film Alien.
Yeah.
Like many of us.
And so I don't know.
He didn't, he didn't, like, you know, didn't have to press too hard at the time.
In between Alien and Ghostbusters.
Wasn't Rocky, but you do look back at it and you feel her fighting against getting pigeon
hold as just genre as like a sort of an action queen or whatever.
Right.
And it feels like she tries a lot of interesting stuff when she and Ghostbusters can prove
that she's funny.
And then that's followed by Aliens and Grill is in the mess and everything.
Right.
By 8485, it's like, oh, so Gordney Weaver can do anything.
But she only does one movie in between Dangerous Lane, which is eyewitness.
Right.
Which is a she and she and Bill Hart both kind of anointed new movie stars at that point.
Never seen.
They're like journalists, right?
They're like Peter Yates, right?
Peter Yates.
James Woods is also in that.
That's not bad.
Sure.
You know, when she had been in college, she had gone to school with Christopher Durang.
Right.
And he had written these plays that would do these plays in college.
And he wrote these roles for her where she was kind of the, you know, in a sense he's
writing.
Yeah, they were very, very much comedies.
And she got to do lots of wacky stuff or be kind of the fact that she was tall, statuesque,
beautiful, long-legged, and yet being in these screwball comedies were playing a kind
of Margaret Dumont character in these things that Durang would write.
So it makes sense that after Aliens, you would say, well, that's not really who I
am.
I'm not really an ass kicking action star.
I do different stuff.
But in year of living dangerously, she and Mel, right, find an opportunity to play.
I mean, she's just so fucking smart, right?
Her screen persona is so fucking smart.
And so you can imagine a lot of actors who would feel not, not equipped to play this role
that she plays in year of living dangerously.
She has a really good character.
That's a amount of intelligence and authority on screen that just is established.
Second one when you see her in a movie that doesn't have a ton of time to backfill character.
Right after this is when she does Hurley Burling on Broadway, which I feel like was another
kind of the fucking deal.
Yeah.
She too much theater now.
She did Christopher Durang's, right?
It's my show.
It's my show.
Yeah, that was the last one.
I think so.
She doesn't do a lot of it these days.
Is she in these fucking avatar things?
She sure is.
And she's crazy.
I'm so glad you asked in a stroke of almost Linda Hunt, S cast it is bizarre what they do
with her.
Sigourney Weaver plays a 13 year old alien.
So in the first film, it is a phenomenal performance.
And the first film Sigourney Weaver plays this scientist, a human person.
She's like a chain smoking tire.
I'm trying to make these avatar.
How do people become aliens?
She dies in the first film, spoiler alert.
But her mind is uploaded, of course, to a mind tree.
I don't worry about it.
Would you say spoiler alert after the spoiler is going to lose a little bit?
And then in the second and third films, she plays in a Navi and alien.
So motion capture performance, but they use the motion capture so that she can play a
13 year old girl.
But it looks like her.
Alien.
It looks like Sigourney Weaver's face on a 13 year old blue cat alien.
And she is so good in the films.
It is such a well observed performance of a teenager.
It is.
Here she is.
Oh, there you go.
Anyway, but back to the year of living dangerously.
It's just so exciting having you on the show.
And I feel like we just want to tell you all this thing.
We're excitedly showing you are like macaroni there.
As I said, they were never really going to do Indonesia.
They shot in Manila, which was very arduous.
And there were terrorist threats, which was a problem.
Manila is a very Catholic city at the time, I think.
Then they start shooting in a village that's very heavily muslim.
And this causes a lot of friction.
And they I think don't know how much of a mess they're making by doing all of this.
Like they're just blundering around making their movie.
So they eventually have to retreat to, I mean, at one point, a note was left in a vehicle
saying in the name of Allah, the Almighty, stop your imperialistic film where we will stop
you.
That's the thing.
The discourse of this movie, I think it was not touchy in the states.
It was touchy the places they were filming.
That makes sense.
Yes.
So we're going to leave Imelda Marcos, the then first lady, but a big Filipino politician
obviously personally reaches out and begs them, like don't leave.
Like, you know, we will figure this out.
But we're is just kind of like this is too fucked up.
Like we don't need to be, you know, dealing with all this life first movie second, this
how he puts it.
So then they do another like six weeks in Sydney, recreating some of the sets, like patching
it all together.
And yeah, the biggest battle, what do you think the biggest battle over this movie was
after it was, you know, Final Cut?
The biggest battle?
Like the biggest kind of like a US sensor kind of, you know, like, you know, the studio
thing, like it's that there's child nudity, that there's the boy naked when he's sick.
And that like isn't that, you know, in the how goes though, like, you know, it's like,
they're like, well, wait a second.
Why are we seeing a penis?
I don't like a child's penis from the dead child.
Right.
Right.
Priorities there maybe a lot of work.
Film came out 80 December 82 in Australia.
Uh, January, late January 83 in America.
So Linda Hunt wins an Oscar for a performance that was a year plus old while.
Like she only went to the 84 Oscars.
Yeah.
And looking through it, it really felt like, uh, she just sort of swept all the critic
awards.
Yeah.
It must have been a performance that people were like, that was interesting.
Obviously, that's not a traditional Oscar winning performance.
And then it became such a critics cause that she, you know, she carried it all the way.
Um, I just think back to the casting thing for a second.
An interesting character comparison point that I saw people pointing out on letter box.
To your point of like, yes, it is incredibly hard to cast these things, right?
In theater, you were granted more sort of latitude of people can play things
representationally.
And then film, we expect a kind of literalism.
And how do you find the real person and also know that they can deliver what's necessary
for the role and all of that, which is, I none of this said as an excuse, right?
Just the casting is an incredibly tricky art form.
The weird kind of counter to this movie is killing fields two years later, where they
hire high-ing Ness Nagore, who basically just was the guy he was playing and he wins an
Oscar as well.
You know, and it's in an academy that has very rarely awarded Asian actors at all.
He is one of the few.
And it's basically he is considered it's him and Harold Russell from best years of our
lives or the two times that someone who was like straight up a non professional actor,
we hired this guy based on life experience and it worked.
Even then, you know, it's going to be hard if you go, well, let's just assume we can
direct them and we can get the performance out of them.
We have to find a four foot nine half Australian Filipino dwarf.
It's still like a tough challenge.
You know, I years ago, just literally identified that human being alive on the planet.
Right.
Yeah.
Years ago, I did a play of mine called Linda Vista and there's a Vietnamese American character
in Linda Vista.
We went about trying to cast this role and trying to cast a Vietnamese actor in Chicago
was challenging.
We eventually got there.
I have a Chinese Korean American friend who said to me, why are you why are you trying
to cast a Vietnamese person?
You're not going to find a Vietnamese person.
You just cast an Asian person and I said, but don't you think that the Vietnamese person
would have a different perspective on that and would want to see themself want to see
the Vietnamese person represented on stage by a Vietnamese actor and she said, that's
not the way we look at it.
She said, if I have to wait for the role to come up, that's a Chinese Korean American.
I've already got a limited number of roles I can play and now you're going to tell me
that I can only play a role if it's Chinese Korean American.
Well, I don't know what Linda Hunt would say since she has dwarfism about a role that
comes up in which she's being asked to play a dwarf.
Yes.
Now, would she say something different now than she said back in 1982?
I don't know.
I don't know.
It's, we're not hand waving or excusing any of it.
There are like two fundamental truths which is this casting would never happen today and
this performance is extraordinary and it is like really the juice of the movie in every
way and back to just the reframing around this character.
The whole reason this movie works for me on top of purchase and nailing the performance
so hard, but I think today there would be some form of reconsensualization around the
character somehow.
I think today a director would say, let's find that person before I do anything else.
Yes.
It's like I got to know that I've got that person that I can build this movie around.
There was whatever years ago, 2019, Steven Spielberg announced he was going to make that
movie about the kidnap.
It could be that way in regard to Montana.
It's been made since then.
Yes.
But he announced it as his next film and they said, and now we begin the worldwide casting
search for the kid.
And basically after two years, he was like, I can't make this movie.
Yeah.
We never found the kid.
You know?
And if you're Steven Spielberg, you have the clouds to be given the money and the runway
to search, knowing that you might not find the kid.
If you're Peter, we're at this point.
Oh, no, I know.
Yeah.
Here's when you start filming.
Yeah.
In, in Mila.
No, you decide who's playing that role, but we're not waiting around for four years.
Mel's got like two more fucking mad Max's to make or whatever.
Yeah.
So the film, we should discuss a little more in depth, I would imagine.
You know, what do we, what?
It opens with Billy Quang.
A character who we later find out is dead.
Sure.
But is telling the story of the film to us.
Sure.
We're right.
He's narrating from beyond in, in diary form.
Yes.
Right.
In a way.
Yeah.
But is this mean we're done with the dossier?
We are, I'm sorry.
No, it's all right.
I'm the only thing left there is, you know, the reviews, the reception of the film, which
I can tell you more.
If there's specific questions, we can always plug and tell you it played it can.
I can tell you that it was well received by critics.
And we're these days sort of like, I'm not sure about that film's legacy, but I'm glad,
you know, it still exists.
It doesn't talk about it in a reverential way exactly, but I think it was a pain to
make.
Here's what I don't know yet.
How do you feel about this film?
I love this film.
I love this film.
I, you know, sensitivity is aside and all like the things are just like, I just, it's
just the kind of movie I really respond to because it's sexy, but also like politically
complex and like rewarding and it's complexity.
Just like not giving you an easy answer, not giving you an easy guide or route for like
he makes mistakes that are identifiable mistakes to me.
He behaves in a way that I'm like, yeah, I don't know that I would really be of upright
integrity here either.
I don't know that I would know how to navigate this situation, but I would be kind of thrilled
by it.
And it's just a film that feels very relevant always.
You can say it's relevant now.
Everything's relevant now.
Right now everything is right now everything is right now everything is for them.
But like the Super Mario Galaxy movie has never been more of a right.
All films, but like capturing like the feeling of a country on the brink of something is
hard to do.
Like and I love any movie that does that.
And I love like Ross Leney movies or what I'm trying to think of like what are what are
other movies that you would put in that genre of like sort of films about a revolution,
but that aren't about like the instigators of that revolution.
I don't know.
That's an interesting question.
But I love revolutions missing missing isn't yeah, yeah, another film that's impossible
to find right now, right?
Isn't missing a criteria.
It's not criteria.
Oh, it's not.
Yeah.
Then I should go fuck myself.
But Galipoli is not not inherent in my comment that you should go fuck yourself.
Galipoli is similar in that regard.
It is you know, backgrounding a giant historical moment and showing it to you only through
the perspective of people who don't understand how important what is happening around them
is actually going to be.
Yes.
I like what I look I'm no expert on Indonesia.
I don't know if you are.
Are you I am not an expert on Indonesia.
This is good to get out there.
But like, Sikarna from what I understand, Sikarna was not a communist.
But he was sort of like loosely aligning himself, left wing, loosely aligning himself
with the Soviets, maybe loosely, loosely drifting from the Americans.
And what's happening in this movie is the American, the West, the Americans, the Brits,
whatever, the old nasty stakeholders are like, let's fucking so chaos so that we can
get our guy.
Right?
And then Indonesia, right?
Because like, Sue Hartto is the guy who replaces him is he's like, you know, I'll do
what the Americans.
David is saluting for those of you listening at home.
And I know that I am embarrassingly simplifying Indonesian like politics here.
But right?
Like, and I just love that insit, what's up?
Well, because I was really trying to figure out like, he seems to be this figure like
a hero.
Yes.
Sikarna or yeah, he is.
He's the father of like Indonesian independence.
Like, they broke off from, they were controlled by the Dutch for, you know, 100 fucking more.
I mean, how many, you know, hundreds of years, they were the Dutch East Indies.
And like post war, he's the leader of their independence movement.
And completely anti imperialist, right?
He doesn't want anything to do with the colonizers.
Right.
And therefore sets himself up as a leader of the country.
But of course, he's terribly corrupt as well.
And that's what the tension of especially Billy Quon.
I mean, everyone else here is there.
They're drifting in here because it's interesting.
Like Billy Quon wants Sikarna to help.
And Sikarna, like, and I guess identifies in Sikarna, like, you know, good, right?
Like you could be doing good.
I mean, like, were I in charge of a nation of what, 10,000 islands with like 400 million languages
and like that had just been liberated from Dutch bond?
I guess I imagine corruption would rain.
I don't really know.
Like, this is what I don't know.
Like was Sikarna way bad leader?
Like, I don't think so.
Like, I think it was just like an insane and complicated situation that then the West kind of like blew up.
I also think there's an interesting trick in the egg thing.
When you look at like radical revolutionary movements and how often those leaders are proven to be corrupt.
And whether there is some driving force in them that pushes the politics,
even if ultimately helpful to their people,
so that they can achieve their own ultimate desires and gains.
Or if it's just classic fucking absolute power corrupts, absolutely.
But so often you have these arcs of the person being the savior,
ultimately becoming the exact kind of person that they existed to topple.
Yeah, not exactly that's right of that happening,
but I think you never actually even really came to that.
I'm not even saying with him in general.
I'm saying like globally across history that is a thing that repeats itself.
History aside, I just like how the film captures that, you know, all of that ambiguity.
Yeah.
While still being a 100 minute sexy journalism thriller.
Well, also to your point, what I like is a pretty darn watchable movie.
What a guess.
But it's not a movie where he's going to break the case and fucking save the day.
And it's not a movie where he's like the white savior or whatever.
You know, like it doesn't really always all these people.
It's like an anti white savior movie,
even though it is obviously placing this guy from the source at the audience at any point.
But it's why I said the like useful idiot thing is there is the sense of like,
as you said, Billy Condein, like, man,
if someone could get through to this guy, he really could help everybody.
And he identifies guy, literally just some white dude named guy who's handsome and charming.
And it's like, he might listen to him.
If I can load the right ideas into his head and he can go relay them.
And he's a better delivery system than maybe I would be.
Does that affect change?
I find that idea very moving that that this,
what's going on globally, politically,
what's going on in this country is so far beyond the reach of the characters.
They really don't understand quite the world they're operating in.
And they basically, you know, one of them dies and the other two run away.
Yeah, I mean, right?
There's they get to just live a fucking Hollywood romance.
But I mean, a scene that I love is when they make it through the checkpoint.
It's so tense.
And then they're laughing.
Even though they just witness like state murder.
Right.
And I'd probably because like they're just so exhilarated and they're like,
you know, happy to be alive.
You wouldn't put that in a Hollywood version of the movie because it makes him look like a jerk.
It's also, yeah, it is, it is begging to be misread.
Whereas I view that as pointed and part of that is the person of looking at his other films.
And the continuity of his view points.
I brought it up in other episodes.
But there is one of the first things Peter we're did was he made one of the
chapters in an omnibus movie called Three to Go.
That was truly like the very beginning of the Australian new wave.
Let's get these kids out of film school and try to make a movie commenting on the youth of Australia.
And it's it's three different stories of three different characters.
And he made one called Michael that is about a upper middle class kind of very coddled,
privileged, kind of well-meaning liberal intellectual kid who is fighting or
he wants to rebel against his parents and what he views.
Views is the safety of their bubble and wants to get into the shit and starts entrenching
himself in kind of radical politics and radical art and wanting to feel dangerous and wanting to
tell himself that he's not just comfortably sitting in an ivory tower.
But it is ultimately an act as an effect.
It's him just wanting to rebel against whatever is imposed upon him.
Even if what is imposed upon him is like immense privilege and security and safety.
And it builds to him inviting this radical kind of a fear troop over to his parents house.
Mostly to kind of just say fuck you to his parents.
And then immediately is hit with like actually is this more chaos than I want.
And I think it's really interesting as like basically the first extended narrative thing
Peter were ever made on film because it feels like it is him very much trying to
excoriate the exact person he doesn't want to be.
Sure.
Right.
You know?
Sort of culture of tourists.
Yeah.
Right.
Right.
And the guy who gets out when things get a little too messy.
Right.
He likes to believe that he could get down and dirty and really give everything to the cause.
But what does he do in this?
He doesn't do much.
Exactly.
That's the difference.
Is that he's really the first act of the movie like just kind of circling around.
Like he's really not doing anything.
Right.
That movie feels right.
It feels much more barbed.
And this the way it is I think getting out of somewhat similar thing is much less critical
of the character and more critical of the societal systems.
And then as you're saying like the moving part of it for me is Billy quad basically
understanding that everything boils down to people that these issues that can feel so humongous
and impossible to manage or ever effect change ultimately are swung by two people having a
conversation.
Right.
And can you get the right two people in the right place?
Can you get them to align on the same things?
Yeah.
And so much of the movie's philosophy is contained in that first conversation that Billy and Guy
have as Guy is just arriving.
And Billy's talking to him about, you know, he talks to him about Tolstoy and, you know,
what would you do?
Do you help the one person in front of you?
How do you how do you help?
What then must we do?
Which is all pulled straight from the book by the way.
This is a cautious book.
I mean the dialogue is pulled straight out of the book.
And it's really the argument that or the conversation I should say that sits the center of the film
and that we keep coming back to.
I mean like I say, Guy only makes one ethical decision in the movie and it's arguably the wrong one.
So okay the plot of this movie, that was still back to the plot.
No, no, it's fine. We don't have to be, but I'm just trying to think like how how it progress.
I mean much like Mel Gibson wanting to show people that he is not just an action star and that
he can do drama. This is a guy who wants to be boots on the ground.
An important photo journalist, you know, video journalist, film journalist I guess.
Doing something meaningful, but also he wants to
stake his claim as important.
He both wants to feel like he is fighting for the right issues and also that he has seen as someone
who can tackle issues of weight.
He's he arrives. He knows nothing.
His predecessor has left him nothing.
Right. So he's kind of like a true babe in the woods.
So he meets all the guys. Michael Murphy.
Love to see that guy.
Always love to see my incredible face.
Yeah.
What's he, I mean he's an Altman guy to me.
Yeah, like he's a big Altman guy, but he's great in everything.
Yeah.
And he's a terrific, this is only what two or three years removed from unmarried
one and where he's also a son of a bitch.
Oh, and Manhattan a couple of years after Manhattan, where he's also a son of a bitch.
He just played this RPG,
planned wasbishes son of a bitch.
It is rare to have someone who was that good and that handsome.
Yeah.
Basically fully embrace the idea of being a character actor.
Yeah.
Right.
Past strategically to represent the most annoying kind of person.
You know what I've never seen is Shocker.
Oh, yes.
Craven movie.
Yeah.
He's the lead up.
Yeah.
And I've always wondered what that is.
Like, like, he's the human lead being quanted by the Shocker.
Right.
I believe that is correct.
Yes.
Is what Mitch Pellejee is the original Shocker.
Right.
He's the man who sends him to the electric chair and then the man in the electric chair.
Haven't seen Sean.
Chris West Craven.
West Craven.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But even like that sort of weird 80s Craven where he wasn't sure what he's.
He's great as the fucking ineffectual mayor and Batman returns.
He's great in a way from like he's I just think he is always fantastic.
And this is such a perfect use of him.
He became a big narrator.
He narrates like any PBS shit that's Michael
Murphy.
Yes.
Anyway,
Michael Murphy is still alive by the way.
So, so I've how old is Michael Murphy?
Michael Murphy is 87 years old.
He's a bachelor in 88.
And I think he's the only Ameri...
Well, I was about to say is the only American except Linda Hunt of course is American.
Right.
But he's the only American.
So Gordon weaver is American.
He's the only American character.
That's why I'm not saying that.
Yes.
He is the token ugly American.
And it's another scene that I think is really telling.
But Sigourney is that the she's a British.
Yes.
Diplomat.
Yeah.
Right.
But she's American.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The scene around the table where Michael Murphy is trying to sell milk gifts and on the sexual
tourism of the Philippines where you're like, you know, okay, but like cut the bullshit.
You're not here because you actually care on any humanitarian level.
This is a cushy job because they treat you like royalty.
Right.
And the laws are looser.
Your money goes far.
You're right.
Yeah.
Right.
And then who's the other actor?
Is that?
No, Farrier.
Yeah.
He's an Australian actor.
Oh, who is?
You might be unsurprised to learn how to big like sort of comedy career contemporary Barry
Humphreys, who is a big Australian, you know, who's Day Medna.
Is there his Barry Humphreys?
He died.
Okay.
He died very recently.
Do we get a sense of like what publications, what countries?
These would be like wire journalists.
I would have said.
Right?
Like my dad was a wire journalist.
Okay.
He worked for UPI.
He lived in Vienna.
He lived in Bevorout.
He lived in Rome.
The Australians might know my dad hated Welsh.
And that is too strong to say that he hated them.
It's more that my dad, I would detect in him, disdain for the Welsh where I was like,
you grew up so fucking poor in London.
Like what is it?
You know, what do you have on the Welsh?
Nothing.
Like, you know, it's like you're just as like a bunch of a yokle is them except you grew
up in like South London or whatever.
But like, and like the he and he just kind of had these like, yeah, but they're just so
silly.
And I would be like, this is because we do what the Brits conquered them a thousand years
ago.
I think it's also Taylor's whole time.
You're all stuck under the same boot and you point to the other person though.
Yeah.
I think they're the fucking pal.
So funny about it.
And it wasn't like he was the only one that it's a common thing in Britain.
The people are like, the Welsh like, and it's just like, I'm like, they're like a hundred
miles that away.
How different are you?
You know, it's like, but no, he didn't.
My dad didn't have an Australian thing.
Other British people do.
I mean, don't you, I mean, like, have you been to Britain?
You know, it's like the Brits the way they are.
It's especially with Australians, but you know, any like, you know, Canada, New Zealand,
America, but they're just like, you know, those guys are kind of Britain, Jr.
You know, we kind of invented this whole thing.
They're fucking running circles around the British labels in terms of physical media these
days.
Well, that's really.
Well, that's really.
Australians are stepping up.
I mean, what is a good, are you?
Is there a good British like, you're recon, you're a FI?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Indicators is UK and radiance is UK.
Yeah.
But like the old tartan label and all that, right?
Like they're gone, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But you got, you got imprints and umbrella and via vision.
But I'm just pointing to the time we got a, let's keep going with the plot.
The scene, the scene of them sort of like trying to sus out in Mel Gibson, what is your sexual
deviancy?
As if the only reason you would take this job is to be able to take advantage, right?
And it's like Michael Murphy is basically, I wasn't even going to say coded.
He is like, this is a man with like pedophilic inclinations, who is like primarily driven
by underage girls.
Yes.
And the other guy is like deeply closeted, right?
Right.
And it's because when Billy is laying it all out at the end, that's what he's, right?
He's poking at all of those sort of unspoken thing.
And in that first scene, I think we're introduced to those guys around the table and they're
poking Billy as like, what's your fucking thing?
Who are you fucking?
What's your fucking deal?
And he like very, like stands very firm of like, that is not my relationship with her,
you know?
They're like, so you're fucking her on the side, right?
Why would you talk to her otherwise?
And he has this like, you don't understand kind of thing where it just feels like Billy
is a character who is completely grounded in the value of seeing people and seeing the
worth of people and the relationship of people to each other in a non-transactional way.
It's why it's so interesting to me to learn that the book character is less pleasant,
but I guess because like to me, it's like, right, they invest the morality in the movie
and Billy.
Because this character is very strategic, but not in a devious way.
Yeah, I'd be like, fine, manipulate me.
Oh no, no, you made me fall in love with the 40-way world.
This sucks.
Oh fuck.
Don't eat when that happens.
What do I do?
Yeah.
So Billy nudges Guy towards Jill, right?
And I feel like Bill nudges Jill towards Guy as well, right?
Like there's all this sort of subtle manipulation going on.
And also let's Guy know that he can give him access to the president in exchange for agreeing
to make Billy his exclusive cameraman that is framed originally as just, you do all
that for me.
And it's like, look, I just want steady work, which of course is not.
I don't think it's the president.
I think it's the leader of the Communist Party.
Oh, yes, I'm sorry.
Correct.
Yes, yes, yes.
But who does later historically did become the first president?
Am I wrong about this?
No, I'm not.
So Karno is the president of Indonesia at the time.
Yes.
So Karno is eventually related.
So what happens is there's a communist rep, you know, not revolution exactly, but like,
there's communist fighting.
Tracy, I'm looking at you because you know everything about this.
I assume you know more about this than I do, but there's communist fighting.
So Karno was the first president.
Yes.
And Terry led by Suharto uses that as an excuse to completely wipe out the communist and
all of opposition.
That's right.
And then eventually kick out Sakardo.
Suharto becomes the president of Indonesia for 35 years or whatever until death.
No, not until that.
Right.
They're in the 90s.
It's like the economy gets bad.
And it's finally his time to go.
I listened to this podcast called Revolutions by Mike Duncan.
I highly recommend it to everyone.
It's well known where he goes through.
Every single revolution that's ever happened.
It's just him talking.
Just tells you I'm on Mexico right now.
And it's just always so interesting how it's always the same fucking mistakes.
The guys just stay a little too long.
And it's like, Hey, you're getting old.
Do you want to like pick a successor?
And he's like, Well, if I pick a successor, then you'll try to get rid of me.
You know, like it's like, you know, like it's like, they become you started the relationship
by cheating on someone.
And you're like, I think you're going to cheat on me.
Like the whole like rightly.
Yeah.
And Sukarno was kind of laying the groundwork for the communist uprising that was eventually
put down.
He, one of the ways he did this was with the speech in which he spoke about living dangerously
correct.
That's where the title comes from, which is never referenced in the film.
It's referenced in the book right straight off the bat.
But the very Perry Coloso.
Well said.
And like he, he called, he gave the speech during like an anniversary of their independence.
I know it was about a year before the coup.
But was he like, did he want this coup to happen the way it happened?
Like no, right?
Like, like the 30.
So this is the thing that's all sort of the you start to get in the weeds here.
And there's like, I'm lost again.
Seeing it in 1983, I couldn't have found Indonesia on a map.
Sure.
Right.
So that didn't matter.
Like it didn't matter.
But what just what spoke to you about the film then, I guess apart from just that kind
of rock.
Well, again, the stranger in a strange land aspect of it, the quality of the performances,
the love story that you talk about that.
I mean, the scene where he goes into the embassy party and then she comes and she gets
in the car with him and we start to play the van vanjeleys song is just the hottest scene
is really unbelievably hot.
They're really like peak pants, but the two of you know, like Gibson and Weaver.
Well, they're not only physically attractive, but they're such good actors and they play
they play that desire so effectively.
They don't speak that much to each other.
But then there's also the sort of loaded mystery of like, you know, is there is there a
secret layer to this relationship?
Are you gaming me a little bit?
Is that which kind of makes it harder?
Yeah.
And and the the filmmaking.
I mean, I suppose with picnic at hanging rock, he had established that he was a great
filmmaker.
Sure.
You, but you know, I just watched the stunt man last night and I said, I'm a bit bemoaning
who we who's the director.
Richard Rush.
You know, that's my great dance.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Why did this guy never make another great film?
Yeah.
That's one of my dad's.
So it's like, what is going to be, how are we going to know that Peter Weir is really
that guy?
And I think you're of living dangerously.
It's very apparent that he is that guy.
That scene where the British journalist says, I've taken a bungalow and then we cut from
there to the guys having a kind of Rick Shaw or tough.
He takes five minutes to say I've taken a bungalow.
Yeah, right.
He does a lot of purple preamble to be yes.
And then the music choices and the tuk tuk race that takes us into the bungalow and then
the whole bungalow sequence in which we hear very little of the dialogue being spoken
but so much of the sexual tension between Sigourney Weaver and Mel Gibson is playing out
to the dance, the gerryly Lewis music, all of that.
Just the way all of that is put together is really masterful filmmaking, I think.
In a really unshowy way, he has such an incredible command of the music of cinema.
In the sense of the magic you can get when you just have every element of this art form
working in tandem.
And you're not doing anything really gimmickier flashy, but it is just the camera and the
editing and the performances and the language and the literal music, the blocking, the framing,
the art direction, everything.
It's like subtle magic trick shit.
You know, it just feels like he's always doing close up magic that is very skillful and
making these things just flow so organically and be so.
His movies are weirdly seductive even when they are not sexually charged.
But he never made a sexually charged movie up until now.
This is his horniest movie.
Yeah, I would argue picnic at hanging rock is very sexually charged.
But it's just a dreamy, sexual violent movie.
Exactly.
And it's mysterious.
I mean, it's just at the time, especially imagine if you had seen other weird movies when
this came out probably not, right?
Like imagine being like, okay, what if the guy who made picnic and hanging rock in the
last wave and golippily make next?
Yeah.
I guess this has a little bit of a handshake with golippily.
Yeah.
And the mel, especially, the idea of now we're going to start digging in.
Even like let's tell us, like golippily and this both tell like human stories of like
intimate relationships in a grand setting, like you know, where there's a big thing playing
out in the background.
And I just find it ultimately just really transporting.
When the movie starts, I'm in a different era.
There's even something about the way the credits look the way the way the credits sequins
shot the shadow puppet.
Yes, it feels, it feels of another time.
Yeah.
Very effectively transporting me to a different time and place.
And I love that.
Our friend Bobby Finger passed on future guests.
I was looking at all the letter box logs for this movie.
He used the term meandering as a positive, which I'm like, that is a good way of putting.
I also, the weird movies, the movie should have, they're working at their own pace and
they low you into what they're doing.
But it's the mood it should have because it's like that until it's not.
And then when everything's going down, it makes the like the shock of that so much stronger.
And then the death of Billy so much more like, you know, unbearable.
It is also the thing I'm almost most allergic to in historical films or films about important
political issues is characters who are so aware of the importance of what they are doing
in every line, in every gesture and filmmaking that is just focused on communicating that
to you.
The stakes of the importance in a way that is not representative of what it feels to live,
to be a person.
Even when you were in the most extreme circumstances imaginable, you are not burdened with the weight
of importance of what you're doing and how it's going to be studied.
I think that's right.
Yeah.
I think that's, I think you're right about that.
I think, you know, if, if, what we're doing Bernstein, we're sitting around in all the
presidents, men saying, you know, this is the future of, you know, fucking, fake democracy
rest on our shoulders.
You know, but instead they're saying, I got to go and talk to that lady and see if I
can get her on the right.
You know, it's what's most well judged about that movie is the amount of time that's
them just being like, huh, she didn't pick up, you know, right, that you're not just seeing
the important things and that they don't immediately have the full picture.
The first time I saw that movie when I was a teenager or whatever and it ends with them
publishing, yeah, I was like, wait a second, this isn't the watergate movie about like
where they get fucking Nixon and like the last half of it is like Congress and, you know,
testimonies and like, oh, they erased the tapes and I think it's like, none of that's
in the movie.
Like literally just a movie about getting that story.
Such a good movie.
Rolls.
Yeah, it's pretty cool.
Good for you.
You got that for you, too.
Oh, hell yeah.
It's, that's, I'm talking about a good image.
Is Pacula up or down?
He like, what do you mean back in?
Because like I feel like for a while, he was in the middle of a March madness.
He was in the potential bucket for the losers bracket this year.
He's a great.
I don't know.
I don't know what you reference this.
I don't know what this is.
Every March, both do 32 directors, a daily vote, a bracket like a, you know, who's voting?
Are listeners or am we?
We'll let them dictate one piece of programming a year.
But where do they go to vote?
Well, it's on our Twitter, which I don't know if you've heard is doing really well right
now.
It's a normal place to have civil discussions and now we do it on our own website.
Oh, it's good on our website.
You can go vote.
You would, I'll vote for you right now.
Wes Anderson or Preston Sturgis.
Preston Sturgis.
My man.
Correct answer.
No offense.
No offense.
No offense.
I'm Westwood vote for Preston Sturgis.
Westwood vote for him.
He would vote in a second.
Yes.
But you, you had said you were like as Pacula too many films as he a little down.
No, it's a very great, interesting filmography.
I mean, the latter half of his career is a little less sexy, but it's what's interesting
to us when we try to cultivate and curate who's going to be on the bracket each year is
do you, but you guys already know you've got this thing planned out for the next five
year.
Oh, okay.
Somehow about a year and a half.
But we need one director gets one by the fans.
One director wins this March Madness thing.
We'll just go on the whole series.
The fans pick a whole series.
Correct.
Who's the last director they picked?
The last director.
The other's the con brothers.
The con brothers.
Poor us.
Right.
So it was like they usually picked someone five months, but it was a good fucking five
month.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And right now, yeah, it's, it's Scorsese.
Scorsese Miloge, Foreman, you haven't done Scorsese.
No.
No, because it's a very hefty ask.
All right.
So that's a little bit of us being like to the fans like, are you cool with essentially
a sort of a half a year on this guy?
All right.
Which is like, it's fine.
I mean, it's Martin Scorsese.
We're like the size that is perfect for us.
If you got like, how about Charles Lodgan?
I mean, well, you know, he's pretty easy.
That's not going to happen now.
Sometimes if there's like a guest being floated who might be tough in terms of scheduling,
we'll throw out, is there a one film filmography you want to cover?
Because we know we could just slot that in anywhere.
And so long, we've always kind of kept on the table as like, is anyone ever going to
try to claim that?
Pretty good movie.
Pretty fucking excellent movie.
But no, but yeah, you work with one of, well, you've worked with multiple blank check.
You've worked with Catherine Bigelow.
I have.
Who we've covered.
I mean, I'm trying to think of like, well, you guys should all over, uh, should all
over my movie.
What is that?
Hey, you were a little more positive than the other people.
Yes.
I made a joke about you being terrified that you had a physical meeting.
I like that you shouted out, Lindor.
Uh, that was going to get bombed.
Yeah.
Who's the other Marie?
Is that Marie?
Are she on my shit?
Are you going to be thrilled to hear this?
No, we covered the post way back when.
Yes.
Hold on.
I'm not done talking about it.
Let's get into it.
Yeah.
So Marie, she says at one point, she said, well, I missed this vital part of the movie because
I had just happened to look away from the screen for a minute.
It's like, happened to look who happens to look, you don't know how to watch a movie.
Cause I know what that means.
It means she's looking at her fucking phone, which means she doesn't know how to watch
a movie.
And she's totally on my shit.
Yeah.
She's on my brain.
Traceys.
Yeah.
Traceys respect back.
Trace Truss.
I'm looking here like Adam McKay.
I've worked there.
I'm like, these are people where there are like major directors that we haven't done them.
And I don't know if we would.
All right.
But we did we covered the post.
Yeah.
We kind of post.
I haven't seen it.
I love that film.
We were very, we were very, very high on it in the moment because it was a new release.
So we were very excited by it.
I have not revisited that film, but I like that film.
Uh, we really don't have to do my filmography.
No, I'm just trying to see if there are either directors that we've covered, but those
are the two.
Catherine and Stephen.
Yes.
And then we covered Ghostbusters Afterlife.
Of course, you're the main character in that.
Uh, uh, that was a favorite.
I don't mind saying that.
I mean, I would say that Jason, we're here.
You were right.
The truth is that Mike Judge was supposed to play that part.
Oh, really?
Funny.
He was supposed to play the part and for some reason, the last minute, the one.
The scheduling problem.
And Jason, we're in Calgary.
Yeah.
We're carrying shooting the movie.
We were already there.
with my life in kids while she was working on the movie.
And Jason's like, wow, if only we could think of somebody
from Oklahoma, who could do a scene and have, sorry.
Yeah.
So that's how I wound up in that.
But you've not done Jason on the, no, we did on our page.
We watched the cast.
So you got to work with Muncher.
Muncher's like ghost and ghost.
Okay.
A blue guy.
Again, just being mindful of time.
Yeah, we should wrap up like try and maybe just hit a couple more
major points in the plot.
Griffin, you were referencing like Mel's character being aware of living
through a major event.
No, not being burdened with that self-importance that he is kind of not
solipsistically, but he is primarily just going, okay, let me figure out the
lay of the land.
What is like, who are the pieces on the board and how do I take the right side?
But he's not thinking about the impact he has.
He's just trying to build a good career starting from that point.
What I'm trying to steer us is that Jill passes him info and that the Chinese
communists are about to arm the PKI, which is the local communist party.
Right.
And he makes the decision that we've been saying throughout, you know, the ethical
decision that's really not the right one.
Ben, we haven't heard what you think about the year of living dangerous.
I had never seen it before.
And I really, really loved it.
It really resonated with me.
I have such romanticism for this kind of life of like a journalist living abroad, living
hard, smoking sigs, drinking, hanging out at bar.
You've lived dangerously most years of your life.
I mean, I would say I have a past and I, you know, still think about those times fondly
and glad I made it out.
But yeah, this, this movie was just such a joy to watch.
Great.
I'm glad to hear that because I feel a lot, you know, obviously this is my presence here
on your show is endorsement of the year of living day.
I mean, you could always come on to discuss the film.
You don't think works like it's fun to talk about movies that don't work or better,
outright failures like that.
That can be kind of fun too.
Can I share it also?
It made me feel like I was able to live in a Tom Waits song.
That is well put.
This is just like that's the thing with a Tom Waits song.
Like this is just not my climate.
I just, you know, it's just a song is not your climate or well, because Tom Waits is,
you know, the sort of the Bayou and this is kind of like the, you know, the same thing.
It's too, the air is just too wet for me.
Like I would just be struggling.
Yeah.
I can't be in in this sort of jungle week.
This is a damp movie.
Yes.
I love the beach.
I love the water.
Yeah.
Like that, that sort of, but I know I would just, I would suffer very hard.
I let the actors sweat, right?
They do.
It's part of the sexiness.
It's part of the, like, and like, yeah, the decision of red, it's basically, Jill's
like, hey, this shit's about to go down.
You got to get out.
And he's like, aren't I fucking journalist?
Like, right?
He does the one kind of journalistic thing.
He's like, I'm going to, you know, publish this news.
But it's selfish because he's like, this is my big story, right?
It's part of his motive.
Yeah.
If you write that it's a little bit of him being a hot doggy, right?
Kind of guy.
Yeah.
You're right.
You're right.
But everyone else is like manipulating him towards positive ends.
You know, they are, they are sort of driving him as a vehicle in the right direction because
I think they all identify.
I was, I was thinking a little bit of this movie in relation to broadcast news, which
is obviously so much about completely, uh, excoriating the, the William Hurt character.
But there's, there's certain commonalities between these two of just like, oh my God.
Here's just a guy with the right shoulders and the right eyes and the right voice and
the steady hand.
He is so dangerous.
If he does not have a moral compass installed in him or the wrong people get a hold of him
because immediately is this understanding of whatever this guy communicates to the public
is going to be heard.
You know, he is like a human.
And printing does have the legend, right?
Yes.
I just love to.
He's a radio trance.
Like I love hearing him deliver the news.
Yes.
And it's not just that he's writing the pieces.
That's seen so good too when he's doing the broadcast and he can't stop sweating.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
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The character Kumar we haven't really talked about, but sort of a vital character in the
last act of the film.
He is driver.
His, the fact that he is a PKI, which is revealed later in the film, right?
Is so obvious when you watch the movie, uh, the second it was like, oh, shit.
How many times does Peter we're show him sort of looking, giving side eye to, uh, to
the other woman who works in the office or I mean, clearly he's, it's like everybody knows
it, but Mel Gibson.
But that's what I love about this is like you kind of buy the Gibson is just, he's not
dumb, but he's just too innocent to really understand like the dies sort of been cast.
Well, that's also like I've arrived in a situation that is already wrapping up and I,
I'm just like here to have fun and learn things.
It's the other thing that reminded me of broadcast news where you're just sort of like
there is this cultural reckoning with has the media become something that is now out of
our control.
You know, it has gained too much power.
We have given it to a medium.
We don't quite understand where the values can be completely thrown out of whack based on
things like watchability, you know, and the right answer to that is yes.
Yes.
And that, you know, there's this attitude of William Hertz more aware that he's part
of the problem, but he's sort of like, if not me than who someone else is going to do
it, right?
And he's right.
I'm not the one who created this situation.
You know, with, with some years, you can look at it and go, oh, actually, if it's not
William Hertz, it's going to be another William Hertz.
Totally.
And the other part of it is for better or worse, this guy projects intelligence, whether
or not he has intelligence is irrelevant, whether or not he understands the situation is
irrelevant.
It is that no one will listen to Billy Quon and people will listen to Sigourney Weaver
even less despite being a mega big movie star because she is a female diplomat.
That's right.
Right.
And this guy is going to be able to, yeah, he's a megaphone.
He's going to be hurt.
He's the best kind of character.
Smart enough to know that what he wants isn't going to happen, but still like a little
bit of a, like, can't dodge the true believer thing.
I like, but what if you fed your people or what if you helped, you know, in the way I know
you want to or you could or what, you know, and it's such a great, you know, again, the
third man.
Holly Martin, right?
He's, Holly Martin goes to the, the same, the same crisis over the course of the film,
not understanding the situation he's in.
Knowing the situation explained to him still doesn't get it has to see the situation played
out in front of him.
Yes.
Just sort of start to grasp just, just what the stakes are.
It is what I also find fascinating about like the possible queer reading of this movie
and the Billy Quon character is there is a notion of is Billy Quon, someone who was born
biologically female, who has adapted the persona of a male, whether through like a genuine
expression of gender identity or strategic means to an end to be taken seriously and
to be able to power these things.
I think there is like a queerness that Linda Hunt plays.
And in this interview I read where she made the super persona comment.
She said that was a deliberate, thoughtful thing in her mind that she was not like clearly
I am playing this role like a cross dresser, but I think it's part of what's fascinating
about this performance is it doesn't just feel like, well, this is the story.
It's like a stylistic kind of flourish that you just suspension of disbelief by this
performance.
There is a, even I think in how every scene is played, the other characters kind of eyeballing
Billy and going, what's going on here?
What's the, yeah, what is the deal?
And part of that is that Billy holds his cards close to his chest, but part of that also
is like, so what, so is that's the haircut?
What's, you know, like everything's a little, no one has really looked or sounded like this.
Death of Billy very sad.
And just like, that's really of course like, I mean, do you buy that, I don't really think
that guy is in danger as much as guy is in real danger after that and gets through the
blockades and gets the airport, but you are like, right, but the, you know, the loss already
happen.
I mean, guess, I guess guys, I get fucked up.
Well, and he has to navigate it without any help from Billy, right?
It's not just Billy's death, but that he doesn't have a guy.
Right.
And what he has to navigate is how, like it's the fucking a dog.
Right.
And then it is, right.
There is like, it's not like, I'm going to expose this.
I'm going to, right.
Oh, I just watched the government murder a journalist like it says like, where's the fucking
airport?
It's so, it's so silly that he goes to the palace and the way he conducts himself.
Right.
It's like clearly he's, he's not thinking he just right mind because he's upset, but
also he doesn't have Billy to guide him anymore.
Right.
Right.
That's not going to work.
Well, he's also got the presumption of a white guy.
It's like, like they, they wouldn't dare kill me.
Right.
Right.
And there's something so kind of like undignified about Billy's death, right?
And even the way it is shown on screen that we get the moment of the breaking through
the door and Billy's reaction.
And then we're mostly seeing just the body lying on the ground afterwards once guy comes
to the scene.
A guy later says when they're cleaning up Billy's stuff that Sikarno didn't even see the
banner.
Right.
Yeah.
Right.
Tragic.
But it's, it's not some epic sacrifice moment.
Sure.
You know, yeah.
It's very, it's not effective.
Yeah.
It's a dumb pointless, but you understand that, you know, the motivation, this sort of like,
yeah, the desire to just do something.
And Billy's so distraught because he's been giving money to that family and that young
boy gets sick and passes away.
And I think that just like really pushes them over the edge.
Yes.
Yes.
It's like it's the, it's the dehumanization.
Yeah.
It is the, these are not chess pieces.
These are human beings.
Wish for you, Fox.
I was going straight from I think so.
I mean, is there anything else we want to say about the film?
I'm just, I'm trying to bring the plane in here.
I don't want to.
I think we haven't paid enough attention to Maurice Jarray and yeah, I will work.
Yeah.
Vangelese who the song is credited in the closing credits, but Vangelese himself is
not name checked.
So you would almost think that song is written by Maurice.
Maurice.
And it's not.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's the classic like Peter Weir would just have like a collection of tapes.
He would play music all the time while they're writing rock and roll pop music.
Right.
Like it's just fun to have to do for.
And he just liked that little, you know, that little song he uses.
And uses it twice, obviously, apart from that, it's Maurice.
Use it uses it twice very close together, by the way.
It's sort of unorthodox the way he uses it.
Also Russell Boyd, his guy, I mean, and to be clear about Jarray, Jarray then goes to
Hollywood, does witness does mosquito coast does depot.
It's like becomes really the fear that he team that he carries over.
Right.
Yeah.
Russell Boyd, the legend, like who is, you know, at picking and hanging rock, like when
they have no money figuring out all these innovative ways to like make the air feel magical
essentially.
He's such an incredible DP.
He's still alive.
All the more still working, I think.
He hasn't really worked much since we're retired.
Yeah.
We've asked credit is the way back.
Yeah.
And before that, of course, Ghost Rider, he did shoot Nicholas K.
Just Ghost Rider.
Why is this movie not on 4k?
Well, we already talked about this.
It's almost certainly a right thing.
But it is odd that no one's left to figure it out.
Given what it's worth even Oscar.
It's worthy of restoration.
Yeah, I agree.
And it's worthy of conversation, right?
If it doesn't, it provide an opportunity to revisit this question of casting.
Sure.
The question of politics and it would seem to me that a new release would provide the
opportunity to further that discussion.
To go hard, I think that's why also MGM or to whoever has fucking access to MGM home
video now through Amazon, maybe Sony isn't going to just be like, yeah, just like put
that one out with the theatrical trailer.
I think there's a worry about just giving it the kind of release that Gallipoli got from
Paramount, which is just like, we put it on a disc.
Are you happy?
Versus this is a movie that needs to be like have a thoughtfully curated extra package
of dialogue around it.
And context provided.
So I don't want to one of the specialty labels needs to step up.
Yeah.
So this film came out.
Do you know about the box office game?
I've heard you guys play the box office game.
I intentionally did not do any investigation because I want to play legit and on his player.
So this film came out limited release January 21st, 1983.
Wow.
So you're a graduated high school.
Congratulations.
Thank you.
So that's as far as my education went, but nevertheless, where'd you go to high school?
Do rant high school and do rant Oklahoma?
Hell yeah.
So it is obviously the film and it really starts on the top five.
Number one, it's a lot of holdovers.
I would say from, you know, the 82 season.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Number one is a big Oscar winning movie of 1982.
A comedy classic, but it wasn't the big.
What's Tutsi?
It's Tutsi.
Tutsi was a December release.
Tutsi came out in December.
Yeah.
December 82.
It's a massive box office.
It is.
Unbelievable box office.
And in my past of trying to memorize box office charts and such, it does just feel like
the first four to six months of 1983 are ruled by Tutsi until ET.
I assume you sought Tutsi at the time.
I did.
I know.
In a packed movie theater.
Yeah.
Did you enjoy Tutsi?
I loved it.
Do you have you thought about Tutsi lately?
I now I feel like I'm like a psychiatrist.
And does Tutsi in the room with us?
We did a 1982 movie draft on the big picture and I selected Tutsi.
I listened to it.
Yes.
A film I've only seen once.
Really?
Maybe twice.
Yeah.
But I enjoyed it, but I have not seen in years.
Which what?
Tutsi?
Tutsi.
Oh.
Worthy of revisiting.
I'll read this.
I'll read this.
I'll read this.
I'll read this.
I'll read this.
I'll read this.
I'll read this.
I'll read this.
Well, it's only been out for a few weeks, but it has made damn.
It's made $81 million.
I think it at the time was one of the 10 highest grossing films in American history.
All right.
Yeah.
So number two is an action film that had come out earlier in December.
OK.
Gigantic breakout hit for one of its stars.
For one of its stars.
I mean, the other guy is...
It's a two-hander.
It's a two-hander.
Yeah.
I mean, the other guy's a little bit more of a name.
I guess it's sort of a breakout for both of them.
But especially for the supporting.
For the sort of...
For the real one.
So one guy was already more established, but the less established guy really kind of popped
on this.
It becomes the most famous factor of the eighties.
Action comedy?
Yes.
Very much.
It's a 48 hour.
Oh, yes.
Well, it's 48 hours.
Yes.
Like, it's not that point.
Yeah.
He's not nobody.
No, not at all.
But, you know, he's a still becoming star.
He's a still becoming star.
Yeah.
And Eddie Murphy is 21 years old.
He's a but a child, essentially.
He's so fucking...
So those are...
I mean, like, obviously, those are like sort of...
Yeah.
It's like, basically, you want to go see, you know, this kind of comedy or that kind of
comedy.
Right there.
They're just kings of the box office.
Number three is...
I mean, and now I'm thinking about the 1980s food draft that you did.
Certainly, one of my favorites of 82, probably not my number one favorite, but one of your
favorite directors.
You know, sort of...
It was nominated for many Oscars.
Big drama.
It's a big gondi, not gondi, but I can tell you that gondi is number four.
Is it a lumec?
It is a Cindy Lumec.
Is it Cindy Lumec?
Uh, the verdict.
It's the verdict.
Hell yes.
So, I think I got that in the legal draft on big picture.
If we're just all reminding people of our past draft.
I got the verdict.
You got the verdict.
Absolutely.
That was my like, the number one.
Fuck.
I think so.
I can try to look it up.
Uh, but, uh, the verdict is the best.
I got the verdict in the 82 draft.
Why do I feel like I'm going to look it up?
Oh, because I took 12 angry men.
I don't know.
I feel like I had the first, you got the legal draft on the lawyer movie draft.
I got, this is lawyer movie.
So is from a comedy thriller Oscar winner movie lawyer that you would want to represent
you.
Oh, nice.
And then John Grisham was the tone category.
And I got the verdict.
The intolerable cruelty, the devil's advocate Chicago, the firm and Atticus Finch.
Not bad.
You got Bridge of Spies legally blonde Michael Clayton, Philadelphia, the rainmaker in
Grisham.
And then you picked a Stanley Tucci in spotlight as your lawyer.
Oh, that's what I knew that I had first round pick.
And I was like, what would I have gone for over the verdict?
And the answer was I knew it was going to be a feeding frenzy for Michael Clayton.
You got Michael.
I had to get Michael Clayton.
Yes.
Yeah.
Um, so okay.
Yeah, the verdict is so number four is, um, Gandhi.
What's your take on, of course, the best picture winner?
It will, it's about to be the best picture winner.
Gandhi.
What about it?
You're a big fan?
No, it's kind of like you guys all kind of shed on Gandhi.
We did the 80s of that.
No, maybe they shed on it more than I did.
It was important in the moment and Kingsley was undeniable.
Kingsley's unbelievable.
And I think Gandhi is, you know, it's not one of the great movies of the 82, but it gets
a slightly bad rap.
It's like, it's very watchable.
I still have good.
Never seen it.
Yeah.
I have it in that big Columbia classics box set.
And I'm just like, when am I in the mood to just throw on three hours of Gandhi?
Let me tell you, well, Kingsley really elevates.
I mean, they're really is a way on board with that movie.
But also to see 100,000 extra.
That's why it's just on its unimaginable.
You'll never see it again.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's, it's all right.
I mean, you know, it's not not incredible.
It's got all the flaws you'd think it has.
Number five is a real Griffin movie.
It's a real Griffin movie.
Is it an 82 holder or an 83?
It's an 82 holder.
A fantasy film.
It's a fantasy film.
It's like one of my favorites or is it just my type of thing?
I'm sure you love it.
Is it the Dark Crystal?
Yeah.
I like it.
Oh, my son's favorite movie.
Wow, there you go.
Most watched movie in our house.
Scary.
He loves it.
He loves it.
I tell you the movie I almost bought as one of the three.
And I actually just could not physically locate a copy in time.
But if you have not watched it with your son yet, I highly recommend.
Have you guys done Paranormon?
He got scared by, is it called Coraline?
Yes.
He got scared by Coraline.
Interesting.
Yeah, Coraline's scary.
And so we haven't gone back into, he likes box trolls.
And I noticed you had done chasing the guy in peach as well.
Yeah.
And then he tells us the guy reads the cheese and his face.
It's been Kingsley.
Yeah, he's good, but it's very freaky.
Yes.
Paranormon is about fear.
Yeah, yeah.
It is like reckoning with fear.
And I think it is one of the better dramatizations of fear mongering I have ever seen.
We have it on the shelf.
I think it is still boxed.
Okay.
So if I had gotten it for you, I would have fucking struck out on that one.
Okay.
I chose right.
I'll tell you the rest of the top 10.
Is the toy, the Richard Donner film with prior and Gleason.
Oh, it is remake of a French.
Yeah.
That's right.
The jewelry.
Oh, does that have perfect politics?
I haven't seen it.
Jackie Gleason buys a black man and hands him to his son and says, have fun.
Another Oscar.
So that's a December 82 release that didn't really translate.
Another Oscar for us.
It was a pretty big hit though.
Not at the same scale.
A Tootsie in 49.
Yeah, maybe.
I mean, 47.
I know it's pretty good.
Sophie's choice.
Sure.
Which is, you know, is okay.
I don't know.
I don't know what you feel about Sophie's choice.
Haven't seen it since.
Right.
Since 1982.
Well, I've seen it since then.
It was on cable a lot.
Right.
I recall it being pretty good.
Yeah.
Peter Ming Nichols.
Fantastic.
He's.
He's.
He's career is fascinating when you zoom out.
Right.
How much time you discover him later in life.
Right.
You're like, okay.
So who's this?
How did this guy get started?
His choice is not what you would expect.
Number.
Sorry.
Number eight is best friends.
The Bertrand Riddles Goldy-Hon.
Goldy-Hon.
Valerie Kertn.
Screenplay.
Okay.
Okay.
Valerie Kertn wrote it with Very Levinson.
Yeah.
And it's based on their friendship.
Right.
Right.
So is it a sort of like there like, it's a bit of a trying there?
It's a.
Very metallic.
Right.
Very, very, very.
Directed by Norman Jewish.
I've never seen.
No, I mean, yeah.
That's not great.
Great, it's fair enough.
Number nine is ET, big one, big movie.
And then number 10 is the man from Snowy River.
What is the Australian film?
Directed by George Miller, not that George T.
Miller. Yeah.
Wow.
Who also directed the never ending story too.
Yes.
Australian Western.
Griffin was offered crocodile dundee
and had to turn it down.
I can't believe it cracked the top top top top top top.
Well, it's opening at number 10.
So not amazing.
But yeah, but yeah, it's Douglass.
It's what we were saying.
The Australian kind of like Australian fever is crackling.
Kirk Douglas in dual roles as brothers Harrison and Spur.
Man from Snowy River is good.
I give that a thumbs up.
Right.
And it got a, it even got a sequel.
Man from Snowy River too.
What's the, what's the physical media report?
A man from Snowy River.
What are we looking at?
I don't think I own it.
Okay.
I don't know.
Let's see.
I've just sort of dutifully like locked like because the,
the, the database thing, what's a CLZ or whatever it's called.
It's like, my problem is I'm always like, can I put this in?
You know, like, we do this little barcode scanning.
Yeah.
But every day I assume another palette arrives.
You're opening them up.
It's my, it's my full time job.
It's my job.
It's my job.
Like, does it, is an Amazon driver or anyone like that ever said to you?
Like, he'll hear fucking DVDs, buddy.
I guess.
I live in the lower man building or has never said that to you.
My wife doesn't do it.
No, sure.
I live in a dorm.
I live in Humbleberg and it does feel like every time I pick up a package, they're like,
got a lot of stuff shipped to you.
How many, how many discs?
How many discs?
I think I'm probably around a thousand.
But I'm not dutifully logging.
I should.
How do you store them?
Like, do you have shelves?
I mean, I, you know, I don't, I don't really.
I have shelves that I have outgrown.
There are now pillars of vertically stacked discs like the books and ghostbusters.
This is my problem.
I have too many discs and stories.
A very well arranged like shelving situation, but it's full.
And so now the new stuff arrives and I'm like, well, that is exactly what I wear.
I'm at.
I now just have like a shelving unit that is full and then a corner where discs live.
And I'm in between.
I'm waiting on the new shelf.
I'm watching this Bud Butterker Westerns right now about criterion.
Is that what it has?
We did the TNT and all the right now in Westerns.
We're now Westerns, right?
Yeah.
I did every one of them.
We did like one a week for five weeks.
How are they?
They're fantastic.
Every one of them.
I'm right.
I'm really liking this sort of like I just have to watch my discs because then it's sort
of like the choices out of my hands.
Like I'm not going to agonize over.
This is why Carrie wants me.
It was why I picked the movie every night.
Right.
Right.
Like I don't want to choose.
I don't want to choose.
I don't want to choose.
I don't want to choose.
She's like I, you the shelves intimidate me.
The streaming tiles.
I can't make heads or tails of it.
You pick, you put it on, no bitching.
Obviously she's got veto power.
I think that it's a rare video.
I'm trying to bring it together.
She's vetoed two movies.
I'd love to know.
What are the two vetoes?
One of them was a movie with Kate Blanchett and Judy notes on a scandal.
Notes on a scandal.
Good movie.
I hadn't seen it.
I put it on and Carrie said, I've seen this and I remember it.
Okay.
So was it?
It was just a bit more than that.
I've done that.
That was one veto.
Yeah.
The scandal is a parliament hill classic.
A parliament hill classic.
There's a lot of scenes set up.
The neighborhood is a park.
They're saying, okay.
But no, she doesn't veto.
She, she, and she doesn't blame me when the movie is bad.
Right.
Does she ever tap out?
She never taps out.
She never taps out.
Sometimes it's hard to keep her awake because she gets up early.
But that's a napping out.
There's a lot of like, they're making her sit up and I scratch her back while we,
while we finish.
But your kids do a good bedtime.
This is, this is the biggest thing in my life because it's pretty good but the bed.
All right.
Good for them.
And now occasionally I'll put on a movie that I've seen that I like and she watches it
and she's like, what the fuck?
Sure.
The brood.
There's still, this is a conversation in our house still.
She's like, that movie rock.
She, but I mean, it is certainly, you got to be in the right mood for it.
And it's, it's such a poisonously angry movie.
Yes.
Which I love.
Yes.
And I know it's his like divorce movie and it's an ask that movie rock.
But yeah, I want to make sure I said everything I have to say.
I wanted to bitch about Marie.
Noted.
So wear it as a badge of honor.
I wanted to say the big picture, right?
The big, you know, there's questionable whether or not I'm a big picture or blank check.
Well, can we get ahead?
Can we get a cartoon likeness of you to wear on that desk and tell people they're sitting
at Tracy's desk?
We're allowing you to sit at Tracy's desk today.
Right.
We're not possessive like Sean.
I see.
I'm free in open environment.
Sean's a little bit more with the chairs and the, the committees and then you know, Lucy
Goosey.
But also I do.
I have a spreadsheet.
I dropped a contract over to you if you want to look it over.
There's potentially a five year first look deal on the table.
Not exclusive, but first look.
I was surprised that you guys had guests come back.
I didn't realize that till I listened to somebody recently and you're like, oh, they
came back.
So I want to, I want to look at your, I want to look at your list.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
We will, well, dictated by March Madness.
It's Tracy.
We'd love to have you on any time.
I don't know if you know this, but you're, you're quite an estimable person.
So we don't want to just like bug you all the time, but we'd love to have you back.
I, I don't feel like that, but that's, that's all well and good.
Right.
The last thing you want to say is that you're living dangerously.
So I showed it to Carrie years ago.
Again, oh, I didn't know the other things we wanted to talk.
Did we want to cover Star Wars or did we want to cover, cover Godfather?
Did we say in the Star Wars?
Okay.
Two minutes on Star Wars.
Two.
So Carrie doesn't remember the movies.
I showed her year of living dangerously a few years ago.
She had no recollection of it.
The nanny and I were watching in a couple of nights ago in Prang live for this.
Former Sag.
Yes.
Yes.
And Carrie walked in halfway through the moon.
She'd been working in town and she walked in and halfway through the movie and she's
like, I remember none of this.
I have no recollection of any of this, but she watched Mel Gibson for a few minutes and she
said, my God, he's so in his body to watch the way he moves on.
Like cameras, just like it really is what he could do.
There's a scene where he's going out to the airport at the very end of the movie and
he does a jog about to his sort of high stepping jog.
He does on the way out to the airport and it is a marvel to see.
It's too bad what happened to that guy.
He was one of our great, great movie stories.
And I think even before he went publicly insane, he lost some thread of like the kinds of
movies he's reading.
So he got to into the sort of Hollywood gigantic paycheck.
But then also his revenge thrillers started getting a weirder and darker in a way that
he's incredibly magnetic screen presence, especially in the 80s.
That is a very good quote from her.
And I often almost always the infrequent times that I now work as an actor.
I think I used to do a lot more.
Now I'm a professional podcast who sometimes acts.
I think about a quote.
I read.
That's why I define myself.
I'll tell you the first time you did big picture after hitmaker had set it up.
Right.
And we were watching all that happen.
We have a text thread called news and deals that Alex Ross Perry is in as well as the
great filmmaker David Lowry were all sharing Blu-ray announcements and deals.
And we saw it happening, right?
Hitmaker saying, you should maybe have Tracy.
Do you know Tracy?
Yes, I can connect it this and that.
And we go Sean.
You've recorded Tracy to how was it?
And he said, if that guy ever decided to start a movie podcast, we'd all be cool.
I'm straight down the chart.
We're done.
That's very sweet.
It is our saving grace that he is showing demand in this area.
He is so esteemed in so many other fields that he never will commit to a permanent desk,
which is why he can be third-chair, fourth-dass, whatever.
But I remember some interview that Kerry gave where she talked about being a full-body actor.
Now she feels like she can always rely on her theatrical training to in on camera work,
which is often so bizarre and nonsensical and can leave you in a position where things
are changing so fast.
And you have so little bearing of where you're in the story that you can look kind of
nonspecific in a scene that she relies on her instincts in using her full-body and everything.
And anytime I'm acting professionally again, I go like, am I doing full-body after shit?
Am I just thinking about my fucking head?
Very nice.
Very nice.
Well, she's also a former athlete.
She's also a former athlete.
And I mail clearly has some athletics in his back part as well.
It's a big part of it.
Yeah.
And I think you're talking about the shame of how fully this man unraveled, but it is
an interesting thing where great actors are often people who have a really great dialogue
ongoing with their own psychology and their own body and ability to take control of these
things and own them and use them in a very deliberate way.
But very often great movie stars are people who have some weird kind of unresolved thing
within them.
There is some inherent tension that makes them more unwatchable, but makes them more watchable,
even if it makes them less functional as a human being.
And sometimes it is in a destructive way, sometimes in a self-destructive way.
Sometimes it's just oddness.
You meet certain movie stars and you're like, how do you tie your shoes?
But on screen, I will buy anything you are selling.
It is a fascinating thing.
And we were talking with Marie now officially on the shit list recently who was saying that
she had just rewashed Apollo 13 and she was like, how the fuck did Braveheart beat Apollo
13 for best picture?
And we were like, you cannot overstate how powerful Mel Gibson was at that moment in
time.
It's really true.
And she was.
Star Wars.
Yes.
So you thought one of the worst movie takes I've ever heard of all time?
I remember my author.
You don't like the trench run, right?
That you've forgotten about this.
We all agree that the ending of Star Wars sucks.
Give me your peel.
That's what I said.
What I said was that the ending of Star Wars is the most boring climax to a great movie.
That's what I said.
Yeah.
But you said it like we're all on the same page.
Yeah.
And you're saying it to boys there.
I mean, a boy and girl.
And you know, like where I'm like, I watched the trench run.
I would watch the trench run over.
I would rewind my VHS.
The DVHS degraded.
The way it went away.
The trench run tattooed on his body.
Like he's the fucking prison break character.
And the thing about the trench run to me is like, I love the climaxes of the other Star Wars
movies where he had more money and he went more epic.
But it's actually kind of small in this beautiful.
Dramatically, it's like perfect.
And even like, I think these moments that are constantly ripped off from that sequence
but exploded and overstated, even down to just the return of Han Solo at the moment
you think he's got no support is I just think so gracefully and sort of succinctly done
without making too much of a meal out.
All right.
Let me tell you, Millennial boys are thinking to it.
We're young ass, we're a person.
I'm going to owe Millennial.
You know, you know, you millennials are so monolithic in their movie opinions.
Let me tell you, first of all, we never called it the fucking trench run.
I don't know who ever came up with the trench run.
Oh, I called it the end of Star Wars.
Okay.
And by the way, the movie was called Star Wars.
I always call it Star Wars.
That I am with you.
In the house, they will not buy a new whole doesn't fucking exist.
Definitely sounds like he had five minutes where he was.
They were like, by the way, are you going to put like a title on the other one?
He's like, yeah, it's so so.
It's so funny.
It's so funny for him to land on that title after he's promised he would make prequel
someday, but hadn't figured out what the prequels were.
And he was like, the one safe bet is this is probably a reset point because call it a new
hope because Star Wars isn't a good title.
The fucking title of the war is isn't working.
It's so crazy how good a title Star Wars.
So a new hope, which is like, it sounds like a faith little album.
Yeah.
He's crazy that Star Trek was a title before Star Wars.
Yeah.
Star Trek sounds more esoteric.
Why did you pick that?
No one had done Star Wars.
The actual trench run itself.
Right.
First of all, you know, it's stolen from a movie called The Damn Buster.
Yes.
He would cut in footage of it, right?
Yeah.
The damn Buster's damn good movie.
Yeah, very good movie.
D.K.
But we've not why is Luke Piloting one of these goddamn because he used to want shoot dead
one person is T14.
Yeah.
I don't know.
I really think that he has the know how to get into this machine.
He's driving into this Kravaz.
He is really funny.
He's really funny.
That you imagine like this is a rag tag rebel group and they're like, we've scraped
together like 10 of these ships.
Yeah.
And he shows up and they're like, yeah, you're like six foot two.
Yeah, you want to get in this thing?
They also, well, first of all, he's like five foot 10.
Yeah.
Secondly, they got like like 20 like life for pilots and all of them fucking flame out
and Luke is the last.
But he's the Jedi.
I knew chosen one.
Yeah, of course.
Of course.
But why are we supposed to care about Victor Blono who suddenly shows up, laden the movie
in the ship is just like, where did he come from?
Who's he?
And I'm one of the guys, one of the big picture guys tells me that character has a name.
Porkins?
We're talking about porkins.
The actor is actually William Hinton.
He does have a really rude of you.
Victor Blono.
I saw William Hinton's play.
I've told Griffin this.
I'm sure.
Maybe.
There's a play called Hitchcock blonde and he played Hitchcock on the west.
End stage.
He was with Rosemond Pazman Pike.
Yeah.
And David Hague and Cameron Brough.
He's not still with us, right?
Who can pass?
He must be pretty old.
He also, he's in Raer's Lost Ark.
He's the guy who assumes that porkins that there was a scene between porkins and the
mechanic who put porkins in the thing and the mechanics name was beans.
Do you suppose there was a scene between porkins and beans?
Yes.
They're better.
Tracy and you are getting at why Star Wars has the cold.
The whole trull strangle hold it does.
But because it opens up these questions in conversation.
But like conversation.
We start thinking about beans.
You could write 10 beans novels.
I'm a kid.
My dad introduces me to Star Wars, obviously, as a sort of a right, right?
You know, I watch it.
And then I'm obsessed with the trend front.
And yeah, I only know it's like, yeah, there's the guy who gets shot immediately, you
know, to prove that there will be deaths like where these guys are going to blow up.
Yeah.
I'm all right.
Boom.
Right.
That's put.
Start to read books about Star or like you get and you're like, the guy's name is
fucking pork.
It's like they, they couldn't spend five minutes like figuring out a better name for this
guy.
Yeah.
It's got a squid head.
What's his name?
I don't know.
He's a mom calamari.
Why is Darth Vader in a ship?
Why have we, have we, he's in a little tie fighter.
Have we been led to believe that Darth Vader is good at flying some of these ships?
So now what you're doing here is very interesting because it's sort of what we did when we started
the show, which is like if you examine Star Wars without the further context, because
like of course, when you watch the prequels, it's like, oh, he was a crack.
Everything's back filled next planet.
But like you're right that the whole thing with Darth Vader in general in Star Wars, where
it's like, there's a fascist empire.
It is mostly run by British white men who are older and are kind of like, you should
kill all of them.
Who is this sadist robot who walks around among them with a cape?
Everyone else is a fascist Nazi guy.
What's fast saying about this Peter Cushing, Darth Vader getting retro at the church.
Should we do a great villain in cinema where you're like, he was meant to be like the
weird gimmicky bond henchmen.
Yes, there's some big guy who's gotten odd energy.
Who is like, like, I just wish someone would be like, where are you on the org chart,
right?
I'm a major.
What are you?
Why is you getting paid dark?
Right.
There's an emperor.
Then there's some, you know, general general.
I understand all these things.
Who are you?
And so then it kind of makes sense to me.
He's like, I'll get in my ship.
Like there's some ships like, let's go.
Right.
Why is he getting a ship?
Because it's like, that's the guy James Bond has to punch at the end because it's not
satisfying to watch him punch.
Doctor No.
Doctor No is like an intellectual.
He is.
He's not going to punch.
No, I don't know how to get ideas out there.
He's got great ideas.
I stand by that take.
Okay.
I've rewatched Star Wars, the original trilogy with my son.
He's liked them.
We watch them two, three times.
But he's not, he is not being gripped by them.
And he may be a little young for it.
I mean, I saw them all in the movie theaters when they first came out.
I was the right age.
Right.
Yeah.
Sure.
Well, the other thing with us, I saw them.
I saw them.
I saw the re really, you know, I've seen them already, but I was there for the re releases
in 97.
Those were my first ones.
And I was 11 and that was perfect.
It was everything.
I couldn't believe how bad Phenomenus was.
I couldn't believe it.
It's quantum menace is tough.
Because, yeah.
I had always been told it was bad.
It's your son.
Because, well, it's bubbling with some interesting ideas and some bad ideas.
This podcast only exists because of our obsession with that film and how we are constantly
wrestling with it.
How we would keep attacking it being like, are we going to like it this time?
I'm not wrestling with it.
I mean, is this good or not as much as what is going on here?
And I can tend it is the best of those three.
But when it started, people were like, well, maybe who like is a little rusty.
I can't regain his foot.
I can tend it's the best of the three.
It's the best of the three now.
Wow.
I think the Padre sequence is wonderful, which again, he's ripping off Phenhar, but like,
similar to the trench rumb, where he's taking a classical visual language of an epic
cinema of past and applying it to the future.
The thing that's happened with the prequels lately, you know, the prequels come out.
They were hits, obviously, but they are derived.
Reviled.
And now that the Disney legacy sequels have come out and had their own life cycle, now
the fans are like, well, the prequels are interesting because they are interesting.
They are weird.
They are outside or art.
Right.
And like lunatic who can fund his own film.
Right.
And so it was like, I want to sort of, you know, write about the fall of the Roman Empire,
right?
Like I want to write about this sort of decline.
How do fish just stay?
But I also think there should be rain to make and fish alien because kids watch it.
You know what I mean?
And like in the original movies, you can see Lucas being tempered and that there's a
lot of interest, you know, a lot of mature people around him as well.
And the prequels he's unfettered.
So he's like, well, have jar jar banks and no one at any point is like, this fucking
sucks.
Like we cannot do this.
That's part of the problem when you become as big as George.
100% and I know we can tell you now.
I've won reviers Lucas and I revere him too because there's nothing like him and God
bless this thing.
You know, he did lots of interesting things.
But like I remember reading interviews with Mark Hamill at the time, like in the 90s,
where he's like, he's the fucking pope.
You getting lunch with him is a day long production.
You can't have a conversation with him anymore, like where it's just like a regular like,
hey, why are you like, and like that's what and so they're interesting objects in that
way because like when, how often does that happen in Hollywood?
Never.
Never.
Literally never.
So that's interesting.
But are they like a good movie?
No.
But you, you know, fascinating.
It sounds like your son watches a lot of goofy Kaiju movies, which rock, but like they're
silly too, right?
Like it's like the right balance of silliness is something that can be hard to find.
Right.
Like I said, the question is, is there a creature and especially are the creatures fighting?
I, not to not spoil you.
I did additionally get to Kaiju action figures for your children.
Oh my God.
Oh my God.
See, do you think the big picture ever did this?
There you go.
See, this is, we treat our guests, right?
Especially after we make them do a three hour plus episode.
Yeah.
That's a funky color.
Hadoora, but then this is I think a really skeleton Godzilla after he is atomized from
the end of the 54 movie at the bottom.
That's a big.
Isn't that fucking cool?
He has a bigger Hadoora, but he'll love you can't have it.
He just had a camera themed eighth birthday party.
He got so many camera.
It's honest.
It's like the other kids from second grade walking into this being like, I'm not.
He converted other people like, are his friends into Gamma?
Not at all.
Right.
They're all into like K-pop demon hunters or whatever.
Which he's never seen doesn't know anything about.
He goes over to a friend's house and they watch, he has no idea what.
But he's not coming home being like, I must now watch K-pop demon hunters.
I've been talking about it this whole time.
Right.
That's great.
I mean, I'd say, I mean, I'm right at the start of this with my kids.
Like, you know, with this sort of like the larger osmosis and you watch.
I have to say, I didn't do a lot of conditioning.
To get him Kaiju.
Right.
This isn't a thing where this isn't like when parents are like, my kids favorite band is
the clash and you're like, okay.
You know, I had the criterion box of Godzilla, which has a big sort of comic book.
I know I have it myself, of course.
Yes.
He became interested in those visuals before he could even read and page through that.
And he went through that over and over.
He memorized all the, I taught him the titles.
He memorized all the titles.
And then I said, well, if you like this so much, maybe we should watch one of the movies.
And I put on one of the movies.
That's it.
Immediately.
That's right.
But they are weird.
Yeah.
Like they're weird to watch.
They're not like movies now.
Like your daughter, you haven't shown them.
No.
My daughter is quite fearful as we, as she loves movies.
Yeah.
I mean, and she loves Bowser.
Who is something of a Kaiju?
I got her the big Godzilla toy, which she all trans between being scared.
Well, now, now the big Godzilla toy is just a favorite friend in our house.
Griffin got her a Godzilla that's like large.
But I think she was old again.
My voice.
But he got her this a couple years ago.
And initially, yes, sometimes the Godzilla had to be like put away.
Yeah.
Right.
And then it had to act like Godzilla was eating his finger.
And that was, that bit was, she made like fucking death comedy.
She needs you guys to come over again.
She's been asking.
Hey, hey, wow.
Anytime.
But, but, yeah, but she, she hasn't seen Godzilla yet.
I got, I got one.
She doesn't like when Ursula gets big in the little room.
It's like that freaks her out.
Yes.
That's also Kaiju adjacent.
So I've been like, maybe, but I also think large is your start with 54.
Start with the movies where Godzilla is the good monster and he fights the bad monsters.
Yes.
I think maybe the first movie he watched was destroy all monsters.
I would say is the best starting point.
Because then you also have the Minya in that one, right?
The, the, the witch.
And I was going to say the little little baby Godzilla.
Oh, yeah.
Vanilla.
Vanilla.
Yes.
Oh, I know that one.
That one's cute.
He's cute.
He's like deep on Godzilla.
I love Mothra.
Mothra is cool.
All right.
So I want to shout out.
We have, I looked up our Indonesian listenership.
The last 12 months got about like 1500 downloads.
Really?
So there's some folks out there.
So we just want to shout out to our listeners.
Very nice.
Hello, Jakarta.
What's up?
Would love to visit.
Sure.
It just looks like I was like looking at Google Maps.
It's quite stunning.
Yeah.
If you're one of those 1500s, let us know what the local comedy theater breakdown is.
If there's a good opportunity for us to do a live show.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Please do.
Yeah.
Yes.
Tracy, we've taken for too much of your time.
I can't believe this podcast has gotten me four hours long.
You're going to have to find some.
It's not as good as it is.
It'll be 315, which unfortunately may not even crack top five.
I won't crack the 10.
I don't think she's a solid.
The audience weirdly just demands longer and longer.
I don't know why.
You're a king amongst men.
You are the boss bitch.
You guys are sweet.
Have anything to plug is there?
And Bob just ended its run on Broadway.
Yeah, not plug it.
Ben wants to see Bob.
Did you know?
I loved it.
Oh, thanks, man.
I think it really captures the paranoia of being on drugs.
Thanks.
Bug rocks.
No, nothing to plug.
As I've said before, this is my job.
The man, the acting in the playwriting is hop.
That's just right.
You're plugging physical media and the value of owning the film to care about.
You've talked about it in the past.
But you guys, yes, Tracey has spoken very well of why it's great to own a disc, but our
fans already know that.
Yeah, I would say.
I will tell you as someone with an, unfortunately, an overwhelming amount of anxiety.
Most times in my life, I'm constantly trying to find different pieces of media that can
function as a bomb for me, things that for whatever reason, physiologically, just calm
me down, slower the heart rate, slower the heart rate.
Slow down the heart rate.
We need to.
Long form interviews with you have started really doing the trick.
We got a great voice.
You got a great voice.
But thank you for being here.
We will absolutely force you to come back again.
We will hold you to your openness.
And thank you all for listening.
Please remember to rate, review and subscribe to the next week for witness with Amanda
Dobbins, Bob mob for life.
We're doing it.
He's crossing the ocean.
He's coming over to Hollywood.
Yep.
This episode, this series has Dobbins, Ashana has hit maker.
It's got all the big voice.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Thanks, y'all.
Thank you.
That is always.
And as always, I have to ask because I almost bought it.
Have you seen slash do you own slash has your son seen the role in Emory Godzilla?
No.
And is that a forceful blocking him from that experience?
No.
In fact, when he turned eight, I said to him, you can now watch any Godzilla movie.
If Godzilla is in it, you can watch it.
Wow.
That had not been the case before he was eight.
That's like the best version of like the birds and the bees talk.
You're old enough to start.
I was like, he was limited.
For a long time to the show era and then I expanded the high say era, but now he can
watch any Godzilla movie.
Wow.
If he ever watches it, please let us know because I think he will hate it.
But I was curious.
I didn't want to infect your collection with the disc.
I don't think it's a good film.
Much like Phantom Manus, I've always been fascinated by how broken it is.
But I saw it about his age and really struggled with why it didn't make me happy.
Langcheck with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims.
Our executive producer is me Ben Hossley.
Our creative producer is Marie Barty Salinas and our associate producer is AJ McKeein.
This show is mixed and edited by AJ McKeein and Alan Smithy.
Research by JJ Birch.
Our theme song is by Lane Montgomery in the Great American novel with additional music
by Alex Mitchell.
Our work by Joe Bowen, Oli Moss and Pat Reynolds.
Our production assistant is Minick.
Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish and Nate Patterson for their production help.
Head over to blankcheckpod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit.
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