Casey on Paranoid Park

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Movie Crush, a production of I Heart Radio.

(00:29):
Hey everybody, and welcome to the Movie Crush. Casey Friday
a dish, Casey. I'd say, hello, hello, uh we are Like,
when was the last time I had you in here?
About six weeks ago? Yeah, it was. It was like, um,
the first week of April or something, so it's it's
been a minute. It was kind of the beginning of
the lockdown exactly. Yeah. I was thinking, like, we we

(00:51):
were so fresh and innocent then and now we're we're
old pros at this, at this lockdown stuff. I know
how you guys doing holding up? Well? How's the house? Yeah,
it's it's my my girlfriend. Actually she went back to
her place this week because she's actually started back work again.
So yeah, that's not great, but it is what it is. Um, Yeah,

(01:12):
we're we're holding up fine here. Um to me, this
just feels like the normal way now. And I'm kind
of interred anyway, So in a way, I've I've lived
weeks in my life like this prior to the whole
confinement thing anyway, So yeah, I'm fine, that's good. You know, Paula,
your roommate, and I did a very controversial episode on
Soup v bat which I started. I have not finished yet,

(01:36):
but I'm about halfway through that one I started. Yeah,
and it's it's weird because I have not seen that
movie even but um, I'm gonna check it out. I
guess I'm gonna do the whole, the whole cursed the
trilogy now of what is a Man of Steel, Batman Verse, Superman,
and then the the newly yeah, the Justice League, which

(01:57):
is now coming out in the uh the Snyder cart apparently. Yeah, yeah,
I'm gonna watch that. I mean, here's my deal. The
reason I'm watching these movies even though I don't love them,
is that I was I wasn't a comic guy growing up,
but I was more d C in um my loves,
which were just sort of from watching Believe it or Not,

(02:18):
super Friends, in Justice League cartoon, and um just the
early Superman movies and you know, from Donner in the
eighties I grew up with, whereas there was no Marvel
going on. Uh, so I'm in more. I'm more invested
in the and I had the wonder Woman TV show,
so like wonder Woman, Batman, Superman, I had the Batman

(02:38):
TV show. All that stuff is more part of my
DNA than Marvel ever was because I wasn't into comics.
So that's why I'm watching these movies each one with
the hope that it's going to be awesome. Right, Yeah,
I was. I was a DC kid, and I did.
I did collect comics for a while. Um, kind of
in like the mid nineties, right around the time that
Baine broke Batman's back and the killed Superman and all

(03:00):
that stuff was going on. So I think the I
think the whole Batman versus Superman thing will be somewhat
in my wheelhouse. So what I'm familiar with because I
did read like Dark Knight Returns, the Frank Miller graphic
novel and all that. So, um, I was never into
Marvel at all, So I don't don't really have any
attachment to those characters or those movies. Yeah, I've said
it before on the show. I don't know why I

(03:22):
never got into superhero comics. I don't know. It's weird
because I like that stuff. It just I don't know,
And it was weird with me because I got into
it because there was a comic bookshop, like an independent
comic book shop in Roswell where I was growing up,
and it was just a cool place to go hang
out for a while and browse the stacks and find

(03:43):
cool stuff. And then yeah, and then the guy ended
up closing the shop or moving it somewhere else, and
that was just sort of like that ended my fascination
with comics right then and there. So you know, I
could have I could have grown up to be way
more of like a comic book guy or something. But
I'm kind of glad that, uh it ended when it did,
like in my adolescence, and Paul is not as well.

(04:05):
I was surprised he picked that movie. Um. It was
an interesting conversation because I didn't love the movie the
first time I saw it. I liked it better through
with his cut and you know, just through the lens
of talking about it with a fringe. That always helps.
But I still don't love it. You know, It's just
I don't know. Zack Snyder to me is just he's
not you know, he's like he's a seventy percenter. It's

(04:29):
it's I think, um, a lot of us are still
when we think Zack Snyder, we think, um, three D.
And I don't know just that that one that whole
that whole aesthetic of like sweatymen. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and uh,
you know, gratuitous violence and all that stuff. So yeah,
I did. Having said that, though flawed as it was,

(04:51):
I was such a big fan of the I did
read the Watchman um graphic novel. That's one of the
few things I did. Actually. Jonathan Strickland gave it to me,
uh in the early days of how stuff works and
recommended it, and I I did. For all its faults,
I did enjoy the Watchman movie just because it was

(05:13):
uh just seeing those characters come to life, and I
thought I thought a lot of it worked, even though
it was a bit of a mess. Yeah, that's that's
another one I wanted to see, but I still have
not checked out. But I am kind of curious about
that one. I mean, I do like this sort of
like meta comic approach. I think, yeah, well, I do
like I like the Watchman better than any of any

(05:34):
of the Superman stuff he's done so far. I think interesting.
And of course I love the Watchman TV show, but
he didn't have his dirty little pause on that, so uh,
paranoid Park I sent you. I need to share this
with everyone. Casey and and poke fun at you a
little bit. You asked, what kind of movie if it
needs to be more feel good? I was like, no,

(05:54):
I feel good at least something widely seen, you know.
And so you sit Paranoid Park and Old Joy, two
very little scene films. Still I get, you know, I
have a hard time, like, um, I feel like we
need we need some kind of objective measure for like
how widely a scene as film or not seen. I

(06:16):
think box office is that measure. Casey, this did like
four and a half million I think on on like
a one point five budgets, so that's pretty yeah. And
four million of that was in Europe. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I saw that too. Like the press screen average was
like I don't know, five tin grand or something in
the US. So yeah, it was interesting. Um, and that
was one of the notes I had to bring up.
This movie Gus Vans and clearly does well in Europe.

(06:36):
Did percent of its its revenue there did about four
hundred thousand and change here. Uh. And my deal with
Gus Van's aunt dude is I was a devote and
saw his first whatever seven movies as they came, and
then stopped watching gust Vans and movies. For some reason,

(06:58):
was there like was was like Psycho the breaking point?
Like what was there a moment where you were just
kind of done with him? Or I don't know. I
thought the Psycho thing was an interesting experiment exact wouldn't
say like, oh, yeah, it was great, I want to
see it again. But I'm glad I watched it. Uh.
It wasn't so much that I think he went after
a good while hunting in the Psycho sort of backlash.

(07:18):
He went way back to his roots and went really,
really really in the borderline experimental, which I'm all about too,
for some reason that I just I missed that. I mean,
that's that to me is my favorite, um, my favorite
period of his when he when he makes Harry and
Elephant and Last Days and then this movie. I didn't

(07:38):
see any of those, but I've seen bits of all
of them. I'm going to go through now and watch
them all because I had not seen this, and it
reminded me of how much I just fucking love Gus
van Dan. He's one of my favorite filmmakers. This one,
I think is it's it's odd because it's the last
one that he made kind of in this style before
he went sort of back into more Hollywood mainstream filmmaking
with Milan seen those either, yeah, Um, actually I did

(08:01):
see Milk. That's the only one I saw, Yeah, which
was I mean, Milk was pretty good. It was well shot,
well acted everything, but it doesn't have like the experimental
panash of of this, you know, the last the four
films before it. Um this is a bit of a detour.
But the last thing I did before all this um

(08:21):
quarantine stuff started Alex Alex Williams and I our colleague
from work, we went on kind of a cinematic pilgrimage
to Philadelphia back in late February to go see this
seven and a half hour film, Satan Tango, directed by
Bail Atar. He was a Hungarian filmmaker, and Satan Tango

(08:44):
came out in the bid nineties and it was like
a big deal at the time. Um. You had like
Susan Sontag saying that she would watch it every year
for the rest of her life, and all these kind
of like heavy intellectuals weighed in on it. And then
a lot of filmmakers responded to it as well, and
Gus Van Santon was one of them, and so that
kind of directly led to him making this trilogy or

(09:05):
quadrilogy of um sort of experimental, low budget features that
all have some share DNA with the Bellatar films of
long takes and tracking shots and overlapping timelines and things
like that. Yeah, yes, yeah, I've gotta be gotta be
comfortable with slowness and silence for sure, And um, I

(09:27):
don't know, it was it was a great way to
see the movie, because I've been wanting to see it
pretty much since it had first came out, or at
least a few years after when I learned about it,
and um, I had put off seeing it all these years.
I had had video copies of it, but it never
seemed like something I would actually be able to sit
through at home. And so when the restoration came out

(09:50):
and it started touring around, it wasn't coming anywhere close
to Atlanta, so we just kind of decided, why not,
We'll we'll go up there and see it. And so
like the whole of this, the whole process of like
you know, getting on a plane and flying and getting
an hotel and like arriving at the venue the next
day and everything, it's just like it. It reminds you
that that the theatrical experience and just the feeling of

(10:11):
like remembering a time and a place and circumstances and
like even like meals we had, you know before, after
the movie. Like the whole thing is all kind of
like combined into one one thing, and it's it's so
much more meaningful in a way than just like streaming
stuff at home or whatever. There's there's so much more
weight to it, and in a way, it kind of
feels like, I mean, I hope that that theatrical experience

(10:33):
will still survive post all of this, but it kind
of feels like almost like the last great memory I'm
going to have of that era. I don't know. I mean, obviously,
obviously people will still be seeing stuff in theaters, but
I think it's going to increasingly just be the big
budget stuff that gets those theatrical runs, and these smaller
movies are more and more just going to go to Netflix,

(10:54):
are going to go to streaming, are going to play
festivals and then just kind of be like V O
D or whatever. So I hope that's not the case,
but I'm kind of thinking economically that's probably where things
are headed. Uh. I think could be surprised how things
are going to get back to normal. Eventually, It'll be
a slow ramp, but um, there have been uh, there

(11:15):
have been nasty sicknesses before and humanity always you know
it's not an existential risk. Well now it's impossible. Uh
you listen to our stuff you should know podcast on that. Um,
you know. The last thing I did, and I've mentioned
this on the show before, was in mid March for
a birthday trip, me and my friend Eddie went to
Philly d C in New York to see Bonnie Principilli

(11:38):
and Richmond and that I had a similar experience man,
where it was like when you go to a different
city to do a concert or like you did like
a movie. It's different than going on a vacation. Like Uh,
all we had to do all day was uh, walk
around and enjoy ourselves and eat and drink and then

(11:59):
be at the venue showtime. The next day we did that.
We were at the venue, and after that third night,
I was like, dude, I don't know what I'm gonna
do tomorrow, not getting up and going to see Bonnie Principal. Yeah,
I wanted to keep following him until his tour stopped Yeah, absolutely,
I love Wild and um, you know, I don't know
if you're aware he's the co star of Old Joy. Yeah, dude,

(12:21):
I've seen Old Okay, okay, alright, alright, alright. Kind of
question is that, Um, I don't know. I thought when
I when I slid that, when I slid that in there,
I thought I thought maybe that would be the one
you the one you went for. So I was surprised
when you went Paranoid Park. Well, I went Paranoid Park
because I hadn't seen it a and Old Joy is
so obscure that, uh, I felt like I had to

(12:43):
go with with Gus van Zan on this one because he's,
you know, to me, a true artist. Filmmakers like him
that that do achieve big successes in Hollywood. Eventually with
winning all the Oscar or I don't know, I think
he wanted the Oscar, did he? I know the guys
did for Hunting. Yeah, yeah, I think it was just
screenplay that that one. Maybe maybe starting stuffer. Yeah, but

(13:06):
you know, major Hollywood accolades. After starting out as it's
Superah with drug Store, Cowboy definitely became accepted into that
whole world and then chose to kind of do something
interesting with it, do the make and kind of stay
true to his roots. And I think his last couple
have been a little more high profile though. Right. He

(13:26):
had one called The Sea of Trees, which almost barely
even came out with Matthew McConaughey actually in the league
about the suicide forest in Japan. That's that's very well known. Um,
I actually have not. I have not seen that one yet.
It's it's on the list. I will get to it eventually,
but it's sort of the played in can and then
it just sort of like disappeared and it came out

(13:47):
in like a limited release maybe about a year or
two later here in the States. Um. But he has
also made one with Joaquin Phoenix called Don't Worry he
Won't Get Far and Foot, which is great. I really
really like that one. Yeah, yeah, man, he's so good. Um,
before we get going on Paranoid Park though, how was
the seven and a half hour film experience? It was great?
It was Actually they did have it broken up. It

(14:10):
is broken up into three separate chunks, so it's sort
of like a two hour film, a two hour film,
and a two and a half hour film. Kind of
when you're when you're sitting through it something like that.
So they had intermissions. They had intermissions of about like
fifteen minutes, and there was like a Starbucks right next
door to the theater, so we would like run out,
go to the Starbucks, like pounce and caffeine, run to
the bathroom, and then run back and get in our

(14:31):
seats and started again, and we have like, you know,
just like a few minutes in line to kind of
talk about what we had just seen and what we
think is going to be coming. And it was a
really cool way to to um, to watch that film,
Like I said, I mean, there's there's absolutely nothing can
compare to that versus just like sitting at home and
being tempted to look at your phone every five minutes
and phone calls and all the rest of it. So um,

(14:53):
I would say, actually, my favorite Bilitar film is still
probably Rick Meister Harmonies, which he made about five years
after that, and which is only like a two and
a half maybe three hour film, and it does many
of the same things, but it does them in a
much more condensed, focused way, whereas sometimes in Satan Tango,
I was never bored necessarily, but there were scenes where

(15:15):
I was like, Okay, you could have cut like five
minutes ago and I would have gotten the point of
what you're doing. But um, you know, as long as
you keep the mentality that you're gonna just hang in there,
then um, you kind of have to surrender to it.
And it was cool because the whole audience was obviously
very self selecting. Everybody that was there was there to
like reckon with this movie and exactly exactly, so everybody

(15:38):
was very respectful. No one's on their phone or making
noise or anything like that, so you know, we were
all just kind of in it together. And yeah, it
was It was a really cool experience. And I did
like the film, but um, like I said, surprisingly, I
didn't think it was like his masterpiece. I think he's
done better, um in other in other films. I'm gonna
put that down on the old list for people listening. Uh,

(15:59):
we're saying his name kind of fast. It's b E
L L A, I think T L and uh. And
it was a sidetrack. But as you mentioned, Gus vans
And has been very open and um respectful of the
fact that he really influenced sort of this period in
his filmmaking career. Yeah, and and Satan Tango right now

(16:21):
even I think you can rent it on streaming the
restoration version. Uh. And there will be like a physical
Blu ray release. I think later in the year or
maybe next year. It might be delayed because of all
this stuff, but right, all right everyone So. Paranoid Park

(16:42):
is the Gust fans Ant film from two thousand seven,
written and directed by Gus van z Ant, from the
novel by uh not Tim Blake. Now is not Tim
Blake Nelson, who I always want to say it's by
Tim Blake Nelson. It is not. It is by a
different guy named Blake Nelson. Yeah. And it is a
film about a um a murder that happens in Portland, Oregon,

(17:06):
and a a group of young skateboarder kids, in particular
one who is the protagonist of the film, and just
how how he may or may not be involved, and
they're going to be spoilers. I don't know why I
bothered to say that. I never do, but um, you know,
it's uh, it was great. I loved it. Good, good,

(17:28):
an hour and twenty minutes long. Yeah, it's nice and tight,
it's it's does not overstay. It's welcome at all, which
I think especially for films like this that have these
kind of they're spacey, they're experimental. Um, there's there's long
kind of slow motion sequences which is playing and so on.
But the fact that it's it's so short overall really

(17:49):
just kind of like leaves you wanting more. You're you're
very like, I don't know, it just it just gets
it gets in, it gets out, it does what it
needs to do, and it kind of leaves you just
like wanting more of that, which I think is a
great way for am to to go about. So many
films these days I think could easily lose you know, yeah,
I totally agree. Man, that's been one of the biggest
changes in filmmaking I think over the last like fifteen years,

(18:11):
is uh. And you know, especially with comedies being too long,
and there's a certain filmmaker that I won't we both
know who we're talking about in his new film. People
people already are talking about the length of his new
film because I think it's in the two and a
half hour range, and so you know, just all the
kind of snarky comments on until on, like you know,

(18:32):
do you really need too and a half hours to
tell the story of X y Z. I don't know. Yeah,
And if you don't know who we're talking about, um, everyone,
it's jutt as Our right right, who I love you know,
I love his movies. I just I think he's I
think he's being a little indulgent with these two and
a half hour comedies. You don't need tow and a
half hours to tell the story. No, no, no, I
mean it's it's it's amazing what can be done in

(18:53):
in a much more condensed part of time. And partly
that is what makes cinema great versus these like you know,
eighteen hour episodic TV dramas, which are great too, but
being able to say everything you want to say, to
establish character and narrative and do it all in like
that compact ninety minutes, it's just that is that is

(19:15):
what differentiates cinema from from television in a large Expeah, absolutely,
to to to pack in really um fully realized character
arcs for multiple characters inside an hour and twenty minutes
or an hour and a half is is very impressive.
And ah, it's tough to do. As someone and you've
written stuff too, it's it's hard. Yeah, it's very very hard.

(19:38):
You just you have a tendency to want to stretch
things out, and you have to Instead of having like
the five scenes that all say the same thing more
or less, you just got to find the one and
really honed in on that and say everything you have
to say. So you know it's easy to do. Casey
write a shitty screenplay exactly. Yes, I've written them before,
and I've written a couple that I think you're pretty good. Um.

(20:01):
All right, so this movie opens up and we'll we'll
be jumping all around. But um, I did want to
mention the opening shot just because it was so cool,
that great shot of Portland, of the bridge there that river,
and it was and this brings up a larger point.
It was set in fast motion, yes, even though it's
a static shot, so it's not hectic. Um, but it

(20:21):
sets up this and this is not an insult. The
best way I can describe this movie is it felt
like the best student film I'd ever seen. Absolutely. That's
that's what this whole period of his filmmaking feels like
to me. It feels like the kind of stuff that
when you are a film student and you're just getting
your hands on the tools for the first time this

(20:42):
Obviously I want to do a tracking shot, I want
to do time laps, I want to do you know, etcetera, etcetera. Um,
it really does feel like he he kind of rediscovered
that that joy in the simplicity in a way of
just like the camera in a space with a few
actors and and just what the sssibilities are of what
can be done just by moving the camera or not

(21:03):
moving the camera. And um, yeah, I love that that
that bridge time lapse shot. It kind of it has
a very dreamy music that is uh, it's from a
Felini film. It's composed by Nino Rhoda and it comes
from mostly um Julietta the Spirits. There's also one track
from all Marcord in the film. Um. But but the
it's almost even. That's kind of contrasting in a way

(21:26):
because it has this dreamy, floating kind of feel, but
the motion is all sped up in time laps. And
he did that a lot. There was a lot of
h I mean, the music is factors in a huge
in this movie. Um from you know, book ending the
movie with two full songs from Elliott Smith, which um,
you know, a total uh fanatic Smith always have been too, uh,

(21:52):
the way he uses these um these classical sort of
upbeat romantic classical scores in the third in the third act,
juxtaposed against you know, the scene that really stands out
as the breakup scene with with the main character and
his I mean, I guess it's his girlfriend, and you know,
the whole thing is in in silence. All you see

(22:14):
is her mad at him. You don't see his It's
just that one take of her or not her perspective,
but hers his shoulder kind of and you see her
face and it's great because you know, if if you've
been paying attention, you know that this is like the
breakup scene. You know that's what he's going to do.
And you can see from his from her reaction, you

(22:34):
can almost read her lips and kind of like gather
mostly what she's saying. You know, totally, How can you
do this? You think you can just you know, hey,
we got a visit her. Hey all right, Ruby, this
has got to be a quick can you say, howe casey? Hey, Ruby,
did you like guess fans as paranoid park? Oh? That's great,

(22:57):
it gets it gets the Ruby uh approval. I love
you Alright, so that's been happening a lot with with Ruby,
as you know. Yeah, she did not watch Paranoid Park
by the way. Okay, well yeah, it's probably not age
appropriate exactly, should be like when's something going to happen, um,

(23:20):
just to say, we would just wait Ruby, a body
gets cut in half. There's one shot that's really gross.
It's gonna be cool. Yeah uh yeah. But you know,
that was a great scene, the breakup scene, because um,
the contrast of the music, and it felt like a
lot of that stuff really came on heavier than the
third act. This sort of bouncy classical like romantic. Um.

(23:40):
The one at the beginning with the Willamette River shot
was the one thing I did think that gave it
was this had this sort of noir edge to it.
Um and this movie. It's interesting to think about this
movie in a movie like Brick, which are have a
little bit of the same d N a completely different execution. Yeah,
but it is it is sort of like he's he's

(24:02):
flirting with that genre a little bit. And I think
that's another thing that differentiates this film from the previous
three that are a little bit more free form and
not really beholden to any genre other than just kind
of quote unquote the art film or the experimental film.
This one does have some genre elements that again I think,
just give it that little bit of a hook, a

(24:24):
little bit of a grounding where it is a little
bit of a who done it, even though it's pretty
obvious early on who did it and so on. But
I didn't really feel that way actually really maybe the
first because I've seen it like ten times at this point,
you know. Um, to me, I feel like there is
more or lesser reveal before the big reveal, just based

(24:46):
on his reactions and emotions and so on, and some
of the scenes. To me, it tips over into he
is truly guilty, although I guess there's the question of
whether he's guilty because he was there or he's guilty
because kind of thing. Yet I thought he knew what
had happened. He's a good kid. Um for the most part.
He's just for listeners at home. You know. The idea

(25:08):
is that this kid is h he's a skater kid.
He's hanging out at this uh and by the way,
I've been by the real skate park in Port uh Lance.
Bangs drove me by Yeah, on our way to dinner.
I went out to dinner with he and his son, Marshall,
and he drove me by the Burnside thing because it
was on the way the restaurant. He was like, I
think he even said for Paranoid Park was filmed. Um,

(25:30):
so the kid is a good kid. He's hanging out
the skate park. That's kind of dangerous in the culture
over there is is a little scary obviously, drug use
and shenanigans going on and sort of lawlessness, no parents,
no cops exactly. It's it's that whole vibe of like
divorced parents who are not paying attention exactly sort of stuff. Yeah,
and then we what we learned through the film, and

(25:52):
it doesn't it didn't follow a traditional chronological narrative. It
sort of hops around via this kind of cool device
of his journal entries as narration and and and we
just got a great reveal we'll get too later. But um,
there is Ah. It turns out that a security guard
at a train yard has been killed and they have
traced it back to the fact that he was killed

(26:14):
by getting hit with a skateboard and falling on the
train tracks and getting cut in half. By a train.
And uh so that's the premise, and there's some question
going on and and you've learned about I guess about
halfway or towards the third act that this kid has
actually done it hopped a freight train with a bad

(26:35):
kid and this guy came running after almost kind of
hitting him with a flashlight and he just sort of
hits him in the face with the skateboard, not even
too hard, just to get him away. And it's and
it was an accident, you know, it's funny, Like I
was thinking about it more like how would that be
regarded and like a criminal court would it be? Was
there even possibly a self defense not trest at the

(27:00):
flashlight first? But it's true they were they were trespassing,
so maybe because they broke the law originally, Yeah, I
involuntary man being an accident, you know, yeah, yeah yeah.
And like I said, he's a good kid. Um, he's
a good kid who made a mistake. Uh. What I

(27:20):
thought was interesting And I didn't kind of pick up
on this till towards the end. Was like a traditional
movie might there's never any other mention of the guy
he was with, true, Yeah, Like I kept waiting for
there to be a search for him or him to
come back into the picture, but he just kind of
runs off and that's it. I mean, that guy I
think got away clean, right, Like nobody really saw him

(27:42):
or knows about him. His name never came up. So
kids just like clean, We think, right, yes, yes, that
is true. But I mean, at least he gets pulled
into questioning a few times, and there is at least
a little bit of a hint that he might be
under more scrutiny than than some of these other skate kids. Um,
but the the other kid, he's just like gone. So

(28:05):
let's talk about that first questioning scene with Detective Lou. Yeah,
it's fantastic, one of the great interrogation scenes because it's, uh,
it's not like a typical interrogation scene. He's not playing
the heavy he's he's total good copying it. Uh. And
then I'd like you to talk a little bit about
what he does with a camera there, because it's really interesting.

(28:25):
So there's a really cool sequence just before where he's
walking down you know, he's been called to the office
and so he's walking down the hallway and then he
arrives in the classroom and the cameras kind of pointed
off in the direction where you can't see the cop.
It's looking at another part of the room. Maybe it's
sort of like the first thing that Um Alex the

(28:45):
character sees when he walks in, and then the camera
suddenly kind of swings over reframes so that you see
the cop and you see this long table, and he
goes and sits at the table, and then the camera
just does this very very slow dolly push forward where
you know, if if you know about filmmaking a little bit,
you realize that they're they're having to kind of clear

(29:06):
that stuff off the table as the camera is like
pushing forward, pushing forward, and it's a pretty traditional just
two shot pushing in. Yeah, but it keeps it keeps going,
It keeps going, and then it's it's kind of framing
them in a two shot, and then at a certain
point it just goes off to the left and it
it just frames him up and kind of a single
close up, and it stays on him for a really
long time. Um and then only after you know, probably

(29:30):
a couple more minutes, does it finally cut to the reverse,
which is again it's like the one thing we should
talk about is the the aspect ratio of this film.
He shot this in the in the square Academy ratio.
So when you have a close up of a person,
you don't really even see any of the environment around them.
You just see the face or you see maybe the

(29:52):
head and the shoulders. But it's it's very narrow and
so it's it's very direct and confrontational. It feels like
something that comes more from almost like silent cinema. It's
very very intimate, and it's it's it's sort of like
you're looking at these beautiful portraits. There's, um, there's even
like this like like splash of bright light that goes
across the cops face where he's lit sort of like

(30:14):
in a painting or something. Um, it's just it's very
very distinct to me. The light is almost a metaphor
for like truth or something. It's it's kind of like
he's this apparently like pretty pretty, um, genuinely benevolently motivated cop,
you know, who's just out to find what's going on,

(30:34):
and he's not out to railroad anybody. He just wants
to get to the bottom of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
and um and so yeah, I don't know that I've
ever seen that shot before. I don't think I've ever
seen and not the whole thing, but even starting with
that slow push in, like I said, it's a very
traditional slow dolly in, and then it just starts veering

(30:55):
left and veering left until the detective is completely out
of the shot. And as I was watching it, you know,
it's so slow and subtle. At first, I was like,
is this a mistake? Yeah, well so much. It's I mean,
sometimes they do feel like mistakes, but they work, you know,
It's it's it's hard to hard to fathom how you know,

(31:19):
as an artist you can you can have that kind
of objectivity on your work to know that a mistake
or something that would appear to be a mistake or
amateurish or whatever is actually going to be really cool
and fresh. And I think it's partly because so much
of the film is so tightly aesthetically controlled and constructed
that when there are these quote unquote mistakes that happened,
they happen within a framework of precision and control, so

(31:43):
that you, as the viewer, feel them, experienced them as
something deliberate, as a choice that's being made, and not
just like you know, people who don't know what they're doing.
It's interesting too on that on that that push in.
You probably only would hear this on headphones if you're
really listening closely, but there's actually a little bit of
cell phone interference at one point where where somebody must
have gotten a call. It's like that sound that you

(32:04):
get and you can tell they kind of they try
to filter it out as best as they could. But
I thought it was really cool that they didn't just
like loop that scene or use a different take or whatever.
Like there was something about that particularly taken, that particularly
sound that he he was just like, that's the one
we're using. Yeah, yeah, I mean this like I compared
it to the best student film I've ever seen, Like
you were talking about all these things that could be

(32:26):
mistakes or you know that he he has his whole
bag of tricks here. He's got soft focus, he's got
you know, a k A. It looks blurry, very very
shallowed depth the field, and sometimes like sometimes the shots
are even out of focus when their quote unquote supposed
to be in focus. They'll they'll be just you know,
an inch forward or back from where the plane of

(32:47):
focus is. And so it'll be like an eyelashes in focus,
but the eye is not and so on. UM, very
very interesting way of of um isolating the viewers attention.
And again something that I remember very well when I
was kind of getting into filmmaking at the beginning for
the first you know, not for the first time because
that was on VHS, but for the first time more

(33:08):
seriously in college. UM that was right in the era
where digital SLRs were starting to shoot video, and so
you could use these like full frame cameras like the
five D and get that insanely shallowed up the field
with these big lenses and big sensors that were really
impossible on video. Before then you always had it was
just deep focus all the time. So one thing that

(33:30):
you saw in like so many student films and short
films in general of that period, everybody shot wide open,
you know, everybody shot available light. Everybody just like you know,
put the longest lens on that they could find, because
everybody was so obsessed with that shallow depth the field
Boca heavy kind of look because it's very beautiful, but

(33:50):
you know, it also became extremely overused very quickly. It's
one of those things where it's another tool to have
in the kit, but you have to know when and
why to use it, and I think he uses it very,
very deliberately and very well in this film. Yeah. I
mean everything in here that I'm liking, the student film
stuff is different in the hands of a master filmmaker.

(34:11):
And that's kind of what you're saying, like, um, knowing
when to utilize it, knowing how long to utilize it,
knowing what you're what salad, you're building from the beginning
and not I guess, you know, I'm sure being open
to ideas on the day, but this feels like a
film cinematically that was very well thought out. Yeah, it
seems like you would have to be, because this does

(34:31):
not feel like a film. I mean, there's never really
any scenes that have like quote unquote coverage. You know,
I don't always wondering about coverage. I mean there's maybe
like one or two shot reverse shot kind of constructions,
but even those feel very deliberate when it cuts from
one side to the other. Liking that interrogation scene, it's
a very deliberate moment that he chooses to finally cut
to the police guy. UM. So it's not a film

(34:55):
that could be quote unquote found in the editing room
in that way. You know, these scenes probably a we
have one way that you could actually cut them and
have it make any sense. Um, you could restructure the
order of the scenes but you couldn't really within the
scenes themselves. You would kind of just be stuck with
whatever it was you shot on the day. Yeah. And
the other interesting thing he does a few times is,
like we were talking about in the breakup scene, he

(35:16):
does what would normally be, um, just a regular over
the shoulder shot of one character's face while the other characters,
you know, off screen having a conversation. And what traditionally
you do is you do that from both shoulders of
both characters. You shoot a master, you know, you shoot
your wide and then you cut between those at least
those three, maybe more you have time and money. But
he has a few scenes where it's just that one

(35:40):
perspective and point of view, uh, and you keep waiting
for the camera to cut to the reverse and it doesn't,
and I think it's you know, it's really interesting. There's
a great moment where it's the second time we see
the cop and he's there to interrogate like a larger
group of the kids, not you can interrogate, but just
to kind of entry and uh and hand out that

(36:02):
the grizzly photos of the of the crime scene to
kind of spook everybody a little bit. But when you
first see him the cop, he's standing, he's overlapped by
somebody else who's covering up his entire face. All you
see is like his bald head and his ear, and
the camera stays on that for like probably a good
thirty seconds, and then it kind of pans down and

(36:24):
it's kind of like racks to focus on some of
the kids who are sitting in the desk. But again,
it's that kind of like fragmented perspective that feels like
it's almost like maybe Alex's POV like when he first
like the thing that stuck in his memory was not
like the full on shot of the cop. It's just
like the ear and the bald head, and and that

(36:44):
was enough to tell him that like, oh, it's this
guy or something. And there's there's so much of the
film that is is just like subtly done like that
is artfully chosen to kind of put the film in
his perspective and his subjectivity and in and kind of
get us inside of his head, his his sort of
like paranoid state of mind. Yeah, and you know, before

(37:06):
that interrogation scene is one of the favorite, my favorite
shots of the movie. It's the initially the one boy
gets called out of class again to come down and
meet with his detective. And as he's going, it's in
slow motion. He keeps it's like the Wild Bunch or something.
He's going down this big hallway and all these all
these skater kids, yes, keeps going out of various classrooms

(37:27):
and joining him. Such a shot. Yeah, there's some really
interesting stuff too with um, with exposure in this film,
where um, they will they will deliberately way over exposed
or way under exposed something, or even change the exposure
during rampit. Yeah, Yeah, rampant in a way that's very visible.
It's not like they're just trying to move from indoors
to outdoors or something. It's it's literally like a static shot, um,

(37:51):
where they'll just ramp down the exposure where suddenly somebody
that was fully lit just becomes a silhouette. UM and
so on. And that shot after the hot tub scene
in particular, Yeah, when we have that beautiful like clouds
in the background and gorgeous. Yeah, and there's some great
dialogue over the top of that tube where they're talking
about you know, um, why why people, why adults do

(38:15):
what they do? Why you know that a cop in,
in this kid's words, makes less than a janitor and
so on and and so one of the kids replies
to that, you know, no, no, no, adults only do
things for money. That's like the only reason adults doing
things for money. And it's over this this yeah, it's
and it's it's this kind of like throwaway moment in

(38:36):
a way, but again it's not because it's very thematically
resonant with the rest of the film. But I love
those kind of like little pauses where it just becomes
this kind of like painting or or just this beautiful
visual tableau that we just kind of pause and take in.
And it's so well paced that when this moments arrive again,
like I I never really have that feeling of like

(38:57):
restlessness or that he's going back to it too many times.
They're parceled out really really well during the film. Yeah,
I totally agree. Um, I think maybe now we should
talk a little bit about Gus vans Aunt and his
his mastery of working with non actors and working with
kids and kid non actors. Um is something he started doing.

(39:18):
Uh jeez, I guess I'm trying to think of the
first movie where an elephant certainly by elephant. Yeah, I'm
wondering if he if he did it even before then.
I mean, malin his very very first film. I don't
think that lead was like I'm pretty sure that lead
was was not like a professional actor, um yeah, but

(39:39):
certainly an elephant um yeah. I mean what he does
is just for the listeners, is for these movies, for
this an elephant at least he has uh for this
when he used my Space and he just puts an
ad upt and or you know, the equivalent would be
flyers in the community and says, come on down and
try out. He wants non actors. Um. You can tell

(39:59):
their non actors, but in a good way, you know,
in the best way that non actors are always used,
which is they're not acting. It's it's really interesting, like
because the lead um who's played I think his name
is Gabe Gabe Nevins Um. He he has to do
a decent amount of voiceover and and when he's reading
the voiceover, he reads it in this very kind of

(40:22):
flat way. It doesn't have it doesn't have like the
rhythm or the musicality of the way we're used to
hearing voiceover, and even me, like, who's not an actor,
Like I can I can kind of hear that. And
if I were asked to read the same thing, there
would be a way that I would read it that
would sound more like a movie or something. But it
sounds like, Yeah, I love But actually I love the
kind of like flatness of it, um, because it just

(40:44):
it feels more genuine in a way. He's not performing.
He's just a kid, you know, um reciting this stuff.
And it it reminds you in a way because so
often in films like child actors are too trained there too,
you know, and they stand out because kids in real
life are nothing like that. And um, and so there's

(41:06):
a real like what I think what it gives you,
especially is a sense of his like his youth, his innocence,
his vulnerability, and and it it's it makes such a
such a stark contrast with the seriousness of what he's
gotten himself into, and it makes it that much more powerful.
It would not be nearly as powerful if he seemed

(41:26):
like a kind of like, you know, um, smarter than
his age. Um. It would completely yeah, it would. It
would completely change the feeling. It would. It would probably
make him seeing him a little bit more sinister or something.
But the fact that he has just kind of like
this kid who bumbled his way into this thing, um,
and and now he's he's he's being hit with all

(41:47):
these like big time adult, grown up terrifying realities. UM,
it just makes it that much more powerful. I think,
do you know the story of that kid? Did you
look into him a little bit? I heard that after
filming he was, you know, had some some problems. I think, yeah,
so he uh, he met a photographer on set, a
still photographer shooting this movie, and he after this movie

(42:11):
kind of stumbled into drug use and homelessness and some
mental illness and just sort of had a really bad
run of it. I don't think right after this. He
did a couple a few more movies after this, but
very very low key. Uh. And this photographer ended up
kind of befriending him, this adult photographer, and taking making
a photo book of him. And I think it's even

(42:33):
called Gabe. I think, yeah, I I did not look
at this when I was looking when I was preparing
for this yesterday. But I do remember seeing that at
some point, reading like a blog post or something about it,
and seeing some of the photographs and yeah, there's a
good Fader interview with him, and uh, there's a they
get a quote from Gabe Nevin's like today, but they

(42:55):
weren't able to interview him because I couldn't really find
I think he was in prison actually when this came out,
like five or six years ago, and um, but there
were questions of whether or not this photographer was bordering
on exploitation because it was this kid who ended up
homeless and on drugs and their nudes and he was like,
you know, I was very conscious of that and I

(43:15):
did not want to veer into that territory. And Gabe
Nevins was like, no, it's not. I was way down
with all of it. Um. But it's interesting because it
shows him kind of growing up and it shows him
kind of wrecked at a certain point. I saw some
of the stills and I'd be interested to see the
whole book, though it's very sad story. Do you know,
do you know the work of Larry Clark much? Yeah,
for sure. Yeah. So, I mean Gus van Stand was

(43:37):
a producer on Kids First, Kids ESK, and then you know,
even Larry Clark his his photographic work. He made this
book called Tulsa, which is like him photographing his friends
in this like small town and they're you know, going
from just being kind of wild teenagers to like serious
drug addicts to like dead in a lot of cases

(43:58):
or shot or or whatever. And there's there's that same
kind of question ethically of like are you exploiting these people?
Are you kind of aestheticizing their their poverty, their their
drug addiction and so on? Um, But I think in
both cases what comes across more is like a sincerity
and it's just like depict depicting life as it is,

(44:18):
telling somebody's story, not not a pretty story, but real story,
and not trying to um embellish it, but just kind
of show it for what it is. Yeah. I don't
think Larry Clark got rich off of Tulso, you know,
would be one thing if you were exploiting people for
like great riches, but not every story is pretty, and
I think there is value in seeing sort of the

(44:39):
what can happen to people? You know, it's powerful. Yeah. Um,
the other thing this movie really is and uh, is
it's a love letter to skateboarding. You can almost call
it a skateboarding movie. Yeah. I mean there's a lot
of video in the film, gorgeous, gorgeous skate video and
clearly a love letter from Gus Vansan's point of view

(45:01):
because he was just he used to skateboard and stuff
like it's clear that whoever made this movie, if you
don't know anything about it, loves skateboarding. Yeah. And and
just like again like the I love that they I
think I think a lot of it was shot on
Super eight, the skateboarding stuff, and um, it just it
gives it this this kind of it's sort of in

(45:22):
the film, but also outside the film a little bit. Um.
One thing I actually picked up for the first time
last night when I was watching is the last bit
of skate footage that is in the movie, like the
kind of amateur Super eight skate footage you actually see
Gabe for a second appear. Um, it's it's his way
of sort of almost being inserted into this kind of
alternate parallel reality or something, because you know, in in

(45:45):
all the other cases, it's kind of it's it's very
close to his reality, but it's somehow separate a little bit.
It has more of a documentary feel or something. But
then to kind of see him inserted into it at
the end kind of combined the two together in a
cool way. Cool. Yeah, yeah, I mean, just so many
beautiful shots of uh skating through these big giant tubes

(46:05):
and on the ramps, and then they have the just
the best one of all, that great lockdown shot with
all the guys in slow motion coming up over the
ramp like one and after the other after the other.
It was just gorgeous, gorgeous shot and again very solid
up the field, so they're all kind of having to
hit the same mark in the air and then come
back down. And then the last guy kind of like

(46:25):
doesn't doesn't pull it off, and like you hear him
kind of crash in the It cuts the way you
hear him crash in the in the distance. Yeah yeah,
And it's cool too, because like if you if you're
ever a skater, like or just know about it, it's
all about it's all about your personal style when you're
flare and like it's a beautiful shot, but each one
of those dudes, you know, it gets to do his

(46:46):
own thing too, Like everyone has their own way of
doing their jump and what they do with their hands
in the face they're making, and it's all about your style,
and it's it's a really cool showcase of that. I
think that culture absolutely and it's it's cool too because, like,
you know, just just on paper, you might think like
a murder mystery taking place around a skate park and
all the skaters are like suspects. You might think this

(47:06):
is going to be like an after school special or
something where it's like stay away from those dangerous skate
kids or something. But it's actually a very loving portrait
of these kids and in a very like you know,
through through the story, it acknowledges like all the all
the sort of like reasons that these kids would have
for looking for basically a family outside their own, for

(47:26):
a sense of community and connection and um, you know
all that. It just it brings so much about like
high school back to me, of that that feeling of
belonging or not belonging. I was not really a skate
a skate kid at all, but that was like a
group that I definitely clocked when I was in high school.
And like even wanted to be friends with those kids,
and so, yeah, skater kids are just cool. Yeah, yeah, Yeah,

(47:51):
it's funny because I'm like Ruby is if she's ever
shown natural talents at anything. From the beginning, it was
on her little scooter. Yeah, like from a very very
young age when other kids were just sort of like
figuring out how to get on it. She was doing
tricks and like had some style and flair. And then
she got to where she she saw the skaters in

(48:12):
the skate park next to the playground here indicator, and
she started standing sideways, started standing on our scooter skateboard style,
And so I was like, man, maybe that's the thing.
Like they have girls. They have a girls skater camp
in the summer in Seattle. It's like cold. We could
take her there in Seattle. But then I started thinking,
and it's so wrong headed to go down the bad Avenue.

(48:33):
But like I was a little skater kid in a
way growing up, but I didn't I wasn't in it
for too long. But you know, I know what happens
at skate parks. It's not as bad as this movie.
But those are the kids who were getting into weed
at fourteen years drinking. Yeah, but then I was like,
you know, you can't live in fear like that and
just say like no, you've got to go to gymnastics. Um,

(48:55):
So we'll see what happens. I mean, it's probably a
little more wholesome these days, and it was in previous
eras maybe that maybe I'm wrong on that. Dude, I
got that play aground a smell weed coming from that
state every time. Yeah, the old fourth Ward spark. Yeah,
but you know, you just you can't like lock your
kids up and prevent them from being exposed to badness.

(49:20):
At some point they've got a interface with the real world.
She could also be super good at it and get
sponsored and got the extra to make a ship done
of money meat Tony Hawk and all that exactly. There
are there's a skater in this movie. The character who
plays his dad is a because a very cool, which
you can kind of tell he's a non actor. He's all, yea, yeah, yeah,

(49:43):
but there's that's a good time to mention that the parents.
He almost does a Charlie Brown thing in this movie,
where you don't you get to see the detective but
almost all the other adults. There's a teacher that you
get an administrator that you get to see her face
a little a bit, but with the with the mom
and the dad, you rarely ever see their face in

(50:04):
focus at all. The mom is like she's she's way
in the distance in that shot where she comes down
the stairs when he's down in his room from behind, Yeah, exactly,
when when they go back upstairs, it's over her shoulders,
so you just see the back of her head kind
of out of focus. The dad is completely out of
focus for a long time in that sequence where they're
talking there. Yeah, and there's sort of like he's he's

(50:27):
trying to connect and they're not really connecting. And then
finally when he kind of like he turns it around
again and he's like, hey, you know, really, I'm serious,
like this whole situation sucks and I really want to
make the best of it. Then he's he's kind of
in focus and they actually do it. Seems like have
like a moment for for a second there of recognition. Yeah,
and and that was no accident. It kind of mirrors

(50:49):
the conversation. He comes into focus as their relationship comes
more into focus. Yes, um, but I thought it was
a good thing, Like I've seen enough of Elephant to
know that it's sort of was the same bag, wasn't
it pretty much fully from the children's point of view, Yeah,
elephant is it does the same thing with with the
kind of the shallow doth the field, um oftentimes filming

(51:11):
people from the back, which is very interesting, um tracking
tracking down these um, these long corridors of the high school,
and um, it has a very sinister quality to it.
Elephants so much more. Elephants a movie I struggle with
because I think when I first saw it, I really
really loved it. It was like my my maybe first

(51:32):
year of college when that came out two thousand two
thou three, and um, I guess second year of college. Whatever.
But as I've as I've watched it more, as I've
gotten older, it's gotten harder to watch for me because
when I was when I was first seeing it, I
was only a couple of years removed from being in

(51:52):
high school, and so I basically identified with those kids
with that situation exactly. Columbine happened when I was in
eighth grade about to go to ninth grade, So it
was sort of like, welcome to high school, and now
we have shootings, you know, and it was it was.
And that's the thing too, is that in that era,
it was just Columbine. You know, Columbine was like this

(52:15):
singular horrible thing that we all knew about, and it
was sort of like a never again. You know, you
didn't have active shooter drills exactly, this this this awful
thing that happened this one time. And then, you know,
now when I watch it today, I'm older, I'm not
the age of those kids anymore. And you know, it's
it's not really the film's fault, but I understand intellectually

(52:36):
that this is just something that happens, unfortunately, very often,
you know, in this country. And in a way, it
kind of robs the film of of a of a
meeting in a way, because it's not about this one
singular event. It's just about this horribly banal thing that
that happens over and over, and it's sort of there's

(52:58):
there's more of like a nihilism to it, because there's
it's not like this bad thing that happened one time
that we learned from. It's just kind of this It's
like it's like you know, a car accident or something.
It's just it happens. It happens all the time, and
so some of the things that that film does in
terms of building the suspense and so on, feels really
icky when you realize that it's about something so real,

(53:22):
but yet he's he's using kind of these filmic conventions
of building suspense and um, you know, playing with the
audiences emotions in a way. Yeah, that that feels because
I mean that the whole film is like this incredibly
slow build up to the event, and you know going
in that that's what's going to happen. And it's like
watching a train wreck and slow motion, you know, a

(53:42):
very a very beautiful train wreck with like beautiful music
and absolutely gorgeous cinematography and so on. Um, I mean
it's it's probably one of my favorite shot films ever. Um,
just amazing. And I've seen pieces of Last Days too.
Was that overall? Was that good? Yeah? No, I mean
I I don't have a bad word to say really
about any of these films of this period, other than

(54:06):
you know, Elephant Is is a little difficult now, um,
but not really not necessarily the film's fault. Last Days,
I think is a little bit more. It's less of
the fluid like long takes and a little bit more
on the side of fragmented timelines and locked off shots. Um.
He's referencing this Shantel Ackerman film Gean Dilman, um quite

(54:29):
a bit in that film, Jean Delmont is a is
a three hour plus film basically about a woman alone
by herself in her apartment, in her kitchen doing housework
and washing dishes and other stuff happens. But it was
it was like this really powerful, uh, kind of feminist
statement back in the seventies about you know, domesticity and

(54:49):
women and so on. Um. And so he's referencing that
quite a bit in in Last Days in sort of
just leaving the camera on and and kind of playing
uh with boredom, with duration and so on in a
way that Elephant and Paranoid Park don't do so much. Yeah.
And then imagine in Last Days it's the the prison

(55:10):
of celebrity, which sort of Kurt Cobain's, you know, part
of his downfall. Yeah, the prison celebrity, the hangers on,
the people that we're supposed to be your friends but
they're they're not, And and the people that really are
trying to do something are kind of kept at arms
length and and all that. Yeah, Yeah, I'm gonna I'm
gonna finish up the second half of gus Man's ance

(55:31):
career and then expe awesome. I want to talk to
for a sect to about another one of my favorite shots,
the shower shot. Yes, it's after um. Well, so what
happens is there's a an odd not an odd, but

(55:53):
just a nonconventional timeline in this movie, and about halfway through,
like I said, it's revealed that this kid is actually responsible,
and it goes to that night shows what happened. There
is one really gross shot of a dude cut in
a half. I'm glad it was in there because it
was very impactful and like you kind of had to
see it. Um. And then he goes he tosses the

(56:15):
skateboard into the Willamette River, which is ends up being
evidence because they find it. Um and then realizes he
has blood and on the board maybe right exactly um,
and then they he's got his clothes that he's got
rid of it, goes home, bags him up, and then
gets in the shower very disturbed, and it's just a beautiful,

(56:36):
beautiful slow motion shot where he plays with exposure again
and the sound too, because he has all these like
it's this weird field recording of like birds singing and
nature sounds and um and insects and so on. There
was a yes, yes, I know, I noticed that too,
And it's interesting too. It it seems like they're they're

(56:56):
playing with the exposure, but I think they're also moving
a light physically in the room because the directionality of
the shadow on the wall kind of changes too. It's
sort of ramps across. It looked like somebody. I thought
someone was going to get in the shower. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So it's it's a very unnerving shot, the way that
the water the the these individual like strands of water

(57:20):
falling from his hair because he has this long hair
with all these kind of interesting points on it where
the water can fall, and so in slow motion the
water is like this solid kind of thing and it's
just he he looks like an alien or something. It's
very very unnerving and um and of course you know
metaphorically the idea of like showering to get clean and
to kind of wash away the sin or the or

(57:42):
the the blood or or the guilt exactly. Um. Yeah,
such a such a powerful shot and such a kind
of thing that obviously in a novel you would just
have sort of conventional like he was worried, he felt guilty,
he was panicking, and so on, but to show it
visually without saying anything, to just know that what we're

(58:04):
observing is is maybe one of the darkest moments of
his life of him really fully reckoning, like because in
the immediate aftermath, it's just pure shock. It's like survival
fight or flight kind of thing where he's just trying
to get rid of the evidence and get home and
figure out what he's gonna do. But then once he
finally gets in the shower, that's when he has a
moment to kind of yah, breathe and like really process

(58:27):
a little bit of what's happened. And it, Yeah, it's
so powerful, which is something that like, uh, I don't
know if I'll go so far as to say it,
but it's a trope. But that scene has been in
a lot of films where a bad thing happens, they're
very adrenaline lye that's not a word dealing with the
immediate aftermath. And then there's a point where they slow

(58:47):
down and then it hits him and they break down,
and this it's just done in such a great way.
It doesn't feel tired at all. Um. You know, it's
such a slow shot that builds from him just getting
in the shower, his dry hair getting wet to soaking,
to the waterfall, and then he eventually he don't see

(59:07):
his face because he's got his hands over it, but
you can tell he's crying, yeah, and just hits against
the side of the wall and slowly slides down out
of frame. Just really really beautiful shot. And it's it's
interesting too, because you see it, you see a brief
moment of that of him taking the shower anyway you
see earlier in the film, because he kind of goes
through the events of that night. It's almost like different

(59:28):
drafts or like he's he's kind of like passing over
at once, and he just completely avoids what really happened,
you know, he just he kind of skips forward. You
this is later that night, you know, I had to
change my clothes and dot da da da, And he
gets in the shower for a second, and then the
second or third time through, we kind of you know,
we see what actually happened at the at the at
the train and um, and then we see the shower

(59:52):
and full and we realize that we're now fully within um,
you know, his perspective of that of that moment of
wrecked timeline or not timeline, but just the correct order
of events. And one thing that I clocked last night
too was that, UM, when he's when you see in
all these scenes where he's writing the journal, you know,
writing on the on in pencil on paper, Um, there's

(01:00:15):
a moment where, uh, like in the banning of the film,
he's he's by himself, he's writing. UM. His uncle who's
actually played by the cinematographer Christopher Dorele, he comes in
and switches on a light and says, what are you writing,
And he's just like, oh, just school work. And he
kind of goes into the room and closes his door,
and then he's in that room and he's kind of
just writing for a while. Then at a certain point

(01:00:36):
I feel like he actually switches on the light, like
on the lamp that's on the desk there with him.
And I feel like, actually, if you if you go
back and you look at those scenes, so I think
there's a little bit of aggression of the lamp being
off to the lamp being on and him getting a
little bit more honest or a little bit more like
exhaustive in the detail of what he's writing about. UM.
So there's there's a little bit of a visual metaphor

(01:00:56):
there too, to kind of indicate that over over time
he's becomeing more um, just open about about what he's
writing and what he's kind of confessing to Oh totally. Um.
And the other thing that that scene where it shows
the reality of what happened that night calls back is
back to that great opening interrogation scene in the library

(01:01:17):
when you realize that he was lying the whole time.
When he gives him this really really tight, believable story
about what happened. He's not nervous. He's like so like
when the investigator is questioning him, he's really he's doing
it in a good cop way. But if you have
ever heard of cop ask questions like that, he's trying
to trip him up a little bit. He's saying, he's

(01:01:39):
asking him very quickly like would you eat? Would you
go to subway? You got the receipt, what you have
on it? And his kid is just nails it, and
I believed him. That's why I didn't think it tipped
into he's guilty because it totally believable to me, and
not nervous at all, like, uh, you know, may always
like no no, Mayo sick. He's like gotta have Mayo,

(01:02:00):
No no, no cand of Mayo. Like they have like
a real nice back and forth. And it's not the
kind of thing you would expect somebody in that in
that predicament to be able to they be. You would
think they'd be a lot more defensive about it or
something like you know, no, you don't keep receipts? Who
keeps subway receipts? But he's very casual about like, no
he keeps, you keep subway receipts, But he's he's lighthearted
about it. Yeah, It's almost like in the way he

(01:02:21):
is going into that scene and is pre that point
in the movie where you know he did it, and
I think he even writes something about blocking it out,
it's almost like he has no memory of doing it
until he sees that picture and the second interrogation, and
he even says something about that it all came back
to him or something like yeah, it's like a repressed
memory almost, He's compartmentalized it until that he can kind

(01:02:44):
of process it and and yeah, it is it is
seeing those images that that takes him back to that moment.
And it's interesting like later, you know, when when the
big reveal does happen in the film, um, and he's
he's sort of he has that moment where he's actually
looking down at the guy who's been kind of half
and the guys looking up at him because he's still
got a few seconds of consciousness and you know it

(01:03:06):
probably it probably would not have lasted as long as
it lasts in the film, but it's almost a suspended
moment in time where it's like time stopped and he
and he felt like they had this back and forth
exchange where they looked at each other in the eyes
and so on. Who knows if that really quote unquote happened.
But then at that moment, there's like this beautiful coral
Beethoven music from the Night Symphony, and it actually cuts

(01:03:28):
back to the interrogation scene and again it's like the
that slash of light going across the CoP's face. It's
sort of like, here is revealed, you know, the the
the full truth of this of the situation. It's yeah,
I love I love the way the film plays with
chronology and kind of uses what he says is like
his poor creative writing ability as a kind of justification

(01:03:50):
for why he hops around so much in his in
his memory. Yeah, and the cool reveal that I mentioned
earlier about this journal is that we learned sort of
towards the end of the film he as his other
friend named Macy played by Lauren McKinney. I assume another
non actor who does a great, great job. Yeah, even
a conventional acting way. I think she's very very believable. Yeah. Um,

(01:04:12):
she we learned towards the end that she is the
one that had told him to write a journal. Uh.
And he and that is the reason, you know, if
you look at it from a filmmaking point of view,
that's the reason we're even getting this film in this
story is because she has told him to write down
his thoughts and that it would help him. And um,
and I guess because you know, he's a kid that's uh,

(01:04:36):
his parents are separated, they're getting divorced. He's got this
girlfriend that he is just sort of sleep walking through. Uh,
this relationship. He's he doesn't even like her. He even
says that to the other girl, He's like why am
I why was he even dating? Or uh? They do
sleep together? He uh he, I guess the flowers. I

(01:04:56):
hate that term. But uh, she more chooses him to
lose her virginity to Yeah. In that one scene, she
it's it's such a I mean, it definitely is that
way to to a lot of kids at that age,
Like they just want to get it over with, They
just want to lose it. They want to check that
box and move on and sort of like I feel,
you know, it's it's it's part of like getting a

(01:05:19):
driver's license or or smoking or like anything that teenagers
do that sort of a quote unquote write of passage
or whatever. Um, it's just it's there. There's it's less
an emotional thing, and it's just kind of like that's
what you do. You you you get a boyfriend that need
do it or whatever, you know. Um. And so she's
very kind of detached about it in a way. The
first thing she does when it's over is just go

(01:05:41):
off to the bathroom and they call her friends and like, yes,
we did it. It was so amazing. And he's just
kind of they're like, Okay, I got to that, you know,
I didn't I wasn't really interested, but I guess it's fine.
She's like, we need to start buying condoms because it's
gonna be happening a lot. He breaks up with her.
There's a there's a funny moment where um, she she's
you know, she's at his sucker and he starts to say,

(01:06:02):
you know, like he doesn't necessarily want to buy more,
and he has this thing about like, well it was
it was your idea in the first place to do it,
and she's like, well, what are you talking about, Like
now you're saying you didn't want you or something, and
then he he quickly turns it around and says, no, no, no,
like by the condoms. I thought that was your idea,
so I figured we would do that together. And she
kind of calms down. She's like, oh, okay, I thought
you were talking about something else. But she was completely right,

(01:06:24):
like she knew she she totally picked up on the
subtext there. Yeah, And the relationship with the Macy characters great.
She's she's really sweet and nice and um, they have
a playful sort of I mean as playful as he
gets in this movie sort of back and forth, and
there's that one moment when they're sitting together where the
way it's framed, like you they almost hold hands when

(01:06:46):
they're on the bus. Yeah, they're not touching, but it's
ends they're almost kind of like I think you can
tell that they both want to. They're both they're both
thinking about it, but the tension is they're they're they're
just too nervous or it's a sweet shot, and it
really like, I love it when a filmmaker is so
skill that they can conjure up such an evocative moment

(01:07:08):
just from a simple thing like that, because I immediately
remembered being a kid, and like holding hands for the
first time was so powerful and just that connected touch,
physical touch was such a big deal. And he gets
that all in that one beautiful, beautiful shot. It's, um,
it's like that Big Star song thirteen. You know, it's

(01:07:29):
it's it's that kind of moment of like innocent, let
me walk you home from school, hands, that whole thing.
It's it's yeah, it's a very very cute scene. And
it's very interesting because moments like that are interwoven with
him trying to figure out am I going to be
charged with murder? You know? And and and the the
whip lash. The juxtaposition of those two realities existing at

(01:07:51):
the same time. There's a great moment um when he
goes let's see, it's when he is it's it's one
of the times that they're hanging out anyway, him and
him and Macy, and she's kind of pressing him on
the breakup, I think, and he goes into this kind
of mini speech where he's like, look, I just don't
think this stuff really matters. You know, There's there's more

(01:08:13):
important stuff in the world. There's like the war in
Iraq and and people starving in Africa and all this
kind of stuff. And she's like, since when do you
care about that stuff? You know? He's like yeah, yeah.
And he's like, well, look, I just think that, you know,
there's like this other world out there beyond like parents
and girlfriends and breakups. There's like this other there's other layers,
you know, and um and I just think that, uh,

(01:08:35):
and he kind of trails off, you know, basically, but
he's he's basically saying like he's he's trying to articulate
that he's been he's been introduced to the world of
grown ups, in the world of like big time ambiguity
and and and heavy stuff, and he can't quite process
it yet because he's still just a kid at heart,
you know. Um. But he he starts to articulating anyway
that he's caught this glimpse of this other world that's

(01:08:55):
out there, and now his like teenage you know, bubble
um just seems completely trivial to him. Yeah, there's another
great moment too that um, you know, in a movie
that's eighty minutes long, you could very easily lose a
moment like this. But towards the end when his little
brother and his little brother is barely in the movie,

(01:09:16):
but his little brother is he's uh Gabe's line there
on the couch or Gabe, that's the real guy's name, Alex.
Alex is laying there on the couch, and his little
brother comes by and just tells this story that only
a little brother. And what he's doing, which I didn't
pick up on, is describing a movie. He's quoting Napoleon Dynamite.
Oh is it? I couldn't figure it out because he

(01:09:37):
keeps the character that he keeps talking about. Okay, Napoleon,
all right, I was hoping you could knew, but I
couldn't quite because he's kind of mumbling, and yeah, he's
hard to follow. And I remember being that age and
like describing stuff like that to my parents and the
humoring me basically because like when you're when you're that young,
like your idea of humor is just quoting other stuff awkwardly.

(01:09:59):
And yeah, and and it's very interesting visually to what
he does in that scene because there's like a desk
or or table or something that's that's partially covering up Alex.
So there's this big kind of black square in the
foreground overlapping him where you kind of just see like
the top of his head and a little bit side
of his face, and there's like a TV on in
the background. There's like also I think like a beam

(01:10:21):
from the house that's that's sort of like covering up
the brother. Maybe it's between the two of them a
little bit, but you it's it's not like it's not
framed in a way to make it feel like this
is comfortable domestic time. It's sort of like he's he's
trying to be there for his little brother to have
this kind of like innocent moment, but in his head,
everything is all wrong. Everything is all heavy and dark

(01:10:43):
and confusing, and he's just kind of he's he's playing
the role of like the older brother who's listening, but
in reality he's kind of that. That's sort of like
immersion has been broken, you know. Yeah, and it's it's
a framing and a shot that, uh that if you
were in film school teacher would say, like, what are
you doing with this thing? Wrong with it? Yeah, you

(01:11:03):
gotta you gotta move that, you gotta get this out
of the way. And it just it really works somehow. Yeah,
very cool and I love I mean, just like the
it feels like I'm sure I'm sure probably in the
script they probably didn't even mention Napoleon Dynamite. I'm sure
it was probably just like that kid's favorite movie or
something that they could they could just have him he
was not reading enthusiasts. Yeah, and I love that. How

(01:11:25):
long did they leave it going on? And then he
gets out at exactly the right moment where he he
kind of winds up and he's like and then another thing,
you know, and then it like cuts to the scene
and kind of realized that it just kept going for Yeah.
One of my favorite moments is towards the end when
he he's been writing this journal and he well, it's

(01:11:45):
kind of the very end and then he burns it eventually. Uh,
and Elliott Smith comes back in is his great second
half book end another one of my favorite songs, and
uh he I think he lets this one play the
entire link. I think so too. Yeah, of the film,
both of I mean, both of the songs play for
quite a while. The White Lady Loves You More, Um,

(01:12:08):
the whole song, isn't it pretty much? Because I think
it's yeah, unless there's like a skillful edit, like you said,
I'm pretty sure the whole the whole song plays because
it goes from um, whatever was on screen initially something
narrative related to then it kind of cuts to like
just like skate footage. But it is like this like
three minute kind of pause in the film where you're

(01:12:28):
seeing a lot of the skate footage and stuff. And
I'm pretty sure that the same thing happens. Yeah, at
the end, like the whole song plays out. Yeah. I
mean it's an hour and twenty minutes long and there's
ten minutes of just music video skate foot Yet he
still manages to tell a complete whole story like in
a really rich way. Yeah, yeah, so jealous. I know.

(01:12:50):
I wanted to say, like, one one thing did you
this is this is just an interpretation. I don't know
if you picked up on this or felt the same
way about it. But part of the relationship with it
with the girlfriend, it seemed to me like maybe he
was a little bit unsure of his own sexuality, Like
maybe he wasn't necessarily into girls. Maybe he's into guys,

(01:13:10):
because I think there's I think there's like a little
bit of attention with the bad kid at the skate
park when he's like, hey, kid, you want to go
get some beers and ride trains, even though he can't
really articulate it to himself. The way the way the
camera films him this other guy and this close up
it's this kind of beautiful portrait, um. And the way
I think he kind of gives in to his request

(01:13:32):
to go do this stuff. I think he's almost doing
it that we can't yet admit it to himself. He's
like his his alterior motive is to just like spend
time with this guy and kind of see what he's about. Um,
because it could be sexual or it could just be
he's a cool older kid. But yeah, there is an ambiguity,
I think because I think I think especially because you know,
the his girlfriend that he's dating. Um, she's you know,

(01:13:56):
she's a cheerleader, she's she's very like conventionally attractive. She
seems like the kind of girl that any teenage boy
would like be super into dating. And the fact that
he's like so kind of indifferent and he just wants
to go hang out at the skate park and so on. Um,
and then also the fact that even even later on
when it's just him and Macy, like there's still that
kind of distance where it kind of, you know, most

(01:14:18):
of the time you would assume like, oh, these two
seem like they're much more on the same frequency. They
could be an item, but maybe they won't be, because again,
he's sort of he hasn't yet figured it out. And
that's that's a common theme and a lot of gust
fans dance movies. Obviously gust Van Sant also being a
gay man, and um, it's something that comes up like
an elephant as well, Um that he plays with a

(01:14:41):
lot a lot in his films. Yeah. Yeah, And there's
even that scene later on after the breakup when he's
talking to his friends about it, and one of them
is like, like, I know, it's better to be getting
mad than not, and he's he's just not identifying with
that at all. Um. And the other moment earlier on,
when he's with his main sort of best friend, I
guess when he you know, he gets a new skateboard

(01:15:02):
because he has lost the other one, the murder weapon
off the bridge, and his friend says, you know, is
that a fag skateboard or something like that, and then
his reaction to that you could definitely read into a
little bit Yeah. And there's a great there's a great
kind of subjective shot right after where it's his it's
him from the passenger seat looking at his friend while
this like punk track plays really fast and aggressive and

(01:15:24):
it's slow motion, and it's his friend kind of turning
and looking at him and then turning back to kind
of look at the road. Um. I it's hard to
even put into words what's so great about that scene.
The elements are so simple, but but it is just
something about the combination of the slowness of the shot
and the kind of contemplative feeling of it married with

(01:15:45):
a kind of like fast, aggressive punk song, hardcore really well,
another juxtaposition of of score and what's going on on screen. Uh.
He he does it sort of all over the place.
I forgot about that one. Usually it's it's like the
breakup scene. There's that sort of old school romantic score.
In this way, he sort of does the reverse, but

(01:16:05):
just so good man. I really really loved the movie.
I'm glad you sort of jogged me back into my
love for guess Van's aunt, because I'm gonna die back
into all this again. Uh. You know the end of
the film, it's sort of implied, you know, he burns
the stuff his journal, and it's implied that he gets
away with it. There's nothing to make you think otherwise this.

(01:16:26):
You know, when I was watching it last night, something
I kind of like, never really watched the film for before,
but I was trying to kind of clock at this
time the guard. I think, you you don't you don't
know very much about him. You just see his face.
He never says anything, but you you see his face.
You see like his his I D card, you know,
his headshot when it's on the news and so on.

(01:16:48):
And I don't know. I I got the feeling that
this was kind of just like a blue collar, working
class guy totally. He's not drawn a big salary. He's
just kind of like one of the millions of kind
of faceless and non with people that that don't get
written about or or made movies about and so on. Um,
he's just a guy doing a job. And contrast that

(01:17:09):
with with Gabe and his family. They seem to be
solidly middle class or even maybe upper middle because there's
like a beach house and when the the the other
kid's house city, his best friend's house that he sleeps
over at, when he wakes up in the morning, there's
that beautiful sunroom with like the high vaulted ceiling and everything.
That's that's some money, you know. So I think while

(01:17:31):
it never it never gets to the point where there's
like a criminal case or anything, so he never gets
to pay for like a pricey lawyer to get him
off all that kind of stuff. Um. At the same time,
I think there's a little bit of an undercurrent of
like this is kind of a you know, a well
off kid and this sort of anonymous blue collar guy
who just gets killed and kind of forgotten about. Um.

(01:17:54):
And yeah, I feel like that's a little bit of
the tension there that he Gabe is gonna is gonna
be a to to go on and live this or
Alex the character is going to be able to go
on and live this kind of you know, like easy,
easy life. You know, he's he's still going to be
set up for success because he comes from the family
that comes from he went to the school that he
went to, and he's going to be one of those

(01:18:15):
guys that has a secret exactly. He's you know, he's
he's a quote unquote rebellious teenager and everything, but I'm
sure I'll get his act together and go to college
and and all the rest of it. So yeah, and
and he's going to have this this really dark thing
that's going to haunt him for the rest of his life.
But at least externally, you know, the facade is going
to be somebody who's had a very kind of simple

(01:18:36):
and charmed life. Yeah, let me ask you this for
an alternate ending. Is same exact shot him burning the
book pages, Elliot Smiths playing in the fire outside, and
just at the very end of that scene you see
very soft focus the police squad cars with the Whites
well into the background in him just kind of stand up,

(01:18:58):
cut to black, Like, what do you think about that?
Interesting to me? To me, I think I open it
does change it. Yeah, I think to me the open
ending is more interesting because it gets it gets into
the real Like I feel like if the cases is
closed in some way, or if we feel like he
got caught it, it's sort of it redirects us more

(01:19:20):
into just sort of like a genre who done it territory,
whereas leaving it unsolved and ambiguous gets us way more
into sort of like I don't know, DOTOYASKI territory, like
crime and punishment, the idea of like if you commit
a crime and you get away with it, you still
have to reckon with yourself and your conscience and and
how that can eat away at a person over a lifetime.

(01:19:41):
And isn't that actually maybe in some ways the worst
punishment than just getting a manslaughter case. You can say
to somebody, look, I was a kid. It was it
was a terrible mistake. There's not a day in my
life that I don't regret it, etcetera, etcetera. But I
done my time and now I am moving on, you know, right,

(01:20:03):
He his whole rest of his life, presumably is going
to carry this thing with him, and no matter what
good deeds he does in the future, he's always going
to have that nagging in the back of his head, like,
but you did this thing and you can't tell anybody,
and you can never tell anybody, and it's just gonna Yeah,
that's a different deal. That's like stuff that leads to
alcoholism and drug abuse. And UM, not to go too

(01:20:25):
far down the Jerry rabbit hole, because we gotta wrap
up here in a sec But his movie Jerry, with
Matt Damon and Casey Afflect tells the true story of
or a semblance of the of these two guys went
hiking out of the desert. They get lost, they suffer dehydration,
one kills the other in a in what appeared to

(01:20:45):
be a mercy killing. And uh, I just sort of
doe down that rabbit hole of the real story last night.
And that guy, UH paid his I think he went
to had two years of a suspended sentence, h and
robation and all this stuff. So he was found guilty
in a way of manslaughter or not in a way,
but fully guilty of manslaughter. But I just typed in

(01:21:07):
his real name, and I was like, I wonder if
he's still around. Uh he is, and he's kind of
notebook open Facebook page and you can just go on
Facebook and look at this guy's life. And it's super
weird that we live in a wow, weird time where
you can do that killed killed his friend is like
on Facebook. And you know, I'm not saying that he's

(01:21:28):
a bad guy or anything, because it no, no, no,
but it's there was some weirdness with the case, but
it did appear to be manslaughter. He didn't want to
murder his friend. But it is strange to just be like,
oh and here he is at a park having a pick. Yeah,
it's so strange. I mean I still forget sometimes, like
how quickly and easily it is to find people on Facebook,
especially um, the whole idea of just like, you know,

(01:21:51):
the mystery of people from our past, we wonder whatever
happened to dot dot dot. It's it's it's so easy
to to solve in most cases. And yeah, even even
people that you think of as not necessarily famous, but
people of note they're just on Facebook. You know, I
can find him and you can send him a request
or a message or whatever. It's very very strange. Uh.

(01:22:12):
One final note here for me. The movie ends, uh,
and the credit sequence is set to a song by
a man named cast King, who Uh it sounds like
a little bit of a bizarro world Johnny Cash in
a way. And then you know, I looked him up
and cast King as I'm sure you know. But for listeners,
he was a He was an old man in Alabama

(01:22:34):
who made his who was a singer and made his
first record when he was like seventy eight years old,
seventy nine years old, and it's just this. I started
listening to it immediately. It's just beautiful dominal and died
a couple of years later. But he it's a pretty
interesting story. And and of course CAUs fans Aunt knows
about this and finds it out because he's the King
of Cool, and it has it has a lot to um.

(01:22:56):
I think it has a lot to say thematically for
the film itself, because yeah, the refrain is he died
like a man, and I think I think what's happening
is what you know, the connection to the film is
that like he died like a man sort of means
like he faced the music, like whatever was out there
that he needed to to acknowledge. He did and he
paid his life for it. But basically, like you know,

(01:23:19):
the the the account summed out to zero, like he
paid the debt whatever whatever it was, whereas in this film,
that debt is still outstanding, and it's going to remain outstanding.
Like he's not going to quote unquote die like a man.
He's going to die like a coward. And in some
ways for not facing up to you know, for for
taking in some ways the easy way out and in
some ways the harder way out. He almost to his
dad at one point even and didn't do it. I

(01:23:43):
love that, um, that whole that whole sequence where even
something as simple as like throwing your skateboard away and
and and changing your clothes, like suddenly there's all these
questions of like his mom asking him, Hey, where's your skateboard?
And then his friend like did you dude, what's that?
What's with the new board? And you know, and then
when he calls his dad had um his mom again
asking him like, oh the colorade, he said that you

(01:24:03):
called from your friend's house at like four in the morning. Yeah.
In that unenviable position of being a parent going through
a divorce that has to kind of let your kid
get away with stuff. It's like it's like there's not
enough there to really pursue further. She just knows that,
like he's he's lying. Something went down, but I don't

(01:24:24):
know what. And obviously most parents are not going to
be able to conceive that, Oh, he probably went to
a skateboard and like murdered skatepark and murdered somebody. So
it's probably more like, oh, there was a party and
it got unruly and he was really drunk and he
called his dad or something like that. But you know,
that's that's the level of um, you know, severity that
she's thinking. But I do love that that long pause
where she's just like he's like, so, I don't I

(01:24:46):
have no idea, and she's just like, well, bumbles, Yeah,
it's a terrible excuse. He's a terrible liar in general,
like you don't have no idea what happened. And then
and then when he's at the he's at the mall,
he's reading the newspaper and again he's looking at the
obituaries to see if there's something about the guy in there.
Yeah the metro section, Yeah yeah, yeah, And She's like, oh,
you're reading sports in the metro section and where you're
reading sports, and again, his story just falls apart immediately.

(01:25:07):
But yeah, there's there's not enough there to really pursue.
So it's just like everybody knows that something is weird,
but nobody was going to push it any further than that. Yeah,
it works that it doesn't go down those roads further.
I think, yeah, that all of a sudden, Macy wasn't like, wait,
something's going on, I gotta figure this out. It's totally
realistic that like it would just be like this weird hiccup,
you know, momentary and then I've forgotten about probably you know. Yeah, alright, man,

(01:25:31):
well that was great. We did what I hoped we
would do, which is talk about the movie as long
as the movie was. I think we talked about every
part of it in fact. But this is a movie
that was just fantastic. Highly recommend it um if you're
into you know, if you're into art and cinema. This
is one of those films. But not inaccessible either. It's

(01:25:51):
not so out there that it's hard to watch or
anything like that. It's really a quick, tight, really well
made constructed film. Yeah, I would say, if you're if
you're interested in this period of of Gus fan Stands filmmaking,
I would start with this film, even though it's the
last in the progression. I would start here and then
go back to Jerry and do the rest in order,
because I think you'll you'll probably have an easier time

(01:26:13):
appreciating those films when you kind of see this slightly
more digestible version. Totally awesome. Dude, Well this was great. Uh,
I'll see you get in another month or so. Great.
I love it. Yeah, looking forward to it. All right, Well,
thanks everyone for listening. Check out Paranoid Park. It is
actually streaming if you have a Hulu it's on Hulu
for free um or you know the cost of Hulu.

(01:26:35):
And I had a commercial at the beginning, but then
was uninterrupted. I think you can you can rent it
on Amazon Prime also if you want to go that route. Awesome. Well,
thanks Casey, and thanks to the listeners, and we will
see you next Friday. Looy Crush is produced, edited, and

(01:27:02):
engineered by Ramsay Hunt here in our home studio at
Pont City Market, Atlanta, Georgia. For I Heart Radio. For
more podcasts for My Heart radio, visit the I heart
Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.

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