Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: Deerskin

In this classic episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Joe and guest host J.J. disucss Quentin Dupieux's 2019 film "Deerskin," starring Jean Dujardin and Adèle Haenel. (originally published 7/18/2025)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, Welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is Rob
Lamb today. We have an episode that aired seven eighteen,
twenty twenty five. I was on vacation when this episode
was recorded. This is a conversation between Joe and our producer,
our excellent producer, jaj about the twenty nineteen film Deer Skin.
So yeah, well, one of the more recent films that

(00:25):
has been covered on Weird House Cinema. So let's jump
right in.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 3 (00:43):
Hello, and welcome to Weird House Cinema. My name is
Joe McCormick. My regular co host, Robert Lamb is out
today and so sitting in the guest co host chair
we have and I'm so excited to welcome him onto
the side of the mic for the first time. Our
longtime audio producer JJ Posway.

Speaker 4 (01:03):
Jj. How you doing man?

Speaker 5 (01:05):
Hey? Doing pretty well? How are you, Joe? I'm doing great.

Speaker 3 (01:09):
To be honest, actually I'm incredibly tired, but I'm not
the same. But I think we're gonna have a great
time today. I'm truly, genuinely so excited for you to
come on the show. We've been talking about doing this
for a while, and I'm glad we're doing it with
a with a weird house pick. So today on Weird
House Cinema, we're going to be talking about a movie

(01:32):
that you selected, and that is the twenty nineteen French
black comedy Deer Skin, directed by about to say a
French name, Quinton Depew.

Speaker 4 (01:43):
How's that?

Speaker 5 (01:44):
Yeah? I think that's probably about how I'm going to
say it too. It's okay, Quanton Depew. Q I'll probably
say Quentin Depew.

Speaker 4 (01:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:54):
In English it looks like Quintin so Quentin might say
Quentin Depew. So I had never seen a movie by
this filmmaker before. Obviously this is more recent than a
lot of the films we cover, but nothing wrong with that.
So what got you excited about Deer Skin? What's your
relationship with this movie?

Speaker 5 (02:11):
To be completely honest, it's when I only watched a
couple of weeks ago. I have a couple of friends
named Ian and Terrence who have watched most of Depew's movies,
and they started introducing me to his work, and at
this point of watched like five or six of them.
They're absurd and surreal, they're a lot of fun. Coincidentally,

(02:32):
last week watching the movie Incredible but True, I thought
one of his movies would make a good Weird House
Cinema episode, and I definitely recommend that one, but Deer
Skin kind of felt like the best fit for an
episode of Weird House.

Speaker 3 (02:46):
Well, I'm glad you picked this one because I loved it.
I thought it was really weird and funny, just fantastic.
I liked the pathetic, understated sense of humor in it,
and yeah, kind of it's the kind of absurd groove
that it gets into. I think you probably know what
I mean by this. The pacing of the increase in

(03:07):
absurdity is really exquisite here.

Speaker 5 (03:10):
Absolutely. Yeah, it's it's slow but steady, and I think
groove is the right word. There is like a strange
musicality to it.

Speaker 3 (03:18):
Yeah, not to it actually has good music in it. Oh,
it's it's not like a musical movie that's like dominated
by musical motifs, but it has like a few recurring
things like these ominous horns that come in with these
little bleats every now and then that are just kind
of sound like something's wrong. But sometimes it's just when
it's a guy looking in a mirror.

Speaker 5 (03:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:39):
Yeah, now, Incredible but True. That's another Depew movie. That's
the one with the robot penis. We're not talking about
that one.

Speaker 5 (03:47):
Yeah, that one didn't seem right for the show, but
I do highly recommend that one. That one has a
little more of the like a sci fi thing going on,
if you could call it that. I think it's a
really good primer. But every movie I've seen of his
has been really great and pretty He's got a consistent tone.

(04:08):
I read this letterboxed review of Incredible but True, and
it was actually a disparaging review, But the way they
started off I thought was pretty apt in calling Depew
a premise generator. Yeah, and I think he's really great
at these just absurd premises, setting them up and letting

(04:29):
them play out for usually like an hour and fifteen
minutes or so. They're not often long movies.

Speaker 3 (04:36):
So I guess we could go ahead and say what
the absurd premise of Deer Skin is?

Speaker 4 (04:42):
How would I put it? It's about a.

Speaker 3 (04:45):
Kind of pathetic middle aged man who goes through some
sort of personal crisis and becomes enamored of a new
deer skin motorcycle jacket that he paid too much money
for and as his love affair with this jacket and
how he looks in it deepens, it goes to increasingly

(05:05):
bizarre places, and he eventually becomes a co conspirator with
the jacket, and they together decide that they must eliminate
all other jacket wearing phenomena from planet Earth, and this
will be the only jacket human duo that should be
allowed to exist.

Speaker 5 (05:21):
I think that's a great summary.

Speaker 3 (05:23):
Okay, now, having only seen this Depew film, I can
see how somebody might describe his style as premise generator.

Speaker 4 (05:33):
Because.

Speaker 3 (05:35):
While the I think you could call this this style
of film making like absurdist or absurd comedy, it's actually,
I think quite logical. It's just a very be follows
a C follows BE kind of logical progression pursuing this
absurd premise where if you take the absurd premise on,

(05:58):
everything just kind of flows and it makes sense totally.

Speaker 5 (06:02):
There's a quote I want to share later that I
think gets at that same sentiment, and Yeah, what is
so fun about it is the just the slow ratcheting
up of that absurdity.

Speaker 3 (06:16):
Another thing I want to establish here at the top.
It is hard not to see the main characters increasingly
bizarre and toxic relationship with his leather jacket as having
something to do with the way lonely people become obsessed
with things. And I feel like this is something I've

(06:38):
seen in my life has happened with people. I know,
in fact, I can feel little threads of it in
myself at different times in my life, the way that
when when you feel kind of alienated, or you are
lacking in a rich, well entangled, you know, sense of
human connections and human networks, when you're lacking in friendship

(07:00):
and family life and stuff like that, it seems like
maybe you are more prone to find a new thing
and then make that thing.

Speaker 4 (07:10):
Your entire personality.

Speaker 3 (07:12):
This is like all, you know, I've discovered that now
I'm into a new hobby or a new artist that
I like or something like that, and it's literally all
I can think and talk about, and all subject matter
is I now relate back to this thing.

Speaker 5 (07:29):
Yeah. I agree with that completely, and I think Depew
from what I've read, has a similar view.

Speaker 3 (07:37):
Oh okay, well maybe we'll get into that as we
go along.

Speaker 4 (07:41):
Elevator pitch.

Speaker 3 (07:42):
I guess I've already given the straightforward description of what
happens in the movie thematic elevator pitches. I'd say it's
a film about loneliness, falsity, and authenticity, obsession, and of
course killer style, both in the earnest and the ironic sense.

Speaker 5 (07:59):
Absolutely. Yeah, alright, we're gonna play a little bit of
the trailer audio.

Speaker 4 (09:14):
Now, j J.

Speaker 3 (09:14):
We we kind of had to put this episode together fast,
so I ended up streaming the movie, but you were
able to get a hold of a disc.

Speaker 5 (09:22):
Yeah, I rented from Videodrome here in Atlanta. It's also
available on Apple and Amazon Prime.

Speaker 3 (09:28):
Though now, as usual on a Weird House Cinema episode,
we're gonna end up discussing the plot in a lot
of detail. So if you haven't seen the movie and
you want to see Deer Skin without knowing everything in advance,
there are some fun surprises in it. Here is your
warning pause the episode. Here, go watch the movie first.
But if you think you'll never see it, or you

(09:48):
just don't care if we describe the whole story in advance,
let's plow right on ahead. All right, Well, let's move
on and talk about the connections and discuss some of
the key people involved. I think you had some stuff
on Quinton Depew the director writer Also I think yes he's.

Speaker 5 (10:14):
The director, writer, cinematographer and editor. Depew's a French filmmaker
a musician. He makes music under the name mister Wazo
and put out his first DP in nineteen ninety seven
via the label F Communications. A few years later, in
nineteen ninety nine, he'd released a single called flat Beat,
which was a hit in Europe. The music video for

(10:37):
Flatbeat was directed by Depew himself and featured a puppet
named flat Eric. Depew created flat Eric with Jim Henson's
Creature Shop, and the puppet, as well as the song
flat Beat, were used in a series of Levi's commercials
that he directed.

Speaker 4 (10:57):
What kind of animal is he?

Speaker 3 (10:59):
He's like a yellow dog but without ears, but with
the like little beady bits of coal for eyes.

Speaker 5 (11:07):
Yeah, I'd say that's an app description. But also little guy.

Speaker 3 (11:13):
Yeah, yeah, he's cute. I mean, is he cute or
is he cruel? And does he wish me harm?

Speaker 5 (11:19):
I feel like that exact intersection is where his music,
as mister waso. At least the stuff I've listened to
seems to live.

Speaker 3 (11:27):
So I haven't listened to any mister waso, what's the
what's the style of music? Like, how would you describe it?

Speaker 5 (11:33):
It falls broadly under the umbrellas of like electro and house.
He makes electronic music, And I mean, I think you
put it best just in describing Flat Eric. There's like
a very playful sinisterness. There's like always a layer of humor.

Speaker 3 (11:52):
Is it like in Deer Skin when there are those
scenes of George sharpening the fan blade to turn it
into a machete, But he's like playing with it. He's
playing with the with the watermelon and just having a
good time. It's like it's like a like a cute
having fun montage, but he's making a Jason Vorhees implement.

Speaker 5 (12:11):
Yeah, yeah, kind of. I linked one of these Levi's
commercials that has a I think paints a pretty good
picture of Flat Eric that features the song flat Beat.

Speaker 3 (12:24):
I'm gonna pull this up right now. Hold on, I
gotta order some jeans. No, it's good, it's like, uh,
I mean it's got that Oh. Here here's where I
don't know if the correct terminology. It's got a kind
of fuzzy malfunctioning electronics sound to the uh to the
tones in there. Uh, there's something that sounds like a

(12:45):
like an incomplete connection in the wiring.

Speaker 1 (12:48):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (12:48):
But also it's a little bit jaunty, you know. It's
it's like something you can nod your head to. It's
not like, you know, industrial downbeat kind of stuff.

Speaker 4 (12:56):
Uh. It's fun.

Speaker 3 (12:58):
But but but something sounds a little wrong.

Speaker 5 (13:00):
Yeah. Yeah, it's like a little distorted and ultimately it's fun,
but there's just like a tinge of menace to it,
the most playful kind of menace though.

Speaker 3 (13:13):
But also in this Levi's commercial, it's like a guy
driving with Flat Eric the puppet. They get pulled over
by a cop and Flat Eric quickly tries to make
his car look less threatening, so he turns around like
a pin up picture, and just on the other side,
it's a picture of a horse in a meadow.

Speaker 5 (13:31):
So he's still active as mister Waso, and some of
his movies have featured his music under that name, and
he is always credited as mister Waso when he makes
music for his movies. His first movie, titled non Film,
was released in two thousand and one, but his breakthrough
movie was twenty ten's Rubber, a movie about a sentient

(13:53):
killer tire with psychokinetic powers.

Speaker 3 (13:56):
So I've never seen Rubber. I had entirely the wrong
idea about what it was, though I'd seen the cover,
not the movie itself, and I assumed it was a
like self conscious ironic schlock comedy horror movie, something more
like Shark Nato, like in like Irony Zone stuff, And

(14:18):
now I assume that's not really what it's like. It
is probably something a little bit closer to Deer Skin,
but more firmly in the absurd horror vein.

Speaker 5 (14:28):
Yeah, I think it's somewhere in between. I definitely don't
think it's a full sort of Shark Nato situation. I
actually watched it last night just to get a good
sense of what that was, and it is closer to
Deer Skin than something like Sharknato, though I do feel

(14:49):
like I kind of prefer where he goes after Rubber.

Speaker 3 (14:54):
Okay, so that's not his peak. It's not all downhill
from there.

Speaker 5 (14:59):
At least, you know, opinion, But I think that that's
one that he's pretty well known for, and it was
the first of four films he'd make in America, followed
by twenty twelve's Wrong, twenty thirteen's Wrong Cops and twenty
fourteen's Reality. He returned to France after the release of
Reality and put out his first film produced there in
twenty eighteen. He's been pretty prolific since, sometimes releasing multiple

(15:21):
movies a year, with his most recent at a time
of recording being The Piano Accident, which was just released
in France a couple weeks ago. The writer Savina Petkova
has a piece on deer Skin from twenty twenty one
on the publication The Quietest that I think aptly describes
to Pew's appeal when she writes his films are laden
with characters, situations, and spoofs that produce a hypnagogic effect,

(15:46):
but the reality status is never questioned. Deerskin represents the
opposite of skepticism in relation to the uncanny, a film
that gladly jumps on the bandwagon of unforeseen ideas with
an ease that resembles a dream.

Speaker 1 (16:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (16:00):
I could agree with that there is something dream like
about it, but not in every way. One of the
we sort of got into this earlier. But one of
the ways I would say it is not like a
dream is that dreams often feel more random, like just
random new introduction of new elements, whereas it seems to

(16:23):
me that once deer Skin gets going, sort of like
I was saying earlier, everything just kind.

Speaker 4 (16:28):
Of follows logically.

Speaker 3 (16:30):
If if you buy into the initial dream, it's like
a real world that operates fully on the logic of
like physics and cause and effect, and people behave in
some ways normally, except this real world was created by
an absurdist demiurge who is like, you know, a man

(16:51):
in a jacket will decide that they must be the
only man in jacket that can be together.

Speaker 5 (16:56):
Yeah, I totally agree with that. Moving on to our
part agonist. Jean Dujardins plays George born nineteen seventy two
French actor and comedian. Worked as a stand up comedian
in France and has been in many films as an actor.
Some of the most well known include The Artist from
twenty eleven, the comedic reboot of the French spy series

(17:20):
OSS one hundred and seventeen, and The Wolf of Wall Street.
As George, he portrays a bit of an idiot, but
he's a confident idiot, and that confidence mostly successfully carries
him as he reinvents himself around a new jacket on
the fly.

Speaker 3 (17:34):
Yes, yeah, I like you flagging the confidence there and
how much it how much it works. Like he's a
pathetic character, but a different kind of movie I think
would have more of everybody around him just treating him
as a fool and treating him with scorn and actually
he you know, he gets some pushback in skepticism, but

(17:56):
he also gets pretty far just.

Speaker 4 (17:58):
On being a.

Speaker 3 (18:00):
Foolish, overconfident, pathetic person.

Speaker 5 (18:03):
Yeah, he gets remarkably far. He gets remarkably little pushed back.
There's like one exception that isn't even really overt pushed back,
and that sort of sends him over the edge.

Speaker 4 (18:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (18:16):
So I thought Doujardn was good in this role, and
I knew I recognized him from somewhere, but I couldn't
place it at first. I actually have not seen the
Artist I think he was. Did he win like a
Best Actor Oscar for that?

Speaker 5 (18:28):
Oh man, I'm not sure.

Speaker 3 (18:30):
Yeah, sorry, we just had to look this up. He
did win the Academy Award for Best Actor for his
role in the Artist from twenty eleven. Again, I have
not seen that one, but I realized what I knew
him from was that he is the corrupt Swiss banker.
In Wolf of Wall Street, he's the guy who's like
trying to telepathically make make slimy deals with Leonardo DiCaprio.

Speaker 5 (18:54):
It's been a while since I've seen that one, so
I don't remember that. But he's great in this.

Speaker 4 (19:00):
Yeah, he is.

Speaker 3 (19:01):
There is a there's a soft spoken, matter of factess
to the way that he resists anything that challenges his
delusions that is so good. One of my favorite moments
of the movie is when he's been like doing stuff
that's impossible to explain without getting more into the plot first,

(19:21):
but doing weird stuff that he's like paying these actors
to be in these bizarre scenes. And one of the
actors is like, this movie you're making it's a bit weird. No,
he says, it's not weird, it's amazing. It's really good
delivery on that line. It's in French, but yeah, it
comes through.

Speaker 5 (19:40):
Yeah, I agree completely. I love his delivery. I love
his whole demeanor in this movie. It really sells it.

Speaker 3 (19:48):
Yes, similar things I would say about the next actor
we're going to talk about is this Adele nl Yeah.

Speaker 5 (19:54):
Annelle born nineteen eighty nine is our second lead made
her film debut at the age of twelve in the
twenty and two movie La Diaba. In twenty fourteen, she
won the CESAR Award for Best Supporting Actress for her
role in the twenty thirteen movie Suzanne, and in twenty
nineteen she appeared in three movies, Deer Skin being one

(20:17):
of them and the other two being Heroes Don't Die
and Portrait of a Lady on Fire, which is where
I knew her from. She retired from the film industry
in twenty twenty three, citing that the industry defended a capitalist, patriarchal, racist,
sexist world of structural inequality. She's since been active in

(20:37):
theater and as a political activist.

Speaker 3 (20:40):
Well respect her critique of the industry, both from within
and without, but I also I think she's so great here.
I love the way that our empathy for this character
evolves as we come to understand her better, so like
the evolution goes something like when we first meet her.

(21:02):
In classic comedy terms, this character, Denise is what do
you call, like the feed or the straight character, the
comedic foil of the act's main buffoon, which is George. Here,
this kind of character is the stand in for the audience,
the normal person who is there to react skeptically to
the funny man's antics, and that is what she feels

(21:23):
like in the first few scenes with her. But then
as our main weirdo evolves to become more criminal, basically
more sinister, the drama shifts and she becomes the victim
of his lies and scams, and we feel a totally
different way about her. We start to feel pity for
her while he's like, you know, lying to her and

(21:44):
draining her bank account. And then she reveals that she
was actually always aware of the fact that he was
a fraud, and then she becomes part of the antics
and scams. In essence, she becomes the weirdo, and in fact,
maybe even weirder than the weirdo that came before. She
starts kind of trying to give orders, and so I
love that evolution. You feel like three totally different ways

(22:07):
about her as the movie goes on, and it's a
very seamless kind of transition.

Speaker 5 (22:13):
Yeah, I love this too. I was reading an interview
on the publication Dazed that Depew did in support of
Deer Skin, and to quote that interview, originally Depew planned
for Denise to be down to earth every woman to
counteract George's quirkiness. However, Annel insisted that Denise should adore,

(22:33):
blend and slaughter without changing a line in the script.
We decided that she's crazy, the director says, and because
she's an amazing actress, you see it in her eyes.
Suddenly every scene looks different, and Jean looks stupid in
front of her. She's evil and he's just a kid.

Speaker 3 (22:52):
That's brilliant. Yeah, yeah, I love that, so.

Speaker 5 (22:55):
Yeah, totally agree. The composer is Yanko Niovich. I think
that's how you pronounce it. As far as I can tell.
He was born in nineteen forty one. He did the score.
He's a prolific Paris based musician who has released over
thirty albums since the early nineteen sixties, mostly library music,

(23:15):
essentially work for higher albums made to be easily licensed
for productions. He's made music under a variety of pseudonyms,
one of which was Mad Unity. Under the mad Unity name,
he released one of his most well regarded albums, Funky Tramway.
I checked out the title track of this one, and
it definitely sounds like a funky tramway. Flattering it's frenetic

(23:41):
and then there's a bunch of like wah guitar. You
gotta check it. It's a funky tramway for sure. His
music has been sampled by artists like Jay Z, Doctor
Dre the Alchemist, and Freddie Gibbs and Schoolboy Q to
name few. He seems to be sampled quite a bit, actually,

(24:03):
and as of twenty twenty two, he's still making new music.
And I found news from twenty twenty three of a
documentary called The Sample Return of Yanko Niovich that's currently
in production, I guess. According to an interview Depew did
with Dazed during Deerskin's post production, he scrap plans to
record an electronic soundtrack himself, saying that quote to me,

(24:27):
it's a dead serious movie. It's funny, but not what
we call it comedy. And actually I never use funny
comedy music or whatever. I decided to only use music
from the seventies to match the jacket.

Speaker 3 (24:37):
Oh that's interesting, because yeah, the music in this movie, well,
first of all, there are some there's some great like
needle drops in it. In the closing credits, it uses
the song by Della Humphrey that I don't know if
I'd ever heard before when Good Girls Go Bad, and
that one's fantastic excellence.

Speaker 5 (24:55):
It's a great closing song.

Speaker 3 (24:57):
Yeah, I loved it, but also the original or for it. Yeah,
it doesn't sound like goofy dumpy dump comedy music. It
sounds like something that could be in a in like
a dark Michael Chimino movie from the seventies or something.

Speaker 5 (25:11):
And finally, I wasn't able to find a ton of
info on her, but Jean le Breux, the production designer.
This is Depew's wife and the production designer on seemingly
all of his movies from twenty Twelve's Wrong onward, and
according to an interview I read, she's the only person

(25:32):
he will run edits the movie by before finalizing them.

Speaker 4 (25:45):
All Right, are you ready to talk about the plot?

Speaker 5 (25:47):
Ja? Ja?

Speaker 4 (25:47):
Yeah, let's do it. Cool.

Speaker 3 (25:49):
So, I think we're going to talk about a lot
of like direct in scene texture in this one, because
that's a lot of where the pleasure of the movie lies.
So it starts off with the cold open in like
a big empty room that looks like it could be
a warehouse or parking garage, and there are several young
men and women they stand lined up behind a car

(26:10):
with the car trunk hanging open, and they're all holding
piles of clothing in their arms. And the first guy,
sort of a guy with red hair and a mustache.
He looks straight into the camera and he says, I
swear never to wear a jacket as long as I live.
And then he's got the stack of clothes in his arms.
You realize they're all jackets. He dumps the jackets into

(26:31):
the car's trunk gets out of the way. The next
man in line steps up to the car. He looks
into the camera with a kind of smirk, and he
says the same thing, I swear never to wear a
jacket as long as I live.

Speaker 4 (26:42):
Dump. A woman steps up from behind. She seems a little.

Speaker 3 (26:46):
Less good humored than the first two guys. She dumps
in her pile of jackets and says the same thing,
though she has to be prompted by somebody off screen
to get the words right. And then a voice behind
the camera tells them to close the trunk. She slams it,
and we cut to black. There's a good WTF opening.
Don't see that every day? And then the action reopens
on our protagonist, George. This is again is Jean dou Chartin,

(27:11):
and he is a quiet, bearded man in his forties.
He's dressed in a corduroy blazer and a button up
shirt tucked into his pants. He's driving a sedan along
the highway in France by himself, somewhere in rural France,
and he passes toll stations. He stops for gas and
at the service station where he's putting gas in the car,

(27:34):
he stares at his reflection in the window of his car,
and it seems like he doesn't like the way he looks.
He's kind of pulling and adjusting at his jacket to
try to look better, but just doesn't seem happy. So
he goes to the bathroom at the service station, where
he takes off his blazer, wads it up, crams it
into the toilet, and then tries to flush it down.

(27:56):
Now this doesn't work. The toilet begins to overflow, and
he starts it's like stomping on it and the toilet bowl,
trying to jam it down the hole. But how's that
going to work. You're not even supposed to flush paper towels.

Speaker 4 (28:06):
You know.

Speaker 3 (28:07):
Are you gonna get a blazer down there? So it
doesn't work. Everything's just flooding in the bathroom, and he
flees the scene in his car.

Speaker 4 (28:15):
So George is on a journey.

Speaker 3 (28:18):
We see him sleeping in his car overnight beside the highway,
and then later he is following a map, winding his
way up these narrow, twisting country roads, and eventually George
comes to an old farmhouse on a hillside. At the door,
he rings the buzzer and he announces that he's following
up about an advertisement, and an older man lets him inside.

(28:41):
Inside this house, it's rustic, a lot of simple varnished wood,
and George is here about a product that this guy
has advertised for sale. George says he's very anxious to
see the item. So the old man goes and gets
it out from a chest, this big treasure chest looking
thing in the other and then the old man comes

(29:03):
into the room with George holding up this object like
a highrafant, showing off the sacred relics. It is a
leather jacket, tawny brown. I'm not sure what you call
this cut, but it kind of motorcycle style with a
wide collar and a zipper in front. But it's the
zipper's not straight down the middle. It's a little offset
to the side with big stripes of leather fringe in

(29:27):
a V shape across the chest, and then the fringe
wrapping all the way around the back. That I miss
any important details, JJ, I feel like we've got to
describe the jacket right right.

Speaker 5 (29:36):
Yeah, No, I think that's a pretty good description.

Speaker 4 (29:38):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (29:40):
The old man says, meet the beast, one hundred percent
deer skin, and George is obviously impressed. It's it's love
at first sight. The old man says that he wore
it for about a year, but then it went out
of style, so he put it away. He also says that.

Speaker 4 (29:56):
It made him itch a little bit.

Speaker 3 (29:57):
So George takes the jacket, he looks at himself in
the mirror, He tries it on, looks in the mirror,
and he loves it. He makes an offer to the
old man and pays him in cash, and the old
man is very pleased. He's counting the money while George
is admiring himself in the mirror, and George is saying,

(30:17):
look at yourself, how elegant.

Speaker 4 (30:20):
And here I've got a question.

Speaker 3 (30:23):
I think this is a serious question about the craft
of the film. Is the jacket actually supposed to look
good on George as in, obviously he likes it, but
is it supposed to look good to us the audience.
On one hand, it's it's I think you could say
it's a cool looking jacket, but it is also ostentatious,

(30:45):
like it has all this fringe and stuff, and you know,
the deer skin element is obviously I don't know, maybe
some people are really into that or not. But it
also looks kind of short to me, like you can
see a gap between the jacket and the top of
his pants where his button up shirt is just kind
of sticking out in a way that looks silly. Maybe

(31:06):
that's just the style of how you wear this, but
I genuinely couldn't tell whether the jacket is supposed to
look cool on George or not. It's sort of somewhere
in the middle.

Speaker 5 (31:15):
Yeah, no, I agree, it looks a little goofy. He
loves the jacket, though he stands up his mouth is
a gape in its presence and has to sit down
with his hand over his mouth, just overcome by its beauty.
When he sees the fringe on the back and speaking
to whether or not the jacket looks good. I guess
to Pew tried like ten or twelve jackets on John

(31:40):
saying that quote. We loved that the jacket was good looking,
but too short. Something's wrong. Oh okay, yeah, I think
it looks a little goofy. As I said, I feel
like he hasn't fully crossed into goofball territory yet, which
I'm excited for. I also want to point out that
he pays seventy five hundred euros for this, which today

(32:01):
converts to roughly eight thousand, six hundred and ninety one dollars, which.

Speaker 4 (32:06):
Is a steal, of course, exactly.

Speaker 5 (32:09):
Yes, And we get a shot of a deer looking
directly into the camera before he puts on the jacket.

Speaker 3 (32:14):
Okay, I think here's the way I would put it,
George is he doesn't look clownish in the jacket, but
he is not quite pulling it off. I think it's
the kind of jacket that like would look really cool
on somebody who usually looks really cool. You know that
it's kind of an unfair thing about fashion, right, Like,

(32:35):
there are a lot of clothing items that look really
cool only on people for whom everything they wear looks cool.
And this jacket might be in that zone on George.

Speaker 4 (32:45):
It is.

Speaker 3 (32:45):
It is definitely somewhere near the border of ridiculousness.

Speaker 5 (32:50):
Yeah, and I think it's funnier for that, Like if
it was over the top, it wouldn't have the same
sort of effect.

Speaker 4 (32:57):
Anyway.

Speaker 3 (32:57):
The old man is so happy with the steale, you know.
George is like, here's seventy five hundred euros for this
old thing you're getting rid of. He decides to give
George an extra gift. It is a digital video camera,
and as he says, digital is the best.

Speaker 5 (33:13):
You can't stop digital.

Speaker 3 (33:14):
Yeah, which is very confusing because admittedly I haven't used
a lot of digital video cameras, but I assume a
digital video camera means that you're like recording to a
memory card or chip or something. But then later in
the movie there's like a significant plot point about needing
cassettes for the video camera. So I don't know, I

(33:35):
didn't know what to make of any of that.

Speaker 5 (33:37):
We're gonna get into this, oh and he pulls the
camera out. I have a whole tangent to bring us
down perfect. I can't wait.

Speaker 4 (33:45):
I love it.

Speaker 3 (33:45):
Love a technology run down in movie props. So George
leaves and he checks in at a nearby hotel, telling
the clerk that he plans to be there for a month.
He has no money. I think he spent all his
money on the jacket, and he says there is a
problem with his credit card, so he's gonna get that
sorted out the next day, but in order to stay

(34:07):
the first night, he takes a gold ring off of
his finger. I'm pretty sure this is a wedding ring,
and he leaves it with the clerk as collateral, promising
to pay the bill the following day. And then George
goes up to his room and he oogles himself in
the mirror, offering these quiet little statements of commentary, sort
of complimenting himself. He's he says things like stoking killer style.

(34:33):
It's it's really tender, you know, he's it's I like
these little, these little moments, especially how quietly he says
these things. And then after checking into his room, we
also see him leaning out of his window playing around
with the video camera he got, like he's I think
he starts focusing it up on the mountain across the
way from the hotel.

Speaker 5 (34:54):
Yeah, and this movie is heavy on the beige in
the tan and this hotel room is like maybe the
bayest thing of all, and it sort of mirrors the jacket.
I also want to point out that the wallpaper extends
into the shower. I'm not sure how normal that is.

Speaker 3 (35:10):
Does this hotel room have a bathroom? There is the
showers in the corner of the room.

Speaker 5 (35:16):
That's a good question. It might just all be in
one room, okay, because you're right, the shower is just
in the corner.

Speaker 3 (35:23):
It's like a ned Flanders house, that love built situation
where the toilet is in the kitchen. Maybe this I
don't mean to make fun. Actually, I wonder if this
is something that's actually common in like some French hotel
rooms or something, maybe maybe in older buildings or something
like that.

Speaker 5 (35:38):
Yeah, I was wondering the same thing. And this is
where George removes the almost new digital camquarder from its bag.
And I spent too long trying to find the exact
model cam quarterer. This was so I'm gonna go on
that brief tangent I was mentioning earlier. For some reason

(35:58):
I needed to know. I think it's a Sony DCR
PC one T handycam it's a mini DV camquorder and
according to the camcorder pedia wiki, sorry, it was introduced
in two thousand and one.

Speaker 4 (36:16):
Oh so it's almost new.

Speaker 3 (36:17):
Is almost new perfect, Most things are almost new if
you think about it.

Speaker 5 (36:23):
And we talked off Mike earlier too about why this
digital camcorder uses little tapes. This came up when I
was watching with my friends Terrence and Ian as well.
So I'm going to offer a brief, very basic explanation
of the DV format because I went down a whole

(36:46):
rabbit hole to be able to talk about this camera
a little bit.

Speaker 4 (36:49):
Absolutely make it make sense.

Speaker 5 (36:52):
I'm gonna try, Okay, I did some cursory research. DV
was a format developed by Sony and Panasonic that was
introduced in nineteen ninety five. DV tapes came in a
variety of sizes, the smallest of which many DV being
very popular. That's what we see in this movie. DV

(37:14):
tape store compressed video in glorious for ADP so DVD
quality and uncompressed audio at sixteen bit forty eight K
when recorded in stereo, so that's higher than CD quality.
While it was mostly a consumer grade format, it was
also used professionally sometimes, and a notable example is that

(37:35):
David Lynch actually shot Inland Empire on the DV format
using a Sony DSR PD one fifty.

Speaker 3 (37:44):
I've actually never seen that Lynch movie. I've heard some
people who have seen it describe it as one of
his least accessible films.

Speaker 5 (37:51):
I'd agree with that, but I really love it. I
could not recommend it more well, of.

Speaker 3 (37:59):
Course I love David Lene So on your recommendation, I'm
going to reprioritize Inland Empire. I'm gonna move it up
my list and try to see it sooner. But yeah,
i'd heard people say it's one of his less accessible movies,
and I think maybe i'd heard different things about the
way it looked. I know some people didn't love the
way that it looked, or found it kind of murky

(38:19):
or something. And I not that I would really think
David Lynch would be a part of this wave. I
don't know, maybe, but I do remember there was sort
of a thing, wasn't there. In like the early to
mid two thousands were more mainstream feature film directors were
experimenting with using digital formats. I remember associating this with

(38:41):
twenty eight days Later had a kind of digital look.
I don't know how that was actually shot.

Speaker 5 (38:46):
You know what that one's also shot on DV.

Speaker 4 (38:49):
Oh, okay, cool?

Speaker 3 (38:50):
Well, yeah, I remember associating it with that look and
some other films of that time getting into that thing,
And I wonder how film like that is sort of
being evaluated in retrospect. I haven't read that much about it,
but I do know it can have its own aesthetic virtues.
Like there's another film actually that I don't know what

(39:12):
it was shot on, but it has that digital look,
and I think it contributes to the aesthetic effect of
the film. And that is the one of the weirdest
cop movies I've ever seen, the Michael Man Miami Vice
movie from what is it like two thousand and six
or something. Do you know what I'm talking about?

Speaker 5 (39:29):
I do. I know that that has a lot of
a lot of people really love that movie.

Speaker 3 (39:34):
I saw it a few years back and was mesmerized
by it. I would call it the cop movie at
the end of the world. So in content, it is
a you know, it has a kind of dark romantic subplot,
but overall it's like a you know, drug busts and
raids and you know, cops and criminals kind of movie.

(39:56):
But there is something about it that feels so doom
and and bleak, and like it takes place in a
world where where all happiness and meaning has been lost
and now all that there is left is is cop
and crime and and maybe and maybe there's there's the

(40:17):
illusion that there could be love, but but that's really
also doomed. It's it's a unique film. I would say,
it's not what you think of when you think Miami Vice.
At least it's not what I imagined Miami Vice would be.

Speaker 5 (40:29):
Yeah. I mean from watching Inland Empire, I can totally
see that, because I think the way Inland Empire looks
gives it that same sort of quality. I definitely think
it is augmented by looking like that, And I think
it was something David Lynch went into very deliberately.

Speaker 3 (40:50):
Okay, well I'm going to watch Inland Empire. But wait,
so we were getting into the technical details here, So
what's the deal with the tape? So it's digital, but
there are still tapes.

Speaker 5 (40:59):
Yeah, sorry for the tangent to address the tapes. Tangent
to address the tapes. The video in the audio info
is stored digitally. Put very very simply, the video and
audio information are converted to digital information, so a sequence
of ones and zeros, and that digital info is encoded

(41:20):
onto magnetic tape. When you play the tape back on
the camcorder or on a DV deck like we'll see
later in the film, that digital information is converted back
to video and audio.

Speaker 3 (41:33):
Okay, so maybe I just had the wrong idea of
what digital means in a recording in storage context.

Speaker 5 (41:41):
Totally, this was new to me too, though. I think
maybe if you like live in camera world and you're
more involved in film, this might be a little uh
less novel. But I also thought this was pretty cool
and I started researching how exactly it works. But I
got in over my head pretty quickly, and while I
have a loose graph of it involves magnets, I definitely

(42:02):
don't understand it well enough to explain it. So if
you're a listener who wants to elaborate on this or
roast me on my short explanation, I would love to
hear about it, and you can write in at contact
at stuff to blowyermind dot com. But anyways, Yeah, it's
a mini dvcamquarder, so it is digital video, but it's
stored on little cassette tapes.

Speaker 3 (42:28):
Okay, so we're coming back to the plot. So, like
George has been playing with his dvcamquorder and then he
goes out walking in the evening and we hear voiceover
of a phone conversation between George and a woman. The
woman says, why are you calling? What's the point? George says,
to tell you, I'm far away. I left, it's done.
Want to know where, And the woman says, no, you're nowhere, George,

(42:51):
you no longer exist. And then George finishes the conversation
standing outside a bar in the rain. When it's over,
he throws his cell phone into the garbage can and
goes inside. So he's done with the cell phone. No
more cell phone. And I think we it seems pretty
clear to me this is to imply that George is

(43:13):
at some kind of breaking point in a relationship. I
think this is his wife he's talking to, and it's
it's the end of their relationship for some reason that
it's not exactly explained. So at the bar we meet
a new character, Denise, the bartender played by Adele and
l and this scene gets funny in subtle ways, like
a lot of the humor in the movie. It's it's
understated humor, but so I'll describe it. Denise is speaking

(43:38):
with a patron at the other end of the bar
while George is having a whiskey by himself, and they're
talking about somebody they know. They're just kind of like saying, oh,
you know, can you believe he said that? No, what's
she going to do? You know, standard kind of social
social gossip. And then George suddenly confronts them and says,
you're talking about my jacket, aren't you. I loved this,

(44:02):
and they act confused. They're like, no, we were not
talking about your jacket. And he's like, oh, sorry, people
always talk about it. Sometimes they stop me in the street.
I'm just used to getting it noticed. Sorry, And Denise
is kind of skeptical and she says, really, what do
they stop you to say about it? And he doesn't
really answer. He's just like, as you can see, it

(44:23):
is no ordinary jacket.

Speaker 5 (44:25):
He has like a slight pause where he looks a
little lost for a second before saying that, yeah.

Speaker 4 (44:30):
It's really good.

Speaker 3 (44:32):
So George, Denise and the other lady start chatting. They
ask him what he does for a living. He thinks
back to his video camera and he says, oh, actually,
I'm a filmmaker, and I might be working on a
film while I'm here in this little town.

Speaker 4 (44:46):
Yeah, that's the ticket, that's what it is.

Speaker 5 (44:48):
Yeah. They ask if he's shooting now, and he says yeah, possibly,
totally possibly.

Speaker 3 (44:56):
And then in the next scene, George is walking home,
is going back to the hotel and the bar, not Denise,
but the bar patron she was talking to pulls up
beside him in her car and she's like, you know, hey,
you know what, I used to act in porn twenty
years ago. She assumes he's a porn director and he's like,
why would you assume that I don't make porn? And

(45:18):
she's like, well, you don't look like you work in
real film, and he says, I do work in real film,
don't you see my killer style?

Speaker 4 (45:27):
And she calls him a loser and drives away.

Speaker 3 (45:31):
But back in his hotel room, George is about to
start working in real film. So he's lying in bed
playing with the video camera, and across the room from him,
hanging on the back of the chair where it will
often be in these little scenes. Is the jacket, and
he frames it with his camera and he starts talking,

(45:51):
and as he talks, there are these little modulations of
his voice, as if in different sentences. It might actually
be different people talking, if you know what I mean.
His mouth is always moving, but he's like doing little
different voices. So he says, hey, you, where are you from?
I come from Italy. I come from Italy. The jacket

(46:14):
is Italian, by the way. It comes from Italy. And
then he says, that's good. From Italy. You're so classy.
You look great on camera. And who are you?

Speaker 4 (46:24):
I'm your new owner.

Speaker 3 (46:26):
I think we'll make a nice team. I'm fine with
being teammates, but I'm the one in charge.

Speaker 4 (46:31):
Okay.

Speaker 5 (46:32):
He takes a minute here to kind of figure out
what the jacket's voice is. It starts off a little
higher and it slowly falls to a calmer place.

Speaker 3 (46:42):
Oh that's right. I didn't think about it that way,
but you're right. He's like experimenting. He's like, yeah, what
does the jacket sound like? And the jacket actually has
a different voice than George though he's again his mouth
is always moving, so he's the one talking, but the
voice he does for the Jacket is lower and more
authoritative and confident, self assured and decisive totally. So anyway,

(47:06):
he closes the camera and he says good night to
the Jacket, goes to sleep, and then later that night
there's a little moment where there's like a loud crashing sound.
George comes out into the hall to investigate what was that,
but there's no answer, so we'll get follow up on
that later. So the next day we see George go
to the atm wearing his jacket of course, and he
tries to get money out but no money is forthcoming,

(47:28):
and he's very mad. He digs some food out of
a trash can and starts eating it while this boy
stands watching him from across the alley, and he yells
at the boy to get lost.

Speaker 5 (47:40):
Yeah, the boy's just looking at him completely blankly.

Speaker 3 (47:43):
Doesn't say anything, just stands there, stone faced. Yeah. And
then after this, George stops at a book shop. He
checks out a book about filmmaking, and then he shoplifts
it by stuffing it into his jacket. The Jacket's just
coming through on all levels. And the next he goes
to the bank and he speaks to a worker there,

(48:05):
he finds out that he can't withdraw money from his
bank account because his wife has placed a security hold
on the account.

Speaker 4 (48:11):
This morning.

Speaker 3 (48:12):
This was I think, after he withdrew seventy five hundred
euros the day before to buy the jacket, and George
does not take this well. Back at the hotel, he
showers while talking to the jacket, and the jacket is
kind of watching him while he's rensing his body with
the detachable shower head, and he's like, don't worry, I'll
find us some money.

Speaker 4 (48:32):
I'm going to take care of us.

Speaker 3 (48:35):
And then later back at the same bar as he
was at the night before, George talks with Denise, the bartender.
She is interested in what kind of film work he's
doing because she herself is an amateur film editor. She
talks about how she enjoys re editing other people's finished
movies just for fun. For example, she says she took

(48:55):
pulp fiction directed by Quentin Tarantino and put all the
scenes in chronological order to discover that it sucked. And
there are plenty of things that should be red flags
about George in this conversation, like he asks her if
she has a special machine that allows her to put
the scenes of a film in order, and she says no,

(49:18):
she uses a computer like everyone else, but she says
that film editing is her passion and she would love
to do it for a living. So here she is
meeting an actual filmmaker, and she clearly she sees an opportunity.
I think she's she's so excited about what this could
mean for her that she's maybe just looking past the
red flags.

Speaker 5 (49:38):
I love the exchange of her saying I'd love to
do it as my real job, in George's response being
something along the lines of they really are amazing jobs.
For sure.

Speaker 3 (49:53):
There are a number of moments that are of really
good comedy where what happens is you would expect in
another script that George would come up with some kind
of funny bluff or lie, but what he actually does
is fail to come up with anything to say, so
he just says like, they are amazing jobs. So later
we see George walking home and arguing with himself or

(50:15):
maybe arguing with the jacket about whether he should should
have claimed to be a movie director or not. You
can see him having some kind of you know, moral
dissent within himself. He's like, maybe I shouldn't be lying
about this. But then he also defends himself to himself, saying,
a guy who films is like a guy who makes
a film.

Speaker 4 (50:35):
You could say here a filmmaker. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (50:37):
So, back at his hotel room, George is trying to
read the book about filmmaking that he stole from the store,
but the jacket hanging on the chair across the room
just keeps calling out to him. And again we can
see that whenever the jacket is speaking, George is the
one talking. He moves his own mouth, but he's giving
this different voice to the jacket, the deeper, more confident,

(50:59):
less emotional than his own voice, is kind of more monotone.
And the jacket interrupts his reading to ask him, do
you want to know my greatest dream? Here we getting
to the here the stews really cooking now. The Jacket's
greatest dream is to be the only jacket in the world.
I want us to be able to walk the streets

(51:20):
without seeing other jackets. Well, George confesses this is perfect
because his greatest dream is to be the only person
in the world who can wear a jacket. And the
jacket asks kind of ominously. How are we going to
realize this stream?

Speaker 5 (51:36):
George, Yeah, an ominous cut to a deer after, how
do you intend to realize this dream? I wish I
could convey his conversations with the jacket in words over
a podcast. They're just so goofy. He's trying to tell
the jacket that they can talk later while he's reading,
but the jacket successfully gets him to talk right now,

(52:01):
and he like closes the book and tosses it aside
in the exasperation, Like, as if he has to stop
reading and listen to this jacket, Yes, as if he's
not completely in control of the entire situation.

Speaker 4 (52:11):
Yeah, it's really good.

Speaker 3 (52:13):
Okay, So next thing is there's a scene with George
discussing his payment problems with the hotel manager, and George
finds out that the first clerk he talked to, the
guy the day before, the one to whom he gave
his gold wedding ring.

Speaker 4 (52:28):
Has died.

Speaker 3 (52:29):
He died by suicide two nights before. Bizarrely, the new
guy at the hotel desk tells George that the clerk's
body is being stored in one of the hotel rooms
until the undertaker arrives and that the room is open
if George would like to go say goodbye. So George

(52:50):
goes to the room. The guy is laying there with
a giant bullet hole in his face, but George gets
fixated on something. He's not looking really at the dead guy.
He's looking at in the clerk's hands. There is a hat.
It's clasped over his midsection. It is a wide brimmed
Fedora style hat made of some kind of leather sueded material.

(53:14):
And George pries the hat out of the dead man's
hands and investigates the tag on the inside and it
says one hundred percent deer skin, and George goes ah bingo,
and then he's trying it on in the mirror. It's
killer style, so of course he steals it. He also
takes his ring back. He has to use his mouth
to get it off the dead guy's hand, and then

(53:37):
leaves the ring with the new hotel clerk as collateral.

Speaker 5 (53:39):
Once again, The scene with him putting on the hat
in the mirror just gets me every time. This is
where he crosses into total goofball territory. He looks like
a like a store brand Indiana Jones and he just
looks so psyched about it.

Speaker 4 (53:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (53:56):
Killer style. So after getting the hat, he has another
meeting with Denise the bartender. He spins out some lies
to make it sound like he's in the middle of
a big, expensive production. He's like, oh, yeah, my producers,
they're stuck in Siberia filming the big fight scene and
I can't get they can't get cell reception. But he
tells her great news, I do not yet have an

(54:19):
editor for my film, though he accidentally says creditor and
I don't have a creditor. I don't know if there's
supposed to be some kind of double meaning there. But
she's like, do you mean editor, and he's like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
you can have the job. She's very excited and agrees,
but doesn't he want to see her work first. No,
no need, He trusts her, but she does need to

(54:41):
take off her jacket, and she's immediately suspicious. She's like,
wait a minute, are you trying to get me to
strip or something. He promises her, No, no, no, nothing
like that, nothing sexual. It's just very important to him
that he be the only person who gets to wear
a jacket.

Speaker 5 (54:56):
Yeah, he says, it's as important to me as editing is.

Speaker 3 (55:00):
You Bravo, And so she's suspicious, but she really wants
this job, so she agrees, and once the jacket is off,
you can see George relaxes. He kind of like settles down,
like okay, and he gives her something. It is a
cassette from his video camera. He tells her that it
is stuff for her to edit, and she's like, okay,

(55:20):
I need a copy of the script though, and he's like, yeah.

Speaker 4 (55:24):
We'll talk about that. We'll talk about that later.

Speaker 3 (55:26):
So somebody stole my credit card and next thing, they're
in an ATM and she's getting money out to loan him.
Of course, the producers will reimburse her once they get
cell phone reception again after they get off of the
glacier in Siberia. And then we see Denise at home
getting out some old video equipment cassette reader and maybe
a digitizer of some kind.

Speaker 5 (55:47):
Yeah, I think that's right. She has to dig it
out of a drawer. And I'm a little less sure
on this than the camera, but I think it's a
Sony gv HD seven hundred HDV video walk manh Yeah,
it seems to be like a VCR with a built
in screen that allows for some basic editing. I was

(56:07):
gonna look a little more into this thing, but I
got totally sidetracked by the camera rabbit hole.

Speaker 3 (56:12):
So yeah, she starts reviewing his footage. She's seeing like
scenery of the mountain beside the village, shots of the
fringe on the deerskin jacket, George posing in the mirror
with the jacket, and Denise seems amused. George meanwhile, it's
it's time to go shopping. Is shopping spree? And what
is he gonna get? Is he gonna get some more

(56:32):
cassette tapes? No, he gets some deer skin boots, killer style,
and it's time for an incredible montage. So with the
deerskin jacket, the deer skin hat, and the boots, George
starts filming scenes. He hires he like, puts out ads,
and he hires local non actors to be in his movie.

(56:54):
He tells them to bring all the jackets they own,
and then he films them putting the jackets in the
trunk of his car and vowing never to wear a
jacket again as long as they live. This is what
we saw in the cold opening of the film. And
this is where we get that amazing exchange where one
guy after doing this says, sorry, but isn't your movie weird?
And he says, it's enough weird, it's amazing.

Speaker 5 (57:17):
Yeah, you can't make sense of it now, but it rocks,
but it rocks.

Speaker 3 (57:23):
And then once the scene is over and the actors
have been paid, George steals the jackets. He just drives
away with them while people are like.

Speaker 4 (57:29):
Wait, I need that back.

Speaker 3 (57:31):
So after one of these shoots, George notices a kid
watching him. It's the same kid who is staring at
him while he was eating out of the garbage can earlier,
and George yells at him to go away, but the
kid just stands there, stone faced, looking at him, and
then getting really annoyed, George picks up a rock and
throws it at the kid, hitting him in the face. Oh,

(57:53):
and then also says to the actor the jacket donor,
who's just standing there, He says, you saw nothing, and
then George drives away.

Speaker 5 (58:00):
Yeah, this is kind of what I was referring to
before about there being one notable exception to people buying
his whole persona this kid that does not even really
seem to be questioning him as much as he's staring blankly,
and George is projecting something onto this kid.

Speaker 3 (58:22):
I feel like all of the other characters either they
buy into George enough and like they either kind of
play along with him, or they ignore him and move on.
This kid is the only person who doesn't do one
of those two things. This kid is continuing to engage
with George, but not by like playing along with him,

(58:45):
instead just by staring at him and making him feel weird.

Speaker 5 (58:49):
Yeah. I think that's a better way of putting it.
I agree.

Speaker 3 (58:52):
Oh, but also the actor as George is driving away,
he's like, wait, what about my jackets there in new
trunk and George says, you swore never to wear a
jacket again, I have filmed proof their mind now. I
think he says, your f to their mind now. And
then there's a creepy scene outside of movie theater. I
like this where he pulls up alongside a guy walking

(59:14):
in the snow. He's filming the guy. The guy's wearing
a jacket, he's confused about what George is doing, and
then we cut away before we see how it resolves.
We'll see more of this scene later. But then George
meets back up with Denise at the bar, and she
has been editing his film the stuff he already gave her.
I don't think this includes the new stuff, all of

(59:34):
the jacket, theft, and the pledges of never Again. It's
the earlier tape, and she says she likes his movie.
She says it's like a mockumentary, so we get the
sense that maybe she's going along with it because she
thinks it's supposed to be funny, or she's interpreting it
in a different spirit than he is. But she does
say it's hard to figure out what to do with

(59:56):
the footage without a script, but she put it together
in a way that made sense to her, and she says,
this is just my interpretation, but the real subject of
the film is the jacket, or the fact that we
all hide behind a shell to protect ourselves from the world.
And he seems intrigued. He asks her, should that be
what it's about? Good question? Should that be what it's about?

(01:00:20):
And then next thing, they're like back at the ATM
and she's trying to withdraw more funds to give him,
but I think she's maxed out at this point. She
can't get more than like eighty euros, and he gets
angry and starts freaking out and eventually just says chow
and storms off into the night. So here's where things

(01:00:44):
are about to start getting darker. George later reviews the
footage he took of the man in the street by
the movie theater, and we see more of the conversation.
George starts badgering the man to take off his jacket,
the man refuses. They become increasingly hostile to each other
before the guy eventually says George will have to kill
him to make him do it, and then the filming
stops and in the room, the jacket speaks to George.

(01:01:09):
The jacket says, the plan is not working at this rate.
It's going to take a thousand years for us to
have the only jacket in the world, and George tries
to argue, He's like, our dream is not reasonable. There
are so many jackets it will take a lot of
time to accomplish, But the jacket, after a long pause, says,
I know what we'll do, and George then begins taking

(01:01:31):
apart the appliances. He disassembles the ceiling fan in his
hotel room and removes one of its blades and then
goes out driving in the night, leaning out of the
door of his car, dragging the fan blade along the
road as he drives, and you can hear it grinding
and see it like shooting up sparks in the dark.
And I was like, wait, is he sharpening it? And yes,

(01:01:52):
in fact, that is exactly what he's doing. Next there
is like a there's a watermelon chopping scene where we
learned he has turned this fan blade into a deadly machete,
and he drives around some more, eating the watermelon. Eventually
he finds a couple of guys standing outside talking in
the snow. He drives up to them, gets out, approaches

(01:02:13):
with his fan blade, and asks if they would like
to help him realize his dream.

Speaker 4 (01:02:18):
Then we cut away.

Speaker 3 (01:02:19):
So here's where things sort of take a twist, because
next thing we see is Denise. She receives a letter
in her mailbox, along with a drawing of George in
the jacket, presumably by George.

Speaker 4 (01:02:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:02:32):
They show this just sort of briefly, and I love
this drawing.

Speaker 3 (01:02:36):
Yeah, the letter goes Denise despite not having money. I
shot a scene tonight by the sweat of my brow
enjoy these images, for they may be the last. I
think something awful must have happened in Siberia for the
producers to leave me with no news. I doubt I
can finish this film without the financing it deserves, unless,
of course, you can find a way to help. And

(01:02:57):
then he includes another cassette tape of himself.

Speaker 4 (01:03:00):
On this tape, he.

Speaker 3 (01:03:01):
Has filmed himself going on a murder spree, whacking people
with his fan sword and then stealing the jackets of
the people he kills. Denise watches this footage and she
is thrilled. She's watching it there. Her eyes are big,
and she says to herself, yes.

Speaker 4 (01:03:18):
So she comes to his.

Speaker 3 (01:03:19):
Hotel room and she's like, you know, George, I saw
the new footage.

Speaker 4 (01:03:22):
It's wild.

Speaker 3 (01:03:23):
She says, I'm into it. And before they discuss any further,
he does make her take off her jacket.

Speaker 4 (01:03:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:03:29):
Before she enters the room, he says, you know why.

Speaker 4 (01:03:33):
But she is now.

Speaker 3 (01:03:35):
She's now all in on his film project. She's got
an advance from her boss at the bar, so she
has more money now. She also has brought a present
for George, wrapped in newspaper. It is a pair of
one hundred percent deer skin pants with fringes running down
the leg, and George he says, damn classy.

Speaker 4 (01:03:57):
I love my life. Thanks.

Speaker 5 (01:04:00):
I love that.

Speaker 3 (01:04:00):
It sounds like a Facebook post somebody would make.

Speaker 4 (01:04:05):
I love that.

Speaker 5 (01:04:06):
She gives him the pants as an apology for my
card maxing out yesterday.

Speaker 4 (01:04:11):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:04:14):
So they go on to discuss the project, and you know,
for a while in the middle of the movie here
we've been thinking like, oh no, poor Denise, Like George
is scamming her, exploiting her. But the tables are kind
of turning. Denise is like, Okay, I think I can
get a lot more money soon, enough to finance the
whole movie. But she's like, George, I need you to
shoot more footage so that I can edit a teaser.

(01:04:37):
And then she starts giving him notes on style. She's like,
you've got a position the camera closer to the subject,
needs more action, more blood. Is she giving the orders now? Yes,
she is, And she hands him some money and it
seems like she may be the boss of.

Speaker 4 (01:04:52):
This film suddenly. So at this point George is Jason Vorhees.

Speaker 3 (01:04:56):
He goes out into the night, following random people filming
them killing them with the fan blade, chopping the heads
in half, like stabbing them through the guts and everything,
and of course always stealing their jackets. And he's like
wearing a rain slicker, of course to avoid getting blood
on his deer skin. And there were some funny music choices,
I mean throughout the film, but especially here. There's groovy

(01:05:17):
lounge music in this montage where he's whacking people with
the machete. And eventually the Jacket starts talking at George
while he's asleep. It's like saying his name over and over,
as if it's impatient he's not moving fast enough.

Speaker 5 (01:05:30):
Yeah, my friend Ian pointed this part out to me
is maybe secretly the funniest part of the movie, and
just the fact that George is either not waking up
or pretending to not wake up while he like voices
the Jacket trying to rouse him from his sleep.

Speaker 3 (01:05:46):
Oh yeah, it's earlier. It's like when he was doing
the voice of the Jacket trying to get his attention
to make him stop reading and he has to put
the book away. Yeah, so George, he's out with his camera.
There's another scene where he like directs a man who
operates an excavator and he makes this guy dig a

(01:06:06):
big hole in the ground, and I was thinking, what
is he going to bury a bunch of bodies in there? Nope,
he's gonna bury the jackets. He's got to get rid
of all the jackets. His car is full of them.
The bodies he just leaves wherever.

Speaker 4 (01:06:18):
So oh.

Speaker 3 (01:06:18):
And also he sort of beats and abuses the jackets
before he covers them with earth, like he's beating one
of the jackets with a pipe, and then he covers
them up with earth.

Speaker 1 (01:06:28):
And then.

Speaker 3 (01:06:31):
There's kind of an interesting moment after this where he
leans over a rushing mountain stream and drinks from the
water like a wild.

Speaker 4 (01:06:37):
Animal, like a deer. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:06:39):
So George meets with Denise yet again. Now she's got
a ton of cash, she says, her father sold his
butcher shop and now she's loaded. She has fifty thousand
euros and she announces that she is officially taking over production.
She's the producer. Now what can he do about it?
She's bringing the money. How can he argue? She said,

(01:07:00):
he needs guidance in his work. It's a mess, and
she's going to have to instruct him on the art
of filmmaking.

Speaker 4 (01:07:05):
He's frustrated.

Speaker 3 (01:07:06):
He kind of tries to resist, but he also just
wants the money, and she explains, look, the money is
not for you, it is for the film. This is
business here, and she says that in fact, she knows
he's been lying about being a filmmaker, lying about the
producers in Siberia, and there's a great cover here where
he's like, I'm not lying. They sent a fax this

(01:07:27):
morning telling me they had died in an avalanche. That's
why I couldn't reach them.

Speaker 4 (01:07:32):
And I don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:07:33):
Something's not lying up there. They died, but they sent
a fax, and he says we but she's known since
the beginning that it was all a fraud and she says,
you're nothing, no one, no producers, just a guy alone.
He points out that she is in fact alone too,
and then she says everyone is alone.

Speaker 4 (01:07:53):
Oh good, come back.

Speaker 3 (01:07:55):
But she does want to make a film, and that's
what they're gonna do. She says, we can be alone
to get other and we can make a great movie.

Speaker 4 (01:08:02):
Now.

Speaker 3 (01:08:03):
He tentatively agrees, but first he needs to do something.
He needs deer skin gloves, so she's got to buy
them for him. So the next thing, they're like at
a clothing shop and he's trying on deer skin gloves
in the mirror, getting all hyped up, and Denise is
encouraging him.

Speaker 4 (01:08:19):
She's like, yeah, yeah, And.

Speaker 3 (01:08:21):
The shop worker asks if he's interested maybe in trying
on some synthetic leather gloves. He says, do I look
like the synthetic type? Denise says, don't you see his
killer style? So next George and Denise, he's like fully
suited now, head to toe deer skin, and they go
out driving on the mountain roads and George he stops

(01:08:42):
at one point along the highway and gives the camera
to Denise and tells her to film him. So he
climbs up on a hill beside the highway and dances around,
showing off his glorious head to toe deer skin outfit
and saying over and over again for Denise to film him.
And then suddenly, from out of nowhere, a shot rings

(01:09:03):
out and George falls over dead. He's been hitting the
head by a bullet, and we see from far away
a man holding a rifle who shot George. It was
the father of the boy who George hit with the rock.
The other day, the boy is in the car with
like a bandage on his head.

Speaker 5 (01:09:19):
And he's sitting there eating a sandwich.

Speaker 3 (01:09:22):
I didn't notice the sandwich. I should go back and
look for that. Yeah, eating a sandwich at the execution? Yeah,
so But anyway, so George gets hit with the bullet.
He falls down and Denise keeps filming. She approaches George's
body and begins to take off his deer skin. She
takes off the gloves and the jacket, filming the whole time.

(01:09:43):
Then she puts the jacket on herself and looks into
the camera and it's, you know, there's a transformation. It's
like I am deer skin now. And that's the end
of the main actions. She dons the deer skin. We
get the credits. There is a post credit scene where
we see video footage playing on a TV screen and
it shows a herd of deer wandering on a ridge

(01:10:04):
in the woods, and then the camera turns back and
we see George's holding it. But after this we go
to the closing credits music, which is a great needle
drop of I can't remember if we mentioned this already
on Mike, but it's a wonderful song that I was
not familiar with before called Don't Make the Good Girls
Go Bad by Della Humphrey.

Speaker 4 (01:10:23):
It's awesome.

Speaker 5 (01:10:24):
Yeah, I really enjoyed this too, and I wasn't sure
how to exactly how to take that post credits scene.
He's also sort of like either pointing or reaching back
towards the deer.

Speaker 3 (01:10:35):
Yeah, yeah, I didn't know exactly what to make of
it either. I mean it's like he was so he's
putting on these deer skinned products. So in one sense,
he's putting on a deer suit, but you could also
so it's like he's becoming a deer, but you could
also think that he's consuming deer. I mean, like deer
have to be killed to make these products, and so

(01:10:57):
he is. We could be looking at them in a
predatory way, like he wants to harvest all of their
skin and wear it all, or if I don't know,
I don't know what the sense of identification there is
it a predatory gaze and a gaze of identification and
becoming like I wouldn't to be you. I'm not quite
sure what is it George wants? Is it seems to

(01:11:22):
me what he wants? You know, you could imagine versions
of this story that have a more mature and meaningful
and identifiable sense of longing. You know, people who want
kind of freedom, or people in middle age who are
unhappy with their choices and want another chance at life and.

Speaker 4 (01:11:41):
Things like that.

Speaker 3 (01:11:42):
So you maybe you can see little flashes of that
here and there in George, But it seems like the
main thing he wants is killer style. He wants to
be He wants to look cool and be seen as cool,
and there is a fundamental kind of childishness and like
boyish maturity to him.

Speaker 5 (01:12:02):
Yeah, he makes a lot of jacket first decisions was
the way I kept thinking about it, Like, I agree
with you that, and I feel like I started off
maybe even the first or second time I watched this movie.
I watched it a couple times just to prepare for this,
But on my initial viewing of it, I think I
read a little more into it, and I saw it

(01:12:24):
as something more akin to this person obsessed with like
the identity of being a filmmaker or an artist over
the substance of actually doing that art or that filmmaking.

Speaker 4 (01:12:42):
Oh yeah, okay.

Speaker 5 (01:12:44):
And when he does start to do some of the
work he likes to do the stuff that will reinforce
his identity as Jacket where exactly all Jacket first decisions.

Speaker 3 (01:12:55):
I can see what you're saying there, Yeah, there are
I mean, people have vocational or artistic dreams.

Speaker 4 (01:13:03):
For themselves or is like I want to be a filmmaker.

Speaker 3 (01:13:06):
I want to be an artist or a writer, or
you know, a musician or something like that. And I
think a lot of those desires really can be decomposed
into very different kinds of desires.

Speaker 4 (01:13:19):
Like somebody who.

Speaker 3 (01:13:20):
Wants to be a musician could be somebody who loves
the act of like playing and writing music. They like
being in the process. It's like the doing that they're
excited about. Or somebody could be like I want to
be a musician because I want to be up on
stage and look cool and have people think I'm cool,
and you know, I want to have my identity associated

(01:13:44):
with the things that I associate with.

Speaker 4 (01:13:46):
Being a musician.

Speaker 3 (01:13:48):
And those are like different desires. And I'm sure that
in you know, many people, they can sort of intermingle
in different ad mixtures, like very different amounts. But I
think you're exactly right that there's something in here about
that that like he he does get very hung up
on this idea of being a filmmaker, but, like Denise
points out, like he doesn't. He doesn't seem to be

(01:14:10):
paying any attention to style, Like he's not paying attention
to the art of filmmaking and doesn't seem to care
much about it. It's more about being able to say
he's a filmmaker in service of being the coolest looking
guy in the world, the only guy in the world
who can wear this jacket, right.

Speaker 5 (01:14:28):
I mean, the whole reason he even says he's a
filmmaker is it's the first thing he thinks of when
he's put in a situation where he has to justify
why he's wearing the jacket.

Speaker 4 (01:14:37):
Yes, yeah, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:14:39):
By contrast, it seems like Denise really does love the
doing of the filmmaking, Like when she's talking about enjoying
being an editor, it sounds like she likes being in
the process, even if it is not necessarily a great
end product, like she talks about how much she liked
re editing pulp fiction when she says the final product sucked,

(01:14:59):
right yeah, yeah, And one more thing before we wrap up,
I wanted to come back to it. Does seem also
like something here is about an interaction between these these
pursuits and loneliness.

Speaker 1 (01:15:10):
Right.

Speaker 4 (01:15:10):
I think we talked about this at the.

Speaker 3 (01:15:12):
Beginning, that Denise and George both seem like characters who
aren't not having fulfilling functional relationships. They're they're both they
both seem like loners or lonely people in a way,
and not necessarily by choice. And it does seem like
that is contributing to or manifesting in some way as

(01:15:34):
these these bizarre obsessions that end up kind of blossoming
into aberrant behavior.

Speaker 5 (01:15:41):
Yeah, totally. And to Pew himself said that we're all
a little bit George, any of us can have that
moment where something snaps and everything collapses into obsession.

Speaker 3 (01:15:52):
Okay, does that do it for deer Skin?

Speaker 5 (01:15:55):
I think so.

Speaker 4 (01:15:56):
Jj.

Speaker 3 (01:15:56):
I really hope you have enjoyed your first turn on
Mike on Weird House, and I hope you'll do it
again in the future.

Speaker 5 (01:16:02):
Yeah, for sure. It is fun talking about this movie
with you.

Speaker 3 (01:16:05):
Absolutely, I'm glad you picked it. I don't know if
I would have seen it otherwise, but it's a hit.

Speaker 4 (01:16:10):
All right. Well, I guess that does it. So.

Speaker 3 (01:16:13):
Hey, if you are new to the show, let me
explain a little bit about what we do here. So
our main show is Stuff to Blow your Mind. That
is our core science and culture show, where most episodes
have something to do with science, but we also have
a kind of interdisciplinary approach. We like to talk about history, mythology,
and religion, literature and things like that, and those are

(01:16:35):
our Tuesday Thursday episodes. Every week on Fridays we do
this show, Weird House Cinema, where usually my co host
Rob Lamb and I just talk about a weird movie
and they can These movies can be old or new,
good or bad, well known or obscure. The only real
criterion is that it has to be weird. So we
do these every Fridays. On Wednesdays, we do a short

(01:16:57):
form episode on Saturday and Mondays we feature older episodes
of the show. So yeah, if you're new, stick around,
listen to some more, and of course subscribe wherever you
get your podcasts. You can also if you would like
to get just the Weird House Cinema episodes by themselves
without everything else, you can look up Weird House Cinema

(01:17:18):
and I think you can subscribe to that as its
own playlist or feed. Though of course, I encourage you
to check out all of our offerings. If you want
to follow us on social media, we're on some of
those I think we're on I think. I think we've
been building up a new Instagram page after we got
somehow locked out of our old one a while back.
We're on some of the other socials you can find

(01:17:40):
us on Letterboxed. Letterboxed is a sort of community film
sharing site. You can find us there under weird House
and let's see. I guess that's it for now, so
JJ thanks once again, thanks as always for being our
excellent audio producer, but double thanks today for joining me
on Mike. I really really appreciate it and I had

(01:18:01):
a great time talking to you and let's see. Oh
last thing, of course, if you would like to get
in touch with us with feedback on this episode or
any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or
just to say hello, you can email us at contact
at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:18:24):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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