Alan Rudolph & Remember My Name (1978)

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Oh, Casey, what's up, Millie? Not much. We are recreating
a scene from Remember My Name at We're recording at
the restaurant Dubrovnick, and we are drunk, and we are

(00:23):
making our way much like in the movie. We're making
our way through the drink list, starting at the bottomfuff puff.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
I'm actually not alone really smoking, but I'm doing it
anyway because I don't give a shit.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
Even though they said don't smoke in here. You can't
smoke in here, Millie puffing, puffing, and passing, MILLI, how
great would it be just to fill a little ash
tray full of cigarettes at a restaurant inside?

Speaker 2 (00:54):
Yeah, dark as hell in here.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
Dark as hell.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
I can't see a thing. I feel like we're drinking
double zombies. I don't even know zombies. What's in a zombie?
Tell me? Tell me what I what.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
Isn't a zombie? It's like the most to me, it's
like the most alcoholic drink there is. It's it's almost
like a Long Island iced tea where it's so much
stuff that it turns you into a zombie. Let me see,
have you ever had one?

Speaker 2 (01:20):
Maybe a trader vix?

Speaker 1 (01:22):
Is it a tiki? Drink. Yeah, the one in the
movie did look disgusting and they were like, this is bad,
but they had to.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
They were going backwards alphabetical order. But they also had
a beer. They were drinking a beer, which I guess
we're drinking now too.

Speaker 1 (01:41):
Yes, we're having a beer. We're having martinis, double martinis,
double Manhattan's, double zombies like in the movie. Honestly, if
I drank that combo, I think I would die. And
I'm a drinker. Yeah, but that's like an insane amount
of alcohol.

Speaker 2 (01:59):
I'm puke it.

Speaker 1 (02:01):
You know what.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
As you were talking, I've been puke it in the.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
Port, puking into like a flower pot in the corner. Well,
this is thrilling. We're drunk, We're feeling great, and uh
we got a great episode coming up here.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
Yeah, boy, we do. We are going to talk about
a fantastic film, something that I would consider a masterpiece.
I have to I would do.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
Yeah, after watching it.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
We're going to be talking about the movie Remember My
Name from nineteen seventy eight, directed by the great Alan Rudolph.

Speaker 1 (02:38):
This is a whole Alan Rudolph episode because you also
spoke to the man himself. Can you tell us just
a little bit about that or like where you recorded
that and that conversation that we're going to include in
this episode.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
Hell yeah, I will. I you know, I have been
a fan of this movie for a very long time.
Just a little bit of background. When I was a
programmer at TCM, I played Remember my Name on TCM
Underground because because it is very hard to find even
to this day. Right it's currently on the Criterion Channel,

(03:13):
by the way, so you can check it out in
all of its actual glory. But for the longest time,
it was not. I think that maybe a rip on
YouTuber in it an archive or something, but that rip
I think comes from TCM because I threw it up
there knowing that I was like, Okay, well this is
a great film and if people should see it, so
cut to I guess a few months ago. Video Drome

(03:37):
was the local Atlanta video store that I love, and
the Plaza Theater, which is the local Rep cinema theater
that I love, got together and actually all of us
collectively brought Allan and his wife Choice to Atlanta to
do two nights of screening. So we screened Remember my
Name and Choose Me, which I'm sure we'll come up

(03:59):
again in this yeah, but essentially, Yeah, the first night,
I sat down with Alan after the film and talked
to him for a while about it because I was
such a fan, and he was very very sweet and
complimentary towards me, and he actually thanked me for putting
it on TCM because he claimed that it was like
saving the movie by.

Speaker 1 (04:18):
Doing that, which was amazing.

Speaker 2 (04:21):
That was like incredible to hear, Like I was like
blown away by him saying that to me, and we
became best friends forever. Actually three of us are me
and Joyce. I just talked to her.

Speaker 1 (04:33):
The other day, So matching tattoos.

Speaker 2 (04:37):
Yeah, we've got, you know, one of those three part
heart necklaces that are cracked in three anyway, we all
have a piece. Yes, And I'm just so excited to
be talking about this movie because we actually did this
movie on I saw what you did. But I feel
like we're going to be talking about it again in
it kind of a different way and definitely play a
little bit of our conversation.

Speaker 1 (04:58):
So yes, absolutely thrilling.

Speaker 2 (05:01):
That's right.

Speaker 1 (05:02):
So gather your drinks, gather your fallen soldiers.

Speaker 2 (05:08):
And you know, have one, have a little long, tall
one on us. You are listening to Deer Movies.

Speaker 3 (05:14):
I Love you, Dear, I love you, and I've got
to know you love me to.

Speaker 2 (05:28):
Check the box. Well, hello there, this is the podcast
Dear Movies, I Love You. This is a little ditty
that we do every week. It's all about loving movies
for people who are in a relationship with movies as

(05:49):
we are. My name is Millie de Chericho.

Speaker 1 (05:52):
I'm Casey O'Brien. We both sobered up, drank a bunch
of coffee. We're feeling fine. We slept in the back
of our car.

Speaker 2 (05:59):
I put myself in the shower, turned on the cold water,
clothes and all, so we're good. Or I dumped my
head in an ice.

Speaker 1 (06:07):
Have you ever done that, by the way, Like put
like a bunch of ice in the sink and then
put your face right in it.

Speaker 2 (06:12):
Yeah, like that Huey Lewis in the news video.

Speaker 1 (06:14):
Oh I've never done that.

Speaker 2 (06:16):
Wow, I've done a polar plunge, but I've never put
my face and ice.

Speaker 1 (06:22):
I've got a polar plunger. Two. Have you really yes,
being a Minnesotan.

Speaker 2 (06:28):
Were you purifying yourself in the.

Speaker 1 (06:30):
Water waters of Lake Minnetonka. Yeah, yes, Bah.

Speaker 2 (06:34):
Having said that, Yeah, this episode is going to be
all about the movie Remember My Name from nineteen to eight,
and we'll probably talk a lot more about Alan's career
because he's made some super duper interesting movies. And I
have to say, like kind of a director that I
think was just sort of doing his own thing for

(06:58):
so long and kind of working in the it's like
weird independent slash studio space like kind of yeah, back
and forth a little bit, and I feel like he's
kind of getting his flowers again recently. Yeah, which is
so cool and interesting to me. So we'll unpack that.

Speaker 1 (07:17):
I think that absolutely. But Milli, we start every episode
the same way we open up the film diary, and
it's very heavy for listeners. This is first episode. Our
diaries are very heavy, and we talk about the movies
we watched from the last week. Yeah, Milli, what do

(07:40):
you get.

Speaker 2 (07:41):
Oh Jesus, I actually watched movies this week.

Speaker 4 (07:44):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (07:45):
I'm very proud of myself and that. So I saw
this week. I went to the movie theater. I went
to the Plaza the aforementioned Plaza Theater as part of
their the tail end of their Pride programming month. I
watch a movie called Pink Narcissus from nineteen seventy one.

(08:06):
This is a movie that I had heard about for
many years. First of all, it's an art house, erotic
gay film.

Speaker 1 (08:15):
Does it have any connection to Black Narcissus.

Speaker 2 (08:19):
I think in spirit perhaps, but I don't think there's
no direct tie. And it was directed by a director
named James Bidgood, and there's a little bit of drama there.
He basically had his name taken off the film because
I guess there was some back and forth with him
and the people who financed the film, and so he,

(08:42):
I guess his name was removed from it for many
many years, and then he essentially his name got put
back on the project, which I think is really great.
But it's basically this really dreamy, avant gardish art house
film about gay male sex worker who is kind of
in a dream like state or has like kind of

(09:03):
these erotic fantasies. And it was all like apparently shot
in his apartment or was in an apartment. And if
you think about if you watch the film and you
look at it, you're like, oh, these are like really
elaborate sets. I can't believe this was actually done in
like a room in somebody's house or something. But it's
kind of like, god, it's like hard to describe. It's

(09:25):
kind of like a Midsummer Night's Dream meets I don't know,
like a Fastbender thing meets I don't know, just like
something super. I think it's definitely of the time seventy one.
I mean, it's definitely like kind of you know, it's
got kind of countercultural elements to it, and so, I
don't know, it was really really interesting and it was

(09:47):
kind of like one of those things and I was like, oh,
I want to It's been on my list forever to
see and I just like crossed it off. So I
was really, yeah, really thrilled that I got that actually
screened in my town, which is like so the after
that I saw real random here, but we're going for it.

Speaker 1 (10:06):
Friday the thirteenth, the final chapter. Okay, let's talk about this.
Did you watch it on Friday thirteenth?

Speaker 2 (10:14):
I mean I might have.

Speaker 1 (10:15):
Yeah, yeah, well I watched Jason x Friday the thirteenth
from two thousand and one, which is obviously Jason in Space,
and it was a damn delight. Yeah, loved it. I
had never seen this one before, so tell me about
which one did you see Friday the thirteenth the final chapter?

(10:37):
Which one is that? See?

Speaker 2 (10:38):
This is the thing that I got a little bit
of beef with with the Friday Thirteenth franchises that I
can't remember which I think it's the fourth or fifth one.
It's I think it's the fourth one.

Speaker 1 (10:51):
Yeah, I've seen this one.

Speaker 2 (10:52):
Nineteen eighty four. It has Crispin Glover in it. Yep,
and most memorably Corey Feldman. Also not the final chapter.
It should be noted it's not the I mean, you
obviously saw Jason ten.

Speaker 1 (11:05):
Yeah, so's damn space, you know. I will say, of
the big, you know, heavy hitters like Nightmare and Elm Street, Halloween,
Friday the thirteenth, I would say Friday the thirteenth is
my least favorite of those franch of those like kind
of famous slasher franchises.

Speaker 2 (11:26):
Yes, I will go you one further and say that
it's probably on It's probably one of my least favorite
of the horror big horror franchises. But Jason Morhees is
my most attractive of the horror villains, if that makes sense.

Speaker 1 (11:46):
Ah, you're horniest for Jason Voorhees. What's what is it
about him?

Speaker 2 (11:54):
I think it's a it's the height, it's the weight,
it's the countenance, it's the out fits.

Speaker 1 (12:01):
He's a big boy.

Speaker 2 (12:02):
Yeah, I love him. I will climb that tree real fast.

Speaker 1 (12:05):
I do like with Friday the Thirteenth though, that they
take bigger swings than the other, like they're less beholden
to some sort of format of their films because they
like Jason goes to Manhattan, Jason goes to Space, Jason
goes to Hell. He's going all over the place.

Speaker 2 (12:20):
Yo, And let me tell you, god, it, like I
the kills are brutal in this one, like real brutal.
I was fucking shocked. Actually, I was like, damn, there's
a lot, a lot of hardcore like trauma to the
face type of stuff. And I gotta tell you the

(12:44):
I mean, spoiler alert for anybody who hasn't seen this.

Speaker 1 (12:46):
Somehow spoiler alert that Tommy.

Speaker 2 (12:49):
Jarvis turn, that Corey Feldman turn at the end is
so insane. Obviously a star making role, sure, but I
like the end of Friday the Thirteenth. The final chapter
is how I felt at the end of Barbarian, where
I just screamed in delight the entire time because I'm like,

(13:11):
this is so fucking stupid and ridiculous, but I'm here anyway, enjoyable,
enjoy very good.

Speaker 1 (13:19):
Okay, my turn. Okay. Like I said, I watched Jason
X from two thousand and one, brilliant. Then I watched
So on the Criterion channel. They have all of the movies,
or maybe not all of them, but a ton of
movies by Handmade Productions, which is this production company from
England that I don't even know if they're around anymore,

(13:41):
but it was like co founded by George Harrison, and
they did a lot of like kind of weird avant
garde comedies in the eighties and nineties, like they did
with Nail and I and like Mona Lisa with Bob
Haskin Bob Hoskins, excuse me. And one of their maybe

(14:04):
most famous movies is Time Bandits from nineteen eighty one
by Terry Gilliam. And this was a movie I used
to watch as a kid a lot and it really
scared me, and I was like, oh, I'd like to
watch that again. So I watched it for the first
time probably thirty years, and it was freaky again, but
it was like so great and so imaginative, and it

(14:24):
makes me sad that Terry Gillium is such a monstrous
creep and I like hate him as a person so much,
but I really do like his movies.

Speaker 2 (14:34):
Yeah, well that's amazing. Like I have never seen Time Band.
It's even though every person I know has probably seen it.

Speaker 1 (14:43):
So yeah, it's good. It's fun and interesting and weird
and idiosyncratic, and yeah it's great. I don't know, I
had a great time watching it. Yeah that's isy, Yeah,
that's it. Really shouldn't children really shouldn't watch it because
it really messed me up as a kid. So it
was kind of fun to watch that. Again. Well that's exciting.
I'll have to check that out on criteria. Yeah, there's

(15:05):
a lot on there. I'm very interested. I have never
seen with Neil and I and I'm curious to watch that.
Oh and then I watched as I promised I would
watch The Accountant too. And here's the thing. Two criticisms. Okay,

(15:25):
number one, The Accountant, it is the way the title is.
It's actually the Accountant squared, so like you know, that's
kind of doing a cutese thing. But if the but
the character of the accountant would not like that because
that doesn't make any sense. You know, it's not the
same as a number two squaring it. It just doesn't

(15:47):
mathematically make sense. And I think he'd have a real
problem with that. So my biggest complaint about this movie
not enough accounting. There should have been way more accounting.
There was a ton of accounting in the first one,
not enough in this one.

Speaker 5 (15:58):
So what he did, So you're mad that there wasn't
enough of uh fucking ben.

Speaker 1 (16:11):
Yes going through papers. Literally there's so much of that
in the first one, and it's thrilling and interesting, and
in this one it's much more of an action to
beat him up. And they kind of got rid of
the accounting, but they forgot about the the basis for
the whole series. He's an accountant, So.

Speaker 2 (16:31):
You're mad that they didn't show enough of him tinkering
with someone suggested gross income correct.

Speaker 1 (16:37):
There wasn't enough spreadsheets, not enough calculators. There wasn't enough
white board writing and circling, you know, there wasn't enough
papers being pinned to surfaces in the wall. There's just
a so well that's to that exact point.

Speaker 2 (16:54):
I mean, I don't know a lot about math. I
was in really bad remedial math when I was in
high school. But I do believe that squaring the accountant
would just means doubling the first one. And it's clear
that it's not the first one.

Speaker 1 (17:07):
No, it's not doubling the first one. It's multiplying the
first one by the first one. So it would be
the accountant multiplied by the accountant, not by two.

Speaker 2 (17:18):
Oh, this is why I'm not in math. Like, I'm
not a math or an accountant. So to that exact
point that you just made, that's also not what the
account two was.

Speaker 1 (17:29):
That's correct, there was There was a subtraction, not not
a multiplication. Wow. Anyways, God blessed. It's it. That's it
for our film diary.

Speaker 2 (17:40):
Schools more clothes, clothes.

Speaker 1 (18:01):
All right, we are back for our main discussion about
Alan Rudolph and his nineteen seventy eight movie Remember my Name, Millie.
You've talked to the man, you've seen his movies? Who
is Alan Rudolph.

Speaker 2 (18:16):
Alan Rudolph is its being my best friend. Yes, is
a really great American director and screenwriter. He writes pretty
much all of his movies. But he, you know, came
from I mean I think he's an LA boy and
his his father was a director and an actor. But

(18:40):
he I think he sort of got his real kind
of star in Hollywood working alongside Robert Altman, the director
Robert Altman, And you know, he was an AD on
The Long Goodbye and Nashville, and.

Speaker 1 (18:59):
Which is interesting to go from a lot of people
do not go from being an assistant director to a
director because it's actually an entirely different job being an
assistant director and AD is like the person who's like
essentially screaming at everybody to get them to do their
jobs properly, or like where's this person? We need this person?

(19:20):
Here are we ready to go? You know, they're the
one that are like keeping the shoot moving. So a
lot of times that oh, you know, that doesn't necessarily
transition easily into being a director, which is a little
bit more of like the creative oh, you know, overseeing
the whole creative vision.

Speaker 2 (19:38):
Have you have you ever been an AD? You seem
like you would be.

Speaker 1 (19:41):
Just the type that's so rude. That is not iird
I have done, you know, on a lot of the
movies that I've directed, I've had to be kind of
an AD because we have such a small crew and
I'm like, where's so and so I need them here?
Or like how long on this? Like my sets have

(20:04):
been so small that I have been able to keep
it all together just myself. I haven't really needed an AD.
But on bigger set, yeah you can.

Speaker 2 (20:13):
You can yell at people as the director.

Speaker 1 (20:16):
Well, yes exactly, but like the AD is the one
who's kind of like running around while the director is
working with the actor, you know, yes, or like the
set design of the costumes or all the creative stuff.
So I have never done it professionally.

Speaker 2 (20:30):
No, Well, it seems kind of like a consigliary type
of job. Like you're totally basically like doing all the
doing all the business, which I think is good for you,
like as as a Capricorn. As your film professor noted,
this is something that you would easily fall into. I

(20:50):
feel like, but uh.

Speaker 1 (20:51):
Huh, yeah, that's not a dig.

Speaker 2 (20:54):
What the fuck an? You know?

Speaker 1 (20:55):
Dad? I just feel like there's no creativity to being
a professional AD. You're not. There's just the creativity, isn't there.
It's more about running the show. Well, well, but thank you,
I mean I cracked a lot of skulls on this program.

Speaker 2 (21:10):
That's exactly what I was talking about. I was like,
you're the one that keeps the trains on time. You're
like yelling at me to like get my shit.

Speaker 1 (21:15):
Together, screaming I'm screaming at Milly behind this.

Speaker 2 (21:20):
Well that's interesting because yeah, he did in fact become
a director. And really, I mean it was funny because
when I was talking to him personally, because we hung out,
you know, at dinner and things, best friends, we you know,
he told me a lot about working with all men
and it's just about how you know, he just sort

(21:41):
of like became part of that universe and how he
just would like smoke weed and hang out with and
he kind of created his own sort of I don't know,
troop of actors that he would use over and over
and over in his films, like Keith Carrodine and Jean
we Have bouge Old and you know, Leslie and Warren

(22:03):
and stuff. So it's like, you know, he he feels
like there's this sensibility to him that feels very Altman like,
which is that like Altman kind of like makes movies
with like a bunch of cool creative people and they're
like not necessarily they're kind of like driven by relationships

(22:26):
and conversations and dialogue, and there's no he's not making
these like action packed, huge, you know, sort of blockbuster
y type of movies with a lot of narrative and
a lot of I mean sometimes like we're gonna talk
about this and remember my name, there's so slow kind
of unraveling of details and there's a lot going on

(22:48):
in the background. He also uses I think in remember
my Name, which feels very Altman esque, And I feel
like he talked about this maybe a little bit. I
don't know if we were gonna have in the conversation,
by the way, I'm just saying it. He talked about
this a little bit in Atlanta, where you know he
did kind of he kind of worked on California Split,

(23:11):
which kind of has that if you've seen California Split
and you know this about Altman films, that kind of
layering of background audio, Yeah, where you can hear like
people in the background hanging out of the bar, on
top of or just.

Speaker 1 (23:26):
It's like a messier scene than you normally see in movies.
You like hear everyone talking all at once and you're
not necessarily picking up entirely everything what the main characters
are saying all the time, right.

Speaker 2 (23:38):
Like it's like the bartender talking to some dude in
the corner, is Mike just as loudly as like the
main characters, And You're hearing all these like bits of
conversation which I feel like comes up and remember my
name a lot. And I feel like that was something
that maybe was an influence. But I feel like his
filmography is I mean, if you look at it, kind

(23:59):
of all like comprehensively. He made a lot of different
types of movies. Some of them are studio films, some
of them were a little bit more independent, And you know,
I personally think that he just has like he's very
focused on the relationships between people and sort of they're

(24:21):
all his movies are very romantic to me, and they
have like or they have elements of romance and sort
of this like off kilter kind of way. Yeah, And
I don't know, there's something like cute and interesting about
that to me when I'm watching his films where I'm
just like, oh, I don't know if I should be
rooting for these people to get together, but I kind
of am.

Speaker 1 (24:42):
Yeah, And it's clear that I definitely felt that and
remember my name. Yeah, I was like, why am I
pulling for this?

Speaker 4 (24:48):
Yes?

Speaker 2 (24:48):
Well, because it's like this weird like you don't know
necessarily where people's intentions are coming from, but you kind
of feel they're the character has a need for somebody
in the film, and you're kind of like you're like
okay with that. You're like, oh, I'm just like I
understand these people are bonded or connected on some level,

(25:10):
even though it makes like no sense. Yeah, but that's
what I think is so great about his movies though,
is that they're kind of a little bit off the
beaten path in a very like non obvious way. And
I feel like that was like by design. He was
like from what we talked about in person when he
was in Atlanta, you know, he was like, I just

(25:32):
want to make the movies I want to make. Like
I'm not trying to be you know, Ron Howard or
Spielberg or any of these people. I just want to
make my movies and hang out with the people that
I like. And there's something so great about that. And
I feel like Altman was kind of like that too.
I feel like it comes from this pure desire to
just like want to make movies with cool people, and

(25:54):
you know, and his wife, Joyce is also a total boss.
She was an on set photographer for her career. She
by the way, I have to say, she did the
on set photography for both Terminator and the First Nightmare
on Elm Street. The picture of the cover on the
First Nightmare on Elm Street with Heather Langingcamp sitting laying backwards,

(26:15):
she did the original photography for that.

Speaker 1 (26:17):
Incredible.

Speaker 2 (26:18):
So she has a copy of that photo, which was
obviously rendered later by some kind of artist because it
looks like a paint a paint portrait. But like I mean,
she was like traveling the world taking photography for all
these really really popular movies. So they're kind of this
like they're kind of relationship goals.

Speaker 1 (26:38):
Got it?

Speaker 6 (26:38):
I gotta say love it? Do you mind if I
do the synopsis for Remember My Name? Do I?

Speaker 1 (26:50):
Here we go, jumping right in. Emily played by Geraldine
Chaplin aka Charlie Chaplin's daughter. She's fresh out of jail,
the twelve year stint in jail in New York. You
can tell immediately she does not quite know how to
fit back into regular society. She has kind of a

(27:12):
every interaction is weird, and she's set up camp in
Los Angeles now because an inmate at the jail with
her said that her son would give Emily a job.
She gets this job at a kind of a convenience store,
grocery store, goods store run by Jeff very young Jeff Golblum,

(27:34):
but most of her time is spent inexplicably stalking and
tormenting this couple Neil played by Anthony Perkins and Barbara,
his wife played by Barry Berenson. And it's at for
most of the movie it's very unclear why she has
her laser beams sort of focused on this couple, in

(27:54):
this man in particular, but it soon becomes very clear
why she is focusing in on them, which we'll get into.
I'm sure this movie will spoiler alert, I will say,
but yeah, something we had talked about before we started
recording was just these kind of these two leads, Anthony
Perkins and Geraldine Chaplain, and I thought it was very

(28:16):
savvy casting because these are people I guess we recognize,
you know, but we both agree there's something they both
look off. They both have a look of they're not
quite right and aren't fitting in society properly, wouldn't you

(28:37):
say they have kind of an odd yeah look to them.

Speaker 2 (28:42):
Yeah, I think I would. I mean, I, first of all,
I have to apologize to anybody who is ever like
I wrote about this movie in the TCM Underground book,
I've you know, obsessed, I'm obsessed. I'm just as obsessed.
I'm Geraldine Chaplain smoking cigarettes in the window of this
movie basically. But I've talked about this movie a lot

(29:03):
because I'm a huge fan of it, and I I
feel like and I again, there was a moment when
I was in the Q and A with Alan where
I was like, I want to go so hard on
all of my like weird like film nerd isn't like
I just want to ask, like, what's the motivation behind

(29:23):
this and stuff? Which is like the most irritating shit
you could ever do?

Speaker 1 (29:28):
What does this mean?

Speaker 2 (29:29):
What does this mean? Like? Did you intend for the
movie to be you know, so fucking dumb. I'm horrified
by the even thought that I had that thought.

Speaker 1 (29:40):
We should have some Q and a horror story episode segments. Yes,
because we could.

Speaker 2 (29:46):
Be like an offshoot of Film Regrets, Yes, exactly, But
to me, I and I picked up on this and
I'm not sure it, Like again, like I don't know
if this was intentional or if this is I read
of it, which is kind of great. I can have
a read. That's Like. The thing that I love about
this film in particular is that it's so it's such

(30:07):
a rich text to where you're like noticing a lot
of stuff in the background, noticing all these character quirks,
and you're just kind of forming your own opinions about
who these people are, which I feel like, you know,
I have my own thoughts about who I think the
Geraldine Chaplin character is and where she comes from and
what motivates her. But I feel like there is this
kind of oddness of them in the sense that the

(30:31):
Geraldine Chaplin character Emily feels slightly butch to me. And yeah,
I know that there is a big runner in the
film is her trying to adapt to like her re
entry into society right where she almost is sort of relearning.

Speaker 1 (30:51):
Femininity totally in a way, right, And there's some very
telling scenes where she's buying clothes at this department store
and it's very hostile with it feels very hostile with
the woman she's purchasing the clothes from in a way
that's like, why is this so loaded? Yes, you know so.

Speaker 2 (31:12):
Right, And you know her physical body, she's small and
she's tiny, but she's also like wearing like kind of
you know when she especially when she first comes out,
she's wearing kind of like work clothes and she's smoking
cigarettes and literally is like stubbing out a cigarette in
her fingers, which is so insane. Did you catch that

(31:33):
where she.

Speaker 1 (31:33):
Would just like rub the Yes, she's she's always rolling
the cigarette like to put out a cigarette. Sometimes you
like roll it to like get the spark charity of
the cherry out of it. And there's several close ups
of that in this movie.

Speaker 2 (31:48):
Yeah, And there's just scenes of her like kind of
trying to put on makeup and being very like, you know,
trying to figure out if this is something that she
should be doing as a woman and this kind of stuff.
So there's that, and then you'd like look at the
flip and you look at the Anthony Perkins character, which,
by the way, there's all like a whole story about
him and trying him trying to be in this movie,

(32:08):
and he you know, actually was like I don't think
I should be in this movie because I don't think
I would make a convincing construction worker, right, Yeah, which.

Speaker 1 (32:22):
I think he doesn't feel like a construction worker, but
that's intent, Like that feels right for this movie.

Speaker 2 (32:29):
Yeah, And it was kind of like it was hard
to say, Like upon rewatching it most recently, I was
kind of like, he sort of has an architect vibe,
but he's also hammering nails into so he's kind of
doing it all. But like, you're right, if you know
Anthony Perkins, you know the career of Anthony Perkins, and
you know his life. I mean you're basically like, oh,
here's a lithe, tall gay man trying to act like

(32:51):
a construction worker, which you're kind of like, there's something
weird about that.

Speaker 1 (32:55):
And he Yah, it feels you know, it feels wrong
in the movie. Yeah, Like everyone, like both Geraldine Chaplain
and him are not fitting in correctly, Like they don't
fit in easily right.

Speaker 2 (33:07):
And I would even go as far as to say
so Barry Berenson, who it was his wife in real life,
Anthony Anthony Perkins's wife in real life, but she plays
his wife in the film as well. There's something a
little butch about her too. She's got a she's got

(33:30):
a short kind of haircut, and she's beautiful, and she's
she's she was a model, so it's kind of like okay,
but she kind of has this like butch energy of
her own.

Speaker 1 (33:41):
Right.

Speaker 2 (33:42):
So there's this point where I was thinking, you know,
when I was watching this movie, going like, oh, so,
here you have these like two women who are kind
of like a little you know, when it comes to
sort of that femininity question, You're like, Okay, they're kind
of not towards the you know, tail end of being
super feminine. And then you have this sensibly a gay

(34:03):
man playing this like butch archetype like the construction work. Yeah,
and there's this inversion to me that exists in this
movie that I think is really fascinating, and it kind
of contributes to the story in the sense that you're like,
who is if you want to think of this movie
as like a Noar or like a Nianawar or like

(34:24):
some kind of thriller, who is the femme fatale? Like
who is the person who is wreaking havoc? You know,
running rampant through the hearts and minds of these main characters, Right,
And that whole question is like one of my favorite
things about this movie. It's sort of like who, Like

(34:47):
as the movie unfolds, you're like, Okay, well, you have
this woman who seems to be like stalking this man
and his wife. But then what is happening with him
where he like as his character on folds, you're like, oh,
maybe he is like a dog. Maybe he has these
moments where he's like been with women and kind of
run through women, and you know, do these women are

(35:10):
they scorned?

Speaker 4 (35:12):
You know?

Speaker 2 (35:12):
And then you've really figured that out towards the end.
I don't know. It's one of the best parts of
the movie for me. So there's something too about the
There's a lot again we were going back to the
audio question of this film. There's a lot of audio
in the background that plays throughout the film, and one
of them is the sound of jail ye, the sound

(35:33):
of like bars clanking and jail doors being shut, and
it typically comes into the film when Emily is alone,
and maybe that's you know, a for a reason. And
then you have the sound of airplanes, which I think
in the film is because the Anthony Perkinson Barry Bearnson

(35:57):
character live near the airport or something. Yeah, but there's
that whole like audio comparison of like incarceration and freedom,
so it's like jail and air travel, flying whatever you
want to call it. And that again not to be

(36:17):
this obnoxious, you know, grad school film programmed person, but
I'm like that to me seems intentional. There seems to
be some intention behind that, which I think is super interesting.

Speaker 1 (36:31):
Can we talk about the scene where Emily Jerldine Chaplin
goes into their house, yes, and is like walking around?
Of course we can, because that was so this movie
has an element that to me was scary. Yes, and
Emily's our main character, were with her like the whole movie,

(36:52):
but she there's something so off about her that it's scary.
And basically she goes into Anthony Perkins and Barry Berenson's
house when Barry Berenson is making dinner and she's sort
of just floating around the house like just like out
of eyeshot of Barry Berenson, and she seems so at

(37:17):
ease and so comfortable infiltrating these people's space, and it
is really You're like, I'm so tense. You're like, when
are they going to see each other? And then all
of a sudden, Emily's just kind of like standing there
in front of her and freaking Barbara out, you know,

(37:39):
but she like seems more at ease, like being breaking
into this person's house than she is in like regular society,
you know, because I feel like she's, like in regular society,
she is like a straight She's a stranger. Everywhere she's out,
she's not welcome anywhere. So how is this any different?
You know, like breaking into someone's house and just kind
of like floating around. But that scene was so scary

(38:04):
to me. Oh yeah, it's it's intense.

Speaker 2 (38:06):
And when I saw it in the theater, you know,
back a few months ago, there's a lot of people
in that movie theater. I hadn't seen it, and everybody
gasped when she finally shows up in front of Barry
Barnson's face with the knife or whatever or.

Speaker 1 (38:20):
Well, there's a jump scare, yeah, and she like Emily
does something unexpected that really made me jump. Yeah, and
like and it's a scary, Like I mean basically she
like pulls out a knife and is like ah, like
literally like that. Yeah, and but you're like so not
expecting it.

Speaker 2 (38:41):
Yeah, there there is this Okay, This is such a
this is such a sidebar observation, but I have to
talk about it. So in that scene, Bary Bearnson is
like making some kind of salad or so she's cutting
up some vetables and yes, she's got a head of
romee lettuce and she pulls out this was This feels

(39:03):
like a very LA apartment thing. But there's this wood
cutting board, Yes, that comes out of the almost like
underneath the countertop.

Speaker 1 (39:11):
Every LA apartment I had had a built in wooden
cutting board that you could that kind of comes out
from the countertop and you could chop yes on it.

Speaker 2 (39:21):
That's how I know. So there's like a couple different
things that when I watch movies after having lived in
LA I'm like, oh, I know that's an LA apartment
number one or book the built in bookshelves that are
always in every LA apartment. The second is that wood
cutting board.

Speaker 1 (39:36):
Can I say watching this movie? So this movie was
primarily filmed I looked this up in Culver City, Marina
del Rey, and Santa Monica. I believe I lived in
all three of those places a long time. That's the
West side of La particularly Culver City. A lot of
this was shot in Culver City. I think their apartment
or the house that they lived in was in Culver City,

(39:58):
and the department store where she worked was in Culver City.
And if you don't know Culver City, it has a
very specific kind of bland seventies feel. It looks the
exact same as it does did in this movie. And
watching this instantaneously, I was like, this is this is
shot in Culver Sell. I knew it, like before any

(40:18):
sort of landmarks came up. I was like, I know
exactly this place. And it's kind of an interesting place
to set the movie because Culver City is not it's
not touching the ocean. It's inland Los Angeles. It's kind
of suburban within the city. It's kind of boring. A
lot of people consider Culver City boring and so but

(40:40):
it's still California. It's still like the Land of Freedom,
but it's kind of like boring in a way. And
I don't know, I just felt like the vibe fit
perfectly with this movie.

Speaker 2 (40:54):
Yeah, I got to say, first of all, it's so
it's so interesting that you lived you were like a
West Side boy for a long time.

Speaker 1 (41:02):
Well, I would say about half my time I lived
in La. I was a west side boy because the
east side is where the cool kids. Yeah, that's where
Silver Lake and Los Felises, which I lived in both
those places too. But I have a special appreciation for
Culver City because everyone shits on it.

Speaker 2 (41:17):
That's so funny. I think the only time that went
to Culver was to go to Arcana, the bookstore.

Speaker 1 (41:25):
Arcana, Okay, the cool bookstore and Apple Pan isn't that
in that's West Lay not Culver City, but it's kind
of close to.

Speaker 2 (41:34):
There is the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City.

Speaker 1 (41:40):
That's I believe mar Vista, but yeah, it's near Culver City. See,
Culver City has the Sony studios and it doesn't have
much else for landmarks, which is why it's kind of
like an un impressive in a way.

Speaker 2 (42:02):
Yeah, they had that big cop but there's that big
complex now that has the Arkana and there's like a
Poketto what is it.

Speaker 1 (42:09):
It's like a huge now it's becoming cooler. Yeah, there's
like all this built. There's all these things being built
there now, the Poketto, Yeah, which is like kind of
like a cute, little dispensive design story exactly well, but yeah,
so I love Culver City.

Speaker 2 (42:27):
Well that's cool. And then like, that's the thing is
that I when she pulled out that wooden board. So
I remember when I first roved in that apartment, I
was like looking around in all the drawers and I
saw that wooden and I kind of clocked that it
was a cutting board, and there was like, there's no
fucking way I'm using this. There's probably like fifty or
sixty years of people like.

Speaker 1 (42:46):
That's what I always thought. I'm like, am I gonna
use meat on this heapens?

Speaker 2 (42:50):
No? No, there's probably like germs from like World.

Speaker 1 (42:55):
War two on that, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (42:57):
But she she uses it very easily. And then I
was like, oh, here's somebody who's actually using that board. Interesting,
but yeah, that part is harrowing. It's really really it's
really really harrowing. And you kind of let that point going. Okay, girl,
I was kind of rooting for you, Emily, But.

Speaker 1 (43:13):
Now she crosses a line there that you're like, oh,
I wasn't sure if she was capable of that, right,
because before she's like destroying their flowers and just sort
of stalking them. I mean, she does throws something through
their window, but then she actually just like casually enters.
Oh what would you do in that situation, Milly, if
you were confronted by an Emily just standing in your apartment?

Speaker 2 (43:35):
Oh, I'd have like an instant heart attack. When you're talking.
I live by myself. I'd be like, what are you doing?
And knowing Jodine Chaplin having that face with her huge eyes,
I would fucking It's like when you watch tiktoks of
like people who are trying to scare their partners by
like hiding under the bed and like wrapping their ankles
and stuff.

Speaker 1 (43:52):
I think it's cool.

Speaker 2 (43:53):
I'd be like, divorce, don't prank me.

Speaker 1 (43:57):
I am not good with this shit, and I'm not
good at like an I don't like when people try
to scare me, like startle me, pisses me on no way.

Speaker 2 (44:04):
Yeah, to that point, this back and forth between whether
or not you're rooting for Emily or not, I think
generally I'm rooting for her. I do think she goes
a little ham at points. Here's the thing that's really
interesting to me is that ultimately I feel like, and
again this is kind of spoiler alert, I know we
shouldn't be like talking about this if you haven't seen

(44:25):
the movie, but I don't care. This is like, yeah,
this is too enticing, and I have the platform. I
want to diarrhea out all my thoughts.

Speaker 1 (44:34):
I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 (44:37):
That was a bad analogy, but whatever. I There's something
that happens at some point in the film that flips
the script about all of it, right, yeah, which is
that eventually Emily gets busted for being a creep stalker
and she gets sent to jail. Okay, Anthony Perkins's character

(45:02):
Neil comes to visit her, and it's basically like, I
have to like this is I have to like I
know this woman. We got to talk it out. And
there's this moment that makes me gasp every single time,
and it made everybody in the theater gasp, which is

(45:23):
that they have the big conversation, the big reuniting, which
had been building and building and building throughout the entire movie.
And then he turns to what is it, the officer
or the detective and says he says it's line, but
he basically says, my wife, my other wife mm hmm,

(45:47):
And it's clear that he is like, oh, this is
my wife. Emily is my wife. My other wife is
the woman that was being stalked by my.

Speaker 1 (45:55):
Wife, but Emily's the primary wife.

Speaker 2 (46:00):
Yeah, and you're like, holy shit, Like at that moment,
were you not like, oh this is on, baby, this
is fucking.

Speaker 1 (46:09):
On, Like well yeah, because like Neil you can tell
has like the whole movie, You're like, some some something's
up here, something wrong with this guy. He's got something
going on. He's something going on. And so when he's
like my wife, my mother wife, You're like, oh shit.
I was like, we're we are we are so back baby.

(46:30):
I felt like it was. But the weird thing that
this movie does is like my body was saying, oh, yeah,
they should go out on a date. They should they
should like hang out, like let's see where this goes,
which is like so weird because his other wife, Barbara,
she's done nothing wrong. She has been the victim of

(46:52):
all of this this whole movie, and yet the movie
makes me want to see where things go with these
two with Neil Emily, those two crazy cats, Like.

Speaker 2 (47:03):
There's some okay, like we're talking about this in context
of this narrative film, right, yeah, there's something kind of
I don't know if it's camp, I don't know what
it is, but the idea of this like character being like, oh, yeah,

(47:25):
this woman loves the shit out of me, Like look
at all the stuff that she's doing for me, Like
she's been, yeah, taking over my flowers and putting knives
in my woman's face and stealing my artful photography that is,
you know, in my house.

Speaker 1 (47:44):
If I can make a comparison just for everybody to
understand this better, It's kind of like on vander Pump
Rules when Stossy was like, I want nothing to do
with Jack's but then Jack's got a tattoo of Stossy's
name on his chest and she's kind of like kind
of like it. I kind of like that. So that's

(48:06):
exactly this sort of scenario where it's kind of like
I shouldn't like this, but it's working for me.

Speaker 2 (48:12):
It's devotion, right, You're like devotion, the devotion of this
fucked up story, like you're kind of going and again
it plays with this more. It's more it's morally very murky.

Speaker 1 (48:28):
Yeah right.

Speaker 2 (48:30):
But if you're just a fucking romantic, Like if you're
just a romantic, big hearted bitch like I am, you're like, oh,
there's some devotion happening here, and this is so fucked up,
but like he is loving it. Why the hell else
would he call her his wife again? Go out for

(48:51):
cocktails at the restaurant.

Speaker 1 (48:54):
Yes, the scene we were re enacting at the top,
Anthony Perkins aka Meal and Emily out to this restaurant
and get blasted together.

Speaker 2 (49:05):
And not that I think that women should be fighting
for straight men in this way at all, but the
idea that there's like a history there and there's kind
of like it's kind of again going back to the
idea of these like weird romances, like these kind of

(49:26):
quirky but not even really quirky in that when I
say quirky romance, it's like I'm not talking about like
fucking five hundred days of summer. I'm talking about something
that's real, rope based, real, like under the surface. And
it again as a text, as a film, as a story,
there's just so much going on there where you are like, yeah,

(49:47):
I don't know, like I want this to kind of
happen between them, even though it's so problematic and so
not probably what should happen for any of their mental healths.

Speaker 1 (50:01):
Well, and you kind of you don't really know the
full story, but she was in jail because she ran
over a secretary that Neil has having an affair with.
But he kind of gets interrupted in this, so you
don't hear the whole story. So it wasn't murder, but

(50:21):
it was an accident. That's kind of like something he
is saying.

Speaker 2 (50:25):
But yeah, it's very to me, and I think that
this is I think that maybe Allan at some point
would agree with us. I don't know. It feels very
like forty is melodrama, Betty Davis, Joan Crawford in this
way where you're like, and I think that's maybe why
I think it feels campy is because it kind of

(50:46):
comes from this like old tradition of the like women's
picture quote unquote, the melodrama of like you know, I
killed the man I love or whatever, you know, just
like that very very very over the top, you know
storyline of like of women being scored but then still

(51:06):
being in love with the person that hurt them, and
then you know and then you realize, Okay, Also, Neil
has probably been cheating on every girlfriend that he's ever had,
and he's a fem fatal, like he's the one that's like,
you know, wreck and shop and you know this because
at the end of the film spoiler alert, you see

(51:29):
Barry Benson smoking a fucking cigarette looking out the wind
like she becomes the Emily Like she's smoking pensively and intensely,
like another scorned woman. Would you know. So there's just
so much, so much about this film that is great
and I don't know, this is what again? I think

(51:50):
that this movie is really unique and rare because it's
not giving you all the information no, so it allows
for this liken really like rampant interpretation, which I'm obsessed with.
I love when something is ambiguous and I can just
like have my own theories about things. And but I

(52:12):
will say that I think that that's why maybe this
film and maybe hismography was never like commercially huge and successful,
because people can't live in that. They want the answers
so badly.

Speaker 1 (52:28):
I feel like these movies they're I feel like they're
what my mom would describe as weird, which is just
sort of like an umbrella term of like this doesn't
this isn't holding my hand, I don't know what's going on.
Who are these You like, you are unsettled? Yeah, while

(52:51):
watching the movies, you don't know exactly what people's intentions
are or what they're going to do. And I can
see why that didn't necessarily equate to commercial success because
watching these movies, they don't feel like commercial movies.

Speaker 2 (53:07):
Yeah, I would have to say that too, and I
feel like a lot of his other movies are that way.
I think it's interesting because his film Choose Me from
nineteen eighty four, which is kind of the other movie
that people have been talking about. I think it's on
the Criterion channel. It was actually released as a Criterion
disc on Blu Ray. That movie is kind of strange
and has its own weird pacing and its own ambiguities.

(53:33):
Even though that seems to be one of his more
popular films at least sort of currently, But a lot
of his films are challenging. I mean, like I would
say to like whatever Multiplex people, right, Like, I think
one of his most famous films or notorious films, if
you want to say that, is his adaptation of Breakfast

(53:55):
of Champions, which is the Kurt Vonnegut book, and it
was kind of like people were really upset by it,
I think when it came out, But then it's kind
of getting this like reappraisal right now, and a lot
of people are kind of going back to it and
kind of looking at it in a different way, which
I think is really interesting. I think he's got he's

(54:16):
got his own unique, rare vibe to him that I
feel like, especially now, Damn, you don't see people doing
shit like this now, Like you're not like everybody has
to have like the whole thing, the whole kit and
kamboodle in front of you, you know. And I just
the idea that his career seems to be kind of

(54:37):
on his own terms, and he got to kind of
do what he wanted when he wanted. I mean, I'm
sure he probably wanted to do other things that didn't
come to fruition, but you know what I mean, Like
in terms of his philography, like he's making different types
of films using like people that he loved and wanted
to work with, and he was writing his own stories
and they got to be as complex or as understated

(55:01):
or ambiguous as he wanted him to be. And I
don't know, I mean, I just think it's it's like
when you find the work of like a really great
author and you're just like, I want to know everything.
I want to come up with my own stories and
theories and interpretations. I don't know, it's just fun.

Speaker 1 (55:18):
Yeah, so absolutely, well fabulous, are you okay? If we
move on from No, I want.

Speaker 2 (55:26):
To live here forever. I think the whole podcast there
was a podcast run should be about this film. No.
I had you watched this film before? Have you seen it?

Speaker 1 (55:36):
No, I'd never seen this before and I'd only seen
Choose Me prior to watching this. So I mean I
said this to you before we started recording. I thought,
this is like a perfect movie. It just felt so
just felt like a master work, you know, and you
just feel like a filmmaker is like operating at the
top of his powers. It just felt great. Yeah, I

(55:59):
love it.

Speaker 2 (55:59):
Well, I'm glad. I to me, I don't like saying this,
but it feels like a handshake movie for me, Like
it feels like a movie that if you love it
like I love it, then we are bonded for life.
And it's sad because I mean, I won't go off
on this too much, but you know, this movie is unavailable.
There's a lot of issues with it in terms of

(56:21):
the music because ALBERTA Hunter and now I know a
little bit more than I did. I don't know back
when I was writing the TCM book, just having talked
to Alan and Joy some certain people where you know
her music is. It's always a music thing, obviously, and
I think for her in particular, it's just a matter
of somebody literally, somebody Sony, finding the time or the

(56:44):
desire to just do the paperwork, do the accountant to
paperwork that you love so much. And I hope that happens.
And I know that there are people who are actually trying,
like I know that there's people in my nerdy core
or of the the re release and arkivist universe that

(57:04):
are trying really hard to kind of figure something out.
And I hope so because I know that Alan wants
it really bad and he loves this movie. It would
be great, but it's not in his power. That's the
unfortunate thing. It's not in his power to figure it out,
which is sometimes the case, and a director cannot control
where his movie ends up. And it's sad, but it
is a reality, especially with like studio people, and like

(57:27):
you know, if you work at a major studio and
you have a huge back catalog of films and everybody
wants it to you know, be re released and restored
and on Blu Ray. It's like, you know, there's there's
people who are like thinking, they're they're prioritizing other things
before other things, and it's stupid, but it is what
it is, and I hope that it happens. I will

(57:50):
do everything I can to help. If anybody knows how
to help, I'm putting the call out there, you can
email us, we can talk about it. But yeah, I
just hope that one day it gets I mean, I
hope it comes on a Criterion and obviously should come
on the disc collection, not the channel.

Speaker 1 (58:08):
If you're interested in watching this, go to the Criterion channel,
subscribe to the Criterion channel and watch it now. It's
on there now.

Speaker 2 (58:14):
Yeah, it is on there now. And then, like I said,
probably the best quality it could be. And I don't know,
tell me what you think. I mean, honestly, email us
Deer Movies at exactly rightmedia dot com. I'd love to
shitty chat about it with you.

Speaker 1 (58:28):
So very good.

Speaker 2 (58:39):
Okay, So we do have a bit of a treat
for everybody. This is actually a bit of the audio
from the night that I did with Alan Rudolph in Atlanta.
This was recorded on April tenth, twenty twenty five, at
the Plaza Theater. So, yeah, enjoy. So I wanted to
kind of ask a little bit about the beginning of

(59:02):
your film career because you started to.

Speaker 4 (59:04):
Have a career.

Speaker 2 (59:05):
I have a korem, but you started with Robert Altman, right.

Speaker 4 (59:13):
No, oh, not true.

Speaker 1 (59:16):
I knew this was going to happen.

Speaker 2 (59:18):
We talked about how this was well, Almon was the start.

Speaker 4 (59:21):
Of of understanding with film what I was doing.

Speaker 2 (59:27):
Yeah, but I was.

Speaker 4 (59:30):
I was an assistant director, which is a really good job,
and I mean first assistant director is in charge of
the whole production for the director. And I was I
think about three four years and television mostly, and I said,

(59:53):
wait a second, I want to make my own films.
But there was absolutely no way to get that done.
You didn't pick up your phone then and start shooting.
Phones were all dial and I didn't work. I just
turned down work. And then I got a call to
work with Altman as a second assistant director, which I

(01:00:14):
hadn't been for years and years and wouldn't go back to.
And then I met him and I just said, anything you.

Speaker 2 (01:00:24):
Want, I want to talk a little bit about well,
there's obviously the big question hanging in the air about
the movie, about why it's not on home video. But
I wanted to talk about Anthony Perkins and Barry Bearnson.
They were a couple when they made this f.

Speaker 4 (01:00:46):
They were married, right, they had two children. Oz Perkins
is a big hint. Now, Yeah, he's a director.

Speaker 2 (01:00:53):
I had read. I had read that that Anthony Perkins
was a little hesitant.

Speaker 4 (01:01:01):
To great reminded me of that. I would no, no,
I wouldn't have All these answers are nothing simple. Yeah.
Altman had a way of making things happen because he
was just a force and no one could could handle

(01:01:22):
him except on his terms. And he had a deal.
I don't I didn't know about the back room stuff,
but now I know. He was making I think, a
wedding for Fox. He called me up one day and

(01:01:44):
he said, I want to see you right now. And
this is the truth. I mean, this is how movies
get made. This no, this is how movies never get made,
but this one did. And he said, I want want
to see you. Can you come over? I said sure,
So I drove over. And when I was driving in

(01:02:05):
the daytime and there was an art Revival House, and
it had a marquee and it said a Femme Fatale
double feature. I can't tell you what the movies were,
but i'd seen both of them. I'd seen all of them,
most of all of them. And I got to his office.

(01:02:27):
He said, oh, let's go and have a launch or something.
And we sat down across the street. His office was
not in the studio. It was a little compound in
Westwood that you thought was a fake tutor building that
you know, handicrafters occupied or something, but it was all
And we went across the street and he says, I

(01:02:48):
think I got a deal here. I can get a
movie made for you. I had turned down several things
because I really want after Welcome, Alman produced Welcome to
La and I wanted to stay with him. I actually
turned down a movie after Welcome, a big one. I
wasn't a movie yet, but it would have been, and

(01:03:09):
I just wanted to stay in that atmosphere. And he says,
I think I can get a movie made for you.
What do you got? And I said, oh, I want
to make a movie about Paris in the twenties. Is
a script I wrote, the first thing I ever wrote,
and I really know. Oh, I said, I have another

(01:03:34):
idea where the vice president of the United States is
having an affair with the first lady. I like that. No,
we couldn't afford that this is going to be as
low budget as Welcome, which are both of them under
a million. And I said, well, I got an idea
about a femme fatale only updated. He said, great, who

(01:03:57):
do you want to be in it? I mean that's
what Bob's always His first question was casting me, whether
he had a script anything, and I said, geraldy. He said,
this is good. He said, I'm going to this is
like Monday. He said, I'm going to New York Friday.
Have you written the script out? I said, well, I'm
pretty much through with it. I need about a week

(01:04:19):
and he said, get it to me before I get
on a plane. I said, okay. I didn't sleep for
a week, but the thing wrote itself one side. It
just came. And I didn't want to write a I
didn't want to make a movie. I just wanted to
make an American art films, which wasn't a category, and

(01:04:45):
Altman was doing them, but I couldn't do what he did,
and I just wanted to make these little things that
nobody pays attention to, but they don't bother you. And
so I just wrote one hundred and ninety two hours
or whatever it was. And I came in and handed

(01:05:06):
him a script which I probably hadn't even read or
re read, and he took it on the plane. He
called me. He says perfect. Wow, And he said, I said, well,
what do you want me to do? He said, I'll
call you in a few days and he went in
I didn't know this. He went into Fox and he

(01:05:28):
made a deal with them that he was going to
do another film for them and this film with me,
and they sort of had to take it to get
his other film, and he said, you know, I keep
it under a million and get some actors. And they
bought it. So we went to New York. Joyce went

(01:05:50):
to see Equis the play and Tony Perkins was staring
in it. And Tony Perkins was a big start of
me from growing up. I'm a friendly persuasion. I mean,
it was really something. And I knew nothing about his
life or anything about him, and I thought, well, he's

(01:06:12):
not going to do this, and we sent him a
script and he said, yeah, which is really something. So
Bob had a as he always did, had some kind
of big session at his house for various reasons, in
his apartment in New York. And we were there and

(01:06:33):
everybody's having a good time and about a variety of things.
But I knew we had a movie, and I thought Tony.
I called Geraldine before I said Tony Percy's oh perfect,
what a great idea. So during this affair, somebody taps
Bob on the shoulder and he goes in the other

(01:06:55):
room and he comes out just the angriest looking and
party continues and he's charming and all that, and I said,
what is something happened? He said, are you sure? And

(01:07:15):
he said, yeah, that was Fox. They don't want to
do the movie. And we had just cast and I
had a crew setting in LA and I'd scouted all
the locations myself because we didn't have anybody working. And
I said, what do we do? He said, I'm coming

(01:07:36):
back to La. You go back there. Well, we're going
to make it.

Speaker 1 (01:07:41):
So I go back.

Speaker 4 (01:07:43):
He arrives, I go to his office and we were
supposed to start shooting in like two weeks. And I
said wow, and he said, just keep prepping, just keep
doing what you doing? And I said, well, we don't
have any money, and he said, yeah, people work with
you for nothing for now. I mean I had a
lot of people who work with Bob, but not all

(01:08:06):
of them on the cameraman I've never even met. And
the day we start shooting, on a Monday, the day
before Saturday or some I went in with Bob and
his associate producer. I said, what do we do? He said,

(01:08:28):
we start shooting Monday. I said, how can we do that?
He said, because you get two weeks before you have
to pay anybody. When you start, you start anything. I
said yeah. I said, so we'll work for two weeks.
If we get the money, we'll keep going. If not,
you shut down. And then he lit a joint or

(01:08:52):
something and I said, well, I guess if he says
that's okay, I'll do it. So we started shooting. And
the first first day shooting I think, well, the first
day was Jerline in the car up, but the first
day with actors was in the thrift store, you know,

(01:09:14):
the Mark or whatever it was called, with Alfree and
Jerolene coming in and Hull and Altman had something that
I absolutely picked up on and did religiously, which is daily's,
which today dailies don't exist. Nobody sees. Daily's are the
day's work from the day before, and they're on thirty

(01:09:38):
five millimeters film, which is a means you can't watch
them on your shower head or whatever people watch now
these days, and you have to either go to the
lab and watch your day's work or you're altman. And
he told somebody on the on Longer Bye, we did

(01:10:00):
the drill a hole in the wall, put the projector
behind here, and in his office he said, we'll just
watch Daily's on that wall on a screen. So Daily's
every night for the Longer Bye in California, split were
in his office and then he illegally built a screening

(01:10:24):
room in the alley. This is all in a residential
neighborhood in the alley out back where he had a
screening room that we did Nashville on and so that's
where we watched Daily's. And I invited Tony to come
to see his wife and because she was in the

(01:10:46):
first day shooting and he wasn't, and Geraldine and I
think Jeff was in. That's Jeff's first speaking role, I
believe Goldblin and Alfrey Woodard's first movie. She was in
the And so we're watching dailies and then after Daily's,

(01:11:06):
you know, you get up dawn, you go shoot a
day's work, you come home, and then we're in Altman's office,
which was home, and you watch dailies for two hours
and you're drunk and it's midnight and you have to
get up at four, but you don't care until you

(01:11:28):
get up at four. But so, so Tony's there and
he's watching this and he told me beforehand. I said, listen, Bob,
has everybody come to dailies?

Speaker 1 (01:11:44):
I did it.

Speaker 4 (01:11:44):
I want you to come to daily He said, never
come to dailyes, not for Hitchcock, not for Urson. Well,
I never come to Daily's. I won't watch Daily's. I said, well,
come tomorrow, because you're not on camera and you can
watch at least the movie you're in, sort of. So
he comes and he watches Barry, who I don't believe

(01:12:06):
i'd ever been in a film. She may have, but
I don't think so Tony cast her. I said, who
do you want to be and who would you like
to play? Your wife he said, my wife said okay,
And he looks at Daily, which were kind of good.

(01:12:29):
All that stuff the first day with the butt can
and the cigarettes and sigarettes. My god, and he's like
this Tony, and I said, everybody's pretty good. He said,
I can't do this movie. I said, what you gotta

(01:12:52):
do this? You got to call tomorrow. He says, no,
I'll pay for the You got to shut down a little.
Did he know we had no money anyway? But I said,
what are you talking about? And he said, I can't
do that. I'm like a traditionally trained actor. These people

(01:13:17):
are like real people. I don't know how to do that.
I said, you're a real person. You just I said,
what are you talking?

Speaker 1 (01:13:28):
Man?

Speaker 4 (01:13:28):
Altman? Who could hear in a noisy room? He could
hear you talking in the next block. So he comes
right in our faces. What are you guys talking about?
I said, Tony just quit, would you say? And Tony's
standing right there. I said, if he quits, I quit, well,

(01:13:51):
I guess we don't have a movie then. And Tony said, well, no,
wait a second. I mean, and he says, you're going
to quit? Or aren't you going to quit? He said, well,
I said, okay, well show up tomorrow and you won't quit.

Speaker 1 (01:14:02):
And that was it.

Speaker 4 (01:14:04):
I think if I had just said, oh, how much
money you're going to pay? But if I had said, okay,
I'm sorry, we'll get Sam Elliott or somebody maybe.

Speaker 2 (01:14:16):
Would have walked away.

Speaker 1 (01:14:17):
But he came.

Speaker 4 (01:14:19):
He came every night in dailies. He was one of
the most gracious, wonderful persons I've ever worked with in
my life. And you know, you do these movies, you
get so close to people and then you don't see
them ever again. But he called me up. Oh many
years later, I think he directed one of the Psychos,

(01:14:42):
I'm not sure, five or six, which whatever, And he said,
I want you to know something I've invited everyone to daily.

Speaker 2 (01:14:57):
I wanted to get to the you know, the question
I think you and I had obviously talked about before.
And part of you know, obviously my history with your movie,
which is that you know it's unavailable has been for
a long time, and I know that there are certain
movies of yours that are now on Criterion and so

(01:15:19):
one one well, but you know, like Trouble in Mind
is available. There's a lot of other of your films
that are kind of out there to see, but this one,
I think has a special distinction, I think, and I
was wondering if maybe you wanted to talk about that,
or how about you know or are involved with that.

Speaker 4 (01:15:39):
I live at every second. This was a pivotal thing
for me. This film, Welcome to La came out. It
made a noise. The West Coast loved it, the East
Coast hated it, which changed later in my life when
I moved to New York permanently and then they loved it.

(01:16:01):
In the West Coast hated my movies. But when we
did remember, I thought, Okay, everything's going to be different
on this movie me, especially because I actually have some
ideas of how to do this and how to what
I was after. And I have to say, it's exactly
what I was hoping to do. And I really thought

(01:16:23):
it was for me a real breakthrough. It was broken,
all right, and we made it.

Speaker 1 (01:16:33):
In LA.

Speaker 4 (01:16:34):
It got really good review I think was the best
picture of the year from the LA Weekly, which is
I don't know if it still exists, but it's a
free paper, which is fitting for this movie. And then
the New York Times called me a racist basically and

(01:16:55):
Columbia before the release of the movie. I should get
that in Columbia Pictures had called up in right before
the second week and said to allman, hey, we hear
you're we're doing a movie. We can't do those kind
of movies, but we'll finance it. So like on the
eve of shutting down, we got money to finish the movie.

(01:17:17):
Then we finished it, took it to Columbia where the
head of the studio, Bob Me, Bob's associate producer, and
the editor sat in one of those big studio screening
rooms and watched this movie and lights come up. The

(01:17:37):
guy comes over to me. He says, yeah, you did
a good job, and says to Almon and they talked
and Bob comes back. I said they don't want it,
and I said, well, what are we gonna do? He said,
we'll figure it out. So we kind of didn't figure
it out. And the to get it released the there

(01:18:01):
was a guy who worked around Bob who was a
publicist and a marketing and Mike Kaplan, and he had
worked with Kubrick and he was quite brilliant. I don't
know if anybody saw choose me, but those posters on
the walls are all his. He's got a world classical
election anyway. He said, Bob said, Mikey will release it.

(01:18:22):
Mikey had a little arthouse release program company which released
film every ten years or something. So Mikey took hold
of it and we had a little money, and he said, okay,
here's what we can't We can't afford to open it
up at any you know, more than one theater at

(01:18:43):
a time. So we're gonna open in LA and open
in New York and then it'll be a city a year.
So three four years into the movie, he'd say, okay,
Philadelphia this year, and I think we got Chicago, Philadelphia,
San Francisco, Seattle. And that was about it. And there's

(01:19:07):
a hang up with the music rights that is so
obscure that it's laughable. But it's not really an issue.
It's just one of those mazes that they send you
through because nobody wants to deal with this movie. But
Columbia still owns or is there a Columbia Sony, whatever

(01:19:28):
it is, they own it. And there was some little
because when the movie was made there was no such
thing as home video and whatnot, but there was some
little paragraphers on I suppose that said about ancillary rights
or whatever, and I guess that's the hang up. I
learned that today by reading something about the movie, So

(01:19:51):
that was it total gone. So it's never been on video,
never been on DVD. You streamed it, saved it from
That means to me there's some technical preservation of the film,
which is all I'm looking for anymore for any of
my films, because they were all made for little companies

(01:20:13):
that lasted a couple of years and then just threw
them away or gave them away or sold them in
as part of whatever they had. And you know, now
people watch movies on their wristwatches and they just want
them anything. I don't care what it is. Just show
me something so I can walk out and every movie

(01:20:33):
but this has just been shown, so I have to
come to Atlanta, which I'm thrilled. I kind of find
it ironic that a movie called Remember my Name.

Speaker 7 (01:20:45):
Is lost that nobody knows about it.

Speaker 1 (01:20:59):
Fabulous I have this conversation. Thank you Milly for providing
that and for introducing me to more of the work
of Alan Rudolph. I'm excited to explore more of his films. AnyWho.
Moving on to our next segment, employees picks. These are
our film recommendations based on the theme of the episode today, Milly,

(01:21:20):
What do you Got?

Speaker 2 (01:21:21):
I was going down the list of Allan's filmography, and
I was kind of like, Okay, what is something that
maybe because I could talk about. There's a lot of
his films that I've seen. I've seen Trouble in Mind,
I've seen The Songwriter, I've seen Roadie Welcome to La.
But I think I want to go with because I
actually remember this movie coming out because I was in
high school and actually didn't know that Alan Rudolf had

(01:21:45):
directed it until much later. But it's a movie from
nineteen ninety four and it's called Missus Parker in the
Vicious Circle. And this is a biography of the writer
Dorothy Parker, whom everybody probably knows. She was part of
this group of funny, witty intellectuals that were called the

(01:22:07):
Algonquin round Table, and they were basically like a bunch
of cool people that used to hang out at the
Algonquin Hotel in New York in like the late teens,
early twenties. And I remember this movie. I saw it
in the nineties, not in ninety four, but like much later,
and it's like Jennifer Jason Lee plays Dorothy Parker and

(01:22:29):
Campbell Scott's in it. He plays Robert Benchley, who if
you don't know Robert Benchley, he was kind of this
like humorist and he did these like short films that
we used to rute him on TCM all the time,
and he's really really funny. But then it's like a
kind of ensemble cast of people playing real people. So
like Matthew Brodericks in it, Andrew McCarthy and Jennifer Beals

(01:22:50):
and Wallace Sean and I mean everybody this movie is
fucking fantastic. I mean, like Gwyneth Paltrow's in this movie,
like Martha Plimpton. It's kind of stacked, and uh, I
don't know, Like to me, I feel like if you're
going to watch something of Allen's that's like a little
bit more on the commercial end, because it was a

(01:23:12):
Merrimax movie or a Fine Line movie, this might be
something to watch. And I think Jennifer Jason Lee is
amazing in it, and I love like the like the
kind of relationship between Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley is
sort of told in the movie. I don't know, I

(01:23:32):
just think it's really great and I love Kembl Scott.
I think he's fantastic, So I don't know. Check it
out if you want to. It's it's a great film
by Allen Cool amazing. Well, I'm going to recommend a
non Alan Rudolph movie, even though this whole episode is
an Alan Rudolph movie. But I haven't seen as many

(01:23:54):
as you, and so I feel like it would be
wrong to recommend a movie I haven't seen fair enough,
so I am going a slightly different direction. There's a
young Jeff Goldbloom in the movie Remember my Name, and
I was thinking about young Jeff Goldbloom, and he is
in a movie that I love, and it came out
the year before Remember my Name, and it's by a

(01:24:17):
director who I also feel like is sort of similar
to Alan Rudolph in that they weren't like they really
focused on movies that were human and much more about
interpersonal relationships. And the movie I'm recommending is nineteen seventy
seven's Between the Lines by director Joan Micklan Silver. Between

(01:24:38):
the Lines is about an alternative newspaper in Boston, like
this fake alternative newspaper and it's got John Hurd, Lindsey Krause,
Jeff Goldbloom, Bruno Kirby, Mary Lourenner, Joe Morton. It's kind
of this ensemble cast and it's really a fun movie

(01:25:00):
about a group of young creative people working on something
and their kind of personal lives. And I don't know,
it's a really delightful film and I feel.

Speaker 1 (01:25:10):
Like more people should see it. So I am recommending
Between the Lines from nineteen seventy seven. Yeah, you can
rent it on Prime or other streaming services. Uh, it's
put out by the Coen Media Channel. It's on a
Coen Media Channel whatever that is. But anyways, it's a
fun I like movies about like groups of people who

(01:25:30):
are like young and working towards sort of a shared goal.
And uh, yeah, it's fun. It's great time.

Speaker 2 (01:25:36):
That's awesome. I love Jodan Micklin Silver. I should watch
this movie because Crossing Delancey is one of my favorite movies.

Speaker 1 (01:25:41):
So yeah, Crossing Delancey, she's amazing.

Speaker 2 (01:25:45):
Hester Street, Yeah, I Hester.

Speaker 1 (01:25:47):
Street, that's the other one. I'm trying to think.

Speaker 2 (01:25:48):
Yeah, I gotta watch it immediately. So good, good, pick,
it's good. What's up? Are we done?

Speaker 1 (01:25:55):
The same? We're done? Hey, Le's get out of here.

Speaker 2 (01:25:57):
All right, Well, well I said, if you want to
email us for any reason, if you want to, you know,
get some film advice from us. We love to give
film advice.

Speaker 1 (01:26:09):
I don't know why I do we do.

Speaker 2 (01:26:12):
If you have a film grape, if you want to
talk more about Ellen Rudolph's filmography with me, if you
want to talk about your own film regrets, whatever you got,
email us at Deer Movies at exactlyrightmedia dot com. And
by the way, we love voicemails. We want to hear
your voices. We want to hear your regional accents. Please

(01:26:35):
send us a voicemail if you just record it on
your phone. Just make sure a song about a minute
or less, and you can also email it to us
at the same email address, dear Movies at exactlyrightmedia dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:26:49):
Excellent. You can also follow us on our socials at
Dear Movies, I Love You on Instagram and Facebook. Our
letterbox handles are at cacyleo'brien and at end to Jericho.
And you can listen to Dear Movies, I Love You
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get
your podcasts.

Speaker 2 (01:27:08):
All right, well, let's talk about next week, Shall.

Speaker 1 (01:27:10):
We woop woop.

Speaker 2 (01:27:14):
Hoo do who? It's gonna be a good one because
I feel like it's gonna be It's not like anchored
in a film, right, We're just talking.

Speaker 1 (01:27:20):
We're just we're just kind of like scatting and bebopping
all over this one.

Speaker 2 (01:27:26):
We are going to talk about VHS era classics, basically
movies that we remember from our childhood's putting those big
ass tapes in those big ass slots and uh yeah,
I'm excited because I feel like this is a whole thing.
This is like and it's been a thing for a

(01:27:47):
long time. People getting back into VHS and collecting VHS.
I know you are collecting VHS as I'm back on
the train.

Speaker 1 (01:27:54):
I just bought to this last weekend. It's a cheap collection.
It's like, I'm not I've never been a collector, but
this is kind of a cheap one.

Speaker 7 (01:28:02):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:28:03):
I bought Fargo and I bought Delikatessen. Yeah, both on VHS.

Speaker 2 (01:28:09):
It's fantastic, And I mean the best thing about the
VHS stuff is that you can watch the trailer stuff
before the movie, which is a lost art.

Speaker 1 (01:28:17):
I feel like Millie put a pin in that.

Speaker 2 (01:28:19):
Okay, we're gonna talk about it excited.

Speaker 1 (01:28:24):
Yeah, VHS Classics, that's thrilling. I'm excited to talk about
that too. All right, that's a lot. I mean, that
was like the birthplace of my film fandom.

Speaker 2 (01:28:34):
Oh mine too.

Speaker 1 (01:28:35):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:28:35):
I'm sure you're gonna hear plenty of stories, so stay
tuned for that next week. But I don't know that's
our episode. Thank you so much to everybody for listening.
I just want to also think, like Alan and Joyce, obviously,
I want to thank AJ and CJ and Matt Booth

(01:28:56):
and Richard everybody from the Plaza that helped to bring
this all to us because I don't know how to
record audio in a movie theater, so they helped. So
thanks so much. And yeah, I don't know. Thank to
you to Casey for being here.

Speaker 1 (01:29:12):
Great to be here. Thank you Milli for sharing your
knowledge of Ellen Rudolph and for bringing me this amazing
movie that has enriched my life.

Speaker 2 (01:29:21):
Clink, I'm clicking a double Manhattan with you.

Speaker 1 (01:29:24):
Oh she's back at it. Yeah, and she's also smoking
a cigarette.

Speaker 2 (01:29:28):
Let's get out.

Speaker 1 (01:29:30):
Amazing, Thanks Milly, thank you, bye bye.

Speaker 2 (01:29:36):
This has been an exactly Right production, hosted by me
Millie to Cherco and produced by my co host Casey O'Brien.

Speaker 1 (01:29:43):
This episode was mixed by Tom Bryfogel. Our associate producer
is Christina Chamberlain, our guest booker is Patrick Cottner, and
our artwork is by Vanessa Ilac.

Speaker 2 (01:29:53):
Our incredible theme music is by the best man in
the entire world, The Softies.

Speaker 1 (01:29:58):
Thank you to our executive producers Karen Kilgareff, Georgia hard Stark,
Daniel Kramer and Millie to Jerico, we love you.

Speaker 2 (01:30:05):
Goodbye Beacon.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Alan Rudolph & Remember My Name (1978)

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Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Stuff You Should Know

24/7 News: The Latest

Crime Junkie

All Episodes

Alan Rudolph & Remember My Name (1978)

Stuff You Should Know