Smoking in Movies & Le Samouraï (1967) featuring Bret Berg and Joe Ziemba

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Puff, Puff Puff. Hey, Casey, how's it going.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Hey man, get that cigarette away from me. Hi, Milly,
it's going well. Yeah, I just want to start this
episode at the top saying like, we're not promoting cigarette
smoking because it's very bad for you and it will
kill you actually, no matter how cool it looks, no
matter how cool and how delicious they taste, and uh,

(00:29):
you know, besides all that, we we say no, I say,
get those cigarettes out of here. So but how are you, Milly?
Besides besides you smoking a pack?

Speaker 1 (00:42):
Right? And I write on the zoom what time is it?
I'm ready through my first pack. I know, I'm kidding.
I I'm great. I'm excited about this episode. I think
clearly we're doing an entire episode on smoking in the movies,
and yeah, specifically a movie that was made in nineteen

(01:03):
sixty seven by maybe my favorite director of all time,
Jean Pierre Melville. It's called La.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
Samurai Amazing MILLI. You know, I was looking this up.
You know, we're on a zoom call right now, and
I think we've joked in the past about how funny
it would be to be like smoking in our you know,
our own zoom calls and how like inappropriate that sort
of feels. And I was looking up a Reddit post
of this manager complaining about one of his staff he
has zoom meetings with and she smokes during the zoom calls,

(01:34):
like smokes cigarettes during the zoom calls, and he was like,
it's totally unprofessional, but it is kind of like one
of those things where it's like, yes, I guess that
is sort of unprofessional, but like thirty forty years ago
people were doing were smoking in the office. So anyways,
a lot of the doctor's office. He's smoking in the
doctor's office. Yes, so a lot to think about with

(01:56):
this episode. Very excited, like you said talking about Lesama
right for this episode's my area of expertise. We're bringing
in two smoking guests, uh Brett Berg and Josiemba of
AGFA to talk about found footage. What a fabulous conversation
we have with them. I'm so excited for you guys

(02:18):
to listen to that. H It really got my juices flowing,
man was I I was like thrilled after that talk
with them. So, but lots happening on this episode.

Speaker 1 (02:26):
Yes, so please stay tuned.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
Puff Puff you're listening to Puffuff me too.

Speaker 1 (02:35):
You're listening to dear movies. I love you, I love you.
What are you going to arrest me for loving movies?
Do you.

Speaker 3 (02:46):
Love you?

Speaker 1 (02:48):
And I've got to.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
Love me to check the box?

Speaker 1 (03:05):
Okay, folks, you are listening to dear movies, I love you.
We like I said, we have this episode this week
that's both both components, all components of this episode. I
feel like I have a personal stake in because the
topic smoking in the movies is obviously something that I

(03:26):
have thought about for so long. I feel like there
is so much to it that I'd like to talk about.
And then you know, obviously with our guests this week,
old friends. So it's gonna be a great episode, absolutely,
I have to say too. By the way, I guess,
maybe relating to the intro, when I was in Japan
a couple of weeks ago, actually it's probably like a

(03:47):
month ago now, I went to a bar that smoked
in the bar, and I felt like I was in
like eighteen ninety three, like yellow Stone Times. What is
going on? Yeah, it was very strange.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
Yeah, I feel like when I went to Europe, I
feel like people you couldn't even smoke inside and most
of the places I went to there, you know, yeah,
you are MILLI to Jericho. I am Casey Obrian. We're
the hosts of this show here movies. I love you,
we love smoking, and mainly I just have a quick

(04:28):
correction I don't even know if it's a correction from
last week. Last week you asked me if I wanted
to get a drink at the bar in Wild at Heart,
Big Tuna.

Speaker 1 (04:37):
I believe it was called Yes, Yes, And you asked.

Speaker 2 (04:40):
Me if I want to get a drink with Bobby Perue,
you know, the character played by Willem Dafoe. And I
was trying to think of the line that he said.
And so I feel like I was really kind of
thrown off by you bring up Bobby Perue. But I
just so, I just wanted to say at the top
of this episode, the line I was trying to think
of was those are doomies.

Speaker 1 (04:58):
Doomy the teeth I could I could see the teeth
when you said that, Millie.

Speaker 2 (05:07):
We start every showed the same way by opening up
the old film diary crep sh Millie, would you please
open your diary up and read to me some passages.

Speaker 1 (05:24):
I will in fact, Okay, So mine's a little light,
a little weird, like a little weird. What is not
a well, one of the things that I've watched is
not a movie. It's not even I couldn't even tag
it on my letterbox.

Speaker 4 (05:37):
Right.

Speaker 1 (05:37):
Oh, So, I I know I've been talking a lot
about Japan lately because I just went on this you know, restorative,
wonderful birthday trimp okay, But to be honest, I've been
doing this since before I left, which is that I'm
obsessed with NHK. Do you know what NHK is. I
don't know what this is. NHK is essentially like public broadcasting. Oh,

(06:03):
they have an app and a channel like as a
YouTube channel where you can watch all their stuff for free.
For the most part, I was. I was aware of
them back when I used to work in public broadcasting
for a very short period of time last year, and
it was we used to play their news because I think,

(06:26):
like most people might know n HK news. It will
play on like PBS stations and stuff here in America.
But they have this entire organization that makes all this
amazing stuff. They have the best shit, dude, Like like
they've got like shows about like you know, anything from

(06:47):
like anime, you know, drawing to sumo wrestling. They have
shows where they like go to people's work and see
what they're eating for lunch. I mean, come on, that's amazing.
I know that I do well. They have this program
that is you can actually there's a channel on YouTube

(07:08):
where you can they're all compiled. It's a playlist of
cats hanging out in different places where it's just literally
this like beautiful gentle asmri like you know, uh, it
was like a natural geographic photographer guy who just like
follows these like cats that are just hanging out in neighborhoods,

(07:30):
like shop cats, like you know, cats that kind of
roam the neighborhood and hang out and wander into stores,
and cats that hang out at the beach. Like I'm
just like, this is fucking incredible and they're cute. They
list the name and the gender and the age of
each cat and it's wonderful. You just like one of

(07:53):
we're toxicating. It's intoxicating. So I've been watching a lot
of the NHK catstuff.

Speaker 2 (07:57):
Actually, Oh it's so cool. You always know the cool stuff.
I strive to be like you. I'm just like this dorky, white,
virginal idiot and you just come in with the coolest stuff.

Speaker 1 (08:14):
Listen. Uh. Part of why I'm interesting is because I
was a fucking loser for most of my life. Don't
you understand. That's what makes people interesting is that they're
incredibly dorky and need things to get through the day,
including this show, which is actually called A Cat's Eye
View of Japan. Ooh, and that's what it's good title.

(08:34):
So that's what I've been watching. But then I have
actually watched one film that I was able to log
on a letterbox, and it was I'll have to give
you another little story about how I came across this
shit because it's also public broadcasting related. It was I
watched it on the PBS channel on YouTube and it's
called We Want the Funk. It's a documentary that was

(08:55):
made this year and it's all about the history of
funk music. And the reason why I watch is because
I stumbled into this show with some friends of mine
this past week where I went and saw a musician,
an African musician named Ebo Taylor, and he's been around forever.
He's from Ghana. He has made like afrobeat highlife kind

(09:17):
of like African funk music. Like he's like extremely famous.
He's been sampled so many times, and you know, primarily
by like hip hop and R and B artists and stuff.
And it was fucking incredible. And I was like really
supercharged after I saw the show, and then I was
like scrolling through YouTube. I was like riding the algorithm.

(09:37):
And then I was like, oh, I want to see
this documentary because I remember when it came on PBS
and it was great. It was so interesting.

Speaker 2 (09:46):
That's fabulous. Yeah, that sounds great.

Speaker 1 (09:48):
They talked about your boy Prince from Minneapolis, my guy.

Speaker 2 (09:53):
Yeah, have you heard this Herbie Hancock quote.

Speaker 1 (09:56):
That's been going around? No, what does that mean?

Speaker 2 (10:00):
Just interviewed and he's eighty four, and they were like,
why haven't you come up with a Why haven't had
a new album in fifteen years? And he said, I
keep getting caught in YouTube rabbit holes.

Speaker 1 (10:13):
Yes, that's my man right there, he said.

Speaker 2 (10:19):
He goes, I'm victim to them.

Speaker 1 (10:21):
Oh, we're the same. This is the thing like YouTube TikTok.
People don't understand why I love TikTok so much. I'm like,
you just fall, you fall into it and then you
just ride the wave and that sure.

Speaker 2 (10:35):
Yeah, life, This is what he said. I fall into
rabbit holes on YouTube, a lot of them, new music
writing software, things about health tech things. I get victimized
by it, so to speak. But that's life, that's life.

Speaker 1 (10:50):
That's exactly right. Amazing.

Speaker 2 (10:55):
Well I'm sorry for that aside. Anyways, that sounds amazing.
I'll just check that out. Yeah, obviously for Minnesota's greatest son, Prince.

Speaker 1 (11:04):
But that's great. Anything else, that's it. What about you?

Speaker 4 (11:08):
So?

Speaker 2 (11:08):
I watched two movies this week. One I watched is
nineteen eighty four is Romancing the Stone by Robert Zemeckis.
I've never seen this movie before. Do you have any
appreciation or yes, thoughts about this movie?

Speaker 1 (11:21):
Yes? I do, of course. I thought it was really
fun at a great time. It's a fun romp.

Speaker 2 (11:26):
It's like a romp. It's a romp.

Speaker 1 (11:29):
And you know, it's kind of like very eighties to
me for two reasons. One the kind of adventure comedy yep,
do They don't really do much of those anymore, not
like this.

Speaker 2 (11:44):
There was one of the Channing Tatum and Sandra Bullock
that came out like two years ago. That was sort
of a copy of Romancing the Stone, Like she's like
literally an author like Kathleen Turner's character was in Romancing
the Stone.

Speaker 1 (11:55):
Yeah, that was why I was thrilled about that, because
I was like, oh, it feels like it's like a
you know, a reworking of Mans in the Stone. But
that's the second thing that makes it really eighties is
that it's about publishing. And I swearies was obsessed with publishing.
You're so right, I swear to god. If you were
an adult in the eighties, especially if you lived in
New York City, you worked in publishing.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
Well, this was This is why I thought with Stillman's Now,
this isn't an eighties movie. I guess it would be
late seventies. But the Last Days of Disco. I think
both Clay Savigne and Cape Beckinsale's characters were worked in
publishing as well in that movie.

Speaker 1 (12:29):
Yes, what is the Okay, what is the fuck? Now?
I've lost it? What's the John Carpenter movie about the
guy that writes the book.

Speaker 2 (12:38):
In the mouth of Man the mouth?

Speaker 1 (12:40):
What's that name? Sam Neil? No, the author that's in
like the fake author. Oh, summer came even then? That
is a nineties movie. I always think like that is
exactly what an eighties movie is, is like some Stephen
King or like, because the eighties was so big into

(13:01):
these big authors, you know, but that was like Romancing
the Stone to me in a nutshell, is like publishing
big authors, fake Sutter Kane folks. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yeah.

Speaker 2 (13:13):
I guess it was the age of big like kind
of celebrity authors almost, so I feel like maybe the
movie is sort of reflect that.

Speaker 1 (13:20):
Yeah, who was the big I'm trying to think of
these like big authors besides Stephen King. I guess it
was like Tom Clancy, Jackie Collins. That was a huge member.
Jackie Collins, like.

Speaker 2 (13:32):
Michael Crichton, I feel like he's another one. But yeah, anyways,
really liked Romancing the Stone really a fun I just
was like in the mood for fun, and I thought
they're their dynamic was really interesting, like Michael Douglas and
Kathleen Turner. It wasn't your typical dynamic. I thought he
was going to be more like Indiana Jones, but he's
more of like kind of an annoying torp in the

(13:54):
jungle and she and you think she's going to be
kind of the Damsel in Distress, but she's not, and
I really enjoyed. I thought they were both great and
I had a good time with them.

Speaker 1 (14:02):
Will you see the sequel, Jewel of the Nile feature.

Speaker 2 (14:05):
I heard that's not as good, but I'd watch it.

Speaker 3 (14:07):
Well.

Speaker 1 (14:07):
It features the song when the Going Gets Tough, The
Tough Get Going by Billy Oshan. Okay, so I'll check it.
Maybe that's the only reason to watch it.

Speaker 2 (14:14):
Yeah, I know Kathleen Turner didn't have a good time
on that sequel, so we'll see. And then I watched
this other movie which I think you'd really like. It
came out in twenty twenty four. It stars June Squib
and it's called Thelma. Have you seen this movie?

Speaker 3 (14:33):
No?

Speaker 1 (14:34):
I don't think so.

Speaker 2 (14:35):
It was incredible. Basically, June Squib gets scammed out of
money from like one of those phone calls where a
person is impersonating her grandson. This is a very fun movie,
very funny, and there's sort of this through line where
she like loves Mission Impossible and is inspired by Tom

(14:59):
Cruise and so she's kind of decides to find the
guy who scammed her. And she's like ninety three years old,
and Parker Posey's in it, and this actor I really love,
Fred Heckinger, who was in the first season of White Lotus,
plays her grandson. And it's so sweet and so funny,
and one of the huge stars of this movie is

(15:21):
Richard Rountree aka Shaft, who this is his last movie.
It is so incredibly sweet. I mean, I was like
weeping because it was just so sweet and funny and
just a wonderful film. And so all four of my

(15:42):
grandparents have died in the last five years. I was
very lucky that they lived so long, but they all
passed away in the last five years, and so I
was just very touched by this movie and getting to
see movies dealing, you know, dealing with getting old. And
I liked that it was a movie about getting becoming,

(16:05):
you know, old, without it being like, oh, how terrible
is this? You know, it's a it's a it's a
much more optimistic view of it, you know. And I
don't know, I was blown away. I think you'd really
like it, Millie. It's really fun, it's really sweet.

Speaker 1 (16:25):
Great, Well, I love that it affected you. I'll watch
it because you liked it so much.

Speaker 2 (16:31):
Yeah, I I mean, it's a. It's just a fun,
silly movie. And there's like these kind of like I'll
put quotes around them action sequences with June's squib that
really made me laugh. And uh, it's great, Yeah, it
was great.

Speaker 1 (16:49):
All Right, let's close up this old I'm smoking. I
can't even lift it.

Speaker 2 (17:15):
All right, we're back, and we are here for our
main discussion, which.

Speaker 1 (17:20):
Is smoking in movies.

Speaker 2 (17:23):
And we're specifically gonna kind of you know, key in
on l Samurai from nineteen sixty seven, which after watching it,
there was less smoking in the movie than I remembered.
But I think the reason I wanted to talk about
this movie was the first shot of the movie is
like a long shot of him smoking a cigarette in
his empty apartment. But anyways, Millie, you've mentioned, you know,

(17:47):
you have a lot of thoughts about smoking in movies.
When you see people smoking cigarettes and movies, how does
that make you feel? And what's your relationship Again, we're
anti cigarette, but what is your relationship with cigarettes in
your lifetime?

Speaker 1 (18:05):
Full disclosure? I used to be a smoker. Full disclosure.
I fucking loved smoking. It was so fun, so glamorous,
all these things they don't want you to say. They
don't want you to say it, but there's a reason.
It's addicting.

Speaker 2 (18:21):
Yeah, they're wonderful. Yes, I think I think I can't.

Speaker 1 (18:27):
I'd be lying if I said I didn't really love smoking.
I really do. It was a great time in my life.
I was young, I was into weird things. Everybody smoked
back then. You know, that's the thing is that you
realize that no one technically smokes anymore, Like there's there's
people who smoke, don't get don't get me.

Speaker 2 (18:49):
It is a real even from like ten years ago.
I feel like people who are smokers now are really
put you know, given the middle finger to society in
a lot of ways now, Like you don't see smokers
in the same way that you did even a couple

(19:11):
of years ago. I think there's a couple of reasons
for that. Number One, they're dying off there because cigarettes
kill you well.

Speaker 1 (19:17):
But but basically all the anti smoking stuff worked. I mean,
essentially they figured out that the only way to get
people stuff smoking is if you make the cigarettes twenty
dollars or whatever. Yeah, and it's like, oh, it worked.
The only people that I see smoking these days, by
the way, are old Asian guys. I don't know why.
Actually I think it's because if I'm not mistaken, at

(19:38):
least the last time, not this past time I was
in Japan, but the time before, when I was in
the Philippines, cigarettes were still cheap in Asia, so I
was like, oh, maybe that's why they're still smoking. Yeah,
you know, but I think the cost thing is what
really made people quit. On top of that, I think
more people just like vape and do that kind of
stuff now. So like, even though I feel like we
have had, there was a tiny little urgents of people

(20:00):
who were smoking cigarettes the old fashioned way. Like I
was on TikTok and you're like, fuck your zins. Fuck,
You're like vabes, your East six, like let's go back
to smoking like Marlboro Reds. And I was like, actually
got to agree with that, because I I've never I never.
I quit long before the East cigarette thing happened, So
I was like, thank God, because that looks to me,

(20:23):
I just can't with that. But look, wh yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:28):
My experience with cigarette smoking, I was also a smoker
for a period of time.

Speaker 1 (20:35):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (20:36):
It really heated up when I was working at a
restaurant and unemployed. Of course, and working at a restaurant.
It was great because it was like going on a
mini vacation when you went outside to smoke a cigarette.
And it's more common in like restaurant work, I think

(20:56):
for people to go outside and yeah, smoke a cigarette.
But also I was when I was I was unemployed
for like a year and a half, two years, and
I lived with my friend Tom.

Speaker 1 (21:11):
Our main job.

Speaker 2 (21:12):
He was also unemployed, and his our job was cigarette smoking.
We had a little patio and he would bring home
cartons of parliaments. And one time there was like a
little convenience store right across the street from our apartment
where we would get our cartons, and they were out
one day, and the owner of this convenience store knew
us because we lived right across the street. And so

(21:34):
I was in the living room on the second floor
and our apartment was on the second floor. But we
had like a patio, you know, what do you call that?
A balcony that we would smoke on. Anyways, I'm talking
to Tom. His back is to the balcony, so he
can't see outside, but I can. I'm facing Tom, so
I can see outside that the owner of the convenience

(21:57):
store is walking towards us, waving a carton of.

Speaker 1 (21:59):
Sigarettes in his hand, and I walk.

Speaker 2 (22:03):
I'm walking towards the balcony, and the owner throws the
carton of cigarettes up to the second floor into my
arms and I catch it. And from Tom's vantage point,
a carton of cigarettes flew into our apartment. He had
no idea that was happening. Flew into our apartment, and

(22:25):
I caught it, and I was like, yay, So that
was a great memory.

Speaker 1 (22:32):
See, that's like a movie, It's like to the Our
point of this entire episode is that there's something inherently
cinematic about cigarettes.

Speaker 2 (22:42):
Yes, And I will also say this was the most
I was the most depressed during this time, worst time,
maybe one of the worst times in my life.

Speaker 1 (22:49):
Iten don't even have to go there. I swear I
think cigarettes made me depressed. Yes, I'm sure they did
as well. But like you said, there's something cinematic about smoking,
partly because watching people smoke cigarettes indoors, I mean it
looks like we're looking into outer space. Essentially, it's like

(23:12):
seeing space aliens on screen because it's so unrecognizable from
our reality, you know, And so it's fun to see
movies where like people in restaurants are like smoking inside.
Because if you were in a restaurant now and someone
started smoking a cigarette, I feel like the police would
be called, Like it would be so outrageous for that

(23:35):
to happen. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (23:37):
That so it is cinematic now because like it is
so different from our reality, you know.

Speaker 1 (23:44):
Well, but even like back then, so I mean part
of I think the glamour of smoking, and certainly the
reason why I think I wanted to start smoking was
because of the movies, and especially older film I mean
back in the day, everybody smoked. So when you watch
older classic Hollywood films or like classic foreign films, everyone's smoking.
Obviously we're talking about you know, Elen Delawn in a

(24:05):
movie from the late sixties, and he smoked in a
ton of movies. So it's like and so you start
to kind of see his image of just being a
cigarette smoker and it's such part of his like ambiance
or whatever. But I I mean, even back in the
day when they used to actually have more smoking in movies,
I feel like the cigarette almost is kind of a

(24:28):
narrative function in a movie because it would telegraph a
lot of information about a character, like, for example, if
a woman is smoking in a movie.

Speaker 2 (24:35):
Mysterious, mysterious, maybe bad news, Yeah, maybe bad news.

Speaker 1 (24:39):
A little bit of a bad girl. Like what is
she gonna do if she's sitting in a bar by herself.
She can't just sit there and like look at her phone.
There's no phones, Like, you gotta smoke a cigarette to
know what to do when you're by yourself. If you're
a lady by yourself, God forbid in the nineteen forties.
But it's like another thing. Cigarettes bond characters. I mean,

(25:00):
there's like you know, and I think they actually bond
people generally, but like in movies, characters that smoke cigarettes
outside together. I actually love this. This is a very
subtle like thing that I notice a lot when you're
in a movie and the movie is about someone who's
either being interrogated in a police station or they're in

(25:21):
jail and they are offered a cigarette, or they ask
for a cigarette and they smoke either in the police
station or the jail. Come on, yeah, glamorous.

Speaker 2 (25:33):
Great, it's great. It's a little vacation in the midst
of all this turmoil. You know, it takes you to
a different place. You know, it's a moment of collection, right,
But in that story, if there's a cop that's trying
to get somebody to confess and you offer them a cigarette,
they're a little more likely to relax after the cigarette.

Speaker 1 (25:55):
And that's what the that's the narrative function of that
helps them have the plot along. I'm just saying there.

Speaker 2 (26:00):
Is a little bit of a all right, I trust
or like I'll play ball a little bit, like if
the if the criminal accepts the cigarette, they'll be like,
this is one step towards me telling you where the
where I hit the jewels, the diamonds exactly, the diamonds. Yeah, sorry,

(26:21):
what you're gonna say? No, I wanted to ask you
a question please, seeing that you used to be.

Speaker 1 (26:24):
A smoker back in your depressed sad boy Yeah, yeah.
Can you tell when you're watching a film and that
person who is smoking a cigarette in a film actually
smokes or has never smoked? Can you tell?

Speaker 2 (26:41):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (26:41):
I absolutely can.

Speaker 2 (26:44):
I can't think of an example, really, but I can
tell just the way they're kind of holding the cigarette
like they're trying to be too cool and there's like
maybe a strain of the hand or yeah, I can
definitely tell. I don't know what the tell are of
someone who is not a smoker in a movie, but

(27:04):
I always can tell. It's like how I can always
tell when a guy gets hair plugs. I can always
what you can tell, I can always tell.

Speaker 1 (27:11):
I would love to know that those that information so
put in the chat and said it to me. Okay
for me, I feel like you're absolutely right. It's the
way they hold the cigarette. A lot of times, if
you've never smoked and you have to smoke in a
roll or something, like, you're holding it real stiff, like stiff,
either the fingers are super straight or they're holding it

(27:32):
with alternate fingers that you would never smoke a cigarette with.
It's very strange. And then usually it's the inhale that
gets me, Like, if you can you can tell like
a native cigarette smoker knows just how to bring it
in and blow it out real easy, breezy. Yes. But
when you're like pretending to smoke whatever it is on

(27:54):
set cigarette, whatever they are in the movies, and you've
never poke before, I'm like, Oh, you're fucking inhaling weird.
I don't even know if you know how to blow
up cigarettes. This is this is taking me out of it.
I can't sit here and watch it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:10):
I think one of the tells is, you know, when
you smoke a cigarette, you have to bring it into
your mouth and then bring it into your lungs. It's
like kind of like a two step process a little
bit and then but like you can tell when uh,
one person just brings it into their mouth and it
kind of like PLoP, the smoke sort of plops out
of their mouth as they're talking.

Speaker 1 (28:29):
You know, listen. I learned the hard way because when
I over the first couple of years that I smoked,
I didn't inhale, I don't think, and was called out
on it by this cool college guy when I was
in Athens, Georgia. He was like, oh, no, are you smoking?
And I'm like yes, and he's like, no, you're not.
You're not even inhaling. And I was like, oh, devastated.

(28:50):
I'm devastating. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:51):
Oh the worst type of that would be devastating if
a cool college kid from Athens, Georgia called me out.
Oh my gosh, this is why I'm interesting case. I've
had a lot of trauma in my life that I
needed to that is like the nightmare I would have
going out to a social event if a cool college
kid called me out.

Speaker 1 (29:09):
Oh to this day. So before we get into La Samurai,
I wanted to ask you, what do you were there
any moments in cinema that you remember, maybe pre smoking
that kind of made you want to smoke, or like

(29:29):
encourage you to keep smoking.

Speaker 2 (29:32):
Oh, that's a good question. I wonder if mad Men
had something because that was on when I was smoking.

Speaker 1 (29:41):
Maybe that was a motivator.

Speaker 2 (29:45):
You know, there's just like it's so casually done in
seventies movies especially, Yeah, I think it was more like
seventies movies like you know, uh Laine May's Mikey and Nicky.

Speaker 1 (30:04):
You know, how about you? Well, a lot of things
influence me actually, I mean, besides if you want to
talk about like my favorite musicians and poets and writers
and artists who smoked, just looking at a photograph of
any famous person that existed from the eighties or before
really influenced my smoking. I remember specifically, I think when

(30:29):
I was in high school when I watched Reservoir Dogs
for the first time and I saw mister Blonde smoking,
especially in the very beginning where he's in the Office
with Laurence Tyranny's character Joe, and he just got out
of jail and he like gets a cigarette and he inhales.
He does the thing where you're like, oh, he's a
real smoker because he inhales the two step process and

(30:51):
he talks while he exhales, which is extremely attractive. I
must say, like when some but he's like Seymour Scagnetti
that fuck or whatever he says. I just I mean
I was like, well, now I got a smoke because
this guy's doing it so cool. But there's that movie,

(31:12):
but there was also like Breathless. I mean, come on,
Jean Lucado's Breathless, which is.

Speaker 2 (31:18):
Yeah, I mean the way John Paul Belmondo has these
big lips and the way the cigarettes would just kind
of like rest on his lips made me want to smoke. Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 1 (31:31):
And then of course, like when I was in college,
it was all about Wonkar Wi movies, so Bridget Lynn
and Chun King Express when she's at the bar, you know,
basically smoking the entire movie. And then any literally anytime
Tony Long smokes me lung oh.

Speaker 2 (31:47):
I mean yes, most attractive, especially in the mood for love. Oh,
I just feel like he's surrounded by cigarette smoke. You know,
the thing about smoking in movies is you can't smell it.
And when you smell a cigarette smoker, now even if
they're not smoking, they fucking reach. And I think that's

(32:07):
something you don't quite realize when you're smoking. That It's like,
I smell like shit all the time. I am a
public nuisance. Everyone hates me, like it's it's incredible. You
don't realize that stuff while it's happening.

Speaker 1 (32:24):
Oh yeah, It's like when you are a smoker, you
never know that you smell like cigarettes. You're like and
then you like literally when you stop smoking and you're like,
oh my god, I smell like the casino in California,
Split or whatever.

Speaker 2 (32:39):
You're just like, exactly a smell like the carpet of
a casino.

Speaker 1 (32:43):
Yeah, yeah, the Ramada Inn that's been around since like
the nineteen fifties. I just want to point out a
couple other of my favorite smoking scenes. Well, you obviously
have legendary classic like smoking actors like Bogart, like James Dean. Right.
I think an iconic smoking scene in classic film is

(33:06):
now Voyager with Paul Henry and Betty Davis where he
lights two cigarettes in his mouth and gives her one,
which I feel like is has been replicated so often
in films and what I you know, when that scene
in The Royal Tennant Bombs where Margot Tennemaum does that
on the rooftop with Richie, I feel like we're all
talking about now Voyager, because it was like when you

(33:28):
see that, you're like, holy shit, that's hot as hell,
Like somebody's lighting a cigarette for you in their mouth
and then giving it to you.

Speaker 2 (33:36):
Come on, yeah, I you know, in the Royal ten
of Moms, she smokes in the bathroom and then like
when but she's hiding it all the time, like that's
part of her characters that she hides that she's a
cigarette smoker. But I'm like, no one could really hide
a hair cigarette smoker. And she's smoking in the bathroom
and then someone knocks and she puts a cigarette out
and like spray's a little perfume and they don't notice it,

(33:56):
and I'm like, it's the stinkiest thing, Like you stink.

Speaker 1 (34:01):
As someone, as someone who try to hide the fact
that they smoked from their parents, I will tell you
that it was unsuccessful, like you think you're you think
you got the grift going. You're like, oh, yeah, they
can't catch me, baby, I'm I'm so good. And then no, later,
much much later at your adults' is like, oh, we
knew you were smoking because you stank like shit. Okay,

(34:23):
so I have to say Royal ten of bombs, but
again now Voyager. One of the sexiest scenes that features
a cigarette is Dorothy Danridge and Harry Belafonte and Carmen Jones.
It's that iconic scene where he is like, she's painting
her toenails with cigarette hanging out of her mouth and
he comes over. It's so sexy. I mean, come on,

(34:43):
that's why cigarettes were made, right, I have. I would
be remiss if I didn't mention Roy Scheider in pretty
much every movie, but especially.

Speaker 2 (34:53):
All that Jazz, Yes and Jaws.

Speaker 1 (34:58):
Jaws. He's got a lott.

Speaker 2 (35:00):
Yes, he's got a lot of He's a good cigarette
hanging out on the side of the mouth actor. He
is our.

Speaker 1 (35:06):
Finest cigarette smoking actress for my money. I have to say,
I feel like he's the best at it besides Bogert.

Speaker 2 (35:14):
But he he feels like he's a real smoker, Like
he's like tanned like leather by the smoke.

Speaker 3 (35:20):
You know.

Speaker 1 (35:21):
Oh, he absolutelyffocating. What the fuck a you're talking about?
He looked like a cigarette. He looks like a cigarette.

Speaker 2 (35:28):
He visually looks like he has been smoking, like for
his entire life, since he was twelve years.

Speaker 1 (35:36):
Old, since he was like seven years old. Yeah, it's like, yeah,
when uh, speaking of wild at Heart, when when Nicholas
Cage reveals he's been smoking since he was four, Like,
oh my god.

Speaker 2 (35:54):
Well, speaking of David Lynch, cigarettes essentially killed David, you know,
and he was like a smoker to the end, and
he had I remember when he had he had some
he said something about not directing anymore somewhat recently, and
he was saying like I really loved cigarettes, but they

(36:15):
bit me, you know.

Speaker 1 (36:17):
Yeah, and he kind of resigned to the fact that
he was going to die of emphasy. But like he
was kind of like, yeah, well said I liked smoking
too much, but this is the way it has to go,
you know.

Speaker 2 (36:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (36:27):
Yeah, which in a way it's sad. It's sort of poetic,
but it's also very sad. It is it is, Yeah,
but I will say so Roy Scheider, Geraldine Chaplin and
remember my name of course cigarette on the poster. But
then you also have stuff like again Sharon Stone and

(36:48):
Basic Instinct and Bancroft in The Graduate. I love the
cigarette smoking and Once upon a Time in Hollywood speaking
of Tarantino.

Speaker 2 (36:56):
Yes, I mean Leo is a great cigarette smoker in
that movie and Brat Pigs, Yes, Brad Pitt two, and
they're obviously, to me, sort of imitating old actors, like
the people that we're talking about who smoked.

Speaker 1 (37:11):
Since they were four. But then also Leo's iconic cigarette
smoking in Django Unchained with the fucking little what do
you call it? Little Tennessee Williams, the little uh what
do you call that thing?

Speaker 2 (37:26):
Extender? One of those uh cigarette what is that?

Speaker 1 (37:31):
Like? Yeah, it's like yeah, Corilla, Yeah, I call it
the Tennessee Williams Corilla Deville cigarette holder thing. But I
mean there's memes of him on the internet smoking that
smoking that cigarette through that thing.

Speaker 2 (37:47):
And I would say Clappers would have those cigarette holders.

Speaker 1 (37:53):
Exactly. And my last one is a small is a
small one. I wanted to go a little bit indie,
but there's a movie called Columbus that came out, oh
with John Chow with John Show. There's a scene where
John Show is smoking a cigarette and he's got a
notebook under his arm, and I was like, this is
the hottest man I've ever seen in my life. So

(38:15):
that's that's it.

Speaker 2 (38:16):
I want to see that movie. It looks good.

Speaker 1 (38:17):
Oh it's fantastic. It's actually so much better than you
would think because it was a quietly released and you know,
it was like an indie movie. But it's so good.
It's so good.

Speaker 2 (38:29):
It has but it gets brought up.

Speaker 1 (38:30):
I feel like it has.

Speaker 2 (38:32):
People like that movie.

Speaker 4 (38:33):
So well.

Speaker 1 (38:35):
Anyway, that's my history of sayank you what a time.

Speaker 2 (38:39):
I mean, it's there really isn't anything out there that's
equivalent to it in terms of like the warning is like, hey,
if you keep this will kill you. Sure, you know,
there's like even alcohol is like only drink this much
per week, but there's no amount of cigarettes that are healthy.

Speaker 1 (38:58):
You know. It's sort of interesting. No, Well, I remember,
I will say this. When I was like eighteen years old,
I went to this doctor that was basically like an
urgent care like a community urgent care doctor, and she
told me when I was eighteen, back in the late nineties,
that if you smoked one cigarette a day you might
be okay.

Speaker 2 (39:19):
Well, famously, Joan Didion was like, I will smoke five
cigarettes a day, no more, no less. WHOA And she
did not die of lung cancer? Yeah, well she didn't
kill her, so we're not doctor.

Speaker 1 (39:34):
Maybe five isn't it? And I don't think the doctor
that told me that was a doctor. So just throw
that out there. Don't smoke.

Speaker 2 (39:41):
Jone Didion is not a doctor. This quack that Millie
went to may or may not be a doctor, Millie.
I'm gonna do this. Let's get into La Samurai. I
really feel like we could have talked. We could keep
talking about cigarettes forever for another twenty four hours, uh,
twenty four hour marathon.

Speaker 1 (40:01):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (40:01):
So this movie Le Samurai's directed by Jumpier Melville from
nineteen sixty seven. It's about Jeff Jeff Costello played by
Alenda Lahn, who is a stoic hitman and criminal in Paris.
He's hired to kill Marty, the owner of a popular

(40:22):
club called Marty's. He does, but he gets one hundred
caught by a jazz piano player d'lare played by Kathy Rosier.
But when he is arrested and the police ask Kathy
to identify him. She says, it's not him. Why, I
don't know. The police are after Jeff and so are

(40:46):
the men who hired him to kill Marty. But what's
our raincoat? Wearing hot he gonna do? That's le Samurai fantastic.
You think it was funny his name was Jeff.

Speaker 1 (40:56):
Yeah, it was like hef almost Jeff.

Speaker 2 (40:59):
It reminds me of the at Pixie Song space where
it's like Jeffrey with one F Jeffrey.

Speaker 1 (41:07):
Do you know that song? I do, Okay, but you
did a fantastic job, just like Frank.

Speaker 2 (41:15):
Now you have a large cutout of Lendolon in your
room that you kiss before bed every night.

Speaker 1 (41:22):
Definitely.

Speaker 2 (41:23):
Do you feel like sometimes he's like this that comes
up with other actors. He's like too attractive that it's
jarring to have him in a scene and his looks
aren't commented on.

Speaker 1 (41:34):
Yes, I say that pretty much every day. I say
that to the cutout when I'm kissing his mouth raw
with like the paper around his mouth, just like eating
away by saliva. He like, this is the thing that
I think is so interesting about a Lendolon is that
he was obviously like playing a lot of bad guys.

(41:56):
I mean, he was definitely in the Melville universe, but
he was like French cry actors, kind of like a
French noir actor. He was so hot and you're like.

Speaker 2 (42:10):
Most almost distracted.

Speaker 1 (42:11):
It's almost distracting. I mean, I feel like American Newar guys,
like just for an example, American Awar guys were like
I guess, functionally hot in the Hollywood way, but like
had some weirdness to them, Like there was always kind
of like a squirreliness, like maybe like a little scar,
like a little weird pock mark or something, you know
what I mean, there was like something about them. They

(42:32):
weren't totally they were character actors, right. That was like
the thing about noir guys.

Speaker 2 (42:36):
I mean, think of like Humphrey Bogart. He like he's attractive,
but you're like he's kind of weird looking, you know,
or like you.

Speaker 1 (42:44):
Know, Alan Ladd was short, yeah, but you know, Robert
Ryan had kind of a weird face, like he was
kind of like, you know, he had those like weird
Downtroden face. I mean, a Lendelawn is basically like a
catalog model angel wrapped in like in his trench coat,
and I'm just like, I it's distracting in a sense

(43:07):
because you're like, oh, he's supposed to pull off the
greatest heist of all time, but he's so attracted that
everyone would notice that he was doing.

Speaker 2 (43:15):
Well, That's what I was saying, Like, there's a huge
part in this movie where they bring in all these
people and some of them are intentionally saying they don't
recognize him because they wanted this Marty guy killed. But
if you're asking witnesses, hey, did you see this guy
in the restaurant, I feel like everyone'd be like, oh,
you mean the hottest human being on planet Earth? Yeah,

(43:36):
I saw him. He was there. Like, he's so distracting
that it made it kind of like unbelievable as a
storyline that people would be like, I'm not sure if
I saw him, you know.

Speaker 1 (43:48):
Yeah, that's the thing is that I talked about. I mean,
I guess we could have technically done le circ Larrouge
for the podcast, even though I did it on I
Saw what You did, and I had a lot to
say about it because there's actually an icon of smoking
scene in that movie. But in that movie also a
Jean Pierre Millville movie, also starring a Lende Lawn. He's
like supposed to be like a cat burglar, and you're

(44:12):
just like, absolutely not, even if he was wearing a mask.
He's got like the hottest body, Like he's just too
hot to be a criminal. And I know that I
say that and knowing that there have been hot criminals
in the past, of course, but in the line of
duty that he's in where he's supposed to be, Like,

(44:33):
I mean, he's getting put into a police lineup with
like forty fifty dudes and he's clearly the hottest one
out of all of them. Yes, you're like, there's no
way he's like taller, hotter, more fit.

Speaker 2 (44:49):
Like it's it's it's ridiculous.

Speaker 1 (44:54):
I swear so. I spent a while since I've seen
the Samurai, but me too. It is one of my favorites.
Sets up this premise that I love about all hitmen,
which is a hitmanism. I'm gonna call it a hitmanism,
and it's when a hitman has to remove a bullet

(45:17):
from his body or tend to his own wound in
his apartment.

Speaker 2 (45:21):
Hell yeah, and they have the little kidney. They usually
have a kidney bean shaped metal dish with which they
PLoP the bullet into. That does not happen in this movie,
but that is sort of one of the you know,
trademarks of that.

Speaker 1 (45:35):
Yes, and the apartments are invariably the most fucking downtrodden, disgusting,
skid row ass places desolate. Yeah, except he has a bird.
He also has a bird, which plays heavily into the film.
I feel like it's an allegory perhaps, but yeah, so

(45:57):
he's like in the shitty little apartment with his bird,
and he's removing Civil War esque bandages from his arms
and he's like removed anyway. I love hitmanisms like that.

Speaker 2 (46:12):
Yes, but this this movie kind of is like a
classic hit Man movie where it's like he finishes the job,
but he's set up.

Speaker 1 (46:21):
By the people who hired him.

Speaker 2 (46:24):
Yes, you know, And so that was fun for to
see such an early version of that type of movie
with this movie, you know, it reminded me of did
you see David Fincher's The Killer from twenty twenty three
with Michael Fassbender.

Speaker 1 (46:41):
Oh of course I did. Well. See.

Speaker 2 (46:43):
I feel like that is like sort of a in
some ways a modern less Samurai. But see in that
there's a specific part where he's like, I need to
blend in so I dress really bad like a German tourist.

Speaker 1 (46:54):
Right, right, right? Have we talked about this movie? I
feel like we talked about this movie before because that
movie stands out to me because I so speaking of hypmnisms, right, yeah,
Michael Fassbender in that movie is so weird and like
listens to the Smiths, which I'm like, do Hitman listen

(47:15):
to the Smiths? I'm not sure. I guess we'll see.

Speaker 2 (47:19):
He eats egg mcmuffins, but only the egg meat and cheese.
He does not eat the uh, he doesn't eat the
English muffin part.

Speaker 1 (47:27):
Well, And like the most notable to me is that,
like in the past, in old Hitman movies, perhaps in
old Jean Pierre Millville films, and especially in Italian crime
films from like the seventies, everybody is drinking J and B. Scotch.
Mm hmm. That's a classic.

Speaker 2 (47:44):
I feel like that shows up in a lot of
genre movies, yes, JB.

Speaker 1 (47:49):
Scotch definitely, you know, in these like European action films,
crime films. So when I watched The Killer with Michael Fassbender,
the David Fincher movie. I was like, this motherfucker's drinking Ensure?
So is he? Are we saying that Ensure is the
new Hitman drink of choice? Like they don't want to

(48:10):
drink Scotch now they just want protein shakes.

Speaker 2 (48:13):
No one has any style anymore. I bet Fastbender wasn't
the killer in that movie. Wasn't smoking SIGs?

Speaker 1 (48:19):
Oh he was drinking in sure. I guess we're when
mom drinks so she doesn't get osteoporosis or whatever. It's crazy.
They're crazy out here with the hitmanisms. Anyway, I must say,
good movie, though I thought I actually liked it. I
liked it.

Speaker 2 (48:33):
I liked that movie. Yeah. Have you seen any of
Alan Allendelon's English movie The thing about him is he
tried to come over to the US to make it
as a big Hollywood dude because he was like this
huge star in Europe, but he wanted to, you know,
make it in Hollywood. But he claims his French accent
stopped him from becoming a huge star. But have you

(48:55):
seen any of his English language movies? I actually have, Nah,
I was just curious to see how those were like.
That just shows you how those were not I don't
think particularly well received.

Speaker 1 (49:11):
Yeah, he it was no eve Montaon right, like Who's Who?
I think is like one of the best examples of
like a French actor that like had an accent but
did American movies, a lot of English language movies. Yeah,
I never saw it. Honestly, to me, there was a

(49:31):
classic period of a landolon movies, and I feel like
it is like a world in which I stay. I
returned to it constantly.

Speaker 2 (49:39):
Well, he had such a run.

Speaker 1 (49:41):
I mean the cutout that I make out with every
night behind me is from Rocco and his Brothers, which is,
you know, one of the He's a lot younger in
that movie than in Samurai, and it's perfect. It's like
a perfect film. And so I'm just like, I don't know,
it's like when it's good, you don't want to go

(50:05):
too far. Like I feel like he's got such good
movies all in a row that I'm like, I love
my little world. He's an icon of smoking because of
these movies, Like he's an icon of like French crime
cigarette smoking. Melville was a big part of that image obviously,
but also I think that like generally you can't get

(50:26):
any better smoking than in like French crime films.

Speaker 2 (50:31):
Well, there's just so many, Like there's so many. I
feel like, long takes on just a person's face with
like a cigarette in their lips and the smoke just
wafting up like that is like part of the genre,
and so it's very conducive to cigarette smoking, you know.
Like the opening sequence of this movie, it's just this

(50:53):
long take of him laying on his bed with the
damn bird chirping and him just smoking a cigarette. It's
like five and it's long.

Speaker 1 (51:00):
Yeah, I mean it's almost like the French were good
at smoking. Yeah, look at John.

Speaker 2 (51:07):
Bier Melville's run. Speaking of runs, nineteen sixty seven La Samurai,
nineteen sixty nine Army of Shadows another one of his,
another banger, and then nineteen seventy Le circ Larrouge. That's
like three or four years. What an incredible run.

Speaker 1 (51:24):
I mean, you don't even want to get me started
on my favorite of his films, Leon Moren Priest, which
is Oh yes, I think it's in the first slot
on my letterboxed faves. Wow, it's maybe number one, it's
definitely the four.

Speaker 2 (51:39):
But I haven't seen it. Holy shit, Casey, you're putting
it on The Lost.

Speaker 1 (51:45):
Oh my god, you watch it, Li, you will die.
Its so good.

Speaker 2 (51:49):
I love priest movies. I love Diary of a Country Priest.
You're gonna love First Reformed.

Speaker 1 (51:55):
Yeah, and you just watch Black Narcissius, so you're gonna
totally go crazy because it's kind of conceptually the same thing. Cool. Yeah, Conclave.
I want to see Conclave. I haven't seen. They've been
pushing Conclave a lot because of the new priest or
I'm sorry, the new the new priest, the old pope,
the new Pope. As of this.

Speaker 2 (52:16):
Time, there is no new pope. We're in between.

Speaker 1 (52:21):
Well, you know, you know who they got. There's a
Filipinos at the forefront. You don't know that. I've been
gutted for this guy. Like everybody, all the Filipinos I know,
are rallying behind this guy. Like they're just basically like,
we need our dude in there, we need our people
in there. It's time. Yes, I agree. You know it's funny.

Speaker 2 (52:40):
My wife is Filipino, and this is something that I
think Minnesotans and Filipinos have in common. Anyone who is
even slightly slightly Filipino they're they are celebrated, haralded, and uh,
you know they love them.

Speaker 1 (52:56):
You know, even Rob Schneider, he's Filipino. I know that. Okay,
listen when they find when they find out that, like
this happens a lot with sports players. If a sports
player comes out as like half Filipino, forget it. You're
a part. You're a part. That's why my mom loves
Kana Reeves so much because she claims that there's some
Filipino ancestry.

Speaker 2 (53:15):
I've heard this too, Yes, I've heard this too. The
new lead singer of Journey Filipino. But the same is
with Minnesotan's. If you have any sort of passing, like
if you're like ma, a celebrity's mom was from Minnesota,
I feel like we know about that. It's sort of
a similar thing. So I related to Tricia on that, yes,

(53:38):
very immediately. Anyways, any other thoughts on Le Samurai Millie.

Speaker 1 (53:44):
I don't know. Classic film. Everybody should watch it. It's
on Criterion Channel. It's uh, it's there's no danger of
it going away because I think that it's a Janis title,
so they own it.

Speaker 2 (53:54):
It's one of the classic film school you gotta see
this movie. Yeah, like movies.

Speaker 1 (53:59):
And if you don't know who Llendlan is and you
want to just you know, die right into his hotness.
You can't find a better movie than The Samurai as
far as I'm concerned.

Speaker 2 (54:07):
So not about a Samurai. Just know that going you.

Speaker 1 (54:14):
Know the quote at the beginning that is in every
John piter Mellville movie that sometimes is made up. He'll
explain to you why he equates Samurais with Hitman. Do
you know what I'm saying?

Speaker 2 (54:27):
Sure, Yeah, there's a connective tissue there.

Speaker 1 (54:30):
Sure, all right. So we have a couple of great
guests for this week's My Area of Expertise, which is
part of the show where we bring on a guest
to talk about their very specific niche area of film knowledge.

(54:54):
And I have to say I love these guys. I've
known them for a very long time. We used to
work to together. I was technically on the board of
the nonprofit that they work for, which is called the
American Genre Film Archive based out of Austin, Texas. And
their programmers, their musicians, their writers that they just do

(55:17):
a lot. They were a lot of hats. They've presented
a lot of films in their past and currently and
I just loved them at pieces and I'm glad that
they're here to talk about their area of expertise. So
please everybody welcome Rettberg and Joe Ziamba from the American
genre film Markive.

Speaker 2 (55:34):
Hi, I'm so happy to be here.

Speaker 4 (55:36):
Yeah, a longtime listener, first time caller.

Speaker 1 (55:40):
Well, I'm glad you guys are here because I think
y'all are really perfect for the topic that we're going
to talk about today, which is very near and dear
to my heart. And I was wondering if y'all wanted
to set that up a bit. What do you what
are you? What is your area of expertise?

Speaker 4 (55:55):
Guys, Well, Joe and I have had a we had
a long history bounding about the region of found footage.
And this comes in various forms. This could be stuff
you just watch on the Internet, or it could be
tapes passed around the underground that somehow made their way
to us. I worked in a video store for many

(56:17):
years in the aughts. Joe and I crosspaths like twelve
years ago at Sina Family, which was as a now
defunct movie theater here in Los Angeles. It's a multifaceted
plane and I don't mean to sound new agy or
weird about it, but there's a lot of intersecting points
between myself, Joe, and this medium.

Speaker 1 (56:39):
Yeah. Well, okay, I want to set this up properly
because I have a feeling that there are people out
there who are maybe younger, who maybe have never experienced
the heartache of having to find things without YouTube or
archived or just googling. So let's talk a little bit

(57:04):
about that, because I think we're roughly the same age, right,
We kind of grew up in the same era of
like home video television, kind of like pre internet, right,
And I've certainly talked about this on you know, on
the podcast before, about you know, having to find like
eighth generation dubs of movies back in the day, and uh,

(57:24):
you know, not everything was obviously on home video or
stream there was no streaming, so it was just such
a challenge to find stuff in that at some point,
the challenge was sort of the thrill, you know, And
so I just wanted to get y'all's opinion about what
was like growing up in that era, you know, set

(57:45):
it up for everybody who maybe doesn't understand what we're
talking about.

Speaker 4 (57:49):
Oh yeah, Well, I think to give us some context,
we were all late gen X, and that kind of
sets the scene. And I'm very burned on it because
I was not Gen X growing up. I was born
in seventy nine, and so I was considered the next generation.
But somewhere in the twenty tens, all things, all three

(58:10):
of us got retroactively lumped into gen X. Not happy
about it, but oh well, I kind of like it.

Speaker 1 (58:19):
But I also do I get what you mean. I
get what you mean.

Speaker 4 (58:22):
There are worse things there are, Yeah, So I guess
this was. We all grew up at a time without
the Internet in the home, necessarily without cell phones, and
we were the last generation I think to do so
I had cable television in the home, so I feel
like I was as plugged in as possible as plugged
into someone could be, you know, from that generation. But

(58:44):
they were also the generation that had to send away
for things through mail order if you really wanted them. Joe,
I'm sure you did that a lot. Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (58:52):
That's my introduction to all of this, actually was I
remember reading about underground VHS tapes of compilations, like homemade
compilations that people made, and then film Threat had released
a couple I think with like really gross titles like
anal cathode to something you know, just like what like,
and I was I was fascinated by them, but I
didn't want to watch them because I knew they would
have stuff on it. At the time, I was really

(59:13):
young that I would like really disturbed me. So it
was like the DVDR eras when I really got into it,
like Revenge is My Destiny dot com in five Minutes
to Live dot com when they actually had found footage
pieces that you could buy on DBDR, and it was
really electric because you had no idea what you're going
to get. Some of them could be really horrible and boring,
and some were just like revelations. So it was very

(59:35):
It was like the feeling of sending away for something
and not knowing exactly what you're going to get. It's
hard to describe, but is like all part of the
experience of doing it.

Speaker 2 (59:44):
And so these compilations that you guys are like sending
out for or like seeking out what kind of like
just for our listeners, like what kind of footage is
actually on these compilations? What are these like narrative stories, documentaries,
home videos or all of the above, Like, what exactly
is the content of this type of like found footage

(01:00:06):
that you're seeking out at this time?

Speaker 4 (01:00:08):
Oh boy, I mean I would have to classify most
of it as edgy. Yeah, you know, things that could
not be broadcast or were secreted away into the archives
of whatever broadcast entity, never to be seen. I don't know,
like random collisions of crap, which is I guess was
the basis of YouTube. Sometimes they were here's a compilation

(01:00:33):
of all like the best moments from Italian horror movies.
Sometimes it was here's like bloopers or you know, things
that are just too too hot for TV, incredible commercials,
you know, the proto meme stuff. I guess the things
that were really worthy in that world were of a

(01:00:55):
proto meme, proto viral nature.

Speaker 1 (01:00:59):
I think that actually, key, I think this is exactly
what we were doing. Is I think we were watching
compilations of memes or you know, viral videos, and you know,
it was just this thing where there were certain people
that had It almost felt like there were people who

(01:01:21):
were just like home recording and they were recording things
off of TV or they had you know, somehow had
an older brother that had footage of when like the
max Hedroom guy broke into the TV station and took
it over. You know, like these like weird random moments
that happened like in either on TV or on video
or something and made comps and it would just be

(01:01:45):
like one thing after another. And I mean I think
I started too around that Five Minutes to Live era,
which was a mail order label really for a while.
But you know, I bought like all of the found
footage stuff like back in the day, Like you know,
I was just thinking about this the other day. I

(01:02:05):
you know, bought James Brown's Future Shock, which was this
short lived sort of soul train type of show that
he had made in Atlanta actually in the seventies. And
I mean, where would you be able to find that?
Somebody dug it up, found it, put it on a
VHS tape or like a DVDR and sold it through
a website, and it was that kind of stuff. And

(01:02:29):
I also remember stuff like TV Carnage and Everything Is Terrible,
which I think is kind of like the thing that
more people know about now, which were kind of like
compilations of television movies like random stuff like a lot
of Christian television like public broadcasting, which was so fun

(01:02:50):
to watch, like if you just put it on at
a party, everybody would sit around and watch it, right.

Speaker 4 (01:02:55):
Yeah. I also Five Minutes to Live was Atlanta based.
I think that guy who ran the labels where I
didn't realize that.

Speaker 1 (01:03:03):
Yeah, I think there's a little bit of drama there. Well,
I won't go into it because I don't know a
lot about it, but I do believe that perhaps people
are owed money or something. This is all I've heard.
That's all I know. I'm not gonna go any further
than that. But yeah, there was like a lot of

(01:03:24):
different players back then. And then also again to Joe's
earlier point of this is something that I think is
really interesting too about where you would find like these
mail order catalogs, because I remember seeing it in the
back of like Fangoria and Room Orgue and Film Threat
and all these magazines. But then I also would see like,

(01:03:45):
do y'all remember the Sessions catalog, which was kind of
this like skater like mail order catalog that you would
find in the middle of like Alternative Press magazine. Do
you remember Alternative Press magazine? And you could buy like
skater clothes skater ephemera, like fucking like you know, weird

(01:04:06):
alien neon signs for your bedroom clothes. But you could
also buy records, and you could also buy tapes, like
you could buy like compilations of like weird concerts that happened,
and just kind of like viral like what they would
call kind of underground videos, which were just kind of

(01:04:26):
like again what we're talking about, And so it was
always really embedded with like like kind of like you know,
anti mainstream culture, sort of like skater punk, rock heavy
metal culture. It was all kind of part and party
of all of this.

Speaker 4 (01:04:43):
Stuff, right, Yeah, I mean it was The reason why
it's so interesting to talk about this now is that
I think it's a hidden history and everyone, just about
everyone on the planet has forgotten what underground culture used
to mean. Before the Internet and social media was a
daily reality, most content on Earth was difficult to get

(01:05:05):
and a lot of folks were in a monoculture just
all watching the same thing. Let's go back thirty years
and talk about Friends versus the punk underground. Most people
were watching Friends in Seinfeld, but there's a small number
of us who were not necessarily watching that and instead
reading magazines going out to rock shows, talking to other people.

(01:05:29):
That's the thing. A lot of what we're talking about
doesn't happen without like human contact and human interaction, which
is increasingly rare these days. Yeah, you had to buy media.
That was one big thing. You had to actually fork
over money to purchase an item and you could maybe
copy it for your friends, or if it was a

(01:05:50):
DVD maybe at the time you didn't know how to
copy it. So everything lived was trapped on this media
that you had to physically hand off to someone in
order for them to get And this created an excitement,
tangible like culture, a subculture. And now it's funny that

(01:06:12):
memes and viral things is overground. It is the culture.
It's the way that people communicate with each other and
relate to each other is through watching some guy take
a golf club to the nuts on fail army. That's
how we relate instead of going to shows. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:06:30):
There's commercials like they put like these like nut crushing
videos in Like there's actual like insurance commercials and stuff
that play memes. It's crazy.

Speaker 4 (01:06:43):
Also mixtapes back then, they mimicked the channel changing quality
of our television culture, especially especially in the eighties nineties,
where you know, cable TV is present and then you
have hundreds of channels. So the idea of these mixtapes
acting as an alternative to television, it was a really

(01:07:04):
mind blowing idea and the people who made the mixtapes
it was kind of like bands. You know, it was
I relate everything to the band metaphor, because I think
that's how gen X people know how to talk to
each other.

Speaker 2 (01:07:18):
Well, it is interesting you bring up like how that
sort of like underground visuals are now held at the
same place as mainstream media. You know, it's like I
buy something on AM, I could go to Amazon dot
com and the same way you would find something that's
like more alternative now is the same. It has a

(01:07:40):
it's like on the same platform now, whereas before there
was no real infrastructure, or like if there was an infrastructure,
it was much more underground, much more difficult to navigate
just to find this type of culture, let alone to
like take it in. You know, it's very interesting how

(01:08:03):
things have changed.

Speaker 4 (01:08:03):
Yeah, also buying things through these bootleggers, because let's be clear,
the people who you were buying all these tapes from
and magazines they're all bootleggers. None of them have the
rights to do any of it. But the art of
creating the mixtape and the art of distributing the mixtapes,
those are two separate arts. They're both kind of lost

(01:08:24):
because because everything is nothing, nothing is everything.

Speaker 2 (01:08:29):
Yeah, well, Millie, you had some story I remember, didn't
You used to like buy dubs from some like security
guard or like bouncer at some clubs.

Speaker 1 (01:08:38):
Am I making that up entirely? No, that is absolutely true.
I think I've told the story before my last podcast.
But yeah, I used to buy dubs of like Asian
action movies from a bouncer at this really ceedy strip
club in Atlanta. And he was a friend. He was
the boyfriend of one of my friends from high school basically,

(01:08:58):
and he was he had a folded up stapled papers
like maybe like ten pages or something stapled folded and
halfn't shoved in his back pocket, and if you were
like wanting to see like the Heroic Trio or something,
or like something that was like it was all Asian stuff.
Typically a lot of you know, things you couldn't get

(01:09:21):
imported into America because it was just extremely expensive to
get Asian films back in the day, right or impossible,
but he would make dubs from his collection and as
long as you gave him fifty dollars in cash.

Speaker 3 (01:09:37):
Fifty Oh wow, that's pretty steep for like friends of
friend exchange.

Speaker 1 (01:09:41):
Yo, these scumbags back in the day, they're like that
didn't necessarily call him a scot. Well maybe I am.
I don't even know. He will not be listening, so
it doesn't really matter. But but like that was what
Brian was talking about, how the distribution was an art form.
It was there was a lot of guys out there
just like charging the crazy some amounts for dubs and

(01:10:02):
knowing that they had you because they were like where
else you going to go? Baby, Like, I'm the only
one you got, and so I would like give the
sky fifty dollars in cash. He gave me like the
story of Ricky Terrible Quality or whatever, like on a
VHS tape, and then I was a happy college person.
But yeah, that was like that, I mean, that's insane

(01:10:24):
to think about, Like, you know, it's insane to think about,
Like now the movies that I was buying from a
bouncer to ship club are like on Criterion collection.

Speaker 3 (01:10:34):
Yeah, and like the four kuhd of some of those
titles is less than fifty dollars, which is what you
were paying on this bootleg VHS thirty years ago.

Speaker 1 (01:10:42):
So I want to talk to you guys a little
bit about what you do at AGFA, because basically you're
keeping the tradition of this alive in many ways. And
I also want to talk about y'all specifically in your
side projects, because I know both of you have kind
of little side hustles that in found footage or you know,
direct to video films. I would love to talk about that,

(01:11:06):
But talk to me a little bit about AGFA generally,
and then how AGFA is now kind of creating these
comps in the same realm of what we were just
talking about.

Speaker 4 (01:11:19):
Well, Joe, you give the history roundup of where we
came from.

Speaker 3 (01:11:23):
Okay, all right, I'll try to keep it very brief
because at this point AGFA is fifteen years old and
there's been so many different iterations. But it started out
as strictly a film archive with about three thousand feature
length films. I'm thirty five millimeter and it was started
by Tim and Carey League in Austin, Texas and for
the longest time, there was one employee at AGVA and
his name was Sebastian du Castillo. He's no longer at

(01:11:46):
the staff, but we love him so much and he
was the beating heart of AGFA for so long. And
when let's see, I moved to Austin in twenty twelve
and was introduced to the archive and seb and we
really hit it off, and we were always kind of
joking around at screenings like, oh, if we could do
something more with agphilic, what can we do? And then

(01:12:07):
it really snowballed in twenty sixteen where Tim League was
interested in scanning films and the archive that were rare
and so he was sending them out to be scanned,
and the price to get them scanned was pretty enormous,
and so I think it was his idea that which
is like, oh, what if AGFA got a scanner and
what if we could just digitize all these things? So
we did a kickstarter to get that and it was successful.

(01:12:27):
And as soon as that happened, we started working with
Lisa Petrucci at Something Weird and got a lot of
the Something Weird archive and started scanning those and started
the home video label, and Brett came on to do
the theatrical aspect of AGFA, which was basically an extension
of sending the prints out to theaters to play, but
then using that what we had built up with that

(01:12:47):
to really expand it into DCPs and beyond that, and
then Alisha join and Ivan joined and it just kind
of went from there and we became who we are now,
which is basically like the world's probably the world's largest
nonprofit genre film distributor and archive. So we have a
home video arm, a theatrical arm, we're moving into vod

(01:13:08):
just like all sorts of stuff that we're doing anything
and everything we can think up, any crazy idea we
can think up to further the mission. What we're doing
is a nonprofit we do it. So that's I hope
that makes sense to everyone that's listening that's never heard
of AGFA.

Speaker 1 (01:13:23):
And it's for genre films specifically, right, So explain that
a little bit to the listeners.

Speaker 3 (01:13:29):
Right, I think for us, I mean, genre means anything
to I mean, it could be an action movie, it
could be a comedy, it could be a documentary. It's
the genre, right that it is, like the name of
the genre but for us, it seems to fall more
into the like underground, outsider, neglected things that no one
else is going to touch, So we take genre in
that direction. But it's it's more of like a catch all.

(01:13:50):
But I think that's what it means for us.

Speaker 1 (01:13:52):
Yeah, So, now AGFA, you know, has been releasing, they
have a home video arm. They've been releasing a lot
of great titles and has been had been doing so
for years. I mean stuff that I just a lot
of stuff I've never even heard of before, let alone
the stuff that I never thought i'd actually see, you know.
I mean, you've done so many great things, from like

(01:14:12):
ed Wood to like you know, these insane like Florida
exploitation movies, and you know, it really runs the gamut
of so many different things. But y'all have started specifically
making these compilations and I feel like you've done like
at least three or four, am Am, I wrong about that,
So talk to me a little bit about what those are.

Speaker 4 (01:14:33):
Those are us trying to make something out of nothing.
In the process of having a Blu Ray label and
needing to release one thing per month. Sometimes, you know,
there's a lack of film prints for us to immediately
do things with and we realized that because we're in

(01:14:54):
an archive, it doesn't mean that we just have to
take a feature film print and put that on a
Blu ray. It means that we can utilize any material
that we have to create something that's fun, exciting and contextual.
So in recent times, we did a feature length edit
of Drive in intermission snipes called Hey folks, that's it's

(01:15:16):
intermission time. We've got a lot of trailers in our archives,
so we've done to date two different feature length trailer
compilations where we're not just having the trailers themselves on
the disc, will actually make a feature length mixtape out
of them where we choose the best bits from them.
And then most recently we did the AGVA mystery mixtape Vault,

(01:15:39):
which is it Valter Archive. I'm forgetting that you get fault. Yeah.
Where during twenty twenty, in the COVID lockdown era, we
had less to do with theaters and we just started
tinkering around with video material that we had at our
disposal just to make something fun and accessible and or

(01:16:00):
just like make the day a little easier, especially in
twenty twenty, and a lot of those have ended up
on that Mystery Mixtape Fault a lot of random stuff
but also a Christmas mix, a Stairway to Stardom mixed
Stairway to Start. It was like an eighties public access
version of American Idol. And Joe did the Lost and

(01:16:22):
Found Video Night Mixtape, which is from the label five
Minutes to Live, which was that one from Atlanta that
we were talking about, right, sort of the best of
that person's version of found footage. Yeah, and all those
eight things are squashed together on one disc act for
Mystery Mixtape Faults. And it was a real milestone for

(01:16:44):
us recently because it was a release that we had
sold out the initial run of, but we didn't actually
tell anybody what was on it, which is pretty rare.
That's great for Blu Ray release.

Speaker 3 (01:16:55):
I don't know if anyone has ever done that before
with the Blue Ray.

Speaker 1 (01:16:57):
I think it's great though, It's like, you know, it's
because it's kind of like a blind box. I don't know,
people are obsessed with those blind boxes now. It's like
you just like get something and put it on, and
I mean you know that the the author or the
curators are great, so you just have to kind of
you know, soaking it, trust it, trust in their expertise, right. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:17:19):
It's like going to a restaurant and it's like a
trust me a meal, you know, to the chef. It's
like you cook up something good for me. You know,
I trust you. When you guys are like looking through
this footage, you know, kind of culling and trying to
figure out what goes on these you know, mixtapes, are
you watching a lot of stuff where you're like, this
is just bad for like every like the thing that

(01:17:42):
you find is that's good? You know? Like do you
have to like, uh, you know, kiss a lot of
frogs to find your prints in there? Or like, how
what's that? What's that process?

Speaker 4 (01:17:53):
Like I would say yes to whatever metaphor you choose, okay,
And the process is really just looking through stuff after
stuff after stuff, trying to find the glimpses of footage
where the spidery sense goes up, whether it's a particular

(01:18:13):
thematic content or just contextual quality. Does it make me
excited to share it with someone? Is it cinematic in
some way where there's an accidental story being told through
whatever the hell's happening that isn't exactly what they meant
to tell, but it tells a story to us decades later.

(01:18:37):
I'm put on the mystery mixtape Bault. One of the
mixtapes is very Freddy centric because it's an hour sort
of stuff that mostly has to do with horror sequels.
I'm always fascinated by horror sequels, so that just kind
of became a theme for one of the mixtapes. And
Robert England and the fandom that came along with Freddy

(01:19:00):
and it Freddy's representation of pop culture, like how it
appeared on MTV and stuff. That's that's always fascinating to me. Yeah,
so it's just uh, once you like, I set the
template of Okay, this one's going to be about sequels,
and then it's just whatever kind of fits the bill.

Speaker 1 (01:19:17):
That's what I think is kind of the key point
maybe to this is the curation part, because you know,
I think the word curator, like whatever, is being thrown
around a lot these days.

Speaker 4 (01:19:30):
I get that word. Yeah at all.

Speaker 1 (01:19:32):
I wish I wish there was a new word. I mean,
programmer feels good, and that's what I call myself. But
it's like, I don't even know a lot of people
think that's like computer programming, so we need we need
a new word.

Speaker 4 (01:19:43):
But VJ.

Speaker 1 (01:19:45):
Yeah, I want to be a VJ ship. I want
to be a VJ contest. But I I think that
that's kind of the art to it, right, because you're
obviously the person that's in charge of figuring out what's
and what's not crap, right, And like, I think that
that is the I think that's why when you find,

(01:20:10):
especially even online now, you find these like kind of
Instagram accounts or TikTok accounts with people who are just
like making weird content, you are, in a way sort
of like trusting that they know what's good and funny
and interesting and versus not, you know what I mean.
And that's why I think you know what you guys
do is so great, is because I, as a fan,

(01:20:33):
you know of of you guys and both your work
and but also the work of AGFA, like trust that
you know what you're talking about. You have a sensibility
that I know and appreciate, and so I feel like
I'm on the ride, you know. And I just don't
know if people really think about it in that way,
like when they think curation is like, oh, it's just
somebody who's just playing whatever they want. I'm like, no, No,
I think there's a lot more to it.

Speaker 4 (01:20:54):
Well, I mean, I think that it's not a conversation
of what's good versus what's bad, or what's crap versus
not crap. It's more about what is exciting versus dull
because as the programmer or the editor or the VJ
or the curator, to me, the job is seeing through

(01:21:15):
the audience's eyes and what is going to raise their
pulse Rather than this is what I like or this
is what I don't like. I'm trying to think of
what is this body of people, the seventy five people
in a room if you want to imagine a film
screening or something, what are they all reacting to be
for beat? And that for me determines where the edit

(01:21:39):
points are. Is where their interest keeps writing high versus
when does it the peaks and valleys of their interest?

Speaker 3 (01:21:47):
Right, Yeah, And I think that bringing up about the
live show, I think a lot of it ties back
into years of hosting and programming live screenings because you're
chasing that feeling of when the audience gets it and
you love it. So I think that really ties in
to the choices that you make while you're cutting these things.

Speaker 4 (01:22:04):
Yeah, and I think today's generation of found footage makers,
whether it's us or I'm forgetting their name, those two
sisters in Australia Soda Jerk, or the collective in New
York that made the very very stark climate Change found
footage piece, I'm forgetting their name, or the people that
made the y two k documentary that was on HBO Max.

(01:22:28):
I think that and everything is terrible because they're still
continuing to make stuff, and even people like Found Footage Fest.
You know, all the found footage makers I think at
this point are using a somewhat empathetic lens to choose
their material, meaning you are putting yourself in the shoes
of the audience as a body, rather than this is
what I like or this is what I don't like.
I'm really excited to see everybody's found footage work now

(01:22:50):
because I think we've hit that level that goes beyond
the so bad it's good concept or even the what
the fuck concept that was around in the two thousand.
Now we've reached this place about why does this exist?
That's the question I have in my mind every time
I watch a piece of crazy found footage? Why does
this exist? And then you can go down the rabbit

(01:23:11):
hole of that creator or team or whatever to try
to get into their head. And this foster's an empathetic
attitude towards life in general.

Speaker 1 (01:23:21):
Yeah, I mean, and there's so many there are actual filmmakers.
I think of people like Adam Curtis or Bill Morrison
or somebody who frequently use found footage like in their
work to tell a big story, you know, and get
nominated for like Academy Awards in the case of Bill Morrison.
So it's kind of like it's, yeah, it's people making

(01:23:43):
memes and stuff, but in compilations, but it's also people
using that found footage to tell you know, again more
way to your point, more empathetic story is more important stories.

Speaker 4 (01:23:53):
And yeah, I mean think I think the best found
footage work being made today is stuff that examines where
we've been, where we are, and where we're going. So
I just I like to think that's what we do
at ACVA, and it's not just a random collision of
crusty old things where people talk like this, and because

(01:24:14):
there's a lot of that, and in fact, our next
Found Footage disc release has a lot of people talking
like this in old movies, Joe, do we want to
talk about that at all? Are we keeping? Mom?

Speaker 3 (01:24:28):
Well, it goes up the preortor goes up this Thursday,
May first, So I guess yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:24:34):
Go for it. Oh, this is a release called Danger Stories,
which is our second collab with something Weird video that
explores the realm of twentieth century educational films. Yeah. The
first one was Drug Stories a number of years ago.
That was a lot of fun to put together. That
has the whole short weear Florrie Fisher, who's the inspiration

(01:24:56):
for Jerry Blank from Strangers with Candy, that legend very
proto viral film where she's addressing a whole room of
high school is and they might be into drugs, but
I'm telling you, don't get into the drugs like the
just total madness. So we have a second volume called

(01:25:17):
Danger Stories, which is all about health and safety films.
And so the bonus feature on this disc is an
hour long thing that I made that plays upon the
concept of the word salad of these shorts because they're
trying to convey a lot of information and none of
it makes sense and none of it is even meant

(01:25:38):
to make sense, it's just to scare you. So there's
a lot of people talking like this very sternly about
nuclear fallout or don't get those streptococcyx virus or whatever.
And I just took a like thirty plus hours of
that and did a like a deck shuffling word salad symphony,

(01:26:01):
oh Man, kind of directly in the vein of Negative
Land and Bruce Connor and a lot of the classic
culture jamming stuff from the eighties and nineties in this respect, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:26:15):
Yeah, amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:26:16):
There's a lot of pockets we go down. I mean, honestly,
like the industrial films, this classroom scare films like those
used to be really big, and they used to have
the educational archives compilations that would come out. Yeah, and
then just like again, trailers going back to the original point.
I mean, something weird was huge in that world. They
used to come out with comps of trailers all the time.

(01:26:39):
And Yeah, we could honestly talk about this forever. And
I was telling Casey before you guys arrived, I was like,
we could go like four or five hours on this topic.
So let's let's keep that in mind. But I wanted
to say, I wanted to ask you both about again
sort of like your side projects or your passion projects,
your other companies that you do alongside AGFA. So Joe,

(01:27:03):
tell me a little bit about Bleeding Skull because I
feel like this is kind of related to what we're
talking about, right.

Speaker 3 (01:27:08):
Yeah, of course, I think both Museum from Video and
Bleeding skullar absolutely. Really, they're all intertwined. They all feed
from up you know, into the same thing. So yeah,
I mean Bleeding Skull has been around twenty one years
this year, from two thousand and four.

Speaker 4 (01:27:20):
It started out as a site.

Speaker 3 (01:27:22):
It was just movie reviews, and then we did a
couple of books over the years, and now my partner
Annie Joe and I launched a home video label, a
Bleating Skull home video label as a Vinegar Syndrome partner
last year in twenty twenty four. So we are. We
love doing it so much. It's just a very pure
and kind of there's no nothing, nothing keeping us from

(01:27:44):
doing whatever we want to.

Speaker 4 (01:27:44):
Do with it. It's just really fun and yeah, we're
having a great time with it.

Speaker 1 (01:27:49):
And it's primarily direct to video horror or like home
home video horror, right.

Speaker 3 (01:27:56):
Yeah, yeah, it's very underground, probably the mostnderground stuff you
can get. But I think the goal we've had with
releasing things for Bleeding Skull is making sure that they're
going to appeal to other people and not just us,
because there's a whole other subset of stuff that I'm
into that I would never think of releasing because it's
it's just for me, like no one else is going
to relate to it or buy it or be interested
in it. So we try to find the titles that

(01:28:17):
the ones that we love, each and every one of them,
but make sure that these are things that people are.

Speaker 4 (01:28:21):
Going to want to buy and watch and enjoy.

Speaker 3 (01:28:23):
So movies like Blonde Death was the first one that
we did, and then we did a four kuhd for
a movie called Disembodied, which I still can't believe we
did that. We actually made it like a four kuhd.
But so yeah, it's a big mix of stuff, a
very underground sov to underground sixteen millimeter films, all sorts
of different kind of stuff, and we do have a
found footage centered release coming later this year, which is exciting.

Speaker 1 (01:28:48):
Well, I have to say, y'all released a movie that's
perhaps my favorite title of any movie that has ever
been made, and it's actually a sequel. It's the sequel
to the movie Fuck the Devil, and the name of
the title is Fuck the Devil to Colon, Return of

(01:29:10):
the Fucker.

Speaker 4 (01:29:11):
The Fucker's Back.

Speaker 1 (01:29:14):
I mean, honestly, every time I think about that, I laugh.
So thank you for this, thank you for bringing this
into my life, is what I'm saying.

Speaker 3 (01:29:24):
Thank you, thank you for even acknowledging that that you've
watched that.

Speaker 1 (01:29:30):
God I had to. I mean, that title alone is
so good. Well, and Brett, let's talk a little bit
about Museum of Home Video two, because I remember when
you started it. I believe was it during the pandemic
when you started.

Speaker 4 (01:29:43):
Oh yeah, yeah. So Museum of Home Video is a
live stream that I do every Tuesday night at seven
thirty pm Pacific onwards. And it is a found footage
variety show. It's taking all the things that we've talked
about throughout this call and kind of turning it into
it an MTV style presentation where it's twenty to thirty

(01:30:08):
minutes of and then I'll come on and I'll say
you just saw this, and now you're going to see
this and dive back into the mix. It's something that
was originally going to be a live show in LA
starting in June of twenty twenty, but whoops, we couldn't
do that, so we pivoted me and my producer Jenny Nixon,
who Millie has known probably longer than I have. Yeah

(01:30:31):
about it. We just decided to turn it into something online,
and we debuted in July of twenty twenty and we
have done it every just about every single Tuesday night
since then, and it's formed a real interesting community of
funny people who all are drawn Pavlovian style to found

(01:30:53):
footage stuff. A lot of gen xers. I'll say, but
it's old game show clips, old talk show clips, old commercials.
I'll take a movie and I'll cut it down to
eight minutes, very much in the style of college radio.
But I like to say it's college radio for the
eyes or stealing a phrase from Weird Al's UHF. It's

(01:31:15):
the reason television was invented, so that all these years
later we could do this with it.

Speaker 1 (01:31:23):
Yeah, I have to say, like I, I have loved
working with you guys in the past. Full disclosure, I
used to be on the board of AGFA for a
couple of years, and I just really am happy that there,
you know, is a place that is basically preserving this
kind of stuff. I was wondering if maybe you could
tell the folks, like how could they support AGFA, Like

(01:31:45):
if they can make donations, come to screenings, buy things
like what is it?

Speaker 4 (01:31:49):
Yeah, all of this things and thank you Millie. We
miss you a lot.

Speaker 1 (01:31:52):
I miss you guys too.

Speaker 3 (01:31:54):
But all of those things you can donate directly to
AGFA from our site. There's a donation but top. You
can buy our blu rays. You can go to our screenings,
you can support the venues all across the country, in
the world who are screening our theatrical catalog everywhere. There
are so many different ways you can support us. And
it doesn't just have to be you know, I'm going
to donate twenty dollars to you today. I think that

(01:32:17):
to me, it's like the support comes from all over
the place. It comes from audiences, it comes from people
just like you telling us that you enjoy what we're doing.
You know, it means a lot of This whole conversation
is very energizing to me and feels so good. It
makes me happy, so there's just so many ways to
support and just to be positive and joyful about all
these things.

Speaker 4 (01:32:35):
So yeah, that's my pitch.

Speaker 1 (01:32:37):
Well, Brett and Joe, I just wanted to say thanks
again for coming on the podcast. Casey and I had
an amazing time talk to me all about your area
of expertise. I feel like, you know, this is something
that is so near and dear to my heart. It's
part of how I grew up, So it felt very
personal to me to be having this conversation with you guys,
but also just like amazing interesting, you know, sort of

(01:33:00):
to dive back into that world of you know, like
the pre digital eras. So thank you for coming.

Speaker 4 (01:33:06):
Thank you, I mean, this was It's always a joy
to talk about the stuff and and getting to talk
to you as a highlight of any week.

Speaker 2 (01:33:12):
Absolutely, Oh my gosh, what a stimulating conversation with Brett
and Joe I was. So that's a world I don't
necessarily know a ton about, but I'm very interested in.

Speaker 1 (01:33:34):
And yeah, I loved hearing.

Speaker 2 (01:33:37):
What they had to say about found footage. It was
really a great combo.

Speaker 1 (01:33:42):
Yeah, love those guys, love ACFA. Support them if you can.
They're a great nonprofit out here doing the good work
so absolutely well. Now is our.

Speaker 2 (01:33:55):
Segment Employees Picks, where we recommend a movie based on
what we talked about today, Millie, do you have a
film recommendation for the folks out there?

Speaker 1 (01:34:05):
Yeah? I was like, I could run down the whole
gamut of things. There's so many titles that he could
be included.

Speaker 2 (01:34:15):
I mean I had Oh, there's so many, even Greece,
even though I do not like Greece. But Danny Zuko
turned around with a cigarette in his mouth. Tell listen,
just because you like Greece too more doesn't mean you
have to hate Greece.

Speaker 1 (01:34:30):
Listen. I didn't like I I didn't like Greece before
I discovered Greece too, by the way, So it was
not like I'm not like retroactively disliking the first Grease
because I like Greece too. I was like, I don't
like this very much, or you know, I was like,
I'm annoyed by this, and.

Speaker 2 (01:34:46):
Then Greece to tell my don't tell my brother Brady
O'Brien why Greece is like his favorite movie?

Speaker 1 (01:34:54):
He loves Greece. What why is that? Do you know
he loves Greece. What I mean, I like Greece.

Speaker 2 (01:35:03):
It's a fun movie. It's a fun time.

Speaker 1 (01:35:04):
Well that's to be a fact that you'd bring up
about him. He really really likes it. He just leves.
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:35:13):
Some of those musical sequences are intoxicated. What can I
say in the first one.

Speaker 1 (01:35:19):
Well, listen, I don't want to We don't need to
get into it now. Sorry, Casey's brother. I don't mean
to disparage your favorite film and IP of all time. Okay,
so there was so many I swear to God, like,
don't tell me about Breakfast at Tiffany's, don't tell me
about Grease. I think. I think since we're talking about

(01:35:39):
crime films, noirs ish you know, foreign noirs with Alendo,
Lawn and Melville, you have to go classic American noir
smoking and that is Robert Mitcham and Out of the
Past from nineteen forty seven. The poster is like, all,

(01:35:59):
you know, like he's just smoking. Look that fat cigarette
hanging out of his mouth. I know he probably you
think that's a camel wide. How gross is the cable?
Whye dude? Why I knew one person.

Speaker 2 (01:36:26):
That smoked to him in high school?

Speaker 1 (01:36:28):
And I was like, damn, that's a fat cigarette. Why
I always.

Speaker 2 (01:36:33):
Felt that about American spirits. I feel like American spirits
became the hipster's cigarette of choice, but they were so
big and fat that it was like, oh, I don't
want to smoke anymore tonight.

Speaker 1 (01:36:47):
They take forever to smoke.

Speaker 2 (01:36:50):
They take forever. It's like a thick milkshake. That's why
I was a parliament guy. I could just suck him down.

Speaker 1 (01:36:56):
That's why you were getting cardons of parliaments thrown at you.

Speaker 2 (01:36:59):
Thrown into the window in the of our apartment building.

Speaker 1 (01:37:07):
That's so funny. So that that's my recommendation. If you
want to see some good smoking. Oh it's great. If
you know, if you know for a fact that they're
cabl wids, please email us at Dear Movies at exactly
rightmedia dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:37:20):
We need to do one of those like enhanced enhanced
to zoom in on the cigarette to see if we
can see a little camel on there.

Speaker 1 (01:37:28):
All right, what's your recommendation?

Speaker 2 (01:37:30):
Okay, So you know, when we were trying to think
of movies to talk about with like a celebration of cigarettes,
this was one that came up. But I don't know,
I was kind of against doing it's too obvious, but
I do love this movie, so I'm gonna recommend it.
Coffee and Cigarettes Jim Jarmusch's two thousand and three anthology film,
which is just a bunch of conversations of people I

(01:37:50):
didn't get, like diners, yeah, smoking cigarettes, And it's just
such a great movie and a huge inst inspiration to me.
I haven't talked about this much, but I filmed the
feature film a few months ago and we are in
post production right now, and the movie takes place entirely
in various bathrooms, and it's just conversations and bathrooms, and

(01:38:14):
so this is obviously a huge inspiration to me, sort
of as a form factor.

Speaker 1 (01:38:20):
Of a movie, you know, Like just so, I love
this movie.

Speaker 2 (01:38:25):
It's really interesting. I think about it all the time.
There's a lot of great performances, you know, Steve Buscemi,
Alfred Molina, Tom Waits, Iggy Pop, It's the white stripes.

Speaker 1 (01:38:37):
Are in it.

Speaker 2 (01:38:38):
I love this movie. I think it's great and it's
really watchable, and I love Jim jarmush so much. And yeah,
good choice, great movie, Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:38:49):
Good choice, employee. You really did it. I'm employee. All right,
well Millie, we did it.

Speaker 2 (01:38:56):
We did it again, Yes we did. How do you
feel the end of our show?

Speaker 1 (01:39:00):
I feel you, coffin good? Ye next day?

Speaker 2 (01:39:05):
Rough, Oh, I feel good. I'm a little light headed.
That was always a thing too, if you're like out
drinking and it's like I'm gonna have a cigarette and
you're like that one cigarette put me over. Listen now
I'm throwing up in a dumps.

Speaker 1 (01:39:21):
Instantly regrettable, Like you're just like Jesus, that was such
a bad choice. I'm wasted. Well, listen next week's episode.
I don't. We just haven't been dancing around uh noir.
But we're gonna do flirting with it. We're flirting with it.
We're doing a little little song and dance with them.
The next week's episode is gonna be about film noir,

(01:39:44):
but specifically an era of film noir, which is kind
of it's kind of like almost like a micro genre,
but it's it's Cold War film noir. And these are
movies that were essentially made in Hollywood that were roughly
about communism and the Cold War. But there's this movie
called kiss Me Deadly from nineteen fifty five that is
on criterring collection if you want to watch it starring

(01:40:08):
an actor named Ralph Meeker, who I feel like is
so weird, Like it's weird that Ralph Meeker was famous.
Like he's so normal looking to me. And we can
talk about that because actually there is a connection between
Ralph Meeker and Once upon a Time in Hollywood. So
we'll talk about it next week.

Speaker 2 (01:40:27):
But he does look like you're dentist.

Speaker 1 (01:40:30):
Yeah, he just looks like a real normal dude. But
he was in a lot of like.

Speaker 2 (01:40:34):
Born in Minneapolis.

Speaker 1 (01:40:35):
There we go. It's one of you. But kiss Me
Deadly is a very interesting movie. If you've not seen it,
it's kind of bizarre, and I think that's kind of
like the best thing about it. So let's all watch
it and talk about it next week. Fabulous.

Speaker 2 (01:40:57):
I can't wait. I've never seen it. Now I'm excited.
Flous Well, that's our show. If you would like us
to answer any questions you have, any film advice you
can give you, please write to us. If you need
a specific recommendation, need help navigating a director's filmography, or
need a film gripe resolve, Please write in Deer Movies

(01:41:18):
at exactlyrightmedia dot com, or you can leave us a
voicemail and record it on your phone, keep it under
sixty seconds and please record in a quiet place and
you can send that to Deer Movies at exactly rightmedia
dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:41:32):
Please also follow us on social media. We are at
Deer Movies I Love You on Instagram and Facebook, and
we're all in letterbox as ourselves, so we're at Casey
le O'Brien and at mdecerco. That's right.

Speaker 2 (01:41:46):
And you can listen to Deer Movies I Love You
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get
your podcasts, And hey, why don't you rate and review
our show preferably positively? But it really helps to get
our podcast out there if you rate and review the show.
So do that if you can.

Speaker 1 (01:42:05):
All right, Casey, way to go. Fun episode, Thanks everybody
for listening, and we'll see you next week. All right,
bye bye. This has been an Exactly Right production hosted
by me Milli to Cherico and produced by my co host,
Casey O'Brien.

Speaker 2 (01:42:22):
This episode was mixed by Tom Bryfocal. Our associate producer
is Christina Chamberlain, our guest booker is Patrick Cottner and
Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.

Speaker 1 (01:42:31):
Our incredible theme music is by the best band in
the entire world, The Softies.

Speaker 2 (01:42:37):
Thank you to our executive producers Karen Kilgareff, Georgia hart Stark,
Daniel Kramer and Millie. To Jericho, we love you.

Speaker 1 (01:42:44):
Goodbye, be

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