February 26, 2015 • 56 mins
An estimated 50,000 films were made worldwide in 2009 alone. Many are surely clunkers, but in this episode Chuck and Josh talk about the ones that emerged throughout cinema history to change the course of all movies that followed. Get your popcorn.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles W. Chuff, Bryant a k A. Ciskel and
Ebert save us the Isle seat, and Jerry's over there.
(00:22):
I guess she's Jeane Shallots. That's the stuff you should
Know Trium for it. I don't know why that took
on me so much, because Jeane seal it's a funny looking.
I guess that Jerry's not. I'm just picturing her with
a big afro and a mustache and like a tweet
jacket and bad opinions about movies. Gene Shell it had
(00:43):
a look for sure. Still though, he's around right, Oh yeah,
I think so. Yeah, r I p both Ciske, Annyber.
It's so sad um. Have you seen the Roger Ebert documentary? No,
I've heard nothing but good things, really really good, very touching. Yeah.
What is it? Uh? Something? Life life like mine, Life
(01:05):
with Me, Life on top, life itself, Life with thumbs,
Life itself, life itself, Life with thumbs. It was really
great and I watched it and it made the mistake
of watching on a plane, and I was just like,
my allergies are acting out. So yeah, oh yeah I was.
I was watering because of your allergies. No, because it
was sad. I was crying. Do you want me to
(01:26):
say it? Yeah, crying on a plane. Was confused there
for a second. That's better than when I watch other
movies that are on my laptop that are like like
bad violence or or nudity or something. I'm always just like, oh,
then I kind of lower the laptop and it's like
I didn't realize this was in here, and the lady
next to me is just like, you disgusted me? Yeah,
(01:47):
because I don't. I want to be sensitive people around me,
and I'm not one of those jerks just like just
lives in my own bubble. It's like watching some sex
scene on blame. So no, I hate it. It's just
it was so embarre. I happen to be a couple
of times. I'm like I needed to start going PG
on movies just airplanes. Jude Am I right, He's unpredictable.
(02:08):
Yeah alright, So Chuck, this is your episode to shine Man,
is it? Yes? You're a movie guy too. Though I
like movies, but I've I almost consciously don't let myself
watch movies on a like a film aficionado level, pure enjoyment. Yeah,
I don't never want to see the individual shots and
(02:31):
just be like, oh, well that could have been better
or whatever, um and and just miss the movie as
a whole. Yeah, I fall somewhere in the middle of that.
I try to let go. But um like, our our
video producer, director Casey is is pretty bad about that.
And our buddy Scotty who shot our TV show, he's
the worst. He's just a camera working that lighting in
(02:53):
that scenect's awesome. Hey, Casey, they're all in here with
this in spirit. And hey, this is the last show
in the studio, last episode in the old office, the
murder room. Couldn't feel more neutral about it. I actually
feel less than neutral, less than zero. It's it's weird.
That was a good movie. You great shots. I say
(03:16):
thank you as if I directed it a lot, right,
I not only directed, I also played Andrew McCarthy. Uh. Yeah,
I'm ready to get the heck out of here, man.
I can't wait to get in that new office and
that Yeah, it's gonna be good, tiny little dedicated studio,
whole new world. All right, let's do this. Okay, So
Chuck films, you've seen one or two of them in
(03:37):
your time. Have you seen any of the ones in
this list? I know you've seen a few of them,
but have you seen like some of the early ones
I've seen. Well, we'll just go piece by piece because
I have not seen Battleship Pittankon. Okay, um, but I
do love Mandy Patankin. It's a little different in spelling
pronunciation meaning the whole thing, but it's close, I guess.
(04:00):
But we're talking, of course, about films that change filmmaking
and somewhere or another, and the first one on the
list is from Battleship, but takin it's hard for me
to say, which is not the first movie, by the way,
The first screen movie was Workers Leaving the Lumier Factory,
which is forty seven seconds long and the most boring
piece of celluloid anyone's ever put together. But it was
(04:22):
the first, that's right. This was many years. That was
a full thirty years before Battleship prettempted. By the time,
thirty years had passed, like we were doing like narratives,
and there was banning and all sorts of great stuff
and battleship pretention fell under both of those umbrellas. It
was a narrative story. It was a silent movie, right,
but it told a pretty clear story. And it was
(04:44):
a bit of Russian propaganda as well. Yeah, it tells
the story of a nineteen o five uprising in Uh
where there were Russian sailors. Basically, there was a mutiny
aboard a ship and then the bad guys, the Cossacks,
came in looking for revenge. Inge. Yeah, n five that
would have been rising up against tyranny, would have been
(05:05):
rising up against the Romanoff monarchy, I guess, but it
was made. So this is a time when you know,
Lenin and Trotsky and all those dudes were running around
trying to do the great experiment, and uh it ends up.
It turns out that the battleship Potempkin was banned in
(05:26):
some countries. Some countries are like, we don't want this
Rusky propaganda. But Russia itself later on banned it when
Stallin came to power because he was a self aware dictator,
was that the deal? Yeah, Okay, he knew this could
be a metaphor for rising up against my dictatorship. So
I'm gonna just bay in this even though it's Russian propaganda. Well, filmatically,
(05:51):
I need to bring the history by the way, uh,
filmatically speaking, it was a landmark film because of the montage,
most notably the Russia and or Soviet theory of montage,
which is basically that, um, your impact is going to
come from juxtaposition of shots and not necessarily smooth sequence
of shots. Um, and it should be rhythmic instead of
(06:14):
necessarily being tied to the story. It was like a
rhythmic series of shots. And this one is popular. Um.
It was. The Odessa Steps sequence is one of the
five acts, and it is huge because it has been
aped and um mimicked and mocked and um homaged, probably
(06:36):
more than I don't know about more, but a lot
of times in film history. Well, yeah, the montage it's
like a go to editing technique, right. Oh yeah, well
the montage in general, but specifically the Odessa Steps. There
are two notable parts in that sequence. One is the
you know, it's basically a big charge on these these
grand steps leading up to a building and a big
(06:56):
battle Odessa, Texas. And um, there's a part of it
where there's the old the old baby carriage going down
the steps. You know what's gonna happen to the baby?
And it sounds tired because we've seen that in uh,
you know, the Untouchables. Notably that I did not find
it tiresome, Naked Gun thirty three and the third Everything
(07:20):
is Illuminated, The Great Movie by Liev Schreiber Um that
was from directly from the Odessa step sequence and Battleship
Patinkin the Baby Carriage and the old um shot through
the shot in the eye through the glasses that comes
from this movie too. They were the first ones to
do it um And you've seen that in Woody Allen's
(07:41):
Love and Death and Bananas and of course The Godfather.
The Great sequence where Mo Green's getting the massage and
he looks up and puts on his glasses. Yeah, that's
exactly the whole Yeah, because there was an assassination on
the steps as well. Yes, definitely a double Who was that?
That was Francis Ford Coppola. Yea, he was clearly aware
(08:03):
of Battleship Attempkin. Clearly. I was trying to think of
other examples of montages and the only thing I could
come up with was the a team building something. But
that counts as a montage, right, Yeah. Yeah, it's like
some related in some way related shots that are kind
of put together that a little bit transcend like a
(08:23):
story in itself, like Rocky training for a fight. Yeah,
that's another good A lot of times just set to music. Yeah,
I love that. That's the only one you can think of.
And in the Great Movie Brazil too has the shot
through the glasses bit as I like to call it.
So that's Battleship at Hampkin. Doesn't one of the Nazis
and Raiders have lost art gets shot through the glasses.
(08:44):
Maybe that wouldn't surprise me. It's been it's been off homaged. Yeah,
So Battleship Attempkin was a It made a pretty big splash.
Nine six the following year, the next movie on the list. Um,
it wasn't his first, but it really solidified I think
his stardom Buster Keaton stardom. Yeah, the general rightfully so too. Yeah,
(09:08):
he was one of the great. Um well, some people
call him the greatest stuntman to ever live. He's done
some stuff that I think earns him that. Yeah, because
I mean this is back in the day to where
he was legitimately risking his life, you know, like that
the very famously where he's standing on the street in
front of a house and then the whole front of
(09:29):
the house falls over him, and the window he just
goes right around him. I watched that again today. It
is I can't believe you did that. You And there's
actually a half of a second where his arm jerks
up because he startled as the house finally makes its
way like into his peripheral vision. And it has to
(09:49):
be one of the most dangerous things that human beings
ever done on film. I'm sure the whole time before
that was like we did the math, right, he did
the math. Do the math again, Do the math again,
Show me the math, Show me the math, because that's
all it was. It was math and measurements. But yeah,
he could have been squashed and killed very easily, and
he had a lot of faith in everybody who was
(10:10):
pulling off this stunt with him. You know, he had
to just stand there. That was his whole thing is
he had to just stand there. And his bit was
that he um was He played it straight constantly. He
was a stone faced actor. Yeah, deadpan. Yeah, he kind
of started the whole thing because his big um I
was about to say rival, but I guess, um just
contemporary Charlie Chaplin, while similar in some ways, was completely
(10:33):
different because Chaplin was constantly mugging for the camera and
like asking for the audience, uh, sympathy, right, raising his
eyebrows or yeah, like look, what's happening to me? Come on?
Come on, whereas Buster Keaton would just he had that
deadpan look the whole time. Yeah, he would go from
like a house falling around him to jumping on a
train or something like that with just the same blank
(10:54):
facial expression. Yeah. And the reason this is a highly
influential film the generals because it kind of showcases the
best of both, um, the the amazing stunts that would
be mimicked in throughout the years and built upon, and
then the dead pan style that influenced everyone from obviously
Bill Murray is one of the great dead pan actors
(11:14):
of all time. Like you can count the number of
time Bill Murray even smiles in a movie on like
two hands, much less like apes or laughs or anything.
Michael Sarah's mentioned in here, and I'm like he, I
think he might have Bill Murray beat as far as well.
Zach Galfin Akiss is on the list. He's super deadpan um,
(11:35):
Leslie Nielsen, of course, Amy Poehler. I think is Uh
is a woman that's a very dead pan has a
deadpan style, Jason Schwartzman. But people say this is this
is all is a direct descendant of Buster Keaton's work. Yeah,
And if you think we're overstating this, go watch any
Buster Keaton movie. You will be thrilled and delighted. And
(11:55):
if your attention span has been shredded to ribbons by
the Internet, just go into YouTube and type in Buster
Keaton and it'll bring up all sorts of um clips
of his awesome stunts. Pretty great promise. Yeah, and I
think I made a note here by the way, that
we have a fatty Arbuckle retraction to make. Remember when
we we called him out as the rapist murderer, I
(12:18):
didn't say murderer, well, we said rapists at least, but
we were taken a task by fan he was he had,
he was acquitted of all that stuff and apparently didn't
do uh either act and um, his career in life
and family name were ruined forever. So he was evidently
done a grave miss justice and we sort of cavalierly
(12:39):
just still called him that today. Yeah, I need to
look into it more, all right. So next up we
have the Jazz Singer, the edition, not the Neil diamond one. No,
and there was one in between two with Danny Thomas.
I believe. Um, I like Neil Diamonds. It's good. I
never saw you ever see it? No, No, it's not bad.
(13:00):
But this is the original from Alan Crossland and it
is notable because it was the first feature length uh
movie that was at least spoken dialogue. That makes sense, Yeah,
it wasn't. It wasn't the first talkie because they had
(13:21):
short films that were talkies. And there was a movie
the next year I'm sorry, yeah, called Lights of New
York that had full spoken dialogue. But the Jazz Singer
had a mix of music and spoken dialogue, the first big,
big daddy feature lenk film to do so right with
substantial dialogue, right, yeah, And they they did it in
(13:43):
the most roundabout difficult way that you could possibly do it,
which is too record the audio and the soundtrack, both
the dialogue and the music, onto vinyl records probably Wax
records really, And then um, the rejectionists had to sink
the record up with the film strip, so everything was
(14:04):
in sync. Yeah. It was a device called a Vita
phone that Warner Brothers sunk about half a million into. Uh.
This company called Western Electric who invented it, and it
was actually physically connected to the projector's motor. Um so
they did while they did have to sink it. It
was it was a physical connection between the phonograph player
(14:25):
and the projection. Uh real, I guess. And it went
on to gross three and a half million bucks for dough.
That's a ton of dough. That's like five six million
dollars today, at least, yeah, at least. But uh, it
was ineligible for the Best Picture because they were just like,
(14:46):
you can't compete with the rest. It's not fair. Oh wow,
because everything else is silent and everyone's going to vote
for you. So that changed the whole game for sure.
We will continue on with our awesome and engrossing list
right after this, so chuck um if you'll notice the
(15:22):
first three movies in our list, the first three films
that changed everything happened twenty seven. Things were changing fast,
they really were. I mean, like we buy Leaps and Bounder.
But you can also make the case that there was
a lot of new ground to cover, so just about
anybody who did anything new that was noteworthy. Yeah, it
(15:44):
was a big innovation. Harder to innovate these days, it
is um and if you'll notice on the list, um,
so the earliest ones where like technical editing innovations. UM.
Now starting with Citizen Kane from we start to getting
two innovations and storytelling, which is a lot more nuanced
(16:04):
than you know, um, doing your own stunts or using
a montage or something. It's it's figuring out how to
tell a story in a much less linear narrative fashion.
And Citizen King was one of the early ones to
pioneer a non linear narrative. Yeah did you you saw this? Yeah? Yeah, Okay,
(16:25):
I didn't see it until I mean it was probably
like probably about fifteen years ago, but like way later
than you would think I would have seen this as
a big film buff. I saw it in college at
a in a film class. Often. Yeah, if you sign
up for a film class, you're gonna study Citizen exactly
(16:46):
pretty much. And I finally found out where Rosebud was.
Don't ruin it, I won't, but it is a landmark
film in every way. And it has often been top
of Best Films of All Time lists for great reasons. Um,
one of which, like you said, the non linear narrative
was a really unique thing at the time. Um. Although
(17:07):
flashback wasn't brand new, it was the first time it
had been this extensive and effective in the story because
I mean it's substantial enough that it really cuts up
the flow. Yeah, you know, it's not like a quick
flashback and they come back and the actors like staring
off into space to transition back into the present again.
I mean like it was all over the place. Yeah. Uh.
(17:30):
Some of the more concrete cinematic landmarks. One was using
deep focus. Uh. Director of photography Greg Toland legend used
he had used deep focus before on a movie called
Long Voyage Home, But um, it's all over the place
in Citizen Kane. And that basically means if you see
a shot where something very far away is in focus
(17:55):
in the shot, basically where everything's in focus or the
background in the foreground or in focus, so you can
press pause and look around exactly like you're sticking your
head into a box. Yeah. That's called deep focus, and
it was brand new. Uh. As far as Citizen Kane
goes as how extensive it used it. One of the
other things was off center framing. Um it was a big,
(18:17):
you know, pretty common thing to just center whatever the
main action was either the character or the object. And um,
Citizen Kane had a lot of things where the main
focus of the scene the character, maybe even off screen,
which was really weird at the time. People didn't know
what to think of it. Um expressionistic lighting. Uh back
(18:39):
then everything that they just lit it there, like make
sure everything's well lit. Um. But an auto premeate also
like a big pioneer with that. Yeah, I think so.
M Dalin for murder, I think he directed that. Was
that Hitchcock? I think that was Hitchcock? Was it? Okay? Well,
auto premature directed stuff like that though, right he was.
He used moody lighting and s and stuff a lot.
(19:00):
I probably messed that up. People are gonna be dialing
for murder. I think it was prematury okay. Um. But
Orson Welles, of course, I don't think we even mentioned
that who wrote, directed, and started and produced, And I
think he even edited A Citizen Kane. Yeah, I just
assumed everybody knew that, you know. Yeah, Um, he came
from the theater, where uh, you create a mood with
(19:23):
lighting only certain parts of the stage. So he brought
that into the movies and uh it was very um
evocative and set the mood well, and people are like, man,
why are we lighting everything all bright all the time?
Look at Citizen Kane. It really worked. Um. A couple
of other things, one of which I know you will appreciate, sir,
(19:45):
is that he pretty much invented the wipe. Oh, the
star wipe, not the star white, but it followed. Yeah,
the star wipe followed, which I know is your favorite
transition in cinema. Oh, it's all star wars star because
it almost makes it sound you know. Uh. And one
of the way I want to say, you're right, Dallan.
For murder, it was Hitchcock. Okay, what was premature? Did
(20:08):
you look that up? He did one called Laura the
Man with the Golden Arm. It's not who I'm thinking of.
I'm thinking of a director named Auto who directed in
like the twenties or thirties, and he directed like moody um,
like like moody movies, like murder movies, like filmore, yes,
film noir. That's exactly what I was going for and
(20:29):
I don't remember who it was. Maybe his name is
Otto film Moore, He's French. Um. And then one final thing,
of course, that you could study Citizen Kane for a
week in the film class. So this is an overview.
But um, the low angle shots. Um, people didn't use
a lot of lower high angle shots back then. It
was kind of just stopped from straight on and um
(20:51):
Orson Welles even dug out cut out the floor a
lot of times to get the camera lower. And for
the first time we saw ceilings in view in a
the because quite often things were shot on a sound
stage where you don't have ceilings. And um, he wanted
those low angle shots, so they used um fabric most
times to act as a ceiling, but very effective shots
(21:12):
of from below of Orson Welles. As I mean, it
wasn't exactly William Randolph first, but it was an approximation
of William Randolph first. It's a very effective low angle
stuff that now, I mean we take for granted all
these things, um, but you know, there would be no
pulp fiction and that non linear storytelling if there was
(21:33):
no well maybe somebody would have done it, but maybe eventually.
But the first he did the first and and that's
why it was innovative exactly. Fritz Lang. Yeah, there you go,
Fritz Lang, Metropolis and um just them. That's okay, Yeah,
it's all making sense now. Confused, Yeah, but you were
right on, You were right there. Fritz and Auto are
(21:55):
not close. I mean they're both Jerman, but that's about it. Yeah,
but you know the difference between them and dial them
just a telephone. What's up next, chuck, breath of fas.
So I am going to rely on you mostly for
this one because I looked up what the French New
Wave really did, what did accounted for? And like all
(22:19):
of the essays I found were hard to they were dense,
and I didn't really understand. I understood that the French
New Wave like changed everything, and that a lot of
the movies that I know and love today are the
offspring of the French New Wave, but I still didn't
get exactly specifically what the French New Wave did. And
(22:41):
you're gonna rely on me to summarize this, no pressure. Well,
for me, the French New Wave basically ushered in an
era of what now I think most people might associate
with indie filmmaking. Okay, okay, like uh, handheld camera work
and what some people at the time considered amateurish camera work.
(23:03):
UM movies where maybe not a lot seemingly happens, you know,
nothing grant happens, which was the case in Breathless. A
lot of people didn't like it at the time because
it was like, you know, not much happens. You know
that the two leads in the movie, uh, Jean Paul
Belmondo and Jean c. Berg weren't really like, didn't show
express a whole lot of deep love, and there weren't
(23:25):
these big moments of love and affection and these huge
action sequences. And it was described as flat by a
lot of people. Um, and I think a lot of
indie movies do that, just kind of show life as
it happens. Yeah, So without Breathless, we wouldn't have like
follow Rocket. Maybe Wes Anderson is definitely a big French
New wave guy for sure. Um, but uh go dar
(23:50):
John Luke Goodard who directed it, and Trufaux and some
other um French New wave forefathers were film critics at first, Yeah,
and decided as a group like we want to look
at sent him in a new way. Um and do
something different, so they would and started making their own movies.
That's like James Fenimore Cooper, Yeah, the guy who wrote
(24:12):
Last of the Mohicans. Yeah, he apparently used to complain that,
like nobody wrote good books anymore, and so I think
his wife or something said, well, why don't you do
a big shot? And he did and the books he
wrote were so great. But he he went and wrote
him and he wrote a bunch of them too. One
of my favorite four sides ever is the second to
(24:32):
the Last of the Mohicans. It's just a line of
Native Americans and the second to the last one, they're
online facing away. He just sort of turning around and
waving a camera I guess the camera at Gary Larson's hand. Um.
So Breathless is notable for those reasons. It kind of
kicked off the French New Wave. But the use of
jump cut editing, which we see so much now. It
(24:54):
was the first movie and it was very jarring at
the time to see jump cuts in a movie. How
about uh? And that's when you're showing, like I guess
the best way to describe it as, um, multiple shots
of the same subject or thing from different angles. Right,
it's like um, you indicate the progression of time or
(25:16):
movement or something by just cutting quickly rather than focusing
on somebody walking down the street for five minutes, you
cut a couple of times, and all of a sudden,
they're just closer to the camera, and then closer and closer,
and then they're past the camera. It's a jump cut, yeah,
or even as simple. Something as simple is like you're
going to leave the house, so you go and pick
up your keys and you put on your coat. Instead
of showing all that you come out of the bedroom, Boom,
(25:38):
you're putting on your coat. Boom, you're putting the keys
in the door, right exactly. You're just showing the high
highlights of this progression of stuff, where that would otherwise
be boring to watch the whole thing. But it also
um is used to create tension too, because it's it's
um jarring. I guess it's probably why it creates tension.
And Scorsese famously used it in Good Fellows at the
(26:01):
end when Henry Hill is like, like trying to sell
some guns to Nero. Yeah, he's cut to the gills, right,
and he's like trying to sell some guns to Nero.
But they don't fit the silencers, and like he's the
helicopters following him, he's got the sauce going and all
this stuff is being represented and compressed in a very
short amount of time by the use of jump cuts.
(26:23):
Very effective and for budding filmmakers it's a great way
to hide mistakes. Um of things you may not have
gotten that you thought you got. UM. Jump cutting is
a really easy way to to just sort of uh yeah,
to hide your errors. I did a lot. In other words,
when I was making those shorts, I um, I was.
(26:45):
I realized that in my head I was referencing the
UM shot in Soul Taker. You know, have you seen
that Mrs Science three thousands with it's um His last
name is Estevezzus Martin Sheen's brother, and he the soul Taker,
and he's next to this guy who's the soul Taker.
You just have to see this. But anyway, they're they're
(27:07):
walking down the road and this jump cut like has
this progression of them. It's so unnecessary, but it's like
a great use of jump cut. You could tell the
director was like, I can't wait to use a jump cut,
and that's what she did. She used it on, um,
but go watch the MSc three. K it's a good one. Man.
You did you see every single one of those episodes? No,
(27:27):
it's still I still run across ones that I haven't seen. Yeah. Nice,
um hey, and the shout out to Bill Corbett, who
I know as a listener. Oh yeah it is, isn't it. Yeah.
I don't know if he's gonna hear this one, but
the great Bill Corbett, so taker. Uh. Next, we're gonna
move on to Federico Fellini's eight and a half. Have
(27:51):
you ever seen this one? No? I haven't. Now I
understand why it's called that though. Yeah. It was one
of the first, although not the first, movies about movie
making and uh, starring the great Marcello Mastriannia Masterroi from
adulta Vita. Amuse of Felini's over the years too, And
this one, um, this one really kicked off the surrealist
(28:14):
filmmaking and sort of saying you can play around and
shoot a dream sequence where the guys in traffic and
then he leaves his car and floats up in the
air and his you know, being pulled down to the
ground on the beach from a rope tight around his
ankle just like go nuts. Yeah, and successive filmmakers did
go nuts, like um Gondry did, Uh Eternal sent out
(28:36):
of the Spotless Mine. Oh yeah, he's hugely influenced. Um.
Darren Aronofski did some weird stuff here there, David Lynch
and Terry Gilliam. Of course, just basically surrealism is is
what I'm taking Folini introduced into this, Yeah for real.
And um, besides the surrealism, uh, that opening sequence of
(28:57):
eight and a half where the director of um, he's
the director in the movie, Uh, Guido is stuck in traffic.
It's really claustrophobic feeling, and that's why he floats away,
uh and escapes. You know that that traffic jam, But
that was directly mimicked and like R. E. M S
Everybody hurts video And um, the beginning of the movie
Falling Down, Do you remember that that started with the
(29:20):
traffic jam? Michael Douglas just left. I saw that again
the other day. Most of it it's weird. It alternately
felt way ahead of its time and also very dated
because the stuff that Michael Douglas was doing felt way
ahead of its time. But then there was I just
(29:41):
forgot about that whole um weird subplots with Robert Duval
retiring and he had this wife that was him pecking them,
and like this retirement party they were trying to throw
off for Yeah, it was just so unnecessary and felt
really weird and out of place. The other day when
I was watching it, they're like a jump cut montage
(30:01):
where he's putting on his watch, his gold retirement watch. No,
but then to the Barbara Hershey now is in Venice
at home with the daughter, and he spends a whole
day coming there to grab them, basically, and the whole
time she just keeps calling the cops, like the noise
coming and no, he's coming. And I was watching the
other day, I was like, freaking leave. Oh, yeah, what
(30:22):
are you doing there? That's a movie character thing, you know.
That's just bad writing, bad directing. When you just walk
right past the ability to leave, there's you. You missed
a huge step. Where were we falling down? Yeah? I
think that pretty much sums up eight and a half.
I think so too, falling down boom, so chuck. We
(30:43):
got a little more left, we got more films. Is
this making you want to watch films? Yeah? Me too.
I feel like eating ice cream, watching a film and
scratching from poison ivy Lately and burning this office down.
Uh you know if that happens now, suspicion is gonna
fall on you for saying that. All Uh, we'll be
right back after this. Alright, So we're back with our
(31:25):
awesome jingles, which, by the way, um, we have to
thank John Bagan John begin He even emailed with the
pronunciation of the name. But he um, the original guy
who did our jingle, the first jingle ever, Rusty Madius
Mattias Man. I'm not good with the pronunciation. Uh. Well, anyway,
(31:47):
Rusty who's banned The sheep Dogs are on tour right now. Um,
just because his work was so original, we contacted him
and said, hey, we got this other guy who's done
like covers of your work. Can we use these? It's
like totally and John's been making awesome like versions of
it ever since. Yeah. They're both great and talented. Thanks
(32:07):
to you both, And go check out I think that
what you say. They're on tour right yeah, the sheep Dogs. Yeah,
go check out the sheep Dogs in a town here
you Yeah, all right, let's finish with these two in
reverse order. Okay, Toy Story was a big one, hugely innovative, huge,
And again it's one of those things where now almost
(32:28):
everything about it seems pedestrian or what it did. See.
It's still a great movie, I'm sure, um, but the
innovations that it undertook or it just seemed pedestrian. But
at the time it was totally groundbreaking. It was the first, um,
the first c g I movie, all c g I
movie ever. Yeah, that was enormous. Well yeah, and I
(32:50):
remember at the time seeing it and just being like, wow,
this is the future of animated films. What's the best
all c g I animated filming or seemed visually? Uh well,
I haven't seen a lot of them these days because
Emily doesn't like those, so I probably wouldn't be the
best person to ask. Holly from stuff mom or Sophiasts
(33:11):
and history class, she'd probably the one to ask for
my money. Have you seen The Adventures of Tinton? Oh? Yeah,
that was amazing, mind blowing. Yeah. I saw that on
your recommendation and really really liked it. Yeah. The story
was great, the action was great, the characters were great.
But the c g I, the computer animation is but
(33:33):
I think possibly the best ever done. Yeah, and that's
a bit of a different style than say like UP
or Um The Incredible. It's not nearly these cartoons. It's
like the I think it's the motion capture. Yeah, I
think that's what they did for that. Oh yeah, with
UP it would strictly be totally just animation, right, Yeah,
but I mean they're both animation. Um. But yeah, man, Tinton,
that was really good. It was good. I was surprised
(33:53):
how much I like that. But UP was good too,
and Toy Store was good too. And but all of
these things came as a result of the ground that
Toy story broke absolutely in Um, like you said, what
seems like a common thing today, could I mean, you
don't see sell animation anymore. It's almost I know, I
kind of miss it. I totally miss like the new Um,
Mickey Mouse is all weird and CG like stuff from
(34:17):
our generation should have just been discontinued, and then you
just come up with all new stuff that's c G.
I start very shortcake not supposed to be c G.
I it just all looks weird now. Yeah, I wish
there would have people would have done a little bit
of both still because I think sell animation, like uh,
I think The Iron Giant came out after Toy Story
(34:37):
and they did sell animation and that was great, great
movie that it was really good, you'd like it, uh,
Like it was a movie for grown ups, and Toy
Story sort of laid the way for that because it
was one of the first movies. Um, I guess cartoony
kids movies to really have a lot of dialogue that
flew over kids heads that adults got a little nod
(34:58):
in a wink. What Toy Story? Yeah, yeah, not like
dirty humor, but it's not like it's the cat no
no no, but a little entendre here and there that
adults might appreciate that kids won't understand. Those are the
best jokes. Um. And now we have you know, best
animated uh feature in the Oscars, which definitely came straight
(35:20):
out of the original Toy Story because movies started being
considered before they created its own category up in Toy Story,
three were actually nominated for regular Best Picture, and I
think everyone's like, oh, we need to get them their
own category because you can't have an animated movie when
best Picture came well up would have come after Um,
the the Best Animated Picture category came out real, so
(35:44):
that kind of goes as a testament to just how
amazing that movie is. Yeah, that's right. It was still
for Best Picture. Oh it was both. I don't know
if it was up for it probably was up for
Best Animated as well, but it was definitely also up
for Best Picture while there was an animated cat category. Yeah,
I never considered that. Bam, that was a good movie. Yeah,
(36:04):
it was sweet. Um, so I got nothing else in
toy story. Well then what about the last one? Yeah,
two thousand one Space Odyssey quite a film. You sent this,
uh essay on Criterion I think Criterion dot com, but
you know the Criterion collection. Um it was written, I
guess in even though it says posted in like there
(36:29):
wasn't an internet to post it on in eight Maybe
it means posted it like in the mail. Maybe. Um.
But I realized, like I can read film essays about
Stanley Kubrick's work all day long, Like I love that
documentary Room two to seven two three seven two six seven,
(36:53):
you know the one about the shining conspiracy theory. Yeah,
then the number of the room is amazing. I can't
remember though, Um, I I read a bunch of articles
is I think two thirty seven. Um, I read a
bunch of articles around the release of that documentary, which
we're basically like film essays on on the shining. I
read this one amazing one um from several years ago
(37:15):
about Eyes Wide Shut, how it's like a masterpiece of sociology.
A lot of people hate that movie. Um And then
now this like two thousand one. I'm sure there's tons
out there to consume, but I can just read that
stuff all day long because that guy was so just
amazingly detailed as a director. Yeah, I agree. I can
(37:36):
read more about his work critical essays on his work
than any other director. It's just unbelievable. It's almost like
it's its own genre. It is, you know. Yeah, it's
got a word named after it, and well it should.
Um So. Two thousand one of Space odysse Um blue
minds back then, blows minds today one for its uh
(37:59):
just the amazing look in the technical achievement um A
eight is really well. I mean, if you see a
movie from about out of space, it still looks like
the future. Yeah, he don't expect it to hold up well,
but it totally does. Um So. Much though that a
lot of the you know, George Lucas and Ridley Scott
were just like it's done, Like we might as well
give up. George Lucas when Star Wars came out said
(38:22):
Star Wars is technically comparable, but for my money, two
thousand one is by far the better movie. Yeah, everyone
was sort of intimidated, I think by how talented Kubrick was. Well.
Plus also, um, you have to take into account that
he made this movie at a time when other sci
fi movies were just pure schlock. So not only to
(38:43):
make the movie in this way this visually amazing and
amazing with an audio soundtrack and just totally innovative, it
also took like that mindset, this is completely going a
different direction that everybody else has as well. Yeah, of
course think about Ridley Scott saying that, and then he
goes on to make Alien and Blade Runner after that.
(39:03):
So I mean he helped Prometheus. Man. Yeah, people are
like Prometheus. I don't care. It's a cool movie. No.
I liked it too. I thought, Okay, on one flaw,
the big flaw to me was and I'm sure it's
like part of the subtext or the context or one
of the texts, but um, the engineer coming back to
(39:28):
life or coming out of hibernation after however long and
just immediately like inflicting violence on these p brained humans
who are showing him no threat whatsoever. I just thought
it was a little, uh, it wasn't explained well enough
for my taste. Yeah, I don't think I agree with you,
But when I'm watching a Ridley Scott movie, I just
(39:51):
assume if I'm missing something, he has an explanation for it.
I'm just not catching it. Yeah, I know what you mean.
I'd like I think I read some stuff about how
it tied into the alien cannon and realized I need
to go see it again with all this knowledge that
I wasn't really thinking about, and maybe i'd like it more. Yeah,
but I haven't done that yet, So back to two
(40:13):
thousand one. It was also notable for being bookended basically
with thirty minutes of silence on both ends of the movie.
The first thirty minutes or and when I say silent,
I mean no dialogue, and the last thirty minutes have
no dialogue. Yeah, the last line comes like a full
thirty minutes before the end. Yeah, and over the hundred
and forty six minutes. There are only forty minutes of
(40:34):
dialogue and the whole thing. And um, that's why I
just when people compare something like Interstellar and call it
kubrickey and I just want to smash. Do you not
like Interstellar? Not really? Oh, I liked it. I was
super let down despite McConaughey doing Waterson in the future.
(40:55):
I still liked it. I even liked him in. I
liked a lot of the parts of it. But um,
to me, it's anti kubrick in because every ten minutes
they're explaining everything that's going on. That was another thing,
just like Ellen Page's entire character was written in to
explain what was going on every ten minutes. Yeah, and
(41:15):
I felt like Interstellar was the same way. It's like
Christopher Nolan needs to just trust his audience a little
bit like kubrick did, and so you figure it out
or don't. Yeah that I'm not gonna stop every ten
minutes just to explain everything. You're just going on. Remember
if you didn't get it right, here's what's going on again. Well,
I think if they are labeling something like Interstellar, is
(41:36):
Kubrickian right. One of the ways that you can interpret
that is that he was he rooted his two thousand
one in science fact Yeah, right, So like the stuff
that the astronauts are like dealing with and the things
that are going on and the conditions of the space,
that was all factual, whereas with Interstellar, same thing. They
(41:59):
went to really great links to do what they could
to make everything scientifically factual. Aside from the fact that
the idea that you could go into a black hole
and then come back out or something like that drifting
in space, that's not gonna happen. But for the most part,
Interstellar was scientifically accurate. So maybe that's what they meant
when they called it kubrick in because you're absolutely right,
(42:20):
like they did explain a lot and went to great
links to explain a lot, whereas with with two thousand one,
you just watch it the first five times like what
just happened? Yeah, And apparently Carry Grant had that same
reaction as well. That was rock Hudson, Rock Hudson, that's right. Yeah,
the original screening that Roger Ebert was in l A.
Rock Hudson just left and said, can somebody tell me
(42:42):
what the hell that was about? Yeah, And it wasn't
even over yet. Yeah. Um. Well the reason it it
uh has science fact and not science fiction is because
Kubrick and Arthur C. Clark, who it wasn't actually a
book that was made into a movie. It was a
movie B book made after a movie, and they collaborated
on both. And um, they went to Carl Sagan, um
(43:07):
of course of Cosmos and said he said, you're going
to make billions and billions. That was pretty good, was it? Yeah?
A lot like them. Um. They went to Carl Sagan said, hey,
we want to portray these extraterrestrials. Are they maybe the
Star Child? Is uh? Are they turned Dave into the
(43:27):
Star Child? Are they humanoids? What are they gonna look like?
And Sagan was like they were very unlikely to be humanoid.
So Kubrick did the smart thing and was just like, well,
we just won't show them at all. Instead of making
a fool of myself like signs and making some dumb
looking at man, man, let me just not show the aliens.
(43:48):
Very smart move. Um. Getting back to the story of
two thousand one, although I think the Village is underrated,
Yeah I can stomach that one. What about well, you
like the six cents, right, everybody like the sixth cents.
I guess that was it for him. I loved Unbreakable. Unbreakable, Yeah,
(44:10):
that was one where like, yeah, I think it was
maybe even better the second time. Yeah. I still like
that movie. Uh, but that he also made that Lady
in the Water movie and the the one with Marky
Mark the people were jumping no three kings. Uh is
it the one in the elevator? No, he just produced
(44:33):
Oh I know what you're talking about, the one where
people like jumping off of buildings and stuff inexplicably. Yeah.
That I didn't even I didn't see that. You couldn't
get through ten minutes of that movie. So um. Two
thousand one Back to Good Movies was had a three
x three part structure, but not a conventional three x
structure that you might be used to in movies, which
(44:53):
is white confounded people like Rock Hudson. The first they
called the movements. The first movement was the the Dawn
of Man sequence with the the the apes, with the
with the monolith um and uh, he has that great
part where he throws his little bone tool up in
the air and then it morphs into well not morphs,
but maybe it's a dissolve into the spinning in outer space.
(45:19):
It's called the match cut. Yeah, match cut and um
of the rotation of what we now know was a
nuclear warhead. Because I read that little article twenty Things
you Didn't Know about two thousand one, I didn't know
those are nuclear warheads necessarily in outer space. They made
it a little more vague, and initially it was going
to be more explicit and they were going to explode
(45:40):
it in outer space. But he said, now that's a
little too close to uh, the ending of strange. Yeah,
so let's not do that. Yeah, probably a good choice, yeah,
but some as a result, some people have taken it
to mean that like it was that match cut was
supposed to show how far humans have come from using
a bone to murder somebody to satellites in space. But
(46:03):
if you know that the satellite is actually loaded down
with nuclear warheads, that match cut demonstrates how little humans
have changed from using a bone to murder somebody to
using satellites to murder somebody. The the motif is still
the same, and it's murder. Yeah, he's going through some
deep things. Oh yeah, a lot of metaphor happening. Yeah,
(46:23):
I mean supposedly in every single shot, because he started
out as a still photographer, right, Supposedly every frame of
a Kubrick movie. You there is nothing that isn't unintentionally
placed there by him. He did a lot of his
own set decorating. Yeah, Like the pencil holder on the
desk in the office of the guy at the Shining
Hotel was where it's supposed to be, right, and if
(46:45):
like if it has like a picture of a goat
head inscribed on it, that means something. It's not accidental. Yeah,
although we'll say Room two thirty seven, which I think
may have been the point, is a little bit like
these people are crazy, not like, oh man, I just
see what they're saying in all this, right, I was
just thinking, these people are nuts, right, It's it was
(47:06):
just kind of enjoyable to hear their interpretations of it well,
and I think it had a It was a comment
on obsession and fandom more so than the Shining but
there I thought there some of their ideas were interesting.
I said, Room too two seven, and I like going
out with conspiracy theorists like Mary. Wasn't Room two two
(47:28):
seven like a sitcom? Yeah? It was just called to seven.
Remember was Jack k She's like Mary, Okay, That's what
my impression was. What do you think I was doing? Well?
I wasn't sure what. You must be a weirdo. Yeah, okay.
The second movement was, of course, the house sequence, the
computer of the How was it? The How nine thousand
(47:50):
um really creepy, and How ended up being a lot
of people's favorite character, even though it was just a voice.
The supercomputer on the Discovery ship remembers, what are you
doing to you? It's so creepy. I had the Mad
Magazine spoof of two thousand one when I was a kid.
It was great. And then the third movement is when
Dave moves on to the next stage of human development
(48:14):
with these extraterrestrials that you know only here and um. Basically,
it's when it comes full circle the third movement, and
the third movement is the one that has almost well,
it's really just the second movement that it has a dialogue.
Yeah yeah. Uh. Some of the alternate titles for two
(48:35):
thousand one Journey Beyond the Stars, Terrible, Universe not bad,
Tunnel to the Stars not so great, Planet Fall that
sounds bad. It sounds like good. James Pond movie, and
then How the Solar System was One as a play
on how the West was one, Yeah, which, like movie
geeks would find that appealing, but everybody else would say
(48:58):
that's um, you ruined everything. Yeah, and Kubrick was this
is the last thing I have. He was so obsessive
with protecting his material that he allegedly, Uh, I don't
think allegedly. I think he did have all the sets
and props and miniatures destroyed after he shot it so
they would never be reused, which is a common thing
at the time. Okay, we're doing a space movie. Go
(49:19):
get that Go get that space ring from Stanley set.
Let's reuse it for a planet fall. He also destroyed
all of the footage that didn't make it into the
original theatrical release. Yeah, destroyed it's gone. Yeah, so they
wouldn't one day after his death recut it, which they
invariably probably would have done. Yep, he's a smart man. Yeah,
(49:42):
I could. We should just do a podcast on Kubrick.
Okay he was I'm down for that challenge. He'd be
a dude. Yes, one of my heroes. Yeah, cinematically, you
got anything else? I got nothing else? Uh. If you
want to know more about movies. If you like this,
and you probably also love our exploitation episode Exploitation Movie
(50:03):
episode one. What else have we talked about movies in
Cannonball Run? Oh yeah, I had a lot to do
with the movie. Yeah, our James Fonda episode. Yeah. Uh yeah.
We've had a few of these, and people always respond
to these, were like, you guys, should have a spin off,
should do an all movie podcast, or maybe one day maybe.
Remember if you're looking for any of these, um press
(50:24):
control F or Apple F in your web browser and
search that way on our podcast archive page. Uh. You
can also search for this article on how stuff works
by typing movies in and seeing what comes up. And
since I said how stuff works, this time for a
listener mail, I'm gonna call this Mike couldupont really clear
(50:45):
something up for us on scientific method? Hey guys, it
was a great um Well, actually he didn't say it
was great. I think I just made that up. Hey guys,
your Scientific Method podcast has a consistent misuse of what
a scientific law is in relation to UH working of
the scientific method. It appears that you believe that a
law e g. Newton's law of gravity is in held uh,
(51:06):
in higher esteem than theory, and that eventually a theory
matures into a law. Um. I think I probably did
think that because of politics, you know, bill becomes a
law right exactly, he says, when in fact, theory is
considerably more robust than a law. A law is a
mathematical model that describes observed behavior, does not answer the why.
(51:27):
Theory does answer why something happens. Did we not say that?
I thought we did, Like I I knew that. I
remember finding that out from the research. I just can't
believe it didn't come out of my mouth, he claims.
We did not, And I feel like I'm learning this
so I definitely did not. But you may have. For example,
Newton's law of gravitational attraction describes the action of two
(51:48):
bodies that can be used for pretty much everything. Um.
It is perfect for describing what happens, but it cannot
tell you why the two items are attracted or drill
down to the underlying mechanism. Yeah, law is like much
more succinct. It just is what it is. Uh. Nor
is the law even universal and could not be used
to explain the para helion procession of Mercury's orbit burn.
(52:12):
In comparison, Einstein's theory of general relativity was eventually used
to solve the mercury issue. Oh yeah, the mercury issue. Uh,
and the standard model, along with the recent discovery the
Higgs boson on my Stern, can answer the why do
these two masses attracted to each other? Question? I think
what you mean is, why are these two masses attracted
(52:33):
to one another? Mike, it's pretty teleological theory is considerably
more developed and richer than a scientific law, which is
more of a tool that is applicable to a wide
range of applications. Keep up the good work that is,
Mike DuPont. Thanks Mike, thanks for that of the Valley
Forge DuPont's I think, so, huh have you seen Fox Catcher?
(52:53):
Oh no, I've heard it's good. Is it good? No? Really,
I don't think so. Now. I heard it's kind of slow.
It's beyond slowly. I I can understand why, Um, the
Academy loved it, or a lot of people. I'm sure,
do you like it? I was not a fan of
Fox Kid. I think people generally seeing like a turn
(53:16):
by an actor like Steve Girl doing something really different,
they're knocked out by that. No, I still can't believe
you didn't like Birdman. No spoiler alert for people who
have not seen Birdman. The following conversation is full of spoilers. Yes,
what did you like about it? Um? So? I thought?
I thought Michael Keating was good? Okay? Um? Who plays
(53:39):
his daughter Emily Blunt? Is that? Who that is? Emma Stone?
Emma Stone? Excellent? Okay? Um? Edward and even pretty good? Okay?
So the acting was fine? Who is Naomi Watts was
in it? Yeah? She did great? Okay? So yes, the acting.
The acting was fine. Sure that the acting was fine.
I thought the photography was amazing. Yeah, the whole seemingly
(54:00):
one take thing kind of knocked you out. Probably I
didn't even pick up on that, but yes it did. Um.
It was more the the for me, the juxtaposition of
the story, which was pretty boring in realistic and everyday life.
Even though it was about a Broadway production, it was
(54:20):
still about the everyday life of it against the surrealism
that's like threaded and embedded in throughout the whole movie.
I didn't like that it was like choose one or
the other man. It irked me. Um and uh and
then just so that one part with the critic or
Michael Keaton tells off the critic. I thought Michael Keaton
did a wonderful job, but just the whole point that
(54:43):
it was in there of like the director, you know,
using Michael Keaton's character to tell off all the critics
he's ever wanted to. I just thought it was pretentious
and I thought it was kind of clumsy in that
sense too, and it was enough that it attainted it. Yeah,
and then the ending. I did not like the ending
(55:05):
at all at all. That'll ruin a good movie because
it was completely went contrary to all the other stuff
that he went out of his way to point out
was fake or fraud and they're not real. And then
all of a sudden it is what no choose one
or the other. The director refused to make very important decisions,
(55:27):
and I think that that ruined the movie. That is
a very well uh thought out the criticism. I thank you,
thank you very much. Sure uh Man. That was the
end of Listener Mail even, wasn't it. Yeah, Because now
I'm not like she's Jush is weird. He didn't like Birdman.
Now I'm like just in like Birdmann. He has good reasons.
Thank you, Thank you. UM. I like justifying my opinion.
(55:50):
So if you want to get in touch with Chuck
and I or Jerry who I apparently just spoiled Birdman
for UM, you can contact us via Twitter, s y
s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook, dot com,
slash stuff you Should Know. You can send us an email.
This stuff podcast at how stuff Works dot com and
has always joined us at home on the web. Stuff
you Should Know dot com for more on this and
(56:17):
thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff Works dot
com
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles W. Chuff, Bryant a k A. Ciskel and
Ebert save us the Isle seat, and Jerry's over there.
(00:22):
I guess she's Jeane Shallots. That's the stuff you should
Know Trium for it. I don't know why that took
on me so much, because Jeane seal it's a funny looking.
I guess that Jerry's not. I'm just picturing her with
a big afro and a mustache and like a tweet
jacket and bad opinions about movies. Gene Shell it had
(00:43):
a look for sure. Still though, he's around right, Oh yeah,
I think so. Yeah, r I p both Ciske, Annyber.
It's so sad um. Have you seen the Roger Ebert documentary? No,
I've heard nothing but good things, really really good, very touching. Yeah.
What is it? Uh? Something? Life life like mine, Life
(01:05):
with Me, Life on top, life itself, Life with thumbs,
Life itself, life itself, Life with thumbs. It was really
great and I watched it and it made the mistake
of watching on a plane, and I was just like,
my allergies are acting out. So yeah, oh yeah I was.
I was watering because of your allergies. No, because it
was sad. I was crying. Do you want me to
(01:26):
say it? Yeah, crying on a plane. Was confused there
for a second. That's better than when I watch other
movies that are on my laptop that are like like
bad violence or or nudity or something. I'm always just like, oh,
then I kind of lower the laptop and it's like
I didn't realize this was in here, and the lady
next to me is just like, you disgusted me? Yeah,
(01:47):
because I don't. I want to be sensitive people around me,
and I'm not one of those jerks just like just
lives in my own bubble. It's like watching some sex
scene on blame. So no, I hate it. It's just
it was so embarre. I happen to be a couple
of times. I'm like I needed to start going PG
on movies just airplanes. Jude Am I right, He's unpredictable.
(02:08):
Yeah alright, So Chuck, this is your episode to shine Man,
is it? Yes? You're a movie guy too. Though I
like movies, but I've I almost consciously don't let myself
watch movies on a like a film aficionado level, pure enjoyment. Yeah,
I don't never want to see the individual shots and
(02:31):
just be like, oh, well that could have been better
or whatever, um and and just miss the movie as
a whole. Yeah, I fall somewhere in the middle of that.
I try to let go. But um like, our our
video producer, director Casey is is pretty bad about that.
And our buddy Scotty who shot our TV show, he's
the worst. He's just a camera working that lighting in
(02:53):
that scenect's awesome. Hey, Casey, they're all in here with
this in spirit. And hey, this is the last show
in the studio, last episode in the old office, the
murder room. Couldn't feel more neutral about it. I actually
feel less than neutral, less than zero. It's it's weird.
That was a good movie. You great shots. I say
(03:16):
thank you as if I directed it a lot, right,
I not only directed, I also played Andrew McCarthy. Uh. Yeah,
I'm ready to get the heck out of here, man.
I can't wait to get in that new office and
that Yeah, it's gonna be good, tiny little dedicated studio,
whole new world. All right, let's do this. Okay, So
Chuck films, you've seen one or two of them in
(03:37):
your time. Have you seen any of the ones in
this list? I know you've seen a few of them,
but have you seen like some of the early ones
I've seen. Well, we'll just go piece by piece because
I have not seen Battleship Pittankon. Okay, um, but I
do love Mandy Patankin. It's a little different in spelling
pronunciation meaning the whole thing, but it's close, I guess.
(04:00):
But we're talking, of course, about films that change filmmaking
and somewhere or another, and the first one on the
list is from Battleship, but takin it's hard for me
to say, which is not the first movie, by the way,
The first screen movie was Workers Leaving the Lumier Factory,
which is forty seven seconds long and the most boring
piece of celluloid anyone's ever put together. But it was
(04:22):
the first, that's right. This was many years. That was
a full thirty years before Battleship prettempted. By the time,
thirty years had passed, like we were doing like narratives,
and there was banning and all sorts of great stuff
and battleship pretention fell under both of those umbrellas. It
was a narrative story. It was a silent movie, right,
but it told a pretty clear story. And it was
(04:44):
a bit of Russian propaganda as well. Yeah, it tells
the story of a nineteen o five uprising in Uh
where there were Russian sailors. Basically, there was a mutiny
aboard a ship and then the bad guys, the Cossacks,
came in looking for revenge. Inge. Yeah, n five that
would have been rising up against tyranny, would have been
(05:05):
rising up against the Romanoff monarchy, I guess, but it
was made. So this is a time when you know,
Lenin and Trotsky and all those dudes were running around
trying to do the great experiment, and uh it ends up.
It turns out that the battleship Potempkin was banned in
(05:26):
some countries. Some countries are like, we don't want this
Rusky propaganda. But Russia itself later on banned it when
Stallin came to power because he was a self aware dictator,
was that the deal? Yeah, Okay, he knew this could
be a metaphor for rising up against my dictatorship. So
I'm gonna just bay in this even though it's Russian propaganda. Well, filmatically,
(05:51):
I need to bring the history by the way, uh,
filmatically speaking, it was a landmark film because of the montage,
most notably the Russia and or Soviet theory of montage,
which is basically that, um, your impact is going to
come from juxtaposition of shots and not necessarily smooth sequence
of shots. Um, and it should be rhythmic instead of
(06:14):
necessarily being tied to the story. It was like a
rhythmic series of shots. And this one is popular. Um.
It was. The Odessa Steps sequence is one of the
five acts, and it is huge because it has been
aped and um mimicked and mocked and um homaged, probably
(06:36):
more than I don't know about more, but a lot
of times in film history. Well, yeah, the montage it's
like a go to editing technique, right. Oh yeah, well
the montage in general, but specifically the Odessa Steps. There
are two notable parts in that sequence. One is the
you know, it's basically a big charge on these these
grand steps leading up to a building and a big
(06:56):
battle Odessa, Texas. And um, there's a part of it
where there's the old the old baby carriage going down
the steps. You know what's gonna happen to the baby?
And it sounds tired because we've seen that in uh,
you know, the Untouchables. Notably that I did not find
it tiresome, Naked Gun thirty three and the third Everything
(07:20):
is Illuminated, The Great Movie by Liev Schreiber Um that
was from directly from the Odessa step sequence and Battleship
Patinkin the Baby Carriage and the old um shot through
the shot in the eye through the glasses that comes
from this movie too. They were the first ones to
do it um And you've seen that in Woody Allen's
(07:41):
Love and Death and Bananas and of course The Godfather.
The Great sequence where Mo Green's getting the massage and
he looks up and puts on his glasses. Yeah, that's
exactly the whole Yeah, because there was an assassination on
the steps as well. Yes, definitely a double Who was that?
That was Francis Ford Coppola. Yea, he was clearly aware
(08:03):
of Battleship Attempkin. Clearly. I was trying to think of
other examples of montages and the only thing I could
come up with was the a team building something. But
that counts as a montage, right, Yeah. Yeah, it's like
some related in some way related shots that are kind
of put together that a little bit transcend like a
(08:23):
story in itself, like Rocky training for a fight. Yeah,
that's another good A lot of times just set to music. Yeah,
I love that. That's the only one you can think of.
And in the Great Movie Brazil too has the shot
through the glasses bit as I like to call it.
So that's Battleship at Hampkin. Doesn't one of the Nazis
and Raiders have lost art gets shot through the glasses.
(08:44):
Maybe that wouldn't surprise me. It's been it's been off homaged. Yeah,
So Battleship Attempkin was a It made a pretty big splash.
Nine six the following year, the next movie on the list. Um,
it wasn't his first, but it really solidified I think
his stardom Buster Keaton stardom. Yeah, the general rightfully so too. Yeah,
(09:08):
he was one of the great. Um well, some people
call him the greatest stuntman to ever live. He's done
some stuff that I think earns him that. Yeah, because
I mean this is back in the day to where
he was legitimately risking his life, you know, like that
the very famously where he's standing on the street in
front of a house and then the whole front of
(09:29):
the house falls over him, and the window he just
goes right around him. I watched that again today. It
is I can't believe you did that. You And there's
actually a half of a second where his arm jerks
up because he startled as the house finally makes its
way like into his peripheral vision. And it has to
(09:49):
be one of the most dangerous things that human beings
ever done on film. I'm sure the whole time before
that was like we did the math, right, he did
the math. Do the math again, Do the math again,
Show me the math, Show me the math, because that's
all it was. It was math and measurements. But yeah,
he could have been squashed and killed very easily, and
he had a lot of faith in everybody who was
(10:10):
pulling off this stunt with him. You know, he had
to just stand there. That was his whole thing is
he had to just stand there. And his bit was
that he um was He played it straight constantly. He
was a stone faced actor. Yeah, deadpan. Yeah, he kind
of started the whole thing because his big um I
was about to say rival, but I guess, um just
contemporary Charlie Chaplin, while similar in some ways, was completely
(10:33):
different because Chaplin was constantly mugging for the camera and
like asking for the audience, uh, sympathy, right, raising his
eyebrows or yeah, like look, what's happening to me? Come on?
Come on, whereas Buster Keaton would just he had that
deadpan look the whole time. Yeah, he would go from
like a house falling around him to jumping on a
train or something like that with just the same blank
(10:54):
facial expression. Yeah. And the reason this is a highly
influential film the generals because it kind of showcases the
best of both, um, the the amazing stunts that would
be mimicked in throughout the years and built upon, and
then the dead pan style that influenced everyone from obviously
Bill Murray is one of the great dead pan actors
(11:14):
of all time. Like you can count the number of
time Bill Murray even smiles in a movie on like
two hands, much less like apes or laughs or anything.
Michael Sarah's mentioned in here, and I'm like he, I
think he might have Bill Murray beat as far as well.
Zach Galfin Akiss is on the list. He's super deadpan um,
(11:35):
Leslie Nielsen, of course, Amy Poehler. I think is Uh
is a woman that's a very dead pan has a
deadpan style, Jason Schwartzman. But people say this is this
is all is a direct descendant of Buster Keaton's work. Yeah,
And if you think we're overstating this, go watch any
Buster Keaton movie. You will be thrilled and delighted. And
(11:55):
if your attention span has been shredded to ribbons by
the Internet, just go into YouTube and type in Buster
Keaton and it'll bring up all sorts of um clips
of his awesome stunts. Pretty great promise. Yeah, and I
think I made a note here by the way, that
we have a fatty Arbuckle retraction to make. Remember when
we we called him out as the rapist murderer, I
(12:18):
didn't say murderer, well, we said rapists at least, but
we were taken a task by fan he was he had,
he was acquitted of all that stuff and apparently didn't
do uh either act and um, his career in life
and family name were ruined forever. So he was evidently
done a grave miss justice and we sort of cavalierly
(12:39):
just still called him that today. Yeah, I need to
look into it more, all right. So next up we
have the Jazz Singer, the edition, not the Neil diamond one. No,
and there was one in between two with Danny Thomas.
I believe. Um, I like Neil Diamonds. It's good. I
never saw you ever see it? No, No, it's not bad.
(13:00):
But this is the original from Alan Crossland and it
is notable because it was the first feature length uh
movie that was at least spoken dialogue. That makes sense, Yeah,
it wasn't. It wasn't the first talkie because they had
(13:21):
short films that were talkies. And there was a movie
the next year I'm sorry, yeah, called Lights of New
York that had full spoken dialogue. But the Jazz Singer
had a mix of music and spoken dialogue, the first big,
big daddy feature lenk film to do so right with
substantial dialogue, right, yeah, And they they did it in
(13:43):
the most roundabout difficult way that you could possibly do it,
which is too record the audio and the soundtrack, both
the dialogue and the music, onto vinyl records probably Wax
records really, And then um, the rejectionists had to sink
the record up with the film strip, so everything was
(14:04):
in sync. Yeah. It was a device called a Vita
phone that Warner Brothers sunk about half a million into. Uh.
This company called Western Electric who invented it, and it
was actually physically connected to the projector's motor. Um so
they did while they did have to sink it. It
was it was a physical connection between the phonograph player
(14:25):
and the projection. Uh real, I guess. And it went
on to gross three and a half million bucks for dough.
That's a ton of dough. That's like five six million
dollars today, at least, yeah, at least. But uh, it
was ineligible for the Best Picture because they were just like,
(14:46):
you can't compete with the rest. It's not fair. Oh wow,
because everything else is silent and everyone's going to vote
for you. So that changed the whole game for sure.
We will continue on with our awesome and engrossing list
right after this, so chuck um if you'll notice the
(15:22):
first three movies in our list, the first three films
that changed everything happened twenty seven. Things were changing fast,
they really were. I mean, like we buy Leaps and Bounder.
But you can also make the case that there was
a lot of new ground to cover, so just about
anybody who did anything new that was noteworthy. Yeah, it
(15:44):
was a big innovation. Harder to innovate these days, it
is um and if you'll notice on the list, um,
so the earliest ones where like technical editing innovations. UM.
Now starting with Citizen Kane from we start to getting
two innovations and storytelling, which is a lot more nuanced
(16:04):
than you know, um, doing your own stunts or using
a montage or something. It's it's figuring out how to
tell a story in a much less linear narrative fashion.
And Citizen King was one of the early ones to
pioneer a non linear narrative. Yeah did you you saw this? Yeah? Yeah, Okay,
(16:25):
I didn't see it until I mean it was probably
like probably about fifteen years ago, but like way later
than you would think I would have seen this as
a big film buff. I saw it in college at
a in a film class. Often. Yeah, if you sign
up for a film class, you're gonna study Citizen exactly
(16:46):
pretty much. And I finally found out where Rosebud was.
Don't ruin it, I won't, but it is a landmark
film in every way. And it has often been top
of Best Films of All Time lists for great reasons. Um,
one of which, like you said, the non linear narrative
was a really unique thing at the time. Um. Although
(17:07):
flashback wasn't brand new, it was the first time it
had been this extensive and effective in the story because
I mean it's substantial enough that it really cuts up
the flow. Yeah, you know, it's not like a quick
flashback and they come back and the actors like staring
off into space to transition back into the present again.
I mean like it was all over the place. Yeah. Uh.
(17:30):
Some of the more concrete cinematic landmarks. One was using
deep focus. Uh. Director of photography Greg Toland legend used
he had used deep focus before on a movie called
Long Voyage Home, But um, it's all over the place
in Citizen Kane. And that basically means if you see
a shot where something very far away is in focus
(17:55):
in the shot, basically where everything's in focus or the
background in the foreground or in focus, so you can
press pause and look around exactly like you're sticking your
head into a box. Yeah. That's called deep focus, and
it was brand new. Uh. As far as Citizen Kane
goes as how extensive it used it. One of the
other things was off center framing. Um it was a big,
(18:17):
you know, pretty common thing to just center whatever the
main action was either the character or the object. And um,
Citizen Kane had a lot of things where the main
focus of the scene the character, maybe even off screen,
which was really weird at the time. People didn't know
what to think of it. Um expressionistic lighting. Uh back
(18:39):
then everything that they just lit it there, like make
sure everything's well lit. Um. But an auto premeate also
like a big pioneer with that. Yeah, I think so.
M Dalin for murder, I think he directed that. Was
that Hitchcock? I think that was Hitchcock? Was it? Okay? Well,
auto premature directed stuff like that though, right he was.
He used moody lighting and s and stuff a lot.
(19:00):
I probably messed that up. People are gonna be dialing
for murder. I think it was prematury okay. Um. But
Orson Welles, of course, I don't think we even mentioned
that who wrote, directed, and started and produced, And I
think he even edited A Citizen Kane. Yeah, I just
assumed everybody knew that, you know. Yeah, Um, he came
from the theater, where uh, you create a mood with
(19:23):
lighting only certain parts of the stage. So he brought
that into the movies and uh it was very um
evocative and set the mood well, and people are like, man,
why are we lighting everything all bright all the time?
Look at Citizen Kane. It really worked. Um. A couple
of other things, one of which I know you will appreciate, sir,
(19:45):
is that he pretty much invented the wipe. Oh, the
star wipe, not the star white, but it followed. Yeah,
the star wipe followed, which I know is your favorite
transition in cinema. Oh, it's all star wars star because
it almost makes it sound you know. Uh. And one
of the way I want to say, you're right, Dallan.
For murder, it was Hitchcock. Okay, what was premature? Did
(20:08):
you look that up? He did one called Laura the
Man with the Golden Arm. It's not who I'm thinking of.
I'm thinking of a director named Auto who directed in
like the twenties or thirties, and he directed like moody um,
like like moody movies, like murder movies, like filmore, yes,
film noir. That's exactly what I was going for and
(20:29):
I don't remember who it was. Maybe his name is
Otto film Moore, He's French. Um. And then one final thing,
of course, that you could study Citizen Kane for a
week in the film class. So this is an overview.
But um, the low angle shots. Um, people didn't use
a lot of lower high angle shots back then. It
was kind of just stopped from straight on and um
(20:51):
Orson Welles even dug out cut out the floor a
lot of times to get the camera lower. And for
the first time we saw ceilings in view in a
the because quite often things were shot on a sound
stage where you don't have ceilings. And um, he wanted
those low angle shots, so they used um fabric most
times to act as a ceiling, but very effective shots
(21:12):
of from below of Orson Welles. As I mean, it
wasn't exactly William Randolph first, but it was an approximation
of William Randolph first. It's a very effective low angle
stuff that now, I mean we take for granted all
these things, um, but you know, there would be no
pulp fiction and that non linear storytelling if there was
(21:33):
no well maybe somebody would have done it, but maybe eventually.
But the first he did the first and and that's
why it was innovative exactly. Fritz Lang. Yeah, there you go,
Fritz Lang, Metropolis and um just them. That's okay, Yeah,
it's all making sense now. Confused, Yeah, but you were
right on, You were right there. Fritz and Auto are
(21:55):
not close. I mean they're both Jerman, but that's about it. Yeah,
but you know the difference between them and dial them
just a telephone. What's up next, chuck, breath of fas.
So I am going to rely on you mostly for
this one because I looked up what the French New
Wave really did, what did accounted for? And like all
(22:19):
of the essays I found were hard to they were dense,
and I didn't really understand. I understood that the French
New Wave like changed everything, and that a lot of
the movies that I know and love today are the
offspring of the French New Wave, but I still didn't
get exactly specifically what the French New Wave did. And
(22:41):
you're gonna rely on me to summarize this, no pressure. Well,
for me, the French New Wave basically ushered in an
era of what now I think most people might associate
with indie filmmaking. Okay, okay, like uh, handheld camera work
and what some people at the time considered amateurish camera work.
(23:03):
UM movies where maybe not a lot seemingly happens, you know,
nothing grant happens, which was the case in Breathless. A
lot of people didn't like it at the time because
it was like, you know, not much happens. You know
that the two leads in the movie, uh, Jean Paul
Belmondo and Jean c. Berg weren't really like, didn't show
express a whole lot of deep love, and there weren't
(23:25):
these big moments of love and affection and these huge
action sequences. And it was described as flat by a
lot of people. Um, and I think a lot of
indie movies do that, just kind of show life as
it happens. Yeah, So without Breathless, we wouldn't have like
follow Rocket. Maybe Wes Anderson is definitely a big French
New wave guy for sure. Um, but uh go dar
(23:50):
John Luke Goodard who directed it, and Trufaux and some
other um French New wave forefathers were film critics at first, Yeah,
and decided as a group like we want to look
at sent him in a new way. Um and do
something different, so they would and started making their own movies.
That's like James Fenimore Cooper, Yeah, the guy who wrote
(24:12):
Last of the Mohicans. Yeah, he apparently used to complain that,
like nobody wrote good books anymore, and so I think
his wife or something said, well, why don't you do
a big shot? And he did and the books he
wrote were so great. But he he went and wrote
him and he wrote a bunch of them too. One
of my favorite four sides ever is the second to
(24:32):
the Last of the Mohicans. It's just a line of
Native Americans and the second to the last one, they're
online facing away. He just sort of turning around and
waving a camera I guess the camera at Gary Larson's hand. Um.
So Breathless is notable for those reasons. It kind of
kicked off the French New Wave. But the use of
jump cut editing, which we see so much now. It
(24:54):
was the first movie and it was very jarring at
the time to see jump cuts in a movie. How
about uh? And that's when you're showing, like I guess
the best way to describe it as, um, multiple shots
of the same subject or thing from different angles. Right,
it's like um, you indicate the progression of time or
(25:16):
movement or something by just cutting quickly rather than focusing
on somebody walking down the street for five minutes, you
cut a couple of times, and all of a sudden,
they're just closer to the camera, and then closer and closer,
and then they're past the camera. It's a jump cut, yeah,
or even as simple. Something as simple is like you're
going to leave the house, so you go and pick
up your keys and you put on your coat. Instead
of showing all that you come out of the bedroom, Boom,
(25:38):
you're putting on your coat. Boom, you're putting the keys
in the door, right exactly. You're just showing the high
highlights of this progression of stuff, where that would otherwise
be boring to watch the whole thing. But it also
um is used to create tension too, because it's it's
um jarring. I guess it's probably why it creates tension.
And Scorsese famously used it in Good Fellows at the
(26:01):
end when Henry Hill is like, like trying to sell
some guns to Nero. Yeah, he's cut to the gills, right,
and he's like trying to sell some guns to Nero.
But they don't fit the silencers, and like he's the
helicopters following him, he's got the sauce going and all
this stuff is being represented and compressed in a very
short amount of time by the use of jump cuts.
(26:23):
Very effective and for budding filmmakers it's a great way
to hide mistakes. Um of things you may not have
gotten that you thought you got. UM. Jump cutting is
a really easy way to to just sort of uh yeah,
to hide your errors. I did a lot. In other words,
when I was making those shorts, I um, I was.
(26:45):
I realized that in my head I was referencing the
UM shot in Soul Taker. You know, have you seen
that Mrs Science three thousands with it's um His last
name is Estevezzus Martin Sheen's brother, and he the soul Taker,
and he's next to this guy who's the soul Taker.
You just have to see this. But anyway, they're they're
(27:07):
walking down the road and this jump cut like has
this progression of them. It's so unnecessary, but it's like
a great use of jump cut. You could tell the
director was like, I can't wait to use a jump cut,
and that's what she did. She used it on, um,
but go watch the MSc three. K it's a good one. Man.
You did you see every single one of those episodes? No,
(27:27):
it's still I still run across ones that I haven't seen. Yeah. Nice,
um hey, and the shout out to Bill Corbett, who
I know as a listener. Oh yeah it is, isn't it. Yeah.
I don't know if he's gonna hear this one, but
the great Bill Corbett, so taker. Uh. Next, we're gonna
move on to Federico Fellini's eight and a half. Have
(27:51):
you ever seen this one? No? I haven't. Now I
understand why it's called that though. Yeah. It was one
of the first, although not the first, movies about movie
making and uh, starring the great Marcello Mastriannia Masterroi from
adulta Vita. Amuse of Felini's over the years too, And
this one, um, this one really kicked off the surrealist
(28:14):
filmmaking and sort of saying you can play around and
shoot a dream sequence where the guys in traffic and
then he leaves his car and floats up in the
air and his you know, being pulled down to the
ground on the beach from a rope tight around his
ankle just like go nuts. Yeah, and successive filmmakers did
go nuts, like um Gondry did, Uh Eternal sent out
(28:36):
of the Spotless Mine. Oh yeah, he's hugely influenced. Um.
Darren Aronofski did some weird stuff here there, David Lynch
and Terry Gilliam. Of course, just basically surrealism is is
what I'm taking Folini introduced into this, Yeah for real.
And um, besides the surrealism, uh, that opening sequence of
(28:57):
eight and a half where the director of um, he's
the director in the movie, Uh, Guido is stuck in traffic.
It's really claustrophobic feeling, and that's why he floats away,
uh and escapes. You know that that traffic jam, But
that was directly mimicked and like R. E. M S
Everybody hurts video And um, the beginning of the movie
Falling Down, Do you remember that that started with the
(29:20):
traffic jam? Michael Douglas just left. I saw that again
the other day. Most of it it's weird. It alternately
felt way ahead of its time and also very dated
because the stuff that Michael Douglas was doing felt way
ahead of its time. But then there was I just
(29:41):
forgot about that whole um weird subplots with Robert Duval
retiring and he had this wife that was him pecking them,
and like this retirement party they were trying to throw
off for Yeah, it was just so unnecessary and felt
really weird and out of place. The other day when
I was watching it, they're like a jump cut montage
(30:01):
where he's putting on his watch, his gold retirement watch. No,
but then to the Barbara Hershey now is in Venice
at home with the daughter, and he spends a whole
day coming there to grab them, basically, and the whole
time she just keeps calling the cops, like the noise
coming and no, he's coming. And I was watching the
other day, I was like, freaking leave. Oh, yeah, what
(30:22):
are you doing there? That's a movie character thing, you know.
That's just bad writing, bad directing. When you just walk
right past the ability to leave, there's you. You missed
a huge step. Where were we falling down? Yeah? I
think that pretty much sums up eight and a half.
I think so too, falling down boom, so chuck. We
(30:43):
got a little more left, we got more films. Is
this making you want to watch films? Yeah? Me too.
I feel like eating ice cream, watching a film and
scratching from poison ivy Lately and burning this office down.
Uh you know if that happens now, suspicion is gonna
fall on you for saying that. All Uh, we'll be
right back after this. Alright, So we're back with our
(31:25):
awesome jingles, which, by the way, um, we have to
thank John Bagan John begin He even emailed with the
pronunciation of the name. But he um, the original guy
who did our jingle, the first jingle ever, Rusty Madius
Mattias Man. I'm not good with the pronunciation. Uh. Well, anyway,
(31:47):
Rusty who's banned The sheep Dogs are on tour right now. Um,
just because his work was so original, we contacted him
and said, hey, we got this other guy who's done
like covers of your work. Can we use these? It's
like totally and John's been making awesome like versions of
it ever since. Yeah. They're both great and talented. Thanks
(32:07):
to you both, And go check out I think that
what you say. They're on tour right yeah, the sheep Dogs. Yeah,
go check out the sheep Dogs in a town here
you Yeah, all right, let's finish with these two in
reverse order. Okay, Toy Story was a big one, hugely innovative, huge,
And again it's one of those things where now almost
(32:28):
everything about it seems pedestrian or what it did. See.
It's still a great movie, I'm sure, um, but the
innovations that it undertook or it just seemed pedestrian. But
at the time it was totally groundbreaking. It was the first, um,
the first c g I movie, all c g I
movie ever. Yeah, that was enormous. Well yeah, and I
(32:50):
remember at the time seeing it and just being like, wow,
this is the future of animated films. What's the best
all c g I animated filming or seemed visually? Uh well,
I haven't seen a lot of them these days because
Emily doesn't like those, so I probably wouldn't be the
best person to ask. Holly from stuff mom or Sophiasts
(33:11):
and history class, she'd probably the one to ask for
my money. Have you seen The Adventures of Tinton? Oh? Yeah,
that was amazing, mind blowing. Yeah. I saw that on
your recommendation and really really liked it. Yeah. The story
was great, the action was great, the characters were great.
But the c g I, the computer animation is but
(33:33):
I think possibly the best ever done. Yeah, and that's
a bit of a different style than say like UP
or Um The Incredible. It's not nearly these cartoons. It's
like the I think it's the motion capture. Yeah, I
think that's what they did for that. Oh yeah, with
UP it would strictly be totally just animation, right, Yeah,
but I mean they're both animation. Um. But yeah, man, Tinton,
that was really good. It was good. I was surprised
(33:53):
how much I like that. But UP was good too,
and Toy Store was good too. And but all of
these things came as a result of the ground that
Toy story broke absolutely in Um, like you said, what
seems like a common thing today, could I mean, you
don't see sell animation anymore. It's almost I know, I
kind of miss it. I totally miss like the new Um,
Mickey Mouse is all weird and CG like stuff from
(34:17):
our generation should have just been discontinued, and then you
just come up with all new stuff that's c G.
I start very shortcake not supposed to be c G.
I it just all looks weird now. Yeah, I wish
there would have people would have done a little bit
of both still because I think sell animation, like uh,
I think The Iron Giant came out after Toy Story
(34:37):
and they did sell animation and that was great, great
movie that it was really good, you'd like it, uh,
Like it was a movie for grown ups, and Toy
Story sort of laid the way for that because it
was one of the first movies. Um, I guess cartoony
kids movies to really have a lot of dialogue that
flew over kids heads that adults got a little nod
(34:58):
in a wink. What Toy Story? Yeah, yeah, not like
dirty humor, but it's not like it's the cat no
no no, but a little entendre here and there that
adults might appreciate that kids won't understand. Those are the
best jokes. Um. And now we have you know, best
animated uh feature in the Oscars, which definitely came straight
(35:20):
out of the original Toy Story because movies started being
considered before they created its own category up in Toy Story,
three were actually nominated for regular Best Picture, and I
think everyone's like, oh, we need to get them their
own category because you can't have an animated movie when
best Picture came well up would have come after Um,
the the Best Animated Picture category came out real, so
(35:44):
that kind of goes as a testament to just how
amazing that movie is. Yeah, that's right. It was still
for Best Picture. Oh it was both. I don't know
if it was up for it probably was up for
Best Animated as well, but it was definitely also up
for Best Picture while there was an animated cat category. Yeah,
I never considered that. Bam, that was a good movie. Yeah,
(36:04):
it was sweet. Um, so I got nothing else in
toy story. Well then what about the last one? Yeah,
two thousand one Space Odyssey quite a film. You sent this,
uh essay on Criterion I think Criterion dot com, but
you know the Criterion collection. Um it was written, I
guess in even though it says posted in like there
(36:29):
wasn't an internet to post it on in eight Maybe
it means posted it like in the mail. Maybe. Um.
But I realized, like I can read film essays about
Stanley Kubrick's work all day long, Like I love that
documentary Room two to seven two three seven two six seven,
(36:53):
you know the one about the shining conspiracy theory. Yeah,
then the number of the room is amazing. I can't
remember though, Um, I I read a bunch of articles
is I think two thirty seven. Um, I read a
bunch of articles around the release of that documentary, which
we're basically like film essays on on the shining. I
read this one amazing one um from several years ago
(37:15):
about Eyes Wide Shut, how it's like a masterpiece of sociology.
A lot of people hate that movie. Um And then
now this like two thousand one. I'm sure there's tons
out there to consume, but I can just read that
stuff all day long because that guy was so just
amazingly detailed as a director. Yeah, I agree. I can
(37:36):
read more about his work critical essays on his work
than any other director. It's just unbelievable. It's almost like
it's its own genre. It is, you know. Yeah, it's
got a word named after it, and well it should.
Um So. Two thousand one of Space odysse Um blue
minds back then, blows minds today one for its uh
(37:59):
just the amazing look in the technical achievement um A
eight is really well. I mean, if you see a
movie from about out of space, it still looks like
the future. Yeah, he don't expect it to hold up well,
but it totally does. Um So. Much though that a
lot of the you know, George Lucas and Ridley Scott
were just like it's done, Like we might as well
give up. George Lucas when Star Wars came out said
(38:22):
Star Wars is technically comparable, but for my money, two
thousand one is by far the better movie. Yeah, everyone
was sort of intimidated, I think by how talented Kubrick was. Well.
Plus also, um, you have to take into account that
he made this movie at a time when other sci
fi movies were just pure schlock. So not only to
(38:43):
make the movie in this way this visually amazing and
amazing with an audio soundtrack and just totally innovative, it
also took like that mindset, this is completely going a
different direction that everybody else has as well. Yeah, of
course think about Ridley Scott saying that, and then he
goes on to make Alien and Blade Runner after that.
(39:03):
So I mean he helped Prometheus. Man. Yeah, people are
like Prometheus. I don't care. It's a cool movie. No.
I liked it too. I thought, Okay, on one flaw,
the big flaw to me was and I'm sure it's
like part of the subtext or the context or one
of the texts, but um, the engineer coming back to
(39:28):
life or coming out of hibernation after however long and
just immediately like inflicting violence on these p brained humans
who are showing him no threat whatsoever. I just thought
it was a little, uh, it wasn't explained well enough
for my taste. Yeah, I don't think I agree with you,
But when I'm watching a Ridley Scott movie, I just
(39:51):
assume if I'm missing something, he has an explanation for it.
I'm just not catching it. Yeah, I know what you mean.
I'd like I think I read some stuff about how
it tied into the alien cannon and realized I need
to go see it again with all this knowledge that
I wasn't really thinking about, and maybe i'd like it more. Yeah,
but I haven't done that yet, So back to two
(40:13):
thousand one. It was also notable for being bookended basically
with thirty minutes of silence on both ends of the movie.
The first thirty minutes or and when I say silent,
I mean no dialogue, and the last thirty minutes have
no dialogue. Yeah, the last line comes like a full
thirty minutes before the end. Yeah, and over the hundred
and forty six minutes. There are only forty minutes of
(40:34):
dialogue and the whole thing. And um, that's why I
just when people compare something like Interstellar and call it
kubrickey and I just want to smash. Do you not
like Interstellar? Not really? Oh, I liked it. I was
super let down despite McConaughey doing Waterson in the future.
(40:55):
I still liked it. I even liked him in. I
liked a lot of the parts of it. But um,
to me, it's anti kubrick in because every ten minutes
they're explaining everything that's going on. That was another thing,
just like Ellen Page's entire character was written in to
explain what was going on every ten minutes. Yeah, and
(41:15):
I felt like Interstellar was the same way. It's like
Christopher Nolan needs to just trust his audience a little
bit like kubrick did, and so you figure it out
or don't. Yeah that I'm not gonna stop every ten
minutes just to explain everything. You're just going on. Remember
if you didn't get it right, here's what's going on again. Well,
I think if they are labeling something like Interstellar, is
(41:36):
Kubrickian right. One of the ways that you can interpret
that is that he was he rooted his two thousand
one in science fact Yeah, right, So like the stuff
that the astronauts are like dealing with and the things
that are going on and the conditions of the space,
that was all factual, whereas with Interstellar, same thing. They
(41:59):
went to really great links to do what they could
to make everything scientifically factual. Aside from the fact that
the idea that you could go into a black hole
and then come back out or something like that drifting
in space, that's not gonna happen. But for the most part,
Interstellar was scientifically accurate. So maybe that's what they meant
when they called it kubrick in because you're absolutely right,
(42:20):
like they did explain a lot and went to great
links to explain a lot, whereas with with two thousand one,
you just watch it the first five times like what
just happened? Yeah, And apparently Carry Grant had that same
reaction as well. That was rock Hudson, Rock Hudson, that's right. Yeah,
the original screening that Roger Ebert was in l A.
Rock Hudson just left and said, can somebody tell me
(42:42):
what the hell that was about? Yeah, And it wasn't
even over yet. Yeah. Um. Well the reason it it
uh has science fact and not science fiction is because
Kubrick and Arthur C. Clark, who it wasn't actually a
book that was made into a movie. It was a
movie B book made after a movie, and they collaborated
on both. And um, they went to Carl Sagan, um
(43:07):
of course of Cosmos and said he said, you're going
to make billions and billions. That was pretty good, was it? Yeah?
A lot like them. Um. They went to Carl Sagan said, hey,
we want to portray these extraterrestrials. Are they maybe the
Star Child? Is uh? Are they turned Dave into the
(43:27):
Star Child? Are they humanoids? What are they gonna look like?
And Sagan was like they were very unlikely to be humanoid.
So Kubrick did the smart thing and was just like, well,
we just won't show them at all. Instead of making
a fool of myself like signs and making some dumb
looking at man, man, let me just not show the aliens.
(43:48):
Very smart move. Um. Getting back to the story of
two thousand one, although I think the Village is underrated,
Yeah I can stomach that one. What about well, you
like the six cents, right, everybody like the sixth cents.
I guess that was it for him. I loved Unbreakable. Unbreakable, Yeah,
(44:10):
that was one where like, yeah, I think it was
maybe even better the second time. Yeah. I still like
that movie. Uh, but that he also made that Lady
in the Water movie and the the one with Marky
Mark the people were jumping no three kings. Uh is
it the one in the elevator? No, he just produced
(44:33):
Oh I know what you're talking about, the one where
people like jumping off of buildings and stuff inexplicably. Yeah.
That I didn't even I didn't see that. You couldn't
get through ten minutes of that movie. So um. Two
thousand one Back to Good Movies was had a three
x three part structure, but not a conventional three x
structure that you might be used to in movies, which
(44:53):
is white confounded people like Rock Hudson. The first they
called the movements. The first movement was the the Dawn
of Man sequence with the the the apes, with the
with the monolith um and uh, he has that great
part where he throws his little bone tool up in
the air and then it morphs into well not morphs,
but maybe it's a dissolve into the spinning in outer space.
(45:19):
It's called the match cut. Yeah, match cut and um
of the rotation of what we now know was a
nuclear warhead. Because I read that little article twenty Things
you Didn't Know about two thousand one, I didn't know
those are nuclear warheads necessarily in outer space. They made
it a little more vague, and initially it was going
to be more explicit and they were going to explode
(45:40):
it in outer space. But he said, now that's a
little too close to uh, the ending of strange. Yeah,
so let's not do that. Yeah, probably a good choice, yeah,
but some as a result, some people have taken it
to mean that like it was that match cut was
supposed to show how far humans have come from using
a bone to murder somebody to satellites in space. But
(46:03):
if you know that the satellite is actually loaded down
with nuclear warheads, that match cut demonstrates how little humans
have changed from using a bone to murder somebody to
using satellites to murder somebody. The the motif is still
the same, and it's murder. Yeah, he's going through some
deep things. Oh yeah, a lot of metaphor happening. Yeah,
(46:23):
I mean supposedly in every single shot, because he started
out as a still photographer, right, Supposedly every frame of
a Kubrick movie. You there is nothing that isn't unintentionally
placed there by him. He did a lot of his
own set decorating. Yeah, Like the pencil holder on the
desk in the office of the guy at the Shining
Hotel was where it's supposed to be, right, and if
(46:45):
like if it has like a picture of a goat
head inscribed on it, that means something. It's not accidental. Yeah,
although we'll say Room two thirty seven, which I think
may have been the point, is a little bit like
these people are crazy, not like, oh man, I just
see what they're saying in all this, right, I was
just thinking, these people are nuts, right, It's it was
(47:06):
just kind of enjoyable to hear their interpretations of it well,
and I think it had a It was a comment
on obsession and fandom more so than the Shining but
there I thought there some of their ideas were interesting.
I said, Room too two seven, and I like going
out with conspiracy theorists like Mary. Wasn't Room two two
(47:28):
seven like a sitcom? Yeah? It was just called to seven.
Remember was Jack k She's like Mary, Okay, That's what
my impression was. What do you think I was doing? Well?
I wasn't sure what. You must be a weirdo. Yeah, okay.
The second movement was, of course, the house sequence, the
computer of the How was it? The How nine thousand
(47:50):
um really creepy, and How ended up being a lot
of people's favorite character, even though it was just a voice.
The supercomputer on the Discovery ship remembers, what are you
doing to you? It's so creepy. I had the Mad
Magazine spoof of two thousand one when I was a kid.
It was great. And then the third movement is when
Dave moves on to the next stage of human development
(48:14):
with these extraterrestrials that you know only here and um. Basically,
it's when it comes full circle the third movement, and
the third movement is the one that has almost well,
it's really just the second movement that it has a dialogue.
Yeah yeah. Uh. Some of the alternate titles for two
(48:35):
thousand one Journey Beyond the Stars, Terrible, Universe not bad,
Tunnel to the Stars not so great, Planet Fall that
sounds bad. It sounds like good. James Pond movie, and
then How the Solar System was One as a play
on how the West was one, Yeah, which, like movie
geeks would find that appealing, but everybody else would say
(48:58):
that's um, you ruined everything. Yeah, and Kubrick was this
is the last thing I have. He was so obsessive
with protecting his material that he allegedly, Uh, I don't
think allegedly. I think he did have all the sets
and props and miniatures destroyed after he shot it so
they would never be reused, which is a common thing
at the time. Okay, we're doing a space movie. Go
(49:19):
get that Go get that space ring from Stanley set.
Let's reuse it for a planet fall. He also destroyed
all of the footage that didn't make it into the
original theatrical release. Yeah, destroyed it's gone. Yeah, so they
wouldn't one day after his death recut it, which they
invariably probably would have done. Yep, he's a smart man. Yeah,
(49:42):
I could. We should just do a podcast on Kubrick.
Okay he was I'm down for that challenge. He'd be
a dude. Yes, one of my heroes. Yeah, cinematically, you
got anything else? I got nothing else? Uh. If you
want to know more about movies. If you like this,
and you probably also love our exploitation episode Exploitation Movie
(50:03):
episode one. What else have we talked about movies in
Cannonball Run? Oh yeah, I had a lot to do
with the movie. Yeah, our James Fonda episode. Yeah. Uh yeah.
We've had a few of these, and people always respond
to these, were like, you guys, should have a spin off,
should do an all movie podcast, or maybe one day maybe.
Remember if you're looking for any of these, um press
(50:24):
control F or Apple F in your web browser and
search that way on our podcast archive page. Uh. You
can also search for this article on how stuff works
by typing movies in and seeing what comes up. And
since I said how stuff works, this time for a
listener mail, I'm gonna call this Mike couldupont really clear
(50:45):
something up for us on scientific method? Hey guys, it
was a great um Well, actually he didn't say it
was great. I think I just made that up. Hey guys,
your Scientific Method podcast has a consistent misuse of what
a scientific law is in relation to UH working of
the scientific method. It appears that you believe that a
law e g. Newton's law of gravity is in held uh,
(51:06):
in higher esteem than theory, and that eventually a theory
matures into a law. Um. I think I probably did
think that because of politics, you know, bill becomes a
law right exactly, he says, when in fact, theory is
considerably more robust than a law. A law is a
mathematical model that describes observed behavior, does not answer the why.
(51:27):
Theory does answer why something happens. Did we not say that?
I thought we did, Like I I knew that. I
remember finding that out from the research. I just can't
believe it didn't come out of my mouth, he claims.
We did not, And I feel like I'm learning this
so I definitely did not. But you may have. For example,
Newton's law of gravitational attraction describes the action of two
(51:48):
bodies that can be used for pretty much everything. Um.
It is perfect for describing what happens, but it cannot
tell you why the two items are attracted or drill
down to the underlying mechanism. Yeah, law is like much
more succinct. It just is what it is. Uh. Nor
is the law even universal and could not be used
to explain the para helion procession of Mercury's orbit burn.
(52:12):
In comparison, Einstein's theory of general relativity was eventually used
to solve the mercury issue. Oh yeah, the mercury issue. Uh,
and the standard model, along with the recent discovery the
Higgs boson on my Stern, can answer the why do
these two masses attracted to each other? Question? I think
what you mean is, why are these two masses attracted
(52:33):
to one another? Mike, it's pretty teleological theory is considerably
more developed and richer than a scientific law, which is
more of a tool that is applicable to a wide
range of applications. Keep up the good work that is,
Mike DuPont. Thanks Mike, thanks for that of the Valley
Forge DuPont's I think, so, huh have you seen Fox Catcher?
(52:53):
Oh no, I've heard it's good. Is it good? No? Really,
I don't think so. Now. I heard it's kind of slow.
It's beyond slowly. I I can understand why, Um, the
Academy loved it, or a lot of people. I'm sure,
do you like it? I was not a fan of
Fox Kid. I think people generally seeing like a turn
(53:16):
by an actor like Steve Girl doing something really different,
they're knocked out by that. No, I still can't believe
you didn't like Birdman. No spoiler alert for people who
have not seen Birdman. The following conversation is full of spoilers. Yes,
what did you like about it? Um? So? I thought?
I thought Michael Keating was good? Okay? Um? Who plays
(53:39):
his daughter Emily Blunt? Is that? Who that is? Emma Stone?
Emma Stone? Excellent? Okay? Um? Edward and even pretty good? Okay?
So the acting was fine? Who is Naomi Watts was
in it? Yeah? She did great? Okay? So yes, the acting.
The acting was fine. Sure that the acting was fine.
I thought the photography was amazing. Yeah, the whole seemingly
(54:00):
one take thing kind of knocked you out. Probably I
didn't even pick up on that, but yes it did. Um.
It was more the the for me, the juxtaposition of
the story, which was pretty boring in realistic and everyday life.
Even though it was about a Broadway production, it was
(54:20):
still about the everyday life of it against the surrealism
that's like threaded and embedded in throughout the whole movie.
I didn't like that it was like choose one or
the other man. It irked me. Um and uh and
then just so that one part with the critic or
Michael Keaton tells off the critic. I thought Michael Keaton
did a wonderful job, but just the whole point that
(54:43):
it was in there of like the director, you know,
using Michael Keaton's character to tell off all the critics
he's ever wanted to. I just thought it was pretentious
and I thought it was kind of clumsy in that
sense too, and it was enough that it attainted it. Yeah,
and then the ending. I did not like the ending
(55:05):
at all at all. That'll ruin a good movie because
it was completely went contrary to all the other stuff
that he went out of his way to point out
was fake or fraud and they're not real. And then
all of a sudden it is what no choose one
or the other. The director refused to make very important decisions,
(55:27):
and I think that that ruined the movie. That is
a very well uh thought out the criticism. I thank you,
thank you very much. Sure uh Man. That was the
end of Listener Mail even, wasn't it. Yeah, Because now
I'm not like she's Jush is weird. He didn't like Birdman.
Now I'm like just in like Birdmann. He has good reasons.
Thank you, Thank you. UM. I like justifying my opinion.
(55:50):
So if you want to get in touch with Chuck
and I or Jerry who I apparently just spoiled Birdman
for UM, you can contact us via Twitter, s y
s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook, dot com,
slash stuff you Should Know. You can send us an email.
This stuff podcast at how stuff Works dot com and
has always joined us at home on the web. Stuff
you Should Know dot com for more on this and
(56:17):
thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff Works dot
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