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March 3, 2025 49 mins

In this thought-provoking episode, Evan and Cormac engage in a spirited critique of "The Brutalist," with an in-depth analysis of cinema through an architect's lens. We explore how architectural principles like clarity, editing, and supporting a core concept apply equally to filmmaking. We discuss the dangers of creative overindulgence and the importance of restraint in both architecture and storytelling.

Whether you're interested in film criticism, architectural theory, or simply enjoy hearing passionate professionals analyze creative work, this episode offers valuable insights into the intersection of different art forms.

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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Evan Troxel (00:09):
Oh, snowpocalypse.
That's what I'm talking about right there.

Cormac Phalen (00:13):
How's the weather out there?

Evan Troxel (00:15):
I think got about 14 inches so far at the house, something
like that.

Cormac Phalen (00:19):
that's impressive.

Evan Troxel (00:21):
the last, more than the last two years combined.
Here, I'll show you somepictures here real quick.
So,
uh, this is our, this is ourgarden and you can see the little
hats on these covers we builtfor the, for some of the plants.
So this was like mid, mid storm.
And then, uh, this is, this is like ourlower, our lower area that I had to park
the car at the bottom of the drivewaybecause where these shoe marks are.

(00:43):
that's my driveway.
I, I got, after, after I, I, I,I'd take my son to work because I
wasn't going to let him drive thecar to work in these conditions,

Cormac Phalen (00:52):
Understandable.

Evan Troxel (00:53):
I dropped him off.
I came back up.
I, I drove up the drivewayabout 30 or 40 feet.
Car wouldn't go any further.
I was just spinning.
This is all wheel drive.
It's a Subaru, right?
And so I, I just put my foot on the brake.
Thank you.
And I'm like, okay, I'mjust going to go back.
I forgot to put the car in reverse.
All I did was let my foot off the brakeand the car slid all the way back down.

(01:15):
Oh, that was great.
My mom, can't get outof their place at all.
The driveway is too long.
There's too much snow.
Um, so I went up there to kickstart thegenerator, the brand new generator
that we put in this summer that wasdesigned to go in when the power went out.

(01:38):
Well,
the power went out because
trees have been fallingover onto the power lines.
And

Cormac Phalen (01:43):
generator

Evan Troxel (01:44):
up, I'm like, I'm like, did the generator come on?
No.
And so I had to go over there thenext day and actually get it going.
Uh, so anyway, now I have anotherproject, which is to figure out why the
generator didn't go on, but they didn'thave power for 40, over 48 hours at her

Cormac Phalen (02:00):
Ooh,

Evan Troxel (02:02):
Yeah.
So not awesome.

Cormac Phalen (02:04):
well, I
did tell you the storythat, my furnace went out

Evan Troxel (02:08):
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
Right.

Cormac Phalen (02:09):
been without heat for a week and a half.

Evan Troxel (02:14):
Oh my gosh.
And
what are, what are the, howis it in Detroit right now?

Cormac Phalen (02:19):
Uh, I mean, we're at freezing right now, but well,
when it went out, that was fun.
Cause that was the, cold snap where wewere having, below zero temperatures.
And, we got space heaters, we had thefireplace going, we had everything
going, and it was, basically knocked thechill out of the air to get it roughly

(02:44):
around like a constant 54 in the house.
Yeah.

Evan Troxel (02:49):
Downstairs.
What, what's the upstairs?
How, what's the temperature differencebetween upstairs and downstairs?

Cormac Phalen (02:54):
you want me to admit that we have two units and one
was perfectly fine and one wasn't

Evan Troxel (03:00):
to keep you honest.

Cormac Phalen (03:01):
and that the, and that the, and that the kids themselves
were, you know, cold while wewere nice and toasty upstairs.
You know, if you want me to, youknow, admit that, uh, I mean, sure.
Uh, actually, what was funny is, that,we would, like, everybody would come
upstairs, and we would just huddle around,the room upstairs, and it was, it was fun.

(03:24):
You know, we'd have, having donethat, we've got adult children like
you do, and, our youngest is a juniorin high school, so, like, none of
them are interested, and, actuallylike hanging out with their parents.
So, until the furnace goes out, thenthey're like, Hey, how are you guys doing?
Uh, so we went and we, and we, we wentand we invested, which honestly, it's

(03:47):
kind of a good investment in a way.
Power was on, which was good.
I know, unlike, your situation.
but so the power was on and thenwe went to Lowe's and bought.
Two of those kind of electric kind of likefake fireplaces, so it looks like, got
the logs in there and it looks like, youknow, the, the crackling fire and stuff,

(04:07):
but it's a heater,

Evan Troxel (04:08):
Yeah.

Cormac Phalen (04:09):
but it's a heater and you can crank it all the
way up to like 80 or something.
And, we put them downstairsand it actually started, like,
just have been running themnonstop for a week and a half.
I mean, my, my electricbill is just like, by
running all of these space heaters,but, the big worry was obviously,

(04:29):
I need to get the chill out of theair so that the pipes don't freeze.
And so, anywhere where there was,pipes, I wanted to make sure that
I got some, heat to those areas.
And thankfully these little electricfireplaces, they might not be the
most attractive, but they work.

Evan Troxel (04:51):
they're kind of portable, like they're not super
easy to move, right?
But you can, you can putthem where you need them.
So you could have a
fireplace in the dining room.
You could have a fireplace in the kitchen.
You could,
in the bathroom, you couldput a fireplace in the
bathroom.
It's, it's nice.

Cormac Phalen (05:05):
And, and honestly, there was sort of, at a point we
were like, stopped running the actualfireplace, wood burning, log fireplace.
We stopped using that one becauseit was just getting kind of, the
wind was kicking pretty hard.
And I mean, you know, there'smultiple days where we were, a
gale advisory for, for wind.
I mean, you can hear likejust wind coming through.

(05:27):
You think that you havenice sealed windows.
Yeah.
like go through some gale winds, you'llfigure out where the draft's coming from.

Evan Troxel (05:35):
Right.
Totally.
Yeah.
What, what, how old is your house?
What year was it built?

Cormac Phalen (05:40):
Yeah, 1941

Evan Troxel (05:41):
Yeah.
Yeah,

Cormac Phalen (05:43):
and their new win.

Evan Troxel (05:44):
40, my house was 47 and it had some old single pane windows
when we were in Southern California.
But
the weather is a littledifferent in Southern
California most of the time.

Cormac Phalen (05:52):
Yeah.

Evan Troxel (05:53):
so you have new windows and they're still leaking.

Cormac Phalen (05:55):
They, yeah, they are new windows.
I mean, they're, double pane,double hung windows, but they, yeah,
you can, it, it, it tests them.
I keep looking over.
It's

Evan Troxel (06:05):
you just,

Cormac Phalen (06:05):
like hear,

Evan Troxel (06:06):
you said double hung windows and you just totally like unlocked a piece
of my memory from an ARE exam, you know,
when they were, when, when youhave to like, you, we had to
study all the window types.
It's like casement,
fixed, double
hung, like all these, it was likeyou had a little, we all, we all
had the flashcards back then.
Right.
And you,
and you would be like, what's this?

(06:26):
And same for brick coursing.
It was like, what's this coursing called?
What's

Cormac Phalen (06:30):
Mm, mm, mm.
Mm.
Quick, quick!
Can you identify a Flemishbond on the streets?

Evan Troxel (06:36):
Right.
PTSD.
That's PTSD right there.

Cormac Phalen (06:42):
That's

Evan Troxel (06:43):
What is that?
Yeah.
A R E P T S D.
That's a good, like, domain name.
I'm gonna, I'm gonna, beforewe release that episode, we
should probably lock that in.
Uh, A
R E P T S D.
com.

Cormac Phalen (06:54):
All right, we're gonna do that.

Evan Troxel (06:57):
So,
so there's a, there's a questionand, and this is the moment where
I'm going to push the button Right.
here and bring up the QR code.
And, uh, askarchispeak.Com,
something we've been talking aboutrecently on the, on the podcast here,
letting everybody know that they can pullout their phone, open the camera app and,

(07:18):
and use this to just go to askarchispeak.
com without you having to type it in.
But if you need to useyour monkey fingers.
type in askarchispeak.
com because you don't have yourphone or you can't see this QR code.
Maybe you're listening to theaudio version of the podcast.
QR code fail in that instance, right?
So easy to remember domainname, askarchispeak.

(07:40):
com.
You can ask us a questionto be answered on the show.
And we have questionsin the queue, Cormac.
I'm very excited about this.
we
answered one last week, right.
We went, we went deep on an askarchispeak

Cormac Phalen (07:54):
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.

Evan Troxel (07:55):
week.
This week, I'm going to ask the question.
I'm going to ask you the question.
So here, I can take it.

Cormac Phalen (08:03):
okay.

Evan Troxel (08:05):
I've, I've heard maybe from you, I can't, I can't give away my
sources here, um, that, that there's a,an architectural movie out called, well, I
don't know, is it an architectural movie?
Yeah, yeah, air, scare quotes,
Air quotes.

Cormac Phalen (08:19):
Air

Evan Troxel (08:19):
uh, I mean, if it was an architectural movie, it probably would be
square, square quotes, it would be scarequotes, they would, they could, we would
align the quotes, yes, if, if, if it's
an architectural movie, um, yeah.
There's a movie out called TheBrutalist, and I've heard from a
little birdie that You saw this movie.
So

(08:40):
is

Cormac Phalen (08:41):
the movie.

Evan Troxel (08:42):
it is true.
Wow.

Cormac Phalen (08:44):
I, I have seen the movie

Evan Troxel (08:46):
out?
I mean, first, let's just start here.
What's it like to get out andgo see something entertaining
at our advanced age.
This happens less and less

Cormac Phalen (08:55):
as surprisingly enough.
I'm, I'm a movie goer and I enjoygoing to the movie theater and the
whole movie theater experience.
So when movies come out.
Um, sure, it's easy to just say, eh,I'll wait for it till, but we just like
the process of going to the movies,going and sitting down in the dark.

(09:17):
The only movie that I questionwhy we were there after the fact
was, the movies, A Quiet Place.
So, going to those movies, and themovie itself is not making a sound.

(09:38):
You can hear every single solitary person
who apparently

Evan Troxel (09:45):
to the movies.
Who wants to go to the movies andsit through that with other people
making noises or every sound thatpeople, like they're not even doing
it intentionally most of the time.

Cormac Phalen (09:56):
Well, you know, I mean,

Evan Troxel (09:58):
that sounds

Cormac Phalen (09:59):
maybe somebody should have taught me that.

Evan Troxel (10:00):
that?

Cormac Phalen (10:01):
Maybe somebody should have taught their kids
to chew with their mouth closed.

Evan Troxel (10:06):
Totally.
Or
teenagers just chat through a movie.
People just talk through a movie.
It's

Cormac Phalen (10:13):
yeah.

Evan Troxel (10:15):
This is why movie theaters have to rethink their
business model because like
why would I want to go and do that?

Cormac Phalen (10:21):
we saw Nosferatu and you know, there's a lot of like quiet
scenes and things like that there.
And you can hear peopletalking here, like seriously,

Evan Troxel (10:30):
my gosh,

Cormac Phalen (10:31):
or people complaining about, this isn't what I expected.
Like, do you?
Do a little bit of research on themovie that you're going to see.

Evan Troxel (10:39):
Do you have to say that out loud like?

Cormac Phalen (10:41):
Exactly.
Use your inside voice.

Evan Troxel (10:45):
Keep it
keep it inside

Cormac Phalen (10:47):
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I did see it.

Evan Troxel (10:50):
Okay,

Cormac Phalen (10:51):
And it's interesting because, so, because I've been listening,
um, to, the audio books that we've beentalking about, like Corb and, now onto
the Bauhaus and, and things like that.
Um, it's interesting that they usedkind of like an amalgamation of a bunch

(11:15):
of different archetype archetypes,architecture of archetype archetypes, uh,
I can't even say it, stuffy nose anyway,of a bunch of different architects.
Blend it all up in a, in a, uh,in a blender and made the, you
know, power drink of this guy.

Evan Troxel (11:37):
disgusting sounds disgusting

Cormac Phalen (11:40):
Exactly.
Um, it's, uh, you know, was it,you know, um, Starcotech PowerAid?

Evan Troxel (11:49):
Yeah, yeah, it's
green drink.
Yeah, it's made of people.

Cormac Phalen (11:53):
I don't, yeah, that one just went off of
the rails there, but anyway,

Evan Troxel (11:57):
so
this is the Adrian Brody character

Cormac Phalen (12:00):
So Adrian Brody

Evan Troxel (12:01):
have a name in the

Cormac Phalen (12:03):
He's Laszlo
Laszlo something or other

Evan Troxel (12:09):
Toth, isn't it?
Toth, Toth,

Cormac Phalen (12:11):
Talk.
Yeah, Laszlo Toth.
Thank you.
And he plays the tortured artist sort ofa kind of a mix, the Fountainhead type,
you know, kind of like hero architect thatdoesn't want to give up and lose control
of their vision, you know, and everybody,if you don't agree, Get off the bus.
It's, my vision, or bust,there's that aspect of it.

(12:35):
Then there's like the aspect of, theyeven say that, had studied at the
Bauhaus and, he's making furnitureand it's less tubular steel furniture.
And so, you you're starting to thinkof Like the Vasili chair, from, Breuer
and, and all of these other things.
And you say, so you're starting to seelike all of these different people kind of
mixed together and you kind of have thislike, almost Corb kind of like character.

(12:58):
And, it literally is, as you're watchingit, you see like these little parts
and pieces that they sort of like,made a Lego man out of like all sorts
of different, um, pieces of people andthat's what made up this character.
So it was kind of interesting in that way.
And so it was kind of astudy of, perseverance.
It was a study of, I mean, therewas, there was architecture in there.

(13:22):
Yes.
Um, is it a movie about architecture?
Like say, my father, thearchitect or, things like that.
It's not like that.
It's not a documentary.
Um, I went with my oldest son whohe's in school for film studies.
And, I look over at him and I'mlike, well, what did you think of it?

(13:44):
And so it's long enough where there's anintermission in the middle of the movie.
15 minute intermission.

Evan Troxel (13:51):
How long is it?

Cormac Phalen (13:52):
Uh, it is three hours and 40 minutes.

Evan Troxel (13:55):
Wow.
And
just, can we just say like, that mightbe 3 hours and 40 minutes of torture for
people who might go see this movie and

Cormac Phalen (14:06):
could be.

Evan Troxel (14:07):
it?
Or was

Cormac Phalen (14:07):
So, so it

Evan Troxel (14:09):
Is it really a polarizing movie from that respect?
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Now let's get back to the conversation.
I.
Is it really a polarizingmovie from that respect?

Cormac Phalen (15:50):
in, in my opinion, it was kind of a tale of two movies,
the before and after intermission,because after intermission sort of
started to go off the rails a little.
Um, and I know that everybody'slike, was, it was definitely.
Beautifully filmed.
I mean, it's, you know, a, afantastically filmed movie.

(16:13):
And to be quite honest with you,I mean, um, I thought Nosferatu
was a beautifully filmed movie.
I mean, you know, just the, theway it was filmed and kind of
like the mood that it created.
And this one did

Evan Troxel (16:23):
about the cinematography, the lighting,
the
costumes, the settings,

Cormac Phalen (16:28):
Yes.
And, and, and this one kind of capturedthat, with the, the kind of didn't
have necessarily the flowy cape kindof architect, but it was still, you
felt, kind of like the presence of, him.
So Adrian Brody, I had no real, notesfor other than the fact that there was
some storylines and, and I don't knowhow much you want me to give away of
anything, you know.

Evan Troxel (16:49):
like, like, what do you think?
I mean, would, would this conversationbe better if we, if we just say spoilers?
Spoilers are going to

Cormac Phalen (16:57):
I could say, well, how about this?
They, they focused on so many differentaspects of his life, kind of like his
character, character flaws, his moralbehaviors and all of this other stuff.
But they were trying to frameit as the tortured artist.

(17:18):
But when it started tokind of go south for me.
And this was kind of like the conversationthat I was having with my son.
So I look over at my son at the veryend of the movie, at intermission,
we were both kind of like, okay, thisis not bad, you know, I mean, a few
things were a little off, but I mean,overall, you know, it's not bad.
At the end of the movie,he's like, gave me the

(17:39):
whole, you know, he totallygave me a thumbs down.
And I'm

Evan Troxel (17:43):
What about you?
What, what, what, what was your

Cormac Phalen (17:46):
I wasn't as harsh
until we started.
I was kind of floating in between.
I was with a little bit, southernmovement, but then as we started to
talk about it and then dissect, youknow, we, we do this all the time.
You know, we, we sitand we dissect movies.
like, you and I, so like I went tosee, you know, The Green Knight with

(18:07):
him and I came back and, as we werelike dissecting the movie, I came
back and I kind of told you, I waslike, oh, you got to see that movie.
It's, fantastic movie, beautifully done.
There's, interesting, metaphors, like thiswhole like thing was all about, whatever.
And if anybody wants to see it,I kind of suggest you go see it,

Evan Troxel (18:25):
The
Green Knight.
How do you spell knight?
I think this was an N IG H T or was it with a K?
But I can't remember.
Okay.
Okay.
So it's like the, the knightin shining armor, the green

Cormac Phalen (18:34):
Yeah.
Oh, absolutely.
Yes.
Yes.
And so.
we always do these, dissectionsof movies afterwards.
We sit there and talk about it.
In this one, we were having aconversation as we're driving home.
And I'm in, you know, ironicallyenough, as I'm like driving home,
I'm driving past, some Saarinenbuildings and things like that.
So like, I get to like, connect with, Oh,look, as I'm driving by, Oh, there's the,

(18:58):
uh, the GM design center by Saarinen.

Evan Troxel (19:01):
You're like, oh, oh,

Cormac Phalen (19:02):
you know, exactly.
And then, there are these interestingplot devices that they use to talk
about a narrative of his character orhis morals or his belief and his like
tortured, artists kind of, but it wasjust like, so odd how they did it.
Whereas, It was almost as if they said,his character flaw is this and explained

(19:27):
it rather than like show it and kindof like emotionally connect to it.
It was like these real quick,kind of like, and he's this
and he's this and he's this.
And you're like that for a three hourand 40 minute movie, you think you could
have like, told the story a little bitdifferently, a little bit better where

(19:47):
you felt connection with his torture,his pain, his kind of like agony of
art and all of these other things.
And it was just like, it might've justsaid on the script, um, Adrian, you
will say that you're a tortured artist.
I'm a tortured artist.
Like seriously, that's how you do it.
I mean, like it was just this, it was so.

(20:12):
as we started to dissect themovie, I kind of went, I started
to like it less and less.
I was
like, man,

Evan Troxel (20:19):
were
going to go the other way.

Cormac Phalen (20:21):
was like, I wanted to like the movie.
And as we started to talk about it, aswe were like, well, why did they do this?
You know what?
That's a good question.
Why did they do that?
Well, why did they do that?
and to be quite honestwith you, The building?
Eh, it's sort of shit.

Evan Troxel (20:40):
So,

Cormac Phalen (20:41):
kept seeing

Evan Troxel (20:41):
question, finish, finish this up.
But then I have
like a really, I

Cormac Phalen (20:46):
They kept showing this They kept showing this scene where you'd
go You'd basically go up this ramp thisbrutalist building, you'd go up this ramp.
So you're up above, grade level andyou'd go into the building, but you would
almost be, you, you're walking throughthis, I don't know if it was flooded

(21:06):
or whatever, but it was all filled withwater and all of the columns and stuff
were raw concrete and everything else.
And it just, it lookedunfinished, but it almost really
looked like the basement, not.
an elevated level and you're likewalking through and I just kept
saying, what, what's with the water?
Like, what's with the water?

(21:27):
I kept thinking in myhead, I'm like, really?
And

Evan Troxel (21:31):
this an artistic statement in the movie, do you

Cormac Phalen (21:33):
it, it could have been, it
wasn't

Evan Troxel (21:36):
you're not, yeah, maybe you're just not,

Cormac Phalen (21:39):
I might not be in tune with
the, with, you know, with what theywere saying, it's so interesting because
I am one who doesn't like to sit andread reviews ahead of time, and you and
I were talking about this beforehandand you were like, well, I've heard
sort of hit or miss reviews on it.
And my son heard hitor miss reviews on it.

(21:59):
I'm like, I don't really care,

Evan Troxel (22:00):
Well, so,
so here's, here's what I, here's whatI experienced, and I, I wanted to bring
this up, so I'm glad you, you said that.
I've actually heard people, and,and I didn't look at any content
about this, like reviews, I didnot look up actual critique of the,
of the movie by movie critics.
It was just people mostly postingon the EntreArchitect Facebook page

(22:23):
saying, did anybody see this movie?
And then I would see a comment.
As I was trying to scroll past it
because I didn't wantto know about the movie.
Um, and and the comment sayslike, I walked out on a movie or
I left at the intermission, or
I wish I could get thattime back in my life.
And, and this was not.
I don't want to give anybodythe idea that that was most of

(22:46):
the comments because it wasn't.
It was
just a few that stood out to me.
So I don't know kind of the general sense.
I'm, I, I'm getting a better sense from
you, but I wanted to bring that upbecause I'm just curious, like, could
you see why that would be the case?

Cormac Phalen (23:01):
oh yeah, yeah, I mean, as we were walking out,
actually, I did notice that therewere people who left at intermission.
Um, cause, you know, I look atit this way, I mean, not very
many, um, I watch good movies, badmovies, and everything in between.
I mean, I can actually beentertained by watching Birdemic.

(23:23):
Mostly because it's an absolutely absurdmovie, with horrible graphics, horrible
acting, and it's just absolute garbage.
However, It's kind of like, when you'redriving past a car wreck that you
just gotta stop and like stare at it.
Movies like that, I'm just like,eh, you know what, I'm gonna

(23:44):
give it, you know, Sharknado.
I've seen all the Sharknados.
They're horrible.
Acting is horrible and everything else.
And you look at them and you'relike, Wait, how did you have
this like very successful career?
This is where you landed.
But it almost became kind of a joke.
And then everybody was justlike, Oh, it's so terrible.
I want to be in that movie.

(24:04):
And so you got bigger and bigger actors.
in those movies.
And so, it just became kind of moreof like a joke than anything else.
Then, I feel like the first one sortof meant to be serious ish, maybe,
but then it went off the rails, butit went off the rails on purpose.

(24:26):
This one, I feel like They had a bag oftricks of like all sorts of different
plot devices to kind of tell the storyof this, tortured, artist, architect,
master, maestro, the star architect.
And instead of like, decidingon a few, they just said,

(24:47):
Oh, we're gonna use them all.
Like, you didn't have to, like, The waythat you told some of the, some of the
story was like sort of almost unnecessarythat you even showed that part.
You're like, he didn't have to do that.
Like.
And again, I don't, I don'treally want to throw out spoilers.

(25:09):
I hate throwing out spoilers.
Like, I never spoil a movie for somebodythat doesn't, hasn't already seen
it or is thinking about it, but youknow, the way that I'm talking about
it and kind of a slightly negative,like, is it slightly or pretty,
pretty knee deep into the, yeah,

Evan Troxel (25:26):
you're, but, but if you didn't like it, you didn't like it.
Like everybody

Cormac Phalen (25:29):
So it's, like I
said, it is a tale of two movies.
Before the intermission, Iactually was kind of enjoying it.
And if it would've kept that same kindof, feeling, it might've been okay.
Um, there was, there was one character,the, the son of the, um, you Guy Pearce

(25:52):
played basically the benefactor to him,kind of like found him, you know, he
was working is, this isn't that muchof a spoiler because it kind of like
shows it in some of the trailers, but,he was working non architectural, odd,
labor jobs and all that other stuff.
He found him and he said,You know, is this you?
You know, like you'rean amazing architect.

(26:12):
Why are you doing this?
And so, think that, you know, it'slike, oh, wow, he's got this, kind of
like rebirth of his career now thathe's this big time architect in Europe.
He flees Europe.
He comes to, um, America, thisis kind of in the post World
War II and, can't find work.
And honestly, we've heard thatstory a lot from, other architects.
And so that's why I said it was this kindof amalgamation of like multiple different

(26:36):
architects and multiple differentlike root stories of those architects.
And, and so, you're like, okay, I cansee where this is going and it's, kind
of a cool story and all this other stuff.
And then, intermission hits andthen you're like taking your
little break and you're stretchingand all this other stuff.
And then you kind of come back inand you sit down and you're like,
and then it just kind of goes weird.

(26:58):
Like, it just goes like, notweird in like, Oh, Like Dr.
Calgary, I can't even remember how topronounce it, but, or like Brasilia or,
you know, these, like the weird movies,like the belly of an architect, you
know, those kinds of movies, you know,I had, did you ever see any of those,

Evan Troxel (27:15):
saw, I saw Brazil.
Yeah.

Cormac Phalen (27:17):
Brazil.
Okay.
So yeah, Brazil, why did I say Brasilia?
I know what I was talking about,

Evan Troxel (27:22):
You know it.
I knew what you meant.
I knew what you meant.

Cormac Phalen (27:24):
wasn't like that.
It was just like.
Why,

Evan Troxel (27:28):
a Terry
Gilliam movie.
Yeah.

Cormac Phalen (27:30):
yeah, it was just like, why are you telling the story this way?
I see what you're trying to dowith the story, but this is a
really weird way of, telling it.
and it was kind of in, in a lot ofcases that was just unnecessary.
You didn't need this.
You really didn't need that.
And that's where it was really off puttingto a lot of people, and that's when I

(27:50):
started watching people walking out, iswhen they started doing these, what I
felt like were unnecessary plot devices.
That's when they were like,eh, I'm out, kind of thing.
And, my son wanted to see itto the end because as a student
in film studies, he wanted
to just kind of understandwhat was going on.
And he was, like I said, he was likevery critical about it at the end and,
you know, kind of our conversationabout like dissecting it, it was

(28:13):
a really good conversation aboutjust like, why did they do this?
Why did they do that?
I was looking at it kind of in anarchitectural manner and it's just like,
I want to see more about his struggleswith the client and, this other stuff and
kind of like trying to hold, true to the,root of his art And then he like brings
out the model and he sets the model out.
And I swear to you in myhead, I'm like, what is that?

(28:37):
Like,

Evan Troxel (28:40):
Okay, what do you mean?
What was wrong with

Cormac Phalen (28:42):
well, it was probably the most rudimentary model I'd ever seen.
And I'm talking about like, think aboutin architecture school when you're doing
a massing model and you're throwingtogether, like this big massing model
with hot glue and chipboard and allof this other stuff and you didn't
cut in your windows or anything else.

(29:05):
And he's just like that quality ofa, of a model just in white museum
board, kind of like threw it outthere and said, this is my creation.
And you're just looking atthe creation is like, dude.
Like, that is half baked at best.

Evan Troxel (29:23):
Here's what you said.
Yeah, that's when you get alooks good start over or it
was a first.
This, that was a good first pass.
Like that's a
polite way to say this.
This sucks.
This is

Cormac Phalen (29:32):
Or when you'd have like, one of my professors who'd like, while
he's sitting at your desk, he's lookingat your model and stuff, and then he
just starts looking around and you'relike, what are you looking around for?
He's like looking, and then he like,leans over, he picks something up
off the ground, and he kind of liketwists it, and bunches it up, and
he sits it on top of your model.
He's like, there, isn't that better?
Like.

Evan Troxel (29:54):
You just put

Cormac Phalen (29:54):
So you, so you looked for a garbage hat to put on the head
of my model to say that it was better.

Evan Troxel (30:02):
Oh my

Cormac Phalen (30:03):
That, I kind of wish that, you know,

Evan Troxel (30:07):
Could have done

Cormac Phalen (30:07):
Doug, yeah, my professor Doug Burleson would have,
was around to do that to that model.
I don't know if you remember this kindof like, little comedy skit that was
going around of the, Starkitect, theywould show like all of these different
clips and stuff.
And he'd like pick up agarbage can and he'd sit

Evan Troxel (30:24):
yes, he

Cormac Phalen (30:24):
Yeah, that was, that was, so think about that garbage can moment.
He's like, there, what do you think?
And like, he's presenting it in front ofthe town council and all this other stuff.
And the, I, I did kind of like,there was, there was moments where
you can really, as an architect,you can like, kind of associate with
like everything that he's feeling.

(30:46):
Cause like, people are like gobsmacked.
They're like, what the hell is that?
And you're just like, you don't know art.
how dare you?
It's just like, but then you'relooking at the model and you're
like, I, I, I get their reactions.

Evan Troxel (31:00):
so how important was it or why?
I mean, I don't know if you know thehistory of the writing of this movie.
I heard it took him quite along time to actually make this
movie, before they started doinglike the festival circuit stuff.
It was something like
seven years in the making, or maybethat was even just the writing period.
I don't even, I didn'tfollow it that closely.
Um, but

Cormac Phalen (31:19):
Maybe you should have had an intermission in between them.

Evan Troxel (31:22):
Yeah.

Cormac Phalen (31:24):
Go

Evan Troxel (31:24):
important was it?
Do you think that protagonistwas an architect and it was
kind of architecture related.
Like what,
what is it about this story that madethat the way that they decided to tell it?

Cormac Phalen (31:37):
it in a way to me felt like a modernist, brutalist, um,
retelling of the Fountainhead, the,

Evan Troxel (31:52):
I wonder if
they would, uh, agree with that.

Cormac Phalen (31:54):
they
probably wouldn't.

Evan Troxel (31:57):
Yeah.

Cormac Phalen (31:58):
But, if you think about Howard Rourke and his kind
of like stance of, it's my way tohighway, got fired multiple times,
career dip, all of this other stuff.
They kind of like had that same kindof, path for him for, for Adrian's
character that, um, you were just like.

(32:19):
can see the connections between this,the tortured architect, the people
just not understanding, what he'strying to accomplish and all that
other stuff and kind of this, I'llshow them kind of effect that, I'll
show you like, you know, the best thingthat you've ever seen, this emotional
experience and all of that other stuff.
And you may not get it when yousee it, but when you experience

(32:40):
it, it's going to be that.
If they played that a little bitbetter, kind of like that storyline.
To me, I think it would have, thesecond half of the movie, because
I feel like the first half of themovie before intermission was sort
of leading to that kind of like,all right, you just don't understand
me, I'll show you kind of thing.

(33:01):
And, and then, people are like,Oh my God, dude is, great.
we should have listened to himkind of thing, or, we should have
given him more credit or whatever.
It didn't go that direction.
It literally just kept him torturing.
And then, uh, here is a spoiler alert.
He, they basically use as a,

(33:26):
device to tell a story thatI feel was very unnecessary
of him being a heroin addict.
And Sorry if I'm ruining themovie for you this, but this was a
reoccurring, device that they wereusing to illustrate his torturedness.
And like, there's other ways of doingthat, that really kind of enhanced

(33:49):
the story of the tortured artistarchitect like I said, unappreciated
and misunderstood kind of like, thing.
Instead of just, showing him that, This isa way to deal with my pain kind of thing.
that's when it startedto go off the rails.
I'm like, you don't have to, I don't know.
I was being a little hypercritical and Iwas just like, I don't believe that this,

(34:12):
now I don't feel sorry for him anymore.
like I wanted to feel sorry for him, youknow, I wanted to like understand and
feel the pain because we all feel kind oflike the pain when somebody says, you're
like spending all night long working andworking and working and doing something.
And then somebody comes back.
Oh, that looks fine.
And you're like, uh, dagger to theheart, that really hurts, because
you, fine is like the death knell,word to me when you're like slaving

(34:36):
over something and somebody's like,eh, it's all right, kind of thing.

Evan Troxel (34:40):
Right.

Cormac Phalen (34:41):
Wanted them to play that kind of story because they were trying to
tell that story as the tortured artist,but they then told it, or it was just
like it started to become unappealing tome that his struggle was anything more
than a self inflicted wound of his ownego, it was just like, you know, now
he's a, I'm going to keep it clean so Idon't have to, uh, edit out some things.

(35:04):
But anyway, yeah.

Evan Troxel (35:06):
so why, why the brutalist?
Why brutalism?
What, what do you thinkthe, the, why, why did that

Cormac Phalen (35:13):
I think in a way that device of that particular type of
architecture, probably was again totry to like amplify the misunderstood,
the, the misunderstood artist.
And I, I truly, and soit worked and that was
a good part of it.
I just wish that they would haveplayed that a little bit more.

Evan Troxel (35:35):
did they explain brutalism at all
in the
movie?
Like if somebody went in not knowing whatthat meant, so they're not coming out
with any new information there.

Cormac Phalen (35:44):
Any non architect who didn't know what brutalism was, or
didn't understand, that, would havelooked at this building and basically
said, What the hell is that thing?
This big, massive, monstrous,kind of like sitting on top of a
hill, concrete, windowless form.

(36:04):
with these big, massive, towers andstuff on there, they would just look
at it and say, what the hell is this?
And I kinda don't necessarily thinkthat that was a bad thing because
the reaction to the work as he waspresenting it to the non architect
or the non like art appreciator.

(36:27):
was very much the same way aswhat you got from the audience.
And that actually worked well.
And I was okay with that.
Like the way that they did it, it was,it was kind of cool because again, it
was all about the, the misunderstanding,underappreciated, tortured artist, you
don't understand what I'm trying to do.
But people looked at Pollock'swork and they're just like, I

(36:50):
could do that, kind of thing.
I don't understand it.
You know, what the hell am I looking at?
Kind of thing.
And, that was kind of the intent ofnot really explaining the evolution of,
what brutalism is or things like that.
And so, you know, they showed.
Like some of his early work and theyshowed him being an architect from the
Bauhaus, they showed very Bauhausiankind of like work that was in Europe.

(37:13):
And, when he was building furniture andstuff, he was doing very Bauhausian,
like the Vasili chair, and things likethat, that was like his creations or,
or where this was that kind of work.
And so, they showed that that modernis kind of like, you know, early works.
And if you think about it, like, it'sinteresting, like, if you use Breuer

(37:33):
as a good example, you know, becausethey kind of used him as an example
of, you know, like how, how he sort ofI mean, Breuer's known as a brutalist.
I, I live in a town that has alibrary done by, Marcel Breuer.
And, uh, it is nowhere near brutalist.
It is modernist to modernist hilt.

(37:54):
It is brick.
It is big glass.
It is a Calder sculpture that wasbuilt for that particular space.
It is amazing.
I love it.
It, you know, it's, it's, it's notlike, anything to write home about.
It's a good, competent, very nicemodernist building done by Marcel Breuer.
But you don't think of him that way.
You think of him as a brutalist in.

(38:14):
Okay.
so like, we don't really know what,was he following the, the fashion?
of other architects?
I mean, because you don't eventhink, like, there's, there's.
I Sa we think about all these differentthings, but he was brutalist, he did
a lot of brutalist buildings, Khan,all these other ones, you look at
their early work in the transition.
So, you know, I'm going off on alittle tangent here, but you see

(38:37):
what I'm saying is like, you don'treally see that kind of like, the
evolution of, like, why theywent from, it didn't define it.
Right.
And so I, I think this one was justhis way of, like, capturing an emotion,
capturing, this overall feelingand the way that he explained it,
I was excited to see the building.
and they never really kind of like showedyou those, few things, except for, at the

(39:00):
end, they were talking about this very,not at the end, but, kind of nearing
the, completion of the building, there issome events that happened and then they
went into the building and kind of likethis center space where, the skylight
was coming through and shining down on,a focal point and, beautifully done.
Beautifully, filmed, cinema, photographywas great staging, lighting, all

(39:21):
of that stuff was like, well done.
And it kind of like capturedthe emotion that he was trying
to go for with the building.
and so I don't necessarily think,from a positive view, I don't really
necessarily think they needed like allof the architecture to really kind of
like talk about this tortured architect.
Um, I just think that some of thethings that they use to, depict him as

(39:45):
the tortured architect were either Tooquickly done and resolved that, you
wanted it to kind of be pulled out.
Yes, it was a three hour and 40 minutelong movie, but maybe you could have
made some choices of not showing somethings and showing other things that kind
of stretch them out a little bit more.
So you understood the pain,the agony of like the desire

(40:06):
to create and things like that.
When you just didn't, Get satisfied, thesatisfaction of resolution on like all of
the things, cause they had a big old boxof like a bunch of things in his head.
And instead of like, editing itout, he just threw it all in there.
And you're just like, eh, it'd haveto, it's like, you think about us

(40:29):
when we go through our process, whenwe like got 1, 001 different ideas,
but of course you're not going topresent 1, 001 ideas to the client.
You got to edit down.
And I, I feel like he sort of missed thatmemo about editing down all of his ideas.

Evan Troxel (40:46):
I, don't get to go out to the movies that often, but I just
re watched, uh, the other night.
We, we did watch a movie andwe watched Inception again.

Cormac Phalen (40:55):
Nah.

Evan Troxel (40:56):
And that has got to be, to me, one of the best movies ever made.
And it's, it's just absolutelyso detailed and incredible, and
there's so much depth to it.
And I mean, it's a longer movie.
It's not that long.
There's no intermission.
and I imagine that, that, that, Like,to get to the level of that has got to

(41:18):
be really difficult, to get to that kind
of level of being able to crafta story, put it on a big screen,
make an incredible score, have anincredible cast, all those things.
Like,
this is not your first movie, and I'mpretty sure that the movie that you're
talking about is probably not thatwriter, director's first movie either.
Do you know any of, of thatperson, of his history?

Cormac Phalen (41:40):
I, I don't, my son was telling me a couple of movies that
this, director has done before andI, and I wasn't familiar with them
and he's seen them.
and that's why he was somewhat,disappointed in, these other movies
that he's done were actually somuch better than, than this one.

Evan Troxel (41:58):
But
he talked about this as
if it was like his life's work.
Like, this was
really a pinnacle movie for him.
Yeah.
Yeah.

Cormac Phalen (42:05):
Well, I mean, one of the things that, since you bring up
Inception, you know, one of the thingsthat's really interesting about Chris
Nolan and his work is, is that he'sgot an idea, and it's the big idea.
And he, world builds around that idea, buteverything is there to support the idea.
And it doesn't really distractfrom or take away from kind

(42:27):
of like that, goal, that
main

Evan Troxel (42:29):
the parti diagram.
Yeah.

Cormac Phalen (42:30):
Exactly.
And it's just like, everything thatyou do is in support of that idea.
and if it doesn't support,or if it's confusing to it,
then it's kind of pointless.
And so he is a master at editingout the pointless thoughts,
about what's next and stuff.
I mean, I've grown an appreciation forInception that when I first saw it.

(42:54):
And I didn't like the movie, but thenagain, I'm not a big fan of, the lead
actor in the movie, um, and, kind ofshy away from a lot of his movies but
then, as he gets older, his acting isless contrived, in my opinion, and, more
it's like, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, he's,he's, he's evolved, he's gotten better,
not very many people share my opinionabout that, so it's just like, I've

(43:19):
shied away from a lot of those movies,but then, you and I've talked about this
and my initial disdain for inception.
And, then he, he, I think you chastisedme once for, he said, Oh, you got to give
it another shot or something like that.
Can't recall.
And I did.
and, and it is.
It is a beautifully done,interesting movie, I still have

Evan Troxel (43:39):
not going to, you're not saying
it's the best movie ever made.

Cormac Phalen (43:42):
I still have issues with DiCaprio, but whatever, like, but, other
than that, though, it's an amazing movie.
It is, there's no holes in it though.
And that's the big difference betweensay that and, the Brutalist is that,
or at least to me, I understood what Ithought was the big idea of the movie.

(44:03):
And the problem that I had is that Icouldn't see some of the things that he
used to tell the story of that big idea.
Like, were even, therewas like no point to them.
There was like, you know, they,they didn't support the story.
They just, they were distractionsor they were superfluous.
And this was like.
You don't need that.
Like, that wasn't, like,that wasn't necessary.

(44:25):
Like, that doesn't tell the storyor doesn't support the story.
And you're just like, I mean,but that was, again, me.
And, in here, okay, so this issomething that's kind of interesting
is, When I, last semester when I wasteaching, the students about how to,
work on their final presentation,I said, you control the narrative.

(44:48):
Everything that you createin your presentations has
to support that narrative.
If you feel like, it's kind of likegoing off, in one direction or another,
and you've got these tangents goingon, Chop them off, get rid of them.
Don't tell that story.
Tell the story that you're trying to tell.
Don't do anything more.

(45:10):
This movie did that.
They tried to do too much to tell,just like, but this and this, but also
this, don't forget this, kind of thing.
You're just like, dude, stop enough.
you know, it's like theshiny red ball squirrel,

Evan Troxel (45:23):
that's the difference.
Yeah.
And that's the difference betweenlike trying to be clever and
show.
Everybody, everything, beatingthem over the head with all
the tricks that you know.
Versus clarity, right?
Clarity is the, is the opposite of that.

Cormac Phalen (45:37):
and it's, it's like some, some star architects
that kind of do that as well.
it's just like, sometimes I kindof critically say, Oh, look, it's
gimmicky architecture because, I'mtrying all the tricks in my bag.
And you're like, you I seewhat you were trying to do.
It's just, it's really weirdhow you got there and all of the
stuff that's, is supporting it.
It's just like, that's,that, that's not needed.

(45:58):
That's not necessary,

Evan Troxel (46:00):
Well, you're also, you're also a very practical
project architect, Cormac.
I mean, you, you don't like
flair.
You don't like flair.
I, I know you.

Cormac Phalen (46:09):
I, I like cleanliness.
I like clarity.

Evan Troxel (46:13):
do.
No, that's fine.
That's
fine.
So I'm interested to, I, I, I feel likeI have to check this movie out and then
we have to,
we have to, we have to chat again.

Cormac Phalen (46:22):
We get, we've got to revisit this.
I, I, I, I'd love for you to watchit and just, have that, honestly,

Evan Troxel (46:28):
not making me feel good about wanting to watch it, just so

Cormac Phalen (46:30):
No, no, no, no, no,
no.
Well, that

Evan Troxel (46:33):
like
I feel like this is mandatoryhomework at this point.
Right.

Cormac Phalen (46:41):
fine.
I'll, I'll do this.

Evan Troxel (46:43):
Yes.

Cormac Phalen (46:45):
um,
I got done with the Corb book.

Evan Troxel (46:48):
Oh,
Yeah.

Cormac Phalen (46:49):
He, he didn't, he didn't endear himself to me,

Evan Troxel (46:53):
It didn't come back.
He didn't,
the, the phoenix
did not rise from the ashes that
were created.

Cormac Phalen (46:59):
what is, okay.
So what, what is really interesting?
Let's, real quick,

Evan Troxel (47:04):
Let's put a, let's put the final nail in this coffin.
Yes.

Cormac Phalen (47:08):
I think honestly his magnum opus, if we're going to talk about, those
kinds of things is Chandigarh and thecity planning and all of that other stuff.
It is interesting.
However, like if you think aboutlike how he designed it and how
you think about urban and communityplanning as it's evolved since then.

(47:31):
there's some really interesting,beautiful architecture in there, but
it, as a whole, It is almost a Pollockpainting, in a way it's there's a lot
going on here and there's not a lotof clarity to like this whole thing.
But his whole desire was this,straight grid clarity, telling
the story of pure, clean modernismand all of this other stuff.

(47:54):
And it just didn't.
in my opinion, come out that way,like he tried to, he was, it was
another one of those, like I triedevery trick in the, in my, toolbox
of here's everything that I know, andI'm going to throw it right at it.
It was just like, muchlike the Brutalist movie.
You're almost like, why man?

(48:16):
Why?
Like, Too much.
And again,

Evan Troxel (48:19):
too hard.

Cormac Phalen (48:20):
and again, Pierre.
Pierre's the hero, man.
Pierre is what, like, there needsto be somebody who, dedicates, some
deep academic study on Pierre andhis role in the success of Corb.

(48:42):
Because if it was not for him, Man,I don't think you'd have the same, I
don't think you'd have the same kindof like, academic impression of Corb.
Because, that guy, he, heknew what he was doing.

Evan Troxel (49:00):
that was the actual guy.
Yeah.

Cormac Phalen (49:01):
And he wasn't a fascist.
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Crime Junkie

Crime Junkie

Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.

24/7 News: The Latest

24/7 News: The Latest

The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.

Stuff You Should Know

Stuff You Should Know

If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.

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