Episode 622: The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970)

Episode Transcript
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(00:05):
Old years, folks. It shouldtie people fake good money to see this
movie. When they go out toa theater. They want cold sodas in
a hot popcorn and no monsters inthe projection booth. Everyone for ten podcasting
isn't boring? Turn it off.Billy Wilder, the man who gave you

(00:42):
the Apartment and some like it Hotnow reveals of the private life of Sherlock
Holmes. Doctor Watson, in hislifetime, recorded some sixty cases demonstrating the
singular gift of his friend Sherlock Holmes. But there were other adventures which,
for reasons of discretion, were withheldfrom the public, adventures which involve matters

(01:03):
of a delegate and sometimes scandalous nature. The private life of Sherlock Holmes was
anything but elementary. I dear Sherlock. There are certain affairs that do not
come within the profits of the privatedetective. The public has a right to

(01:27):
know these things. Sherlock Holmes wasa man of curious habits and eccentric tastes.
Aren't you ashamed of your summer,Faraday? But this will take care
of it. And not always whathe seemed to be. You have described
me as six foot fowards and barelysix foot fow moll euss you are short

(01:49):
of then, she thought them,Oh, I didn't mean to be I
hope by not being presumptuous. Butthere haven't been women in your life,
and they would never find I foundher body quite rewarded, especially the palm
of her right hair. Midget.What is it indeed that feeds on canary

(02:15):
birds and sulf puric acid and hasan engine for a hard open the door,
Sherlock. When I said drop thiscase, it's not merely a suggestion,
it was an order by whose authority, by the authority of Her Majesty's
government. Hot, you better takethis with your Your client isn't Madame Valador.

(02:50):
It's the Imperial German government. Givethem. Still, he's getting close
out and close sighing. It tooka genius to cover up Sherlock holmes vices,

(03:14):
blunders and bizarre tastes. Sherlock Holmeswas a genius. The private life
of Sherlock Holmes was anything but elementary. Welcome to the Projection booth, I'm

(03:47):
your host, Mike White joined meonce again. Is mister Aaron Peterson.
Hey, I'm glad to be back, especially about Sherlock Holmes, also joining
us as mister David McGregor. I'mdelighted to be here. Thanks for inviting
me. The game is afoot aswe kick off a month looking at four
films featuring Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's consultingdetective Sherlock Holmes, one of the most

(04:10):
adaptive characters in the history of cinema. We've all grown up with a variety
of actors and interpretations of homes.In this series, we are looking at
four films from the nineteen seventies,and in this episode we are discussing Billy
Wilder's nineteen seventy film The Private Lifeof Sherlock Holmes. The film stars Robert
Stevens as Holmes and Colin Blakeley asWatson, along with Christopher Lee as Microft

(04:34):
Holmes and Geraldine Page as the mysteriousGabrielle Valadon. We will be spoiling this
film as we go along, soif you don't want anything ruined, please
go ahead and turn off the podcast, watch the movie, and then come
on back. We'll still be here. So, David, when was the
first time we saw The Private Lifeof Sherlock Holmes and what did you think

(04:56):
it would have been? I can'ttell you, for sir. My exposure
to Sherlock Holmes was I had readthe stories. My brother and I had
a habit of going to book salesthat on the last day of the sale
they would have bag day. Youcould buy a grocery bagup books for a
dollar, or we would just throwthem in everything that looked promising. And
one of those books was the CompleteSherlock Holmes. So I'd read the stories,

(05:19):
and I'd watched the Basil Rathbone films. Not that I'm that old,
but you know, Universal Pictures soldall of those films to TV in the
nineteen fifties and they were a stapleon various stations, usually late at night.
And so I read the stories,I watched the Basil Rathbone films,

(05:39):
and that was about it up untilnineteen eighty four, when there was a
British TV company called Grenada who cameout with a Sherlock Holmes series featuring Jeremy
Brett as Sherlock Holmes, and theirgoal was, we are going to do
the definitive adaptation. We're going tobe faithful to the stories, faithful to
the period, and I started watchingLows and I thought that they were just

(06:01):
amazing. They were just terrific,especially the first couple of seasons, and
I thought, well, I shouldcheck out other versions of this. There's
films, there's TV shows, andso at some point in the late eighties
or early nineties, I watched ThePrivate Life of Sherlock Holmes, and I
think because I'd watched Rathbone and I'dwatched Brett, I was really underwhelmed.

(06:25):
I knew it was a Billy Wilderfilm. I liked a lot of the
music. I liked a lot ofthe cinematography. But Robert Stevens as Sherlock
Holmes was nothing like rath Bone,nothing like Jeremy Brett. Not remotely heroic.
You know, he's not that bright, he's not that athletic, he's
not impressive really in any way.He starts the film taking injections of cocaine

(06:47):
to deal with reality. He endsthe film the same way, and he's
more anti heroic. He's kind ofa pathetic, disillusioned version of Sherlock Holmes.
So I liked a lot of thefilm, but you know, for
me, a lot of any whomstory play, TV show, movies stands
on Sherlock Holmes and Watson and therelationship between the two, and I was,

(07:09):
as I said, not real impressedat my you know, my first
impression. And Aaron, how aboutyourself, Well, we grew up poor
speading very much. But the moviesand books that's about all I had and
I love. For some reason,when I was young, I always had
a knack for putting together solutions,like figuring out who'd done it and whatever.
I was reading whenever I was watching. And my mom was an avid

(07:31):
reader, and so she insisted thatif you're gonna watch mysteries, you should
at least check out the most formidable, you know, the detective in all
of fiction, which was Sherlock Holmes. And I think the first book I
read was Adventures of Sherlock Holmes,and then I started I went back to
the original, which was studying Scarlet, if I remember right, And there's
there's something about the way the characterwas portrayed that really just caught my eye.

(07:55):
I mean, he was such agenius but also kind of dickish and
also and this best friend that youknow, I mean, throughout the many
many books, I'm like, what'sgoing on? With this friendship because there
there were definitely times where you wonder, and this movie definitely touches on it.
And then I got obsessed with thefilm versions of it and just every
iteration of it as a rathbone ofcourse is in there. I mean,

(08:16):
Nigel Bruce. They were a greatcombination, but there were so many other
wonderful combinations. And this movie isone that was like off my radar for
a long time because, you know, when I was coming up in my
obsession where Sherlock Holmes was the eightieshard to find, you know, early
seventies films like this, because it'svery much a it's a very unique take

(08:37):
on Sherlock Holmes. It's not reallythe standard great mystery and really Sherlock is
just there for the mystery. He'sreally the character of this one. It
was an interesting take and I likedit. It's definitely not like I wouldn't
put it at the top, butI wouldn't put it at the bottom either.
It's it's very good. It's justa very different take on Sherlock Holmes.

(08:58):
And I saw it eventually and thennineties somewhere, and I don't have
no idea where I saw it.I just remember I hunted it down Finland.
I was able to watch it.Yeah, this was a new one
for me. I had heard aboutthis title for years. I mean,
being a Billy Wilder fan, Ikind of came to it from that.
But then also, like I saidat the beginning, we all grew up
with Sherlock Holmes, whether you arereally aware of him or not. And

(09:22):
I really wasn't aware of him thatmuch. I kind of knew, you
know, the Basil Rathbone films,and I imagine every single person that's just
like, oh wow, there's awhole clud of Sherlock Holmes movies that are
all coming out right now. Youcould say that right now and look at
things like Enla Holmes or a fewyears ago, we had the Johnny the

(09:43):
Miller TV show, which may ormay not still be going, who knows.
I think it's okay. We hadthe BBC Sherlock, which was kind
of the head to head. Therewas the Korean or Japanese show Sherlock.
I mean there's just always there's alwaysSherlock Holmes. There's always that. But
me growing up in the seventies,I was just like, oh yeah,
like Adventures of Sherlock Holmes smarter Brother, the seven Percent Solution, just that

(10:07):
felt like there was always Sherlock Holmesin the air watching this one. I
can really see how it informed theBBC Sherlock, the Stephen moffat Sherlock,
because I mean that relationship between thetwo men that you were talking about,
and I'm sure that's in other thingsas well, but there were a lot
of things where I was just like, oh, yeah, I remember this

(10:28):
in Sherlock. I remember seeing BenedictCumberbatch do almost the exact same thing,
and I think he portrays Sherlock inmuch the same way. That kind of
antisocial, kind of a weak solacetype of guy. He's not really a
hero. I don't see him jumpingacross Rik and back full falls or something,
and just like you know, havingfistic hous from people. He feels

(10:52):
a little bit like a whimp.A smart but just a little off.
And you can see white people wouldn'tnecessarily like him. I wouldn't call a
limp, but he definitely doesn't pursuea fight, you know, he's thinking
of the more intelligent way to getout of one. Is kind of how
I would look at it. ButI could see how you can see it
that way. I would say cumbertBatch is way more in the heroic spectrum.

(11:15):
He's too cool than Robert Stevens.I mean, Cumberbatch is. He's
beautiful, he's got the hero coat, he's got the hero hairstyle. They
shoot him from low angles on manyoccasions. He is an object of desire
her especially in the first two seasons. He is distinctly heroic. He's brilliant.

(11:37):
I mean, how Cumberbatch memorized someof the speeches that he's given and
rattled them off at machine gun speedwas incredible. His relationship with Watson,
it's more friendship. He depends onhim, They depend on one another.
Robert Stevens, he just kind offloats through this. It's a very effeminate
betrayal of Sherlock. Holm's very languewith it's his brother Microft as played by

(12:03):
Christopher Lee, who's the real smartone. You don't get that with Cumberbatch,
especially in the first two seasons.He's the man in charge. He
is definitely the hero. There's areason that that show took off the way
it did. I mean, BenedetCumberbatch. When that show premiered in two
thousand tons. He went to bedone night being a well regarded character actor
and the next morning he had becomea pop culturist in station and that was

(12:26):
due to one show. And theyhad prepped it really well, you know,
they had kind of primed the pumpon the internet and with other forms
of media. But the reaction,visceral reaction to his first performance at Sherlock
Holmes was exceptional and rightly deserved aswell. It's just such a disappointment as

(12:46):
to what that show became. Ohgod, yeah, those first two seasons.
I totally agree with you, reallygood. The introduction of Moriarty,
Oh my god. Andrew Stevens,I think as a gentleman's right, just
amazing. Loved his portrayal of Moriartyand just that whole episode and especially the

(13:07):
reveal around the pool and all that. So good. Once Moriarty dies,
the show dies. And I don'tknow why there has to be more to
Sherlock Holmes than just Moriarty. Imean, Moriarty does not show up in
Private Life for Sherlock Holmes. Moriartywon't show up in some of these other
films, probably this month. Butit can be more than just Moriarty's nemesis.

(13:33):
You know, there's got to bea little bit more to that,
and that the whole show is justlike, Okay, well here's this amazing
character. We kill him off,and now we're going to find some way
to bring back the dead person.But that was awful. That was awful.
Oh yeah, it was terrible.At one point, Mark Gatis,
one of the producers and the guythat played Microft in the show, he

(13:58):
literally said, we can do that. Think we realized we can do anything
we want. Once you get tothat level of hubrists, you're kind of
doomed. They went heavily in thefan service direction. They realized that the
preponderance of their audience was female,and so they amped up the roles of
the female characters. They gave Watson'swife all of a sudden, she's a

(14:20):
CIA agent with a you know,amazing set of super skills. Missus Hudson
is driving her Aston Martin at youknow rocket speeds down the road, and
you know, Holmes and Watson theyend up just kind of bubbled in and
holding each other and having a cuddle. And yeah, it was nothing like
the first two seasons. And ifyou can even look at the ratings of
the last season, they just crashed. They crashed and burned, and they

(14:45):
were I mean some people, obviouslyyou know, they liked it, but
by and large, for you know, people like that like Sherlock Holmes,
it was real disappointment the wind theseries ended doing even the thing with Gabriel
Valadon in this movie and I'm jumpingall the way to the again right now
and we'll come back dress me jumpingall the way through the end. When
he gets the letter and says,oh, she was captured in Japan and

(15:09):
executed, I'm just like, oh, well, that's Irene Adler in Sherlock,
the BBC Sherlock. It's like,you know, she was caught,
she was captured, but then theyhave that weird thing where it's like,
no, no, Sherlock actually savedher and she's still out there someplace,
And I'm like, okay, thereare so many things that while I was
watching this movie, I was justlike, oh, yeah, yeah,
they really they just stole that outright, or just you know, took

(15:31):
things. And I know that thereare a lot of things that are Sherlock
Holmes more that they definitely played withon the BBC show, and they're definitely
doing it in this as well.I mean the whole thing when they Holmes
is bored and he's trying to figureout what he wants to do next.
There's no challenging cases to him,and then you get the you know,

(15:52):
somebody reads something in a newspaper oryou get a letter. I think it's
a newspaper in this one where it'sthe six little people little men are missing,
and I'm just like, Okay,well that's going to come back later
on. You know that always comesback later on, and so it's like,
I don't know if that happens inevery home story. Where's that there's
that kind of introduction of a potentialmystery that just disappears for a while and

(16:17):
then comes back at the end.But that's definitely something I've seen in the
movies and in the TV series.You know, I grew up reading them
more than watching them, and thenI kind of got into watching them after
that. Stephen King books and whatnot, ones that have read or Dean Comes
or any of that stuff. Youknow, when I go watch those movies,
I can remember big details from thebooks because there haven't been that many
remakes when I go watch Sherlock Holmes. At this point, there's so much,

(16:41):
it's so blended together. I've seenpeople argue over this that never happened
in the books. I don't know. I'm like, yes, it did,
absolutely, and I don't know.I don't honestly, I can't remember
if it wasn't the books or not. At this point, because there's been
so many I think Sherlock is themost news character in film outside of Dracula
or something. That's why it justall blends. And I read all those

(17:02):
books, but still, because there'sso much on movies and TV, it
blends after a while. I thinkyou could make the argument that Sherlock Holmes
is the most successful fictional character ever. I mean, unless you want to
throw Santa Claus into the Knicks.There's been any number of plays and pastiches
and movies and TV shows. Theone that's most faithful was the Granada series.

(17:25):
The first two seasons, Jeremy Brettliterally walked around the set with a
bible, a Sherlock Holmes Bible,and objected to any variations and dialogue.
If you look at the series,they meticulously they tried to frame some of
the shots based on illustrations from theoriginal stories. Yeah, it was done

(17:47):
by the producer. The original producerof that series was a guy named Michael
Pox, who with Jeremy Brett,said we're going to do Sherlock Holmes by
the book. And that kind ofslipped away once Jeremy Brett became ill,
he was bipolar, he had ahard condition that he gained weight, and
Michael Cox gave way to a differentproducer and the series kind of lost its

(18:08):
way a little bit. But initiallythat's as close as you're going to get
of faithful adaptations of the original ArthurCondol stories. We're definitely going to be
talking about the seven percent solution lateron this month. And I found it
interesting that the Nicholas Meyer books dothe same thing that Wilder and Aile Diamond

(18:30):
are doing in this movie, andI'm sure where I'm probably sure that it
had been done before. This wholeidea of oh, there are all of
these other Watson stories that you areunfamiliar with. This movie opens with this
idea of having an old trunk.You don't necessarily see the details when we'll
talk about those details around it ina bit here, But this old trunk,

(18:53):
and it's got all of the ephemera, all of those things that you
think of when you think of SherlockHolm. So you've got the deer Stalker
cab, you've got the magnifying glass. You even have a number of the
house. Two to one B isin the I don't know why he took
that off of the door to thehouse, but that's in the trunk as
well. Just all of these thingswhere you're just like, oh, yeah,

(19:15):
this is Sherlock Holmes. These areall the trappings of Sherlock Holmes.
And there's a manuscript of all ofthese things that Watson didn't feel comfortable with
releasing at that time. But herewe are fifty years later and now we
can release all of these details andtalk about these other cases that Sherlock Holmes
was on. That's pretty much thesame thing that Nicholas Meyer is going to

(19:37):
be doing it in just a littlebit here when it comes to the seven
percent solution where it's like, oh, yeah, no, here's this lost
manuscript. And I like with theNicholas Meyer books that each one has a
different way of where was this manuscript? You know, like each one is
based on this and I like howMeyer will also do and I know I'm
jumping ahead to Nicholas Meyer episode,but just the whole thing of like,

(20:00):
oh, well, you know,there are weird americanisms and all this,
and that's the fault of Nicholas Meyer. That's not the fault of these manuscripts,
you know, just how he covershis bases with that. But in
here we have this manuscript that hasoriginally four chapters to this major manuscript,
but what we see in the Finnishversion is kind of like one and a

(20:22):
half of those chapters. And itwas interesting the way they paired it down
because I couldn't believe the first timeI found the script for Private Life of
Sherlock Holmes and I'm like, twohundred and sixty pages? What are you
talking about? This movie is nottwo hundred and sixty minutes long. That's
ridiculous. And then I start readingand I'm like, wow, the first

(20:48):
fifty six pages of this, ifnot more, there's maybe three pages that
are in the beginning of this movie, and all the rest of it is
on the cutting room floor, likeliterally on the cutting room floor. It
was all shot, but it wasnowhere to be found. And the extras
on this disc are remarkable to see. This scene has audio but no visuals.

(21:12):
This scene has visuals by no audio. This one just exists, as
you know stills. But there areso many parts of this movie that they
just lopped out to get it downto this running time. For better or
for worse. I think there aresome things that are in those deleted scenes
that were pretty quaint. But atthe same time, it's like two hundred

(21:33):
and sixteen minutes. They probably wouldhave had to have at least an intermission,
if not two, because this thingjust went on forever. But what
they ended up cutting and the waythat they pieced this together still feels a
little rocky, where you have thatopening with the Russian ballet or you've gotten
that, and then you go intothe main story and it just feels a

(21:56):
little like, what is this?What is this Russian ballet stuff? This
doesn't really fit other than to introducethe idea of Holmes bringing up oh no,
sorry, Russian ballerina, beautiful lady, I can't be your service,
stud I'm actually gay, and sois Watson, and we lift Heather and

(22:18):
I love the moment when we seeWatson dancing with all of these beautiful women,
and then the way that they changeout the dancers. So by the
end he's dancing with all of thesemen and he's facing one way, they're
facing the other, and he finallylooks and notices that was very nice.
That's definitely a good Billy Wilder touch. Well, I should not because you
brought it up. The so calledunwritten Sherlock Holme cases. That's Arthur Conan

(22:45):
Doyle. I mean, he putthat in the original stories. He has
Watson throwing asides the giant rat andSumatra, a story for which the world
is not yet prepared, Ricoletti ofthe club Foot and his abominable wife,
and so yeah, that's red meatto people like Nicholas Meyer, or to
this film, or to the threeplays that I wrote. You know,

(23:07):
I put aspects of the stories andthen I just embellished them into a new
tale. So it's in there inthe original material because Arthur Knonduel was smart
guy. He knew what he wasdoing. You see, were so many
writers taking leap from that. Evenstill Ryan Johnson, I mean, when
he writes a mystery, he's verymuch going off the bones of Sherlock Holmes,
even if he doesn't want to admitit. Oh yeah, Ben wave

(23:30):
Blanc is definitely a very here inHolmes territory. And then even that little
kind of like Lizy gay, ishe that gay where you have Hugh Grant
show up in the in the GlassOnion movie. Well, I can tell
you at the time when it cameout in nineteen seventy, this this whole
the intonation, oh Sherlock Holmes isgay, that was not well received by

(23:53):
a lot of people in the Sherlockianfandom. In nineteen seventy according to the
Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,homosexuality he was still a mental illness.
It was not removed until nineteen seventyfour. The Stonewall riots in New York
had taken place in nineteen sixty nine. There was really just a burgeoning gay

(24:15):
rights movement. And in the reviews, some of the reviews and certainly some
of the comments by Sharlockians, theydescribe Sherlock Holmes in the film as they're
making him a sex pervert. He'sa degenerate. This is appalling, this
is a revolting and you know,certainly from our twenty twenty three perspective.
You look back on that and youknow, he kind of wins a little

(24:36):
bit because it's so unfeeling and youknow, just kind of in humane too,
But that was the general tenor ofthe time that you know, being
homosexual. That was wild. There'soriginal attempt when he thought about this,
he thought, I'm going to makeSharlock Holmes gay, and that explains his
drug addiction. And if he hadrun with that, it would not have
been as well received as it wasin nineteen seventy. It would be a

(24:57):
lot better received now. And sohe just kind of he just kind of
fudged with it. It's like,yeah, he has no one just kidding.
Didn't It became more like junior highschool kids looking through a dictionary for
dirty words and giggling and it youknow, certainly from a modern sensibility,
it kind of leaves a bad tastein your mouth. To watch the Wait
on Folds would I would argue he'smore by than anything, and honestly,

(25:19):
he's kind of flirting with homosexuality.I don't know. I don't think this
movie paints him in a quarter orput it that way. I feel like
by the end of the movie,he's it's very open as to where his
inclinations lie. I agree, Idon't feel like he's really oh yeah,
Sherlock is gay, that's it,or even Sherlock is by. He definitely

(25:41):
falls for the woman in this film. And then you get the one scene
that they cut out that he tellsher when they're on the train together,
this whole thing about when he wasin college at Oxford I think it was,
and he is part of a rowingteam and they have this whole lottery
as far as if we win thisgame, we'll have this lottery or whatever

(26:03):
regatta sorry and bla, this lotteryand whoever wins, we're going to pay
for prostitute. And he had beenenamored with this beautiful girl and he goes
to see this prostitute and it turnsout to be this girl and that kind
of breaks his heart and me justyou know, I don't trust women,
And it becomes this whole thing offI don't trust women now like I don't
like women, I just don't trustthem. And then he seems to fall

(26:26):
for Gabrielle and everything seems to beokay. But yeah, I agree that
it almost feels like no, no, like it feels like they want their
cake and eat it too, asfar as like, no, no,
he really isn't gay. Here's thislady that he's really falling for and now
he trusts women again. But eventhough she really deceives him, it's like,

(26:49):
Okay, which way are you goingwith this? I feel like they
were toying with it. It wasbasically like, let's let's creep up to
the line we want to we don'twant to go too far. It back
when it matters most, and that'sreally what they do in the film.
They pull it back well in theoriginal stories. In the first short story
of Scandal in Bohemia, Sherlock Holmesis outwitted by Irene Adler and thereafter simply

(27:12):
refers to her as the woman andwere many people that's enough, Okay,
he was smitten with this woman thatwas just as brilliant as he was in
other stories. He says flat out, I am not a wholehearted admirer of
womenkind, and he also says womenare not to be trusted, not the
best of them. So he doescome across says just a wee bit misogynistic,

(27:36):
but that gets played with and changedas down through the years, different
people adapting the stories have gone atdifferent directions. I watched a lot of
the Johnny leege Miller TV Show becausemy wife like, all right, yeah,
I was not a big fan.My wife liked it a lot,
but that was interesting that they changedWatson to woman to Lucy lew and that.

(27:57):
So you've got a gender swap ina racial swap, plus the idea
of them being in New York andliving in this brown stone together, and
of course it's at how will theywon't they think throughout the entire series,
very much like you know, Bonesor Moonlighting or one of those things where
it's like, Okay, if thesetwo ever get come together, the show's

(28:17):
probably going to suffer. So howare we going to handle this? But
we always have to keep this wellthey won't they think? Going on.
That's the most romantic that I seeHolmes and Watson, I really did.
Haven't seen them be that romantic inother cases where it is two men playing
the roles. Well, the difference. I mean the BBC's Sherlock that was

(28:37):
created by two self confessed fanboys ofSherlock Holmes. They love, eat,
and breathe Sherlock Holmes and the firsttwo seasons. That's evident. Elementary was
more kind of calculated for by theproducers. We want to create a police
procedural that will be watched by peoplewho watch CBS, and they created a

(29:00):
police procedural and then they kind oflayered over and say at Sherlock Holmes from
the shrlocke in community. It neverhad quite the buy in and quite the
investment that the original episodes of Srlockbit and certainly not the original investment that
people had in the Jeremy Brett series. It was considered, I mean,
it was very successful. Elementary ranfor seven seasons. I know, they

(29:22):
had like one hundred and fifty fourepisodes. Nobody has played Shrlock Holmes more
than Johnny Lee Miller, you know, in the pantheon of great great Holmes.
Since you know he's not up there, there's been I would argue there's
been three and a half definitive Sherlockholmeses, and that would be William Gillette
on stage, Basil Rathbone on film, Jeremy Brett on TV. And I'm

(29:44):
willing to throw Benedict cumb Cumberbatge ahalf just for the first two seasons of
Shrlock none of those are my favorite. There must be something wrong with my
headphones. I don't hear Robert DowneyJr. At all. Here's the deal
with those those two films, heand Guy Ritchie. Those two films are
based on one word, one wordin the entire Sherlock Holmes cannon, and
that word is burritsu, which SherlockHolmes explains to Watson is a Japanese form

(30:11):
of wrestling that enabled him to extricatehimself from the grip of Professor Moriarty.
Guy Ritchie and Robert Downey Junior.They saw that they are both martial arts
enthusiasts. They both have black belts, and they were like, we can
make Sherlock Holmes a superhero, andwe'll give him a utility belt and he'll
be a you know, he'll bean amazing fighter. And that was really

(30:33):
what brought them both in. Thosetwo films were enormously successful. I mean,
they brought in over a billion dollars. Is Robert Downey Junior well regarded
in by a lot of Sherlockians notnecessarily? Yeah, I like him all
right. I enjoy enjoy those films. It's fun, it's absolutely but none
of those are my favorite minds still. Nicholas House so Young Sherlock Holmes is

(30:57):
probably my favorite interpretation after Alock Holmes, just because it goes a different route
kind of makes it gives him moreemotion, it shows him kind of becoming
who he is, and it's alwaysbeen my favorite always. I love that
movie as well, but mostly becauseI grew up with it. I remember
going to see it at the theaterand that was probably the first time I
went to see Charlock Holmes movie,so it really stuck out for me.

(31:21):
And plus you had the cutting edgecomputer graphics in that movie. Did Yes,
You Did? You Did? Thatwas a Landmark movie, right,
yea exactly, and I remember itso looked like the opening credits of Amazing
Stories, and you had that wholeSpielberg connection and stuff with that as well.
So yeah, I really liked thatmovie as well. And you get

(31:44):
Moriarty without even knowing you got MaryMoriarty until the very end where you get
that Stinger who knew there was aStingers. We're gonna be popular. You
get that moment when Samuel L.Jackson is like, mister Holmes, I'm
putting together a team. Got Iwant to see that movie now. I
want to want to see Samuel Jacksonshow up at Sir three with Robert Donney
Jr. Just right, I'd watchthat. I hold out hope that there

(32:04):
will be a third Sherlock Holmes movie. And still I think those were fun.
I mean, they're definitely not They'renot the deeper thinking Sherlock Holmes,
but they are fun and the mysteriesdo work on their own level. So
I really enjoyed those. They getrid of the Women. Those two films
are like, let's get rid ofthe women. That's fast. We'll throw
them off trains if we have to, We'll do anything we can do.

(32:25):
We'll kill him, get him outof the movie. It's romance, romance,
romance the end, and Robert DonnyJunior Sherlock is doing everything he can
to make sure Watson is single forever. That's really like his goal is to
not have women around because he wantshim to himself. The other thing that
they really cut out of this oneas well, was this whole thing we
talked about how Holmes is a drugaddict, and that we start with that,

(32:49):
we end with that. But therewas a scene that was again,
it plays very much into the sevenPercent Solution. It is Watson trying to
get Relock to quit with the drugs, and he's really Sherlock is really getting
deep in with drugs. And itwas hilarious to read the script and read,

(33:10):
Oh, they're doing all of thesetreatments, and I think it was
Sweden in Vienna, and I wasjust like, oh, hey, yeah,
go to Vienna, you'll meet SigmundFreedom, we'll have the seven percent
Solution. Part of the movie iscalled The Curious Case of the Upside Down
Room, where Watson sets up anentire mystery for Sherlock to solve, but

(33:31):
of course Sherlock solves it within fiveminutes of walking into the room. He
just realizes that a corpse on thefloor. He looks at the guy's feet
and realizes that there had been atoe tag on the toe, and it
was just like, oh, well, this was a corpse. He was
already did by the time he wasin this room. And oh the proprietor

(33:51):
was blind and Watson, he didn'tsay anything because he would have recognized your
voice. And really puts it alltogether. And I like the idea of
everything being from the floor to theceiling and Lestrade shows up at that part,
and they put Lestrade on his headto kind of give him the perspective
of the would be killer, andthen they just leave him that way and
kind of go off on their ownbusiness. And that's when Holmes is like,

(34:15):
you set this up for me.You want to give me something to
put my mind to so that Iquit taking the drugs. Well, sorry,
didn't work. So there's that wholething as well. So really the
drugs played a much bigger part inthis originally. And I know, we
really haven't even talked about the movieitself because we're just talking about all the
things around it and the things thatweren't in here. But some of them

(34:36):
are brilliant, Like there's a greatmoment of deduction where Holmes and Watson are
coming back from a case and they'reon a train and this gentleman comes into
their cabin and promptly falls asleep andhomes starts to use his powers of deduction
to give this whole thing about howthis guy is Italian, he's from people

(35:00):
that he had been sleeping with,this guy's wife. He even gives the
name of the person that he wassleeping with, and he just goes through
all of these things based upon thedress. What the guy said in Italian
that one of his shoes is off, that is soccers dirty. He just
like gives this whole thing and buchof the guy jumps off the train.

(35:22):
But I'm just like, this isa nice little scene, like you get
to see Sherlock really doing this thing. And that was the thing from the
BBC show that I love the mostis when Cumberbatch would come into the room
and just be like all right andjust start to list off everything and you
get all those great like being shownaround his head. The graphics in Sherlock

(35:43):
were probably the best part form theBeautiful Mind. Yeah, I like that
a lot, and that's the bestthing. That's why I liked about in
his Sherlock episode where he meets IreneAdler, the professional dominatrix, and she
greets him stark naked and all yousee around him is question marks, like
he's got nothing. I got anI ken read this at all. Yeah,
that was a really fun moment.The whole thing of him trying to

(36:06):
unlock her phone for the entire episode. But yeah, this one really it's
the really quick story with the Russianballerina, and then we move on to
the mystery proper, which for meisn't that strong of a mystery, and
we kind of play around with somethings, like we get introduced to microft,

(36:28):
and I like the introduction of microft, especially that Microft is so far
ahead of homes that he leaves anote for homes. At the scene of
this, there's this whole thing withthis old lady who is running a mail
drop. Plus there's a whole pagefilled with canaries. So as soon as
I see canaries, I'm like,okay, mining, you know, or

(36:50):
gases, dangerous gases. I feltlike I was farther ahead than Holmes was,
and Holmes is always supposed to befor me anyway, five steps ahead
of the eater. Well, Ithink that was the intent of the film.
The film very much to me,reads as though this is showing Holmes
at is fallible. This is thisis Holmes not like you've seen him before.
This is what happens when he doesmisguided by a woman, when he

(37:14):
does kind of lose his balance,when he is taken off kilter a little
bit, And that's what the wholemovie is, Because the whole movie is
he's behind everybody. I mean,really microft solves the mystery. There's really
you know, he's the one thatpoints out, hey, by the way,
that's that's not what you're thinking,is who And I mean it's very
much Shelllock Holmes doesn't really do awhole lot. All he really figures out,

(37:35):
if you think about it, isthat the Lockfast sponsors not real and
he knows that Hell, that's more'scode. That's really all he does in
this movie that he figures out.I think what this is coming from is
after Basil Rathbone, there was thisassumption will Shillbock Holmes is done. Even
Rathbone himself said it's done. It'sdone. The only way it's viable anymore
is as a Disney cartoon put abowl around it. No one can make

(37:58):
Mouse Detective, which as actually avery good film, and Basil Rathbone is
he's in that. Posthumously, theyused the recordings that he had made to
get Basil Rathbone's voice in the filmas Sherlock Holmes. But for decades after
Raftbone and Nigel Bruce retired from theroles in nineteen forty six, everything was

(38:21):
compared to well, it's not Basilrath It's not Basil Rathbone. There was
this kind of agreement, what arewe going to do? And they made
an attempt, one more attempt tomake a straight Sherlock Holmes film was made
in nineteen sixty five. It wascalled a Study in Terror and the idea
was, Okay, he's a musty, old fashioned Victorian gentleman up against James

(38:42):
Bond, you know, the Beatlesand the rolling Stones. He's hopelessly out
of style, out of fashion.But we'll pit him against Jack the Ripper
and that'll be good because now we'vegot the sex, now we've got the
violence. They cast a really goodactor, John Neville as Sherlock Holmes.
There was really high expectations for itand it opened in nineteen sixty five in
the UK and as the gentle expressionGhost, did not meet projections. And

(39:07):
when they were going to release itin the United States the next year in
nineteen sixty six, they were producers, the distributors, the marketers were in
a full blown panic. How dowe sell this? And they just looked
around and they said, what's bigin the United States right now? And
the answer was Batman, the showwith Adam West and Burt Ward, and
they literally printed up posters comparing SherlockHolmes to Adam West and Batman with pow

(39:32):
and Ie and Biff, and he'sthe original Cape Crusader. And they tried
to sell it as a campy typeof Sherlock Holmes, which is nothing of
the sort. It's actually a reallywell regarded film today by a lot of
people that like Sherlock Holmes. Butit just bombed at that point, the
idea, we can't do it preatSherlock Holmes film anymore, and so Private

(39:53):
Life of Sherlock Holmes, along withseven Percent Solution and Murdered by Decree their
anti hero Holmes films. He's nota hero, He's just a broken,
disillusioned, ineffective and certainly in sevenPercent Solution Drug Addict. There was a
pretty straightforward TV series in like sixtyseven or sixty eight something like that too,

(40:14):
with Peter Cushing. I remember that. So there's there's one right around
at that time. There was aTV show where they tried to go straightforward
with Your Luck. Cushing was ina nineteen sixty eight BBC series. Guy
named Douglas Wilmer was in a sixtyfive BBC series, and they both described
their respective series as the worst experienceof their professional lives. They did one

(40:35):
series and they were done. I'mout. So that was really unfortunate,
and you know, even worse,a lot of those episodes the BBC just
wiped because we can reuse the tape. I hated that practice. They would
do that all the time. Iloved seeing Christopher Lee as Mycroft, and
I always like that that sibling rivalrythat they have and that Mycroft is the

(40:58):
superior thinker, but he is theinferior human being. He wants nothing to
do with anything. He's very doesn'thave the same social skills that Sherlock has,
even though Sherlock barely has any socialskills in some of these interpretations.
So yeah, seeing Christopher Lee andseeing Christopher Lee without a hairpiece, I

(41:19):
never knew that he used a hairpiece. For a minute there, I'm like
Javi's head because I mean, I'veseen him in so many things and he
alwayshits hair. I guess he justdoesn't really have it. He's got a
wig. He's Sean Connery, whoknew I would actually double check that.
I think he did have hair.I think they put him in a bald
cap, just doing a little factchecking. According to Peter cushingblog dot com.
For the majority of his film rolesfrom Hammer's Hound of the Baskervilles onwards

(41:43):
in nineteen fifty nine, Lee warpieces, with the exception of Microft Holmes
in the Private Life of Sherlock Holmesnineteen seventy. Here, Lee for the
only time, went completely songs topay. When this brave but strange decision
drew a little too much attention,Lee explained it away as an act of
dedication to playing the role, andthat he had simply shaved his head.

(42:05):
Christopher Lee was Sir Henry Basker Billand then nineteen fifty nine version Hammer's version
of The Hound of the Basker Bills, and then he was Sherlock Holmes and
a black and white West German filmin nineteen sixty two called Sherlock Holmes and
a deadly diamonds, deadly necklace.I'm sorry it sounds almost like a crimmy.
He was really proud of his performance, but he said the ultimate result

(42:29):
was a badly edited hodgepodge up nonsense, because when I released in English,
they dubbed his voice out. Theyadded someone else's voice in and then the
Man with the Best Voice of Alltime? What it was like a couple
of movies. He did a coupleof movies, right. Christopher Lee was
in a film called Sherlock Holmes anda Leading Lady in nineteen ninety one,

(42:52):
and then an incident at Victoria Falls. It's Patrick McNee as his Watson,
and that was kind of if youguys seen those, they're a little embarrassing
because they're both kind of jerryatrics,but they've got hot ladies that will do
a thing to be with them.What's her name, Morgan Fairchild? I
think is like lusting after Sherlock Holmes. Who's my wife? Yeah, this
is an old old man at thattime. Yeah, hopefully you guys are

(43:15):
old enough to remember that joke soso I don't have to explain it.
Yeah, he was the real deal. And here again he shows up on
the extras for this disk and he'sjust like, oh, I've worked with
all of these people, but workingwith Billy Wilder was such a treat.
I was just like, okay,yeah, well that's cool that you think
that. I don't know if theend result in the movie was that much

(43:37):
of a treat, But I'm gladyou had a good time. You said
working with Wilder was the best.He was the best director he ever worked
with. I think in large partit was because he was feeling very typecast
as Dracula, and it was Wilderthat kind of pulled him out of that
and didn't make a lot of itexcept for one time when there was a

(43:58):
bat flying around this up in Scotlandand Billy Wilders said, this makes you
feel comfortable. That was about theonly reference that he made to his Dracula
career. So I think Lee wasjust grateful to him for giving him such
an important role in this film.Sherlock really doesn't solve the mystery. It's
basically handed to him by his brother. She's she's this, this is this,

(44:19):
this is this, and you knowit's like luckily Holmes figures out the
whole thing with the poison, andyou know, if he mixed the salt
water with the other, then youget the gas and then that's how you
know that the birds, the canarieswere bleached inside of this guy's coffin,
Emil's coffin, her alleged husband,who is probably not her husband at all,

(44:42):
right, because she's actually a Germanagent. Yes. As soon as
I see all those Friars on thetrain as well, I'm just like,
Okay, well, those guys don'tspeak English. That's why they're not speaking
at all. So again I'm aheadof this movie, and I'm just like,
I don't want to be ahead ofthis movie. I don't want to
be smurder than Sherlock. Which it'sa weird position to be put in,
because I'm okay being smarter than FatherBrown or you know, mister Midsummer,

(45:07):
you know, like Viera, anyof these people. But as Sherlock Holmes
is supposed to surprise me with thesethings that he just kind of pulls out
of the air and then you go, oh, yeah, no, that
was true. Okay, well again, I think I really think it's what
Billy Wilder was trying to do.He was trying to create. You know,
I'm gonna make a Surelock Holmes moviethat is not at all what you

(45:27):
would expect. It's going to bemore about the mistakes he gaffs, the
errors that he would make, andhow he can be caught off guard and
it does happen. He is fallible, he's not perfect. Because this is
the seventies, right, and thisis the dawn of We're gonna make our
heroes flawed, very flawed, andeven Sherlock Holmes, We're even gonna make

(45:49):
Sureo Colmes flawed with his personal historyand how this woman really seduced him kind
of and got him off key,and he doesn't really solve a mystery.
And we're watching a whole movie wherewe're expecting all of the things you're talking
about expecting and it never really happens. The only person that more kind than
Sherlock Holmes is Watson. I mean, we're way ahead of Sherlock Micross,

(46:10):
way ahead of Sherlock, but Watson, he's still in the dark at the
end. Well, it's a filmthat, on the one hand, it's
trying to capture the mystique, butit's also debunking the myth. You know,
Watson's the creator of the myth inthe original stories, and now fifty
years after his death, it's Watsonwho's the debunker. And that's an odd

(46:30):
kind of tension to try to maintain. And I think that, you know,
it's not totally consistent. Either Holmesis the hero and he's amazing,
or he's a fraud basically, andthis film kind of osciltates on both sides
of that line. Yeah, there'sanother scene that was cut out, which
was the it was the Curious Caseof the Naked Honeymooners or something like that,

(46:51):
where they're on a boat or aship, I should say. They
have found two bodies on the boat, so they send Holmes of Watson down
to take a look. Watson islike, I've been with you for so
many years, I know all yourtricks. I can do this as well.
Give me a case. And thenSherlock's like, yeah, sure,
here's these two corpses. You knowthis is your case. Do it up.

(47:14):
And so Watson starts doing this wholething. He goes around and he's
just like, oh, well,you know, I see this bottle of
champagne, and the champagne was probablyspiked, but with the cork in there,
there's no way they could get thepoison in. So oh, it
must be these swizzlesticks and just likelays out all of these things, and
then you find out that they're actuallyin the wrong room and that the two

(47:36):
people, the two naked honeymooners,are actually still alive and pretty offended by
being woken up by basically Watson feelingthe woman's stomach because he thinks that she
had poisoning and that her stomach wouldbe bloated. So you get that where
it's like Holmes is like, hey, wrong, room, stupid, and
so it's like, well, Holmesis really super smart and he's got all

(47:57):
this stuff figured out, and he'sjust humoring Watson through the entire thing.
But then it's like, well,yeah, we're It's kind of like this
cognitive dissonance as far as like,well Holmes really isn't that smart, so
he was just fucking with his friend, but really maybe shouldn't have been.
So that scene is a good scene, but just again it kind of contradicts

(48:19):
the rest of the movie. Ican really see why they lost that one.
Wilder considered, you know, thisis going to be a symphony in
four parts. That was the originalconception, and it was going to be
there was going to be a dramaticsequence, there was going to be comedy,
there was going to be farce,that there was going to be romance.
The scene with the naked honeymooners,that was clearly that's the farcical episode,
and it is available on the BluRay DVD extras or whatever. And

(48:44):
yeah, as a self contained scene, it's really well done, and it's
very funny. It's very well playedfor comedy, but it is stills really
disconnected from the general tone of therest of the film. Well, that's
good that they scrapped it. Butagain, to talk about that whole debunker
versus, you know, just theway that Watson will rewrite history. I

(49:06):
think it's in that segment where they'retalking about how they were just in constant
to double that's right, because Watsonis wearing a fez and then eventually they
switch hats. But he's talking aboutthis case they were just on where it
was a harem and the chic andall this, and of course, this
being Victorian times, you've got Sherlottegoing well, you know, right,

(49:29):
the readers can't handle that, youknow, you don't want to put that
in print type of thing, andso Watson just starts to talk about,
well, now, actually I changedchange the harem to a girls' school,
and I change this, you know, the chek to a teacher, and
just all of these things. I'mjust like, oh, okay, so
we already know or this is tellingus that what we've read in the magazines

(49:51):
are not the true things. ThatWatson is going to be embellishing all of
this stuff and changing things to forour Victorian sensibilities. There's Billy Wilder films,
and a lot of his films there'sa character that basically plays the role
of the dupe, and here it'sSherlock Holmes is the dupe, which is,
you know, it's not really whatmost people expect when they watch a

(50:12):
Sherlock Holmes movie that he's the dupe, but that's certainly the case here.
Of all the things in this moviefor me to like or dislike, the
thing that I liked the most wasthe scene at the fake funeral in the
churchyard where you get to see thesix little men are back and they're pretending
to be children, and they're infront of these graves and you find out,
oh, the Germans are using theselittle people because they take a bless

(50:36):
room, take a bless oxygen.They're perfect for submarines. The head groundskeeper,
head gravedicker is Stanley Holloway, andhe starts talking with Sherlock Holmes and
I'm just like, I know thatvoice that is Alfrey Doolittle from My Fair
Lady. I was so happy becauseI don't know if I've ever seen him

(50:57):
in anything other than My Fair Lady. And as soon as his mouth open,
I was just like, wow,that voice is so great. And
I was just really happy. Forlike three or four minutes in this movie
when it's just Santley Holloway kind ofgiven a little bit of a monologue about
you know, the grave and allthis, It's like, okay, So
of all the things, I mean, I didn't dislike this movie. I
didn't hate this movie by any stretchof the imagination. I just wasn't that

(51:22):
thrilled by it. But I definitelywas thrilled by this character, actors showing
up. I mean wilder thoughts heconceived even thinking about this for years.
He originally conceived of this as amusical, as a Broadway musical, and
he's working on this in the nineteenfifties, and Danny decided, no,
I think it's going to be amovie. And his original idea was I

(51:43):
want Peter ro Tool as Strelock Holmesand I want Peter Sellers as Doctor Watson,
which I would love to have seenthat film. Unfortunately, that did
not come off, but this wasa passion project for him. Wilder was
a self described Holmes opheliac, andhe described the film as his valentine to

(52:04):
Sherlock Holmes and the original whatever itwas, three hour, twenty minute film
that got shopped down at two hours. As he said, when he saw
the edited version, he had tearsin his eyes. So it's unfortunate positive
tears or negative tears, negative tears. By watching the film, there's not
a moment where I go, thisis somebody who loves Sherlock Holmes. To

(52:27):
me, this very much comes across. So this is somebody who wants to
turn the myth of Sherlock Holmes moretheir visual approval. It's not someone.
It doesn't come across as written bysomeone who absolutely loved Sherlock Holmes. But
there's a lot of playing with themyths. Well, there's people that will
argue that, and I'm not sureI would argue what. There's people that

(52:47):
have said this is his most personalfilm that he's depicting homes as an aging
maestro, which is in nineteen seventythat's what Billy Wilder was, and he
was a few years removed from anyof his big, popular, most successful
films, and this was kind ofthe coda. This was supposed to be

(53:07):
a master work, and certainly heput who knows how many hours into writing
the screenplay and getting this office offthe ground and just didn't end up the
way that he thought it would endup. I think he had one more
decade worth of films in him afterthis, But yeah, this was a
far cry from a decade before whenhe was doing The Apartment or even Irma

(53:30):
La Douce or The Fortune Cookie.I was the end product. I can
see why I brought him to tearsif this was such a personal thing for
him, because yeah, it justfeels like it kind of gets gutted and
once left is it feels almost TVmovie esque at times, you know,
even with like just that kind ofcheesy way of like or we know that

(53:51):
the submarine is going to explode andthen it finally does. And then the
way that the Bible and bottle ofchampagne flowed to the surface and there's that
iris in on them because of we'relooking through a spyglass. I'm just like,
wow, that's really just handing itto you. Didn't feel like it
had that visual panache that I wouldexpect from Billy Wilder film, and it

(54:15):
doesn't even have that kind of snappydialogue. There were a couple lines.
There was one line I really laughedat, which was, were you expecting
someone maybe missus Hudson is entertaining?I never found her, so that made
me laugh out loud. But thereweren't that many other times where it's just
like, oh, this is genuinelyfunny or this is genuinely entertaining. There's

(54:37):
like one moment where they're in dangerand I'm just like, well true,
like, oh, I'm just goingto get out of this, and basically
there was no danger. That's whenMicroft shows up and it's just like,
you've been working for the Germans thewhole time. Yeah, you know what
would they say? She used youthe way that people use hogs to find
truffles. I'm like, wow,okay, you just really put him in

(54:59):
his place. Well, by allaccounts, you know, in the production,
Wilder was still being Billy Wilder.He was complete control freak, telling
actors I want this syllable the sametime you put this object down, and
like cut, do it again,and do it again. They shut down
production because Robert Stevens had a nervousbreakdown and or suicide attempt, depending on

(55:22):
who you believe he was. Atthat time. He was married to Maggie
Smith and their marriage was kind ofon the rocks, and he was working
on this film. Wilder's an extremelydemanding director, and he fell apart and
they shut down production. Briefly spokehe could pull himself together. He had
to be taken the hospital for anoverdose, and whether or not it was

(55:44):
intentional or not, I think it'sstill a mystery to this day. I
was kind of unfamiliar with him.I know I've seen them in things,
but he was definitely not as familiaras of a face as Colin Blakeley.
He was very familiar to me,and I'm not sure if it's because of
you just mentioned Peter Sellers. I'mnot sure if that's because of him being

(56:05):
in some of the big Panther moviesor Murder on the Urine Express, which
I've seen a lot. But yeah, he was such a familiar face.
And then he even was playing adouble role in this movie, and that
he was the younger or the descendantof doctor Watson and shows up at the
bank and there's this whole thing atthe beginning of them at this bank and

(56:30):
he's like, oh, I'm intown for this veterinary thing because now he's
a vet, he's that a medicaldoctor. He's like, I was in
town. I've figured I'd stop byand pick up this thing that, you
know, my family heirloom and Ilove. The bank manager is like,
I have not retired from this positionbecause I've been waiting for you to show

(56:52):
up, for me to see what'sinside of this thing. Because he is
a huge sherlockean. He's just likewhen the chess gets open and he's the
one that's taking out all of thethings and like puts on the deer stock
or starts looking through the magnifying glass, all of these things that I thought
that was really cute. That wasreally kind of nice. This was supposed
to be wild There's comeback film,and it was supposed to make Robert Stevens

(57:14):
a star. It didn't happen ineither instance. Shouldn't have shouldn't have an
either instance. I he just doesn'tHe's fine, but he's never great at
any moment. Well, he wasreally really highly regarded on stage. He
was considered this is the guy who'sthe heir to Lawrence Olivier. That's how

(57:35):
well thought of he was, andyou know, a great Shakespearean actor,
like many British actors are, butit just never came about. You know,
this was supposed to be the filmthat was going to launch him,
and that that launch never you know, that never happened. There was one
moment where he was laying back lookingup at the ceiling and I thought he

(57:55):
looked a lot like Peter rough Tools. So you're saying that, you know,
a Tool was the dream, youknow for that, But I would
wonder what it would be like ifa Tool was Watson and Sellers was Holmes,
just because Sellers had that amazing knackof falling into makeup and just being
other characters, and that was That'ssomething that I sometimes see in Holmes adaptations

(58:20):
and sometimes don'te this whole thing ofHolmes being the master disguise. Yeah,
I would have loved to see thatversion. I mean, more recently,
there was a film with will Farrell, Holmes and Watson that was awful,
absolutely abysmal. Absolutely, I'm stillmad that they made it. I'm mad
that I saw it. I'm madthat it exists. I'm mad that it's

(58:40):
still there. I'm just bad.Well, the reason I brought it up
was because the original conception was tohave Slasha Baron Cohen be Holmes. Yeah,
I'd paid to see that, alongwith How Do the Basketballs? Done
by Ludley Moore and Peter Cooked inthe nineteen seventies Holmes and Watson. It's
largely considered to be one of theworst Shilock Holmes movies ever. And that's

(59:04):
just recently. I'm like, man, you're shot to the top. Good
job, and it should nothing aboutit should have been that bad, you
know. I mean remember without aclue that was that was a fun take
on it a little bit. Thiswas trying to be in that same vein,
and you had two actors that haveplayed off each other pretty well.
I mean John c Riley and WillFerrell have always had a good chemistry,
and it just was like, nothingabout that movie worked. Nothing about that

(59:28):
movie worked. In the nineteen thirties, they made a version of The Hound
of the Basketballs featuring an actor bythe name of Robert Rental. I've never
seen it because apparently it still exists, but nobody wants to bring it out
back into public because it was sucha disaster. But that coupled with the
Dudley Moore, Peter Cook, countof the Basket Bills, and Holmes and
Watson, that's the unholy triumvirates ofbad Shelock Hoomes films. I owned this

(59:54):
movie. I owned the nineteen seventytwo Check version of Sherlock Holmes, one
of a few from When I Understand, and it's got you know, Davan
Lukasski as Sherlock Holmes. I mean, Eurie Hurts is in it. There's
a lot of familiar faces, youknow. You guys know, I'm a

(01:00:15):
big Check fan. I have themovie, but so far no subtitles have
ever shown up. And I can'tsee watching a Sherlock Holmes movie without the
dialogue and without you know, becausethat's going to clue you into what's actually
going on. Because these movies cango off the rails pretty quickly. There
can suddenly be supernatural elements that aren'treally supernatural. There's a wordplay a lot

(01:00:39):
of times. It's just that's partof the pleasure of a lot of these
movies, as they feel very literaryobviously because of the source. But you
know, I'm not going to getthat from an unsubtitled version of this movie,
so hopefully one of these days thosewill show up. Well, there
were many, many, many silentfilms which Block Holmes, in which he

(01:01:00):
was transformed into a furious man ofaction simply because you could make money with
the name Sherlock Holmes. And sothe first Shrlock and there's no rights entanglements.
Well, no, the whole rightsand copyrights has been an issue with
Sherlock Holmes pretty much since it sincesession. Yeah, the first two stories

(01:01:21):
were not protected by US copyright.There's short stories, and subsequently everything after
was covered by copyright. But thenfilm rights that was I believe it was
the Townsend Act in nineteen twelve thatfinally gave writers some kind of control over
their material. But yeah, itwas the wild West out there. There
was one gentleman. He made fortyseven on silent films from nineteen twenty one

(01:01:45):
to nineteen twenty three that had theapproval of Sir Arthur Cunnan Doyle, and
only a few of them are availablefor viewing right now. His name is
Eileen Norwood and they were for USa British film company called Stole Sto and
the British Film Institute is in theprocess of getting all of those films restored,

(01:02:06):
and so everybody in the Sherlocking communityis pretty geeked about that, but
there's no plans to actually digitize themand make them available for a distribution.
And they're owned apparently by Andrew LloydWebber, so you would think he would
have the financial means to make thesefilms available. So everyone's very pleased that
the films are being restored and digitized, but at present there's no real plan

(01:02:30):
to get them out on Blu Rayor in streaming or anything. I've got
to believe that that will happen.The last film in the series was made
in nineteen twenty three, so thisis like one hundredth anniversary. So that's
the goal, is to get thesesilent films. And admittedly the ones I've
seen have a lot of title cards, a lot of title cards because at
Sherlock Holmes you got a lot ofdialogue. But he was an actor,

(01:02:53):
he took it really seriously. AileenNorwood was determined to do well by Arthur
Conan Doyle and not just exploit thename, but to really do his best.
A version as he could, soI would love to see those films
if they become available. Yeah,there was the first definitive Sherlock Holmes American
actor stage actor by the name ofWilliam Gilletts was you know, he was

(01:03:16):
encouraged and he did. He madea film of his play in nineteen sixteen,
and he viewed it more as eightyway to record and document the play
as opposed to like a film inits own right, and unfortunately disappeared shortly
after it premiered. But then itwas rediscovered and put back together and it's

(01:03:39):
now available. Premier it again intwenty fifteen, and in fact I went
to go see it in ann Arborat one of the theaters down there that
hasn't an Oregon and they played thefilm with the original organ and it's available
on Blu ray, and you it'sworth watching, I mean, just to
get an idea of the guy thatwas acclaimed for over three decades. This

(01:04:01):
is the guy. This is thedefense of Sherlock Holmes, hands down.
And that was the case up untilBasil Rathbone picked up his dear staker and
made those films from nineteen thirty nineteennineteen forty six how many films did he
make? Rathbun He made two becalled a list films of for twenty century
Fox, and then they decided we'renot going to make anymore that. They

(01:04:26):
made two films in nineteen thirty nine, The Hound of the Basketbavills and the
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and heand Nigel Bruce both started appearing as Holmes
and Watson on radio. But thentwenty century Fox said we're done, and
they continued on a radio and thenin nineteen forty two Universal Pictures said,
well, we're going to pick thisup. We're gonna bring it into the
modern day. They're going to bebeat pictures. They're all going to be

(01:04:49):
about sixty five minutes long. Andthey made twelve of those, so there's
a total of fourteen films. Yeah. Still when I think of cinematic Holmes,
he's still the name that comes tomy mind, even though I think
I've seen some of them, butnot fourteen. That's for sure, I've
seen all of them. I rememberhe used to be able to get those

(01:05:11):
videotapes and they'd be like three dollarsor something, and you can get three
or four of them on one,so you'd have to hunt them all down
and see if you could get ifyou can get all of them. The
issue with that those films is alot of people, especially without Sherlock Holmes
fans, they object to Nigel Brucebecause he's such a clown. He's such
a buffoon, and it's like he'shanging with this really powerful, dark,

(01:05:32):
almost Noirish version of Sherlock Holmes.I mean, that's the thing about Basil
Rathbone. He came to the roleas arguably one of the best villains the
film industry had ever seen. Imean, I think you could argue Eric
Eric von Stroheim had a bunch ofhund rules and then he went behind the
camera and after that, Basil Rathbonewas a bad guy. He made a

(01:05:54):
great Nazi, he made a Craigopponent of Robin Hood, and then he
took on Sherlock Holmes and he hadthat dark edge to him. And that
was the first series. That's whatreally cemented Holmes and Watson in the public
mind, because that's an every issueyou know, play or TV show or
movie with Holmes and Watson. Youhave the problem of Watson, which is

(01:06:15):
if he's not the narrator, whatthe hell is he going to do?
And the Rathbone and Bruce films werethe first incarnation that solved that problem.
We're going to make him comic reliefand we're gonna make him lovable. And
while today people will carve about wellthat's a goofball performance. At the time
Nigel Bruce got more fan mail thanas a Rathbone did. People loved him.

(01:06:39):
I haven't heard this argument from fansof that. I've never had a
problem with Nigel Bruce and all.I thought it was a nice balance to
Basil Rathbone. Personally, I likeit. I like like the films.
In fact, Mark Gadis and StephenMoffat, the creators of BBC shrlock you
know, when they were asked aboutit, they said, well, we
know it's heresy, but we likethose bat Rathbone Bruce movies. Well,

(01:07:02):
when people talk about you know,who's a good Watson. The two of
the people at the top of thelist were in the Jeremy Brett series.
His first Watson was an actor bythe name of David Burke, who quit
the series because he wanted to appearin Shakespeare with his wife and he was
replaced by Edward Hardwick, and bothof those, if you ask, you

(01:07:24):
know Omesey and sherlockeans they're kind ofthe a standard of that's that's a great
Watson, I would say him,is it Martin Freeman. I like his
take a lot. I like hisstake as well. I like his take
way more than I like better thatcumbermatch. And I don't know that's heresy,
but there's just something about how heapproached it that was different from every
other actor that kind of approached Watson. Well. One of the it's not

(01:07:46):
that it's generally known, one ofthe greatest Holmes Watson pairings is actually in
a USSR series that came out inthe late nineteen seventies into the eighties,
and it is considered to be thesingle greatest television series ever produced in the
USSR. And it's available. Ofthe subtitles are a little dodgedy, but

(01:08:11):
it's worth looking up if you likeSherlock Holmes. It's just amazing. It's
just terrific because you realize that itkind of evolved on its own, it's
not responding to previous incarnations of SherlockHolmes, and it's just great. The
guy who plays Sherlock Holmes living offis just he's a great Holmes. His

(01:08:33):
Watson is a great Watson. Unfortunately, his Watson was subsequently beaten to death
or in real life, the actor, and it's a mystery that has remained
unsolved to this day. It's interestingabout the series is that it was produced
in the USSR and it was onlykind of discovered. They started to play

(01:08:54):
it like an East Berlin and thesignals would leak over to West Berlin and
people who had like the ECRs,and it was you know, part of
the fun was like, oh mygod, what is this. We're not
supposed to see this, and itsslowly kind of leaked out into you know,
Western media that there was this amazingseries that had been produced in Russia

(01:09:15):
with a lot of love. Thedirector was clearly a big Homes fan,
and we're the votees of Sherlock Holmes. It ranks very, very high in
terms of affection and the esteem thatit's held. Yeah, I think the
most buffoonish that Watson gets in thismovie is the whole thing with the Lockness

(01:09:35):
Monster. This is way way goofierthan Nigel Bruce ever was. So yeah,
obviously there is no Lochness Monster inthis movie. It's a submarine.
Whoa big revelation. Wow, wereyou wondering? Were you were you like,
hey, I wonder if they gofor real Luckness then you actually see
them bump into it and you oh, please, God, please please don't

(01:09:58):
let that be real. Like Imean, because you know it's personal.
Like my parents were both people fromScotland, so I into Scotland. I've
been on Lochness and you know,it's nice to see that. It's obviously
very scenic. It's very beautiful whenit's not raining. So yeah, I'd
like that part of a lot.You know, they discovered the original.

(01:10:19):
They were trying to shoot on Locknestwith this Lockness Monster and it sank and
it was only recovered a few yearsago. Somebody found it at the bottom
of Lochness, I want to say, like six or seven years ago,
and it's it sank in nineteen seventy. Yeah. If I look like that
thing, I would have sank too. I just would have ended it all.
Goodbye crewel World. It looked likea sesame street doll that they got

(01:10:43):
the really cool castle ar Kurt Kurt, you know in Scottish and it's just
a beautiful ruin and I'm so Yeah, a lot of a lot of touches
in this that I really I thoughtwere really terrific. Yeah, when they
go up to Scotland, which isprobably went like the last third of the
film. Yeah, it's nice thatthere's actually like location shooting, and I'm
just like, oh, okay,because so much of the beginning is very

(01:11:08):
set bound. I mean, itlooks good, it looks very good.
I can't complain about the cinematography ofthis. I did say that it looks
a little bit like a TV movie. There's sometimes where it feels like that
and just TV movie in the sensethat you're not getting a lot of subtlety.
We're not using the wide scream verywell, you know, just like
the Means on Sand is not asas brilliant as it could be. You

(01:11:30):
know, you do have some reallygood moments, and then you've got some
we're just like, yeah, allright, that could have been better.
But Yeah, I really liked thosecastles. I think the I'm not sure
if this is the same castle,but the one from Highlander is also in
this movie from what I've read,so that's pretty cool. I was just
gonna add I'm not sure because itjust occurred to me about Robert Stevens and

(01:11:53):
Sherlock Holmes, like he did.His career did not take off, but
he did appear as Sherlock Holmes onstage. There was a vival of the
play written by Willam Gillette in eighteenninety nine, and he was picked to
play Holmes. And then you guyswant to take a guest at who was
given the role of Holmes when theshow went on the road. What year
was it, nineteen seventy six.Dudley Moore, Leonard Mooy, Oh wow,

(01:12:20):
on the road. Yeah, yeah, he even came to Detroit.
They did a production in Detroit withLeonard ingwa. Leonard Memoy also played Holmes
in a TV episode, The InteriorMotive. It was called and yeah,
it was Leonard Memoy as Sherlock Holmesand Bert Blackwell as doctor Watson. It's
only twenty minutes long. It's justone episode of a TV series. Well,

(01:12:43):
there's you know, considerable crossover betweenStar Trek and Sherlock Holmes. We'll
be talking about the seven percent solutionpretty soon. Okay, all right,
what other ways that are there crossoverbetween the two worlds. Well, I
mean, clearly Spock is Sherlockian.You know, he's the creature of pure
logic. And then when you getto start trek generation, Yeah, I

(01:13:09):
forgot about the Holidack. Yeah.Yeah, at Data dresses it up.
He cosplays Shrlock Holmes and encounters ProfessorMoriarty and Shorty is his Watson. Yeah,
and two in two separate episodes.Yeah, I try to forget those
Holidack episodes if I can. Allthe I mean that's also where we get

(01:13:29):
them being the merry Men and allthe boy, well, I've already ruined
the end of this movie. Wealready find out that Gabrielle was a spy
and no, they actually had realaffection, and she goes off to Japan
and gets killed, and that hegoes off and does some cocaine and that's

(01:13:51):
end. The movie ends on thisreal somber note, though there was at
one boy the editor proposed that theymoved the scene of one of the Russian
dancers coming to the house coming totwo to one b Baker Street, and
that be the end of the movie. So you've got like him, Yeah,

(01:14:14):
you got him delivering a Stratiarius violinto Holmes and then he also I
think he gives a rose to Watson, and that was supposed to be the
end of the movie, so itwould have been much more like a something
like a hot you know, Nobody'sperfect type of twist at the end.
That would have been kind of cute, but apparently Billy Wilder was not having
any of that. I actually like, I actually liked this ending there.

(01:14:35):
There are several aspects of the lastthird that make it a far more interesting
movie than I think the first twothirds were, when it was kind of
like trying to find its footing orwhere it was really headed. I did.
I liked the monk tie in alittle person tie in which you know,
kind of kind of goes back toto Hit or two stories and in

(01:14:58):
a really loved relationship as it evolved, and at the end, once he
is aware of who she is andthen that happens to her, you know
where basically he made the deal tosave her, and what that does is
that puts her back in their clutchesto use again, and this time she
doesn't make it out Okay, obviouslynot as great as by as we'd like
to think, because she keeps gettingcaught but it was It was a nice

(01:15:23):
emotional punch. I really liked theend and how Watson handled it, how
Sherlock handled it, even though youknow, a little cocaine probably isn't the
way to handle it. But I'dreally really liked the emotional punch at the
end. I liked the whole thingof her using her parasol to do the
Morse code at him as she's drivingaway. I thought's really a sweet moment.

(01:15:44):
That was sweet because you needed thatextra moment. They never really had
great words. I mean, i'llviat zane or whatever, but they never
had that great exchange that you wanted. So him to get that Morse code
I think was important for the film. But he's a hero and ros can't
have women. That's the rule.They get in the way of being heroic.
Jared, women I was getting inthe way. Well. I remember

(01:16:06):
watching it was one of the Rambofilms, and you know with Sylvester Stallone,
and I think he evnces a fewshreds of affection for Vietnamese girl and
I'm like, Okay, she's dead. How long is that? Oh she's
dead. Yeah, that you can'thave that. You can't have that.
You know, because it gets inthe way of the hero being heroic.

(01:16:26):
That's I will watch Shaft then,yeah, well that's one of the reasons.
You know, I think you couldargue that why was Sherlock Holmes popular
in the first place as a literarycharacter, because he came about at a
time in which the whole idea ofheroism had been considerably diminished in Victorian fiction.
That heroes were bad. We don'twant heroes. They cause trouble,

(01:16:51):
and you know, there's a lotof you know, some of the Victorian
novelists, Anthony Trollop and William Thackerayand partic they explicitly wrote novels without a
hero and that was supposed to bea thing. It's just a gentleman.
And so Sherlock Holmes kind of reinvigoratedthe whole notion of a heroic personality.

(01:17:13):
Who is you know, he's notout for conquests, he's not off from
money, he's not out for aromance. He's trying to make the world
a better place, and he's willingto help anybody from royalty down to anybody
in the working class. And that'sI think part of why he took off
in popularity in the eighteen nineties.You know, obviously I were in a
Colombo podcast as well, and welike to put him up against other detectives

(01:17:40):
and what you're saying as far asbeing able to help rich, the wealthy,
the royals, all these but alsosticking up for the little guy.
That's what makes Colombo Colombo, issticking out for the little guy and always
putting the screws to the upper class. So I can definitely see that as
being quite an appeal, and especiallyif he's willing to help out whoever needs
the help. I would argue ShacCollins is more about the game itself than

(01:18:04):
the actual helping. That works outgreat for him and it makes him look
heroic in to many degrees. Buthe wants to solve whatever the mystery is
and he doesn't care who it's for, because anything that's very complicated, very
convoluted, something that he can unravel. It's all about the chess game for
him. And I honestly think frommy perspective, in terms of why it's

(01:18:24):
he's in dueties a character, it'sbecause of that. It's because it isn't
about a romanic entanglement. It's notabout anything other than solving the puzzle.
And you know, we have thepieces. Can he solve that? We
know he will, But how's hegoing to solve it? How's he going
to figure it out? And that'sthat's why I've always loved the character because
it's not about the romantic relationships,which I think gets Boggs out a lot

(01:18:45):
of Hollywood projects. It's it's niceto see a character which is just about
a mystery. I just want themystery. Yeah, that's ballad. I
mean he epitomizes, you know,what makes human beings human beings and kind
of separate into things from other speciesin our facility for pattern recognition, and
obviously Sherlotta Holmes represents the epitome ofthat. He can he can perceive the

(01:19:12):
world and then he can logically proceedfrom his observations to deuce what has happened.
And that's what makes human beings humanbeings. You know, from looking
up in the sky and seeing allthe stars are shifting, that means the
seasons are changing. Our ability ofpattern recognition is what makes human beings human
beings. And he's the ultimate characterthat does that. Is that Genevieve Page

(01:19:35):
is that her name she's I thinkshe's great. She covers several different roles
in this. I mean she's reallyplaying in kind of different variations of a
character. And I was enamored withher the whole time, not just because
she's always, you know, halfnaked. That's not why she she was
riveting. I thought from the momentshe gets there, I mean the second

(01:19:56):
she shows up, I'm like,well, she's bad. She's got to
be because it says her Lick Holmestory, and that's just the way it's
gonna go, even though she's changinginto different personas. And then you you
have very very much the almost milcyinnocent, and then you have fearful widow,
and then you you have the oh, the ultraconfident spy who's just in
this to go against Sherlock Holmes.I mean, each each facet that she

(01:20:18):
played. I thought she she candledpretty wonderfully and I understood why the characters
were enamored with her because she sheheld the screen, which was important.
And she doesn't get enough credit,I'm sure, because you've got a cast
of more notable people. But shedid a great job. I would say,
if you like Sherlock Holmes, Ifyou like Billy Wilder, you need

(01:20:40):
to see this film. If it'sme, you should grab the DVD that
has the extras. Oh, definitely, because it really stands out, you
know, kind of like Orson Wellsand Thefson Anderson's or Ron Stroheim's Greed.
It's it's recognized as kind of anincomplete or damaged potential master piece, but
the extras they fill in the blanksreally well, and it's nice to get

(01:21:04):
a little bit of behind the scenesof what Wilder, what his original conception
was as compared to what he endedup with. But even with that,
it's definitely a film worth watching,and it's an enjoyable at many different levels.
All right, Okay, so let'sgo ahead and take a break and
play a preview for next week's showright after these brief messages. For many

(01:21:29):
years, people have believed that SherlockHolmes was the greatest detective in the world.
But is it possible that there couldexist another human being whose mental powers
go even beyond those of the master? Hello? What's this? It's Sherlock
Holmes Smarter Brother starring Gene Wilder.Do you have a brother whose first name

(01:21:53):
is Sherlock? I do not youdo have a brother? I do?
Might I inquire as to his firstname? Sheer Luck, Madeline Khan An
leaven Let the gimble in as JennyHill. How do you do? My

(01:22:15):
name is Bessie Bellwood. Liar.Oh, you don't fool around, don't
you? Marty Feldman as a manwith a photographic sense of hearing due to

(01:22:36):
ill health, your brother has decidedto take a short vacation in the country.
Oh not very long, two orthree days at most, But he
would very much appreciate. He wouldvery much appreciate. He would very much
apprecipt you would handle one of thetale of amazing feats of deductions hard eared,
unless I'm very much mistaken. Harderit is the Egyptian word meaning to
eat fat. Him here dom Deloiseas the king of all the blackmailers,

(01:23:01):
greater conne to the money. You'regonna love you, Rish, and you
gonna love luish Um coming in thetangaroo. You're over rating now, But

(01:23:45):
happening about the father is the dairyladies down here the musical of the Adventure
of Sherlock Holmes's Smarter Brother Dance.That's right, Sherlock Holmes month continues what

(01:24:09):
they look at the adventures of SherlockHolmes's smarter brother until then, what is
the latest with you wearing? SoI do the Hollywood Outsider. It is
a film and television podcast. Dothat every single week. We are heading
into south By Southwest and other filmfestivals. There's a lot going on at
the Hollywood Outsider. It's be alableat the Hollywood Outsider dot com. And

(01:24:30):
I also do Presenting Hitchcock, wherewe look at every single Alfred Hitchcock movie.
We are almost done. I've almostseen every single one that I hadn't
seen, and that's available at PresentingHitchcock, and that's also you can find
it at the Hollywood Outsider dot comor your podcast stat Presenting Hitchcock and David
What's Happening with You? If anyoneis interested in what I've done with Sherlock

(01:24:50):
Holmes. I've got three Sherlock Holmesplays adapted into novels. I've got a
two volume nonfiction book, Sherlock HolmesThe Hero Within a Thousand Faces, and
the next production of one of myplays, Shlockholm's Plays is It's opening up
in New Zealand this month and myactual next new play, non shlalock Holm's

(01:25:11):
play is called The Antichrist Cometh,which will be premiering at the Purple Rose
Theater and Lovely Chelsea, Michigan intwenty twenty four. Do you get to
go to New Zealand for that one? Sadly no, No, that sucks.
But they have huge billboards that theyput up in this city and they
they send me pictures and it's justgreat. They produced one of my other

(01:25:34):
plays earlier and so God bless thepeople in New Zealand. Yeah, and
oh actually I have a one ofmy plays is being produced a dozen times
in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this August. Maybe you could hit a riot on
that Lochness Monster and go over thereand check it out. I am going
to try to get over there tocheck it out. Well. Thank you
so much guys for being on theshow. Thanks to everybody for listening.

(01:25:56):
If you want to hear more ofme shooting off my mouth, check out
some of the other shows that areworked and they are all available at weirdingweightmedia
dot com. Thanks especially to ourPatreon community. If you want to join
the community, visit patreon dot com. Slash Projection booth. Every donation we
get helps the Projection Booth take overthe world.

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Episode 622: The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970)

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