Episode 727: Being There (1979)

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Old you is, folks, It's show Died. People say good
money to see this movie. When they go out to
a theater.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
They want clod sodas, pop popcorn, and no monsters in
the protection booth.

Speaker 3 (00:17):
Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.

Speaker 4 (00:20):
Got it off.

Speaker 3 (00:39):
I'm chance the gardener in the garden.

Speaker 5 (00:43):
Years since I was a child, I worked in this garden.

Speaker 2 (00:48):
Then you really are a gardener? Oh yes, can I
ask your name?

Speaker 1 (00:57):
Where the gardener?

Speaker 2 (01:01):
Mister Chancey Gardner?

Speaker 1 (01:02):
Are you related to Basil and Prodita Gardner?

Speaker 6 (01:06):
No, I'm not related to Basil and Podita gobbledygook, you.

Speaker 7 (01:11):
Know, chawsea.

Speaker 8 (01:12):
There's something about you.

Speaker 7 (01:14):
You all playing games.

Speaker 9 (01:16):
With words to protect yourself.

Speaker 6 (01:20):
Stuff with rice pudding between the ears on television. Mister president,
you look much smaller, dam as a jackass. As long
as the roots are not severed, all is well, and
all will be well in the garden.

Speaker 10 (01:46):
In the gardener, hm whom mm?

Speaker 3 (01:52):
Being there?

Speaker 11 (01:53):
The story of the village idiot who convinced almost everybody,
including the President of the United States, that he was
a genius. It's very funny, but scary too because it
could come true.

Speaker 3 (02:07):
He's very, very sexy, but.

Speaker 9 (02:10):
I think he's brilliant.

Speaker 10 (02:12):
It's always somewhat surprising to find men like yourself working
so intimately with the President. Yet somehow I'm managing to
remain relatively unknown. Yes, it is surprising. I can't write.

Speaker 7 (02:27):
I heard you speak say languages I can't read at all.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
I like to watch d read.

Speaker 12 (02:55):
Welcome to the Projection Booth. I'm your host, Mike White
Treno once again is Ms.

Speaker 2 (02:59):
Susankuglinska Hey, and let me just say I like to watch.

Speaker 12 (03:04):
Also back in the booth is mister Morris Brushtinsky.

Speaker 7 (03:08):
There was a season for Everything. In the Projection Booth.

Speaker 12 (03:12):
We continue a month of Patreon requests with one from
Jordan nash Hal Ashby's being There, based on the novel
by yearsI Kosinski. It's the story of Chance, played by
Peter Sellers. He's a developmentally delayed man who has lived
in seclusion the ward of an old man who is
recently deceased at the beginning of the film. He soon

(03:32):
finds himself homeless and wandering the streets of Washington, d C.
Where he runs into, or is run into, by Eve
Rand played by Sherley McClain. He becomes mistaken for the
wise Chauncey Gardner and begins mixing in the circles of
some movers and shakers, including the President of the United States,
as played by Jack Warden. We will be spoiling this

(03:53):
film in as much as it can be, so if
you don't want anything ruined, please turn off the podcast
and come back after you've seen it. We will still
be here. So, Morrison, when was the first time you
saw being there and what did you think?

Speaker 7 (04:05):
I think it might have been a decade or so
after the film came out. I do have very strong
memories of the film coming out in nineteen seventy nine.
I would have been about thirteen or fourteen years old
at the time. It was one of those films that
I thought, oh, that's too grown up, not interested. At
the time, all I knew Peter Sellers for was the

(04:30):
Pink Panther films, which I saw every time a knew
one came out and the party and later on I
do want to talk a little bit more about Peter
Sellers as an actor, But the time when that came out,
I just thought, Yep, this is not for me. And
then I think shortly after this came out, the fiendish
plot of Doctor Fu Manchu came out, and that was

(04:52):
sort of like a PostScript. Everyone wanted to think that
Being There was the last film that he ever made,
but now, sorry, there's one that's not quite fashionable. And
I've not seen the finish plot of Doctor Fu Manchu.
I have no idea whether it's as bad as people
say it is. But yeah, as I said, I saw
it about a decade after it came out in the

(05:15):
late eighties, maybe the early nineties, on VHS, and at
the time I thought, yeah, this is really really good,
but I still didn't quite get everything. Maybe in the
two thousands I watched it again. I was recording a
podcast with my friend Michael Persh about the album Remote

(05:39):
Control by the banda Tubes and fi Waybill had long
gone and said that Being There was a direct influence
on that album by the Tubes, and I wanted to
see what the connection was, and I think that was
when I got it, and watching it again a couple
of times for this podcast episode, I really get it.

(06:00):
And there's just so much in there that in theory,
we could have like a whole ten part podcast series
just going through every theme that's covered. In this film.
But suffice to say, I've had a journey with this film,
going from apathetic to now being almost obsessed by it.

(06:22):
So yeah, I really love it. Thanks for having me
on for this one.

Speaker 12 (06:25):
And how about you, Susan.

Speaker 2 (06:27):
We're we're on the same agent. So I was a kid,
there were so many amazing like kid movies and seventy nine, Like,
there's no way I would have you know, been drawn
to that. I remember the art, you know, I can
remember the posters and that kind of thing. But then
in the same thing where I'm sure the first time
I saw it was during the heyday of VHS video rental,
you know, when when you're in college and you're like
catching up on all this stuff you didn't see when
you're a kid. And I would have been too, Like

(06:48):
I loved Peter Sellers as a kid in the Pink
Panther movies. That was like huge for me, and so
it would have been like a real you know, like
I don't quite remember, I know, you know it. It
would have been like just a recontextualization of Peter for me.
And I love psychological portraits. So but I, you know,
really kind of didn't think about it for a long
time and only recently kind of deep dive, really deep

(07:10):
dived into it over the last few years, and I
had done a discussion of it on a different thing
with cartoonist Joe Dator, who's a big Peter Sellers fan,
and I'm kind of really like, you know, just sort
of I was sort of embarrassed I hadn't kind of
like hadn't stuck with me as much as I thought
it should, because I really, like I said, I love
psychological portraits of really unusual people, and it's just you know,

(07:30):
it's a masterpiece as far as that goes. And Yeah,
I'm thrilled to be getting back to it.

Speaker 12 (07:37):
My parents took me to see this. I don't think
they took me to see this. I was with them
when they went to see this. How about that. So
as I'm rewatching this movie the other night and we
get to the masturbation scene, which I completely had forgotten
because I saw this when I was seven years old.
I didn't get it then, and even watching it now,

(07:58):
I'm like, Okay, I can see why I didn't get it,
because it's not really explicit, no crotch shots or anything
like that. But I'm like, oh, okay, but I do
remember just thinking what an unusual role for Peter Sellers, Because,
like y'all, I grew up watching those Pink Panther movies.
I'm more connected with Peter Sellers. When this is going

(08:18):
to sound really bad, when he was in Yellow Face,
not for the fiendish plot of Doctor Fu Manchu, but
for Murder by Death, I really liked him in that.
I really just enjoyed that movie. I did enjoy the
Pink Panther films, but I do remember it being a
case of diminishing returns. Especially wasn't there one where David

(08:40):
Niven was in it? And he died midway through, and
so Rich Little ended up doing David Niven's voice for
the entire film. So yeah, it was. It was a strange,
strange series of movies. But yeah, rewatching this movie, I
really connected with it. I enjoyed listening to book. I

(09:01):
love the differences that are between the book and the movie.
I read the Aaron Hunter book about the progression of
the screenplays, and that was fascinating as well, especially that
the end of the movie wasn't in any of the screenplays,
and it sounds like Ashby kind of came up with
it not necessarily on the spot because they had to

(09:21):
do a lot of prep work for it, but it
wasn't something that had been planned out as much as
the screenplays had. So yeah, I find this really fascinating
and years of Kaczinski is a really interesting dude as well.
I never really got into his work and just to
find out more about him as a person, And it
was just such a great confluence of events where you've got,

(09:44):
you know, his book. Peter Sellers immediately glommed on to
Chauncey Gardner. He was just like I am, This character
tried for years to get made. He loved Harold and
Maud and wanted Ashby to direct it. We didn't have
the clout until after Coming Home came out, and then
he was finally able to get this project off the ground.

(10:06):
And according to pretty much everything I've read, it's like
the last great, great, great great hal Ashby film. I mean,
he made some other things afterwards, but he was not
necessarily firing on all cylinders afterwards. And this was, you know,
almost Peter Seller's last role, and he would pass away
shortly after this. And I think Kazinsky, well, Kazinsky ended

(10:31):
up committing suicide. More movies have been made out of
his works, like Painted Bird from a few years ago,
which I missed, but at the same time it sounds
pretty harrowing, so I'm not really like, oh, let's go
watch Painted Bird. But yeah, to have all of these
elements come together with this level of talent, I mean,
and it just hits every single thing that I like

(10:55):
about film.

Speaker 2 (10:56):
Yeah, this is an example of really a budget things yeah,
magically coming together. Because the book is good, but it's
not amazing, you know, and it's I think a lot
of people agree with that. It's it's an interesting idea
and it's something you know that you know a lot
of people think he kind of lifted from something else,
but you know, it's an internal story like this sort
of idiot rising. It's a good book. It's I shouldn't

(11:17):
say it's you know, it's like a novella. It's a
very easy read. I recommend everybody read it, actually, but
the movie is way way, way better. And and then
when you look at yeah, the evolition of the scripts
and then what Peter Sellers brought to it, like nobody
else could have brought to it, you know. So it's
just like you just would have had a completely different
movie if anybody on the planet did it, you know,
besides Peter Sellers. So again, yeah, just magical, perfect, perfect

(11:39):
combination of things that just by themselves was were great,
but together it makes it a masterpiece, like a real masterpiece.

Speaker 7 (11:47):
One of the things that I thought was interesting though
about Yozi Kazynski's script was he wanted to include some
elements which weren't in the book. No problem, because that
often happens by I think part of what makes the
final film so great is that subtlety. There's nothing being
really forced down your throat. It's like, here's a story,

(12:11):
this is this character, the characters how they react to him,
and it's all very subtle. And Yerzy Kazinsky wanted to
include scenes of civil unrest and homeless protests and a
stronger emphasis on the shady financiers who want to rule

(12:33):
the country as it were, you know, like what we
see in that final scene towards the end where they're discussing, well,
the only way we're going to maintain the presidents that
we want is if we get Chauncey Gardner to be
the one with that greater emphasis. You sort of think well,
coming back to your points, Susan, I actually sort of
think that the book is rather good. It's just a

(12:54):
different beast maybe to the film, but it maintains the
subtlety that the film has and that Peter Sellers provides
in his role as Chance the Gardener, and I just
sort of found it really amazing that he was prepared
for whatever political points he wanted to make in the
film with extra stuff that was just to say, I

(13:17):
think the audience is not smart enough to get the
subtlety of hal Ashby's and Robert Jones' a Robert Jones's
script in hal Ashby's direction, let's put this stuff in.
But thank goodness that Robert Jones said, no, not happening
like that, We're going to be more faithful to your book.
I really like that about it.

Speaker 12 (13:38):
Yeah, because even in the novella, there's stuff towards the
end where you do get some of the financiers, but
there's a lot more when it comes to the Russians
and the American government trying to find out who Chauncey
Gardener is at the same time that the Russian government
is trying to find out who Chauncey Gardener is because
the president in this movie, the President quotes Gardner and

(14:00):
jettison's him into the spotlight, and then he goes onto
television and that just keeps he keeps going up and
up and up and up, and right around that same
time that the government is looking into him. The Russian
because we have the Russian ambassador in this, this whole
thing about you know, we're so close, yes, look our

(14:22):
chairs are almost touching. That goes off into a whole
other direction, and you get the Russians also trying to
figure out what's going on. You don't really get even
though Thomas Franklin I think it is the David Clinton character.
He shows up a few times in the story, but
he really doesn't connect to the story again. And then

(14:43):
the Richard Deiser character, the doctor, he's not even in
the novella. So Yeah, the decisions that they made, I
thought were very very smart, and also that they were
working in more of the racial stuff, which I've found
to be very interesting, especially when you look at something
like hal Ashby's The Landlord, which really puts a fine

(15:04):
point on the disparity between black and white. And even
in this when Chauncey's out in the world for the
first time. Even before he meets Raphael's enemy. You get
that great graffiti on the wall that says American shit
because the white man's got a god complex. And then
later on you hear from Louise and she starts talking

(15:25):
about the white man. It's just like, all you have
to be is white in this country and look at
you know, the success that gets thrust upon you. I'm like,
that's really poignant stuff. And that was found nowhere in
the Kazinski stuff.

Speaker 7 (15:38):
That's the one part of the film where they decide, right, okay,
we have a point to make here. Let's dispense with
the subtlety. We really have to make that point, not
just with that speech that Louise makes in that home
that she's visiting or is in later on the film,
and not only just on the graffiti on the walls,

(15:59):
but also so on that moment just where Chauncey actually
leaves the house, because all the time that he's in
the house at the beginning of the film, and I
know we're going to sort of speak a little bit
more about that, but that moment that he leaves the
house and we hear the dear Dato version of also
Sprague Zarathustra the two thousand and one thing. We see

(16:20):
that it's urban decay. We got houses destroyed, we've got
cars destroyed, we've got homeless people, and all this time
he's been isolated in this one, if not necessarily luxurious
house the way that the Rams House is, but it's
comfortable and he's led a comfortable life living there in

(16:43):
these four walls with no idea as to what's outside
that front door. And it also brought me to mind
a little bit of another film that we covered on
the show Mike, that was The Amiga Man. So whereas
Neville played by Charlton Heston, is determined he's going to
live in the luxury that he wants, while all around

(17:07):
him is just an absolute waste slamp, and we never
find anything out about the old Man, as he's called
in the film, But why has he stayed where he's stayed?
He's determined he's going to stay in this one place,
despite the fact that all around him is crumbling down.
And maybe he's a part of that, don't know, But

(17:30):
I just found that an interesting parallel.

Speaker 2 (17:32):
Yeah, again, it's just a great progression because the book
is like, like you said, it's a late touch. You know,
you're just zipping through this story and you kind of
get the idea, a sketch of this person, and then
you look at the like the Kazinski script that he
had written, and he really seems more interested in what's
going on around the character of Chance like that, like
it's a little more about this, like the building up

(17:53):
of who he is by the people around him, and
he's just the cipher in the middle. And clearly they
took it to the next step, which was part which
is like, let's center this much more on Chance, so
we're seeing it more through his eyes, you know what
I mean. And it's just like the people are a
little more peripheral, and that, you know, that worked really well,
and that's how you could have that wonderful opening where
he's just walking and you're walking. You're you're walking out

(18:15):
into the world with him, going like, how is he
going to take all this in? You know, just taking
in this this You don't expect it, of course, because
you're in this kind of this rich little house, and
then you walk out and it's completely what you don't
think it is, and so you're just seeing all this
new stuff through his eyes and what the world is
really like. And yeah, and that they layered it with
this this racial layer. There's not a there's not a

(18:35):
drop of that in the book. And it's just a
really really good choice to layer that on top and
make it a lot more of a you know, like
a substantive point, you know, all together.

Speaker 12 (18:45):
Yeah, because Louise isn't even in the novella. She's she
was there before, but now he's got more of a
European maid that lives at the house that Chance really
doesn't connect with. He talks about and this is his words,
Black Louise, and he's like, well, black Liue, Louise moved
back to Jamaica and she's down there. And then later
on and the story finds out that she actually died

(19:06):
years before, but he had no connection afterwards. And I
read a very interesting article last night where and this
was very tough for me to get my head around, because,
like I said, I've been living with this movie for
a long time, right since I was fucking seven years old.
And they were saying, you know, if you don't know,
if you walk into this movie cold, like maybe you

(19:27):
just see the posters, you haven't seen the spots. You
don't know anything about this movie, and you start watching it,
you don't know that Chance is developmentally delayed. You watch
him get up in the morning, watching television, going out
to the garden, taking care of things. He's very well dressed,
you know. Louise comes in brings him his food, and

(19:50):
you think maybe he is the master of the house basically,
And it isn't until the story starts to unfold more,
especially when the two lawyers show up after the old
man is dead, that you really start to figure, Oh,
this guy has something going on with him that isn't
quite right. He's not all there. And I found that

(20:13):
to be very fascinating because basically Ashby is playing the
same trick on us as the character will you know,
even though it's not a trick, but we are as
clueless about what Chance is as the people later on
who meet Chauncey Gardner.

Speaker 2 (20:30):
Jessic a really quick little clue that I never noticed.
So the very last time I watched it, just last
night or whatever. At the very opening, he's dusting the
limousine and that tire is flat, flat, flat, So it's
like this, yeah, so it's like this old limousine and
nobody's clearly driven it for you know, in a million years,
I never noticed that before. But that's like a clue
of just like, wait, what's going on here?

Speaker 7 (20:49):
Yeah, I still haven't seen that. Wow, I might have
to have yet another watch after we finished recording this
one thing that I thought was very deliberate, because you're
talking Mike about Chance being developmentally delayed. There's one moment
in the early scenes where he's watching the television and

(21:10):
he's watching a scene with Sesame Street with Big Bird,
and I think it's Buffy sent Marie.

Speaker 1 (21:16):
Now.

Speaker 7 (21:17):
They always said that all the characters on Sesame Street
are supposed to be children at various ages, and I
think Big Bird is like three years old. This might
have been making it too obvious, forcing it home too much.
But there was a moment in Sesame Street where Big

(21:37):
Bird does drawings of all his friends on Sesame Street
and he's wanting to give mister Hooper his drawing, but
where's mister Hooper And they're having to explain to him
that he's died, but he doesn't get what does that mean?
What does that mean? And I mean it may have

(21:58):
actually been more appropriate to put that bit into the film,
but that might have been really assuming that the audience
is that's stupid. But putting Big Bird at the point
where the film where Chance is watching the television, I
think was no accident. It's not like, oh, will just

(22:19):
take any bit out of Sesame Street. It had to
be Big Bird because I think that Big Bird, as
a three year old child, is at the same level
of development, maybe though with a whole lot more empathy.
And that's a word I think I'll be using a
bit more in this show. Big Bird has more empathy
than Chance does, but I think they're at the same
stage of their understanding of the world. Big Bird lives

(22:43):
on Sesame Street, nowhere else. That's all he knows. But
well he's three years old. Who knows what happens if
he leaves Sesame Street. Well, I mean he did in
the follow that Bird film, But that's another story.

Speaker 2 (22:54):
Big Bird. Don't you remember we told you mister Hooper died.

Speaker 9 (23:00):
He's dead? Oh yeah, I remember.

Speaker 2 (23:04):
Well I'll give it to him when he comes.

Speaker 6 (23:05):
Back, Big Bird.

Speaker 3 (23:07):
When people die, they don't come back.

Speaker 7 (23:12):
Ever, Well, Big Bird, their dad, they they can't come back. Well,
he won't be the same.

Speaker 2 (23:30):
You're right, big Bird.

Speaker 13 (23:31):
It's it's it'll never be the same around here with
all of them.

Speaker 14 (23:36):
M But you know something, we can all be very
happy that we had a chance to be with him.

Speaker 1 (23:46):
It's no.

Speaker 13 (23:48):
And to love him a lot when he was here.

Speaker 3 (23:51):
Yeah, you know, I'm gonna miss you, mister Looper.

Speaker 14 (23:58):
Pat's Hooper, Big Bird.

Speaker 12 (24:03):
The Chance lives basically in a walled garden, you know.
And I know that there was at least one reviewer
who kind of compared it to Candide with the whole
gardener idea and stuff, and I'm like, okay, yeah, that works.
Another writer compared Chauncey to Our Chance to the mc
greek painting, you know, the man with the bowler hat

(24:24):
and the big apple in front of his face where
you don't know the man, and like, it's that whole
cipher thing, right, And I just I really appreciate that
this movie is so open to interpretation like that. But yeah,
to go back to your point as far as God,
when mister Hooper died, it just devastated me as a
young person. And yes, Chance has no idea really about

(24:47):
death when this movie opens, and that's the growth of
the character for me, is that when he goes in
front of it, and I know we're jumping all over
the place, ladies and gentlemen. Really, I hope you've watched
this movie. But when he he goes in front of
the old in front of Ben, and he just says,
are you dying?

Speaker 7 (25:04):
Ben?

Speaker 12 (25:05):
And just it's a little lacking to your word, more
as a little lacking in empathy. But at the same time,
it's just so direct and so simple. And I think
that Ben actually appreciates that, because I'm sure people have
been pussy footing around him and he's the one who
knows he's dying, and everybody else says, no, no, you'll
get better, You'll get better. And Chauncey's right there, Chances

(25:26):
right there saying you know, are you dying? Ben? Is
this your time? And actually sheds a tear after Ben dies.
And I think he has grown as a person throughout
this movie that he can now understand a little bit more.
I mean, obviously you've seen death on television. He probably
saw I don't remember when mister Hooper died, but he
probably understands it to a point. But to actually have

(25:50):
connection with another human being, and Ben basically becomes that
father figure that who knows what the old man was
like to Chance? And they barely talk about the old
man in the book, and they barely talk about him
in here. So again you get to project all of
these ideas. You're like, well, was he was Chance the

(26:10):
bastard son of the old man? Is that why he
kept them around? Is that why there's no record of
him anywhere in any of the paperwork. He doesn't have
a Social Security card, he's never learned how to drive,
there's no papers. But at the same time, and I know,
we'll talk about the religious implications as we go along,
But at the same time, he's never been to a dentist,

(26:32):
he's never seen a doctor. He says, he's never been sick.
Sounds like he's been in perfect health his entire life.
The only time that he's ever been hurt is coming
up in the next few minutes when he gets backed
into by a car.

Speaker 2 (26:45):
It's very mysterious, now, kazinskiscript. He kind of that was
a big mistake, was he came up with his whullbackstory.
He's like, no, no, no, that's bad.

Speaker 12 (26:53):
Oh yeah, like a deathbed confession.

Speaker 2 (26:55):
Yeah, deathbed. And he was like, oh, I loved your mother,
and it's like, no, no, no, no, this guy's cruel.
He never taught him to he never taught him to write.
He can't even sign his name. He's never left that house.
That's neglect. That is straight up neglect. I mean that
guy should have he should have been rescued from that house.
So clearly, you know, this is part of why he's
It could even, you know, in my imagination, could even
be why he's slow because if a baby or a

(27:16):
little child is not stimulated, you know, it sounds like
the mother died at birth like that seems like very likely,
and that he just was completely neglected by this horrible man.
That's that's like my take from this. But so what
happens is the old man gives them TVs because he's
rich and TV is coming out as he's growing up,
and he buys them every up to date, fancy TV
you could possibly have. So there's a TV in every room,

(27:39):
completely up to date, and that's how he learns every
single solitary thing about life. And he's practicing shaking hands
by watching TV. He's practicing how you back and forth
with human beings by watching TV. And that's what really
makes this movie a magical piece of cinema is these
who the person and I'm forgetting her name? Who picked
out the TV pieces? It was very, very brilliant and

(28:00):
very important piece of this movie. Like that Sesame Street scene.
That music is like so it's so melancholy, it's so
minor key, and it's it's like it adds the sadness
to the scene, even though you know it has nothing
to do with the scene. Or when they're driving into
the Ran mansion and that that you know, the song
that what is that guy's name them Basketball Jones, Yes,

(28:24):
chiechen Chok. It's a it's a novelty song, but weirdly enough,
it's this beautifully poignant song. It's got a cartoon that's
very almost defensive, because it's a depiction kind of in
a style of like schoolhouse rock, but it has like
kind of very older depictions of black people that you know,
we find very offensiven. It's very exaggerated, but so it
has this ugliness to it because of that. But then

(28:45):
this beautiful sad song where this kid is just pleading,
and it adds to that again, So there's this weird
like whimsical there's cartoons there's children's shows, but then there's
this melancholy to those scenes, you know, and even like
mister Rogers playing when Like is visiting him, you know,
there's just a lot of like. It adds a real
real it kind of almost a dark side to the
whole thing, I think. But it's all about him. Just

(29:08):
that's all he knows is TV, and that's why he
carries his flipper around. He's obsessed with TV's he was
his best friend. It was the thing that raised him.

Speaker 7 (29:17):
It's the universe that the film has created for itself
and the story has created for itself. But I find
it interesting that maybe Chance doesn't actually know more than
what he does through watching TV, because TV is not
just a window towards watching I don't know, soap operas

(29:40):
and the like, but there's news and there's current affairs
and things like that, which he's obviously not watched. But
for a character who's I don't know, we never find out.
But given to Peter Solla's silver hair, let's presume he's
in his forties or early fifties or something like that,
and he he doesn't have a clue as to what

(30:02):
is happening on in the wider world. He's find it
unusual that he's learning things like how to shake hands
at this late stage in life. While the film has
a lot of really fascinating points to make, but I
do struggle a little bit with the notion that even

(30:24):
through just having the TV as a guide to the world,
that chance isn't a little bit more developed in his
knowledge of the wider world. You know, he's very polite,
but you know, surely in watching TV, he would have
watched situational dramas where there's conflict and there'll be one
nice guy and one bad guy, and he would have

(30:48):
known about it or behavior as well. But that could
be his choice to only be nice. But surely he's
been exposed to more than what we as an audience
are seeing that he's been supposed to, if that makes
any sense.

Speaker 12 (31:02):
The movie that I thought of while I was watching
this time, which I obviously hadn't seen when I saw
it in earlier viewings, especially when I was seven, was
the film Bad Boy Bubby, which I saw that you
wrote in the notes as well more as where that
is another film where it's with that one though you
get to see the overprotective parents who are basically trying

(31:22):
to scare the kid into never going outside. You know,
there's there's radiation out there, there's all these terrible things.
I guess it's really it's kind of like dog toothed
as well, where it's like we are keeping you kids
isolated inside this yard, you know, never go outside of
this yard. And it's basically the same thing with Bad
Boy Bubby. But he's just kept in this little windowless

(31:45):
room basically for almost his entire life until his folks
end up dying. I think it is has been a
little bit since I've seen it, and yeah, he knows nothing.
He didn't even have television to raise him. He's completely
clueless about anything, and he's kind of like the wild
and borneo when he goes out on the streets.

Speaker 7 (32:03):
I avoided watching that film for many years. And I'm
a huge Rolf to Hear fan. I've watched probably, if
not everything, then eighty of rol to Hear his films.
But the thing that it kept me away from Bad
Boy Bubby was the couple of scenes of cat cruelty.
I thought, no, I can't watch that, but you always

(32:26):
knew what it was about, and thought, all right, we're
talking about being there, I guess I now need to
put on the DVD of that. So, yeah, I watched
Bad Boy Bubby, and yes, you're right. I mean Bobby
and Chance both developmentally delayed, and both take their cues
from what's going on around them as to how they

(32:48):
should behave and things that they say. So the Chance
repeats catchphrases that he's heard on television, shakes hands the
way he's sent them on television. Bobby takes he doesn't
have television, but you know, he goes and gropes women's
breasts because that's what he sees his father do to
his mother. When he first leaves his house after killing

(33:10):
his parents, he's nearly run over by a truck who
tell him to get off the fucking road, and so
he does the same thing to a policeman that approaches.
And it's two very different characters, but neither have a
clue as to what is appropriate to say or do
in any given situation. I think the big difference between

(33:34):
Chance and Bubby is a Chance is passive. He doesn't
know what to say in any situation. People are talking politics,
he doesn't know what that's about. But when they're asking
him for opinion. I'll talk about the but is active
he wage of thirty seven. He throws himself into things.
It's not appropriate necessarily anything that he does, but he's

(33:57):
attacking life with zeal, regardless of whether he finds his
way into a band. He just does so much stuff.
But life is cruel to him. People don't know how
to react to him, just the way that people don't
know how to react to Chance. Whereas Chance has fallen
into a tub of cream, Bobby, for the first two

(34:18):
thirds of the film has fallen into a tub of shit,
if I can use that expression, if things are really
really difficult for him until the latter third of the film.
I won't spoil that because we're not doing that as
a as a topic for this podcast, and I think
people should go off and see that if they haven't.
But I might be the last person left on the

(34:40):
planet who was interested in the film, who hasn't, who
hadn't seen it up until now. So the point of
similarity is two characters who've lived for a stupid amount
of time within four walls and have no idea what's
on the outside. But how they approach the outside is very,
very diff But I still think it would make a

(35:02):
wonderful double bill at a repertory theater for sure.

Speaker 2 (35:05):
Getting back to Hill like the Handjesters, you know, I
think he wrote just Chance. I think realized he has
to he has to learn this stuff right now, Like
I this is after the lawyers already came and kicked
him out, and he was like, all right, I need
to learn how to react to the outside world. I
think that's what he was doing there. Let's just talk
about this developmental delay kind of thing, you know, developmental disability,
you know, and a lot of these kinds of movies
they you know, they base it on reality. They do research,

(35:27):
you know, like Gilbert Grape and rain Man, you know,
they studied real people and the actors like really you know,
took in what was what it was like to actually
be a person with whatever it was they were going for.
And here, you know, this is completely detached from reality.
As far as the both Kazinski and Ashby and Sellers,
none of them, this was not you know, they were

(35:49):
not researching this. They were just like coming up with
a character, a simple character. And so it's actually even debatable,
like you know, maybe he was born just fine and
you know, just pure neglect. He just had no input,
no stimulus, you know, blah blah blah. You know, it
really does happen to people. You know, there's some terrible
tragic stories of children who've been raised like that, you know,
and it's generally you actually you know, don't even learn
really to speak well and that kind of thing when

(36:10):
that really happens.

Speaker 12 (36:11):
But at least he's not like Nell, for God's sakes.

Speaker 3 (36:15):
Yeah, fine on God, and.

Speaker 2 (36:16):
To come, Okay, I'm studying developmental psychology, so I can
I can talk about this. But yeah, and I've actually
worked with kids and stuff like that. But this is
not just so the audience knows, because there's always a
lot of chatter around this film like oh, he's autistic,
and you know, he's not. Like I don't see that
at all. And you really shouldn't base any of this on.

(36:37):
This doesn't really meant to resemble anything real necessarily.

Speaker 1 (36:40):
You know.

Speaker 2 (36:41):
It's he's slow, yeah, but it's you know, as far
as like what I've ever seen, and I've seen a
lot of you know, pretty wide range of delays, it
doesn't really ring true of anything that you actually see.
You know.

Speaker 12 (36:52):
It was interesting too, the difference between Kazinski's original chance
and the one that we see here eight, because the
Kazinski original character in the book or the novella was
much younger, and what they say looks like rocks a.

Speaker 2 (37:09):
Care grant, Ted Kennedy and carry Grant. It mix between
Ted Kennedy, Yeah, which is really hard to imagine it
after you've seen this film.

Speaker 12 (37:15):
Yeah, yeah, definitely, especially growing up with Ted Kennedy on
you know, and I'm like, yeah, yeah, maybe Robert Kennedy senior,
but you know, not not Ted to play this as
an older character gives it a different spin. And also,
the character is completely sexless. He has no desire for

(37:39):
anyone man woman, animal, furniture and nothing like that. And
in the novella he has no physical reaction when Eve
or Ee in the book is groping him, there's no reaction.
It is just completely dead down there, which then kind
of puts a different, you know, take on this whole
thing where it's just like all right, So he he's

(38:01):
not even all there when it comes to his body either.
He's just kind of this blank slate. So it's not
like he's running around like falling in love or whining
the fuck or do any of these things having any
sort of urges or desires. And it's it is interesting
that in the in the novella, he is the he's
supposed to be basically like the young via young man,

(38:22):
and here as an older man, it's like, Okay, well
you don't really expect that from It fits a little
bit better with the character. But at the same time,
it's like the way that Eve the Sherlan Claim character
falls for him, you would think that he was Cary
Grant or you know, somebody just incredibly handsome. I mean,
Peter Seller's just no slouch, but he's in his golden years,

(38:43):
you know. And and she's almost taking Melvin Douglas, who's yes,
much older than Peter Sellers, even though I think they
were both in the war together at the same time
they were in Burma, I want to say. But anyway,
they she's taking, you know, going for like the let's say,
the ninety year old man to the sixty five year
old man, maybe seventy year old man. It's like, yeah,

(39:04):
you're not really trading down too much, so but yeah,
just that lack of sexuality for the character also puts
him on the outside of things and makes him also
more of a cipher.

Speaker 7 (39:17):
I thought that it was unusual that Peter Seller's character,
I mean, you've already gone and sort of implied this
both of you, because he's been well abused by never
being exposed to the outside world, so he's delayed in
terms of what he can learn. But I was sort

(39:37):
of thinking, how, really, I mean, doesn't puberty hit all
of us. He's three year old mentally or whatever. But
he's also well before thirteen or fourteen from a physical perspective,
because I mean, I don't really know a hell of
a lot in that regard, but I would have sort

(39:57):
of thought that every person would have some level of
that once the hormones kick in. That would be something
that if Eve is making a play for him, that's
something that at least from a physical perspective, he would understand.
But intuitively. But maybe, I mean, I've never read or

(40:19):
watched The Tin Drum, but I all know.

Speaker 2 (40:22):
That's one of my favorite books in the world.

Speaker 7 (40:24):
All right, Well, maybe I need to get onto that,
but I know the premise is that the character decides, right,
I'm not going to grow any further, and I just
sort of wonder whether that's the same with chance, you know,
he's maybe he's not consciously decided it, or maybe he
has I don't know, but he's not mentally gone any further.

(40:46):
But he's also not physically developed any further. He's never
hit puberty. He just wants to He just wants to
watch television. And when Eve makes that second play for him,
he's been watching something on television where a man and
a woman are kissing passionately, so things, Oh that's what
she wants, Okay, I'll do that. But he's still watching
the television to see if he's getting it right. Not

(41:07):
because he's passionate for her, but just because, oh, this
is what she wants. I want to make her happy.
And maybe that's actually some level of growth unto itself,
that he wants to keep someone else happy, and that's
a level of kindness. So he's no longer the blank
slate that he was at the beginning of the film.
He knows that she's treated him kindly, and that's something

(41:30):
that he never experienced. He had the I mean, maybe
apart from Louise making him his meals, but we don't
really know what her relationship with him was. She might
have just left the meals and gone on to do
her work. But here he is with people who don't
understand him, and they misinterpret him at every turn, but

(41:52):
they're treating him nicely. So at this stage he understands, Oh,
that's to be reciprocated. So oh she's oh she wants
the case. Oh if that makes her happy, I'll do that.

Speaker 1 (42:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 12 (42:04):
He's watching the Thomas Crown Affair, I believe, which was
edited by Hal Ashby.

Speaker 7 (42:09):
Oh, there you go.

Speaker 12 (42:11):
He gives that very nervous laugh when he's talking about
Joe that showed him the pictures of the naked men
and women.

Speaker 5 (42:19):
Yes, I remember Joe. He was very fat, had short hair,
and showed me pictures from a funny little book, some pictures, Yes,
the men and women.

Speaker 2 (42:40):
Oh.

Speaker 12 (42:41):
That seems to be the only time he's ever really
had experience with any sort of stimulus of that, any
sort of pornography. But to your point, like, yeah, had
he been watching different things on television, I think he's
much more comfortable with the children's television because that's much
more of his mental state, because you know, you can
find hot Si Tatsi stuff on TV, but you know,

(43:05):
obviously nothing as hot as what Joe was showing him
when he came to repair the wall all those years ago.
And then when Louise talks about how Chance was cursed
by God. First I thought she was talking about that
he has nothing between his legs basically, or that he's,
you know, mister micro penis. And then it's like, oh, no,
she's talking about the brains. She's talking about up here,

(43:26):
not down here. So okay, Yeah, when she's like railing
against him and just talking about how he's got what
was it mashed.

Speaker 2 (43:33):
Potatoes was fitting between his ears? Between the ears? No,
but in the beginning she does, she does allude to
his thingy. And when she's leaving, she says, you need
to find a woman, but you need to find an
older woman because you don't, and she implies it he
is a very small thing, like she does. That's like blatant,
she really does. So that's definitely a thing you ought

(43:54):
to find yourself, a lady, Chance, cass. It ought to
be an old lady like good I you young and
any good not with that little thing of you. She
apparently like maybe knew him when he was young enough

(44:15):
that she would change him. Who knows, but I don't know.
That's what she's saying, but I mean, let me just
say that, like TV back then for people who don't
know who are a little younger than us, you know,
and they make a point of this, I think in
the book or in one of the scripts that they would,
you know, when you came to a love scene, it
would just cut off, like they couldn't show that stuff.
You know, everything was much much and much more censored.
So you could actually be a kid watching TV and
never learn what sex is at all, you know, like

(44:37):
if nobody ever told him, and so yeah, I think,
you know, there's enough of a spectrum of asexuality sexuality
that you know, he could have been on the asexual
side of the spectrum just naturally, and then nobody ever,
you know, he just had, you know, except for that
those magazine pictures that guy showed him, which he kind
of chuckles at. You know, he really had no reason
to kind of like start up the sex drive, I

(44:57):
would think, which is mercifully a good thing probably, you know.
And then I think his first real moment is when
I think he's always reciprocating. He knows the reciprocation game
where you repeat the last thing a person says you know,
you do these these things that make people feel happy
by you know, repeating, But they just said doing what
you see on TV that makes people happy. But it's

(45:18):
the moment when when rand dies or when he says
really it's I think it's when he says, you know,
you're I'm sorry you're sick, which is a really beautiful moment.
I think that's like where you're seeing the character arc
change where you're like, oh, this isn't something he's on TV.
You know.

Speaker 12 (45:35):
Yeah, it sounds like the old man didn't spring for cable.
I mean because cable ATV had been around since earlier
in the seventies. I think, I know, it really came
into the forour like in the early eighties, mid eighties, right,
been a little bit before, like at least in my household,
before we got the VCR, we had cable at least
that's how I remember it, and we had on TV

(45:57):
and these kind of things. But even then the movie
channel was like the only one that was showing anything
risque and then eventually like skin him Ax obviously, but
it was difficult to see things and especially you know,
trying to make it make out things during the scrambled channels,
you know what I'm talking about, Like that was my
early exposure to things. I want to say that this

(46:17):
is a stretch because sometimes I think people, especially when
it comes to Stanley Kubrick, people just go fucking crazy
about I mean, see Room thirty, two thirty seven. But
Peter Sellers having worked with Stanley Kubrick pretty often, I
mean with Alita and Doctor Strange Love. And then to
have that disco version of two thousand and one, the

(46:41):
diodato version of also Sprocks Zarah Thrustra to be the
song that plays when he comes out. I swear that
that's a Kubrick reference, especially when he makes it to
the end of the song and he sees himself on
television and there's the whole Moonscape thing. It looks all
like the moon, there's a big moon on one side

(47:02):
and just like, oh okay, and it just feels very
much like that's a real moment for him when he
sees himself on television, that he's been watching television for
all of these years, and to see yourself on that
screen in the TV seller's window, I mean, that's huge.
And I found interesting too that when he gets threatened

(47:24):
by that black gang that that's also in front of
a television store, a much more run down TV store,
and then you know it's like the nicer area I
guess he's in. It must be a nicer area if
Eve is parking there. But yeah, that was a great
moment when he finally sees himself on television and then
there's no nervousness. Of course, you know it's probably not

(47:45):
in his core. But when he goes onto a television program,
he's like, well, I've been on television before.

Speaker 7 (47:52):
I'm feeling like such a dummy. Because it's only once
he brought up that expression he sees himself on television
that it hit me later on when he says in
the film, oh, yeah, I've been on television before. I thinking, really, Ah,
of course the play circuit camera, I hadn't. I'm a
bit slow today.

Speaker 2 (48:12):
One one hundred percent on the Kubrick reference. I believe
that's a one hundred percent Kubrick reference. And Peter sells
he felt that too. The only he said once the
only two movies he was proud of was This and Strangelove.
Of course he loved Strangelove, he loved he loved Kubrick
I mean, they had a hard time, but he loved it,
you know, he enormous and he was so I think
that's one hundred percent.

Speaker 7 (48:33):
I think it was a good thing that they used
the diodato version, which was already in existence for Peter
Sellers coming out of the house and exploring the brave
new universe that is outside of the Old Man's House.
To have done the original orchestral version would have been

(48:54):
seen too much as a pastiche But it's appropriate because
it's a soul funk version and it goes into places
where it sounds almost sinister that it works perfectly for
the environment that he's actually walking into. It makes the
point far better than an orchestral version ever would have.

(49:17):
But yeah, I'd love that use and hugely appropriate. I mean,
I wonder if two thousand and one hadn't existed, or
if he'd use the Blue Danube at the point of
the Star Child and the Dawn of Man instead also
spars Arathustra, whether they would have found a funk version

(49:38):
of the Blue Danube or something like that. But just
such a perfect piece of music and so grateful that
it got made into that version. I think it's a
really really good version of that piece of music.

Speaker 12 (49:49):
I don't know what it was about the seventies and
redoing classical music as disco themes. I mean, I'm sure
you guys remember fit the Beethoven koff down Disco Mountain.
You know, like the whole star Zone forty five thing
where they would do disco upbeat versions of classical things.
It was such a.

Speaker 2 (50:07):
Star Wars theme song, Star Wars theme song.

Speaker 7 (50:09):
Oh yeah, yea thing to do.

Speaker 2 (50:11):
Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 7 (50:13):
Now look I don't see the diodato version of also
spras Sertister. That's not disco to me. That's that's funk.
That's a difference. But yeah, look I absolutely applaud that
Walter Murphy of fifth of date Oven not on Disco Mountain.

(51:05):
I might have a little bit more leniency for, but
a fifth of Bethoven and Stars on forty five can
bite my shiny metal. But did Dato doing also Sprung.
It's clever and it's soulful, it's it's funky as hell.
I love it, I really love it well.

Speaker 12 (51:25):
And when you think about it too, I mean, Wendy
Carlos Williams was such a pioneer of doing the electronic
versions of the music that she did for.

Speaker 2 (51:35):
Absolutely before that she did a whole album of like
Bach or something.

Speaker 7 (51:39):
Yeah, she's really switched on bath yeah.

Speaker 2 (51:41):
Switched on back. Yeah. Absolutely.

Speaker 12 (51:44):
It was like the thing for like Moog and like
electronic pioneers to do classical music in this new form.

Speaker 2 (51:51):
Oh yeah, and to meta do. I don't know if
you remember Tomda, but anyway, I always said this stuff
was really cheesy. And you know, in the time, I
love disco. I loved disco, but I did think that's
was really cheesy. But this and yet this, like when
you see this, even if you don't like that, that
whole little movement there, you got to love with how
it works in this film. It works perfectly. It just
works perfectly.

Speaker 12 (52:11):
This whole segment of when he leaves the house for
the first time, like I forgot about the things, where
he sees the black lady on the street and he
goes up and asks her for lunch. You know, that's
a great moment. Or like you were saying before, when
the one kid is threatening him with a knife, he
pulls us his remote control and is trying to change

(52:32):
the channel. And I'm glad that they don't do that
for the whole movie, but they just have the remote there.
And then it's interesting when he's using the remote on
the TV that he's on, it's actually changing the channels
on a small TV next to him, next to that TV.
So it's like this remote does work out in the
real world, but it doesn't work on real people.

Speaker 7 (52:54):
The other interesting thing at that point where he's being
threatened by the gang member and he takes out his
remote control, he doesn't look scared. He doesn't. He sees
that knife and he doesn't see that as a threat,
which is another interesting thing because you sort of wonder
if he'd been watching all that TV, he surely would
have seen something violent. Me no sex on TV, but

(53:15):
all the violence that you can handle. And he sees
this knife and it doesn't register to him. But oh,
I've seen this on TV. Someone had a knife and
they got hurt. But he doesn't register that.

Speaker 2 (53:29):
I think he's scared. That's why he hits the remote.
It's like I want to see something else. I don't
want to be here. I don't know. That's kind of
my that's my take on it. But it's hard. It's
hard to tell because he doesn't, you know, he never
shows any emotions, so you never know, you really not know.

Speaker 12 (53:42):
That sequence also has the amazing image of him walking
straight down the middle of the screen right towards the
Capitol building, which was basically that inspiration for the poster
that we see with him walking on air, which then
I can't remember if I think it was Hunters one
of his pieces where he has a screen grab of

(54:04):
that and then a screen grab of Chance walking on
water at the end of the film, and he's almost
in the exact same position and the camera looks very
similar as far as the height and everything, just to
see him walking down the middle of the screen, one
of them towards the capital basically, and the other one
as he's walking back to the mansion and got the

(54:24):
Biltmore mansion. I've been to the Biltmore mansion, but I
barely remember it. It's funny that I remember seeing being
there more than I remember actually going to that mansion,
going all the way to North Carolina to go to
that mansion, and my mom still talks about going there
to this day.

Speaker 7 (54:39):
So I know nothing about that mansion. What's its claim
to fame? Is it still like a public place.

Speaker 12 (54:44):
Or well it is now? You can I think you
have to pay to go to it. It's been forever,
like I said, but I want to say, was it Rockefellers, Handerbilt, Vanderbilt?
Thank you? I always mix up all of those oligarchs.

Speaker 2 (54:59):
I don't know why old oligarchs.

Speaker 12 (55:01):
Was a JP Morgan was it?

Speaker 2 (55:04):
Which Robert barn was it?

Speaker 12 (55:05):
That was one of their places. So it's just amazing.
The thing I remember the most from it because I
was a younger kid when I was there, was that
there were secret passageways all throughout there and like different
ways to get around the house, and probably a lot
of stuff for the servants so they could move around
without having to disturb the upper echelon.

Speaker 2 (55:26):
It's so interesting how the television clips just anchor you
into the present. You have like a silly postropedic mourning.
Those of us who lived through that remember that commercial
very well, and so it really these clips really anchor you,
although they also just work in a both comedic and
and adding emotion kind of way that is timeless. But

(55:47):
then the environment he's in is always just completely out
of time, like he could be it could be you
know again, like what he's wearing, and it's just you know,
you can't put your finger on when when it's happening.
You know, it takes a lot to remember you're in
nineteen seventy nine.

Speaker 7 (56:01):
One thing that we haven't touched on yet, which is
really quite the central part of the story, is how
everything that Chance says is misinterpreted by those people around
him because oh, he must be metaphorical, because surely he's
not talking about a garden. And that sort of makes

(56:24):
me think that as narrow as chances vision is really
the RAN's vision, and the people around them is just
as narrow. I mean, they know a little bit more
about the world, but they really know mostly about the
world within the multiple walls. They live on this hugely

(56:49):
wealthier state, and all they know is wealth. They don't
know about the world that Luise inhabits. They would never
recognize that Chance walks out onto it the beginning of
the film, after he leaves the old Man's house and
everything that he said, like, for instance, that there's that

(57:10):
moment where they're all sitting down to dinner and there's
like about ten thousand waiters and servants bringing them their
meal and there's only four people at the dinner table.
There's lengthy dinner table and Chances talking about how he
was kicked out of the property, and Ben says, you

(57:30):
were kicked out of your business, and Chance, oh, what
does that mean. Yeah, sure, it's kicked out of the business.
That's his interpretation. His world is different, but it's equally narrow.
Just as Chance doesn't understand what certain things mean and
how to behave under certain situations, I think neither do

(57:52):
the Rams. They live in this bubble, and Chance that
lived in a bubble. So I don't know whether you'd
say whether it's appropriate that they all got together, but
it's no one's trying to teach each other. Hey have
a look at the wider world, because they both live
in their own little space. I mean, the rants is bigger,
but it's still narrow in lots of ways.

Speaker 1 (58:16):
Shaka when the all spell.

Speaker 4 (58:21):
Shaka.

Speaker 12 (58:21):
Indeed, they are so isolated from the real world, and
especially you get to hear that quite a bit right
at the end, when Jack Warden is reading some of
the quotes that Ben Rand had written or said, and
it's just that whole like I don't believe in welfare
and all of these things. I'm like, oh, okay, Like

(58:44):
I picture Ben as being this very nice, grandfatherly type
of person. But then when you read some of the
or when he says some of the things that Rand
had said earlier in his life, you're like, oh, no, no,
he is an Ola Gark Okay, all right. And I
don't think it's any coincidence that they chose the name
Rand for this, because as soon as I read, I
was just like, well, kind of reminds me of the

(59:05):
Rand Corporation, which was this you know, government thinks tank
that the US used to use and they probably still do,
that would do all this research on issues like the
space race or Vietnam or the mutually Assured Destruction, you know,
and they would like, I want to say, like Robert
McNamara was part of it at one point, just like

(59:28):
it's not a really like even Doctor Strangelove, like they
call it the Bland Corporation, so it's like, you know,
it's a known thing. And I was just like, yeah,
I'm pretty sure that they named Ben Rand Rand because
of this.

Speaker 7 (59:39):
And this is years before the fact, But Melvin Douglas
looks like Rupert Murdoch does now, So I think if
Rupert Murdoch was that age at that time, they would
have deliberately made Melvin Douglas look like and it now
it's just a film and coincidence.

Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
Is that like the non understanding, you know, we get
our first taste of that when he when he meets
those kids, the kids who think he's in a gang.
You know that he's talking very ganglator. They're from such
different planets. The kids can't comprehend him, he can't comprehend
the kids. And then you're right, it's exactly the same thing,
but a complete flip when he's in the Rand household.
Like they're just from different planets, so they're just like

(01:00:20):
not interpreting each other in the same way. And I
think it's a really interesting choice. You don't get too
much of a feel, you get a little, you know.
I think in the book you're supposed to assume that
that Ben Rand is, you know, like your typical jerky
corporate guy, and they don't get too into it. It's
just like a completely flat, you know, character. And it's

(01:00:41):
really interesting that they make him very sympathetic because it's
like the kind of movie where you would have expected
the complete opposite. You'd expected Sherley McClain to be this
like materialistic and she probably is, you know, you kind
of do. She's wearing these fur coats, and you know,
she obviously loves luxury, and she's obviously impressed by this
guy that everybody else is impressed with. But yet they
make them both like you feel like they're really in love,

(01:01:03):
you know, which is a really interesting take for this
kind of movie where you feel a real love between
Ben Rand and Eve Rand. And then also just you
feel like it's not judge. This movie doesn't judge them,
you know. And until the end, like you said, during
the funeral, you start to hear that's the first time
where you're like, oh, he said that, you know, and
you realize you know who he really is, and it's

(01:01:25):
sort of like I think the movie's statement is a
little bit like it's kind of refreshing maybe, and maybe
that's it's a little bit of refreshing that they don't judge,
you know, that's it kind of removes that part of
it that people are people, that's their role, that's where
they are.

Speaker 9 (01:01:41):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:01:42):
There were definitely some sympathetic things about Rand in that
he wanted to start this company that would help the
businessmen who were doing badly, so you know, he definitely had.
You know, I think it's just kind of a neutral
he turns out, you know in the wash, kind of
a neutral character.

Speaker 12 (01:01:55):
Yeah. He wants to help the businessmen do better, not
the common man do better.

Speaker 7 (01:02:00):
Of a trickle down economic smuk.

Speaker 12 (01:02:02):
Oh well yeah, which we know works. So and it
is interesting that it's dice Art's doctor character that seems
to start to recognize that Chance isn't everything that he
seems to be to all of these other people, because
he's kind of an outsider too. He's also a guest
in the house, and there's that moment when Chauncey asks him,

(01:02:23):
you know, are you going to like after Ben dies?
He's just like, are you going to leave now? And
it's like a little bit of a threat to dice
Art's character, just like, hey, you know, I'm part of
this household too, but yeah, I guess Rand is dead.
I really don't have a leg to stand on. And
I'm glad to like you're talking about how this could

(01:02:43):
have been played so different. It could have been so arch,
and it could have just been you know, just these
nasty I'm trying to remember, like down and out in
Beverly Hills type of people, where it's just like the
clueless rich you know, or even like even like my
man Godfrey. Right, you've got Godfrey coming in and just
how airheaded everybody seems to be. Was that Carol Lombard

(01:03:06):
in that one, I can't.

Speaker 7 (01:03:07):
Yes, yes, the original one was Carol.

Speaker 12 (01:03:09):
So you get like her and she's like, oh, look
at what I brought to the party, and all this
kind of stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:03:14):
Scavenger hut, yes, exactly.

Speaker 12 (01:03:17):
Like they could have been those characters, you know, but
luckily they're not. And Diysar could have been really like,
you know, it could have been like, you know, like
the nasty villain in some of those screwball comedies where
it's just like this Deed's character, I've got his number,
I'm going to expose him for being a fool, you know.
But he is doing a little bit of that, and

(01:03:39):
David Clennon's doing a little bit of that ironically, like
what two years before the thing, when they would be
down in Antarctica together, you know, serving on Outpost thirty one,
them together, it's like they want to figure this stuff out.
But it's not like he blows the whistle on him.
I mean, his biggest thing is when he calls Chauncey
Chance at the end of the movie, and you get

(01:04:01):
that little recognition in Chances eyes and you get the recognition.
Then back to dice Art.

Speaker 13 (01:04:08):
But it's not like, Aha, I have you. I will
tell the media all about you. Because the nicest thing
about this movie really it's like the act one of
the story, because you could take this and go farther.
You could have him elected as president and get to
see what's going on with that, and then you know,

(01:04:29):
in twenty twenty four, you could show like that he
is an idiot and that everybody knows that he's an idiot,
but yet he stays in power and appoints other idiots
as his cabinet.

Speaker 7 (01:04:40):
Well, then you have yes Minister or yes Prime Minister.

Speaker 12 (01:04:43):
Or what America is right now.

Speaker 15 (01:04:45):
But Chauncey Gardner knew his television. He could recite all
the commercials he was listening. Trump is just as much
of a television addict, with just as little connection to
non television reality. But while he is ruling this country
based largely on what he's sees on TV, that reinforces
what he already saw on TV, or reinforces what he
thinks he already saw on TV. He's not even paying

(01:05:08):
attention to the TV.

Speaker 2 (01:05:10):
In the other versions, nobody figures out what's going on.
But here the doctor, which makes sense, you know, because
like if he's developmental, you know, it makes sense the
doctor will get But so he does want to tell Rand.
But when he's getting close to death, he does kind
of want to be like, you know what, I don't
know if you really want Eve to end up with
this guy or if you well, actually he wants to
appoint him to his board and blah blah blah. And

(01:05:32):
in fact you find out, you know, he really wants
him to be like president, you know, in the book
vice President, but in the movie actual president. And so
the I think he does want to be like this
is not a good thing. But then then when Brand
says I'm dying happy because this guy's in my life,
you know, like it's the only reason I'm dying at
piece is because of this guy, he stops. So and

(01:05:54):
let me say that I think that, you know, he
has an interesting ending. We should talk about the ending,
which I think is like kind of we're talking a
little bit about like the future that goes that what
happens after this movie, and I think, to me, the
way I interpret the ending where he's just walking on water,
it's a very nonsensical, almost non sequitor ending. Everybody always
puzzles over it, and to me, it feels like it's

(01:06:17):
it's ashby punctuating the fact that this is a fable
and there is no future, like this couldn't really happen.
There's no like it wouldn't really last because Eve would
find out and everybody would figure out that this but
it's just a fable. This is the end. Don't even
think any further about this story. Like that's kind of
that's my personal interpretation of that ending. Like I think
that that's kind of in a way what he's kind

(01:06:39):
of doing with that little fantasy bit there.

Speaker 12 (01:06:41):
Yeah, the walking on water, I like that. There are
so many different interpretations of it. I mean, there's the
road Runner or sorry, Wiley Coyote, I should say, interpretation
of it where he runs out or you know, after
the Roadrunner and then realizes that there is no gravity
there or no no mountain that he's still on and
then falls and it's just like, okay, if you don't

(01:07:05):
buy into it, if you just are, I hate to
say it that dumb You can just walk out there.
If you don't know any better, then there you go.
The interpretation I like is just like, we don't know
where Chance came from. We don't know. Maybe he was
born in a manger, who's never been sick, never went
to the dentist, perfect human being. He's been locked away

(01:07:27):
for all these years. Now he's out. Maybe the Messiah
has come and this is the Messiah.

Speaker 1 (01:07:31):
You know.

Speaker 12 (01:07:32):
It's like Michael moor Cock Behold the Man, where this
time traveler goes back and meets Jesus only to find
out that Jesus is a complete, babbling idiot and he
basically has to take the place of Jesus and do
all the things that Jesus does even though he knows
he's going to end up nail to across. And for me,
it's like, Okay, is this our new Jesus? Is it

(01:07:52):
this idiot that can walk on water and has these
mystical powers? But yeah, I like that one as well.
But you know, I don't know if I have a
leg to stand out other than the whole talk of
the old man and all of this stuff. And I
love the the misinterpretation of you know, the only thing
I have left for me is the room upstairs. Oh,

(01:08:13):
you're too young to talk about the room upstairs. I'm
going to go to the room upstairs. And I'm surprised
the Chance and be like, no, you can't have the
room upstairs. That's my room.

Speaker 7 (01:08:21):
It's a nice room. Then in nineteen seventy nine, another
really big film that came out that year was Life
of Brian, and Brian is a character who everything he
says is misinterpreted, well, not necessarily misinterpreted, but once they've decided.

Speaker 13 (01:08:38):
He dropped his shoe, the holy Isshue, the God of Jerusalem.

Speaker 12 (01:08:43):
We must wear it on our heads.

Speaker 7 (01:08:46):
Even when he tries to get explicit. Now back off,
how shall we fuck off?

Speaker 10 (01:08:51):
Oh?

Speaker 7 (01:08:52):
Lord? You know, there's nothing that he says that people
will believe the worst of him.

Speaker 1 (01:08:58):
That's it.

Speaker 7 (01:08:58):
They've decided he is the one. He's the one that
they want to hear from. And just like in being there,
at some point it stops being about misinterpretation of what
Chance says, and they've said, right, we've already decided he's
a messiah. I mean what the girlfriend of the lawyer says, Yeah,
he certainly talks like a gardener. But I think he's

(01:09:18):
a genius. They've made up their mind. There's nothing that
he's going to say at any stage. It's apart from
the doctor that's going to make them spend their heads
away and think, hang on, this guy really is he's
talking literally, he's not talking metaphorically. All he's talking about
is gardens. I like that contrast. I think I was
saying in a type message to you, Mike, that another

(01:09:42):
film that I could see that this is similar to
is one that we covered on the projection booth a
few years ago, was The Big Dig where there's a
main character who escapes from an asylum and he's got
a passion for pneumatic drills. He comes out, steals a
drill and goes into the center of Tel Aviv and

(01:10:03):
starts digging up the road. And rather than anyone saying, hey,
what the hell are you doing, let's take you away,
everyone's trying to sort of work out which member of
council had asked for the road to be dug up.
And you've got a policeman pushing away the cars and
say no, this is being dug up. No one's asking anything,

(01:10:25):
And then people are blaming each other and then at
the end they're all taking credit for it, and this guy,
he's just a simple guy who's just digging up the road.
It's the bureaucracy. It's a misinterpretation. And I really saw
that as a good parallel to this story as well.
I think I've done a number of films on the
projection booth with you, Mike about misinterpretation. Simple simple people.

(01:10:49):
That's my that's my passion.

Speaker 2 (01:10:52):
You know, Like I think of parallels, like Barry Linden
is an idiot, like sort of an idiot who and
then at The Jerk, which came out that the same era,
which is what I'm my favorite movies, The jack It's
the same story.

Speaker 12 (01:11:02):
The only thing that's missing is the aptigraph exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:11:05):
It's very similar, very similar kind of tale, which is
kind of cool. And then, like you were saying about,
you kind of remind me, Mike a little bit when
you were talking before. This is like an anti omen
like the Omen backwards, you know, like you know, in
a way, there's a lot of interesting parallels. It's always
an interesting story where you have a rise to power
like this, we.

Speaker 7 (01:11:23):
Are to cure write a film festival.

Speaker 12 (01:11:25):
Simple people thrust into great situations. We're going to take
a break and we'll be back with an interview with
Aaron Hunter, the writer of authoring hal Ashby the myth
of the New Hollywood Tour. Right after these brief messages.

Speaker 16 (01:11:40):
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us on an exciting journey through the illustrious career of
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Speaker 3 (01:12:14):
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podcasts and let the adventure begin.

Speaker 12 (01:12:49):
I want to know a little bit more about you
and how you got interested in film and writing about film.

Speaker 3 (01:12:54):
I was always interested in film. I'm a kind of
gen X's Star Wars Baby. But academically I moved. I
left the US. I just realized, actually today, it was
about twenty five years ago this week, and I ended
up in Budapest, Hungary, where I was teaching American studies.

(01:13:16):
I had a master's degree in English and literature was
my background, but I just started using film more and
more in the classroom. It was academic course of study,
but we used American culture and civilization, everything from talking
about different decades to talking about race in America or
education or gender, all these sorts of things as subject

(01:13:39):
matter for them to write about. And it just became
clear and clear to me that using film in those
contexts conveyed a lot of the messages easier, at least
for me. And so they ended up letting me put
together a film class which was on the nineteen seventies.
And while I was doing that and putting together the

(01:14:00):
reading list, one of the things I noticed was that
at that point, this would have been two thousand and six.
I think that there was nothing. There was one article
on Senses of Cinema. I think about hal Ashby, and
that's what led me to start to think about putting

(01:14:21):
it together as a PhD project. I was already thinking
about going back for a PhD, and I had met
my partner who I would eventually marry. She was an
English teacher from Hungary who wanted to live in an
English speaking country, and it all came together. We ended
up first in Belfast and then down here in Dublin.

Speaker 12 (01:14:42):
Hal Ashby and the Seventies go together so well. It
feels like that's such a natural marriage.

Speaker 3 (01:14:50):
That's more parent now than it was in the first
couple decades of the construction of the seventies image, which
really started in the late seventies, where it was more
about the kind of I didn't want to say macho,
but the sort of larger than life Maverick, directors, Peck

(01:15:12):
and Pah and Friedkin and these kind of guys, even Altman,
somebody who wouldn't take no for an answer, and a
lot of the ways that seventies films were written about
in the eighties and i'd say into the early two
thousands was about topics that are coming back around now,

(01:15:33):
but male loneliness that sort of disaffected young boomer late Vietnam,
post Vietnam, distrust of the establishment kind of person, the
Bobby Dupree or Travis Bickle, these kinds of characters. And

(01:15:54):
one of the things that drew me to Ashby is
that his films they fit that, but they're different. Harold
is a different Big Year, and even the tough guys
in the last detail, I think it's a different kind
of projection of toughness that they have than somebody like
Popeye Doyle or somebody like that. They're stock and they

(01:16:18):
don't know what to do about it, but they're not.
I don't want to, like overemphasize the differences, but I
think he has a foot in that, but he's not
fully in it, which is why I think in some
of the earlier books he's not even really mentioned, or
he's a footnote in a way. But I think, as
in the last let's say, fifteen years, as the kind

(01:16:40):
of understanding of the seventies filmography has expanded, and our
awareness of the different filmmakers, female filmmakers and filmmakers of
color that were making films that people were going to see,
but that just weren't getting canonized early on. Then Ashby
fits better or into that kind of broader constellation, if

(01:17:02):
that makes sense.

Speaker 12 (01:17:04):
Do you think one reason why he wasn't as noticed
or as laud it is because of the title of
your book, The myth of the new Hollywood auteur wasn't
because he was collaborating more with other people that he
wasn't seen as that singular tough guide director.

Speaker 3 (01:17:20):
I think so, Yeah, definitely, I think they were all
collaborating that much. But I think that there was a
confluence of events that I talk about in the book
and on all my books really of the changing nature
of the studio system, a new guard, a new generation

(01:17:41):
of directors, and the wider spread public understanding of tourism
as a tourism became something that film critics wrote about,
not just film academics, and as it became a marketing
tool of film by and so on. That the confluence

(01:18:03):
of all of those things by nineteen seventy one or
two meant that those savvy filmmakers knew to adopt that
mantle and then promote themselves under that mantle and Ashby
was resistant to that. In an interview after interview where
he's constantly deflecting his role onto his cinematographers or by Taller,

(01:18:29):
his production designer. He's always talking about his role in
the look of the film, his performers and so on.
And I think the more we learn about how those
films were made, the more we see that well Scorsese
was doing that too, and Bogdanovitch was doing that too.
They were just better at the time at playing the

(01:18:49):
game of presenting themselves as singular visionary director.

Speaker 12 (01:18:55):
By Danovich was so good about it that so many
people don't even know about Holly Platt, who I know,
is somebody else that you wrote about.

Speaker 3 (01:19:03):
Yeah, I think Karina's podcast from a few years ago
expanded the knowledge ba's about poly Platt. But yeah, Bogdanovitch
was very good editor. I mean, he's a fantastic rack
on tour, and he's a fantastic historian of film and
very good at placing himself within that history, which he

(01:19:26):
made four incredible films right out of the gate and
then had a very good filmography. So he deserves to
be in that history. But he certainly knew that.

Speaker 12 (01:19:39):
Why do you think that Ashby was so collaborative and
was so open to that. Was that fromastasa as an
editor or where did that come from?

Speaker 3 (01:19:48):
He talks about it as early as working on some
of the first films where he was an assistant editor
to Robert Swink on the William Wiler films, and Wyler
and Swink coming in and saying to the whole if
you have an idea, tell us, we probably won't use it,
but we want to hear it. No idea is a
bad idea until we decide it's a bad idea. And

(01:20:09):
that was part of his his sort of apprenticeship in
the industry, and then when he went to work with
Norman Jewison. He's edited those films of Jewisen's in the
sixty Cincinnati Kid and obviously In the Heat of the
Night for which he won the Oscar and Thomas Crown affair.

(01:20:29):
Jewison was fairly new too, and he was also, like Ashby,
would become invested in using his crew to the best
of their abilities and really letting them make suggestions. I'm
working on a piece about the cinematography of In the

(01:20:50):
Heat of the Night right now, and how much decision
making Haskell Wexler had on that film to shoot it
the way he wanted to shoot it in order to
capture most specifically Partier's performance in Partier's presence on screen Jewison,
it seems, from both what Jewison said about it and
what Wexler said about it, basically let Wexler det up

(01:21:14):
the cinematography on that choose the cameras, choose the lenses,
choose the film, choose the lighting, and so on. So
it's in that kind of twelve or thirteen years of
working mostly with Wiler and then with Jewison, That's how
he learned filmmaking works. And so I think he brought
that approach with him because that's how he was trained,

(01:21:36):
but also he saw the film's benefit from it. He
always wanted to work with Haskell Wexler because they'd done
a couple films with Jewison and they'd become friends, and
they would remain friends until Ashby passed and Jeff Wexler
Haskell's son. I think he worked on all of Ashby's
films from Harold and Maud, so they were family friends

(01:21:57):
and so on. But he couldn't get him until Bound
for Glory and so on the Landlord. He got Gordon Willis,
and then he wanted to work with Willis again all
the time after that, but they were like East Coast
West Coast Union things, and he was back on the
East Coast after Harold and Maud wanted to get Gordon

(01:22:17):
Willis again, but he was maybe working on The Godfather
Part two, and so he hired Michael Chapman, who was
like Gordon Willis's assistant, who'd never been a cinematographer on
a film before. And Chapman was like what Okay talked about,
not knowing exactly what he was doing. The people have
praised my use of natural light on that film. I

(01:22:39):
didn't know how to like this. I just used the
light that was there and it worked and it looks
great and stark and cold like that film does. And
then he went on to do Taxi Driver and Raging
Bowl and so many other great films. So yeah, I
really appreciate Ashby's willingness to do that over and over
and with some of his editors who are maybe lesser
known than Michael Chapman. But he did the same thing

(01:23:01):
which would bite him in the ass on some of
Zadies films when he brought in some unproven editors who
he tried to give a chance to but maybe didn't
work out the way he'd hoped they would on some
of those last few films.

Speaker 12 (01:23:15):
One of the things that I found fascinating about him
was the whole idea of him shooting and editing two
films at once, or editing two films at once. Was
the first time doing that? Was that being there in
secondhand hearts? Or had he done that before?

Speaker 3 (01:23:29):
That was the first time doing that? He was getting
really burnt out. There's conflicting stories. When I wrote the
I shouldn't probably say this, but who wrote the Ashby book?
I was really committed to tali an alternate story to
the Ashby burnt out on drugs, which was that's all

(01:23:51):
part of Peter Biskins's narrative, and that's a lot of
the kind of all those last four films aren't that
good because of cocaine. And Nick Dawson's book. I don't
know if you've read his biography of Ashby, but he
goes into quite a lot of detail about just how
burnt out Ashby was from working these kind of sixteen
hour days for weeks and weeks because he would let

(01:24:12):
his editors edit. I interviewed Bob Jones a couple of times,
who edited, I think from the last detail Shampoo Bound
for Glory and then worked as a writer on Being
There and Coming Home, and he said, while he was
editing those films, Ashby just let him be for days
and days where he'd come down at the end of
the day and just look at what was there. But

(01:24:35):
for him it was then the fine tuning. So he
would get his editor Don Zimmerman or Jones or whoever
it was, would get the film where Ashby wanted it.
And then he was so interested in rhythm and so
interested in the precise moments in those cross cutting like
so many of his films, and with those great cross

(01:24:57):
cut like Harold and Maud where he's still in the
hospital and he's driving the car and the cat Stephens
song's playing and you're just shattered, or the end of
Coming Home where you're cutting between Dern and John Voyd
talking to the kids in the gym, and it's just
so intense, and for him, all of the precision of
that was what was important. And he would just spend

(01:25:17):
because he's editing on film, on decks and a long
time working on that, and he would feel burned out.
And I think he felt really burnt out by the
end of Coming Home, which also happened to be his
sort of most celebrated film at the time anyway, and

(01:25:38):
so going into Being There, Second Hand Hearts was actually
filmed first and the Lorimar deal, which also would produce
Looking to get out. That was his idea. He thought,
I can stay fresh. If I start to feel burnt
out on this one film, I'll go and work on
the other film. I don't think it quite worked out

(01:25:58):
the way he wanted to be because, as I was
talking about earlier, the initial edits of Secondhand Hearts didn't
work out as well as Zimmerman's editing on Being There.
So he had to go back into Secondhand Hearts and
rework it from the very beginning, which was a lot

(01:26:18):
more laborious than he had hoped it would be.

Speaker 12 (01:26:21):
Tell me a little bit about the origins of Being
There and the evolution of a screenplay, because the idea
behind that of you teaching those screenplays and then how
it became a book. I would love people to know
more about that me too. Thanks for asking about it.

Speaker 3 (01:26:40):
That was a real Passion project, and I was shocked
that my publisher, Katie Galloff, she's at Bloomsbury and she's amazing.
So I have to give her props because I just
went to her and I was like, I've got this
quirky idea for a book. Do you think anybody would
publish this? And she was like, I'll publish it. I
didn't mean you got it wasn't asking and they were

(01:27:02):
great about it. It's a big, fat book that's not
typical of if these are my loop I have them here,
but oh, we're on a podcast. But you can see
anyway that being their books a lot bigger, both in
its kind of dimensions and how thick it is, and
so I really appreciate that they agreed to publish it.

(01:27:24):
It was Yeah. So I teach a lot of screenwriting
and I still do, like if any of my students
listen to this, I still use the end of being
there on the first day of class, because I talk
about screenwriting is rewriting. No matter what process you have

(01:27:45):
in your head, about writing in your ivory tower or
your own individual genius, hold on to those things. They're
great too, But if you want to go into this industry.
You're going to get notes and you're going to have
to respond to those notes, and those notes are going
to help you. Sometimes they're going to be annoying, sometimes
they're gonna seem ridiculous, but oftentimes they're gonna help you.

(01:28:07):
So let's look at how this happened, and then the
two Jones scripts, and then we watched the end of
the film and it seemed to work. I started doing
that around twenty fourteen, and I had a couple scripts.
I have the Robert Town published or I don't know
who published it, but it's the last Detail in Chinatown,

(01:28:30):
A nice little publication of that script. I have some
Hal Hartley scripts that I bought and a few other
script books. What if there was not just one script
but more. I wanted to put five drafts in, but
they were like, you can't do that, met come on, huh.
So they agreed on the three drafts. And there was

(01:28:52):
a lot of talk during the kind of production phase
of the book about how much I should include, should
this be a work book? We went through a month
or six weeks where it was going to be a workbook,
where there were like questions and it was textbooky thing
and I didn't really want it to be that because
I wanted it, and this is what makes it a

(01:29:13):
hard sell, I think, to be honest, but I wanted
it to be a book that students could look at
in a classroom but also on their own and track
those changes themselves. So if you've looked at it, in
the introduction and in the short intros to each of
the scripts, I give a couple examples, but I really

(01:29:34):
want that process of discovery is really important. So when
I'm teaching screenwriting, I'll sign a script with the film
and they're going to do what they're going to do
because they're students. But I asked them read the script,
watch the film, and then watch the film again with
the script. And some of them do, I know, because
they come to class and we often end up talking

(01:29:57):
about the differences. Is this different in the film than
it is on the page? And we can't always because
of the nature of scripts and which script do you
find online? And so on, we can't always come to
a reason why the change was made, but we can
at least talk about the effect of it in class
for them as writers, and it ends up being really effective,

(01:30:20):
I think, because I have them at the end of
the semester write a kind of critical reflection of the
process of writing their own script, and they often write
about when I saw this change from the script to
screen in this film, I realized the efficiency of dialogue,
or I better understood the get in late and get
out early rule of screenwriting, or whatever it might be.

(01:30:44):
And so that was the impetus behind doing that book.
It was a movie I love, a movie that I
think the script is fantastic. I also had because Bob
Jones had been so kind to me when I was
just a sort of lowly PhD stud and he was
so screwed over by the attribution of that script that

(01:31:06):
I felt like I have no power to go to Hollywood,
whoever owns being there now I think Warner Brothers and
say put Bubs Jones's name in the titles. But I
could put out a book with Bob Jones's name on
the cover and give back a little to him that way,
which I felt like he would deserve. The book came
out six weeks after he died. I was a little

(01:31:27):
bit bummed out about that, but I had a nice
chat with some of his daughters and they were happy
about it. That's not why I did it. But when
something like that can happen as well, it's a nice
side effect or a nice benefit.

Speaker 12 (01:31:40):
The idea of looking at the script and the evolution
of those versus what we see. That's why bread and Butter.
I love that kind of stuff, absolutely, sign just to
track those changes. And now I'm curious about the other
two scripts. Were they more intron between to those drafts,
to those Jones drafts.

Speaker 3 (01:31:59):
The other two would have been two other Kazinski drafts.
He wrote one right after the book came out. And
it's funny because I get some of this wrong in
the Ashby book, because I was researching all the films
and I can only spend so many days in the
archives on being There or the Landlord or whatever. But
then when I went back to the hal Ashby archives

(01:32:21):
and then got in touch with some of the Kazinski archives,
I discovered that he was teaching a class at Yale
in nineteen seventy one on screenplay adaptation, and he used
being There as his case study in the class, and
so he wrote a script adaptation of his own book.

(01:32:42):
I'm going to get this date wrong, but I think
nineteen seventy one early seventies anyway, and it was a
I think it was a summer school course at Yale
on yeah screen adaptations, and it was around that time
that Ashby and Sellers were interesting. It's a great story
in talks about making the film, but neither of them

(01:33:05):
had the wherewithal to get it made, and Kazinsky had
heavier hitters in mind. I can't remember right now, but
there were bigger named directors that he was trying to
get to make the film back then. And then when Brownsberg,
who was friends with Ashby and Kasinski, brought them together
after coming home and they went through all of the

(01:33:28):
process of getting Lauramar to agree to make the film,
Kazinsky submitted another draft and that's the one that's in
the book, and that's the one that's wild, I think,
because it's got all of the cutaways to social protests,
and it's got backstories of a lot of the minor characters,
the lawyer, and a lot more stuff with the Secret

(01:33:50):
Service agents and whimsical dialogue that they have as they're
going around Rams mentioned there's a lot more people trying
to find out chances background and it gets goofy and hygiency,
and that one is still set in New York, which
is where the novel was set. And then in the meantime,
and I get this a little bit wrong. In the

(01:34:12):
Ashby book, Mike Caller had gone to d C and
he came back and said to Ashby, we have to
move it to DC. I always thought that was Jones's decision,
but it was actually Mike Haller's idea because he saw
this the corridors of power right now in late seventies

(01:34:32):
America visually are going to be more symbolically represented by
the Capitol Building and the disparity of wealth in Washington,
d C just still there but was massive, as you
see in the film. And so Kazinski actually wrote another
script in the summer of seventy eight where he cut

(01:34:56):
out all of that social unrest, and he did said
it in Washington d C at their request. It's his
first and his third draft that I also wanted to include.
But then even after that third draft, Ashby has said
in a bunch of interviews like he wasn't feeling it.
He said, it's really interesting that he felt like Kazinsky

(01:35:19):
was afraid of his protagonist because he kept writing more
and more about everything else except chance, and Kazinsky was
also getting really frustrated because he wanted to write another
novel because that's what he was really and so I
don't know how amicable the split was after the film

(01:35:40):
came out and was such a success, because innc he
was I don't know much about him, but he was
one of these kind of literary celebrities. When he's going
to Studio fifty four and showing up on the Tonight
Show all the time acting in Reds. He was just
happy to be in the spotlight. So once the film
came out and was celebrated, he was happy to go

(01:36:00):
out and publicize as much as he could and take
a lot of credit for it, of course, but he
definitely stepped away late summer of seventy eight, and that's
when a should be brought in Jones and he did
the two drafts, So he did one by December, and
then he and Ashby met over Christmas and Jones rewrote

(01:36:23):
it based on that meeting for January, and they started
shooting right after that.

Speaker 12 (01:36:28):
I found it interesting too that even into those later
drafts that Kazinski still wasn't on board. It sounded like
with Peter Seller, so that he was still writing a
much younger, more handsome Chance, just like taking Warren Baby
from Shampool and putting him into being there.

Speaker 3 (01:36:46):
I think he wanted Ryan O'Neill, Robert Redford one of
these guys, and I get it. In the book, Chance
is like a football player or something, and he's big,
and he's strong, and he's vira or appears to be.
And that's part of his appeal too in the book,
that people are going to look at that kind of

(01:37:07):
and a waspy, tight East Coast wasp figure. And of
course he's brilliant, and I think it's one of those
moments of movie magic. I don't think from everything I've read,
I think Ashby was being a sound guy. He was
also probably experimenting with his newfound power after coming home,

(01:37:31):
and I like the way this feels. But he said
always interview after interview, I made a deal with Sellers
if I make this fill he's Chance and I respect
him for that, and it made the movie different. It's
a whole different experience to have him be a middle

(01:37:52):
aged He's almost a sad sack who's holding it together
because of his simple mindness. But Obviously by the end,
when we get to that deathbed scene with rand you
can see there's a pain in him that I don't think.
I can't imagine Ryan O'Neill, as much as I like him,

(01:38:13):
and what's up, Doc or whatever, he's not going to
pull off that deathbed scene with the one tier and
the red eyes and just I've seen it before, Robert.
It's wonderful, and the age also gives it a kind
of I don't know it somehow makes the hanging out
with the Soviet ambassador more believable, going on talk shows

(01:38:36):
and that kind of stuff. So it works in the book.
But I'm glad they stuck with Sellers. But yeah, Kazinski,
you're right. He was resistant to it and continued to
write him almost specifically as young and broad shouldered and
that sort of thing in the scripts, which is probably
another bone of contention with Ashby.

Speaker 12 (01:38:57):
Well, he couldn't elect anyone younger than sixties president done anyway.

Speaker 3 (01:39:02):
Sixty would be a fountain of view of these days.

Speaker 12 (01:39:06):
When does the Richard Dyser character, When does the doctor
enter into the mix?

Speaker 3 (01:39:11):
He's definitely in the Kazinski draft, that's in my book.
So the first one he submitted to the production. He's
an important character in that. I think he's in the
I'd have to have a look. I can get back
to you. I think he's in the first draft that
he did in seventy one as well, because I think

(01:39:33):
he changed the second half of the story so much,
because Rand pretty much disappears from the book halfway through,
and the ending of the book is so much different,
so that notion of somebody inside the house having to
be suspicious, which I think is important. I've been thinking.

(01:39:55):
I watched it again the last couple of days, and
I hadn't watched for a little while, and every time
I watch it, my reading of it changes a little.
As I'm sure has happened with you in films, you
can't believe the story, you just can't believe it. And
if the doctor's not there suspicious, of course you're going

(01:40:18):
to have the president investigating him because he's some guide
who just showed up. And then when the press finds out,
they're going to investigate, who's this guy who just showed up?
But for Alan B he has a personal connection and
I think he has to be there for the audience
to accept this. He's the outlier of the whole story

(01:40:42):
that makes the story believable, you know what I mean?
Does that make sense? And without him, I think the
audience would have a harder time accepting it because somebody
has to see that there's something going on here. Would
you agree with us?

Speaker 12 (01:40:58):
I would. It feels like he he's the little kid
from the EMPERORSU closed or something, but he can't scream
about it because everybody else is playing along so much
that it feels like he would get in trouble if
he did.

Speaker 17 (01:41:13):
If he just was like, look at what you're doing,
look at what you're talking about. Yeah, So why do
you think when we ask you? Because I was wondering
this on this recent rewatch, I've wondered it before, But
why does he let him get away with it?

Speaker 3 (01:41:25):
At the end.

Speaker 12 (01:41:27):
We talked a little bit about that in our discussion,
and one of the things that I was thinking was
Chance coming to him and saying Eve is not going
to close up the house, and basically and also asking
are you done here? Basically it sounds like he's about
to kick the doctor out right, but then maybe he'll

(01:41:48):
let him stay, don't It's almost like the doctor is
in the same position the Chance was at the beginning
of the film.

Speaker 3 (01:41:55):
Oh nice.

Speaker 12 (01:41:56):
I like that because that old man dies, so that's
his old man who's died.

Speaker 3 (01:42:02):
It fits with the tone of the film and it's
I think again, part of what makes it all believable
is that Alan b his curiosity is tweaked almost from
the beginning, and Dysart's performance is really great. It's all
in his expressions, in the way he looks at Chance,
and compared to all the craziness of the CIA and

(01:42:22):
the FBI investigations in the press, his is very gentle,
and I think it comes out of a kind of
paternalistic feeling he has towards Rand, his patient, who seems
to also be his friend. He goes to the dinner
with them and this sort of stuff, and he has
to maybe as a man of science, I don't know,

(01:42:43):
has to gratch this itch. But in the meantime, as
he's doing that, both Rand, Benjamin Rand, and Ivrand tell
him at different points, this guy makes me happy. I
feel good with him. Brand says his dying right, this
is the calmest or the happiest or something I've felt

(01:43:04):
in a long time. And I think that taps into
Alanbe's sense of concern and friendship as well. If I
tell them the truth, I'm gonna take this away from them,
and that makes it very gentle. Which the whole film,
not the whole film, but much of the film is

(01:43:24):
like this kind of fable and it fits into that tone.

Speaker 12 (01:43:27):
And I think, did you see any other potential missteps
in those earlier drafts, even the Jones drafts before they
got to the final film, other things where you're just like, ah,
I'm really glad they avoided that trap.

Speaker 3 (01:43:42):
I like the way Ashby brings in like a smidgeon
of sort of race politics. Enough she says it sure
is a white man's world if this guy is gonna
be on TV. And that great piece of graffiti when
he first hears the house, it's magnificent, and it's just there.

(01:44:02):
It's like a commentary on the film, which I think
is really important to a newest shreading I have. But
we can come back to that. Kazinski keeps changing her
and so there's also a German maid. I don't want
to say inga, but it might be ingrid, sorry, And
from draft to draft, from the original book, who the

(01:44:25):
maid is in the story keeps changing, and in one
of the drafts he actually gives the old man a
deathbed scene. I think this might be the what's in
the book where he tells Chance that Chance is the
son of the old man and a previous black who

(01:44:46):
has since died, so that Chance, all of a sudden
is like the biracial product of forbidden love, because that
would have been whatever in the forties or fifties or
something like that. I think that was a mistake, and
I appreciate like what Kazinsky's trying to do there and
trying to like break some taboos or push the story

(01:45:09):
in different directions, but I don't think that's the story
that being there is about, and that just whether his
mother was black or not isn't even the issue. It's
chances background at all, removing that enigma of it. I'd
call that a misstep. I think in the Jones first

(01:45:29):
Jones draft really a misstep because he had so much
work to do, and this comes at the ending, which
I talk about with my students. But at the ending
of the Kazinsi drafts, you're not always sure if rand
has died. Sometimes it's mentioned we don't see him die,
but the men who become The Pallbearers in the film

(01:45:51):
are always off site, somewhere in some kind of ancient
smoking room around a fireplace, and in this his first draft,
he kept them off site. He did include the funeral,
so you have the President giving the eulogy and you
have Chance wandering off, but he still has those guys

(01:46:14):
off site, which some of my students actually like when
they get to that, because they feel like it creates
a greater mystery and they feel like having the puppet
masters the Pallbears is a little on the nose, which
I that's a sort of fair reading. But I like
the centrality of the location of it all at the end,

(01:46:36):
and I love the way again editing Ashby does that
cross cut editing, and the way that the President's voice
hangs over it all, and the acoustic depth from when
we cut. There's four different volumes, maybe five. I was
trying to listen if when he says life is a
state of mind at the end, after he's dunked the

(01:46:56):
umbrella in, they'd put some reverb on that or something.
It sounds like another I don't know volume level. Then
you have President, you have even Allen b you have
the Pallbearers and you have Chance, and those are all
four different volumes of his speech. Then I think that
life of the state of mind, Life is a state
of Mind is a fifth volume, and just that kind

(01:47:18):
of subtle sound mixing is magnifics.

Speaker 12 (01:47:23):
That was interesting. The whole idea of keeping them off site.
I almost wonder if the idea of the that looks
like an Illuminati temple with the big eyeball. I'm like, okay,
is this kind of playing into These guys are in
power and they've been in power for as long as
this country has been around. Like plying back to the
Mason's I think.

Speaker 3 (01:47:43):
There's a YouTube video about that way.

Speaker 12 (01:47:45):
I wouldn't be surprised seeking down that rabbit.

Speaker 3 (01:47:48):
Local people want to go down at. Yeah, being there
is an example that the illuminat and it's a movie man,
but yeah, Matt video is out there.

Speaker 12 (01:47:56):
You're talking about your new reading as far as race goes,
whether you're thinking these days, well so much about race,
but the race feeds into it. So one of the
big kind of criticisms of the film still is the
blooper ending. And so if your listeners don't know the
film ends on this real like elegaic, this beautiful spare

(01:48:19):
piano and Chance.

Speaker 3 (01:48:20):
Walks on water out of nowhere, like there's nothing leading
you to believe that this is even a possibility. And
it's beautiful and it's cinematic, and I write about it
in the first Ashley book gets all of the imaginations
of everybody involves come together in this magnificent moment, and

(01:48:42):
then you get a black screen, a little bit of
old school TV fuzz and then the silly bloopers of
Peter Seller's flubbing his lines, and a lot of people
hate it. And if you go on YouTube, I was
looking at it today you can see the original film
the ending, which is also available on maybe on the

(01:49:04):
criterions blu ray. So it's the ending when Chances off
in the woods and Eve has come looking for him,
and she says, Chauncey, I was looking for you. I
was looking for you too, Eve, and they kiss and
they walk off and they fill them with that and
then it went. It was going to go into just
the credits with some background sounds, and you can also

(01:49:26):
see this on YouTube, some TV sounds in the background,
but then the piano continues, and so down in the comments,
everyone was I can't believe they didn't keep this ending.
I hope in future DVDs they get rid of that
stupid blooper ending. It breaks the spell, which is what
Peter Seller said to it, and Ashby defended it. He

(01:49:47):
continued to defend the blooper ending because it's in a
letter that he wrote I put in one of the books.
He went to the cinema a bunch of times and
watched it, and he said, every time I watched it,
everybody stayed at the end to watch the and it
wasn't their intention, but they got to see the names
of all the people who made the movie. That's interesting.

(01:50:07):
But I was thinking about this breaks the spell, and
this is a film that's come back. Maybe this is
one reason why you're talking about on your podcast. Because
of current and recent political situations, Chance should not be
a leader of the free world. Chance should not be
walking on water. And I think I've always thought that

(01:50:32):
the one of the neat tricks that the film plays
is that in the opening sequence, it tricks the audience
into believing that Chance is a rich guy, because we
have no dialogue and we have him in his silk
pajamas and his beautiful estate, and yes he's doing labor,
but he's doing it in the way that a retired

(01:50:53):
gentleman might tend to his gardens in his old cars
and stuff like that. And then we realize, oh he's Chance. Ooh,
it tricked us. And that's very important, I think, because
even though we're only tricked for five minutes, that helps
us to understand how everyone else gets tricked throughout the film.
And as we watch it, and we watch all these

(01:51:13):
kind of idiots around him, and we were like, how
could these people believe it? We also fall in love
with him again as Chance, as this sort of furial
wisdom maker, and so when he walks on water at
the end, we're like, wow, he could do it. He

(01:51:34):
could do it, and we've been tricked by it again,
and I feel like the spell should be broken and
we should ask ourselves, why does a Chance appeal to us?
Because he does, He's in It's Peter Sell's performance is fantastic,
dialogue's great. There's all kinds of reasons, but I think

(01:51:56):
the film taps into something deeper in our own I'm
probably saying too much, reading too much into this, but
this is what occurred to me. Over the last couple
of days. It taps into a kind of a desire
for that simple wise man to save us or something
like that, and you can see I'm still trying to

(01:52:18):
figure this out. But and that spell should be broken
because that's dangerous. Do you know what chance running the
country some people do.

Speaker 1 (01:52:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:52:30):
The other thing I really love watching it again this time,
if you don't mind, is I really fell for Shirley MacLean.
I've always liked her in it, but she's so good
and understated. And there's a scene. It's the scene when
she first kisses him and they're standing in the hallway,
and that scene just feels like such a delicate seventies

(01:52:53):
movie moment, and they play it so well, except for
the scene where she's in the bedroom on the floor,
which I like, I get hot and cold on that scene,
the masturbation scene. But throughout the rest of the film
she's just so understated, and she grows into it so much.
From the scene in the limousine where she's like a
little worried she's gonna get sued, she doesn't know what's

(01:53:15):
going on, and then as she just develops this fondness
for him, she acts it so well, and I really
watching it this time felt like what I was saying
about Alan b like we need him as the skeptic,
but we need her not as the overly enthusiastic Rand
and the president and all these people who are like

(01:53:36):
willing to jump onto Chauncey, but just someone who sees
this gentleness. It's probably part of why we fall for
him again because she's so good. But her performance is
just really lovely. And I think I got in previous
viewings so caught up in Sellers and Jack Warden, who
I always love, all these the kind of hyjinks of

(01:53:59):
it that sometimes you miss how quiet and really restrained
her performances.

Speaker 12 (01:54:06):
What are you working on these days?

Speaker 3 (01:54:08):
I have a couple projects. One is in line with
this stuff, and it's a book about well, I hope
it'll be a book about cinematography in the seventies, and
so I want to talk about all these great figures,
mostly men, almost all men. That's the area of Hollywood

(01:54:31):
production that's still incredibly dominated by men. But Haskell Wexler,
who I mentioned, Gordon Willis, Michael Chapman, Owen Roy's mean
so many more that I'm forgetting right now, Lasso, Kolbots, Jakmunville, Mosh,
these guys who did so much to shape the look
of that era. And there was a lot of great

(01:54:52):
stuff going on with new quiet handheld cameras, with the
steady cam by the middle of the decade, all that
sort of stuff. And how it was the cinematographers usually
who would go to the directors and say, hey, can
we try this Bill must Schigmann go into all men,
let's flash the film. What Yeah, but it'll look cool
if it works Petha, that sort of thing, and the

(01:55:15):
director's going for And that's another part of that collaboration
that we talked about at the beginning. And so that's
actually the I'm working on a paper right now in
the heat of the night, because I think that film
and another film, Gunge and Hesse to Build gunfilm, those
were two of the films that really like were the cinematographers.

(01:55:36):
Clinton was at his name on Gungeon Hess where they
decided we're going to shoot black skin in a way
that you can see it because there's a whole history
of Hollywood cinematography being geared towards whiteness, just in the
way it highlighted greens and reds and things like that.

(01:55:56):
And so both of those guys came from a black
and white documentary background and when they switch to color,
they're like, what is this? This doesn't work and I
want this is Sydney Partier. He's going to look good
in this film. And so that might be the first chapter,
and I'll write about Lens Flair, so a mix of
style and technology and the practitioners who brought it about.

(01:56:20):
And then the other project is veering off in a
different direction, and it's about male affection on screen, like
mostly sort of platonic male or the lack of platonic
male affection on screen. And that's going to be about
film and television but in the twenty first century. So

(01:56:41):
it's all kind of new area for me. But just
that sort of I don't know, taboo of men expressing
love and affection towards each other. So that's something I'm
really excited about. But it's definitely a new avenue of
research for me.

Speaker 12 (01:57:00):
Yeah, that one, Thund's really daunting.

Speaker 3 (01:57:03):
It is really daunting because you had to leave a
lot out, just even in terms of like how you
theorize gender and masculinity and this sort of stuff like
queer studies and the bromance, which is not really what
I want to talk about. I want to talk about
non community. There'll be some comedy, but just the ways

(01:57:23):
in which Hollywood and American indie cinema, American television prevent
men from doing this or mock them for doing it.
If that makes sense. Do you ever watch a friend
We show Friends barely. I really wasn't a big fan.
This is how I frame it for some people. There's

(01:57:45):
an episode where joe and this won't be in the book,
it might be in the introduction. Joey and Ross accidentally
fall asleep on the couch together and they wake up
and they're both like, this is the best nap I've
ever had in my life. And the rest of the
episode is them like, we should do it again. No,
we can't do it again, but it's the best n

(01:58:05):
app I've ever had in my life. I know, like
when we get to a certain age, naps are important,
and so they finally decide to do it, and they
wake up and they feel so good, and they look
up and the other friends are just standing there, arms crossed,
looking at them with derision. And I find that fascinating
because I feel like that's like in a microcosm, how

(01:58:29):
Hollywood treats men being affectionate with each other. So it's
just something like that.

Speaker 12 (01:58:36):
Is there a big place for me to keep up
on you and your work?

Speaker 3 (01:58:40):
And you have a faculty page at Trinity College. It's
fairly well updated. I have a YouTube channel that's been
dormant for about a year, but I'm about to fire
it up again. So that went on for about three
years and I'm hoping to get it started again in
the next couple of three weeks. Last year was very

(01:59:01):
busy for me, so I kept saying next week, next week,
and then I stopped. Sometimes I talk about my work
a little bit there, but that's more just talking about
movies and that sort of thing. But I'm on Blue Sky,
so I've cut the other social media ties for now.
If I have things come up, like if one of
these book projects gets accepted, I'll certainly trumpet it there.

Speaker 12 (01:59:26):
Professor Hunter, thank you so much for your time. This
is great.

Speaker 3 (01:59:29):
Thank you so much for inviting me. I really appreciate it,
and for reading my books.

Speaker 1 (01:59:44):
There's the place.

Speaker 8 (01:59:47):
I can get to where I'm safe from Mecida blues,
and it's green, it's quogged. Oh the trouble ball.

Speaker 3 (02:00:05):
I had the bar you and love.

Speaker 8 (02:00:08):
You anything I got to do, got my head shot.
See you keep all singing in.

Speaker 1 (02:00:16):
The blue rooms. Get fucking stayed here.

Speaker 8 (02:00:20):
Johnny's doded.

Speaker 12 (02:00:23):
All right, we are back, and we were talking about
being there.

Speaker 2 (02:00:26):
As far as the ending, just quick, I think he
had actually he was in conversation with somebody or something
like that and kind of said, oh, you know, at
this point in the movie, how could just walk on water?
And then it was like ding ding ding ding. You know,
he had that ending because he wasn't really feeling great
about the endings he had. But I was thinking, you know,
I think other people have said this, but coming home,
you know, like it's very similar, you know, that ending

(02:00:46):
of walking into water, that's very like it's kind of
poignant when you think about it like that. That was
another ending of a really amazing movie that he did.
That's kind of weirdly similar.

Speaker 7 (02:00:56):
Speak about the ending of the film the credits where
they show outtake after outtake, and I had read that
Peter Sellers was very very unhappy about that, said, probably
quite rightly, you've told this really effective tale and now
you're cheapening it by showing some comedic out takes where

(02:01:20):
I can't remember my lines, and I think I read
that for the European release of the film, they just
had the credits over TV static, which makes more sense
if you're going to do that without it being a
black screen with white credits going over it. But no,

(02:01:40):
how did you two feel? Do you think it took
away from the story? It was, Yeah, HiT's there.

Speaker 12 (02:01:45):
I kind of agree with Peter Sellers on that I
don't know about this whole it ruined the spell kind
of thing, but it's so different than the rest of
the film, and it's so much more of what I
associate with comedies, like very big comedies like big as
an brash loud. You know. Obviously the most famous one

(02:02:07):
for me is Cannibal Run.

Speaker 2 (02:02:09):
Because if I had enough time, I would take those
rosary bleeds and stuck them up your nose.

Speaker 1 (02:02:15):
These bleeds and those bleeds there. If you're gonna take
these up, take bleeds here.

Speaker 12 (02:02:22):
And then you watch some of like the Paul Figue
stuff where you're just like, oh my god, this guy
actually did not include every single punchline that was set
on set, Like, oh, here's another twenty minutes of Melissa
McCarthy just riffing so and some of those are actually funny,
some of them aren't. But in uh, for me, like
Cannibal Run, some of the best end credits ever. But

(02:02:43):
that fits with the movie. It's not like, Oh, I
had this idea in my head that Dom Delaize really
was him. You know that he was kept in chaos,
you know, none of this stuff. But I do agree
that I think playing this over, playing the credits over
black or static would have been a better choice. And

(02:03:03):
I don't know if it cost him the Oscar, like
Sellers was saying, I mean, he was up against some
real heavy hitters that year. But yeah, I think it totally.
It doesn't fit with the rest of the film. What
do you think, in Susan, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:03:15):
I agree, it's it's very odd choice, really odd choice.
I don't know what he was thinking, actually, you know,
to me, it's like, why don't I don't even know
why you'd want to see that? Really, I mean it's
it's like not even that amusing, you know, I mean,
I don't know. I guess again, maybe he felt like, oh,
everybody came here to see Peter Seller's cut up, you know,
in a way, and I just feel like I need

(02:03:35):
to do something to reward that people who are here
to see, who are Sellers fans. You know, maybe that
was the thought. I don't know, but I agree. Yeah,
I think it's a shame.

Speaker 12 (02:03:45):
After two hours and seven minutes. We're going to use
the last two minutes to.

Speaker 2 (02:03:50):
Show because you do get you immediately get to you
feel like you're seeing you remember then you remember, oh,
this is a man of a thousand voices, you know
what I mean, Like you just you know you immediately. Yeah,
So it's really.

Speaker 12 (02:04:01):
Seller's performance in this is amazing. But there are certain
moments where I'm just like I'm in awe of the performance,
you know, like the use of the voice, that kind
of flattening of the voice, that mid Atlantic type accent.
You know, I think he based a lot of it
on Stan Laurel, so I can kind of hear that.
But when he's got the cigar and Rand is smoking

(02:04:25):
the cigar and he's given one to chance, and you
see him kind of like we were talking about how
he's imitating people, he's kind of you know, monkey see
monkey doo, and he still doesn't quite get it. And
he just keeps trying to mess with the cigar, and
then you get the match going and everything, and it's
just like he doesn't know what the hell to do.
And I just love that he's got that little bit

(02:04:45):
of puzzlement on his face. He's not playing it to
the rafters. You know, it's just very, very subtle. And
that's the thing I like the most about this performance
is just how subtle it is. But you know, he's
this charric. I mean, he's inhabiting chance throughout the entire thing,
and like you were saying at the end, when he's
not doing that anymore, when he is flipping back into

(02:05:06):
that character and trying to do the whole what you know,
Raphael's message type of thing. I don't want to be
reminded of that, because I've just seen this guy in
this body and inhabiting this character for two hours and
seven minutes. You know, I don't need the last two
minutes to be oh, and here's the guy who actually
did it. It's like, no, I know that he's an actor.

(02:05:27):
I know that he has this amazing power. I've just
witnessed it for all this time.

Speaker 7 (02:05:33):
This is one of those films where the lead actor.
I watched that film and I don't see Petercella's acting.
I see Chance the Gardener. That's that's it. It's very
rare for me where I see someone that so inhabits
I forget that it's an actor. But this is one
of those rare cases. And everyone sort of talks about

(02:05:54):
Peter Seller's comedic genius and his pencheon for using voices.
I mean, I think you even use the word there mic,
but I think there's so much in his face, just
his facial expressions. It's a blank slate or where he
shows fear because he's being asked a question on television
that he doesn't know how he's going to respond, so things, Well,

(02:06:16):
I better bring up the garden. It's the one thing
I know. He just has that blank look on his face,
and when he says things that the audience finds funny,
but he's just saying completely straight face, and he looks
and says, oh good, and he just says that little
while everything about his face is perfect. That's where all
the acting is not just in the voice. I wanted

(02:06:37):
to sort of bring up one of the Peter Soller's
film that I watched a few months ago. I think
they were talking about this on the Pure Cinema podcast.
They went and mentioned this Peter Solla's film from nineteen
sixty one called Never Let Go, And this is one
one I hadn't even heard of. And I always sort

(02:06:59):
of associated Seller's with comedic roles, with maybe occasionally something
that was comedic with a slight sense of drama. So
like in Hoffman, that's no comedy, but it's not. His
character isn't completely sinister or anything like that. He's just creepy.

(02:07:21):
But in Never Let Go, he plays a really dangerous gangster,
a really dangerous thug. And I think there's a scene
late in the film where the main protagonist comes up
against him and they get into a fistfight and they're
beating the stuffing out of each other. I never thought
I'd say Peter Seller's action film hero, but he is

(02:07:41):
a nasty piece of shit, I think. I mean, if
you just sort of think about Michael Gambon's character and
the cook, the thief, he's nasty like that. But if
you were to say to me, can you imagine Peter
Seller's playing a character like that? Obvious said nah. But
you watch this and you realize my god, he's a
really seriously good actor. If he was only a man

(02:08:04):
of multiple voices, he wouldn't have helped that roll up.
But he does so well and a film that your
affection of Susan as well.

Speaker 2 (02:08:12):
You know, he really had ambitions at that point in
his career to be a serious actor. He wanted He
was really resentful when he was in Casino Royal, the
Bond movie, that he wasn't really being a serious Bond.

Speaker 11 (02:08:22):
You know.

Speaker 2 (02:08:22):
He thought he could be a serious Bond. You know,
he wanted that, and so when he did that movie,
it was, you know, I think, a purposeful attempt to
move his career in a different direction, but actually got panned.
And I agree that I think it's very good. I
like it like I think it's very powerful acting. But
people at the time thought he was chewing up the
scenery like he got I don't know, for some reason,

(02:08:43):
it just didn't do well and they felt like like
he didn't go back to that because of the I
believe that because of the criticism he got.

Speaker 1 (02:08:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 12 (02:08:51):
I read something about that too, and yeah, that he
was pretty sad about the reactions to those roles, and
I don't know, Yeah, people said, yeah, that he was
trueing up the scenery, and then I think some people
weren't taking them seriously. They maybe he already had that
reputation as being a comedian at that time, and it's
just like, oh, look at what he's trying to do.
He can't do it.

Speaker 7 (02:09:10):
He had already done like years of the Goons. So
how surreal is that.

Speaker 2 (02:09:15):
He was an institution? I mean, if you lived, you know,
in that time in the UK, everybody listened to the
Goon Show. I mean, so that was the radio show
he did with Spike Milligan. And I always forget the risk. Yeah,
I always who I love, who I love, And I
never remember his name. I mean, he was just you know,
people knew who he was, and it was so over
the top. It was so cartoonish. Yeah, it's a little
bit like you know, Jim Carrey, you know, like it's

(02:09:37):
like or Robin Williams, where it's like really really cartoonish
and it takes a while to kind of like readjust
but then you're like, oh, well, and that's the thing,
is that kind of comedian you get so good at
at a range being you know, doing arrange, you become
an amazing actor people don't realize how hard comedy is,
you know, and that's why those people can pull those
kinds of things off.

Speaker 7 (02:09:57):
He Robin Williams was able to do both parts and
no one bat an eyelid. I mean, I think, like
I don't think it was his first film, but certainly
his first big film in the world, according to garp
and he does both comedy and drama in the one film.
I mean, I think I heard him once say on

(02:10:18):
a comedy album reality what a concept. Someone calls out
for him to, hey, do MOREK and he says, I
don't do MOREK here. That's why I come here to
do something different. And that could really apply to his
whole career. And I imagine that Robin Williams would have
been a huge Peter Sollas fan. And it's just fortunate
for Robin that he got to do a range of

(02:10:39):
comedic and dramatic roles in such a shame that Peter
Solace didn't get to do as much as he would
have liked to have done. But just sort of coming
back to being there for a second where he does
get to do this so called serious role. I think
that another film which won't get the kudos that it

(02:11:02):
did at one time. It's not seen as being appropriate nowadays.
But I love Blake it Wou's filmed the Party and
I see a lot of Kharundai v. Bakshi his character
in the party, in Chance the Gardener, they're both very
humane people and there's chaos of sorts going on around them,

(02:11:25):
but they're both lovely people that don't want to cause
any fuss because of them. I'd like to think that
Chance is in if not an extension of his character
in the Party, but there's something of that character in
his character, his humanity.

Speaker 12 (02:11:47):
The Chance is doing all of this without malice. You know,
you're talking about like he doesn't want to inconvenience anybody,
and he doesn't. He just wants to fit in a
little and just basically he wants and he wants a television,
you know, he wants for him those are the basic necessities, right,

(02:12:07):
And once he finds it again. He had that at
the old Man and he switches for another old man,
and here he is. We get these parallels between there,
we get the deaths of the two old men and everything.
But he's so concerned. He's just like, is he going
to close up the house. Is this going to happen
to me again? He just wants this and he it's

(02:12:27):
not like he's desperate and like, oh what am I
going to do just to maintain my position? You know,
he just wants to be. You know, I guess that's
where the title comes from, you know, just being there.
He just wants to be, wants to live, wants to
do his thing, which is to watch TV and eat supper, lunch,
breakfast whatever. That's it.

Speaker 2 (02:12:50):
Being there that he's just said. That title made me
think of reading that script that Kazinski wrote. I mean,
we I only read the seventy eight script. I think
it was an earlier script I haven't read. But the
last script he wrote before Brad Jones took over. Two
unusual things in it that are a little annoying. I
actually was surprised how much it did match the Ultimate
movie actually. But one is that they keep he keeps

(02:13:12):
using the word chance as if like kind of like
as a joke, Like he keeps like having characters say
the word chance over and ever again, which is like
kind of strange, like all leading up to even when
you're meeting Chance. And the second thing is he inserts
himself did you see that he has, like on someone's
bedside table, being the book being there, and the author's
photo is seen in the movie, you know, in the

(02:13:33):
script it's you're supposed to see the author's photo. And
at one point in another part of the movie, it's like, oh,
that we have plenty of great literature. Here's some Kozinski
or something. It's just so funny. He just inserts himself
right into I don't know, I thought that was hysterical.
I've never seen anybody do that before.

Speaker 12 (02:13:49):
It's kind of like when Clive Cussler wrote himself into
some of the Dirk Pit books.

Speaker 2 (02:13:53):
And you're just like, were doing this.

Speaker 12 (02:13:56):
It's this embarrassing, Just stop it. Yeah, there was a
guy at one of the parties that I thought was
Kazinski later on in the film, and I'm just like,
I hope he's not biging a cameo. That's a little annoying.

Speaker 2 (02:14:08):
Kazensky again, like he was an interesting character. I mean,
he you know, he's friends with Polanski. He grew up
in you know, in Poland, in you know, during the
war and survived by pretending to be a Catholic, you
know that kind of thing.

Speaker 12 (02:14:20):
Well, and then there's some question about whether he yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:14:23):
Yeah, so that's the thing too. Yeah, so he's like, so, yeah,
that's That's actually an interesting thing is he's in a
way could be kind of looked up on as a
little bit of a cipher because he seems to have
woven White a story for himself that yet he even had,
you know, he came up with a degree from Columbia
that didn't exist. There's a lot of accusations of plagiarism
or lifting you know, gigantic things, themes and whatnot, and

(02:14:45):
even to get into America. I think he like created
a foundation and it was like he just was really
good at lying. And so it's interesting to wonder a
lot of people think, you know, he didn't know English
well enough to have written a lot of the English
works that he claims to have written. And plus the
styles are different from work to work to work, So
it is kind of interesting when you think about this
story and compared to the author, the original author.

Speaker 12 (02:15:08):
Yeah, and I had no idea about any of that
until I started looking into this, and I was like, oh, okay,
this is this is kind of fascinating, And it is
funny that he was friends with Polanski because some of
those the stories you know from like the Pianist and everything.
I was just like, well, this kind of reminds me
a little bit of what Kazinski was saying. Like I said,
I haven't seen The Painted Bird yet, but yeah, from

(02:15:30):
what I understand it was a lot of people were
just like, yeah, no, this really didn't happen to this guy,
and we have proof of him being here and here
and here, not living in those Catholic missions or Catholic churches.
So I'm like, Okay, you know, I don't know if
it's all apocryphal or what it is, but I think
that article was it in the.

Speaker 2 (02:15:48):
Voice of like eighty three or something like that a.

Speaker 12 (02:15:50):
Little bit after this, a few years after this, but yeah,
I got to see him interviewed on Dekaviot and I
really enjoyed on the extras on the Blue Ray having
Gene Chalatte interviewing Peter Sellers. That was fantastic because Gene's Shalot,
I mean, he's a living cartoon character, and then you
have the other living cartoon character with Peter Sellers there

(02:16:13):
and he's just cracking up Gene as usual. Very easy
to crack him. Up, but it was a great interview.

Speaker 7 (02:16:19):
If the film were to be made and set in
the twenty first century, where we're less dependent on say,
network television, and everyone's getting their information, they're getting their
entertainment and maybe their information from the internet, what would
Chance be obsessed with. He'd be obsessed with gardening, and

(02:16:42):
would he be actively looking for things? He is not
necessarily intelligent or enough to be curious, but it's an
interesting question if this if the story was remade and
really and set in the twenty first century I wanted
to have, that would go.

Speaker 2 (02:17:03):
I think you couldn't have the story. You wouldn't have
That's why it's like we are. We've come into an
age where you can't have the story can't exist unless
he lived in a house with no internet. So that
would be the only way, which of course could be
obviously you would have to do that. But as far
as like, if he had access to internet, forget all
bets are off. You have access to the entire universe.
So it's completely it's the opposite in a way. I mean,

(02:17:24):
you know you could do a flip of this, you
know where a person like you know, just I don't
know believe like a person who wholly believes every single thing.
Imagine something like that where they have no guidance whatsoever,
they have no people raising them. They're so naive that
they believe everything that they see on the internet and
have this like crazy idea of what the world is
like before they go out and see what it's really like.

Speaker 7 (02:17:44):
That would be a well, doesn't happen soon?

Speaker 2 (02:17:46):
It couldn't possibly happen. Nobody's living in a basement. No,
that couldn't happen.

Speaker 12 (02:17:51):
Yeah, it would be another Jim Carrey film. They would
have cameras on him at all times and just watching
what he does or something. You'd be very into kombucha gardening.

Speaker 2 (02:18:00):
Definitely a The TV.

Speaker 12 (02:18:03):
Appearance that he has doesn't happen until an hour and
twenty minutes into this film. And to your point from earlier,
like everybody's watching it. We get to see every single
person in the story, even going all the way back
to David Clennan who came in as Thomas Franklin, the lawyer.
We get to get back with his story. We see
the President watching it, we see Louise watching it, we

(02:18:25):
see Melvin Douglas's character watching it. So it's that whole thing,
Like you're saying, like we had three channels, three main
channels here, you know, like nobody's checking out, UHF, everybody's
watching this one particular show. And I'd love to this
whole theme of the president becoming impotent when chances on
TV that he's so upset that he's when he says,

(02:18:48):
what do you think about the president's stance on economics?
And he's like, well, which one? And the audience loves that,
just like, oh, the president can't make up his mind
or whatever, and that seems to set Warden off. And
then we come back to him one more time later
on in the film and he still can't get it
up for his wife, and she's just like, well, this
happens to people, but maybe you should see somebody kind

(02:19:09):
of say I love that. I love that his power
is such that he kills the virility of the president.
Basically the reason why the finance guys at the end
are like, let's get rid of the president. I mean,
it's not directly related to that, but he's seen as
a very impotent human being. After they now have Chauncey

(02:19:29):
Gardner where they can put him up on this pedestal Hey,
he's got no past. Nobody knows who this guy is.
This is going to be perfect. No one can, you know,
dig out any of those things. There's no what was
that monkey business with Gary Hart or like any of
these like old scandals kind of thing. Not that they
care about that stuff anymore. I mean, you know, you
could write people and do all this stuff now and

(02:19:52):
have thirty four felon accounts and still get elected. But
back in nineteen seventy nine it was a much different story.
And that this is right before the election of Reagan.
You know, a person who ends up having dementia. I
don't know when he started to get this dementia, but
by nineteen eighty eight, full blown dementia. It's pretty funny.

Speaker 2 (02:20:16):
And getting his information from an astrologer. I mean, yeah,
it's so it's so interesting like that Reagan. Yeah, I know,
I think about that a lot. Yeah, you know, And
I never noticed when I read the script, the written
print script, because you can't quite hear everything very carefully
in that funeral scene where the pall bearers are carrying,
but they're actually saying rand wants him to be president.

(02:20:38):
Like I didn't realize it took he took it that far.
I knew Ran when I'm on the board, Rand wants
him to be president of the United States. Like you
actually hear them say that, or at least it's in
the script. Maybe they changed it for the film, but
you know, that was definitely one of the last versions
of the script, and that's such a betrayal. Like you know,
you sort of think about like how the President after
he sees Rand, he's like, oh, we have all this

(02:20:59):
information on Rand, like find out about this guy Gardner,
you know, and then suddenly Rant's just like another person
he has information on and then you know, but it's
the opposite where he also, like to the president, they
they only make a subtle reference to how the entire
economy is apparently collapsing and it's just like a really
bad time for America right now while this film is
taking place, like unemployment is astronomical and people are paying

(02:21:21):
a million dollars for groceries, and it sounds like, you know,
everybody wants to replace this president, including everybody at the top.
You know, they want him replaced. They actually say something
like we can't have him run again or something like
that that actually comes up. So yeah, it's it's even where,
you know, I mean, they really want him to be president.
Rand really wants to be president. It's pretty pretty interesting.

Speaker 12 (02:21:42):
It's almost like the price of eggs work too high.

Speaker 2 (02:21:45):
It was a different time. It was also interesting is
they never say what political affiliation they are, right, that
never comes up. That would never happen. Now, I just
want to talk about the music for a second, because
Johnny Mandel. Yeah, so I think one of the you know,
one of the important elements, you know, like the television
clips are kind of a soundtrack the obviously the the
the Deodata is that Deodata is that his name, Theodora.

(02:22:09):
His stuff is like ecentric but punctuating this and of
course all throughout in a very end, very beautifully is
the music of Johnny Mandel, who wrote one of the
most beautiful songs in cinema, Suicide is Painless, you know,
from mash And this is based on Eric satis music.
You know, if if you can hear that, it's it's

(02:22:31):
sort of like it's based on I think not quite that,
but yeah, I mean it's like, you know, he used
Eric Satiz's greatest inspiration while I was writing this, and
it's just I think it's just another element that makes
this a masterpiece. I just think that music is heartbreaking
and gorgeous and subtle and not over you know, not overdone.

Speaker 7 (02:22:50):
We've gone and spoken on the program before, Mike about
the use of music in seventies cinema. You know, Trouble
Man had that great Marvin Gaye score, and a couple
of years before this, I think was it a couple
of years when I mean, not that we've spoken about
this on the show, but Sorcerer William Friedkin's use of
Tangerine Dream and use of music in seventies cinema, and

(02:23:14):
certainly John Williams had a lot to do bringing back
orchestral music. It was big, it was brash, it was orchestral,
and films like the Teknapellam one two three, which used
I think a David Shire Funk score. Everything was big,
regardless of whether as band or orchestral. And to your point, Susan,

(02:23:38):
maybe apart from the Dear Dato moment at the beginning
of the film, all the music there is noticeable, but
it's quiet, and that maybe seems to go against the grains,
certainly for what ended up being released as a mainstream
feature in the seventies. I mean, I don't know. Probably
people listening to this are thinking, you, dickhead. There's one

(02:23:59):
hundred films we can name you without even doing any
research that cataract that. But I mean, even if you
watch the comparatively art house films of the Woody Allen
of that period, they're using wacky nineteen twenties nineteen thirties
jazz in a sort of wacky sort of context. It's
there to be noticed. But here the music, you still

(02:24:22):
do notice it, and it is beautiful, but it's not
there to take over the story. And look, I'm a
big believer in recognizing soundtracks and thinking that they should
be a part of the story. I know there's some
people who say that a good soundtrack is one that
you don't notice. I don't believe that at all. But
in this case, the music is heard, but it's subtle,

(02:24:46):
just like the film is. And I think it would
have been a completely different film than a film all
the poorer if they would have used music that was
there and the emotionally tug on your heart strings, Oh
she's falling in love with chance? Oh chances being made

(02:25:08):
fun of on TV or something I agree with you
one hundred percent that that was of music. He was
absolutely perfect and in a lot of ways went against
the grain of what else is going on in seventy cinema.

Speaker 12 (02:25:23):
Hall ashually was no slouch when it came to music.
I mean, two films before this, he was doing Bound
for Glory, which is all about Woody Guthrie, so using
all the Woody Guthrie music and then the score that
he did well, the score quote unquote all of the
Cat Stevens music that he was using for Harold and Maud.
I mean, that is freaking brilliant, the use of that music,

(02:25:45):
and especially now that I'm more used to Kat Stevens,
Like seeing that movie the first time, I was like, okay, yeah,
this is cool. But now having and I'm sorry I'm
calling him to Kat Stevens, I'm dead naming him. I'm
so sorry because I can never suffer. Thank you. To
use use of Islam's music in the way that he
did was just oh so good. And yeah, so he

(02:26:09):
knows what he's doing. And obviously as a you know,
the editor that he was, he's just all about like
all right, the juxtaposition of these images with this music
and I know that he did a whole one of
his last gigs I think was doing stuff for the
Rolling Stone, So he's just like, very very into the
music stuff as well. And yeah, I agree like the

(02:26:31):
score is subtle, but it comes in at the right time,
you know. I love that you pointed out earlier, Susan,
the use of basketball Jones of one of my favorite
Chiech and Shong songs. And yeah, like you said this,
the TV becomes the soundtrack for so much of this
that the Mandel stuff when it does come in, it
is noticeable. It does enhance, but so much of this

(02:26:54):
is just the TV as that background and commenting on
what's happening on. And the other thing that I haven't
mentioned is that it's not like a raucous comedy like
I was saying, it's not Canniball run. But it is
a comedy and we're there and as the audience, we're
the only ones allowed to laugh at this. No one

(02:27:15):
inside of the movie is laughing at Chance. Like you
get Louise being upset about Chance, you get Disart being
a little bit upset him, and David Clennan, but no
one's laughing at him. We're the ones that are laughing
at him. We're the ones that see the humor in
this situation. Nobody inside the screen sees that. We're the
ones that are privy to something they're not privy too.

Speaker 7 (02:27:38):
Going away from being there for a second, but just
because you were talking about the use of Cat Stevens
songs in Harold and Mood, this week I watched for
the second time my favorite film of the year, which
was The Holdovers, which a lot of people have been saying,
and I agree, is like a homage to a Plash's

(02:28:00):
knew how Ashby's directorial style, and certainly, even if you
didn't pick up on the hal Ashby aspect, the titles,
everything about it shows that it is trying to be
a seventies style film. But there's the use of music
in the film, the folky music. Thinking, Oh, this is

(02:28:23):
definitely trying to bring the use of Cat Stevens slash
use of Islam into this film. There's I can't remember
who who composes the songs for this film, but I
think actually at one point I didn't remember this, but
I was watching the film again this week with Joanne
and she said, oh, that song that's out of Harold
and mood. So there was a Cat Stevens song in

(02:28:46):
the soundtrack of that. Did have either of you watched
The Holdovers?

Speaker 2 (02:28:50):
Yeah, i'd seen it. It was was that two years ago?
Am I crazy?

Speaker 14 (02:28:53):
No?

Speaker 7 (02:28:53):
I came out. Well, in Australia, we always get things.

Speaker 2 (02:28:56):
Yeah, I feel like it's been a really long time.
It's a bit.

Speaker 7 (02:28:59):
Yeah, came out here at maybe fevery March of this year.
Maybe it had a twenty twenty three season in the
the US.

Speaker 2 (02:29:09):
No, you could be right. It just feels really long
for me.

Speaker 7 (02:29:11):
But yeah, I'm very selective now with my Blu Ray
purchases running out of space. But The Holdovers was one
film I thought, no, I have to own a copy
of this one and watched it because what else am
I going to do on Christmas Eve? Watched it this
week and I'm decided I'm going to watch it. That's

(02:29:32):
going to be a Christmas Eve movie for me every year.
Just absolutely beautiful, but very hal ashby and its approach
and once again very subtle use of music and even
trying to pay tribute through the style of Kat Stevens,
slash use of Islam slash whatever. His birth name was,

(02:29:53):
Stephen Georgio.

Speaker 2 (02:29:54):
I think just as a final fight on there. It's
just taking us all the way back to the opening,
opening opening. Maybe it's one of my favorite movie openings ever.
And I'm really serious. It starts silent. You almost feel like,
oh is my audio on? You know when you rewatch it,
But then the TV clicks on. He has an alarm TV.
It clicks on at six am or whatever, and that
orchestra comes in and it is again. So this is

(02:30:17):
just exactly what we're just talking about, like how he's
a genius. That's hal Ashby. I mean, that's totally hawl
Ashby came up with that. It's just gorgeous. I just
love the opening to this movie. So anyway, that's taking
us back to the beginning, and then the ending is
perfect muscle. It's got a perfect first few minutes, perfect
last few minutes, and everything in between's pretty good too.

Speaker 12 (02:30:37):
All Right, we're going to take another break and play
PREV for next week's show right after these brief messages.

Speaker 14 (02:30:44):
Without getting emotional, to declaim loud and clear the cold
and serious strophy you were about to hear, pay attention
to its message and defend yourselves, or it will certainly
be painfully seared like our brand on your troubled imagination?

Speaker 1 (02:31:40):
Eth does that feel? Does that feel? Let it fem
out there?

Speaker 2 (02:31:58):
Sorday m hm. The one really what I did a
nou su Johnson.

Speaker 12 (02:32:08):
And is a pacis a female O care the murder.

Speaker 2 (02:32:41):
Look at you.

Speaker 4 (02:32:47):
Man passes from an upper stage of savagery to a
lower stage of barbarism.

Speaker 11 (02:33:20):
Weekend cheerly justifies the passion and fortune in young America.

Speaker 1 (02:33:26):
See it.

Speaker 12 (02:33:28):
That's right, everybody's working for the weekend. We'll be back
next week with a discussion of the Jean Luke Godard film.
Until then, I want to thank my co hosts, Susan
and Morris. Morris, what is the latest with.

Speaker 7 (02:33:39):
You, sir? Well, At the time of recording this, I've
just released the latest episode of Love That Album. I
get together with a fellow from the Love That Album
Facebook group community, ed Ross, a fellow jazz fanatic, and
we decided to pick four albums from the ECM Record label,
great label that was started up in Germany in nineteen

(02:34:02):
sixty nine a run by follow called Manfred Eicher, who
I believe is still very hands on with a company
all these years later, and of so many great artists
on that label, Pat Metheny, Keith Jarrett, John Abercrombie, Gary Burton,
Ralph Towner, tons and tons and tons of others. So
we pick four albums that we want to discuss and

(02:34:23):
as love that album's way, as we also drift in
and out of other topics and other albums from great
musicians on the label. In See Here World. We actually
took a break this month, but we'll be back in January.
Tim's picked the next film, which is strictly speaking not

(02:34:44):
really a music film, but music plays a strong art
in the presentation, and that's nineteen eighty one's heavy Metal,
So that'll be a next month's pick. But yeah, another
good year, we hope ahead of us for both and Susan,
how about yourself.

Speaker 2 (02:35:02):
Well, I've been taking a very big break because I've
ended up going back to school. So just as inspiration
for anybody else, I'm in my fifties and I'm getting
a PhD. Man, I'm getting a PhD in developmental psychology. Yeah,
because the kids are not all right and I'm gonna
try to pitch it and hopefully get them back on track.
But anyway, yeah, it's a fascinating area, and so that's
what I'm doing. But yeah, just so people know, that's

(02:35:23):
why I haven't been doing too much. Might do an
occasional Kevin Geeks out here in New York City around there,
but in Austin, Texas. Get a degree at a very
late age. But everybody should give that a try if
they can, because it's it's pretty it's pretty amazing actually
to do this at this age, and I'm really really
enjoying it, to tell you the truth.

Speaker 12 (02:35:41):
Well, thank you so much folks for being on the show.
Thanks to everybody for listening. If you want to hear
more of me shooting off my mouth, check out some
of the other shows that I work on. They are
all available at Waitingwaymedia dot com. Thanks especially to our
Patreon community. If you want to join the community, visit
patreon dot com slash Projection Booth. Every donation we get
helps some Projection Booth take over the.

Speaker 9 (02:35:59):
World things, boost recordings at the.

Speaker 8 (02:38:57):
Listening to.

Speaker 9 (02:41:04):
At times best Stu

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