Episode 756: Panic in Year Zero! (1962)

Mike is joined by Emily Intravia (The Feminine Critique) and screenwriter Howard A. Rodman for a sobering descent into Panic in Year Zero! (1962), directed by and starring Ray Milland. Loosely inspired by Ward Moore’s chilling short stories “Lot” and “Lot’s Daughter,” the film imagines a Los Angeles family thrust into chaos after a nuclear attack decimates the city. As Henry Baldwin, Milland leads his wife (Jean Hagen) and children (Mary Mitchel and Frankie Avalon) on a desperate quest for survival in a world unraveling by the hour.

With Cold War dread baked into every frame, Panic in Year Zero! is an eerily prescient slice of apocalyptic Americana—a proto-survivalist tale that predates The Road and The Walking Dead by decades. We unpack its moral ambiguity, its place in the post-bomb canon, and why it remains a startling relic of atomic-age anxiety.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-projection-booth-podcast--5513239/support.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Oh is boots. It's showed.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
People say good money to see this movie. When they
go out to a theater, they want clothed sodas, hot popcorn,
and no monsters in the protection booth. Everyone pretend podcasting
isn't boring, none at all.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
After all these years, I thought I knew you, but
you turned out to be a stranger.

Speaker 2 (00:48):
We are fighting for our lives there.

Speaker 3 (00:51):
My family must survive.

Speaker 4 (01:05):
Yes, the most shocking experience of their lives. Doubly shocking
because it can happen to you.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
Still, right my trailer, what are you gonna do?

Speaker 5 (01:19):
Cola cops, they're busy with the new highway petroth corect.

Speaker 4 (01:27):
The lawless are on the loose, making it necessary for
law abiding citizens to make their own law.

Speaker 5 (01:33):
I could going fire as shadow of the heads. Maybe
that'll upset them. Right, there are no civilians. We are
all at war.

Speaker 4 (02:00):
Give me a gun.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
I'm good with a gun. We'll stay here and I'll
kill them.

Speaker 4 (02:06):
This is civilization's jungle after the jackals of society have
ruthlessly ravaged it, ending the world of decency.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
Hm. I killed two men.

Speaker 1 (02:38):
I tried to kill them too, but I missed. I
just wasn't a good enough shot.

Speaker 3 (03:01):
Welcome to the projection booth. I'm your host. Mike White
joined me once again as Ms. Emily and Travia hey
Hey also back in the booth after far too long
as mister Howard A. Rodman.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
Hello.

Speaker 3 (03:12):
We conclude Sci Fi July with a look at Ray
Milland's Nick in Year Zero, based on the stories Lot
and Lot's Daughter by Ward Moore. The film also stars
Miland as Henry Baldwin, the patriarch of the Baldwin Family,
a Los Angeles family on a camping trip that turns
into a desperate fight for survival. Along with Miland, the

(03:33):
film stars Gene Hagen, Mary Mitchell, and Frankie Avalant. It's
an early entry in the nuclear apocalypse subgenre, released in
the height of the Cold War anxiety. We will be
spoiling this film as we go forward, so if you
don't want anything ruined, turn off the podcast and come
back after you've seen it. We will still be here. So, Emily,
when was the first time you saw Panic in the

(03:53):
Year Zero?

Speaker 6 (03:54):
And what did you think when you first asked me
about this movie. I was trying to remember if I
had seen it, because there's a whole bunch of movies
that are very similar between probably about a thirty year gap,
and as I started looking at it and I'm like, yeah,
I've seen this. Wait, no, that's The Lays of Grass.
Wait i've seen this. No, that's eight other movies that
this could have been. Five was the other one I

(04:15):
kept thinking it was, and then I went to watch it.
I'm like, oh, wait, this is Panic in the Streets,
which I always write accidentally instead of Panic in the
year zero. But then I finally watched it and said, oh, no,
I have seen this, and I watched it maybe five.

Speaker 1 (04:29):
This years ago.

Speaker 6 (04:30):
I feel like this might have been a Netflix disc
at the time, where it wasn't that easy to find,
and it was always one that would come up in
different Apocalypse books of all these movies that I had
on my checklist to see, and it didn't leave much
of an impression back then, which is why I didn't
remember if i'd seen it or not. Rewatching it this
week in this place of time in the year twenty

(04:50):
twenty five, it played really differently. I won't say in
a bad way, because I think there's stuff about the
film that obviously we'll get into politically socially. It was
a really different experience watching it today than maybe five
ten years ago when we weren't quite where we are
in the world right now.

Speaker 3 (05:08):
Howard, how about yourself.

Speaker 2 (05:09):
I came to this film by a very different path Italy.
So when I was growing up, there was an institution
in New York called the Million Dollar Movie, which was
a TV broadcast in movies, and at that point there
was not enough programming to fill an entire programming day
for some local stations, so they would either broadcast what

(05:33):
was clearly filler, I mean on some of the It's
hard to believe now, but the ratio of Hamburger to
Hamburger Helper on some of these local stations was a
bit dodgy, or they would just rebroadcast something and on
the Million Dollar Movie for whatever that week was, they
would show the movie every night, and sometimes multiple times
on weekends. So if you saw the movie on a

(05:55):
Monday and you liked it, you just kept showing up.
And there were a couple that were cult favorites among
me and my tea bopper friends, and I think one
of them was Panic in the year zero exclamation point
and to tell tales out of school although I think
the Statute of Limitations has passed on this. Myself, my

(06:18):
friend Adam Duhan who Harold Duhan who later became Adamduhan
and a blessed memory, and the late Walter Becker, late
of Steely Dan. The three of us and sometimes some
friends would sit on a couch either in my living
room or Walters, and we would have in preparation, gone

(06:38):
to the local drugstore and bought as many bottles of
Romolar as they would let us get away with, which
was a cough syrup which in that day and age
actually contained codeine as opposed to more useless substitutes. And
we would get woozy on Romolar and watch Panic in
the year zero, and loved it so much that we

(07:00):
would come back the next night to do it again.
So that was my introduction to the film.

Speaker 1 (07:06):
I'm jealous. I wish that was mine.

Speaker 2 (07:08):
In some ways, I can't quite put my finger on it,
but the story of nuclear family in a post nuclear
world spoke to us, especially with the aid of ob eights.

Speaker 3 (07:20):
Yeah, my story is not nearly as impressive. No, no
Steely Dan, no codining. Nothing. I remember probably similar to you, Emily.
I probably saw it around the time of those Netflix stays.
I don't know if I saw it in or if
it was on cable, but yeah, I definitely saw this
around the early two thousands, and it left a little

(07:45):
bit of an impression on me. I remember liking it,
and I always love nuclear apocalypse movies. I don't know why,
probably just because growing up in the eighties and being
threatened by that, growing up and watching Thread and The
Day After After. Yeah, so all of that was been
great to me. So going back and seeing some of

(08:06):
these earlier ones, which just seems so quaint and they
really don't talk about radiation whatsoever. There's really no problem
with radiation. And I've complained about this before on the
show where we've gotten back to now where people are like, Oh,
we'll just drop a nuclear bomb in that hurricane. Sure,
that'll get rid of it. We'll just throw a new

(08:28):
at Godzilla, who's five miles off the coast of San Francisco.
That's not going to be a problem, is it.

Speaker 6 (08:34):
I came to The Day After late because I missed
it in the initial broadcast. I was too young, But
I think it was the sci Fi Channel before it
was the Siphy channel back when it was SciFi in
ninety four.

Speaker 1 (08:47):
Maybe they aired it and it was just a random day.

Speaker 6 (08:50):
Where I'm like little teenage me is flipping around and
lands on this movie and doesn't know what it is.
But for the next I think three and a half hours,
and they just aired it in it's entirety. I just
sat there and probably turned progressively like more action as.

Speaker 1 (09:03):
The movie ended, and looked around and said, wait, this
was a wait you thought this was oh oh god,
And it launched that obsession. And it was much later
when I saw Threads. So just imagine the world that
it could have been.

Speaker 3 (09:15):
Yeah, Threads was like the real deal of the day
after Scared the Bejesus Side.

Speaker 1 (09:20):
Yeah, tell us it changed Reagan's view on nuclear war, right.

Speaker 3 (09:24):
But then you see Threads and you're like, oh my god.

Speaker 2 (09:27):
There is now a film called Television Event, which is
about the nineteen eighty three broadcast of the Day after.

Speaker 1 (09:36):
Oh Wow, it's excited.

Speaker 2 (09:39):
It's a documentary as interviews with Nick Meyer, who directed it,
whom you may know better from the Sherlock Holmes seven
Percent series or Star Trek to Rapid Kahn and this
came quotes the interviews with Nick but also footage with
Ted Kopple, Carl Sagan and Me Kissinger, Robert Tomara, William F. Buckley, Junior,

(10:02):
Elie Vizelle. It's that kind of thing. So if you're
into not only post apocalypticism but the history of post
apocalypticism as received by the American public, I think you
would enjoy it.

Speaker 3 (10:18):
I'm definitely gonna have to check that one out because
for whatever reason, and I don't know if it's just nostalgia,
but it's all right. No Blade of Grass, as you said, Testament, Yeah,
oh boy. Another good one.

Speaker 2 (10:30):
Damn Nation Alley with Dominique Sanda.

Speaker 3 (10:33):
That vehicle that Jan, Michael Vincent and George Prepar drive
around so cool. I love that.

Speaker 6 (10:40):
I think there's so much to it. I think there's
a lot of there's the era if you live through it.
I think it's the same with the zombie apocalypse. It
is that weird wish not wish fulfillment, but there is
an aspect of I know what I would do, I
know how i'd survive.

Speaker 1 (10:54):
I live near York. I'm going to die in the
first bomb.

Speaker 6 (10:57):
I hope if everything goes well, because I don't want
to deal with that the reason I think zombies caught
on eventually when they did. Like growing up, we were
big zombie fans, and we always just did the scenario
of Okay, we're walking at night, what happens as zombie
comes out. Most apocalyptic movies or apocalyptic movies are putting
normal everyday people in these situations.

Speaker 2 (11:19):
Right.

Speaker 6 (11:19):
Sure, you have your road warriors and you have your
kind of more extreme, but this, right and the movies
around this time were very much the pure nuclear family.
You know exactly who you could be in the scenario,
and if you're a good man, you can figure out
how to survive it.

Speaker 1 (11:36):
And save your family.

Speaker 6 (11:38):
And I think there is a lot of that, And
this is where it gets into that weird territory that
I'm sure we'll go into of today in twenty twenty five,
where it's become a source of pride. I think there
are this idea that there are people that kind of
secretly want World War three to happen because it would
give them a chance to show off why they keep
their guns and why they need their rights and why
they have all of this, and it justifies things.

Speaker 1 (12:01):
But at the same time, like you get it, it's
really appealing it's very exciting to.

Speaker 2 (12:04):
Watch absolutely emily that there is a certain kind of
wish fulfillment here, which is God. If there were a
nuclear or I could unleash my inner Jordan Peterson, I
could show them what an alpha I am.

Speaker 1 (12:16):
Yeah, I don't have to put on pants, I don't
have to comb my hair.

Speaker 2 (12:19):
That could be a chad. I grew up in the
nineteen fifties under the shadow of the bomb, and we
would regularly have duck and cover drills in school, and
all kinds of cheerful nostrums like don't look out the window,
the fireball will melt your eyeballs, but stay safe under
your desk, as if getting under the desk in PS

(12:43):
one ninety six Q Class five would save you from
a holocaust that would melt everything else in the world.
And I remember, I'll come out of the closet on this.
My mother was a communist, was a Stalinist.

Speaker 1 (12:54):
Oh thing, I got to make a phone call.

Speaker 2 (12:56):
Yeah, sure, feel free, Statute of limitations once more. And
she said, these things are stupid. If there's a nuclear war,
we're all going to die.

Speaker 1 (13:06):
So that's a good thing.

Speaker 2 (13:07):
The next time there was a duck and cover grill
at PS one ninety six Q. I didn't go into
the desk, and my teacher said why not, and I
parroted what my mother had said, which was that there's
a nuclear war, We're all going to die. And she
sent the other principal's office, and I assumed I was
going to get lectured and maybe do detention, god knows what.

(13:28):
And it was the weirdest goddamn thing. The principal, a
guy named Abraham Pauschner, the principle of PS one ninety six,
talked to me in a kind of rambling way for
twenty maybe thirty minutes about the fact that we were
all going to die, and it is death that gives
life meaning but also renders life meaningless. It was like

(13:49):
I expected to be reprimanded. Instead I got Albert Camu.

Speaker 1 (13:52):
A philosophy lesson.

Speaker 2 (13:54):
And then after he was finished talking about death meaning
they need to I said, go back to class. And
that was That was one of the weirder things of
a very weird childhood.

Speaker 6 (14:05):
Yeah, I have a similar mother involving duck and cover story,
because my mother grew up also in the fifties and
about sixteen seventeen years ago, as she lived in Russia
for a year. I was teaching English there and I
had a class of adults, lawyers and professionals, and my
mother had come to visit and it brought her to
the class. And it was fascinating because my mother has

(14:27):
never really been abroad, and she's talking to Russian and
she's saying to them, growing up, you guys were the enemy.

Speaker 1 (14:33):
I was so scared of you.

Speaker 6 (14:35):
And she's going through what it was like, and she
was talking about duck and cover and how we thought
you were going to bomb us. So when they a
bell would ring and then we'd all have to go.

Speaker 1 (14:42):
Under the desks. And my students, who were probably in there,
like early thirties, late twenties, looked in they were just so, wait,
you went what was your school like?

Speaker 6 (14:51):
You had a bomb shelter? No, we just went under
the desks. Wait, you went under a desk for a
nuclear bomb. And it finally hit my mother, Oh my god,
we weren't going to survive.

Speaker 1 (15:01):
Why do they make us do that?

Speaker 3 (15:03):
Better late than never?

Speaker 1 (15:05):
Yeah, it took the Russians to teacher that.

Speaker 2 (15:07):
And I also think I believe that you're right to
draw the parallel between the sort of wave of postal
apocalyptic films, which in some ways morphed into zombie apocalypse films,
many of the same. We are barricaded here in our house,
everybody outside is either radioactive, and a lot in connection

(15:28):
with these films are the kind of inciting incident, if
you will. Is a big externality the bomb drops, But
really there about community, neighborhood. How thin is the veneer
of civilization? What does it take to strip us away
from our quote unquote civilized selves and turn us into Hobbsey?

(15:50):
And I've got mine. After I rewatched Panic in the
year zero this week without the aid of coughs here,
I was reminded of a nineteen fifty nine Twilight Zone
episode which you may be familiar, called the Monsters Are
Due on Maple Street.

Speaker 3 (16:05):
Do you know that one?

Speaker 2 (16:06):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (16:07):
I thought you were going to say the one in
the Bombshelter.

Speaker 6 (16:09):
I' forget the name of it, but there's one where
a family has built a bomb shelter and they're not
letting the other family in.

Speaker 1 (16:15):
Oh yeah, Maple Street is the episode that may be
want to write.

Speaker 3 (16:18):
Actually, the episode Emily is referring to is the Shelter
Season three episode three of The Twilight Zone.

Speaker 2 (16:26):
Let me just quote Rod Serling if I might. This
is sort of afterward to the episode. The tools of
conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosion and fallout.
They are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices, to
be found only in the minds of men. For the record,
prejudices can kill, and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless,

(16:49):
frightening search for Escapegoat has a fallout of its own
for the children, and the children yet unborn. And the
pity of it is that these things cannot be confined
only to the Twilight Zone, do you do?

Speaker 3 (17:04):
It's amazing to look at some of the films that
were coming out around this time. We spoke earlier this
year about On the Beach. I forgot that we had
already done a post apocalyptic film this year. On the
Beach nineteen fifty nine, The World of Flesh and the
Devil nineteen fifty nine, The Day the Earth caught fire
in nineteen sixty one. I would consider le Jetee to

(17:26):
be a post of Black Ealliptic Film nineteen sixty two, Ladybug,
Ladybug nineteen sixty three, Fail Yeah, Fail, Safe and After
Strange Love in sixty four, Peter Watkins The War Game
in nineteen sixty five, who ironically we've already done Late
August in the Hotel Ozone that was nineteen sixty six.

(17:46):
None to just continues from there. Of course, it's never
really gone out of style, I don't think. But yeah,
that's a killer list of amazing films. Interestingly, on this
list I'm looking at there is the Creation of the Humanoids,
which we covered quite a few years ago, also written
by Jay Simms, who wrote the screenplay for this. Jay

(18:08):
Simms probably best known these days for writing The Killer Shrews,
one of the best mystery sites Theater three thousand movies.
And then also that same year The Giant HeLa Monster
came out as well, which he wrote, also a good
MSD episode. Yeah, this guy's knocking them out of the park.

Speaker 2 (18:26):
Music coordinator for this who is Al Simms? Did all
of the bikini movies, any movie with bikini in the title, Bikini,
Beach Party, Goldfoot, and The Wild Bikini, The Return of
Doctor Goldswood, How to Stuff a Wild Bikini Bikini Al Simms,
I mean it's he is in the Bikini Cinematic universe.

(18:47):
He owns Music League, and I love the Less Baxter
movie and the Al Sims music in this and I
actually found on Spotify there is a soundtrack album.

Speaker 6 (18:58):
I would listen to this soundtrack out of context. I
think it is a really good soundtrack. I like the
idea of this jazzy score over It's very incogruous in
a way because it's getting back to and here you
have wild drums and saxophone. But there are times where
this score is just so intrusive that I think it

(19:20):
genuinely affects.

Speaker 2 (19:22):
This movie absolutely, and you can see it as bretty
and if you want to be charitable.

Speaker 1 (19:26):
But again, this is a case where it's oh, I
get why the codeine helps.

Speaker 2 (19:29):
And if I can go off on a tangent and
I'm not derailing you. I also think that in addition
to this belonging to the genre of post apocalyptic films,
it also is part of another genre, which is the
sort of disturbed teenager movie, the cool and the crazy
or the delinquents, the kind of Richard becallon cinematic universe
that goes through all of this. He plays Carlolk, but

(19:52):
Dick McAllan was it him? And Scott Marlowe were in
all of these movies about beat Nicks disturbed teenage, all
of whom were hopped up on Mary Jane and then
did bad things. And in some ways this feels to
me like that episode of Dragnet, which is about drugs,

(20:13):
or the Delinquent School and the Crazy, where it's about
finger snapping, about jazz and about the threat that young
and of course the apotheosis of this is rebel without
a cause. And if you look at James Dean's Harrington
jacket in that, and if you look at Thank You
Abalon's jacket in this, you can see the kind of
through line. But I do think that in some ways,

(20:36):
in addition to this being about the nuclear family under
threat from the bomb, it's also about the American white
picket fence nuclear family being under threat from the teenage
rebellion that's just under the white picket fence of the
Eisenhower years well, and it's.

Speaker 3 (20:53):
Like that teenage rebellion can run wild in this one
because there are no police anymore. So you can take
all of those things from the Delinquent movies and take
them to their quote unquote logical end, where we've got
them armed, very dangerous, going after this family, very open,
and then the whole thing with them torturing the girl.

(21:14):
Of course that's where the delinquents would take it if
there was no rule of law around.

Speaker 6 (21:19):
I feel like this movie had the potential to be
really fascinating and great, and I don't think it really
gets there, because I think part of the most interesting
kernel of the movie is Frankie Avalon character, because he's
there as this sort of okay, we the dad is

(21:40):
trying to teach him because he knows, okay, I need
you in order to the two of us. Of course,
we have to keep the women safe because they can't
do anything. We have to keep you, saying, if you
have to learn to kill, but not to enjoy it.
And there's all that, and there's a moment early on,
like somewhere in the middle where I can't remember if
it's after they shoot one of the beating the kids,
but we're Frankie Avalon's smiles and the dad kind of

(22:01):
sees it and you see him.

Speaker 1 (22:02):
Upset by it.

Speaker 6 (22:03):
And that's so that's a story right there, to see
where he's gonna go. And I think not to jump everywhere,
but going back to the short stories that this is
based on, and I don't know how much that yeah,
that is, but my jaw dropped at the end of
first short story when I realized what was happening. But
it was so much about the dad looking at his

(22:24):
kids and saying, this one's gonna make it, this one's
not gonna make it, this one's not. And I just
wish in a way it was a little bit digging
deeper into who is Frankie Avalon becoming in this movie?
Is he going to be the dad in twenty years
or is he gonna be one of these other delinquents
going around and taking other people's property in women and

(22:44):
so on. But I don't And also it's I get it,
it's the year and the time, and this wasn't going
for that kind of story, but it's just like it.

Speaker 1 (22:54):
I'm like, oh, are we gonna pull it now? Okay,
we run out of time.

Speaker 2 (22:57):
But I think you're absolutely right to point to that
is the kind of moral dilemma at the center of
this movie. I think Raymonland's line to Frankie Avalon and
I love this because it so encapsulates all of this.
I want you to use that gun if you have to,
but I want you to hate it.

Speaker 1 (23:12):
That is a great line, and that.

Speaker 2 (23:14):
He says, A big piece of civilization is gone, and
your mother wants you to save what's left. Try to
unpack that, A big piece of civilization is gone and
your mother, not me, your mother wants you to save
what's left. I think you're absolutely right. Emily chasits this
as a kind of theme, sometimes rather deliberately, sometimes over deliberately,

(23:37):
But then does it quite take it to the extremes that, say,
a late sixties movie might of really tearying that character
apart with any kind of straw dog's kind of way.

Speaker 1 (23:49):
There's no real transition to his character. He looks the
same as he did in the beginning, but.

Speaker 2 (23:53):
There is that sort of weird smile on his face
and I love that moment.

Speaker 3 (24:00):
Yeah, so much of this is the Ray milland story.
Of course, it makes sense. He's the director and his
cheapest star. He does a great job with the direction
of this, and I love Raymonland. I've always enjoyed Ray
miland this period of his career was interesting because this
was right before he worked with I think was Roger Corman,

(24:20):
who did X the Man with the X Ray Eyes.
I can't remember who directed that or he definitely.

Speaker 1 (24:24):
Worked with Corman quite a bit.

Speaker 2 (24:27):
I mean, he did those movies like the Wilder movie,
the Hitchcock movie, Last Weekend, I'm for Murder, but he'd
also had directed at this point I'm correct, and if
I'm not, please correct me. A man alone lives been
the Safecracker, which are good competent BB minus. So this
was not his directorial debut, and I think he actually

(24:50):
knew what he was doing, and not in as when
forgive the implicit screenwriterly bias here, but when actors turn directors,
sometimes you get a lot of showy performances because oh,
look what I can do in acting if I weren't

(25:11):
constrained by that director. And sometimes you get weird, unexpected
pieces of genius like Charles Lawton's Not of the Hunter.
But here it feels to me like he is doing
a far better directorial job and a I'm not sure
that it's self effacing is the right way, but I
would say very economical and professional. It reminds me more

(25:36):
of say on that Spectrum, more Howard Hawks than North
and Welles.

Speaker 3 (25:41):
Just for the record, yes, Roger Carman directed X the
Man with the X Ray Eyes also a score by
Less Baxter, and yes, that Less Baxter music is intense
a lot of the time. We start with that shot
of the.

Speaker 2 (25:55):
On the AM radio. You see an AM radio dial
in a car.

Speaker 3 (25:58):
We pull back and get that title on there, and yeah,
like you guys are saying, as far as this being
somewhat post apocalyptic, but somewhat, if not more, a survivalist
film and having this is year zero, we were starting
from scratch. This is it, ladies and gentlemen. Civilization other

(26:18):
than that small piece that you're mentioning that your mother
wants you to keep is gone. And we just see
the breakdown through so much of the first probably into
the second act of this film, as they realize what's
going well, they don't ever seem to really realize to me,
like it feels like they don't really connect with the
fact that Los Angeles is just gone now or at

(26:40):
least maybe no, it's so strange, like I said, without
the radiation and the destruction, and it just feels like
sometimes they're like, we don't want to go into that area, okay,
because at the end, aren't they going back to Los Angeles?

Speaker 2 (26:54):
The central question is my mom okay.

Speaker 1 (26:56):
Yeah, and then we have to just stop asking that
very quickly in some ways.

Speaker 6 (27:00):
At the beginning of the film is actually the most
interesting part to me of this family is going out
for a vacation. They realize what an now we're into
their ride, that there are bombs over Los Angeles, and
I think this is so much. And this is where
I think this aspect of the short story does feel
very much there of it being purely Dad knows what

(27:23):
to do?

Speaker 1 (27:24):
Who knows why? I forget what he does for a living.
If they say it, I think they do.

Speaker 3 (27:28):
He gets so annoyed that whole short story, at least
the first one. We'll definitely talk about the second one.
But that first short story just feels like I am
pissed off at all times. Just feels like the dad
who you don't want to mess with because he's going
to turn around.

Speaker 6 (27:46):
Dad is always right, don't piss off Dad. Dad doesn't
like you to tap your foot. Don't tap your foot.

Speaker 3 (27:52):
If you were sitting in the back of that car
and you said how much longer, he would turn around
and literally bite your head off and spit it out
The window.

Speaker 6 (28:00):
The ory Milan version of that is not He's not that,
but he is immediately survivalist of I know exactly what
we have to do. We are not gonna stop. We're
gonna keep driving. We'll stop at a phone if we
can't get your mother. We're just gonna keep going. We're
not gonna go to the main road. We're gonna go
to a side road. We are not going to tell
the proprietor right away what's going on. We're gonna go

(28:20):
somewhere where they are a little bit less in the know,
and they don't know. So we're gonna buy everything first.
We're gonna pay for everything first, and then we're a
good person, we're gonna say, hey, by the way, turn
on the news. Something really bad is happening. You should
shut things down, you should take your stuff and go.
So it's very the evolution of it. And then immediately
the next stop he makes, which is the gun shop,

(28:43):
where he similarly, I need a gun, I need this,
I need that. Here's everything, and already it's getting a
little bit looser as far as yeay, oh okay, fine,
I'll pay you double and then gun laws. What do
you know in nineteen sixty two, I can't sell it
to you right now. You got to come back tomorrow
for it. And he does the trick that the one

(29:03):
era of my life where I played PlayStation, I had
a stressful job and I would kill an hour in
the afternoon by playing Grand Theft Auto and all I
would do is drive around and shoot people and do
violence dark time in my life.

Speaker 1 (29:15):
I'm good now.

Speaker 6 (29:16):
But one thing you cannot do is you cannot go
into a gun shop and purchase guns and immediately try
to shoot the proprietor of that chop in order to
not think for them, because the proprietor is going to
be faster with the gun than you are. And I
was very happy to be validated in this movie when
that happens. And then of course the gun shop guy
comes back. But there's just something to that of how
it quickly progresses into Okay, I was the good guy

(29:38):
with the grocery store owner. I'm a little bit less
of the good guy now with the gun store owner.
And now it's we're going down that slope.

Speaker 3 (29:47):
The only time that doesn't hold water is if you
are Arnold Schwarzenegger coming back in time and able to
take out Dick Miller as the gun proprietor anything.

Speaker 2 (29:56):
Else phase plasma vifer in the forty range. It's just
what you see, Pal, who's the nine millimeter? You know
your weapons, buddy. Any one of these is ideal for
home defense. So which shall it be?

Speaker 3 (30:15):
All close early today?

Speaker 2 (30:18):
It's a fifteen day away on ten guns. Rifles you
can take right now. You can't do that. The politics
of this film are really interesting because, on the one hand,
there's a very strong strain of pakriarchalism. Father knows best
with a gun in his hand. But there's also some

(30:40):
kind of I think some weird left wing politics as well,
that that kind of thread through this. I don't know
if this is true, but I have read that ward
More was expelled from d wait Clinton High School in
New York for his pacifism during World War One. I
do know in a more confirmed way that he was
in the Federal Writers Project of the WPA with people

(31:03):
like Ralph Ellison and Nelson Algren and Zora Neil Hurston
and John Chiever and Studs Turkle and Jim Thompson of
all people, and Richard Wright and Saul Bellow, and there
was a strong kind of left liberal strain in that too,
and I think there is at one and the same
time a kind of endorsement of nuclear war would be

(31:27):
a very bad thing. But also if there were a
nuclear war, the men stop is to kill other men
and protect there women with a strong underlining of the
possessory adjective.

Speaker 6 (31:42):
Well, that's what I really liked about the second story,
Lot's Daughter, because it has a little bit of a
kick to that with its ending just for.

Speaker 3 (31:52):
Folks who may not be as familiar with the Bible
as other people. Of the story of Lot somewhat similar
and so far as moving to I can't remember if
he was in Sodom or if he was just as
a Gemora. But there's the whole story of the angels
coming in and if they can find what was it
ten good men that they would spare the city. They

(32:15):
eventually take shelter with Lot and his family. All of
these people come from outside, so again protecting the family,
protecting the house. But when all of these people show
up and they go, hey, you have two strangers in there,
basically send them outside so we can fuck them, is
how I understand the story. And he goes, you, no,

(32:35):
these are my guests. Here's my daughters take them. Yeah,
which is great. Then the angels are basically like, hey, man,
you need to get you and your family the fuck
out of here. We're going to lay waste to this city.
Of course, there's the whole thing of them running away.
Lot's wife turns around, and I really wish I remembered

(32:55):
her first name. I don't even know she has a first.

Speaker 1 (32:57):
I don't think she has one. I think it's just
Lot's wife.

Speaker 2 (32:59):
I think she's missus Lott.

Speaker 7 (33:00):
Yeah, my name is Lot, and I'm Abraham's cousin.

Speaker 5 (33:05):
I live.

Speaker 3 (33:06):
I live in Sodomgamore.

Speaker 7 (33:07):
I live really right on the line outside Imamore. I
met my wife about six hundred years ago. We've been
married for like five hundred and.

Speaker 8 (33:17):
Ninety eight years.

Speaker 9 (33:18):
I'm Lot's wife. Everybody refers to me as Lot's wife,
but I have a name. I'm Myra, Myra Lott, actually
the light of my life for my two daughters, Tracy
and Stacy.

Speaker 3 (33:31):
Missus Lott turns around, turns into a pillar of salt.

Speaker 1 (33:34):
You can color. You're ready to see if you want to.

Speaker 3 (33:36):
Second part of the story, yes, very apropos. Second part
of the story is now Lot is alone with his family,
with his daughters, and the name of the second story
that this was somewhat based on, I would say it's
really much more based on Lot. And then Lot's Daughter
is the follow up story. And if you remember again

(33:57):
in the Bible, Lot's daughters want to perpetuate the lineage,
so they get a Lot nice and drunk, and a
couple nights in a row they have their way with him,
or he has some semi consensual sex with them, or
maybe not. Maybe it's even darker than that. But yeah,
So when we come to ward More's story Lot's Daughter,

(34:20):
he now has a new son and his wife is
gone and his daughter. Look at how nice my daughter looks.
And yes, things are falling apart, but she really takes
the place of her mother very well. Fucking dark.

Speaker 6 (34:33):
She's stronger than her mother, She's more logical than her mother. Yeah,
the stories are great. I had heard the name word Moore,
but I had never read anything by him, and I immediately.

Speaker 1 (34:41):
Added a bunch of his books to my list.

Speaker 6 (34:43):
I think in some ways, I actually the first story
is just written with such an intensity, and the dad.

Speaker 1 (34:50):
Is despicable and you know that dad, you absolutely do.

Speaker 6 (34:55):
And so that has a great ending that shocked me,
and the second story kind of gives a little bit
of upp into and a way I think in the end,
I would love to see an adaptation that is a
little bit closer to that, because it would be hard
to watch, but it would be yeah, evident.

Speaker 2 (35:09):
And if you were doing a nineteen fifties adaptation set
in car culture of Orpheus, you could call it Orpheus
and Furry Dice.

Speaker 3 (35:17):
And that's why it makes the big bucks. I was laughing,
of course, as he's going with the ray milland characters
going on this quest to get the supplies, get the guns,
get the gas. I love when they stop at a
diner and they're talking about how they don't have any
eggs anymore, and I was just like, oh, wow, everything
old is new.

Speaker 2 (35:35):
Again that diner. By the way, the Saddle Peak Lodge
is still there. Yeah, it is now much grander. It
is a kind of in Calabasas. It's at four to
one nine Cold Canyon Road. It also appears in episode
eighty three of Perry Mason that aired on January thirty,
nineteen sixty. But it's funny when I'm looking at that

(35:59):
or the movie ranch that appears in it. There's a
kind of subterranean dialogue between all of the different movies
that feature the stock locations that you do when you're
shooting on the cheap in Los Angeles. I forget whether
it was Sam Goldwyn or Harry Cohne who's alleged to
have said, a tree is a tree, a rock is

(36:20):
a rock. Shoot it in Griffith Parker, don't shoot it.
But there are these sort of trope locations that pop
up in movie after movie, and in some ways it
takes you out of the film because you're saying, oh
my god, saddle Peak Lodge. I officiated at a wedding
at saddle Peak Lodge. It takes you out of the movie,
but also sews you back into this Los Angeles movie world,

(36:43):
where there are five or six iconic locales which have
doubled for fifty or sixty places in as many movies.
If both of you come to Los Angeles at the
same time and I will take you to saddle Peak
Lodge and we can make our pilgrimage, I would be
very happy to do that.

Speaker 1 (37:01):
Blast the jazz, whatever we do.

Speaker 3 (37:03):
It took me so long to figure out who was
playing the mother in this film, or I knew her from.

Speaker 1 (37:11):
I know her as I can't stand it. I never
ever have figured out that that was her.

Speaker 2 (37:18):
Oh she is so good.

Speaker 3 (37:20):
But when I figured it out, I was like, oh,
I see it in the face. Of course she was
in The Big Knife and a whole bunch of other stuff,
but yeah, that role and singing in the rain so
freaking classic, god.

Speaker 6 (37:32):
Is iconic, one of the best supporting performances in a
movie of all time.

Speaker 3 (37:37):
And then using Franky Avalon as this kind of I
guess it would have been a box office draw at
this time. Right, this is before the bikini films.

Speaker 2 (37:45):
Yes, I think so.

Speaker 1 (37:47):
I feel like he and at least the quick trivia
I read like he was already doing me. Let's see.

Speaker 2 (37:54):
I know he was a teen idol as a musical star,
but I don't know to what extent he was a
movie star. Reports that he was, but I don't know.

Speaker 6 (38:03):
Oh, the Beach Party was sixty three, Operation Bikini sixty three.

Speaker 1 (38:07):
Wow, he did a lot of bikini movies prey quickly.

Speaker 3 (38:10):
So this is right before, right before I was going
to break out, almost right after Voyage to the Bottom
of the Sea, which is what I really remember him for.
And he did a few other things before that, but okay,
so he's probably yeah, not quite box office idle, but
more the musical hit. Okay, that makes a lot of sense.
Let's cast this guy in here and bring in some

(38:32):
of the teeny boppers. He looks amazing in this movie.
I didn't really recognize the daughter too much, and speaking
of this being such a patriarchal film, she gets barely anything.

Speaker 1 (38:41):
She gets nothing.

Speaker 6 (38:43):
I was mad because I felt like I was just
annoyed because I think it's like, what is it, probably
forty five minutes in the film when she finally gets
to say something, and what does she say? Okay, we
have to go, Carrie, we found the place we're gonna
live as the world ends. Let's go get it ready,
and she says, what a drag? I'm bored. Yes, that's
great work right there. But that actress. I felt bad

(39:05):
after because I was so angry at her as a character.
And then I realized she's in Spider Baby. Oh yes,
she is a blonde in Spider Baby, and she's so
great in that. But yes, it's not her fault that
she just gets No. I'm sorry she doesn't get nothing
to do. She does get to get sexually assaulted, which.

Speaker 1 (39:22):
Has nothing to do with her.

Speaker 6 (39:23):
In the end, it is all about how the dad
is said, it's the dad's responsibility and he'll never forget help.

Speaker 2 (39:28):
Was he insufficiently good at protecting his women? It's not
about them, it's about him.

Speaker 6 (39:34):
Yes, we never see her actual react to it after.
We never see is she recovering, is she defensive, is
she anything like?

Speaker 1 (39:42):
Nope, you would never know. This girl just went through
it horrific, right, and.

Speaker 2 (39:46):
Nabe Molan's wife says, maybe you should talk to her,
and you're expecting that will be the next scene, and
instead the next scene is Frankie Avalon clumsily trying to
pick up the woman that they rescued.

Speaker 1 (39:57):
Yes, so there's a second woman in this movie who
is also being actually assaulted, and they do decide to
help her. Okay, come stay with us, we'll take care
of you. And I think this woman is not on
the market right now, and every scene is just Frankie
Avalon make an eye at her, and here I pitched
a flower for you. She does not want that, No,

(40:18):
she doesn't.

Speaker 3 (40:19):
Should get this woman to a trauma center, right, Now
before we move off of actors, I just want to
sing praises of a couple of sort of smaller actors.

Speaker 2 (40:27):
Dick mcallian, who plays Carl, who is just such an
axiom of cinema, all of those beat big movies, the
Linklin School and the Crazy that we mentioned, but he
had a career that goes through Robin and the Seven Hoods,
Von Ryan's Express. He is a loach in Chinatown. For
God's sake. Once you see his face, you see it everywhere.

(40:47):
He is almost the Dick Miller of the Beatniks. You
know here he is cast let's just say, not cast
against type. He's doing that thing that he often does.
But I just love, Oh, oh my god, it's Dick mckallion.
And then the other guy who I recognized was the
grocery store owner who's an actor named o Z Whitehead,

(41:08):
and he's if Kustin Sturgis had his the Allen Quell Company,
his stock company of actors, John Ford had a bunch
of them too, and he was one of the john
Ford Stock Company actor guys. He's in everything from Grapes
of Wrath to Man who Shot Liberty Balance and again,
once you see his face. You see it everywhere. He's

(41:29):
one of that great generation of I guess you could
say character actor, although that seems a little insufficient, non
leading men. For the most part, supporting actors who once
become aware of them, have great faces, and once you
become aware of them, it's like, oh my god, there
he is again. Oh that's whoa And I think Ray Miland,

(41:53):
who was an actor, knew in his mental or even
maybe physical rolodex whole bunch of guys who could come
in do a day or two's work, deliver and do
it professionally, not have to be what's my motivation or
any of that stuff.

Speaker 3 (42:11):
I was thrilled to see Paul Gleason as the gas
station attendant about ten minutes in that gets his lights
punched out.

Speaker 1 (42:19):
There didn't raise me to be a hero for four bucks.
It's that great line, just in case the.

Speaker 3 (42:25):
People of my generation need a little reminding. Paul Gleeson,
the principal from the Breakfast Club, you mess with the bully,
get the horns. So great seeing him here where he
just looks like he still went behind the ears. And yeah,
it's about thirty minutes in when we finally get the
roughnecks coming in here, these teenage hoodlums, and they really
become the motivation for the whole second part of the

(42:47):
film because we think we're done with them for a
little while once they find their new world Swiss family.

Speaker 1 (42:53):
Robinson kind of what it feels like for a bit,
let's build a house in a cave.

Speaker 2 (42:57):
But those of us who make our living screenwriting, he
knew that they're going to come back.

Speaker 1 (43:02):
You didn't kill them, you had just shot them. It
was a grace.

Speaker 2 (43:05):
But they are the kind of motor that kicks you
into the second activeness and changes it a little bit
from the dominant tone being is ray Miland being going
to be able to keep his family together by being
an authoritative, strong leader of the population of basically this

(43:26):
nineteen sixty two Mercury Monterey custom or what's it going
to be like when they are tangling with the anarchy
of this new doggie dog world that they're now finding
themselves in.

Speaker 3 (43:41):
Ray Miland has one of the best ways to enter
traffic that I've ever seen when he is trying to
get onto the freeway again from a side road, unable
to get on there because going back to the short story,
That's a lot of it is the traffic and trying
to make it through.

Speaker 1 (43:59):
And get down this road and not use all your
gas just idling.

Speaker 3 (44:05):
And here he's trying to get back into the road.
Nobody's stopping, nobody's allowing him to merge.

Speaker 2 (44:10):
So do you know what to do?

Speaker 3 (44:12):
You just get a big old bucket of gasoline, throw
that out onto the freeway, light it on fire, and
that gives you a little bit of a path.

Speaker 1 (44:20):
Yeah, and look, New York traffic can be rough. I'm
not gonna lie. I did watch that and think a
little super soaker.

Speaker 2 (44:27):
I want to give a little plug here if I
may to. I think we all know IMDb a good
old m de bath. I am a CDB International Movie
Car Database.

Speaker 3 (44:39):
Oh I love that one.

Speaker 1 (44:40):
Yes, I have used that one.

Speaker 2 (44:42):
I went, of course there to see what kind of
car is that? Because it struck me in many of
its sort of configurations and aspect ratio to be a
kind of second cousin to the car that let me
caution drives in alphabilt. It's a Mercury Monoabe. It's a
Ford product, and all the Ford products share a base
body style, although different trim levels according to IMCDB, whom

(45:06):
I trust absolutely explicitly. It was a nineteen sixty two
Mercury Monterey Custom. It was a fifteen foot can Skill
travel trailer in tow and you actually see the can
Skill logo at some point, and I love it. Somewhere
there is somebody who cares enough about this to document it.
The interiors were not shot in a nineteen sixty two

(45:28):
Mercury Monterey Custom because the Mercury Monterey Custom is a
kind of a small ish car. It is not what
we now would consider a compact or subcompact, but it's
not one of those large land sharks. So in order
to shoot the interiors capaciously enough, they used a nineteen
sixty Mercury Montclair, which is a size level up from that. Cool. Okay,

(45:53):
you're shooting a movie. You've got your sort of picture car,
but then you're shooting the interiors and now it's cramped.
But the idea that there's somebody who cares enough about
cars and cares enough about movies to actually do that research.
And here we are because somebody is obsessive and that
shit crazy in the best possible sense. We get to

(46:15):
rebel in these things that we now know that we
would never have known on our own.

Speaker 3 (46:20):
My head is off.

Speaker 1 (46:21):
I would believe that my dad would have done that.

Speaker 6 (46:23):
However, my dad isn't good enough for the Internet to
have executed that, because he is somebody who would watch
this kind of movie and say that can't be the
inside of that car if that's too small. And just
a memory I have is as a child, Barbie's nineteen
fifty seven Chevy was the car for Barbie. It was
this pink Chevy and my dad was helping me put
it together when I was like eight years old, and

(46:45):
remember him doing it and putting it down and looking
at me and being very torn about something and saying,
I'm really glad they did this because it's a toy
for kids and they should have this. But I just
have to say, in nineteen fifty seven, there would not
have been seat belts in the backseat of this car.

Speaker 3 (47:01):
I am disappointed that one of my other favorite movie databases,
the Internet Movie Firearms Database, does not have an entry
for this, because then they'd be able to tell us
all of the guns that we're seeing.

Speaker 1 (47:14):
There's multiple guns, and they play huge plot points, and
they're apparently very easy to aim. And fire. Everybody's really
quick at figuring that out.

Speaker 3 (47:22):
Somebody's letting me down.

Speaker 1 (47:23):
That is very disappointing.

Speaker 3 (47:24):
Or the movie Internet stock location, which I imagine that's where. Yeah,
I know, you know where all of these locations are.
But I love when they go from real location and
then walk right onto a set and we are so
set bound for quite a lot of this second act
where we're just walking through a bunch of either fake

(47:46):
trees or trees they've just planted on a sound stage.
Man oh man, does that really just bring a battle
where it's no, we're on a sound stage all.

Speaker 2 (47:55):
Yes, they had three weeks.

Speaker 1 (47:57):
That feels like it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (47:59):
One of the things I love about the Arcoff Nicholson
movies and the Corman New World stuff is let's make
a virtue of necessity. We've got no money, we've got
three weeks, We've got these actors, we've got these locations.
But we're making a movie, so we're gonna.

Speaker 1 (48:16):
Make it something.

Speaker 6 (48:16):
Also, I think really neat about a kind of stark,
undecorated end of the world film, very different movie, but
also about the end of the world in a very
different way. Something I love is the just blandness of
the visuals of the movie, the rapture where it just
feels there is nothing visually interesting, and that is deliberate

(48:39):
and it just puts it in a different headspace when
you watch it.

Speaker 1 (48:42):
I mean, have a little bit of that here.

Speaker 6 (48:44):
Where there's no I think we see a mushroom cloud quickly.
There's no real visual style or like attempt at pinache
to the movie.

Speaker 1 (48:55):
And it's fine because let's see focus on the story.

Speaker 2 (48:58):
These days, if we were to see a roland emerate
post apocalyptic movie, we would go for the special effects
in some ways.

Speaker 1 (49:07):
Well we'd have twenty minutes of that mushroom, Yeah, we would.

Speaker 2 (49:10):
In this there is one shot of a mushroom clud
in one shot of a sort of ascending whatever. Clearly
either stock footage is primitively matted in, but maybe not even.
But that's not what we came for. We didn't come
for the glander of the special effects, or the awe

(49:30):
of it, or the shock of it, or the oh
my god, that looks so real. We're here for something else.

Speaker 3 (49:37):
We're for good storytelling, and that's what we're getting with this.
Like I love so simple, this whole idea of the
reintroduction of these hoodlums done in such a beautiful way,
and maybe a reference to Moses. This whole thing where
mom's doing laundry, daughters on the shore, and mom accidentally

(50:01):
drop a shirt or something into the water, and we
follow that down. Then we go past the daughter, and
then we keep going down and then a hand reaches
in and pulls it up, and sure enough, it's one
of those tufts that we saw before. Who's just oh,
somebody's around here, okay, And.

Speaker 2 (50:19):
If that thing came from upstream, we're gonna go there
and find the humans to prey on it. A long
time ago, there were some women by the shore of
a river, not unlike the one we see in the movie,
and floating down through the rushes is a basket with
a little baby, and they say, oh my god, it's
a basket with a baby in it. And they pluck

(50:39):
it out from the rushes and they go to the
pharaoh and present this child to the pharaoh and say, Pharaoh,
look at this baby. It's the most beautiful tube we've
ever seen. And the pharaoh looks and says, this baby
is really ugly, and the women say, but he looks
so good in the rushes.

Speaker 3 (50:57):
That's a lot of bull just.

Speaker 2 (50:59):
Into terms of exposition. There is lightning, hope it doesn't rain.
It came from behind us, and there's a sense that okay,
could be lightning, could be this, could be that, And
then there's a second one that wasn't lightning. Maybe they're testing.
So the existence of one could be anything. The existence

(51:24):
of two therefore means purpose. It reminds me a lot
of any random plane can crash into the World Trade Center.
Once the second one crashes, that something else, or Goldfinger
saying the first is happenstance, the second is coincidence, the
third is enemy action. There is something about the other

(51:45):
hue dropping, which I find an extraordinarily beautiful piece of storytelling,
of narrative, unminding that it's done here and again, Like
many of the things, is some of this dialogue cheezy assolutely,
but the storytelling is done with I think great economy

(52:05):
and intent. And I love the fact that if you're
operating on a very limited number of shooting days and
a very limited budget, the thing that we'll get you
through again and again is the storytelling is you know
what really comes through.

Speaker 6 (52:23):
The efficiency, the fact that it opens and very quickly,
and we don't need a lot of backstory. We don't
need to know that it's the Russians, or it's World
War three or instance, or that it is very immediate
setup of here's dad, here's mom, the kids, they're lazy teenagers.

Speaker 1 (52:40):
Let's go here.

Speaker 6 (52:41):
It happens now we move into action. It is within
the first five minutes. I think that he is heading
to the grocery store and with a plan, and some
movies move like that, and I think it's for the better,
but very easy to make that opening a good fifteen minutes.

Speaker 1 (52:58):
Before we get to them back in the car going
to the grocery store.

Speaker 2 (53:02):
It's lean and economical, and there's not so much wasted
effort in this film, because we know we're in the
grips of storytellers. When there does seem to be something
that momentarily doesn't make sense or what's that about or
where's that coming from, we have the faith that they
will in very short ordered pay off that setup.

Speaker 3 (53:23):
I'm very surprised that Frankie gets shot towards the end
here and that we actually don't see him recover. We
have the scene with the doctor that kind of fixes
him up a little bit and then can't really do
too much more, sends him off on their own way
and they get stopped by the military, and of course,

(53:43):
being a fan of twenty eight days later, I think, okay,
now you're dead.

Speaker 1 (53:49):
Oh no, this is even worse.

Speaker 3 (53:50):
But they flag him down. Okay, it's all right. Basically
it's okay to go back to Los Angeles.

Speaker 2 (53:55):
Guys.

Speaker 1 (53:56):
It's like a misstanding instead.

Speaker 3 (53:58):
And then that great title car of there must be
no end, only a new beginning.

Speaker 2 (54:03):
What a way to end this right, and it's oh
my god, there's this car. They're all gonna die, and
it turns out, thank god, it's the police, which is
in some ways the mirror image of a Jordan Peele ending.

Speaker 1 (54:15):
There's a big difference between this family and Chris in
that movie, right, And that is the thing. I don't
think this movie intended in any way to be overly
conservative nuclear family.

Speaker 6 (54:27):
I don't think it was as politically minded as that.
But the way it watches today is just this is
the American way. We have this perfect family. Of course
they're white, but this entire movie is but just that this. Okay, yeah,
they're doing it right, they're Christians, right, they are saying
grace before their meals. They might kill people, but that's
because they have to protect their own. And see even

(54:50):
in the end, what is the policeman or the army
guy say as he waves them over.

Speaker 2 (54:58):
That's fid more, five more, one by more that are okay.

Speaker 5 (55:04):
They come from the hills, no radiation, sickness, yep, five
good ones.

Speaker 1 (55:15):
We're rebuilding. We've got five perfect specimens of Christianity. And
they are clearly upstanding because they still were shaving and
Raymlan still wearing his hat, so we know it's going
to be okay. This is the kind of people we
want to continue in society. And again in twenty twenty five,
that read a little icky. I know it was a
different time and it's not intended that way, but I

(55:35):
think it just feels so specifically a particular portrait of America,
if you will.

Speaker 2 (55:43):
I would maintain though, that there is a certain kind
of in movies of Lake Ifew's early sixties. It's all
going to be all right, which we the audience know
that the.

Speaker 3 (55:55):
Scars left by the movie will persist.

Speaker 2 (55:58):
Down onto many generations. And I think it's Hollywood's way
of giving you what, on the level of plot is
a happy ending, but on the level of emotional attack
is an undertail. I think a lot about Nick Ray
movie Bigger than Life, where Ray Milan does a lot
of courtizone and turns crazy and tries to kill his

(56:18):
son another biblical haha, and at the end of it,
they're in the hospital. They've finally figured out that it's
a cortizone that's been driving him to these delusions, and
they're going to get him off of it, and he's
going to be a good dad again, and the family's
going to be together again. And they all gather around
the bedside in the hospital, but Nick Ray shoots it
out of slight Dutch tilt, and you're looking at it

(56:40):
and you're realizing, oh, no, for the purposes of whatever,
the equivalent of Father Breen and the Hayes Commission, yes,
everything's going to be all right, But boy, is that
not the message the visuals are telling us. And I
think there's something of the same thing going on here,
which is ostensibly he's going to get to the hospital
and he's not going to die. They're probably not even

(57:02):
gonna have to Amtibata's lag. We're going because civilization is
going to be okay. But nothing in the pit of
my stomach, either medicated or unmedicated, tells me that this
world is going to be okay. And I like that
there's a lot of that stuff going on. When Ray
Millan says for the next few days, you're going to

(57:23):
have the kind of togetherness you've always dreamed of unpacked
that what does that mean in terms of expectations for
nineteen fifties white Christian families and what we know of
the world, or the kind of weird is this Frankie
Avalon's coming of age through trial. I just keep coming

(57:43):
back to that line, where what do you do when
your dad says I want you to shave every day,
or in Rick's case, maybe every other day.

Speaker 3 (57:51):
So much of this movie takes place in that car
that we're talking about. We almost start in the car,
but we definitely end in the car, maybe what twenty
thirty minutes out of the car, but that we have
the credits playing over them still driving is wild for me.
And we go back to that radio so many times

(58:13):
in the end credits. And I found it fascinating that
at the beginning of the movie, when the title comes up,
it's all in black letters with a white outline. At
the end of the movie, it's now in white letters,
no black outline. It's almost like it's giving us hope
through just the font choice. I'm like, am I stretching?
I don't think I am, because they're being so deliberate

(58:36):
about these end credits.

Speaker 1 (58:37):
And the music too.

Speaker 6 (58:38):
The music is very triumphant and cheery and yeah, we
got this, We're going in the right direction.

Speaker 1 (58:44):
Yeah, the right people survived.

Speaker 3 (58:46):
This family vacation from hell, starting off with Raymonlan there
with this fishing rod. He's just like, Oh, I can't
wait to go out with my family and catch some
big ones. Me and the boy. We're gonna bond out
in the river.

Speaker 2 (58:59):
When civilization gets civilized.

Speaker 6 (59:01):
I'll rejoins being like sixteen and being in the backseat
of the car of your parents gone fishing.

Speaker 3 (59:08):
Like it sounds like help that moment in the short
story to go back to that when they have to
put the dog out of the car.

Speaker 6 (59:16):
Yes, I'm reading it. I'm like, oh, this dad is
already awful. And of course the dad says no dog,
and almost there's a part of me that it's terrible
because my Internet database is does the doogdie dot com.
That's what I look at anytime there's an animal in
a movie, and I just need to separate myself from
the emotionality of having to worry about this animal.

Speaker 1 (59:37):
But it's such a powerful moment in the short story.

Speaker 6 (59:39):
It is such a way to establish somebody as willing
to throw their young child's dog out the window of
the car to move on and survive.

Speaker 1 (59:49):
I would not have wanted to see that, but I
think it would have gone a.

Speaker 6 (59:52):
Long way in establishing exactly what kind of man, or
what kind of person Raymland was going to be could
be to have him say, put.

Speaker 1 (01:00:02):
The dog outside. I don't think there's any coming back
from it, though.

Speaker 6 (01:00:05):
It's one of those things where a lot of audience
would just never walk out the screen rightfully.

Speaker 2 (01:00:11):
You can do anything you want to a Uman in
a movie, but you harm a dog.

Speaker 1 (01:00:15):
That's talks, don't heard anybody.

Speaker 3 (01:00:18):
They're perfect save the cat.

Speaker 2 (01:00:20):
You were talking about Rame Miland at the beginning with
a fishing rod, and it starts weirdly with an apology
thanks for the help. I'm sorry, and I'm sorry thanks
for the help. Is very sarcastic there's a way in which,
although they don't underline it, we are in the first
act watching Raymond land go from a guy who was

(01:00:43):
a little bit in the parlance of the time, henpack.
His wife is snarky at him, and he's apologizing to
the guy who can take command. And that is such
a common trope of movies in late fifties early sixties too,
which is to see the Jim backus wearing an apron

(01:01:04):
and rebel without a cause, being the sort of, to
use that period word, emasculated husband either succeeding or failing
into becoming the man that his son needs him to be.

Speaker 6 (01:01:18):
It's a good point too, because in the beginning there
the husband and wife's interactions are very playful and sex like.
They're making jokes about I'm gonna pull over and because
the kids are sleeping, and it feels like such.

Speaker 1 (01:01:30):
A different marriage. Once the story kicks in, suddenly their
relationship which seemed positive enough for a couple married probably
twenty years at that time, but that how it. The
affection seems to go very quickly once she is an obstacle.

Speaker 6 (01:01:47):
I think to him, on we can't survive your way.
You're not necessarily wrong and wanting us to. But we're
not going to do that because otherwise.

Speaker 1 (01:01:57):
We'll be dead.

Speaker 2 (01:01:58):
Sorry about your mom, but sorry, but yeah, that's it.

Speaker 1 (01:02:01):
We got them a bun.

Speaker 2 (01:02:02):
Yeah. But I love the way that whether we're talking
about this as again nuclear family in a post nuclear world,
or whether we're talking about this as a sort of
father knows best but with weaponry, or whether we're talking
about this as the near of civilization versus the anarchy
of lawlessness, whether we're talking about it as a fifties

(01:02:25):
beacon a disturbed teenager movies and the threat they present
to the white picket Daincet Eisenhower family, whether we're talking
about it as Frankie Avalon's Coming of age. Whatever. Of
the ten or twelve films that are embedded in this one,
they're all in really good sink. They don't seem to
be warring with one another or competing for control of

(01:02:46):
the narrative. What is the central metaphor it's me? You know,
it's me. They all seem to be there as different
flavor and notes, which make this a kind of rich
stew There's a little Carter mom, there's a little Annis,
maybe there's It just makes me happy.

Speaker 3 (01:03:02):
I'm very happy too when it comes to the presentation
of this film because I had only ever seen it
full frame, and the scan of this that I think
it was Radiance put out widescreen looks great. This movie
looks better than I ever thought it had before. And
I don't want to say any looks better than it

(01:03:23):
has any right to. But it just looks fantastic, and
I thought, I'm going back to Milan. He's like, okay.
Apparently he felt overwhelmed by the shooting schedule and working
with AIP was, like you said, probably very much a trial.
But I think he knocked it out with some good stuff.
I won't say this is a great movie, but I

(01:03:44):
sure did have fun watching it.

Speaker 2 (01:03:45):
I want to, just as a footnote, keep a shout
out to the guy who shot it, who is Gil
Warren King, who shot thirty forty features, most of them
have little note to be candid. As a cinematographer, you
often don't get your choice of projects. You can start
out as a cinematographer on The Lucy Show and end

(01:04:07):
up shooting The Lucy Show. Has actually happened. As a
footnote to a footnote, Gil Warrington's mother lul Warrington was
an actress and was at the time when she was
working for Universal, the only woman director in the entire world.
There certainly was Alice Ki Bouchet, and there certainly was
Dorothy Orsner and people that our generation is just now

(01:04:30):
beginning to recover the histories of. But I love the
fact that here's a guy who spent his lifetime as
a good, serviceable and I don't say that as a
majority cinematographer serving the material over a long span. With
a mom who was the only woman film director in
the entire freaking world.

Speaker 1 (01:04:52):
What era was she directing?

Speaker 3 (01:04:54):
Early tease, It's never been easy for a rooman director.

Speaker 1 (01:04:57):
What are you talking about? Actually mean, that's why we
have so many of them? Now, Look two of them
at Oscars, Come on, if three of them, we're fine.

Speaker 2 (01:05:06):
It's the white male directors who are having trouble getting
work these days because they're the people who are really
being discriminated against.

Speaker 1 (01:05:12):
It really upsets me sometimes.

Speaker 2 (01:05:15):
My mom was pretty extraordinary woman, very gutsy, and was
a single working mom, and she was working for the
American Cancer Society helping produce their public service announcements. I'd
cancer with a checkup and a check made enough money
to support her and support me, and she didn't want
to be the client on the set anymore. She wanted

(01:05:37):
to be one of the filmmakers. So at age thirty
seven in nineteen sixty, as a single working mom, she
went to NYU Film School when no women went to
film school. She held her own. Her mentor was Haigemnugian,
who was Marty Scorsese's mentor and old generation of people.
If you look at the end of Raging Bullet, says

(01:05:59):
I was and now I see this film as dedicated
to Hey Glen ag and he was that guy. And
she got her ass pinstrel out as the only woman
in class and made her requisite sixteen milimeter black and
white movie of the Pigeons in Washington Square Park. When
she got out of film school, she wanted to be
a director, and nobody knew quite what to do with that. Oh,

(01:06:20):
Dorothy Arsner and Lul Wonging were just utterly unknown. Nya
Svarda was doing directing in France, but nobody really knew
about it. Barbara Hammer, I think was making some wonderful
soft hour in any porn films, but they wasn't considered director.
Barbara Logan was several years down the pike. It was
just what is that woman? Director just did not compute,

(01:06:43):
and so she wanted to be an assistant director, thinking
that might be a path, and people said, we've got one.
There was a woman named Nancy Littlefield who was a
first a d in New York and it was.

Speaker 10 (01:06:53):
Like, we have a woman ad and maybe she got
sick one day, so she became a script supervis and
that was a dub did her well when she did
it for the rest of her life, and she was
very good at it, and a lot of directors.

Speaker 2 (01:07:05):
Liked working with her, and she trained the next generation
of script supervisors. And I think a lot about what
she sacrificed as a single working mom in order to
raise me, the dreams of her own that she put
on the back burner in order to have and raise
a child. And I'm grateful for that, but I'm even

(01:07:25):
more grateful in many ways for what she refused to
sacrifice to be a single working mom. And I think
my life is so much the richer because of what
she said. She was unwilling to give up simply because
she was a woman and a mother and to the
extent that I'm here now talking about panic in the

(01:07:45):
year zero exclamation point. A lot of that really is
due to what she told me I would be capable
of by her words, but also by her example. This
may not be the appropriate list, but I just want
to say thanks.

Speaker 3 (01:08:02):
On that note, we're going to take a break and
play preview for next week's show right after these brief messages,
Ladies and.

Speaker 5 (01:08:08):
Gentlemen, Baby Jane Hudson, I real no let to daddy.

Speaker 8 (01:08:19):
Is ussis Helen Love?

Speaker 1 (01:08:25):
I wonder if you can guess who I am.

Speaker 5 (01:08:27):
I'm Baby Jane hutch The hell was Baby Jane Hudson.

Speaker 8 (01:08:33):
I've written a letter to Duddy say.

Speaker 1 (01:08:47):
My sister doesn't ever go out. She so not fit
to receive visitors. Jane, I want to talk to you.
I'm afraid I have bad news. You'll probably have to
sell the house.

Speaker 5 (01:09:04):
Yeah, I'm ever gonna sell this house, and yeah, I'm
ever gonna leave it.

Speaker 1 (01:09:12):
She's sick and she's not getting any better. You mean, Jane,
I think she seems much better lately. I was cleaning
the cage the bird got out.

Speaker 4 (01:09:27):
Yeah, you wouldn't be.

Speaker 1 (01:09:32):
Able to do these awful things to me.

Speaker 2 (01:09:34):
If I were still in this chair, what your heart land?

Speaker 5 (01:09:37):
You are in that chair, Jane.

Speaker 1 (01:09:45):
Please don't do this to me.

Speaker 5 (01:09:47):
Jane, Jane Please.

Speaker 3 (01:10:00):
That's right. We'll be back next week to kick off
a celebration of Victor Bruno with a look at his
brover performance in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. Until then,
I want to thank my co hosts Emily and Howard. So, Emily,
what is the leadest with you?

Speaker 6 (01:10:14):
Apparently not talking about Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? I
guess we'll have to listen to that. One would have
happily joined that episode, Mike. But in the meantime, I
sometimes write about movies over at Dudley Dollshouse dot com
and then the wonderful Christine Niek Peace and I do
a podcast together also on Weird and Wait Media, The
Feminine Critique.

Speaker 1 (01:10:33):
And our next episode which will probably be out by
the time this drops. And it's us kin to read
grouping together and talking about our favorite beach movies? Will
Frankie avalon show up? I can't say, oh, come on.

Speaker 3 (01:10:46):
A discussion of beach movies unless you're just talking about
a beach that makes you old.

Speaker 1 (01:10:51):
Spoiler alert That would totally be on my list because
that Zaney Bonker's dumb movie keeps showing up on the
sci fi or ciphy channel now and time it's on,
I'm like, oh, leave this on, it's entertaining. I never
said I had good taste, by the way, just to
be clear on that.

Speaker 2 (01:11:07):
While we're on the subject of beach movies. So there
was a family of v Andese intellectuals called the Coners
Kohner and because fascism, they came to the United States,
and Paul Koner became a literary and talent agent and
represented people like John Houston. Paulconer represented him and the

(01:11:27):
guy who wrote Tredudency and Madre represented all kinds of
people for several generations. I think he represented them vendors
towards the end of his life. And his brother, Frederick Kohoner,
who was a scholar, was in essence the first person
to get a PhD in film history, even though that
category didn't quite exist from the University of Vienna, and
this very cultured Enny Gray found himself in Malibu, blinking

(01:11:51):
in the sunlight. He was writing little novels. There was
one about Kiki of Montparnas. The lovely book. I like
it a lot, but feeling displaced and not quite knowing
what to do between what his life would have, should
have could have been had not the Nazis come to
powers and this weird sun dappled life. He was now

(01:12:11):
living in malibuups and so just for kicks, he decided
to write a little book about his daughter and her
friends playing it on the beach called Gidget. What we
know of this beach movies today really is the kind
of weird fever dream of a comically or tragically displaced

(01:12:32):
Viennese intellectual. And Howard, what's the latest with you, sir?
He just finished writing a pilot for what we hope
will be a limited series called The Last Baron, based
on the book of the same name by Tom Sankton.
It's a nonfiction book about the kidnapping of the Baron
and from in front of his house in Paris in

(01:12:53):
nineteen seventy eight by a gang of leftist idiologues and
petty carthieves and all kinds of unhealthy mental excitement among
the members of his family. No, I'm not going to
pay his ransom. You pay us. So there's that, And
then I think this is the first place I publicly
said this, but two of my novels, A very early

(01:13:13):
novel which is set in March of nineteen thirty three
in Berlin in the filmmaking community, when all these people
were trying to decide whether they should keep on making
films for the Nazis or just take the next train
to Paris and get the fuck out to novelical Destiny Express.
And then a much more recent novel called The Great Eastern,

(01:13:34):
which is my scrolling, lavish literary, nineteenth century anti colonial
adventure novel. There were going to be what are you
issued next year in uniform editions, so I get to
be a novelist again and still get to romp in
the playfields of filmed entertainment. And my current project is

(01:14:00):
working on a screenplay for one of my very favorite
French noir authors, again named John Patrick Manchett, who wrote
a lot of books that became some good movies, some
in different movies, some Alan de Lowell movies. French bleak
existential noir is like mother's milk to me, and I'm

(01:14:23):
very happy that I get to work in the Manchett's
cinematic university.

Speaker 3 (01:14:28):
I just was recommending Destiny express on our episode we
did don Metropolis to kick off sci Fi July, so
very appropriate that we're now talking with the author of
that here and the wrapping up episode.

Speaker 2 (01:14:41):
Thank you so much for that shout out, and I
would like to remind your audience not to pay any
extra for a first edition because there's no other kind.

Speaker 3 (01:14:50):
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 Wordingwaymedia dot com, especially to our Patreon community.
If you want to join the community, visit patreon dot
com slash Projection Booth. Every donation we get helps the
Projection Booth take over the world.

Speaker 2 (01:16:06):
And a and a.

Speaker 8 (01:16:11):
Ha a aver a ha aver a model, he said,

(01:17:10):
facts to fall from the government, after from the land,

(01:18:14):
after from a Fami