Episode 770: The Driver (1978)

Noirvember 2025 roars to life with Walter Hill’s sleek, existential chase film The Driver (1978). Ryan O’Neal plays the nameless getaway specialist who moves through Los Angeles like a ghost, pursued by Bruce Dern’s manic lawman hell-bent on taking him down. It’s a lean, hypnotic duel between predator and prey where style is substance and silence is power. Mike rides shotgun with Beth Accomando and Walter Chaw to unpack Hill’s minimalist approach, his homage to Melville’s Le Samouraï, and the cold precision that makes The Driver a high-octane hymn to professionalism and control.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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Speaker 2 (00:20):
Oh ge is.

Speaker 3 (00:21):
Folks, it's showtime.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
People say good money to see this movie.

Speaker 3 (00:26):
When they go out to a theater. They want clothed sodas,
hot popcorn in. No monsters in the Projection Booth. Everyone
for tend podcasting isn't boring.

Speaker 4 (00:35):
Put it off.

Speaker 3 (00:59):
Two men on opposite sides of the law, Ryan O'Neill,
Bruce Dern, and between them Isabella Johnny m Three loaners
playing a ruthless game. None of them could afford to lose.
In the Driver, Ryan O'Neill is the driver. My line

(01:28):
of work is kind of hard to come by. His
reputation the best meal man in the city. Memory is
not too good about law not Yeah, you can do
better than that. I don't have to. Did you ever
get caught on one.

Speaker 4 (01:42):
Of your jobs?

Speaker 3 (01:43):
Hasn't happened yet. Bruce Dern is the detective. I'm very
good at what I do. His reputation the toughest cop
in the city, and.

Speaker 4 (01:56):
He saw the man who's driving the car. Yeah, you
didn't identify him. I just don't like you.

Speaker 3 (02:02):
Now you get out of my time because you go
out on one more job and I'm gonna nail you.
You might be getting too big. Two men driven by
their need to prove they were the best. How you're
gonna get downstairs? I really like chasing you. Sounds like
you've got a problem.

Speaker 4 (02:30):
I'm much better at this game than you are. Are
you winning to make some money?

Speaker 3 (02:34):
I win? You're gonna do fifteen years for them? The money,
the law, even their lives no longer count. You don't
care about the money, might even send it to it.
Who was best was all that matter. This is a
quiet part of the hunting traps. Offset cowboys out are somewhere.
You've been set up in am to break the cop.

(02:56):
The driver was willing to risk it all. Break the driver.
The cop was willing to break the laws. Pat It'll
cost you two years. Ryan O'Neill, Bruce Dern Isabella, Johnny
the Driver. A ruthless game between two legends.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
Welcome to the projection Booth. I'm your host, Mike White,
joining me once again as Ms. Beth A Commando.

Speaker 5 (03:28):
Hello, thank you.

Speaker 1 (03:29):
Also back in the booth is mister Walter Shaw.

Speaker 2 (03:32):
Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 1 (03:34):
We kick off November twenty twenty five with a look
at Walter Hill's The Driver. Released in nineteen seventy eight.
The film stars Ryan O'Neil as the titular driver getaway
driver that is, if he were younger, you could call
him a baby driver. He's pursued by the detective played
by Bruce Dern and if you can't tell by these
character names, the film is a stripped down thriller that

(03:54):
plays with some familiar archetypes, including some that may feel
very familiar if you're a fan of Jean Pierre Melville
Le Samurai. We will be spoiling the film as we
go along, so if you don't want anything ruined, please
turn off the podcast and come back after you've seen
the film. We will still be here. So, Beth, when
was the first time you saw The Driver and what
did you think?

Speaker 5 (04:13):
I have a terrible memory for the first time. I
see a lot of films, but I do remember being
a big fan of Walter Hill around that timeframe, and
I feel like I saw The Long Writers before I
saw The Driver, but I remember really liking it, and
a lot of my film memories are tied to my dad,
who's the one who got me to really love cinema,

(04:37):
And I feel like the first time I saw it,
I think I was still a teenager and not quite
understanding it, and I remember talking to my dad about
how the film was these arc types as opposed to
real characters, because my dad always liked to make me
think more about films that I was watching, never answering
my questions, but prompting me to think about it more.

(05:01):
That's what I remember is the first time saying it,
being a little bit confused by it, but being a
fan of Walter Hill and being a huge fan of
just action films, and I just felt like it felt
fresh and new and different. I've since put it into
a slightly different context, seeing like Jean Pierre Melville's work,
like you mentioned, but when I saw it, that was

(05:23):
the first thing.

Speaker 1 (05:25):
And Walter, how about yourself?

Speaker 2 (05:26):
For some I saw it, I think it's got to
be in VHS. I think I came to it backwards
through the Warriors and the Streets of Fire was so enamored.
Those were more kind of my friend group, this vibe.
We really loved Warriors, we love the Streets of Fire.
Just when I became more aware that there was somebody,
there was an active hand behind some of these movies,

(05:47):
you started to work backwards and forwards. I think most
of us did in the pre Internet age, right, we
started to look at the credits and start wondering about
these people. And The Driver was one of the first
movies I was really actively searching for at local video
stories and stuff difficult in my small town Collorade to
find for a while, but I think I finally did
if I recall it. Video Plus late lamented Video Plus

(06:08):
had a copy of The Drivers, So I remember renting
it and being disappointed that it wasn't The Warriors over
Streets of Fire, something very animal, that was really different.
And it wasn't for years later that it came back
to it with a different kind of expectation, with no
expectation really just to say I was really little. I
didn't get it. I was twelve or thirteen. I wanted

(06:29):
street fights. I wanted guys in baseball uniforms. I don't know,
something different forty eight hours I wanted even and it
wasn't any of those things. I think the second time
is really when I began to appreciate it as a
kind of its own animal. But the first time I
saw it would have been on a pretty crappy VHS
and I was not nearly ready for it.

Speaker 1 (06:46):
This was actually a first time watch for me for
this episode. When we had you on the show. I
think it was what last year I think you were
on before Walter. Obviously you've got the book about Walter
Hill that you wrote, and I was just like, Okay,
this guy knows what he's talking about. Let's get him
on and talk about a movie that I've always wanted
to see but never have because yeah, I'm a fan

(07:07):
of Walter Hill. We've done so many Walter Hill films
on this program. We've talked about The Getaway, We've talked
about Hickey and Bogs, Streets of Fire, The Warriors. I
can't even remember what all else we've discussed. But just
I had this blind spot of the driver, even though
I think I've got a screenplay that I printed out

(07:28):
forever ago and just always wanted to get into this
film and never did so. I use this as an
opportunity to say, Okay, if I'm going to talk about
this movie, I want to talk about it with two
people that I really enjoy their opinions, So let's check
it out.

Speaker 5 (07:43):
That's great. What's your first reaction to it?

Speaker 1 (07:46):
My first reaction is that I love this whole idea
of this stripped down narrative. I can really see the
Samurai influence on there, the whole idea, mostly at the beginning,
especially when it comes to the Isabella Johnny character and
the way that she sees Ryan O'Neill. And I know
we'll talk about how the original screenplay played out that

(08:09):
it wasn't a coincidence that she sees Ryan O'Neill, but
she becomes one of the few witnesses to see him,
very much like the singer Well from Le Samurai, as
well as Jenny from The Killer, and the way that
she can be the person that puts the finger on him,
and just the way that this movie plays with this

(08:29):
very cool color palette, and also the minimal dialogue that
it has. I'm trying to think it's like, what fifteen
minutes into the movie before Ryan O'Neill even says anything,
and there's very little dialogue. And then of course I
love Brucetern and seeing Bruce Dern in this era, especially

(08:49):
anytime I see Bruce Den I'm super happy. But nineteen
seventies Bruce Dern, Fuck, yes, I am there for it.
And I just really like him in this movie, and
especially to him and Matt Clark in their chemistry. And
then Joseph Walsh, who I've talked with Joseph Walsh for
hours and hours, but mostly about California Split. I never

(09:11):
brought up the Driver, which makes me feel pretty guilty,
but it was so nice to see him in here
in such a prominent role.

Speaker 2 (09:19):
And Brewster wasn't the first choice for this film. It
was Robert Mitcham. Hill actually went over to Mitchum's office,
I guess it was, and he describes as there's two
chairs with a small refrigerator in between, and they sat
down and Mitchell pulled out of balla vodka from the
refrigerator and his is eleven in the morning here, but
he describes his long day spent with Mitcham and a

(09:40):
ball of vodka, and then the next day Bencham calls
up and says, nah, and that was it. He was
initially considered. You can imagine what a different kind of
movie that would have been without it. During snaky Reptilian insinuation,
which I think is perfect for the detective.

Speaker 1 (09:56):
Durren can play a dirty cop like nobody's business. I
love the laughing policeman, which one of these days I'm
going to cover on this show. And I just feel
that he's racist, sexist, plant evidence and basically he's very
similar in this movie and so far as he will
do whatever it takes to catch the driver, and I

(10:17):
really appreciate that, and I also appreciate that I don't
know if we ever really see him in a police station.
No see him. We see him at Torchies, and I'm
just waiting for Peter Jason to be running the bar
back there and for Eddie Murphy to come walking in
saying there's a new sheriff in town.

Speaker 5 (10:33):
I was so surprised because I haven't seen it in
a long time, and there are no police station shots
at all. His office is in that truck and in
the bar, and it's interesting because on a certain level,
it's like he's never in his real environment of his job,
but he's in his real environment of how he sees himself.

(10:58):
He's this player out on the streets, or the thing
about Priestern. I love him, but he's an actor who
in most of his films I always find that he
could have played both roles. He could have done a
kick ass job playing the driver. I especially thought of
that when I was watching Coming Home. I kept thinking, like,
man might have been better in him switched places. But

(11:21):
he's a great actor. I love watching him.

Speaker 1 (11:24):
Yeah, Ryan O'Neil's an interesting choice. I know that Hill
really wanted Steve McQueen to play this role. I was
listening to the commentary that Matthew Aspery Greer put together
for the I think It's the Imprint disc and talking
about how O'Neill's career was a little bit on the
waning side. At this point. We had done Nickelodeon, which

(11:46):
really wasn't that big. He was huge in the earlier
part of the decade. By nineteen seventy eight, you're on
the downswing already. This seems so quick, but I guess
suff just moved pretty fast. And I think it's an
interesting choice to have this pretty boy actor playing this role.
And I like that he is so pretty that and

(12:07):
I'm sorry to use that word, but whenever I look
at him, he's such a beautiful man, and you would
think that he would be more like hard scrabble, like
even Bert Reynolds or something in this role would seem
more fitting. But I like that he's playing against type.
And I guess, really, when you look at somebody, and
we'll talk about this later on in the show, but
you look like a Ryan Gosling very similar so far

(12:30):
as very pretty man in this role as this silent,
stoic driver.

Speaker 2 (12:36):
There's something about the John Ireland to him, or I
won't say money Cliff because he was a great actor,
but there's something about the sort of gentleman cowboy feeling
about it if you look at the Driver as a
Western which is why I did like write Adeal in
that role, because he's such a cipher really as a
human being. As an actor, I think there's a real
blankness to him that could be sociopathic. Possibly he had

(12:58):
worked with He'll be in a TV movie called The
Thief Who Came to Dinner, and Hill had written the
screenplay for that. It's really interesting to see the similarities
between those two performances. They're both the Thornhill character north
By Northwest go as the wind goes. There's not really
a set identity for them necessarily, and whatever's happening around
them seems to imprint and get filtered through them. I

(13:20):
think Ryan O'Neill's great movies, or because he's got great
co stars, there's something about him like open milk and
refrigerator or something. He takes on the flavor of whatever
is most prominent in the building. And here he couldn't
be more different from McQueen to both of your points,
I think because McQueen is such a died in the
wools sort of character, he is, we is what he is.

(13:41):
But for O'Neil, I think he really fits in with
this unknowable archetype maybe even thing, and in a movie
that's aspiring towards a Western archetype, I think kind of
works for hildasem twice, I think is he engenders a
lot of loyalty, but also I think he's got a
pretty good eye for that sort of asking all the
different kinds of masculinity that he covers in turn in

(14:04):
each of his films.

Speaker 5 (14:06):
Ryan O'Neil wanted the part too, because I think he
was feeling his career. I don't know like waning, but
I think he was feeling tired of that sort of
type casting that he was getting. He was getting all
the same roles, and I think he saw this as
a chance to do something different. And if you consider
that the Samurai was an influence, he's a pretty boy,

(14:28):
just like Alan DeLong. They're both these like beautiful faces
that the camera loves that can be just this kind
of blank slate. You can also say that about Greta Garbo.
They always joke that what were you thinking about when
you were shooting that scene? And it was like nothing.
She was just this gorgeous face that whatever you cut

(14:48):
to you could read whatever you wanted into her. And
so I think the only moment where I felt that
he wasn't the right guy was when he beats up
that thug. That was the only time when I'm going
like maybe not, I'm not sure he would like really
take that guy out. But other than that, I think

(15:09):
he worked really well in this context.

Speaker 2 (15:13):
You know, I really love that comparison to Alid the
Loan because lately I likely Samurai a lot asks almost
more as a comedy, like an existential comedy, because he's
such a bad assassin. There's thirty witnesses. He doesn't really care.
He does care how his hat looks, though he does
care of his callers just perfectly irony. He's just very
aware of his beauty. And I think there's something about

(15:34):
Millville that was talking about referencing that as a trope
I think in some of these movies. And yeah, I
think O'Neil's that kind of character as well. And the
only minor pushback I'd give to the beating up the
thug scene is that I think people who have no
like Mark Wahlberg, who have no interior life, seem are
really scary when they get violent because they see sharks.

(15:57):
You know that was that the Quinn says, their eyes
roll back to black and then the screaming starts. I
feel like that with some of these actors that don't
really have it seems like any kind of hamster spinning
around the wheel. So when they start beating there's something
to me that feels really serial killer about that. I
can't reason with this thing. There's no mercy here. They've

(16:20):
just started down this road and they're going to continue
down the road, just because I can't really read him,
So I'm not really arguing with you. He's saying word
for me, because the scariest people and film for me
are not the cannibal elector seeing you can't engage him
in a conversation about bar talk or something he right,
and Neil, what are you going to talk to him about?
He's just there to kill you. So there's something about
that's scary to me. They can't reason with him, there's

(16:43):
no talking to him. If he's showing up to your
meeting angry, he's leaving angry. He's programming, and there's something
about that I think is interesting in a film that's
this programmatic.

Speaker 1 (16:53):
But he's so fatalistic as well, because he knows that
he's being set up. That's how I I read this
movie is that he absolutely, one hundred percent knows. Even
when Glasses first approaches him and he basically murders the
car in the parking garage, that to me was him
just showing like, I know what you guys are up to.
I'm going to ruin your car. And then when he

(17:16):
takes the job later on, it's basically, yeah, I know
what's going to happen with this thing, but I have
to have like you're saying, is if this were Western,
I have to have this showdown. I've been on the sidelines.
I've been ducking black Bart for this whole time. I
need to man up. And I'm not sure if he's
actually a white hat or a black hat, because I

(17:37):
don't feel that either of these guys have both gray
hats to me, both very morally ambiguitu. But I just
feel like, Okay, this is the time I need to
make sure that I face off with Brewster and with
this detective.

Speaker 5 (17:53):
Talking about showdown, it's like a showdown of egos, like
they each think they're the best and the only way
to prove it is to play this game where I
know what you're doing, but I can still beat you
at this or I'm going to trap you. But it
feels very much like it's all about their egos, and

(18:14):
that's why, like Isabella, Johnny can just walk away at
the end. It's not about her. It's about the two
of them, like having this fight.

Speaker 1 (18:21):
It's his finishing move. It's Ryan O'Neil's the driver for
his finishing move where he plays chicken twice in this
movie and he wins both times, plays it against the
cops at the beginning they both separate and crash, and
then later on when he's going against glasses and his
driver does it again, sure enough, there's a crash. He
will not blink, and I appreciate him for that.

Speaker 5 (18:43):
See, that's the part of the sociopath psychic guy that
I do believe that he pulls off well for me.
The punch did not land right for me, but that
sense of I'm not going to blink in this chicken
fight that I totally believed and thought he did really well,
because it's like it doesn't even fake him at all.
He knows he's gonna win because other people are more

(19:04):
human and will try to save themselves and pull aside.

Speaker 2 (19:09):
Yeah, there's that such a fatalism there too, I think,
where I'm not sure that he knows that he'll win.
I don't trust that he cares or that he's aware
of consequences. I don't trust that he's aware of consequences,
which is a strange I guess sem to say. And
I think part of the effectiveness of that film for
me is that the driver is so ambiguous but also

(19:31):
so scary. He reminds me of all these Western villains
from Martin Lando, although I think leave Marvin, who show
up and you feel like, I don't know if they
know the damage that they're doing. I don't know that
they have thought through the preciousness of the lives that
they're taking. All this sort of liberal craft that I've
been docrenated with. But watching these movies, that was what

(19:54):
was the horror of those people, and to find it
a hero for me is one of those things that
only later as I got a little older, to college
and more existential, that I really truly appreciate. I think
watching this movie first, when I was really young and
looking for that black and white hero villain thing, which
really is there in Warriors and Streets of Fire in

(20:14):
forty eight hours, you see this obviously supposed to be
the hero, and yet well, I don't know. It's hard
to like him. He's not eloquent, he's not charming, he's
not warm at all. He doesn't seem to feel fear.
There's something scary and did about him. And I think
part of the allure of the Driver now is a

(20:34):
cult object, it seems like, because it really didn't do
well at the time. Part of that, I think is
that there's this chilliness about it. There's no exit kind
of feeling about it, where they're just engaged in the
cycle of violence and the set roles that they're trapped
in and cased it in their lives and they can't
ever break out of the cycle of the stuff that

(20:55):
they're doing. The kickers who can, like the player like
he is a Belgian player, are almost supernatural. She knows
more than she should at all times. She is able
to move in and out of the action. Everyone else
is trapped. We'll get glasses for God's sake. All these
people are trapped, and these we cannot get out of.
These were trapped there by their own design or by

(21:17):
the design of what their makeup is. There's something like
waiting for you to go about it that you were
just stuck here and there's nowhere for you to go,
and you're trapped in these roles that you're forced to
enact over and over again. Especially in our culture and
our media culture, you are the same roles that you're
cast in and you're first to reenact over and over again.
There's something about that.

Speaker 1 (21:36):
Yeah, not to jump to the end, but there's no resolution.
This will continue to go on. It feels like when
at the end of this movie that bag is empty,
there is no money, there is no winner. They just
walk away, and what's going to happen the next day.
I don't see Ryan O'Neill turning over a new leaf.

(21:56):
I don't see Bruce Dern not being obsessed about Ryan
O'Neil anymore. I just see them going their own separate
ways and then starting against the next day. It's like
that whole the sheep Dog and the Coyote thing from
the Warner Brothers cartoon.

Speaker 3 (22:12):
Hello Ralph, Hello Fred.

Speaker 1 (22:14):
Clocking in kind of thing, and then off they go again.
Because I can see maybe why audiences were like, what
the hell dies, nobody wins, nobody goes away with the girl.
You've got this beautiful Isabella Johanni in her first American role,
and she just walks away. Yeah, she's a complete cipher
as well. You don't get to know her at all.

(22:35):
And I'm really glad So I did read the script
of this, and I'm really glad that they cut out
that first scene where you have the Ronnie Blakeley character,
the connection who's at the heart of all this stuff.
She's meeting with the player, the Johnny character, and basically
giving her money, and like, this whole thing is almost
like a setup. And so when she sees Ryan O'Neil,

(22:57):
and if you know that, then it plays that scene
a little bit different as far as her looking at O'Neil,
O'Neill looking at her, and then the lineup scene plays
a little bit differently as well. And I'm so glad
that they cut that out because that just would have
not done this movie any favors whatsoever.

Speaker 5 (23:16):
It would be early on in the film telling you
something and removing any sense of ambiguity or interest. And
it also doesn't make a whole lot of sense either
to me, Like it makes much more sense the way
it plays out this way, and it seems more true
to the style of what the film is. When I

(23:37):
heard about the scenes that were in there, I was like,
oh my god, thank god they cut that out.

Speaker 2 (23:42):
I don't believe he was interested in making sense. Really,
we just wrote and that's the Moto American film since forever.
But sat in an interview. They didn't want a realistic
depiction of what real criminals were like. I didn't want
a realistic depiction of what the city was like. It
wasn't interested in any of.

Speaker 5 (23:59):
That makes it so interesting.

Speaker 2 (24:02):
Yeah, it becomes a metaphor, but for what It becomes
a symbol but for a passion play.

Speaker 3 (24:07):
But for what?

Speaker 2 (24:08):
So that's the question that holds interest. I think over
all this time that this is a deeply symbolic, a
deeply metaphorical film. But what is it for the politicians
that go in every day and say horrible stuff and
then they clock out and they have dinner with their
opposition that they've just been slandering on TV. It's just
a game, except lives are at stake, the real issues

(24:31):
are mistaken. These guys are playing some kind of game
here is it? More and more as I just watched
it recently in preparation for tonight, I just felt like, Oi,
this feels like watching television accidentally for a while, watching
Expand or something. Boy, it really feels like these people
are just engaging their own micro drama and not realizing

(24:53):
that they're actually influencing the world with the decisions that
they're making here just because they have to show up
and see the right things in front of the camera.
The stiltedness of a strange daccatoess of the dialogue and
the roles again, to me, it becomes increasingly poignant, as
this is who we are, this is actually what's happening.

Speaker 3 (25:12):
Now.

Speaker 2 (25:13):
We have to pretend that we're still okay. We have
to pretend that we're playing the rules the same that
we've always played them. But really we're just trapped in
these rules and we have an awareness that there's like
an immense darkness looming. It sound like a crackpot, but
our job needs to play this role and to enact
in these same cycles and act like everything is okay.

Speaker 3 (25:33):
That's what we.

Speaker 2 (25:33):
Do while these other people who are in control do
the same thing, and then we clock out and we
don't know. So there's something about The Driver that to
me has now become larger than a genre film. It's
like an existentialist play.

Speaker 1 (25:46):
To me, well, I can see why it was not
accepted in America but lauded by more European critics. This
feels like a European film that escaped to America. Somehow.
I can't even say it feels like a remake of
a French film, because it doesn't. It feels like a
French film instead of a remake of a French film.
It feels very true to that idea because the script

(26:07):
is so stripped down and told in very sparse dialogue,
sparse directions. I know that he'll described as writing haiku.
I don't know if I necessarily see it like that,
but it is very minimalist to find that he even
hacked a bunch of stuff out of that. I've talked
about scripts before where it feels like when you're watching

(26:29):
the movie, all of the connecting tissue is gone. But
I'm glad the connecting tissue is gone. I'm glad that
it is so enigmatic. It just adds to the experience
of things because we see Ryan O'Neil where he lives
and it is super sparse, like no personal effects or anything.
And then there's a scene where they visit where Bruce
Dern lives and I think they say, oh, your place

(26:52):
looks just like the cowboys or the drivers, but not
like how they call them cowboy as well, and it's yeah,
like it's that whole Danny Lee chow yun fat thing
of the two sides of the coin, the Batman Joker
thing where it's like, okay, which one came first kind
of thing, and is he that way because the driver's
that way? Or are they just both so similar that

(27:15):
they both live in like squalor like no personal effects.
They just have their one job. I'm the driver, I'm
the detective.

Speaker 2 (27:22):
And back into best point about Lee Samurai. I remember
Alan the Loan's apartment in that it's empties except for
the bed table in the parakeet who's his best friend,
you know, and actually tells him that he's being bugged
at one point, I think in that movie. I love
that movie, very funny, but yeah, happiness.

Speaker 5 (27:38):
I'm also curious if he put that stuff in the
script to get it approved by the studios. Like I
wonder if there was stuff in there that he knew
in his head he was gonna cut because it didn't
really fit the rest of the film, because so much
of that is so well written and stripped down, and
those scenes feel very out of place what that final

(28:00):
film is. So I'm just curious if maybe he put
that in as decoy, let the studio have a little
more conventional narrative, a little more explanation, a little more exposition,
and then we'll just cut it out.

Speaker 2 (28:15):
Yeah, very possibly, And for his cast as well, to
give them a little bit of direction. That's interesting. He
stated about the Driver that he wrote it essentially as
a reaction against regular stuff and making a career out
of writing for a while. Now at that point he
was like, I guess, didn't he want to do the
same stuff again? So for the same stuff to show

(28:35):
up in there to your point to end up being
cut really interesting. Yeah, I think probably you have something there.
Derney here's got to know what he's doing. He's a
little background. But while we're shooting, we're not shooting any
of this stuff.

Speaker 3 (28:47):
Better again.

Speaker 1 (28:47):
Yeah, there is almost always a moment when Bruce Dern
sounds like he was raised in Ireland, where he will
add a little irish to his affect. There's one part.
It's when he dumps the coffee on Ryan O'Neill's hands
and Ryan O'Neal's about to punch him.

Speaker 3 (29:03):
He's just like, it'll cost you two years. Go on,
do you want to throw it? Go on? Go on,
go on. You know what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna
catch the cowboy that's never been caught, cowboy desperado.

Speaker 1 (29:25):
What are you talking? What's going on here? Bruce? You're
not in Ireland. You're somewhere in Los Angeles in the
back streets, or at that moment you're at Torches doing
a police lined up and the bartender's behind him just
polishing glasses. Like sam Alone, I'm like, all right.

Speaker 2 (29:42):
Great, Torchie shows up in a lot of his movies.
That's also the name of the bar and Forty Streets
of Fire as well. Torchies is the name of Raven's
bar that he hangs out, and it's just just a name.

Speaker 1 (29:53):
I guess it's his Velverde right.

Speaker 2 (29:57):
To the county.

Speaker 5 (29:58):
I just wanted to get back to one point you made, Mike,
where you were talking about it felt like this French
film that you know, landed here. To me, what's interesting
about it, it's the same thing that kind of happens
with Westerns and Akira Kurosawa and Sergio Leoni. I feel
like it's something American that got exported and reinterpreted in

(30:19):
France and then came back over and got reinterpreted. So
it's got these layers of translation, and each time it
gets translated, it like picks up some slightly different flavor
or tone or texture. And I think that's why it's interesting,
because it's not quite Le Samurai, but it's not quite

(30:42):
the action films that came before in the United States,
and it's not quite anything else at that point, so
it feels like it's just been translated a few times.

Speaker 2 (30:52):
And well, to throw another wrench in it, the movie
that Hill's actually obsessed with is John Woo's The Killer,
like a remake Samurai, right, So to your point again,
there's another and he wanted.

Speaker 1 (31:03):
To remake that for America.

Speaker 2 (31:05):
He did, and he has a script written for it
in English ready to Go.

Speaker 1 (31:10):
And a lot of that felt like it was taking
from Rio Bravo. To me, it almost black. He was
taking Les Samurai into The Killer and adding more of
a Western flavor. But he kind of was doing that
whole thing that you're talking about Beth with the echoes.
He would kind of re echo everything into Last Man's
Standing And this is more of a pure vision of

(31:30):
Red Harvest or something. But to me, it's the worst version.
I think there's a version with David carrotyin that I
think is an actual better version of Yo Jimbo and
fist fill of dollars and Last Man Standing. Nobody gets
blasted off of trampolines and shot through windows or anything.

Speaker 3 (31:44):
See.

Speaker 2 (31:44):
I actually love that. I think there are two different
kinds of Walter Hill action film.

Speaker 3 (31:48):
Right.

Speaker 2 (31:48):
There's the kind where it looks like people are actually
fighting and learn how to fight, and then there's that
kind with the Fire where Michael Parra swing's a mop
I think at one point someone goes flying through the window. Yeah,
there's a real comic bookness too, some Hills films. Those
are the two things that he always loved were Westerns
and comic books, and he wanted to be a comic
book artist who went to Mexico to study that. But yeah,

(32:10):
there's two different kinds. And Michael Pere in Streets of
Fire was like told Hill that he's gonna go take
boxing lessons that you knew how to fight, and he said,
absolutely not. It's not that kind of movie. You should
not know how to fight. You should swing like a
big roundhouse telegraph swing and you're gonna hit some guy.
He's gonna go through a door, across the street, through
a window. But that's the kind of movie that we're

(32:30):
making here. But there are other movies that are very
much about fighting and knowing how to fight. I would
say ahead of that, or even for forty eight hours
is a very interesting fight film. They both show a
lot of character through the way that they fight each other.
But yeah, I think my defensive last man's standing it's
a really wonderful Prohibition era comic book, a take on

(32:53):
all that stuff. For the driver, I think, to Ryan
O'Neill's punch, I don't think he's inspired to. What he's
really wanting is not for them to be able to
ever express themselves verbally, but only through cars. It's almost
like a Cronenberg film in that way, or something where
all of the physicality of the film is really through
the manipulation of metal and the screeching and the screaming

(33:16):
of metal. When he's trying to show Glasses is disdain
for being undervalue, they destroy his car. He destroys his car,
and this amazing garage sequence, it's this rather than telling
him off and this eloquently penned speech, He's just I'm
gonna knock off every door on your car, one by one.
I'm taking the wings off a fly. I'm going to

(33:39):
I show my disdain for you through the destruction of
this metal and so the screeching of it and the
torturedness of it, and the idea that we're bus stations
and rail yards and all these places. There's something very
brutalless about I think the way that this film is
told as well, again not in a realistic way, but
in a various metaphorical wayment even about our hist as

(34:00):
an industrial nation. Perhaps not to get to eve in
the woods, but there's something about that.

Speaker 5 (34:05):
It's also him just showing how skilled he is too,
because he doesn't just smash the car. He piece by
piece very carefully, one side, one other side, one fender,
the next vender. I can do this exactly how I
want to like, and it's again like it's a bit
of ego. And to put my two cents in on

(34:27):
last man's standing that is his heroic bloodshed film. So
like all that excess and over the top is like
perfectly suited to that particular style. I think.

Speaker 1 (34:41):
I love speaking of the use of the cars. When
I'm trying to remember exactly when it is in the
film when he is Ryan O'Neill is driving through, I
want to say it's another parking garage, but it's like
he's sneaking in the car. It's almost like as if
he were like crawling or just like looking around corners.

(35:04):
But it's the car doing it. It's not him, but
it's him as an extension of the car. And I
want to say that Durn's doing something very similar as well.
And it's just like these two men just going around
corners but in these vehicles and just sussing each other out.
I just really love that he is so identified with
the cars and the other thing too, going back to

(35:26):
John wu and the color palette of the Samurai is
so distinct, and the color palette of Unflick is so
distinct as well. And I love, absolutely love the cinematography
that is coming in this movie, and just that it's
the same gentleman Phil Lathup who did Point Blank, which

(35:47):
is to me one of the best looking movies pretty
much ever. It looks so good, and I just love
the coolness of the colors. I love that amazing shot
of Walker going down the the airport corridor and you
just hear the shoes and see him coming, and the
whole thing of him busting through the door and the

(36:08):
gray suit that he's got on, or all the gangsters
with those green, different shades of green. You get so
much of this, especially in some of these outdoor scenes
where they have these chases where the world is green.
There's an amazing shot when O'Neill finally confronts Johnny after
the lineup scene, and it's a corridor kind of thing

(36:30):
and it's lit up at the bottom. It looks like
with green neon and it just casts a shade over everything,
and you see these two elevators in the background, like
outside of the building type elevators going up and down,
and you just see these little red lights going up
and down. It just looks so good, and everything looks
so cool and controlled with this film, very much like

(36:52):
the characters.

Speaker 5 (36:53):
And then the city looks gorgeous too, even when they're
having the car chases and seeing the neon and the
lights of the city whiz by when they're taking the
curves and stuff.

Speaker 2 (37:05):
Yeah, I don't think La looks like this anymore.

Speaker 4 (37:08):
You know.

Speaker 2 (37:08):
There's something very time capsule about this as well. It
was wonderful movies during the no wave period in New
York where you really get a feeling for it. This
is the La version of that, I think. And Lathrop
he did the Hills first movie Too Hard Times and
also worked with him on FIFA Came to Dinner, But
I'm not sure there are a lot of cinematographers who
are better at shooting with low light like this, bouncing

(37:32):
light off the streets, using neon and all those things
to do it. Hill would recapture a lot of that,
I think for the Warriors, but just the way to
shoot at night. It's really elle noir Quinn essentially ell noir.
Right when we think about that is man, This is
a really beautiful film. What a great comment. I love
talking about his use of cars and the extension of

(37:54):
cars and tying it with brilliant observation about heroic bloodshed
and last standing.

Speaker 3 (37:59):
Thank you for that.

Speaker 2 (38:00):
Jordan does that as well in his Mission Impossible movie.
There's that sort of tango that Tom Cruise's character has
on the back of the on the motorcyclist. They're actually
expressing this and also through the cars, and he does
that of course in Hard Boiled with motorcycles and cars too,
and there's yeah, there's a real like marriage of man
and metal theme trope or whatever going on here. But yeah,

(38:24):
Lathrop is to be commended for a lot of that
really beautiful stuff. He also shoot a shot out. They
shoot horses, don't they?

Speaker 1 (38:32):
Oh? Yeah, another Bruce Stern classic.

Speaker 2 (38:34):
Yeah, just really beautiful films, gorgeous looking movies, right, But yeah,
it's always smart. I think for young filmmakers to attach
themselves to veteran cinematographers for their first couple of times out,
it really helps ease the transition.

Speaker 3 (38:49):
I think. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (38:50):
To think that this was Hill's second directorial effort is
just amazing. And I do love that he says about
the Warriors. Thank god I was making the Warriors because
this movie.

Speaker 2 (39:00):
The Driver is the kind of movie that's so experimental
and unusual that it ends careers pretty quickly in the
United States. It's very possible that if he didn't have
Warriors in the chamber already and was actually shooting it,
that we wouldn't have had at Walter Hill, not the
way that we do now. I think he had already
maybe sold the script for Ayleen as well. At that
point he had started brandy Wine with David Tyler. He

(39:24):
already luckily had some really soft landings because The Driver
was just even Isabella Johnny came out afterwards saying that
she was betrayed. She was told that it was going
to be an American action movie with a big car
chases and stuff, and this is what we got. She
was not a supporter of that experience. Yeah, no, I
think it's a career ender. But luckily he was already

(39:47):
ready to go.

Speaker 1 (39:48):
She's an interesting person. I spoke years and years Sorry,
this is very off topic that I spoke years and
years ago to Sam Neil about possession and I was
just like, oh, I'd love to talk to you more
about this, and he said, I after certain people are
no longer with us. So I was like, oh, that's interesting.
So then when Chaikowsky passed away, I was like, are

(40:09):
you ready to talk about this now? And he goes, Nope,
not yet. I'm like, oh, okay, you're narrowing the field.
And then when I recently was reading her Wikipedia article
and just where she's at politically, I'm like, oh, okay, yeah,
she's a little loony. So maybe he's just biding his
time for that one. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (40:29):
Didn't you check herself into an institution after possession?

Speaker 1 (40:34):
I think she did. Yeah. I think she's very right
wing these days.

Speaker 2 (40:40):
I would have so much empathy for those people now,
for the damage that they're doing.

Speaker 1 (40:44):
It's just so casual when it comes to knowing the
driver is behind all this stuff. There is no I'm
going to find out who did this. There's no cat
and mouse as far as that goes. There's no I'm
following the clue. He knows exactly what's going on. He
knows that Ryan O'Neil is the guy. There is a
little cat and mouse as far as he's just batting

(41:05):
him around, just hey, I know this, Like, here's the
fake key that you used to get into that car.
You want this back because I found it, but you
can have it back, and just walks right into his
It looks like a hotel room, but it's an apartment,
and then later on when he checks into a hotel
it basically looks exactly the same.

Speaker 5 (41:25):
It was funny. When he was handing in the key.
The first thing that I was thinking he was trying
to do is to get him to put his fingerprints
on it so that he could take it back and
use it as evidence. I don't know if that was
his first thought. And then when he didn't do that,
then it was like, let me egg him on more
to play this cat and mouse game and take the bait.

(41:45):
But that was I was going like, oh, don't touch it,
don't put your fingerprints on it.

Speaker 1 (41:49):
Because it's immediately thereafter that the driver goes to Glasses like, Okay,
I'm your man, let's set it up.

Speaker 2 (41:55):
There's a strangeness about this, right, there's too much knowledge
and there's not enough. No, they're just playing his role, right,
I keep being inarticulate about it. Did you guys read
Animal Man, the comic book that Grant Morrison revived during
the Vertigo era when sand Man was big and all
that stuff. Anyway, this is a superhero. But there's this

(42:16):
episode called the Coyote Gospel that talks about Wiley Coyote
as a sentient and he has to wake up every
day to get murdered horribly and it's a terrible pain,
and there's like this existential The comic is like this
where the character is aware of itself as a troupe,
as a device and a larger machine that is so

(42:38):
much older than him, and he's helpless to break out
of it. He is the project of it. He can
only enact what he's forced to enact, but he does
it with a certain kind of resignation and fatalism and
self awareness, all these things that we're all pulling out
of the driver as a vibe from it, and I
think that's being carried through with these guys like Brewster
Earn and Isabelle, Johnny and whatever. They are indeed characters

(43:02):
that feel as though they're trapped in this and that
everything else is just like there's money in the back
or there isn't.

Speaker 3 (43:08):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (43:09):
Tomorrow, I'm gonna wake up. I'm wanna be a cop
in a movie, and you're gonna be a bad guy
in a movie or a hero an anti hero, and
you are gonna be the damsel that knows too much
the film Fatale, and we're gonna do this again. And
then after that we're gonna wake up and I wanna
be the cop again. And there's a sort of inevitability
of what they're doing. And if we read into a
little bit of Hill's sort of interviews around that time,

(43:31):
talking about his exhaustion with rewriting, adaptation, writing for other
people like Pecking Pod, and he just wanted us to
do something different. These guys are brilliant. I grew up
on this stuff. All this stuff is brilliant. It's all familiar.
What if I made a movie that everybody knew what
roles they were to be playing. He's the gun slinger,

(43:51):
and there's the kid that comes in the end who
thinks he's a better gun slinger than he is and
has to be taught like a day of the Gunfighter,
Day of the Outlaw? Was that the name of that.
So there's a sort of archetypal quality to this. And
then indeed Edgar Wright comes in with Baby Driver and
does a lot of similar feeling tropes, and to me,
it's just yeah, do this again, Nicholas ref drive, do

(44:13):
this again, over and over again, because in fact, the
point of The Driver is that we are trapped in
these cycles of storytelling. The mcguffin of the movie is
the mcguffin to itself. There's nothing in the bag. It's empty.
It's just completely empty. There are other bags in movies.
Extreme Prejudice has a suitcase full of money, Hicking Bogs
has a suitcase full of money. There are all these

(44:33):
things that wouldcur over and over again. Even in his
own work. The Driver is when he's commenting on I.

Speaker 1 (44:38):
Want to say, there's a suitcase of money in the
getaway as well. That's right, And it might even be
at a It's been a while since I've seen it,
but yeah, it feels like it might even be at
either a bus or train station. And I kind of
love this whole idea of so much of this taking place,
the finale taking place around that bus station. And again,
like the exchange man they call him with the money exchange,

(45:02):
the guy who actually gets away with the money but
then doesn't. The guy who's just there saying, oh, yeah,
he just picked up the money. He's doing the exchange.
The key's gone. This guy's a punk just reading out
all of this stuff about this guy. There's no again,
Oh my god, he's gonna get away. No, they're on
him like flies on shit the entire time.

Speaker 2 (45:23):
That wonderful image you have that one brother's cartoon work.
They're just punching in and they're doing this every day,
and every day it's like Groundhog's Day. Right, every day's
the same thing, every day's the same variation a different thing.
Hill is really famous for saying, there's only two stories
in the Western Cannon. There's the Crucifixion and there's the Odyssey,
and everything else is just a ballishment, right, And so

(45:44):
if this is what you believe and he's a really
well read guy. He knows of which he speaks when
it comes to some of these things. This is I
think his real moment of that existential risk. We're saying,
I'm gonna make a movie that is actually a commentary
on all action movies and a commentary on all of
these Western trips we're telling in a commentary in Western
masculinity in a lot of real ways. There's a really

(46:05):
uncomfortable scene and I don't know that we're allowed to
really use this word flippantly anymore, but it's sexual assault
essentially of the connection in which a gun is forced
in her mouth. It was really uncomfortable in ugly sequence.
Even that's recreated in Hill's filmography and Alien, when As

(46:25):
tries to kill Ripley he rolls up a pornographic magazine
and tries to put it into her mouth. For me,
that was always interesting, weird when I was a kid
an Alien, because I thought, how is he really planning
on killing her? Is it choking or is it whatever?
But really later you realize it's a metaphor for sexual violence,
engendered violence, and how often does that occur in Hills films?

(46:47):
Fairly frequently, especially towards characters that are as powerful as
replay or as powerful as the connection is. Really like
Mercy and the Warriors or Ellen in Streets of Fire.
These are really powerful women characters that are the only
way that men are able to confront their castration before
them is in a gendered way. Even that I think

(47:10):
is he'll reckoning with certain tropes that he himself will
continue to enact in his movies as he was forward
in his career. But yeah, here with the second film,
he's already taking this unbelievably huge ballsy swing. It's almost
like it's the kind of thing that Francis Ford might
do after he tells those vineyards and says, I'll give

(47:31):
a crap people like this or not. I think the
Driver willfully denies pleasure in a lot of ways. It
pushes away the usual easy catharsis, and it says, really,
examine what it is that you've come here for. What
is it that you're looking for? What is the resolution
that they get away, they get married, they buy a

(47:52):
bungalow in the Bohma, What is it that you're looking
for here? Because I deny that you remember he was
brought into the Getaway to rewrite bogdhana script for that,
and Bogdonagean's script for that was really faithful to the
book too, Harrison and the book ends in a fantasy
hell town where robbers pay to stay until they can't

(48:14):
and then they're cannibalized by the rest of the residents there,
and that's the ending of the Getaway, and they brought
in hell to give them something more conventional. So I
think the driver really is working against that, and in
a subtle way, he does that for the rest of
his career. I have all this capital that I just
won from making this forty eight hours movie. What am
I going to do now streets his career is the

(48:38):
giant middle finger to expect and what people want from him?

Speaker 1 (48:43):
God, Now I tracked down that Bogdanovitch script because I
that's what we talked a lot about when we did
the Getaway episode, was talking about that ending from Thompson
and just how aft up that was, and how that
so many of Jim Thompson's books just take that wild
turn towards the end, like Savage Night or The Killer

(49:04):
Inside Me. But yeah, so many of his books just
take this weird turn towards the end, and when I
read the original of The Getaway, I was just like,
what the hell just happened? What dimension did we just enter?
At the end of this book, it's so good.

Speaker 5 (49:17):
You were talking about denying expectations. But Bruce Dern has
that scene early on where he says, what do you
do first thing in the morning? You read the sports
section because it's easy, It's like good, it's like win
or lose, there's losers and winners, and it's He's basically saying,
here's the most simple, basic outcome, that's clear and precise,

(49:41):
and that's not what you're going to get.

Speaker 2 (49:44):
Hills, Well, what did to do? Another Thompson novel for
a long time too? Pop twelve eighty in a population
twelve eighty, which is also really weird.

Speaker 1 (49:53):
So anyway, didn't they do that? As is that coup
de tourchon or whatever? That's cat? I start to speak
very quietly when I try to pronounce French work.

Speaker 2 (50:03):
Yeah, the richand Tavinir film. Yeah, Jergo's Lanthemos currently owns
the rights to it, so we'll see if he brutalizes
him the stone in that one.

Speaker 1 (50:13):
Yeah, I know I've really got turned on to thompsone
from Keith Gordon, the filmmaker or slash actor, because he
wanted to do Savage Night Forever Ago and it's God.
I would love to see what you end up doing
with that, or if you could, because that one is
really wild too.

Speaker 2 (50:28):
Keith Gordon is one of my favorite directors that people
don't talk about enough. As a director, Yeah, would be amazing.
I'd just love to send another one of his movies. Honestly,
he's amazing and I love him as an actor too.

Speaker 1 (50:39):
We're going to take a break and we'll be back
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(51:02):
in on it now at scarecrow dot com and rediscover
the wonders of physical media. All right, we are back
and we were talking about The Driver and Walter, I
wanted to ask you a little bit about your book.
How did you come to write about Walter Hill for.

Speaker 2 (51:14):
While I was writing a couple of movie theaters and
I did a screening on thirty five millimeter of The
Warriors and Streets of Fires double feature. I loved him
as a kid, and I thought, we're going to get
some the usual suspect showing up to these weird screenings
or whatever I like to do them. Whatever won't make
any money. They both sold out within a few minutes
of us putting on the scale, and I snuck in

(51:36):
the back just to see what the vibe was like.
And people were going nuts. During the Warriors, they were
yelling and laughing and all the right places. And Streets
of Fire same thing. I had flown Larry gross Out,
the screenwriter, to talk after Streets of Fire, and we
got up in front of the stage as the credits
started going, and we turned the music down a little bit,

(51:57):
and people cried out in horror that we turned the
music down.

Speaker 3 (52:01):
It's the fix.

Speaker 2 (52:02):
Closer and closer. I think it is the closing sign.
And so we were like, oh, okay, we just let
the credits play at full volume so people can't get
the rest of their energy out, and that kind of
created kind of a spark in my head of curiosity,
what is it about these movies? What is it exactly?
And I started doing research and there weren't any books

(52:22):
at that time in English about Walter Hill. I think
Walter Hill was dismissed in a way as a maker
of ro movies like Red Heat and Last Man Standing.
He's working with Stallone, He's working with Schwartz and there
He's just one of those guys. There's more to it,
obviously in my head anyway, and I started just going

(52:43):
down that rabbit hole. Okay, what did he do?

Speaker 3 (52:46):
Right? Who is he? Really?

Speaker 2 (52:47):
Can we pull something out of watching his filmography? So
I went through I think he had twenty three twenty
four movies at the time, and I watched them all,
and I watched the tales from the Crips, and I
watched some of his TV shows that I could find,
Dog and Cat and stuff like that, and I was like, Okay,
there's actually a lot here, and I'm not sure that
I'm the right person for it, but there's no one

(53:08):
else doing it, so I'm going to do it. And
seven years later I finished. And I'd gone out several
times during that time to meet with him and chat
with him. And he was very open and very willing
to help with the caveat that it wouldn't be a
biography of him, and it wouldn't be about the behind
the scenes and the dirty stories, which is not interesting

(53:31):
to me at all, if you know me. So I
was lucky that worked out perfectly. And the first time
I met him, he said I've been warned about you,
and I was like, Okay, here we go. What movies
of mine don't you like? Was this question? And I
was like, I don't like Brewster's Millions. I never really
understood that in your photography, and I don't know that
I like Crossroads. I hope that you'll give Crossroads another

(53:54):
and I'm like, deal, I want to write your book
and we'll give all of them a lot of looks
after writing the book. Really understand Crossroads, I think in
a different way. He made that movie after his father
had just died, and his father was a real musical
kind of person, and it introduced him to the Southern.

Speaker 3 (54:11):
Blues and all of that.

Speaker 2 (54:12):
Crossroads was really made for him and about an older
mentor and a young man. All that stuff. I get
it now. And Brewster's Millions is actually an interesting populous
piece in which a person that doesn't even want to
be the mayor the governor is elected on a platform
of burn everything down. So ultimately the longest chapter in

(54:32):
my book is ultimately about Brewster's millions because of this
suppression in some ways without being still not my favorite,
but anyway, Yeah, I just I knew there was something there,
and I wondered, because you can program all sorts of stuff.
You can program class of nineteen eighty four. You know
nothing about Marc Lester, but you can program a lot
of stuff from that era that's not going to get
the same kind of reverence and the same kind of

(54:54):
full roaded approval and love today, but by a large audience.
It's a relatively large, cold audience. And so I was like,
what is it about this guy that we've overlooked and
that we haven't really reckoned with? And then some friends
of mine knew that I was doing the book when
forty eight Hours was coming out on four K, I think,
and they asked if I wanted to do a special

(55:16):
feature for it, And first they can you send us
the chapters of the chapter, And then he asked me
to do that. We finished a thing for forty eight hours,
a little video essay, and then my partners in that said,
this is too good for Paramount. Let's see if David
Fincher wants it his Fincher was doing something for Netflix

(55:36):
at the time. He wanted to do a little documentary
series about film critics that he liked in films.

Speaker 3 (55:41):
That he wanted.

Speaker 2 (55:41):
Fincher got a hold of that, and he took a
little bit of convincing, not too much, because he had
not a great experience making Alien three with Hill and Kyler,
and I think what might have sold it ultimately, not
only that was done already pretty much. But I said
to him, I think the assembly cut of three is
actually the best Alien film and told him that, trying

(56:04):
to convince him of my seriousness and maybe backfire. He
was silence for a minute, and he goes, come on, Walter. Yeah,
he was really like angry almost at the suggestion. But
I kept talking to him about what was really great
and what really works about Alien three, the best version
of Ripley, the most interesting version of this world, the
blue collar world. And I think at the end of

(56:26):
our conversation, hopefully what sort of moved the ball in
our favor was that finally after all that, he was like, Okay,
let's do it. And so the show that we did
for him was on forty eight hours and the sort
of endairy nature of its characterizations and racial dynamics. Anyway,
I just started writing the book because I think I
felt like there was an opportunity to tell the story

(56:48):
of somebody who deserved to get his flowers before he
was gone. I think too often we have these great retrospectives, like, yeah,
I had twenty years and it wouldn't have been great.
Someone said something, well, he could hear it, and that
was really what drove me to the finish line. At
the end of it, it was like, I just want
to quit. I'm so tired, and we've got so much

(57:10):
material and I just overwhelmed. But it really drove me
to think I really want him, whether he agrees with
everything saying or not, to know how appreciated he is
in his lifetime.

Speaker 1 (57:22):
I'm glad that there are movies that take so liberally
from some of the things that he's done. You mentioned
Baby Driver earlier, and I bet I think you mentioned
refin I would throw probably Death Proof a little bit
in there. Some of the color palette stuff that Tarantino's
doing and that I'm not a big fan of that. Actually,

(57:43):
I'm not a big fan of Drive, Baby Driver, or
death Proof, But I just rewatched Drive before we sat
down to record this, and it did hit me a
little bit better than before. But I don't know if
I've ever seen the theatrical version of Drive, because the
only version I've ever seen has Angelo by the name

(58:05):
in the credits, So I'm wondering if that's all temp music,
because I don't think he ever wrote a score for it,
and I don't think it's the who is it Cliff Martinez.
I don't think it's the Cliff Martinez score that's going
along with it. But it's great music that goes throughout
the entire thing, and it is an interesting film. I
did like it more the second time, and I do

(58:27):
think what a cipher Ryan Gosling is in that, and
I can really see him being very related to as
far as this, Like I said, pretty Boy, very minimal dialogue,
you don't always know exactly what's going on through his head,
and some of the violence in that movie is just
absolutely wonderful. The thing with the hammer and the scene

(58:52):
and the elevator and that opening chase, which for me
just pays so much homage to the opening chase in
The Drive, and how it ends at that sports game
and everyone coming out and him putting on the baseball
cap and with that cool fucking jacket that he's got.
I can see why people like that a little bit more.

(59:13):
But sometimes Refin I love the bits that of Billy
Friedkin just tearing him a new asshole. I thought that
was great. I feel like Refin is way up his
own ass A lot of times.

Speaker 5 (59:29):
I want to throw out. One film that draws on
Walter Hill, City of Violence, the Korean film. There is
a great fight sequence where the two Korean guys have
to face off all these local gangs that are totally
playing off of the Warriors. It's one of the best
fight sequences. I love that film so much.

Speaker 1 (59:52):
I need to see that one.

Speaker 5 (59:53):
Oh, it's such a good film.

Speaker 2 (59:56):
I think you really touched on something interesting about Walter Hill, though,
is that people in the the industry seem to really
know him to movies and stuff. People who are making
movies in general really revere some of the things that
he does in him and you see these echoes popping up.
He even did the pilot for dead Wood. He did
this really interesting mini series called Broken Trail, in which

(01:00:18):
he allowed his Chinese actresses to write their own dialogue.
And it's really about an undertold story all over the West.
And so there's so much that when you say about
Walter Hill, people are kind of surprised, right you say
he influenced this. He influenced this, and he was really
into Asian cinema and he's really into the honesty. He
would have been my choice to direct The Odyssey. There's

(01:00:40):
really this sort of foundational generation I think of filmmakers
here in internationally, and he's huge in France and to
your point, and so there's a lot going on here.
I think podcasts like yours and he's really smart comments
by both of you and it's a really hard there's
nothing to do with me, But I feel justified now
spending all this time digging into the and is feeling like, boy,

(01:01:02):
this guy just deserves a different kind of conversation.

Speaker 5 (01:01:04):
Part of it, too, is that his personality is not
the type to demand attention, like he seems like he
doesn't need to be in the spotlight. He's very I
don't know, it's humble, he doesn't strike you as this
person who's like this narcissist who demands to have attention.
He's doing his work. He's a lot like these directors

(01:01:26):
for the studios, where they were doing this job and
they were doing the best they could and elevating it
as high as they could. But on a certain level,
it was like, no, it's like I'm not I don't
need that kind of extra attention, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:01:40):
And I was always a little bit at the beginning.
I was a little bit suspicious of that because a
lot of people say that and they don't mean it.

Speaker 3 (01:01:49):
Means.

Speaker 2 (01:01:50):
He really genuinely is extraordinarily humble and kind. We've talked
to people in a circle and to a one on
welter great guy that there isn't ever I wouldn't tell
you probably anyway, but I've never really come upon to
anybody who has anything to say about him other than
he's genuine. They may now have gotten along with him,

(01:02:11):
but they never felt like he lied to them. He's
just a very genuine person. And when he says he's
allergic to attention, he is. He Ultimately watched that thing
that I did with Fincher, and only because his family
tricked him into it. He sat me down, they didn't
tell me what was going He called me after and
they did it. They sat me down and they didn't

(01:02:32):
tell me what I was about to see, and they
made me watch the damn thing that you did. And
I just want to tell you thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:02:39):
And that was it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:40):
But he wouldn't get into it. He wouldn't talk more
about it. He doesn't like to talk about his stuff.
He said that people usually do that when the crew
is over. And I like to think I got two
or three more left in me. And he's genuine. He's
still writing like crazy. He's got four or five screenplays
that he's written just in the last couple of years.
He just pitched a new idea for an alien film
to a Segourity of Uber and she's on board. And

(01:03:02):
so there's a lot of life in him and he
wants to do more, and I think that's hope he
gets too. That's always interesting to see what he's got.

Speaker 5 (01:03:10):
What's interesting at this point in his career because one
of the things about the French New wave directors, they
were all making films late in their lives and making
films that were like still breaking boundaries and pushing the envelope.
So I'm rooting for him to make a couple more
films at least.

Speaker 2 (01:03:29):
You know, the thing about Hill is you don't have
to like his movies, but there's always something to talk about,
and I'm not sure that's true for everybody, and I
always appreciate that by him.

Speaker 1 (01:03:39):
I don't know if you would consider this a minor
Hill film, but for me, one of his best that
nobody talks about his Trespass. I fucking love that movie.

Speaker 2 (01:03:49):
It's incredible and largely nineteen ninety two. He's like dealing
with new forms of media. He's using surveillance videos, he's
using camcore footage, he's using sixteen mil, he's using thirty five.
He's really getting deeply into how just a good Gudar dish,

(01:04:09):
But he's really getting into these different new at the
time ninety two new media is in new ways to
tell these stories. Yeah, absolutely, Trespass is phenomenal. And of
my favorite movies of his for the longest time was Undisputed,
the boxing film that he did with Wesley's nine. He
had Peter Falk again. He's dealing with these new stats
on each character that comes up how long they're going

(01:04:30):
to be imprisoned for. It's like playing with new modes
of meat. He's never really getting Oh, I guess in
the art of creation. And I love Supernova as well,
which is.

Speaker 1 (01:04:43):
Super Nova is so interesting and I would be so interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:04:47):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:04:48):
What a wild story of the making of that too.

Speaker 2 (01:04:52):
And consider this is a movie that was touched by
Francis Coppola. He did an edit on it. I was
directed by Hill and then directed by Jack Shoulder, who
did one of my favorite eighties movies. They hidden. So
there's all is weirdly nage in it, but there's also
there's this weird moment where Angela Bassett somebody is digitally
turned into an African American woman.

Speaker 1 (01:05:12):
And because there's a sex scene Robin Tunny.

Speaker 2 (01:05:14):
Thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:05:15):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:05:16):
So there's a sex scene between Robin computer Facchinelle that
they made into one between James Spader and Angela Bassett,
so they had to digitally darken Robin Tunny's crazy. It's
insane but also fascinating. The final product is really fascinating.
There's an AI in it that is really incredible. It's
an incredible AI. It falls in love with the creator,

(01:05:37):
but it's bound by its programming not to help it's
creator when his creator is being murdered. Maybe I've drunk
too deep from the spring, but I'm able to find
often right on the surface, these really fascinating tropes that
bind all the movies together, and they almost always have
to do with how relationships work between different kinds of people.
That's what these movies are all about, even stuff that's

(01:06:00):
really hate it, like the Assignment I think was really
hated and misunderstood. If you just give it a look,
you understand where's coming from. But no, another great one
is Johnny Hansome. You guys haven't seen Johnny Highly.

Speaker 1 (01:06:14):
I think I watched that around the time that I
was on another person's show talking about Angel Heart, and
I was like, oh, let's watch Johnny Hansom.

Speaker 2 (01:06:22):
As a double feature, of course would occur. It's just
this incredible group just talking about what is the nature
of personality? Is it announced someone looks or is that
are you just born with it? And these are just
primary issues for Hill all the way back to the
beginning of it.

Speaker 3 (01:06:39):
Hicky Box, all.

Speaker 1 (01:06:40):
Right, we're gonna take another break and play a preview
for next week's show. Right after these brief messages.

Speaker 3 (01:06:46):
Javeline Turner is trying a detective v I. R. Sholski.
She's turning up the heat, turning on the charm, get
to the point, Hello when you talk, turning the town up?
Signed down, happy Detective, I was a lousy gus wife.

Speaker 4 (01:07:02):
You let a broad do this deal?

Speaker 3 (01:07:03):
Kathleen Turner's v I Warshowski? What's that? By Sten for
Virtuists and the Inquisitive readinar.

Speaker 1 (01:07:14):
That's right. We'll be back next week with a look
at a Weird One VII Warshawski. Until then, I want
to thank my co hosts, Beth and Walter. So Walter,
what is keeping you busy these days?

Speaker 2 (01:07:25):
I'm teaching film history at the University of Colorado, Denver
a lot. I'm working on a few other physical media projects,
things like that. I don't know, trying to keep my
head above water as the tides a rising.

Speaker 1 (01:07:36):
And Beth, how about yourself.

Speaker 5 (01:07:38):
I'm continuing to work with Film Geek San Diego, just
trying to bring interesting programming here to San Diego. And
we're in the midst of picking what our theme will
be for next year's year long film series. So that's exciting.

Speaker 1 (01:07:51):
Thank you. Again folks for being on the show, and
thanks to everybody for listening. Want to support physical media
and get great movies by mail, head over to scarecrow
dot com. Try Scarecrow Video is incredible rent by mail service,
the largest publicly accessible collection in the world. You'll find
films there entirely unavailable elsewhere. Get what you want, when
you want it, without the scrolling, and of course they

(01:08:13):
have the driver available. 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 Weirdingwaymedia dot com. Thanks especially to our Patreon community.
If you want to join the community, visit patreon dot com.
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Speaker 2 (01:09:21):
In