November 27, 2025 • 37 mins
Daniel Kremer returns to The Projection Booth with an irresistible double feature of cinephile obsession. Mike dives into Cruel, Usual, Necessary: The Passion of Silvio Narizzano (2024), Kremer’s exhaustive and heartfelt documentary about the fiercely talented, too-often disregarded director behind Georgy Girl, Loot, and Why Shoot the Teacher? Kremer lays out the decades-long fascination that fueled his mission to rescue Narizzano’s reputation from footnotes and dismissals.
The conversation then shifts to Kremer’s new book, Adventures in Auteurism: A Crusade for the Critically Neglected, a bold, deeply researched celebration of filmmakers who never got their due. He and Mike dig into the joys of critical excavation, the thrills of uncovering overlooked filmographies, and the fight to keep forgotten artists visible. If you love cinematic passion projects, archival detective work, and spirited defenses of the undervalued, this one’s a feast.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-projection-booth-podcast--5513239/support.
Become a supporter of The Projection Booth at http://www.patreon.com/projectionbooth
The conversation then shifts to Kremer’s new book, Adventures in Auteurism: A Crusade for the Critically Neglected, a bold, deeply researched celebration of filmmakers who never got their due. He and Mike dig into the joys of critical excavation, the thrills of uncovering overlooked filmographies, and the fight to keep forgotten artists visible. If you love cinematic passion projects, archival detective work, and spirited defenses of the undervalued, this one’s a feast.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-projection-booth-podcast--5513239/support.
Become a supporter of The Projection Booth at http://www.patreon.com/projectionbooth
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Oh he is, folks, it's showtime.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
People say good money to see this movie. When they
go out to a theater, they want clod Sodas pop
popcorn in no monsters.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
In the Projection Booth, everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Got it off?
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Hey, folks, we can.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Do a very special episode of The Projection Booth. I'm
you ost Mike White. On this episode, I am talking
with Daniel Kremer. He has been a co host many
times on the show before I sat down to talk
with him all about his documentary Cruel Unusual Necessary The
Passion of Silvio and Narrazano. It is a documentary that
is part of a release of Blue from nineteen sixty
(01:03):
eight and Fade In from nineteen seventy three, all from
Imprint Films that is available over at diabolicdvd dot com.
And while I was talking with Daniel, I found out
that he is also writing a new book which just
came out. It is called Adventures in Auturism, A Crusade
for the Critically Neglected. If you know anything about me,
(01:25):
you know that I love critically neglected films. This book
sounds fantastic. I can't wait to dive into it. I
had a great time talking with Daniel. I hope you
have a great time listening to it, and I would
highly recommend that you pick up Adventures in Auturism. I
think it'll make a great well, I can't say stocking
stuff because this sucker's five hundred pages. It's going to
be a great book for you to read and a wonderful,
(01:48):
wonderful gift for the holidays. Thanks so much for listening,
and I hope you enjoyed the interview.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Have you been I've been good. I'd been busy. I'm
finishing this book at which I mentioned I was index
which is tedious, and I'm very tired and I'm very sore.
I've been in this chair through the last two days
because it's just anyway, it's almost done, so happy about that.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
What is the book about?
Speaker 1 (02:11):
My collected writings on Overlooked Filmmakers. So the script for
this movie that we're doing it on today is in
there as like a text essay. So he's in there
with twenty four other full case studies and then dozens
of other guys and girls. It's Paul Cronin's press who's
(02:33):
doing it. I'm not sure if you know that press.
It's a great new imprint. A lot of great people
are publishing through him nowadays. Jonathan Rosenbaum, Joe McBride, Major Bamulton,
and Nott Sigaloff just did a volume together. I think
people are basically flocking to Paul because they've had it
(02:54):
up to here with academic presses jerking them around the process.
Paul has been wonderful. It's been very easy and it's
been very quick. Actually, there's no board that has to
review or approve everything that you do. That's a wonderful thing.
(03:14):
I love that about it as well. But yeah, it'd
be out like the end of October. I think actually
since coming up, we just did copy editing, we just
did picture placement, type setting. It's consumed two months. I
basically used what I earned my part of our wedding funds,
(03:34):
what people gave us as gifts, and then just like
taking the last two months off from doing commentary tracks
and video essays for discs and then just putting it
into doing this book. So yeah, I haven't been as active,
but I'm looking to get back into it after this
is all over.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Tell me about this documentary you did about Silvio Nerizano,
and I'm so curious, how did you come across him
in the first place.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
Years ago, when I was first doing the book on
Sidney Fury, I always knew that Naredzano was a name
out there in the ether. I knew that, you know.
I think you hear me in the documentary itself, my
recording with Sidney Fury when he's talking about there was
a director at the CBC who had gone over to
(04:21):
England to Pioneer Granada Television. You'll know the name Sylvia Narzano.
And I guess I knew at the time because I was, Oh, yeah,
the guy who did Georgia Girl. Of Course, Sidney really
talked him up, and then I got to know Ted Katcheff,
and Ted also talked him up. He was like a
bit of a daddy figure in a sense to the
(04:43):
Canadians who were coming over to the UK to forge
ahead with their careers and helping them get set up,
helping them get their foothold. And I was like, oh,
he seems like a sweet guy. Of course I had
seen Georgia Girl, but it took probably his most controversial movie,
(05:04):
The Sky's Falling, which was released on VHS in the
eighties under the dubious title Bloodbath, which I had seen
in the VHS version, which you'll see the comparison in
the documentary. It is unwatchable. It is so dark you
cannot see what's going on. And I was like, I
can't imagine what this would look like in a good transfer,
(05:28):
but I don't know. It's so it's just like one
of the movies that you watch in a bad bootleg
and then it's like you move on, and then it's
like you don't think much about it. And then when
Vinegar Syndrome came along and then they did this new
beautiful film scan of it, I was like, Wow, what
a fucked up, demented movie this is. And it really
(05:51):
fascinating film, very personal, it feels, and it also feels
very gay. Kenn Anderson says there's far more male flesh
on display than female, and just the way that it
carries itself off feels very gay or very queer. And
I was like, yeah, that's true. But then, of course
I had seen Blue along the Line. I still have
(06:13):
my VHS of Glue, which is the pan and scan
this one. It's a scope movie, so you're missing a
lot in the VHS, but I got the Paramount DVD.
It's like, oh, this is a really also a pretty
interesting movie, just in terms of the pictorial quality, the
visual the visuals, and I want to dig a little
(06:34):
deeper into him because he seems like an interesting type
of guy, maybe just like a subject for further study,
never dreaming at the time that I'd be doing this
whole film about him. And then it was around that
time that I moved to LA that I caught up
with my aforementioned friend, David del Valle, who does a
number of commentaries and whatnot, and I was over his
(06:55):
place and we were just hanging out. It's like, oh,
did you see that crazy DNA popper Carol Baker movie?
And I was like yes, and we talked about it,
and he was also very fascinated by it, and I
was like, yeah, isn't he interesting? And I've been less
in touch with Sid Fury the last couple of years
because of the health issues on his part, but every
(07:16):
once in a while I still talk to him and
he can do maybe just a few minutes at a time.
But I was like one of those calls, I was like,
tell me more about Sylvia and Arazzano and I came
out in the course of that conversation. It's like, oh, no,
he was gay. He had a partner before I knew
that gay men could have partners, and he was married
(07:37):
to a woman for a time, and then that didn't
hand out because he was very even though I knew
then that he was not interested in woman. That's what
you did. It was kind of like a beard. I
began to dig more than like I saw Redneck. I
was like, jeez, this is another crazy one written by
the guy I learned was his partner, win Wells, his
life partner. So win Wells writes these two demented movies
(08:02):
with very strong gay slash queer undertones, and not even undertones.
It's just like the subtext became text after a while.
And then by the time I finally got to Young Shoulders,
which Blew Me Away, which is his last movie, or
one of the unless he cunt the Body in the Library,
(08:24):
Young Shoulders being his last major work, I gotta do
something about this guy. I don't know what that's going
to look like. I can't imagine ever being able to
sell a book on there Atsano. No one would pay
me for it. That's for sure, and then there'd be
a question about it, who would print it? I feel
like I have to do something about Sylvia. And it
(08:45):
was around that time that Josh Hibberd at Imprint Films,
who likes to ask me every now and then, like
what I'd like to see come down the pike on
the label mostly from Paramount, and because they have a
nice sweet deal of Paramount, I was like, if you
could get Blue, and if you could get the film
that was shot on the back of Blue, which is
(09:08):
called fade in for those there's a movie shot on
the set of another movie, another fiction movie shot as
a behind the scenes movie on the set of this
western that Sylvia Arzano made called Blue, with Burt Reynolds
who's hired by the movie company as a driver and
as a gopher. He's a local cowhand in Utah and
(09:30):
he falls in love with the film editor on Blue,
played by Barbara Loden Wanda Barbara Loden, Elia Kazant's wife,
Barbara Loden. So I was like, if you can get
those two movies in a pack together, I could give
you something really good as an extra about the director
of Blue. So he began to poke around at paramount,
(09:55):
what do you have is blue available? Because sometimes the
elements aren't really in good shape or whatever. There's one
title in particular that is not in good shape and
it really rankles me. But Blue they had, it was
in good shape. Fade in they also had. It's like, okay,
we're green lit, but it's not going to be for
a while. So I went to work and what I
(10:16):
originally envisioned as a kind of extended video essay, I
was like, I was quoting other people that I had
right on my fingertips, like David el Val and like
Howard Berger and like Nathaniel Thompson. Was like, why don't
I just interview them on camera and do something a
little more formal and not just like a video essay
(10:38):
with me narrating, but do a documentary hybridized with a
kind of video essay that form and make this kind
of big hoosey wats it's about the kind of the
definitive text about Sivia and Rzana for the total lack
of one. So my husband went away for six months
(10:58):
of last year because he worked on the election. He's
a statistician and very interested in political methodology and all that.
So he was off in the field and I was
left all by my lonesome in Pasadena and not having
an easy time of it because you begin to miss
(11:18):
your spouse or your partner. But I was like, oh,
why don't I just sublimate all this or devote all
my energy into doing this thing. So that's what I
did while my husband was away. Movie. Before I knew it,
I had a two and a quarter hour cut and
it would seem to be playing well enough where I
(11:38):
was just like, Okay, this is probably going to be
the only thing ever done about this guy, so I'm
going to leave it at this length. And yeah, that's
how it happened, which.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Is really remarkable because so much these days when I
see extras, they seem to be almost purposefully broken into
small chunks, almost like we don't want to pay you
for making a documentary, You're just making a short extra.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
I'm in that market of making video essays for I
guess now nearly twenty companies, and it's the pay is
high and low, depending on who it is and what
the movie is. Oftentimes, if it's a movie that they
think is going to sell, you can normally get a
better rate but yeah, it's not a lucrative endeavor to
(12:29):
do a documentary about a filmmaker no one's ever heard of,
let's say the least. Josh is very nice about it
and very sweet about it, but you know, that's not
why you at the end of the day, that's not
exactly why you do these things. I feel like I
almost had to. It's like kind of like I needed
to understand this guy more because, let's say, also, as
(12:49):
much as it's about a filmography and a filmmaker and
an artist, it's a chronicle of a gay man in
this time in the business and how he covertly, sometimes
overtly infused his work with things that he was fired
off of a movie for making it too gay, fired
off of the man who had power over women because
(13:11):
they didn't the studio didn't like that he was making
it like extremely capital h homosexual and funny. When I
was at Ted Kotcheff's memorial over the summer, I got
to meet the editor, Tom Noble, who is ninety years old,
nearly in Knockwood. Great shape for a guylight age. It
(13:32):
was pretty unbelievable. We met at that it was gathering
at the katchaf house afterwards with food and everything. And
I honed in on him like a guided missile because
Tom Noble edited Redneck, and I wanted to hear everything
about that crazy movie. And he goes, if you think
the movie was crazy, way do you hear about the
(13:53):
behind the scenes. It's like, God, damn it, I wish
I had interviewed you on the camera. But he was
the editor on the man who had power over women
as well, and so he was able to confirm to
me that, oh, yes, the AVCO did. There was a
big edict passed down, was like, get rid of this guy.
No matter what we tell him, no matter how much
we warn or admonish him, he cannot lay out all
(14:16):
the gay stuff. He was fired for that reason. It's
like I felt like I had to get to the
bottom of a guy who felt he could be that
bold with that type of thing in that era and
living with his partner or partner who was very if
you might want to say, flamboyant. Tom Noble told me
that win Wells, who was Sylvia's partner, wanted to open
(14:37):
gay bar called Sissy's, and this was a long time
ambition of his. And I was like, There's really a
lot of facts that are now that didn't make it
into the film because I didn't know Tom at that
time and there was no means to get in touch
with him then. But of course him showing up at
this memorial was like, oh, I need to talk to you.
(14:58):
But it made its way into the book version, which
is a collection of my writings on the Overlook directors.
A lot of these whole stories and factoris in the
Narratano chapter make it into this book. But yeah, Tom
had a lot of crazy stories and it was very
fond of Silvio. He really enjoyed the documentary because I
(15:20):
shared it with him later on, And yeah, I felt
like it was a personal project that I had to
explore what this guy was all about, how he felt
so compelled to make the movies he made, really out
bold and proud about it.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Yeah, I was so shocked to see some of those
scenes from Blue and then Loot looked like an absolute
just crazy hoot. I am so excited to now. I
think your documentary is doing exactly what you would hope
it is, which is now I want to see all
of these movies.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
No, that's the best that you could hope for and
as I say, you might not like everything that you see,
but it's it is one voice. It's unified as one
man saying there's something very consistent through the course with
a particular set of vocal cords. But no, he went
(16:13):
from the movie was fired from too Gay on right
to Loot and he put all of that spunk, if
you want to call it that, and to Loot. And then,
as I say, Loot is like to stop at the
amusement park before on the road to elector of shock therapy.
Because Redneck and the following are definitely cold reckonings, I
(16:34):
guess you might say.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
Again, even with some of the unpleasantness of Redneck, just
to see that performance by Telly Savalis just looks amazing.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
Yeah, my husband's who saw the movie. That came out
of his absence when he came back finally from the
election season and everything else. He watched it. I wound
up dedicating the movie to my husband, which is if
he's watched till the very end, you'll see, but he
was watching it. This movie that is of course he
(17:06):
dedicated to him. And there's the scene that I showed
from Redneck of Pelly Savadalis cold bloodily killing a child
and saying you.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Made me do it?
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Why did he run away? And like my husband's did
he just kill a child? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Sorry, but it's like Maggot from the Dirty Dozen having
his own movie.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
Yes exactly. It is like that, and that's a good
way of putting it.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Yeah, that's the thing that I've always admired about you,
is just the way that you champion some of these
underseen films, some of the stuff that we've talked about
on the show. It's so nice to give light to this.
I'm super excited about this book project as well.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
It's my bag. I guess he might say, that's what
I do. I'm not as interested at all in writing
the thousandth book on Kubrick or john Ford or Hitchcock,
one of these guys. I really don't know what new
there is to say about a guy like that, saying
that there isn't it's just not my bag. But I'm
really interested in digging up buried treasure and making kind
(18:06):
of correlations and charting the kind of constellation of a
career and looking at people that most everyone is ignored
and being like, there's more here that you should look
closer at it, look closer at it, and you'll see.
Like I was telling, I think it was Ryan Beryl,
I was not with Ryan Beryl, and I was like,
the word I hate the most is journeyman. Fuck journeyman.
(18:28):
I don't want to hear about Journeyman. It's like every
every scene, in every shot in a movie, there are
choices being made. Some shout louder than others. Marizan shouted
very loud, but there are things to decode at every juncture,
and Journeyman, to me, is just too much of a burden.
You should be looking closer at these things. I should
(18:50):
be looking at what ties this all together, if anything.
And then sometimes the twenties, I think twenty six full
case studies, you got guys like Clive Downer in there
that Andrew Sarah's champion but dropped off the map. You
have Joe mclin silver, who I was on I've been
on your show before, and I got to know Joan
and was doing a book on her for a time.
(19:12):
And Joan is in there. And Sidney Fury, who's Patient
zero as I call him. He's the kind of the
locus of my interest in overlooked O Tears, head Catchers,
Sylvia Harvey Hart is another one, Harvey Hart. No one
gave a damn about Harvey Hart, as Gibbs I should say,
And maybe the hope the book will open up some eyes.
(19:35):
But if you look at Fortunate of Men's Eyes and
the Picks, which I think is one of the great
horror oddities of its day, or Mahoney's Last Stand, or
bus Riley, there's a pretty distinctive voice here. Yvonne Passer
is in there, and I hope that that public is
(19:56):
very happy and very excited about it. He thinks it's
like one of the books of the year because it's
it's wow. These are like really very the essays really
make clear connections that aren't like too far fetched. Your
you're responsible, but you're also it's very observant. Now, I
hope people connect with them. And it's like dozens of
(20:18):
others in an appendix with short kind of capsule hey studies. Yeah,
there are a lot of people in that. Charles B.
Pearce is one. Philip Leacock is another, great pet cause
of Mind. Yeah, there's a lot of guys in there,
Muriel Box, Wendy Coy, the great you know, they were
working female feature directors in the UK in the nineteen fifties,
(20:42):
and they're both extraordinary. They're clearly extremely talented visually and otherwise,
and they've just been by and large ignored, and there
are things that connect all of them. And I hope
I demonstrate how that is with here E years ago.
When I began in twenty twelve, I guess that was
I was like, I couldn't fathom how am I the
(21:03):
first guy to ever really study him, and how he'd
been this lacuna in the kind of oh tier studies
that I've read so much of, And I was like,
I guess more for me than more stake for me
to put down on I think with Narnzana it was
really like I think Sarus and a lot of these
people are maybe slightly put off by the kind of
(21:27):
blamingness of narbskay voice, so I think they just it
was easier just to dismiss it rather than dealing with
any of it. I think that's why he was passed
over mainly, and chatting with a big wig film a
story and film scholar film critic who I will not
name of the older set said some pretty alarming things
(21:50):
to me. When I shared the film with him, he
did watch it and then it was just like basically
vaguely homophobic remarks. I was just like, Yeah, it's no
wonder he's been ignored for so long when the likes
of you have been the only ones to have had
to go at him and deemed him too much himself
for your taste.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
It's twenty twenty five people. Let's let's get a grip here.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
As my husband says, they're in his field as well.
He's in academia, so sclerotic, super anuated film scholars who
see what has already been carved out, what's already been charted.
If you are at the least but heterodox, then you
know they might as well be the alien replacements from
(22:35):
invasion of the body statures pointing and screeching. As I
point out in the book, is that they're not one
of us. I want to chart my own path. There's
a lot of There are thousands of filmmakers out there
and millions of films to concentrate at these like koshered
items at the expense of all else distinct. There's too
(22:56):
much out there to ignore certain things that have not
been given the light.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
They're not in the pantheon. What are you talking about
unless it's Felini or Antonio ya.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
A lot of that. The opening of the book is
I do my own Andrew Seris list the categories as
he defined them in the American cinema, and I do
my own categories, my own personal pantheon, which I call
the personals. So fury is in there, of course, never really,
and then I go to the solids. Let me find
(23:28):
the what I think I put it best in the text,
quoted accurately, the generally unassailable filmmakers all are great, and
they don't need me to cheer lead for them. We
know they're great. I would never deny it, so hooray
for them. But this volume really isn't about them. I'm
not trying to be like, these guys are great and
(23:49):
your legends are bullshit. And I was like, no, this
is these are solid I'm granting you something. This book
isn't about that.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
They're not tearing down the old idols. You're just trying
to install some new ones in the temple.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
I tear down a couple, but that's just out. As
I say in the opening introduction, like this is completely subjective,
but as I quote him Lucas who as a quote
that I love reusing and repurposing whenever I get the opportunity.
It's it's like any list of a favorite movie or
filmmaker or anything could be like a mixtape that you
(24:26):
exchange with other people, as if to say, this is
who I am. You shouldn't be afraid. There's no guilty players.
This is me in this mixtape. This is who I am. Like,
there shouldn't be this kind of like Leonard Zelig. This
has been sanctioned, so I should include it. This has
not been sanctioned, so I should leave it off. Don't
be Leonard Zelig. Don't be the human chameleon. Be like,
(24:49):
make your own mixtape handed off with pride, and be like,
this is me. This is what I value, this is
what I like. And that's I talk about that in
the intro chapter. You might not like the fact that
I don't can with these whatever guys. I'm not going
to spoil who they are. You think up the book
to find out. But I was like, that's my reality.
This is all completely subjective. I talk about what feeds
(25:12):
into our subjectivity and what feeds into its experience, its culture.
I offer an example of this. Leaving a screening of
the Revenue. At one point we were my friend and
I were trying to glean why did we not connect
with that film at all? And then we had this
really interesting conversation that I talk about is it's like
it's where we both came from, comparing her with the
(25:33):
other movies that I say, the same content, a man
alone in the wild, fighting back the elements type of thing. Okay,
that other movie works, Why does that work? And this
one that we just saw does not? And then we
had a really great conversation about that. It's partly its cultural,
partly its experience. It's a lot of things. And like
(25:55):
Joe Dante, who wrote the forward, which I was very
grateful for, talks a little about this as well. It's
like where does all this come from? And Rosenbaum and
Jonathan Rosemeuld he should see films as guides for how
to live, and the films that you value should show
you some type of path about you know what. It
should demonstrate or give body to the values that you
(26:19):
hold here and you Richard Rody saying the film is
like a book. It's like every film is like a
book of philosophy, like what is the author or what
is the directory or the filmmaker saying I put it
in a Jewish mystical context, which is John Borman says
that filmmaking is translating money into light and the judism
(26:44):
I team of agent. It's translating goshas, which is the
material world, into Rooknius, which is the spiritual world. So
we're taking this cold substance of either silas assitaate or
ones and zeros on the drive and we're turning that
into something that is spiritual, something that connects us to
dreams and dream states and everything else. And so with
(27:07):
that in mind, I said, if filmmakers are clergy people,
what do their churches or temples look like? And then
it comes this exercise of John Ford. He's the most
ritually oriented Catholic priest you ever did meet, but his
true self comes out at the church socials where the
women leave early and the men sit around it in
(27:31):
their uniforms, drinking tear infused beer, memorializing their mothers. And
that became a kind of a fun exercise to open with.
But it's all very personal and the point of the
book is I value these people I've fucked them out
of this obscure form, and I've given them to you,
fed them back to you. Now, if you're interested based
(27:52):
on what I've written, seek them out and look for
these things. If not, move on and find what appeals
to you. Called adventures and o terorism, a crusade for
the critically neglected, That's what it is.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
When it came to the Arizanto films, you know, you
touch about the restoration of the Sky's falling, and you know,
coming out with this new version of Blue and Fade
in on which this documentary lives, which is freaking fantastic
having that as this kind of companion piece to those
two films. How difficult or easy was it to find
(28:25):
the rest of these films? Because those the clips from
that clips from some of the other films in your
documentary the gorgeous. But how easy or difficult is it
to find these films?
Speaker 1 (28:37):
I'm a gray market here, so I'm constantly sourcing these
things from sometimes sketchy places. I guess you say so,
d Die, my darling is out there. You can get
that pretty handily. Georgia Girl is of course out there.
Blue is now out there again, and Redneck and The
(28:57):
Sky Is Falling is out there, so you got a
big chunk the movies that are available. Then you have
the films that I call the Trilogy of Pedagogy, which
are Why Shoot the Teacher, which I'm hoping a certain
company is working on finding the elements of that. There's
been the conversation about that, so hopefully maybe they'll dig
that one up, which only had a VHS release in
(29:20):
the early to mid eighties from Embassy Home Video. You
had the Class of Miss McMichael once again VHS from
CBS Fox hasn't been out on video since then. And Choices,
which has been out on every fucking video label known demand.
I'm talking Bargain Bin label with Demi Moore's mug plastered
(29:42):
on the front of it, so that one's really been
that one's gotten around. It is neither one of Narzana's
better films, nor is the transfer on it very good,
So that's not a good barometer for whether or not
you will groove with Naratzano. But and then Young Shoulders,
which you can watch on YouTube, but which was a
(30:03):
play for Today, which I'm convinced should have gotten theatrical
oversees the much in the way that Mike Lee and
Alan Clark and kind of loached it. That one is
out there. You can watch that on YouTube pretty easily.
And then the Body in the Library I think is
part of a Miss Marple set, which actually that's a
(30:23):
very handsome Agatha Christie adaptation that na Daniel Thompson wanted
to make sure that he got some nice words in
for so I was happy that he was the one
guy to be like, no, we have to talk about
the Body in the Library. Absolutely crucial. I was like, oh, yeah, great, Yeah,
no one's talked about the Body Library. Let's look, let's
do it. But yeah, there are a few titles that
(30:45):
haven't really seen the light of day since the days,
and I'm hoping that maybe one day I can go
back and replace a lot of the faultier clips, mainly
Why Shoot the Teacher, which is an almost unsightly HS
transfer but it's workable for the purposes of a documentary
like this, but it's a bit of an eye sore.
(31:07):
So if that comes along in a nicer scan, which
I'm hoping the Canadian archives, which are fairly well kept,
that would be nice to go back and do some
flip replacements.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
So, as I said, the documentary's part of this larger
box when it comes to these other films. But is
it going to be released separately on its own?
Speaker 1 (31:27):
I own the rights to the documentary, so I own
the license. I never thought that. Maybe I'm just down
on the film festival scene perhaps, And I don't think
the prospect of showing a two and a quarter hour
movie at one of their events would really I don't
think they would prick up their errors on that. But
I'm going to continue to seek out. There is another
(31:49):
potential offer in the workings, so hopefully that bears some fruit.
But yeah, I'll make it available on the private torn
sites for people to act us. The Church of Near
Zano Gospel has to be spread somehow. Hopefully it'll get
more legs and get out there more. You know.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
Is there a place for people to keep up with
you and your work online?
Speaker 1 (32:11):
And unfortunately don't have much of a website anymore, been
on my list of things to do. But if you
google me or look me up on IMDb or on Facebook,
it's also a good way. I normally friend people if
we have enough in common. So yeah, those are the
best ways for right now.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
Well, thank you so much, sir. This was always great
talking with you.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
It's been a few years, so it's been nice to return.
I think the last time I was on was over
on the Sky Here's twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
Yeah, I know we need to get back together and
talk about some of these movies here especially, you know,
I want to go through your book and pick out
some titles and have a little film festival.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
It's a big volume, I know. I think we're going
to be around like five hundred and forty pages, so
it's a big volume. Yeah, but I would like that.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Well, I can't wait to read it. I've been thinking
that I would love to do either a maybe both
those weird PN Dennis Hopper movies, because he was in
what was that one, crush Proof I think it was called, Yeah,
a lot of like odd ones, and then Terrence Stamp
(33:20):
was in a bunch of weird stuff too, like that
one Human. That's like, let somebody needs to talk about
these things, So why not us.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Exiles of Stamp and Hopper some pretty odd results there's
Stamp also did the kind of proto totally clips movie
where he played Rambau to Jean claud Riali's Verlaine, and
that's a Season in Hell, which was an Italian film
that he made it in his European days or European exile.
(33:50):
So yeah, there are a lot of movies in that.
Flush Color is the one that's the lost Hopper movie
in Europe, I think in mainland Europe, but which I
know anyone has been able to track down. That's another
Popper out of the Henry Jaguline was a very close
friend of mine and passed on recently. And Henry hated
saying passed on. He went on the record multiple times
(34:12):
and I don't want to pass on when I die,
I want to die say that I died. I was like, okay,
Henry died recently. I remember him telling me a story
about Popper before I think it was before they went
to work on tracks. He went to lunch with Dennis
and Dennis was in a kind of a hopped up
state of some kind, and Henry commented or made some
(34:36):
remark to Dennis's date, who was also out of it,
and it was a pretty bit innocuous remark and Dennis,
what did you say? And then oh, I just said
blah blah blah, and Dennis plunged over the table and
tried to choke Henry in the restaurant. This is Henry.
It's on tapes with him somewhere. I taped them telling
(34:57):
this story. But I was like, were you ever afraid
of Dennis at any point?
Speaker 2 (35:02):
Is?
Speaker 1 (35:02):
Of course I was. It's like even when you were
making cracks. I was like, when he was working, he
was on better behavior, But no, he was crazy. He
was crazy for a time, with no doubt about it.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
Well, I'll let you get back to indexing. I know
there's nothing better to do.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
I know I only have a few left, Thank god.
Hey the georgy swinging down the streets, so fancy greed,
nobody you meet.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
Alone inside you? Hey the Georgie.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
Come, why do all the boys just passed you by?
Couldny you just don't try?
Speaker 2 (35:46):
Or is it the colley.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
You're always windows shopping but never stopping you by, So
just stop a little bit.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
Georgy girl, there's another georgy be inside.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
Bring out all.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
The love you hide and a lot of.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
Change that be to age a new georgy girl. Georgy
(36:43):
girl dreaming of of someone you could be. Life is
a reality. You can always run away.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
Don't be so scared of changing, envy, arranging yourself.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
It's time for jumping down from the shell a little bit.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
Pay there, Georgy go, there's another Georgy deep inside.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
Bring have all the love.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
You have a lot of change, and let's see an
George George, George
Speaker 1 (37:26):
George,
Oh he is, folks, it's showtime.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
People say good money to see this movie. When they
go out to a theater, they want clod Sodas pop
popcorn in no monsters.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
In the Projection Booth, everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Got it off?
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Hey, folks, we can.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Do a very special episode of The Projection Booth. I'm
you ost Mike White. On this episode, I am talking
with Daniel Kremer. He has been a co host many
times on the show before I sat down to talk
with him all about his documentary Cruel Unusual Necessary The
Passion of Silvio and Narrazano. It is a documentary that
is part of a release of Blue from nineteen sixty
(01:03):
eight and Fade In from nineteen seventy three, all from
Imprint Films that is available over at diabolicdvd dot com.
And while I was talking with Daniel, I found out
that he is also writing a new book which just
came out. It is called Adventures in Auturism, A Crusade
for the Critically Neglected. If you know anything about me,
(01:25):
you know that I love critically neglected films. This book
sounds fantastic. I can't wait to dive into it. I
had a great time talking with Daniel. I hope you
have a great time listening to it, and I would
highly recommend that you pick up Adventures in Auturism. I
think it'll make a great well, I can't say stocking
stuff because this sucker's five hundred pages. It's going to
be a great book for you to read and a wonderful,
(01:48):
wonderful gift for the holidays. Thanks so much for listening,
and I hope you enjoyed the interview.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Have you been I've been good. I'd been busy. I'm
finishing this book at which I mentioned I was index
which is tedious, and I'm very tired and I'm very sore.
I've been in this chair through the last two days
because it's just anyway, it's almost done, so happy about that.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
What is the book about?
Speaker 1 (02:11):
My collected writings on Overlooked Filmmakers. So the script for
this movie that we're doing it on today is in
there as like a text essay. So he's in there
with twenty four other full case studies and then dozens
of other guys and girls. It's Paul Cronin's press who's
(02:33):
doing it. I'm not sure if you know that press.
It's a great new imprint. A lot of great people
are publishing through him nowadays. Jonathan Rosenbaum, Joe McBride, Major Bamulton,
and Nott Sigaloff just did a volume together. I think
people are basically flocking to Paul because they've had it
(02:54):
up to here with academic presses jerking them around the process.
Paul has been wonderful. It's been very easy and it's
been very quick. Actually, there's no board that has to
review or approve everything that you do. That's a wonderful thing.
(03:14):
I love that about it as well. But yeah, it'd
be out like the end of October. I think actually
since coming up, we just did copy editing, we just
did picture placement, type setting. It's consumed two months. I
basically used what I earned my part of our wedding funds,
(03:34):
what people gave us as gifts, and then just like
taking the last two months off from doing commentary tracks
and video essays for discs and then just putting it
into doing this book. So yeah, I haven't been as active,
but I'm looking to get back into it after this
is all over.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Tell me about this documentary you did about Silvio Nerizano,
and I'm so curious, how did you come across him
in the first place.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
Years ago, when I was first doing the book on
Sidney Fury, I always knew that Naredzano was a name
out there in the ether. I knew that, you know.
I think you hear me in the documentary itself, my
recording with Sidney Fury when he's talking about there was
a director at the CBC who had gone over to
(04:21):
England to Pioneer Granada Television. You'll know the name Sylvia Narzano.
And I guess I knew at the time because I was, Oh, yeah,
the guy who did Georgia Girl. Of Course, Sidney really
talked him up, and then I got to know Ted Katcheff,
and Ted also talked him up. He was like a
bit of a daddy figure in a sense to the
(04:43):
Canadians who were coming over to the UK to forge
ahead with their careers and helping them get set up,
helping them get their foothold. And I was like, oh,
he seems like a sweet guy. Of course I had
seen Georgia Girl, but it took probably his most controversial movie,
(05:04):
The Sky's Falling, which was released on VHS in the
eighties under the dubious title Bloodbath, which I had seen
in the VHS version, which you'll see the comparison in
the documentary. It is unwatchable. It is so dark you
cannot see what's going on. And I was like, I
can't imagine what this would look like in a good transfer,
(05:28):
but I don't know. It's so it's just like one
of the movies that you watch in a bad bootleg
and then it's like you move on, and then it's
like you don't think much about it. And then when
Vinegar Syndrome came along and then they did this new
beautiful film scan of it, I was like, Wow, what
a fucked up, demented movie this is. And it really
(05:51):
fascinating film, very personal, it feels, and it also feels
very gay. Kenn Anderson says there's far more male flesh
on display than female, and just the way that it
carries itself off feels very gay or very queer. And
I was like, yeah, that's true. But then, of course
I had seen Blue along the Line. I still have
(06:13):
my VHS of Glue, which is the pan and scan
this one. It's a scope movie, so you're missing a
lot in the VHS, but I got the Paramount DVD.
It's like, oh, this is a really also a pretty
interesting movie, just in terms of the pictorial quality, the
visual the visuals, and I want to dig a little
(06:34):
deeper into him because he seems like an interesting type
of guy, maybe just like a subject for further study,
never dreaming at the time that I'd be doing this
whole film about him. And then it was around that
time that I moved to LA that I caught up
with my aforementioned friend, David del Valle, who does a
number of commentaries and whatnot, and I was over his
(06:55):
place and we were just hanging out. It's like, oh,
did you see that crazy DNA popper Carol Baker movie?
And I was like yes, and we talked about it,
and he was also very fascinated by it, and I
was like, yeah, isn't he interesting? And I've been less
in touch with Sid Fury the last couple of years
because of the health issues on his part, but every
(07:16):
once in a while I still talk to him and
he can do maybe just a few minutes at a time.
But I was like one of those calls, I was like,
tell me more about Sylvia and Arazzano and I came
out in the course of that conversation. It's like, oh, no,
he was gay. He had a partner before I knew
that gay men could have partners, and he was married
(07:37):
to a woman for a time, and then that didn't
hand out because he was very even though I knew
then that he was not interested in woman. That's what
you did. It was kind of like a beard. I
began to dig more than like I saw Redneck. I
was like, jeez, this is another crazy one written by
the guy I learned was his partner, win Wells, his
life partner. So win Wells writes these two demented movies
(08:02):
with very strong gay slash queer undertones, and not even undertones.
It's just like the subtext became text after a while.
And then by the time I finally got to Young Shoulders,
which Blew Me Away, which is his last movie, or
one of the unless he cunt the Body in the Library,
(08:24):
Young Shoulders being his last major work, I gotta do
something about this guy. I don't know what that's going
to look like. I can't imagine ever being able to
sell a book on there Atsano. No one would pay
me for it. That's for sure, and then there'd be
a question about it, who would print it? I feel
like I have to do something about Sylvia. And it
(08:45):
was around that time that Josh Hibberd at Imprint Films,
who likes to ask me every now and then, like
what I'd like to see come down the pike on
the label mostly from Paramount, and because they have a
nice sweet deal of Paramount, I was like, if you
could get Blue, and if you could get the film
that was shot on the back of Blue, which is
(09:08):
called fade in for those there's a movie shot on
the set of another movie, another fiction movie shot as
a behind the scenes movie on the set of this
western that Sylvia Arzano made called Blue, with Burt Reynolds
who's hired by the movie company as a driver and
as a gopher. He's a local cowhand in Utah and
(09:30):
he falls in love with the film editor on Blue,
played by Barbara Loden Wanda Barbara Loden, Elia Kazant's wife,
Barbara Loden. So I was like, if you can get
those two movies in a pack together, I could give
you something really good as an extra about the director
of Blue. So he began to poke around at paramount,
(09:55):
what do you have is blue available? Because sometimes the
elements aren't really in good shape or whatever. There's one
title in particular that is not in good shape and
it really rankles me. But Blue they had, it was
in good shape. Fade in they also had. It's like, okay,
we're green lit, but it's not going to be for
a while. So I went to work and what I
(10:16):
originally envisioned as a kind of extended video essay, I
was like, I was quoting other people that I had
right on my fingertips, like David el Val and like
Howard Berger and like Nathaniel Thompson. Was like, why don't
I just interview them on camera and do something a
little more formal and not just like a video essay
(10:38):
with me narrating, but do a documentary hybridized with a
kind of video essay that form and make this kind
of big hoosey wats it's about the kind of the
definitive text about Sivia and Rzana for the total lack
of one. So my husband went away for six months
(10:58):
of last year because he worked on the election. He's
a statistician and very interested in political methodology and all that.
So he was off in the field and I was
left all by my lonesome in Pasadena and not having
an easy time of it because you begin to miss
(11:18):
your spouse or your partner. But I was like, oh,
why don't I just sublimate all this or devote all
my energy into doing this thing. So that's what I
did while my husband was away. Movie. Before I knew it,
I had a two and a quarter hour cut and
it would seem to be playing well enough where I
(11:38):
was just like, Okay, this is probably going to be
the only thing ever done about this guy, so I'm
going to leave it at this length. And yeah, that's
how it happened, which.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Is really remarkable because so much these days when I
see extras, they seem to be almost purposefully broken into
small chunks, almost like we don't want to pay you
for making a documentary, You're just making a short extra.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
I'm in that market of making video essays for I
guess now nearly twenty companies, and it's the pay is
high and low, depending on who it is and what
the movie is. Oftentimes, if it's a movie that they
think is going to sell, you can normally get a
better rate but yeah, it's not a lucrative endeavor to
(12:29):
do a documentary about a filmmaker no one's ever heard of,
let's say the least. Josh is very nice about it
and very sweet about it, but you know, that's not
why you at the end of the day, that's not
exactly why you do these things. I feel like I
almost had to. It's like kind of like I needed
to understand this guy more because, let's say, also, as
(12:49):
much as it's about a filmography and a filmmaker and
an artist, it's a chronicle of a gay man in
this time in the business and how he covertly, sometimes
overtly infused his work with things that he was fired
off of a movie for making it too gay, fired
off of the man who had power over women because
(13:11):
they didn't the studio didn't like that he was making
it like extremely capital h homosexual and funny. When I
was at Ted Kotcheff's memorial over the summer, I got
to meet the editor, Tom Noble, who is ninety years old,
nearly in Knockwood. Great shape for a guylight age. It
(13:32):
was pretty unbelievable. We met at that it was gathering
at the katchaf house afterwards with food and everything. And
I honed in on him like a guided missile because
Tom Noble edited Redneck, and I wanted to hear everything
about that crazy movie. And he goes, if you think
the movie was crazy, way do you hear about the
(13:53):
behind the scenes. It's like, God, damn it, I wish
I had interviewed you on the camera. But he was
the editor on the man who had power over women
as well, and so he was able to confirm to
me that, oh, yes, the AVCO did. There was a
big edict passed down, was like, get rid of this guy.
No matter what we tell him, no matter how much
we warn or admonish him, he cannot lay out all
(14:16):
the gay stuff. He was fired for that reason. It's
like I felt like I had to get to the
bottom of a guy who felt he could be that
bold with that type of thing in that era and
living with his partner or partner who was very if
you might want to say, flamboyant. Tom Noble told me
that win Wells, who was Sylvia's partner, wanted to open
(14:37):
gay bar called Sissy's, and this was a long time
ambition of his. And I was like, There's really a
lot of facts that are now that didn't make it
into the film because I didn't know Tom at that
time and there was no means to get in touch
with him then. But of course him showing up at
this memorial was like, oh, I need to talk to you.
(14:58):
But it made its way into the book version, which
is a collection of my writings on the Overlook directors.
A lot of these whole stories and factoris in the
Narratano chapter make it into this book. But yeah, Tom
had a lot of crazy stories and it was very
fond of Silvio. He really enjoyed the documentary because I
(15:20):
shared it with him later on, And yeah, I felt
like it was a personal project that I had to
explore what this guy was all about, how he felt
so compelled to make the movies he made, really out
bold and proud about it.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Yeah, I was so shocked to see some of those
scenes from Blue and then Loot looked like an absolute
just crazy hoot. I am so excited to now. I
think your documentary is doing exactly what you would hope
it is, which is now I want to see all
of these movies.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
No, that's the best that you could hope for and
as I say, you might not like everything that you see,
but it's it is one voice. It's unified as one
man saying there's something very consistent through the course with
a particular set of vocal cords. But no, he went
(16:13):
from the movie was fired from too Gay on right
to Loot and he put all of that spunk, if
you want to call it that, and to Loot. And then,
as I say, Loot is like to stop at the
amusement park before on the road to elector of shock therapy.
Because Redneck and the following are definitely cold reckonings, I
(16:34):
guess you might say.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
Again, even with some of the unpleasantness of Redneck, just
to see that performance by Telly Savalis just looks amazing.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
Yeah, my husband's who saw the movie. That came out
of his absence when he came back finally from the
election season and everything else. He watched it. I wound
up dedicating the movie to my husband, which is if
he's watched till the very end, you'll see, but he
was watching it. This movie that is of course he
(17:06):
dedicated to him. And there's the scene that I showed
from Redneck of Pelly Savadalis cold bloodily killing a child
and saying you.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Made me do it?
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Why did he run away? And like my husband's did
he just kill a child? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Sorry, but it's like Maggot from the Dirty Dozen having
his own movie.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
Yes exactly. It is like that, and that's a good
way of putting it.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Yeah, that's the thing that I've always admired about you,
is just the way that you champion some of these
underseen films, some of the stuff that we've talked about
on the show. It's so nice to give light to this.
I'm super excited about this book project as well.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
It's my bag. I guess he might say, that's what
I do. I'm not as interested at all in writing
the thousandth book on Kubrick or john Ford or Hitchcock,
one of these guys. I really don't know what new
there is to say about a guy like that, saying
that there isn't it's just not my bag. But I'm
really interested in digging up buried treasure and making kind
(18:06):
of correlations and charting the kind of constellation of a
career and looking at people that most everyone is ignored
and being like, there's more here that you should look
closer at it, look closer at it, and you'll see.
Like I was telling, I think it was Ryan Beryl,
I was not with Ryan Beryl, and I was like,
the word I hate the most is journeyman. Fuck journeyman.
(18:28):
I don't want to hear about Journeyman. It's like every
every scene, in every shot in a movie, there are
choices being made. Some shout louder than others. Marizan shouted
very loud, but there are things to decode at every juncture,
and Journeyman, to me, is just too much of a burden.
You should be looking closer at these things. I should
(18:50):
be looking at what ties this all together, if anything.
And then sometimes the twenties, I think twenty six full
case studies, you got guys like Clive Downer in there
that Andrew Sarah's champion but dropped off the map. You
have Joe mclin silver, who I was on I've been
on your show before, and I got to know Joan
and was doing a book on her for a time.
(19:12):
And Joan is in there. And Sidney Fury, who's Patient
zero as I call him. He's the kind of the
locus of my interest in overlooked O Tears, head Catchers,
Sylvia Harvey Hart is another one, Harvey Hart. No one
gave a damn about Harvey Hart, as Gibbs I should say,
And maybe the hope the book will open up some eyes.
(19:35):
But if you look at Fortunate of Men's Eyes and
the Picks, which I think is one of the great
horror oddities of its day, or Mahoney's Last Stand, or
bus Riley, there's a pretty distinctive voice here. Yvonne Passer
is in there, and I hope that that public is
(19:56):
very happy and very excited about it. He thinks it's
like one of the books of the year because it's
it's wow. These are like really very the essays really
make clear connections that aren't like too far fetched. Your
you're responsible, but you're also it's very observant. Now, I
hope people connect with them. And it's like dozens of
(20:18):
others in an appendix with short kind of capsule hey studies. Yeah,
there are a lot of people in that. Charles B.
Pearce is one. Philip Leacock is another, great pet cause
of Mind. Yeah, there's a lot of guys in there,
Muriel Box, Wendy Coy, the great you know, they were
working female feature directors in the UK in the nineteen fifties,
(20:42):
and they're both extraordinary. They're clearly extremely talented visually and otherwise,
and they've just been by and large ignored, and there
are things that connect all of them. And I hope
I demonstrate how that is with here E years ago.
When I began in twenty twelve, I guess that was
I was like, I couldn't fathom how am I the
(21:03):
first guy to ever really study him, and how he'd
been this lacuna in the kind of oh tier studies
that I've read so much of, And I was like,
I guess more for me than more stake for me
to put down on I think with Narnzana it was
really like I think Sarus and a lot of these
people are maybe slightly put off by the kind of
(21:27):
blamingness of narbskay voice, so I think they just it
was easier just to dismiss it rather than dealing with
any of it. I think that's why he was passed
over mainly, and chatting with a big wig film a
story and film scholar film critic who I will not
name of the older set said some pretty alarming things
(21:50):
to me. When I shared the film with him, he
did watch it and then it was just like basically
vaguely homophobic remarks. I was just like, Yeah, it's no
wonder he's been ignored for so long when the likes
of you have been the only ones to have had
to go at him and deemed him too much himself
for your taste.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
It's twenty twenty five people. Let's let's get a grip here.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
As my husband says, they're in his field as well.
He's in academia, so sclerotic, super anuated film scholars who
see what has already been carved out, what's already been charted.
If you are at the least but heterodox, then you
know they might as well be the alien replacements from
(22:35):
invasion of the body statures pointing and screeching. As I
point out in the book, is that they're not one
of us. I want to chart my own path. There's
a lot of There are thousands of filmmakers out there
and millions of films to concentrate at these like koshered
items at the expense of all else distinct. There's too
(22:56):
much out there to ignore certain things that have not
been given the light.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
They're not in the pantheon. What are you talking about
unless it's Felini or Antonio ya.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
A lot of that. The opening of the book is
I do my own Andrew Seris list the categories as
he defined them in the American cinema, and I do
my own categories, my own personal pantheon, which I call
the personals. So fury is in there, of course, never really,
and then I go to the solids. Let me find
(23:28):
the what I think I put it best in the text,
quoted accurately, the generally unassailable filmmakers all are great, and
they don't need me to cheer lead for them. We
know they're great. I would never deny it, so hooray
for them. But this volume really isn't about them. I'm
not trying to be like, these guys are great and
(23:49):
your legends are bullshit. And I was like, no, this
is these are solid I'm granting you something. This book
isn't about that.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
They're not tearing down the old idols. You're just trying
to install some new ones in the temple.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
I tear down a couple, but that's just out. As
I say in the opening introduction, like this is completely subjective,
but as I quote him Lucas who as a quote
that I love reusing and repurposing whenever I get the opportunity.
It's it's like any list of a favorite movie or
filmmaker or anything could be like a mixtape that you
(24:26):
exchange with other people, as if to say, this is
who I am. You shouldn't be afraid. There's no guilty players.
This is me in this mixtape. This is who I am. Like,
there shouldn't be this kind of like Leonard Zelig. This
has been sanctioned, so I should include it. This has
not been sanctioned, so I should leave it off. Don't
be Leonard Zelig. Don't be the human chameleon. Be like,
(24:49):
make your own mixtape handed off with pride, and be like,
this is me. This is what I value, this is
what I like. And that's I talk about that in
the intro chapter. You might not like the fact that
I don't can with these whatever guys. I'm not going
to spoil who they are. You think up the book
to find out. But I was like, that's my reality.
This is all completely subjective. I talk about what feeds
(25:12):
into our subjectivity and what feeds into its experience, its culture.
I offer an example of this. Leaving a screening of
the Revenue. At one point we were my friend and
I were trying to glean why did we not connect
with that film at all? And then we had this
really interesting conversation that I talk about is it's like
it's where we both came from, comparing her with the
(25:33):
other movies that I say, the same content, a man
alone in the wild, fighting back the elements type of thing. Okay,
that other movie works, Why does that work? And this
one that we just saw does not? And then we
had a really great conversation about that. It's partly its cultural,
partly its experience. It's a lot of things. And like
(25:55):
Joe Dante, who wrote the forward, which I was very
grateful for, talks a little about this as well. It's
like where does all this come from? And Rosenbaum and
Jonathan Rosemeuld he should see films as guides for how
to live, and the films that you value should show
you some type of path about you know what. It
should demonstrate or give body to the values that you
(26:19):
hold here and you Richard Rody saying the film is
like a book. It's like every film is like a
book of philosophy, like what is the author or what
is the directory or the filmmaker saying I put it
in a Jewish mystical context, which is John Borman says
that filmmaking is translating money into light and the judism
(26:44):
I team of agent. It's translating goshas, which is the
material world, into Rooknius, which is the spiritual world. So
we're taking this cold substance of either silas assitaate or
ones and zeros on the drive and we're turning that
into something that is spiritual, something that connects us to
dreams and dream states and everything else. And so with
(27:07):
that in mind, I said, if filmmakers are clergy people,
what do their churches or temples look like? And then
it comes this exercise of John Ford. He's the most
ritually oriented Catholic priest you ever did meet, but his
true self comes out at the church socials where the
women leave early and the men sit around it in
(27:31):
their uniforms, drinking tear infused beer, memorializing their mothers. And
that became a kind of a fun exercise to open with.
But it's all very personal and the point of the
book is I value these people I've fucked them out
of this obscure form, and I've given them to you,
fed them back to you. Now, if you're interested based
(27:52):
on what I've written, seek them out and look for
these things. If not, move on and find what appeals
to you. Called adventures and o terorism, a crusade for
the critically neglected, That's what it is.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
When it came to the Arizanto films, you know, you
touch about the restoration of the Sky's falling, and you know,
coming out with this new version of Blue and Fade
in on which this documentary lives, which is freaking fantastic
having that as this kind of companion piece to those
two films. How difficult or easy was it to find
(28:25):
the rest of these films? Because those the clips from
that clips from some of the other films in your
documentary the gorgeous. But how easy or difficult is it
to find these films?
Speaker 1 (28:37):
I'm a gray market here, so I'm constantly sourcing these
things from sometimes sketchy places. I guess you say so,
d Die, my darling is out there. You can get
that pretty handily. Georgia Girl is of course out there.
Blue is now out there again, and Redneck and The
(28:57):
Sky Is Falling is out there, so you got a
big chunk the movies that are available. Then you have
the films that I call the Trilogy of Pedagogy, which
are Why Shoot the Teacher, which I'm hoping a certain
company is working on finding the elements of that. There's
been the conversation about that, so hopefully maybe they'll dig
that one up, which only had a VHS release in
(29:20):
the early to mid eighties from Embassy Home Video. You
had the Class of Miss McMichael once again VHS from
CBS Fox hasn't been out on video since then. And Choices,
which has been out on every fucking video label known demand.
I'm talking Bargain Bin label with Demi Moore's mug plastered
(29:42):
on the front of it, so that one's really been
that one's gotten around. It is neither one of Narzana's
better films, nor is the transfer on it very good,
So that's not a good barometer for whether or not
you will groove with Naratzano. But and then Young Shoulders,
which you can watch on YouTube, but which was a
(30:03):
play for Today, which I'm convinced should have gotten theatrical
oversees the much in the way that Mike Lee and
Alan Clark and kind of loached it. That one is
out there. You can watch that on YouTube pretty easily.
And then the Body in the Library I think is
part of a Miss Marple set, which actually that's a
(30:23):
very handsome Agatha Christie adaptation that na Daniel Thompson wanted
to make sure that he got some nice words in
for so I was happy that he was the one
guy to be like, no, we have to talk about
the Body in the Library. Absolutely crucial. I was like, oh, yeah, great, Yeah,
no one's talked about the Body Library. Let's look, let's
do it. But yeah, there are a few titles that
(30:45):
haven't really seen the light of day since the days,
and I'm hoping that maybe one day I can go
back and replace a lot of the faultier clips, mainly
Why Shoot the Teacher, which is an almost unsightly HS
transfer but it's workable for the purposes of a documentary
like this, but it's a bit of an eye sore.
(31:07):
So if that comes along in a nicer scan, which
I'm hoping the Canadian archives, which are fairly well kept,
that would be nice to go back and do some
flip replacements.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
So, as I said, the documentary's part of this larger
box when it comes to these other films. But is
it going to be released separately on its own?
Speaker 1 (31:27):
I own the rights to the documentary, so I own
the license. I never thought that. Maybe I'm just down
on the film festival scene perhaps, And I don't think
the prospect of showing a two and a quarter hour
movie at one of their events would really I don't
think they would prick up their errors on that. But
I'm going to continue to seek out. There is another
(31:49):
potential offer in the workings, so hopefully that bears some fruit.
But yeah, I'll make it available on the private torn
sites for people to act us. The Church of Near
Zano Gospel has to be spread somehow. Hopefully it'll get
more legs and get out there more. You know.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
Is there a place for people to keep up with
you and your work online?
Speaker 1 (32:11):
And unfortunately don't have much of a website anymore, been
on my list of things to do. But if you
google me or look me up on IMDb or on Facebook,
it's also a good way. I normally friend people if
we have enough in common. So yeah, those are the
best ways for right now.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
Well, thank you so much, sir. This was always great
talking with you.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
It's been a few years, so it's been nice to return.
I think the last time I was on was over
on the Sky Here's twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
Yeah, I know we need to get back together and
talk about some of these movies here especially, you know,
I want to go through your book and pick out
some titles and have a little film festival.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
It's a big volume, I know. I think we're going
to be around like five hundred and forty pages, so
it's a big volume. Yeah, but I would like that.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Well, I can't wait to read it. I've been thinking
that I would love to do either a maybe both
those weird PN Dennis Hopper movies, because he was in
what was that one, crush Proof I think it was called, Yeah,
a lot of like odd ones, and then Terrence Stamp
(33:20):
was in a bunch of weird stuff too, like that
one Human. That's like, let somebody needs to talk about
these things, So why not us.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Exiles of Stamp and Hopper some pretty odd results there's
Stamp also did the kind of proto totally clips movie
where he played Rambau to Jean claud Riali's Verlaine, and
that's a Season in Hell, which was an Italian film
that he made it in his European days or European exile.
(33:50):
So yeah, there are a lot of movies in that.
Flush Color is the one that's the lost Hopper movie
in Europe, I think in mainland Europe, but which I
know anyone has been able to track down. That's another
Popper out of the Henry Jaguline was a very close
friend of mine and passed on recently. And Henry hated
saying passed on. He went on the record multiple times
(34:12):
and I don't want to pass on when I die,
I want to die say that I died. I was like, okay,
Henry died recently. I remember him telling me a story
about Popper before I think it was before they went
to work on tracks. He went to lunch with Dennis
and Dennis was in a kind of a hopped up
state of some kind, and Henry commented or made some
(34:36):
remark to Dennis's date, who was also out of it,
and it was a pretty bit innocuous remark and Dennis,
what did you say? And then oh, I just said
blah blah blah, and Dennis plunged over the table and
tried to choke Henry in the restaurant. This is Henry.
It's on tapes with him somewhere. I taped them telling
(34:57):
this story. But I was like, were you ever afraid
of Dennis at any point?
Speaker 2 (35:02):
Is?
Speaker 1 (35:02):
Of course I was. It's like even when you were
making cracks. I was like, when he was working, he
was on better behavior, But no, he was crazy. He
was crazy for a time, with no doubt about it.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
Well, I'll let you get back to indexing. I know
there's nothing better to do.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
I know I only have a few left, Thank god.
Hey the georgy swinging down the streets, so fancy greed,
nobody you meet.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
Alone inside you? Hey the Georgie.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
Come, why do all the boys just passed you by?
Couldny you just don't try?
Speaker 2 (35:46):
Or is it the colley.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
You're always windows shopping but never stopping you by, So
just stop a little bit.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
Georgy girl, there's another georgy be inside.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
Bring out all.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
The love you hide and a lot of.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
Change that be to age a new georgy girl. Georgy
(36:43):
girl dreaming of of someone you could be. Life is
a reality. You can always run away.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
Don't be so scared of changing, envy, arranging yourself.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
It's time for jumping down from the shell a little bit.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
Pay there, Georgy go, there's another Georgy deep inside.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
Bring have all the love.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
You have a lot of change, and let's see an
George George, George
Speaker 1 (37:26):
George,
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