September 1, 2025 • 69 mins
Original Release Date: Monday 1 September 2025
Description: It's the symbolic final weekend of summer 2025 and your friends in podcasting commemorate in style with almost 70 minutes of rich podcasty goodness! They discuss how one of Dean's all-time least favorite films might become a television series. They discuss how a Todd Haynes period detective film they would have loved to see might just be back from the dead. They discuss how and why Weapons has captured the cultural conversation in a way few movies do any more. They discuss how and why Netflix had the #1 film at the box office, why Netflix didn't want you to know that, and what it might portend for the future. They discuss the merits of the new Netflix mystery The Thursday Murder Club. They discuss the 1987 classic River's Edge and the 1949 all-time masterpiece The Third Man. In the return of the "Live Event of the Week", Pink Martini performs under the stars at the Greek Theatre. In "Celebrity Deaths", an Oscar-winning composer, a Tejano legend, a chart-topping flugelhorn player, a co-founder of "Derek and the Dominos", and the jazz singer dubbed "the lady with the million-dollar ears" all get remembered. Finally, Dean and Phil pay tribute to the great Terence Stamp. Happy Labor Day, USA! Happy Monday, everyone else.
Description: It's the symbolic final weekend of summer 2025 and your friends in podcasting commemorate in style with almost 70 minutes of rich podcasty goodness! They discuss how one of Dean's all-time least favorite films might become a television series. They discuss how a Todd Haynes period detective film they would have loved to see might just be back from the dead. They discuss how and why Weapons has captured the cultural conversation in a way few movies do any more. They discuss how and why Netflix had the #1 film at the box office, why Netflix didn't want you to know that, and what it might portend for the future. They discuss the merits of the new Netflix mystery The Thursday Murder Club. They discuss the 1987 classic River's Edge and the 1949 all-time masterpiece The Third Man. In the return of the "Live Event of the Week", Pink Martini performs under the stars at the Greek Theatre. In "Celebrity Deaths", an Oscar-winning composer, a Tejano legend, a chart-topping flugelhorn player, a co-founder of "Derek and the Dominos", and the jazz singer dubbed "the lady with the million-dollar ears" all get remembered. Finally, Dean and Phil pay tribute to the great Terence Stamp. Happy Labor Day, USA! Happy Monday, everyone else.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
And now Your Chill Pack Hollywood Hour with Dean Hagland
and Phil Alareness.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Me Love me.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
Less, Begin to night.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
All right? If what I read is true, we are
recording Welcome to year nineteen, episode seventeen of Your Chillpack
Hollywood on this Labor Day Monday in the USA, the
symbolic end of summer and the first Monday of September.
Coming at you from the Los Angeles neighborhood of Los Phelis.
(00:46):
I am Phil Alareness, joining us via the magic of
podcasting and zoom and now a handheld zoom recorder all
the way from the environs of Detroit. It's the MotorCity
adjacent Madman TV's Dean Hagland. Great, Diane, are you looking
forward to fall in Michigan now that you are back
(01:06):
in your house?
Speaker 3 (01:07):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Yes, the Lee's will change colors and I don't have
to see them but.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Through a window.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
We received, as you know, emails from listeners plural, and
as you know, they were all directed towards John Lawler.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
So so we don't have to answer.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
They were emails about what people liked about Superman, which
I will wait on until I actually have a chance
to see the film and it's about Spike Lee's newest
highest to lowest, which we will get him to address
probably a couple shows from now. So thank you for
those emails. Keep those cards and letters and petitions coming.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Petitions. What the protest the protest letters?
Speaker 2 (01:56):
You know, if we haven't mentioned the email account a
long time Chillpackhollywood at yahoo dot com, people sell you
femails there. We read them and sometimes we read them
on the air. You know. I do want to follow
up on last week though, we were discussing movies we've
walked out of and no sooner do you name the
(02:20):
Stallone vehicle The Specialist? That's right, than the Specialist books
are suddenly in the news. What here's the screen rant
headline from this week, from right after our show dropped.
Sylvester Stallone's critically hated nineties action movie is getting a
(02:45):
TV remake O Great just at the time. Oscar nominated
producer Alexander Rodinianski has optioned the television rights to John
Shirley's action thriller book series The Specialist. The novels were
published under the pen name John Cutter, served as the
inspiration for the nineteen ninety four Warner Brothers film The Specialist,
(03:08):
starring Sylvester Stallone and Sharon Stone. Ar Content has secured
the rights to all eleven books in the series, and
the company said it's planning to bring the material into
present day, exploring the moral and tactical complexities of modern
drone era warfare. Oh hey, look that the company is
(03:30):
currently in discussions with showrunners. All Right, I don't want
to talk too much about a TV series that may,
let's face it, not even end up seeing the light
of day.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
However, I think it's already odd problematic that you're bringing
it up to date more than thirty years after it's
written into a new kind of warfare, and it'll be
the books.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
How yeah, exactly what moral ambiguity? I mean?
Speaker 1 (03:59):
If you're one chain any video of Ukraine Russian War,
you realize that it's mostly robotic now that everybody can
just sit in a basement with your ocular lens and
your controllers and just blast each other silly.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
And if you see the original Sylvester Stallone vehicle, you'll
notice it's mostly robotic. So I'm so filled with joy
right now after mentioning it off air and Keen listeners.
I'm provided that this recording is actually working, will no
doubt have been able to enjoy the same thing I enjoyed,
(04:35):
which was your Doberman puppies lapping up water in the well.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
You know, it is a lovely sunny day and they
just ate a large beef stick, so naturally all that salt.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
And your newly restored home has no shortage of echo,
So that sound really was It was the surround sound
lapping of water.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Slipped. I was at a beach. How about that? It
was the sound of the shores.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
You know. We talked a while back about how Todd
Haynes proposed new film and beyond proposed it was in production,
a nineteen thirties gay detective film. Remember we talked about
this and how yeah, the plug got pulled after again,
(05:28):
everybody was already on location and money was being spent.
It was a project brought to Killer Films, the production
entity by its star Joaquin Phoenix, who, beyond the last minute,
simply failed to show up on location for two weeks.
Apps a case of cold feet about the rather explicit
gay sex scenes. Although again he was the guy who
(05:51):
developed the project right, so.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
You would think he had read that earlier than heavily
in New Mexico.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
So the film had to be shuttered and was thought dead,
and we were grieving what could have been because it
seemed like a gender and genre bending detective film from
Todd Haynes, a great filmmaker and particularly great at making
us reappraise genres and eras of the past. We really
(06:20):
wanted to get to see that film. Well, thanks to
Pedro Pascal, Oh, the film may just be going before
cameras in twenty twenty six.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
Look at that, he's taken over the lead role.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Yeah, if they can work it into what is no
doubt a very very busy schedule in his contract to
his exclusive contract to start in every motion picture, a
television show filmed anywhere in North America.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
I'm sure he's doing a couple more fantastic fours.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Anyway, Dan Notce is the name of that film. And seriously,
I mean I very rarely do I read about the
concept of a new film and genuinely feel like, oh, yeah, oh,
I can't wait to see that. But this I just
(07:12):
I Mexico City, nineteen thirties Detectives Gayness. It's literally the
big screen version of your Chillpack Hollywood Hour it is.
I saw the film this week that has become as
we we've talked about before, you and I off this
on our side project. I saw the film this week
(07:34):
that has become what I think is the third film
of the year to capture the cultural conversation, right, not
just box office success. There have been huge box office
successes like f one Lelo and Stitch that I would
say have avoided cultural conversation.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
That nobody talked about.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Well, yeah, you don't just find people discussing these films
on the waves in your local beer halls. I don't
know where people hear other people have cultural conversations this show,
but you know, probably some conversation in the halls of Hollywood,
as in, hey, how do we recreate this amount of money?
(08:19):
But I always said, there used to be kind of
this magical triumvirate for a movie. If it got critical love,
box office and awards. That was the triple that everybody
was chasing. And man, if you made a movie that
(08:39):
did all this, you were set for a long time,
no matter how many companies you bankrupted after that. I'm
looking at you, Michael Chimino. So but nowadays I feel
like just as impressive is if you have a film
that actually captures a cultural conversation, because films don't have
(09:01):
the same imprint anymore, right, right, And so what we
were saying was, and I don't know if any others
have occurred to you, but it seems to me this
year it's been Sinners, Superman, and Weapons that have achieved
this thus far. Critics have liked them enough, and audiences
(09:25):
have not only liked them enough. But what I think
is going on here is getting something they need from
them enough that they want to talk about those things afterwards.
And in the case of Sinners, of course totally understand
because it's a time and a place and a people
(09:47):
that incredibly underrepresentative represented at all, right in movies. And
when I say not represented at all, I mean, of
course vampires in the Deep South in the nineteen twenties
blues era.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
Yeah, oh that did happen.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
They have not been represented anyway. So this one, Weapons
is out now, and of course I was concerned about
seeing it because I'd heard that it was scarier than
writer director Zach Kraiger's prior Barbarian.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
Which you couldn't watch to the end.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Which I couldn't watch to the end, which I only
watched because you hailed it so much, And it was
a film immediately that I found myself admiring and that I,
in all good conscious have to readily admit I could
not watch all of I had to stop with about
(10:45):
thirty minutes remaining because it was that terrifying to me.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
Disturbing for sure, and terrifying.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
This film isn't actually scary, it is horrifying. It is
a horror film, and I think that that's a distinction
that doesn't maybe get discussed enough right, just as Hitchcock
used to talk about again the distinction with suspense films.
(11:16):
He said he didn't make horror films, he made suspense pictures,
and so all these things have different I believe, visceral
reactions in an audience, And I will say that maybe
there are parts in the first half of Weapons that
you'll think are scary or going to be scary, but
(11:37):
it's such an interestingly structured film, almost rachamon esque, that
once you get to the midpoint and you have a
handle on not what is happening, but how it's being
unfolded for you, then it no longer plays to me.
Like a scary picture, but it some of its themes
(12:01):
and its resonance is now deep and even further so
you have less a fear factor and more of a horror.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
Factor, a cultural horror factor.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Well, this is what I know. You haven't seen this,
so I'm I'll be intrigued because I do wonder, like, literally,
what is it that people are getting from this? It's
not just a scary film or a horrific film, or
you know, or a paranormal horror film. You know, to
have a cultural conversation again, what is it that is
(12:37):
tying into what the audience writ large needs. It's you know,
it focuses on townspeople affected by the disappearance of seventeen
or of seventeen of eighteen students in one elementary school
class and.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
Get up to seventeen in the morning and run.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Away exactly, and the townspeople who are affected find the
need to invent boogeymen instead of doing the hard work
of trying to understand what actually.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
Happened or finding them, like, instead of blaming something, well.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
There are there are officials that are supposed to be
doing that, right. It is an ongoing investigation, So maybe
I wouldn't put it on the people, the townspeople to
find them. But isn't it an interesting American pastime. We're
not going to do anything about the problem, but we
(13:36):
are going to help identify and publicly persecute boogeymen that
we've invented.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
Right to see who's to blame?
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Our powerlessness has been weaponized to what end? And this
is what the Weapons of the movie refers to is weaponization.
When the actual evil in the film is revealed, it's
truly evil, but not nearly as horrifying to me as
(14:09):
what fully conscious people do to each other under the
authority they feel granted to them by their own suffering.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
Ah, fascinating.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Yeah, So it's an interesting film to discuss from the
point of view of Yeah, what is what is a culture?
Are we getting that we needed from this that is
leading to not only box office success, but to this
cultural conversation that it's having. One final note, I will
(14:40):
have and one of the things that the film certainly
gave me that I didn't know I needed and you
should have known I needed the usage of George Harrison's
Beware of Darkness as the opening song during the disappearance
of the children and the opening credits. Uh oh, it's
(15:01):
nothing short of sublime. It's one of the best needle
drops in a long, long time. Watch out now take.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
This dropping.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Weapons of course, doing still great business at the box office,
but in a fascinating bit of historic firsts Okay was
not number one at the box office last week. It
was number two. It made like fifteen and a half million,
coming in second place behind the eighteen million earned in
(15:49):
two days at the box office because it only played
Saturday and Sunday by Netflix's K pop anime film K
Pop Demon Hunters. Now, as you know, Netflix will release
some of their films to theaters. The joke I love
(16:12):
to say, right, they escape more than they are released.
They don't report box office on these things. Usually the
films go to either theaters they own or they're renting,
and usually it's to garner award consideration. Right, and some
(16:33):
of these films I will see theatrically. Roma I saw
several times on the big screen, Like why would I
see a seventy millimeter black and white film at home
on Netflix instead of trying to see it on the
big screen. If I can't this film, I don't know
why the idea was made. It was already their number
one streaming film. It's maintained number one streaming films, set
(16:55):
all these records, and it got into theaters for two days,
and the numbers were discovered by all the rival studios
who reported them. Oh, so that's how we know that
in two days it was the number one film at
the box office. And this has me thinking about a
(17:17):
whole lot of different things again about they're all on
assault on theater going, which they rely on for so
much of their content, because so much of their content
are sequels, too successful theatrical films. That's how the IP
has gotten launched in the first place. They spent all
(17:38):
this money to get The Knives out sequels because that
was a huge international box office hit. And by the way,
that first sequel, Glass Onion, was the first Netflix film
where the box office results got out, and I think
that was in part by the makers of the film itself. Ah,
(18:00):
that film had been exclusively released I think, to AMC
theaters a month before it went streaming, and they could
show it for one week, and the numbers off those
screens were really good, so good that again Daniel Craig
and the filmmakers were going, wtf here, Why can't we
have a theatrical experience for this film? And the question
(18:25):
to me is more sound than ever. If you can
have a number one box office hit without paying to
promote it in theaters, I didn't even know. Why are
you leaving that money on the table? Why are you
not exploring ways to incorporate the theatrical experience into what
(18:47):
you're doing? And I don't And I know that the
answer gets back to our algorithms and our synthetic ais
that run the company read Hastings. No, you know, they know,
they know, and I who am I to tell anybody
how to run their business, especially when their business is
(19:08):
working well. Other than again, Netflix is a place, in
part built on people like me who loved movies and
who will keep coming there because we love movies. And yet,
can't you please love movies just a little bit yourself?
Speaker 3 (19:31):
I suppose?
Speaker 1 (19:34):
But could this have a similar thing to like Minecraft,
the movie where all fourteen year old boys go buy
a bag of popcorn and don't eat it until the
scene where the bumblebee shows up and they all stand up,
scream their heads off and throw popcorn at each other
and that's the experience of the movie. It's not watching
(19:56):
the movie. It's not how good the movie is, it's
that everybody does this thing in the middle of the
movie with popcorn. Does this K pop thing have a
similar phenomena amongst the kids?
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Maybe, but what does that matter, you know, get them
into theaters. I mean, that can't be the only one
that has that phenomenon.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
Well, it might be. I mean, there's only one Rocky
horror picture show.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
I know.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
They tried others where you're supposed to sing along and
dress up in the characters, and nobody did that. So
I'm just wondering if there is a larger element to
this than just how good the movie is.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
Yeah, well maybe they're Yeah. I mean, it is an
interesting idea that they know how the movies are playing
from streaming. Why did it because that's the thing. Why
did it get two days in theaters? Why why would
they decide to do that. They're not pushing it for awards,
they don't need to push it. I mean, part of
(20:57):
me says, well, it's got to be a way to
try to lure new subscribers. Our young subscribers are the
K pop anime fans. Less likely to subscribe, or were
trying to lure them. Maybe I don't know what the
purpose behind it was, but I do know this idea
of trying to hide the success of it so that
(21:17):
you don't have to be a part of the theatrical
game is just really seems stupid, like or child dish
even like that, And you have to be a part
of You were negotiating along with the other big producers
during all the union strikes. You were one of them.
(21:37):
You were part of the group that was known as
the producers right the AMPTP. You're part of a group.
You're always a part of it when the awards come around.
Be a part of what laughingly I will call the
community of entertainment conglomerates. But be a part of it.
(22:00):
Realize again that to a degree, it's not just within
your own raft of titles, but within the industry as
a whole. Historically, all bye, all boats do rise together.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
Right theoretically, Yeah, but that means you are also uh
sharing coffee with these other producers in the restaurants around
the city.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
Is Netflix.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
I don't even know if I can name one Netflix executive.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
At the top read Hastings. I already did that for you?
Speaker 3 (22:35):
I thought that was an AI name.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
It does? It does sound like I know, Yeah, it's
a It is a real name of someone totally made up. Yes. Anyway,
despite all that the box office success, we still probably
have Netflix most importantly for stuff like Happy Gilmour two,
(22:58):
and I'm not sure that would have done box office
no matter how beloved it was in But maybe because
this appetite for comedies, as we've talked about over past weeks,
seems to be there, so maybe it would have. But
I don't know. It is a sentimental nostalg maybe not
sentimental for something like having, but it's a nostalgia play
(23:20):
that they specialize in. So yeah, by all means, and
they also exist for things like The Thursday Murder Club.
That's why they exist. And despite knowing better than to
look forward to anything directed by Chris Columbus, God help me,
I was looking forward to the Netflix feature film adaptation
(23:42):
of the first book in the series of The Thursday
Murder Club. Yeah, and you know, it's about what I
expected from both Chris Columbus and Netflix. It's sort of
the best of what straight to Netflix movies should be.
No art, but peculiarly satisfying and something that would have
(24:03):
been much better if you'd put extensive commercial breaks in
it and aired it live on CBS on a Sunday
night in the nineteen eighties. Okay, the cast full of greats,
frequently given very little to do. Helen Mirren shines in
the biggest part. Pierce Brosnan is the best he's been
(24:24):
in years. Ben Kingsley is game and largely wasted. Celia
Imri is a true delight. But it's some of the
supporting characters that pop in that are actually surprising, though
again rarely given anything to do. The one that's given
the most to do and who acquits herself quite well
(24:45):
as their police ally is Naomi Acki, who has been
on quite a run. She played Whitney Houston in The
Big Screen, a biopic. She was Robert Pattinson's love interest
in Mickey seventeen, which we both saw. Yeah, and she
co starred in this year's critical consensus top film Thus Far,
(25:09):
Sorry Baby, which I talked about just gird. Yeah, that's
all recent.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
So she's very good. And if there's a sequel, and
there are other books, I hope they're smart enough to
bring her back. She really is a delight, and just
those films shows incredible range, like she's seriously the real deal.
David Tennant shows up for a few scenes.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
Doctor who.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
Yeah. Richard E. Grant shows up for one scene.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
He seems to be doing that because I just saw
a hit Man's Bodyguard that was leaving Netflix, and he
has one hilarious cameo in that thing.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
He's so good, He's always been good. And look if
he's getting paiday, if he's getting bank for this, it's overdue.
Just take whatever money they offer you, seriously, yes, and.
Speaker 3 (26:09):
Just everybody back away and let him do his thing.
Roll camera us you go.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
So the best I can say about this thing is
all of it is palatable. Occasionally it is touching, sometimes
it is funny. The mystery is engaging enough, though it's
unfolding is rather tedious, and its resolution more sad than rewarding.
The best scenes, the scenes that hint at what could
(26:34):
have been if you were interested in making like a
real movie, involve Jonathan Price as Helen Morren's husband who
is descending into dementia. Oh, something he specializes in these days,
because that's what he's doing in Slow Horses, as the
former head of the spy agency. He's got dementia, but
(26:57):
in this film he plays her husband and he's descending
into dementia. I think he was a former author, published author.
And despite his dementia, he nevertheless solves one of the murders,
but hilarious, and then immediately forgets that he has. He
confronts the person and says straight out like, why did
(27:21):
you do it? How did you know? Why did you
do it? And the guy starts to explain, and Jonathan
Price doesn't know what they're talking about anymore. It's really
really good. It's good stuff, and let's face it, somewhere
along the along the lines, Jonathan Price became an international treasure.
I don't know when that was, but forty years on
(27:41):
from Brazil, it's safe to say that Jonathan Price did
become an international treasure.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
Well, when he was the evil villain in the Bond movie.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
That didn't make him an international Like I feel like
his whole career is littered with things that are almost
good anyway. Will there be additional movie made from the
follow up novels? Again, probably also I don't care, and
if there are, I will watch them as soon as
they become available.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
Well, that's that's the endorsement. I need to go stop
this show and batchet right now.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
Speaking of forty years ago, man, do you remember River's Edge? Yes, with.
Speaker 3 (28:27):
Crispin Glover right, Yes.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
So's a movie that came out when I was at UCLA.
I had not started film school yet, and it was
a big deal when it came out because of course
it was written by a UCLA Film School grad and
it was an assignment. It was a class assignment the script. Yeah,
(28:50):
so I remember that, but it was shocking how little
I remembered of the of the movie. And I went
to a screening of it at the Cinema Tech that
was followed by a Q and A with the film's director,
Tim Hunter, And in that Q and A, he revealed,
because you know, he's made so many youth oriented projects
(29:13):
before that he had made the se Hinton adaptation texts,
and then he would go from River's Edge to direct
three of the most important episodes of Twin Peaks in
those first two seasons, and he revealed that he never
wanted to let go of the feelings of intense friendship
(29:35):
he had when he was in high school, and this
led to him gravitating towards stories of teen friendships to
try to explore how your friendships when you're that age
have an intensity that do not exist into adulthood, and
he wanted to pay honor to those by never letting
(29:56):
go of that in his storytelling. And certainly his edge
fits into that, you know, as do these other projects
I'm saying. So yeah. So Neiljmenez wrote the script and
it was a class assignment. It earned him a C
minus because he begged for a passing grade.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
Oh you're kidding.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
Tim Hunter knew it was brilliant, however, and as production approached,
it was Jimenez who feared that the film might be
too edgy and too dark. Tim Hunter did not let
him change quote a goddamn word of it.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
Oh wow.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
And one of the things that makes the film so
dark is what Crispin Glover's performance did to the film
as a whole. The film was, you know, a straight
low budget scale affair across the board, and Crispin was
fresh off back to the future. Ah right, So you
(30:54):
theoretically could have commanded more money from doing other things.
But he hated, as he's notoriously said, he's hey, he
hated working on Back to the Future, hates his work
in it, and he was very, very interested in doing
River's Edge, so much so that he was willing to
audition for it. Oh And Hunter and the producers were
(31:16):
excited by the prospect of him being in the film,
and indeed, of course building some of the marketing at
least around Crispin Glover from Back to the Future, right,
using the thing that he hates as part of the
marketing campaign. But although he admitted a willingness to audition,
it seemingly turned into a reluctance, and so for weeks
(31:39):
he did not show up to the Wow, kept them waiting,
and when he finally came in, it was with the
wig and the entire wardrobe we see in the film
and the character exactly as he wound up playing it.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
Wow. So he basically worked for two weeks on this thing.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
In other words, it was out there for an audition, right.
I doubt any audition of anyone ever actually cast has
probably been weirder than that audition. And the filmmakers, by
Tim Hunter's own recollection, had a very difficult choice. They
(32:23):
had to go with someone they did not understand and
feared might crater the entire affair, which was Crisp and
Glover or try to find someone safe. Right. They made
the right choice, though, but it was courageous to go
with a performance they didn't understand, and it pushed the film,
(32:48):
as I said, even darker, because when you think about it,
in any other film, Dennis Hopper's character Feck, a one
legged former bike on the run for more than twenty
years after the shooting death of the only woman he
ever loved, which he was responsible for.
Speaker 3 (33:07):
Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
Who never leaves home, who ekes out a modest living,
selling pot to underage school kids, all while shacking up
with a plastic sex doll. In any other film, that
would have been the darkest, edgiest character. But with and
I'm not joking with Glover's interpretation of the leader of
(33:30):
the high school gang of friends, however, Hopper doesn't seem
so odd. In fact, he actually becomes the film's moral center. Wow,
and that lets you know just how edgy this film
remains almost forty years later. It is hilarious. There's genuine pathos,
(33:52):
and my god, Keanu Reeves, in one of his earliest roles,
was really earnest and found it in good Yet as
the days and years go on, it will still be
Crisp and Glover's Lane who stays in the memory because
in some ways he's the James Dean of the piece,
(34:14):
the exemplar of youthful intensity.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
I think that's even what they said about him, right,
This is like a James Dean performance, similar to that
of a rebel without a cause.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Yes, because it's weird, sure in a way that James
Dean isn't that, but that full embodiment of the intensity
and following it wherever it goes, which is in its
own way. Again, as odd and dark as this is,
it's so honest. Yeah, it's it's actually beautiful. It's alive
(34:52):
and and his philosophy, though it's totally a moral, is
profound human. It's the human component of the movie interesting,
you know, because after all, even those friends that don't
go along, even those that go to the police, don't
(35:16):
do so because they felt anything at seeing a friend's
dead body, a friend murdered by another of their friends.
It's thoughts of what they should do and can't do
that lead to their choices, not what they're feeling. They
don't really feel much of anything. The only characters that
(35:36):
seem to truly feel anything are Lane, Dennis Hoppers, Feck
and the former counterculture figure turned high school teacher.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
Oh that's right, huh. You know I got to see
this again now. I wish I actually went to this.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
C Q and A one really fascinating thing that screenwriter
Jimenez didn't I read about him he died a few
years ago. Was he took the true life murder case
of a high school girl killed by her boyfriend in Milpedis,
who then, like in the movie, brought his friends out
to see the body would show it off, though it
(36:12):
went on much longer in real life. He placed that
true life murder story, or placed into that true life
murder story his own friends from high school in Sacramento.
All of them are based on real people, So it's
real people in a real murder case, only not the
(36:35):
people from that murder case. And I think that allowed
him to fill it with such authentic detail. It's all
so odd and so disturbing, and yet it rings true
so often. And I think that's a result of that,
that he's using so much biographical detail.
Speaker 3 (36:56):
That's so weird. Then why did he get a C plus?
Speaker 2 (36:59):
Do you C minus?
Speaker 3 (37:00):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (37:01):
Yes, Oh, yes, I have that professor absolutely who was
pretty proud of giving it a bad great.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
But I would have I would have been so ashamed
if the movie like had legs like that.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
Yeah, I wasn't. I was rejected from the class. And
then someone, someone with a pull, explained to the professor
that no, I was getting into the class. So anyway, after,
did you say, clearly genius is not appreciated by this person. Anyway? Uh,
(37:37):
it is a great film, and it and it came
at a time when Hollywood films, especially Hollywood teen films,
were rather boring in how in how safe they were.
I'm not saying that John Hughes movies weren't charming, but
they were safe, right, The John Hughes movies were safe.
They This definitely moved the needle and it shook things
(37:59):
up a bit. And it debuted at the same Toronto
International Film Festival where Blue Velvet had its premiere. They
both debuted at the same time. They were released a
month apart from each other in theaters their kindred something
big was brewing. And then for Tim Hunter to go
(38:19):
on to direct I think the three most important episodes
of the first two seasons that were not directed by Lynch.
Makes a great deal of sense. And I've even wondered
a little bit if Tim Hunter and River's Edge didn't
help influence Twin Peaks. Oh, the lineage and lineage. I
(38:41):
think it's the same cinematographer too. Oh. Now, this is
interesting because it seems like such an unrelated movie. But
as we've talked about so much, it's context. It's all context.
So I wanted to talk about this because I had
just come from this context of this concept of the
(39:02):
intensity of friendships in our formative years. And I finished
a long delayed rewatch of The Third Man, one of
my five all time favorite films, in its seventy fifth
anniversary four K Ultra high definition presentation. You know, it
is my desire to see to either watch for the
first time or rewatch every film on the site and
(39:23):
sound Pole before the next poll comes out in twenty
thirty two, and this is one of those films. It
It not only is one of my five all time
favorite films, it boasts perhaps my favorite cinematography of all time,
at least at least in black and white. And it's
not just the oblique expressionistic camera angles or the shimmering
(39:43):
nighttime location photography, which had never been done before and
never quite frankly, has been done as evocatively since it's
also the composition in framing, almost as if the indoor
sets were built our round. How the cinematographer Robert Krasker
(40:04):
had wanted to frame those scenes based on the way
he was able to frame the actual location photography they
had done earlier. Like I seriously am watching some of
these indoor scenes going. They had to build the set
for the framing he wanted, yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:23):
And to match that final sewer chase in terms of
those shadows and light. That's such a brilliant, well almost
abstracting expressionist.
Speaker 2 (40:34):
That even in the ruins, we get more and more
detail on the ruins, the more and more the corruption
is revealed, the more and more you start to see
in this vienna and the depth of field. Yes, that's impressive,
of course, and it allows for an unbelievable amount of
location detail. It's not just that we don't make films
(40:55):
like this anymore. It suddenly occurred to me on this viewing.
The truth is we can the locations and the filming
techniques don't exist anymore. The dialogue is almost without peer
the writing. I was really piecing together just how intelligent
(41:16):
the writing is, Even when the characters are anything but
yeah right, It's depiction of a specific postwar place and
time still rings utterly true. Every single character and performer
is utterly memorable. How many films has that where there
isn't anyone in it that doesn't impact you in stand
(41:38):
out in some way? You know, Casablanca comes close. There
are so many actors doing truly lovely, you know, layered work.
I don't know if any other film has ever been
so funny, so thrilling, so mysterious, and ultimately so heartbreaking.
I have been thinking of the film a lot, even
prior to River's Edge, in terms of its context with
(42:02):
Casablanca and the idea of the protagonists as American heroes.
Holly Martin's in Third Man is not nearly as iconic
as Rick in Casablanca, but in both cases, each character
is shockingly unwilling to do the right thing. For almost
the entire film, we think of them as Americans and heroes,
(42:28):
but for most of the films, both of them refuse
to do anything, least of all the right thing. They
go along satisfied in trying to prove how much more
clever they are than anyone else. That seems American to me,
until their cleverness is revealed to be cowardice where a
(42:49):
moral backbone ought to be. They go along until they
just can't do so anymore, and basically, at the last
possible opportunity for both of them, they do the right thing.
They are marked by their reluctance, by their fear, by
their self pity, which both of them have to great degrees, yeah,
(43:13):
and all of which they reveal prior to finally, at
long last, revealing a willingness to do the hard right thing.
Those characterizations in this film in a setting where black
market grift and transactional grift are the orders of the day,
(43:35):
make the seventy five year old third Man resonate today
as much as it ever has.
Speaker 3 (43:41):
Wowk.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
After all, Harry Lyme's defense for his murderous enterprise comes
across as reasonable and persuasive, right and charming. Like many
of the uber successful ultra capitalists of today, He's even
he's even a sympathetic figure. It's really terrifying when you
(44:06):
think of the implications he is a psychopath. But we
don't have to think of the implications of them. Thank goodness,
because we're living them so anyway. As I said in
context of The River's Edge, and it's director's fascination with
the intensity of friendships in our youth. Right, Harry Lyme
Orson Welles and Holly Martin's Joseph Cotton were friends in
(44:29):
their school days, and so they maintain this intense need
to believe in each other and to be with each
other no matter what. So Harry's betrayal is actually not
just a betrayal of a friendship. It's a destruction of innocence,
(44:50):
which is reflected in the destruction of all those beautiful, charming,
innocent buildings all around them in Vienna. Right, Casablanca is
ultimately a rousing film, right because it reveals that it
has not been about lost love as we had thought.
It's about rediscovered idealism, and it's about the start of
(45:15):
a beautiful friendship. The Third Man is heartbreaking because Holly
Martin's has finally embodied his idealism and backbone. And in
that moment where Harry gives him not only the go
ahead to do what he must, but almost pathetically silently
asks him to put him out of his misery. It's
(45:38):
in that final moment the start of an honest friendship
for the first time.
Speaker 3 (45:45):
Huh.
Speaker 2 (45:45):
But the cost of that honesty is one of their lives,
and the other cost is the other one being alone
again as he was completely at the start of the story.
The tension between honesty and happiness is darkly displayed throughout
the whole film, and it's at tension that, to me,
(46:06):
is echoed by the jaunty strings of the zither. When
I started to think about it through this point, I go,
that's why the zither. The zither serves to ground the film,
as did the locations in the real world post you know,
War Europe.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
Yeah, yeah, but I didn't player open his own restaurant
and play the zither.
Speaker 2 (46:27):
I'll tell that story. But but, but the zither reveals
the distance between the performance of the jauntiness that is
put on display and the cold, calculating, transactional darkness of
the world depicted. Harry Lime embodies that tension, that contradiction,
(46:49):
and he suffers indigestion because of it. It's a little
clue that there's a tension that he's uneasy with.
Speaker 3 (46:56):
Right.
Speaker 2 (46:57):
So the film was once ranked in the top fifteen
of the site and Sound Pole. Well. It still has
maintained a great deal of affection and admiration through the years.
In it was sixty three on the most recent list
of the greatest films ever made. So yeah, Anton Carras,
who did the zither music, had never scored anything. He
was just sitting playing that instrument at a cafe when
(47:19):
they were location scouting, and Carol Reid spotted him and said,
what is that instrument? I've never heard this, I've never
seen this, and the guy explained, and he said to
Carol Reid said to him, Hey, would you like to
do the music for a film? And Anton Carras said sure.
And so I think it used to take like six
weeks on average roughly to score a movie in those days,
(47:41):
and it took him six months to write the score,
locked into a flat in London because he didn't have
the experience and didn't know. But what came of it,
of course, was not only this great contribution to the film,
but a number one worldwide smash hit, the Third Man theme.
It's what Lily entered to. That was her wedding march
(48:02):
and her wedding but and that led to global world
tours for him and uh anyway, he earns so much
money off of it that he bought the cafe where
he was discovered and he spent out the rest of
his days just playing that zither at that cafe.
Speaker 3 (48:21):
Ah is that cafe still there in Vienna?
Speaker 2 (48:23):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (48:25):
That'd be great to go. It's like Harry's.
Speaker 1 (48:29):
Harry's Bar in Venice, right, it would be that kind
of iconic cafe.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
The Chilipac Hollywood Live event of the Week.
Speaker 3 (48:39):
My chambrelafom a cone.
Speaker 2 (48:48):
Le chasseamabot komlep geez giv pro. I went to see again,
not for the first time at the Greek not even
at the first time at the Greek Theater Pink Martini
and it was a show for the ages, proving quite
(49:11):
emotional and healing. At first, I was very concerned. I
thought I was gonna have a totally different report. I'm
not sure if it was the audio mix, but their
nine or ten or eleven piece orchestral sound seemed less
full than usual, which I think could have been the mix.
But and the first two songs all time classics of theirs,
(49:32):
A Motto Mio and sympathique were rather lackluster, a bit slow,
a bit low energy, low energy. I actually turned to
Lil and I said, they're boring. And I was worried
about singer China Forbes, whether it was nerves, which would
make sense given what she revealed later on, or just
(49:57):
need to warm up and in the hot, humid night air.
We had unprecedented humidity here and it was outdoors and
it's super hot. Maybe that does take an amount of
warming up the vocal chords that I'm not.
Speaker 1 (50:12):
And your read instruments would also be affected. That's a
would read that plays differently in humidity than dry air.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
I think your read hastings would also be ah see
what you did anyway, So whatever the reason, those first
couple of songs, she was not in good voice, as
they say, and and I felt that in those first
two songs that she was like actually conducting addiction class,
(50:41):
teaching all of us the lyrics through clear, precise enunciation
and by acting them out. It was, it was, it was.
It was not good. Soon, though, they mix things up
and the evening became more emotional, more rousing, more raucous,
and much later, China Forbes revealed that after thirty years.
(51:01):
It was her next to last concert with the Portland
based group. She's taking two years off to stay home
with her sixteen year old son, that so that she
can be close to him during his final two years
at home. They play one hundred and fifty dates a
year around the world, and so she told a hilarious
(51:23):
story about how this sixteen year old boy, who you
know is taller than her, has platinum blonde hair, once piercings,
and this is the best. China Forbes's son wants to
get a tattoo that says made in China, and the
(51:44):
audience loved it, just loved it, and she said, so,
I guess I should let him, though I'm going to
wait until the tariffs are lowered anyway. Perhaps because of
her impending departure after thirty years of collaborating with Pink
Martini and its founder Thomas Lauderdale, she was allowed to
sing a song of her most recent solo album, and
(52:06):
the song Full Circle was quite moving. Especially moving was
the rendition of the song Lily and I used for
our first dance reception over the Valley, which we learned
China Forbes had written for her son because it described
the view from his childhood bedroom. Is that cool? So?
(52:29):
There were also several guest vocalists, including Ari Shapiro, who
is leaving All Things Considered on NPR after twenty five
years in order to tour full time with Pink Martini.
Speaker 3 (52:43):
You're kiddy, I wouldn't think he has a singing voice.
Speaker 2 (52:46):
He's recorded some big hits with him. Yeah. Really, he's
really good and in many different languages. Yeah, this time Foisener,
Devon Twinno Homaricle. Some of these other artists though, were
(53:17):
eye opening, and I'm going to be exploring their catalog.
But I realized, I don't think I've ever shared with
you the story of Pink Martini, and it might be
something that even after thirty years, a lot of people
don't know, and it's rather delightful. Pink Martini was founded
by Thomas Lauderdale, who had studied classical music. He was
(53:40):
a classical pianist and had studied it at Harvard, but
he had no intention of going into music. He wanted
to go into politics. He was in fact working for
the mayor of Portland at the time and had intentions
to run for mayor as an adopted openly openly homosexual
artist of Asian descent would do, you'd run for political
(54:02):
office in the nineties. But they were formed after he
saw the Del Rubio Triplets on Peewee Herman's Christmas special.
Speaker 1 (54:12):
Okay, let me think back. Oh yeah, I sort of
remember them.
Speaker 2 (54:17):
Look thirty years on. All of this is so surprising
because they have a string of albums, right. I say
they tour one hundred and fifty days out of each year.
Their own founder Lauderdale once said, if the United Nations
had a house band back in nineteen sixty two, I'd
(54:37):
like to think we are that band. Ironically, it was
his interest in politics that led to Pink Martini because
in nineteen ninety four there was Measure thirteen in Oregon.
It was a proposed anti gay rights amendment to the
Oregon Constitution. So he organized a week of protest in
(55:00):
opposition to the bill, and he was determined to bring
some fun to these especially because he described it at
the time as a rather underwhelming political fundraising landscape in Portland.
So after seeing the Del Rubio Triplets on the Pee
Week Christmas special, he invited them to Portland to campaign
(55:24):
right and at a public concert at Cinema twenty one.
During that week, the opening band backed out at the
last minute, so Lauderdale himself donned a Betsy Johnson cocktail dress,
put on a wig, enlisted a singer, a bass player,
and a bongo player, and he dubbed the makeshift group
(55:47):
Pink Martini, And that night a musical sensation was born.
Speaker 3 (55:52):
Oh wow, that's hilarious, as.
Speaker 2 (55:55):
Was a new means of political activism for Lauderdale, as
he used the muse to fundraise to champion civil rights
causes and the environment and affordable housing, and education and
music education. Thirty one years later, they do not play
any more overtly political events, nor do they make overtly
(56:16):
political statements from the stage, and certainly never with their music.
But there is a loving diplomacy at the heart of
what the band does, both here and abroad. They represent
a broader, more inclusive America than certainly what our nation
has become. Their America is cross generational, cross cultural, cross political,
(56:41):
and the band itself appeals to both conservatives and liberals alike.
The joke about tariffs, notwithstanding, the only overtly political moment
in the concert, came in a tribute to Maimi van Doren.
What yes, that Mami van dorin one of the three
(57:02):
ms from the nineteen fifties who's still alive and well
in Newport Beach at the age of ninety four, and
she had recently recorded two songs with Pink Martini and
ten years ago at the Greek Lily and I got
one of the surprises of our concert Going Lives when
she actually sat in with the band for a song.
Speaker 3 (57:23):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (57:24):
It was from the nineteen sixty four German western Freddy
in the Wild West diek Liba was It's a great song.
But anyway, at the concert the other night, Lauderdale face
timed her so that she could get the love of
the crowd that desired to appreciate her. In the wake
(57:44):
of her being given a Lifetime Service Award from AIDS
Project Los Angeles, ah, the founder of that organization, said
that during the height of AIDS, Mami van Doren was
the first celebrity willing to lend her celebrity to that cause,
and that she has remained steadfast through the decades, just
(58:08):
a tireless friend and ally to the LGBTQ plus community.
It was pretty cool stuff anyway, So many musical biopics
get made, and we talk about some of them, but
Thomas Lauderdale's life is truly the stuff of making a movie.
If you don't know the story. If anyone hearing my
(58:30):
voice doesn't know the story of Thomas Lauderdale and his
childhood and his upbringing and his family, and they probably
do if they watched daytime talk shows at all in
the nineties. But if you don't know the story of
his upbringing, just stop what you're doing right now and
go look it up. Celebrity deaths. Alan Bergman lyricist Alan
(58:51):
Bergman Dean died July seventeenth at his home in Los Angeles.
Died of natural causes at the age of ninety nine.
Speaker 3 (58:59):
Wow so close.
Speaker 2 (59:01):
He and his wife, Marilyn Bergman, of course powerhouse songwriting team,
winning Oscars for their work on The Way We Were Right,
The Windmills of Your Mind, and their music for yentl.
Alan Bergman also wrote the theme songs to the TV
shows Mod Good Times and.
Speaker 3 (59:20):
Alice, Oh Look at that Yeah.
Speaker 2 (59:24):
Flacojmenez. He was a musician and a songwriter. He died
July thirty first at his son's home. He died after
a long illness at the age of eighty six. Grammy
Award winning accordionist and singer who specialized in tejano and
noirtigno tunes. Now, one of my favorite jokes I've ever
heard was from Don Snyder, my friend, the longtime musical
(59:47):
director of the Breakfast Club, who because we had some
accordion players as an act, and he whispered to me,
you know what my favorite sound in accordion makes is?
And I said, I said, what's that? He said, when
it lands on top of a tenor saxophone in a
trash dumpster. By the way, tenor saxophones getting strays from
(01:00:10):
him all of a sudden. It's a funny joke, But
accordionists have senses of humor, by the way, about their
their musical instrument of choice. And one of those musicians
that he was referencing said to me, yeah, you know,
we play these accordions. We left the van unlocked one
(01:00:32):
day hoping that they would get stolen, and I said,
what happened? He said, we got back and we had
seven accordions. Anyway. Flock ohaman As was a member of
the supergroups the Texas Tornadoes. They're Awesome and Loose Super seven,
and he played on the Dwight Yoakam and Buck Owens
(01:00:53):
hit Streets of Bakersfield. Chuck Mangioni, oh musician Chuck Mangioni
died July twenty second at his home in Rochester, New York,
in his sleep at the age of eighty four. He
it's safe to say made the flugelhorn cool.
Speaker 3 (01:01:10):
And how do you do that with.
Speaker 2 (01:01:12):
With instrumentals like his nineteen seventy eight chart topping single
Feels So Good that was ubiquitous at the time. Mangioni
(01:01:37):
had so much fun being Chuck Mangioni that he made
recurring guest appearances as himself on King of the Hill.
Speaker 1 (01:01:47):
I didn't realize that. I thought somebody was impersonating chuckman Joni.
Speaker 2 (01:01:51):
He did it himself any way. Bobby Whitlock, musician and songwriter,
died August tenth at his home in Texas. Died after
a brief illness at the age of seventy seven. Bobby
Whitlock founded What Important band.
Speaker 3 (01:02:07):
Dean the Deftones.
Speaker 2 (01:02:13):
You're not late, You're not far You're not far off,
you know sounding sounding. He formed the band with Eric Clapton.
Speaker 1 (01:02:22):
Oh yeah, what was that first band.
Speaker 3 (01:02:26):
He was in?
Speaker 2 (01:02:28):
It was Derek and the Dominoes.
Speaker 3 (01:02:32):
Derek and the Dominoes. Oh, it's so close.
Speaker 2 (01:02:35):
Bobby Whitlock played keyboards on the classic album Layla and
other assorted love songs. He wrote or co wrote half
of the album songs, including Bell Bottom Blues and Tell
the Truth. Sheila Jordan Dean I Don't Have to Tell
You was nicknamed the Lady with the Million Dollar Ears
(01:02:56):
by jazz great Charlie Parker. She died August eleventh in
New York City at the age of ninety six. Really
popular jazz singer, beloved for her dynamic improvisation and scat singing. Wow, yeah,
you know. I want to make this documentary about improvisation,
and I went jazz to be a big part of it.
Speaker 3 (01:03:16):
Yeah for sure.
Speaker 2 (01:03:18):
Finally, let's end with perhaps the most beautiful man ever
to grace the silver screen, someone who I think in
the nineties was voted one of the one hundred sexiest
people to ever live. Terrence Henry Stamp died August seventeenth
at the age of eighty seven. He was, of course
(01:03:40):
an actor, received many accolades in his time, including a
Golden Globe Award, a Canned Film Festival Award, and Academy
Award nominations, BAFT Awards nominations. Yeah, it was Empire magazine
who named him one of the sexiest one hundred Sexiest
film Stars of all time nineteen ninety five.
Speaker 1 (01:04:01):
Well, yeah, I mean that Saline movie did with the
shirt off when he was in his twenties, that all
the women clamored too.
Speaker 2 (01:04:09):
Well. He was absolutely a poster individual for the swing
in sixties. He trained at the Webber Douglas Academy of
Dramatic Art in London before acting in the wolf Mankowitz
production of This Year. Next year in nineteen sixty at
the West End Vaudeville Theater, he made his American film
(01:04:32):
debut film debut, playing the title role in the film
Billy Bud in nineteen sixty two. One of the greats,
one of the greatest. I mean, you love Peter Ustinov.
That's the I had to see it in an English
literature class. It is unbelievably great and it is interesting
(01:04:52):
that a guy that would be known so much for
his villain roles was kind of typecast in christ like
roles for many years because of Billy budd. It earned
him a Golden Globe Award as well as nominations for
Academy Award in BAFTA against such a great film, Robert
Ryan Everyone in It Is So Good. After that, he
(01:05:13):
starred in the psychological horror film The Collector, for which
he won the cann Film Festival Award for Best Actor.
Went on to star in such films as Modesty, Blaze,
Far from the Matting Crowd, Teorema All in the sixties.
He a decade later gains wider pop culture fame for
his role as the archevillain General Zod in the Superman
(01:05:37):
film Superman and Superman two. For his leading role in
the Australian road comedy The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of
the Desert, he earned a BAFTA Award in Golden Globe
Award nominations. He then starred in The Limey in nineteen
ninety nine for Steven Soderberg, which is So Great, and
(01:05:58):
he got an Independent Spirit Award nomination for that. Other
movies that he did include Legal Eagles in nineteen eighty six,
Wall Street in nineteen eighty seven, Young Guns in nineteen
eighty eight, Star Wars episode won the Phantommenace in ninety nine,
and his final performance was Last Night in Soho from
(01:06:20):
director Edgar Wright, just a few years ago in twenty
twenty one.
Speaker 3 (01:06:24):
Oh, I don't think I've seen that.
Speaker 2 (01:06:27):
What is surprising to me is that he grew up
idolizing Gary Cooper after his mother took him to see
BeO Jest in nineteen thirty nine when he was three
years old. He was also inspired by the nineteen fifties
method trained actor James Dean. That would come more to
(01:06:48):
mine to me, but was there not actually, even when
he was young, even in Billy Bud, a certain Gary
Cooper esque stowis.
Speaker 1 (01:07:00):
Yeah, now you say it, you're like, oh, I could
totally see that between the two of them, between.
Speaker 2 (01:07:05):
The two of them, that is really odd. I never
would have thought that anyway. Growing up in London during
World War Two. After leaving school, Terence Stamp worked in
a variety of advertising agencies in London, working his way
up to earning a reasonable salary. In the mid nineteen fifties.
He also worked as an assistant to professional golfer REDG.
(01:07:26):
Knight at one Stead Golf Club in East London, and
he describes this whole period of his life quite positively
in his memoirs, which I think is called Stamp Act.
I think the name of it, which is pretty cool.
In the nineteen sixties, before and during their rise to fame,
(01:07:50):
he shared a house with a roommate on Wimpole Street
in London that other actor Peter ustaof Michael Kaine.
Speaker 3 (01:08:03):
Michael Kaine Dah they were roommates.
Speaker 2 (01:08:07):
Terence Stamp turned down the lead role in Alfie.
Speaker 3 (01:08:10):
Oh You're kidding, said get my room mate instead.
Speaker 2 (01:08:13):
Michael Kaine used to always have nightmares that Terence Stamp
didn't turn it down.
Speaker 3 (01:08:19):
That would have changed Michael Kain's career for anyway.
Speaker 2 (01:08:22):
Associated with the swinging London scene of the sixties, during
which time he was in high profile relationships with actress
Julie Christie supermodel Gene Shrimpton. Stamp was among the subjects
photographed by David Bailey for a set titled Box of
Pin Ups. He and Jean Shrimpton were one of the
most photographed couples of Maud London. Uh and then after
(01:08:46):
she ended her relationship with him, was when he moved
to India and spent time at the Ashram of Krishna Murdy. Oh,
and when he returned, he only played for a long
time diabolic, villainous, devilish roles. Wow, as if something in
(01:09:08):
him knew that his own grounding, his own centering, his
own exploration.
Speaker 3 (01:09:15):
Needed to explore the darkness, the.
Speaker 2 (01:09:18):
Dark the body. And we've talked about it before, but
it is shocking how many people who are great at
playing villains are actually the loveliest and kindest and most
gentle people. And it's the people who identify with playing
heroes that you kind of want to steer clear of.
Speaker 3 (01:09:34):
Yes, that's true, right, belated spoiler alert
And now Your Chill Pack Hollywood Hour with Dean Hagland
and Phil Alareness.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Me Love me.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
Less, Begin to night.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
All right? If what I read is true, we are
recording Welcome to year nineteen, episode seventeen of Your Chillpack
Hollywood on this Labor Day Monday in the USA, the
symbolic end of summer and the first Monday of September.
Coming at you from the Los Angeles neighborhood of Los Phelis.
(00:46):
I am Phil Alareness, joining us via the magic of
podcasting and zoom and now a handheld zoom recorder all
the way from the environs of Detroit. It's the MotorCity
adjacent Madman TV's Dean Hagland. Great, Diane, are you looking
forward to fall in Michigan now that you are back
(01:06):
in your house?
Speaker 3 (01:07):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Yes, the Lee's will change colors and I don't have
to see them but.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Through a window.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
We received, as you know, emails from listeners plural, and
as you know, they were all directed towards John Lawler.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
So so we don't have to answer.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
They were emails about what people liked about Superman, which
I will wait on until I actually have a chance
to see the film and it's about Spike Lee's newest
highest to lowest, which we will get him to address
probably a couple shows from now. So thank you for
those emails. Keep those cards and letters and petitions coming.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Petitions. What the protest the protest letters?
Speaker 2 (01:56):
You know, if we haven't mentioned the email account a
long time Chillpackhollywood at yahoo dot com, people sell you
femails there. We read them and sometimes we read them
on the air. You know. I do want to follow
up on last week though, we were discussing movies we've
walked out of and no sooner do you name the
(02:20):
Stallone vehicle The Specialist? That's right, than the Specialist books
are suddenly in the news. What here's the screen rant
headline from this week, from right after our show dropped.
Sylvester Stallone's critically hated nineties action movie is getting a
(02:45):
TV remake O Great just at the time. Oscar nominated
producer Alexander Rodinianski has optioned the television rights to John
Shirley's action thriller book series The Specialist. The novels were
published under the pen name John Cutter, served as the
inspiration for the nineteen ninety four Warner Brothers film The Specialist,
(03:08):
starring Sylvester Stallone and Sharon Stone. Ar Content has secured
the rights to all eleven books in the series, and
the company said it's planning to bring the material into
present day, exploring the moral and tactical complexities of modern
drone era warfare. Oh hey, look that the company is
(03:30):
currently in discussions with showrunners. All Right, I don't want
to talk too much about a TV series that may,
let's face it, not even end up seeing the light
of day.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
However, I think it's already odd problematic that you're bringing
it up to date more than thirty years after it's
written into a new kind of warfare, and it'll be
the books.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
How yeah, exactly what moral ambiguity? I mean?
Speaker 1 (03:59):
If you're one chain any video of Ukraine Russian War,
you realize that it's mostly robotic now that everybody can
just sit in a basement with your ocular lens and
your controllers and just blast each other silly.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
And if you see the original Sylvester Stallone vehicle, you'll
notice it's mostly robotic. So I'm so filled with joy
right now after mentioning it off air and Keen listeners.
I'm provided that this recording is actually working, will no
doubt have been able to enjoy the same thing I enjoyed,
(04:35):
which was your Doberman puppies lapping up water in the well.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
You know, it is a lovely sunny day and they
just ate a large beef stick, so naturally all that salt.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
And your newly restored home has no shortage of echo,
So that sound really was It was the surround sound
lapping of water.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Slipped. I was at a beach. How about that? It
was the sound of the shores.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
You know. We talked a while back about how Todd
Haynes proposed new film and beyond proposed it was in production,
a nineteen thirties gay detective film. Remember we talked about
this and how yeah, the plug got pulled after again,
(05:28):
everybody was already on location and money was being spent.
It was a project brought to Killer Films, the production
entity by its star Joaquin Phoenix, who, beyond the last minute,
simply failed to show up on location for two weeks.
Apps a case of cold feet about the rather explicit
gay sex scenes. Although again he was the guy who
(05:51):
developed the project right, so.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
You would think he had read that earlier than heavily
in New Mexico.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
So the film had to be shuttered and was thought dead,
and we were grieving what could have been because it
seemed like a gender and genre bending detective film from
Todd Haynes, a great filmmaker and particularly great at making
us reappraise genres and eras of the past. We really
(06:20):
wanted to get to see that film. Well, thanks to
Pedro Pascal, Oh, the film may just be going before
cameras in twenty twenty six.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
Look at that, he's taken over the lead role.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Yeah, if they can work it into what is no
doubt a very very busy schedule in his contract to
his exclusive contract to start in every motion picture, a
television show filmed anywhere in North America.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
I'm sure he's doing a couple more fantastic fours.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Anyway, Dan Notce is the name of that film. And seriously,
I mean I very rarely do I read about the
concept of a new film and genuinely feel like, oh, yeah, oh,
I can't wait to see that. But this I just
(07:12):
I Mexico City, nineteen thirties Detectives Gayness. It's literally the
big screen version of your Chillpack Hollywood Hour it is.
I saw the film this week that has become as
we we've talked about before, you and I off this
on our side project. I saw the film this week
(07:34):
that has become what I think is the third film
of the year to capture the cultural conversation, right, not
just box office success. There have been huge box office
successes like f one Lelo and Stitch that I would
say have avoided cultural conversation.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
That nobody talked about.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Well, yeah, you don't just find people discussing these films
on the waves in your local beer halls. I don't
know where people hear other people have cultural conversations this show,
but you know, probably some conversation in the halls of Hollywood,
as in, hey, how do we recreate this amount of money?
(08:19):
But I always said, there used to be kind of
this magical triumvirate for a movie. If it got critical love,
box office and awards. That was the triple that everybody
was chasing. And man, if you made a movie that
(08:39):
did all this, you were set for a long time,
no matter how many companies you bankrupted after that. I'm
looking at you, Michael Chimino. So but nowadays I feel
like just as impressive is if you have a film
that actually captures a cultural conversation, because films don't have
(09:01):
the same imprint anymore, right, right, And so what we
were saying was, and I don't know if any others
have occurred to you, but it seems to me this
year it's been Sinners, Superman, and Weapons that have achieved
this thus far. Critics have liked them enough, and audiences
(09:25):
have not only liked them enough. But what I think
is going on here is getting something they need from
them enough that they want to talk about those things afterwards.
And in the case of Sinners, of course totally understand
because it's a time and a place and a people
(09:47):
that incredibly underrepresentative represented at all, right in movies. And
when I say not represented at all, I mean, of
course vampires in the Deep South in the nineteen twenties
blues era.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
Yeah, oh that did happen.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
They have not been represented anyway. So this one, Weapons
is out now, and of course I was concerned about
seeing it because I'd heard that it was scarier than
writer director Zach Kraiger's prior Barbarian.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
Which you couldn't watch to the end.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Which I couldn't watch to the end, which I only
watched because you hailed it so much, And it was
a film immediately that I found myself admiring and that I,
in all good conscious have to readily admit I could
not watch all of I had to stop with about
(10:45):
thirty minutes remaining because it was that terrifying to me.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
Disturbing for sure, and terrifying.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
This film isn't actually scary, it is horrifying. It is
a horror film, and I think that that's a distinction
that doesn't maybe get discussed enough right, just as Hitchcock
used to talk about again the distinction with suspense films.
(11:16):
He said he didn't make horror films, he made suspense pictures,
and so all these things have different I believe, visceral
reactions in an audience, And I will say that maybe
there are parts in the first half of Weapons that
you'll think are scary or going to be scary, but
(11:37):
it's such an interestingly structured film, almost rachamon esque, that
once you get to the midpoint and you have a
handle on not what is happening, but how it's being
unfolded for you, then it no longer plays to me.
Like a scary picture, but it some of its themes
(12:01):
and its resonance is now deep and even further so
you have less a fear factor and more of a horror.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
Factor, a cultural horror factor.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Well, this is what I know. You haven't seen this,
so I'm I'll be intrigued because I do wonder, like, literally,
what is it that people are getting from this? It's
not just a scary film or a horrific film, or
you know, or a paranormal horror film. You know, to
have a cultural conversation again, what is it that is
(12:37):
tying into what the audience writ large needs. It's you know,
it focuses on townspeople affected by the disappearance of seventeen
or of seventeen of eighteen students in one elementary school
class and.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
Get up to seventeen in the morning and run.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Away exactly, and the townspeople who are affected find the
need to invent boogeymen instead of doing the hard work
of trying to understand what actually.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
Happened or finding them, like, instead of blaming something, well.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
There are there are officials that are supposed to be
doing that, right. It is an ongoing investigation, So maybe
I wouldn't put it on the people, the townspeople to
find them. But isn't it an interesting American pastime. We're
not going to do anything about the problem, but we
(13:36):
are going to help identify and publicly persecute boogeymen that
we've invented.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
Right to see who's to blame?
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Our powerlessness has been weaponized to what end? And this
is what the Weapons of the movie refers to is weaponization.
When the actual evil in the film is revealed, it's
truly evil, but not nearly as horrifying to me as
(14:09):
what fully conscious people do to each other under the
authority they feel granted to them by their own suffering.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
Ah, fascinating.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Yeah, So it's an interesting film to discuss from the
point of view of Yeah, what is what is a culture?
Are we getting that we needed from this that is
leading to not only box office success, but to this
cultural conversation that it's having. One final note, I will
(14:40):
have and one of the things that the film certainly
gave me that I didn't know I needed and you
should have known I needed the usage of George Harrison's
Beware of Darkness as the opening song during the disappearance
of the children and the opening credits. Uh oh, it's
(15:01):
nothing short of sublime. It's one of the best needle
drops in a long, long time. Watch out now take.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
This dropping.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Weapons of course, doing still great business at the box office,
but in a fascinating bit of historic firsts Okay was
not number one at the box office last week. It
was number two. It made like fifteen and a half million,
coming in second place behind the eighteen million earned in
(15:49):
two days at the box office because it only played
Saturday and Sunday by Netflix's K pop anime film K
Pop Demon Hunters. Now, as you know, Netflix will release
some of their films to theaters. The joke I love
(16:12):
to say, right, they escape more than they are released.
They don't report box office on these things. Usually the
films go to either theaters they own or they're renting,
and usually it's to garner award consideration. Right, and some
(16:33):
of these films I will see theatrically. Roma I saw
several times on the big screen, Like why would I
see a seventy millimeter black and white film at home
on Netflix instead of trying to see it on the
big screen. If I can't this film, I don't know
why the idea was made. It was already their number
one streaming film. It's maintained number one streaming films, set
(16:55):
all these records, and it got into theaters for two days,
and the numbers were discovered by all the rival studios
who reported them. Oh, so that's how we know that
in two days it was the number one film at
the box office. And this has me thinking about a
(17:17):
whole lot of different things again about they're all on
assault on theater going, which they rely on for so
much of their content, because so much of their content
are sequels, too successful theatrical films. That's how the IP
has gotten launched in the first place. They spent all
(17:38):
this money to get The Knives out sequels because that
was a huge international box office hit. And by the way,
that first sequel, Glass Onion, was the first Netflix film
where the box office results got out, and I think
that was in part by the makers of the film itself. Ah,
(18:00):
that film had been exclusively released I think, to AMC
theaters a month before it went streaming, and they could
show it for one week, and the numbers off those
screens were really good, so good that again Daniel Craig
and the filmmakers were going, wtf here, Why can't we
have a theatrical experience for this film? And the question
(18:25):
to me is more sound than ever. If you can
have a number one box office hit without paying to
promote it in theaters, I didn't even know. Why are
you leaving that money on the table? Why are you
not exploring ways to incorporate the theatrical experience into what
(18:47):
you're doing? And I don't And I know that the
answer gets back to our algorithms and our synthetic ais
that run the company read Hastings. No, you know, they know,
they know, and I who am I to tell anybody
how to run their business, especially when their business is
(19:08):
working well. Other than again, Netflix is a place, in
part built on people like me who loved movies and
who will keep coming there because we love movies. And yet,
can't you please love movies just a little bit yourself?
Speaker 3 (19:31):
I suppose?
Speaker 1 (19:34):
But could this have a similar thing to like Minecraft,
the movie where all fourteen year old boys go buy
a bag of popcorn and don't eat it until the
scene where the bumblebee shows up and they all stand up,
scream their heads off and throw popcorn at each other
and that's the experience of the movie. It's not watching
(19:56):
the movie. It's not how good the movie is, it's
that everybody does this thing in the middle of the
movie with popcorn. Does this K pop thing have a
similar phenomena amongst the kids?
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Maybe, but what does that matter, you know, get them
into theaters. I mean, that can't be the only one
that has that phenomenon.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
Well, it might be. I mean, there's only one Rocky
horror picture show.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
I know.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
They tried others where you're supposed to sing along and
dress up in the characters, and nobody did that. So
I'm just wondering if there is a larger element to
this than just how good the movie is.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
Yeah, well maybe they're Yeah. I mean, it is an
interesting idea that they know how the movies are playing
from streaming. Why did it because that's the thing. Why
did it get two days in theaters? Why why would
they decide to do that. They're not pushing it for awards,
they don't need to push it. I mean, part of
(20:57):
me says, well, it's got to be a way to
try to lure new subscribers. Our young subscribers are the
K pop anime fans. Less likely to subscribe, or were
trying to lure them. Maybe I don't know what the
purpose behind it was, but I do know this idea
of trying to hide the success of it so that
(21:17):
you don't have to be a part of the theatrical
game is just really seems stupid, like or child dish
even like that, And you have to be a part
of You were negotiating along with the other big producers
during all the union strikes. You were one of them.
(21:37):
You were part of the group that was known as
the producers right the AMPTP. You're part of a group.
You're always a part of it when the awards come around.
Be a part of what laughingly I will call the
community of entertainment conglomerates. But be a part of it.
(22:00):
Realize again that to a degree, it's not just within
your own raft of titles, but within the industry as
a whole. Historically, all bye, all boats do rise together.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
Right theoretically, Yeah, but that means you are also uh
sharing coffee with these other producers in the restaurants around
the city.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
Is Netflix.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
I don't even know if I can name one Netflix executive.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
At the top read Hastings. I already did that for you?
Speaker 3 (22:35):
I thought that was an AI name.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
It does? It does sound like I know, Yeah, it's
a It is a real name of someone totally made up. Yes. Anyway,
despite all that the box office success, we still probably
have Netflix most importantly for stuff like Happy Gilmour two,
(22:58):
and I'm not sure that would have done box office
no matter how beloved it was in But maybe because
this appetite for comedies, as we've talked about over past weeks,
seems to be there, so maybe it would have. But
I don't know. It is a sentimental nostalg maybe not
sentimental for something like having, but it's a nostalgia play
(23:20):
that they specialize in. So yeah, by all means, and
they also exist for things like The Thursday Murder Club.
That's why they exist. And despite knowing better than to
look forward to anything directed by Chris Columbus, God help me,
I was looking forward to the Netflix feature film adaptation
(23:42):
of the first book in the series of The Thursday
Murder Club. Yeah, and you know, it's about what I
expected from both Chris Columbus and Netflix. It's sort of
the best of what straight to Netflix movies should be.
No art, but peculiarly satisfying and something that would have
(24:03):
been much better if you'd put extensive commercial breaks in
it and aired it live on CBS on a Sunday
night in the nineteen eighties. Okay, the cast full of greats,
frequently given very little to do. Helen Mirren shines in
the biggest part. Pierce Brosnan is the best he's been
(24:24):
in years. Ben Kingsley is game and largely wasted. Celia
Imri is a true delight. But it's some of the
supporting characters that pop in that are actually surprising, though
again rarely given anything to do. The one that's given
the most to do and who acquits herself quite well
(24:45):
as their police ally is Naomi Acki, who has been
on quite a run. She played Whitney Houston in The
Big Screen, a biopic. She was Robert Pattinson's love interest
in Mickey seventeen, which we both saw. Yeah, and she
co starred in this year's critical consensus top film Thus Far,
(25:09):
Sorry Baby, which I talked about just gird. Yeah, that's
all recent.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
So she's very good. And if there's a sequel, and
there are other books, I hope they're smart enough to
bring her back. She really is a delight, and just
those films shows incredible range, like she's seriously the real deal.
David Tennant shows up for a few scenes.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
Doctor who.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
Yeah. Richard E. Grant shows up for one scene.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
He seems to be doing that because I just saw
a hit Man's Bodyguard that was leaving Netflix, and he
has one hilarious cameo in that thing.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
He's so good, He's always been good. And look if
he's getting paiday, if he's getting bank for this, it's overdue.
Just take whatever money they offer you, seriously, yes, and.
Speaker 3 (26:09):
Just everybody back away and let him do his thing.
Roll camera us you go.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
So the best I can say about this thing is
all of it is palatable. Occasionally it is touching, sometimes
it is funny. The mystery is engaging enough, though it's
unfolding is rather tedious, and its resolution more sad than rewarding.
The best scenes, the scenes that hint at what could
(26:34):
have been if you were interested in making like a
real movie, involve Jonathan Price as Helen Morren's husband who
is descending into dementia. Oh, something he specializes in these days,
because that's what he's doing in Slow Horses, as the
former head of the spy agency. He's got dementia, but
(26:57):
in this film he plays her husband and he's descending
into dementia. I think he was a former author, published author.
And despite his dementia, he nevertheless solves one of the murders,
but hilarious, and then immediately forgets that he has. He
confronts the person and says straight out like, why did
(27:21):
you do it? How did you know? Why did you
do it? And the guy starts to explain, and Jonathan
Price doesn't know what they're talking about anymore. It's really
really good. It's good stuff, and let's face it, somewhere
along the along the lines, Jonathan Price became an international treasure.
I don't know when that was, but forty years on
(27:41):
from Brazil, it's safe to say that Jonathan Price did
become an international treasure.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
Well, when he was the evil villain in the Bond movie.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
That didn't make him an international Like I feel like
his whole career is littered with things that are almost
good anyway. Will there be additional movie made from the
follow up novels? Again, probably also I don't care, and
if there are, I will watch them as soon as
they become available.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
Well, that's that's the endorsement. I need to go stop
this show and batchet right now.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
Speaking of forty years ago, man, do you remember River's Edge? Yes, with.
Speaker 3 (28:27):
Crispin Glover right, Yes.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
So's a movie that came out when I was at UCLA.
I had not started film school yet, and it was
a big deal when it came out because of course
it was written by a UCLA Film School grad and
it was an assignment. It was a class assignment the script. Yeah,
(28:50):
so I remember that, but it was shocking how little
I remembered of the of the movie. And I went
to a screening of it at the Cinema Tech that
was followed by a Q and A with the film's director,
Tim Hunter, And in that Q and A, he revealed,
because you know, he's made so many youth oriented projects
(29:13):
before that he had made the se Hinton adaptation texts,
and then he would go from River's Edge to direct
three of the most important episodes of Twin Peaks in
those first two seasons, and he revealed that he never
wanted to let go of the feelings of intense friendship
(29:35):
he had when he was in high school, and this
led to him gravitating towards stories of teen friendships to
try to explore how your friendships when you're that age
have an intensity that do not exist into adulthood, and
he wanted to pay honor to those by never letting
(29:56):
go of that in his storytelling. And certainly his edge
fits into that, you know, as do these other projects
I'm saying. So yeah. So Neiljmenez wrote the script and
it was a class assignment. It earned him a C
minus because he begged for a passing grade.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
Oh you're kidding.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
Tim Hunter knew it was brilliant, however, and as production approached,
it was Jimenez who feared that the film might be
too edgy and too dark. Tim Hunter did not let
him change quote a goddamn word of it.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
Oh wow.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
And one of the things that makes the film so
dark is what Crispin Glover's performance did to the film
as a whole. The film was, you know, a straight
low budget scale affair across the board, and Crispin was
fresh off back to the future. Ah right, So you
(30:54):
theoretically could have commanded more money from doing other things.
But he hated, as he's notoriously said, he's hey, he
hated working on Back to the Future, hates his work
in it, and he was very, very interested in doing
River's Edge, so much so that he was willing to
audition for it. Oh And Hunter and the producers were
(31:16):
excited by the prospect of him being in the film,
and indeed, of course building some of the marketing at
least around Crispin Glover from Back to the Future, right,
using the thing that he hates as part of the
marketing campaign. But although he admitted a willingness to audition,
it seemingly turned into a reluctance, and so for weeks
(31:39):
he did not show up to the Wow, kept them waiting,
and when he finally came in, it was with the
wig and the entire wardrobe we see in the film
and the character exactly as he wound up playing it.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
Wow. So he basically worked for two weeks on this thing.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
In other words, it was out there for an audition, right.
I doubt any audition of anyone ever actually cast has
probably been weirder than that audition. And the filmmakers, by
Tim Hunter's own recollection, had a very difficult choice. They
(32:23):
had to go with someone they did not understand and
feared might crater the entire affair, which was Crisp and
Glover or try to find someone safe. Right. They made
the right choice, though, but it was courageous to go
with a performance they didn't understand, and it pushed the film,
(32:48):
as I said, even darker, because when you think about it,
in any other film, Dennis Hopper's character Feck, a one
legged former bike on the run for more than twenty
years after the shooting death of the only woman he
ever loved, which he was responsible for.
Speaker 3 (33:07):
Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
Who never leaves home, who ekes out a modest living,
selling pot to underage school kids, all while shacking up
with a plastic sex doll. In any other film, that
would have been the darkest, edgiest character. But with and
I'm not joking with Glover's interpretation of the leader of
(33:30):
the high school gang of friends, however, Hopper doesn't seem
so odd. In fact, he actually becomes the film's moral center. Wow,
and that lets you know just how edgy this film
remains almost forty years later. It is hilarious. There's genuine pathos,
(33:52):
and my god, Keanu Reeves, in one of his earliest roles,
was really earnest and found it in good Yet as
the days and years go on, it will still be
Crisp and Glover's Lane who stays in the memory because
in some ways he's the James Dean of the piece,
(34:14):
the exemplar of youthful intensity.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
I think that's even what they said about him, right,
This is like a James Dean performance, similar to that
of a rebel without a cause.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Yes, because it's weird, sure in a way that James
Dean isn't that, but that full embodiment of the intensity
and following it wherever it goes, which is in its
own way. Again, as odd and dark as this is,
it's so honest. Yeah, it's it's actually beautiful. It's alive
(34:52):
and and his philosophy, though it's totally a moral, is
profound human. It's the human component of the movie interesting,
you know, because after all, even those friends that don't
go along, even those that go to the police, don't
(35:16):
do so because they felt anything at seeing a friend's
dead body, a friend murdered by another of their friends.
It's thoughts of what they should do and can't do
that lead to their choices, not what they're feeling. They
don't really feel much of anything. The only characters that
(35:36):
seem to truly feel anything are Lane, Dennis Hoppers, Feck
and the former counterculture figure turned high school teacher.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
Oh that's right, huh. You know I got to see
this again now. I wish I actually went to this.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
C Q and A one really fascinating thing that screenwriter
Jimenez didn't I read about him he died a few
years ago. Was he took the true life murder case
of a high school girl killed by her boyfriend in Milpedis,
who then, like in the movie, brought his friends out
to see the body would show it off, though it
(36:12):
went on much longer in real life. He placed that
true life murder story, or placed into that true life
murder story his own friends from high school in Sacramento.
All of them are based on real people, So it's
real people in a real murder case, only not the
(36:35):
people from that murder case. And I think that allowed
him to fill it with such authentic detail. It's all
so odd and so disturbing, and yet it rings true
so often. And I think that's a result of that,
that he's using so much biographical detail.
Speaker 3 (36:56):
That's so weird. Then why did he get a C plus?
Speaker 2 (36:59):
Do you C minus?
Speaker 3 (37:00):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (37:01):
Yes, Oh, yes, I have that professor absolutely who was
pretty proud of giving it a bad great.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
But I would have I would have been so ashamed
if the movie like had legs like that.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
Yeah, I wasn't. I was rejected from the class. And
then someone, someone with a pull, explained to the professor
that no, I was getting into the class. So anyway, after,
did you say, clearly genius is not appreciated by this person. Anyway? Uh,
(37:37):
it is a great film, and it and it came
at a time when Hollywood films, especially Hollywood teen films,
were rather boring in how in how safe they were.
I'm not saying that John Hughes movies weren't charming, but
they were safe, right, The John Hughes movies were safe.
They This definitely moved the needle and it shook things
(37:59):
up a bit. And it debuted at the same Toronto
International Film Festival where Blue Velvet had its premiere. They
both debuted at the same time. They were released a
month apart from each other in theaters their kindred something
big was brewing. And then for Tim Hunter to go
(38:19):
on to direct I think the three most important episodes
of the first two seasons that were not directed by Lynch.
Makes a great deal of sense. And I've even wondered
a little bit if Tim Hunter and River's Edge didn't
help influence Twin Peaks. Oh, the lineage and lineage. I
(38:41):
think it's the same cinematographer too. Oh. Now, this is
interesting because it seems like such an unrelated movie. But
as we've talked about so much, it's context. It's all context.
So I wanted to talk about this because I had
just come from this context of this concept of the
(39:02):
intensity of friendships in our formative years. And I finished
a long delayed rewatch of The Third Man, one of
my five all time favorite films, in its seventy fifth
anniversary four K Ultra high definition presentation. You know, it
is my desire to see to either watch for the
first time or rewatch every film on the site and
(39:23):
sound Pole before the next poll comes out in twenty
thirty two, and this is one of those films. It
It not only is one of my five all time
favorite films, it boasts perhaps my favorite cinematography of all time,
at least at least in black and white. And it's
not just the oblique expressionistic camera angles or the shimmering
(39:43):
nighttime location photography, which had never been done before and
never quite frankly, has been done as evocatively since it's
also the composition in framing, almost as if the indoor
sets were built our round. How the cinematographer Robert Krasker
(40:04):
had wanted to frame those scenes based on the way
he was able to frame the actual location photography they
had done earlier. Like I seriously am watching some of
these indoor scenes going. They had to build the set
for the framing he wanted, yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:23):
And to match that final sewer chase in terms of
those shadows and light. That's such a brilliant, well almost
abstracting expressionist.
Speaker 2 (40:34):
That even in the ruins, we get more and more
detail on the ruins, the more and more the corruption
is revealed, the more and more you start to see
in this vienna and the depth of field. Yes, that's impressive,
of course, and it allows for an unbelievable amount of
location detail. It's not just that we don't make films
(40:55):
like this anymore. It suddenly occurred to me on this viewing.
The truth is we can the locations and the filming
techniques don't exist anymore. The dialogue is almost without peer
the writing. I was really piecing together just how intelligent
(41:16):
the writing is, Even when the characters are anything but
yeah right, It's depiction of a specific postwar place and
time still rings utterly true. Every single character and performer
is utterly memorable. How many films has that where there
isn't anyone in it that doesn't impact you in stand
(41:38):
out in some way? You know, Casablanca comes close. There
are so many actors doing truly lovely, you know, layered work.
I don't know if any other film has ever been
so funny, so thrilling, so mysterious, and ultimately so heartbreaking.
I have been thinking of the film a lot, even
prior to River's Edge, in terms of its context with
(42:02):
Casablanca and the idea of the protagonists as American heroes.
Holly Martin's in Third Man is not nearly as iconic
as Rick in Casablanca, but in both cases, each character
is shockingly unwilling to do the right thing. For almost
the entire film, we think of them as Americans and heroes,
(42:28):
but for most of the films, both of them refuse
to do anything, least of all the right thing. They
go along satisfied in trying to prove how much more
clever they are than anyone else. That seems American to me,
until their cleverness is revealed to be cowardice where a
(42:49):
moral backbone ought to be. They go along until they
just can't do so anymore, and basically, at the last
possible opportunity for both of them, they do the right thing.
They are marked by their reluctance, by their fear, by
their self pity, which both of them have to great degrees, yeah,
(43:13):
and all of which they reveal prior to finally, at
long last, revealing a willingness to do the hard right thing.
Those characterizations in this film in a setting where black
market grift and transactional grift are the orders of the day,
(43:35):
make the seventy five year old third Man resonate today
as much as it ever has.
Speaker 3 (43:41):
Wowk.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
After all, Harry Lyme's defense for his murderous enterprise comes
across as reasonable and persuasive, right and charming. Like many
of the uber successful ultra capitalists of today, He's even
he's even a sympathetic figure. It's really terrifying when you
(44:06):
think of the implications he is a psychopath. But we
don't have to think of the implications of them. Thank goodness,
because we're living them so anyway. As I said in
context of The River's Edge, and it's director's fascination with
the intensity of friendships in our youth. Right, Harry Lyme
Orson Welles and Holly Martin's Joseph Cotton were friends in
(44:29):
their school days, and so they maintain this intense need
to believe in each other and to be with each
other no matter what. So Harry's betrayal is actually not
just a betrayal of a friendship. It's a destruction of innocence,
(44:50):
which is reflected in the destruction of all those beautiful, charming,
innocent buildings all around them in Vienna. Right, Casablanca is
ultimately a rousing film, right because it reveals that it
has not been about lost love as we had thought.
It's about rediscovered idealism, and it's about the start of
(45:15):
a beautiful friendship. The Third Man is heartbreaking because Holly
Martin's has finally embodied his idealism and backbone. And in
that moment where Harry gives him not only the go
ahead to do what he must, but almost pathetically silently
asks him to put him out of his misery. It's
(45:38):
in that final moment the start of an honest friendship
for the first time.
Speaker 3 (45:45):
Huh.
Speaker 2 (45:45):
But the cost of that honesty is one of their lives,
and the other cost is the other one being alone
again as he was completely at the start of the story.
The tension between honesty and happiness is darkly displayed throughout
the whole film, and it's at tension that, to me,
(46:06):
is echoed by the jaunty strings of the zither. When
I started to think about it through this point, I go,
that's why the zither. The zither serves to ground the film,
as did the locations in the real world post you know,
War Europe.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
Yeah, yeah, but I didn't player open his own restaurant
and play the zither.
Speaker 2 (46:27):
I'll tell that story. But but, but the zither reveals
the distance between the performance of the jauntiness that is
put on display and the cold, calculating, transactional darkness of
the world depicted. Harry Lime embodies that tension, that contradiction,
(46:49):
and he suffers indigestion because of it. It's a little
clue that there's a tension that he's uneasy with.
Speaker 3 (46:56):
Right.
Speaker 2 (46:57):
So the film was once ranked in the top fifteen
of the site and Sound Pole. Well. It still has
maintained a great deal of affection and admiration through the years.
In it was sixty three on the most recent list
of the greatest films ever made. So yeah, Anton Carras,
who did the zither music, had never scored anything. He
was just sitting playing that instrument at a cafe when
(47:19):
they were location scouting, and Carol Reid spotted him and said,
what is that instrument? I've never heard this, I've never
seen this, and the guy explained, and he said to
Carol Reid said to him, Hey, would you like to
do the music for a film? And Anton Carras said sure.
And so I think it used to take like six
weeks on average roughly to score a movie in those days,
(47:41):
and it took him six months to write the score,
locked into a flat in London because he didn't have
the experience and didn't know. But what came of it,
of course, was not only this great contribution to the film,
but a number one worldwide smash hit, the Third Man theme.
It's what Lily entered to. That was her wedding march
(48:02):
and her wedding but and that led to global world
tours for him and uh anyway, he earns so much
money off of it that he bought the cafe where
he was discovered and he spent out the rest of
his days just playing that zither at that cafe.
Speaker 3 (48:21):
Ah is that cafe still there in Vienna?
Speaker 2 (48:23):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (48:25):
That'd be great to go. It's like Harry's.
Speaker 1 (48:29):
Harry's Bar in Venice, right, it would be that kind
of iconic cafe.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
The Chilipac Hollywood Live event of the Week.
Speaker 3 (48:39):
My chambrelafom a cone.
Speaker 2 (48:48):
Le chasseamabot komlep geez giv pro. I went to see again,
not for the first time at the Greek not even
at the first time at the Greek Theater Pink Martini
and it was a show for the ages, proving quite
(49:11):
emotional and healing. At first, I was very concerned. I
thought I was gonna have a totally different report. I'm
not sure if it was the audio mix, but their
nine or ten or eleven piece orchestral sound seemed less
full than usual, which I think could have been the mix.
But and the first two songs all time classics of theirs,
(49:32):
A Motto Mio and sympathique were rather lackluster, a bit slow,
a bit low energy, low energy. I actually turned to
Lil and I said, they're boring. And I was worried
about singer China Forbes, whether it was nerves, which would
make sense given what she revealed later on, or just
(49:57):
need to warm up and in the hot, humid night air.
We had unprecedented humidity here and it was outdoors and
it's super hot. Maybe that does take an amount of
warming up the vocal chords that I'm not.
Speaker 1 (50:12):
And your read instruments would also be affected. That's a
would read that plays differently in humidity than dry air.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
I think your read hastings would also be ah see
what you did anyway, So whatever the reason, those first
couple of songs, she was not in good voice, as
they say, and and I felt that in those first
two songs that she was like actually conducting addiction class,
(50:41):
teaching all of us the lyrics through clear, precise enunciation
and by acting them out. It was, it was, it was.
It was not good. Soon, though, they mix things up
and the evening became more emotional, more rousing, more raucous,
and much later, China Forbes revealed that after thirty years.
(51:01):
It was her next to last concert with the Portland
based group. She's taking two years off to stay home
with her sixteen year old son, that so that she
can be close to him during his final two years
at home. They play one hundred and fifty dates a
year around the world, and so she told a hilarious
(51:23):
story about how this sixteen year old boy, who you
know is taller than her, has platinum blonde hair, once piercings,
and this is the best. China Forbes's son wants to
get a tattoo that says made in China, and the
(51:44):
audience loved it, just loved it, and she said, so,
I guess I should let him, though I'm going to
wait until the tariffs are lowered anyway. Perhaps because of
her impending departure after thirty years of collaborating with Pink
Martini and its founder Thomas Lauderdale, she was allowed to
sing a song of her most recent solo album, and
(52:06):
the song Full Circle was quite moving. Especially moving was
the rendition of the song Lily and I used for
our first dance reception over the Valley, which we learned
China Forbes had written for her son because it described
the view from his childhood bedroom. Is that cool? So?
(52:29):
There were also several guest vocalists, including Ari Shapiro, who
is leaving All Things Considered on NPR after twenty five
years in order to tour full time with Pink Martini.
Speaker 3 (52:43):
You're kiddy, I wouldn't think he has a singing voice.
Speaker 2 (52:46):
He's recorded some big hits with him. Yeah. Really, he's
really good and in many different languages. Yeah, this time Foisener,
Devon Twinno Homaricle. Some of these other artists though, were
(53:17):
eye opening, and I'm going to be exploring their catalog.
But I realized, I don't think I've ever shared with
you the story of Pink Martini, and it might be
something that even after thirty years, a lot of people
don't know, and it's rather delightful. Pink Martini was founded
by Thomas Lauderdale, who had studied classical music. He was
(53:40):
a classical pianist and had studied it at Harvard, but
he had no intention of going into music. He wanted
to go into politics. He was in fact working for
the mayor of Portland at the time and had intentions
to run for mayor as an adopted openly openly homosexual
artist of Asian descent would do, you'd run for political
(54:02):
office in the nineties. But they were formed after he
saw the Del Rubio Triplets on Peewee Herman's Christmas special.
Speaker 1 (54:12):
Okay, let me think back. Oh yeah, I sort of
remember them.
Speaker 2 (54:17):
Look thirty years on. All of this is so surprising
because they have a string of albums, right. I say
they tour one hundred and fifty days out of each year.
Their own founder Lauderdale once said, if the United Nations
had a house band back in nineteen sixty two, I'd
(54:37):
like to think we are that band. Ironically, it was
his interest in politics that led to Pink Martini because
in nineteen ninety four there was Measure thirteen in Oregon.
It was a proposed anti gay rights amendment to the
Oregon Constitution. So he organized a week of protest in
(55:00):
opposition to the bill, and he was determined to bring
some fun to these especially because he described it at
the time as a rather underwhelming political fundraising landscape in Portland.
So after seeing the Del Rubio Triplets on the Pee
Week Christmas special, he invited them to Portland to campaign
(55:24):
right and at a public concert at Cinema twenty one.
During that week, the opening band backed out at the
last minute, so Lauderdale himself donned a Betsy Johnson cocktail dress,
put on a wig, enlisted a singer, a bass player,
and a bongo player, and he dubbed the makeshift group
(55:47):
Pink Martini, And that night a musical sensation was born.
Speaker 3 (55:52):
Oh wow, that's hilarious, as.
Speaker 2 (55:55):
Was a new means of political activism for Lauderdale, as
he used the muse to fundraise to champion civil rights
causes and the environment and affordable housing, and education and
music education. Thirty one years later, they do not play
any more overtly political events, nor do they make overtly
(56:16):
political statements from the stage, and certainly never with their music.
But there is a loving diplomacy at the heart of
what the band does, both here and abroad. They represent
a broader, more inclusive America than certainly what our nation
has become. Their America is cross generational, cross cultural, cross political,
(56:41):
and the band itself appeals to both conservatives and liberals alike.
The joke about tariffs, notwithstanding, the only overtly political moment
in the concert, came in a tribute to Maimi van Doren.
What yes, that Mami van dorin one of the three
(57:02):
ms from the nineteen fifties who's still alive and well
in Newport Beach at the age of ninety four, and
she had recently recorded two songs with Pink Martini and
ten years ago at the Greek Lily and I got
one of the surprises of our concert Going Lives when
she actually sat in with the band for a song.
Speaker 3 (57:23):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (57:24):
It was from the nineteen sixty four German western Freddy
in the Wild West diek Liba was It's a great song.
But anyway, at the concert the other night, Lauderdale face
timed her so that she could get the love of
the crowd that desired to appreciate her. In the wake
(57:44):
of her being given a Lifetime Service Award from AIDS
Project Los Angeles, ah, the founder of that organization, said
that during the height of AIDS, Mami van Doren was
the first celebrity willing to lend her celebrity to that cause,
and that she has remained steadfast through the decades, just
(58:08):
a tireless friend and ally to the LGBTQ plus community.
It was pretty cool stuff anyway, So many musical biopics
get made, and we talk about some of them, but
Thomas Lauderdale's life is truly the stuff of making a movie.
If you don't know the story. If anyone hearing my
(58:30):
voice doesn't know the story of Thomas Lauderdale and his
childhood and his upbringing and his family, and they probably
do if they watched daytime talk shows at all in
the nineties. But if you don't know the story of
his upbringing, just stop what you're doing right now and
go look it up. Celebrity deaths. Alan Bergman lyricist Alan
(58:51):
Bergman Dean died July seventeenth at his home in Los Angeles.
Died of natural causes at the age of ninety nine.
Speaker 3 (58:59):
Wow so close.
Speaker 2 (59:01):
He and his wife, Marilyn Bergman, of course powerhouse songwriting team,
winning Oscars for their work on The Way We Were Right,
The Windmills of Your Mind, and their music for yentl.
Alan Bergman also wrote the theme songs to the TV
shows Mod Good Times and.
Speaker 3 (59:20):
Alice, Oh Look at that Yeah.
Speaker 2 (59:24):
Flacojmenez. He was a musician and a songwriter. He died
July thirty first at his son's home. He died after
a long illness at the age of eighty six. Grammy
Award winning accordionist and singer who specialized in tejano and
noirtigno tunes. Now, one of my favorite jokes I've ever
heard was from Don Snyder, my friend, the longtime musical
(59:47):
director of the Breakfast Club, who because we had some
accordion players as an act, and he whispered to me,
you know what my favorite sound in accordion makes is?
And I said, I said, what's that? He said, when
it lands on top of a tenor saxophone in a
trash dumpster. By the way, tenor saxophones getting strays from
(01:00:10):
him all of a sudden. It's a funny joke, But
accordionists have senses of humor, by the way, about their
their musical instrument of choice. And one of those musicians
that he was referencing said to me, yeah, you know,
we play these accordions. We left the van unlocked one
(01:00:32):
day hoping that they would get stolen, and I said,
what happened? He said, we got back and we had
seven accordions. Anyway. Flock ohaman As was a member of
the supergroups the Texas Tornadoes. They're Awesome and Loose Super seven,
and he played on the Dwight Yoakam and Buck Owens
(01:00:53):
hit Streets of Bakersfield. Chuck Mangioni, oh musician Chuck Mangioni
died July twenty second at his home in Rochester, New York,
in his sleep at the age of eighty four. He
it's safe to say made the flugelhorn cool.
Speaker 3 (01:01:10):
And how do you do that with.
Speaker 2 (01:01:12):
With instrumentals like his nineteen seventy eight chart topping single
Feels So Good that was ubiquitous at the time. Mangioni
(01:01:37):
had so much fun being Chuck Mangioni that he made
recurring guest appearances as himself on King of the Hill.
Speaker 1 (01:01:47):
I didn't realize that. I thought somebody was impersonating chuckman Joni.
Speaker 2 (01:01:51):
He did it himself any way. Bobby Whitlock, musician and songwriter,
died August tenth at his home in Texas. Died after
a brief illness at the age of seventy seven. Bobby
Whitlock founded What Important band.
Speaker 3 (01:02:07):
Dean the Deftones.
Speaker 2 (01:02:13):
You're not late, You're not far You're not far off,
you know sounding sounding. He formed the band with Eric Clapton.
Speaker 1 (01:02:22):
Oh yeah, what was that first band.
Speaker 3 (01:02:26):
He was in?
Speaker 2 (01:02:28):
It was Derek and the Dominoes.
Speaker 3 (01:02:32):
Derek and the Dominoes. Oh, it's so close.
Speaker 2 (01:02:35):
Bobby Whitlock played keyboards on the classic album Layla and
other assorted love songs. He wrote or co wrote half
of the album songs, including Bell Bottom Blues and Tell
the Truth. Sheila Jordan Dean I Don't Have to Tell
You was nicknamed the Lady with the Million Dollar Ears
(01:02:56):
by jazz great Charlie Parker. She died August eleventh in
New York City at the age of ninety six. Really
popular jazz singer, beloved for her dynamic improvisation and scat singing. Wow, yeah,
you know. I want to make this documentary about improvisation,
and I went jazz to be a big part of it.
Speaker 3 (01:03:16):
Yeah for sure.
Speaker 2 (01:03:18):
Finally, let's end with perhaps the most beautiful man ever
to grace the silver screen, someone who I think in
the nineties was voted one of the one hundred sexiest
people to ever live. Terrence Henry Stamp died August seventeenth
at the age of eighty seven. He was, of course
(01:03:40):
an actor, received many accolades in his time, including a
Golden Globe Award, a Canned Film Festival Award, and Academy
Award nominations, BAFT Awards nominations. Yeah, it was Empire magazine
who named him one of the sexiest one hundred Sexiest
film Stars of all time nineteen ninety five.
Speaker 1 (01:04:01):
Well, yeah, I mean that Saline movie did with the
shirt off when he was in his twenties, that all
the women clamored too.
Speaker 2 (01:04:09):
Well. He was absolutely a poster individual for the swing
in sixties. He trained at the Webber Douglas Academy of
Dramatic Art in London before acting in the wolf Mankowitz
production of This Year. Next year in nineteen sixty at
the West End Vaudeville Theater, he made his American film
(01:04:32):
debut film debut, playing the title role in the film
Billy Bud in nineteen sixty two. One of the greats,
one of the greatest. I mean, you love Peter Ustinov.
That's the I had to see it in an English
literature class. It is unbelievably great and it is interesting
(01:04:52):
that a guy that would be known so much for
his villain roles was kind of typecast in christ like
roles for many years because of Billy budd. It earned
him a Golden Globe Award as well as nominations for
Academy Award in BAFTA against such a great film, Robert
Ryan Everyone in It Is So Good. After that, he
(01:05:13):
starred in the psychological horror film The Collector, for which
he won the cann Film Festival Award for Best Actor.
Went on to star in such films as Modesty, Blaze,
Far from the Matting Crowd, Teorema All in the sixties.
He a decade later gains wider pop culture fame for
his role as the archevillain General Zod in the Superman
(01:05:37):
film Superman and Superman two. For his leading role in
the Australian road comedy The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of
the Desert, he earned a BAFTA Award in Golden Globe
Award nominations. He then starred in The Limey in nineteen
ninety nine for Steven Soderberg, which is So Great, and
(01:05:58):
he got an Independent Spirit Award nomination for that. Other
movies that he did include Legal Eagles in nineteen eighty six,
Wall Street in nineteen eighty seven, Young Guns in nineteen
eighty eight, Star Wars episode won the Phantommenace in ninety nine,
and his final performance was Last Night in Soho from
(01:06:20):
director Edgar Wright, just a few years ago in twenty
twenty one.
Speaker 3 (01:06:24):
Oh, I don't think I've seen that.
Speaker 2 (01:06:27):
What is surprising to me is that he grew up
idolizing Gary Cooper after his mother took him to see
BeO Jest in nineteen thirty nine when he was three
years old. He was also inspired by the nineteen fifties
method trained actor James Dean. That would come more to
(01:06:48):
mine to me, but was there not actually, even when
he was young, even in Billy Bud, a certain Gary
Cooper esque stowis.
Speaker 1 (01:07:00):
Yeah, now you say it, you're like, oh, I could
totally see that between the two of them, between.
Speaker 2 (01:07:05):
The two of them, that is really odd. I never
would have thought that anyway. Growing up in London during
World War Two. After leaving school, Terence Stamp worked in
a variety of advertising agencies in London, working his way
up to earning a reasonable salary. In the mid nineteen fifties.
He also worked as an assistant to professional golfer REDG.
(01:07:26):
Knight at one Stead Golf Club in East London, and
he describes this whole period of his life quite positively
in his memoirs, which I think is called Stamp Act.
I think the name of it, which is pretty cool.
In the nineteen sixties, before and during their rise to fame,
(01:07:50):
he shared a house with a roommate on Wimpole Street
in London that other actor Peter ustaof Michael Kaine.
Speaker 3 (01:08:03):
Michael Kaine Dah they were roommates.
Speaker 2 (01:08:07):
Terence Stamp turned down the lead role in Alfie.
Speaker 3 (01:08:10):
Oh You're kidding, said get my room mate instead.
Speaker 2 (01:08:13):
Michael Kaine used to always have nightmares that Terence Stamp
didn't turn it down.
Speaker 3 (01:08:19):
That would have changed Michael Kain's career for anyway.
Speaker 2 (01:08:22):
Associated with the swinging London scene of the sixties, during
which time he was in high profile relationships with actress
Julie Christie supermodel Gene Shrimpton. Stamp was among the subjects
photographed by David Bailey for a set titled Box of
Pin Ups. He and Jean Shrimpton were one of the
most photographed couples of Maud London. Uh and then after
(01:08:46):
she ended her relationship with him, was when he moved
to India and spent time at the Ashram of Krishna Murdy. Oh,
and when he returned, he only played for a long
time diabolic, villainous, devilish roles. Wow, as if something in
(01:09:08):
him knew that his own grounding, his own centering, his
own exploration.
Speaker 3 (01:09:15):
Needed to explore the darkness, the.
Speaker 2 (01:09:18):
Dark the body. And we've talked about it before, but
it is shocking how many people who are great at
playing villains are actually the loveliest and kindest and most
gentle people. And it's the people who identify with playing
heroes that you kind of want to steer clear of.
Speaker 3 (01:09:34):
Yes, that's true, right, belated spoiler alert
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