September 29, 2025 • 70 mins
Original Release Date: Monday 29 September 2025
Description: Because Phil is on the road, tending to family matters, this week’s show was pre-recorded last week and much of the episode is dedicated to discussing two icons: The historic landmarked Mayan Theatre in downtown Los Angeles closed its doors for good on September 14, and the great leading man, filmmaker, and supporter of the arts and the environment, Robert Redford, left the stage on September 16. Dean and Phil do a deep dive into his career and accomplishments and put his 1974 starring vehicle The Great Gatsby under the microscope. This leads to a discussion of lead characters, often seen as heroes, who suffer the delusions caused by their own fantasies. Such characters include Holly Martins in The Third Man and Rick in Casablanca. The dangers of fantasy prove the perfect segue way to Phil’s thoughts upon finally having watched James Gunn’s Superman. Finally, things wrap up, in this jumbo installment of YOUR Chillpak Hollywood Hour, with a devilishly haunting, and rather delightfully macabre 1964 suspense picture from Japan, Onibaba.
Description: Because Phil is on the road, tending to family matters, this week’s show was pre-recorded last week and much of the episode is dedicated to discussing two icons: The historic landmarked Mayan Theatre in downtown Los Angeles closed its doors for good on September 14, and the great leading man, filmmaker, and supporter of the arts and the environment, Robert Redford, left the stage on September 16. Dean and Phil do a deep dive into his career and accomplishments and put his 1974 starring vehicle The Great Gatsby under the microscope. This leads to a discussion of lead characters, often seen as heroes, who suffer the delusions caused by their own fantasies. Such characters include Holly Martins in The Third Man and Rick in Casablanca. The dangers of fantasy prove the perfect segue way to Phil’s thoughts upon finally having watched James Gunn’s Superman. Finally, things wrap up, in this jumbo installment of YOUR Chillpak Hollywood Hour, with a devilishly haunting, and rather delightfully macabre 1964 suspense picture from Japan, Onibaba.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
And now Your Chill Pack Hollywood Hour with Dean Haglind
and Phil Lareness.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Hey, welcome to year nineteen, episode twenty one of Your
Chillpack Hollywood Hour for the final week of September twenty
twenty five. Coming at you from the Los Angeles neighborhood
of Los Philis, or at least I was when we
pre recorded this. I am Phil Lareness and joining us
via the magic of podcasting and zoom all the way
(00:59):
from the environs of Detroit, the MotorCity at Jason mad
Man at Stevie's. Dean Hagland, Hey, Dean, no sooner do
we do a Mayan podcastathon overlooking the Mayan Theater? Then
some thirteen years later they shut down the Mayon Theater?
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Well? Yes?
Speaker 4 (01:23):
Is that?
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Is that what we could call cause and effect? Or
is that correlation? I don't correlation.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Well, I imagine in the in.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
The in the universal clock, if you were to, if
you were to do the timeline right the twenty four
hours representing all of history since the Big Bang. My goodness,
us doing that podcast and the theater closing are right
on top of each other.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
Yes, yes, if I compare it to four point six
billion years. I suppose that SE's really close.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
And yet you living in the studio is still a
huge long swath.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
Which goes to prove Einstein that time is relative. This
is all to answer your question. Yes, the Mayan Theater
built in nineteen twenty six, I think it was had
a gorgeous historic little Mayan details all throughout it. But
it was a huge, huge theater. I mean it had
three balconies if I recall and could see two thousand.
(02:27):
They turned it into a nightclub as of late, but
as they say, the kids aren't drinking anymore, so it
must be very expensive to run that big piece of
real estate with the hopes of selling a couple of
Gin and tonics.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
You know, I think it's been a long time since
you've been in a bar, so the twenty five dollars
drinks that get served in a bar these days, twenty
one during happy hour are most decidedly not gin and tonics.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
Well for twenty five bucks.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
It appeared in many movies right like, uh not that
long ago. I remember when we did our talk about
Jack Lemon, our appreciation of Jack Lemon. One of the
movies we discussed was Save the Tiger and uh, and
the Mayan features prominently in that film.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
Probably watch it.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
But you know rock and roll high School with your
friends the Ramones, Yeah, that was there as well. Anyway,
I didn't know that.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
You know who's most famous of being discovered there though.
He was drafted in World War two and they went
off to Palas Verdes and some of them were assigned
to put on a little sketch show about the trials
and tribulations of a newcomer soldier to all the drill
sergeants and the yelling and the stuff. And so the
(03:53):
guy who was the voice of Winnie the Pooh got
that role and he never got shipped off because to
play with such a hit. It stayed on through the
war in the Mayan Theater.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
So that's two shows out of our last what four
where Winnie the Pooh has come up for you?
Speaker 3 (04:16):
Isn't that weird? You brought up the Mayan and the Mayan.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
And oh well, yeah, I in no way demanded two
minutes on Winnie the.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
Pooh, the voice of Winnie the Pooh.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Anyway, by that time, by the time people hear this
the show, you will have spent another week talking about
Winnie the pooh. But also, yeah, the theatre will probably
be closed. It was supposed to be closing late September.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
It is an LA Historic Cultural Monument landmarked in nineteen
eighty nine, so the building will remain, but the future
use remains unclear. And I'm assuming you're right the nineteen
twenty six building. It opened for the first time in
nineteen twenty seven, and what I thought was cool to
(05:07):
read about was that it was designed by a sculptor
and anthropologist.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Oh that I did not.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Know, Francisco Cornejo. Oh. It is, of course one of
this country's most notable examples of the nineteen twenties and
nineteen thirties mayan revival architectural movement with its pre Columbian
meso American style. And you mentioned that a nightclub. It
(05:39):
did serve a number of functions through the through the decades,
and at one point was an actor's workshop theater during
the depression. I didn't know that, and a venue for
musicals Spanish language movie theater.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
In the night seventies it shifted to screening pornographic.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Films on that big screen. Man. That must have been overwhelming.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
A lot of balconies though like you said, you can
probably find some privacy. Yeah, And in nineteen ninety it
was converted into a nightclub and there for a while.
I don't know, I remember this in the nineties. I
don't know if this was still possible when you moved here,
but it was called Club Mayon.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Oh yeah, sort of remember that, but I think it
was just shortened to the Mayan.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
So an icon it's safe to say, yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
But they can't tear it down because it's on the
National Register. It's just going to sit empty till I.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
See I mean something someone will have to do. There's
there isn't an Apple store within three blocks of it, so.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
Maybe the apple and say it again.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Anyway, an icon that is no longer with us, and
there are icons that are no longer with us, and
then there are icons who are no longer with us.
And that leads us to Robert Redford.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
Oh thank you celebrity deaths.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
The actor and director known for his roles in classic movies,
is directing his activism. He of course, starred in at
least a trio of films that are you know, all
time beloved classics. Right. We may not call them masterpieces,
(07:47):
but all the President's Men, Butch Cassidy and The Sundance
Kid and The Sting. He died September sixteenth at his
home in Utah at the age of eighty nine. I
was kind of surprised.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
I was kind of surprise too. I don't know if
he was staying in shape or he just you know,
I thought he'd hit the nineties the way he seemed
so youthful in his energy. That last one where he's
a single in the boat and he chooses to was that.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
The last one was The Old Man in the Gun, Oh,
where where he uh real life story of a of
a bank robber and uh playing someone much younger than
himself in that movie. The Old Man in The Old
Man in the Gun was seventy oh wow. Yeah, and
he still seemed, like you said, very very energetic. But
(08:41):
but the point being kind of a youthful enthusiasm, yeah,
and passion for stuff.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
Like like a Betty White sort of thing. You would
think you would have one of those.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
I don't. We don't. Neither of us knew him. Well,
we don't know. And this guy was a gentleman. Even
when he criticized, he did it in such a way
where I feel like you probably were glad that he
was talking about you. And I can't help but wonder though,
(09:16):
if the last several years, where we're at, and especially
where we're at vis a vis as stewards of the environment,
all right, if maybe it just got to be a
little too much for him and it was time to
just check out of the game, because because he cared
(09:36):
about a lot of things. But I don't think he
cared about anything as much as he cared about being
a good steward for this planet.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
Right right at his place in Utah, apparently was wasn't
that environmentally sensitive.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
He bought a huge place, which I think he still
had in New Mexico, something you know, two hundred and
fifty acres or something like that, and he purchased it
just to preserve that the view from a particular hill,
so that the view from a particular hill would remain
for people who came there.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
Wow, so never be developed.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
That's kind of thoughtful, you know, I mean, because he said,
and I remember in an interview he did. It was
a TV interview, and he he said, you know, like
there was a time when the Western United States, this
is what it looked like. This is what you saw,
and we ought to keep whatever rare visions of that
of what this land looked like for future generations. He
(10:40):
was born in Santa Monica, California. Did you know that.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
I did not know that. I thought he was a
Midwest guy.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
I would have sworn it as well. He got his
start on the stages of New York City, So again
you think, okay, a farm boy. I mean, I want
to put his biographical background of his character, Roy Hobbs,
and the natural I want to put onto him. I
(11:08):
want to impose it onto him. And anyway, he makes
the trip to New York City and starts working on
stage in the fifties and sixties, starts working in television
in nineteen sixty, appearing on a wide range of shows
including Perry Mason, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and The Twilight Zonehead Zone. Yes,
(11:32):
talk about that performance.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
I mean, I forget the name of the episode, but
you saw that dynamic, like just jump off the screen.
And you know how many great actors were on that,
Joseph Cotton. You had all of those big name actors
and here's this new guy. And I don't know if
it was the lighting, but boy, his teeth his teeth
(11:55):
were so shiny, and he was like the blonde haired
It just was so I like, your eye was drawn
to him, no matter how many people on the screen.
It was.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
It was called nothing in the Dark, oh right, and
all his charm And I mean a debonair is not
a word I use very often, but I believe that
he had that debonair switch. Yeah, and it's why his
(12:27):
charm worked for so many American eras. I don't mean
of moviegoers, I mean of like you know, putting him
in different periods, right, and he's playing death in that
oh that's right show. Yeah, and what a what a
fascinating launch for him, And it really was. Because his
(12:51):
television era as an actor did not last long. By
nineteen sixty three, he's appearing in movies. He did receive
an Emmy nomination, believe it or not, that same year
in nineteen sixty three, for an episode of an adventure
series called Rescue eight.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
Wow. Never heard of that.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Anyway. His film roles, of course, lead to startum and
I wanted to kind of take some time to do
a deep run through his filmography in just a minute,
but just to put it in some overall perspective. You know,
Emmy Award nineteen sixty three guest starring in these things
after doing stage work in the fifties, and he by
(13:37):
nineteen sixty nine is a movie.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
Star, right, was sixteen sixty nine.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
That's what cements him. He's played the lead in some
movies and some interesting movies that will we'll talk about.
But playing a sidekick is what cements him as a
movie star, which is kind of fast, right, not a
lead role, not a lead role, but a sidekick role.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
Yeah, but he made it like it was a duel,
like a Bob Hope Bing Crosby Road movie, right. I
mean the dynamic of it on page probably looked like
a sidekick. But him and Paul Newman together.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
But let me ask you, do you think today, assuming
that movie gets made, what can you change the ending? Uh?
Speaker 3 (14:32):
You didn't like the freeze frame with the ad.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
And can we have more singing in the rains montages?
Which really sucks. That is so bad because I've been
watching cherry picking scenes from that movie and they are
so good. So then just to have that in the
middle is just such a It's just a kick to
the gnats is really what it is. Cinematically speaking, and
(15:00):
there is a kick to the nad scene in the movie,
but we didn't know what was gonna we were gonna
be feeling that paying ourselves as movie goers. Anyway, my
serious question was going to be a movie like that
it's made comes out. Are people really saying to the
second lead, Okay, we got to put you as the
(15:23):
lead in your own movies, or is there just an
effort to keep remaking that.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
Because the sting comes up what seventy three, Yeah, a.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
Few years later, so they are trying to get them
to do it. But in the meantime he's starring in movies,
whereas I guess I'm thinking like Chris Tucker in the
Rush Hour movies. And I'm sure there's other more modern examples,
but it's not like these people went into lead roles.
Their next lead role was a sequel to the same one.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
Right, right, right, I see what you're saying. So that
what sidekick leapt from that in so short of years,
I can't think of a single one. Really.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Yeah, it always felt a little unique to me. But
you're right. If you watched that movie, you and really
watch it, you do say, yeah, this guy can carry it. Absolutely. Anyway,
his success continued well into the seventies, with a big
string of commercial and critical hits. He was as big
(16:30):
a movie star as Hollywood had ever produced, movies like
The Way We Were with Barbar Streissan, The Sting, which
earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. Believe
it or not, his Academy Award nomination for Acting came
from The Sting. There was The Great Gatsby, which was
(16:53):
reviled by critics but a hit. Yeah. Three Days of
the Condor in nineteen seventy Oh my god, I was looking.
I went down a rabbit hole because of Gatsby into
the films of of nineteen seventy four and release dates,
and there was, Oh my god. Within short order, you
(17:17):
had The Conversation come out. Yeah, you had Parallax View
come out, and the very next week after Parallax View,
you had Chinatown.
Speaker 3 (17:27):
Wow. And yet that era is considered just those disaster
movies Towering, Inferno, Earthquake, Airplane.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
I think increasingly it is known as the era of
the paranoia movie, of the of the corruption paranoia movie.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
But I think again, what's what's what's old is new
and we're and and we're finding ourselves really driven to
some of these movies now. And one of those movies
that we're driven back to is Three Days of the Condor.
And how about All the President's Men? That movie doesn't
resonate less with each passing day, It resonates more, both
(18:09):
as a film but also behind the scenes. How they
made that? It's again, would any movie be made like
this where the actors embed themselves in the newspaper for
a year so that they can pull off what you
see in the movie, which is you believe that these
(18:30):
famous people you're watching actually work there.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
And then and then how about rebuilding the entire Washington
Post on sound stages.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
That's not easy.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
I don't know if that gets done anymore. There was
a Bridge Too Far, Big Hit nineteen eighty. He turns
his attention to directing. His debut film was Ordinary People,
at won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director.
He beat out a certain Martin Scorsese, who was nominated
(19:08):
for Raging Bully. Other other films that Redford directed that
met with both critical acclaim and box office profits I
would say were probably Quiz Show, A River runs through it,
(19:28):
and The Horse Whisperer, which I think was the only
It was certainly the first time he had directed himself
in a movie. I believe maybe he did it one
other time or two other times later on, like Lions
for Lambs and then was it The Company You Keep
maybe was the other one. He continued to be a
(19:51):
box office draw after turning to filmmaking, though his his
his acting roles became fewer and farther between. After bru Baker,
which I think was nineteen eighty, he doesn't do another
movie until The Natural nineteen eighty four, does appear in
Out of Africa the next year alongside Meryl Streep, and
(20:12):
then doesn't have another really big hit until Indecent Proposal
in ninety three, which oddly was a movie that in
the weeks leading up to my dad's death, my dad
was watching every day. And I'm not saying that those
are lengths that that's causational. I guess the words causal
(20:35):
because of causation. And I think right before that had
had a modest hit with the rather modestly delightful Sneakers.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
Oh yeah, I forgot about that.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
And he even made late career appearances in Superhero films.
His casting in Captain America The Winter Soldier served to
elevate that movie into the terrain of being discussed like
it was a genuine cinematic achievement, tying it as it
(21:14):
did Two Three Days of the Condor and All the
Presidents Men being as much a what, owing as much
to its lineage, you know, owing its lineage as much
to those movies, those paranoia thrillers of the seventies as
(21:35):
it did to comic book movies in the Marvel universe.
And his final appearance on screen, though it wasn't his
final film that he shot was Avengers Endgame Wows. As
we mentioned, when he was not on screen or behind
the camera, he was very, very active in other ways
(21:56):
as an advocate for the art of cinema.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
Right started Sundance after all.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
After Yeah, I was on a chat show this past week,
and some of the young people were surprised, you know,
felt felt ashamed to admit they didn't even weren't even
familiar with Robert Redford, and so I just asked them,
are you familiar with Quentin Tarantino? And they said, of course.
I said, we'll name something he did, you know, and
(22:22):
pulp fiction and I said, well, do you know the
movie he did before that? They said, Reservoir Do I said,
you're familiar with Robert Redford? Have you heard have you
seen Sinners? They? Oh, we love Sinners. Do you know
what else that guy did? And they said, you know
Black Panther? And I said, did you know that he
started with a movie called fruit Vale Station. I said, well,
we've heard of it, but you know I haven't seen.
(22:44):
I said, well, if you've heard of it, you've heard
of Robert Redford. And I just listed through all the
filmmakers we have today who got their launch out of
the Sundance Labs, right, So, yeah, orchestraated by him, and
he produced through his Wildwood Productions, also many many movies
(23:05):
he was and it, man, it took me a while
to flash back and remember that this was indeed the case.
He was a bipartisan political activist. He famously supported candidates
from both parties. It's hard to remember that, yeah, because
(23:31):
of where he stood in relation to issues, again in
an era of denial of facts and truth, but in particular,
he would advocate for environmental causes and for politicians who
he felt were environmental warriors. And when we were young
(23:59):
that did not know partisan bounds.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
Right. Yeah, yeah, well THEPA was started under Nixon's administration. Right.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
And indeed, if we just flashed back twenty five years ago,
right to just before nine to eleven, the vast majority,
more than four hundred of the four hundred and thirty
five members of Congress acknowledged climate change as one of
the great issues facing the world. Right, and it would
(24:33):
be at least a decade or more before one side
of the political aisle learned to ignore it or try.
Speaker 3 (24:43):
To diminishment Tom.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
Diminish it, or outright deny it after, as we know,
a prolonged marketing and lobbying effort by the same lobbyists
who had worked for the tobacco industry decades earlier. Yeah. So, anyway,
he also advocated for LGBTQ plus rights and Native American Oh. Yes,
(25:14):
there are so many Native American storytellers who issued the
most beautiful remembrances of Redford in tributes to Redford in
the wake of his death. And indeed, he did, I
think make a final acting appearance on the television series
(25:39):
Dark Wins, which he was instrumental in helping get off
the ground. I think it was a season three episode
where he's playing chess with George R. R. Martin.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
Nah, how seventh seal?
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Is that especially for a guy that started playing death
fun Twilight Zone?
Speaker 3 (26:01):
Yeah, right, that's true.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
He was recognized by the National Audubon Society with their
Audubon Medal. Do you think he could have been recognized
without that medal? I mean, he was a famous guy.
He's right there here. Give this medal to Robert Redford
if you can recognize him. He doesn't need this recognition.
He received honorary doctorates from Bard College and Brown University,
(26:25):
was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Bill Clinton,
won Lifetime Achievement honors at the Academy Awards and the
Venice Film Festival, and in twenty sixteen, received the Presidential
Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama.
Speaker 3 (26:39):
Wow that's a lot.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
So some interesting things about his filmography. His first, i
would say romantic leading role in a movie was Barefoot
in the Park.
Speaker 3 (26:56):
Oh yeah, that was funny.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
I can't recall off the top of my head whether
he had played in the show on Broadway, but I'm
betting he did. Neil Simon and co starring with Jane Fonda, right, yeah,
so that's his first romantic lead, and his final romantic
(27:23):
lead was I think also with Jane Fonda. Really yeah,
it was, although maybe we consider The Old Man in
the Gun a romantic, but he did an out and
out romance Our Souls at Night with Jane Fonda for Netflix.
(27:45):
I never saw that, and it's supposed to be quite
lovely twenty seventeen. And so I'm gonna avail myself of
that five movies they were in through the years. Apparently
rather famous Slee Redford had to keep rejecting Jane Fonda's
(28:05):
advances in real life, as he did Barbara Streisan also,
and it tells you what like a gentleman this guy
is that neither of those women had any problem admitting
that innfessing that in fact. But his first movie that
he appeared in, though it was uncredited, was nineteen sixty.
(28:25):
It was Tall Story, starring Anthony Perkins, and that was
Jane Fonda's first movie, so she was in his Both
of them had the same first movie. His first credited
role was two years later in War Hunt, which I
told you about a really good movie. He meets his
lifelong friend Sidney Pollock, who acts in that movie and
(28:49):
then ends up being in so many of Sidney Pollock's films.
The movie starred John Saxon in one of John Saxon's
only like character roles. It's kind of the sort of
thing you would expect Brando to be doing. It's a
bit of apocalypse now. It's about a guy that's gone mad
(29:11):
in the face of war, and that's the lead. And
Robert Redford plays the good soldier in it. And it's
an interesting, interesting little movie. He works for Robert Mulligan
and Inside Daisy Clover another film I've only seen pieces of,
and I think it was Natalie Wood. I think who
(29:34):
pulls strings to get him cast in that film. Now,
a movie that I've wanted to ask you about actually
for years, because I'm a huge allagonist fan. I would
like to become more of an elegantist completist. He did
a movie in nineteen sixty five that Redford's in called
Situation Hopeless but not Serious. Did you ever see that? No?
Speaker 3 (29:56):
In fact, it is it a comedy?
Speaker 2 (29:58):
Yeah? Yeah, comedy?
Speaker 3 (30:01):
Oh boy, that sounds good, because I mean Alec Ginnis
is pretty funny in The Lady Killers, where they're all
still pretty funny.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
There's never been an actor funny or there's never been
a better big screen comedic actor. And if there wasn't
Alec Guinness, there would not be Peter Sellers, there would
not be Mike Myers, there would not dare I say,
there would not be movies.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
But there you could say that, sure, and it's called situation.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
Hopeless tot but not serious.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
Hopeless but not serious.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
Okay, Anyway. I think one of the first things I
ever saw Redford dinn when I was a little kid
on you know after school TV, you know, in reruns,
was this Property Is Condemned. Oh yeah, that's a that's
a heavy, heavy movie based on a play, and I
remember coming away from it going Robert Redford movies aren't fun.
Speaker 3 (30:59):
Well, surprisingly, the first one I recall seeing with the
family done on the TV was Jeremiah Johnson, and I went,
oh my gosh, this is grueling.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
Yeah, that also is not fun. But in the age
hit huge hit.
Speaker 3 (31:14):
Big kit. I mean in terms of environmental and anti disestablishmentarianism,
guy going it on his own in the mountains without
two bits of wit and the other miner helping him the.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
Trapper because I think sixty seven was Barefoot in the Park,
and like I said, that showed his romantic bona fides.
But the year before that he did a movie that
was not a hit. But he was the second lead
on the run in a movie called The Chase. Oh yeah,
(31:54):
for Arthur Penn, starring Marlon Brando, and Brando was not
a box office draw at this point. These were the
lean years for him. But my god, is that a
good movie.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
I don't think I've seen it. Now you say it
out loud, I know I've seen of it.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
It's really good. Redford on the Run again, Jane Fonda
in that, and Marlon Brando playing the cop who is
trying to track this escaped convict down played by Redford
before the mob mentality gets to him.
Speaker 3 (32:32):
Ah.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
Right, And it is nineteen sixty seven Arthur Penn. As
you can imagine, it is a pretty hard hitting depiction
of the communal mentality of America. Let's go it's it's
a dark film. It's really really good and Brando cares.
Now he looks good and he cares. So then is
(32:56):
Butch Cassidy. And like we said, coming out of Butch Cassidy,
now he's given his own movies to carry. He's not
playing second to Newman, to Brando, He's not playing second
quite honestly to Jane Fonda because she is the star
of Barefoot in the Park.
Speaker 3 (33:18):
Right.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
As so often in those Neil Simon movies, it is
the female character that's the better character, and the male
characters is often more of a straight man.
Speaker 3 (33:28):
Right.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
So he does Downhill Racer, which is the first movie
for Michael Ritchie. Oh yeah, Jeremiah Johnson, you know, right
after that, but also another Western we could call it,
even though it's a modern Western, and it was tell
(33:50):
them Willie boy is Here with Robert Blake, and both
his westerns tell them Willie boy is here, and Jeremiah
Johnson in vall native American themes as well. Okay, so
smart to hey, you know what, I can play the
(34:11):
lead in westerns because I was just in a huge
hit western that cemented me. But if I'm gonna do it,
I want to do some westerns that don't get made
right right, And that to me kind of cements a
career path for him, because he loved nothing more than
(34:32):
the movies that he was able to make that people
told him could not be made or would not be made.
Speaker 3 (34:40):
Right right, So he had the power to green light
that stuff, and so he chose wisely, I think.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
And Sidney Pollock of course makes Jeremiah Johnson. And it
is a filmmaking feat. How they accomplished that movie. I mean,
it may not be, you know, quite at the level
of how the hell did they do this in the
desert as Lawrence of Arabia.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
But there's some shots you go, how'd you get a
camera up that mountain in a snowstar?
Speaker 2 (35:09):
Yeah, somebody carried that goddamn thing.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
I know. And it's lit well and you hear everything
like all of that on the side of a bloody
mountain with the you know, minimal, minimal set deck. Like
you look in the background, there's not an extra snow
being blown on those trees or anything.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
It's, let's face it, a lot of Westerns. You can
almost see, like the ending of Blazing Saddles, which is
one of the reasons I love it so much. You
can almost see the limos just off frame to bring
them back to the hotel to the lodge, right, and
oh that actor, Oh look, Lee Marvin just came out
of the hotel bar and now he's in a bar
(35:49):
set on the set of this and honestly, I got
no problem with that. I love that about westerns. But
this one. Uh again, totally different movies in terms of
their pacing and everything, but a bit of a kindred
(36:10):
nature to Baby's film with Altman, mckayby and Missus Miller.
Oh yeah, another one where you really feel, look, they
immersed themselves in the world of these characters and built
from within this world, not coming from the outside and
(36:33):
slopping the world down on this land.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
Yeah, now you say it. You know, you see some
actors who have their tricks, their things, but Redford always
seem to have it just genuinely come from the character,
came from almost the relationship to the environment. He was in.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
The next year, The Candidate nineteen seventy two. Oh yeah,
one of my favorites. I have watched that movie so
many times. He re teams with Michael Ritchie for that
and his performance. We talked about how he gets an
Oscar nomination for the sting. Honestly, his performance in The Candidate,
(37:16):
where he's just starting to lose his mind of having
to give the same stump speeches over and over and
over again and having everything that he cared about sort
of moved to the side because you can't get anything
done if you don't win. But in order to win,
you kind of have to disqualify yourself from getting anything done.
(37:37):
And it is. It's a brilliant comedic performance. And he
gave of any movie star, you know, he gave great
movie star performances. And I don't know, you know why,
I mean, I guess because it was comedy, you know.
(37:59):
And additionally, the Oscars never honored comedy. So that's seventy two,
and the next year he does the Sting and I
feel like maybe that's why he gets nominated for the Sting.
Is like, wow, you've been doing really good work, so
here you go. And then the same year as the
Sting is the way we were like, I mean, my god,
(38:23):
I think Gatsby and Three Days of the Condor were
right around the same time. I watched Gatsby. I had
never seen that, So in the wake of his death,
I decided that that's of the films of his that
had eluded me, that's the one that I was gonna
(38:44):
check out.
Speaker 3 (38:45):
Right, And that's Sam from Law.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
And Order, Sam Waterston.
Speaker 3 (38:51):
And Waterson, Yeah, and Bruce Dern Right, was in the.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
Bruce Dern early Bruce Dern, and he gives a very
good performance. He was very well acclaimed for that. Of course,
Sam Waterston, you know everybody knows him Law and Order,
but like Killing Fields. He was the lead actor in
The Killing Fields for Crying Out Loud, oscar winning film
and his two Woody Allen's nothing wrong with his performances
(39:21):
in Hannah and Her Sisters and as the man Diane
Weist and Kerrie Fisher are fighting over and the blind
Rabbi in Crimes and Misdemeanors. He's so good in that
as well. And not to make this, we will cover
all this in our Sam Waterston show. But he looks
(39:42):
exactly the same. He just looks like a Sam Waterston
who has aged.
Speaker 3 (39:47):
That's it.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
That's it, but but identical. You put the two guys
next to him and you would without hesitation, you guys
are related, your father and son? What the hell? Anyway?
Like I said, Great Gatsby was kind of widely reviled
by critics, but it did meet with considerable box office success,
and I found it a very interesting watch. It was
(40:11):
never anything less than interesting. Sometimes it's interesting because I
feel like it's making choices that torpedo its chances to
be a good movie, because those choices tend to pay
great respect to the literary work upon which it's based,
(40:36):
but they fight against what a movie needs. And it's
quite possible Fitzgerald the writer should never be adapted into
a movie, really, because the intelligence of his writing can
be approached. But cinema is a visceral experience. Yeah, and
(41:00):
without significant restructuring of the story and the events, which
no one's gonna do with a Fitzgerald because no, this
is sacra Saint, right, right, You can't mess with the
structure of the events. But without restructuring it, audiences are
always going to be at an emotional reserve, whereas in
(41:22):
the process of reading it you can form your own relationships.
Speaker 3 (41:28):
Yeah, you know where that pays off, mostly for that
movie the billboard for the Pometrist and the Jobs. Yeah,
and you go, Oh, I didn't get that was the
Eyes of Judgment and God until I read the book.
In the movie, it just looks like, Hey, there's a
funny billboard in the middle of nowhere. That's odd.
Speaker 2 (41:51):
I wondered if it was a commentary on us as audience. Oh, right,
a a voyeuristic commentary, right, because there is an element
of the movie that is about voyeurism and watching other people. Right.
Can we just say that I wish he does not
have a line in the movie Redford until like twenty
(42:12):
seven minutes, and it's the very end of the first act,
because it's the part of the book that I remember
the great the best too, which is the mystery of
this neighbor. And yet as a movie, we have to
let people know, remember Redford's in it. It's not all
Sam Waterston. Redford's in it, so we have to have
a couple shots of him looking wistfully mysterious, mysterious and beautiful.
(42:34):
And I wish we didn't have those shots. I wish
that he could just be a mystery, right. Yeah, keep
the biggest movie star on the planet in mystery until
he shows up, and then that conversation they first have
is so weird an off putting, and nothing happens in it,
and it would be even more powerful, I think Mia Pharaoh. Yeah,
(43:00):
am I allowed to say was terrible casting.
Speaker 3 (43:03):
You're allowed to say it.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
She was only cast apparently because the director and producer
plays great historic weight on the fact that MIA's godfather,
the Great George Kuckor, was linked intimately with the original book.
He produced its Broadway adaptation back in the day, after all,
(43:25):
and so her family had requested that she get to
be a part of this as part of family lineage.
Oh and that held weight for George Jack Clayton, the director. Wow,
she looks the part instills, but her Daisy just comes
off as silly and actually sort of nuts. It's hard
(43:46):
to see the idealized feminine symbol Gatsby has obsessed over.
It's tough casting, and it's a tough role because she
is revealed to be nothing but superficial, right, But you
have to believe that he could see in her the
idealized feminine and in a movie that has to be
(44:09):
about more than just what someone looks like, it really
does because we're spending time with them, and we find
out they spent time with them, so we have to
believe that that time was spent being able to idealize
this person. I've read a lot like Ali McGraw was
originally cast to be in it, but they didn't want
(44:29):
Steve McQueen to do it, who was her boyfriend, and
they didn't want him because Ali McGraw had left the
producer Bob Evans for Steve McQueen, so he had a
little bit of an extra grind. And they also didn't
want to put them together because they thought there's no
controlling them. The story behind the making of it, as
(44:51):
with many movies of that era, is fascinating. You know.
Cobola wrote this for God's sake, and he Francis Cobola
wrote it because the God hadn't come out yet and
he didn't know if Godfather was going to be a hit,
so he said, give me whatever work you can.
Speaker 3 (45:05):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (45:06):
William Goldman was so pissed off because he was desperate
to get to adapt the book. Having read the script,
he said, but Copola did it better than I could have.
This is one of the greatest scripts of all time.
And Copola said, yes, if only they had made it
the script. But he is the soul screenwriter. Anyway, back
(45:29):
to the casting. Of all the names that were associated
with it, the one that makes me think I would
like to see what she would have done with it
is same year she stars in Chinatown instead don Away
Faye dune Away as the idealized feminine who because to me,
(45:50):
I don't know, like it's to be able to believe
or want to believe. There are depths that there are
not right right, And she's a fascinating projection screen for that.
I believe that because of that innate sort of mystery
about her, you could project depths onto her. The depths
(46:12):
that fade down away really did have and showed him
an actress. I don't mean the actress didn't, but I
mean playing someone but she also, I am convinced, could
play someone who ultimately reveals herself to be shallow and neurotic.
Speaker 3 (46:29):
Completely just yeah, superficial. I could see that too. She
plays superficial, but she would convey depth for him to idealize, right.
Speaker 2 (46:41):
And you get to see the work they do together
in three days of the Condor. Oh and again it's
hard not to want to go back and rewrite The Gatsby.
So what's great about Redford in it? Though? And he
had just screen test for it even though he was
a big star, because one of the producers just hadn't
(47:03):
in his mind. I think it was Bob Evans that
that you couldn't have a blonde you can have a
light haired actor like it, even though there's no reference
to that in the book at all, and they realized
after the fact they don't think Evans ever read the book.
So which is fine. You're making a movie. You're making
a movie. Hopefully the storytellers or have done it. But
(47:25):
his his secrecy, his his emotional withholding seems sort of dangerous,
right with whiffs of mental illness. Redford the actor always
wanted the opportunity to play a fiend. I don't think
(47:46):
you ever really got that opportunity. But this film makes
me wish that some director or producer had been brave
enough to give him that chance.
Speaker 3 (47:56):
Right not to set it up a notch, just a
notch towards fiendishness.
Speaker 2 (48:01):
The yeah, you know, anyway, getting back to Coppola, I'm
going to endeavor to track down the screenplay.
Speaker 3 (48:11):
Oh yeah, please do see how it differs.
Speaker 2 (48:15):
Goldman said about the final film that one of the
things he really did not like was that the parties
at the Gatsby Estate are rather crass and silly rather
than glamorous.
Speaker 3 (48:28):
Right dent in the water.
Speaker 2 (48:30):
What I like about them is that they reveal what
I feel might just be a universal truth, that contemporary
ideas of glamour are probably quite often pretty darn silly
(48:51):
when you take a historic step back.
Speaker 3 (48:54):
Ah, oh, that's fascinating. So what glamorous to us is
in with context, so that when I remove it by
a couple of decades, that's not glamor at all. It's
completely similar, sort of like eighteenth century ballroom dancing and
stylized quadrilles and all of those silly dances and where
(49:17):
you can dance with the same woman twice or that
made you betrothed.
Speaker 2 (49:20):
Yeah, the rituals of glamour and power and pomp and
circumstance that so often deprived a being rooted in again
something almost emotional.
Speaker 3 (49:40):
Or an emotional reality.
Speaker 2 (49:43):
Or integral to our human makeup. Right, they can come
off as flighty and silly after the fact, And I
think that that is actually kind of brilliant. I liked
that the thing that Goldman really didn't appreciate. It was
maybe thing I appreciated the most in the movie, but
the the other element of it. And maybe, you know,
(50:04):
like in the Weeks to Come, like we did with
The Land Delawn, it'd be fun to revisit some of
these Redford performances because he really was not just a
big star and this iconic figure in the industry. He
really could be a very interesting actor, and so I
(50:25):
would enjoy revisiting some of these. But an element of
Gatsby that really has been tying in a lot with
some of the things I've been thinking is the element
of fantasy. Oh yeah, you know this, his fantasy about
what it's going to be like when he meets her again,
(50:46):
and the ramifications of so building his life towards that fantasy.
Right reminded me of how when we did our deep
dive into The Third Man after I rewatched that, and
how I've been thinking about how Joseph Cotton's Holly Martin's character,
like Rick in Casablanca, two of my big heroes from
(51:09):
the forties, in one case, an absolutely iconic American hero.
How what almost disturbs me now is how genuine and
authentic depictions they are of what it meant to be American,
and maybe what it means to be American now, and
that is to be fearful and to keep rejecting the
(51:32):
opportunity to do the right thing until almost the last minute.
Speaker 3 (51:37):
Right.
Speaker 2 (51:39):
Lily added another piece of that thought process to mine,
which is she pointed out that both those characters are
prone to fantasy.
Speaker 3 (51:50):
Oh is that?
Speaker 2 (51:53):
And they both end up alone. Yeah, And so I
was thinking about that again with Gatsby, right, he ends
up alone and then ultimately of course, at the bottom
of the pool. Yeah. Anyway, so I've been thinking about that,
about fantasy and with third Man. Oh my goodness. Unlike Rick,
(52:16):
who breaks free from it. There's a moment where you
see in Casablanca, the reality hit him when the object
of his fantasy and his romantic fantasies and this idea
we could live together. I'll do the right thing by
you know, your husband and everybody. But we're ending up together.
(52:36):
We're going to have this happy ending love story. And
she breaks down and says to him, Okay, I can't
think anymore. This has been exhausting. This has been terrible
these last few years, being away from you, being in
concentration camps, being in this You have to do the
thinking for both of us now, And suddenly responsibility for
someone he actually cares about is put on him, and
(52:57):
that's the cold water that wipes away immediately the fantasy,
and all that's left is what he has to do right,
and it no longer requires bravery because he has no choice.
He either has to do what it is him to
do or not, And in the case of the Third Man,
(53:21):
there is a similar moment to it, but it never
removes Holly Martin's romantic fantasy. Even at the very end
he thinks he's going to end up with the girl,
and that's the meaning of the last shot of the movie,
when his final fantasy is taken from him. He begins
(53:42):
the movie penniless and alone, but with a fantasy of
what his life is going to be thanks to Harry
Lyme in this City of Vienna, and he ends the
movie penniless and alone and literally throwing away the last
vestiges of his fantasy. Was thinking about the debilitating nature
(54:05):
of fantasy and watching these and in watching Gatsby, because
in no small part I had finally watched the James
Gunn Superman.
Speaker 3 (54:19):
Uh huh.
Speaker 2 (54:20):
By the way, there was a moment in time when
Robert Redford was considered for Superman in nineteen seventy eight,
but they gave it to Warren Beatty instead, and then
he could not wrap his head around wearing tights and
a cape, so he made Heaven Can Wait instead. That
(54:42):
was his superhero movie. Okay, In nineteen seventy eight, Dean,
The reason we believed a man could fly was because,
in no small part, Superman in and that Richard Donner
directed film, had landed on our planet Earth, not a
(55:08):
fantasy earth, which is where James guns film is set.
Speaker 3 (55:14):
Oh, I see what you're saying.
Speaker 2 (55:16):
I don't recognize the Earth in James guns movie as
our world at all. There are references to obviously what's
going on now, A delightful bit of angry monkeys. Who
are the bots destroying social discourse on the internet. That's funny,
but it's not the real world, so there's no chance
(55:40):
for these to be real people. You would believe a
man could fly? I think we've always focused on the
flying part of it. I would love a superhero movie
where I could believe a.
Speaker 3 (55:53):
Man none of them.
Speaker 2 (55:58):
When of you, when did you last believe a character
in a superhero movie. It's been a handful of years,
I think, so I don't believe anything in the James
Gunn movie, and and I don't believe it. You know,
if you want me to believe in this other world,
then you actually have to build that world. I don't
(56:20):
need to see the world I live in in anything.
I don't go to the theater expecting to see the
world I live in. I want to be transported from
my hear and now. But if you do the work, then,
oh my god, just actors on a set with a
black background, I start to see the village that they're
living in. I start to see the enemy battalions coming
(56:44):
at them. Because you've done the work to build the world,
not just push out buttons on our collective knowledge of
these characters and their previous stories.
Speaker 3 (56:59):
That's exactly what they were doing, a series of buttons.
It was almost ironic that Lex Luthor does move C
forty five move. It was almost like a metaphor for
just pushing emotional buttons like, oh we got you pegged
your three thousand data analytics that we have carefully researched.
(57:20):
So here's there are fight sequence.
Speaker 2 (57:23):
You're you're gonna hear what I'm what I'm saying, and
I'm saying it I am. I'm throwing punches on this
in a good film by a actual good storyteller, which
I do not think James Gunn qualifies for in a
long time, right, those scenes would have been in it
(57:43):
because you've taken it upon yourself to say, I'm going
to expose this unhealthy genre fantasy for what it is, right,
and I'm gonna take the piss out of this to
such a degree that no one's making one of these
after this. Ever, again, some of his choices are exactly
(58:07):
the choices that such a storyteller would make. In this case,
there is literally no story told. Yeah, there are scenes
that hint at once hinted stories. John was right. The
interview of Superman by Lois Lane hints at some things
of what the movie could have been. He's absolutely right,
(58:27):
But please choose to tell someone's story. I am relieved.
I guess that we didn't have to deal with an
origin story. I hate or that, but we don't have
any story someone. Every story, into a degree, has to
be an origin story. Every story right, because we are
(58:51):
being introduced to someone right.
Speaker 3 (58:53):
A beginning, middle, and end. That's a standard structure, even.
Speaker 2 (58:57):
If the beginning came before or when our story began.
Artful crafting and structure lets us catch up to some
idea of how these people became the way that they are. Right,
So somebody has to be introduced and the story has
(59:20):
to be told from their perspective. Right, honestly, make a
Superman movie, call it a Superman movie. But give me
the origin story that I've never seen. Give me a
Lex Luthor origin story.
Speaker 3 (59:32):
Yeah, really always shows up completely evil and rich.
Speaker 2 (59:37):
Well, at least in nineteen seventy eight we saw Lex
and Otis and Miss test Macher have to do things.
They had to do heavy lifting themselves to make their
plans come true. We at least got to see them
do things even though they were already set in who
(59:59):
they were. This Lecks has all the money, all the tools,
all the sci fi toys, all the know how, and
apparently a boat load. We are told of envy motivating him. No,
could we not see how that developed? Would that not
have been an interesting story? To see the evolution of
(01:00:23):
envy and how envy destroys.
Speaker 3 (01:00:27):
Now, that would have been a good story if.
Speaker 2 (01:00:30):
The world we live in is one where we need
this film, and apparently we do, because as we said,
it's not just a hit. It's one of three films
that have captured the conversation this year thus far, though
I'm hoping this pt Anderson one is about to be
the fourth. One battle after another. Oh yeah, the best
(01:00:55):
Metacritic score of the decade. What and not all the
reviews are positive, so think about that. It means it's
getting lots and lots of one hundred out of one hundred.
But also again, another Warner Brothers movie. Anyway, if this
world we live in, the one we live in is
(01:01:16):
one that needs a film that gives us the feels,
as our friend Takako described, that's fine, of course, I
got no problem with that, But I worry that we're
still looking to fantasy for those feels. We're still dependent
(01:01:40):
upon the same type of pop culture fantasy that frankly
helped us get here in the first place.
Speaker 3 (01:01:47):
We fantasized our way through comic books. Yeah, well, or just.
Speaker 2 (01:01:52):
The it reinforced the process of living in fantasy and
just as entertainment. This film, if we can for a moment,
the action is like a video game. The comedic tonal
shifts are inconsistent and clunky.
Speaker 3 (01:02:14):
Oh totally, did I need a close up of a
squirrel during a giant monster attack? Like? Is that funny?
Speaker 2 (01:02:21):
It is a step up on all the recent Phase
films from Marvel, but it's a step down from DC's
The Batman. Yeah, a movie that finally, for the first
time put the detective in detective comics. Right, and if
it's better and more enjoyable than the Zack Snyder d
(01:02:43):
C movies, okay, but it's still at best mediocrity. Yeah,
mediocrity has become passable. But at some point, mark my words,
another Christopher Nolan is gonna come along to do something
unexpected with the Superhero film. And when that director does
(01:03:05):
this Superman, if it's not already been found to be
lacking as I believe it will be within a couple
few years, it will certainly be relegated to the scrap heap.
Speaker 3 (01:03:15):
Then, right, Let's hope that kid's listening.
Speaker 2 (01:03:20):
I certainly did not, as it turns out, need to
see this film. There was no reason. There was no reason.
It was neither bad enough nor good enough to warrant
my time. I got absolutely nothing out of it, bad
or good. Nothing out of it.
Speaker 3 (01:03:40):
Can you explain to me where everybody found hope?
Speaker 2 (01:03:42):
Though I didn't even I didn't even believe the dog
was real.
Speaker 3 (01:03:47):
It wasn't real. It was digital, but I.
Speaker 2 (01:03:50):
Didn't believe that it was real. We went from you
will believe a man to fly to you won't even
believe this dog? Is real, and that might I say, though,
I bring it up because that dog is the only
character that's remotely interesting.
Speaker 3 (01:04:06):
Well, except the one scene with Supergirls, you can only
get drunk on other planets. I want to see that
how that works out.
Speaker 2 (01:04:11):
I would be sort of interested in learning more about
the motivation and programming of the robots. Oh, yes, who
I believe are the intentional representations of James Gunn and
his filmmaking team. Automatons programmed, programmed to protect Superman and
(01:04:36):
his property at all costs, and the best way to
do that is to do it without any real feeling
or humor, right, because those things are dangerous.
Speaker 3 (01:04:49):
Hit a C plus line drive and that's it. Don't
dang for the benches. Don't foul out again?
Speaker 2 (01:04:55):
Is it bad? No, it's not enough of anything to
be good or bad. A whole lot goes on, but
nothing much happens. And what does happen is so I've
been thinking about this word a lot. It's so generic. Yes, Yeah,
(01:05:16):
audiences are clearly not over comic books now, but they
are desperately hungry for something, and this movie will apparently
do for now.
Speaker 3 (01:05:32):
Wow, it's a placeholder in our fields. Till we say
something that actually gives us the fields or we actually
feel something. Don't even give me the feels. That sounds ridiculous.
I don't need it shoved down my throat. I need
a response to some piece of art where then I
can analyze how I'm interpreting that. How hard is that
(01:05:53):
to get on the big screen? Apparently really hard? I
guess I know. Well, I'm glad you saw it a glass.
Speaker 2 (01:06:04):
I knew.
Speaker 3 (01:06:05):
I knew it wasn't gonna be your cup of tea
for sure, but I was really surprised that you really
punched this thing to death.
Speaker 2 (01:06:14):
It's a little tough to go from watching nineteen seventies
movies still watching a James Gunn movie.
Speaker 3 (01:06:22):
I bet it is.
Speaker 2 (01:06:24):
I watched a and then we'll go. But I watched
another film that's worthy of speaking of, part thriller, part
horror story, full on dream like nightmare from Japan in
nineteen sixty four called Oni Baba.
Speaker 3 (01:06:40):
Oh. I haven't heard this.
Speaker 2 (01:06:42):
It's about two peasant women living alone during a fourteenth
century civil war. Woh. The director Canado Shindo made another
great acclaim masterpiece called kur Nako, which I have not
seen so, but this film's titled Onie Baba Fleet translates
to either demon hag or old devil women. Wow, And
(01:07:07):
sure enough, the behavior of these women is quite devilish.
They live in a hut in a crazy field of
high grass and reeds as far as the eye can see,
and nearby, in totally masked and hidden by these tall reeds,
is a seemingly bottomless pit into which the women deposit
(01:07:32):
the lost strangers, often deserters from the war, who seek shelter.
After the women have murdered them, they dump them after
they murder that these strangers seeking shelter, they murder them
and then dump them into this pit, and the women
barter their victims belongings for food and supplies from the
(01:07:54):
closest shopkeeper. And I haven't gotten to the dark parts yet.
Speaker 3 (01:07:59):
Wow, it's darker. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:08:02):
The older woman has a son who went off to
fight in the war, and the younger woman is that
son's wife, so it's the woman the older woman's daughter
in law. And they have a neighbor, a man who
returns from the war who left with the son to
go fight in it, and he returns alone, revealing that
(01:08:22):
the women's beloved son husband has died. Oh, and almost immediately,
the young woman becomes sexually infatuated with the neighbor, and
the old woman does everything within her considerable powers to
prevent their relationship because she's fearful that if her daughter
(01:08:42):
in law leaves her, she will not be able to
keep carrying on these killings by herself.
Speaker 3 (01:08:50):
Which is the important part of survival.
Speaker 2 (01:08:52):
So it's part thriller, part horror film, part psychle psycho
sexual nightmare, part Freudian exploration, and honestly some some serious
Tennessee Williams thrown in for good measure. It's it's also
a ridiculously well shot film, worthy of frequent study. And
(01:09:17):
and by the way, it's it's shocking how much Japanese
censors let filmmakers get away with in the early nineteen sixties.
Speaker 3 (01:09:24):
Yeah, they didn't have a haze coat going on then
on Baba dying to see this.
Speaker 2 (01:09:31):
Oh my god. The cinematography there's there's frames that feel
almost painted, and of course it's black and white.
Speaker 3 (01:09:38):
Yeah, yeah, that's it.
Speaker 2 (01:09:40):
Yeah. Oh, anyway, I'm glad we talked about that. That
was a nice palette cleanser.
Speaker 4 (01:09:45):
Nah, hilarious promotional consideration paid for by Empire State Gas.
From farm to pump, We've got great gas.
Speaker 2 (01:10:00):
Belated spoiler alert
And now Your Chill Pack Hollywood Hour with Dean Haglind
and Phil Lareness.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Hey, welcome to year nineteen, episode twenty one of Your
Chillpack Hollywood Hour for the final week of September twenty
twenty five. Coming at you from the Los Angeles neighborhood
of Los Philis, or at least I was when we
pre recorded this. I am Phil Lareness and joining us
via the magic of podcasting and zoom all the way
(00:59):
from the environs of Detroit, the MotorCity at Jason mad
Man at Stevie's. Dean Hagland, Hey, Dean, no sooner do
we do a Mayan podcastathon overlooking the Mayan Theater? Then
some thirteen years later they shut down the Mayon Theater?
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Well? Yes?
Speaker 4 (01:23):
Is that?
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Is that what we could call cause and effect? Or
is that correlation? I don't correlation.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Well, I imagine in the in.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
The in the universal clock, if you were to, if
you were to do the timeline right the twenty four
hours representing all of history since the Big Bang. My goodness,
us doing that podcast and the theater closing are right
on top of each other.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
Yes, yes, if I compare it to four point six
billion years. I suppose that SE's really close.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
And yet you living in the studio is still a
huge long swath.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
Which goes to prove Einstein that time is relative. This
is all to answer your question. Yes, the Mayan Theater
built in nineteen twenty six, I think it was had
a gorgeous historic little Mayan details all throughout it. But
it was a huge, huge theater. I mean it had
three balconies if I recall and could see two thousand.
(02:27):
They turned it into a nightclub as of late, but
as they say, the kids aren't drinking anymore, so it
must be very expensive to run that big piece of
real estate with the hopes of selling a couple of
Gin and tonics.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
You know, I think it's been a long time since
you've been in a bar, so the twenty five dollars
drinks that get served in a bar these days, twenty
one during happy hour are most decidedly not gin and tonics.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
Well for twenty five bucks.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
It appeared in many movies right like, uh not that
long ago. I remember when we did our talk about
Jack Lemon, our appreciation of Jack Lemon. One of the
movies we discussed was Save the Tiger and uh, and
the Mayan features prominently in that film.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
Probably watch it.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
But you know rock and roll high School with your
friends the Ramones, Yeah, that was there as well. Anyway,
I didn't know that.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
You know who's most famous of being discovered there though.
He was drafted in World War two and they went
off to Palas Verdes and some of them were assigned
to put on a little sketch show about the trials
and tribulations of a newcomer soldier to all the drill
sergeants and the yelling and the stuff. And so the
(03:53):
guy who was the voice of Winnie the Pooh got
that role and he never got shipped off because to
play with such a hit. It stayed on through the
war in the Mayan Theater.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
So that's two shows out of our last what four
where Winnie the Pooh has come up for you?
Speaker 3 (04:16):
Isn't that weird? You brought up the Mayan and the Mayan.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
And oh well, yeah, I in no way demanded two
minutes on Winnie the.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
Pooh, the voice of Winnie the Pooh.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Anyway, by that time, by the time people hear this
the show, you will have spent another week talking about
Winnie the pooh. But also, yeah, the theatre will probably
be closed. It was supposed to be closing late September.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
It is an LA Historic Cultural Monument landmarked in nineteen
eighty nine, so the building will remain, but the future
use remains unclear. And I'm assuming you're right the nineteen
twenty six building. It opened for the first time in
nineteen twenty seven, and what I thought was cool to
(05:07):
read about was that it was designed by a sculptor
and anthropologist.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Oh that I did not.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Know, Francisco Cornejo. Oh. It is, of course one of
this country's most notable examples of the nineteen twenties and
nineteen thirties mayan revival architectural movement with its pre Columbian
meso American style. And you mentioned that a nightclub. It
(05:39):
did serve a number of functions through the through the decades,
and at one point was an actor's workshop theater during
the depression. I didn't know that, and a venue for
musicals Spanish language movie theater.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
In the night seventies it shifted to screening pornographic.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Films on that big screen. Man. That must have been overwhelming.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
A lot of balconies though like you said, you can
probably find some privacy. Yeah, And in nineteen ninety it
was converted into a nightclub and there for a while.
I don't know, I remember this in the nineties. I
don't know if this was still possible when you moved here,
but it was called Club Mayon.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Oh yeah, sort of remember that, but I think it
was just shortened to the Mayan.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
So an icon it's safe to say, yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
But they can't tear it down because it's on the
National Register. It's just going to sit empty till I.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
See I mean something someone will have to do. There's
there isn't an Apple store within three blocks of it, so.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
Maybe the apple and say it again.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Anyway, an icon that is no longer with us, and
there are icons that are no longer with us, and
then there are icons who are no longer with us.
And that leads us to Robert Redford.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
Oh thank you celebrity deaths.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
The actor and director known for his roles in classic movies,
is directing his activism. He of course, starred in at
least a trio of films that are you know, all
time beloved classics. Right. We may not call them masterpieces,
(07:47):
but all the President's Men, Butch Cassidy and The Sundance
Kid and The Sting. He died September sixteenth at his
home in Utah at the age of eighty nine. I
was kind of surprised.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
I was kind of surprise too. I don't know if
he was staying in shape or he just you know,
I thought he'd hit the nineties the way he seemed
so youthful in his energy. That last one where he's
a single in the boat and he chooses to was that.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
The last one was The Old Man in the Gun, Oh,
where where he uh real life story of a of
a bank robber and uh playing someone much younger than
himself in that movie. The Old Man in The Old
Man in the Gun was seventy oh wow. Yeah, and
he still seemed, like you said, very very energetic. But
(08:41):
but the point being kind of a youthful enthusiasm, yeah,
and passion for stuff.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
Like like a Betty White sort of thing. You would
think you would have one of those.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
I don't. We don't. Neither of us knew him. Well,
we don't know. And this guy was a gentleman. Even
when he criticized, he did it in such a way
where I feel like you probably were glad that he
was talking about you. And I can't help but wonder though,
(09:16):
if the last several years, where we're at, and especially
where we're at vis a vis as stewards of the environment,
all right, if maybe it just got to be a
little too much for him and it was time to
just check out of the game, because because he cared
(09:36):
about a lot of things. But I don't think he
cared about anything as much as he cared about being
a good steward for this planet.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
Right right at his place in Utah, apparently was wasn't
that environmentally sensitive.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
He bought a huge place, which I think he still
had in New Mexico, something you know, two hundred and
fifty acres or something like that, and he purchased it
just to preserve that the view from a particular hill,
so that the view from a particular hill would remain
for people who came there.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
Wow, so never be developed.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
That's kind of thoughtful, you know, I mean, because he said,
and I remember in an interview he did. It was
a TV interview, and he he said, you know, like
there was a time when the Western United States, this
is what it looked like. This is what you saw,
and we ought to keep whatever rare visions of that
of what this land looked like for future generations. He
(10:40):
was born in Santa Monica, California. Did you know that.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
I did not know that. I thought he was a
Midwest guy.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
I would have sworn it as well. He got his
start on the stages of New York City, So again
you think, okay, a farm boy. I mean, I want
to put his biographical background of his character, Roy Hobbs,
and the natural I want to put onto him. I
(11:08):
want to impose it onto him. And anyway, he makes
the trip to New York City and starts working on
stage in the fifties and sixties, starts working in television
in nineteen sixty, appearing on a wide range of shows
including Perry Mason, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and The Twilight Zonehead Zone. Yes,
(11:32):
talk about that performance.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
I mean, I forget the name of the episode, but
you saw that dynamic, like just jump off the screen.
And you know how many great actors were on that,
Joseph Cotton. You had all of those big name actors
and here's this new guy. And I don't know if
it was the lighting, but boy, his teeth his teeth
(11:55):
were so shiny, and he was like the blonde haired
It just was so I like, your eye was drawn
to him, no matter how many people on the screen.
It was.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
It was called nothing in the Dark, oh right, and
all his charm And I mean a debonair is not
a word I use very often, but I believe that
he had that debonair switch. Yeah, and it's why his
(12:27):
charm worked for so many American eras. I don't mean
of moviegoers, I mean of like you know, putting him
in different periods, right, and he's playing death in that
oh that's right show. Yeah, and what a what a
fascinating launch for him, And it really was. Because his
(12:51):
television era as an actor did not last long. By
nineteen sixty three, he's appearing in movies. He did receive
an Emmy nomination, believe it or not, that same year
in nineteen sixty three, for an episode of an adventure
series called Rescue eight.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
Wow. Never heard of that.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Anyway. His film roles, of course, lead to startum and
I wanted to kind of take some time to do
a deep run through his filmography in just a minute,
but just to put it in some overall perspective. You know,
Emmy Award nineteen sixty three guest starring in these things
after doing stage work in the fifties, and he by
(13:37):
nineteen sixty nine is a movie.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
Star, right, was sixteen sixty nine.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
That's what cements him. He's played the lead in some
movies and some interesting movies that will we'll talk about.
But playing a sidekick is what cements him as a
movie star, which is kind of fast, right, not a
lead role, not a lead role, but a sidekick role.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
Yeah, but he made it like it was a duel,
like a Bob Hope Bing Crosby Road movie, right. I
mean the dynamic of it on page probably looked like
a sidekick. But him and Paul Newman together.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
But let me ask you, do you think today, assuming
that movie gets made, what can you change the ending? Uh?
Speaker 3 (14:32):
You didn't like the freeze frame with the ad.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
And can we have more singing in the rains montages?
Which really sucks. That is so bad because I've been
watching cherry picking scenes from that movie and they are
so good. So then just to have that in the
middle is just such a It's just a kick to
the gnats is really what it is. Cinematically speaking, and
(15:00):
there is a kick to the nad scene in the movie,
but we didn't know what was gonna we were gonna
be feeling that paying ourselves as movie goers. Anyway, my
serious question was going to be a movie like that
it's made comes out. Are people really saying to the
second lead, Okay, we got to put you as the
(15:23):
lead in your own movies, or is there just an
effort to keep remaking that.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
Because the sting comes up what seventy three, Yeah, a.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
Few years later, so they are trying to get them
to do it. But in the meantime he's starring in movies,
whereas I guess I'm thinking like Chris Tucker in the
Rush Hour movies. And I'm sure there's other more modern examples,
but it's not like these people went into lead roles.
Their next lead role was a sequel to the same one.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
Right, right, right, I see what you're saying. So that
what sidekick leapt from that in so short of years,
I can't think of a single one. Really.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Yeah, it always felt a little unique to me. But
you're right. If you watched that movie, you and really
watch it, you do say, yeah, this guy can carry it. Absolutely. Anyway,
his success continued well into the seventies, with a big
string of commercial and critical hits. He was as big
(16:30):
a movie star as Hollywood had ever produced, movies like
The Way We Were with Barbar Streissan, The Sting, which
earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. Believe
it or not, his Academy Award nomination for Acting came
from The Sting. There was The Great Gatsby, which was
(16:53):
reviled by critics but a hit. Yeah. Three Days of
the Condor in nineteen seventy Oh my god, I was looking.
I went down a rabbit hole because of Gatsby into
the films of of nineteen seventy four and release dates,
and there was, Oh my god. Within short order, you
(17:17):
had The Conversation come out. Yeah, you had Parallax View
come out, and the very next week after Parallax View,
you had Chinatown.
Speaker 3 (17:27):
Wow. And yet that era is considered just those disaster
movies Towering, Inferno, Earthquake, Airplane.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
I think increasingly it is known as the era of
the paranoia movie, of the of the corruption paranoia movie.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
But I think again, what's what's what's old is new
and we're and and we're finding ourselves really driven to
some of these movies now. And one of those movies
that we're driven back to is Three Days of the Condor.
And how about All the President's Men? That movie doesn't
resonate less with each passing day, It resonates more, both
(18:09):
as a film but also behind the scenes. How they
made that? It's again, would any movie be made like
this where the actors embed themselves in the newspaper for
a year so that they can pull off what you
see in the movie, which is you believe that these
(18:30):
famous people you're watching actually work there.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
And then and then how about rebuilding the entire Washington
Post on sound stages.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
That's not easy.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
I don't know if that gets done anymore. There was
a Bridge Too Far, Big Hit nineteen eighty. He turns
his attention to directing. His debut film was Ordinary People,
at won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director.
He beat out a certain Martin Scorsese, who was nominated
(19:08):
for Raging Bully. Other other films that Redford directed that
met with both critical acclaim and box office profits I
would say were probably Quiz Show, A River runs through it,
(19:28):
and The Horse Whisperer, which I think was the only
It was certainly the first time he had directed himself
in a movie. I believe maybe he did it one
other time or two other times later on, like Lions
for Lambs and then was it The Company You Keep
maybe was the other one. He continued to be a
(19:51):
box office draw after turning to filmmaking, though his his
his acting roles became fewer and farther between. After bru Baker,
which I think was nineteen eighty, he doesn't do another
movie until The Natural nineteen eighty four, does appear in
Out of Africa the next year alongside Meryl Streep, and
(20:12):
then doesn't have another really big hit until Indecent Proposal
in ninety three, which oddly was a movie that in
the weeks leading up to my dad's death, my dad
was watching every day. And I'm not saying that those
are lengths that that's causational. I guess the words causal
(20:35):
because of causation. And I think right before that had
had a modest hit with the rather modestly delightful Sneakers.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
Oh yeah, I forgot about that.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
And he even made late career appearances in Superhero films.
His casting in Captain America The Winter Soldier served to
elevate that movie into the terrain of being discussed like
it was a genuine cinematic achievement, tying it as it
(21:14):
did Two Three Days of the Condor and All the
Presidents Men being as much a what, owing as much
to its lineage, you know, owing its lineage as much
to those movies, those paranoia thrillers of the seventies as
(21:35):
it did to comic book movies in the Marvel universe.
And his final appearance on screen, though it wasn't his
final film that he shot was Avengers Endgame Wows. As
we mentioned, when he was not on screen or behind
the camera, he was very, very active in other ways
(21:56):
as an advocate for the art of cinema.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
Right started Sundance after all.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
After Yeah, I was on a chat show this past week,
and some of the young people were surprised, you know,
felt felt ashamed to admit they didn't even weren't even
familiar with Robert Redford, and so I just asked them,
are you familiar with Quentin Tarantino? And they said, of course.
I said, we'll name something he did, you know, and
(22:22):
pulp fiction and I said, well, do you know the
movie he did before that? They said, Reservoir Do I said,
you're familiar with Robert Redford? Have you heard have you
seen Sinners? They? Oh, we love Sinners. Do you know
what else that guy did? And they said, you know
Black Panther? And I said, did you know that he
started with a movie called fruit Vale Station. I said, well,
we've heard of it, but you know I haven't seen.
(22:44):
I said, well, if you've heard of it, you've heard
of Robert Redford. And I just listed through all the
filmmakers we have today who got their launch out of
the Sundance Labs, right, So, yeah, orchestraated by him, and
he produced through his Wildwood Productions, also many many movies
(23:05):
he was and it, man, it took me a while
to flash back and remember that this was indeed the case.
He was a bipartisan political activist. He famously supported candidates
from both parties. It's hard to remember that, yeah, because
(23:31):
of where he stood in relation to issues, again in
an era of denial of facts and truth, but in particular,
he would advocate for environmental causes and for politicians who
he felt were environmental warriors. And when we were young
(23:59):
that did not know partisan bounds.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
Right. Yeah, yeah, well THEPA was started under Nixon's administration. Right.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
And indeed, if we just flashed back twenty five years ago,
right to just before nine to eleven, the vast majority,
more than four hundred of the four hundred and thirty
five members of Congress acknowledged climate change as one of
the great issues facing the world. Right, and it would
(24:33):
be at least a decade or more before one side
of the political aisle learned to ignore it or try.
Speaker 3 (24:43):
To diminishment Tom.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
Diminish it, or outright deny it after, as we know,
a prolonged marketing and lobbying effort by the same lobbyists
who had worked for the tobacco industry decades earlier. Yeah. So, anyway,
he also advocated for LGBTQ plus rights and Native American Oh. Yes,
(25:14):
there are so many Native American storytellers who issued the
most beautiful remembrances of Redford in tributes to Redford in
the wake of his death. And indeed, he did, I
think make a final acting appearance on the television series
(25:39):
Dark Wins, which he was instrumental in helping get off
the ground. I think it was a season three episode
where he's playing chess with George R. R. Martin.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
Nah, how seventh seal?
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Is that especially for a guy that started playing death
fun Twilight Zone?
Speaker 3 (26:01):
Yeah, right, that's true.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
He was recognized by the National Audubon Society with their
Audubon Medal. Do you think he could have been recognized
without that medal? I mean, he was a famous guy.
He's right there here. Give this medal to Robert Redford
if you can recognize him. He doesn't need this recognition.
He received honorary doctorates from Bard College and Brown University,
(26:25):
was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Bill Clinton,
won Lifetime Achievement honors at the Academy Awards and the
Venice Film Festival, and in twenty sixteen, received the Presidential
Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama.
Speaker 3 (26:39):
Wow that's a lot.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
So some interesting things about his filmography. His first, i
would say romantic leading role in a movie was Barefoot
in the Park.
Speaker 3 (26:56):
Oh yeah, that was funny.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
I can't recall off the top of my head whether
he had played in the show on Broadway, but I'm
betting he did. Neil Simon and co starring with Jane Fonda, right, yeah,
so that's his first romantic lead, and his final romantic
(27:23):
lead was I think also with Jane Fonda. Really yeah,
it was, although maybe we consider The Old Man in
the Gun a romantic, but he did an out and
out romance Our Souls at Night with Jane Fonda for Netflix.
(27:45):
I never saw that, and it's supposed to be quite
lovely twenty seventeen. And so I'm gonna avail myself of
that five movies they were in through the years. Apparently
rather famous Slee Redford had to keep rejecting Jane Fonda's
(28:05):
advances in real life, as he did Barbara Streisan also,
and it tells you what like a gentleman this guy
is that neither of those women had any problem admitting
that innfessing that in fact. But his first movie that
he appeared in, though it was uncredited, was nineteen sixty.
(28:25):
It was Tall Story, starring Anthony Perkins, and that was
Jane Fonda's first movie, so she was in his Both
of them had the same first movie. His first credited
role was two years later in War Hunt, which I
told you about a really good movie. He meets his
lifelong friend Sidney Pollock, who acts in that movie and
(28:49):
then ends up being in so many of Sidney Pollock's films.
The movie starred John Saxon in one of John Saxon's
only like character roles. It's kind of the sort of
thing you would expect Brando to be doing. It's a
bit of apocalypse now. It's about a guy that's gone mad
(29:11):
in the face of war, and that's the lead. And
Robert Redford plays the good soldier in it. And it's
an interesting, interesting little movie. He works for Robert Mulligan
and Inside Daisy Clover another film I've only seen pieces of,
and I think it was Natalie Wood. I think who
(29:34):
pulls strings to get him cast in that film. Now,
a movie that I've wanted to ask you about actually
for years, because I'm a huge allagonist fan. I would
like to become more of an elegantist completist. He did
a movie in nineteen sixty five that Redford's in called
Situation Hopeless but not Serious. Did you ever see that? No?
Speaker 3 (29:56):
In fact, it is it a comedy?
Speaker 2 (29:58):
Yeah? Yeah, comedy?
Speaker 3 (30:01):
Oh boy, that sounds good, because I mean Alec Ginnis
is pretty funny in The Lady Killers, where they're all
still pretty funny.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
There's never been an actor funny or there's never been
a better big screen comedic actor. And if there wasn't
Alec Guinness, there would not be Peter Sellers, there would
not be Mike Myers, there would not dare I say,
there would not be movies.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
But there you could say that, sure, and it's called situation.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
Hopeless tot but not serious.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
Hopeless but not serious.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
Okay, Anyway. I think one of the first things I
ever saw Redford dinn when I was a little kid
on you know after school TV, you know, in reruns,
was this Property Is Condemned. Oh yeah, that's a that's
a heavy, heavy movie based on a play, and I
remember coming away from it going Robert Redford movies aren't fun.
Speaker 3 (30:59):
Well, surprisingly, the first one I recall seeing with the
family done on the TV was Jeremiah Johnson, and I went,
oh my gosh, this is grueling.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
Yeah, that also is not fun. But in the age
hit huge hit.
Speaker 3 (31:14):
Big kit. I mean in terms of environmental and anti disestablishmentarianism,
guy going it on his own in the mountains without
two bits of wit and the other miner helping him the.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
Trapper because I think sixty seven was Barefoot in the Park,
and like I said, that showed his romantic bona fides.
But the year before that he did a movie that
was not a hit. But he was the second lead
on the run in a movie called The Chase. Oh yeah,
(31:54):
for Arthur Penn, starring Marlon Brando, and Brando was not
a box office draw at this point. These were the
lean years for him. But my god, is that a
good movie.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
I don't think I've seen it. Now you say it
out loud, I know I've seen of it.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
It's really good. Redford on the Run again, Jane Fonda
in that, and Marlon Brando playing the cop who is
trying to track this escaped convict down played by Redford
before the mob mentality gets to him.
Speaker 3 (32:32):
Ah.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
Right, And it is nineteen sixty seven Arthur Penn. As
you can imagine, it is a pretty hard hitting depiction
of the communal mentality of America. Let's go it's it's
a dark film. It's really really good and Brando cares.
Now he looks good and he cares. So then is
(32:56):
Butch Cassidy. And like we said, coming out of Butch Cassidy,
now he's given his own movies to carry. He's not
playing second to Newman, to Brando, He's not playing second
quite honestly to Jane Fonda because she is the star
of Barefoot in the Park.
Speaker 3 (33:18):
Right.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
As so often in those Neil Simon movies, it is
the female character that's the better character, and the male
characters is often more of a straight man.
Speaker 3 (33:28):
Right.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
So he does Downhill Racer, which is the first movie
for Michael Ritchie. Oh yeah, Jeremiah Johnson, you know, right
after that, but also another Western we could call it,
even though it's a modern Western, and it was tell
(33:50):
them Willie boy is Here with Robert Blake, and both
his westerns tell them Willie boy is here, and Jeremiah
Johnson in vall native American themes as well. Okay, so
smart to hey, you know what, I can play the
(34:11):
lead in westerns because I was just in a huge
hit western that cemented me. But if I'm gonna do it,
I want to do some westerns that don't get made
right right, And that to me kind of cements a
career path for him, because he loved nothing more than
(34:32):
the movies that he was able to make that people
told him could not be made or would not be made.
Speaker 3 (34:40):
Right right, So he had the power to green light
that stuff, and so he chose wisely, I think.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
And Sidney Pollock of course makes Jeremiah Johnson. And it
is a filmmaking feat. How they accomplished that movie. I mean,
it may not be, you know, quite at the level
of how the hell did they do this in the
desert as Lawrence of Arabia.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
But there's some shots you go, how'd you get a
camera up that mountain in a snowstar?
Speaker 2 (35:09):
Yeah, somebody carried that goddamn thing.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
I know. And it's lit well and you hear everything
like all of that on the side of a bloody
mountain with the you know, minimal, minimal set deck. Like
you look in the background, there's not an extra snow
being blown on those trees or anything.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
It's, let's face it, a lot of Westerns. You can
almost see, like the ending of Blazing Saddles, which is
one of the reasons I love it so much. You
can almost see the limos just off frame to bring
them back to the hotel to the lodge, right, and
oh that actor, Oh look, Lee Marvin just came out
of the hotel bar and now he's in a bar
(35:49):
set on the set of this and honestly, I got
no problem with that. I love that about westerns. But
this one. Uh again, totally different movies in terms of
their pacing and everything, but a bit of a kindred
(36:10):
nature to Baby's film with Altman, mckayby and Missus Miller.
Oh yeah, another one where you really feel, look, they
immersed themselves in the world of these characters and built
from within this world, not coming from the outside and
(36:33):
slopping the world down on this land.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
Yeah, now you say it. You know, you see some
actors who have their tricks, their things, but Redford always
seem to have it just genuinely come from the character,
came from almost the relationship to the environment. He was in.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
The next year, The Candidate nineteen seventy two. Oh yeah,
one of my favorites. I have watched that movie so
many times. He re teams with Michael Ritchie for that
and his performance. We talked about how he gets an
Oscar nomination for the sting. Honestly, his performance in The Candidate,
(37:16):
where he's just starting to lose his mind of having
to give the same stump speeches over and over and
over again and having everything that he cared about sort
of moved to the side because you can't get anything
done if you don't win. But in order to win,
you kind of have to disqualify yourself from getting anything done.
(37:37):
And it is. It's a brilliant comedic performance. And he
gave of any movie star, you know, he gave great
movie star performances. And I don't know, you know why,
I mean, I guess because it was comedy, you know.
(37:59):
And additionally, the Oscars never honored comedy. So that's seventy two,
and the next year he does the Sting and I
feel like maybe that's why he gets nominated for the Sting.
Is like, wow, you've been doing really good work, so
here you go. And then the same year as the
Sting is the way we were like, I mean, my god,
(38:23):
I think Gatsby and Three Days of the Condor were
right around the same time. I watched Gatsby. I had
never seen that, So in the wake of his death,
I decided that that's of the films of his that
had eluded me, that's the one that I was gonna
(38:44):
check out.
Speaker 3 (38:45):
Right, And that's Sam from Law.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
And Order, Sam Waterston.
Speaker 3 (38:51):
And Waterson, Yeah, and Bruce Dern Right, was in the.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
Bruce Dern early Bruce Dern, and he gives a very
good performance. He was very well acclaimed for that. Of course,
Sam Waterston, you know everybody knows him Law and Order,
but like Killing Fields. He was the lead actor in
The Killing Fields for Crying Out Loud, oscar winning film
and his two Woody Allen's nothing wrong with his performances
(39:21):
in Hannah and Her Sisters and as the man Diane
Weist and Kerrie Fisher are fighting over and the blind
Rabbi in Crimes and Misdemeanors. He's so good in that
as well. And not to make this, we will cover
all this in our Sam Waterston show. But he looks
(39:42):
exactly the same. He just looks like a Sam Waterston
who has aged.
Speaker 3 (39:47):
That's it.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
That's it, but but identical. You put the two guys
next to him and you would without hesitation, you guys
are related, your father and son? What the hell? Anyway?
Like I said, Great Gatsby was kind of widely reviled
by critics, but it did meet with considerable box office success,
and I found it a very interesting watch. It was
(40:11):
never anything less than interesting. Sometimes it's interesting because I
feel like it's making choices that torpedo its chances to
be a good movie, because those choices tend to pay
great respect to the literary work upon which it's based,
(40:36):
but they fight against what a movie needs. And it's
quite possible Fitzgerald the writer should never be adapted into
a movie, really, because the intelligence of his writing can
be approached. But cinema is a visceral experience. Yeah, and
(41:00):
without significant restructuring of the story and the events, which
no one's gonna do with a Fitzgerald because no, this
is sacra Saint, right, right, You can't mess with the
structure of the events. But without restructuring it, audiences are
always going to be at an emotional reserve, whereas in
(41:22):
the process of reading it you can form your own relationships.
Speaker 3 (41:28):
Yeah, you know where that pays off, mostly for that
movie the billboard for the Pometrist and the Jobs. Yeah,
and you go, Oh, I didn't get that was the
Eyes of Judgment and God until I read the book.
In the movie, it just looks like, Hey, there's a
funny billboard in the middle of nowhere. That's odd.
Speaker 2 (41:51):
I wondered if it was a commentary on us as audience. Oh, right,
a a voyeuristic commentary, right, because there is an element
of the movie that is about voyeurism and watching other people. Right.
Can we just say that I wish he does not
have a line in the movie Redford until like twenty
(42:12):
seven minutes, and it's the very end of the first act,
because it's the part of the book that I remember
the great the best too, which is the mystery of
this neighbor. And yet as a movie, we have to
let people know, remember Redford's in it. It's not all
Sam Waterston. Redford's in it, so we have to have
a couple shots of him looking wistfully mysterious, mysterious and beautiful.
(42:34):
And I wish we didn't have those shots. I wish
that he could just be a mystery, right. Yeah, keep
the biggest movie star on the planet in mystery until
he shows up, and then that conversation they first have
is so weird an off putting, and nothing happens in it,
and it would be even more powerful, I think Mia Pharaoh. Yeah,
(43:00):
am I allowed to say was terrible casting.
Speaker 3 (43:03):
You're allowed to say it.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
She was only cast apparently because the director and producer
plays great historic weight on the fact that MIA's godfather,
the Great George Kuckor, was linked intimately with the original book.
He produced its Broadway adaptation back in the day, after all,
(43:25):
and so her family had requested that she get to
be a part of this as part of family lineage.
Oh and that held weight for George Jack Clayton, the director. Wow,
she looks the part instills, but her Daisy just comes
off as silly and actually sort of nuts. It's hard
(43:46):
to see the idealized feminine symbol Gatsby has obsessed over.
It's tough casting, and it's a tough role because she
is revealed to be nothing but superficial, right, But you
have to believe that he could see in her the
idealized feminine and in a movie that has to be
(44:09):
about more than just what someone looks like, it really
does because we're spending time with them, and we find
out they spent time with them, so we have to
believe that that time was spent being able to idealize
this person. I've read a lot like Ali McGraw was
originally cast to be in it, but they didn't want
(44:29):
Steve McQueen to do it, who was her boyfriend, and
they didn't want him because Ali McGraw had left the
producer Bob Evans for Steve McQueen, so he had a
little bit of an extra grind. And they also didn't
want to put them together because they thought there's no
controlling them. The story behind the making of it, as
(44:51):
with many movies of that era, is fascinating. You know.
Cobola wrote this for God's sake, and he Francis Cobola
wrote it because the God hadn't come out yet and
he didn't know if Godfather was going to be a hit,
so he said, give me whatever work you can.
Speaker 3 (45:05):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (45:06):
William Goldman was so pissed off because he was desperate
to get to adapt the book. Having read the script,
he said, but Copola did it better than I could have.
This is one of the greatest scripts of all time.
And Copola said, yes, if only they had made it
the script. But he is the soul screenwriter. Anyway, back
(45:29):
to the casting. Of all the names that were associated
with it, the one that makes me think I would
like to see what she would have done with it
is same year she stars in Chinatown instead don Away
Faye dune Away as the idealized feminine who because to me,
(45:50):
I don't know, like it's to be able to believe
or want to believe. There are depths that there are
not right right, And she's a fascinating projection screen for that.
I believe that because of that innate sort of mystery
about her, you could project depths onto her. The depths
(46:12):
that fade down away really did have and showed him
an actress. I don't mean the actress didn't, but I
mean playing someone but she also, I am convinced, could
play someone who ultimately reveals herself to be shallow and neurotic.
Speaker 3 (46:29):
Completely just yeah, superficial. I could see that too. She
plays superficial, but she would convey depth for him to idealize, right.
Speaker 2 (46:41):
And you get to see the work they do together
in three days of the Condor. Oh and again it's
hard not to want to go back and rewrite The Gatsby.
So what's great about Redford in it? Though? And he
had just screen test for it even though he was
a big star, because one of the producers just hadn't
(47:03):
in his mind. I think it was Bob Evans that
that you couldn't have a blonde you can have a
light haired actor like it, even though there's no reference
to that in the book at all, and they realized
after the fact they don't think Evans ever read the book.
So which is fine. You're making a movie. You're making
a movie. Hopefully the storytellers or have done it. But
(47:25):
his his secrecy, his his emotional withholding seems sort of dangerous,
right with whiffs of mental illness. Redford the actor always
wanted the opportunity to play a fiend. I don't think
(47:46):
you ever really got that opportunity. But this film makes
me wish that some director or producer had been brave
enough to give him that chance.
Speaker 3 (47:56):
Right not to set it up a notch, just a
notch towards fiendishness.
Speaker 2 (48:01):
The yeah, you know, anyway, getting back to Coppola, I'm
going to endeavor to track down the screenplay.
Speaker 3 (48:11):
Oh yeah, please do see how it differs.
Speaker 2 (48:15):
Goldman said about the final film that one of the
things he really did not like was that the parties
at the Gatsby Estate are rather crass and silly rather
than glamorous.
Speaker 3 (48:28):
Right dent in the water.
Speaker 2 (48:30):
What I like about them is that they reveal what
I feel might just be a universal truth, that contemporary
ideas of glamour are probably quite often pretty darn silly
(48:51):
when you take a historic step back.
Speaker 3 (48:54):
Ah, oh, that's fascinating. So what glamorous to us is
in with context, so that when I remove it by
a couple of decades, that's not glamor at all. It's
completely similar, sort of like eighteenth century ballroom dancing and
stylized quadrilles and all of those silly dances and where
(49:17):
you can dance with the same woman twice or that
made you betrothed.
Speaker 2 (49:20):
Yeah, the rituals of glamour and power and pomp and
circumstance that so often deprived a being rooted in again
something almost emotional.
Speaker 3 (49:40):
Or an emotional reality.
Speaker 2 (49:43):
Or integral to our human makeup. Right, they can come
off as flighty and silly after the fact, And I
think that that is actually kind of brilliant. I liked
that the thing that Goldman really didn't appreciate. It was
maybe thing I appreciated the most in the movie, but
the the other element of it. And maybe, you know,
(50:04):
like in the Weeks to Come, like we did with
The Land Delawn, it'd be fun to revisit some of
these Redford performances because he really was not just a
big star and this iconic figure in the industry. He
really could be a very interesting actor, and so I
(50:25):
would enjoy revisiting some of these. But an element of
Gatsby that really has been tying in a lot with
some of the things I've been thinking is the element
of fantasy. Oh yeah, you know this, his fantasy about
what it's going to be like when he meets her again,
(50:46):
and the ramifications of so building his life towards that fantasy.
Right reminded me of how when we did our deep
dive into The Third Man after I rewatched that, and
how I've been thinking about how Joseph Cotton's Holly Martin's character,
like Rick in Casablanca, two of my big heroes from
(51:09):
the forties, in one case, an absolutely iconic American hero.
How what almost disturbs me now is how genuine and
authentic depictions they are of what it meant to be American,
and maybe what it means to be American now, and
that is to be fearful and to keep rejecting the
(51:32):
opportunity to do the right thing until almost the last minute.
Speaker 3 (51:37):
Right.
Speaker 2 (51:39):
Lily added another piece of that thought process to mine,
which is she pointed out that both those characters are
prone to fantasy.
Speaker 3 (51:50):
Oh is that?
Speaker 2 (51:53):
And they both end up alone. Yeah, And so I
was thinking about that again with Gatsby, right, he ends
up alone and then ultimately of course, at the bottom
of the pool. Yeah. Anyway, so I've been thinking about that,
about fantasy and with third Man. Oh my goodness. Unlike Rick,
(52:16):
who breaks free from it. There's a moment where you
see in Casablanca, the reality hit him when the object
of his fantasy and his romantic fantasies and this idea
we could live together. I'll do the right thing by
you know, your husband and everybody. But we're ending up together.
(52:36):
We're going to have this happy ending love story. And
she breaks down and says to him, Okay, I can't
think anymore. This has been exhausting. This has been terrible
these last few years, being away from you, being in
concentration camps, being in this You have to do the
thinking for both of us now, And suddenly responsibility for
someone he actually cares about is put on him, and
(52:57):
that's the cold water that wipes away immediately the fantasy,
and all that's left is what he has to do right,
and it no longer requires bravery because he has no choice.
He either has to do what it is him to
do or not, And in the case of the Third Man,
(53:21):
there is a similar moment to it, but it never
removes Holly Martin's romantic fantasy. Even at the very end
he thinks he's going to end up with the girl,
and that's the meaning of the last shot of the movie,
when his final fantasy is taken from him. He begins
(53:42):
the movie penniless and alone, but with a fantasy of
what his life is going to be thanks to Harry
Lyme in this City of Vienna, and he ends the
movie penniless and alone and literally throwing away the last
vestiges of his fantasy. Was thinking about the debilitating nature
(54:05):
of fantasy and watching these and in watching Gatsby, because
in no small part I had finally watched the James
Gunn Superman.
Speaker 3 (54:19):
Uh huh.
Speaker 2 (54:20):
By the way, there was a moment in time when
Robert Redford was considered for Superman in nineteen seventy eight,
but they gave it to Warren Beatty instead, and then
he could not wrap his head around wearing tights and
a cape, so he made Heaven Can Wait instead. That
(54:42):
was his superhero movie. Okay, In nineteen seventy eight, Dean,
The reason we believed a man could fly was because,
in no small part, Superman in and that Richard Donner
directed film, had landed on our planet Earth, not a
(55:08):
fantasy earth, which is where James guns film is set.
Speaker 3 (55:14):
Oh, I see what you're saying.
Speaker 2 (55:16):
I don't recognize the Earth in James guns movie as
our world at all. There are references to obviously what's
going on now, A delightful bit of angry monkeys. Who
are the bots destroying social discourse on the internet. That's funny,
but it's not the real world, so there's no chance
(55:40):
for these to be real people. You would believe a
man could fly? I think we've always focused on the
flying part of it. I would love a superhero movie
where I could believe a.
Speaker 3 (55:53):
Man none of them.
Speaker 2 (55:58):
When of you, when did you last believe a character
in a superhero movie. It's been a handful of years,
I think, so I don't believe anything in the James
Gunn movie, and and I don't believe it. You know,
if you want me to believe in this other world,
then you actually have to build that world. I don't
(56:20):
need to see the world I live in in anything.
I don't go to the theater expecting to see the
world I live in. I want to be transported from
my hear and now. But if you do the work, then,
oh my god, just actors on a set with a
black background, I start to see the village that they're
living in. I start to see the enemy battalions coming
(56:44):
at them. Because you've done the work to build the world,
not just push out buttons on our collective knowledge of
these characters and their previous stories.
Speaker 3 (56:59):
That's exactly what they were doing, a series of buttons.
It was almost ironic that Lex Luthor does move C
forty five move. It was almost like a metaphor for
just pushing emotional buttons like, oh we got you pegged
your three thousand data analytics that we have carefully researched.
(57:20):
So here's there are fight sequence.
Speaker 2 (57:23):
You're you're gonna hear what I'm what I'm saying, and
I'm saying it I am. I'm throwing punches on this
in a good film by a actual good storyteller, which
I do not think James Gunn qualifies for in a
long time, right, those scenes would have been in it
(57:43):
because you've taken it upon yourself to say, I'm going
to expose this unhealthy genre fantasy for what it is, right,
and I'm gonna take the piss out of this to
such a degree that no one's making one of these
after this. Ever, again, some of his choices are exactly
(58:07):
the choices that such a storyteller would make. In this case,
there is literally no story told. Yeah, there are scenes
that hint at once hinted stories. John was right. The
interview of Superman by Lois Lane hints at some things
of what the movie could have been. He's absolutely right,
(58:27):
But please choose to tell someone's story. I am relieved.
I guess that we didn't have to deal with an
origin story. I hate or that, but we don't have
any story someone. Every story, into a degree, has to
be an origin story. Every story right, because we are
(58:51):
being introduced to someone right.
Speaker 3 (58:53):
A beginning, middle, and end. That's a standard structure, even.
Speaker 2 (58:57):
If the beginning came before or when our story began.
Artful crafting and structure lets us catch up to some
idea of how these people became the way that they are. Right,
So somebody has to be introduced and the story has
(59:20):
to be told from their perspective. Right, honestly, make a
Superman movie, call it a Superman movie. But give me
the origin story that I've never seen. Give me a
Lex Luthor origin story.
Speaker 3 (59:32):
Yeah, really always shows up completely evil and rich.
Speaker 2 (59:37):
Well, at least in nineteen seventy eight we saw Lex
and Otis and Miss test Macher have to do things.
They had to do heavy lifting themselves to make their
plans come true. We at least got to see them
do things even though they were already set in who
(59:59):
they were. This Lecks has all the money, all the tools,
all the sci fi toys, all the know how, and
apparently a boat load. We are told of envy motivating him. No,
could we not see how that developed? Would that not
have been an interesting story? To see the evolution of
(01:00:23):
envy and how envy destroys.
Speaker 3 (01:00:27):
Now, that would have been a good story if.
Speaker 2 (01:00:30):
The world we live in is one where we need
this film, and apparently we do, because as we said,
it's not just a hit. It's one of three films
that have captured the conversation this year thus far, though
I'm hoping this pt Anderson one is about to be
the fourth. One battle after another. Oh yeah, the best
(01:00:55):
Metacritic score of the decade. What and not all the
reviews are positive, so think about that. It means it's
getting lots and lots of one hundred out of one hundred.
But also again, another Warner Brothers movie. Anyway, if this
world we live in, the one we live in is
(01:01:16):
one that needs a film that gives us the feels,
as our friend Takako described, that's fine, of course, I
got no problem with that, But I worry that we're
still looking to fantasy for those feels. We're still dependent
(01:01:40):
upon the same type of pop culture fantasy that frankly
helped us get here in the first place.
Speaker 3 (01:01:47):
We fantasized our way through comic books. Yeah, well, or just.
Speaker 2 (01:01:52):
The it reinforced the process of living in fantasy and
just as entertainment. This film, if we can for a moment,
the action is like a video game. The comedic tonal
shifts are inconsistent and clunky.
Speaker 3 (01:02:14):
Oh totally, did I need a close up of a
squirrel during a giant monster attack? Like? Is that funny?
Speaker 2 (01:02:21):
It is a step up on all the recent Phase
films from Marvel, but it's a step down from DC's
The Batman. Yeah, a movie that finally, for the first
time put the detective in detective comics. Right, and if
it's better and more enjoyable than the Zack Snyder d
(01:02:43):
C movies, okay, but it's still at best mediocrity. Yeah,
mediocrity has become passable. But at some point, mark my words,
another Christopher Nolan is gonna come along to do something
unexpected with the Superhero film. And when that director does
(01:03:05):
this Superman, if it's not already been found to be
lacking as I believe it will be within a couple
few years, it will certainly be relegated to the scrap heap.
Speaker 3 (01:03:15):
Then, right, Let's hope that kid's listening.
Speaker 2 (01:03:20):
I certainly did not, as it turns out, need to
see this film. There was no reason. There was no reason.
It was neither bad enough nor good enough to warrant
my time. I got absolutely nothing out of it, bad
or good. Nothing out of it.
Speaker 3 (01:03:40):
Can you explain to me where everybody found hope?
Speaker 2 (01:03:42):
Though I didn't even I didn't even believe the dog
was real.
Speaker 3 (01:03:47):
It wasn't real. It was digital, but I.
Speaker 2 (01:03:50):
Didn't believe that it was real. We went from you
will believe a man to fly to you won't even
believe this dog? Is real, and that might I say, though,
I bring it up because that dog is the only
character that's remotely interesting.
Speaker 3 (01:04:06):
Well, except the one scene with Supergirls, you can only
get drunk on other planets. I want to see that
how that works out.
Speaker 2 (01:04:11):
I would be sort of interested in learning more about
the motivation and programming of the robots. Oh, yes, who
I believe are the intentional representations of James Gunn and
his filmmaking team. Automatons programmed, programmed to protect Superman and
(01:04:36):
his property at all costs, and the best way to
do that is to do it without any real feeling
or humor, right, because those things are dangerous.
Speaker 3 (01:04:49):
Hit a C plus line drive and that's it. Don't
dang for the benches. Don't foul out again?
Speaker 2 (01:04:55):
Is it bad? No, it's not enough of anything to
be good or bad. A whole lot goes on, but
nothing much happens. And what does happen is so I've
been thinking about this word a lot. It's so generic. Yes, Yeah,
(01:05:16):
audiences are clearly not over comic books now, but they
are desperately hungry for something, and this movie will apparently
do for now.
Speaker 3 (01:05:32):
Wow, it's a placeholder in our fields. Till we say
something that actually gives us the fields or we actually
feel something. Don't even give me the feels. That sounds ridiculous.
I don't need it shoved down my throat. I need
a response to some piece of art where then I
can analyze how I'm interpreting that. How hard is that
(01:05:53):
to get on the big screen? Apparently really hard? I
guess I know. Well, I'm glad you saw it a glass.
Speaker 2 (01:06:04):
I knew.
Speaker 3 (01:06:05):
I knew it wasn't gonna be your cup of tea
for sure, but I was really surprised that you really
punched this thing to death.
Speaker 2 (01:06:14):
It's a little tough to go from watching nineteen seventies
movies still watching a James Gunn movie.
Speaker 3 (01:06:22):
I bet it is.
Speaker 2 (01:06:24):
I watched a and then we'll go. But I watched
another film that's worthy of speaking of, part thriller, part
horror story, full on dream like nightmare from Japan in
nineteen sixty four called Oni Baba.
Speaker 3 (01:06:40):
Oh. I haven't heard this.
Speaker 2 (01:06:42):
It's about two peasant women living alone during a fourteenth
century civil war. Woh. The director Canado Shindo made another
great acclaim masterpiece called kur Nako, which I have not
seen so, but this film's titled Onie Baba Fleet translates
to either demon hag or old devil women. Wow, And
(01:07:07):
sure enough, the behavior of these women is quite devilish.
They live in a hut in a crazy field of
high grass and reeds as far as the eye can see,
and nearby, in totally masked and hidden by these tall reeds,
is a seemingly bottomless pit into which the women deposit
(01:07:32):
the lost strangers, often deserters from the war, who seek shelter.
After the women have murdered them, they dump them after
they murder that these strangers seeking shelter, they murder them
and then dump them into this pit, and the women
barter their victims belongings for food and supplies from the
(01:07:54):
closest shopkeeper. And I haven't gotten to the dark parts yet.
Speaker 3 (01:07:59):
Wow, it's darker. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:08:02):
The older woman has a son who went off to
fight in the war, and the younger woman is that
son's wife, so it's the woman the older woman's daughter
in law. And they have a neighbor, a man who
returns from the war who left with the son to
go fight in it, and he returns alone, revealing that
(01:08:22):
the women's beloved son husband has died. Oh, and almost immediately,
the young woman becomes sexually infatuated with the neighbor, and
the old woman does everything within her considerable powers to
prevent their relationship because she's fearful that if her daughter
(01:08:42):
in law leaves her, she will not be able to
keep carrying on these killings by herself.
Speaker 3 (01:08:50):
Which is the important part of survival.
Speaker 2 (01:08:52):
So it's part thriller, part horror film, part psychle psycho
sexual nightmare, part Freudian exploration, and honestly some some serious
Tennessee Williams thrown in for good measure. It's it's also
a ridiculously well shot film, worthy of frequent study. And
(01:09:17):
and by the way, it's it's shocking how much Japanese
censors let filmmakers get away with in the early nineteen sixties.
Speaker 3 (01:09:24):
Yeah, they didn't have a haze coat going on then
on Baba dying to see this.
Speaker 2 (01:09:31):
Oh my god. The cinematography there's there's frames that feel
almost painted, and of course it's black and white.
Speaker 3 (01:09:38):
Yeah, yeah, that's it.
Speaker 2 (01:09:40):
Yeah. Oh, anyway, I'm glad we talked about that. That
was a nice palette cleanser.
Speaker 4 (01:09:45):
Nah, hilarious promotional consideration paid for by Empire State Gas.
From farm to pump, We've got great gas.
Speaker 2 (01:10:00):
Belated spoiler alert
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