June 9, 2025 • 73 mins
Original Release Date: Monday 9 June 2025
Description: Dean and Phil have quite the array of topics to discuss, including a recent Marvel film, a Neil Simon comedy from the 1970s, all the big award-winners at the recent Cannes Film Festival, and a director's cut of Chris Carter's The X-Files: I Want to Believe. Both the Australian and the American versions of "Laid" get discussed, and art, architecture, history and more get discussed in the return of "What We Are Reading". Two beloved television stars and a legendary comedian get remembered in "Celebrity Deaths". Finally, good pal of the show Marc Hershon drops by to offer up two new television show recommendations that both sound awesome!
Description: Dean and Phil have quite the array of topics to discuss, including a recent Marvel film, a Neil Simon comedy from the 1970s, all the big award-winners at the recent Cannes Film Festival, and a director's cut of Chris Carter's The X-Files: I Want to Believe. Both the Australian and the American versions of "Laid" get discussed, and art, architecture, history and more get discussed in the return of "What We Are Reading". Two beloved television stars and a legendary comedian get remembered in "Celebrity Deaths". Finally, good pal of the show Marc Hershon drops by to offer up two new television show recommendations that both sound awesome!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
And now you're chill pack Hollywood Hour with Dean Hagland
and Phil Lareness.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Coming at you from Los Angeles. I am Phil Lareness
coming at us from we think Birmingham, Michigan, though the
audio quality tells us it could be a bunker from
D Day in World War Two. It's the Motor City
Adjasent Madman, It's TV's Dean Hagland. Hello, Dean God. We're
going to be together here in Los.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Angeles in just a few days.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
And next Saturday, instead of going to that Bollywood thing
at Union Station and then finding a place to drink
and record afterwards, you're going to come to Los Pheelis
on Saturday. Oh, and Lily and I are taking you
to the American Cinema Tech at the Los Phelis three
to see the nineteen ninety movie All the Vermeres in
(01:34):
New York. That's the name of the movie. Wow, it
has Dean Haglan written all over it. Because I described
this movie to Lil thinking she would want to go
see it while I was with you, and then at
the end of describing it, she said, well, what about
that makes you think Dean isn't the one who should
(01:55):
be seeing. So get this. You already have art in
the title, and yeah, it's a it's not a metaphor.
It's not a family called the Vermires who live in
New York. No, it's it's the paintings. And it's a
largely improvised film. So you enjoy improv thank you, yes.
(02:18):
And it follows pretty aspiring French actress Anna, played by
Emmanuel Cholet, as she navigates her expat life in New
York City. While spending time among the Vermier paintings in
the Metropolitan Museum of Arts. Anna encounters high strung stockbroker Mark,
(02:40):
played by Stephen Lack, the star of Scanners, which we
talked about at length the other week. Right, so this
is like the other big movie he that he did
eighty seven minutes long. It won the Kaligari Film Award
at the nineteen ninety one Berlin International Film Festival and
(03:03):
the Best Experimental Film in the Los Angeles Film Critics
Association Award. It's a mix of experimental and narrative. The
film was created with filmmaker Jean Jost's love of Vermier
paintings as the central organizing theme, and the Dean of
(03:24):
American film critics at the time, Vincent can Be wrote
in The New York Times, the film's purpose was to
show art as the last bit of humanism in a
world without love.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
Wow, how about that?
Speaker 2 (03:41):
And I'm not even giving you the mind blowing stuff
because I don't want to spoil anything. So after the movie,
we could then retire to the roof here for cocktails
and podcasting. And I thought, oh, this will be fun.
Although we will visit the chill Pack Morgue briefly at
the end of this episode, we could next week actually
(04:04):
turn Celebrity Deaths into what I've always wanted to do,
which is a competition where I give the celebrity and
the two of you take turns guessing their claim to
fame and or their identity, and they'll be prizes.
Speaker 4 (04:17):
There will be prizes. That sounds fun. I mean, I'm
intrigued by the movie. I'm not sure about how I'm
gonna you know, I get one out of five on
these celebrity death things.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Yeah, but I think it's great if it's not like, Okay,
who is it Dean? And then and then in a
few guesses and then silence, and then we go on
to the next one. But if the two of you
start riffing on guesses back and forth, there doesn't have
to be you know. Oh, I mean, it's gotta be
more entertaining than hearing us discuss it now, I think.
(04:55):
So I can't see you, I can barely hear you.
Where are you? What is what's the latest there? You
have no internet? You say, is that because you also
have no power and because the local transformer got knocked
down by an ice raid? What is going on? No?
Speaker 4 (05:17):
They put up the trim, you know, and there's an
Ethernet cable sticking out of the floor.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
That has been the whole time reconstruction has.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
Been going on, and everybody's been careful to miss it.
So I'm assuming that either the internet's out around the
neighborhood or the guys hammered a nail right through the
internet cable and blew out.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
And yeah, so.
Speaker 4 (05:43):
That requires a little more examination than I could do
in the last three minutes.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
It was setting up.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
A thirty thousand dollars nail.
Speaker 4 (05:53):
Yes, yes, well these were the Oh no, these are
the guys.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
That fixed the problem.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
This team was working on another house just a few
blocks over, and somebody nailed a nailed into a water
pipe under the floor, which then leaked and caused the
ceiling in the dining room below to collapse completely onto
the dining room table.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
And that was an expensive mistake. So, you know, at
least we didn't have that.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
There was some X Files news this week, was there
and it did not involve the reboot per se, But
appearing on David Dukoveny's was it Is it failing Better?
Speaker 3 (06:43):
Is that the name of yes or failing upwards?
Speaker 2 (06:46):
I think it's failed Better? Yeah, David du Companies Failed
Better podcast. Chris Carter was on that show and he revealed, Yeah,
it was interesting. They buried the hatchet about a couple
of things. I didn't realize how much things got really
bad on that final season eleven reboot.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
Oh, I didn't realize.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Well, But the news was that Chris Carter has been
given the go ahead to do a director's cut of
the second movie, The X Files. I want to believe
we let We once did a fascinating viewing and analysis
of that film on this very show, and Carter seems
(07:33):
thrilled to have the opportunity to make the quote scary
movie he always wanted to make something for him again,
this is a direct quote that was on the page
but never got to the screen.
Speaker 4 (07:49):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Anyway, this strikes me as the biggest news yet that
there is going to be a reboot.
Speaker 4 (07:59):
Oh, because they put out a director's cut as a
way to read get a new generation involved, and then.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
No, maybe a way to take advantage of the press
surrounding the franchise by making new money, having a new
legacy product available for people, because you know, Disney owns
the property now and people talk about, well, for example,
(08:33):
the recent Marvel movie Captain America Brave New World and
how it had reversed a box office slide, but it
still lost money. It still ended up losing ten to
twenty million, And yet Marvel was pretty quick to point out,
and Disney as well, that that amount of loss is
(08:56):
fine in the sense that it still is profitable because
of all the new revenue each new release allows them
to generate off the franchise, the pre existing entries and
all the legacy merchandise and everything. Right, So it's part
(09:18):
of that box car locomotive that you would say a
little bit of loss is fine because it is driving
a whole lot of other revenue. It's when the loss
is greater that they then have to analyze, Okay, are
we in trouble because of diminishing interest? Are we in
(09:40):
trouble because of budgets that are spiral ling out of control?
What do we need to adjust? But anyway, I think
coming from the same company, that's why I see this
as a pretty good sign that oh, something new is
going to be coming out, and we want to make
sure that we we are benefiting from that new release
(10:05):
across the board where this franchise is concerned.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
Ah, well, now that is a smart business move, isn't it,
Because as you said, that energy circulates, you create energy
and then that drives your financing.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
So you're right, this is optimistic.
Speaker 4 (10:25):
I'm not sure if it's going to be I mean,
you know, as we both said, we had trouble, we
had lots of problems with that second NIXT file.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Well, no we didn't. After we did our analysis, we
came out very much in favor of it. We said,
there is a way of reading this that is a
very very interesting film. What I like about his comments were, yes,
if what he wanted was a scary movie, it didn't
(10:56):
end up closing its fist on that.
Speaker 4 (10:59):
Right right, which is weird. Why would the studios bulk
at that?
Speaker 3 (11:06):
But that's Fox for you.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Well, I can't go all the way back in time
to that, but two thousand and eight we were looking
at a big writers strike, and remember there was a
rush to get product into theaters. There was a rush
to get product finished because they wanted to avoid what
(11:31):
quite frankly plagued the industry mightily just a couple of
years ago, the repercussions of which have certainly been felt
until just recently, which is a dearth of product.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Right right, So that was the panic back then.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Yeah, So I liked that he did not honestly get
into an issue of why it didn't end up on screen.
I think if it wasn't his doing, if it was
the circumstances surrounding the film getting made and getting into theaters,
a rush, what have you in editing and post production,
(12:13):
if it was issues out of his control. I both
like that he did not list them and did not
try to excuse it. But also it makes sense again
because he's been given an opportunity to redo it, And
why would you knock anyone else if you've been given
(12:35):
an opportunity to redo it. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (12:38):
Well, and he's a really thoughtful director and he really
pursues it, analyzing it from all angles.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
So I know, if he's under the gun or.
Speaker 4 (12:51):
Pressure, he'll you know, sacrifice some choices that he probably
would have rather made heavy the time.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
So this is good news.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
Well, it also creates a bit of a quandary in
the editing room sometimes, right, because if you are a
thoughtful director and you are looking at it from all angles,
you might have takes the delve into and explore different
elements of what is possible. Right, And we can maybe
at some point when the director's cut comes out, we
(13:21):
can compare it and we can say to ourselves, then,
oh see, this is a movie that could have been
cut differently.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
Interesting.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
You remember when when you saw right around the same
time you saw Quantum of Solace and you talked about
the action scenes, because I was kind of, I don't know,
I was. I was flabbergasted at how could the action
scenes not only be so different than Casino Royale, but
so much less effective? And what you pointed out to
(13:53):
me was that all the pieces were there, it was
a matter of how they were editing. The approach to
editing those action sequences, right, is what changed everything. Yeah,
so you could have the same crew and you could
be shooting the same kind of coverage in the same
stunt cruise, and yet it could turn out so totally differently.
(14:17):
But to you when you watched them and broke them down, yeah,
all the pieces had been there.
Speaker 4 (14:24):
Right right, It's just yeah, well this is why we
armchair edit.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
I did see, by the way, that Captain America Brave
New World recently I caught that. Did you listen to
this one?
Speaker 3 (14:36):
No? I hadn't tell me more.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
This is the pen ultimate film of Marvel's Phase five,
the middle section of their multiverse saga. Captain America Brave
New World, however, does not have any elements of multiverse
in it. That's the interesting thing about it, and a
relief and quite frankly a relief to me just you know, occasionally,
(15:04):
just tell a story, y is what. And it's not
a bad film, not as bad as the reviews would indicate.
On the other hand, nor is there anything special about
it except for it being a really good Harrison Ford vehicle.
(15:25):
Hey what I mean? I know that Anthony Mackie is
the titular star of it, but the arc for Ford's
president Thaddeus Ross is actually the most interesting aspect of
the film, and Ford seriously goes for it. In the movie.
He's having a ball, and that speaks to why he
(15:46):
signed up in the first place. Apparently he signed on
for the movie without ever seeing a script. You might
remember he replaced the late William Hurt, who had played
the part the in forod previous MCU films.
Speaker 5 (16:01):
Right.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
The reason Ford did this was that he had seen
enough actors he admired having a ball doing Marvel films
to know it would be fun.
Speaker 4 (16:13):
Ah See, that's how you make your choices, not what's
going to be the box of us.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
What's my take? How much fun am I going to have?
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Well, especially a guy like him. I mean he's doing
if you look at this and of course shrinking, he's
doing some of the best work he's ever done. And
when you hear him speak, because he does more interviews
than he's ever done, something he never particularly enjoyed doing, right,
what comes through loud and clear is just how much
(16:45):
he loves working and acting like he loves acting. Wow,
it's that kind of youthful, child like love and enthusiasm
and enjoyment I feel like we spend a lot of
our adult lives trying to get back to you know,
as we get distracted by all the other reasons we're
(17:06):
working and all the other concerns that we have, and
then ultimately at the end we get back to you know,
creating stuff is fun.
Speaker 4 (17:17):
The act creation, it's a humanistic things.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
So yeah, So if you're a Harrison Ford fan and
I am enjoyable to watch him and his arc, it
would be nice if they find a way and important
way to bring him back as we move into phase six.
We don't need him just doing cameos and waving right
because he's because he's clearly able to contribute so much more.
(17:44):
As for Mackie, you know, I was a big fan
of his fifteen sixteen years ago when I saw him
on Broadway, I saw him in the Oscar winning film
hurt Locker. I got to meet him at the same time.
And what a serious young man he was. And I
don't mean, like, you know, a serious, brooding type. He
(18:04):
was very charming and engaging and lovely, but I mean
you could tell this guy's serious about his craft, about
the business. And I've loved seeing him get the success
that he's had, and as you know, I would never
deny anyone the opportunity to make some serious bang right.
(18:27):
But here comes I find his part in this to
be like a watered down Will Smith role. Wow, and
his Sam Wilson is certainly not as interesting as Chris
Evans Steve Rogers in the Captain America movies. As I mentioned,
(18:48):
this movie lost a little bit of money, hardly matters
because it does nothing to harm the MCU, probably makes
them a lot of money in other ways. On the
other hand, I have a hard time believing that it
really did anything to help the MCU or the franchise.
It's sort of I walked away thinking about it financially
(19:12):
and realizing that artistically I felt the same way. It's
a zero sum game with one fun Harrison Ford performance.
So if that excites you to dial it up on
Disney Plus, feel free to bow out of this show. Now.
Oh wait, you don't have internet.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
So I don't have internet, you get dial up anything.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
I'm still interested more from a standpoint of kind of
the experiment professionally, of them keeping this franchise going, of
how are they going to do this with these long
range plans? Then I am any more invested in the
story of the characters.
Speaker 4 (19:55):
Yeah, this is the thing, isn't it. How do you
keep that play spinning on the top of the stick forever?
I mean, eventually gravity ad or interest is good to
collapse and everybody will have moved on.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Theoretically, it'll collapse unto itself, creating a quantum implosion that
actually leads to a multiverse. We thought all this time
that it was because the stories had to deal with multiverses. No,
it's the multiverse saga because at the end of this
giant financial creative implosion, we will all find ourselves. Yeah,
(20:31):
we'll find ourselves in a multiverse. I would never bring
this up, because it will. There's no way in which
this is resonant, either from a classical sense or a
contemporary sense, other than the fact that we're both Jack
Lemon fans. But I bring up the fact that I
watched the nineteen seventy five adaptation of Neil Simon's play
(20:53):
The Prisoner of Second Avenue because I went down a
rabbit hole that proved utterly delightful to me. A Jack
Lennon No, No, oddly enough, I would more call it
a Joel Schumacher a rabbit hole, but a Diana Ross
(21:14):
rabbit hole. I know it makes no sense, but in
a multiverse sense it probably does. So look Prisoner of
Second Avenue. I say that it is not resonant either
classically or culturally. It might actually be more resonant now
that movie as a portrait of working class animosity towards
the world, towards authority, and towards other people. That part
(21:37):
made me think, hey, this is kind of more twenty
twenty five really than it was nineteen seventy five. It
was directed by Melvin Frank, not Neil Simon's usual director.
More on that a second. It was directed by Melvin Frank,
who had worked on great comedies and with great comedians
twenty and thirty years earlier. He had directed Hope and
(22:02):
Crosby Road Pictures. Oh my gosh, he directed mister Blandings
builds his dream House.
Speaker 3 (22:12):
Oh he's got a sense of architecture.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Well, so the irony is it? Also, as I'm watching
it sort of felt like it might have been resonant
in his era. It might have been resonant in nineteen
forty five or nineteen fifty. Again, nineteen seventy five and
I remember nineteen seventy five, what a head scratcher the
movie was. The director of Melvin Frank, shoots the film
(22:37):
sometimes as if he thinks it is being done in
black and white. I swear to god that sounds like
a joke. But you watch some of his setups and
you watch this, and you go, he thinks these sets
are being lit for black and white. That explains why
he's shooting it this way.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
You know, the best Neil Simon movies of the era
were directed by Jene Sacks, and for some reason he
did not direct this one. But odd most odd of all,
he does play the major supporting role in the film.
He doesn't direct it. He acts in it. He plays
(23:21):
Jack Lemon's brother in it. Gene Sacks, Oh, oh is that?
Speaker 4 (23:27):
Oh that's hilarious. So he's a director who acts occasionally.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Yeah, when he doesn't apparently want to direct the Neil
Simon adaptation, or Neil Simon said, you know what, Gene,
I need to give Melvin Frank some work after all
these many years. How about you act in it? Anyway?
And he's good. Lemon is brilliant there, you know it
isn't you know? It's it's not that you should avoid it.
(23:52):
It's it's just it's not It's not a great Jack
Lemon film. It's not even a good Neil Simon film.
And I do think there were plenty of those, but
Lemon's brilliant. If the movie had truly been a portrait
of his descent into anxiety and paranoia, yeah they could.
They could have been onto something back then. They could
(24:12):
have been onto something.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
But aside from seeing Anne Bancroft as his wife, because
she's she's wonderful, there's little to recommend other than Lemon's work.
But I noticed in the credits, as I said, that
the costumes were by future director Joel Schumacher, who he
did many titles in that capacity back then, you know,
(24:38):
as a costume designer. That was his start, including My
Beloved The Last of Sheila, which I still think is
maybe the greatest mystery film of all time. But what
I never knew until watching it and then researching him
is that he was the screenwriter of the Sidney Lumett
directed feature film at Saptation of the Broadway show The Wiz.
Speaker 4 (25:04):
Oh you're kidding that, So it goes right into his
cheese pocket too.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
Doesn't it, because.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Well it's just so strange though, Like that's his break
into screenwriting, is the Wiz. We've got this big Broadway
franchise based on the most beloved movie of all time.
Let's get the costume designer to write it, I mean,
and and by the way, let's get Sidney Lumet to
direct it.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
Yeah, well that's weird.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
It's all weird. It's all weird. And I can't believe
that I hadn't remembered all those things.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
I don't believe.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
It was not well received, It was not a financial success,
despite a big budget and a lot of hope behind it,
because that Broadway show was was was huge. But I
am wondering if it might be time for reappraisal of
that movie, both by me and by the public.
Speaker 3 (26:04):
Really because it's musicality.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
Well, because of the musicality, because of the era in
which we live, an all black Wizard of Oz could
be fascinating. And with the advent of the you know,
the huge embrace of Wicked globally, and let's not pretend
that that was good. So why wasn't Whiz at that
(26:33):
time embraced and would it be embraced now? The same movie.
So I'm fast and plus Sidney Lumett. Yeah, I'm not
gonna go into a rewatch expecting it to be anything
other than interesting now, appreciating Sidney Lumett as I do.
So I'm interested in rewatching it. But this was part
(26:54):
of the rabbit hole I went down. Apparently, apparently, and
it's also a reason to rewort watch it and reappraise it. Apparently.
Joel Schumacher's script was greatly and obviously influenced by the
teachings of Werner Erhardt Earhart. Oh yeah, and his ST movement.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
The S Movement.
Speaker 4 (27:17):
Yeah, that's the whole thing of taking personal responsibility for
your own destiny, so on and so forth.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Yeah, the ST training or the S Movement was Earhard
Seminars training, and both Schumacher and the movies star Diana
Ross were very enamored of Earhard.
Speaker 4 (27:39):
Oh so this was a cult movie made by a cult.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
The film's producer actually calls The Wiz and not happily so,
an Estian fable full of st buzzwords and terminology.
Speaker 4 (28:00):
She oh, oh, now I'm gonna watch it again.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
The producer hated the script, but found that it was
impossible to argue with his leading lady who had all
the power.
Speaker 3 (28:17):
Right Dana Ross, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (28:20):
Of course, and so she was studying st and therefore
she wouldn't take a rewritease on down, ease on.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
Down the road. So we might need to ease our
way down the road, just seeing.
Speaker 4 (28:42):
That.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
Maybe after we see this experimental movie and once we
start drinking, then we record. Then we watched the Whiz
and then as I drive you in the middle of
the night to the airport, will we'll podcast and drive drunkenly. No,
that's a terrible idea. We would never do that. We
would never do that.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
I'll take an uber.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
A couple of weeks back, Dean this year's edition of
the can Film Festival closed, and what a strong year
this was heard Almost no hated films whatsoever, and even
films hailed as all time masterpieces could not win the
top prize, the Palm d'Or. That's how competitive it was.
(29:41):
How So, who won on a six year palm door
winning streak. Neon acquired. It was just an accident from
the great Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, who has long been
in exile or in prison for his artistry. The sixty
(30:02):
five year old Pana. He has made such modern masterpieces
as This Is Not a Movie Taxi and the recent
No Bears, which I still have not caught up to.
Oh yeah, this year's Palm Door winner, It was just
an accident, has the following setup. A man is driving
(30:22):
at night with his wife and daughter when he hits
and kills a dog. The accident badly damages his engine
and causes the car to later break down. He pulls
over to a nearby garage, encountering a former political prisoner
who recognizes the squeaking sound of the man's false leg
(30:49):
as that of an intelligence officer who tortured him in
prison and caused him permanent kidney damage.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Okay, so now that's your setup. That's your setup right there.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
Wow, that's pretty good. That sounds actually like.
Speaker 4 (31:08):
A uh well, a Canadian classic play called Cold Comfort,
where a car breaks down in Saskatchewan and then finds
out that the daughter wants to run away with him
and the guy ties him. You know, it's a it's
a creepy the tail of his lone garage shout in
the middle of the prairies on a winter's night, and boy,
(31:32):
oh boy, this sounds like that.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
Actually I thought it also sounds like it could have
been the synopsis for a setup for a a Twilight
Zone episode.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
Oh yeah, the squeaky leg of the torture. That's pretty good.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
I mean, just that setup. And see this is where
directing comes into play, right immediately. Uh, you could imagine
so many different types of films coming from that premise
and that setup.
Speaker 3 (32:06):
Right. And yes, suspense, give suspense.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
An espionage picture. I mean there's so much so and
Pana he makes movies like nobody else. So I can't
wait to see what that film is. And anyway, the
runner up called the Grand Prize, so the Grand Prize
is second place. It went to a movie called Sentimental
(32:36):
Value from Norwegian filmmaker Joakim Trier, who over the past
several years has scored huge international hits with the likes
of Oslo August thirty first back in twenty eleven, which
I loved, and the recent Oscar nominated The Worst Person
in the World, which I also loved.
Speaker 5 (32:57):
So a.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
Kinsman to me Norwegian filmmaker Jaquem Trier. The premise of
Sentimental Value is that after the death of their mother,
the estranged sisters Nora and agnes Borg are forced to
confront their distant father, Gustav, a once famous but now
(33:22):
almost forgotten film director who abandoned the family when the
girls were still young.
Speaker 3 (33:29):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
The movie stars as that distant father, the great international
star Stellin Scarsguard. Oh. Yes, and the young girls are
top Norwegian actresses. And the film also features American star
El Fanning. And the more I read, the more it
(33:52):
seems to me like a project that might have been
worthy of pek ingmar Bergmann.
Speaker 3 (33:58):
Oh sounds good, I'm curious.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
Yeah, so that's your Grand Prize a winner. Other major works,
it seems to me that are worthy to seek out
and find are the film that won the Best Director award.
That is often for me, the best film to come
out of Can won Wings of Desire, by the way,
one Best Director at CAN. Last week we talked about
the great Taiwanese film Yee, which ended up being the
(34:25):
final film for the great Edward Yang. He won Best
Director for that at CAN. So this year it was
a movie called The Secret Agent, which also pulled off
the rare, extremely rare trick at CAN of winning a
second award because they love to spread out the prizes
(34:47):
to celebrate many great films from around the world, but
this one best director and best actor. The filmmaker is
a man named Klieber Mendosa Filho, and he's a Brazilian filmmaker.
The movie is a historic political thriller following a teacher
(35:09):
caught up in the political turmoil of the final years
of the Brazilian military dictatorship. It's set in nineteen seventy
seven and it focuses on this teacher who is a
bit of a technology expert.
Speaker 3 (35:24):
Oh so that's a.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
Secret agent and yes, for someone who misses the Cold War,
and so hence loved the right the remake of Tinker
Taylor Soldier Spy fourteen years ago because it returned us
to a place and time that rooted so many of
(35:47):
these tropes again into actual real world you know, relevance. Well,
oh my goodness, a spy film set in the seventies,
a technology expert in the seventies. That's fun to me,
using analog and nascent digital technology, and plus in a
(36:14):
Brazilian military dictatorship about which I know very little.
Speaker 4 (36:20):
I know very little as well. That wasn't in our
history books up in Canada, but that sounds pretty fun.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
Actually, yeah, I feel like this is gonna be something
that's up both our allies. The jury prize was the
movie The Sound of Falling, about which I told you
two weeks ago when people immediately hailed it as one
of the great all times works of art in the
art form known as cinema. The special prize went to
(36:53):
a movie called Resurrection from director by Gune from China,
who whose work I have enjoyed. Resurrection is a science
fiction drama film set in a future where most of
humanity has lost the capacity to dream, and where a
woman discovers that one creature is still able to experience dreams.
(37:18):
She enters this creature's dreams, using her ability to perceive
illusions to determine the truth in its visions of Chinese history.
The film is divided into six chapters, with each representing
one of the five senses, plus the mind as sixth chapter.
(37:40):
So the writer director by Gan is the filmmaker who
made twenty eighteen's Long Day's Journey in Tonight, which you
might recall was one of my favorite films of twenty eighteen.
It was a movie notable for its final fifty nine minutes,
which consisted of one Unbroken Master shot entirely in three D,
(38:04):
but the rest of the movie was in two D.
So when the character, the lead character went into a
theater and put on the three D glasses, we put
on our three D glasses and our minds got blown.
Speaker 3 (38:21):
Wow, I forgot you talked about this.
Speaker 4 (38:24):
Frankly, that's that I wish that would get a re
re examination. Moe, Oh what am I reading? Good lord, Well,
funny you should ask the We had to move our
(38:49):
library because the well is being painted and it would
have to match, so all the books had to come out.
Speaker 3 (38:55):
And what book do you think.
Speaker 4 (39:00):
Fell into my lap that I haven't read in such
a long time.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
So The Art.
Speaker 4 (39:05):
Thief is a novel by Noah Charni, And yes I
have read this, Yeah you have. Yes, It's fascinating and
I really enjoyed it, so I actually cracked it open.
There's three steps that are simultaneously investigating three different cities,
and they apparently the isolated cribs have more in common
than anyone imagines. So this inspector from Scotland Yard attempts
(39:29):
to to solve it all and there's ransoms involved in it.
It was quite a thrilling and fast, fascinating in art
historical detail too. So I'm going to start that one
again because I loved it so much.
Speaker 2 (39:44):
But I do recall that we discussed it and I
was fascinated about the topic. And then, you know, oh
my goodness, years later, I see this movie that I
rewatched and talked about Certified cop and the issue of
not only art thefts but art forgeries. I remember that
(40:07):
Art Thief really started me for the first time thinking
about this world, right, and and wondering, man, just how
authentic is a book like The Art Thief.
Speaker 4 (40:22):
Yeah, because it brings into the contemporary art issue of
reproduction and what you know, Mrkami who that the idea
that the reproduction is the art itself, that he is
making an art piece that can be mass produced and
(40:42):
sold at the gift store, you know, So so that
the little keychain that has its little cartoon flower head
on it is the artwork. It's not a copy of it.
It's not the merchandise of the painting. It is the
It is the work that he intended to make in
mass quantities. So that idea of you know, it's not
(41:04):
a single canvas that everybody then does T shirts and
umbrellas and hats like a van Go. It is the
idea that the artwork is the t shirt and the
hat and the umbrella.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
My step uncle in law, Brian Burke's book of essays,
The Genius of the Place Essays on History and Continuity
in Philadelphia, is something we discussed a little bit last time.
We talked about this and we were starting to get
really gung ho about doing a walking tour of Philly.
(41:38):
I wanted to share the following with you from that book.
It's from chapter nine, an essay entitled christ Church and
Its Bells, And this is just direct direct lift from
the book. February twenty third, eighteen forty six, both the
christ Church Bell and the Liberty Bell rang for George
(42:02):
Washington's birthday, but the Liberty bell cracked in the work.
So this is the day the Liberty Bell cracks.
Speaker 3 (42:12):
Was George Washington's birthday.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
February twenty third, eighteen forty six. A slot was carved
along the crack and secured by two rivets. Appropriately, this
most famous of all American bells had rung for the
last time in honor of George Washington. Wow, that's pretty cool. Little,
that's pretty cool, right bit of history. How come I
(42:36):
never knew that?
Speaker 3 (42:37):
Yeah, I went and visited. No, there's not even a plaque.
Speaker 2 (42:45):
Weird people, could I think sense the emotion in your
voice that you found it weird and were frustrated that
you didn't didn't find out about that when you visited
the Liberty Bell. People couldn't make out any of the words, though,
did We're losing the sea, We're losing you? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (43:07):
Oh my gosh, there's not another treasure lost. Ah.
Speaker 2 (43:12):
Well, I'm trying to translate from English back into English
for you.
Speaker 3 (43:16):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
Later on in this book, later on, in this same essay,
this was I thought amazing. This was mind blowing to me. Again,
a field about which I know nothing, the making of
bells at and yet in Philadelphia. History counts Long before
Philadelphia had even thought of enjoying the pleasant amenities of
(43:39):
its five squares, and even longer before the Carolon of
Holy Trinity was serenading fashionable written house square, the Liberty
Bell and the bells of Christ Church had become symbols
of the cities and the nation's history. Everyone could enjoy
their chime, but some citizens appreciated them as American icons
(44:01):
and worked to perpetuate them. In eighteen seventy six, Henry
Siebert presented a new tenor bell for Independence Hall to
the City of Philadelphia. He had appreciated the inspiration of
the Liberty Bell during the dark days of the Civil War,
and he made a commemorative bell to fill its place.
(44:24):
As a metallurgist, Siebert knew what he was doing. He
cast a replacement for the Liberty Bell that incorporated symbolic
medals from the past for a beginning. His bell weighs
thirteen thousand pounds to represent the thirteen original colonies in
(44:46):
the ancient custom of beating swords into plowshares Isaiah two four.
He literally melted and then melded a lot of history
the bronze of two cannons from the Battle of Saratoga,
one American, the other British, and two from the Battle
of Gettysburg, one Union the other Confederate in his bell,
(45:09):
the canons that have divided people in war unite them
in peace. At first, after this new bell seemed to
lack tonal quality, it was recast. It still rings the
hours from the steeple of Independence Hall, celebrating the liberty
for which Americans fought into Great Wars.
Speaker 3 (45:29):
Wow, like that that symbolic.
Speaker 2 (45:33):
Like and like that guy Richard Siebert, Like how brilliant
was that man? Like he knows his history, he's an artist.
How much craft and skill and science goes into making
a thirteen thousand.
Speaker 3 (45:51):
Pound bell and I can't imagine.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
And music and harmonics, I mean to realize the need
to shift it and change it after the fact, to
adjust the tonal quality. I mean, oh, these people make
me so angry.
Speaker 4 (46:07):
Mean, they're so skillful and craft craftsmanship.
Speaker 3 (46:13):
Can them if.
Speaker 2 (46:15):
We have time at the at the tail end of this,
I was gonna tack on a little talk I had
with Mark Kershaan with him making another couple television recommendations,
as he does almost every month. Absolutely both up both
our allys okay, but I mean rarely is he given
picks that both of us I feel like would radically enjoy.
(46:40):
But I wanted to ask you about a show, the
American adaptation of which just got canceled and I was
disappointed because I was really charmed by it. But it
started as an Australian TV series and that's laid it
was a big hitch show. In twenty eleven, twenty twelve
(47:01):
down Under, and I wondered if you had availed yourself
of the Australian sitcom when you were there.
Speaker 4 (47:11):
No, no, because it was canceled by the time I
got there. But I know a lot of the improvisers
referred to it a lot, and I never got to
see it because it didn't air Understand, which was the
cable satellite service down Under, and I couldn't find it.
Speaker 2 (47:35):
I really did find the reboot charming and sometimes really
really funny, and increasingly so throughout. It's now just one season.
They certainly had set up a second season, but despite
great reviews and really winning lead performances from Stephanie's Shoe
as Ruby Yo the lead, a thirty three year old
(47:57):
single Seattle based party planner who is trying to solve
why every single one of her past sex partners have
been dying in the order she slept with them, and
Zosia Mammot, David Mammott's daughter, as aj Ruby's best friend
and roommate. Their rapport comedically next level brilliant these times. Women. Yeah,
(48:25):
So anyway, I'm disappointed, but I might be curious to
try to track down the the Auzi version because I've
heard it's great.
Speaker 4 (48:33):
Yes, I heard that too, but I could never find it.
Speaker 1 (48:37):
Celebrity deaths.
Speaker 2 (48:39):
Speaking of television, Dean Loretta Switz, Oh, I know. The
actress who won two Emmy Awards for her portrayal of
Major Margaret hot Lips Hulahan on the television classic Mash,
died May thirtieth at her home in New York City
at the age of eighty seven. It's safe to say
that not only did Mash make Loretta Switt a household name,
(49:02):
it utterly defined her career. Right. I mean, she did
do plenty of other work, but name it.
Speaker 3 (49:11):
Yeah, right.
Speaker 2 (49:13):
You can't know. Margaret hua Han just cast way too
big a shadow over everything. You played the head nurse, right,
everybody knows a surgical unit in the Korean War. But
in her hands, Margaret was an early example of a
strong and highly capable female character on TV. Kind of
(49:37):
different than in the movie where Sally Kellerman played it right. Initially,
Loretta Switt's hot Lips was straight laced in her but
her character softened over the seasons, fitting in better with
the jokesters of the four h seven seven, and she
(49:59):
was one only four of the actors to remain with
mash for all eleven of its seasons, and only she
and Alan Alda appeared in both the pilot and that
record setting season or series Finale's fine. Yeah, this quote
from Alan Alda is worthy of sharing. I think he
(50:23):
posted this on social media. He said Loretta was a
supremely talented actor. She deserved all her ten Emmy nominations
and her two wins. But more than acting her part,
she created it. She worked hard in showing the writing
(50:46):
staff how they could turn the character from a one
joke sexist stereotype into a real person with real feelings
and ambitions. We celebrated the day the script came out out,
listing her character for the first time, not as Hot Lips,
but as Margaret. Loretta made the most of her time
(51:10):
here Ah. She always knew she wanted to act. She
was raised with a deep love for movies. She acted
in high school productions. She grew up in Passaic, New Jersey,
studied acting while working clerical jobs, including as a secretary
to the great gossip columnist Elsa Maxwell. Oh And she
(51:31):
soon began to find stage roles, you know, off Broadway
in the early sixties. Her first one was the great
an Enemy of the People. Her television debut came nine
years later. Ten years later, sixty nine and a guest
role on Hawaii Ive. Oh so ten years of cutting
her teeth on the New York stage. You know, and
(51:51):
you think about the show Mash, there is no doubt that, man,
they were almost putting on a little play every week.
Speaker 3 (51:59):
Yeah. The writing was excellent, production.
Speaker 4 (52:03):
Values, I mean in terms of shots and ideas and
jokes joke heavy too. She was really quite a phenomenal
piece of tea at television.
Speaker 2 (52:12):
She was a noted advocate for animal welfare, founded the
nonprofit Sweetheart Animal Alliance, where she fundraised on behalf of animals. Now, Dean,
this woman died on May first, And I'd been waiting
to ask you about this. I was curious. Were you
a fan of Ruth Buzzy?
Speaker 4 (52:35):
Yes, from laughing she was hilarious. Carried that show interesting?
Speaker 2 (52:41):
Wow? Yeah, an actress and a comedian. I remembered her
from Rowan and Martin's laughing just slightly a little bit
before my time, but wow, you say, carried it. She
died at her home in Stephenville, Texas, in her sleep
at the age of eighty eight. Tell me more about this,
because you know, there was an August roster of talent
(53:03):
on that show.
Speaker 4 (53:04):
Yes, for sure, but she was dependable on her characters
and as a foil to Artie Shaw. She was brilliant
and she could come out and when needed, belt out
a tune like ethel Merman unbelievable. It was like, you
didn't expect that because she had, you know, it was
really a wacky sense of humor she had. But then
(53:28):
to hear her sing, went, oh my gosh, what how
are you hiding that talent?
Speaker 2 (53:34):
Wow? I didn't I wasn't even aware of that. I
don't remember that. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (53:38):
I recently rewatched the entire series of Laughing from Top
from day one to the very end, and wow, yeah, yeah,
it was really fascinating actually because it it really had energy.
And then somehow producers and directors had stupid ideas and
more dancing girls, and you know, you could sort of
(53:58):
see it struggle as the years went on.
Speaker 2 (54:02):
She appeared in every single episode during its entire six
season run. I don't think I had been aware of that.
She was pretty remarkable. She was already a working union
card carrying actress before she even graduated from Pasadena Playhouse.
(54:25):
And this is back. You know, when Pasadena Playhouse was
a College of Theater Arts. Their alumni included Gene Hackman
and Dustin Hoffman. Right, she'd been doing live musical comedy.
She'd been performing off Broadway in New York, and she'd
made her way to television and yet was still training
and perfecting her craft at Pasady in a playhouse. She
(54:48):
had early appearances on television on The Steve Allen Comedy Hour,
but it was Roanan Martin's laugh In that won her
national recognition.
Speaker 3 (54:59):
Ye.
Speaker 2 (55:00):
She earned five Emmy nominations for the show and a
Golden Globe in nineteen seventy three. I also remember that
she was a regular on Sesame Street.
Speaker 3 (55:13):
That's right, I forgot about that.
Speaker 2 (55:16):
I mean, that's pretty great. And look, Lily Tomlin has
cut from this cloth as well. I think to be
able as a comedy performer, to be able to delight
and speak to all ages without speaking down to any
of them, is just I mean, that's heartening to me.
Speaker 3 (55:43):
Yeah, I mean it was charming. She was charming. That
was the other thing.
Speaker 4 (55:47):
Funny but charming as well. And you know that's such
a combo.
Speaker 2 (55:54):
She made appearances on so many shows, That girl, the Carol,
that show she was in an episode of Chips for
crying out loud and lent that distinctive and unique and
delightful voice to many animated shows.
Speaker 3 (56:13):
Oh yeah, of course.
Speaker 2 (56:15):
But finally George went Yes, the actor who played Norm
on Cheers, and in so doing created really one of
television's not only most beloved, but most enduring characters. I mean,
who doesn't regularly hear people? Do Norm? I know?
Speaker 3 (56:37):
Right?
Speaker 2 (56:37):
He died in his sleep May twentieth, at his home
in Los Angeles at the age of seventy six. His
acting career spanned over one hundred and seventy different roles,
not episodes or hours of televisions, one hundred and seventy
different roles he played, and in all that, though for
most people, he will always be Norm Peterson, who haunted
(57:02):
television's most famous bar, Cheers, right right, and who was
one of just three characters to appear in every episode
of that show. He was born in Chicago, got his
start in acting through Second City, the famous improv comedy
group that spawned such alumni as Bill Murray, Gilda Radner,
(57:24):
John Candy, John Belushi, On and on and on. He
graduated from Campion High School in Wisconsin, then earned his
degree at Jesuit Rockhurst College before discovering his love for acting.
He got his start on screen in a small uncredited
role in the nineteen seventy eight Robert Altman film A Wedding,
then had small parts in shows like Soap Taxi, Alice,
(57:49):
and Mash before being cast in the part that would
change his life. All four of those shows have in
common the fact that they were great, so smart casting
directors had already identified George Wentt as the real deal,
it seems to me right. I mentioned that he was
(58:10):
one of only three actors to appear in every episode.
The others were Ted Danson of course, playing Sam Malone,
and Ria Pearlman playing Carlah. It was just the three
of them that appeared in every single episode. But his
work did go far beyond Cheers, as I mentioned, one
hundred and seventy different roles. But you know, those six
(58:32):
straight Emmy Awards that he won for his work on
Cheers also helped seal the deal, not just the popularity
of the character and the show itself. Do you know
what former SNL star is His nephew.
Speaker 3 (58:50):
Wow, let me think of this. No, who would it be?
Speaker 2 (58:57):
None other than Ted Lasso himself, Jason Sudekus.
Speaker 4 (59:01):
No, that's an incredible relative.
Speaker 2 (59:06):
Yeah, and Jason Sudekas always just adored him, apparently said
that he was like a total mench.
Speaker 3 (59:14):
Oh, that's good to hear.
Speaker 1 (59:17):
All those nights when you've got no lights, the check
is in the mail, and your little angel hung the
cat up by its.
Speaker 4 (59:26):
Team, and your thirdly answer it didn't show. Sometimes you
want to go where everybody knows your name.
Speaker 2 (59:40):
Mark Kershawan, Welcome back to your Chill Pac Hollywood Hour.
Speaker 5 (59:43):
Thank you, Phil. Always a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 2 (59:45):
So we're recording this on I guess June seventh, Saturday,
June seventh. We just did some other work together, and
in about a half hour, I am going to be
watching a live broadcast of a Broadway show. Oh, based
(01:00:06):
on a movie about a live broadcast fantastic.
Speaker 5 (01:00:11):
So you're referring, of course to George Clooney Clooney George
Clooney Show on Broadway. They're doing a live broadcast on CNN.
Speaker 2 (01:00:21):
I believe, yeah, of the actual Broadway performance. It's the
first time, believe it or not, in history that a
Broadway performance is being broadcast live.
Speaker 5 (01:00:33):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (01:00:35):
There have been Broadway performances, of course, recorded for later
broadcast and live theater. I think in the Golden age
of Hollywood was occasionally broadcast, but never a Broadway show.
Speaker 5 (01:00:51):
Wow. Well you can cut this out. But in a
brilliant piece of counter programming, Fox News is going to
be showing a carnival, a live carnival.
Speaker 2 (01:01:01):
Is that true?
Speaker 5 (01:01:02):
No?
Speaker 2 (01:01:03):
Oh god, because now I was gonna have I'm asking
myself which do I watch? And which do I DVR?
And yes, I DVR things? Oh I do I've I've
managed to get the DVR storage down to ninety percent
this past week by watching like six hours of international film.
(01:01:25):
All right. The other thing that I wanted to hit
you with was very excited to see that Slow Horses
not coming soon, but does have an air date or
a release date. I think September twenty fourth.
Speaker 5 (01:01:40):
Oh, I thought it was dropping this summer.
Speaker 2 (01:01:43):
It returns for its fifth season on September twenty fourth,
so it's it's the longest gap that they've had between
seasons because the fourth season aired its finale and on
Apple TV, are you airing anything? It's releasing it. Yes.
(01:02:03):
So they released their season finale for season four in
October of twenty twenty four, so almost a year.
Speaker 5 (01:02:11):
Oh wow, Okay, yeah. I think originally they were looking
for summer, but maybe with everything going on and they
just didn't want to lose the audience or something.
Speaker 2 (01:02:19):
But the really exciting news to me, though, is the
new cast member, oh, a star of another beloved Apple
TV franchise, joining the season five cast of Slow Horses,
Ted Lasso's Nick Mohammad. Oh yeah, Nate the Great, Yes, Yes.
Speaker 5 (01:02:44):
I read something about that. It's just yeah, that's going
to be great.
Speaker 2 (01:02:48):
He is a really gifted performer. He is, and as
we've talked about before, and then maybe we'll let Slow
Horse have a couple months off because if I feel
like we have something to talk about with it almost
every month. But my goodness, do they cast people correctly
in that show?
Speaker 5 (01:03:09):
Yes? Speaking of casting people, I was reading that the
next season of Shrinking, they've done some big stunt casting
for that. Jeff Daniels is coming into play Jason Siegel's father, right.
Michael J. Fox is coming in to play a person
(01:03:31):
with Parkinson's.
Speaker 2 (01:03:33):
Right, And I imagine that will I mean that has
the potential to be really powerful. I imagine he's doing
a lot of scenes with Harrison Ford, yeah, I would think,
and he's coming out of retirement for that. Yes. Yes,
Bill Lawrence, the showrunner right goes back all the way
(01:03:56):
to the days of Spin City with him, Yes, and
has always said had the doors open for Michael J.
Fox to come and be a part of anything that
he's doing. So I am really looking forward to that.
It's sort of a strange idea to me that, well,
(01:04:16):
let me put it this way. If you had told
mid nineteen eighties film Alareness, the one inside joke alert
who aimed to be Pierce President, if you had told
him that Jeff Daniels of Michael J. Fox and Harrison
Ford were all going to appear together, he would have
(01:04:37):
said that's too much, that's too many nineteen eighties references
brought together. And he would have said that in the
nineteen eighties.
Speaker 5 (01:04:46):
So yeah, So again, interesting casting coming out of that.
Speaker 2 (01:04:51):
All right. So that's the all the TV news that's
suitable to print.
Speaker 5 (01:04:58):
I think, Oh, well, I've been watching a few things
good Binge the heck I can say heck on this
podcast right, Yes, out of Netflix's new Department Q, which
is based on a series of books by a Nordic author,
(01:05:22):
and they made like six movies that are in the
Nordic languages. Whatever that is, I don't know. You've been
there recently, you tell me. But so this is it's
a sort of crime thriller, dramedy, a little bit of
slow horsiness to it in terms of there's some humor
(01:05:45):
woven into it. It's got Matthew Good is the star.
He was in Downton Abbey. He played the race car
driver who was a romantic interest for a short time,
the oldest daughter on that show. But he plays a
detective Carl morc just kind of funny mor c k
(01:06:10):
But he's he was injured in the line of duty
and they bring him back, but he's this cantankerous jerk
off basically nobody wants to work with. So they create
this new cold cold Cases department and they put him
in charge by himself. It's just him, and he pulls
a band of scrappy misfits together sort of against his
(01:06:30):
will because he hates everybody. But it's a really entertaining
show and it's a really interesting mystery. They're trying to
unravel in.
Speaker 2 (01:06:39):
This sounds like it might not just be up my alley,
butt up Dean's alley as well. I would think so,
because he loves the Scandinavian crime you know shows. Now,
where is Department Q set?
Speaker 5 (01:06:54):
It's outside of London.
Speaker 2 (01:06:57):
Okay, it's in England, so based on Danish that's actually
you know, it's it's it's in Scotland.
Speaker 5 (01:07:03):
Actually that's what.
Speaker 2 (01:07:04):
It looked like. That's what it looked like. Okay, So
so it's a Danish author. Were the book set in
Scotland or just now adaptation?
Speaker 5 (01:07:13):
Okay, yeah, just the adaptation.
Speaker 2 (01:07:16):
That's cool.
Speaker 5 (01:07:17):
Yeah, it's pretty it's pretty fun, and the acting is interesting.
Uh you know, it's it's always you know, got a
bunch of actors. You go, I know that guy from somewhere.
But it's also kind of you know, it's it's like
a variety of spins off of the Sherlock Holmes formula,
because this main detective is a guy that you know,
(01:07:38):
is kind of antisocial. Uh you know, he's got a
step son who's in there in a roommate and he
just and then he he ends up with an assistant
who is Syrian, who is not a policeman, at least
he's not licensed in the UK, and he's kind of
(01:08:01):
this Doctor Watson type guy who's got He's very entertaining
because he's just just puts up with him, puts up
with work in all of his proclivities, but is very
capable himself as soon as he's allowed to do something,
which is interesting.
Speaker 2 (01:08:18):
I am scrolling through Matthew good credits trying to see
what I most fondly remember him from, because the name
immediately I recognized. He's done so many high quality and
cachet movie projects. I'm wondering if it wasn't him in
(01:08:42):
the original movie version of Watchmen where I'm thinking about
him from. But he did match Point, Woody Allen's match Point,
The Lookout, Joseph Gordon Levitt movie that I really liked,
Oscar winning film The Imitation Games. So I mean he's
he's been the real deal for a quarter of a century.
(01:09:02):
I love seeing that in the regular cast. Kelly MacDonald,
who has always been one of my favorites playing a
police therapist, yes. And Shirley Henderson, who is a bit
of an international treasure and has sometimes reminded me of
my sister in law actually, but she plays a housekeeper,
(01:09:25):
yes in it, and uh and she's often delightful when
used properly, so I'm hoping.
Speaker 5 (01:09:31):
Yeah. And it's a nine episode series, and it does
a great job of weaving in some great red herrings
that you just go, oh, that's the guy. That's the guy,
and then two episodes later go oh, it's not the guy.
But they do it in a great way, so they
keep kind of pulling you along still wondering was that
(01:09:52):
the guy might have been the guy? And it's very interesting.
Speaker 2 (01:09:56):
So cool, all right, that's a good that's good. Get
Department Q.
Speaker 5 (01:10:01):
So that's a good one. Not quite as good, a
totally different vibe, but it's it's the kind of fun
sci fi thing I like. Is murder Bot on Apple
TV with Alexander Scarguard, Oh well, we love him. Yeah,
he plays He plays this sort of bionic android security
(01:10:26):
robot who gets sort of sold off to this kind
of group of organic granola crunchy colonists who want to
go to this dangerous planet.
Speaker 2 (01:10:40):
This sounds great. This also you've managed to, seriously, I think,
and maybe for the first time, quite frankly, come up
with recommendations that are up both my ally and Dean's out.
That's fun because the sci fi component of this, not
just because it's sci fi, but specifically the comedic premise
(01:11:03):
of it seems like something that has Dean Haglin.
Speaker 5 (01:11:06):
Written all I think so, Yeah, I think so. It's
the main character is constantly distracted because he's watching streaming
television shows constantly while he's supposed to be on guard.
He's just got access to all the channels in the
unit in the galaxy, so he's always watching like soap
operas and things like that, and he gets all of
(01:11:26):
his human cues from watching these TV shows. So whenever
he gets pressed into having to answer to the colonists,
he always plucks some dialogue out of some show he's
just watched.
Speaker 2 (01:11:39):
Wow. And this also in addition to Scarsguard stellin Scarsguard's Son, right, Yes,
that's right, Yeah, Okay, who has been so good? Yeah,
one of them, he's been so good, especially in HBO shows.
He's been so good. But also David Dawson Mulchian.
Speaker 5 (01:12:02):
Who's great in it. He's great in it.
Speaker 2 (01:12:04):
And who just of course starred in one of Dean's
favorite movies of the last couple of years, The Late
Night with the Devil. Yes, yes, And I have long
loved Noma Doomswheny I hope I'm saying her her name,
Uh correct. That's a brilliant stage actress from England who's
(01:12:27):
from Swaziland originally and who played Hermione Granger in the
original West End run of Harry Potter.
Speaker 5 (01:12:36):
And Really Child.
Speaker 2 (01:12:38):
Yeah late Hermione as a as a grown woman. Yeah, funny, interesting,
but she is fantastic.
Speaker 5 (01:12:44):
It's a very entertaining cast and the you know, commit
it's hard to find like comedic sci fi that that
works and still has. It's got some you know, it's
got some tense moments in it because they're on this
foreign planet with these weird things, and there's a mystery
going on because there's another group of scientists and on
the other side of the planet and they've all disappeared.
Nobody knows where they are. So yeah, it's very, very entertaining.
(01:13:08):
I'm really enjoying it.
Speaker 2 (01:13:09):
Okay to give ones that both Dean and like it
won't just be on his list. I feel like he
will actually watch that.
Speaker 1 (01:13:18):
Guests of Viewer Chillpack, Hollywood Hours stay at the Baldwin
Hills motor End promotional consideration paid for by Empire State Gas.
Speaker 2 (01:13:27):
From farm to pump, we've got great
Speaker 1 (01:13:30):
Gas related spoiler alert
And now you're chill pack Hollywood Hour with Dean Hagland
and Phil Lareness.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Coming at you from Los Angeles. I am Phil Lareness
coming at us from we think Birmingham, Michigan, though the
audio quality tells us it could be a bunker from
D Day in World War Two. It's the Motor City
Adjasent Madman, It's TV's Dean Hagland. Hello, Dean God. We're
going to be together here in Los.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Angeles in just a few days.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
And next Saturday, instead of going to that Bollywood thing
at Union Station and then finding a place to drink
and record afterwards, you're going to come to Los Pheelis
on Saturday. Oh, and Lily and I are taking you
to the American Cinema Tech at the Los Phelis three
to see the nineteen ninety movie All the Vermeres in
(01:34):
New York. That's the name of the movie. Wow, it
has Dean Haglan written all over it. Because I described
this movie to Lil thinking she would want to go
see it while I was with you, and then at
the end of describing it, she said, well, what about
that makes you think Dean isn't the one who should
(01:55):
be seeing. So get this. You already have art in
the title, and yeah, it's a it's not a metaphor.
It's not a family called the Vermires who live in
New York. No, it's it's the paintings. And it's a
largely improvised film. So you enjoy improv thank you, yes.
(02:18):
And it follows pretty aspiring French actress Anna, played by
Emmanuel Cholet, as she navigates her expat life in New
York City. While spending time among the Vermier paintings in
the Metropolitan Museum of Arts. Anna encounters high strung stockbroker Mark,
(02:40):
played by Stephen Lack, the star of Scanners, which we
talked about at length the other week. Right, so this
is like the other big movie he that he did
eighty seven minutes long. It won the Kaligari Film Award
at the nineteen ninety one Berlin International Film Festival and
(03:03):
the Best Experimental Film in the Los Angeles Film Critics
Association Award. It's a mix of experimental and narrative. The
film was created with filmmaker Jean Jost's love of Vermier
paintings as the central organizing theme, and the Dean of
(03:24):
American film critics at the time, Vincent can Be wrote
in The New York Times, the film's purpose was to
show art as the last bit of humanism in a
world without love.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
Wow, how about that?
Speaker 2 (03:41):
And I'm not even giving you the mind blowing stuff
because I don't want to spoil anything. So after the movie,
we could then retire to the roof here for cocktails
and podcasting. And I thought, oh, this will be fun.
Although we will visit the chill Pack Morgue briefly at
the end of this episode, we could next week actually
(04:04):
turn Celebrity Deaths into what I've always wanted to do,
which is a competition where I give the celebrity and
the two of you take turns guessing their claim to
fame and or their identity, and they'll be prizes.
Speaker 4 (04:17):
There will be prizes. That sounds fun. I mean, I'm
intrigued by the movie. I'm not sure about how I'm
gonna you know, I get one out of five on
these celebrity death things.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Yeah, but I think it's great if it's not like, Okay,
who is it Dean? And then and then in a
few guesses and then silence, and then we go on
to the next one. But if the two of you
start riffing on guesses back and forth, there doesn't have
to be you know. Oh, I mean, it's gotta be
more entertaining than hearing us discuss it now, I think.
(04:55):
So I can't see you, I can barely hear you.
Where are you? What is what's the latest there? You
have no internet? You say, is that because you also
have no power and because the local transformer got knocked
down by an ice raid? What is going on? No?
Speaker 4 (05:17):
They put up the trim, you know, and there's an
Ethernet cable sticking out of the floor.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
That has been the whole time reconstruction has.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
Been going on, and everybody's been careful to miss it.
So I'm assuming that either the internet's out around the
neighborhood or the guys hammered a nail right through the
internet cable and blew out.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
And yeah, so.
Speaker 4 (05:43):
That requires a little more examination than I could do
in the last three minutes.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
It was setting up.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
A thirty thousand dollars nail.
Speaker 4 (05:53):
Yes, yes, well these were the Oh no, these are
the guys.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
That fixed the problem.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
This team was working on another house just a few
blocks over, and somebody nailed a nailed into a water
pipe under the floor, which then leaked and caused the
ceiling in the dining room below to collapse completely onto
the dining room table.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
And that was an expensive mistake. So, you know, at
least we didn't have that.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
There was some X Files news this week, was there
and it did not involve the reboot per se, But
appearing on David Dukoveny's was it Is it failing Better?
Speaker 3 (06:43):
Is that the name of yes or failing upwards?
Speaker 2 (06:46):
I think it's failed Better? Yeah, David du Companies Failed
Better podcast. Chris Carter was on that show and he revealed, Yeah,
it was interesting. They buried the hatchet about a couple
of things. I didn't realize how much things got really
bad on that final season eleven reboot.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
Oh, I didn't realize.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Well, But the news was that Chris Carter has been
given the go ahead to do a director's cut of
the second movie, The X Files. I want to believe
we let We once did a fascinating viewing and analysis
of that film on this very show, and Carter seems
(07:33):
thrilled to have the opportunity to make the quote scary
movie he always wanted to make something for him again,
this is a direct quote that was on the page
but never got to the screen.
Speaker 4 (07:49):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Anyway, this strikes me as the biggest news yet that
there is going to be a reboot.
Speaker 4 (07:59):
Oh, because they put out a director's cut as a
way to read get a new generation involved, and then.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
No, maybe a way to take advantage of the press
surrounding the franchise by making new money, having a new
legacy product available for people, because you know, Disney owns
the property now and people talk about, well, for example,
(08:33):
the recent Marvel movie Captain America Brave New World and
how it had reversed a box office slide, but it
still lost money. It still ended up losing ten to
twenty million, And yet Marvel was pretty quick to point out,
and Disney as well, that that amount of loss is
(08:56):
fine in the sense that it still is profitable because
of all the new revenue each new release allows them
to generate off the franchise, the pre existing entries and
all the legacy merchandise and everything. Right, So it's part
(09:18):
of that box car locomotive that you would say a
little bit of loss is fine because it is driving
a whole lot of other revenue. It's when the loss
is greater that they then have to analyze, Okay, are
we in trouble because of diminishing interest? Are we in
(09:40):
trouble because of budgets that are spiral ling out of control?
What do we need to adjust? But anyway, I think
coming from the same company, that's why I see this
as a pretty good sign that oh, something new is
going to be coming out, and we want to make
sure that we we are benefiting from that new release
(10:05):
across the board where this franchise is concerned.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
Ah, well, now that is a smart business move, isn't it,
Because as you said, that energy circulates, you create energy
and then that drives your financing.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
So you're right, this is optimistic.
Speaker 4 (10:25):
I'm not sure if it's going to be I mean,
you know, as we both said, we had trouble, we
had lots of problems with that second NIXT file.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Well, no we didn't. After we did our analysis, we
came out very much in favor of it. We said,
there is a way of reading this that is a
very very interesting film. What I like about his comments were, yes,
if what he wanted was a scary movie, it didn't
(10:56):
end up closing its fist on that.
Speaker 4 (10:59):
Right right, which is weird. Why would the studios bulk
at that?
Speaker 3 (11:06):
But that's Fox for you.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Well, I can't go all the way back in time
to that, but two thousand and eight we were looking
at a big writers strike, and remember there was a
rush to get product into theaters. There was a rush
to get product finished because they wanted to avoid what
(11:31):
quite frankly plagued the industry mightily just a couple of
years ago, the repercussions of which have certainly been felt
until just recently, which is a dearth of product.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Right right, So that was the panic back then.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Yeah, So I liked that he did not honestly get
into an issue of why it didn't end up on screen.
I think if it wasn't his doing, if it was
the circumstances surrounding the film getting made and getting into theaters,
a rush, what have you in editing and post production,
(12:13):
if it was issues out of his control. I both
like that he did not list them and did not
try to excuse it. But also it makes sense again
because he's been given an opportunity to redo it, And
why would you knock anyone else if you've been given
(12:35):
an opportunity to redo it. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (12:38):
Well, and he's a really thoughtful director and he really
pursues it, analyzing it from all angles.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
So I know, if he's under the gun or.
Speaker 4 (12:51):
Pressure, he'll you know, sacrifice some choices that he probably
would have rather made heavy the time.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
So this is good news.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
Well, it also creates a bit of a quandary in
the editing room sometimes, right, because if you are a
thoughtful director and you are looking at it from all angles,
you might have takes the delve into and explore different
elements of what is possible. Right, And we can maybe
at some point when the director's cut comes out, we
(13:21):
can compare it and we can say to ourselves, then,
oh see, this is a movie that could have been
cut differently.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
Interesting.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
You remember when when you saw right around the same
time you saw Quantum of Solace and you talked about
the action scenes, because I was kind of, I don't know,
I was. I was flabbergasted at how could the action
scenes not only be so different than Casino Royale, but
so much less effective? And what you pointed out to
(13:53):
me was that all the pieces were there, it was
a matter of how they were editing. The approach to
editing those action sequences, right, is what changed everything. Yeah,
so you could have the same crew and you could
be shooting the same kind of coverage in the same
stunt cruise, and yet it could turn out so totally differently.
(14:17):
But to you when you watched them and broke them down, yeah,
all the pieces had been there.
Speaker 4 (14:24):
Right right, It's just yeah, well this is why we
armchair edit.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
I did see, by the way, that Captain America Brave
New World recently I caught that. Did you listen to
this one?
Speaker 3 (14:36):
No? I hadn't tell me more.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
This is the pen ultimate film of Marvel's Phase five,
the middle section of their multiverse saga. Captain America Brave
New World, however, does not have any elements of multiverse
in it. That's the interesting thing about it, and a
relief and quite frankly a relief to me just you know, occasionally,
(15:04):
just tell a story, y is what. And it's not
a bad film, not as bad as the reviews would indicate.
On the other hand, nor is there anything special about
it except for it being a really good Harrison Ford vehicle.
(15:25):
Hey what I mean? I know that Anthony Mackie is
the titular star of it, but the arc for Ford's
president Thaddeus Ross is actually the most interesting aspect of
the film, and Ford seriously goes for it. In the movie.
He's having a ball, and that speaks to why he
(15:46):
signed up in the first place. Apparently he signed on
for the movie without ever seeing a script. You might
remember he replaced the late William Hurt, who had played
the part the in forod previous MCU films.
Speaker 5 (16:01):
Right.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
The reason Ford did this was that he had seen
enough actors he admired having a ball doing Marvel films
to know it would be fun.
Speaker 4 (16:13):
Ah See, that's how you make your choices, not what's
going to be the box of us.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
What's my take? How much fun am I going to have?
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Well, especially a guy like him. I mean he's doing
if you look at this and of course shrinking, he's
doing some of the best work he's ever done. And
when you hear him speak, because he does more interviews
than he's ever done, something he never particularly enjoyed doing, right,
what comes through loud and clear is just how much
(16:45):
he loves working and acting like he loves acting. Wow,
it's that kind of youthful, child like love and enthusiasm
and enjoyment I feel like we spend a lot of
our adult lives trying to get back to you know,
as we get distracted by all the other reasons we're
(17:06):
working and all the other concerns that we have, and
then ultimately at the end we get back to you know,
creating stuff is fun.
Speaker 4 (17:17):
The act creation, it's a humanistic things.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
So yeah, So if you're a Harrison Ford fan and
I am enjoyable to watch him and his arc, it
would be nice if they find a way and important
way to bring him back as we move into phase six.
We don't need him just doing cameos and waving right
because he's because he's clearly able to contribute so much more.
(17:44):
As for Mackie, you know, I was a big fan
of his fifteen sixteen years ago when I saw him
on Broadway, I saw him in the Oscar winning film
hurt Locker. I got to meet him at the same time.
And what a serious young man he was. And I
don't mean, like, you know, a serious, brooding type. He
(18:04):
was very charming and engaging and lovely, but I mean
you could tell this guy's serious about his craft, about
the business. And I've loved seeing him get the success
that he's had, and as you know, I would never
deny anyone the opportunity to make some serious bang right.
(18:27):
But here comes I find his part in this to
be like a watered down Will Smith role. Wow, and
his Sam Wilson is certainly not as interesting as Chris
Evans Steve Rogers in the Captain America movies. As I mentioned,
(18:48):
this movie lost a little bit of money, hardly matters
because it does nothing to harm the MCU, probably makes
them a lot of money in other ways. On the
other hand, I have a hard time believing that it
really did anything to help the MCU or the franchise.
It's sort of I walked away thinking about it financially
(19:12):
and realizing that artistically I felt the same way. It's
a zero sum game with one fun Harrison Ford performance.
So if that excites you to dial it up on
Disney Plus, feel free to bow out of this show. Now.
Oh wait, you don't have internet.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
So I don't have internet, you get dial up anything.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
I'm still interested more from a standpoint of kind of
the experiment professionally, of them keeping this franchise going, of
how are they going to do this with these long
range plans? Then I am any more invested in the
story of the characters.
Speaker 4 (19:55):
Yeah, this is the thing, isn't it. How do you
keep that play spinning on the top of the stick forever?
I mean, eventually gravity ad or interest is good to
collapse and everybody will have moved on.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Theoretically, it'll collapse unto itself, creating a quantum implosion that
actually leads to a multiverse. We thought all this time
that it was because the stories had to deal with multiverses. No,
it's the multiverse saga because at the end of this
giant financial creative implosion, we will all find ourselves. Yeah,
(20:31):
we'll find ourselves in a multiverse. I would never bring
this up, because it will. There's no way in which
this is resonant, either from a classical sense or a
contemporary sense, other than the fact that we're both Jack
Lemon fans. But I bring up the fact that I
watched the nineteen seventy five adaptation of Neil Simon's play
(20:53):
The Prisoner of Second Avenue because I went down a
rabbit hole that proved utterly delightful to me. A Jack
Lennon No, No, oddly enough, I would more call it
a Joel Schumacher a rabbit hole, but a Diana Ross
(21:14):
rabbit hole. I know it makes no sense, but in
a multiverse sense it probably does. So look Prisoner of
Second Avenue. I say that it is not resonant either
classically or culturally. It might actually be more resonant now
that movie as a portrait of working class animosity towards
the world, towards authority, and towards other people. That part
(21:37):
made me think, hey, this is kind of more twenty
twenty five really than it was nineteen seventy five. It
was directed by Melvin Frank, not Neil Simon's usual director.
More on that a second. It was directed by Melvin Frank,
who had worked on great comedies and with great comedians
twenty and thirty years earlier. He had directed Hope and
(22:02):
Crosby Road Pictures. Oh my gosh, he directed mister Blandings
builds his dream House.
Speaker 3 (22:12):
Oh he's got a sense of architecture.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Well, so the irony is it? Also, as I'm watching
it sort of felt like it might have been resonant
in his era. It might have been resonant in nineteen
forty five or nineteen fifty. Again, nineteen seventy five and
I remember nineteen seventy five, what a head scratcher the
movie was. The director of Melvin Frank, shoots the film
(22:37):
sometimes as if he thinks it is being done in
black and white. I swear to god that sounds like
a joke. But you watch some of his setups and
you watch this, and you go, he thinks these sets
are being lit for black and white. That explains why
he's shooting it this way.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
You know, the best Neil Simon movies of the era
were directed by Jene Sacks, and for some reason he
did not direct this one. But odd most odd of all,
he does play the major supporting role in the film.
He doesn't direct it. He acts in it. He plays
(23:21):
Jack Lemon's brother in it. Gene Sacks, Oh, oh is that?
Speaker 4 (23:27):
Oh that's hilarious. So he's a director who acts occasionally.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Yeah, when he doesn't apparently want to direct the Neil
Simon adaptation, or Neil Simon said, you know what, Gene,
I need to give Melvin Frank some work after all
these many years. How about you act in it? Anyway?
And he's good. Lemon is brilliant there, you know it
isn't you know? It's it's not that you should avoid it.
(23:52):
It's it's just it's not It's not a great Jack
Lemon film. It's not even a good Neil Simon film.
And I do think there were plenty of those, but
Lemon's brilliant. If the movie had truly been a portrait
of his descent into anxiety and paranoia, yeah they could.
They could have been onto something back then. They could
(24:12):
have been onto something.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
But aside from seeing Anne Bancroft as his wife, because
she's she's wonderful, there's little to recommend other than Lemon's work.
But I noticed in the credits, as I said, that
the costumes were by future director Joel Schumacher, who he
did many titles in that capacity back then, you know,
(24:38):
as a costume designer. That was his start, including My
Beloved The Last of Sheila, which I still think is
maybe the greatest mystery film of all time. But what
I never knew until watching it and then researching him
is that he was the screenwriter of the Sidney Lumett
directed feature film at Saptation of the Broadway show The Wiz.
Speaker 4 (25:04):
Oh you're kidding that, So it goes right into his
cheese pocket too.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
Doesn't it, because.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Well it's just so strange though, Like that's his break
into screenwriting, is the Wiz. We've got this big Broadway
franchise based on the most beloved movie of all time.
Let's get the costume designer to write it, I mean,
and and by the way, let's get Sidney Lumet to
direct it.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
Yeah, well that's weird.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
It's all weird. It's all weird. And I can't believe
that I hadn't remembered all those things.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
I don't believe.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
It was not well received, It was not a financial success,
despite a big budget and a lot of hope behind it,
because that Broadway show was was was huge. But I
am wondering if it might be time for reappraisal of
that movie, both by me and by the public.
Speaker 3 (26:04):
Really because it's musicality.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
Well, because of the musicality, because of the era in
which we live, an all black Wizard of Oz could
be fascinating. And with the advent of the you know,
the huge embrace of Wicked globally, and let's not pretend
that that was good. So why wasn't Whiz at that
(26:33):
time embraced and would it be embraced now? The same movie.
So I'm fast and plus Sidney Lumett. Yeah, I'm not
gonna go into a rewatch expecting it to be anything
other than interesting now, appreciating Sidney Lumett as I do.
So I'm interested in rewatching it. But this was part
(26:54):
of the rabbit hole I went down. Apparently, apparently, and
it's also a reason to rewort watch it and reappraise it. Apparently.
Joel Schumacher's script was greatly and obviously influenced by the
teachings of Werner Erhardt Earhart. Oh yeah, and his ST movement.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
The S Movement.
Speaker 4 (27:17):
Yeah, that's the whole thing of taking personal responsibility for
your own destiny, so on and so forth.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Yeah, the ST training or the S Movement was Earhard
Seminars training, and both Schumacher and the movies star Diana
Ross were very enamored of Earhard.
Speaker 4 (27:39):
Oh so this was a cult movie made by a cult.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
The film's producer actually calls The Wiz and not happily so,
an Estian fable full of st buzzwords and terminology.
Speaker 4 (28:00):
She oh, oh, now I'm gonna watch it again.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
The producer hated the script, but found that it was
impossible to argue with his leading lady who had all
the power.
Speaker 3 (28:17):
Right Dana Ross, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (28:20):
Of course, and so she was studying st and therefore
she wouldn't take a rewritease on down, ease on.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
Down the road. So we might need to ease our
way down the road, just seeing.
Speaker 4 (28:42):
That.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
Maybe after we see this experimental movie and once we
start drinking, then we record. Then we watched the Whiz
and then as I drive you in the middle of
the night to the airport, will we'll podcast and drive drunkenly. No,
that's a terrible idea. We would never do that. We
would never do that.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
I'll take an uber.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
A couple of weeks back, Dean this year's edition of
the can Film Festival closed, and what a strong year
this was heard Almost no hated films whatsoever, and even
films hailed as all time masterpieces could not win the
top prize, the Palm d'Or. That's how competitive it was.
(29:41):
How So, who won on a six year palm door
winning streak. Neon acquired. It was just an accident from
the great Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, who has long been
in exile or in prison for his artistry. The sixty
(30:02):
five year old Pana. He has made such modern masterpieces
as This Is Not a Movie Taxi and the recent
No Bears, which I still have not caught up to.
Oh yeah, this year's Palm Door winner, It was just
an accident, has the following setup. A man is driving
(30:22):
at night with his wife and daughter when he hits
and kills a dog. The accident badly damages his engine
and causes the car to later break down. He pulls
over to a nearby garage, encountering a former political prisoner
who recognizes the squeaking sound of the man's false leg
(30:49):
as that of an intelligence officer who tortured him in
prison and caused him permanent kidney damage.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Okay, so now that's your setup. That's your setup right there.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
Wow, that's pretty good. That sounds actually like.
Speaker 4 (31:08):
A uh well, a Canadian classic play called Cold Comfort,
where a car breaks down in Saskatchewan and then finds
out that the daughter wants to run away with him
and the guy ties him. You know, it's a it's
a creepy the tail of his lone garage shout in
the middle of the prairies on a winter's night, and boy,
(31:32):
oh boy, this sounds like that.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
Actually I thought it also sounds like it could have
been the synopsis for a setup for a a Twilight
Zone episode.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
Oh yeah, the squeaky leg of the torture. That's pretty good.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
I mean, just that setup. And see this is where
directing comes into play, right immediately. Uh, you could imagine
so many different types of films coming from that premise
and that setup.
Speaker 3 (32:06):
Right. And yes, suspense, give suspense.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
An espionage picture. I mean there's so much so and
Pana he makes movies like nobody else. So I can't
wait to see what that film is. And anyway, the
runner up called the Grand Prize, so the Grand Prize
is second place. It went to a movie called Sentimental
(32:36):
Value from Norwegian filmmaker Joakim Trier, who over the past
several years has scored huge international hits with the likes
of Oslo August thirty first back in twenty eleven, which
I loved, and the recent Oscar nominated The Worst Person
in the World, which I also loved.
Speaker 5 (32:57):
So a.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
Kinsman to me Norwegian filmmaker Jaquem Trier. The premise of
Sentimental Value is that after the death of their mother,
the estranged sisters Nora and agnes Borg are forced to
confront their distant father, Gustav, a once famous but now
(33:22):
almost forgotten film director who abandoned the family when the
girls were still young.
Speaker 3 (33:29):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
The movie stars as that distant father, the great international
star Stellin Scarsguard. Oh. Yes, and the young girls are
top Norwegian actresses. And the film also features American star
El Fanning. And the more I read, the more it
(33:52):
seems to me like a project that might have been
worthy of pek ingmar Bergmann.
Speaker 3 (33:58):
Oh sounds good, I'm curious.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
Yeah, so that's your Grand Prize a winner. Other major works,
it seems to me that are worthy to seek out
and find are the film that won the Best Director award.
That is often for me, the best film to come
out of Can won Wings of Desire, by the way,
one Best Director at CAN. Last week we talked about
the great Taiwanese film Yee, which ended up being the
(34:25):
final film for the great Edward Yang. He won Best
Director for that at CAN. So this year it was
a movie called The Secret Agent, which also pulled off
the rare, extremely rare trick at CAN of winning a
second award because they love to spread out the prizes
(34:47):
to celebrate many great films from around the world, but
this one best director and best actor. The filmmaker is
a man named Klieber Mendosa Filho, and he's a Brazilian filmmaker.
The movie is a historic political thriller following a teacher
(35:09):
caught up in the political turmoil of the final years
of the Brazilian military dictatorship. It's set in nineteen seventy
seven and it focuses on this teacher who is a
bit of a technology expert.
Speaker 3 (35:24):
Oh so that's a.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
Secret agent and yes, for someone who misses the Cold War,
and so hence loved the right the remake of Tinker
Taylor Soldier Spy fourteen years ago because it returned us
to a place and time that rooted so many of
(35:47):
these tropes again into actual real world you know, relevance. Well,
oh my goodness, a spy film set in the seventies,
a technology expert in the seventies. That's fun to me,
using analog and nascent digital technology, and plus in a
(36:14):
Brazilian military dictatorship about which I know very little.
Speaker 4 (36:20):
I know very little as well. That wasn't in our
history books up in Canada, but that sounds pretty fun.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
Actually, yeah, I feel like this is gonna be something
that's up both our allies. The jury prize was the
movie The Sound of Falling, about which I told you
two weeks ago when people immediately hailed it as one
of the great all times works of art in the
art form known as cinema. The special prize went to
(36:53):
a movie called Resurrection from director by Gune from China,
who whose work I have enjoyed. Resurrection is a science
fiction drama film set in a future where most of
humanity has lost the capacity to dream, and where a
woman discovers that one creature is still able to experience dreams.
(37:18):
She enters this creature's dreams, using her ability to perceive
illusions to determine the truth in its visions of Chinese history.
The film is divided into six chapters, with each representing
one of the five senses, plus the mind as sixth chapter.
(37:40):
So the writer director by Gan is the filmmaker who
made twenty eighteen's Long Day's Journey in Tonight, which you
might recall was one of my favorite films of twenty eighteen.
It was a movie notable for its final fifty nine minutes,
which consisted of one Unbroken Master shot entirely in three D,
(38:04):
but the rest of the movie was in two D.
So when the character, the lead character went into a
theater and put on the three D glasses, we put
on our three D glasses and our minds got blown.
Speaker 3 (38:21):
Wow, I forgot you talked about this.
Speaker 4 (38:24):
Frankly, that's that I wish that would get a re
re examination. Moe, Oh what am I reading? Good lord, Well,
funny you should ask the We had to move our
(38:49):
library because the well is being painted and it would
have to match, so all the books had to come out.
Speaker 3 (38:55):
And what book do you think.
Speaker 4 (39:00):
Fell into my lap that I haven't read in such
a long time.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
So The Art.
Speaker 4 (39:05):
Thief is a novel by Noah Charni, And yes I
have read this, Yeah you have. Yes, It's fascinating and
I really enjoyed it, so I actually cracked it open.
There's three steps that are simultaneously investigating three different cities,
and they apparently the isolated cribs have more in common
than anyone imagines. So this inspector from Scotland Yard attempts
(39:29):
to to solve it all and there's ransoms involved in it.
It was quite a thrilling and fast, fascinating in art
historical detail too. So I'm going to start that one
again because I loved it so much.
Speaker 2 (39:44):
But I do recall that we discussed it and I
was fascinated about the topic. And then, you know, oh
my goodness, years later, I see this movie that I
rewatched and talked about Certified cop and the issue of
not only art thefts but art forgeries. I remember that
(40:07):
Art Thief really started me for the first time thinking
about this world, right, and and wondering, man, just how
authentic is a book like The Art Thief.
Speaker 4 (40:22):
Yeah, because it brings into the contemporary art issue of
reproduction and what you know, Mrkami who that the idea
that the reproduction is the art itself, that he is
making an art piece that can be mass produced and
(40:42):
sold at the gift store, you know, So so that
the little keychain that has its little cartoon flower head
on it is the artwork. It's not a copy of it.
It's not the merchandise of the painting. It is the
It is the work that he intended to make in
mass quantities. So that idea of you know, it's not
(41:04):
a single canvas that everybody then does T shirts and
umbrellas and hats like a van Go. It is the
idea that the artwork is the t shirt and the
hat and the umbrella.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
My step uncle in law, Brian Burke's book of essays,
The Genius of the Place Essays on History and Continuity
in Philadelphia, is something we discussed a little bit last time.
We talked about this and we were starting to get
really gung ho about doing a walking tour of Philly.
(41:38):
I wanted to share the following with you from that book.
It's from chapter nine, an essay entitled christ Church and
Its Bells, And this is just direct direct lift from
the book. February twenty third, eighteen forty six, both the
christ Church Bell and the Liberty Bell rang for George
(42:02):
Washington's birthday, but the Liberty bell cracked in the work.
So this is the day the Liberty Bell cracks.
Speaker 3 (42:12):
Was George Washington's birthday.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
February twenty third, eighteen forty six. A slot was carved
along the crack and secured by two rivets. Appropriately, this
most famous of all American bells had rung for the
last time in honor of George Washington. Wow, that's pretty cool. Little,
that's pretty cool, right bit of history. How come I
(42:36):
never knew that?
Speaker 3 (42:37):
Yeah, I went and visited. No, there's not even a plaque.
Speaker 2 (42:45):
Weird people, could I think sense the emotion in your
voice that you found it weird and were frustrated that
you didn't didn't find out about that when you visited
the Liberty Bell. People couldn't make out any of the words, though,
did We're losing the sea, We're losing you? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (43:07):
Oh my gosh, there's not another treasure lost. Ah.
Speaker 2 (43:12):
Well, I'm trying to translate from English back into English
for you.
Speaker 3 (43:16):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
Later on in this book, later on, in this same essay,
this was I thought amazing. This was mind blowing to me. Again,
a field about which I know nothing, the making of
bells at and yet in Philadelphia. History counts Long before
Philadelphia had even thought of enjoying the pleasant amenities of
(43:39):
its five squares, and even longer before the Carolon of
Holy Trinity was serenading fashionable written house square, the Liberty
Bell and the bells of Christ Church had become symbols
of the cities and the nation's history. Everyone could enjoy
their chime, but some citizens appreciated them as American icons
(44:01):
and worked to perpetuate them. In eighteen seventy six, Henry
Siebert presented a new tenor bell for Independence Hall to
the City of Philadelphia. He had appreciated the inspiration of
the Liberty Bell during the dark days of the Civil War,
and he made a commemorative bell to fill its place.
(44:24):
As a metallurgist, Siebert knew what he was doing. He
cast a replacement for the Liberty Bell that incorporated symbolic
medals from the past for a beginning. His bell weighs
thirteen thousand pounds to represent the thirteen original colonies in
(44:46):
the ancient custom of beating swords into plowshares Isaiah two four.
He literally melted and then melded a lot of history
the bronze of two cannons from the Battle of Saratoga,
one American, the other British, and two from the Battle
of Gettysburg, one Union the other Confederate in his bell,
(45:09):
the canons that have divided people in war unite them
in peace. At first, after this new bell seemed to
lack tonal quality, it was recast. It still rings the
hours from the steeple of Independence Hall, celebrating the liberty
for which Americans fought into Great Wars.
Speaker 3 (45:29):
Wow, like that that symbolic.
Speaker 2 (45:33):
Like and like that guy Richard Siebert, Like how brilliant
was that man? Like he knows his history, he's an artist.
How much craft and skill and science goes into making
a thirteen thousand.
Speaker 3 (45:51):
Pound bell and I can't imagine.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
And music and harmonics, I mean to realize the need
to shift it and change it after the fact, to
adjust the tonal quality. I mean, oh, these people make
me so angry.
Speaker 4 (46:07):
Mean, they're so skillful and craft craftsmanship.
Speaker 3 (46:13):
Can them if.
Speaker 2 (46:15):
We have time at the at the tail end of this,
I was gonna tack on a little talk I had
with Mark Kershaan with him making another couple television recommendations,
as he does almost every month. Absolutely both up both
our allys okay, but I mean rarely is he given
picks that both of us I feel like would radically enjoy.
(46:40):
But I wanted to ask you about a show, the
American adaptation of which just got canceled and I was
disappointed because I was really charmed by it. But it
started as an Australian TV series and that's laid it
was a big hitch show. In twenty eleven, twenty twelve
(47:01):
down Under, and I wondered if you had availed yourself
of the Australian sitcom when you were there.
Speaker 4 (47:11):
No, no, because it was canceled by the time I
got there. But I know a lot of the improvisers
referred to it a lot, and I never got to
see it because it didn't air Understand, which was the
cable satellite service down Under, and I couldn't find it.
Speaker 2 (47:35):
I really did find the reboot charming and sometimes really
really funny, and increasingly so throughout. It's now just one season.
They certainly had set up a second season, but despite
great reviews and really winning lead performances from Stephanie's Shoe
as Ruby Yo the lead, a thirty three year old
(47:57):
single Seattle based party planner who is trying to solve
why every single one of her past sex partners have
been dying in the order she slept with them, and
Zosia Mammot, David Mammott's daughter, as aj Ruby's best friend
and roommate. Their rapport comedically next level brilliant these times. Women. Yeah,
(48:25):
So anyway, I'm disappointed, but I might be curious to
try to track down the the Auzi version because I've
heard it's great.
Speaker 4 (48:33):
Yes, I heard that too, but I could never find it.
Speaker 1 (48:37):
Celebrity deaths.
Speaker 2 (48:39):
Speaking of television, Dean Loretta Switz, Oh, I know. The
actress who won two Emmy Awards for her portrayal of
Major Margaret hot Lips Hulahan on the television classic Mash,
died May thirtieth at her home in New York City
at the age of eighty seven. It's safe to say
that not only did Mash make Loretta Switt a household name,
(49:02):
it utterly defined her career. Right. I mean, she did
do plenty of other work, but name it.
Speaker 3 (49:11):
Yeah, right.
Speaker 2 (49:13):
You can't know. Margaret hua Han just cast way too
big a shadow over everything. You played the head nurse, right,
everybody knows a surgical unit in the Korean War. But
in her hands, Margaret was an early example of a
strong and highly capable female character on TV. Kind of
(49:37):
different than in the movie where Sally Kellerman played it right. Initially,
Loretta Switt's hot Lips was straight laced in her but
her character softened over the seasons, fitting in better with
the jokesters of the four h seven seven, and she
(49:59):
was one only four of the actors to remain with
mash for all eleven of its seasons, and only she
and Alan Alda appeared in both the pilot and that
record setting season or series Finale's fine. Yeah, this quote
from Alan Alda is worthy of sharing. I think he
(50:23):
posted this on social media. He said Loretta was a
supremely talented actor. She deserved all her ten Emmy nominations
and her two wins. But more than acting her part,
she created it. She worked hard in showing the writing
(50:46):
staff how they could turn the character from a one
joke sexist stereotype into a real person with real feelings
and ambitions. We celebrated the day the script came out out,
listing her character for the first time, not as Hot Lips,
but as Margaret. Loretta made the most of her time
(51:10):
here Ah. She always knew she wanted to act. She
was raised with a deep love for movies. She acted
in high school productions. She grew up in Passaic, New Jersey,
studied acting while working clerical jobs, including as a secretary
to the great gossip columnist Elsa Maxwell. Oh And she
(51:31):
soon began to find stage roles, you know, off Broadway
in the early sixties. Her first one was the great
an Enemy of the People. Her television debut came nine
years later. Ten years later, sixty nine and a guest
role on Hawaii Ive. Oh so ten years of cutting
her teeth on the New York stage. You know, and
(51:51):
you think about the show Mash, there is no doubt that, man,
they were almost putting on a little play every week.
Speaker 3 (51:59):
Yeah. The writing was excellent, production.
Speaker 4 (52:03):
Values, I mean in terms of shots and ideas and
jokes joke heavy too. She was really quite a phenomenal
piece of tea at television.
Speaker 2 (52:12):
She was a noted advocate for animal welfare, founded the
nonprofit Sweetheart Animal Alliance, where she fundraised on behalf of animals. Now, Dean,
this woman died on May first, And I'd been waiting
to ask you about this. I was curious. Were you
a fan of Ruth Buzzy?
Speaker 4 (52:35):
Yes, from laughing she was hilarious. Carried that show interesting?
Speaker 2 (52:41):
Wow? Yeah, an actress and a comedian. I remembered her
from Rowan and Martin's laughing just slightly a little bit
before my time, but wow, you say, carried it. She
died at her home in Stephenville, Texas, in her sleep
at the age of eighty eight. Tell me more about this,
because you know, there was an August roster of talent
(53:03):
on that show.
Speaker 4 (53:04):
Yes, for sure, but she was dependable on her characters
and as a foil to Artie Shaw. She was brilliant
and she could come out and when needed, belt out
a tune like ethel Merman unbelievable. It was like, you
didn't expect that because she had, you know, it was
really a wacky sense of humor she had. But then
(53:28):
to hear her sing, went, oh my gosh, what how
are you hiding that talent?
Speaker 2 (53:34):
Wow? I didn't I wasn't even aware of that. I
don't remember that. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (53:38):
I recently rewatched the entire series of Laughing from Top
from day one to the very end, and wow, yeah, yeah,
it was really fascinating actually because it it really had energy.
And then somehow producers and directors had stupid ideas and
more dancing girls, and you know, you could sort of
(53:58):
see it struggle as the years went on.
Speaker 2 (54:02):
She appeared in every single episode during its entire six
season run. I don't think I had been aware of that.
She was pretty remarkable. She was already a working union
card carrying actress before she even graduated from Pasadena Playhouse.
(54:25):
And this is back. You know, when Pasadena Playhouse was
a College of Theater Arts. Their alumni included Gene Hackman
and Dustin Hoffman. Right, she'd been doing live musical comedy.
She'd been performing off Broadway in New York, and she'd
made her way to television and yet was still training
and perfecting her craft at Pasady in a playhouse. She
(54:48):
had early appearances on television on The Steve Allen Comedy Hour,
but it was Roanan Martin's laugh In that won her
national recognition.
Speaker 3 (54:59):
Ye.
Speaker 2 (55:00):
She earned five Emmy nominations for the show and a
Golden Globe in nineteen seventy three. I also remember that
she was a regular on Sesame Street.
Speaker 3 (55:13):
That's right, I forgot about that.
Speaker 2 (55:16):
I mean, that's pretty great. And look, Lily Tomlin has
cut from this cloth as well. I think to be
able as a comedy performer, to be able to delight
and speak to all ages without speaking down to any
of them, is just I mean, that's heartening to me.
Speaker 3 (55:43):
Yeah, I mean it was charming. She was charming. That
was the other thing.
Speaker 4 (55:47):
Funny but charming as well. And you know that's such
a combo.
Speaker 2 (55:54):
She made appearances on so many shows, That girl, the Carol,
that show she was in an episode of Chips for
crying out loud and lent that distinctive and unique and
delightful voice to many animated shows.
Speaker 3 (56:13):
Oh yeah, of course.
Speaker 2 (56:15):
But finally George went Yes, the actor who played Norm
on Cheers, and in so doing created really one of
television's not only most beloved, but most enduring characters. I mean,
who doesn't regularly hear people? Do Norm? I know?
Speaker 3 (56:37):
Right?
Speaker 2 (56:37):
He died in his sleep May twentieth, at his home
in Los Angeles at the age of seventy six. His
acting career spanned over one hundred and seventy different roles,
not episodes or hours of televisions, one hundred and seventy
different roles he played, and in all that, though for
most people, he will always be Norm Peterson, who haunted
(57:02):
television's most famous bar, Cheers, right right, and who was
one of just three characters to appear in every episode
of that show. He was born in Chicago, got his
start in acting through Second City, the famous improv comedy
group that spawned such alumni as Bill Murray, Gilda Radner,
(57:24):
John Candy, John Belushi, On and on and on. He
graduated from Campion High School in Wisconsin, then earned his
degree at Jesuit Rockhurst College before discovering his love for acting.
He got his start on screen in a small uncredited
role in the nineteen seventy eight Robert Altman film A Wedding,
then had small parts in shows like Soap Taxi, Alice,
(57:49):
and Mash before being cast in the part that would
change his life. All four of those shows have in
common the fact that they were great, so smart casting
directors had already identified George Wentt as the real deal,
it seems to me right. I mentioned that he was
(58:10):
one of only three actors to appear in every episode.
The others were Ted Danson of course, playing Sam Malone,
and Ria Pearlman playing Carlah. It was just the three
of them that appeared in every single episode. But his
work did go far beyond Cheers, as I mentioned, one
hundred and seventy different roles. But you know, those six
(58:32):
straight Emmy Awards that he won for his work on
Cheers also helped seal the deal, not just the popularity
of the character and the show itself. Do you know
what former SNL star is His nephew.
Speaker 3 (58:50):
Wow, let me think of this. No, who would it be?
Speaker 2 (58:57):
None other than Ted Lasso himself, Jason Sudekus.
Speaker 4 (59:01):
No, that's an incredible relative.
Speaker 2 (59:06):
Yeah, and Jason Sudekas always just adored him, apparently said
that he was like a total mench.
Speaker 3 (59:14):
Oh, that's good to hear.
Speaker 1 (59:17):
All those nights when you've got no lights, the check
is in the mail, and your little angel hung the
cat up by its.
Speaker 4 (59:26):
Team, and your thirdly answer it didn't show. Sometimes you
want to go where everybody knows your name.
Speaker 2 (59:40):
Mark Kershawan, Welcome back to your Chill Pac Hollywood Hour.
Speaker 5 (59:43):
Thank you, Phil. Always a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 2 (59:45):
So we're recording this on I guess June seventh, Saturday,
June seventh. We just did some other work together, and
in about a half hour, I am going to be
watching a live broadcast of a Broadway show. Oh, based
(01:00:06):
on a movie about a live broadcast fantastic.
Speaker 5 (01:00:11):
So you're referring, of course to George Clooney Clooney George
Clooney Show on Broadway. They're doing a live broadcast on CNN.
Speaker 2 (01:00:21):
I believe, yeah, of the actual Broadway performance. It's the
first time, believe it or not, in history that a
Broadway performance is being broadcast live.
Speaker 5 (01:00:33):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (01:00:35):
There have been Broadway performances, of course, recorded for later
broadcast and live theater. I think in the Golden age
of Hollywood was occasionally broadcast, but never a Broadway show.
Speaker 5 (01:00:51):
Wow. Well you can cut this out. But in a
brilliant piece of counter programming, Fox News is going to
be showing a carnival, a live carnival.
Speaker 2 (01:01:01):
Is that true?
Speaker 5 (01:01:02):
No?
Speaker 2 (01:01:03):
Oh god, because now I was gonna have I'm asking
myself which do I watch? And which do I DVR?
And yes, I DVR things? Oh I do I've I've
managed to get the DVR storage down to ninety percent
this past week by watching like six hours of international film.
(01:01:25):
All right. The other thing that I wanted to hit
you with was very excited to see that Slow Horses
not coming soon, but does have an air date or
a release date. I think September twenty fourth.
Speaker 5 (01:01:40):
Oh, I thought it was dropping this summer.
Speaker 2 (01:01:43):
It returns for its fifth season on September twenty fourth,
so it's it's the longest gap that they've had between
seasons because the fourth season aired its finale and on
Apple TV, are you airing anything? It's releasing it. Yes.
(01:02:03):
So they released their season finale for season four in
October of twenty twenty four, so almost a year.
Speaker 5 (01:02:11):
Oh wow, Okay, yeah. I think originally they were looking
for summer, but maybe with everything going on and they
just didn't want to lose the audience or something.
Speaker 2 (01:02:19):
But the really exciting news to me, though, is the
new cast member, oh, a star of another beloved Apple
TV franchise, joining the season five cast of Slow Horses,
Ted Lasso's Nick Mohammad. Oh yeah, Nate the Great, Yes, Yes.
Speaker 5 (01:02:44):
I read something about that. It's just yeah, that's going
to be great.
Speaker 2 (01:02:48):
He is a really gifted performer. He is, and as
we've talked about before, and then maybe we'll let Slow
Horse have a couple months off because if I feel
like we have something to talk about with it almost
every month. But my goodness, do they cast people correctly
in that show?
Speaker 5 (01:03:09):
Yes? Speaking of casting people, I was reading that the
next season of Shrinking, they've done some big stunt casting
for that. Jeff Daniels is coming into play Jason Siegel's father, right.
Michael J. Fox is coming in to play a person
(01:03:31):
with Parkinson's.
Speaker 2 (01:03:33):
Right, And I imagine that will I mean that has
the potential to be really powerful. I imagine he's doing
a lot of scenes with Harrison Ford, yeah, I would think,
and he's coming out of retirement for that. Yes. Yes,
Bill Lawrence, the showrunner right goes back all the way
(01:03:56):
to the days of Spin City with him, Yes, and
has always said had the doors open for Michael J.
Fox to come and be a part of anything that
he's doing. So I am really looking forward to that.
It's sort of a strange idea to me that, well,
(01:04:16):
let me put it this way. If you had told
mid nineteen eighties film Alareness, the one inside joke alert
who aimed to be Pierce President, if you had told
him that Jeff Daniels of Michael J. Fox and Harrison
Ford were all going to appear together, he would have
(01:04:37):
said that's too much, that's too many nineteen eighties references
brought together. And he would have said that in the
nineteen eighties.
Speaker 5 (01:04:46):
So yeah, So again, interesting casting coming out of that.
Speaker 2 (01:04:51):
All right. So that's the all the TV news that's
suitable to print.
Speaker 5 (01:04:58):
I think, Oh, well, I've been watching a few things
good Binge the heck I can say heck on this
podcast right, Yes, out of Netflix's new Department Q, which
is based on a series of books by a Nordic author,
(01:05:22):
and they made like six movies that are in the
Nordic languages. Whatever that is, I don't know. You've been
there recently, you tell me. But so this is it's
a sort of crime thriller, dramedy, a little bit of
slow horsiness to it in terms of there's some humor
(01:05:45):
woven into it. It's got Matthew Good is the star.
He was in Downton Abbey. He played the race car
driver who was a romantic interest for a short time,
the oldest daughter on that show. But he plays a
detective Carl morc just kind of funny mor c k
(01:06:10):
But he's he was injured in the line of duty
and they bring him back, but he's this cantankerous jerk
off basically nobody wants to work with. So they create
this new cold cold Cases department and they put him
in charge by himself. It's just him, and he pulls
a band of scrappy misfits together sort of against his
(01:06:30):
will because he hates everybody. But it's a really entertaining
show and it's a really interesting mystery. They're trying to
unravel in.
Speaker 2 (01:06:39):
This sounds like it might not just be up my alley,
butt up Dean's alley as well. I would think so,
because he loves the Scandinavian crime you know shows. Now,
where is Department Q set?
Speaker 5 (01:06:54):
It's outside of London.
Speaker 2 (01:06:57):
Okay, it's in England, so based on Danish that's actually
you know, it's it's it's in Scotland.
Speaker 5 (01:07:03):
Actually that's what.
Speaker 2 (01:07:04):
It looked like. That's what it looked like. Okay, So
so it's a Danish author. Were the book set in
Scotland or just now adaptation?
Speaker 5 (01:07:13):
Okay, yeah, just the adaptation.
Speaker 2 (01:07:16):
That's cool.
Speaker 5 (01:07:17):
Yeah, it's pretty it's pretty fun, and the acting is interesting.
Uh you know, it's it's always you know, got a
bunch of actors. You go, I know that guy from somewhere.
But it's also kind of you know, it's it's like
a variety of spins off of the Sherlock Holmes formula,
because this main detective is a guy that you know,
(01:07:38):
is kind of antisocial. Uh you know, he's got a
step son who's in there in a roommate and he
just and then he he ends up with an assistant
who is Syrian, who is not a policeman, at least
he's not licensed in the UK, and he's kind of
(01:08:01):
this Doctor Watson type guy who's got He's very entertaining
because he's just just puts up with him, puts up
with work in all of his proclivities, but is very
capable himself as soon as he's allowed to do something,
which is interesting.
Speaker 2 (01:08:18):
I am scrolling through Matthew good credits trying to see
what I most fondly remember him from, because the name
immediately I recognized. He's done so many high quality and
cachet movie projects. I'm wondering if it wasn't him in
(01:08:42):
the original movie version of Watchmen where I'm thinking about
him from. But he did match Point, Woody Allen's match Point,
The Lookout, Joseph Gordon Levitt movie that I really liked,
Oscar winning film The Imitation Games. So I mean he's
he's been the real deal for a quarter of a century.
(01:09:02):
I love seeing that in the regular cast. Kelly MacDonald,
who has always been one of my favorites playing a
police therapist, yes. And Shirley Henderson, who is a bit
of an international treasure and has sometimes reminded me of
my sister in law actually, but she plays a housekeeper,
(01:09:25):
yes in it, and uh and she's often delightful when
used properly, so I'm hoping.
Speaker 5 (01:09:31):
Yeah. And it's a nine episode series, and it does
a great job of weaving in some great red herrings
that you just go, oh, that's the guy. That's the guy,
and then two episodes later go oh, it's not the guy.
But they do it in a great way, so they
keep kind of pulling you along still wondering was that
(01:09:52):
the guy might have been the guy? And it's very interesting.
Speaker 2 (01:09:56):
So cool, all right, that's a good that's good. Get
Department Q.
Speaker 5 (01:10:01):
So that's a good one. Not quite as good, a
totally different vibe, but it's it's the kind of fun
sci fi thing I like. Is murder Bot on Apple
TV with Alexander Scarguard, Oh well, we love him. Yeah,
he plays He plays this sort of bionic android security
(01:10:26):
robot who gets sort of sold off to this kind
of group of organic granola crunchy colonists who want to
go to this dangerous planet.
Speaker 2 (01:10:40):
This sounds great. This also you've managed to, seriously, I think,
and maybe for the first time, quite frankly, come up
with recommendations that are up both my ally and Dean's out.
That's fun because the sci fi component of this, not
just because it's sci fi, but specifically the comedic premise
(01:11:03):
of it seems like something that has Dean Haglin.
Speaker 5 (01:11:06):
Written all I think so, Yeah, I think so. It's
the main character is constantly distracted because he's watching streaming
television shows constantly while he's supposed to be on guard.
He's just got access to all the channels in the
unit in the galaxy, so he's always watching like soap
operas and things like that, and he gets all of
(01:11:26):
his human cues from watching these TV shows. So whenever
he gets pressed into having to answer to the colonists,
he always plucks some dialogue out of some show he's
just watched.
Speaker 2 (01:11:39):
Wow. And this also in addition to Scarsguard stellin Scarsguard's Son, right, Yes,
that's right, Yeah, Okay, who has been so good? Yeah,
one of them, he's been so good, especially in HBO shows.
He's been so good. But also David Dawson Mulchian.
Speaker 5 (01:12:02):
Who's great in it. He's great in it.
Speaker 2 (01:12:04):
And who just of course starred in one of Dean's
favorite movies of the last couple of years, The Late
Night with the Devil. Yes, yes, And I have long
loved Noma Doomswheny I hope I'm saying her her name,
Uh correct. That's a brilliant stage actress from England who's
(01:12:27):
from Swaziland originally and who played Hermione Granger in the
original West End run of Harry Potter.
Speaker 5 (01:12:36):
And Really Child.
Speaker 2 (01:12:38):
Yeah late Hermione as a as a grown woman. Yeah, funny, interesting,
but she is fantastic.
Speaker 5 (01:12:44):
It's a very entertaining cast and the you know, commit
it's hard to find like comedic sci fi that that
works and still has. It's got some you know, it's
got some tense moments in it because they're on this
foreign planet with these weird things, and there's a mystery
going on because there's another group of scientists and on
the other side of the planet and they've all disappeared.
Nobody knows where they are. So yeah, it's very, very entertaining.
(01:13:08):
I'm really enjoying it.
Speaker 2 (01:13:09):
Okay to give ones that both Dean and like it
won't just be on his list. I feel like he
will actually watch that.
Speaker 1 (01:13:18):
Guests of Viewer Chillpack, Hollywood Hours stay at the Baldwin
Hills motor End promotional consideration paid for by Empire State Gas.
Speaker 2 (01:13:27):
From farm to pump, we've got great
Speaker 1 (01:13:30):
Gas related spoiler alert
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