June 23, 2025 • 66 mins
Original Release Date: Monday 23 June 2025
Description: Dean is back home in Birmingham, Michigan. Phil is at home in Los Angeles. They connect via Zoom to discuss the fire damage Dean witnessed while he was in L.A. last week, as well as his ongoing and evolving thoughts regarding Captain America: Brave New World which he caught up with on a flight. Phil has thoughts about the recent Mickey 17, and about the current theatrical releases Caught by the Tides and Friendship. The talk then turns to the business of show and the recently announced/ongoing breakups of media conglomerates Warner Bros. Discovery and Comcast/NBC Universal. Finally, in "Celebrity Deaths", a character actor on the brink of big fame, a chart-topping singer of 1960s hits, and a legendary jazz singer and pianist all get remembered, and Phil corrects something Dean said last week in remembering the great Brian Wilson, as well as offering something he recently learned about beloved television star Loretta Swit (who was remembered a couple weeks back).
Description: Dean is back home in Birmingham, Michigan. Phil is at home in Los Angeles. They connect via Zoom to discuss the fire damage Dean witnessed while he was in L.A. last week, as well as his ongoing and evolving thoughts regarding Captain America: Brave New World which he caught up with on a flight. Phil has thoughts about the recent Mickey 17, and about the current theatrical releases Caught by the Tides and Friendship. The talk then turns to the business of show and the recently announced/ongoing breakups of media conglomerates Warner Bros. Discovery and Comcast/NBC Universal. Finally, in "Celebrity Deaths", a character actor on the brink of big fame, a chart-topping singer of 1960s hits, and a legendary jazz singer and pianist all get remembered, and Phil corrects something Dean said last week in remembering the great Brian Wilson, as well as offering something he recently learned about beloved television star Loretta Swit (who was remembered a couple weeks back).
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
And now Your chill Pack Hollywood Hour with Dean Hagland
and Phil Lareness.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Welcome to year nineteen, episode seven of Your Chilpack Hollywood Hour.
Coming at you from Los Angeles, California. I am Phil Lareness,
coming at us from Birmingham, Michigan. It's the Motor City
of Jason Madman. It's TV's Dean Hagland. How are things
They're at the homestead, mister Hagland.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Oh my gosh, a murderous heat wave? Is this ending
on the mid all of the doom? Everyone?
Speaker 4 (01:03):
Please go do your basement and turn up the ac
to like there's no tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
So yeah, you know, one hundred degrees whatever.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
So you're you've moved into your basement.
Speaker 4 (01:15):
Now now the basement being painted, we are going to
move into the basement.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
It seems, you know, give up the studio for the basement.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Why not moving? Moving literally down in the world.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
It's my motto.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Hey, last week, you know you were here.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
In La I was too.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
One of the things that you did while you were
here was you mistook the late Brian Wilson for his
brother Dennis. Something I heard about from many people. When
you said that Brian hung out with Charles Manson. He
did not. It was his brother Dennis Oh, the drummer
of the Beach Boys and the only member of the
(02:01):
band who did what the left surfed.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
He was the only the only surfer. Yeah, I's see,
and they had so many surf songs.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Keen eared listeners managed to pick out that mistake amidst
all of our high energy audio hijinks. Yeah, so good
for them. I feel like there should be a prize.
I want to discuss the viewing that you did on
your plane flights. But but first you did something we
didn't discuss on last week's show. You drove through much
(02:37):
of the fire damage. Yes, you did not go all
toa Dina, right, you went Malibu and the Palisades to
the Malibu area there.
Speaker 4 (02:51):
Yeah, we tried to take Sunset Boulevard a way down
to the Pacific Coast Highway, and you could do it
almost all the way, except then there's the roadblock was
still up, so we had to take some side streets
that didn't have any fire damage to get down to
the PCH. So yeah, I think now I just heard
(03:11):
they've opened up Sunset all the way so you can
go through the neighborhood, the harshest part where the business
is burnt and everything in the bank.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
What were you prepared for? What did you get? I mean,
what was the experience? Like, I mean, I've been here
for six months. I thought we were going to go
on Saturday night to see Lee and Malibu for his birthday,
his seventieth birthday, Lee mccoskey. And at the last minute
that party got canceled. But we had kind of decided
(03:45):
maybe we would one of the ways, maybe back so
that we're not really so sad and depressed when we
get to the party, but maybe on the way back
we come through going down the sage in them back sunset.
But I but I haven't And I realized when you
(04:05):
did it that yeah, I haven't wanted to do it,
Like it's that's it. It's like literally like I'm kind
of scared what I'm gonna see.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
Yeah, yeah it is. It's altered forever.
Speaker 4 (04:23):
I mean for it ever to go back with all
those cute little bungalows all along the beach front.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
I mean you just see.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
A couple of steel girders here and there, a couple
pillars in the sand that they have all been damaged,
and then the houses that remain, some of them are
fire damaged, but some of them are And I would
think that would be harder to go back and live
with all of your neighbor's houses eradicated, and you're like, uh,
you know, it's not a neighborhood anymore.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
You can't just sit out on the deck and enjoy
the view of the.
Speaker 4 (04:57):
Ocean knowing full well everything else is destroyed around you.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
I would bet that it depends, yeah, on your perspective.
I would think if you did lose your home, you
would look at the homes that weren't lost and wonder,
why why was my house not spared? And then if
your house was spared, like, why was my house spared?
(05:22):
You know? It was when speaking of Lee, when there
were the Malibu fires, right and we drove that neighborhood afterwards,
and it was just mind blowing the force of that
firestorm that hit that area, but also just the strange
way in which, yeah, it wasn't entire sections, it would
(05:45):
all it would, it would pass by certain houses. In
the case of Lee, you know, he stayed behind, He
and his wife stayed behind, weak without power, fighting off
the fires themselves. They earned their stripes, and they weren't
without damage. Also, they had to reinforce the house afterwards.
And you know, do like a brick that is very
(06:08):
highly recommended for I guess, you know, firewall, firewall in
the futures and stuff like that. But I I, yeah,
I hear what you're saying. I you knows as we're
talking about it. It really is stunning to me because
I spent so much time in my in my younger
days there in the Palisades writing and was out there
(06:30):
almost every day for a couple of years. And I
also love Altadena more than almost any other place, and
I haven't been back there to see it.
Speaker 4 (06:40):
And yeah, something I think Altadena would be harder because
the craftsmen home that the Pasadena Altadena is known for,
with the thick timbers and the low swung roofs, that
unique architecture is so much harder and probably can't be
replicated because you won't find those thick beams of wood
(07:01):
like that anymore.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Apparently not allowed to be replicated, right, Wasn't that one
of the first things we heard that there are styles
of houses that they will not allow to be rebuilt
because this may not be our only or last I
guess rodeo, yeah.
Speaker 4 (07:18):
Right, But it's also a real demand on wood. I
mean at the turn of the century. Last in the
year nineteen hundred, it seemed the California redwood forest went
on forever. So you can log all that and have giant,
giant beams.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
Holding up your roof.
Speaker 4 (07:36):
That look great, But now I can't imagine what even
the cost of the couple of beams like that would be.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Well, speaking of trees, that's my curiosity. You drove out
through an area that was traditionally very highly populated but
also really lush.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Are all the trees gone?
Speaker 3 (08:00):
Yeah? I mean the palms.
Speaker 4 (08:02):
There's some palms that are just sticks, and the palm
frons are blackened. The smaller shrubbery course is all gone,
you see, the hillsides are all darkened.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
But there's some of the larger trees seem to survived.
Speaker 4 (08:18):
Actually, and I forget the variety, but there is one
tree that only its seeds pop out like popcorn when
a fire comes by, so it needs a fire underneath
it in order to resee and replant its own species.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
You just named my two favorite snacks for when I
go to the movies. I love popcorn and I love
blackened palm fronds.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
Oh I've never had those, un so cajun.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Oh, Delta Airlines also serves a mean blackened palm front.
So I just played movies and airlines, which leads us
to your viewing on flights. You alluded to, of course,
Captain America Brave New World, which you watched on the
way to LA. Did you watch it again on the
(09:08):
way back or did you watch something else?
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (09:11):
You know what, I didn't watch anything I read, so
I only saw because Captain America Brave New World was
so disturbing to it. It was unbelievad Like, what do
you remember of all this Huxley's Brave New World?
Speaker 3 (09:27):
You read that?
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Oh, a lot of it. I actually did a term
paper on Brave New World. Revisit it his essays about
Brave New.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
Oh, I didn't even know he did that.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
I'm a big oldest hux leygue guy. You are, Yeah,
So do you.
Speaker 4 (09:41):
Not think it's remarkable that they named this movie Brave
New World because it it echoes a elitism and a
class structure that.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
You know?
Speaker 4 (09:56):
Okay, First, I found the movie horrible, so I was
fast forward through it with my finger on the screen.
You know, you can just drag it over and watch
some of the Harrison Ford scenes that you said he
was doing his best work ever. Though I think what
he's doing is he's just sitting into his tiredness, his overwhelmingness,
(10:16):
because that's a lot of what he played.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
The thing is, though he played it with high energy,
he played his exhaustion with high energy.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
Yeah, he invested in it, invested.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
It's not like the actors exhausted. The actor is, you know.
It's it's like I always say, I was really surprised
to find when I had to really play boredom, because
boredom was always kind of something that was disowned for me.
When when I had to play it, I was shocked
to realize that boredom isn't like a lack of energy.
(10:50):
Boredom's highly energized.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
Right, You're craving to do something just you.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Can't, Yeah, you just can't. And it's building up, it's
coiling up a point of interest. Perhaps so until very
near its release, it was Captain America New World Order AH,
and there was a huge backlash against it for the
(11:17):
anti Semitic associations with that title, so they changed it
to Brave New World. But it is interesting given the
connotations of the film.
Speaker 4 (11:27):
I know, so I was hating it, hating it until
the very last scene, after Red Hawk has destroyed the
White House by throwing helicopters at each other, you know,
as one does. The fake news reporter as the cranes
are rebuilding, the White House goes and now maybe we
can get back to a degree of normalcy.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
Well, wh whoa, whoa, what's this movie about?
Speaker 4 (11:53):
And then I've watched it in reverse, going backwards and
seeing all of these social commentary regarding you know, propaganda,
what's in your brain? Whose voice is that? How is
it making you make bad decisions? Stressing you until you
do you know, you turn into a raged filled hulky monster,
(12:18):
red Hulk. I mean, if you think of Tim Blake
Nelson's character as the Internet and everybody else being affected
by his coercion, then you sort of have how the
whole social structure that we have now and how it's
fragmenting and all that sort of thing.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
I mean, I don't want to go down this rabbit hole.
I really really don't. I know plenty of my own
emotional rabbit holes to go down these days, feel free
to come pack a lunch. But I'm struck by the
fact that the first iron Man movie. There had been
Marvel movies before, but the real modern MCU kicks off
(13:00):
with Iron Man, and it's sort of unexpected and unprecedented success.
That's something that's two thousand and eight. That's the year
one Barack Obama would become president right, get elected after
a again seemingly unprecedented economic collapse, and we'd had not upheaval,
(13:25):
but a lot of unhappiness and angst throughout that decade,
and there was this brief moment following the collapse and
following the election where there was the opportunity for coming together.
(13:45):
One should always, if one does not remember, one should
always dial up John McCain's concession speech the night of
the election. It's a It is a speech for the
ages by a true American right and makes you feel
good about the country and both the men who ran.
(14:09):
And I say this because looking back two thousand and eight,
two thousand and nine, twenty ten, is there anything in
there to compare it with the shit storm we've been
living through for many, many years now? And yet there
(14:30):
was so much, as we know from making the truth
is out there, so much tumult bubbling beneath the surface. Yeah,
And I want to go back to the Tim Blake
Nelson character, a character who has this giant brain that's
working over time while he is locked up, feeling unseen,
(14:55):
unlistened to, unappreciated, and it is jinning up in him,
this desire to lash out and gain revenge on the
people who are he deems responsible for his being ignored
and locked up and unseen. And I feel like that
(15:15):
described a big portion of the population that, for whatever reason,
by the end of the first decade of this century,
had it in their minds that they were under lock
and key, that they were just you know, subjugated to
the underground right where they would not be appreciated, not seen,
(15:39):
not heard. And we told some of their stories, and
I always maintained that the healthy thing would be to
form a relationship to what all of the populace is
thinking and feeling, because if you don't, well, those members
(16:01):
of the populace are going to actually lead the conversation
at some point, right And because you never invited them
in to be a part of it. So I can
go a little too far. But the Brave New World,
you know, and the Tim Blake Nelson and what you're describing,
I don't know. I feel early parallels back to again
(16:24):
the start of this, when the MCU started, And by
the way, an MCU that has its own share of
responsibility for where we're at.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
Right right by manifesting that.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
The exploitation of people's willingness to lose themselves in fantasy,
do you not have a responsibility as someone who purveys
fantasy to maybe give them something a little bit more,
to maybe give them the key to returning to reality
at the end of the adventure you set them.
Speaker 4 (16:59):
On right, right, well, and that was the final line, right,
maybe we would go back to a degree of normalcy.
You know, whoever wrote that knew exactly what you're saying,
their degree or responsibility in the MCU universe, because I mean,
I don't know what's coming up next for them, but
it seems we're just gonna tread in a circle now.
(17:22):
Anything else I can't imagine, right, none of these things.
This is why I found it even boring. It's that
the action sequences did not seem like from a comic
book artist.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
You know, normally a lot of these things.
Speaker 4 (17:38):
They could go back, refer to the artist who drew
the original comic in the fifties and sixties and see it,
storyboard it and have it sort of pre visualized as
it were, whereas this one, it seemed there was no
or or poorly thought out action sequences, you know, all fast,
all big explosions, all to scale, all wrong, you know,
(18:01):
all of that. And I don't know if they were
thinking of making this a three D movie, because a
lot of it was trying to jump out of the
screen at you, and you're like, well, that's even more confusing.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Did you see Mickey seventeen Bang June Host.
Speaker 4 (18:20):
On my list right there on the ready to go
on the old TV streamer.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Because we have spent much of our many years during
this podcast talking about Bang June Hoe. Remember the host
came out just the year before we started this podcast,
and I have a feeling we probably caught up with
it that year. I think it was right around then
(18:47):
when we were in neighboring offices back then. I am
not sure the man can make a bad movie, you know,
we talk about, Hey, making good movies is really hard.
It's a miracle when good movies are made, especially the
more different pieces that you put into it, and the
(19:09):
bigger the movie, and the longer it takes from gestation
to release, like it is still to this day a miracle.
So another miracle that here's a filmmaker I don't think
is capable of making a bad movie.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
But here we go.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
This will certainly do until the bad movie gets here.
Oh no, But I want to get it a point.
I know you haven't seen it yet, but I want
to get to a point that relates to brave New World.
There's nothing grounding Mickey seventeen to me in any kind
(19:46):
of reality we might care about. The humor is so
over the top that it comes off as hackneyed. It's
as if every performer in it is following the Tilda
Swinton in Snow Piercer school of acting, you know, that
approach that she had, and as if no one had
(20:08):
seen Chris Evans performance in that film, The Original Captain America.
The way Mickey seventeen in fact, is full of ideas
that feel like leftovers to me from snow Piercer. Oh right,
in that film in Snow Piercer, And I might be
remembering wrong. We both love that movie. My memory tells
(20:32):
me that the closer the action was to the tail
section of the train, back where Chris Evans and the
other workers are living and spending their lives. The closer
to that section of the train the movie was, the
more grounded the characters and the performances. Then as you
(20:53):
move towards the higher classes in that train, the higher
the class, the more insane the characters and the performances.
And to me, there was always an obvious commentary there, right,
a thematic commentary, And the movie was no less fascinating
(21:15):
and no less rich and rewarding because of that commentary,
right right, It just it flowed from it. And after
making it through the more wealthy and ostentatious characters and performances,
once we got to the engine to find who it
was controlling everything, we discovered the godlike leader to be
(21:38):
rather mundane and just banal, right, you know it was?
That film to me was like a like a blood
fever dream as it got crazier and crazier. Yeah, and again,
this movie, Mickey seventeen, ostensibly a comedy from the jump,
(21:58):
never seems to find any footing, even if there is
some beauty in the final act. Again, Bong Juno can't
make a bad movie. So there's things in it that
will take your breath away and that maybe you really
like or whatever. But it's just some of his movies
cast such a shadow that some of his other movies
(22:21):
have a hard time living up to them. And this
one is so reminiscent of Snow Piercer that I don't
know how I'm supposed to ignore how great that one
worked versus this. But the reason that I thought of
it to bring it up right now is there has
been and continues to be much discussion. In fact, I
(22:43):
think most of the discussion if you go online about
the film is about whether or not Mark Ruffalo is
doing a Donald Trump impression as the villain. Okay, and
the filmmakers say no, you might watch. Shouldn't say yeah,
of course he is. I think of course he is.
(23:04):
Could it be unconscious that he's doing it? Could he
have just been in the moment leaning into it because
that made sense for this character that he was playing.
Maybe maybe you know, I'm not saying it was Okay,
we're gonna do commentary, right, but in a good movie,
we wouldn't care one way or another.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
Ah, Right, In.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
A bad movie, or as close to bad as bun
jun Hoe is capable. You know, the sometimes very funny
work Ruffalo is doing gets crushed under the weight of
the possibility that this is real world satire.
Speaker 4 (23:46):
Oh so, as soon as I hear his performance, I
am then brought to real world satire.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
And the more that they rely on him and that performance,
and the longer then the further You're taken away again
from any kind of unique beauty that this film might
be grounded in, because.
Speaker 4 (24:08):
I'm always looking for real world parallel situations.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
You know, it has a premise of people escaping crushing
debt on Earth by signing up for a deep space
colonization expedition, got it, And as such that sort of
fits into bun Juno's you know overall, what would you
would say, Ouvra, you know, because he regularly explores economic exploitation, Yeah,
(24:35):
and all the physical and psychic horrors that are associated
with that exploitation. It's a bit of a whiplash for
me that he makes this film on the heels of
the Oscar winning parasite. Yeah, that's a film I definitely
need to see again. As a snap bold declarative judgment
(25:00):
in this moment, I will say that, aside from Bong's
first film, which was called Barking Dogs Never Bite, which
I never saw, oh yeah, I love his next four
films more than I actually like his next three that
followed them, including Parasite. Right, the film's a Bong that
(25:22):
I've seen in the order of their release, Memories of
Murder two thousand and three, The Host two thousand and six,
Mother two thousand and nine, Snow Piercer twenty thirteen. Here's
a filmmaker that I thought was getting better, better, better,
and like, boom, you're one of the greats. After those four,
then he does Oaksha on Netflix. Oh yeah, right, Parasite,
(25:46):
which wins Best Picture, and Mickey seventeen. And I don't
find any of those three, any of them including Parasite,
to be the equal of the four that came before it.
Speaker 4 (25:58):
Oh that's fascinating, because I mean Parasite was unique, for sure,
and carefully a story, carefully told, I thought, well maintained.
But uh yeah, well, now you say that out loud.
I hadn't seen the two thousand and three one, but yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
It's pretty good. Memories of Murder is pretty pretty good. Yeah,
I mean you have to realize again it's it's early,
it's early in his career, but absolutely worth watching. I
am going to, as I said, bold snap declarative judgment
in the moment right now, in an early morning. So
maybe I'm totally wrong. Maybe I'll watch Parasite again and
go what the hell were you talking about it? But
(26:43):
I will all rewatch that. You watch Mickey seventeen, all
rewatch Parasite, and we'll.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
We'll meet back to me.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
But you know, a filmmaker again, who is who has
been for basically this whole century now interested in telling
these tales of the exploitation of the worker, of you know,
economic exploitation. There's no shortage of fertile ground for him,
(27:11):
including now, and so that's why kind of the Mickey
seventeen just seems like such a head scratcher to me
because he grounds it in almost no reality whatsoever. It
feels almost like somebody who said, hey, you know what
movie I loved was that snow Piercer. Let's do a
thing like that.
Speaker 4 (27:32):
Well, I mean, if you are perhaps creatively in a
rut or coming up with blanks, of course you're going
to go back onto your previous works and look to
it for inspiration, but that doesn't mean necessarily that he's well,
we don't know where his head's at right.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
But often as an artist.
Speaker 4 (27:55):
You'll suddenly go, I'm just doing the same thing over
and over again just to sell.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
Before I get to a movie I saw in theaters
this week, because of you, I want to talk about
another film I saw in theaters by another Asian filmmaker
who I hold in great esteem. Jean Song Qu, Chinese
filmmaker has a new film outain theaters called Caught by
(28:22):
the Tides, and I caught it in an American Cinematech screening,
and it's a somewhat experimental film. I'd seen, like I said,
a couple of his films before, and was duly impressed.
But what was amazing to me because I didn't read
about it. I just knew who the filmmaker was, and
I said, yeah, okay, I'm there for this. This seems good.
(28:43):
I will see something unlike like anything I'd seen, and
truly nothing prepared me for this except for Richard Linklater's Boyhood. Oh,
because here's a film shot over many years on many
different flours and aspect ratios. But unlike boy Hood, I
(29:08):
don't think jaw knew at the outset that he was
doing this, like I'm gonna spend decades making a movie.
As the characters grow old, he kind of realized he
had footage from the past with these people that would
work and then continue to do it. And so that's why,
like the formats changed, you know, film stocks, digital video,
(29:33):
high definition, the aspect ratios are changing as a result.
Throughout the movie. It's got a loosely constructed story following
a working class woman and her on again, off again
romance with a small time businessman turned even smaller time
hustler turned old man in COVID lockdown era Wuhan, and
(29:56):
it covers ground geographically. It charts the change of communities
displaced by the three gorgeous damn Project Oh Wow, built
throughout all those years throughout the Guangdong province, and so
it covers the tides again. The name of the film
is caught by the Tides. It covers the tides of
time from two thousand and one through twenty twenty two.
(30:19):
It covers ground emotionally, perhaps most of all, and charts
these changes in terrain through decidedly unique storytelling that I
found at times utterly unapproachable and at other times utterly delightful.
There were entire sections of the movie where I just
(30:40):
kind of went, Okay, I'm just gonna open myself to
it and let it wash over me and just for
the best. Well, yeah, I'll get somewhere. I'll get somewhere.
But I don't know what this movie wants from me.
I don't know what I want from it, but I'm
pretty sure neither of us are delivering. And so it
(31:01):
was a really unique experience, and it does end up.
The ending emotional Catharsis that I get out of it
was really quite beautiful. According to Wikipedia, the decision to
use previous footage was sparked by the COVID nineteen pandemic.
So indeed, I just looked this up. Indeed, he never,
(31:24):
at any point through those years knew he was making
this movie, but he had the footage to make the movie.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
It.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
Pandemic, of course, made filming in China difficult, so as
Jah was revisiting two decades worth of footage and outtakes
that he had, and footage that he shot as experimentation
with different techniques, because he would write scenes to experiment
with different cameras and different formats and different you know, processes.
(31:56):
Through the years, he would write scenes to do it,
never intending the to be part of a larger project
or even a short film or whatever. But then he
had all these scenes, and he always used the same
actress because he loved working with her all the time.
So it's just like, let's get together and shoot, I
got to test a scene, and here's what we'll say
is going on in this scene. So unconsciously maybe he
(32:18):
did know he was always making this film right, and
he was able to reuse much of the footage as
material for this new movie. The movie stars his frequent collaborator,
actress Jao Tao, and seeing her grow up and grow
well into middle age and to see the depth of
(32:39):
feeling in humor and how she wears those changes really
is kind of a privilege. I really do feel like
I'm witnessing just from the standpoint of an actor growing
up and growing older. I'm really getting privileged to witness
(32:59):
the development of this person.
Speaker 3 (33:01):
That's really cool.
Speaker 4 (33:03):
So I mean, but to go through two decades, like
I just found some old proof sheets and negatives, I
don't even want to look at that stuff. I can't
imagine going through two three decades of my own work
and going, Okay, what can we make of this now?
Speaker 2 (33:19):
Well, I don't think she I mean who knows. I
mean maybe yeah, when they got to filming come the pandemic,
she did want to go back so that she could
chart something. Maybe she did. I mean, oh, yeah, I
want to read more about it, about the making of it.
It's one of those things where I bet the Criterion
release will be fascinating because of the documentaries and the
(33:40):
books of essays and the things about it.
Speaker 3 (33:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
So the movie I saw in theaters because of you
are written and directed by Andrew Deyong, is a movie
called Friendship.
Speaker 3 (33:52):
Ah.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
Has this been on your radar?
Speaker 3 (33:56):
Has been on my radar? Did you go see it
because of me?
Speaker 2 (33:59):
Yeah? Because you are the one that always celebrated Tim Robinson,
the movie's star, Michigan's Michigan's own Tim Robinson, the star
of the Detroitters For God's Sake, a show I never
understood the appeal of, and I'm a big fan of
(34:21):
both those guys, and it did not work for me.
I will say, for the first few moments, I thought
I might regret having taken Lily to see Friendship. No,
she really wanted to see it because Dan, God damn it.
It starts in a cancer support group where where Tim's wife,
(34:47):
Kate Kate Mara's character Tammy Waterman, speaks about the frustrations
of her post cancer life and uh, you know, so
important and for all of us to keep the wind
in our sales when you're facing an illness, very important
to keep the wind in your sales. To then be
(35:08):
shown something where hey, the good news your post cancer.
The bad news life post cancer is terrible Jesus, Like, yeah,
I was thinking I might, I might regret it anyway.
Her husband Craig is sitting nearby. Her husband Craig is
Tim Robinson. He's the lead played by Tim Robinson and
(35:32):
Tim Robinson. Of course, before The Detroiters was on SNL
and since The Detroiters has gone on to his own
sketch comedy series, I think you should leave right And
he soon in that meeting, as just the spouse of
the survivor, turns everyone's attention onto himself. It's the first
(35:56):
indication of how narcissistic this person is, and it sets
up kind of the dark comedy and how frequently hilarious,
albeit dark. The movie is, and from what I've heard,
it very much feels like an expansion of a sketch
from his show from I Think You Should Lead Leave.
(36:21):
The plot centers on a socially awkward marketing executive Robinson,
who yearns to be friends with his new neighbor Austin,
a charismatic but unfulfilled TV weather man and amateur musician.
The setup, right there, yeah, plays and sounds a little
(36:43):
bit like a send up of the comedies in which
Paul Rudd used to specialize.
Speaker 3 (36:50):
Yeah, it totally sounds.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
Like that, and that's appropriate and hilarious as the charismatic
neighbor with a secret source of shame is played by
Paul Rudd. Ah, so he's kind of sending up his
own films that launched him. Really Yeah, And the thing
about Paul Rudd I realized is that he is in
(37:15):
this as he always is, somewhat performative. Right, I would
imagine Paul Rudd is capable of something raw and real,
But but I don't know if I've ever seen it.
Speaker 3 (37:33):
I trying to think too. No, I can't think of it.
Speaker 2 (37:36):
He is so good at playing characters who are themselves performative,
right that I can't help but feel that sometimes that
performative quality seeps into characters who might be better served
without it. Ah, Now that's not the case. It's well served.
(38:01):
The casting and the performance is great. He's well cast,
he matches Tim Robinson well and at its best. Like
I said, this is this film is a dark comedy
about narcissism, and I think as such, hello pretty valuable.
And by depicting narcissism as not a quality of the elite,
(38:25):
or of the powerful, or of the wealthy, but as
a trait that can befall people at all walks of life, right,
it's incredibly useful in a way to the movies. To detractors,
(38:47):
it really is an extended sketch that that is never
real world enough to support its weight. And I'm sitting
there again not really familiar with this guy's sketch work
beyond just who he is and his you know, his credits,
his bona fidees. But I recognize that complaint as accurate.
(39:11):
It's an extended sketch that probably doesn't support real world weight. Ah,
that's accurate. It's not real world okay, And yet I
appreciated the film's unique tone so much that I don't
much care, and I know the tone could not have
(39:35):
been maintained if they did not let the film itself
spin off into madness.
Speaker 3 (39:43):
Ah that's fun.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
Yeah. So we talk about the importance of real world
and authenticity, we talk about the importance of tone. Here's
literally a film where choose your own adventure because if
you want this to maintain this tone and you want
to see them land the dismount tonally be prepared for
this to spin off Planet Earth. Oh okay, and I'm
(40:09):
with it. I'm all there for it. Wow.
Speaker 3 (40:13):
That's really fun.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
Then and really interesting. And it's released by the way
by A twenty four.
Speaker 3 (40:20):
Oh you're clear.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
Well they had been and quite frankly, they needed this film,
right because, as I've been expressing in other genres, they've
been succumbing to their own imprints tropes, right.
Speaker 3 (40:36):
Yeah, that now you could see an A twenty four
film before even you know it.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
And this is new terrain for them, while still feeling
like a film that only they would want to release. Ah,
so it's it. It makes sense again as A twenty
four and yet it's it's fresh ground for them. So
I was really appreciative.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
Yeah, oh this is a I should see this all.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
Right, man. There's show business news that just quite frankly,
is too bland to discuss. Do we want to talk
about Do we want to talk about corporate acquisitions and mergers?
Speaker 3 (41:16):
And yes? Do we want to who corporately merged with who?
Speaker 2 (41:23):
No, it was that while we're waiting on the paramount
Skydance merger, Warner Brothers Discovery split into two companies. Oh
do we care about that? They split into streaming and studios,
something called streaming and studios and then something called Global Networks.
Speaker 3 (41:44):
Oh that's ominous.
Speaker 4 (41:47):
So the studios is the actual lot the Warner Brothers locked.
I take that that's not its own company or that
is now its own company, And Discovery is their television
brands from HGTV on down right, So so it makes
sense that they'd go into two.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
Remember there was this period of time where you had studios,
and studios made stuff, they made movies and TV shows,
and then you had networks and syndicated stations and they
would show stuff. And then you had movie theaters and
you know what they would do, They would show stuff,
and the same companies did not own all those things, right,
(42:29):
Companies owned networks and syndicated stations. Companies owned studios that
made stuff, and companies owned theaters that showed stuff. And
never the twainshell.
Speaker 3 (42:41):
Meet right, that was well actually one time.
Speaker 2 (42:45):
Well, now everything's owned by the same people, by the
same conglomerates. Right, we have I think three people in
this world that own everything. So they're just kind of
swapping out. They're planning what game of risk? I don't
know what that life, the game of life. So this
(43:07):
conglomerate had already had an internal reorganization that grouped its
businesses into these headings earlier this year. Streaming and studios,
which they love because it's s ampersand s I'm sure
that's why they loved it. And global networks global network, Well,
(43:30):
a network actually implies something that's almost global in this
day and age. Right, So this last week, a bit
earlier than many expected, this Warner Brothers Discovery conglomerate announced
that the separation would become an actual split along the
(43:51):
lines of what Comcast has been doing in spinning out
its cable networks from NBC Universal and put together Comcast
and Warner Brothers Discovery. In these splits, if what I
read is true. It's a seismic reconfiguration of the US
(44:14):
media business, and again it's shocking. Well the good I'm
glad that you feel something about it, because again my question,
am I supposed to feel anything about?
Speaker 3 (44:26):
Well, a seismic shift and how we consume entertainment.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
Or how we receive it? I mean, will it This
is the question. Does it affect us at all? Does
it just affect shareholders? Is it just a way to
protect certain shareholders while telling other shareholders there's no lifeboat?
Here was the quote that was released in the in
(44:51):
the release. In the news release, by operating as two
distinct and optimized companies right now, you've used a bullshit
word that makes me not care. Is that my sphincter.
That's tightening up optimized companies in the future. By operating
as two distinct and optimized companies in the future, we
(45:13):
are empowering these iconic brands with the sharper focus and
strategic flexibility. Chat gpt wrote this.
Speaker 4 (45:25):
It all sounds completely strategic flexibility, which is.
Speaker 3 (45:29):
What I like.
Speaker 2 (45:31):
That's why you go to Pilates exactly.
Speaker 3 (45:33):
That's my strategic flexibility.
Speaker 2 (45:36):
This is the Pilates of the corporate conglomerate set okay. Again,
By operating as two distinct and optimized companies in the future,
we are empowering Wait, where's the Wei? If there's two
distinct who's the Wii?
Speaker 3 (45:56):
We the two together to make a Wii?
Speaker 2 (46:00):
Makes me, Oh, my god. And again I don't want
to be the old man who's you know? Shouting at
the storm because of pronouns. But by operating as two
distinct and optimized companies in the future, we are empowering
these iconic brands with the sharper focus and strategic flexibility
(46:21):
they need to compete most effectively in two days evolving
media landscape. In other words, we have no clue if
this will work right.
Speaker 4 (46:33):
We're just cutting half of this adrift and you're on
your own, suckers, and we are. We have the flexibility
to ignore what the hell you're doing.
Speaker 2 (46:43):
And I think you're onto something because here's then what
streaming and studios will consist of Warner Brothers Television. See
I hear the word television. I would have thought global networks, right,
but Warner Brothers Television as a no doubt a production
(47:05):
entity that makes all Warner Brothers Television product Okay, So
Warner Brothers Television, Warner Brothers Motion Picture Group. All right,
you got me there. So it's we're back to a
studio that produces movies and TV shows, right, DC Studios,
which is not really a separate studio, but it's a
(47:27):
studio that makes content based on one of their intellectual properties,
which is the DC properties. Right. HBO and HBO Max.
So now we're saying that HBO HBO Max are not
a network and a streaming service. They are more than that.
(47:48):
They are a mini major studio under themselves, right, they
are producing their own content. In addition, Okay, so uh finally,
in addition all that, the full film and television libraries,
and of course here's where a lot of the resources
that keep you afloat in the worst of times are,
(48:09):
right because you can always borrow against those libraries or
sell off those libraries.
Speaker 3 (48:14):
If you, or just show them kind of like bad revenue.
Speaker 2 (48:18):
Okay, so Global Networks, meanwhile, tell me if this sounds
as sexy or and exciting or as much of a
growth opportunity where you want to find yourself. Global networks
that's going to include pre mere entertainment. What does that
mean premier entertainment support, sports and news television brands around
(48:43):
the world. Ooh ooh, these sound like are they all
on life support? So the so this is the hospice.
Speaker 4 (48:53):
We're building a hospice for that which gets injected.
Speaker 2 (48:58):
So the television brands that these include once shiny iconic brands.
My friend DNN, TNT Sports, TNT Sports specifically not TNT
T and T Sports, which you know, one of the
most popular shows on television. Honestly, one of the best
(49:19):
long running shows on TV was Inside the NBA with
Charles Barkley, Kenny the Jet Smith, Shack O'Neill, and Ernie Johnson.
Great show. TNT Sports has no sports anymore, like they
lost the NBA this coming year to Amazon. So good
for you if you own T and T Sports, Discovery
(49:49):
top free to air channels across Europe, and digital products
such as the profitable Discovery Lust streaming service and Bleacher Report.
This is a strange amalgamation of things that it's more
(50:10):
or less and I'm being glib, and I don't mean
to be smart people who make a lot of money
or making these decisions, but it just from my first
blush reaction is all these things go together over here, right,
So this second company over here will be everything that
doesn't go in that first group, right, right, We.
Speaker 3 (50:32):
Got to categorize or who wants it?
Speaker 4 (50:35):
Who are more than likely Because at TNT Sports I
didn't even know that was a thing.
Speaker 3 (50:41):
I had no idea.
Speaker 2 (50:43):
Well, I'm glad you found out for the final hours
of it being a thing. I hate when you learn
about somebody for the first time in celebrity deaths, Dean.
Speaker 3 (50:54):
This is that equivalent.
Speaker 2 (50:56):
Oh my gosh, here's the line that I read. Legacy
Media is responding. Well, I'm glad they're responding and not reacting. Okay,
They are responding to major shifts in the business, led
by the rise of streaming and faster than anticipated decline
of linear television that has left investors confused and stock
(51:20):
prices floundering. The interesting thing is streaming has risen. How
that would be the first conversation that you know, Yes,
in terms of the amount of people who are engaged
in streaming and the amount of content that's consumed that way,
but risen as a viable economic model. Again, if you're
(51:44):
not Netflix, I don't know. I don't know if it's risen.
I know that you've killed off other revenue streams in
the name of it, right, But I don't know if
you've replaced the revenue streams, right.
Speaker 4 (51:59):
Yes, because now it's diversified so wide that one person
streaming one person's subscription to a streamer isn't necessarily your
neighbor's subscription as well. So you don't have a even
an area wide demographic, right. So I could see that
being a real problem in terms of not just investors,
(52:21):
but advertisers. Where do I where do I find that
person who's going to buy my thing?
Speaker 2 (52:29):
Yeah, so this is interesting. Comcast, who I alluded to,
expects the initiative for its cable spinoff, which will be
called Versant. I wonder maybe Mark Kersham named that it's
possible to be completed by the end of this year.
And their idea is that cable network groups like these
(52:52):
two will which still throw off significant cash and revenue.
Let's not kid ourselves. There's still is money there. It's
just that in the way of these gigantic be a myths,
it wasn't making sense. So these cable network groups could
(53:14):
merge or be acquired by buyers like private equity firms
that would manage their decline, strip it.
Speaker 3 (53:24):
Of his assets, and let it goes soaking a rain.
Speaker 2 (53:27):
Basically, so the splits are seen as likely presaging a
period of media mergers and acquisition, because isn't this the
question about legacy media? Is it really going to die out?
How much media have we said was going to die out,
(53:47):
from film to vinyl to DVDs? And it doesn't die out.
It it shrinks and settle, and then it has a market,
and the market might even grow a little bit as
people come back to it and realize, oh, there's joys
(54:09):
in this. We've joked about how certain streamers their best
numbers come when they show live adds supported program it. Yeah, right,
So the streamers have reinvented television.
Speaker 3 (54:26):
Yes, live television.
Speaker 2 (54:29):
And again, you know, everybody's freaking out about how like,
oh my god, the late night numbers for late night
talk shows and comedy shows have dwindled almost nothing, But
the amount of eyeballs that sees part of those shows
is greater than ever before. It's exponentially greater than ever before.
(54:53):
The Late show never had ten million viewers a night,
but it's got ten million individuals viewers checking out parts
of it right on TikTok and YouTube and different social
media platforms. Right, but do you have that if you
don't have the flagship.
Speaker 3 (55:13):
Well, that's a great question, right, because I can't think
of anything.
Speaker 4 (55:18):
I mean, Stephen Colbert is a great example with that
CBS as it's.
Speaker 3 (55:24):
Technical where it's airing. But I haven't watched it on CBS.
Speaker 4 (55:29):
I watched it on YouTube all the time, every morning
instead of late night, Right, So yeah, I'm up on it.
Speaker 3 (55:38):
I think it's a he's doing a wonderful job. But
you're right, if he.
Speaker 4 (55:42):
Left CBS and just had it out of a studio,
I don't know if the same number of eyes would
be seeing it.
Speaker 2 (55:50):
So I find this idea interesting. You know, private equity
firms managing the decline, but that doesn't necessarily mean stripping
it for assets and selling it off as junk. It
might literally mean let's see where it settles and then
(56:13):
let's see what kind of revenue it can generate on
what kind of models.
Speaker 4 (56:18):
When private equity butt toys r us Right, Oh no, no,
we're going to let this in and then they just
this fired sixty thousand people and ran away with all
the money.
Speaker 2 (56:29):
But I see it as kind of this possibility that
where we're heading back to is where we've been before,
which is lots and lots of small companies. What you
won't have are the giant networks maybe, but who knows,
(56:50):
maybe maybe they will. Maybe that viewership will just settle
in at a certain level and people go, yeah, this
works at this level. But you'll have more and more
smaller companies, and maybe those companies will form partnerships and
pipeline deals with other social media outlets, other distributors, what
(57:13):
have you, what have you. There's a way of looking
at that that could be a lot healthier for the
media landscape.
Speaker 4 (57:23):
As a whole, right, as opposed to under one thumb
controlling and all.
Speaker 2 (57:29):
And for messaging and for the diversity of content and
thought and expression and story.
Speaker 3 (57:36):
Yeah, all of that.
Speaker 2 (57:39):
Celebrity deaths. There's one thing about a recent celebrity, a
television grate, that we remembered and a tidbit about her
that I learned after we discussed her that I wanted
to share, and that is a Loretta swit. Yes, we
talked about not only her greatness on mash, but how
(58:02):
that greatness almost prevents you from thinking of anything else
she did because that casts such a shadow. While she
was still working on Mash, Loretta Switt starred in the
nineteen eighty one pilot for Cagney and Lacy Come On,
(58:28):
playing Detective Christine Cagney. Her contractual obligations to Mash prevented
her from continuing with the series when it was picked
up and ordered to air. Oh she never took another
starring TV role, though she had many guest appearances, like
(58:51):
we like, we talked about the original Cagney. Yeah, isn't
that fascinating? And I kind of want to see the
pilot because I gotta tell you, I bet she was great.
Speaker 3 (59:05):
Yeah, I can see it too.
Speaker 4 (59:07):
I mean I liked I watched a couple of seasons
of Cagney and Lacy with Sharon Gless.
Speaker 2 (59:13):
But Tyne Daily and yeah, I remember that. I remember
it as well.
Speaker 3 (59:18):
Yeah, they were. They had great chemistry.
Speaker 4 (59:20):
But thinking of putting the Loretta squid in there, I
could see that working. It'd be uh yeah, a little uh,
a little tougher little balls here. I think there'd be
like more little more energy in the in the dynamic
between the two of them.
Speaker 2 (59:35):
And of course her way with comedy. I wonder, I
wonder like, was there an acid wit to it that?
Speaker 4 (59:43):
Oh yes, let's look for the pilot, all right?
Speaker 2 (59:47):
A couple of musicians. Uh Andy Bay, an acclaim jazz
singer and pianists who was legendary for his four octave
vocal range, died April twenty six in Englewood, New Jersey,
at the age of eighty five. I've been sitting on
this one for a while. His impressive vocal abilities were
(01:00:09):
already gaining him wide attention by his teenage years, when
he had a band with two of his eight siblings
called Andy and the Bays Sisters. They recorded three albums
together before Andy Bay forged off on his own and
recorded both as a solo artist and in accompanying jazz
(01:00:30):
greats like Stanley Clark, Max Roach, and Horace Silver. His
range and his versatility on vocals, like I said, won
him wide acclaim because he had this ability to switch
up tones and styles and approaches with ease. Wow, never
seemed to be reaching for it. You know, he was
(01:00:53):
adept at playing almost anything in the jazz songbook and
you know, making it his own. He recorded ten albums
as a solo artist, including the two thousand and five
Grammy nominee American Song and the twenty fourteen Best Vocal
Album winner of NPR's Jazz Critics. Pull pages from an
Imaginary Life. Nah Lou Christie was a nineteen sixties singer.
(01:01:22):
I mean he's saying all his life, but in the
nineteen sixties he had such hits as Lightning Strikes Me.
Speaker 1 (01:01:29):
Maybe you gotta undiscovered the.
Speaker 3 (01:01:33):
Makings of a name. Baby, It's hard to set on times?
Am I much for you?
Speaker 2 (01:01:41):
He died June eighteenth, after a short illness in Pittsburgh
at the age of eighty two. He had a very
distinctive falsetto voice during his heyday, especially during a time
when rock and roll was beginning to take over the charts.
It it really enabled him to stand out from the crowd.
His first splash was the Gypsy Cried, followed by Two
(01:02:04):
Faces Have I, and then he hit number one in
nineteen sixty six with Lightning Strikes. He no longer had
any hits in you know by the nineteen seventies. I'm
(01:02:25):
Gonna Make You Mine was his last major hit, going
to number ten in nineteen sixty nine, but he continued
to delight audiences singing his sweet brand of love songs
in the decades that followed, and always touring to enthusiastic
crowds and was releasing new music up until twenty fifteen
when he released Summer in Malibu.
Speaker 3 (01:02:46):
Has a different connotation now, yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (01:02:48):
Know, yeah, he read the tea leaves. Yeah, finally, this
is one of the saddest celebrity deaths I think in
all these years we've been doing it that I've come across.
David Kakili Kenui Bell seemed truly to be poised for
big things. He's an actor, was an actor. He appears
(01:03:13):
in the new smash hit Lelo and Stitch, which is
doing such baffo box office around the globe. But he
died June twelfth in Kylua, Kona at the age of
forty six. When the trailer for Lelo and Stitch dropped. Yeah,
(01:03:35):
he was in it as the big Hawaiian dude. Okay,
he he has this moment in a trailer, right, and
like tell me, like, as an actor, when you know
you've got a moment in the movie that is gonna
be like trailer worthy, like that is that's a potential
(01:03:59):
to really. Okay, if my agents, my managers and everything
are on top of this, they are using this to
catapult me right, yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:04:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:04:09):
And he has a moment in the trailer when he
sees aliens that is really funny and really makes you
like see almost as if a spotlight is just shining
on him and the words character actor are jumping off
(01:04:31):
the screen at you. He he should have had Dean
like a big career here as a character actor. It
was not his first work. He'd appeared in the reboot
of Hawaii five Ozho and Magnum Pi. He worked as
a local hire there in Hawaii. He did voiceover work
(01:04:53):
and I knew who he was because he was the
brand ambassador for ConA brewing company.
Speaker 3 (01:05:01):
Oh hilarious.
Speaker 2 (01:05:03):
He was in like a series of their commercials uh
that was known as one Life. He was the voice also.
This was cool and I recognized this when we went
to Hawaii for our much delayed honeymoon Lily and I.
He's the voice of Kona International Airport. Like all the
public address announcements that's him, are this dude? Yeah? Anyway,
(01:05:28):
David Hakili Kanui Bell Yeah, like I.
Speaker 3 (01:05:34):
Did forty six. What was the cause of death?
Speaker 2 (01:05:36):
I don't know. I worry that you know, he was
a very very big guy.
Speaker 3 (01:05:42):
Oh and uh the heart.
Speaker 2 (01:05:45):
Yeah. I pray that Kona Brewing didn't have anything to
do with it. The drinking a lot of beer isn't
a problem, is it deed?
Speaker 3 (01:05:55):
Oh I don't think.
Speaker 2 (01:05:56):
So, Belee did.
Speaker 1 (01:05:58):
Spoiler alert
And now Your chill Pack Hollywood Hour with Dean Hagland
and Phil Lareness.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Welcome to year nineteen, episode seven of Your Chilpack Hollywood Hour.
Coming at you from Los Angeles, California. I am Phil Lareness,
coming at us from Birmingham, Michigan. It's the Motor City
of Jason Madman. It's TV's Dean Hagland. How are things
They're at the homestead, mister Hagland.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Oh my gosh, a murderous heat wave? Is this ending
on the mid all of the doom? Everyone?
Speaker 4 (01:03):
Please go do your basement and turn up the ac
to like there's no tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
So yeah, you know, one hundred degrees whatever.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
So you're you've moved into your basement.
Speaker 4 (01:15):
Now now the basement being painted, we are going to
move into the basement.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
It seems, you know, give up the studio for the basement.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Why not moving? Moving literally down in the world.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
It's my motto.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Hey, last week, you know you were here.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
In La I was too.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
One of the things that you did while you were
here was you mistook the late Brian Wilson for his
brother Dennis. Something I heard about from many people. When
you said that Brian hung out with Charles Manson. He
did not. It was his brother Dennis Oh, the drummer
of the Beach Boys and the only member of the
(02:01):
band who did what the left surfed.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
He was the only the only surfer. Yeah, I's see,
and they had so many surf songs.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Keen eared listeners managed to pick out that mistake amidst
all of our high energy audio hijinks. Yeah, so good
for them. I feel like there should be a prize.
I want to discuss the viewing that you did on
your plane flights. But but first you did something we
didn't discuss on last week's show. You drove through much
(02:37):
of the fire damage. Yes, you did not go all
toa Dina, right, you went Malibu and the Palisades to
the Malibu area there.
Speaker 4 (02:51):
Yeah, we tried to take Sunset Boulevard a way down
to the Pacific Coast Highway, and you could do it
almost all the way, except then there's the roadblock was
still up, so we had to take some side streets
that didn't have any fire damage to get down to
the PCH. So yeah, I think now I just heard
(03:11):
they've opened up Sunset all the way so you can
go through the neighborhood, the harshest part where the business
is burnt and everything in the bank.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
What were you prepared for? What did you get? I mean,
what was the experience? Like, I mean, I've been here
for six months. I thought we were going to go
on Saturday night to see Lee and Malibu for his birthday,
his seventieth birthday, Lee mccoskey. And at the last minute
that party got canceled. But we had kind of decided
(03:45):
maybe we would one of the ways, maybe back so
that we're not really so sad and depressed when we
get to the party, but maybe on the way back
we come through going down the sage in them back sunset.
But I but I haven't And I realized when you
(04:05):
did it that yeah, I haven't wanted to do it,
Like it's that's it. It's like literally like I'm kind
of scared what I'm gonna see.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
Yeah, yeah it is. It's altered forever.
Speaker 4 (04:23):
I mean for it ever to go back with all
those cute little bungalows all along the beach front.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
I mean you just see.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
A couple of steel girders here and there, a couple
pillars in the sand that they have all been damaged,
and then the houses that remain, some of them are
fire damaged, but some of them are And I would
think that would be harder to go back and live
with all of your neighbor's houses eradicated, and you're like, uh,
you know, it's not a neighborhood anymore.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
You can't just sit out on the deck and enjoy
the view of the.
Speaker 4 (04:57):
Ocean knowing full well everything else is destroyed around you.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
I would bet that it depends, yeah, on your perspective.
I would think if you did lose your home, you
would look at the homes that weren't lost and wonder,
why why was my house not spared? And then if
your house was spared, like, why was my house spared?
(05:22):
You know? It was when speaking of Lee, when there
were the Malibu fires, right and we drove that neighborhood afterwards,
and it was just mind blowing the force of that
firestorm that hit that area, but also just the strange
way in which, yeah, it wasn't entire sections, it would
(05:45):
all it would, it would pass by certain houses. In
the case of Lee, you know, he stayed behind, He
and his wife stayed behind, weak without power, fighting off
the fires themselves. They earned their stripes, and they weren't
without damage. Also, they had to reinforce the house afterwards.
And you know, do like a brick that is very
(06:08):
highly recommended for I guess, you know, firewall, firewall in
the futures and stuff like that. But I I, yeah,
I hear what you're saying. I you knows as we're
talking about it. It really is stunning to me because
I spent so much time in my in my younger
days there in the Palisades writing and was out there
(06:30):
almost every day for a couple of years. And I
also love Altadena more than almost any other place, and
I haven't been back there to see it.
Speaker 4 (06:40):
And yeah, something I think Altadena would be harder because
the craftsmen home that the Pasadena Altadena is known for,
with the thick timbers and the low swung roofs, that
unique architecture is so much harder and probably can't be
replicated because you won't find those thick beams of wood
(07:01):
like that anymore.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Apparently not allowed to be replicated, right, Wasn't that one
of the first things we heard that there are styles
of houses that they will not allow to be rebuilt
because this may not be our only or last I
guess rodeo, yeah.
Speaker 4 (07:18):
Right, But it's also a real demand on wood. I
mean at the turn of the century. Last in the
year nineteen hundred, it seemed the California redwood forest went
on forever. So you can log all that and have giant,
giant beams.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
Holding up your roof.
Speaker 4 (07:36):
That look great, But now I can't imagine what even
the cost of the couple of beams like that would be.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Well, speaking of trees, that's my curiosity. You drove out
through an area that was traditionally very highly populated but
also really lush.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Are all the trees gone?
Speaker 3 (08:00):
Yeah? I mean the palms.
Speaker 4 (08:02):
There's some palms that are just sticks, and the palm
frons are blackened. The smaller shrubbery course is all gone,
you see, the hillsides are all darkened.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
But there's some of the larger trees seem to survived.
Speaker 4 (08:18):
Actually, and I forget the variety, but there is one
tree that only its seeds pop out like popcorn when
a fire comes by, so it needs a fire underneath
it in order to resee and replant its own species.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
You just named my two favorite snacks for when I
go to the movies. I love popcorn and I love
blackened palm fronds.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
Oh I've never had those, un so cajun.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Oh, Delta Airlines also serves a mean blackened palm front.
So I just played movies and airlines, which leads us
to your viewing on flights. You alluded to, of course,
Captain America Brave New World, which you watched on the
way to LA. Did you watch it again on the
(09:08):
way back or did you watch something else?
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (09:11):
You know what, I didn't watch anything I read, so
I only saw because Captain America Brave New World was
so disturbing to it. It was unbelievad Like, what do
you remember of all this Huxley's Brave New World?
Speaker 3 (09:27):
You read that?
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Oh, a lot of it. I actually did a term
paper on Brave New World. Revisit it his essays about
Brave New.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
Oh, I didn't even know he did that.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
I'm a big oldest hux leygue guy. You are, Yeah,
So do you.
Speaker 4 (09:41):
Not think it's remarkable that they named this movie Brave
New World because it it echoes a elitism and a
class structure that.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
You know?
Speaker 4 (09:56):
Okay, First, I found the movie horrible, so I was
fast forward through it with my finger on the screen.
You know, you can just drag it over and watch
some of the Harrison Ford scenes that you said he
was doing his best work ever. Though I think what
he's doing is he's just sitting into his tiredness, his overwhelmingness,
(10:16):
because that's a lot of what he played.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
The thing is, though he played it with high energy,
he played his exhaustion with high energy.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
Yeah, he invested in it, invested.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
It's not like the actors exhausted. The actor is, you know.
It's it's like I always say, I was really surprised
to find when I had to really play boredom, because
boredom was always kind of something that was disowned for me.
When when I had to play it, I was shocked
to realize that boredom isn't like a lack of energy.
(10:50):
Boredom's highly energized.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
Right, You're craving to do something just you.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Can't, Yeah, you just can't. And it's building up, it's
coiling up a point of interest. Perhaps so until very
near its release, it was Captain America New World Order AH,
and there was a huge backlash against it for the
(11:17):
anti Semitic associations with that title, so they changed it
to Brave New World. But it is interesting given the
connotations of the film.
Speaker 4 (11:27):
I know, so I was hating it, hating it until
the very last scene, after Red Hawk has destroyed the
White House by throwing helicopters at each other, you know,
as one does. The fake news reporter as the cranes
are rebuilding, the White House goes and now maybe we
can get back to a degree of normalcy.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
Well, wh whoa, whoa, what's this movie about?
Speaker 4 (11:53):
And then I've watched it in reverse, going backwards and
seeing all of these social commentary regarding you know, propaganda,
what's in your brain? Whose voice is that? How is
it making you make bad decisions? Stressing you until you
do you know, you turn into a raged filled hulky monster,
(12:18):
red Hulk. I mean, if you think of Tim Blake
Nelson's character as the Internet and everybody else being affected
by his coercion, then you sort of have how the
whole social structure that we have now and how it's
fragmenting and all that sort of thing.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
I mean, I don't want to go down this rabbit hole.
I really really don't. I know plenty of my own
emotional rabbit holes to go down these days, feel free
to come pack a lunch. But I'm struck by the
fact that the first iron Man movie. There had been
Marvel movies before, but the real modern MCU kicks off
(13:00):
with Iron Man, and it's sort of unexpected and unprecedented success.
That's something that's two thousand and eight. That's the year
one Barack Obama would become president right, get elected after
a again seemingly unprecedented economic collapse, and we'd had not upheaval,
(13:25):
but a lot of unhappiness and angst throughout that decade,
and there was this brief moment following the collapse and
following the election where there was the opportunity for coming together.
(13:45):
One should always, if one does not remember, one should
always dial up John McCain's concession speech the night of
the election. It's a It is a speech for the
ages by a true American right and makes you feel
good about the country and both the men who ran.
(14:09):
And I say this because looking back two thousand and eight,
two thousand and nine, twenty ten, is there anything in
there to compare it with the shit storm we've been
living through for many, many years now? And yet there
(14:30):
was so much, as we know from making the truth
is out there, so much tumult bubbling beneath the surface. Yeah,
And I want to go back to the Tim Blake
Nelson character, a character who has this giant brain that's
working over time while he is locked up, feeling unseen,
(14:55):
unlistened to, unappreciated, and it is jinning up in him,
this desire to lash out and gain revenge on the
people who are he deems responsible for his being ignored
and locked up and unseen. And I feel like that
(15:15):
described a big portion of the population that, for whatever reason,
by the end of the first decade of this century,
had it in their minds that they were under lock
and key, that they were just you know, subjugated to
the underground right where they would not be appreciated, not seen,
(15:39):
not heard. And we told some of their stories, and
I always maintained that the healthy thing would be to
form a relationship to what all of the populace is
thinking and feeling, because if you don't, well, those members
(16:01):
of the populace are going to actually lead the conversation
at some point, right And because you never invited them
in to be a part of it. So I can
go a little too far. But the Brave New World,
you know, and the Tim Blake Nelson and what you're describing,
I don't know. I feel early parallels back to again
(16:24):
the start of this, when the MCU started, And by
the way, an MCU that has its own share of
responsibility for where we're at.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
Right right by manifesting that.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
The exploitation of people's willingness to lose themselves in fantasy,
do you not have a responsibility as someone who purveys
fantasy to maybe give them something a little bit more,
to maybe give them the key to returning to reality
at the end of the adventure you set them.
Speaker 4 (16:59):
On right, right, well, and that was the final line, right,
maybe we would go back to a degree of normalcy.
You know, whoever wrote that knew exactly what you're saying,
their degree or responsibility in the MCU universe, because I mean,
I don't know what's coming up next for them, but
it seems we're just gonna tread in a circle now.
(17:22):
Anything else I can't imagine, right, none of these things.
This is why I found it even boring. It's that
the action sequences did not seem like from a comic
book artist.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
You know, normally a lot of these things.
Speaker 4 (17:38):
They could go back, refer to the artist who drew
the original comic in the fifties and sixties and see it,
storyboard it and have it sort of pre visualized as
it were, whereas this one, it seemed there was no
or or poorly thought out action sequences, you know, all fast,
all big explosions, all to scale, all wrong, you know,
(18:01):
all of that. And I don't know if they were
thinking of making this a three D movie, because a
lot of it was trying to jump out of the
screen at you, and you're like, well, that's even more confusing.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Did you see Mickey seventeen Bang June Host.
Speaker 4 (18:20):
On my list right there on the ready to go
on the old TV streamer.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Because we have spent much of our many years during
this podcast talking about Bang June Hoe. Remember the host
came out just the year before we started this podcast,
and I have a feeling we probably caught up with
it that year. I think it was right around then
(18:47):
when we were in neighboring offices back then. I am
not sure the man can make a bad movie, you know,
we talk about, Hey, making good movies is really hard.
It's a miracle when good movies are made, especially the
more different pieces that you put into it, and the
(19:09):
bigger the movie, and the longer it takes from gestation
to release, like it is still to this day a miracle.
So another miracle that here's a filmmaker I don't think
is capable of making a bad movie.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
But here we go.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
This will certainly do until the bad movie gets here.
Oh no, But I want to get it a point.
I know you haven't seen it yet, but I want
to get to a point that relates to brave New World.
There's nothing grounding Mickey seventeen to me in any kind
(19:46):
of reality we might care about. The humor is so
over the top that it comes off as hackneyed. It's
as if every performer in it is following the Tilda
Swinton in Snow Piercer school of acting, you know, that
approach that she had, and as if no one had
(20:08):
seen Chris Evans performance in that film, The Original Captain America.
The way Mickey seventeen in fact, is full of ideas
that feel like leftovers to me from snow Piercer. Oh right,
in that film in Snow Piercer, And I might be
remembering wrong. We both love that movie. My memory tells
(20:32):
me that the closer the action was to the tail
section of the train, back where Chris Evans and the
other workers are living and spending their lives. The closer
to that section of the train the movie was, the
more grounded the characters and the performances. Then as you
(20:53):
move towards the higher classes in that train, the higher
the class, the more insane the characters and the performances.
And to me, there was always an obvious commentary there, right,
a thematic commentary, And the movie was no less fascinating
(21:15):
and no less rich and rewarding because of that commentary,
right right, It just it flowed from it. And after
making it through the more wealthy and ostentatious characters and performances,
once we got to the engine to find who it
was controlling everything, we discovered the godlike leader to be
(21:38):
rather mundane and just banal, right, you know it was?
That film to me was like a like a blood
fever dream as it got crazier and crazier. Yeah, and again,
this movie, Mickey seventeen, ostensibly a comedy from the jump,
(21:58):
never seems to find any footing, even if there is
some beauty in the final act. Again, Bong Juno can't
make a bad movie. So there's things in it that
will take your breath away and that maybe you really
like or whatever. But it's just some of his movies
cast such a shadow that some of his other movies
(22:21):
have a hard time living up to them. And this
one is so reminiscent of Snow Piercer that I don't
know how I'm supposed to ignore how great that one
worked versus this. But the reason that I thought of
it to bring it up right now is there has
been and continues to be much discussion. In fact, I
(22:43):
think most of the discussion if you go online about
the film is about whether or not Mark Ruffalo is
doing a Donald Trump impression as the villain. Okay, and
the filmmakers say no, you might watch. Shouldn't say yeah,
of course he is. I think of course he is.
(23:04):
Could it be unconscious that he's doing it? Could he
have just been in the moment leaning into it because
that made sense for this character that he was playing.
Maybe maybe you know, I'm not saying it was Okay,
we're gonna do commentary, right, but in a good movie,
we wouldn't care one way or another.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
Ah, Right, In.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
A bad movie, or as close to bad as bun
jun Hoe is capable. You know, the sometimes very funny
work Ruffalo is doing gets crushed under the weight of
the possibility that this is real world satire.
Speaker 4 (23:46):
Oh so, as soon as I hear his performance, I
am then brought to real world satire.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
And the more that they rely on him and that performance,
and the longer then the further You're taken away again
from any kind of unique beauty that this film might
be grounded in, because.
Speaker 4 (24:08):
I'm always looking for real world parallel situations.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
You know, it has a premise of people escaping crushing
debt on Earth by signing up for a deep space
colonization expedition, got it, And as such that sort of
fits into bun Juno's you know overall, what would you
would say, Ouvra, you know, because he regularly explores economic exploitation, Yeah,
(24:35):
and all the physical and psychic horrors that are associated
with that exploitation. It's a bit of a whiplash for
me that he makes this film on the heels of
the Oscar winning parasite. Yeah, that's a film I definitely
need to see again. As a snap bold declarative judgment
(25:00):
in this moment, I will say that, aside from Bong's
first film, which was called Barking Dogs Never Bite, which
I never saw, oh yeah, I love his next four
films more than I actually like his next three that
followed them, including Parasite. Right, the film's a Bong that
(25:22):
I've seen in the order of their release, Memories of
Murder two thousand and three, The Host two thousand and six,
Mother two thousand and nine, Snow Piercer twenty thirteen. Here's
a filmmaker that I thought was getting better, better, better,
and like, boom, you're one of the greats. After those four,
then he does Oaksha on Netflix. Oh yeah, right, Parasite,
(25:46):
which wins Best Picture, and Mickey seventeen. And I don't
find any of those three, any of them including Parasite,
to be the equal of the four that came before it.
Speaker 4 (25:58):
Oh that's fascinating, because I mean Parasite was unique, for sure,
and carefully a story, carefully told, I thought, well maintained.
But uh yeah, well, now you say that out loud.
I hadn't seen the two thousand and three one, but yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
It's pretty good. Memories of Murder is pretty pretty good. Yeah,
I mean you have to realize again it's it's early,
it's early in his career, but absolutely worth watching. I
am going to, as I said, bold snap declarative judgment
in the moment right now, in an early morning. So
maybe I'm totally wrong. Maybe I'll watch Parasite again and
go what the hell were you talking about it? But
(26:43):
I will all rewatch that. You watch Mickey seventeen, all
rewatch Parasite, and we'll.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
We'll meet back to me.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
But you know, a filmmaker again, who is who has
been for basically this whole century now interested in telling
these tales of the exploitation of the worker, of you know,
economic exploitation. There's no shortage of fertile ground for him,
(27:11):
including now, and so that's why kind of the Mickey
seventeen just seems like such a head scratcher to me
because he grounds it in almost no reality whatsoever. It
feels almost like somebody who said, hey, you know what
movie I loved was that snow Piercer. Let's do a
thing like that.
Speaker 4 (27:32):
Well, I mean, if you are perhaps creatively in a
rut or coming up with blanks, of course you're going
to go back onto your previous works and look to
it for inspiration, but that doesn't mean necessarily that he's well,
we don't know where his head's at right.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
But often as an artist.
Speaker 4 (27:55):
You'll suddenly go, I'm just doing the same thing over
and over again just to sell.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
Before I get to a movie I saw in theaters
this week, because of you, I want to talk about
another film I saw in theaters by another Asian filmmaker
who I hold in great esteem. Jean Song Qu, Chinese
filmmaker has a new film outain theaters called Caught by
(28:22):
the Tides, and I caught it in an American Cinematech screening,
and it's a somewhat experimental film. I'd seen, like I said,
a couple of his films before, and was duly impressed.
But what was amazing to me because I didn't read
about it. I just knew who the filmmaker was, and
I said, yeah, okay, I'm there for this. This seems good.
(28:43):
I will see something unlike like anything I'd seen, and
truly nothing prepared me for this except for Richard Linklater's Boyhood. Oh,
because here's a film shot over many years on many
different flours and aspect ratios. But unlike boy Hood, I
(29:08):
don't think jaw knew at the outset that he was
doing this, like I'm gonna spend decades making a movie.
As the characters grow old, he kind of realized he
had footage from the past with these people that would
work and then continue to do it. And so that's why,
like the formats changed, you know, film stocks, digital video,
(29:33):
high definition, the aspect ratios are changing as a result.
Throughout the movie. It's got a loosely constructed story following
a working class woman and her on again, off again
romance with a small time businessman turned even smaller time
hustler turned old man in COVID lockdown era Wuhan, and
(29:56):
it covers ground geographically. It charts the change of communities
displaced by the three gorgeous damn Project Oh Wow, built
throughout all those years throughout the Guangdong province, and so
it covers the tides again. The name of the film
is caught by the Tides. It covers the tides of
time from two thousand and one through twenty twenty two.
(30:19):
It covers ground emotionally, perhaps most of all, and charts
these changes in terrain through decidedly unique storytelling that I
found at times utterly unapproachable and at other times utterly delightful.
There were entire sections of the movie where I just
(30:40):
kind of went, Okay, I'm just gonna open myself to
it and let it wash over me and just for
the best. Well, yeah, I'll get somewhere. I'll get somewhere.
But I don't know what this movie wants from me.
I don't know what I want from it, but I'm
pretty sure neither of us are delivering. And so it
(31:01):
was a really unique experience, and it does end up.
The ending emotional Catharsis that I get out of it
was really quite beautiful. According to Wikipedia, the decision to
use previous footage was sparked by the COVID nineteen pandemic.
So indeed, I just looked this up. Indeed, he never,
(31:24):
at any point through those years knew he was making
this movie, but he had the footage to make the movie.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
It.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
Pandemic, of course, made filming in China difficult, so as
Jah was revisiting two decades worth of footage and outtakes
that he had, and footage that he shot as experimentation
with different techniques, because he would write scenes to experiment
with different cameras and different formats and different you know, processes.
(31:56):
Through the years, he would write scenes to do it,
never intending the to be part of a larger project
or even a short film or whatever. But then he
had all these scenes, and he always used the same
actress because he loved working with her all the time.
So it's just like, let's get together and shoot, I
got to test a scene, and here's what we'll say
is going on in this scene. So unconsciously maybe he
(32:18):
did know he was always making this film right, and
he was able to reuse much of the footage as
material for this new movie. The movie stars his frequent collaborator,
actress Jao Tao, and seeing her grow up and grow
well into middle age and to see the depth of
(32:39):
feeling in humor and how she wears those changes really
is kind of a privilege. I really do feel like
I'm witnessing just from the standpoint of an actor growing
up and growing older. I'm really getting privileged to witness
(32:59):
the development of this person.
Speaker 3 (33:01):
That's really cool.
Speaker 4 (33:03):
So I mean, but to go through two decades, like
I just found some old proof sheets and negatives, I
don't even want to look at that stuff. I can't
imagine going through two three decades of my own work
and going, Okay, what can we make of this now?
Speaker 2 (33:19):
Well, I don't think she I mean who knows. I
mean maybe yeah, when they got to filming come the pandemic,
she did want to go back so that she could
chart something. Maybe she did. I mean, oh, yeah, I
want to read more about it, about the making of it.
It's one of those things where I bet the Criterion
release will be fascinating because of the documentaries and the
(33:40):
books of essays and the things about it.
Speaker 3 (33:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
So the movie I saw in theaters because of you
are written and directed by Andrew Deyong, is a movie
called Friendship.
Speaker 3 (33:52):
Ah.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
Has this been on your radar?
Speaker 3 (33:56):
Has been on my radar? Did you go see it
because of me?
Speaker 2 (33:59):
Yeah? Because you are the one that always celebrated Tim Robinson,
the movie's star, Michigan's Michigan's own Tim Robinson, the star
of the Detroitters For God's Sake, a show I never
understood the appeal of, and I'm a big fan of
(34:21):
both those guys, and it did not work for me.
I will say, for the first few moments, I thought
I might regret having taken Lily to see Friendship. No,
she really wanted to see it because Dan, God damn it.
It starts in a cancer support group where where Tim's wife,
(34:47):
Kate Kate Mara's character Tammy Waterman, speaks about the frustrations
of her post cancer life and uh, you know, so
important and for all of us to keep the wind
in our sales when you're facing an illness, very important
to keep the wind in your sales. To then be
(35:08):
shown something where hey, the good news your post cancer.
The bad news life post cancer is terrible Jesus, Like, yeah,
I was thinking I might, I might regret it anyway.
Her husband Craig is sitting nearby. Her husband Craig is
Tim Robinson. He's the lead played by Tim Robinson and
(35:32):
Tim Robinson. Of course, before The Detroiters was on SNL
and since The Detroiters has gone on to his own
sketch comedy series, I think you should leave right And
he soon in that meeting, as just the spouse of
the survivor, turns everyone's attention onto himself. It's the first
(35:56):
indication of how narcissistic this person is, and it sets
up kind of the dark comedy and how frequently hilarious,
albeit dark. The movie is, and from what I've heard,
it very much feels like an expansion of a sketch
from his show from I Think You Should Lead Leave.
(36:21):
The plot centers on a socially awkward marketing executive Robinson,
who yearns to be friends with his new neighbor Austin,
a charismatic but unfulfilled TV weather man and amateur musician.
The setup, right there, yeah, plays and sounds a little
(36:43):
bit like a send up of the comedies in which
Paul Rudd used to specialize.
Speaker 3 (36:50):
Yeah, it totally sounds.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
Like that, and that's appropriate and hilarious as the charismatic
neighbor with a secret source of shame is played by
Paul Rudd. Ah, so he's kind of sending up his
own films that launched him. Really Yeah, And the thing
about Paul Rudd I realized is that he is in
(37:15):
this as he always is, somewhat performative. Right, I would
imagine Paul Rudd is capable of something raw and real,
But but I don't know if I've ever seen it.
Speaker 3 (37:33):
I trying to think too. No, I can't think of it.
Speaker 2 (37:36):
He is so good at playing characters who are themselves performative,
right that I can't help but feel that sometimes that
performative quality seeps into characters who might be better served
without it. Ah, Now that's not the case. It's well served.
(38:01):
The casting and the performance is great. He's well cast,
he matches Tim Robinson well and at its best. Like
I said, this is this film is a dark comedy
about narcissism, and I think as such, hello pretty valuable.
And by depicting narcissism as not a quality of the elite,
(38:25):
or of the powerful, or of the wealthy, but as
a trait that can befall people at all walks of life, right,
it's incredibly useful in a way to the movies. To detractors,
(38:47):
it really is an extended sketch that that is never
real world enough to support its weight. And I'm sitting
there again not really familiar with this guy's sketch work
beyond just who he is and his you know, his credits,
his bona fidees. But I recognize that complaint as accurate.
(39:11):
It's an extended sketch that probably doesn't support real world weight. Ah,
that's accurate. It's not real world okay, And yet I
appreciated the film's unique tone so much that I don't
much care, and I know the tone could not have
(39:35):
been maintained if they did not let the film itself
spin off into madness.
Speaker 3 (39:43):
Ah that's fun.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
Yeah. So we talk about the importance of real world
and authenticity, we talk about the importance of tone. Here's
literally a film where choose your own adventure because if
you want this to maintain this tone and you want
to see them land the dismount tonally be prepared for
this to spin off Planet Earth. Oh okay, and I'm
(40:09):
with it. I'm all there for it. Wow.
Speaker 3 (40:13):
That's really fun.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
Then and really interesting. And it's released by the way
by A twenty four.
Speaker 3 (40:20):
Oh you're clear.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
Well they had been and quite frankly, they needed this film,
right because, as I've been expressing in other genres, they've
been succumbing to their own imprints tropes, right.
Speaker 3 (40:36):
Yeah, that now you could see an A twenty four
film before even you know it.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
And this is new terrain for them, while still feeling
like a film that only they would want to release. Ah,
so it's it. It makes sense again as A twenty
four and yet it's it's fresh ground for them. So
I was really appreciative.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
Yeah, oh this is a I should see this all.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
Right, man. There's show business news that just quite frankly,
is too bland to discuss. Do we want to talk
about Do we want to talk about corporate acquisitions and mergers?
Speaker 3 (41:16):
And yes? Do we want to who corporately merged with who?
Speaker 2 (41:23):
No, it was that while we're waiting on the paramount
Skydance merger, Warner Brothers Discovery split into two companies. Oh
do we care about that? They split into streaming and studios,
something called streaming and studios and then something called Global Networks.
Speaker 3 (41:44):
Oh that's ominous.
Speaker 4 (41:47):
So the studios is the actual lot the Warner Brothers locked.
I take that that's not its own company or that
is now its own company, And Discovery is their television
brands from HGTV on down right, So so it makes
sense that they'd go into two.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
Remember there was this period of time where you had studios,
and studios made stuff, they made movies and TV shows,
and then you had networks and syndicated stations and they
would show stuff. And then you had movie theaters and
you know what they would do, They would show stuff,
and the same companies did not own all those things, right,
(42:29):
Companies owned networks and syndicated stations. Companies owned studios that
made stuff, and companies owned theaters that showed stuff. And
never the twainshell.
Speaker 3 (42:41):
Meet right, that was well actually one time.
Speaker 2 (42:45):
Well, now everything's owned by the same people, by the
same conglomerates. Right, we have I think three people in
this world that own everything. So they're just kind of
swapping out. They're planning what game of risk? I don't
know what that life, the game of life. So this
(43:07):
conglomerate had already had an internal reorganization that grouped its
businesses into these headings earlier this year. Streaming and studios,
which they love because it's s ampersand s I'm sure
that's why they loved it. And global networks global network, Well,
(43:30):
a network actually implies something that's almost global in this
day and age. Right, So this last week, a bit
earlier than many expected, this Warner Brothers Discovery conglomerate announced
that the separation would become an actual split along the
(43:51):
lines of what Comcast has been doing in spinning out
its cable networks from NBC Universal and put together Comcast
and Warner Brothers Discovery. In these splits, if what I
read is true. It's a seismic reconfiguration of the US
(44:14):
media business, and again it's shocking. Well the good I'm
glad that you feel something about it, because again my question,
am I supposed to feel anything about?
Speaker 3 (44:26):
Well, a seismic shift and how we consume entertainment.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
Or how we receive it? I mean, will it This
is the question. Does it affect us at all? Does
it just affect shareholders? Is it just a way to
protect certain shareholders while telling other shareholders there's no lifeboat?
Here was the quote that was released in the in
(44:51):
the release. In the news release, by operating as two
distinct and optimized companies right now, you've used a bullshit
word that makes me not care. Is that my sphincter.
That's tightening up optimized companies in the future. By operating
as two distinct and optimized companies in the future, we
(45:13):
are empowering these iconic brands with the sharper focus and
strategic flexibility. Chat gpt wrote this.
Speaker 4 (45:25):
It all sounds completely strategic flexibility, which is.
Speaker 3 (45:29):
What I like.
Speaker 2 (45:31):
That's why you go to Pilates exactly.
Speaker 3 (45:33):
That's my strategic flexibility.
Speaker 2 (45:36):
This is the Pilates of the corporate conglomerate set okay. Again,
By operating as two distinct and optimized companies in the future,
we are empowering Wait, where's the Wei? If there's two
distinct who's the Wii?
Speaker 3 (45:56):
We the two together to make a Wii?
Speaker 2 (46:00):
Makes me, Oh, my god. And again I don't want
to be the old man who's you know? Shouting at
the storm because of pronouns. But by operating as two
distinct and optimized companies in the future, we are empowering
these iconic brands with the sharper focus and strategic flexibility
(46:21):
they need to compete most effectively in two days evolving
media landscape. In other words, we have no clue if
this will work right.
Speaker 4 (46:33):
We're just cutting half of this adrift and you're on
your own, suckers, and we are. We have the flexibility
to ignore what the hell you're doing.
Speaker 2 (46:43):
And I think you're onto something because here's then what
streaming and studios will consist of Warner Brothers Television. See
I hear the word television. I would have thought global networks, right,
but Warner Brothers Television as a no doubt a production
(47:05):
entity that makes all Warner Brothers Television product Okay, So
Warner Brothers Television, Warner Brothers Motion Picture Group. All right,
you got me there. So it's we're back to a
studio that produces movies and TV shows, right, DC Studios,
which is not really a separate studio, but it's a
(47:27):
studio that makes content based on one of their intellectual properties,
which is the DC properties. Right. HBO and HBO Max.
So now we're saying that HBO HBO Max are not
a network and a streaming service. They are more than that.
(47:48):
They are a mini major studio under themselves, right, they
are producing their own content. In addition, Okay, so uh finally,
in addition all that, the full film and television libraries,
and of course here's where a lot of the resources
that keep you afloat in the worst of times are,
(48:09):
right because you can always borrow against those libraries or
sell off those libraries.
Speaker 3 (48:14):
If you, or just show them kind of like bad revenue.
Speaker 2 (48:18):
Okay, so Global Networks, meanwhile, tell me if this sounds
as sexy or and exciting or as much of a
growth opportunity where you want to find yourself. Global networks
that's going to include pre mere entertainment. What does that
mean premier entertainment support, sports and news television brands around
(48:43):
the world. Ooh ooh, these sound like are they all
on life support? So the so this is the hospice.
Speaker 4 (48:53):
We're building a hospice for that which gets injected.
Speaker 2 (48:58):
So the television brands that these include once shiny iconic brands.
My friend DNN, TNT Sports, TNT Sports specifically not TNT
T and T Sports, which you know, one of the
most popular shows on television. Honestly, one of the best
(49:19):
long running shows on TV was Inside the NBA with
Charles Barkley, Kenny the Jet Smith, Shack O'Neill, and Ernie Johnson.
Great show. TNT Sports has no sports anymore, like they
lost the NBA this coming year to Amazon. So good
for you if you own T and T Sports, Discovery
(49:49):
top free to air channels across Europe, and digital products
such as the profitable Discovery Lust streaming service and Bleacher Report.
This is a strange amalgamation of things that it's more
(50:10):
or less and I'm being glib, and I don't mean
to be smart people who make a lot of money
or making these decisions, but it just from my first
blush reaction is all these things go together over here, right,
So this second company over here will be everything that
doesn't go in that first group, right, right, We.
Speaker 3 (50:32):
Got to categorize or who wants it?
Speaker 4 (50:35):
Who are more than likely Because at TNT Sports I
didn't even know that was a thing.
Speaker 3 (50:41):
I had no idea.
Speaker 2 (50:43):
Well, I'm glad you found out for the final hours
of it being a thing. I hate when you learn
about somebody for the first time in celebrity deaths, Dean.
Speaker 3 (50:54):
This is that equivalent.
Speaker 2 (50:56):
Oh my gosh, here's the line that I read. Legacy
Media is responding. Well, I'm glad they're responding and not reacting. Okay,
They are responding to major shifts in the business, led
by the rise of streaming and faster than anticipated decline
of linear television that has left investors confused and stock
(51:20):
prices floundering. The interesting thing is streaming has risen. How
that would be the first conversation that you know, Yes,
in terms of the amount of people who are engaged
in streaming and the amount of content that's consumed that way,
but risen as a viable economic model. Again, if you're
(51:44):
not Netflix, I don't know. I don't know if it's risen.
I know that you've killed off other revenue streams in
the name of it, right, But I don't know if
you've replaced the revenue streams, right.
Speaker 4 (51:59):
Yes, because now it's diversified so wide that one person
streaming one person's subscription to a streamer isn't necessarily your
neighbor's subscription as well. So you don't have a even
an area wide demographic, right. So I could see that
being a real problem in terms of not just investors,
(52:21):
but advertisers. Where do I where do I find that
person who's going to buy my thing?
Speaker 2 (52:29):
Yeah, so this is interesting. Comcast, who I alluded to,
expects the initiative for its cable spinoff, which will be
called Versant. I wonder maybe Mark Kersham named that it's
possible to be completed by the end of this year.
And their idea is that cable network groups like these
(52:52):
two will which still throw off significant cash and revenue.
Let's not kid ourselves. There's still is money there. It's
just that in the way of these gigantic be a myths,
it wasn't making sense. So these cable network groups could
(53:14):
merge or be acquired by buyers like private equity firms
that would manage their decline, strip it.
Speaker 3 (53:24):
Of his assets, and let it goes soaking a rain.
Speaker 2 (53:27):
Basically, so the splits are seen as likely presaging a
period of media mergers and acquisition, because isn't this the
question about legacy media? Is it really going to die out?
How much media have we said was going to die out,
(53:47):
from film to vinyl to DVDs? And it doesn't die out.
It it shrinks and settle, and then it has a market,
and the market might even grow a little bit as
people come back to it and realize, oh, there's joys
(54:09):
in this. We've joked about how certain streamers their best
numbers come when they show live adds supported program it. Yeah, right,
So the streamers have reinvented television.
Speaker 3 (54:26):
Yes, live television.
Speaker 2 (54:29):
And again, you know, everybody's freaking out about how like,
oh my god, the late night numbers for late night
talk shows and comedy shows have dwindled almost nothing, But
the amount of eyeballs that sees part of those shows
is greater than ever before. It's exponentially greater than ever before.
(54:53):
The Late show never had ten million viewers a night,
but it's got ten million individuals viewers checking out parts
of it right on TikTok and YouTube and different social
media platforms. Right, but do you have that if you
don't have the flagship.
Speaker 3 (55:13):
Well, that's a great question, right, because I can't think
of anything.
Speaker 4 (55:18):
I mean, Stephen Colbert is a great example with that
CBS as it's.
Speaker 3 (55:24):
Technical where it's airing. But I haven't watched it on CBS.
Speaker 4 (55:29):
I watched it on YouTube all the time, every morning
instead of late night, Right, So yeah, I'm up on it.
Speaker 3 (55:38):
I think it's a he's doing a wonderful job. But
you're right, if he.
Speaker 4 (55:42):
Left CBS and just had it out of a studio,
I don't know if the same number of eyes would
be seeing it.
Speaker 2 (55:50):
So I find this idea interesting. You know, private equity
firms managing the decline, but that doesn't necessarily mean stripping
it for assets and selling it off as junk. It
might literally mean let's see where it settles and then
(56:13):
let's see what kind of revenue it can generate on
what kind of models.
Speaker 4 (56:18):
When private equity butt toys r us Right, Oh no, no,
we're going to let this in and then they just
this fired sixty thousand people and ran away with all
the money.
Speaker 2 (56:29):
But I see it as kind of this possibility that
where we're heading back to is where we've been before,
which is lots and lots of small companies. What you
won't have are the giant networks maybe, but who knows,
(56:50):
maybe maybe they will. Maybe that viewership will just settle
in at a certain level and people go, yeah, this
works at this level. But you'll have more and more
smaller companies, and maybe those companies will form partnerships and
pipeline deals with other social media outlets, other distributors, what
(57:13):
have you, what have you. There's a way of looking
at that that could be a lot healthier for the
media landscape.
Speaker 4 (57:23):
As a whole, right, as opposed to under one thumb
controlling and all.
Speaker 2 (57:29):
And for messaging and for the diversity of content and
thought and expression and story.
Speaker 3 (57:36):
Yeah, all of that.
Speaker 2 (57:39):
Celebrity deaths. There's one thing about a recent celebrity, a
television grate, that we remembered and a tidbit about her
that I learned after we discussed her that I wanted
to share, and that is a Loretta swit. Yes, we
talked about not only her greatness on mash, but how
(58:02):
that greatness almost prevents you from thinking of anything else
she did because that casts such a shadow. While she
was still working on Mash, Loretta Switt starred in the
nineteen eighty one pilot for Cagney and Lacy Come On,
(58:28):
playing Detective Christine Cagney. Her contractual obligations to Mash prevented
her from continuing with the series when it was picked
up and ordered to air. Oh she never took another
starring TV role, though she had many guest appearances, like
(58:51):
we like, we talked about the original Cagney. Yeah, isn't
that fascinating? And I kind of want to see the
pilot because I gotta tell you, I bet she was great.
Speaker 3 (59:05):
Yeah, I can see it too.
Speaker 4 (59:07):
I mean I liked I watched a couple of seasons
of Cagney and Lacy with Sharon Gless.
Speaker 2 (59:13):
But Tyne Daily and yeah, I remember that. I remember
it as well.
Speaker 3 (59:18):
Yeah, they were. They had great chemistry.
Speaker 4 (59:20):
But thinking of putting the Loretta squid in there, I
could see that working. It'd be uh yeah, a little uh,
a little tougher little balls here. I think there'd be
like more little more energy in the in the dynamic
between the two of them.
Speaker 2 (59:35):
And of course her way with comedy. I wonder, I
wonder like, was there an acid wit to it that?
Speaker 4 (59:43):
Oh yes, let's look for the pilot, all right?
Speaker 2 (59:47):
A couple of musicians. Uh Andy Bay, an acclaim jazz
singer and pianists who was legendary for his four octave
vocal range, died April twenty six in Englewood, New Jersey,
at the age of eighty five. I've been sitting on
this one for a while. His impressive vocal abilities were
(01:00:09):
already gaining him wide attention by his teenage years, when
he had a band with two of his eight siblings
called Andy and the Bays Sisters. They recorded three albums
together before Andy Bay forged off on his own and
recorded both as a solo artist and in accompanying jazz
(01:00:30):
greats like Stanley Clark, Max Roach, and Horace Silver. His
range and his versatility on vocals, like I said, won
him wide acclaim because he had this ability to switch
up tones and styles and approaches with ease. Wow, never
seemed to be reaching for it. You know, he was
(01:00:53):
adept at playing almost anything in the jazz songbook and
you know, making it his own. He recorded ten albums
as a solo artist, including the two thousand and five
Grammy nominee American Song and the twenty fourteen Best Vocal
Album winner of NPR's Jazz Critics. Pull pages from an
Imaginary Life. Nah Lou Christie was a nineteen sixties singer.
(01:01:22):
I mean he's saying all his life, but in the
nineteen sixties he had such hits as Lightning Strikes Me.
Speaker 1 (01:01:29):
Maybe you gotta undiscovered the.
Speaker 3 (01:01:33):
Makings of a name. Baby, It's hard to set on times?
Am I much for you?
Speaker 2 (01:01:41):
He died June eighteenth, after a short illness in Pittsburgh
at the age of eighty two. He had a very
distinctive falsetto voice during his heyday, especially during a time
when rock and roll was beginning to take over the charts.
It it really enabled him to stand out from the crowd.
His first splash was the Gypsy Cried, followed by Two
(01:02:04):
Faces Have I, and then he hit number one in
nineteen sixty six with Lightning Strikes. He no longer had
any hits in you know by the nineteen seventies. I'm
(01:02:25):
Gonna Make You Mine was his last major hit, going
to number ten in nineteen sixty nine, but he continued
to delight audiences singing his sweet brand of love songs
in the decades that followed, and always touring to enthusiastic
crowds and was releasing new music up until twenty fifteen
when he released Summer in Malibu.
Speaker 3 (01:02:46):
Has a different connotation now, yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (01:02:48):
Know, yeah, he read the tea leaves. Yeah, finally, this
is one of the saddest celebrity deaths I think in
all these years we've been doing it that I've come across.
David Kakili Kenui Bell seemed truly to be poised for
big things. He's an actor, was an actor. He appears
(01:03:13):
in the new smash hit Lelo and Stitch, which is
doing such baffo box office around the globe. But he
died June twelfth in Kylua, Kona at the age of
forty six. When the trailer for Lelo and Stitch dropped. Yeah,
(01:03:35):
he was in it as the big Hawaiian dude. Okay,
he he has this moment in a trailer, right, and
like tell me, like, as an actor, when you know
you've got a moment in the movie that is gonna
be like trailer worthy, like that is that's a potential
(01:03:59):
to really. Okay, if my agents, my managers and everything
are on top of this, they are using this to
catapult me right, yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:04:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:04:09):
And he has a moment in the trailer when he
sees aliens that is really funny and really makes you
like see almost as if a spotlight is just shining
on him and the words character actor are jumping off
(01:04:31):
the screen at you. He he should have had Dean
like a big career here as a character actor. It
was not his first work. He'd appeared in the reboot
of Hawaii five Ozho and Magnum Pi. He worked as
a local hire there in Hawaii. He did voiceover work
(01:04:53):
and I knew who he was because he was the
brand ambassador for ConA brewing company.
Speaker 3 (01:05:01):
Oh hilarious.
Speaker 2 (01:05:03):
He was in like a series of their commercials uh
that was known as one Life. He was the voice also.
This was cool and I recognized this when we went
to Hawaii for our much delayed honeymoon Lily and I.
He's the voice of Kona International Airport. Like all the
public address announcements that's him, are this dude? Yeah? Anyway,
(01:05:28):
David Hakili Kanui Bell Yeah, like I.
Speaker 3 (01:05:34):
Did forty six. What was the cause of death?
Speaker 2 (01:05:36):
I don't know. I worry that you know, he was
a very very big guy.
Speaker 3 (01:05:42):
Oh and uh the heart.
Speaker 2 (01:05:45):
Yeah. I pray that Kona Brewing didn't have anything to
do with it. The drinking a lot of beer isn't
a problem, is it deed?
Speaker 3 (01:05:55):
Oh I don't think.
Speaker 2 (01:05:56):
So, Belee did.
Speaker 1 (01:05:58):
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