November 20, 2025 • 62 mins
Wire into the dystopian world of Kathryn Bigelow's "Strange Days" with our latest review. We explore the film's ambitious narrative, technical wizardry, and its reflection of 90s societal angst. From groundbreaking POV shots to its complex themes, this episode unpacks why "Strange Days" remains a compelling watch.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to the ned Palty.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Welcome back to the House of Bigelow, the latest ongoing
series in house Lights where we examine the work of directors,
and this time it's Catherine Bigelow and we are working
through her oove, her list, her filmography, and we come
to nineteen ninety five's Strange Days. I am one of
your humble hosts, your blackjack dealer for the little sony
(00:44):
mini disc that goes on top of your head, John
quote unquote Lenny Mills, and I am joined by the
virtuous police commissioner who kicked me off of the forest,
Darren Moser, and my suspiciously long haired best friend Tristan Riddell.
Welcome you both to this look at the future from
the past, Catherine Bigelow's giant epic Strange Days from nineteen
(01:09):
ninety five, boasting an all star cast. And I'm going
to go right off the bat. I'm going to jump
right in. Usually we talk about first time seeing it,
those sorts of things, and Darren, I know this was
your first time seeing it, but I will throw the
first question to you. How disorienting is it to watch
something from decades ago postulating on a future? Four years
(01:31):
from when it was set. That's now thirty years behind us.
And how far off do you think that it was
in its predictions?
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Oh so you know eight questions. Okay, that's good. Yes, No,
I think I will give it. As far as like
the tech and the sci fi element of you know,
the squid and the technology. I liked that they kept
it at one thing. They're like, this is a single
piece of technology. If they can get you on board
with that, it's part of the story. But it's not
(02:01):
like and we also have this and you know these
other pieces of technology that don't exist. So I was
happy with the conservativeness of that prediction. Also, I think
Catherine talked about how she was not inspired is probably
(02:22):
the wrong word, but influenced by the Rodney King riots
in Los Angeles, because boy, every shot of the street
in LA is like, why are you out of your house?
This is like a war zone. It's worse than RoboCop
three war zone. And that's you know, even stretching it.
(02:42):
So all that to say, you know, I didn't mind
it being set in ninety nine watching it from twenty
plus years in the future, because I don't think it
was really taking a giant leap. Yeah, the Riots is
you know, a bit star Trek's taken more leaps in
(03:03):
the future, you know, with their prediction of the late
nineties than this movie did. Like it was actually very grounded.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
That's fair, that's fair. Tristan. Do you think that looking
at this movie, especially through the lens of now, that
you see some of the angst that people were starting
to feel as early as nineteen ninety five about the
turn of the millennium.
Speaker 4 (03:24):
I don't think it was necessarily the angst of the
turn of the millennium, more so the angst of being
in a post Rodney King worldly. I really do believe that,
like when you're watching it, like you know, Darren was
talking about, like even when you look at the streets
and how it's shot and where they shoot in Los
Angeles is very much evocative of the riots could happen
(03:47):
in any time, you know, the incitement could happen like this.
The city is a powder keg, and so I think
it was kind of odd to make it about the
turn of the century, about to make it, you know,
like two thousand. I don't think that was really necessary.
(04:07):
I really don't like that was one thing that kind
of stuck out to me as odd was that that
was a focal point, because I don't think you needed
that at all. I mean, like, if you wanted to
make it New Year's, sure, you know, make it New
Year's But the the whole in the world New Millennium thing,
(04:28):
it felt a little out of place, where the rest
of it felt very in vibe with the time. And
it's how what was that? Oh jeez, what was that
movie that we that we reviewed where oh it is
Predator too? Yeah, yeah, Predator too. Like you could tell
like this, like it's it's this this phobia, it's this
(04:50):
this nervousness of how things are only going to get worse.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I like the way you
phrase that, because I think that there is definitely a vibe,
but it seems to come from people who are living
closer to LA at the time than other cities necessarily.
I mean, New York went through its post apocalyptic thing
in the eighties Escape from New York The Warriors, which
(05:17):
was seventy nine, but whatever, you get my point, Like
New York had gone through its post apocalyptic thing, and
then it seems like the nineties were LA's post apocalyptic
vision of the world, whereas you know, a lot of
other movies in the nineties were a lot more fun
and care free. Like it's interesting, it almost seems like
it's a regional concern, not concerned. I'm not diminishing it.
I'm saying like, La seems to be where things were
(05:40):
really focused. Because you mentioned Predator too and then this film.
But Darren to what Tristan is talking about, do you
think that this film from the outset is adequately structured
to deal with all of the themes that he just
went through, the racial anxiety, the future anxiety, the military,
(06:02):
police dating. Like, there's a lot going on in this
movie about the world. Is it structured in such a
way that that supports that.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
Yeah, it's definitely swinging for the fences in what it's
trying to accomplish. It's almost like it takes all this
time to set up this big narrative again, you know,
when talking about the riots, the fact that in the
background of every shot there's like tanks and squads of
(06:31):
you know, police with riot shields, And it's almost jarring
because I'm like, why are people going about their lives
like that? Doesn't make any sense that there aren't. There
isn't a group of people cowering. But then it tries
to tell this tiny story that tells takes place in
like a city block, and I'm like, Okay, are you
(06:54):
telling the big story? Are you telling the little story?
And not that you can't create the world, Like obviously
that's important, but yeah, at the end of the day,
I don't even know. I guess with more thought, I
could probably suss it out. But nothing really struck me
(07:14):
as oh, this is the message of the movie, you know,
because it's trying at all these different ways, you know,
talking about the cops, talking about race, talking about you know, inequality.
You know, they have little spiels about nothing's going to
get better. I guess I would say that's it. It's
(07:36):
nothing is going to get better, so give what you
can while you can. Like that is kind of the
underlying theme of many of these characters.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Okay, I think that I think that's a fair way
to approach it. But you know, with the way that
it opens, it's very jarring, like you're instantly thrown into
that first person peron perspective sort of camera work where
you're experiencing what it would be like to watch one
(08:06):
of these experiences with the rig on your head, and
Bigelow and her director of photography actually pioneered a different
kind of rig so that they could get something more
like eye movement of what it would be like to
be in that first person perspective, like I would think
back to if you look back at a film like
(08:29):
John Carpenter's Halloween that very famously opens with the first
person perspective of Michael Myers as a kid, you can
tell that it's a camera with somebody reaching from just
off and stuff like that.
Speaker 4 (08:42):
There's some distortion.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
Tristan, do you think that this represents a leap in
terms of how the first person perspective stuff is shot
or do you like, do you think that this is
an unrecognized leap forward or do you think that this
is just good for the equipment of the time.
Speaker 4 (09:03):
This was an unrecognized leap forward, and you could really
tell that you needed someone like Bigelow and Cameron behind
the scenes in order to get this to happen. You
needed innovative minds like them in order to make it happen.
And it's it's true, like while I was watching it,
I had to double check the date because this was
(09:25):
phenomenal POV because there's there's so many movies before and
so many after where the POV is just shaky cam.
You know, it's just first person shaky camp. That's all
it is. And that's fine if that's what you want
to go, or you have like a chest mount where
like that. That happens a lot. It's kind of like
the reverse of that, almost said Stanley Spike Lee shot
(09:49):
where you know, like he has the chest rig and
it shows the camera pointed at the person's face and
so their face is centered in the frame and so
the background is moving all like crazy. It's you know,
like there's some you know, cinematographers who do the reverse
of that, where it's just a chest cam and the
camera's rigged in front, and then it's it's like really
stilted and it's kind of like wobbly back and forth,
(10:11):
but not in a natural way. This was done where
you could see it as eyes darting left and right
up and down diagonal and it was much more fluid
without being floaty. And that is a really really hard
line to walk, and this really pulled it off, and
I applaud it and the cinematographer and Bigelow and cameraon
(10:34):
for being able to develop that. And I kept looking
online to see a picture of the rig and I
can't find it.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
I know, I kind of want to see that. I mean,
I'm reading what did they say multifaceted cameras, and I'm.
Speaker 4 (10:48):
Like, what does that mean?
Speaker 3 (10:49):
Like I want to see a picture, because you're right,
it wasn't just a lockdown, straightforward shot. It had eye movement,
but you have to be very subtle on that because
if you're darting around the viewers getting nauseous. And while
I could see, you know, where the cuts were in
(11:10):
some of the sequences, they were very well hidden, like
you know, like stumbling and looking left really quickly, I'm like, oh,
there's obviously a little cut there. But it didn't ever
take me out of it. It was always a well
done transition because obviously they're shooting on film still at
this point, so it's a tiny camera that Yeah, it
was loud as hell, you know rank eight.
Speaker 4 (11:33):
Oh sorry I didn't mean to cut you off, but yeah,
it was an eight pound, thirty five millimeter camera that
you could put in front of you. That's amazing. And
but the thing is like you said, Darren, it was
so loud that they actually couldn't record any audio, so
they had to for the opening scene, they had to
redub everything, They had to adr everything in post.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
Oh yeah, because if anyone's heard a camera right next
to a microphone, it sounds like helicopter taking off. It's
really load, especially if you're trying to get a certain
sort of frame rate.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
You know, I'm going to ask you this question first, Aaron.
You know, obviously I never wanted any sort of like
school for it. I can, you know, break things apart.
I've seen lots of film, I've had discussions with people,
but you're talking about the technical stuff there with Tristan.
Do you see this first person camera work that's going
on here and you understand the technical challenges they overcame.
(12:30):
Do you see modern cinema benefiting from digital? Like, is
this film so far ahead of its time that it
would have been easier and better to shoot it now
then back then?
Speaker 3 (12:45):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (12:45):
Definitely.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
I mean nowadays you would strap a GoPro or an
iPhone and you have something that's a fraction of the
weight and is silent. So yeah, the fact that they
did it, you know, I didn't think about it until
after finishing the movie, but then thinking about the point
of viewshot, I was like, oh, well, Cameron worked on
(13:07):
this of course, Like of anyone in this era who
would be like, we're gonna make this cool movie, but
we're also going to have to spend a year of
R and D making a unique camera to pull it off.
There's one person on that list who would pull who
would do that, and that's James Cameron. So but yeah, nowadays,
(13:27):
or I think of you could also shoot it with
the A three sixty camera and then later edit in
the motion of the eye movement because you're capturing the
entire frame. But it's finding that balance between a wide
angle lens, which we all know what that looks like,
and that's usually what POV was is get the camera
(13:49):
as close to the face as possible and really widen
it out, because that's the trick about our human perception
is we kind of have a mix of peripheral that
we're not paying attention to, but we kind of intrinsically
see and our telephoto focus in front of us, and
then we can swing that focus around. But in a
(14:12):
movie camera, you it's all or nothing. It's everything is
the focus. So but yeah, props more props to them
for making it in the nineties than in the twentyands
or twenty tens.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
But Tristan, do you see modern filmmakers pulling this off
as well? Do you think that we like Bigelow pulls
off these first person perspective shots. Do you think that
the limitations of the technology back then made these shots
better because they had to plan them so significantly to
(14:46):
get them to go right.
Speaker 4 (14:47):
Probably definitely With that second question, I think definitely. Like
when you it's interesting because like when you compare digital
editing to analog editing editing where you know when back
in like when you were Spielberg often talked about the
differences between making Jaws and making something like Minority Report
(15:08):
or Later, where you know, when you're making Jaws, it
takes you like fifteen minutes to cut a like a
to make a cut, and so you have to really
really figure out if that's where you want to cut,
Like is this where you want to cut the scene?
Is this where you want to cut the shot? You
really got to think about it because it's going to
(15:29):
take you a while. Fifteen minutes is an exaggeration, but
you know, in a you know, in digital filmmaking, on
just a computer, you make that cut, you can do
it fifteen different ways in a minute, and so when
you're prepping a shot like this, or when you're prepping technology,
you have to really make figure out what it looks like.
(15:51):
And I feel like with digital filmmaking, one of the
drawbacks is also one of the advantages is that you're like, oh, well,
we can get it like this fifteen different ways and
just figure it out later, like with the three sixty camp.
That's a great idea, Darren. But at the same time,
you're just you're getting all the information so you can
decide later instead of you know, deciding on set, which
(16:11):
again has its advantages and has its disadvantages. And so
I feel like Soderberg does POV really well, especially with
his latest film Presence. You know, that's all POV of
a ghost, and so it's really floaty and it's really
you know, like kind of ambient, and so it's not
(16:32):
like this at all. But you know, you know, he
famously utilizes the iPhone in a very specific type way,
and he uses it in ways that you couldn't use
a normal thirty eight millimeter camera or even a regular
digital camera because it's so thin and you can put
it in different places. But like if you look at
I know this is a glaring example, but the Doom
(16:54):
movie with the Rock, not Dwayne Johnson, the Rock, you know,
a lot of that was POV and it was It
was weird because they were trying to go for a
video game feel, but yet it was nauseating and with
strange days, you could easily make the argument, oh, it
feels like a video game, but it doesn't. Like just
because it's first person doesn't mean it feels like a
(17:15):
video game. It feels like you're actually in it, which
was the point.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
So, Darren, with all of the technical stuff that we
spent so long talking about, which is easy to you know,
it's a rabbit hole to go down, this is your
first time watching it, do you think that they spent
more time developing the tech than developing the script or
did they find the right balance.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
It's not a bad balance. I think the times that
we do use the POV shot, it's not every frame,
it's not every shot that's used sparingly for the narrative.
I think I will give them that. I don't feel like, oh,
look another POV and it's like thirty minutes and boy,
you know, why are we in this? It makes me
(18:01):
kind of think of what was it final cut that
Robin Williams weird?
Speaker 4 (18:09):
I remember that one man, That's a weird movie.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
The only thing I loved about that movie was is
like editing station, because it was just like every editor's
nerd dream of, like just conducting your edit basically with
giant wheels and tumblers. But in the cutter, Yeah, I
was a bit of a nerd and wanted to call
myself that in editing school, but nobody got on board.
So I would have called you that, Tristan. If you
(18:36):
had called me, we would have been bros.
Speaker 4 (18:38):
But I get you, man, I get it.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
But no, in strange days, yeah it. You know, this
is a nineties movie. It feels like a nineties movie.
It feels the kind of movies where we interact with
people and you know, down on your luck, just trying
to get through another night, you know, running the streets,
(19:02):
and but also with my cool piece of future tech
that sits on your head. And but I liked it.
I liked the overall story. We spend a ton of time,
you know, with you know, with Lenny. You know, we
know it's his story. There's no protagonist confusion, dear lord,
(19:24):
there's you know, it's all about him and trying to
come through this, you know, a short amount of time.
It's like only two or three nights that were actually
experiencing of his life. So all that to say, I
enjoyed the story. I enjoyed the characterization and the plot,
(19:46):
but it's also just, you know, it's a it's kind
of a B movie as so far as like there's
nothing that's shocking me or rocking me or you know,
oh I got to watch that again. And we've we've
talked a lot about movies that pull it off in
the last act and you're like, oh, I'm ready for more.
(20:08):
And not that this saidn't have a good last act,
but it just it was kind of like big budget
TV movie vibe, you know, like it had a lot
of money behind it. It had some amazing shots. I'm
still amazed by the helicopter shot of downtown Los Angeles
(20:29):
at night where they panned down and there's a crowd
of like ten thousand people, which apparently there were. I'm
assuming the other shots must have been a model or something.
But that shot just totally blew me over. But that
was my overall vibe. I would say with the story.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Tristan, given the complexity of the story, you're coming back,
you were revisiting it. I don't know what you thought
of it the first time you saw it.
Speaker 4 (20:57):
But taking the first time I saw Oh, this was.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
The first time you saw it. Oh, I'm so sorry.
I thought that I thought you had seen this before.
Speaker 4 (21:05):
Nope, not at all. Oh, my day, it was the
first day.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
So given that fact that you're coming in and you're
seeing this for the first time, Like Darren, same question
to you, do you think that they spent so much
time on the tech that they should have spent more
time leaning the script down, you know, narrowing the focus.
Speaker 4 (21:23):
No, no, I love the script. I thought that was
one of the best things about the movie was the script.
I think this was I think Jay Cox did a
fantastic job with writing the dialogue. I feel like I
wish all James Cameron screenplays were like this, where he
would he would take the story. It's a it's a
(21:44):
James Cameron story, you know, with input from Catherine Bigelow.
He writes a treatment and he writes out the story beats,
he writes the treatment, and then let somebody else do
the dialogue. That is exactly how a James Cameron film
should go. And I think Jay Cox just he nailed
the noir and the cyberpunk vibe and Lenny's. Lenny's verbiage
(22:11):
is so perfect that it's shocking, Like the just the
language is so unique and different, and there's so many
different pronouns and unique words that are repurposed and reused
for this age and for this applicable world and technology
(22:31):
that it felt so effortless coming from Ray Fines's mouth.
And so I feel like it's a combination of Jaycox's
words read by or I should say, recited by Ray Fines,
directed by Catherine Bigelow. You know, Like, I think probably
my main complaint is that it should be shorter. It
should be trimmed down a little bit, like there is fat,
(22:54):
There is fat there there it should be compacted, because
I think I get when you get to the ninety
minute mark. I'm not saying it should have ended at
ninety minutes, but like you look at your watch and
you're like, I have forty five more minutes. Good, Actually
more than that at that point, like you have almost
an hour more. That's insane. It's too long, it's too long.
(23:16):
But the script itself is solid.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
Yeah, I want to echo that for a sci fi movie,
and I'll say that because of the technology. I mean,
obviously it's like ninety percent not sci fi, but for
the sci fi elements. It is really really hard to
introduce a new technology to your viewers and give it
(23:40):
slang and have it not sound atrocious. It is really
really hard. And this movie I grew Tristan, it nailed it.
The way they delivered lines of like oh, I deal
with like blackouts and you know, just like you're like, oh,
he means a video about someone killing themselves. Like he
didn't have to explain it and have to draw it out.
(24:02):
And there was not a ton of slang. There was
maybe ten phrases throughout the whole movie, but they were
all around the technology and things like that. But they worked.
They worked really well, and they felt like even their
explanation where they're like, oh, yeah, this was developed by
the FBI as a replacement for the wire and then
of course it went underground. I'm like, I'm sold, you've
(24:23):
sold me. I believe that this technology exists and that
there's obviously people who use it for nefarious means. But yeah,
the with the with the length and what Tristan said,
you know, Filo being the villain. You know, I felt
like we should have really only seen him at the end,
(24:45):
the fact that we kind of interacted with him, met him,
and then left, and then we came and saw him again,
and then we saw him a third time, Like there
wasn't really a build up because he was only what
he was every time.
Speaker 4 (24:58):
I'm gonna I'm gonna stop you right there, because I
never advocate for less Michael Wincott, and so I'm just
gonna have to say, uh, that's a noe for me.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
Michael Wincott was great, I'm not denying that.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
But the thing I loved was that Michael Wincott playing
Filo is a natural extension of him playing Paul Rothschild,
a music producer in Oliver Stones the Doors, another movie
that we've covered here on House Lights. So I'm like, well,
this is a natural progression for his career.
Speaker 4 (25:25):
It's crazy and this is not an insult to Wincott whatsoever.
But there was more than a few times that I
heard his character from Robin Hood as as a sheriff
of Nottingham's cousin. There's just a few lines where like
he just delivered it and he's like, why spoon cousin?
You know this is I don't know.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
That's that's very fair, that's very fair.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
But I kept hearing the County Mine of Crystal role,
like of him as the the head of the Shadow Deef,
Like I was like, you're you're just slimy. You're not
a good person. I can tell.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
As bread as butters exactly. Michael Wincott is a guy
who was completely comfortable being type cast through his whole career,
where he was like yeah, okay, fine, I got the voice.
Speaker 4 (26:10):
I was really surprised in Nope, like his character and Nope, I.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
Never saw that.
Speaker 4 (26:17):
I never saw it wasn't slimy at all. He was
one of the good guys. And I was just like disorienting,
that's really.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
Gary Oleman and you're like, but you're the goody Okay that.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
That would be yeah, that would be like finding out
that uh yeah. There are so many different actors you
could bring in where it's like when they play the
good guy, you're like, wait, what what this doesn't make
any sense. But given that statement, this doesn't make any sense.
And you know that the shine we're giving to the
script and the way that things are handled. Is there
(26:53):
anything in this Tristan that didn't make sense to you?
Is there anything where when they were explaining it with
exposition late or anything where you're like, well, wait a minute,
what about that? Like, was there anything that didn't line
up for you? Or do you think that everything is
successful in terms of tying together cleanly?
Speaker 4 (27:11):
I wouldn't say that there's anything that didn't make sense.
I think there were certain things that might have been
overly complicated here or there. Because when Tom Sizemore's character
max like, this is one thing I really hate about
movies and books do this too a lot like mystery
books or murder books and everything like that. It's just
(27:32):
like ten pages before it's over, the bad guy explains
literally everything, and it can be exhausting, where like we
don't like, you don't over explain the desk squads, And
I think it's insult to injury when we start doing
(27:53):
flashbacks to remind the audience that like, oh no, this
actually did happen, and you know they're not just talking
about it now, we layered it. You know, like I
feel like that there were certain things I know that
doesn't really I kind of took this question to do
a different example, but like that was something where there
were certain things that Max was talking about that might
have been overly complicated but not confusing.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
Darren, I want to throw that to you though. Do
you think that the use of flashback at the end
when explanations are being given is almost an accidental admission
that the movie has gone on too long because they realize, oh,
it's been so long since we talked about that, we'd
better show the shot so that people remember.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
Yeah, it's not the strongest narrative take. It's also how
do you show a flashback in a movie specifically about
POV which also has to look different? So you've already
kind of used that trick. So because technically all the
povs are flashbacks if you think about it, they're previous
(29:00):
events that have already occurred, So I would have been
really cautious about using a flashback tool as well. I
think it could have done without. But I mean I
said this, I saw this through one sitting, so I
didn't feel the need for that much of a reminder,
(29:21):
that much of a tap on the shoulder of yeah,
we're don't forget when I like, I said that twenty
minutes ago where it was. Although I will say with
Max's character from early on, I was like, so, when's
he going to betray us? Like it was too much
of a why is this guy on the story if
he's not gonna either die or betray us in the end,
(29:46):
And so I was not surprised that it was Max
in the end.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
I'll say, for me, that's the Michael Wincott principle, because
when Tom Sizemore walks on screen, I just don't trust him.
I'm like, all right, fine, like it was, that was
that's a great example of Tom. Take Tom size and
put him in a movie where he doesn't betray anybody
Blackhawk down. I was like, oh, oh, okay, all right,
he's he's okay through the whole thing. Okay, cool, cool, cool,
cool cool. He's an okay guy. So, with all of
(30:13):
the all of the praise that we've given it so far, Tristan,
why do you think that this movie has such trouble
finding an audience in nineteen ninety five? There are so
many different factors. And you know you can Monday Morning
Quarterback everything to death. But honest question, is it the length,
(30:35):
is it the subject matter? Is it just wrong time
to be talking about this or people not ready for it?
Why do people have such a hard time with this
movie that it winds up being a bomb on the
scale that people refer to it as almost ending Bigelow's career.
Speaker 4 (30:52):
Yeah, I think it's It's definitely multiple factors. I would
love to know what kind of budget they put behind
it in marketing, A.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Lot of mix as somebody who was old enough to
really it. Oh my god, they I remember how much
they put behind this. In terms of talking the visionary
new film. This is a like there was a there
was a trailer for it that was a specific callback
to American Jigglow with Richard Gear, which was a Touchstone
(31:23):
movie from the seventies where Ray Findes is talking to
the screen, talking you into you know, he's doing his
sales pitch to you. You know, have you ever tuned in?
Have you ever jacked in? Have you ever experienced? And
like it has all of these words going on the screen.
It was a really memorable commercial. Obviously to the point
where my friends and I started making fun of it
(31:43):
because you saw it everywhere, and you saw the trailer everywhere.
Fox really went into this. They were really trying to
make this a thing. As I recall it, like because
you know, I was going to a lot of movies
in ninety five and I saw this trailer a lot,
and I saw a lot of press behind this, So
I can tell you that they did not sleep on this.
(32:04):
This was not quietly marketed and it was actually it
was actually when on video, as I recall, it was
part of like the Fox Special series where they tried
to explain letterboxing to everybody. There were these special clamshell
cases that they had. Independence Day was part of that
push and everything like that.
Speaker 4 (32:23):
I had that one. Yeah, yeah, Stargate yep, Yes, I
was on there too. Yeah, this was That's really interesting
to know because I in ninety five, I wouldn't have
been that aware of it, of what was going on
in marketing around it and everything like that, because I
knew nothing about this movie going into it, absolutely nothing.
(32:45):
I knew nothing about the story, I knew nothing about
the characters. I remember seeing a poster maybe in Blockbuster,
and that's it. I didn't know it was cyberpunk. I
didn't know it was noir. I didn't know it involved
technology that doesn't exist, none of that, none of that.
Even today, when I watched it, I went into it
just knowing it was a Catherine Bigelow film. That's literally it.
(33:10):
And so I'm kind of, oh, yes, okay, your question
was why did it fail? So I think this is
this is a hard movie. I'm very surprised, like with
that much marketing behind it, that they didn't force it
to be two hours or under two hours. I'm really
surprised because you know that when you're two and a
(33:31):
half hours, that severely limits the amount of showings that
you can have yep, during the day. And the nineties
were huge on that with like keeping it shorter and
not expanding too much, Like, especially with a movie that
has action in it like this one. Does you know,
you'd think you'd want to keep it tight, and I do.
And then you know, as I mentioned earlier, that's one
of my criticisms of this film, this is this is
(33:56):
a hard R and this was hard R in the nineties.
I mean even when you know, like even in the
twenty tens, when hard R films were coming out. It's
it was hard to market, like there's still a risk
of how much money, Like you know, like do our
rated movies make money? Of course they do. But if
(34:16):
you want a broader audience, you go to PG thirteen.
That's just standard. That's just how it works. Is there
exceptions to every rule, of course there is. But this
one is not just art. It's hard art. It has
sexual assault, graphic graphic sexual assault.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
Really uncomfortable to watch see.
Speaker 4 (34:37):
It's POV graphic sexual assault. And also like Juliet Lewis's
nipples are in it almost as much as she is,
and so you can't put it on TV later on,
you know, like you can't syndicate it. And and also
like it's also it's dealing with hard themes. It's very nihilistic.
(35:01):
This movie is very nihilistic, and you know, like you
dealing with Jericho one, it hits really close to home
on purpose, and a lot of people don't want to
be reminded of that. They don't want to be reminded
of that. And it's it's the movie. It's not a
feel good movie. It's hard are it's hard to market
(35:22):
internationally in certain countries, and you have lingo that doesn't
make sense to a lot of people. There's a buy
in that you need to get and it's just, yeah,
I can see there's a million ways this could have
gone wrong, and it did. This is this movie is
not a slam dunk. And that's not a knock on
the quality. It's just it's hard to market because you
(35:46):
want you want to, you want to market for them,
you want to aim high, but market to the middle.
That Strange Days is not a movie that you can
do that with Darren?
Speaker 2 (35:55):
Do you think that because this came out in October,
which is not exactly like, that's not blockbuster season, and
it's not awards season. Awards season December, right, it's not
dump off season. Do you think this movie finds more
purchase if they release it during what we always traditionally
referred to as award season, which is closer to Christmas time,
(36:19):
where you know that the movie you're going to see
is about the prestige, it's about the awards, it's about
the Oscar nomination. Do you think they recoup some of
the some of the marketing, maybe not monetarily, but they
make it more of a a an awards a Prestige
(36:40):
Elite discussion releasing it in December.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
Maybe, I mean yeah, because you could also release it
in December and angle it in your promotion as a
New Year's movie, because New Year's is really not that
much farther after, you know, Christmas. You know, I I
would try if I had a hand behind my back
and had to, you know, I could say, yeah, push
(37:06):
it into December, but lean into the millennium New Year's Eve,
you know, on New Year's Eve. I mean, I'm sure
that wasn't the trailer. I'm sure that was a major
cornerstone of the marketing, but uh yeah, it it's a
hard cell though, I mean, to all the points that
Tristan said, and it's not the kind of movie that
(37:28):
has a gotcha twist or something that you would be like, oh,
I really enjoyed this because of X, I'm going to
get my friends to come see it with me again.
Like it just it doesn't have that thing. I think.
I think this is a if you enjoy it, you
enjoyed it once. So maybe it's it's not the kind
(37:51):
of movie that gets the repeat view, and that coupled
with the hard r and the you know, I mean,
I don't know how much they spell that out in
the mid nineties.
Speaker 2 (38:01):
I know later.
Speaker 3 (38:03):
They would have trailers and it would say, you know,
at the bottom like art, you know, are because of X,
you know because of now.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
To No, so spell that out back then, which I.
Speaker 3 (38:14):
Liked it when they started doing that, because you know,
as we've all said, Are is a sliding scale. I
mean Point Break was ore, but not in the same
way as this one was.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
So that's true, That's very, very true because Point Break,
you know, Tristan, is it disorienting to come to this
movie from Bigelow where you go from Point Break, which
is sort of a it's a very light thing like
Point Break does what is that really saying? It's just
a it happens and it's an event and it's fun.
(38:47):
It's sort of a pulp movie. I would contend that
this is the first movie we've seen from Bigelow that's
actually saying something, a lot of something, maybe not as
clearly as it wants to, but it's saying something. Do
you think that this is a significant step forward for
Bigelow as a director as we examine her works, Do
(39:09):
you think this is a you know, that important leap
forward for her where she's found her voice, She's found,
regardless of success, how she wants to tell a story.
Speaker 4 (39:23):
I feel like this is the first film that I've
seen of Catherine Bigelow so far where I'm just like, Okay,
that was ambitious. I can see what you're doing. I
can see what you're going for. She got some really
great performances out of rape Fines and size More and Lewis.
(39:46):
Angela Bassett, who is a phenomenal actress. I felt like
probably was the weakest in this movie.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
That's fascinating. I'm going to stop you right there, because
Angela Bassett is the one that everybody always points to
as love her in this film. Break that down for me.
You think that of the four names that you just dropped,
she feels the most out of place. Do you think
that she's the most uncomfortable with the material?
Speaker 4 (40:12):
I just I don't know what. I don't know how
to put my finger on it, because I remember, like
the most recent example is Black Panther two, where you
are blown away by her performance. And did she win
Did she win the Oscar for that? I can't remember.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
Yeah, I don't think so she should have.
Speaker 4 (40:35):
Because like it's not just that wasn't just a great
performance for a comic book movie. That was a great
performance like she was for a movie that was severely
lacking Chadwick Boseman. She made it harder than it could
have been to miss him. And everybody knows what I'm
(40:55):
trying to say. There I'm fumbling it, but everybody knows
what I'm trying to say. And so she's phenomenal actress
and she's done some really great things, but for some
reason in this movie, I really like her character. But
there's certain times that she delivers her lines pretty stilted
and unlike Bassett, and where you don't always believe what's
(41:17):
coming out of her mouth. And I feel like they
were laying it on pretty thick with the relationship between
Lenny and Mace, where there are certain times when I
was just like, oh, that could have been a little
bit that could have been done more subtly or more subtle,
And I feel like Bassett was one of the reasons
(41:38):
why I was like, you're broadcasting your feelings instead of
making me feel it.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
So you're saying you're saying you're like Bender, or I'm sorry,
not like Bender, You're like the robot devil, the Robot Devil.
Where you can't you can't have characters just saying how
they feel. That makes me angry. God, do you know
what really kills me? Like is that her saying Lennear,
your life is happening right here, right now. That that
(42:06):
was sampled for the Fat Boy Slim song right here,
right now.
Speaker 3 (42:09):
I was I was pretty sure it was. I'm like,
that sounds just like the song, oh, because that's an
amazing song.
Speaker 4 (42:19):
And to note that it's Angela Bassett saying it like
all weirded out and moused up and everything.
Speaker 3 (42:23):
There was another line that I felt was sampled too,
somewhere else in this movie, but I don't know definitely
that one.
Speaker 4 (42:30):
Yeah, but it's it's like Darren, I, I'll let you continue.
But it's just, yeah, it's not like she killed it.
It's not like she did a poor job. It was
just I think, standing up against all these other people
who did great jobs in Bassett, who is a phenomenal actress,
doing something that I felt she felt out of place
mixed in with everybody else.
Speaker 3 (42:51):
Yeah, I was just gonna say. She was nominated for
Best Supporting for the Academy, did not win, but one
in many other Awards shows and in category so to
no surprise for Wakanda. Yeah, I will say that was
the only thing, and I think it ties in to
(43:11):
Angela Bess, it's to Mace's character. Is it was almost
sidekick confusion. You know, we've talked about protagonist confusion as
so far as you know, I think if they had
made a small tweak of the two of them are
together from the get go, like obviously she joins in
(43:34):
the story very quickly, but if this story had been
I have no car, so I have to ride around
in the back of my friend's limo as she picks
up people, and she doesn't like that I'm hustling them.
But we have this kind of friendship, but we're always
keeping each other safe on the streets, like we didn't
get but instead they're trying for the lone noir figure
(43:57):
riding around in his car doing his business. But then
it immediately translates into this you know, buddy story, I say, loosely,
but you know, so all that to say, I think
that was a bit of not confusion, but just contemplation
on her character where she's there and in times she's
(44:19):
used a lot and in times she's basically set dressing
to get him around. And yeah, not the not the
strongest of characters. Nothing to her acting, but and it's
also decades earlier in her career. You know she she
can progress well, I mean that ability.
Speaker 2 (44:37):
She came right off of filming What's Love Got to
Do With It? The Tina Turner biopic, and so like
that once she got a lot to shine on and
then she comes to this. You know, there were there
was heat on her whereas like, oh, Angela Bassett, who
you all love from What's Love Got to Do With It?
(44:58):
Is in this movie and it still didn't find an
audience as a result. And I think that some of
the stuff that makes it feel very much like a
nineties movie. And Tristan, I'll throw this out to you.
Do you think that the movie is trying too hard
at times to make itself marketable in the way that
(45:19):
nineties movies did, like The Crow and other films, by
having musical scenes where it was like, look, kids, we
have cool music club scenes going on in here. Because
you talk about making the movie shorter, I'm like, there
are plenty of things where I would have just yeah,
I don't need to see somebody singing a song. It's fine,
(45:41):
it's fine.
Speaker 4 (45:42):
Yeah, they definitely could have trimmed that down. And I
was really impressed with Juliet Lewis singing her own vocals,
and I actually really enjoyed what she was doing.
Speaker 2 (45:51):
Covering a Pga Harvey song No Less, which is yeah, yeah,
all right, coming to play.
Speaker 4 (45:57):
And of course you have, you know, the Doors song
Strange Day No, which.
Speaker 2 (46:01):
Is no no. You said that on purpose to make
me angry. That is a terrible cover. It's awful. It
should be stricken from the record. Go back, make a
Strange Day special edition where you play the actual song.
Speaker 4 (46:16):
Hey, who's playing the drums? Who is playing the drums?
No cover? I know who is playing the drums on
that cover.
Speaker 2 (46:21):
I don't care if Jesus was playing the drums on
that cover doesn't count, not at all.
Speaker 4 (46:26):
No, Okay, you heard it. You heard it here, folks
on House Slights that even though the Doors were playing
the drums, it's not a Doors song because it.
Speaker 2 (46:35):
Was ray and Xeric. It was ray Man Xeric. It
was keyboards. Okay, it wasn't excuse me, keyboards, excuse me done, keyboards.
There you go, you just further invalidated your take. Done
with you, But yes, that could have been that could
have been trimmed down. But at the same time.
Speaker 4 (46:51):
It didn't feel like, oh, we're making this hip and
marketable because we're putting this music in. It really felt
like this is the vibe of the movie. I know
we keep saying that word and I hate using that word,
but it's so applicable with this movie.
Speaker 2 (47:05):
We're being hip like the kids by stand vibe. That's
what we're doing. It's it's giving music video. How about that?
Speaker 4 (47:14):
How about that? Yeah, it's just like I think that's
definitely something that we could have trimmed down because it
did go on a little bit. I was just like, oh, okay,
cool selling Jesus really great song and we're still going
and we're still going and we're still and we're done. Okay,
still happening. It's still happening. Yeah, So yes, but I
really enjoyed it, Like this is one of those I mean, oh, man,
(47:36):
I missed the nineties. I missed the nineties music so bad, and.
Speaker 2 (47:40):
So I condies music was pretty awesome. You lived through
and it was pretty pretty great.
Speaker 4 (47:45):
We're pretty kids today. I have no idea what you're
missing none at all, freaking with.
Speaker 2 (47:49):
Your producers and your tailor swift and all of those things.
You don't know what you're missing. You don't know what
you're missing. Yeah, so all right, So speaking of music, though, Darren,
we have the music that's uh, that's a character of
its own in here, but you also have technically a
score from Graham Revel. Is there anything memorable from the
score for you?
Speaker 3 (48:12):
I mean there was. I think there was one moment
where what did they talk about the difference between real
life or and movies or not real life? It was
talking about the playback and movies. Is in the like
in the movies the score swells and then you hear
the core swell, you know, and then the end credits
roll and you know it's over. And I was like, oh,
(48:34):
it's a little little on the nose, But okay, no,
I think it was a decent score. Again, it's hard
for me to get attached to a score that is
not doing character based tracks where and not that it's
not it's not a good score, it's just those are.
Speaker 4 (48:56):
The ones I connect to.
Speaker 3 (48:57):
When you have a theme, a motif connected to something,
I'm gonna remember that I'm gonna hummet, you know, just
like comedy movies that are quotable are great. You know,
scores that are hummable, you know, are also just more memorable.
So nothing against it, just it was, it was there.
Speaker 4 (49:16):
Tristan falling into Light is great. Yeah, I mean that's
the that's that's the one standout score piece. And he
reused it for Red Planet, he liked it so much.
Speaker 2 (49:26):
Tristan, the director of photography here, was nominated for a
Chicago Film Critics Association Award for his work here on
Strange Days. He later went on to work with Jonathan
Freakes for Star Trek Insurrection and you know a number
of other things. Do you feel that you see a
(49:46):
journeyman director of photography here or somebody who's making a
mark Let me let me tease that out a little bit.
Do you feel that this is a cinematographer who is
simply taking notes from the director and translating what's going
to be on screen, or somebody who's collaborating with the
(50:07):
director to put what's on screen.
Speaker 4 (50:09):
I love your ten part questions.
Speaker 2 (50:12):
That's what I live for. Don't you dare take this
away from me?
Speaker 4 (50:17):
No, I think this cinematographer is fantastic. I think he's
absolutely making a mark. There's so many there's so much
texture to this film, which I mean is in part
because of the production design and the art design. Those
positions need to be mentioned. Absolutely. I think they absolutely
nailed this world. It was tangible, it was real, and
(50:40):
I feel like this is one of those movies where, like,
you know, Darren, you were talking about it, how if
you know, like it takes place in ninety nine, which
isn't that far into the future from when it was released,
and so it's just the one piece of technology that's
really different. That's it. It's just that one piece of technology.
And so you don't have flying cars, you don't have
telep ortation, you don't have space travel or anything like
(51:02):
that that takes place in ninety nine. It doesn't look
like Blade Runner in ninety nine, which again, you know,
you know, a cyberpunk you know or whatever, you know comparison.
There's even a Blade Runner. Yeah, there's even a Blade
Runner reference in this movie when she says, you know,
dry me. But it I feel like if it wasn't
(51:22):
ninety nine, you could easily say, oh, tomorrow, somewhere in
the near future that kind of thing, and it would
absolutely work. But the cinematography, like with the with the
POV shots with certain you know Dutch, the Dutch angles
not being overused, but yet subtle enough to give you
(51:42):
that that off kilter feel that something is wrong or
that you know that that something is something is a miss.
You know, there's a really nice mixture of wides and
tights and establishing shots. You never felt like you were
doing the one two one two one two hack. No,
this is this is phenomenal. This is great cinematography. This
(52:04):
is this is someone who's not just working for Bigelow,
but working with Bigelow.
Speaker 3 (52:09):
Well, and I know to comment on the POV shots,
obviously those have a huge amount of prep and thought
into them. It's more than just one person pulling that out.
But there were some great moments in those shots where
you would see the recorder and they again very clever,
(52:31):
like in the mirror but we know the mirror is
just slightly and then the actor is off to the
side to give that POV. But they all worked. Every
time they use that trick, it worked and you felt like, oh, yeah,
that's right, that's the POV of the person. There's no
camera in the shot. It's always what should be there,
(52:52):
so I applaud them for that. Obviously something you have
to nail if your whole stick is the POV shot.
Speaker 2 (53:00):
Yeah, I think this is a cinematographer working with the director.
But I also feel that this is the first time,
knowing what's coming, that I see Bigelow where I look
at this and I can say this is a Catherine
Bigelow film. I can tell certain things, not everything, but
(53:20):
there are certain things I look at and I say,
this bears the visual mark of a director who has
found her voice, her style, her imprint, whatever you want
to say, and it's there. I can look at it
visually and I can say this is definitely Catherine Bigelow,
and I think that is a tribute to her. I
(53:42):
think that's a tribute to her director of photography and
the fact that I don't ask ten part questions. I
just ask very long questions. So, Darren, since this is
a tradition on house lights that I don't always respect,
I'm nevertheless, as we have clear third and are heading
toward home, I'm going to ask you for your final
(54:05):
thoughts and rating of Strange Days. Catherine Bigelow's nineteen ninety
five epic of the future of the past.
Speaker 3 (54:13):
Yes, I mean every time someone set something in ninety nine,
I always think of entrapment and then robbing the virtual
banks as they're counting down to the bloody Well movies
were fun.
Speaker 2 (54:25):
I still haven't seen it.
Speaker 4 (54:26):
Oh it's a it's fun.
Speaker 3 (54:29):
I still I have it on VHS somewhere y two
k the movie. It was like a made for TV
movie about planes falling out of the sky and everything
was going bad. It was made in like ninety eight
or something, and I'm just it's terrible, but yeah, this
happened New Year. The technical ability in this movie really shines.
(54:54):
I mean I just read that the scene where you
know she's jumping in front of the train, they play
backwards if the train was moving away, and I'm like,
I would never have thought that shot was reversed. It
was so well pulled off, you know, obviously for safety
and pacing reasons. So yeah, this again, it was a
nice nineties movie. As much as we talked about the
(55:18):
technology in the future being easier to film this kind
of perspective, I don't think the story and the vibe
as we love saying vibe, but really would have been
as good if you had made this in twenty ten
or twenty fifteen. It just would not have felt because
(55:41):
in that moment you had a lot of angst in society,
a lot of pent up anger, especially in the Los
Angeles area. So they really capitalized on that. It's a
moment in time that you can't pull out and and
just look at and be like, no, yeah, this could
(56:02):
be present day twenty twenty five. No, it would not
have worked nearly as well. So I'm going to give
it a solid three, you know, I compared to previous
ones she's done. I think, as we've stated, it's a
really hard film to market. But I could see myself
(56:24):
revisiting it, maybe in a double bill with some other
nineties noir like that might if I'm in that vibe,
you know, maybe some dark city, you know, some some
things like that. I think it would be fun to
watch as like a triple bill or something like that.
So I'm giving it three jumps off.
Speaker 2 (56:46):
Of the balcony, Tristan, when I started this conversation, I
still wasn't sure whether I was going to land with
a three or a four on this because I gave
back to the Future Part three a lot of breaks
for his technical wizardry, and this I'm tempted to do
the same thing. Darren gives it a three. What do
(57:08):
you give strange Days.
Speaker 4 (57:10):
I'm given Strange Days a solid four. I think this
is a great movie. I really liked it. This really
really surprised me because, as I said before, I went
in and blind. I knew nothing about it, and I
think I went in with the right expectations because I had,
you know, the only thing that I had was the
warning from you about the sexual assault scene. And I
(57:30):
really appreciate that warning because I do not handle it well. However,
one of my favorite films of all time is The
Girl with the Dragon Tattoo because it's integral to the plot.
This is integral to the plot. I still fast forward it.
I was able to skip it, and I still knew
what was going on. Could you cut it down? Absolutely?
(57:53):
Could you make it less graphic? One hundred percent? And
I think they should have. And I think with that
and the length, that's what knocks it down a star.
But I love the acting. I love the vibe, I
love the texture. I love the production design, the art design,
the soundtrack, the screenplay, I think is top notch again
(58:17):
praise to Jay Cox, and I think it's Catherine Bigelow
at the top of her game at this point, I
really do. I think this is this is a movie
I'm going to watch again, and this was this was
really entertaining.
Speaker 2 (58:33):
I could say that now being the tiebreaker between the
two of you, I'm not gonna wimp out and say
three and a half. I'm I'm gonna say that there
are certain things I struggle with with this movie. There
are certain things that I didn't like as much now
as I did then. I think it is a product
of its time. I think Tristan, in the same warning
(58:54):
that I sent to you, that I said something about
like film in the nineties where they felt a lot
freer pushing certain boundaries. And I think that the assault
scene that you're talking about, I think I said at
the time as well, it's not Rob Zombie with his
director's cut of his remake of Halloween, which I consider
(59:16):
beneath contempt terrible.
Speaker 4 (59:17):
He should have never been allowed to direct a.
Speaker 2 (59:19):
Film again ever after that scene. But I don't think
that I can give it a three because I think
that it is a film that is trying to say something,
and I think that there are certain technical aspects of
it that I have to admire, Like I have to
(59:39):
watch certain scenes independent of the rest of it and say, wow,
that is amazing what they pulled off. We didn't understand
in the nineties what they pulled off with what they
were doing with the technical wizardry. They didn't explain it
enough of what they pulled off. I remember seeing this
in the theater and that first was like, what is
(01:00:01):
even happening? Like it was completely disorienting and there was
some real technical wizardry going on. I think it is
too long. I think that Juliette Lewis actually of the
main three on the poster, is the one who's floundering
a little bit in certain scenes. She's given some exposition
that she doesn't handle as well as I would have
(01:00:23):
liked to see. But I will wind up giving this
a four. Part of it because of affection, because of
remembering liking it a lot more back in the past,
but also because it's a movie that's trying to say something,
and so I'll wind up with a four. This is
a I think an important step forward for Bigelow. And
(01:00:44):
speaking of steps forward, Darren where are we going next week.
Speaker 4 (01:00:48):
With our house of develop darren afore you answer, Before
you answer that, I do want to say that I
was okay. So at the end when they were clearly
brought podcasting that Mace's Angela Basset's character Mace had feelings
for Lenny and.
Speaker 3 (01:01:07):
Felis, that was really subtle. It went over my head.
Speaker 4 (01:01:10):
Again, Lenny was completely unawares. And then towards the end
when they were just like ending it where it was
just like, oh, yeah, we've been through some stuff. We're
still friends, but we've been through some stuff and they
were going in separate directions. I was kind of like,
you know what, Okay, I get it. I think that
was probably a smart idea not to have them get
(01:01:30):
together or not have a kiss or anything like that.
That's fine, that's fine. And then he turns around, comes
back and just lays one honor. I was grinning like
an idiot while that was going on, and it just
it brought me so much joy, where like the fanboy
or nay I say fangirl and me was just like
kind of like, okay, yeah, I was excited that they
(01:01:51):
got together. Like it gave me that happy ending that
I wanted in such a nihilistic movie. And so that
was that was four stars right there.
Speaker 2 (01:01:58):
Okay, so Darren, since Tristan gave even more color to
his final rating, I feel that you have extra energy
to tell us where we're headed to next week with
our examination of Bigelow's works.
Speaker 4 (01:02:14):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (01:02:14):
This week we were in downtown Los Angeles. Next week
we'll be traveling beneath the waves with K nineteen The
Widow Maker. Here on house Lights
Speaker 1 (01:02:26):
Join the Revolution, Join the NED Party.
Welcome to the ned Palty.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Welcome back to the House of Bigelow, the latest ongoing
series in house Lights where we examine the work of directors,
and this time it's Catherine Bigelow and we are working
through her oove, her list, her filmography, and we come
to nineteen ninety five's Strange Days. I am one of
your humble hosts, your blackjack dealer for the little sony
(00:44):
mini disc that goes on top of your head, John
quote unquote Lenny Mills, and I am joined by the
virtuous police commissioner who kicked me off of the forest,
Darren Moser, and my suspiciously long haired best friend Tristan Riddell.
Welcome you both to this look at the future from
the past, Catherine Bigelow's giant epic Strange Days from nineteen
(01:09):
ninety five, boasting an all star cast. And I'm going
to go right off the bat. I'm going to jump
right in. Usually we talk about first time seeing it,
those sorts of things, and Darren, I know this was
your first time seeing it, but I will throw the
first question to you. How disorienting is it to watch
something from decades ago postulating on a future? Four years
(01:31):
from when it was set. That's now thirty years behind us.
And how far off do you think that it was
in its predictions?
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Oh so you know eight questions. Okay, that's good. Yes, No,
I think I will give it. As far as like
the tech and the sci fi element of you know,
the squid and the technology. I liked that they kept
it at one thing. They're like, this is a single
piece of technology. If they can get you on board
with that, it's part of the story. But it's not
(02:01):
like and we also have this and you know these
other pieces of technology that don't exist. So I was
happy with the conservativeness of that prediction. Also, I think
Catherine talked about how she was not inspired is probably
(02:22):
the wrong word, but influenced by the Rodney King riots
in Los Angeles, because boy, every shot of the street
in LA is like, why are you out of your house?
This is like a war zone. It's worse than RoboCop
three war zone. And that's you know, even stretching it.
(02:42):
So all that to say, you know, I didn't mind
it being set in ninety nine watching it from twenty
plus years in the future, because I don't think it
was really taking a giant leap. Yeah, the Riots is
you know, a bit star Trek's taken more leaps in
(03:03):
the future, you know, with their prediction of the late
nineties than this movie did. Like it was actually very grounded.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
That's fair, that's fair. Tristan. Do you think that looking
at this movie, especially through the lens of now, that
you see some of the angst that people were starting
to feel as early as nineteen ninety five about the
turn of the millennium.
Speaker 4 (03:24):
I don't think it was necessarily the angst of the
turn of the millennium, more so the angst of being
in a post Rodney King worldly. I really do believe that,
like when you're watching it, like you know, Darren was
talking about, like even when you look at the streets
and how it's shot and where they shoot in Los
Angeles is very much evocative of the riots could happen
(03:47):
in any time, you know, the incitement could happen like this.
The city is a powder keg, and so I think
it was kind of odd to make it about the
turn of the century, about to make it, you know,
like two thousand. I don't think that was really necessary.
(04:07):
I really don't like that was one thing that kind
of stuck out to me as odd was that that
was a focal point, because I don't think you needed
that at all. I mean, like, if you wanted to
make it New Year's, sure, you know, make it New
Year's But the the whole in the world New Millennium thing,
(04:28):
it felt a little out of place, where the rest
of it felt very in vibe with the time. And
it's how what was that? Oh jeez, what was that
movie that we that we reviewed where oh it is
Predator too? Yeah, yeah, Predator too. Like you could tell
like this, like it's it's this this phobia, it's this
(04:50):
this nervousness of how things are only going to get worse.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I like the way you
phrase that, because I think that there is definitely a vibe,
but it seems to come from people who are living
closer to LA at the time than other cities necessarily.
I mean, New York went through its post apocalyptic thing
in the eighties Escape from New York The Warriors, which
(05:17):
was seventy nine, but whatever, you get my point, Like
New York had gone through its post apocalyptic thing, and
then it seems like the nineties were LA's post apocalyptic
vision of the world, whereas you know, a lot of
other movies in the nineties were a lot more fun
and care free. Like it's interesting, it almost seems like
it's a regional concern, not concerned. I'm not diminishing it.
I'm saying like, La seems to be where things were
(05:40):
really focused. Because you mentioned Predator too and then this film.
But Darren to what Tristan is talking about, do you
think that this film from the outset is adequately structured
to deal with all of the themes that he just
went through, the racial anxiety, the future anxiety, the military,
(06:02):
police dating. Like, there's a lot going on in this
movie about the world. Is it structured in such a
way that that supports that.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
Yeah, it's definitely swinging for the fences in what it's
trying to accomplish. It's almost like it takes all this
time to set up this big narrative again, you know,
when talking about the riots, the fact that in the
background of every shot there's like tanks and squads of
(06:31):
you know, police with riot shields, And it's almost jarring
because I'm like, why are people going about their lives
like that? Doesn't make any sense that there aren't. There
isn't a group of people cowering. But then it tries
to tell this tiny story that tells takes place in
like a city block, and I'm like, Okay, are you
(06:54):
telling the big story? Are you telling the little story?
And not that you can't create the world, Like obviously
that's important, but yeah, at the end of the day,
I don't even know. I guess with more thought, I
could probably suss it out. But nothing really struck me
(07:14):
as oh, this is the message of the movie, you know,
because it's trying at all these different ways, you know,
talking about the cops, talking about race, talking about you know, inequality.
You know, they have little spiels about nothing's going to
get better. I guess I would say that's it. It's
(07:36):
nothing is going to get better, so give what you
can while you can. Like that is kind of the
underlying theme of many of these characters.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Okay, I think that I think that's a fair way
to approach it. But you know, with the way that
it opens, it's very jarring, like you're instantly thrown into
that first person peron perspective sort of camera work where
you're experiencing what it would be like to watch one
(08:06):
of these experiences with the rig on your head, and
Bigelow and her director of photography actually pioneered a different
kind of rig so that they could get something more
like eye movement of what it would be like to
be in that first person perspective, like I would think
back to if you look back at a film like
(08:29):
John Carpenter's Halloween that very famously opens with the first
person perspective of Michael Myers as a kid, you can
tell that it's a camera with somebody reaching from just
off and stuff like that.
Speaker 4 (08:42):
There's some distortion.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
Tristan, do you think that this represents a leap in
terms of how the first person perspective stuff is shot
or do you like, do you think that this is
an unrecognized leap forward or do you think that this
is just good for the equipment of the time.
Speaker 4 (09:03):
This was an unrecognized leap forward, and you could really
tell that you needed someone like Bigelow and Cameron behind
the scenes in order to get this to happen. You
needed innovative minds like them in order to make it happen.
And it's it's true, like while I was watching it,
I had to double check the date because this was
(09:25):
phenomenal POV because there's there's so many movies before and
so many after where the POV is just shaky cam.
You know, it's just first person shaky camp. That's all
it is. And that's fine if that's what you want
to go, or you have like a chest mount where
like that. That happens a lot. It's kind of like
the reverse of that, almost said Stanley Spike Lee shot
(09:49):
where you know, like he has the chest rig and
it shows the camera pointed at the person's face and
so their face is centered in the frame and so
the background is moving all like crazy. It's you know,
like there's some you know, cinematographers who do the reverse
of that, where it's just a chest cam and the
camera's rigged in front, and then it's it's like really
stilted and it's kind of like wobbly back and forth,
(10:11):
but not in a natural way. This was done where
you could see it as eyes darting left and right
up and down diagonal and it was much more fluid
without being floaty. And that is a really really hard
line to walk, and this really pulled it off, and
I applaud it and the cinematographer and Bigelow and cameraon
(10:34):
for being able to develop that. And I kept looking
online to see a picture of the rig and I
can't find it.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
I know, I kind of want to see that. I mean,
I'm reading what did they say multifaceted cameras, and I'm.
Speaker 4 (10:48):
Like, what does that mean?
Speaker 3 (10:49):
Like I want to see a picture, because you're right,
it wasn't just a lockdown, straightforward shot. It had eye movement,
but you have to be very subtle on that because
if you're darting around the viewers getting nauseous. And while
I could see, you know, where the cuts were in
(11:10):
some of the sequences, they were very well hidden, like
you know, like stumbling and looking left really quickly, I'm like, oh,
there's obviously a little cut there. But it didn't ever
take me out of it. It was always a well
done transition because obviously they're shooting on film still at
this point, so it's a tiny camera that Yeah, it
was loud as hell, you know rank eight.
Speaker 4 (11:33):
Oh sorry I didn't mean to cut you off, but yeah,
it was an eight pound, thirty five millimeter camera that
you could put in front of you. That's amazing. And
but the thing is like you said, Darren, it was
so loud that they actually couldn't record any audio, so
they had to for the opening scene, they had to
redub everything, They had to adr everything in post.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
Oh yeah, because if anyone's heard a camera right next
to a microphone, it sounds like helicopter taking off. It's
really load, especially if you're trying to get a certain
sort of frame rate.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
You know, I'm going to ask you this question first, Aaron.
You know, obviously I never wanted any sort of like
school for it. I can, you know, break things apart.
I've seen lots of film, I've had discussions with people,
but you're talking about the technical stuff there with Tristan.
Do you see this first person camera work that's going
on here and you understand the technical challenges they overcame.
(12:30):
Do you see modern cinema benefiting from digital? Like, is
this film so far ahead of its time that it
would have been easier and better to shoot it now
then back then?
Speaker 3 (12:45):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (12:45):
Definitely.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
I mean nowadays you would strap a GoPro or an
iPhone and you have something that's a fraction of the
weight and is silent. So yeah, the fact that they
did it, you know, I didn't think about it until
after finishing the movie, but then thinking about the point
of viewshot, I was like, oh, well, Cameron worked on
(13:07):
this of course, Like of anyone in this era who
would be like, we're gonna make this cool movie, but
we're also going to have to spend a year of
R and D making a unique camera to pull it off.
There's one person on that list who would pull who
would do that, and that's James Cameron. So but yeah, nowadays,
(13:27):
or I think of you could also shoot it with
the A three sixty camera and then later edit in
the motion of the eye movement because you're capturing the
entire frame. But it's finding that balance between a wide
angle lens, which we all know what that looks like,
and that's usually what POV was is get the camera
(13:49):
as close to the face as possible and really widen
it out, because that's the trick about our human perception
is we kind of have a mix of peripheral that
we're not paying attention to, but we kind of intrinsically
see and our telephoto focus in front of us, and
then we can swing that focus around. But in a
(14:12):
movie camera, you it's all or nothing. It's everything is
the focus. So but yeah, props more props to them
for making it in the nineties than in the twentyands
or twenty tens.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
But Tristan, do you see modern filmmakers pulling this off
as well? Do you think that we like Bigelow pulls
off these first person perspective shots. Do you think that
the limitations of the technology back then made these shots
better because they had to plan them so significantly to
(14:46):
get them to go right.
Speaker 4 (14:47):
Probably definitely With that second question, I think definitely. Like
when you it's interesting because like when you compare digital
editing to analog editing editing where you know when back
in like when you were Spielberg often talked about the
differences between making Jaws and making something like Minority Report
(15:08):
or Later, where you know, when you're making Jaws, it
takes you like fifteen minutes to cut a like a
to make a cut, and so you have to really
really figure out if that's where you want to cut,
Like is this where you want to cut the scene?
Is this where you want to cut the shot? You
really got to think about it because it's going to
(15:29):
take you a while. Fifteen minutes is an exaggeration, but
you know, in a you know, in digital filmmaking, on
just a computer, you make that cut, you can do
it fifteen different ways in a minute, and so when
you're prepping a shot like this, or when you're prepping technology,
you have to really make figure out what it looks like.
(15:51):
And I feel like with digital filmmaking, one of the
drawbacks is also one of the advantages is that you're like, oh, well,
we can get it like this fifteen different ways and
just figure it out later, like with the three sixty camp.
That's a great idea, Darren. But at the same time,
you're just you're getting all the information so you can
decide later instead of you know, deciding on set, which
(16:11):
again has its advantages and has its disadvantages. And so
I feel like Soderberg does POV really well, especially with
his latest film Presence. You know, that's all POV of
a ghost, and so it's really floaty and it's really
you know, like kind of ambient, and so it's not
(16:32):
like this at all. But you know, you know, he
famously utilizes the iPhone in a very specific type way,
and he uses it in ways that you couldn't use
a normal thirty eight millimeter camera or even a regular
digital camera because it's so thin and you can put
it in different places. But like if you look at
I know this is a glaring example, but the Doom
(16:54):
movie with the Rock, not Dwayne Johnson, the Rock, you know,
a lot of that was POV and it was It
was weird because they were trying to go for a
video game feel, but yet it was nauseating and with
strange days, you could easily make the argument, oh, it
feels like a video game, but it doesn't. Like just
because it's first person doesn't mean it feels like a
(17:15):
video game. It feels like you're actually in it, which
was the point.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
So, Darren, with all of the technical stuff that we
spent so long talking about, which is easy to you know,
it's a rabbit hole to go down, this is your
first time watching it, do you think that they spent
more time developing the tech than developing the script or
did they find the right balance.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
It's not a bad balance. I think the times that
we do use the POV shot, it's not every frame,
it's not every shot that's used sparingly for the narrative.
I think I will give them that. I don't feel like, oh,
look another POV and it's like thirty minutes and boy,
you know, why are we in this? It makes me
(18:01):
kind of think of what was it final cut that
Robin Williams weird?
Speaker 4 (18:09):
I remember that one man, That's a weird movie.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
The only thing I loved about that movie was is
like editing station, because it was just like every editor's
nerd dream of, like just conducting your edit basically with
giant wheels and tumblers. But in the cutter, Yeah, I
was a bit of a nerd and wanted to call
myself that in editing school, but nobody got on board.
So I would have called you that, Tristan. If you
(18:36):
had called me, we would have been bros.
Speaker 4 (18:38):
But I get you, man, I get it.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
But no, in strange days, yeah it. You know, this
is a nineties movie. It feels like a nineties movie.
It feels the kind of movies where we interact with
people and you know, down on your luck, just trying
to get through another night, you know, running the streets,
(19:02):
and but also with my cool piece of future tech
that sits on your head. And but I liked it.
I liked the overall story. We spend a ton of time,
you know, with you know, with Lenny. You know, we
know it's his story. There's no protagonist confusion, dear lord,
(19:24):
there's you know, it's all about him and trying to
come through this, you know, a short amount of time.
It's like only two or three nights that were actually
experiencing of his life. So all that to say, I
enjoyed the story. I enjoyed the characterization and the plot,
(19:46):
but it's also just, you know, it's a it's kind
of a B movie as so far as like there's
nothing that's shocking me or rocking me or you know,
oh I got to watch that again. And we've we've
talked a lot about movies that pull it off in
the last act and you're like, oh, I'm ready for more.
(20:08):
And not that this saidn't have a good last act,
but it just it was kind of like big budget
TV movie vibe, you know, like it had a lot
of money behind it. It had some amazing shots. I'm
still amazed by the helicopter shot of downtown Los Angeles
(20:29):
at night where they panned down and there's a crowd
of like ten thousand people, which apparently there were. I'm
assuming the other shots must have been a model or something.
But that shot just totally blew me over. But that
was my overall vibe. I would say with the story.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Tristan, given the complexity of the story, you're coming back,
you were revisiting it. I don't know what you thought
of it the first time you saw it.
Speaker 4 (20:57):
But taking the first time I saw Oh, this was.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
The first time you saw it. Oh, I'm so sorry.
I thought that I thought you had seen this before.
Speaker 4 (21:05):
Nope, not at all. Oh, my day, it was the
first day.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
So given that fact that you're coming in and you're
seeing this for the first time, Like Darren, same question
to you, do you think that they spent so much
time on the tech that they should have spent more
time leaning the script down, you know, narrowing the focus.
Speaker 4 (21:23):
No, no, I love the script. I thought that was
one of the best things about the movie was the script.
I think this was I think Jay Cox did a
fantastic job with writing the dialogue. I feel like I
wish all James Cameron screenplays were like this, where he
would he would take the story. It's a it's a
(21:44):
James Cameron story, you know, with input from Catherine Bigelow.
He writes a treatment and he writes out the story beats,
he writes the treatment, and then let somebody else do
the dialogue. That is exactly how a James Cameron film
should go. And I think Jay Cox just he nailed
the noir and the cyberpunk vibe and Lenny's. Lenny's verbiage
(22:11):
is so perfect that it's shocking, Like the just the
language is so unique and different, and there's so many
different pronouns and unique words that are repurposed and reused
for this age and for this applicable world and technology
(22:31):
that it felt so effortless coming from Ray Fines's mouth.
And so I feel like it's a combination of Jaycox's
words read by or I should say, recited by Ray Fines,
directed by Catherine Bigelow. You know, Like, I think probably
my main complaint is that it should be shorter. It
should be trimmed down a little bit, like there is fat,
(22:54):
There is fat there there it should be compacted, because
I think I get when you get to the ninety
minute mark. I'm not saying it should have ended at
ninety minutes, but like you look at your watch and
you're like, I have forty five more minutes. Good, Actually
more than that at that point, like you have almost
an hour more. That's insane. It's too long, it's too long.
(23:16):
But the script itself is solid.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
Yeah, I want to echo that for a sci fi movie,
and I'll say that because of the technology. I mean,
obviously it's like ninety percent not sci fi, but for
the sci fi elements. It is really really hard to
introduce a new technology to your viewers and give it
(23:40):
slang and have it not sound atrocious. It is really
really hard. And this movie I grew Tristan, it nailed it.
The way they delivered lines of like oh, I deal
with like blackouts and you know, just like you're like, oh,
he means a video about someone killing themselves. Like he
didn't have to explain it and have to draw it out.
(24:02):
And there was not a ton of slang. There was
maybe ten phrases throughout the whole movie, but they were
all around the technology and things like that. But they worked.
They worked really well, and they felt like even their
explanation where they're like, oh, yeah, this was developed by
the FBI as a replacement for the wire and then
of course it went underground. I'm like, I'm sold, you've
(24:23):
sold me. I believe that this technology exists and that
there's obviously people who use it for nefarious means. But yeah,
the with the with the length and what Tristan said,
you know, Filo being the villain. You know, I felt
like we should have really only seen him at the end,
(24:45):
the fact that we kind of interacted with him, met him,
and then left, and then we came and saw him again,
and then we saw him a third time, Like there
wasn't really a build up because he was only what
he was every time.
Speaker 4 (24:58):
I'm gonna I'm gonna stop you right there, because I
never advocate for less Michael Wincott, and so I'm just
gonna have to say, uh, that's a noe for me.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
Michael Wincott was great, I'm not denying that.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
But the thing I loved was that Michael Wincott playing
Filo is a natural extension of him playing Paul Rothschild,
a music producer in Oliver Stones the Doors, another movie
that we've covered here on House Lights. So I'm like, well,
this is a natural progression for his career.
Speaker 4 (25:25):
It's crazy and this is not an insult to Wincott whatsoever.
But there was more than a few times that I
heard his character from Robin Hood as as a sheriff
of Nottingham's cousin. There's just a few lines where like
he just delivered it and he's like, why spoon cousin?
You know this is I don't know.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
That's that's very fair, that's very fair.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
But I kept hearing the County Mine of Crystal role,
like of him as the the head of the Shadow Deef,
Like I was like, you're you're just slimy. You're not
a good person. I can tell.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
As bread as butters exactly. Michael Wincott is a guy
who was completely comfortable being type cast through his whole career,
where he was like yeah, okay, fine, I got the voice.
Speaker 4 (26:10):
I was really surprised in Nope, like his character and Nope, I.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
Never saw that.
Speaker 4 (26:17):
I never saw it wasn't slimy at all. He was
one of the good guys. And I was just like disorienting,
that's really.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
Gary Oleman and you're like, but you're the goody Okay that.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
That would be yeah, that would be like finding out
that uh yeah. There are so many different actors you
could bring in where it's like when they play the
good guy, you're like, wait, what what this doesn't make
any sense. But given that statement, this doesn't make any sense.
And you know that the shine we're giving to the
script and the way that things are handled. Is there
(26:53):
anything in this Tristan that didn't make sense to you?
Is there anything where when they were explaining it with
exposition late or anything where you're like, well, wait a minute,
what about that? Like, was there anything that didn't line
up for you? Or do you think that everything is
successful in terms of tying together cleanly?
Speaker 4 (27:11):
I wouldn't say that there's anything that didn't make sense.
I think there were certain things that might have been
overly complicated here or there. Because when Tom Sizemore's character
max like, this is one thing I really hate about
movies and books do this too a lot like mystery
books or murder books and everything like that. It's just
(27:32):
like ten pages before it's over, the bad guy explains
literally everything, and it can be exhausting, where like we
don't like, you don't over explain the desk squads, And
I think it's insult to injury when we start doing
(27:53):
flashbacks to remind the audience that like, oh no, this
actually did happen, and you know they're not just talking
about it now, we layered it. You know, like I
feel like that there were certain things I know that
doesn't really I kind of took this question to do
a different example, but like that was something where there
were certain things that Max was talking about that might
have been overly complicated but not confusing.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
Darren, I want to throw that to you though. Do
you think that the use of flashback at the end
when explanations are being given is almost an accidental admission
that the movie has gone on too long because they realize, oh,
it's been so long since we talked about that, we'd
better show the shot so that people remember.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
Yeah, it's not the strongest narrative take. It's also how
do you show a flashback in a movie specifically about
POV which also has to look different? So you've already
kind of used that trick. So because technically all the
povs are flashbacks if you think about it, they're previous
(29:00):
events that have already occurred, So I would have been
really cautious about using a flashback tool as well. I
think it could have done without. But I mean I
said this, I saw this through one sitting, so I
didn't feel the need for that much of a reminder,
(29:21):
that much of a tap on the shoulder of yeah,
we're don't forget when I like, I said that twenty
minutes ago where it was. Although I will say with
Max's character from early on, I was like, so, when's
he going to betray us? Like it was too much
of a why is this guy on the story if
he's not gonna either die or betray us in the end,
(29:46):
And so I was not surprised that it was Max
in the end.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
I'll say, for me, that's the Michael Wincott principle, because
when Tom Sizemore walks on screen, I just don't trust him.
I'm like, all right, fine, like it was, that was
that's a great example of Tom. Take Tom size and
put him in a movie where he doesn't betray anybody
Blackhawk down. I was like, oh, oh, okay, all right,
he's he's okay through the whole thing. Okay, cool, cool, cool,
cool cool. He's an okay guy. So, with all of
(30:13):
the all of the praise that we've given it so far, Tristan,
why do you think that this movie has such trouble
finding an audience in nineteen ninety five? There are so
many different factors. And you know you can Monday Morning
Quarterback everything to death. But honest question, is it the length,
(30:35):
is it the subject matter? Is it just wrong time
to be talking about this or people not ready for it?
Why do people have such a hard time with this
movie that it winds up being a bomb on the
scale that people refer to it as almost ending Bigelow's career.
Speaker 4 (30:52):
Yeah, I think it's It's definitely multiple factors. I would
love to know what kind of budget they put behind
it in marketing, A.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Lot of mix as somebody who was old enough to
really it. Oh my god, they I remember how much
they put behind this. In terms of talking the visionary
new film. This is a like there was a there
was a trailer for it that was a specific callback
to American Jigglow with Richard Gear, which was a Touchstone
(31:23):
movie from the seventies where Ray Findes is talking to
the screen, talking you into you know, he's doing his
sales pitch to you. You know, have you ever tuned in?
Have you ever jacked in? Have you ever experienced? And
like it has all of these words going on the screen.
It was a really memorable commercial. Obviously to the point
where my friends and I started making fun of it
(31:43):
because you saw it everywhere, and you saw the trailer everywhere.
Fox really went into this. They were really trying to
make this a thing. As I recall it, like because
you know, I was going to a lot of movies
in ninety five and I saw this trailer a lot,
and I saw a lot of press behind this, So
I can tell you that they did not sleep on this.
(32:04):
This was not quietly marketed and it was actually it
was actually when on video, as I recall, it was
part of like the Fox Special series where they tried
to explain letterboxing to everybody. There were these special clamshell
cases that they had. Independence Day was part of that
push and everything like that.
Speaker 4 (32:23):
I had that one. Yeah, yeah, Stargate yep, Yes, I
was on there too. Yeah, this was That's really interesting
to know because I in ninety five, I wouldn't have
been that aware of it, of what was going on
in marketing around it and everything like that, because I
knew nothing about this movie going into it, absolutely nothing.
(32:45):
I knew nothing about the story, I knew nothing about
the characters. I remember seeing a poster maybe in Blockbuster,
and that's it. I didn't know it was cyberpunk. I
didn't know it was noir. I didn't know it involved
technology that doesn't exist, none of that, none of that.
Even today, when I watched it, I went into it
just knowing it was a Catherine Bigelow film. That's literally it.
(33:10):
And so I'm kind of, oh, yes, okay, your question
was why did it fail? So I think this is
this is a hard movie. I'm very surprised, like with
that much marketing behind it, that they didn't force it
to be two hours or under two hours. I'm really
surprised because you know that when you're two and a
(33:31):
half hours, that severely limits the amount of showings that
you can have yep, during the day. And the nineties
were huge on that with like keeping it shorter and
not expanding too much, Like, especially with a movie that
has action in it like this one. Does you know,
you'd think you'd want to keep it tight, and I do.
And then you know, as I mentioned earlier, that's one
of my criticisms of this film, this is this is
(33:56):
a hard R and this was hard R in the nineties.
I mean even when you know, like even in the
twenty tens, when hard R films were coming out. It's
it was hard to market, like there's still a risk
of how much money, Like you know, like do our
rated movies make money? Of course they do. But if
(34:16):
you want a broader audience, you go to PG thirteen.
That's just standard. That's just how it works. Is there
exceptions to every rule, of course there is. But this
one is not just art. It's hard art. It has
sexual assault, graphic graphic sexual assault.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
Really uncomfortable to watch see.
Speaker 4 (34:37):
It's POV graphic sexual assault. And also like Juliet Lewis's
nipples are in it almost as much as she is,
and so you can't put it on TV later on,
you know, like you can't syndicate it. And and also
like it's also it's dealing with hard themes. It's very nihilistic.
(35:01):
This movie is very nihilistic, and you know, like you
dealing with Jericho one, it hits really close to home
on purpose, and a lot of people don't want to
be reminded of that. They don't want to be reminded
of that. And it's it's the movie. It's not a
feel good movie. It's hard are it's hard to market
(35:22):
internationally in certain countries, and you have lingo that doesn't
make sense to a lot of people. There's a buy
in that you need to get and it's just, yeah,
I can see there's a million ways this could have
gone wrong, and it did. This is this movie is
not a slam dunk. And that's not a knock on
the quality. It's just it's hard to market because you
(35:46):
want you want to, you want to market for them,
you want to aim high, but market to the middle.
That Strange Days is not a movie that you can
do that with Darren?
Speaker 2 (35:55):
Do you think that because this came out in October,
which is not exactly like, that's not blockbuster season, and
it's not awards season. Awards season December, right, it's not
dump off season. Do you think this movie finds more
purchase if they release it during what we always traditionally
referred to as award season, which is closer to Christmas time,
(36:19):
where you know that the movie you're going to see
is about the prestige, it's about the awards, it's about
the Oscar nomination. Do you think they recoup some of
the some of the marketing, maybe not monetarily, but they
make it more of a a an awards a Prestige
(36:40):
Elite discussion releasing it in December.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
Maybe, I mean yeah, because you could also release it
in December and angle it in your promotion as a
New Year's movie, because New Year's is really not that
much farther after, you know, Christmas. You know, I I
would try if I had a hand behind my back
and had to, you know, I could say, yeah, push
(37:06):
it into December, but lean into the millennium New Year's Eve,
you know, on New Year's Eve. I mean, I'm sure
that wasn't the trailer. I'm sure that was a major
cornerstone of the marketing, but uh yeah, it it's a
hard cell though, I mean, to all the points that
Tristan said, and it's not the kind of movie that
(37:28):
has a gotcha twist or something that you would be like, oh,
I really enjoyed this because of X, I'm going to
get my friends to come see it with me again.
Like it just it doesn't have that thing. I think.
I think this is a if you enjoy it, you
enjoyed it once. So maybe it's it's not the kind
(37:51):
of movie that gets the repeat view, and that coupled
with the hard r and the you know, I mean,
I don't know how much they spell that out in
the mid nineties.
Speaker 2 (38:01):
I know later.
Speaker 3 (38:03):
They would have trailers and it would say, you know,
at the bottom like art, you know, are because of X,
you know because of now.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
To No, so spell that out back then, which I.
Speaker 3 (38:14):
Liked it when they started doing that, because you know,
as we've all said, Are is a sliding scale. I
mean Point Break was ore, but not in the same
way as this one was.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
So that's true, That's very, very true because Point Break,
you know, Tristan, is it disorienting to come to this
movie from Bigelow where you go from Point Break, which
is sort of a it's a very light thing like
Point Break does what is that really saying? It's just
a it happens and it's an event and it's fun.
(38:47):
It's sort of a pulp movie. I would contend that
this is the first movie we've seen from Bigelow that's
actually saying something, a lot of something, maybe not as
clearly as it wants to, but it's saying something. Do
you think that this is a significant step forward for
Bigelow as a director as we examine her works, Do
(39:09):
you think this is a you know, that important leap
forward for her where she's found her voice, She's found,
regardless of success, how she wants to tell a story.
Speaker 4 (39:23):
I feel like this is the first film that I've
seen of Catherine Bigelow so far where I'm just like, Okay,
that was ambitious. I can see what you're doing. I
can see what you're going for. She got some really
great performances out of rape Fines and size More and Lewis.
(39:46):
Angela Bassett, who is a phenomenal actress. I felt like
probably was the weakest in this movie.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
That's fascinating. I'm going to stop you right there, because
Angela Bassett is the one that everybody always points to
as love her in this film. Break that down for me.
You think that of the four names that you just dropped,
she feels the most out of place. Do you think
that she's the most uncomfortable with the material?
Speaker 4 (40:12):
I just I don't know what. I don't know how
to put my finger on it, because I remember, like
the most recent example is Black Panther two, where you
are blown away by her performance. And did she win
Did she win the Oscar for that? I can't remember.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
Yeah, I don't think so she should have.
Speaker 4 (40:35):
Because like it's not just that wasn't just a great
performance for a comic book movie. That was a great
performance like she was for a movie that was severely
lacking Chadwick Boseman. She made it harder than it could
have been to miss him. And everybody knows what I'm
(40:55):
trying to say. There I'm fumbling it, but everybody knows
what I'm trying to say. And so she's phenomenal actress
and she's done some really great things, but for some
reason in this movie, I really like her character. But
there's certain times that she delivers her lines pretty stilted
and unlike Bassett, and where you don't always believe what's
(41:17):
coming out of her mouth. And I feel like they
were laying it on pretty thick with the relationship between
Lenny and Mace, where there are certain times when I
was just like, oh, that could have been a little
bit that could have been done more subtly or more subtle,
And I feel like Bassett was one of the reasons
(41:38):
why I was like, you're broadcasting your feelings instead of
making me feel it.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
So you're saying you're saying you're like Bender, or I'm sorry,
not like Bender, You're like the robot devil, the Robot Devil.
Where you can't you can't have characters just saying how
they feel. That makes me angry. God, do you know
what really kills me? Like is that her saying Lennear,
your life is happening right here, right now. That that
(42:06):
was sampled for the Fat Boy Slim song right here,
right now.
Speaker 3 (42:09):
I was I was pretty sure it was. I'm like,
that sounds just like the song, oh, because that's an
amazing song.
Speaker 4 (42:19):
And to note that it's Angela Bassett saying it like
all weirded out and moused up and everything.
Speaker 3 (42:23):
There was another line that I felt was sampled too,
somewhere else in this movie, but I don't know definitely
that one.
Speaker 4 (42:30):
Yeah, but it's it's like Darren, I, I'll let you continue.
But it's just, yeah, it's not like she killed it.
It's not like she did a poor job. It was
just I think, standing up against all these other people
who did great jobs in Bassett, who is a phenomenal actress,
doing something that I felt she felt out of place
mixed in with everybody else.
Speaker 3 (42:51):
Yeah, I was just gonna say. She was nominated for
Best Supporting for the Academy, did not win, but one
in many other Awards shows and in category so to
no surprise for Wakanda. Yeah, I will say that was
the only thing, and I think it ties in to
(43:11):
Angela Bess, it's to Mace's character. Is it was almost
sidekick confusion. You know, we've talked about protagonist confusion as
so far as you know, I think if they had
made a small tweak of the two of them are
together from the get go, like obviously she joins in
(43:34):
the story very quickly, but if this story had been
I have no car, so I have to ride around
in the back of my friend's limo as she picks
up people, and she doesn't like that I'm hustling them.
But we have this kind of friendship, but we're always
keeping each other safe on the streets, like we didn't
get but instead they're trying for the lone noir figure
(43:57):
riding around in his car doing his business. But then
it immediately translates into this you know, buddy story, I say, loosely,
but you know, so all that to say, I think
that was a bit of not confusion, but just contemplation
on her character where she's there and in times she's
(44:19):
used a lot and in times she's basically set dressing
to get him around. And yeah, not the not the
strongest of characters. Nothing to her acting, but and it's
also decades earlier in her career. You know she she
can progress well, I mean that ability.
Speaker 2 (44:37):
She came right off of filming What's Love Got to
Do With It? The Tina Turner biopic, and so like
that once she got a lot to shine on and
then she comes to this. You know, there were there
was heat on her whereas like, oh, Angela Bassett, who
you all love from What's Love Got to Do With It?
(44:58):
Is in this movie and it still didn't find an
audience as a result. And I think that some of
the stuff that makes it feel very much like a
nineties movie. And Tristan, I'll throw this out to you.
Do you think that the movie is trying too hard
at times to make itself marketable in the way that
(45:19):
nineties movies did, like The Crow and other films, by
having musical scenes where it was like, look, kids, we
have cool music club scenes going on in here. Because
you talk about making the movie shorter, I'm like, there
are plenty of things where I would have just yeah,
I don't need to see somebody singing a song. It's fine,
(45:41):
it's fine.
Speaker 4 (45:42):
Yeah, they definitely could have trimmed that down. And I
was really impressed with Juliet Lewis singing her own vocals,
and I actually really enjoyed what she was doing.
Speaker 2 (45:51):
Covering a Pga Harvey song No Less, which is yeah, yeah,
all right, coming to play.
Speaker 4 (45:57):
And of course you have, you know, the Doors song
Strange Day No, which.
Speaker 2 (46:01):
Is no no. You said that on purpose to make
me angry. That is a terrible cover. It's awful. It
should be stricken from the record. Go back, make a
Strange Day special edition where you play the actual song.
Speaker 4 (46:16):
Hey, who's playing the drums? Who is playing the drums?
No cover? I know who is playing the drums on
that cover.
Speaker 2 (46:21):
I don't care if Jesus was playing the drums on
that cover doesn't count, not at all.
Speaker 4 (46:26):
No, Okay, you heard it. You heard it here, folks
on House Slights that even though the Doors were playing
the drums, it's not a Doors song because it.
Speaker 2 (46:35):
Was ray and Xeric. It was ray Man Xeric. It
was keyboards. Okay, it wasn't excuse me, keyboards, excuse me done, keyboards.
There you go, you just further invalidated your take. Done
with you, But yes, that could have been that could
have been trimmed down. But at the same time.
Speaker 4 (46:51):
It didn't feel like, oh, we're making this hip and
marketable because we're putting this music in. It really felt
like this is the vibe of the movie. I know
we keep saying that word and I hate using that word,
but it's so applicable with this movie.
Speaker 2 (47:05):
We're being hip like the kids by stand vibe. That's
what we're doing. It's it's giving music video. How about that?
Speaker 4 (47:14):
How about that? Yeah, it's just like I think that's
definitely something that we could have trimmed down because it
did go on a little bit. I was just like, oh, okay,
cool selling Jesus really great song and we're still going
and we're still going and we're still and we're done. Okay,
still happening. It's still happening. Yeah, So yes, but I
really enjoyed it, Like this is one of those I mean, oh, man,
(47:36):
I missed the nineties. I missed the nineties music so bad, and.
Speaker 2 (47:40):
So I condies music was pretty awesome. You lived through
and it was pretty pretty great.
Speaker 4 (47:45):
We're pretty kids today. I have no idea what you're
missing none at all, freaking with.
Speaker 2 (47:49):
Your producers and your tailor swift and all of those things.
You don't know what you're missing. You don't know what
you're missing. Yeah, so all right, So speaking of music, though, Darren,
we have the music that's uh, that's a character of
its own in here, but you also have technically a
score from Graham Revel. Is there anything memorable from the
score for you?
Speaker 3 (48:12):
I mean there was. I think there was one moment
where what did they talk about the difference between real
life or and movies or not real life? It was
talking about the playback and movies. Is in the like
in the movies the score swells and then you hear
the core swell, you know, and then the end credits
roll and you know it's over. And I was like, oh,
(48:34):
it's a little little on the nose, But okay, no,
I think it was a decent score. Again, it's hard
for me to get attached to a score that is
not doing character based tracks where and not that it's
not it's not a good score, it's just those are.
Speaker 4 (48:56):
The ones I connect to.
Speaker 3 (48:57):
When you have a theme, a motif connected to something,
I'm gonna remember that I'm gonna hummet, you know, just
like comedy movies that are quotable are great. You know,
scores that are hummable, you know, are also just more memorable.
So nothing against it, just it was, it was there.
Speaker 4 (49:16):
Tristan falling into Light is great. Yeah, I mean that's
the that's that's the one standout score piece. And he
reused it for Red Planet, he liked it so much.
Speaker 2 (49:26):
Tristan, the director of photography here, was nominated for a
Chicago Film Critics Association Award for his work here on
Strange Days. He later went on to work with Jonathan
Freakes for Star Trek Insurrection and you know a number
of other things. Do you feel that you see a
(49:46):
journeyman director of photography here or somebody who's making a
mark Let me let me tease that out a little bit.
Do you feel that this is a cinematographer who is
simply taking notes from the director and translating what's going
to be on screen, or somebody who's collaborating with the
(50:07):
director to put what's on screen.
Speaker 4 (50:09):
I love your ten part questions.
Speaker 2 (50:12):
That's what I live for. Don't you dare take this
away from me?
Speaker 4 (50:17):
No, I think this cinematographer is fantastic. I think he's
absolutely making a mark. There's so many there's so much
texture to this film, which I mean is in part
because of the production design and the art design. Those
positions need to be mentioned. Absolutely. I think they absolutely
nailed this world. It was tangible, it was real, and
(50:40):
I feel like this is one of those movies where, like,
you know, Darren, you were talking about it, how if
you know, like it takes place in ninety nine, which
isn't that far into the future from when it was released,
and so it's just the one piece of technology that's
really different. That's it. It's just that one piece of technology.
And so you don't have flying cars, you don't have
telep ortation, you don't have space travel or anything like
(51:02):
that that takes place in ninety nine. It doesn't look
like Blade Runner in ninety nine, which again, you know,
you know, a cyberpunk you know or whatever, you know comparison.
There's even a Blade Runner. Yeah, there's even a Blade
Runner reference in this movie when she says, you know,
dry me. But it I feel like if it wasn't
(51:22):
ninety nine, you could easily say, oh, tomorrow, somewhere in
the near future that kind of thing, and it would
absolutely work. But the cinematography, like with the with the
POV shots with certain you know Dutch, the Dutch angles
not being overused, but yet subtle enough to give you
(51:42):
that that off kilter feel that something is wrong or
that you know that that something is something is a miss.
You know, there's a really nice mixture of wides and
tights and establishing shots. You never felt like you were
doing the one two one two one two hack. No,
this is this is phenomenal. This is great cinematography. This
(52:04):
is this is someone who's not just working for Bigelow,
but working with Bigelow.
Speaker 3 (52:09):
Well, and I know to comment on the POV shots,
obviously those have a huge amount of prep and thought
into them. It's more than just one person pulling that out.
But there were some great moments in those shots where
you would see the recorder and they again very clever,
(52:31):
like in the mirror but we know the mirror is
just slightly and then the actor is off to the
side to give that POV. But they all worked. Every
time they use that trick, it worked and you felt like, oh, yeah,
that's right, that's the POV of the person. There's no
camera in the shot. It's always what should be there,
(52:52):
so I applaud them for that. Obviously something you have
to nail if your whole stick is the POV shot.
Speaker 2 (53:00):
Yeah, I think this is a cinematographer working with the director.
But I also feel that this is the first time,
knowing what's coming, that I see Bigelow where I look
at this and I can say this is a Catherine
Bigelow film. I can tell certain things, not everything, but
(53:20):
there are certain things I look at and I say,
this bears the visual mark of a director who has
found her voice, her style, her imprint, whatever you want
to say, and it's there. I can look at it
visually and I can say this is definitely Catherine Bigelow,
and I think that is a tribute to her. I
(53:42):
think that's a tribute to her director of photography and
the fact that I don't ask ten part questions. I
just ask very long questions. So, Darren, since this is
a tradition on house lights that I don't always respect,
I'm nevertheless, as we have clear third and are heading
toward home, I'm going to ask you for your final
(54:05):
thoughts and rating of Strange Days. Catherine Bigelow's nineteen ninety
five epic of the future of the past.
Speaker 3 (54:13):
Yes, I mean every time someone set something in ninety nine,
I always think of entrapment and then robbing the virtual
banks as they're counting down to the bloody Well movies
were fun.
Speaker 2 (54:25):
I still haven't seen it.
Speaker 4 (54:26):
Oh it's a it's fun.
Speaker 3 (54:29):
I still I have it on VHS somewhere y two
k the movie. It was like a made for TV
movie about planes falling out of the sky and everything
was going bad. It was made in like ninety eight
or something, and I'm just it's terrible, but yeah, this
happened New Year. The technical ability in this movie really shines.
(54:54):
I mean I just read that the scene where you
know she's jumping in front of the train, they play
backwards if the train was moving away, and I'm like,
I would never have thought that shot was reversed. It
was so well pulled off, you know, obviously for safety
and pacing reasons. So yeah, this again, it was a
nice nineties movie. As much as we talked about the
(55:18):
technology in the future being easier to film this kind
of perspective, I don't think the story and the vibe
as we love saying vibe, but really would have been
as good if you had made this in twenty ten
or twenty fifteen. It just would not have felt because
(55:41):
in that moment you had a lot of angst in society,
a lot of pent up anger, especially in the Los
Angeles area. So they really capitalized on that. It's a
moment in time that you can't pull out and and
just look at and be like, no, yeah, this could
(56:02):
be present day twenty twenty five. No, it would not
have worked nearly as well. So I'm going to give
it a solid three, you know, I compared to previous
ones she's done. I think, as we've stated, it's a
really hard film to market. But I could see myself
(56:24):
revisiting it, maybe in a double bill with some other
nineties noir like that might if I'm in that vibe,
you know, maybe some dark city, you know, some some
things like that. I think it would be fun to
watch as like a triple bill or something like that.
So I'm giving it three jumps off.
Speaker 2 (56:46):
Of the balcony, Tristan, when I started this conversation, I
still wasn't sure whether I was going to land with
a three or a four on this because I gave
back to the Future Part three a lot of breaks
for his technical wizardry, and this I'm tempted to do
the same thing. Darren gives it a three. What do
(57:08):
you give strange Days.
Speaker 4 (57:10):
I'm given Strange Days a solid four. I think this
is a great movie. I really liked it. This really
really surprised me because, as I said before, I went
in and blind. I knew nothing about it, and I
think I went in with the right expectations because I had,
you know, the only thing that I had was the
warning from you about the sexual assault scene. And I
(57:30):
really appreciate that warning because I do not handle it well. However,
one of my favorite films of all time is The
Girl with the Dragon Tattoo because it's integral to the plot.
This is integral to the plot. I still fast forward it.
I was able to skip it, and I still knew
what was going on. Could you cut it down? Absolutely?
(57:53):
Could you make it less graphic? One hundred percent? And
I think they should have. And I think with that
and the length, that's what knocks it down a star.
But I love the acting. I love the vibe, I
love the texture. I love the production design, the art design,
the soundtrack, the screenplay, I think is top notch again
(58:17):
praise to Jay Cox, and I think it's Catherine Bigelow
at the top of her game at this point, I
really do. I think this is this is a movie
I'm going to watch again, and this was this was
really entertaining.
Speaker 2 (58:33):
I could say that now being the tiebreaker between the
two of you, I'm not gonna wimp out and say
three and a half. I'm I'm gonna say that there
are certain things I struggle with with this movie. There
are certain things that I didn't like as much now
as I did then. I think it is a product
of its time. I think Tristan, in the same warning
(58:54):
that I sent to you, that I said something about
like film in the nineties where they felt a lot
freer pushing certain boundaries. And I think that the assault
scene that you're talking about, I think I said at
the time as well, it's not Rob Zombie with his
director's cut of his remake of Halloween, which I consider
(59:16):
beneath contempt terrible.
Speaker 4 (59:17):
He should have never been allowed to direct a.
Speaker 2 (59:19):
Film again ever after that scene. But I don't think
that I can give it a three because I think
that it is a film that is trying to say something,
and I think that there are certain technical aspects of
it that I have to admire, Like I have to
(59:39):
watch certain scenes independent of the rest of it and say, wow,
that is amazing what they pulled off. We didn't understand
in the nineties what they pulled off with what they
were doing with the technical wizardry. They didn't explain it
enough of what they pulled off. I remember seeing this
in the theater and that first was like, what is
(01:00:01):
even happening? Like it was completely disorienting and there was
some real technical wizardry going on. I think it is
too long. I think that Juliette Lewis actually of the
main three on the poster, is the one who's floundering
a little bit in certain scenes. She's given some exposition
that she doesn't handle as well as I would have
(01:00:23):
liked to see. But I will wind up giving this
a four. Part of it because of affection, because of
remembering liking it a lot more back in the past,
but also because it's a movie that's trying to say something,
and so I'll wind up with a four. This is
a I think an important step forward for Bigelow. And
(01:00:44):
speaking of steps forward, Darren where are we going next week.
Speaker 4 (01:00:48):
With our house of develop darren afore you answer, Before
you answer that, I do want to say that I
was okay. So at the end when they were clearly
brought podcasting that Mace's Angela Basset's character Mace had feelings
for Lenny and.
Speaker 3 (01:01:07):
Felis, that was really subtle. It went over my head.
Speaker 4 (01:01:10):
Again, Lenny was completely unawares. And then towards the end
when they were just like ending it where it was
just like, oh, yeah, we've been through some stuff. We're
still friends, but we've been through some stuff and they
were going in separate directions. I was kind of like,
you know what, Okay, I get it. I think that
was probably a smart idea not to have them get
(01:01:30):
together or not have a kiss or anything like that.
That's fine, that's fine. And then he turns around, comes
back and just lays one honor. I was grinning like
an idiot while that was going on, and it just
it brought me so much joy, where like the fanboy
or nay I say fangirl and me was just like
kind of like, okay, yeah, I was excited that they
(01:01:51):
got together. Like it gave me that happy ending that
I wanted in such a nihilistic movie. And so that
was that was four stars right there.
Speaker 2 (01:01:58):
Okay, so Darren, since Tristan gave even more color to
his final rating, I feel that you have extra energy
to tell us where we're headed to next week with
our examination of Bigelow's works.
Speaker 4 (01:02:14):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (01:02:14):
This week we were in downtown Los Angeles. Next week
we'll be traveling beneath the waves with K nineteen The
Widow Maker. Here on house Lights
Speaker 1 (01:02:26):
Join the Revolution, Join the NED Party.
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