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Stop the Beatles Biopics! · Boomer Has It!

0:00
SPEAKER_01: We thought we knew what the Beatles looked like.
0:02
SPEAKER_01: We were wrong.
0:03
SPEAKER_01: John, Paul, George Noringo actually look like Harris Dickinson, Paul Mescal, Joseph Quinn, and Barry Keegan.
0:12
SPEAKER_01: That's according to Sam Mendes, who is directing four, count them four biopics on the Fab Four, one for each bandmate.
0:22
SPEAKER_01: I'd say that's four films too many in a genre that's too awful for words.
0:27
SPEAKER_01: Boy, do I hate these things?
0:29
SPEAKER_01: Bohemian Rhapsody, Rocket Man, No Direction Known, Walk the Line, Elvis.
0:35
SPEAKER_01: That once that's the one about Elvis.
0:37
SPEAKER_01: Back to Black with Doors.
0:39
SPEAKER_01: I want to dance with somebody.
0:42
SPEAKER_01: I didn't even like Amadeus.
0:45
SPEAKER_01: Leave these people alone, except for Mozart.
0:48
SPEAKER_01: We have pictures and film of all these guys.
0:51
SPEAKER_01: Many of them are still alive.
0:53
SPEAKER_01: The Beatles flicks are not scheduled to be released until 2028.
0:57
SPEAKER_01: So there's still time.
0:59
SPEAKER_01: Stop them now.
1:01
SPEAKER_01: I'm JB Miller in London.
1:03
SPEAKER_00: And I'm Jim Jelamis in Brooklyn.
1:05
SPEAKER_00: Guessing who Barry Keegan could possibly be portraying among the Beatles.
1:10
SPEAKER_01: And this is Boomer Hazard.
1:17
SPEAKER_01: Jim, these things are incredibly popular.
1:20
SPEAKER_01: Bohemian Rhapsody.
1:22
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you saw that one.
1:23
SPEAKER_01: It made$910 million in the box office.
1:26
SPEAKER_01: Uh Michael, which was Michael Jackson, Elvis, uh Rocket Man Walk the Line.
1:32
SPEAKER_01: These are really successful films.
1:34
SPEAKER_01: So we're not going to see the end of this genre anytime soon, but I can't wait to see them go because uh they really bug the hell out of me.
1:42
SPEAKER_01: What do you think of these films?
1:44
SPEAKER_00: I I'm it's interesting that you raise this as a topic.
1:47
SPEAKER_00: I see them as um just a a new phenomenon in the you know the biopic cinema experience, the musical biopic.
1:57
SPEAKER_00: And is it fair to say that the the queen, the Freddie Mercury biopic set off a trend?
2:05
SPEAKER_00: Was that the first among them?
2:07
SPEAKER_00: Oh no days.
2:08
SPEAKER_01: No, no, it goes back far before that.
2:11
SPEAKER_01: I mean, some of the films I mentioned, uh predated Bohemian Rhapsody.
2:16
SPEAKER_01: Um the um I think Walk the Line was before that.
2:21
SPEAKER_01: The Buddy Holly story was back in the late 70s.
2:25
SPEAKER_01: Uh Paul McCartney produced that one because he owns the rights to to that uh that catalog.
2:31
SPEAKER_01: No, they've been around for for a while, but they suddenly started making a lot of money.
2:37
SPEAKER_01: I think this is a boomer issue.
2:39
SPEAKER_01: A lot of these musical personalities are boomer heroes and heroines.
2:45
SPEAKER_00: Um, so would it be fair to say that then there's been a rash of them and there's no ointment available?
2:52
SPEAKER_01: There's no what available?
2:54
SPEAKER_00: Ointment.
2:55
SPEAKER_01: Ointment.
2:56
SPEAKER_00: You mean like for the rash of anti-historical musical biopics?
3:01
SPEAKER_01: There is there's no defense for that.
3:03
SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's no stopping them, certainly.
3:06
SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, that but the to uh they just bug the hell out of me because there are a lot of documentaries about these musical personalities.
3:16
SPEAKER_01: You know, they're around.
3:17
SPEAKER_01: We have the music, we have the film.
3:19
SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, for the last the last 60 years of music, that's the boomer, boomer era of music, and then plus the other generations, is the most covered, the most filmed, and the most followed as aspect of our culture, you know, compare it to uh even you know, books or a lot of other a lot of other aspects of the culture.
3:41
SPEAKER_01: It is well, well covered field.
3:44
SPEAKER_01: We know what all these people look like, we know what they actually sound like.
3:48
SPEAKER_01: Um, at the end of the pod, I'm gonna list a bunch of documentaries that are worth watching that are about that are show film and the real thing.
3:59
SPEAKER_00: I have a whole that's the ointment, that's the anti-chemistry.
4:03
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's okay.
4:04
SPEAKER_01: Maybe that's the is the ointment, and they're not difficult to find.
4:08
SPEAKER_01: A lot of them are on uh Amazon Prime or you know, Netflix.
4:13
SPEAKER_01: Um, but the the feature films become very high profile, they get Oscar nominations and wins, and um, and they they just why do they bother me so much?
4:27
SPEAKER_01: I think because of the it's a bit like the uh Uncanny Valley.
4:32
SPEAKER_01: Is that right?
4:33
SPEAKER_01: You know, they're kind of close but no cigar.
4:36
SPEAKER_01: And when Sam when was this and when the Beatles films were announced, uh, that was going too far in my book.
4:44
SPEAKER_01: I'm a big Beatles fan.
4:46
SPEAKER_01: And we've got some great Beatles movies going back to A Hard Days Night, which is one of the not only one of the best music films of the last 60 years, it's one of the best films of the last 60 years.
4:57
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you've watched that recently, but it's just fantastic.
5:00
SPEAKER_01: It's got much, it's much better than it is any right to be.
5:04
SPEAKER_01: Help is a bit annoying.
5:06
SPEAKER_01: Um, that's more of a children's film.
5:07
SPEAKER_01: My children like help, but Hard Days Night, that's the real thing.
5:12
SPEAKER_01: Um, Magical Mystery Tour, even um, even Yellow Submarine, uh, which was made quickly, animated um cheaply, is a really fun film.
5:23
SPEAKER_01: It's got the great music, and then Let It Be.
5:26
SPEAKER_01: And then we've got um Jackson's uh recut of Let It Be the Seven Hour Get Back.
5:33
SPEAKER_01: Um, so you know, we've got a lot of Beatles material and all the music videos they made.
5:40
SPEAKER_01: So just leave it alone.
5:42
SPEAKER_01: But you Barry Keegan, yes, why?
5:44
SPEAKER_01: Because he's kind of funny looking, so he's Ringo.
5:46
SPEAKER_00: He looks a little like Richard Starkley, doesn't he?
5:50
SPEAKER_01: Uh, I don't think so.
5:51
SPEAKER_01: I don't think uh there's one guy who does look a lot like Ringo, and that's Ringo, and he's still around, he's looking a lot like Ringo, he's 86, he's doing just fine.
6:01
SPEAKER_00: I'm surprised they did get Tom Cruise with a prosthesis to play Ringo and look younger.
6:07
SPEAKER_01: Oh well, don't give them any ideas that could be next in line.
6:10
SPEAKER_00: That's a kind of ask you what why did why is this a peeve of yours?
6:15
SPEAKER_00: Why are you what what is it why does it rub you the wrong way?
6:18
SPEAKER_00: Is it that it's it's a little bit redundant once the music is available, once the documentary film is available, that uh adding a fictional version of it on top of it is uh too much icing.
6:33
SPEAKER_01: It's totally redundant, they're reductive.
6:36
SPEAKER_01: I'll get into the films individually, some of them, and they're they're counter-productive.
6:42
SPEAKER_01: They're they're they're we we have uh partly it's proprietary as a boomer.
6:48
SPEAKER_01: I feel some slight ownership to some of this music, like a lot of boomers feel.
6:53
SPEAKER_01: I grew up with the Beatles, so I don't want younger, I don't want my kids to think of the Beatles as Barry Keegan, you know.
7:02
SPEAKER_01: Uh what are their name?
7:03
SPEAKER_01: Paul Mescal Mescal.
7:04
SPEAKER_00: You know, I don't who will he be?
7:07
SPEAKER_01: Paul.
7:08
SPEAKER_01: They want he shares the same first name, but I think that's the only similarity they have.
7:13
SPEAKER_01: Paul Mescal.
7:14
SPEAKER_01: He's good looking.
7:15
SPEAKER_00: I don't see that.
7:16
SPEAKER_00: I could see him as George Harrison.
7:18
SPEAKER_00: Who plays George Harrison?
7:19
SPEAKER_01: Uh Joseph Quinn.
7:21
SPEAKER_01: And who's that?
7:23
SPEAKER_01: I have no idea.
7:24
SPEAKER_01: I just don't have no idea who that is.
7:26
SPEAKER_01: I don't know who Harris Dickinson, who is supposed to be John Lennon.
7:30
SPEAKER_01: Uh, we saw at the end of a really annoying film called Yesterday.
7:34
SPEAKER_01: Did you see yesterday, which somehow got the rights this Beatles songs?
7:38
SPEAKER_01: It's it's about a um like some bad folk singer who um, through some weird electrical storm, all the Beatles' music is wiped out, but he's the only person on the planet who can remember them.
7:55
SPEAKER_01: So he starts playing Beatles songs, and everyone thinks he's a genius, but he didn't write any of them.
8:00
SPEAKER_01: The end of the film, and I'm gonna ruin it for people because they shouldn't go see it anyway, is a spoiler, uh spoiler announcement.
8:09
SPEAKER_01: At the end of the film, he meets a living 80-something John Lennon.
8:16
SPEAKER_01: Um, and uh they did you know digital effects to make someone look like kind of a shrunken John Lennon in his 80s, and it was kind of putrid, to be honest.
8:27
SPEAKER_01: I didn't like that at all.
8:28
SPEAKER_01: Did you see that film yesterday?
8:30
SPEAKER_00: I found I found that scene to be a little uh eerie, or maybe that's not the right word, almost in bad taste that they created this resurrected version of John Lennon.
8:42
SPEAKER_00: Who was he?
8:43
SPEAKER_00: Why was he there?
8:44
SPEAKER_00: Was he John Lennon?
8:46
SPEAKER_01: How about in bad taste?
8:48
SPEAKER_01: I would have gone not almost, that's pretty much bad taste.
8:53
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there wasn't the whole film, it was uh you know, one of those silly, uh fanciful films.
9:00
SPEAKER_01: Just leave the Beatles alone.
9:02
SPEAKER_01: I can understand why Paul and Ringo might sign off on this because they may see it as introducing re you know, introducing themselves to a whole new generation, but that's what bothers me, really.
9:15
SPEAKER_01: This this misdirection that's being given.
9:19
SPEAKER_00: I I always wonder do millennials and Gen Z do they do they know the Beatles or A, do they appreciate them?
9:29
SPEAKER_00: And I think I think Boomers should feel very grateful for a TV show called Glee, which introduced younger audiences to a range of music that we appreciated, and always surprises me when someone 23 or 24 can identify Jim Morrison of the Doors or any of the Beatles, and and actually love the music.
9:52
SPEAKER_00: But that's now do we do we need Sam Mendies to do it again?
9:56
SPEAKER_01: No, but I mean Glee Glee didn't feature actors pretending to be the Beatles, they feature the music, right?
10:03
SPEAKER_01: Correct, right?
10:04
SPEAKER_01: Well, that's fine.
10:05
SPEAKER_01: I have no problem with that.
10:06
SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, Kate Bush was introduced to a whole new generation, you know, running up that hill, I think it was from Stranger Things.
10:13
SPEAKER_01: I have no problem with the music being reintroduced.
10:16
SPEAKER_01: I don't like actors pretending to here.
10:19
SPEAKER_01: We have so we had a complete.
10:21
SPEAKER_00: I was just reacting to the the the attempt to introduce this to younger, introduce this line, this kind of music to younger audiences.
10:31
SPEAKER_00: And I think it's been done.
10:33
SPEAKER_00: So do we so I I hear what you're saying?
10:36
SPEAKER_00: Do we need to dramatize them?
10:37
SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to get at the core of your discomfort.
10:40
SPEAKER_01: Well, let's go, let's go through some of them.
10:42
SPEAKER_01: Um, a complete unknown, I hated a little bit less because it wasn't a biopic in the sense that it tried to cover you know 20 years or the whole life of a of a musical figure.
10:56
SPEAKER_01: It was a very concentrated period of of Dylan early in his career until he went electric, but it was also histrionic and got things wrong, and there was no need for it.
11:07
SPEAKER_01: Back to Black was Marissa Abella's pretending to be Amy Winehouse.
11:13
SPEAKER_01: Again, there's a great documentary called Amy, which actually features Amy Whitehouse.
11:19
SPEAKER_01: There was Springsteen Deliver Me From Nowhere with Jeremy Allen White from that uh restaurant The Bear.
11:29
SPEAKER_01: The Bear looking nothing like Springsteen, and probably I didn't I didn't see it, but I saw you know the trailer.
11:35
SPEAKER_01: Uh I don't think that did that well.
11:37
SPEAKER_01: Ray, Ray Charles, played by Jamie Foxx.
11:40
SPEAKER_01: That was a number of years ago, that was before um Bohemian Rhapsody.
11:45
SPEAKER_01: What's Love Got to Do with It?
11:47
SPEAKER_01: Starring Angela Bassett as Tina Turner and her arm muscles, and and love and mercy.
11:55
SPEAKER_00: You heard that from uh someone close to you, female, right?
12:00
SPEAKER_00: Talking about Angela Bassett's arm muscles.
12:03
SPEAKER_00: I I'm here.
12:04
SPEAKER_00: Every woman I know who knows Angela Bassett talks about her muscles.
12:08
SPEAKER_01: Oh no, I maybe I heard it somewhere.
12:10
SPEAKER_01: I mean, they're they're great arms, uh, nothing wrong with her arms, but um, they're very pronounced.
12:15
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if if um Tina Turner, I guess she had pretty good arm muscles, but uh no one's got better arm muscles than uh Angela Bassett.
12:23
SPEAKER_01: Love and Mercy, Paul Dano pretending to be Brian Wilson.
12:26
SPEAKER_01: Um a lot, so a lot of these films uh have features sort of the same, the same kind of structure, humble beginnings, a kid who doesn't fit in with his or her peers growing up, then sudden fame, disconnection from society, overindulgence, drugs, drink, sex, alienation from friends, a fall from grace, and then recovery.
12:46
SPEAKER_01: And the film often ends with a cathartic concert.
12:50
SPEAKER_01: That seems to be.
12:53
SPEAKER_01: Is that familiar to you from with some of these films?
12:56
SPEAKER_00: It sounds like a pattern.
12:57
SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, I think the other thing about those films is that they you know how it's gonna end.
13:03
SPEAKER_00: It's a little like going to the library and picking out Lincoln's biography and flipping through to the very last few pages.
13:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I know how it's gonna go.
13:13
SPEAKER_00: Uh, although I I have to take issue with you, there are a few that I actually enjoyed, but mostly I don't like.
13:18
SPEAKER_00: I I loved Walk the Line because it featured some some young actors um actually singing and giving us you know their their full attention span um as as and their talent.
13:33
SPEAKER_00: I I enjoyed it.
13:34
SPEAKER_00: I like what was that about?
13:36
SPEAKER_01: Walk the line was uh Johnny Cash.
13:39
SPEAKER_00: Johnny Cash, yeah.
13:40
SPEAKER_00: Johnny Cash biopic.
13:41
SPEAKER_00: We got to see Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon sing, uh sing together and separately, and that's that was a treat.
13:49
SPEAKER_00: And the other thing about biopics is you they give us facts sometimes.
13:58
SPEAKER_00: So it was interesting to me.
14:01
SPEAKER_00: I didn't know or maybe forgot that Johnny Cash toured with Elvis Presley in the 1950s, the beginning of they have someone playing Elvis Presley, uh, and and to their credit, whoever played Elvis, it was a very low-key performance.
14:16
SPEAKER_00: We uh we didn't see him on stage, we just saw him with the road crew and fooling around uh during the tour.
14:24
SPEAKER_01: No, I haven't seen that film.
14:26
SPEAKER_01: You say they're oh you haven't seen it, eh?
14:28
SPEAKER_00: But you're judging, are you?
14:30
SPEAKER_00: I see.
14:30
SPEAKER_00: That's very interesting.
14:31
SPEAKER_00: But like you say, well, I see, based on the facts, you can make a judgment.
14:37
SPEAKER_00: What books haven't you read that you dislike?
14:39
SPEAKER_01: I mean, speaking of facts, so they introduce us to facts, they also they also didn't leave facts out.
14:46
SPEAKER_01: I mean, the film Michael, which was a huge hit about Michael Jackson, left out all of the accusations of you know pedophilia, um, which is you know a big part of this.
14:56
SPEAKER_01: What he was a pedophile?
14:58
SPEAKER_01: You know, there was no mention of it.
15:00
SPEAKER_01: They they claimed Excuse me.
15:01
SPEAKER_00: We have to stop this for a little while.
15:03
SPEAKER_00: I'll be back in 10 minutes.
15:04
SPEAKER_01: Oh, the vapors, are you having the vapors?
15:06
SPEAKER_01: Are you sorry to be the one that breaks to you, Jim?
15:12
SPEAKER_01: Yes, but the film was so successful that they're gonna do a sequel, and I don't think they'll be able to avoid the charges of um, you know, uh a pedophilia that uh really uh didn't have and destroyed his posthumous career.
15:27
SPEAKER_01: Um, but that film made uh no mention of them.
15:30
SPEAKER_01: And Bohemian Rats Rhapsody uh about Queen largely skirts um Freddie Mercury's sexuality, which I think was key to his his personality.
15:41
SPEAKER_00: I don't think it skirted it at all.
15:44
SPEAKER_00: Did you see it?
15:45
SPEAKER_01: I did.
15:45
SPEAKER_01: I saw that film.
15:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I didn't know.
15:47
SPEAKER_00: Just checking.
15:48
SPEAKER_01: I saw that film.
15:49
SPEAKER_01: It tried it it's so nervous about about that subject.
15:54
SPEAKER_01: Didn't you think?
15:54
SPEAKER_01: It really didn't know what to say.
15:56
SPEAKER_00: I think I think it was it, I think actually I they didn't they didn't it wasn't absent, but you're right.
16:04
SPEAKER_00: There was it was um they weren't comfortable.
16:07
SPEAKER_00: They were they were shy about it, and they were but that was another film where I thought there were some interesting facts.
16:13
SPEAKER_00: When Queen, when Queen came up, I was 16 or 17 years old.
16:19
SPEAKER_00: It was interesting music, uh, interesting how it evolved from sort of glam rock to whatever it became.
16:25
SPEAKER_00: I didn't realize that Freddie Mercury was Persian and that he worked at Heathrow Airport.
16:30
SPEAKER_00: And yeah, okay.
16:32
SPEAKER_00: I I liked that.
16:33
SPEAKER_00: I liked some of that origin stuff that maybe I had not I might have overlooked or didn't have the energy to look up on Wikipedia.
16:40
SPEAKER_01: He was from what Zanzibar.
16:42
SPEAKER_01: I don't think he was Persian, he was from uh the Middle East.
16:45
SPEAKER_01: I don't think I'm pretty sure they were Iran Persian.
16:48
SPEAKER_01: Okay, all right.
16:49
SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah, he's got uh he's uh he kept that quiet.
16:53
SPEAKER_01: I mean, um, you know, the the sure that but you can see a documentary about him and them that shows, you know, him talking and where's singing sorry, where's Zanzibar?
17:03
SPEAKER_01: Uh I don't know, we'll have to look it up.
17:04
SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay, fair enough.
17:06
SPEAKER_01: The guy who played him uh one of the best actors.
17:08
SPEAKER_01: Uh um what was what was the the guy Matlin or Maylin Malik Malik?
17:16
SPEAKER_00: Remy Malik.
17:18
SPEAKER_01: Remy Malik, who ended up who went on to be a very um mediocre uh yeah, mediocre actor and um not a very good James Bond um villain.
17:28
SPEAKER_01: Um there was a film Better Man, uh, which was kind of interesting because it depicted Robin Williams as a monkey, came out a couple of years ago.
17:38
SPEAKER_01: That was on his insistence.
17:40
SPEAKER_01: He uh and what was in so you never see him as as Robbie Williams, he's a digital monkey, he has a monkey face.
17:48
SPEAKER_01: Did you did you see that film?
17:49
SPEAKER_00: I didn't.
17:50
SPEAKER_00: I avoided it.
17:51
SPEAKER_01: What was what was curious about that film was very quickly you forgot that you were looking at a monkey because the film just fit the the cliche of the music biopic.
18:03
SPEAKER_01: So it seemed nothing was odd about it.
18:06
SPEAKER_01: So even the monkey thing, the monkey face, they didn't really do anything with that, it was just uh the guy half looked like a monkey.
18:13
SPEAKER_00: Uh can you I'm sorry, can you tell me more about that film?
18:17
SPEAKER_00: I I have to tell you, it was so weird.
18:19
SPEAKER_00: I saw it uh uh at a on a trailer uh as a trailer in the theater, and I it just was weird to me.
18:26
SPEAKER_00: It was supposed to depict Robber Robin Williams, Robbie Williams.
18:31
SPEAKER_01: Oh Robbie Williams, Robin Williams was not a musical personality.
18:35
SPEAKER_01: Robbie Williams came out one of the came out of one of those boy bands.
18:39
SPEAKER_01: He's he's an English phenomenon.
18:41
SPEAKER_01: Phenomenon.
18:42
SPEAKER_01: Okay, yeah, and he's huge here.
18:44
SPEAKER_00: Educate me.
18:46
SPEAKER_01: Um oh god, now I've got to remember what the boy band was that he came out of.
18:51
SPEAKER_00: Um was it called were they called the Crisps?
18:56
SPEAKER_01: Was it called the fish and chips?
18:59
SPEAKER_00: Fish and ships, the uh uh the bavril boys.
19:03
SPEAKER_01: Um bavrell boys.
19:05
SPEAKER_01: Take that.
19:07
SPEAKER_01: Okay, take that, take that, and um, and he was the most successful when they broke up, he they all went on to do various things, and he had the most successful career, and he's always been a bit awkward about the way he looks.
19:20
SPEAKER_01: Um, so he wanted uh his awkwardness uh telegraphed um by appearing like a monkey whenever no one else looked like a monkey.
19:30
SPEAKER_01: Um and that was uh and it's just uh it was it would have been an interesting conceit if they kind of did anything with it, but they didn't.
19:39
SPEAKER_01: They just followed all of the all of the beats of a of a regular musical, you know, biopic.
19:46
SPEAKER_01: What did you think of the Bob Dylan one?
19:49
SPEAKER_00: I didn't like it, it it bored me, and I and and it insulted me because they shot it on the lot in LA.
19:56
SPEAKER_00: None of it looked like New York to me.
19:59
SPEAKER_00: And you know, like you know, I know there a lot of these biopics, they're careful to make the characters three-dimensional and show us their abrasive sides.
20:10
SPEAKER_00: So we saw some of that.
20:11
SPEAKER_00: I appreciated it because sometimes Bob Dylan um is is cast as someone um perfect, uh almost like a prophet, almost like a prophet.
20:24
SPEAKER_01: And when he's uh all right, I didn't know I mean during the 1960s, you know.
20:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, he's a tricky, tricky character.
20:32
SPEAKER_01: You can be a prophet and tricky at the same time, which clearly he was, um, and is, I guess.
20:39
SPEAKER_01: He's still touring.
20:40
SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, okay.
20:42
SPEAKER_01: Um, so did you find it um oh, so you found that was interesting about it, that it didn't it didn't hold back from showing how he was a bit of a self-obsessed dance, self-obsessed and not not great with his romantic partners in constant.
21:00
SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, I don't know, but I I don't think uh I didn't I just don't think it went deep enough.
21:05
SPEAKER_00: I I found uh the portrayal of Dylan to be kind of tedious to me.
21:11
SPEAKER_00: Um I've I've got I've got I've gonna say I've got uh fatigue.
21:15
SPEAKER_00: Uh that actor fatigues me right now.
21:17
SPEAKER_01: I'm just Timothy Chalamet.
21:20
SPEAKER_00: I'm not interested in him anymore.
21:22
SPEAKER_01: All right.
21:22
SPEAKER_01: I mean you go back, maybe it's a bit more excusable if it's someone like Mozart or Beethoven, because we don't have film of these guys, we don't know what they sounded like, and they didn't speak English uh for a start.
21:36
SPEAKER_01: They wouldn't have, but I remember seeing it's like a 1961 live action Disney film about Beethoven, which uh probably very few people have seen with good reason.
21:49
SPEAKER_01: And there's a scene of him before he went deaf sitting under a tree during a uh thunderstorm, and the storm goes da da da right.
22:01
SPEAKER_01: And then he listens.
22:03
SPEAKER_01: It was like it was like the most ridiculous thing.
22:06
SPEAKER_01: Is that what Disney was teaching kids how Beethoven came up with his musical formulas?
22:12
SPEAKER_01: And you know, it just seems so silly.
22:15
SPEAKER_01: Um, and then and then the Mozart one, uh Amadeus.
22:20
SPEAKER_01: What did you think of that?
22:22
SPEAKER_00: Well, actually, while we're talking about Beethoven, let's not forget that Gary Oldman.
22:27
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yes, Immortal Beloved.
22:29
SPEAKER_00: He played an Immortal Beloved, and that's a 1994 film.
22:33
SPEAKER_00: So early biopic.
22:34
SPEAKER_00: Although, yeah, to be point, we should be careful, we should be discreet here.
22:38
SPEAKER_00: It was, you know, it was a post-mortem biopic, someone who was long gone, yeah, and not still alive.
22:46
SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, I think it's more excusable, but I they tend to be, you know, reductive.
22:52
SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry, I keep using that word, you know, by definition.
22:56
SPEAKER_01: Gotta get a whole bunch of their life into 90 minutes and it with the with the beats and everything, you know, and uh what I I think I saw Immortal Beloved.
23:06
SPEAKER_01: If I did, I don't remember any of it.
23:08
SPEAKER_01: Um I am still scarred from seeing Gary Oldman as uh Winston Churchill um in um their final uh the finest hour.
23:19
SPEAKER_01: He redeemed himself as Jackson Lamb in uh Slow Horses, which is maybe his best role ever.
23:25
SPEAKER_01: But he was a painful Churchill in big fat suit, uh, which someone suggested he do.
23:32
SPEAKER_01: And you know, it was a big hit.
23:33
SPEAKER_01: He won Best Actor Oscar for that, but I thought that was a ludicrous film.
23:38
SPEAKER_01: Uh anyway, sorry, that wasn't a musical biopic.
23:40
SPEAKER_01: Churchill didn't write any music.
23:41
SPEAKER_00: But wait, didn't he play the ukulele?
23:43
SPEAKER_01: He does in the film.
23:44
SPEAKER_01: That's historically.
23:47
SPEAKER_00: Um, Ain't She Sweet.
23:49
SPEAKER_01: They show him on the tube.
23:50
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's just I don't think Churchill took the tube ever in his life.
23:54
SPEAKER_01: Anyway, during the war, they show him taking the tube.
23:57
SPEAKER_01: Um, I the the the the biopic genre is so successful.
24:02
SPEAKER_01: We have at least two um parody films of it.
24:06
SPEAKER_01: There's walk hard, the Dewey Cox story.
24:09
SPEAKER_01: Do you remember that?
24:11
SPEAKER_00: No, and I wish I saw it.
24:12
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, did you?
24:14
SPEAKER_01: No, that was uh as a spoof of walk the line, and then there was Weird, Weird, the the Al Yankovic story.
24:22
SPEAKER_01: The Al sorry, the Al Yankovic story, Weird Al Yankovic, with the Weird Al Yankovic played by Harry Potter himself.
24:32
SPEAKER_01: Um uh Daniel Radcliffe played Weird Al Yankovic Yankovic.
24:36
SPEAKER_01: Did you know that?
24:38
SPEAKER_00: Uh with an accordion.
24:39
SPEAKER_00: I was aware of the story.
24:40
SPEAKER_00: I did not, I was not aware that it was Daniel Radcliffe, who I think, unlike Remy Malik, I I think he's an interesting, terrific actor.
24:49
SPEAKER_00: I've seen him on stage, he's great in cinema, naturally on TV.
24:54
SPEAKER_00: And uh I think he's he's interesting that he he picked that role.
24:58
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, good for him.
24:59
SPEAKER_01: Uh I like what he does.
25:01
SPEAKER_01: Um, you know what?
25:02
SPEAKER_00: I saw him in a uh an adaptation of a book that you have on your very bookshelf that is that is not a dramatic book, it's called The Anatomy of a Fact.
25:13
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, it was adapted for theater uh with Cherry Jones, uh and that other Broadway editing.
25:23
SPEAKER_00: It's about copy editing, and Daniel Radcliffe plays the young copy editor who has to work with uh Bobby Carnival, who's sort of a brash, uh irreproachable journalist, the big mouth and bullying, and they have to debate some facts and a story.
25:43
SPEAKER_00: Somehow they made it interesting.
25:45
SPEAKER_00: At the end, yeah, it was a packed house.
25:49
SPEAKER_00: I was in the very back.
25:50
SPEAKER_00: There had to be a thousand people in that theater.
25:52
SPEAKER_00: Could that possibly be?
25:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, it was it was Broadway, there'd be a thousand people in that they they hosted a fundraiser.
26:02
SPEAKER_00: I guess theater the Broadway does a fundraiser for something noble, and there was there was uh Harry Potter, Daniel Radcliffe leading a a bidding war, people bidding$800 at a time, filling up the coffers for this for this unknown uh charity.
26:21
SPEAKER_00: He was amazing on stage the way he motivated people.
26:24
SPEAKER_00: I don't know how he did it.
26:25
SPEAKER_01: I like the fact of that play because it gives hope to you know copyright copy editors everywhere that there could be a play about their their lives, their life.
26:37
SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, when you're working away, work I worked as a copy editor on some projects, and it's a bit can be true drudgery, but in the back of my mind, I thought maybe someone will write a play about this.
26:50
SPEAKER_01: Maybe Harry Potter will play me on stage.
26:53
SPEAKER_01: Sorry, Daniel Ratcliffe, that's a bit unfair.
26:55
SPEAKER_01: He he deserves to get his actual his real name back at this point, don't you think?
26:59
SPEAKER_00: Uh you know what I heard he's he's being considered to play Harry Styles in a new biopic.
27:06
SPEAKER_01: No, you're kidding.
27:07
SPEAKER_00: I am okay.
27:10
SPEAKER_01: I think Harry Styles wouldn't let anyone else play Harry Styles.
27:14
SPEAKER_00: Oh, and one little detail you know, this weekend was the New York City Marathon, so there was a lot of marathon chatter.
27:19
SPEAKER_00: Apparently, Harry Stiles is a super athlete and he runs a sub-three hour marathon.
27:26
SPEAKER_00: And wow, whoever plays him in a biopic better be fit.
27:30
SPEAKER_00: That's all I can say.
27:31
SPEAKER_01: I thought when you started saying that about Harry Styles in the marathon, I thought, you know how people run in costume.
27:37
SPEAKER_01: I thought he said that was the most popular costume this year was Harry Styles.
27:42
SPEAKER_01: All these runners dressed as Harry Styles.
27:44
SPEAKER_01: And aren't there runners dressed as um as bananas and stuff to raise money for charity?
27:50
SPEAKER_01: There is here.
27:50
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
27:51
SPEAKER_01: I was thinking it makes it much harder to run if you're stuck in a silly costume.
27:56
SPEAKER_00: Hard enough without a nice long shower after that one.
28:00
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
28:01
SPEAKER_01: Um, so um, well, all right, I didn't know that about Harris Styles.
28:06
SPEAKER_01: He's probably runs, he runs around a lot on stage, I think.
28:09
SPEAKER_01: Um, so he's fit.
28:12
SPEAKER_00: Jagger used to run before you know in his 40s or 50s, I think, in preparing for tours.
28:18
SPEAKER_00: Um, oh, boy, what about a Rolling Stones film?
28:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I was just thinking, don't the Rolling Stones um want to have a film uh made about them?
28:26
SPEAKER_01: There these are all you know, there's uh great there's some great real Rolling Stones films on my list that I'll I'll I'll give in a minute.
28:36
SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, uh why why are there four Beatles film feature films and no Rolling Stones biopic?
28:44
SPEAKER_01: Maybe Mick Jagger has more sense um and you know dignity than to sell the uh the the feature rights to to his band.
28:53
SPEAKER_01: What do you think?
28:54
SPEAKER_01: What's behind that?
28:56
SPEAKER_00: Uh well I'm not an attorney, uh, but I play one on this podcast.
29:01
SPEAKER_00: Um I would say it's absolutely verboten.
29:05
SPEAKER_01: Who could play him?
29:06
SPEAKER_01: What who could play Paul McCartney?
29:08
SPEAKER_01: It's just ridiculous.
29:10
SPEAKER_01: It's just ridiculous.
29:12
SPEAKER_01: I I you know I think it's it's different if you're nine years old and you see, you know, all four Beatles films, or even just one of them in 2028.
29:21
SPEAKER_01: Um, that's gonna be your view, what these guys look like and sound like and were like and are like.
29:27
SPEAKER_01: I just I don't know, I find it offensive as a boomer.
29:33
SPEAKER_01: It's it gets my boomer guard up.
29:36
SPEAKER_01: But but here, so here is a list of musical documentaries featuring the real things, the real people.
29:44
SPEAKER_01: Let's get lost, Bruce Weber's terrific 1988 film about Chet Baker, Stop Making Sense, which is a concert film, John Pandemi Talking Heads, and American Utopia, which was uh Spike Lee's film, The Talking Heads, The Kids Are All Kids Are All Right, featuring the Who Pink Floyd at Pompeii.
30:06
SPEAKER_01: There's a great film about the Velvet Underground released a few years ago.
30:10
SPEAKER_01: Um, Amy, I mentioned that before about um Amy Winehouse, Summer of Soul, about 1969 Soul Tour, featuring Sly and the Family Stone, being oh, that was uh that was so interesting.
30:22
SPEAKER_01: Staple singers.
30:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I really I really got glued to that for some reason, even though it's I it's not the greatest documentary in the world, but to just see that there was a almost nearly spontaneous, massive, over and overlooked summer concert in Harlem that was just pretty dazzling.
30:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and there's film of it.
30:43
SPEAKER_01: You wouldn't want an actor to play those roles, you know.
30:46
SPEAKER_01: You wouldn't want Woodstock, a move, a feature film about Woodstock with all these actors playing Jimi Hendrix and The Who and The Grateful Dead.
30:54
SPEAKER_01: There's uh film about Metallica, there's Monterey Pop, there's about Kurt Cobain, um Amazing Grace.
31:01
SPEAKER_01: Remember that?
31:02
SPEAKER_01: Recently restored concert film of um of Aretha Franklin at her height in 1972.
31:09
SPEAKER_01: Gimme Shelter, Rolling Stones at the Altamont concert that was a disaster.
31:16
SPEAKER_01: Bad concert, great film.
31:17
SPEAKER_01: Oh my, we won't tell you what happens at the end of that film, but that's worth seeing.
31:21
SPEAKER_01: Uh, The Grateful Dead and the Jefferson Airplane are in that as well.
31:24
SPEAKER_01: And I think Tina Turner is in some earlier scenes.
31:27
SPEAKER_01: The last waltz, remember that?
31:29
SPEAKER_01: Uh Martin Scorsese's account of the the band's supposed final gig in 1976, although I think they they reformed.
31:38
SPEAKER_00: And he he directed a Rolling Stones concert film circa 2002.
31:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's three, maybe.
31:48
SPEAKER_00: Yes, which was fairly terrible from the orfield in the last 30 seconds.
31:54
SPEAKER_01: What happened the last 30 seconds?
31:56
SPEAKER_00: You see Scorsese and a whole crew crowded into a very small space, and he in a very fussy way giving giving direction to either lighting or camera, and it just it's it's worth watching that 30 seconds, and you don't need to watch you don't need to watch the rest of it.
32:16
SPEAKER_00: There are to see a fussy director at one.
32:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I like to see that.
32:21
SPEAKER_01: Uh uh, there's some been very good.
32:22
SPEAKER_01: A lot of Rolling Stones concerts of the last 20 years have been filmed, and you can find them, and some of them are great.
32:29
SPEAKER_01: There was a so this film of them in Hyde Park in maybe 2016 or something, and it is much better, much better performance the than they had any right to be delivering at that point.
32:41
SPEAKER_01: It was great.
32:42
SPEAKER_00: I think maybe Timothy someone would cast Timothy Chalamet as Keith Richards, wouldn't you say?
32:50
SPEAKER_00: Just based on physique.
32:52
SPEAKER_01: Well, we have we have we have you know Johnny Depp playing Keith Richards in the Pirates of the Caribbean films, right?
33:01
SPEAKER_01: No, they're not biopics, and we're talking about Dylan, maybe one of the greatest music documentaries ever made, is Don't Look Back.
33:10
SPEAKER_01: Do you remember that?
33:11
SPEAKER_01: Released 1967 of Dylan 65 Tour of England.
33:16
SPEAKER_01: I think it was his last acoustic tour.
33:18
SPEAKER_01: It's just riveting.
33:20
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't, he's kind of a he's he's tricky in that film.
33:24
SPEAKER_01: You see his personality.
33:26
SPEAKER_01: He was narcissistic and grumpy, and um, you know, he was tricky to be around.
33:33
SPEAKER_01: And he is, you know, he's a genius.
33:35
SPEAKER_01: I mean, he's just so he's so charismatic.
33:38
SPEAKER_01: Um, and the camera is right in his face, it's a shot in the back of taxicabs.
33:43
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's uh it's just that and um uh and a hard day's night from 1964.
33:50
SPEAKER_01: Those are great music films featuring the Beatles and Dylan.
33:54
SPEAKER_01: We got Rolling Stones, they're all actual footage of these guys.
33:59
SPEAKER_01: So forget these biopics kids.
34:02
SPEAKER_00: Check out the real thing, and baby boomer listeners.
34:06
SPEAKER_00: I I or even less than baby boomer listeners.
34:09
SPEAKER_00: I I hope you're you're taking stock of this terrific list that JB has assembled of concert films.
34:14
SPEAKER_00: I know I am.
34:16
SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm kind of I'm kind of thirsty to see some of these things.
34:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, a lot of them are concert films, not uh some of them are in sort of documentaries about uh the life of the band.
34:25
SPEAKER_01: The one on um on the velvet underground is just absolutely fascinating.
34:29
SPEAKER_01: They're also on is it Netflix or Amazon?
34:33
SPEAKER_00: I think Amazon, I I did not love that Velvet that Velvet I there was it was too stylized.
34:41
SPEAKER_00: There was a lot of cutting, editing, um, a lot of footage that was pleasing to the eye, but wasn't telling the story.
34:51
SPEAKER_00: It was just a little a little much for me.
34:53
SPEAKER_00: I would have I would have, you know, maybe I'm boring, you know, I and not stylish because you know, I I think they're all interesting.
35:00
SPEAKER_00: It's a great story.
35:02
SPEAKER_00: Um, the Velvets, it's a good influential, very influential today, but yeah, there was just too much junk for the eyes.
35:09
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of it was noise.
35:11
SPEAKER_01: That's well, that's a fair criticism because I tend not to like showy, I don't like intrusive, intrusive directors so much, but I found that film informative.
35:21
SPEAKER_01: Um, I guess I'm such a Velvet fan that you know I would eat up anything about them, but I certainly wouldn't want to see actors uh portray them.
35:29
SPEAKER_01: I didn't like that Warhol film.
35:32
SPEAKER_01: I shot Andy Warhol, I thought was uh a monstrosity.
35:36
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I loved it.
35:37
SPEAKER_01: Okay, great.
35:38
SPEAKER_00: Tell me I loved it.
35:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and oh my goodness, do you remember who played Andy Warhol?
35:45
SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, what a great portrayal, and um so the portrayal was so counterintuitive.
35:53
SPEAKER_00: How would they have picked that guy?
35:56
SPEAKER_00: Who was it?
35:58
SPEAKER_01: I'll tell you in a second, as soon as I remember who there was David Bowie played Andy Warhol as terribly stunting in that uh that uh Basquiat film, which was kind of annoying in itself.
36:11
SPEAKER_01: I didn't want someone to play Busquiat.
36:14
SPEAKER_00: Uh, are you ready?
36:16
SPEAKER_00: Are you ready for the name of the actor?
36:18
SPEAKER_00: And that man's name was Jared Harris.
36:21
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I love Jared Harris.
36:24
SPEAKER_00: Jared Harris played Andy Warhol with such, I'm gonna use this word, a plum.
36:30
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he was terrific.
36:32
SPEAKER_00: And by contrast, David Bowie in the Boscat film played uh played him, and you could tell he was dying to to play Andy Warhol, and it just I thought was very stylized, so mannered and obvious.
36:48
SPEAKER_01: I agree with you.
36:48
SPEAKER_01: I did as I did not I did not like I shot uh Andy Warhol, but I liked Jared Harris's portrayal of Warhol.
36:57
SPEAKER_01: Um, and I would see Jared Harris in anything.
37:01
SPEAKER_01: He's one of our greatest actors, greatest character actors.
37:04
SPEAKER_01: We liked him in Mad Men and we liked him in um Chernobyl.
37:09
SPEAKER_01: He's just a fabulous actor.
37:11
SPEAKER_01: So yes, he was a good Andy Warhol.
37:14
SPEAKER_01: Um, the exception to the rule.
37:16
SPEAKER_01: There was a third film with someone playing Warhol.
37:18
SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to remember what it was.
37:19
SPEAKER_00: Interesting thing that you you raised that because uh Lilary Lily Taylor played the shooter of Valerie Solanus, Solanus, Solanus, yeah.
37:30
SPEAKER_00: And uh interestingly, she she wrote a manifesto, the scum manifesto.
37:36
SPEAKER_01: The Society for Cutting Up Men.
37:39
SPEAKER_01: We could do a whole podcast on this because it was really atrocious.
37:43
SPEAKER_00: It was atrocious, it was marginal, it was sophomoric, it was and um an insult, an insult to feminists.
37:52
SPEAKER_01: But she's become a feminist heroine, a hero.
37:55
SPEAKER_00: That's what I was gonna say.
37:56
SPEAKER_00: You stole my thunder, Miller.
37:58
SPEAKER_01: Sorry, I'm sorry, but I agree with you in 100.
38:02
SPEAKER_01: Well, cut this out.
38:03
SPEAKER_01: Well, then take two.
38:04
SPEAKER_01: And what was that?
38:05
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's interesting though, because uh you know the unibomber has has attracted interest in recent years.
38:10
SPEAKER_00: Uh, so has she.
38:12
SPEAKER_00: There's there's an appeal somehow for these extremist parts.
38:16
SPEAKER_01: On and that was your instigation.
38:17
SPEAKER_01: Remember, we did a podcast on uh uh yeah, on the guy who shot um the uh executive from the health correct the United Healthcare executive shooting by Luigi Mangione.
38:31
SPEAKER_00: So, what does it say if we decode the these uh these interests?
38:36
SPEAKER_00: Uh what does it say about society that they've become uh young people, especially mostly exclusively, are are big fans of these extremists, like the unibomber, like Valerie Solanus, like Luigi Mangioni.
38:51
SPEAKER_00: What does it say about the culture?
38:52
SPEAKER_01: Um, I mean, uh, you know, we grew up with people like you know, Abby Hoffman, Jerry Rubin.
38:58
SPEAKER_01: They were they were they were heroes of mine, but they weren't violent, they didn't kill anyone or try to kill anyone.
39:07
SPEAKER_01: They were they had a great sense, great sense of humor, both of them.
39:11
SPEAKER_01: Um, that was a side of the anti-war movement I really liked.
39:15
SPEAKER_01: Uh it was you know creative and fun, um, you know, in the in the face of a you know terrible war.
39:23
SPEAKER_01: Um, but Valerie Salonas, I've never understood her following.
39:28
SPEAKER_01: And I thought the film um was also part of this reframing her as a as a feminist, uh feminist heroine.
39:38
SPEAKER_01: I mean, maybe that's one of the reasons I didn't like it.
39:40
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to drift too far from our topic, but I you know, I sometimes I speak to people in their in their 20s or 30s who have not been able to afford their healthcare premiums and have given it up.
39:52
SPEAKER_00: Um and I I I bring you know my reaction as someone older who has a family and has had jobs is that killing people and depriving you know them, depriving their families of someone who earns money for them and gives them you know love and a family life is not a nice thing to do.
40:13
SPEAKER_00: But uh you know, maybe it's a little bit um flippant, but uh I don't hear a lot of sympathy for the dead United Healthcare CEO sometimes, or put it this way I hear more sympathy for the shooter than for the CEO because of the the high cost of healthcare.
40:32
SPEAKER_00: And well, it's a it's a we something maybe we take for granted as boomers.
40:37
SPEAKER_01: It's it's an it's understandable, if not um uh what's the word I'm looking for?
40:45
SPEAKER_01: Uh it's um you it's a murder that that has a a motive, uh, even if I'm totally you know against it.
40:55
SPEAKER_01: The killing of Warhol was she was just mad.
40:58
SPEAKER_01: I mean, uh Valerie Salinas was nuts.
41:00
SPEAKER_00: Um she was mad because she felt rejected from the well, she was angry.
41:06
SPEAKER_00: I mean, yeah, I meant mad rejected from the from the factory society, she wanted to be part of the factory, and there's a very funny scene in that film where he says Jared Harris playing Andy Warwell says, Well, what you've got here, this pamphlet, it's pretty good.
41:22
SPEAKER_00: I think we could use you in the factory to do some typing.
41:26
SPEAKER_01: He says, he says to her, Did you type us all yourself?
41:31
SPEAKER_01: It's very well done, it's terrific.
41:34
SPEAKER_01: You typed all this yourself.
41:36
SPEAKER_01: That's a very war hock and picture him uh saying that.
41:40
SPEAKER_01: Um, but I meant mad in the sense of she had mental health issues, yeah.
41:45
SPEAKER_00: She did, right?
41:46
SPEAKER_01: So um you don't need to make uh, but um anyway, I don't want to get as as you said, I don't get too sidetracked by by this.
41:56
SPEAKER_01: Uh, but you're right about Jared Harris as Warhol in I Shot Andy Warhol.
42:01
SPEAKER_01: But again, we have a lot of footage of Warhol.
42:04
SPEAKER_01: Um Andy Warhol playing uh Andy Warhol.
42:06
SPEAKER_01: And I think he did play Andy Warhol.
42:08
SPEAKER_01: I think there was always a performance of some kind.
42:11
SPEAKER_01: So do you have a headquake for us?
42:13
SPEAKER_00: My I do have a head headquake.
42:15
SPEAKER_00: Um, it's uh it's in memoriam for an author named John Sedgwick.
42:21
SPEAKER_00: Uh I've met him several times.
42:23
SPEAKER_00: Uh he's close with a personal, another friend of mine.
42:26
SPEAKER_00: He was a pretty prolific journalist, um, biographer, novelist.
42:31
SPEAKER_00: I think he wrote 13 books over his career.
42:34
SPEAKER_00: He's from the Sedgwick family.
42:37
SPEAKER_00: So when we were talking about Andy Warhol, I thought of his famous muse, Edie Sedgwick, who was a young model, tragically died of a drug overdose, and is the subject of a very interesting book called Edie, which is a um oral history.
42:55
SPEAKER_00: So it's an oral history in which the story is told by uh people close to her in a journalistic style.
43:02
SPEAKER_00: So it's there's no there's no master narration, it's just it's just voices, acquaintances, relatives, friends, telling the story up from the beginning of her life to her death.
43:14
SPEAKER_00: And uh John was a wonderful guy.
43:18
SPEAKER_00: Um, he was tasked with overseeing some of the family property, which is cost, you know, costly, hard to do.
43:26
SPEAKER_00: He wrote a great book called Uh In My Blood in 2008, and it was a memoir about six generations of his Boston Brahmin family.
43:37
SPEAKER_01: Uh can I ask he was he um was he Edie's brother or cousin?
43:43
SPEAKER_00: They were first cousins.
43:45
SPEAKER_00: First cousins, okay.
43:46
SPEAKER_00: First cousins, and so he died at 72, and uh the Sedgwicks are famous for having a famous cemetery or a family family uh cemetery.
43:57
SPEAKER_00: I think they they call it uh The pie slice, or something like that.
44:02
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
44:03
SPEAKER_00: Talked about it a bit.
44:04
SPEAKER_00: And sadly, like many in his family, he died by his own hand.
44:09
SPEAKER_00: So we uh we commemorate him, uh, and in this sad little headquake, uh, for a you know, great guy who was a terrific author and uh had an interesting history.
44:22
SPEAKER_01: The Sedgwicks are an interesting family, and that I can recommend that book, 80 um an American life, uh, by George Plimpton and Gene Stein.
44:32
SPEAKER_01: And it kind of started a trend in oral oral histories, right?
44:36
SPEAKER_01: It was a brilliant approach to the subject.
44:38
SPEAKER_01: My headquake is quite simple.
44:40
SPEAKER_01: It's I've been enjoying the fourth season of The Diplomat on Netflix.
44:45
SPEAKER_00: Oh, us too.
44:47
SPEAKER_01: And I want to point out that as any Anglophile would, that their Windsor Castle looks nothing like Windsor Castle.
44:57
SPEAKER_01: Picky picky.
44:58
SPEAKER_01: It's the 16th century Burley House, which was built 500 years after the turrets and crenellations of Windsor Castle, of which Burley has none.
45:09
SPEAKER_01: I thought that was stuck out like a sore thumb.
45:12
SPEAKER_01: Um, but the mid-century here, I'm being a real snooty stickler about this.
45:18
SPEAKER_01: The mid-18th century Rotham Park is the stand-in for the ambassador's residence called Winfield House, which um their stand-in is much better looking than the real thing, which was built in 1936 by the heiress Barbara Woolworth Hutton, of whom one of her five husbands was Carrie Grant.
45:39
SPEAKER_01: She donated she donated her big London house, which is just inside the grounds of Regents Park.
45:48
SPEAKER_01: She gave it to the American, to the to the US, and now it's the ambassador's residence, which is a much better location for filming, but they're not allowed to use it, so they have to drive 17 miles north to to Rotham Park, which is a much more elegant house.
46:05
SPEAKER_01: But it's a great show, maybe the only reason to subscribe to Netflix at the moment, but I'm really enjoying it.
46:11
SPEAKER_01: Have you been watching it too?
46:12
SPEAKER_01: Or are you about to watch it?
46:13
SPEAKER_01: The new season?
46:15
SPEAKER_00: I actually took out a temporary Netflix membership just to watch it.
46:19
SPEAKER_00: There you go.
46:20
SPEAKER_00: It's that good.
46:22
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's brilliant.
46:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
46:24
SPEAKER_01: Rufus Sewell, and um it's a great cast.
46:28
SPEAKER_00: But I think we owe a lot to Deborah Kahn, who is the show runner.
46:31
SPEAKER_00: She was in the she was in the writer's room uh at uh for for the West Wing, and she does a great job honoring the tradition of Aaron Sorkin, um, and everyone else involved in that show.
46:44
SPEAKER_01: It's well, it's cast some.
46:46
SPEAKER_01: There's some uh alumn alumna from um alumni.
46:50
SPEAKER_01: There are left wing, right?
46:52
SPEAKER_00: Uh there are, and what isn't Alison Jani?
46:56
SPEAKER_00: She's just the most, she's just um she's scary, versatile.
47:00
SPEAKER_01: She's a scary president.
47:02
SPEAKER_00: She's scary, she's funny, she's can be thoughtful, and she does it all in this show.
47:09
SPEAKER_00: It's just amazing.
47:10
SPEAKER_01: And Bradley Whitford?
47:11
SPEAKER_01: Is that Bradley Whitford?
47:13
SPEAKER_01: Playing the first husband.
47:15
SPEAKER_01: Um, he is he's a very complex character, too.
47:18
SPEAKER_01: They're they're a great double double act in it.
47:21
SPEAKER_01: I have to say, I was thinking of Aaron Sorkin a bit while I was watching it, and kind of kind of thankful for the lack of snappy Sorkinisms.
47:29
SPEAKER_01: It seemed uh and what the show all does as well is it balances or or echoes or the the public life of these diplomats with their with their private issues, right?
47:42
SPEAKER_01: They do that really well, weaving those those two stories.
47:46
SPEAKER_00: Um, and there's several couples all the characters seem to be struggling with their personal with their spouses or their personal relationships in a way that is a little bit of a metaphor for diplomacy, isn't it?
48:00
SPEAKER_00: The US relationship with the the UK is a little about managing a relationship, and then there's the the the microeconomic level where households have to manage their relationships.
48:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's terrific, yeah.
48:14
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean they fit a lot into you know 50 minutes because they have those sort of two levels of the of the storylines and the subplot.
48:20
SPEAKER_00: So anyway, that's a great uh series, and they do something every now and then they do something very strange.
48:27
SPEAKER_00: And I I still I'm not giving much away when Rufus Sewell, who plays the eventually the vice president, returns to the UK to his wife, who is the ambassador, and he gets into bed with her in his shoes.
48:43
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
48:45
SPEAKER_00: He won't take his shoes off, he won't take his shoes off, and it's the strangest thing, and I still haven't quite figured it out.
48:50
SPEAKER_00: We were flummoxed.
48:52
SPEAKER_01: She she thinks it's disgusting, which it kind of is.
48:54
SPEAKER_01: It is who gets into bed in their shoes in their shoes.
49:00
SPEAKER_01: He was so tired.
49:02
SPEAKER_01: He was uh he just uh flown in from Washington just to see it.
49:05
SPEAKER_01: And boy, were boy were boy with were his arms tired and his feet apparently, and his feet.
49:12
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, when you fly in, your feet go on the tar, you know, you on the runway, you have to screech to a halt, you know.
49:18
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so that's the diplomat on Netflix.
49:21
SPEAKER_01: So anyway, we get a lot of uh recommend a lot of a lot of recommendations here between our didn't you say you had a list?
49:28
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I gave the list.
49:30
SPEAKER_01: I gave you the list.
49:30
SPEAKER_00: Oh, you gave the list, yeah.
49:32
SPEAKER_01: Where were you?
49:33
SPEAKER_00: I thought you said you were gonna do it at the end of the podcast.
49:36
SPEAKER_01: Well, it was the end of the end of the discussion of musical biopics before headquakes.
49:42
SPEAKER_00: Oh, excuse me.
49:44
SPEAKER_01: Wake up and smell the coffee, Jim.
49:47
SPEAKER_00: In your case, the Tetley T.
49:49
SPEAKER_01: Tedley T.
49:50
SPEAKER_01: Wake up and smell the tea.
49:51
SPEAKER_01: Well, anyway, that's uh that's boomer has it.
49:55
SPEAKER_01: Um for this uh for this episode.
49:58
SPEAKER_01: I am JB Miller in London, which is already dark at 5 30 and six o'clock.
50:04
SPEAKER_00: And I'm Jim Jelamis, just finishing daylight savings time in Brooklyn.
50:09
SPEAKER_01: There you go.
50:10
SPEAKER_01: Thanks.
50:10
SPEAKER_01: Bye-bye.