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Natural Born Killers (1994) with David Hering · Left of the Projector

0:15
Intro: Hello and welcome to Left of the Projector. I am your host, Evan,
0:19
Intro: back again with another film discussion from the left.
0:22
Intro: You can follow the show at leftoftheprojector.com and subscribe for bonus content
0:28
Intro: and to support the show at patreon.com slash leftoftheprojectorpod.
0:33
Intro: This week on the show, we will be discussing the 1994 film Natural Born Killers.
0:38
Intro: It was directed by Oliver Stone and stars Woody Harrelson, Juliette Lewis,
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Intro: Robert Downey Jr., Tommy Lee Jones, and Tom Sizemore.
0:46
Intro: The story was originally created by Quentin Tarantino, but was sold off and
0:52
Intro: picked up by Oliver Stone with help from David Vellos and Richard Rutowski on the screenplay.
0:59
Intro: This week on the show, I have Dr. David Herring.
1:02
Intro: David is a senior lecturer in English at the University of Liverpool.
1:06
Intro: His writing has appeared in publications including the New York Review of Books,
1:10
Intro: Guernica, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and the London Magazine.
1:15
Intro: He is a author of David Foster Wallace, Fiction and Form, which came out in 2016 from Bloomsbury.
1:22
Intro: He is currently working on a book about cinema and memory.
1:25
Intro: And I guess that is a perfect segue to the bring in David on this conversation
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Intro: to talk about the 1994 film Natural Born Killers.
1:35
Intro: I hope you enjoyed this week's episode all.
1:38
Evan: Right people thanks for joining today it's a pleasure,
1:42
Evan: Yes, yes. So I mentioned in the opening, we're talking about the 1994 Oliver
1:47
Evan: Stone film Natural Born Killers.
1:50
Evan: And, you know, before we get into this kind of crazy movie, it had been quite
1:56
Evan: a long time since I saw it.
1:57
Evan: I thought as a little quick, you know, thought exercise, if you will,
2:01
Evan: I'm usually asking people if there's any, you know, if there's an actor living
2:05
Evan: or dead, doesn't have to have anything to do with natural born killers.
2:07
Evan: It could be, but if there's someone out there that you would,
2:10
Evan: you know, be nice to have a drink, coffee, a dinner with, would you, uh, who would you pick?
2:15
David: Can I pick a director? Yeah.
2:17
Evan: Oh, please. That counts.
2:18
David: I only, I only asked this because I, I was recently having a conversation that was, um,
2:24
David: along the, along the lines of, you know, a similar thing
2:27
David: who would be kind of a approachable or good
2:30
David: company and a name that came up for someone who
2:32
David: potentially would be difficult company was um andrei tarkovsky uh for the simple
2:37
David: reason that his films are very complex and um poetic and and i you could i have
2:44
David: you have a kind i guess a kind of image of what he might be like in real life
2:47
David: which would be quite taciturn or quite a complex person.
2:51
David: But then I heard a story about how he had screened Solaris for Akira Kurosawa,
3:01
David: who was a great hero of his, and took him out to dinner afterwards.
3:04
David: And he was so nervous that he drank the best part of a bottle of vodka and turned
3:10
David: the music off in the restaurant and started singing the theme to Seven Samurai at the top of his voice.
3:16
David: So I thought, actually, I bet he'd be a great dinner party guest.
3:20
David: So I'm going to go with Tarkovsky, I think.
3:22
Evan: That's certainly a good one. I have an ongoing kind of every quarter,
3:27
Evan: I guess, if you will, or every three months, I've been doing a couple of his films.
3:30
Evan: I've done Solaris, Stalker, and then I did Ivan's Childhood.
3:34
Evan: And he would be interesting. I've read his book, and he seems very humble,
3:37
Evan: but also he's very serious about his craft.
3:40
Evan: So it would be interesting to talk to him.
3:42
Evan: I always have trouble with this one because I feel like I've named all the good
3:47
Evan: ones I have in other episodes.
3:48
Evan: So the one I was thinking about, not maybe a glamorous one, would be Andy Serkis.
3:53
David: Oh, yeah.
3:54
Evan: Just because I love Lord of the Rings. I love his portrayal of Gollum,
3:57
Evan: and he's going to be doing and directing a new version, a new movie in 2026.
4:02
David: I believe so.
4:03
Evan: Just to hear him do the voices and all the things and just kind of how he ended
4:08
Evan: up being stuck on Lord of the Rings. as if it was, he just did the impression for someone somewhere.
4:13
Evan: And then all of a sudden, I'm sure there's a story about this.
4:15
Evan: I just don't know what it is, but I'd like to, he's not dead,
4:18
Evan: but I would still like to have a chat. Yeah, absolutely.
4:21
Evan: I think he's from, I know he's from England. I don't know where in England he's
4:24
Evan: from, but perhaps Northern England.
4:26
David: I think he's from Southern England. I once walked past Andy Serkis in London.
4:30
David: That's my, that's my Andy Serkis story.
4:34
Evan: That's it.
4:35
David: Literally, I just walked past him on the street. There is no,
4:37
David: there's no more or less to this story.
4:38
Evan: I okay so apparently he's from middlesex right so southeast england okay you're
4:43
Evan: right so that's that's uh much better than my made up uh prediction,
4:48
Evan: but yeah i'd love to love to um chat with him i don't know what kind of person
4:53
Evan: he is but i guess uh going into the the film natural born killers i guess what
5:00
Evan: uh made you choose that one and then maybe also tied to the same thing?
5:04
Evan: I don't know if you've seen it until you saw it recently for this.
5:09
Evan: Did you have memories of being a movie you liked or is it more just a fascination?
5:14
Evan: I guess what got that movie in your head?
5:17
David: I have a very long and complex history with this film, which is the reason I picked it.
5:23
David: And I watched it again a couple of weeks ago for the first time in a very,
5:29
David: very, very long time, probably at least...
5:31
David: 10 years, I would imagine. To outline the story of my first viewing of this film,
5:38
David: I have to explain the particular situation that around Natural Born Killers
5:43
David: release in the UK, because it had a very particular controversy around its release.
5:49
David: So basically, the film was due to come out and then was effectively banned by
5:55
David: the British censors in 1994.
5:58
David: It was due to come out, it had a release state and then
6:01
David: there had been a we were in the middle in
6:04
David: the 93 94 of a kind of moral panic about
6:07
David: screen violence after a series of um murder
6:11
David: cases in which there had been
6:14
David: kind of mixed into the case that had been the suggestion
6:17
David: of um the the exposure to
6:20
David: kind of violent content this is all pre-internet of course but
6:23
David: the violent videos had yeah had had a kind of um
6:26
David: you know manchurian candidate style kind of
6:29
David: activation of some something kind of murderous in
6:31
David: people now obviously we we know that that's not true you know
6:34
David: we know that i mean maybe if someone is living in a home where they're
6:37
David: exposed to incredibly violent films all the time that speaks more
6:40
David: to the level of care in the home than it does to the actual quality of
6:43
David: the video itself but anyway the bbfc which is the british censorship board which
6:48
David: was at that point was kind of a fiefdom that was run by this guy called james
6:52
David: firman who kind of really controlled what people saw and what people didn't
6:55
David: see and had a lot of quite peculiar ideas about what should and shouldn't be seen.
7:01
David: So, for example, you couldn't see The Exorcist on home video in the UK until
7:05
David: 2000, I think it was, which is when he left, because Furman had the idea that it made...
7:13
David: It had a kind of effectively magical effect on teenage girls.
7:18
David: And he was convinced that it would make them kind of hysterical.
7:22
David: This gives you an idea of the kind of idea of the person you're dealing with.
7:25
David: Anyway, they were very, very sensitive about violent movies in about 93, 94.
7:31
David: And this is when Tarantino, for example, first comes through.
7:35
David: And so Reservoir Dogs got a cinema release, but not a video release.
7:39
David: And True Romance got a cinema release and not a video release.
7:41
David: And effectively, it got to the point where anything that was even vaguely Tarantino-related
7:46
David: was seen with great kind of suspicion.
7:49
David: And it was a year or two before Reservoir Dogs appeared on home video.
7:54
David: And as a result, I had to wear three overcoats and sneak into a cinema to see it.
8:00
David: That was the first time I saw it. It was like a midnight screening because you
8:03
David: couldn't see it at home. And it's pre-internet, so you couldn't download it or look it up.
8:07
David: And then Natural Born Killers was due to come out. And then,
8:10
David: I don't know if you recall, but there were a couple of specific murder cases,
8:15
David: I think one in France and one in the US, where the murderers actually said that
8:19
David: they were specifically influenced by the film.
8:22
David: And it was like, in both cases, it was young couples, a young man, a young woman.
8:29
David: And basically, the BBFC got absolute, took total fright over this and did not
8:35
David: issue a film certificate, a cinema certificate for the film.
8:39
David: So the film was effectively banned in the UK. So my first viewing of Natural
8:43
David: Born Killers was not at the cinema. It was not rented from Blockbuster or whatever.
8:50
David: It was on a bootleg VHS tape.
8:53
David: That I had bought it from someone in the school playground for,
8:57
David: I think it was the sum of two pounds.
9:01
David: I'd heard that this guy was selling VHSs. This makes the school system in the
9:06
David: UK in the 90s sound quite insalubrious.
9:09
David: But yeah, I got this VHS tape, which was a very poor, but watchable bootleg copy of the film.
9:16
David: And so the first time I watched it was as a bootleg at home.
9:20
David: And, of course, when you see something as a bootleg, it's the same as I saw
9:26
David: Clockwork Orange around the same age. Clockwork Orange you couldn't see in the UK either.
9:29
David: And these films have these – if
9:33
David: you can't see them, they have this kind of tantalizing aura around them.
9:39
David: I mean, you know, I was probably one of the first people generally in the UK to see that film.
9:45
David: Weirdly, um or one of an early number because it
9:48
David: was nearly a year before it was released at the
9:51
David: cinema so everything i had was on this very scrappy vhs
9:55
David: and it was so scrappy in places that the picture was i mean
9:58
David: it wasn't it wasn't terrible i could see what was going on i could hear what
10:01
David: was going on um but it was not you know
10:03
David: it was not the greatest quality and certain images were
10:06
David: hard to see um and you know i watched this
10:09
David: and this tape was passed around me and my friends
10:12
David: and and we were very excited about it because
10:15
David: it was it was a an illicit film
10:18
David: you know it was not supposed to be seen um and
10:21
David: you know it was like a violent crime movie and as for a
10:24
David: bunch of like 13 14 year old boys you
10:27
David: know violent crime movies played rather
10:30
David: a large part and also tarantino we were all into tarantino at
10:33
David: that time as well so we were really cool but also
10:36
David: to be fair we were all being quite movie-headed people
10:39
David: we were all also like into oliver stone and we'd seen jfk and
10:42
David: we'd seen platoon and wall street and all that so we were curious
10:45
David: and we also knew that tarantino didn't like it
10:47
David: either or that tarantino had been elbowed out of
10:50
David: the process so we were very curious to see it and
10:53
David: i we'd read all this stuff about it's on you know five different film stocks
10:58
David: and there's animation and there's canned laughter and and so you know that we
11:02
David: were really kind of jazzed to see it so when we all kind of first saw it we
11:07
David: were kind of quite dazzled by it which is.
11:10
David: I mean, I think there still are elements of the film that are quite dazzling.
11:15
David: And we probably weren't thinking too hard about the kind of politics of it or
11:21
David: about its internal consistency or anything like that.
11:27
David: And, of course, the other thing as well at the time was that it was an early
11:31
David: example of stunt casting,
11:34
David: because Woody Harrelson, I mean, was Cheers and then you know white men can't
11:40
David: jump they were like the things that Woody Harrelson was famous for he was famous
11:43
David: for playing a kind of goofy character and then he had they had him as this kind
11:47
David: of skinheaded serial killer so that was you know,
11:51
David: that was a big, that was an unusual thing as well. So it was very,
11:55
David: it felt very illicit and it felt very new and different.
12:00
David: And so, and as a, you know, 14 year old boy, that's all you,
12:03
David: that's all you want, you know? So I wasn't critical at all.
12:07
Evan: Yeah, no, that, that makes sense. I saw it, I don't have quite as a,
12:12
Evan: you know, um, I didn't know about it being banned there.
12:15
Evan: I do remember reading once going down a rabbit hole of all the different,
12:19
Evan: I guess they were called like copycat crimes.
12:21
Evan: I even think that the Columbine killers, Columbine shootings in the United States
12:26
Evan: in 1999 had some connection where they had put the NBK killer,
12:31
Evan: natural born killer code in their journal and things.
12:34
Evan: So there's lots of violence that they've claimed from this and I guess that's
12:39
Evan: another conversation we can get to of what to take from it, like what should
12:43
Evan: one take from it and does Oliver Stone,
12:46
Evan: do people who make movies like this have any, is there culpability in that But
12:49
Evan: one thing you mentioned as having a bootleg, I sort of imagine it almost at
12:57
Evan: times feels like you're watching something that is like a bootleg.
13:00
Evan: Every – like the imagery and the way the camera changes and the color grains
13:04
Evan: and all these different things, it feels almost – it's like chaos at times.
13:08
Evan: Especially the first third of the movie, I think, is probably the most crazy.
13:13
Evan: You posted it on Twitter, like the Rodney Dangerfield and Flames and all these crazy things.
13:21
Evan: It is a very incredible movie. And it's very much unlike Oliver Stone's other films. I love JFK.
13:28
Evan: It's nothing like this. Or even all of his other films are very different.
13:32
Evan: And so I don't know, as far as like the Oliver Stone kind of thing,
13:37
Evan: and also them being part of the Quentin Tarantino universe, is I think this movie and also –,
13:44
Evan: Kill Bill were supposed to be part of like the same universe.
13:47
Evan: Not Kill Bill. You mentioned the movie just a minute ago.
13:50
David: True Romance.
13:51
Evan: True Romance. True Romance and this like part of the same kind of universe.
13:54
Evan: And so he sold both scripts to make Reservoir Dogs, which is the story or what I've read.
13:59
Evan: And I guess that's not really a question, but I don't know. Like,
14:01
Evan: what do you think about this, the imagery in the movie?
14:04
Evan: And is it like, does it hold up?
14:07
Evan: Do you think having your memory of it being so much like I, as a youth watching
14:11
Evan: this and And now watching it as an adult, you know, does all that craziness,
14:16
Evan: maybe even forgetting the plot, just the imagery and the visuals like hold up to you?
14:20
David: I mean, I think that my opinion on this film has changed so much.
14:26
David: I've kind of flip-flopped a lot.
14:28
David: The most recent time I saw it a couple of weeks ago, I was left with a very
14:33
David: strong feeling that it was really not a very sophisticated film in terms of
14:40
David: what it was trying to do or say.
14:42
David: I mean, maybe we'll get to this. it it it came across
14:45
David: as much more kind of simplistic than i'd remembered
14:48
David: it um and and quite glib
14:52
David: in some ways as well although we can maybe talk about
14:54
David: that more in a minute but um conversely the
14:58
David: the the the look of the film and the kind of the the way that it's effectively
15:03
David: a kind of two hour montage um is even more striking i think 30 years on because
15:12
David: it's 30 years old isn't it this year, 30 years on.
15:17
David: It's really remarkable that, I mean, there's several remarkable things about it.
15:21
David: One is that, you know, Oliver Stone, really, at the time, he,
15:24
David: to a certain extent, his reputation, if not his reputation, but his presence
15:28
David: has faded quite a lot in the last few years. But I mean, in 94,
15:33
David: you know, he was coming off...
15:35
David: You know, Platoon had won Best Picture, and then he'd got Best Director for
15:39
David: Born on the Fourth of July. He'd done Wall Street.
15:42
David: He'd done The Doors. You know, like, he was really, really famous.
15:46
David: And, you know, he was about as famous
15:48
David: as a director, certainly an American director, could get at that point.
15:53
David: And then he'd chosen to do this, and that it was considerably wilder than anything
16:00
David: that he'd done before was really interesting.
16:04
David: That the it's also interesting that it's one of his collaborations with um uh
16:10
David: the cinematographer robert richardson and it was clearly a very kind of fruitful
16:14
David: partnership you can see it in a few films at that time in fact the film that
16:18
David: followed this uh nixon um still there's a little hangover.
16:23
David: Stylistically from natural born killers and they
16:26
David: do change the color and they change the stocks occasionally and
16:30
David: there's little bits and pieces even there might even be a little bit of that happening
16:33
David: in jfk i can't remember but um you
16:37
David: know the the hugely celebrated director would be able to do this and would do
16:43
David: something this wild was quite was quite extraordinary it's also extraordinary
16:47
David: now to see it that it was distributed by warner brothers i mean you know i mean
16:52
David: you know one of the idea that warner brother well i mean warner brothers is a you know,
16:57
David: Not as a total basket case at the moment, right?
17:00
David: I mean, the idea that Warner Brothers would... The idea, frankly,
17:02
David: that any major studio would distribute this film now is completely out of the question.
17:08
David: I mean, there's just absolutely no way that this film would get...
17:11
David: A film on this budget with that director, with those actors, would get funded.
17:16
David: I just simply don't believe it would happen. So in that sense,
17:19
David: it's really interesting as a kind of piece of film history and as a kind of timepiece.
17:24
David: The way that the film looks is,
17:28
David: I mean, I've always taken it to be, and actually now, with the benefit of hindsight,
17:33
David: I feel like I can actually see the film more clearly than I could at the time,
17:37
David: because it's very, very much a film of its time.
17:41
David: It's very, very much a film of the Clinton era of the mid-90s in America,
17:47
David: of that era of television, of that era of MTV.
17:51
David: And I think, you know, what Stoner is trying to do is to effectively kind of
17:57
David: mimic that kind of cross-channel cutting, that kind of switching around from one thing to another.
18:03
David: I mean, the film literally ends with channels being changed.
18:07
David: I mean, it's not a film that is subtle or politically kind of evasive.
18:13
David: It's always a film that says what it's saying to you at the absolute top of its voice all the time.
18:19
David: So it's not like you have to kind of hunt around for the meaning or anything
18:22
David: like that. But it is very clear.
18:26
David: On the other hand, like as a sheer work of montage, it is spectacular.
18:32
David: And I mean, there are moments that still are really, really stunning and effective.
18:39
David: I mean, the opening credits, for example, over which you have...
18:44
David: Overlaid spoken word poetry. You have Patti Smith, you have Leader of the Pack,
18:48
David: you have stock footage, you have footage of Vietnam, you have them driving in
18:54
David: front of rear projection.
18:56
David: It's a really thrilling bit of montage.
19:02
David: This might be one of the main issues of the film, is that the film is in love
19:06
David: with the effect that it's creating.
19:07
David: But of course, it's also trying to distance itself from that kind of narcotic
19:12
David: effect at the same time you know it's it's it's you know it's trying to have
19:15
David: its cake and eat it it's it's it's you know it is a really exceptional worker
19:19
David: montage but at the same time it's also trying to kind of say the opposite.
19:23
Evan: Yeah i almost wonder this is this slightly leads me to just a curiosity i have
19:28
Evan: if quentin tarantino maybe didn't have to sell this script and he directed it
19:32
Evan: himself i mean i think you have a much i don't know what his original screenplay
19:35
Evan: looked like what it would have been like i know that he said he doesn't like
19:39
Evan: this movie at all. He really hates what happened to it.
19:41
Evan: But I think Oliver Stone almost seemed to do too much.
19:45
Evan: He went too far over that line. I feel like if he'd used the montage style more
19:50
Evan: on a limited nature basis and struck more towards, I don't know.
19:56
Evan: I don't really know what you would do differently.
19:58
Evan: We don't need to be here saying, oh, I would have done this.
20:02
Evan: I would have done that. I'm not a filmmaker.
20:04
Evan: But I think it's just too much. And this time, I couldn't actually believe as
20:09
Evan: I was watching it aside from just the message and used to thinking this movie
20:13
Evan: was like really cool when I was 17 to now thinking like,
20:17
Evan: wow, this is, this is kind of, I don't know what's going on here.
20:21
Evan: Like I lost my, you know, you, I don't know.
20:25
Evan: It's, um, it, my perception of it all changed. So I don't know if,
20:29
Evan: uh, if he had toned it down more, maybe they could make it, you know,
20:33
Evan: would have been more effective. I just think that you're visually blinded.
20:38
Evan: Getting just like punched across the face with all the different changes.
20:41
Evan: And then you have the very violent, you know, nature of the movie,
20:46
Evan: plus the actual violence in the movie.
20:48
Evan: It's just, uh, it's, it's too much for me. And even though the media at that
20:51
Evan: time had this very big obsession with, you know, OJ trial in America and all
20:55
Evan: these different, I can think of countless different trials that were on TV.
20:59
Evan: This is when like court TV in America became a thing and, you know,
21:02
Evan: true crime was in its probably its height. Although I guess it's kind of coming back.
21:06
Evan: All the MTV, all of all that stuff.
21:10
Evan: I could see what he was trying to do, but it just doesn't work for me.
21:15
Evan: It's fine, but it's not – I hate to call it a good movie, but it's not a bad
21:20
Evan: movie. It's an okay movie.
21:21
David: I think the interesting thing is that one of the points that – one of the kind
21:26
David: of legs that the film seems to be supposedly supported by is that rather than
21:32
David: – one of the kind of main elements of the satire is rather than them being kind
21:37
David: of castigated for what they did, they become elevated to celebrities.
21:41
David: The weird thing is that the film doesn't really spend any time dealing with that.
21:45
David: Like the the film you know you have the you
21:48
David: have the interview and you hear that they're famous and you
21:51
David: get this little montage of people saying that they're famous but it
21:54
David: doesn't really drill down into into
21:57
David: why people want this you know or kind
22:00
David: of it doesn't ever turn the lens really on the audience
22:03
David: either you know there is a very there is a kind of lightning rod
22:07
David: for this media hypocrisy which
22:10
David: is the the Wayne Gale character um but
22:13
David: really who is you know literally a devil
22:16
David: in one of the scenes you know he's literally like dressed as the
22:19
David: devil again you know it's about the most on-the-nose film you can
22:22
David: imagine but like one of the things that's interesting
22:25
David: is that they you know they they allude to the kind of media celebrity but really
22:29
David: most of that occurs most of what occurs is stuff that kind of occurs around
22:34
David: them so the punches don't really land when we're talking about the kind of hypocrisy
22:41
David: of not just the media, but of the audience too.
22:45
David: Because it's like, one of the things about this kind of phenomenon is,
22:50
David: well, if you didn't want it, you wouldn't watch.
22:53
David: And then so the idea that the audience is also complicit is kind of,
22:59
David: it's almost kind of passed over here, effectively.
23:03
Evan: Yeah, for some reason, the movie is not at
23:06
Evan: all anything like this but i was thinking it would
23:09
Evan: be an interesting kind of like double feature with the movie uh
23:12
Evan: nightcrawler have you seen that with um jake which
23:15
Evan: also talks about like the glorification of violence and crime and you know essentially
23:20
Evan: the media you know crafting narratives as what they want i think that is a much
23:24
Evan: to me is a lot it's a very smart film whereas this is kind of banging you over
23:28
Evan: the head with the message of you know the violence but you're right they only
23:32
Evan: they interview a few like
23:34
Evan: people like young kids in front of the courthouse being
23:36
Evan: like oh yeah i love them like oh but you know they kill people it's like oh you
23:39
Evan: know whatever and it's i don't know it
23:42
Evan: um it doesn't in some ways one of
23:45
Evan: the things one of the notes i have i'm kind of jumping around a little bit but one of the
23:48
Evan: things i wrote was is that it doesn't really grapple the
23:50
Evan: message of the movie doesn't really grapple with it glorifying their
23:54
Evan: violence but it never kind of shows you the other way it
23:57
Evan: doesn't it kind of just glorifies it almost too much it
24:00
Evan: doesn't ever say okay well yes i really we realize is bad like you know he could
24:04
Evan: they kill at the end as a spoiler they kill uh gail you know the actor played
24:09
Evan: by or the character played by robert downey jr who did a phenomenal job i have
24:12
Evan: to say in in the movie but there's never really any reckoning unless do you
24:16
Evan: think that's the case in the in the kind of i.
24:19
David: Was i was thinking about this a lot actually when i
24:22
David: when i saw it and i mean there's there's a
24:25
David: very very very very generous reading of
24:28
David: the film which i'm not sure i really share which
24:31
David: is that you know the fact that they are just effectively
24:34
David: at the end of the film they're simply seemingly kind
24:37
David: of absorbed back into the fabric of american society seemingly
24:41
David: without any consequence is um is itself a kind of indictment is it you know
24:47
David: well well this is effectively you know this this level of violence uh and this
24:52
David: degree of violence is so naturalized at all levels of American culture that effectively, you know,
24:58
David: these people pass almost unnoticed or they pass kind of without judgment.
25:03
David: I mean, the problem with that for me is that.
25:08
David: I don't necessarily see how that squares with what the rest of the film is kind of projecting.
25:15
David: I mean, I think that there's what is clearly an attempt to create a kind of dialogic moment.
25:21
David: It's just literally a long dialogue in the second half of the film with Woody
25:27
David: Harrelson and Robert Downey Jr.,
25:28
David: where it becomes pretty clear that the film is supposed to be outlining the
25:33
David: philosophy of what it means to be or to not be a hypocrite.
25:37
David: The problem is that the Wayne Gale character, Robert Downey Jr.,
25:43
David: is a kind of, instead of thinking about the concept of violence,
25:47
David: there's a distinction made between two types of violence,
25:52
David: one of which is the violence propagated by the media, and the other which is
25:57
David: this kind of very nebulously described primal or pure violence that Woody Harrelson,
26:03
David: Mickey Knox is talking about.
26:05
David: And the problem is that neither of these characters in any sense have the high ground on each other.
26:13
David: So what happens is there's a lot of heat, but there's not a lot of light that
26:16
David: comes out of this discussion.
26:18
David: There's no question of reflection for any character.
26:22
David: I mean, I think this leads maybe to a broader question about,
26:26
David: you know, what are the nature of the characters in this film?
26:30
David: And I think, you know, it's probably easiest and most satisfying to see the
26:35
David: characters in this film as kind of larger than life, grotesques, basically.
26:40
David: I mean, you know, they are physically grotesque.
26:44
David: You know, Tommy Lee Jones is very, like, physically grotesque.
26:48
David: I think he's really good in the film, actually. So I think Tommy Lee Jones really
26:51
David: kind of anchors that second half.
26:54
David: It's not a subtle performance. I mean, there's not a subtle performance in this film.
26:58
David: And then, you know, Tom Sizemore, this almost kind of cartoon character looking
27:03
David: kind of murdering policeman.
27:05
David: And then, you know, Mickey and Mallory Knox wearing an increasingly kind of
27:11
David: cartoonish series of outfits and stuff.
27:12
David: So it almost seems like he's kind of put this bunch of kind of grotesques in the mix.
27:18
David: And just kind of thrown them together and is seeing what happens.
27:23
David: Unfortunately, what it seems to end up suggesting is that this kind of primal
27:28
David: instinct to murder is somehow kind of holy or kind of – there's almost a kind
27:35
David: of Buddhist quality to it.
27:40
David: You know, there's again – this is why this is also a very, very 90s film.
27:43
David: There's a lot of kind of semi-elusive kind of references to Buddhism, kind of pop Buddhism.
27:49
David: And the idea that, you know, to see oneself truly is to see how murderous the world is.
27:57
David: Whereas, in fact, you know, the guy is an indiscriminate murderer.
28:00
David: Like, there's no real sense of kind of grappling with him saying that.
28:07
David: Which is why I say the most generous reading, which I don't really have,
28:12
David: is that the film is kind of taking a long look and saying, well,
28:18
David: none of this will have judgment passed on it because America is such an inherently
28:23
David: violent culture and nation that everything just passes.
28:26
David: The problem with that is that the film is then just effectively completely flat.
28:31
David: It doesn't have any internal movement.
28:34
Evan: The problem with reading the movie like that, it also kind of, it also absolves.
28:40
Evan: So yes, I mean, America is a violent place and there is these things and you
28:44
Evan: could, there's lots of things you can blame.
28:46
Evan: You could say, oh, well, it's the media or it's video games or it's rap music.
28:49
Evan: There's all these things that people want to point to when they don't want to
28:53
Evan: point to just the foundation of America is on violence.
28:57
Evan: And I think the thing that very briefly is mentioned when I think Woody Harrelson
29:04
Evan: is talking with – in the interview with Robert Downey Jr., at some point they
29:07
Evan: talk about how, you know.
29:10
Evan: Does he say like we call this industry and not murder?
29:13
Evan: Like they realize that there is a problem with America.
29:17
Evan: But it's not simply America. It's simply just the foundations of a system that's
29:22
Evan: built on violence, built on police brutality.
29:25
Evan: I mean, when I think of Tom Slidesworth's character as a police officer who's
29:29
Evan: killing people, that is a very over-the-top perception of American police that's
29:34
Evan: actually not that inaccurate.
29:35
Evan: I mean, the amount of police in America that commit violent acts in domestic
29:42
Evan: sense and then also on the job is very, very high.
29:45
Evan: And so it kind of ignores the systemic problem and kind of just throws it at
29:51
Evan: saying it's TV, it's media, and kind of ignores, I think,
29:56
Evan: the real root of the problem, which kind of to me then is why as I watched it,
30:00
Evan: I'm thinking like, this movie, it's fine visually, it has some good set pieces,
30:04
Evan: the acting is really good, but it doesn't really give me the message I want.
30:07
David: I think one of the things that's interesting about this is that,
30:10
David: okay, so there's two parts here.
30:13
David: One is the context of Oliver Stone himself, which is that, you know,
30:18
David: he is really the kind of the last of a generation of American filmmakers who,
30:27
David: firstly, who saw conflict.
30:29
David: So he was in Vietnam and I
30:32
David: mean I'm thinking of people like you know Sam Fuller
30:35
David: um or Sam Peckinpah there's
30:39
David: like or um I can't remember if John Milius saw combat but there's a certain
30:43
David: type of very macho very masculine American director who um who makes very macho
30:53
David: and very masculine films and who was involved in actually in combat themselves.
30:58
David: And Stone is a bit of an anomaly because he comes later than those guys.
31:02
David: Those guys were like World War I vets, World War II vets, sorry. And he's a Vietnam vet.
31:08
David: But as well as making these films about Vietnam and about, you know,
31:13
David: and I suppose, I mean, if you think about a film like Platoon,
31:15
David: it's really, you know, one of the first times the kind of mainstream cinema-going public,
31:23
David: saw, you know, saw in very large numbers.
31:26
David: Oh, no, I guess, well, I guess you've got The Deer Hunter as well,
31:29
David: which is earlier, but at the same time, you know, like from a vet,
31:33
David: you know, you hadn't had that kind of perspective before.
31:36
David: And he does have a tendency to,
31:39
David: You know, his films are always very violent, whether it's emotionally violent or physically violent.
31:44
David: And there's, I think, often a kind of, it's like the same with Peckinpah.
31:48
David: You know, there's often, in Peckinpah's weakest films, there's a real lack of
31:52
David: distinction between the violence that's on screen and the kind of relish with
31:57
David: which it's being directed.
31:59
David: Whereas the best stuff that Peckinpah did, you know, there is this really,
32:03
David: like something like Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid,
32:05
David: there is a real kind of serious awareness of the context of where the violence
32:11
David: comes from and what the violence means and what the violence leads to.
32:15
David: I think that the other point I was going to make was about the scene in which
32:20
David: Mickey and Mallory meet the character played by Russell Means as a Native American character.
32:28
David: This should be the kind of heart of the film, right?
32:31
David: So this is the scene where they basically decide to stop murdering.
32:35
David: It's the only accidental killing that they do.
32:39
David: And we're supposed to get the impression that this is the kind of eye of the
32:43
David: storm of the film, basically.
32:45
David: And also that it is hinting at something like what you just said before,
32:50
David: you know, the fact that America is based on a foundation of kind of genocide
32:54
David: and a genocide of its native peoples.
32:59
David: And the problem here for me is that it relegates the Native American character
33:06
David: to this kind of magical figure,
33:09
David: you know, an all-wise, all-knowing figure who exists kind of to be murdered
33:15
David: as a reminder of the kind of genocide that was carried out,
33:23
David: the colonial genocide that was carried out in America. The problem is, I mean, this is the same.
33:28
David: Stone has got form with this. I don't know if you remember with the doors.
33:31
David: There's a whole bit in the door. The doors opens with the young people
33:35
David: boy jim morrison seeing a native american guy
33:38
David: killed in a car accident like a shaman and the
33:41
David: suggestion is that like some of this guy's spirit kind
33:44
David: of passes on to him and then he goes into the desert and
33:47
David: there's there's this native american guy on a horse like maybe he's real maybe
33:51
David: he isn't and he goes into this cave i mean this was being parodied in in wayne's
33:56
David: world like this was so ridiculous you know and and it carries over into natural
34:01
David: born killers i think and i it's one of those things where you can see the point
34:04
David: that it's trying to be made,
34:06
David: but it's being made with such a lack of subtlety.
34:10
Evan: Do you think, well, I don't know if this is what you're getting at,
34:12
Evan: but do you think that the scene with the Native American in this movie,
34:18
Evan: in Natural Born Killers,
34:19
Evan: so he decides he's going to quit killing, they're going to change their ways,
34:23
Evan: and then he accidentally kills him, and they're kind of running out,
34:28
Evan: and then they go on kind of another murder spree.
34:30
Evan: Do you think that in some sense, are we meant to think that there continue to
34:35
Evan: go on a murder spree as almost like a revenge for the white man having killed
34:44
Evan: all these native people?
34:45
Evan: Now he's going to take his spirit.
34:48
Evan: Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I don't know.
34:51
Evan: The before and after of that scene doesn't make a whole lot of sense in sense
34:56
Evan: of that as this moment in the movie that feels uh feels off i don't know.
35:02
David: Uh yeah i mean i think the the the scene would
35:05
David: i mean he says later on you know that was the kind of moment
35:08
David: at which you know he wished that he hadn't killed um
35:12
David: but the scene is the scene is immediately followed by
35:15
David: murdering a bunch of people when they get so and needlessly
35:19
David: murdering the the the clerk at
35:22
David: the at the pharmacy and stuff like so there's there's
35:26
David: very little rhyme or reason to the
35:29
David: to the kind of uh this this
35:32
David: is the i mean i think at heart this is part of the film's problem which is that
35:35
David: it's kind of intoxicated with its own rhythm and its own style and and and the
35:42
David: film becomes kind of a hostage to it effectively because it's almost that thing
35:47
David: if we if we stop you know we can't stop moving because if we stop moving,
35:52
David: you know, people are going to start to see the kind of strings that are holding this set together.
35:56
David: So we have to keep, keep going, you know, effectively.
36:00
David: I mean, I, I sometimes feel a little bit like this when I see,
36:03
David: um, in a very, in a very, very different way,
36:06
David: when i see uh christopher nolan movies which which i i feel that i felt with
36:11
David: something like oppenheimer every scene a very every scene has music under every
36:15
David: scene is cut like a trailer every scene is kind of montage montage montage montage
36:19
David: and it's almost like there's a slight.
36:21
David: Fear underneath of of stopping for too long now i know that's kind of part of his style,
36:27
David: um but i sometimes you know i found i find myself just wanting a bit of silence
36:32
David: or a bit of quiet or a bit of thinking time um and i felt the same about this
36:37
David: you know that there's a kind of,
36:40
David: there's such a commitment to
36:41
David: montage because that's really all all there is in the film you know it's.
36:46
Evan: It's it's funny you that funny you had mentioned the beginning you'd want to
36:49
Evan: have you know dinner with andre tarkovsky it's like this is like the.
36:52
David: Anti-tarkovsky movie the opposite where he.
36:55
Evan: Has a two-minute set piece where you his his goal in movies is to show things
37:00
Evan: like almost as they're happening, like real time.
37:02
Evan: And that is not what Oliver Stone was going for in this, where it's just constant moving.
37:07
Evan: And maybe that's what he wanted to do in that it's this overindulgence or this
37:16
Evan: just you're getting hit with.
37:18
Evan: I mean, I remember TV at that time and you didn't have the ability to go onto
37:22
Evan: a channel that would show you all the different things were on TV.
37:25
Evan: You're just literally like we're flipping through. So I understand that.
37:28
David: That's one of the things is really interesting about it
37:31
David: it's the last big pre-internet movie
37:35
David: about the media really like it's it's
37:38
David: it's so fossilized now
37:41
David: you know it's 30 years old but it's you know
37:44
David: it's got it it's pre-internet there's no concept of
37:47
David: the internet in that film at all it's like really just three or
37:50
David: four years out and it's it's really
37:53
David: interesting for that reason you know it's all the problem
37:56
David: is is tv you know and it's it's also
37:59
David: interesting i suppose think about it's a film about gen x made
38:02
David: by boomer as well you know and and boomers have
38:05
David: a particular relationship to tv which is they were they were born without it
38:09
David: you know and i think boomers never you can see it in fiction as well in you
38:13
David: know thomas pension or don de lillo or so that the tv arrived in the living
38:17
David: room and it was it was a it was an arrival whereas you know everyone else had just always had it yeah.
38:23
Evan: I'm I was trying to think of other, the only movies that I can think of,
38:27
Evan: I can think of movies that came out, you know, after this talking about,
38:30
Evan: this is not at all the same kind of movie, but I think of the movie and maybe
38:32
Evan: it's like five years after this,
38:34
Evan: Pleasantville, which is about, you know, the old time TV, which is not in the
38:39
Evan: same way, the same look at media, but, you know, all of those really good ones,
38:42
Evan: like Network, all were in the 50s, 60s, 70s. And then you had this one.
38:46
Evan: Yeah, you couldn't, like, I think you said at the beginning,
38:48
Evan: like, this could not be made now not just they wouldn't make it it just i don't
38:53
Evan: think it could be made it's uh just a.
38:56
Evan: It's not the same thing. One of the things that I just, so I just released an episode.
39:03
Evan: This is before this, before the recording of this on true romance.
39:08
Evan: And in that movie, I was talking about kind of like the, you know,
39:11
Evan: seeing people as, maybe was it that movie?
39:14
Evan: Maybe it wasn't that conversation, but kind of about like antiheroes.
39:17
Evan: And, you know, you're maybe meant to look at some of the people in this as antiheroes.
39:24
Evan: And I guess the thing that brings me back to is talking about all the copycat
39:29
Evan: murders, the Columbine shootings and all these people that use this movie as
39:33
Evan: a code for evil, where that isn't really what Oliver Stone was going for.
39:37
Evan: I think of another movie like American Psycho, where people identify on the
39:42
Evan: right with, you know, Patrick Bateman when it's a satire and it's a similar,
39:47
Evan: I mean, the satire and this is not nearly, I think is as good as that is.
39:51
Evan: But does Oliver Stone – did he fail then if he's – do these – I don't know.
39:59
Evan: Maybe it's just the way that people watch these movies. They're going to read
40:02
Evan: in it what they want. They're going to identify with the character and they're
40:04
Evan: going to do it whether it's satire or not.
40:07
Evan: But does Oliver Stone deserve some criticism for not making it more – making
40:13
Evan: it less obvious and more interesting or more subtle?
40:17
Evan: Because it really glorifies violence to an extreme.
40:20
David: It's weird because, I mean, you can't, like, I'm personally always reluctant
40:25
David: to say, you know, that the direct, I mean, I've seen so many egregious cases of things.
40:31
David: I mean, so like, I mean, if you're going to stay on the 90s,
40:33
David: like a classic example is the Matrix, right?
40:36
David: You know, I mean, that's, you know, it's, which has been claimed as both a trans
40:41
David: allegory and also, you know, an alt-right allegory, right?
40:45
David: So there's no way that the creator can necessarily take the blame for the different
41:00
David: interpretations of how that works.
41:02
David: I mean, I think if there's failures in the film, for me, they're structural, really.
41:10
David: The point that's being made is being made again and again and again and again
41:14
David: and again. Like, I mean, effectively, you could boil the entire film pretty much down to the.
41:21
David: Uh the rodney dangerfield scene actually the
41:24
David: the the uh one that is played as like a kind of 50s sitcom
41:27
David: um and it's actually a genuinely effective
41:31
David: moment of satire in the film it's one
41:34
David: where the kind of form and the uh and
41:37
David: the structure kind of they work together we get a sense of
41:40
David: of what's of of the kind of
41:43
David: um the media image of of the american family
41:46
David: and then the kind of reality of the american family and and it's
41:49
David: and actually casting rodney dangerfield in it is
41:52
David: a genuinely brilliant thing to do like i mean it's
41:55
David: really because he you know he's an absolute like
41:58
David: monster and but he's also playing against type you know
42:01
David: very very heavily against type uh so in
42:04
David: that sense it's you know that's one of the more successful moments
42:08
David: of it but i just think that there's it's hard to kind of
42:10
David: identify i mean okay so some people would say
42:13
David: well if the film is able to be interpreted in those
42:16
David: in those ways it's failed i don't necessarily
42:20
David: agree with that but i do think that like the
42:23
David: the film is not necessarily successful
42:26
David: what it's trying to do or maybe you know if what it's simply trying to say is
42:31
David: too much tv which is it which is literally projected onto the body of a character
42:35
David: at one point the words too much tv well i mean it's succeeded but it's but then
42:40
David: it what it's saying is too much tv again and again and again and again and again And I mean.
42:45
David: Yeah, I mean, it's so if it's a failure, it's a failure of, I don't think it's
42:51
David: a failure of filmmaking. I think it's very interesting.
42:53
David: The filmmaking is often very interesting, but I think as a kind of.
42:57
David: Polemic or an indictment it's just not.
43:00
Evan: Consistent i don't yeah i don't i don't either think you
43:02
Evan: can blame the directors for the way that
43:05
Evan: they're interpreted uh you know and sometimes there even
43:08
Evan: filmmakers will say like oh i wasn't trying to make a political film and
43:11
Evan: i always like have to laugh at the like well even if you're going to say that
43:13
Evan: like it's just not true you know like things are political whether you meant
43:18
Evan: to do them or not but one thing i was thinking about is you know that you said
43:22
Evan: they kind of hammered the message over and over like one way that i think they
43:25
Evan: could have actually maybe told this story in a more effective way that would have maybe,
43:31
Evan: this is just if I were, I'm not a filmmaker.
43:34
Evan: This is just would be interesting if the movie was actually the interview between
43:38
Evan: Gale and Mickey Knox. What's his name?
43:41
Evan: And Mickey Knox. It would have just been the interview. That's kind of like
43:44
Evan: the setup for the movie. And then they kind of then go from that to having different,
43:47
Evan: you know, him telling stories.
43:49
Evan: And then maybe it becomes a scene where they, something they had done.
43:53
Evan: And then it goes back to the interview where you could have,
43:55
Evan: you know, driven more into his character and talked more about it.
44:00
Evan: And then still had some of those interesting set pieces with Rodney Dangerfield,
44:04
Evan: which again, I agree was a really good scene and some other ones in there.
44:08
Evan: And then maybe, I don't know, because there are some good moments where they
44:12
Evan: talk about, you know, how the media is,
44:14
Evan: I think he says the media is like the weather, except it's man-made and the
44:18
Evan: media by themselves feel like all these things are true and very over the top
44:22
Evan: in terms of them telling you what it is.
44:23
Evan: But I think they could have been more effective at showing that they also allude
44:28
Evan: to their childhood, but maybe they could have done more about their childhood.
44:31
Evan: They also try to say, if your parents were violent towards you,
44:35
Evan: you're going to be inherently violent.
44:37
Evan: There's other questionable things in there about
44:41
Evan: And that's maybe indictment of our own, again, the system not giving people
44:47
Evan: the proper care when they're in school to identify people who might need support and all these things.
44:52
Evan: So, I don't know. Those are kind of two separate thoughts. One,
44:55
Evan: maybe this has been my idea for the movie, my uneducated, unsophisticated take on it.
45:01
Evan: And then the other is just, I think, they could have been more subtle.
45:05
Evan: Again like i think of american psycho like the the satire is more subtle where
45:09
Evan: it's easier i think to take the wrong message from it because it's less obvious
45:14
Evan: but you know it's there if you look under the.
45:17
David: Layers yeah i i think so and i think the the risk is that much of the film can
45:23
David: risk ending ending up kind of looking either kind of glib or or just in poor
45:27
David: taste i mean that that's that's the other thing as well you know i mean i i
45:31
David: don't think i'd noticed it maybe until recently maybe because I hadn't seen
45:35
David: a decent quality copy for a long time,
45:38
David: but there's a sex scene in a hotel room in which there are images of the Holocaust in the window.
45:45
David: And it's like, well, at that point, it's like this has no connection to what
45:51
David: you're talking about in this film.
45:53
David: It's like if you're going to display images of such gravity,
45:59
David: then then there really has to
46:02
David: be a kind of systemic connection here to
46:05
David: to the broader point that you're talking about otherwise it just
46:08
David: looks it's just an empty provocation and
46:12
David: you know extremely poor taste so it it
46:15
David: really does depend on on the
46:19
David: on the way in which it is uh the way
46:21
David: in which a particular thing is is deployed i guess
46:25
David: so so cross-cutting as they do earlier on
46:28
David: with images of american westerns and
46:30
David: images of of things like that and then having the
46:33
David: kind of native americans from villainous native
46:36
David: americans from the old westerns and then the um the
46:39
David: war and american war movies and stuff that's more
46:43
David: kind of logically and internally consistent because it's talking about the image
46:47
David: that america made of itself um so yeah i mean i think it's yeah it's it's it's
46:53
David: too scattershot and it it leaves it open to you know accusate credible accusations
46:59
David: of really being very glib.
47:01
Evan: Yeah i think the the thing with like using the holocaust it seems like he was
47:04
Evan: really pushing heavy down on you know things being like the devil and evil and
47:09
Evan: all these things like in a very black and white kind of way you know he had
47:14
Evan: you know the rodney dangerfield with the fire and devil and i think they called you know um They called,
47:20
Evan: I think at some point, numerous characters were referred to as devil,
47:24
Evan: like Mickey Knox was the devil and Wayne Gale was the devil.
47:27
Evan: And the, you know, what was the time of the Jones, like the warden McCluskey,
47:32
Evan: you know, he's the, you know, they're all these devils and it just kind of.
47:36
Evan: Again, it's one of those things where they just pile on too much and it becomes kind of flat.
47:41
Evan: But one part of the movie that I actually thought was also interesting and maybe
47:44
Evan: worth talking about, it's the ending scene before the moment where I think you
47:48
Evan: mentioned where they kind of just ride off into the sunset and just become travelers,
47:53
Evan: have kids, and everything is fine. and they just fold back into the fabric of society.
47:57
Evan: But the moment when they're leaving, there's a riot in the prison,
48:02
Evan: and they have what basically amounts to a war scene, which we know Oliver Stone
48:05
Evan: has successfully filmed numerous times in other movies.
48:09
Evan: So it's, you know, it's very, you know, you could say it's shot pretty well.
48:13
Evan: But the message that I took from those was the America has now become this uncivilized
48:20
Evan: place, which is what we as Americans or the media or the, you know,
48:24
Evan: leaders like to call other places.
48:26
Evan: Like, oh, well, we have to colonize Africa and do things there because they're uncivilized.
48:30
Evan: They need our rule to be better or Latin America or whatever it might be.
48:34
Evan: And it seemed like America had become the thing that we were claiming other
48:39
Evan: places were like all the time.
48:41
Evan: And it's, you know, maybe to show that, you know, America always was like this.
48:47
Evan: I think I mentioned before how, you know, the formation of the United States
48:51
Evan: being on the genocide of a people that were living here already.
48:55
Evan: So, I did find it effective. I don't know if that's what Oliver Stone was going
49:00
Evan: for, but I did think it was interesting.
49:02
Evan: And they also referred to – the prison was called Beckinsville.
49:07
Evan: I can't remember now. I had it written down.
49:09
Evan: For some reason, it sounded – the name of the prison almost sounded very,
49:13
Evan: I don't know, So, like a foreign sounding name to almost evoke that same kind of message imagery.
49:21
Evan: But I don't know. I don't know if you thought the same thing when you saw the
49:23
Evan: kind of the prison riot and all that.
49:25
David: I think that one of the things that's interesting about the prison stuff is
49:28
David: it's actually, I mean, it's remarkable for a number of reasons.
49:31
David: One is that it's a real prison and that he's using real prisoners in the riot.
49:36
David: I mean, again, literally, like I cannot imagine a studio allowing that to happen
49:41
David: now. I mean, genuinely, you know, I mean, it's extraordinary that it even happened then.
49:47
David: I do think he's actually, weirdly, the film is a bit ahead of its time in terms
49:51
David: of the stuff in the prison.
49:52
David: In that, I don't think we were seeing in mainstream movies.
49:57
David: Anywhere near mainstream American cinema at that time, any kind of serious reckoning
50:03
David: or depiction of the, you know, mass incarceration,
50:07
David: the squalor of and injustice of mass incarceration in the US.
50:13
David: Really, that's, you know, in terms of public perception, that's really come
50:18
David: more to the surface of public perception, really maybe more in the last 10 years.
50:22
David: But prison movies, you know, So they didn't perhaps, you know,
50:26
David: you could have like grim prison movies, but they didn't project that image.
50:31
David: I mean, there's obviously a certain verisimilitude to this because it's a real
50:34
David: prison and real prison and, you know, real prisoners are acting the roles.
50:39
David: There's a certain edge that this film has in regard to those scenes in the prison
50:46
David: that I've not really seen in any.
50:49
David: There's not really present in anything else around that time.
50:51
David: And for that reason, it is very interesting.
50:55
David: It's also interesting because I was thinking when I was watching it about how
50:59
David: there was this focus in the scenes of the Native American guy and a lot of kind
51:06
David: of implicit or explicit mentions of the genocide of Native Americans.
51:09
David: But there's virtually not a single mention of slavery in the entire film.
51:14
David: Um which i thought was interesting you
51:18
David: know um on the other hand i mean
51:21
David: i wondered if what was happening was the the incarceration sequences which and
51:27
David: of course the rate of uh of african americans incarcerated is vastly vastly
51:32
David: disproportionate um and you know many many people have written about disproportionate
51:38
David: incarceration of black americans and of course.
51:40
David: There are, you know, a lot of black prisoners in the prison who are kind of featured characters.
51:46
David: And I wondered if, you know, there was a, you know, there was a way that what
51:50
David: Stone, again, this is probably a generous reading, but what Stone was saying
51:54
David: about, you know, here's the land outside, used to belong to the Native Americans, then we took it.
51:58
David: And here inside, locked in, are all the people, you know, the descendants of
52:02
David: the people that we kidnapped and enslaved.
52:05
David: You know, so there's a sense that, you know, outside is this and inside is this.
52:08
David: But it is interesting that there is virtually no discussion of race in the film at all.
52:13
David: And actually, in a film about American violence, that is actually pretty interesting.
52:18
David: And then while it addresses it, I think, again, you know, it speaks to a particular
52:23
David: era, perhaps, more than anything else.
52:25
Evan: Yeah. And especially, I mean, you think about, I think you mentioned earlier,
52:28
Evan: it's like the Clinton administration at this time, you know,
52:31
Evan: you have the crime bill that was literally putting people behind bars,
52:35
Evan: you know, as this movie is being filmed or, you know, released and all of that.
52:40
Evan: And I didn't realize that it was, I knew that it was an actual correction.
52:43
Evan: I did not know that many of the people were actually inmates,
52:47
Evan: which is quite shocking, honestly.
52:50
Evan: I mean, Oliver Stone always seems to do these crazy things. Like with Platoon,
52:53
Evan: they didn't get military support. So they had to buy used machine guns,
52:58
Evan: military gear from the Russians and other places.
53:02
Evan: So it seems like the kind of thing that he tends to do. But one thing I did
53:05
Evan: see just as a funny note in the Wikipedia just now was that
53:09
Evan: There's that Coca-Cola polar bear ad, which because again, they used it as an
53:14
Evan: interview after the Super Bowl, which is totally the way this would actually
53:17
Evan: go if they were going to do something like this, you know, exclusive with OJ
53:20
Evan: Simpson after the football game.
53:22
Evan: And they apparently approved them to use the ads before they knew what the film
53:26
Evan: was about. And when they saw the film, they were just absolutely – they wanted
53:30
Evan: to pull it from the movie.
53:32
Evan: But they said, oh, well, you already agreed to it. So, you know, tough shit.
53:35
Evan: Which I think is just kind of
53:37
Evan: funny in a way to use Coca-Cola in a way that's, you know, angered them.
53:41
Evan: Because, you know, we know what
53:43
Evan: they've done in South America and in general. But, yeah, I don't know.
53:48
David: I think this is part of Stone's persona, right? I think this idea of the kind
53:52
David: of rebel filmmaker is very kind of integral.
53:56
David: And it doesn't always necessarily have to be that consistent in the way that
54:01
David: it's applied across the films.
54:03
David: I mean, the idea, I think, I remember in contemporaneous interviews with Stone,
54:08
David: where he made a big deal of the fact that, you know, he shot in a real prison,
54:12
David: he shot with real prisoners, that everything was just on the verge of flying
54:16
David: out of control at all times, almost as a kind of point of pride,
54:20
David: you know, that in order to get to the kind of chaos and violence,
54:24
David: you really had to kind of whip it up, you know.
54:25
David: And again, it's in that lineage of someone like Peckinpah.
54:31
David: In that sense, he's slightly out of time in that way.
54:36
David: And maybe that's one reason why Stone hasn't quite carried across to the contemporary
54:43
David: era in the same way that other directors have. I don't know.
54:47
David: I don't know whether it's the case that he's now seen as being a kind of iconic
54:53
David: director of the 80s and 90s, because his films are so tied to that era in so
55:00
David: many ways. I mean, Wall Street kind of is the 80s.
55:02
Evan: What would he have to say now, right? What would his message be now?
55:06
Evan: I feel like it's almost like he's, I don't want to say he's like old fashioned,
55:09
Evan: but it's almost like he doesn't have a, I don't know what his message would
55:12
Evan: be about kind of modern. His politics are a little interesting.
55:16
David: Yeah, well, here's something interesting. I actually saw Oliver Stone in person
55:21
David: doing a talk a few years ago at the Edinburgh Film Festival.
55:26
David: They screened Wall Street,
55:28
David: And, and it said, and afterwards will be a Q&A with Oliver Stone.
55:33
David: Um, and he spent most of that Q&A talking about what a wonderful and misunderstood
55:40
David: man Vladimir Putin was because he just shot those eight hours of interviews with Putin.
55:47
David: Um, which was, I think it went out on TV. I think they were at TV interviews.
55:52
David: Um, and he was surrounded by bodyguards as well.
55:56
David: This was something I'd never seen. So it was a kind of interesting little kind
56:01
David: of glimpse into, well, this was probably 2018, maybe something like that.
56:05
David: So this is a kind of interesting glimpse into kind of the most recent version,
56:10
David: as far as I'm aware of where he is.
56:12
David: I mean, this is pre-Ukraine, but it's still interesting that,
56:16
David: you know, this is, I don't know, you know, I don't know what his position was
56:20
David: on, for example, like WikiLeaks or Snowden.
56:22
David: You know, I imagine he's someone who's very invested in that kind of,
56:27
David: I think, that particular kind of anti-American free speech element. And I think.
56:35
Evan: It's… Especially given his JFK movie, right? Because he got a lot of shit for
56:39
Evan: talking about things related to whether true or not, just, you know,
56:43
Evan: kind of breaking that out.
56:44
Evan: And he also, there's another thing he's done recently. He was interviewed during
56:48
Evan: a documentary about the usage of military –.
56:55
Evan: Uh funding for for films i'm blanking i
56:58
Evan: think it's called i'm blanking on the name of the documentary it's
57:02
Evan: he may he might have produced it it's um and it's
57:05
Evan: uh it's a it's a pretty good documentary it's a little bit repetitive there's
57:08
Evan: also a book about this by the same person who made the about the documentary
57:11
Evan: um starts with an a i'm blanking on i have to look it up and i can add it in
57:16
Evan: the notes but he he definitely likes to talk about that too you know where the
57:21
Evan: influence of the government.
57:23
Evan: So it seems like he's anti, he's like anti-government, but he has kind of like
57:27
Evan: a weird streak about how he views it.
57:30
Evan: So I think he would view Snowden and those in a very positive light in the sense
57:34
Evan: of, you know, bringing to light the crimes of America.
57:38
Evan: Like he, you know, he did that in Platoon and JFK and, you know, Salvador, other films.
57:46
Evan: But yeah, I don't know. he um he's an interesting uh he's interesting i had
57:52
Evan: someone on actually when we did the true romance where they actually don't actually
57:55
Evan: don't like a lot of his films they kind of find that he's,
57:59
Evan: maybe overrated with some of them i think some of his films are quite good but
58:02
Evan: it's interesting he's kind of kind of a very good 80s a very good 90 or i guess
58:08
Evan: a very very good 80s uh early good 90s and then kind of yeah i mean he's swept away i.
58:13
David: Think he's a very very much of a particular time. I mean, I think that's why...
58:18
David: And that ends up, I think, being what's interesting about him.
58:21
David: I mean, I still think JFK is a really interesting movie and often a very successful movie.
58:28
David: I don't find myself going back to,
58:31
David: his stuff very much, frankly. Although I watched most of them when I was young,
58:36
David: because he was such a big name at that time.
58:38
David: But I wonder if he maybe is, as you say, a figure of the 80s and 90s really
58:44
David: more than... It's like seeing Coppola reappear now.
58:47
David: It feels really strange and a bit anachronistic because he feels like so much
58:52
David: a figure of the 70s and a little bit of the 80s you know it doesn't it especially.
58:58
Evan: The movie that he's done it's it's almost like it like it's almost seems not.
59:02
David: Not real uh.
59:04
Evan: I mean i wouldn't mind if oliver stone came back and made i'd be curious to
59:07
Evan: see if he would make something but something tells me he's not going to make
59:10
Evan: a any movies like this and i don't know if even a studio would touch him at
59:15
Evan: this point like you'd have to probably make something with a smaller uh a studio you know but uh.
59:20
David: Yeah and i think that's that that's one of the things that is
59:23
David: interesting i think that really remained with me after
59:26
David: seeing this which is that this i mean this really is
59:29
David: a kind of filmmaking that american studios aren't aren't making anymore i mean
59:34
David: they're just not and i think also very specifically this kind of film which
59:38
David: is a film with with movie stars um with a not insignificant kind of budget and
59:44
David: you know uh and locations and technical specs.
59:49
David: I mean, this film, even now, to make a film like this is just not accessible
59:53
David: to someone working on a smaller budget, I don't think. It needs the big money.
59:58
David: And so it is something that we're just not now, maybe not for the foreseeable
1:00:04
David: future that we're going to see, not just this kind of film, which feels very
1:00:07
David: singular, but this particular film.
1:00:10
David: That kind of free hand for filmmaking there's usually kind of a small number
1:00:13
David: of directors who have a reasonably free hand with a studio like nolan is an
1:00:18
David: example or paul thomas anderson or someone like that but but really or tarantino
1:00:23
David: actually to come back to tarantino um.
1:00:25
Evan: But yeah but.
1:00:26
David: But really something like this really does feel like a bit of an artifact now.
1:00:30
Evan: Yeah it really does feel like that there are a lot of i mean i've done a
1:00:33
Evan: lot of 90s movies on this podcast primarily that's
1:00:36
Evan: the you know arab movies that i grew up watching and
1:00:39
Evan: there really are a lot of them that feel that way and
1:00:42
Evan: actually i don't know if we've talked about this in the true romance episode
1:00:45
Evan: but even though that's a very of its time a
1:00:48
Evan: movie i feel like it actually holds up better than
1:00:51
Evan: this does as far as a you know modern you
1:00:55
Evan: know kind of looking at it's a much different movie so
1:00:58
Evan: it's hard to say but given that they're kind of like two babies
1:01:01
Evan: in the same womb almost like twins and then they kind of separated to
1:01:05
Evan: being very much different kinds of you know different directors one tony scott
1:01:10
Evan: and then oliver stone so it's interesting um how those kind of movies hold up
1:01:15
Evan: but um but david any uh any do you have any i guess final thoughts on on the
1:01:20
Evan: movie that we maybe we didn't uh that you didn't touch on i'm.
1:01:24
David: Trying to think i don't necessarily think so
1:01:27
David: i think that um no i think it's it's it's more that you know yeah i just you
1:01:33
David: know as in summation it's it's really a case that i think actually from a technical
1:01:38
David: perspective there are still elements of this film that are really interesting
1:01:43
David: and and often actually quite dazzling um,
1:01:47
David: in terms of just kind of in and of themselves but as
1:01:50
David: a whole um you know when i was when i was in my teens I was you know this felt
1:01:56
David: very new and interesting and and now it's interesting really because of because
1:02:01
David: of what it is because it because of the age it is and because it's become almost this kind of timepiece.
1:02:08
Evan: Yeah I kind of feel the same way whereas there was a moment where this was you
1:02:13
Evan: know I really I loved Oliver Stone movies when I was in college watch platoon
1:02:17
Evan: all the time and in those in this one maybe not as much but now I just think
1:02:22
Evan: they they just hit differently and I think we can appreciate it again as a,
1:02:26
Evan: as a pretty incredible piece of filmmaking, you know,
1:02:29
Evan: visually, but maybe it just doesn't, uh, just doesn't quite hit in,
1:02:34
Evan: uh, 2024 as it did in 1994.
1:02:37
Evan: But, um, but yeah, David, uh, again, thank you for coming on to talk about natural born killers.
1:02:42
David: Thanks for having me.
1:02:43
Evan: Of course. And you can, uh, of course, follow this show on, uh,
1:02:46
Evan: on all platforms at left of the projector.com and we will catch you next time.