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Selects: Some Movies That Changed Filmmaking · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's me Josh. And since it's summertime, it's
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Speaker 1: movie time. I am oh. So I've chosen our super
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Speaker 1: interesting two thousand fifteen movie Talk episode some movies that
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Speaker 1: changed filmmaking. You don't have to be a cinema file
0:14
Speaker 1: to enjoy this episode, so don't be scared off. And
0:17
Speaker 1: there's a part right around the beginning of listener mail
0:19
Speaker 1: where we talk about making a movie podcast that I
0:22
Speaker 1: now wonder was possibly the seed that Chuck's Movie Crush
0:25
Speaker 1: podcast sprouted from. Maybe, which if you like this, go
0:29
Speaker 1: listen to the extensive Movie Crush catalog anywhere you get
0:32
Speaker 1: your podcasts. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy Welcome
0:39
Speaker 1: to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
0:49
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W.
0:52
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant, A k A. Ciskel, and Ebert save with
0:57
Speaker 1: Sea I'll see, and Jerry's over there. I guess she's
1:00
Speaker 1: Jeane Shallott. That's that's the stuff. If you should know,
1:06
Speaker 1: trium for it. I don't know why that took on
1:09
Speaker 1: me so much, because Jeane sell it's a funny looking
1:11
Speaker 1: I guess Jerry's not. I'm just picturing her with a
1:15
Speaker 1: big afro and a mustache and like a tweed jacket
1:18
Speaker 1: and bad opinions about movies. Jane Shell. It had a
1:21
Speaker 1: look for sure. Still though he's around right, Oh yeah,
1:25
Speaker 1: I think so? Yeah, r I p both cisk Lanni,
1:29
Speaker 1: but it's so sad. Um. Have you seen the Roger
1:32
Speaker 1: Ebert documentary? No, I've heard nothing but good things, really
1:35
Speaker 1: really good, very touching. Yeah. What is it? Uh? Something Life,
1:41
Speaker 1: Life like Mine, Life with Me, Life on Top, Life Itself,
1:46
Speaker 1: Life with thumbs, Life itself, Life itself, Life with thumbs.
1:50
Speaker 1: It was really great and I watched it and it
1:52
Speaker 1: made the mistake of watching on a plane, and I
1:54
Speaker 1: was just like, my allergies are acting up, so yeah,
1:57
Speaker 1: oh yeah I was. I was watering because you're allergies. No,
2:01
Speaker 1: because it was sad. I was crying. Do you want
2:03
Speaker 1: me to say it? Yeah, crying on a plane. I
2:06
Speaker 1: was confused there for a second. That's better than when
2:09
Speaker 1: I watch other movies that are on my laptop that
2:11
Speaker 1: are like like bad violence or or nudity or something.
2:15
Speaker 1: I'm always just like, oh, then I kind of lower
2:17
Speaker 1: the laptop and it's like I didn't realize this was
2:20
Speaker 1: in here, and the lady next to me, he's just
2:21
Speaker 1: like you disgusted me. Yeah, because I don't I want
2:26
Speaker 1: to be sensitive people around me. You know, I'm not
2:28
Speaker 1: one of those jerks just like just lives in my
2:30
Speaker 1: own bubble. It's like watching some sex scene on Blane.
2:32
Speaker 1: You're like elbowing the lake. So no, I hate it.
2:36
Speaker 1: That's it was so embarrassed that happened to me a
2:38
Speaker 1: couple of times. I'm like, I needed to start going
2:40
Speaker 1: PG on movies like airplanes, Judd Apples. How Am I right?
2:45
Speaker 1: He's unpredictable? Yeah? Alright, so Chuck, this is your episode
2:50
Speaker 1: to shine Man, is it? Yes, you're a movie guy too.
2:54
Speaker 1: Though I like movies, but I've I almost consciously don't
2:58
Speaker 1: let myself watch movies on a like a film aficionado
3:03
Speaker 1: level kid pure enjoyment. Yeah. I don't never want to
3:06
Speaker 1: see the individual shots and just be like, oh, well
3:11
Speaker 1: that could have been better whatever, um and and just
3:14
Speaker 1: miss the movie as a whole. Yeah. I fall somewhere
3:17
Speaker 1: in the middle of that. I try to let go,
3:19
Speaker 1: but um like, our our video producer director, Casey Is
3:23
Speaker 1: is pretty bad about that, and our Buddy Scotty who
3:25
Speaker 1: shot our TV show. He's the worst. He's just a
3:29
Speaker 1: camera working. That lighting in that scene's awesome. Hey, Casey,
3:35
Speaker 1: they're all in here with this in spirit, and hey,
3:37
Speaker 1: this is the last show in the studio. Ye, last
3:40
Speaker 1: episode in the old office, the murder Room. Couldn't feel
3:44
Speaker 1: more neutral about it. I actually feel less than neutral,
3:48
Speaker 1: less than zero. It's it's weird. That was a good movie.
3:51
Speaker 1: You great shots. I say thank you as if I
3:54
Speaker 1: directed it a lot, right, I not only directed it,
3:58
Speaker 1: also played Andrew McCarthy. Uh. Yeah, I'm ready to get
4:03
Speaker 1: the heck out of here. Man. I can't wait to
4:04
Speaker 1: get in that new office and that it's gonna be good,
4:07
Speaker 1: tiny little dedicated studio, whole new world. All right, let's
4:11
Speaker 1: do this. Okay, So, Chuck films, you've seen one or
4:14
Speaker 1: two of them in your time. Have you seen any
4:16
Speaker 1: of the ones in this list? I know you've seen
4:18
Speaker 1: a few of them, but have you seen like some
4:20
Speaker 1: of the early ones I've seen. Well it we'll just
4:22
Speaker 1: go piece by piece because I have not seen Battleship Penkin. Okay, Um,
4:28
Speaker 1: but I do love Mandy Patankin. It's a little different
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Speaker 1: in spelling pronunciation meaning the whole thing. But it's close,
4:36
Speaker 1: I guess. But we're talking, of course about films that
4:41
Speaker 1: change filmmaking and somewhere or another, and the first one
4:45
Speaker 1: on the list is from Battleship Patankin. That's hard for
4:49
Speaker 1: me to say, which is not the first movie, by
4:51
Speaker 1: the way. The first screen movie was Workers Leaving the
4:53
Speaker 1: Lumier Factory, which is forty seven seconds long. I'm the
4:56
Speaker 1: most boring piece of celluloid anyone's ever put together, But
4:59
Speaker 1: it was the first, that's right. This was many years.
5:02
Speaker 1: That was a full thirty years before Battleship Potempkin. By
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Speaker 1: the time thirty years had passed, like we were doing
5:08
Speaker 1: like narratives and there was banning and all sorts of
5:11
Speaker 1: great stuff, and battleship pretention fell under both of those umbrellas.
5:16
Speaker 1: It was a narrative story. It was a silent movie, right,
5:19
Speaker 1: but it told a pretty clear story. And it was
5:21
Speaker 1: a bit of Russian propaganda as well. Yeah, it tells
5:24
Speaker 1: the story of a nineteen o five uprising in uh
5:28
Speaker 1: where there were Russian sailors. Basically, there was a mutiny
5:32
Speaker 1: aboard a ship and then the bad guys, the Cossacks
5:35
Speaker 1: came in looking for revenge. Yeah ninety five, that would
5:39
Speaker 1: have been rising up against tyranny, would have been rising
5:43
Speaker 1: up against the romanof monarchy, I guess. But it was made.
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Speaker 1: So this is a time when you know, Lenin and
5:53
Speaker 1: Trotsky and all those dudes were running around trying to
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Speaker 1: do the great experiment, and uh it ends up. It
6:00
Speaker 1: turns out that the battleship Potempkin was banned in some countries.
6:04
Speaker 1: Some countries are like, we don't want this Rusky propaganda, right,
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Speaker 1: But Russia itself later on banned it when Stallin came
6:11
Speaker 1: to power because he was a self aware dictator. Was
6:14
Speaker 1: that the deal? Yeah, okay, he knew this could be
6:18
Speaker 1: a metaphor for rising up against my dictatorship. So I'm
6:22
Speaker 1: gonna just bay in this. Uh yeah, even though it's
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Speaker 1: Russian propaganda. Well, filmatically, I need to bring the history,
6:29
Speaker 1: by the way, uh, Filmatically speaking, it was a landmark
6:33
Speaker 1: film because of the montage, most notably the Russian or
6:38
Speaker 1: Soviet theory of montage, which is basically that, um, your
6:42
Speaker 1: impact is going to come from juxtaposition of shots and
6:45
Speaker 1: not necessarily smooth sequence of shots. Um, and it should
6:50
Speaker 1: be rhythmic instead of necessarily being tied to the story.
6:53
Speaker 1: It was like a rhythmic series of shots. And um,
6:58
Speaker 1: this one is popular. It was The Odessa Steps sequence
7:02
Speaker 1: is one of the five acts, and it is huge
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Speaker 1: because it has been aped and um mimicked and mocked
7:11
Speaker 1: and um homaged, probably more than I don't know about more,
7:15
Speaker 1: but a lot of times in film history. Well, yeah,
7:18
Speaker 1: the montage it's like a go to editing technique, right,
7:22
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, well the montage in general, but specifically the
7:25
Speaker 1: Odessa Steps. There are two notable parts in that sequence.
7:28
Speaker 1: One is the you know, it's basically a big charge
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Speaker 1: on these these grand steps leading up to a building
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Speaker 1: in a big battle Odessa, Texas. And um, there's a
7:39
Speaker 1: part of it where there's the old the old baby
7:41
Speaker 1: carriage going down the steps. You know what's going to
7:44
Speaker 1: happen to the baby And it sounds tired because we've
7:46
Speaker 1: seen that in uh, you know, The Untouchables. Notably that
7:51
Speaker 1: I did not find it tiresome Naked Gun thirty three
7:55
Speaker 1: and a third everything is illuminated the great movie by
7:59
Speaker 1: leaf Shaw. Ever, um that was from directly from the
8:05
Speaker 1: Odessa Step sequence and Battleship Patinkin the Baby Carriage and
8:09
Speaker 1: the old um shot through the shot in the eye
8:12
Speaker 1: through the glasses. Oh cool, that comes from this movie too.
8:15
Speaker 1: They were the first ones to do it. Yeah. Um,
8:17
Speaker 1: And you've seen that in Woody Allen's Love and Death
8:19
Speaker 1: and Bananas and of course The Godfather. The great sequence
8:23
Speaker 1: where Mo Green's getting the massage and he looks up
8:26
Speaker 1: and puts on his glasses during a montage. Yeah, that's
8:29
Speaker 1: exactly the whole Yeah, because there was an assassination on
8:33
Speaker 1: the steps as well. Oh yes, that was definitely a
8:36
Speaker 1: double Who was that? That was Francis Ford Coppola. Yeah,
8:39
Speaker 1: he was clearly aware of battleship attemptin clearly. I was
8:43
Speaker 1: trying to think of other examples of montages and the
8:45
Speaker 1: only thing I could come up with was the a
8:47
Speaker 1: team building something. But that counts as a montage, right, Yeah. Yeah.
8:52
Speaker 1: It's like some related in some way related shots that
8:56
Speaker 1: are kind of put together that a little bit transand
9:00
Speaker 1: and like a story in itself, like Rocky training for
9:04
Speaker 1: a fight. Yeah, that's another good A lot of times
9:06
Speaker 1: to set to music. Yeah, I love that. That's the
9:08
Speaker 1: only one you can think of. And in the Great
9:10
Speaker 1: Movie Brazil too has the shot through the glasses bit
9:13
Speaker 1: as I like to call it. So that's a Battleship
9:16
Speaker 1: at Tamkins, doesn't one of the Nazis and Raiders have
9:19
Speaker 1: lost art gets shot through the glasses. Maybe that wouldn't
9:23
Speaker 1: surprise me. It's been it's been off homaged, you know. Yeah,
9:27
Speaker 1: So Battleship at Tempkin was a It made a pretty
9:30
Speaker 1: big splash in ninety six. The following year, the next
9:35
Speaker 1: movie on the list. Um, it wasn't his first, but
9:39
Speaker 1: it really solidified I think his stardom Buster Keaton stardom, Yeah,
9:44
Speaker 1: the general rightfully so too. Yeah, he was one of
9:47
Speaker 1: the great Um well, some people call him the greatest
9:50
Speaker 1: stuntman to ever live. He's done some stuff that I
9:54
Speaker 1: think earns him that, yeah, because I mean this is
9:56
Speaker 1: back in the day two where he was legitimately risking
9:59
Speaker 1: his life, you know, like the the very famously where
10:03
Speaker 1: he's standing on the street in front of a house
10:05
Speaker 1: and then the whole front of the house falls over
10:07
Speaker 1: him and the window he just goes right around him.
10:11
Speaker 1: I watched that again today. It is I can't believe
10:15
Speaker 1: he did that. And there's actually a half of a
10:18
Speaker 1: second where his arm jerks up because he startled as
10:21
Speaker 1: the house finally makes its way like into his peripheral vision,
10:25
Speaker 1: and it has to be one of the most dangerous
10:28
Speaker 1: things that human beings ever done on film. I'm sure
10:31
Speaker 1: the whole time before that was like, we did the
10:34
Speaker 1: math right, he did the math. Do the math again,
10:36
Speaker 1: do the math again, Show me the math right, show
10:38
Speaker 1: me the math, because that's all it was. It was
10:41
Speaker 1: math and measurements. But yeah, he could have been squashed
10:44
Speaker 1: and killed very easily, and he had a lot of
10:45
Speaker 1: faith in everybody who was pulling off the stunt with him.
10:49
Speaker 1: You know, he had to just stand there. That was
10:51
Speaker 1: his whole thing is he had to just stand there.
10:53
Speaker 1: And his bit was that he um was he played
10:56
Speaker 1: it straight constantly. He was a stone faced actor. Yeah, deadpan. Yeah,
11:00
Speaker 1: he kind of started that whole thing because his big um.
11:03
Speaker 1: I was about to say rival, but I guess um
11:06
Speaker 1: just contemporary Charlie Chaplin, while similar in some ways, was
11:10
Speaker 1: completely different because Chaplin was constantly mugging for the camera
11:14
Speaker 1: and like asking for the audience, uh sympathy, raising his
11:17
Speaker 1: eyebrows or yeah, like look what's happening to me? Come on?
11:20
Speaker 1: Come on? Whereas Buster Keaton was just he had that
11:22
Speaker 1: dead pan look the whole time. Yeah, he would go
11:24
Speaker 1: from like a house falling around him to jumping on
11:28
Speaker 1: a train or something like that with just the same
11:31
Speaker 1: blank facial expression. Yeah. And the reason this is a
11:34
Speaker 1: highly influential film the generals because it kind of showcases
11:37
Speaker 1: the best of both, um, the the amazing stunts that
11:40
Speaker 1: would be mimicked in throughout the years and built upon,
11:43
Speaker 1: and then the dead pan style that influenced everyone from
11:49
Speaker 1: Obviously Bill Murray is one of the great dead pan
11:51
Speaker 1: actors of all time. Like you can count the number
11:55
Speaker 1: of time Bill Murray even smiles in a movie on
11:57
Speaker 1: like two hands, much less like apes or laughs or anything.
12:01
Speaker 1: Michael Sarah's mentioned in here, and I'm like he, I
12:04
Speaker 1: think he might have Bill Murray beat as far as
12:07
Speaker 1: actor goes. Well. Zach Galfin Akiss is on the list,
12:10
Speaker 1: he's super deadpan, um Leslie Nielsen, of course, Amy Poehler.
12:15
Speaker 1: I think is a is a woman that's a very
12:17
Speaker 1: dead pan has a dead pan style. Jason Schwartzman, Yes,
12:22
Speaker 1: but people say this is this all is a direct
12:24
Speaker 1: descendant of Buster Keaton's work. Yeah, And if you think
12:27
Speaker 1: we're overstating this. Go watch any Buster Keaton movie. You
12:31
Speaker 1: will be thrilled and delighted. And if your attention span
12:35
Speaker 1: has been shredded to ribbons by the Internet, just go
12:37
Speaker 1: on to YouTube and type in Buster Keaton and it'll
12:40
Speaker 1: bring up all sorts of um clips of his awesome stunts.
12:44
Speaker 1: Pretty great. He will be thrilled in amazed, I promise. Yeah,
12:46
Speaker 1: And I think I made a note here by the way,
12:47
Speaker 1: that we have a fatty Arbuckle retraction to make. Remember
12:51
Speaker 1: when we we called him out as the rapist murderer,
12:55
Speaker 1: I didn't say murderer, well, we said rapists at least,
12:59
Speaker 1: but we were taken a task by fan he was
13:01
Speaker 1: he had, he was acquitted of all that stuff and
13:04
Speaker 1: apparently didn't do uh either act and um, his career
13:09
Speaker 1: in life and family name were ruined forever. So he
13:12
Speaker 1: was evidently done a grave miss justice, and we sort
13:15
Speaker 1: of cavalierly just still called him that today. Yeah, I
13:19
Speaker 1: need to look into it more, all right, So next
13:21
Speaker 1: up we have the Jazz Singer the edition not the
13:25
Speaker 1: Neil Diamond one. No, and there was one in between
13:28
Speaker 1: two with Danny Thomas. I believe, Um, I like Neil Diamonds.
13:33
Speaker 1: It's good. I never saw do you ever see it? No? No,
13:36
Speaker 1: it's not bad. Um. But this is the original from
13:39
Speaker 1: Alan cross Land, and it is notable because it was
13:44
Speaker 1: the first feature link uh movie that was at least
13:52
Speaker 1: spoken dialogue. Does that make sense? Yeah, it's totally new. Yeah,
13:57
Speaker 1: it wasn't. It wasn't the first talkie because they had
13:59
Speaker 1: short films that were talking key's. And there was a
14:01
Speaker 1: movie the next year I'm sorry, yeah, called Lights of
14:04
Speaker 1: New York that had full spoken dialogue, but the jazz
14:09
Speaker 1: singer had a mix of music and spoken dialogue. The
14:14
Speaker 1: first big, big daddy feature length film to do so
14:16
Speaker 1: right with substantial dialogue, right, Yeah, and they they did
14:21
Speaker 1: it in the most roundabout difficult way that you could
14:24
Speaker 1: possibly do it, which is too record the audio and
14:29
Speaker 1: the soundtrack, both the dialogue and the music, onto vinyl
14:33
Speaker 1: records probably wax records really, and then um, the projectionists
14:38
Speaker 1: had to sink the record up with the film strip
14:41
Speaker 1: so everything was in sync. Yeah. It was a device
14:44
Speaker 1: called a Vita phone that Warner Brothers sunk about half
14:47
Speaker 1: a million into. Uh. This company called Western Electric who
14:50
Speaker 1: invented it, and it was actually physically connected to the
14:54
Speaker 1: projector's motor. Um, so they did while they did have
14:59
Speaker 1: to sink it. It was it was a physical connection
15:01
Speaker 1: between the phonograph player and the projection. Uh real, I guess.
15:07
Speaker 1: And it went on to gross three and a half
15:09
Speaker 1: million bucks a lot of dough. That's a ton of dough.
15:13
Speaker 1: That's like five six million dollars today at least at least,
15:19
Speaker 1: but uh, it was ineligible for the Best Picture because
15:22
Speaker 1: they were just like, you can't compete with the rest.
15:25
Speaker 1: It's not fair, oh wow, because everything else is silent
15:27
Speaker 1: and everyone's going to vote for you. So that changed
15:31
Speaker 1: the whole game for sure. We will continue on with
15:35
Speaker 1: our awesome and engrossing list right after this, So Chuck,
15:59
Speaker 1: if you will notice the first three movies in our list,
16:03
Speaker 1: the first three films that changed everything happened in twenty seven.
16:08
Speaker 1: Things were changing vast they really were. I mean, like
16:10
Speaker 1: we buy leaps and bounds. But you can also make
16:13
Speaker 1: the case that there was a lot of new ground
16:16
Speaker 1: to cover. So just about anybody who did anything new
16:20
Speaker 1: that was noteworthy. Yeah, it was a big innovation. Harder
16:24
Speaker 1: to innovate these days, it is um And if you'll
16:27
Speaker 1: notice on the list. Um, So the earliest ones where
16:31
Speaker 1: like technical editing, innovations. Um. Now, starting with Citizen Kane
16:35
Speaker 1: from we start to get into innovations and storytelling, which
16:40
Speaker 1: is a lot more nuanced than you know, um, doing
16:44
Speaker 1: your own stunts or using a montage or something. It's
16:48
Speaker 1: it's figuring out how to tell a story in a
16:52
Speaker 1: much less linear narrative fashion. And Citizen King was one
16:57
Speaker 1: of the early ones to pioneer a non linear narrative
17:00
Speaker 1: of Yeah, did you you saw this? Yeah? Yeah, I
17:03
Speaker 1: didn't see it until I mean it was probably like
17:08
Speaker 1: probably about fifteen years ago, but like way later than
17:11
Speaker 1: you would think I would have seen this as a
17:12
Speaker 1: big film buff. I saw it in college at a
17:16
Speaker 1: in a film class. Yeah. Often. Yeah, if you sign
17:21
Speaker 1: up for a film class, you're gonna study Citizen exactly
17:24
Speaker 1: pretty much. And I finally found out where Rosebud was.
17:28
Speaker 1: Don't ruin it. I won't. But it is a landmark
17:31
Speaker 1: film in every way, and it has often been top
17:35
Speaker 1: of best Films of All Time lists for great reasons, UM,
17:39
Speaker 1: one of which, like you said, the non linear narrative
17:41
Speaker 1: was really unique thing at the time. UM. Although Flashback
17:45
Speaker 1: wasn't brand new it was the first time it had
17:49
Speaker 1: been this extensive and effective in the story because I
17:52
Speaker 1: mean it's substantial enough that it really cuts up the flow. Yeah,
17:56
Speaker 1: you know, it's not like a quick flashback and they
17:58
Speaker 1: come back and the actor is like staring off into
18:01
Speaker 1: space to transition back into the present again. I mean
18:05
Speaker 1: like it was all over the place. Yeah. Uh. Some
18:08
Speaker 1: of the more concrete cinematic landmarks. One was using deep focus. Uh.
18:16
Speaker 1: Director of photography Greg Toland Legend used he had used
18:20
Speaker 1: deep focus before on a movie called Long Voyage Home,
18:23
Speaker 1: But um, it's all over the place in Citizen Kane.
18:26
Speaker 1: And that basically means if you see a shot where
18:30
Speaker 1: something very far away is in focus in the shot,
18:34
Speaker 1: basically where everything is in focus, or the background in
18:36
Speaker 1: the foreground or in focus, so you can press pause
18:39
Speaker 1: and look around exactly like you're sticking your head into
18:42
Speaker 1: a box. Yeah, that's called deep focus. And it was
18:45
Speaker 1: brand new. Uh, as far as Citizen Kane goes. It's
18:48
Speaker 1: how extensive it used it. One of the other things
18:51
Speaker 1: was off center framing. Um it was a big, you know,
18:55
Speaker 1: pretty common thing to just center whatever the main act was,
19:00
Speaker 1: either the character or the object, and um, Citizen Kane
19:04
Speaker 1: had a lot of things where the main focus of
19:06
Speaker 1: the scene the character, maybe even off screen, which was
19:10
Speaker 1: really weird at the time. People didn't know what to
19:12
Speaker 1: think of it. Um expressionistic lighting. Uh back then everything
19:18
Speaker 1: that they just lit it there, like make sure everything's
19:20
Speaker 1: well lit. Um. But auto premature also like a big
19:23
Speaker 1: pioneer with that. Yeah, I think so with um Dalin
19:27
Speaker 1: for Murder, I think he directed that. Was that Hitchcock?
19:30
Speaker 1: I think that was Hitchcock? Was it? Okay? Well, auto
19:33
Speaker 1: premature directed stuff like that, though right he was. He
19:36
Speaker 1: used moody lighting and shadows and stuff a lot. I
19:38
Speaker 1: probably messed that up. People are going to be Dalin
19:41
Speaker 1: for murder. I think it was premature, okay, Um, but
19:45
Speaker 1: U orson Welles of course. I don't think we even
19:48
Speaker 1: mentioned that who wrote, directed, and started and produced, and
19:52
Speaker 1: I think he even edited A Citizen Kane. Yeah, I
19:54
Speaker 1: just assumed everybody knew that, you know. Yeah. Um. He
19:57
Speaker 1: came from the theater, where uh you create mood with
20:00
Speaker 1: lighting only certain parts of the stage, so he brought
20:04
Speaker 1: that into the movies and uh it was very um
20:08
Speaker 1: evocative and set the mood well. And people are like, man,
20:11
Speaker 1: why are we lighting everything all bright all the time?
20:14
Speaker 1: Look at Citizen Kane, which really worked. Um. A couple
20:19
Speaker 1: of other things, one of which I know you will appreciate, sir,
20:22
Speaker 1: is that he pretty much invented the wipe. Oh, the
20:26
Speaker 1: star wipe, not the star wipe, but it followed. Yeah,
20:29
Speaker 1: the star wipe followed, which I know is your favorite
20:32
Speaker 1: transition in cinema. Oh, it's all Star wars Star because
20:36
Speaker 1: it almost makes a beop sound, you know. Uh. And
20:40
Speaker 1: one of the way, I want to say, you're right, Dallan.
20:42
Speaker 1: For murder, it was Hitchcock. Okay, what was premature? Did
20:46
Speaker 1: you look that up? He did one called Laura the
20:48
Speaker 1: Man with the Golden Arm. It's not who I'm thinking of.
20:50
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of a director named Auto who directed in
20:53
Speaker 1: like the twenties or thirties, and he directed like moody um,
20:59
Speaker 1: like like moody movies like yeah, murder movies, yeah, filmore, yes,
21:05
Speaker 1: film noir. That's exactly what I was going for. And
21:07
Speaker 1: I don't remember who it was. Maybe his name is
21:10
Speaker 1: Otto film Moore, He's French. Um. And then one final thing,
21:15
Speaker 1: of course, that you could study Citizen Kane for a
21:17
Speaker 1: week in the film class. So this is an overview.
21:20
Speaker 1: But um, the low angle shots. Um, people didn't use
21:24
Speaker 1: a lot of low er high angle shots back then.
21:26
Speaker 1: It was kind of just shot from straight on and
21:28
Speaker 1: um Orson Welles even dugout cut out the floor a
21:31
Speaker 1: lot of times to get the camera lower. And for
21:34
Speaker 1: the first time we saw ceilings in view in a
21:37
Speaker 1: movie because quite often things were shot on a sound
21:40
Speaker 1: stage where you don't have ceilings, and um, he wanted
21:43
Speaker 1: those low angle shots, so they used um fabric most
21:47
Speaker 1: times to act as a ceiling, but very effective shots
21:50
Speaker 1: of from below of orson Wells. As I mean, it
21:55
Speaker 1: wasn't exactly William Randolph first, but it was an approximation
21:58
Speaker 1: of William Randolph first, a very effective low angle stuff
22:02
Speaker 1: that now, I mean we take for granted all these things, Um,
22:06
Speaker 1: but you know, there would be no pulp fiction and
22:08
Speaker 1: that non linear storytelling if there was no well maybe
22:12
Speaker 1: somebody would have done it, but maybe eventually. But the
22:15
Speaker 1: first he did the first, and and that's why it
22:18
Speaker 1: was innovative. Exactly. It's Fritz Lang. Yeah, there you go,
22:22
Speaker 1: Fritz Lang Metropolis and m just um, that's okay, Yeah,
22:27
Speaker 1: it's all making sense that get confused. Yeah, but you
22:30
Speaker 1: were right, You were right there. Fritz and Auto are
22:33
Speaker 1: not close. I mean they're both Jerreman, but that's about it. Yeah,
22:36
Speaker 1: but do you know the difference between M and dial M?
22:39
Speaker 1: Just a telephone? What's up next, Chuck Breathless? One of
22:44
Speaker 1: my faiths. So I am going to rely on you
22:48
Speaker 1: mostly for this one because I looked up what the
22:51
Speaker 1: French New Wave really did, what did accounted for? And
22:56
Speaker 1: like all of the essays I found were are they
23:00
Speaker 1: were dense, Yeah, and I didn't really understand. I understood
23:04
Speaker 1: that the French New Wave like changed everything, yea, and
23:07
Speaker 1: that a lot of the movies that I know and
23:09
Speaker 1: love today are the offspring of the French New Wave,
23:13
Speaker 1: but I still didn't get exactly specifically what the French
23:17
Speaker 1: New Wave did. And you're going to rely on me
23:20
Speaker 1: to summarize this, no pressure. Well, for me, the French
23:25
Speaker 1: New Wave basically ushered in an era of what now
23:30
Speaker 1: I think most people might associate with in d filmmaking Okay, okay,
23:34
Speaker 1: like uh, handheld camera work and what some people at
23:39
Speaker 1: the time considered amateurish camera work. UM movies where maybe
23:43
Speaker 1: not a lot seemingly happens you know, nothing grant happens,
23:46
Speaker 1: which was the case in Breathless. A lot of people
23:49
Speaker 1: didn't like it at the time because it was like,
23:51
Speaker 1: you know, not much happens. You know that the the
23:55
Speaker 1: two leads in the movie, uh, Jean Paul Belmondo and
23:58
Speaker 1: Jean c. Berg weren't really lie didn't show express a
24:02
Speaker 1: whole lot of deep love, and there weren't these big
24:04
Speaker 1: moments of love and affection and these huge action sequences.
24:08
Speaker 1: And it was described as flat by a lot of people. Um,
24:12
Speaker 1: and I think a lot of indie movies do that,
24:14
Speaker 1: just kind of show life as it happens. Yeah, So
24:16
Speaker 1: without Breathless, we wouldn't have like Bottle Rocket. Maybe. Wes
24:21
Speaker 1: Anderson is definitely a big French New wave guy for sure. Um,
24:26
Speaker 1: but uh go dar John Luc Goodard who directed it,
24:30
Speaker 1: and Trufaux and some other um French New wave forefathers
24:35
Speaker 1: were film critics at first. Yeah. Yeah, and they decided
24:38
Speaker 1: as a group like we want to look at cinnam
24:40
Speaker 1: in a new way, um and do something different. So
24:44
Speaker 1: they would and started making their own movies. That's like
24:47
Speaker 1: James Fenimore Cooper, Yeah, the guy who wrote Less of
24:50
Speaker 1: the Mohicans. Yeah. He apparently used to complain that, like
24:54
Speaker 1: nobody wrote good books anymore, and so I think his
24:58
Speaker 1: wife or something said, well, why don't you do a
25:00
Speaker 1: big shot? And he did. And the books he wrote
25:02
Speaker 1: really weren't so great, but he he went and wrote
25:05
Speaker 1: him and he wrote a bunch of them too. One
25:07
Speaker 1: of my favorite four sides ever, is the second to
25:10
Speaker 1: the last of the Mohicans. It's just a line of
25:13
Speaker 1: Native Americans. In the second to the last one, they're
25:16
Speaker 1: online facing away. He just sort of turning around and
25:18
Speaker 1: waving at the camera, I guess the camera at Gary
25:21
Speaker 1: Larson's hand. Um. So Breathless is notable for those reasons.
25:26
Speaker 1: It kind of kicked off the French New Wave. But
25:28
Speaker 1: the use of jump cut editing, which we see so
25:31
Speaker 1: much now. It was the first movie and it was
25:33
Speaker 1: very jarring at the time to see jump cuts in
25:36
Speaker 1: a movie. And that's when you're showing, like, I guess
25:41
Speaker 1: the best way to describe it as um, multiple shots
25:44
Speaker 1: of the same subject or thing from different angles. Right,
25:49
Speaker 1: It's like, um, you indicate the progression of time or
25:54
Speaker 1: movement or something by just cutting quickly rather than focusing
25:57
Speaker 1: on somebody walking down the street for five minutes. You
26:01
Speaker 1: cut a couple of times, and all of a sudden
26:03
Speaker 1: they're just closer to the camera, and then closer and closer,
26:05
Speaker 1: and then they're past the camera. It's a jump cut, yeah,
26:08
Speaker 1: or even as simple. Something as simple is like you're
26:10
Speaker 1: going to leave the house, so you go and pick
26:12
Speaker 1: up your keys and you put on your coat. Instead
26:13
Speaker 1: of showing all that you come out of the bedroom, Boom,
26:16
Speaker 1: you're putting on your coat. Boom, you're putting the keys
26:18
Speaker 1: in the door, right exactly, you're just showing the high
26:20
Speaker 1: highlights of this progression of stuff, where that would otherwise
26:24
Speaker 1: be boring to watch the whole thing. But it also
26:27
Speaker 1: um is used to create tension too, because it's it's
26:32
Speaker 1: um jarring. I guess it's probably why it creates tension.
26:35
Speaker 1: And Scorsese famously used it in Goodfellas at the end
26:39
Speaker 1: when Henry Hill is like like trying to sell some guns. Yeah,
26:44
Speaker 1: he's coat to the gills, right, and he's like trying
26:46
Speaker 1: to sell some guns to Nero but they don't fit
26:48
Speaker 1: the silencers, and like he's the helicopters following him. He's
26:52
Speaker 1: got the sauce going and all this stuff is being
26:55
Speaker 1: represented and compressed in a very short amount of time
26:59
Speaker 1: by the use of jump cuts. Very effective and for
27:03
Speaker 1: budding filmmakers, it's a great way to hide mistakes. UM
27:09
Speaker 1: of things you may not have gotten that you thought
27:11
Speaker 1: you got. UM. Jump cutting is a really easy way
27:14
Speaker 1: to to just sort of uh yeah, to hide your errors.
27:18
Speaker 1: I did a lot. In other words, when I was
27:20
Speaker 1: making those shorts, I UM, I was. I realized that
27:23
Speaker 1: in my head I was referencing the UM shot in
27:27
Speaker 1: Soul Taker. Have you seen that mystery signs three thousand
27:31
Speaker 1: with it's um. His last name is Estevez is Martin
27:34
Speaker 1: Sheen's brother, and he is a soul taker and he's
27:38
Speaker 1: next to this guy who's a soul taker. You just
27:43
Speaker 1: have to see this. But anyway, they're they're walking down
27:45
Speaker 1: the road and this jump cut like has this progression
27:48
Speaker 1: of them. It's so unnecessary, but it's like a great
27:52
Speaker 1: use of jump cut. You could tell the director was like,
27:54
Speaker 1: I can't wait to use a jump cut, and that's
27:56
Speaker 1: what she did. She used it on UM. But go
28:00
Speaker 1: watch the MSc three K. It's a good one. Man.
28:03
Speaker 1: You did you see every single one of those episodes? No,
28:05
Speaker 1: it's still I still run across the ones that I
28:08
Speaker 1: haven't seen. Yeah, nice, um hey, and the shout out
28:13
Speaker 1: to Bill Corbett, who I know as a listener. Oh yeah,
28:15
Speaker 1: he isn't. Yeah. I don't know if he's gonna hear
28:17
Speaker 1: this one, but the great Bill Corbett, so take care. Uh. Next,
28:23
Speaker 1: we're gonna move on to Federico Fellini's eight and a half.
28:29
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen this one? No? I haven't. Now
28:31
Speaker 1: I understand why it's called that. Yeah. It was one
28:34
Speaker 1: of the first, although not the first, movies about movie
28:37
Speaker 1: making and uh, starring the great Marcello Mastriani Masterroianni from
28:43
Speaker 1: Ludulta Vita. Amuse of Felini's over the years too, And
28:48
Speaker 1: this one, Um, this one really kicked off the surrealist
28:52
Speaker 1: filmmaking and sort of saying you can play around and
28:56
Speaker 1: shoot a dream sequence where the guys in traffic and
29:00
Speaker 1: then he leaves his car and floats up in the
29:02
Speaker 1: air and is you know, being pulled down to the
29:04
Speaker 1: ground on the beach from a rope tied around his ankle,
29:07
Speaker 1: just like go nuts. Yeah, and successive filmmakers did go
29:10
Speaker 1: nuts like um Gondry did. Uh eternal sunch out of
29:14
Speaker 1: the Spotless Mine. Oh yeah, he's hugely influenced. Um, Darren
29:17
Speaker 1: Aronofsky did some weird stuff here there, Yeah, David Lynch
29:22
Speaker 1: and Terry Gilliam. Of course. Just basically surrealism is is
29:26
Speaker 1: what I'm taking Felini introduced into this, Yeah, for real.
29:30
Speaker 1: And um, besides the surrealism, uh, that opening sequence of
29:35
Speaker 1: eight and a half where the director of um, he's
29:38
Speaker 1: the director in the movie, Uh, Guido is stuck in traffic.
29:42
Speaker 1: It's really claustrophobic feeling, and that's why he floats away,
29:45
Speaker 1: uh and escapes. You know that, that traffic jam. But
29:49
Speaker 1: that was directly mimicked in like R E. M S.
29:51
Speaker 1: Everybody Hurts video, And Um, the beginning of the movie
29:55
Speaker 1: Falling Down. Do you remember that that started with the
29:57
Speaker 1: traffic jam. Michael Douglas just laughed. He doesn't float, he
30:01
Speaker 1: gets I saw that again the other day. Most of
30:04
Speaker 1: it it's weird. It alternately felt way ahead of its
30:09
Speaker 1: time and also very dated. Yeah, because the stuff that
30:14
Speaker 1: Michael Douglas is doing felt way ahead of its time.
30:17
Speaker 1: But then there was I just forgot about that whole
30:21
Speaker 1: um weird subplots with Robert Duval retiring and he had
30:26
Speaker 1: this wife that was him pecking them, and like this
30:29
Speaker 1: retirement party they were trying to throw off. Forgot that. Yeah,
30:32
Speaker 1: it was just so unnecessary and felt really weird and
30:35
Speaker 1: out of place. The other day when I was watching
30:37
Speaker 1: it was there like a jump cut montage where he's
30:40
Speaker 1: putting on his watch, his gold retirement watch. No, but
30:44
Speaker 1: then to the Barbara Hershey, you know, is in venice
30:47
Speaker 1: at home with the daughter, and he spends a whole
30:50
Speaker 1: day coming there to grab them basically, and the whole
30:53
Speaker 1: time she just keeps calling the cops like a no,
30:55
Speaker 1: he's coming, and no, he's coming. And I was watching
30:57
Speaker 1: the other day, I was like, freaking leave, what are
31:00
Speaker 1: you doing there? That's a movie character thing, you know.
31:05
Speaker 1: That's just bad writing, bad directing. When you just walk
31:08
Speaker 1: right past the ability to leave, there's you. You missed
31:13
Speaker 1: a huge step. Where were we falling down? Yeah? I
31:16
Speaker 1: think that pretty much sums up eight and a half.
31:18
Speaker 1: I think so too, falling down boom, so chuck. We
31:21
Speaker 1: got a little more left, we got more films. Is
31:23
Speaker 1: this making you want to watch films? Yeah? Me too.
31:26
Speaker 1: I feel like eating ice cream watching a film and
31:30
Speaker 1: scratching from poison Ivy lately and burning this office down.
31:35
Speaker 1: Uh you know if that happens now, suspicion is going
31:37
Speaker 1: to fall on you for saying that's all right. Uh,
31:40
Speaker 1: we'll be right back after this. Alright, So we're back
32:02
Speaker 1: with our awesome jingles, which, by the way, um, we
32:05
Speaker 1: we have to thank John bagonin John begin begin to begin.
32:12
Speaker 1: He even emailed with the pronunciation of his name, but he, um,
32:15
Speaker 1: the original guy who did our jingle, the first jingle ever,
32:18
Speaker 1: Rusty Maddius Mattias Man, I'm not good with the pronunciation.
32:24
Speaker 1: Uh well, anyway, Rusty who's banned the sheep Dogs are
32:27
Speaker 1: on tour right now. Um, just because his work was
32:31
Speaker 1: so original, we contacted him and said, hey, we got
32:33
Speaker 1: this other guy who's done like covers of your work.
32:36
Speaker 1: Can we use these is like totally and John's been
32:40
Speaker 1: making awesome like versions of it ever since. Yeah, they're
32:44
Speaker 1: both great and talented. Thanks to you both. And go
32:46
Speaker 1: check out I think that what you say. They're on
32:48
Speaker 1: tour right yeah, the sheep Dogs. Go check out the
32:50
Speaker 1: sheep Dogs in town here you Yeah, all right, let's
32:55
Speaker 1: finish with these two in reverse order. Okay. Toy story
32:59
Speaker 1: was a big one, hugely innovative, huge, And again it's
33:03
Speaker 1: one of those things where now almost everything about it
33:06
Speaker 1: seems pedestrian or what it did. See. It's still a
33:10
Speaker 1: great movie, I'm sure, um, but the innovations that it
33:14
Speaker 1: undertook her it's just seemed pedestrian. But at the time
33:17
Speaker 1: it was totally groundbreaking. It was the first, um, the
33:22
Speaker 1: first c g I movie, all c g I movie ever. Yeah,
33:26
Speaker 1: that was enormous. Well yeah, and I remember at the
33:29
Speaker 1: time seeing it and just being like, Wow, this is
33:32
Speaker 1: the future of animated films. What's the best all c
33:36
Speaker 1: g I animated film you've ever seen? Visually? Uh? Well,
33:40
Speaker 1: I haven't seen a lot of them these days because
33:42
Speaker 1: Emily doesn't like those. So I probably wouldn't be the
33:45
Speaker 1: best person to ask Holly from stuff mom or sophiasts
33:49
Speaker 1: and history class, she'd probably be the one to ask
33:52
Speaker 1: for my money. Have you seen The Adventures of Tintin? Oh? Yeah,
33:56
Speaker 1: that was amazing, mind blow. Yeah. I saw that on
34:00
Speaker 1: your recommendation and really really liked it. Yeah. The story
34:03
Speaker 1: was great, the action was great, the characters were great.
34:06
Speaker 1: But the c g I, the computer animation is but
34:11
Speaker 1: I think possibly the best ever done. Yeah, And that's
34:13
Speaker 1: a bit of a different style than say like UP
34:16
Speaker 1: or Um The Incredible. It's not nearly his cartoons. It's
34:19
Speaker 1: like the I think it's the motion capture. Yeah, I
34:22
Speaker 1: think that's what they did for that. Oh yeah, with
34:23
Speaker 1: UP it would strictly be totally just animation, right, yeah,
34:26
Speaker 1: but I mean they're both animation. Um. But yeah, man, Tinton,
34:30
Speaker 1: that was really good. It was good. I'm surprised how
34:32
Speaker 1: much I like that. But UP was good too, and
34:34
Speaker 1: Toy Story was good too. And but all of these
34:36
Speaker 1: things came as a result of the ground that Toy
34:38
Speaker 1: Story broke absolutely in Um, like you said, what seems
34:43
Speaker 1: like a common thing today, could I mean, you don't
34:46
Speaker 1: see sell animation anymore. It's almost I know, I kind
34:49
Speaker 1: of miss it. I totally miss like the new Um,
34:52
Speaker 1: Mickey Mouse is all weird and CG like stuff from
34:55
Speaker 1: our generation should have just been discontinued, and then you
34:58
Speaker 1: just come up with all new stuff off that's CG.
35:00
Speaker 1: I start very shortcake not supposed to be c G.
35:03
Speaker 1: I it just all looks weird now. Yeah, I wish
35:06
Speaker 1: there would have people would have done a little bit
35:09
Speaker 1: of both still, because I think Sell animation like Uh.
35:13
Speaker 1: I think The Iron Giant came out after Toy Story
35:15
Speaker 1: and they did sell animation and that was great, great
35:18
Speaker 1: movie that it was really good, you'd like it. Uh
35:22
Speaker 1: Like it was a movie for grown ups, and Toy
35:25
Speaker 1: Story sort of laid the way for that because it
35:28
Speaker 1: was one of the first movies. Um, I guess cartoony
35:31
Speaker 1: kids movies to really have a lot of dialogue that
35:34
Speaker 1: flew over kids heads that adults got a little nod
35:36
Speaker 1: in a wink. What Toy Story. Yeah, yeah, not like
35:39
Speaker 1: dirty humor, but it's not like f it's the cat
35:41
Speaker 1: no no no, but a little entendre here and there
35:43
Speaker 1: that adults might appreciate that kids won't understand. Those are
35:46
Speaker 1: the best jokes. Um. And now we have you know,
35:52
Speaker 1: best animated uh feature in the Oscars, which definitely came
35:58
Speaker 1: straight out of the original Toy Sto worry because movies
36:01
Speaker 1: started being considered before they created its own category up
36:05
Speaker 1: in Toy Story. Three were actually nominated for a regular
36:07
Speaker 1: Best Picture, and I think everyone's like, oh, we need
36:10
Speaker 1: to get in their own category because you can't have
36:12
Speaker 1: an animated movie when best Picture it came well up
36:14
Speaker 1: would have come after. Um, the the best Animated Picture
36:20
Speaker 1: category came out, really, so that kind of goes as
36:23
Speaker 1: a testament to just how amazing that movie is. Yeah,
36:27
Speaker 1: but it was still for Best Picture. Oh, it was both.
36:30
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was up for it probably
36:32
Speaker 1: was up for Best Animated as well, but it was
36:34
Speaker 1: definitely also up for Best Picture while there was an
36:37
Speaker 1: animated category. Yeah, I never considered that. Bam, that was
36:41
Speaker 1: a good movie. Yeah, it was sweet. Um, so I
36:45
Speaker 1: got nothing else in toy Story. Well then what about
36:47
Speaker 1: the last one? Yeah, two thousand one Space Odyssey quite
36:53
Speaker 1: a film. You sent this, uh essay on Criterion I
36:58
Speaker 1: think Criterion dot com, but you know the criteria in collection.
37:01
Speaker 1: Um it was written, I guess in even though it
37:05
Speaker 1: says posted in it's like there wasn't an internet to
37:08
Speaker 1: post it on in night. Maybe it means posted it
37:11
Speaker 1: like in the mail. Maybe. Um. But I realized, like
37:15
Speaker 1: I can read film essays about Stanley Kubrick's work all
37:21
Speaker 1: day long, Like I love that documentary Room two to
37:25
Speaker 1: seven two three seven six seven, you know the one
37:32
Speaker 1: about the shining conspiracy theory. Yeah, then the number of
37:34
Speaker 1: the room is amazing. I can't remember though. Um, I
37:37
Speaker 1: read a bunch of articles is I think two thirty seven. Um,
37:41
Speaker 1: I read a bunch of articles around the release of
37:43
Speaker 1: that documentary, which we're basically like film essays on on
37:48
Speaker 1: the shining. I read this one amazing one um from
37:52
Speaker 1: several years ago about Eyes Wide Shut about how it's
37:55
Speaker 1: like a masterpiece of sociology, studying sociology. People hate that movie. Um.
38:02
Speaker 1: And then now this like two thousand one. I'm sure
38:04
Speaker 1: there's tons out there to consume, but I can just
38:07
Speaker 1: read that stuff all day long because that guy was
38:09
Speaker 1: so just amazingly detailed as a director. Yeah, I agree.
38:14
Speaker 1: I can read more about his work critical essays on
38:18
Speaker 1: his work than any other director. It's just unbelievable. It's
38:21
Speaker 1: almost like its genre. It is, you know rick. Yeah,
38:24
Speaker 1: it's got a word named after it, and well it should. Um.
38:28
Speaker 1: So two thousand one of Space Odyssey, Um, blue minds
38:33
Speaker 1: back then, blows minds today one for its uh just
38:37
Speaker 1: the amazing look and the technical achievement. Um. A eight
38:41
Speaker 1: is really well. I mean, if you see a movie
38:43
Speaker 1: from nine about out of Space, it still looks like
38:46
Speaker 1: the future. Yeah, he don't expect it to hold up well,
38:48
Speaker 1: but it totally does. Um so much so that a
38:51
Speaker 1: lot of the you know, George Lucas and Ridley Scott
38:54
Speaker 1: were just like it's done, Like we might as well
38:57
Speaker 1: give up. Yeah, George Lucas when Star Wars came out
38:59
Speaker 1: said Star Wars is technically comparable, but for my money,
39:03
Speaker 1: two thousand one was by far the better movie. Yeah,
39:06
Speaker 1: everyone was sort of intimidated, I think by how talented
39:09
Speaker 1: Kubrick was. Well. Plus also, um, you have to take
39:12
Speaker 1: into account that he made this movie at a time
39:15
Speaker 1: when other sci fi movies were just pure schlock. So
39:20
Speaker 1: not only to make the movie in this way this
39:24
Speaker 1: visually amazing and amazing with an audio soundtrack and just
39:29
Speaker 1: totally innovative, it also took like that mindset. It is
39:33
Speaker 1: completely go in a different direction that everybody else has
39:36
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah, of course I think about Ridley Scott
39:39
Speaker 1: saying that, and then he goes on to make Alien
39:40
Speaker 1: and Blade Runner after that. So I mean he helped Prometheus. Man. Yeah,
39:46
Speaker 1: people are like Prometheus. I don't care. It's a cool movie. No,
39:49
Speaker 1: I liked it too. I thought, Okay, one flaw, the
39:54
Speaker 1: big flaw to me was and I'm sure it's like
39:58
Speaker 1: part of the subtext, the context, or one of the texts,
40:02
Speaker 1: but um, the engineer coming back to life or coming
40:07
Speaker 1: out of hibernation after however long and just immediately like
40:11
Speaker 1: inflicting violence on these p brained humans who are showing
40:15
Speaker 1: him no threat whatsoever. I just thought it was a little, uh,
40:22
Speaker 1: it wasn't explained well enough for my taste. Yeah, I
40:25
Speaker 1: don't think I agree with you, But when I'm watching
40:27
Speaker 1: a Ridley Scott movie, I just assume if I'm missing something,
40:31
Speaker 1: he has an explanation for it. I'm just not catching it. Yeah,
40:35
Speaker 1: I know what you mean. I'd like I think I
40:37
Speaker 1: read some stuff about how it tied into the alien
40:41
Speaker 1: cannon and realized I need to go see it again
40:44
Speaker 1: with all this knowledge that I wasn't really thinking about,
40:47
Speaker 1: and maybe i'd like it more. Yeah, but I haven't
40:49
Speaker 1: done that yet, So back to two thousand one. It
40:53
Speaker 1: was also notable for being bookended basically with thirty minutes
40:58
Speaker 1: of silence on both ends of the movie. The first
41:00
Speaker 1: thirty minutes or and when I say silent, I mean
41:02
Speaker 1: no dialogue in the last thirty minutes have no dialogue. Yeah,
41:06
Speaker 1: the last line comes like a full thirty minutes before
41:08
Speaker 1: the end. Yeah, and over the hundred and forty six minutes.
41:11
Speaker 1: There are only forty minutes of dialogue and the whole thing.
41:14
Speaker 1: And um, that's why I just when people compare something
41:18
Speaker 1: like Interstellar and call it kubricky in, I just want
41:21
Speaker 1: to smash do you know like Interstellar? Not really? Oh,
41:26
Speaker 1: I liked it. I was super let down despite McConaughey
41:30
Speaker 1: doing Waterson in the future. I still liked it. I
41:34
Speaker 1: even liked him in it. I liked a lot of
41:35
Speaker 1: the parts of it. But um, to me, it's anti
41:39
Speaker 1: kubricky in because every ten minutes they're explaining everything that's
41:44
Speaker 1: going on again another thing. Just like Inception, Ellen Page's
41:49
Speaker 1: entire character was written in to explain what was going
41:52
Speaker 1: on every ten minutes. Yeah, and I felt like Interstellar
41:54
Speaker 1: was the same way. It's like Christopher Nolan needs to
41:56
Speaker 1: just trust his audience a little bit like kubrick did
41:59
Speaker 1: and say figure it out or don't. Yeah that I'm
42:02
Speaker 1: not gonna stop every ten minutes just to explain everything.
42:05
Speaker 1: Here's just going on. Remember if you didn't get it right,
42:09
Speaker 1: here's what's going on again. Well, I think if they
42:11
Speaker 1: are labeling something like Interstellar, is Kubrickian right, one of
42:15
Speaker 1: the ways that you can interpret that is that he
42:18
Speaker 1: was he rooted his two thousand one in science fact right,
42:25
Speaker 1: So like the stuff that the astronauts are like dealing
42:29
Speaker 1: with and the things that are going on and the
42:31
Speaker 1: conditions of space, it was all factual. Whereas with Interstellar,
42:36
Speaker 1: same thing. They went to really great lengths to do
42:39
Speaker 1: what they could to make everything scientifically factual. Aside from
42:43
Speaker 1: the fact that the idea that you could go into
42:46
Speaker 1: a black hole and then come back out or something
42:47
Speaker 1: like that drifting in space, that's not gonna happen. But
42:51
Speaker 1: for the most part, Interstellar was scientifically accurate. So maybe
42:55
Speaker 1: that's what they meant when they called it Kubrickian, because
42:57
Speaker 1: you're absolutely right, like they did blaming a lot and
43:02
Speaker 1: went to great links to explain a lot, whereas with
43:04
Speaker 1: with two thousand one, you just watch it the first
43:07
Speaker 1: five times like what just happened? Yeah, And apparently Carry
43:10
Speaker 1: Grant had that same reaction as well. That was rock Hudson,
43:13
Speaker 1: Rock Hudson, that's right. Yeah, the original screening that Roger
43:16
Speaker 1: Ebert was at in l A. Rock Hudson just left
43:19
Speaker 1: and said, can somebody tell me what the hell that
43:21
Speaker 1: was about? Yeah? And it wasn't even over yet. Yeah. Um.
43:25
Speaker 1: Well the reason it it uh has science fact and
43:30
Speaker 1: not science fiction is because Kubrick and Arthur C. Clark,
43:33
Speaker 1: who it wasn't actually a book that was made into
43:35
Speaker 1: a movie. It was a movie B book made after
43:38
Speaker 1: a movie, and they collaborated on both. And um, they
43:43
Speaker 1: went to Carl Sagan, um of course of Cosmos and
43:46
Speaker 1: said he said, you're gonna make billions and billions. That
43:51
Speaker 1: was pretty good, it wasn't. Yeah, that's a lot like them. Um.
43:54
Speaker 1: They went to Carl Sagan said, hey, we want to
43:57
Speaker 1: portray these extraterrestrials. Are they maybe the Star Child is uh?
44:04
Speaker 1: Or they turned Dave into the Star Child? Are they humanoids?
44:07
Speaker 1: What are they gonna look like? And Sagan was like
44:09
Speaker 1: they were very unlikely to be humanoid. So Kubrick did
44:13
Speaker 1: the smart thing and was just like, well, we just
44:14
Speaker 1: won't show him at all, instead of making a fool
44:17
Speaker 1: of myself like signs and making some dumb looking at man, man,
44:24
Speaker 1: let me just not show the aliens. Very smart move. Um.
44:30
Speaker 1: Getting back to the story of two thousand one, although
44:34
Speaker 1: I think the Village is underrated, Yeah I can stomach
44:40
Speaker 1: that one. What about well, you like the six cents, right,
44:43
Speaker 1: everybody like the sixth Cents. I guess that was it
44:46
Speaker 1: for him. I loved Unbreakable. Unbreakable that was one where like, yeah,
44:51
Speaker 1: I think it was maybe even better the second time. Yeah,
44:53
Speaker 1: I still like that movie. Uh. But then he also
44:56
Speaker 1: made that Lady in the Water movie and the the
45:00
Speaker 1: one with Marky Mark the people were jumping off no
45:06
Speaker 1: three kings. Uh is it the one in the elevator? No,
45:10
Speaker 1: he just produced Oh I know what you're talking about,
45:12
Speaker 1: the one where people like jumping off of buildings and
45:14
Speaker 1: stuff inexplicably. Yeah. That I didn't even I didn't see that.
45:18
Speaker 1: You couldn't get through ten minutes of that movie. So um.
45:21
Speaker 1: Two thousand one Back to Good Movies was had a
45:24
Speaker 1: three x three part structure, but not a conventional three
45:28
Speaker 1: act structure that you might be used to in movies,
45:31
Speaker 1: which is why it confounded people like Rock Hudson. The
45:34
Speaker 1: first they called the movements. The first movement was the
45:38
Speaker 1: Dawn of Man sequence with the the the apes with
45:42
Speaker 1: a monolith um and uh, he has that great part
45:47
Speaker 1: where he throws his little bone tool up in the
45:49
Speaker 1: air and then it morphs into well not Morse but
45:52
Speaker 1: maybe it's a dissolve into the spinning and outer space.
45:57
Speaker 1: It's called the match cut. Yeah, match cut and um
46:01
Speaker 1: of the rotation of what we now know was a
46:03
Speaker 1: nuclear warhead. Because I read that little article twenty Things
46:07
Speaker 1: you Didn't Know about two thousand one, I didn't know
46:10
Speaker 1: those are nuclear warheads necessarily in outer space. They made
46:13
Speaker 1: it a little more vague, and initially it was going
46:14
Speaker 1: to be more explicit and they were going to explode
46:18
Speaker 1: it in outer space. But he said, now it's a
46:20
Speaker 1: little too close to uh, the ending of strange. Yeah,
46:25
Speaker 1: so let's not do that. Yeah, probably a good choice, Yeah,
46:28
Speaker 1: but some as a result, some people have taken it
46:31
Speaker 1: to mean that, like it was a That match cut
46:34
Speaker 1: was supposed to show how far humans have come from
46:37
Speaker 1: using a bone to murder somebody to satellites in space.
46:41
Speaker 1: But if you know that the satellite is actually loaded
46:44
Speaker 1: down with nuclear warheads, that match cut demonstrates how little
46:48
Speaker 1: humans have changed from using a bone to murder somebody
46:51
Speaker 1: to using satellites to murder somebody. The the motif is
46:55
Speaker 1: still the same, and it's murder. Yeah. He was going
46:58
Speaker 1: for some deep things. Oh yeah, a lot of metaphor happening.
47:01
Speaker 1: I mean supposedly in every single shot, because he started
47:04
Speaker 1: out as a still photographer, right, supposedly every frame of
47:08
Speaker 1: a Kubrick movie. You there is nothing that isn't unintentional
47:13
Speaker 1: in place there by him. He did a lot of
47:15
Speaker 1: his own set decorating. Yeah, Like the pencil holder on
47:18
Speaker 1: the desk in the office of the guy at the
47:20
Speaker 1: Shining Hotel was where it's supposed to be, right, and
47:23
Speaker 1: if like if it has like a picture of a
47:25
Speaker 1: goat head inscribed on it, that means something. It's not accidental. Yeah,
47:30
Speaker 1: Although I will say Room two thirty seven, which I
47:33
Speaker 1: think may have been the point, is a little bit
47:35
Speaker 1: like these people are crazy, not like, oh man, I
47:39
Speaker 1: just see what they're saying in all this, right, I
47:41
Speaker 1: was just thinking, these people are nuts, right, It's it
47:44
Speaker 1: was just kind of enjoyable to hear their interpretations of
47:47
Speaker 1: it well, and I think it had a It was
47:48
Speaker 1: a comment on obsession and fandom more so than the
47:52
Speaker 1: Shining but there I thought there some of their ideas
47:56
Speaker 1: were interesting. I said Room to two sid didn't I
48:00
Speaker 1: like going out with conspiracy theorists like Mary. Wasn't Room
48:06
Speaker 1: two two seven like a sitcom? Yeah. It was just
48:08
Speaker 1: called to seven. Okat. Remember was Jack k She'd be like, Mary, Okay,
48:14
Speaker 1: that's what my impression was. What do you think I
48:16
Speaker 1: was doing? Well? I wasn't sure what. You must be
48:18
Speaker 1: a weirdo. Yeah, okay. The second movement was, of course
48:22
Speaker 1: the house sequence, the computer, the how was it? The
48:27
Speaker 1: How nine thousand um really creepy and How ended up
48:31
Speaker 1: being a lot of people's favorite character, even though it
48:34
Speaker 1: was just a voice the supercomputer on the Discovery ship. Remember,
48:37
Speaker 1: he's like, what are you doing to you? It's so creepy.
48:41
Speaker 1: I had the Mad Magazine spoof of two thousand one
48:43
Speaker 1: when I was a kid. It was great. And then
48:45
Speaker 1: the third movement is when Dave moves on to the
48:51
Speaker 1: next stage of human development with these extraterrestrials that you
48:54
Speaker 1: know only here and um. Basically, it's when it comes
48:59
Speaker 1: full circle the third movement, and the third movement is
49:04
Speaker 1: the one that has almost well, it's really just the
49:07
Speaker 1: second movement. That's it's dialogue. Yeah yeah. Uh. Some of
49:11
Speaker 1: the alternate titles for two thousand one Journey Beyond the Stars,
49:15
Speaker 1: Terrible Universe, not bad, Tunnel to the Stars, not so great,
49:22
Speaker 1: Planet Fall, that sounds bad. It sounds like good James
49:25
Speaker 1: Pond movie. And then how the Solar System was one
49:28
Speaker 1: as a play on how the West was one, Yeah,
49:31
Speaker 1: which like movie geeks would find that appealing, but everybody
49:35
Speaker 1: else would say that's dumb. He ruined everything, Yeah, and
49:39
Speaker 1: Kubrick was this is the last thing I have. He
49:41
Speaker 1: was so obsessive with protecting his material that he allegedly, uh,
49:47
Speaker 1: I don't think allegedly. I think he did have all
49:49
Speaker 1: the sets and props and miniatures destroyed after he shot
49:53
Speaker 1: it so they would never be reused, which is a
49:55
Speaker 1: common thing at the time, like, hey, we're doing a
49:57
Speaker 1: space movie, go get the go get that space from
50:00
Speaker 1: Stanley set. Yeah, let's reuse it for a planet fall.
50:04
Speaker 1: He he also destroyed all of the footage that didn't
50:08
Speaker 1: make it into the original theatrical release. Yeah, destroyed it's gone. Yeah,
50:13
Speaker 1: so they wouldn't one day after his death recut it,
50:16
Speaker 1: which they invariably probably would have done. Yep, he's a
50:19
Speaker 1: smart man. Yeah, I could. We should just do a
50:22
Speaker 1: podcast on Kubrick. Okay, he was I'm down for that challenge.
50:27
Speaker 1: Be a dude, Yes, one of my heroes. Yeah, cinematically,
50:33
Speaker 1: you got anything else? I got nothing else. Uh. If
50:35
Speaker 1: you want to know more about movies, if you like
50:37
Speaker 1: this one, you probably also love our exploitation episode exploitation
50:41
Speaker 1: movie episode fun one. What else have we talked about
50:43
Speaker 1: movies in Cannonball Run? Oh yeah, I had a lot
50:48
Speaker 1: to do with the movie. Yeah. Our James Bonda episode. Yeah.
50:51
Speaker 1: Uh yeah. We've had a few of these, and people
50:53
Speaker 1: always respond to these, were like, you guys should have
50:55
Speaker 1: a spin off, should do an all movie podcast maybe
50:58
Speaker 1: one day. May remember if you're confront any of these,
51:01
Speaker 1: UM press control F or Apple F in your web
51:04
Speaker 1: browser and search that way on our podcast archive page. Uh.
51:08
Speaker 1: You can also search for this article on how stuff
51:13
Speaker 1: works by typing movies in and seeing what comes up.
51:16
Speaker 1: And since I said how stuff works, is time for
51:18
Speaker 1: a listener mail. I'm gonna call this Mike. Could DuPont
51:23
Speaker 1: really clear something up for us on scientific method? Hey guys,
51:27
Speaker 1: it was a great um Well, actually he doesn't say
51:30
Speaker 1: it was great. I think I just made that up.
51:31
Speaker 1: Hey guys, your Scientific Method podcast has a consistent misuse
51:35
Speaker 1: of what a scientific law is in relation to uh,
51:37
Speaker 1: to the working of the scientific method. Uh. It appears
51:40
Speaker 1: that you believe that a law e g. Newton's law
51:42
Speaker 1: of gravity isn't held uh in higher esteem than theory,
51:46
Speaker 1: and that eventually a theory matures into a law. Um.
51:49
Speaker 1: I think I probably did think that because of politics,
51:53
Speaker 1: you know, bill becomes a law right exactly, he says,
51:55
Speaker 1: when in fact, theory is considerably more robust than a law.
51:58
Speaker 1: A law is a mathematical model that describes observed behavior,
52:03
Speaker 1: does not answer the why. Theory does answer why something happens.
52:08
Speaker 1: Did we not say that? I thought we did, Like
52:11
Speaker 1: I I knew that. I remember finding that out from
52:13
Speaker 1: the research. I just can't believe it didn't come out
52:15
Speaker 1: of my mouth. He claims, we did not, and I
52:18
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm learning this So I definitely did not.
52:21
Speaker 1: But you may have. For example, Newton's law of gravitational
52:24
Speaker 1: attraction describes the action of two bodies that can be
52:27
Speaker 1: used for pretty much everything. Um. It is perfect for
52:30
Speaker 1: describing what happens, but it cannot tell you why the
52:32
Speaker 1: two items are attracted or drill down to the underlying mechanism. Yeah,
52:36
Speaker 1: law is like much more succinct. It just is what
52:39
Speaker 1: it is. Uh. Nor is the law even universal and
52:42
Speaker 1: could not be used to explain the para helion procession
52:48
Speaker 1: of Mercury's orbit burn. In comparison, Einstein's theory of general
52:53
Speaker 1: relativity was eventually used to solve the mercury issue. Oh yeah,
52:56
Speaker 1: the mercury issue. Uh, and the standard model, along with
53:00
Speaker 1: the recent discovery the Higgs boson on my sern, can
53:02
Speaker 1: answer the why do these two masses attracted to each other? Question?
53:08
Speaker 1: I think what you mean is, why are these two
53:10
Speaker 1: masses attracted to one another? Mike, it's pretty teleological theory
53:16
Speaker 1: is considerably more developed and richer than a scientific law,
53:18
Speaker 1: which is more of a tool that is applicable to
53:20
Speaker 1: a wide range of applications. Keep up the good work
53:23
Speaker 1: that is, Mike DuPont. Thanks Mike, thanks for that of
53:26
Speaker 1: the Valley Forge DuPont's I think so, huh have you
53:30
Speaker 1: seen Fox Catcher? Oh no, I've heard it's good. Is
53:33
Speaker 1: a good? No? Really, I don't think so. Now. I've
53:37
Speaker 1: heard it's kind of slow. It's beyond slow. Really, I
53:42
Speaker 1: I can understand why, Um, the Academy loved it, or
53:48
Speaker 1: a lot of people. I'm sure, do you like it?
53:50
Speaker 1: I was not a fan of Fox Kich. I think
53:52
Speaker 1: people generally seeing like a turn by an actor like
53:55
Speaker 1: Steve Girl doing something really different. They're knocked out by that. No,
53:59
Speaker 1: I still can't believe you didn't like Birdman. No spoiler
54:02
Speaker 1: alert for people who have not seen Birdman. The following
54:05
Speaker 1: conversation is full of spoilers. Yes, what didn't you like
54:08
Speaker 1: about it? Um? So I thought? I thought Michael Keaton
54:13
Speaker 1: was good? Okay? Um? Who plays his daughter Emily Blunt?
54:18
Speaker 1: Is that? Who that is? Emma Stone? Emma Stone? Excellent? Okay?
54:22
Speaker 1: Um Edward and even pretty good? Okay? So the acting
54:25
Speaker 1: was fine? Who is Naomi Watts was in it? Yeah?
54:28
Speaker 1: She did great? Okay, So yes, the acting, the acting
54:31
Speaker 1: was fine. Sure that the acting was fine. I thought
54:34
Speaker 1: the photography was amazing. The whole seemingly one take thing
54:39
Speaker 1: kind of knocked you out. Probably I didn't even pick
54:41
Speaker 1: up on that, but yes it did. Um. It was
54:45
Speaker 1: more the the for me, the juxtaposition of the story,
54:51
Speaker 1: which was pretty boring in realistic and everyday life. Even
54:56
Speaker 1: though it was about a Broadway production, it was still
54:58
Speaker 1: about the everyday life of it. Sure, against the surrealism
55:02
Speaker 1: that's like threaded and embedded in throughout the whole movie.
55:06
Speaker 1: I didn't like that it was like choose one or
55:08
Speaker 1: the other? Man? It irked me. Um and uh. And
55:13
Speaker 1: then just so that one part with the critic or
55:16
Speaker 1: Michael Keaton tells off the critic. I thought Michael Keaton
55:18
Speaker 1: did a wonderful job, but just the whole point that
55:22
Speaker 1: it was in there of like the director, you know,
55:26
Speaker 1: using Michael Keaton's character to tell off all the critics
55:28
Speaker 1: he's ever wanted to. I just thought it was pretentious
55:33
Speaker 1: and I thought it was kind of clumsy in that
55:35
Speaker 1: sense too, and it was enough that it it. Yeah,
55:39
Speaker 1: and then the ending. I did not like the ending
55:43
Speaker 1: at all at all. That'll ruin a good movie because
55:47
Speaker 1: it was completely went contrary to all the other stuff
55:51
Speaker 1: that he went out of his way to point out
55:53
Speaker 1: was fake or fraud and they're not real. And then
55:56
Speaker 1: all of a sudden it is what no choose one
56:01
Speaker 1: or the other? The director refused to make very important decisions,
56:05
Speaker 1: and I think that that ruined the movie. That is
56:07
Speaker 1: a very well uh thought out the criticism. I think
56:11
Speaker 1: you thank you very much? Sure, uh man. That was
56:14
Speaker 1: the end of Listener Mail even, wasn't it? Yeah? Because
56:17
Speaker 1: now I'm not like she's Josh is weird? He didn't
56:19
Speaker 1: like Birdman. Now I'm like just in like Birdman. He
56:21
Speaker 1: has good reasons. Thank you, Thank you. UM. I like
56:24
Speaker 1: justifying my opinion, don't we all? So? If you want
56:29
Speaker 1: to get in touch with Chuck and I or Jerry,
56:32
Speaker 1: who I apparently just spoiled Birdman for UM, you can
56:36
Speaker 1: contact us via Twitter at s Y s K podcast.
56:39
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56:42
Speaker 1: you Should Know. You can send us an email. This
56:43
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56:46
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56:48
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56:53
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