Latest / CinemaHounds - A Lorehounds Podcast / One Battle After Another (2025) - Part 1 w/Anthony

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One Battle After Another (2025) - Part 1 w/Anthony · CinemaHounds - A Lorehounds Podcast

0:07
[SPEAKER_02]: Hey everybody, David here, so this is going to be part one of, I don't know how many episodes on one battle after another, it is a movie that is generating a lot of conversation and
0:27
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, we can argue about that, I guess, on the podcast.
0:30
[SPEAKER_02]: It is certainly activating a lot of thought and critique across the film and TV media landscape.
0:40
[SPEAKER_02]: And we are also getting wrapped up in that.
0:44
[SPEAKER_02]: This is the third podcast that I've been hunting as many days.
0:48
[SPEAKER_02]: And we'll see if there's going to be any more.
0:50
[SPEAKER_02]: I know there's going to be at least one more for the lower hounds.
0:53
[SPEAKER_02]: So, originally,
0:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Anthony and I scheduled with Jean to have a conversation last week, but then Jean had some family stuff come up and he wasn't able to join us.
1:04
[SPEAKER_02]: So Anthony and I went ahead and we're working on getting a schedule with Jean as soon as we can.
1:11
[SPEAKER_02]: In the meantime, Ron Dawson and JD, who both
1:22
[SPEAKER_02]: They're on their YouTube podcast thing called Dungeons & Do Rags.
1:28
[SPEAKER_02]: They came on to talk to me about the movie.
1:31
[SPEAKER_02]: I've got to still edit that podcast that should be out in a few days.
1:35
[SPEAKER_02]: And then they had me come on their YouTube channel and when they did one of their normal episodes with a couple of other buddies of theirs for their show.
1:43
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, I know we're going to be talking with Jean just got to get that scheduled and then so that'll be at least three from us on the movie.
1:52
[SPEAKER_02]: So after that we'll see where we go with this regardless it was a great movie to see.
1:59
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm looking forward to seeing it again and I'm just really thankful for all the fun and interesting conversation that we've been having about what this movie has sort of sparked in the general discourse.
2:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, I think that's about it for set up for this conversation.
2:18
[SPEAKER_02]: In terms of what we've got coming up on this schedule, I think Alicia has one more peacemaker to come out.
2:27
[SPEAKER_02]: I've got one more bonus episode for Alien Earth and then that should wrap the season.
2:32
[SPEAKER_02]: Nicole and I are going to be talking about some psychology related stuff.
2:35
[SPEAKER_02]: And then we're in the middle of Spooktober, we've got three Zach Krieger films that we're covering, we're covering what weapons on the main public feed, and we'll be talking about barbarian and companion, we'll be doing a lordown on the subscriber feed.
2:50
[SPEAKER_02]: I know Alicia has a bunch of Frankenstein projects also in the works.
2:56
[SPEAKER_02]: The new movie is coming out, so I'm sure that'll be out before too long, and then I think she's got something else special going on on Worship Dust.
3:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Then I think there is a Marvel zombies also in the works.
3:09
[SPEAKER_02]: And I know Alicia and I are going to be talking about predator badlands once that is released.
3:15
[SPEAKER_02]: In terms of television shows, John and Alicia are talking about covering it.
3:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Welcome to dairy and maybe doing some check-in pods on Talamaska.
3:25
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm definitely going to be covering the new Vince Gilligan show pluribus once that comes out.
3:30
[SPEAKER_02]: And the radioactive ramblers are going to be covering fallout in December as well.
3:35
[SPEAKER_02]: We'll have our end of year nonsense that we usually do where we rank all the TV.
3:40
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot of TV this year.
3:41
[SPEAKER_02]: We'll get that out as well.
3:43
[SPEAKER_02]: And I know that there's some Christmas rom-com stuff in the pipeline.
3:47
[SPEAKER_02]: So stay tuned for all of that.
3:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks again for being subscribers.
3:51
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks again for just being listeners.
3:53
[SPEAKER_02]: We appreciate all of you.
3:54
[SPEAKER_02]: And yeah, here's my conversation with Anthony about one battle after another.
4:05
[SPEAKER_02]: I relate to Bob, I'm happy.
4:07
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I was just saying I relate to Bob in a number of ways, which we can talk when we get to spoilers, but there's a few sort of sad-sac adult mail
4:31
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, a subordinate masculinity issues that he has that I can relate to for sure.
4:38
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think this is going to be the first of maybe several conversations about this film.
4:44
[SPEAKER_02]: We were initially scheduled to record with Jean.
4:47
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, his spouse is feeling a little unwell.
4:51
[SPEAKER_02]: So he needs to attend to his family and be a new father.
4:54
[SPEAKER_02]: And just given the next couple of weeks scheduling is going to be a little bit nuts.
5:01
[SPEAKER_02]: And we are very clear that Jean has some things that he would like to talk about.
5:08
[SPEAKER_02]: And we're going to make sure that he has that opportunity and what configuration and what time frame.
5:13
[SPEAKER_02]: That happens will be to, we'll just figure that out at some point.
5:18
[SPEAKER_02]: But you and I wanted to talk anyway.
5:21
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think this is kind of the opening chapter.
5:22
[SPEAKER_02]: We can talk about,
5:24
[SPEAKER_02]: a number of the other themes and ideas that are happening in this movie because it's a millfoil, right?
5:29
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a huge, so many layers.
5:31
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I'm going on the Dungeons and New Rags podcast with Ron in JD this Friday.
5:39
[SPEAKER_02]: and I'll be on their show and I may cross post the episode back to our feed so that'll be a good conversation and Ron has been around the lorhounds for a little while now.
5:53
[SPEAKER_02]: JD is a buddy of his and they were with me for episode 7 of Alien Earth and we got a lot of positive feedback from from their episode so they invited me over there so we'll do that and then I don't know we'll just
6:06
[SPEAKER_02]: I just see multiple conversations happening around this movie.
6:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, David.
6:10
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm fine with all of this as long as we can sort of be unified in our fight against haters, lunatics, and punk track.
6:18
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the phrase of the century.
6:22
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like it's going to stick with me.
6:26
[SPEAKER_00]: The unholy Trinity.
6:28
[SPEAKER_00]: It's right.
6:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Hater's trying to check in the contract.
6:33
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm trashed as the best.
6:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh goodness.
6:35
[SPEAKER_00]: How many times have you seen the movie now?
6:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Only twice.
6:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
6:39
[SPEAKER_00]: I saw the night it came out.
6:42
[SPEAKER_00]: really kind of geeked out for it.
6:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And just saw it again last night.
6:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow, so it's fresh.
6:49
[SPEAKER_00]: It's fresh.
6:50
[SPEAKER_00]: And I wanted, you know, I've been wanting to kind of see it again anyway.
6:55
[SPEAKER_00]: And I got to tell you, I don't know if people are talking about it this movie in this way, but it's hilarious.
7:04
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just, you know, it's an action thriller.
7:07
[SPEAKER_00]: It's all the depth that you'd expect from PTA, but
7:10
[SPEAKER_00]: I just laughed really, really hard from, you know, probably like the middle hour, you know, there's some really serious stuff for the beginning of some really serious stuff, the magically at the end that's worth talking about, but I don't want it, I don't want it to go and said.
7:31
[SPEAKER_00]: that I laughed harder in this movie than most movies, they're intended to be comedies.
7:37
[SPEAKER_00]: So anyway, it's delightful.
7:41
[SPEAKER_00]: If you kind of are getting that the Christmas boys are just so common, and they're cartoons, they're just cartoons, so.
7:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, I don't want to spoil anything early on here, but I just thought this movie was hilarious.
8:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I think for the purposes of your an eye conversation, we might as well just lift the spoiler safety now, and then just launch in because this is going to be a multi podcast conversation, I think.
8:15
[SPEAKER_02]: we don't really need to stick to a lot of forms and structures given it's just you and I, you know, kind of shoot in the shit.
8:22
[SPEAKER_02]: And so yeah, spoiler warnings, we're going to just spoil the whole thing going forward.
8:26
[SPEAKER_02]: So if you haven't seen this movie by now, you're sleeping on it.
8:32
[SPEAKER_02]: I've only seen it once.
8:34
[SPEAKER_02]: It is still a lot of it is clear in my mind at a broad scale.
8:39
[SPEAKER_02]: I was just looking to
8:43
[SPEAKER_02]: And one of the four theaters that can actually play the movie in Native Vistivision.
8:50
[SPEAKER_02]: is not too far from me.
8:51
[SPEAKER_02]: In fact, in fact, it's my wife's home suburb of Boston.
8:58
[SPEAKER_02]: Interesting.
8:59
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we're like chalking about maybe going and seeing it.
9:03
[SPEAKER_02]: We're like, we have to see some family in the Boston area.
9:06
[SPEAKER_02]: And we might, I don't know.
9:08
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, yeah, but I can see it in VistaVision.
9:11
[SPEAKER_00]: I kind of, I kind of really want to.
9:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that sounds interesting to me.
9:15
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not really one for
9:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, this is gonna sound weird, but I see movies in my mind.
9:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
9:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, there's a little screen projector in my head because if I'm in the movie, I tend not to be thinking about
9:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, whether or not the definition is working or what the media surround is, is you're watching the movie watching them, watching yourself watching them move.
9:45
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm trying to describe, I don't know.
9:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I don't know.
9:47
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess I've never really felt like, I mean, there are very few movies that I feel like,
9:54
[SPEAKER_00]: I could really tell the difference between the 4k and the standard, you know, I just think it's not how my mind works.
10:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
10:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
10:02
[SPEAKER_00]: That is something that I would be interested in because of the really odd choice to choose this outmoded film to choose the movie and, you know, only to show it on a few theaters in that way that does not treat me.
10:18
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'll just put a quick note in here about this division.
10:23
[SPEAKER_02]: The big thing about it is that it runs the film is exposed, so it's actual film, it's not digital.
10:32
[SPEAKER_02]: And the film is running horizontally across the lens as opposed to vertically.
10:38
[SPEAKER_02]: And so you're getting different perforation, per second, sort of a type of frame rate.
10:49
[SPEAKER_02]: And so you, because of that setup,
10:52
[SPEAKER_02]: the physics of it.
10:53
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't understand it.
10:56
[SPEAKER_02]: It captures more detail, and it creates a greater depth of field around the image, and so there's a bunch of qualitative things.
11:03
[SPEAKER_02]: And so in this movie, it was all filmed, as I understand it, and it's a mixture of 35 millimeter and
11:19
[SPEAKER_02]: went and spent the engineering time and financial resources to re upgrade four theaters around the world to play it in the distribution format.
11:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Otherwise, it's, you know, they've converted to 70 millimeter and 70 millimeter IMAX and normal formats as well.
11:43
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, they shot this whole freaking thing on film, which is wild in this day and age.
11:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I wanted to throw an idea at you about this.
11:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Please, since we're full on this spoilers.
11:55
[SPEAKER_00]: In the interview, DiCaprio said that he couldn't stop thinking about the parallels between this film and Star Wars.
12:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Whoa, okay.
12:05
[SPEAKER_00]: And when I was watching it the second time, all I could think about was Star Wars.
12:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Like this, this movie is just a map it.
12:11
[SPEAKER_00]: This movie is just a retelling of a new hope.
12:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And everything down to sort of like, you know, the back story of Darth Vader and how it's sort of the anti-hero,
12:24
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, the antihero begets the hero of the movie and you've got a rebel force and you've got an evil empire and then at the end, you know, you've got this, you know, sort of hint of a reconciliation and even down to like, um,
12:43
[SPEAKER_00]: There's little music ones that I think are we're sort of a technology just created for this film.
12:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Whereas if you're a little wand is a motorola pageer, I had a friend who had one of those.
12:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, that actually plays the music?
13:00
[SPEAKER_02]: No, no, no, so my head cannon for that is is that that's an actual old school pageer.
13:07
[SPEAKER_02]: Those were the early pages.
13:10
[SPEAKER_02]: and that he modified them to be able to do that.
13:15
[SPEAKER_00]: But I'm to modify them to look a little bit like Darth Vader's lightsaber.
13:22
[SPEAKER_00]: okay that's weird okay because they are they're like more like a wand shape and for most of the time they they give our little red light yeah right and at one point you know willas Lane you know she's totally forsaken she's laying on her bed she's crying and you just see the red light in her face and she's holding on to that thing interesting and of course her father
13:49
[SPEAKER_00]: who sort of, you know, the veteran in the, you know, the rebel alliance, he's got one too.
13:55
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's also red if they're not together.
13:58
[SPEAKER_00]: But as soon as they get together, it turns the color of Luke Skywalker's.
14:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that's wild.
14:05
[SPEAKER_00]: And so there are just little things like that that made me think like, oh my gosh, this has so much in common with a new hope.
14:12
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm looking at a Motorola Metro Page boy
14:19
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's like the same shape.
14:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, it's a single seal box.
14:24
[SPEAKER_02]: I have a visceral memory of these.
14:27
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, here's one for $11.
14:28
[SPEAKER_02]: Looks like it's a bit of a knockoff.
14:31
[SPEAKER_02]: But I have a visceral memory of a friend who had one of these.
14:35
[SPEAKER_02]: Don't ask me why he had one.
14:36
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, high school, but he had one.
14:38
[SPEAKER_02]: Somehow.
14:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Did they light up as either green or red?
14:42
[SPEAKER_00]: So for me, that's the crucial thing.
14:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Is the shape of them, and it's the sort of the glow that they represent.
14:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
14:49
[SPEAKER_02]: And that was part of the mod if that's what I,
14:52
[SPEAKER_02]: So I took away that it's old tech right because they're talking about old cell phones and they don't monitor those frequencies anymore and so they took some old tech and then modified it and for whatever the form factor, the battery, the electronics, the existing electronics, so they can hijack for it, so that's my interpretation.
15:17
[SPEAKER_00]: So anyway, I thought that was an interesting.
15:19
[SPEAKER_00]: That's very interesting connection.
15:21
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if it's intentional, but there's, oh my gosh, it's really hard not to see Star Wars once you start looking for it.
15:28
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm stuck now, I'm gonna be in my head knowing I go see it next time.
15:32
[SPEAKER_00]: So what was your experience of this movie?
15:34
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm curious that your anticipation running up to it, what is your expect and what was sort of your takeaway afterwards?
15:46
[SPEAKER_02]: had no idea what this movie was going to be.
15:50
[SPEAKER_02]: I literally had no plans to see it until you texted me and you're asking, oh, you know, or we don't know, is anybody doing a one shot for one battle and it's like, no, because I thought that this movie was some kind of hybrid,
16:10
[SPEAKER_02]: uh, interpretation of the Big Lebowski and the Taken series.
16:14
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not, look, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not those things.
16:19
[SPEAKER_02]: I realized that after the fact that it, it is kind of like that.
16:23
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
16:23
[SPEAKER_02]: But I had no idea.
16:24
[SPEAKER_02]: And so when I was watching, when them film opened, I thought,
16:29
[SPEAKER_02]: I was watching the trailer, so my theater on the afternoon matinee that I saw they didn't run any trailers on the front of it, they just straight into the film.
16:38
[SPEAKER_02]: And I thought, what trailer is this movie for?
16:40
[SPEAKER_02]: I had no idea, and then until I saw it to Caprio, I was like, oh, this is the movie.
16:46
[SPEAKER_02]: And then, there are parts of this movie that shook me to my core.
16:52
[SPEAKER_02]: specifically around the tactical forces that were being deployed in the battle of the town.
17:02
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm blanking the name of the town right now off top of it.
17:07
[SPEAKER_00]: And filmed in Eureka, by the way, was right.
17:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Northern California.
17:12
[SPEAKER_02]: What's the name of the town that they're in there?
17:14
[SPEAKER_02]: I was a backton cross.
17:16
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, backton cross, that's it.
17:18
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
17:20
[SPEAKER_02]: And, and then some of the stuff when they were hunting down the French 75, I think there was a scene where one girl leaves out the back door of a place, and then as she runs out the door,
17:31
[SPEAKER_02]: She, they, they, they shoot her in the head as she goes, I was so shocked and by that shook me.
17:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.
17:37
[SPEAKER_00]: And my wife kind of jumped because I completely know she was sort of like, a really important character in, in, in, um, licorice pizza.
17:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I haven't seen Blickrish.
17:49
[SPEAKER_00]: And I thought, she absolutely is going to... Is that he?
17:52
[SPEAKER_00]: What's that?
17:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Was that hean?
17:54
[SPEAKER_00]: That was hean.
17:54
[SPEAKER_00]: That was one of the hean sisters.
17:56
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it was, yeah.
17:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
17:58
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I thought, I just thought she's going to be really important for this movie.
18:02
[SPEAKER_00]: She'll be there to the end.
18:03
[SPEAKER_00]: And so for her to just be summarily executed like that, it was just jarring, just totally shocking.
18:10
[SPEAKER_00]: sends the signal of what kind of movie you're watching.
18:12
[SPEAKER_00]: It's right.
18:13
[SPEAKER_00]: That's right.
18:14
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, and I'll get to it toward when we get to the end of the movie, but it didn't kind of set me up to like, just be completely disoriented.
18:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
18:23
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what could happen during, in the over-the-course that this movie anything can happen.
18:28
[SPEAKER_02]: And so there's this deadly serious deployment of
18:34
[SPEAKER_02]: quote unquote long for you know paramilitarized law enforcement yeah that terrified me because when you see how how effective these guys are so i can only imagine what's happening in Illinois right now in other places in our country that really it really upset me in that regard yeah and then the it was freaking hilarious and then it's a father daughter and it's a
19:03
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it took Paul Thomas Anderson is holding up a mirror, a clown style show mirror to us to look how ridiculous fascism and white supremacy is, and they're inherent contradictions and blah, blah, blah, so all that stuff.
19:18
[SPEAKER_02]: So I walked out disoriented, but visually I had that experience of
19:27
[SPEAKER_02]: being transported, like when I saw Dune 2, you know, Villeneuve's movie 2, I had that transcendent moment where my eyes sort of bugged, I opened my jaw, went slack, and I was transported into that some other place.
19:47
[SPEAKER_02]: When cinema can do that, that's intense.
19:50
[SPEAKER_02]: And the rolling, you know, the ocean waves of us rolling up and down on the road and that kind of
19:58
[SPEAKER_02]: just breathtaking visually, right?
20:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Like you can say what you want about story and revolution and how black women are being portrayed on screen and all of these kinds of things are a lot of conversation to be had, but at the end of the day, it's just a, it's an amazing film.
20:14
[SPEAKER_02]: with an amazing structure and an amazing purpose and point of view.
20:18
[SPEAKER_02]: The laid miss a rob, there's like a whole lay miss a rob thing that's going on with this.
20:22
[SPEAKER_02]: I think so.
20:23
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
20:24
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm not an expert on that, but the way that he constructed the story and the way that he took the book, Pinsions book, and all of this stuff, it's just, it's, I don't see how, I don't see another film,
20:41
[SPEAKER_02]: seriously challenging it for best picture at the Oscars next year.
20:44
[SPEAKER_00]: That's interesting.
20:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's have that conversation in a little bit.
20:47
[SPEAKER_00]: I do want to talk a little bit about the prologue of this movie.
20:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, let's do it.
20:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Because to me, the prologue of the movie was so
21:09
[SPEAKER_00]: and this all sort of happened 16 years before sort of the the climactic moment of the film.
21:17
[SPEAKER_00]: That part to me was very disorientant and it was very I really couldn't tell
21:25
[SPEAKER_00]: who were the good guys and who were the bad guys.
21:26
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there were certainly a shunt pen to certainly get back at it.
21:31
[SPEAKER_00]: So, the question, the other thing.
21:32
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, he could be one of the best villains, worst villains in film history in this movie.
21:37
[SPEAKER_00]: But I really think that perfidia is almost propped up as an anti-hero, absolutely.
21:47
[SPEAKER_00]: And I kind of had a different view for, in Comps Visual with my wife after the movie.
21:56
[SPEAKER_00]: It really kind of brought me to the same place that Civil War brought me to, not Marvel's.
22:04
[SPEAKER_02]: No, out of Maryland.
22:05
[SPEAKER_00]: 2024.
22:07
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, because I thought, oh my gosh, that movie is, it's a big time in conversation with this.
22:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I felt like both of these movies really had a lot to say about the present state of our country
22:26
[SPEAKER_00]: there was an and because of that the violence in the movie felt more
22:32
[SPEAKER_00]: depressing then then maybe a sort of a movie like Star Wars because it did feel so real to life like this is this could be our world in one year this could be our world in two months yeah it it really did give me that sense and I was just crazy when you realize that he wouldn't he write it how long he's been writing it and what the book the book is basically built on
23:02
[SPEAKER_00]: in Reagan era.
23:03
[SPEAKER_00]: That's right.
23:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.
23:04
[SPEAKER_00]: So I really feel like there's a sense in which that prologue is meant to create more problems than sort of a raw raw aren't the aren't the progressive revolutionaries fantastic the heroes right.
23:22
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think that this
23:29
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm absolutely rooting for Willa, you know, in her fight to change the world.
23:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Like that to me, there's no question about that.
23:35
[SPEAKER_00]: She is Luke Skywalker at that point.
23:38
[SPEAKER_00]: But the prologue of this movie really had me disoriented and depressed and not knowing if there was going to be any real good
23:57
[SPEAKER_00]: early stage of the, I mean, you can't tell the second part of this movie without that set up.
24:03
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that goes into the Lay Mis comparison where it's all this aftermath of the barricades.
24:13
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm not a Lay Mis expert, so it's hard for me to talk authority of it, tatively about that, but the understanding is that there's this intensity and then there's this whole shattered aftermath that the characters have to sort of work with.
24:28
[SPEAKER_02]: I think two, you mentioned Civil War, I had that exact same thought, but I also then hadn't watched, but then subsequently, like, I think the next night I watched how to blow up a pipeline.
24:41
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, interesting.
24:42
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know if you've seen that move.
24:43
[SPEAKER_02]: I have, yeah.
24:45
[SPEAKER_02]: And to me, those three, these three films are in that some level.
24:52
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean,
24:53
[SPEAKER_02]: One battle is doing some different things on some different levels as well, so there's some unrelated stuff but in this area of what does America look like in the future.
25:05
[SPEAKER_02]: these three films are deeply in conversation with each other.
25:09
[SPEAKER_00]: I think so, and I don't know if they're trying to be like, I think so.
25:12
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's pretty sure, I mean, honestly, like, I feel like PTA is in conversation with like nine different scorsese films and even through a different Tarantino film.
25:22
[SPEAKER_00]: 100% and a couple co-in brother films.
25:26
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that there's a lot of those movies.
25:30
[SPEAKER_00]: that kind of get little hat tips and nods and homages in this movie.
25:38
[SPEAKER_00]: But I don't know if Garland is trying to be in conversation with his movie or vice versa.
25:44
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't, I just don't know how much they knew of these movies going in.
25:47
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's so many parallels exactly that it makes you, you know, it makes you wonder.
25:54
[SPEAKER_00]: It makes you wonder how much these guys were aware of their work going into it.
25:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, it's a zeitgeist conversation like the disaster films of the 70s, you know, with what's the, it's not Titanic, what's the movie, the ship one.
26:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Anyway, there's all the airport ones and towering inferno and oh, the Poseidon adventure, all of that right.
26:18
[SPEAKER_02]: That was our fear of
26:21
[SPEAKER_02]: of industrial catastrophe was coming out on film or the environmental disaster films of, you know, the 90s and the 2000s.
26:33
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think whatever is bubbling up, it's been bubbling up for a while.
26:40
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think our artists are, you know, people who are modern storytellers are being, you know,
26:51
[SPEAKER_00]: for sure, and it's interesting that Paul Thomas Anderson is making a movie like this because he usually makes period pieces and he'll, so he'll have something to say about, you know, American capitalism and, you know, the oil industry or, you know, the early stages of, you know,
27:18
[SPEAKER_00]: You'll have such a commentary like that, but he'll usually put our era in conversation with a previous era.
27:28
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is really the first film that he made that's clearly
27:35
[SPEAKER_00]: speaking to a moment in time and also set in that moment of time.
27:41
[SPEAKER_02]: So how big of a Paul Thomas Anderson official noto fan.
27:48
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm pretty big.
27:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'm pretty big.
27:51
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that there's movies that I've seen a lot of times, and then there's movies I've seen once.
27:58
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't feel like I need to see the master again.
28:00
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I recognize it as this is a brilliant movie.
28:05
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel kind of gross.
28:06
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not going to watch that again.
28:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, and then there's other movies that like like I think I've seen licorice pizza like four or five times.
28:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow So I I'm a big fan of you know boogie nights.
28:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a big fan of punch trunk love Shout out to properly Howard Stephen.
28:23
[SPEAKER_00]: I just covered punch trunk love recently.
28:25
[SPEAKER_00]: I think
28:27
[SPEAKER_00]: I think he's brilliant, I think he's one of our best filmmakers, he will do one of these things that Scorsese does and that a lot of his movies are about the slow depravity of a man's psychosis that's bringing down not only him, but the world around him, which, you know, is interesting character, it's an interesting character study to do it that way, it's just not my
28:57
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, these are these are films about men who are hyper competitive and domineering and it brings a certain kind of psychosis into them and the people around them and it's fascinating and I don't know if anyone does it better post, you know,
29:25
[SPEAKER_00]: don't want to give you a neat, nice silver lining at the end.
29:29
[SPEAKER_00]: He would much rather, you know, have someone's blood spilled out on the floor.
29:39
[SPEAKER_00]: This movie ends, I think, in a very hopeful way.
29:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, absolutely done.
29:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And it kind of follows a few familiar action action movie beats to kind of make you feel good at the end.
29:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Even though the darkness remains, there is a silver lining at the end of this movie, right, which I found really surprising and because of that,
30:10
[SPEAKER_00]: I need to let it set for a while.
30:12
[SPEAKER_00]: I need to let it, you know, ruminate and need to maybe go revisit bookie nights or whatever, but I do think that this movie has a real solid chance to be in my favorite movie of this.
30:25
[SPEAKER_02]: I was surprised when I went to look at his filmography, how few films of his that I had seen.
30:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, interesting.
30:35
[SPEAKER_02]: I had literally only seen two of his now ten interesting bookie nights and there will be blood.
30:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
30:44
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I went and I watched, I was at a little cold or something at the beginning of last week.
30:52
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I kind of had a day and a half where I was like I can't work.
30:55
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm in bed and I did a three movie run of Phantom Thread, the master, and then there will be blood in that order and I don't recommend that anyone do that.
31:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Because you have three Dominary men just mind-bend the people around them Yeah, and in the worst in the most I don't know I don't know how to how to categorize that I did enjoy Phantom Thread though because it did have a glimmer of Positive note in the end.
31:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, they are both really messed up people in the lot of ways
31:38
[SPEAKER_02]: But there you are, when they're together.
31:41
[SPEAKER_02]: I guess it works for them.
31:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, exactly.
31:46
[SPEAKER_02]: And clearly he is, the Phantom Thread character is, we would, I'm not a psychologist or psychiatrist, but I would clearly put him on a spectrum of some kind.
31:58
[SPEAKER_02]: And I don't wonder if that's part of what his storytelling is,
32:04
[SPEAKER_02]: How do we look at these people who are extremely driven, highly successful and to extraordinary things in the world?
32:16
[SPEAKER_02]: And then we have Bob.
32:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, let's talk about Bob.
32:21
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like, you know, this is a DiCaprio joint.
32:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
32:25
[SPEAKER_00]: I do think that there's something about his star power.
32:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Go ahead.
32:34
[SPEAKER_02]: I would just a very quick question about DeCaprio and this role, I don't mean to interrupt, but I kind of think this movie is a perfect, this character is a perfect character for DeCaprio.
32:47
[SPEAKER_02]: He needs like a hyperactive stick, or for his stick to work, interesting.
32:53
[SPEAKER_02]: The character has to be an over-the-top kind of character.
32:56
[SPEAKER_00]: That's really interesting.
32:57
[SPEAKER_02]: A wolf of Wall Street, kind of.
33:02
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, because he's constantly fumbling and screaming.
33:07
[SPEAKER_02]: People that were ever lose shit, right?
33:08
[SPEAKER_02]: And you can't remember thing.
33:09
[SPEAKER_02]: And he's, they, they, them, I mean, he's a lot of, I love him as a, is him being a sad sack, though.
33:16
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, but he's so window like he commits to the bit.
33:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, for sure.
33:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think that that's interesting to me.
33:23
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's hard not to put this,
33:26
[SPEAKER_00]: performance in conversation with once upon a time on in Hollywood.
33:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you guys just covered it and I watched it after your podcast on it.
33:34
[SPEAKER_02]: So, once upon a time, what Hollywood?
33:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, what a great movie.
33:39
[SPEAKER_00]: It's weird.
33:39
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
33:40
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm still processing it in that movie.
33:44
[SPEAKER_00]: He sort of played in the classic movie star.
33:47
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah.
33:48
[SPEAKER_00]: he's so insecure and so unsure of himself and he's sort of on the back end of his career and he's really kind of he's he's more sad than anything else and he and at the same time he's sort of classic cowboy you know American hero kind of kind of guy and he's both at the same time and so I wonder if it's just really interesting that he's choosing roles like this
34:15
[SPEAKER_00]: where he would rather play the belabowski than the Tom Cruise character, which is also kind of a name check in this film.
34:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, right.
34:29
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, look, look at Tom Cruise and look at the counter characters that he chooses to play.
34:37
[SPEAKER_00]: They're superheroes, you know, yeah, yeah, he's clean too.
34:41
[SPEAKER_00]: They're clean, they're morally upright, you know, he'll he'll throw in a little bit of like, traffic thunder every now and again, for the most part, he's got it, it was in his movie.
34:54
[SPEAKER_00]: He was got a type of character.
34:57
[SPEAKER_00]: He was a play.
34:58
[SPEAKER_00]: 100%.
34:59
[SPEAKER_00]: And the capio is absolutely more
35:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that he's, I think he's perfect in this role and yet he sells a movie like an alpha, you know?
35:17
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like he's going to sell a movie every bit as hard as Tom Cruz and yet and he could, he is as good looking and is anyone else in Hollywood, you know, he's
35:36
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't think of the last time he played anyone that was kind of heroic.
35:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Does that make sense?
35:42
[SPEAKER_00]: I think so.
35:44
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to look at his, I want to look at his filmography really quick.
35:48
[SPEAKER_02]: He to me is, he's like this messy, the way that we were talking about.
35:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Tom Cruise just now.
36:00
[SPEAKER_02]: I see him as clean.
36:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I see him as a digital, like, you know, the camera brand red, which is like that top of the line, digital, the clarity of the images, extraordinary, you don't have to light a scene very much because it just picks up.
36:19
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it's just such a technically proficient machine.
36:23
[SPEAKER_02]: And D'Caprio is like an analog film camera to me.
36:25
[SPEAKER_02]: He's messy, rainy, he's loud, he's got the last one.
36:30
[SPEAKER_00]: The last one D'Caprio did where he was sort of classic movie star heroic was in section.
36:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, good point.
36:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Which I did not think he was great to be honest.
36:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I don't think that that's for me that I wouldn't put that near the top of it.
36:48
[SPEAKER_00]: The Caprio performance.
36:50
[SPEAKER_00]: That is a movie I can just watch though.
36:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that right?
36:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's just kind of a, it's a, it's a Rubik's cube of a movie.
36:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, interesting.
36:58
[SPEAKER_00]: So I could, I could see that.
37:00
[SPEAKER_00]: So the Caprio, let me ask you this question.
37:03
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the Caprio,
37:07
[SPEAKER_00]: is not the leading actor of this movie.
37:10
[SPEAKER_00]: I think he's a supporting actor.
37:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Even though he's sort of the big face, I think it's Sean Penn's movie, isn't it?
37:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I honestly, I think it's, I think it's Willis movie.
37:21
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think until Willis introduced, it's Profit Diaz movie.
37:26
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think he's got, you know, Sean Penn and sort of the classic villain role, but I think that the caprio, even though he's the big face on the poster, even though he's the one that sells the movie, he's really the supporting actor in the same way.
37:44
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that in one spot on time, Hollywood, that's really Brad Pitt's movie.
37:54
[SPEAKER_02]: There was something that he brought into that role that he was almost unrecognizable to me in the way that when an actor loses themselves when you don't see them anymore.
38:04
[SPEAKER_02]: That I think to me that's probably one of Brad Pitt's best movies.
38:09
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it is, and I think that it's probably one of DiCaprio's best movies, and yet, I think that we are mistaking, I think he's just choosing really great supporting actor roles.
38:21
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's for whatever reason he pulls us into thinking that he's the main actor.
38:25
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
38:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Because he is a legitimate,
38:28
[SPEAKER_02]: movie star in the a list at right you see his name on a movie it sells the movie you just go to the movie because it's the caprio that's right that's right you don't know what this movies about i i i see the caprio looking like lebaoski with big you know the big glasses my dad used to wear and i'm like the fuck is this and then i go see the movie yeah oh yeah those glasses also uh kind of heart and back to the like the
38:57
[SPEAKER_00]: the the blast helmets.
38:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
38:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh for for stars right.
39:02
[SPEAKER_00]: And he's got the robe, which is a little bit like the Jedi's robe.
39:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And just just just a nice tight bow on this.
39:12
[SPEAKER_00]: At the end of the movie, when he is a showdown with Willah, Willah's little gun has a little sort of
39:23
[SPEAKER_00]: sci-fi looking targeting?
39:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's got a little laser.
39:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yep, which to me, there's just like, oh my gosh, this is Star Wars.
39:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, let's get back to you to Capitol.
39:34
[SPEAKER_00]: I think he's the supporting actor and I don't think I don't think that the argument against this is that he's the constant from the beginning of the film to the end.
39:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
39:47
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, these other actors kind of come and go out of the narrative where he has probably, maybe he has the most screen time.
39:53
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
39:54
[SPEAKER_00]: I think so, but he's not, he's not classically the hero.
39:58
[SPEAKER_00]: He doesn't save, will it in the end?
40:02
[SPEAKER_00]: No, she saves herself.
40:03
[SPEAKER_00]: She saves herself.
40:05
[SPEAKER_00]: He's sort of there to like give her a ride.
40:07
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, he's there to like, you know, be a supportive dad.
40:11
[SPEAKER_00]: But at the end of the movie, you know, he can't even take
40:15
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
40:16
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's why part of the reason that this film is so interesting and it's so hard to not accept it for a high level work.
40:30
[SPEAKER_02]: is because it defies storytelling norms and forms.
40:35
[SPEAKER_02]: I think so.
40:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
40:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
40:37
[SPEAKER_02]: We have a list.
40:38
[SPEAKER_02]: We have the outline that we were going to do.
40:40
[SPEAKER_02]: It was young.
40:42
[SPEAKER_02]: And at the bottom, there's like, I don't know, 10 or plus more comps and tropes things that we pulled out.
40:50
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was always looking over that list today, you know, the French connection, Jackie Brown, Le Bowsky, Strange Love, Civil War, American Anthem, which is a book, Pipeline, say nothing, Kill Bill, were you listed black clans, man, Bonnie, and Clyde, Natural Born Killers, like all this stuff.
41:07
[SPEAKER_02]: None of them, none of the concert tropes that you can pull out of this, that you can, I easily I pull out from this movie.
41:16
[SPEAKER_02]: Ever reside for me.
41:19
[SPEAKER_02]: in the place of Anderson borrowing something?
41:25
[SPEAKER_02]: Because he doesn't know how to get out of a situation.
41:28
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm going to borrow this trope from another movie.
41:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Or I'm going to use this plot mechanic from another story.
41:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Or I'm going to do the thing that they did in Star Wars or whatever.
41:36
[SPEAKER_02]: Right there.
41:37
[SPEAKER_02]: He eat.
41:39
[SPEAKER_02]: And none of it is homage.
41:40
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, I loved French connection.
41:42
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm going to do my car chase.
41:45
[SPEAKER_02]: None of it is he's leaning on nothing.
41:50
[SPEAKER_02]: But all of those, they're like, spirits or presences with us.
41:54
[SPEAKER_02]: They're all there with us.
41:57
[SPEAKER_02]: But they're never in competition.
41:59
[SPEAKER_02]: They're never competing with each other.
42:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
42:02
[SPEAKER_00]: I would say it like this.
42:03
[SPEAKER_00]: I would say he's so comfortable with his own voice.
42:06
[SPEAKER_00]: 100% he's, he's no exactly what his own film style is.
42:13
[SPEAKER_00]: that he can grab these homages and it not feel like, oh, you're cribbing someone else.
42:21
[SPEAKER_00]: They're being put in service to a film that is from start to finish his voice.
42:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
42:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Even down to his family relationships, his emotional connection to his own daughters.
42:36
[SPEAKER_00]: These are things that he,
42:40
[SPEAKER_00]: He's writing himself into these movies and so these movies are so personal that even if he is going to, you know, kind of wink to Killbell, it's not in that moment isn't going to like take you out and make you think, oh, you're trying to be Tarantino.
42:57
[SPEAKER_00]: It's 100%.
42:59
[SPEAKER_02]: 100%.
42:59
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that's a level of mastery.
43:02
[SPEAKER_02]: And then for DeCaprio to then slide into this in the non-standard role as I'm the face of the movie, but I'm not the hero of the movie.
43:15
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm not even the anti-hero of the movie.
43:19
[SPEAKER_02]: The movie isn't really about me.
43:21
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm just a part
43:25
[SPEAKER_02]: the wheel-turning and revolution and counter-revolution and, you know, the generations and generations moving forward.
43:36
[SPEAKER_02]: And for him to put himself into that position, I think that's...
43:42
[SPEAKER_02]: I used to hate DeCaprio.
43:45
[SPEAKER_02]: I did not like him.
43:46
[SPEAKER_02]: Titanic.
43:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Interesting.
43:49
[SPEAKER_02]: What the beach, you know, all just all that stuff.
43:51
[SPEAKER_00]: I was just like, I was kind of on board with him after Gilbert Grape.
43:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
43:56
[SPEAKER_00]: So I was sort of interested in him as an actor.
44:01
[SPEAKER_00]: And I did like the beach, but I think I was probably like you thinking Titanic is just
44:11
[SPEAKER_00]: But happily surprised by Titanic, you know, I'm sure a lot of people felt the same way.
44:19
[SPEAKER_00]: But I'm kind of, I'm kind of invested at this, but I'll even watch Rewatch.
44:25
[SPEAKER_00]: What was the movie where he fights the bear?
44:27
[SPEAKER_00]: What was the color?
44:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that's one of my favorites of his, the Revenant.
44:30
[SPEAKER_00]: The Revenant.
44:31
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of people hated the Revenant.
44:33
[SPEAKER_02]: I will rewatch it.
44:34
[SPEAKER_02]: I would, I loved that then and I love
44:38
[SPEAKER_02]: In your out to Alejandro Gonzales and you're out to the director of that.
44:41
[SPEAKER_02]: I think he I think it's a gorgeous film and I think it's it's not a film for everybody I'll say that but Because it's that brutalist survival Kind of horror Yeah, it's a revenge film and yeah
44:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Were you familiar with either of the lead female actors in this film?
45:03
[SPEAKER_00]: No, not prior to this.
45:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, they were revelations to me.
45:07
[SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't take my eyes off either one of them.
45:11
[SPEAKER_00]: When they are on-screen, they're the most interesting thing about the movie.
45:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, Regina Hall to, uh, Teyana Taylor and Jason Fennity.
45:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Actually, yeah, three, three people really.
45:23
[SPEAKER_02]: Right, assuming you're, you're, you're including Regina Hall.
45:26
[SPEAKER_00]: I am.
45:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.
45:27
[SPEAKER_00]: In, in fact, there's a scene where they're like around a campfire.
45:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Mm-hmm.
45:32
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't think,
45:36
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't even know her name.
45:38
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't know Regina Hall's name at this point, but she's on a screen with one of the ALS actors of Hollywood.
45:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
45:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just can't take my eyes off her.
45:48
[SPEAKER_00]: There's something about her eyes that just convey a sense of authenticity and earnestness and concern.
46:03
[SPEAKER_00]: her eyes that hold the camera in such a way that make me think I have to know more about that person.
46:12
[SPEAKER_00]: That's that's star power.
46:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Teyana Taylor was a force of nature.
46:16
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I think, you know, you probably talk about, you know, maybe her portrayal on film was shown, but I do think
46:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I'm mesmerized.
46:33
[SPEAKER_00]: I just, I'm just mesmerized by her when she's on screen.
46:38
[SPEAKER_00]: She absolutely overshadows to Caprio on screen.
46:43
[SPEAKER_00]: 100% she, I mean, look, she's going to total tow with Sean Pan.
46:48
[SPEAKER_00]: And I believe in highly charged scene, in highly charged scene, and I believe at every moment that those two are equals.
46:58
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just, like, I don't, like, is he gonna get the upper hand on her?
47:02
[SPEAKER_00]: She gonna get the, like, in terms of, like, the characters in the story, but also in terms of acting chops, I am not, I'm not thinking, well, of course, Sean Penn's gonna rule the day at the end of this or not.
47:16
[SPEAKER_00]: that's saying something that is absolutely saying something so anyway I was I was thrilled with with here and then of course you know you get to chase infinity which I I knew her from the presumed innocence series on on apple right she was very she was very good in that
47:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Was she one of the was a dot was she was the yeah, she was a daughter and we started that and we dropped out Okay on so I think she was good and it was sort of a flawed Television show, but yeah, but it was a little weird.
47:54
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought she was really great, but I after this movie I feel like oh my gosh, you're gonna be You're gonna be one of the biggest stars in Hollywood for the next 30 years You know she she look let me just say this
48:08
[SPEAKER_00]: She was in the Luke Skywalker role, and she was so much more charismatic than Hamel.
48:17
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, just such an improvement over Mark Hamel, like I just, I'm so more interested in what she has to do in the future.
48:25
[SPEAKER_00]: So she was amazing.
48:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that there's something about her performance in this movie that conveys a sense of vulnerability
48:40
[SPEAKER_00]: heroic ending.
48:41
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't think either one gets sacrificed toward the end.
48:45
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't feel like she's a superhero at the end.
48:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
48:48
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't feel like she's sort of, you know, punching above her weight and then she, you know, she sort of dominates and now she's kneel from the matrix.
48:57
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't get the sense of that.
48:57
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like she's still believably a 16-year-old girl who has been
49:09
[SPEAKER_00]: but by force of just luck or her own, you know, sheer will, you know, her new villa.
49:17
[SPEAKER_00]: She's able to get it, get sort of overcome.
49:23
[SPEAKER_00]: She's able to overcome.
49:25
[SPEAKER_00]: and put herself in a position where now she is the next generation's hero, but not perfect.
49:33
[SPEAKER_00]: I really don't feel at the end of this that she loses her humanity, right?
49:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
49:37
[SPEAKER_00]: She doesn't dawn, tights and a cape at the end of this, right?
49:42
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think that that's kind of, that's kind of a magical introduction to a new hero.
49:52
[SPEAKER_02]: And then when you think about the fact that Regina Hall, little less so, but Tiana Taylor and Jason Fennity.
50:04
[SPEAKER_02]: Like you mentioned, but widen this frame out a little bit, they're both going toe-to-toe with Decaprio and Diltores and Sean Penn.
50:15
[SPEAKER_02]: And they are matching those guys who have incredible careers beat for beat, energy level for energy level.
50:23
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
50:24
[SPEAKER_02]: Teyana Taylor's performance is show, like you were saying before.
50:30
[SPEAKER_02]: the, the on-screen energy that she was giving to them performance.
50:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Bob Ferguson's are kind of a crazy character, you know, to get real, like really leans into his craziness, Sean Penn really leans into a lot, Joe's craziness.
50:46
[SPEAKER_02]: And she's there for as much, as for as much as she's on screen.
50:51
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
50:52
[SPEAKER_02]: She's laying out the same amount of performance
50:58
[SPEAKER_02]: and outshining the both simultaneously.
51:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, let's talk about the in-world motivations.
51:04
[SPEAKER_00]: My impression of Profitia Beverly Hills is that she is not idealistically pure in the same way that you would find in Le Miserabe.
51:20
[SPEAKER_00]: My impression is that she's a thrill-seeker.
51:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Kind of like in one of the who is who is the the main photographer in Alex Gardland Civil War.
51:32
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh Gosh, I have yeah, let me carry on and I'll look it up.
51:38
[SPEAKER_00]: I Think that there are some people who are in it for I think some people are in the revolution for Kirsten Dunst
51:45
[SPEAKER_00]: No, no, who's the male?
51:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Katelyn Spani, Jesse, or no, Wagner Mora.
51:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, yeah.
51:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Wagner, Wagner Mora's character in that film, I felt like he's interested in sort of the artistic and the integrity of being of photographic journalist.
52:10
[SPEAKER_00]: but there's a part of his personality that is absolutely in it for the thrill.
52:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Like he's a, he's a thrilled junkie.
52:19
[SPEAKER_00]: This guy.
52:21
[SPEAKER_02]: And there was some criticism around Civil War around that.
52:24
[SPEAKER_02]: And I played at photojournalism for a while.
52:29
[SPEAKER_02]: And I knew a bunch of people who were new for the thrill.
52:32
[SPEAKER_02]: And I, and I've been in situations where
52:36
[SPEAKER_02]: domestic, you know, nothing, not a war zone, but in police action, heavy police action, have been gased a few times.
52:45
[SPEAKER_02]: And I will 100% tell you that a big chunk of the job of being that kind of a conflict based, you know, or a photojournalist who looks for conflict is there in it for the thrill of it.
52:57
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
52:58
[SPEAKER_02]: And I would imagine, no, I don't have experience with having idealistic journalism values.
53:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
53:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Both can be true.
53:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, then maybe in this way, my sense of prophetic kind of parts ways with the analogy, but my sense is that in revolutions, you really need ideologues to
53:26
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you also need people who are thrill seekers.
53:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, sometimes those people can be very useful.
53:35
[SPEAKER_00]: I get the sense with her is that she's more of a thrill seeker.
53:39
[SPEAKER_02]: And maybe she's charismatic and she's passionate and that rally.
53:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, and maybe that's kind of rallies people to the cause.
53:48
[SPEAKER_00]: But I don't get the sense that she's much of an ideologue.
53:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Correct.
53:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, I think, you know, I can't change my tune on this after talking with my wife at the end of the movie.
53:59
[SPEAKER_00]: But I got the sense that she wasn't like she made this big shift and kind of became a trader.
54:08
[SPEAKER_00]: to save her own skin.
54:09
[SPEAKER_00]: I kind of felt like she was always a little bit self-centered, or a lot self-centered.
54:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And the same with Bob, I never got the sense that he was much of an ideologue.
54:20
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like he had a certain set of expertise.
54:22
[SPEAKER_00]: He was a great bomb maker.
54:24
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that he sort of drawn into her cult of personality.
54:30
[SPEAKER_00]: I think he gets a thrill from the declaration of war.
54:37
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't really see a window into him as a committed revolutionary.
54:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And by the time we meet him 16 years later, he's so much more into Steely Dan.
54:54
[SPEAKER_00]: And he is, and he is to sort of keep, you know, keep them up the revolutionary persona.
55:02
[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't know if, like, when I said at the beginning of the movie, I didn't really feel like there were any real heroes.
55:09
[SPEAKER_00]: To me, that's kind of what I meant.
55:11
[SPEAKER_00]: I kind of felt like both willous parents.
55:16
[SPEAKER_00]: We're absolutely revolutionaries, but I never got the sense that they were telling me
55:24
[SPEAKER_00]: in any way, shape or form.
55:27
[SPEAKER_02]: Think too with Bob, an additional dimension is the PTSD that he had in the self-medication.
55:34
[SPEAKER_00]: He was doing a lot of self-medicating.
55:38
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the funniest things in the movie is what he's trying to explain why he's brain's flat or front.
55:45
[SPEAKER_00]: I have been doing drugs and alcohol for 30 years.
55:51
[SPEAKER_00]: I am a drug and narcotic lover.
55:54
[SPEAKER_02]: And I love, and this goes into the other point I was going to make is that Anderson doesn't shy away from making his character human.
56:06
[SPEAKER_02]: That's right.
56:07
[SPEAKER_02]: That's right.
56:08
[SPEAKER_02]: Be it a postpartum depression, be it self medication and being honest about self medicating like hey man, I messed up.
56:17
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm I'm all I because like I did bad stuff in the bad days.
56:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that was the conversation I had with a Sarah after the movie was over when I was trying to figure out her motives and I was saying I didn't ever get the sense that she had any connection to her daughter and with Sarah said was, oh, she was totally in postpartum depression.
56:37
[SPEAKER_00]: and I was like, oh my gosh, that totally makes sense because at the end I was thinking, nothing that this woman has done so far would convince me that she's able to write the letter that she writes to her daughter.
56:51
[SPEAKER_00]: It just seems so out of character with everything I knew about her.
56:54
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I even went so far as to think, like, to keep in right the letters, this may be Bob's
57:04
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, for the right, right, right, um, and I would wonder, is that, is that kind of silver lining at the end of this film earned.
57:16
[SPEAKER_00]: And what Sarah said was, yeah, but she was in postpartum depression, you can't, you can't draw anything about her ethical character from the way that she's reacting to the birth of her daughter.
57:30
[SPEAKER_00]: And I totally got that.
57:32
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, oh my gosh, I didn't.
57:33
[SPEAKER_00]: I did not see that going in, but I probably needed Sarah to help me see that.
57:38
[SPEAKER_02]: I had a bout of depression maybe a year or half or two into or after my daughter was born.
57:49
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's not postpartum in the in the same way as your, you know, for nineish months your body has turned into a complete differently chemically souped souped up machine, but there is a big shift that.
58:09
[SPEAKER_02]: we have to go through as adults or children, whatever, whenever we have children.
58:14
[SPEAKER_02]: And we have to reorient our lives.
58:18
[SPEAKER_02]: My father-in-law said this is that you become aware of the world in a way that you never understood before because you're now responsible for the life of somebody else.
58:31
[SPEAKER_02]: And that is going to alter your framework radically, assuming you're committed to, you know, to being the best parent you can be.
58:39
[SPEAKER_02]: And I mean, I'm not lawing that as a virtuous or whatever, just as, you know, it's about choices and about choices people make in the world of their circumstances.
58:51
[SPEAKER_02]: And for Perfidia, who, I think you're right, and this goes back to this,
59:00
[SPEAKER_02]: super heroes and capes.
59:01
[SPEAKER_02]: He's not giving us clean hero anti hero mustache twirling villain, you know, what have you?
59:08
[SPEAKER_02]: He's giving the primary characters a lot of depth and complexity.
59:13
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, the Christmas boys, the Christmas steak club, whatever, I pre-weird.
59:18
[SPEAKER_02]: The Christmas adventure?
59:19
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, that's it.
59:22
[SPEAKER_02]: They're there must actually a two-dimensional twirling, right?
59:24
[SPEAKER_02]: That's fine.
59:25
[SPEAKER_02]: You have a cartoon, yeah, cartoons.
59:28
[SPEAKER_02]: First of all, our primary characters are three-dimensional.
59:30
[SPEAKER_02]: They're living their alive.
59:32
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I think Perfidia can be a revolutionary.
59:35
[SPEAKER_02]: She can be a thrill-sinker.
59:37
[SPEAKER_02]: She can be a mother who went through a terrible bout of postpartum depression to the point where that she could no longer stay in that circumstance and had to make a choice for her well-being.
59:51
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll be it within the realm of a really messed up relationship with Lockjaw and the American justice system.
59:59
[SPEAKER_02]: which then entangles us into the whole world of racial politics and America's fascination with fascism and all of this stuff, but she can absolutely be a complex multi-faceted character.
1:00:19
[SPEAKER_02]: And as much as she's not on screen, her presence across the screen, the whole story,
1:00:27
[SPEAKER_02]: is always there.
1:00:28
[SPEAKER_02]: She's always present with us even though she may not be in for sure.
1:00:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, her shadow is over the whole movie.
1:00:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me ask you a question about her.
1:00:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you feel at the end of this movie that she's still alive?
1:00:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
1:00:46
[SPEAKER_00]: I keep on going back and forth on this for two reasons.
1:00:57
[SPEAKER_00]: She's according to the Christmas adventure club, she's MIA, all right.
1:01:06
[SPEAKER_00]: So they're unable to find her and then Sean Penn's character says at one point, I put your mother in the ground.
1:01:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I missed that.
1:01:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
1:01:20
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's not for the movies, not for my mind.
1:01:21
[SPEAKER_00]: So.
1:01:24
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't know if I can, I can trust either one.
1:01:27
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that we're dealing with unreliable narrators here, but then the sense that we don't get her, we don't get her knocking on the door at the end.
1:01:41
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just a letter.
1:01:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Mm-hmm.
1:01:43
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's supposed to be an open question.
1:01:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, is this person still alive or not?
1:01:49
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm fine.
1:01:50
[SPEAKER_02]: I am on record with being fine with ambiguity of of these kinds of things.
1:01:54
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't always need the answer.
1:01:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I guess I was just kind of curious like what you're toward the end, what what your impression is of the and it's not fresh in my mind and and so I it there's obviously clues that I could have missed but my my feeling is
1:02:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, she's alive and I guess maybe that's my have full, you know, optimist view is that there is still a possibility that her and Willah could have reunite, you know, and reestablish.
1:02:34
[SPEAKER_02]: a personal relationship.
1:02:36
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, not an easy thing to do, but if people are willing, you can work it out.
1:02:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I get the sense that I get this one's will is totally open to this.
1:02:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, in opposition, like if we were going to argue the other side, at one point when DeCaprio
1:03:00
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, he can't believe that Locke found him and knocked on his door.
1:03:06
[SPEAKER_00]: He's like, I always thought it would be her mother who did that, suggesting that maybe to Caprio doesn't know whether she's alive or dead.
1:03:18
[SPEAKER_00]: But at least that would make sense.
1:03:20
[SPEAKER_00]: At least she's, I mean, if you think that she wrote the letter and it's not a forgery,
1:03:29
[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't know if there's a good answer to that, to that particular, for me, it's an open question.
1:03:38
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think if we go back to what you had mentioned earlier about the positive silver lining of this story, that there is a possibility that she's alive adds to that tenor, right?
1:04:00
[SPEAKER_02]: things are are not over and there is a possibility that Willa and her mom could connect.
1:04:09
[SPEAKER_00]: I think Deltaara will win best supporting.
1:04:14
[SPEAKER_00]: He's so fantastic in this movie.
1:04:17
[SPEAKER_00]: I was listening to an interview with PTA and he basically said that he's been working on this script for over
1:04:28
[SPEAKER_00]: All of the Sensei parts were like written in one night.
1:04:32
[SPEAKER_00]: He's like, it basically had a day and a half.
1:04:35
[SPEAKER_00]: He's like, we knew we needed, we wanted Benicio.
1:04:38
[SPEAKER_00]: We brought him in.
1:04:39
[SPEAKER_00]: He had this whole backstory, this whole, and he's like, the, the,
1:04:44
[SPEAKER_00]: the absolute hit hit the that character just down pat they sat down in the day and half and wrote that entire scene amazing and he said and I think it's the best part of the movie and I I kind of agree like that it the the amount of comedy and action that happened
1:05:10
[SPEAKER_00]: and it really kind of, it almost is sort of the heart of the movie.
1:05:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think because people will not recognize that DeCaprio is actually a supporting actor, I think it's possible that Benicio Del Tora actually gets best supporting actor this year.
1:05:28
[SPEAKER_02]: Interesting.
1:05:29
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that could be, that could be.
1:05:34
[SPEAKER_02]: He really his performance, his portrayal really pulled for me the Fred Finster character from usual suspects, just sort of that, you know, rolling with it, highly competent, but on surface you just like, what is up with this dude?
1:05:53
[SPEAKER_00]: There we go.
1:05:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, he's got this whole system in place like it's interesting like I don't I can't I can't claim that I'm super tapped into this world but a lot of my most of my students or pastors
1:06:09
[SPEAKER_00]: And I would say probably six or seven of them are pastors of minority congregations in New York City and what they tell me is that they've got parishioners who are scared to leave their house.
1:06:26
[SPEAKER_00]: They're scared to come to church.
1:06:27
[SPEAKER_00]: They're scared to go to the grocery store.
1:06:28
[SPEAKER_00]: They're scared to ride the bus because they fear, you know, ice.
1:06:36
[SPEAKER_00]: capturing them in transit from one place to the next, and they just live in this constant fear.
1:06:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And so these pastors are forced to put in the position of a refugee leader.
1:06:54
[SPEAKER_00]: and their churches become refuges in the same way that sort of the sacred heart churches uses as a refuge for Dol Toro's community.
1:07:03
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's, to me, that's all very realistic to our sense.
1:07:10
[SPEAKER_00]: sort of our political climate right now.
1:07:12
[SPEAKER_00]: And yet, he's by far the funniest guy in this whole movie.
1:07:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Like he's hilarious and he's so crucial to kind of the the darkest, the darkest heart of this movie as well.
1:07:28
[SPEAKER_02]: There was a line that he drops that really hit me about.
1:07:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, that that I'm paraphrasing and I'm adding all into it, that, um, brown, non-white communities have been operating in these ways for a long time.
1:07:56
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, what he says, what he says is, we've been laid siege for 300 years, right?
1:08:03
[SPEAKER_00]: He's like, you did nothing wrong.
1:08:04
[SPEAKER_00]: You didn't bring this to my door.
1:08:06
[SPEAKER_00]: we've been dealing with this for 300 years.
1:08:08
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's so profound.
1:08:11
[SPEAKER_00]: It is.
1:08:12
[SPEAKER_02]: It's so great.
1:08:13
[SPEAKER_02]: And again, this is what terrified me about the movie.
1:08:22
[SPEAKER_02]: is seeing these paramilitarized forces operating with this level of not only impunity, but efficiency and effectiveness.
1:08:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And why are they there at all?
1:08:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Because of Sean Penn's personal right.
1:08:44
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, his personal gripe his personal interest.
1:08:47
[SPEAKER_02]: He's got to clean up his thing.
1:08:49
[SPEAKER_02]: He's got his reputation so that he can join the Christmas.
1:08:53
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, of course, of course, is all in service to white supremacy, but it's absolutely a personal vendetta that he's trying to settle as well, you know?
1:09:03
[SPEAKER_00]: And so you've got this, you know, the best fighting force, the world's ever known, put in service to just the most depraved
1:09:13
[SPEAKER_00]: right, ill begotten motive that you could imagine.
1:09:15
[SPEAKER_02]: And these soldier, you know, these paramilitarized soldiers, you know, they're doing police action because they're not just dropping a bomb on the whole city block, right?
1:09:29
[SPEAKER_02]: That's a difference between military and paramilitary and sort of police on a spectrum.
1:09:36
[SPEAKER_02]: But these guys that I'm using the guys that were guys specifically are trained and trained and honed and honed for this.
1:09:43
[SPEAKER_02]: So they don't care.
1:09:44
[SPEAKER_02]: They're just in it because that's what they do.
1:09:49
[SPEAKER_02]: And whether it's Lockjaw's desire to gain acceptance into this club, which is really interesting for his character too, because he has power, but yet he's subservient to power, and that puts him in an interesting position as a villain.
1:10:19
[SPEAKER_00]: it first it's like he can't he's just has animal attraction right to this woman who we can't who he he cannot he cannot take his eyes off right he's he's infatuated and then he is is palpable right be yes it's the thing that he hates and wants to suppress but he cannot
1:10:47
[SPEAKER_00]: he's drawn to power, you know, he wants to be part of this, this club that views himself as superior men and worship Saint Nick.
1:11:00
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, something I realized too, he got what he wanted because he died.
1:11:06
[SPEAKER_02]: sitting in his office thinking believing that he had achieved his that he had obtained his want.
1:11:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, and I think that this is where we start talking about sort of the generational differences, right?
1:11:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Like this isn't this sort of a commentary on sort of the older gen
1:11:36
[SPEAKER_00]: and a really kind of depressing building and think that you've arrived and you're going to put your foot up and really what have you accomplished in the end.
1:11:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
1:11:46
[SPEAKER_00]: You're going to die like a dog.
1:11:49
[SPEAKER_00]: That's right.
1:11:51
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think there's something about a commentary on the failures of, I mean, if you look at the book, the failures of the baby boomers.
1:11:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
1:12:00
[SPEAKER_00]: But in the world, the current
1:12:05
[SPEAKER_00]: there's a commentary on on what one generation has left undone and really what that generation requires the next generation to clean up in the aftermath.
1:12:20
[SPEAKER_02]: I've been thinking about that.
1:12:24
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to say that I've been thinking about that a lot but that
1:12:27
[SPEAKER_02]: those thoughts are on the periphery of my mind throughout the goings ons of my days as I'm thinking about my ten-year-old daughter and what it is that she's going to have to manage for.
1:12:41
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, man.
1:12:44
[SPEAKER_02]: Ecologically, politically, you know, all these things.
1:12:48
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think from a social and political standpoint,
1:12:55
[SPEAKER_02]: know that the dynamics are all that fundamentally different in the sense of who has power and control and the struggle for creating spaces where it's power.
1:13:13
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not all about power over, but power with.
1:13:18
[SPEAKER_02]: But I think the one, and then this movie is not talking about this at all,
1:13:24
[SPEAKER_02]: element that is fundamentally changed is climate and ecology, and that is not something that humanity has faced in this.
1:13:33
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, and this, whereas we've had dyspotic rulers before, we've had civil wars before, we've had global wars before, those are all things that we have a point of view of based on the past.
1:13:46
[SPEAKER_00]: It's interesting that you said, because I think that there's also a commentary on
1:13:52
[SPEAKER_00]: the next generation's relationship to their phones?
1:13:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, for sure.
1:13:58
[SPEAKER_00]: And that would be a key shift for sure.
1:14:01
[SPEAKER_00]: I think.
1:14:02
[SPEAKER_00]: It's information, the speed at which information moves.
1:14:05
[SPEAKER_00]: The reveal that she doesn't have a phone and that she does have a phone is so brilliant.
1:14:12
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's so great.
1:14:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Very insightful.
1:14:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Perfect, perfect.
1:14:16
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the way that this ends with, you know,
1:14:22
[SPEAKER_00]: I've got a kind of a rapid fire sort of film omages.
1:14:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, let's do it.
1:14:30
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just going to go through I'm like really quickly.
1:14:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Jim Downey was one of the Christmas adventures.
1:14:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, yes, I reckon.
1:14:39
[SPEAKER_00]: And he sort of famous SNL writer who sort of pta picked out of obscurity because never really acted before except for it like in a
1:14:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Happy Gilmore's a Jim Downey.
1:14:50
[SPEAKER_00]: There was another guy's one of the Christmas adventures too that I mean, there was there was a few for sure, but but Jim Downey was sort of the older thinner guy with the round face.
1:15:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
1:15:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Fantastic.
1:15:04
[SPEAKER_00]: He was in there will be blood.
1:15:08
[SPEAKER_00]: He is also in the new HBO show with Tim Robinson called the chair company, and I just always love to see him pop up.
1:15:21
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought that the beginning of this movie was very reminiscent of punch trunks' loves beginning with in terms of the music choice.
1:15:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, I thought in one of the scenes, there's a reference to jungle pussy, yeah.
1:15:39
[SPEAKER_00]: And then she died and then the hitman basically said, oh, well, the pussy died.
1:15:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Which is an absolute draw from kill bill.
1:15:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
1:15:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Reference sitting.
1:15:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
1:15:50
[SPEAKER_00]: The bride's pussy wagon.
1:15:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
1:15:52
[SPEAKER_00]: So that that was a clear homage, I thought.
1:15:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Got it.
1:15:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, I liked the fact that
1:16:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Charlene was put in a basket and and spirited away into the night.
1:16:06
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought that was a little Moses typology there.
1:16:09
[SPEAKER_00]: That was really nice.
1:16:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, I'd love to the, um, I love the scene with Pluto.
1:16:17
[SPEAKER_00]: When, Pluto sort of the younger Hispanic kid that gets interrogated and the interrogator says,
1:16:30
[SPEAKER_00]: And he says a little bit.
1:16:33
[SPEAKER_00]: That was, it was just perfectly delivered.
1:16:35
[SPEAKER_00]: These are actors I've not seen in anything else.
1:16:40
[SPEAKER_00]: They're just, man, just left an indelible mark and that scene, I'm always gonna think about that.
1:16:47
[SPEAKER_00]: For sure.
1:16:47
[SPEAKER_00]: And most, most importantly for me, I'm never gonna forget in this movie,
1:17:00
[SPEAKER_00]: bureaucratic red tape conversation he has to have with.
1:17:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Comrade Joshua on the phone, which is so punch drunk love, you know, he has to have this conversation with Philopsy Moore Hoffman.
1:17:20
[SPEAKER_00]: And he has all of these conversations over the phone where he's just trying to be understood or get through or find out some information
1:17:35
[SPEAKER_00]: that for me is just, there's just something about Comrade Joshua that is so deeply funny, you know, even these revolutionaries have these vicious group following, yeah, I gosh, just unbelievable and just sort of been late in that through at the end.
1:17:57
[SPEAKER_00]: You clearly don't have children, the, all the conversations between the Caprio and Conrad Joshua is just perfect.
1:18:07
[SPEAKER_02]: And it goes in, it lean, that part leans into the absurdist nature of the, the naming of the nuns and their combat, which I don't remember off his album as well.
1:18:18
[SPEAKER_00]: The sisterhood of the proud beaver.
1:18:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
1:18:21
[SPEAKER_02]: And they're grown weed in the California desert.
1:18:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that a joke against God?
1:18:28
[SPEAKER_02]: I love for sure.
1:18:29
[SPEAKER_02]: I love all that.
1:18:30
[SPEAKER_02]: I will, you know what?
1:18:31
[SPEAKER_02]: It's interesting.
1:18:32
[SPEAKER_02]: The names and there's just he, he layers in all this absurdism, which helps us process the humor helps us process these really heavy things if they're not leavened in a way.
1:18:55
[SPEAKER_02]: one crazy scene after another leads into another.
1:18:58
[SPEAKER_02]: The absurdism, I think, helps, uh, 11, uh, all.
1:19:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:19:02
[SPEAKER_00]: And one of the things that is sort of a threat of that absurdity is all the code speak that runs from the beginning of the community.
1:19:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:19:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:19:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:19:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:19:12
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just a ridiculous and it's sort of called up for its absurdity and that conversation.
1:19:18
[SPEAKER_00]: And yet at the end,
1:19:22
[SPEAKER_00]: It really is important for that final confrontation when traumatized Willa, who's just killed a hitman, is pointing a gun at her father.
1:19:36
[SPEAKER_00]: and demanding the codespeak and he's just trying to like finally connect like no more code speak it's me it's me and like right not really realizing it's you know interesting um little bit of blood diamond in that scene I just realized interesting um you know being asked sort of as traumatized and as sort of in the midst of bat like in in the throw of battle
1:20:07
[SPEAKER_00]: and so and warrior mode that you don't recognize your own father.
1:20:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
1:20:13
[SPEAKER_00]: And to be sure, and the coach week is absolutely necessary to make that that scene work.
1:20:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Mm-hmm.
1:20:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's interesting.
1:20:20
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's laid, he's laid the ground work.
1:20:23
[SPEAKER_00]: And when the caprio comes around the corner and realizes it's his daughter pointing the gun to him.
1:20:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Mm-hmm.
1:20:30
[SPEAKER_00]: I have no idea what's going to happen.
1:20:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
1:20:33
[SPEAKER_00]: I shoot on impulse because she's going to shoot him.
1:20:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:20:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Is this going to be this a tragic, Greek mess understanding?
1:20:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Mm-hmm.
1:20:42
[SPEAKER_00]: The movie has not given me any indication about how this is going to end.
1:20:48
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, I think it ends perfectly.
1:20:49
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's perfect.
1:20:52
[SPEAKER_00]: But in that scene,
1:20:55
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm completely enthralled.
1:20:57
[SPEAKER_00]: I do not know what the script is.
1:20:59
[SPEAKER_02]: He's ramped up the tension.
1:21:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
1:21:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Show tightly that anything could, yeah, the spring could be, the catch on the spring could release and it could all be terribly messy.
1:21:10
[SPEAKER_02]: And again, I think it goes into the realism of this.
1:21:14
[SPEAKER_02]: In that, she is freaked the fuck out, you have absolutely, is high on so much adrenaline right now, and that's true.
1:21:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, right, you just met her biological father who turns out he's a super villain.
1:21:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
1:21:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And he's almost been killed.
1:21:37
[SPEAKER_02]: you know what four or five times been yeah hold off to a bunch of 1776ers or whatever they called them the or the jacic you know jacic whatever yeah no I think that they were called 1776ers right I mean and just narrowly escaped all of these situations and sort of and a human being who's hopped up on that much adrenaline in fear or anything could happen and that's right yeah
1:22:04
[SPEAKER_02]: And I love, I think that was one of the emotional punches of the movie is that setting all this artificial side, setting all the the code speak in whatever and in Bob is just trying to be, look, I'm just a father just trying to look after my daughter and there's all this spiderwebs stuff that like I'm trying to get my way through.
1:22:28
[SPEAKER_00]: And then just be it's me, it's just me and you are just you and it's your safe like it hits right it's what you want you desperately want those two to can be reunited yeah and for everything to be healed in the end
1:22:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and it ends perfectly.
1:22:59
[SPEAKER_00]: He's on the couch.
1:23:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Fiddling with his phone.
1:23:03
[SPEAKER_00]: She zooms away to Tom Petty's American girl.
1:23:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Telling us not so subtly, this is what America oughta really look like.
1:23:16
[SPEAKER_00]: It's this girl with this complexion with these dreams in her heart.
1:23:21
[SPEAKER_00]: and she's got tactical training, and she has survival instincts, and she's in the right of the next generation, which I was definitely not expecting.
1:23:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
1:23:36
[SPEAKER_00]: I think just the ending alone makes it different than a lot of these other PTA movies.
1:23:42
[SPEAKER_02]: I would agree.
1:23:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Having not seen
1:23:50
[SPEAKER_02]: I know that the spread, he's on, he's either chasing these like megalomania or he's doing these light-hearted sexual comic robes or something, I don't know.
1:24:03
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, that's right, yeah, it's fascinating, yeah, choice for a film.
1:24:12
[SPEAKER_00]: given his sonography.
1:24:14
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
1:24:15
[SPEAKER_02]: And then to push all of the production and design choices forward, practical sets, practical explosions, this division, you know, that film just doing the
1:24:30
[SPEAKER_02]: he's pushed the art form.
1:24:31
[SPEAKER_02]: He's re-expanded boundaries of the art form that have been dormant for a long while, I think, in a lot of ways.
1:24:40
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that's what part of why it feels so fresh and why the Oscar talk is so palpable because there is a richness to this film that we don't see in a lot of other
1:24:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, sausage factory films, right, which is really what dominates our high level box office media.
1:24:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, one more scene that just I can't get out of my head.
1:25:03
[SPEAKER_00]: It's when Will is going to meet Sean Penn for the first time.
1:25:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Block job.
1:25:08
[SPEAKER_00]: What a hot.
1:25:10
[SPEAKER_00]: What a wonderful name.
1:25:19
[SPEAKER_00]: to this cathedral setting, the cameras and the rafters.
1:25:24
[SPEAKER_00]: So man, right, right.
1:25:26
[SPEAKER_00]: The all of the views have been removed and he's in the front in throne.
1:25:32
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like she's walking into a throne room.
1:25:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Mm-hmm.
1:25:35
[SPEAKER_00]: This is like Palpatine or whatever.
1:25:39
[SPEAKER_00]: And she walks in and you just see her enter
1:25:48
[SPEAKER_00]: As sort of, I don't know, it's almost ethereum, you know, it's almost like she's, you know, she's sort of young Arthur walking in and and thrown is the evil king who's just waiting for her to enter.
1:26:08
[SPEAKER_00]: That that shot is just just unbelievable.
1:26:14
[SPEAKER_00]: And then when it's happened so she comes in,
1:26:18
[SPEAKER_00]: He tells her to come closer.
1:26:20
[SPEAKER_00]: He gets out of the throne and puts her in the throne.
1:26:24
[SPEAKER_00]: It's almost as if symbolically, right?
1:26:29
[SPEAKER_00]: He's foreshadowing.
1:26:32
[SPEAKER_00]: the transfer of generational power and then he kind of moves over to the side and just has kind of this odd exchange with a daughter with his biological daughter and you can kind of
1:27:01
[SPEAKER_00]: as DeCaprio is, yep, yep, this is him trying to display his sort of, you know, alpha male personality and completely failing because we know, and the audience knows, that the person with power is the person sitting in that chair.
1:27:28
[SPEAKER_00]: so much more powerful than he is, because just because of who he is.
1:27:34
[SPEAKER_00]: He's striking me down and I shall become more powerful than ever.
1:27:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
1:27:38
[SPEAKER_00]: And so does he says, you know what's gonna happen, right?
1:27:41
[SPEAKER_00]: The hero's gonna win in the end.
1:27:44
[SPEAKER_00]: But this is in a movie that it's hard to script in that way.
1:27:47
[SPEAKER_00]: It's hard to know, but I think on a rewatch, that scene is so impressive.
1:27:53
[SPEAKER_02]: I can't wait for this to get out on video and demand so I can, you know, break it down even more.
1:27:59
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure there's 100 themes just like, you know, 100 scenes just like that, but there's just a few of them that are just really stay as thick with.
1:28:08
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I think this is a good place to maybe wrap it up and we can pick up further conversation in the near future, because I don't think we're done talking about this film.
1:28:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, there's just so many facets to it that we've barely even talked about racial politics or America's fascination with fascism and but yet it's a fascination with black culture, women in revolutions and liberation movements and I mean there's just all kinds of stuff.
1:28:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Anti-heroes, villains, heroes, you know, the slow deterioration of people who love Steely Dan,
1:28:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Speaking of a legend, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
1:29:16
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1:29:19
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1:29:24
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1:29:31
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1:29:34
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1:29:41
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for listening!