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SMC Pod #225: The Cult Classic Movie · Secret Movie Club Podcast

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Hello, Secret Movie Clubbers, and welcome to Secret Movie Club Podcast 225.
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The founder and programmer of Secret Movie Club. Thank you for being here.
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Today, we're going to talk about the cult classic movie because when you hear
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this, in just about a week and a day, we're going to be showing The Big Lebowski,
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the Coen Brothers, Big Lebowski.
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My favorite Coen Brothers movie and in my top 50 movies of all time was not
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a hit when it came out. And in fact, a lot of people didn't get it,
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thought it was kind of a weird follow-up to a movie everybody but he really
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responded positively to Fargo.
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And over time, the movie has just gained this huge following.
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People can quote every line. We're showing it on August 1st.
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It's basically sold out now, like a thousand seats.
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And this is 30 years later, almost, from when the movie was released.
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And here's a movie that was never a hit at the box office, but now a whole group of people love.
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And it's a really fascinating phenomenon that I wanted to get into today.
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Secret Movie Club Podcast 225.
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Normally, I would take a break, but I'm actually going to do one more podcast.
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So we're going to do four podcasts in a row.
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And the final podcast in that run will come out next week, next Thursday or Friday.
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And that is going to be about The Odyssey, Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey,
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which just came out and is doing incredible commercially, critically.
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Such a great, important, feel-good story, but really a testament to Christopher
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Nolan, let's be frank here, and his mastery and his dedication to cinema and
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movie theaters and movies.
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But we're going to talk about The Odyssey, epics, and film formats today.
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The Odyssey, as you probably know, is being released on, I was shot on IMAX
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completely, and then is being released either IMAX film, 70 millimeter in about
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20, 30 theaters, you know, digital IMAX and a lot of other theaters are digital.
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But the history of the epic and the history of film formats are often very tied
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together. So that'll be our final podcast.
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And there's a selfish reason why we're going to do that too,
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because next week I can officially announce our September event.
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It's basically done, but I'm superstitious. And I can tell you this.
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It will be Sunday, September 6th during Labor Day weekend. So you're going to have Monday off.
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It is going to be at the Crown Jewel movie theater of Los Angeles.
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One of them. There are obviously several. But I've been wanting to show a movie
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at this movie theater since I started showing movies for Secret Movie Club.
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And we're very lucky that we're finally going to get to do it.
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I will tell you, you can do some sleuthing if you want to.
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This was the movie theater that Charlie Chaplin helped finance so that he could
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premiere City Lights there in 1931.
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Albert Einstein attended the premiere. The people who own the theater have done
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an amazing job of keeping it up. I actually did a walkthrough when we were locking
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this all in, and it was like science fiction to me.
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There's a nursery with murals for children. There's a ballroom.
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There's a whole floor that can be where, and we are going to turn them into
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bars and food and like a little mini food court.
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We are going to be showing a trilogy of movies. I can tell you that too, all day.
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And you can explore the theater during the breaks, go get food,
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get a drink. I will announce the titles officially next week.
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If you go to our social media at Secret Movie Club, you can figure it out already.
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I gave a pretty big hint today what those titles are going to be.
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You can get on our newsletter or get a free account. Go to secretmovieclub.com.
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Out of superstition, again, we always let the newsletter and the account holders know first.
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So we are going to put the tickets on sale next Tuesday, July 28th at 1 p.m.
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Pacific time. And what I mean by that is we'll do the broad social media launch at that time.
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But if you're on the newsletter or you have an account on our website,
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which is free, by the way.
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You're going to hear about it at 10 a.m. You'll get access to the tickets at
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10 a.m. I am now working feverishly on October.
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I already have November, mostly hammered out, oddly. And then we got December
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to go. So we are going to work to announce the rest of the year as soon as we can.
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Thank you so much, everybody here. You can email us, as always,
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at community at secretmovieclub.com.
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Please reach out. We want to hear your thoughts, your suggestions,
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your comments, your criticisms. Thank you.
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It's always good to, you know, definitions, definitions. Let's start with definitions
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and terms so we know what we're talking about.
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There's a lot of Venn dot diagram overlap here, as there is with a lot of different kinds of movies.
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But I'm going to define the cult classic movie as a movie that was not necessarily
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what you would call a mainstream or blockbuster hit when it came out.
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But found over time a devoted, fervent, dedicated audience that loves that film
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and will turn out for that movie and.
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Really genuinely thinks it is a great movie. That's my definition of a cult classic movie.
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Now, what's interesting is that often, but not always,
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these movies are ultimately accepted into the canon as masterpieces,
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as great movies that just took time for the culture or moviegoers or for the
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rest of us to catch up with.
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And some weird, small subset got it right away.
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And through their advocacy and championing, the rest of us sort of caught up to it if we wanted to.
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Now, the cult movie, the cult classic movie sometimes is just going to appeal
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to a small subsection and it's never going to appeal to more than that group.
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And there are movies that you get it, you're on that wavelength or you're not.
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And sometimes the cult classic movie appeals to a community because it really
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speaks to them, whether it's the LGBTQ community or the Chicano community or,
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the could be musical community, music theater community. Who knows?
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It could be any of these communities. And there's that.
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Now, the overlap and why it's important to define terms is there's another subsection
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of movies that's adjacent to the cult classic movie, and they are often cult classics.
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But they're not they might not necessarily be viewed as objectively good movies.
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They might be like, wow, this movie is awful or and it's great.
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It's so awful. It's amazing. People call it so bad. It's good.
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Or this movie is so trashy. It's really fun.
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Or I can't believe this movie got money to get made. And you sit there in a
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stupefied, befuddled wonderment. I love those films.
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And I call them bad crazy movies because I just think so bad.
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It's good. It just doesn't. What does that mean?
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I think that a bad movie is a movie you forget or a movie where you spent money,
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you gave two hours of your time and you want those two hours back or you want
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your money back. That's a bad movie.
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But a movie where, look, objectively, the acting is not great.
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The script writing is not great. The production quality is not great.
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The themes or the handle of the material is not great. And yet you have a blast.
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That's not a bad movie. That's a great movie, but it's a different kind of great
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movie than, say, Citizen Kane.
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And so I call those movies shit crazy movies and movies like that.
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And I recommend all of these movies. And I'll probably do a podcast at some
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point just devoted to these movies.
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But these are movies like Sam Furstenberg and Cannon's Ninja 3 The Domination,
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which I love and I'm obsessed with.
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The movie Hard Ticket to Hawaii from the 1980s with a lot of nudity,
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a ridiculous like flying Frisbee that explodes, if I remember it right.
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And it was sort of the basis of the MacGruber movie that Will Forte made.
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Then On Deadly Ground, Steven Seagal, when he got to direct his movie and his
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kind with Michael Caine, by the way, as the baddie.
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It's an environmental movie in Alaska where Steven Seagal goes on a vision quest.
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There's some Inuit spiritual imagery in it. The movie is crazy.
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It's nuts, but it's delightful and delicious.
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And then other movies like, you know, Patrick Swayze's Roadhouse or Chuck Norris's
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Invasion USA or the musical The Apple from 1980, I think, or this movie from
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Canada directed by a doctor called Ryan's Babe.
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All of these movies are mind blowing, but they're not what you would call objectively good movies.
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That's a different category. Movies that I would say really over time you start
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to say by objective whatever that means but by let's just say mostly accepted
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metrics you know the same metrics that would,
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judge a movie like Ken Loach's Cass a great movie or the Palin Pressburgers
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or the Red Shoes a great movie or Orson Welles' Citizen Kane a great movie or
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Howard Hawks' His Girl Friday a great movie or,
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Milos Forman's Amadeus, a great movie.
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I mean, these are all I'm trying to name or Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing,
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a great movie, all different movies.
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Those same metrics you would you would say these movies we're going to talk
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about today are great movies.
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The only distinction would be they might have a limited appeal.
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They might be really weird and strange. And so they might be acquired tastes in a way.
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But for most people who see them, you just go over time. That That was incredible.
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But they have a cult following, they're a cult classic.
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But let's dive in and start talking about these movies.
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So it always is just good to just get right into it.
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One of the first cult classic movies, although it probably was not the first,
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I'm sure it wasn't the first, is Todd Browning's 1931 MGM produced Freaks, a horror film, kind of.
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But it is horrifying. For sure, terrifying film.
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It is one of my favorite movies of all time. When I saw it, I couldn't believe
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it was made in any era, let alone 1931, but it was pre-Code Hollywood.
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And it's a movie about a circus and a little person named Hans falls in love
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with a beautiful woman who's also in the circus as a horse rider.
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And she just wants his money because he's about to come into a family inheritance.
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And so Hans breaks off his relationship
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with a very loyal, faithful little person who's his girlfriend.
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And Hans is part of the group in the circus that would be the people that are
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in the circus because of some difference, some physical difference that makes
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them at that time, people would pay money to see that.
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Weather has the characteristics of both genders.
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They used to call that the bearded lady or the woman who's the man who's also
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a woman, amputees, people who had Down syndrome or people who had deformities that would.
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Dwarfism, they used to call it.
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And so the movie is called Bluntly Freaks. Well, the great thing about this
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film, if you've ever seen it, is you're not going to know how to feel about
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it, even after you see it, because,
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I don't know how to describe it, but it certainly doesn't play it safe.
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It certainly doesn't conform to any neat political ideology or here is the correct
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way of addressing this issue.
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But I do feel first off, Todd Browning is a master. I love Todd Browning as
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a filmmaker. But secondly, it is, in my opinion, a very humanist film.
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And the point of the film ultimately is that the people that would be adjudged,
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the physical freaks who are often ostracized by society or put into a circus to be gawked at, they're,
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very tolerant, very accepting, very loving.
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I mean, in many ways, they're living or trying to live and sometimes forced to live the,
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ideal of empathy and tolerance, whereas the ostensibly beautiful people or normal
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people are the real monsters because they can be and they're monsters on the inside.
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And this woman who is basically slowly killing Hans to get at his money and
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her strongman, drunk, alcoholic lover.
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You know, within 20, 30 minutes of the film, you don't like these people at all.
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And your empathy and sympathy is totally with the folks who have physical aberrations,
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but don't, you know, but their hearts are good.
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Now, the reason that that description doesn't fully get at what's unsettling about the movie is.
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The this found family of people with aberrations when the woman basically turns
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Hans against them and separates Hans from them.
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Take violent action on her. And there is a incredible sequence in a lightning
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thunderstorm in the night that's horrifying. And there are images you're never
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going to get out of your head.
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I remember one image of a man who has no arms and no legs writhing through the
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mud and the lightning with a knife in his mouth. And he's heading for that woman.
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And then the final image of the movie is.
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Just beware, you will never get it out of your head. You do no amount of washing
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in any bath or shower will ever scrub the image from your head.
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I still, and so shocking, by the way, that like Rob Zombie tried to lift it
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when he made a movie called House of a Thousand Corpses.
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And it's less shocking in a House of a Thousand Corpses, which I think is an
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NC-17 or unrated, than it is in Freaks.
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But I think Freaks is a great place to start too, because it really shows us
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a number of characteristics of what,
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you really can say, oh, I get why that's a cult film, why that's not a mainstream
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hit, you know, a la, I'm trying to think, you know.
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Name your pick, but like a Marvel movie or Barbie or whatever.
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Mainstream movies can be very, and I mean Greta Gerwig's Barbie, by the way.
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Mainstream hit movies can be very smart, very subversive.
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That's, in no way am I casting aspersions on mainstream hits.
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I aspire to making mainstream hits. You know, Godfather, Jaws,
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these movies were mainstream hits and they're incredibly brilliant films and
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they've stood the test of time.
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But Freaks is not going to draw in the Jaws crowd, which is sort of when you
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think about it hypocritical and ironic because people are going to see Jaws
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to see people munched on by a shark, basically.
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But or, you know, like Texas Chainsaw Massacre for or the even more recently
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Backrooms and Obsession.
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Look, we dig and dig and lift the hood under those movies.
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And you're like, what's going on in the American psyche there?
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But it is different. And you can see people don't want to have to spend 70 minutes.
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Freaks is actually a fairly short movie. They had to cut 20 minutes out because it was too disturbing.
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But freaks is it's just a lot of people don't want to spend 70 minutes on,
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having to think about the inequity, randomness, and unfairness of how nature
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meets out abnormalities or doesn't meet out abnormalities.
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Nor do I think people want to think about how monstrosity is really interior.
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And by that definition, monstrosity is everywhere.
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I don't know how you can deny that given the world and society we live in right
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now. I think we unfortunately get living examples of that every day.
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And I'm sure that thus has it always been. But Freaks, I think,
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forces you to deal with things that aren't fun to think about.
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It's hard enough for people to spend one good minute, one unforgiving minute
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thinking about mortality and death.
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They're not going to want to spend 70 minutes thinking about this.
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But Freaks does force you to do that.
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And so I think what's interesting is a cult movie often will deal or traffic
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in subject matter that not everybody wants to deal or traffic in.
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Its take will often be very dark.
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Often one of the unifying things about cult classic movies is there's a very
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perverse or unorthodox or dark sense of humor.
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You're either on that wavelength or you're not.
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I find dark humor to be very cathartic and necessary.
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And so when I see it done incredibly, I'm always blown away and envious and jealous.
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But also, I'd say that it's unsettling. The imagery is often disturbing in cult classic movies.
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There's something about the subject matter that's a little off.
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The filmmaker's a little off, and some people just aren't comfortable with it.
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So I think that Freaks lays out a lot of those things. Now, that's not always
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true, but I think it's a great Rosetta Stone to start with.
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Now, we're going to bounce all over the map here on other cult classic movies
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and what might make them cult classics.
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One another aspect of I've noticed in cult classic movies is a sub community
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or community latches onto it and it becomes a banner movie for that community.
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And in some ways, the cult classic movie, you're also protective of it because
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you don't want it to be a mainstream hit.
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You don't want everybody to get it. You don't want everybody to go see it.
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It's like that album not everybody knows about that's yours.
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That you love, that music album. And so this would be a movie I saw as a kid,
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and I actually loved it, was Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, starring Cassandra Peterson.
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I think a bit of a forgotten cult classic movie now in 2026 in some areas with
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some groups, not with all.
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I think in some ways Elvira, she was a real character Cassandra Peterson created,
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and she would introduce schlock movies in the 80s.
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I remember watching Elvira's introductions, and you watched her on L.A.
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TV for her, not really the movies. The movies were awful. I remember some of them.
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But when they would cut back to her, she was a hoot.
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And I think that the movie they made about her, Elvira, Mistress of the Dark,
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which is, it's got Edie McClurg, I remember.
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And it really is about Elvira coming into a small town community and shocking everybody.
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But I think in some ways it was very embraced by the LGBTQ community.
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And you can see other movies that fall into this umbrella subgroup of the cult classic movies.
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I would include Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, the Rocky Horror Picture Show
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for sure, which may be the crown jewel.
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I would put Pink Flamingos, a lot of John Waters movies.
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These are movies that are transgressive and they're trans Gregoraki movies,
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early Gregoraki movies, I think, like The Living End, which were very sex positive, pro,
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you know, almost defiant in the face of AIDS when Gregoraki started.
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You know, homo, queer films, defiantly proud.
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Those movies are really embraced for good reason.
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And there's a sensibility in them that if you're on that wavelength,
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you just love it. You quote every line. It's amazing.
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Now, if you're not on that wavelength, then a lot of people aren't,
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or you don't get it, or it makes you uncomfortable for whatever reason.
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You're just not going to want to watch it. You're not going to watch it over and over again.
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I think special emphasis probably should be put on Rocky Horror Picture Show,
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which, you know, now has almost become.
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Its own sui generis thing in the sense that it was a musical that came out in
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the mid 70s, made a star of several of its actors, including Tim Curry and Susan
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Sarandon, has an amazing cast. Meatloaf is in it.
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The actor, musician, Meatloaf.
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But it's a riff on horror movies.
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But basically, Susan Sarandon, Basically, there's this couple,
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Brad and Janet. The car breaks down. They go to a castle.
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And Dr. Frankenfurter, who's played by Tim Curry, who makes his appearance in
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the movie in full lingerie, women's lingerie and makeup, and is this omnisexual,
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loves men, loves women, very much, I think, representative of a certain moment.
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Kind of coming out of glam rock, David Bowie, T-Rex, even Mick Jagger at that
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point, Lou Reed, Transist, like that whole era of glam rock.
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Rocky Horror Picture Show.
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Yes, is one of the crown jewels, I think, of the LGBTQ cult classic cinema.
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But now what they started to do was they started to perform it at midnight at theaters.
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And I remember it was always midnight at the New Art here in Los Angeles.
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There was always lines around the block.
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And it just became the thing to do. Like, let's go to Rocky Horror Picture.
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It was a live event. It really became a let's go.
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You know, it's going to be crazy. you yelled at the screen, you threw things at the screen.
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If you were new to the movie, you were called a virgin. You had to go up onto
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the stage and do some crazy prank or whatever. And then people would perform
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the movie underneath the movie.
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And so it really became kind of a multimedia art performance thing that goes to this day.
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There are Rocky Horror Picture shows all around the country,
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maybe all around the world that basically have used this template.
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But what's interesting, I think, about that is,
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Not all cult movies, you know, I actually I don't know that I can think of any
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cult movie that really got as far along the track of full immersion as Rocky Horror Picture Show.
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But I think what Rocky Horror Picture Show illuminates about a cult classic
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movie is if you love it, you start to know all the words to it, you.
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The audience, there's an alchemy and there becomes a meta level to your interaction
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with the movie that is if you don't know it, you would go to a screening and
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be like, what is everybody doing?
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Why is everyone talking? Why is everyone quoting? Why did everybody say this weird thing?
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Oddly, I've never seen it. Ironically, I've never seen it with an audience.
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I just I remember my dad's friends turned me on to it and I got the cassette
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tape of the soundtrack and I heard the audience. I like I've heard the audience
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and I had a cassette where the audience was yelling things at the screen and stuff.
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And then I watched the movie as like I was 14, 13, 14, 15.
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And I loved that it was about sexuality. I remember that. I remember being like, whoa, whoa.
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You know, when you're starting to discover your own sexuality and you're just
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watching people enjoy themselves sexually and you're like, oh,
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like it's I think it's a very healthy movie.
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And I think that movie, I don't think there's anything wrong with any of that.
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And I think to develop a healthy ability to thrive in life, it's a movie like
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Rocky Horror is so important to tell you it's OK to let your freak flag fly.
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And Lord knows that straight people can be the weirdest freaks of all with their kinks.
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So, you know, I think in another way, a cult movie, a cult classic movie can
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also help you. It can be cathartic. It can be therapeutic. It can be medicinal.
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I often think it is, actually.
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And I think one unexplored or underexplored aspect of the cult classic movie is the.
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How therapeutic it is for the people that go to see it.
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They may get a kind of therapy, a mental health, a spiritual health,
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a physical health therapy from seeing the movie with like minded people that
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they can't find anywhere else.
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And Rocky Horror Picture Show, I think, for people who are misfits or people
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who are, you know, not the popular kids or people who are trying to figure out
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what they are, who they are, who they like, who they love, who they're attracted
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to, what they're attracted to.
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A movie like Rocky Horror Picture Show is like, it's all good,
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baby. Going to see that movie kind of tells you, like, don't worry,
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it's weird now, it's going to be fine.
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And I think, what a public service. What a f***ing public service.
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Okay, moving on. Then there are the movies, I think, where people click into,
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often it's the humor right away, but a lot of people don't get the humor.
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And so the movies don't, they're not hits when they come out.
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And then it takes people a long time to catch up and be like,
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actually, that movie was hilarious.
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And these are movies like Popstar, Never Stop, Never Stopping by the Lonely
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Island guys, The Big Lebowski for sure, Heather's, Jennifer's Body, Harold and Maude.
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Office Space, Repo Man.
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These are movies where they're meant to be funny. They're meant to be comedies.
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And when people went to go see them, maybe the humor was a little dry.
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Maybe it was a little obscure. Maybe it was a little niche.
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Oftentimes i find that these comedies the filmmaker just went for it didn't
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you know what was not making concessions to,
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okay hey we play it out of town and now we're playing on broadway like the these
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movies are often off off off broadway but that's what makes them so enduring,
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i was specifically would point big lebowski which the reason i'm doing this
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is because of big lebowski and we are going to be showing Lebowski August 1st.
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We are sold out, but please keep checking the websites and social media because
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if we get refunds, then we can re-release those tickets. And we already have
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gotten refund requests, so we are going to release those tickets.
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So just be on the lookout.
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You may yet get a pass to party with us at Maude's apartment,
26:28
but definitely you may yet get a pass to just see the movie.
26:31
You want to see the movie.
26:33
But Big Lebowski, the Coen brothers, Big Lebowski, which is a fun Raymond Chandler riff on the L.A.
26:42
Raymond Chandler novel, basically centers around Jeff Bridges playing the dude
26:47
who's this pot smoking, bowling, unemployed guy.
26:52
High and as the the narrator cowboy sam elliott says at the beginning of the
26:56
movie the dude was like one of the laziest people in los angeles which made
27:00
him put him in the running for laziest like all time or like all around the world
27:05
and if you're from la you really appreciate the cohen's are so good at,
27:11
this weird magic trick they do of regional universal so blood simple will be,
27:17
Texas, Austin, regional noir.
27:20
But it then by somehow digging into the regional, it becomes universal.
27:25
Fargo, same thing. You know, Minnesota, the Dakotas.
27:29
And then suddenly, weirdly, by embracing the region, the universality,
27:36
it's like some kind of cooking trick.
27:39
You bring the flavor, the universal flavor out.
27:41
And I would say Big Lebowski weirdly did the same thing, but it took people
27:44
a while to cotton on to it, which is it's this great,
27:49
mystery based on Raymond Chandler novels like The Big Sleep,
27:53
Farewell, My Lovely, Long Goodbye, Little Sister.
27:57
And it's also a riff on Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye, which itself is a
28:01
Raymond Chandler adaptation starring Elliot Gould, which also took place in L.A.
28:06
And also posited a Philip Marlowe-like character in 70s drug culture.
28:12
And what the Coens did was almost take Robert Altman's take and invert it,
28:17
and put the drug culture, hippie culture, counterculture into one character,
28:22
the dude, and surround him with everything that came after that moment ended in America.
28:30
The movie is brilliant, as many Coen Brothers movies are.
28:33
And what I love about the film is, and I think this is also a definition of the cult film for sure.
28:41
A cult movie is a movie that is so rewarding upon rewatch,
28:46
that every time you watch it, you get something new out of it.
28:52
It's like a bottomless gift, bottomless mimosa. It is the gift that keeps on
28:57
giving, except minus the vomiting and hangover.
28:59
It really is like a guilt-free bottomless mimosa.
29:04
But I don't think that's right, because that almost implies that you drink yourself
29:07
into a fun stupor through which you don't have to pay consequences.
29:10
That's not how I see these cult movies.
29:12
I don't know what you, It's like a meal that is ever-changing,
29:16
ever-nutritious, ever-sustainable, ever-fortifying.
29:21
And there are very few movies like this. Lebowski, to me, is one of the few
29:26
where when you watch it, every scene, every line, every character,
29:30
it's quotable. It's great.
29:32
And every time you see the movie, you see something different.
29:35
I tell this story quite a bit, but,
29:37
it was only maybe the 11th or 12th time I saw Big Lebowski that I realized there's
29:43
this great sequence in the movie where the dude goes to talk to Maude,
29:47
played by Julianne Moore, who is this kind of performance artist.
29:52
She's the daughter of a rich scion in Pasadena. It turns out she really controls the money.
29:57
But she's, you know, a performance artist. And her friend Knox Harrington,
30:02
played by David Thewlis, is at her loft apartment where we're going to be partying
30:06
in downtown Los Angeles. They're laughing and Knox Harrington's laughing.
30:10
And the dude can't figure it out. Like they seem to be on some kind of inside
30:14
joke. And it annoys him because they're kind of being annoying elitist actors.
30:19
For like arty people. And I only realized that 11th or 12th time that I think
30:24
they're laughing because Knox Harrington knows Maude wants to have a baby with the dude.
30:30
And she's just not telling the dude. That's why she's getting him checked out.
30:33
That's why she's scoping him to be her baby daddy.
30:37
And the dude is the last one to know, which is sort of one of the jokes of the movie.
30:42
I didn't get that. And every time I see the movie, like another thing I just
30:47
got, and I've seen the movie 20, 30 times,
30:49
is, and I can't believe I didn't get it, but the dude is full of malapropisms
30:54
and he's always repeating what other people told him.
30:57
And he's always saying things out of context or not quite right.
31:01
And when the nihilists come to threaten him to give them the money in his own
31:05
apartment and they, they bring the animal and throw it into the bath.
31:08
The dude's line is nice marmot, man. And I love that line. I actually never knew what a marmot was.
31:15
And I looked it up and it's like a huge fat prairie dog.
31:20
So the dude is totally wrong, which he often is in the movie.
31:23
It's a ferret. The animal they bring is a ferret.
31:26
But just that realization that they've even built that into the dude's character,
31:31
that he's always kind of behind the eight ball or using a malapropism or just quoting other people.
31:38
That's another aspect of great cult classic movies.
31:49
Another aspect of the cult classic, I think, is a movie that really gives you
31:57
an intense experience that is crazy, nutty.
32:04
Excuse me. And in a weird way, it does what movies are supposed to do.
32:10
It takes you on a really emotional journey, but it might be an emotional journey
32:16
that not many people want to go on.
32:18
These are movies like Abel Farrar's Bad Lieutenant, starring Harvey Keitel.
32:23
Movies like Alejandro Jodorowsky's El Topo, which I love, or David Lynch's Eraserhead.
32:30
These are movies like Richard Kelly's Donnie Darko.
32:33
Movies where all those movies are brilliant, as far as I'm concerned.
32:37
Brilliant. Eraserhead is indisputably Citizen Kane-level brilliant.
32:44
But when you watch Eraserhead, you're either going to go with it or you're going
32:50
to be like, what is going on? Like, what is this movie?
32:54
Eraserhead actually gained the moniker of being a midnight movie.
32:58
I actually think El Topo, Alejandro Jodorowsky's early 70s freak out philosophical,
33:06
Western, if you want to call it that, a spiritual journey movie, brilliant movie.
33:11
And I'm a huge Jodorowsky fan. But it's a problematic movie because one of the
33:16
performers in the movie now says that she was assaulted by Jodorowsky.
33:20
So, you know, please research it. Look into it. You have to do your own due
33:24
diligence into the film.
33:25
But El Topo, Magic Mountain, Santa Sangre, all Jodorowsky-directed masterpieces,
33:32
in my opinion, they're not for everybody.
33:36
They're very much...
33:38
Kind of theatrical in a way. Like if you come out of live theater,
33:42
you're probably much more comfortable with the extremes in the films,
33:46
but they're very almost kabuki in a way.
33:51
They're not kabuki. I don't know that that's the right word,
33:53
but just heightened theatrical styles. If you're comfortable with those,
33:57
you're going to be comfortable with Jodorowsky.
33:58
And I think there's an aspect of that in David Lynch where people behave in
34:03
a certain way. His pacing is a certain way.
34:06
If you've never seen Eraserhead, it's about a very nervous man living in an
34:12
industrial city named Henry, played by the great Jack Nance.
34:16
And he has a girlfriend. She brings him home to meet her parents.
34:21
And it's then revealed that she's pregnant and that Henry has got a man up and be a dad.
34:27
And suddenly she has the baby. Nothing makes any kind of chronological or temporal sense.
34:33
And the baby is has an abnormality that the baby looks like a like a little
34:38
horse baby in a weird way.
34:40
And they bring the horse baby home and the wife just doesn't know how to deal with the horse baby.
34:47
And Henry is tempted by the neighbor next door, wants to have an affair.
34:52
He's very ambivalent about the child. And,
34:55
David Lynch often said that Eraserhead was his most spiritual movie,
34:59
and many people didn't understand that.
35:03
We were lucky. Secret Movie Club was lucky. We actually, through his assistant,
35:07
I want to be very clear, I don't want to overhype this, but Lynch really worked
35:11
with us. He was very cool.
35:13
And we would reach out to him and he would reach out to us again through his
35:16
assistant who was incredible incredible person and lynch once said secret movie
35:22
club i've said that eraser head
35:24
is my most spiritual movie do you know why that is that was his answer,
35:28
which i loved and very lynchian and the older i get the more i agree with what
35:32
he did and not explaining it but lynch said that he read a bible quote and uh
35:37
it informed the whole way he made eraser head i don't know what that quote is.
35:42
I've never been able to figure it out. Maybe other people have, but.
35:47
It is for sure a spiritual film. It's a very crazy movie.
35:53
There's a lady in the radiator with chipmunk cheeks who dances on uteruses that
35:58
fall from a stage and sings in heaven, everything will be fine.
36:02
And, you know, there's a there's a man, I think, played by Jack Fisk,
36:07
who like pulls a lever and you see the world and it's very mythological.
36:11
Logical well if you're gonna i think another aspect of the cult movie is you,
36:17
you just go with it you just you just say okay i'm gonna go on this journey
36:21
with this filmmaker don't know what i'm seeing exactly,
36:24
don't know exactly what this all means but i i know it means something i know
36:28
there's a there there and i'm gonna allow myself to go on this journey and i'm
36:32
not gonna fight it and i think one of the one of the other aspects of a cult movie is,
36:37
maybe you don't get it maybe you don't fully understand it but you know there's
36:40
something to it and that's another argument for why you've got to see it again
36:44
and again and again i've seen eraser head now maybe five six seven times every time i see it,
36:51
it's really more of a marvel to me that lynch stuck with that movie for seven
36:55
years and got it made it really you can i mean,
36:59
it really also to be is proof to me about how much work goes into being a filmmaker
37:04
and that you have to give that level of commitment and obsession to a film, to.
37:10
Have a career in film and movies as a writer-director, and Eraserhead,
37:13
to me, is a testament to that.
37:15
But it is also, it just, Lynch commits 100%, as he did when he made Twin Peaks The Return.
37:23
I think those are such great bookend films. Eraserhead is his first feature.
37:28
For all intents and purposes, Twin Peaks The Return is his final feature.
37:32
And I view both those movies as unapologetically committed to giving the fullest...
37:44
Cinematic experience idiosyncratically that that filmmaker is capable of.
37:49
Now, that doesn't mean that it's indulgent. A lot of people might argue that
37:53
a lot of these cult classic movies are indulgent. I actually would argue if
37:57
you feel that, then it's not working.
38:00
Yes, Lynch may have a confidence and a commitment and a determination to a voice
38:07
that other filmmakers would be very nervous to commit to fully.
38:10
I don't know that Lynch really had any choice other than to make movies,
38:13
the way he saw the world and, you know, through his voice.
38:17
But I would push back against anybody who said, you know, I once,
38:21
there's a real famous story about Twin Peaks Firewalk with me,
38:24
which is also in my top 50 and is my favorite Lynch feature.
38:28
That when it premiered in Cannes, it was, you know, it was a bomb.
38:31
And Quentin Tarantino said it was the first David Lynch movie where he thought
38:35
David Lynch was just totally up his own ass or whatever the quote was.
38:38
I could not disagree with him more.
38:41
Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me is the opposite, in my opinion,
38:46
of an indulgent movie. That is a brave film. That was a movie Lynch felt he
38:52
had to make. I think it is a movie that has stood the test of time.
38:56
I think it is a provocative film and a challenging film.
38:59
But I think it's the problem that Freaks ran into, Todd Brennan's Freaks.
39:04
You have to spend two hours,
39:06
dealing with a world where there is incest and rape and a person's life.
39:13
Laura Palmer's is destroyed almost before it begins. She's murdered.
39:18
You have to deal with all these things that you do. Who wants to deal with those
39:21
things? You have to. I think you should. That's the world.
39:25
Oftentimes the world forces you to deal with it, whether you like it or not.
39:29
But lynch in a way cathartically deals with it and yet affirms,
39:35
god spirituality and a transcendent level to the universe and yet the provocative
39:42
thesis i would argue in twin peaks fire walk with me as in the entire twin peaks
39:46
uh work as a whole which i really view it as a whole is that,
39:50
the horrible and the transcendent and the sublime co-exist together, all together.
39:57
And whatever existence is, and I do believe there is something after death and before death.
40:04
I couldn't go any further than that, but I intuitively, I just,
40:08
I really sense there is, and I have a faith about that, and that's me.
40:13
But beyond that, I would not conjecture what it is.
40:17
Nevertheless, I sense that lynch is more right than people want to think he
40:21
is which is that whatever that world is the the bad the good the effed up it still continues,
40:31
i think we always want to believe there's a heaven and hell and it all gets
40:34
separated out in a nice way that's a very human way of thinking i'm not sure that's the case
40:39
and i think shakespeare knew that too because in to be or not to be that's essentially
40:43
the point of that monologue the undiscovered country from which no traveler returns,
40:48
and puzzles the will and makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others we know not of.
40:54
Kurosawa says the same thing. You see this repeatedly in great works of art.
40:58
And I think Twin Peaks does that. And David Lynch does that.
41:01
And I would also argue that the cult film often deals with things or traffics
41:05
and things a lot of people don't want to deal with.
41:14
I will end with just a very quick lightning round.
41:17
I am a huge fan of Bad Lieutenant. Harvey Keitel's performance in that movie is nuts.
41:23
There are movies like Russ Meyer's Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and Faster
41:27
Pussycat Kill Kill, which are both bat crazy and legitimately great.
41:32
I love it when they're both.
41:33
Like, Russ Meyer was his own guy. I got to interview him.
41:37
I've told Russ Meyer stories before. I'm not going to get into it right here.
41:40
He was Russ Meyer, man. When I got to interview him before he passed,
41:44
when I was in college in the late nineties, mid nineties, he came,
41:48
he was as Russ Meyer as you could be.
41:50
And it was one of the greatest nights, one of the greatest things I ever programmed.
41:55
All his stories were Russ Meyer stories. And at the end to like.
42:01
I don't even know what size you would describe these ladies.
42:03
If you see Russ Meyer movies, they're often known for women with prodigious
42:07
bosoms and the lady, he, to these two, I know he set the whole thing up.
42:11
What a showman this guy was. I'm interviewing Russ Meyer at USC in film school.
42:16
We've shown his print of Faster Pussycat Kill Kill.
42:19
And then to a sold out crowd, these two ladies come in with some of the biggest
42:25
bosoms I've ever seen. And Russ Meyer links arms with them. And he's like,
42:28
I got a date with these two ladies. Everyone goes crazy.
42:31
He's like, I got to go. And then he looked at me.
42:34
I'm sure I've told this story on another podcast.
42:36
And he said, you want to come? And I had invited my sister to the screening,
42:41
and I'm very close to my brothers and sisters, and I needed to drive her back to UCLA.
42:45
And I was like, I'm sorry, Mr. Meyer, I've got to drive my sister back.
42:50
And he was like, okay. He left.
42:55
I wish I could tell you that I had a second half to that story where I went
42:59
out and partied with Russ Meyer.
43:01
I'm sure that would have been a night to remember, but I did not.
43:04
And I don't even it's not really a regret because I get to tell that story.
43:08
And I drove my sister home.
43:09
And but there you go. So I'm going to end on that note. There's so many more,
43:14
aspects of the cult classic film we
43:16
could talk about, but you got to end somewhere. So I'm going to end here.
43:19
Okay, Secret Movie Clubbers, thank you so much for listening.
43:23
We will have one more podcast. Normally we do three and take a week off,
43:27
but this time we're going to do four.
43:29
So next week, Secret Movie Club podcast 226 will be the Odyssey,
43:35
the Epic Movie, and film formats.
43:39
Because they're all very related. And I will announce what we're showing in
43:43
September at the theater. I'm so excited to tell you all of this. You'll hear that.
43:48
But we're actually putting the tickets on sale sooner. So if you want to get
43:52
tickets, we are going to release them Tuesday, 10 a.m. That's Tuesday,
43:56
July 28th, 10 a.m. to our newsletter and account holders, 1 p.m.
44:02
To the general audience.
44:03
Just go to secretmovieclub.com, scroll down, get on our newsletter.
44:07
You'll hear about it first or create a free account. We want you to.
44:14
It's going to be amazing. It's going to be in a movie theater that it's like
44:18
no theater you've ever been in.
44:20
You may be like, homie, I've been in the Chinese. I've been in the Egyptian.
44:24
Homie, I've been to the Cinerama Dome. Yes.
44:27
Amazing theaters, this theater will still, you will not believe a theater like this exists.
44:33
It's like entering the opera house of cinema. And we are showing three incredible
44:38
films. I want you there. I will announce it next week, along with that podcast.
44:42
In the meantime, go to secretmovieclub.com, check out our socials at secretmovieclub,
44:46
email us your thoughts, comments, criticisms at community at secretmovieclub.com.
44:53
Fight the good fight, keep the faith, run the race, make good movies don't get
44:59
discouraged and i'm here to tell you hold on believe,
45:04
make movies believe in cinema believe in yourself get it done don't give up,
45:09
uh okay i will see you next week uh and have a good week.