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228: R. Lee Ermey Declares War · Movie Meltdown

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey, we're out.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: Semper Fi, do or die. Hold them high at 8th
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: and I. Gunnery Sergeant R. Lee Ermey here. This is
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Movie Meltdown. You better pay attention or I'll drop your
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: ass down for 25. It's showtime.
• 0:21
  Speaker 3: The following feature has been rated R by the Motion
• 0:24
  Speaker 3: Picture Association of America. It is intended for mature audiences
• 0:29
  Speaker 3: and parental discretion is advised.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Our nuclear reactor pumping out one million kilowatts of power.
• 1:18
  Speaker 4: What's up and welcome to Movie Meltdown. I'm Brian.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: I'm Sterling.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: I'm Greg.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: I'm Lucy.
• 1:22
  Speaker 5: I'm Fred.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: I'm Christian.
• 1:24
  Speaker 6: I'm Dave.
• 1:25
  Speaker 4: And we are coming to you live via digital recording
• 1:28
  Speaker 4: from the Dreamland Film Center in And yeah, we are
• 1:31
  Speaker 4: back with more of the crazy activities. I'm going to
• 1:36
  Speaker 4: get right into mine. I have my geek activity and
• 1:39
  Speaker 4: I was pretty thrilled with it. And it leads to
• 1:42
  Speaker 4: this week's interview. I recently got to hang out with
• 1:46
  Speaker 4: Arlie Armey. And I wasn't really prepared. I didn't know
• 1:52
  Speaker 4: it was coming. And next thing I knew, I'm standing
• 1:54
  Speaker 4: there talking to the gunnery sergeant himself. And he's quite
• 1:59
  Speaker 4: a force to be reckoned with, I have to say.
• 2:01
  Speaker 4: So I'm assuming everybody in the free world knows him
• 2:06
  Speaker 4: from Full Metal Jacket. But then looking through, he's got a...
• 2:10
  Speaker 4: ridiculous amount of credits to his name as time's gone
• 2:14
  Speaker 4: on so um yeah i i figured at least for
• 2:17
  Speaker 4: a few minutes we would have to uh to talk
• 2:19
  Speaker 4: to him so any arlie comments before we get into
• 2:24
  Speaker 4: it i'm a fan.
• 2:27
  Speaker 7: Seconded yeah i think there's going to be an entire
• 2:31
  Speaker 7: generation of people that that's the voice of military to them.
• 2:37
  Speaker 4: I think it has been really like any, any time
• 2:40
  Speaker 4: you need somebody, like it's just such a tie in that.
• 2:43
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 2:43
  Speaker 4: It's, it's kind of amazing that we found like this
• 2:48
  Speaker 4: one person. And even when they get somebody else, you're
• 2:50
  Speaker 4: kind of like, Oh, they couldn't get earlier.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:52
  Speaker 7: I mean, it's, and I think the thing that sealed it,
• 2:54
  Speaker 7: probably the reason why I say generation is like my
• 2:57
  Speaker 7: nephew and younger is, is the toy story. I think
• 3:01
  Speaker 7: that because then they're eventually going to see things like
• 3:04
  Speaker 7: Full Metal Jacket. They were raised always with that voice.
• 3:08
  Speaker 7: And I think there's never going to be an escaping that.
• 3:13
  Speaker 4: It keeps coming back to him. I mean, that's kind
• 3:15
  Speaker 4: of what I address with him is just sort of
• 3:18
  Speaker 4: like the fact that he's sort of this character that
• 3:20
  Speaker 4: flows through all these different movies and he's not the
• 3:23
  Speaker 4: same guy. But he kind of has that, you know,
• 3:26
  Speaker 4: he's almost the same spirit of this military man, and
• 3:30
  Speaker 4: he gets enforced into all these different roles.
• 3:33
  Speaker 6: You're experiencing, you know, the shades of army. You've got
• 3:35
  Speaker 6: the family-friendly army, and then you've got the TV version,
• 3:39
  Speaker 6: and then finally you work your way up to full
• 3:40
  Speaker 6: metal jacket. Fully blown.
• 3:43
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, which he really does focus a lot.
• 3:46
  Speaker 4: I guess the kids will know his voice really well,
• 3:48
  Speaker 4: because he does a lot of voiceover stuff, and he's
• 3:51
  Speaker 4: in SpongeBob, you know, and he's like, he does so
• 3:54
  Speaker 4: many like kid friendly titles now that like, it will
• 3:57
  Speaker 4: be interesting when they grow up and are scarred by
• 4:00
  Speaker 4: full metal jacket, like everyone else.
• 4:03
  Speaker 7: You know, the only other voice that I could think,
• 4:05
  Speaker 7: I mean, it's a distant second would probably be, uh.
• 4:09
  Speaker 6: Keith David.
• 4:10
  Speaker 7: Cause he does a lot of the army over, you know,
• 4:13
  Speaker 7: the commercials and things like that. And he, he always
• 4:16
  Speaker 7: plays that general kind of guy in films.
• 4:18
  Speaker 6: And stuff like that.
• 4:19
  Speaker 7: So he has that voice. And even presence, but nowhere near.
• 4:24
  Speaker 7: I mean, light years away from.
• 4:25
  Speaker 4: Yeah, he's still not as recognizable. He's just voice, visually. Yeah,
• 4:30
  Speaker 4: anything you need military, he's thrown in the middle of it.
• 4:33
  Speaker 4: And it always works. They obviously know what they're doing. Well,
• 4:37
  Speaker 4: I think we'll just get into that. We will go
• 4:39
  Speaker 4: into our interview with Arleon. We're here with Early Army.
• 5:26
  Speaker 4: Just kind of go back to the very beginning here.
• 5:28
  Speaker 4: Born in Kansas, is that right?
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: That's affirmative. All right.
• 5:32
  Speaker 4: And then I guess, were you one of those kids
• 5:33
  Speaker 4: that knew going in what you wanted to do in life,
• 5:37
  Speaker 4: or were you just sort of figuring it out early on?
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: No, I had no idea what I was going to
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: do in life. I was trying to get away from
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: the law, and I needed to get out of town fast.
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: The judge kind of recommended that I go in the military,
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: any branch, and I chose the Marine Corps.
• 5:54
  Speaker 4: And that was pretty early on. Were you even 18
• 5:56
  Speaker 4: yet at that point?
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: I was 17 years old, just freshly 17, 17 at
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: about a week.
• 6:02
  Speaker 4: I guess as you went into it, I mean, you
• 6:05
  Speaker 4: did training and you were sort of a drill sergeant.
• 6:07
  Speaker 4: Then at one point you actually go to Vietnam.
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: No, I've never been a drill sergeant. We'll clear that
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: up right away because I was in the Marine Corps,
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: and the Marine Corps has drill instructors there. The Army
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: has drill sergeants, not just like Army drill sergeants, but
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: it's just that there is a difference there. One's Army,
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: one's Marine Corps. But anyway, you know, I went to Vietnam.
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: I spent 11 years in the Marine Corps. I came out,
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: I got retired out of Vietnam, got hurt, and came
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: out a better man. And the Marine Corps gave me
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: a lot. As a matter of fact... I probably would
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: have been a total failure in life had it not
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: been for the Marine Corps. And my drill instructors worked
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: me over pretty good.
• 6:49
  Speaker 4: I can believe that. It's worn off on you now,
• 6:51
  Speaker 4: hasn't it?
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: It has, yes. And I was a drill instructor for
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: three years myself. So as far as I'm concerned, probably
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: the greatest tour that I spent in the Marine Corps.
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: It was fantastic.
• 7:03
  Speaker 4: I mean, how was that a few years later once
• 7:05
  Speaker 4: you're discharged and you start making movies, a lot of
• 7:08
  Speaker 4: which were about Vietnam, how... Strange was that having actually
• 7:11
  Speaker 4: been there and experienced it, you know, in your own horror,
• 7:14
  Speaker 4: and then having to, like, reshoot a fictionalized version of it.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: Well, it made it real easy. Actually, the films that
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: I got on early on, I was signed on as
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: technical advisor. Well, of course, technical advisor, you must have one,
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: you know, in military films. It's got to all be correct.
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: And it got to the point where I would rewrite
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: scenes that were incorrect. And then that evolved into putting
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: me in front of the camera because I did it
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: quite well. And it just worked out. Now I was
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: an instructor in the Marine Corps, so you understand standing
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: in front of a camera really didn't bother me too bad.
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: So I didn't have any problems with stage fright or
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: anything like that. And it just worked out real good.
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: One thing led to another, to another, to another. Stanley Kubrick.
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: Got ready to do Full Metal Jacket, and he called
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: a director friend of mine that I had done two
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: films with, Boys in Company C and Purple Hearts, and
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: his name was Sidney J. Fury. And Stanley Kubrick called
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: him and asked about me. Next thing you know, Stanley
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: was calling me and asked me if I would come
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: over and work for him. So that's how I got
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: Full Metal Jacket. One thing, you know, it's like one
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: thing leads to another.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 8:31
  Speaker 4: He's a very specific, he was definitely a very specific
• 8:34
  Speaker 4: type of director and very specific the way he wanted things.
• 8:37
  Speaker 4: How was he as far as working with you?
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: Stanley Kubrick was one of the only directors that I
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: never heard these words out of. That's good enough. Let's
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: move on. If it wasn't, we'd shoot the scene. And
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: if it wasn't perfect, then we didn't move on. And
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: all the other directors that I've worked with, well, that
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: was pretty good. That was good enough. Let's move on.
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: But Kubrick was a perfectionist. He insisted that when the
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: scene entertained him, then it was perfect and it was
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: time to move on. But Stanley was a prince of
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: men to work for. He was phenomenal. He squared my
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: young butt away and educated me. I worked for 14
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: months with Stanley on Full Metal Jacket. I wrote everything
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: that I said in my role as Gunnery Sergeant Hartman.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: But I was also a technical advisor slash writer slash
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: actor on that film. So my fingerprints are all over
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: the film, and it was a great film. And what happened,
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: we're talking 32 years ago, and the film's still going strong.
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: Warner Brothers tells me that it sold more DVDs and
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: videos than any other thing that they've shot. So, you know,
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: that's a pretty high compliment for the film. I won
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: after I did Full Metal Jacket I got won the
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: best supporting actor of 75 I think it was Boston
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: Society of Film Critics and I got a nomination for
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: the Gold Gloves Award so that just bang all the
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: doors flew open and I've been working ever since.
• 10:17
  Speaker 4: Well, I mean, you have some of the most memorable
• 10:19
  Speaker 4: dialogue in cinema history. I mean, you said you did
• 10:22
  Speaker 4: pretty much all of the writing on that?
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: I wrote Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, yes.
• 10:28
  Speaker 4: Did Kubrick fight you on any of that, or did
• 10:30
  Speaker 4: he want to change anything along the way?
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: Stanley Kubrick insisted. I rewrote a couple of scenes. Next
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: thing I know, he insisted that I rewrite all of
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: the scenes in Boot Camp. So it just worked out
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: pretty good for me.
• 10:44
  Speaker 4: And you sort of disappear in that first half, but
• 10:47
  Speaker 4: you were still, were you on board, like, watching them
• 10:49
  Speaker 4: shoot the technical stuff as the advisor when they did
• 10:51
  Speaker 4: the battle scenes later?
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: Well, the thing was, we shot the battle scenes first.
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: And then we did the boot camp sequence after we
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: shot the battle scenes. So I was there for the
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: full 14 months. I was right there. So I wasn't
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: going anyplace.
• 11:08
  Speaker 4: Um, but as far as technical advisor before that you
• 11:10
  Speaker 4: were on apocalypse now, what, how different was it working
• 11:13
  Speaker 4: with Coppola?
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: Uh, Coppola was a, uh, a raving maniac. Uh, what happened?
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: We had a typhoon that came through, uh, IBA, uh,
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: the Philippine islands when we were right in the middle
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: of shooting and poor Coppola, he was going out of
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: his mind. It blew all of our sets away and
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: just destroyed everything. He had to stop filming. He had
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: to come back to the States and hockey cars and
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: his houses and everything he owned, I guess, to get
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: enough money to come back and finish Apocalypse Now. But
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: Francis Ford Coppola makes good stuff. I mean, he's a
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: great director and he was perseverance. We'll put it that way.
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: He was not about to let something like a little
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: typhoon blow and he sets away to, deter him from
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: finishing his film. But I think Apocalypse Now came out
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: pretty good.
• 12:06
  Speaker 4: And they were still going through their own battles and stuff.
• 12:09
  Speaker 4: Was it dangerous during the shoot?
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: You know, safety is really of the utmost importance on
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: a film set. Nobody, no director, no producers want to
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: see anybody get hurt on their film set. So, you know,
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: it's pretty much when the actors, when we were blowing
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: things up Pretty much the actors were far enough away
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: where they weren't about to get hurt by any of
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: the explosions and everything.
• 12:38
  Speaker 4: I was going to ask you, you've sort of created
• 12:40
  Speaker 4: this character that runs through a lot of different movies.
• 12:43
  Speaker 4: How different is the character from you yourself?
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: You know, I was a Marine drill instructor. So, you know,
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: when it comes to playing a Marine Corps role, pretty
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: much that's the way it was. That's what, you know,
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: the character is different. what I had in the Marine Corps.
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: So not a heck of a lot of difference. I
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: played doctors, lawyers, judges, you name it, pretty much I
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: played it. So I played a gay homicidal high school
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: football coach in Saving Silverman. They sent me that script
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: up and they asked me if I would play the,
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: they described the role was description of the role was
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: that of a gay homicidal high school football coach. And
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: I scratched my head and said, well, you know, I
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: really haven't ever played a gay, homicidal high school football coach.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: Maybe I give this a whirl. Maybe it'll work out
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: for me. So it worked fine. I had a good
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: time doing it. It was fun.
• 13:38
  Speaker 6: That was, yeah.
• 13:39
  Speaker 4: It sort of found its audience and probably brought you
• 13:41
  Speaker 4: to a whole new audience as well.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: Well, the thing is, it was a comedy. I love comedies.
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: And I had to kiss Jack Black in the film.
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: It took 17 takes. Jack Black is just not a
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: good kisser. I tried to teach him, taught him everything
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: I know, and he still didn't know a darn thing.
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: But I want to point out that the old gunny
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: will certainly not be coming out of the closet anytime soon.
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: So that's a redeemer on that. When I kissed Jack,
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: there was no wetness, no tongue. It was civilized.
• 14:15
  Speaker 4: You heard it here. Jack Black, not a good kisser guy.
• 14:19
  Speaker 4: You've also worked in a lot of... Voice work now,
• 14:23
  Speaker 4: you've kind of moved into doing a lot of different
• 14:25
  Speaker 4: animated things. How have you taken to working, you know,
• 14:27
  Speaker 4: when you're just behind the microphone?
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: You know, I did three Toy Stories. I've done Batman.
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: I've done a whole bunch of voiceover work. And all
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: I can say about that, the voiceover work is the
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: hardest part about it is the drive to L.A. and back.
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: Because it's so quick and so easy. You know, you
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: don't have to memorize anything. It's right there. It's on
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: the script right in front of you. So you really
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: can't screw that up.
• 14:52
  Speaker 4: Do you see that character coming back? In your mind,
• 14:55
  Speaker 4: is he the same character, like in The Frighteners, is
• 14:57
  Speaker 4: he the same character coming back from previous roles, or
• 15:00
  Speaker 4: is he an entirely different guy? As the Sarge, you know,
• 15:04
  Speaker 4: coming back there, is he like, in your mind, like
• 15:06
  Speaker 4: the ghost of a previous role?
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: No, no, he was pretty fresh, this guy. He was
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: in charge of, he was the guardian of the graveyard,
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: you know, he was a pretty cool character. He had
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: two machine guns, and yeah, he was fun to play, and... Jackson.
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: I'll tell you what, Peter Jackson, as far as I'm
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: concerned is the greatest director in the world. And I think, uh,
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: he's made his mark so far. And I think, uh,
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: before it's over with, you're going to see some more
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: really fantastic work out of Peter Jackson. He is phenomenal.
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: Great director.
• 15:41
  Speaker 4: How was he to work with for you?
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: He's a nice guy. He's, uh, he's very extremely creative.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: He owns, uh, he owns his own studio. Uh, He's
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: just a great guy to work for. He's always got
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: a smile on his face. He's a happy guy. He's
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: got a family. He's a married man with children. His
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: wife is a sweetheart of a gal. I mean, you know,
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: he's a well-rounded individual, but I think he's a genius.
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: And I think we've got a lot, we'll see a
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: lot more from Peter Jackson before this is over. I mean,
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: Lords of the Ring, come on. He was shooting three
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: movies at one time. That trust me that can get
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: complicated i don't know i don't know how he could
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: possibly do that there's only one of them and he
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: was there for every shot every scene and and i
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: just i respect him more than any director that i've
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: ever worked for next to stanley kubrick um.
• 16:40
  Speaker 4: i guess just uh... tell people what what all you're
• 16:42
  Speaker 4: working on now what you've got going.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: Well, I'm pretty much tied up as spokesperson for SOG Knives,
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: which is the best damn knife out there as far
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: as I'm concerned. I'm a spokesperson for Glock Pistols. I
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: work with Victory Motorcycles, TruSpec clothing, and nothing but the best.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: It's really good stuff. If I didn't think it was
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: the best, and if I didn't use it, I wouldn't
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: tell you to go buy it. That's the way it works,
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: but I stay involved. I turned down 10 films last
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: year because I'm getting so busy, and my schedule's pretty
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: well set up by about February. I've got my schedule
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: for the year, and I do a lot with the military,
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: and I do a lot with law enforcement and fire departments,
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: and I just, if I take a movie, that means
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: three months out of my life, and that means that
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: I'm going to have to cancel a lot of stuff
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: with the military, law enforcement, and fire department. I just
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: don't like to do that, so I've done 75 movies.
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: If it's not a primo when I read the script,
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: if I don't think it's going to be a total smash,
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: I just won't bother with it because I've done good
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: stuff up until now. It's not like I'm broke, not
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: like I need the money. Back in the old days,
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: I'd have to take anything that was thrown my way.
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: But nowadays, I'm extremely particular about what I do. And, uh,
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: that's the way it's going to stay. If you see
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: my name on a movie, better go see it because
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: it's a kick-ass movie.
• 18:20
  Speaker 4: Um, and then you've got your own website. I saw,
• 18:22
  Speaker 4: are you selling, uh, is that the alarm clock feature
• 18:24
  Speaker 4: you can put on your phone?
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: You know, I don't really, I, I gave the website,
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: I got so busy that I just, I had the
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: website going. We designed the website. We got it all
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: going real good. And I turned it over to my
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: manager and he runs the website. And, uh, I sign
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: everything that goes across the website. That's about the only
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: involvement that I have with the website anymore is he'll
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: come up to my house with cases of stuff for
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: me to sign about every two or three weeks, you know.
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: And so I do that for him, try to keep
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: him in business. And it's a little income for him,
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: which is okay.
• 19:03
  Speaker 4: What is the website, I guess, just to push that
• 19:06
  Speaker 4: for people to find you?
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the website is rleerme.com. Go there. We've got a
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: little PX on the website. Pictures, if you want pictures
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: or something, sign by me. Motivational figures or I don't
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: know really what all they have on the website anymore.
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: But I sign it all. All right.
• 19:25
  Speaker 4: Well, I think that was about all we had. Thank
• 19:26
  Speaker 4: you for talking with us today.
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: It's been a pleasure. Thank you.
• 19:40
  Speaker 7: But not for voting. You don't believe in war.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: But what's that gun you're toting? And even the Jordan
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: River has bodies.
• 19:50
  Speaker 8: Floating.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: But you tell me.
• 19:53
  Speaker 9: Over and over and over again, my friend.
• 19:58
  Speaker 4: You don't believe we're on the.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: Eve of destruction.
• 20:11
  Speaker 9: Don't you understand what I'm trying to say? Can't you
• 20:16
  Speaker 9: feel the fears I'm feeling today? If the button is pushed,
• 20:21
  Speaker 9: there's no running away. There'll be no one to save
• 20:25
  Speaker 9: with the world in a grave.
• 20:27
  Speaker 5: Take a look around you, boy.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: It's bound to scare you, boy. And you tell me away.
• 20:34
  Speaker 9: Over and over and over again, my friend. You don't
• 20:41
  Speaker 9: believe we're on the eve of destruction.
• 20:45
  Speaker 8: In a nuclear attack on this country, one of the
• 20:58
  Speaker 8: greatest threats would be radioactive fallout. While heat and blast
• 21:03
  Speaker 8: effects of even the largest bombs would have a definite limit,
• 21:07
  Speaker 8: any area could be threatened by fallout. The large number
• 21:11
  Speaker 8: of weapons which probably would be dropped in a full-scale
• 21:14
  Speaker 8: attack would produce fallout, ranging from light to intense over
• 21:20
  Speaker 8: much of the nation. Radiation produced by nuclear weapons presents
• 21:25
  Speaker 8: a revolutionary threat to our country. In an enemy attack,
• 21:29
  Speaker 8: it could become a direct threat Fortunately, there are means
• 21:35
  Speaker 8: of protecting ourselves, means so effective that civil defense officials
• 21:40
  Speaker 8: believe everyone can survive fallout if they take a few
• 21:45
  Speaker 8: simple precautions to protect themselves.
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: They called it the war to end all wars. They
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: called those who died in it The lost generation. This
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: is their story. The story of Paul. He wanted only
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: to create, not destroy.
• 22:15
  Speaker 6: I didn't want to kill you. Forgive me, comrade.
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: The story of Kat. A veteran soldier who had everything
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: to live for.
• 22:30
  Speaker 6: What about you? Back to the cobbler's bench?
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 22:34
  Speaker 6: And the children.
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: The story of seven young men who enlisted for their fatherland.
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: Seven boyhood friends who were part of a generation marked
• 22:52
  Speaker 3: for death.
• 22:56
  Speaker 6: But who had no wish to die.
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: Simply, a story of war, as honestly as we can
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: tell it. They said of Eric Maria Remarque's great novel,
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: All Quiet on the Western Front is the definitive expose
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: of war.
• 23:25
  Speaker 6: We say it is much more.
• 23:28
  Speaker 5: I want the truth.
• 23:31
  Speaker 6: May I never come back. If he wasn't killed instantly.
• 23:39
  Speaker 6: All Quiet on the Western Front.
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: Stars Richard Thomas, Ernest Borgnine, Donald Pleasence, Ian Holm, Patricia Neal.
• 23:54
  Speaker 4: My boy. They called them.
• 24:01
  Speaker 6: The lost generation. They should not be forgotten.
• 24:12
  Speaker 10: Want some music for your ears? Doo-Wop Shop makes it
• 24:15
  Speaker 10: easy to rent for any event, business meeting, or special occasion.
• 24:18
  Speaker 10: From PA systems to karaoke machines to just about anything
• 24:21
  Speaker 10: that makes noise, you can rent it from the Doo-Wop Shop.
• 24:24
  Speaker 10: In Louisville, find them either at their Highland store at
• 24:26
  Speaker 10: 1587 Bardstown Road, or in the East End at 2915
• 24:31
  Speaker 10: South Hurstburn Parkway. And look for them online at doo-wop-shop.com.
• 24:35
  Speaker 6: Doo-Wop Shop.
• 24:36
  Speaker 10: We're serious about music. Wonderfest.
• 24:41
  Speaker 4: Our other business at hand, we, as you heard, have
• 24:44
  Speaker 4: Dave here with us, and we're also coming up on
• 24:48
  Speaker 4: the next big Wonderfest, so we thought we'd let you
• 24:51
  Speaker 4: tell people what you've got going on this year.
• 24:52
  Speaker 6: Okay. Got a pretty mixed bag this year. While the
• 24:57
  Speaker 6: country seems to be becoming overrun with genre-oriented conventions.
• 25:03
  Speaker 4: There's a lot of them.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: I go to many.
• 25:05
  Speaker 6: And, you know, they're all great, and there's room for everybody,
• 25:07
  Speaker 6: I think.
• 25:07
  Speaker 4: You're just different, though.
• 25:08
  Speaker 7: At least for now.
• 25:10
  Speaker 6: We're kind of going the other way, whereas most shows
• 25:13
  Speaker 6: are very celeb-oriented and very autograph-oriented. We really can't compete
• 25:18
  Speaker 6: in that arena. I can't pay these kind of upfront
• 25:20
  Speaker 6: expenses and fees anymore. So, if anything, we're folding back
• 25:24
  Speaker 6: on what we've always have been, which we are a
• 25:26
  Speaker 6: hobby show.
• 25:27
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 25:28
  Speaker 6: Primarily guys who build model kits or guys who work
• 25:31
  Speaker 6: in special effects, which is a shrinking business as well,
• 25:33
  Speaker 6: as you saw from what went on at the Oscars
• 25:36
  Speaker 6: this year and all the protests that are going on
• 25:38
  Speaker 6: with VFX. But we've kind of occupied our niche even more,
• 25:43
  Speaker 6: and it takes us back to our roots, and we're
• 25:45
  Speaker 6: happy with that. So we've got a lot of different
• 25:47
  Speaker 6: things going on this year. Jerry Anderson, who was a
• 25:51
  Speaker 6: producer and a showrunner back in the 60s and 70s,
• 25:54
  Speaker 6: passed away. He produced a lot of fun shows that
• 25:56
  Speaker 6: people grew up with like space, 1999 and UFO back
• 26:00
  Speaker 6: in the seventies. And before they know the weird super
• 26:03
  Speaker 6: marionation puppet shows like Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and stingray and
• 26:08
  Speaker 6: all these amazing shows that went on back then. So we're,
• 26:10
  Speaker 6: we've got one of the authorities coming, Anthony Taylor, who's
• 26:14
  Speaker 6: a regular visitor. He's coming. We're going to do some
• 26:16
  Speaker 6: presentations about Jerry. We're going to have a lot of
• 26:18
  Speaker 6: displays of some of the props and costumes and things
• 26:21
  Speaker 6: from those shows over the years. Uh, I've got, um,
• 26:25
  Speaker 6: Sarah Karloff coming in, Boris Karloff's daughter. She hasn't been
• 26:28
  Speaker 6: with us for about 10 years. So it's going to
• 26:30
  Speaker 6: be kind of neat to have Sarah back. We're going
• 26:33
  Speaker 6: to be concentrating on Boris's later career in the 60s,
• 26:38
  Speaker 6: which is the era she was mostly around for, and
• 26:40
  Speaker 6: the era when I first was aware of him from
• 26:43
  Speaker 6: The Grinch and Thriller and all those shows he did
• 26:45
  Speaker 6: back then. And she's thrilled because she's about Frankenstein now.
• 26:49
  Speaker 6: She's tired. She's tired. of talking about the classic era, because.
• 26:53
  Speaker 10: It's all anybody ever wants to talk about.
• 26:55
  Speaker 6: And there's a lot of great stories from the 60s,
• 26:57
  Speaker 6: because that's when Boris kind of came into his own.
• 26:58
  Speaker 6: He was such a superstar at the time.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: Are you talking about stuff like Black Sabbath and the
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: Crimson Death? Or, sorry, Crimson Cult?
• 27:06
  Speaker 6: Yeah, those. Also, the Corman pictures. He did The Terror.
• 27:09
  Speaker 10: He did The Raven.
• 27:10
  Speaker 7: Right.
• 27:11
  Speaker 6: And comedy terrors. I'm going to be showing The Raven
• 27:13
  Speaker 6: on Saturday night, which is really one of my favorite movies.
• 27:15
  Speaker 6: It's a very cool comfort movie. From my childhood, because
• 27:18
  Speaker 6: you've got Peter Lorre and Vincent Price in that as well,
• 27:20
  Speaker 6: and Jack Nicholson, one of his first roles.
• 27:22
  Speaker 4: Nice.
• 27:23
  Speaker 6: And all the episodes of Thriller and things like that
• 27:25
  Speaker 6: that he did. And Targets, which was one of Peter
• 27:28
  Speaker 6: Bogdanovich's first films. It was actually very good.
• 27:30
  Speaker 4: That's a cool movie. I've seen it.
• 27:31
  Speaker 6: It's a great movie, because Boris owed something like two
• 27:34
  Speaker 6: weeks' worth of work to Carmen, and he told Bogdanovich,
• 27:38
  Speaker 6: go off and write a script. So he wrote this
• 27:40
  Speaker 6: terrific script about a sniper at a drive-in theater. He
• 27:44
  Speaker 6: was meticulously planning to kill people at this horror movie festival.
• 27:47
  Speaker 6: premiere and boris essentially plays himself i think his name
• 27:51
  Speaker 6: is byron orlock yeah it's it's a weird setup for
• 27:54
  Speaker 6: it's about classic horror versus the new horror and how
• 27:57
  Speaker 6: he literally confronts this this gunman it's a really cool
• 27:59
  Speaker 6: picture uh got that going on i've got a lot
• 28:03
  Speaker 6: of special effects guests uh john eves he's a regular
• 28:06
  Speaker 6: of ours he's a designer he worked on iron man
• 28:09
  Speaker 6: 3 this year he worked on the new track movie
• 28:12
  Speaker 6: which is opening that weekend He's going to be working
• 28:15
  Speaker 6: on the Star Wars films, but of course he's been
• 28:17
  Speaker 6: sworn to silence on all that stuff. We may actually
• 28:20
  Speaker 6: torture him in a public venue.
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: Could I be there for that?
• 28:24
  Speaker 4: People will sign up for that.
• 28:26
  Speaker 6: He owes me, so we'll see.
• 28:28
  Speaker 4: He owes me for some other stuff.
• 28:29
  Speaker 6: Also, the prop builder from the new Trek film is
• 28:32
  Speaker 6: coming in. He just joined us and he did all
• 28:35
  Speaker 6: the new phasers. He's working on the new Godzilla movie.
• 28:37
  Speaker 6: He's doing all kinds of cool stuff, so he's.
• 28:39
  Speaker 10: Going to be there.
• 28:40
  Speaker 6: Lee Stringer, who's a A VFX producer did Firefly, the
• 28:46
  Speaker 6: new Battlestar Galactica, all kinds of stuff. He's coming in
• 28:49
  Speaker 6: from Thailand because the industry is moving out of the country.
• 28:54
  Speaker 6: It's all going east. And he's been there for a while.
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: And I think Eric Chu is going to be back.
• 28:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah. We're going to try to rope him into doing
• 29:02
  Speaker 4: another episode with us. He may fight it.
• 29:04
  Speaker 6: It's a lot of fun. We like it. John Goodwin,
• 29:07
  Speaker 6: who was the makeup supervisor on CSI, We'll be coming
• 29:11
  Speaker 6: back and doing some live makeup demonstrations. I've got Lee
• 29:15
  Speaker 6: Merriweather from the 60s. She was on all genre television back.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: In the 60s.
• 29:19
  Speaker 6: She was in the Time Tunnel. She was the first
• 29:22
  Speaker 6: cinematic Catwoman in the 67 Batman movie, which is the
• 29:27
  Speaker 6: first movie I ever saw.
• 29:29
  Speaker 4: But you knew?
• 29:30
  Speaker 6: Lee Merriweather would be a really interesting person to talk to. Yeah,
• 29:34
  Speaker 6: she's cool. Her daughter is a professional stuntwoman. She's done
• 29:38
  Speaker 6: a lot of work in the industry, so she's going
• 29:39
  Speaker 6: to come. We're going to do a Q & A
• 29:40
  Speaker 6: with her as well. So a lot of cool stuff.
• 29:42
  Speaker 6: I'm looking forward to it. Also the Alley Theater. We
• 29:46
  Speaker 6: have a Sunday night event. It's a post-show party we
• 29:49
  Speaker 6: do every year. And starting last year, Alley Theater did
• 29:52
  Speaker 6: a terrific job. Star Wars in 30 minutes, I think.
• 29:56
  Speaker 6: 60 minutes, yeah. 60 minutes. Yeah, we cut it into
• 29:58
  Speaker 6: two sections and did that last year. It was great.
• 30:00
  Speaker 6: So they're going to be coming back this year for
• 30:02
  Speaker 6: Sunday night and doing Flash Gordon and Commando Cody. So
• 30:05
  Speaker 6: we're looking forward to that.
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It will be fun. I'm in that troupe, so
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: you'll see me pretend to improv.
• 30:13
  Speaker 6: Yeah, you've got an appreciative audience there. Everybody's so geeked out.
• 30:16
  Speaker 6: They're very familiar with the source material, so I think
• 30:18
  Speaker 6: you'll really enjoy the response. We had a great time
• 30:20
  Speaker 6: last year.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we're really looking forward to it this time.
• 30:23
  Speaker 10: Wonderfest is still the annual expo for model and toy collectors,
• 30:27
  Speaker 10: with a huge display and competition for plastic kits and
• 30:30
  Speaker 10: garage kits. So go to wonderfest.com and check it out yourself.
• 30:34
  Speaker 7: If you're enjoying this podcast, perhaps you'd be interested in GleeCast.
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: You watch your tone, young lady. Hey, we're not forcing
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: you to download the internet's best, or at least most
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: booze-filled podcast about Glee.
• 30:46
  Speaker 4: You want to be me.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: Who doesn't, Sue?
• 30:48
  Speaker 7: But we know we can't be. Instead, Erica and Emily.
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: Uh, Emily and Erica.
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: Who am I?
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: I just don't know anymore.
• 30:53
  Speaker 4: I'd love to stay in chat, but I got a
• 30:55
  Speaker 4: satellite interview.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: Sorry, we get off topic a lot.
• 30:57
  Speaker 7: The point is, listen to Glee Cast following every new
• 30:59
  Speaker 7: episode of Glee.
• 31:00
  Speaker 4: Plus our sporadic bonus content on some of the greatest
• 31:03
  Speaker 4: bad cinema that incorporates musical theater or sweet dance moves.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: I'm going to ask you to smell your armpits. The
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: right or the left?
• 31:10
  Speaker 4: That's the smell of failure.
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: Failure.
• 31:12
  Speaker 4: Failure smells like dove mine has a pleasant lady speed
• 31:14
  Speaker 4: stick scent kind of makes me think of candy canes.
• 31:16
  Speaker 6: Your resentment is delicious.
• 31:19
  Speaker 5: Visit gleecast.podomatic.com or search for us in the itunes store
• 31:22
  Speaker 5: that's gleecast with a k part of the palaver.com family
• 31:25
  Speaker 5: that's p-a-l-a-v-r.com.
• 31:27
  Speaker 6: Boy the only thing missing from this place is a
• 31:29
  Speaker 6: couple dozen bodies limed and rotting in shallow graves under
• 31:32
  Speaker 6: the floorboards.
• 31:33
  Speaker 8: We're working on that Hey everyone, this is Jeanette Goldstein
• 31:42
  Speaker 8: and you are listening to Movie Meltdown.
• 31:46
  Speaker 5: Look man, I only need to know one thing.
• 31:51
  Speaker 4: Where they are.
• 31:54
  Speaker 11: Any time, anywhere.
• 31:55
  Speaker 4: It's part of your problem, you know, you haven't seen
• 32:05
  Speaker 4: enough movies.
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: All of life's riddles are answered in the movies.
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: Now, on with the show.
• 32:34
  Speaker 11: Trying to get to you But I won't wait forever
• 32:42
  Speaker 11: You gotta let me through Now I've been diplomatic But
• 32:50
  Speaker 11: I don't know what for If.
• 32:55
  Speaker 9: You hurt me Then just watch me I won't take
• 33:00
  Speaker 9: no more.
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: Do they do that anymore where judges are just like,
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: you know, probably be a good idea for you to
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: join the armed services. Like that might be the best
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: thing you can do right now. Cause maybe it needs
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: to be done a little more actually. Yeah. I mean,
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: I'm sure there are all kinds of, you know, issues
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: with like the longterm of like, you know, what happens
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: when you're asking your, your neighborhood drug dealer, okay, well
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: we can send you to jail for all this time,
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: or you can just join the military for a couple
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: of years and get a college degree afterwards. Like, you know,
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: there are all kinds of questions of what might emerge
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: from that.
• 33:56
  Speaker 4: But there's many a person that could benefit from that actually.
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: But still, I think to myself, like, like how hilarious
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: would it be if like, I don't know, like I
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: did something awful. And then like, I'm sitting there in
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: front of the judge and he was like, You know what?
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: My best recommendation right now is that why don't you
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: just join the Marines? We got this thing going on
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: in Afghanistan and all that. We could just ship you
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: right over there right now.
• 34:19
  Speaker 4: The things we could do to you will pale in
• 34:21
  Speaker 4: comparison to what the Marines will do. The Marines will
• 34:25
  Speaker 4: beat the hell out of you and hopefully you'll get
• 34:27
  Speaker 4: your act together.
• 34:27
  Speaker 12: I have to imagine that from that commercial that he did,
• 34:31
  Speaker 12: the commercial spot a couple of years ago where he
• 34:34
  Speaker 12: was like, I forget, it was a series of like,
• 34:36
  Speaker 12: these guys should not be this.
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: It's like, your drill instructor should not be your therapist.
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: And it shows him sitting there, like, chewing out this
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: poor woman, like, lying on a couch, like, sobbing her
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: eyes out. And then he, like, grabs the box of
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: tissues and, like, hands it to her.
• 34:52
  Speaker 10: At the end.
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: And I'm like, man, I kind of want him to
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: be my therapist.
• 34:56
  Speaker 4: Again, that's showing how many ways he's, like, infiltrated into
• 34:59
  Speaker 4: pop culture now. Like, every performance goes back to that
• 35:03
  Speaker 4: same general idea, you know, that, like, you know, thing
• 35:07
  Speaker 4: that he has but.
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah he's made himself he is the archetype of that.
• 35:12
  Speaker 6: Thing he's the archetype he's the icon and it's testimony
• 35:16
  Speaker 6: to that power is who remembers the second half of
• 35:18
  Speaker 6: Full Metal.
• 35:19
  Speaker 4: Jacket yeah because it pales in comparison.
• 35:22
  Speaker 5: It does pale I remember it but.
• 35:24
  Speaker 7: It does pale in comparison it does it's two different
• 35:27
  Speaker 7: movies even It sort.
• 35:29
  Speaker 5: Of gives up on what it's trying to do.
• 35:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah, because it doesn't even feel.
• 35:33
  Speaker 5: All of a sudden it gets sentimental out of nowhere,
• 35:36
  Speaker 5: and it's like you've earned the opposite of that.
• 35:41
  Speaker 6: It's a weird move.
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: Can we just chalk it up to Kubrick's a strange guy?
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: That's true.
• 35:46
  Speaker 4: But he knew how to direct that first half of
• 35:48
  Speaker 4: the movie.
• 35:50
  Speaker 6: Something I've always noticed not too many people bring up
• 35:52
  Speaker 6: is that Full Metal Jacket is actually a rip-off of
• 35:54
  Speaker 6: a made-for-TV movie called Tribes. Jan Michael Vincent and Darren McGavin.
• 36:00
  Speaker 6: And that whole segment, the first half, is basically that
• 36:05
  Speaker 6: TV movie from the early 70s.
• 36:08
  Speaker 4: Jan Michael Vincent. Tell me Darren McGavin plays the... He's
• 36:12
  Speaker 4: the D.I.
• 36:12
  Speaker 5: Oh, nice.
• 36:15
  Speaker 4: Now I do need to see this.
• 36:16
  Speaker 7: He can curse, but in any way.
• 36:19
  Speaker 4: Is it all just nonsense? Is it all just... Jan
• 36:22
  Speaker 4: Michael Vincent!
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: Papa Sam!
• 36:26
  Speaker 6: No, it's kind of like, you know... As best as
• 36:30
  Speaker 6: TV will allow. Yeah, it's Vietnam-era stuff, and it's flower
• 36:33
  Speaker 6: power versus authority. Nice. He's a little more caring, but
• 36:39
  Speaker 6: it's all about those conflicts that come up. But when
• 36:42
  Speaker 6: I saw it years later, I was like, whoa, I've
• 36:44
  Speaker 6: seen this. Interesting. Basically the same story.
• 36:47
  Speaker 5: Now we need to come back to that one.
• 36:49
  Speaker 4: That's kind of awesome.
• 36:51
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 36:53
  Speaker 4: So, yes, thank you to Early Army for giving us
• 36:57
  Speaker 4: his insight on all of that. That's a lot of
• 37:00
  Speaker 4: weird stuff that he was involved in over the years
• 37:03
  Speaker 4: and a lot of really interesting projects. And we're even
• 37:06
  Speaker 4: going to come back to them. I've got one we're
• 37:08
  Speaker 4: sort of going to return to with them. So, yeah,
• 37:12
  Speaker 4: there's another Early Army performance that we'll return to in
• 37:16
  Speaker 4: the near future. So we're back, and it's time for
• 37:19
  Speaker 4: The Grind.
• 37:19
  Speaker 8: The Grind.
• 37:33
  Speaker 4: In this segment, we discuss a specific topic or question
• 37:36
  Speaker 4: related to movies. And this week's topic comes from me,
• 37:39
  Speaker 4: because I talked to one of the actors most synonymous
• 37:42
  Speaker 4: with the military, and I thought we would continue on
• 37:45
  Speaker 4: a general discussion about war movies. And since Arleigh Armey
• 37:49
  Speaker 4: is associated with movies centering more around Relatively.
• 37:53
  Speaker 7: Speaking, modern era war.
• 37:55
  Speaker 4: We'll focus more on somewhat modern era, say World War
• 37:58
  Speaker 4: I through today, but we can stray if need to
• 38:01
  Speaker 4: for conversational purposes. So, yeah, where would you like to
• 38:04
  Speaker 4: begin with war movies? Huge topic.
• 38:09
  Speaker 5: Well, I'll begin with like a.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: War story.
• 38:14
  Speaker 5: It's the return of the soldier after the war. One
• 38:17
  Speaker 5: of my favorite French movies is The Return of Martin Gar.
• 38:21
  Speaker 4: Mm-hmm.
• 38:23
  Speaker 5: And it's a soldier returns after the war and there's
• 38:29
  Speaker 5: some question whether he is the soldier. It's something that, well,
• 38:36
  Speaker 5: I don't want to spoil it, but I will.
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: I think you've actually spoiled it on a past episode.
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: I remember you already spoiling this one for me. It's
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: a great movie and it's got a great question.
• 38:46
  Speaker 7: You can't really.
• 38:46
  Speaker 5: Spoil it because you can watch it, you can know everything.
• 38:49
  Speaker 5: It's actually based on an actual case and there's a
• 38:54
  Speaker 5: book about you know they still have the legal records
• 38:57
  Speaker 5: of the trial and of course the Simpsons spoiled it
• 39:02
  Speaker 5: with Skinner's backstory is essentially the same.
• 39:06
  Speaker 4: I do kind of remember that. He was in the army.
• 39:08
  Speaker 7: That's right.
• 39:09
  Speaker 5: And I believe a judge recommended he go into the army.
• 39:13
  Speaker 4: I think that is exactly what happened.
• 39:15
  Speaker 5: Because Skinner was like a delinquent.
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 39:19
  Speaker 5: And a judge sent him into the army, and his
• 39:22
  Speaker 5: pal in the army died?
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: Thought he died in a foxhole.
• 39:27
  Speaker 4: Oh, yeah.
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: And, yeah, by the way, this is also all, excuse me,
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: spoilers for anyone not on this planet. This is all
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: also Don Draper's story, more or less, is the guy
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: who sort of absorbs the hopes and dreams of someone else. Except,
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: of course, in Skinner's case, it was like sitting there
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: being told all the wonderful things about being a school
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: principal and, you know, living with your mother.
• 39:51
  Speaker 5: So great.
• 39:54
  Speaker 4: Oh, it's fabulous.
• 39:55
  Speaker 5: But they denied that it was, the writers denied that
• 39:58
  Speaker 5: it was based on Return of Martin, where they said
• 40:02
  Speaker 5: it was based on a Borges story that I can't
• 40:05
  Speaker 5: remember the name of, but it was a similar situation.
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: Being based on a Borges story to me is like
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: saying it was based on a Poe story. It's like, sure,
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: I'm sure that something like that is in there.
• 40:17
  Speaker 5: I've read the story, but it seems a lot more
• 40:19
  Speaker 5: like the Return of Martin Garth.
• 40:21
  Speaker 6: Okay.
• 40:24
  Speaker 5: I don't remember the name of it, but yeah, that's,
• 40:26
  Speaker 5: I mean, that's one version of a war story there.
• 40:29
  Speaker 5: And that's just the, the one that's one of my preoccupations.
• 40:34
  Speaker 4: Well, I mean, it just became such a huge industry
• 40:37
  Speaker 4: there for, for years. And like, it seems like it
• 40:41
  Speaker 4: changed moods midway in, like you have, you know, that run,
• 40:45
  Speaker 4: I mean, they'd been around forever, you know, since they
• 40:48
  Speaker 4: started making film, but you had that run of, that
• 40:51
  Speaker 4: hit probably like the John Wayne era. And it became
• 40:55
  Speaker 4: a very different thing. It almost became recruitment films. It's
• 40:59
  Speaker 4: very different the way they present war.
• 41:01
  Speaker 6: Ever since really the beginning, you've had films like All
• 41:03
  Speaker 6: Quiet on the Western Front, which is a very compassionate,
• 41:07
  Speaker 6: humanitarian sort of story. But all along, starting with World
• 41:11
  Speaker 6: War II, where film was the art form, the mass
• 41:16
  Speaker 6: art form. You had that other kind of film, like
• 41:19
  Speaker 6: Flying Tigers and all these other pictures that Wayne did
• 41:21
  Speaker 6: at the time. Instead of going off to war like
• 41:23
  Speaker 6: most of his cohorts, he stayed home and made pictures,
• 41:25
  Speaker 6: which people love to bring out. And that kind of
• 41:30
  Speaker 6: held the whole genre for about 20 years. Probably up
• 41:36
  Speaker 6: through the Vietnam era, where it became expedient to do
• 41:39
  Speaker 6: some more anti-war horror movies.
• 41:43
  Speaker 4: Well, it got to where they didn't want to make any.
• 41:45
  Speaker 4: It seems like at that point it wasn't... Yeah, there
• 41:47
  Speaker 4: was that whole.
• 41:47
  Speaker 6: Movement in the late 60s and early 70s where they
• 41:49
  Speaker 6: didn't want to make war movies or have war toys.
• 41:51
  Speaker 6: Imagine that.
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: They didn't want any of that stuff.
• 41:55
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 41:55
  Speaker 5: Another one that looms large for me is Henry V,
• 41:58
  Speaker 5: because there's the Laurence Olivier, and then somebody comes along.
• 42:02
  Speaker 5: And it was like a recruitment thing.
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: I knew some people who told me they were.
• 42:08
  Speaker 5: I think it's... England and Scotland, they were bused from
• 42:13
  Speaker 5: school to go see the Olivier version because they felt
• 42:17
  Speaker 5: that this is about how we're going to win the war.
• 42:23
  Speaker 5: And it was shocking that, what's his name, Branagh made
• 42:27
  Speaker 5: another one. That was just such a ballsy move to say, yeah,
• 42:33
  Speaker 5: Olivier made a nice movie. I'm going to make another
• 42:35
  Speaker 5: version of it.
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: Well, that's Branagh for you. He's just like, eh. Yeah,
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's Shakespeare. I can do it my way,
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: and it'll work.
• 42:45
  Speaker 7: That's why he's perfect for the role of Lockhart in
• 42:47
  Speaker 7: Harry Potter, by the way.
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 42:50
  Speaker 4: I was going to say.
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: Actually, that's one of the reasons.
• 42:52
  Speaker 4: It was all preparation.
• 42:54
  Speaker 7: No, the role he was born to play.
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: It was.
• 42:57
  Speaker 7: It's like, I'm a pompous ass, and I don't care.
• 42:59
  Speaker 6: It's perfect.
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: See, I thought it was perfect prep for his directing
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: of Thor.
• 43:05
  Speaker 6: Oh, my God.
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: I need a bunch of Viking gods bellowing at each
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: other in a technicolor landscape. Well, obviously, Kenneth Branagh is
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: the guy to call. And that segues into a Natalie
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: Portman love story.
• 43:21
  Speaker 5: But I thought that was a great version of the movie.
• 43:23
  Speaker 5: And it's kind of an anti-war version. But I do
• 43:27
  Speaker 5: think also that nobody has ever done the complete thing
• 43:30
  Speaker 5: where they... They kill the prisoners. It's something that happens
• 43:35
  Speaker 5: in Shakespeare that nobody really wants to mention. They always
• 43:40
  Speaker 5: cut that part. At some desperate point in the battle,
• 43:44
  Speaker 5: they're just like, fuck it, let's kill the prisoners. But
• 43:47
  Speaker 5: they don't... It's too real.
• 43:50
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 43:52
  Speaker 5: They always keep in how the enemy kills the boys,
• 43:56
  Speaker 5: the messenger boys, but they always leave out the part
• 43:59
  Speaker 5: about the English killing their prisoners.
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: It's funny to think what Shakespeare's people would have said
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: at that show. Yeah, it is funny. It's one of
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: the things I like to say, whenever you're thinking about
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: a Shakespeare anything, is remember that that's like back in
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: the days when booing and catcalling and cheering was expected
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: from your crowd, your audience. So one of the first
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: things you have to do whenever you approach a Shakespeare
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: play is you wonder, well, when are they going to
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: boo and when are they going to cheer? And that
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: opens up some really interesting questions. Like in Hamlet... when
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: does someone cheer in, in Hamlet? It's like, when do
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: you boo? Who do you boo in Hamlet? Like what?
• 44:37
  Speaker 6: The porcupine.
• 44:38
  Speaker 4: There we go.
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: It's the porcupine.
• 44:40
  Speaker 6: Um, you're so right.
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: Thank you. Let me ask back to that surreal image.
• 44:44
  Speaker 4: Um, but no, uh, yeah.
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: Um, so like in, in Henry the fifth or any
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: of these war movies, that's, that's the difficulty of war
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: movies I've noticed or, or one of the, the, the,
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: there's a divide in most war movies. Like you said,
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: there's that John Wayne era war movies where it's like war, uh,
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: hero as superhero where, you know, you sweep in and
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: you charm people, you say some tough stuff. And then
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: before you know it, the problem is solved and everyone's
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: going home and the bad guys are beaten. This is also,
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: you know, you see that in Indiana Jones movies and
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: anything like that. It's like, you know, clever guys and
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: industrious people versus bad guys, basically.
• 45:20
  Speaker 6: You know, it was, it was, you know, not, uh,
• 45:22
  Speaker 6: it was just not something to do to examine, you know,
• 45:26
  Speaker 6: results in motivation in war movies until, you know, much later.
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: But then that's the other thing though, is that, is
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: that then when you cross over and you start making films, uh,
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: like all quiet on the Western front or anything that
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: has to do with that somber reflectiveness about warfare, that's
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: when you see like the violence coming in and like
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: the horrors of warfare being sort of touted and talked
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: about in the inhumanity of it. But you never see,
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: or excuse me, I should say you very rarely see,
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: it seems to me in a war film, like, a
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: combination of that, like showing the violence, showing the dehumanization
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: and all the negative aspects of war while simultaneously, like
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: in that Henry V moment, holding up like the heroism
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: or the good guys in war. Like to me, that's
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: one of the things that makes Henry V, for instance,
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: a great play. Like there's all this violence going on,
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: both sides, horrible things are happening. And yet guys stand
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: out and are recognized as heroes. Guys stand out and
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: are recognized as villains. Like it's all happening at the
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: same time. Hmm. And that's a hard thing to do.
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: That's why they usually cut that line. It's a hard
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: line to walk and to pull off. But, you know,
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: it's still interesting to consider or to think about.
• 46:34
  Speaker 7: I think there's a definite line. World War II films, especially,
• 46:45
  Speaker 7: are easy to romanticize.
• 46:48
  Speaker 8: We.
• 46:51
  Speaker 7: Because we were clearly the winners. I mean, you know,
• 46:55
  Speaker 7: there's no, you know.
• 46:59
  Speaker 4: We were clearly the good guy. Not only that, it
• 47:02
  Speaker 4: was the good fight. And I've said that a lot lately.
• 47:05
  Speaker 4: I was like, there's not been a war since then.
• 47:07
  Speaker 4: And people haven't questioned. Nobody questioned World War II. We
• 47:11
  Speaker 4: had to go do that.
• 47:12
  Speaker 7: If you question, especially the European front of World War II,
• 47:17
  Speaker 7: who's good and who's bad, you're just an asshole if
• 47:20
  Speaker 7: you question it now.
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: So.
• 47:22
  Speaker 6: But we questioned it a lot in the period. We
• 47:25
  Speaker 6: had to really talk ourselves into getting into that war.
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: But that's also funny. That is the pacifist question, though.
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: It's like, well, what would I do in World War II?
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: What do you say when there are Nazis about? Is
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: that still a moment to stick to your guns and say,
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: you know what? War really isn't the answer, guys. We
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: really should just sanction Nazi Germany.
• 47:47
  Speaker 4: That's a hard question.
• 47:49
  Speaker 7: Before Japan attacked, we had our own German internment camps.
• 47:55
  Speaker 7: There was way too much gray area, but afterwards it
• 47:58
  Speaker 7: was like, oh yeah, we were always against the Nazis.
• 48:03
  Speaker 4: No, we weren't.
• 48:04
  Speaker 6: When I was writing the book on War Eagles, I
• 48:08
  Speaker 6: talked about that. This was a film that was very anti-Nazi,
• 48:11
  Speaker 6: but there were laws on the books that you were
• 48:14
  Speaker 6: not supposed to denigrate the Nazi government as early as
• 48:18
  Speaker 6: the mid-30s. And this is 1939, and it was only
• 48:22
  Speaker 6: until after they invaded Poland. They're like, oh, well, go ahead.
• 48:25
  Speaker 6: Because the film studios, which were largely Jewish-run concerns, still
• 48:31
  Speaker 6: had good business going on in Germany and other places,
• 48:34
  Speaker 6: and they didn't want to lose the European market. And
• 48:36
  Speaker 6: nobody knew what was really happening.
• 48:38
  Speaker 7: And Hitler in.
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: His rush to rebuild or to try to rebuild as
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: best as he could with the state-run government was just
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: making lots of economic deals with people right and left.
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: And one of the things we tend to forget about
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: that period, too, is that the Nazis' platform was, like
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: many platforms, was built up on many different ideological points.
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: It wasn't just driven by racism. It was also driven
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: by species of economic and cultural reform that were very
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: common in many governments and cultures in the West at
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: the time. So there was a real question. Britain at
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: the time, if anything, looked like the old guard. They
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: were the old imperial power. They were Victorian England in
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: a lot of people's eyes. They were sort of outdated
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: and stuffy. And Germany looked like it was going to
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: be the wave of the future. That's where you had
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: all the modern philosophy coming out. All of the modern
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: filmmakers that we talked about with the Black Cats started
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: in Germany. That's where all the futurism was occurring, literally,
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: even in art. All that stuff was going on there. So,
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: you know, it makes sense in a sense that, like,
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: of course, Americans would be a little bit divided as to, well,
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: who do we side with in this conflict? Until, of course,
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: you know, Germany starts, you know, invading Poland and we
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: start saying, oh, wait, that's what this leads to. You know,
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: that's what this means.
• 49:54
  Speaker 6: You know, it's, you know, policies and contracts written and
• 49:56
  Speaker 6: then contracts immediately subverted and destroyed. They started Blitzkrieg. And
• 50:03
  Speaker 6: they started rolling over all those countries around them. And
• 50:05
  Speaker 6: then it's like, well, we sat back too long.
• 50:07
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: If this is progress, then we need to change.
• 50:12
  Speaker 7: But again, as far as film goes, though, it's so
• 50:15
  Speaker 7: easy to feel so good about World War II and
• 50:20
  Speaker 7: World War II films. And most men or all families
• 50:24
  Speaker 7: had someone that was there. And so that's kind of
• 50:28
  Speaker 7: like the easy win. Hey, let's make a World War
• 50:31
  Speaker 7: II film. And everybody's going to love it. Everything since
• 50:34
  Speaker 7: then is just so gray and so disgusting, and you
• 50:38
  Speaker 7: can't pin down who's right. Maybe we were the bad guys.
• 50:43
  Speaker 7: The one that sticks out in my mind, I think
• 50:45
  Speaker 7: because I'm still young and thinking, hey, war movies, yay America,
• 50:51
  Speaker 7: and I saw Born on the Fourth of July. I
• 50:56
  Speaker 7: had so many questions. I hated it because it was.
• 51:02
  Speaker 7: It opened the door to that. Maybe we're the bad
• 51:06
  Speaker 7: guy kind of thing. And boy, we treat our own
• 51:09
  Speaker 7: like crap. And, and so, um, I think that was
• 51:13
  Speaker 7: for me that first moment of, um, that ambiguity of war.
• 51:17
  Speaker 7: And I know historically it's not, there's so many other
• 51:21
  Speaker 7: films before that, but for me growing up, you know, I,
• 51:23
  Speaker 7: cause like I, like I've mentioned before, I had the,
• 51:27
  Speaker 7: the tape of Red Dawn, and I put that thing
• 51:29
  Speaker 7: in every Saturday. And we acted it out with the
• 51:32
  Speaker 7: kids in my street. It was the greatest feel-good kids'
• 51:37
  Speaker 7: idea is, yeah, we can do this too. It was
• 51:40
  Speaker 7: our cops and robbers or cowboys and Indians. It was
• 51:43
  Speaker 7: us versus, you know, it was like real kids being G.I.
• 51:47
  Speaker 6: Joe.
• 51:48
  Speaker 7: And then you see Born on the Fourth of July,
• 51:51
  Speaker 7: and it's like you grow up really fast.
• 51:53
  Speaker 4: And that one's almost like anti- everything like not just
• 51:57
  Speaker 4: the anti-war message but even when he's in battle like
• 52:00
  Speaker 4: you get that moment where he gets injured that first
• 52:03
  Speaker 4: injury wasn't that i mean it would have sucked he
• 52:06
  Speaker 4: would have gone home he would have had a limp
• 52:08
  Speaker 4: but he wouldn't have been but like it's only when
• 52:10
  Speaker 4: he stands up and has to be the gung-ho like
• 52:12
  Speaker 4: hero that he ends up getting himself really like that's
• 52:16
  Speaker 4: why his entire life is ruined at that point if
• 52:19
  Speaker 4: he just would have laid there they would have sent
• 52:20
  Speaker 4: him home he would have had a cane. It's like
• 52:24
  Speaker 4: when he has his big John Wayne moment and stands
• 52:26
  Speaker 4: up to be the hero is when it ruins his
• 52:28
  Speaker 4: entire life. And it's like you never saw something like
• 52:31
  Speaker 4: that in an older era of war movies.
• 52:34
  Speaker 6: It's pretty rare. You've got to go back to people
• 52:38
  Speaker 6: like Sam Fuller. He was making interesting movies in the
• 52:41
  Speaker 6: late 50s and early 60s and addressing Korea in a
• 52:44
  Speaker 6: steel helmet and fixed bayonets. His last big war picture
• 52:48
  Speaker 6: was the big red one back in the 70s, which
• 52:50
  Speaker 6: is really good. And he would show some of the
• 52:52
  Speaker 6: gray aspects of ideology versus reality. But it was rare,
• 52:58
  Speaker 6: and he was kind of a fringe director. But it
• 53:00
  Speaker 6: was getting out there. For me, the only movie that
• 53:04
  Speaker 6: kind of walks that line where it both glorifies and
• 53:08
  Speaker 6: shows you horror is Patton. It's one of my favorite movies.
• 53:12
  Speaker 6: And since it's basically a character study, it's about what's
• 53:15
  Speaker 6: in this man's life and his mind.
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: And.
• 53:19
  Speaker 6: it's incredibly well written, you know, Coppola wrote it and Friedkin,
• 53:23
  Speaker 6: not Friedkin, but Franklin Schaffner directed it. And it's just,
• 53:27
  Speaker 6: it's made in 68 right there in the middle of Vietnam,
• 53:29
  Speaker 6: but it still shows both sort of the glorious aspects
• 53:32
  Speaker 6: of what we were trying to do. Plus just obsession.
• 53:36
  Speaker 6: And when Patton says, you've got help me, I love it.
• 53:38
  Speaker 6: So it really puts you right to the center of, of,
• 53:42
  Speaker 6: of what makes people fight. It reminds me, there's that
• 53:47
  Speaker 6: movie coming out soon. Uh, That's all about MacArthur in Japan.
• 53:52
  Speaker 6: And that first like month after the war was over
• 53:55
  Speaker 6: in Japan would basically, the question was, do we, do
• 53:58
  Speaker 6: we let the Japanese keep their emperor or not? Because
• 54:01
  Speaker 6: of course, you know, like my, uh, cause, cause you know,
• 54:04
  Speaker 6: in that period, and that's funny too, cause for me,
• 54:06
  Speaker 6: like my grandpa was actually on the, was on the, uh, uh,
• 54:09
  Speaker 6: Japanese front. He was going to be one of those
• 54:11
  Speaker 6: guys who climbs up to trees and like sees how
• 54:13
  Speaker 6: many of the enemy there are.
• 54:14
  Speaker 9: Yeah.
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: They got a really long lifespan. Um, But so when
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: they drop the bomb, like, all those guys are over
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: there for the brief moment, and they're thinking, like, do
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: we let them keep the emperor? Sorry, do we let
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: them keep the emperor? Do we not? So, because if
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: we don't, then they might incite a riot, which at
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: this point would just be a massacre. Like, it would
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: just be our soldiers just shooting at peasants and farmers, like,
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: and whatnot, because... that's what I'm told actually is that
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: when the boats were off, off the shores, like, you know, and, and,
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: and we were like that close from invading Japan, like
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: there were the peasants, they saw them like massing in numbers,
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: like on the beaches, just like with pitchforks, literally just
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: standing there waiting for the Americans to start trying to
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: come over and going like, how are we going to
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: do this? And at all, try to feel like we're
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: the good guys.
• 55:03
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 55:04
  Speaker 4: Well, there was, there was also like a situation that again,
• 55:07
  Speaker 4: I'm sure they didn't make public at the time that like,
• 55:09
  Speaker 4: when they were trying to make that decision, there was also,
• 55:13
  Speaker 4: there was this weird thing within Japan that like, if
• 55:17
  Speaker 4: we as a country become dishonored, that we also must
• 55:21
  Speaker 4: take ourselves out. Like they were like, part of what
• 55:23
  Speaker 4: they were decision was, was that a huge portion of
• 55:27
  Speaker 4: the country may have committed suicide if they felt that
• 55:30
  Speaker 4: their leader was dishonored and they, That was their only
• 55:33
  Speaker 4: show of solidarity, was to also kill themselves. They were like, well,
• 55:38
  Speaker 4: how are we the good guys there? It puts us
• 55:40
  Speaker 4: in a weird situation.
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: How are we the good guys if we get to
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: the enemy country that's been attacking and bombing us, and
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: then they've killed themselves due to defeat? How is that
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: any kind of.
• 55:50
  Speaker 6: It's a weird.
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: mixture of just two very different.
• 55:54
  Speaker 4: I don't know.
• 55:55
  Speaker 5: To me, that just seems so emo on the part
• 55:57
  Speaker 5: of Japanese.
• 55:58
  Speaker 4: This is me. It's a fine line between, uh, Japanese
• 56:04
  Speaker 4: emotional blackmail.
• 56:07
  Speaker 7: Emotional.
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: I love, I love that you just referred to Sepiko
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: as like emotional blackmail. Oh, you're, you're, you just killed
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: yourself to make me feel bad. I was a cutter,
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: but now I'm moving it up a notch. Um, By
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: the way, apparently the Japanese emperor does do a public
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: declaration every December 8th over there. I think it is
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: December 8th. He does a public declaration. He apologizes to
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: his people. That's a thing still. The emperors of Japan
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: still apologize for World War II to their people. They say, hey,
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: we screwed this one. We screwed this one.
• 56:44
  Speaker 4: We fought a war.
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: We lost. It's our bad. It's not you. But no, there's...
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: I was just watching, by the way, talking about that ambiguity.
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: I was just watching. I feel like we can't talk
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: about the subject without talking about the movie Zero Dark
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: Thirty a little bit. But weirdly enough, I don't want
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: to talk about Zero Dark Thirty. I don't want to
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: talk about Catherine Bigelow's earlier film or one of her
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: earlier films, K-19, The Widowmaker. Just saw that picture for
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: the first time. And it's another one of those pictures
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: that I have a very powerful, ambiguous relationship to because
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson both deliver knockout performances in it.
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: it's got a lot of intensity and it seems to
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: speak to a lot of stuff that, um, does and
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: doesn't fit into a traditional war movie. It's like, it's,
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: it builds itself by the soundtrack and by the ending
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: and certain other things. It's like a standard, like look
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: at these men standing together and being heroes or standing
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: up for their men or, you know, things like that.
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: But what that movie is about is about a submarine, uh,
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: about to melt down and like, people dying trying to
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: stop it from melting down and possibly precipitating world war
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: three and then no one finds out about it the
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: whole thing is hushed up because it's soviet russia no
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: one wants to talk about like their near misses and
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: their failures and their mistakes in that point like just
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: like our government at the time yeah um uh and
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: now But, you know, it's a film about victory and defeat.
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: It's a film about people who succeed despite getting none
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: of the credit and despite, you know, having to suffer
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: tremendously for it. And it's like, what do you say
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: about a situation like that? You know, there's that wonderful
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: moment where Harrison Ford says to all of the men
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: who we know will die of radiation poisoning because they
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: went in there without any suits on to fix the leak.
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: And he says, you're heroes. You're all heroes. And then
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: we're told later the Soviet government not only refused to
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: recognize them as heroes, but they scrapped the entire mission
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: and burnt the documents. And none of these guys got
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: any credit whatsoever for averting a nuclear holocaust.
• 58:46
  Speaker 4: It's an interesting movie because it does kind of loop
• 58:48
  Speaker 4: around on itself. You're on this side and you're thinking, okay, well,
• 58:52
  Speaker 4: this is the guy we're supposed to be behind. And
• 58:54
  Speaker 4: then midway in it sort of shifts and you realize, oh. Okay, wait,
• 58:58
  Speaker 4: he had our best interest in mind. So it does
• 59:00
  Speaker 4: sort of change at a point with that urgency coming.
• 59:03
  Speaker 4: It's pretty interesting.
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: It's a very interesting film. Like Catherine Bigelow, she's the
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: next director that I really want to get into and
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: sort of really spend some time with. with, especially since, actually,
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: we're going to be doing Point Break Live again at
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: the LA Theater this summer. But, yeah, but there's, like,
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: her films, like, Zero Dark Thirty also seems to me
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: to have an element of that victory and defeat, because
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: apparently they started out making that movie just about the
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: ampuities of the Iraq situation. They were just going to
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: make a film about, like, okay, here are some people
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: looking for Osama bin Laden, here's some torture going on,
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: here are some people striving to figure this stuff out,
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: and then we got it. And they were like two-thirds
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: into making the movie, and they were like, well, what
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: do we do? Well... We'll just make it with the
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: ending of They Got Him.
• 59:49
  Speaker 4: I guess we finished the movie. So now we have
• 59:52
  Speaker 4: a film.
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: Which should be a film about the one great triumphant
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: moment in the last 10 years of that war, which
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: is like, ha-ha, that guy got killed, like the guy
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: that we were looking for actually got killed. but instead
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: it is this incredibly ambiguous, strange, dark film, uh, about
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: the uncertainties of whether or not anything we're doing is
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: ever going to pay off. And it just happens to
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: pay off. It looks like, so I don't know, maybe
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: that's just the kind of war movie we have to
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: make now, you know?
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 4: Well, that's, I mean, going back to her that she's
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 4: done two in a row now, like that, that same
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 4: thing in the hurt locker was what we referenced earlier.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 4: That is nothing but about why we do it. Like,
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 4: More so the soldiers individually. You think of how horrible
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 4: it is, and then you're like, it's nice to be honorable,
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 4: but why would you go deal with that? And then
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 4: it's sort of examining how attached to that life that
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 4: they get, whether they mean to or not, whether they
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 4: want to or not, it becomes your life. And then
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 4: it's like, well, how do I do anything else? It's
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 4: rare that you saw movies sort of examine that. Yeah,
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 4: that's a different take on it than most people have
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 4: to do.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 5: I recently saw The African Queen, which I had never
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 5: seen before, but had a bizarrely specific idea of what
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 5: it was, and I was completely wrong. It's kind of
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 5: like a war romantic comedy. Those are hard to make.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: I've never managed to see one myself, I don't know.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 5: Well, it's just this mismatched couple of people who I
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 5: thought it was going to be bleaker and a little tenser,
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 5: but they seem to get along pretty well. It's got
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 5: a lot more of a Gilligan's Island feel than I expected.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 5: It's pretty low-key, but it winds up having a team
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 5: up to try to sink this ship. But the thing
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 5: it reminds me of, and I've probably mentioned this before,
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 5: is like the shift in war movies in terms of relationships,
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 5: like romantic relationships. If you look at Casablanca and The
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 5: African Queen, it's like, well, I guess two people, the
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 5: concerns of two people don't amount to a hill of beans.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 5: That's not true anymore. The movies we make now is, Oh,
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 5: the affairs of the whole fricking world don't amount to
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 5: a hill of beans compared to the interests of two
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 5: people in love. We've got like the English patient and
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 5: what cold mountain is another.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: One of those.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 6: Fuck the war.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 5: I'm going to go find this check.
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 5: It's a complete reversal in the way we've looked at
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 5: like individual relationships against the backdrop of world events.
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: Well, it's, I see that that's happening on two levels, though.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: It's that on the one hand, we see you want
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: to tell the story of the one relationship that's going
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: on and the conflict, it doesn't matter. But then you
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: also have those deconstructionist films which want to take a
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: look at a big world conflict and talk about it
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: in terms of just two people really just having an
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: argument in a room and it blossoms into this enormous...
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: A lot of biopics and stuff like that seem to
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: go that way. of just like, well, all this stuff
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: really comes down to the fact that Stalin had mom
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: issues or something. It tries to break things down to
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: a set of relationships.
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: I think the question that raises for me then is,
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: Cold Mountain is a great example because it begins with
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: that great image of the charge at Petersburg. Is it Petersburg?
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: It's something like that, where where the Yankees blew that
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: enormous hole in the Confederate lines. It was a giant ditch.
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: And Grant, who is kind of, you know, I say
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: this even as a deep Southerner, like he's an underrated
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: military guy. He just orders his troops in because he
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: knows the hole will fill up. And then they'll just
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: be able to walk across the Southern lines. And it's like,
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: that was one of those, that was actually one of
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: the reasons why we were hesitant to enter World War I.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: we knew that's what trench warfare was is ordering troops
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: into a hole until it's filled with bodies and you
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: can just walk across it. Like it was this incredibly
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: horrifying mechanistic thing. And that's of course the perfect moment
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: for Confederate soldier to just go, you know what?
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 4: Fuck this.
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 7: Like fuck all of it.
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: Like whatever we were fighting for, it doesn't matter to
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: me anymore. I'm getting out of this. This is madness.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: But then you turn to the hurt locker and it's like, well,
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: there's actually this kind of person who, for whom this life,
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: suits in which case do wars just get fought because
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: like that's such a weirdly um i want to say
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: like subjective subjectivist you know you know there is no
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: objective truth sort of way of looking at warfare it's
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: like well why are wars fought well because there are
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: people in whom in whose nature it is to fight
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: them there are people for whom war is a thing
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: and that happens there is no larger There's just a
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: bunch of relationships which are very confusing and make you
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: scratch your head when you leave the theater. And people
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: who are okay with the idea of going out every
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: day and being in life-threatening situations.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 4: And there are people that will put them there. There's
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 4: a different group of people who will put them there.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 6: Aware of who can be used as cannon fodder and
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 6: who can't. And I worked on a Civil War documentary
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 6: ages and ages ago where we went out marching with
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 6: a bunch of... and it was weird to fall into
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 6: step with those people because it began to kind of
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 6: come up in you. You kind of felt like a soldier,
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 6: and you kind of understood the mechanism. You understood what
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 6: marching in cadence meant, and you realized that probably every
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 6: guy in that line had some personal reason for why
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 6: he was going to war. It may not have had
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 6: to do with the overall political situation. It may have
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 6: been proving something to someone. And that is useful to
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 6: the people who run the wars.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 7: Fred's idea of the individual greater than the war, I
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 7: think that reminded me a lot in Saving Private Ryan.
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 7: Because I think a lot of people in war are
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 7: looking for a purpose. And why am I here? And
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 7: I think whether that story was true or not, it
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 7: didn't matter. I think finding... some reason, well, we're going
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 7: to get this guy out of here because it's the right.
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 4: Thing to do.
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 7: We can't do anything else, but we're going to do this.
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 7: I mean, I know my father.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 6: He.
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 7: Was in Vietnam, and he doesn't really like war movies.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 7: And I think somebody brought it over and said, hey,
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 7: watch this. And he said, I'm not watching that. I
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 7: don't care how good it is. I think it was
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 7: because he started watching, I think, the beach scene or
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 7: something like that. It's just... just too real.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 4: Um, that one in particular.
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 7: And, and the, the only other moment, cause that, that
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 7: moment in that, I was like, wow, I, I don't
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 7: like this anymore. And, um, the only other moment that
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 7: I've had that with, and it's a far less lesser
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 7: of a, of a film, but still has some good
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 7: things about it is, um, in enemy at the gates
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 7: when he's, he's not handed a rifle. Um, he's told, well,
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 7: one of you gets the rifle, the other one picks
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 7: it up when he falls, you know, and you know,
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 7: that happened. That's not just an invention of Hollywood. You know,
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 7: that happened. And I don't like this anymore. I don't
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 7: want to think about those sorts of things. It's too real.
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 7: Even though that that was a overly romanticized film, you know,
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 7: you know, it didn't matter. It just, it, those are
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 7: images that I don't know. I don't, I don't feel
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 7: good watching that necessarily.
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 5: It would be interesting to see what a contemporary director
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 5: would do with War and Peace now after seeing what
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 5: I thought was a fairly passable Anna Karenina.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: I still haven't seen that.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 7: It won me over.
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 5: There are parts of it that are kind of goofy,
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 5: but the editing is really, like, you're never aware of
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 5: any exposition.
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 7: I'm a huge fan.
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: Of the novel, so I was really hesitant when I saw, like,
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: First it was Keira Knightley, and then I saw that like,
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: and I give cred to Keira Knightley, even like, you know,
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: she takes on some pretty serious roles, but it's like,
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: it's like, I see it's her. And then like, I
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: saw the first poster, which looked kind of like a
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: Disney princess poster. And then I saw that in the poster,
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: avoid giving any spoilers if I can, but in the poster,
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: of course, Anna Karenina is standing right in front of
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: a train.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 4: And I was just.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 7: Like, oh, come on. Please.
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 5: Actually, a friend of mine said, you know, the movie seems...
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 5: obsessed with trains. And I'm like, are you.
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 4: Familiar with this story?
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 6: Lord.
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: But then I saw that Tom Stoppard was working on it.
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 5: I saw that later. I was noticing the writing as
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 5: we went along. It's like, oh, this seems kind of...
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 5: He pulls out one line... And it's like, oh, God,
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 5: that's such the perfect line to convey what's going on
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 5: in that scene. And Levin's relationship with his brother. And
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 5: they film the birth of text messaging very nicely, which
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 5: is in the book. Like when Levin and Kitty are
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 5: talking to each other and they just like they do
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 5: the first letters of words.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 5: And they can tell what each other are thinking. And
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 5: it's so romantic and it's so beautifully filmed. The guys
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 5: in it are disappointing, though, because Vronsky looks like a
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 5: little gay soldier.
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: Sounds about right.
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 5: Like a little gay French sailor is what he... He's
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 5: just mousy.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: Sorry, I'm one of those guys who comes away from
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: that book without much of an opinion of Vronsky. The
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: coolest thing about him was that Anna decided to date him.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 5: But he's supposed to be dashing, although with Tolstoy's genius.
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 4: He always does this.
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 5: He later introduces Vronsky's brother, who is like the taller,
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 5: more attractive guy.
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 8: Oh, yeah.
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 13: Because nobody is like, nothing is ever clear-cut. It's always life-size.
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 13: That's one of the great things that you mentioned about
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 13: filming War and Peace. Because even in Anna Karenina, he
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 13: mentions that Levin, in the beginning of the book, he
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 13: mentions that Levin had fallen in love with each one
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 13: of the daughters in turn he fell in love with
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 13: the oldest daughter and then she got married he's like
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 13: okay he fell in love with the middle daughter and
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 13: then she got married again he fell in love with
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 13: kitty and kitty was the one he was coming to
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 13: the house to see today and she turns him down
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 13: she turns him down and then he's like wracked with
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 13: pain and all this stuff happens and then eventually they
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 13: come back together and it turns out it works you
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 13: know it's like it's like there's this there's this humanism
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 13: that isn't easily interpreted in his works. Like, you know, did,
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 13: was he just kind of lucky with his infatuation with
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 13: Kitty that he actually happened to get infatuated with someone
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 13: who's worthwhile or, you.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: Know, so War and Peace is also kind of riddled
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: with those questions, you know, of like motivation and what exactly, like,
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: because there's so many characters that you can take one
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: side or another on. And I don't know, that's, It
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: seems to me that that's really difficult. Like when people
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: try to do that in a war film or any
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: kind of film, we always wind up, it seems, with
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: something bleak.
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 5: There are some film versions. Like there's that Soviet version
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 5: that's really long. But the casting is so good in it.
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 5: Because with Tolstoy, the characters are so vivid, like you
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 5: just see the actor and you go, oh, that's.
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 10: What's his name?
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 5: And you don't know the name because it's all these
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 5: Russian names you can't fucking remember.
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 4: If it's a Soviet version. But you know who it is.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 7: It's probably so long they're still filming it, even though
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 7: you started watching it.
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the government bureau of film propaganda has yet to
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: churn out the final copy. But it survived the fall
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: of the wall and it's still just like trying to
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: finish this movie. But Yeah, no, but that's the thing, sorry,
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: trying to bring it back to, like, the only filmmaker,
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: one of the only filmmakers I've seen who's done that
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: sort of ambiguity, at least for me really well, is,
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: we just mentioned one of his movies, Enemy at the Gates.
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: Come on, name somebody who... room full of movie geeks.
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: He also did The New World. He's doing that film
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: that's coming out soon called To the Wonder. He did
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: Tree of Life. Terrence Malick?
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 4: Terrence Malick.
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: What is Enemy at the Gates? I don't know what
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: that is.
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 4: Is that Malick?
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: That's not Malick.
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 4: Was that not Malick? I don't think that's Malick. Oh,
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 4: I just got confused. But he did do The Thin
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 4: Red Line.
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 6: The Thin Red Line.
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 4: Thank you.
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: Sorry, my brain did a total fart.
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 7: I was like, that's not a good enough Yeah, because,
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 7: wait a minute.
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: Ray Fiennes is in Enemy of the Gates, isn't it?
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, yeah.
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: Terrence Malick wouldn't do it. No, it's... Joseph Fiennes, right?
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 7: No, it's... He was in everything there for five years.
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 7: Whoever he is, he's fine. He's fine, yeah.
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 4: Ralph.
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 7: What am I... I'm having a.
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: Because it's... I'm holding my iPhone and refusing to check
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: it because I just like... I don't know if this
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: movie is at all.
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 7: Yeah, it's Jude Law and Ed Harris.
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: When did this come out?
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 6: Eight years ago.
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 4: And it's set in.
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 7: Is it Stalingrad or St.
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 6: Petersburg? It's the War of the Snipers.
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 7: Yeah, the Snipers. Vasily Zaitsev is the... I pulled that
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 7: out of my ass. I couldn't remember Jude Law. I
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 7: couldn't remember.
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: Vasily Zaitsev?
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 7: Yeah, and he was a real Russian sniper then. And
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 7: he specifically took out lieutenants and up. He wouldn't shoot
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 7: at anyone else. And he became feared and it kind
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 7: of was, was there not.
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 5: By everyone else, just by the lieutenants.
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 4: And privates didn't care. Yeah.
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: Um, yeah, that raises an interesting question that, yeah, I
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: wanted to bring up Terrence Malick because he does for
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: me like emotional ambiguity very well. And, you know, I'm
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: wondering what would, what would he make of a war
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: film or something like that? You know, what would he
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: do with those emotional things? And we see in, thin
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: red line. There's so many layers to that. I mean,
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: it's difficult, I think, for us to make a war
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: film that shows different sides of a conflict, different interpretations
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: of personal relationships and, you know, whether or not individuals
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: stand out in the front or they recede into the background,
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: all these, you know, and it seems like most of
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: those wind up being a very bleak story. It winds
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: up being a, you know, I wonder if there's not
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: another direction for that. Like there, instead of patriotism or,
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: you know, patriotic solidarity or like bleak, nihilistic individualism. Like
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: if there isn't some sort of third direction for war
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: films to go.
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 4: There's those characters that are just, I just want to
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 4: get home. I guess that's probably the closest is, you know, I,
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 4: I'm being as patriotic as I can, but really I
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 4: just want to get home. There's, there's sort of that
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 4: mid level with some of the characters anyway, that, you know,
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 4: I I'm here because I'm supposed to be, well, that's
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 4: like mash.
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 4: So mash winds up being the, yeah.
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 5: That's the alternative. And, They're just doing their job, but
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 5: they just want to go home. And there's this kind
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 5: of huge melancholy about the whole thing.
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 7: What is it about the characters in some war movies
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 7: that the supporting characters, that they're willing to... They somehow
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 7: recognize that they're not the stars. And they're willing to say.
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 7: Yes, they're the one that needs to survive.
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 2: Not me.
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: Go, just leave me.
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 7: He's Matt Damon.
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 5: He's got to get home.
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: They're going to have a barely recognizable face.
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 7: I mean, I really liked Barry Pepper in that. Why
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 7: didn't he get to live? Why does it have to be?
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 4: You've seen him. I mean, he's no Matt Damon.
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 9: Come on.
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 7: It's like they're born as character actors in a world
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 7: of war.
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 5: And it's the fucking Brooklyn guy get to go home.
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 2: Never mind.
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 7: Because he's the one who was whining.
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: The whole time.
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 4: Because he's got a direct move.
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 6: Yeah, it seems that no matter what kind of war
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 6: film it is, you have to have that stock group
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 6: of characters.
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 6: It just makes it a war movie.
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: They make that joke. Wasn't that a joke in Forrest Gump, too?
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: Like where they're enumerating all the different places where the
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: different soldiers come from. Then there was Tex.
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: I couldn't remember where Tex came from.
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 5: I don't know.
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 7: Yeah, Dallas. He was from Birmingham.
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 4: Yeah, there are all the rules.
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 5: Like if you ever show a picture of your girlfriend
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 5: back home.
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 4: You got about a few minutes.
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 7: If you hand somebody a letter, you're, yeah.
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 7: Give this to my mom.
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: If you say whatever happens, utter the phrase whatever happens,
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: then you're gone.
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 4: Any messages to your unborn child? So this is a
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 4: list of things.
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: List of movie things that you will never do if you.
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 10: Ever go to war.
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 5: Hold this watch for me.
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 4: Whatever it takes.
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 7: Oh, Deer Hunter.
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 5: I just remembered Deer Hunter.
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 7: Deer Hunter.
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 5: I was thinking, of course, of Christopher Walken and Pulp Fiction,
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 5: and that took me to Deer Hunter.
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: I don't think I know Deer Hunter.
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 6: Deer Hunter and Michael Cimino. It was like his one
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 6: big picture. Yeah. And it's brilliant.
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 5: But it's also very strange. It's so mythic and strange.
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 5: It has that Russian roulette thing. And that's one of
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 5: the rules of life. You can only play Russian roulette
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 5: so many times.
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: As I've known very, very well, yeah.
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 5: The house always wins.
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 4: Can't argue that one.
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: That was pretty accurate.
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 7: Do war movies have to be historically accurate?
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 4: That's actually one I was going to ask. What happens
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 4: when they rewrite history?
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 7: That's probably the most.
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 5: There are still people who are going to be outraged
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 5: if you don't get Braveheart right.
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: Do we ever let it go? That's actually a real question.
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: I know we're trying to stay above World War I
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: on the chronology.
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 4: We can wonder if we need to.
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: Just for a contrast, hold up 300.
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 7: Yeah, oh, yeah, they're gonna make a sequel that's the
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 7: Sequel like well hundred minutes.
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: I was gonna say it's just an image of like
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: all the dead bodies for two hours But no, it's
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: like it's like that movie the the funny thing about
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: that movie is is actually it fits in pretty well
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: with what heron says about the conflict i mean obviously
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: there's all the stylization done but no no there's really
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: is this this extensive cataloging of these of these exotic
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: peoples and nations that are being herded like slaves to
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: go fight the free men who are the greeks it's
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: got that same like super patriotic, larger-than-life flavor to it
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: with the Spartans, but in a weird way, do we
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: care that that's been made in such a mythic way?
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: I mean, is that not a war movie anymore? Is
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: it just a fantasy movie? In which case, do we
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: just classify it with Lord of the Rings and not
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: care anymore that it's inaccurate? Well, I think the Greeks
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: wouldn't mind if you... But that's just it. I don't
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: think they did. I don't think they really considered... history
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: the same way, at least not at that point, they
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: weren't really concerned so much that it was, that it
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: was what we consider accurate. That's not history. Like the
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: Iliad is history. That's a tale worth telling, you know? Um, uh,
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: so I guess I wonder, you know, um, is our,
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: can that, that's part of that question about like, you know,
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: can war movies be inaccurate? Like, Are we slaves to resources?
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 5: Are they just of necessity going to be enacted?
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 6: War is war. War is all about the fog and
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 6: all about what doesn't go right, really. So we sort
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 6: of create a story out of chaos. I read a
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 6: really good book recently, Stephen Pressfield's, called Killing Rommel. And
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 6: it's about the long-range desert group, the rat patrol guys
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 6: in World War II who were basically assigned to go
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 6: kill Rommel.
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 4: Go find him and kill him.
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 6: And they never, ever even get close until they're captured,
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 6: more or less. And they meet him, and it's like, hi.
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 6: And he lets them go. It's all about all the
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 6: things that go horribly, horribly wrong.
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: Because that's Rommel for you.
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 6: Yeah, Rommel's a good guy.
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 4: Oh, you're looking to kill me? Oh, well, I'll just
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 4: let you go.
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 6: I'll give you a day's start, essentially.
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: That's a fair.
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 6: The book really captured that whole element of chaos that
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 6: goes on in war, where nothing ever works out like
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 6: it should. No plan ever goes exactly as planned.
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 4: And.
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 6: People don't demand that of conventional storytelling. They want structure,
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 6: most of the time. And when they don't get it,
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 6: their reactions vary. You get into something like Apocalypse Now,
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 6: which subverts people's expectations, and you either think that's brilliant
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 6: or you don't. But most people want a narrative in
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 6: a war film, something with that much emotion. I think
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 6: they want a standard.
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a war movie that doesn't become a war movie.
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 6: Yeah, and it's hard to capture. I think all war
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 6: movies are going to be inaccurate Unless they embrace that,
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 6: and very few do.
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's an interesting consideration, too, because you always want
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: to talk about victories as being due to, like, fate
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: or character or something like that, not as a result
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: of a number of horrific accidents that turn out in
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: your favor. You know, we did it.
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 5: Have you ever, like, examined George Washington's career?
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 4: Mm-hmm.
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 5: Speaking of just accidents.
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: Like, the only.
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: Like really large battle of the revolution was the battle
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: of New York. And that was like, he, he lost
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: the army in a fog, like he lost the British
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: in a fog and had to retreat. He, uh, you know,
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: there were so many moments of just like, whew, man,
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: glad we didn't die just then. Like, you know, um,
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: he used to, you know, try to provoke the British
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: at odd moments, you know, and it was just a
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: series of strategic calamities for the British that landed them
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: in his lap.
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 4: And I don't know, I mean.
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: Like, I've read a biography of him. He seems like
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: a really remarkable individual on so many levels. But yeah,
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: the American Revolution is a great example. Whereas, by all accounts,
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: the Civil War was better fought on both sides to
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: so many degrees, and yet just how much more horrifying
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: and awful and everything was that. It seems like really
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: well-run wars are just the worst.
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 7: Well, the saying is about Purple Heart's never been given
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 7: when things went well. It's only when something really bad happened,
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 7: somebody messed up.
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 6: You can make the argument that the Revolutionary War is
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 6: really kind of where modern warfare starts, because prior to
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 6: that it was Napoleonic. It was squares of people fighting
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 6: squares of people. Nice, neat little rows. You caught a
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 6: ball and you fell, but the next guy behind you
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 6: kept shooting and started with the Revolutionary War because they
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 6: were influenced by the Indians and everybody else fighting. It
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 6: became much more sort of subterfuge and carried over to
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 6: the Civil War.
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's one of the people they tend to identify
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: as a real genius of the Revolution was Nathaniel Green.
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: And if you ever look at his record, he never
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: won a battle, but he is regarded as one of
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: the more brilliant generals because his.
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: Fighting the British involved simply, okay, I'm going to make
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: you chase me like, you know, 500 miles this way,
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: then 500 miles that way. And then I'm only going
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: to fight you after you've crossed a river in the winter,
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: like a pitched battle. Oh, you won. Well, you lost
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: a lot of men.
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 4: I don't care.
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: You're going to now chase me through the woods and
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: then you're going to chase me this way. It's like,
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: he just wore Cornwallis down, like just successful. Like it
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: was literally just him messing with the British army. And
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: it's like, of course we don't tell that story. We
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: don't tell the story of the guy who also by
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: all the portraits was kind of on the chubby side.
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: You know, uh, we don't tell the story of that guy, like, um,
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: basically winning by not engaging in any, anything regarding resuming,
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: resembling heroics.
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 7: Um, and instead we have, um, Mel Gibson's the Patriot.
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 9: Exactly.
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: Another, another very accurate war.
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 6: Film is made.
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 7: Wasn't he, was he like, um, scalping the British soldiers.
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 7: I mean, it was almost, I don't know. Of course
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 7: the battle ends up at his house. I don't know.
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 7: The whole thing just was too Mel Gibson, I think,
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 7: is what it was. It was like, let's have Braveheart,
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 7: but set it in the American Revolution.
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: I want to hail a British officer with an American flag.
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 6: Like, wow.
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 7: But I did like that it gave the huge nod
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 7: to the French. Because in grade school, when you're talking
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 7: about the American Revolution, they never even bring up the
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 7: fact that we never would have survived a week if
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 7: it weren't for the French. Because of course they wanted
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 7: us to win.
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: One thing I will say, though, about that movie The Patriot,
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: just talking about ambiguity... The love story does die, like,
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: midway through. Like, you know, the girl is locked inside
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: a church that's burned down, and then the kid goes
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: on his heroic rampage and is promptly killed. You know,
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: and even though he manages to mow down, like, a
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: dozen British soldiers before that happens, you know, it's still
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: kind of a great, like, I'm going to go be
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: a hero and avenge my lost love, and I die.
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: Because that's what happens when you try to take on
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: a British contingent by yourself.
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 6: You know.
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's the way it always happens in the real world.
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 6: Not movies.
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 4: Movies, we pick the one person that actually comes through
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 4: and gets to be the hero. But yeah, we don't
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 4: tell the stories that are all the other ones that
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 4: wanted to do the same thing and just got killed
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 4: in the process.
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 5: But that's my favorite kind of story I've realized over
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 5: time is when somebody sets off on some sort of
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 5: ill-advised adventure and then it goes terribly wrong. There's just
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 5: something about that that I've always... Every horror movie ever, probably.
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: Many of the good ones.
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 5: You know, like The Black Robe.
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 6: Oh, I love The Black Robe.
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 5: It's a terrible idea to go.
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 6: And it goes really bad. It carries it all the
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 6: way to the darkest parts.
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: I don't think I've seen that. Oh, that's a great movie.
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 6: It's... more or less, Dances with Wolves properly.
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 4: It is!
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: Now I'm even more curious, because I can't begin to
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: imagine what that movie looks like.
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 5: Dances with Wolves is kind of like how.
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 1: Kind of like how great Kevin Costner is when he's with.
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 6: An ethnic group.
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 5: And the teenage Indians just seem like teenage kids. And
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 5: then there are scenes from Bewitched in it. The guy
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 5: is looking for his pipe to give as a gift
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 5: to Kevin Costner, and he can't find it, and his
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 5: wife goes right to him.
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 5: But in The Black Probe, everybody just is who they are.
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 5: And you can see they can't understand each other, even
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 5: with the best of intentions.
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 6: It's a collision of belief. You've got your good Indians
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 6: and you've got your bad Indians. And they unfortunately fall
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 6: victim to the bad and to nature itself.
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 4: It's a really incredible movie.
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 6: It's the only movie I ever saw at the Vogue
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 6: where I watched a patron pass out.
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 10: It's pretty intense.
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 6: The finger cutting, the oyster shell scene. I watched a
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 6: guy fall out of his chair onto the floor.
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 6: Because it was so realistic.
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 5: It used to be women that fainted, but now... In.
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: Fairness, women do have a higher pain tolerance, I believe,
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 1: than men.
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 6: Especially red-haired women.
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I'm told.
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 10: That's what I'm told.
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 6: I don't know.
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 5: I've never tested.
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 4: I thought it was.
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 7: A lower pain tolerance that red-haired women had.
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: Oh, is it?
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 9: Yeah.
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 4: I get those confused.
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: Pain tolerance. I'm taking the same pills either way.
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 5: Is Schindler's List a war movie?
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah where do we classify movies like.
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 4: Of all the of all the war movies they always
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 4: have that one listed in there so i guess they
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 4: treat it as.
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 6: Though it is one it's all about you know i
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 6: guess collateral damage.
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: But that's a holocaust movies usually i think find their
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: way into their own category for that reason it's like
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: okay here's a war movie without an actual war just
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: you know some camps Just some prisoner of war camps
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: with people suffering in them. Speaking of which, by the way,
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: apparently George Takei is working on a Japanese internment camp film,
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: which I'm really excited about. Because he, of course, grew
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: up or spent some time in an internment camp when
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: he was growing up. So I think that would be
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: really interesting to see.
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 4: That's, yeah, I'm still, like, when I first was learning
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 4: about the, and how much we don't talk about them
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 4: in this country, and that's, in talking to people over
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 4: the years, that's also true of Teresa Tana and her family.
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 4: Her family lost everything. They took it away from them,
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 4: put them in a camp, and when the war was over,
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 4: they were like, well, sorry about that, and put them
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 4: back out there with nothing.
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: Well, of course, in fairness, you know, one could say that, like,
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: the Japanese internment, like, I've heard people refer to it as, like,
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: the secret holocaust or something, and I don't know quite,
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: I mean, granted, you know, I'm a young white male
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 1: saying this, but at the same time, like, I don't
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: know how accurate that would be to say, but at
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 1: the same time, it is weird that this whole thing happened.
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: Like you said, these people were taken away from their homes.
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 4: Businesses, you know, everything.
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: And then, yeah, and then they were just let go
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 1: without much explanation, especially without, like, you know, any sort of,
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry from the federal government, you know, or here's
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: some tax write-off status or something like that.
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 4: Can we help put you back into a life? It
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 4: was just, oops, sorry.
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: Whoops, turns out you weren't traitors, or at least if
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: you are, it doesn't really matter now. You know, it's like, oh,
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: you were Korean? Well, we don't really know the difference.
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 4: And that's the thing. It's not so much that we
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 4: didn't know about it, it's just that the other version
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 4: of it is like, Huge. Like every year they're making
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 4: 20 documentaries about what was going on there. And it's
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 4: like most people for years had no idea we even
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 4: did that here. I don't know. It's just weird that we, again,
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 4: being the we always want to look at the good
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 4: side of things, you know, oh, they were bad over there.
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 4: Look what they did. But let's talk about some of
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 4: the things. We were doing it and in our own
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 4: country for one.
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 6: I don't know.
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 7: Like I mentioned before, just right down the road, Charleston
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 7: State Park, that was a German internment. Yeah. That's something
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 7: so close to you that my grandmother remembers that they
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 7: took people that she knew there. That's great. That's way
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 7: too close to home. And again, I didn't learn about
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 7: that until I was in my 30s.
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 7: You kind of should learn about that a little bit earlier.
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 7: You know, it's not.
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: And it's, and it's like we said, like these are
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 1: the ambiguities we talk about with world war two, but
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: we also hold them apart from the war itself. We're like, well,
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 1: and all this other stuff was going on. I think
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: for me, that's actually, from my mind, one of the
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 1: reasons why I've never seen a really satisfying film about
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: say the civil war is because all that stuff was
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: going on simultaneously in our backyard. And there's all this ambiguity.
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: It's like, You know, you got Southerners ostensibly fighting for
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: a new country, but is it about slavery? Meanwhile, you
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 1: have Yankees ostensibly fighting to end slavery, but come on,
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 1: how many of them really care? You know, how many
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 1: of them are really invested and how many of them
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 1: are just literally immigrants rounded up at ports to go fight,
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 1: you know, instead there were huge contingents of just Irish
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: people that were just sent to war as soon as
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: they got here and riots and stuff going on upstate
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 1: in New York and things. Uh, it's just like, how
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: do you begin to capture such a complicated situation where
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 1: who's fighting who for what? Like what's the, what, what
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 1: really is the meaningful conflict here aside from just atrocity
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: going on everywhere, you know, uh, in which, uh, such
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: a huge percentage of our population dies. Like, how do
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 1: you begin to wrap your head about that or call it,
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: make it into something heroic?
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 4: I don't think there's any of these though. I mean,
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 4: the more you think about it, it's like on the
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 4: one hand, we, we tell them just because it's life,
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 4: just because it's always been going on. And we, you know,
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 4: started making movies and we tell Westerns and we tell,
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 4: you know, anything. So it's just what we do.
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 4: Mythology about it, but there's no good side. You know,
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 4: it's like, it's not like it's, I don't know. You're
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 4: not getting anything out of it other than you're telling
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 4: the story. And I guess that's ideally what you're trying
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 4: to do in any situation when you're making a movie.
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 4: But it's a weird subsection that gets into so many
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 4: heavy areas that, I don't know, it's hard to deal with.
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 7: There really aren't many. The two that kind of get
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 7: lost in all of it, though, are, especially when you
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 7: speak of the Korean War and even World War I.
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 4: They just get overshadowed. Both of them get overshadowed by
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 4: the war that came after. They really do.
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 7: I think if the Vietnam War hadn't come along, I
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 7: think they could have realized the negative burn of Korea.
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 7: Nothing was right there. And I think you probably would
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 7: have gotten a lot more war films that maybe revealed
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 7: it a little bit more. It's just Vietnam kind of
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 7: trumped it. I think the same thing happened with World
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 7: War I. I think there was a lot of good
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 7: stories that came out of it. Good story is not
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 7: the right way to put it.
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 4: In the cinematics. Yeah.
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 7: That maybe got lost because by the time you're getting
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 7: around to telling those stories, you've got an even bigger
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 7: and more grand war.
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 1: I was definitely viewed that way by the generation at
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 1: the time.
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: You know, you look at that whole generation of writers,
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 1: like we're looking at Hemingway, Fitzgerald, all those guys, the
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: lost generation, they were trying to sketch out the experiences
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 1: of what was going on at that time, which, you know,
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 1: if you think about it, like World War I, that's
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: a great example. It's like there's that huge overarching conflict,
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 1: but then it is immediately followed as soon as it's done.
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 1: And we never talk about this either. We always talk
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: about just how, you know, America returned to normal. Britain
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: continued to, you know, have its empire swell and crumble and, Meanwhile,
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 1: Germany starts to be really, really pissed at everyone again.
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: But immediately after World War I, we have a wave
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: of nationalist movements. Virtually every country in New Eastern Europe
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: has a little communist uprising that's ended in a year.
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: Greece invades Turkey and is roundly defeated. And a whole
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: Greek population is deported. You have the Spanish Civil War.
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: You have all these huge cultural movements going on in
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: Europe that we just don't really talk about because they
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: happen in the in between time. It happened in the bookends,
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: you know, between the bookends. And even with, uh, even
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: with Vietnam and what's looking like the other big period,
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: you know, which is the Afghanistan, Iraq period, you know,
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: it's like between then, like you look at the eighties
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: and the seventies, there were still military actions going on
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 1: being led by the United States, all of the world,
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 1: most of them pretty tiny, uh, by comparison, but still like,
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: you know, that's an active military presence, you know, military
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 1: invasions and things like that going on. And not to mention,
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: you know, enormous military scandals like the Iran Contra thing
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: and other stuff that people have commentators beat to death
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: over the years. Like on the one hand, I wonder, well,
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: actually I'll just say, I wonder if maybe we just
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: haven't made those cinematic because we're too used to thinking
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 1: of them just as history. Like, it's too much, that
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: commentary section in the New York Times. Like, how do
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: you make a movie about Iran-Contra, you know, or any
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: of that other really shady stuff the CIA and the
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 1: military were doing in South America or Africa or anything
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 1: like that? You know, you can kind of touch on that,
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: but that's no longer a war movie.
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 6: Yeah, we almost consider it business as usual. Unfortunately. And
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 6: so we have to get behind the big war stories
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 6: that seem to be more ideological. We get into the
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 6: Nazis and we get into the things that are easy
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 6: to define. Human nature says war is business as usual
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 6: with populations. People are always going to war. Those aren't
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 6: the kind of stories people are going to respond well to.
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 7: Be more like black hawk down kind of one-off uh
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 7: because you know i was reading reading articles about you
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 7: know mogadishu and everything i you know it was like
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 7: right when i was in college you know in college
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 7: age and and there was a lot of ambiguity in
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 7: that why are we doing this what you know and
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 7: and You even saw news reports and everything. And then
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 7: when you see the movie, it really brought that to life.
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 7: And you finally get a feeling of, oh, that's really
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 7: what that was about. And, yeah, it almost seems like
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 7: those sort of conflicts need more attention like that.
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 6: I don't know.
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 7: I think a lot of our history I've learned through film,
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 7: or at least you go, well, I need to find
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 7: out more about that, and you read about it. um
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 7: later on and find out what was real and what
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 7: wasn't and um i don't know i think yeah i
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 7: think as far as a tool i think that as
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 7: far as learning very helpful for me at least yeah.
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 1: There was actually a little bit about this in video
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 1: games recently, too.
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 6: There was a.
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 1: I forget which city it was.
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 2: In Iraq or.
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 1: Was it Iraq or Afghanistan? God, I feel like such
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 1: an American right now. Which country was it over there?
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 1: They were going to make a video game about another
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: military video game for recruitment purposes or whatever that they make,
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: and these guys were interviewing soldiers for it coming in
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 1: from one of the major sieges in Iraq when we
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: first took the country and talking about the fight that
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: happened there, and they got this idea in their head
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: to make a video game based around this battle. Like
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: this battle that just happened is a way of like saying, look,
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: this is what American soldiers just did. And it wasn't
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: intended to be like a criticism of the war or
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: anything like that. It was just purely like, let's see,
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 1: this is what current modern day warfare is. This is
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 1: something that just happened. You know, here are your objectives.
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 1: Here's the end result. And woohoo, we've just conquered Iraq.
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: You know, we've done that. And of course the United
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: States government pulled the funding out. and all these organizations
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 1: just jumped on them because they were turning it into
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 1: a game and stuff like that. But it's like right there,
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: you had people trying to make a story about something
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: current that was happening, but people reacted very negatively against it.
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 1: People reacted very negatively against trying to present something that
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 1: was maybe, I don't know, not so clearly defined for us.
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 4: It's almost like it's unbiased. And we want it to
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 4: be by choice. We want to feel like we're in
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 4: the right, not this is a horrible thing we just
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 4: did for whatever reason. This is just cutting it down
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 4: to the actions. And the actions, regardless of who's doing them,
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 4: is horrible. So it's hard to distance yourself that way
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 4: and just be like, oh, well now it comes through
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 4: a little too much.
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 6: We have to let history and generations distance us. So
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 6: it's okay to make ambiguous movies about World War II.
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 6: 40 years later but you're affecting you know populations opinions
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 6: about their country.
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 1: I want to ask that question in a more general
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: way though about uh about war stories though i mean
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: quite apart from politics you know just just talking about
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 1: war stories you know from any country or anything uh
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: is it possible for like is it do we want
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 1: like a bias in our war story is it like
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 1: insufficient for us as a war movie if there isn't
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: like a good guy and a bad guy or if
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: there isn't like a uh some sort of bias one
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: way or another like because even films that we say
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 1: are ambiguous like pretty clearly that some of them want
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 1: to be demonstrating that you know like we we met
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 1: we might be the bad guys or at least you
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 1: know they have hero and villain characters You know, like
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 1: maybe that's just a feature of war movies that we
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: need a bias of some kind regardless of who's fighting who.
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 4: Or just storytelling that we just need. Protagonists, antagonists, regardless
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 4: of whether it's on the battlefield or whatever. It's just
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 4: kind of how we do it as human beings in
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 4: our storytelling. And the more sophisticated we get with it,
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 4: the just more elaborate we make that same setup. While
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 4: we were on the World War II thing and not
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 4: doing it in the era, I did want to at
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 4: least mention the best years of our lives. That in
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 4: 1946 is telling this really ultra-realistic version of soldiers coming
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 4: home and dealing with not being able to adjust in
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 4: a time when nobody even talked about that. That sort
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 4: of thing didn't come up until Vietnam, really. But in 1946,
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 4: they're telling this story of guys that don't know how
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 4: to readjust, and the actor who actually had his hands
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 4: blown off, and is portraying that on screen, and just
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 4: as we're coming out of that situation, that's unusual.
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 6: It's a standalone kind of film.
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 6: And it seems like, well, the opinion is, the consensus is, well,
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 6: that's okay for a standalone film. It tells a noble
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 6: story about someone who's in this position and speaks for
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 6: a lot of people, well, let's not make too many
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 6: movies like that.
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and they didn't.
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 1: That's another World War I subject, too, is, you know,
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 1: the guys coming back with shell shock for the first time.
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 1: you know, British soldiers who came back and like, yeah,
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: you had the first reports of like, I don't know
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 1: what's wrong with me. I just wake up in the
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 1: middle of the night and I'm all terrified. And I
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: don't know why that is. Well, maybe it's because you
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 1: spent the last four years in a trench with bombs
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 1: going off all around you. Like, you know, you're traumatized.
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 1: Like people shouldn't live through that.
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 4: It's a weird situation. And the fact that it happens, yeah. Uh,
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 4: movies or not, it's just, it's a lot to deal with.
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 4: So yeah, I, I don't know that we can wrap
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 4: it up in this episode. I think we, I think
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 4: we best, uh, leave it alone at this point.
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 1: We can't put a stamp on it here.
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 4: I don't think we can. I think it's too much
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 4: to deal with.
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 7: Red Dawn, greatest war movie of all time.
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 5: Well, American movies, you know, they, they are from the
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 5: point of view of our hegemony. Um, and nobody else
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 5: has that as a factor in telling their own story.
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 5: That's kind of our little, um, we have to justify
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 5: ourselves because we have that, we're in that position of power.
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 6: Winners write history.
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 5: And it's like, so Pinocchio's nose grows. And I've just
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 5: invented the character of hegemony cricket.
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 1: Man, I hope he makes a reappearance.
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 4: You were working that.
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 2: Oh, man.
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 7: You're like, where's he going? Oh.
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 1: Man, I really hope you were thinking about that for
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 1: the last 15 minutes. Like, hegemony cricket.
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 4: I'm going to say that.
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 5: It just popped into my head.
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 4: I'm mapping it out on the table. I really like that, though.
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 1: Sort of the question of like, well, if we're winners,
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 1: does that mean that we have to write our history
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 1: like we're winners? Like, we have this need to.
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 5: We have to justify ourselves, or else we're just bullies.
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 5: We have to believe that it's for something, and that
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 5: goes back to the formation of the country, which we
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 5: were basically stealing. But in the name of ideals, this
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 5: idea that everyone's created equal, and we still have living
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 5: justices who refuse to recognize that this was forward thinking.
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 5: How can you not see that that was... part of
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 5: the deal we're going to pay for this later we're
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 5: doing that we knew what we were doing we knew
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 5: we knew we were stealing we knew we were taking
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 5: over uh but we had these ideals we were just
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 5: and that's the way we justified it to ourselves is
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 5: that we have these high-minded ideals that have never existed
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 5: in the world before and we're going to stand for
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 5: that and we're still trying to like Keep our account
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 5: straight with ourselves so we can feel okay about our
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 5: power and our position in the world. So I think
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 5: that's unique in American movies. You don't necessarily see that
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 5: when it's telling other stories. I think I saw a
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 5: movie about the Albanian genocide. It's not really a factor there.
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 1: And in fairness, as ambiguous as we've gotten, we haven't
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 1: had a real holocaust on our hands. There have been
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 1: horrible things that have happened in Vietnam and elsewhere. There
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 1: have been a lot of shady deals made. I think
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 1: that's one of the reasons also why we have made
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 1: so many gray war films is because we haven't really
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 1: been the villain villain yet. We haven't just... pounded another
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 1: nation into the ground for no reason or something like that.
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 1: We haven't had to recover from real, like Germany has
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 1: had to recover from realizing, oh my God, like our
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 1: government did horrible things in that period that like we
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 1: can't really justify ever. You know, we at some of
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 1: our worst moments were middlemen. I feel like that was
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 1: our learning moment.
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 4: The more you know.
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 7: The more you know.
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 4: Knowing is half the battle. Wait a minute.
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 1: I think we're on to something.
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 4: That's the real lesson. Thank you, G.I. Joe.
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 4: I guess we should use that to get ourselves out
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 4: of here.
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 1: Is that on a timer?
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 8: No.
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 4: It's magic.
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 5: I turned the volume all the way off, but I
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 5: guess that doesn't affect the text.
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 1: I wanted you to know.
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 2: It's time.
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 4: So with that, we do want to thank our friends
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 4: at the Dreamland Film Center for letting us come here
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 4: and agonize over war. They do have the festival coming up,
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 4: so go to littlefilmsociety.org and see what they've got in
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 4: store for us. Otherwise, that about does it. We will
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 4: return next week. Same geek time, same geek fee. Thanks
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 4: for listening.
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 7: What is it good.
• 1:47:42
  Speaker 1: For?
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 7: Absolutely nothing.
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 1: Say it again, y'all. What is it good for?
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 7: Absolutely nothing. Listen to me.
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 11: I despise, cause it means destruction.
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 7: Of this life.
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 1: I said, whoa!
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 11: Good God, y'all.
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 7: Absolutely.
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 11: Listen to me The war is an enemy to all men.
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 11: The thought of war blows my mind. War has caused
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 11: unrest within the younger generation. Induction, then destruction.
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 4: Who wants to die?
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 11: The war is an enemy to all.
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 8: Men.
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 7: What is it good for?
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 11: Absolutely nothing.
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 4: Listen to me.
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 7: It ain't nothing.
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 11: But a heartbreaker.
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 7: War has got one friend, that's the Undertaker.
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 11: War has shattered many young men's dreams, made him disabled,
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 11: better than me. Life is much too short and precious,
• 1:49:34
  Speaker 11: it's been fighting wars these days. War can't give life,
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 11: it can only take.
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 4: Absolutely.
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 9: Say it again.
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 1: What is it good for?
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 10: Absolutely.
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 7: Listen to me. It ain't nothing but a heartbreaker. Friend
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 7: only to the undertaker.
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 11: Peace, love, and understanding. Tell me, is there no place
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 11: for everyday? They say we must fight to keep our freedom.
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 11: The Lord knows there's got to be a better way.
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 11: Say what?
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 12: What is it for?
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 2: You tell.
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 8: Me.
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 1: Say it, say it, say it, say it.
• 1:50:35
  Speaker 8: What?
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 1: Oddly appropriate for the Black Cat, I think. All their
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 1: references to the horrors of warfare.
• 1:50:53
  Speaker 7: Oh, speaking of time travel, I never even thought of
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 7: this until.
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 10: This episode is a production of Movie Meltdown, produced and
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 10: edited by The Oddity Studios, with opening music performed by
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 10: The Empires. For more on how to sponsor or support
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 10: the show, email producer at moviemeltdown.com.
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 11: Talk hard!