Latest / Outskirts Film Podcast / #017 - Tex Avery: Of Mice, Wolves, Bunnies, Squirrels… and Men

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#017 - Tex Avery: Of Mice, Wolves, Bunnies, Squirrels… and Men · Outskirts Film Podcast

• 0:16
  Speaker 1: You're listening to the Outskirts Film Podcast.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: I'm Christopher Small, and I'm joined as ever by my co-hosts.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Hello, I'm Oyku.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Hey, I'm Alonso Aguilar.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Today we will be talking about Tex Avery, who for me is quite possibly pound for pound the funniest filmmaker of all time.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: As Walt Disney was the yin that laid the whole basis for animated films, Tech Avery was the Yang, giving us the grammar of raucous cartoon comedy.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: The fourth wall breaks director camera, the detonation and destruction of the animal human body, the self-aware gags right down to the pretty corny, isn't it, signs that characters hold up.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: He was both a distinctive director and a creative force that extended beyond the borders of his own films.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Tex Avery gave the world Bugs Bunny, Droopy, and Daffy Duck, and he redesigned Porky Pig, but he was never all that interested in characters.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: He was monomaniacally and above all else interested in landing a laugh.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: That is in the gag itself.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: He was born Fred Bean Avery in Texas in 1908 and got his start uh sketching comics.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: And upon moving to LA in 1928, he worked his way up through some budding animation studios, first as an inca, then an animator, and finally as a director.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: In 1933, while he was still an animator, Tex Avery lost his left eye while goofing around in the office with paper clips.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: This disability would later be credited with influencing his visual style with his very distinctive use of flatness and depth.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: Two years later, at Warner Brothers, where he was under Leon Schlösinger, Tex Avery talked his way into heading an animation unit which was confined to a bungalow on the studio lot, which they nicknamed Termite Terra Terrace.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: This allowed for freedom from studio interference, and it was there that Tex Avery mentored and helped shape the likes of Chuck Jones and Bob Clampett.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: When Leon Schlesinger tried to change the ending of The Heckling Hair, Tex Avery quit and signed at MGM, where he pushed his crazy style even further, creating many of his most enduring masterpieces in a 10-year period of creative freedom.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: What actually defines a Tech Savery cartoon isn't a single joke, it's a whole attitude towards jokes.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: Almost every one of his films sets up a premise and a character's motivation in the opening seconds only to abandon it moments later.
• 2:53
  Speaker 6: I wasn't as familiar as you did with Avery's uh universe, although I took a course when I was doing my exchange here in Paris about uh a hand and animation.
• 3:07
  Speaker 6: About we uh the the main subject of the the course was about how animation uh uses uh hand motives as a self-reflective tool in uh in its uh visual universe.
• 3:22
  Speaker 6: And our main um topic was mostly Disney films, and we used Eisenstein's text about Walt Disney as kind of like a guide to move through uh those films.
• 3:37
  Speaker 6: Maybe I'd love to ask and for you to elaborate more on what defines uh takes every cartoon and what dis distinguishes his style.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: I think it's sometimes over-emphasized that he was a kind of pioneer, that there was nothing and then there was him.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: Because, you know, as well as Disney, there were other animators and anim animation directors and animation studios that were doing a kind of like flippant and ironic version of Disney in various ways.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: Even the Fleischer brothers, you know, they're much more to me, much more perverse than Disney and much like full of full of a huge amount of interest.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: But I think it wasn't until Tex Avery that this way of seeing animation as a kind of liberating force, particularly in comedy, would bleed through into just like the basic grammar of how you make cartoons.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: Like when you watch these films again and again, or re-revisit them or watch them all in a in a close space of time, you see how these kind of auteurist touches in Avery Dumb are also just things that just became basic parts of cartoons.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: When the wolf sees a sexy lady, his eyes will like swell to the size of dinner plates, or that a character's body doesn't mean anything, that it's like perfectly okay for a wolf to be hit by a hammer and shatter into a thousand pieces and then immediately in the next scene be reconstituted.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: These things always existed in animation, but then when Avery came along, he just took them to another level.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: It's very interesting to see his films all together because they're very, very coherent.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: You know, he has like these few obsessions, these few um narrative styles that he just repeats again and again and again in different forms.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: Like uh it's like Yasujiro or something.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: And so now basically, when you look back at that time, it's in it's difficult to separate Tech Savory from just a general movement that he started, I would say.
• 5:33
  Speaker: His vision, his comedic vision, as Chris was saying, to me kind of like uh like flows and intersects like through throughout almost the history of like early animation or 20th century animation.
• 5:42
  Speaker: Because like if you see something like uh Page Miss Glory, which is kind of like starts like the most like Disney style animation, but then turns into this like very like art deco modern art style, already has kind of this like uh liquidity of like uh bodies and uh textures and how they all kind of like are in service of the gag.
• 6:00
  Speaker: Uh and then like as the animation starts like diverging from more like the perhaps classic like Disney textures, uh with like these like uh more rounded figures with like these big eyes and kind of this cutesy appeal starts to diverge into more I guess like uh abrasive uh character designs as he becomes more and more like I guess they gave him more like creative liberty and more like unhinged and free-flowing with what he's doing.
• 6:23
  Speaker: But to me, it's always interesting how like the history of animation also kind of like goes through his styles and how he always manages like to find ways and to find like space to make the most out of it in a way.
• 6:32
  Speaker: Like when I watch like the blowout, which looks again, like if you start just looking at like the cutesy, like puffy porky in that film, and then it it's like has this like awful terrorist who's like uh devicing bombs.
• 6:42
  Speaker: It's already kind of like a subversion, I think.
• 6:43
  Speaker: Like I think I never seen one of his films where it's like he just takes like the format and sticks to it.
• 6:47
  Speaker: He's always like in dialogue in in a way, just kind of constant dialectic between how what he wants to do, his subversion, and I guess like in a way, anarchism in his style, as his characters also have, is kind of what uh to me like encompasses his whole work.
• 7:00
  Speaker 6: I agree with you, especially in what you said about the liquidity.
• 7:04
  Speaker 6: I especially see that in the narrative form, like the progression of the narrative form rather than the figurative uh aspects, because I think that like a figurative capacity of characters is rather a common point in many animations that a body, a door, an object can like take many forms.
• 7:22
  Speaker 6: But I think the uncontrollable nature of narrative that you don't expect how uh a gag, a story will unfold is something very uh specific that I found in Avery's cartoon.
• 7:36
  Speaker 6: Especially in King Size Canary, like there's no limit to to to that growth, and you just like he ends up in a very he ends the film in a very whimsical and like nonsensical way, but that's also uh in a from a counterpoint.
• 7:52
  Speaker 6: There are patterns throughout the films, but not within them.
• 7:56
  Speaker 6: It's very hard to like track them.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: When he came to Hollywood, he was obsessed with screen comedy, so the Marx Brothers, Lauren Hardy, Chaplin, etc.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: There's there's a great book about Avery called Tex Avery the King of Cartoons from 1975, which ends with this long interview with him.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: In that interview, he he says that the way that they kind of got towards that style that you just described was through understanding that people wouldn't find it funny if cartoons did things that humans could do.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: When he was at MGM, is that he was just completely detached from any kind of requirement to make these films uh follow some kind of you know fixed pattern or to have characters who are somehow coherent or whatever, it was just like, is it funny?
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: If you think about King Size Canary, as I was re-watching it, I was just thinking that like there's no moment of that film where it's not funny from the beginning.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: And in order to tell, you know, to narrate some plot points in that cartoon, which after all is quite a simple plot, he never lets one of those plot points not be funny.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: So, for example, in the opening of the film, we see a cat who's kind of this early kind of progenitor of um Tom from Tom and Jerry, and he's he's walking and he's going to a house and he's gonna steal food from the house because he's very hungry.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: But there's a dog outside, and so he walks very, very slowly past the dog to not wake the dog up.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: And when the dog does wake up and looks around, his eyes are flashlights.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: That's not necessary, you know, but it's just just that plot point needs to be funny, you know.
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: Hey, wait a minute, pals.
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: What are you trying to do?
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: Eat me.
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: Well, forget it, see?
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: I've seen this cartoon before.
• 9:59
  Speaker 3: And brother, believe me, if you're smart, you won't eat me.
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: Cause before this pitch is over, I save your life.
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: Well, okay then.
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: In the next room, you'll find a great, big, fat, juicy canary.
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: Eat him.
• 10:32
  Speaker 5: Whoa, I can see.
• 10:35
  Speaker 6: Aries, at least Bucks Bunny, Aries cats that evolved, like as you said, like progenitor of these iconic characters, are not necessarily the ones that we know and associate with like the beloved I wouldn't say they they are beloved cartoon characters because there's this very shady, slippery side in their whole being, basically.
• 10:58
  Speaker 6: They're not sympathetic.
• 10:59
  Speaker 6: They you don't root for them to for them to like win something over or catch you don't root for El Mulfad, nor you would like you root for Bugs Bunny to like beat him.
• 11:10
  Speaker 6: Like it's it's it's it goes for both sides, I would say.
• 11:14
  Speaker 6: And that is also a different aspect of comedy that I think is different from maybe other cartoons, but I feel like it's more about moral questions of how they uh remind us the human qualities that that are mostly uh polished, embellished in um cinema of those times, and we have very ugly, mean, um nasty characters, and that adds an interesting dimension to to how uh the gags unfold.
• 11:47
  Speaker: I mean there's like clear dichotomy between like Chuck Jones and Avery in like despite playing so uh a lot of times with the same characters.
• 11:53
  Speaker: I kind of like see like almost kind of like a chaplain and Mark Brothers separation between them.
• 11:57
  Speaker: I mean, if you say like a Rabbit to Seville or like uh what's opera dog, Docamok, there's kind of like this like very like ornate high concept, like a lot of gusto into like uh the Chuck Jones cartoons, despite being also genius in their own ways.
• 12:08
  Speaker: Avery just like doesn't he gets his hands dirty, it's kind of this like anarchic almost body wheel that I associate more like with Mark's brothers, if in this case Chuck Jones being more of a kind of a chaplain.
• 12:17
  Speaker: Yeah, that I think that's the distinguishing element that kind of like keep keep surprising me about like watching like a bunch of like Avery cartoons is just this how mean they are, how mean-spirited they are, how characters he doesn't really have any affection for them in in their presence and their outcome.
• 12:31
  Speaker: And there's like not an even like a moment to like reflect onto what's happening to his characters.
• 12:34
  Speaker: And I think that's also what to me works in his like comedic style throughout his all all his films, and even uh to me at least, and perhaps I shouldn't say this, but I kept to me that kind of helps bypass perhaps some of the more like problematic elements of some of those films.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: Tech Savory never met a stereotype that he didn't like to exploit.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: Um and you know, like a lot of people doing things in 30s and 40s, he uh had some pretty obvious biases.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: So while everybody I think is available to be made fun of, uh there are certain races that he treats worse than others for sure.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: There's also uh you know, even the the best of these films are pretty misogynistic, even if I would say that you know they do there there is some shading there.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: Um but as Alonzo said, you know, at least for me, I mean I guess it's easy for me to say, but for me, you know, some of that like um raw energy is almost like so so overwhelming that it kind of forgives me.
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: So so so it's so often repeated, so uh so much an obsession of his that it's like easy for me somehow to sort of find a place for it.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: Like, for example, um in these films almost in in in a in a huge majority of these films, uh an antagonist uh is stopped from chasing the protagonist when the protagonist uh holds up uh a glossy picture of a pinup girl uh and uses that, a very curvaceous pinup girl, and uses that to stop the antagonist.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: And I started to catalogue as I was watching these films who these antagonists were.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: So it it involves uh a flea, a wolf, a fly, and even artillery shells, which in in Blitzwolf get fired towards the American side, and then they hold up this pin-up girl, and the the bullets get so horny that they go back to Germany.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: The like prevalence of like gigantic cock metaphors in all these movies is also you know flowing everywhere.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: You know, there's always some kind of gun, a pi a pistol that when it's like poked through a door, it grows in size, or the even the yeah, the weapons in in Blitz Wolf are like these giant penises.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: I think at one point one of the artillery weapons is kind of drooped over and they pour something into it and it goes.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: Yes, there are things that make me more uncomfortable than others, but in general it's like if you go into the world of Avery Dom, this is what you will you will find.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: You will find big cocks offensive stereotypes.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: Women in these films are alternately either kind of babes or old withered hags that nobody wants to have sex with.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: There's also like a strange undercurrent of bestiality in these films because they are all involve these animals, uh, and Avery doesn't seem to really register any kind of like dissonance in making these animals want to fuck humans.
• 15:44
  Speaker 6: All these stereotypes you mentioned like didn't came out of didn't come out of nowhere because they already existed in Hollywood, so it's most like the exaggerated versions and maybe like nastier versions of already existent trop existing tropes and studio films.
• 16:00
  Speaker 6: So I mean that's also a mirror, like the self-ref reflexivity and the fourth wall breaking is also operates on that level too.
• 16:08
  Speaker 6: Maybe I'm being too like analytical here, and uh but yeah, I I I would say that it's also another way of breaking the fourth wall through exaggerating the tropes, not necessarily in a like through the image, but making you conscious of what type of films that what type of uh films and genres that it's referring to.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: There's also different types of you know um racism, frankly, in these movies.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: So in uh Uncle Tom's Cabana, which is a really good one, uh when it begins you see these black characters and the way that they're sketched is this kind of classic racist style, and of course it's extremely uncomfortable as the film starts.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: But then Avery takes it to this kind of very crazy and disrespectful uh place that kind of undermines basically the whole of American society somehow, using these characters, turning them inside out, putting them in different contexts, etc.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: So it becomes like a a very fucked up, very problematic and racist text, but an interesting one that somehow is like tearing itself apart.
• 17:18
  Speaker: For example, I think of like uh old Liz and Rabbits 2, which is what is one of the Box Bunny.
• 17:22
  Speaker: I think that was one of the um uh Stands Red 11, which were like this series of uh banned cartoons for racist racist stereotyping.
• 17:28
  Speaker: But that one for like the like it's like 85% or 90% of like the cartoon, it's essentially just like like Elmer Fott or like an egghead kind of character that it just happens to be kind of like a very stereotypical, like southern, like uh like African-American.
• 17:42
  Speaker: But then at the end, like the main, like the final punchline, it is kind of like a very like stereotic and racist joke about like uh gambling addiction and things like that.
• 17:49
  Speaker: I think of Magical Maestro, which again is a film that's essentially almost half of the jokes are just like uh kind of like one-second uh racist jokes, I guess, like about like uh like Chinese music and about like uh soul singers.
• 18:05
  Speaker: The concept which is like character gets a magic wand and just like starts using it against an opera performer and he's kind of like switching like musical styles as he is transforming to different things.
• 18:15
  Speaker: Uh a lot of like are kind of like country, like western style songs, and then he's uh a blackface moment where he just like starts immediately singing uh like Krooner like soul and things like that.
• 18:27
  Speaker: So I guess it's to me it's like going towards like that impulsive element, which I don't I wouldn't say is like a good thing per se, but it kind of like informs what we like about him and also like the problematic elements and what we can be like kind of question about him.
• 18:39
  Speaker: That it's like feels to be like always in this state of like primal like urge, which I think almost like pours over his films in its like sexual politics, in its like racist jokes, and also in just like the way his universe always like molds in this chaotic way.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: Just his whole style is just pouring fuel on on already existing fires.
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: So these films kind of just you know they they push everything to such an emphasis that like if you have a racist society and you're making these films in that context, these these things will just uh catch fire.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: You know, I also I was re watching um uh Little Rural Riding Hood, which is really really good.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: But if you you know if you think about like how disrespectful he is to like southern people, as a southerner himself.
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: I mean he wasn't called Tex Avery for nothing, he was he was Texan, but it's just like there's just no limit to how disrespectful this is, you know, like the southern woman like opening the door with her foot.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: Oh my god.
• 19:41
  Speaker 6: Also, in cro in cross-country detours, like all these striptease, like like how some animals are like uh perceived as female are to me is very like I just like raise my eyebrows and like hmm, what are we having what are we having here?
• 19:57
  Speaker 6: Like a little lizard like doing a strip tease and like suddenly the I think it's the deer, like these animals like suddenly acquiring like feminine futures.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: Like Avery never did rotoscoping, they never traced over the outlines of existing people, they just uh they just invented from whole cloth.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: One of the only exceptions is that lizard strip tease, which is that they went downtown and they picked up a stripper and they brought her to the office and they recorded her and then they they they they sketched this outline and made a rotoscoped uh lizard strip tease.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: So it's like it's in the fabric of these movies, I'm telling you.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: I'm telling you.
• 20:39
  Speaker: I think that encompasses his whole move in a way, just like that.
• 20:42
  Speaker: That's a single instance of like him using that, and it's like natural sets.
• 21:22
  Speaker 6: Maybe let's talk a bit about characters.
• 21:25
  Speaker 6: Do you think that are there any quintessential Avery characters that like represents his style or represents his represents his ideas, represents his vision in terms of characters, or or is it mostly like spread over different characters, like more diffuse vision?
• 21:43
  Speaker: I don't know if it's specific character, but it's like tropes of characters.
• 21:46
  Speaker: And one of my favorite ones is it kind of like appears in the Badlock Blackie and also in kind of like the cat films in gener in general, which always gets me, and it's kind of like they have this like very like rough, like sleazy 19 like 1940s, like.
• 21:59
  Speaker: Italian American voice all the time for some reason.
• 22:02
  Speaker: Is that a guy that always works for me?
• 22:04
  Speaker: Like even like a small mouse, it kind of looks so cutesy, and he's like, So what are you saying?
• 22:08
  Speaker: Kind of like just like to me that always works.
• 22:10
  Speaker: And kind of like these like streetwise characters always on like the margins of society, knowing how to like subvert not only like the world, the semi like American world the characters are living in, but also like the cartoon world.
• 22:20
  Speaker: They just know how to like uh switch like the background and like uh immediately uh create elements out of thin air.
• 22:26
  Speaker: Like to me, also one of the recurring gags that always gets me is kind of like a character like paints like a rock in in like uh as it's like a steak or an apple, and then like the other character kind of manages to eat it naturally, and then when the other character tries to do that, then their like teeth all fall off, or like they there's a time to jump into a pool and then like they just crash and like uh collapse.
• 22:46
  Speaker: And to me, those kind of like streetwise characters I guess like are in a way kind of the quintessential element of that of his sensibility.
• 22:53
  Speaker 6: Just wanna add that about the cat uh films.
• 22:56
  Speaker 6: I love the cat that hated people because I think there's this uh exceptional aspect to it that the like the character, the the character that focuses the film focuses on intentionally like decides to do something rather than like uh suffering from the external uh consequences.
• 23:15
  Speaker 6: I mean the the cat again when the he's on the moon he suffers, but at least it's on his own volition that he goes there.
• 23:23
  Speaker 6: So I mean that kind of like character like a narrative development is uh a different style and different uh evolution in within the film.
• 23:33
  Speaker 6: So I love that film very much.
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: What you're describing, Alonzo, um Nick about this little cat with the with the with the voice.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: It's like to me that's what makes Tech Savory so funny is that he's someone who's able to do these like overarching meta jokes that are like deeply stimulating and uh intellectually interesting.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: Then he's able to do the mid-tier jokes, and then he's able to do the joke where it's just a mouse that has a funny voice.
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: And it's like it's like the the moving between those tiers of humor like from one moment to the next that I just find like so so deeply funny, you know, that he's so much able to just move between those different layers of comedy, like in a way that I don't think anyone else is.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: As I said, I don't think he's someone who really cares about a character all that much, but you know, because of the moment that he was working and his genius and also the genius of the people he was working with, they did either create or kind of crystallize these characters that are super, super famous, most notably Bugs Bunny, but also Daffy Duck.
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: Uh the wolf, of course, is kind of like the quintessential um Tex Avery character.
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: But basically, and also Droopy, I should say, at MGM, basically for Avery, like these characters they only exist as kind of narrative devices that he can use to play different levels of fiction against each other.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: So I think the wolf is there basically as this kind of representative of his own kind of sexually rapacious worldview that he can like deploy in various either evil or kind of either either evil contexts or as like points of identification for the narrative.
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: Uh Droopy is always a counter uh counter-character, so it's always like something is playing against Droopy, and like the the the joke is that Droopy is what he is.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: Whereas Bugs Bunny like kind of inhabits this kind of deeply ironic uh sort of laconic worldview that I think is also a part of Avery's character and is like is funny because he's like so so charming but so so able to be like vindictive and even like torture other characters.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: And I think then like to come to Screwy Skrull, I think Screwy Skrull was kind of this this moment where Avery kind of stepped a little bit across the line, uh where he created a character who's like so nasty and so unlikable that it almost like derails the films that he takes that he's in, you know?
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: He's almost like this experimental device for Avery to see just how far he can push the fiction.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: Uh, and often it goes across like the line, like the limits of the cartoon.
• 26:25
  Speaker: Yeah, to me that's also what in a way he's kind of like quintessential Avery character to me, because it is kind of like a like a curveb he drew.
• 26:31
  Speaker: Like uh he's like swinging for the fences in in that instance of creating Screw Skrull.
• 26:36
  Speaker: And even like the first cartoon, uh it is it starts out like a Disney parody film, and it's a screw scroll kind of like uh just like telling off and like actually beating off like a cute like Disney, like uh rabbit cartoon that's kind of like starting to like talk about like how beautiful and magical the forest is, and then Screw Skrull just appears, says not this kind of of cartoon and kit, and then takes the the the rabbit to like a little bush and just like you see like a harsh beating sounds and like fouse.
• 27:00
  Speaker: And he's he is kind of in a way that is his manifesto.
• 27:04
  Speaker: He's like, This is what you people like one of cartoons.
• 27:07
  Speaker: I'll literally like beat the shit out of like that cute rabbit and then make this like uh terrorist uh squirrel that just like without any purpose or reason, kind of in a boxbook anyway, just starts terrorizing this dog.
• 27:18
  Speaker: And again, like in the case that he doesn't even have quips or anything, he just like does does a lot of like uh I guess like annoying one-liners and very obvious like references.
• 27:29
  Speaker: But uh yeah, his arc to me is kind of like fascinating as well because each one of the cartoons screw squirrel is in is perhaps more like genre infused or more like a reference to something else.
• 27:40
  Speaker: Big Hill Wata, which is uh kind of like a very problematic like uh Native American the fiction film.
• 27:46
  Speaker: Uh but in that one, also uh going back to the iconography of the wolf to that point, that's a 1944, he already has like this kind of like self-constructed, I guess, like mythos around his work because in that film the wolf doesn't appear, but when the like the tribe is um the film is set in, they all get horny looking at this um like Native American babe, they all turn into wolves for one second, and uh one of the characters says that that is like the wolf like wolf howl of the tribe, and it's got all the kind of like oh, so a wolf is kind of this like cosmological cosmological entity of horniness, it's kind of like the the male eat in this universe, like but yeah, I was mentioning that film because in that one screw scroll is kind of also uh becomes also kind of this like suave, horny character in a way, and then the final one, uh Lonesome Lenny, which I don't know if you've seen that one.
• 28:33
  Speaker: It's an adaptation of uh Steinbeck's of Mice and Men.
• 28:36
  Speaker: But naturally, the only thing that Avery cares about that is like, oh, there's like the beast, this like big um mentally impaired character that is only knows how to love things by uh torturing them.
• 28:49
  Speaker: That's the only thing like Avery takes out of that Steinbeck book, and that's the joke he goes for.
• 28:55
  Speaker: And in that one, it's like the final uh in apparition of like uh Screw Squirrel, but even then like he perhaps knowing that he was a flop and making like the flop uh end is in his own means.
• 29:06
  Speaker: Like if you if you go to like the Shock Jones comparison, like he usually has like these hyper-referential like uh cartoons as well, but always perhaps with more like appreciation towards the material, whereas like in Avery in this case, he just like takes one single element, the most do-bow element, plays that up for laughs, and then like doesn't really care about the implications of that.
• 29:24
  Speaker: And uh, I don't know if it will be the spoiler, but like uh Screw Squirrel just like literally like the last frame is like the dead body of Screw Squirrel, and he like his characters like holds up a sign saying like sad ending, huh?
• 29:35
  Speaker: And then the cartoon ends.
• 29:36
  Speaker: And to me that that the arc of that character to me just like encompasses like perhaps the more like uh abrasive, like a rough around the edges elements of his work, and to me that's also like in a way the most interesting, despite not necessarily being his most inspired cartoons.
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and also uh I think you know, while he was at uh Warner's uh he would yeah, he was the person most responsible for coming up with Daffy Duck, and you see also in a lot of those, I think in Porky's Duck Hunt, you see a very kind of like protean version of Daffy Duck, also in Daffy Duck and Duck and Egghead.
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: You know, you start to see this Daffy Duck character starting to take shape, and he's also kind of screwy squirrel-esque.
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: You know, he's like this pure anarchic force uh who just like seems to take pleasure in tormenting uh these kind of various kind of Elma fud or Porky stand-ins.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: So there's always this kind of like hapless, neurotic, uh Porky-like figure, and then you have Daffy Duck who's like kind of inflicting physical harm and like mental torture on this character.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: Well, he left uh Warner Brothers, so therefore he left Daffy Duck behind.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: So, in a way, Screwy Squirrel was almost like an attempt to recapture that uh Daffy Duck energy, you know, like to return a device to him where you could just like have this completely sadistic character who has no uh like moral boundaries and basically just gets pleasure from inflicting pain on others, and like he just like I guess in his repertoire he just felt that was missing.
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: So he like tried to remake this character and it just it tr it transmitted too far, so they just you know Screwy Scroll had to die because it was just it was beyond the borders of acceptability.
• 31:19
  Speaker 6: Chris, you were referring to Drupy.
• 31:21
  Speaker 6: I feel like I had a lot, like a lot of hard time trying to watch Druopy films.
• 31:26
  Speaker 6: He gives me an ick, I don't know what to why, but like he's just so annoyingly insufferable, complaining about his existence all the time.
• 31:36
  Speaker 6: I'm I'm miserable, like all the time, like in this like very doomer mood, so that I hate him as a cartoon character.
• 31:45
  Speaker 6: All the other characters, like Bugs Bunny, um Kat, like Kat is a bit ugly as well, but like there's this charming and like charismatic quality in them, like or or this bubbly, like this animation is related to movements, right?
• 32:00
  Speaker 6: Like you need to be like uh jumping around, moving, but Droopy is just like very static.
• 32:06
  Speaker 6: So I think that's also his whole being kind of contradicts the animation.
• 32:11
  Speaker: To me, like the Druopy template.
• 32:12
  Speaker: I think you've seen this as well, the blowout, uh the 1936 uh Porky Pig cartoon.
• 32:18
  Speaker: But in that one, like the the Druopy standing is Porky Pig, and he kind of brings a different element to it because uh if Druopy is kind of this like gloomy, almost like stoic figure, like almost kind of like a slasher serial killer, like he just like appears everywhere with like being announced, and he's almost like this metaphysical force.
• 32:36
  Speaker: Porky is kind of this like almost childish, innocent, clumsy character that also always also appears uh every single time like the antagonist is trying to like uh get off with his plan on like uh in this case like bombing New York City.
• 32:48
  Speaker: But like it's like Porky kind of provides uh kind of some affect towards like his uh way of appearing and like uh intermingling in these like antagonist plans, whereas I guess Droopy is more just I do find it funny in in his like he's more like uh anonymous in a way, but to me it kind of becomes like a self-referential guy in Avery that just Droopy is this he's so so against type of all his characters that I think that's what to him became interesting.
• 33:16
  Speaker: Oh yeah, droop is the counterbalance to all my like fun boy characters, and he just like this and he all that also I think that you were saying, like the fact that he always wins is kind of like I guess like a subversion of audience expectation despite always happening.
• 33:29
  Speaker: I don't know, but yeah, I I can I can see why.
• 33:32
  Speaker: Uh I would say, like, yeah, I don't like Druopy himself.
• 33:35
  Speaker: I like like the Drupy cartoons because usually he's paired with someone more interesting, like the wolf, usually.
• 33:40
  Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean the the antagonist is more interesting than Droopy, and and you kind of like uh observe them more than what Druopy is doing, at least, or like because he's just like I mean I think Chris you were saying this about like they are not like active and squirrels and um Droopy are not really the heroes or like active agents of the story, but they become somehow the become the winners in a way.
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: Droopy is basically like Forrest Gump, you know, like he's not Oh my god, he's so annoying.
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: He's annoying, he always succeeds despite his best efforts, and he always shows up in like the most important moments.
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: Um But if you look at a film like Dumbhounded, you see how like the joke doesn't work unless Droopy is what he is.
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: Like that whole film is built around Droopy being that fucking boring, depressing guy.
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: Uh because he but he's always there, you know.
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: That's that's the joke, is that he's always like he's like a punctuation mark rather than a character.
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: Like there's a scene in that film where basically the premise of the film is that a wolf the wolf escapes from jail, uh, and then uh Droopy like is uh haunting him wherever he goes.
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: Like he's detective Droopy and he's gonna catch the wolf.
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: So wherever the wolf goes, Droopy is waiting for him, like the Arctic or whatever it is.
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: And there's one moment where he jumps out of a skyscraper.
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: The the premise of this joke doesn't work unless you have Droopy at the top and Droopy at the bottom being completely static.
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: But the the meat the meat of the joke is the fact that when the wolf is falling, uh an undertaker jumps out of the building, falls down with him, measures him for a suit, and then goes back inside the building.
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: So like that wolf character is much more able to be, you know, dynamic, like that's the body of the joke.
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: But it just somehow doesn't work unless Troopy is there at the bottom, like being himself.
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: But you're right, like if you compare him uh with Porky, for example, you know, Porky is also the butt of the joke in some way, but he's a much more neurotic and much more textured as a character, you know, and when he's he's a bit like Elma Fudd, like when he's tortured, he's like very sensitive and emotional and often breaks down in tears.
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: Uh so there's yeah, a bit more a bit more texture to that character, I guess.
• 36:29
  Speaker 4: Hey, uh, what kind of a cartoon is this gonna be anyway?
• 36:33
  Speaker 4: Well, you see, I play the lead in the picture, and my name is Sammy Squirrel, and the story is all about me and my cute little furry friends in the forest.
• 36:46
  Speaker 4: Oh, but rather not that and Wallace Woodchuck and Buster Magic and Horace Hedgehog and Scott Skunk and Barney Bear and Tommy Monkey and Dottie Duck.
• 36:59
  Speaker 4: You wouldn't like the story anyway.
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: When you get to the MGM years, you see very, very clearly that Avery starts to become less and less interested in in characters per se.
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: And then you get you go from characters to types.
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: And I think, you know, those films like Bad Luck Blackie, for example, you know, is one of his masterpieces.
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: It doesn't have any characters in it.
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: I mean, I guess like Spike the Bulldog, but it's not really the same.
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: You know, so he at that point he's just like he's sketching with types.
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: You know, he's moved away from character just towards types because he no longer is so interested in that.
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: You know, it's just like about evoking sensations to arrive at a joke, I guess.
• 37:44
  Speaker: Yeah, I guess in that sense of types, uh, I can see like uh King's Ice Canary and what what I think is perhaps one of his uh masterpieces, uh what's Boss and Bossard.
• 37:51
  Speaker: It's kind of like a microgenre of itself, which has just one simple premise, which is like a couple of characters like one-up in themselves until it becomes almost like outrageous, like this tense they they're going to eat each other, in both cases actually, uh, or like at least to one-up each other.
• 38:06
  Speaker: Dialectical confrontation between characters uh just like allows him to do all this like progressive, uh very like quick, quick, quick-paced amalgamation of like physically harm gags and ways of characters can harm each other, but since it has to continue because he has another gag has to come in, then like the characters just like reform themselves to in the immediately in the next frame.
• 38:27
  Speaker: And that kind of like liberty, I think, kind of like showcases one of his to me, like it's one of his like strongest uh templates of like cartoon in a way, just like two character two character confrontation and uh usually in like a very like urgent need for the characters and like whose urge will like impose over the other.
• 38:45
  Speaker: And actually, in I think in in both cases, it doesn't really have a conclusion.
• 38:49
  Speaker: He only cares about like the the build-up and the setup, and doesn't really want I guess in his whole career, he doesn't really care about like that ending.
• 38:56
  Speaker: That ending is also an opportunity to like put uh just like one final gag and to like uh pull the audience's hair one more time and then just ends.
• 39:03
  Speaker: There's never any like I was like narrative satisfaction in any of these formats.
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: I guess that's also where the the Laurel and Hardy connection comes from because that was I think one of their inspirations working with uh Leo McCary was basically this idea that you could just you don't need to have a kind of overarching overarching structure, you just need to have one small premise that gradually billows out into something truly absurd.
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: And I think a film like um Bad Luck Blackie, which I know that both of you really like as well, is like uh a perfect demonstration of that, like a very sort of simple premise that itself is like very absurd.
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: And then it's just about all the ways that you can like push that to the limit of the joke.
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: You know, it's a house on fire, there's trumpets blaring, there's wolves with their eyes shooting out, you know, it's like it's a very abrasive kind of humor that I think you i is can is kind of alienating if you're not on the level for.
• 40:03
  Speaker 6: I would also argue that I think there's this spontaneous element that uh one needs when when they watch cartoons, because you are like experiences of cartoons used to be at least like just like stumbling upon them, at least like, oh, there's this cartoon that I want to watch.
• 40:23
  Speaker 6: At least that's the case for me.
• 40:25
  Speaker 6: And then you kind of like mirror the experience of characters, like suddenly uh like bombarded with jokes and like unexpected things happening.
• 40:35
  Speaker 6: But in in the in our case, like watching systematically films one after another, it kind of I think breaks the effect of uh humor that you would have if it was if you watch like if you like change channels and you just stumble upon something and you you kind of open yourself to to very in a very exp unexpected way.
• 40:57
  Speaker: I think the effect is much better and welcoming than no no, I get what you're saying, because I mean they weren't meant to be consumed the way we like uh saw them, which is like jumping through the ages in this, like I don't know, like I like seeing like 30-20 films in my case.
• 41:13
  Speaker: I only seen like I seen like 10 films per day for the last couple days of his, which uh is a little bit too much perhaps.
• 41:19
  Speaker: Uh although I did have like this uh George Lucas meme experience of like when I saw like a gag that I had just seen like two films prior, like oh it's like poetry, it rhymes.
• 41:27
  Speaker: Uh that's like kind of the thing Chris was also mentioning, also in the sense like just seeing these uh recording structures almost also like repeating gags all the time almost becomes endearing if you kind of like uh feel immersed in these universe, but as you say, uh it wasn't really built in that way.
• 41:45
  Speaker: But I think there's there's something in there in the the additive element and the cumulative effect.
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: Like the way that these films were made, because I think it's it's quite relevant.
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: Like as you said, this it's it's weird to watch them in such close succession because they were never meant to be seen like that.
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: I mean, only when they were later repackaged, and even when they were shown on TV, it was never quite like this, and never from a single filmmaker.
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: Um but basically the way that these films were made was that you know some of them were were made uh more quickly, which I think is what you identified earlier is basically they're called like spot gag cartoons, so it's where there's like a very simple premise, and basically it's just one joke after another, and that for them was the easiest one to make.
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: So usually when you see those ones, it's because they were stuck working on something longer, and basically yeah, Texavory would work a lot of the time with writers like Heck Allen, for example, um, and they would sit down and they would basically work out the story and the gags of the cartoon on paper first, and those papers would be like both plot gags and also some visual sketches of some things that could be.
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: And they said basically that those would take the best cartoons would come out in two weeks as as a as a kind of script.
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: Uh then ones that were more difficult would take like four or six weeks.
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: And so when they would be stuck on a four or six week project, then they would either go to a spot spot cartoon, uh like these just recurring gags, or maybe they would revisit uh uh a premise that they had done before, like for example the Red Red Hot Riding Hood.
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: And it and as Alonzo said, I mean, it's interesting for me to see those films together because you can just kind of take pleasure in the variation.
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: So you see that often in those kind of quasi-sequels to the earlier films, like he he's already got the premise out of the way.
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: So things move faster and become more perverse in their humour because he's he's not obliged to tell the story.
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: Um like the Is a film called Northwest Hounded Police, which is basically a remake of Dumbfounded.
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: And you just basically see like the same jokes, but they're they're faster, they're shorter, they're nastier, because he's just like the grammar has been established somehow.
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: Around 1951-52, Texavery had um kind of a physical breakdown, basically, that he just was completely overworked.
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: So sometime between 1950 and 1952, he took a year off.
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: And then when he came back, he wasn't quite the same.
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: You know, he didn't have quite the same manic energy, and I think it bleeds through to the films uh that were made after that.
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: Some of them still really, really good, to be honest.
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: But also at that point, animation had changed, and like the animation style had changed to this kind of animation style that maybe now we would associate with kind of the 60s, like the kind of jet Jetsons and Flintstones, like with the kind of blank backgrounds and the curved faces and stuff.
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: It was always like very unsettling for me to see Tex Avery like change his animation style, which goes to show that even someone who's like as a major an auteur as him was still under the whims of you know fashion and taste.
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: A really good one called uh Crazy Mixed Up Pup from 1955, which is another sort of quasi-bestiality premise.
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: A man and his dog leave his wife and dog wife in the house to go for a walk.
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: Like the man has a wife, and the dog also has a like poodle wife, and they they go for a walk and they get hit by a truck flattened, and when the paramedics come, they have a jar that says plasma and another jar that says dog plasma, and they put it they put it in the wrong way around, so that when they go home, the man is acting like a dog, and the dog is acting like a man.
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: And it's again he pushes it pretty far, and it's but it's an interesting kind of collision of sensibilities because it's all animated in that very kind of that later style that you don't associate with Avery, but the humor is just is pure Avery, so it's it's a very strange mix.
• 46:17
  Speaker: Uh Magical Master is also, I guess, like a 52, which to me that's one of the highlights.
• 46:20
  Speaker: Although that one is also kind of like a one kind of one gag kind of like uh cartoon, in a sense, like you see him like the the opera singer like switching genres and switching ethnicities with the power of magic.
• 46:33
  Speaker: Uh but then I guess like the ones I wasn't as big on from that period, kind of like tomorrow, the House of Tomorrow and Car of Tomorrow series to me is kind of very lazy usually, which is like a futuristic axe, kaleidoscopic look of things, and it's kind of like this constant pan of like look, a toaster, look, uh refrigerator.
• 46:54
  Speaker: Um doesn't really feel too it's like too constrained to me to what I like about Avery.
• 46:59
  Speaker: And then there was like another one, uh one of the late droopy ones, uh, which is called Deputy Droopy that I saw.
• 47:05
  Speaker: He seemed to do like a lot of droopy ones in the final stage of his career.
• 47:09
  Speaker: I guess like that was like the uh the legacy act he he he still had.
• 47:13
  Speaker: But in that one, there's like the droopy figure, but it's also one joke, which is like these two outlaws uh are trying to sneak in and steal like uh in a like western town uh steal some gold uh from the police station.
• 47:26
  Speaker: But then it's like they have to be quiet, and so the only gag is like they get hit by something and they have to run out of town, scream, and then come back to town.
• 47:34
  Speaker: And that's funny, like the first two times they do that same joke like 24 times in seven minutes.
• 47:38
  Speaker: Uh so it kind of feels also like I don't know if like uninspired per se, but I guess it was more like a hit or miss in terms of like the effort put into, and it like also feels more there's not as much as we were saying all these visual gags and this like almost collapsing universe felt like a little bit more like slowed down a little bit.
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: The recurring trend of this podcast that like we we see how clearly you know directors are able to work in bursts because of like very historically contingent conditions, and then when those conditions change, maybe they continue but in a different way, or maybe it just extinguishes them.
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: And as I said, you know, tech savory is like there's no sensibility stronger than tech savories, in my opinion.
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: And yet, like when it arrives at this point, because he's an animator in particular, changes in the way animation is done, changes in the distribution of animation, all this stuff has a huge bearing on him.
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: Also his physical tiredness, because as I understand it, he was like a huge workaholic before, and at some point he just kind of had this breakdown and just lost his energy.
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: And you see it in those later films, like you still see the spark of energy, but you see that the animation style has changed, and you also just see the tempo has slowed down.
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: And he's as you said, you know, there's a lot of droopy films, there's a lot of those like Farm of Tomorrow and stuff like that, because it's like, well, I just don't have the energy anymore, you know?
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: And so then when you go back, you see how you know in Warner Brothers he was able to do this, you know, those Warner Brothers films are very, very beautifully drawn, and then he gets to MGM and he's unleashed for like 10, 11, 12 years, and then it's like okay, the spirit has passed.
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: You know, and and after after that point he worked a lot in advertising and he wrote gags and stuff like that, but it was it was gone.
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: Like that moment of Avery Dumb was gone.
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: Whereas someone like Chuck Jones even continued into the 60s and was able to, you know, redefine himself uh into you know making like the Grinch and stuff like that.
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: We can end with just talking about, you know, maybe a little bit about why people should go back and look at Avery himself.
• 49:48
  Speaker: To me, it's more like uh the sensibility he has, which I think is very unique, and even in the context, um particularly looking back in like comedic uh the history of comedy, I think there's something to even like his not as well-known films.
• 50:01
  Speaker: Uh like I go back to two films I didn't mention, uh Buddy Baseball and uh Dogs with uh Dirty Mugs, which are some of my favorites of his.
• 50:08
  Speaker: And he's like taking one niche, like a specific thing as like his baseball as a subject, and like crime films.
• 50:14
  Speaker: He the way he just like fully immerses in that world and then gets like gags for like every single second of like eight, seven, eight minute duration.
• 50:22
  Speaker: It's very abrasive and very like uh like overwhelming, but also that's kind of like what gets you into that.
• 50:27
  Speaker: Every opportunity, everything is just like a gag, a potential potential to like make fun of you in a way that holds no punches, and in that sense, I guess that spirit to me is something that should be like remembered in a way.
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: Dear listeners, go watch Who Killed Who, and you will find a dictionary of style.
• 50:45
  Speaker 3: That's the last straw.
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: I give up, I'm gonna throw myself into the lion.
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: But there's just one thing that's bummer on me.
• 51:19
  Speaker 3: I wonder if there could have been more than one of them little guys.
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: Now now that we've put uh Mr.
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: Texavery behind us, what have you been watching this past week?
• 51:42
  Speaker 6: Yeah, I've I've been attending Venice Film Festival, so I've been watching films here, and uh I mean it's um annoying to say that like the festival program is in is not good, so I won't tell that.
• 51:54
  Speaker 6: Um but I had some highlights here, um especially documentary that was uh premiered and out of competition called uh Queer Edward II, which takes place in um during Derek Drummond's Edward II, and it's actually um taken from an archival footage that was believed to be like um lost, or like at least um the cinematographers Seamus McGarvey, who shot this film uh as a young cameraman, believed to be lost, and uh Theo Rolasson, who made this film, is uh basically used as archival material to uh depict the broader, the broader picture of British society in the early 90s, how the Britain is going through the some political changes regarding uh homosexuality, but also since uh Jarman was also diagnosed with AIDS in a couple of years ago, he's also dealing with AIDS.
• 53:01
  Speaker 6: And I really liked how um the film adds this like broader context to the film about censorship, about representation, about the tensions that uh go through queer communities.
• 53:16
  Speaker 6: And because I think, especially in documentaries, like uh somehow for the sake of like solidarity and representation, we always want to like portray queer artists as very inspirational, very queer activists and queer communities as very inspirational and always going, always aiming for like moving forward, whereas here uh through concepts of or the notions of outing, it creates a tension within the community.
• 53:42
  Speaker 6: Like not it's not just about like everything is going well, but it's there are like groups who are solid who who support uh uh each other obviously, but also have a lot of tensions regarding certain uh concepts and uh and approaches of like they, for example, there's a very uh interesting scene because um during the shoot the shoot uh there's a musician who's like right-wing uh or like Christian and who's um believed to be like close at it called Cliff Richards.
• 54:19
  Speaker 6: He's also like recording uh next to the studio, and then they go the activists who take who took part in the Derek Jarman's film like try to like force with into his studio and say like go outside the closet, like they try to they create they create a scene, and meanwhile Derek Jarman is watching like them with a like a silly, uh whimsy smile on their face, and they he just says, like, they're adults, they can do whatever they want, but that caused a lot of problem to the production.
• 54:55
  Speaker 6: So all these are shot in a very um the I would say like the office style verte uh cinematography.
• 55:03
  Speaker 6: So it feels very organic, like as if they were already making a film, but it's just like behind-the-scenes footage of the shoot.
• 55:10
  Speaker 6: So I I found it very uh accomplished in what it was trying to do as an archival documentary.
• 55:18
  Speaker 6: So that was one of the highlights uh from my from the festival.
• 55:22
  Speaker 6: And how about you?
• 55:23
  Speaker: I did see one of the Prince Charles Cinema's one pound screens, and they showed like a film called Rancho of the Lux by Frank Berry, which is a filmmaker I'm uh I'm I'm aware of, but I haven't really been exposed to his work.
• 55:35
  Speaker: Uh this is kind of like a very like loose hangout like cowboy film, but it's a kind of cowboy film in like a 1970s like new Hollywood style, in a sense that there's like it's like uh under the meneer of like uh naturalism and like kind of like a more grounded state of affairs.
• 55:52
  Speaker: So kind of like the mythology of the cowboy is no longer there.
• 55:54
  Speaker: It is kind of like a counter-culture, kind of like very low stakes kind of film, like kind of like a couple of uh cattle rustlers, uh Jeff Bridges and Sam Watterstone, who just like hang around, like just like viciously actually shoot cows and like steal like meat, and then they're just like uh having sex with the ranches, uh daughters in the outdoors, and you get like and it's like nothing really happens in the film.
• 56:19
  Speaker: I just see them like in like 70s Montana just being chill.
• 56:23
  Speaker: Since it's in the 70s, and the characters are also in the 70s.
• 56:26
  Speaker: There's a lot of weird side characters, and it doesn't feel like this ultra like masculine energy in the sense in that way, because they're kind of like pseudo-hippies, like the main characters, sex-sided character, and you have like Jardine Santon going on side quests and getting his nipples sucked, and it's like a very like raunchy film, also, like very lowbrow.
• 56:43
  Speaker: But yeah, I was quite surprised by this film because uh seeing it it kind of looked more as like a kind of a sentimental throwback to like some sort of like late western style, but it's actually none of that, and also what I was worried about was it was gonna be just this like new Hollywood style 70s, more like uh bleak version of that, but it isn't as well.
• 57:01
  Speaker: Like I guess like the fact is in Montana, and there's like a lot of like uh to me at least like funny accents happening, and a lot of like old people in the film, and old people doing like very like youthful things, uh, to not spoil some of the interesting things that happen.
• 57:15
  Speaker: Uh so yeah, it's like a like basically no drama, like they just kill a couple cows, and that's like the whole mystery of the film and the whole like uh situation that puts the town in in peril.
• 57:25
  Speaker: Cool hangout film, I would recommend it, and uh kind of like gave me like uh interest to look into more like a Frank Perry's films.
• 57:32
  Speaker: Uh what about you, Chris?
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm I'm here in Cinematic in Piesztani, Slovakia, because I'm doing a retrospective of Niels Mamos.
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: So watching his films again with him, uh because surprisingly he's been seeing all the films.
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: Uh him and his wife have been watching all the films again, which is unusual, I would say.
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: So seeing them next to him and her has been very nice, you know, even though the films are super intense and personal.
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: But I also, while here just got a chance to catch up on a couple of new films, um, including Diary of a Chambermaid by Rider Jude and uh Peppa Lobojatsky's If Pigeons Turned to Gold, which won a documentary prize in Berlin earlier this year.
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: And I think I mean you know, both are very, very nice films, so I was very happy to catch them both.
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: Made me st start to think about this as kind of um you know how much pleasure I can get when a filmmaker uh has a very kind of strong hand in structuring the films.
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: Uh, because I think you know films now f I for the most part drifted in a more naturalistic direction, at least in the world of festivals.
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: And so when there's a filmmaker who's really willing to overtly structure the film, even at the risk of kind of deforming the drama, it's usually a high pleasure that I get.
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: So in Radu's film there are these um date time cards that like an Eric Romer film break it up into individual days.
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: Uh but I think they're just like aerial font on black screen.
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: And sometimes he really gets a lot of humour out of the moment that he chooses to cut, like sometimes it's really outrageous, like cut cutting mid-sentence and things like that.
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: But it helps to orient you in this film, and I think, you know I I don't know how much I have to say about it, but it just um makes it a richer experience for me.
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: And this this film also, you know, in general is just full of like the pleasures of Radu and he's at his best, like lots of wonderful vulgarity, you know, rubbing rubbing the contradictions of Europe in your face in the in the most vulgar way possible.
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: But it's also, you know, and unlike um Continental 25, which I also like, uh it's actually well shot, so there's also some pleasure in the images themselves.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: It didn't corrupt him, it just, you know, it just gave us a few more nice images, which is nice.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: Um so that that's very good.
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: And then um When Pigeons Turn If If Pigeons Turn to Gold is a Czech Slovak uh documentary that won the Berlin Documentary Prize this year, and it's uh about the filmmaker's addicted uh homeless brother and her relationship with him.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: And I was thinking that you know in in a film about homelessness and addiction, in a way there's kind of a spectacular quality to it.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: Like people want to see the horrors that people the the horrible living conditions that people can be forced into.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: I think it's is is something always present in these kind of films, like as the audience is almost waiting to see how far the film can can or where the film can take you.
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: Her style is also structured through the use of title cards uh and these uh photographs that she uses AI to like bring back to life in a very tacky Radaruda-esque way.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: So at no moment in the film are you totally immersed, you're always aware of this structure that she's showing you.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: Um and it doesn't always work, but it's you know, she's able to be playful with the images and to be playful with the structure of the film, which is something that I really realized seeing these two films that I very much appreciate, you know, much much more than uh kind of flat naturalism.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker: That's all folks.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker: This was our conversation regarding the high altruism of uh Take Savory cartoons, all their horny wolves and bumbling buffoon characters.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker: Uh next week we're switching towards a more somber environment.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker: Still sexy though, with uh General Dan.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker: Uh so be tuned for that in the next couple weeks.
• 1:01:52
  Speaker: Any comments, uh letters, be it love or hate, you can send them at outskirtsfilmmagazine at gmail.com.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker: You can follow us on Instagram at outskirtsfilm mag to keep up with what we're doing, and also uh listen to us on your favorite streaming platform.