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Are Movies Back? · Boomer Has It!

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: I am big.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's the pictures that got small.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: That, of course, was Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: It was the pictures that got small.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: That was a veiled reference to television in 1950 when the film came out.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: That was a real threat to the movies then.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Lately, it's it's been streaming that's been the major threat to the business.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: But and a lot of people thought that the biz was um was about over, that the theatrical business of showing movies in cinemas was finished.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: But this year, 2026, is turning out to be Bafo Box Office.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's the strongest year for the box office in theatrical rentals since before the lockdown in 2019.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Are the movies back?
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm JB Miller in London.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Jim Jelamis at the Twisted Spine bookstore right here in Brooklyn.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: And this is Boomer Has It.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: So Jim, you you've been a first-rate movie moviegoer lately, I've noticed.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: So you're like sort of um exhibit A in this in this podcast.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: So what has sent you back to the movies lately?
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's something to do.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, we're the New Yorker had an interesting essay called craving, craving something around the line of craving inefficiency, which is the fact that every technology promises us more convenience.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: And we don't get out of the house, we don't do anything.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: And um, so it's that's one thing.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: The movies I've seen, I made it to an art house film called The Secret Agent.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: I saw a blockbuster called Project Hail Mary.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: I recently watched Obsession, and the missus and I went out to see The Invite.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so you know, part of it is maybe I hope we can touch on this, is why a collective viewing experience is better than a solitary or at-home viewing experience.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, it is.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's really different.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I am, as you know, I'm a I'm a huge movie fan.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a cyniste, I'm a self-confessed cyniste.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: I must have 1,500 DVDs and Blu-rays.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I do not go out to the cinema much here in London.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: It is so expensive.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I have a uh I have a video projector um and a pull down screen.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um can I can I ask, how expensive is it in US dollar terms to go to the movies?
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's I feel like I'm asking for trade data from a from a well, I mean, in my uh in my local posh cinema here in Barnes in Richmond, um, it's gone up to 18 pounds fifty to see a film.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: I would guess that's about$25, maybe.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there's a senior discount of 12 pounds during the week before 5 p.m.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: through Thursday.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's not a very generous um schedule.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh do you have to have a walker to to verify your age?
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: Or maybe like I don't know, like a Gerrit Hall prescription.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: 12 quid, 18 pounds fifty.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's just no, I could I could afford to go, I could afford to to see a movie every now and then.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think the pensioners in old London town can get to the I think it's cheaper to use Blu-ray if you're it's just it's well, yes, it's absolutely sticker shock because I can't help thinking, oh, if I was gonna spend 12 or 18 pounds on a movie, I could get, you know, what four or five DVDs at a charity shop, or I could buy a new Blu-ray and watch it at home.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: But when you watch it at home, you know, you in my case, I'm solitary, I live alone.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: So uh I miss seeing things, especially comedies, you know, with an audience.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's great.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: When you see a comedy in a movie theater, people are laughing.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, or if you see a well, let me ask you, you saw um obsession, which is a what uh it's a horror, horror genre.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: Or what what would was the audience responding uh vocally to it when you saw it?
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, although it it doesn't stand out because we're all doing it together, it was very well synchronized.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: And and you know, but sometimes there you'll hear someone laugh at something during a film and it's a joke you missed, or it's a subtlety that that went over your head.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: So sometimes you get clues um about how to view a film when you're with other people.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's funny because I was talking about it with Carol, and she was mostly thinking about reasons why it's annoying to go to the theater.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and because someone's too tall, it's in the seat in front of you, or there's some guy with a noisy cellophane wrapper taking out his raisinettes, uh, or any any number of reasons, which I think I think movie theater cinemas have c largely solved for with stadium seating and wide aisles.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: Has the experience uh changed since COVID?
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: But that's what a lot of people have been saying.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: People were used to for two, you know, a couple of years, watching everything at home and being noisy and you know, getting up to get popcorn or whatever, um, talking or looking at their phone.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: Has that spilled over still to to movie theaters, or are people um as attentive as they used to be, you know, BC before COVID, if I can put it that way?
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think you're about to reveal some interesting data about movie going, and I'll at the expense of giving some of it away, it's it tends to be generational.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: We have Gen Z and millennials attending the theaters, and they're famous rule followers, as opposed to us, as opposed to boomers who are rebels at heart and shapeshifters in form.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: And um, so being a baby boomer, I sort of flaw I flouted the rules that say do not turn your phone on.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there's a warning, there's a short warning video that you watch.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: I left mine on to see something, maybe the weather.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: And millennial, some couple of millennials said, You're just supposed to turn the oh good for them.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm I'm on their side.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: The movie hadn't even started, you bastard.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah, no, I was sort of like goomer.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, follow the rules, rule followers.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, you yeah, I mean, I I looked it up.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, a report recently said that um 87% of Gen Zers and 82% of millennials saw at least one movie um in a movie theater in the last year.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that that's not a lot, but it's um uh more than none uh compared to 70% of Gen Xers and 58% uh baby boomers.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um so and I think that those almost so 58%, that's almost half that don't go to the movies.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean this was our in our cohort.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, this but this uh this was um you know asterisk here because this was a but before this great I don't know when this uh survey was done, but I mean I think those numbers have probably gone up because uh people are returning to the to the movie.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's counterintuitive, isn't it, JB Miller?
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: Right that that's gonna be too that a cohort that grew up in and saw the evolution of you know film from the silver screen going from black and white to color to the small screen on television and then sense around sound, um, that they they turned away from the the movies and at a a generation that you know at best started you know the technology they saw was maybe VHS, are are drawn before well how do you account for that, Mr.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: Cinny ass?
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well, come on.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, VHS is going back to the 1980s, but I think it might be uh partly a um a reaction uh to um being you know bored and stuck in at home, you know, young people are social creatures.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it reminded me of uh, you know, I I made a note of this.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: The success of I success the box office could be um a reaction to people just being sick of um of sitting alone.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: And according to a Guardian article, and I think this is slightly um slightly um uh apropos.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: So according to a Guardian article, cut and paste fanzines are back.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: Do you remember cut and paste fanzines from the 70s, late 70s, early 80s?
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think of punk zines, and remember um, you know, the cover of uh of the first Sex Pistols album where it's you know cut and paste the letters a bit like um are are we talking about like pamphleteering for for to be a stand for a film?
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: Like um so it's like a homemade physical document devoted to a movie or this is and this is apparently according to this article, this is a response to the slickness, the deadening slickless slickness of of AI.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: So you know it's a reaction against against that.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: So it's uh, you know, it's maybe they found their their mothers and fathers uh old fanzines and they thought, all right, this is interesting.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a reaction to that.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I think maybe movie going is partly a reaction to being stuck at home, you know, streaming with streaming series.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: And uh also the summer is when there aren't the as many new um series, certainly on network television and on the BBC here in England.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: There's nothing new.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: So um, because they figure people are busy in the summer, and one of the things we're busy doing is going to the movie theater.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: The movies, and you know, interesting.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, give to give a little more strength to your your theory is um again, there was this article, I I named it wrong.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's um it was in the New Yorker and it was about our desire for inconvenience, inefficiency.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but does that mean one obstacle, I think, also for the movies also occurs on the small screen at home, and that's video games.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: And if it can draw if it can draw people, young, young viewers out of the house to one, see a movie that they could see on streaming, or two, play in a video game by themselves or virtually with many people if it's a multiplayer game, it's still a pretty strong, some kind of strong desire to get out to see something collectively.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's a good point.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: I I always have to remind myself about the world of video games because it's so foreign to me.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: I never uh took any interest in it, but it is a huge industry.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's bigger than the film industry.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: So we know it's it's bigger than the film industry, and it is, and we don't I don't think we have any data on that, but it puts Hollywood, the ever-powerful, ever-reviled Hollywood, uh, this you know, juggernaut of power and influence, they're the underdogs right now.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: The big studios are the underdogs.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's funny to think of them as underdogs, but um again, there's a there's there was a still a fear that the recent merger or the uh the current ongoing merger of what is it, Paramount and Warner Brothers is going to result in fewer, a smaller uh slate, um, fewer films being released.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: They claim um Allison Jr., um, who's in charge of that, claimed that um he would enlarge um the slate to 30 uh films a year.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: No one believes that's possible.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: I think it'll be more like 12.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: So there are fewer films being released, although I think um more films this year than last year.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um if I can go into a little history of film growing, because I think it's kind of it's kind of interesting.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: The I'd I'd like to hear that history because the only thing I can imagine could make 30 films a year from from a film bro like David Ellis is if it's completely fabricated and synthesized by AI using AI actors and everything else.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: So please let's refresh my stale, ugly mind with some some Hollywood history.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we yeah, we go back to the era of truly the the film, the film studios when they when they actually made films.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: The studios don't make films so much anymore.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: They they release films, they may uh help finance films, but they don't really make them as much as they they used to.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: The studio started in mostly in the 1920s by the 1930s.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you've heard of this term, the factory, the factory system.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: And they would put out, I think, pretty much one major film a week.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's 52 films a year.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: Those are A pictures, so they're also B pictures.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: There were cartoons, there were shorts, there were newsreels.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: The peak film going year was 1946, the year after the Second World War.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: This is true both in the both in the US and in the in the UK.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: And and people people went to the movies uh every week, every week.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember yeah, I remember even before that, um, uh hearing my mother used to recall being sent to the movies with her older sister in the 30s, in the late 30s.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: Her her mother, my grandmother would send them, would give them, I think maybe 10 cents each to go to the go to the movie theater just to get out of the house.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: So my grandmother would have a little peace and quiet for up to three or four hours because there'd be a main feature, a short feature, a cartoon in Israel.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: And they would give away free fiesta wear.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: You've seen fiesta ware on sale in antique stores for a lot of money.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: They used to be given away free at the movie theater as the selling point to get people into the movies in the during the um the depression.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: I remember visiting my grandmother and grandfather, and they still had all of these glasses and plates from the given away in the 1930s at the movies.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so the deal was that my mother and her sister would go to the movie, which they wanted to do anyway, and when they would pick up the free glass or the free plate, and I don't know if that was handed to them on the way in or the way out, I assume the way out, they would hand those over to my grandmother.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: So that was an incentive.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: It was a bit like you probably remember.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: We're we're old enough to remember free maps at the gas station.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I think every eight for every eight gallons you got uh like an ingot, like a little coin.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember in 1969 they gave away free moon maps.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: This was an incentive to fill your gas, you know, you had to fill your car anyway, but uh, it was, I guess, uh about brand brand loyalty.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm getting I'm getting way off the track here.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: So 1946 was the the um all-time peak of movie going, and um I think it was understandable there were, you know, there was a huge audience in America.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it was um it was a very wealthy, um, you know, uh strong economy.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: In England it wasn't.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: It was there were still rationing here until the early 50s.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: But the movies were um a great escape.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, the we the films like um the uh the best years of our lives, which was about um returning GIs.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: Great film, great film, great film.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: And the film that we remember from that year, It's a Wonderful Life, was a flop when it came out.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: No one really went to that, but that was from 1946.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: That was a great, that was a great year.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so you know, that was um the high point, which only lasted a few years because the at that in that period the movie the movie studios owned their own theater chains.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: They had a captive audience, as it were.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's what we would call in the business world vertically integrated.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: It had vertical integration.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: Vertical continue.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, right, exactly.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: That was vertical integration, which was declared um what's the word?
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: It was uh uh it was a trust.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: It was declared uh oh monopoly monopoly.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: It was monopoly.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: It was knocked down, I think, by the Supreme Court, and they were f they were told to divest themselves of their uh movie.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: This is this ruling came in the late 30s, but it didn't go into effect to the late 40s, I think, because the war wow, you don't need Lena Khan to do that.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: How naive we were in those days.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my god, the the evil cabal of Hollywood and its movie theaters are going to poison our water and change the climate.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, there was a double whammy for Hollywood in the late 40s because two things happened.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: One was they had to give up all of their movie theaters, so they would have to fight for screens.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: And at the exact same time, television came in.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: So there was this huge fear that people would stop going to the movies and uh attendance dropped precipitously, and that's when widescreen cinema came out.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: That was to try to lure people, lure people back into the movie theaters.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: That was when widescreen and 3D, early 3D and Technicolor and Paner Panavision and all those exciting things came in to try to keep people going to the movie theaters.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I I remember growing up, uh, my local theater, one of my local theaters was owned by it was a mom and pop store.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: A couple owned it.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it was a great, it was a great way for them to make a living and raise kids their whole lives.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: And uh tough, I mean a fun, a fun way to make a living, but not a not a very reliable way to make a living, I would have thought.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: This is we're talking about the 60s and 70s.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: So that 20-year period was not bad.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they had movies like Shampoo and Willard.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh no, yeah, it was at the 60s was a tough time for Hollywood because they didn't understand their audience, they lost their audience.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they made the mistake.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: The the biggest movie of the decade of the 60s was The Sound of Music in 1964, I think.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: And they the studios kept trying to replicate that and kept on getting it wrong very expensively.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: So they'd make films like Star.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: I think the punchline to the story, I think either you shared it with me or I read it somewhere, was that what brought them back was a strange independent film with Dennis Hopper and Easy Rider.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: Easy Rider, yes, and also things like Jack Nicholson.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Jack Nicholson in it.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, that was a film that caught uh this yeah, Easy Rider 1969.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: But it's a terrible film, by the way, but it caught it got an audience, it cost under a million dollars, made like a hundred million dollars.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: It and Hollywood was just stunned by that.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like, whoa, what is this film?
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: But but even that, that was after films like um The Graduate 1967, uh Mike Nichols's second film, which was a huge hit.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: Bonnie and Clyde, which was a slow burn, but eventually did really well.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: Mash was an enormous hit, Robert Altman was already in his 50s, probably, been around a long time.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: But those films caught the imagination of the young audience who had been largely lost to music, and they were not interested in the films that Holly was what it was making.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: I was because I was a kid, I was eight or nine or ten years old, and I used to be taken to the movie theater.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: It was a special occasion.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: My parents would take us to the movie theater here in London, these big movie palaces, and I I loved it.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: I had no idea I was watching films that lost the studios millions and millions and millions.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: I'm the same way.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: I enjoyed interesting though that your observation is was that they lost it to music because you and I both watched, and I read a transcript, but watched the video of a charming, wonderful, surprising interview from the New York Times with Nick Jagger.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: Nick Jagger.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the one of the and David Marchese was the interviewer who was great.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: And one of his observations was that music today, some of the biggest sellers are catalog, catalog items.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: They come from the music catalogs, music that we've all heard before that are stored away on servers.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: And that music is not iconic today, like it was in the 60s and early 70s.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: It was not it was it was political.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's different now.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: It was political then.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: It was countercultural.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: That was what countercultural.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: And it but it but uh and that's that's interesting to me also because um you know it wasn't.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: That wasn't a foregone conclusion.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the the what caught the culture of the 30s, you know, was the movies.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that was the cultural strength uh for young people.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: I just I I mean we're talking about the 30s.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: What tell me what what films and which which movie stars uh actors are we talking about in the 1930s, just to get a feel for it.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: Bringing up a within No, well, I mean this is a long I'll make have cut this short because it's it could be a long discussion, but the the different studios represented different kinds of films.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: So Warner Brothers was um which wasn't as big as MGM, but it was one of the it was one of the top three.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: MGM was considered the top studio, it was a sort of Rolls-Royce of the of the film studios.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: Warner Brothers was the more politically motivated studio, and they were more left-wing, and they would uh make films like they were they were famous for the gangster films, um, you know, little little Caesar, um uh and um you know I was uh I was a fugitive um from a um from a chain gang.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they were really politic, they were they were they were catching the moment, the excuse me, the political moment.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: This was early in uh Roosevelt's uh administration.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I mean, you know, the music was potent as well, of course.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but I think the movies really well that was MGM then had it had a different take compared to Warner Brothers.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: And well, MGM was run by uh Louis B.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: Mare, who was extremely conservative.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: He was the best friends with Herbert Hoover.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and he was much more much more conservative and much more kind of moralistic.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um and um so he they they didn't uh there they were the Warner Brothers had those great 1930s musicals, the backstage musicals, the the Busby Berkeley musicals, which were uh rediscovered in by by uh sort of stoneheads in the um in the late 60s, people would uh drop acid and watch a Busby Berkeley movie in a movie theater, and they and that must have been a lot of a lot of fun.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: But uh I maybe I'm overstating the case, maybe someone could argue it differently.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: But I I would argue that uh just as um music caught caught the cultural moment for young people in the late 60s, early 70s, I think movies did that in the in the 30s.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: So it was tough for Hollywood to get that audience back.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: And the films like um like The Graduate and Mash and Bonnie and Clyde anticipated uh what was considered, still considered by a lot of people that great 70s uh movement in America.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: Or talk about we're talking about American films.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: We're not talking about foreign films, but American films, you know, five EC.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: That's another podcast.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's a different podcast.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: Jack Nicholson was uh, you know, the sort of what do we call them?
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: The the the counter the counterhero?
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: What did we call them?
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: That the the they were um you're you're you're losing me.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Jack Nicholson was a was uh kind of anti-hero.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: Oh oh oh oh in the in the early in the early 70s, right?
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: Five easy pieces.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: Five easy pieces, one floor of the cuckoo's nest, um, you know, going uh was uh the I love the um not going south, the um anyway, I'll take a bit of the the the he was in some some um oh the the last detail that's my favorite Jack Nicholson film, the last detail.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's a good one.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's a good and you know little known little known fact about Jack Nicholson is I mean he really worked his way up into the the movie industry.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_01: He he was in a in a couple of hammer horror films playing an American and Roger Corman films, he was in low budget Corman films.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: Roger, but there I remember there was a scene where he walks into this gothic, he knocks on the door of this giant wooden door of this gothic castle, and Peter Laurie, who's a sorcerer or some mysterious, scary guy, opens the door and he and he says, uh, enchante, manami.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: Something along those lines.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: I love the idea of Jack.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know that.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: Jack Nicholson in a movie with Peter Laurie, who we remember from Castle.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: And Vincent Price, yeah.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: 1950, 19 Castle Mike, 1942 or 43, I think.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: And then later acted with Jack Nicholson.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's fantastic.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so the 1970s, you know, it was great era.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, The Godfather, which was a studio film that was paramount.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, no one thought that would do um much business.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: That was one of the biggest films of of the decade.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then by the 1980s, films uh the studio that the Hollywood got really kind of stoltified, ossified.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I think 1984, I was surprised to read.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: 1984 had the lowest attendance at movie theaters.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: I think they've lost their audience.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: Think of what do you think of in movies from the 1980s?
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: Things like Flashdance or um Wall Street.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, those are hits, but um, there were some big bloated films that uh didn't do that well.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: Steven Spielberg had one.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um it was 1941.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: It was called 1941, released in the 80s.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, but that for him, that was the exception to the rule because things like uh, you know, Rages the Lost Ark, which was so much fun.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um I remember being dragged to that film and actually loving it.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so we can anyway, I don't want to get lost in the in the weeds here, but uh I just the so that the that begat the indie film movement with Sundance in the 1990s, and I think um young people rediscovered the movies because they were speaking to them.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: Films like uh Sex Lyze and Videotape and the Tarantino films, Reservoir Dogs.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: These were you know scrappy young upstart directors, and that's being repeated now.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: Well, isn't this kind of a is kind of a fable of capitalism that some disruptive technology comes in and disturbs all the establishment, um, and you know, just like it did in the 1960s in the movies with with um um the Peter Fonda, Jack Nicholson, yeah.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: What's an easy rider easy rider, right?
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_01: So now we're talking about the indie film sex, lives, and videotape and the house that Quentin built built called Miramax.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: And and Robert Robert Rodriguez, who's one of those directors, wrote a book with a great title.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: It was called Rebel Without a Crew.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought that that encaptioned it perfectly.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: These these were tiny, these are very small productions, but didn't have much of a crew.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: Or he was a rebel, these were all rebels without crews.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: And what you said is absolutely right.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's the technology being being um what's the word interrupt interrupted?
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: Disrupted disrupted, sorry, disrupted, and the two films that now these are the the sort of easy riders of our day, in a way, are Obsession and Back Rooms, both very small budget films, both directed by very young directors who have cut their teeth on YouTube, short YouTube videos.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's YouTube.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: I just and I remember a data point, I think in that variety article that we both read.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: I think the budget for obsession was 750,000.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's a good one.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_01: Not a bad investment.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: You could do you can't do better with crypto on that.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um you keep agreeing with me, and it's kind of annoying.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna disagree with you for a moment.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: There's a difference between the production cost and the and the and the actual release cost because I think it was A24.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: Someone bought Obsession for 15, 15 million dollars, but they did very well on that investment.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: But but it's a it's a great look.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: I saw it, it's a great looking film for$750,000.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then uh someone bought it for$15 million, probably spent more money on you know, promotion or whatever.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: But I mean that's a huge return.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: Backrooms uh is also, I don't know what the budget is probably a slightly larger budget, but um it's very small compared to most uh Hollywood uh releases, and now everyone apparently studios have been buying up uh YouTube directors, content providers, throwing money at them to try to come up with um, you know, in the next obsession, the next backrooms.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if that's gonna work or not, but uh maybe curious to see what happens.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_01: I read a little bit about the backrooms and obsession um directors, creators, and how they had to push back real hard on Hollywood.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um basically on uh production value.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: You know, um Hollywood wanted to dress them up and make them look like big movies.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: And both both these young directors warned that that would that would carry a scent that would scare off audiences, and they were right.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: Boy, were they right, they were so right.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, these are people who know their audiences, and their audiences are young people who what have seen their their short videos on on YouTube.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they they were they are tested directors in that sense, you know, they're not just coming right out of film school like some of the Sundays guys were.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, these are people who uh already had an audience of a kind, right?
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know, I had never heard of these guys.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm not uh of their uh I'm not part of their demographic, but I I I'm I liked obsession and I'm looking forward to seeing um backrooms.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: We were talking about it recently.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: I called it boardrooms.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's a corporate a corporate thriller.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's the corporate thriller version of back rooms.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh backrooms, yes.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: Are you gonna see back rooms?
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_01: I intend to quick um quickly, but uh this weekend I have tickets to um another feature that is drawing audiences in advance.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's drawing it's drawing praise in advance and it's drawing controversy.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's a two-millennial old epic.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_01: Can you name that epic, young man?
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: The Odyssey.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: The Odyssey, uh the Christopher Nolan.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: What's interesting about that too is because he shot it in IMAX, and that is sort of the modern version of the of the widescreen that I was talking about earlier that try to get people back to the movie theaters in.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: No, actually, and maybe you can help me with this.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_01: He not only shot it in IMAX, but like like uh one battle after another, he also shot it in 70 millimeters.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_01: So isn't that compounding the complexity of movie making?
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_01: And what is what's the benefit of 70 millimeter?
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's the aspect ratio, right?
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's not the aspect ratio.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: I th I think it's the grain, it's the finer grain.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean it's a I guess it's a it's it's a clearer.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: You can you can shoot uh on the smallest camera you want.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: You can have an extremely extremely widescreen.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's about I think the flux grain of the image.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I might be wrong, I believe uh one battle after another was um shot on film, not on digital, which is a construction as well.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: Correct.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that's again, that's sort of going back to uh movies where these are uh Paul Thomas Anderson is you know a film nerd, and he would have grown up uh watching, you know, celluloid films on celluloid and and and uh maybe wanting to by the one one battle after another was uh one film that did get me into the movie theater.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: I I went to my local posh expensive cinema.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: I saw that, I guess that was that last year, and I saw b uh Bobby, not Bobby Supreme, it was Marty Supreme in a movie theater.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's it's interesting because we're I'm uh eight of us are attending this film, and we're in a theater-rich city, and but we could not get into an IMX this weekend.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_01: It had been sold, they'd been sold out since Tuesday.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_01: Oh there were a lot of sales a year ago, and I we talked about that too.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_01: Even Tony Scott at the New York Times, who's their sort of critic film critic at large, I read an interview with him today saying that wherever he lives, the nearest IMAX is is a long, long drive.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so he won't get to it.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_01: Lucky he's not the chief movie critic, he'd have to take that drive.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_01: But the one of the chief movie critics gave a glowing review at the New York Times.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_01: I haven't checked out any other.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, it's gotten amazingly.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: No, dude, do you want to read them after you've seen the film?
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: Are you gonna so what are you gonna do?
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_01: And then it's also it's kind of fun because it comes with controversy.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I need need I uh need I share who objects to it.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_01: Let's just put it this way.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Tony Scott put it best, uh, a preemptive strike, ideological strike against the film for guess, you know, guess why?
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_01: Colorblind casting, or is it the the script?
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's something that a that MAGA objects to on foundational terms, which is emotionally uh juvenile and uh intellectually vacant.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: It makes them look really silly, but as soon as a film opens, um you know, if it does, if it's gotten good reviews, which this has across the board, all of that controversy just you know fits.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: It just dries up.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: But then as I was reading the review, I I was looking at the commenters, and here's one that appears to come from England, and it it crystallizes your theory about the movies.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm gonna read it.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_01: The Mrs.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_01: and I, maybe you should read it.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_01: You could do it with an English accent.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_01: The Mrs.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_01: and I have not been to a theater or playhouse since COVID.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_01: We watch mostly on Blu-ray or via stream.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_01: The What Odyssey Was is a personal favorite, perhaps the best book I have ever read.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_01: When I learnt with a T, learnt this film was greenlit.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't imagine anyone taking on such a massive project.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_01: I imagine it will be the best big budgeted project released this year.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_01: Both my wife and I are attending a screening this weekend.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_01: I wholly expect the film uh will my wife and I, sorry, typo from the commenter, I back into the theater.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_01: It will lure us back in the theater on a regular basis like we did when we first started dating years ago.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: He's he's well, that's interesting that he's he's already assuming that they're gonna return going, you know, this one film is gonna return them to the cinema um, you know, again and again.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_00: I what what's telling about that comment is he mentions Blu-rays.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_00: Anybody who is at home watches things on Blu-ray is a is a true film fan.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think I gave you a DVD not long ago, and you don't you don't even have a DVD player like most people, like most smart normal people.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have a DVD player.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's better.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_01: In in insulting is is is welcome here.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we might like to keep the podcast lively.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm I'm you bastards.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm an old passion nerd.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_00: I have all my music on CDs, which I download on my laptop, which takes forever.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_00: I watch films on CDs and Blu-rays.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but here's someone who uh if that who wrote into the newspaper saying, you know, mentioned Blu-rays, so they are film fans, and it took a film like The Odyssey to get them uh back into the cinema.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_00: That is great, that's wonderful, and that's exactly what um what um Christopher Nolan, you know, would want.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that's what remember just after the lockdown, Tom Cruise um finished uh making the uh the maverick, what was that called?
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_00: The the Top Gun Maverick, which he insisted on being released theatrically.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think this the studios were really nervous about theatrical release then, and they wanted to go put it on streaming.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, no, this is you know, this is a you know, he wanted to get people back into the cinema.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_00: Good for him.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_00: He was right, and it's taken you know a few years for that to come around.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_00: But the Odyssey is it's an event film, right?
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's an you know, certainly if it's IMAX, it must be you're not seeing it on IMAX, but you're seeing it where on a big on a on a big screen.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_01: We'll get it in a standard a standard screen because that's the only thing where we could get eight people into the theater.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna look great though, anyway.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's gonna have you know, Dolby, Atmos, it's gonna have all that the great that's that's something that cinemas do that you can't, even if you have a 5-1 surround sound system, which I I don't have, I want to get at some point.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_00: But the the the sound now in movie theaters, and you can attest to this, you're more of a moviegoer than I am.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: The sound is just spectacular, right?
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's really yeah, it's hard.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's so interesting.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_01: It what you know.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_01: As I was shopping, again, we have this huge, this huge volume of cinemas in where I live, and you can shop on Fandango, you can shop shop by format.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_01: So you could look at standard IMAX, uh they call premium, which would be IMAX 70 millimeter.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_01: And as I am looking closely because I'm the one in charge of getting tickets, so it's nerve-wracking because everybody has preferences on where to sit.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I s I see that Regal, the Regal chain, has a proprietary format that is a little like IMAX, but not, but includes seats that rumble.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_01: Seats rumble.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's I by it there's a name, you know, Regal and Regal proprietary baky seats or something.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_00: That was in the in the 70s, but then they briefly have what was it called?
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's called Sense Around.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I never saw anything in Sense Around, but uh like Earthquake.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_01: It was a film called Earthquake and the I saw Earthquake Quake in the theater, and the Sense Around seemed really stupid to me.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_01: It felt like a bad amusement park ride.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_00: I I remember the early 3D film, uh they would they they re-released some 3D films from the 50s, and they you'd wear these glasses that had different color.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there was uh was it blue and green or red and red and green, and that was to make the 3D effect work, and it just gave you a headache after a while.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_01: And a red mark on your nose.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_00: Later.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_00: That was another thing to try to get people back to movie the when um the first um uh avatar came out in the 2005, whatever it was.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_00: That was they brought back uh an improved 3D.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: Can I ask you how much?
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_00: Can I ask you how much they charge you for the uh for the tickets?
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_00: What do you pay to see a movie theater in New York?
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's down to about 17 bucks a ticket, so not far away from using.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_00: Not nothing.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, not nothing.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um I remember the outrage when you could go to the movies and they'd give you a slice of stilton cheese or something to take home.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like champagne.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_00: The smelly cheese in the theater.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there is they they um there is Cornish pie, or what do they call it?
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_01: Cornish pie?
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_00: Cornish pixie pie.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_00: Cornish pasty.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_01: Cornish, uh, Cornish pasties.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_00: But they wouldn't, they wouldn't um here there there are certain cinemas like the Hampstead cinema, which was used to be a uh theater, uh stage theater, and now it's one of these upmarket posh cinemas, and you can get um, you know, food brought to your brought to your seat, and you know, that makes the price go up.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_00: I was reading in that article in Variety, they mentioned, and you can tell me if you've run into they mentioned this new business of popcorn buckets, which range prices range from 20 to 80 dollars, and the boxes can kind of nearly double that on eBay.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_00: These are film film-related buckets, so they have but pictures of the of the film.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, the was a bucket made out of out of gold, platinum, wood.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, have you seen these?
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know what I'm talking about?
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's a big bus a hundred million dollar business for the for the AMC theater chain now.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, they're they're hand-carved in India and they're shipped in from an NGO that distributes all the profits to poor families in Iowa.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_01: Because they're poorer in this country.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_01: No, I have no idea what they're talking about.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what they're doing.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_00: I thought that was the thing.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'd never heard of that before.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_01: One thing that impresses me about variety, I I don't read it as often as I should, is when they they run these large features, these sweeping features to make a uh proclamation about the movie industry.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_01: They um they quote major not only studio personnel, but we got Seth Rogan commenting and Rink Richard the director Richard uh Linklater.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so they're I'm not a studio chief, but I play one on television.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe they thought he was what was the name of the of that fictional, his fictional studio was that cosmopolitan.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's not cosmopolitan.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_01: Atlantic?
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_01: Was it Atlantic Studios?
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_00: No, I can't remember what it was anyway.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_00: He's the go to guy.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that was such a hit, the studio.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_00: We both really like that.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's coming back in the fall, I think.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um is it I I'm gonna ask you.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: Is it time um for headquakes?
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_01: Do you have one?
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe an advanced apology to viewers whose whose eardrums split from the last episode because we didn't have the levels right.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we're taking there no more boom.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_00: We're taking out the boom uh now.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_00: I think the boom has uh been laid to rest.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's boomed its last boom.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um is that right?
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's too it's uh it's technologically too different.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um well, do you have one or should I begin?
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_00: I've got one.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_00: I've got one.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's just a book I finished reading.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh 10 years uh old.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's called 1971, Never a Dull Moment.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's written by a British music journalist um who came with age.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_00: He turned 21 in 1971.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_00: And the premise, it's kind of a loosely based premise of the book, is that 1971, 1971, was the greatest year in rock.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um it doesn't he doesn't quite make the case, but it's a very entertaining kind of kind of cultural history and and and industry um uh appraisal of the uh rock business in 1971, which was a good year for rock.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's the Who's Next and Um Exile was.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_01: It was a little like um making a proclamation, it's like uh Donald Trump saying last night that there's uh fraud in the election system, but not providing any evidence.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_01: Well is there any evidence what of the in 1971?
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_01: Which bands did he attribute to this greatest year every year?
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there was evidence.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_00: The Who, the Who's Neck, Who's Next, and Um, you know, After Live It Leagues and The Rolling Stones, Exile in Main Street, some people consider that their greatest album, and um, you know, the rise of soft rock and James Teller.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_00: And no, it's a it was a good year, but you know, there are a lot of good years.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_00: If you sort of ignore the premise and just enjoy the the sort of history of the of the business at that point, um he doesn't get everything uh for uh about America right.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um he mentions um I think two cities at one point, Nashville and Carolina.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh he doesn't see there whoops cities.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_01: Where were the fact checkers?
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_00: But he's very good on the English scene because he was, you know, in his 20s during in the 70s.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_00: So he you can uh capture, you know, uh the bands like The Who playing Live at Leeds.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, live at Leeds, maybe the most famous, you know, one of the most famous live live recordings ever released, was recorded at Leeds University, not in Leeds uh City, not in the big venue.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_00: They all of those fans played universities.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, it's an entertaining book.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_00: The author's name is David Hepworth, 1971.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_00: Never I think in America it's just called Never a Dull Moment.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_00: They took out the 1971, probably just as well.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, what's your headquake, Mr.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_00: Jalamas?
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, well, you know, you recently um cited uh Billy Joel because he had been omitted from a top list in a major Bailey.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I stumbled across a Kanye West song called Power, in which he samples King Crimson, a 20th century schizoid man.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_01: And then while I was in Europe, um an English-speaking Spaniard helped me gain entry to a hundred-year-old pub, and uh he was wearing a King Crimson shirt.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_01: He he had recently attended a reunion concert.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_01: So I was I got I got sucked down a little bit of a rabbit hole on Robert Fripp.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_01: Fripp Frippatronics a legendary guitarist, and um I'm not sure how he fits in, except that his reputation in those years, which would have been the late 60s and 70s, um, he was sort of like uh on-demand magical guitarist who could yeah, he played with a David Bowie.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_00: He's got some really great guitar stuff on some of the brands.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_01: He his guitar was in a famous David Bowie song that escapes me, but but a lot of people really think about the experimental, very successful experimental uh work he did with Brian Eno.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and uh yeah, there's a name that's right.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah, there's that is a strange name, Fripan Eno, and it's someone worth maybe looking into.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I've been listening to a lot of uh Eno, early Eno lately.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh sort of um on the same subject.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'm a huge Roxy Music fan, and uh I recently read an interview with their guitarist, Phil Phil Manzanera, and he said he had one guitar lick uh from a pretty obscure track, not even not from Roxy Music, that was sampled by I think Jay-Z and and Kanye West, and he made more money from that sampling than his entire career at Roxy Music, which was a 30-year career.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that was that's how much money you can make of that business.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and he was happy to let it be sampled.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_00: Incredible.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's the business.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'd I'll stick with Roxy Music myself, but anyway.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_01: On that profound note, yeah.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_01: Shall we sign off?
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, well, thanks uh for listening and watching.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_00: This has been uh Boomer has it.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_01: I'm JB Miller in London, and I'm Jim Jalamis in Brooklyn at the Twisted Spine bookstore.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks.
• 49:42
  unknown: Bye-bye.