Speaker 1: Welcome to Movie Crush, a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey everybody, and welcome to Movie Fresh Fresh. Jesus Christ,
Speaker 1: Casey here were keep it in. We're keeping it in.
Speaker 1: Casey's here everyone. This is Movie Crush. It is Friday
Speaker 1: Interview Edition. Casey and I are both stressed for different reasons,
Speaker 1: So why not talk about a very tense there you
Speaker 1: go movie like spring Breakers? How you doing besides stressed? Stressed?
Speaker 1: Um no, I'm doing good. It was it was really
Speaker 1: fun to revisit this movie because it's been at least
Speaker 1: five or six years since I last saw it, so
Speaker 1: and um, yeah, I don't know, it's it's I guess
Speaker 1: it's it's weird to watch it now in the context
Speaker 1: of social distancing in Corona and to see man all
Speaker 1: the sweaty bodies and close proximity and the whole spring
Speaker 1: break you know thing. Yeah, So, just to catch everyone
Speaker 1: up here, we are. I am on my daughter's spring
Speaker 1: break right now. And I said those two words in
Speaker 1: case he said, well, hey, let's do spring Breakers because
Speaker 1: I didn't have an episode for tomorrow, like this is
Speaker 1: we're cutting it close here. It's Thursday afternoon, day before release.
Speaker 1: And you said spring Breakers. I had never seen it
Speaker 1: for some weird reason. I always kind of meant to
Speaker 1: and didn't. And uh so I watched it last night
Speaker 1: and I have re titled it now um and I'm
Speaker 1: glad I watched it now that I have a daughter
Speaker 1: because the new the new working title is um every
Speaker 1: Father's Nightmare, yeah, or just every parent's nightmare parents in general.
Speaker 1: Probably um youthful debauchery and just uh oh god. It
Speaker 1: was hard hard to get through, honestly, and you know
Speaker 1: I was. Here's my deal with spring break and this scene.
Speaker 1: I went on my high school spring break to Panama
Speaker 1: City where one year where it was debauchery. I mean,
Speaker 1: it wasn't quite like this, but because this is just
Speaker 1: really over the top and gross. But I'm sure it
Speaker 1: is this way in places, but it was our version
Speaker 1: of of high school debauchery. I didn't take part because
Speaker 1: I was a good kid in high school. I didn't
Speaker 1: turn bad until later. Uh. And you know it was fine,
Speaker 1: but like this scene, there's nothing I would want to
Speaker 1: do less than the stuff I see in this movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I I feel me, kill me right. I found myself
Speaker 1: just thinking like this just looks terrible, Like, um, no,
Speaker 1: thank you. Yeah. Even even if you could like detach
Speaker 1: yourself from responsibilities and and and all that kind of
Speaker 1: stuff and find yourself in that place again with the
Speaker 1: opportunit unity to do it again, at this point, you
Speaker 1: would not choose to do that. It's like, that looks terrible,
Speaker 1: but the young girls no, no, no. Yeah. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, I think the movie does a really
Speaker 1: interesting thing where on the one hand, it's it's clearly
Speaker 1: like it's not presenting it as something that looks all
Speaker 1: that enticing. I would say, yeah, in a way, it's satire,
Speaker 1: but I feel like it's not necessarily ironically distanced or
Speaker 1: that it's judging the characters. I think it actually adopts
Speaker 1: their point of view of just youthful naivete and and
Speaker 1: that for them when they like there's there's a voice
Speaker 1: over at one point where um, one of the girls says, uh,
Speaker 1: maybe it's faith. Um she says, you know, I think
Speaker 1: this is like the most spiritual place I've ever been.
Speaker 1: And that could be a commentary and a laugh line
Speaker 1: and sort of like a critique of limited her worldview
Speaker 1: is or something. But I think really more fundamentally it's
Speaker 1: something genuine and true that she's expressing. And I think
Speaker 1: it's even something that the film is kind of allowing
Speaker 1: to to pass without commentary as this kind of sincere thing,
Speaker 1: Like there is something to this like right of spring,
Speaker 1: release of like pent up sexual energy and all all
Speaker 1: the rest of it, just the partying and the craziness,
Speaker 1: Like even though it very quickly turns bad and into
Speaker 1: excess and all of that, and there's all these negative consequences, Like,
Speaker 1: there is just something instinctual and kind of pure about
Speaker 1: that expression of like youthful energy, even if it gets
Speaker 1: channeled into all these messed up things. Um, I think
Speaker 1: the film wants to acknowledge, you know, and and not
Speaker 1: like condescend towards it necessarily. Yeah, I totally agree. I
Speaker 1: think it's interesting once you strip away all of the
Speaker 1: sort of any artifice of this film. And we'll talk
Speaker 1: about the the music video aesthetic and the color palette,
Speaker 1: which is all like kind of cool stuff. But if
Speaker 1: you strip all that away, to me, it's two things.
Speaker 1: It's it's a movie about these lost girls who aren't
Speaker 1: so far off from people in his earlier films. They're
Speaker 1: not quite the trailer park people, but they're not a
Speaker 1: million miles away either, who are sort of trapped in
Speaker 1: this mundane existence of small town nothingness. So it's that,
Speaker 1: and it's also just a very straight ahead sort of
Speaker 1: trophy crime movie like it it hits all the notes
Speaker 1: of movies we've seen before of the group that gets
Speaker 1: in over their head and one is kind of the
Speaker 1: ringleader and one doesn't feel so good about it, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, they're in way too deep and
Speaker 1: you know, bad things are going to happen, and they do.
Speaker 1: Like it's very sort of by the numbers, but it's
Speaker 1: just dressed up in this MTV spring break party aesthetic. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's a great effect, I think. Yeah. He he definitely
Speaker 1: like it's his most kind of can eventually plot driven
Speaker 1: I think, so you could say, uh, at the same
Speaker 1: time while remaining very kind of like floaty. And you know,
Speaker 1: we can talk a lot about how it's structured and
Speaker 1: the way that it kind of doubles back on itself
Speaker 1: all the time, and there's all these recurring shots, recurring phrases.
Speaker 1: Um you know, yeah, you know. He talks about how
Speaker 1: he wanted to structure the film almost like a song,
Speaker 1: you know, where there would be samples and loops and
Speaker 1: like verses and choruses and um. And that the whole film.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's almost all waldomal music. You know, there's
Speaker 1: always like score or source music or something happening and um.
Speaker 1: And just like the way he uses the voiceover to
Speaker 1: kind of develop these themes and move from one section
Speaker 1: to the next and so on. Um, he does a
Speaker 1: similar kind of thing that we saw, for instance, in
Speaker 1: The Limey, where he'll film a conversation and multiple locations
Speaker 1: and kind of cross cut between them and you get
Speaker 1: the sense that, you know, maybe this is somebody's hazy
Speaker 1: memory of a conversation that happened at some point during
Speaker 1: that day, but it's unclear exactly when, and we're kind
Speaker 1: of seeing multiple angles of it. Um. So Yeah, on
Speaker 1: the one hand, he does use all this kind of
Speaker 1: as a framework for a pretty conventional crime story of like,
Speaker 1: like you said, people in over their head and then
Speaker 1: rival drug dealers and a big shootout at the end
Speaker 1: and all that. But I think that's just kind of
Speaker 1: the window dressing. I think you know, what he's really
Speaker 1: at here is is something different, is trying to find
Speaker 1: a different way to structure a film or to make
Speaker 1: a film or to express these kinds of ideas through film. Um,
Speaker 1: with the kind of conventional plot just sort of being
Speaker 1: like a little bit of a backbone, a little bit
Speaker 1: of something to grab onto. Um. You know, I would
Speaker 1: compare this film very closely with like a lot of
Speaker 1: later Malick films. Um. In fact, Malik made a film
Speaker 1: really just a year or two after after this one
Speaker 1: came out, although he was shooting it really at the
Speaker 1: same time that this one was being shot and around
Speaker 1: twelve Um called Night of Cups. And yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: one of my favorite Malik films. Um. But a lot
Speaker 1: of people really don't like it, and a lot of
Speaker 1: people just haven't seen it period. But um, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of similar ideas about very briefly and Knight of
Speaker 1: Cups is about a guy who was working in the
Speaker 1: film industry as a screenwriter. It's based very loosely off
Speaker 1: of Malik After Days of Heaven, where he was like
Speaker 1: playing script doctor for a minute. And um, it's basically
Speaker 1: Christian Bale plays this guy, and it's it's about him
Speaker 1: being this womanizing, you know, just living life to the
Speaker 1: absolute excess kind of character and the complete like emptiness
Speaker 1: that he feels inside from this where he thinks he's
Speaker 1: this is what's going to make him happy and it
Speaker 1: really doesn't. And um it's told in a very similar
Speaker 1: way where uh, you know, it's it's very musical, it's
Speaker 1: there's hardly ever any really dialogue scenes. It's all just
Speaker 1: kind of fragments and so on. Um he uses like
Speaker 1: this some of the same cameras, these low grade digital
Speaker 1: cameras that Korean uses from time to time in this film.
Speaker 1: Malik also uses in that film, um so I you
Speaker 1: know that the two films share a lot of DNA. However,
Speaker 1: Mali's film there is no conventional narrative to like grab onto,
Speaker 1: So it's just two too and a half hours of
Speaker 1: like complete just you know, floating from one thing to
Speaker 1: the next, and if you pay super close attention, you'll
Speaker 1: see kind of a development happening. But you know, if
Speaker 1: you're if you're not like all the way in, it's
Speaker 1: just going to seem like two and a half hours
Speaker 1: of you know, people on beaches and people in cars
Speaker 1: and keep leving meaningless sex and and all that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. So I think this is directorially one of
Speaker 1: Harmony Korean's stronger films. Um and I got like Sofia
Speaker 1: Copela vibes at times. Although he made this before bling Ring,
Speaker 1: I think bling Ering is a sort of slightly tamed
Speaker 1: down version of this movie. And uh, I also got
Speaker 1: a little bit of a gust fans and vibe here
Speaker 1: and there, which I come to think of it, His
Speaker 1: earlier films definitely evoke guest fans and I just never
Speaker 1: really thought about it before. Yeah, and Larry Clark, to who,
Speaker 1: of course, you know, collaborated on Kids and the whole
Speaker 1: idea of like, what did he write kids? Harmony Crean
Speaker 1: wrote wrote Kids. Um, he was just like a skater
Speaker 1: hanging out in New York City and Larry Clark was
Speaker 1: photographing skaters and they started talking and Crean told him like, oh,
Speaker 1: I want to be a filmmaker. I've got this idea
Speaker 1: for a movie or whatever. And it just kind of
Speaker 1: developed very quickly from there, and Karina was like, or something,
Speaker 1: he's really young. I love that movie and I saw
Speaker 1: it in New York when it came out in the theater,
Speaker 1: and that really launched him. Is one of the great
Speaker 1: young weirdo you know, avant garde experimental type filmmakers. The
Speaker 1: success of that film, which was made very cheaply and
Speaker 1: and did you know, relatively well at the box office.
Speaker 1: It was like an indie sensation, very controversial. Everybody was
Speaker 1: talking about it, so it got that kind of attention
Speaker 1: and right up and so on. Um, that got Korean
Speaker 1: kind of like not a blink check, but a million
Speaker 1: dollar check anyway to go make whatever he wanted to make.
Speaker 1: So he made Gummo, which I still think is like
Speaker 1: his best film. Um, and spring Breakers kind of comes
Speaker 1: at a point where his career had kind of been
Speaker 1: on the decline for a while. He had a period
Speaker 1: after Gummo where he got really heavily into drugs. He yeah,
Speaker 1: he Um. I think there was like a couple house
Speaker 1: fires where you know, he almost died and um, various
Speaker 1: things that he was working on were like lost in
Speaker 1: those fires. Some of this might be Korean's sort of
Speaker 1: like self mythologizing, because he likes to kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: been the truth and and invent stories about himself and
Speaker 1: kind of make things sound a little more outrageous than
Speaker 1: sometimes they are. At least. Oh man, I love those
Speaker 1: I love those appearances. Anybody who hasn't seen there's a
Speaker 1: compilation on YouTube of like you can see the progression
Speaker 1: because the first time he's just like this like innocent
Speaker 1: looking young kid, and then the next time he's like
Speaker 1: strung out, and you know, he's got this like scraggly
Speaker 1: beard and he looks like super rough and he's yes,
Speaker 1: well yeah, So by the time he makes spring Breakers,
Speaker 1: he um, he's come out of this this long period
Speaker 1: of like addiction and and almost dying and so on,
Speaker 1: and um, now he's like the more matured version of
Speaker 1: himself where he still has all the same kind of
Speaker 1: like wacky sensibilities. Um, he's still like very free and
Speaker 1: how he uh uses creativity and he's not afraid of
Speaker 1: looking ridiculous or of trying something that may or may
Speaker 1: not work. But at the same time he has that
Speaker 1: more like mature minded responsibility, you know. And now it's
Speaker 1: him as a slightly older person and looking at youth
Speaker 1: the way Larry Clark was looking at youth and kids. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, let's talk for a minute just about the
Speaker 1: how beautiful this movie is. Aesthetically. It's, um, I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously all the big the big beach pool side scenes
Speaker 1: and all that is a little sort of over the
Speaker 1: top in that slow mobe like kind of day glow
Speaker 1: fluorescent world. But there's so many gorgeous shots in this movie. Um,
Speaker 1: early on, the color palette is clearly just one of
Speaker 1: the things he wanted to lean into on this movie.
Speaker 1: And uh, and it's obvious and a lot of this
Speaker 1: stuff because it's just so bright and colorful. But even
Speaker 1: in the subtle shots where uh, I'm thinking about, like
Speaker 1: the stained glass early on coming through the windows and
Speaker 1: then that cut together with the scene of the girls
Speaker 1: in the classroom in the dark with everything lit by
Speaker 1: computer laptop screens of different colors, but just really gorgeous stuff.
Speaker 1: That's the stuff that reminded me of Sofia Coppola. Sort
Speaker 1: of dreamy, colorful, a lot of slow moo and voiceover
Speaker 1: going on. Yeah. His his cinematographer that he used for
Speaker 1: this film is a guy Ben wad to Be. Um.
Speaker 1: He's a French cinematographer and he's most known for his
Speaker 1: work with gas Bar and Away and films like Reversible
Speaker 1: and especially Into the Void, which is similarly hard, very psychedelic, colorful, trippy,
Speaker 1: uh kind of movie. And yeah, as you mentioned, very
Speaker 1: very lighthearted stuff. Um. And so he he Krean talks
Speaker 1: about how he wanted this film to have the look
Speaker 1: of like candy. You know, that he wanted it to
Speaker 1: be this like bright neon saturated, just completely over the top. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and that it would have this kind of delectable,
Speaker 1: like iye candy quality to it at the same time
Speaker 1: that the material can be quite dark. Um, it's not
Speaker 1: like a particularly dark feeling film. I feel like in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways, the tone, even when things get
Speaker 1: kind of heavy, it has this sort of like just
Speaker 1: like fun aspect to it. Um. It doesn't get like
Speaker 1: depressing the way you could say maybe kids gets depressing. Um,
Speaker 1: it doesn't have as much of a documentary feel. It's
Speaker 1: it's it's reality pushed a little bit beyond reality so
Speaker 1: that it's almost kind of surreal and there's almost something
Speaker 1: kind of dreamlike or fable like about it. Where this
Speaker 1: is more about it's it's not talking so literally about
Speaker 1: youthful access. It's taking that access and then pushing it
Speaker 1: beyond the point of realism while not completely detaching from reality,
Speaker 1: but just kind of you know, everything's turned up to eleven. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: because like I was saying, it's still it's hard to
Speaker 1: movie about these lost young girls who don't know shit,
Speaker 1: and they don't know what they're gonna do, they don't
Speaker 1: know where they're gonna go. They know they're not happy. Um,
Speaker 1: that's where the Sophia like, it's sort of yeah, recalled
Speaker 1: sort of virgin suicides a little bit and lingering, like
Speaker 1: the scene, that beautiful scene in the dorm room when
Speaker 1: they were that voiceovers going on. They were doing the
Speaker 1: handstands against the wall and all of their legs were
Speaker 1: sort of criss crossing, and it's just it's really easy
Speaker 1: to overlook stuff like that, but those were really beautiful,
Speaker 1: beautiful shots. It's he's finding like transcendence in stuff that
Speaker 1: ought not necessarily be transcendent because it's so fraught with,
Speaker 1: you know, all these problems of let's say objectification of
Speaker 1: of you know, male gaze. We could say of um,
Speaker 1: just you know, youthful like hyper sexuality and corruption and
Speaker 1: loss of innocence and all this stuff. But that's not
Speaker 1: where they're coming from, and they don't necessarily even recognize
Speaker 1: it to themselves, like how much danger they're in sometimes,
Speaker 1: well you can hear it in the calls to their
Speaker 1: parents and grand I know that they're playing it down
Speaker 1: but you know, everyone here is so sweet and we're
Speaker 1: just having such a good time, and it's just like
Speaker 1: I could see the I could see people watching this
Speaker 1: movie and being horrified, thinking that it is in celebration
Speaker 1: of this behavior and objectifying it, whereas I didn't take
Speaker 1: it that way. I thought it was part satire, part
Speaker 1: uh what do you call the warning? Like, uh, like
Speaker 1: a cautionary tale, kind of cautionary tale, a little bit um.
Speaker 1: Never did I think that Harmony Corene was saying, like, look,
Speaker 1: how fucking badass this scene, you know, and I think
Speaker 1: some people, I bet this movie was protested, you know,
Speaker 1: like it's it's over the top when it comes. I
Speaker 1: was going to make a joke at the beginning of
Speaker 1: this episode that I like smoked weed every time someone
Speaker 1: in the movie smoked weed, and I took a shot
Speaker 1: every time there were bare breasts and be like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you couldn't make everywhere all the time. Yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean the excess is like that's the point. If
Speaker 1: it were restrained, it would be something totally different. But
Speaker 1: it's just like it's something that might be fun for
Speaker 1: like a couple of hours, but then you stretch that
Speaker 1: into just like this absurd you know, like end of
Speaker 1: the world apocalyptic kind of you know, exuberance of um,
Speaker 1: just wall to wall drinking and smoking. And it never
Speaker 1: shows anyone going to bed at night and came up
Speaker 1: and having breakfast. It's like there are the bits of
Speaker 1: quiet moments as I think when they were they were
Speaker 1: and yeah, when they're near the pool, or when they
Speaker 1: were just sort of drinking at the in the parking
Speaker 1: lot and stuff like that, like they removed themselves a
Speaker 1: little bit. But um, you know, they had that first
Speaker 1: robbery scene at the chicken check and it's all right
Speaker 1: there in those two lines. Just pretend like it's a
Speaker 1: video game, act like you're in a movie or something.
Speaker 1: And that's like it's it's horrifying when you think of
Speaker 1: those two lines, because it's true like that, I could
Speaker 1: see something like this going. This could be a news
Speaker 1: story very easily. Yeah, I'm sure similar things have probably happened,
Speaker 1: like the sort of the ability when you're that young
Speaker 1: to detach and compartmentalize and that sense of like youthful
Speaker 1: immortality that so many teenagers have where they're like, you know,
Speaker 1: taking huge life altering risks like they were nothing because
Speaker 1: they think they're invincible, or they just don't see. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they've seen in a movie and it worked out fine
Speaker 1: for that character. So you know, I don't think Karine
Speaker 1: is like a social critic per se, but he does
Speaker 1: have these little notes like you said of like pretend
Speaker 1: it's a video game, like it's in a movie or something,
Speaker 1: because I think it's all about how for them they're
Speaker 1: in this like fantasy world and there's the real world
Speaker 1: next to that and and underneath all that, but in
Speaker 1: their own kind of subjective experience, they're living through this
Speaker 1: kind of like youthful fantasy and they don't realize it's
Speaker 1: like how close they are to real disaster. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that robbery scene, man, just when there's been a couple
Speaker 1: of movies, like you've seen it all, like how do
Speaker 1: you shoot a robbery? How do you shoot a heist?
Speaker 1: How do you shoot someone breaking into a bank vault?
Speaker 1: And I remember Sexy Beasts when that came out and
Speaker 1: they did the underwater than with the bank vault, and
Speaker 1: I was like, fuck, dude, like someone thought of something new.
Speaker 1: And then this showing the perspective of that car pulling
Speaker 1: around that restaurant very slowly and each time it pulls
Speaker 1: around a corner, the girls are inside in another part
Speaker 1: of the restaurant, and I was like, hats off to him, man,
Speaker 1: he thought a bit of a new way to shoot it.
Speaker 1: And not only that, but later on you get the interior. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: You're you're you're getting from You're just getting these little
Speaker 1: snippets climpse through the window as the cars driving, and um,
Speaker 1: it's it's like editing within the within the frame. You know,
Speaker 1: you get a little bit here, and then you get
Speaker 1: some wall, then you get a little bit here, and
Speaker 1: then yeah, like you said, later on when they're kind
Speaker 1: of in the parking lot and they're recounting how they
Speaker 1: actually went about the raw bree and intimidated these people
Speaker 1: and so on, Um, you get like that was handheld
Speaker 1: inside of the And that's really that's like, it's it's
Speaker 1: cool because when we're outside and we're a little bit removed,
Speaker 1: we have one reaction to the violence, which is like,
Speaker 1: well that's not cool, but it's it's more of a
Speaker 1: subdued kind of feeling because we're removed from it. Then
Speaker 1: when they're kind of recounting it the second time, we're
Speaker 1: right up in it with the handheld, and you can
Speaker 1: kind of see how afraid these people are for their lives,
Speaker 1: even though it's just a game for these girls. But
Speaker 1: these people don't know that, and they are losing their
Speaker 1: money in their wallets and so on. Um and and
Speaker 1: getting you know, a gun even though it's we know
Speaker 1: it's a square gun, but it is to them, it's
Speaker 1: just a gun in their face. So they're terrified. They're
Speaker 1: so lucky they didn't end up dead, especially open carry exactly.
Speaker 1: It's just it's crazy that not one person in that
Speaker 1: restaurant didn't have a gun, like in Boogie Night Style.
Speaker 1: Oh god, don seetle in the donut job? Oh man,
Speaker 1: do you know much about the back like how he
Speaker 1: shot this? Was this? Did he go to a spring
Speaker 1: break or did he literally get all these extras and
Speaker 1: put them in a movie. No, A lot of this
Speaker 1: is really shot like in and around spring break. Um.
Speaker 1: I had they used you know a lot of just
Speaker 1: like real people, real locations. Um. And I think for instance,
Speaker 1: when they're having that daytime party where they end up
Speaker 1: getting arrested, um before when you know, as that party
Speaker 1: is going on, still raging. Um. A lot of those
Speaker 1: were just like people off the street that they invited
Speaker 1: to come there and told them to just go crazy
Speaker 1: and and they said they basically kind of like lost
Speaker 1: control at various points where they're trying to tell people
Speaker 1: all right, cut cut calm down, and it just kept going.
Speaker 1: And well they were probably really fucked up too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh exactly exactly. And so they're they're in like a
Speaker 1: real abandoned hotel, um and just like you know, utter anarchy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so um, that was a real location when they
Speaker 1: were in like um the jail cell. That was a
Speaker 1: real location. Um, yeah, a lot. I mean basically he went.
Speaker 1: He went like for practical locations as much as kid.
Speaker 1: When they're in that pool hall and h Selena Gomez
Speaker 1: is really like starting to freak out and being like
Speaker 1: I don't want to be here. Those were like a
Speaker 1: lot of real people just hanging out in the pool hall,
Speaker 1: real criminals, um, some of the like stuff with like
Speaker 1: the dogs in the back and whatever. That was like
Speaker 1: a real thing that was going on. So he was
Speaker 1: in like a real like shady you know spot when
Speaker 1: they were shooting, which he that's that's totally hum. He
Speaker 1: likes to It's always like a blend of the hyper
Speaker 1: real on the one end, and like the kind of
Speaker 1: documentary reality on the other. Uh. Let's talk about James Franco.
Speaker 1: I mean, his his intro is one of the more
Speaker 1: amazing intros. Uh. He's that guy that I mean, and
Speaker 1: I know he was based on this too, idiot Twins Twins.
Speaker 1: He's really based on um. I would I would argue
Speaker 1: at least his look is really based on riff Raff.
Speaker 1: If you know riff Raff, who is this like internet rapper?
Speaker 1: Um he was huge in in like the early tens.
Speaker 1: I would say he was one of those guys that
Speaker 1: that came up on YouTube um and really just became
Speaker 1: famous completely outside of before. Yeah, you've you've probably seen
Speaker 1: like riff Raff memes and um so. But but in
Speaker 1: terms of like the official story of spring Breakers, supposedly
Speaker 1: it's based on this other guy who I think is
Speaker 1: performing next to James Franco on the stage when he's
Speaker 1: doing that song hanging with the Dope Boys. I think
Speaker 1: this is guy Danger Russ is his name, which maybe
Speaker 1: he got like some mannerisms or phrases or something from
Speaker 1: that guy. But the look is like a riff Raff.
Speaker 1: And so after this movie came out riff Raff, like
Speaker 1: you know, got on Twitter or whatever and said he
Speaker 1: was gonna sue for like million dollars and and ultimately
Speaker 1: what happened, Like, I don't think he ever actually filed
Speaker 1: the suit. I think he was just kind of trying
Speaker 1: to like create some buzz or whatever. Um. But then
Speaker 1: like a few years later, in twenty sixteen, James Franco
Speaker 1: ended up starring as riff Raff in a riff Raff
Speaker 1: music video playing Playing Refreff, so essentially playing alien again. Um,
Speaker 1: so you know that the snake kind of ade its
Speaker 1: tail there, I think, uh, I think Franco was really
Speaker 1: good and this actually, um I'm glad that he sort
Speaker 1: of and he made him Southern and sort of this
Speaker 1: Florida cultural appropriator. And um, what hits me about most
Speaker 1: of these guys is they don't actually have any real
Speaker 1: talent for anything other than like creating well, you know, buzz.
Speaker 1: But he's a criminal. He's not like he's trying to
Speaker 1: be a rapper sort of, but he has no talent
Speaker 1: for it. But he's what he is is a criminal
Speaker 1: and he's the scene. I loved them post was and
Speaker 1: I thought that was so fucking funny was seen in
Speaker 1: the bedroom. Look at my ship, Look at all my ship.
Speaker 1: It was amazing, It was funny, it was great acting.
Speaker 1: It was reprehensible and gross and awful and like you're
Speaker 1: just like dying for these girls to get out of there.
Speaker 1: And Franco's talking like this Florida, you know, trashy beach,
Speaker 1: bumb breadneck with grills, and I just I don't know
Speaker 1: to hit all the right notes for me as far
Speaker 1: as really having a good time watching it. You have
Speaker 1: everything happening in that same moment, like the kind of
Speaker 1: if you want to go there, the kind of critique
Speaker 1: of materialism, capitalism, the American dream whatever, because he cook
Speaker 1: on it, the American dream. He was living it. He's
Speaker 1: not subtle about it. But at the same time it
Speaker 1: is just on its face totally absurd and hilarious and ridiculous. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's also kind of scary because he's holding those
Speaker 1: guns and you know, he just doesn't seem like a
Speaker 1: stable guy and he like, you know, as we see
Speaker 1: later on, like the situation can turn. The mood can
Speaker 1: change so quickly from being like fun and exuberant to
Speaker 1: suddenly like the guns pointed in the other direction and
Speaker 1: they're not really sure so intense when the girls like
Speaker 1: I didn't know, man, I didn't know what was going on.
Speaker 1: I mean I was like praising Harmony Green because he
Speaker 1: fooled me. I was like, I thought that they were
Speaker 1: really turning the tables on him. You might see this
Speaker 1: guy like get his head blown off in a second.
Speaker 1: You know, it really feels like it could assume his lifestyle. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I totally didn't know what was going on. I think
Speaker 1: he doesn't in the moment, and that's what made it
Speaker 1: so like enthralling and like stimulating sexually stimulating for him.
Speaker 1: And I think he's like because like, uh, he might like, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's really in danger. Maybe that's turning him on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: totally those were stream girls. But then also like I
Speaker 1: almost kind of wonder like maybe they were planning on
Speaker 1: killing him, robbing him, whatever. But the fact that he
Speaker 1: turned it back around again and just embraced it and
Speaker 1: really starts like going to town on the silencers and whatever,
Speaker 1: like like that's kind of the way I took it, dude. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I thought that they were really serious and that once
Speaker 1: he started getting into it, because like, Okay, this guy
Speaker 1: is crazy. We can you know what they're doing. They
Speaker 1: don't know how to kill a guy. Um. I thought
Speaker 1: it was interesting. The shift in tone from the movie
Speaker 1: is kind of in two halves. You had that first robbery,
Speaker 1: which is kind of crazy, and they were sort of
Speaker 1: feeling it but still kind of like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: what the fun did we do? And then it's just
Speaker 1: a party time, party time. They get arrested for something
Speaker 1: else for partying, they get bailed out, and then immediately
Speaker 1: it is like it turned sinister and they're really in
Speaker 1: that world and they're like, this isn't playtime anymore. You know,
Speaker 1: this is the ship. These are the real guys, and
Speaker 1: like who was gonna blink first? And of course faith is.
Speaker 1: I love how they echoed those to get on the
Speaker 1: bus scenes for both of the girls left early, and
Speaker 1: each time I thought that that girl has just saved
Speaker 1: her life and the other ones are going to die, right,
Speaker 1: which doesn't happen, but I'm surprised that it didn't happen.
Speaker 1: By the time, you know, we find out what happens
Speaker 1: to the last two girls. I feel like the film
Speaker 1: has has fully departed reality anyway where you know, if
Speaker 1: the film were to remain in that more semi realistic register.
Speaker 1: They very well could have died if they had tried
Speaker 1: to pull what they end up doing at the end
Speaker 1: of the film, they would be dead. There's no way
Speaker 1: they would like shoot through that whole situation. I had
Speaker 1: a bit of an issue with some suspension of disbelief
Speaker 1: there at that At that point, the film is like
Speaker 1: moved up to a higher plane of kind of metaphorical
Speaker 1: kind of fantasy. Yeah. Um, I think you're right. I
Speaker 1: think I think the only way anybody who's going to
Speaker 1: survive that situation was get on a bus and get
Speaker 1: back home and get away from that that whole crowd,
Speaker 1: because it was going to relief time one of them
Speaker 1: did that, especially as the father of a daughter. I
Speaker 1: was just like, fucking make the right choice. Just get
Speaker 1: out of there. And that scene with Faith, I think
Speaker 1: it was the end of the pool hall scene when
Speaker 1: she was wanting to go home and they were jump
Speaker 1: cutting it all around and Franco has that scene with her.
Speaker 1: He's got her by the face talking about how much
Speaker 1: he cares about her. I was just coming out of
Speaker 1: my skin, man, And that's such good like solid filmmaking
Speaker 1: when you can make an audience squirm like that. He's
Speaker 1: so manipulative and he knows that. I mean, it's predatory, right,
Speaker 1: he knows he's talking to this young naive girl. He's
Speaker 1: trying to push all the right buttons as far as
Speaker 1: making her feel like he's really, I don't know, in
Speaker 1: love with her, or make her feel super important or
Speaker 1: something to him. The way he says like that, she
Speaker 1: actually leaves after he says this. He says to her like,
Speaker 1: you know, you're gonna go home and your friends are
Speaker 1: gonna stay here. But even though I'm going to be
Speaker 1: with your friends, I'm still gonna be thinking about you.
Speaker 1: And it just doesn't it doesn't land right for her, thankfully,
Speaker 1: you know, that's not what she wants to hear, and
Speaker 1: so that's her point where she just like walks out
Speaker 1: the door, like Okay, I'm just done, you know. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It also takes a while to get overtly sexual, Like
Speaker 1: you see where it's going, and you kind of get
Speaker 1: the idea that he's he's definitely wants to like to
Speaker 1: have five some with them, but the sex scene actually
Speaker 1: comes when it founded just here three of them in
Speaker 1: the pool, uh, which was a really cool the way
Speaker 1: they shot. That scene is great. And then the scene
Speaker 1: though it really makes me laugh though, is proceeding that
Speaker 1: the piano scene. Oh yes, yes, the Britney spears. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that man. It was so funny because again
Speaker 1: I'm looking at as as this character, like this guy,
Speaker 1: there's no talent. He's got the money to have a
Speaker 1: grand piano on a on a veranda overlooking the ocean,
Speaker 1: and like he can't play shit, he can't sing ship
Speaker 1: and they're just like you see, like his fingers like
Speaker 1: hitting a few notes. But it's pretty obvious Franco can't
Speaker 1: play either, and he's just kind of like, you know,
Speaker 1: winging it um, which is really funny that they didn't
Speaker 1: hire like a hand double or anything to make it,
Speaker 1: to try to sell it. It's very obviously like they're
Speaker 1: just not showing his hands. They're they're shooting out of
Speaker 1: the directions. It was pretty bad and corny, but believe yeah, um,
Speaker 1: I wasn't quite sure too. With the two that stayed,
Speaker 1: it's Vanessa Hudgens as Candy and Ashley Benson is Britt.
Speaker 1: I can never quite tell the endgame with Candy and Britt.
Speaker 1: Until that last scene, I thought I thought they were
Speaker 1: just hanging in there a little bit longer than their friends,
Speaker 1: and that they were going to come around and that
Speaker 1: they would leave, and they were just sort of I
Speaker 1: couldn't tell how deep into this lifestyle if they were like, well,
Speaker 1: this is who we are now. We're gangs to chicks
Speaker 1: and it's pretty much. And I think they're just like,
Speaker 1: we're never going to finish school, We're never going back.
Speaker 1: This is it for us, you know, Like they were
Speaker 1: in even even when things well, yeah, because they chose
Speaker 1: to stay, even when their first friend left, when their
Speaker 1: second friend got shot in the arm, after all that,
Speaker 1: after really like being confronted with the kind of real
Speaker 1: danger that they're in. This is not a game, this
Speaker 1: is not a joke of fantasy. They chose to stay.
Speaker 1: So I think they're in it, you know, for the
Speaker 1: long haul. But then you know, there is that phone conversation,
Speaker 1: uh near the end where one of them calls home
Speaker 1: and is saying, like I want to do better. I
Speaker 1: want to like get my get my life back together
Speaker 1: and get back on the right track. So it's almost
Speaker 1: like they have to go through that final like kind
Speaker 1: of confrontation climax to to come out on the other
Speaker 1: side then yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's just like a sort
Speaker 1: of I don't know, Joseph Campbell, like you know, it
Speaker 1: just has to be this final showdown and then they
Speaker 1: can go back to their to the life, having learned,
Speaker 1: having passed through all of this, and now sort of
Speaker 1: like starting starting a new Like I think in my mind,
Speaker 1: I pictured those girls having this great story to tell
Speaker 1: one day that their husbands don't even know about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that their kids, their kids would never believe. Uh,
Speaker 1: and the fact that they were so in Like I
Speaker 1: don't know, it was disturbing, but like I think, like
Speaker 1: you said, like once it hit that movie hits that
Speaker 1: point in the last third, it's sort of complete fantasy.
Speaker 1: At that point, Um, when they're when they're you know,
Speaker 1: when they really get into it with his former friend
Speaker 1: and who was the guy that played him. He was
Speaker 1: he's a real rapper, Adney oh Gucci man. Yeah about
Speaker 1: this guy, but he's he was awesome in this movie
Speaker 1: as terrific. Yeah, there's a really funny anecdote from when
Speaker 1: they were shooting. Um they're doing the sex scene, like
Speaker 1: the final sex scene in the movie where with him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the three so he's got the one girls on
Speaker 1: top of him. Yes, he improved that he had of that.
Speaker 1: And but also like while they were shooting that scene,
Speaker 1: he literally fell asleep and so he's like snoring and
Speaker 1: she's on top of him and they had to like
Speaker 1: wake him up, and you know, apparently he woke up
Speaker 1: and said that line and they just like put it
Speaker 1: in the movie. So super impressive. You like a composer, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was really funny. Um. But once it gets real
Speaker 1: with him, uh, and you know it's all there and
Speaker 1: the if you had the subtitles song because I had
Speaker 1: to watch it at lower volume than I wanted to
Speaker 1: because my daughter was sleeping, um, and the subtitles really
Speaker 1: helped because James Franco was kind of singing What's going
Speaker 1: to happen through that last third but you can't really
Speaker 1: understand him that well. But he's singing the song about
Speaker 1: two little chickens remain and like I'm gonna go kill
Speaker 1: my best friend and my best friend's gonna die today
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, so you see it coming. But
Speaker 1: I don't know how in he is man when they
Speaker 1: were calling him scaredy cat and stuff like that, Like
Speaker 1: I don't think he really wanted to. I think he
Speaker 1: felt like he had to. Yeah, he might have felt
Speaker 1: like he had to put up her shut up, kind
Speaker 1: of like with in front of these girls. Yeah, exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a um he had to play that
Speaker 1: role of like the masculine, tough guy, even if he
Speaker 1: might have been like, man, this is a bad idea. Um,
Speaker 1: he just had to go through with it. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think that's probably correct. I hope it's not disparaging that
Speaker 1: I'm saying girls instead of like young women. But they
Speaker 1: seem like they were teenagers. I guess they're in college.
Speaker 1: They're yeah, they're in college. Although to me they felt
Speaker 1: emotionally psychologically a little bit more like high schoolers. But
Speaker 1: he may have just shifted it to college just to
Speaker 1: kind of remove that element of like are they underage
Speaker 1: or not? Fifty year old guy, they were girls to me, Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, exactly exactly. I mean it's the older you
Speaker 1: get people, you're like you're a kid, you know, so
Speaker 1: that that that frame of reference continues to shift I
Speaker 1: think throughout throughout life. I mean it's like when you're
Speaker 1: when you're young, when you're like fourteen, you think you're
Speaker 1: like the big kid. You know, you're looking at like
Speaker 1: a seven year old. You really, Oh that's a kid.
Speaker 1: I'm like a grown up. So yeah, it's always changing.
Speaker 1: You don't become an adult until you're like forty two.
Speaker 1: I look forward to it. I did look up the
Speaker 1: A T. L Twins because I was I remember when
Speaker 1: this came out and they were all over the news,
Speaker 1: and I was just, you know, I don't want to
Speaker 1: yuck someone's young young, but I they're very punchable guys,
Speaker 1: you know, I had that same reaction to them. Like
Speaker 1: all these years, I've kind of thought they were just
Speaker 1: like the epitome of like Vice magazine, exploitative kind of
Speaker 1: you know, Internet clickbait circu or whatever. But on the
Speaker 1: on the blue ray, there's this three part like little
Speaker 1: featurette documentary thing on the ETL Twins, they're actually pretty
Speaker 1: pretty solid. Like they have they have a really really
Speaker 1: hard life story, um and and they actually seemed like
Speaker 1: genuine real people, as as crazy as that seems, um
Speaker 1: and they even have like respectable day jobs outside of
Speaker 1: all this like hype and whatever. So I you know,
Speaker 1: just watching watching them sing to them, they're like very
Speaker 1: self aware. They know exactly how they come off to people.
Speaker 1: It's it's more of like almost like a character they
Speaker 1: can play. They can they can amp it up if
Speaker 1: they want to. Interesting, but they're actually like very kind
Speaker 1: of like smart, hip, articulate dudes, um who kind of
Speaker 1: come out. Yeah. They also like disappear from the movie um,
Speaker 1: which I mean and no disappeared from yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah. I tried to find out anything like what
Speaker 1: they're doing now, and it's like I can't find anything. Man.
Speaker 1: They dropped off of social media like kind of after this.
Speaker 1: I think they're probably like, you know, this might have
Speaker 1: been like the sort of the peak, the zenith of
Speaker 1: their notoriety, and after that, maybe they were just like,
Speaker 1: all right, let's just like settle into more of a
Speaker 1: real life, you know. Maybe. I mean that's I did
Speaker 1: see a thing on Reddit, which I'm never on Reddit,
Speaker 1: but I followed their trail there and it said this
Speaker 1: is from like three years ago. Some guy said, I
Speaker 1: live in midtown Atlanta. I see him all the time.
Speaker 1: They live in the Spire building and they they're like
Speaker 1: artists now doing pretty good. And I was trying, all right,
Speaker 1: all right these guys, okay, so you know, yeah, they
Speaker 1: there's some really cool footage and one of those documentaries
Speaker 1: of them skating in downtown Atlanta and like the probably
Speaker 1: early nineties, mid nineties or something. Um, and it was
Speaker 1: cool just from a perspective of seeing like what the
Speaker 1: city looked like back then, and you know, some buildings
Speaker 1: you recognize a lot of buildings you don't. And uh,
Speaker 1: and just like the way the city has changed since then. Um.
Speaker 1: But no, I I had the exact same reaction of like,
Speaker 1: I hate these dudes. Um. And then after watching I
Speaker 1: was like, you know what, they actually seem pretty pretty solid. Um.
Speaker 1: Surprisingly so yeah, or the documentary was just trying to
Speaker 1: make them look as good as possible. But I think
Speaker 1: I think just from listening to them, it was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: these guys like they know what's going on. They're not
Speaker 1: just like in a haze of you know, stupidity or something. Okay,
Speaker 1: maybe they're playing a part because I read I was
Speaker 1: started to read one in or view with them to
Speaker 1: try and figure them out, and it said something about
Speaker 1: whether or not they date much and they said, well,
Speaker 1: we have nine inch dicks, and I went, all right,
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not going to read anywhere there's there's
Speaker 1: a Yeah, they mentioned that in the in the documentary too,
Speaker 1: and they're like, so it's like eighteen between us, because
Speaker 1: you know, they the whole the whole bit is that
Speaker 1: they they only date like the same women at the
Speaker 1: same time and a good stuff. Yeah, yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: well more power to you. I guess not my bag.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean we're towards the end of the
Speaker 1: movie now where you know, we feel like the hit
Speaker 1: is gonna go down. I firmly believe that alien felt
Speaker 1: like he had to do this to impress those girls
Speaker 1: and and was scared. I don't think I think he
Speaker 1: knows that he may not live through this. I think
Speaker 1: it's hysterical that he gets taken out almost the second
Speaker 1: he steps off that boat after that cool shot and
Speaker 1: like those gay globating suits in the tank top, like
Speaker 1: all that ship is so cool looking, and the first
Speaker 1: thing that happens is he dies. Yeah, we should mention
Speaker 1: like that whole where they're approaching on the boat and everything.
Speaker 1: One of the major I think influences inspirations for this
Speaker 1: film is Michael Mann's two thousand makes Miami Vice, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which was like that was a real major moment in
Speaker 1: uh in filmmaking for certain, for his for certain kind
Speaker 1: of cinephile, a certain kind of filmmaker. Um that moment
Speaker 1: in like the mid two thousand's where Michael Mann went
Speaker 1: digital and started shooting you know in this really different Yeah,
Speaker 1: like a little bit in Collateral and then full on
Speaker 1: in Miami Vice and Public Enemies, which was less successful
Speaker 1: I think artistically, but Miami Vice remains like a real
Speaker 1: like um turning point I think for digital cinema because
Speaker 1: here was like this major American filmmaker using digital, not
Speaker 1: to try to replace film or to imitate film, but
Speaker 1: digital for digital. And you could put this alongside something
Speaker 1: like Inland Empire by David Lynch as well, where he's
Speaker 1: shooting on like consumer grade digital cameras and he's not
Speaker 1: trying to It's not that he's trying to save like
Speaker 1: budget or something. He's using the digital and the flaws
Speaker 1: in the digital and just like the idiosyncrasies of the
Speaker 1: digital um as its own like expressive medium. And even
Speaker 1: though Spring Breakers a shot primarily on thirty five, that
Speaker 1: was like a lot of the impetus. When when Korean
Speaker 1: saw Miami Vice, he was like, Wow, there's like just
Speaker 1: something about the way in that movie in Miami Vice
Speaker 1: when they're outside at night, like the sky has color
Speaker 1: in it, you know, and and the depth of field
Speaker 1: is just like going infinite in every direction. So on
Speaker 1: one hand it has this kind of video thing, but
Speaker 1: on the other hand, um, there's there's also something kind
Speaker 1: of like cinematic about it. Um. Yeah, it's just a
Speaker 1: really really um interest film. And there was all this
Speaker 1: kind of um discussion and talk in the mid two
Speaker 1: thousand's about like what is digital cinema, what can digital
Speaker 1: cinema become? And I feel like in a way, with
Speaker 1: the advent of like red and Alexa um and people
Speaker 1: getting into using more kind of traditional lenses and shooting
Speaker 1: in a more kind of traditional film style, digital cinema
Speaker 1: has kind of gotten away from that a little bit
Speaker 1: where now it's sort of like it's kind of like film,
Speaker 1: but you can still kind of tell it's digital. But
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of films are not really
Speaker 1: using digital as its own medium. It's just like we
Speaker 1: couldn't afford to shoot thirty five kind of thing, right,
Speaker 1: or or just the that's just the way they're made
Speaker 1: now and it has nothing to do with the aesthetic
Speaker 1: of digital. It's not even a question, right, It's just
Speaker 1: like you're just going to shoot digital. If you're shooting
Speaker 1: for Netflix or whatever, unless you're Martin Scorsese or something,
Speaker 1: you're gonna be shooting you know digital. But I mean
Speaker 1: even Christopher Nolan, I mean some of the you know,
Speaker 1: the big his filmmakers are all digital. Yeah, still seventy,
Speaker 1: isn't he? Uh? I know that the camera he shot uh,
Speaker 1: nineteen fourteen on Jesus No, not Sam Raimi, Jesus Casey
Speaker 1: were all over the place. It's Sam American beauty guy. Yes, God,
Speaker 1: I'm losing it. Sorry, Yes, I'm sorry, I got those confused.
Speaker 1: He shot nineteen fourteen was on digital because you know,
Speaker 1: my buddy Scotty he owns that camera. Now. He's like
Speaker 1: he went all in and I was like, I'm going
Speaker 1: to get the best camera there is and just have it. Samendez, Samendz,
Speaker 1: Sam Raymie hanging in there on film. I don't know
Speaker 1: is he But that last part, you know, starting with
Speaker 1: that boat montage, it's like it's got that voice over
Speaker 1: in the day glow fluorescent and that slow mo and
Speaker 1: the score and it's just all coming together, man, and that.
Speaker 1: I was just I was really impressed with harmony Kareem's
Speaker 1: filmmaking in this movie. Yeah. I was just like, man,
Speaker 1: this is a really confident filmmaker making the exact movie
Speaker 1: that he wants to make. He's he's really like kind
Speaker 1: of flexing the muscles and showing that like he can
Speaker 1: hang in there with these big names and filmmaking and
Speaker 1: and pull off some of these more complicated shots and
Speaker 1: sequences that obviously he loves to improvise. He loves to
Speaker 1: just find stuff on the day, but when you need
Speaker 1: to like execute a more complicated shot like that, he's
Speaker 1: also got the chops to do that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: which is really cool. I haven't seen his last because
Speaker 1: I was kind of like, where has he been since
Speaker 1: these This put him on the map in a or
Speaker 1: not on the map, back on the map in a
Speaker 1: pretty big way. I think, well, this was yeah, this
Speaker 1: was like again, this was a pretty successful film commercially.
Speaker 1: It made its budget back and then some, and it
Speaker 1: kind of became like it was a pretty talked about movie. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, we we haven't really talked about it, but
Speaker 1: you had the whole crossover thing. Were like Selena Gomez
Speaker 1: fans are wandering into the theater to kind of see
Speaker 1: whats Yeah. Yeah, so there's that weird crossover moment where like,
Speaker 1: you know, people like me who just love Krene because
Speaker 1: of Gummo and because of like his real weirdo outsider
Speaker 1: you stuff um, and then people that are coming from
Speaker 1: like pop, you know the world of pop music and um,
Speaker 1: youthful celebrities and so on also coming in. And then
Speaker 1: people like me, So what is this beach bumb movie?
Speaker 1: Though he took a seven year break, yeah, which is weird.
Speaker 1: I thought, I mean you would think, right, that's very
Speaker 1: harmony Karene to not parlay spring Breakers into like something
Speaker 1: a year or two later exactly. I was just reading
Speaker 1: online on the on the Harmony Cream forum, like the
Speaker 1: thread from when this movie came out, and they were
Speaker 1: talking about what the box office looked like, and they
Speaker 1: were saying like, man like, he's gonna get to make
Speaker 1: something with like a big budget. Now what are he's
Speaker 1: gonna do? And then like seven years passed and he
Speaker 1: kind of comes out with beach Bum which is uh,
Speaker 1: Matthew McConaughey playing almost a sort of alien like character, uh,
Speaker 1: a guy who lives in Key West, and his only
Speaker 1: goal in life is just to smoke weed and get
Speaker 1: drunk and all day. Yeah, it's a comedy. It's um.
Speaker 1: It's it's like a total like stoner comedy. UM kind
Speaker 1: of set a little bit in the spring Breakers milieu
Speaker 1: of Florida, of you know, similar kind of like day
Speaker 1: Glow Neon kind of look um, but different, very different.
Speaker 1: I mean, beach Bum is more like, on its face,
Speaker 1: absurdist and surreal kind of um. Snoop Dogg has a
Speaker 1: pretty big part in it, and there's like a little
Speaker 1: bit of a narrative of I'm trying to even remember
Speaker 1: what the story was. It has to do with he's
Speaker 1: like a poet, but he has no ambition. And so
Speaker 1: this is not a spoiler because it happens like the
Speaker 1: first ten minutes of the movie, and it's it's really
Speaker 1: not a big deal. But he's he's married to this
Speaker 1: rich woman who is sort of like his patron. She's
Speaker 1: the one who supports him, and he gets just as
Speaker 1: kind of funk off all day and she ends up
Speaker 1: dying and in her will it says, in order for
Speaker 1: you to get like my estate, you need to publish
Speaker 1: your next book and and by the way, you don't
Speaker 1: have a publisher, there's nothing set up. You have to
Speaker 1: go make this happen. And so it's kind of, uh,
Speaker 1: it's a story about like a man child kind of
Speaker 1: trying to mature a little bit um, but but done
Speaker 1: in a very offbeat, off kilter, harmcake carean kind of way.
Speaker 1: And uh, it's got a really funny Martin Lawrence cameo.
Speaker 1: I will say, yeah, it's it's really I mean, it's
Speaker 1: like probably the funniest thing I've seen him do in
Speaker 1: a long time. And yeah, I mean it's it's it's
Speaker 1: worth checking out. But it wasn't like to me, it
Speaker 1: was kind of like a companion piece to this film,
Speaker 1: and this film by far was the more groundbreaking of
Speaker 1: the two. That one is just kind of like a fun, silly,
Speaker 1: stoner movie. I would say, I'll check it out. I'm
Speaker 1: looking at spring Breakers. It did thirty one million worldwide
Speaker 1: against a five million dollar budget. That's pretty good. Little yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it did better internationally. Interesting. You know, Karine is like
Speaker 1: beloved in France and I could see that. And when
Speaker 1: when when we're talking, by the way about he takes
Speaker 1: this like seven years sabbatical. That's because he's shooting like
Speaker 1: all these fashion kind of adjacent things. He's working. He's working, yeah,
Speaker 1: he he works as like a painter. He had a
Speaker 1: major retrospective at the Modern Art Museum in Paris, the
Speaker 1: Pompidou Center, Um I guess a few years ago where
Speaker 1: they showed like most of his films, uh, tons of
Speaker 1: his paintings. He has poetry. He you know, he's like
Speaker 1: a he's kind of like a Renaissance like mixed media
Speaker 1: kind of guy. He does a lot of stuff outside
Speaker 1: of just like his official you know, narrative motion picture releases.
Speaker 1: So he's always busy. He's always working on something, but
Speaker 1: a lot of it kind of flies a little bit
Speaker 1: below the radar. That's his wife in Ko Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: She played the second when I get shot. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: the one who gets shot in the arm and not
Speaker 1: in a good way. And she also acted, by the way,
Speaker 1: in his film prior to this one, trash Humpers, which
Speaker 1: is a terrific film. Actually it sounds like a joke.
Speaker 1: It sounds like, you know, just something something, you know,
Speaker 1: where he goofed off or whatever. But trash Shoppers is
Speaker 1: really like his return to cinema because between like Julian
Speaker 1: Donkey Boy and this film Mr. Lonely. That was when
Speaker 1: he had his really dark period and he came back
Speaker 1: with this film Mr. Lonely, which he made in a
Speaker 1: more kind of traditional European art house style. I would say, Um,
Speaker 1: it had what's his name, Denny Lavant, who was in
Speaker 1: bou Travia that we talked about, the main guy, the dancer. Um,
Speaker 1: he's in that film as a Michael Jackson impersonator. UM.
Speaker 1: So like on on the services sounds like it's gonna
Speaker 1: be amazing, um, but it to me that movie is
Speaker 1: just kind of so so. But it's good because it
Speaker 1: got him back making films. And then not too long
Speaker 1: after that he makes Trash Humpers, which he shot just
Speaker 1: all on VHS cameras. It's basically trying to create this
Speaker 1: kind of like found footage artifact item that you would find,
Speaker 1: you know, in a dumpster or in the woods or
Speaker 1: whatever and popping in and they're these people wearing old
Speaker 1: man masks and just going around and humping trash cans
Speaker 1: at night, and you know, and that's the movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty much the movie. But there's a monologue in
Speaker 1: that movie which is almost word for word, the same
Speaker 1: monologue that's in Spring Breakers, where they're talking about these
Speaker 1: people they just live in the same town and they
Speaker 1: never leave and they never see the world, and they
Speaker 1: just go to work and they go to bed. He's
Speaker 1: always seemingly making movies about these lost kids who can't
Speaker 1: get out, these sort of lower income children who are
Speaker 1: who are stuck in a place. Yeah, and the trash
Speaker 1: humpers are sort of like, rather than go to spring
Speaker 1: Break or go somewhere else to try to escape, they
Speaker 1: just live where they live, and they live in these
Speaker 1: kind of like you know, trailer parkish kind of environs,
Speaker 1: but they don't live a traditional life. They wear these masks,
Speaker 1: they go out into public, they mess with people, they
Speaker 1: just get into trouble and raise hell and um it's
Speaker 1: a similarly kind of like rebellious kind of thing, but um,
Speaker 1: I don't know, a little darker maybe, but also very
Speaker 1: very funny. Well, the end of Spring Breakers, you know,
Speaker 1: ends with this big shootout in slow mo. That's uh,
Speaker 1: like we mentioned, it's it's the suspension of disbelief is
Speaker 1: just tough here that these I mean, it's it's hard
Speaker 1: to shoot a gun and I imagine I've never shot someone,
Speaker 1: but imagine it's really hard to shoot someone who has
Speaker 1: a gun trying to shoot you back and get what
Speaker 1: they're doing. The thing where they like hold it by
Speaker 1: the side. I mean, it's it's a pure like music
Speaker 1: video style, you know. And that was kind of the point.
Speaker 1: I don't think he wanted that to be realistic, but
Speaker 1: they kind of just mow their way through this party
Speaker 1: and eventually get to Gucci Ma and take care of
Speaker 1: business there. And the music too is It's cool because
Speaker 1: um on on one of the extras um Cliff Martinez,
Speaker 1: who haven't talked about yet, but he's the composer along
Speaker 1: with scrill X for this film. Cliff Martinez, he's done
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff from band Uh well, he was
Speaker 1: in Red Hot Chili Peppers, like Rum and now he like,
Speaker 1: you know, he's done everything from the Limi to Drive
Speaker 1: to the Berg remake of Solaris, which has a really
Speaker 1: beautiful score. But he's he's sort of like, um uh,
Speaker 1: he's the guy you go to in Hollywood if you
Speaker 1: want like a sort of Brian Eno ambient, floaty, dreamy
Speaker 1: score to kind of like you know, tie everything together.
Speaker 1: So Cliff Martinez is talking about how originally that whole
Speaker 1: shootout they had licensed like a piece of classical music,
Speaker 1: source music and yeah, and so he looked at it
Speaker 1: and he was kind of like, you know, I feel
Speaker 1: like this is gonna this is like the culmination of
Speaker 1: the film. There's been so much score in this movie.
Speaker 1: There ought to be like a kind of like a
Speaker 1: payoff for all those kind of musical themes and stuff.
Speaker 1: So he basically wrote this kind of orchestrated version of
Speaker 1: the scrill X song that is like and it's just
Speaker 1: kind of like slow, dreamy, floaty, contemplative version of that. Uh.
Speaker 1: But um, he just put it in there, like they
Speaker 1: didn't ask him to write it. He just put it
Speaker 1: in sound. And they watched the movie and Harmony like
Speaker 1: apparently jumped up and hugged him. I was like, thank you.
Speaker 1: That is like that's exactly what I wanted. I didn't
Speaker 1: even know to ask for it, Like, you know, it's
Speaker 1: just perfect. Yeah, it really, I mean, I really love
Speaker 1: the ending, despite it being completely unrealistic. I think that's
Speaker 1: not what you're looking for. Their Um, I'm I guess
Speaker 1: I'm glad these girls lived. I mean that certainly didn't
Speaker 1: want to see him die, I'm kind of curious of
Speaker 1: the five years on where they are where they end up.
Speaker 1: There's a uh William Blake quote that came to mind
Speaker 1: watching this and watching the Terence Malic Knight of cups Um.
Speaker 1: Basically he says that, uh, the road of excess leads
Speaker 1: to the Palace of Wisdom. And obviously that's an easy
Speaker 1: quote to misinterpret as just an excuse to go buck
Speaker 1: wild crazy, but I think there is something to it
Speaker 1: in the way you see it in this film, where
Speaker 1: they really do arrive someplace different at the end of it,
Speaker 1: and they really did learn something about themselves and about
Speaker 1: life and became different people and hopefully better people too.
Speaker 1: And so again it's this idea of like finding this
Speaker 1: kind of like real spiritual, kind of transcendent thing through
Speaker 1: the most crass material, excessive, harmful, you know, toxic manners possible.
Speaker 1: It's really interesting idea. Yeah, and I think the big
Speaker 1: question case he is, who's going to fill that crime
Speaker 1: vacuum in St. Pete the two going. Somebody's got to
Speaker 1: step in there. Maybe it's the girls exactly. Yeah, you could,
Speaker 1: you could well. And there was even talk of like
Speaker 1: a possible sequel, which I think would have been the
Speaker 1: kind of thing where like maybe the producers give it
Speaker 1: to a different director or whatever, because I don't think
Speaker 1: Kareein has any interest in like doing sequels and certainly
Speaker 1: not like a cash crab commercial, cash in kind of thing.
Speaker 1: This is perfect. It was ninety four minutes long. That's
Speaker 1: how long it should have been. Yeah, he didn't overdo it.
Speaker 1: I mean he overdid everything, but you know it's he
Speaker 1: kept it tight, you know, kept he kept it, didn't overstay.
Speaker 1: It's welcome. Yeah, you gotta do that in a movie
Speaker 1: like this. I think. I think it was a smart
Speaker 1: edit and um, I liked it, man, I liked a lot.
Speaker 1: I think it's a really good movie. Yeah, he um.
Speaker 1: I I look forward to what he's going to do next.
Speaker 1: Like I said, beach Bum was sort of like a
Speaker 1: continuation in this mode, and so I hope whatever is
Speaker 1: coming next will kind of be a new phase, a
Speaker 1: new kind of um, you know, a new moment in
Speaker 1: his in his career path. So we'll see. It would
Speaker 1: be interesting to see him do something really I guess
Speaker 1: straightforward still him. Yeah, yeah, we could see that, you know.
Speaker 1: He I mean, he's almost he's the only couple years
Speaker 1: younger than me. Yeah, he's um, he's still in interviews
Speaker 1: and everything has like that kind of youthful demeanor about him,
Speaker 1: even though he is a little bit older. Now he's
Speaker 1: a little bit more slow and deliberate, and like he
Speaker 1: used to just make a sport of, you know, being
Speaker 1: absurd and ridiculous in interviews, and now he actually gives thoughtful,
Speaker 1: like compelling answers to questions and um, while still being himself,
Speaker 1: which is great like that. That's that's the really wonderful
Speaker 1: thing is that he did find a way to remain
Speaker 1: all the good things about himself artistically while at the
Speaker 1: same time getting to a place where he's like not
Speaker 1: gonna o D or whatever, you know, like he yeah, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: that's cool. Alright, Casey, Well, there's a lot of fun
Speaker 1: my friend. I'm glad you picked this because he forced
Speaker 1: me to watch it, and I probably, I mean, it
Speaker 1: was one I wanted to watch back then, but it's
Speaker 1: not a movie eight years later that it's still high
Speaker 1: on my list. So I'm glad I got to watch it.
Speaker 1: I thought it was really cool. I love the aesthetic
Speaker 1: of it, and I just thought it was a good
Speaker 1: way to spend ninety minutes on my spring break. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you. I'm glad you mentioned it. It had
Speaker 1: not jumped to the top of my head. Um, I
Speaker 1: think you had mentioned before if I was going to
Speaker 1: pick a Kareem film, I think it would have been
Speaker 1: gumm oh probably, but um, you know that that's the
Speaker 1: film people can seek out and watch the thing. I
Speaker 1: haven't seen it. Uh, and but but yeah, this is this,
Speaker 1: This one was probably a good blend of um, somewhat
Speaker 1: more accessible yea. And just like the the the intersection
Speaker 1: with screen break. So yeah, it's great. And if you're
Speaker 1: into keg stands and pouring beer all over bare breasts
Speaker 1: and bong hits out of I don't even know car
Speaker 1: tail pipes, then this is this. This is your you
Speaker 1: want to take it that way, then you probably could. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I thought it was a pretty good piece of
Speaker 1: satire and cautionary tale. All right, well we'll think about something.
Speaker 1: Good luck with your stresses, and uh, we'll handle mine,
Speaker 1: and we'll see each other soon. Yeah, soon, very soon,
Speaker 1: I hope. All Right, thanks everybody, We'll see you next week.
Speaker 1: Movie Crash is produced and written by Charles Bryant. And
Speaker 1: Meel Brown. Edited and engineered by Seth Nicholas Johnson and
Speaker 1: scored by Noel Brown here in our home studio at
Speaker 1: Pontsty Market, Atlanta, Georgia. For i Heart Radio. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows