Speaker 1: What kind of a show you guys.
Speaker 2: Putting on here today?
Speaker 3: You're not interested in art?
Speaker 4: Now?
Speaker 3: No, look, we're going to do this thing.
Speaker 4: We're going to have a.
Speaker 1: Conversation from Chicago. This is Film Spotting celebrating our twentieth year.
Speaker 3: I madam Kempenar and I'm Josh Larson.
Speaker 4: I gotta feed the street, my lady ken and newborn kid.
Speaker 4: And I ain't trying to going back into another big days.
Speaker 2: I know what it is to risk everything you have
Speaker 2: or something.
Speaker 3: That you want.
Speaker 1: I know what that means to have nothing and won everything?
Speaker 3: What is that? In Spike Lee's Highest to Lowest, Denzel
Speaker 3: Washington is a powerful record executive whose life is upended
Speaker 3: by a kidnapping.
Speaker 1: Currently out in limited release, the film comes to Apple
Speaker 1: TV Plus in September. We've got a review plus some
Speaker 1: weapons feedback with spoilers and Jaws at fifty that and more.
Speaker 4: But that you get the head, the tail, the whole damn.
Speaker 1: Thing ahead on Film Spotting.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much, mister quint.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Film Spotting. We gave Jaws the Sacred Cow
Speaker 1: treatment back in the summer of twenty twenty for its
Speaker 1: forty fifth anniversary Josh, and we found a film that
Speaker 1: spoke to our then current political moment in some surprising ways.
Speaker 1: Five years later, Jaws is back in theaters celebrating its
Speaker 1: fiftieth I'm guessing that conversation will still resonate.
Speaker 3: I mean, considering we spent some time talking about it
Speaker 3: as a COVID parable and I believe I saw today
Speaker 3: that our current administration and its wisdom is discussing pulling
Speaker 3: back support for COVID vaccines. Yeah, I think it'll still
Speaker 3: apply to what we're experiencing today.
Speaker 1: This week we will share that twenty twenty Sacred Cow
Speaker 1: review of Jaws. We've also got some listener feedback with
Speaker 1: questions and maybe some insights from our listeners anyway about
Speaker 1: Zach Kraiger's weapons, plus massacre theater and more.
Speaker 3: But first, Spike Lee's Highest to Lowest, a remake of
Speaker 3: Akira kuris I was nineteen sixty three thriller High and Low,
Speaker 3: which itself was an adaptation of the nineteen fifty nine
Speaker 3: American novel King's Ransom by Ed McBain. The new film
Speaker 3: stars Denzel Washington as music mogul David King. He's blackmailed
Speaker 3: by a kidnapper who thinks he has nabbed King's son
Speaker 3: but has actually grabbed the son of his driver. Jeffrey
Speaker 3: writes Paul, here's Denzel's King trying to negotiate with the
Speaker 3: kidnapper into the phone.
Speaker 4: Please, okay, relax, Hello King, David n Ain't this sign?
Speaker 3: So? I got your full attention now?
Speaker 2: Huh you're finally listening to me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm listening.
Speaker 5: Good.
Speaker 3: You know you got the wrong boy.
Speaker 1: Ray offer, and I'll also learn you can never trust
Speaker 1: the help.
Speaker 3: But luckily for me, it was never about the boy.
Speaker 3: It was always about you.
Speaker 6: Well, I'm fair enough, but if it's about me, then
Speaker 6: you can't expect me to pay seventeen and a half
Speaker 6: million dollars for somebody else's sun.
Speaker 3: If it's about me and his blood is gonna be
Speaker 3: on your hands, then how you wanted? No? Man, Come on, no,
Speaker 3: I could have say, no negotiation. That's the day of
Speaker 3: recking it.
Speaker 1: I'm not God no more an all right.
Speaker 2: Listen, God give you everything you want, right, No, God
Speaker 2: give you everything you need.
Speaker 3: So the question is, what are you unique?
Speaker 4: How can I help?
Speaker 2: I saying I'm God, but I can help.
Speaker 1: Quick preface here, I had the idea for this setup,
Speaker 1: and I wrote it before I really thought through my
Speaker 1: full reaction to the movie and took down all of
Speaker 1: my notes. And now I'm kind of doubting my assumption
Speaker 1: about your reaction, but it doesn't change my prompt to Okay,
Speaker 1: so here goes. I'm no statistician, but I do know
Speaker 1: small sample sizes can be misleading. I've only spoken with
Speaker 1: two people who've seen Spike Lee's latest talk to them
Speaker 1: about it. Still, I couldn't help but notice something unpacking,
Speaker 1: or at least worth exploiting for this setup. They're both
Speaker 1: in their early twenties, and on the movie's titular scale,
Speaker 1: their reactions lean more lowest than highest. But age isn't
Speaker 1: really the issue. Their Spike Lee history is between them.
Speaker 1: They've seen just one of his previous films. Experiencing his
Speaker 1: work for the first or second time can be jarring.
Speaker 1: Calling anyone much less an artist didactic is rarely a compliment,
Speaker 1: Yet we've both used the term lovingly to describe Lee.
Speaker 1: His audacity is only matched by his fearlessness. And if
Speaker 1: for some reason you needed to mount a quick defense
Speaker 1: of the tour theory, say you show up at a party,
Speaker 1: and boom, someone's been reading Pauline Kle and suddenly starts
Speaker 1: laying into you. You know how it is at these parties, Josh, Uh, sure,
Speaker 1: he could be your exhibit A whether we're discussing films
Speaker 1: he wrote, directed and acted in like Do the Right Thing,
Speaker 1: Jungle Fever, and Malcolm X. Or films he wrote and
Speaker 1: directed like He Got Game, Shyrack and Black Klansman, Or
Speaker 1: films by other writers that he directed, like Twenty Fifth
Speaker 1: Hour and Inside Man. Or films other directors already made,
Speaker 1: like Old Boy, The Sweet Blood of Jesus, and now
Speaker 1: Highest to Lowest, which he calls a reinterpretation, not a remake.
Speaker 1: There is one indisputable double truth, Ruth. A Spike Lee
Speaker 1: joint is always a spike Lee joint. I don't know
Speaker 1: where you currently fall, Josh, but I'm going to guess that,
Speaker 1: even if you're positive on it, you probably don't consider
Speaker 1: Highest to Lowest to be top tier or quite possibly
Speaker 1: even middle tier Spike Lee. For what it's worth, I
Speaker 1: consulted the experts vultures Will Leach and Tim Grierson. In
Speaker 1: their recent ranking of every Spike Lee film. They slot
Speaker 1: it at twenty one out of twenty nine, just behind
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties No Better Blues, and ahead of nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: six is Get on the Bus. Here's my hunch again,
Speaker 1: admittedly based on wildly insufficient data, longtime le viewers are
Speaker 1: going to be more forgiving of his bold swings within
Speaker 1: a movie despite what could be a disappointing hit to
Speaker 1: miss ratio. If so, whether you are lukewarm or cold
Speaker 1: on the film, surely there were enough Spike Lee flourishes
Speaker 1: to gettily glue you to your seat or even youphorically
Speaker 1: elevate you out of it. Give me your favorite, but conversely,
Speaker 1: tell me the choice that made you feel like maybe
Speaker 1: you were just stuck in your seat.
Speaker 3: Let's get this out of the way. This is upper
Speaker 3: tier Spike Lee. Okay, great for me.
Speaker 1: I started to doubt it. I started to doubt it.
Speaker 3: And I'll say that without having done the official ranking.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm a completist before I do the letterboxed ranking,
Speaker 3: and I have two Lee films I have yet to see.
Speaker 3: I thought this might be the occasion to knock those
Speaker 3: out before seeing highest to lowest it and happen. So
Speaker 3: I have not done the work. I would not say
Speaker 3: this is top tier, Spike Lee. When you make a
Speaker 3: movie like Do the Right Thing, you have a tier
Speaker 3: few filmmakers will ever reach, including yourself again in your career.
Speaker 3: So that's one tier we can't even really talk about. Again.
Speaker 3: There's probably a tier below that that has better films
Speaker 3: than highest to lowest. I'm going to put it off
Speaker 3: the top of my head right now, in the next
Speaker 3: tier down, which I still think is upper. And for
Speaker 3: those who are in countering Lee relatively new now, I
Speaker 3: would not recommend they start here. I think this is
Speaker 3: something I have only thought about right now as you
Speaker 3: were talking at them. I might point them to Malcolm X.
Speaker 3: I think it's in some ways it has all those
Speaker 3: touches you're talking about. It's absolutely a not a tourist project,
Speaker 3: piece of work, piece of art. But I do think
Speaker 3: it also fits the biopic formula enough that an new
Speaker 3: viewer to Lee would be comfortable with the as you say, didacticism.
Speaker 3: I like to say, and I reserve this for Spike Lee.
Speaker 3: It's direct address cinema, and we have two instances of
Speaker 3: direct address cinema in highest to lowest one. I'm going
Speaker 3: to get too quickly here because I think it's just
Speaker 3: so fun. And another one which you know, it's one
Speaker 3: of the investigating policemen starts talking about the plan and
Speaker 3: he delivers it right to the camera.
Speaker 1: That's right, literal direct address.
Speaker 3: But I think that stands in for how his movies are.
Speaker 3: When people say they're didactic, that is generally pejorative, not
Speaker 3: necessarily for Lee, but in general terms. So I like
Speaker 3: to come up with another term, and it's direct address,
Speaker 3: which I reserve for Lee. So yeah, I would point
Speaker 3: people to something like Malcolm X. Then maybe go do
Speaker 3: the right Thing, see the Pinnacle, and then if you
Speaker 3: still like it, work your way through some other films
Speaker 3: and it might be a while before you get to
Speaker 3: highest to lowest, still really like this movie. I'll answer
Speaker 3: your question now because I have an answer. It's not
Speaker 3: what I liked most about the movie, but it is
Speaker 3: the answer to your question, what is the Lee choice?
Speaker 3: What is the Spike Lee And it is that you know,
Speaker 3: when you're going to a Spike Lee movie, you are
Speaker 3: going to get a distinctly cultural product coming from a
Speaker 3: distinctly specifically cultural point of view, and obviously Black culture
Speaker 3: is a part of that, and it's not Black culture
Speaker 3: is not a monoculture. This is a culture Spike Lee
Speaker 3: grew up in. There are black icons he admires in sports,
Speaker 3: in music that he will pepper in his movies, and
Speaker 3: you get that here. I just learned today that some
Speaker 3: of the artwork in David King's penthouse is actually artwork
Speaker 3: that is from lee'sone collection and was in the Spikely
Speaker 3: exhibit I saw a couple of years ago when I
Speaker 3: was in New York City where he showed some of
Speaker 3: his movie posters and paintings and so forth that he's collected.
Speaker 3: So you get that here. You get this slice of
Speaker 3: a particular part of black culture that I love experiencing
Speaker 3: in his movies because obviously it's not as familiar to me,
Speaker 3: but you get so much New York City culture that's
Speaker 3: a part of that Adam, which I found again new
Speaker 3: to me, been there many times, didn't grow up there,
Speaker 3: so I don't know it as well, but I love
Speaker 3: seeing it through Spike's eyes. There's the sports element of this.
Speaker 3: His son, Denzel Washington Sun plays basketball, and so you
Speaker 3: get you know Rick Fox, Lakers legend as his coach,
Speaker 3: and there's a little back and forth between Celtics fans
Speaker 3: and Knicks fans and throw some Lakers stuff in there.
Speaker 3: I enjoyed all that, but the pinnacle of the New
Speaker 3: York City culture stuff for me in High Suloist was
Speaker 3: the money drop sequence, which I also think is a
Speaker 3: fantastic bit of filmmaking. And this is I don't think
Speaker 3: you know, this is not necessarily a spoiler. Halfway through
Speaker 3: the film, we realized that David King is going to
Speaker 3: pay the ransom for the son of his driver, the
Speaker 3: Jeffrey Wright character, and it involves riding the train. Also
Speaker 3: in Chris awas riding a train, so I like that
Speaker 3: they retain that the subway. It gets to an above
Speaker 3: ground track and he's supposed to drop it. And the
Speaker 3: setting for this the Kidnapper is devised. It's going to
Speaker 3: take place during a Puerto Rican Pride festival essentially. Now
Speaker 3: when we're on the train, when King is on the train,
Speaker 3: it's also fans Yankees fans en route to a game
Speaker 3: against the Red Sox, so you get a a little
Speaker 3: bit of that sports element. Here's the other direct direct
Speaker 3: address bit, Adam, there is a Yankees fan leading the cheer,
Speaker 3: Let's go Yankees. Boston sucks. The whole car is chanting this.
Speaker 3: It's Nick de Turo, John t Turro's brother, a Spike
Speaker 3: leavet a great face for cinema, and he turns and
Speaker 3: looks right into the camera and delivers a Boston sucks.
Speaker 3: I mean, so that's the sort of stuff you're going
Speaker 3: to get in the midst of a high stake, suspense
Speaker 3: action sequence that gives you that Spike flavor, that Spike texture.
Speaker 3: I mentioned the Puerto Rican going on. We get cutaways
Speaker 3: to the Eddie Palmieri Salsa Orchestra playing the street festival.
Speaker 3: He's introduced by Rosie Perez. Just a nice little touch
Speaker 3: there as Rosie Perez. And so we're cutting back and
Speaker 3: forth with this music, this amazing salsa orchestra music interwoven
Speaker 3: with the chant Boston socks. And this is the texture.
Speaker 3: This is the great New York City stew the texture
Speaker 3: that Spike Lee is going to bring to what could
Speaker 3: have been a rote standard suspense sequence. And I loved it.
Speaker 3: I was like this, You're not going to get this
Speaker 3: from anyone else. So that's the Spike answer. But as
Speaker 3: I said, it's not why I liked Hi Solois quite
Speaker 3: so much. We'll get to that. But what did you
Speaker 3: First of all, did you like it? And what did
Speaker 3: you What was the spikiness level for you?
Speaker 1: Well, first, I'll say, if this was a game show,
Speaker 1: you win. That's that's the right answer, or that is
Speaker 1: my answer, And I don't know how much I can
Speaker 1: add to it, but I'll try. I do. First want
Speaker 1: to say that, going back to my little preface here,
Speaker 1: I had this setup in mind, as I mentioned, and
Speaker 1: for some reason, my assumption about my own reaction was,
Speaker 1: even though I walked out of the theater liking it,
Speaker 1: I knew I liked this movie. I was going to
Speaker 1: be positive on it. Somehow I thought that Hit to
Speaker 1: Miss Ratio was a little bit tighter, and I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: when I sit down to really prepare for my review,
Speaker 1: I know, here are things I like about it, and
Speaker 1: I know there are many things I like about it,
Speaker 1: but I was going to have to acknowledge some of
Speaker 1: those bold and those audacious spike choices that maybe don't
Speaker 1: totally work or maybe don't work at all. And then Josh,
Speaker 1: I started preparing and it's it's almost exclusively positive, and
Speaker 1: so then I love. That's That's where I really started
Speaker 1: to doubt myself. And now I'm all in on this film.
Speaker 1: We'll get to a few things, or at least I
Speaker 1: will that maybe we can talk about not totally working.
Speaker 1: But there is so much that does work about this film.
Speaker 1: And you talked about that sequence, that key sequence in
Speaker 1: relation to what Spike is doing in terms of incorporating
Speaker 1: New York and that cultural heritage that is there that
Speaker 1: is so important. I think what I'll try to do
Speaker 1: is just mention it in terms of or discuss it
Speaker 1: in terms of how important the music is there, but
Speaker 1: not only there, how important the music is to the
Speaker 1: entire film. Right, So I do think that entire sequence,
Speaker 1: and we have to mention not only Matthew Lebetique, the
Speaker 1: director of photography who also shot Inside Man shot Shyraq
Speaker 1: for Spike, but a few other films as well, his
Speaker 1: cinematography and the editing by Barry Alexander Brown and Alison C. Johnson.
Speaker 1: The work they're doing here is incredible. It is intense,
Speaker 1: it is unpredictable. It is such a long sequence from
Speaker 1: the moment Denzel leaves the condo and a combination of
Speaker 1: different types of shooting hand held but also some very
Speaker 1: elegant work. But it's unpredictable. It's chaotic, but it's very
Speaker 1: controlled filmmaking. And because it is Spike Lee, it is
Speaker 1: You're right, fundamentally culturally at its core New York. And
Speaker 1: that choice to have the music coming from Eddie Palmieri,
Speaker 1: that song Puerto Rico, to have it be a parade
Speaker 1: that's going on, have it be so core to this
Speaker 1: sequence and thus this movie, and have it be diagetic,
Speaker 1: not imposed on the sequence, have it be diegetic. It's happening,
Speaker 1: this is happening in this neighborhood. Now, that only adds
Speaker 1: to that intensity and the suspense. And I think that sequence,
Speaker 1: it isn't just the standout sequence in this film, and
Speaker 1: there are a lot of great scenes and moments, but
Speaker 1: it's the standout sequence here. And I think it is
Speaker 1: as suspenseful and thrilling as the famous French Connection scene,
Speaker 1: which is clearly an influence for Spike Lee on this sequence, sure,
Speaker 1: but as suspenseful and thrilling as anything Spike Lee has done. Also.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you saw this. It popped up
Speaker 1: for me somewhere that Eddie Palmieri had passed away. And
Speaker 1: not only has he passed away, Josh, he just died
Speaker 1: on August sixth.
Speaker 3: Oh no, I did not see that one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so just died earlier this month, sadly. But that's
Speaker 1: Eddie Palmiery and his salsa orchestra that's featured playing Puerto
Speaker 1: Rico in this movie. Incredible sequence, but it doesn't it
Speaker 1: doesn't just stop there.
Speaker 3: Can I ask you a quick question about the sequence? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Did you did? It seem like they were using different stock,
Speaker 3: at least film stock. Possibly maybe it was switching from
Speaker 3: digital film for the subways.
Speaker 1: I feel like that's where it's introduced, isn't it is
Speaker 1: when he goes that ways the first time in the movie,
Speaker 1: where we start to see potentially sixteen millimeters.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a lot connection point. I think you're thrust into
Speaker 3: that area.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's adding different textures in that sequence, and that
Speaker 1: feels like something Spike would do. Right, A great rhetorical
Speaker 1: device there. But the beginning of this movie also just
Speaker 1: brought me right in the use of Oh what a
Speaker 1: beautiful morning. Those shots of the city. It's the Harbor,
Speaker 1: the Brooklyn Bridge, it's majestic, and it's showcasing the city
Speaker 1: in a way that somehow feels new and different. Despite
Speaker 1: the fact the Spike Lee himself and so many other
Speaker 1: filmmakers have already shot these same vistas so many times before.
Speaker 1: But it's spiked too, Josh. So he's got this great
Speaker 1: ironic sense of humor. Even just taking the song. It's
Speaker 1: ironic because we know going in how his day is
Speaker 1: going to unfold. Yeah, but what he thinks his day
Speaker 1: is going to unfold. Like, there's the irony there. But
Speaker 1: just taking that song out of its milieu, written originally
Speaker 1: for Oklahoma and adopting it trans play to New York
Speaker 1: City is genius and it works on all of those levels.
Speaker 1: But it is more than that too, Josh, And I
Speaker 1: think this is one of those areas. I think this
Speaker 1: goes back to my setup. It actually is the key
Speaker 1: element here that maybe inspired what I was thinking when
Speaker 1: I was talking about something that might turn off people
Speaker 1: who are just coming to Spike's work for the first
Speaker 1: or second time and they're not as used to it.
Speaker 1: There is music. It's not just these big flourishes, these
Speaker 1: big choices where songs are playing throughout these entire sequences.
Speaker 1: There is music almost constantly throughout the film. The score,
Speaker 1: and I think most of it works very well, but
Speaker 1: the score here, I want to make sure get the
Speaker 1: name right. The score is done by Howard Drawsen, and
Speaker 1: there's other artists that you hear as well, in addition
Speaker 1: to the ones that we've mentioned, and I'll mention a
Speaker 1: couple of artists here, or at least one more famous
Speaker 1: artists in a second. But there is scoring that is
Speaker 1: underneath so many scenes, especially through the first forty five
Speaker 1: minutes to an hour of this movie, And in some
Speaker 1: cases I feel like there are folks who might feel
Speaker 1: like it's almost soap opera ish, but that that feels
Speaker 1: right for Spike because it's almost as if he is
Speaker 1: so musical and so musically inclined. It's like he wants
Speaker 1: to give each scene not just not just broad pieces
Speaker 1: or sequences, but each scene its own theme. And just
Speaker 1: as I'm thinking that, just as I'm thinking that, there's
Speaker 1: a moment early in the film where Denzel's you know,
Speaker 1: David King gets in the car with Paul for the
Speaker 1: first time and he says, I need a theme, and
Speaker 1: what happens. Paul picks out the perfect theme and the
Speaker 1: song I think is Ain't No Stop in Us Now,
Speaker 1: which is like a disco hit from the seventies, But
Speaker 1: that's what they're feeling at the time, So that becomes
Speaker 1: the theme for that moment later when they're in the
Speaker 1: car again and their head to do something. What's the
Speaker 1: theme for that moment. It's the Payback by James Brown, right,
Speaker 1: But there are also themes musical instrumental themes for every
Speaker 1: other moment that is in the movie, and so that
Speaker 1: that use of music, especially in the money drop sequence,
Speaker 1: is incredible, but how we used it throughout is one
Speaker 1: of the touches that for me really made highest to
Speaker 1: lois something worth seeing and worth listening to.
Speaker 3: Totally with you on the soundtrack selections and the use
Speaker 3: of those. One of the things that did hold me
Speaker 3: back about Hies Solis was the score by Dr Howard Drowson, and.
Speaker 1: There as I loved it, and some times that held
Speaker 1: me back.
Speaker 3: And I know again the things you know going into
Speaker 3: a Spike Lee film. The wallpaper score is a common
Speaker 3: element I know, and Drawsen has worked with Spike Lee before,
Speaker 3: I believe, but a lot of times this sort of
Speaker 3: texture was established by his father, Bill Lee, a jazz musician,
Speaker 3: and his early films would have these wall to wall scores,
Speaker 3: which are you're not used to them, and sometimes they
Speaker 3: do take a little getting used to. I did find
Speaker 3: it at times more intrusive than I have in other films,
Speaker 3: but that's that's more of a quibble. I completely agree
Speaker 3: about the use and the specific selections. When you're mentioning
Speaker 3: that song, the opening song being from Oklahoma. That's another
Speaker 3: part of the the cultural fabric Spike Lee weaves. Because
Speaker 3: it's not just black culture, sports culture, New York City culture.
Speaker 3: He also often takes quote unquote American approved historical culture
Speaker 3: and subverts it question reappropriate, reappropriate, And that's what you
Speaker 3: were describing in that opening number, which I love.
Speaker 1: What about you reference the art, Josh, But also in
Speaker 1: addition to the art, we cut to a lot of
Speaker 1: pictures of Denzel Washington from his actual past. Maybe some
Speaker 1: are contrived, but they are actual pictures. I mean contrived
Speaker 1: in the sense that maybe they're usually using actual photos
Speaker 1: of him on mock covers, but I think right, actual
Speaker 1: images and covers, and they're images of his former self.
Speaker 1: And maybe, Josh, this isn't a major flourish, not as
Speaker 1: bold of a choice as some of the other things
Speaker 1: we're talking about. Maybe it's even arguably an obvious one.
Speaker 1: And I'll say briefly too. I don't think it's something
Speaker 1: that works on the same level is what Steven Soderbergh
Speaker 1: does in The Limi. I mentioned this movie last week,
Speaker 1: the casting of Peter Fonda in that movie, the footage
Speaker 1: of Terrence Stamp from the ken Loach movie Poor Cow.
Speaker 1: The way those work in that film, for me, are
Speaker 1: not just stunts and not just practical. We needed to
Speaker 1: show Terrence Stamp as a young man, so we found
Speaker 1: this footage. There are choices that significantly add to the
Speaker 1: meaning and the experience of the movie. So maybe not
Speaker 1: quite on that level, but there are constant references to
Speaker 1: the art that you mentioned and different artifacts, and when
Speaker 1: David King is doing his most soul searching and really
Speaker 1: what he's wrestling with is his legacy, his legacy, there
Speaker 1: is some added I think it was for me, there
Speaker 1: was added potency to seeing these celebrated, authentic visages of himself,
Speaker 1: of his actual self haunting him. Would it be more
Speaker 1: potent if there was a meta element to it, if
Speaker 1: Denzel was a problematic figure or someone who truly was
Speaker 1: wrestling with his legacy. I don't know. Maybe I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna wish that on him. Certainly but also I don't
Speaker 1: know that it's necessary because he's seventy years old, and
Speaker 1: there is going to be a logical reckoning with that
Speaker 1: legacy for him and then vicariously vicariously through us as
Speaker 1: the audience. And I also don't think it's a stretch
Speaker 1: to suggest that within the Black community over the last
Speaker 1: forty years of popular culture, Denzel Washington is one of
Speaker 1: those figures those visages, certainly portraying just the image of
Speaker 1: him portraying Malcolm X, portraying Alonso in Training Day, but
Speaker 1: just him as a sex symbol what he's meant as
Speaker 1: a philanthropist. That added element I thought was really crucial
Speaker 1: to the film.
Speaker 3: I think so too. I think it's also part of
Speaker 3: what we should talk about is how much Highest to
Speaker 3: Lowest is an old man movie. And by old man,
Speaker 3: I'm saying that respectfully, but you know, you pointed out
Speaker 3: the age, and I mean old man in terms of Hollywood.
Speaker 3: You know age, because both Spike Lee and Denzel Washington,
Speaker 3: I believe Spike Lee is just a couple years younger,
Speaker 3: are at a different phase of their reputations and their careers.
Speaker 3: And I did worry a bit at the beginning about
Speaker 3: this quality and how it was going to play in
Speaker 3: this film, because to my mind, David King when he
Speaker 3: first appears, is a little awkward, a little out of touch,
Speaker 3: a little acting younger than he should and fairly, and
Speaker 3: I was wondering, like, has Denzel lost it? Are we
Speaker 3: starting to see? But of course, I mean, this is
Speaker 3: just me being dumb. That's part of the nuance of
Speaker 3: the performance, is what I came to understand, because David
Speaker 3: King is a little too old, and characters reference this,
Speaker 3: he may have lost his touch, or if he hasn't
Speaker 3: lost his touch, it's because he's been focusing on the
Speaker 3: wrong things. He's been focusing on sales and stock prices
Speaker 3: rather than new artists and musing. There's a reference his
Speaker 3: wife references that he doesn't listen to music as much
Speaker 3: as he used to. And so I do think it's
Speaker 3: awkward to see an awkward Denzel Washington. But I think
Speaker 3: that's an intentional part of the performance, because as the
Speaker 3: movie goes on and David King makes different choices, both
Speaker 3: moral and artistic, he begins to reclaim some of that
Speaker 3: swagger we recognize, and there's a moment that's very distinct
Speaker 3: for me. Adam there's an early scene where he's trying
Speaker 3: to make a business negotiation with a partner and there's
Speaker 3: a gold mic in the conference room, like a gold
Speaker 3: embossed mic, and he's kind of using it as a prop,
Speaker 3: like talking into it then holding it to his partner.
Speaker 3: And at first I'm like, oh, that's kind of like
Speaker 3: clever charisma, right, But then he keeps doing it, and
Speaker 3: I'm thinking, Okay, you're pushing this a little bit, Like
Speaker 3: you're pushing this bit a little bit, And it's tied
Speaker 3: into what I eventually realized is it's because David King
Speaker 3: is pushing that, right. It's him trying to rely on
Speaker 3: the old charisma he used to have. Notice Dunzel Washington's
Speaker 3: shift into real charisma later in the film, and I
Speaker 3: do think it correlates with his reclaiming his moral and
Speaker 3: artistic integrity. I think that's when we start to see
Speaker 3: the real David King come out, which, to us as
Speaker 3: audience viewers, is the real Denzel Washington. So I could
Speaker 3: talk about this more in detail in a climactic scene
Speaker 3: where there's a face off with the kidnapper, but I
Speaker 3: don't know how much of that I want to spoil
Speaker 3: because I think that's the brilliant performance because we see,
Speaker 3: let's just say, we see David King try to rap
Speaker 3: a little bit and it's not it's not great, but
Speaker 3: it's not it shouldn't be great in that scene. Yet
Speaker 3: somehow he balances yeah, real swagger, authority, charisma, gravitas in
Speaker 3: that scene as well. So it's different from the early
Speaker 3: David King. It's a different David King at that point.
Speaker 3: And again I think it's because he's he's come to
Speaker 3: understand who he is as a music producer on the
Speaker 3: artistic side and as a man making the right moral
Speaker 3: choice as it regards to the ransom for his driver's son.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's an accurate reading of the performance.
Speaker 1: I think it's a great performance overall. I do think
Speaker 1: generally compared to a lot of other Denzel Washington performances,
Speaker 1: it's it's not that it's bigger, but it is busier.
Speaker 1: He's he's just a little bit more of a good way.
Speaker 1: H Yeah, he's just fidgety compared to other Denzel characters,
Speaker 1: and especially the more unraveled he becomes. But we see
Speaker 1: it even early on, as you said, when he isn't
Speaker 1: really himself because he's trying to get things done and
Speaker 1: he's not sure he's not going to be able to
Speaker 1: pull them off. He's unsure if he can.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And there's an insecurity to the security, that's that
Speaker 3: he's not used to being in that position when he
Speaker 3: doesn't have his swagger.
Speaker 1: That's really where I think that that busyness comes into play.
Speaker 1: So I do think you're you're right about that. And
Speaker 1: yet what's interesting for me about it is that I noticed,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to go back to the words from
Speaker 1: the title here a little bit, it isn't as busy
Speaker 1: as it is. It's not a high volume performance. There
Speaker 1: is some swagger and bravado to it, but he doesn't
Speaker 1: get loud. It's not Alonzo from Training Day type of loud.
Speaker 1: And in fact, the more serious and pointed he gets,
Speaker 1: the lower his volume gets throughout the film. And he
Speaker 1: does have once he finds himself, he does seem to
Speaker 1: have of that natural confidence and command, and he doesn't
Speaker 1: have to like people who actually have that type of swagger.
Speaker 1: He doesn't have to be overly forceful, right, and you
Speaker 1: see that.
Speaker 3: You know what's a great example of that when he's
Speaker 3: agreed at this point, I think to pay the ransom
Speaker 3: for Paul's son, and they get another phone call and
Speaker 3: all the investigators in the penthouse are like, pick up
Speaker 3: the phone, pick up the phone, like rushing him. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and he just does this like okay, relax, it's like
Speaker 3: shoots it so well. It just yeah, it's just like
Speaker 3: that's to your point. That's that is when he's in control.
Speaker 3: I did want to throw in real quick because there
Speaker 3: may be people who are going to call this an
Speaker 3: old man movie, and he does. David King does have
Speaker 3: an anti kids are on their phones too much rant
Speaker 3: early on, an anti AI rant early on, and both
Speaker 3: of those exactly. I mean, we're old guys too, we agree,
Speaker 3: but but in the moment I'm thinking, like, oh boy,
Speaker 3: are we in for like a couple of older filmmakers
Speaker 3: using this chance to kind of like tell us what
Speaker 3: they think about the world. Again, I realized it was
Speaker 3: all in service of the character and appropriately.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so you touched on this a little bit.
Speaker 1: I also want to highlight I don't know if this
Speaker 1: counts as one of Spike's bolder choices. The actor the
Speaker 1: rapper has been in a few other movies, but I
Speaker 1: don't know if he's been on quite this stage before
Speaker 1: casting agents. You can go ahead and put asap Rocky
Speaker 1: in bigger roles in more films.
Speaker 3: Agreed.
Speaker 1: He absolutely, he clearly has it. He is a legit
Speaker 1: presence and what is definitely a bold stroke and I
Speaker 1: think it pays off, But we can't get into it
Speaker 1: because we aren't going to get into spoiler territory. Is
Speaker 1: there is a music video moment near the end that
Speaker 1: I think absolutely works in the film, and I do
Speaker 1: agree with you, And this is I know I've seen
Speaker 1: a few things here and there, so I know this
Speaker 1: has been talked about. It really isn't a spoiler. We
Speaker 1: won't spoil what would be a spoiler about it. We're
Speaker 1: gonna talk just vaguely. There is a showdown of sorts
Speaker 1: between those two characters, and I don't think Josh that
Speaker 1: what matters about that is we're supposed to believe that
Speaker 1: old man David King, that Denzel as old man David
Speaker 1: King actually has the rap skills of a sap Rocky
Speaker 1: as this character, but he does have to match the swagger.
Speaker 3: That's that's the point I was making. Yeah, yeah, he
Speaker 3: and I think Denzel is purposely not I mean who
Speaker 3: knows that Denzel Washington can rap. I have no idea,
Speaker 3: but in that scene he's purposely I think, not being
Speaker 3: very good. I think that serves the moment the character.
Speaker 3: But he has the he has the gravitas and the
Speaker 3: other elements of that scene. That's that's what makes him real.
Speaker 3: If if David King walked in there and like outrapped
Speaker 3: asap rocky, you'd be like, what is this?
Speaker 1: Corners here where I'll disagree with you a little bit,
Speaker 1: But it's only because I do know something. I read
Speaker 1: something that Spike said that made me think of another
Speaker 1: thing that's lore from a Denzel Washington performance in a
Speaker 1: Spike Lee film. And you may be familiar with this
Speaker 1: as well. He got game Denzel Washington. Well, any Denzel
Speaker 1: Washington performance or character you hear. This about his sort
Speaker 1: of method, if you will, is that he is supremely confident.
Speaker 1: He is never going to back down from anyone in
Speaker 1: a scene, no matter what they're doing, or no matter
Speaker 1: who that other actor is. So on, he got game. If,
Speaker 1: for example, he's playing legitimate star slash very good NBA
Speaker 1: player Ray Allen as his son one on one, and
Speaker 1: he knows in his heart he knows in his heart
Speaker 1: he's not as good. Sure, he's not going to beat
Speaker 1: Ray Allen one on one, but on that day, on
Speaker 1: that set, he is going to not give an inch
Speaker 1: and he is going to try to beat him. And
Speaker 1: in those moments, he is going to play as if
Speaker 1: Denzel Washington, the forty year old actor or whatever, can
Speaker 1: absolutely beat him, and he'll do whatever it takes to
Speaker 1: beat him. That's how he played that game against him,
Speaker 1: as if he could beat him. And Spike said that
Speaker 1: a lot of that that sequence that we're talking about
Speaker 1: was unscripted, and Denzel decided to show up and basically
Speaker 1: be like, oh, young kid, you think you got it, Well,
Speaker 1: I've got some surprises in my bag, right, So he
Speaker 1: he of course, just like the Ray Allen situation, he
Speaker 1: of course cannot actually out wrap a sap Rocky, But
Speaker 1: that didn't mean he still wasn't going to approach it, Yes,
Speaker 1: with the confidence, Yes, as if as if he couldn't
Speaker 1: be as good as it, because that that's what's important,
Speaker 1: that's what comes through.
Speaker 3: And that's what that character requires. So yeah, I do
Speaker 3: agree with you. I think we're saying I think we're
Speaker 3: saying the same thing. Yes, there's just there's there's a
Speaker 3: lot of nuance going on there, so that it's it's
Speaker 3: more than just I'm gonna come in and show you kid, right.
Speaker 3: It's important that he's not quite as good as as
Speaker 3: asap rocky for this story and this confrontation. So I'm
Speaker 3: glad that they they went that way, all right? Can
Speaker 3: I get to Can I get to what I loved
Speaker 3: most about High Stalls? Because I think I think you're
Speaker 3: gonna love it.
Speaker 1: What are we like thirty five ish minutes in and
Speaker 1: I haven't heard what you love most?
Speaker 3: Okay, this is when I was like, I, whatever happens, whatever,
Speaker 3: like weird turns Spike Lee might make. I'm on board
Speaker 3: because I'm having fun tracing this and it's partly obvious,
Speaker 3: maybe mostly obvious, but I love this as a mashup
Speaker 3: of Macbeth and the biblical chronicles of King David. The
Speaker 3: last part is obvious because he calls himself, he references,
Speaker 3: he tells himself King David, right, like the King of
Speaker 3: the Old Testament, and he he walks around like that,
Speaker 3: and so obviously that's in my mind right away. And
Speaker 3: then I'm realizing that both Denzel and Toshira Maffune, the
Speaker 3: Star of High and Low have played McBeth throw the
Speaker 3: Tragedy of Macbeth right yeap throwing a blood for Kursawa
Speaker 3: and Joel Cohen's Tragedy of Macbeth, where Denzel is just
Speaker 3: amazing in the part. So I had a lot of fun, Adam,
Speaker 3: just tracing how this movie. Who knows if this was
Speaker 3: on Spike Lee's mind or exactly, yeah, of course, first
Speaker 3: time screenwriter. I believe Alan Fox Am I getting that right. Yes,
Speaker 3: who knows if they were thinking of this, But I
Speaker 3: was having fun watching it flow back and forth. I
Speaker 3: don't think it's a perfect parallel for either of them,
Speaker 3: but you think about you know, in the Biblical story
Speaker 3: of King David, he sacrificed Bethsheba's husband to protect his reputation.
Speaker 3: And I realized right away this this terrorist, This beautiful
Speaker 3: Terris you referenced in the opening scene that David king
Speaker 3: has has to be something like the palace roof that's
Speaker 3: described in the Bible where David spied on Bathsheba. So
Speaker 3: you got all that going on, and then you know,
Speaker 3: the Macbeth stuff is fascinating to me because there is
Speaker 3: definitely ambition at play in this character. He is in
Speaker 3: the midst of this takeover deal when the kidnapping crisis occurs,
Speaker 3: so he's making a power grab even though he's established
Speaker 3: he is not satisfied with his career. The ambition eats
Speaker 3: at him and he is. You could describe it as
Speaker 3: protecting what he's built, but it's also an ambitious power grab,
Speaker 3: and you get we haven't mentioned David King's wife yet,
Speaker 3: played by Ilfineshdera. I think she gets a Lady Macbeth moment.
Speaker 3: They're in the bedroom together and she is like, yeah,
Speaker 3: I don't know that we should pay the ransom for
Speaker 3: Paul's kid either, like it might now overall she's not
Speaker 3: played that way, but there's that moment where I was like, ooh,
Speaker 3: that's that's an interesting And then I want to talk
Speaker 3: about this, Adam, because I do think you'll like this.
Speaker 3: You reference the scene where he's looking at portraits of
Speaker 3: himself or photos of himself earlier, when he's trying to
Speaker 3: decide do I pay the ransom or not, and he
Speaker 3: keeps repeating what would you do? And he's saying that
Speaker 3: to his own photos, but he's also picking up like
Speaker 3: framed portraits of I think I have this right, James Brown.
Speaker 3: I think Aretha Franklin's in there, possibly Stevie Wonder and
Speaker 3: each one he picks up looks at what would you do?
Speaker 1: What would you do?
Speaker 3: What would you do? So I've got this on my mind,
Speaker 3: and I'm thinking, like, oh, is this like Macbeth's dialogue
Speaker 3: with Banquo's ghost, Like he's having this internal that the
Speaker 3: other people can't see who he's talking to. Maybe I'm
Speaker 3: going a little further afield there, but still think about it.
Speaker 3: Macbeth attempted to have banquotes son murdered arranged for the
Speaker 3: assassination of another boy. So there's this element of like
Speaker 3: sacrificing others kids for your own gain, or at least
Speaker 3: to protect your own reputation. So this is where I
Speaker 3: just kind of started thinking, whatever thread this might be,
Speaker 3: however strong, or however intended. I was having a blast
Speaker 3: tracing that throughout and seeing how it played out. I
Speaker 3: do think, and we can't get into this. It's very
Speaker 3: interesting to ask yourself at the end of this movie.
Speaker 3: Is David King more of a King David figure who
Speaker 3: experiences repentance, confession, or is he more of a meth
Speaker 3: figure who you know. Obviously, it's a tragedy, it goes
Speaker 3: bad in the end, So that's a whole other conversation
Speaker 3: we can't have about spoilers. But I do think it's
Speaker 3: interesting in this parallel to see how this David King
Speaker 3: fits along these really you know, grand classic narratives that
Speaker 3: I think it's possible Spike Lee is playing with intentionally
Speaker 3: a little bit.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, gaate, no, no, no, no, no, no, it's
Speaker 6: not a risk, it's a rebirth. Look, the biggest mistake
Speaker 6: I have may was selling all parts of Stack and
Speaker 6: His in the first place.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it all came to me last night, the money,
Speaker 6: the buy out, the boat. It's it's not the ending,
Speaker 6: it's it's it's an opportunity for a new beginning. And
Speaker 6: what God gives you an opportunity for the new beginning,
Speaker 6: you gotta take it. You don't tell God no, you
Speaker 6: you just you take it, and you you make it work.
Speaker 1: It's been too long since I took the Hebrew Bible
Speaker 1: in college. Josh, I'll have to defer to you on
Speaker 1: the King David story. I'd push back if we were
Speaker 1: really going to get into it on the Lady McBeth
Speaker 1: part or Macbeth. Because of the Lady Macbeth part. I
Speaker 1: think the wife here is obviously far too passive. It's
Speaker 1: just the one scene. It's just the one and it's there.
Speaker 1: She's she's so supportive throughout right. So if if I
Speaker 1: was really gonna argue that, you know, that would be
Speaker 1: what I'd point to. But otherwise, I think you're onto something,
Speaker 1: especially when you consider ultimately, and I guess this goes
Speaker 1: to where you are s. You may possibly read the
Speaker 1: film where it's going the end of the film. We won't.
Speaker 1: We won't discuss it too much, but there's a question
Speaker 1: about whether or not this is ultimately a redemption film.
Speaker 1: And I think the final choice made in this film,
Speaker 1: it's a final choice. It's a final scene that I'm
Speaker 1: not a huge fan of Josh, and it's also and
Speaker 1: there's a final there's a final utterance by the main
Speaker 1: character by David King that Hammer's home. I think the
Speaker 1: idea of it being more redemptive than anything, I'm not
Speaker 1: sure that we needed that final scene would be would
Speaker 1: be my my argument there again for spoiler territory, here's
Speaker 1: here's my my biggest issue, and maybe this is the thing,
Speaker 1: Josh that as I walked out of the theater, I thought, Oh,
Speaker 1: I had more more things going on, And it was
Speaker 1: really just this one thing that was was kind of
Speaker 1: nagging at me. And it's funny because we talked about
Speaker 1: weapons last week or or whatever week it was, and
Speaker 1: two weeks ago, and then we're gonna talk about spoilers
Speaker 1: later and this might come up again. You talked about
Speaker 1: how the movie kind of requires us to think the
Speaker 1: police department in this town must be the dumbest police
Speaker 1: department of all time.
Speaker 3: You found a worst one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I found a worst one here. I think the
Speaker 1: detectives here in this Yeah city police department. Because here's
Speaker 1: what I will say. The last forty minutes forty minutes
Speaker 1: ish of this movie only happen because we have to
Speaker 1: buy that these cops wouldn't wouldn't pursue a lead. Yes,
Speaker 1: that they obviously would immediately, and how they reject the
Speaker 1: lead in the moment doesn't even make sense. It's a
Speaker 1: terrible scene. But b but be they wouldn't even be
Speaker 1: having that conversation because they would have started pursuing that
Speaker 1: lead and others like that lead immediately after the second
Speaker 1: phone call from the kidnapper.
Speaker 3: It's true.
Speaker 1: I know, Josh that Hy and Lowe is the Kurrasabo
Speaker 1: movie that inspired this movie and not Stray Dog. But
Speaker 1: they're both Coursabo movies and both police procedurals, and we're
Speaker 1: talking about Stray Dog for bonus content. So it's on
Speaker 1: my mind that rookie cop and the postwar Tokyo Police Department,
Speaker 1: with its archaic filing system of criminal dossieres and photos,
Speaker 1: would have been onto this guy from the jump. It's
Speaker 1: crazy that they somehow didn't come up with a different
Speaker 1: screenwriting solution to justify the last forty minutes of this film.
Speaker 1: And I think there are some other things, the contrivance
Speaker 1: with the headband that's so important to the film, some screenwriting,
Speaker 1: some dialogue moments that feel overwritten. But that's that's the
Speaker 1: big one, and we all you know you talked about
Speaker 1: it with weapons. Clearly you enjoyed the movie enough that
Speaker 1: you were able to get past that. I had a
Speaker 1: similar reaction to how that was handled, some of the
Speaker 1: suspension of disbelief. I got pasted it there. I did
Speaker 1: have a little bit of a harder time getting pasted
Speaker 1: it here because so much of the movie hung on
Speaker 1: this and having to buy it. That said, the filmmaking
Speaker 1: here is still just too electric for me to care
Speaker 1: too much about it.
Speaker 3: You're so right, and I think I'm in the same
Speaker 3: place you are in terms of like, oh, that didn't work,
Speaker 3: and I'm going to forget that we had that scene
Speaker 3: and move on. And maybe it's again first time screenplay thing.
Speaker 3: But I will also add to it the wonderful sequence
Speaker 3: we praised at the top. The money drop is somewhat
Speaker 3: ruined to me by a completely needless it's not ruined.
Speaker 3: I like to think of them as two separate sequences.
Speaker 3: It's followed after the drop by a needless and endless
Speaker 3: motorcycle chase, with multiple motorcyclists changing hands of the money bag.
Speaker 3: Every time they change hands. The guy who gets it
Speaker 3: next basically heads right back to where the police are
Speaker 3: coming from. So I didn't understand the logic of that.
Speaker 3: And then they catch the guy they think they do,
Speaker 3: and the backpack doesn't have the money. The guy they
Speaker 3: catch because they've been you know, switching it out that
Speaker 3: thread we never hear again, who like they have a
Speaker 3: prime right accomplice in.
Speaker 1: That case right there from you're telling me that they're
Speaker 1: not able to do something with that lead that leads
Speaker 1: them to the bad guy.
Speaker 3: Can I give you an element that I that I
Speaker 3: did like about the law enforcement though, because this is
Speaker 3: a little twist on the Curisawa film, you know, the
Speaker 3: curis How film to me is as much as I
Speaker 3: which is very little understand about Japanese culture, very about
Speaker 3: the severity of class distinctions. And one of the saddest
Speaker 3: elements of that is the chauffeur whose son is kidnapped
Speaker 3: in that film hardly speaks, yet he is in almost
Speaker 3: every scene, and he's just sort of like cowering in
Speaker 3: the background. And while the whole conversation is going on
Speaker 3: whether they're going to pay, whether Mafune is going to
Speaker 3: pay for his son's release, this guy doesn't say a word.
Speaker 3: He just kind of cowers more and more and shrinks
Speaker 3: in the background. And it's heartbreaking and clearly all about class.
Speaker 3: Like it's just it's inconceivable that a chauffeur would get
Speaker 3: the same would deserve the same sort of monetary investment
Speaker 3: in his child as an executive what so.
Speaker 1: Like reinterprets that here he interprets it really an interesting
Speaker 1: great performance by him by.
Speaker 3: By Jeffrey Wright, and I think we should credit maybe
Speaker 3: here the first time screenwriter Ellen Fox, if this was
Speaker 3: his contribution. There's more than a class element here. It's
Speaker 3: partly that because Paul, we understand, did grow up in
Speaker 3: the same Bronx neighborhood as David King, but has clearly
Speaker 3: not risen as high as him. Also, I think it
Speaker 3: is so crucial that we learn that he was formally
Speaker 3: incarcerated because what is the effect of that in terms
Speaker 3: of the law enforcement. Well, immediately they suspect he's involved
Speaker 3: when they learn of his past and that he is
Speaker 3: King's driver, right, and then even when they clear him
Speaker 3: of that because it's his kid's son. Notice the difference
Speaker 3: in response to the investigation. When it's David King's son,
Speaker 3: it's all hands on deck, like bring out the twelve computers.
Speaker 3: And then when it's Paul's son, they're still on the case,
Speaker 3: but they're annoyed by him. They're not taking as much care.
Speaker 3: And I just think that's a nice extra wrinkle that is,
Speaker 3: you know, to bring us back to where we started.
Speaker 3: It's a little bit of cultural perspective that's injected that
Speaker 3: someone like Spike Lee Brings.
Speaker 1: Yes, I agree, and I also agree it is crucial
Speaker 1: or it's very important that he is someone who is
Speaker 1: formally incarcerated, and they do immediately look at him as
Speaker 1: a suspect because of that. But even if he hadn't
Speaker 1: been formally imprisoned, just the fact that he isn't of
Speaker 1: David King's status, I think they would probably right still
Speaker 1: say well, maybe he has motive. Yeah, yeah, maybe because
Speaker 1: because his son's involved, he may have a motive, and
Speaker 1: they would they would treat him differently.
Speaker 3: They do treat him.
Speaker 1: They absolutely do treat him more harshly and more suspiciously
Speaker 1: though because of it, and they and they do treat
Speaker 1: him with absolutely no respect, they no respect, like he
Speaker 1: is nothing because of that background.
Speaker 3: And I like the thread that the acep Rocky character
Speaker 3: we learn too also serve time at one point, and
Speaker 3: I just like that there's there's something, there's something interesting
Speaker 3: there looking at Paul as an echo or mirror reflection
Speaker 3: in some way of the young man trying to make
Speaker 3: it out of his situation in this case through music
Speaker 3: and has had some similar experiences to Paul. So just
Speaker 3: just an interesting touch they put.
Speaker 1: In highest to lowest is currently playing in limited release.
Speaker 1: It does come exclusively to Apple TV Plus on September fifth,
Speaker 1: and we are recommending you look for it then. If
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Speaker 1: email us feedback at filmspotting dot net.
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Speaker 3: our celebration of our twentieth year, we have been sharing
Speaker 3: some voice messages from film Spotting family members. These were
Speaker 3: submitted ahead of Film Spotting Fest back in March.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we have a couple here. I said, I
Speaker 1: think a couple of weeks ago that we only had
Speaker 1: one more, but I found one hidden in the Google
Speaker 1: drive Josh, that I wanted to make sure we featured.
Speaker 1: And we may even have another one that will feature
Speaker 1: in a couple of weeks. But here too. As promised,
Speaker 1: you're gonna hear from Film Spotting, Madness Godfather, Mike Marrigan,
Speaker 1: and another one to two folks here that if you've
Speaker 1: listened to the show at all over the last ten years,
Speaker 1: or if you've participated in a few trivia spottings, or
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Speaker 5: Congrats everyone. This is Steve Green here in LA where
Speaker 5: I have done most of my listening since the cinecast days.
Speaker 5: The first memory that came to mind was something that
Speaker 5: actually has nothing to do with movies and didn't even
Speaker 5: happen in the course of the main episode. It's the
Speaker 5: outtake of Sam needing an extra try to introduce himself
Speaker 5: for the very first time as Sam van Holgren. I
Speaker 5: was already a huge fan of the way show talked
Speaker 5: about filmmaking and everything that goes in to it, but
Speaker 5: then to hear two people share a genuine spontaneous moment,
Speaker 5: including if I remember correctly, a rare Adam Kempener f bomb,
Speaker 5: that just proved how special this show could be, and
Speaker 5: indeed has been. In all the years since. Everything I
Speaker 5: loved about the show has come from that same spark
Speaker 5: and that same shared passion and fun. You all are
Speaker 5: wonderful and have changed my life in ways that I
Speaker 5: can't even begin to fathom.
Speaker 3: But I know I'm not alone.
Speaker 5: So here's to you, and here's to twenty more years.
Speaker 7: Hello film Spotting and happy twentieth. It's Mike Marigan, the
Speaker 7: godfather of Film Spotting.
Speaker 3: Madness, coming to you from Dover, New Hampshire.
Speaker 7: And what else can I talk about but the Film
Speaker 7: Spotting Madness Tournament. This crazy idea that I concocted, that
Speaker 7: Adam and Josh and Sam have made such an important
Speaker 7: part of the show, and it's been so cool every
Speaker 7: year when the tournament comes up to hear other listeners
Speaker 7: get excited for it, fill out their brackets, discover films
Speaker 7: that they hadn't seen before.
Speaker 3: It's just become so.
Speaker 7: Much bigger than I ever could have imagined. And I
Speaker 7: don't care what Michael Phillips says. The Film Spotting Madness
Speaker 7: Tournament is awesome. There was that time that I won
Speaker 7: the whole thing, which was a little awkward, but it
Speaker 7: meant that I got to record an episode of the
Speaker 7: show with the guys, and I don't have to tell
Speaker 7: those podcast nerds out there, getting to record an episode
Speaker 7: of your favorite podcast with the host is beyond cool.
Speaker 7: So I look forward to this year's tournament. Good luck
Speaker 7: to whoever our eventual winner is. We all know that
Speaker 7: it's not going to be Josh Larson and guys Happy twentieth.
Speaker 7: I cannot wait to see what the next twenty years
Speaker 7: has in store.
Speaker 3: For Film Spotting Now. Now, Mike, you know, I respect
Speaker 3: his mad scientists skills as birthing film Spotting madness, but
Speaker 3: unnecessary shot. I believe I haven't lost our internal bracket
Speaker 3: competition for two years now. Three Maybe agreed? Possibly you've
Speaker 3: been sharing pretty well, pretty well there Mike and Steve. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so great to hear from Steve hung out with him
Speaker 3: a little bit at Film Spotting Fest, and he's pretty
Speaker 3: regular on Trivia Spotting two, which we do with Film
Speaker 3: Spotting family members.
Speaker 1: Yes, we do deeply appreciate all their contributions to the
Speaker 1: show and having the opportunity to get to know both
Speaker 1: of them over the years, and that goes for all
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Speaker 1: We do have more members than this family members, but
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Speaker 1: And it's just such a wonderful community where we can
Speaker 1: have conversations, really serious conversations about film, can really silly
Speaker 1: conversations about film, or I think there's a music spotting channel,
Speaker 1: a theater spotting channel, a food spotting channel, book you know,
Speaker 1: book spotting, book spotting, I mean, you name it. You
Speaker 1: got really smart people that you can have any kind
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Speaker 1: are a family member who hasn't taken the plunge, and
Speaker 1: maybe you're one of those family members who's like, I
Speaker 1: don't I don't do the discord thing. I don't know
Speaker 1: what discord is. I'm intimidated by it. Guess what I
Speaker 1: was in your shoes like six or eight months ago.
Speaker 1: It's really not that complicated, Josh. You probably felt the
Speaker 1: same way. It's not that complicated. It's easy, it's fun.
Speaker 1: Take the plunge, and if.
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Speaker 3: have to like keep up with everything that is going on.
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Speaker 1: It's also available on Plex, which may have a commercial
Speaker 1: or two in it, but otherwise it's free and spoilers.
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Speaker 1: come listen to our discussion as part of our bonus episode.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to learn more about the film Spotting Family,
Speaker 1: you can learn that at Filmspottingfamily dot com.
Speaker 2: Those kids walked out of those homes No one pulled
Speaker 2: them out, no one forced them.
Speaker 3: What do you see that I don't.
Speaker 4: Show me? Where did you go? There's something very very
Speaker 4: wrong going on.
Speaker 1: That's from Zach Kraiger's Weapons, which we discussed a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks back. If you've seen it yourself, you'll know
Speaker 1: that it's the kind of film that raises as many
Speaker 1: questions as it answers. And if you haven't seen it yourself,
Speaker 1: well you really should not be listening to this segment.
Speaker 1: Go into whatever podcast platform you're listening on and look
Speaker 1: for the chapter, or look for the timecode and jump
Speaker 1: ahead to later in the show. Because this will be
Speaker 1: a spoiler segment. We are going to read some feedback
Speaker 1: from listeners. All of it features spoilers on the movie.
Speaker 1: We'll have some responses, and that's how we're going to
Speaker 1: do a spoiler segment on this movie. Are you ready, Josh?
Speaker 3: I love it. I'm so excited for this. Let's jump
Speaker 3: right in, starting with Matt White in Indy and I
Speaker 3: think we have a few here at the top that
Speaker 3: are about the humor in the movie. And yeah, that crazy,
Speaker 3: crazy ending. So here's Matt White and Indy. I enjoyed
Speaker 3: listening to your takes on the movie. WEAPONS would love
Speaker 3: to hear some spoiler talk. In particular, I would enjoy
Speaker 3: hearing why people were actually laughing at the end of
Speaker 3: this movie. My audience was split about half and half.
Speaker 3: Half were laughing uncontrollably, absolutely uncontrollably. The other half was
Speaker 3: sitting in absolute stunned silence, myself included. I got to
Speaker 3: the end and asked myself how anyone could have found
Speaker 3: that funny. Would love to hear your thoughts. You might
Speaker 3: check out the interview Craiger did on The Big Picture podcast.
Speaker 3: He talks about the humor issue around the one four
Speaker 3: mark and says, I don't think of this as being
Speaker 3: a funny movie. He does acknowledge a couple of purposely
Speaker 3: funny moments, but he honestly sounds surprised people are talking
Speaker 3: about the humor so much.
Speaker 1: I would love to know. The one thing Matt leaves
Speaker 1: out is I haven't listened to that podcast. If Craiger
Speaker 1: says that he doesn't think of it as a funny movie,
Speaker 1: but he acknowledges there are some purposefully funny moments, I
Speaker 1: wonder what he thinks the purposely funny moments are, Because
Speaker 1: for me the only moments in the movie I thought
Speaker 1: that were truly funny and truly purposely funny. Maybe there
Speaker 1: were a couple throughout, Josh, but I'm thinking of the
Speaker 1: ones that were for me, decidedly intended to be funny,
Speaker 1: borderline wacky, were at the end of the film. So
Speaker 1: I'd wonder if if Craiger thought, yeah, I was trying
Speaker 1: to make those funny, or for him they were three
Speaker 1: other moments in the film that nobody else in the
Speaker 1: world might think were funny. Again, Matt doesn't mention that,
Speaker 1: and I haven't listened to the podcast. I would also
Speaker 1: throw this back on Matt and say, the half of
Speaker 1: the audience, including you, you sat there in stun silence.
Speaker 1: Why why did you sit there in stun silence? What
Speaker 1: was it about the ending that kept you from laughing?
Speaker 1: Because here's what I can say about the ending of
Speaker 1: the movie. Here's what I remember, very vividly. I was
Speaker 1: all already kind of chuckling before this. But I can remember,
Speaker 1: and I might get I might get some of the
Speaker 1: particulars wrong. I'm not going to remember the exact shot,
Speaker 1: but you can. You can tell me, Josh if I'm
Speaker 1: misremembering here. Or how you recall the scene, the moment
Speaker 1: in that sequence. So this is the end the clown.
Speaker 1: Gladys is running for her life and these kids, these
Speaker 1: twenty kids or whatever, nineteen kids, however many there are,
Speaker 1: they are chasing after her, screaming too, and they're trying
Speaker 1: to kill her. Like we know they're trying to kill her.
Speaker 1: They're going to attack her. We don't know exactly what
Speaker 1: they're going to do when they get to her, but
Speaker 1: we know it's not going to be good for her.
Speaker 1: And they're they're screaming and chasing her. And again I
Speaker 1: was already kind of chuckling. But when I knew, or
Speaker 1: I thought I knew, oh he's going for laughs. Here
Speaker 1: was when there was a shot where the camera was
Speaker 1: is like on the sidewalk or in a front lawn
Speaker 1: or something, and it's it's looking at like the backyard,
Speaker 1: the part in between like two houses, right, so you
Speaker 1: can see the grass, but it's like in between two
Speaker 1: houses kind of thing. So you're seeing the backyard, but
Speaker 1: just that space in between. And and you I think
Speaker 1: you can hear the yelling, you can hear the shouting,
Speaker 1: so you know you know it's coming.
Speaker 3: It's great sound design in that sequence.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you see you see Gladys run by. You
Speaker 1: see Gladys run by, just just going left to right
Speaker 1: on the frame by yourself, then empty space, then twenty
Speaker 1: kids yelling and shouting across the frame. Sure, and that
Speaker 1: use of the frame, her running, then empty space, then yelling, shouting,
Speaker 1: twenty kids charging after. It's maybe this isn't clear from
Speaker 1: the way I'm explaining it, but if we were watching it,
Speaker 1: if I could find it, it is. It is like
Speaker 1: something out straight out of a cartoon.
Speaker 3: It is just.
Speaker 1: It could be silent comedy. I was just gonna say
Speaker 1: it is a silent comedy. Bit it is. It is
Speaker 1: straight up the Keaton Chaplin playbook. And so yes, if Craiger,
Speaker 1: I don't care. I honestly don't care. If Craiger tries
Speaker 1: to tell me he didn't accept that purposely funny, or
Speaker 1: if anyone else tells me they didn't think it was funny,
Speaker 1: I refuse. Well, first of all, it's funny. It just
Speaker 1: is funny. But also I can't imagine I cannot imagine
Speaker 1: a world where he didn't set it up that way
Speaker 1: to try to elicit a laugh. I just don't believe it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, a couple things. So that's a bit a
Speaker 3: familiar bit. Another familiar bit is and I don't remember
Speaker 3: either where it comes in the Secrets events or when
Speaker 3: I started laughing. And I was never laughing as in
Speaker 3: like I'm watching a straight farce here, I was laughing,
Speaker 3: like this is insane, and the only way I can
Speaker 3: process it is that I will laugh. But also I'm
Speaker 3: prompted by the familiarity with bits as you just described
Speaker 3: another bit when they it's a common bit whenever there's
Speaker 3: a chase sequence that a family is going about their
Speaker 3: business in their house and James Bond runs through a
Speaker 3: superhero runs through name name your character. Right here, we
Speaker 3: get that, except it's it's nothing we've ever seen before.
Speaker 3: It's a crazed clown witch running through. Weird enough, the family.
Speaker 1: Is like normal neighbors.
Speaker 3: What the hell was that? Pause? Here come the kids
Speaker 3: running through streaming. So that's another example of a familiar
Speaker 3: comic bit. I am totally you know, I'm with you.
Speaker 3: I don't care what Craiger says. I could. I mean
Speaker 3: it's interesting right when I say that, I mean I
Speaker 3: don't care what Kraiger says in relation to my or
Speaker 3: anyone else's experience of the film. So Matt, I would
Speaker 3: say in response, I think your stun silence is legit.
Speaker 3: If that's how you experienced Weapons, I don't think you
Speaker 3: experienced it wrong. Like there's no policing someone's interpretation or
Speaker 3: experience of a movie. This is why I love Weapons,
Speaker 3: because I think in a good way. So many people
Speaker 3: are responding to it so differently. So the stunned silence
Speaker 3: I can understand. You know, there might be responses where
Speaker 3: I'm like, I don't know where you got that out
Speaker 3: of it, right, But in this one I can understand
Speaker 3: because it is deeply disturbing. That's partly why I laughed.
Speaker 3: It's some you know, I have that response to some horror,
Speaker 3: and I will just say that I am less sure
Speaker 3: as I think you are, Adam. And maybe this will
Speaker 3: come up in further feedback about the final section of
Speaker 3: the film where we get that voiceover narration of the
Speaker 3: young girl. I believe that that I feel is next email. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 3: let's go ahead and read that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, before we get there, I want to go back
Speaker 1: to what you said, because this ties together this whole
Speaker 1: idea of humor. I think what you're getting at, and
Speaker 1: I think this is what you were getting at during
Speaker 1: the review proper when you were talking about Catharsis. It's
Speaker 1: a different type of humor than what we're describing when
Speaker 1: we're saying it feels like a very clear comedic setup
Speaker 1: the ending, or just before the ending, where you have
Speaker 1: twenty little kids tearing apart an old woman like ravaging
Speaker 1: her body, guts and blood and stuff spilling everywhere. Of course,
Speaker 1: that on a visceral level, on the most immediate primary level,
Speaker 1: is horrifying. And if you were someone sitting in the audience,
Speaker 1: you sat there and stunned silence and just thought that
Speaker 1: was awful, And we're not laughing at all. I completely
Speaker 1: understand that reaction. But if you were someone that maybe
Speaker 1: like you, Josh and me, even to some extent, you
Speaker 1: almost couldn't do anything but laugh at the absolute absurdity
Speaker 1: of it, the absolute over the top absurdity of it.
Speaker 1: And and in your case maybe even like a sort
Speaker 1: of Catharsis of the kids like getting this revenge of it,
Speaker 1: like the crazy, the crazy nature of their revenge. I
Speaker 1: can see that. I can see that too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that's another example of like the your body
Speaker 3: responds in laughter, even though it's not like haha, punchline laughter, right,
Speaker 3: it's a different sort of laughter. Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 1: So if Kraiger there, if he's saying I didn't intend
Speaker 1: that to be funny, well, okay, great here again doesn't
Speaker 1: really matter, but I would understand that if he didn't.
Speaker 1: But also I'm sure he understands, or he has to
Speaker 1: understand that it still might elicit that response in viewers. Yes,
Speaker 1: because it's crazy. It's crazy, it is okay. So here's
Speaker 1: a viv from La who's a listener since twenty ten.
Speaker 1: I'm a proud owner of a film spotting t shirt.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 1: As someone who considers himself a horror fan and horror filmmaker,
Speaker 1: I want to thank the Scaredy Cat Adam for perfectly
Speaker 1: articulating what didn't quite work for me about weapons while
Speaker 1: it's still a movie. I recommend the necessity of including
Speaker 1: all of the storylines due to them being woven together
Speaker 1: by grief. Did never fully gel for me. I also
Speaker 1: don't know that you can really say that about the
Speaker 1: Benedict Wong segment. That's the one I was referring to
Speaker 1: when I had a quick aside and I said, it's
Speaker 1: the only one that doesn't really fit. But like Josh,
Speaker 1: I was very into the Gonzo ending. The part of
Speaker 1: the ending that really didn't work for me is the
Speaker 1: voiceover over the final image. I might suggest listeners who
Speaker 1: haven't seen weapons yet plug their ears the moment that
Speaker 1: thing happens to that character and watch the last thirty
Speaker 1: seconds of the movie listening to your own heartbeat. It
Speaker 1: will make for a much more powerful final moment. So, Josh,
Speaker 1: I would actually love for you to maybe fully express
Speaker 1: or paint a picture of what Aviv is articulating there,
Speaker 1: because I don't know if I fully remember exactly what
Speaker 1: he's referring to here, what's being said, what that final
Speaker 1: image is, and do you agree with what he is saying?
Speaker 3: Yes? And I don't recall the exact final image, But
Speaker 3: there is a PostScript epilogue. I don't know what you'd
Speaker 3: want to call it. But and you do understand Craiger
Speaker 3: maybe wanting to giv in the audience this and not
Speaker 3: ending with the kids tearing the witch apart. Right, You're worrying,
Speaker 3: like what happens to these kids now? Right? You're still
Speaker 3: so I know we want to see them.
Speaker 1: But it was. Yeah, it was sort of some of
Speaker 1: them might even talk again or something like that.
Speaker 3: And this is the voiceover. The movie starts with this
Speaker 3: child's voiceover describing about, you know, that day was like
Speaker 3: any other day, and I understand the sort of fairy
Speaker 3: tale fable element. Again, I've likened this to the Pied Piper,
Speaker 3: so I'd like that choice, but I don't know who's talking,
Speaker 3: what the timeframe is. They seem to be talking as
Speaker 3: if this happened years ago. But then the voice appears
Speaker 3: right at the end of the like we see parents
Speaker 3: coming to gather their children up right, and I think
Speaker 3: Josh Brolin reconnects with his son. Yeah, and the voiceover
Speaker 3: tells us like some of the kids eventually spoke again,
Speaker 3: and yes, to me, I guess the way that was
Speaker 3: handled was it opened more questions to me about the
Speaker 3: timeline about what the kids experienced, because I think those
Speaker 3: who express concern that children, or at least child characters
Speaker 3: are forced to endure such horror in this movie, you know,
Speaker 3: you don't want that to be flippant. And so maybe
Speaker 3: this is a gesture on Craiger's part to attend to
Speaker 3: these kids as actual children, but to me. It the
Speaker 3: way it was done again just confused me. I didn't
Speaker 3: quite understand are these kids now? Why are they out
Speaker 3: of the spell? And other characters were under different spells.
Speaker 3: It started to open this can of worms that it
Speaker 3: then did not squeeze back in by the.
Speaker 4: Time the movie.
Speaker 1: It doesn't seem to make sense, isn't there. I don't
Speaker 1: recall there being something that would make it a contradiction
Speaker 1: that as soon as well, she hasn't otherwise died, So
Speaker 1: doesn't it make sense that if she dies the spell
Speaker 1: is broken? I guess yes, that's how I interpreted it.
Speaker 1: So the spell is broken. But I'd have to watch
Speaker 1: I'd have to watch that ending again. As as I
Speaker 1: said here, when I asked you that question, I kind
Speaker 1: of forgot about. I mean, I didn't forget it. It
Speaker 1: came back to me, but I wasn't really reckoning with
Speaker 1: the ending as far as that final line or that.
Speaker 1: For me, Yeah, it was something that bothered me. I
Speaker 1: was thinking about the ending in terms of the number
Speaker 1: they pull on Gladys right and how crazy it was.
Speaker 1: But I guess I would say, at least in quick response,
Speaker 1: that your defense of it, even as it didn't totally
Speaker 1: work for you. I do think is the right one
Speaker 1: in that the risk Krigger takes as a filmmaker is
Speaker 1: if you end on that note of the spell is
Speaker 1: broken because they just tore her limb from limb, and
Speaker 1: then the movie ends somehow just with the kids kind
Speaker 1: of walking off into the neighborhood or the parents reuniting
Speaker 1: with them or whatever is, then it does almost it
Speaker 1: potentially lends. I think that actually potentially opens up the
Speaker 1: door for more questions than answers, because then it makes
Speaker 1: us think, well, maybe they just all go back to
Speaker 1: normal after that, and that opens the door for us
Speaker 1: to think that somehow the trauma, the trauma's over and
Speaker 1: at least this ending tells us that, no, they're probably
Speaker 1: never going to be the same after this experience, whether
Speaker 1: the spell is broken or not.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think that's the right instinct on the
Speaker 3: storytelling part. I guess it's just the execution of that
Speaker 3: impulse for me.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So we're going to move on to a few emails
Speaker 3: here on the addiction theme in Weapons, and the first
Speaker 3: one comes from Emilio Barrientos, longtime listener and first time writer.
Speaker 3: After listening to your review of Weapons, I felt compelled
Speaker 3: to send in some thoughts in the movie after some
Speaker 3: conversations on Reddit really unlocked the movie for me. I
Speaker 3: also easily latched onto the school shooting aspect of the
Speaker 3: film on my first viewing, but the theme I missed
Speaker 3: out on was that of addiction and perhaps specifically alcoholism.
Speaker 3: Several Reddit users pointed out that the triangle inside of
Speaker 3: the circle that was seen in the beginning of the
Speaker 3: movie is the symbol for alcoholics anonymous. From my limited
Speaker 3: Internet research, it sounds like alcoholism and addiction is touch
Speaker 3: Kreger's life significantly, and that he wrote Weapons in response
Speaker 3: to his longtime collaborator Trevor Moore's death, which sounds like
Speaker 3: it was in part caused due to being intoxicated. I
Speaker 3: think this theme unlocks the movie in a lot of ways.
Speaker 3: The school shooting theme does not not that both cannot
Speaker 3: be in the movie, but from the characters we follow
Speaker 3: to the idea of transference of pain. I think the
Speaker 3: addiction theme is the stronger theme of the movie. Once
Speaker 3: I started thinking about addiction, I started seeing it everywhere
Speaker 3: in the movie, and I am curious as to your
Speaker 3: thoughts on this as well. I also have taken issue
Speaker 3: with people seeing the final scene as just kind of
Speaker 3: bonkers and random. To me, this scene is vital to
Speaker 3: the idea of the youth being abandoned and leeched off
Speaker 3: from their elders, elders who are fine with stealing their
Speaker 3: children and grandchildren's future for their present. Once that younger
Speaker 3: generation has had enough, they will rebel and tear everything down,
Speaker 3: and it will feel fun, crazy and satisfying until it's
Speaker 3: over and everyone realizes the problem still needs solving and
Speaker 3: they have been left with few tools to solve them.
Speaker 1: Hmm, that's a deep breeding.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a lot of good standing.
Speaker 1: I don't know quite what to make of it, right,
Speaker 1: I don't necessarily have a response. I can't say I
Speaker 1: feel like it's misguided. I also can't say that I
Speaker 1: totally agree with it. It's an interesting read on the
Speaker 1: end of film.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, his point at the end there about how
Speaker 3: the movie concludes and the generations I think does tie
Speaker 3: into what I eventually laughed on too, was the school
Speaker 3: shooting interpretation, and I think that applies, as I said,
Speaker 3: sacrificing kids at the idol of gun rights. So that
Speaker 3: works for me. But when we go back to what
Speaker 3: are you was saying at the top, and this being
Speaker 3: maybe perhaps intended as an allegory a parable about addiction.
Speaker 3: Here's where I'll say, this is what I love about
Speaker 3: Weapons is that I saw that there. I didn't know
Speaker 3: either that the triangle in the title represented alcoholics anonymous.
Speaker 1: Like we all see the triangle in the A.
Speaker 3: I didn't know that. Obviously, I traced that several characters
Speaker 3: are alcoholic, you know, suffering from alcoholism, and so I
Speaker 3: recognize that as a narrative thread. It didn't register with
Speaker 3: me as strongly as the Pied Piper School shooting interpretation.
Speaker 3: But yeah, that's why Weapons is so great is because
Speaker 3: I think both are valid to me, and your interpretation too,
Speaker 3: Adam about transference of pain, that is valid as well.
Speaker 3: So a good movie opens it up to these readings
Speaker 3: as long as what's on the screen can support each
Speaker 3: of them, and I think it to support you know,
Speaker 3: those three that we just mentioned and possibly some more.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was it for me, because there are multiple,
Speaker 1: in fact, at least three characters in the film who
Speaker 1: have addiction issues. That's there, that's clearly text, and so
Speaker 1: for me, I thought, well, what else might he be
Speaker 1: dealing with here clearly based on what people have written
Speaker 1: in and said the movie was inspired by. I mean
Speaker 1: we have to allow for that. I don't think that necessarily.
Speaker 1: That doesn't suggest that we have to read the movie
Speaker 1: only one way, but objectively, if what inspired movie was
Speaker 1: him dealing with the death of a friend and that
Speaker 1: was brought on by someone who had a problem with addiction,
Speaker 1: and maybe that was also addiction to something that touched
Speaker 1: his life prior to that, then yes, that's something he's
Speaker 1: working through. But that doesn't mean that's the only thing
Speaker 1: that that's the only thing this movie is about. That
Speaker 1: can open the door to lots of kinds of pain
Speaker 1: or lots of kinds of issues. But yes, this is
Speaker 1: fascinating and it's really interesting to hear from people like
Speaker 1: Emilio and like this one from Mike Bell in Dallas.
Speaker 1: And as I read this, if anyone hearing it says, oh,
Speaker 1: is Mike really comfortable with Adam sharing this on air?
Speaker 1: This is usually very private. Yes, Mike is a longtime listener.
Speaker 1: And I asked him if he was okay with this
Speaker 1: or if he just wanted to keep it between us,
Speaker 1: and he said absolutely, read it. I went straight from
Speaker 1: a certain meeting that I go to every Thursday to
Speaker 1: see weapons. Imagine my surprise when the symbol adorning the
Speaker 1: door at the very meeting that I had attended a
Speaker 1: triangle embedded in a circle appeared in the title of
Speaker 1: the movie. Imagine my greater surprise at the fact that
Speaker 1: the movie thematized the subject matter of the meeting I
Speaker 1: had attended, and even mentioned such meetings in Alden Ehrenreich's
Speaker 1: phone conversation with his fiance. Imagine my even greater surprise
Speaker 1: when one character successfully tempted another to do what we
Speaker 1: call going back out, leading to regret and ruin. I
Speaker 1: don't know exactly how it all adds up, but clearly
Speaker 1: alcoholism is somewhere near the forefront of Craiger's mind. Here
Speaker 1: I read an interview in which Craigor, himself a recovering
Speaker 1: alcoholic and the son of an alcoholic who died of cirrhosis,
Speaker 1: said that he intended the final segment to be a
Speaker 1: metaphor for living with an alcoholic parent. A nefarious force
Speaker 1: invades the house, taking away the personality of the parent
Speaker 1: you once knew. It's food for thought, and I'll need
Speaker 1: to see the movie again to develop a stronger read
Speaker 1: on it. But there's something there. I was a longtime
Speaker 1: listener from the beginning of the show until around twenty fifteen.
Speaker 1: I used to write in from Staten Island and later
Speaker 1: a story of Queens. But I only recently returned to
Speaker 1: the fold glad to see the show is still growing strong.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Mike.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks for that, Mike. The description nefarious force that
Speaker 3: definitely describes the boys' parents when they're overtaken by the
Speaker 3: Witch's curse. Right, so it does, so that track does,
Speaker 3: but even it applies to Gladys of course as well.
Speaker 1: Who is causing that? Like that that specific part there
Speaker 1: is something that really resonates with me when you think
Speaker 1: about that.
Speaker 3: Right. Also on this topic, we got this from Michael
Speaker 3: in Kiel, Germany. I'm gonna say Kiel, yes, m hm.
Speaker 3: And here is Michael going into a little more detail
Speaker 3: about a few of those points for me. Michael says,
Speaker 3: the chapter with Alex had an interesting subtext. It reminded
Speaker 3: me of children who live with parents that are alcoholics
Speaker 3: or drug addicts. These children have to grow up way
Speaker 3: too fast, take care of their parents, feel shame and
Speaker 3: guilt and don't dare to ask anyone for help, but
Speaker 3: instead try to maintain the facade of a functioning family. Finally,
Speaker 3: I want to highlight the cinematography. I generally love it
Speaker 3: when filmmakers use long, uncut takes as they make a
Speaker 3: movie more immersive. Weapons was full of these, and I
Speaker 3: really love them. You already discussed the one with Justine
Speaker 3: sleeping in the car. I agree that it worked great,
Speaker 3: especially the part where we only hear the car door
Speaker 3: and don't see what is happening. Oh, I'm already getting
Speaker 3: goosebumps there. I'd like to add two more examples that
Speaker 3: were more dynamic. When Paul chases James and the camera
Speaker 3: is in the car, it really feels like we are
Speaker 3: sitting in the backseat and taking part of the chase.
Speaker 3: It also made the geography of the space much easier
Speaker 3: to understand. If the chase had been shown with many
Speaker 3: cuts instead, we would have needed to reorient ourselves after
Speaker 3: each one, whereas here we always know who is where.
Speaker 3: Another long take highlight for me was at the end
Speaker 3: when the camera follows one of the kids running through
Speaker 3: gardens and houses and jumping through windows. In my opinion,
Speaker 3: the movie deserves an Oscar nomination for Best Cinematography.
Speaker 1: Really good stuff there for Michael, and I like the
Speaker 1: way he expanded on the point there that Michael in
Speaker 1: Dallas Mike and Dallas made so thank you everybody for that.
Speaker 1: We'll close with this one from Alex. You know he's
Speaker 1: a longtime listener because he has his Sam van Holgren nickname,
Speaker 1: very handy, Alex, Mitch and Murray a near in San Francisco.
Speaker 1: I know that Alex is such a long time listener
Speaker 1: that if he had just said Alex Anear, I would
Speaker 1: have been able to tell you his Sam van Halgren nickname.
Speaker 3: Impressive.
Speaker 1: I know it's Mitch and Murray, and.
Speaker 3: I would have recognized I wouldn't have.
Speaker 1: Known before I would have been able to pull out
Speaker 1: the Glengarry glen Ross reference there. He says, I almost
Speaker 1: never write about a movie, but something about weapons compelled
Speaker 1: me on Letterbox. I saw Sam's review, and I'm pretty
Speaker 1: much right where he is on it. Here's what I wrote.
Speaker 1: I'm angry at the movie, not for ethical reasons but
Speaker 1: merely movie watching ones. I was so hooked in the beginning,
Speaker 1: and there were so many interesting things he could have
Speaker 1: done with the setup. The motif of alcohol addiction and
Speaker 1: how it impacts people differently, the gas station incident with
Speaker 1: the cheated on wife where she douses Justine, and Boo's
Speaker 1: parental concern slash grief, where I was really hoping it
Speaker 1: would spend more time being a parent of a toddler.
Speaker 1: Police procedural drug abuse, school closures, COVID came to mind
Speaker 1: a Rascha Man riff, which came to mind watching these
Speaker 1: slightly differing recollections of the police slash junkie interaction from
Speaker 1: each perspective. But no, we get a much more rote
Speaker 1: witch story. Yeah, because we needed more cursaba in this show, Josh,
Speaker 1: and boy do we get a witch story. By the end,
Speaker 1: you almost entirely forget about all those other far more
Speaker 1: interesting avenues. The movie ops to bypass, and like you
Speaker 1: guys pointed out, we had some gory fun while getting there.
Speaker 1: I believe I get what he's getting at, namely a
Speaker 1: school shooting allegory, But other than showing, or rather telling,
Speaker 1: at the very end, the impact of the trauma and
Speaker 1: the survivors, it skips over that idea. The very real
Speaker 1: and wrenching story turns into a total supernatural cop out.
Speaker 1: Tying the whole movie up in a nice bow so
Speaker 1: you don't have to think about it after leaving the theater. Welp,
Speaker 1: it was just a witch. That explains it. The filmmaking
Speaker 1: style is excellent, the acting is superb, the setup is gripping,
Speaker 1: and instead of what could have been a powerful evocation
Speaker 1: of an all two real social problem, it becomes a
Speaker 1: boring old witch story like any Blumhouse Jumps Scarre movie.
Speaker 1: What a shame. I'm definitely a game to keep seeing
Speaker 1: Craiger movies, but I wish he'd done so much more
Speaker 1: with the potential here cheers to twenty years. Please keep
Speaker 1: up the great work.
Speaker 3: Welp. I disagree with Alex, but I can't be too
Speaker 3: hard on him because he's essentially presenting the argument I
Speaker 3: made when we reviewed together that it had, you know,
Speaker 3: this central metaphor allegory as a horror movie, and to
Speaker 3: my mind, tantalized us with a few ways it could
Speaker 3: have gone and didn't really follow any of those tracks,
Speaker 3: and it was just content to really explore, honestly, a
Speaker 3: lot of the gorish, gory possibilities of its metaphor. So
Speaker 3: this is an eye of the beholder thing. I go
Speaker 3: to Weapons, and I find a movie that Alex isn't wrong.
Speaker 3: It is ultimately a witch story, but in this case
Speaker 3: it's a loaded witch story that, as we've been discussing
Speaker 3: now for a of minutes in concert with a number
Speaker 3: of listeners, did sustain the readings that Alex described with
Speaker 3: enough on text evidence to support them. So that's I
Speaker 3: need to think more about why Together didn't work for
Speaker 3: me and Weapons did in this central issue of having
Speaker 3: an easy explanation for your horror story, but it can
Speaker 3: hold deeper resonance. Together didn't Weapons did. I think the
Speaker 3: answer I would give right now is that I find
Speaker 3: more support for the interpretation I latched onto on the screen,
Speaker 3: as well as your interpretation, Adam, and the addiction one
Speaker 3: we've been talking about. I think it's a richly conceived
Speaker 3: enough film that it can hold all of those interpretations
Speaker 3: at once while being a simple witch story. And I'll
Speaker 3: go to another witch story that does that. The Witch,
Speaker 3: you know, I think that is clearly, at the end
Speaker 3: of the day, a witch story, but it's also about
Speaker 3: religious oppression and fundamentalism and all these other things. In
Speaker 3: ways you know, it holds all those things too. I
Speaker 3: think I think Weapons does that for me at least.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I get the connection you're making between the two films,
Speaker 1: but I don't think it's a stretch to say that
Speaker 1: Weapons is a more finely crafted film than Together is,
Speaker 1: and more importantly, right, more importantly, though, they're trying to
Speaker 1: do very different things, and that I don't think Together
Speaker 1: is trying to be mysterious. It it does want to
Speaker 1: wrap itself up very neatly and tell you exactly what
Speaker 1: kind of movie it is. And Weapons.
Speaker 3: That's what Alex is saying though, that that Weapons, and I.
Speaker 1: Guess I'm pushing back on that a little bit, and
Speaker 1: I'm saying that Weapons Weapons wants to be a more
Speaker 1: mysterious movie. I think it is inherently a more mysterious
Speaker 1: movie that clearly does open itself up for more interpretation.
Speaker 1: Now here's where I'll talk out of both sides of
Speaker 1: my mouth, if you will. I think I think it's
Speaker 1: a little more nuanced than that. I think that's true,
Speaker 1: and that's why I'm more positive on Weapons than Alex is,
Speaker 1: and why I like it more than I like Together.
Speaker 1: But where Alex and I agree a little bit, because
Speaker 1: I expressed this a little bit during the review is
Speaker 1: unlike you, rather than having that moment of catharsis when
Speaker 1: the when the witch was being torn apart, all the
Speaker 1: witch stuff only distracted me from the Catharsis I wanted,
Speaker 1: which was more about the Catharsis of the characters themselves,
Speaker 1: Alex and his parents, Josh brol and Archer and Matthew,
Speaker 1: Justine and all of her storylines, Like that's that's why
Speaker 1: I was invested in. Yeah, and maybe going back to
Speaker 1: how we started this conversation about you know, where the
Speaker 1: movie ultimately wraps up. I left the theater kind of
Speaker 1: like Alex did, just thinking, Oh, it's kind of a
Speaker 1: silly witch movie. Even though I still was thinking about
Speaker 1: pain and all that stuff. I kind of was thinking, oh,
Speaker 1: that was kind of a that was kind of a
Speaker 1: silly witch movie, rather than thinking about the characters and
Speaker 1: their pain and how the story resolved or didn't resolve
Speaker 1: around them, because I was too busy still thinking about
Speaker 1: the absurdity of the ending.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so we don't, you know, neither of us tries
Speaker 3: to get into here's what the filmmakers should have done conversation.
Speaker 3: But all of this feedback does make me think what
Speaker 3: weapons would have been like if Craiger had chosen rather
Speaker 3: than that voice over ending that you know I've argued
Speaker 3: doesn't entirely work, had gone back to the multiple story
Speaker 3: structure and given us a PostScript from each person's perspective. Yeah,
Speaker 3: like yes, and maybe it could have been a year later,
Speaker 3: maybe it could have been from that those same last
Speaker 3: three minutes. But because I think you're onto something good
Speaker 3: here is it spent so much time with those characters.
Speaker 3: It is a little disappointing not to find a bit
Speaker 3: of closure with each of them. And maybe that would
Speaker 3: be Maybe that's a terrible idea in unga only a
Speaker 3: way to do it, but it just popped in my
Speaker 3: head as you were talking there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, if you do have more thoughts you like to
Speaker 1: share on weapons, we would love to hear them or
Speaker 1: anything else we talk about here on the show, email
Speaker 1: us feedback at film spotting dot net and Josh. The
Speaker 1: conversation around weapons does not stop here when it comes
Speaker 1: to the Film Spotting Network of shows.
Speaker 3: It seems that's right the next Picture show looking at
Speaker 3: Cinema's present via It's past their new pairing. It's the
Speaker 3: one Scott Tobias hope to get. When I talked to
Speaker 3: him coming out of that Weapons screening, he thought right
Speaker 3: away about Adam Agoian's nineteen ninety eight Oscar nominee The
Speaker 3: Sweet Hair, after you brought it up in our review, Adam,
Speaker 3: that it popped in mind to you while you're watching Weapons,
Speaker 3: and yet it really is a good pairing. So right
Speaker 3: now they're going to be talking about The Sweet Hair
Speaker 3: after and then they will get to their Weapons review
Speaker 3: on the following episode. New episodes of The Next Picture
Speaker 3: Show drop every Tuesday and you can find them wherever
Speaker 3: you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: Next week here on Phil Spotting, we're off sort of.
Speaker 1: We never really take a week off. We still will
Speaker 1: have a show to drop, but it's Labor Day week,
Speaker 1: it's my anniversary week, and it's Josh Larsen off to
Speaker 1: Scotland week. Scott Yeah, not just not just a vacation.
Speaker 1: So we will have something in your feed, and we
Speaker 1: think right now we still have to have some conversations
Speaker 1: here behind the scenes, but our plan right now, you know,
Speaker 1: we've been sharing some film spotting Fest audio from March,
Speaker 1: dolling that out over the course of the past few months,
Speaker 1: and we haven't shared yet our conversation with Coganata about
Speaker 1: the movie Columbus from Film Spotting Fest, and with his
Speaker 1: new movie coming out here in September, we thought we
Speaker 1: would share that. We might also share your conversation with
Speaker 1: a Dana Stevens wonderful conversation about pother Panchali She was
Speaker 1: rt he was so good, so we might share that
Speaker 1: as well, or we'll save that for later in the year.
Speaker 1: So you will have you will have new audio or
Speaker 1: audio you haven't heard before unless you were in the
Speaker 1: audience at Film spotting Fest in your feed next week
Speaker 1: and then the following week, we're planning on another Sacred Cow,
Speaker 1: another Pantheon project review thirty fifth anniversary. We're finally doing it.
Speaker 1: Been in the Pantheon all this time, but we've never
Speaker 1: discussed Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas.
Speaker 3: Yeah, how is that possible?
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know, I don't know, and I
Speaker 1: don't remember. You know, it's one of those with Goodfellas.
Speaker 1: It's one of those movies where if you ask me,
Speaker 1: when is the last time I saw it? You know,
Speaker 1: I don't know if if I've seen the movie in
Speaker 1: one sitting, maybe since I was in high school when
Speaker 1: it came out. But I've seen the movie four thousand times,
Speaker 1: you know, like it comes on TV. If it ever
Speaker 1: has come on TV, I watch it. If I'm at
Speaker 1: someone's house and it's on, Yeah, I watch it, like
Speaker 1: I know every scene from that movie almost by heart.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I think the last time so The Irishman
Speaker 3: was what twenty nineteen, twenty twenty around there, something like
Speaker 3: that seventeen eighteen nineteen. So I did a rewatch of
Speaker 3: all of Scorsese's gangster movies back when Think Christian was
Speaker 3: still a thing, exploring sort of the morality of the
Speaker 3: mobster and the laws that all the mobsters have to
Speaker 3: follow even though they're criminals, and revisit Goodfellows for that,
Speaker 3: which was fascinating. Spoiler, Adam, it holds up.
Speaker 1: I think you will say.
Speaker 3: I think even watching it all in its entirety, you
Speaker 3: will find that it's a good film.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I have a feeling it will. And you
Speaker 1: were right twenty nineteen on The Irishman. We will also
Speaker 1: have results from the current deeply flawed film spotting pull.
Speaker 1: We thought this was going to be a real death
Speaker 1: match that was going to just tear people apart, and
Speaker 1: based on the comments. Some people were really in conflict
Speaker 1: about this. But if you look at the overall voting
Speaker 1: or studio jubilee, you can only choose one. There is
Speaker 1: a clear winner in this one, Josh, it's not close.
Speaker 3: That confounds me. And now I don't know which way
Speaker 3: to go, like our listeners leaning more, you know, like
Speaker 3: the art house, I guess pick you would say, and
Speaker 3: going to what do you.
Speaker 1: Think about film Spotting listeners? What's your guy?
Speaker 3: I think possibly that's it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you might be right, really, you might be right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So if you want to try to even things out
Speaker 1: a little bit in Pixar's favor, you can vote now
Speaker 1: have film Spotting dot Net. The polls are still open
Speaker 1: for another week. And yes, we'll we'll see. I don't
Speaker 1: know if Josh will get to anything. As he's moving
Speaker 1: into his dorm room. What's your dorm room gonna be? Like, Josh?
Speaker 1: Are you gonna hang up with a poster of Apocalypse? Now?
Speaker 1: Reservoir dogs?
Speaker 3: I'm worried about my roommate quite frankly, and what they
Speaker 3: think of.
Speaker 1: My wife exactly. How's that gonna go? And we'll see
Speaker 1: if we are able to view anything else. We're both
Speaker 1: curious about Darren Aronofsky's caught stealing with Austin Butler. There's
Speaker 1: a few things coming out that we'll see if we
Speaker 1: can catch up with. For a current show schedule, you
Speaker 1: can visit Filmspotting dot Net slash episodes.
Speaker 3: Time out for Massacre Theater, we perform a scene and
Speaker 3: you get a chance to win a film Spotting prize.
Speaker 3: Last time we massacred, Oh boy, this scene.
Speaker 6: And they've been bad and they have kept the change
Speaker 6: in that room.
Speaker 1: But it was for your button.
Speaker 3: Don't you remember what I used to sing to you?
Speaker 3: You A little block of bye baby on the tree top.
Speaker 2: When the wind.
Speaker 3: Blows that cradle we'll buy when Bob Bray that great
Speaker 3: a will fall.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: I only dropped you once.
Speaker 3: That was John Matusak as Sloth and Anne Ramsey as
Speaker 3: Mama Fratellia nineteen eighty five's The Gooties, written by Chris
Speaker 3: Columbus and directed by Richard Donner. That massacre was part
Speaker 3: of our weapons show a couple of weeks ago. There's
Speaker 3: always a tie in. So why that scene from the Goonies.
Speaker 1: Colton Butcher says, superb performance, stunning oscar Worthy. I just
Speaker 1: got to introduce the Goonies to a friend's tween for
Speaker 1: the first time, and he loved it. It's an evergreen
Speaker 1: summer favorite of mine. As for connections, I assume it's
Speaker 1: Josh Brolin is the dad searching for his kid in
Speaker 1: weapons and as the older brother following the kids on
Speaker 1: their adventure and Goonies. It's a stretch, not really, but
Speaker 1: you also mentioned the cinematographer is the same guy that
Speaker 1: shot Everything Everywhere all at once, which stars a grown
Speaker 1: up data key Akwon.
Speaker 3: Wow, what a poll. Coulton. Yeah, nice, we heard from
Speaker 3: Kemo Watanabe from Rose Park, Utah. It's been a while
Speaker 3: since I knew the movie Massacre Theater, and you are
Speaker 3: one hundred percent correct. The real winners are all of
Speaker 3: us who got to hear that ha ha talk about
Speaker 3: unlocking a core memory. I'm glad that you didn't veto
Speaker 3: this one. Josh was completely nailing those sloth articulations with
Speaker 3: an accuracy that was both incredible and incredibly disturbing. I
Speaker 3: guess it's probably equally disturbing that I know how accurate
Speaker 3: they are. This was maybe my favorite movie, Massacre Theater ever.
Speaker 3: Adam's Ma Fratelli kudos to you for really going for it.
Speaker 3: Half James Cagney, half Gonzo All and Ramsey.
Speaker 1: So don't notice, Josh, there's a lip seson there, and
Speaker 1: that's because he had a line from the script in there,
Speaker 1: and I didn't want to have to try to replicate it.
Speaker 1: I didn't count on the fact that you might be
Speaker 1: the one reading it. You could have done it.
Speaker 3: Oh no, I think you're performed was immortal and should
Speaker 3: be enshrined and never duplicated.
Speaker 1: Here's Frederick from Norway. This is great. Well, my gym
Speaker 1: membership may finally get revoked. It's not uncommon for me
Speaker 1: to listen to your show while exercising, and sure it
Speaker 1: promotes the occasional giggle, but your mescer theater performance of
Speaker 1: the Goonies had me laughing out loud in a way
Speaker 1: I'm sure dissuaded the use of treadmills in my immediate proximity.
Speaker 1: So thanks for that. Not having seen Weapons yet, I'm
Speaker 1: sure there are many connections between Goonies and this week's
Speaker 1: show I missed, but the most obvious one was that
Speaker 1: it features Josh Brolin. Brolin has said he believes Weapons
Speaker 1: is a project that has the potential to have a
Speaker 1: lasting impact in the same way as Goonies. This was
Speaker 1: somewhat echoed by Josh and that he believes the imagery
Speaker 1: of the kid's running arms spread out into the night
Speaker 1: is something that could become something lasting and iconic. Again,
Speaker 1: I have not seen weapons, and it does not arrive
Speaker 1: in theaters in my little backwater part of Norway for
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks. But your review has me excited
Speaker 1: and I'm looking forward to checking it out. As always.
Speaker 1: Keep up the good work.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you, Frederick. I hope they let you back
Speaker 3: into the gym. Here's Patricia Collins. You must have wanted
Speaker 3: to hear from all your Oregon listeners and eighties kids
Speaker 3: with your Masacar theater choice. I'm not great at this game,
Speaker 3: but got this scene by the second line. The performances
Speaker 3: were so spectacular that I played it for my partner,
Speaker 3: who also got it before you were done. Goonies is
Speaker 3: such a part of Oregon Coast culture that one of
Speaker 3: the hotels in Cannon Beach I recently stayed at had
Speaker 3: three DVD cop Why you need three such high demand?
Speaker 3: Uh huh, because what else would you do while staying
Speaker 3: at a place that overlooks Haystack Rock, then revisit the
Speaker 3: quest for One Eyed Willie's Treasure.
Speaker 1: Finally, here's Brian Spinks. It may seem absurd now, but
Speaker 1: watching this film as a kid, a couple of years
Speaker 1: younger than Mikey, it felt like only one small compass
Speaker 1: click away from our reality.
Speaker 3: I get it, Brian.
Speaker 1: Could there be a lost treasure map in our attics,
Speaker 1: among the dusty detritus of the past. Possibly. What adults
Speaker 1: saw as a fun romp was to us kids a
Speaker 1: call to action, the makings of a plan, join forces
Speaker 1: with your friends, and, despite any adversity, go on life
Speaker 1: changing adventures. Unbeknownst to our parents or lack thereof, To
Speaker 1: us kids, Goonies was as real as the evening News.
Speaker 1: The performances Donner derives from these kids are spectacular. I
Speaker 1: think if this film is existing in the spielburghing in
Speaker 1: school of directing kids, Spielberg having served as the original
Speaker 1: story writer and producer, it's our time down here. Feel that, Josh,
Speaker 1: did you feel that?
Speaker 3: Inspiring Brian and Goonies is fine?
Speaker 1: It almost makes me want to like the movie.
Speaker 3: It's fine. We just ruined it.
Speaker 1: We had to built up so.
Speaker 3: Much we could. We could have just gone, I know
Speaker 3: it's not that great, it's fine. You're right, it's fine.
Speaker 1: Reach into the brimming the brimming film Spotting Cat Brian.
Speaker 1: That really was inspired, though I'm not I'm not joking.
Speaker 3: It moved me. Three stars in your email, two and
Speaker 3: a half out of the four.
Speaker 1: For goodness, Reach into that hat it is brimming, and
Speaker 1: pick out this week's winner.
Speaker 3: Our winner is Ethan Johnson.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he didn't include a location, but I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure Ethan Johnson is from Fergus Falls, Minnesota, or at
Speaker 1: least at one point in his life was. So that's
Speaker 1: what I'm gonna say. Congratulations Ethan. Email feedback at film
Speaker 1: spotting dot net. Let us know if you would like
Speaker 1: your film Spotting t shirt, a film Spotting tote bag,
Speaker 1: or a trial membership to the film Spotting Family. The
Speaker 1: sound goes through the cable to the box. A man
Speaker 1: records it on a big record in wax, but you
Speaker 1: have to.
Speaker 4: Talk into the mic first. In the bush.
Speaker 1: We move on now to this week's edition of Massacre Theater.
Speaker 1: A couple things. So this scene actually has a plethora
Speaker 1: of voices in it, and we are we are combining
Speaker 1: them into obviously just two voices. There's one character and
Speaker 1: he's versus a bunch of other characters. So one of
Speaker 1: us will play that character and the other will play
Speaker 1: all the other characters.
Speaker 3: Which will be me. So I'm like, imagine a bunch
Speaker 3: of demons possessing my body.
Speaker 1: But not yes, because that's in your body, but not
Speaker 1: actually on screen.
Speaker 3: And then speaking through one voice. So that's what I'm
Speaker 3: going to be channeling. This is not a horror movie,
Speaker 3: by the way.
Speaker 1: Let's it is definitely not a horror movie. Here's the
Speaker 1: Here's the other hint I'm going to give you. Well, first,
Speaker 1: it does tie in with this show, though Josh, is
Speaker 1: it fair to say it may be it is a
Speaker 1: clear tie in, but it may be a little bit
Speaker 1: of a deeper.
Speaker 3: Cut once usual, it's.
Speaker 1: Not as clear as like Josh Brolin's in the Goonies,
Speaker 1: Andy's in Weapons. It's not that clear.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: The other thing I'm going to say is we recently
Speaker 1: talked about how film Spotting Madness. The upcoming film spot
Speaker 1: Madness goes way back to the nineteen forties, and the
Speaker 1: further back you go in time, the fewer movies generally
Speaker 1: people have seen. And I bring that up only because
Speaker 1: I'm not telling you what decade is from. But I'm
Speaker 1: going to say that it does suggest we may have
Speaker 1: a case where the hat is not going to be
Speaker 1: as brimming as the Goonies was.
Speaker 3: You're worried about submissions.
Speaker 1: I am a little worried, but but I like the
Speaker 1: tie in. I don't know if I'm going to like
Speaker 1: the performance. I don't know what's going to come out
Speaker 1: of my mouth in about five seconds.
Speaker 3: I mean that's how every massacre theater should begin.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you usually do the funny voices or the
Speaker 1: attempts at funny voices, and here I am, so are
Speaker 1: you ready? I mean, I are we going to Are
Speaker 1: we going to change the one name in it?
Speaker 4: Though?
Speaker 3: No, let's just go okay.
Speaker 1: I love Josha's approach. Josha's roach to scene study is
Speaker 1: don't overthink it action. I'm going into the hills for winter.
Speaker 1: Where am I going to get the food for my
Speaker 1: men bird or grow it or maybe even work for
Speaker 1: it somehow. I don't think you've solved my problem.
Speaker 3: Solving your problems is entire mind. We deal in lead, friend.
Speaker 1: So do I. We're in the same business. Huh, only
Speaker 1: as competitors, Why not as partners? Suppose I offer you
Speaker 1: equal shares and what everything to the last grain and.
Speaker 3: The people in the village? What about them?
Speaker 1: I leave it to you. Can men of our profession
Speaker 1: worry about things like that, may even be sacrilegious. But
Speaker 1: if God didn't want them sheared, he would not have
Speaker 1: made them sheep. What do you say?
Speaker 3: Right on?
Speaker 1: You hear that Sotero? You hear what he said right
Speaker 1: on to me?
Speaker 3: And scene wow? I mean I argued we had to
Speaker 3: keep that last line and I because it was so important.
Speaker 3: I didn't know you were going to do that.
Speaker 1: Well, it's because you argued for the line that I
Speaker 1: knew I had to deliver.
Speaker 3: Did I deliver? Oh? Yeah, Oh you delivered? Nice?
Speaker 1: It would show a film. We just massacred. Email the
Speaker 1: movie's title and your name and location to feedback at
Speaker 1: film spotting dot net. The deadline is Monday, September fifteenth.
Speaker 1: And Josh, when you brought up the demon thing, I
Speaker 1: didn't realize you were actually going to do separate voices.
Speaker 3: I didn't either, Adam show us No, that wasn't my
Speaker 3: plan or possessed as I often am in massacre theater.
Speaker 1: Wow, your deadline's Monday, September fifteenth, will select the window
Speaker 1: randomly from all the craged entries had announced it in
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks.
Speaker 2: There is a creature alive today who has survived millions
Speaker 2: of years of evolution, without change, without passion, and without logic.
Speaker 2: It lives to kill. A mindless eating machine. It will
Speaker 2: attack and devour anything. It is as if God created
Speaker 2: the devil and gave him Jaws.
Speaker 1: We couldn't resist Jaws, one of the greatest movies of
Speaker 1: all time. Josh, It's back in theaters for its fiftieth anniversary.
Speaker 3: Go see it.
Speaker 1: We didn't want to wait. We couldn't wait till it's fiftieth.
Speaker 1: Back when it was celebrating its forty fifth birthday, we
Speaker 1: gave it the sacred cow treatment. We had what we
Speaker 1: thought was a pretty long and pretty thorough, pretty eye
Speaker 1: opening conversation about the film. At the time, we thought
Speaker 1: it was worth sharing. We'll see if this leads to
Speaker 1: another two, two or three comments on Apple Podcasts telling
Speaker 1: us that we're too woke.
Speaker 3: That's right, what do you think I believe we may
Speaker 3: have lost six or seven listeners. Yeah, last time so
Speaker 3: if that happens again, we'll be struggling. But yeah, this
Speaker 3: was a fun one, and.
Speaker 1: We'll still replay it at fifty five and sixty doesn't
Speaker 1: matter to us. From June twenty twenty, here is that
Speaker 1: sacred cow review of Jaws. Sometimes, probably often, we have
Speaker 1: a convenient hook for one of these setups that doesn't
Speaker 1: really reflect the whole substance of our conversation about a movie.
Speaker 1: But a convenient hook is a convenient hook, Which is
Speaker 1: all to say for those of you who aren't particularly
Speaker 1: interested in hearing a discussion of Jaws framed around our
Speaker 1: current administration, just give us a little wiggle room here.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty confident we're both more excited to talk about
Speaker 1: Steven Spielberg's camera tricks than his politics. But it's a
Speaker 1: little eerie how precient his game changing nineteen seventy five
Speaker 1: blockbuster is forty five years later. The movie that promised
Speaker 1: Will Never Go in the Water Again also presents an
Speaker 1: all too dangerously familiar type of huckster politician during a
Speaker 1: crisis who fails to heed the warnings of scientists, dramatically
Speaker 1: downplays and dismisses the potential loss of life. Can't wait
Speaker 1: to pat himself and his cronies on the back, loves
Speaker 1: to preen for a TV camera, and who demands those
Speaker 1: beaches be open because business demands they be open. Yep, Sorry,
Speaker 1: even the scary shark movie is actually about coronavirus. And
Speaker 1: I'm far from the only one who has noticed. My
Speaker 1: Twitter timeline has jumped the snark over the past couple
Speaker 1: of months, including this from Frank Rich just a few
Speaker 1: nights ago, commenting on a New York Times breaking news
Speaker 1: tweet that read Vice President Mike Pence encourage governors to
Speaker 1: repeat a misleading claim about coronavirus outbreaks, Rich wrote, Pence
Speaker 1: makes the Jaws Mayor look like Churchill. Mayor Vaughan is
Speaker 1: played with a Penzian affable smugness by Murray Hans Hamilton,
Speaker 1: and one line I had always kind of overlooked this
Speaker 1: struck me on this rewatch is when he's spurning the
Speaker 1: pleas of Roy Scheider's chief Martin Brody and Richard Dreyfus's
Speaker 1: Matt Hooper to keep the beaches closed. On July fourth,
Speaker 1: America's data celebrate its independence and pre eminence, and he explains,
Speaker 1: I don't think either one of you are familiar with
Speaker 1: our problems, our problems. You see, Matt is a visitor
Speaker 1: to Amity, and the chief, well, he's an interloper. He's
Speaker 1: a cop from New York City who just moved his
Speaker 1: family to the island a year ago. Mayor Vaughan translated,
Speaker 1: why should I take advice on what my people should
Speaker 1: do from you foreigners? Maybe he would have listened to
Speaker 1: the warnings of a police chief who was a born
Speaker 1: and bred Islander. Maybe not, but Martin's otherness sure makes
Speaker 1: him really easy to ignore. So, Josh, I'm curious. As
Speaker 1: a starting point anyway, on this viewing, was your mind
Speaker 1: still mostly blown by Jaws remarkable craft or in the
Speaker 1: midst of this pandemic starring Inn satiable predacious virus that's
Speaker 1: always lurking out of sight? Was it the movie surprising
Speaker 1: relevancy that had you jumping out of your seat.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll get to the craft. I mean, that's the
Speaker 3: reason this movie is ultimately still so masterful these many
Speaker 3: decades later. But I'm glad you're starting here, because obviously
Speaker 3: this came to mind even if you hadn't revisited Jaws
Speaker 3: recently as soon as I mean, even if we hadn't
Speaker 3: had the one to one correlation of beaches people desperately
Speaker 3: wanting beaches to be open, I think this would have
Speaker 3: come to mind, and you're right, it was all over Twitter.
Speaker 3: But sitting down to watch the movie again, it's the
Speaker 3: details that are so one to one that did absolutely
Speaker 3: shock me. And I want to say at the start,
Speaker 3: you know, I realize that this is not as cut
Speaker 3: and dried. On the one hand that the administration wants
Speaker 3: things to seem, it's, you know, not as cut and
Speaker 3: dried maybe for some people. On the other hand, I
Speaker 3: don't own a small family business, you know, but my
Speaker 3: livelihood is not tied to something that is directly affected
Speaker 3: by these closings. So I do get it that this
Speaker 3: is a real issue for some people. Yet the broad
Speaker 3: scale opening I think that the White House has been
Speaker 3: pushing not only seems unwise but is very much in
Speaker 3: line with what we see Amity's mayor pushing for in
Speaker 3: this movie. And just quotes like Murray Hamilton saying we
Speaker 3: need summer dollars. You know, you can just you basically
Speaker 3: have been hearing that for two months now. And I
Speaker 3: think there are other details worth mentioning. The Pence correlation,
Speaker 3: Adam is absolutely the amended autopsy report, right. They fudge
Speaker 3: the autopsy report to make it not look like a
Speaker 3: shark attack. That's what's going on in the case. In
Speaker 3: this recent case of Pence, you mentioned Hooper, and there's
Speaker 3: this distrust of Hooper. I don't I didn't make the
Speaker 3: you know, the outsider immigrant connection quite as much. I
Speaker 3: think that's that's really smart. But I think of him
Speaker 3: as like the outside experts, who's bringing scientific evidence and data?
Speaker 3: Right This is who is immediately distrusted, is the person
Speaker 3: with the facts. And that again is all we're seeing
Speaker 3: from up on top right now, the eagerness for an
Speaker 3: easy solution. When the fishermen catch the first shark and
Speaker 3: right away it's like, let's have a parade. It's over.
Speaker 3: Everybody get in the water immediately. And how about this one.
Speaker 3: This is a more subtle one that it's maybe not
Speaker 3: as easy to laugh about. But the distraction from the
Speaker 3: issue at hand, I mean, how much nonsense we're always
Speaker 3: putting up with nonsense coming out of the White House,
Speaker 3: But how much did that amp up after COVID nineteen hit.
Speaker 3: And it's very much in line with that conversation Hooper
Speaker 3: and Brody and the mayor have underneath the amity sign
Speaker 3: and it's been vandalized, right and so immediately for the mayor,
Speaker 3: that's issue number one.
Speaker 1: Sick vandalism.
Speaker 4: That is a deliberate utilation of a public service message.
Speaker 1: Now I want those little paint happy baskets caught and
Speaker 1: hung up by their busker Brown.
Speaker 3: That's it. That's to him, what's plaguing the island, law
Speaker 3: and order, Law and order. Let's get that and not
Speaker 3: worry about all this other stuff. So you know all
Speaker 3: that said, the other revelation to me, as long as
Speaker 3: we're dumping on Trump, which I'm happy to do all day,
Speaker 3: I don't think he's the mayor. I mentioned this when
Speaker 3: I right after I revisited it on letterbox because it
Speaker 3: struck me. Remember the scene where there's a scare in
Speaker 3: the water. Everyone's on the beach and it's just chaos.
Speaker 3: Everyone is rushing to get to shore. There's one guy,
Speaker 3: there's one guy who a was dumb enough to go
Speaker 3: in the water, right, but then when things go bad,
Speaker 3: he pushes those kids off the raft and steals it
Speaker 3: and desperately paddles back to shore in terror. That's Trump.
Speaker 3: If you want to look for Trump in that movie
Speaker 3: and how he's behaved throughout his presidency and particularly when
Speaker 3: crisis hits, he's that dumb guy.
Speaker 1: Man, I am so willing to buy the Trumpian elements
Speaker 1: to both the mayor and to that guy, which I
Speaker 1: don't think I had never really noticed before until this viewing.
Speaker 1: And it's also so perfect, right because this terrible thing
Speaker 1: he does, this horrible act of prioritizing his safety over
Speaker 1: these kids. Yeah, is also so stupid because wouldn't he
Speaker 1: probably move faster if he just swam instead of not
Speaker 1: only yaking the float but trying to use the float? Now,
Speaker 1: is the flow going to get him to shore any quicker?
Speaker 1: He speaks to the panic. Yeah, it speaks to the panic.
Speaker 1: It speaks to the selfishness, It speaks to all the
Speaker 1: things that we're talking about. And yes, we definitely will
Speaker 1: geek out on the formal elements of this movie, I'm sure,
Speaker 1: But having not really devoted a lot of time to
Speaker 1: studying this movie or having discussed it in detail before
Speaker 1: on this show, I got all the Twitter jokes over
Speaker 1: the past couple of months, But it was because, Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, I've always just kind of taken the idiot
Speaker 1: it may or aspect. For granted, that was part of
Speaker 1: the story. It wasn't really some kind of statement on
Speaker 1: Spielberg's part with regard to American politics or Americans in general.
Speaker 1: But it is very hard to watch it now and
Speaker 1: separate that aspect, and even more interesting for me than
Speaker 1: all the parallels that were touching on and you really
Speaker 1: nicely articulated. For me, what's fascinating is where the political
Speaker 1: and the personal intersect in this film, which I think
Speaker 1: fits nicely with what this movie does as a whole,
Speaker 1: so very well, which is mixing the horror and those
Speaker 1: thriller adventure aspects with the personal too. It's in getting
Speaker 1: to know these people, it's having an attachment to Chief
Speaker 1: Brody in his family. That great scene at the dinner
Speaker 1: table after the slap is one of my favorites. I
Speaker 1: think I may have had it in my top five
Speaker 1: Spielberg moments. But just going off memory, coming into this film,
Speaker 1: I thought of Chief Brody as this purely heroic figure
Speaker 1: and that it was the idiot mayor and the greed
Speaker 1: of the townspeople that prevent this guy, this stand up
Speaker 1: righteous man, from doing his job and saving lives, and
Speaker 1: that he's almost this Cassandra like figure who unfortunately is ignored,
Speaker 1: except when you watch closely, you realize he doesn't really
Speaker 1: put up a fight when the medical examiner changes the
Speaker 1: police report, as you pointed out, from a shark attack
Speaker 1: to a boting accident. He doesn't actually really protest. What
Speaker 1: he does is what so many of us do. He
Speaker 1: just tries to cover his ass. The exact lines are,
Speaker 1: that's not what you told me over the phone. And
Speaker 1: when theme says I was wrong, we'll have to amend
Speaker 1: our reports, Brody says, and you'll stand by that. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, as long as the medical examiner will
Speaker 1: go on the record and say that that's the cause
Speaker 1: of death, then Chief Brody's willing to wash his hands
Speaker 1: of it. Right, And when they catch the tiger shark,
Speaker 1: and they all do preemptively celebrate, he's all too eager,
Speaker 1: Like how much attention Spielberg pays to Shier smiling, and
Speaker 1: how willing he is to congratulate everyone and even pose
Speaker 1: for the picture himself triumphantly. Right, it's not because, like
Speaker 1: the others, he really probably wants the glory and he
Speaker 1: wants the publicity. I think we understand that about who
Speaker 1: he is as a person, but you know what it is.
Speaker 1: It does make life so much easier, doesn't it. If
Speaker 1: the shark was caught, it makes his life so much easier.
Speaker 1: So he's immediately willing again, like so many of us are.
Speaker 1: He's immediately willing to assume the truth of what is
Speaker 1: told to him and what seems to be shown to him,
Speaker 1: rather than dig deeper and actually confront the truth. And
Speaker 1: what finally does prompt moments of reckoning for both Brody
Speaker 1: and the mayor. I think it's really worth pointing out
Speaker 1: that it isn't until missus Kittner slaps him. Brody doesn't
Speaker 1: show much remorse. You can tell that this is weighing
Speaker 1: on him, but he is willing to celebrate, as I said,
Speaker 1: in that moment, and he doesn't reflect or really show
Speaker 1: remorse or awareness of his guilt that Alex's death could
Speaker 1: have been prevented if he hadn't been complicit in basically
Speaker 1: covering up the shark attack. And for the mayor, it's
Speaker 1: the same. It's when he says, my kids were on
Speaker 1: that beach too, So it's that Hooper line that's actually
Speaker 1: the response to the line I quoted in the setup
Speaker 1: from the mayor about not wanting to hear from them.
Speaker 1: They don't understand our problems. He says, I think that
Speaker 1: I'm familiar with the fact that you're going to ignore
Speaker 1: this particular problem until it swims up and bites you
Speaker 1: on the ass, until it swims up and bites them
Speaker 1: on the ass. The chief is willing to look the
Speaker 1: other way, the mayor is willing to look the other way.
Speaker 1: A lot of us are willing to look the other way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think you're right about Brody. It is more complicated.
Speaker 3: You know, he does have an immediate instinct to protect right.
Speaker 3: His instinct is to have the deputy make the beaches
Speaker 3: closed signs. But once things get complicated and political, his
Speaker 3: position shifts a little bit. And here's another resonance with
Speaker 3: you know, COVID nineteen that I'll just say I've been experiencing.
Speaker 3: How about the fact that Brody lets his kids go
Speaker 3: in the water, but they go in the pond, right,
Speaker 3: And so there's a negotiation there. And I don't know
Speaker 3: about you, but as things are open up and we're
Speaker 3: trying to follow what actual experts say is safe to
Speaker 3: do right now, just not governmental bodies who have perhaps
Speaker 3: other interests. Yet at the same time, we have teenage
Speaker 3: kids who are desperate to associate with their friends, and
Speaker 3: we have some friends whose families are making some decisions,
Speaker 3: some who are making other decisions. We're kind of like,
Speaker 3: do we let our kids go in the water? Like?
Speaker 3: Which body of water do we let our kids go into?
Speaker 3: And how are we making our own compromises. So I'm
Speaker 3: glad you brought that up about Brody because it does
Speaker 3: complicate things in a way that I think is more
Speaker 3: true to life. And it adds absolutely And maybe here's
Speaker 3: where we can get into other aspects of the film.
Speaker 3: Into what you were talking about, Adam, is how personal
Speaker 3: this film is not only tied to Brodie's family, but
Speaker 3: really to an extent, this community at large. And let
Speaker 3: me give you an example that'll also get us into
Speaker 3: the craft. It was Michael Phillips number three Spielberg scene,
Speaker 3: and it is that first bea attack sequence. First of all,
Speaker 3: just the patience of the filmmaking there watching it again,
Speaker 3: how much time is spent on building the suspense. But
Speaker 3: here's here's what I mean about it being personal. Each
Speaker 3: potential victim in that sequence gets a story it's patient
Speaker 3: enough to give them a story. So we have the
Speaker 3: boy who's begging to go back in the water. Right,
Speaker 3: that's a mini picture of a real family right there.
Speaker 3: Any of us with kids know that conversation. There's also
Speaker 3: the woman floating peacefully alone. The shot is long enough
Speaker 3: to wonder is she just at the beach by herself?
Speaker 3: You know? Is what is she? You know, just chilling
Speaker 3: for the day? What's her story? Then how about.
Speaker 1: Teenage couple the horse play the horse.
Speaker 3: Play, and then how about the teen with the dog?
Speaker 3: The dog who gets a name Pippin and that turns
Speaker 3: out to be Alex Kittner, who is the one who
Speaker 3: obviously gets killed. So just the time spent where it's
Speaker 3: not just a shark attack on these strangers who are screaming,
Speaker 3: it's all of these people who, yes, we don't get
Speaker 3: to know intimately, but we formed. Spielberg is patient enough,
Speaker 3: and the shot selection is intentional enough to allow us
Speaker 3: to form a little bit of relationship so that when
Speaker 3: the chaos strikes it's all the more terrifying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you are so right, and the math doesn't work out.
Speaker 1: But when I heard Pippen is the dog name here,
Speaker 1: I of course, thought about Roy Scheider in one of
Speaker 1: my all time favorite films, All That Jazz playing Bob
Speaker 1: Fosse and Pippen was one of his seminal musicals, one
Speaker 1: of his real master works that he got a lot
Speaker 1: of acclaim for. But obviously this film came before, not
Speaker 1: before Pippen, but before All That Jazz. I don't think
Speaker 1: I had that. I didn't go back and look at
Speaker 1: our top five list, which you can find over at
Speaker 1: filmspotting dot net just click on lists. I don't remember
Speaker 1: my exact top five Spielberg moments, but if I was
Speaker 1: redoing it now, that sequence wouldn't be just at number three,
Speaker 1: it would probably be at number one. And let's be honest,
Speaker 1: we could do at minimum a top five moments just
Speaker 1: from this film.
Speaker 3: For sure.
Speaker 1: Forget Spielberg's filmography, but I do think, certainly on this rewatch,
Speaker 1: that prelude to the Alex Kittner attack is the sequence
Speaker 1: of this film Brody on the Beach. He's watching obsessively,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to come back to why I think
Speaker 1: that part of it is actually important in a second,
Speaker 1: and we get those wipe cuts on movement, the residents,
Speaker 1: the residents walking in front of him, almost like it's
Speaker 1: the blinking of his eye, and every time we get
Speaker 1: one of those blinks, we get closer to his face,
Speaker 1: and it does just take everything you were talking about.
Speaker 1: All that tension, all that dread is just mounting, and
Speaker 1: it mounts with every single one of those little innocent cuts,
Speaker 1: those little innocent blinks, and it's all just sound, right.
Speaker 1: There's no real dialogue, there's no music at this point.
Speaker 1: It's all just sound and motion, sound and motion, which
Speaker 1: is filmmaking, right, Filmmaking at its core is sound and motion.
Speaker 1: And even then we get that shot where Spielberg employs
Speaker 1: a little trick that is a preview of another trick
Speaker 1: that's going to come, where Brody's perspective is obscured by
Speaker 1: the guy, another guy who kind of gets a story, Josh,
Speaker 1: to your point, Yeah, the guy we all know who's
Speaker 1: the busybody who only cares about what the reckless holmbs
Speaker 1: in town or whatever are doing to him. And he's
Speaker 1: really got to take a look at that he's telling
Speaker 1: the chief, right, and his perspective is obscured by that
Speaker 1: guy in his shoulder, and we watch as Brody does
Speaker 1: what we want him to do. Lifts his eyes, lifts
Speaker 1: his head over the guy's shoulders so we can see,
Speaker 1: and then we get a diopter shot. I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: it's a diopter shot that obscures the perspective between what
Speaker 1: Brody's seeing and in the foreground that guy's face and
Speaker 1: then in the water what he's looking at, which again
Speaker 1: it does just continue to heighten the tension. Something seems
Speaker 1: very off in that moment, and that diopter shot actually
Speaker 1: comes the second before a scream, But it's a scream
Speaker 1: in the water that isn't the attack yet, so it's
Speaker 1: all just to tease to well, it's the scream of
Speaker 1: those kids who are playing in the water, the teenagers,
Speaker 1: and all of that is what actually sets up the
Speaker 1: classic shot, the vertigo trick shot. It's one thing to
Speaker 1: think of that when you take it just on its
Speaker 1: own as a scene to analyze, and you recognize that
Speaker 1: he is zooming forward at the same time he is
Speaker 1: pulling back. That's the technique that gives that amazing effect
Speaker 1: of fear and awareness of what's happening when the Kittner
Speaker 1: attack actually begins, as the camera focuses in on Brody.
Speaker 1: But that's exactly what it's doing just as the shots
Speaker 1: before it, those cuts were playing with distance and playing
Speaker 1: with perspective at once. That's what's happening here. Time and
Speaker 1: space is completely collapsing in that moment.
Speaker 3: So we've both mentioned the editing in this sequence. We
Speaker 3: should probably point out Jaws edited by Verna Fields, and
Speaker 3: looking at her credits, this was her last credit at
Speaker 3: least at IMDb, but before that edited me Paper Moon
Speaker 3: American Graffiti with Spielberg here on the sugar Land Express
Speaker 3: as well. So man, just masterful, masterful work, the camera work,
Speaker 3: but also the editing in this sequence. And I agree.
Speaker 3: You know, my pick from Jaws for our top five
Speaker 3: Spielberg scenes, which will probably get to though I went
Speaker 3: on and on and on when we did that episode,
Speaker 3: is show Me the Way to Go Home, the comparing
Speaker 3: scours scene. But I do agree in terms of craft,
Speaker 3: maybe in terms of characterization, that's the best scene in
Speaker 3: the film. In terms of craft, it's this one here
Speaker 3: that we've been talking about. But you know you're in
Speaker 3: for this high level of craft from the very start
Speaker 3: of this film, And one thing I did not remember
Speaker 3: watching it again is that John Williams score is the
Speaker 3: first thing we get I think before even any images,
Speaker 3: we're getting that score. So how supremely confident the filmmakers
Speaker 3: were right of William's work here to do that. And
Speaker 3: then we get the teenagers on the beach at night time,
Speaker 3: and I loved how the camera movement shift here and
Speaker 3: really moves us into the terror because when they're on
Speaker 3: the beach hanging out, there's a tracking shot along all
Speaker 3: of them that shows us clearly we're on stable ground.
Speaker 3: It's a smooth shot. Right before we get on the water.
Speaker 3: Things are smooth. Then the two of them run to
Speaker 3: the water and the movement increases, the camera picks up speed,
Speaker 3: still tracks, but is going faster now, a little jostling.
Speaker 3: And then finally when we get in the water, it
Speaker 3: is when we start to have that sort of lulling
Speaker 3: effect that we'll have throughout much of the film. And
Speaker 3: that's just kind of a way to take us from
Speaker 3: from stable land to a place of instability and fear.
Speaker 3: And I think, you know, that attack itself is scary
Speaker 3: because at first she's confused. You know, we know what's
Speaker 3: happening because we're here to see Jaws, even if this
Speaker 3: is the first time we saw it, right, But she
Speaker 3: does not doesn't understand what's happening to her. Then she
Speaker 3: gets that moment of reprieve hanging on to the buoy.
Speaker 3: Then the final bite comes pulls her under and we
Speaker 3: have stillness and silence. So all of this establishes the
Speaker 3: water as a place of danger compared to the land.
Speaker 3: And what do we get after this sequence? The first
Speaker 3: shot Brody uneasily looking out the window of his house
Speaker 3: at the bay, at the water. So you know you're
Speaker 3: in the hands already of someone where every shot is
Speaker 3: going to count. Not a second is wasted. Even think
Speaker 3: of that moment right there with Brody and his wife,
Speaker 3: who I do want to get to. There's another shot.
Speaker 3: I don't know if it's a diopter, but he takes
Speaker 3: the phone call in their kitchen in the foreground while
Speaker 3: the mother and son are attending to the child's cut.
Speaker 3: In the background. Blood, right, that's what we're getting. There
Speaker 3: is more blood in the background again, a little kind
Speaker 3: of a setup scene for the narrative. But Spielberg is
Speaker 3: doing so much, squeezing so much efficiency and important imagery
Speaker 3: into that shot as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are so many moments like that. I even
Speaker 1: think about when they are finally departing with Quint, Hooper
Speaker 1: and Brody. They're heading off on the boat and we
Speaker 1: get a moment, if I remember the sequence right where
Speaker 1: he cuts to that shot from inside Quint's little shack
Speaker 1: and the big jaws of the shark, and the camera
Speaker 1: is moving forward, and then we cut to outside and
Speaker 1: the camera is still moving, but now it's pulling back
Speaker 1: a little bit. He's just always playing with movement right
Speaker 1: in a really really fascinating way, and all of those
Speaker 1: shots matter. I think I went with when we did
Speaker 1: that top five Spielberg moments my cliche, and there are
Speaker 1: so many of them that are just so great and
Speaker 1: so classic from this movie to pick from, I think
Speaker 1: I went with the Chalkboard sequence, right, the one where
Speaker 1: we get that great, one of the all time great
Speaker 1: character introductions into cinema to Quint. But the other one
Speaker 1: that a lot of people would point to, and it's
Speaker 1: still great no matter how many times you watch it,
Speaker 1: is the Indianapolis speech. And I did notice one thing
Speaker 1: this time. There was always obvious before, I just never
Speaker 1: zeroed in on. It is one little touch, one little
Speaker 1: decision with the framing I think Spielberg makes that heightens
Speaker 1: every thing with that speech is that he keeps Richard
Speaker 1: Dreyfus in the shot. We know how invested Matt Hooper
Speaker 1: is in all things sharks, right, yeah, and their history,
Speaker 1: their legacy almost if you will. He knows that story.
Speaker 1: We know without him even saying it that he knows,
Speaker 1: and he does actually verbalize it, I think at one point,
Speaker 1: but we know that he probably is familiar with all
Speaker 1: of the lore of the Indianapolis, and he's also fascinated
Speaker 1: by and also terrorized by to an extent, Quint. Yes,
Speaker 1: And so when Quinn starts telling a story that puts
Speaker 1: him in that place and having had that experience, he's
Speaker 1: in awe and just by keeping him in the right
Speaker 1: of the frame visible the entire time Dreyfus plays it perfectly,
Speaker 1: doesn't react at all, is just completely focused on Quint's words,
Speaker 1: his investment in the story that becomes our investment, and
Speaker 1: it already is a reflection of our investment as viewers.
Speaker 1: But I think then we're just hanging on every word
Speaker 1: in a way that maybe we wouldn't even if it
Speaker 1: wasn't for the fact that we've got a surrogate there
Speaker 1: in the scene who is showing us how important every
Speaker 1: word is, how important this experience is, and how important
Speaker 1: the storytelling itself is, the act of storytelling.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's like an audience plant in a way, and
Speaker 3: it works. It works perfectly. And I don't know if
Speaker 3: this came up when we talked about this scene on
Speaker 3: that show, but I had forgotten and so I had
Speaker 3: to look it up again that this speech was not
Speaker 3: in the Peter Benchley novel. So found, you know, just
Speaker 3: doing some googling that Spielberg credited Howard Sackler for coming
Speaker 3: up with that. Now, Sackler didn't get screenplay credit, but
Speaker 3: Spielberg mentioned that he came up with the idea and
Speaker 3: inserted it, and then John Millius apparently did some work
Speaker 3: on the speech at some point, and then Robert Shaw himself,
Speaker 3: you know, brought his own addition, Spielberg said, which you
Speaker 3: can imagine. So I think I kind of cheated and
Speaker 3: rolled the Show Me the Way to Go Home Scar
Speaker 3: scene right into Indianapolis, and that was my pick. But
Speaker 3: at a little touch I noticed this time was after they
Speaker 3: the two are comparing their scars, so Quint and Hooper,
Speaker 3: and it's really like, you know, they're they're pretty close
Speaker 3: Hooper's had some tough experiences there, even compared to quint.
Speaker 3: At the end of that, Brody pulls up his shirt
Speaker 3: quietly in the corner away from them. He's not at
Speaker 3: the table, and we see he's got a scar too
Speaker 3: across his abdomen. He just looks at it and pulls
Speaker 3: his shirt down and it looks like a you know,
Speaker 3: a pretty big scar like I don't think it was
Speaker 3: just like a bike accident, but still it's just like,
Speaker 3: you know, the levels of manliness at play among the
Speaker 3: three of them, it's not enough for him to enter
Speaker 3: that contest. Another great character touch that I love. What's
Speaker 3: that one?
Speaker 4: What that one on your arm? Oh? I got that? Remove?
Speaker 4: Don't tell me?
Speaker 1: Don't tell me, mother.
Speaker 4: Tuba. That's the US, says Indianapolis.
Speaker 1: I am glad that we've mentioned all the other screenwriters
Speaker 1: who maybe had a role in this movie. We haven't
Speaker 1: mentioned Carl Gottlieb yet, who is the credited screenwriter on
Speaker 1: this film. And I don't know the original version of
Speaker 1: the script. I haven't read the Benchley novel either, But
Speaker 1: in talking about whatever pointed statements it may be making
Speaker 1: about America that are still very timely and relevant now,
Speaker 1: probably some credit should go to Gottlieb and his interpretation
Speaker 1: of the Benchley source material. But another new thing for
Speaker 1: me watching this time, Josh, And this is where I
Speaker 1: was going when I was hinting at the obsessiveness of
Speaker 1: Roy's watching, is I don't think that classic shot on
Speaker 1: the beach, the zoom pull back is the only Hitchcock
Speaker 1: theft in this film or the only direct homage to
Speaker 1: Vertigo even in this film, right, because that's where it
Speaker 1: comes from, right, And maybe there are other instances in
Speaker 1: cinema history, But famously that shot in Vertigo Scotty Jimmy
Speaker 1: Stewart hanging over the ledge looking down. We get that
Speaker 1: same effect zooming and pulling back in that disorienting sense
Speaker 1: that it gives us as viewers. Well, Brody is a
Speaker 1: lot like Scotti in Vertigo. Both are cops, both effectively
Speaker 1: are retired from being police officers. There's some little character
Speaker 1: details that we get that I'd also never paid attention
Speaker 1: to really before, about what being on the beat or
Speaker 1: being on the job in New York City was like
Speaker 1: and how different that is. And instead of heights, what's
Speaker 1: his fear, he's afraid of water? Right, it's elemental. He
Speaker 1: does not want to go near the water. So there's
Speaker 1: a perfect correlation here actually to Vertigo. And I do
Speaker 1: think that whether that's just spiel film school playfulness at
Speaker 1: work and we can geek out about that a little bit,
Speaker 1: that fear and making that a psychological foundation for Brody
Speaker 1: is something that really gives this film a richness that
Speaker 1: maybe another filmmaker would not bring to what could have
Speaker 1: been obviously just kind of a B movie where the
Speaker 1: types of scares we get when the face pops out
Speaker 1: at Hooper under the water, and maybe some of the
Speaker 1: shark attacks could have been more gruesome and bloody. We
Speaker 1: could have gotten that type of bee picture here. But
Speaker 1: it's not just the craft. It's those character touches that
Speaker 1: you have pointed out, and it's also that psychological underpinning
Speaker 1: that's there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that fear comes to fruition when he gets
Speaker 3: on the boat later right for the last third, it's
Speaker 3: that we understand that he's out of his element in
Speaker 3: so many ways at that point, he's almost he's almost helpless.
Speaker 3: The only thing that doesn't you know, I would say,
Speaker 3: in terms of you think of Jimmy Stewart being so
Speaker 3: such an obsessive character in Vertigo. The most obsessive character
Speaker 3: in this movie is the shark. This thing for sure
Speaker 3: will not give up. And I love the touch of
Speaker 3: the show off touch of the shark. At this point,
Speaker 3: I think it has three barrels harpooned to it should
Speaker 3: be impossible to go underwater at all. Not only does
Speaker 3: it go underwater, it goes under the boat right to
Speaker 3: just kind of like kind of give them a little
Speaker 3: middle finger that really with them, to tally with them.
Speaker 3: I do want to jump back because I mentioned her
Speaker 3: character briefly, Brodie's wife, but not the actress Lorraine Gary
Speaker 3: as Allen, and I just you know, I think she
Speaker 3: stands in a line of it. I don't want to
Speaker 3: give Stielberg too much credit here. He's a male dominant filmmaker, absolutely,
Speaker 3: but Lorraine Gary as Allen is in a line of
Speaker 3: fully envisioned and fully performed women characters. Again, they're sidelined
Speaker 3: because they never really get their full stories. But think
Speaker 3: of Karen Allen in Raiders of the Lost Dark, think
Speaker 3: of d Wallace in Et the Extraterrestrial, Terry Ghar in
Speaker 3: Close Encounters. Again, you could reorient most of those movies
Speaker 3: perhaps around each of those women, and they might be
Speaker 3: just as interesting different experiences, and it's sad that we
Speaker 3: haven't gotten a cinema like that alongside the cinema of men.
Speaker 3: But for the amount of screen time they have, I
Speaker 3: think they are given attention by Spielberg as a filmmaker,
Speaker 3: and I think the actors these actresses give such great performances.
Speaker 3: Lorraine Gary here, I love how she's supportive of Brody,
Speaker 3: like you know, she's got his back, but she also
Speaker 3: has her own ideas, like she pushes back on him.
Speaker 3: She has her own ideas about their family, but when
Speaker 3: it comes to if it's going to come down to
Speaker 3: the island or them, she's gonna stand right next to
Speaker 3: him and protect the family against the island and the
Speaker 3: mayor and that sort of stuff. She also has a
Speaker 3: sardonic sense of humor about that community. She deflates their pretensions.
Speaker 3: I love the little line like how much work does
Speaker 3: a line like this do? And the delivery by Gary
Speaker 3: when she just says want to get drunk and full around.
Speaker 3: I mean, in a second, you have that marriage right,
Speaker 3: you know them, and it's it's because of how she
Speaker 3: delivers it. And again you mentioned the dinner family scene,
Speaker 3: just another wonderful domestic touch, which was such a strength
Speaker 3: of Spielberg's early films, in particular when it ends with
Speaker 3: Brody's son mimicking him and Brody just says to him,
Speaker 3: give us a kiss, you know. And again another line
Speaker 3: interaction delivery where this family becomes so fully formed even
Speaker 3: though it's not really about them. This story isn't meant
Speaker 3: to be about them, but it still becomes so much
Speaker 3: about them because of performances like this.
Speaker 1: If they weren't there, this is such a lesser film.
Speaker 1: Oh and everything that happens on the boat we would
Speaker 1: probably still be impressed by because of the craft of
Speaker 1: so much of it, but we would not be drawn
Speaker 1: to this film. We would not all continually consistently come
Speaker 1: back to this film as an all time American great
Speaker 1: if it wasn't for all of these elements we're talking about,
Speaker 1: including its timelessness. And I'm really glad you brought up
Speaker 1: Lorrange Gary, because I agree with everything you said, and
Speaker 1: I also get to point out that if someone would
Speaker 1: like to while they're listening, go to Google and type
Speaker 1: in Lorraine Gary Jaws and look at her hair and
Speaker 1: hairstyle and see if it maybe reminds you of someone
Speaker 1: like I don't know Kim Novak from Vertigo, just a
Speaker 1: little bit that blonde hair, the way it's up. But
Speaker 1: I will also point to a character moment with her
Speaker 1: that I love that I also think is so indicative
Speaker 1: of human nature. It just speaks to who she is,
Speaker 1: but who we all are. And it's in that moment
Speaker 1: where after the first attack, I think, after the first
Speaker 1: body is washed up on shore, he's reading all the
Speaker 1: books and he's trying to learn what he can about sharks.
Speaker 1: And he looks out and he shouts at his kids
Speaker 1: who are out in their little boat that one of
Speaker 1: them got for his birthday. But they're just along the dock,
Speaker 1: and the mom's like, what are you doing? What are
Speaker 1: you doing? They're just along the dock, they're in the boat.
Speaker 1: They're fine. But then what happens. She glances down at
Speaker 1: a page in the book where a boat is being
Speaker 1: attacked by a shark, and in that moment, she then
Speaker 1: screams at the boys to come in, and Brody has
Speaker 1: no idea what's happening. And I love that because wouldn't
Speaker 1: we all do that very same thing? You have that
Speaker 1: initial dismissal, you go, they're fine, what are we worried about?
Speaker 1: But the moment, and this kind of goes back to
Speaker 1: what we were talking about earlier, the moment it becomes visual,
Speaker 1: the moment it becomes real in your mind and you
Speaker 1: can actually imagine what you just saw in that book
Speaker 1: happening to your children on that boat right the second
Speaker 1: Then the panic sets in. Then the protective instinct sets in,
Speaker 1: and she shouts at the boys to come in, speaking
Speaker 1: of fear. I will also say this, and this is
Speaker 1: not an exaggeration at all. So I go back all
Speaker 1: the jokes about this movie making people afraid to go
Speaker 1: in the water. I think I've alluded to this before.
Speaker 1: I remember as a kid being afraid. I'd lay in
Speaker 1: my bed. This is like from ages maybe seven to ten,
Speaker 1: or maybe maybe past that. Josh, we don't have to
Speaker 1: get into the numbers here. Who's counting?
Speaker 2: But eight?
Speaker 1: Yeah, at least I would lay in my bed, and
Speaker 1: I would not lay with my legs fully extend, even
Speaker 1: though they didn't go off the bed. I would not
Speaker 1: lay with my legs fully extended because just the thought
Speaker 1: of my toes sort of dangling or it was some
Speaker 1: monsters I'm sure I was afraid of, but I also
Speaker 1: was very afraid of this idea of Jos. I was
Speaker 1: afraid of the shark somehow being in my bedroom and
Speaker 1: being able to get my feet and I am not
Speaker 1: kidding you, it was like I was seven years old
Speaker 1: all over again. I'm watching this movie. I'm sitting on
Speaker 1: the couch in my office sort of viewing area, and
Speaker 1: it's one of those where the side also reclines like
Speaker 1: a chair. And there were two moments where I caught
Speaker 1: myself pulling my feet back off of the extension. I
Speaker 1: couldn't let myself fully recline because my toes were dangling
Speaker 1: on the floor and Jos was going.
Speaker 3: To get them recoiling from the movie. Yeah, it's that effective.
Speaker 3: Would you Would you ever do I've seen park districts
Speaker 3: do this where they have pools. They'll do a screening
Speaker 3: of Jaws and you sit in an inner tube and
Speaker 3: watch it in the pool. I would kind of love
Speaker 3: to try that sometimes. But just to go back to
Speaker 3: your note about the books, the pictures in the books,
Speaker 3: it's effective in that scene as a character development and
Speaker 3: motivation for that moment, but also I noticed you know,
Speaker 3: we've talked, I'm sure at some point on the show,
Speaker 3: and everyone talks about all the filmmaking tricks Spielberg had
Speaker 3: to do to get around this faulty mechanical shark, right,
Speaker 3: John Williams score is one thing. Using the camera point
Speaker 3: of view as the shark is another way. But it
Speaker 3: struck me this time. That's why we get so many
Speaker 3: insert shots I think of these books is because he
Speaker 3: can't show the shark attacking. So let's show something even scarier,
Speaker 3: not like a yankee mechanical shark, but actual photos of
Speaker 3: attacks from real life, and the autopsy description that Hooper
Speaker 3: can barely get through that serves the same purpose. So
Speaker 3: those are just a few other things that stand in
Speaker 3: place of the actual shark here, in addition to the
Speaker 3: more traditional ones people mentioned, like the barrels or like
Speaker 3: the peer breaking and then turning around and coming after
Speaker 3: the Yeah, there's just again. It goes back to the efficiency,
Speaker 3: the killer great white shark like efficiency of this movie,
Speaker 3: where yes, even an insert shot of a shark attack
Speaker 3: in a book is going to serve multiple purposes for
Speaker 3: the film.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that efficiency and that sense of how to
Speaker 1: use the camera and get around the shark problem if
Speaker 1: you will also manifest itself so clearly in just the
Speaker 1: decision to focus on using point of view as a tool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it goes back to the feet of the woman dangling
Speaker 1: in the water below the surface, and we are the
Speaker 1: shark in that moment. And how many times throughout the
Speaker 1: film instead of showing us the shark does he show
Speaker 1: us what the shark would see. And that's all we
Speaker 1: need to experience to really feel the horror of Jaws.
Speaker 2: Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss, Jaws. See it before
Speaker 2: you go swimming.
Speaker 3: Hope you enjoyed that June twenty twenty Sacred Cow review
Speaker 3: of Jaws. For now, that's our show. If you'd like
Speaker 3: to connect with us on social media, you can find
Speaker 3: Adam and film Spotting on Instagram, Facebook, letterbox, and how
Speaker 3: about this YouTube that's all at film Spotting I'm at
Speaker 3: I think, Yeah, I'm at all those places and throw
Speaker 3: Bluesky in there as well. You can find me Larson
Speaker 3: on film We are independently produced and listeners supported. You
Speaker 3: can support the show by joining the film Spotting Family
Speaker 3: at film spottingfamily dot com, listen early and ad free
Speaker 3: get a weekly newsletter. Get monthly bonus episodes and access
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Speaker 3: other merch go to film spotting dot net slash shop.
Speaker 1: In that archive, you can hear our top five Denzel
Speaker 1: Washington performances from twenty seventeen. We had a guest on
Speaker 1: for that, comedian TV host and film director w caamal Beell.
Speaker 1: He's the host of the Denzel Washington is the Great
Speaker 1: actor of all time period podcast makes sense. We had
Speaker 1: him on right. We did share that in our feed
Speaker 1: earlier this week. And my favorite part of that top
Speaker 1: five is when I was certain I was going to
Speaker 1: get praise from camal Bell for including that deep cut
Speaker 1: of Deja Vu in my top five, only to have
Speaker 1: him laugh at me for putting it on my list.
Speaker 3: You didn't have to bring that up again for everyone
Speaker 3: to hear, Adam, you know what I want.
Speaker 1: I want people to go ahead and listen to it.
Speaker 1: It is what it is. It happened, and it filled
Speaker 1: me with shame.
Speaker 3: And it also in the Ardnights.
Speaker 1: Yeah twenty eighteen, episode six ninety three, we shared our
Speaker 1: top five spike Lee shots other spike Lee conversations. Do
Speaker 1: the right Thing at thirty five Episode nine to seventy five,
Speaker 1: American Utopia, The David Byrne Collaboration Episode seven ninety seven
Speaker 1: to five, Bloods seven eighty one, Black Clansman six ninety three,
Speaker 1: Shyraq five sixty six, Old Boy Episode four seventy seven.
Speaker 1: That's for seventy Actually An Inside Man episode eighty nine
Speaker 1: out new on vod The Thursday Murder Club. Actually this
Speaker 1: is on Netflix streaming. A retirement community or friends from
Speaker 1: a retired community form the club of the title to
Speaker 1: work on cold cases for fun when they find themselves
Speaker 1: in the middle of a live murder case. It's directed
Speaker 1: by Chris Columbus, but the cast Helen Mirren, Ben Kingsley,
Speaker 1: Pierce Brosnan.
Speaker 3: You know what, I for some reason I thought this
Speaker 3: was a streaming series, and I was like, could be good,
Speaker 3: but I'm not cold, Okay, sit down, knock it out movie.
Speaker 3: Maybe I'm in.
Speaker 1: Maybe in limited release A Little Prayer. David Strathern tries
Speaker 1: to protect his daughter in law when he discovers that
Speaker 1: his son is having an affair. It's directed by Angus McLaughlin,
Speaker 1: who wrote the movie Junebug. It premiered at the twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three Sun Dance to pretty strong reviews. It's just
Speaker 1: getting a theatrical release. Brian Tallerico says, a gentle dramedy
Speaker 1: about a decent man realizing he hasn't raised a decent sun.
Speaker 1: Phenomenal work from Strathurn. Really great. He's He's always great. Also,
Speaker 1: we should mention the Tell You Write Film Festival is
Speaker 1: starting through September first. If you happen to be out
Speaker 1: there now, this is a good one. I've actually never
Speaker 1: seen this somehow, despite being a huge Prince fan. Prince
Speaker 1: Sign of the Times in Imax in limited release. This
Speaker 1: was originally out in nineteen eighty seven. Now it's out
Speaker 1: in Imax. Producer Sam this is his four star letterbox review,
Speaker 1: Like if gene Kelly directed porn.
Speaker 3: I mean Sam would know, And I'm just gonna leave
Speaker 3: it that there, or leave it there Sam, Sam really
Speaker 3: likes gene Kelly. I feel I have to say.
Speaker 1: It, Josh, we need to leave it there. It was
Speaker 1: funnier when you left it there. Suspended Time directed by
Speaker 1: Olivier Asseas, the director of Personal Shopper and Clouds of
Speaker 1: Sils Maria and Carlos. I really want to see this one,
Speaker 1: he returns to his childhood home and discovers isolation to
Speaker 1: be an artistic curative. It was shot during the pandemic
Speaker 1: out in wide release. Aeronofsky's new film Caught Stealing, a
Speaker 1: nineties crime drama starring Austin Butler as a former baseball
Speaker 1: player who finds himself mixed up in New York City's
Speaker 1: criminal underbelly. This also has a really good cast Zoey Kravitz,
Speaker 1: Regina King, Matt Smith, Lee Have Schreiber, Vincent Dinafrio, and others.
Speaker 1: The Roses I've never been interested. I wasn't interested in
Speaker 1: the Michael Douglas Kathleen Turner version. If you just on
Speaker 1: paper seeing another version of the eighties black comedy The
Speaker 1: War of the Roses, this one with Olivia Coleman and
Speaker 1: Bennett Cumberbatch, Andy Samberg's in it, Kate mckinning, Alison Janney
Speaker 1: on paper, I don't care. I've seen the trailer a
Speaker 1: few times though, and maybe it's just how game Coleman
Speaker 1: and cumber Batch are. Looks kind of fun.
Speaker 3: They are game, and every once in a while, I mean,
Speaker 3: Debbie's open for most movies, not horror, but most movies
Speaker 3: that I want to go to. But this is one
Speaker 3: where she came up to me. It was like, can
Speaker 3: we go see this? She saw the trailer somewhere and
Speaker 3: so maybe I'll maybe we'll check it out and I'll
Speaker 3: report back.
Speaker 1: Okay, there you go. Also out The Toxic Avenger. I
Speaker 1: think Debbie has this number one on her priority list.
Speaker 1: It's a remake of the cold eighties film directed by
Speaker 1: Mace Macon Blair from Blue Ruin, with Peter Dinklage as
Speaker 1: the Avenger, plus Kevin Bacon, Elijah Wood, and Taylor Page.
Speaker 1: It was the opening film at twenty twenty three's Fantastic Fest,
Speaker 1: didn't get distribution. It's in theaters now in an unrated version.
Speaker 1: Tasha Robinson, our friend from the Next Picture Show, caught
Speaker 1: it back in twenty twenty three and said this, there's
Speaker 1: a whole lot of huh. I've never seen anyone explode
Speaker 1: quite like that before in this extremely goofy, utterly self
Speaker 1: aware remake. Also, there is no scenery left in the
Speaker 1: entire world because Kevin Bacon has now eaten it all.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I think you got a little in
Speaker 3: Massacre Theater, you babe, found something to eat? Yeah, I
Speaker 3: will not be seeing this w If I see it,
Speaker 3: it'll be alone in the theater, which is maybe how
Speaker 3: the Toxic Avenger was meant to be seen, So that'll
Speaker 3: be just fine.
Speaker 1: Of course, Jaws in Imax as well. Next week we
Speaker 1: are off no new content, but new to you content
Speaker 1: sharing at least one film spotting fest Q and A
Speaker 1: and maybe more. Look for that come back in a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks. We'll have our Pantheon Project review of
Speaker 1: Goodfellas at thirty five, and I'm really looking forward to
Speaker 1: the debut of Josh's Scottish bro.
Speaker 3: Well, we're gonna have a problem, Adam, if you can
Speaker 3: no longer understand me, true, true, Well, actually it'll be
Speaker 3: probably business as usual.
Speaker 1: There you go.
Speaker 3: Film Spotting is produced by Golden Joe, Des and Sam
Speaker 3: van Holgren. Without Sam and Golden Joe, this show wouldn't go.
Speaker 3: Our production assistant is Sophiekampanar special thanks to everyone at
Speaker 3: wb easy Chicago. More information is available at wbeazy dot org.
Speaker 3: For a film spotting I'm Josh Larson.
Speaker 1: And I Madam Kempinar. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 4: This conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Good fine.
Speaker 1: Film Spotting is Listeners supported join the film Spotting Family
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