Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Weird House Cinema. My name is
Speaker 2: Joe McCormick. My regular co host Robert Lamb is out
Speaker 2: today and so sitting in the guest co host chair
Speaker 2: we have and I'm so excited to welcome him onto
Speaker 2: the side of the mic for the first time. Our
Speaker 2: longtime audio producer JJ Posway. Jj. How you doing? Man?
Speaker 2: Hey doing pretty well? How are you, Joe? I'm doing great.
Speaker 2: To be honest, actually I'm incredibly tired, but I'm not
Speaker 2: but I think we're gonna have a great time today.
Speaker 2: I'm truly, genuinely so excited for you to come on
Speaker 2: the show. We've been talking about doing this for a
Speaker 2: while and I'm glad we're doing it with a weird
Speaker 2: House pick. So today on Weird House Cinema, we're going
Speaker 2: to be talking about a movie that you selected, and
Speaker 2: that is the twenty nineteen French black comedy Deer Skin,
Speaker 2: directed by about to say a French name, Quentin Depew.
Speaker 2: How's that yeah?
Speaker 3: I think that's probably about how I'm going to say
Speaker 3: it too. It's okay, Quantin Depew, Quanton dep I'll probably
Speaker 3: say Quentin Depew.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in English, it looks like Quintin, so Quentin might
Speaker 2: say Quentin Depew. So I had never seen a movie
Speaker 2: by this filmmaker before. Obviously this is more recent than
Speaker 2: a lot of the films we cover, but nothing wrong
Speaker 2: with that. So what got you excited about Deer Skin?
Speaker 2: What's your relationship with this movie?
Speaker 3: To be completely honest, it's when I only watched a
Speaker 3: couple of weeks ago. I have a couple of friends
Speaker 3: named Ian and Terrence who have watched most of Depew's movies,
Speaker 3: and they started introducing me to his work, and at
Speaker 3: this point of watched like five or six of them.
Speaker 3: They're absurd and surreal. There are a lot of on coincidentally,
Speaker 3: last week watching the movie incredible but true. I thought
Speaker 3: one of his movies would make a good Weird House
Speaker 3: Cinema episode, and I definitely recommend that one, but Deer
Speaker 3: Skin kind of felt like the best fit for an
Speaker 3: episode of Weird House.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm glad you picked this one because I loved it.
Speaker 2: I thought it was really weird and funny, just fantastic.
Speaker 2: I liked the pathetic, understated sense of humor in it,
Speaker 2: and yeah, kind of. It's the kind of absurd groove
Speaker 2: that it gets into. I think you probably know what
Speaker 2: I mean by this. The pacing of the increase in
Speaker 2: absurdity is really exquisite here.
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: It's slow but steady, and I think groove is the
Speaker 3: right word. There is like a strange musicality to it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not to It actually has good music in it. Oh,
Speaker 2: It's not like a musical movie that's like dominated by
Speaker 2: musical motifs, but it has like a few recurring things
Speaker 2: like these ominous horns that come in, these little bleats
Speaker 2: every now and then that are just kind of sound
Speaker 2: like something's wrong. But sometimes it's just when it's a
Speaker 2: guy looking in a mirror. Yeah, yeah, now, incredible but true.
Speaker 2: That's another depew movie. That's the one with the robot penis.
Speaker 2: We're not talking about that one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that one didn't seem right for the show, but
Speaker 3: I do highly recommend that one. That one has a
Speaker 3: little more of a like a sci fi thing going on,
Speaker 3: if you could call it that. I think it's a
Speaker 3: really good primer. But every movie I've seen of his
Speaker 3: has been really great and pretty. He's got a consistent tone.
Speaker 3: I read this letterboxed review of Incredible but True, and
Speaker 3: it was actually a disparaging review. But the way they
Speaker 3: started off I thought was pretty apt in calling Depew
Speaker 3: a premise generator. Yeah, and I think he's really great
Speaker 3: at these just absurd premises, setting them up and letting
Speaker 3: them play out for usually like an hour and fifteen
Speaker 3: minutes or so. They're not often long movies.
Speaker 2: So I guess we could go ahead and say what
Speaker 2: the absurd premise of Deer Skin is? How would I
Speaker 2: put it? I'd say it's about a kind of pathetic
Speaker 2: middle aged man who goes through some sort of personal
Speaker 2: crisis and becomes enamored of a new deer skin motorcycle
Speaker 2: jacket that he paid too much money for. And as
Speaker 2: his love affair with this jacket and how he looks
Speaker 2: in it deepens, it goes to increasingly bizarre places, and
Speaker 2: he eventually becomes a co conspirator with the jacket, and
Speaker 2: they together decide that they must eliminate all other jacket
Speaker 2: wearing phenomena from planet Earth, and this will be the
Speaker 2: only jacket human duo that should be allowed to exist.
Speaker 3: I think that's a great summary.
Speaker 2: Okay, now, having only seen this, depu film. I can
Speaker 2: see how somebody might describe his style as premise generator,
Speaker 2: because while the I think you could call this the
Speaker 2: style of filmmaking like absurdist or absurd comedy, it's actually,
Speaker 2: I think quite logical. It's just a very B follows,
Speaker 2: a C follows, be kind of logical progression pursuing this
Speaker 2: absurd premise where if you take the absurd premise on,
Speaker 2: everything just kind of flows and it makes sense totally.
Speaker 3: There's a quote I want to share later that I
Speaker 3: think Get said that same sentiment, and Yeah, what is
Speaker 3: so fun about it is the just the slow ratcheting
Speaker 3: up of that absurdity.
Speaker 2: Another thing I want to establish here at the top.
Speaker 2: It is hard not to see the main characters increasingly
Speaker 2: bizarre and toxic relationship with his leather jacket as having
Speaker 2: something to do with the way lonely people become obsessed
Speaker 2: with things. And I feel like this is something I've
Speaker 2: seen in my life has happened with people I know.
Speaker 2: In fact, I can feel little threads of it in
Speaker 2: myself at different times in my life, the way that
Speaker 2: when you feel kind of alienated or you are lacking
Speaker 2: in a rich, well entangled, you know, sense of human
Speaker 2: connections and human networks. When you're lacking in friendship and
Speaker 2: family life and stuff like that, it seems like maybe
Speaker 2: you are more prone to find a new thing and
Speaker 2: then make that thing your entire personality. This is like
Speaker 2: all you know, I've discovered that. Now I'm into a
Speaker 2: new hobby or a new artist that I like or
Speaker 2: something like that, and that's literally all I can think
Speaker 2: and talk about, and all subject matter is now I
Speaker 2: now relate back to this thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I agree with that completely, and I think Depew
Speaker 3: from what I've read, has a similar view.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, well, maybe we'll get into that as we
Speaker 2: go along. Elevator pitch. I guess I've already given the
Speaker 2: straightforward description of what happens in the movie thematic Elevator pitches.
Speaker 2: I'd say it's a film about loneliness, falsity, and authenticity, obsession,
Speaker 2: and of course killer style, both in the earnest and
Speaker 2: the ironic sense.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. Yeah, all right, we're going to play a little
Speaker 3: bit of the trailer audio.
Speaker 4: Well, now, j J.
Speaker 2: We we kind of had to put this episode together fast,
Speaker 2: so I ended up streaming the movie. But you were
Speaker 2: able to get ahold of a disc.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I rented from Video Drome here in Atlanta. It's
Speaker 3: also available on Apple and Amazon Prime.
Speaker 2: Though now, as usual on a Weird House Cinema episode,
Speaker 2: we're gonna end up discussing the plot in a lot
Speaker 2: of detail. So if you haven't seen the movie and
Speaker 2: you want to see Deer Skin without knowing everything in advance,
Speaker 2: there are some fun surprises in it. Here is your
Speaker 2: warning pause the episode. Here, go watch the movie first.
Speaker 2: But if you think you'll never see it, or you
Speaker 2: just don't care, if we describe the whole story in advance,
Speaker 2: let's plow right on ahead. All right, Well, let's move
Speaker 2: on and talk about the connections and discuss some of
Speaker 2: the key people involved. I think you had some stuff
Speaker 2: on Quinton Depew, the director writer also, I think yes, he's.
Speaker 3: The director, writer, cinematographer and editor. Depew's a French filmmaker
Speaker 3: a musician. He makes music under the name mister Waso
Speaker 3: and put out his first EP in nineteen ninety seven
Speaker 3: via the label f Communications. A few years later, in
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety nine, he'd released a single called flat Beat,
Speaker 3: which was a hit in Europe. The music video for
Speaker 3: Flatbeat was directed by De Pew himself and featured a
Speaker 3: puppet named flat Eric. De Pew created Flat Eric with
Speaker 3: Jim Henson's Creature Shop, and the puppet, as well as
Speaker 3: the song flat Beat, were used in a series of
Speaker 3: Levi's commercials that he directed.
Speaker 2: What kind of animal is he? He's like a yellow
Speaker 2: dog but without ears, but with the like little beaty
Speaker 2: bits of coal for eyes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'd say that's an app description. But also a
Speaker 3: little guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he's cutee. I mean is he cute or
Speaker 2: is he cruel? And does he wish me harm?
Speaker 3: I feel like that exact intersection is where his music,
Speaker 3: as mister Waso, at least the stuff I've listened to
Speaker 3: seems to.
Speaker 2: Live so I haven't listened to any mister Waso. What's
Speaker 2: the what's the style of music? Like? How would you
Speaker 2: describe it?
Speaker 3: It falls broadly under the umbrellas of like electro and house.
Speaker 3: He makes electronic music, And I mean, I think you
Speaker 3: put it best just in describing Flat Eric. There's like
Speaker 3: a very playful sinisterness. There's like always a layer of humor.
Speaker 2: Is it like in Deer Skin when there are those
Speaker 2: scenes of George sharpening the fan blade to turn it
Speaker 2: into a machete, but he's like playing with it. He's
Speaker 2: playing with the with the watermelon and just having a
Speaker 2: good time. It's like it's like a like a cute
Speaker 2: having fun montage, but he's making a Jason Vorhees implement.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, kind of. I linked one of these Levi's
Speaker 3: commercials that has a I think paints a pretty good
Speaker 3: picture of flat Eric that features the song flat Beat.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna pull this up right now. Hold on, I
Speaker 2: gotta order some jeans. No, it's good. It's like, I mean,
Speaker 2: it's got that Oh, here's where I don't have the
Speaker 2: correct terminology. It's got a kind of fuzzy, malfunctioning electronics
Speaker 2: sound to the to the tones in there, there's something
Speaker 2: that sounds like a like an incomplete connection in the wiring.
Speaker 2: But also it's a little bit jaunty, you know. It's
Speaker 2: it's like something you can nod your head to. It's
Speaker 2: not like, you know, industrial downbeat kind of stuff. It's fun,
Speaker 2: but but something sounds a little wrong.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, it's like a little distorted, and ultimately it's fun,
Speaker 3: but there's just like a tinge of menace to it,
Speaker 3: the most playful kind of menace.
Speaker 2: Though, but also in this levice commercial, it's like a
Speaker 2: guy driving with flat Eric the puppet. They get pulled
Speaker 2: over by a cop and flat Eric quickly tries to
Speaker 2: make his car look less threatening, so he like turns
Speaker 2: around like a pin up picture, and just on the
Speaker 2: other side, it's a picture of a horse in a meadow.
Speaker 3: So he's still active as mister Waso, and some of
Speaker 3: his movies have featured his music under that name, and
Speaker 3: he is always credited as mister Waso when he makes
Speaker 3: music for his movies. His first movie, titled non Film,
Speaker 3: was released in two thousand and one, but his breakthrough
Speaker 3: movie was twenty ten's Rubber, a movie about assentient killer
Speaker 3: tire with psychokinetic powers.
Speaker 2: So I've never seen Rubber. I had entirely the wrong
Speaker 2: idea about what it was, though I'd seen the cover,
Speaker 2: not the movie itself, and I assumed it was a
Speaker 2: like self conscious ironic schlock comedy horror movie, something more
Speaker 2: like Sharknado in like irony zone stuff. And now I
Speaker 2: assume that's not really what it's like. It is probably
Speaker 2: something a little bit closer to Deer Skin, but more
Speaker 2: firmly in the absurd horror Vein.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's somewhere in between. I definitely don't
Speaker 3: think it's a full sort of Shark Nato situation. I
Speaker 3: actually watched it last night just to get a good
Speaker 3: sense of what that was, and it is closer to
Speaker 3: Deer Skin than something like Shark Nato, though I do
Speaker 3: feel like I kind of prefer where he goes after Rubber.
Speaker 2: Okay, so that's not his peak. It's not all downhill
Speaker 2: from there.
Speaker 3: At least, you know, in my opinion, But I think
Speaker 3: that that's one that he's pretty well known for, and
Speaker 3: it was the first of four films he'd make in America,
Speaker 3: followed by twenty twelve's Wrong, twenty thirteen's Wrong Cops, and
Speaker 3: twenty fourteen's Reality. He returned to France after the release
Speaker 3: of Reality and put out his first film produced there
Speaker 3: in twenty eighteen. He's been pretty prolific since, sometimes releasing
Speaker 3: multiple movies a year, with his most recent at the
Speaker 3: time of recording being The Piano Accident, which was just
Speaker 3: released in France a couple weeks ago. The writer Savina
Speaker 3: Petkova has a piece on Deer Skin from twenty twenty
Speaker 3: one on the publication The Quietest that I think aptly
Speaker 3: describes to Pew's appeal when she writes his films are
Speaker 3: laden with characters, situations, and spoofs that produce a hypnogogic effect,
Speaker 3: but the reality status is never questioned. Deer Skin represents
Speaker 3: the opposite of skepticism in relation to the uncanny, a
Speaker 3: film that gladly jumps on the bandwagon of unforeseen ideas
Speaker 3: with an ease that resembles a dream.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I could agree with that there is something dream
Speaker 2: like about it, but not in every way. One of
Speaker 2: the we sort of got into this earlier. But one
Speaker 2: of the ways I would say it is not like
Speaker 2: a dream is that dreams often feel more random, like
Speaker 2: just random new introduction of new elements, Whereas it seems
Speaker 2: to me that once Deer Skin gets going, sort of
Speaker 2: like I was saying earlier, everything just kind of follows logically.
Speaker 2: If you buy into the initial dream, it's like a
Speaker 2: real world that operates fully on the logic of physics
Speaker 2: and cause and effect, and people behave in some ways normally,
Speaker 2: except this real world was created by an absurdist demi
Speaker 2: urge who is, like, you know, a man in a
Speaker 2: jacket will decide that they must be the only man
Speaker 2: in jacket that can be together.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I totally agree with that. Moving on to our protagonist.
Speaker 3: Jean Dujardins plays George born nineteen seventy two, French actor
Speaker 3: and comedian. Worked as a stand up comedian in France
Speaker 3: and has been in many films as an actor. Some
Speaker 3: of the most well known include The Artist from twenty eleven,
Speaker 3: the comedic reboot of the French spy series OSS one
Speaker 3: hundred and seventeen, and The Wolf of Wall Street. As George,
Speaker 3: he portrays a bit of an idiot, but he's a
Speaker 3: confident idiot, and that confidence mostly successfully carries him as
Speaker 3: he reinvents himself around a new jacket on the fly.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, I like you flagging the confidence there and
Speaker 2: how much it how much it works like. He's a
Speaker 2: pathetic character, but a different kind of movie I think
Speaker 2: would have more of everybody around him just treating him
Speaker 2: as a fool and treating him with scorn and actually
Speaker 2: he you know, he gets some pushback in skepticism, but
Speaker 2: he also gets pretty far just on being a foolish, overconfident,
Speaker 2: pathetic person.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he gets remarkably far. He gets remarkably little pushback
Speaker 3: there's like one exception that isn't even really overt pushback
Speaker 3: in that sort of sends him over the edge.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I thought Douchardon was good in this role,
Speaker 2: and I knew I recognized him from somewhere, but I
Speaker 2: couldn't place it at first. I actually have not seen
Speaker 2: the Artist I think he was. Did he win like
Speaker 2: a Best Actor Oscar for that?
Speaker 3: Oh man, I'm not sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sorry, we just had to look this up. He
Speaker 2: did win the Academy Award for Best Actor for his
Speaker 2: role in The Artist from twenty eleven. Again, I have
Speaker 2: not seen that one, but I realized what I knew
Speaker 2: him from was that he is the corrupt Swiss banker
Speaker 2: in Wolf of Wall Street. He's the guy who's like
Speaker 2: trying to telepathically make make slimy deals with Leonardo DiCaprio.
Speaker 3: It's been a while since I've seen that one, so
Speaker 3: I don't remember that. But he's great in this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he is. There is a there's a soft spoken,
Speaker 2: matter of factus to the way that he resists anything
Speaker 2: that challenges his delusions that is so good. One of
Speaker 2: my favorite moments of the movie is when he's been
Speaker 2: like doing stuff that's impossible to explain without getting more
Speaker 2: into the plot first, but doing weird stuff that he's
Speaker 2: like paying these actors to be in these bizarre scenes.
Speaker 2: And one of the actors is like, this movie you're
Speaker 2: making it's a bit weird. No, he says, it's not weird,
Speaker 2: it's amazing. It's really good delivery on that line. It's
Speaker 2: in French, but yeah, it comes through.
Speaker 3: Yeah, agree completely. I love his delivery. I love his
Speaker 3: whole demeanor in this movie. It really sells it.
Speaker 2: Yes, similar things I would say about the next actor
Speaker 2: we're going to talk about, is this Adele nel Yeah.
Speaker 3: Annelle born nineteen eighty nine is our second lead. She
Speaker 3: made her film debut at the age of twelve in
Speaker 3: the two thousand and two movie Le Diaba. In twenty fourteen,
Speaker 3: she won the CESAR Award for Best Supporting Actress for
Speaker 3: her role in the twenty thirteen movie Suzanne, and in
Speaker 3: twenty nineteen she appeared in three movies, Deer Skin being
Speaker 3: one of them and the other two being Heroes Don't
Speaker 3: Die and Portrait of a Lady on Fire, which is
Speaker 3: where I knew her from. She retired from the film
Speaker 3: industry in twenty twenty three. Citing that the industry defended
Speaker 3: a capital, patriarchal, racist, sexist world of structural inequality. She's
Speaker 3: since been active in theater and as a political activist.
Speaker 2: Well respect her critique of the industry, both from within
Speaker 2: and without, but I also I think she's so great here, Like,
Speaker 2: I love the way that our empathy for this character
Speaker 2: evolves as we come to understand her better. So like
Speaker 2: the evolution goes something like when we first meet her.
Speaker 2: In classic comedy terms, this character, Denise is what do
Speaker 2: you call, like the feed or the straight character, the
Speaker 2: comedic foil of the act's main buffoon, which is George. Here,
Speaker 2: this kind of character is the stand in for the audience,
Speaker 2: the normal person who is there to react skeptically to
Speaker 2: the funny man's antics. And that is what she feels
Speaker 2: like in the first few scenes with her. But then
Speaker 2: as our main weirdo evolves to become more criminal, basically
Speaker 2: more sinister, the drama shifts and she becomes the victim
Speaker 2: of his lies and scams, and we feel a totally
Speaker 2: different way about her. We start to feel pity for
Speaker 2: her while he's like, you know, lying to her and
Speaker 2: draining her bank account. And then she reveals that she
Speaker 2: was actually always aware of the fact that he was
Speaker 2: a fraud, and then she becomes part of the antics
Speaker 2: and scams. In essence, she becomes the weirdo, and in fact,
Speaker 2: maybe even weirder than the weirdo that came before. She
Speaker 2: starts kind of trying to give orders, and so I
Speaker 2: love that evolution. You feel like three totally different ways
Speaker 2: about her as the movie goes on, and it's a
Speaker 2: very seamless kind of transition. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I love this too. I was reading an interview on
Speaker 3: the publication Dazed that Depew did in support of Deer Skin,
Speaker 3: and to quote that interview, Originally, Depew planned for Denise
Speaker 3: to be down to earth every woman to counteract George's quirkiness. However,
Speaker 3: Nnel insisted that Denise should adore blood and slaughter without
Speaker 3: changing a line in the script. We decided that she's crazy,
Speaker 3: the director says, and because she's an amazing actress, you
Speaker 3: see it in her eyes. Suddenly every scene looks different,
Speaker 3: and Jean looks stupid in front of her. She's evil
Speaker 3: and he's just a kid.
Speaker 2: That's brilliant. Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 3: So, yeah, totally agree. The composer is Yanko Niovich. I
Speaker 3: think that's how you pronounce it. As far as I
Speaker 3: can tell. He was born in nineteen forty one. He
Speaker 3: did the score. He's a prolific Paris based musician who
Speaker 3: has released over thirty albums since the early nineteen sixties,
Speaker 3: mostly library music, essentially work for higher albums made to
Speaker 3: be easily licensed for productions. He's made music under a
Speaker 3: variety of pseudonyms, one of which was Mad Unity. Under
Speaker 3: the mad Unity name, he released one of his most
Speaker 3: well regarded albums, Funky Tramway. I checked out the title
Speaker 3: track of this one, and it definitely sounds like a
Speaker 3: funky tramway. Flattering, it's frenetic, and then there's a bunch
Speaker 3: of like wah guitar. You gotta check it. It's a
Speaker 3: funky tramway for sure.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: His music has been sampled by artists like Jay Z,
Speaker 3: Doctor Dre the Alchemist, and Freddie Gibbs and Schoolboy Q
Speaker 3: to name a few. He seems to be sampled quite
Speaker 3: a bit actually, and as of twenty twenty two, he's
Speaker 3: still making new music. And I found news from twenty
Speaker 3: twenty three of a documentary called The Sample Return of
Speaker 3: Yanko Niovich. That's currently in production, I guess. According to
Speaker 3: an interview Depew did with Dazed during Deerskin's post production,
Speaker 3: he scrap plans to record an electronic soundtrack himself, saying
Speaker 3: that quote to me, it's a dead serious movie. It's funny,
Speaker 3: but not what we call it comedy. And actually I
Speaker 3: never used funny comedy music or whatever. I decided to
Speaker 3: only use music from the seventies to match the jacket.
Speaker 2: Oh that's interesting, because yeah, the music in this movie, well,
Speaker 2: first of all, there are some there's some great like
Speaker 2: needle drops in it. In the closing credits, it uses
Speaker 2: the song by Della Humphrey that I don't know if
Speaker 2: I'd ever heard before, when Good Girls Go Bad. That
Speaker 2: one's fantastic excellence.
Speaker 3: It's a great closing song. Yeah, I loved it.
Speaker 2: But also the original score for it, Yeah, it doesn't
Speaker 2: sound like goofy dump de dump comedy music. It sounds
Speaker 2: like something that could be in like a dark Michael
Speaker 2: Chimino movie from the seventies or something.
Speaker 3: And finally, I wasn't able to find a ton of
Speaker 3: info on her. But Jean le Barux, the production designer,
Speaker 3: this is Depew's wife and the production designer on seemingly
Speaker 3: all of his movies from twenty Twelve's Wrong onward and
Speaker 3: according to an interview, I ran and she's the only
Speaker 3: person he will run edits the movie by before finalizing them.
Speaker 2: All Right, you ready to talk about the plot? Ja, ja, Yeah,
Speaker 2: let's do it cool. So I think we're going to
Speaker 2: talk about a lot of like direct in scene texture
Speaker 2: in this one, because that's a lot of where the
Speaker 2: pleasure of the movie lies. So it starts off with
Speaker 2: the cold open in like a big empty room that
Speaker 2: looks like it could be a warehouse or parking garage.
Speaker 2: And there are several young men and women. They stand
Speaker 2: lined up behind a car with the car trunk hanging open,
Speaker 2: and they're all holding piles of clothing in their arms.
Speaker 2: And the first guy, sort of a guy with red
Speaker 2: hair and a mustache, he looks straight into the camera
Speaker 2: and he says, I swear never to wear a jacket
Speaker 2: as long as I live. And then he's got this
Speaker 2: stack of clothes in his arms. You realize they're all jackets.
Speaker 2: He dumps the jackets into the car's trunk gets out
Speaker 2: of the way. The next man in line steps up
Speaker 2: to the car. He looks into the camera with a
Speaker 2: kind of smirk, and he says the same thing, I
Speaker 2: swear never to wear a jacket as long as I live. Dump.
Speaker 2: A woman steps up from behind. She seems a little
Speaker 2: less good humored than the first two guys. She dumps
Speaker 2: in her pile of jackets and says the same thing,
Speaker 2: though she has to be prompted by somebody off screen
Speaker 2: to get the words right. And then a voice behind
Speaker 2: the camera tells them to close the trunk. She slams
Speaker 2: it and we cut to black. There's a good WTF opening.
Speaker 2: Don't see that every day? And then the action reopens
Speaker 2: on our protagonist, George. This is again is Jean dou
Speaker 2: Chartin and he is a quiet, bearded man in his forties.
Speaker 2: He's dressed in a corduroy blazer and a button up
Speaker 2: shirt tucked into his pants. He's driving a sedan along
Speaker 2: the highway in France by himself, somewhere in rural France,
Speaker 2: and he passes toll stations. He stops for gas, and
Speaker 2: at the service station where he's putting gas in the car,
Speaker 2: he stares at his reflection in the window of his
Speaker 2: car and it seems like he doesn't like the way
Speaker 2: he looks. He's kind of pulling and adjusting at his
Speaker 2: jacket to try to look better, but just doesn't seem happy.
Speaker 2: So he goes to the bathroom at the service station,
Speaker 2: where he takes off his blazer, wads it up, crams
Speaker 2: it into the toilet, and then tries to flush it down.
Speaker 2: Now this doesn't work. The toilet begins to overflow, and
Speaker 2: he starts like stomping on it and the toilet bowl,
Speaker 2: trying to jam it down the hole. But how's that
Speaker 2: going to work. You're not even supposed to flush paper towels,
Speaker 2: you know, Are you gonna get a blazer down there?
Speaker 2: So it doesn't work. Everything's just flooding in the bathroom,
Speaker 2: and he flees the scene in his car. So George
Speaker 2: is on a journey. We see him sleeping in his
Speaker 2: car overnight beside the highway, and then later he is
Speaker 2: following a map, winding his way up these narrow, twisting
Speaker 2: country roads, and eventually George comes to an old farmhouse
Speaker 2: on a hillside. At the door, he rings the buzzer
Speaker 2: and he announces that he's following up about an advertisement,
Speaker 2: and an older man lets him inside inside this house,
Speaker 2: it's rustic, a lot of simple varnished wood, and George
Speaker 2: is here about a product that this guy has advertised
Speaker 2: for sale. George says, he's very anxious to see the item.
Speaker 2: So the old man goes and gets it out from
Speaker 2: a chest, this big treasure chest looking thing in the
Speaker 2: other room. And then the old man comes into the
Speaker 2: room with George holding up this object like a highrafant
Speaker 2: showing off the sacred relics. It is a leather jacket,
Speaker 2: tawny brown. I'm not sure what you call this cut,
Speaker 2: but his kind of motorcycle style with a wide collar
Speaker 2: and a zipper in front. But it's the zipper's not
Speaker 2: straight down the middle. It's a little offset to the side,
Speaker 2: with big stripes of leather fringe in a V shape
Speaker 2: across the chest, and then the fringe wrapping all the
Speaker 2: way around the back. That I miss any important details, JJ,
Speaker 2: I feel like we've got to describe the jacket.
Speaker 3: Right right, Yeah, No, I think that's a pretty good description.
Speaker 2: Okay. The old man says, meet the beast, one hundred
Speaker 2: percent deer skin, and George is obviously impressed. It's love
Speaker 2: at first sight. The old man says that he wore
Speaker 2: it for about a year, but then it went out
Speaker 2: of style, so he put it away. He also says
Speaker 2: that it made him itch a little bit. So George
Speaker 2: takes the jacket, he looks at himself in the mirror,
Speaker 2: He tries it on, looks in the mirror, and he
Speaker 2: loves it. He makes an offer to the old man
Speaker 2: and pays him in cash, and the old man is
Speaker 2: very pleased. He's counting the money while George is admiring
Speaker 2: himself in the mirror, and George is saying, look at yourself,
Speaker 2: how elegant. And here I've got a question. I think
Speaker 2: this is a serious question about the craft of the film.
Speaker 2: Is the jacket actually supposed to look good on George?
Speaker 2: As in, obviously he likes it, But is it supposed
Speaker 2: to look good to us the audience. On one hand,
Speaker 2: it's it's I think you could say it's a cool
Speaker 2: looking jacket, but it is also ostentatious, like it has
Speaker 2: all this fringe and stuff, and you know, the deerskin
Speaker 2: element is obviously I don't know, maybe some people are
Speaker 2: really into that or not, but it also looks kind
Speaker 2: of short to me, like you can see a gap
Speaker 2: between the jacket and the top of his pants, where
Speaker 2: his button up shirt is just kind of sticking out
Speaker 2: in a way that looks silly. Maybe that's just the
Speaker 2: style of how you wear this, but I genuinely couldn't
Speaker 2: tell whether the jacket is supposed to look cool on
Speaker 2: George or not. It's sort of somewhere in the middle.
Speaker 3: Yeah. No, I agree, it looks a little goofy. He
Speaker 3: loves the jacket, though he stands up, his mouth is
Speaker 3: a gape in its presence and has to sit down
Speaker 3: with his hand over his mouth, just overcome by its
Speaker 3: beauty when he sees the fringe on the back and
Speaker 3: speaking to whether or not the jacket looks good, I
Speaker 3: guess to Pew tried like ten or twelve jackets on
Speaker 3: John saying that quote. We loved that the jacket was
Speaker 3: good looking, but too short. Something's wrong. Oh okay, Yeah,
Speaker 3: I think it looks a little goofy. As I said,
Speaker 3: I feel like he hasn't fully crossed into goofball territory yet,
Speaker 3: which I'm excited for. I also want to point out
Speaker 3: that he pays seventy five hundred euros for this jacket,
Speaker 3: which today converts to roughly eight thousand, six hundred and
Speaker 3: ninety one dollars, which is a steal, of course, exactly. Yes,
Speaker 3: And we get a shot of a deer looking directly
Speaker 3: into the camera before he puts on the jacket.
Speaker 2: Okay, I think here's the way I would put it.
Speaker 2: George is he doesn't look clownish in the jacket, but
Speaker 2: he is not quite pulling it off. I think it's
Speaker 2: the kind of jacket that like would look really cool
Speaker 2: on somebody who usually looks really cool. You know. That's
Speaker 2: it's kind of an unfair thing about fashion, right, Like
Speaker 2: there are a lot of clothing items that look really
Speaker 2: cool only on people for whom everything they wear looks cool.
Speaker 2: And this jacket might be in that zone on George.
Speaker 2: It is. It is definitely somewhere near the border of ridiculousness.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think it's funnier for that, Like if
Speaker 3: it was over the top, it wouldn't have the same
Speaker 3: sort of effect.
Speaker 2: Anyway. The old man is so happy with this deal
Speaker 2: that George is. You know, George is like, here's seventy
Speaker 2: five hundred euros for this old thing you're getting rid of.
Speaker 2: He decides to give George an extra gift. It is
Speaker 2: a digital video camera, and as he says, digital is
Speaker 2: the best.
Speaker 3: You can't top digital.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is very confusing because admittedly I haven't used
Speaker 2: a lot of digital video cameras, but I assume a
Speaker 2: digital video camera means that you're like recording to a
Speaker 2: memory card or chip or something. But then later in
Speaker 2: the movie there's like a significant plot point about needing
Speaker 2: cassettes for the video camera. So I don't know, I
Speaker 2: didn't know what to make of any of that.
Speaker 3: We're gonna get into this. Oh, and he pulls the
Speaker 3: camera out. I have a whole tangent to bring us
Speaker 3: down perfect.
Speaker 2: I can't wait. I love it. Love a technology run
Speaker 2: down in movie props. So George leaves and he checks
Speaker 2: in at a nearby hotel, telling the clerk that he
Speaker 2: plans to be there for a month. He has no money.
Speaker 2: I think he spent all his money on the jacket,
Speaker 2: and he says there is a problem with his credit card,
Speaker 2: so he's going to get that sorted out the next day,
Speaker 2: but in order to stay the first night, he takes
Speaker 2: a gold ring off of his finger. I'm pretty sure
Speaker 2: this is a wedding ring, and he leaves it with
Speaker 2: the clerk as collateral, promising to pay the bill the
Speaker 2: following day. And then George goes up to his room
Speaker 2: and he oogles himself in the mirror, offering these quiet
Speaker 2: little statements of commentary, sort of complimenting himself. He says
Speaker 2: things like stoking killer style, it's it's really tender, you know,
Speaker 2: he's it's I like these little, these little moments, especially
Speaker 2: how quietly he says these things. And then after checking
Speaker 2: into his room, we also see him leaning out of
Speaker 2: his window playing around with the video camera he got,
Speaker 2: like he's I think he starts focusing it up on
Speaker 2: the mountain across the way from the hotel.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this movie is heavy on the beige in
Speaker 3: the tan, and this hotel room is like maybe the
Speaker 3: beigest thing of all, and it sort of mirrors the jacket.
Speaker 3: I also want to point out that the wallpaper extends
Speaker 3: into the shower. I'm not sure how normal that is.
Speaker 2: Does this hotel room have a bathroom? There is the
Speaker 2: showers in the corner of the room.
Speaker 3: That's a good question. It might just all be in
Speaker 3: one room, Okay, Because you're right, the shower is just
Speaker 3: in the corner.
Speaker 2: It's like a ned Flanders house that love built situation
Speaker 2: where the toilet is in the kitchen. Maybe this I
Speaker 2: don't I mean to make fun. Actually, I wonder if
Speaker 2: this is something that's actually common in like some French
Speaker 2: hotel rooms or something, maybe maybe in older buildings or
Speaker 2: something like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was wondering the same thing. And this is
Speaker 3: where George removes the almost new digital camquarder from its bag.
Speaker 3: And I spent too long trying to find the exact
Speaker 3: model camquarder this was, so I'm gonna go on that
Speaker 3: brief tangent I was mentioning earlier for some reason I
Speaker 3: needed to know, and I think it's a Sony DCR
Speaker 3: PC one handycam. It's a mini DV camquarder and according
Speaker 3: to the camquorder pedia wiki, sorry, it was introduced in
Speaker 3: two thousand and one.
Speaker 2: Oh so it's almost new.
Speaker 3: Is almost new perfect.
Speaker 2: Most things are almost new if you think about it.
Speaker 3: And we talked off Mike earlier too about why this
Speaker 3: digital camcorder uses little tapes. This came up when I
Speaker 3: was watching with my friends Terrence and Ian as well.
Speaker 3: So I'm going to offer a brief, very basic explanation
Speaker 3: of the DV format because I went down a whole
Speaker 3: rabbit hole to be able to talk about this camera
Speaker 3: a little bit.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, fill me in, man, make it make sense.
Speaker 3: I'm going to try, Okay, I did some cursory research.
Speaker 3: DV was a format developed by Sony and Panasonic that
Speaker 3: was introduced in nineteen ninety five. DV tapes came in
Speaker 3: a variety of sizes, the smallest of which many DV
Speaker 3: being very popular. That's what we see in this movie.
Speaker 3: DV tape store compressed video in glorious for ADP so
Speaker 3: DVD quality, and uncompressed audio at sixteen bit forty eight
Speaker 3: K when recorded in stereo, so that's higher than CD quality.
Speaker 3: While it was mostly a consumer grade format, it was
Speaker 3: also used professionally sometimes, and a notable example is that
Speaker 3: David Lynch actually shot Inland Empire on the DV format
Speaker 3: using a Sony DSR PD one F.
Speaker 2: I've actually never seen that Lynch movie. I've heard some
Speaker 2: people who have seen it describe it as one of
Speaker 2: his least accessible films.
Speaker 3: I'd agree with that, but I really love it. I
Speaker 3: could not recommend it more.
Speaker 2: Well, of course, I love David Lynch, So on your recommendation.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna reprioritize Inland Empire. I'm gonna move it up
Speaker 2: my list and try to see it sooner. But yeah,
Speaker 2: i'd heard people say it's one of his less accessible movies,
Speaker 2: and I think maybe i'd heard different things about the
Speaker 2: way it looked. I know some people didn't love the
Speaker 2: way that it looked or found it kind of murky
Speaker 2: or something. And I not that I would really think
Speaker 2: David Lynch would be a part of this wave. I
Speaker 2: don't know, maybe, but I do remember there was sort
Speaker 2: of a thing, wasn't there In like the early to
Speaker 2: mid two thousands were more mainstream feature film directors were
Speaker 2: experimenting with using digital formats. I remember associating this with
Speaker 2: twenty eight Days Later, had a kind of digital look.
Speaker 2: I don't know how that was actually shot.
Speaker 3: You know what, that one's also shot on DV.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, cool? Well, yeah, I remember associating it with
Speaker 2: that look and some other films of that time getting
Speaker 2: into that thing. And I wonder how film like that
Speaker 2: is sort of being evaluated in retrospect. I haven't read
Speaker 2: that much about it, but I do know it can
Speaker 2: have its own aesthetic virtues like there's another film actually
Speaker 2: that I don't know what it was shot on, but
Speaker 2: it has that digital look and I think it contributes
Speaker 2: to the aesthetic effect of the film. And that is
Speaker 2: one of the weirdest cop movies I've ever seen, The
Speaker 2: Michael Man Miami Vice movie from what is it like
Speaker 2: two thousand and six or something. Do you know what
Speaker 2: I'm talking about?
Speaker 3: I do. I know that it has a lot of
Speaker 3: a lot of people really love that movie.
Speaker 2: I saw it a few years back and was mesmerized
Speaker 2: by it. I would call it the cop movie at
Speaker 2: the End of the World. So in content, it is
Speaker 2: a you know, it has a kind of dark romantic subplot,
Speaker 2: but overall it's like a you know, drug busts and
Speaker 2: raids and you know, cops and criminals kind of movie.
Speaker 2: But there is something about it that feels so doomed
Speaker 2: and uh and bleak, and like it takes place in
Speaker 2: a world where where all happiness and meaning has been
Speaker 2: lost and now all that there is left is is
Speaker 2: cop and crime and and maybe and maybe there's there's
Speaker 2: the illusion that there could be love, but but that's
Speaker 2: really also doomed.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 2: It's it's a unique film. I would say it's not
Speaker 2: what you think of when you think Miami Vice. At
Speaker 2: least it's not what I imagined Miami Vice would be.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean from watching Inland Empire, I can totally
Speaker 3: see that, because I think the way Inland Empire looks
Speaker 3: gives it that same sort of quality. I definitely think
Speaker 3: it is augmented by looking like that, and I think
Speaker 3: it was something David Lynch went into very deliberately.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, I'm going to watch in lond Empire. But wait,
Speaker 2: so we were getting into the technical details here. So
Speaker 2: what's the deal with the tape? So it's digital, but
Speaker 2: there are still tapes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sorry for the tangent to address the tapes. Tangent
Speaker 3: to address the tapes. The video in the audio info
Speaker 3: is store digitally. Put very very simply, the video and
Speaker 3: audio information are converted to digital information, so a sequence
Speaker 3: of ones and zeros, and that digital info is encoded
Speaker 3: onto magnetic tape. When you play the tape back on
Speaker 3: the camcorder or on a DV deck like we'll see
Speaker 3: later in the film, that digital and is converted back
Speaker 3: to video and audio.
Speaker 2: Okay, So maybe I just had the wrong idea of
Speaker 2: what digital means. A recording in storage context totally.
Speaker 3: This was new to me too, though I think maybe
Speaker 3: if you like live in camera world and you're more
Speaker 3: involved in film, this might be a little less novel.
Speaker 3: But I also thought this was pretty cool and I
Speaker 3: started researching how exactly it works. But I got in
Speaker 3: over my head pretty quickly, and while I have a
Speaker 3: loose grasp of it involves magnets, I definitely don't understand
Speaker 3: it well enough to explain it. So if you're a
Speaker 3: listener who wants to elaborate on this or roast me
Speaker 3: on my short explanation, I would love to hear about it,
Speaker 3: and you can write in at contact at stuff to
Speaker 3: blowermind dot com. But anyways, Yeah, it's a mini dvcamcorder,
Speaker 3: so it is digital video, but it's stored on little
Speaker 3: cassette tapes.
Speaker 2: Okay, so we're coming back to the plot. So, like
Speaker 2: George has been playing with his dvcam quorder and then
Speaker 2: he goes out walking in the evening and we hear
Speaker 2: voiceover of a phone conversation between George and a woman.
Speaker 2: The woman says, why are you calling? What's the point?
Speaker 2: George says, to tell you, I'm far away. I left
Speaker 2: it's done. Want to know where? And the woman says, no,
Speaker 2: you're nowhere, George, you no longer exist. And then George
Speaker 2: finishes the conversation standing outside a bar in the rain.
Speaker 2: When it's over, he throws his cell phone into the
Speaker 2: garbage can and goes inside. So he's done with the
Speaker 2: cell phone. No more cell phone. And I think we
Speaker 2: it seems pretty clear to me this is to imply
Speaker 2: that George is at some kind of breaking point in
Speaker 2: a relationship. I think this is his wife he's talking to,
Speaker 2: and it's the end of their relationship for some reason
Speaker 2: that it's not exactly explained. So at the bar we
Speaker 2: meet a new character, Denise, the bartender, played by Adele
Speaker 2: and l And this scene gets funny and so like
Speaker 2: a lot of the humor in the movie, it's it's
Speaker 2: understated humor, but so I'll describe it. Denise is speaking
Speaker 2: with a patron at the other end of the bar
Speaker 2: while George is having a whiskey by himself, and they're
Speaker 2: talking about somebody they know. They're just kind of like saying, oh,
Speaker 2: you know, can you believe he said that? No, what's
Speaker 2: she going to do? You know? Standard kind of social
Speaker 2: gossip and then George suddenly confronts them and says, you're
Speaker 2: talking about my jacket, aren't you. I loved this, and
Speaker 2: they act confused. They're like, no, we were not talking
Speaker 2: about your jacket. And he's like, oh, sorry, people always
Speaker 2: talk about it sometimes they stop me in the street.
Speaker 2: I'm just used to getting it noticed. Sorry. And Denise
Speaker 2: is kind of skeptical and she says, really, what do
Speaker 2: they stop you to say about it? And he doesn't
Speaker 2: really answer. He's just like, as you can see, it
Speaker 2: is no ordinary jacket.
Speaker 3: He has like a slight pause where he looks a
Speaker 3: little lost for a second before saying that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really good. So George, Denise and the other
Speaker 2: lady start chatting. They ask him what he does for
Speaker 2: a living. He thinks back to his video camera and
Speaker 2: he says, oh, actually, I'm a filmmaker and I might
Speaker 2: be working on a film while I'm here in this
Speaker 2: little town. Yeah, that's the ticket, that's what it is.
Speaker 3: Yeah. They ask if he's shooting now and he says yeah, possibly,
Speaker 3: totally possibly.
Speaker 2: And then in the next scene, George is walking home.
Speaker 2: He's going back to the hotel and the bar, not Denise,
Speaker 2: but the bar patron she was talking to pulls up
Speaker 2: beside him in her car and she's like, you know, hey,
Speaker 2: you know what, I used to act in porn twenty
Speaker 2: years ago. She assumes he's a porn director, and he's like,
Speaker 2: why would you assume that I don't make porn? And
Speaker 2: she's like, well, you don't look like you work in
Speaker 2: real film, and he says, I do work in real film,
Speaker 2: don't you see my killer style? And she calls him
Speaker 2: a loser and drives away. But back in his hotel room,
Speaker 2: George is about to start working in real film. So
Speaker 2: he's lying in bed, playing with the video camera, and
Speaker 2: across the room from him, hanging on the back of
Speaker 2: the chair where it will often be in these little scenes,
Speaker 2: is the jacket, and he frames it with his camera
Speaker 2: and he starts talking, and as he talks, there are
Speaker 2: these little modulations of his voice, as if in different
Speaker 2: sentences it might actually be different people talking, if you
Speaker 2: know what I mean. His mouth is always moving, but
Speaker 2: he's like doing little different voices. So he says, hey, you,
Speaker 2: where are you from? I come from Italy. I come
Speaker 2: from Italy. The jacket is Italian, by the way, it
Speaker 2: comes from Italy. And then he says, that's good from Italy.
Speaker 2: You're so classy. You look great on camera, and who
Speaker 2: are you. I'm your new owner. I think we'll make
Speaker 2: a nice team. I'm fine with being teammates, but I'm
Speaker 2: the one in charge. Okay.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: He takes a minute here to kind of figure out
Speaker 3: what the Jacket's voice is. It starts off a little
Speaker 3: higher and it slowly falls to a calmer place.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's right. I didn't think about it that way,
Speaker 2: but you're right. He's like experimenting. He's like, what does
Speaker 2: the jacket sound like? And the jacket actually has a
Speaker 2: different voice than George, though he's again his mouth is
Speaker 2: always moving, so he's the one talking, but the voice
Speaker 2: he does for the jacket is lower and more authoritative
Speaker 2: and confident, self assured and decisive. Totally. So anyway, he
Speaker 2: closes the camera and he says good night to the jacket,
Speaker 2: goes to sleep, and then later that night there's a
Speaker 2: little moment where there's like a loud crashing sound. George
Speaker 2: comes out into the hall to investigate what was that,
Speaker 2: but there's no answer, So we'll get follow up on
Speaker 2: that later. So the next day we see George go
Speaker 2: to the atm wearing his jacket, of course, and he
Speaker 2: tries to get money out, but no money is forthcoming,
Speaker 2: and he's very mad. He digs some food out of
Speaker 2: a trash can and starts eating it while this boy
Speaker 2: stands watching him from across the alley, and he yells
Speaker 2: at the boy to get lost.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The boy's just looking at him completely blankly.
Speaker 2: Doesn't say anything, just stands there, stonefaced. Yeah. And then
Speaker 2: after this, George stops at a book shop. He checks
Speaker 2: out a book about filmmaking, and then he shoplifts it
Speaker 2: by stuffing it into his jacket. The jacket's just coming
Speaker 2: through on all levels. And then next he goes to
Speaker 2: the bank and he speaks to a worker there. He
Speaker 2: finds out that he can't withdraw money from his bank
Speaker 2: account because his wife has placed a security hold on
Speaker 2: the account. This morning. This was I think, after he
Speaker 2: withdrew seventy five hundred euros the day before to buy
Speaker 2: the jacket, and George does not take this well. Back
Speaker 2: at the hotel, he showers while talking to the jacket,
Speaker 2: and the jacket is kind of watching him while he's
Speaker 2: rinsing his body with the detachable shower head. And he's like,
Speaker 2: don't worry, I'll find us some money. I'm going to
Speaker 2: take care of us. And then later back at the
Speaker 2: same bar as he was at the night before, George
Speaker 2: talks with Denise the bartender. She is interested in what
Speaker 2: kind of film work he's doing, because she herself is
Speaker 2: an amateur film editor. She talks about how she enjoys
Speaker 2: re editing other people's finished movies just for fun. For example,
Speaker 2: she says she took pulp fiction directed by Quentin Tarantino
Speaker 2: and put all the scenes in chronological order to discover
Speaker 2: that it sucked. And there are plenty of things that
Speaker 2: should be read flags about George in this conversation, like
Speaker 2: he asks her if she has a special machine that
Speaker 2: allows her to put the scenes of a film in order,
Speaker 2: and she says no, she uses a computer like everyone else.
Speaker 2: But she says that film editing is her passion and
Speaker 2: she would love to do it for a living. So
Speaker 2: here she is meeting an actual filmmaker, and she clearly
Speaker 2: he sees an opportunity. I think she's so excited about
Speaker 2: what this could mean for her that she's maybe just
Speaker 2: looking past the red flags.
Speaker 3: I love the exchange of her saying I'd love to
Speaker 3: do it as my real job, in George's response being
Speaker 3: something along the lines of they really are amazing jobs.
Speaker 3: For sure.
Speaker 2: There are a number of moments that are of really
Speaker 2: good comedy where what happens is you would expect in
Speaker 2: another script that George would come up with some kind
Speaker 2: of funny bluff or lie, but what he actually does
Speaker 2: is fail to come up with anything to say, so
Speaker 2: he just says like, they are amazing jobs. So later
Speaker 2: we see George walking home and arguing with himself or
Speaker 2: maybe arguing with the jacket about whether he should should
Speaker 2: have claimed to be a movie director or not. You
Speaker 2: see him having some kind of you know, moral dissent
Speaker 2: within himself. He's like, maybe I shouldn't be lying about this.
Speaker 2: But then he he also defends himself to himself, saying,
Speaker 2: a guy who films is like a guy who makes
Speaker 2: a film. You could say here a filmmaker. Yeah. So,
Speaker 2: back at his hotel room, George is trying to read
Speaker 2: the book about filmmaking that he stole from the store,
Speaker 2: but the Jacket hanging on the chair across the room
Speaker 2: just keeps calling out to him. And again we can
Speaker 2: see that whenever the jacket is speaking. George is the
Speaker 2: one talking. He moves his own mouth, but he's giving
Speaker 2: this different voice to the jacket, the deeper, more confident,
Speaker 2: less emotional than his own voice is kind of more monotone,
Speaker 2: and the jacket interrupts his reading to ask him, do
Speaker 2: you want to know my greatest dream? Here we get
Speaker 2: into the here the stews really cooking now. The Jacket's
Speaker 2: greatest dream is to be the only jacket in the world.
Speaker 2: I want us to be able to walk the streets
Speaker 2: without seeing other jackets. Well, George confesses this is perfect
Speaker 2: because his greatest dream is to be the only person
Speaker 2: in the world who can wear a jacket, and the
Speaker 2: Jacket asks, kind of ominously, how are we going to
Speaker 2: realize this stream?
Speaker 3: George, Yeah, an ominous cut to a deer after, how
Speaker 3: do you intend to realize this dream? I wish I
Speaker 3: could convey His conversations with the jacket in words over
Speaker 3: a podcast. They're just so goofy. He's trying to tell
Speaker 3: the Jacket that they can talk later while he's reading,
Speaker 3: but the jacket successfully gets him to talk right now,
Speaker 3: and he like closes the book and tosses it aside.
Speaker 3: In exasperation, like as if he has to stop reading
Speaker 3: and listen to this jacket. Yes, as if he's not
Speaker 3: completely in control of the entire situation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really good. Okay. So next thing is there's
Speaker 2: a scene with George discussing his payment problems with the
Speaker 2: hotel manager, and George finds out that the first clerk
Speaker 2: he talked to, the guy the day before, the one
Speaker 2: to whom he gave his gold wedding ring, has died.
Speaker 2: He died by suicide two nights before. Bizarrely, the new
Speaker 2: guy at the hotel desk tells George that the clerk's
Speaker 2: body is being stored in one of the hotel rooms
Speaker 2: until the undertaker arrives, and that the room is open
Speaker 2: if George would like to go say goodbye. So George
Speaker 2: goes to the room and the guy is laying there
Speaker 2: with a giant bullet hole in his face. But George
Speaker 2: gets fixated on something. He's not looking really at the
Speaker 2: dead guy. He's looking at in the clerk's hands. There
Speaker 2: is a hat. It's clasped over his midsection. It is
Speaker 2: a wide brimmed Fedora style hat made of some kind
Speaker 2: of leather swayed material and George pries the hat out
Speaker 2: of the dead man's hands and investigates the tag on
Speaker 2: the inside and it says one hundred percent deer skin,
Speaker 2: and George goes ah bingo, and then he's trying it
Speaker 2: on in the mirror. It's killer style, so he steals it.
Speaker 2: He also takes his ring back. He has to like
Speaker 2: use his mouth to get it off the dead guy's hand,
Speaker 2: and then leaves the ring with the new hotel clerk
Speaker 2: as collateral.
Speaker 3: Once again, the scene with him putting on the hat
Speaker 3: in the mirror just gets me every time. This is
Speaker 3: where he crosses into total goofball territory. He looks like
Speaker 3: a like a store brand Indiana Jones, and he just
Speaker 3: looks so psyched about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Killer style. So after getting the hat, he has
Speaker 2: another meeting with Denise the bartender. He spins out some
Speaker 2: lies to make it sound like he's in the middle
Speaker 2: of a big, expensive production. He's like, oh, yeah, my producers,
Speaker 2: they're stuck in Siberia filming the big fight scene and
Speaker 2: I can't get they can't get cell reception. But he
Speaker 2: tells her great news, I do not yet have an
Speaker 2: editor for my film. Though he accidentally says creditor, and
Speaker 2: I don't have a creditor. I don't know if there's
Speaker 2: supposed to be some kind of double meaning there, But
Speaker 2: she's like, do you mean editor? And he's like, oh, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: you can have the job. She's very excited and agrees,
Speaker 2: but doesn't he want to see her work first? No,
Speaker 2: no need. He trusts her, but she does need to
Speaker 2: take off her jacket, and she's immediately suspicious. She's like,
Speaker 2: wait a minute, are you trying to get me to
Speaker 2: strip or something? He promises or no, no, no, nothing
Speaker 2: like that, nothing sexual. It's just very important to him
Speaker 2: that he be the only person who gets to wear
Speaker 2: a jacket.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's as important to me as editing is to you, Bravo.
Speaker 2: And so she's suspicious, but she really wants this job,
Speaker 2: so she agrees, and once the jacket is off, you
Speaker 2: can see George relaxes. He kind of like settles down,
Speaker 2: like okay, and he gives her something. It is a
Speaker 2: cassette from his video camera. He tells her that it
Speaker 2: is stuff for her to edit, and she's like, okay,
Speaker 2: I need to copy the script though, and he's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: we'll talk about that. We'll talk about that later. So
Speaker 2: somebody stole my credit card, and next thing, they're in
Speaker 2: an ATM and she's getting money out to loan him.
Speaker 2: Of course, the producers will reimburse her once they get
Speaker 2: cell phone reception again after they get off of the
Speaker 2: glacier in Siberia. And then we see Denise at home
Speaker 2: getting out some old video equipment, cassette reader and maybe
Speaker 2: a digitizer of some kind.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's right. She has to diget out
Speaker 3: of a drawer. And I'm a little less sure on
Speaker 3: this than the camera, but I think it's a Sony
Speaker 3: gv HD seven hundred hdv video walk man. Yeah, it
Speaker 3: seems to be like a VCR with a built in
Speaker 3: screen that allows for some basic editing. I was going
Speaker 3: to look a little more into this thing, but I
Speaker 3: got totally sidetracked by the camera rabbit hole.
Speaker 2: So yeah, she starts reviewing his footage. She's seeing like
Speaker 2: scenery of the mountain beside the village, shots of the
Speaker 2: fringe on the deerskin jacket, George posing in the mirror
Speaker 2: with the jacket, and Denise seems amused. George meanwhile, it's
Speaker 2: time to go shopping shopping spree and what is he
Speaker 2: going to get? Is he going to get some more
Speaker 2: cassette tapes? No, he gets some deer skin boots, Killer style,
Speaker 2: and it's time for an incredible montage. So with the
Speaker 2: deerskin jacket, the deer skin hat, and the boots, George
Speaker 2: starts filming scenes. He hires, He puts out ads, and
Speaker 2: he hires local non actors to be in his movie.
Speaker 2: He tells them to bring all the jackets they own,
Speaker 2: and then he films them putting the jackets into the
Speaker 2: trunk of his car and vowing never to wear a
Speaker 2: jacket again as long as they live. This is what
Speaker 2: we saw in the cold opening of the film, and
Speaker 2: this is where we get that amazing exchange where one guy,
Speaker 2: after doing this says, sorry, but isn't your movie weird?
Speaker 2: And he says, it's ut weird, it's amazing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can't make sense of it now, but it.
Speaker 2: Rocks, But it rocks. And then once the scene is
Speaker 2: over and the actors have been paid, George steals the jackets.
Speaker 2: He just drives away with them while people are like, wait,
Speaker 2: I need my need that back. So after one of
Speaker 2: these shoots, George notices a kid watching him it's the
Speaker 2: same kid who was staring at him while he was
Speaker 2: eating out of the garbage can earlier, and George yells
Speaker 2: at him to go away, but the kid just stands there,
Speaker 2: stone faced, looking at him, and then getting really annoyed,
Speaker 2: George picks up a rock and throws it at the kid,
Speaker 2: hitting him in the face. Oh, and then also says
Speaker 2: to the actor the jacket doner, who's just standing there,
Speaker 2: He says, you saw nothing, and then George drives away.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is kind of what I was referring to
Speaker 3: before about there being one notable exception to people buying
Speaker 3: his whole persona this kid that does not even really
Speaker 3: seem to be questioning him as much as he's staring blankly,
Speaker 3: and George is projecting something onto this kid.
Speaker 2: I feel like all of the other characters either they
Speaker 2: buy into George enough and like they either kind of
Speaker 2: play along with him, or they ignore him and move on.
Speaker 2: His kid is the only person who doesn't do one
Speaker 2: of those two things. This kid is continuing to engage
Speaker 2: with George, but not by like playing along with him,
Speaker 2: instead just by staring at him and making him feel weird.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's a better way of putting it.
Speaker 3: I agree.
Speaker 2: Oh, but also the actor as George is driving away,
Speaker 2: he's like, wait, what about my jackets? There in new
Speaker 2: trunk and George says, you swore never to wear a
Speaker 2: jacket again. I have filmed proof their mind now. I
Speaker 2: think he says, your f to their mind now. And
Speaker 2: then there's a there's a creepy scene outside a movie
Speaker 2: theater I like this where he like pulls up alongside
Speaker 2: a guy walking in the snow. He's filming the guy.
Speaker 2: The guy's wearing a jacket. He's confused about what George
Speaker 2: is doing, and then we cut away before we see
Speaker 2: how it resolves. We'll see more of this scene later.
Speaker 2: But then George meets back up with Denise at the bar,
Speaker 2: and she has been editing film the stuff he already
Speaker 2: gave her. I don't think this includes the new stuff,
Speaker 2: all of the jacket theft and the pledges of never again.
Speaker 2: It's the earlier tape. And she says she likes his movie.
Speaker 2: She says it's like a mockumentary. So we get the
Speaker 2: sense that maybe she's going along with it because she
Speaker 2: thinks it's supposed to be funny, or she's interpreting it
Speaker 2: in a different spirit than he is. But she does
Speaker 2: say it's hard to figure out what to do with
Speaker 2: the footage without a script, but she put it together
Speaker 2: in a way that made sense to her, and she says,
Speaker 2: this is just my interpretation, but the real subject of
Speaker 2: the film is the jacket, or the fact that we
Speaker 2: all hide behind a shell to protect ourselves from the world.
Speaker 2: And he seems intrigued. He asks her, should that be
Speaker 2: what it's about? Good question? Should that be what it's about?
Speaker 2: And then next thing, they're like back at the ATM
Speaker 2: and she's trying to withdraw more funds to give him,
Speaker 2: but I think she's maxed out at this point. She
Speaker 2: can't get more than like eighty euros. And he gets
Speaker 2: angry and starts freaking out and eventually just says chow
Speaker 2: and storms off into the night. So here's where things
Speaker 2: are about to start getting darker. George later reviews the
Speaker 2: footage he took of the man in the street by
Speaker 2: the movie theater, and we see more of the conversation.
Speaker 2: George starts badgering the man to take off his jacket,
Speaker 2: the man refuses. They become increasingly hostile to each other
Speaker 2: before the guy eventually says George will have to kill
Speaker 2: him to make him do it, and then the filming
Speaker 2: stops and in the room, the Jacket speaks to George.
Speaker 2: The Jacket says, the plan is not working at this rate.
Speaker 2: It's going to take a thousand years for us to
Speaker 2: have the only jacket in the world. And George tries
Speaker 2: to argue, He's like, our dream is not reasonable. There
Speaker 2: are so many jackets it will take a lot of
Speaker 2: time to accomplish. But the Jacket, after a long pause, says,
Speaker 2: I know what we'll do, and George then began taking
Speaker 2: apart the appliances. He disassembles the ceiling fan in his
Speaker 2: hotel room and removes one of its blades, and then
Speaker 2: goes out driving in the night, leaning out of the
Speaker 2: door of his car, dragging the fan blade along the
Speaker 2: road as he drives, and you can hear it grinding
Speaker 2: and see it like shooting up sparks in the dark.
Speaker 2: And I was like, wait, is he sharpening it? And yes,
Speaker 2: in fact, that is exactly what he's doing. Next there
Speaker 2: is like a there's a watermelon chopping scene where we
Speaker 2: learned he has turned this fan blade into a deadly
Speaker 2: machete and he drives around some more, eating the watermelon.
Speaker 2: Eventually he finds a couple of guys standing outside talking
Speaker 2: in the snow. He drives up to them, gets out,
Speaker 2: approaches with his fan blade, and asks if they would
Speaker 2: like to help him realize his dream. Then we cut away.
Speaker 2: So here's where things sort of take a twist, because
Speaker 2: next thing we see is Denise. She receives a letter
Speaker 2: in her mailbox, along with a drawing of George in
Speaker 2: the jacket, presumably by George.
Speaker 3: Yeah. They show this just sort of briefly, and I
Speaker 3: love this drawing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the letter goes Denise. Despite not having money, I
Speaker 2: shot a scene tonight. By the sweat of my brow.
Speaker 2: Enjoyed these images for they may be the last. I
Speaker 2: think something awful must have happened in Siberia for the
Speaker 2: producers to leave me with no news. I doubt I
Speaker 2: can finish this film without the financing it deserves, unless,
Speaker 2: of course, you can find a way to help. And
Speaker 2: then he includes another cassette tape of himself. On this tape,
Speaker 2: he has filmed himself going on a murder spree, whacking
Speaker 2: people with his fan sword and then stealing the jackets
Speaker 2: of the people He kills. Denise watches this footage and
Speaker 2: she is thrilled. She's watching it there. Her eyes are big,
Speaker 2: and she says to herself. Yes. So she comes to
Speaker 2: his hotel room and she's like, you know, George, I
Speaker 2: saw the new footage. It's wild. She says, I'm into it.
Speaker 2: And before they discuss any further, he does make her
Speaker 2: take off her jacket.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's the room, he says, you know why.
Speaker 2: But she is now, She's now all in on his
Speaker 2: film project. She's got an advance from her boss at
Speaker 2: the bar, so she has more money now. She also
Speaker 2: has brought a present for George, wrapped in newspaper. It
Speaker 2: is a pair of one hundred percent deer skin pants
Speaker 2: with fringes running down the leg. And George, he says,
Speaker 2: damn classy. I love my life. Thanks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2: It sounds like a Facebook post somebody would make.
Speaker 3: I love that. She gives him the pants as an
Speaker 3: apology for my card maxing out yesterday.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. So they go on to discuss the project,
Speaker 2: and you know, for a while in the middle of
Speaker 2: the movie here we've been thinking like, oh no, poor Denise,
Speaker 2: like George is scamming her. Exploiting her, but the tables
Speaker 2: are kind of turning. Denise is like, Okay, I think
Speaker 2: I can get a lot more money soon, enough to
Speaker 2: finance it's the whole movie. But she's like, George, I
Speaker 2: need you to shoot more footage so that I can
Speaker 2: edit a teaser. And then she starts giving him notes
Speaker 2: on style. She's like, you got a position, the camera
Speaker 2: closer to the subject, needs more action, more blood. Is
Speaker 2: she giving the orders now? Yes, she is, and she
Speaker 2: hands him some money and it seems like she may
Speaker 2: be the boss of this film suddenly. So at this point,
Speaker 2: George is Jason Vorhees. He goes out into the night
Speaker 2: following random people, filming them, killing them with the fan blade,
Speaker 2: chopping the heads in half, like stabbing them through the
Speaker 2: guts and everything, and of course always stealing their jackets.
Speaker 2: And he's like wearing a rain slicker, of course to
Speaker 2: avoid getting blood on his deer skin. And there were
Speaker 2: some funny music choices, I mean throughout the film, but
Speaker 2: especially here. There's groovy lounge music in this montage where
Speaker 2: he's whacking people with the machete, and eventually the jacket
Speaker 2: starts talking at George while he's asleep. It's like saying
Speaker 2: his name over and over as if it's impatient. He's
Speaker 2: not moving fast enough.
Speaker 3: Yeah, my friend Ian pointed this part out to me
Speaker 3: is maybe secretly the funniest part of the movie, and
Speaker 3: just the fact that George is either not waking up
Speaker 3: or pretending to not wake up while he like voices
Speaker 3: the Jacket trying to rouse him from his sleep.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's earlier. It's like when he was doing
Speaker 2: the voice of the Jacket trying to get his attention
Speaker 2: to make him stop reading and he has to put
Speaker 2: the book away. Yeah, so George, he's out with his camera.
Speaker 2: There's another scene where he like directs a man who
Speaker 2: operates an excavator and he makes this guy dig a
Speaker 2: big hole in the ground. And I was thinking, what
Speaker 2: is he going to bury a bunch of bodies in there? Nope,
Speaker 2: he's gonna bury the jackets. He's gonna get rid of
Speaker 2: all the jackets. His car is full of them. The
Speaker 2: bodies he just leaves wherever. So oh, and also he
Speaker 2: sort of beats and abuses the jackets before he covers
Speaker 2: them with earth, Like he's beating one of the jackets
Speaker 2: with a pipe, and then he covers them up with
Speaker 2: earth and then he but there's kind of an interesting
Speaker 2: moment after this where he leans over a rushing mountain
Speaker 2: stream and drinks from the water like a wild animal,
Speaker 2: like a deer. Yeah. So George meets with Denise yet again.
Speaker 2: Now she's got a ton of cash. She says, her
Speaker 2: father sold his butcher shop and now she's loaded. She
Speaker 2: has fifty thousand euros and she announces that she is
Speaker 2: officially taking over production. She's the producer. Now what can
Speaker 2: he do about it? She's bringing the money. How can
Speaker 2: he argue? She says he needs guidance in his work.
Speaker 2: It's a mess, and she's going to have to instruct
Speaker 2: him on the art of filmmaking. He's frustrated. He kind
Speaker 2: of tries to resist, but he also just wants the money,
Speaker 2: and she explains, look, the money is not for you,
Speaker 2: it is for the film. This is business here, and
Speaker 2: she says that in fact, she knows he's been lying
Speaker 2: about being a filmmaker, lying about the producers in Siberia.
Speaker 2: And there's a great cover here where he's like, I'm
Speaker 2: not lying. They sent a fax this morning telling me
Speaker 2: they had died in an avalanche. That's why I couldn't
Speaker 2: reach them and I don't know. Something's not lighting up there.
Speaker 2: They died, but they sent a fax and he says
Speaker 2: we But she's known since the beginning that it was
Speaker 2: all a fraud. And she says, you're nothing, no one,
Speaker 2: no producers, just a guy alone. He points out that
Speaker 2: she is in fact alone too, and then she says
Speaker 2: everyone is alone. Oh good, come back. But she does
Speaker 2: want to make a film, and that's what they're gonna do.
Speaker 2: She says, we can be alone together and we can
Speaker 2: make a great movie. Now. He tentatively agrees, but first
Speaker 2: he needs to do something. He needs deer skin gloves,
Speaker 2: so she's got to buy them for him. So the
Speaker 2: next thing, they're like at a clothing shop and he's
Speaker 2: trying on deer skin gloves in the mirror, getting all
Speaker 2: hyped up, and Denise is encouraging him. She's like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: and the shop worker asks if he's interested maybe in
Speaker 2: trying on some synthetic leather gloves. He says, do I
Speaker 2: look like the synthetic type? Denise says, don't you see
Speaker 2: his killers style? So next George and Denise, he's like
Speaker 2: fully suited now head to toe deer skin, and they
Speaker 2: go out driving on the mountain roads and George he
Speaker 2: stops at one point along the highway and gives the
Speaker 2: camera to Denise and tells her to film him. So
Speaker 2: he climbs up on a hill beside the highway and
Speaker 2: dances around, showing off his glorious head to toe deer
Speaker 2: skin outfit and saying over and over again for Denise
Speaker 2: to film him. And then suddenly, from out of nowhere,
Speaker 2: a shot rings out and George falls over dead. He's
Speaker 2: been hitting the head by a bullet. And we see
Speaker 2: from far away a man holding a rifle who shot George.
Speaker 2: It was the father of the boy who George hit
Speaker 2: with the rock the other day. The boy is in
Speaker 2: the car with like a bandage on his head.
Speaker 3: And he's sitting there eating a sandwich.
Speaker 2: I didn't notice the sandwich. I should go back and
Speaker 2: look for that. Yeah, eating a sandwich at the execution. Yeah,
Speaker 2: But anyway, so George gets hit with the bullet. He
Speaker 2: falls down and Denise keeps filming. She approaches George's body
Speaker 2: and begins to take off his deer skin. She takes
Speaker 2: off the gloves and the jacket, filming the whole time
Speaker 2: then she puts the jacket on herself and looks into
Speaker 2: the camera and it's, you know, there's a transformation. It's
Speaker 2: like I am deer skin now. And that's the end
Speaker 2: of the main actions. She dons the deer skin, we
Speaker 2: get the credits. There is a post credits scene where
Speaker 2: we see video footage playing on a TV screen and
Speaker 2: it shows a herd of deer wandering on a ridge
Speaker 2: in the woods, and then the camera turns back and
Speaker 2: we see George is holding it. But after this we
Speaker 2: go to the closing credits music, which is a great
Speaker 2: needle drop of I can't remember if we mentioned this
Speaker 2: already on Mike, but it's a wonderful song that I
Speaker 2: was not familiar with before, called Don't Make the Good
Speaker 2: Girls Go Bad by Della Humphrey. It's awesome. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I really enjoyed this too, And I wasn't sure how
Speaker 3: to exactly how to take that post credit scene. He's
Speaker 3: also sort of like either pointing or reaching back towards
Speaker 3: the deer.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I didn't know exactly what to make of
Speaker 2: it either. I mean, if it's like he was so
Speaker 2: he's putting on these deer skinned products, so in one sense,
Speaker 2: he's putting on a deer suit, but you could also
Speaker 2: it's always like he's becoming a deer, but you could
Speaker 2: also think that he's consuming deer. I mean, like deer
Speaker 2: have to be killed to make these products, and so
Speaker 2: he is. You know, he could be looking at them
Speaker 2: in a predatory way, like he wants to harvest all
Speaker 2: of their skin and wear it all. Or if I
Speaker 2: don't know, I don't know what the sense of identification
Speaker 2: there is it a predatory gaze and a gaze of
Speaker 2: identification and becoming like I wouldn't be you. I'm not
Speaker 2: quite sure what is it George wants is? It seems
Speaker 2: to me what he wants. You know, you could imagine
Speaker 2: versions of this story that have a more mature and
Speaker 2: meaningful and identifiable sense of longing, you know, people who
Speaker 2: want kind of freedom, or people in middle age who
Speaker 2: are unhappy with their choices and want another chance at
Speaker 2: life and things like that. So maybe you can see
Speaker 2: little flashes of that here and there in George. But
Speaker 2: it seems like the main thing he wants is killer style.
Speaker 2: He wants to be He wants to look cool and
Speaker 2: be seen as cool, and there is a fundamental kind
Speaker 2: of childishness and like boyish immaturity to him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he makes a lot of Jacket first decisions. Was
Speaker 3: the way I kept thinking about it, Like, I agree
Speaker 3: with you that, and I feel like I started off
Speaker 3: maybe even the first or second time I watched this movie.
Speaker 3: I watched it a couple times just to prepare for this,
Speaker 3: But on my initial viewing of it, I think I
Speaker 3: read a little more into it, and I saw it
Speaker 3: as something more akin to this person obsessed with like
Speaker 3: the identity of being a filmmaker or an artist over
Speaker 3: the substance of actually doing that art or that filmmaking.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, okay.
Speaker 3: And when he does start to do some of the work,
Speaker 3: he likes to do the stuff that will reinforce his
Speaker 3: identity as Jacket where exactly all jacket first decisions.
Speaker 2: I can see what you're saying there, Yeah, there are.
Speaker 2: I mean, people have vocational or artistic dreams for themselves
Speaker 2: or is like I want to be a filmmaker, I
Speaker 2: want to be an artist or a writer or you know,
Speaker 2: a musician or something like that. And I think a
Speaker 2: lot of those desires really can be decomposed into very
Speaker 2: different kinds of desires. Like somebody who wants to be
Speaker 2: a musician. Could be somebody who loves the act of
Speaker 2: like playing and writing music. They like being in the process.
Speaker 2: It's like the doing that they're excited about. Or somebody
Speaker 2: could be like, I want to be a musician because
Speaker 2: I want to be up on stage and look cool
Speaker 2: and have people think I'm cool. And you know, I
Speaker 2: want to have my identity associated with the things that
Speaker 2: I associate with being a musician. And those are like
Speaker 2: different desires. And I'm sure that in you know, many people,
Speaker 2: they can sort of intermingle in different ad mixtures, like
Speaker 2: very different amounts. But I think you're exactly right that
Speaker 2: there's something in here about that that like he he
Speaker 2: does get very hung up on this idea of being
Speaker 2: a filmmaker. But like like Denise points out, like he
Speaker 2: doesn't he doesn't seem to be paying any attention to style.
Speaker 2: Like he's not paying attention to the art of filmmaking
Speaker 2: and doesn't seem to care much about it. It's more
Speaker 2: about being able to say he's a filmmaker in service
Speaker 2: of being the coolest looking guy in the world, the
Speaker 2: only guy in the world who can wear this jacket.
Speaker 3: Right, I mean, the whole reason he even says he's
Speaker 3: as a filmmakers. It's the first thing he thinks of
Speaker 3: when he's put in a situation where he has to
Speaker 3: justify why he's wearing the jacket.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, you know. By contrast, it seems like Denise
Speaker 2: really does love the doing of the filmmaking, Like when
Speaker 2: she's talking about enjoying being an editor, it sounds like
Speaker 2: she likes being in the process, even if it is
Speaker 2: not necessarily a great end product, like she talks about
Speaker 2: how much she liked re editing pulp fiction when she
Speaker 2: says the final product sucked, right, yeah, yeah, And one
Speaker 2: more thing before we wrap up, I wanted to come
Speaker 2: back to it. Does seem also like something here is
Speaker 2: about an interaction between these these pursuits and loneliness. Right.
Speaker 2: I think we talked about this at the beginning, that
Speaker 2: Denise and George both seem like characters who aren't not
Speaker 2: having fulfilling, functional relationships. They're both they both seem like
Speaker 2: loners or lonely people in a way, and not necessarily
Speaker 2: by choice. And it does seem like that is contributing
Speaker 2: to or manifesting in some way as these bizarre obsessions
Speaker 2: that end up kind of blossoming into aberrant behavior.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally. And to Pew himself said that we're all
Speaker 3: a little bit George. Any of us can have that
Speaker 3: moment where something snaps and everything collapses into obsession.
Speaker 2: Okay, does that do it for deer Skin?
Speaker 3: I think so.
Speaker 2: Jj. I really hope you have enjoyed your first turn
Speaker 2: on Mike on Weird House Cinema, and I hope you'll
Speaker 2: do it again in the future.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. Is fun talking about this movie with you.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I'm glad you picked it. I don't know if
Speaker 2: I would have seen it otherwise, but it's a hit.
Speaker 2: All right. Well, I guess that does it. So Hey,
Speaker 2: if you are new to the show, let me explain
Speaker 2: a little bit about what we do here. So our
Speaker 2: main show is Stuff to Blow your mind. That is
Speaker 2: our core science and culture show, where most episodes have
Speaker 2: something to do with science, but we also have a
Speaker 2: kind of interdisciplinary approach. We like to talk about history, mythology,
Speaker 2: and religion, literature and things like that, and those are
Speaker 2: our Tuesday Thursday episodes. Every week on Fridays we do
Speaker 2: this show Weird House Cinema. We're usually my co host
Speaker 2: Rob Lamb and I just talk about a weird movie,
Speaker 2: and they can. These movies can be old or new,
Speaker 2: good or bad, well known or obscure. The only real
Speaker 2: criterion is that it has to be weird. So we
Speaker 2: do these every Fridays. On Wednesdays, we do a short
Speaker 2: form episode on Saturdays, and Mondays we feature older episodes
Speaker 2: of the show. So yeah, if you're new, stick around,
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Speaker 2: own playlist or feed. Though of course I encourage you
Speaker 2: to check out all of our offerings. If you want
Speaker 2: to follow us on social media, we're on some of
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Speaker 2: been building up a new Instagram page after we got
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Speaker 2: We're on some of the other socials you can find
Speaker 2: us on Letterboxed. Letterboxed is a sort of community film
Speaker 2: sharing site. You can find us there under Weird House
Speaker 2: and Let's see I guess that's it for now, so
Speaker 2: JJ thanks once again, thanks as always for being our
Speaker 2: excellent audio producer, but double thanks today for joining me
Speaker 2: on Mike. I really really appreciate it and I had
Speaker 2: a great time talking to you and let's see. Oh
Speaker 2: last thing, of course, if you would like to get
Speaker 2: in touch with us with feedback on this episode or
Speaker 2: any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or
Speaker 2: just to say hello, you can email us at contact
Speaker 2: at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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