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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is Rob Lamb.

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Speaker 1: Today we have an episode for you that originally published

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Speaker 1: three twenty one, twenty twenty five. It is an episode

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Speaker 1: covering the nineteen seventy two Spanish short film La Caabina

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Speaker 1: The Telephone Box. Let's jump right in.

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Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.

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Speaker 3: This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And

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Speaker 3: last week on Weird House Cinema we talked about the

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Speaker 3: nineteen eighty four fantasy short film Quest, directed by Saul

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Speaker 3: and Elaine Bass, and that was a real good time.

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Speaker 3: If you haven't heard that episode yet, I recommend you

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Speaker 3: go back and check that out. But this this week

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Speaker 3: I kind of wanted to stick to the theme of

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Speaker 3: short films, especially weird short films. In the thirty minute

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Speaker 3: run time zone, that's about how long Quest was. So

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Speaker 3: today we're going to be talking about a picture that

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Speaker 3: I've had on my list for a while, the surreal,

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Speaker 3: genre defying nineteen seventy two made for TV Spanish short

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Speaker 3: film La Cabina or The Telephone Box, directed by Antonio Mrcero. Now,

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Speaker 3: much like Quest the Telephone Box, you can really do

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Speaker 3: in a one sentence plot description. It is very light

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Speaker 3: on plot machinations, not a lot of dialogue, not a

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Speaker 3: lot of information to process except for weird little images

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Speaker 3: and things to kind of wonder how you should read

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Speaker 3: as the situation develops. But instead of a plot per se,

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Speaker 3: this movie really does have more of a situation, and

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Speaker 3: that situation is a man gets stuck inside a telephone

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Speaker 3: booth and he can't get out out And warning before

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Speaker 3: we say anything else, this movie does have some major

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Speaker 3: twists and surprises, and we're going to be talking about

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Speaker 3: all of that. So if you want to watch it unspoiled,

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Speaker 3: you should pause here and go do that. The film

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Speaker 3: is available to stream for free online, including in what

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Speaker 3: looks to me like an official upload on YouTube by

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Speaker 3: the television station that owns the rights to it, which

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Speaker 3: I think is RTVE out of Spain.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, RTV Archivo. That's how I watched it. And

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Speaker 1: outside of that, I'm not aware of an actual physical

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Speaker 1: release for this film, though of course sometimes short films

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Speaker 1: like these do get included as extras on the release

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Speaker 1: of full features, but this seems to be the best,

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Speaker 1: if not only, way to watch it right now, at

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Speaker 1: least internationally.

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Speaker 3: So again, the situation that takes place in this film

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Speaker 3: is a man gets stuck in a telephone box and

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Speaker 3: he can't get out. Now, what's really interesting about this

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Speaker 3: story is the way the situation develops, both in terms

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Speaker 3: of tone and I would say, ultimately in terms of genre.

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Speaker 3: I said at the top this was a genre defying film,

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Speaker 3: and I think you could quite reasonably ask how one

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Speaker 3: would classify it if you were going to have to

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Speaker 3: shelve it at the video store. Where does this go?

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Speaker 3: I've seen write ups that do classify it as a

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Speaker 3: comedy and write ups that classify it as horror. I

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Speaker 3: think it's a lot easier to say it is horror

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Speaker 3: if you had to pick one, But a lot of

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Speaker 3: writing about this notes that it is both. And while

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Speaker 3: I think it certainly is both, I think it would

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Speaker 3: be quite misleading to call Lacabina a horror comedy. That

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Speaker 3: would give the wrong impression, because horror comedy is a

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Speaker 3: well established hybrid genre. But in thinking about this question

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Speaker 3: of what to call Lacabina, I realized that almost all

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Speaker 3: so called horror comedy movies are built the same way,

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Speaker 3: and that is the bones are horle horror and the

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Speaker 3: flesh is comedy. So in a horror comedy movie, the plot,

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Speaker 3: the setting, the characters, and situations will almost entirely be

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Speaker 3: those of the horror genre. And then what makes it

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Speaker 3: a comedy is that we get ironic reversals on the

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Speaker 3: expected imagery or tone. Maybe through dialogue or the behavior

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Speaker 3: of the characters. You will get changes that twist the

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Speaker 3: basic horror situation and make it funny. So when I

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Speaker 3: make a mental list of horror comedy movies, I think

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Speaker 3: this basic format applies to all of them, all the

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Speaker 3: ones I can think of Evil Dead, to Grimlins, Grimlins

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Speaker 3: to Sean of the Dead, Cabin in the Woods, etc.

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Speaker 3: It's really hard to think of a movie that people

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Speaker 3: think of as horror comedy that doesn't basically work like that,

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Speaker 3: built like a horror film, but then furnished and decorated

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Speaker 3: with comedy.

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Speaker 1: I think Tremors is a great example of this. Tremors

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Speaker 1: is a film that doesn't do anything in its structure

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Speaker 1: plot that really screams comedy, but the characters are fun

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Speaker 1: and funny yes at times, and therefore you get plenty

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Speaker 1: of chuckles in there, and you can, I think, accurately

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Speaker 1: call it a horror comedy to some degree.

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Speaker 3: I think that's a great example, and I think there's

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Speaker 3: a reason that horror comedies are usually built like this.

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Speaker 3: Comedy by nature works by subverting expectations. So I think

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Speaker 3: the laugh moment in a comedy routine comes from your

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Speaker 3: brain recognizing some kind of incongruity. You think, that's not

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Speaker 3: how that works, or that's not what's supposed to happen,

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Speaker 3: or that's not the right way to respond, and so forth.

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Speaker 3: So when you merge comedy with another genre of storytelling,

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Speaker 3: the script to follow is pretty clear. You change or

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Speaker 3: subvert the expectations of that other genre in amusing ways.

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Speaker 3: So maybe you play with the tone like it's a

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Speaker 3: horror situation, but the moment, the moment where things would

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Speaker 3: normally be very serious, something silly happens. Or maybe you

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Speaker 3: satirize the geen itself, like you invert horror tropes in

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Speaker 3: a way that reveals something about the reason that writers

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Speaker 3: invoke them, which undercuts their power. So in you know,

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Speaker 3: this is what you get more of in movies that

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Speaker 3: are satires on horror itself, like Cabin in the Woods.

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Speaker 3: So I think that's the way it almost always works.

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Speaker 3: The other element in the genre hybrid, be it horror

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Speaker 3: or fantasy or whatever, is the setup, and then the

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Speaker 3: comedy is by its very nature. The twist on that

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Speaker 3: setup the short film we're going to be talking about

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Speaker 3: today is, I would argue the extremely rare inverse of

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Speaker 3: this blueprint, in lack of beina, the bones are comedy

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Speaker 3: and the flesh is horror.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that is a that is a very

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Speaker 1: valid point. Yeah, because everything about the premise even just

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Speaker 1: screams comedy. You hear it and you're like, all right,

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Speaker 1: I'm ready to hear this joke. You don't know that

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Speaker 1: the jokes punchline is going to be so and horror centric.

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Speaker 1: But it initially seems to have the structure of comedy,

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Speaker 1: the structure.

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Speaker 3: Of a joke exactly right. So it's a comedy situation.

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Speaker 3: In fact, we could explore more about this as we

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Speaker 3: go on, but it feels to me like a very old, classic,

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Speaker 3: almost silent film era style of comedy situation. It makes

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Speaker 3: me think of Charlie Chaplin.

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Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, yeah. It's very mime too, of course, like

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Speaker 1: the mime act is Oh, I'm stuck in a box,

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Speaker 1: and that's the basic plot here. In fact, I believe

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Speaker 1: the filmmakers when they were casting it initially one of

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Speaker 1: them was pushing for the for them hiring a mime, like,

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Speaker 1: let's get somebody who can who can do that level

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Speaker 1: of wordless, pure body acting.

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Speaker 3: And the main actor that is cast in the film

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Speaker 3: is the guy who gets stuck in the box does

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Speaker 3: have a lot of mime like skills. So the setup

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Speaker 3: of the plot is an absurd, humiliating physical situation where

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Speaker 3: there's like a mechanical problem to solve. Again, this is

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Speaker 3: like a Charlie Chaplin scene. So you're stuck in a

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Speaker 3: box and we watch various stereotyped characters come along and

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Speaker 3: try and fail to solve the problem in amusing ways. However,

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Speaker 3: if this movie had just been a comedy that delivered

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Speaker 3: on that premise, I don't think it would be all

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Speaker 3: that well remembered. Not like the comedy elements are not good,

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Speaker 3: but it just wouldn't stand out in the way that

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Speaker 3: it actually does. This movie made a big impression on

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Speaker 3: a lot of people. We can talk more about its

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Speaker 3: cultural impact and a bit, but I think it is

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Speaker 3: the horror twist that really makes this movie memorable to

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Speaker 3: people and is what makes it kind of masterful. So

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Speaker 3: as the comedy scenario drags on, there is a very gradual,

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Speaker 3: almost imperceptibly increasing tone of menace and despair, and moment

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Speaker 3: by moment the situation just becomes less funny and a

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Speaker 3: little weirder and more ominous, until by the final moments

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Speaker 3: we are in full throttle nightmare territory. And I honestly

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Speaker 3: cannot think of another film that pulls off this kind

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Speaker 3: of revolution in genre and tone across its run time.

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Speaker 3: It's a really interesting project, has a very unique effect

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Speaker 3: on the viewer, and I can't think of anything else

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Speaker 3: quite like it.

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Speaker 1: The only picture that's coming to my mind that does

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Speaker 1: something even kind of like this is Terry Gilliams Brazil

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Speaker 1: with of course it's actual ending, not the fairy tale ending,

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Speaker 1: but the right bleak ending that we get in that picture,

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Speaker 1: which is one of the things that makes it so memorable.

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Speaker 1: Like there's so much in Brazil that is, you know,

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Speaker 1: stupid and absurd and outright comedic, but we land in

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Speaker 1: a very dark place, in a very contemplative place, and

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Speaker 1: I think it's one of the reasons that Brazil resonates

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Speaker 1: so strongly with everyone.

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Speaker 3: I think that's a really good point of comparison, though

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Speaker 3: I would say it's different because I think the bleak

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Speaker 3: and ominous stuff is there from the beginning in Brazil,

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Speaker 3: but throughout the runtime it's also like earlier on, especially

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Speaker 3: it's a lot funnier, and then it just ends in

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Speaker 3: like its bleakest point, whereas this is a movie that

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Speaker 3: starts doesn't It's not scary or bleak at all at

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Speaker 3: the beginning. It starts off completely lighthearted and then ends

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Speaker 3: where it does.

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Speaker 1: Now we've mentioned absurdity a couple of times, and I

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Speaker 1: think absurdity is also key to understanding The Telephone Box.

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Speaker 1: I think it makes wonderful use of absurdity in multiple ways,

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Speaker 1: and I think we are generally primed to interpret absurdity

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Speaker 1: in terms of comedy, at least at first. Maybe there's

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Speaker 1: some sort of scenario though, where if absurdity, if you're

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Speaker 1: continually bombarded with absurdity, it eventually becomes horror. I'm not sure,

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Speaker 1: but I think one of the film's great merits is

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Speaker 1: that on the whole, even though we have an absurd

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Speaker 1: premise from the get go. It's pretty much played straight.

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Speaker 1: We have some goofy moments, some physical comedy, but even

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Speaker 1: those goofier moments I think are played with a realistic

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Speaker 1: air and deliberately avoid going full cartoon on anything. And

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Speaker 1: we'll touch on some examples of this when we get

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Speaker 1: into the plot later. And then of course, at the

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Speaker 1: center of it all, our unfortunate man, our gray man

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Speaker 1: trapped in the phone booth played by Jose Lewis Lopez Vesquez,

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Speaker 1: who we'll get to here in a minute, is portrayed

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Speaker 1: just very believable, very relatable. It has this quiet dignity

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Speaker 1: and frustration and embarrassment that just steadily gives way to

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Speaker 1: these darker emotional states.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, I think that's right, and I think I'm

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Speaker 3: not the first to point this out. You know, people

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Speaker 3: have written before about the kind of surprising overlap between

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Speaker 3: comedy and horror and the way I think they can

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Speaker 3: both stem from absurd situations that you know, the genres

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Speaker 3: do have a lot in common, Like they both deal

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Speaker 3: with the with the building and then the release of tension.

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Speaker 3: That's the structure of a joke, and that's the structure

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Speaker 3: of a scare in a horror movie. And as you

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Speaker 3: were just pointing out, with like the situational absurdity in

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Speaker 3: the film, a lot of times the difference but like

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Speaker 3: the same events could be shown as comedy or as horror,

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Speaker 3: and really all that it takes to make a difference

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Speaker 3: between the two is your perspective.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely so.

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Speaker 3: Another thing I wanted to bring up about Lacabino or

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Speaker 3: the telephone Box is that this is not an obscurer movie,

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Speaker 3: actually certainly not obscure within Spain. You know, we on

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Speaker 3: Weird House we cover stuff most people have never heard of,

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Speaker 3: and we cover stuff that's pretty well known. This is

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Speaker 3: actually sort of both because I think many English speaking

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Speaker 3: listeners will probably never heard of it. But in Spain,

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Speaker 3: I think lots of people saw this on TV, certainly

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Speaker 3: back when it came out. Lots of people who are

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Speaker 3: adults now saw it on TV when they were kids,

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Speaker 3: having no idea what it was, and it left a

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Speaker 3: powerful impression on them. This is one of those movies

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Speaker 3: where there's like a lot of Internet search traffic of

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Speaker 3: people asking what was the horror movie where the guy

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Speaker 3: gets stuck in a phone box, and then they come

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Speaker 3: across this and find these web pages about it.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. I think, as we've discussed before, that's one of

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Speaker 1: the brilliant things about broadcast horror television is that so

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Speaker 1: many of us watched something or part of something and

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Speaker 1: it just stuck in our heads and we had no

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Speaker 1: idea what it was. And it's only much later via

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Speaker 1: the Internet that were able to find out, Oh, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I was, that's what it was. It was in my case,

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Speaker 1: like NASA, it was NAUSICAA or various horror movies that

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Speaker 1: I saw parts of.

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Speaker 3: We may have mentioned this on the show before, but

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Speaker 3: I remember having a conversation with my dad about this,

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Speaker 3: where he was remembering from when he was a kid

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Speaker 3: seeing something on TV that really scared him, and just

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Speaker 3: talking through it, we were able to figure out what

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Speaker 3: it was, and it was an episode of Boris Karloff's

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Speaker 3: thriller that was an adaptation of the story Pigeons from Hell.

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Speaker 1: Oh yes, yes, the short story by Robert E. Howard.

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Speaker 3: But anyway, coming back to the telephone Box, something quite

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Speaker 3: interesting about this was that it was something of a

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Speaker 3: cultural sensation. It was kind of the talk of the

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Speaker 3: town in Spain when it first aired in December nineteen

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Speaker 3: seventy two, and I was reading an article about this

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Speaker 3: movie called Lacabina creating Horror from the Absurd. This was

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Speaker 3: published in an online magazine called The Artifice, written by

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Speaker 3: a contributor just called Amius. I guess that's like a

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Speaker 3: pseudonym or something. But in this article, which is definitely

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Speaker 3: worth a read for a lot of the background on

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Speaker 3: the film, the author talks about how the movie gave

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Speaker 3: rise to so it was not only talked about a lot,

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Speaker 3: it gave rise to a kind of urban legend in Madrid. Basically,

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Speaker 3: I think the idea was that people in Madrid were

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Speaker 3: becoming trapped in phone boxes and later being kidnapped by

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Speaker 3: sort of agents in shadowy uniforms, and nobody knew where

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Speaker 3: they were taken, and so this actually would cause people

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Speaker 3: to be afraid. And maybe whether or not they'd actually

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Speaker 3: seen this short on TV, maybe they just heard about

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Speaker 3: the kind of rumor of this thing happening secondhand, and

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Speaker 3: so they go into a phone box to make a

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Speaker 3: call and leave their legs sticking out to keep the

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Speaker 3: door from shutting.

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Speaker 1: I love that they made phone box is scary, which

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Speaker 1: we should. This would probably is probably a good point

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Speaker 1: in the podcast to mention for our younger listeners high zoomers.

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Speaker 1: A phone box or a telephone booth is a is

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Speaker 1: a compartment, sometimes open on one or more sides, but

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Speaker 1: sometimes it can be sealed with a door, and there

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Speaker 1: is a pay telephone in there, a telephone that you

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Speaker 1: would put money into in order to place calls and

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Speaker 1: could receive calls if you've watched enough like older films,

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Speaker 1: especially like noir films, you know, payphones off and feature

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Speaker 1: into the plot. So I'm half joking and having to

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Speaker 1: remind everyone what it is. But but I also found

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Speaker 1: it an interesting experience to watch this film that is

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Speaker 1: so centered around a phone booth and really asking myself,

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Speaker 1: have I ever actually used one in my life? And

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Speaker 1: I'm not sure that I have ever used a fully

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Speaker 1: enclosed phone booth before.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not sure. I've used payphones when I was younger,

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Speaker 3: but I don't know if they were I've heard the

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Speaker 3: kind that were enclosed in a glass box.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, there is something just unique about the idea that

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Speaker 1: I must seal myself into this space in order to

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Speaker 1: then have this disembodied conversation with another place. There's almost

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Speaker 1: kind of a magic act going on there, which I

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Speaker 1: think they're tapping into a little bit here.

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Speaker 3: Well, you want privacy for your call, but I mean,

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Speaker 3: does it feel private when everybody can see you from

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Speaker 3: all sides?

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Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean nowadays with everyone. I mean,

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Speaker 1: it seems like this was a rational expectation for folks.

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Speaker 1: People are going to have phone calls out in public.

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Speaker 1: They want privacy, But now we know they don't really

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Speaker 1: want privacy. People have all sorts of hyper sensitive phone

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Speaker 1: calls out in front of tons of people. So it

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Speaker 1: turns out it really didn't matter.

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Speaker 3: Okay, I got another bizarre cultural legacy of this movie,

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Speaker 3: also mentioned in that same article on the Artifice, in

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Speaker 3: what seems to me like a quite bizarre marketing choice,

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Speaker 3: there's a Spanish telecom company called Telefonica, which actually released

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Speaker 3: TV ads after this special that were a parody of it,

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Speaker 3: using the star of the movie in the ads. That

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Speaker 3: will seem even more bizarre to you after we discuss

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Speaker 3: the whole plot.

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Speaker 1: Yeahs, as that artifice article kind of gets into, it's

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Speaker 1: really kind of brilliant. It's like, uh, oh, they've made

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Speaker 1: telephone booth scary. What do we do? We embrace it,

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Speaker 1: We turn it into a commercial. Even though from some

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Speaker 1: angles that seems a little tone deaf. It actually reminds

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Speaker 1: me of some of the Severance branded ads out there

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Speaker 1: right now for stuff like zip Recruiter, where they're just like, Yep, Severance,

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Speaker 1: that's great, let's attach our brand to that, when Severance

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Speaker 1: is in many ways like a really cutting look at

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Speaker 1: workplace culture and and you know what it does to

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Speaker 1: us and what we do to ourselves there.

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Speaker 3: Oh, I'm a surfboard company. Let's make a Jaws themed commercial.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I don't know. But then again, I guess

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Speaker 1: any publicity is good but elic, so they go for it. Now.

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Speaker 3: Actually, the story of the ad for this telephone company

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Speaker 3: gets even stranger because that article talks about how the

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Speaker 3: movie itself, the short film, may have been in part

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Speaker 3: inspired by a telephone company ad that aired in the

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Speaker 3: nineteen sixties and also had the star of this film

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Speaker 3: in it. So there was a phone ad, and then

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Speaker 3: the guy from the phone ad was in a movie

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Speaker 3: that turned a telephone box into horror, and then the

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Speaker 3: telephone company made another ad that was a spin off

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Speaker 3: of the horror movie.

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Speaker 1: Right, And I think there's also some possible connection to

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Speaker 1: a nineteen sixty spy movie that had somebody in a

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Speaker 1: phone booth in the phone booth gets put on the

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Speaker 1: back of a truck, that kind of thing. But the

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Speaker 1: ultimate finished product here goes in original and terrifying directions.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. Also this in the not obscurer category. This movie

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Speaker 3: won awards. It won an International Emmy in nineteen seventy

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Speaker 3: three for Best Fiction. This was apparently the first Emmy

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Speaker 3: ever for a Spanish director.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and as we'll get into, many of the people

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Speaker 1: involved in this picture were top notch professionals who were

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Speaker 1: recognized certainly within Spain but also internationally.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, so major cultural legacy. There's some kind of there was,

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Speaker 3: at least at some point a kind of campaign to

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Speaker 3: get a monument put in place that's like a phone box,

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Speaker 3: you know, in Madrid to recognize this movie. There's like

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Speaker 3: telephone booth graffiti that people have found where somebody like

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Speaker 3: illustrates the man from the movie being trapped on the

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Speaker 3: inside of a phone booth.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's rather telling. The article points out that

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Speaker 1: Charlie Brooker of Black Mirror fame was inspired by this

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Speaker 1: short film, which should tell you everything you need to

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Speaker 1: know about the ultimate trajectory of this piece.

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Speaker 3: This is very nineteen seventy two Black Mirror. Okay, Now

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Speaker 3: we would normally play some trailer audio here, but I

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Speaker 3: don't think this thing ever had a trailer, at least

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Speaker 3: as far as I can tell.

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Speaker 1: Not that I could tell. So in lieu of a trailer,

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Speaker 1: go watch it. Just go watching it and come back,

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Speaker 1: Or if you know you're not gonna watch it, or

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Speaker 1: you don't like to go into films without full spoilers,

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Speaker 1: then carry on and watch it later. Joe, what's your

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Speaker 1: elevator pitch here?

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Speaker 3: Well, if the tagline for Jaws was You'll never go

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Speaker 3: in the water again, this is gotta be You'll never

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Speaker 3: go in a phone booth again.

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Speaker 1: Right. I think that works. I think that works.

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Speaker 3: All right, we talked about the connections.

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Speaker 1: Yes, so let's start at the top with the director,

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Speaker 1: who also has a writing credit on this. As we

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Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, it is Antonio Marcero or Marciro. I'm not

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Speaker 1: sure which pronunciation is most accurate here, but he lived

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Speaker 1: nineteen thirty six through twenty eighteen Spanish film and TV

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Speaker 1: director whose work was well regarded domestically and internationally. His

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Speaker 1: directorial work spanned from nineteen sixty through two thousand and seven,

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Speaker 1: and included such acclaimed films as nineteen eighty eight's Wait

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Speaker 1: for Me in Heaven, about a man selected against his

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Speaker 1: will to serve as Franco's double, nineteen eighty eight It's

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Speaker 1: a Time for Defiance, a romance set during the Spanish

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Speaker 1: Civil War, and two thousand and three's The Fourth Floor,

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Speaker 1: about seriously ill youths at a Spanish cancer ward. As

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Speaker 1: for his other genre films, there's nineteen seventy five Bloodstains

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Speaker 1: in a New Car, a kind of follow up to

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Speaker 1: this film, I think in some ways has the same

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Speaker 1: lead actor. Oh, and then there is a nineteen eighty

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Speaker 1: three kids monster mash film, a monster mash in that

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Speaker 1: it has a Franknstinse monster, has a Dracula, a were wolf,

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Speaker 1: and so forth. It's titled good Night, Mister Monster. And

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Speaker 1: I'm glad to report that it does feature Paul Nashy

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Speaker 1: as the were wolf. I'm also to understand that it

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Speaker 1: is a disco musical with some rocky horror aspirations.

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Speaker 3: Oh wow, I gotta see that.

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Speaker 1: Well.

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Speaker 3: I should have of it when I picked this movie.

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Speaker 3: But there have to be multiple Paul nashi connections, right,

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Speaker 3: We're gonna get several, aren't we?

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Speaker 1: There are yes? And also that's I mean, for better

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Speaker 1: or worse. That's how I end up grounding any Spanish cinema.

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Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, how many decrease the separation? Are we? From?

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Speaker 1: Paul Nashi?

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Speaker 3: So I found a quote of Antonio Mercero's where he's

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Speaker 3: trying to describe the themes of his own work, and

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Speaker 3: he basically says in all of his movies there are

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Speaker 3: three elements. He says, in all my works, I have

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Speaker 3: used three concepts, pain, love and humor. It's a strange cocktail,

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Speaker 3: I know, and often I've asked myself how I could

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Speaker 3: mix elements potentially so different from one another. But in

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Speaker 3: practice they have been landmarks in developing my creations. And

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Speaker 3: you know what, yep, that's they're all three are here

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Speaker 3: in the telephone box less love than anything else, but

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Speaker 3: there is a bit of love, and the bit of

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Speaker 3: love makes the horror much more painful. And of course

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Speaker 3: there's humor too, So check on all three, all right.

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Speaker 1: The other writer credited here is Jose Lewis Garci born

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Speaker 1: nineteen forty four, claimed Spanish writer and director who directed

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Speaker 1: four films nominated for Best Foreign language film at the

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Speaker 1: Oscars begin the Beginning in nineteen eighty two, and that

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Speaker 1: one actually won double feature in eighty four, Course Completed

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Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty seven, and The Grandfather in nineteen ninety eight.

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Speaker 1: He's also credited with a handful of horror films from

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Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties, but I couldn't find out much about these.

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Speaker 1: But he's certainly best known for his dramas, his comedies,

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Speaker 1: and his social commentary. Now our star really the when

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Speaker 1: I say star in the short thirty minute film, he's

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Speaker 1: pretty much like the I mean, he's the focal point

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Speaker 1: the whole time. He is our gray man. He is

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Speaker 1: the man trapped in the telephone booth. It's his performance

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Speaker 1: within the telephone booth. And again we barely hear from him.

435
00:23:55,320 --> 00:23:59,040
Speaker 1: He is mostly sealed in there. There is no sound.

436
00:23:59,119 --> 00:24:01,800
Speaker 1: It's just a pure visual, mime like performance.

437
00:24:02,520 --> 00:24:04,480
Speaker 3: He has a few lines at the beginning, Yeah, but

438
00:24:04,840 --> 00:24:06,960
Speaker 3: almost no dialogue for this protagonist.

439
00:24:07,280 --> 00:24:10,920
Speaker 1: Yeah. This is again Jose Lewis Lopez Vasquez, who with

440
00:24:11,040 --> 00:24:13,760
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty two through two thousand and nine a claim

441
00:24:13,800 --> 00:24:18,680
Speaker 1: Spanish actor whose largely comedic work eventually shifted towards the serious.

442
00:24:19,080 --> 00:24:22,960
Speaker 1: During the nineteen seventies. He worked in theater initially before

443
00:24:23,000 --> 00:24:26,439
Speaker 1: working his way into cinema with various odd jobs in cinema,

444
00:24:26,520 --> 00:24:28,600
Speaker 1: and then his career really began to take off in

445
00:24:28,640 --> 00:24:32,280
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties. So today's film certainly emerges during a

446
00:24:32,320 --> 00:24:35,760
Speaker 1: prominent part of his career when he's switching into more

447
00:24:36,280 --> 00:24:39,640
Speaker 1: for the most part, into more serious roles and finding

448
00:24:39,680 --> 00:24:42,880
Speaker 1: a great deal of success there. Some of his most

449
00:24:42,880 --> 00:24:46,720
Speaker 1: critically well received films are from this time period. In fact,

450
00:24:46,720 --> 00:24:49,960
Speaker 1: he won two Chicago International Film Festival Awards for his

451
00:24:50,040 --> 00:24:54,639
Speaker 1: performances in the early seventies, particularly two films of note,

452
00:24:54,680 --> 00:24:58,560
Speaker 1: the First I've Seen It attributed to nineteen seventy and

453
00:24:58,640 --> 00:25:02,640
Speaker 1: other places to nineteen seventy. A film titled The Anchises

454
00:25:02,680 --> 00:25:07,560
Speaker 1: would a well regarded folk horror film about historical Spanish

455
00:25:07,600 --> 00:25:13,400
Speaker 1: serial killer and self professed werewolf Manuel Blanco. Roma Santo

456
00:25:14,160 --> 00:25:18,399
Speaker 1: Vasquez plays a fictional character based on accounts of this

457
00:25:18,480 --> 00:25:23,879
Speaker 1: individual from the novel by Carlos Martinez Barbito. It's a

458
00:25:23,920 --> 00:25:27,200
Speaker 1: serious role and only his I think, second big non

459
00:25:27,240 --> 00:25:31,960
Speaker 1: comedic role, following the acclaimed psychological thriller Peppermint Frape in

460
00:25:32,040 --> 00:25:36,160
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight, The Anchises Woods earned him numerous nominations,

461
00:25:36,440 --> 00:25:38,439
Speaker 1: and then in nineteen seventy two he was in a

462
00:25:38,480 --> 00:25:42,760
Speaker 1: film titled My Dearest Senorita. This was a groundbreaking Spanish

463
00:25:42,840 --> 00:25:46,840
Speaker 1: film dealing with sex change and intersexualism, in which Fasquez

464
00:25:46,880 --> 00:25:50,919
Speaker 1: plays Adella, who becomes Juan. I haven't seen this film,

465
00:25:51,040 --> 00:25:52,920
Speaker 1: and so I can't speak for how well at sincabela

466
00:25:53,040 --> 00:25:56,199
Speaker 1: sensibilities concerning sex and gender matchup with where we are today,

467
00:25:56,640 --> 00:25:59,800
Speaker 1: but it apparently broke new ground at the time, especially

468
00:25:59,880 --> 00:26:03,640
Speaker 1: in Spain, as such subjects had largely been banned under

469
00:26:03,680 --> 00:26:07,479
Speaker 1: the oppressive Franco regime. And during this time there's like

470
00:26:07,520 --> 00:26:10,800
Speaker 1: a sort of and this is also discussed in that

471
00:26:10,920 --> 00:26:13,200
Speaker 1: article we referenced earlier, during this time period, there's kind

472
00:26:13,200 --> 00:26:17,680
Speaker 1: of a breaking down of some of those strict rules

473
00:26:17,720 --> 00:26:21,680
Speaker 1: concerning media as Spain is beginning to sort of reach

474
00:26:21,720 --> 00:26:23,200
Speaker 1: out and try and sort of fit in with the

475
00:26:23,280 --> 00:26:29,119
Speaker 1: larger European world around them. And so, you know, a

476
00:26:29,119 --> 00:26:32,480
Speaker 1: few years earlier, film like this would not have been released,

477
00:26:32,960 --> 00:26:36,720
Speaker 1: but Vesquez's performance here earned widespread acclaim, and the film

478
00:26:36,760 --> 00:26:39,359
Speaker 1: itself was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the

479
00:26:39,400 --> 00:26:43,480
Speaker 1: forty fifth Academy Awards. So these two films were instrumental

480
00:26:43,520 --> 00:26:46,639
Speaker 1: in his shift to more dramatic work, including nineteen seventy

481
00:26:46,680 --> 00:26:50,840
Speaker 1: one's The Garden of Delights, seventy fives of Zorita Martinez

482
00:26:51,160 --> 00:26:55,080
Speaker 1: seventy six's Este Signor di Negro. But of course, as

483
00:26:55,080 --> 00:26:57,600
Speaker 1: far as connections go, you might be wondering, Okay, did

484
00:26:57,600 --> 00:27:00,400
Speaker 1: he work with any of the Spanish cinema mainstay from

485
00:27:00,440 --> 00:27:02,800
Speaker 1: the time period that we've discussed on the show before,

486
00:27:03,160 --> 00:27:06,520
Speaker 1: And the answer is yes, So Frank Bronna multiple times,

487
00:27:07,160 --> 00:27:12,399
Speaker 1: Lewis Barbou multiple times, Helga Linet, yes, I think at

488
00:27:12,480 --> 00:27:15,879
Speaker 1: least one or two pictures there. And indeed there is

489
00:27:15,920 --> 00:27:19,760
Speaker 1: a Paul Nashi connection as well. So Nashi, I think,

490
00:27:19,760 --> 00:27:22,520
Speaker 1: had an uncredited part in the nineteen sixty six film

491
00:27:22,640 --> 00:27:26,760
Speaker 1: that Vasquez also appears in. But Vasquez definitely appears in

492
00:27:26,800 --> 00:27:30,280
Speaker 1: a pair of Nashi written and directed films, though sadly

493
00:27:30,320 --> 00:27:33,160
Speaker 1: they're from Paul Nashi's late period. So there's a family

494
00:27:33,280 --> 00:27:37,800
Speaker 1: drama titled My Friend the Vagabond, and then that's from

495
00:27:37,880 --> 00:27:40,680
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four, and then there's a nineteen eighty five

496
00:27:40,800 --> 00:27:45,080
Speaker 1: film titled Operation Mantis that is like a slapstick spy

497
00:27:45,280 --> 00:27:49,159
Speaker 1: movie that I think was just negatively received across the board.

498
00:27:49,720 --> 00:27:52,880
Speaker 1: He did all the genres, didn't the Yeah, at one

499
00:27:52,880 --> 00:27:55,359
Speaker 1: point or another. I've got his horror box sets, but

500
00:27:55,400 --> 00:27:58,560
Speaker 1: I don't see his slapstick spy movies. Yeah, I mean

501
00:27:58,640 --> 00:28:01,160
Speaker 1: the horror I think is by most accounts, the best.

502
00:28:01,280 --> 00:28:04,199
Speaker 1: I think that's also where Paul Nashey's heart ultimately was.

503
00:28:04,960 --> 00:28:07,639
Speaker 1: And some of these other genres are often things he

504
00:28:07,800 --> 00:28:10,639
Speaker 1: was getting into later in his career when gothic horror

505
00:28:11,640 --> 00:28:17,080
Speaker 1: had lost its popularity in Spanish cinema. So yeah, these

506
00:28:17,119 --> 00:28:19,840
Speaker 1: are generally not as well received and or are not

507
00:28:19,920 --> 00:28:21,480
Speaker 1: as widely known outside of Spain.

508
00:28:22,080 --> 00:28:24,480
Speaker 3: I think that he's done at least a couple of

509
00:28:24,560 --> 00:28:28,600
Speaker 3: movies about characters who are either actors or filmmakers and

510
00:28:28,720 --> 00:28:31,600
Speaker 3: just want to keep doing universal style monster movies and

511
00:28:31,640 --> 00:28:34,240
Speaker 3: there's pressure for them to do like action and stuff.

512
00:28:34,520 --> 00:28:38,160
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Now, I can't speak for how Vesquez performs

513
00:28:38,200 --> 00:28:41,800
Speaker 1: in those two pictures, but in fact, in any other picture.

514
00:28:41,840 --> 00:28:44,840
Speaker 1: This is the only thing I've seen Vesquez in, But

515
00:28:44,920 --> 00:28:46,680
Speaker 1: now I want to see more of him because he's

516
00:28:46,720 --> 00:28:50,240
Speaker 1: so good in the Telephone Box again, The Quiet Dignity

517
00:28:50,800 --> 00:28:53,560
Speaker 1: in the face of all this inconvenience and embarrassment, the

518
00:28:53,560 --> 00:28:58,960
Speaker 1: gradual erosion of his resolve as the situation steadily descends

519
00:28:59,000 --> 00:29:02,000
Speaker 1: into panic and tear. You know, it's all there, all

520
00:29:02,040 --> 00:29:07,000
Speaker 1: wordless and soundless within this soundproof sarcophagus, and we know

521
00:29:07,080 --> 00:29:10,000
Speaker 1: next to nothing about his character, and yet we feel

522
00:29:10,080 --> 00:29:11,720
Speaker 1: we know him so well by the end of it,

523
00:29:12,160 --> 00:29:14,360
Speaker 1: you know, just based on the nuances of the performance,

524
00:29:14,440 --> 00:29:17,239
Speaker 1: and also some of these nice key supporting details, like

525
00:29:17,560 --> 00:29:20,080
Speaker 1: you know, obviously there's as we'll discuss, like there's this

526
00:29:20,200 --> 00:29:23,400
Speaker 1: love for his son, and it's this photograph of his family.

527
00:29:23,760 --> 00:29:26,320
Speaker 1: But also I like, I really love the detail of

528
00:29:26,360 --> 00:29:30,520
Speaker 1: his colorful tie. Yeah, it really felt like otherwise he's

529
00:29:30,560 --> 00:29:32,640
Speaker 1: wearing this kind of you know, just boring business suit,

530
00:29:32,840 --> 00:29:35,880
Speaker 1: but he has this really nice tie that made makes

531
00:29:35,960 --> 00:29:38,760
Speaker 1: him feel like a guy who has found this one

532
00:29:38,800 --> 00:29:44,560
Speaker 1: small way to allow his individualism to burst free and shine,

533
00:29:45,200 --> 00:29:47,440
Speaker 1: you know, and it's it's very much filtered and held back,

534
00:29:47,520 --> 00:29:50,560
Speaker 1: but but you can get a sense of his inner light. Oh.

535
00:29:50,640 --> 00:29:53,200
Speaker 3: I think the tie is a great detail. Not to

536
00:29:53,240 --> 00:29:56,880
Speaker 3: contradict to you, but you described it as colorful. It

537
00:29:56,960 --> 00:30:00,960
Speaker 3: is visually interesting, but it's actually rather earth toned. It's

538
00:30:01,000 --> 00:30:02,840
Speaker 3: basically brown and black.

539
00:30:03,840 --> 00:30:05,880
Speaker 1: I interpreted it as kind of an orange, but.

540
00:30:06,120 --> 00:30:07,960
Speaker 3: Oh well, maybe it is kind of orange. I mean,

541
00:30:08,360 --> 00:30:11,000
Speaker 3: but it's not like, you know, rain the whole rainbow.

542
00:30:11,080 --> 00:30:13,560
Speaker 3: It's like a kind of brown or orange and black.

543
00:30:13,600 --> 00:30:17,120
Speaker 3: But it does have these very striking expressive designs on it.

544
00:30:17,120 --> 00:30:20,640
Speaker 3: It's like these kind of watery swirls in a way.

545
00:30:21,200 --> 00:30:22,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, kind of ya waves.

546
00:30:23,000 --> 00:30:25,960
Speaker 3: Yeah, sorry, folks, we just had to scroll down to

547
00:30:26,000 --> 00:30:28,840
Speaker 3: our screenshots to make sure we're describing the tie correct.

548
00:30:29,000 --> 00:30:31,320
Speaker 3: I don't know that could be so it is like black,

549
00:30:31,400 --> 00:30:33,680
Speaker 3: but it is the other color, like, could be brown

550
00:30:33,840 --> 00:30:36,160
Speaker 3: or maybe orange or maybe gold. It's a little hard

551
00:30:36,160 --> 00:30:38,840
Speaker 3: to tell in the light quality because it's like under

552
00:30:38,840 --> 00:30:42,240
Speaker 3: a really bright sun, which is another thing about this character.

553
00:30:42,240 --> 00:30:44,760
Speaker 3: He's stuck in a glass box in the middle of

554
00:30:44,880 --> 00:30:48,680
Speaker 3: like right under this noonday sun. Yeah, so he's like

555
00:30:48,760 --> 00:30:52,040
Speaker 3: baking in there, but he's got this tie on and yeah,

556
00:30:52,080 --> 00:30:54,240
Speaker 3: it's I don't know what you call this pattern, but

557
00:30:54,280 --> 00:30:57,520
Speaker 3: it's like these kind of spirals or swirls that look

558
00:30:57,600 --> 00:31:00,560
Speaker 3: kind of like, I don't know, dabs of pain, almost

559
00:31:00,560 --> 00:31:02,440
Speaker 3: maybe made with the fingers or something.

560
00:31:02,760 --> 00:31:08,760
Speaker 1: It's interesting all right, more on the necktie in a bit. Okay.

561
00:31:08,800 --> 00:31:11,280
Speaker 1: There are other actors in the picture, but mostly it's

562
00:31:11,280 --> 00:31:14,880
Speaker 1: a one man show, though I do want to mention

563
00:31:15,960 --> 00:31:19,560
Speaker 1: the burly man, the sort of like heavy set strong

564
00:31:19,600 --> 00:31:21,960
Speaker 1: man that comes to try and bust him out of

565
00:31:22,000 --> 00:31:25,480
Speaker 1: the phone booth. This character is played by Tito Garcia,

566
00:31:25,680 --> 00:31:27,840
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen thirty one through two thousand and three,

567
00:31:28,160 --> 00:31:31,600
Speaker 1: a rotn Spanish character actor whose credits include various westerns,

568
00:31:31,920 --> 00:31:35,320
Speaker 1: also the Jess Franco film The Awful Doctor Orloff and

569
00:31:35,360 --> 00:31:38,920
Speaker 1: a pair of Nashy films nineteen eighties Human Beasts, Oh

570
00:31:38,960 --> 00:31:41,920
Speaker 1: and nineteen eighty one's Night of the Werewolf, which we

571
00:31:41,960 --> 00:31:44,240
Speaker 1: previously covered on Weird House Cinema. He's one of the

572
00:31:44,240 --> 00:31:47,760
Speaker 1: two grave robbers that accidentally reawakens Voldemar Gninski.

573
00:31:48,000 --> 00:31:50,480
Speaker 3: Okay, I've seen both of those. Night of the Werewolf's

574
00:31:50,480 --> 00:31:53,840
Speaker 3: a lot better. Human Beasts didn't love that one.

575
00:31:53,920 --> 00:31:56,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, kind of a nasty one and also but in

576
00:31:56,560 --> 00:32:01,160
Speaker 1: very action oriented in its early goings. Yeah, but I

577
00:32:01,160 --> 00:32:03,120
Speaker 1: have to say Garcia is good here. This could have

578
00:32:03,160 --> 00:32:06,320
Speaker 1: easily been a real over the top, blueto stop performance,

579
00:32:06,360 --> 00:32:09,400
Speaker 1: and I guess it is. But there are these nuances,

580
00:32:09,440 --> 00:32:11,880
Speaker 1: you know, like this guy's trying to do the right

581
00:32:11,920 --> 00:32:15,880
Speaker 1: thing despite of the onlookers, but also kind of because

582
00:32:15,880 --> 00:32:18,960
Speaker 1: of the onlookers. Yeah, and it all comes off quite

583
00:32:19,000 --> 00:32:20,960
Speaker 1: believable in my estimation.

584
00:32:21,480 --> 00:32:23,240
Speaker 3: I want to talk later on when we get into

585
00:32:23,240 --> 00:32:26,560
Speaker 3: some of the themes about the way the film portrays

586
00:32:26,600 --> 00:32:29,080
Speaker 3: the people who stop to help the guy in the box.

587
00:32:29,880 --> 00:32:30,120
Speaker 1: Yeah.

588
00:32:30,200 --> 00:32:32,800
Speaker 3: I think there's interesting stuff about the choices there.

589
00:32:33,600 --> 00:32:36,040
Speaker 1: Now getting into the music here. Early on in the picture,

590
00:32:36,720 --> 00:32:40,920
Speaker 1: the subtitles generously refer to the music as jazz, and

591
00:32:41,720 --> 00:32:44,800
Speaker 1: I'm guessing it's probably stock music, but it also kind

592
00:32:44,840 --> 00:32:48,600
Speaker 1: of works perfectly because it feels energetic but lifeless, you know,

593
00:32:48,640 --> 00:32:51,760
Speaker 1: it's just sort of humdrum modernity, like this is what

594
00:32:51,800 --> 00:32:55,960
Speaker 1: we have done to jazz. And later on in the picture,

595
00:32:56,000 --> 00:32:59,560
Speaker 1: we have a rather kind of startling shift in tone.

596
00:33:00,040 --> 00:33:01,520
Speaker 1: I mean, we've been building up to it, but there

597
00:33:01,600 --> 00:33:04,120
Speaker 1: is this shift in tone, and we get a shift

598
00:33:04,200 --> 00:33:07,720
Speaker 1: in the music as well, and suddenly we're utilizing the

599
00:33:07,800 --> 00:33:11,480
Speaker 1: music of German composer and educator Karl Orf who lived

600
00:33:11,480 --> 00:33:14,760
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety five through nineteen eighty two, best known probably

601
00:33:14,800 --> 00:33:17,800
Speaker 1: for Carmina Burana, which has been used a great effect

602
00:33:17,880 --> 00:33:21,160
Speaker 1: in many a film, including John Borman's ex Caliber. His

603
00:33:21,280 --> 00:33:23,520
Speaker 1: music has also been used in such pictures as nineteen

604
00:33:23,560 --> 00:33:27,960
Speaker 1: seventy Three's bad Lands by Terrence Malick. This film makes

605
00:33:28,040 --> 00:33:34,120
Speaker 1: use of a cantata from his operetta Trianfo Diafreddi.

606
00:33:34,920 --> 00:33:37,880
Speaker 3: Now, initially the use of this composition did lead to

607
00:33:38,160 --> 00:33:42,200
Speaker 3: a legal dispute. Orf tried to sue Marco because he

608
00:33:42,240 --> 00:33:45,440
Speaker 3: said that one of his compositions was used without permission.

609
00:33:46,000 --> 00:33:48,360
Speaker 3: Marcero pleaded that it was an accident. He said he

610
00:33:49,160 --> 00:33:51,160
Speaker 3: used it, he had meant to ask for permission and

611
00:33:51,200 --> 00:33:54,360
Speaker 3: then forgot to, and he set settled out of court

612
00:33:54,360 --> 00:33:56,920
Speaker 3: with Orf. Apparently they met up and they watched the

613
00:33:56,960 --> 00:33:59,320
Speaker 3: film together, and they came to some kind of agreement

614
00:33:59,360 --> 00:34:01,440
Speaker 3: and then or prove the use of his music. But

615
00:34:01,960 --> 00:34:04,880
Speaker 3: initially that was a bit of a sticky point about this.

616
00:34:05,960 --> 00:34:08,680
Speaker 3: Unclear to me if Marcero actually did just forget and

617
00:34:08,760 --> 00:34:10,920
Speaker 3: it was an accident an honest mistake, or if he

618
00:34:10,960 --> 00:34:12,600
Speaker 3: was trying to get away with something. I don't know.

619
00:34:13,000 --> 00:34:15,360
Speaker 1: Either way, I do feel like the orph music is

620
00:34:15,960 --> 00:34:17,920
Speaker 1: used really well here. He kept us the sense of

621
00:34:17,920 --> 00:34:20,560
Speaker 1: the transcendent, the tragic, and much more.

622
00:34:20,840 --> 00:34:23,640
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, unimpeachable choice to use four effect in the film,

623
00:34:23,680 --> 00:34:25,440
Speaker 3: and just wish he had wish he had gone to

624
00:34:25,560 --> 00:34:26,640
Speaker 3: Orfit first.

625
00:34:27,719 --> 00:34:30,279
Speaker 1: All right, well, let's get right into the plot, all right.

626
00:34:30,360 --> 00:34:34,040
Speaker 3: So you can kind of divide this movie into three parts.

627
00:34:33,760 --> 00:34:36,800
Speaker 3: There's the opening that takes place in the phone booth

628
00:34:37,440 --> 00:34:40,720
Speaker 3: within a plaza in Madrid, and then there's the middle

629
00:34:40,760 --> 00:34:43,680
Speaker 3: part that's sort of a journey, and then there is

630
00:34:43,719 --> 00:34:46,799
Speaker 3: the climax, which is when we descend and descend into

631
00:34:46,840 --> 00:34:50,000
Speaker 3: the underworld. So the first third, as I said, takes

632
00:34:50,040 --> 00:34:53,160
Speaker 3: place in a plaza in Madrid. It's a real place apparently,

633
00:34:53,160 --> 00:34:58,479
Speaker 3: called the Plaza del Conde del vaer de Sushil. And

634
00:34:58,680 --> 00:35:02,560
Speaker 3: the credits play in this blood red typewriter font all

635
00:35:02,640 --> 00:35:06,640
Speaker 3: lowercase over views of the city framed by tall, blocky

636
00:35:06,719 --> 00:35:07,760
Speaker 3: apartment towers.

637
00:35:08,480 --> 00:35:10,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, apparently this is a rather nice part of Madrid,

638
00:35:11,200 --> 00:35:16,360
Speaker 1: a traditional district with an aristocratic architectural flare, according to

639
00:35:16,360 --> 00:35:19,480
Speaker 1: Tourismo Madrid, So I take their word for it.

640
00:35:20,920 --> 00:35:23,000
Speaker 3: Yeah, it seems like an elegant part of the city.

641
00:35:23,040 --> 00:35:25,080
Speaker 3: So as we first come in, we're looking up at

642
00:35:25,080 --> 00:35:27,239
Speaker 3: the sky at the tops of the buildings. But then

643
00:35:27,280 --> 00:35:30,759
Speaker 3: the camera pans down to the plaza, which is in

644
00:35:30,800 --> 00:35:33,680
Speaker 3: one sense, yes, it is quite pleasant. It is surrounded

645
00:35:33,680 --> 00:35:36,840
Speaker 3: by trees as this big yard where kids can play soccer.

646
00:35:37,640 --> 00:35:39,759
Speaker 3: But in another sense, at least in the way it

647
00:35:39,880 --> 00:35:43,120
Speaker 3: is framed, it's kind of claustrophobic because we see it

648
00:35:43,360 --> 00:35:46,800
Speaker 3: boxed in on all sides by these nondescript high rises.

649
00:35:47,640 --> 00:35:50,440
Speaker 1: Yeah. I feel like there's a weird sense of balance here,

650
00:35:50,760 --> 00:35:53,840
Speaker 1: an uneasy balance, but balanced nonetheless, So like the apartment

651
00:35:53,920 --> 00:36:00,440
Speaker 1: complexes are modern and nice, thus pacifying. Apparently government pressure

652
00:36:00,920 --> 00:36:04,440
Speaker 1: to include a sense of modern Madrid to showcase to

653
00:36:04,480 --> 00:36:08,160
Speaker 1: the world. Yes, but on the other it's kind of like, well, okay,

654
00:36:08,560 --> 00:36:11,040
Speaker 1: whatever you may have lost to these sort of stacked

655
00:36:11,080 --> 00:36:13,600
Speaker 1: confines of apartment living, at least you have these nice

656
00:36:13,600 --> 00:36:14,920
Speaker 1: green spaces and pluses.

657
00:36:15,520 --> 00:36:17,600
Speaker 3: Yeah, we should have mentioned this earlier. But yeah, as

658
00:36:17,640 --> 00:36:21,600
Speaker 3: you said, showing off the beautiful modernizing Madrid was apparently

659
00:36:21,640 --> 00:36:25,600
Speaker 3: a requirement to satisfy the government censors, you know, the

660
00:36:25,680 --> 00:36:29,040
Speaker 3: kind of ministry that they didn't know if this script

661
00:36:29,080 --> 00:36:30,880
Speaker 3: was going to get approved to be made into a

662
00:36:31,120 --> 00:36:33,719
Speaker 3: made for TV movie, and it did. But one of

663
00:36:33,719 --> 00:36:36,400
Speaker 3: the conditions was, okay, you got to make Madrid look nice.

664
00:36:36,520 --> 00:36:39,120
Speaker 3: You know, we got good stuff going on here.

665
00:36:39,520 --> 00:36:43,320
Speaker 1: Yeah, as we'll discuss, as is often the case, government

666
00:36:43,400 --> 00:36:48,960
Speaker 1: mandates for the arts can often be twisted around and

667
00:36:49,200 --> 00:36:53,560
Speaker 1: weaponized in very inventive ways. And then that may be

668
00:36:53,680 --> 00:36:54,600
Speaker 1: what's going on here.

669
00:36:54,800 --> 00:36:57,520
Speaker 3: Yeah, there may be a kind of malicious compliance with

670
00:36:57,560 --> 00:37:00,920
Speaker 3: the sensors. So at first, when we come in, the

671
00:37:01,280 --> 00:37:05,080
Speaker 3: soundscape here is chirping birds and the grinding of motors

672
00:37:05,080 --> 00:37:08,880
Speaker 3: and machinery. It's early in the morning, and the first

673
00:37:08,880 --> 00:37:11,400
Speaker 3: thing we see in terms of action is a dark

674
00:37:11,640 --> 00:37:16,160
Speaker 3: green flatbed truck rolling into the plaza with a bright

675
00:37:16,320 --> 00:37:20,360
Speaker 3: red new telephone box as its cargo. The truck slows down,

676
00:37:20,600 --> 00:37:22,759
Speaker 3: backs up to the edge of the yard, and then

677
00:37:22,920 --> 00:37:26,120
Speaker 3: four men in telephone company uniforms get out. They unload

678
00:37:26,160 --> 00:37:28,280
Speaker 3: the box, carry it to the middle of the plaza,

679
00:37:28,640 --> 00:37:32,200
Speaker 3: and efficiently install it. And I want to note that

680
00:37:32,480 --> 00:37:36,040
Speaker 3: nothing really feels ominous at this point. There's no indication

681
00:37:36,360 --> 00:37:39,320
Speaker 3: that this is a horror movie. The birds are chirping,

682
00:37:39,719 --> 00:37:43,440
Speaker 3: the music is bright, almost whimsical. It feels much more

683
00:37:43,480 --> 00:37:46,560
Speaker 3: like the opening of a lighthearted family comedy than a

684
00:37:46,560 --> 00:37:47,560
Speaker 3: horror film.

685
00:37:47,840 --> 00:37:50,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, like we said, the sun is bright you get

686
00:37:50,719 --> 00:37:52,799
Speaker 1: the sense that there's no danger here because everybody's at

687
00:37:52,800 --> 00:37:56,520
Speaker 1: work or at school, like nobody's creeping about. It's just

688
00:37:56,520 --> 00:37:59,520
Speaker 1: people here on official business. And especially given the nineteen

689
00:37:59,560 --> 00:38:01,920
Speaker 1: seventies feel to everything, I was reminded of a lot

690
00:38:01,960 --> 00:38:04,800
Speaker 1: of live action sesame street shorts. Yeah. I feel like

691
00:38:04,840 --> 00:38:07,759
Speaker 1: I just needed a child's narration about telephones or the

692
00:38:07,840 --> 00:38:08,200
Speaker 1: letter P.

693
00:38:08,680 --> 00:38:10,200
Speaker 3: This is how they make saxophones.

694
00:38:10,520 --> 00:38:11,120
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.

695
00:38:12,200 --> 00:38:15,799
Speaker 3: The only thing that potentially registers as threatening to me,

696
00:38:15,840 --> 00:38:17,920
Speaker 3: and it didn't when I first watched. This was only

697
00:38:18,440 --> 00:38:22,400
Speaker 3: upon rewatching. The only thing that is potentially threatening is

698
00:38:22,680 --> 00:38:26,160
Speaker 3: the camera angle, because instead of watching this scene from

699
00:38:26,200 --> 00:38:29,720
Speaker 3: the ground, we begin with the camera way up above,

700
00:38:30,080 --> 00:38:34,080
Speaker 3: surveying everything from a distance in the sky, as if

701
00:38:34,080 --> 00:38:37,920
Speaker 3: we were watching like security camera footage or something. And

702
00:38:38,160 --> 00:38:42,040
Speaker 3: this could allow to set in a kind of subconscious

703
00:38:42,080 --> 00:38:46,279
Speaker 3: awareness of the scene in the plaza as being monitored

704
00:38:46,360 --> 00:38:50,399
Speaker 3: by distant and unfeeling observers, which is a powerful kind

705
00:38:50,400 --> 00:38:54,040
Speaker 3: of horror feeling to create within fiction when you take

706
00:38:54,080 --> 00:38:57,799
Speaker 3: like a mundane scene or activity, something that is not

707
00:38:58,120 --> 00:39:01,839
Speaker 3: unsettling by itself, but then suddenly give the impression that

708
00:39:01,920 --> 00:39:06,799
Speaker 3: it is being watched unsympathetically. It reminds me of the

709
00:39:07,000 --> 00:39:10,400
Speaker 3: excellent opening sentence of HG. Well's War of the Worlds,

710
00:39:10,520 --> 00:39:13,640
Speaker 3: where he says, quote, no one would have believed in

711
00:39:13,680 --> 00:39:16,920
Speaker 3: the last years of the nineteenth century that this world

712
00:39:17,040 --> 00:39:21,080
Speaker 3: was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than

713
00:39:21,160 --> 00:39:24,200
Speaker 3: man's and yet as mortal as his own. That as

714
00:39:24,239 --> 00:39:28,240
Speaker 3: men busied themselves about their various concerns, they were scrutinized

715
00:39:28,239 --> 00:39:31,200
Speaker 3: and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with

716
00:39:31,239 --> 00:39:35,560
Speaker 3: a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and

717
00:39:35,640 --> 00:39:37,360
Speaker 3: multiply and a drop of water.

718
00:39:37,960 --> 00:39:43,080
Speaker 1: Hmm. Yeah, that's a good point. This may be ultimately

719
00:39:43,120 --> 00:39:45,200
Speaker 1: because I had some sense of where things were going,

720
00:39:45,239 --> 00:39:47,799
Speaker 1: but I also found it a tiny bit foreboding that

721
00:39:47,880 --> 00:39:52,040
Speaker 1: the box is carried around via inserted staves, like it's

722
00:39:52,080 --> 00:39:54,520
Speaker 1: the Arc of the Covenant or something, you know. I

723
00:39:54,520 --> 00:39:56,959
Speaker 1: don't know, I just I don't see workmen carrying things

724
00:39:57,000 --> 00:40:00,480
Speaker 1: around like this. Maybe this is accurate, or maybe it

725
00:40:00,560 --> 00:40:03,960
Speaker 1: is kind of a nod to something strange. I'm not sure.

726
00:40:04,520 --> 00:40:06,600
Speaker 3: Yeah, with the poles and sert it's like the Arc

727
00:40:06,640 --> 00:40:10,320
Speaker 3: of the Covenant or like a palanquin, which is especially

728
00:40:10,880 --> 00:40:14,360
Speaker 3: funny slash disturbing when there is actually a person inside

729
00:40:14,360 --> 00:40:17,640
Speaker 3: the box. So they're being carried like a king, accepted

730
00:40:17,719 --> 00:40:19,919
Speaker 3: as they're not being treated.

731
00:40:19,560 --> 00:40:21,880
Speaker 1: Well yeah, yeah, And there are a number of visual

732
00:40:21,880 --> 00:40:25,120
Speaker 1: comparisons that end up being made between the box and

733
00:40:25,200 --> 00:40:28,239
Speaker 1: other things in the world. Will discuss as we proceed.

734
00:40:29,640 --> 00:40:32,120
Speaker 3: So anyway, the phone company guys install the box. They

735
00:40:32,200 --> 00:40:34,320
Speaker 3: bolt it down to the earth and they get in

736
00:40:34,360 --> 00:40:36,480
Speaker 3: their truck and drive away, and we see the box

737
00:40:36,600 --> 00:40:38,719
Speaker 3: just left in the middle of the square. It is

738
00:40:38,760 --> 00:40:41,640
Speaker 3: the brightest object in the frame. The door is hanging

739
00:40:41,680 --> 00:40:46,040
Speaker 3: open invitingly. It looks absolutely jolly. And after this we

740
00:40:46,080 --> 00:40:48,400
Speaker 3: get a kind of slice of life of the residents

741
00:40:48,400 --> 00:40:49,440
Speaker 3: of the local buildings.

742
00:40:49,480 --> 00:40:50,040
Speaker 1: In the morning.

743
00:40:50,120 --> 00:40:52,719
Speaker 3: We see a gardener out watering the plants in the

744
00:40:52,719 --> 00:40:57,080
Speaker 3: plaza with a hose. Children running around, playing and chasing

745
00:40:57,120 --> 00:40:58,759
Speaker 3: after each other before they have to go to the

746
00:40:58,760 --> 00:41:02,200
Speaker 3: school bus, some nuns out on a walk. We see

747
00:41:02,239 --> 00:41:04,560
Speaker 3: this cool guy, Rob. I've got a screenshop for you

748
00:41:04,600 --> 00:41:06,840
Speaker 3: to look at. Here's a guy with a button up

749
00:41:06,880 --> 00:41:11,040
Speaker 3: shirt with a big seventies collar and big sunglasses.

750
00:41:11,160 --> 00:41:14,360
Speaker 1: I like his look. He's got some books there he

751
00:41:14,560 --> 00:41:16,320
Speaker 1: has to return those to the library or something.

752
00:41:16,640 --> 00:41:19,879
Speaker 3: Yeah, I bet their books on the occult, they've got

753
00:41:19,880 --> 00:41:26,239
Speaker 3: to be interlibrary loan for the Necronomicon. So eventually we

754
00:41:26,280 --> 00:41:29,720
Speaker 3: meet our protagonist again. He is an unnamed middle aged

755
00:41:29,800 --> 00:41:33,000
Speaker 3: man in a business suit with this with this seventies

756
00:41:33,080 --> 00:41:36,160
Speaker 3: tie with the cool design on it. He is bald

757
00:41:36,239 --> 00:41:38,160
Speaker 3: on the top of his head, with a horseshoe of

758
00:41:38,239 --> 00:41:41,160
Speaker 3: dark hair and a mustache. And from what I've read,

759
00:41:41,560 --> 00:41:44,400
Speaker 3: I think this guy is supposed to look like a

760
00:41:44,520 --> 00:41:50,040
Speaker 3: sort of stereotyped character, a stereotypical urban businessman in nineteen

761
00:41:50,120 --> 00:41:53,759
Speaker 3: seventy Spain. This is our gray man, and the gray

762
00:41:53,760 --> 00:41:56,719
Speaker 3: Man is not alone. He is leaving home in the

763
00:41:56,760 --> 00:41:59,520
Speaker 3: morning with his son, who's a boy of maybe a

764
00:41:59,520 --> 00:42:01,920
Speaker 3: ten or two, twelve or so, and his son is

765
00:42:01,920 --> 00:42:06,239
Speaker 3: out bouncing a blue soccer ball. So the son is

766
00:42:06,280 --> 00:42:08,399
Speaker 3: like kicking the soccer ball around and at one point

767
00:42:08,440 --> 00:42:11,800
Speaker 3: he kicks it and it flies into the new phone

768
00:42:11,840 --> 00:42:14,480
Speaker 3: booth because the door is just hanging right open, and

769
00:42:14,560 --> 00:42:17,640
Speaker 3: upon rewatch, I was horrified because I forgot about this moment,

770
00:42:18,480 --> 00:42:21,000
Speaker 3: but I remember at this part the boy he goes

771
00:42:21,120 --> 00:42:23,960
Speaker 3: into the phone booth to retrieve the ball, and he

772
00:42:24,040 --> 00:42:26,279
Speaker 3: stops for a second like he's messing around. I think

773
00:42:26,320 --> 00:42:28,960
Speaker 3: he's dawdling before school. And he goes to pick up

774
00:42:28,960 --> 00:42:31,680
Speaker 3: the phone receiver and his dad comes over is like,

775
00:42:31,719 --> 00:42:34,000
Speaker 3: come on, no, get out of there, and the boy does,

776
00:42:34,080 --> 00:42:37,440
Speaker 3: and he never closes the door again. There is still

777
00:42:37,640 --> 00:42:40,760
Speaker 3: if you don't know what's coming. There's nothing overtly frightening

778
00:42:40,760 --> 00:42:43,480
Speaker 3: at this point. It's only on rewatch that this moment

779
00:42:43,520 --> 00:42:46,640
Speaker 3: becomes tense. But the boy points out that the phone

780
00:42:46,680 --> 00:42:49,160
Speaker 3: booth is new, and the father acts almost as if

781
00:42:49,200 --> 00:42:52,920
Speaker 3: he would not have noticed that fact otherwise, So they

782
00:42:52,920 --> 00:42:55,040
Speaker 3: walk off to catch the school bus. The father gives

783
00:42:55,080 --> 00:42:57,239
Speaker 3: his son a kiss and says goodbye for the day,

784
00:42:58,239 --> 00:43:00,440
Speaker 3: and then while walking back the way he can the

785
00:43:00,480 --> 00:43:03,560
Speaker 3: gray man stops beside the phone booth and he seems

786
00:43:03,600 --> 00:43:06,319
Speaker 3: to remember that he needs to make a call, so

787
00:43:06,800 --> 00:43:11,000
Speaker 3: he steps inside. And I noticed this also on rewatch.

788
00:43:11,200 --> 00:43:14,239
Speaker 3: We never learn who he was planning to call or

789
00:43:14,280 --> 00:43:16,799
Speaker 3: what he was calling about. Never find out.

790
00:43:17,120 --> 00:43:19,719
Speaker 1: I mean it was probably something mundane and boring, like

791
00:43:19,760 --> 00:43:21,759
Speaker 1: he's like, oh, I forgot I'm supposed to call about

792
00:43:21,760 --> 00:43:24,640
Speaker 1: those tickets for the weekend, or I forgot to call

793
00:43:24,680 --> 00:43:28,480
Speaker 1: about the laundry. You know, nowadays we would stop halfway

794
00:43:28,520 --> 00:43:31,040
Speaker 1: between point A and point B, pull out her cell

795
00:43:31,040 --> 00:43:34,279
Speaker 1: phone and send that quick email or text message. And

796
00:43:34,360 --> 00:43:36,000
Speaker 1: I assume that's just what's going on here.

797
00:43:37,040 --> 00:43:40,080
Speaker 3: But when the man lifts the receiver in the phone booth,

798
00:43:40,200 --> 00:43:43,040
Speaker 3: he does not hear a dial tone, so he starts

799
00:43:43,080 --> 00:43:46,520
Speaker 3: fiddling around with the phone, trying to make it work. Meanwhile,

800
00:43:46,840 --> 00:43:51,240
Speaker 3: behind his back, the door to the box quietly folds shut.

801
00:43:51,400 --> 00:43:54,480
Speaker 3: It's just like a venus fly trap closing on its prey.

802
00:43:55,440 --> 00:43:57,680
Speaker 3: And still there is nothing yet to let you know

803
00:43:57,760 --> 00:43:59,840
Speaker 3: this is horror. The man just keeps messing around with

804
00:43:59,840 --> 00:44:02,440
Speaker 3: the phone to try to figure out what's wrong. Eventually

805
00:44:02,520 --> 00:44:05,440
Speaker 3: he gives up and he tries to leave, but now

806
00:44:05,520 --> 00:44:08,879
Speaker 3: the door is closed and it will not open, and

807
00:44:08,920 --> 00:44:12,680
Speaker 3: he pushes and pulls and it is not going anywhere.

808
00:44:13,200 --> 00:44:15,880
Speaker 3: And then he just stands back and folds his arms, like,

809
00:44:15,960 --> 00:44:18,719
Speaker 3: oh brother, this is all I need very much. In

810
00:44:18,760 --> 00:44:21,279
Speaker 3: the mime school of posture.

811
00:44:21,400 --> 00:44:23,360
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, so at this point again, yeah, there's no

812
00:44:23,440 --> 00:44:27,440
Speaker 1: musical sting to drive home what's happening. The ceiling of

813
00:44:27,480 --> 00:44:29,799
Speaker 1: the phone booth is as low key and natural as

814
00:44:29,840 --> 00:44:32,799
Speaker 1: can be. And initially it's just like, oh goodness, yeah,

815
00:44:33,080 --> 00:44:34,759
Speaker 1: I've got one more thing now I have to do

816
00:44:34,920 --> 00:44:36,880
Speaker 1: in my day, and it's get out of this phone booth.

817
00:44:37,360 --> 00:44:39,080
Speaker 1: But you know, it seems like I've just got to

818
00:44:39,120 --> 00:44:41,040
Speaker 1: figure this out, right, It's like there's a latch or

819
00:44:41,040 --> 00:44:44,080
Speaker 1: there's something. This will just take a minute.

820
00:44:44,440 --> 00:44:47,239
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so his initial struggles give rise to I

821
00:44:47,239 --> 00:44:49,840
Speaker 3: think some of the most famous images from the movie

822
00:44:49,880 --> 00:44:52,920
Speaker 3: images you see clipped out around the internet, ones that

823
00:44:52,960 --> 00:44:56,000
Speaker 3: are reproduced, and stills and graffiti and on the poster,

824
00:44:57,000 --> 00:44:59,680
Speaker 3: it's just the man struggling in the situation. He looks

825
00:44:59,719 --> 00:45:02,399
Speaker 3: around on the inside of the box. He's probably trying

826
00:45:02,400 --> 00:45:05,200
Speaker 3: to find some kind of release mechanism or something that

827
00:45:05,320 --> 00:45:07,920
Speaker 3: he's pressing on the corners and searching up and down,

828
00:45:08,080 --> 00:45:10,919
Speaker 3: but nothing. The door is locked and there is no

829
00:45:10,960 --> 00:45:21,440
Speaker 3: apparent way to get out. So next a couple of

830
00:45:21,480 --> 00:45:24,280
Speaker 3: men come along. There is a guy in a polo

831
00:45:24,360 --> 00:45:27,640
Speaker 3: shirt and then an older man and a jacket, and

832
00:45:27,960 --> 00:45:31,200
Speaker 3: they come along walking past the box, and the man

833
00:45:31,239 --> 00:45:33,439
Speaker 3: in the box pantomimes to them that he needs help

834
00:45:33,480 --> 00:45:36,640
Speaker 3: getting out, and so the two men stop to try.

835
00:45:38,160 --> 00:45:41,120
Speaker 3: I think it's worth noting that in their performance, they

836
00:45:41,160 --> 00:45:44,719
Speaker 3: never seem to care all that much. They do not

837
00:45:44,920 --> 00:45:48,719
Speaker 3: act like they are concerned for the man. They do

838
00:45:48,760 --> 00:45:51,600
Speaker 3: stop to help, but for example, the first thing they

839
00:45:51,680 --> 00:45:53,960
Speaker 3: do is they go to the man and they suggest

840
00:45:54,280 --> 00:45:58,880
Speaker 3: that he try pushing on the door. Then when that

841
00:45:59,040 --> 00:46:01,160
Speaker 3: clearly doesn't work, they start trying to pull on the

842
00:46:01,160 --> 00:46:04,400
Speaker 3: door from the outside, but it's not moving. And then

843
00:46:04,440 --> 00:46:07,279
Speaker 3: they declare, well, we're late for work, and they move on,

844
00:46:07,520 --> 00:46:08,480
Speaker 3: leaving the man behind.

845
00:46:08,560 --> 00:46:11,320
Speaker 1: Yeah. The guys are basically like, look, we've done exactly

846
00:46:11,400 --> 00:46:14,560
Speaker 1: as much as the Social contract Demand's office, and then

847
00:46:14,600 --> 00:46:17,160
Speaker 1: they move on. And this is a vibe that's going

848
00:46:17,239 --> 00:46:20,360
Speaker 1: to continue throughout the film where different people attempt to help,

849
00:46:21,160 --> 00:46:24,400
Speaker 1: their actions always very much within the neuro confines of

850
00:46:24,440 --> 00:46:27,520
Speaker 1: what society and or their job requires of them.

851
00:46:28,200 --> 00:46:30,120
Speaker 3: And the thing I want to emphasize is true of

852
00:46:30,160 --> 00:46:33,439
Speaker 3: them and basically everybody else who comes along. They do

853
00:46:33,560 --> 00:46:37,080
Speaker 3: briefly stop to try to help, but it never feels

854
00:46:37,120 --> 00:46:40,600
Speaker 3: like they see him or like they're concerned for him.

855
00:46:40,640 --> 00:46:42,560
Speaker 3: It's just kind of like, oh, here's a little problem,

856
00:46:42,680 --> 00:46:44,839
Speaker 3: eh okay, can't fix it, see yah.

857
00:46:45,200 --> 00:46:48,320
Speaker 1: Yeah, And they never seem to appreciate any real danger,

858
00:46:49,160 --> 00:46:51,480
Speaker 1: and of course we don't truly begin and our main

859
00:46:51,560 --> 00:46:54,120
Speaker 1: character doesn't truly begin to understand the danger till later.

860
00:46:54,680 --> 00:46:56,799
Speaker 3: So in the meantime, while these guys are pulling on

861
00:46:56,840 --> 00:47:00,000
Speaker 3: the door, several spectators sort of gather up around the scene.

862
00:47:00,120 --> 00:47:02,400
Speaker 3: There are some adult women coming back from the store.

863
00:47:02,640 --> 00:47:05,879
Speaker 3: They stop to look at him from a distance. There's

864
00:47:05,920 --> 00:47:08,960
Speaker 3: a group of evil children who begin pointing and laughing

865
00:47:09,000 --> 00:47:11,600
Speaker 3: at him, and they gather outside the door to the box.

866
00:47:11,880 --> 00:47:15,239
Speaker 3: They're mocking him. They're saying, like, what's wrong with you man?

867
00:47:15,280 --> 00:47:17,480
Speaker 3: And one of them says, should we throw you peanuts?

868
00:47:17,920 --> 00:47:20,760
Speaker 3: And the children run in circles around the box, hooting

869
00:47:20,800 --> 00:47:23,160
Speaker 3: at him, and they're just having the time of their lives.

870
00:47:23,239 --> 00:47:24,279
Speaker 3: This is hilarious.

871
00:47:24,719 --> 00:47:26,560
Speaker 1: Yeah. How many Spanish films have we seen at this

872
00:47:26,600 --> 00:47:30,040
Speaker 1: point where mobs of children mock an adults predicament. I

873
00:47:30,040 --> 00:47:31,520
Speaker 1: think this is at least the third one.

874
00:47:31,800 --> 00:47:34,719
Speaker 3: That's the mainstay of Paul Nashy movies. Also, yeah, it's

875
00:47:34,719 --> 00:47:36,480
Speaker 3: just mobs of evil children.

876
00:47:36,920 --> 00:47:39,479
Speaker 1: Yeah. I believe it also showed up in the Tomb

877
00:47:39,520 --> 00:47:41,600
Speaker 1: of the Blind Dead film that we watch. It's like

878
00:47:42,840 --> 00:47:45,280
Speaker 1: Spanish children in these movies are just out to shame

879
00:47:45,440 --> 00:47:46,040
Speaker 1: and harass.

880
00:47:46,560 --> 00:47:48,680
Speaker 3: So I think it's kind of interesting to note all

881
00:47:48,719 --> 00:47:51,400
Speaker 3: of the different characters who become part of the crowd

882
00:47:51,520 --> 00:47:53,960
Speaker 3: around the man in the box. So there's a guy

883
00:47:54,640 --> 00:47:57,799
Speaker 3: carrying an ornate cushioned chair on his head. I think

884
00:47:57,800 --> 00:48:01,040
Speaker 3: he might he's supposed to be a mover. Maybe maybe

885
00:48:01,040 --> 00:48:03,160
Speaker 3: somebody is moving into one of these apartment buildings. And

886
00:48:03,200 --> 00:48:05,560
Speaker 3: he stops and he puts the chair down in the

887
00:48:06,280 --> 00:48:09,640
Speaker 3: yard just to watch the scene. And then there's a

888
00:48:09,680 --> 00:48:12,000
Speaker 3: man who's or it's a young man I guess, going

889
00:48:12,000 --> 00:48:15,040
Speaker 3: around selling pastries from a tray. He gets robbed. Later,

890
00:48:16,440 --> 00:48:20,600
Speaker 3: a couple of movers are unloading a large polished mirror

891
00:48:20,680 --> 00:48:24,080
Speaker 3: that has like baroque framing on the outside, and they

892
00:48:24,080 --> 00:48:26,440
Speaker 3: stop and they put the mirror down to watch what's happening.

893
00:48:27,520 --> 00:48:30,760
Speaker 3: A few women nearby they sit down on a bench

894
00:48:30,800 --> 00:48:33,560
Speaker 3: and begin knitting, and they're knitting. That's when you really

895
00:48:33,560 --> 00:48:36,840
Speaker 3: know you're in trouble. And so next we get to

896
00:48:37,680 --> 00:48:42,680
Speaker 3: the large man Tito Garcia. Here he's this big guy

897
00:48:42,760 --> 00:48:45,600
Speaker 3: carrying an athletic bag. I think it's a Puma brand bag.

898
00:48:45,680 --> 00:48:48,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like I guess he's going to the gym or

899
00:48:48,239 --> 00:48:49,400
Speaker 1: just came back from the gym.

900
00:48:49,600 --> 00:48:52,719
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's a weightlifter guy. And he comes to the

901
00:48:52,719 --> 00:48:55,640
Speaker 3: rescue and he's like, Okay, everybody, get out of the way.

902
00:48:55,760 --> 00:48:58,319
Speaker 3: I'm the strongest. I'll get this thing open. And he

903
00:48:58,480 --> 00:49:01,600
Speaker 3: tugs and he tugs and and it's played a bit

904
00:49:01,640 --> 00:49:05,280
Speaker 3: for comedy. All he succeeds in is breaking the handle

905
00:49:05,280 --> 00:49:09,520
Speaker 3: off the door, and then he tries repeatedly ramming the

906
00:49:09,600 --> 00:49:12,279
Speaker 3: glass with his shoulder like he's a charging bull, but

907
00:49:12,440 --> 00:49:15,440
Speaker 3: to no avail. And this is all played for physical comedy.

908
00:49:15,880 --> 00:49:18,359
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you know, you do get the vibe that

909
00:49:18,640 --> 00:49:21,400
Speaker 1: he is trying to do what's right, both in the

910
00:49:21,440 --> 00:49:25,200
Speaker 1: eyes of the gray man inside, but also the crowd

911
00:49:25,200 --> 00:49:28,279
Speaker 1: of onlookers, like there's a performative aspect of what's going on,

912
00:49:28,680 --> 00:49:33,000
Speaker 1: even though as he begins to fail at this task,

913
00:49:33,080 --> 00:49:35,960
Speaker 1: they begin to sort of mock him as well. But

914
00:49:36,080 --> 00:49:38,080
Speaker 1: in the end, once more, there's only so much he

915
00:49:38,120 --> 00:49:41,840
Speaker 1: can do and has to do in everyone's eyes, and

916
00:49:41,880 --> 00:49:43,680
Speaker 1: it's kind of like, well, it is what it is.

917
00:49:43,800 --> 00:49:45,720
Speaker 1: I gave it a good go, but I've got places

918
00:49:45,760 --> 00:49:46,879
Speaker 1: to be buddy. Yeah.

919
00:49:46,920 --> 00:49:50,080
Speaker 3: Once again, I feel like he never seems to really

920
00:49:50,360 --> 00:49:53,480
Speaker 3: see or be concerned about the man inside. He's just like, oh,

921
00:49:53,520 --> 00:49:55,840
Speaker 3: here's a problem. I'm strong, I can get this thing open.

922
00:49:55,880 --> 00:49:58,600
Speaker 3: And he tries and tries, and then he's humiliated and

923
00:49:58,640 --> 00:49:59,799
Speaker 3: then last to leave.

924
00:50:00,280 --> 00:50:02,560
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, but yeah, there's never a sense that he

925
00:50:03,239 --> 00:50:08,040
Speaker 1: cares about the individual in the box. He wants to

926
00:50:08,920 --> 00:50:11,920
Speaker 1: obey the social contract. He wants to sort of appease

927
00:50:11,960 --> 00:50:14,719
Speaker 1: the crowd and perhaps himself in his own ego. But

928
00:50:16,000 --> 00:50:18,920
Speaker 1: does he really see the gray man at all in

929
00:50:18,960 --> 00:50:19,360
Speaker 1: a sense?

930
00:50:19,440 --> 00:50:19,480
Speaker 2: No.

931
00:50:20,280 --> 00:50:22,960
Speaker 3: Somewhere in here, there's an interesting moment where the man

932
00:50:23,040 --> 00:50:26,640
Speaker 3: in the box sees his reflection in the fancy mirror

933
00:50:26,680 --> 00:50:29,960
Speaker 3: that the movers have set down across from him and

934
00:50:30,120 --> 00:50:32,520
Speaker 3: on rewatch. I thought this was kind of interesting because

935
00:50:32,800 --> 00:50:34,640
Speaker 3: a few things happen here. For one thing, and the

936
00:50:34,680 --> 00:50:39,040
Speaker 3: man sees himself in the mirror. He's clearly embarrassed and

937
00:50:39,080 --> 00:50:41,680
Speaker 3: he kind of tries to adjust his appearance in a way.

938
00:50:42,280 --> 00:50:44,760
Speaker 3: But this is also the first moment where it felt

939
00:50:44,760 --> 00:50:50,120
Speaker 3: to me like Vasquez's performance where the man's demeanor shifts

940
00:50:50,160 --> 00:50:54,080
Speaker 3: a little bit from frustration and embarrassment to worry.

941
00:50:55,000 --> 00:50:58,200
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And of course I love just the idea

942
00:50:58,200 --> 00:51:00,239
Speaker 1: of bringing the mirror into this. It feels very very

943
00:51:00,960 --> 00:51:05,359
Speaker 1: borges esque, you know. And also the mirror is of

944
00:51:05,400 --> 00:51:09,319
Speaker 1: course a person in a box sort, and so the

945
00:51:09,320 --> 00:51:12,120
Speaker 1: man in the box is now reflected and is another

946
00:51:12,200 --> 00:51:15,560
Speaker 1: man in the box. And I think maybe now he's

947
00:51:15,800 --> 00:51:19,319
Speaker 1: seeing himself from the outside, right, he's seeing what other

948
00:51:19,320 --> 00:51:22,239
Speaker 1: people are seeing. That he is this person trapped within

949
00:51:23,680 --> 00:51:25,640
Speaker 1: and maybe less of a person, you know, he is,

950
00:51:25,719 --> 00:51:29,080
Speaker 1: just he is within something else. He has no he's

951
00:51:29,120 --> 00:51:31,640
Speaker 1: no longer like this free part of the world.

952
00:51:32,160 --> 00:51:34,520
Speaker 3: I think that's right. Yeah, But then so we we're

953
00:51:34,520 --> 00:51:36,799
Speaker 3: gonna get another attempt to intervene. So the guy who

954
00:51:36,920 --> 00:51:39,640
Speaker 3: was carrying the mirror next tries to show that he's

955
00:51:39,719 --> 00:51:42,080
Speaker 3: the one who can get the box open. He's like,

956
00:51:42,120 --> 00:51:44,879
Speaker 3: it takes not strength but skill, and so he pulls

957
00:51:44,920 --> 00:51:47,120
Speaker 3: out his tools. He's got like a screwdriver. He has

958
00:51:47,160 --> 00:51:49,640
Speaker 3: the tools and he has the know how. So we

959
00:51:49,680 --> 00:51:51,960
Speaker 3: see him searching all over the box looking for the

960
00:51:52,000 --> 00:51:54,880
Speaker 3: place where he can unscrew the door and get it open,

961
00:51:55,440 --> 00:51:57,719
Speaker 3: but he finds nothing. It's like it was made not

962
00:51:57,800 --> 00:52:00,920
Speaker 3: to be disassembled. And then he tries to pry the

963
00:52:00,960 --> 00:52:02,840
Speaker 3: door open with his tools, but he can't get that

964
00:52:02,960 --> 00:52:07,040
Speaker 3: done either. And then while the screwdriver man is working

965
00:52:07,080 --> 00:52:10,040
Speaker 3: and the crowd is watching. Uh. The man in the

966
00:52:10,080 --> 00:52:14,879
Speaker 3: telephone box, he like witnesses things happening outside. I thought

967
00:52:14,920 --> 00:52:18,279
Speaker 3: this was so interesting. So everybody's watching him, and then

968
00:52:18,320 --> 00:52:22,000
Speaker 3: he's looking out through the windows seeing things happening in

969
00:52:22,040 --> 00:52:25,000
Speaker 3: the crowd that other people are not seeing. He's like

970
00:52:25,040 --> 00:52:28,680
Speaker 3: seeing what is not otherwise observed. So he like watches

971
00:52:28,719 --> 00:52:32,440
Speaker 3: a man steal pastries from the pastry vendor's tray and

972
00:52:32,480 --> 00:52:36,000
Speaker 3: cram them in his mouth, and he walks. He sees

973
00:52:36,000 --> 00:52:40,439
Speaker 3: a man walk by behind the crowd with multicolored balloons. Uh.

974
00:52:40,480 --> 00:52:43,320
Speaker 3: He sees the mover who set down the cushioned chair,

975
00:52:43,560 --> 00:52:46,280
Speaker 3: offering the chair to an elderly woman who is also

976
00:52:46,320 --> 00:52:49,560
Speaker 3: there watching the scene, which is funny because it's like

977
00:52:49,640 --> 00:52:52,400
Speaker 3: it's like a gesture of kindness, but not toward the

978
00:52:52,440 --> 00:52:55,160
Speaker 3: man in the box, only toward another member of his

979
00:52:55,320 --> 00:53:01,480
Speaker 3: unwonted audience. And then finally, uh oh, here comes fuz So.

980
00:53:01,600 --> 00:53:06,000
Speaker 3: Two uniformed police come marching up to the scene. And

981
00:53:06,200 --> 00:53:10,239
Speaker 3: I've read other reviewers mentioning feeling at this moment when

982
00:53:10,239 --> 00:53:12,680
Speaker 3: they watched it, like, Okay, the authorities are here, the

983
00:53:12,719 --> 00:53:15,160
Speaker 3: situation is under control now. But nope.

984
00:53:15,840 --> 00:53:18,279
Speaker 1: Well, you know, given the sort of rule of three, right,

985
00:53:18,320 --> 00:53:20,480
Speaker 1: if this were some sort of a parable, and it

986
00:53:20,560 --> 00:53:22,960
Speaker 1: definitely feel it has more of the trappings of parable.

987
00:53:23,000 --> 00:53:25,480
Speaker 1: I think when we tell listeners what's happening here, it

988
00:53:25,480 --> 00:53:27,640
Speaker 1: feels like okay now. And then the third people that

989
00:53:27,680 --> 00:53:30,240
Speaker 1: came and tried to solve the riddle, they were able

990
00:53:30,280 --> 00:53:33,440
Speaker 1: to solve it because they had legal authority to do so.

991
00:53:33,719 --> 00:53:36,920
Speaker 1: But like you say, this is also not going to work.

992
00:53:36,880 --> 00:53:39,160
Speaker 3: Right, So the cops here have an awesome way of

993
00:53:39,200 --> 00:53:42,600
Speaker 3: dealing with the situation. They arrive and they tell the

994
00:53:42,640 --> 00:53:44,880
Speaker 3: man with the screwdriver to get away from the box,

995
00:53:45,040 --> 00:53:46,759
Speaker 3: and they tell the man stuck in the box to

996
00:53:46,840 --> 00:53:50,360
Speaker 3: get out immediately, and then when he shows that he can't,

997
00:53:50,520 --> 00:53:52,920
Speaker 3: they start barking threats at him and saying, didn't you

998
00:53:52,960 --> 00:53:54,640
Speaker 3: hear me? I said, get out of there now.

999
00:53:56,760 --> 00:54:00,960
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, once more they follow procedure, they enforce their authority,

1000
00:54:01,840 --> 00:54:05,000
Speaker 1: but they're unable to help and gladly step aside to

1001
00:54:05,080 --> 00:54:09,040
Speaker 1: let some other authorized party jump in. And during this

1002
00:54:09,280 --> 00:54:12,160
Speaker 1: section of the short film here I thought quite a

1003
00:54:12,160 --> 00:54:15,040
Speaker 1: bit about the bystander effect in all of this. This

1004
00:54:15,120 --> 00:54:17,799
Speaker 1: is that psychological theory that I believe we've talked about

1005
00:54:17,800 --> 00:54:20,319
Speaker 1: in the show before that states that the presence of

1006
00:54:20,440 --> 00:54:24,960
Speaker 1: others tends to discourage an individual from intervening. So in

1007
00:54:25,000 --> 00:54:28,840
Speaker 1: the more people there are, arguably the less likely any

1008
00:54:28,880 --> 00:54:32,720
Speaker 1: individual is to help. And this is not necessarily grounded

1009
00:54:32,760 --> 00:54:35,640
Speaker 1: in any kind of like state of innate cruelty or anything.

1010
00:54:36,160 --> 00:54:38,560
Speaker 1: If there is a conscious energy to it all, it

1011
00:54:38,640 --> 00:54:41,240
Speaker 1: is often something along the lines of, oh, well, someone

1012
00:54:41,280 --> 00:54:44,959
Speaker 1: more qualified, someone more official, or someone more just someone

1013
00:54:45,040 --> 00:54:47,920
Speaker 1: closer to the situation, They're going to jump in and

1014
00:54:47,960 --> 00:54:50,560
Speaker 1: do what needs to be done. I'm not that person.

1015
00:54:51,080 --> 00:54:53,440
Speaker 1: And this is why if you've ever taken any CPR

1016
00:54:53,520 --> 00:54:56,919
Speaker 1: classes before, they always stress that you don't say, hey,

1017
00:54:56,960 --> 00:54:59,319
Speaker 1: someone call nine to one one, because there's too much

1018
00:54:59,400 --> 00:55:01,560
Speaker 1: room for people to say, yes, that's a great idea.

1019
00:55:01,719 --> 00:55:05,640
Speaker 1: Someone should do that, maybe someone closer to the situation

1020
00:55:05,880 --> 00:55:07,440
Speaker 1: or someone unless it or know. What you do is

1021
00:55:07,480 --> 00:55:09,680
Speaker 1: you point at someone and you tell them to call

1022
00:55:09,760 --> 00:55:12,040
Speaker 1: nine to one one, Because if you leave it open,

1023
00:55:12,920 --> 00:55:16,640
Speaker 1: then there's this there's a high likelihood that nothing is

1024
00:55:16,680 --> 00:55:18,440
Speaker 1: going to be done, or it's going to take far

1025
00:55:18,520 --> 00:55:20,640
Speaker 1: longer for some decision to be made.

1026
00:55:20,880 --> 00:55:23,960
Speaker 3: Yeah, everybody assumes somebody else is doing it, or it

1027
00:55:24,000 --> 00:55:25,840
Speaker 3: takes them too long to figure out who's doing it.

1028
00:55:25,920 --> 00:55:28,319
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So when the when the police kind

1029
00:55:28,320 --> 00:55:31,759
Speaker 1: of run out of options, that you know someone else

1030
00:55:31,840 --> 00:55:33,920
Speaker 1: is about to arrive on the scene. It's the fire department,

1031
00:55:33,920 --> 00:55:36,040
Speaker 1: and they're like, oh, well, good, fire department will take care.

1032
00:55:35,920 --> 00:55:38,520
Speaker 3: Of it, okay, see yah. So the fire department, it

1033
00:55:38,600 --> 00:55:40,400
Speaker 3: really seems like these are the ones who are going

1034
00:55:40,440 --> 00:55:43,680
Speaker 3: to solve the problem, right, So they've they've got ladders

1035
00:55:43,719 --> 00:55:46,680
Speaker 3: and axes and everything they need to get inside this box.

1036
00:55:47,960 --> 00:55:51,919
Speaker 3: So they get like one of the fire firefighters gets

1037
00:55:52,000 --> 00:55:54,040
Speaker 3: up on top of the box and it seems like

1038
00:55:54,080 --> 00:55:56,440
Speaker 3: he is going to smash the glass.

1039
00:55:56,040 --> 00:55:58,560
Speaker 1: In and I was really thinking this was going to

1040
00:55:58,600 --> 00:56:00,919
Speaker 1: do it. Surely like they have fine, like someone has

1041
00:56:00,960 --> 00:56:04,000
Speaker 1: the tools. It seems it's a little violent, but it

1042
00:56:04,040 --> 00:56:05,439
Speaker 1: looks like this is gonna work.

1043
00:56:05,760 --> 00:56:10,440
Speaker 3: But just then an even higher authority arrives, the phone company.

1044
00:56:12,120 --> 00:56:15,600
Speaker 3: So finally the right people for the job, the phone

1045
00:56:15,640 --> 00:56:18,879
Speaker 3: company truck parks and four men get out, I think

1046
00:56:18,960 --> 00:56:23,040
Speaker 3: the same fore men who installed the box earlier, and

1047
00:56:23,120 --> 00:56:26,399
Speaker 3: they One thing I thought was worth noting, we never

1048
00:56:26,400 --> 00:56:28,319
Speaker 3: get a very close look at any of the phone

1049
00:56:28,360 --> 00:56:32,239
Speaker 3: company workers whatever they actually are, the people dressed up

1050
00:56:32,239 --> 00:56:34,960
Speaker 3: in the green uniforms who put the box there. But

1051
00:56:35,320 --> 00:56:39,680
Speaker 3: from a distance they all look vaguely like the man

1052
00:56:39,800 --> 00:56:43,120
Speaker 3: stuck inside the box. They're all like middle aged men

1053
00:56:43,200 --> 00:56:46,160
Speaker 3: who are balding on top with a horseshoe of dark hair.

1054
00:56:46,719 --> 00:56:49,280
Speaker 1: That's a good point. Yeah, they're just very much bland,

1055
00:56:49,440 --> 00:56:53,560
Speaker 1: everyday men, they are, and we get far, we get

1056
00:56:53,719 --> 00:56:55,960
Speaker 1: far less character from these. We don't get a sense

1057
00:56:56,320 --> 00:56:59,680
Speaker 1: of the same sort of interpersonal connection that we do

1058
00:56:59,760 --> 00:57:03,080
Speaker 1: with these other phases of helpers or would be helpers.

1059
00:57:03,440 --> 00:57:05,800
Speaker 3: That's right. So the four men come and they unbolt

1060
00:57:05,800 --> 00:57:08,120
Speaker 3: the phone booth from the earth, they lift it up,

1061
00:57:08,640 --> 00:57:11,480
Speaker 3: they insert the poles to carry it, and then they

1062
00:57:11,560 --> 00:57:14,400
Speaker 3: carry it back to their flatbed truck, put it on

1063
00:57:14,440 --> 00:57:17,439
Speaker 3: the truck bed and drive away, all with the man

1064
00:57:17,600 --> 00:57:22,120
Speaker 3: still stuck inside, and everybody at the assembled crowd they're

1065
00:57:22,160 --> 00:57:25,640
Speaker 3: all cheering and celebrating like this is what's supposed to happen.

1066
00:57:26,120 --> 00:57:29,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like somebody who knows what they're doing came

1067
00:57:29,360 --> 00:57:31,560
Speaker 1: and did something, so things are okay now.

1068
00:57:31,880 --> 00:57:33,960
Speaker 3: But the guy in the box is like, wait, what

1069
00:57:33,960 --> 00:57:38,120
Speaker 3: what's going on? But from everybody outside's perspective, it's like

1070
00:57:38,200 --> 00:57:41,760
Speaker 3: it's absurd, but it almost is plausible that that is

1071
00:57:41,800 --> 00:57:45,680
Speaker 3: how a crowd would react, because it's now like by

1072
00:57:45,960 --> 00:57:49,320
Speaker 3: removing the man in a in a kind of weird

1073
00:57:49,320 --> 00:57:51,800
Speaker 3: psychological way, the people who were standing around can be

1074
00:57:51,840 --> 00:57:54,120
Speaker 3: like the situation has been resolved.

1075
00:57:54,400 --> 00:57:54,760
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1076
00:57:54,880 --> 00:58:06,120
Speaker 3: Yeah, So this gives rise to the middle section of

1077
00:58:06,160 --> 00:58:08,200
Speaker 3: the movie, where the man is still stuck in the

1078
00:58:08,360 --> 00:58:10,920
Speaker 3: booth and now he's riding around on the back of

1079
00:58:10,960 --> 00:58:14,120
Speaker 3: the truck. I did notice this earlier, actually, but I

1080
00:58:14,160 --> 00:58:15,960
Speaker 3: thought we got to mention at some point, So I

1081
00:58:15,960 --> 00:58:19,120
Speaker 3: do want to mention here how hot it seems like

1082
00:58:19,160 --> 00:58:21,600
Speaker 3: it would be inside that booth. Was just like the

1083
00:58:21,640 --> 00:58:25,360
Speaker 3: sun blasting down through the glass and the doors are stuck.

1084
00:58:26,040 --> 00:58:29,360
Speaker 3: And apparently this was actually an issue during filmmaking that,

1085
00:58:29,480 --> 00:58:31,760
Speaker 3: like for the actor in the box, it was quite

1086
00:58:31,800 --> 00:58:33,760
Speaker 3: hot in there, and they at some points had to

1087
00:58:34,680 --> 00:58:37,440
Speaker 3: like angle shots in certain ways so that you couldn't

1088
00:58:37,480 --> 00:58:40,480
Speaker 3: see that Pines had to be removed from parts of

1089
00:58:40,520 --> 00:58:42,880
Speaker 3: the box just to allow some air to circulate, or

1090
00:58:42,920 --> 00:58:46,240
Speaker 3: it would get unbearably hot inside. But during this section

1091
00:58:46,320 --> 00:58:48,960
Speaker 3: of the short, the truck is driving around Madrid and

1092
00:58:49,200 --> 00:58:53,080
Speaker 3: the man is becoming increasingly distressed. He tries to get

1093
00:58:53,080 --> 00:58:55,640
Speaker 3: the attention of the workers in the truck, but they

1094
00:58:55,680 --> 00:58:57,840
Speaker 3: won't even look at him like that. It's not like

1095
00:58:57,880 --> 00:59:01,720
Speaker 3: they're menacing. They just eyes forward, driving, no acknowledgment of

1096
00:59:01,800 --> 00:59:05,200
Speaker 3: him at all. Other people on the road, much like

1097
00:59:05,240 --> 00:59:09,560
Speaker 3: the crowd earlier, just do not seem to take him seriously.

1098
00:59:09,720 --> 00:59:12,480
Speaker 3: Like they stare at him, they're kind of amused, or

1099
00:59:12,520 --> 00:59:15,360
Speaker 3: they mock him and laugh at him. We see some

1100
00:59:15,440 --> 00:59:18,440
Speaker 3: young attractive people in a convertible pull up next to

1101
00:59:18,480 --> 00:59:20,880
Speaker 3: the truck and traffic, and they're all pointing at him.

1102
00:59:21,200 --> 00:59:23,360
Speaker 3: One of them jokingly, I think, asks if they can

1103
00:59:23,400 --> 00:59:24,240
Speaker 3: make a phone call.

1104
00:59:24,680 --> 00:59:30,439
Speaker 1: Yeah. And this whole time too, we're driving past more

1105
00:59:31,320 --> 00:59:35,040
Speaker 1: high rise apartment buildings in various high rise buildings in Madrid.

1106
00:59:35,320 --> 00:59:38,680
Speaker 1: And this is another I think there's some great visual

1107
00:59:38,720 --> 00:59:42,560
Speaker 1: poetry going on here between the vertical phone booth and

1108
00:59:42,600 --> 00:59:47,120
Speaker 1: the vertical buildings, the idea of these towers of modernity

1109
00:59:47,400 --> 00:59:49,840
Speaker 1: in here, this sort of little tower of modernity in

1110
00:59:49,880 --> 00:59:52,200
Speaker 1: which our main character is trapped. Yeah.

1111
00:59:52,240 --> 00:59:55,919
Speaker 3: And so obviously this section of the movie is where

1112
00:59:55,960 --> 00:59:59,320
Speaker 3: they were fulfilling part of their obligation to the Ministry

1113
00:59:59,360 --> 01:00:02,320
Speaker 3: Office that was like show us, show us Madrid modernizing,

1114
01:00:02,760 --> 01:00:04,880
Speaker 3: and so we get some of these views of the city,

1115
01:00:05,320 --> 01:00:07,240
Speaker 3: but I think a lot of them are sort of

1116
01:00:07,280 --> 01:00:10,320
Speaker 3: situated and edited together actually to make us feel some

1117
01:00:10,800 --> 01:00:11,560
Speaker 3: amount of dread.

1118
01:00:12,160 --> 01:00:12,520
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1119
01:00:12,600 --> 01:00:17,320
Speaker 3: Yeah, because we see like buildings being constructed, and so

1120
01:00:17,440 --> 01:00:20,680
Speaker 3: in a way all like construction, that's growth, that's modernizing,

1121
01:00:20,720 --> 01:00:23,840
Speaker 3: that's good, but we see kind of the bones of

1122
01:00:23,880 --> 01:00:26,800
Speaker 3: a building in a way that's a little unsettling, especially

1123
01:00:26,840 --> 01:00:29,280
Speaker 3: because we see them back to back with a moment

1124
01:00:29,320 --> 01:00:31,960
Speaker 3: where the truck stops outside of a church where there's

1125
01:00:32,000 --> 01:00:35,000
Speaker 3: a funeral going on and it's a funeral with a

1126
01:00:35,080 --> 01:00:36,120
Speaker 3: glass coffin.

1127
01:00:36,760 --> 01:00:42,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, and yeah, the comparison there is obvious and rather foreboding.

1128
01:00:42,600 --> 01:00:45,840
Speaker 1: But then also gave what you mentioned about the we

1129
01:00:45,880 --> 01:00:49,840
Speaker 1: see these buildings that are being built, and it is

1130
01:00:49,920 --> 01:00:53,960
Speaker 1: there's this kind of feeling like something modern and out

1131
01:00:53,960 --> 01:00:57,680
Speaker 1: of control is happening, you know, And that's what's happening

1132
01:00:57,720 --> 01:01:00,320
Speaker 1: on the micro level here with the phone booth as well,

1133
01:01:00,360 --> 01:01:02,200
Speaker 1: or at least that's the since I'm beginning to get

1134
01:01:02,560 --> 01:01:05,840
Speaker 1: like there's some sort of a process going on here.

1135
01:01:06,120 --> 01:01:08,600
Speaker 1: People you know, delivered one of these things. It trapped

1136
01:01:08,640 --> 01:01:11,480
Speaker 1: somebody and now they're taking it away, and there's this

1137
01:01:11,600 --> 01:01:15,040
Speaker 1: feeling that nobody is at the wheel, or that's the

1138
01:01:15,040 --> 01:01:17,760
Speaker 1: the overbearing feeling that I got from it, Like there

1139
01:01:17,760 --> 01:01:23,040
Speaker 1: are just machinations in process. They are completely unfeeling, nobody

1140
01:01:23,040 --> 01:01:27,440
Speaker 1: approved them, nobody's fighting them. It's just what's happening, and

1141
01:01:27,480 --> 01:01:29,400
Speaker 1: you and you were just in the wrong place at

1142
01:01:29,400 --> 01:01:30,000
Speaker 1: the wrong time.

1143
01:01:30,240 --> 01:01:32,880
Speaker 3: Well, it connects to a kind of to a kind

1144
01:01:32,920 --> 01:01:34,840
Speaker 3: of real world horror that I think a lot of

1145
01:01:34,880 --> 01:01:37,880
Speaker 3: people will have some experience with the feeling of like

1146
01:01:38,800 --> 01:01:42,520
Speaker 3: when you are in some way to your detriment being

1147
01:01:42,560 --> 01:01:47,160
Speaker 3: the object of an institutional process something by like a

1148
01:01:47,200 --> 01:01:49,600
Speaker 3: you know, a big corporation or a government or some

1149
01:01:49,680 --> 01:01:53,840
Speaker 3: big institution, and there's no way for you to feel

1150
01:01:53,880 --> 01:01:56,720
Speaker 3: like you are getting a foothold with that organization, like

1151
01:01:56,760 --> 01:01:59,720
Speaker 3: they're paying attention to your needs. And that kind of

1152
01:02:00,320 --> 01:02:02,080
Speaker 3: can of course run the whole gamut from just like

1153
01:02:02,480 --> 01:02:06,440
Speaker 3: a very frustrating inconvenience to like severe oppression of a

1154
01:02:06,480 --> 01:02:09,840
Speaker 3: person's rights, and in any sense it feels bad, but

1155
01:02:09,920 --> 01:02:13,760
Speaker 3: it can go from much like this story does, from

1156
01:02:13,760 --> 01:02:18,440
Speaker 3: the inconvenient to the horrifying. Now right around here in

1157
01:02:18,480 --> 01:02:20,880
Speaker 3: the story, is the first moment where I would say

1158
01:02:20,920 --> 01:02:24,960
Speaker 3: the energy really seems to tip over when it crosses

1159
01:02:25,040 --> 01:02:29,840
Speaker 3: the threshold into horror. And that moment is when the

1160
01:02:29,880 --> 01:02:33,560
Speaker 3: truck pulls up next to a playground and there are

1161
01:02:33,680 --> 01:02:36,760
Speaker 3: children singing a kind of song where it's some kind

1162
01:02:36,760 --> 01:02:39,959
Speaker 3: of I don't know, old nursery rhyme song that talks

1163
01:02:39,960 --> 01:02:44,280
Speaker 3: about like Easter and the Trinity, and the truck stops,

1164
01:02:44,360 --> 01:02:47,440
Speaker 3: and it stops next to another phone company truck on

1165
01:02:47,480 --> 01:02:50,480
Speaker 3: which there is also a red telephone box with a

1166
01:02:50,480 --> 01:02:51,480
Speaker 3: man stuck inside.

1167
01:02:51,880 --> 01:02:53,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's where we begin to realize this is

1168
01:02:53,960 --> 01:02:58,520
Speaker 1: not a singular incident, This is not maybe not that

1169
01:02:58,640 --> 01:03:02,240
Speaker 1: much of an anomaly, this is maybe happening all the time.

1170
01:03:02,600 --> 01:03:05,400
Speaker 3: Yeah. And so the men are unable to talk, like

1171
01:03:06,040 --> 01:03:08,080
Speaker 3: because they're both stuck in the boxes, but they look

1172
01:03:08,120 --> 01:03:11,640
Speaker 3: at each other and you see them both like a

1173
01:03:11,760 --> 01:03:15,040
Speaker 3: kind of horror dawning on them when they see one another.

1174
01:03:15,240 --> 01:03:18,160
Speaker 3: Also because they're kind of dressed the same and look similar,

1175
01:03:18,320 --> 01:03:21,520
Speaker 3: like they just like look like similar guys. And they

1176
01:03:21,840 --> 01:03:25,200
Speaker 3: see each other and they they're aware something frightening is happening,

1177
01:03:25,600 --> 01:03:28,000
Speaker 3: and they're both powerless to do anything about it. So

1178
01:03:28,080 --> 01:03:31,680
Speaker 3: you can see a it's weird almost to kind of

1179
01:03:31,760 --> 01:03:34,640
Speaker 3: like pity for each other, but also a kind of

1180
01:03:34,720 --> 01:03:38,480
Speaker 3: resentment for each other in the like seeing what the

1181
01:03:38,560 --> 01:03:39,840
Speaker 3: other one means for them.

1182
01:03:40,280 --> 01:03:40,960
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1183
01:03:41,040 --> 01:03:43,600
Speaker 3: Another interesting moment I wonder what you made of this

1184
01:03:43,840 --> 01:03:47,040
Speaker 3: was the part where the truck crosses paths on the

1185
01:03:47,080 --> 01:03:49,400
Speaker 3: outskirts of the city. Like they are these ruins, a

1186
01:03:49,480 --> 01:03:52,760
Speaker 3: kind of collapsing old wall. Uh, and they cross pass

1187
01:03:52,840 --> 01:03:57,160
Speaker 3: with a group of circus performers. They're these guys juggling

1188
01:03:57,240 --> 01:04:00,640
Speaker 3: and in clown makeup sitting on this collapse sing wall.

1189
01:04:00,760 --> 01:04:03,840
Speaker 3: One guy's holding a ship in a bottle. Oh, It's

1190
01:04:04,000 --> 01:04:07,560
Speaker 3: it's an unsettling moment. And I would say the men

1191
01:04:07,880 --> 01:04:10,400
Speaker 3: sitting there, like the circus performers, do, seem to kind

1192
01:04:10,400 --> 01:04:12,840
Speaker 3: of look at the guy in the phone booth with

1193
01:04:12,960 --> 01:04:17,480
Speaker 3: more recognition and pity than most of the other observers

1194
01:04:17,600 --> 01:04:21,080
Speaker 3: in the story do. But I'm not sure what was

1195
01:04:21,080 --> 01:04:21,960
Speaker 3: really meant by this.

1196
01:04:22,760 --> 01:04:26,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think, like everything in the picture, they

1197
01:04:26,240 --> 01:04:28,760
Speaker 1: keep it vague so that you can have various interpretations.

1198
01:04:28,760 --> 01:04:32,240
Speaker 1: But I guess what I took away from this is maybe,

1199
01:04:32,280 --> 01:04:35,000
Speaker 1: like the circus performers here have a certain amount of

1200
01:04:35,040 --> 01:04:37,400
Speaker 1: freedom like they are. They live on the outside, and

1201
01:04:37,440 --> 01:04:39,520
Speaker 1: in fact they are situated in this shot on the

1202
01:04:39,520 --> 01:04:43,600
Speaker 1: other side of a wall that separates them from the

1203
01:04:43,640 --> 01:04:47,080
Speaker 1: truck in the phone booth. So you know, in a

1204
01:04:47,120 --> 01:04:52,200
Speaker 1: way they like pity his condition in his circumstance, but

1205
01:04:52,280 --> 01:04:55,040
Speaker 1: they understand it insofar as they have escaped it.

1206
01:04:55,600 --> 01:04:59,080
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, And then right after this comes I was

1207
01:04:59,280 --> 01:05:01,440
Speaker 3: maybe the sad to part in the whole thing, which

1208
01:05:01,520 --> 01:05:04,000
Speaker 3: is when the truck crosses paths with a young boy.

1209
01:05:04,160 --> 01:05:07,240
Speaker 3: There's like a young boy out playing with a ball,

1210
01:05:07,400 --> 01:05:09,880
Speaker 3: and the boy waves to the man. This is another

1211
01:05:09,880 --> 01:05:12,120
Speaker 3: point I guess where the man does. It does feel

1212
01:05:12,160 --> 01:05:14,520
Speaker 3: like somebody actually sees the man and kind of like

1213
01:05:15,280 --> 01:05:19,920
Speaker 3: recognizes his humanity and all that. But he when he

1214
01:05:19,960 --> 01:05:22,240
Speaker 3: sees this boy, obviously he thinks about his son, and

1215
01:05:22,280 --> 01:05:24,560
Speaker 3: he thinks about his son earlier, and he remembers the

1216
01:05:24,560 --> 01:05:28,520
Speaker 3: soccer ball bouncing into the phone booth that morning. And

1217
01:05:28,800 --> 01:05:32,440
Speaker 3: I think it's a strong image because it implies simultaneously

1218
01:05:32,480 --> 01:05:35,520
Speaker 3: a kind of horror. This man's worrying about his own

1219
01:05:35,560 --> 01:05:38,840
Speaker 3: situation and worrying how he's going to get out of

1220
01:05:38,840 --> 01:05:40,720
Speaker 3: this and whether he's going to see his son again.

1221
01:05:41,160 --> 01:05:43,760
Speaker 3: But Also there's a kind of relief in the memory,

1222
01:05:43,760 --> 01:05:46,400
Speaker 3: I think, because he realizes that his son could have

1223
01:05:46,480 --> 01:05:48,560
Speaker 3: been the one trapped in the in the box and

1224
01:05:48,680 --> 01:05:52,640
Speaker 3: he wasn't. Then after this he just keeps getting weirder.

1225
01:05:52,960 --> 01:05:57,360
Speaker 3: Suddenly there's a helicopter following the truck. Why the helicopter,

1226
01:05:57,520 --> 01:05:58,920
Speaker 3: I never knew what to make.

1227
01:05:58,800 --> 01:06:03,320
Speaker 1: Of That helicopter just means like someone is watching. It's

1228
01:06:03,320 --> 01:06:06,000
Speaker 1: almost like the eye of God. But then it becomes

1229
01:06:06,960 --> 01:06:11,400
Speaker 1: it offers no comfort because in this situation, God is

1230
01:06:11,440 --> 01:06:16,440
Speaker 1: doing nothing. Whoever is in the helicopter, who's observing from

1231
01:06:16,480 --> 01:06:20,640
Speaker 1: the helicopter, they're not interfering with this, they're just I guess,

1232
01:06:20,720 --> 01:06:24,640
Speaker 1: documenting it. And again there's just this overbearing coldness to

1233
01:06:24,680 --> 01:06:25,480
Speaker 1: the whole scenario.

1234
01:06:25,960 --> 01:06:30,240
Speaker 3: So the truck leads through some strange and amazing locations.

1235
01:06:30,280 --> 01:06:32,600
Speaker 3: At one point it goes down this mountain side road,

1236
01:06:32,840 --> 01:06:36,560
Speaker 3: zigzagging down, down and down into a valley near a

1237
01:06:36,640 --> 01:06:40,040
Speaker 3: huge dam. And then finally at the end of this

1238
01:06:40,160 --> 01:06:43,200
Speaker 3: road we pass out of the sunlight which has been

1239
01:06:43,440 --> 01:06:45,680
Speaker 3: beating down. So you might imagine you almost kind of

1240
01:06:45,680 --> 01:06:48,320
Speaker 3: feel a physical relief because this man's been under the

1241
01:06:48,360 --> 01:06:50,400
Speaker 3: glass under the hot sun and it has just been

1242
01:06:50,520 --> 01:06:53,600
Speaker 3: roasting him in there, and they finally pass into darkness.

1243
01:06:53,640 --> 01:06:57,080
Speaker 3: But things are not getting better, So the truck goes

1244
01:06:57,080 --> 01:07:01,400
Speaker 3: into an underground facility and dry down a long dark

1245
01:07:01,520 --> 01:07:05,200
Speaker 3: road and a tunnel. They are little sort of utility

1246
01:07:05,280 --> 01:07:09,000
Speaker 3: lights all along the walls, and as it goes deeper,

1247
01:07:09,520 --> 01:07:12,480
Speaker 3: it passes more and more unsettling things. The man sees

1248
01:07:13,040 --> 01:07:17,520
Speaker 3: lots of empty red telephone boxes being cleaned and prepared

1249
01:07:17,600 --> 01:07:20,480
Speaker 3: by phone company workers. Again, if that's actually what they are,

1250
01:07:20,520 --> 01:07:24,400
Speaker 3: they're just men in green uniforms. We see trucks leaving

1251
01:07:24,400 --> 01:07:29,320
Speaker 3: the facility loaded with telephone boxes, and the tone markedly

1252
01:07:29,400 --> 01:07:32,680
Speaker 3: shifts here. There is no longer any ambiguity or any

1253
01:07:32,760 --> 01:07:36,240
Speaker 3: hint of comedy or whimsy. The music lets you know

1254
01:07:36,320 --> 01:07:37,880
Speaker 3: that things have gotten very dark.

1255
01:07:38,520 --> 01:07:42,560
Speaker 1: That's right, Yeah, the carl Orf is in full swing here,

1256
01:07:43,080 --> 01:07:45,280
Speaker 1: and things that are beginning to feel tragic.

1257
01:07:45,960 --> 01:07:49,520
Speaker 3: So the truck parks and uniformed men get out and

1258
01:07:49,600 --> 01:07:52,000
Speaker 3: the man in the box again. He tries to signal

1259
01:07:52,040 --> 01:07:53,840
Speaker 3: them for help, but they don't even look at him.

1260
01:07:53,880 --> 01:07:56,800
Speaker 3: They unhitch the box from the truck and then it

1261
01:07:56,880 --> 01:08:00,360
Speaker 3: is lifted away by a crane and transported to some

1262
01:08:00,520 --> 01:08:04,520
Speaker 3: deeper part of the facility, and the man becomes increasingly

1263
01:08:04,640 --> 01:08:08,000
Speaker 3: terrified and desperate. He's banging on the glass from the inside,

1264
01:08:08,520 --> 01:08:11,840
Speaker 3: but there seems to be no relief, and eventually the

1265
01:08:12,360 --> 01:08:15,800
Speaker 3: box is transported into some kind of dark back room,

1266
01:08:15,880 --> 01:08:20,439
Speaker 3: this big, vast warehouse room where he has wheeled past

1267
01:08:20,760 --> 01:08:25,840
Speaker 3: other telephone boxes, and here just the nightmare reaches its apex,

1268
01:08:26,439 --> 01:08:30,439
Speaker 3: where he looks into the other telephone boxes and there

1269
01:08:30,520 --> 01:08:33,639
Speaker 3: are just dead men inside, dead men dressed like him,

1270
01:08:33,680 --> 01:08:37,000
Speaker 3: in various states of decomposition, looking like they've been in

1271
01:08:37,040 --> 01:08:41,839
Speaker 3: there for years or even decades. And finally he's parked

1272
01:08:41,920 --> 01:08:45,160
Speaker 3: next to one where a guy appears to have strangled

1273
01:08:45,200 --> 01:08:48,760
Speaker 3: himself with the cord of his own telephone receiver. The

1274
01:08:48,840 --> 01:08:50,559
Speaker 3: last image we see of the man is of his

1275
01:08:50,680 --> 01:08:53,880
Speaker 3: hand pressed up against the glass. Is he's just, I guess,

1276
01:08:54,040 --> 01:08:59,640
Speaker 3: sinking down to the floor in despair. Ending doesn't get

1277
01:08:59,680 --> 01:09:00,640
Speaker 3: much darker than that.

1278
01:09:02,560 --> 01:09:09,320
Speaker 1: Yeah, there is no escape. That is the final statement

1279
01:09:09,400 --> 01:09:11,040
Speaker 1: here that we do get a little bit of a

1280
01:09:11,040 --> 01:09:15,160
Speaker 1: stinger that reminds us, don't worry, there's more doom to come.

1281
01:09:15,479 --> 01:09:18,560
Speaker 3: That's right. So we see a clean, tidy, new telephone

1282
01:09:18,560 --> 01:09:22,799
Speaker 3: box being deployed in the plaza once again, just waiting

1283
01:09:22,840 --> 01:09:24,479
Speaker 3: for the next person to step inside.

1284
01:09:25,120 --> 01:09:25,519
Speaker 1: Wow.

1285
01:09:26,240 --> 01:09:30,640
Speaker 3: So that's the end of Lacabina. But several things I

1286
01:09:30,640 --> 01:09:32,920
Speaker 3: think I want to talk about because it raises all

1287
01:09:32,920 --> 01:09:37,800
Speaker 3: these interesting ideas. One is, within the movie, did you

1288
01:09:37,840 --> 01:09:41,200
Speaker 3: ever detect any hint about what the point of the

1289
01:09:41,280 --> 01:09:43,200
Speaker 3: human harvesting operation was?

1290
01:09:43,400 --> 01:09:43,519
Speaker 1: Like?

1291
01:09:44,120 --> 01:09:47,760
Speaker 3: Why are people getting trapped in phone booths and stashed underground?

1292
01:09:48,040 --> 01:09:52,240
Speaker 3: I'm almost certain this is intentionally left unanswered by the film.

1293
01:09:52,280 --> 01:09:54,799
Speaker 3: But did you pick up on any clues that I missed?

1294
01:09:55,400 --> 01:09:58,240
Speaker 1: No, I mean, I think it's left ambiguous. I think

1295
01:09:58,400 --> 01:10:01,160
Speaker 1: if I were to supply my own sort of headcannon

1296
01:10:01,240 --> 01:10:03,479
Speaker 1: for what's happening here, is that just like some sort

1297
01:10:03,520 --> 01:10:08,040
Speaker 1: of uncorrected accident of design, and the overall view of

1298
01:10:08,280 --> 01:10:12,519
Speaker 1: the corporation and or the government and anyone involved is like, well,

1299
01:10:12,920 --> 01:10:17,120
Speaker 1: these things happen. It's unavoidable. There are tragedies and horrors

1300
01:10:17,160 --> 01:10:20,240
Speaker 1: baked into modern civilization, and I'm sorry, we can't really

1301
01:10:20,240 --> 01:10:23,160
Speaker 1: address these design flaws. It is what it is. I'm

1302
01:10:23,200 --> 01:10:25,559
Speaker 1: sorry it happened to you, or at least I feel

1303
01:10:25,600 --> 01:10:30,439
Speaker 1: obligated to tell you so. And yeah, that's what I

1304
01:10:30,479 --> 01:10:32,840
Speaker 1: got from it. I mean, I guess you could lean

1305
01:10:32,880 --> 01:10:35,160
Speaker 1: into the idea that the boxes are being put out

1306
01:10:35,200 --> 01:10:39,320
Speaker 1: there intentionally to catch and kill middle aged men in Madrid.

1307
01:10:39,960 --> 01:10:42,320
Speaker 1: But I like the idea that this is all just

1308
01:10:42,360 --> 01:10:46,040
Speaker 1: an accident of design and it's just not going to

1309
01:10:46,080 --> 01:10:50,520
Speaker 1: be corrected, not out of maliciousness or not individual maliciousness,

1310
01:10:50,560 --> 01:10:53,280
Speaker 1: but just sort of like the uncaring nature of the world.

1311
01:10:53,800 --> 01:10:55,759
Speaker 3: Well, bridging off of that, I guess to go beyond

1312
01:10:55,920 --> 01:10:59,920
Speaker 3: the sort of in universe question of what these people

1313
01:11:00,040 --> 01:11:03,000
Speaker 3: are supposed to be doing in the narrative, there's something

1314
01:11:03,000 --> 01:11:04,960
Speaker 3: a lot of people have asked, which is, like, what

1315
01:11:05,160 --> 01:11:08,839
Speaker 3: is the meaning of the whole story? Is Lackabine supposed

1316
01:11:08,880 --> 01:11:13,240
Speaker 3: to be a metaphor for living under the Francoist dictatorship

1317
01:11:13,280 --> 01:11:17,880
Speaker 3: in Spain? This is something lots of viewers have inferred.

1318
01:11:17,920 --> 01:11:21,160
Speaker 3: I mean, I think it's quite reasonable to suspect that

1319
01:11:21,240 --> 01:11:25,120
Speaker 3: about it. According to the director, the meaning was not

1320
01:11:25,320 --> 01:11:29,360
Speaker 3: intended to be limited to that, so it's not any

1321
01:11:29,439 --> 01:11:33,719
Speaker 3: kind of direct allegory, but instead it was generally about

1322
01:11:34,040 --> 01:11:37,680
Speaker 3: a kind of confinement and unfreedom and the desire for

1323
01:11:37,760 --> 01:11:40,479
Speaker 3: freedom of all sorts. However, I think it's very worth

1324
01:11:40,560 --> 01:11:43,639
Speaker 3: noting that at the time of this film's production and release,

1325
01:11:44,120 --> 01:11:47,720
Speaker 3: Marcero may have believed he had to say that that

1326
01:11:47,800 --> 01:11:51,759
Speaker 3: he could not admit, even if it were a veiled

1327
01:11:51,760 --> 01:11:56,160
Speaker 3: critique of Francoist Spain, that that's what it was. However,

1328
01:11:56,280 --> 01:11:59,439
Speaker 3: I think this issue is a little further illuminated by

1329
01:11:59,439 --> 01:12:03,920
Speaker 3: a couple of quotes that Marcero gave that are collected

1330
01:12:03,960 --> 01:12:06,720
Speaker 3: in that article in the Artifice magazine that we've been

1331
01:12:06,720 --> 01:12:09,880
Speaker 3: talking about. So, for one thing, Marcero, speaking after the

1332
01:12:09,880 --> 01:12:15,600
Speaker 3: film's release, said, quote, Jose Luis Garci and I recognize

1333
01:12:15,640 --> 01:12:17,720
Speaker 3: that when we wrote the script we were closer to

1334
01:12:17,760 --> 01:12:20,880
Speaker 3: the world of science fiction and terror than any political theme.

1335
01:12:21,360 --> 01:12:24,719
Speaker 3: We also realized that our story had many readings, and

1336
01:12:24,920 --> 01:12:28,360
Speaker 3: that that was its richness and complexity. I would say

1337
01:12:28,400 --> 01:12:31,200
Speaker 3: then that Lakabina is a parable open to all kinds

1338
01:12:31,240 --> 01:12:35,000
Speaker 3: of interpretations, and according to the sensitivity, culture, and formation

1339
01:12:35,120 --> 01:12:38,120
Speaker 3: of each one, it will be interpreted in a different way,

1340
01:12:38,479 --> 01:12:43,920
Speaker 3: and those multiple interpretations will always be valid. And then, apparently,

1341
01:12:43,960 --> 01:12:47,040
Speaker 3: in an interview to our tve in two thousand and nine,

1342
01:12:47,120 --> 01:12:48,800
Speaker 3: looking back on the film, so this was when he

1343
01:12:48,880 --> 01:12:52,720
Speaker 3: was much older, he said, quote, all human beings have

1344
01:12:52,880 --> 01:12:55,360
Speaker 3: boxes that we have to get rid of. There are

1345
01:12:55,400 --> 01:12:57,760
Speaker 3: boxes of the moral type, there are boxes of the

1346
01:12:57,920 --> 01:13:01,440
Speaker 3: educational type. There are boxes of the mental type, economic

1347
01:13:01,560 --> 01:13:04,400
Speaker 3: boxes that imprison us. And I believe that life is

1348
01:13:04,439 --> 01:13:07,680
Speaker 3: a continuous quest for freedom from each one of these boxes.

1349
01:13:08,160 --> 01:13:11,599
Speaker 3: In order to be free, spontaneous, and happy, each person

1350
01:13:11,640 --> 01:13:14,240
Speaker 3: has to see which box imprisons him and try to

1351
01:13:14,280 --> 01:13:19,599
Speaker 3: free himself. That is our destiny. So, according to Mrcero himself,

1352
01:13:19,840 --> 01:13:24,599
Speaker 3: a political interpretation is not the only intended meaning, and

1353
01:13:24,720 --> 01:13:27,439
Speaker 3: I certainly don't think it's the only valid interpretation of

1354
01:13:27,479 --> 01:13:30,160
Speaker 3: the film. But I also looking at it and knowing

1355
01:13:30,160 --> 01:13:32,280
Speaker 3: a bit about the history, I would have to say

1356
01:13:32,320 --> 01:13:36,400
Speaker 3: it's certainly a reading that makes sense, especially in the

1357
01:13:36,400 --> 01:13:39,799
Speaker 3: way that it locks with other themes that are clearly

1358
01:13:39,800 --> 01:13:42,280
Speaker 3: there in the story. So there's this theme of unfreedom,

1359
01:13:42,880 --> 01:13:46,120
Speaker 3: but it also the theme of unfreedom connects to the

1360
01:13:46,120 --> 01:13:50,439
Speaker 3: theme of dehumanization, which is a core element of first

1361
01:13:50,520 --> 01:13:53,600
Speaker 3: the comedy and then later the horror. This thing we

1362
01:13:53,640 --> 01:13:55,800
Speaker 3: see over and over is that the man stuck in

1363
01:13:55,800 --> 01:13:58,719
Speaker 3: the phone booth is not being treated as a human

1364
01:13:58,760 --> 01:14:01,960
Speaker 3: being by those outside the booth. He gets mocked, he

1365
01:14:02,000 --> 01:14:05,840
Speaker 3: gets gawkeed at like just some amusing object. He gets

1366
01:14:05,920 --> 01:14:09,800
Speaker 3: absurd nonsensical orders barked at him by the police, like

1367
01:14:09,880 --> 01:14:12,280
Speaker 3: things that would be impossible for him to comply with.

1368
01:14:13,439 --> 01:14:16,400
Speaker 3: People that do try to help him, most of them

1369
01:14:16,479 --> 01:14:19,479
Speaker 3: don't actually seem all that sympathetic to him. They're just

1370
01:14:19,600 --> 01:14:22,519
Speaker 3: like it's like a way to show off their strength

1371
01:14:22,600 --> 01:14:25,479
Speaker 3: or skills to the gathering crowd by getting the door open.

1372
01:14:26,439 --> 01:14:29,720
Speaker 3: And then eventually the man gets shelved inside an underground

1373
01:14:29,760 --> 01:14:33,679
Speaker 3: bunker to apparently die, with no one at any point

1374
01:14:33,920 --> 01:14:35,960
Speaker 3: other than maybe like the kid on the road, and

1375
01:14:36,000 --> 01:14:39,960
Speaker 3: maybe the circus performers seeming too much notice his humanity,

1376
01:14:40,040 --> 01:14:44,000
Speaker 3: like his pain, his dignity, his desire for freedom, his

1377
01:14:44,080 --> 01:14:48,439
Speaker 3: requests for help. It's really like, once he is stuck

1378
01:14:48,479 --> 01:14:52,000
Speaker 3: in the box, he is not a person anymore. And

1379
01:14:52,080 --> 01:14:57,200
Speaker 3: so despite the film's extremely bleak and horrifying ending, I

1380
01:14:57,200 --> 01:15:00,280
Speaker 3: think it actually functions as a rather human the main

1381
01:15:00,439 --> 01:15:05,520
Speaker 3: and emotionally powerful warning against participating in that kind of dehumanization,

1382
01:15:05,760 --> 01:15:09,559
Speaker 3: either as a spectator or as a functionary of an

1383
01:15:09,600 --> 01:15:14,280
Speaker 3: institution stacking telephone boxes full of people underground, like the

1384
01:15:14,320 --> 01:15:16,479
Speaker 3: person stuck on the other side of the glass is

1385
01:15:16,520 --> 01:15:19,839
Speaker 3: a human being, and tomorrow or the next day, maybe

1386
01:15:19,880 --> 01:15:22,880
Speaker 3: it is you, according to this story, and so we've

1387
01:15:22,920 --> 01:15:25,160
Speaker 3: got to treat that person as a human being. The

1388
01:15:25,160 --> 01:15:27,599
Speaker 3: fact that they're stuck in the box isn't funny, and

1389
01:15:27,640 --> 01:15:29,519
Speaker 3: it isn't meaningless. It matters.

1390
01:15:30,280 --> 01:15:32,799
Speaker 1: I think it would be easy to watch this film

1391
01:15:32,840 --> 01:15:34,840
Speaker 1: and just be left with a feeling of like, well,

1392
01:15:35,040 --> 01:15:37,240
Speaker 1: people will do what they can and what they have

1393
01:15:37,280 --> 01:15:38,840
Speaker 1: to do in order to help you, but beyond that,

1394
01:15:38,920 --> 01:15:42,200
Speaker 1: they won't. And you know that it's not to say

1395
01:15:42,200 --> 01:15:44,880
Speaker 1: that the safety net of society and government is a

1396
01:15:44,880 --> 01:15:47,160
Speaker 1: complete illusion, but it will only get you so far.

1397
01:15:48,840 --> 01:15:51,280
Speaker 1: I guess where it challenges us, and where you can

1398
01:15:51,280 --> 01:15:54,040
Speaker 1: get into that idea of the film ultimately being about

1399
01:15:54,120 --> 01:15:58,720
Speaker 1: freeing yourself from your boxes and all is by realizing

1400
01:15:58,760 --> 01:16:02,559
Speaker 1: that we don't have to like the people in this movie,

1401
01:16:03,200 --> 01:16:06,280
Speaker 1: like this is a cautionary tale, Like we don't have

1402
01:16:06,320 --> 01:16:11,759
Speaker 1: to live in a society, in a culture that views

1403
01:16:11,760 --> 01:16:14,040
Speaker 1: the suffering of other in the predicaments of other people

1404
01:16:14,280 --> 01:16:14,639
Speaker 1: like this.

1405
01:16:15,360 --> 01:16:19,040
Speaker 3: That's right, And so I think that that's one reading

1406
01:16:19,120 --> 01:16:24,200
Speaker 3: on which this weird, absurd, little horror short film actually

1407
01:16:24,200 --> 01:16:27,840
Speaker 3: becomes quite powerful, Like it this is it's not just

1408
01:16:27,960 --> 01:16:30,599
Speaker 3: there to kind of chill you and entertain you. It's

1409
01:16:30,920 --> 01:16:33,080
Speaker 3: rather meaningful and it kind of puts a lesson in

1410
01:16:33,120 --> 01:16:35,880
Speaker 3: there that I think it's hard to forget, but I

1411
01:16:35,920 --> 01:16:38,720
Speaker 3: do want to acknowledge also that that again, that's not

1412
01:16:38,760 --> 01:16:41,439
Speaker 3: the only reading of it. People have interpreted this to

1413
01:16:41,520 --> 01:16:44,479
Speaker 3: mean all kinds of things, and so you know, there's

1414
01:16:44,520 --> 01:16:46,960
Speaker 3: what the director said about it himself, is this general

1415
01:16:47,040 --> 01:16:49,519
Speaker 3: like free your mind sort of thing. There are also

1416
01:16:49,600 --> 01:16:51,880
Speaker 3: all these weird other readings that came up in some

1417
01:16:51,920 --> 01:16:53,800
Speaker 3: of the articles we looked at. The one in the

1418
01:16:53,880 --> 01:16:56,800
Speaker 3: Artifice mentioned something some people at the time apparently thought

1419
01:16:56,800 --> 01:16:59,679
Speaker 3: it had something to do with alien abductions. I don't

1420
01:16:59,760 --> 01:17:02,640
Speaker 3: get that much at all, but people take it all

1421
01:17:02,680 --> 01:17:03,320
Speaker 3: over the place.

1422
01:17:03,800 --> 01:17:07,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, they leave it open, and so you know, all

1423
01:17:07,200 --> 01:17:10,400
Speaker 1: interpretations are valid. All right, Well, there you have it.

1424
01:17:10,600 --> 01:17:15,720
Speaker 1: Nineteen seventy two's La Cabina the Telephone Box, I say,

1425
01:17:16,600 --> 01:17:20,200
Speaker 1: still more of a downbeat film compared to last week's Quest,

1426
01:17:20,960 --> 01:17:23,200
Speaker 1: but they do have some things in common, Like they

1427
01:17:23,200 --> 01:17:29,160
Speaker 1: are both films, both short films about liberation or the

1428
01:17:29,520 --> 01:17:32,799
Speaker 1: quest for liberation, the desire for liberation, whether that liberation

1429
01:17:32,920 --> 01:17:35,080
Speaker 1: is actually achieved within the runtime or not.

1430
01:17:35,439 --> 01:17:37,600
Speaker 3: I guess it is up to us to imagine the

1431
01:17:37,600 --> 01:17:40,639
Speaker 3: sequel to La Caabina where the where the telephone box

1432
01:17:40,680 --> 01:17:41,840
Speaker 3: regime is overthrown.

1433
01:17:42,360 --> 01:17:44,840
Speaker 1: But can you imagine if someone did a feat I

1434
01:17:44,920 --> 01:17:46,679
Speaker 1: think I've seen that kind of thing done before, where

1435
01:17:46,680 --> 01:17:49,440
Speaker 1: there'll be like some sort of a short, like perfect

1436
01:17:49,520 --> 01:17:52,160
Speaker 1: treatment of an idea. But if you expand it out

1437
01:17:52,200 --> 01:17:54,360
Speaker 1: into a feature, you've got to you've got to add

1438
01:17:54,360 --> 01:17:56,760
Speaker 1: all these elements that kind of take away the bite

1439
01:17:56,840 --> 01:18:00,400
Speaker 1: of the original piece. You know, you didn't have have

1440
01:18:00,479 --> 01:18:04,360
Speaker 1: to have that escape and perhaps some explanation of what's

1441
01:18:04,439 --> 01:18:06,519
Speaker 1: going on, and I think a lot of that would

1442
01:18:06,520 --> 01:18:07,080
Speaker 1: fall flat.

1443
01:18:07,280 --> 01:18:09,520
Speaker 3: Yeah, best to leave that victory to the imagination.

1444
01:18:10,280 --> 01:18:11,920
Speaker 1: All right, We're going to go and close up the

1445
01:18:11,960 --> 01:18:14,200
Speaker 1: episode here, but we'd love to hear from everyone out there.

1446
01:18:14,600 --> 01:18:17,880
Speaker 1: Had you seen the telephone box before? What did you

1447
01:18:17,880 --> 01:18:19,280
Speaker 1: think of it? What kind of an impact did it

1448
01:18:19,360 --> 01:18:23,880
Speaker 1: have over you? Or are you, like us, new initiants

1449
01:18:23,920 --> 01:18:26,000
Speaker 1: into the mysteries of the telephone box. If that is

1450
01:18:26,040 --> 01:18:28,479
Speaker 1: the case, we want to hear about that too, And

1451
01:18:28,520 --> 01:18:31,639
Speaker 1: if you have any recommendations for other thirty minute films

1452
01:18:32,240 --> 01:18:34,400
Speaker 1: that feel like a perfect fit for Weird House. We

1453
01:18:34,439 --> 01:18:38,000
Speaker 1: would love to entertain those suggestions. Also, I want to

1454
01:18:38,080 --> 01:18:41,080
Speaker 1: note once more that we are really close to hitting

1455
01:18:41,160 --> 01:18:44,439
Speaker 1: our two hundred film selection here on Weird House Cinema.

1456
01:18:44,800 --> 01:18:47,120
Speaker 1: We've been receiving a number of suggestions for what we

1457
01:18:47,200 --> 01:18:49,920
Speaker 1: might cover, and we might not listen to any of

1458
01:18:49,920 --> 01:18:54,160
Speaker 1: those suggestions, but we might. I'm very interested to read

1459
01:18:54,200 --> 01:18:56,760
Speaker 1: more of them, so keep them coming. A reminder that

1460
01:18:56,760 --> 01:18:58,640
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and

1461
01:18:58,640 --> 01:19:02,400
Speaker 1: culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, short

1462
01:19:02,439 --> 01:19:05,240
Speaker 1: form episodes on Wednesdays and on Fridays. We set aside

1463
01:19:05,280 --> 01:19:07,519
Speaker 1: most serious concerns to just talk about a weird movie

1464
01:19:07,560 --> 01:19:09,680
Speaker 1: here on Weird House Cinema. And if you want to

1465
01:19:09,720 --> 01:19:13,880
Speaker 1: follow us on letterbox dot com, our profile name is

1466
01:19:13,920 --> 01:19:16,080
Speaker 1: weird House, and there is in fact a list of

1467
01:19:16,160 --> 01:19:18,519
Speaker 1: all the movies we've covered thus far, and sometimes a

1468
01:19:18,560 --> 01:19:20,639
Speaker 1: glimpse ahead at what's coming out next.

1469
01:19:21,160 --> 01:19:25,120
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.

1470
01:19:25,479 --> 01:19:27,120
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us

1471
01:19:27,120 --> 01:19:29,679
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

1472
01:19:29,680 --> 01:19:31,759
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

1473
01:19:32,160 --> 01:19:34,960
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at Stuff to Blow

1474
01:19:35,000 --> 01:19:49,640
Speaker 3: Your Mind dot com.

1475
01:19:42,880 --> 01:19:45,840
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

1476
01:19:45,920 --> 01:19:48,719
Speaker 2: more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

1477
01:19:48,880 --> 01:19:52,120
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.