Speaker 1: Welcome to Movie Crush, a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey everybody, and welcome to movie Crush. We have another
Speaker 1: Casey edition. Casey who got the iTunes review that I
Speaker 1: told you about that. Yeah, I went to someone said
Speaker 1: you should only have Casey on and he should just
Speaker 1: be your permanent co host and always just talk movies
Speaker 1: with Casey. That was actually my my secret account that
Speaker 1: posted that was that you know whoever that was. So
Speaker 1: Casey and I are continuing are Kenneth Lonergan Uh tribute?
Speaker 1: It will be a short one because they're only three movies.
Speaker 1: He's going to make more movies. Uh, Casey. We are
Speaker 1: continuing on with a movie called Margaret that I don't
Speaker 1: I think I said this last time. I have no
Speaker 1: idea how this movie got by me. I hadn't. I
Speaker 1: didn't even know it existed. So maybe it was because
Speaker 1: of all the history of the lawsuits and it not
Speaker 1: getting like a decent release in marketing. But I didn't
Speaker 1: even know it was out there. Yeah, it had a
Speaker 1: super quiet release and a super kind of protracted um journey,
Speaker 1: you know, from from being shot in like two thousand
Speaker 1: five to coming out all the way in two thousand
Speaker 1: eleven and a very very limited almost sort of like
Speaker 1: contractual obligation vanity release, you know, like New York and
Speaker 1: l A, only for a couple of weeks. And then
Speaker 1: you know, and that was that was not even Laurigan's
Speaker 1: preferred cut. It was kind of the shorter version. So, um,
Speaker 1: we're very very lucky that we even got the DVD
Speaker 1: version of the extended cut, I think, Yeah, so let's
Speaker 1: go over that and level set real quick. Um, there
Speaker 1: were this movie, the Kenneth Launergan Cut as uh, I
Speaker 1: guess we can just call it is three hours in
Speaker 1: six minutes of of heavy drama. It's unusual for a
Speaker 1: movie like this to be this long. Um, and how
Speaker 1: long was it theatrical? So even even the theatrical was
Speaker 1: pretty long, it was still two and a half hours.
Speaker 1: So we're only talking about a difference of like thirty
Speaker 1: six minutes, which is a lot, but you know, not
Speaker 1: as much as you might have thought. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: think I saw online somewhere where Martin Scorse's the end
Speaker 1: on a is it schoonmaker or Schumacher? I hear it
Speaker 1: both ways. I usually say she schoonmaker, schoonmaker maker. I
Speaker 1: mean I took Germans. So I want to say schoon
Speaker 1: I think it's I think, but I'm trying to remember
Speaker 1: how she says it. I think she says schoonmaker, but
Speaker 1: I could be wrong. Well, legendary editor, you know, one
Speaker 1: of the all time grades. And I saw that they
Speaker 1: helped him get it down to that theatrical cut. Is
Speaker 1: that what you saw to it? I don't think it
Speaker 1: was the theatrical cut. What happened was there was a
Speaker 1: producer on the film who was I think very enthusiastic
Speaker 1: early on, but then began to kind of insert himself
Speaker 1: more and more into the kind of editing process and
Speaker 1: being in the editing room, and he was kind of
Speaker 1: driving long Agan crazy with notes and and just kind
Speaker 1: of interfering with the process and uh, you know, giving
Speaker 1: his two cents, where lar Agan thought, this is not
Speaker 1: really your place, and so that that relationship became more
Speaker 1: and more strained. Um and eventually Scorsese, who I think
Speaker 1: was already maybe a producer on the film, he had
Speaker 1: some level of involvement, as he did also with You
Speaker 1: Can count On Me, I think, just as an executive
Speaker 1: producer on that one. But which is champion of the film. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so so Scorsese had already seen lan Agans kind of
Speaker 1: like at that time favored version of the film, which
Speaker 1: was probably in the three hourish range and um and
Speaker 1: and said it was a masterpiece. And but lannergan while
Speaker 1: he final cut in his contract, he did not have
Speaker 1: the right to have it be longer than I think
Speaker 1: about two two and a half hours. So even though
Speaker 1: he had full creative control, he was still obligated to
Speaker 1: get it down to that length. And he just couldn't
Speaker 1: do it, or he felt like he couldn't do it anyway.
Speaker 1: And so Scorsese, well, you know, Scorsey's well, okay, let
Speaker 1: me let me get involved here. Let me let me
Speaker 1: see if I can kind of whittle some of this
Speaker 1: down a little bit and um, and we can make
Speaker 1: something that everybody's happy with. And you know, Scorsese did
Speaker 1: his cut with Thelma and Lauragan liked it and everything,
Speaker 1: but then the producer basically just killed it like out
Speaker 1: of spite at that point and and spiked it and
Speaker 1: just said, no, we're going to release this other version
Speaker 1: that basically nobody really wants, you know, um, just to
Speaker 1: kind of stick it to the mark, to at to
Speaker 1: Launagan and um, yes, stick it to the great artists. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And at some point in there also, Um, Dylan Tishner
Speaker 1: got involved. He's Paul Thomas Anderson's editor. I think he
Speaker 1: was hired maybe by the producer to kind of do
Speaker 1: his own cut without Lauren again kind of having any
Speaker 1: say in it. And that version never still the light
Speaker 1: of day either. So Um, the version that did come
Speaker 1: out in theaters, the two and a half hour one,
Speaker 1: Lanigan did have some involvement with, but it was basically
Speaker 1: like he did it under duress and he doesn't really
Speaker 1: stand by it necessarily. Right. Well, so here's what I
Speaker 1: have to say about the length. Um, it is a
Speaker 1: a movie that is richly rewarding at this length. I
Speaker 1: could also see, and this is probably a credit to
Speaker 1: just the great acting and the great directing and the
Speaker 1: fact that it's a great movie. I could also see
Speaker 1: a two hour and twenty minute version being great. And dude,
Speaker 1: I could see a our and forty five minute version
Speaker 1: of this movie being great. I agree. Um, the way
Speaker 1: he hasn't laid out there's um, there's so much in it,
Speaker 1: Like the first hour in fifteen minutes is almost preamble too.
Speaker 1: I guess what quote un what the real story is,
Speaker 1: which is this young woman who uh and if you
Speaker 1: you know, there's obviously gonna be spoiled, um, if you're
Speaker 1: listening and haven't seen it, But this young woman who
Speaker 1: has a part in a tragic accident where in a
Speaker 1: Manhattan City bus runs over Alison Janny and kills her
Speaker 1: and she dies and uh and Anti Paquin's and Lisa's
Speaker 1: arms and she is partially to blame because she was
Speaker 1: distracted the bus driver. So that is sort of the
Speaker 1: central story. But it's a movie about so much more
Speaker 1: than that. I mean, it's you could have made a
Speaker 1: movie about a girl losing your virginity. They make Yeah,
Speaker 1: they make movies about girls who get pregnant by their
Speaker 1: teachers and have fortunes, and all these things happen in
Speaker 1: this movie, these big, big things. It's crazy. It's it's
Speaker 1: the full kitchen sink, right. It's like, um, it's it's
Speaker 1: the opposite of minimalism. It's like maximalism. It's sort of like,
Speaker 1: even even though he has this story that could be
Speaker 1: kind of the central focus of the film, and it
Speaker 1: could almost be like a legal procedural kind of thing,
Speaker 1: like are we gonna get this guy. Are we gonna
Speaker 1: win the settlement all that? Yeah? Yeah, and um but
Speaker 1: you know, I feel like to do that. Like, there
Speaker 1: are many films within this film, and I think that
Speaker 1: is entirely the point that Lanagan is making is that basically,
Speaker 1: you know, um, so there's a moment where Emily, who
Speaker 1: is Monica the deceased woman, her friend, where she confronts
Speaker 1: Lisa and uh and basically says like this, this is
Speaker 1: not your life, this is not your story. You're making
Speaker 1: it about you because you're young and your naive and
Speaker 1: you're inexperienced. But this was my friend that I've known
Speaker 1: since I was nineteen years old, you know, all my life.
Speaker 1: I've known this person. She meant so much to me.
Speaker 1: And for you to kind of come in at the
Speaker 1: eleventh hour and make it all about you essentially, is
Speaker 1: this kind of um monstrous thing to do in a way.
Speaker 1: And she's Lisa is so like taken back by this,
Speaker 1: like I'm just trying to help, you know, but she
Speaker 1: she doesn't have that broader awareness and what the film
Speaker 1: as a whole, like, as a film, what it's doing
Speaker 1: is basically saying that, you know, we all think that
Speaker 1: we're the star of our own movie, and we don't
Speaker 1: necessarily expand that to realize that we're just like a
Speaker 1: background player and and most people's lives and um, and
Speaker 1: also that that it's part of just being human that
Speaker 1: we kind of create these narratives. We create these stories
Speaker 1: to kind of contain the overwhelming amount of things in
Speaker 1: the world, you know, just the brute reality of like
Speaker 1: a city like New York, where there's millions and millions
Speaker 1: and millions of stories. Everybody has their own thing and
Speaker 1: it's all colliding and it's all overlapping at the same time,
Speaker 1: and so in a way that it even goes against
Speaker 1: the idea of like narrative film, because narrative film, the
Speaker 1: idea is that like you you winnow that down, you
Speaker 1: use zero in on just a handful of characters, and
Speaker 1: you kind of tell that one story. But he's trying
Speaker 1: to tell or at least suggest that on the periphery,
Speaker 1: there's like a million other stories, and this movie could
Speaker 1: be about any one of them. For the point that
Speaker 1: it's kind of making. In a way, it just happens
Speaker 1: that they zero went on Lisa, But the broader kind
Speaker 1: of philosophical point that he's making you know you could
Speaker 1: you could make a story about any of these people
Speaker 1: and and have it kind of be um similarly compelling
Speaker 1: to think. Yeah, And he does that in some very
Speaker 1: interesting ways. UM. One of the ways he does it
Speaker 1: is and there are a couple of scenes where that
Speaker 1: stand out to me where he allows the audio track
Speaker 1: almost in an altmanesque way, from other conversations to bleed in. UM.
Speaker 1: Notably the scene where they're in the dinner together, she
Speaker 1: and her kind of best friend who loves her, and
Speaker 1: she very cruelly sort of and I don't think intentionally
Speaker 1: toys with She's just a very confused young adolescent woman,
Speaker 1: a girl, and U as their zoom, you know, zooming
Speaker 1: in very slowly on their dinner table. You're really listening
Speaker 1: to a conversation with these two elderly women next to them,
Speaker 1: but also a little bit of this other table bleeds
Speaker 1: in and then they finally get to their conversation. So
Speaker 1: he does it there, and then he does it in
Speaker 1: that great shot outside the apartment building when he's when
Speaker 1: he's panning from outside the tracking shot by the different
Speaker 1: windows and you hear the different conversations at the different
Speaker 1: windows of the different apartments and so you finally land on. Um,
Speaker 1: I keep wanting to color stuki because I was a
Speaker 1: true blood person. Uh. Lisa and her mom uh sort
Speaker 1: of just picks it up in mid conversation, and and
Speaker 1: that stuff really makes it clear that this is a
Speaker 1: movie about this girl and her entire her full life,
Speaker 1: but also a movie about New York. Yes, oh absolutely,
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's a cliche to say like the
Speaker 1: city is another character, but it is really true in
Speaker 1: this case. Um, and you know they're there are definitely
Speaker 1: those those two scenes that where it jumps out the most.
Speaker 1: But anytime there's like an establishing shot or an exterior
Speaker 1: there's always like audio bleeding over from people's conversations on
Speaker 1: the street, usually people we don't even see, but just
Speaker 1: to kind of, um, yeah, convey the idea, like reinforce
Speaker 1: the idea that life is always going on beyond these stories.
Speaker 1: And and even though this might be considered like high drama,
Speaker 1: to watch this like realized that the world is just
Speaker 1: going indifferently at its own pace all around it, and
Speaker 1: this thing that kind of stops the world for Lisa.
Speaker 1: The rest of the world just keeps moving. Yeah, did
Speaker 1: you happen to read I'm sure you probably did the
Speaker 1: great Atlantic article an interview with Lonergan. Yes, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: really great read um, And he pointed out a couple
Speaker 1: of things which really kind of drive that home too,
Speaker 1: was um, he was always fascinated with the idea of
Speaker 1: what else is going on aside from the central plot
Speaker 1: of a movie in these people's lives, and why have
Speaker 1: we never seen that? And I think the reason why
Speaker 1: is is it's not for everyone. It's this is a
Speaker 1: borderline experimental film in a lot of ways. Because of that,
Speaker 1: it really is. Yeah, yeah, it's in the empty narrative
Speaker 1: in a way, it really is. And the other thing
Speaker 1: too that he did, which was very sneaky sort of
Speaker 1: camera trick, was he said he wanted to have a
Speaker 1: lot of shots where Lisa wasn't even the focus of
Speaker 1: the shot, even though she was in the shot, and
Speaker 1: he said, there are plenty where she is, but he
Speaker 1: said he he tried to have a lot of shots
Speaker 1: of the city where she just sort of passes through,
Speaker 1: and it gives it's almost like a documentary at times,
Speaker 1: oh for sure. And you can tell, like a lot
Speaker 1: of those street shots they're just on a long lens,
Speaker 1: like several blocks away. They're not blocking off the count
Speaker 1: you know, the streets for filming or anything. I think
Speaker 1: those are real New Yorkers and a lot of those shots, um,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't have like a documentary film where um, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're Lisa is allowed to just get lost among like
Speaker 1: the anonymous crowd, you know, and the camera starts to
Speaker 1: pick up these other faces. And because of the way
Speaker 1: the movie has been working, it kind of invites you
Speaker 1: to think, like, I wonder what that person's story is.
Speaker 1: I wonder what their day is, Like, I wonder what
Speaker 1: they're worried about her, thinking about her going through you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's just the real the reality and the realness of
Speaker 1: that long again, I mean he does it, and in
Speaker 1: all of those films, Um, it's just astounding, Like the
Speaker 1: that scene early on where she's on the sidewalk and
Speaker 1: her boyfriend or her friend that I can't remember Tyn
Speaker 1: twelve who yeah he's great, Yeah, where he asked her
Speaker 1: out on a date. It is so like gut wrenching
Speaker 1: because we've all been there as adolescence to to try
Speaker 1: and figure out that roadmap in front of you that
Speaker 1: you've never navigated before of asking a girl out on
Speaker 1: a date, and especially if it's someone that's your friend
Speaker 1: that you want to take it to that next relationship
Speaker 1: level in they just play it so real. It's really
Speaker 1: really great. Yeah, that that's an incredibly relatable part of
Speaker 1: the story For me, absolutely, I had that experience numerous
Speaker 1: times where it was like it was always like the
Speaker 1: friend that you know, the feelings developed for over time
Speaker 1: more than like you know, just approaching someone out of
Speaker 1: the blue and asking them out. That wasn't really a thing,
Speaker 1: so um yeah. And then and then the strain that
Speaker 1: would put on those relationships, you know, whatever the outcome was, Um,
Speaker 1: there's always like some awkwardness involved if it doesn't if
Speaker 1: it's not returned, you know, if it's not mutual. So
Speaker 1: um yeah, Yeah, that's that's a very very relatable part
Speaker 1: of the movie. Even you know, I love that the
Speaker 1: movie just gives you these like a little small moments
Speaker 1: that give you a window into these other lives, even
Speaker 1: though their periphery characters. But there's like the scene where
Speaker 1: she's already called up Karen Culkin about about losing her virginity.
Speaker 1: Then her friend calls her up and it there's even
Speaker 1: a shot of him like in his bed with like
Speaker 1: the pavement and interpoll posters on the wall, and it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a Friday night probably, and like he's
Speaker 1: in bed and he's thinking like should I call her?
Speaker 1: Should I not call her? You know, I wonder what
Speaker 1: she's up to. That's all going through his head. He's
Speaker 1: just like fixated on this girl and um. And then
Speaker 1: he calls her up and he's trying to make conversation
Speaker 1: and it's it's not leading anywhere, and she finally just says,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, you know, I don't really feel like talking
Speaker 1: right now. He's like, oh, okay, okay, and then he
Speaker 1: just you know, hangs out the phone like starts crying immediately.
Speaker 1: It's very very um, you know, we we we we
Speaker 1: don't see him that much through the film, but I
Speaker 1: love that we have that kind of a little little
Speaker 1: private moment just to kind of, I don't know, give us,
Speaker 1: give us some a little bit of richness and detail
Speaker 1: to these kind of secondary characters. Yeah, and that's after
Speaker 1: the party where she makes out with Karen Culkin and
Speaker 1: then immediately drunkenly in the hallway tells her friend that
Speaker 1: she loves him really and him Yeah, and this poor Darren,
Speaker 1: he's just like on this roller coaster of young emotion. Man,
Speaker 1: I felt so bad for him. And she's not she's
Speaker 1: not being cruel. I don't think. I think she's just
Speaker 1: a confused kid. Yeah, I think I think the idea
Speaker 1: is that, like Lisa is, she's more powerful or she
Speaker 1: has more of an effect on people than she even
Speaker 1: realized this. Right, she hasn't She hasn't yet learned that
Speaker 1: necessarily that what seems to her like a small thing
Speaker 1: might be a big thing to somebody else. And she
Speaker 1: so she doesn't have that that that like empathetic, um
Speaker 1: more developed adult perspective on the world, because she's still
Speaker 1: like an adolescent. And this is they're all narcissists. Yeah,
Speaker 1: then this is this this movie is like her journey
Speaker 1: to some broader awareness. But even at the end of
Speaker 1: the film, like she's still got a lot of um
Speaker 1: territory to cover before she really gets there. But she
Speaker 1: does expand that that awareness in some ways, in other
Speaker 1: ways she still has a lot more to learn. Yeah,
Speaker 1: since you brought up Karen Culkin, uh I adore Kieren Culkin.
Speaker 1: I'm a huge, huge fan of his. Uh Igby goes
Speaker 1: down as one of my all time favorite movies. And
Speaker 1: he just has a a fucking coolness about him that like,
Speaker 1: I don't I could never achieve even as a kid,
Speaker 1: effortless and the and this character is kind of and
Speaker 1: I thought the the virginity losing scene was he he
Speaker 1: was he was being a good guy, you know, he was.
Speaker 1: He was trying to be very caring and he was
Speaker 1: charged with a very big important thing in her life.
Speaker 1: He agreed to do it, and he was being very
Speaker 1: caring and very loving. I think I kept waiting for
Speaker 1: that seemed to go bad, I mean, and it went bad,
Speaker 1: and that he you know, didn't wear a condom, but
Speaker 1: I was waiting forward to go bad with him being
Speaker 1: too aggressive or being a jerk, and the whole time
Speaker 1: he was really kind of being a good guy and
Speaker 1: trying to guide her through this thing. I felt like,
Speaker 1: I think the movie kind of sets up the expectation
Speaker 1: that he's going to be more a jerk about it
Speaker 1: than he than he is, and he actually ends up
Speaker 1: to be a pretty decent person and and to not
Speaker 1: have any kind of particularly impure intentions about the thing,
Speaker 1: you know, and and yeah, it kind of she she
Speaker 1: picks him, you know. She she jokes about this with him, like, um,
Speaker 1: or he asked her to what do I owe this
Speaker 1: honor that you're you know, giving me, And she's like, Oh,
Speaker 1: it's because of my really profound, deep feelings for you sarcastically,
Speaker 1: So she's just basically saying, you seem cool, and I
Speaker 1: want to get it over with and you know, neither
Speaker 1: one of us is going to like mistake this for
Speaker 1: something more than what it is, so, um, this seems
Speaker 1: like an ideal thing because I trust you and we
Speaker 1: already know each other a little bit, so let's just
Speaker 1: do this. But by the end of it, he kind
Speaker 1: of says, or she says to him, um, something about
Speaker 1: you know, you must not feel anything for me, and
Speaker 1: he's like, well, I think I've just proved that I
Speaker 1: at least have some level of feelings for you, you know. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that scene later on too, and the acting
Speaker 1: class when the play isn't going well and they're all
Speaker 1: getting getting real and the teacher it's such a very
Speaker 1: drama class thing to do, basically sits down and has
Speaker 1: this sort of group therapy where they all admit these
Speaker 1: things to one another and then hug it out one
Speaker 1: at a time, and they get over to his character.
Speaker 1: I mean it's basically Igby. I'm just gonna call m
Speaker 1: Maigby and and he's like, and I play in the
Speaker 1: band and uh on these songs for this play and
Speaker 1: I just kind of want to come here and do
Speaker 1: that and go smoke a joint on the roof. And
Speaker 1: I don't want to hug anyone. And but he's not
Speaker 1: being an asshole, he say, he's still so affable. And
Speaker 1: the teacher was like, well, you want to hug me
Speaker 1: and he's like yeah, yeah, yeah, such a great moment,
Speaker 1: so so real. Yeah, he's he's yeah, I mean he
Speaker 1: he only has like a handful of scenes, but he
Speaker 1: does leave a big impression in this film. And um,
Speaker 1: it's funny, like his his way, you know. Lisa even
Speaker 1: brings attention to it where she says, like, why is
Speaker 1: it that everything you sound, everything you say sounds funny?
Speaker 1: You know, It's just a gift I have or something.
Speaker 1: And even when he says that, it's like fun and
Speaker 1: I've known people like that. They just have that that
Speaker 1: kind of weird charisma, effortless, you know, and um, yeah,
Speaker 1: growing up especially it was always frustrating to like see
Speaker 1: other kids who had that kind of thing, just that
Speaker 1: ease with like social situations or charming people or whatever.
Speaker 1: So it just comes so understood. Yeah yeah, Um, well,
Speaker 1: let's jump back to the beginning and in the big scene,
Speaker 1: you know where I didn't know anything about this movie.
Speaker 1: I intentionally kind of went in not wanting to know,
Speaker 1: and so that bus accident really shook me to the core.
Speaker 1: And it's one of the most brutal, one of the
Speaker 1: most brutal death scenes I've ever seen in a movie.
Speaker 1: I think it really is. I can't even think of
Speaker 1: a more impactful, realistic upsetting just completely out of the blue,
Speaker 1: if you don't know it's coming, um scene in a
Speaker 1: film like and I'm Glad you're it's it's really cool that,
Speaker 1: um that you didn't know that, because if you if
Speaker 1: you read even like kind of the log line, the
Speaker 1: one liner description for this movie, a lot of times
Speaker 1: it's like after a traumatic bus crash blah blah blah. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's really cool that you got to see
Speaker 1: it cold and and just be completely taken by surprise
Speaker 1: by that, even though it is like super upset and
Speaker 1: the way the whole thing on fold. I mean it
Speaker 1: feels like that's exactly how it would go in reality. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems very real. Alison Janny. I think it was
Speaker 1: brilliant to cast her because she's someone like if you
Speaker 1: would have cast an unknown, it would have been tough.
Speaker 1: But I think when you cast in Alison Janny just
Speaker 1: for that one party, it's someone that everyone loves, I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: and so it makes it really extra hard to see
Speaker 1: her slowly and brutally go into the light right in
Speaker 1: front of your face. It was It's one of the
Speaker 1: toughest movie scenes I've ever sat through. Man, it was
Speaker 1: really really hard to watch. And it's really gnarly to
Speaker 1: the way the blood, like they're not shy about like
Speaker 1: the blood sprang out, and you know, it's really gory.
Speaker 1: I mean it's like a war movie, you know, that
Speaker 1: that level of like uh, And they're talking about the
Speaker 1: tournique and everything, and she's starting to you know, when
Speaker 1: when we kind of realized that we don't know the
Speaker 1: full reality of this until later on where she's asking
Speaker 1: for her daughter. Her daughter also happens to be named Lisa.
Speaker 1: Lisa gets confused by this. She's like, what are you
Speaker 1: talking about me. She's like, no, I'm talking about my
Speaker 1: daughter Lisa. And then later, you know, later on in
Speaker 1: the film, uh, we learned that, you know, her daughter
Speaker 1: Lisa died at twelve and hasn't been around for a
Speaker 1: long time. That makes it even more kind of upsetting
Speaker 1: to think about that in the last few minutes of
Speaker 1: her life, like she was confused, she didn't realize that
Speaker 1: her daughter was really gone. It's just yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: really um, really sad and um yeah, just the I
Speaker 1: I don't know, I mean that one one interesting thing
Speaker 1: about this film is the particularly time in which it's situated,
Speaker 1: where it's like four years after nine eleven, um, but
Speaker 1: it's still very much on everybody's mind. It comes up
Speaker 1: in conversation, you know. Um, I don't think anybody ever
Speaker 1: like literally says the word nine eleven, but they say
Speaker 1: things like they blew up our city or they killed
Speaker 1: three thousand people, things like that, And in a way, Uh,
Speaker 1: there's something about I don't know, something about the way
Speaker 1: this bus crash happens. It brings up to mind just
Speaker 1: in the sense that it's this insanely traumatic thing that
Speaker 1: just comes out of the blue. On like a nice,
Speaker 1: pleasant New York day, you know, and then suddenly like
Speaker 1: there's this person bleeding and dying in front of you,
Speaker 1: and people are standing around and they're kind of helpless
Speaker 1: to do anything, and um, I don't know. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like a much smaller version of of kind of
Speaker 1: that collective trauma that everybody in that city experience. So
Speaker 1: I mean everybody in the country experienced. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: said that they were actually shooting during happened. No, there's
Speaker 1: there's no way, um no, because they didn't. I don't
Speaker 1: think they started shooting until like two thousan five. But
Speaker 1: I think I think he did have He's had this
Speaker 1: script for a long time. I'm pretty sure. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's what it is. Like he'd been up working
Speaker 1: on the script for a long time and then that
Speaker 1: happened and he was like, Okay, well now this has
Speaker 1: to be like the layer in the film, and um,
Speaker 1: you know, I think I think this is like in
Speaker 1: the in the canon of great post nine eleven movies, Um,
Speaker 1: that that sort of recreate and and and and truly
Speaker 1: capture what that moment felt like in the United States.
Speaker 1: And it's it's kind of interesting because we're in such
Speaker 1: a different moment now that there's almost I think a
Speaker 1: kind of collective amnesia a lot of us have when
Speaker 1: it comes to that period, um, and just remembering what
Speaker 1: it was like and the kind of things that that
Speaker 1: people were really concerned with at that time. Um, I
Speaker 1: would I would say, you know, along with like Spike
Speaker 1: Lee's twenty, this is like one of the great movies
Speaker 1: to to respond to that whole um period, particularly through
Speaker 1: the lens of like New York City, Yeah, and through
Speaker 1: the lens in this case of the kids in high
Speaker 1: school there. You know, they go to this sort of
Speaker 1: hippie dippie liberal, expensive private school which she's partially on
Speaker 1: scholarship for. Um, although you know she's certainly not hurting.
Speaker 1: Her mom's a Broadway uh not star, but pretty big actor.
Speaker 1: Her dad will get her dad right. The commercial director
Speaker 1: in Out in l A on the Beach, Um Keneth
Speaker 1: are gonna so great as an actor. I love it.
Speaker 1: But um, the way they handle it in this movie
Speaker 1: is through the eyes of these high school it's and
Speaker 1: notably in the school and they have these very open,
Speaker 1: hippie dippy sort of chat remit sessions where um, one
Speaker 1: of the threads is this Syrian student and just really
Speaker 1: going at it with with the other kids, like screaming
Speaker 1: at each other and um anna pack when man. She
Speaker 1: has so many great scenes scenes where she's just full
Speaker 1: of rage, not only there, but with the scene with
Speaker 1: um I think Emily later Monica's friend scenes with her
Speaker 1: mom Keneth Low against wife. I mean, she's doing like
Speaker 1: Academy Award winning level acting in this movie. I think, oh, absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's it's a shame that, um nobody
Speaker 1: really got recognized for this movie. You know, it's crazy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's so good. Yeah, but yeah, I love I love
Speaker 1: all the school scenes, the kind of classroom debates. You know,
Speaker 1: I went to I went to a public school, um
Speaker 1: and so, but I actually did my senior year, I
Speaker 1: had a class that was kind of like the classes
Speaker 1: that she's in all the time. UM. It was called
Speaker 1: like political philosophy, I want to say, or maybe political actually,
Speaker 1: I think it was called political theory because they didn't
Speaker 1: want to put the name philosophy in the title of
Speaker 1: the class. I was taught by this guy who was
Speaker 1: basically retired and he just taught this one class just
Speaker 1: for fun basically, and he was like a kind of
Speaker 1: like a former sixties radical and um, you know we
Speaker 1: were reading like Marx and Nietzsche and um, all kinds
Speaker 1: of stuff that that would not really be part of
Speaker 1: the public school curriculum, let's say. And um, and we
Speaker 1: we did have some really heated debates in class, because
Speaker 1: I mean, um, my senior year was two thousand one
Speaker 1: going into two thousand two, So nine eleven happened when
Speaker 1: I was a senior in high school. And um, and
Speaker 1: that was when that class was going on. So we
Speaker 1: had debates in that class about that, you know, about
Speaker 1: going into Aghanistan, and um, he you know, the cool
Speaker 1: thing about him was that he, like I said, he
Speaker 1: was retired. He was not doing it for the money.
Speaker 1: He did not care if he got fired or if
Speaker 1: he got complaints sort ever. So it was it was like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's basically like a college class, but in
Speaker 1: a high school format. And um, this movie really captures
Speaker 1: very well, like I don't know, it's it it reminds
Speaker 1: me of just that that period in your life where
Speaker 1: you're you're beginning, you're you're a teenager, you're starting to
Speaker 1: get introduced to all these ideas that are probably unfamiliar
Speaker 1: to you and you're kind of expanding your mind a
Speaker 1: little bit and you're you're starting to consider other perspectives
Speaker 1: and um, and just the way different different people react
Speaker 1: to it. Some people get really offended. Some people are
Speaker 1: kind of, if anything, maybe too willing to kind of
Speaker 1: take that stuff on, um without without weighing it and
Speaker 1: really considering it. Um, it's just it's just a really
Speaker 1: interesting I don't I can't think of any other film.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's been plenty of films made like in schools,
Speaker 1: but it rarely have they focused so much in on
Speaker 1: the classroom discussions and how combative that can be, and
Speaker 1: the dynamics that exists between the students both inside the
Speaker 1: classroom and outside the classroom, and how those play off
Speaker 1: each other. Just really really interesting. Yeah. And I mean
Speaker 1: and ostensibly this is all stuff that could have hit
Speaker 1: the cutting room floor. Um. I mean, this is the
Speaker 1: stuff to me that makes the movie not a movie
Speaker 1: about a girl who witnessed an accident and follows up
Speaker 1: on it, but a movie about a girl's life at
Speaker 1: that age and her, like I said earlier, her whole
Speaker 1: life and this one thing happens in it. But um,
Speaker 1: it's just a much more rich film. I think by
Speaker 1: leaving all this stuff in and all these other side relationships,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a movie where you have a very
Speaker 1: full subplot that could have left concerning her mother and
Speaker 1: her new boyfriend and John Ren who was fantastic in
Speaker 1: this and I think having those two, you know, this
Speaker 1: is her mom who's also struggling in her relationships and
Speaker 1: in her place in the world, and and whether or
Speaker 1: not she's received well in this play and her narcissism,
Speaker 1: and it's there they kind of mirror each other. It's
Speaker 1: really really good stuff. Yeah. The um I love that
Speaker 1: because how many movies have we seen where the mother
Speaker 1: character is just like an auxiliary thing to kind of
Speaker 1: just serve the plot, drive the story forward whatever, you know,
Speaker 1: either an obstacle or or a help when she's needed,
Speaker 1: but not to be this fully rounded three D character.
Speaker 1: And um yeah, I love this idea that, Like, I mean,
Speaker 1: the thing that that we see over and over and
Speaker 1: over again in this film is how something very dramatic
Speaker 1: can be happening, but there's this other thing also happening
Speaker 1: right at the same time that kind of overlaps it,
Speaker 1: and people's attention is like pulled in different directions. So
Speaker 1: she's very worried about this new play that she has opening,
Speaker 1: but at the same time, her daughter has just had
Speaker 1: this massive traumatic thing, and even the day that it happens, Um,
Speaker 1: she has like a performance or a rehearsal or something
Speaker 1: that night, and she kind of asked her daughter, like,
Speaker 1: do you want me to stay home? I can I
Speaker 1: can just tell them I'm not coming in tonight, and
Speaker 1: she says, no, no, no, just it's fine. Just go, Um,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go to the the movies. You know, I don't
Speaker 1: really want to just sit around here and think about
Speaker 1: it either, So just go and and it'll be fine.
Speaker 1: Like she's kind of Lisa at that point, is is
Speaker 1: trying to just kind of like speed past the thing
Speaker 1: and and and and get beyond it, even though it's
Speaker 1: it's weighing on her immediately and she can't really even
Speaker 1: sit through the movie and you know, obviously it's it's
Speaker 1: it's there's there's no way that she can just kind
Speaker 1: of move beyond it. But yeah, the way the mother
Speaker 1: has to weigh all that stuff together, the way Um
Speaker 1: she's now kind of like dating for what seems like
Speaker 1: the first time and in many many years, because she's
Speaker 1: been busy raising her kids and working as single mom
Speaker 1: in New York City. Um. So yeah, I love that
Speaker 1: she has this this other life and that it's it's
Speaker 1: not um, it's not treated it's just like an occasional thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, it is fully integrated into the story of
Speaker 1: the movie, even though you could argue, if this is
Speaker 1: really Leasa story, some of that stuff doesn't need to
Speaker 1: be there. But then if it wasn't there, it wouldn't
Speaker 1: be this movie. It wouldn't be Margaret, it wouldn't be
Speaker 1: saying what really Long Again is trying to say with
Speaker 1: his film about, you know, the many different stories in
Speaker 1: everyone's life and how those all intersect. Yeah, because so often,
Speaker 1: like you said, you see the mom character just reacting
Speaker 1: and either helping or not helping, but you don't know
Speaker 1: why they might react or help or not help. In
Speaker 1: this movie, she's so full and um, I mean, you
Speaker 1: could have made an entire movie about this woman who's
Speaker 1: a Broadway actor that's getting on up a little bit
Speaker 1: in years and a single mom. It could have been
Speaker 1: totally from her point of view and the dating this
Speaker 1: new man who who she's it's a good guy, but
Speaker 1: she's having such a hard time really connect acting with
Speaker 1: There's that great scene where you know, she talks about
Speaker 1: not really even knowing him, and he's kind of like,
Speaker 1: can we just not do those things? And like here,
Speaker 1: let's just look at a photo album with my family. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he has a very different idea of what a relationship
Speaker 1: is and um, and she is a woman who I
Speaker 1: feel like it's struggling whether or not, like is that
Speaker 1: enough because he's a handsome man, he's French, and he's uh,
Speaker 1: has money and um, all these things that would make
Speaker 1: him a good catch quote unquote, but uh, but she's
Speaker 1: not satisfied. Now He's he's kind of boring. You know,
Speaker 1: he's kind of boring. It's sort of it's sort of
Speaker 1: the parallel character and you can count on me the
Speaker 1: boyfriend in that film too, it's the same kind of
Speaker 1: thing where it's like the guy reliable. You know, he's
Speaker 1: going to provide for the family. He's he's very family oriented.
Speaker 1: He's he's not going to be a scumbag or anything like,
Speaker 1: he's gonna be faithful all that stuff. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, he's just not particularly compelling or exciting. He's
Speaker 1: just kind of a safe you know, responsible pick but
Speaker 1: not like you know, the kind of movie idea of
Speaker 1: like a great romance or something. Yeah, and then he
Speaker 1: spoils it all with the what is it, what is
Speaker 1: it called the the Israel Palestine the Jewish reaction or yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he says that is the Jewish reaction, that that she
Speaker 1: kind of, um just just shuts the conversation down and
Speaker 1: walks away. And then he says, he says later on,
Speaker 1: like if I had just said the Israeli reaction instead
Speaker 1: the Jewish, it wouldn't be this problem. But yeah, the
Speaker 1: films really that's a very very interesting um kind of
Speaker 1: through line in the film because there's a lot of
Speaker 1: talk about um, Afghanistan, Iraq, and then Israel Palestine comes
Speaker 1: up in some of the classroom discussions as well. UM
Speaker 1: and kind of just you know, America's relationship to the
Speaker 1: Middle East and um, Islam, Judaism and so on, UM,
Speaker 1: and just how how how incredibly um, I don't know,
Speaker 1: treacherous that that territory can can be in a in
Speaker 1: a conversation like that. And it's Lisa that that ends
Speaker 1: up throwing that bomb into that conversation, you know, because
Speaker 1: she's just come from the class room discussion and now
Speaker 1: she's like a dinner with the adults and she's like, oh,
Speaker 1: here's what we had a conversation about in class today.
Speaker 1: And then it just immediately like, you know, detonates in
Speaker 1: that conversation, and um, who knows what would have happened,
Speaker 1: you know, Um, had had she not brought it up,
Speaker 1: had that not come up, like he wouldn't have said
Speaker 1: the thing, her mom wouldn't have broke up with him,
Speaker 1: and he doesn't have the heart attack, then who knows,
Speaker 1: you know. It's just like it's it's hard to say
Speaker 1: what the what the different story might have been. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he dies, they go to the funeral, and I don't
Speaker 1: know if you've got the sense, but I feel like
Speaker 1: every sort of attractive woman they showed felt like an
Speaker 1: ex girlfriend. Yeah, well, like blond hair and a lot
Speaker 1: of the I think so, I think. I think it's
Speaker 1: it's very a subtle. I didn't pick up on it
Speaker 1: for a long time. In fact, I think it was
Speaker 1: somebody's review pointed that out, and then when I watched
Speaker 1: his most recent time, I was like, oh, yeah, I
Speaker 1: do kind of see that. That's like insanely subtle stuff
Speaker 1: because it's not marked on at all, but it is
Speaker 1: kind of the funny thing where, like, I mean, it's true,
Speaker 1: it's like if if if if somebody has a type
Speaker 1: and they actually keep in touch with their exes and
Speaker 1: so on, then if they did have a funeral, like
Speaker 1: there might be that moment where everyone kind of looks
Speaker 1: around and realizes, oh, we all kind of yeah, we
Speaker 1: all kind of fit the bill, you know. It's it's
Speaker 1: kind of a weird thing. Yeah. Uh So, let's talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about the Kenneth Against character. The father,
Speaker 1: the TV commercial director who was out on the West
Speaker 1: coast on that in that sweet Pad on the beach.
Speaker 1: The only thing we see of their relationship I think
Speaker 1: is is it three or four phone calls something like that? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think it is for maybe for um. And he's
Speaker 1: such a he's such a good actor, you know, doing
Speaker 1: what he does, which, uh, in this case, sort of
Speaker 1: this kind of schlubby what was me narcissist father who Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, he loves his daughter, but he's also kind
Speaker 1: of like he's not really listening to her that much.
Speaker 1: I don't feel like, well, it's like he has I mean,
Speaker 1: everybody in the movie has like their story that they
Speaker 1: think they're in, that they think their life is, and
Speaker 1: the meaning that they think their life has, and and
Speaker 1: the sort of grand purpose that they that they ascribe
Speaker 1: to things. And so everybody is interpreting reality through that story,
Speaker 1: through that lens, and he has his particular lens. And
Speaker 1: for some reason, maybe because she's like, um, you know,
Speaker 1: I think she's like a junior senior in high school, right,
Speaker 1: so you know, she's right on the cusp of of
Speaker 1: young adulthood. And in his mind, the big thing is
Speaker 1: like a boyfriend, Like, is she gonna have a boyfriend?
Speaker 1: And she's not gonna have a boyfriend? What are the
Speaker 1: boys doing? Who she's seeing? So every conversation becomes about that,
Speaker 1: and he never gives her the space ace to be
Speaker 1: like to just ask, really, what's going on with you,
Speaker 1: you know, tell me what's been going on in your life?
Speaker 1: And it's always like he asked her a specific thing
Speaker 1: and she can respond to that specific question, and then
Speaker 1: it's like she can barely get a word in, you know,
Speaker 1: and she when she finally tells him about the accident,
Speaker 1: which is quite a long time after it actually happens,
Speaker 1: when she finally opens up about it. She has to
Speaker 1: kind of just butt in and say, hey, well we'll
Speaker 1: wait a minute, that there's actually something kind of serious
Speaker 1: I need to talk to you about. But it takes
Speaker 1: her making that extra step to get him to like
Speaker 1: kind of listen. Um. And then there's that great sequence
Speaker 1: where you know he's heard the story and now he's
Speaker 1: trying to give his advice a little bit, and then
Speaker 1: his like new girlfriend or wife comes in and again
Speaker 1: it's it's this great thing where it didn't still true
Speaker 1: to life, where things you know in drama that would
Speaker 1: never happen right in drama, you would just have the
Speaker 1: conversation father and daughter without the interruptions, and it would
Speaker 1: kind of get to the core of something in their relationship.
Speaker 1: But instead this other person comes in midway through and
Speaker 1: they're talking about what food do you want to order
Speaker 1: for the trip that we're doing in like this trip yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And uh. It's just so funny the way you can
Speaker 1: see his patients being tested with every additional interruption where
Speaker 1: he like covers the funniest I'm sorry, I'm just in
Speaker 1: the minute, I'm just in the middle of something right now. Um,
Speaker 1: can can we please just And he's he's holding it back,
Speaker 1: and he's holding it back because he's a smild manner guy.
Speaker 1: But you kind of get this since that sooner or
Speaker 1: later he's going to explode too, because it's just stress
Speaker 1: that that he's being put under by being pulled in
Speaker 1: these two directions at the same time. And I love
Speaker 1: the kind of almost uncinematic nous of that, you know,
Speaker 1: of having these like inconvenient things happen in the middle
Speaker 1: of what should be these big pivotal, dramatic moments. But
Speaker 1: that's just how life is. It's not, um, it never
Speaker 1: it's never as smooth as you see in a movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and those that's one of the many moments where
Speaker 1: it's sort of dabbles in cinema verity a little bit.
Speaker 1: I think it's a great effect. Um And and the
Speaker 1: other thing I noticed from that scene too, well, a
Speaker 1: couple of things is a he's sort of miserable in
Speaker 1: his life too. He doesn't like his current wife he
Speaker 1: um and I think he's just kind of a sad bastard.
Speaker 1: Genuine he's probably very very self pitying. And um yeah,
Speaker 1: it's so funny whenever whenever they talk, you know, she's
Speaker 1: like how are you like, Oh, things are good. I
Speaker 1: think it's a little slow yet slow, but I might
Speaker 1: have some stuff coming up in the fall. You know.
Speaker 1: It's like he's talking to his agent or something. It's
Speaker 1: like that. But he is this this self obsessed person,
Speaker 1: which Lisa is too in a way, and and everyone
Speaker 1: is to some extent, but he's never It's interesting because
Speaker 1: at the one on one hand, he is maybe a
Speaker 1: more like well read, thoughtful, kind of philosophical person. He
Speaker 1: has that kind of um, you know, he he brings
Speaker 1: up that great that great quote about uh, George Bernard
Speaker 1: Shaw saying that you know, the Englishman sees the world
Speaker 1: as their own personal moral gymnasium and didn' she knows where,
Speaker 1: he knows where it's from. Um. And so you know,
Speaker 1: in some ways he is more reflective and thoughtful, but
Speaker 1: in other ways he's completely trapped in his own mind,
Speaker 1: in his own perspective and um. Yeah, and he's he's
Speaker 1: just kind of not really there as a father, even
Speaker 1: though he probably thinks he is, because he's never done
Speaker 1: anything nasty. He's never done you know, any of the
Speaker 1: things your quote unquote not supposed to do as a parent.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, he's kind of um, he
Speaker 1: just he just has her arms length emotionally and they're
Speaker 1: not really close the way um, you know, you hope
Speaker 1: a parent and child would be. Yeah. And and the
Speaker 1: other thing he does in that scene, which is what
Speaker 1: all the adults do when they hear this story, and
Speaker 1: I think it's a big part of the movie, which
Speaker 1: is the accident and this conundrum she's in from a
Speaker 1: teenager's point of view, and then from the adults, and
Speaker 1: every single adult that she tells, the first thing they
Speaker 1: say is we should call an attorney. And she doesn't
Speaker 1: get it. She doesn't want to. Um, Emily says it.
Speaker 1: He says it. I think her mom says it, and
Speaker 1: everyone is like, oh shit, this is like this could
Speaker 1: be really bad and we need to just talk to
Speaker 1: someone who knows how we should best handle this. Where
Speaker 1: she's just all it and all emotion and and just
Speaker 1: just wants to get this guy fired so he doesn't
Speaker 1: do this again. And it's also like she's she's only
Speaker 1: looking at it from the perspective of this kind of
Speaker 1: objective morality, ethical kind of lens, because that's what she's
Speaker 1: kind of getting in all her classrooms. She's getting these
Speaker 1: great moral debates in the in the abstract kind of
Speaker 1: and so she sees this thing happens in her life
Speaker 1: and she almost sees like, oh, this is this is
Speaker 1: one of those great conundrums that I can kind of explore,
Speaker 1: you know, and she she doesn't think about I mean,
Speaker 1: the first thing that her mom's is is that Will sweetie,
Speaker 1: like he probably has a family he has to take
Speaker 1: care of. Um. Yeah, there there's there's these real world connections,
Speaker 1: and you know, the the the understood assumption is like
Speaker 1: it was it was an accident. It wasn't like he
Speaker 1: maliciously ran this person over. It was it was negligent
Speaker 1: in the moment, but it wasn't it didn't come out
Speaker 1: of this great malice. And you also, Lisa bear some
Speaker 1: responsibility for this event. So because it's kind of messy
Speaker 1: and gray, and because no matter what we do, we're
Speaker 1: not going to bring this person back to life, Like
Speaker 1: what is really to be gained by um ruining this
Speaker 1: guy's life for a mistake that like anybody could make
Speaker 1: um And so that that's that's the response to the
Speaker 1: adults is just like, let's let's think about how this
Speaker 1: is going to affect this other person, their family that
Speaker 1: certainly has no responsibility for this accident, but they would
Speaker 1: suffer too if he were to lose his job, is
Speaker 1: pension and so on. So that's like the lens through
Speaker 1: which the adults view, which is like it's ambiguous, it's
Speaker 1: it's gray area, you know, there's there's shades of right
Speaker 1: and wrong. It's not so clear, whereas Lisa is much
Speaker 1: more of an absolutist, like would be yeah, yeah, and um,
Speaker 1: you know, because she's so disillusioned in the end by
Speaker 1: the system, because she should be very simple, like I
Speaker 1: go in there, I change my statement, and they get
Speaker 1: this guy fired and make sure you can't do this
Speaker 1: again because that's how it works. And then that's not
Speaker 1: how the system works. And she just sort of the
Speaker 1: system is always there, man, it's always moving, and she
Speaker 1: just gets sort of swept up into it for a
Speaker 1: moment um, and she like I'd almost like to see
Speaker 1: a sequel to this movie of Lisa in her thirties
Speaker 1: or forties to see how she change yeah yeah, and
Speaker 1: like have her have a kid. It would be it's
Speaker 1: such an interesting character. Uh, This this youth, this the
Speaker 1: naivete of youth is just on such full display here. Uh,
Speaker 1: and the and the rage and the pure emotion of
Speaker 1: you if there's so many scenes where she just ex loads,
Speaker 1: like on her mom or on Emily in that one
Speaker 1: scene where that great, great scene where we were talking
Speaker 1: about earlier, where she doesn't realize she kind of is
Speaker 1: making it about her, but she is. But she's also
Speaker 1: a kid that went through this trauma and like she
Speaker 1: did kind of feel for a moment like she was
Speaker 1: her kid and that they had this moment but the
Speaker 1: best friend didn't want to hear that ship. You know.
Speaker 1: It's one of those things where it's like the movie
Speaker 1: does this so well where the tension that that breaks
Speaker 1: in that scene is something that's kind of been building,
Speaker 1: you know, over time, and she's she's Emily is is
Speaker 1: kind of like this. She's probably had to bite her
Speaker 1: tongue a few times before this. But when she starts talking,
Speaker 1: you know, specifically about um, you know, I was with
Speaker 1: your friend and she was dying and and I think
Speaker 1: for a few minutes she confused me with her daughter,
Speaker 1: and you know it's almost like for those few minutes
Speaker 1: I was her daughter. It just rubs her the wrong way,
Speaker 1: like ye hang on, like you're you're really building yourself
Speaker 1: up to be like in a movie, you would be
Speaker 1: be sort of like the last thing before you know,
Speaker 1: everything flashes to white and we cut to the funeral
Speaker 1: or whatever. Like you would be like the kind of um,
Speaker 1: the conclusion of this person's life is to be kind
Speaker 1: of quote unquote reunited with their daughter for a few minutes,
Speaker 1: you know, before passing on. Whereas Emily has this perspective
Speaker 1: of much more like, no, it's just a dumb, stupid, unfortunate,
Speaker 1: tragic thing that happened, and it's almost a disservice to
Speaker 1: her life to to ascribe that particular event too much
Speaker 1: meaning because it changes everything that came before it. And
Speaker 1: it's unfair in a way because it's just a dumb
Speaker 1: accident and it shouldn't affect how we think about the
Speaker 1: rest of this person's life. So there's no need and
Speaker 1: it's almost offensive to like narrativize that event and you
Speaker 1: put your cast yourself as like the leading supporting character
Speaker 1: as this sort of like angel or something that comes
Speaker 1: in at the eleventh hour and like shepherds them into
Speaker 1: the afterlife. It's just kind of you know, Emily's grossed
Speaker 1: out by and she can't she can't hold her tongue
Speaker 1: any longer. Yeah, And I think she's sort of like
Speaker 1: I think she clearly gets that from her mom, because
Speaker 1: her mom's a good woman and she's a single mob
Speaker 1: like keeping it together, but she's also narcissistic. And I
Speaker 1: think that scene where a great scene where the mom
Speaker 1: wants to get to get together with this new woman
Speaker 1: in her life that she's pursuing this case with, and
Speaker 1: she just sort of says, you know, she tells me,
Speaker 1: you're in a play, and then she starts that narcissism
Speaker 1: of like, oh, well, you know, it's nice to be recognized,
Speaker 1: and then and all this stuff, and you can see
Speaker 1: in Emily's eyes like that's where she gets it, like
Speaker 1: like she is from yeah, yeah, and these sort of
Speaker 1: I mean they live in the same neighborhood, I guess.
Speaker 1: But I guess if you get the feeling that that
Speaker 1: maybe Emily is in uh, not that she's poor, but
Speaker 1: maybe in some like d of old school rent control
Speaker 1: scene and not a part of this Upper west Side
Speaker 1: Broadway star kind of scene. Right, she's she's a little
Speaker 1: bit more not working class, but she's she's definitely like
Speaker 1: a little bit more. I mean, she seems like a
Speaker 1: lifelong New Yorker. She has that kind of toughness and
Speaker 1: terseness in a way. Um. But at the same time, yeah,
Speaker 1: she's she whatever she does, it seems like she would
Speaker 1: probably be involved in, like, you know, literary life for
Speaker 1: some something kind of intellectual in a way. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and yeah, she's she's not living high in the hog.
Speaker 1: She's she doesn't have some glamorous life, but she does
Speaker 1: have her life that she's carved out for herself in
Speaker 1: the city. And um, yeah, it's clear that that Lisa
Speaker 1: and her family come from a little bit of different
Speaker 1: strata in that way, as as does the Mark Ruffler,
Speaker 1: the bus driver. Yeah, that boy, that scene where she
Speaker 1: finally goes and confronts him. Um, it's funny. Before before
Speaker 1: that happened, I thought he was not going to appear
Speaker 1: again in the movie. Yeah, Like I had this fan
Speaker 1: fiction theory that that's Terry from you can count on
Speaker 1: me exactly, But then it turned out to be it's
Speaker 1: atally different thing. And um, a much less caring, sympathetic character,
Speaker 1: I guess. Yeah. And uh, the great Um, what's her
Speaker 1: name I'm looking now? Rosemary DeWitt who was just so
Speaker 1: great and everything that she's in a very small part here.
Speaker 1: But what that that's a really tough scene, um because
Speaker 1: he like he just basically denies it flat out, like
Speaker 1: I don't even know what you're talking about. And you
Speaker 1: can see her this is when the reality of the
Speaker 1: system starts to wash over her, like the fact that
Speaker 1: this guy won't admit and confide in her like yeah,
Speaker 1: we this thing happened between us, and and that's why
Speaker 1: I hit her. Like she's just outraged that this could
Speaker 1: be how things go in life, that works in the
Speaker 1: world exactly, that that this great injustice could could happen
Speaker 1: and there's nothing anybody can do about it to change it,
Speaker 1: and and all the adults seem okay with it, you know, no,
Speaker 1: like like there's nobody's going to stand up and make
Speaker 1: the great speech on the courtroom and like justice is
Speaker 1: gonna be served and everyone's gonna learn this great lesson.
Speaker 1: Like no, it's just like because there's this whole backdrop
Speaker 1: of like there's a big labor dispute negotiation happening, and
Speaker 1: the Transit Workers Union does not want to fire any
Speaker 1: of its employees, especially related to like an outside civil
Speaker 1: complaint because that's going to show that they are not
Speaker 1: protecting their workers the way that a union is supposed
Speaker 1: to and so and and that's really interesting too because
Speaker 1: if you think of just like in the abstract, you think, okay, well,
Speaker 1: like it's a union, it's going to protect the workers.
Speaker 1: They're gonna get better wages there, you know, there's gonna
Speaker 1: be better conditions and so on, that there's gonna be
Speaker 1: more job security. Um, it's it's gonna help all these
Speaker 1: people who are kind of working class to still have
Speaker 1: like a pretty reliable um way of living, you know.
Speaker 1: And so it's it's it's this good thing in in
Speaker 1: the overall big picture, but in the specific where this
Speaker 1: like injustice has happened, just the way the power dynamics
Speaker 1: shake out and everything. They're going to defend this guy
Speaker 1: who's not a great guy and who probably shouldn't be
Speaker 1: driving a bus because he's had these other prior complaints
Speaker 1: and they've just kind of rapped them around from place
Speaker 1: to place and swept it all under the rug. So yeah,
Speaker 1: you like, on the one hand, you do want accountability,
Speaker 1: but on the other hand, you don't want it to
Speaker 1: go so far that like they can just fire people
Speaker 1: at will and and you know, pay people less and
Speaker 1: and you know, race to the bottom kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: So again, it's it's that that moral complexity, like the
Speaker 1: the injustice done to this one small person versus the
Speaker 1: greater kind of good of having these um labor protections
Speaker 1: and so on, and the way that there are contradictions
Speaker 1: involved all the time, and it's just reality smashing her
Speaker 1: in the face, like over and over again in this movie,
Speaker 1: the scene with the that fucking asshole detective who was
Speaker 1: who was not not sitting in for the other but
Speaker 1: the other guy's not there yet, and boy, the way
Speaker 1: she's treated by this guy, And it's just that didn't
Speaker 1: have to be in this movie, but I feel like
Speaker 1: that was sort of one of the points is like,
Speaker 1: this is the adult world, and you are seventeen year
Speaker 1: old coming in there, acting like you should get this
Speaker 1: special attention or maybe any attention, and she's dismissed at
Speaker 1: every turn, and that guy is such a fucking jerk. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's a jerk. And you also get the sense that like,
Speaker 1: in a way, it's just pure happenstance that she got
Speaker 1: the detective that she got, who is a more sympathetic
Speaker 1: ear and is actually willing to kind of humor her
Speaker 1: a little bit. Yeah, more much, much more than this
Speaker 1: other jaded kind of jerk is going to. He's willing
Speaker 1: to hear out. He actually is willing to amend the
Speaker 1: statement and talk to the bus driver again. And he's
Speaker 1: he's only going to take so far, but he's at
Speaker 1: least willing to take it that far. Where's this other
Speaker 1: guy just completely shuts her down. He's very condescending, calls
Speaker 1: her honey, um yeah, and and just you know, she
Speaker 1: tells him her name, like three seconds later, he's like,
Speaker 1: what what's her name again? Okay, Lisa, blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: You know. He's he's like a just a just a
Speaker 1: real prick, but um, very very realistically portrayed, you know,
Speaker 1: and we've all met these people too. So Matt Dameman
Speaker 1: is in this movie. He plays her sort of young
Speaker 1: enhancent teacher. And like I said earlier, you could have
Speaker 1: completely made a movie just about what happens with them.
Speaker 1: There are movie there are movies that exist that are
Speaker 1: just about that. And it was so realistic and so
Speaker 1: and I imagine this is one of the things that
Speaker 1: could have been cut Whole Cloth from the movie in
Speaker 1: a shorter version. Um, but it's like all this is
Speaker 1: going on, and then she's sort of throwing herself at
Speaker 1: these different boys because she didn't know what the hell
Speaker 1: to do. I think part of it is just that
Speaker 1: sort of thing you do when you're going through with
Speaker 1: trauma to distract yourself. But this one was really tough
Speaker 1: to watch. When she goes to his apartment and you're
Speaker 1: just like, don't, don't do it, and don't do it,
Speaker 1: and she's so, uh, what's the word, like that young
Speaker 1: siren man. That's like she's she's using all of her
Speaker 1: young feminine wiles, which she doesn't even fully understand how powerful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, oh god, and he does and she gets
Speaker 1: pregnant and it's fucking just brutal. Yeah, it's really interesting,
Speaker 1: Like in terms of the things some of the things
Speaker 1: that were cut for the shorter version. The scene where
Speaker 1: she actually goes and gets the abortion is not in
Speaker 1: the shorter cut, So you see, you see, you do
Speaker 1: see the fact that they had sex. That's still there.
Speaker 1: And then the scene later on where she walks up
Speaker 1: to Matt Damon and the other teacher on the street
Speaker 1: and just says, just blurts out, did you have an
Speaker 1: abortion last week? So you don't see the actual abortion
Speaker 1: in the middle. So in the shorter cut at act,
Speaker 1: he plays like is Lisa telling the truth? Is she
Speaker 1: messing around and she just playing a head game with
Speaker 1: this guy. It's a very different tone that it takes. Um.
Speaker 1: So that one scene, Yeah, yeah, you don't, you don't know,
Speaker 1: like you you're you're just kind of left to like
Speaker 1: maybe she was, Maybe she wasn't. We're not really sure
Speaker 1: if that's just something she's saying just to kind of
Speaker 1: see what his reaction is going to be, like if
Speaker 1: he's gonna you know, who knows? Um. So, yeah, it
Speaker 1: makes her into a somewhat different character. That's it's a
Speaker 1: little more diabolical. Um, the idea that she might just
Speaker 1: be throwing that out there to like scare him or
Speaker 1: or kind of yeah, mess with his head a little bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean he should. And this is someone who h
Speaker 1: was going to be a teacher at one point. My
Speaker 1: parents were both teachers. Like, you don't even go get
Speaker 1: the coffee with her, right, you don't invite her to
Speaker 1: your apartment, Like I feel like he might have had
Speaker 1: decent intentions. Initially because she was one of the students,
Speaker 1: it was kind of suffering and reaching out to him,
Speaker 1: but like, you just you can't. And he try is
Speaker 1: early on, you know, to not put himself in that position,
Speaker 1: but he does. And then yeah, that's scene where she
Speaker 1: kind of sees on riding his bike and and you know,
Speaker 1: she starts to say all this stuff like did you know,
Speaker 1: and like insanely in love with you and I'm not
Speaker 1: a virgin if you're worried about that, you know, and
Speaker 1: he's just like, I can't be having this conversation, gets
Speaker 1: on his bike and gets out of there. But it
Speaker 1: should have been the end of it, but I feel like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the big mistake was certainly he crossed the
Speaker 1: line and having her over to his apartment like that.
Speaker 1: And then there's almost like a secondary line crossing in
Speaker 1: the scene where she asked if she can smoke in
Speaker 1: the apartment. He says yeah, sure, and he goes up
Speaker 1: to get an ash tray, and then when she sits
Speaker 1: back down, she sits next to him, and then it's
Speaker 1: kind of all over from there. Um yeah, but um,
Speaker 1: you know I love next to him. Yeah, she's before
Speaker 1: she was in a different chair exactly there. He's on
Speaker 1: a couch, she's in a chair. And then after you know,
Speaker 1: they he gets up to get the ash tray and
Speaker 1: she goes up to to get a light. Um. They
Speaker 1: sit back down on the same couch, side by side,
Speaker 1: and then she starts moving in and it goes pretty
Speaker 1: quickly from there. Even though he's still kind of like,
Speaker 1: we can't, we shouldn't, don't you know, he gives it
Speaker 1: pretty quickly. Yeah. Another scene that could have easily been cut,
Speaker 1: and a character that could have been cut was Matthew
Speaker 1: Broderick's character and the great the Shakespeare scene in class.
Speaker 1: It's so funny and and it doesn't even add much
Speaker 1: to the film other than just a bit of comic
Speaker 1: relief of this teacher. And in my mind it was
Speaker 1: also a little bit of fan fiction that that even
Speaker 1: though I think they, oh, no, I guess it could
Speaker 1: have worked out timeline wise that that was the teacher
Speaker 1: from election. He's also relocated like Mark Rufflo, they both yeah,
Speaker 1: because he went to New York. So he gets he
Speaker 1: gets this job where he's so he lands on his
Speaker 1: feet fighting with this uh, this little young male version
Speaker 1: of Tracy Flick about what Shakespeare means. And it's that
Speaker 1: thing that we I think that we probably saw in school,
Speaker 1: but maybe they didn't even direct because we were just kids. Well,
Speaker 1: there's there's something funny in that scene where he basically
Speaker 1: just like the kid keeps coming back to him with
Speaker 1: this interpretation like well, like you know, Shakespeare is comparing
Speaker 1: you know, humans two flies, and gods to humans, and
Speaker 1: and you know, like if he keeps talking about like
Speaker 1: if gods have a higher consciousness, then they don't. They
Speaker 1: don't think the way humans think and the way that
Speaker 1: you know, a fly cannot understand the way of human thinks.
Speaker 1: And so what we perceive as you know, a malicious
Speaker 1: act on the part of the gods, you know, killing
Speaker 1: us for their sport. Um. Maybe there is some grand
Speaker 1: design and we just can't appreciate it because we're these
Speaker 1: mere humans and they're these great gods that have this
Speaker 1: higher consciousness um, which I think is I mean, it's
Speaker 1: a fine interpretation, but it's it's just funny because you
Speaker 1: can tell Matthew Brodick is like, well, that's not the
Speaker 1: scholarly opinion on this passage. You know, all the literary
Speaker 1: critics agree Shakespeare is talking about this other thing, and
Speaker 1: that's that's ultimately the only rebuttal he has. Like he
Speaker 1: he doesn't really have he you know, he kind of
Speaker 1: has this off handed remark like, well, you know, Shakespeare
Speaker 1: says somewhere else on the play that that's not what
Speaker 1: he's talking about, but I don't even want to get
Speaker 1: into that. Like he kind of, uh, he kind of
Speaker 1: just like bigfoots him, and it's just sort of like, look,
Speaker 1: here's what the established scholarly opinion says, this passage means.
Speaker 1: That's what it means. You're wrong, We're moving on, you know.
Speaker 1: And it's funny because all throughout the scene he like
Speaker 1: keeps drinking this orange juice. Um. After he has that
Speaker 1: final blow up, he like walks over to his desk
Speaker 1: and like eats the sandwich. So you kind of get
Speaker 1: the idea that like maybe he's just like hungry and
Speaker 1: he's a little cranky and that's why he's being particularly
Speaker 1: short with uh, with his student today. Um. There's there's
Speaker 1: so many things like that throughout the film where someone
Speaker 1: who's maybe even in a position of authority, uh, like
Speaker 1: a grown up that you think is supposed to be
Speaker 1: this kind of like evolved neutral, um, kind of moral authority. Um,
Speaker 1: they have all these like mitigating circumstances. So maybe Matthew
Speaker 1: Broderick is just hungering, cranky. Maybe something's going on in
Speaker 1: his life and he's not in the best mood. So
Speaker 1: on a different day, maybe he would have engaged more
Speaker 1: with that student's ideas and they could have had like
Speaker 1: a fruitful discussion. Instead, he just like shuts him down.
Speaker 1: He's like, look, we're moving on. That's not what we're
Speaker 1: talking about here, because that's not I'm not equipped to
Speaker 1: discuss this in the way that you're bringing forward because
Speaker 1: I have this like preconceived notion of what the scenes about,
Speaker 1: and so we're just gonna move on. That's kind of
Speaker 1: what he does to the kid. Yeah, my take on
Speaker 1: that scene was that that Matthew Broddick wasn't following him
Speaker 1: and didn't really understand him, and the kid kind of
Speaker 1: outwitted him, and uh, he did the opposite of what
Speaker 1: a teacher should do, which was I'm caught not fully
Speaker 1: understanding it. Because eventually he does kind of say, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know, but what you should do as a
Speaker 1: teacher is indulged in and ask for more explanation and say,
Speaker 1: you know what, you kind of got me here. I
Speaker 1: really don't know what you're saying, but let's talk more
Speaker 1: about it. But he's I think of the ego, there's
Speaker 1: narcissism from the adult some display all throughout this movie,
Speaker 1: very sort of subtly, and I think this is just
Speaker 1: another example of that adult ego with a kid around
Speaker 1: not wanting to sort of reveal his hand, which is
Speaker 1: I don't really know what this kid's talking about right now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he wants to. He wants to maintain that air of
Speaker 1: like knowing it all, authority of authority, yeah, and and
Speaker 1: of being like I'm the teacher, you're the student. I'm
Speaker 1: going to tell you what this stuff means. Um, even
Speaker 1: when I ask you what you think it means, I
Speaker 1: want you to tell me the thing that I already
Speaker 1: think it is. And if you come at me with
Speaker 1: some other idea that doesn't connect up with like what
Speaker 1: I had in mind to discuss or the way I
Speaker 1: see it, instead of like engaging with that, he just
Speaker 1: shuts it down. Um, which is I've seen that happen,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, it's there's there's a lot of
Speaker 1: times also like there's that one kid who always like
Speaker 1: when he's called on, he has like a dumb thing
Speaker 1: to say kind of Um, so there there. I've been
Speaker 1: in classrooms where that happens too. We all have where
Speaker 1: it's like you're you're having a really cool discussion about
Speaker 1: something and then someone just throws a wrench into it
Speaker 1: because they're not really following the train of thought that
Speaker 1: everyone else. Is the kind of derail over where you
Speaker 1: know that the one that's coming to mind right now
Speaker 1: is the kid who says, um, you know, why is
Speaker 1: it cool to bomb men, but like it's not cool
Speaker 1: to bomb women and children? Like isn't that just like
Speaker 1: a reverse sexism or something? Right? And and the teachers like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, like, you know, that's not really the
Speaker 1: conversation we're having, and you're sort of like your premises
Speaker 1: way off and I don't really want to get into this,
Speaker 1: like they just kind of God bless the teachers. Uh.
Speaker 1: So let's talk some about the filmmaking. Um, this is
Speaker 1: a movie that has some of the most beautiful transition shots, uh,
Speaker 1: that I've ever seen in a movie. And it was
Speaker 1: a love letter to the city. And it was clear
Speaker 1: to Lanagan that that Lanagan really wanted to showcase New York.
Speaker 1: A bunch of them spring to mind, but um, I've
Speaker 1: jotted down a few of my favorites. That one, I mean,
Speaker 1: my god, that one transition where he he usually has
Speaker 1: that lockdown shot from above on the city street and
Speaker 1: I think that probably might be outside her apartment maybe,
Speaker 1: But the one where he finally moves the camera and
Speaker 1: it felt slowly all the way the Endless Avenue at night,
Speaker 1: and then it follows that plane yea, as it flies
Speaker 1: through the sky to its kind of goes along the
Speaker 1: edge of that building, like it it never gotapped by
Speaker 1: the building. It was like a crazy shot. I don't
Speaker 1: know how they got that, or how they planned it,
Speaker 1: or if it was just sheer luck or what. But
Speaker 1: I mean the time to kind of scout like the
Speaker 1: flight paths and and just knowing that like a plane's
Speaker 1: gonna fly over that, and timing it and and and
Speaker 1: you know, getting the shot where it's like smooth and everything.
Speaker 1: Very very impressive kind of technical achievement there. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: so many shots like this, all the transition shots, these languid,
Speaker 1: slow tilts and hands around New York City. Um, the
Speaker 1: shots of the buildings reflecting in their buildings. Uh. Just
Speaker 1: a real love letter that. The one shot God that
Speaker 1: I loved was towards the end when they're at the
Speaker 1: opera uh, and it follows for all the way down
Speaker 1: the staircase uh and then through the door into the
Speaker 1: theater all the way to her seat, and it's just
Speaker 1: like this one continuous shot and it's just fucking gorgeous. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it's like it's it's not a showy film, I
Speaker 1: don't think. I mean, every time he does that, there's
Speaker 1: like a real kind of narrative purpose that he's serving.
Speaker 1: It's not showy in that way. Um. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, it is very ambitious formally. Um in a
Speaker 1: way I think that's really really cool um and and
Speaker 1: very very interesting. There's another one of those great panning
Speaker 1: shots of the skinny skyline that I think is really cool,
Speaker 1: where they're panning and it's kind of tracking along with
Speaker 1: like this bird that's flying in the sky, and then
Speaker 1: it continues to pan and there's also like an airplane
Speaker 1: in the background and it continues to pan and you
Speaker 1: know it just these these really really nice visual moments
Speaker 1: that again, like you could not stage. You just have
Speaker 1: to be there with a camera and look for it,
Speaker 1: wait for it and catch something interesting like that. Um yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's that shot and Tree of Life where you see
Speaker 1: like the um the flock of birds like changing direction
Speaker 1: spontaneously kind of reminded me of that shot a little bit.
Speaker 1: Another one, And I think all the airplanes. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of shot of airplanes. I think that was
Speaker 1: sort of a little nod to nine two sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and just the idea too that like when you
Speaker 1: look up at an airplane, you're looking up at potentially
Speaker 1: hundreds of people, again, all with their own story. Maybe
Speaker 1: they're maybe they're coming to New York. Maybe New York
Speaker 1: is just a connection. Um. But like the sense that
Speaker 1: everyone's life is just like moving, you know, there's always movement,
Speaker 1: there's always things going on. Um, there's like way too
Speaker 1: many things to contain. Uh, there's there's just like this
Speaker 1: constant flood of of things happening all around you know,
Speaker 1: and um, all we can do is try to contain
Speaker 1: that and contextualize it for our own lives. But um,
Speaker 1: you know, because you would would kind of like lose
Speaker 1: your mind if you if you try to actually literally
Speaker 1: respond to all the stimula. There's there's no way you
Speaker 1: have to filter down. I miss New York. Another couple
Speaker 1: of shots that I loved. One that great, great shot
Speaker 1: from behind where Lisa's walking down the sidewalk and the
Speaker 1: camera is following, the lens is following her as she walks,
Speaker 1: and then at a certain point that it's and I've
Speaker 1: never seen a shot do this. Uh it's the it
Speaker 1: stops the camera uh stops the It's not a push,
Speaker 1: it's actually a zoom, I think, and then it starts
Speaker 1: to widen back out and then it tilts up and
Speaker 1: follows into the sky. It was unbelievable. And it's that's
Speaker 1: kind of a if you looked at it on paper,
Speaker 1: it's a very showy shot, but it doesn't really come
Speaker 1: across that way in this movie somehow. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it's that's that's probably, you know, when Lonergan is talking
Speaker 1: about this idea of like having shots where you just
Speaker 1: kind of happened to catch Lisa in a crowd, but
Speaker 1: it's not really framed for her that one does. It
Speaker 1: does definitely start out on her because it's kind of
Speaker 1: a long lens. It's a little bit of shallowed up
Speaker 1: the field with the focus on her, and the focus
Speaker 1: is tracking with her as she walks into the crowd,
Speaker 1: but at a certain point, the focus stops and it
Speaker 1: just kind of sits, and you start to see other
Speaker 1: people come into focus as she gets completely, you know,
Speaker 1: absorbed by this crowd, like they start overlapping her, and
Speaker 1: then you just lose sight of her, and then it
Speaker 1: starts to kind of the zoom starts pulling back and
Speaker 1: tilting up, and yeah, it's one of those things where,
Speaker 1: like you you very rarely see camera moves like that
Speaker 1: in a film where there's not some kind of foeground
Speaker 1: subject that you're tracking with that kind of motivates the
Speaker 1: camera to move that way. It is very like almost
Speaker 1: fourth wall kind of breaking shot where it's just like
Speaker 1: we're gonna, we're gonna do this thing that's a very
Speaker 1: very overt camera move, and I'm just gonna kind of
Speaker 1: show my hand a little bit in terms of I
Speaker 1: want you to be taking in this broader perspective of
Speaker 1: all these people in this city. And again just just
Speaker 1: to kind of illustrate that idea, um, this film could
Speaker 1: be about any one of these people in this whole crowd,
Speaker 1: and it would kind of be saying, at a fundamental level,
Speaker 1: the same thing that everyone has, these these lives that
Speaker 1: are going on. So the fun shot that I want
Speaker 1: to talk about is that the great sort of subtle
Speaker 1: shot where she goes down and gets on the subway
Speaker 1: under the poster her Broadway poster of her mom controversy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and doesn't even acknowledge it. She's like literally walks
Speaker 1: right by the poster of her mom's face and doesn't
Speaker 1: even look at it. Yeah, very nice little moment, I
Speaker 1: think from long again there, Yeah, Yeah, I like I
Speaker 1: love the way that, Um, it's just like it's part
Speaker 1: of the landscape, as part of the backdrop. But you know,
Speaker 1: I mean that does that seems realistic? Right that? Um,
Speaker 1: if if all your life your mom has been in
Speaker 1: plays like that, then it's nothing special to you, particularly anymore,
Speaker 1: especially if you're a teenager and you're kind of self
Speaker 1: involved and you know, you don't have a more evolved
Speaker 1: perspective where you're like, you know what, that's really cool
Speaker 1: that my mom's and actress and you know, so on Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: she's annoyed by it, probably, Yeah, get the feeling that
Speaker 1: later in life she would appreciate it more for sure,
Speaker 1: and there are times when she is you know, when
Speaker 1: you when you can tell she's not super annoyed by it,
Speaker 1: but she's a teenager. She has that scene where, um,
Speaker 1: uh you know it's it's it's it's a really really
Speaker 1: great argument scene mother daughter kind of argument where her
Speaker 1: mom is like getting ready to took out on a date.
Speaker 1: She asked, uh, Lisa, you know, does this trust make
Speaker 1: me look fat? And Lisa's like, yeah, a little, and
Speaker 1: then she said, well, there's nothing more I can do
Speaker 1: about it now. And then you know, the whole thing
Speaker 1: about like do you want to go to the opera
Speaker 1: in a few weeks um, and Lisa's like no, I
Speaker 1: don't like opera, and then they kind of have it
Speaker 1: back and forth about that, and like, you know, herr
Speaker 1: mom eventually says to her like, why does everything I
Speaker 1: say to you like annoy you so much? And then
Speaker 1: Lisa has that kind of meltdown where she's like, Mom,
Speaker 1: I don't I don't care about this. I don't care
Speaker 1: about your dumb problems or my dumb problems. You know,
Speaker 1: there's there's bigger things out here, and um, I just
Speaker 1: like I can I I really can remember similar moment
Speaker 1: when I was like a teenager, and you have those weird,
Speaker 1: like hormonal kind of shifts that happen where suddenly you're
Speaker 1: just in a terrible mood or something, and um, it's
Speaker 1: like you're you know, you you start to like butt
Speaker 1: heads with your parents for really no reason. You know,
Speaker 1: you're you're like, there's a there's a phase that some
Speaker 1: kids get into where they're just kind of annoyed by
Speaker 1: almost the existence of their parents. And I don't know,
Speaker 1: like I love the way that in that in that scene,
Speaker 1: like her mom like you know, called her the C
Speaker 1: word and then she throws it back at her and
Speaker 1: she's like, all right, well let's not start calling names.
Speaker 1: Is like you just call me that, Like it's it's
Speaker 1: really really funny. And um, and then like you know,
Speaker 1: all of this is leading up to she's supposed to
Speaker 1: meet jeanre No that night, and then you know, she's like, well,
Speaker 1: should I have him come up or should I just
Speaker 1: have them wait downstairs? You know where she just she
Speaker 1: just wants to, you know, introduce her kid. And now
Speaker 1: like this, this this meltdown has happened. And um, even
Speaker 1: even when they like start going on their date and
Speaker 1: they're kind of walking up to Lincoln Center. Um, there's
Speaker 1: you know, she has this kind of like worried, unhappy
Speaker 1: look on her face, and he asked her, is everything
Speaker 1: all right? And she kind of like switches it off.
Speaker 1: She's like, no, no, no, everything's fine. And you know,
Speaker 1: I just I love that the way that you can
Speaker 1: you could say, I mean, in most movies, if you
Speaker 1: had a date scene like that, it would just all
Speaker 1: be about, you know, one person anticipating the date, the
Speaker 1: other person anticipating the date, and the nervousness and and
Speaker 1: and so on, and then like whatever happened between them emotionally,
Speaker 1: it would all just be about the two of them.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't introduce this third element, which is her daughter
Speaker 1: happened to pick a fight like five minutes before she's
Speaker 1: about to walk out the door. And there's that great
Speaker 1: scene in the elevator to UM where she gets on
Speaker 1: the elevator her mom does and she's kind of crying,
Speaker 1: and then the elevator stops on another floor and like
Speaker 1: a neighbor gets on and she very quickly has to
Speaker 1: kind of collect herself, and then the neighbor happens to
Speaker 1: know that she is an actor, and you know, starts
Speaker 1: complimenting and everything. She has to be kind of gracious
Speaker 1: in that moment. But I just I love the way
Speaker 1: that all these things are are constantly colliding with each
Speaker 1: other again, like in a way that you almost never
Speaker 1: see in uh in in drama, their fiction. Yeah, let's
Speaker 1: talk about that last uh that last scene, you know,
Speaker 1: And I kind of called it to myself because I
Speaker 1: watched it by myself last night earlier when she does
Speaker 1: invite her to the opera. Immediately when she said she'd go,
Speaker 1: I went, that's going to be the last scene. That's yeah,
Speaker 1: I can kind of see that coming. And um, you know,
Speaker 1: they get dressed up and she even has a sweet
Speaker 1: line the mom does where she goes, we can dress
Speaker 1: up like you know, that that connection she's trying to
Speaker 1: make girls night out kind of thing. And boy, and
Speaker 1: you know, just throughout the movie, his use of classical
Speaker 1: music and opera is just outstanding. And it comes to
Speaker 1: its apex here where this very moving thing is happening
Speaker 1: on stage. Everything is finally just culminated his life to
Speaker 1: the point where she starts breaking down. The mom looks
Speaker 1: over and starts breaking down, and then they're just sitting
Speaker 1: there bawling and just have this embrace that's like so
Speaker 1: healing for the audience, remember to see this happen. There's
Speaker 1: that it's just overhead looking down shot where she reaches
Speaker 1: her hand over and you know she's she's kind of
Speaker 1: gripping because she's like holding on for dear life because
Speaker 1: she's you get the sense that this is the moment whatever.
Speaker 1: You know, this Catharsis has arrived because of the beautiful music,
Speaker 1: because she's there with her mom in the opera, and
Speaker 1: you know, so many things are going on and the
Speaker 1: case has just been settled in this really unsatisfactory way,
Speaker 1: this really undrest way. She's even just seen the bus
Speaker 1: driver like out again. Um, and it's like yeah, and
Speaker 1: this moment in this in this one moment, she she
Speaker 1: just kind of has this breakdown and you know she's
Speaker 1: holding on for dear life and she grabs onto her mom.
Speaker 1: They start holding each other and this is beautiful moment
Speaker 1: of like reconciliation and healing and connection and you know,
Speaker 1: you get the sense that this is like it is
Speaker 1: a breakthrough. It's maybe not the last breakthrough she's going
Speaker 1: to have, but this is a big one to kind
Speaker 1: of re established that that relationship she has with her
Speaker 1: mother and um and and and just kind of returned
Speaker 1: to the fundamentals, like she can she can leave that
Speaker 1: parallel life she's been living with, like the court case
Speaker 1: and um just everything that's that's been going through her
Speaker 1: mind about the bus accident. She can start to kind
Speaker 1: of put that behind her now and and focus on
Speaker 1: what's going to be next to her life because the
Speaker 1: rest of the world has moved on and she's certainly
Speaker 1: done all she could do to try to rectify that.
Speaker 1: The system has kind of neutered the response. But she
Speaker 1: did what she could do, and now it's time to
Speaker 1: to get on with her life. Yeah, And I mean
Speaker 1: just that's one of the things. It's also losing her
Speaker 1: virginity and sleeping with her teacher and getting pregnant and
Speaker 1: having an abortion and having this uh fraught relationship with
Speaker 1: this new woman who Emily, who sort of plays out
Speaker 1: as a little surrogate mom in subtle ways, and then
Speaker 1: this brutal situation that she goes through with his cousin
Speaker 1: in Arizona, who are just money grubbers. And uh again,
Speaker 1: I'll be these reality checks slapping her in the face
Speaker 1: of like this is what the adult world is. Like
Speaker 1: you're going to the private school school and on the
Speaker 1: Upper West Side, and like this is what the real
Speaker 1: world is. Punch, punch, Punch. I love the line that
Speaker 1: the lawyer has where he's like, this is how our
Speaker 1: society punishes people. You see, not you, not the individual,
Speaker 1: but the insurance company of the employer. It's just it's
Speaker 1: so abstract. It seems to have nothing to do with
Speaker 1: with any form of She wanted personal payback, Yeah, she wanted.
Speaker 1: She wanted. Um, you know, it's like when they're when
Speaker 1: they're on that final speakerphone conversation. Um, she's like, I
Speaker 1: you know, I know I did it. I know I'm responsible.
Speaker 1: I just want somebody, you know, I want him to
Speaker 1: know that he was responsible to I want somebody to
Speaker 1: acknowledge that, you know that that's something wrong happened here.
Speaker 1: It can't just how can it that's something like that
Speaker 1: can happen and the world just keeps moving and nothing changes.
Speaker 1: It just seems so unjust and unfair because she's been
Speaker 1: she's she's had this idea that that in the world,
Speaker 1: you know, the bad people are punished and the good
Speaker 1: people are are rewarded, and you know, it's it's just
Speaker 1: not that simple. I get. And that's sort of a
Speaker 1: nine eleven allegory as well. Um, I sort of get
Speaker 1: the feeling that if she had gone to Mark Ruffalo
Speaker 1: in that scene and he asked his wife for some
Speaker 1: time alone, and he breaks down and says, I'm so sorry.
Speaker 1: I've been hoping you would come by. I I can
Speaker 1: barely sleep at night. I can't believe this happened. And
Speaker 1: I've had a family. Thank you for lying, because I
Speaker 1: can't lose my job like she would have. That would
Speaker 1: have been enough for her exactly. Yeah, That's that's all
Speaker 1: she really wanted, was just you know, that that private
Speaker 1: admission between the two of them that you know, there's
Speaker 1: we there's nothing we can do to bring her back now,
Speaker 1: but can we at least admit among ourselves in private
Speaker 1: that this is what happened and that we're both responsible.
Speaker 1: And he was just like, you know, his only response
Speaker 1: really is is to just completely shut it down and
Speaker 1: play play innocent, like I have no idea what you're
Speaker 1: even talking about. What I was looking at you, what
Speaker 1: do you mean? Um? And then he finally has this
Speaker 1: thing where he's like, look like the brakes on the
Speaker 1: bus can only slow down at a certain rate and
Speaker 1: the distance between me and there, so you can tell
Speaker 1: he's had his rationalization. Exactly. That's the story he's told
Speaker 1: himself in his mind, which is a very like technical
Speaker 1: one of like, you know, break responsiveness and this is
Speaker 1: the was from the intersection and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: He's like, no, it was, like it was it's a
Speaker 1: physics problem, like I can't there's nothing that could have
Speaker 1: been done, you know. That's that's how he's justified it
Speaker 1: to himself, and it's just, yeah, it's very interesting that
Speaker 1: that whole sequence. You know, if you really think about
Speaker 1: it in retrospect, if any one of those elements had
Speaker 1: been different, it might not have happened. You know, if if,
Speaker 1: for instance, the trip that she was going on was
Speaker 1: not a horse riding trip, she wouldn't have been looking
Speaker 1: for a cowboy hat. It never would have happened, you know,
Speaker 1: if her father had picked some other destination, if Mark
Speaker 1: Ruffalo hadn't put on the cowboy hat that day, you know,
Speaker 1: it would have been different. Exactly. It's a sliding doorth thing,
Speaker 1: like if if Lisa had maybe gotten to the bus
Speaker 1: a few seconds earlier, maybe he wouldn't have closed the
Speaker 1: door and they could have had a conversation like on
Speaker 1: the bus or or whatever. You know, Like, there's there's
Speaker 1: so many different things, and there's even I think kind
Speaker 1: of a deep subtext a little bit, which is that
Speaker 1: he is kind of having this flirtatious moment with her
Speaker 1: and and he's he's sort of like, oh, there's like
Speaker 1: this cute girl and she's chasing the bus and I'm
Speaker 1: kind of giving her a hard time. And um. Then
Speaker 1: then when she goes to see him at home, like
Speaker 1: the wife is just like immediately super suspicious, and you
Speaker 1: get the feeling that he's probably had some like affairs
Speaker 1: or something in the past or that that has has
Speaker 1: driven a real wedge between them and that relationship. And
Speaker 1: so within when Lisa shows up out of the blue,
Speaker 1: the wife is already like, who the hell is this person?
Speaker 1: What is she doing here? You know, what, what have
Speaker 1: you got in yourself? And he's he's doubly panicked because
Speaker 1: on the one hand, he's like, You're gonna mess up
Speaker 1: my relationship. She's gonna think I'm having some some kind
Speaker 1: of affair with this young woman. Um. And then of
Speaker 1: course at the same time, he's also worried about his
Speaker 1: job and and and all that, so he's super freaked out.
Speaker 1: Uh did you recognize that attorney by the way, he
Speaker 1: looks super familiar, but I couldn't place, like what else
Speaker 1: I know him from? He is Dobell in klausn Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: intolerable cruelty. Yeah, yeah, remember that Carl great great, Uh
Speaker 1: just a great face. You know, there's so many like
Speaker 1: I immediately saw him. I was like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: because that's one of my favorite parts of that movie.
Speaker 1: There's so many uh wonderful kind of character actors and
Speaker 1: and familiar faces in this movie. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, his
Speaker 1: his part's great. I love just his like, I mean,
Speaker 1: he he inhabits that role so so well, where he's like, yes,
Speaker 1: this is our system, isn't a great we get money
Speaker 1: like you know, Um, he has a sense of humor
Speaker 1: about it because he's he's a grown up and he
Speaker 1: he knows is the system. And I'm sure at some
Speaker 1: point he was also shocked that it was kind of
Speaker 1: like that callous or whatever. But he's like, look, this
Speaker 1: is the world as it is, Like it's the world
Speaker 1: that exists, not not some world of ideals, not some
Speaker 1: world of quote unquote the way it should be, just reality,
Speaker 1: the way it is. Such good stuff, man, good talk,
Speaker 1: great movie. God damn, if you haven't seen Margaret, do
Speaker 1: yourself a favor and watch the three hour and six
Speaker 1: minute version settle in. It's very rewarding. Um. It is
Speaker 1: very languid and has a pace that you have to
Speaker 1: um be rid before. But um, it's just so great man,
Speaker 1: such a good you know, slice of life and and
Speaker 1: a whole picture of a young woman and and a
Speaker 1: grown woman and her mother and all these characters are
Speaker 1: so fully realized. And um and again, I think that
Speaker 1: you could have made a hour and forty minute version
Speaker 1: of this movie that was great. It was just about
Speaker 1: this accident. Um, But you strip all that stuff away,
Speaker 1: and it's it's a different film. You know, you would
Speaker 1: you would You would essentially not learn or or or
Speaker 1: come to this insight that the film is trying to
Speaker 1: lead you to about how we all invent this story
Speaker 1: for our own lives. But the whole, the world itself
Speaker 1: is so much larger and more complex than than in
Speaker 1: one person story. You would lose all that. You would
Speaker 1: effectively make the same mistake that Lisa makes you know,
Speaker 1: if you were to cut this film down, you would
Speaker 1: be back in that world of like solipsism and narcissism
Speaker 1: and only dealing with um things as they affect you personally,
Speaker 1: but not thinking about the broader you know, uh, consequences
Speaker 1: of actions. We're all just NAT's there's you know the
Speaker 1: poem because a lot of people get confused and they
Speaker 1: think that Lisa's name is going to be Margaret or
Speaker 1: maybe the woman who dies is going to be near Margaret,
Speaker 1: and you're kind of yeah, and um, so this poem,
Speaker 1: you know, the way it goes by in the film.
Speaker 1: I think it's hard if you haven't seen the film
Speaker 1: already to really grasp like what the usage of that
Speaker 1: poem is. Yeah, and it's several times yeah Bring and
Speaker 1: Fall by a Gerard Manley Hopkins. It's really interesting. I
Speaker 1: looked it up on the internet. There's a dedication like
Speaker 1: a subtitle to the to the title kind of um
Speaker 1: that's not mentioned in the film, but it's dedicated to
Speaker 1: a young child. So in a way, um, it's about
Speaker 1: you know, the moral and and kind of emotional development
Speaker 1: of a young child that early on in life cries
Speaker 1: easily and cries at things because it's the first time
Speaker 1: they've encountered this idea of loss or tragedy or or
Speaker 1: or injustice. And um and how as you age, um,
Speaker 1: we become a little bit more coarsened to that stuff. UM.
Speaker 1: And he says, you know, Margaret, are you grieving over
Speaker 1: Golden Grove? On leaving? Then the last line it is
Speaker 1: the blite man was born for. It is Margaret you
Speaker 1: mourn for. So you're mourning for yourself when you when
Speaker 1: you see this external tragedy, there's a part of you
Speaker 1: that feels bad for that person. But at a deeper level,
Speaker 1: it's the understanding that you two are mortal, right, and
Speaker 1: that all this stuff that that is unfair and is
Speaker 1: visited upon others. It means that you two could be
Speaker 1: you know, could find yourself on the other end of
Speaker 1: that um. Like the like the speech Emily made you
Speaker 1: know where she says, you know, um, you're not the
Speaker 1: one who got hit by a bus, and you're not
Speaker 1: the one who just died in an earthquake somewhere else
Speaker 1: in the world. You know, but you will be, you know,
Speaker 1: that's the thing. You will be that one day. UM.
Speaker 1: So I think it's yeah, it's it's it's a profound
Speaker 1: kind of film about um, somebody coming to two terms
Speaker 1: with um, what it is to be an adult, what
Speaker 1: it is to to be confronted with moral complexity in
Speaker 1: the world, and in just a lot of gray area
Speaker 1: and no easy answers. Yeah, totally great movie. I guess
Speaker 1: we have Manchester by the scene next. Yeah, so let's
Speaker 1: get you in here another month or a month and
Speaker 1: a half that laugh fest. Uh, yeah, that wouldn't know
Speaker 1: that's about either. I just know it's stuff. Yeah, don't
Speaker 1: don't read anything about it. Um. Alright, we'll go in
Speaker 1: as cold as you can and alright, I love to
Speaker 1: you know, look forward to talking about it. Awesome and
Speaker 1: maybe we'll get knneth Lawn again on the show on day.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna Lena see if we can alert him somehow
Speaker 1: that we've been paying him homage here. That was incredible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you would be invited, Casey if he did not. All right,
Speaker 1: I'll just start I'll try to calm down. No, I
Speaker 1: don't think it's gonna happen, so don't It's a long shot,
Speaker 1: but we'll see, all right. Man. Well, thanks a lot,
Speaker 1: take care and thank you all for listening and we
Speaker 1: will see you next week By everybody. Bomy Crush has produced, edited,
Speaker 1: and engineered by Ramsay Hunt here in our home studio
Speaker 1: at Pont City Market, Atlanta, Georgia. For I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts For my heart Radio, visit the i
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.