Speaker 1: Welcome to Movie Crush, a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey everybody, and welcome to the Movie Crush. Casey Friday
Speaker 1: a dish, Casey. I'd say, hello, hello, uh we are Like,
Speaker 1: when was the last time I had you in here?
Speaker 1: About six weeks ago? Yeah, it was. It was like, um,
Speaker 1: the first week of April or something, so it's it's
Speaker 1: been a minute. It was kind of the beginning of
Speaker 1: the lockdown exactly. Yeah. I was thinking, like, we we
Speaker 1: were so fresh and innocent then and now we're we're
Speaker 1: old pros at this, at this lockdown stuff. I know
Speaker 1: how you guys doing holding up? Well? How's the house? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's my my girlfriend. Actually she went back to
Speaker 1: her place this week because she's actually started back work again.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's not great, but it is what it is. Um, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're we're holding up fine here. Um to me, this
Speaker 1: just feels like the normal way now. And I'm kind
Speaker 1: of interred anyway, So in a way, I've I've lived
Speaker 1: weeks in my life like this prior to the whole
Speaker 1: confinement thing anyway, So yeah, I'm fine, that's good. You know, Paula,
Speaker 1: your roommate, and I did a very controversial episode on
Speaker 1: Soup v bat which I started. I have not finished yet,
Speaker 1: but I'm about halfway through that one I started. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's it's weird because I have not seen that
Speaker 1: movie even but um, I'm gonna check it out. I
Speaker 1: guess I'm gonna do the whole, the whole cursed the
Speaker 1: trilogy now of what is a Man of Steel, Batman Verse, Superman,
Speaker 1: and then the the newly yeah, the Justice League, which
Speaker 1: is now coming out in the uh the Snyder cart apparently. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna watch that. I mean, here's my deal. The
Speaker 1: reason I'm watching these movies even though I don't love them,
Speaker 1: is that I was I wasn't a comic guy growing up,
Speaker 1: but I was more d C in um my loves,
Speaker 1: which were just sort of from watching Believe it or Not,
Speaker 1: super Friends, in Justice League cartoon, and um just the
Speaker 1: early Superman movies and you know, from Donner in the
Speaker 1: eighties I grew up with, whereas there was no Marvel
Speaker 1: going on. Uh, so I'm in more. I'm more invested
Speaker 1: in the and I had the wonder Woman TV show,
Speaker 1: so like wonder Woman, Batman, Superman, I had the Batman
Speaker 1: TV show. All that stuff is more part of my
Speaker 1: DNA than Marvel ever was because I wasn't into comics.
Speaker 1: So that's why I'm watching these movies each one with
Speaker 1: the hope that it's going to be awesome. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was. I was a DC kid, and I did.
Speaker 1: I did collect comics for a while. Um, kind of
Speaker 1: in like the mid nineties, right around the time that
Speaker 1: Baine broke Batman's back and the killed Superman and all
Speaker 1: that stuff was going on. So I think the I
Speaker 1: think the whole Batman versus Superman thing will be somewhat
Speaker 1: in my wheelhouse. So what I'm familiar with because I
Speaker 1: did read like Dark Knight Returns, the Frank Miller graphic
Speaker 1: novel and all that. So, um, I was never into
Speaker 1: Marvel at all, So I don't don't really have any
Speaker 1: attachment to those characters or those movies. Yeah, I've said
Speaker 1: it before on the show. I don't know why I
Speaker 1: never got into superhero comics. I don't know. It's weird
Speaker 1: because I like that stuff. It just I don't know,
Speaker 1: And it was weird with me because I got into
Speaker 1: it because there was a comic bookshop, like an independent
Speaker 1: comic book shop in Roswell where I was growing up,
Speaker 1: and it was just a cool place to go hang
Speaker 1: out for a while and browse the stacks and find
Speaker 1: cool stuff. And then yeah, and then the guy ended
Speaker 1: up closing the shop or moving it somewhere else, and
Speaker 1: that was just sort of like that ended my fascination
Speaker 1: with comics right then and there. So you know, I
Speaker 1: could have I could have grown up to be way
Speaker 1: more of like a comic book guy or something. But
Speaker 1: I'm kind of glad that, uh it ended when it did,
Speaker 1: like in my adolescence, and Paul is not as well.
Speaker 1: I was surprised he picked that movie. Um. It was
Speaker 1: an interesting conversation because I didn't love the movie the
Speaker 1: first time I saw it. I liked it better through
Speaker 1: with his cut and you know, just through the lens
Speaker 1: of talking about it with a fringe. That always helps.
Speaker 1: But I still don't love it. You know, It's just
Speaker 1: I don't know. Zack Snyder to me is just he's
Speaker 1: not you know, he's like he's a seventy percenter. It's
Speaker 1: it's I think, um, a lot of us are still
Speaker 1: when we think Zack Snyder, we think, um, three D.
Speaker 1: And I don't know just that that one that whole
Speaker 1: that whole aesthetic of like sweatymen. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, gratuitous violence and all that stuff. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I did. Having said that, though flawed as it was,
Speaker 1: I was such a big fan of the I did
Speaker 1: read the Watchman um graphic novel. That's one of the
Speaker 1: few things I did. Actually. Jonathan Strickland gave it to me,
Speaker 1: uh in the early days of how stuff works and
Speaker 1: recommended it, and I I did. For all its faults,
Speaker 1: I did enjoy the Watchman movie just because it was
Speaker 1: uh just seeing those characters come to life, and I
Speaker 1: thought I thought a lot of it worked, even though
Speaker 1: it was a bit of a mess. Yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: another one I wanted to see, but I still have
Speaker 1: not checked out. But I am kind of curious about
Speaker 1: that one. I mean, I do like this sort of
Speaker 1: like meta comic approach. I think, yeah, well, I do
Speaker 1: like I like the Watchman better than any of any
Speaker 1: of the Superman stuff he's done so far. I think interesting.
Speaker 1: And of course I love the Watchman TV show, but
Speaker 1: he didn't have his dirty little pause on that, so uh,
Speaker 1: paranoid Park I sent you. I need to share this
Speaker 1: with everyone. Casey and and poke fun at you a
Speaker 1: little bit. You asked, what kind of movie if it
Speaker 1: needs to be more feel good? I was like, no,
Speaker 1: I feel good at least something widely seen, you know.
Speaker 1: And so you sit Paranoid Park and Old Joy, two
Speaker 1: very little scene films. Still I get, you know, I
Speaker 1: have a hard time, like, um, I feel like we
Speaker 1: need we need some kind of objective measure for like
Speaker 1: how widely a scene as film or not seen. I
Speaker 1: think box office is that measure. Casey, this did like
Speaker 1: four and a half million I think on on like
Speaker 1: a one point five budgets, so that's pretty yeah. And
Speaker 1: four million of that was in Europe. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I saw that too. Like the press screen average was
Speaker 1: like I don't know, five tin grand or something in
Speaker 1: the US. So yeah, it was interesting. Um, and that
Speaker 1: was one of the notes I had to bring up.
Speaker 1: This movie Gus Vans and clearly does well in Europe.
Speaker 1: Did percent of its its revenue there did about four
Speaker 1: hundred thousand and change here. Uh. And my deal with
Speaker 1: Gus Van's aunt dude is I was a devote and
Speaker 1: saw his first whatever seven movies as they came, and
Speaker 1: then stopped watching gust Vans and movies. For some reason,
Speaker 1: was there like was was like Psycho the breaking point?
Speaker 1: Like what was there a moment where you were just
Speaker 1: kind of done with him? Or I don't know. I
Speaker 1: thought the Psycho thing was an interesting experiment exact wouldn't
Speaker 1: say like, oh, yeah, it was great, I want to
Speaker 1: see it again. But I'm glad I watched it. Uh.
Speaker 1: It wasn't so much that I think he went after
Speaker 1: a good while hunting in the Psycho sort of backlash.
Speaker 1: He went way back to his roots and went really,
Speaker 1: really really in the borderline experimental, which I'm all about too,
Speaker 1: for some reason that I just I missed that. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that to me is my favorite, um, my favorite
Speaker 1: period of his when he when he makes Harry and
Speaker 1: Elephant and Last Days and then this movie. I didn't
Speaker 1: see any of those, but I've seen bits of all
Speaker 1: of them. I'm going to go through now and watch
Speaker 1: them all because I had not seen this, and it
Speaker 1: reminded me of how much I just fucking love Gus
Speaker 1: van Dan. He's one of my favorite filmmakers. This one,
Speaker 1: I think is it's it's odd because it's the last
Speaker 1: one that he made kind of in this style before
Speaker 1: he went sort of back into more Hollywood mainstream filmmaking
Speaker 1: with Milan seen those either, yeah, Um, actually I did
Speaker 1: see Milk. That's the only one I saw, Yeah, which
Speaker 1: was I mean, Milk was pretty good. It was well shot,
Speaker 1: well acted everything, but it doesn't have like the experimental
Speaker 1: panash of of this, you know, the last the four
Speaker 1: films before it. Um this is a bit of a detour.
Speaker 1: But the last thing I did before all this um
Speaker 1: quarantine stuff started Alex Alex Williams and I our colleague
Speaker 1: from work, we went on kind of a cinematic pilgrimage
Speaker 1: to Philadelphia back in late February to go see this
Speaker 1: seven and a half hour film, Satan Tango, directed by
Speaker 1: Bail Atar. He was a Hungarian filmmaker, and Satan Tango
Speaker 1: came out in the bid nineties and it was like
Speaker 1: a big deal at the time. Um. You had like
Speaker 1: Susan Sontag saying that she would watch it every year
Speaker 1: for the rest of her life, and all these kind
Speaker 1: of like heavy intellectuals weighed in on it. And then
Speaker 1: a lot of filmmakers responded to it as well, and
Speaker 1: Gus Van Santon was one of them, and so that
Speaker 1: kind of directly led to him making this trilogy or
Speaker 1: quadrilogy of um sort of experimental, low budget features that
Speaker 1: all have some share DNA with the Bellatar films of
Speaker 1: long takes and tracking shots and overlapping timelines and things
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, yes, yeah, I've gotta be gotta be
Speaker 1: comfortable with slowness and silence for sure, And um, I
Speaker 1: don't know, it was it was a great way to
Speaker 1: see the movie, because I've been wanting to see it
Speaker 1: pretty much since it had first came out, or at
Speaker 1: least a few years after when I learned about it,
Speaker 1: and um, I had put off seeing it all these years.
Speaker 1: I had had video copies of it, but it never
Speaker 1: seemed like something I would actually be able to sit
Speaker 1: through at home. And so when the restoration came out
Speaker 1: and it started touring around, it wasn't coming anywhere close
Speaker 1: to Atlanta, so we just kind of decided, why not,
Speaker 1: We'll we'll go up there and see it. And so
Speaker 1: like the whole of this, the whole process of like
Speaker 1: you know, getting on a plane and flying and getting
Speaker 1: an hotel and like arriving at the venue the next
Speaker 1: day and everything, it's just like it. It reminds you
Speaker 1: that that the theatrical experience and just the feeling of
Speaker 1: like remembering a time and a place and circumstances and
Speaker 1: like even like meals we had, you know before, after
Speaker 1: the movie. Like the whole thing is all kind of
Speaker 1: like combined into one one thing, and it's it's so
Speaker 1: much more meaningful in a way than just like streaming
Speaker 1: stuff at home or whatever. There's there's so much more
Speaker 1: weight to it, and in a way, it kind of
Speaker 1: feels like, I mean, I hope that that theatrical experience
Speaker 1: will still survive post all of this, but it kind
Speaker 1: of feels like almost like the last great memory I'm
Speaker 1: going to have of that era. I don't know. I mean, obviously,
Speaker 1: obviously people will still be seeing stuff in theaters, but
Speaker 1: I think it's going to increasingly just be the big
Speaker 1: budget stuff that gets those theatrical runs, and these smaller
Speaker 1: movies are more and more just going to go to Netflix,
Speaker 1: are going to go to streaming, are going to play
Speaker 1: festivals and then just kind of be like V O
Speaker 1: D or whatever. So I hope that's not the case,
Speaker 1: but I'm kind of thinking economically that's probably where things
Speaker 1: are headed. Uh. I think could be surprised how things
Speaker 1: are going to get back to normal. Eventually, It'll be
Speaker 1: a slow ramp, but um, there have been uh, there
Speaker 1: have been nasty sicknesses before and humanity always you know
Speaker 1: it's not an existential risk. Well now it's impossible. Uh
Speaker 1: you listen to our stuff you should know podcast on that. Um,
Speaker 1: you know. The last thing I did, and I've mentioned
Speaker 1: this on the show before, was in mid March for
Speaker 1: a birthday trip, me and my friend Eddie went to
Speaker 1: Philly d C in New York to see Bonnie Principilli
Speaker 1: and Richmond and that I had a similar experience man,
Speaker 1: where it was like when you go to a different
Speaker 1: city to do a concert or like you did like
Speaker 1: a movie. It's different than going on a vacation. Like Uh,
Speaker 1: all we had to do all day was uh, walk
Speaker 1: around and enjoy ourselves and eat and drink and then
Speaker 1: be at the venue showtime. The next day we did that.
Speaker 1: We were at the venue, and after that third night,
Speaker 1: I was like, dude, I don't know what I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do tomorrow, not getting up and going to see Bonnie Principal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wanted to keep following him until his tour stopped Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I love Wild and um, you know, I don't know
Speaker 1: if you're aware he's the co star of Old Joy. Yeah, dude,
Speaker 1: I've seen Old Okay, okay, alright, alright, alright. Kind of
Speaker 1: question is that, Um, I don't know. I thought when
Speaker 1: I when I slid that, when I slid that in there,
Speaker 1: I thought I thought maybe that would be the one
Speaker 1: you the one you went for. So I was surprised
Speaker 1: when you went Paranoid Park. Well, I went Paranoid Park
Speaker 1: because I hadn't seen it a and Old Joy is
Speaker 1: so obscure that, uh, I felt like I had to
Speaker 1: go with with Gus van Zan on this one because he's,
Speaker 1: you know, to me, a true artist. Filmmakers like him
Speaker 1: that that do achieve big successes in Hollywood. Eventually with
Speaker 1: winning all the Oscar or I don't know, I think
Speaker 1: he wanted the Oscar, did he? I know the guys
Speaker 1: did for Hunting. Yeah, yeah, I think it was just
Speaker 1: screenplay that that one. Maybe maybe starting stuffer. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: you know, major Hollywood accolades. After starting out as it's
Speaker 1: Superah with drug Store, Cowboy definitely became accepted into that
Speaker 1: whole world and then chose to kind of do something
Speaker 1: interesting with it, do the make and kind of stay
Speaker 1: true to his roots. And I think his last couple
Speaker 1: have been a little more high profile though. Right. He
Speaker 1: had one called The Sea of Trees, which almost barely
Speaker 1: even came out with Matthew McConaughey actually in the league
Speaker 1: about the suicide forest in Japan. That's that's very well known. Um,
Speaker 1: I actually have not. I have not seen that one yet.
Speaker 1: It's it's on the list. I will get to it eventually,
Speaker 1: but it's sort of the played in can and then
Speaker 1: it just sort of like disappeared and it came out
Speaker 1: in like a limited release maybe about a year or
Speaker 1: two later here in the States. Um. But he has
Speaker 1: also made one with Joaquin Phoenix called Don't Worry he
Speaker 1: Won't Get Far and Foot, which is great. I really
Speaker 1: really like that one. Yeah, yeah, man, he's so good. Um,
Speaker 1: before we get going on Paranoid Park though, how was
Speaker 1: the seven and a half hour film experience? It was great?
Speaker 1: It was Actually they did have it broken up. It
Speaker 1: is broken up into three separate chunks, so it's sort
Speaker 1: of like a two hour film, a two hour film,
Speaker 1: and a two and a half hour film. Kind of
Speaker 1: when you're when you're sitting through it something like that.
Speaker 1: So they had intermissions. They had intermissions of about like
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes, and there was like a Starbucks right next
Speaker 1: door to the theater, so we would like run out,
Speaker 1: go to the Starbucks, like pounce and caffeine, run to
Speaker 1: the bathroom, and then run back and get in our
Speaker 1: seats and started again, and we have like, you know,
Speaker 1: just like a few minutes in line to kind of
Speaker 1: talk about what we had just seen and what we
Speaker 1: think is going to be coming. And it was a
Speaker 1: really cool way to to um, to watch that film,
Speaker 1: Like I said, I mean, there's there's absolutely nothing can
Speaker 1: compare to that versus just like sitting at home and
Speaker 1: being tempted to look at your phone every five minutes
Speaker 1: and phone calls and all the rest of it. So um,
Speaker 1: I would say, actually, my favorite Bilitar film is still
Speaker 1: probably Rick Meister Harmonies, which he made about five years
Speaker 1: after that, and which is only like a two and
Speaker 1: a half maybe three hour film, and it does many
Speaker 1: of the same things, but it does them in a
Speaker 1: much more condensed, focused way, whereas sometimes in Satan Tango,
Speaker 1: I was never bored necessarily, but there were scenes where
Speaker 1: I was like, Okay, you could have cut like five
Speaker 1: minutes ago and I would have gotten the point of
Speaker 1: what you're doing. But um, you know, as long as
Speaker 1: you keep the mentality that you're gonna just hang in there,
Speaker 1: then um, you kind of have to surrender to it.
Speaker 1: And it was cool because the whole audience was obviously
Speaker 1: very self selecting. Everybody that was there was there to
Speaker 1: like reckon with this movie and exactly exactly, so everybody
Speaker 1: was very respectful. No one's on their phone or making
Speaker 1: noise or anything like that, so you know, we were
Speaker 1: all just kind of in it together. And yeah, it
Speaker 1: was It was a really cool experience. And I did
Speaker 1: like the film, but um, like I said, surprisingly, I
Speaker 1: didn't think it was like his masterpiece. I think he's
Speaker 1: done better, um in other in other films. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: put that down on the old list for people listening. Uh,
Speaker 1: we're saying his name kind of fast. It's b E
Speaker 1: L L A, I think T L and uh. And
Speaker 1: it was a sidetrack. But as you mentioned, Gus vans
Speaker 1: And has been very open and um respectful of the
Speaker 1: fact that he really influenced sort of this period in
Speaker 1: his filmmaking career. Yeah, and and Satan Tango right now
Speaker 1: even I think you can rent it on streaming the
Speaker 1: restoration version. Uh. And there will be like a physical
Speaker 1: Blu ray release. I think later in the year or
Speaker 1: maybe next year. It might be delayed because of all
Speaker 1: this stuff, but right, all right everyone So. Paranoid Park
Speaker 1: is the Gust fans Ant film from two thousand seven,
Speaker 1: written and directed by Gus van z Ant, from the
Speaker 1: novel by uh not Tim Blake. Now is not Tim
Speaker 1: Blake Nelson, who I always want to say it's by
Speaker 1: Tim Blake Nelson. It is not. It is by a
Speaker 1: different guy named Blake Nelson. Yeah. And it is a
Speaker 1: film about a um a murder that happens in Portland, Oregon,
Speaker 1: and a a group of young skateboarder kids, in particular
Speaker 1: one who is the protagonist of the film, and just
Speaker 1: how how he may or may not be involved, and
Speaker 1: they're going to be spoilers. I don't know why I
Speaker 1: bothered to say that. I never do, but um, you know,
Speaker 1: it's uh, it was great. I loved it. Good, good,
Speaker 1: an hour and twenty minutes long. Yeah, it's nice and tight,
Speaker 1: it's it's does not overstay. It's welcome at all, which
Speaker 1: I think especially for films like this that have these
Speaker 1: kind of they're spacey, they're experimental. Um, there's there's long
Speaker 1: kind of slow motion sequences which is playing and so on.
Speaker 1: But the fact that it's it's so short overall really
Speaker 1: just kind of like leaves you wanting more. You're you're
Speaker 1: very like, I don't know, it just it just gets
Speaker 1: it gets in, it gets out, it does what it
Speaker 1: needs to do, and it kind of leaves you just
Speaker 1: like wanting more of that, which I think is a
Speaker 1: great way for am to to go about. So many
Speaker 1: films these days I think could easily lose you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: I totally agree. Man, that's been one of the biggest
Speaker 1: changes in filmmaking I think over the last like fifteen years,
Speaker 1: is uh. And you know, especially with comedies being too long,
Speaker 1: and there's a certain filmmaker that I won't we both
Speaker 1: know who we're talking about in his new film. People
Speaker 1: people already are talking about the length of his new
Speaker 1: film because I think it's in the two and a
Speaker 1: half hour range, and so you know, just all the
Speaker 1: kind of snarky comments on until on, like you know,
Speaker 1: do you really need too and a half hours to
Speaker 1: tell the story of X y Z. I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And if you don't know who we're talking about, um, everyone,
Speaker 1: it's jutt as Our right right, who I love you know,
Speaker 1: I love his movies. I just I think he's I
Speaker 1: think he's being a little indulgent with these two and
Speaker 1: a half hour comedies. You don't need tow and a
Speaker 1: half hours to tell the story. No, no, no, I
Speaker 1: mean it's it's it's amazing what can be done in
Speaker 1: in a much more condensed part of time. And partly
Speaker 1: that is what makes cinema great versus these like you know,
Speaker 1: eighteen hour episodic TV dramas, which are great too, but
Speaker 1: being able to say everything you want to say, to
Speaker 1: establish character and narrative and do it all in like
Speaker 1: that compact ninety minutes, it's just that is that is
Speaker 1: what differentiates cinema from from television in a large Expeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: to to to pack in really um fully realized character
Speaker 1: arcs for multiple characters inside an hour and twenty minutes
Speaker 1: or an hour and a half is is very impressive.
Speaker 1: And ah, it's tough to do. As someone and you've
Speaker 1: written stuff too, it's it's hard. Yeah, it's very very hard.
Speaker 1: You just you have a tendency to want to stretch
Speaker 1: things out, and you have to Instead of having like
Speaker 1: the five scenes that all say the same thing more
Speaker 1: or less, you just got to find the one and
Speaker 1: really honed in on that and say everything you have
Speaker 1: to say. So you know it's easy to do. Casey
Speaker 1: write a shitty screenplay exactly. Yes, I've written them before,
Speaker 1: and I've written a couple that I think you're pretty good. Um.
Speaker 1: All right, so this movie opens up and we'll we'll
Speaker 1: be jumping all around. But um, I did want to
Speaker 1: mention the opening shot just because it was so cool,
Speaker 1: that great shot of Portland, of the bridge there that river,
Speaker 1: and it was and this brings up a larger point.
Speaker 1: It was set in fast motion, yes, even though it's
Speaker 1: a static shot, so it's not hectic. Um, but it
Speaker 1: sets up this and this is not an insult. The
Speaker 1: best way I can describe this movie is it felt
Speaker 1: like the best student film I'd ever seen. Absolutely. That's
Speaker 1: that's what this whole period of his filmmaking feels like
Speaker 1: to me. It feels like the kind of stuff that
Speaker 1: when you are a film student and you're just getting
Speaker 1: your hands on the tools for the first time this
Speaker 1: Obviously I want to do a tracking shot, I want
Speaker 1: to do time laps, I want to do you know, etcetera, etcetera. Um,
Speaker 1: it really does feel like he he kind of rediscovered
Speaker 1: that that joy in the simplicity in a way of
Speaker 1: just like the camera in a space with a few
Speaker 1: actors and and just what the sssibilities are of what
Speaker 1: can be done just by moving the camera or not
Speaker 1: moving the camera. And um, yeah, I love that that
Speaker 1: that bridge time lapse shot. It kind of it has
Speaker 1: a very dreamy music that is uh, it's from a
Speaker 1: Felini film. It's composed by Nino Rhoda and it comes
Speaker 1: from mostly um Julietta the Spirits. There's also one track
Speaker 1: from all Marcord in the film. Um. But but the
Speaker 1: it's almost even. That's kind of contrasting in a way
Speaker 1: because it has this dreamy, floating kind of feel, but
Speaker 1: the motion is all sped up in time laps. And
Speaker 1: he did that a lot. There was a lot of
Speaker 1: h I mean, the music is factors in a huge
Speaker 1: in this movie. Um from you know, book ending the
Speaker 1: movie with two full songs from Elliott Smith, which um,
Speaker 1: you know, a total uh fanatic Smith always have been too, uh,
Speaker 1: the way he uses these um these classical sort of
Speaker 1: upbeat romantic classical scores in the third in the third act,
Speaker 1: juxtaposed against you know, the scene that really stands out
Speaker 1: as the breakup scene with with the main character and
Speaker 1: his I mean, I guess it's his girlfriend, and you know,
Speaker 1: the whole thing is in in silence. All you see
Speaker 1: is her mad at him. You don't see his It's
Speaker 1: just that one take of her or not her perspective,
Speaker 1: but hers his shoulder kind of and you see her
Speaker 1: face and it's great because you know, if if you've
Speaker 1: been paying attention, you know that this is like the
Speaker 1: breakup scene. You know that's what he's going to do.
Speaker 1: And you can see from his from her reaction, you
Speaker 1: can almost read her lips and kind of like gather
Speaker 1: mostly what she's saying. You know, totally, How can you
Speaker 1: do this? You think you can just you know, hey,
Speaker 1: we got a visit her. Hey all right, Ruby, this
Speaker 1: has got to be a quick can you say, howe casey? Hey, Ruby,
Speaker 1: did you like guess fans as paranoid park? Oh? That's great,
Speaker 1: it gets it gets the Ruby uh approval. I love
Speaker 1: you Alright, so that's been happening a lot with with Ruby,
Speaker 1: as you know. Yeah, she did not watch Paranoid Park
Speaker 1: by the way. Okay, well yeah, it's probably not age
Speaker 1: appropriate exactly, should be like when's something going to happen, um,
Speaker 1: just to say, we would just wait Ruby, a body
Speaker 1: gets cut in half. There's one shot that's really gross.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be cool. Yeah uh yeah. But you know,
Speaker 1: that was a great scene, the breakup scene, because um,
Speaker 1: the contrast of the music, and it felt like a
Speaker 1: lot of that stuff really came on heavier than the
Speaker 1: third act. This sort of bouncy classical like romantic. Um.
Speaker 1: The one at the beginning with the Willamette River shot
Speaker 1: was the one thing I did think that gave it
Speaker 1: was this had this sort of noir edge to it.
Speaker 1: Um and this movie. It's interesting to think about this
Speaker 1: movie in a movie like Brick, which are have a
Speaker 1: little bit of the same d N a completely different execution. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it is it is sort of like he's he's
Speaker 1: flirting with that genre a little bit. And I think
Speaker 1: that's another thing that differentiates this film from the previous
Speaker 1: three that are a little bit more free form and
Speaker 1: not really beholden to any genre other than just kind
Speaker 1: of quote unquote the art film or the experimental film.
Speaker 1: This one does have some genre elements that again I think,
Speaker 1: just give it that little bit of a hook, a
Speaker 1: little bit of a grounding where it is a little
Speaker 1: bit of a who done it, even though it's pretty
Speaker 1: obvious early on who did it and so on. But
Speaker 1: I didn't really feel that way actually really maybe the
Speaker 1: first because I've seen it like ten times at this point,
Speaker 1: you know. Um, to me, I feel like there is
Speaker 1: more or lesser reveal before the big reveal, just based
Speaker 1: on his reactions and emotions and so on, and some
Speaker 1: of the scenes. To me, it tips over into he
Speaker 1: is truly guilty, although I guess there's the question of
Speaker 1: whether he's guilty because he was there or he's guilty
Speaker 1: because kind of thing. Yet I thought he knew what
Speaker 1: had happened. He's a good kid. Um for the most part.
Speaker 1: He's just for listeners at home. You know. The idea
Speaker 1: is that this kid is h he's a skater kid.
Speaker 1: He's hanging out at this uh and by the way,
Speaker 1: I've been by the real skate park in Port uh Lance.
Speaker 1: Bangs drove me by Yeah, on our way to dinner.
Speaker 1: I went out to dinner with he and his son, Marshall,
Speaker 1: and he drove me by the Burnside thing because it
Speaker 1: was on the way the restaurant. He was like, I
Speaker 1: think he even said for Paranoid Park was filmed. Um,
Speaker 1: so the kid is a good kid. He's hanging out
Speaker 1: the skate park. That's kind of dangerous in the culture
Speaker 1: over there is is a little scary obviously, drug use
Speaker 1: and shenanigans going on and sort of lawlessness, no parents,
Speaker 1: no cops exactly. It's it's that whole vibe of like
Speaker 1: divorced parents who are not paying attention exactly sort of stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then we what we learned through the film, and
Speaker 1: it doesn't it didn't follow a traditional chronological narrative. It
Speaker 1: sort of hops around via this kind of cool device
Speaker 1: of his journal entries as narration and and and we
Speaker 1: just got a great reveal we'll get too later. But um,
Speaker 1: there is Ah. It turns out that a security guard
Speaker 1: at a train yard has been killed and they have
Speaker 1: traced it back to the fact that he was killed
Speaker 1: by getting hit with a skateboard and falling on the
Speaker 1: train tracks and getting cut in half. By a train.
Speaker 1: And uh so that's the premise, and there's some question
Speaker 1: going on and and you've learned about I guess about
Speaker 1: halfway or towards the third act that this kid has
Speaker 1: actually done it hopped a freight train with a bad
Speaker 1: kid and this guy came running after almost kind of
Speaker 1: hitting him with a flashlight and he just sort of
Speaker 1: hits him in the face with the skateboard, not even
Speaker 1: too hard, just to get him away. And it's and
Speaker 1: it was an accident, you know, it's funny, Like I
Speaker 1: was thinking about it more like how would that be
Speaker 1: regarded and like a criminal court would it be? Was
Speaker 1: there even possibly a self defense not trest at the
Speaker 1: flashlight first? But it's true they were they were trespassing,
Speaker 1: so maybe because they broke the law originally, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: involuntary man being an accident, you know, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: And like I said, he's a good kid. Um, he's
Speaker 1: a good kid who made a mistake. Uh. What I
Speaker 1: thought was interesting And I didn't kind of pick up
Speaker 1: on this till towards the end. Was like a traditional
Speaker 1: movie might there's never any other mention of the guy
Speaker 1: he was with, true, Yeah, Like I kept waiting for
Speaker 1: there to be a search for him or him to
Speaker 1: come back into the picture, but he just kind of
Speaker 1: runs off and that's it. I mean, that guy I
Speaker 1: think got away clean, right, Like nobody really saw him
Speaker 1: or knows about him. His name never came up. So
Speaker 1: kids just like clean, We think, right, yes, yes, that
Speaker 1: is true. But I mean, at least he gets pulled
Speaker 1: into questioning a few times, and there is at least
Speaker 1: a little bit of a hint that he might be
Speaker 1: under more scrutiny than than some of these other skate kids. Um,
Speaker 1: but the the other kid, he's just like gone. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about that first questioning scene with Detective Lou. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's fantastic, one of the great interrogation scenes because it's, uh,
Speaker 1: it's not like a typical interrogation scene. He's not playing
Speaker 1: the heavy he's he's total good copying it. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then I'd like you to talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: what he does with a camera there, because it's really interesting.
Speaker 1: So there's a really cool sequence just before where he's
Speaker 1: walking down you know, he's been called to the office
Speaker 1: and so he's walking down the hallway and then he
Speaker 1: arrives in the classroom and the cameras kind of pointed
Speaker 1: off in the direction where you can't see the cop.
Speaker 1: It's looking at another part of the room. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: sort of like the first thing that Um Alex the
Speaker 1: character sees when he walks in, and then the camera
Speaker 1: suddenly kind of swings over reframes so that you see
Speaker 1: the cop and you see this long table, and he
Speaker 1: goes and sits at the table, and then the camera
Speaker 1: just does this very very slow dolly push forward where
Speaker 1: you know, if if you know about filmmaking a little bit,
Speaker 1: you realize that they're they're having to kind of clear
Speaker 1: that stuff off the table as the camera is like
Speaker 1: pushing forward, pushing forward, and it's a pretty traditional just
Speaker 1: two shot pushing in. Yeah, but it keeps it keeps going,
Speaker 1: It keeps going, and then it's it's kind of framing
Speaker 1: them in a two shot, and then at a certain
Speaker 1: point it just goes off to the left and it
Speaker 1: it just frames him up and kind of a single
Speaker 1: close up, and it stays on him for a really
Speaker 1: long time. Um and then only after you know, probably
Speaker 1: a couple more minutes, does it finally cut to the reverse,
Speaker 1: which is again it's like the one thing we should
Speaker 1: talk about is the the aspect ratio of this film.
Speaker 1: He shot this in the in the square Academy ratio.
Speaker 1: So when you have a close up of a person,
Speaker 1: you don't really even see any of the environment around them.
Speaker 1: You just see the face or you see maybe the
Speaker 1: head and the shoulders. But it's it's very narrow and
Speaker 1: so it's it's very direct and confrontational. It feels like
Speaker 1: something that comes more from almost like silent cinema. It's
Speaker 1: very very intimate, and it's it's it's sort of like
Speaker 1: you're looking at these beautiful portraits. There's, um, there's even
Speaker 1: like this like like splash of bright light that goes
Speaker 1: across the cops face where he's lit sort of like
Speaker 1: in a painting or something. Um, it's just it's very
Speaker 1: very distinct to me. The light is almost a metaphor
Speaker 1: for like truth or something. It's it's kind of like
Speaker 1: he's this apparently like pretty pretty, um, genuinely benevolently motivated cop,
Speaker 1: you know, who's just out to find what's going on,
Speaker 1: and he's not out to railroad anybody. He just wants
Speaker 1: to get to the bottom of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and um and so yeah, I don't know that I've
Speaker 1: ever seen that shot before. I don't think I've ever
Speaker 1: seen and not the whole thing, but even starting with
Speaker 1: that slow push in, like I said, it's a very
Speaker 1: traditional slow dolly in, and then it just starts veering
Speaker 1: left and veering left until the detective is completely out
Speaker 1: of the shot. And as I was watching it, you know,
Speaker 1: it's so slow and subtle. At first, I was like,
Speaker 1: is this a mistake? Yeah, well so much. It's I mean,
Speaker 1: sometimes they do feel like mistakes, but they work, you know,
Speaker 1: It's it's it's hard to hard to fathom how you know,
Speaker 1: as an artist you can you can have that kind
Speaker 1: of objectivity on your work to know that a mistake
Speaker 1: or something that would appear to be a mistake or
Speaker 1: amateurish or whatever is actually going to be really cool
Speaker 1: and fresh. And I think it's partly because so much
Speaker 1: of the film is so tightly aesthetically controlled and constructed
Speaker 1: that when there are these quote unquote mistakes that happened,
Speaker 1: they happen within a framework of precision and control, so
Speaker 1: that you, as the viewer, feel them, experienced them as
Speaker 1: something deliberate, as a choice that's being made, and not
Speaker 1: just like you know, people who don't know what they're doing.
Speaker 1: It's interesting too on that on that that push in.
Speaker 1: You probably only would hear this on headphones if you're
Speaker 1: really listening closely, but there's actually a little bit of
Speaker 1: cell phone interference at one point where where somebody must
Speaker 1: have gotten a call. It's like that sound that you
Speaker 1: get and you can tell they kind of they try
Speaker 1: to filter it out as best as they could. But
Speaker 1: I thought it was really cool that they didn't just
Speaker 1: like loop that scene or use a different take or whatever.
Speaker 1: Like there was something about that particularly taken, that particularly
Speaker 1: sound that he he was just like, that's the one
Speaker 1: we're using. Yeah, yeah, I mean this like I compared
Speaker 1: it to the best student film I've ever seen, Like
Speaker 1: you were talking about all these things that could be
Speaker 1: mistakes or you know that he he has his whole
Speaker 1: bag of tricks here. He's got soft focus, he's got
Speaker 1: you know, a k A. It looks blurry, very very
Speaker 1: shallowed depth the field, and sometimes like sometimes the shots
Speaker 1: are even out of focus when their quote unquote supposed
Speaker 1: to be in focus. They'll they'll be just you know,
Speaker 1: an inch forward or back from where the plane of
Speaker 1: focus is. And so it'll be like an eyelashes in focus,
Speaker 1: but the eye is not and so on. UM, very
Speaker 1: very interesting way of of um isolating the viewers attention.
Speaker 1: And again something that I remember very well when I
Speaker 1: was kind of getting into filmmaking at the beginning for
Speaker 1: the first you know, not for the first time because
Speaker 1: that was on VHS, but for the first time more
Speaker 1: seriously in college. UM that was right in the era
Speaker 1: where digital SLRs were starting to shoot video, and so
Speaker 1: you could use these like full frame cameras like the
Speaker 1: five D and get that insanely shallowed up the field
Speaker 1: with these big lenses and big sensors that were really
Speaker 1: impossible on video. Before then you always had it was
Speaker 1: just deep focus all the time. So one thing that
Speaker 1: you saw in like so many student films and short
Speaker 1: films in general of that period, everybody shot wide open,
Speaker 1: you know, everybody shot available light. Everybody just like you know,
Speaker 1: put the longest lens on that they could find, because
Speaker 1: everybody was so obsessed with that shallow depth the field
Speaker 1: Boca heavy kind of look because it's very beautiful, but
Speaker 1: you know, it also became extremely overused very quickly. It's
Speaker 1: one of those things where it's another tool to have
Speaker 1: in the kit, but you have to know when and
Speaker 1: why to use it, and I think he uses it very,
Speaker 1: very deliberately and very well in this film. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean everything in here that I'm liking, the student film
Speaker 1: stuff is different in the hands of a master filmmaker.
Speaker 1: And that's kind of what you're saying, like, um, knowing
Speaker 1: when to utilize it, knowing how long to utilize it,
Speaker 1: knowing what you're what salad, you're building from the beginning
Speaker 1: and not I guess, you know, I'm sure being open
Speaker 1: to ideas on the day, but this feels like a
Speaker 1: film cinematically that was very well thought out. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: seems like you would have to be, because this does
Speaker 1: not feel like a film. I mean, there's never really
Speaker 1: any scenes that have like quote unquote coverage. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't always wondering about coverage. I mean there's maybe
Speaker 1: like one or two shot reverse shot kind of constructions,
Speaker 1: but even those feel very deliberate when it cuts from
Speaker 1: one side to the other. Liking that interrogation scene, it's
Speaker 1: a very deliberate moment that he chooses to finally cut
Speaker 1: to the police guy. UM. So it's not a film
Speaker 1: that could be quote unquote found in the editing room
Speaker 1: in that way. You know, these scenes probably a we
Speaker 1: have one way that you could actually cut them and
Speaker 1: have it make any sense. Um, you could restructure the
Speaker 1: order of the scenes but you couldn't really within the
Speaker 1: scenes themselves. You would kind of just be stuck with
Speaker 1: whatever it was you shot on the day. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: the other interesting thing he does a few times is,
Speaker 1: like we were talking about in the breakup scene, he
Speaker 1: does what would normally be, um, just a regular over
Speaker 1: the shoulder shot of one character's face while the other characters,
Speaker 1: you know, off screen having a conversation. And what traditionally
Speaker 1: you do is you do that from both shoulders of
Speaker 1: both characters. You shoot a master, you know, you shoot
Speaker 1: your wide and then you cut between those at least
Speaker 1: those three, maybe more you have time and money. But
Speaker 1: he has a few scenes where it's just that one
Speaker 1: perspective and point of view, uh, and you keep waiting
Speaker 1: for the camera to cut to the reverse and it doesn't,
Speaker 1: and I think it's you know, it's really interesting. There's
Speaker 1: a great moment where it's the second time we see
Speaker 1: the cop and he's there to interrogate like a larger
Speaker 1: group of the kids, not you can interrogate, but just
Speaker 1: to kind of entry and uh and hand out that
Speaker 1: the grizzly photos of the of the crime scene to
Speaker 1: kind of spook everybody a little bit. But when you
Speaker 1: first see him the cop, he's standing, he's overlapped by
Speaker 1: somebody else who's covering up his entire face. All you
Speaker 1: see is like his bald head and his ear, and
Speaker 1: the camera stays on that for like probably a good
Speaker 1: thirty seconds, and then it kind of pans down and
Speaker 1: it's kind of like racks to focus on some of
Speaker 1: the kids who are sitting in the desk. But again,
Speaker 1: it's that kind of like fragmented perspective that feels like
Speaker 1: it's almost like maybe Alex's POV like when he first
Speaker 1: like the thing that stuck in his memory was not
Speaker 1: like the full on shot of the cop. It's just
Speaker 1: like the ear and the bald head, and and that
Speaker 1: was enough to tell him that like, oh, it's this
Speaker 1: guy or something. And there's there's so much of the
Speaker 1: film that is is just like subtly done like that
Speaker 1: is artfully chosen to kind of put the film in
Speaker 1: his perspective and his subjectivity and in and kind of
Speaker 1: get us inside of his head, his his sort of
Speaker 1: like paranoid state of mind. Yeah, and you know, before
Speaker 1: that interrogation scene is one of the favorite, my favorite
Speaker 1: shots of the movie. It's the initially the one boy
Speaker 1: gets called out of class again to come down and
Speaker 1: meet with his detective. And as he's going, it's in
Speaker 1: slow motion. He keeps it's like the Wild Bunch or something.
Speaker 1: He's going down this big hallway and all these all
Speaker 1: these skater kids, yes, keeps going out of various classrooms
Speaker 1: and joining him. Such a shot. Yeah, there's some really
Speaker 1: interesting stuff too with um, with exposure in this film,
Speaker 1: where um, they will they will deliberately way over exposed
Speaker 1: or way under exposed something, or even change the exposure
Speaker 1: during rampit. Yeah, Yeah, rampant in a way that's very visible.
Speaker 1: It's not like they're just trying to move from indoors
Speaker 1: to outdoors or something. It's it's literally like a static shot, um,
Speaker 1: where they'll just ramp down the exposure where suddenly somebody
Speaker 1: that was fully lit just becomes a silhouette. UM and
Speaker 1: so on. And that shot after the hot tub scene
Speaker 1: in particular, Yeah, when we have that beautiful like clouds
Speaker 1: in the background and gorgeous. Yeah, and there's some great
Speaker 1: dialogue over the top of that tube where they're talking
Speaker 1: about you know, um, why why people, why adults do
Speaker 1: what they do? Why you know that a cop in,
Speaker 1: in this kid's words, makes less than a janitor and
Speaker 1: so on and and so one of the kids replies
Speaker 1: to that, you know, no, no, no, adults only do
Speaker 1: things for money. That's like the only reason adults doing
Speaker 1: things for money. And it's over this this yeah, it's
Speaker 1: and it's it's this kind of like throwaway moment in
Speaker 1: a way, but again it's not because it's very thematically
Speaker 1: resonant with the rest of the film. But I love
Speaker 1: those kind of like little pauses where it just becomes
Speaker 1: this kind of like painting or or just this beautiful
Speaker 1: visual tableau that we just kind of pause and take in.
Speaker 1: And it's so well paced that when this moments arrive again,
Speaker 1: like I I never really have that feeling of like
Speaker 1: restlessness or that he's going back to it too many times.
Speaker 1: They're parceled out really really well during the film. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I totally agree. Um, I think maybe now we should
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about Gus vans Aunt and his
Speaker 1: his mastery of working with non actors and working with
Speaker 1: kids and kid non actors. Um is something he started doing.
Speaker 1: Uh jeez, I guess I'm trying to think of the
Speaker 1: first movie where an elephant certainly by elephant. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: wondering if he if he did it even before then.
Speaker 1: I mean, malin his very very first film. I don't
Speaker 1: think that lead was like I'm pretty sure that lead
Speaker 1: was was not like a professional actor, um yeah, but
Speaker 1: certainly an elephant um yeah. I mean what he does
Speaker 1: is just for the listeners, is for these movies, for
Speaker 1: this an elephant at least he has uh for this
Speaker 1: when he used my Space and he just puts an
Speaker 1: ad upt and or you know, the equivalent would be
Speaker 1: flyers in the community and says, come on down and
Speaker 1: try out. He wants non actors. Um. You can tell
Speaker 1: their non actors, but in a good way, you know,
Speaker 1: in the best way that non actors are always used,
Speaker 1: which is they're not acting. It's it's really interesting, like
Speaker 1: because the lead um who's played I think his name
Speaker 1: is Gabe Gabe Nevins Um. He he has to do
Speaker 1: a decent amount of voiceover and and when he's reading
Speaker 1: the voiceover, he reads it in this very kind of
Speaker 1: flat way. It doesn't have it doesn't have like the
Speaker 1: rhythm or the musicality of the way we're used to
Speaker 1: hearing voiceover, and even me, like, who's not an actor,
Speaker 1: Like I can I can kind of hear that. And
Speaker 1: if I were asked to read the same thing, there
Speaker 1: would be a way that I would read it that
Speaker 1: would sound more like a movie or something. But it
Speaker 1: sounds like, Yeah, I love But actually I love the
Speaker 1: kind of like flatness of it, um, because it just
Speaker 1: it feels more genuine in a way. He's not performing.
Speaker 1: He's just a kid, you know, um reciting this stuff.
Speaker 1: And it it reminds you in a way because so
Speaker 1: often in films like child actors are too trained there too,
Speaker 1: you know, and they stand out because kids in real
Speaker 1: life are nothing like that. And um, and so there's
Speaker 1: a real like what I think what it gives you,
Speaker 1: especially is a sense of his like his youth, his innocence,
Speaker 1: his vulnerability, and and it it's it makes such a
Speaker 1: such a stark contrast with the seriousness of what he's
Speaker 1: gotten himself into, and it makes it that much more powerful.
Speaker 1: It would not be nearly as powerful if he seemed
Speaker 1: like a kind of like, you know, um, smarter than
Speaker 1: his age. Um. It would completely yeah, it would. It
Speaker 1: would completely change the feeling. It would. It would probably
Speaker 1: make him seeing him a little bit more sinister or something.
Speaker 1: But the fact that he has just kind of like
Speaker 1: this kid who bumbled his way into this thing, um,
Speaker 1: and and now he's he's he's being hit with all
Speaker 1: these like big time adult, grown up terrifying realities. UM,
Speaker 1: it just makes it that much more powerful. I think,
Speaker 1: do you know the story of that kid? Did you
Speaker 1: look into him a little bit? I heard that after
Speaker 1: filming he was, you know, had some some problems. I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: so he uh, he met a photographer on set, a
Speaker 1: still photographer shooting this movie, and he after this movie
Speaker 1: kind of stumbled into drug use and homelessness and some
Speaker 1: mental illness and just sort of had a really bad
Speaker 1: run of it. I don't think right after this. He
Speaker 1: did a couple a few more movies after this, but
Speaker 1: very very low key. Uh. And this photographer ended up
Speaker 1: kind of befriending him, this adult photographer, and taking making
Speaker 1: a photo book of him. And I think it's even
Speaker 1: called Gabe. I think, yeah, I I did not look
Speaker 1: at this when I was looking when I was preparing
Speaker 1: for this yesterday. But I do remember seeing that at
Speaker 1: some point, reading like a blog post or something about it,
Speaker 1: and seeing some of the photographs and yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: good Fader interview with him, and uh, there's a they
Speaker 1: get a quote from Gabe Nevin's like today, but they
Speaker 1: weren't able to interview him because I couldn't really find
Speaker 1: I think he was in prison actually when this came out,
Speaker 1: like five or six years ago, and um, but there
Speaker 1: were questions of whether or not this photographer was bordering
Speaker 1: on exploitation because it was this kid who ended up
Speaker 1: homeless and on drugs and their nudes and he was like,
Speaker 1: you know, I was very conscious of that and I
Speaker 1: did not want to veer into that territory. And Gabe
Speaker 1: Nevins was like, no, it's not. I was way down
Speaker 1: with all of it. Um. But it's interesting because it
Speaker 1: shows him kind of growing up and it shows him
Speaker 1: kind of wrecked at a certain point. I saw some
Speaker 1: of the stills and I'd be interested to see the
Speaker 1: whole book, though it's very sad story. Do you know,
Speaker 1: do you know the work of Larry Clark much? Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure. Yeah. So, I mean Gus van Stand was
Speaker 1: a producer on Kids First, Kids ESK, and then you know,
Speaker 1: even Larry Clark his his photographic work. He made this
Speaker 1: book called Tulsa, which is like him photographing his friends
Speaker 1: in this like small town and they're you know, going
Speaker 1: from just being kind of wild teenagers to like serious
Speaker 1: drug addicts to like dead in a lot of cases
Speaker 1: or shot or or whatever. And there's there's that same
Speaker 1: kind of question ethically of like are you exploiting these people?
Speaker 1: Are you kind of aestheticizing their their poverty, their their
Speaker 1: drug addiction and so on? Um, But I think in
Speaker 1: both cases what comes across more is like a sincerity
Speaker 1: and it's just like depict depicting life as it is,
Speaker 1: telling somebody's story, not not a pretty story, but real story,
Speaker 1: and not trying to um embellish it, but just kind
Speaker 1: of show it for what it is. Yeah. I don't
Speaker 1: think Larry Clark got rich off of Tulso, you know,
Speaker 1: would be one thing if you were exploiting people for
Speaker 1: like great riches, but not every story is pretty, and
Speaker 1: I think there is value in seeing sort of the
Speaker 1: what can happen to people? You know, it's powerful. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: the other thing this movie really is and uh, is
Speaker 1: it's a love letter to skateboarding. You can almost call
Speaker 1: it a skateboarding movie. Yeah. I mean there's a lot
Speaker 1: of video in the film, gorgeous, gorgeous skate video and
Speaker 1: clearly a love letter from Gus Vansan's point of view
Speaker 1: because he was just he used to skateboard and stuff
Speaker 1: like it's clear that whoever made this movie, if you
Speaker 1: don't know anything about it, loves skateboarding. Yeah. And and
Speaker 1: just like again like the I love that they I
Speaker 1: think I think a lot of it was shot on
Speaker 1: Super eight, the skateboarding stuff, and um, it just it
Speaker 1: gives it this this kind of it's sort of in
Speaker 1: the film, but also outside the film a little bit. Um.
Speaker 1: One thing I actually picked up for the first time
Speaker 1: last night when I was watching is the last bit
Speaker 1: of skate footage that is in the movie, like the
Speaker 1: kind of amateur Super eight skate footage you actually see
Speaker 1: Gabe for a second appear. Um, it's it's his way
Speaker 1: of sort of almost being inserted into this kind of
Speaker 1: alternate parallel reality or something, because you know, in in
Speaker 1: all the other cases, it's kind of it's it's very
Speaker 1: close to his reality, but it's somehow separate a little bit.
Speaker 1: It has more of a documentary feel or something. But
Speaker 1: then to kind of see him inserted into it at
Speaker 1: the end kind of combined the two together in a
Speaker 1: cool way. Cool. Yeah, yeah, I mean, just so many
Speaker 1: beautiful shots of uh skating through these big giant tubes
Speaker 1: and on the ramps, and then they have the just
Speaker 1: the best one of all, that great lockdown shot with
Speaker 1: all the guys in slow motion coming up over the
Speaker 1: ramp like one and after the other after the other.
Speaker 1: It was just gorgeous, gorgeous shot and again very solid
Speaker 1: up the field, so they're all kind of having to
Speaker 1: hit the same mark in the air and then come
Speaker 1: back down. And then the last guy kind of like
Speaker 1: doesn't doesn't pull it off, and like you hear him
Speaker 1: kind of crash in the It cuts the way you
Speaker 1: hear him crash in the in the distance. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's cool too, because like if you if you're
Speaker 1: ever a skater, like or just know about it, it's
Speaker 1: all about it's all about your personal style when you're
Speaker 1: flare and like it's a beautiful shot, but each one
Speaker 1: of those dudes, you know, it gets to do his
Speaker 1: own thing too, Like everyone has their own way of
Speaker 1: doing their jump and what they do with their hands
Speaker 1: in the face they're making, and it's all about your style,
Speaker 1: and it's it's a really cool showcase of that. I
Speaker 1: think that culture absolutely and it's it's cool too because, like,
Speaker 1: you know, just just on paper, you might think like
Speaker 1: a murder mystery taking place around a skate park and
Speaker 1: all the skaters are like suspects. You might think this
Speaker 1: is going to be like an after school special or
Speaker 1: something where it's like stay away from those dangerous skate
Speaker 1: kids or something. But it's actually a very loving portrait
Speaker 1: of these kids and in a very like you know,
Speaker 1: through through the story, it acknowledges like all the all
Speaker 1: the sort of like reasons that these kids would have
Speaker 1: for looking for basically a family outside their own, for
Speaker 1: a sense of community and connection and um, you know
Speaker 1: all that. It just it brings so much about like
Speaker 1: high school back to me, of that that feeling of
Speaker 1: belonging or not belonging. I was not really a skate
Speaker 1: a skate kid at all, but that was like a
Speaker 1: group that I definitely clocked when I was in high school.
Speaker 1: And like even wanted to be friends with those kids,
Speaker 1: and so, yeah, skater kids are just cool. Yeah, yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's funny because I'm like Ruby is if she's ever
Speaker 1: shown natural talents at anything. From the beginning, it was
Speaker 1: on her little scooter. Yeah, like from a very very
Speaker 1: young age when other kids were just sort of like
Speaker 1: figuring out how to get on it. She was doing
Speaker 1: tricks and like had some style and flair. And then
Speaker 1: she got to where she she saw the skaters in
Speaker 1: the skate park next to the playground here indicator, and
Speaker 1: she started standing sideways, started standing on our scooter skateboard style,
Speaker 1: And so I was like, man, maybe that's the thing.
Speaker 1: Like they have girls. They have a girls skater camp
Speaker 1: in the summer in Seattle. It's like cold. We could
Speaker 1: take her there in Seattle. But then I started thinking,
Speaker 1: and it's so wrong headed to go down the bad Avenue.
Speaker 1: But like I was a little skater kid in a
Speaker 1: way growing up, but I didn't I wasn't in it
Speaker 1: for too long. But you know, I know what happens
Speaker 1: at skate parks. It's not as bad as this movie.
Speaker 1: But those are the kids who were getting into weed
Speaker 1: at fourteen years drinking. Yeah, but then I was like,
Speaker 1: you know, you can't live in fear like that and
Speaker 1: just say like no, you've got to go to gymnastics. Um,
Speaker 1: So we'll see what happens. I mean, it's probably a
Speaker 1: little more wholesome these days, and it was in previous
Speaker 1: eras maybe that maybe I'm wrong on that. Dude, I
Speaker 1: got that play aground a smell weed coming from that
Speaker 1: state every time. Yeah, the old fourth Ward spark. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know, you just you can't like lock your
Speaker 1: kids up and prevent them from being exposed to badness.
Speaker 1: At some point they've got a interface with the real world.
Speaker 1: She could also be super good at it and get
Speaker 1: sponsored and got the extra to make a ship done
Speaker 1: of money meat Tony Hawk and all that exactly. There
Speaker 1: are there's a skater in this movie. The character who
Speaker 1: plays his dad is a because a very cool, which
Speaker 1: you can kind of tell he's a non actor. He's all, yea, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but there's that's a good time to mention that the parents.
Speaker 1: He almost does a Charlie Brown thing in this movie,
Speaker 1: where you don't you get to see the detective but
Speaker 1: almost all the other adults. There's a teacher that you
Speaker 1: get an administrator that you get to see her face
Speaker 1: a little a bit, but with the with the mom
Speaker 1: and the dad, you rarely ever see their face in
Speaker 1: focus at all. The mom is like she's she's way
Speaker 1: in the distance in that shot where she comes down
Speaker 1: the stairs when he's down in his room from behind, Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: when when they go back upstairs, it's over her shoulders,
Speaker 1: so you just see the back of her head kind
Speaker 1: of out of focus. The dad is completely out of
Speaker 1: focus for a long time in that sequence where they're
Speaker 1: talking there. Yeah, and there's sort of like he's he's
Speaker 1: trying to connect and they're not really connecting. And then
Speaker 1: finally when he kind of like he turns it around
Speaker 1: again and he's like, hey, you know, really, I'm serious,
Speaker 1: like this whole situation sucks and I really want to
Speaker 1: make the best of it. Then he's he's kind of
Speaker 1: in focus and they actually do it. Seems like have
Speaker 1: like a moment for for a second there of recognition. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and that was no accident. It kind of mirrors
Speaker 1: the conversation. He comes into focus as their relationship comes
Speaker 1: more into focus. Yes, um, but I thought it was
Speaker 1: a good thing, Like I've seen enough of Elephant to
Speaker 1: know that it's sort of was the same bag, wasn't
Speaker 1: it pretty much fully from the children's point of view, Yeah,
Speaker 1: elephant is it does the same thing with with the
Speaker 1: kind of the shallow doth the field, um oftentimes filming
Speaker 1: people from the back, which is very interesting, um tracking
Speaker 1: tracking down these um, these long corridors of the high school,
Speaker 1: and um, it has a very sinister quality to it.
Speaker 1: Elephants so much more. Elephants a movie I struggle with
Speaker 1: because I think when I first saw it, I really
Speaker 1: really loved it. It was like my my maybe first
Speaker 1: year of college when that came out two thousand two
Speaker 1: thou three, and um, I guess second year of college. Whatever.
Speaker 1: But as I've as I've watched it more, as I've
Speaker 1: gotten older, it's gotten harder to watch for me because
Speaker 1: when I was when I was first seeing it, I
Speaker 1: was only a couple of years removed from being in
Speaker 1: high school, and so I basically identified with those kids
Speaker 1: with that situation exactly. Columbine happened when I was in
Speaker 1: eighth grade about to go to ninth grade, So it
Speaker 1: was sort of like, welcome to high school, and now
Speaker 1: we have shootings, you know, and it was it was.
Speaker 1: And that's the thing too, is that in that era,
Speaker 1: it was just Columbine. You know, Columbine was like this
Speaker 1: singular horrible thing that we all knew about, and it
Speaker 1: was sort of like a never again. You know, you
Speaker 1: didn't have active shooter drills exactly, this this this awful
Speaker 1: thing that happened this one time. And then, you know,
Speaker 1: now when I watch it today, I'm older, I'm not
Speaker 1: the age of those kids anymore. And you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's not really the film's fault, but I understand intellectually
Speaker 1: that this is just something that happens, unfortunately, very often,
Speaker 1: you know, in this country. And in a way, it
Speaker 1: kind of robs the film of of a of a
Speaker 1: meeting in a way, because it's not about this one
Speaker 1: singular event. It's just about this horribly banal thing that
Speaker 1: that happens over and over, and it's sort of there's
Speaker 1: there's more of like a nihilism to it, because there's
Speaker 1: it's not like this bad thing that happened one time
Speaker 1: that we learned from. It's just kind of this It's
Speaker 1: like it's like you know, a car accident or something.
Speaker 1: It's just it happens. It happens all the time, and
Speaker 1: so some of the things that that film does in
Speaker 1: terms of building the suspense and so on, feels really
Speaker 1: icky when you realize that it's about something so real,
Speaker 1: but yet he's he's using kind of these filmic conventions
Speaker 1: of building suspense and um, you know, playing with the
Speaker 1: audiences emotions in a way. Yeah, that that feels because
Speaker 1: I mean that the whole film is like this incredibly
Speaker 1: slow build up to the event, and you know going
Speaker 1: in that that's what's going to happen. And it's like
Speaker 1: watching a train wreck and slow motion, you know, a
Speaker 1: very a very beautiful train wreck with like beautiful music
Speaker 1: and absolutely gorgeous cinematography and so on. Um, I mean
Speaker 1: it's it's probably one of my favorite shot films ever. Um,
Speaker 1: just amazing. And I've seen pieces of Last Days too.
Speaker 1: Was that overall? Was that good? Yeah? No, I mean
Speaker 1: I I don't have a bad word to say really
Speaker 1: about any of these films of this period, other than
Speaker 1: you know, Elephant Is is a little difficult now, um,
Speaker 1: but not really not necessarily the film's fault. Last Days,
Speaker 1: I think is a little bit more. It's less of
Speaker 1: the fluid like long takes and a little bit more
Speaker 1: on the side of fragmented timelines and locked off shots. Um.
Speaker 1: He's referencing this Shantel Ackerman film Gean Dilman, um quite
Speaker 1: a bit in that film, Jean Delmont is a is
Speaker 1: a three hour plus film basically about a woman alone
Speaker 1: by herself in her apartment, in her kitchen doing housework
Speaker 1: and washing dishes and other stuff happens. But it was
Speaker 1: it was like this really powerful, uh, kind of feminist
Speaker 1: statement back in the seventies about you know, domesticity and
Speaker 1: women and so on. Um. And so he's referencing that
Speaker 1: quite a bit in in Last Days in sort of
Speaker 1: just leaving the camera on and and kind of playing
Speaker 1: uh with boredom, with duration and so on in a
Speaker 1: way that Elephant and Paranoid Park don't do so much. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then imagine in Last Days it's the the prison
Speaker 1: of celebrity, which sort of Kurt Cobain's, you know, part
Speaker 1: of his downfall. Yeah, the prison celebrity, the hangers on,
Speaker 1: the people that we're supposed to be your friends but
Speaker 1: they're they're not, And and the people that really are
Speaker 1: trying to do something are kind of kept at arms
Speaker 1: length and and all that. Yeah, Yeah, I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 1: gonna finish up the second half of gus Man's ance
Speaker 1: career and then expe awesome. I want to talk to
Speaker 1: for a sect to about another one of my favorite shots,
Speaker 1: the shower shot. Yes, it's after um. Well, so what
Speaker 1: happens is there's a an odd not an odd, but
Speaker 1: just a nonconventional timeline in this movie, and about halfway through,
Speaker 1: like I said, it's revealed that this kid is actually responsible,
Speaker 1: and it goes to that night shows what happened. There
Speaker 1: is one really gross shot of a dude cut in
Speaker 1: a half. I'm glad it was in there because it
Speaker 1: was very impactful and like you kind of had to
Speaker 1: see it. Um. And then he goes he tosses the
Speaker 1: skateboard into the Willamette River, which is ends up being
Speaker 1: evidence because they find it. Um and then realizes he
Speaker 1: has blood and on the board maybe right exactly um,
Speaker 1: and then they he's got his clothes that he's got
Speaker 1: rid of it, goes home, bags him up, and then
Speaker 1: gets in the shower very disturbed, and it's just a beautiful,
Speaker 1: beautiful slow motion shot where he plays with exposure again
Speaker 1: and the sound too, because he has all these like
Speaker 1: it's this weird field recording of like birds singing and
Speaker 1: nature sounds and um and insects and so on. There
Speaker 1: was a yes, yes, I know, I noticed that too,
Speaker 1: And it's interesting too. It it seems like they're they're
Speaker 1: playing with the exposure, but I think they're also moving
Speaker 1: a light physically in the room because the directionality of
Speaker 1: the shadow on the wall kind of changes too. It's
Speaker 1: sort of ramps across. It looked like somebody. I thought
Speaker 1: someone was going to get in the shower. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: So it's it's a very unnerving shot, the way that
Speaker 1: the water the the these individual like strands of water
Speaker 1: falling from his hair because he has this long hair
Speaker 1: with all these kind of interesting points on it where
Speaker 1: the water can fall, and so in slow motion the
Speaker 1: water is like this solid kind of thing and it's
Speaker 1: just he he looks like an alien or something. It's
Speaker 1: very very unnerving and um and of course you know
Speaker 1: metaphorically the idea of like showering to get clean and
Speaker 1: to kind of wash away the sin or the or
Speaker 1: the the blood or or the guilt exactly. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: such a such a powerful shot and such a kind
Speaker 1: of thing that obviously in a novel you would just
Speaker 1: have sort of conventional like he was worried, he felt guilty,
Speaker 1: he was panicking, and so on, but to show it
Speaker 1: visually without saying anything, to just know that what we're
Speaker 1: observing is is maybe one of the darkest moments of
Speaker 1: his life of him really fully reckoning, like because in
Speaker 1: the immediate aftermath, it's just pure shock. It's like survival
Speaker 1: fight or flight kind of thing where he's just trying
Speaker 1: to get rid of the evidence and get home and
Speaker 1: figure out what he's gonna do. But then once he
Speaker 1: finally gets in the shower, that's when he has a
Speaker 1: moment to kind of yah, breathe and like really process
Speaker 1: a little bit of what's happened. And it, Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: so powerful, which is something that like, uh, I don't
Speaker 1: know if I'll go so far as to say it,
Speaker 1: but it's a trope. But that scene has been in
Speaker 1: a lot of films where a bad thing happens, they're
Speaker 1: very adrenaline lye that's not a word dealing with the
Speaker 1: immediate aftermath. And then there's a point where they slow
Speaker 1: down and then it hits him and they break down,
Speaker 1: and this it's just done in such a great way.
Speaker 1: It doesn't feel tired at all. Um. You know, it's
Speaker 1: such a slow shot that builds from him just getting
Speaker 1: in the shower, his dry hair getting wet to soaking,
Speaker 1: to the waterfall, and then he eventually he don't see
Speaker 1: his face because he's got his hands over it, but
Speaker 1: you can tell he's crying, yeah, and just hits against
Speaker 1: the side of the wall and slowly slides down out
Speaker 1: of frame. Just really really beautiful shot. And it's it's
Speaker 1: interesting too, because you see it, you see a brief
Speaker 1: moment of that of him taking the shower anyway you
Speaker 1: see earlier in the film, because he kind of goes
Speaker 1: through the events of that night. It's almost like different
Speaker 1: drafts or like he's he's kind of like passing over
Speaker 1: at once, and he just completely avoids what really happened,
Speaker 1: you know, he just he kind of skips forward. You
Speaker 1: this is later that night, you know, I had to
Speaker 1: change my clothes and dot da da da, And he
Speaker 1: gets in the shower for a second, and then the
Speaker 1: second or third time through, we kind of you know,
Speaker 1: we see what actually happened at the at the at
Speaker 1: the train and um, and then we see the shower
Speaker 1: and full and we realize that we're now fully within um,
Speaker 1: you know, his perspective of that of that moment of
Speaker 1: wrecked timeline or not timeline, but just the correct order
Speaker 1: of events. And one thing that I clocked last night
Speaker 1: too was that, UM, when he's when you see in
Speaker 1: all these scenes where he's writing the journal, you know,
Speaker 1: writing on the on in pencil on paper, Um, there's
Speaker 1: a moment where, uh, like in the banning of the film,
Speaker 1: he's he's by himself, he's writing. UM. His uncle who's
Speaker 1: actually played by the cinematographer Christopher Dorele, he comes in
Speaker 1: and switches on a light and says, what are you writing,
Speaker 1: And he's just like, oh, just school work. And he
Speaker 1: kind of goes into the room and closes his door,
Speaker 1: and then he's in that room and he's kind of
Speaker 1: just writing for a while. Then at a certain point
Speaker 1: I feel like he actually switches on the light, like
Speaker 1: on the lamp that's on the desk there with him.
Speaker 1: And I feel like, actually, if you if you go
Speaker 1: back and you look at those scenes, so I think
Speaker 1: there's a little bit of aggression of the lamp being
Speaker 1: off to the lamp being on and him getting a
Speaker 1: little bit more honest or a little bit more like
Speaker 1: exhaustive in the detail of what he's writing about. UM.
Speaker 1: So there's there's a little bit of a visual metaphor
Speaker 1: there too, to kind of indicate that over over time
Speaker 1: he's becomeing more um, just open about about what he's
Speaker 1: writing and what he's kind of confessing to Oh totally. Um.
Speaker 1: And the other thing that that scene where it shows
Speaker 1: the reality of what happened that night calls back is
Speaker 1: back to that great opening interrogation scene in the library
Speaker 1: when you realize that he was lying the whole time.
Speaker 1: When he gives him this really really tight, believable story
Speaker 1: about what happened. He's not nervous. He's like so like
Speaker 1: when the investigator is questioning him, he's really he's doing
Speaker 1: it in a good cop way. But if you have
Speaker 1: ever heard of cop ask questions like that, he's trying
Speaker 1: to trip him up a little bit. He's saying, he's
Speaker 1: asking him very quickly like would you eat? Would you
Speaker 1: go to subway? You got the receipt, what you have
Speaker 1: on it? And his kid is just nails it, and
Speaker 1: I believed him. That's why I didn't think it tipped
Speaker 1: into he's guilty because it totally believable to me, and
Speaker 1: not nervous at all, like, uh, you know, may always
Speaker 1: like no no, Mayo sick. He's like gotta have Mayo,
Speaker 1: No no, no cand of Mayo. Like they have like
Speaker 1: a real nice back and forth. And it's not the
Speaker 1: kind of thing you would expect somebody in that in
Speaker 1: that predicament to be able to they be. You would
Speaker 1: think they'd be a lot more defensive about it or
Speaker 1: something like you know, no, you don't keep receipts? Who
Speaker 1: keeps subway receipts? But he's very casual about like, no
Speaker 1: he keeps, you keep subway receipts, But he's he's lighthearted
Speaker 1: about it. Yeah, It's almost like in the way he
Speaker 1: is going into that scene and is pre that point
Speaker 1: in the movie where you know he did it, and
Speaker 1: I think he even writes something about blocking it out,
Speaker 1: it's almost like he has no memory of doing it
Speaker 1: until he sees that picture and the second interrogation, and
Speaker 1: he even says something about that it all came back
Speaker 1: to him or something like yeah, it's like a repressed
Speaker 1: memory almost, He's compartmentalized it until that he can kind
Speaker 1: of process it and and yeah, it is it is
Speaker 1: seeing those images that that takes him back to that moment.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting like later, you know, when when the
Speaker 1: big reveal does happen in the film, um, and he's
Speaker 1: he's sort of he has that moment where he's actually
Speaker 1: looking down at the guy who's been kind of half
Speaker 1: and the guys looking up at him because he's still
Speaker 1: got a few seconds of consciousness and you know it
Speaker 1: probably it probably would not have lasted as long as
Speaker 1: it lasts in the film, but it's almost a suspended
Speaker 1: moment in time where it's like time stopped and he
Speaker 1: and he felt like they had this back and forth
Speaker 1: exchange where they looked at each other in the eyes
Speaker 1: and so on. Who knows if that really quote unquote happened.
Speaker 1: But then at that moment, there's like this beautiful coral
Speaker 1: Beethoven music from the Night Symphony, and it actually cuts
Speaker 1: back to the interrogation scene and again it's like the
Speaker 1: that slash of light going across the CoP's face. It's
Speaker 1: sort of like, here is revealed, you know, the the
Speaker 1: the full truth of this of the situation. It's yeah,
Speaker 1: I love I love the way the film plays with
Speaker 1: chronology and kind of uses what he says is like
Speaker 1: his poor creative writing ability as a kind of justification
Speaker 1: for why he hops around so much in his in
Speaker 1: his memory. Yeah, and the cool reveal that I mentioned
Speaker 1: earlier about this journal is that we learned sort of
Speaker 1: towards the end of the film he as his other
Speaker 1: friend named Macy played by Lauren McKinney. I assume another
Speaker 1: non actor who does a great, great job. Yeah, even
Speaker 1: a conventional acting way. I think she's very very believable. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: she we learned towards the end that she is the
Speaker 1: one that had told him to write a journal. Uh.
Speaker 1: And he and that is the reason, you know, if
Speaker 1: you look at it from a filmmaking point of view,
Speaker 1: that's the reason we're even getting this film in this
Speaker 1: story is because she has told him to write down
Speaker 1: his thoughts and that it would help him. And um,
Speaker 1: and I guess because you know, he's a kid that's uh,
Speaker 1: his parents are separated, they're getting divorced. He's got this
Speaker 1: girlfriend that he is just sort of sleep walking through. Uh,
Speaker 1: this relationship. He's he doesn't even like her. He even
Speaker 1: says that to the other girl, He's like why am
Speaker 1: I why was he even dating? Or uh? They do
Speaker 1: sleep together? He uh he, I guess the flowers. I
Speaker 1: hate that term. But uh, she more chooses him to
Speaker 1: lose her virginity to Yeah. In that one scene, she
Speaker 1: it's it's such a I mean, it definitely is that
Speaker 1: way to to a lot of kids at that age,
Speaker 1: Like they just want to get it over with, They
Speaker 1: just want to lose it. They want to check that
Speaker 1: box and move on and sort of like I feel,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's it's part of like getting a
Speaker 1: driver's license or or smoking or like anything that teenagers
Speaker 1: do that sort of a quote unquote write of passage
Speaker 1: or whatever. Um, it's just it's there. There's it's less
Speaker 1: an emotional thing, and it's just kind of like that's
Speaker 1: what you do. You you you get a boyfriend that need
Speaker 1: do it or whatever, you know. Um. And so she's
Speaker 1: very kind of detached about it in a way. The
Speaker 1: first thing she does when it's over is just go
Speaker 1: off to the bathroom and they call her friends and like, yes,
Speaker 1: we did it. It was so amazing. And he's just
Speaker 1: kind of they're like, Okay, I got to that, you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't I wasn't really interested, but I guess it's fine.
Speaker 1: She's like, we need to start buying condoms because it's
Speaker 1: gonna be happening a lot. He breaks up with her.
Speaker 1: There's a there's a funny moment where um, she she's
Speaker 1: you know, she's at his sucker and he starts to say,
Speaker 1: you know, like he doesn't necessarily want to buy more,
Speaker 1: and he has this thing about like, well it was
Speaker 1: it was your idea in the first place to do it,
Speaker 1: and she's like, well, what are you talking about, Like
Speaker 1: now you're saying you didn't want you or something, and
Speaker 1: then he he quickly turns it around and says, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: like by the condoms. I thought that was your idea,
Speaker 1: so I figured we would do that together. And she
Speaker 1: kind of calms down. She's like, oh, okay, I thought
Speaker 1: you were talking about something else. But she was completely right,
Speaker 1: like she knew she she totally picked up on the
Speaker 1: subtext there. Yeah, And the relationship with the Macy characters great.
Speaker 1: She's she's really sweet and nice and um, they have
Speaker 1: a playful sort of I mean as playful as he
Speaker 1: gets in this movie sort of back and forth, and
Speaker 1: there's that one moment when they're sitting together where the
Speaker 1: way it's framed, like you they almost hold hands when
Speaker 1: they're on the bus. Yeah, they're not touching, but it's
Speaker 1: ends they're almost kind of like I think you can
Speaker 1: tell that they both want to. They're both they're both
Speaker 1: thinking about it, but the tension is they're they're they're
Speaker 1: just too nervous or it's a sweet shot, and it
Speaker 1: really like, I love it when a filmmaker is so
Speaker 1: skill that they can conjure up such an evocative moment
Speaker 1: just from a simple thing like that, because I immediately
Speaker 1: remembered being a kid, and like holding hands for the
Speaker 1: first time was so powerful and just that connected touch,
Speaker 1: physical touch was such a big deal. And he gets
Speaker 1: that all in that one beautiful, beautiful shot. It's, um,
Speaker 1: it's like that Big Star song thirteen. You know, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's that kind of moment of like innocent, let
Speaker 1: me walk you home from school, hands, that whole thing.
Speaker 1: It's it's yeah, it's a very very cute scene. And
Speaker 1: it's very interesting because moments like that are interwoven with
Speaker 1: him trying to figure out am I going to be
Speaker 1: charged with murder? You know? And and and the the
Speaker 1: whip lash. The juxtaposition of those two realities existing at
Speaker 1: the same time. There's a great moment um when he
Speaker 1: goes let's see, it's when he is it's it's one
Speaker 1: of the times that they're hanging out anyway, him and
Speaker 1: him and Macy, and she's kind of pressing him on
Speaker 1: the breakup, I think, and he goes into this kind
Speaker 1: of mini speech where he's like, look, I just don't
Speaker 1: think this stuff really matters. You know, There's there's more
Speaker 1: important stuff in the world. There's like the war in
Speaker 1: Iraq and and people starving in Africa and all this
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. And she's like, since when do you
Speaker 1: care about that stuff? You know? He's like yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: And he's like, well, look, I just think that, you know,
Speaker 1: there's like this other world out there beyond like parents
Speaker 1: and girlfriends and breakups. There's like this other there's other layers,
Speaker 1: you know, and um and I just think that, uh,
Speaker 1: and he kind of trails off, you know, basically, but
Speaker 1: he's he's basically saying like he's he's trying to articulate
Speaker 1: that he's been he's been introduced to the world of
Speaker 1: grown ups, in the world of like big time ambiguity
Speaker 1: and and and heavy stuff, and he can't quite process
Speaker 1: it yet because he's still just a kid at heart,
Speaker 1: you know. Um. But he he starts to articulating anyway
Speaker 1: that he's caught this glimpse of this other world that's
Speaker 1: out there, and now his like teenage you know, bubble
Speaker 1: um just seems completely trivial to him. Yeah, there's another
Speaker 1: great moment too that um, you know, in a movie
Speaker 1: that's eighty minutes long, you could very easily lose a
Speaker 1: moment like this. But towards the end when his little
Speaker 1: brother and his little brother is barely in the movie,
Speaker 1: but his little brother is he's uh Gabe's line there
Speaker 1: on the couch or Gabe, that's the real guy's name, Alex.
Speaker 1: Alex is laying there on the couch, and his little
Speaker 1: brother comes by and just tells this story that only
Speaker 1: a little brother. And what he's doing, which I didn't
Speaker 1: pick up on, is describing a movie. He's quoting Napoleon Dynamite.
Speaker 1: Oh is it? I couldn't figure it out because he
Speaker 1: keeps the character that he keeps talking about. Okay, Napoleon,
Speaker 1: all right, I was hoping you could knew, but I
Speaker 1: couldn't quite because he's kind of mumbling, and yeah, he's
Speaker 1: hard to follow. And I remember being that age and
Speaker 1: like describing stuff like that to my parents and the
Speaker 1: humoring me basically because like when you're when you're that young,
Speaker 1: like your idea of humor is just quoting other stuff awkwardly.
Speaker 1: And yeah, and and it's very interesting visually to what
Speaker 1: he does in that scene because there's like a desk
Speaker 1: or or table or something that's that's partially covering up Alex.
Speaker 1: So there's this big kind of black square in the
Speaker 1: foreground overlapping him where you kind of just see like
Speaker 1: the top of his head and a little bit side
Speaker 1: of his face, and there's like a TV on in
Speaker 1: the background. There's like also I think like a beam
Speaker 1: from the house that's that's sort of like covering up
Speaker 1: the brother. Maybe it's between the two of them a
Speaker 1: little bit, but you it's it's not like it's not
Speaker 1: framed in a way to make it feel like this
Speaker 1: is comfortable domestic time. It's sort of like he's he's
Speaker 1: trying to be there for his little brother to have
Speaker 1: this kind of like innocent moment, but in his head,
Speaker 1: everything is all wrong. Everything is all heavy and dark
Speaker 1: and confusing, and he's just kind of he's he's playing
Speaker 1: the role of like the older brother who's listening, but
Speaker 1: in reality he's kind of that. That's sort of like
Speaker 1: immersion has been broken, you know. Yeah, and it's it's
Speaker 1: a framing and a shot that, uh that if you
Speaker 1: were in film school teacher would say, like, what are
Speaker 1: you doing with this thing? Wrong with it? Yeah, you
Speaker 1: gotta you gotta move that, you gotta get this out
Speaker 1: of the way. And it just it really works somehow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: very cool and I love I mean, just like the
Speaker 1: it feels like I'm sure I'm sure probably in the
Speaker 1: script they probably didn't even mention Napoleon Dynamite. I'm sure
Speaker 1: it was probably just like that kid's favorite movie or
Speaker 1: something that they could they could just have him he
Speaker 1: was not reading enthusiasts. Yeah, and I love that. How
Speaker 1: long did they leave it going on? And then he
Speaker 1: gets out at exactly the right moment where he he
Speaker 1: kind of winds up and he's like and then another thing,
Speaker 1: you know, and then it like cuts to the scene
Speaker 1: and kind of realized that it just kept going for Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite moments is towards the end when
Speaker 1: he he's been writing this journal and he well, it's
Speaker 1: kind of the very end and then he burns it eventually. Uh,
Speaker 1: and Elliott Smith comes back in is his great second
Speaker 1: half book end another one of my favorite songs, and
Speaker 1: uh he I think he lets this one play the
Speaker 1: entire link. I think so too. Yeah, of the film,
Speaker 1: both of I mean, both of the songs play for
Speaker 1: quite a while. The White Lady Loves You More, Um,
Speaker 1: the whole song, isn't it pretty much? Because I think
Speaker 1: it's yeah, unless there's like a skillful edit, like you said,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure the whole the whole song plays because
Speaker 1: it goes from um, whatever was on screen initially something
Speaker 1: narrative related to then it kind of cuts to like
Speaker 1: just like skate footage. But it is like this like
Speaker 1: three minute kind of pause in the film where you're
Speaker 1: seeing a lot of the skate footage and stuff. And
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure that the same thing happens. Yeah, at
Speaker 1: the end, like the whole song plays out. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean it's an hour and twenty minutes long and there's
Speaker 1: ten minutes of just music video skate foot Yet he
Speaker 1: still manages to tell a complete whole story like in
Speaker 1: a really rich way. Yeah, yeah, so jealous. I know.
Speaker 1: I wanted to say, like, one one thing did you
Speaker 1: this is this is just an interpretation. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you picked up on this or felt the same
Speaker 1: way about it. But part of the relationship with it
Speaker 1: with the girlfriend, it seemed to me like maybe he
Speaker 1: was a little bit unsure of his own sexuality, Like
Speaker 1: maybe he wasn't necessarily into girls. Maybe he's into guys,
Speaker 1: because I think there's I think there's like a little
Speaker 1: bit of attention with the bad kid at the skate
Speaker 1: park when he's like, hey, kid, you want to go
Speaker 1: get some beers and ride trains, even though he can't
Speaker 1: really articulate it to himself. The way the way the
Speaker 1: camera films him this other guy and this close up
Speaker 1: it's this kind of beautiful portrait, um. And the way
Speaker 1: I think he kind of gives in to his request
Speaker 1: to go do this stuff. I think he's almost doing
Speaker 1: it that we can't yet admit it to himself. He's
Speaker 1: like his his alterior motive is to just like spend
Speaker 1: time with this guy and kind of see what he's about. Um,
Speaker 1: because it could be sexual or it could just be
Speaker 1: he's a cool older kid. But yeah, there is an ambiguity,
Speaker 1: I think because I think I think especially because you know,
Speaker 1: the his girlfriend that he's dating. Um, she's you know,
Speaker 1: she's a cheerleader, she's she's very like conventionally attractive. She
Speaker 1: seems like the kind of girl that any teenage boy
Speaker 1: would like be super into dating. And the fact that
Speaker 1: he's like so kind of indifferent and he just wants
Speaker 1: to go hang out at the skate park and so on. Um,
Speaker 1: and then also the fact that even even later on
Speaker 1: when it's just him and Macy, like there's still that
Speaker 1: kind of distance where it kind of, you know, most
Speaker 1: of the time you would assume like, oh, these two
Speaker 1: seem like they're much more on the same frequency. They
Speaker 1: could be an item, but maybe they won't be, because again,
Speaker 1: he's sort of he hasn't yet figured it out. And
Speaker 1: that's that's a common theme and a lot of gust
Speaker 1: fans dance movies. Obviously gust Van Sant also being a
Speaker 1: gay man, and um, it's something that comes up like
Speaker 1: an elephant as well, Um that he plays with a
Speaker 1: lot a lot in his films. Yeah. Yeah, And there's
Speaker 1: even that scene later on after the breakup when he's
Speaker 1: talking to his friends about it, and one of them
Speaker 1: is like, like, I know, it's better to be getting
Speaker 1: mad than not, and he's he's just not identifying with
Speaker 1: that at all. Um. And the other moment earlier on,
Speaker 1: when he's with his main sort of best friend, I
Speaker 1: guess when he you know, he gets a new skateboard
Speaker 1: because he has lost the other one, the murder weapon
Speaker 1: off the bridge, and his friend says, you know, is
Speaker 1: that a fag skateboard or something like that, and then
Speaker 1: his reaction to that you could definitely read into a
Speaker 1: little bit Yeah. And there's a great there's a great
Speaker 1: kind of subjective shot right after where it's his it's
Speaker 1: him from the passenger seat looking at his friend while
Speaker 1: this like punk track plays really fast and aggressive and
Speaker 1: it's slow motion, and it's his friend kind of turning
Speaker 1: and looking at him and then turning back to kind
Speaker 1: of look at the road. Um. I it's hard to
Speaker 1: even put into words what's so great about that scene.
Speaker 1: The elements are so simple, but but it is just
Speaker 1: something about the combination of the slowness of the shot
Speaker 1: and the kind of contemplative feeling of it married with
Speaker 1: a kind of like fast, aggressive punk song, hardcore really well,
Speaker 1: another juxtaposition of of score and what's going on on screen. Uh.
Speaker 1: He he does it sort of all over the place.
Speaker 1: I forgot about that one. Usually it's it's like the
Speaker 1: breakup scene. There's that sort of old school romantic score.
Speaker 1: In this way, he sort of does the reverse, but
Speaker 1: just so good man. I really really loved the movie.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you sort of jogged me back into my
Speaker 1: love for guess Van's aunt, because I'm gonna die back
Speaker 1: into all this again. Uh. You know the end of
Speaker 1: the film, it's sort of implied, you know, he burns
Speaker 1: the stuff his journal, and it's implied that he gets
Speaker 1: away with it. There's nothing to make you think otherwise this.
Speaker 1: You know, when I was watching it last night, something
Speaker 1: I kind of like, never really watched the film for before,
Speaker 1: but I was trying to kind of clock at this
Speaker 1: time the guard. I think, you you don't you don't
Speaker 1: know very much about him. You just see his face.
Speaker 1: He never says anything, but you you see his face.
Speaker 1: You see like his his I D card, you know,
Speaker 1: his headshot when it's on the news and so on.
Speaker 1: And I don't know. I I got the feeling that
Speaker 1: this was kind of just like a blue collar, working
Speaker 1: class guy totally. He's not drawn a big salary. He's
Speaker 1: just kind of like one of the millions of kind
Speaker 1: of faceless and non with people that that don't get
Speaker 1: written about or or made movies about and so on. Um,
Speaker 1: he's just a guy doing a job. And contrast that
Speaker 1: with with Gabe and his family. They seem to be
Speaker 1: solidly middle class or even maybe upper middle because there's
Speaker 1: like a beach house and when the the the other
Speaker 1: kid's house city, his best friend's house that he sleeps
Speaker 1: over at, when he wakes up in the morning, there's
Speaker 1: that beautiful sunroom with like the high vaulted ceiling and everything.
Speaker 1: That's that's some money, you know. So I think while
Speaker 1: it never it never gets to the point where there's
Speaker 1: like a criminal case or anything, so he never gets
Speaker 1: to pay for like a pricey lawyer to get him
Speaker 1: off all that kind of stuff. Um. At the same time,
Speaker 1: I think there's a little bit of an undercurrent of
Speaker 1: like this is kind of a you know, a well
Speaker 1: off kid and this sort of anonymous blue collar guy
Speaker 1: who just gets killed and kind of forgotten about. Um.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I feel like that's a little bit of
Speaker 1: the tension there that he Gabe is gonna is gonna
Speaker 1: be a to to go on and live this or
Speaker 1: Alex the character is going to be able to go
Speaker 1: on and live this kind of you know, like easy,
Speaker 1: easy life. You know, he's he's still going to be
Speaker 1: set up for success because he comes from the family
Speaker 1: that comes from he went to the school that he
Speaker 1: went to, and he's going to be one of those
Speaker 1: guys that has a secret exactly. He's you know, he's
Speaker 1: he's a quote unquote rebellious teenager and everything, but I'm
Speaker 1: sure I'll get his act together and go to college
Speaker 1: and and all the rest of it. So yeah, and
Speaker 1: and he's going to have this this really dark thing
Speaker 1: that's going to haunt him for the rest of his life.
Speaker 1: But at least externally, you know, the facade is going
Speaker 1: to be somebody who's had a very kind of simple
Speaker 1: and charmed life. Yeah, let me ask you this for
Speaker 1: an alternate ending. Is same exact shot him burning the
Speaker 1: book pages, Elliot Smiths playing in the fire outside, and
Speaker 1: just at the very end of that scene you see
Speaker 1: very soft focus the police squad cars with the Whites
Speaker 1: well into the background in him just kind of stand up,
Speaker 1: cut to black, Like, what do you think about that?
Speaker 1: Interesting to me? To me, I think I open it
Speaker 1: does change it. Yeah, I think to me the open
Speaker 1: ending is more interesting because it gets it gets into
Speaker 1: the real Like I feel like if the cases is
Speaker 1: closed in some way, or if we feel like he
Speaker 1: got caught it, it's sort of it redirects us more
Speaker 1: into just sort of like a genre who done it territory,
Speaker 1: whereas leaving it unsolved and ambiguous gets us way more
Speaker 1: into sort of like I don't know, DOTOYASKI territory, like
Speaker 1: crime and punishment, the idea of like if you commit
Speaker 1: a crime and you get away with it, you still
Speaker 1: have to reckon with yourself and your conscience and and
Speaker 1: how that can eat away at a person over a lifetime.
Speaker 1: And isn't that actually maybe in some ways the worst
Speaker 1: punishment than just getting a manslaughter case. You can say
Speaker 1: to somebody, look, I was a kid. It was it
Speaker 1: was a terrible mistake. There's not a day in my
Speaker 1: life that I don't regret it, etcetera, etcetera. But I
Speaker 1: done my time and now I am moving on, you know, right,
Speaker 1: He his whole rest of his life, presumably is going
Speaker 1: to carry this thing with him, and no matter what
Speaker 1: good deeds he does in the future, he's always going
Speaker 1: to have that nagging in the back of his head, like,
Speaker 1: but you did this thing and you can't tell anybody,
Speaker 1: and you can never tell anybody, and it's just gonna Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a different deal. That's like stuff that leads to
Speaker 1: alcoholism and drug abuse. And UM, not to go too
Speaker 1: far down the Jerry rabbit hole, because we gotta wrap
Speaker 1: up here in a sec But his movie Jerry, with
Speaker 1: Matt Damon and Casey Afflect tells the true story of
Speaker 1: or a semblance of the of these two guys went
Speaker 1: hiking out of the desert. They get lost, they suffer dehydration,
Speaker 1: one kills the other in a in what appeared to
Speaker 1: be a mercy killing. And uh, I just sort of
Speaker 1: doe down that rabbit hole of the real story last night.
Speaker 1: And that guy, UH paid his I think he went
Speaker 1: to had two years of a suspended sentence, h and
Speaker 1: robation and all this stuff. So he was found guilty
Speaker 1: in a way of manslaughter or not in a way,
Speaker 1: but fully guilty of manslaughter. But I just typed in
Speaker 1: his real name, and I was like, I wonder if
Speaker 1: he's still around. Uh he is, and he's kind of
Speaker 1: notebook open Facebook page and you can just go on
Speaker 1: Facebook and look at this guy's life. And it's super
Speaker 1: weird that we live in a wow, weird time where
Speaker 1: you can do that killed killed his friend is like
Speaker 1: on Facebook. And you know, I'm not saying that he's
Speaker 1: a bad guy or anything, because it no, no, no,
Speaker 1: but it's there was some weirdness with the case, but
Speaker 1: it did appear to be manslaughter. He didn't want to
Speaker 1: murder his friend. But it is strange to just be like,
Speaker 1: oh and here he is at a park having a pick. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's so strange. I mean I still forget sometimes, like
Speaker 1: how quickly and easily it is to find people on Facebook,
Speaker 1: especially um, the whole idea of just like, you know,
Speaker 1: the mystery of people from our past, we wonder whatever
Speaker 1: happened to dot dot dot. It's it's it's so easy
Speaker 1: to to solve in most cases. And yeah, even even
Speaker 1: people that you think of as not necessarily famous, but
Speaker 1: people of note they're just on Facebook. You know, I
Speaker 1: can find him and you can send him a request
Speaker 1: or a message or whatever. It's very very strange. Uh.
Speaker 1: One final note here for me. The movie ends, uh,
Speaker 1: and the credit sequence is set to a song by
Speaker 1: a man named cast King, who Uh it sounds like
Speaker 1: a little bit of a bizarro world Johnny Cash in
Speaker 1: a way. And then you know, I looked him up
Speaker 1: and cast King as I'm sure you know. But for listeners,
Speaker 1: he was a He was an old man in Alabama
Speaker 1: who made his who was a singer and made his
Speaker 1: first record when he was like seventy eight years old,
Speaker 1: seventy nine years old, and it's just this. I started
Speaker 1: listening to it immediately. It's just beautiful dominal and died
Speaker 1: a couple of years later. But he it's a pretty
Speaker 1: interesting story. And and of course CAUs fans Aunt knows
Speaker 1: about this and finds it out because he's the King
Speaker 1: of Cool, and it has it has a lot to um.
Speaker 1: I think it has a lot to say thematically for
Speaker 1: the film itself, because yeah, the refrain is he died
Speaker 1: like a man, and I think I think what's happening
Speaker 1: is what you know, the connection to the film is
Speaker 1: that like he died like a man sort of means
Speaker 1: like he faced the music, like whatever was out there
Speaker 1: that he needed to to acknowledge. He did and he
Speaker 1: paid his life for it. But basically, like you know,
Speaker 1: the the the account summed out to zero, like he
Speaker 1: paid the debt whatever whatever it was, whereas in this film,
Speaker 1: that debt is still outstanding, and it's going to remain outstanding.
Speaker 1: Like he's not going to quote unquote die like a man.
Speaker 1: He's going to die like a coward. And in some
Speaker 1: ways for not facing up to you know, for for
Speaker 1: taking in some ways the easy way out and in
Speaker 1: some ways the harder way out. He almost to his
Speaker 1: dad at one point even and didn't do it. I
Speaker 1: love that, um, that whole that whole sequence where even
Speaker 1: something as simple as like throwing your skateboard away and
Speaker 1: and and changing your clothes, like suddenly there's all these
Speaker 1: questions of like his mom asking him, Hey, where's your skateboard?
Speaker 1: And then his friend like did you dude, what's that?
Speaker 1: What's with the new board? And you know, and then
Speaker 1: when he calls his dad had um his mom again
Speaker 1: asking him like, oh the colorade, he said that you
Speaker 1: called from your friend's house at like four in the morning. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In that unenviable position of being a parent going through
Speaker 1: a divorce that has to kind of let your kid
Speaker 1: get away with stuff. It's like it's like there's not
Speaker 1: enough there to really pursue further. She just knows that,
Speaker 1: like he's he's lying. Something went down, but I don't
Speaker 1: know what. And obviously most parents are not going to
Speaker 1: be able to conceive that, Oh, he probably went to
Speaker 1: a skateboard and like murdered skatepark and murdered somebody. So
Speaker 1: it's probably more like, oh, there was a party and
Speaker 1: it got unruly and he was really drunk and he
Speaker 1: called his dad or something like that. But you know,
Speaker 1: that's that's the level of um, you know, severity that
Speaker 1: she's thinking. But I do love that that long pause
Speaker 1: where she's just like he's like, so, I don't I
Speaker 1: have no idea, and she's just like, well, bumbles, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a terrible excuse. He's a terrible liar in general,
Speaker 1: like you don't have no idea what happened. And then
Speaker 1: and then when he's at the he's at the mall,
Speaker 1: he's reading the newspaper and again he's looking at the
Speaker 1: obituaries to see if there's something about the guy in there.
Speaker 1: Yeah the metro section, Yeah yeah, yeah, And She's like, oh,
Speaker 1: you're reading sports in the metro section and where you're
Speaker 1: reading sports, and again, his story just falls apart immediately.
Speaker 1: But yeah, there's there's not enough there to really pursue.
Speaker 1: So it's just like everybody knows that something is weird,
Speaker 1: but nobody was going to push it any further than that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it works that it doesn't go down those roads further.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, that all of a sudden, Macy wasn't like, wait,
Speaker 1: something's going on, I gotta figure this out. It's totally
Speaker 1: realistic that like it would just be like this weird hiccup,
Speaker 1: you know, momentary and then I've forgotten about probably you know. Yeah, alright, man,
Speaker 1: well that was great. We did what I hoped we
Speaker 1: would do, which is talk about the movie as long
Speaker 1: as the movie was. I think we talked about every
Speaker 1: part of it in fact. But this is a movie
Speaker 1: that was just fantastic. Highly recommend it um if you're
Speaker 1: into you know, if you're into art and cinema. This
Speaker 1: is one of those films. But not inaccessible either. It's
Speaker 1: not so out there that it's hard to watch or
Speaker 1: anything like that. It's really a quick, tight, really well
Speaker 1: made constructed film. Yeah, I would say, if you're if
Speaker 1: you're interested in this period of of Gus fan Stands filmmaking,
Speaker 1: I would start with this film, even though it's the
Speaker 1: last in the progression. I would start here and then
Speaker 1: go back to Jerry and do the rest in order,
Speaker 1: because I think you'll you'll probably have an easier time
Speaker 1: appreciating those films when you kind of see this slightly
Speaker 1: more digestible version. Totally awesome. Dude, Well this was great. Uh,
Speaker 1: I'll see you get in another month or so. Great.
Speaker 1: I love it. Yeah, looking forward to it. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: thanks everyone for listening. Check out Paranoid Park. It is
Speaker 1: actually streaming if you have a Hulu it's on Hulu
Speaker 1: for free um or you know the cost of Hulu.
Speaker 1: And I had a commercial at the beginning, but then
Speaker 1: was uninterrupted. I think you can you can rent it
Speaker 1: on Amazon Prime also if you want to go that route. Awesome. Well,
Speaker 1: thanks Casey, and thanks to the listeners, and we will
Speaker 1: see you next Friday. Looy Crush is produced, edited, and
Speaker 1: engineered by Ramsay Hunt here in our home studio at
Speaker 1: Pont City Market, Atlanta, Georgia. For I Heart Radio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts for My Heart radio, visit the I heart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.