Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Weird House Cinema. My name is
Speaker 2: Joe McCormick. My regular co host, Robert Lamb is not
Speaker 2: with me today, so I am being joined by a
Speaker 2: guest someone who will be familiar to longtime listeners of
Speaker 2: the show, our former producer and friend, Seth Nicholas Johnson.
Speaker 2: How are you doing, Seth?
Speaker 3: Hello? Everyone, I'm doing great. Happy to be back again,
Speaker 3: and I'm glad to still be a part of the
Speaker 3: you know, Stuff to Blow your Mind family.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's really great to have you back, man. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So the movie we're going to be talking about today
Speaker 2: is a movie you suggested, Seth, one that I had
Speaker 2: never seen before, and I am thrilled to discuss it
Speaker 2: today because it is so strange and so interesting. Today's
Speaker 2: film is the nineteen sixty eight psychedelic musical comedy Head,
Speaker 2: starring the TV musical act The Monkeys, and people may
Speaker 2: say they monkey around, but the important thing to understand
Speaker 2: is that being a monkey is a pact with Satan,
Speaker 2: cursing you to a dreadful existence of meaninglessness and unfreedom.
Speaker 2: But also it's all for a laugh.
Speaker 3: You know, they monkey around a lot in this movie.
Speaker 3: Like if a reviewer simply wrote that after they saw
Speaker 3: the film, you know these boys, they really monkey around,
Speaker 3: they'd be correct. That is what's happening throughout the entire
Speaker 3: eighty six minutes of this film.
Speaker 2: But what's not true is that they're too busy singing
Speaker 2: to put anybody down. This movie sort of does put
Speaker 2: a lot of people in things down, including the monkeys
Speaker 2: and the creators of the monkeys, true, and everything that
Speaker 2: enabled the monkeys to happen, and the fans of the monkeys,
Speaker 2: and war and consumerism and the broader culture and basically everything.
Speaker 2: It's a shocking indictment of humankind.
Speaker 3: It's very true.
Speaker 2: So I first of all had no idea this movie
Speaker 2: was going to have such dark threads running through it,
Speaker 2: or that it would be as funny as it was.
Speaker 2: But I previously actually didn't know much about the Monkeys.
Speaker 2: I didn't like grow up watching the show or anything
Speaker 2: I knew, you know, so the songs that would play
Speaker 2: on the radio and stuff. So before we get into
Speaker 2: discussing the film itself, Sethlake, what is your pre existing
Speaker 2: relationship with the Monkeys and did that have anything to
Speaker 2: do with you suggesting this movie for today.
Speaker 3: Definitely, I grew up on the TV show. Well obviously
Speaker 3: on the reruns. I wasn't around for the first round.
Speaker 3: But if folks don't know, around the mid to late eighties,
Speaker 3: MTV started replaying old episodes of The Monkeys simp believe
Speaker 3: it was like the thirtieth anniversary, twentieth anniversary, something like that,
Speaker 3: And when that happened, yeah, I guess would have been
Speaker 3: the twentieth anniversary sixties, seventies, eighties, correct anniversary on MTV.
Speaker 3: They had a bunch of reunions and they played the
Speaker 3: TV Show and there was like a second wave of
Speaker 3: Monkey Mania, and this was kind of a big bolster,
Speaker 3: not only to their record sales, some of their albums
Speaker 3: like re entered the charts and stuff like that, but
Speaker 3: in addition to that, they started doing reunion tours like
Speaker 3: the Monkeys came back in the mid to late eighties,
Speaker 3: and I guess I was influenced by that as a
Speaker 3: as a small child, because I watched those reruns and
Speaker 3: fell in love with it and just like the humor
Speaker 3: and the silliness, and honestly also the quality of the
Speaker 3: music really won me over as a child and it
Speaker 3: stuck with me for a long time. And eventually, when
Speaker 3: I did become old enough to start like you know,
Speaker 3: buying my own albums and like caring about music, I
Speaker 3: was like, you know, some of these Monkeys albums are great.
Speaker 3: So then I went like through the effort of actually
Speaker 3: like learning the history of them and when they took
Speaker 3: over and started, you know, being in control of their
Speaker 3: own music compared with when they just had a bunch
Speaker 3: of like you know, studio heads telling them what they
Speaker 3: had to do, and what the difference between that sound was. Like,
Speaker 3: I really did a deep dive and just to just
Speaker 3: to you know, educate myself. And yeah, I would call
Speaker 3: myself a big Monkeys fan. I have seen my personal
Speaker 3: favorite Monkey, Mike Nesmyth, in concert multiple times, and you
Speaker 3: know what, that's what I'll definitely say. I'm an enormous
Speaker 3: Mike Nesmyth fan, and Mike Nesmyth used to be in
Speaker 3: the Monkeys, That's what I'll say.
Speaker 2: It is surprising when you go back and listen how
Speaker 2: good a lot of these songs are, like well written
Speaker 2: pop tunes. Yeah, And I honestly Seth thought you might
Speaker 2: say that you're on Ramp to the Monkeys was the
Speaker 2: smash Mouth cover in the Shrek soundtrack. I'm a believer.
Speaker 3: I don't think I'm quite young enough for that. I'm
Speaker 3: sure the generation below us would definitely say that. But
Speaker 3: now I was brought on board with the reruns on
Speaker 3: a MTV back in the late eighties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, was that song. By the way, this would be
Speaker 2: a good segue to the fact that actually a lot
Speaker 2: of the great Monkeys tunes that we know were written
Speaker 2: by people who would go on to become great, you know, musicians,
Speaker 2: well known stars and songwriters in their own right. I
Speaker 2: think I'm a believer who was written by Neil Diamond,
Speaker 2: wasn't it.
Speaker 3: I believe there is some truth to that. I can't
Speaker 3: remember if it was originally intended to be a Neil
Speaker 3: Diamond song originally, but yeah, there was a bunch of
Speaker 3: that kind of like flip flopping back and forth back then.
Speaker 3: But he was definitely involved, that's for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But other songs of the Monkeys were written by
Speaker 2: like Carol King and collaborators. So, like, there are several
Speaker 2: Carol King songs that pop up in this movie, and
Speaker 2: they're fantastic. Probably one of the best songs in the movie.
Speaker 2: The Porpoise song is a Carol King and I forget
Speaker 2: the collaborator to his name will come up later.
Speaker 3: Harry Nielsen too. They had some really good Harry Nielsen
Speaker 3: collaborations in the future. And not to you know, harp
Speaker 3: too much on my favorite monkey, Michael Nesmith. But Michael
Speaker 3: Nesmyth definitely wrote all of the best Monkeys songs. Well,
Speaker 3: we'll hear at least one in this movie, a Circle Sky.
Speaker 3: But when you hear that that Texas twang out of
Speaker 3: Mike Nesmyth's mouth, you know, you know it's a Nesmuth original.
Speaker 3: And man, he writes a damn fine song. If folks
Speaker 3: don't know he was, well, well, we'll get to this later.
Speaker 3: But he was already a famous songwriter before he joined
Speaker 3: the Monkeys, like, for example, he wrote Linda Ronstadt's Different Drum.
Speaker 3: You know that song that's a Mesmith original? Yes, yeah,
Speaker 3: uh yeah.
Speaker 2: Okay, So we'll have to talk about the different elements
Speaker 2: as we go along, But maybe before we go into
Speaker 2: the history of the Monkeys and what the monkeys mean,
Speaker 2: we should just give a brief description of what is head,
Speaker 2: What is this movie? It is hard to describe, but
Speaker 2: I think the way I would put it is that
Speaker 2: it is a nonlinear mad cap comedy starring the mid
Speaker 2: sixties made for TV band the Monkeys as themselves or
Speaker 2: as the slightly fictionalized versions of themselves that were that
Speaker 2: were the Monkeys, or actually you might say as like
Speaker 2: a second order character, like a a second order fictionalized
Speaker 2: version of the Monkeys that appears in this movie to
Speaker 2: sort of comment on the characters that they played in
Speaker 2: the show. Does that make any sense?
Speaker 3: It absolutely does. And you know, I was just thinking
Speaker 3: to myself, what other structures around this time were happening,
Speaker 3: And here's something that I don't believe this can be
Speaker 3: connected because the timelines are too similar. I think it
Speaker 3: was probably just like the vibe going through the air was.
Speaker 3: Did you ever used to watch Rowan and Martin's laugh.
Speaker 2: In I think I've seen like one episode of it.
Speaker 3: I had pointing out how old I am, But I
Speaker 3: definitely used to watch reruns of Rowan and Martin's Laughing
Speaker 3: back in the day, and it has that same highly gosh,
Speaker 3: how to even put it, because there's a combination of psychedelia,
Speaker 3: corny old jokes, rapid succession from like shot to shot,
Speaker 3: very little from thing to thing, and that show came
Speaker 3: out in nineteen sixty eight, the same year as this movie.
Speaker 3: So okay, I'm not claiming that there's any connection there,
Speaker 3: but I do think there must have been something in
Speaker 3: the water that made people feel that this was like
Speaker 3: where the pendulum was swinging, that this was the kind
Speaker 3: of structure that was needed in the world.
Speaker 2: Or something in the kool aid yea, the electric kool
Speaker 2: aid exactly there, I think it would be. In fact,
Speaker 2: I was going to say it would be hard to
Speaker 2: deny the drug influences on this movie, but in fact
Speaker 2: you couldn't. Even Like the creators have explicitly said this
Speaker 2: movie was fueled by psychedelic drugs. Like Bob Rayfelson, who
Speaker 2: will talk about in a bit, has given interviews extensively
Speaker 2: talking about how much the use of drugs like marijuana
Speaker 2: and LSD played into the creative process that led to
Speaker 2: this film. I don't know how much for the monkeys themselves,
Speaker 2: but for the writers and the director certainly this is
Speaker 2: a very psychedelic forward comedy comedy film. But also so yeah,
Speaker 2: you get that very like only loosely logically connected or
Speaker 2: sometimes totally logically unconnected sequence of images and scenes. But
Speaker 2: also I just wanted to run down like a list
Speaker 2: of things that this movie does. What these these comedic
Speaker 2: episodes in the movie do so, they satirize American media,
Speaker 2: especially like movies and TV with traditional square storytelling genres
Speaker 2: like westerns and war movies. But also they they satirize
Speaker 2: American advertising and just the general landscape of the media,
Speaker 2: news report reports and stuff like that. But also these
Speaker 2: there are several points in the movie that quite viscerally
Speaker 2: critique the morality of US involvement in the Vietnam War
Speaker 2: with like truly shocking imagery. But then the movie also
Speaker 2: experiments with psychedelic music and imagery styles. I think if
Speaker 2: I was going to offer some critiques of this film,
Speaker 2: one of them would be that I think they got
Speaker 2: a little too excited about the solarization effect. I don't
Speaker 2: know if that's quite as cool as they thought it was.
Speaker 3: Right for sure, I felt the same thing. Eventually, it
Speaker 3: was just a one throwoff moment, so I doubt we'll
Speaker 3: be referencing it directly. There was a scene with a
Speaker 3: bunch of mylar balloons floating around, and I think they
Speaker 3: thought it would blow our minds, and I was like, nah,
Speaker 3: we know what my lar balloons are. It's fine.
Speaker 2: But then along with all that we get traditional song
Speaker 2: and dance numbers. There's even like a Broadway show tune
Speaker 2: kind of number in it. That's fantastic that there are
Speaker 2: just like constant detours into corny non sequitor jokes. Like
Speaker 2: the jokes are not all you know, like dark, incisive comedy.
Speaker 2: A lot of it is just really the bottom of
Speaker 2: the barrel kind of just the silliest puns and stuff.
Speaker 3: And like you said too, the non sequitur nonsensical nature.
Speaker 3: Some of the humor is some of my favorites too.
Speaker 3: One of my favorites I'll mention later. It's early in
Speaker 3: the movie, so I'll bring it up later. But a
Speaker 3: lot of it is just good timing and good editing
Speaker 3: with just like odd creative choices, especially captions. They use
Speaker 3: a lot of odd text on screen captions and editing
Speaker 3: choices that are fascinating.
Speaker 2: Oh like when the guy says to Mickey Dolan's.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, that yeah, that happens early in the movie.
Speaker 3: We'll mention that scene soon, but that that genuinely made
Speaker 3: me laugh out loud. That's that we'll mention soon, Okay.
Speaker 2: But another big thing this movie does is it meditates on,
Speaker 2: I would say, from the movie's perspective, the genuinely quite terrifying,
Speaker 2: implied psychic undercurrents of Beatlemania and monkey mania. The movie
Speaker 2: almost suggest there is something like threatening and fascist about
Speaker 2: the adulation of bands like this. And then also it
Speaker 2: meditates on the meaninglessness of the Monkeys as a concept,
Speaker 2: and on the meaninglessness of life, and on illusions of freedom.
Speaker 2: But also it's funny.
Speaker 3: It's very true. It's it's genuinely a funny film. And
Speaker 3: it's amazing how they balance all of these pieces, that
Speaker 3: it can be this dark, this unconnected, but also this
Speaker 3: watchable and this funny. It's it's actually quite masterful in
Speaker 3: many ways. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So in otherwise though, I mean, it's it's a movie
Speaker 2: clearly made in the sixties, and like the sixties are
Speaker 2: just wafting through it. So it is very dated in
Speaker 2: a lot of ways. But in other ways it stands
Speaker 2: out as surprisingly fresh and good and even shockingly, as
Speaker 2: I said earlier, sharp with its satire. Sometimes it's hard
Speaker 2: for me to think of another movie be quite like this. Agreed,
Speaker 2: Maybe we should hear some trailer audio.
Speaker 4: Not since the Ten Commandments.
Speaker 5: If you liked Covered Wagon Beyond from Here to Eternity.
Speaker 5: They can't be the Marx Brothers.
Speaker 4: They're too young. Columbia Pictures presents the Monkeys Mickey, Davey,
Speaker 4: Mike Peter in Head. That's right, Head, what's it all about?
Speaker 4: Only Victor Mature's hair dresser knows for sure. Head is
Speaker 4: the most extraordinary adventure, western comedy, love story, this greed, drama, musical, documentary,
Speaker 4: satire ever filmed.
Speaker 2: All Right, So this is the part of the episode
Speaker 2: we usually call connections where we talk about some people involved.
Speaker 2: There were a lot of people involved in this movie.
Speaker 2: It has a ton of cameos that we can't possibly
Speaker 2: name them all, but we'll try to talk through some
Speaker 2: of the main figures and then maybe we'll hit on
Speaker 2: some other things as we go through the plot a
Speaker 2: little bit. The plot quote, It doesn't have a plot,
Speaker 2: but as we talk about what happens on screen. The
Speaker 2: director and writer of this film as a guy named
Speaker 2: Bob Rafelson who lived in nineteen thirty three through twenty
Speaker 2: twenty two. He was an American director, writer, and producer.
Speaker 2: Head was his first feature film, though he had previously
Speaker 2: worked on TV as one of the creators of The
Speaker 2: Monkeys TV series for NBC in nineteen sixty five sixty six.
Speaker 2: I think maybe he created it in sixty five and
Speaker 2: it debuted in sixty six, I believe. But he would
Speaker 2: later go on to be best known as a director
Speaker 2: of films like Five Ez Pieces in nineteen seventy, which
Speaker 2: he directed and co wrote with Carol Eastman and which
Speaker 2: starred Jack Nicholson and Karen Black. He also directed the
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty one adaptation of The Postman Always Rings Twice.
Speaker 2: This is a story that was made had multiple movie
Speaker 2: versions over the years, this version starring again Jack Nicholson
Speaker 2: and Jessica Long, and then he also did The King
Speaker 2: of Marvin Gardens in nineteen seventy two. Stay Hungry in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy six, a film starring Jeff Bridges and Sally Field,
Speaker 2: but also Arnold Schwarzenegger in a straight dramatic role. This
Speaker 2: was I think his first movie after he appeared as
Speaker 2: Arnold's strong in that Hercules film.
Speaker 3: I've never seen that, and I'm actually kind of curious too.
Speaker 3: That sounds pretty fascinating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's like it's not an action movie at all.
Speaker 2: Arnold Schwarzenegger plays like a guy who either owns or
Speaker 2: manages a gym and a gym I think somewhere in Alabama.
Speaker 2: And Jeff Bridges is like a shady real estate developer
Speaker 2: who's trying to like scam him into selling the gem
Speaker 2: property for some reason.
Speaker 3: Fascinating And I bet this would have been technically the
Speaker 3: first time his voice was on film, because wasn't he
Speaker 3: dubbed in that Hercules movie? Oh?
Speaker 2: I bet he was. Yeah, that's sounds familiar. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Interesting.
Speaker 2: Rafelson also directed Black Widow in eighty seven, which is
Speaker 2: a sort of neo noir movie. I think that has
Speaker 2: a Deborah Winger in it. Andy did the nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: biographical film Mountains of the Moon, about the journeys of Richard,
Speaker 2: Francis Burton and John Hanning. Speak Rafelson along with his
Speaker 2: partner Bert Schneider. They also provided funding for the production
Speaker 2: of Easy Rider in nineteen sixty nine, which was huge.
Speaker 2: It's kind of hard to overstate the impact Easy Rider
Speaker 2: on the film industry. It was hugely influential independent film
Speaker 2: and a kind of frozen in time snapshot of the
Speaker 2: feeling of an era, that era being the late sixties counterculture,
Speaker 2: and together with another producer named Steve Blouner, Rafelson and
Speaker 2: Schneider would found a company called BBS Productions, which from
Speaker 2: what I understand, they entered into an agreement with Columbia
Speaker 2: Pictures to finance films without allowing creative interference by the studios.
Speaker 2: And I think this is seen by some as like
Speaker 2: an important component in the evolution of the new Hollywood
Speaker 2: of the nineteen seventies, which was more it was sort
Speaker 2: of less focused on creative control by the studio and
Speaker 2: more focused on creative control by the directors and filmmakers.
Speaker 2: But before all that, Rafelson made The Monkeys. When I
Speaker 2: as a kid and I was aware of, you know,
Speaker 2: the Monkeys, that I knew their songs from the radio
Speaker 2: and stuff, I actually did not realize that they were
Speaker 2: a band created for television. And I don't know if
Speaker 2: this qualifies them as a quote fictional band, because I
Speaker 2: was talking about this with my wife Rachel. We watched
Speaker 2: the movie together and we were talking about, like, what
Speaker 2: does it mean for a band to be fictional? At
Speaker 2: least what you can say about the Monkeys is they
Speaker 2: are not a band that formed by musicians on their
Speaker 2: own right. They were formed for a project that was
Speaker 2: organized by someone else, and originally not all members of
Speaker 2: the band played their instruments and wrote songs, though they
Speaker 2: would kind of grow into different roles. But because of
Speaker 2: that like growth and coming more into musicianship over time,
Speaker 2: I guess you might say that they could in some
Speaker 2: sense be considered a quote real band, whatever that means.
Speaker 2: But at least at the beginning, Yeah, they did not
Speaker 2: all write songs or play instruments the way I understand it,
Speaker 2: and Seeth you can correct me if I'm wrong. I
Speaker 2: think Mike Nesmith and Peter Tork played instruments, and Nesmith
Speaker 2: alone had written songs, but the others were kind of
Speaker 2: new to music in this way.
Speaker 3: Kind Of one way that Mickey Dolans would often kind
Speaker 3: of make an analogy for the situation was that they
Speaker 3: hired Leonard Nimoy to play a vulcan, and eventually they
Speaker 3: had to actually become a vulcan. That was their job.
Speaker 3: And so let's see here, Davy Jones was a Broadway
Speaker 3: guy like he was. He got really popular because he
Speaker 3: was the artful dodger in Oliver that was like his
Speaker 3: like claimed defect fits. Yeah, exactly, your salesman. Yeah, very
Speaker 3: very like soft shoe. That's his thing, and that's kind
Speaker 3: of the role that he kind of kept throughout the movie.
Speaker 3: In fact, Zappa Frank Zappa makes a great cameo later
Speaker 3: and makes reference to that in the film, which we'll
Speaker 3: we'll get there. But so, yeah, that was his background.
Speaker 3: He could he could do like Broadway type singing, but
Speaker 3: he wasn't really a musician. And when you see him
Speaker 3: on the Monkeys, he's usually playing like the tambourine or
Speaker 3: the moroccas or something like that. But he's sort of
Speaker 3: the lead singer exactly, although technically, if you go by
Speaker 3: the numbers, Mickey Dolan's sang more than anyone. But but anyway, anyway, anyway,
Speaker 3: so then we had Mike Nesmith, who was the full
Speaker 3: blown real musician. He was making a living as a musician,
Speaker 3: that was his job. And then Peter Tork definitely hung
Speaker 3: out with hippies. In fact, the only reason he came
Speaker 3: to the Monkeys was that his friend Stephen Stills had
Speaker 3: auditioned been rejected, and then Stephen Stills said to Peter Tork, hey, man,
Speaker 3: I think you're actually what they're looking for you should
Speaker 3: go you should go check this out. And that's how
Speaker 3: that happened.
Speaker 2: I heard that. Yeah, the way I heard it put
Speaker 2: was that he was like a younger, cuter version of
Speaker 2: Stephen Still.
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly. He's like, they weren't into this, but you might,
Speaker 3: you might get it. Go ahead, Yeah, And then yes,
Speaker 3: mick Key Dolan's was a child actor. So he was
Speaker 3: the star of a television show called Circus Boy, I believe,
Speaker 3: and so he was already like deep inside like the
Speaker 3: Hollywood scene, and he had some experience I believe playing guitar,
Speaker 3: but nothing else. And then as a default, when the
Speaker 3: band kind of got together, they were like, someone has
Speaker 3: to sit behind the drums. Mickey, that's you. And he's like,
Speaker 3: I don't know how to play the drums. He's like, well,
Speaker 3: you don't know how to play anything, You'll figure it out.
Speaker 3: So Mickey by default had to learn how to be
Speaker 3: the drummer. Okay, yeah, so yeah, yeah, they all had
Speaker 3: some experience, but Nesmuth was the only real musician there.
Speaker 3: But so they were.
Speaker 2: The Monkeys were created by Rafelson and Schneider to pitch
Speaker 2: as a show for NBC that would be like a
Speaker 2: sitcom about a struggling folk rock band in California. But
Speaker 2: it was, from what I understand, very much based on
Speaker 2: Beatlemania and the success of the Beatles, maybe the Beatles
Speaker 2: movies at that point.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, let's go. Let's go a little bit into
Speaker 3: the history here. And in fact, when he first pitched
Speaker 3: this series, Rafelson, he pitched with the band The Love
Speaker 3: and Spoonful. He said, this will be the band that
Speaker 3: we will focus on, and that fell apart for who
Speaker 3: knows how many reasons, and rumor has it? Who knows,
Speaker 3: you know, I mean, what's the saying there are many
Speaker 3: fathers to a creative idea or something like that, you know,
Speaker 3: whatever that phrase.
Speaker 2: Is, success has a million fathers or something.
Speaker 3: Something like that. Who knows the absolute truth behind all
Speaker 3: of this. But Rafelson said that he did have the
Speaker 3: idea for the Monkeys actually long before Beatlemania, but then
Speaker 3: he had the clout to start pitching at it around
Speaker 3: after the Beatles nineteen sixty four film A Hard Day's
Speaker 3: Night hit the theaters and was a big success. It's
Speaker 3: a very simple film. It basically just shows the Beatles
Speaker 3: preparing for a concert and then they have some wacky
Speaker 3: adventures along the way to their oncerts, with many little
Speaker 3: musical interludes peppered throughout, but probably because it happened in
Speaker 3: the height of Beatlemania, and also because it actually is
Speaker 3: a genuinely good movie. Have you ever seen Hard Day's
Speaker 3: Night before, Joe?
Speaker 2: No. Strangely enough, the only one of the Beatles films
Speaker 2: I've seen is Yellow Submarine, so I haven't seen. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I have not seen Hard Day's Night, or I think
Speaker 2: the other one from just a year later, which was.
Speaker 3: Help, Help, is also quite good. And then also there's
Speaker 3: one more which was more or less a concert film,
Speaker 3: which was the Magical Mystery Tour. That one also exists.
Speaker 3: But Harday's Night is actually quite good. If anyone the
Speaker 3: audience hasn't seen it, I recommend it's actually a Criterion pick,
Speaker 3: I believe. And so that was a big commercial and
Speaker 3: critical success, and so based on that success, Bob Rafelson,
Speaker 3: are you pronouncing it? Rayfulson? Is that? Is that what
Speaker 3: we're going with?
Speaker 2: I like that, That's what I'm saying. Yeah, that's what
Speaker 2: That's what I heard Jack Nicholson say in an interview.
Speaker 2: So I assume he's right because they were friends.
Speaker 3: Exactly let's go with Rafelson. So Bob Rafelson then, based
Speaker 3: on this success, was able to go around to the
Speaker 3: studios and be like, hey, you saw that success, we
Speaker 3: want to do that for TV. Let's do that. So
Speaker 3: Bob Rafelson and as you mentioned earlier, Bert Schneider, they
Speaker 3: were able to sell this concept to television, and the
Speaker 3: concept was four charming musicians lived together and they have
Speaker 3: wacky adventures just like just like a hard day's night.
Speaker 3: And so this come is going to be called The Monkeys,
Speaker 3: and basically it would a premiere September twelfth, nineteen sixty six.
Speaker 3: They had a open cast and call, and they basically
Speaker 3: had auditions with hundreds and hundreds of musicians which they
Speaker 3: filmed actually, and they actually include some of that footage
Speaker 3: in the TV show The Monkeys, which is actually very
Speaker 3: charming and very entertaining. And they wound up hiring the
Speaker 3: four that we've mentioned, Mickey Dolan's, Peter Tork, Michael Nosmith,
Speaker 3: Davey Jones. Now, all four actors had some experience, like
Speaker 3: we mentioned, but the only one amongst them that was like, no,
Speaker 3: I'm a musician and I care about music was Mike Nesmyth.
Speaker 3: These four, they were hired to be actors pretending to
Speaker 3: be musicians. They were not hired to be musicians. All
Speaker 3: the music from the show was going to be written
Speaker 3: and recorded by quote unquote real musicians behind the scenes,
Speaker 3: and these four actors were going to provide the singing voices,
Speaker 3: and that's it. They were not. The creators had no
Speaker 3: interest in this. I can go to much deeper detail
Speaker 3: about the fights they had with like the original music
Speaker 3: producers and all this other stuff, but another time, another time.
Speaker 3: But basically, the first two albums that they recorded that
Speaker 3: would have been nineteen sixty six Is the Monkeys and
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty seven's More of the Monkeys. These functioned as
Speaker 3: like the soundtrack for season one of the TV show,
Speaker 3: And eventually it just kind of came out that this
Speaker 3: was all phony, this scripted TV show wasn't real. This
Speaker 3: was how dark there so the audience they felt deceived.
Speaker 3: They felt that like they had been sold a bill
Speaker 3: of goods that was not genuine, and so then they
Speaker 3: had to kind of like there was a backlash against
Speaker 3: them now in defense of the Monkeys themselves. Nesmuth actually
Speaker 3: complained about this pretty early on. For example, on the
Speaker 3: first record the Monkeys. If you look at it, it
Speaker 3: looks like just a genuine record from a band. There's
Speaker 3: no like liner notes showing which musicians played on it
Speaker 3: and who wrote and blah blah blah blah blah. It
Speaker 3: looks like the Monkeys made this record. And he complained
Speaker 3: about that. He said, you're fooling these people. He's like,
Speaker 3: you're making them think that we're a real band by design,
Speaker 3: and that's not going to work out in the long term.
Speaker 2: I can see that, Okay. So I would have thought
Speaker 2: it would be silly to be mad at this TV
Speaker 2: band for not being what is portrayed as because it's
Speaker 2: obviously a fictional show and all that. But I guess
Speaker 2: I would feel differently if yeah, I can unders saying like,
Speaker 2: if you put out a record in the liner notes,
Speaker 2: don't give credit to the people who actually played on
Speaker 2: the songs and all that, that would feel more like
Speaker 2: a true deception exactly.
Speaker 3: And so that's what happened on the first two albums,
Speaker 3: and the Monkeys basically put their foot down. This is
Speaker 3: in between seasons one and two, and they were like,
Speaker 3: we want more creative control, especially over the music, but
Speaker 3: in general, you know, if we are the Monkeys and
Speaker 3: this is a hit, and it was a hit. Then
Speaker 3: we want, you know, to feel like we are getting
Speaker 3: our voice put through here and not feel like frauds,
Speaker 3: not feel like hacks, you know. So that's what happened,
Speaker 3: and they were able to start making their own music
Speaker 3: and really focus on everything themselves, and that started with
Speaker 3: their third album, Headquarters. And you know, based on whatever,
Speaker 3: a different situation you want to say, after that season
Speaker 3: where they took control, the series was canceled. So I
Speaker 3: don't think we can fully blame that on the Monkeys,
Speaker 3: but hey, that is something that definitely happened. And then
Speaker 3: the next step after their TV show was canceled, Hey
Speaker 3: let's make a feature length film. And that's the movie
Speaker 3: that we're talking about today. And so after the commercial
Speaker 3: and critical failure of head the movie we're talking about today,
Speaker 3: the Monkeys then started a long series of breaking up
Speaker 3: and getting back together and having a reunion and hey,
Speaker 3: this time the Monkeys are just two people, and hey,
Speaker 3: this time the Monkeys are three people. And basically every
Speaker 3: combination you could imagine of those four either being together
Speaker 3: or a part it happened at one point or another.
Speaker 3: And in fact, there was this great joke made at
Speaker 3: some point. This would have been in the early seventies,
Speaker 3: where so Peter Tork was the first Monkey to quit.
Speaker 3: This was after the movie came out. Then Nesmuth quit
Speaker 3: soon after that, and so each Monkey's album for a
Speaker 3: while there just had one fewer member. There was one
Speaker 3: with just three, then there was one with two. And
Speaker 3: then when a reviewer reviewed the album that just had
Speaker 3: Mickey Dolan's and Davy Jones on and he's like, I'm
Speaker 3: pretty sure the next album is just to be called
Speaker 3: the Monkey and I was like, that's pretty good, that's
Speaker 3: pretty funny. So so this happened on again, off again
Speaker 3: for years and years. They had different like moments of
Speaker 3: nostalgic popularity again. They even got back together to record
Speaker 3: new albums at different points throughout their career. Some of
Speaker 3: those are actually quite good, some of them not so much.
Speaker 3: And this all kind of ended for sure for sure
Speaker 3: in their final farewell tour that was just Nesmuth and
Speaker 3: Dolan's and that tour ended in twenty twenty one, and
Speaker 3: then the third of the Monkeys, Mike Nesmyth, he died.
Speaker 3: So I believe Davy Jones was first. Peter Tork was second,
Speaker 3: Mike Nesmyth was third, and Dolan's is our last living
Speaker 3: monkey at this current date on twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now, I did want to come back and emphasize
Speaker 2: though there's one. Even though we're talking about how the
Speaker 2: you know, the there was this frustration with the fact
Speaker 2: that the creative direction of the music was mostly given
Speaker 2: from the studio, originally from the television studio, and not
Speaker 2: from the Monkeys themselves. I don't think we should undersell
Speaker 2: the importance of the Monkeys, like the individual guys in
Speaker 2: the band, as as as like what made the show popular,
Speaker 2: because Rayfelson talks about how when they first put together
Speaker 2: the pilot episode, they had only the scripted elements in it,
Speaker 2: and the executives and test audiences whoever, everybody who looked
Speaker 2: at it hated it. They were like terrible, awful. And
Speaker 2: then he made a change. And the only change he
Speaker 2: made was he inserted what you were talking about, some
Speaker 2: of the interviews that were totally unscripted, just conversations, interviews
Speaker 2: with the guys in the band when they were like
Speaker 2: auditioning for the roles, and that completely changed the reaction.
Speaker 2: Everybody loved it, and so it was like the original
Speaker 2: personal charm of these four actors slash musicians, which was
Speaker 2: what made the show initially as successful as it.
Speaker 3: Was for sure. And yeah, I mean, if you ever
Speaker 3: get a chance, I'm sure you could find them on
Speaker 3: YouTube or just watch the TV show The Monkeys. I
Speaker 3: think it's quite good. But yeah, like very funny Beatles
Speaker 3: esque quips, like I remember in a Davy Jones's audition,
Speaker 3: He's in there and the interviewer is just like, oh, so, like, well,
Speaker 3: what kind of a sound do you make? And he's like,
Speaker 3: what do you mean? I don't get that. He's like, no,
Speaker 3: what kind of sound? Like a like a rock sound
Speaker 3: or a folk sound. It's like, I make a terrible sound.
Speaker 3: It's funny, very nice.
Speaker 2: Okay. So another thing that will be important going into
Speaker 2: talking about the movie is that I think I think
Speaker 2: you could say that each monkey in the band has
Speaker 2: a has a bit. They've each got sort of an
Speaker 2: archetype they fit and seth. You can tell me if
Speaker 2: I'm wrong about these, but this is the way I
Speaker 2: understood it. I don't know the Monkeys as well as you,
Speaker 2: but the way I read it is that Davy Jones
Speaker 2: is the singer and he's the cute one. Mike Nesmith
Speaker 2: is on guitar and he's like the serious one or
Speaker 2: the brooding artist. Peter Tork is on bass and he
Speaker 2: is the simple one, sort of the California stoner, the
Speaker 2: surfer type. And then Mickey Dolan's is on drums and he's.
Speaker 3: The cut up, the goofball. I think that's pretty accurate
Speaker 3: for sure. I would quibble on very small things, like
Speaker 3: I would say Peter Tork instead of being simple, he
Speaker 3: was more naive, like he was the one that was
Speaker 3: gonna believe you. He was the hippie. But I think
Speaker 3: what you said was close enough. And then I would
Speaker 3: like I mentioned before too, Mickey Dolan's, by the numbers,
Speaker 3: is perhaps the actual lead singer of the Monkeys, just
Speaker 3: because he sang on the most tracks. Many people consider
Speaker 3: Mickey's voice to be the actual voice of the Monkeys,
Speaker 3: but part of that might be just too that he
Speaker 3: stuck with at the longest. He is the last surviving monkey,
Speaker 3: so his voice is the voice of the Monkeys.
Speaker 2: Now, I guess I'm thinking more about the way I've
Speaker 2: seen them arranged on stage when forming that they have
Speaker 2: they would have Davy Jones out front, and.
Speaker 3: I've seen that talked about before too, where like I said,
Speaker 3: none of them were drummers. One of them just had
Speaker 3: to become the drummer. And they at first were thinking
Speaker 3: about Davy and they're like, he's too short, we won't
Speaker 3: see him. We need a bigger monkey back there. And
Speaker 3: that's why Mickey became the drummer. And here's the interesting
Speaker 3: thing too. Here's an interesting thing too, is that, like
Speaker 3: I said, obviously they were trying to duplicate the Beatles
Speaker 3: and the Beatles' success. So if you look at it,
Speaker 3: the manufactured personality types are actually kind of one to
Speaker 3: one to the Beatles. Davy Jones, the cute one was
Speaker 3: Paul McCartney, The cute one Mike Nesmith. The serious artist
Speaker 3: was John Lennon. The serious artist Peter Torque, the quiet
Speaker 3: one was George Harrison, the quiet one. And then Mickey
Speaker 3: Dolan's kind of the goof was Ringo Star kind of
Speaker 3: the goof. I don't think it quite matches up because
Speaker 3: they're real personalities of the monkeys actually kind of like
Speaker 3: further develop, but it is interesting how close they are
Speaker 3: one to one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Mickey Dolans's goofiness is different than Ringo's goofy noess,
Speaker 2: Like Mickey is not an octopus's garden kind of goof
Speaker 2: He's a he's he's a different He's got a sharper
Speaker 2: kind of goofiness.
Speaker 3: He's a ham for sure. He definitely like he's putting
Speaker 3: on a he's putting on a show. He he he
Speaker 3: mugs to the camera. He's he's he's a he's a
Speaker 3: Hollywood actor, That's what he is.
Speaker 2: But actually the like it, I mean, he's good in there.
Speaker 2: In some of his comedic scenes in Head, he's legitimately hilarious,
Speaker 2: like the scene where he's fighting the coke machine is
Speaker 2: I was laughing out loud, definitely. But briefly, to come
Speaker 2: back to dray Felson for just a moment, I wanted
Speaker 2: to mention a quote of his I found where he
Speaker 2: said he said, quote, of course, Head is an utterly
Speaker 2: and totally fragmented film. Among other reasons for making it
Speaker 2: was that I thought I would never get to make
Speaker 2: an other movie, so I might as well make fifty
Speaker 2: to start out with and put them all in the
Speaker 2: same feature. And when I read that, I was like,
Speaker 2: that's exactly that's what this movie feels like. So he
Speaker 2: did go on to become a big deal in Hollywood
Speaker 2: in the seventies. He made a lot of other successful films,
Speaker 2: but at this point that hadn't happened yet. He didn't
Speaker 2: know that was going to happen. So it's like he
Speaker 2: just tried to put everything he had on screen in
Speaker 2: one go, and it's surprising how well it works.
Speaker 3: It's almost like he was constructing his own like directors
Speaker 3: reel that he could show off later.
Speaker 2: Look, I did a more film, Look at my range.
Speaker 3: I did a deserts I did a party, I did
Speaker 3: a concert, I did all these things. I've actually heard
Speaker 3: something similar from Jordan Peel, where when he started directing
Speaker 3: stuff for Key and Peel, he went all out and
Speaker 3: really dedicated himself to these big set pieces with lots
Speaker 3: of production value, because in the future he knew that
Speaker 3: if you wanted to say I'm a film director now,
Speaker 3: he would be able to go back and show them
Speaker 3: these examples of Oh, look at these zombies. I did zombies. Hey,
Speaker 3: look at this. You know I did sports.
Speaker 2: That would why the makeup effects on Key and Peel
Speaker 2: were so good. Yeah, exactly, he was.
Speaker 3: He was constructing a future directors reel much like Rafelson.
Speaker 2: Okay, next person I want to talk about here with
Speaker 2: head is the other writer of the film, Jack Nicholson
Speaker 2: born nineteen thirty seven. Have we talked about Jack Nicholson
Speaker 2: on the show before? A little known actor mostly famous
Speaker 2: for playing the possibly playing the giant crab in Roger
Speaker 2: Corman's Attack of the Crab Monsters. Speaking of this movie
Speaker 2: in an interview many years later, Nicholson said, at this
Speaker 2: point in his career he was actually thinking that he
Speaker 2: probably wanted to be a writer director instead of an actor.
Speaker 2: And at this point his acting career was mostly like
Speaker 2: B movies. I mean, he'd actually done stuff with the
Speaker 2: Roger Corman crew. You know, he'd been in Little Chop
Speaker 2: of Horrors, I guess, and you know Corman type stuff.
Speaker 2: He was in what was it called The Terror? Have
Speaker 2: you ever seen that? It's a Corman movie from sixty three,
Speaker 2: starring Boris Karloff and Jack Nicholson. So like actors I love,
Speaker 2: you'd think it'd be riveting, But I think I've tried
Speaker 2: to watch it and like literally never made it more
Speaker 2: than ten minutes. I think it's a snooze fest from
Speaker 2: what I can recall, but I don't know. Maybe if
Speaker 2: I went back and revisited, I would think differently. It's
Speaker 2: been a long time, but yeah, so he mostly had
Speaker 2: like B movies under his belt at this point.
Speaker 3: That's amazing. Can I tell you a couple of fun
Speaker 3: things about Jack Nicholson directly tied into this movie?
Speaker 2: Yes? Please?
Speaker 3: Here are a couple of fun facts about Jack Nicholson,
Speaker 3: specifically when he was working on this film. One is
Speaker 3: that if you listen to the soundtrack album of this movie,
Speaker 3: it's actually highly respected. It's one of the Monkeys' most
Speaker 3: beloved albums only from the fans, but also from the
Speaker 3: Monkeys themselves. They think it's one of the best. Jack
Speaker 3: Nicholson completely compiled and arranged that soundtrack because it's got
Speaker 3: all kinds of little like clips and soundbits from the
Speaker 3: movie itself and blah blah blah. It's really a beautiful
Speaker 3: noise collage of an album. It's fantastic. And the reason
Speaker 3: that happened was that one day Jack Nicholson saw Mike
Speaker 3: Nesmuth working on It's like in the studio and he
Speaker 3: was like, oh, I'd love to help out with that
Speaker 3: if he need If he needs some you know, need
Speaker 3: to need an extra hand, and Nesmuth was like, I
Speaker 3: just want to go home. You do it. So Jack
Speaker 3: stepped in and just did it himself. And then because
Speaker 3: this was, you know, at the time just probably the
Speaker 3: biggest thing that Jack Nicholson ever had ever been associated with.
Speaker 3: The Monkeys were all stars. This is amazing. He got
Speaker 3: to write a monkey's movie. This is his big break.
Speaker 3: You know. He took a very active hand in the
Speaker 3: promotion of this film, doing all kinds of like you know,
Speaker 3: like street team like stickering campaigns and stuff like that,
Speaker 3: going to like all the different premieres, and he eventually said, quote,
Speaker 3: I saw it like one hundred and fifty eight million times. Man,
Speaker 3: I loved it.
Speaker 2: I don't know if this is true, but I read
Speaker 2: a supposed fact that Jack Nicholson was at one point
Speaker 2: arrested for putting a sticker to promote the film on
Speaker 2: a cops helmet in New York.
Speaker 3: That matches with everything I've heard, so I think we
Speaker 3: can call that in fact.
Speaker 2: But yeah, so he was. So this is interesting that
Speaker 2: he eventually got so deep into this movie and was
Speaker 2: so dedicated to promoting it, because that sort of clashes
Speaker 2: with his initial reaction to the pitch. So this was
Speaker 2: when he wanted to be a writer director instead of
Speaker 2: an actor. This would be you know, the mid late sixties.
Speaker 2: And the way he was explaining it in this interview
Speaker 2: is he went to pitch himself as a writer to
Speaker 2: Bob Rafelson, who he knew, and he was, you know,
Speaker 2: trying to sell himself on that. He's like, yeah, put
Speaker 2: me to work. Bobby said, Bob, I can write a
Speaker 2: movie about anything, anything, And Rafelson said, okay, can you
Speaker 2: write me a movie for the monkeys? And Nicholson replied
Speaker 2: with evident disgust the monkeys. You gotta be kidding me.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: And I think this this indicates the interesting place this
Speaker 2: movie came from. You were talking about this this earlier
Speaker 2: assessed with the Monkey's backlash after the first couple of
Speaker 2: seasons of the show, where they came to be perceived
Speaker 2: as like brutally uncool by the by the the hip
Speaker 2: out there taste makers, you know, sort of the acid
Speaker 2: ronan like like Jack Nicholson and probably even Rafelson himself
Speaker 2: like that. They were looking on this as oh, this
Speaker 2: is very uncool now. And I think you could say
Speaker 2: this is also indicative of a kind of there's a
Speaker 2: thing like this that pops up, not just with respect
Speaker 2: to the artists themselves, but I've often noticed like there's
Speaker 2: like there's like a revulsion a lot of like dudes
Speaker 2: have to to acts that are very popular vicially with
Speaker 2: teenage girls. You know that there's like a kind of
Speaker 2: sexist backlash to that too, And I bet that was
Speaker 2: part of it as well.
Speaker 3: What makes comparison to like the late nineties early two
Speaker 3: thousands of boy bands assembled in the same way, there's
Speaker 3: some you know, corporate overlord behind the scenes who puts
Speaker 3: a cast and call out and just assembles the cute
Speaker 3: ones and gives them each like a personality type, and
Speaker 3: then they're presented to the public with music that they
Speaker 3: didn't write and didn't perform. It was one hundred percent
Speaker 3: like the original templates that became the boy band template
Speaker 3: in the future, and that wasn't well respected when it
Speaker 3: first happened. I think over time, you know, very similarly.
Speaker 3: I'm sure boy bands, you know, take more control over
Speaker 3: their creative output and et cetera, et cetera, and all
Speaker 3: that stuff. But I can see why someone like Jack
Speaker 3: Nicholson would be like you want me to make an
Speaker 3: in Sync movie. No, I'm not interested.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know what the equivalent in the nineties
Speaker 2: would be, like, who is the Jack Nicholson of the
Speaker 2: time being asked to make an n Sync movie?
Speaker 3: Well, you know what, here's here's an example. This would
Speaker 3: have been much later, though, But do you remember when
Speaker 3: it was first announced that the next David Fincher movie
Speaker 3: was going to be the Facebook movie? And everyone thought, what, what? Why? Why? Why?
Speaker 3: Of all the things David Fincher can do. He's the
Speaker 3: seven guy, He's the game, you know, he's a What's
Speaker 3: what's a great one? The fight Club? He's the fight
Speaker 3: club guy? Why is he making a movie about Facebook?
Speaker 3: And then the social network came out? And it's a
Speaker 3: great movie because great, great artists can make great art
Speaker 3: out of anything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and people didn't realize how dark the take would
Speaker 2: be in the mid right, yes, but oh yeah. Anyway,
Speaker 2: So coming back to like, so Nicholson's initial reaction is like,
Speaker 2: you want me to make a movie for the monkeys?
Speaker 2: I can't, You can't be serious. But then Rayfelson replies, like,
Speaker 2: wait a minute, you just said you could write about
Speaker 2: anything where you know, were you lying to me. So
Speaker 2: Nicholson says, okay, I'll do it. And so the next
Speaker 2: day Nicholson has to go in and pitch his Monkey
Speaker 2: script to Rafaelson's partner, Bert Schneider, and Nicholson goes in
Speaker 2: meets him. He tells him, Okay, I've got two movie
Speaker 2: ideas for you, Bert. One of them I can guarantee
Speaker 2: with one hundred percent certainty will be as big a
Speaker 2: hit as A hard Day's Night, and the other one
Speaker 2: I can guarantee you with equal certainty won't make a dime.
Speaker 2: And then, without hearing another word, Schneider says, I want
Speaker 2: the second one. Well, and you know, well, here we
Speaker 2: are with.
Speaker 3: This is actually gonna be something that is full blown
Speaker 3: rumor mill. But some people believe this, including some of
Speaker 3: the monkeys. There's a rumor that Jack Nicholson and then
Speaker 3: Bert and Jack wait, wait, hold on, there's too many Jacks, right,
Speaker 3: What's what's raf Bob Bob Bob Rafelson, Jack Nicholson and
Speaker 3: Bert Schneider that the three of them intentionally tanked this
Speaker 3: movie because they wanted to be done with the Monkeys,
Speaker 3: in particular, that Bob Rafelson wanted to move on from
Speaker 3: this into bigger and better things, and the only way
Speaker 3: he was going to get that was if the monkeys
Speaker 3: failed and went away. Now I think this is perhaps
Speaker 3: complete fabrication, but many people believe it so much, to
Speaker 3: the point that if you watch there's a biopic about
Speaker 3: the monkeys. I believe it's called Daydream Believer, but it's
Speaker 3: one of those made for TV, very low budget things.
Speaker 3: There is a scene where they are filming the Dandriff scene,
Speaker 3: which we will get to later of the film head
Speaker 3: in the artificial made for TV biopic of the Monkeys.
Speaker 3: I know this is getting like inception layers, but in
Speaker 3: that scene, someone walks onto the set and it's like,
Speaker 3: what are you doing? This is garbage. No one's gonna
Speaker 3: like this. And you see Jack Nicholson, the actor playing
Speaker 3: Jack Nicholson, and the actor playing Bob Rafelson look at
Speaker 3: each other and give each other a knowing look. Then
Speaker 3: they continue filming. I don't think there's any confirmed truth
Speaker 3: behind this, but that is something that many people believed,
Speaker 3: including some of the monkeys.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's interesting. I could see that being possible.
Speaker 2: I will say that while I would regard that with skepticism,
Speaker 2: I also regard with skepticism. A lot of the first
Speaker 2: hand accounts of people like Rafaelson and Jack Nicholson about
Speaker 2: their time working on these projects because like, I don't know,
Speaker 2: some of them are kind of like contain self contradictory details,
Speaker 2: like and also it's just like you know, it's Hollywood storytelling.
Speaker 2: There's it's just notorious for people kind of like telling
Speaker 2: tall tales about how projects came to be, maybe not
Speaker 2: even remembering totally and just making it into a good story.
Speaker 2: So who knows really, And as.
Speaker 3: You mentioned, there were definitely drugs involved.
Speaker 2: They were, Yeah, that's established. Rafelson said in an interview
Speaker 2: that a lot of this movie was written under the
Speaker 2: influence of psychedelics in Harry Dean Stanton's basement amazing, So
Speaker 2: that's Harry Dean Stanton's basement is its own sort of
Speaker 2: in theagen. I guess this was.
Speaker 3: Also depicted in the biopic, and it's them sitting around
Speaker 3: in a haze of pot smoke with a tape recorder
Speaker 3: just saying all of the wildest ideas that can possibly think.
Speaker 3: And it's a fascinating biopick if anyone wants to learn
Speaker 3: more about the monkeys.
Speaker 2: Now, when it comes to the cast of this movie.
Speaker 2: Most of the cast, apart from the monkeys, I think
Speaker 2: could best be classified as cameos. They are not really
Speaker 2: very substantial roles in the film, but more like people
Speaker 2: who pop in and out for strange little scenes or
Speaker 2: recurring gags.
Speaker 3: Oh and audience, don't feel bad if you don't notice
Speaker 3: these cameos when you watch this film, because I've seen
Speaker 3: this movie many many times and I recognize like none
Speaker 3: of them, even from actors and personalities I know, like
Speaker 3: Terry Garr and a net Funicello. I cannot tell you
Speaker 3: where Terry gar is in this movie, and I cannot
Speaker 3: tell you where a net Foodedicello is in this movie.
Speaker 3: I can blame part of that in my face blindness,
Speaker 3: but I think the other part too, is that these
Speaker 3: are just blips. These are just passing things in the nights.
Speaker 3: Most of these cameos have very little substance to them.
Speaker 2: And Rafelson has said in interviews that when finding when
Speaker 2: finding people to do all of these cameos, he claims
Speaker 2: he was specifically looking for people who were recognizable to
Speaker 2: the public but who had in some way been like
Speaker 2: used up, mistreated, rejected, or sort of grown passed so
Speaker 2: he wanted this like large cameo chorus of has beens, weirdos,
Speaker 2: outcasts and who's thats And I don't know if that's
Speaker 2: exactly what he successfully summoned here, but if that's indeed
Speaker 2: what he was going for, I can kind of see it.
Speaker 2: The movie is frantic, and the lines that characters deliver
Speaker 2: are not characteristic of the characters as they appear, if
Speaker 2: that makes any sense. So it's almost like it's almost
Speaker 2: like people like cameo people show up to do a cameo,
Speaker 2: but the lines they say could have been randomly reassigned
Speaker 2: to any of the other people, you know what I.
Speaker 3: Mean, Yes, for sure. And the lines don't feel like
Speaker 3: they're developing anything. Many of them are just non sequitur poetry.
Speaker 3: In many ways, a lot of them don't actually mean
Speaker 3: anything other than conveying a feeling or like maybe perhaps
Speaker 3: just kind of setting the mood for the scene that
Speaker 3: is to follow.
Speaker 2: So there is no way I can mention all the
Speaker 2: cameos in this movie, but I'm gonna just mention some
Speaker 2: of the top ones who get some of the some
Speaker 2: of the most screen time. So you already mentioned Seth
Speaker 2: that there is Annette Funicello who live nineteen forty two
Speaker 2: to twenty thirteen. She was an American actress who started
Speaker 2: out as a child performer on The Mickey Mouse Club.
Speaker 2: She was a mousekutier, and she would later become a
Speaker 2: pop singer. In the sixties, she had success with movies
Speaker 2: in the beach party subgenre. And I just love how
Speaker 2: a popular genre of movies.
Speaker 3: Used to be the beach Yes.
Speaker 2: Sort of a Ken genre, you know, and it makes
Speaker 2: me think, like, so the other you know her? Her
Speaker 2: partner in these movies was often Frankie Avalon. So was
Speaker 2: he sort of the original Ken?
Speaker 3: Absolutely? One hundred percent. Absolutely.
Speaker 2: We also get Terry Garr who you mentioned born nineteen
Speaker 2: forty four, American actress and comedian. Acted in lots of
Speaker 2: TV and movies. She's famously very funny. She was a
Speaker 2: dancer too. I think before she was an actress and comedian,
Speaker 2: she was in movies as different as Francis Ford Coppola
Speaker 2: as The Conversation and Young Frankenstein the Milbrooks movie.
Speaker 3: Two questions for you, just real quick, I started to interrupt. One.
Speaker 3: So was Terry Garr a known entity when she filmed this?
Speaker 3: I guess we can't answer it. To me, I don't
Speaker 3: you know we weren't alive at the time, because like
Speaker 3: to me and I only have you know, hindsight to
Speaker 3: look at this. To me, I picture like the birth
Speaker 3: of Terry garr As being young Frankenstein. But that's just
Speaker 3: because that's what I know her best from. So my
Speaker 3: perception is definitely skewed. I wonder if someone in nineteen
Speaker 3: sixty eight knew who she was and actually real quick
Speaker 3: a net Funacello, where is she in this movie? I've
Speaker 3: never once been able to, like pinpoint review in.
Speaker 2: The I think she's in the scene where Davy Jones
Speaker 2: wants to be a boxer, like he could have been
Speaker 2: a contender. He's boxing with Actually, so he's boxing with
Speaker 2: Sonny Liston. Okay, another cameo in the movie. So Sonny Liston,
Speaker 2: who lived nineteen thirty to nineteen seventy American pro boxer.
Speaker 2: He became a world heavyweight champion in nineteen sixty two
Speaker 2: after knocking out Floyd Patterson, and then in nineteen sixty four,
Speaker 2: Sunny Liston was feeded by Muhammad Ali, who is then
Speaker 2: known as Cassius Clay. So by the time this movie
Speaker 2: was made, Liston had already lost his world heavyweight title,
Speaker 2: and here he's in the scene where he's boxing Davy Jones,
Speaker 2: and I think Annette Funicello is like Davy Jones' wife
Speaker 2: who's sitting in the audience watching him. And then I
Speaker 2: think he's supposed to take a dive. And then they
Speaker 2: have this emotional scene where she's shown crying asking him.
Speaker 2: I don't even remember what she's asking him to do,
Speaker 2: and you see like a hand reach in from from
Speaker 2: off screen to like wipe her tears away. It's not
Speaker 2: her hand.
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm learning. This is great.
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure that's her. But so yeah, that's Sunny Liston.
Speaker 2: That's another one of them. Timothy Carey is in this.
Speaker 2: He's sort of he's recognizable. He lived twenty nine through
Speaker 2: ninety four. He was an American actor known for playing
Speaker 2: like weird, crazy characters. He was in several Stanley Kubrick movies.
Speaker 2: He was in The Killing Who's in Paths of Glory,
Speaker 2: and he was also in films as varied as the
Speaker 2: Marlon Brando western One Eyed Jackson nineteen sixty one and
Speaker 2: the nineteen sixty five beach party movie Beach Blanket Bingo
Speaker 2: starring guess who, Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello. And then finally,
Speaker 2: sort of, if this film has a villain, the villain
Speaker 2: might be us the audience, but also the film's villain
Speaker 2: might be Victor Mature who lived nineteen thirteen to nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety nine. He kind of plays Satan like this, Okay,
Speaker 2: So Victor Mature, the actor was an American actor. He
Speaker 2: was known as like a suave leading man in movies
Speaker 2: in the forties and fifties. He was like in the
Speaker 2: Cecil b de mil biblical epics Samson and Delilah. And
Speaker 2: in this movie he plays a cosmic trickster who sometimes
Speaker 2: appears out of the sky, and he seems to want
Speaker 2: to entrap the monkeys in a world of illusions that
Speaker 2: will cause them to forget their true nature. So he's
Speaker 2: sort of like like an old Hollywood gnostic demi urge.
Speaker 3: I saw this movie at a young age originally, so
Speaker 3: I always considered him to be the jolly green giant
Speaker 3: of this film. Doesn't quite make sense, but that's still
Speaker 3: a part of his character in my head whenever I
Speaker 3: see it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there are tons of other cameos who I
Speaker 2: guess we should go ahead and say Frank Zappa's in
Speaker 2: this for like half a second. He pops in to
Speaker 2: say a line and then a cow talks after him
Speaker 2: and his I would say Frank Zappa's vibe in this
Speaker 2: movie is halfway between Alan Watts and Bertram Gilfoyle.
Speaker 3: And it's fun too because Frank Zappa was definitely a
Speaker 3: friend of the monkeys, and he makes an appearance in
Speaker 3: the TV show as well, and the scene that he
Speaker 3: played in the TV show, Frank Zappa plays Mike Nesmith
Speaker 3: and Mike Nesmith plays Frank Zappa, and I've seen their clip.
Speaker 3: It's very entertaining.
Speaker 2: I've seen this clip. I think they're like they they
Speaker 2: interview each other as each other, and doesn't Mike Nesmith
Speaker 2: like try to grill Frank and Zappa as Mike Nesmith
Speaker 2: on like why their music is so hollow and commercial?
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, it's great, it's great, and yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 3: believe Frank's main thing here. So uh, it's right after
Speaker 3: Davey has just performed like a soft shoe song and dance,
Speaker 3: he comes out and Frank Zappa goes, man, that's really white,
Speaker 3: and then Davy Jones goes, yes, so am I very strange,
Speaker 3: very strange.
Speaker 2: And then a cow talks. What does the cow say.
Speaker 3: Oh I cuckoo chew or something, you know, gabba gabba hay,
Speaker 3: something nonsensical. A lot of my favorite quotes in this
Speaker 3: movie are complete nonsense.
Speaker 2: Okay, So here's the part where we would normally do
Speaker 2: a full plot breakdown. This movie doesn't really have a plot,
Speaker 2: so we can't do that, but we will instead try
Speaker 2: to describe some things that happen. And in the movie. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it opens with a scene that's like a ribbon cutting
Speaker 2: ceremony where there are all these police gathered around marines
Speaker 2: and silver helmets, and then we see a politician get
Speaker 2: out of a limo. This character is credited as mayor Feedback,
Speaker 2: and he comes up to a ribbon. Somebody like hands
Speaker 2: them a huge pair of scissors and he walks up
Speaker 2: to a ribbon and this is for the opening of
Speaker 2: a new arch bridge in the Los Angeles area. This
Speaker 2: this is apparently, I guess, supposed to be a real location,
Speaker 2: like a bridge in Long Beach, California. But the mayor
Speaker 2: like can't speak into the microphone without creating an infinite
Speaker 2: echo of feedback, and we just see this like loop
Speaker 2: of the cop keeps hammering on the microphone and then
Speaker 2: handing it back to the mayor like it's fine, but
Speaker 2: it's still creating all this feedback. So it's like, even
Speaker 2: this moment seemed kind of thematically significant to me, Like
Speaker 2: the person who's supposed to speak here knows that it
Speaker 2: is not going to sound right, but he just keeps
Speaker 2: getting the mic handed back to him like, yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 3: It's an amazing bit of timing from I'm sure the
Speaker 3: director but as well as the editor to have the
Speaker 3: confidence to start this, you know what. I'm sure would
Speaker 3: have been viewed as a children's film in nineteen sixty
Speaker 3: eight before anyone saw it. I'm sure a lot of
Speaker 3: fans of the TV show showed up waiting for the
Speaker 3: TV show in feature length, and this is how they start.
Speaker 3: Because it's not even a quick moment. It's what probably
Speaker 3: like four minutes perhaps of yeah, of this slow pondering
Speaker 3: view of a mayor trying to talk into a microphone
Speaker 3: and getting in It's just it's not something that someone
Speaker 3: would do, by the book, it's a very deliberate decision.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then so before the mayor can cut the ribbon. Oh,
Speaker 2: here come the monkeys. So there's the introduction, except there
Speaker 2: is no introduction. They just run through the frame. They
Speaker 2: run through like tearing through the ribbon, like the finish
Speaker 2: line of a race, signifying a kind of finality here
Speaker 2: at the beginning. And then they keep running, with Mickey
Speaker 2: Dolan's running ahead of the other guys while these loud
Speaker 2: sirens wail all around them as if they are being pursued.
Speaker 2: It suggests a feeling of persecution, but also like, ooh,
Speaker 2: these boys are bad, but we never see anybody in
Speaker 2: pursuit at this point at least. But then the monkeys
Speaker 2: come to the edge of the bridge, and then Mickey
Speaker 2: Dolan's jumps off the side of the bridge, and this
Speaker 2: is like not a low bridge, it's like really high up.
Speaker 2: He just jumps off. That's a way to start a movie.
Speaker 3: And audience remember this scene for later, because I definitely
Speaker 3: want to talk about it at the end again and
Speaker 3: where it will have a completely different context.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, this does come back. So we see Mickey's
Speaker 2: body tumble through the air in slow motion, occasionally cutting
Speaker 2: to long shots of an obvious dummy, but when it's
Speaker 2: close up, I think it looks like it actually is
Speaker 2: Mickey and he's jumping on a trampoline, but he plunges
Speaker 2: into the water below. And then we get our first
Speaker 2: musical number. And this is a strange choice for an
Speaker 2: opening musical number because it number one. I think this
Speaker 2: song is great. It's one of the best songs in
Speaker 2: the movie, and I love it, but it's not really
Speaker 2: the vibe you would expect for the first song in
Speaker 2: A Monkey's Movie, which you'd think would be a more,
Speaker 2: I don't know, upbeat, tuneful pop number. Instead, this is
Speaker 2: kind of a slower tempo psychedelic sound with a big
Speaker 2: instrumental section with like guitars, cello and other strings, woodwinds, organ,
Speaker 2: ringing bells. So it's almost like a day in the
Speaker 2: life that has all this crazy orchestra in it, just
Speaker 2: like pounding on the beat while this languid melody plays.
Speaker 2: And the song is called the Porpoise Song. And seth,
Speaker 2: I don't know if you want to talk about your
Speaker 2: thoughts about the song before we discuss the lyrics.
Speaker 3: Oh, sure, sure, I love this song. I think it
Speaker 3: is amongst the Monkey's best tracks. And I grew everything
Speaker 3: you just said. I love the deliberate choice that the
Speaker 3: director and the writer and everyone honestly is making at
Speaker 3: this point to tell the audience get out of here.
Speaker 3: You know this movie you came to see, We're not
Speaker 3: going to give it to you. We're going to give
Speaker 3: you something very strange. Get out of this theater. And
Speaker 3: I think that's great, And there's actually a really great
Speaker 3: future use of this song. If anyone's ever seen the
Speaker 3: Cameron Crow film Vanilla Sky, this song is very intentionally,
Speaker 3: very prominently and in multiple locations used in Vanilla Sky.
Speaker 3: So if you've seen that film, you've heard this song.
Speaker 2: I have seen that movie, but it was long ago,
Speaker 2: and I don't remember the use of this. Do you
Speaker 2: what part of the movie is it?
Speaker 3: I guess I don't want to give anything away, but
Speaker 3: I will say never mind, but I'll give a very
Speaker 3: vague illusion. It matches in many ways Mickey's Leap from
Speaker 3: the Bridge.
Speaker 2: Okay, So this song was written by Jerry Goffin and
Speaker 2: car Old King. Carol King co wrote a couple of
Speaker 2: the best songs in the soundtrack, and the lyrics seem
Speaker 2: very much to be a commentary on the creative frustrations
Speaker 2: of the monkeys who wanted to be musicians on their
Speaker 2: own terms, but were controlled by a corporate marketing apparatus.
Speaker 2: So like there's a verse that so the first verse
Speaker 2: is my mi. The clock in the sky is pounding away.
Speaker 2: There's so much to say. A face, a voice, an
Speaker 2: overdub has no choice, an image cannot rejoice, And so
Speaker 2: the lyrics end up sort of holding up this idea
Speaker 2: of like whatever the singer's position is as kind of
Speaker 2: like an image or an insubstantial reflection opposite the idea
Speaker 2: of the porpoise. The porpoise, it says, is laughing goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.
Speaker 2: The porpoise is kind of the image of freedom in
Speaker 2: the song. It's like a wild animal that can swim
Speaker 2: away in the ocean. And we hear the sounds of
Speaker 2: the porpoise literally like sampled at the end of the song. Uh,
Speaker 2: and it's just repeatedly. It's like the sounds become mocking
Speaker 2: because it is clear that the singer will never have
Speaker 2: freedom like the porpoise does. The singer instead summarizes their
Speaker 2: situation in the verse that says, clicks clacks, writing on
Speaker 2: the backs of giraffes for laughs is all right for
Speaker 2: a while the ego sings of castles and kings and
Speaker 2: things that go with a life of style, wanting to feel,
Speaker 2: to know what is real. Living is a lie. The
Speaker 2: porpoise is waiting goodbye, goodbye.
Speaker 3: See and Sink would never do that. These boys far
Speaker 3: beyond it and sync.
Speaker 2: I think, you know, a lot of psychedelic songs have
Speaker 2: lyrics that, like, they kind of sound cool. They're more
Speaker 2: for sonic effect than they are for meaning. But I
Speaker 2: don't know, I think these are good, meaningful lyrics. It's
Speaker 2: really clever. The line about clicks and clacks, you know,
Speaker 2: clicks being the idea of like the clicks that control
Speaker 2: the band, the clicks of producers and so forth. The
Speaker 2: claques being clacked meaning like a paid audience members.
Speaker 3: And phonetically too, like just just just the automnopic sound
Speaker 3: of both those things works on that level as well.
Speaker 3: It's it's deep, it's meaningful, and it sounds good. It's
Speaker 3: it's excellent songwriting.
Speaker 2: But also it's an incredible downer of an opener, good Bye, Goodbye, Goodbye.
Speaker 2: The point of this song is that we will never
Speaker 2: have creative freedom, and we are living a life of
Speaker 2: falsity and illusion.
Speaker 3: Get out of the theater, kids, this isn't for you.
Speaker 2: So in the water here Dolan's like synks to the
Speaker 2: bottom and he's like surrounded by coral and here we
Speaker 2: get extensive use of that. I apologize if this is
Speaker 2: not exactly the correct way to describe this, but it's
Speaker 2: I think what would be called a solarization effect. It's
Speaker 2: where like the colors are all weirdly inverted. It's like
Speaker 2: sort of saturated and has opposite kinds of contrast intensities
Speaker 2: of what the original image would be. I think I
Speaker 2: read that the part of this was done because like
Speaker 2: they shot some underwater scenes somewhere out actually in the ocean,
Speaker 2: but there had just been a hurricane and so the
Speaker 2: water was really cloudy and so it didn't look right,
Speaker 2: and so then they ended up having to reshoot things
Speaker 2: in a swimming pool, and then they used this solarization
Speaker 2: technique to kind of cover that up. And it clearly
Speaker 2: at the time they must have thought, yeah, this looks
Speaker 2: so psychedelicly cool, but it kind of it wears at
Speaker 2: it's welcome pretty quick. But anyway down there in the water,
Speaker 2: like Mickey, he sinks down and then mermaids come to
Speaker 2: his rescue apparently.
Speaker 3: Well, rescue or doom, because you know, depending upon the
Speaker 3: mythology that we're talking about here. Okay, think about the
Speaker 3: movie Hook. You know those mermaids they rescued Peter Pan. However,
Speaker 3: you think about the other kinds of mermaids where they're
Speaker 3: luring you deeper and deeper into the water so ultimately,
Speaker 3: you know, make you drown and then consume your flesh.
Speaker 3: So it could be either it could be either one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we see one of the mermaids. It appears
Speaker 2: to be resuscitating Mickey with mouth to mouth.
Speaker 3: Hook style, Peter Pan.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But then the solarization departs and we can see
Speaker 2: them clearly again, and the water in the foreground is
Speaker 2: revealed to be not real water or not water that
Speaker 2: they're in, but only a fish tank in front of
Speaker 2: the camera with the mermaid and Mickey behind. And in fact,
Speaker 2: the mermaid is no longer a mermaid. It's just a
Speaker 2: regular woman with legs and everything. And she's kissing Mickey
Speaker 2: on the mouth. Then she walks away from him, revealing
Speaker 2: they're in some kind of weird apartment. This might have
Speaker 2: been correct me if I'm wrong here, Seth, this apartment
Speaker 2: might have been like a standard part of the Monkey's
Speaker 2: TV set.
Speaker 3: That's what it looks like. It's clearly not the exact
Speaker 3: same setup, but I think they're at least trying to
Speaker 3: either reuse the sets or make us feel, hey, we're
Speaker 3: back at the TV show for a moment. But yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: I think that was intentional.
Speaker 2: Okay, so it's kind of like that. It's like an
Speaker 2: apartment that's like the Monkey set, except it has like
Speaker 2: barbering equipment. There are people in these swiveling barber chairs
Speaker 2: I don't know, and the rest of the monkeys are
Speaker 2: there too, And then the lady she kisses all of
Speaker 2: them in sequence. She kisses Mickey, then Michael Nesmith, then
Speaker 2: Peter tork Uh, then Davy Jones, and Davy Jones is last.
Speaker 2: He's in front of this big orange stained glass window
Speaker 2: with seagulls screaming outside. And after this, she goes to
Speaker 2: the door, looking kind of bored and unimpressed, and she's
Speaker 2: gonna leave the leave the apartment, but they ask her
Speaker 2: for a verdict. First. I guess this was like a
Speaker 2: kissing competition, and she's like, eh, even none of you
Speaker 2: is better than the other yep.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: And then things start getting really wild.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 2: There's another musical number that is credited as Diddy Diego
Speaker 2: or the War Chance, and this is sung by the
Speaker 2: Monkeys to the rhythm of the I don't know what
Speaker 2: this is originally called, but the Hello Operator song. The
Speaker 2: like the children's children's you know school yard rhyme dah
Speaker 2: da da da di duh, and so I'm not going
Speaker 2: to read all the lyrics, but some of the salient ones.
Speaker 2: It starts with, Hey, hey, we are the monkeys. You know,
Speaker 2: we love to please, a manufactured image with no philosophies,
Speaker 2: and then later in the song it says, you say
Speaker 2: we're manufactured to that we all agree, so make your
Speaker 2: choice and will rejoice in never being free. Hey hey,
Speaker 2: we are the monkeys. We've said it all before. The
Speaker 2: money's in. We're made of tin, We're here to give
Speaker 2: you more. And as they're singing this, the screen you're
Speaker 2: watching is filling up with miniature TV screens that I
Speaker 2: think are showing you different scenes of the movie you're
Speaker 2: about to watch. So they're all cutting in TV screens,
Speaker 2: showing you stuff that hasn't happened in the movie yet
Speaker 2: but will. Most of this stuff is silly in nature
Speaker 2: until the last screen pops up, which happens to show
Speaker 2: the execution of Nuin Van Limb, which was this important
Speaker 2: event in the history of the Vietnam War. It was
Speaker 2: like the summary execution of a Vietcong officer in Saigon
Speaker 2: in February nineteen sixty eight in a photo that was
Speaker 2: captured by the Associated Press photographer Eddie Adams, but also
Speaker 2: was captured by a film TV camera and became like
Speaker 2: this really important image in the American anti war movement. Obviously,
Speaker 2: this is unbelievably tonally jarring on purpose, and then the
Speaker 2: film gives way to this overwhelming montage of war and
Speaker 2: violence imagery, just like bombs exploding and weaponry and war photography,
Speaker 2: and the monkeys do like a cheerleading chant of give
Speaker 2: me a W, give me an A, give me an
Speaker 2: R to spell war. So it's like, clearly, this incredibly
Speaker 2: sharp critique of the Vietnam War, making it look clearly
Speaker 2: intended to make it look barbarous and immoral, and then
Speaker 2: it cuts straight from that to a goofy trench warfare skit.
Speaker 2: I don't know how to explain, like I can't think
Speaker 2: of anything else like this it's so.
Speaker 3: Strange, incredibly strange, and I mean there is humor to it,
Speaker 3: but almost the humor is the existence of humor in
Speaker 3: such a dire situation like that, like like they are
Speaker 3: making genuine jokes, but I think the joke ultimately is
Speaker 3: that they are joking in this war scene when it
Speaker 3: is not something that should be joked about, which is
Speaker 3: kind of double layer fascinating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the trench warfare scene is like a parody
Speaker 2: of a World War two movie, and this will come
Speaker 2: up again and again. Like I said, there's like there
Speaker 2: are all these scenes in the movie that are parodies
Speaker 2: of sort of square movie and TV genres. They're parodies
Speaker 2: of westerns, parodies of war movies, parodies of sports movies.
Speaker 2: And so the World War two movie scene has like
Speaker 2: these gags about helmets, like Mickey doesn't want to wear
Speaker 2: his helmet, which actually seems kind of thematically significant given
Speaker 2: the opening. And then Peter, I think, or at least
Speaker 2: there may be multiple of the other monkeys like run
Speaker 2: out across the disputed zone between the trenches to retrieve
Speaker 2: a different helmet for Mickey to wear, and eventually that
Speaker 2: ends with them like fighting a football player who keeps
Speaker 2: tackling them, but they steal his football helmet and come
Speaker 2: back and give it to Mickey.
Speaker 3: It's beautiful in many ways. In many ways, it's making
Speaker 3: these connections between warfare and sports and the violence and
Speaker 3: the one upsmanship and this like push and pull and
Speaker 3: conflict between us and them, and it's it's fascinating and
Speaker 3: beautiful and also very nonsensical and silly. It's it's odd.
Speaker 2: And then it transitions straight from that to a concert
Speaker 2: scene where this is just like a It starts off
Speaker 2: just kind of like a straight concert scene with the
Speaker 2: band playing on stage. They're playing their instruments and singing
Speaker 2: in front of a crowd, and the song in this
Speaker 2: scene is the Mike Nesmith song Circle Sky, written and
Speaker 2: sung by Mike Nesmith. The whole band is playing on
Speaker 2: stage in front of an audience of screaming young fans.
Speaker 2: Fans shown shrieking and applauding with such intensity it looks
Speaker 2: almost more like pain and fear than happiness.
Speaker 3: Well, let's throw in one bit of context here, which
Speaker 3: I'm please correct me if I'm not getting this completely correct,
Speaker 3: But this is kind of like the the series of
Speaker 3: images that I remember. So the four monkeys. They are
Speaker 3: trying to like breach this like cave or whatever, you know,
Speaker 3: in the war scene. Still, so we're still we're still
Speaker 3: picturing war. And when they get up there, you know,
Speaker 3: they're doing things. They throw a grenade in, they charge
Speaker 3: in as if they're about to attack, and that's the
Speaker 3: direct transition into the scene you just mentioned of them
Speaker 3: at their concert, right, So do they have this antagonistic
Speaker 3: feeling towards their live shows? Do they see their concerts
Speaker 3: as a battle and their audience as like an enemy
Speaker 3: that must be bested that that this is this is
Speaker 3: this is conflict, This is war between them and this
Speaker 3: screaming horde that is their fan base.
Speaker 2: It's odd that would make sense given what happens at
Speaker 2: the end of this thing, because well, first of all,
Speaker 2: let's talk about Circle Skide the song, and then when
Speaker 2: we talk about how the scene finishes. This is a
Speaker 2: very weird and interesting song. I'd say it's another one
Speaker 2: of my favorites in the soundtrack. Rhythmically, it's built around
Speaker 2: a Bo Diddley beat, you know, bump a dump a dump,
Speaker 2: a dump bump, but it also has this strange descending
Speaker 2: chromatic scale part after the verses that kind of reminds
Speaker 2: me of the riff in Pink Floyd's Interstellar Overdrive. And
Speaker 2: it's a weird sounding song. It's a lot more rock
Speaker 2: than most of the other Monkey songs I can think of,
Speaker 2: if that makes sense.
Speaker 3: Definitely, I mean, this is a this is a Nesmuth
Speaker 3: and one thing that Nesmuth is credited as inventing. And
Speaker 3: once again, no one invented anything. We're all building off
Speaker 3: each other's influences, et cetera, et cetera. But one things
Speaker 3: people give Nesmuth credit for is inventing the rock country genre,
Speaker 3: that melding, you know, something that we would see later
Speaker 3: with like the Birds and Wilco exactly exactly. He's given
Speaker 3: credit for that, which these early Monkeys songs definitely kind
Speaker 3: of hint towards, and then he gets really into it later.
Speaker 3: This is just a quick bonus recommendation. There's a series
Speaker 3: of three solo albums from Mike Nesmyth that I think
Speaker 3: you would love, Joe, but I think everyone would love
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy Magnetic southeteen seventy Loose Salute, nineteen seventy one
Speaker 3: Nevada Fighter. All three are this Vibe and so if
Speaker 3: anyone likes this song and the way this is going
Speaker 3: that this is like a little hint at where Nesmuth
Speaker 3: is headed next. And he put out three albums in
Speaker 3: a row that are all this vibe and are all incredible.
Speaker 2: I would say, yeah, and even this may be a
Speaker 2: very strange comparison, but I would say, if you loosen
Speaker 2: all of the bolts on this type of music significantly,
Speaker 2: you end up with the meat puppets.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely no, it's it's it's
Speaker 3: incredible song making. It's Mike Nesmith. I'm a huge fan
Speaker 3: of his. I really really love what he does, and
Speaker 3: this is a great example of it. And this whole
Speaker 3: scene is just filmed beautifully as well. This whole like
Speaker 3: war into concert and then are you ready to go
Speaker 3: into what it goes into next?
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, So they sing this song and it's a
Speaker 2: great musical number. But at the end of the song,
Speaker 2: the audience, which again is mostly teenage girls, they assault
Speaker 2: the stage, attack the band, and apparently kill them, except
Speaker 2: it reveals that the band are not flesh and blood like.
Speaker 2: They are ripped to pieces by the audience, revealing that
Speaker 2: they are actually just puppets. And mannequins.
Speaker 3: They were phony the whole time.
Speaker 2: But I do want to dwell for a second on
Speaker 2: how like it's interesting the way the movie really focuses
Speaker 2: on the intensity of the feeling and the audience for
Speaker 2: the band. And I don't know how exactly this was filmed,
Speaker 2: like if they filmed a real a real audience for
Speaker 2: a Monkey's concert, or if these were just actors, you know,
Speaker 2: asked to portray screaming. I really don't know what they
Speaker 2: did here, but you can compare it certainly to live
Speaker 2: footage of real audiences reacting to the Beatles or any
Speaker 2: very popular band. And it just reminds me that I
Speaker 2: love music. But however much I love music now, there
Speaker 2: really is no way for me to access the kind
Speaker 2: of excruciating passion I had for my favorite bands when
Speaker 2: I was a teenager. There's like a teenage relationship with
Speaker 2: music that that doesn't come back no matter how hard
Speaker 2: you try, you know, like the way that you would
Speaker 2: just scream for a band at that age.
Speaker 3: And like the physical output, like especially if like again
Speaker 3: you're in your young teenage years, you're going to a
Speaker 3: metal show, a punk show, hardcore show, and that physical
Speaker 3: feeling you get of being amongst your peers jostling and
Speaker 3: being in a pit and all that stuff. I can't
Speaker 3: imagine doing that anymore, Like, not for a second. You know,
Speaker 3: I'm middle aged. There's not a chance.
Speaker 2: But at least in my memory, I strongly identified with
Speaker 2: the audience in the scene. Is like, I remember that
Speaker 2: feeling of like caring about a band, even a band
Speaker 2: that maybe years later I would think was silly. Caring
Speaker 2: this much, that is just overwhelming passion.
Speaker 3: It's wonderful. I'm glad music has that ability. And yeah,
Speaker 3: you're right, though I think teenagers connect to it in
Speaker 3: a perfectly teenage way.
Speaker 2: Oh but from here it goes on to all kinds
Speaker 2: of other weird stuff. We get like a channel surfing
Speaker 2: montage where we see like a disembodied hand clicking a
Speaker 2: remote control. I don't think I even realized there were
Speaker 2: remote controls at this point, but clicking a remote and
Speaker 2: we see on the TV screen like cuts between commercials
Speaker 2: that highlight American consumerism. We get bits of Bible movies
Speaker 2: and stuff. There's one moment where it's a Bela Lagosi movie.
Speaker 2: I don't know what movie this is from. I didn't
Speaker 2: look it up. But it's where Bella Lagosi is talking
Speaker 2: to some guy and the other guy says, sounds like
Speaker 2: a bunch of supernatural boloney to me, and Bello replies, supernatural,
Speaker 2: perhaps bloney, perhaps not.
Speaker 3: This moment has a very prominent place on the album soundtrack,
Speaker 3: this spell Lagosi quote, and I love it every time.
Speaker 2: But then we go to another very memorable scene. It's
Speaker 2: the Mickey in the Desert scene where we get Mickey
Speaker 2: Dollins lost in the desert, wandering around shirtless, thirsty. He
Speaker 2: comes across a coke machine in the middle of the desert,
Speaker 2: but it malfunctions and won't give him his coke. I
Speaker 2: found this scene very funny. Yes, he's like fighting the machine.
Speaker 2: And then later in the scene it becomes a parody
Speaker 2: of Lawrence of Arabia with like an Arabian horseman riding
Speaker 2: over the sand dunes, and then seth, did you want
Speaker 2: to describe this part?
Speaker 3: Sure? This is a moment we referenced earlier that genuinely
Speaker 3: made me laugh out loud just yesterday watching this. When
Speaker 3: the horseman rides up over the dunes, comes all the
Speaker 3: way up to Mickey, Mickey is confused, perhaps a little apprehensious,
Speaker 3: a little little worried, and he goes and he's like
Speaker 3: what and then he gets real close, he goes past,
Speaker 3: and then there's a big caption on the screen that
Speaker 3: just saysst some title. Yes, and then he just rides
Speaker 3: off and that's it. That's the end. I believe.
Speaker 2: Mickey once again goes what Yeah. But then there so
Speaker 2: after that, there's a part where an Italian tank drives
Speaker 2: up right. The driver gets out of the tank, goes
Speaker 2: up to Mickey and confirms he is American. He only
Speaker 2: speaks Italian, I think, but Americano, and Mickey confirms, and
Speaker 2: then the tank driver gleefully surrenders to Mickey, and then
Speaker 2: we basically get to watch this huge train of soldiers
Speaker 2: that are like all of the axis powers lining up
Speaker 2: to surrender to the monkeys.
Speaker 3: It's so what.
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 2: And then oh, then finally Mickey gets in the tank
Speaker 2: and uses it to shell the coke machine, which I
Speaker 2: laughed out loud at.
Speaker 3: You know who wasn't laughing was Coca Cola. They got
Speaker 3: mad and actually requested that this be taken out of
Speaker 3: the film. But not too long afterwards, Coca Cola actually
Speaker 3: bought the production company in the studio that made this film,
Speaker 3: so then they didn't mind so much.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's see after this, let's what happened. Oh, it
Speaker 2: segues into another musical number and not so great scene
Speaker 2: where the monkeys are like hanging out dressed in Arabic
Speaker 2: clothing and surrounded by belly dancers. And this is to
Speaker 2: a company the Peter Torque song can You Dig It,
Speaker 2: which is set to I don't know what you call
Speaker 2: this genre, but it was like American psychedelic rock music
Speaker 2: of the sixties that was supposed to be inflected with
Speaker 2: I think like an Eastern sound, I.
Speaker 3: Believe, right right, Yeah, when all of the white rock
Speaker 3: and roll musicians bought a sitar and didn't know how
Speaker 3: to play it, it was that era. Yeah. No, no
Speaker 3: offense to George Harrison. I'm sure he was doing it
Speaker 3: better than most.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, But but this one feels I
Speaker 2: don't know, this is not I think one of the
Speaker 2: better musical numbers in the movie.
Speaker 3: It feels like a little music video interlude, but one
Speaker 3: without as much meaning as the previous two Circle Sky
Speaker 3: and Porpoise song.
Speaker 2: Yeah. No offense to the belly dancers, though they do
Speaker 2: great and we get for sure, no belly cam and
Speaker 2: all that. But then we transition to another genre parody,
Speaker 2: this time a Western featuring Terry Garr In this scene
Speaker 2: where in the middle of the scene here Mickey gets
Speaker 2: fed up and walks off set, literally tearing a hole
Speaker 2: in the painted backdrop. And this is the first of
Speaker 2: many scenes in the movie where the fourth wall not
Speaker 2: only breaks, but the monkeys like argue with the director
Speaker 2: and with the script and express dissatisfaction with the creative
Speaker 2: direction of the movie. And I think this thing. I
Speaker 2: don't know if it's happened already in other movies before this,
Speaker 2: but I feel like this will be a sort of
Speaker 2: copied in comedy movies that follow, like movies where people
Speaker 2: break the fourth wall and start arguing with the director.
Speaker 2: I wonder if it comes from this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, great point. I mean this is pretty early on
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty eight is pretty early in the history of
Speaker 3: cinema for things to still be established, like, for example,
Speaker 3: this is a complete tangent. But something I learned recently, Joe,
Speaker 3: do you know where the very first fart in American
Speaker 3: cinema was?
Speaker 2: I do not know.
Speaker 3: Blazing saddles. Ah, that's how long it took to get
Speaker 3: a fart in American cinema.
Speaker 2: That's really funny. Well, so long, what year was Blazing Saddles,
Speaker 2: by the way, you know, let's.
Speaker 3: Look it up. These are just dumb facts in my head.
Speaker 3: Let's find out because I was thinking.
Speaker 2: Of Blazing Saddles. As doesn't Blazing Saddles have a scene
Speaker 2: where the actors start arguing with the director?
Speaker 3: They do, and that was nineteen seventy four. So perhaps
Speaker 3: Blazing Saddles was at least in part influenced by, if
Speaker 3: not this film, other things that were happening around this film.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Or maybe it's just something that's commonly in
Speaker 2: the air in the sixties and seventies, and it is changing, yeah,
Speaker 2: changing views about the role of the artist and understanding
Speaker 2: film as a medium to be critiqued from a step back.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: It must have been fun though, that at that time
Speaker 3: you still could do things that were first that things
Speaker 3: oh felt still unexplored, like it was the wild West.
Speaker 3: No pun intended that you could just kind of do
Speaker 3: something and have it be the first time it ever
Speaker 3: happened on screen.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, And I wanted to mention so there are
Speaker 2: these scenes where they argue with the director, and in
Speaker 2: one of these scenes later you see Bob Raefelson and
Speaker 2: Jack Nicholson as themselves like walk on screen and start
Speaker 2: arguing with Peter Torrik and stuff.
Speaker 3: It's amazing because you immediately recognize Jack Nicholson like it's
Speaker 3: you know, Jack Nicholson is iconic, of course, and no
Speaker 3: one looks like Jack Nicholson except Jack Nicholson. Like he is.
Speaker 3: He's a legend, He's an icon from what I've heard.
Speaker 3: Dennis Hopper is also in this scene, but I have
Speaker 3: never been able to spot him, But then again, I
Speaker 3: also couldn't spot a net Funicello, so that's not saying much.
Speaker 2: I did not spot Dennis Hopper either, so I don't
Speaker 2: know where he is in there.
Speaker 3: But there's I do go in this scene though. It's
Speaker 3: so it's so beautiful, like and just everything that's happening
Speaker 3: in this scene. This is this is the diner scene, correct,
Speaker 3: the later scene where they're they're arguing with the with
Speaker 3: the the director. Yeah, yes, yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 2: But let's see other things in the movie. We've already
Speaker 2: mentioned that the Davy Jones boxing with Sonny Liston scene.
Speaker 2: There is there's the you're the dummy theme. This is
Speaker 2: a recurring thing in the movie where the monkeys kind
Speaker 2: of have a dispute about which one of them is
Speaker 2: the dummy, and they decide Peter is the dummy. He's
Speaker 2: always the dummy, but in fact Peter in the end
Speaker 2: is revealed to be the one with wisdom right, and
Speaker 2: this gives it goes into another one of the musical numbers,
Speaker 2: a song called as We Go Along, written by Carol
Speaker 2: King and Tony Stern. I don't know who's singing this one.
Speaker 2: It sounds like a female voice, so it could be
Speaker 2: Carol King singing, but I don't know for sure. This
Speaker 2: one's kind of a hopeful sounding hippie ballad almost kind
Speaker 2: of reminds me of the vibe of like Both Sides Now.
Speaker 2: And we see Peter Tork wandering through landscapes of snow flowers, forests,
Speaker 2: rocky beaches. It's like a land escape video. But then
Speaker 2: this transitions straight into a montage of advertising billboards, and
Speaker 2: then we go into the factory scene where the monkeys
Speaker 2: are touring a factory. What does this factory make? I
Speaker 2: think it makes shapes, that's what we see. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: something that looks like v eight juice that we see
Speaker 2: guys like coming. It's coming out of spouts and guys
Speaker 2: are drinking it, and the foreman giving them the factory
Speaker 2: tour explains that soon everything will be automated and then
Speaker 2: the only work left to humanity will be figuring out
Speaker 2: how to amuse itself, and he ominously comments that we
Speaker 2: should be careful what we wish for.
Speaker 3: We're getting closer to that every day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then the monkeys they like somehow from the
Speaker 2: factory they get they walk into a giant tu pay
Speaker 2: and they are like being I think they're being ordered
Speaker 2: to film a commercial for something having to do with
Speaker 2: the two pay. Like this is the Dandriff scene? Can
Speaker 2: you explain this seth, what's going on?
Speaker 3: I mean, first of all, how transition from the factory
Speaker 3: to the dan Driff happens. I'm not entirely sure. There's
Speaker 3: a few really great transitions where you can kind of
Speaker 3: like see the A to the B. I'm not sure
Speaker 3: if I can connect to this one. But so we
Speaker 3: have a giant and I mean enormous pile of fake
Speaker 3: large scale hair and the four monkeys dressed all in white,
Speaker 3: and the director is yelling at them and commanding them, no,
Speaker 3: roll around, roll on, wrap yourself up in there. You're
Speaker 3: dan drff, you're dander.
Speaker 2: Get in there, get in the hair.
Speaker 3: And then I think, once again, we see another example
Speaker 3: of your my puppets. Just do the stupid thing so
Speaker 3: I can hurry up and film it, we can move
Speaker 3: on with our lives. I need you to just do
Speaker 3: what I'm saying. You don't need to understand it, you
Speaker 3: don't need to have any commentary. Just roll around in there,
Speaker 3: get in there.
Speaker 2: And then we get a like zoom out where the
Speaker 2: hair is revealed to be the hair of Victor Mature,
Speaker 2: the Hollywood actor and the like Hollywood leading man, who's
Speaker 2: got very nice looking hair, very well coaffed, and his
Speaker 2: hair is being vacuumed. Was this a common hair grooming
Speaker 2: procedure in the sixties to vacuum your hair?
Speaker 3: To me, have you ever heard of it?
Speaker 2: But okay, so his hair is being vacuumed, and then
Speaker 2: the monkeys get sucked up into the vacuum, and then
Speaker 2: somehow in this whole sequence, Davy gets separated, and then
Speaker 2: we get another musical number. It's completely different from anything
Speaker 2: that's come before, but I think is really good. Davy
Speaker 2: finds himself alone on a sound stage and begins a
Speaker 2: wonderful musical number that is visually dazzling by relying on
Speaker 2: such a simple visual effect, which is editing between two
Speaker 2: takes that each have completely inverted colors. So in one
Speaker 2: take it's a white set with Davy Jones wearing a
Speaker 2: black suit and a white shirt, and in the other
Speaker 2: all the colors are the opposite, and they cut back
Speaker 2: and forth between these two and the effect is fantastic. Also,
Speaker 2: Davies dancing is really good, and he's got a dancing
Speaker 2: partner and she's really good too. I was trying to
Speaker 2: find out who his dancing partner was here, but I'm
Speaker 2: not sure who it was.
Speaker 3: I can say this in many situations throughout this film,
Speaker 3: if you look into who the female cast member is,
Speaker 3: it's quite often someone's wife or girlfriend that that happened
Speaker 3: many times, like Jack Nicholson's girlfriend at the time was
Speaker 3: in this. I believe a couple of the Monkeys' wives
Speaker 3: were in this. Like that was a common thread throughout
Speaker 3: this film was Friends of the Monkeys.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, But then coming to the song itself, this
Speaker 2: is the one written by Harry Nilson called Daddy's Song,
Speaker 2: which the song sounds kind of cheerful, it sounds like
Speaker 2: it's like a classic classic Broadway show tune, but actually
Speaker 2: it is quite sad. It's a sad narrative about a
Speaker 2: young boy who remembers looking up to his father, but
Speaker 2: then his father abandons his family, and he tells about
Speaker 2: how his mother didn't know how to explain it to
Speaker 2: her son, and then he reflects on how he thinks
Speaker 2: he might never tell his own children. It is a
Speaker 2: once again, just like a very strange and much darker
Speaker 2: and more thoughtful song then you would guess from the
Speaker 2: sound of it or from its context in the film.
Speaker 3: And Nielsen actually did this multiple times for them. Another
Speaker 3: really great one is a song called Cuddly Toy, another
Speaker 3: one that has this kind of like soft shoe Broadway
Speaker 3: vibe to it. It's from their album Piss's Aquarius Capricorn
Speaker 3: and Jones Limited, and once again it's got Davy Jones
Speaker 3: up front being this kind of like corny dude with
Speaker 3: like a sad undertone. Like it's that they really had
Speaker 3: a good thing going at this point. And do you
Speaker 3: think that there was a deliberate metaphor here of separating
Speaker 3: the the one monkey that did stand out that was
Speaker 3: different from the others. He's one British monkey compared to
Speaker 3: the three am and monkeys. Ah, yes, he's the song
Speaker 3: and dance man. They're all hippies, Like, like, hmmm. I
Speaker 3: wonder if there was this kind of intentional division, or
Speaker 3: if perhaps it's as simple as like Davy Jones being like, hey,
Speaker 3: I want I want a song, you know, give me
Speaker 3: a chance to get up there and do my thing too.
Speaker 2: That's a good point. I hadn't thought of that, but
Speaker 2: it actually does connect to something that I was talking
Speaker 2: about with Rachel. So she actually she had more knowledge
Speaker 2: of the monkeys growing up than I did, so going
Speaker 2: into this movie she knew more about the monkeys than me.
Speaker 2: And she pointed out how the movie kind of messes
Speaker 2: with the character of each monkey. So like Davy the
Speaker 2: cute one is the fighter in the movie. He's the
Speaker 2: guy who's boxing and we constantly see him actually doing
Speaker 2: like doing karate and trying to fight people. Peter the
Speaker 2: supposed dummy or the kind of like the naive one
Speaker 2: is the wise enlightened one in this movie. Mickey the
Speaker 2: funny one is shown having very like dark moods and
Speaker 2: is placed in a very dark context. And then the
Speaker 2: odd one out here is kind of Mike. I'm not
Speaker 2: sure how Mike fits this, like playing with the character.
Speaker 2: He does still seem pretty serious in the movie. I
Speaker 2: don't know if you have thoughts on that, but that
Speaker 2: seemed interesting to me that the movie takes time to
Speaker 2: single each one out at various points and then kind
Speaker 2: of invert them for sure.
Speaker 3: And yeah, you know, I think you're completely right that
Speaker 3: Mike Nesbeth doesn't quite get the subversion. I don't think
Speaker 3: anything really happens to him. Maybe it's the fact that
Speaker 3: in general he's seen as like the leader of the monkeys,
Speaker 3: and in this film he doesn't really lead them at
Speaker 3: any point, like he is in many ways just kind
Speaker 3: of a passive character. But that's a stretch that's me
Speaker 3: really reaching for it. Now.
Speaker 2: There are a bunch of other sequences in the movie.
Speaker 2: There's the horror movie sequence with like an eye behind
Speaker 2: a mirror. That's great stuff. Yeah, like Davy season eye
Speaker 2: behind a mirror in the bathroom and then he tries
Speaker 2: to show it to other people but they can't see it.
Speaker 2: There's that leads into a kind of go go dancer
Speaker 2: freak out scene set to a song called do I
Speaker 2: Have to Do This all over again? That title's kind
Speaker 2: of on the nose from the themes. There's also this
Speaker 2: whole thing with like the monkeys searching for quote the answer,
Speaker 2: and there is a scene where like a guru inspires
Speaker 2: Peter to reflect on how we cannot tell reality from illusion.
Speaker 2: And then when we get to the ending, we actually
Speaker 2: return to the beginning. Seth, I know you wanted to
Speaker 2: talk about the ending. Do you do you want to
Speaker 2: take this here?
Speaker 3: Sure? So at the end, we actually at first aren't
Speaker 3: even sure that we're re entering the beginning again, because
Speaker 3: it starts with basically all the characters from all the
Speaker 3: scenes we've seen all the way up until now pursuing
Speaker 3: the four monkeys. They're chasing them. Some of the characters
Speaker 3: are feeling quite you know, antagonistic towards them chasing them around,
Speaker 3: et cetera, et cetera, And eventually we do start to
Speaker 3: put it together that oh, they're back on the bridge again,
Speaker 3: and we're basically seeing the same scene from the beginning,
Speaker 3: except that we just have context. Now we see who
Speaker 3: the chaser is, the camera is letting us see this
Speaker 3: mob behind them. So in the beginning, if you're just
Speaker 3: watching it without context, it feels like the monkeys committed
Speaker 3: suicide on their own, that they felt the need, that
Speaker 3: they were like, the monkeys are over, let's go, and
Speaker 3: they just jump off the bridge. Now with this extra context,
Speaker 3: we can see that they were being pursued, that they
Speaker 3: were being forced to do this, that in many ways, we,
Speaker 3: the audience or perhaps society at large, forced them to jump.
Speaker 3: That we ended the monkeys, not the monkeys. The monkeys
Speaker 3: they were just they were just dealing with what we
Speaker 3: gave them, that they were reacting to our pursuits and
Speaker 3: anger and whatever. Maybe even our need for the monkeys
Speaker 3: caused the monkeys to have to end. But yeah, it's
Speaker 3: it's that it's our fault. We ended the monkeys, not
Speaker 3: the monkeys.
Speaker 2: It's our fault. And it's the creators of the monkey's
Speaker 2: fault because it's like the filmmaking apparatus is also chasing them,
Speaker 2: all of the actors and everything.
Speaker 3: It's everyone's fault except the monkeys. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so like they jump off, and but we
Speaker 2: get a return of the porpoise song. So there is
Speaker 2: this this idea of the freedom of the porpoise, and
Speaker 2: you wonder if maybe it's going to be a happy
Speaker 2: ending where they actually do become like the porpoise, and they,
Speaker 2: you know, when they hit the water, maybe they swim
Speaker 2: out to sea and become free on their own. But instead,
Speaker 2: when we last see them in the water, and then
Speaker 2: it is you're teased with this idea of them becoming
Speaker 2: like wild animals, you know, marine mammals with freedom, but
Speaker 2: instead we realize that they are in fact in a
Speaker 2: fish tank on the back of a truck being lorded
Speaker 2: over by Victor Mature. This like this devilish demi urge
Speaker 2: figure who's like sitting there in a director's chair, smoking
Speaker 2: a pipe and grinning wickedly as they are as they
Speaker 2: are carried away on a trailer presumably to be I
Speaker 2: don't know, like shelved and archived or something, or maybe.
Speaker 3: Put in a zoos. People can can continue to stare
Speaker 3: at the monkeys, you know, you know, it would be
Speaker 3: a fun art project that would actually be relatively easy.
Speaker 3: Think of this as like a museum art installation where
Speaker 3: you walk through and you see like those little like
Speaker 3: side screening rooms where they're showing like an art film,
Speaker 3: you can sit down and watch for a minute and
Speaker 3: then get up and walk out. You could easily turn
Speaker 3: this movie into an infinite loop that they are pursued
Speaker 3: and then when they jump, you just seamlessly edited that
Speaker 3: back into the original jumping off of the bridge, and
Speaker 3: it just goes again and again and again. This could
Speaker 3: very easily be an infinite loop of a movie, and
Speaker 3: I'd love to see that. I wonder how many times
Speaker 3: they can make it through.
Speaker 2: That's a great idea. Yeah, organize it, Seth. You put
Speaker 2: it together, get the rights.
Speaker 3: I'll set aside some gallery space and yeah.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, I think that is all I have
Speaker 2: to say about head Seth. Do you have anything else
Speaker 2: you want to talk about before we wrap up here?
Speaker 3: No, but I will say if anyone if this is
Speaker 3: their first introduction to the Monkeys, I'm sure there are
Speaker 3: people in the audience who are very familiar with the
Speaker 3: Monkeys and some that have never seen anything from them.
Speaker 3: I genuinely do recommend several Monkeys albums. But here's like
Speaker 3: the big thing to keep in mind. The Monkeys actually
Speaker 3: barely existed like the in like the Grand Timeline of life.
Speaker 3: When they were having like a successful artistic output. It
Speaker 3: was such a small window. The first album they put
Speaker 3: out was in nineteen sixty six. This album is in
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty eight, and in that window they released one, two, three, four,
Speaker 3: five six albums and they had to already go through
Speaker 3: an entire upheaval of people thinking that they're frauds and
Speaker 3: fighting back for creative control. That whole window of sixty
Speaker 3: six to sixty eight is just two years, and yet
Speaker 3: it encompasses this whole enormous situation that just do It's
Speaker 3: it's it's similar to when you look at the Beatles
Speaker 3: and you see how much they accomplished and they short
Speaker 3: time as a band because they're releasing more than one
Speaker 3: album a year. In sixty seven, they released three albums.
Speaker 3: In sixty eight they released two. Oh I'm talking about
Speaker 3: the Monkeys again, by the way. So I do think
Speaker 3: it's important to look into them as just a musical act.
Speaker 3: And I will say, personally, my three favorite albums of
Speaker 3: theirs are I mentioned it briefly. Pisce's Aquarius, Capricorn and
Speaker 3: Jones Limited from nineteen sixty seven, The Birds, the Bees
Speaker 3: and the Monkeys from nineteen sixty eight. That one's kind
Speaker 3: of their wide album because they all had their own
Speaker 3: very independent ideas of what they wanted their next album
Speaker 3: to be, so they all kind of split off, produced
Speaker 3: their own things, and then cobbled it back together like
Speaker 3: a quilt, which is pretty fun. Then, oh, of course,
Speaker 3: of course. And then in nineteen sixty eight Head of Course.
Speaker 3: I think that's also a wonderful album, which there are
Speaker 3: two versions of. Both are good, but the original version,
Speaker 3: the one Jack Nicholson Babe's, that's the preferred version.
Speaker 2: And hey, folks, if you would like to hear Seth
Speaker 2: talk about music like this all the time, you can
Speaker 2: subscribe to his other podcast, Rusty Needles Record Club. Seth,
Speaker 2: do you want to pitch the show? What's the deal
Speaker 2: with Rusty Needles Record Club?
Speaker 3: I love to It's an old style podcast, back in
Speaker 3: the days, pre advertising, pre gosh, what else do podcasts
Speaker 3: have now? Pre celebrities, pre true crime, none of that stuff.
Speaker 3: It's the old style. We just sit around in chitchat
Speaker 3: for a while and then it's over and much like
Speaker 3: this show, which I really appreciate. There's a big difference
Speaker 3: between old style podcast and new style podcast. And anyway,
Speaker 3: that's a whole nother thing. Rusty Needles Record Club is
Speaker 3: a show where it's like a book club, but for music.
Speaker 3: Each episode is a different album me and my co host.
Speaker 3: We listen to it, we talk about it, we break
Speaker 3: it down based on facts, based on our feelings, and
Speaker 3: then we give the album a review. But ultimately it's
Speaker 3: just a place for people who love music to kind
Speaker 3: of get some music conversation in their ears, to have
Speaker 3: like a nice relaxed parasocial relationship with some other people.
Speaker 3: If you don't happen to have other friends around you
Speaker 3: that you can talk about things like what your favorite
Speaker 3: Monkeys album is, I'll do that for you.
Speaker 2: Well, chipchat, the show is Rusty Needles Record Club. And
Speaker 2: there's an apostrophe before the s on Needles right exactly.
Speaker 3: This is Rusty Needle. He owns the record club.
Speaker 2: Yes, there you go wherever podcasts are found. Yep, yep,
Speaker 2: look it up. Well, thank you so much for joining
Speaker 2: me today, Seth. It has been a real pleasure to
Speaker 2: have you back on the show again. And let's do
Speaker 2: it again in the.
Speaker 3: Future absolutely anytime.
Speaker 2: All right, that does it for today. Huge thanks again
Speaker 2: to Seth Nicholas Johnson for joining us. If you are
Speaker 2: new to the show and would like to check us out,
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Speaker 2: forms of the short scripted show or Emerging. On Fridays,
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Speaker 2: talk about a weird film, good or bad, well known
Speaker 2: or obscure. We do them all as long as they
Speaker 2: are strange in some way. And then on Saturdays we
Speaker 2: run an episode from the Vault, an older episode of
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