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Speaker 2: What kind of a show you guys putting on here today?
Speaker 2: You're not interested in armed? Now? No, Look, we're going
Speaker 2: to do this thing. We're going to have a.
Speaker 3: Conversation from Chicago. This is film Spotting. I'm Adam Kempinar.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 3: So we hoped when we started planning this that maybe
Speaker 3: being a Chicago guy, we could get Michael Shannon to
Speaker 3: come be here at film Spotting Fest. And you know, instead,
Speaker 3: he's off touring the country doing rim songs. And that
Speaker 3: was impossible. So we got the next best thing, Matt
Speaker 3: Singer as Michael Shannon. Back in March, we celebrated twenty
Speaker 3: years of the show with Film Spotting Fest, a three
Speaker 3: day film festival with screenings, a special guest critic, Matt
Speaker 3: Singer yes, cosplaying as Hawaiian shirt wearing Michael Shannon joined
Speaker 3: us for a post screening chat about Jeff Nichols Take Shelter.
Speaker 3: That conversation, plus Michael Phillips and I revisit John Sales
Speaker 3: Lone Star, which turns thirty in the new year. That
Speaker 3: more ahead on film Spotting. Welcome to Film Spotting and
Speaker 3: Happy New Year everyone. We're still on holiday break, but
Speaker 3: that doesn't mean we don't have some fresh audio for you.
Speaker 3: Next week, Josh and I will return with a review
Speaker 3: of Marty Supreme. I'm being told that Josh may also
Speaker 3: have a defense of Avatar, Fire and Ash. There may
Speaker 3: also be a quick roundup of other movies we've caught
Speaker 3: up with since we record ordered our epic Top ten
Speaker 3: Films of twenty twenty five show. Later on in this
Speaker 3: week's show, you'll hear Michael Phillips and I in conversation
Speaker 3: about John sales great nineteen ninety six film Low and
Speaker 3: Star that was recorded after a screening of the film
Speaker 3: back in November as part of the City of Chicago's
Speaker 3: fiftieth anniversary celebration of Ciskel and Ebert. Such a thrill
Speaker 3: to be part of that, but First, we're going to
Speaker 3: go back to March of twenty twenty five and Film
Speaker 3: Spotting Fest, our three day celebration of twenty years of
Speaker 3: this show. Over that March weekend, we hosted screening of
Speaker 3: six films at two of Chicago's finest cinemas, the historic
Speaker 3: Music Box Theater on the city's North side and the
Speaker 3: Genes Ciskel Film Center Downtown. Special guests joined us for
Speaker 3: all six screenings, and over the past nine months we've
Speaker 3: shared the audio from all of those conversations, including director
Speaker 3: Ryan Johnson talking about his debut film, Brick Coganata talking
Speaker 3: about his debut film, Columbus critics Danas Stevens, Alison will More,
Speaker 3: and Scott Tobias On respectively, Statuget Rays pather Ponchali, Sean
Speaker 3: Baker's Tangerine, and Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise. That leaves us
Speaker 3: with just one film and one special guest left. We've
Speaker 3: been saving it up. Matt Singer, the Screen Crush critic
Speaker 3: and author of Opposable Thumbs, How Ciskel and Ebert change
Speaker 3: movies Forever. We've got a little theme going on this show.
Speaker 3: He joined me for a screening of and a very
Speaker 3: personal conversation about Jeff nichols twenty eleven film Take Shelter.
Speaker 3: The film stars Nichols regular Michael Shannon as a man
Speaker 3: experiencing frightening apocalyptic visions who goes to extreme ends to
Speaker 3: keep his family safe. Jessica Chastain plays his wife, their
Speaker 3: young daughter, whose death is played by Tova Stewart from
Speaker 3: March earlier this year. Here is that conversation, which starts
Speaker 3: with me explaining why Matt is dressed as Michael Shannon.
Speaker 3: Matt said, if he promised on social media, if you
Speaker 3: follow him, that if this event sells out and the
Speaker 3: place seems pretty packed to me, that he would would
Speaker 3: wear a special outfit.
Speaker 4: And indeed, you if.
Speaker 5: You google Michael Shannon red carpet, the first thing you
Speaker 5: will see is him dressed on a red carpet. He
Speaker 5: didn't have pictures of himself on his I had that
Speaker 5: made special for you guys. But uh, that was what
Speaker 5: I said I would dress in that. So I did
Speaker 5: my best.
Speaker 6: As best I could. And here you are, well, such
Speaker 6: a great comedy. I felt like we should really embrace
Speaker 6: lighten things up.
Speaker 5: Yeah, uh, I'm gonna take these off because I literally
Speaker 5: I cannot see without my glasses, but that was part
Speaker 5: of the look.
Speaker 6: Make sure you google and so you see I'm not well.
Speaker 4: I don't like that you've already broken character.
Speaker 6: But sorry.
Speaker 2: Sorry.
Speaker 4: The met singer I know commits to the bit.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well this is yeah, this is a lot of commitment.
Speaker 4: Come on, you're right, fair enough.
Speaker 3: So let's start, Matt, as we have been throughout the day,
Speaker 3: a little bit with you before we talk about the film,
Speaker 3: our relationship to you, why you are here at Film
Speaker 3: Spotting Fest. You were one of the first guests we
Speaker 3: had in mind, and that goes back to the fact
Speaker 3: that I think you were the first, let's say, national
Speaker 3: media outlet to have anything to say about Film Spotting
Speaker 3: then Cinecast.
Speaker 4: This was just a few months in.
Speaker 3: I don't know if iTunes it even launched yet, but
Speaker 3: we'd been doing the show for a little bit, and
Speaker 3: I don't know if you just reached out to us
Speaker 3: one day and said I'm either gonna do this or
Speaker 3: I just did it. But you did a feature about
Speaker 3: this on IFC News, like a sixty second hit, and
Speaker 3: I remember very vividly how you explained there's this new
Speaker 3: thing called podcasts in your announcer TV guy voice that
Speaker 3: you have. So what was your recollection of discovering I
Speaker 3: guess us discovering podcasting why you felt like it was
Speaker 3: worth doing a story and I FC news about.
Speaker 6: Well, what I remember about that is, yeah, Apple had
Speaker 6: started the iTunes store.
Speaker 5: That was what the impetus was, like, there's this new
Speaker 5: thing called podcasts, and.
Speaker 6: I forget how I found out about.
Speaker 5: Maybe it was covered in something else whereas like there's
Speaker 5: even ones about movies and yours was included. And as
Speaker 5: someone who loved Cisco and eBird and conversations about movies
Speaker 5: going back to when I was a kid, I was like,
Speaker 5: this is fabulous. And at the time I was working
Speaker 5: for IFC and we were always we were doing basically
Speaker 5: at the time, IFC did not have commercials, and so
Speaker 5: my job was to create news that would kind of
Speaker 5: interstitials between the movies, because the movies would air, you know,
Speaker 5: like uncut with no brakes, but then they would show
Speaker 5: to space things out and sometimes they were sponsored, so
Speaker 5: they were basically were commercials. They were secret commercials. So
Speaker 5: I we would come up with ideas and I pitched one.
Speaker 5: I think honestly what it was was maybe Ebert and
Speaker 5: Roper had started a podcast, but it was just the
Speaker 5: audio version of the show, and I think we did
Speaker 5: something about just like you know, you were sort of
Speaker 5: the David versus the Goliath of Ebert and Roper, that
Speaker 5: they were the bad guys, which is very ironic how
Speaker 5: things turned out later.
Speaker 6: But yeah, that was the impetus for that.
Speaker 5: Yes, I don't remember emailing you about it, but at
Speaker 5: some point we did start chatting. I remember seeing it
Speaker 5: and that's where our friendship. I was wearing this in
Speaker 5: the spot. Ironically, there's just a weird coincidence.
Speaker 6: So let's talk.
Speaker 3: About Take Shelter and why you were the good candidate.
Speaker 3: You were a good candidate to talk about this movie
Speaker 3: with us. Back in twenty eleven, we already said it.
Speaker 3: Josh had it as his number five film of the year.
Speaker 3: It was my number two film of the year. You
Speaker 3: had it at number one.
Speaker 2: Guy.
Speaker 6: You guys blew it, we blew it.
Speaker 3: I had this little Terrence Malick movie called The Tree
Speaker 3: of Life, So did you know Josh did as well.
Speaker 3: But you went all in on Jeff Nichols and this film.
Speaker 3: Why was it your number one back in twenty eleven.
Speaker 5: I genuinely believe this is like one of the great
Speaker 5: movies of my lifetime, and hopefully this does not.
Speaker 6: You know, I'm not making fun of this movie. I'm
Speaker 6: making fun of my myself and being silly.
Speaker 5: But this is almost like a defense mechanism because talking
Speaker 5: about this movie exposes all of the realities of my life,
Speaker 5: which is that to me, this is like the best
Speaker 5: movie ever made about living with anxiety. I know, I
Speaker 5: look like a really cool and put together person, but
Speaker 5: the reality is that, like, you know, the the that
Speaker 5: I relate to this character on a on a level
Speaker 5: that is almost too personal to talk about, you know,
Speaker 5: like there isn't like a history of schizophrena in my family,
Speaker 5: but there is a history of really intense anxiety and
Speaker 5: this idea of fear, you know, as this almost crippling
Speaker 5: force in your life that can take hold of you
Speaker 5: and is almost more dangerous and more insidious and more
Speaker 5: threatening than whatever it is you're afraid of. I think
Speaker 5: this movie communicates that idea in a way that is
Speaker 5: better than hours of therapy that I have taken. Like,
Speaker 5: I think I got more out of this movie than
Speaker 5: I have talking to certain therapists in my life and
Speaker 5: I'm not saying that like facetiously. I genuinely mean that,
Speaker 5: like there is like a I don't know this movie.
Speaker 5: You know, you could describe it as a scary or
Speaker 5: you know, certainly moments that are in it are disturbing, scary, horrifying,
Speaker 5: But I almost find something kind of like uplifting about
Speaker 5: the ending in a weird in a very weird way.
Speaker 5: I admit that is strange, but I genuinely find something
Speaker 5: almost hopeful and therapeutic about the end of this movie.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, I thought we might build to the ending,
Speaker 3: but maybe we should just dive into the ending.
Speaker 4: What do you say, should we talk about it?
Speaker 3: You open the door, okay, Matt, the story, the storm seller,
Speaker 3: the storm celler door. Yeah, let's see what will be
Speaker 3: reveal the other side on the other side, shine the
Speaker 3: light on us. Just tell us your your thoughts on
Speaker 3: it and it has your take on the ending changed
Speaker 3: it all over the years if you as you've thought
Speaker 3: about this film.
Speaker 5: Well, I'm curious first, like, because I know people do
Speaker 5: like this is it is the sort of ending that
Speaker 5: encourages debate, and so I'm curious to like, do people
Speaker 5: in the audience think that this is really happening. What
Speaker 5: is the end of the movie? Is that, like an
Speaker 5: are we to take that as a literal? The apocalypse
Speaker 5: or whatever it is.
Speaker 4: Is upon them?
Speaker 5: Some people feel that way a couple of hands, Oh, okay,
Speaker 5: you can it's all right. Look, I shared my deepest
Speaker 5: personal issues.
Speaker 6: You can raise your hand at a question, okay.
Speaker 5: And then how many people think that it's, uh, you know,
Speaker 5: this is another dream, or it's it's we're not supposed
Speaker 5: to take it literally. It's okay, maybe it's maybe more,
Speaker 5: but it's there's a So to me, like, I feel
Speaker 5: like the answer, whatever you feel is is correct for
Speaker 5: you obviously. And I love what Ryan Johnson said yesterday
Speaker 5: about like, you know, like film criticism is like a
Speaker 5: documentary of a person's experience of a movie.
Speaker 6: I love that.
Speaker 5: I thought that was really lovely. So whatever you feel
Speaker 5: is wonderful. But for me, it's like the answer is irrelevant,
Speaker 5: Like they're like the debate is irrelevant.
Speaker 6: Like to me, the thing that matters is that he's not.
Speaker 5: Afraid, and he and his and his and and the
Speaker 5: Jessica chests, same character sees it too, the daughter sees
Speaker 5: it too, and that whatever is going to happen. They're
Speaker 5: gonna face it together, and he's and it and they
Speaker 5: are a like, you know, visually, they are a cohesive unit.
Speaker 5: And so to me, that is like where you find
Speaker 5: like the hopefulness in this movie, because again, like you
Speaker 5: can live, you can literally put yourself in a stormshell
Speaker 5: storm celler and put on a gas mask and just say,
Speaker 5: I'm just it's too scary out there, something bad is
Speaker 5: out there or whatever the phrase is to use you,
Speaker 5: I'm afraid something bad is coming.
Speaker 6: Well, there always is something bad right coming, right.
Speaker 5: So it's not a matter of that, it's a matter
Speaker 5: of are you going you know, like, are you going
Speaker 5: to stay in a storm seller? I can't say that
Speaker 5: phrase apparently, storm seller, are you going to stay down there?
Speaker 6: Or are you going to live your life?
Speaker 4: Yeah? No, I think that's a great take.
Speaker 3: And going back to the show and when we discussed
Speaker 3: it, it was actually Dana Stevens, who was on film spotting
Speaker 3: at the time when we reviewed it, filling in as
Speaker 3: a guest host. And I don't think we necessarily talked
Speaker 3: about it ahead of time or planned to get into
Speaker 3: the ending, but it was also one of those things
Speaker 3: where you kind of felt like you had to, and
Speaker 3: I only had really one line in my notes, but
Speaker 3: then we devoted some bonus content to it and ended
Speaker 3: up unpacking it a little bit, and it was a
Speaker 3: discussion that seemed to be helpful for some listeners who
Speaker 3: were in a state of kind of going okay, this
Speaker 3: sort of feels like Jeff Nichols just unraveled everything we saw,
Speaker 3: and I ultimately agree with you, Matt. I think I'll
Speaker 3: just take a harder line, though, and say that I
Speaker 3: don't think there's any reason to believe, based on the
Speaker 3: previous one hundred plus minutes, that the vision at the
Speaker 3: end is anything but another vision. Just the reality of
Speaker 3: the movie suggests that it is another vision, another hallucination,
Speaker 3: another nightmare. But what matters is exactly what you said.
Speaker 3: And it goes back. It goes back to a couple
Speaker 3: of lines in the film, and one in particular, when
Speaker 3: he finally comes clean with his wife at the table,
Speaker 3: he says, I need you to believe me. But even
Speaker 3: more pointed, remember when they're driving home and he's got
Speaker 3: both of them in the car in the back and
Speaker 3: a lot of activity is happening and he's getting unnerved,
Speaker 3: and he says is anybody seeing this and the whole film,
Speaker 3: nobody else has seen it, whether it's Shay Wegm or
Speaker 3: anyone else.
Speaker 4: This is all happening to him.
Speaker 3: This is his experience, and it feels as if he's
Speaker 3: completely alone in it, and he's he's he's building it
Speaker 3: that way. He won't let her in, he won't let
Speaker 3: other people in. And so what matters, as you said, Matt,
Speaker 3: at the end, is the fact that they both see it.
Speaker 4: She sees it, they she nods at him. That's what
Speaker 4: really matters.
Speaker 3: And we understand that they as a couple are moving
Speaker 3: forward and it's going to get harder. As the doctor says,
Speaker 3: before it gets better, it's going to be harder. And
Speaker 3: that's what I think for me that image suggests. But
Speaker 3: at least they're finally they're on the same page. They are,
Speaker 3: they are in agreement that they're going to fight this together.
Speaker 2: Your mother was diagnosed with paranoids in her thirties, I
Speaker 2: thought before wanderings.
Speaker 3: No, it's been telling me how straying Curtis has been
Speaker 3: acting ly.
Speaker 2: Is anyone seeing this? Tell people what you've been doing?
Speaker 2: I know, I'm sorry you friends.
Speaker 6: The other the other thing that I would say.
Speaker 5: Is important about the ending that I don't always see
Speaker 5: talked about, is you know the whole movie is about
Speaker 5: uncertainty again, fear, anxiety, and so much of the movie
Speaker 5: it's bouncing between reality and hallucination or dream or whatever
Speaker 5: you want to call it. And so many times in
Speaker 5: the movie does this so beautifully where it constantly is
Speaker 5: messing with you, the audience member, Are we awake or
Speaker 5: are we hallucinating?
Speaker 4: Or are is it?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 5: The whole movie and that ending, leaving you with a
Speaker 5: question of is this real or is this not? Puts
Speaker 5: you into the position of that character this whole movie,
Speaker 5: the whole movie. He's asking himself, is anyone seeing this?
Speaker 6: Am I going crazy? Am I hallucinating? Is you know?
Speaker 2: So?
Speaker 5: Leaving you in that state is a way is like
Speaker 5: an almost like an empathetic gesture.
Speaker 6: It allows you to feel what this character has.
Speaker 2: Been feeling for the whole movie.
Speaker 3: I agree, and I'll use that word feeling here as well.
Speaker 3: He says that to her, right, he says, it's a feeling.
Speaker 3: He's trying to describe what he's going for, and it's
Speaker 3: very hard thing for him to articulate because it is
Speaker 3: a feeling. And I think at the end, even though
Speaker 3: we have that conversation, the preceding conversation with the doctor,
Speaker 3: and the doctor explains this is he's gonna have to
Speaker 3: commit to treatment. He might be away from the family
Speaker 3: for a little bit. If the movie ends with the
Speaker 3: big reveal being him hit. He comes outside and the
Speaker 3: light shines and he sees it and he says it's fine.
Speaker 3: After an entire film with him saying what, I'm all right,
Speaker 3: I got it, I'm fine, it's fine. I'm not and
Speaker 3: at the end he finally says it's fine, and it
Speaker 3: actually is fine for the first time, it's fine. If
Speaker 3: it ended there, I think we'd all kind of walk
Speaker 3: out of the theater feeling like, Yeah, everything's gonna be great.
Speaker 3: They're right, they're they're finally gonna move forward, their their
Speaker 3: marriage is stronger, they're they're communicating better.
Speaker 4: He's gonna get treatment. We can walk out and feel
Speaker 4: great about the ending.
Speaker 3: And Jeff Nichol says, no, I need you to leave
Speaker 3: with the feeling like this isn't over.
Speaker 4: This is an over by a long shot, right.
Speaker 5: And again that's very true of anxiety, you know, like,
Speaker 5: at least as I have experienced it.
Speaker 6: You have these.
Speaker 5: Periods where you are extremely that or heightened, or you're
Speaker 5: having these really intent panic attacks, and then.
Speaker 6: You know, hopefully you get maybe get it under control.
Speaker 6: But it doesn't go like there is no magical solution.
Speaker 5: You know, Like he has that scene where he's like,
Speaker 5: I need you to tell me what I need to take.
Speaker 4: Get it under to get it under control, fix.
Speaker 6: To fix this.
Speaker 5: And the answer is not, there isn't The answer is
Speaker 5: there is no answer. The answer is learning to accept
Speaker 5: it and to and to live with it a little more,
Speaker 5: maybe without building you know, spent getting a home loan
Speaker 5: and building a storm shehelf.
Speaker 6: I can't say storm, cellar, what is rot?
Speaker 3: That's sorry the moment where you know, I mean, right
Speaker 3: from the beginning, it's it's ominous, right. It opens on
Speaker 3: him standing outside in the rain and he's seeing it
Speaker 3: come down. But when Shay Wigan, when his friend says
Speaker 3: to him, basically, you have a perfect life. You're a
Speaker 3: good man, you have a good life. We know what
Speaker 3: this could be foreshadowing, you know, and and the fact
Speaker 3: that he he is.
Speaker 4: A good man. We see that he on the job.
Speaker 3: He doesn't want to stop early, right, just because it
Speaker 3: looks like it might be rain Like. He seems to
Speaker 3: be a man of integrity and honesty, and he is
Speaker 3: trying to do everything he can for his family. But
Speaker 3: as you've said, in the end, bad things are going
Speaker 3: to come for you.
Speaker 4: Anyway.
Speaker 3: You can be a good man, You can do everything right,
Speaker 3: you can, you know, And these are modest ambitions that
Speaker 3: these characters have. They want to they want to be
Speaker 3: able to go to the beach house on vacation maybe
Speaker 3: once a year. They want to pay all their bills.
Speaker 3: They want their daughter to be able to hear that.
Speaker 3: That's about it. But there's just this this fear, this
Speaker 3: this spear, as you said, that's hanging over him the
Speaker 3: entire time.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you mentioned the daughter, and I what I I had.
Speaker 5: I saw this movie when a K I had my
Speaker 5: number one. I may not have seen it again until
Speaker 5: a week ago when I rewatched it getting ready for
Speaker 5: this and then watching it here again today, and really
Speaker 5: in those two new viewings, really struck by how wonderfully
Speaker 5: the daughter fits into the one of the other themes
Speaker 5: of this movie, which is communication and the struggle to
Speaker 5: communicate with their daughter, and how important that is, and
Speaker 5: how his fears about that again connect to his mental struggles,
Speaker 5: but also again his struggle to communicate with everyone. And
Speaker 5: there's so much about this movie and about anxiety that
Speaker 5: is his reaction to it is to I mean, maybe
Speaker 5: this is too much symbolism or reading too much in
Speaker 5: but the idea that he's a construction worker and he
Speaker 5: spends his life building things, and then we watch him
Speaker 5: in this movie begin to build walls around his issues.
Speaker 5: He builds a fence, a pen for the dog. The
Speaker 5: dog is scary. I'm going to put the dog in
Speaker 5: a cage and that will solve my fear. Oh there's
Speaker 5: more fear now, I'm worried about this. I'm going to build.
Speaker 5: He literally puts up walls, you know. He builds a
Speaker 5: storm cellar and then he goes into it, you know.
Speaker 6: And and so.
Speaker 5: He he is trying to solve the problem by just
Speaker 5: closing it off. I'm gonna I'm gonna seal this thing in.
Speaker 5: I'm gonna bury it way down deep in the ground,
Speaker 5: you know. I mean, And that's something I joke about
Speaker 5: with my wife, is like, you know, I'm gonna just
Speaker 5: I'm just gonna bury it, bury it way down deep
Speaker 5: and that's like he almost literally tries to do.
Speaker 6: That in this movie and finds out spoiler alert that never.
Speaker 4: Word, it doesn't work.
Speaker 3: So a couple days ago, as we were doing our
Speaker 3: final prep for this, we're on a call with producer
Speaker 3: Sam and he says, you know, at festivals, there always
Speaker 3: ends up being connections that developed between films, and I
Speaker 3: wonder what they'll be. And of course we probably should
Speaker 3: have known that because unlike most film festivals, we've seen
Speaker 3: all these movies before and we probably could have planned those.
Speaker 4: Connections, but we did not.
Speaker 3: And here I am, and I'm thinking about Brick last
Speaker 3: night and Ryan Johnson talking about Brendan and we're having
Speaker 3: the conversation about his type of masculinity and how did
Speaker 3: he describe him as self righteous? What's more self righteous
Speaker 3: than Michael Shannon in that scene right where he finally
Speaker 3: goes off on all the other people in his community.
Speaker 3: But also I don't remember the exact lines, but how
Speaker 3: does Brendan describe the way he loves Emily? For those
Speaker 3: of you who are there, he says, I love you.
Speaker 3: This is how I show my love. I have to
Speaker 3: protect you, right, And this is what we're getting here
Speaker 3: with Michael Shannon's character as well. But I think also
Speaker 3: we just watched Father Ponchali and to your point about walls,
Speaker 3: we have a mother in that film who is trying
Speaker 3: the entire movie to get her walls actually fortified. Literally,
Speaker 3: she needs the walls fortified to try to protect her family. Unfortunately,
Speaker 3: she is actually alone. She's unnecessarily alone her husband in
Speaker 3: this case, the father is kind of mia.
Speaker 4: Unfortunately for most of.
Speaker 3: The film, he is unnecessarily building up these walls, right, yeah, I.
Speaker 6: Mean I get.
Speaker 5: I mean it's funny because I'm like, I never again
Speaker 5: watching it the first time, I don't know that I
Speaker 5: noticed any of these things. But even this, this this
Speaker 5: idea of the walls that he's and the structures he's
Speaker 5: building to contain and hide and protect himself. I mean
Speaker 5: it's sort of again obvious. But the ending, the ending
Speaker 5: is opening opening a door literally being open you know,
Speaker 5: uh it all it kind of fits together in that
Speaker 5: beautiful way that that you know, and and that the
Speaker 5: that Jessica Chesstain's character.
Speaker 6: It says him, you have to do this.
Speaker 5: I could open I could, I could open the door,
Speaker 5: but that wouldn't solve the problem. You have to open it,
Speaker 5: you have to be open perhaps and uh and that
Speaker 5: and so you have that and what and what a
Speaker 5: powerful ending that is, which is literally just that that
Speaker 5: that being the the moment. I think a movie that
Speaker 5: has these huge apocalyptic visions and that you're you know,
Speaker 5: they I remember the I remember the first time I
Speaker 5: saw it being so talk about anxiety, like when they
Speaker 5: go in there for the first time and you don't
Speaker 5: know how that scene is going to resolve. I remember
Speaker 5: just really like being really white knuckled watching that. Just
Speaker 5: the amount of tension that they get out of that
Speaker 5: sequence that ends in such a sort of simple way,
Speaker 5: I think is just brilliant filmmaking.
Speaker 3: Well, that was vulnerable, So I'll be a little vulnerable, right,
Speaker 3: We've got to be honest, Like I have had probably,
Speaker 3: oh gosh, ten to twenty at least moments like he
Speaker 3: has in the film at Night, where you have a
Speaker 3: panic attack where you wake up in the middle of
Speaker 3: the night, scare your wife half to death because you
Speaker 3: feel like you can't bread, you feel like you're choking
Speaker 3: on something, you feel completely over.
Speaker 4: You actually do think you're.
Speaker 3: In my case, choking on something that has happened many
Speaker 3: times dozens of times in my life, right, so.
Speaker 4: I can relate in a lot of ways to this character.
Speaker 3: And I mentioned earlier the top five things we learned
Speaker 3: from the movies we did an episode four hundred, I
Speaker 3: think I want to share this just because it underscores,
Speaker 3: you know, what we're talking about with this. It's themes
Speaker 3: of communication and vulnerability and honesty. The scene for me
Speaker 3: that I talked about an episode four hundred, I think
Speaker 3: is so important is when he wakes up that one
Speaker 3: morning after having a panic attack, and he has wept
Speaker 3: the bed right. And if you think about all of
Speaker 3: us in the room, if something like that happened to you,
Speaker 3: how many of you and let's assume just like in
Speaker 3: this case, he's got a loving, supportive wife. If he
Speaker 3: said to her, if he was honest with her and said,
Speaker 3: I don't know what happened, but look at the sheets,
Speaker 3: she would say, well, we maybe need to get you
Speaker 3: in to see a doctor, and we need to try
Speaker 3: and address this, and let's clean the sheets. But because
Speaker 3: of his shame, because of the fear of what he thinks,
Speaker 3: this is going to lead to the fear that they're
Speaker 3: going to think that he's losing control. And he's not
Speaker 3: fulfilling his duties as husband and father, and just I
Speaker 3: think too, the shame of that masculine sort of shame
Speaker 3: and that pride.
Speaker 4: He what does he do?
Speaker 3: He hides it, He doesn't he want her to come
Speaker 3: over next to him, and he goes and washes the
Speaker 3: sheets and puts the bed back together in private. I
Speaker 3: wonder how many of us would do the exact same thing,
Speaker 3: even if we even if we think we're in a
Speaker 3: really healthy relationship and we could be as honest as
Speaker 3: we want with each other, in that moment, wouldn't you
Speaker 3: also feel a little bit of shame? Wouldn't you want
Speaker 3: to probably cover it up? That's that's the kind of
Speaker 3: questions I think Jeff Nichols is really getting at and
Speaker 3: exploring in this film and why it feels very personal,
Speaker 3: and I think why many of us can have that
Speaker 3: personal connection to it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I know.
Speaker 5: And you know, one of the other sort of personal
Speaker 5: reactions I had this time was when I it's is
Speaker 5: it twenty ten?
Speaker 6: Twenty eleven?
Speaker 4: Is when the movie twenty eleven?
Speaker 6: So I was not.
Speaker 5: I was married, but I wasn't a dad then and
Speaker 5: now I have I have two kids, so that adds
Speaker 5: an extra an extra wrinkle of fun. I guess, let's say,
Speaker 5: to watching this movie is to and having kids really
Speaker 5: does add that level of anxiety. You know you were
Speaker 5: talking before about like their extremely modest ambitions and goals
Speaker 5: and like the things that he wants to protect.
Speaker 6: And that's it.
Speaker 5: I told again, that's another thing that I think is
Speaker 5: so beautiful about the movie is that idea of.
Speaker 6: I don't have a lot, but what I have is great,
Speaker 6: this is all I need. I just don't want anything
Speaker 6: bad to happen. I don't want anything to jeopardize that.
Speaker 6: And I think that as.
Speaker 5: A father, I can really sadly relate to that you
Speaker 5: know that you know and and and I think again
Speaker 5: that the movie really it taps into such a beautiful
Speaker 5: personal way of expressing all of those ideas that you know,
Speaker 5: Like seeing it now, I had an even more intense
Speaker 5: reaction to even knowing you know. As I said, like
Speaker 5: I find the the ending to be somewhat hopeful and
Speaker 5: kind of optimistic in a weird way therapeutic, but just
Speaker 5: experiencing that aspect of it now, it just adds another
Speaker 5: fun wrinkle of tension and anxiety.
Speaker 3: Well, Matt Singer added a fun wrinkle to film spotting Fest.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much Matt Singer for being here, Thank
Speaker 3: you for sharing your thoughts on the film that was.
Speaker 3: Film critic Matt Singer and me at the Film spotting
Speaker 3: Fest screening of Jeff Nichols.
Speaker 4: Take shelter.
Speaker 3: For more Film spotting Fest conversations, you can go to
Speaker 3: filmspottingfest dot com or listen wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 4: How do you live well?
Speaker 6: I live with the conference of I believe in myself,
Speaker 6: the money will follow.
Speaker 4: And what do you plan to do if this whole
Speaker 4: dream of yours doesn't work?
Speaker 7: At it doesn't even enter my consciousness.
Speaker 3: Before we get to our conversation about Lone Star, a
Speaker 3: couple of quick notes. We do have a lot planned
Speaker 3: for January here on Film spotting Next week we'll have
Speaker 3: a review of Christmas Day release Marty Supreme, along with
Speaker 3: Josh talking about Avatar Fire and Ash. Yes, I think
Speaker 3: I am going to sit that one out. We do
Speaker 3: expect to have a couple of more recent releases in
Speaker 3: the mix as well. The following week it's our twenty
Speaker 3: twenty five wrap party. That's where we share our favorite
Speaker 3: scenes and moments of the twenty twenty five movie year,
Speaker 3: and then later in the month it's our twenty twenty
Speaker 3: six movie preview. We've got our Oscar nomination reactions, and maybe,
Speaker 3: well it's not a maybe, we've got it on the calendar.
Speaker 3: We actually have a Sacred Cow conversation already planned for
Speaker 3: Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another. Yes, the film
Speaker 3: of twenty twenty five. We've got it on the docket
Speaker 3: for early twenty twenty six to already revisit reflect on
Speaker 3: that film before we completely close the book on this
Speaker 3: past year, on that rap party show. In a couple
Speaker 3: of weeks, we will announce the winner of the Film
Speaker 3: Spotting Golden Brick Award, our favorite film by a new
Speaker 3: or emerging director. You get to help choose the winner
Speaker 3: of that award, and you could do that by voting
Speaker 3: in the Film Spotting Poll, which is available now at
Speaker 3: film spotting dot Net. The twenty twenty five Brick nominees
Speaker 3: are Julian Glanders Animated Boys Go to Jupiter, which is
Speaker 3: available now vod. The film whose title explains it all,
Speaker 3: Grand Theft Hamlet that's available via Movie and You Can Act,
Speaker 3: says that via Amazon Prime the David osit directed documentary Predators,
Speaker 3: which is available via Paramount Plus Eva. Victor is Sorry Baby,
Speaker 3: that's streaming on HBO Max and available via other VOD platforms.
Speaker 3: And finally, another documentary being distributed locally or by our
Speaker 3: local distributor, Music Box Films, Charlie Shackleton's Zodiac Killer Project.
Speaker 3: Now that is one that may be a little bit
Speaker 3: harder to see, but you have some time to vote.
Speaker 3: Your vote actually is in due until I think our
Speaker 3: deadline's going to be Sunday, January eleventh, and Zodiac Killer
Speaker 3: Project comes out on VOD. You can see it digitally
Speaker 3: starting January six So if you want to do all
Speaker 3: your homework, make sure you've seen all five of these,
Speaker 3: and hey, Zodiac Killer Project is a good one, make
Speaker 3: sure that you make time for it. January sixth is
Speaker 3: when that movie comes out. You can vote in that
Speaker 3: poll and leave a comment at Film Spotting.
Speaker 7: I thought it was important to acknowledge the new modes
Speaker 7: that the Ciskel and Ebert format is taking in new
Speaker 7: media spaces as we celebrate their fiftieth anniversary. And I
Speaker 7: thought that Adam and Film Spotting were the perfect example
Speaker 7: of this.
Speaker 3: That was Alex Vasquez from the Chicago Film Office. This fall,
Speaker 3: Chicago Film and the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs celebrated
Speaker 3: fifty years of Ciskel and Ebert with some special film
Speaker 3: screenings and events, including a film they invited us to host,
Speaker 3: and I got to pick. That was what was so
Speaker 3: wonderful about this. Alex gave me a call said, do
Speaker 3: you have any ideas on what you might want to screen?
Speaker 3: And John sales nineteen ninety six film Lone Star was
Speaker 3: one of the first movies that came to mine. As
Speaker 3: you will hear me explain shortly in the post screening conversation.
Speaker 3: Lone Star is set on the US Mexico border and
Speaker 3: stars Chris Cooper as a small town sheriff, Sam Dead's
Speaker 3: who starts unearthing long buried secrets after the remains of
Speaker 3: a former sheriff are discovered, a former share who disappeared
Speaker 3: under mysterious circumstances. Mysterious circumstances that may have involved Sam's
Speaker 3: father Buddy, played by a very young Matthew McConaughey. The
Speaker 3: disappeared sheriff He's played by Chris Christofferson. Elizabeth Tania also
Speaker 3: stars sheriff Deed sheff.
Speaker 2: Ded is dad, honey, He's just sheaff Julie.
Speaker 7: We found a body out by Fort McKenzie yesterday.
Speaker 1: He got any idea who might have put him there?
Speaker 2: The hell of a time to bring up old business
Speaker 2: that badge and didn't come out of a cereal box,
Speaker 2: started figging holes in this county. Don't telling him what
Speaker 2: will come up? Be too so did you? I Won'll
Speaker 2: find out one way or the other.
Speaker 3: With Josh overseas, I invited Michael Phillips to join me
Speaker 3: for the screening and that conversation Michael Phillips, everybody, Hey, folks, Hey,
Speaker 3: you got them?
Speaker 4: Hi Michael.
Speaker 3: I'm wondering if everybody out there is really processing the
Speaker 3: ending of the film. We might, yeah, forget it. We
Speaker 3: might need to give them another minute or two. But
Speaker 3: I did want to explain my choice of this film,
Speaker 3: and maybe we can talk about the context in which
Speaker 3: you saw Lone Star for the first time. So June
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety six is when this film came out. I
Speaker 3: would have been home for the summer right before my
Speaker 3: senior year of college, sleeping on my parents' couch because
Speaker 3: I didn't have a bedroom anymore.
Speaker 4: And this is before I.
Speaker 3: Had written any film reviews or taken any film studies
Speaker 3: classes or film production classes. My liberal arts school didn't
Speaker 3: have any film classes. I knew I wanted to do
Speaker 3: something in film though at this point, and I was
Speaker 3: watching at the movies religiously. I saw this review. I
Speaker 3: heard them talking about John Sales. I didn't know anything
Speaker 3: about John Sales. The movie looked fascinating. I wanted to
Speaker 3: see this film, and of course it was not playing
Speaker 3: at my little two screen movie theater in my small town,
Speaker 3: and I was so I started scanning the Des Moines
Speaker 3: Register because we had to look at newspapers. Then I'm
Speaker 3: dating myself. The Internet was fledgling at this point, so
Speaker 3: I'm scanning the Des Moines Register constantly to see is
Speaker 3: this going to come to Des Moines? Am I going
Speaker 3: to get to see Lone Star? I have to see
Speaker 3: this movie, And finally it did. It might have been
Speaker 3: like two months after it came out, maybe even three,
Speaker 3: but I eventually did see this movie.
Speaker 2: So wait, it wasn't the streaming the week after it
Speaker 2: opened in the theaters.
Speaker 3: No, no streaming. I do remember too, being intrigued by
Speaker 3: the fact that I don't think I had seen Dazed
Speaker 3: and Confused at this point. Somehow I missed it when
Speaker 3: it came out. That was like Matthew McConaughey's first role.
Speaker 3: But A Time to Kill had come out, or came
Speaker 3: out just a month after this movie, and it had
Speaker 3: been promoted. It was a big movie of the John
Speaker 3: Grisham novel, so i'd seen ads for that constantly. I
Speaker 3: think I saw that before saw Lone Star. And what's funny,
Speaker 3: of course, is that that's the big breakout McConaughey role,
Speaker 3: and Chris Cooper's in that movie and he's a supporting character.
Speaker 3: And I remember being I don't know, just kind of
Speaker 3: surprised by the fact that it's so funny to see
Speaker 3: this little movie and Chris Cooper's the big star and
Speaker 3: Matthew McConaughey's in the supporting role. But I did finally
Speaker 3: get to see Lone Star, and it turns out Roger
Speaker 3: and jan were right. I thought it was a masterpiece,
Speaker 3: and I don't think i'd seen it. Somehow i'd seen
Speaker 3: the entire film until last night prepping for this and
Speaker 3: then watching it again now holds up beautifully. At least
Speaker 3: I felt that it did. So how about you, when
Speaker 3: did you see Lone Star? What did you bring to it?
Speaker 2: So you again you what year in college were you.
Speaker 4: I would have been right before my senior year, so I.
Speaker 2: Was in fourth grade. So that makes you no, No,
Speaker 2: it's but I did for Rogeriebert. There's a piece running
Speaker 2: soon about a similar sort of Ebert and Cisco force
Speaker 2: of influence in my movie going life, where when I
Speaker 2: was second or thirty year of college, this little film
Speaker 2: called My Dinner with Andrei came out and that was
Speaker 2: in eighty one, I think, And yeah, so it's we're
Speaker 2: half a generation issue apart on everything on that, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I saw I saw a Lone Star as a as
Speaker 2: a civilian. This was at a period of my life
Speaker 2: when I was writing about theater, which was about half
Speaker 2: my career, and seeing it again, and it had been
Speaker 2: a similar spread of time since since the second watch,
Speaker 2: and I'm very happy to see it again, not just
Speaker 2: because it's politically, sociologically just historically relevant in ways that
Speaker 2: I wish it weren't. In a way what we're going
Speaker 2: through now, I don't even know what writer directors who
Speaker 2: want to write truthfully and from the heart about what
Speaker 2: they see happening in their country now, what we're going
Speaker 2: to see in another few years, I hope, I hope something.
Speaker 2: I really don't want it to be nothing. It's not
Speaker 2: just that I think watching this now, it's the thing
Speaker 2: that really hits me is that there's a word. I
Speaker 2: caught an adjective that one sort of grousy critic, and
Speaker 2: I don't remember which one it was. It wasn't Siskel
Speaker 2: or Ebert, obviously, but a critic who was sort of
Speaker 2: hot and cold on John Sales use the word civilized
Speaker 2: to describe sort of the tone, the approach, and the
Speaker 2: whole kind of humanist outlook here. And it was sort
Speaker 2: of meant to be kind of a mixed assessment. And
Speaker 2: now seeing this tonight, I can only really see the
Speaker 2: value in it. And also just the craft of this writer.
Speaker 2: The fact that in his writing career is fascinating. I mean,
Speaker 2: he wrote all this, really some of it really entertaining
Speaker 2: trash for Roger Corman, everything from Piranha to I think
Speaker 2: uncredited work on some Corman films, including I think Black Mama,
Speaker 2: White Mama, which we see playing at the drive in
Speaker 2: in that scene and the flashback, and the fact that
Speaker 2: he could actually juggle successfully eighteen or so. It's eighteen
Speaker 2: credited actors on the open credits, So I think basically
Speaker 2: eighteen substantial roles without seeming crazy overpacked to me, and
Speaker 2: without its seeming ginned up for melodrama every second. God knows,
Speaker 2: you know, and and Sales knows what kind of filmmaker
Speaker 2: he is. He knows that he's a guy that will
Speaker 2: never be grabby enough for a big audience, for a
Speaker 2: big box office boom. You know. He just he cannot
Speaker 2: change his temperament, which is interesting coming out of the
Speaker 2: career he coming out of the writing career he with Korman,
Speaker 2: which is all just like can we you know, just
Speaker 2: throw the trash at the screen, make an entertaining, make
Speaker 2: it cheap. But I mean, look at all the great
Speaker 2: people that came out of working with Corman, everyone from
Speaker 2: Jonathan demidev Scor says, and here we have John Sales.
Speaker 2: So anyway, that's the writing is what really Yeah, a
Speaker 2: lot alone the acting, but that's a different story. That's
Speaker 2: a yeah, yeah, I think the writing.
Speaker 3: Of course, you saw the clip from Ciskel Niehburg Gene
Speaker 3: talked about that, and I agree. I think if this
Speaker 3: was a film that just gave us the kind of
Speaker 3: murder mystery Charlie Wade storyline and introduced us to a
Speaker 3: few of these characters. You know, we met we met
Speaker 3: Big Oh, and we understood a little bit about his
Speaker 3: backstory because we need to because he ends up being
Speaker 3: a major player in this mystery. It would have been
Speaker 3: fairly satisfying. But the fact that we get I think
Speaker 3: Alex's word was tapestry. I mean the fact that we
Speaker 3: get all of these characters. And there are a lot
Speaker 3: of movies, Michael, that try to pull that off, that
Speaker 3: to try to weave together all these different characters give
Speaker 3: us the big ensemble, and they never they never really
Speaker 3: have the depth I think that this movie has. And
Speaker 3: what you notice, I think is John Sales does a
Speaker 3: really good job of giving every character at least one
Speaker 3: scene where they get to do something that isn't just
Speaker 3: their introduction and then the thing they have to do
Speaker 3: for the plot. You know, they have a scene where
Speaker 3: we get to just even with a character like Enrique,
Speaker 3: who we meet him early in the film when he
Speaker 3: delivers some food to the table with Hollis, and then
Speaker 3: of course at the end where he shows up at
Speaker 3: Mercedes house. But in addition to the other scenes where
Speaker 3: we see him planning the river crossing, he's waiting outside
Speaker 3: and he sees her car and he tells her how
Speaker 3: nice of a car she has. We just get to
Speaker 3: know a little bit about him in terms of his
Speaker 3: personality and a sense of kind of his aspirations. And
Speaker 3: every character has a moment like that, even even as
Speaker 3: subtle as the Texas Ranger we meet Ben Wetzel.
Speaker 2: He's just the love that guy. He's so good and
Speaker 2: you know, we're talking about the guy who comes to
Speaker 2: I mean that. It's like I've never seen less acting
Speaker 2: in my life.
Speaker 3: I know, And it's very subtle.
Speaker 6: He's there to.
Speaker 3: Deliver information right to move the story forward, but Sales
Speaker 3: gives him that great story about Charlie Wade walking into
Speaker 3: his dad's hardware store and saying that he winked at
Speaker 3: me and I wet my pants. That gives that character
Speaker 3: some dimension. I'll give you another one when he goes
Speaker 3: to meet with with Roderick's widow and just the fact
Speaker 3: that she's not just sitting on her porch waiting to
Speaker 3: deliver answers to his questions. She's playing the game boy right,
Speaker 3: and there too, it's emerging of the past and present,
Speaker 3: this older woman playing with this game boy. But it
Speaker 3: it just gives her something to do and to joke
Speaker 3: around about, beyond just again serving the story. Every character
Speaker 3: has something like that. We get to see, we get
Speaker 3: to see how they interact with each other and a
Speaker 3: sense of their interiority beyond just what they're doing there
Speaker 3: to serve the plot. Yeah, I suppose, I suppose if
Speaker 3: you have a car wait, you're disagreeing.
Speaker 2: With no, no, no, not yet less than.
Speaker 4: Usual, This would be appropriate if he was.
Speaker 2: I mean there are there are at times when when
Speaker 2: you're sort of aware of of of exactly what you're
Speaker 2: saying that you're not getting. You're not you're not. It's
Speaker 2: not plot forward in that way. It's plenty ploty, you know.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's a couple of reversals that you know,
Speaker 2: we can argue about, you know, the value over whatever.
Speaker 2: But Sales is a big fan of Raymond Chandler as
Speaker 2: a lot of people, right, and who's a guy, you know,
Speaker 2: Philip Marlow, you know, l a crime all that, and
Speaker 2: plot was very busy in a in a Philip Marlow
Speaker 2: mystery without really being as important as anything else going on.
Speaker 2: I mean, what's Chandler was really into. It was just
Speaker 2: this weird sort of like, you know, kind of organism
Speaker 2: that was l A that he that he got to
Speaker 2: know in the thirties and forties, in the fifties, although
Speaker 2: I think they lived in La Joya for a time.
Speaker 2: Anybody know La Joya? The to Chandler wrote one grade
Speaker 2: line on that's his hand. He just he just said, ayah,
Speaker 2: it's nothing but a climate, That's what he said. But
Speaker 2: I think what what Sales is doing here in Lone
Speaker 2: Star is is kind of attribute to something like Tandler,
Speaker 2: because it's like he more than I will say this,
Speaker 2: more than a lot of his movies. I think Sales
Speaker 2: does seem activated by being on location really really down
Speaker 2: where we're talking about, I mean fictionalized you know, names
Speaker 2: of the towns, but that that just feels like it's
Speaker 2: doing a lot of the work we need done and
Speaker 2: the actors kind of filling from there. You just you
Speaker 2: can tell it's And in terms of the writing too,
Speaker 2: you know this whole business about algorithmic writing where Netflix people,
Speaker 2: if you're doing just rogic for Netflix, uh, you know,
Speaker 2: the note is always given that you have to as
Speaker 2: a writer. You have to reiterate the stupid single one
Speaker 2: idea plot over and over, or assuming people are texting
Speaker 2: while they're watching, they're not really looking, so you have
Speaker 2: to you know, you can't, you know, and that I
Speaker 2: meanes Sales would be running a hardware store today if
Speaker 2: you had to put up on that stuff here, right, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: In terms of the screenplay, dialogue is usually I don't know,
Speaker 3: I'd put it maybe fourth on the list of things
Speaker 3: that criteria for a great screenplay.
Speaker 4: But there are some really good lines here. We got
Speaker 4: a great laugh out of it, the.
Speaker 3: Great zinger when the character I think it's Mikey who says, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's always heartwarming to see a prejudice defeated by a
Speaker 3: deeper prejudice. Come on, that's a good line. But the
Speaker 3: writing may be the standout here. But where I think
Speaker 3: Lone Star might be a standout in sales career. And
Speaker 3: I've seen almost all of his films, but it's been
Speaker 3: a long time since I've seen a lot of sales films,
Speaker 3: So I don't know if someone.
Speaker 4: Can talk to me after if they've they've seen these films.
Speaker 3: More recently, he's he's known as maybe the godfather of
Speaker 3: American independent cinema. You go back to a film like
Speaker 3: Return of the Sacaca seven is often a film that's
Speaker 3: pointed too as the film that launched that movement and
Speaker 3: the focus. A lot of times, Michael is on independent
Speaker 3: in that two word phrase independent filmmaker, not so much
Speaker 3: on the filmmaking. He's not a filmmaker that's known for
Speaker 3: being ostentatious. He's never trying to draw a lot of
Speaker 3: attention to what he's doing with the camera. But when
Speaker 3: you think about this movie, and when you do think
Speaker 3: about it in the context of a Western, it makes
Speaker 3: me think a little bit of a filmmaker like Howard Hawks,
Speaker 3: who was another filmmaker who didn't move the camera a
Speaker 3: whole lot, but was always well regarded for being a
Speaker 3: guy who knew where to place the camera, always knew
Speaker 3: where to put it in exactly the place it needed
Speaker 3: to be. And when I watch Lone Star, I feel
Speaker 3: like sales one. He knows exactly where to put the camera.
Speaker 3: But then he also does some interesting things with the
Speaker 3: camera here, especially in those flashbacks.
Speaker 2: The scene that's that's what I want to talk about.
Speaker 3: The scene at the end before we even get to
Speaker 3: the kind of editing and the trick of going between
Speaker 3: past and president, which I want to get to. I
Speaker 3: just needed some of the staging and the blocking of
Speaker 3: using some of those low angle shots when he needs
Speaker 3: to to emphasize the authority and the intensity, the intimidation
Speaker 3: of Charlie Wade cutting in just on a close up
Speaker 3: when he needs to really to amp up a scene,
Speaker 3: the canted angle, he'll go to a tilted shot there
Speaker 3: at the end when when Sam walks in and we're
Speaker 3: going to get finally the truth revealed, and especially with
Speaker 3: otis young. Otis there at the end right looking up
Speaker 3: at at at Charlie Wade. There, there's some really effective
Speaker 3: subtle uses of the camera in addition to the great
Speaker 3: editing tea.
Speaker 2: Yeah it took. I mean Sales never had a lot
Speaker 2: of money, even when he had bigger budgets for him.
Speaker 2: I mean this was a somewhat larger budget. And I
Speaker 2: think part of that is you can't really set up
Speaker 2: complicated fluid what is you know, medium length takes quickly.
Speaker 2: You cannot set those up and rehearse them. It takes
Speaker 2: it takes half a day to and and you're looking
Speaker 2: at days like shooting schedules like nineteen days and a
Speaker 2: lot of his pictures twenty three. I mean, I'm amazing
Speaker 2: that he got anything done, you know with that, But
Speaker 2: I yeah, what I really love about about the potential
Speaker 2: narrative moments of like no, wait, who what you know?
Speaker 2: You know, there's a little of that here and there,
Speaker 2: which is almost entirely solved in my in my view,
Speaker 2: by that ideas simple as as can be and not original,
Speaker 2: but really beautifully sort of layered in look at let's
Speaker 2: let's do the flashbacks in this way this time, meaning
Speaker 2: you know, for maximum clarity and also just sort of
Speaker 2: a poetic touch that does not to me seem like
Speaker 2: a like a tick or a gimmick where you just
Speaker 2: you know, you have an actual without a break person
Speaker 2: in the presence talking about something, shift over here to
Speaker 2: the bar, and then there's a quick shuffle we don't
Speaker 2: see behind. Okay, we'll remove this stuff, and then okay,
Speaker 2: younger so and so is there forty years earlier. And
Speaker 2: that's a very kind of subliminally satisfying way of handling
Speaker 2: flashbacks for maximum clarity and something just a little different
Speaker 2: for him, absolutely that was his I mean, there aren't
Speaker 2: that many camera moments, aha moments with sales in his
Speaker 2: entire career, and that might be wonderful. It was like
Speaker 2: that beautiful, very simple idea, nicely done it.
Speaker 4: And as cinematic as it is.
Speaker 3: I wonder, especially with your theater criticis's background, I wonder
Speaker 3: if you thought it was theatrical, because it made me
Speaker 3: think about moments on the stage where you might have
Speaker 3: something on the front of the stage, characters acting, and
Speaker 3: then they'll lights out on them and the spotlight to
Speaker 3: someone back here, and it might even be characters from
Speaker 3: their past or a future moment or something like that,
Speaker 3: where you're shifting to another part of the stage and
Speaker 3: it feels like that sometimes here. Even though it also
Speaker 3: is based on what makes it effective is the way
Speaker 3: they're hiding cuts effectively, right, I mean, this is based
Speaker 3: on the fact that the camera is moving, and I
Speaker 3: think in almost every instance, if not every instance, there
Speaker 3: is a cut somewhere there to make it seamless. And
Speaker 3: the reason why beyond I think just being inherently satisfying.
Speaker 3: If you think about this film thematically, right, this is
Speaker 3: a place, these are characters.
Speaker 4: This is a story where.
Speaker 3: The present and the past cannot be separated from each other.
Speaker 3: Everybody is at every moment haunted by their past, and
Speaker 3: some are doing whatever they can to try to move
Speaker 3: past it, but they can't, and some, by the end
Speaker 3: of the film, we see them making efforts to, like
Speaker 3: in the case of Delmore and and his father, right,
Speaker 3: there is some attempts at reconciliation and change, and even
Speaker 3: Mercedes moves forward a little bit and we see her
Speaker 3: helping those characters at the end.
Speaker 4: But they can't be separated.
Speaker 3: And I'm going to use a phrase that the bartender
Speaker 3: uses in the film sales. I think is exploring in
Speaker 3: this film this idea of lines of demarcation, right, And
Speaker 3: if you can't have that separation, if there is no
Speaker 3: line of demarcation between the past and present, then there
Speaker 3: can't be a line of demarcation in the editing either.
Speaker 3: There can't be that clear cut, There can't be that
Speaker 3: clear separation between the past and present. It has to
Speaker 3: be seamless, and we need to feel like the past
Speaker 3: and present are constantly in dialogue with each other, and
Speaker 3: I think the.
Speaker 4: Editing pulls that off.
Speaker 3: And what I especially love Michael is then we get
Speaker 3: a moment where the past and present are literally in
Speaker 3: dialogue with each other when they're by the river, right,
Speaker 3: because then Chris Cooper actually answers his own question and says,
Speaker 3: is knee neither right? Right?
Speaker 2: This is this is the it's it's the two themes
Speaker 2: sort of formed the right, the two streams into the
Speaker 2: river where it's like a past and president, you know,
Speaker 2: the ghosts of the past. How much can we deny
Speaker 2: and without or bury him or keeping Barry without going
Speaker 2: crazy as a as a what a son, a family,
Speaker 2: a society, all of it, it's all there in this
Speaker 2: in the story. And it's just just the eternal golf,
Speaker 2: as Shaw said, George Burnshaw, the eternal golf between parents
Speaker 2: and children. And the Brits and and other other countries
Speaker 2: always thought look down on American drama a little bit,
Speaker 2: saying the usual you know, family family stuff about the
Speaker 2: classet falls is in the closet, because of course that
Speaker 2: doesn't happen in England. You know nobody, but you know,
Speaker 2: it's it's the great quote from Falkner, right. I think
Speaker 2: it was originally Requiem for a none. You know, the
Speaker 2: past is never dead, it's not even past. And that
Speaker 2: was in fifty one he wrote that, And then I
Speaker 2: mean O'Neil gen O'Neil long Day's journeying tonight off on
Speaker 2: the great play about about the past just not able
Speaker 2: to you know, you cannot shake it, you cannot bury it.
Speaker 2: The past is, the present is, and it's the future too.
Speaker 2: We all try to lie out of that, but life
Speaker 2: will not let us. And that's that's sales from the
Speaker 2: beginning of Mister Calucus seven. You know, how can you
Speaker 2: resolve your sort of counterculture revolutionary recent past with your
Speaker 2: complacent present? Even brother who's seen brother from another planet here? Really,
Speaker 2: I love that film. I just resaw that, and that
Speaker 2: I mean that begins with that first. I mean, I
Speaker 2: defy anybody not to stick with that movie past the
Speaker 2: first five minutes because this opening where this Interstellar you know,
Speaker 2: played by Joel.
Speaker 4: Moore Morton from The Colonel, The.
Speaker 2: Colonel, Yeah, lands and he ends up H's just fun
Speaker 2: to find your landing right by the statue in the
Speaker 2: in the in the river, and and he's sort of
Speaker 2: flooded with this sort of supernatural ability to hear and
Speaker 2: imagine voices of the past in Ellis Island. You know,
Speaker 2: he's over there and it's just like, Wow, he never
Speaker 2: really shook this theme, you know, He's just found ways
Speaker 2: over decades of filmmaking to revisit it, and he never
Speaker 2: I agree with you on Loan Star. I don't think
Speaker 2: Sales ever made a better mosaic film, you know, and
Speaker 2: he made a lot of them, I.
Speaker 4: Believe it or not.
Speaker 3: We're actually already pretty much at twenty minutes, so we
Speaker 3: kind of have to wrap this up. So that's the yeah,
Speaker 3: all right, all right, let's go. Yeah, he's he's given
Speaker 3: us that we can keep talking sign you know that's
Speaker 3: dangerous with film spotting, though, Alex.
Speaker 2: This means we can keep talking right when you.
Speaker 3: Do there you can just talk from the well, maybe
Speaker 3: we can get to the ending of the film a
Speaker 3: little bit and not just the twist necessarily, though we
Speaker 3: can talk about that too, or the double twists if
Speaker 3: you will.
Speaker 4: But what on these.
Speaker 3: Rewatches, having now watched it back to back nights as
Speaker 3: we both have, what what surprised you?
Speaker 2: If anything?
Speaker 4: What did you discover on rewatch?
Speaker 2: For me, it's and this is where I really would
Speaker 2: love to hear after I speak very briefly to this,
Speaker 2: I just how many great small, medium size, not just
Speaker 2: not just scenes has written, but performances there are.
Speaker 4: In this.
Speaker 2: And how my my occasional struggle with John Sale's work
Speaker 2: not less so here than almost any film about whether
Speaker 2: or not the motor is if the motor's a little
Speaker 2: less than I want sometimes in terms of the story narrative.
Speaker 2: But all that seems to be kind of solved by
Speaker 2: the next moment when I realized good line, good act,
Speaker 2: good casting, you know, like I mean, that's a you know,
Speaker 2: you know, it's like I would you know, look, we
Speaker 2: see a lot of movies in a year. I mean,
Speaker 2: you after five in a row where that doesn't have either,
Speaker 2: you know, you just start thinking there was a time
Speaker 2: when it was a little easier to find something that
Speaker 2: really was like well written, you know, whether it's for
Speaker 2: you or not, or whether it's taking on something interesting
Speaker 2: that happens to be have this weird, sort of unfortunate,
Speaker 2: sinister layer of relevance to today. You know, it's but the
Speaker 2: damn thing holds together, you know. So who I mean,
Speaker 2: who's for the first timer? Is I'd like to hear
Speaker 2: from any any one or two first time viewers of
Speaker 2: this thing right back right there.
Speaker 3: We're gonna give them a mic. What would you like, Michael,
Speaker 3: what was that? What would you like to hear them
Speaker 3: chime in on?
Speaker 2: Well, I just say just what they what they felt
Speaker 2: about the first few, Like let's let's hear what you thought.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I I feel like it's very interesting, especially now
Speaker 8: with like Paul Thomas Anderson like putting out another film
Speaker 8: like one battle after another, and like seeing a lot
Speaker 8: of like Magnolia in this movie, which is like a
Speaker 8: very interesting thing, and like again with that idea of
Speaker 8: like the past not being through with you, kind of
Speaker 8: that famous quote by William H. Macy in that movie,
Speaker 8: and just kind of like seeing these like small independent
Speaker 8: things really like channeling up in the nineties and some
Speaker 8: of them getting lost. And I'm really grateful for highlighting
Speaker 8: this because I've never heard of this movie orgon sales before.
Speaker 8: Wonderful what's your name?
Speaker 2: Thank you? Now? No, thank you.
Speaker 3: I'm so glad you said that, because as Michael was
Speaker 3: talking and using some of those quotes, I was thinking
Speaker 3: of that line and I couldn't place it. I had
Speaker 3: that in my head and it's that Magnolia, that Magnolia line.
Speaker 3: I did want to talk about the surprise for me
Speaker 3: one of them was that as well, just thinking about
Speaker 3: like Ron Canada as as Otis I love watching in
Speaker 3: this film, and Jill Morton, but Elizabeth Pania who who
Speaker 3: sadly passed away cancer, and I think twenty fourteenth just
Speaker 3: doesn't have a false moment at all ever in this film.
Speaker 3: But then I will say about about the ending, Michael,
Speaker 3: I think the first time I saw this film, I
Speaker 3: was so busy processing it, the revelation and the ramifications
Speaker 3: of it, that I didn't really think about how perfectly
Speaker 3: it does tie together all of these ideas we're talking
Speaker 3: about about the past in present. And she says a
Speaker 3: line about starting from scratch, which is echoing something that
Speaker 3: said earlier in the film, right between between Otis and
Speaker 3: Chet his grandson, where he says that his dad says,
Speaker 3: you start, you start from scratch when you're born. And
Speaker 3: so this is that that whole concept of are you
Speaker 3: able to or are you someone who can separate yourself
Speaker 3: from your past? Are you exactly who you create yourself
Speaker 3: to be or are you a product of your environment
Speaker 3: and your heritage? Can you carve out your own legacy?
Speaker 4: And I don't think.
Speaker 3: I don't think sales the great thing about sales as
Speaker 3: a filmmaker is he's not setting a line of demarcation.
Speaker 3: He's not a simple enough writer or filmmaker to say
Speaker 3: it is one or the other. He's challenging all of those.
Speaker 3: He's challenging that idea. He wants to think about that concept.
Speaker 3: And at the end, at the end, she's saying, we
Speaker 3: are for the sake of our relationship and happiness, we
Speaker 3: are going to pretend that the life before doesn't matter.
Speaker 3: We are going to try to start from scratch. And
Speaker 3: just on that point about lines of demarcation, the character
Speaker 3: the private right who when they're talking with the colonel,
Speaker 3: she mentions that she wants to stay in the army
Speaker 3: and why does she want to stay in the army,
Speaker 3: And it's because the world outside is chaos. She likes
Speaker 3: having the rules. She needs the lines drawn right and
Speaker 3: he understands that. But back to the ending, they are
Speaker 3: going to try to move forward in their way, and
Speaker 3: that line forget the Alamo is kind of the It
Speaker 3: is so great because it's kind of the movie a
Speaker 3: nutshell in terms of this idea of men.
Speaker 2: Look that also, that's enough, that's the other moment of
Speaker 2: I think it really inspired I mean, you know it's
Speaker 2: in writing the credits. He edited, you know, it's written,
Speaker 2: directed and edited by sales, right, it's and that's a
Speaker 2: really astute final thirty seconds to have that line not
Speaker 2: hammered with a close up. Just say it, you believe it,
Speaker 2: Say it like it just bought it. It's a thought.
Speaker 2: And then it goes camera goes back to a different chat,
Speaker 2: you know, forty feet further back and then further back
Speaker 2: cut boom. You know that's that's that's where you know,
Speaker 2: that's right. He's a really good editor too. You know,
Speaker 2: look here, I'd love to hear one more first time
Speaker 2: or his reaction, just and just quick briefly, my name
Speaker 2: is John.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 9: The one thing that really stuck out to me, first
Speaker 9: of all, how relevant all this stuff with the with
Speaker 9: the immigrants are. It was just incredible. But it's the genre,
Speaker 9: like I couldn't for the life of me place it.
Speaker 9: Like I kept thinking was falling into a Western, and
Speaker 9: then all of a sudden I was in a romance
Speaker 9: and then I was in a history and like what
Speaker 9: what what do you guys say about about that genre
Speaker 9: of this film?
Speaker 2: I mean the beauty of it, Yeah, I mean it
Speaker 2: you know, you could get fancy and call it a
Speaker 2: you know, like a neo Western noir. But he's made
Speaker 2: you know, he has come back often far more than
Speaker 2: to a detective genre, or he's done sales. Is always
Speaker 2: gravitated toward Westerns of different types and often border related.
Speaker 2: He's filmed both sides of the border, and he has
Speaker 2: He's done a lot of TV work, some of it's
Speaker 2: been Westerns. I think that's where I think he's compelled
Speaker 2: to find out, how do we get beneath this sort
Speaker 2: of old mythic easy black hat white hat thing, uh
Speaker 2: and just get into some issues that are worth talking about,
Speaker 2: digging into, you know, just just sort of the racial
Speaker 2: anime and prejudice and you know, politics, all of it.
Speaker 2: You know, why not? I mean he does it with
Speaker 2: plenty of modern days, things like City of Hope. Everyone's
Speaker 2: seen that similar kind of mosaic structure. But this is
Speaker 2: very satisfying. I think that this one, this film, you
Speaker 2: saw the better film. You know, if we've seen City
Speaker 2: of Hope, we wouldn't have be half as good a discussion.
Speaker 4: So just a couple of things to close on.
Speaker 3: Food for thought, Michael, you can see if you think
Speaker 3: I'm crazy here or not? Just a few things I
Speaker 3: noted tonight maybe an example of what I'm trying to
Speaker 3: argue that Sales is potentially theorizing here this idea of
Speaker 3: not separating purely from the past, but a path forward
Speaker 3: with the past in mind. The very opening of the film,
Speaker 3: what what do we find out that the characters, those
Speaker 3: two characters are doing. He he makes art out of
Speaker 3: old bullets, right, old bullets are transforming them into something new.
Speaker 3: The I love the fact that and we get a
Speaker 3: great line at the end, right. I love the fact
Speaker 3: that everybody says this idea of myths. Everybody keeps repeating
Speaker 3: your mother was a saint, right, just like with Buddy.
Speaker 3: It's just so easy for everybody to just keep repeating
Speaker 3: the same line over and over again. It almost becomes
Speaker 3: meaningless because that's that's just what they know. And they
Speaker 3: just keep falling falling back on that. Okay, the drive
Speaker 3: in the fact that it ends at the drive in,
Speaker 3: and the fact that we get a flashback earlier at
Speaker 3: the drive in where they're they're they're dragged out of
Speaker 3: the car, right, and she even makes a comment about
Speaker 3: when does the picture start? And I think I'm going
Speaker 3: to argue that Sales is being a little tricky there
Speaker 3: that like, the old story is over, the old picture
Speaker 3: has ended, and the new picture gets to move forward. Right,
Speaker 3: that story has ended, the drive in is not showing
Speaker 3: that movie anymore, right, and they get to start a
Speaker 3: new one. And then here's my last thing. And I
Speaker 3: did notice this last night, and here again in that
Speaker 3: very first flashback, when Hollis is telling.
Speaker 4: The story of.
Speaker 3: Charlie Wade and Buddy Deeds, he the story ends with
Speaker 3: Buddy saying as Charlie Wade exits with Hollis, it ends
Speaker 3: with Buddy saying, unomas servesa por right, And then we
Speaker 3: come out of the flashback with Hollis saying that line.
Speaker 3: Hollis is telling them that that's what Buddy said. But
Speaker 3: at that point Buddy is very clearly not I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: Hollis is very clearly in the past, not in the
Speaker 3: bar Hollis as the the way Sales has shot it,
Speaker 3: Hollis in the past would not have heard him say
Speaker 3: that line. So is that the myth making and we
Speaker 3: that's that's a sign sales Is is sneakily showing us
Speaker 3: that Hollis doesn't really know the whole truth, because he's
Speaker 3: fabricating that because he would have never heard that.
Speaker 4: Or did Sales just make a.
Speaker 2: Mistake or was it connutier.
Speaker 6: I don't know who'd for thought.
Speaker 2: Excellent questions and a good audience. Thank you, and a
Speaker 2: great please you veramiliar movie here.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Thank you Alex and the Department of Cultural Affairs.
Speaker 3: This is so much fun. Thank you for coming out
Speaker 3: from this past November. That was me and Michael Phillips
Speaker 3: in conversation about John Sales great nineteen ninety six film
Speaker 3: Lone Star. It followed a screening of the film that
Speaker 3: was part of the City of Chicago's fiftieth anniversary celebration
Speaker 3: of Siskel and Ebert. My thanks to Alex Vasquez everyone
Speaker 3: in the Chicago Film Office and the Department of Cultural
Speaker 3: Affairs for inviting me and inviting Film Spotting to be
Speaker 3: part of that celebration. That is our show. You can
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Speaker 5: Panically