Speaker 1: What kind of a show you guys.
Speaker 2: Putting on here today?
Speaker 1: You're not interested in art?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 1: No, look, we're going to do this thing. We're going
Speaker 1: to have a conversation.
Speaker 2: From Chicago. This is Film Spotting celebrating our twentieth year.
Speaker 1: I'm Adam Kempenar and I'm Josh Larson.
Speaker 2: To me, being a gangster was better than being President
Speaker 2: of the United States.
Speaker 1: Never right on your friends, and always keep in mind
Speaker 1: shut go by.
Speaker 2: I meant being somebody in the neighborhood that was full
Speaker 2: of nobody's Jimmy, Tommy, Henry Pauley, the whole gang is
Speaker 2: here for our Pantheon Project review of Goodfellas, which came
Speaker 2: to theaters thirty five years ago.
Speaker 4: This month, plus I caught up with the Roses and
Speaker 4: the intriguing new indie Lurker. All that and a new
Speaker 4: deeply flawed Film Spotting Paul Ahead on Film Spotting, you.
Speaker 2: Were treated like movie stars with muscle.
Speaker 1: We had it all just for the asking else on
Speaker 1: I belong.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Film Spotting, the first international edition of the show. Josh.
Speaker 2: You are coming to us from the City of Saint Andrew's, County, Fife, Scotland.
Speaker 2: Have you ever felt less like a gangster.
Speaker 4: I have not run into any gangsters. There's got to
Speaker 4: be a CD underbelly to this place, though, Adam. I mean,
Speaker 4: for one thing, there's way too much golf going on here,
Speaker 4: and that is that's never a good sign.
Speaker 2: You got to pick up the sticks.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't think that's going to happen. I'll try
Speaker 4: to investigate and see if I can find that underbelly,
Speaker 4: because right now I got to tell you this is
Speaker 4: ridiculously picturesque here on the coast of the North Sea.
Speaker 4: So it can't always be like this. I hope it is,
Speaker 4: but probably not.
Speaker 2: This week you played catch up on some new Ish
Speaker 2: releases Olivia Coleman and Benedict Cumberbatch in The Roses. Also
Speaker 2: lurker at Dark Tale about pop music fandom. We've also
Speaker 2: got results from the Pixar versus studio Jubilip and a
Speaker 2: new deeply flawed film spotting Pool, asking you to choose
Speaker 2: one musical from the nineteen sixties. The Hills are Alive,
Speaker 2: or so I've been told.
Speaker 4: But first Goodfellas at thirty five. Goodfellas came to theatres
Speaker 4: September twenty one, nineteen ninety. It ended up making forty
Speaker 4: six million dollars in change at the box office. That
Speaker 4: was enough to put it ahead of the Stevens Sagal
Speaker 4: starring Marked for Death. I don't know if you remember
Speaker 4: that one.
Speaker 2: Adam robbed of the Best Picture nomination.
Speaker 4: However, Goodfellows was just behind the Sagal starring Hard to
Speaker 4: Kill Now Hard to Sounds familiar. I completely blanked on
Speaker 4: Marked for Death.
Speaker 1: I'm afraid.
Speaker 4: Goodfellows was nominated for six Oscars, including Best Picture and Director.
Speaker 4: Also nominated that year gangster movie Royalty, Brancis Ford Coppola's
Speaker 4: Godfather Part three, also the De Niro starring Awakenings and Ghost.
Speaker 4: The Best Picture went, however, to Kevin Hostner's Dances with Wolves.
Speaker 1: Thirty five years later.
Speaker 4: We're not going to be talking about any of those films.
Speaker 4: We are talking about Goodfellas.
Speaker 1: Here's a scene. Take it away, Mama Scarcese.
Speaker 2: And he's mad.
Speaker 5: You don't talk too much.
Speaker 1: Quiet for me.
Speaker 5: You don't eat much, you don't talk much.
Speaker 1: I'm just listening tomorrow.
Speaker 5: You remind me of when we were kids, com paris
Speaker 5: just to visit one another, and there was this man.
Speaker 5: He would never talk. He would just sit there all
Speaker 5: night and not say a word. So they says to him,
Speaker 5: what's American Paris? Don't you talk? Don't you say anything?
Speaker 5: He says, what am I going to say that? My
Speaker 5: wife two times me, so she says to him, shut up,
Speaker 5: you're always talking. But in Italian it sounds much nice.
Speaker 2: Josh. One thing I don't remind you of enough is
Speaker 2: that you're a year and a half older than me.
Speaker 1: It's true.
Speaker 2: Why is that relevant? We've never really parsed the details,
Speaker 2: but I think we may have had our cinephile awakenings
Speaker 2: at roughly the same ages, just not at the same times.
Speaker 2: Let's jump into the DeLorean destination circa September twenty first,
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety. I'm going to run through a quick list.
Speaker 2: You tell me how many boxes you check off. Number one,
Speaker 2: saw Goodfellas in the theater, number two, number two, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna get through all of them.
Speaker 1: Here.
Speaker 2: You tell me your account. Number two watched at the movies,
Speaker 2: double thumbs up review. Number three Red ciskeles you were
Speaker 2: a trib house after all, and or Ebert's review where
Speaker 2: you would have scanned this high praise. No finer film
Speaker 2: has ever been made about organized crime, not even The Godfather.
Speaker 2: Although the two works are not really comparable, both critics
Speaker 2: would name it their number one film of the year.
Speaker 2: Number four understood that after opening the eighties with a
Speaker 2: masterpiece in Raging Bowl, Scorsese looked to be starting the
Speaker 2: nineties with another. I'll also accept in some sense that
Speaker 2: there was prestige attached to a Martin Scorsese film. Where
Speaker 2: are you at with those four?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I definitely hit all of those your The last question
Speaker 4: made me think, had I seen Raging Bowl yet at
Speaker 4: that point?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 4: Possibly I have, but definitely aware of its.
Speaker 1: Stature for sure.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, I needed another eighteen to twenty four months.
Speaker 2: I went, oh for four. It's entirely possible. Goodfellows played
Speaker 2: at my hometown cinema, the one i'd eventually be a
Speaker 2: projectionist and usher at, But it wouldn't have mattered because
Speaker 2: it wasn't on my radar at all. I didn't catch
Speaker 2: Ciskel and Eberts at the movies takes, nor was I
Speaker 2: reading the Sun Times or Tribune in Iowa in print,
Speaker 2: nor could I contemplate Scorsese's legacy. I didn't finally see
Speaker 2: Goodfellows until a full year later, after renting it from
Speaker 2: one of my local video stores, I distinctly remember being
Speaker 2: drawn to that VHS case, or the top half of it. Anyway,
Speaker 2: I still don't know what's happening in the bottom half.
Speaker 2: De Niro's prominence may have had something to do with it.
Speaker 2: I was familiar with him, but I think it's how
Speaker 2: he's position as the centerpiece of that sinister besuited triumvirate,
Speaker 2: with Leoda and Peshi angled to the sides, all three
Speaker 2: emerging evocatively out of the pure darkness. It felt timeless, somehow,
Speaker 2: already a classic, which was appropriate since I'm almost certain
Speaker 2: I was under the impression that it was several years old.
Speaker 2: The box alone suggested the movie was momentous, and when
Speaker 2: I watched it, despite not being equipped with the vocabulary
Speaker 2: to articulate it, I recognized that it was. Was it
Speaker 2: the kinetic dynamism of Michael Balhaus's camera, combined with Thelma
Speaker 2: Shoemaker's cutting, the intoxicating allure of the gangster life as
Speaker 2: Henry sees it, welcome back to that, the sweep of
Speaker 2: it covering parts of four decades, and Henry's rags to
Speaker 2: to housecoat and egg noodles with ketchup tail. Maybe there
Speaker 2: was a guy at school who I thought deserved a
Speaker 2: good pistol whipping. You know, this really isn't about me,
Speaker 2: It's about you, Josh. What made Goodfellas feel momentous back
Speaker 2: in ninety and what makes it feel momentous still?
Speaker 4: Well, not only at that point had I caught the movie,
Speaker 4: bug I was passing it on and inflicting it on Debbie,
Speaker 4: who we had probably just started dating, maybe six ten
Speaker 4: months before Goodfella's Fall nineteen ninety release. And thankfully, maybe
Speaker 4: this is one of the reasons we started dating. Found
Speaker 4: out she loved mob movies, and what a year. Maybe
Speaker 4: this is what brought us together, Adam, we've already talked
Speaker 4: about a few of these, Godfather Part three and Goodfellas.
Speaker 4: You realize Miller's Crossing came out in October, so we
Speaker 4: were averaging if you consider Godfather Part three was a
Speaker 4: December release, we were averaging almost a let's say, key
Speaker 4: mobster movie, if not a masterful mobster movie a month
Speaker 4: one a month in that fall and early winter.
Speaker 1: And yeah, what.
Speaker 4: A time to be alive, What a time to be
Speaker 4: coming into love with films? So it was the thrill
Speaker 4: of it. That's what was momentous for me that first
Speaker 4: time I saw it. Your phrase kinetic dynamism, Yeah, that's
Speaker 4: what it was. Just we've talked about this in terms
Speaker 4: of Miller's Crossing, is coming to realize the choices that
Speaker 4: filmmakers are making in terms of the camera movement or
Speaker 4: the editing and all the things we're going to dig into.
Speaker 4: Goodfellas had that right there for you to eat up
Speaker 4: on the screen, like I would argue something like Miller's
Speaker 4: Crossing does, And so yeah, that's that's what it was.
Speaker 1: Then.
Speaker 4: Now what feels momentous about it. I think for me
Speaker 4: it's the movie's moral weight. And I had a little
Speaker 4: advance work done on this film because I saw it
Speaker 4: maybe a couple of years ago.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 4: I wrote a piece for Think Christian looking at Martin
Speaker 4: Scorsese's mob movies in particular, with the thesis that they
Speaker 4: were just as religious as something like Last Temptation of
Speaker 4: Christ or Silence. Maybe not explicitly so, but if you
Speaker 4: take them all together, from Mean Streets to the Irishmen
Speaker 4: and everything in between, including Goodfellas, you see that these
Speaker 4: movies depict organized crime as a religion that is full
Speaker 4: of these laws you must follow ritual, yeah, that's it,
Speaker 4: but key devoid of mercy and grace. And so when
Speaker 4: I looked at Goodfellas through this lens, it was fascinating
Speaker 4: to me how it fitted to a tea as all
Speaker 4: of his did, and depicted these guys who are beholden
Speaker 4: to this code. That is, they think they're above the law,
Speaker 4: but they've chosen adherence to a code that is more
Speaker 4: unforgiving than any legal system could be. And it's also
Speaker 4: a world that has no benevolence again, no mercy to it.
Speaker 4: They're subject to greater suffering than the schnooks, as Henry
Speaker 4: Hill would.
Speaker 1: Say in the end.
Speaker 4: And so it's just these movies and Goodfellas particularly, I
Speaker 4: think they're sinners who freed themselves from the law, but
Speaker 4: they've only shackled themselves into chains of their own making.
Speaker 4: And to bring this to Goodfellas, And a particular scene
Speaker 4: where this clarifies for me, both when I watched a
Speaker 4: few years ago and just now, I think in his
Speaker 4: Mob movie canon the Christmas party scene after the heist
Speaker 4: that has gone down successfully and Jimmy is throwing a
Speaker 4: party at the bar to celebrate. I think it's the
Speaker 4: defining scene theologically speaking, because yes, it's Christmas, right, But
Speaker 4: what do you have here? You have Jimmy making all
Speaker 4: of these rules, and when they're broken, there is hell
Speaker 4: to pay.
Speaker 3: Am I say?
Speaker 4: Enough to go buy anything for a while.
Speaker 1: It's a wedding gift, Jimmy, it's.
Speaker 5: From my mother.
Speaker 1: It's on the name. I just gone out.
Speaker 3: I loved that car.
Speaker 1: I'm sure's being valued for just a second. I just
Speaker 1: gone out. Johnny, you got your nuts?
Speaker 5: What are you get excited for?
Speaker 3: Jay?
Speaker 4: What am I get excited for?
Speaker 2: You?
Speaker 1: Are you stupid?
Speaker 6: We've got a million feebles out there, everybody's watching this,
Speaker 6: and you get a called I love this name.
Speaker 1: It's a wedding gift, a fool's name. It's so now,
Speaker 1: you stupid? O'd What did you hear what I said?
Speaker 6: Don't buy anything, don't get anything, nothing big than you?
Speaker 1: What I said? What's the matter with you? What are
Speaker 1: you getting excited for? Am I get excited about? Because
Speaker 1: you're gonna get us all fur pinched? That's why?
Speaker 4: What are you stupid?
Speaker 1: It's matter with you? I apologize? What's the matter with you?
Speaker 2: Sorry?
Speaker 1: The is the matter with you?
Speaker 4: This should be a celebration of victory, of triumph, of
Speaker 4: beating the Schnooks, but instead with we get these guys
Speaker 4: who are under the burden of a law that is
Speaker 4: even heavy. And the great irony of this taking place
Speaker 4: in a Christmas setting. You know, if theologically you think
Speaker 4: about the Christmas gift and and this gift gift of
Speaker 4: grace and forgiveness and freedom from the law, good laws
Speaker 4: and bad laws. I'll stop there and save the rest
Speaker 4: for that. This isn't the thing Christian podcast. So but yeah,
Speaker 4: that is the thing that struck me watching Goodfellas this
Speaker 4: last time, which was just you know, of course kicked
Speaker 4: off by that deeper study I did a few years ago.
Speaker 2: I'm smiling and kind of laughing to myself, even just
Speaker 2: because I love de Niro. How could you not love
Speaker 2: d Naro throughout this entire film as Jimmy Conway, but
Speaker 2: especially in that sequence, just starting with the camee you,
Speaker 2: and he's so happy, he's so excited to see Henry,
Speaker 2: to see ray Leota, and then it just goes downhill
Speaker 2: once that pink Cadillac shows up outside, right, And what
Speaker 2: I keep thinking about, I wasn't going to initially start
Speaker 2: with this. I had this like third on my list,
Speaker 2: and I wasn't very familiar with what you had previously
Speaker 2: written about this, but I knew or had a feeling
Speaker 2: we would go here. And I was a little bit hesitant, Josh,
Speaker 2: because this is this is your corner, and we're talking
Speaker 2: about a mob movie. So if I if I go
Speaker 2: to quickly down this path, or I spend too long
Speaker 2: on this corner, I mean, I might get whacked right,
Speaker 2: And I don't know if I if I should tread
Speaker 2: into your your territory.
Speaker 1: It's all.
Speaker 2: Especially when you think about a movie like Mean Streets,
Speaker 2: where we meet de Niro as an actor in a
Speaker 2: Scorsese film, and there's there's a fair amount of crossover
Speaker 2: between the two films. When I think about those movies,
Speaker 2: and we're going to talk a little bit about even
Speaker 2: the use of color red. When I think about the
Speaker 2: two movies, and I think they're used in a very
Speaker 2: pointed and similar way, there is a key to diference
Speaker 2: for me. And there's a key difference here for me
Speaker 2: between a lot of other Scorsese films, not just the
Speaker 2: gangster films, and that is this is not a revelation
Speaker 2: to anyone. Obviously, a lot of Scorsese's films are preoccupied
Speaker 2: with the notion of sin and the notion of redemption,
Speaker 2: and you have characters who are very torn and conflicted
Speaker 2: between these two worlds, the moral world and the world
Speaker 2: of the flesh, and their corporeal desires and money and
Speaker 2: the worldly things that they want to occupy themselves with,
Speaker 2: and and again they often are seeking some kind of
Speaker 2: absolution for their sins. And there is nothing like that
Speaker 2: whatsoever in our hero here.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: It's simply completely absent. And why that strikes me is
Speaker 2: because it feels to me this is based on true material.
Speaker 2: Henry Hill is a real character. I've never read the book.
Speaker 2: I don't know, and I don't care for the purposes
Speaker 2: of our conversation how true it is to that story.
Speaker 2: But it's interesting to me that it feels like Scorsese
Speaker 2: wasn't concerned in this case with imposing that absolution storyline
Speaker 2: onto Henry Hill, and he was content to have a
Speaker 2: character who from the very beginning, as we meet him,
Speaker 2: and actually as we meet him and we're going to
Speaker 2: talk about the prolog, I'm definitely going to talk about
Speaker 2: the prolog as we meet him later in the story,
Speaker 2: and then as we meet him as a teenage boy
Speaker 2: making his decision, he has decided what path he's going
Speaker 2: to take. He has chosen the path of sin, and
Speaker 2: he stays on that path completely until the very end,
Speaker 2: and he never has any doubt about that path. Unlike
Speaker 2: most of the Scorsese heroes that we might think about
Speaker 2: the Scorsese conflicted protagonist, he never has any doubt about that.
Speaker 2: He constantly chooses what serves his worldly desires at every turn.
Speaker 2: He never is thinking about redemption. He is in the hell,
Speaker 2: the hell of his making from the very beginning of
Speaker 2: this film, and he's happy to be there. And when
Speaker 2: you look at Henry Hill as a character, he is, yes, less.
Speaker 2: I don't want to use a technical term because I
Speaker 2: don't really necessarily know all the distinctions in terms of
Speaker 2: the actual scientific definitions or psychological definitions. But he's less
Speaker 2: psychopathic than Tommy, and he's not as crazy as Jimmy, right,
Speaker 2: But that doesn't mean he's a better guy. I mean,
Speaker 2: maybe he's a slightly better guy. He doesn't want Maury
Speaker 2: to die, but I think that's just because it kind
Speaker 2: of just means a little more stress for him because
Speaker 2: Maury's wife is going to be hanging around the house.
Speaker 2: He doesn't actually really care that much more about Maury.
Speaker 2: He's not actually a more compassionate human being. He is
Speaker 2: always just looking out for himself. So it's it. I'll
Speaker 2: just use the word interesting again. It's interesting to me
Speaker 2: that in this movie, and in this gangster movie Milieu,
Speaker 2: where we've seen him so many other times, have characters
Speaker 2: that are really struggling with this notion of sin. We
Speaker 2: have a character here who is not struggling at all.
Speaker 4: Yeah, completely agree, and that is a distinction of something
Speaker 4: like Goodfellas. Think about even The Irishman, where, to my mind,
Speaker 4: where we end up in that nursing home with the
Speaker 4: DeNiro character, and he is at least if he's not
Speaker 4: sorry or regretful, he's pondering the weight of his actions.
Speaker 4: And I don't think Henry Hill ever does that. He
Speaker 4: is completely the way you were talking about him, psychologically,
Speaker 4: he is a moral right, there's just a disinterest in
Speaker 4: the morality.
Speaker 1: Of any situation, good way to put it.
Speaker 4: And this connects with Leota's performance, which you know, it's
Speaker 4: that box, the VHS box. When you're describing it. It instantly
Speaker 4: comes back to me, and my first thought as you
Speaker 4: started describing it is how bizarre. I get the marketing reason,
Speaker 4: but how bizarre that Leota isn't in the center right
Speaker 4: instead of because the way he drives this entire film.
Speaker 4: And the one thing that stood out to me that
Speaker 4: was completely fresh on this most recent viewing Adam, was
Speaker 4: the quality of his The definitive quality of Leota's performance,
Speaker 4: to me, connects with what we're talking about. Eagerness. Henry
Speaker 4: is so eager to be a part of this lifestyle.
Speaker 4: He doesn't give a second thought to the repercussions for
Speaker 4: his family, for his education, for anything when he's a boy,
Speaker 4: when he's a teenager, this is Think about the smile
Speaker 4: on and I think it's Christopher Cerone playing the young
Speaker 4: Henry at this point. What a great match for Lioda
Speaker 4: as an adult too, just physically, but also the way
Speaker 4: he carries himself, the way he has that eagerness. He
Speaker 4: has this beaming smile while he's watching these guys get
Speaker 4: away with this, and it just gets bigger once they
Speaker 4: bring him into the fold, and.
Speaker 1: That carries through every scene.
Speaker 4: I think that Liota is in even the famous Joe
Speaker 4: peshe you think I'm a clown scene. Notice how hard
Speaker 4: Henry Hill is laughing at those jokes.
Speaker 2: He says, no, you're going to tell me something today,
Speaker 2: tough guy.
Speaker 5: I said, all right, I'll tell you something.
Speaker 7: Give mother.
Speaker 6: To pay for a.
Speaker 2: Now I'm coming around, you know, I start to come
Speaker 2: out of it.
Speaker 6: Oh, I see in front of me this big brick again.
Speaker 2: He says, Oh, what do you want to tell me now?
Speaker 1: Tough guy?
Speaker 5: I said, dang, what do I thought to tell you?
Speaker 5: To go?
Speaker 2: Mother?
Speaker 4: He is so eager to be in that group laughing
Speaker 4: at him in a in a supportive way, you know,
Speaker 4: I know that's what they get to an argument about.
Speaker 4: He's also he's eager for the violence too. You brought
Speaker 4: up Maury that moment when Jimmy wraps the cord around
Speaker 4: Maury's neck. Henry's there laughing.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: He does, eventually, I think, try to count things down,
Speaker 4: but his immediate instinct is to laugh. He's eager for
Speaker 4: the violence. He even takes a slap in the face
Speaker 4: from Polly, one of those affectionate slaps. He receives that eagerly.
Speaker 4: It's like, slap me again, Polly, because that means I'm
Speaker 4: in and so that was a distinctive quality to this
Speaker 4: great Rali out of performance that stood out to me
Speaker 4: that I think connects exactly with what you're talking about,
Speaker 4: this amorality of the character.
Speaker 2: And it could have something to do with the fact,
Speaker 2: like Jimmy, he is Irish, he is not Italian, so
Speaker 2: he's an outsider. He is someone who may have to exhibit,
Speaker 2: or at least early on exhibited some of that eagerness
Speaker 2: and it just sort of stuck. He has to ingratiate
Speaker 2: himself into this world because he is not the same
Speaker 2: as everyone else around him. I'm gonna go back. Let's
Speaker 2: see if i can say it twice. We can say
Speaker 2: it for a third time in the show Kinetic Dynamism.
Speaker 2: The pantheon may need a pantheon for the movies that
Speaker 2: seem to scene, moment to moment deliver the most thrilling filmmaking.
Speaker 2: I didn't go through the list, but do the right
Speaker 2: Thing would be in it, and Goodfellas, goodfellas would be
Speaker 2: in it. That's how good every scene is and how
Speaker 2: good every choice is. And unlike some of our recent revisits,
Speaker 2: we've had a bunch of sacred cows and Pantheon Project
Speaker 2: reviews recently. It hasn't been twenty or thirty years since
Speaker 2: I've seen Goodfellas, so I really was a little nervous,
Speaker 2: and I didn't know what to expect from this conversation.
Speaker 2: I don't know the last time I watched it in
Speaker 2: one sitting, but I'll borrow a phrase from Billy Bean
Speaker 2: and Moneyball the movie. Anyway, I've certainly recreated it in
Speaker 2: the aggregate. I don't know how many countless times I've
Speaker 2: watched scenes from it or picked up, you know where,
Speaker 2: whatever it was on TV. I know this movie well.
Speaker 2: But even if there weren't going to be or I
Speaker 2: didn't expect there to be any Capital R revelations, there
Speaker 2: did still end up being aspects to discuss that I
Speaker 2: hadn't strongly considered before. And you used a word earlier,
Speaker 2: just a short time ago, talking about Liota. You said, watching,
Speaker 2: and I said, in my setup, the intoxicating allure of
Speaker 2: the gangster life as Henry sees it. And there's two
Speaker 2: parts there. We may talk about the intoxicating allure of
Speaker 2: the gangster life part, but for me, the more important
Speaker 2: part is is as Henry sees it. Because if we
Speaker 2: go back to and we consider the opening with Billy
Speaker 2: Bats in the trunk as a sort of prologue, and
Speaker 2: that's how I'm going to refer to it. How does
Speaker 2: that culminate? It culminates with that incredible it feels to
Speaker 2: me just like John Wayne in Stage Coach like introduction,
Speaker 2: the rushing tracking shot that stops in a freeze frame
Speaker 2: on Leota's face in close up, his eyes looking past
Speaker 2: the camera, and that's where we get the famous line
Speaker 2: as far back as I can remember, right, And if
Speaker 2: it wasn't for the credits in between, it would be
Speaker 2: almost a match cut from that close up on his eyes,
Speaker 2: those piercing Rayliota eyes two Henry Young, Henry's eyes looking
Speaker 2: at the gangsters across the way from from his apartment,
Speaker 2: looking at them down on the stoop, and that great shot,
Speaker 2: the cinematography, the beam, the reflection beaming in the iris
Speaker 2: of his eye.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So, yes, of course he's the narrator. This is his
Speaker 2: telling his tale, the retelling of events. But I had
Speaker 2: never fully paid attention to just how much Scorsese leans
Speaker 2: into that point of view. How often we watch Henry, who,
Speaker 2: as I said, is an Italian, isn't born into the mob.
Speaker 2: How often we watch him watching, like when he's worried
Speaker 2: about Maury getting whacked, He's watching the dynamic the entire time.
Speaker 2: A bunch of examples of that, right, or more directly,
Speaker 2: you take a shot like the steady Kim introductions the
Speaker 2: classic you know, I'm gonna go get the papers, Get
Speaker 2: the papers, when he introduces us at the restaurant to everybody,
Speaker 2: and it's amazing. And if you, I guess, if you
Speaker 2: wanted to somehow take a shot at Scorsese for just
Speaker 2: showing off, you'd be like, well, that's what he's doing there,
Speaker 2: But actually that's Henry's point of view, walking through that restaurant,
Speaker 2: introducing us to those characters as if we're seeing it
Speaker 2: through Henry's eyes. Or how about the other great scene
Speaker 2: where he wakes up to find Karen pointing the gun
Speaker 2: right at him slash us. Or one of my new
Speaker 2: favorite shots that I just never appreciated before, which is
Speaker 2: when he gets out of jail. Think about how simple
Speaker 2: this is, Josh, Like, how subtle this is? Because I
Speaker 2: think it's so easy to miss. Again, I don't know
Speaker 2: how many times I've seen Goodfellows, but I just never
Speaker 2: thought about it in these terms before, and it's not
Speaker 2: a bravura camera moment, but I still think it's ingenious
Speaker 2: and it's a choice. It's still a choice that's being made,
Speaker 2: and it's an atypical filmmaking choice. When he gets out
Speaker 2: of jail and he goes back to the apartment or
Speaker 2: whatever space Karen has the kids currently.
Speaker 1: Living there with the bunk beds, and there.
Speaker 2: The bunk beds, and I believe it's it's a single
Speaker 2: shot and you hear a door open, and you hear
Speaker 2: the kids say something like what do you think, Daddy?
Speaker 2: You know I made that picture or something. The camera
Speaker 2: is looking at the room, we are seeing the camera.
Speaker 2: It's almost like it does a three point sixty turn
Speaker 2: about the room, and then as it scans across the room,
Speaker 2: it finally ends ultimately on Henry and he says like, Karen,
Speaker 2: get everything packed. Yeah, we're getting out of here, right.
Speaker 2: So it doesn't it doesn't start on the door. Any
Speaker 2: other filmmaker or a lot of other filmmakers would have
Speaker 2: started that sequence with the door opening and Henry walking
Speaker 2: in and then cut to him seeing the room and
Speaker 2: then cut back to his reaction shot. Scorsese in one
Speaker 2: shot doesn't show us that it's his point of view,
Speaker 2: in fact, allows it to be our point of view,
Speaker 2: the audience's point of view. First, we get to process
Speaker 2: the room almost as if we're seeing it before Henry does.
Speaker 2: We have to take in the relative squalor of the conditions.
Speaker 2: We get to react with our eyes before he even does.
Speaker 2: It's kind of like we're seeing it through his eyes,
Speaker 2: but we're also in a way it feels like we're
Speaker 2: seeing it before he does. So it's it's not just
Speaker 2: a POV shot, it's our perspective in a way, aligning
Speaker 2: or superseding his perspective. And then Josh the capper to that.
Speaker 2: For me from the point of view perspective, here, what
Speaker 2: really just blew me away this time watching it is
Speaker 2: then you get to something like the Kopa, the famous
Speaker 2: steadycam shot there where Scorsese is graciously allowing us to
Speaker 2: experience in real time the rewards of Henry's chosen profession,
Speaker 2: the access, the glamour, though it's mostly what Karen is experiencing,
Speaker 2: because for Henry we have to assume it's old hat,
Speaker 2: but for Karen it's new. It's exhilarating and I always
Speaker 2: just thought about it. In those terms, we get to
Speaker 2: follow them in and we get to follow them in
Speaker 2: real time. It's a literal film school textbook version of
Speaker 2: how to use the steadycam. And I say literal because
Speaker 2: yesterday in class I used it right even before it
Speaker 2: was just coincidence that we were talking about Goodfellows this week.
Speaker 2: I used it last fall too. It's the textbook example
Speaker 2: of how to use the steady cam shot. But until
Speaker 2: I watched it this time for our discussion and was
Speaker 2: really thinking about how he was using point of view,
Speaker 2: I didn't fully pick up on the fact that the
Speaker 2: real genius is in how the sequence ends. We stay
Speaker 2: tethered to them the entire time. We are following them
Speaker 2: the entire time, except at the very end where we
Speaker 2: see the staff bring the table out, and then what happens.
Speaker 2: Henry and Karen actually step slightly to the right out
Speaker 2: of the frame, and the camera I think, moves forward
Speaker 2: a little bit as the table gets placed down, and
Speaker 2: you know, Henry and Karen they're going to take their
Speaker 2: seats in a second, but just for a moment, that
Speaker 2: table has been placed down just for us. So it's
Speaker 2: another moment where our point of view is both aligning
Speaker 2: with but also again for lack of a better word, superseding,
Speaker 2: Henry's point of view. And that's the perspective that we
Speaker 2: feel throughout the entire movie as we relive this, this
Speaker 2: gangster life, this saga that Henry is experienced.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the point of view thing brings up an interesting
Speaker 4: question I'll ask you in just a second. But as
Speaker 4: far as that copa cabana shot, the thing that stood
Speaker 4: out to me on this viewing is related to the
Speaker 4: religious ritual. I had never noticed that table being lifted
Speaker 4: up in the air, and you're right, we suddenly focus
Speaker 4: on it rather than them, and it has a white
Speaker 4: table cloth, and it's moving briskly through the crowd, back
Speaker 4: and forth. It's almost like some sort of robe that
Speaker 4: is flowing, or there's this angelic sense to it that
Speaker 4: is you could you could envision something like that going
Speaker 4: down a church aisle, right and being placed down as
Speaker 4: some sort of sacred object, which is the that the
Speaker 4: camera is giving it. So, yeah, as far as the
Speaker 4: point of view thing goes, you're right, this movie is
Speaker 4: interestingly aligned with Henry Hill's point of view, though not
Speaker 4: technically the same way all the time.
Speaker 1: But it's absolutely his story.
Speaker 4: And so what did you make on this viewing of
Speaker 4: the choice to allow Karen's narration to have some space
Speaker 4: in this narrative.
Speaker 3: We always did everything together and we always were in
Speaker 3: the same crowd. Anniversaries, Christenings, we only went to each
Speaker 3: other's houses. The women played cards, and when the kids
Speaker 3: were born, Mickey and Jimmy were always the first at
Speaker 3: the hospital. And when we went to the Islands of
Speaker 3: Vegas for vacation, we always went together, no outsiders. Ever,
Speaker 3: it got to be normal. It got to where I
Speaker 3: was even proud that I had the kind of husband
Speaker 3: who was willing to go out and risk his neck
Speaker 3: just to get us the little.
Speaker 4: Extras fluring Brocco here as Karen, and I think, oh man,
Speaker 4: I should have marked this down. There are maybe three
Speaker 4: sections dedicated to her in terms of voiceover, but I
Speaker 4: think the performance is dynamic enough that she also brings
Speaker 4: a presence and makes it her story when she's not
Speaker 4: delivering a voiceover. But it is a break from this
Speaker 4: very specific choice to align us in the movie with
Speaker 4: Henry Hill. So how did that play.
Speaker 2: Out for you on this viewing, Well, it made sense
Speaker 2: because there are certain things that obviously only Henry can
Speaker 2: know and have seen and experienced, and those are the
Speaker 2: things we see only through his point of view. But
Speaker 2: there are things that she was witnessed to, and those
Speaker 2: are the things that she gets to articulate that she
Speaker 2: was part of. It worked for me, Josh, because not
Speaker 2: only that, but this whole sense that it is a memory,
Speaker 2: that is something he is retelling it. It feels like
Speaker 2: it's going back into the past until we get caught
Speaker 2: up to the quote unquote present day, and where we
Speaker 2: know we're in the present day officially, I think anyway,
Speaker 2: is when they're having the conversation with the FBI guy
Speaker 2: about whether or not they're going to go into the
Speaker 2: witness protection program. That for me is the moment where
Speaker 2: the story has now caught up. And so I I
Speaker 2: think that the dual voiceovers, how I reconcile that is
Speaker 2: it's as if they are both putting their stories on
Speaker 2: the page. Rather they're on the record, whether it's for
Speaker 2: the FBI or it's for some other some of the storyteller. Nevertheless,
Speaker 2: it's it's in the present day. It's it's officially on
Speaker 2: the record. And and then and she now is is
Speaker 2: entering that part of the story officially through that through
Speaker 2: that route. So I love that we get her perspective.
Speaker 2: And I love the rain Brocos performance.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean I've always I've always been favorable on it.
Speaker 4: It's just interesting to think about it as the years
Speaker 4: go by, and in Contexte what you were talking about.
Speaker 4: I think for me, it's definitely justified practically in the
Speaker 4: ways you describe, but also it is I mean, the
Speaker 4: performance justifies it, the way it's written, the material that
Speaker 4: she's given justifies it. And right from the first instance
Speaker 4: we see her. How about the line she delivers this
Speaker 4: is on their double date, the first thing she says
Speaker 4: to them, have some coffee, it'll wake you up. She
Speaker 4: is not no matter she doesn't really know who this
Speaker 4: guy is yet. But still, you know, you have to
Speaker 4: imagine that is that's not the demure way to approach
Speaker 4: a first date, even if it's you know, someone who
Speaker 4: you're not really that interested in.
Speaker 1: And what is really interesting.
Speaker 4: About Karen I think, and this again has been you know,
Speaker 4: it wasn't necessarily a revelation, but how entirely complicit she
Speaker 4: is in all this. I think that's fascinating and more
Speaker 4: interesting than making her a victim. This clarified eyes and
Speaker 4: to me in a new way, perhaps with the scene
Speaker 4: where he does take his gun and with the butt
Speaker 4: of it beat her neighbor nearly to death. For from
Speaker 4: what we understand, the neighbor has assaulted Karen and he
Speaker 4: just says hide this. We get an insert shot, so
Speaker 4: many crucial key insert shots in this movie, close ups
Speaker 4: of the bloody gun and she grabs it.
Speaker 3: I know there are women like my best friends who
Speaker 3: would have gotten out of there the minute their boyfriend
Speaker 3: gave them a gun to hide. Well, I didn't. I
Speaker 3: gotta admit the truth. It turned me on.
Speaker 4: And I think what that moment shows to me is
Speaker 4: that in that voiceover, I think once or twice she
Speaker 4: talks about how sexy he is and turn, which is
Speaker 4: one ingredient. Sure, that's that's interesting, But this scene with
Speaker 4: the hide this and the gun shows that it's not
Speaker 4: just his sexiness. It's not even necessarily his connections for
Speaker 4: the you know, the favors they can get. It's that
Speaker 4: he can be a protector. That's part of what appeals
Speaker 4: to her about Henry. And in a way, Henry offers
Speaker 4: Karen the same sort of quote unquote protection that Paul
Speaker 4: offering the neighborhood, right.
Speaker 2: He describes that that's that's what the mom's really doing, right.
Speaker 4: Yes, Yeah, and he describes it as, you know, a
Speaker 4: positive thing, right, yes, but all we see are the
Speaker 4: costs of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And and Karen is in a similar position to where
Speaker 4: she makes a deal and is in some ways coerced,
Speaker 4: but she makes the choice to pursue that protection and
Speaker 4: it costs her as well. And yeah, and Broco just
Speaker 4: you know, with the dynamism and the ferocity that she
Speaker 4: has from beginning to end, is the performance earns this
Speaker 4: diversion from the single point.
Speaker 2: Of view that we otherwise we're getting, and she is
Speaker 2: all those things you describe, And then to show the
Speaker 2: complexity of the character in Broco's range, maybe my favorite
Speaker 2: single word reading of hers watching it this time is
Speaker 2: that night where right after they're just married, Henry stays
Speaker 2: out too late and she's sticking up, She's standing up
Speaker 2: for herself and Henry to her mom right, sounding like
Speaker 2: the independent woman, I don't care what Henry does, stay
Speaker 2: out of it, mom, all those things. But then after
Speaker 2: he comes back and then turns around and goes back out.
Speaker 2: She says Dad, like she sounds just like a child,
Speaker 2: like she needs dad's help with mom. But also maybe
Speaker 2: Dad can give some advice about Henry. And it's just
Speaker 2: perfect that little that little girl is still inside her
Speaker 2: at the same time. Right, even though she is all
Speaker 2: those things, she's not this demurror girl, but she also
Speaker 2: still kind of is. And I wanted to talk about
Speaker 2: this because I think you set this up nicely, and
Speaker 2: I don't want to create any straw men here, so
Speaker 2: you can tell me if I'm heading down the wrong path.
Speaker 2: I haven't read any detailed arguments along these lines, but
Speaker 2: you like me, and I'm sure most people listening have
Speaker 2: certainly seen tweets and different arguments come up on social
Speaker 2: media here and there about people taking shots of Scorsese
Speaker 2: for romanticizing. This goes back to the intoxicating a lower
Speaker 2: part romanticizing this type of lifestyle, or at least romanticizing
Speaker 2: or glorifying a certain type of toxic masculinity that we
Speaker 2: often see in these types of gangster characters. And I
Speaker 2: have to imagine that Goodfellas is an exhibit in that case.
Speaker 2: And I here, Josh, I don't want to this isn't
Speaker 2: just me disagreeing with it. I honestly, watching it this time,
Speaker 2: I really don't see any basis for it at all.
Speaker 2: And I'm not trying to be obtuse about it, because
Speaker 2: I've seen this movie enough. As I said that, I
Speaker 2: didn't expect any major surprises, and I would say overall,
Speaker 2: I didn't have any huge shocks. But if you had
Speaker 2: asked me before rewatching it, how Goodfellas began? How does
Speaker 2: a Goodfellows start? I think I would have mistakenly said, well,
Speaker 2: it starts as far back as I can remember. I
Speaker 2: always wanted to be a gangster. It starts with Henry
Speaker 2: in the past saying I wanted to be a gangster,
Speaker 2: and it starts in the fifties. I would have bypassed
Speaker 2: the prolog. I forgot about the prolog. But you can't
Speaker 2: bypass the prolog. Scorsese doesn't bypass the prolog. Why does
Speaker 2: he open the film the way he does, with the
Speaker 2: first sound we're hearing and the first images we're hearing
Speaker 2: being the car rolling down the road, the highway, the
Speaker 2: early hours of the morning, two guys, two mobsters sleeping
Speaker 2: in the car, Henry barely awake, right they've just done
Speaker 2: something really wrong, really bad. We don't know that yet,
Speaker 2: Viewers don't know that yet, but the guy's in the
Speaker 2: car do certainly the driver knows. And what's happening. We're
Speaker 2: about to find out that there's a guy who should
Speaker 2: be dead, bleeding profusely in the trunk of the car.
Speaker 2: And when they open it, that's when we get That's
Speaker 2: when we get the hellscape. That's when we get that
Speaker 2: color red coming out from the trunk. And so this
Speaker 2: is all within like the first ninety seconds of the movie, Josh,
Speaker 2: We're going to watch Joe Peshy take a gigantic knife
Speaker 2: and stab into Billy Batts and the blood is going
Speaker 2: to start gurgling out of him right so, right away,
Speaker 2: right away, we get a sense of what this life
Speaker 2: is like. And even though even though we're going to
Speaker 2: then get that shot, we're going to get that wonderful,
Speaker 2: editing moment of him closing the trunk and on that
Speaker 2: action and sound that heroic. It is heroic. I think
Speaker 2: Scorsese he is being deliberately ironic here. It's a heroic
Speaker 2: stagecoach Ringo like shot where it tracks forward in a
Speaker 2: hurry and it stops on him. But it's ironic because
Speaker 2: nothing we've seen up to that tracking shot is heroic,
Speaker 2: and the look on Raleiota's face that it freezes on,
Speaker 2: nothing about his face suggests heroism. He looks scared as
Speaker 2: hell actually in that moment, right, And everything about the
Speaker 2: red is telling us whether we know anything about Martin
Speaker 2: Scorsese these other films or not, the color red is
Speaker 2: making us very very uneasy. I actually think I was
Speaker 2: looking at this Josh, and I don't know if he
Speaker 2: did something technique wise or superimposing it over it, But
Speaker 2: there's a moment when that trunk opens where it actually
Speaker 2: looks like they do something almost like a technique out
Speaker 2: of Vertigo, where the color red seems to impose over
Speaker 2: the white sheet. It feels for a second like red
Speaker 2: just kind of starts to absorb over the body. It
Speaker 2: gets even bloodier for a second. And everything about that
Speaker 2: suggests that there's nothing heroic going on. So when he
Speaker 2: actually says, as far back as I can remember, I
Speaker 2: always wanted to be a gangster, and the music and
Speaker 2: the horn start, you could actually you could you could
Speaker 2: just immediately burst out laughing. It's that it's that funny, right,
Speaker 2: so I think that's intended to be that hilarious, and
Speaker 2: he is saying, and as we watch the film, even
Speaker 2: if you take the even if you take the Kopa,
Speaker 2: that might be the only real moment, and even that's
Speaker 2: a performance, Even that's a performance for Karen. Ask yourself,
Speaker 2: how many moments in the film you genuinely feel like
Speaker 2: you would want to trade places with Henry Hill, even
Speaker 2: for a moment or even that you feel a vicarious,
Speaker 2: a rush of adrenaline. I don't know that I could
Speaker 2: come up with with one or two. And look, I'm
Speaker 2: not a saint. I think you have to acknowledge, and
Speaker 2: I think Martin Scorsese understands that there is an element
Speaker 2: within all of us where we are like Karen, we
Speaker 2: can get turned on by bad behavior. I still say
Speaker 2: you can't count the number of moments on maybe more
Speaker 2: than two fingers. If you're lucky where you really feel
Speaker 2: that they mostly have here and you were getting it
Speaker 2: this earlier. Henry and the mob characters there mostly just
Speaker 2: have power and they maintain their power through force, and
Speaker 2: with that comes a lot of ugliness. And it's just
Speaker 2: the power that he's drawn to. But that power isn't
Speaker 2: romantic and it's not sexy really. Ever in this.
Speaker 4: Film, by the time we get to the helicopter sequence,
Speaker 4: which I don't think we've touched on yet, now that
Speaker 4: is where it's absolutely clear this guy is living a
Speaker 4: nightmare and he's got it worse off than any schnook
Speaker 4: he's putting in. Forget nine to five, he's putting in
Speaker 4: twenty two hour days, and he's paranoid for every second
Speaker 4: of them. I read the film the same way you do,
Speaker 4: but I will also say this is a conversation that's
Speaker 4: worth having. And I think Scorsese, throughout his career has
Speaker 4: tiptoed along these lines of being deliberately ironic. And you know,
Speaker 4: this is part, not entirely, but part of our split
Speaker 4: on The Wolf of Wall Street. I do question sometimes
Speaker 4: you know, how much fun are are you going to
Speaker 4: have before you tell the audience this isn't fun even
Speaker 4: if you're being deliberately ironic. And in the case of Goodfellas,
Speaker 4: I find him to be walking that line quite convincingly
Speaker 4: and with dexterity and a moral clarity, a tone management.
Speaker 4: You know, this is where he is doing that at
Speaker 4: his best. For me, yes, at least.
Speaker 2: Am saying, if you want to have that argument, I
Speaker 2: think it's tough to include Goodfellas in that argument.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's yeah, I didn't hold it up as
Speaker 4: an exhibit either. But when you use the word heroic
Speaker 4: for that push in to Henry, that's completely apt. It's
Speaker 4: also purposeful. I think that is a clear choice that
Speaker 4: he is making to be deliberately ironic that does not
Speaker 4: negate its heroic effect. And this brings to mind that
Speaker 4: prologue has another kinetic element that I don't think I'd
Speaker 4: noticed before that adds to this sense of excitement and
Speaker 4: counters that shot of them where they're sleeping and bored,
Speaker 4: and it is the way the car when we first
Speaker 4: it might be the first shot of the film, the car,
Speaker 4: the cameras behind the car zooming down the freeway, and
Speaker 4: the camera all of a sudden revs up, swings to
Speaker 4: the next to the car that Henry's driving and almost
Speaker 4: passes it. And it's it's as if Scorsese is saying, let's.
Speaker 1: Go for a ride.
Speaker 2: H I actually and I got a difference.
Speaker 4: Around them and and pulls ahead of them. And this
Speaker 4: is what I loved about it, Adam. The credits that
Speaker 4: come on the screen right they're moving and if I'm
Speaker 4: remember it correctly, they appear they almost rev up and
Speaker 4: move into.
Speaker 1: The same direction across.
Speaker 4: The screen from right to left. All of that is
Speaker 4: it's that word we keep using. It's kinetic, it's exciting,
Speaker 4: it's sexy, it's it's heroic. And so I am not
Speaker 4: saying that I read the movie any differently than you are, right,
Speaker 4: but these are these are the deliberately ironic or how
Speaker 4: how high are we meant to be getting? This is
Speaker 4: always the question with we meant to be getting in
Speaker 4: moments like this. Now I agree with you. I don't
Speaker 4: think Goodfellas is, you know, ultimately a movie that you
Speaker 4: could use as an argument for that. I have others
Speaker 4: that I've used, But it's there. It's there again.
Speaker 2: Just think about most scenes in this film, sitting around
Speaker 2: at a restaurant getting yelled at by Tommy. What, getting
Speaker 2: a few free drinks? Like most of their life is
Speaker 2: pretty banal, right, Like it's not, it's really not alluring.
Speaker 2: They get to they hang out on the corner in
Speaker 2: a pizza joint, like great, they get to take whatever
Speaker 2: they want, Like that's not actually that that exciting? Ultimately,
Speaker 2: what you see in this film. And even I was
Speaker 2: gonna say how nuanced the beginning is. You're right, the
Speaker 2: way the credits move, how it moves in sync, even
Speaker 2: the sound with the car. But my feeling watching the
Speaker 2: car because of how the car is kind of moving
Speaker 2: at a steady speed and you get the sense you
Speaker 2: see the guys and the way they're sleeping, and how
Speaker 2: the car is moving. It's not a very fast pace.
Speaker 2: It suggests to me that everybody's drowsy, and it's almost
Speaker 2: like the car could go off the road at any minute.
Speaker 2: Like it doesn't feel it doesn't feel thrilling to me,
Speaker 2: but the but the way the credits are in sync
Speaker 2: with it almost feels like it is right. So there
Speaker 2: there are these opposing forces at play. But that's that's
Speaker 2: what that's what makes the film making exciting.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he loves a play. He loves to play in
Speaker 4: that tension. And yeah, as you're describing, you know how
Speaker 4: banal their lives are. This comes back to the supposed
Speaker 4: freedom they've found by being above the law, right when
Speaker 4: actually they've trapped themselves in this bubble that constricts them
Speaker 4: more than if they were a schnook.
Speaker 2: Exactly it's a great point. So just a few other things.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you had a list of other
Speaker 2: things or other items that you wanted to touch on,
Speaker 2: But I love what I think is intentional humor anyway
Speaker 2: of We'll go back to Maury, the fact that we
Speaker 2: get the commercial. We see that entire commercial. You know,
Speaker 2: Maury's wigs stay on, right, you can jump in the water,
Speaker 2: the wind, there could be a storm, right, Maury's wigs
Speaker 2: never come off. But what happens then in the very
Speaker 2: next scene, turns out the wigs can handle everything but
Speaker 2: Jimmy Conway. Of course, you know, like that feels like
Speaker 2: a great joke embedded in there, because as soon as
Speaker 2: Jimmy Conway gets his hands on Maury, the whigs are
Speaker 2: to come off, doesn't.
Speaker 4: It isn't it Jimmy watching the commercial, like discuss.
Speaker 2: It's almost like you know, he's been thinking about it.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna get I'm gonna get that.
Speaker 1: Off, Chuck as Maury.
Speaker 2: By the way, those those editing touches, the the the
Speaker 2: way we allied moments the and here, some of them
Speaker 2: are thrilling to But we've already seen the prologue, so
Speaker 2: that we don't have to relive moments and revisit them again.
Speaker 2: When we leave the house, we actually get what is
Speaker 2: essentially a match cut on sound as there as the
Speaker 2: camera is in the house, we see the car in
Speaker 2: the background, we hear bats in the trunk. In the
Speaker 2: very next shot, they're out on the road, and it's
Speaker 2: as if, well, did the did the sound come from
Speaker 2: the previous shot when he was in the driveway, or
Speaker 2: is the shot is the sound from the road. It
Speaker 2: doesn't really matter. They're from the same moment. But that's
Speaker 2: how he bridges that gap in time, right, it brings
Speaker 2: us there. There are such wonderful little moments like that.
Speaker 2: Another example of that is the time where I think
Speaker 2: he's fighting with Karen. Henry's fighting with Karen and she
Speaker 2: I think it's right after she pulls the gun on him,
Speaker 2: and she goes into the closet and she yanks the clothes.
Speaker 2: So again action and sound combined. Right, she yanks and
Speaker 2: at the same time she yanks, you think she's yelling
Speaker 2: in anger, and maybe she is. But on the next frame,
Speaker 2: the next cut, he's out with the guys or something,
Speaker 2: and it's a cut to his face and he's yelling,
Speaker 2: right so is he screaming? Is she screaming? Those cuts
Speaker 2: are cut together in that moment as if they are
Speaker 2: one moment that is happening together. There are so many examples. Oh,
Speaker 2: I got to give you one more. It is the
Speaker 2: same kind of thing here, but not with sound, with
Speaker 2: with movement in editing. It's when Karen is complaining about
Speaker 2: that first date and how the moment he was you know,
Speaker 2: he was pushing me into the car and then he
Speaker 2: was pulling me out, and so then we see that
Speaker 2: enacted in the editing where just with one cut, it's
Speaker 2: as if, in one fluid motion, it's like she was
Speaker 2: pushed in and then literally taken out. It's just that's
Speaker 2: how that's how fluid the editing in this movie.
Speaker 4: Is well, and it creates this cohesive, coherent experience where
Speaker 4: the two and almost two and a half hours, you know, all.
Speaker 1: Feel of a piece.
Speaker 4: They're propulsives, because that's it. There's movements like that from
Speaker 4: one moment to the other. Just yeah, a couple of
Speaker 4: last quick things. I'll say, we probably haven't talked about
Speaker 4: Joe Pesci much at all because it's such an iconic performance.
Speaker 4: What's left to say?
Speaker 1: Real quick?
Speaker 4: When I notice here, You know, the little things you
Speaker 4: notice when it's the umpteenth viewing and everyone's talked about
Speaker 4: this and impersonated it to death. When Billy Bats insults
Speaker 4: him by talking about the shoe shine story, he's it's
Speaker 4: not just that Tommy gets psychotically mad. Peshi gives us
Speaker 4: a few beats where he is genuinely hurt. He can
Speaker 4: tell he's a real human being who is feeling like, Hey,
Speaker 4: I'm here, I'm almost a made guy, and I still
Speaker 4: don't have their respect.
Speaker 6: Hey, Tommy, if I'm gonna break your ball that day,
Speaker 6: to go home and get your shine box.
Speaker 1: This Kidis kid was great.
Speaker 6: I used to call him spit shine Comy. I swear
Speaker 6: to God, how you make your shoes look like mirrors?
Speaker 6: Excuse me my language.
Speaker 1: He was terrific. He was the best.
Speaker 6: He made a lot of money too. So hello Tommy,
Speaker 6: one more shines, Billy, what I said, no more shines?
Speaker 6: Maybe you didn't hear about it.
Speaker 2: You've been away a long time. They didn't go up
Speaker 2: there and tell you I don't shine shoes anymore.
Speaker 6: Relax, Well, your flock crow, what's what's got into you?
Speaker 6: I'm breaking your balls a little bit.
Speaker 5: That's all.
Speaker 1: I'm going to kid with you.
Speaker 2: Sometimes you don't sound like you're kidding.
Speaker 6: You know, there's a lot of people right I mean,
Speaker 6: I'm only kidding with you having a party. I mean
Speaker 6: I just came home. I haven't seen you in a
Speaker 6: long time, and I'm breaking your balls and away you're
Speaker 6: getting fish.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry.
Speaker 6: I don't know my offend you.
Speaker 5: I'm sorry too.
Speaker 6: It's okay, noo, I'll go home and get your shine box.
Speaker 4: And the fact that you know this Pesci isn't just
Speaker 4: doing the you know below your top moments here. This
Speaker 4: is a really good performance de Niro. I love how
Speaker 4: comfortable he is just to be mostly in the background.
Speaker 4: I know Jimmy comes into the focus a little more
Speaker 4: in the final third, but I almost like the beginning better,
Speaker 4: where you're watching this dynamic scene of violence or yelling
Speaker 4: or talking and and de Niro's kind of like the
Speaker 4: fourth guy in the scene, and he's just kind of
Speaker 4: you know, chuckling or grinning or doing something with his
Speaker 4: hands that's on point and brilliant, and he's so relaxed
Speaker 4: here you can just feel like there's no weight to
Speaker 4: carry this whole movie, and so he's just having as
Speaker 4: much fun as he can in the corners. And then
Speaker 4: the last thing is a little are technical, but that
Speaker 4: famous dolly zoom shot at breakfast the diner, at the
Speaker 4: diner with Jimmy and Henry, where it realizes he's gonna
Speaker 4: set him up. Yeah, it's I think it appears to
Speaker 4: be zooming in on them while dining welling out right,
Speaker 4: So you're so things are a little unsteady. What I
Speaker 4: noticed this time about it. I think that's the first
Speaker 4: time we realize Jimmy, who's older now, has these giant
Speaker 4: the glass nineteen eighties thick glasses which are comical and
Speaker 4: kind of undercut him as a threatening figure. But also
Speaker 4: in that scene they have a similar effect to the
Speaker 4: dolly zoom where you're like, you're a little disoriented by
Speaker 4: the thickness of him and his eyes are a little blurry.
Speaker 4: So that's just, yeah, one of those brilliant little flares
Speaker 4: of techniques. Scar says he puts in here that that
Speaker 4: works thematically as well. They all work thematically. It's not
Speaker 4: none of this is showing off.
Speaker 2: I'll say this about Tommy and the famous scene. You
Speaker 2: think I'm funny is I had never really thought about
Speaker 2: the fact that even though we have met Tommy before,
Speaker 2: we've met that character before, we haven't really gotten to
Speaker 2: know him, and we don't know yet that he's a psychopath.
Speaker 2: So that's our introduction to the real Tommy, And in
Speaker 2: that scene he actually is. He's not playing a psychopath, right,
Speaker 2: or he is acting like a psychopath, but it turns
Speaker 2: out he's being good natured. It's a joke, he's pretending,
Speaker 2: but that is setting up. We get enough of a
Speaker 2: glimpse of how scary he really is in the performance
Speaker 2: within a performance, right that we do know, We do
Speaker 2: know or have enough of a sense of who he
Speaker 2: really is underneath that once we start to see his
Speaker 2: actions later, we see how he really does behave in
Speaker 2: some of these situations. Later, we're not surprised at all
Speaker 2: because we've seen the crazy come out. We've seen the
Speaker 2: crazy come out, even though it was a situation and
Speaker 2: he was performing.
Speaker 7: What do you mean funny?
Speaker 1: Funny?
Speaker 5: How?
Speaker 2: How am I funny? Just do you know how you
Speaker 2: tell a story? No? No, I don't know you said it?
Speaker 7: How do I know you said I'm funny?
Speaker 2: How do my funny?
Speaker 7: What the is so funny about me?
Speaker 6: Tell me, tell me what's funny?
Speaker 1: Get me?
Speaker 4: And I think it's it's the archetype for the you know,
Speaker 4: the gangster, hothead, psychotic. This is a very familiar type.
Speaker 4: But how she gives it all these layers we're talking about,
Speaker 4: which why it's why it makes it like the piece
Speaker 4: de resistance of this particular figure.
Speaker 2: Here's my closing question, the thing I I do. I
Speaker 2: do want listeners to come in and give me an answer.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's in the book. Presumably all of the men
Speaker 2: who were part of the Luftanza heist, like Henry. I
Speaker 2: don't really know enough about the dynamics to say whether
Speaker 2: or not Jimmy definitely reports to Paulie or not as
Speaker 2: part of his crew, but Henry certainly does, don't. All
Speaker 2: of these guys probably belong to Paully's crew. So when
Speaker 2: Jimmy just starts whacking everybody doesn't, doesn't Paulie maybe say, Hey,
Speaker 2: what's what's happening to all my guys all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: I've got no muscle anymore.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm curious. A good question.
Speaker 4: Jimmy seems to be operating on his own towards the
Speaker 4: end there, but even Henry, even says at one point, like,
Speaker 4: we can't touch those guys. That's part of them not
Speaker 4: being one hundred percent Italian, right, is that they can't
Speaker 4: with the wrong guy if but he also kind of
Speaker 4: says like, you know, we're we're held back. So so
Speaker 4: it's a good question. It also opens up has like
Speaker 4: how rogue has Jimmy gone, Like.
Speaker 2: That's what that's kind of what I'm saying is like
Speaker 2: at that point, I don't know. Yeah, I'm curious about that.
Speaker 2: Maybe someone has the answer. It was fun talking about Goodfellas.
Speaker 2: Goodfellas is currently available vod and via quotes in your
Speaker 2: group chat. If you agree or disagree with anything we
Speaker 2: had to say, or you have any other thoughts about
Speaker 2: our show, you can email us feedback at filmspotting dot net.
Speaker 7: This episode is brought to you by Peloton. Break through
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Speaker 4: Listening is the number one thing you can do to
Speaker 4: support an independently produced show like ours. A couple more
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Speaker 4: a rating or a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Speaker 4: It doesn't matter if you're brand new or have been
Speaker 4: around for twenty years. Every new review helps us reach
Speaker 4: new listeners. The most substantial way to support us, however,
Speaker 4: is to join the Film Spotting Family, and you can
Speaker 4: do that at Film Spottingfamily dot com. Thank you very
Speaker 4: much to Family plus member Wyatt Espeland from hiawassee Georgia
Speaker 4: Wyatt's letterbox handle if you want to follow him.
Speaker 2: There is w E.
Speaker 1: S p A l i n seventy five.
Speaker 2: Okay, so it looks like Wes Palin seventy five. Wyatt writes.
Speaker 2: I toured the country performing as a singer, songwriter and
Speaker 2: always in a vehicle. I discovered Film Spotting during the
Speaker 2: Christopher Nolan UVRA View or UVRA Reviews and have been
Speaker 2: listening ever since. I became a member for the nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety nine draft as that was the peak of my
Speaker 2: movie watching years. That was Bonus show number fifty three
Speaker 2: last July I had to hear if any of you
Speaker 2: would pick Boys Don't Cry or The Green Mile, two
Speaker 2: of my favorites from that year, we did not. I'm
Speaker 2: also happy that I can listen to archive episodes. Currently
Speaker 2: enjoying your revisit of Silence of the Lambs for its
Speaker 2: thirtieth a favorite review segment. I love the Year End
Speaker 2: and Oscar episodes, and I was all in on the
Speaker 2: Jane Campion Oove review marathon. I love Josh's comments on
Speaker 2: The Piano, which is one of my favorite movies of
Speaker 2: all time. I love all the rankings of directors films,
Speaker 2: and I like it when Josh and Adam catch up
Speaker 2: on some of their blind spots. I don't like it
Speaker 2: when they disagree and the tension can be felt. It
Speaker 2: broke my heart when I found out Siskel and Ebert
Speaker 2: never really seem to like one another. Lol. Okay, I
Speaker 2: do confess I like the tension a little bit. Missus Miniver,
Speaker 2: anyone I hoped to hang out one day at a
Speaker 2: live event of all the movies? Yeah, Missus Miniver, what
Speaker 2: a wonderfully entertaining show, most of the time more entertaining
Speaker 2: than the films being reviewed. Thanks for having me letterbox
Speaker 2: top four mostly representing my favorite directors, The color Purple,
Speaker 2: Hannah and Her Sisters, Once upon a Time in Hollywood,
Speaker 2: and Nixon. That's got to be the first Nixon appearing
Speaker 2: in a letterbox.
Speaker 1: I think so more.
Speaker 2: Oliver Stone favorite movie he revisited recently, Why It's His
Speaker 2: Natural Born Killers. A random film that he loves is
Speaker 2: The Butcher Boy from Neil Jordan, a movie he credits
Speaker 2: with becoming a cinophile. How about this when I watched
Speaker 2: my first Scorsese at fifteen years old, Goodfellas and The
Speaker 2: Last Temptation of Christ in the same week. There you go,
Speaker 2: a book about movies or movie making. I have all
Speaker 2: of Roger Ebert's review books. We think Wyatt for joining
Speaker 2: the family and all those years of listening. In addition
Speaker 2: to keeping us doing what we're doing, your support comes
Speaker 2: with perks. You get to listen early in ad Free,
Speaker 2: You get our weekly newsletter. You get exclusive opportunities like
Speaker 2: being part of the so thoughtful Film Spotting Family Discord,
Speaker 2: and monthly bonus shows. We did just talk about Akira
Speaker 2: Kurosawa's Stray Dog. Guess what pretty great movie. This month
Speaker 2: we will be having another edition of Trivia Spotting and
Speaker 2: we love playing that fun little game with all of
Speaker 2: our Film Spotting Family members. There are still slots available.
Speaker 2: We will put a link in the notes for this
Speaker 2: show and the Film Spotting Family episode. Anyway, if you
Speaker 2: would like to sign up and be part of Trivia Spotting,
Speaker 2: Can I actually can I just brag real quick on
Speaker 2: the trivia front Josh our discord folks may have seen this,
Speaker 2: but can I brag for a second?
Speaker 1: Yeah, go for it.
Speaker 2: So it was an anniversary for Sarah and me last week,
Speaker 2: and so we decided it was a Wednesday night, we
Speaker 2: decided to have a drink, so we went to just
Speaker 2: the nearest bar to us to sneak out and have
Speaker 2: a drink. Turns out it was trivia night. We didn't
Speaker 2: even know this place had a trivia night. It was
Speaker 2: trivia night, pub trivia night, only like maybe five teams playing,
Speaker 2: and we show up. Round four is about to start.
Speaker 2: I don't know how many rounds there are. I just
Speaker 2: know round four is about to start. So obviously we've
Speaker 2: missed a good part of the game. But they say
Speaker 2: it's the entertainment round, and so we're not gonna play
Speaker 2: because we missed most of the game. But then they
Speaker 2: asked the first question and I know the answer, so
Speaker 2: it's like, okay, it's on. I'm gonna go get I'm
Speaker 2: gonna go get a sheet, and we're gonna play. And
Speaker 2: so we start playing, and there were nine questions and
Speaker 2: I think I knew all nine of them. Sarah may
Speaker 2: not have been a lot of help on entertainment, but
Speaker 2: I knew all nine of them and we and we
Speaker 2: got them right. So we had a good round. So
Speaker 2: then we're in turns out there are seven rounds, right,
Speaker 2: So between Sarah and I, we have two very different
Speaker 2: backgrounds educationally in interest. So we end up being a
Speaker 2: pretty good team. And in the end, with only having
Speaker 2: played four rounds and missing the first three, we only
Speaker 2: ended up losing. We ended up finishing second, and we
Speaker 2: only lost by four points. Hey, I know what you're
Speaker 2: gonna be doing next Wednesday night exactly. It's penciled into
Speaker 2: our you're gonna mount here now. And and the thing
Speaker 2: is the team that the team that won, they were
Speaker 2: like these like really inebriated bros who I think were
Speaker 2: totally oblivious to the fact that we joined in round
Speaker 2: four and only lost by four points and they were
Speaker 2: like over celebrating and it was just like, so, you
Speaker 2: know what, We're definitely coming back.
Speaker 1: This is a rivalry, this is my story.
Speaker 2: Could be Sharks and Jets. I hope they ask a
Speaker 2: question about West Side Story. I think we'll get it,
Speaker 2: and they weren't. I could be wrong. Hey, this is
Speaker 2: about the film Spotting Family, though not my trivia prowess.
Speaker 2: You can learn more about the film Spotting Family at
Speaker 2: film spotting Family dot com.
Speaker 6: Where you find you at greet or something.
Speaker 1: No, he came into the store. I work at.
Speaker 3: Music.
Speaker 2: See yeah, sometimes, bro, you should come to the show.
Speaker 1: Tell us.
Speaker 2: That's from Lurker, a debut feature from director Alex Russell.
Speaker 2: As the title suggests, the innocuous sounding encounter between a
Speaker 2: musician and a fan takes a turn for the worse.
Speaker 2: But just how bad does it get? Josh, you caught
Speaker 2: up with this one and you are nominating it for
Speaker 2: the Golden Brick, which we award to our favorite film
Speaker 2: of the year by a new or emerging filmmaker. Tell
Speaker 2: us what you liked about Lurker.
Speaker 4: It does get dark. I think maybe what I liked
Speaker 4: less was the direction it goes at the end. It
Speaker 4: kind of spins in different directions, and the darkness is
Speaker 4: part of that. But man, is this a movie that
Speaker 4: hooks you with its opening scene. I'm not going to
Speaker 4: describe it in detail, but this is where the sales
Speaker 4: clerk Matthew played by Theodor Pellerin encounters this pop star
Speaker 4: Oliver played by Archie Medekui and and again won't give
Speaker 4: it away, but the way he entraps him and the
Speaker 4: way his eyes lock on him like he's prey, you realize, oh,
Speaker 4: we're dealing with someone really nefarious here. And the performance
Speaker 4: from Pellerin digs into that and is consistently to the
Speaker 4: end fascinating and unnerving.
Speaker 5: He is.
Speaker 4: There's just a desperation to this, a neediness to the
Speaker 4: performance that is electric in a strange way. It is
Speaker 4: very talented mister Ripley. There are definitely shades of that.
Speaker 4: But I think the writer director here, Alex Russell make
Speaker 4: their debut, is he's also doing a character study that
Speaker 4: serves as a meditation on celebrity in some ways that
Speaker 4: Ripley didn't and authenticity, I think in some interesting ways
Speaker 4: that's what I really latched into, are the questions where
Speaker 4: it explores authenticity It's something that comes up in terms
Speaker 4: of Ouiver's music and who he wants to be as
Speaker 4: an artist. What is authentic? So it's not just about
Speaker 4: the Matthew character, the sales clerk character. So there are
Speaker 4: a lot of interesting layers here. The last thing I'll
Speaker 4: quickly mention that I think makes it interesting as a
Speaker 4: golden brick too. You know, we're looking for a strong
Speaker 4: vision here, interesting choices. It is the music, Oliver's music.
Speaker 1: What's the difference between love and obsession? I don't know,
Speaker 1: but I know I want you.
Speaker 4: Kenneth bloom I Guess also known as Kenny Beats, composed
Speaker 4: the score but also worked with a variety of artists
Speaker 4: to bring out these songs. I would say Oliver is
Speaker 4: kind of a weekend like figure. To me, the music
Speaker 4: sounded like that. There's these sleepy, seductive songs that he performs.
Speaker 4: They really grab you and fit the character well and
Speaker 4: what the character is exploring again this authenticity question, and
Speaker 4: Medekue perform then brilliantly. You know, this is a really believable,
Speaker 4: convincing rising pop star you've got here. So the use
Speaker 4: of music is something that makes Lurker stand out as well.
Speaker 4: I'll leave it there so I don't spoil anymore.
Speaker 2: Okay, Lurker is out now. I think just playing in
Speaker 2: limited release. In wider release you can see the roses
Speaker 2: which you did. This stars Olivia Coleman and Benedict Cumberbatch
Speaker 2: as a well off married couple whose marriage goes bad.
Speaker 2: But it's comedy, so it's either going to go hilariously bad.
Speaker 2: Well that's the idea. It should go hilariously bad. SNL
Speaker 2: alums Kate McKinnon Andy Samberg are also in the film.
Speaker 2: Jay Roach of Austin Powers and Meet the Parents' Fame directs.
Speaker 1: How was it, Josh?
Speaker 4: I imagine most folks are going to go see this
Speaker 4: because they're interested in Coleman and Cumberbatch. That was our situation,
Speaker 4: and we weren't disappointed. They're brilliant together. I could have
Speaker 4: just taken a movie of only the two of them together,
Speaker 4: whether they're you know, deeply in love at the front
Speaker 4: or you know, deeply into test near the end of
Speaker 4: the film. The repartee here it's they're just zipping along
Speaker 4: and you're kind of you're dazzled, even when they're being
Speaker 4: horrible to each other.
Speaker 1: One I would rather live with her than a wolf.
Speaker 2: Did you see Wolf?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Well one he has arms. Well I saw a documentary
Speaker 5: Wants about a man without arms, and it looked like
Speaker 5: a difficult life, particularly for the partner.
Speaker 1: So I like that he has arms.
Speaker 4: Yeah, They're almost too good for this movie, because I
Speaker 4: don't remember much about the War of the Roses the
Speaker 4: Turner Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas one, but I remember
Speaker 4: them pretty much being at each other other's throats the
Speaker 4: whole time. And a good part of The Roses is
Speaker 4: about the romance of these two characters, and there's more
Speaker 4: back and forth from you know, they disappoint each other,
Speaker 4: they get back together. And Cumberbatch and Coleman are so
Speaker 4: good at these elements, these dramatic elements, that they make
Speaker 4: this more serious of a movie than I think Jay
Speaker 4: Roach possibly wanted it to be. So there is a
Speaker 4: little bit of tension there that isn't always worked out.
Speaker 4: But again, Cumberbatch and Coleman are so good that if
Speaker 4: you're a fan, even if you're just a fan of
Speaker 4: one of them, I'm probably more of a fan of
Speaker 4: Coleman than Cumberbatch.
Speaker 1: You know, you'll still be glad that you saw The Roses.
Speaker 2: Okay The Roses currently out in wide release again Lurker
Speaker 2: out limited. If you see either film have thoughts, you
Speaker 2: can email us feedback at film spotting dot net.
Speaker 4: Quick note about our sister podcast, The Next Picture Show,
Speaker 4: looking at cinema's present via its past. Their new pairing
Speaker 4: is one that yet they had to do. I can't
Speaker 4: wait to hear this Spike Lee's highest flowest and of
Speaker 4: course nineteen sixty three's High and Low from as Spike
Speaker 4: put it in the credit to his movie The Master
Speaker 4: Filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. So yeah, they'll look at High and
Speaker 4: Low first, then move on to Spike's film. New episodes
Speaker 4: of The Next Picture Show drop every Tuesday, and you
Speaker 4: can find them wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2: Vultures Movies. Fantasy League is back for season five. Josh
Speaker 2: Catch the Excitement. Sign Ups are open now through Thursday,
Speaker 2: September twenty fourth. I mean I am excited. I say
Speaker 2: that because I know you have no idea what I'm
Speaker 2: talking about. Here's the deal. You get to draft eight
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five movies. You earn points based on their
Speaker 2: box office performance, critical reception, and awards. Season haul Now
Speaker 2: if that sounds complicated or you think it sounds simple,
Speaker 2: but you still don't really know how it all works.
Speaker 2: I don't know either. I just know that if it
Speaker 2: gets good reviews, if it wins some awards, and if
Speaker 2: it does well at the box office, whatever the formula is,
Speaker 2: then the movie did well and you'll do well. But
Speaker 2: I've played this two years in a row and I
Speaker 2: have done terribly, so clearly I don't know what I'm doing.
Speaker 2: It's still fun, though, because we get to have our
Speaker 2: own film Spotters League, so we get to compete against
Speaker 2: each other and all the other film spotting listeners who
Speaker 2: want to be part of our league. But then we're
Speaker 2: competing against the wider movie loving public as well, and
Speaker 2: there are prizes involved. So Sam and I are part
Speaker 2: of it. We're part of the Creators League. And last
Speaker 2: year Sam, he didn't know what he was doing, but
Speaker 2: guess what he finished tenth in the Creative Yeah. So,
Speaker 2: you know, if you've had any experience in fantasy sports,
Speaker 2: this might make sense to you. If you haven't, maybe not.
Speaker 2: But if you like movies, just just give it a try.
Speaker 2: They give you all the films that have come out
Speaker 2: this year and all the films that are coming out,
Speaker 2: and obviously if it's already come out, you can pick it,
Speaker 2: but you're not going to earn points for are how
Speaker 2: it did at the box office, because you already know
Speaker 2: how it did at the box office. So you're taking
Speaker 2: a risk there if you go with that film, but
Speaker 2: you could still earn points based on the awards season
Speaker 2: Hall effectively, right, So that's part of your calculation. But
Speaker 2: the competition is obviously everyone who signs up, and you
Speaker 2: can compete in our Film Spotting Mini League. All you
Speaker 2: have to do is enter Film Spotters in the league
Speaker 2: name field when you sign up. We've got a lot
Speaker 2: of people already there. It would be fun to have
Speaker 2: more involved, so we will put the fantasy league's sign
Speaker 2: up in the notes for this episode. Or you can
Speaker 2: go to movie Game dot vulture dot com, Movie Game
Speaker 2: dot vulture dot com, Josh. There are two deadlines to play.
Speaker 2: September twenty fourth, that's the last day to sign up
Speaker 2: before the contest starts. You can also sign up through
Speaker 2: the end of December. That catch though, of course, is
Speaker 2: that you won't be able to draft any films that
Speaker 2: have already started earning points. I don't know why you
Speaker 2: would wait until December. I mean the deadline September twenty fourth.
Speaker 2: Sign up by then and have some fun.
Speaker 1: All the best to you film spotters.
Speaker 2: Good luck, But Josh says good luck, he is a
Speaker 2: no go.
Speaker 4: My therapist has told me no activities that involve spreadsheets.
Speaker 2: Next week. Okay, here's what your therapist should be warning
Speaker 2: you against ideas top fives. They are the brainchild of
Speaker 2: producers Sam.
Speaker 1: I came around the house. I came around some house
Speaker 1: I know you did, and I think I.
Speaker 4: Realized it didn't involve a spreadsheet. Well, I won't involve one.
Speaker 1: I don't know about you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it might for me. That's the problem. I think
Speaker 2: I even tried to talk you into it, and now
Speaker 2: I'm the one who is struggling to actually fulfill it.
Speaker 2: This is the brainchild of producer Sam. He is calling
Speaker 2: this top five that's not really a top five, even
Speaker 2: though it has two fives in it. He's calling it
Speaker 2: five years movies. So what you have to do is
Speaker 2: select a five year period. This is a little misleading.
Speaker 2: Here's how Sam has written it. You have to choose
Speaker 2: a five year period like say nineteen seventy one, to
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy five, and it's important to note not nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy to nineteen seventy five, because that would be his
Speaker 2: sixth year period.
Speaker 1: Josh, now you laugh, but I need that.
Speaker 2: I mean that seems likely that directed comment.
Speaker 4: Josh, I think, hey, hey, I think it actually came
Speaker 4: up in the discord for film family members where this
Speaker 4: has been a trial run, and I was looking at that.
Speaker 4: I think a family member had a list that was
Speaker 4: seventy to seventy five, and so I would have done
Speaker 4: that as well. So I'm just glad we were getting
Speaker 4: this out of the way.
Speaker 2: Now, Okay, So then it says, once you have selected
Speaker 2: your five year period from all possible five year periods
Speaker 2: in the history of film, you next need to pick
Speaker 2: five movies that were released during that five year period,
Speaker 2: and these are the movies you get madness and narrator
Speaker 2: rules activated. Now that all seems fine, but the instructions
Speaker 2: don't actually make sense because the goal here is to
Speaker 2: not randomly pick or even selectively pick a five year
Speaker 2: period and then pick the five films from that period.
Speaker 2: The goal is to pick five films. It's actually reversed.
Speaker 2: You have to pick the films and then and then
Speaker 2: in reverse land on a five year period. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: mean I think that's the process. But someone instructions are confusing, Well,
Speaker 2: I got it. I mean that's because you know what
Speaker 2: the goal is. I'm just saying, if if you literally
Speaker 2: put this in front of someone who didn't know, it
Speaker 2: would be confusing. You're not. You're not starting with a
Speaker 2: five year period. The goal is to come up with Basically,
Speaker 2: you're saying that you have to land on five films,
Speaker 2: like if you would be left with only five films. Ever,
Speaker 2: these are the five films that you you would only
Speaker 2: have these five films to watch for the rest of time, right,
Speaker 2: And the hook is is that they have to come
Speaker 2: from the same year period, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now they could two of them could come from the
Speaker 1: same year.
Speaker 2: They could. It doesn't have to be all like consecutive years,
Speaker 2: right exactly. Okay, Yeah, okay, so now we're good.
Speaker 1: We're on the same Okay.
Speaker 2: So if you do understand the ground rules as I've
Speaker 2: explained them, not how Sam has explained them, then we
Speaker 2: would love for you to submit your picks and your
Speaker 2: reasoning feedback and film spotting dot net. We may share
Speaker 2: some of your picks along with ours next week. I
Speaker 2: think it's diabolical diabra it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I'll explain next week how I wrap my
Speaker 4: mind around this grant.
Speaker 2: What arbitrary criterion did you come up with to get
Speaker 2: yourself through this? Josh?
Speaker 1: Next week I will share.
Speaker 2: So that you could you could spend as minimal amount
Speaker 2: of time worrying about this. But did you come up right?
Speaker 1: It's the non spreadsheet strategy. Okay.
Speaker 2: Also, next week I'm told that we are going to
Speaker 2: have a report. Michael Phillips will be back on the show.
Speaker 2: He is going to report on the Venice Film Festival.
Speaker 2: That should be wonderful. He'll talk to us about the
Speaker 2: top prize winner, the Golden Lion that went to Jim
Speaker 2: Jarmish's latest father, mother, sister, brother, Adam Driver, Kate Blanchett,
Speaker 2: Vicky Creps and Tom Waits in that one that scheduled
Speaker 2: to come to theaters in December. We'll hear all about
Speaker 2: what Michael Phillips has been up to for our current
Speaker 2: show schedule and more. Visit Filmspotting dot Net Slash episodes. Honey, look,
Speaker 2: I can see daylight. We're gonna be okay.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's daylight.
Speaker 2: All right. It is time for deeply flawed Holm spotting
Speaker 2: poll results and a new poll. A couple of weeks ago,
Speaker 2: we asked you two is one and only one animation,
Speaker 2: Studio Pixar or Studio Gibilie. It wasn't daylight for Woody
Speaker 2: and the Gang and Toy Story three, and there was
Speaker 2: no daylight for Pixar in this poll either. Josh, how
Speaker 2: did it come out?
Speaker 4: Studio Gibili took it, surprisingly to me, with sixty four
Speaker 4: percent of the vote Adam thirty seven percent going to Pixar.
Speaker 4: I may have guessed Gibilie would win, but I really
Speaker 4: would have thought it was going to be closer than this.
Speaker 2: I'm going to correct the map there slightly. I guess
Speaker 2: that must be sixty four and thirty six percent. Yeah,
Speaker 2: work got a little better. Yeah, that work out a
Speaker 2: little better. But yes, Studio Ghibli handily won the poll.
Speaker 2: Daniel says, wait, I didn't realize we were talking incinerator here,
Speaker 2: much like the climax of Toy Story three. I'm going
Speaker 2: to have to change my mind at the last second
Speaker 2: and switch my vote from jib Lee to Pixar. Jibili
Speaker 2: has probably been more consistent. The Pixar movies were literally
Speaker 2: made for me. I'm gen Z. My first movie I
Speaker 2: saw in the theater was a Bugs Life, and we
Speaker 2: had those early Pixar movies on constant replay. Not that
Speaker 2: we didn't also enjoy Jiblie Castle in the Sky as
Speaker 2: one of my earliest movie memories as well, But Pixar
Speaker 2: is just a little closer to the heart for me.
Speaker 4: Fair enough, Daniel, vote with the heart. Here's Frederick from Norway.
Speaker 4: First of all, your latest poll question is just cruel.
Speaker 4: If given the choice between throwing the entire filmography of
Speaker 4: Pixar or Jiblie into the incinerator, I may just jump
Speaker 4: in myself. Bit of backstory. I'm a huge animation buff
Speaker 4: growing up in the nineties. My entry into the world
Speaker 4: of cinema was in large part through the Disney animated classics.
Speaker 4: The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, and particularly
Speaker 4: The Lion King were my favorites, and they led me
Speaker 4: to seek out older classics like Snow White, Bambi, Sleeping
Speaker 4: Beauty and others. That, of course led to a devout
Speaker 4: following of Pixar. Their streak from finding Nemo through the
Speaker 4: Incredibles right atue, while the end up was such a
Speaker 4: sustained period of excellence that it should be enough to
Speaker 4: make this poll question a no brainer. From two thousand
Speaker 4: and four to two thousand and seven, I completed a
Speaker 4: bachelor's degree in animation, and the Pixar versus jibilee was
Speaker 4: a frequent topic of debate. Things could get heated, and
Speaker 4: while it never came to fisticuff, some bad language was
Speaker 4: thrown around, and I usually cowered in the corner, not
Speaker 4: wanting to take sides while mommy and daddy were fighting.
Speaker 4: Since then, both studios have only added more masterpieces to
Speaker 4: their resume. Pitting The wind Rises or The Boy and
Speaker 4: the Heron against Coco or Inside Out is equally impossible.
Speaker 4: All that being said, I eventually came down on the
Speaker 4: side of Pixar. My reasoning Pixar has a movie I
Speaker 4: could pop on regardless of the mood I'm in. I
Speaker 4: want to laugh Toy Story two, I want to cry up.
Speaker 4: I want some great action the Incredibles. I want to
Speaker 4: be amazed by visual flare and fantastic music.
Speaker 1: Coco.
Speaker 4: I want to watch something with my kids that may
Speaker 4: help them emotionally. Inside Out and perhaps the thing that
Speaker 4: finally tip the scale for me. Can you name any
Speaker 4: other studio that could successfully have the climax of their
Speaker 4: movie center around a fruit critic eating a stew and
Speaker 4: not only make it work, but also make it emotionally resonant. Man,
Speaker 4: I don't know if Frederick, Now you're making me second
Speaker 4: guess my choice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, here's Bob Mchughe. I watched the most regarded works
Speaker 2: of each studio as a teenager and thought they were fine.
Speaker 2: It's only now watching them with fresh eyes as a parent,
Speaker 2: nearly two decades later, I've realized that I had it
Speaker 2: all wrong. I was too young to truly understand or
Speaker 2: appreciate them. Unfortunately, that reevaluation applies wholly to jibli but
Speaker 2: only for Pixar's golden age. The worst Jiblie films still
Speaker 2: feel like an artist following their muse. The worst Pixar
Speaker 2: films barely feel like films at all, their craven products.
Speaker 2: When a studio's decisions about what stories they tell have
Speaker 2: more to do with branding and title contingency, what hope
Speaker 2: is there?
Speaker 1: See?
Speaker 4: And this is where I wish I was a Jibili
Speaker 4: completist as I am for Pixar. You know, I wonder
Speaker 4: are there titles that are a little that leave viewers
Speaker 4: wanting from the Jupilee catalog.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe listeners who are complete.
Speaker 2: As one can tell us perhaps, But did they feel
Speaker 2: like craven products? That?
Speaker 1: Yeah? That was well that too.
Speaker 4: I mean, I'm just curious, you know, from their vast catalog,
Speaker 4: you know what sort of what sort of range there is?
Speaker 4: We also heard from Jeffrey Overstreet. You asked a complicated question,
Speaker 4: Here comes a complicated answer. Pixar's Golden Age was a
Speaker 4: remarkable run of all ages storytelling with groundbreaking animation. Those
Speaker 4: films are to cinema what books like Charlotte's Web and
Speaker 4: the Secret of Nim and The Phantom Tollbooth our, two
Speaker 4: children's literature works that reward the parents reading to their
Speaker 4: children as much as they reward the children themselves. Having
Speaker 4: said that, Pixar films came to seem somewhat formulaic and
Speaker 4: predictable fairly quickly, I was always bracing for what would
Speaker 4: become a frenzied action, hysterical finale, probably involving a crazed
Speaker 4: pursuit Miyazaki. However, isn't even playing the same sport Miyazaki
Speaker 4: is in Tolkien territory, world building such rich mythologies that
Speaker 4: I believe all kinds of other stories are unfolding just
Speaker 4: off screen while showing remarkable restraints, so that the stories
Speaker 4: and their finales emerge from characters in environments and less
Speaker 4: from an abvi's drive to provoke emotional responses and stir
Speaker 4: things into a frantic finale. I encourage everyone to read
Speaker 4: the essay Towards a True Children's Cinema on My Neighbor
Speaker 4: Todoro by Lauren Wilford, published by bright Wall dark Room,
Speaker 4: and then, because it is so great, republished in a
Speaker 4: booklet that comes with a thirtieth anniversary Disney Blu Ray edition.
Speaker 4: Wilford writes more insightfully than anyone else I've read about
Speaker 4: what makes Miyazaki's storytelling for children so distinctive. Almost all
Speaker 4: of Gible's films, and all of those by Miyazaki himself,
Speaker 4: are gifts that keep on giving, inviting us into new questions, mysteries,
Speaker 4: and revelations every single time. And I'm so grateful to
Speaker 4: the geniuses at Pixar who appreciated studio Ghiblie enough to
Speaker 4: invest in bringing that work to big screens in America.
Speaker 4: My life is so much richer for the work of
Speaker 4: both greats.
Speaker 2: We are getting some very passionate, very thoughtful responses here.
Speaker 2: We have a couple more for you, This one from
Speaker 2: Mark Friedman a testament to the passionate subjectivity of our
Speaker 2: individual connections with art and entertainment. My slap on forehead
Speaker 2: response to this pool as Pixar no contest. Now I
Speaker 2: read these comments from my film spotting family siblings and
Speaker 2: find the exact opposite sentiments in favor of Jibili.
Speaker 4: Let's close out with this from Andy Bukti. Sounds like
Speaker 4: we need an animation march madness to rightfully settle this,
Speaker 4: not just to determine champion, but to see who's better
Speaker 4: represented in the Sweet sixteen, Elite eight, et cetera. There
Speaker 4: could be some amazing and heart wrenching matchups, plus some
Speaker 4: bonus link later Tim Burton and Wes Anderson. Who wouldn't
Speaker 4: enjoy that? And that's that's been on the table for
Speaker 4: film spots on the table.
Speaker 2: It's been discussed. I think I think that Sam and
Speaker 2: myself the selection committee might have I don't know if
Speaker 2: we said this out loud or not, we definitely thought it.
Speaker 2: We're not the most passionate generally animation fans compared to
Speaker 2: some of the folks I think, compared to you, Josh,
Speaker 2: and also compared to all the people who have written
Speaker 2: into this pole, So it wasn't maybe as inspiring for
Speaker 2: us as a madness topic. But I think we also
Speaker 2: just worried about the number of titles and how much
Speaker 2: passion it would inspire in the largest number of participants.
Speaker 2: But I'm intrigued and seeing how passionate everybody was about
Speaker 2: this pole, I wonder if it is something that could
Speaker 2: be settled with madness. And so I'm going to throw
Speaker 2: this out to Andy and maybe some of the other
Speaker 2: commenters put together a bracket. Let me see what your
Speaker 2: bracket would look like. I will I will take a
Speaker 2: look at it, Sam, and I will review it. We'll
Speaker 2: see if you can make your case. Okay. Feedback at
Speaker 2: filmspotting dot Net. Now a new deeply flawed film spotting pole,
Speaker 2: A new one. We're asking about sixties musicals because The
Speaker 2: Sound of Music is back in theaters for its sixtieth anniversary,
Speaker 2: and of course, Josh, literally everyone in the world has
Speaker 2: seen this movie literally, so you've you've seen it now
Speaker 2: literally everyone has seen this movie. Let's let's move on
Speaker 2: to the options. The options are that Sam is giving
Speaker 2: you producer Sam Funny Girl and then I'll turn it
Speaker 2: over to you with Barbis streisand directed by William Wyler.
Speaker 2: That was part of last year's Wiler Marathon. What else
Speaker 2: are we letting them consider?
Speaker 4: Mary Poppins, of course, the other Julie Andrews sixties musical
Speaker 4: I don't know, Adam, If you know this, Julie Andrews
Speaker 4: is in the Sound of Music. My Fair Lady is
Speaker 4: an option. That one with Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison
Speaker 4: directed by George Kuker. The Sound of Music is an option.
Speaker 4: Jacques Dimese The Umbrellas of Sherbour is another and our
Speaker 4: last choice West Side Story. Of course, you can also
Speaker 4: vote other If I don't know, you prefer demis The
Speaker 4: Young Girls of Rochefort or Best Picture winner Oliver the
Speaker 4: Music Man, Bye Bye Birdie, Sweet Charity. That's one I'm
Speaker 4: unfamiliar with. I'm also unfamiliar with Doctor Doolittle, the nineteen
Speaker 4: sixty eight Best Picture nominee, But.
Speaker 1: You don't need that worry yourself. I can skip that one.
Speaker 2: Okay, No one's voting for doctor Doolittle. Well see, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm an Iowan, so of course the music Man is
Speaker 2: one I should be considering. And and I of course
Speaker 2: have seen the sound of music, so I am I
Speaker 2: am strongly considering that for my Okay, I'm strongly considering
Speaker 2: it from my pick, Josh, I know the the correct
Speaker 2: Sinophile answer, the one you're gonna say, the one Sam's
Speaker 2: gonna say, is the umbrellas of sure Boar. But I'm
Speaker 2: still in the bag for West Side Story, and it's
Speaker 2: my pick.
Speaker 4: Okay, fair enough. I think you'll have plenty of people
Speaker 4: with you. Yeah, I just think you know, none of
Speaker 4: these are in the league of Shareboor. When we did
Speaker 4: our top ten of all time, our Sitan sound lists,
Speaker 4: I think in twenty twelve I did have it on
Speaker 4: that list. We did it again in twenty twenty two,
Speaker 4: and I think it got bummed. But I forget for
Speaker 4: what but to the you know, eleven to fifteen range,
Speaker 4: But it's it is an all timer to me, so
Speaker 4: an easy, easy film spotting poll this time around for me.
Speaker 2: Okay, we would love to get your pick and possibly
Speaker 2: read your comments. You can participate in the poll at
Speaker 2: film spotting dot net. We will share the results and
Speaker 2: your feedback in a couple of weeks. Josh, that's our show.
Speaker 4: You can find Adam and the show on Instagram, Facebook, letterbox,
Speaker 4: and YouTube all at film Spotting. I'm at those places
Speaker 4: as well as Larsen on film. We are independently produced
Speaker 4: and listener supported. You can support the show by joining
Speaker 4: the film Spotting Family at film Spotting family dot com.
Speaker 4: You can listen early and ad free. You'll get a
Speaker 4: weekly newsletter, monthly bonus episodes, and access to the entire
Speaker 4: show archive. For show t shirts and other merch you
Speaker 4: can go to film spotting dot net slash shop.
Speaker 2: In that film Spotting archive, you can find our conversations
Speaker 2: about of the Flower Moon for Martin Scorsese episode nine
Speaker 2: forty two plus. We did a little Scorsese ranked even
Speaker 2: though I'm sure we acknowledge that we were not at
Speaker 2: the time, nor are we both now. Scorsese ight no,
Speaker 2: and we've we've talked about doing a marathon of our
Speaker 2: Scorsese blind spots. We share some we don't share some others.
Speaker 2: It makes it a little tough, but I know, I
Speaker 2: know some listeners really hope we do that one, and
Speaker 2: I hope we do.
Speaker 1: I'd love to do it at some point for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The Irishman was episode seven to fifty one. The
Speaker 2: Wolf of Wall Street Boy that was. That was a
Speaker 2: tense one episode four seventy four US.
Speaker 1: That's for sure.
Speaker 2: Shutter Island episode two ninety three, The Stones Concert film,
Speaker 2: Shine a Light episode two oh five, The Departed episode
Speaker 2: one twenty nine out in limited release. The Baltim Morons,
Speaker 2: directed by Jay Duplus in wide release Code three. Rain
Speaker 2: Wilson is a burned out paramedic trying to survive his
Speaker 2: last twenty four hours on the job while training a
Speaker 2: new recruit. Sam. Maybe just catering to you, Josh says,
Speaker 2: think bringing out the dead but funny.
Speaker 1: Okay, I don't know if that's gonna sell me on it,
Speaker 1: but good try.
Speaker 2: Also Downton Abbey, the Grand Finale. I know you cannot
Speaker 2: wait for that. The Long Walk, based on the nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy nine Stephen King novella Walk or Die, Simple Enough
Speaker 2: with Cooper Hoffman and Charlie Plummer. Good Cast, directed by
Speaker 2: Francis Lawrence of The Hunger Games, Catching Fire and mocking Jay.
Speaker 2: How about Spinal Tap two? The end continues the Sound
Speaker 2: of Music. Yes, sixtieth anniversary re release and Toy Story
Speaker 2: thirtieth anniversary re release. We are next week hoping to
Speaker 2: have the Michael Phillips Fest update. I'm hoping I'll get
Speaker 2: to Spinal Tap two at minimum and be able to
Speaker 2: talk about that next week. And Yes, the Diabolical five
Speaker 2: years five movies. I'm somehow going to wrap my head
Speaker 2: around what that is before our next show.
Speaker 4: Better start working on it right now. Film Spotting is
Speaker 4: produced by Golden Joe Desso and Sam van Holgren. Without
Speaker 4: Sam and Golden Joe, this show wouldn't go. Our production
Speaker 4: assistant is Sophie Kempinar. Special thanks to everyone at WBEAZ Chicago.
Speaker 4: More information is available at wbez dot org. For film Spotting,
Speaker 4: I'm Josh.
Speaker 1: Larson and I'm Adam Kempinar. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 5: This conversation can serve no purpose anymore.
Speaker 3: The burn.
Speaker 2: Film Spotting is listeners supported. Join the film Spotting Family
Speaker 2: at film Spottingfamily dot com and get access to ad
Speaker 2: free episodes, monthly bonus shows, our weekly newsletter, and for
Speaker 2: the first time, all to one place. The entire film
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Speaker 3: Panically