Speaker 1: Hey, Welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is Rob
Speaker 1: Lamb today. We have an episode that aired seven eighteen,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five. I was on vacation when this episode
Speaker 1: was recorded. This is a conversation between Joe and our producer,
Speaker 1: our excellent producer, jaj about the twenty nineteen film Deer Skin.
Speaker 1: So yeah, well, one of the more recent films that
Speaker 1: has been covered on Weird House Cinema. So let's jump
Speaker 1: right in.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3: Hello, and welcome to Weird House Cinema. My name is
Speaker 3: Joe McCormick. My regular co host, Robert Lamb is out
Speaker 3: today and so sitting in the guest co host chair
Speaker 3: we have and I'm so excited to welcome him onto
Speaker 3: the side of the mic for the first time. Our
Speaker 3: longtime audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 4: Jj. How you doing man?
Speaker 5: Hey? Doing pretty well? How are you, Joe? I'm doing great.
Speaker 3: To be honest, actually I'm incredibly tired, but I'm not
Speaker 3: the same. But I think we're gonna have a great
Speaker 3: time today. I'm truly, genuinely so excited for you to
Speaker 3: come on the show. We've been talking about doing this
Speaker 3: for a while, and I'm glad we're doing it with
Speaker 3: a with a weird house pick. So today on Weird
Speaker 3: House Cinema, we're going to be talking about a movie
Speaker 3: that you selected, and that is the twenty nineteen French
Speaker 3: black comedy Deer Skin, directed by about to say a
Speaker 3: French name, Quinton Depew.
Speaker 4: How's that?
Speaker 5: Yeah? I think that's probably about how I'm going to
Speaker 5: say it too. It's okay, Quanton Depew. Q I'll probably
Speaker 5: say Quentin Depew.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: In English it looks like Quintin so Quentin might say
Speaker 3: Quentin Depew. So I had never seen a movie by
Speaker 3: this filmmaker before. Obviously this is more recent than a
Speaker 3: lot of the films we cover, but nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 3: So what got you excited about Deer Skin? What's your
Speaker 3: relationship with this movie?
Speaker 5: To be completely honest, it's when I only watched a
Speaker 5: couple of weeks ago. I have a couple of friends
Speaker 5: named Ian and Terrence who have watched most of Depew's movies,
Speaker 5: and they started introducing me to his work, and at
Speaker 5: this point of watched like five or six of them.
Speaker 5: They're absurd and surreal, they're a lot of fun. Coincidentally,
Speaker 5: last week watching the movie Incredible but True, I thought
Speaker 5: one of his movies would make a good Weird House
Speaker 5: Cinema episode, and I definitely recommend that one, but Deer
Speaker 5: Skin kind of felt like the best fit for an
Speaker 5: episode of Weird House.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm glad you picked this one because I loved it.
Speaker 3: I thought it was really weird and funny, just fantastic.
Speaker 3: I liked the pathetic, understated sense of humor in it,
Speaker 3: and yeah, kind of it's the kind of absurd groove
Speaker 3: that it gets into. I think you probably know what
Speaker 3: I mean by this. The pacing of the increase in
Speaker 3: absurdity is really exquisite here.
Speaker 5: Absolutely. Yeah, it's it's slow but steady, and I think
Speaker 5: groove is the right word. There is like a strange
Speaker 5: musicality to it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, not to it actually has good music in it. Oh,
Speaker 3: it's it's not like a musical movie that's like dominated
Speaker 3: by musical motifs, but it has like a few recurring
Speaker 3: things like these ominous horns that come in with these
Speaker 3: little bleats every now and then that are just kind
Speaker 3: of sound like something's wrong. But sometimes it's just when
Speaker 3: it's a guy looking in a mirror.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, now, Incredible but True. That's another Depew movie. That's
Speaker 3: the one with the robot penis. We're not talking about
Speaker 3: that one.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that one didn't seem right for the show, but
Speaker 5: I do highly recommend that one. That one has a
Speaker 5: little more of the like a sci fi thing going on,
Speaker 5: if you could call it that. I think it's a
Speaker 5: really good primer. But every movie I've seen of his
Speaker 5: has been really great and pretty He's got a consistent tone.
Speaker 5: I read this letterboxed review of Incredible but True, and
Speaker 5: it was actually a disparaging review, But the way they
Speaker 5: started off I thought was pretty apt in calling Depew
Speaker 5: a premise generator. Yeah, and I think he's really great
Speaker 5: at these just absurd premises, setting them up and letting
Speaker 5: them play out for usually like an hour and fifteen
Speaker 5: minutes or so. They're not often long movies.
Speaker 3: So I guess we could go ahead and say what
Speaker 3: the absurd premise of Deer Skin is?
Speaker 4: How would I put it? It's about a.
Speaker 3: Kind of pathetic middle aged man who goes through some
Speaker 3: sort of personal crisis and becomes enamored of a new
Speaker 3: deer skin motorcycle jacket that he paid too much money
Speaker 3: for and as his love affair with this jacket and
Speaker 3: how he looks in it deepens, it goes to increasingly
Speaker 3: bizarre places, and he eventually becomes a co conspirator with
Speaker 3: the jacket, and they together decide that they must eliminate
Speaker 3: all other jacket wearing phenomena from planet Earth, and this
Speaker 3: will be the only jacket human duo that should be
Speaker 3: allowed to exist.
Speaker 5: I think that's a great summary.
Speaker 3: Okay, now, having only seen this Depew film, I can
Speaker 3: see how somebody might describe his style as premise generator.
Speaker 4: Because.
Speaker 3: While the I think you could call this this style
Speaker 3: of film making like absurdist or absurd comedy, it's actually,
Speaker 3: I think quite logical. It's just a very be follows
Speaker 3: a C follows BE kind of logical progression pursuing this
Speaker 3: absurd premise where if you take the absurd premise on,
Speaker 3: everything just kind of flows and it makes sense totally.
Speaker 5: There's a quote I want to share later that I
Speaker 5: think gets at that same sentiment, and Yeah, what is
Speaker 5: so fun about it is the just the slow ratcheting
Speaker 5: up of that absurdity.
Speaker 3: Another thing I want to establish here at the top.
Speaker 3: It is hard not to see the main characters increasingly
Speaker 3: bizarre and toxic relationship with his leather jacket as having
Speaker 3: something to do with the way lonely people become obsessed
Speaker 3: with things. And I feel like this is something I've
Speaker 3: seen in my life has happened with people. I know,
Speaker 3: in fact, I can feel little threads of it in
Speaker 3: myself at different times in my life, the way that
Speaker 3: when when you feel kind of alienated, or you are
Speaker 3: lacking in a rich, well entangled, you know, sense of
Speaker 3: human connections and human networks, when you're lacking in friendship
Speaker 3: and family life and stuff like that, it seems like
Speaker 3: maybe you are more prone to find a new thing
Speaker 3: and then make that thing.
Speaker 4: Your entire personality.
Speaker 3: This is like all, you know, I've discovered that now
Speaker 3: I'm into a new hobby or a new artist that
Speaker 3: I like or something like that, and it's literally all
Speaker 3: I can think and talk about, and all subject matter
Speaker 3: is I now relate back to this thing.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I agree with that completely, and I think Depew
Speaker 5: from what I've read, has a similar view.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, well maybe we'll get into that as we
Speaker 3: go along.
Speaker 4: Elevator pitch.
Speaker 3: I guess I've already given the straightforward description of what
Speaker 3: happens in the movie thematic elevator pitches. I'd say it's
Speaker 3: a film about loneliness, falsity, and authenticity, obsession, and of
Speaker 3: course killer style, both in the earnest and the ironic sense.
Speaker 5: Absolutely. Yeah, alright, we're gonna play a little bit of
Speaker 5: the trailer audio.
Speaker 4: Now, j J.
Speaker 3: We we kind of had to put this episode together fast,
Speaker 3: so I ended up streaming the movie, but you were
Speaker 3: able to get a hold of a disc.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I rented from Videodrome here in Atlanta. It's also
Speaker 5: available on Apple and Amazon Prime.
Speaker 3: Though now, as usual on a Weird House Cinema episode,
Speaker 3: we're gonna end up discussing the plot in a lot
Speaker 3: of detail. So if you haven't seen the movie and
Speaker 3: you want to see Deer Skin without knowing everything in advance,
Speaker 3: there are some fun surprises in it. Here is your
Speaker 3: warning pause the episode. Here, go watch the movie first.
Speaker 3: But if you think you'll never see it, or you
Speaker 3: just don't care if we describe the whole story in advance,
Speaker 3: let's plow right on ahead. All right, Well, let's move
Speaker 3: on and talk about the connections and discuss some of
Speaker 3: the key people involved. I think you had some stuff
Speaker 3: on Quinton Depew the director writer Also I think yes he's.
Speaker 5: The director, writer, cinematographer and editor. Depew's a French filmmaker
Speaker 5: a musician. He makes music under the name mister Wazo
Speaker 5: and put out his first DP in nineteen ninety seven
Speaker 5: via the label F Communications. A few years later, in
Speaker 5: nineteen ninety nine, he'd released a single called flat Beat,
Speaker 5: which was a hit in Europe. The music video for
Speaker 5: Flatbeat was directed by Depew himself and featured a puppet
Speaker 5: named flat Eric. Depew created flat Eric with Jim Henson's
Speaker 5: Creature Shop, and the puppet, as well as the song
Speaker 5: flat Beat, were used in a series of Levi's commercials
Speaker 5: that he directed.
Speaker 4: What kind of animal is he?
Speaker 3: He's like a yellow dog but without ears, but with
Speaker 3: the like little beady bits of coal for eyes.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'd say that's an app description. But also little guy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, he's cute. I mean, is he cute or
Speaker 3: is he cruel? And does he wish me harm?
Speaker 5: I feel like that exact intersection is where his music,
Speaker 5: as mister waso. At least the stuff I've listened to
Speaker 5: seems to live.
Speaker 3: So I haven't listened to any mister waso, what's the
Speaker 3: what's the style of music? Like, how would you describe it?
Speaker 5: It falls broadly under the umbrellas of like electro and house.
Speaker 5: He makes electronic music, And I mean, I think you
Speaker 5: put it best just in describing Flat Eric. There's like
Speaker 5: a very playful sinisterness. There's like always a layer of humor.
Speaker 3: Is it like in Deer Skin when there are those
Speaker 3: scenes of George sharpening the fan blade to turn it
Speaker 3: into a machete, But he's like playing with it. He's
Speaker 3: playing with the with the watermelon and just having a
Speaker 3: good time. It's like it's like a like a cute
Speaker 3: having fun montage, but he's making a Jason Vorhees implement.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, kind of. I linked one of these Levi's
Speaker 5: commercials that has a I think paints a pretty good
Speaker 5: picture of Flat Eric that features the song flat Beat.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna pull this up right now. Hold on, I
Speaker 3: gotta order some jeans. No, it's good, it's like, uh,
Speaker 3: I mean it's got that Oh. Here here's where I
Speaker 3: don't know if the correct terminology. It's got a kind
Speaker 3: of fuzzy malfunctioning electronics sound to the uh to the
Speaker 3: tones in there. Uh, there's something that sounds like a
Speaker 3: like an incomplete connection in the wiring.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: But also it's a little bit jaunty, you know. It's
Speaker 3: it's like something you can nod your head to. It's
Speaker 3: not like, you know, industrial downbeat kind of stuff.
Speaker 4: Uh. It's fun.
Speaker 3: But but but something sounds a little wrong.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah, it's like a little distorted and ultimately it's fun,
Speaker 5: but there's just like a tinge of menace to it,
Speaker 5: the most playful kind of menace though.
Speaker 3: But also in this Levi's commercial, it's like a guy
Speaker 3: driving with Flat Eric the puppet. They get pulled over
Speaker 3: by a cop and Flat Eric quickly tries to make
Speaker 3: his car look less threatening, so he turns around like
Speaker 3: a pin up picture, and just on the other side,
Speaker 3: it's a picture of a horse in a meadow.
Speaker 5: So he's still active as mister Waso, and some of
Speaker 5: his movies have featured his music under that name, and
Speaker 5: he is always credited as mister Waso when he makes
Speaker 5: music for his movies. His first movie, titled non Film,
Speaker 5: was released in two thousand and one, but his breakthrough
Speaker 5: movie was twenty ten's Rubber, a movie about a sentient
Speaker 5: killer tire with psychokinetic powers.
Speaker 3: So I've never seen Rubber. I had entirely the wrong
Speaker 3: idea about what it was, though I'd seen the cover,
Speaker 3: not the movie itself, and I assumed it was a
Speaker 3: like self conscious ironic schlock comedy horror movie, something more
Speaker 3: like Shark Nato, like in like Irony Zone stuff, And
Speaker 3: now I assume that's not really what it's like. It
Speaker 3: is probably something a little bit closer to Deer Skin,
Speaker 3: but more firmly in the absurd horror vein.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think it's somewhere in between. I definitely don't
Speaker 5: think it's a full sort of Shark Nato situation. I
Speaker 5: actually watched it last night just to get a good
Speaker 5: sense of what that was, and it is closer to
Speaker 5: Deer Skin than something like Sharknato, though I do feel
Speaker 5: like I kind of prefer where he goes after Rubber.
Speaker 3: Okay, so that's not his peak. It's not all downhill
Speaker 3: from there.
Speaker 5: At least, you know, opinion, But I think that that's
Speaker 5: one that he's pretty well known for, and it was
Speaker 5: the first of four films he'd make in America, followed
Speaker 5: by twenty twelve's Wrong, twenty thirteen's Wrong Cops and twenty
Speaker 5: fourteen's Reality. He returned to France after the release of
Speaker 5: Reality and put out his first film produced there in
Speaker 5: twenty eighteen. He's been pretty prolific since, sometimes releasing multiple
Speaker 5: movies a year, with his most recent at a time
Speaker 5: of recording being The Piano Accident, which was just released
Speaker 5: in France a couple weeks ago. The writer Savina Petkova
Speaker 5: has a piece on deer Skin from twenty twenty one
Speaker 5: on the publication The Quietest that I think aptly describes
Speaker 5: to Pew's appeal when she writes his films are laden
Speaker 5: with characters, situations, and spoofs that produce a hypnagogic effect,
Speaker 5: but the reality status is never questioned. Deerskin represents the
Speaker 5: opposite of skepticism in relation to the uncanny, a film
Speaker 5: that gladly jumps on the bandwagon of unforeseen ideas with
Speaker 5: an ease that resembles a dream.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I could agree with that there is something dream like
Speaker 3: about it, but not in every way. One of the
Speaker 3: we sort of got into this earlier. But one of
Speaker 3: the ways I would say it is not like a
Speaker 3: dream is that dreams often feel more random, like just
Speaker 3: random new introduction of new elements, whereas it seems to
Speaker 3: me that once deer Skin gets going, sort of like
Speaker 3: I was saying earlier, everything just kind.
Speaker 4: Of follows logically.
Speaker 3: If if you buy into the initial dream, it's like
Speaker 3: a real world that operates fully on the logic of
Speaker 3: like physics and cause and effect, and people behave in
Speaker 3: some ways normally, except this real world was created by
Speaker 3: an absurdist demiurge who is like, you know, a man
Speaker 3: in a jacket will decide that they must be the
Speaker 3: only man in jacket that can be together.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I totally agree with that. Moving on to our
Speaker 5: part agonist. Jean Dujardins plays George born nineteen seventy two
Speaker 5: French actor and comedian. Worked as a stand up comedian
Speaker 5: in France and has been in many films as an actor.
Speaker 5: Some of the most well known include The Artist from
Speaker 5: twenty eleven, the comedic reboot of the French spy series
Speaker 5: OSS one hundred and seventeen, and The Wolf of Wall Street.
Speaker 5: As George, he portrays a bit of an idiot, but
Speaker 5: he's a confident idiot, and that confidence mostly successfully carries
Speaker 5: him as he reinvents himself around a new jacket on
Speaker 5: the fly.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, I like you flagging the confidence there and
Speaker 3: how much it how much it works. Like he's a
Speaker 3: pathetic character, but a different kind of movie I think
Speaker 3: would have more of everybody around him just treating him
Speaker 3: as a fool and treating him with scorn and actually
Speaker 3: he you know, he gets some pushback in skepticism, but
Speaker 3: he also gets pretty far just.
Speaker 4: On being a.
Speaker 3: Foolish, overconfident, pathetic person.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he gets remarkably far. He gets remarkably little pushed back.
Speaker 5: There's like one exception that isn't even really overt pushed back,
Speaker 5: and that sort of sends him over the edge.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I thought Doujardn was good in this role, and
Speaker 3: I knew I recognized him from somewhere, but I couldn't
Speaker 3: place it at first. I actually have not seen the
Speaker 3: Artist I think he was. Did he win like a
Speaker 3: Best Actor Oscar for that?
Speaker 5: Oh man, I'm not sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sorry, we just had to look this up. He
Speaker 3: did win the Academy Award for Best Actor for his
Speaker 3: role in the Artist from twenty eleven. Again, I have
Speaker 3: not seen that one, but I realized what I knew
Speaker 3: him from was that he is the corrupt Swiss banker.
Speaker 3: In Wolf of Wall Street, he's the guy who's like
Speaker 3: trying to telepathically make make slimy deals with Leonardo DiCaprio.
Speaker 5: It's been a while since I've seen that one, so
Speaker 5: I don't remember that. But he's great in this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he is.
Speaker 3: There is a there's a soft spoken, matter of factess
Speaker 3: to the way that he resists anything that challenges his
Speaker 3: delusions that is so good. One of my favorite moments
Speaker 3: of the movie is when he's been like doing stuff
Speaker 3: that's impossible to explain without getting more into the plot first,
Speaker 3: but doing weird stuff that he's like paying these actors
Speaker 3: to be in these bizarre scenes. And one of the
Speaker 3: actors is like, this movie you're making it's a bit weird. No,
Speaker 3: he says, it's not weird, it's amazing. It's really good
Speaker 3: delivery on that line. It's in French, but yeah, it
Speaker 3: comes through.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I agree completely. I love his delivery. I love
Speaker 5: his whole demeanor in this movie. It really sells it.
Speaker 3: Yes, similar things I would say about the next actor
Speaker 3: we're going to talk about is this Adele nl Yeah.
Speaker 5: Annelle born nineteen eighty nine is our second lead made
Speaker 5: her film debut at the age of twelve in the
Speaker 5: twenty and two movie La Diaba. In twenty fourteen, she
Speaker 5: won the CESAR Award for Best Supporting Actress for her
Speaker 5: role in the twenty thirteen movie Suzanne, and in twenty
Speaker 5: nineteen she appeared in three movies, Deer Skin being one
Speaker 5: of them and the other two being Heroes Don't Die
Speaker 5: and Portrait of a Lady on Fire, which is where
Speaker 5: I knew her from. She retired from the film industry
Speaker 5: in twenty twenty three, citing that the industry defended a capitalist, patriarchal, racist,
Speaker 5: sexist world of structural inequality. She's since been active in
Speaker 5: theater and as a political activist.
Speaker 3: Well respect her critique of the industry, both from within
Speaker 3: and without, but I also I think she's so great here.
Speaker 3: I love the way that our empathy for this character
Speaker 3: evolves as we come to understand her better, so like
Speaker 3: the evolution goes something like when we first meet her.
Speaker 3: In classic comedy terms, this character, Denise is what do
Speaker 3: you call, like the feed or the straight character, the
Speaker 3: comedic foil of the act's main buffoon, which is George. Here,
Speaker 3: this kind of character is the stand in for the audience,
Speaker 3: the normal person who is there to react skeptically to
Speaker 3: the funny man's antics, and that is what she feels
Speaker 3: like in the first few scenes with her. But then
Speaker 3: as our main weirdo evolves to become more criminal, basically
Speaker 3: more sinister, the drama shifts and she becomes the victim
Speaker 3: of his lies and scams, and we feel a totally
Speaker 3: different way about her. We start to feel pity for
Speaker 3: her while he's like, you know, lying to her and
Speaker 3: draining her bank account. And then she reveals that she
Speaker 3: was actually always aware of the fact that he was
Speaker 3: a fraud, and then she becomes part of the antics
Speaker 3: and scams. In essence, she becomes the weirdo, and in fact,
Speaker 3: maybe even weirder than the weirdo that came before. She
Speaker 3: starts kind of trying to give orders, and so I
Speaker 3: love that evolution. You feel like three totally different ways
Speaker 3: about her as the movie goes on, and it's a
Speaker 3: very seamless kind of transition.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I love this too. I was reading an interview
Speaker 5: on the publication Dazed that Depew did in support of
Speaker 5: Deer Skin, and to quote that interview, originally Depew planned
Speaker 5: for Denise to be down to earth every woman to
Speaker 5: counteract George's quirkiness. However, Annel insisted that Denise should adore,
Speaker 5: blend and slaughter without changing a line in the script.
Speaker 5: We decided that she's crazy, the director says, and because
Speaker 5: she's an amazing actress, you see it in her eyes.
Speaker 5: Suddenly every scene looks different, and Jean looks stupid in
Speaker 5: front of her. She's evil and he's just a kid.
Speaker 3: That's brilliant. Yeah, yeah, I love that, so.
Speaker 5: Yeah, totally agree. The composer is Yanko Niovich. I think
Speaker 5: that's how you pronounce it. As far as I can tell.
Speaker 5: He was born in nineteen forty one. He did the score.
Speaker 5: He's a prolific Paris based musician who has released over
Speaker 5: thirty albums since the early nineteen sixties, mostly library music,
Speaker 5: essentially work for higher albums made to be easily licensed
Speaker 5: for productions. He's made music under a variety of pseudonyms,
Speaker 5: one of which was Mad Unity. Under the mad Unity name,
Speaker 5: he released one of his most well regarded albums, Funky Tramway.
Speaker 5: I checked out the title track of this one, and
Speaker 5: it definitely sounds like a funky tramway. Flattering it's frenetic
Speaker 5: and then there's a bunch of like wah guitar. You
Speaker 5: gotta check it. It's a funky tramway for sure. His
Speaker 5: music has been sampled by artists like Jay Z, Doctor
Speaker 5: Dre the Alchemist, and Freddie Gibbs and Schoolboy Q to
Speaker 5: name few. He seems to be sampled quite a bit, actually,
Speaker 5: and as of twenty twenty two, he's still making new music.
Speaker 5: And I found news from twenty twenty three of a
Speaker 5: documentary called The Sample Return of Yanko Niovich that's currently
Speaker 5: in production, I guess. According to an interview Depew did
Speaker 5: with Dazed during Deerskin's post production, he scrap plans to
Speaker 5: record an electronic soundtrack himself, saying that quote to me,
Speaker 5: it's a dead serious movie. It's funny, but not what
Speaker 5: we call it comedy. And actually I never use funny
Speaker 5: comedy music or whatever. I decided to only use music
Speaker 5: from the seventies to match the jacket.
Speaker 3: Oh that's interesting, because yeah, the music in this movie, well,
Speaker 3: first of all, there are some there's some great like
Speaker 3: needle drops in it. In the closing credits, it uses
Speaker 3: the song by Della Humphrey that I don't know if
Speaker 3: I'd ever heard before when Good Girls Go Bad, and
Speaker 3: that one's fantastic excellence.
Speaker 5: It's a great closing song.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I loved it, but also the original or for it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it doesn't sound like goofy dumpy dump comedy music. It
Speaker 3: sounds like something that could be in a in like
Speaker 3: a dark Michael Chimino movie from the seventies or something.
Speaker 5: And finally, I wasn't able to find a ton of
Speaker 5: info on her, but Jean le Breux, the production designer.
Speaker 5: This is Depew's wife and the production designer on seemingly
Speaker 5: all of his movies from twenty Twelve's Wrong onward, and
Speaker 5: according to an interview I read, she's the only person
Speaker 5: he will run edits the movie by before finalizing them.
Speaker 4: All Right, are you ready to talk about the plot?
Speaker 5: Ja? Ja?
Speaker 4: Yeah, let's do it. Cool.
Speaker 3: So, I think we're going to talk about a lot
Speaker 3: of like direct in scene texture in this one, because
Speaker 3: that's a lot of where the pleasure of the movie lies.
Speaker 3: So it starts off with the cold open in like
Speaker 3: a big empty room that looks like it could be
Speaker 3: a warehouse or parking garage, and there are several young
Speaker 3: men and women they stand lined up behind a car
Speaker 3: with the car trunk hanging open, and they're all holding
Speaker 3: piles of clothing in their arms. And the first guy,
Speaker 3: sort of a guy with red hair and a mustache.
Speaker 3: He looks straight into the camera and he says, I
Speaker 3: swear never to wear a jacket as long as I live.
Speaker 3: And then he's got the stack of clothes in his arms.
Speaker 3: You realize they're all jackets. He dumps the jackets into
Speaker 3: the car's trunk gets out of the way. The next
Speaker 3: man in line steps up to the car. He looks
Speaker 3: into the camera with a kind of smirk, and he
Speaker 3: says the same thing, I swear never to wear a
Speaker 3: jacket as long as I live.
Speaker 4: Dump. A woman steps up from behind. She seems a little.
Speaker 3: Less good humored than the first two guys. She dumps
Speaker 3: in her pile of jackets and says the same thing,
Speaker 3: though she has to be prompted by somebody off screen
Speaker 3: to get the words right. And then a voice behind
Speaker 3: the camera tells them to close the trunk. She slams it,
Speaker 3: and we cut to black. There's a good WTF opening.
Speaker 3: Don't see that every day? And then the action reopens
Speaker 3: on our protagonist, George. This is again is Jean dou Chartin,
Speaker 3: and he is a quiet, bearded man in his forties.
Speaker 3: He's dressed in a corduroy blazer and a button up
Speaker 3: shirt tucked into his pants. He's driving a sedan along
Speaker 3: the highway in France by himself, somewhere in rural France,
Speaker 3: and he passes toll stations. He stops for gas and
Speaker 3: at the service station where he's putting gas in the car,
Speaker 3: he stares at his reflection in the window of his car,
Speaker 3: and it seems like he doesn't like the way he looks.
Speaker 3: He's kind of pulling and adjusting at his jacket to
Speaker 3: try to look better, but just doesn't seem happy. So
Speaker 3: he goes to the bathroom at the service station, where
Speaker 3: he takes off his blazer, wads it up, crams it
Speaker 3: into the toilet, and then tries to flush it down.
Speaker 3: Now this doesn't work. The toilet begins to overflow, and
Speaker 3: he starts it's like stomping on it and the toilet bowl,
Speaker 3: trying to jam it down the hole. But how's that
Speaker 3: going to work. You're not even supposed to flush paper towels.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: Are you gonna get a blazer down there? So it
Speaker 3: doesn't work. Everything's just flooding in the bathroom, and he
Speaker 3: flees the scene in his car.
Speaker 4: So George is on a journey.
Speaker 3: We see him sleeping in his car overnight beside the highway,
Speaker 3: and then later he is following a map, winding his
Speaker 3: way up these narrow, twisting country roads, and eventually George
Speaker 3: comes to an old farmhouse on a hillside. At the door,
Speaker 3: he rings the buzzer and he announces that he's following
Speaker 3: up about an advertisement, and an older man lets him inside.
Speaker 3: Inside this house, it's rustic, a lot of simple varnished wood,
Speaker 3: and George is here about a product that this guy
Speaker 3: has advertised for sale. George says he's very anxious to
Speaker 3: see the item. So the old man goes and gets
Speaker 3: it out from a chest, this big treasure chest looking
Speaker 3: thing in the other and then the old man comes
Speaker 3: into the room with George holding up this object like
Speaker 3: a highrafant, showing off the sacred relics. It is a
Speaker 3: leather jacket, tawny brown. I'm not sure what you call
Speaker 3: this cut, but it kind of motorcycle style with a
Speaker 3: wide collar and a zipper in front. But it's the
Speaker 3: zipper's not straight down the middle. It's a little offset
Speaker 3: to the side with big stripes of leather fringe in
Speaker 3: a V shape across the chest, and then the fringe
Speaker 3: wrapping all the way around the back. That I miss
Speaker 3: any important details, JJ, I feel like we've got to
Speaker 3: describe the jacket right right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, No, I think that's a pretty good description.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 3: The old man says, meet the beast, one hundred percent
Speaker 3: deer skin, and George is obviously impressed. It's it's love
Speaker 3: at first sight. The old man says that he wore
Speaker 3: it for about a year, but then it went out
Speaker 3: of style, so he put it away. He also says that.
Speaker 4: It made him itch a little bit.
Speaker 3: So George takes the jacket, he looks at himself in
Speaker 3: the mirror, He tries it on, looks in the mirror,
Speaker 3: and he loves it. He makes an offer to the
Speaker 3: old man and pays him in cash, and the old
Speaker 3: man is very pleased. He's counting the money while George
Speaker 3: is admiring himself in the mirror, and George is saying,
Speaker 3: look at yourself, how elegant.
Speaker 4: And here I've got a question.
Speaker 3: I think this is a serious question about the craft
Speaker 3: of the film. Is the jacket actually supposed to look
Speaker 3: good on George as in, obviously he likes it, but
Speaker 3: is it supposed to look good to us the audience.
Speaker 3: On one hand, it's it's I think you could say
Speaker 3: it's a cool looking jacket, but it is also ostentatious,
Speaker 3: like it has all this fringe and stuff, and you know,
Speaker 3: the deer skin element is obviously I don't know, maybe
Speaker 3: some people are really into that or not. But it
Speaker 3: also looks kind of short to me, like you can
Speaker 3: see a gap between the jacket and the top of
Speaker 3: his pants where his button up shirt is just kind
Speaker 3: of sticking out in a way that looks silly. Maybe
Speaker 3: that's just the style of how you wear this, but
Speaker 3: I genuinely couldn't tell whether the jacket is supposed to
Speaker 3: look cool on George or not. It's sort of somewhere
Speaker 3: in the middle.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no, I agree, it looks a little goofy. He
Speaker 5: loves the jacket, though he stands up his mouth is
Speaker 5: a gape in its presence and has to sit down
Speaker 5: with his hand over his mouth, just overcome by its beauty.
Speaker 5: When he sees the fringe on the back and speaking
Speaker 5: to whether or not the jacket looks good. I guess
Speaker 5: to Pew tried like ten or twelve jackets on John
Speaker 5: saying that quote. We loved that the jacket was good looking,
Speaker 5: but too short. Something's wrong. Oh okay, yeah, I think
Speaker 5: it looks a little goofy. As I said, I feel
Speaker 5: like he hasn't fully crossed into goofball territory yet, which
Speaker 5: I'm excited for. I also want to point out that
Speaker 5: he pays seventy five hundred euros for this, which today
Speaker 5: converts to roughly eight thousand, six hundred and ninety one dollars, which.
Speaker 4: Is a steal, of course, exactly.
Speaker 5: Yes, And we get a shot of a deer looking
Speaker 5: directly into the camera before he puts on the jacket.
Speaker 3: Okay, I think here's the way I would put it,
Speaker 3: George is he doesn't look clownish in the jacket, but
Speaker 3: he is not quite pulling it off. I think it's
Speaker 3: the kind of jacket that like would look really cool
Speaker 3: on somebody who usually looks really cool. You know that
Speaker 3: it's kind of an unfair thing about fashion, right, Like,
Speaker 3: there are a lot of clothing items that look really
Speaker 3: cool only on people for whom everything they wear looks cool.
Speaker 3: And this jacket might be in that zone on George.
Speaker 4: It is.
Speaker 3: It is definitely somewhere near the border of ridiculousness.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I think it's funnier for that, Like if
Speaker 5: it was over the top, it wouldn't have the same
Speaker 5: sort of effect.
Speaker 4: Anyway.
Speaker 3: The old man is so happy with the steale, you know.
Speaker 3: George is like, here's seventy five hundred euros for this
Speaker 3: old thing you're getting rid of. He decides to give
Speaker 3: George an extra gift. It is a digital video camera,
Speaker 3: and as he says, digital is the best.
Speaker 5: You can't stop digital.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which is very confusing because admittedly I haven't used
Speaker 3: a lot of digital video cameras, but I assume a
Speaker 3: digital video camera means that you're like recording to a
Speaker 3: memory card or chip or something. But then later in
Speaker 3: the movie there's like a significant plot point about needing
Speaker 3: cassettes for the video camera. So I don't know, I
Speaker 3: didn't know what to make of any of that.
Speaker 5: We're gonna get into this, oh and he pulls the
Speaker 5: camera out. I have a whole tangent to bring us
Speaker 5: down perfect. I can't wait.
Speaker 4: I love it.
Speaker 3: Love a technology run down in movie props. So George
Speaker 3: leaves and he checks in at a nearby hotel, telling
Speaker 3: the clerk that he plans to be there for a month.
Speaker 3: He has no money. I think he spent all his
Speaker 3: money on the jacket, and he says there is a
Speaker 3: problem with his credit card, so he's gonna get that
Speaker 3: sorted out the next day, but in order to stay
Speaker 3: the first night, he takes a gold ring off of
Speaker 3: his finger. I'm pretty sure this is a wedding ring,
Speaker 3: and he leaves it with the clerk as collateral, promising
Speaker 3: to pay the bill the following day. And then George
Speaker 3: goes up to his room and he oogles himself in
Speaker 3: the mirror, offering these quiet little statements of commentary, sort
Speaker 3: of complimenting himself. He's he says things like stoking killer style.
Speaker 3: It's it's really tender, you know, he's it's I like
Speaker 3: these little, these little moments, especially how quietly he says
Speaker 3: these things. And then after checking into his room, we
Speaker 3: also see him leaning out of his window playing around
Speaker 3: with the video camera he got, like he's I think
Speaker 3: he starts focusing it up on the mountain across the
Speaker 3: way from the hotel.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and this movie is heavy on the beige in
Speaker 5: the tan and this hotel room is like maybe the
Speaker 5: bayest thing of all, and it sort of mirrors the jacket.
Speaker 5: I also want to point out that the wallpaper extends
Speaker 5: into the shower. I'm not sure how normal that is.
Speaker 3: Does this hotel room have a bathroom? There is the
Speaker 3: showers in the corner of the room.
Speaker 5: That's a good question. It might just all be in
Speaker 5: one room, okay, because you're right, the shower is just
Speaker 5: in the corner.
Speaker 3: It's like a ned Flanders house, that love built situation
Speaker 3: where the toilet is in the kitchen. Maybe this I
Speaker 3: don't mean to make fun. Actually, I wonder if this
Speaker 3: is something that's actually common in like some French hotel
Speaker 3: rooms or something, maybe maybe in older buildings or something
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I was wondering the same thing. And this is
Speaker 5: where George removes the almost new digital camquarder from its bag.
Speaker 5: And I spent too long trying to find the exact
Speaker 5: model cam quarterer. This was so I'm gonna go on
Speaker 5: that brief tangent I was mentioning earlier. For some reason
Speaker 5: I needed to know. I think it's a Sony DCR
Speaker 5: PC one T handycam it's a mini DV camquorder and
Speaker 5: according to the camcorder pedia wiki, sorry, it was introduced
Speaker 5: in two thousand and one.
Speaker 4: Oh so it's almost new.
Speaker 3: Is almost new perfect, Most things are almost new if
Speaker 3: you think about it.
Speaker 5: And we talked off Mike earlier too about why this
Speaker 5: digital camcorder uses little tapes. This came up when I
Speaker 5: was watching with my friends Terrence and Ian as well.
Speaker 5: So I'm going to offer a brief, very basic explanation
Speaker 5: of the DV format because I went down a whole
Speaker 5: rabbit hole to be able to talk about this camera
Speaker 5: a little bit.
Speaker 4: Absolutely make it make sense.
Speaker 5: I'm gonna try, Okay, I did some cursory research. DV
Speaker 5: was a format developed by Sony and Panasonic that was
Speaker 5: introduced in nineteen ninety five. DV tapes came in a
Speaker 5: variety of sizes, the smallest of which many DV being
Speaker 5: very popular. That's what we see in this movie. DV
Speaker 5: tape store compressed video in glorious for ADP so DVD
Speaker 5: quality and uncompressed audio at sixteen bit forty eight K
Speaker 5: when recorded in stereo, so that's higher than CD quality.
Speaker 5: While it was mostly a consumer grade format, it was
Speaker 5: also used professionally sometimes, and a notable example is that
Speaker 5: David Lynch actually shot Inland Empire on the DV format
Speaker 5: using a Sony DSR PD one fifty.
Speaker 3: I've actually never seen that Lynch movie. I've heard some
Speaker 3: people who have seen it describe it as one of
Speaker 3: his least accessible films.
Speaker 5: I'd agree with that, but I really love it. I
Speaker 5: could not recommend it more well, of.
Speaker 3: Course I love David Lene So on your recommendation, I'm
Speaker 3: going to reprioritize Inland Empire. I'm gonna move it up
Speaker 3: my list and try to see it sooner. But yeah,
Speaker 3: i'd heard people say it's one of his less accessible movies,
Speaker 3: and I think maybe i'd heard different things about the
Speaker 3: way it looked. I know some people didn't love the
Speaker 3: way that it looked, or found it kind of murky
Speaker 3: or something. And I not that I would really think
Speaker 3: David Lynch would be a part of this wave. I
Speaker 3: don't know, maybe, but I do remember there was sort
Speaker 3: of a thing, wasn't there. In like the early to
Speaker 3: mid two thousands were more mainstream feature film directors were
Speaker 3: experimenting with using digital formats. I remember associating this with
Speaker 3: twenty eight days Later had a kind of digital look.
Speaker 3: I don't know how that was actually shot.
Speaker 5: You know what that one's also shot on DV.
Speaker 4: Oh, okay, cool?
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I remember associating it with that look and
Speaker 3: some other films of that time getting into that thing,
Speaker 3: And I wonder how film like that is sort of
Speaker 3: being evaluated in retrospect. I haven't read that much about it,
Speaker 3: but I do know it can have its own aesthetic virtues.
Speaker 3: Like there's another film actually that I don't know what
Speaker 3: it was shot on, but it has that digital look,
Speaker 3: and I think it contributes to the aesthetic effect of
Speaker 3: the film. And that is the one of the weirdest
Speaker 3: cop movies I've ever seen, the Michael Man Miami Vice
Speaker 3: movie from what is it like two thousand and six
Speaker 3: or something. Do you know what I'm talking about?
Speaker 5: I do. I know that that has a lot of
Speaker 5: a lot of people really love that movie.
Speaker 3: I saw it a few years back and was mesmerized
Speaker 3: by it. I would call it the cop movie at
Speaker 3: the end of the world. So in content, it is
Speaker 3: a you know, it has a kind of dark romantic subplot,
Speaker 3: but overall it's like a you know, drug busts and
Speaker 3: raids and you know, cops and criminals kind of movie.
Speaker 3: But there is something about it that feels so doom
Speaker 3: and and bleak, and like it takes place in a
Speaker 3: world where where all happiness and meaning has been lost
Speaker 3: and now all that there is left is is cop
Speaker 3: and crime and and maybe and maybe there's there's the
Speaker 3: illusion that there could be love, but but that's really
Speaker 3: also doomed. It's it's a unique film. I would say,
Speaker 3: it's not what you think of when you think Miami Vice.
Speaker 3: At least it's not what I imagined Miami Vice would be.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I mean from watching Inland Empire, I can totally
Speaker 5: see that, because I think the way Inland Empire looks
Speaker 5: gives it that same sort of quality. I definitely think
Speaker 5: it is augmented by looking like that, And I think
Speaker 5: it was something David Lynch went into very deliberately.
Speaker 3: Okay, well I'm going to watch Inland Empire. But wait,
Speaker 3: so we were getting into the technical details here, So
Speaker 3: what's the deal with the tape? So it's digital, but
Speaker 3: there are still tapes.
Speaker 5: Yeah, sorry for the tangent to address the tapes. Tangent
Speaker 5: to address the tapes. The video in the audio info
Speaker 5: is stored digitally. Put very very simply, the video and
Speaker 5: audio information are converted to digital information, so a sequence
Speaker 5: of ones and zeros, and that digital info is encoded
Speaker 5: onto magnetic tape. When you play the tape back on
Speaker 5: the camcorder or on a DV deck like we'll see
Speaker 5: later in the film, that digital information is converted back
Speaker 5: to video and audio.
Speaker 3: Okay, so maybe I just had the wrong idea of
Speaker 3: what digital means in a recording in storage context.
Speaker 5: Totally, this was new to me too, though. I think
Speaker 5: maybe if you like live in camera world and you're
Speaker 5: more involved in film, this might be a little uh
Speaker 5: less novel. But I also thought this was pretty cool
Speaker 5: and I started researching how exactly it works. But I
Speaker 5: got in over my head pretty quickly, and while I
Speaker 5: have a loose graph of it involves magnets, I definitely
Speaker 5: don't understand it well enough to explain it. So if
Speaker 5: you're a listener who wants to elaborate on this or
Speaker 5: roast me on my short explanation, I would love to
Speaker 5: hear about it, and you can write in at contact
Speaker 5: at stuff to blowyermind dot com. But anyways, Yeah, it's
Speaker 5: a mini dvcamquarder, so it is digital video, but it's
Speaker 5: stored on little cassette tapes.
Speaker 3: Okay, so we're coming back to the plot. So, like
Speaker 3: George has been playing with his dvcamquorder and then he
Speaker 3: goes out walking in the evening and we hear voiceover
Speaker 3: of a phone conversation between George and a woman. The
Speaker 3: woman says, why are you calling? What's the point? George says,
Speaker 3: to tell you, I'm far away. I left, it's done.
Speaker 3: Want to know where, And the woman says, no, you're nowhere, George,
Speaker 3: you no longer exist. And then George finishes the conversation
Speaker 3: standing outside a bar in the rain. When it's over,
Speaker 3: he throws his cell phone into the garbage can and
Speaker 3: goes inside. So he's done with the cell phone. No
Speaker 3: more cell phone. And I think we it seems pretty
Speaker 3: clear to me this is to imply that George is
Speaker 3: at some kind of breaking point in a relationship. I
Speaker 3: think this is his wife he's talking to, and it's
Speaker 3: it's the end of their relationship for some reason that
Speaker 3: it's not exactly explained. So at the bar we meet
Speaker 3: a new character, Denise, the bartender played by Adele and
Speaker 3: l and this scene gets funny in subtle ways, like
Speaker 3: a lot of the humor in the movie. It's it's
Speaker 3: understated humor, but so I'll describe it. Denise is speaking
Speaker 3: with a patron at the other end of the bar
Speaker 3: while George is having a whiskey by himself, and they're
Speaker 3: talking about somebody they know. They're just kind of like saying, oh,
Speaker 3: you know, can you believe he said that? No, what's
Speaker 3: she going to do? You know, standard kind of social
Speaker 3: social gossip. And then George suddenly confronts them and says,
Speaker 3: you're talking about my jacket, aren't you. I loved this,
Speaker 3: and they act confused. They're like, no, we were not
Speaker 3: talking about your jacket. And he's like, oh, sorry, people
Speaker 3: always talk about it. Sometimes they stop me in the street.
Speaker 3: I'm just used to getting it noticed. Sorry, And Denise
Speaker 3: is kind of skeptical and she says, really, what do
Speaker 3: they stop you to say about it? And he doesn't
Speaker 3: really answer. He's just like, as you can see, it
Speaker 3: is no ordinary jacket.
Speaker 5: He has like a slight pause where he looks a
Speaker 5: little lost for a second before saying that, yeah.
Speaker 4: It's really good.
Speaker 3: So George, Denise and the other lady start chatting. They
Speaker 3: ask him what he does for a living. He thinks
Speaker 3: back to his video camera and he says, oh, actually,
Speaker 3: I'm a filmmaker, and I might be working on a
Speaker 3: film while I'm here in this little town.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's the ticket, that's what it is.
Speaker 5: Yeah. They ask if he's shooting now, and he says yeah, possibly,
Speaker 5: totally possibly.
Speaker 3: And then in the next scene, George is walking home,
Speaker 3: is going back to the hotel and the bar, not Denise,
Speaker 3: but the bar patron she was talking to pulls up
Speaker 3: beside him in her car and she's like, you know, hey,
Speaker 3: you know what, I used to act in porn twenty
Speaker 3: years ago. She assumes he's a porn director and he's like,
Speaker 3: why would you assume that I don't make porn? And
Speaker 3: she's like, well, you don't look like you work in
Speaker 3: real film, and he says, I do work in real film,
Speaker 3: don't you see my killer style?
Speaker 4: And she calls him a loser and drives away.
Speaker 3: But back in his hotel room, George is about to
Speaker 3: start working in real film. So he's lying in bed
Speaker 3: playing with the video camera, and across the room from him,
Speaker 3: hanging on the back of the chair where it will
Speaker 3: often be in these little scenes. Is the jacket, and
Speaker 3: he frames it with his camera and he starts talking,
Speaker 3: and as he talks, there are these little modulations of
Speaker 3: his voice, as if in different sentences. It might actually
Speaker 3: be different people talking, if you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: His mouth is always moving, but he's like doing little
Speaker 3: different voices. So he says, hey, you, where are you from?
Speaker 3: I come from Italy. I come from Italy. The jacket
Speaker 3: is Italian, by the way. It comes from Italy. And
Speaker 3: then he says, that's good. From Italy. You're so classy.
Speaker 3: You look great on camera. And who are you?
Speaker 4: I'm your new owner.
Speaker 3: I think we'll make a nice team. I'm fine with
Speaker 3: being teammates, but I'm the one in charge.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 5: He takes a minute here to kind of figure out
Speaker 5: what the jacket's voice is. It starts off a little
Speaker 5: higher and it slowly falls to a calmer place.
Speaker 3: Oh that's right. I didn't think about it that way,
Speaker 3: but you're right. He's like experimenting. He's like, yeah, what
Speaker 3: does the jacket sound like? And the jacket actually has
Speaker 3: a different voice than George though he's again his mouth
Speaker 3: is always moving, so he's the one talking, but the
Speaker 3: voice he does for the Jacket is lower and more
Speaker 3: authoritative and confident, self assured and decisive totally. So anyway,
Speaker 3: he closes the camera and he says good night to
Speaker 3: the Jacket, goes to sleep, and then later that night
Speaker 3: there's a little moment where there's like a loud crashing sound.
Speaker 3: George comes out into the hall to investigate what was that,
Speaker 3: but there's no answer, so we'll get follow up on
Speaker 3: that later. So the next day we see George go
Speaker 3: to the atm wearing his jacket of course, and he
Speaker 3: tries to get money out but no money is forthcoming,
Speaker 3: and he's very mad. He digs some food out of
Speaker 3: a trash can and starts eating it while this boy
Speaker 3: stands watching him from across the alley, and he yells
Speaker 3: at the boy to get lost.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the boy's just looking at him completely blankly.
Speaker 3: Doesn't say anything, just stands there, stone faced. Yeah. And
Speaker 3: then after this, George stops at a book shop. He
Speaker 3: checks out a book about filmmaking, and then he shoplifts
Speaker 3: it by stuffing it into his jacket. The Jacket's just
Speaker 3: coming through on all levels. And the next he goes
Speaker 3: to the bank and he speaks to a worker there,
Speaker 3: he finds out that he can't withdraw money from his
Speaker 3: bank account because his wife has placed a security hold
Speaker 3: on the account.
Speaker 4: This morning.
Speaker 3: This was I think, after he withdrew seventy five hundred
Speaker 3: euros the day before to buy the jacket, and George
Speaker 3: does not take this well. Back at the hotel, he
Speaker 3: showers while talking to the jacket, and the jacket is
Speaker 3: kind of watching him while he's rensing his body with
Speaker 3: the detachable shower head, and he's like, don't worry, I'll
Speaker 3: find us some money.
Speaker 4: I'm going to take care of us.
Speaker 3: And then later back at the same bar as he
Speaker 3: was at the night before, George talks with Denise, the bartender.
Speaker 3: She is interested in what kind of film work he's
Speaker 3: doing because she herself is an amateur film editor. She
Speaker 3: talks about how she enjoys re editing other people's finished
Speaker 3: movies just for fun. For example, she says she took
Speaker 3: pulp fiction directed by Quentin Tarantino and put all the
Speaker 3: scenes in chronological order to discover that it sucked. And
Speaker 3: there are plenty of things that should be red flags
Speaker 3: about George in this conversation, like he asks her if
Speaker 3: she has a special machine that allows her to put
Speaker 3: the scenes of a film in order, and she says no,
Speaker 3: she uses a computer like everyone else, but she says
Speaker 3: that film editing is her passion and she would love
Speaker 3: to do it for a living. So here she is
Speaker 3: meeting an actual filmmaker, and she clearly she sees an opportunity.
Speaker 3: I think she's she's so excited about what this could
Speaker 3: mean for her that she's maybe just looking past the
Speaker 3: red flags.
Speaker 5: I love the exchange of her saying I'd love to
Speaker 5: do it as my real job, in George's response being
Speaker 5: something along the lines of they really are amazing jobs.
Speaker 5: For sure.
Speaker 3: There are a number of moments that are of really
Speaker 3: good comedy where what happens is you would expect in
Speaker 3: another script that George would come up with some kind
Speaker 3: of funny bluff or lie, but what he actually does
Speaker 3: is fail to come up with anything to say, so
Speaker 3: he just says like, they are amazing jobs. So later
Speaker 3: we see George walking home and arguing with himself or
Speaker 3: maybe arguing with the jacket about whether he should should
Speaker 3: have claimed to be a movie director or not. You
Speaker 3: can see him having some kind of you know, moral
Speaker 3: dissent within himself. He's like, maybe I shouldn't be lying
Speaker 3: about this. But then he also defends himself to himself, saying,
Speaker 3: a guy who films is like a guy who makes
Speaker 3: a film.
Speaker 4: You could say here a filmmaker. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So, back at his hotel room, George is trying to
Speaker 3: read the book about filmmaking that he stole from the store,
Speaker 3: but the jacket hanging on the chair across the room
Speaker 3: just keeps calling out to him. And again we can
Speaker 3: see that whenever the jacket is speaking, George is the
Speaker 3: one talking. He moves his own mouth, but he's giving
Speaker 3: this different voice to the jacket, the deeper, more confident,
Speaker 3: less emotional than his own voice, is kind of more monotone.
Speaker 3: And the jacket interrupts his reading to ask him, do
Speaker 3: you want to know my greatest dream? Here we getting
Speaker 3: to the here the stews really cooking now. The Jacket's
Speaker 3: greatest dream is to be the only jacket in the world.
Speaker 3: I want us to be able to walk the streets
Speaker 3: without seeing other jackets. Well, George confesses this is perfect
Speaker 3: because his greatest dream is to be the only person
Speaker 3: in the world who can wear a jacket. And the
Speaker 3: jacket asks kind of ominously. How are we going to
Speaker 3: realize this stream?
Speaker 5: George, Yeah, an ominous cut to a deer after, how
Speaker 5: do you intend to realize this dream? I wish I
Speaker 5: could convey his conversations with the jacket in words over
Speaker 5: a podcast. They're just so goofy. He's trying to tell
Speaker 5: the jacket that they can talk later while he's reading,
Speaker 5: but the jacket successfully gets him to talk right now,
Speaker 5: and he like closes the book and tosses it aside
Speaker 5: in the exasperation, Like, as if he has to stop
Speaker 5: reading and listen to this jacket, Yes, as if he's
Speaker 5: not completely in control of the entire situation.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's really good.
Speaker 3: Okay, So next thing is there's a scene with George
Speaker 3: discussing his payment problems with the hotel manager, and George
Speaker 3: finds out that the first clerk he talked to, the
Speaker 3: guy the day before, the one to whom he gave
Speaker 3: his gold wedding ring.
Speaker 4: Has died.
Speaker 3: He died by suicide two nights before. Bizarrely, the new
Speaker 3: guy at the hotel desk tells George that the clerk's
Speaker 3: body is being stored in one of the hotel rooms
Speaker 3: until the undertaker arrives and that the room is open
Speaker 3: if George would like to go say goodbye. So George
Speaker 3: goes to the room. The guy is laying there with
Speaker 3: a giant bullet hole in his face, but George gets
Speaker 3: fixated on something. He's not looking really at the dead guy.
Speaker 3: He's looking at in the clerk's hands. There is a hat.
Speaker 3: It's clasped over his midsection. It is a wide brimmed
Speaker 3: Fedora style hat made of some kind of leather sueded material.
Speaker 3: And George pries the hat out of the dead man's
Speaker 3: hands and investigates the tag on the inside and it
Speaker 3: says one hundred percent deer skin, and George goes ah bingo,
Speaker 3: and then he's trying it on in the mirror. It's
Speaker 3: killer style, so of course he steals it. He also
Speaker 3: takes his ring back. He has to use his mouth
Speaker 3: to get it off the dead guy's hand, and then
Speaker 3: leaves the ring with the new hotel clerk as collateral.
Speaker 5: Once again, The scene with him putting on the hat
Speaker 5: in the mirror just gets me every time. This is
Speaker 5: where he crosses into total goofball territory. He looks like
Speaker 5: a like a store brand Indiana Jones and he just
Speaker 5: looks so psyched about it.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Killer style. So after getting the hat, he has another
Speaker 3: meeting with Denise the bartender. He spins out some lies
Speaker 3: to make it sound like he's in the middle of
Speaker 3: a big, expensive production. He's like, oh, yeah, my producers,
Speaker 3: they're stuck in Siberia filming the big fight scene and
Speaker 3: I can't get they can't get cell reception. But he
Speaker 3: tells her great news, I do not yet have an
Speaker 3: editor for my film, though he accidentally says creditor and
Speaker 3: I don't have a creditor. I don't know if there's
Speaker 3: supposed to be some kind of double meaning there. But
Speaker 3: she's like, do you mean editor, and he's like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: you can have the job. She's very excited and agrees,
Speaker 3: but doesn't he want to see her work first. No,
Speaker 3: no need, He trusts her, but she does need to
Speaker 3: take off her jacket, and she's immediately suspicious. She's like,
Speaker 3: wait a minute, are you trying to get me to
Speaker 3: strip or something. He promises her, No, no, no, nothing
Speaker 3: like that, nothing sexual. It's just very important to him
Speaker 3: that he be the only person who gets to wear
Speaker 3: a jacket.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he says, it's as important to me as editing is.
Speaker 3: You Bravo, And so she's suspicious, but she really wants
Speaker 3: this job, so she agrees, and once the jacket is off,
Speaker 3: you can see George relaxes. He kind of like settles down,
Speaker 3: like okay, and he gives her something. It is a
Speaker 3: cassette from his video camera. He tells her that it
Speaker 3: is stuff for her to edit, and she's like, okay,
Speaker 3: I need a copy of the script though, and he's like, yeah.
Speaker 4: We'll talk about that. We'll talk about that later.
Speaker 3: So somebody stole my credit card and next thing, they're
Speaker 3: in an ATM and she's getting money out to loan him.
Speaker 3: Of course, the producers will reimburse her once they get
Speaker 3: cell phone reception again after they get off of the
Speaker 3: glacier in Siberia. And then we see Denise at home
Speaker 3: getting out some old video equipment cassette reader and maybe
Speaker 3: a digitizer of some kind.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think that's right. She has to dig it
Speaker 5: out of a drawer. And I'm a little less sure
Speaker 5: on this than the camera, but I think it's a
Speaker 5: Sony gv HD seven hundred HDV video walk manh Yeah,
Speaker 5: it seems to be like a VCR with a built
Speaker 5: in screen that allows for some basic editing. I was
Speaker 5: gonna look a little more into this thing, but I
Speaker 5: got totally sidetracked by the camera rabbit hole.
Speaker 3: So yeah, she starts reviewing his footage. She's seeing like
Speaker 3: scenery of the mountain beside the village, shots of the
Speaker 3: fringe on the deerskin jacket, George posing in the mirror
Speaker 3: with the jacket, and Denise seems amused. George meanwhile, it's
Speaker 3: it's time to go shopping. Is shopping spree? And what
Speaker 3: is he gonna get? Is he gonna get some more
Speaker 3: cassette tapes? No, he gets some deer skin boots, killer style,
Speaker 3: and it's time for an incredible montage. So with the
Speaker 3: deerskin jacket, the deer skin hat, and the boots, George
Speaker 3: starts filming scenes. He hires he like, puts out ads,
Speaker 3: and he hires local non actors to be in his movie.
Speaker 3: He tells them to bring all the jackets they own,
Speaker 3: and then he films them putting the jackets in the
Speaker 3: trunk of his car and vowing never to wear a
Speaker 3: jacket again as long as they live. This is what
Speaker 3: we saw in the cold opening of the film. And
Speaker 3: this is where we get that amazing exchange where one
Speaker 3: guy after doing this says, sorry, but isn't your movie weird?
Speaker 3: And he says, it's enough weird, it's amazing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you can't make sense of it now, but it rocks,
Speaker 5: but it rocks.
Speaker 3: And then once the scene is over and the actors
Speaker 3: have been paid, George steals the jackets. He just drives
Speaker 3: away with them while people are like.
Speaker 4: Wait, I need that back.
Speaker 3: So after one of these shoots, George notices a kid
Speaker 3: watching him. It's the same kid who is staring at
Speaker 3: him while he was eating out of the garbage can earlier,
Speaker 3: and George yells at him to go away, but the
Speaker 3: kid just stands there, stone faced, looking at him, and
Speaker 3: then getting really annoyed, George picks up a rock and
Speaker 3: throws it at the kid, hitting him in the face. Oh,
Speaker 3: and then also says to the actor the jacket donor,
Speaker 3: who's just standing there, He says, you saw nothing, and
Speaker 3: then George drives away.
Speaker 5: Yeah, this is kind of what I was referring to
Speaker 5: before about there being one notable exception to people buying
Speaker 5: his whole persona this kid that does not even really
Speaker 5: seem to be questioning him as much as he's staring blankly,
Speaker 5: and George is projecting something onto this kid.
Speaker 3: I feel like all of the other characters either they
Speaker 3: buy into George enough and like they either kind of
Speaker 3: play along with him, or they ignore him and move on.
Speaker 3: This kid is the only person who doesn't do one
Speaker 3: of those two things. This kid is continuing to engage
Speaker 3: with George, but not by like playing along with him,
Speaker 3: instead just by staring at him and making him feel weird.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I think that's a better way of putting it.
Speaker 5: I agree.
Speaker 3: Oh, but also the actor as George is driving away,
Speaker 3: he's like, wait, what about my jackets there in new
Speaker 3: trunk and George says, you swore never to wear a
Speaker 3: jacket again, I have filmed proof their mind now. I
Speaker 3: think he says, your f to their mind now. And
Speaker 3: then there's a creepy scene outside of movie theater. I
Speaker 3: like this where he pulls up alongside a guy walking
Speaker 3: in the snow. He's filming the guy. The guy's wearing
Speaker 3: a jacket, he's confused about what George is doing, and
Speaker 3: then we cut away before we see how it resolves.
Speaker 3: We'll see more of this scene later. But then George
Speaker 3: meets back up with Denise at the bar, and she
Speaker 3: has been editing his film the stuff he already gave her.
Speaker 3: I don't think this includes the new stuff, all of
Speaker 3: the jacket, theft, and the pledges of never Again. It's
Speaker 3: the earlier tape, and she says she likes his movie.
Speaker 3: She says it's like a mockumentary, so we get the
Speaker 3: sense that maybe she's going along with it because she
Speaker 3: thinks it's supposed to be funny, or she's interpreting it
Speaker 3: in a different spirit than he is. But she does
Speaker 3: say it's hard to figure out what to do with
Speaker 3: the footage without a script, but she put it together
Speaker 3: in a way that made sense to her, and she says,
Speaker 3: this is just my interpretation, but the real subject of
Speaker 3: the film is the jacket, or the fact that we
Speaker 3: all hide behind a shell to protect ourselves from the world.
Speaker 3: And he seems intrigued. He asks her, should that be
Speaker 3: what it's about? Good question? Should that be what it's about?
Speaker 3: And then next thing, they're like back at the ATM
Speaker 3: and she's trying to withdraw more funds to give him,
Speaker 3: but I think she's maxed out at this point. She
Speaker 3: can't get more than like eighty euros, and he gets
Speaker 3: angry and starts freaking out and eventually just says chow
Speaker 3: and storms off into the night. So here's where things
Speaker 3: are about to start getting darker. George later reviews the
Speaker 3: footage he took of the man in the street by
Speaker 3: the movie theater, and we see more of the conversation.
Speaker 3: George starts badgering the man to take off his jacket,
Speaker 3: the man refuses. They become increasingly hostile to each other
Speaker 3: before the guy eventually says George will have to kill
Speaker 3: him to make him do it, and then the filming
Speaker 3: stops and in the room, the jacket speaks to George.
Speaker 3: The jacket says, the plan is not working at this rate.
Speaker 3: It's going to take a thousand years for us to
Speaker 3: have the only jacket in the world, and George tries
Speaker 3: to argue, He's like, our dream is not reasonable. There
Speaker 3: are so many jackets it will take a lot of
Speaker 3: time to accomplish, But the jacket, after a long pause, says,
Speaker 3: I know what we'll do, and George then begins taking
Speaker 3: apart the appliances. He disassembles the ceiling fan in his
Speaker 3: hotel room and removes one of its blades and then
Speaker 3: goes out driving in the night, leaning out of the
Speaker 3: door of his car, dragging the fan blade along the
Speaker 3: road as he drives, and you can hear it grinding
Speaker 3: and see it like shooting up sparks in the dark.
Speaker 3: And I was like, wait, is he sharpening it? And yes,
Speaker 3: in fact, that is exactly what he's doing. Next there
Speaker 3: is like a there's a watermelon chopping scene where we
Speaker 3: learned he has turned this fan blade into a deadly machete,
Speaker 3: and he drives around some more, eating the watermelon. Eventually
Speaker 3: he finds a couple of guys standing outside talking in
Speaker 3: the snow. He drives up to them, gets out, approaches
Speaker 3: with his fan blade, and asks if they would like
Speaker 3: to help him realize his dream.
Speaker 4: Then we cut away.
Speaker 3: So here's where things sort of take a twist, because
Speaker 3: next thing we see is Denise. She receives a letter
Speaker 3: in her mailbox, along with a drawing of George in
Speaker 3: the jacket, presumably by George.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: They show this just sort of briefly, and I love
Speaker 5: this drawing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the letter goes Denise despite not having money. I
Speaker 3: shot a scene tonight by the sweat of my brow
Speaker 3: enjoy these images, for they may be the last. I
Speaker 3: think something awful must have happened in Siberia for the
Speaker 3: producers to leave me with no news. I doubt I
Speaker 3: can finish this film without the financing it deserves, unless,
Speaker 3: of course, you can find a way to help. And
Speaker 3: then he includes another cassette tape of himself.
Speaker 4: On this tape, he.
Speaker 3: Has filmed himself going on a murder spree, whacking people
Speaker 3: with his fan sword and then stealing the jackets of
Speaker 3: the people he kills. Denise watches this footage and she
Speaker 3: is thrilled. She's watching it there. Her eyes are big,
Speaker 3: and she says to herself, yes.
Speaker 4: So she comes to his.
Speaker 3: Hotel room and she's like, you know, George, I saw
Speaker 3: the new footage.
Speaker 4: It's wild.
Speaker 3: She says, I'm into it. And before they discuss any further,
Speaker 3: he does make her take off her jacket.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Before she enters the room, he says, you know why.
Speaker 4: But she is now.
Speaker 3: She's now all in on his film project. She's got
Speaker 3: an advance from her boss at the bar, so she
Speaker 3: has more money now. She also has brought a present
Speaker 3: for George, wrapped in newspaper. It is a pair of
Speaker 3: one hundred percent deer skin pants with fringes running down
Speaker 3: the leg, and George he says, damn classy.
Speaker 4: I love my life. Thanks.
Speaker 5: I love that.
Speaker 3: It sounds like a Facebook post somebody would make.
Speaker 4: I love that.
Speaker 5: She gives him the pants as an apology for my
Speaker 5: card maxing out yesterday.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So they go on to discuss the project, and you know,
Speaker 3: for a while in the middle of the movie here
Speaker 3: we've been thinking like, oh no, poor Denise, Like George
Speaker 3: is scamming her, exploiting her. But the tables are kind
Speaker 3: of turning. Denise is like, Okay, I think I can
Speaker 3: get a lot more money soon, enough to finance the
Speaker 3: whole movie. But she's like, George, I need you to
Speaker 3: shoot more footage so that I can edit a teaser.
Speaker 3: And then she starts giving him notes on style. She's like,
Speaker 3: you've got a position the camera closer to the subject,
Speaker 3: needs more action, more blood. Is she giving the orders now? Yes,
Speaker 3: she is, And she hands him some money and it
Speaker 3: seems like she may be the boss of.
Speaker 4: This film suddenly. So at this point George is Jason Vorhees.
Speaker 3: He goes out into the night, following random people filming
Speaker 3: them killing them with the fan blade, chopping the heads
Speaker 3: in half, like stabbing them through the guts and everything,
Speaker 3: and of course always stealing their jackets. And he's like
Speaker 3: wearing a rain slicker, of course to avoid getting blood
Speaker 3: on his deer skin. And there were some funny music choices,
Speaker 3: I mean throughout the film, but especially here. There's groovy
Speaker 3: lounge music in this montage where he's whacking people with
Speaker 3: the machete. And eventually the Jacket starts talking at George
Speaker 3: while he's asleep. It's like saying his name over and over,
Speaker 3: as if it's impatient he's not moving fast enough.
Speaker 5: Yeah, my friend Ian pointed this part out to me
Speaker 5: is maybe secretly the funniest part of the movie, and
Speaker 5: just the fact that George is either not waking up
Speaker 5: or pretending to not wake up while he like voices
Speaker 5: the Jacket trying to rouse him from his sleep.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, it's earlier. It's like when he was doing
Speaker 3: the voice of the Jacket trying to get his attention
Speaker 3: to make him stop reading and he has to put
Speaker 3: the book away. Yeah, so George, he's out with his camera.
Speaker 3: There's another scene where he like directs a man who
Speaker 3: operates an excavator and he makes this guy dig a
Speaker 3: big hole in the ground, and I was thinking, what
Speaker 3: is he going to bury a bunch of bodies in there? Nope,
Speaker 3: he's gonna bury the jackets. He's got to get rid
Speaker 3: of all the jackets. His car is full of them.
Speaker 3: The bodies he just leaves wherever.
Speaker 4: So oh.
Speaker 3: And also he sort of beats and abuses the jackets
Speaker 3: before he covers them with earth, like he's beating one
Speaker 3: of the jackets with a pipe, and then he covers
Speaker 3: them up with earth.
Speaker 1: And then.
Speaker 3: There's kind of an interesting moment after this where he
Speaker 3: leans over a rushing mountain stream and drinks from the
Speaker 3: water like a wild.
Speaker 4: Animal, like a deer. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So George meets with Denise yet again. Now she's got
Speaker 3: a ton of cash, she says, her father sold his
Speaker 3: butcher shop and now she's loaded. She has fifty thousand
Speaker 3: euros and she announces that she is officially taking over production.
Speaker 3: She's the producer. Now what can he do about it?
Speaker 3: She's bringing the money. How can he argue? She said,
Speaker 3: he needs guidance in his work. It's a mess, and
Speaker 3: she's going to have to instruct him on the art
Speaker 3: of filmmaking.
Speaker 4: He's frustrated.
Speaker 3: He kind of tries to resist, but he also just
Speaker 3: wants the money, and she explains, look, the money is
Speaker 3: not for you, it is for the film. This is
Speaker 3: business here, and she says that in fact, she knows
Speaker 3: he's been lying about being a filmmaker, lying about the
Speaker 3: producers in Siberia, and there's a great cover here where
Speaker 3: he's like, I'm not lying. They sent a fax this
Speaker 3: morning telling me they had died in an avalanche. That's
Speaker 3: why I couldn't reach them.
Speaker 4: And I don't know.
Speaker 3: Something's not lying up there. They died, but they sent
Speaker 3: a fax, and he says we but she's known since
Speaker 3: the beginning that it was all a fraud and she says,
Speaker 3: you're nothing, no one, no producers, just a guy alone.
Speaker 3: He points out that she is in fact alone too,
Speaker 3: and then she says everyone is alone.
Speaker 4: Oh good, come back.
Speaker 3: But she does want to make a film, and that's
Speaker 3: what they're gonna do. She says, we can be alone
Speaker 3: to get other and we can make a great movie.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 3: He tentatively agrees, but first he needs to do something.
Speaker 3: He needs deer skin gloves, so she's got to buy
Speaker 3: them for him. So the next thing, they're like at
Speaker 3: a clothing shop and he's trying on deer skin gloves
Speaker 3: in the mirror, getting all hyped up, and Denise is
Speaker 3: encouraging him.
Speaker 4: She's like, yeah, yeah, And.
Speaker 3: The shop worker asks if he's interested maybe in trying
Speaker 3: on some synthetic leather gloves. He says, do I look
Speaker 3: like the synthetic type? Denise says, don't you see his
Speaker 3: killer style? So next George and Denise, he's like fully
Speaker 3: suited now, head to toe deer skin, and they go
Speaker 3: out driving on the mountain roads and George he stops
Speaker 3: at one point along the highway and gives the camera
Speaker 3: to Denise and tells her to film him. So he
Speaker 3: climbs up on a hill beside the highway and dances around,
Speaker 3: showing off his glorious head to toe deer skin outfit
Speaker 3: and saying over and over again for Denise to film him.
Speaker 3: And then suddenly, from out of nowhere, a shot rings
Speaker 3: out and George falls over dead. He's been hitting the
Speaker 3: head by a bullet, and we see from far away
Speaker 3: a man holding a rifle who shot George. It was
Speaker 3: the father of the boy who George hit with the rock.
Speaker 3: The other day, the boy is in the car with
Speaker 3: like a bandage on his head.
Speaker 5: And he's sitting there eating a sandwich.
Speaker 3: I didn't notice the sandwich. I should go back and
Speaker 3: look for that. Yeah, eating a sandwich at the execution? Yeah,
Speaker 3: so But anyway, so George gets hit with the bullet.
Speaker 3: He falls down and Denise keeps filming. She approaches George's
Speaker 3: body and begins to take off his deer skin. She
Speaker 3: takes off the gloves and the jacket, filming the whole time.
Speaker 3: Then she puts the jacket on herself and looks into
Speaker 3: the camera and it's, you know, there's a transformation. It's
Speaker 3: like I am deer skin now. And that's the end
Speaker 3: of the main actions. She dons the deer skin. We
Speaker 3: get the credits. There is a post credit scene where
Speaker 3: we see video footage playing on a TV screen and
Speaker 3: it shows a herd of deer wandering on a ridge
Speaker 3: in the woods, and then the camera turns back and
Speaker 3: we see George's holding it. But after this we go
Speaker 3: to the closing credits music, which is a great needle
Speaker 3: drop of I can't remember if we mentioned this already
Speaker 3: on Mike, but it's a wonderful song that I was
Speaker 3: not familiar with before called Don't Make the Good Girls
Speaker 3: Go Bad by Della Humphrey.
Speaker 4: It's awesome.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I really enjoyed this too, and I wasn't sure
Speaker 5: how to exactly how to take that post credits scene.
Speaker 5: He's also sort of like either pointing or reaching back
Speaker 5: towards the deer.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I didn't know exactly what to make of
Speaker 3: it either. I mean it's like he was so he's
Speaker 3: putting on these deer skinned products. So in one sense,
Speaker 3: he's putting on a deer suit, but you could also
Speaker 3: so it's like he's becoming a deer, but you could
Speaker 3: also think that he's consuming deer. I mean, like deer
Speaker 3: have to be killed to make these products, and so
Speaker 3: he is. We could be looking at them in a
Speaker 3: predatory way, like he wants to harvest all of their
Speaker 3: skin and wear it all, or if I don't know,
Speaker 3: I don't know what the sense of identification there is
Speaker 3: it a predatory gaze and a gaze of identification and
Speaker 3: becoming like I wouldn't to be you. I'm not quite
Speaker 3: sure what is it George wants? Is it seems to
Speaker 3: me what he wants? You know, you could imagine versions
Speaker 3: of this story that have a more mature and meaningful
Speaker 3: and identifiable sense of longing. You know, people who want
Speaker 3: kind of freedom, or people in middle age who are
Speaker 3: unhappy with their choices and want another chance at life and.
Speaker 4: Things like that.
Speaker 3: So you maybe you can see little flashes of that
Speaker 3: here and there in George, But it seems like the
Speaker 3: main thing he wants is killer style. He wants to
Speaker 3: be He wants to look cool and be seen as cool,
Speaker 3: and there is a fundamental kind of childishness and like
Speaker 3: boyish maturity to him.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he makes a lot of jacket first decisions was
Speaker 5: the way I kept thinking about it, Like, I agree
Speaker 5: with you that, and I feel like I started off
Speaker 5: maybe even the first or second time I watched this movie.
Speaker 5: I watched it a couple times just to prepare for this,
Speaker 5: But on my initial viewing of it, I think I
Speaker 5: read a little more into it, and I saw it
Speaker 5: as something more akin to this person obsessed with like
Speaker 5: the identity of being a filmmaker or an artist over
Speaker 5: the substance of actually doing that art or that filmmaking.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, okay.
Speaker 5: And when he does start to do some of the
Speaker 5: work he likes to do the stuff that will reinforce
Speaker 5: his identity as Jacket where exactly all Jacket first decisions.
Speaker 3: I can see what you're saying there, Yeah, there are
Speaker 3: I mean, people have vocational or artistic dreams.
Speaker 4: For themselves or is like I want to be a filmmaker.
Speaker 3: I want to be an artist or a writer, or
Speaker 3: you know, a musician or something like that. And I
Speaker 3: think a lot of those desires really can be decomposed
Speaker 3: into very different kinds of desires.
Speaker 4: Like somebody who.
Speaker 3: Wants to be a musician could be somebody who loves
Speaker 3: the act of like playing and writing music. They like
Speaker 3: being in the process. It's like the doing that they're
Speaker 3: excited about. Or somebody could be like I want to
Speaker 3: be a musician because I want to be up on
Speaker 3: stage and look cool and have people think I'm cool,
Speaker 3: and you know, I want to have my identity associated
Speaker 3: with the things that I associate with.
Speaker 4: Being a musician.
Speaker 3: And those are like different desires. And I'm sure that
Speaker 3: in you know, many people, they can sort of intermingle
Speaker 3: in different ad mixtures, like very different amounts. But I
Speaker 3: think you're exactly right that there's something in here about
Speaker 3: that that like he he does get very hung up
Speaker 3: on this idea of being a filmmaker, but, like Denise
Speaker 3: points out, like he doesn't. He doesn't seem to be
Speaker 3: paying any attention to style, Like he's not paying attention
Speaker 3: to the art of filmmaking and doesn't seem to care
Speaker 3: much about it. It's more about being able to say
Speaker 3: he's a filmmaker in service of being the coolest looking
Speaker 3: guy in the world, the only guy in the world
Speaker 3: who can wear this jacket, right.
Speaker 5: I mean, the whole reason he even says he's a
Speaker 5: filmmaker is it's the first thing he thinks of when
Speaker 5: he's put in a situation where he has to justify
Speaker 5: why he's wearing the jacket.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, you know.
Speaker 3: By contrast, it seems like Denise really does love the
Speaker 3: doing of the filmmaking, Like when she's talking about enjoying
Speaker 3: being an editor, it sounds like she likes being in
Speaker 3: the process, even if it is not necessarily a great
Speaker 3: end product, like she talks about how much she liked
Speaker 3: re editing pulp fiction when she says the final product sucked,
Speaker 3: right yeah, yeah, And one more thing before we wrap up,
Speaker 3: I wanted to come back to it. Does seem also
Speaker 3: like something here is about an interaction between these these
Speaker 3: pursuits and loneliness.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: I think we talked about this at the.
Speaker 3: Beginning, that Denise and George both seem like characters who
Speaker 3: aren't not having fulfilling functional relationships. They're they're both they
Speaker 3: both seem like loners or lonely people in a way,
Speaker 3: and not necessarily by choice. And it does seem like
Speaker 3: that is contributing to or manifesting in some way as
Speaker 3: these these bizarre obsessions that end up kind of blossoming
Speaker 3: into aberrant behavior.
Speaker 5: Yeah, totally. And to Pew himself said that we're all
Speaker 5: a little bit George, any of us can have that
Speaker 5: moment where something snaps and everything collapses into obsession.
Speaker 3: Okay, does that do it for deer Skin?
Speaker 5: I think so.
Speaker 4: Jj.
Speaker 3: I really hope you have enjoyed your first turn on
Speaker 3: Mike on Weird House, and I hope you'll do it
Speaker 3: again in the future.
Speaker 5: Yeah, for sure. It is fun talking about this movie
Speaker 5: with you.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, I'm glad you picked it. I don't know if
Speaker 3: I would have seen it otherwise, but it's a hit.
Speaker 4: All right. Well, I guess that does it. So.
Speaker 3: Hey, if you are new to the show, let me
Speaker 3: explain a little bit about what we do here. So
Speaker 3: our main show is Stuff to Blow your Mind. That
Speaker 3: is our core science and culture show, where most episodes
Speaker 3: have something to do with science, but we also have
Speaker 3: a kind of interdisciplinary approach. We like to talk about history, mythology,
Speaker 3: and religion, literature and things like that, and those are
Speaker 3: our Tuesday Thursday episodes. Every week on Fridays we do
Speaker 3: this show, Weird House Cinema, where usually my co host
Speaker 3: Rob Lamb and I just talk about a weird movie
Speaker 3: and they can These movies can be old or new,
Speaker 3: good or bad, well known or obscure. The only real
Speaker 3: criterion is that it has to be weird. So we
Speaker 3: do these every Fridays. On Wednesdays, we do a short
Speaker 3: form episode on Saturday and Mondays we feature older episodes
Speaker 3: of the show. So yeah, if you're new, stick around,
Speaker 3: listen to some more, and of course subscribe wherever you
Speaker 3: get your podcasts. You can also if you would like
Speaker 3: to get just the Weird House Cinema episodes by themselves
Speaker 3: without everything else, you can look up Weird House Cinema
Speaker 3: and I think you can subscribe to that as its
Speaker 3: own playlist or feed. Though of course, I encourage you
Speaker 3: to check out all of our offerings. If you want
Speaker 3: to follow us on social media, we're on some of
Speaker 3: those I think we're on I think. I think we've
Speaker 3: been building up a new Instagram page after we got
Speaker 3: somehow locked out of our old one a while back.
Speaker 3: We're on some of the other socials you can find
Speaker 3: us on Letterboxed. Letterboxed is a sort of community film
Speaker 3: sharing site. You can find us there under weird House
Speaker 3: and let's see. I guess that's it for now, so
Speaker 3: JJ thanks once again, thanks as always for being our
Speaker 3: excellent audio producer, but double thanks today for joining me
Speaker 3: on Mike. I really really appreciate it and I had
Speaker 3: a great time talking to you and let's see. Oh
Speaker 3: last thing, of course, if you would like to get
Speaker 3: in touch with us with feedback on this episode or
Speaker 3: any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or
Speaker 3: just to say hello, you can email us at contact
Speaker 3: at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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