Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb
Speaker 2: and I am Joe McCormick.
Speaker 3: And today on Weird House Cinema we are going to
Speaker 3: be talking about the nineteen seventy six science fiction film
Speaker 3: The Man Who Fell to Earth, directed by Nicholas Rogue
Speaker 3: and starring David Bowie. This is a film that has
Speaker 3: been on my radar for many years. I knew it
Speaker 3: had a reputation for being quite strange and according to
Speaker 3: some critics at least quite good, though I think critical
Speaker 3: opinion is divided. And I'd never seen it before, didn't
Speaker 3: really know anything about it at all, and so here
Speaker 3: we are to talk about it. I just finished it
Speaker 3: this morning.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is what I had never seen in its
Speaker 2: entirety before. I just had vague memories of catching parts
Speaker 2: of it on like a lonely after noon in the
Speaker 2: nineties on A and E television, so certainly certainly not
Speaker 2: a full understanding of the picture. I just had some
Speaker 2: visions of the alien David Bowie, and some basic kind
Speaker 2: of like meandering about in the seventies.
Speaker 3: Man showing this on TV must involve a lot of editings,
Speaker 3: like every insurance salesman in the film gets naked.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is this might be our nakedest film that
Speaker 2: we've covered on Weird House Cinema. It's our thirtieth selection
Speaker 2: from the nineteen seventies, and it's also pretty long. This
Speaker 2: one actually ties Perana Mandir for the longest film we've
Speaker 2: covered on Weird House. Both of those clock in at
Speaker 2: one hundred and thirty eight minutes, though initially in the
Speaker 2: initial US release of the film, there was something like
Speaker 2: twenty minutes maybe even I've seen some people talk about
Speaker 2: thirty minutes being cut off. I think it's more like
Speaker 2: twenty minutes were cut from the film for that initial release.
Speaker 3: I wonder what twenty minutes those were.
Speaker 2: I think some of the some of the naked bits.
Speaker 2: For sure. There is the Hello Mary Low sequence, so
Speaker 2: we'll get too later on. It's my understanding that was
Speaker 2: cut in its entirety.
Speaker 3: I see.
Speaker 2: But it's weird to consider this film and cuts, as
Speaker 2: we'll discuss, like the this is not necessarily a linear plot.
Speaker 2: You know, there are this this film, you know, drifts
Speaker 2: across the peripheries of multiple genres. There are a lot
Speaker 2: of ideas in it, and this is I think one
Speaker 2: of the film's strengths, but it's also been pointed out
Speaker 2: as a weakness by its many detractors. I wanted to
Speaker 2: touch on just a couple of reviewers and what they
Speaker 2: have said about this film in the past. Okay, First up,
Speaker 2: Roger Ebert. You know, we often check in see what
Speaker 2: the great Roger Ebert had to say about films. Sometimes
Speaker 2: we agree with him wholeheartedly. Sometimes, you know, we have
Speaker 2: to agree to disagree. He reviewed this film twice, once
Speaker 2: upon its release in seventy six, and then again in
Speaker 2: twenty eleven for its re release. He gave it two
Speaker 2: point five stars initially, and then later in twenty eleven
Speaker 2: he bumped.
Speaker 3: That up to three stars, classic Ebert do over. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but in the Airplane over the Sea, Oh no, actually,
Speaker 3: I think that's a ten.
Speaker 2: So it's still always interesting to hear what he had
Speaker 2: to say. So in seventy six he wrote, quote, it
Speaker 2: requires an almost courageous leap of the imagination to take
Speaker 2: Nicholas Rogues The Man Who Fell to Earth. Seriously, here
Speaker 2: is a film so preposterous and posturing, so filled with
Speaker 2: gaps of logic and continuity that if it weren't so solemn,
Speaker 2: there'd be the temptation to laugh aloud. And yet at
Speaker 2: the same time, this is a film filled with interesting ideas.
Speaker 2: It's like a bunch of tentative sketches for a more
Speaker 2: assured film that was never made.
Speaker 3: I think that's sort of right on the money. I
Speaker 3: mean it just I think depends on how appealing or
Speaker 3: unappealing those various elements are to you. There are parts,
Speaker 3: I'd say, overall, I think I quite liked The Man
Speaker 3: Who Fell to Earth, and I really liked the other one,
Speaker 3: Nicholas Rogue movie I've seen, and there were similarities stylistic
Speaker 3: similarities between them that we can talk about as we
Speaker 3: go on. But there, yeah, there are things about this
Speaker 3: movie that it would be hard to argue they really work.
Speaker 3: Like the scene where where David Bowie's character is arguing
Speaker 3: with his human lover Mary Lou played by Candy Clark,
Speaker 3: and he gets angry and smacks a tray of chocolate
Speaker 3: chip cookies out of her hand and they fly up
Speaker 3: into the air and we see them in slow motion
Speaker 3: like the spaceships, or like the Bone turning into the
Speaker 3: spaceship in two thousand and one and then the cookies
Speaker 3: fall to the floor and they're all broken, and I
Speaker 3: think that the camera kind of lingers on that, like, oh,
Speaker 3: the cookies are broken, you know, like their souls or
Speaker 3: like like their relationship or something. I mean that is
Speaker 3: that is high camp?
Speaker 2: That is fun Yeah, yeah, like that that has to
Speaker 2: be intentionally humorous, right. I laughed out loud at that sequence.
Speaker 3: But to interpret it as intentionally humorous does take like
Speaker 3: a leap of faith, because there's no wink at you
Speaker 3: at all. It's you know, they're not There's nothing that
Speaker 3: you could use to really prove that this is supposed
Speaker 3: to be funny. Like that moment is played deadly serious
Speaker 3: in the movie itself.
Speaker 2: Yeah. There. I think that the main scene that jumps
Speaker 2: out as potentially having that wink is where the goons
Speaker 2: are trying to throw buck Henry out the window and
Speaker 2: they their first attempt, he like cracks the glass and
Speaker 2: falls back on the living room floor. Yes, and he
Speaker 2: apologizes too, and he's like I'm sorry, and they're like,
Speaker 2: I don't worry about it, and then they throw them
Speaker 2: out the window.
Speaker 3: To h I agree that moment clearly. Yeah, that kind
Speaker 3: of it breaks the reality a bit and becomes more
Speaker 3: intentionally funny. And yet you could get the wrong idea
Speaker 3: from what we're talking about and assume that that means
Speaker 3: the Man who Fell to Earth is some kind of farce,
Speaker 3: which for the most part, I think it's not. I
Speaker 3: think most of this movie is meant to be taken
Speaker 3: seriously to to you know, to convey emotion and drama
Speaker 3: between the characters in the straightforward way it's presented, and
Speaker 3: you are supposed to feel what the characters are feeling.
Speaker 3: So it just has these strange kind of moments where
Speaker 3: something absolutely ridiculous happens, but then it goes back into
Speaker 3: being a kind of ponderous exploration of alienation and alcoholism.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Alcoholism is one of the central themes in
Speaker 2: this film, and I understand in the book it's based upon,
Speaker 2: and yeah, it's I think a lot of films you expect,
Speaker 2: you reasonably expect more of a linear progression. Scene A
Speaker 2: speaks to scene B, and so forth. This is a
Speaker 2: movie where it's like you have all these different scenes
Speaker 2: with different interactions between characters, and they may speak to
Speaker 2: each other without any real consideration of time and space.
Speaker 2: You know, It's like you're triangulating a feeling out of
Speaker 2: different points in the film.
Speaker 3: Yes, and I think also contributing to what you're saying
Speaker 3: there well. Get in a more detail about this later on.
Speaker 3: But David Bowie's performance itself, he's the central character in
Speaker 3: the movie. I would say his acting performance is incredibly ambiguous,
Speaker 3: to the point of almost feeling kind of random, like
Speaker 3: Newton is often. The character he plays in this movie
Speaker 3: is named Thomas Jerom Newton, and Newton goes through much
Speaker 3: of the plot being kind of aloof and spacey and unemotional.
Speaker 3: He sort of detached from the action. He doesn't display
Speaker 3: a lot of emotion, and then there are suddenly moments
Speaker 3: when he does display a lot of emotion, and they're
Speaker 3: not always what you'd really expect based on the context
Speaker 3: of the scene or the dramatic arc of the film
Speaker 3: as a whole. The way he sort of occasionally comes
Speaker 3: out of his somnambulent and detached state and displays emotion
Speaker 3: almost feels like like Bowie kind of like roll to die.
Speaker 3: Before he did each scene, it was like, how am
Speaker 3: I going to play this one? Rather than like reading
Speaker 3: the script and thinking what would be logical in this scene.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's I mean, this is especially a weird
Speaker 2: film to try and judge an actor's performance in, especially
Speaker 2: someone like Bowie, who is coming into this, as we'll discuss,
Speaker 2: you know, not a tremendous filmography under his belt, coming
Speaker 2: in mainly as a rockstar celebrity, and with Bowie especially,
Speaker 2: I've always found this to be the case, and found
Speaker 2: it to be the case leading up to this episode,
Speaker 2: trying to figure out, like who he really was. It's
Speaker 2: like that scene in Nolan's Batman sequel where you're trying
Speaker 2: to knock down or the various scenes where you're trying
Speaker 2: to figure out the origin story of the Joker. It's
Speaker 2: like a different story each time, and it makes you
Speaker 2: feel like, well, nothing is real, Like he's completely protean,
Speaker 2: He's this this shape shifter.
Speaker 3: Yes, I see exactly what you're saying. Yeah, Bowie can
Speaker 3: very much feel like that, which which is not a
Speaker 3: knock on Bowie. Of course I loved him, Bowie's music
Speaker 3: and and you know, not a knock on him despite
Speaker 3: what I just said, not really a knock on him
Speaker 3: as an actor, because despite the the kind of random
Speaker 3: displays of emotion and odd choices he makes throughout the film.
Speaker 3: It does make it harder to take this movie as
Speaker 3: a straight forward drama. But at the same time, while
Speaker 3: he sort of Bowie's contributions are kind of taking away
Speaker 3: from the movie in one direction, they are adding greatly
Speaker 3: to it in another, which Bowie just brings some kind
Speaker 3: of powerful energy to the screen and he is hard
Speaker 3: to look away from.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. I mean, anybody you look at talking about this film,
Speaker 2: they almost always at the very least praise Bowie's performance.
Speaker 2: So like when Ebert came back and revisited this film,
Speaker 2: he was acknowledging the cult status. He praised Bowie's quote
Speaker 2: unquote eurie performance and he wrote, quote it's slow going
Speaker 2: at times, and the plot isn't worthy of the performances.
Speaker 2: Too many shots of limousines and an unexplained big truck,
Speaker 2: too many unfocused conversations and offices. I gave it two
Speaker 2: five stars and seventy six That was about right, but
Speaker 2: I'm nudging it up to three stars for the twenty
Speaker 2: eleven re release. Star ratings are meaningless anyway, so consider
Speaker 2: this just a quiet protest vote against the way projects
Speaker 2: this ambitious are no longer possible in the mainstream movie industry.
Speaker 3: I see what he's saying there, So like, even though
Speaker 3: he thinks this is still a very flawed film given
Speaker 3: the convergence of a greater proportion of modern movies on
Speaker 3: a kind of like safe marketable sameness, he looks back
Speaker 3: and is like, well, Okay, they tried to do something
Speaker 3: really weird and really different, different and really ambitious with
Speaker 3: this story. And there might have been ways that it
Speaker 3: didn't quite work, but great respect for trying.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now. I also frequently cite the writings of Psychotronic
Speaker 2: Film Guide author Michael Weldon as well. You know, he
Speaker 2: almost always have something to say about the films we
Speaker 2: cover on this show, and you know, sometimes it's very
Speaker 2: matter of fact, like this is what this film was.
Speaker 2: Other times there's a little more or like review quality
Speaker 2: to what he's written, and this is such a film.
Speaker 2: The really interesting thing, though, to me anyway, is that
Speaker 2: he absolutely praises the film, seems to love the film
Speaker 2: and Bowie's performance in it, while also seemingly being rather
Speaker 2: dismissive of Bowie's musical career. So I'm going to read
Speaker 2: part of what he has to say reminder that this
Speaker 2: review would have been written no later than nineteen eighty three. Quote,
Speaker 2: David Bowie makes a great alien, and this fascinating science
Speaker 2: fiction film, which spans twenty five years, will be revived
Speaker 2: in the future, long after most of his derivative rock
Speaker 2: albums land in the cutout bins. Okay, Mikey, So you know,
Speaker 2: I guess some folks don't like Bowie's music. I mean,
Speaker 2: I guess, to be fair, Boi's discography covers a lot
Speaker 2: of ground.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, I mean, if you don't like it, you
Speaker 3: don't like it. I like it. I'm a Bowie fan.
Speaker 2: I mean it could prove true. Eventually. There may come
Speaker 2: a day where people are like David Bowie who and
Speaker 2: they're like the guy from the Manufeld to Earth and like,
Speaker 2: oh yes he's amazing.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, that's strange musical career. Oh wow, watching twenty
Speaker 3: five televisions and screaming get out of my mind.
Speaker 2: All right, Well my elevator pitch for this one. I
Speaker 2: went through a few different possibilities, but ultimately I'm landing
Speaker 2: on David Bowie is from outer space. But like for real, I.
Speaker 3: Do think it's interesting that by this point David Bowie
Speaker 3: had already been playing an alien wasn't the premise of
Speaker 3: Ziggy Stardust that he was an alien who came to
Speaker 3: Earth and started a rock band. And then that was
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy two, I think, And then several years later
Speaker 3: he's in a movie based on this premise, but it
Speaker 3: was a movie based on a book that already existed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's almost like he was auditioning for
Speaker 2: the film with his career up to that point, And yeah,
Speaker 2: you have a better head for all the different personas
Speaker 2: he went through, because again that's another aspect of the
Speaker 2: protein nature of Bowie. It's like there are these different phases,
Speaker 2: different incarnations, and in a way, this film ends up
Speaker 2: being like another version of himself that is out there
Speaker 2: in the same way that Jareth, the Goblin King from
Speaker 2: Labyrinth is like another Bowie persona that kind of lives
Speaker 2: in the same pantheon.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm not going to pretend to have a deep
Speaker 3: knowledge of all the faces of Bowie and the different
Speaker 3: personas he adopted over the years. So I know there
Speaker 3: was the Ziggy Stardust thing, which I think was more
Speaker 3: audacious and supposed to be more audacious and outlandish than
Speaker 3: this kind of persona I have seen The Men Who
Speaker 3: Fell to Earth, persona linked to Bowie's musical stage persona
Speaker 3: known as the quote thin White Duke, which is apparently
Speaker 3: one of his more odious faces. That also I think
Speaker 3: had to do with a time of his life where
Speaker 3: he had genuine drug addiction. And so I don't know,
Speaker 3: I don't know a lot about that, but it does
Speaker 3: seem like this movie sort of fits in somewhere in
Speaker 3: the mid seventies in his career and does contribute to
Speaker 3: his evolving stage persona as a musical performer as well.
Speaker 2: I read just drastically contrasting things about Bowie's performance in
Speaker 2: this Like, on one hand, I think I saw something
Speaker 2: where they like Bowie said that he was whacked out
Speaker 2: on drugs when they filmed this and he doesn't remember it.
Speaker 2: And then there are other stories where like Nicholas Rogue
Speaker 2: is like, no, no, he gave up drugs for this
Speaker 2: film and was, you know, very punctual and very professional.
Speaker 2: And then you also hear things about how Rogue apparently
Speaker 2: at one point entertained the idea of casting Michael Crichton
Speaker 2: in This Ruffle, which was just because he was tall,
Speaker 2: I guess, and maybe had a little like, but it
Speaker 2: was like that gives you some insight into what he
Speaker 2: was maybe at some point going for here, like he
Speaker 2: wanted a non actor who also had some level of
Speaker 2: celebrity status of that at the time period, and you know,
Speaker 2: and then how does that play into sort of the
Speaker 2: expectations of how this character was going to come across
Speaker 2: on screen?
Speaker 3: Is this before or after Westworld?
Speaker 2: Oh? I don't, I don't remember off the top of
Speaker 2: my head.
Speaker 3: So annoying you google Westworld now and this TV series
Speaker 3: comes up. It's like, I don't want to know. I
Speaker 3: want to know about the movie. Oh, nineteen seventy three, Yeah, okay, okay,
Speaker 3: So you know that was written and directed by Michael Crichton.
Speaker 3: So it's like, I want the guy who directed Yule
Speaker 3: Brinner in Westworld to play my alien.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean Crichton was pretty successful at the time.
Speaker 2: So I don't know. I guess it makes sense. But
Speaker 2: I will drive home that David Billie's performance and this
Speaker 2: does not feel like your typical non actor or celebrity
Speaker 2: immediately turned actor performance. There's a lot more there to consider.
Speaker 3: I think the way I would put it is, despite
Speaker 3: him making some dramatic choices, that almost seem to work
Speaker 3: against this directly. Bowie just has overwhelming screen charisma and
Speaker 3: is very interesting and believable as a performer.
Speaker 2: Absolutely all right, let's listen to a little bit of
Speaker 2: the trailer audio. Are you the the first?
Speaker 3: The first one? This is it?
Speaker 2: I've always been visited.
Speaker 4: Nothing you have seen or heard about David Bowie will
Speaker 4: prepare you for the impact of his first dramatic performance
Speaker 4: in The Man Who Fell to Earth. This is another
Speaker 4: dimension of David Bowie, one of the few true originals
Speaker 4: of our time. You're really a freak, I mean not unkindly.
Speaker 3: I like freaks. Is this a weapon?
Speaker 1: The weapon was too small for aniplanetary travel.
Speaker 4: Assume that it's a weapon. If I stay here, CAUSI die.
Speaker 2: You take me with you. I'll see you don't die.
Speaker 4: I can't see.
Speaker 2: You.
Speaker 3: Are I think you know?
Speaker 2: You know too much about it?
Speaker 4: Very taking me. He's just like everybody else.
Speaker 3: He's he's he's a freak. You don't understand.
Speaker 4: You might be able to save him, very lou save him,
Speaker 4: help me?
Speaker 2: Then no, love me?
Speaker 1: I love you.
Speaker 4: The Man Who Fell to Earth is a powerful love story,
Speaker 4: a cosmic mystery, the spectacular fantasy a shocking, mind stretching experience,
Speaker 4: insight in space and sas.
Speaker 2: All right, well, if you want to watch The Man
Speaker 2: Who Fell to Earth in its entirety, before you continue
Speaker 2: on with this episode or after a week, talk about
Speaker 2: the people involved in it. Luckily, it's widely available in
Speaker 2: all formats. I'm not even sure exactly which edition I
Speaker 2: rented from Videodrome. Maybe the fortieth anniversary edition. They had
Speaker 2: like several different versions, and I think it's also available
Speaker 2: in the Criterion collection. It's been put out a number
Speaker 2: of times.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just streamed at this time.
Speaker 2: All right, let's jump into the people involved here. As
Speaker 2: we've been saying, the director is Nicholas Rogue, who lived
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty eight through twenty eighteen English film director and cinematographer,
Speaker 2: with a noted and highly influential style, often characterized as
Speaker 2: featuring fractured editing and nonlinear storytelling techniques. He's also pretty
Speaker 2: well known for his depictions of nudity and sex in
Speaker 2: his films, but the details of this are a bit
Speaker 2: more nuanced, as we'll discuss.
Speaker 3: I think Rogue has a reputation, at least for using
Speaker 3: sex to great dramatic effect in his films, So he
Speaker 3: makes movies that have a lot of sex in them,
Speaker 3: but it's not just for the sake of depicting sex
Speaker 3: and nudity. It, more so than in most films, is
Speaker 3: sort of a scene in which dramatic relationships and interactions
Speaker 3: between characters are developed.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, Like the flesh is not the endpoint. The
Speaker 2: flesh is a storytelling tool or a character creation, character
Speaker 2: development tool. So we'll have more to say about that
Speaker 2: as we roll on. It's really I think one of
Speaker 2: the several interesting things about the picture. Roguess cinematography credits
Speaker 2: extend back to sixty one and include such films as
Speaker 2: sixty four as The Mask of the Red Death. There's
Speaker 2: one sequence in particular. I imagine you probably noticed this
Speaker 2: as well. Remember in Mask of the Red Death we
Speaker 2: had the procession of different rooms that are different colors,
Speaker 2: and what did we have in this film? We had
Speaker 2: a similar thing pretty late in the picture, Like the
Speaker 2: penthouse in which the man who felt or earth is imprisoned,
Speaker 2: has this feel to it.
Speaker 3: I did not make that connection, but you're exactly right.
Speaker 3: In the rooms, yeah, that you go from like a well, yeah,
Speaker 3: like one of the rooms is a sort of a
Speaker 3: yellow room that is a it has wallpaper up that
Speaker 3: depicts a forest in autumn and yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: So we featured Mask of the Red Death on a
Speaker 2: previous episode of Weird House, So go back and listen
Speaker 2: to that one if you want more on that.
Speaker 3: But that one was directed by Roger Corman. Right, Rogue
Speaker 3: did cinematography.
Speaker 2: Cinematography, Yeah, so I started off on the cinematographer side
Speaker 2: of things. He worked on Fahrenheit four fifty one. Then
Speaker 2: he ventures into directing with nineteen seventies Performance starring James
Speaker 2: Fox and McJagger, and then came nineteen seventy one's walk
Speaker 2: About and seventy threes. Don't Look Now.
Speaker 3: Don't Look Now is the other Nicholas Rogue directed film
Speaker 3: I've seen, which it's been a number of years now,
Speaker 3: but I remember that being a very dark and sad
Speaker 3: but very interesting and compelling horror film.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm familiar with it by reputations when had Donald
Speaker 2: Sutherland and Julie Christy. That sounds right, Okay, Yeah, I
Speaker 2: haven't seen it. The only other film that I've seen
Speaker 2: by him is The Witches from nineteen ninety, which you
Speaker 2: know is ultimately a children's film, but also also very
Speaker 2: interested in anyway. Following the Manufeld to Earth, he did Eureka.
Speaker 2: In eighty three, he did I'm not sure to what,
Speaker 2: he did some sort of music video collaboration work with
Speaker 2: Roger Waters. He did a segment in eighty seven's Aria
Speaker 2: the Witches in ninety Cold Heaven in ninety one, a
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety three TV adaptation of Heart of Darkness. And
Speaker 2: then there was a period featuring a couple of erotic
Speaker 2: or semi erotic film projects I'm not sure, an episode
Speaker 2: of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicle Show and a two
Speaker 2: thousand and seven horror film titled Puffball The Devil's Eyeball.
Speaker 2: There's also a nineteen ninety six Sampson and Delilah movie
Speaker 2: in the mix there that it looks like it has
Speaker 2: a solid cast.
Speaker 3: Oh Man, Nicholas Rogue movie about the Bible. That sounds
Speaker 3: up my alley.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right. The screenplay is by Paul Meyersberg born
Speaker 2: nineteen forty one. He was an apparently an uncredited writer
Speaker 2: on Roger Korman's The Tomb of i Gia from nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty four, followed by staff writing work on Conrad Rooks's
Speaker 2: adaptation of Hermann Hess' Sidharta in seventy two. Subsequent screen
Speaker 2: playwork includes seventy seven's The Disappearance Merry Christmas, Mister Lawrence,
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty three's Eureka, nineteen eighty eight's Nightfall, nineteen nineties,
Speaker 2: The Last Samurai Not the Tom Cruise one, and that Nightfall,
Speaker 2: by the way, that is an adaptation of Isaac Asimov's
Speaker 2: work Nightfall. He also directed That Oh Interesting. The screenplay
Speaker 2: is adapted from the novel The original novel by Walter Tavitz,
Speaker 2: who lived nineteen twenty eight through nineteen eighty four an
Speaker 2: American novelist and screenwriter. He wrote the novels The Hustler,
Speaker 2: The Man Who Fell to Earth, Mockingbird, The Steps of
Speaker 2: the Sun, The Queen's Gambit, and The Color of Money.
Speaker 2: Obviously The Hustle, Yeah Color.
Speaker 3: So did he write multiple pool related novels?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think one is the follow up to
Speaker 2: the other. But oh, I see yeah, But yeah, The Hustler,
Speaker 2: of The Queen's Gambit, and The Color of Money were all,
Speaker 2: of course made into films.
Speaker 3: I would not have guessed that in a million years. Wow.
Speaker 3: Same writer as The Color of money.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then we should also point out that The
Speaker 2: Man Who Fell to Earth has been adapted a few
Speaker 2: different times. This was the first adaptation, but then it
Speaker 2: was adapted in eighty seven as a TV movie with
Speaker 2: Beverly DiAngelo and Will Wheaton. And then there's a real
Speaker 2: recent TV series adaptation that came out in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 2: And it looks interesting as well and has a good cast.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's got Bill NII and Chi will tell a
Speaker 3: G four Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So Bill Nye apparently plays David Bowie's character from
Speaker 2: this film, but an older version of him, So I
Speaker 2: guess it's kind of like a sequel. But again, I
Speaker 2: haven't seen it, so I don't know all the details there.
Speaker 3: Just looked it up as E four is playing somebody
Speaker 3: named Faraday. That's not a character who was in this movie,
Speaker 3: so I don't know if that's an character from the
Speaker 3: book or something.
Speaker 2: Maybe he's a new alien, I'm not sure. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: just saw some stills from it. Okay, but now it's
Speaker 2: time to talk about David Bowie. Yes, David Bowie plays
Speaker 2: Thomas Jerome Newton. Bowie lived in nineteen forty seven through
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen. Yeah, a legend of music and film and
Speaker 2: just culture in general, an enigmatic figure who seemed to
Speaker 2: revel in alternate personas and phases and reinvention. Again, there's
Speaker 2: this kind of protean element to his celebrity image. His
Speaker 2: music career often flowed in and out of cinema in
Speaker 2: the form of short film music videos, full blown musicals,
Speaker 2: and more. He'd had a handful of bit roles before
Speaker 2: this movie, but the manufeld earth like propelled him like
Speaker 2: lead status this movie. By the way, if I'm looking
Speaker 2: at everything correctly occurs in his discography between nineteen seventy
Speaker 2: six is Stationed to Station. In nineteen seventy seven's Low
Speaker 2: Low features a photo of Bowie from this film as
Speaker 2: the album ark.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, that's interesting. I wouldn't have identified that because
Speaker 3: the cover of the background is very orange, which is
Speaker 3: not really one of the dominant colors in this film.
Speaker 3: But yeah, hair, oh, that's true. You're right, the orange
Speaker 3: and the sort of yellow in the front of the bangs.
Speaker 3: But yeah, he what he's wearing sort of like a
Speaker 3: coat without a dark coat with a high collar.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, side profile.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's a coat that he wears several times
Speaker 3: in this movie. We see him in that when he
Speaker 3: first arrives on Earth and he's like sort of climbing
Speaker 3: down a hillside in the American Southwest after his ship
Speaker 3: has crashed and he's wearing this big coat. But there
Speaker 3: are other times where he shows up, like he appears
Speaker 3: to rip torn at one point and he's just got
Speaker 3: the coat on and the hood on and he's like, hello,
Speaker 3: we're going to meet tomorrow and ripped horns like ah,
Speaker 3: and then they meet the next day.
Speaker 2: They do yeah, Yeah, it's an important scene to prepare
Speaker 2: you for that meeting. Well. After this movie, Bowie, he
Speaker 2: followed this up with David Hemming's nineteen seventy eight film
Speaker 2: Just a Jigglow, Alan Clark's Ball in eighty two, The
Speaker 2: Hunger in eighty three, which is a vampire movie, the
Speaker 2: Japanese war film Merry Christmas, Mister Lawrence in eighty three,
Speaker 2: John Landis Is Into the Night in eighty five, Absolute
Speaker 2: Beginners in eighty six, Jim Henson's Labyrinth in eighty six,
Speaker 2: as well The Last Temptation of Christ in eighty eight.
Speaker 2: He plays a pilot in that and from here from
Speaker 2: there on out, his acting roles, they seem to enter
Speaker 2: it like a different phase, a lot of smaller roles.
Speaker 2: He appears in Lynch's Twin Peaks fire Walk with Me
Speaker 2: in nineteen two. He played Andy Warhol in Basquiade in
Speaker 2: ninety six, Tesla and Christopher Nolan's The Prestige in two
Speaker 2: thousand and six, a very fun small role, you know,
Speaker 2: kind of a cameo. And he also played himself in
Speaker 2: various movies and TV shows, sometimes to comedic effect, like
Speaker 2: he's in Zoolander. I think as himself that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: Putting a musician in a movie doesn't always work. I
Speaker 3: think it's the kind of thing people assume would work
Speaker 3: because it's like, oh, yeah, you know, you're a rock star.
Speaker 3: That takes a certain kind of charisma, But it doesn't
Speaker 3: always translate into playing a role in a drama. But
Speaker 3: I think with Bowie it does. I mean, Bowie Bowie
Speaker 3: might have some kind of weird, some contours popping out
Speaker 3: of the role he's assigned within a script that are
Speaker 3: just pure Bowie, But at the same time he's he's
Speaker 3: clearly quite good as a screen actor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like we've been saying, it's just a tremendous performance.
Speaker 2: You can't take your eyes off of head. He has
Speaker 2: this like just his physicality is so strange and alluring.
Speaker 2: He has this great kind of sickly elfin energy that
Speaker 2: is even distinct and like, looking at these other Bowie roles,
Speaker 2: like the Goblin King and Labyrinth is essentially an elf
Speaker 2: you know, granted it's many years later, but totally different
Speaker 2: energy to that elfin character.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, No, the Goblin King is like he is
Speaker 3: in charge. He's in control. He is the dominant master
Speaker 3: of his kingdom. Bowie's character in this film is even
Speaker 3: when he's playing like a a character who is the
Speaker 3: head of a great industry and has all this money
Speaker 3: and is being driven around everywhere, he is a man
Speaker 3: who has constantly alienated, an off balance and afraid of
Speaker 3: what might happen, and not in control.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, we also have Ripped Torn in this
Speaker 2: film playing Nathan Brice Torn lived nineteen thirty one through
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen, American actor of stage, TV, and film, with
Speaker 2: credits going back to the mid fifties. He acted and
Speaker 2: eventually directed on Broadway as well, having studied at the
Speaker 2: Actors Studio in New York under Lee Strasberg. Early TV
Speaker 2: credits include such shows as Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Thriller.
Speaker 2: He went on to play Judas in nineteen sixty one's
Speaker 2: King of Kings. He betrays Jeffrey Hunter's Jesus. By the way,
Speaker 2: the story goes that he was originally cast in the
Speaker 2: Jack Nicholson role for Easy Rider, but got into what
Speaker 2: seems to be a very heated argument with Dennis Hopper,
Speaker 2: the details of which were later the subject of legal battles.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, you can read about it online. There's
Speaker 2: some disagreements about who started what fed, who may have
Speaker 2: pulled a knife on who, and the courts had to
Speaker 2: settle it.
Speaker 3: But I can't imagine the noises Rip Torn made in
Speaker 3: this argument, because I bet they were. A.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he has a kind of a bestial quality to him.
Speaker 2: I think that's one of the there's a yeah, there's
Speaker 2: rip Torn has a there's an energy there.
Speaker 3: He unleashes some fearsome growls and grunts throughout The Men
Speaker 3: Who Fell to Earth.
Speaker 2: Yeah. He played Henry Miller in nineteen seventies Tropic of Cancer.
Speaker 2: He appeared in Michael Crichton's seventy eight film Coma and
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty two, he played the child sacrificing villain
Speaker 2: Max and Don Cosarelli's The beast Master. Very fun performance
Speaker 2: that one. But that doesn't stop there. He played a
Speaker 2: ceo in ninety three's RoboCop three, he played Z and
Speaker 2: the Men in Black Franchise, and oh, he played General
Speaker 2: Electric Ceo Don Guys on Thirty Rock And Yeah. He
Speaker 2: was nominated for an Oscar for his role in Cross
Speaker 2: Creek in eighty three. And he also, I think had
Speaker 2: multiple Emmy nominations for his role as already the producer
Speaker 2: on The Larry Sanders Show.
Speaker 3: I guess this reveals I've never seen a lot of
Speaker 3: his work, but I mean, he's got that distinctive voice,
Speaker 3: and he he's one of those character actors who can
Speaker 3: just show up for a cameo role and the lines
Speaker 3: written for him don't have to be funny at all,
Speaker 3: just like the way his voice sounds and the way
Speaker 3: he looks makes the role comedic.
Speaker 2: I think this may be the first film I've watched,
Speaker 2: the first anything I've watched with Rip Torn in it
Speaker 2: where he's not an outright villain or there at least
Speaker 2: a prop up comedic effect.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree. This is I think the first time
Speaker 3: I've ever seen him in just a straight dramatic role.
Speaker 2: All Right. We also have Candy Clark playing the character
Speaker 2: Mary Lou, who we've alluded to already. Candy Clark was
Speaker 2: born in nineteen forty seven, probably best known for her
Speaker 2: role as Debbie Dunham in a nineteen seventy Three's American
Speaker 2: gri for which she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress,
Speaker 2: only her fourth film role. Subsequent credits include Oh, A
Speaker 2: wonderful list of movies, seventy eight is the Big Sleep,
Speaker 2: A film called More American Graffiti in seventy nine, which
Speaker 2: I didn't realize was a thing. She's in Larry Cohen's
Speaker 2: ce the Wings Serpent, fabulously fung giant monster film set
Speaker 2: in New York from nineteen eighty two. She's in the
Speaker 2: Chopper movie Blue Thunder. She's in Amityville three D from
Speaker 2: eighty three. She's in Stephen King's Cat's Eye from eighty five.
Speaker 2: She's in the nineteen eighty eight Blobb remake. She is
Speaker 2: in Cool as Ice, the Vanilla Ice movie from nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety one.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's a fan favorite. That's the movie where we
Speaker 3: discovered that Vanilla Ice can jump a motorcycle over a
Speaker 3: fence without a ramp. I guess he just kind of
Speaker 3: lifts it. He's faster than a horse. And that's there's
Speaker 3: like the whole racing the horse sequence there, right, Well,
Speaker 3: I believe that motorcycle can go faster than a horse.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, but I don't know why. It seems to
Speaker 2: you throw Vanilla Eyes into the equation. It just raised
Speaker 2: his questions. I think.
Speaker 3: Also, that's a movie about him falling in love with
Speaker 3: and trying to date a girl whose father who's disapproving.
Speaker 3: Father is the gun guy from Tremors.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, yes, yeah, it's been I saw a roof
Speaker 2: tracks version of this. I've never watched it straight up anyway.
Speaker 2: She plays Buffy's mom and Buffy the Vampire Slayer from
Speaker 2: ninety two. She's in Zodiac from two thousand and seven,
Speaker 2: and she did a number of TV episodes over the
Speaker 2: years as well, including episodes of fairy Tale Theater and
Speaker 2: Twin Peaks.
Speaker 3: I thought Candy Clark was fantastic in this movie. She
Speaker 3: is the human soul of the film, whereas Bowie is
Speaker 3: giving this kind of random, uncontrolled, ambiguous performance where you
Speaker 3: don't always understand where his emotional displays are coming from,
Speaker 3: or why they're happening this way this time, or or
Speaker 3: what the source of his aloofness is, what is he
Speaker 3: really feeling. She is there to be the anchor of pure, understandable,
Speaker 3: earth based human emotion, and she's quite powerful in her role.
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, it's a role that's often has this
Speaker 2: kind of like raw, innocent, unfiltered feeling about it.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: Again, she's definitely the human heart of the picture, all right.
Speaker 2: We also have a character named Oliver Farnsworth. He's a
Speaker 2: patent lawyer that becomes important to the plot and eventually
Speaker 2: ends up running David Bowie's Earthly Empire, played by Buck Henry,
Speaker 2: who lived nineteen thirty through twenty twenty American actor, screenwriter,
Speaker 2: and director who worked on a lot of interesting projects
Speaker 2: over the years. His writing credits include sixty seven's The Graduate,
Speaker 2: nineteen seventies Catch twenty two, seventy three's The Day of
Speaker 2: the Dolphin, and nineteen ninety five's To Die For. His
Speaker 2: directing credits include seventy eight's Heaven Can Wait I Believe.
Speaker 2: He co directed with Warren Beatty on that one. His
Speaker 2: acting credits include bit parts in various things he wrote,
Speaker 2: but I'll single out here that he did one Tales
Speaker 2: from the Crypt episode and was also a familiar face
Speaker 2: on thirty Rock playing Liz Lemon's dad, Dick Lemon.
Speaker 3: Oh I didn't know that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, old Dick Lemon. Yeah, it's a fun, fun role.
Speaker 2: He also is you know, kind of linked to especially
Speaker 2: early Saturday Night Live because he was a he hosted
Speaker 2: like ten different times.
Speaker 3: Oh, okay, I think he is also quite good in
Speaker 3: this movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he is often wearing some really distracting glasses, like
Speaker 2: reading glasses. I guess that it just like you know,
Speaker 2: total coke, bottle very trailer park boys, I guess would
Speaker 2: be the comparison to compare it to modern media.
Speaker 3: Yes, there is a tragic part where some goons come
Speaker 3: to his apartment to do him harm and they take
Speaker 3: his glasses off and he says, those are my eyes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a This is a good performance as well,
Speaker 2: in large part because Nicholas Rogue seems to have decided
Speaker 2: at some point it's like it doesn't matter how small
Speaker 2: a character you are in this film, we can still
Speaker 2: get in there and show you at your most tender.
Speaker 2: We can show like where your heart is, even if
Speaker 2: it's really not necessary arguably for the overall plot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is a character whose role in the in
Speaker 3: the plot progression is just as like a lawyer and
Speaker 3: then a corporate functionary. But we get these moments of
Speaker 3: like him at his in his home life, with his
Speaker 3: with his partner Trevor, and they seem to have this wonderful,
Speaker 3: supportive relationship, and like there's no reason in most films
Speaker 3: that you would see this character's home life and their relationships.
Speaker 3: You just see him like executing orders that are to
Speaker 3: be done for the project.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, so their relationship is sweet, and I'm ultimately
Speaker 2: glad it was included, you know, even though it's exactly
Speaker 2: the sort of thing you can imagine someone arguing for
Speaker 2: a cut. They're like, why do we need to know this?
Speaker 2: And you know what?
Speaker 3: That continue that trend of like showing surprising glimpses of
Speaker 3: home and family life and relationships with characters who had
Speaker 3: other in other stories just be purely functional sort of
Speaker 3: game pieces. That's true also of like even the sort
Speaker 3: of the I don't know if you'd call them villains,
Speaker 3: like the antagonists of Bowie's character in the movie, including
Speaker 3: like rival corporate agents and people who work for the
Speaker 3: government who were ultimately trying to enact a conspiracy against
Speaker 3: David Bowie.
Speaker 2: That's right, and that includes the character Peters played by
Speaker 2: Bernie Casey, who lived nineteen thirty nine through twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2: He was an American football player turned actor. As I've
Speaker 2: had to do before, I'll leave it to you, gentle listeners.
Speaker 2: If anyone out there knows football, you can write in
Speaker 2: and tell us what Bernie Casey's role in football was
Speaker 2: and like how big a deal he was. But at
Speaker 2: any rate, he was a football player, he became an actor,
Speaker 2: and his credits have a you know, there's a fair
Speaker 2: amount of diversity in the sort of roles he played,
Speaker 2: Like for instance, he's in nineteen seventy two's Gargoyles, a
Speaker 2: desert gargoyle film, and yes, he plays a gargoyle, like
Speaker 2: a full body gargoyle costume wearing gargoyle in this.
Speaker 3: We've talked about checking this out to see whether it'd
Speaker 3: be good for the show or not, because I think
Speaker 3: wasn't it directed by Stan Winston or something or maybe
Speaker 3: effects by Stan Winston. It was like a t a
Speaker 3: made for TV movie about gargoyles that live underground in
Speaker 3: New Mexico.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's another one that I think I weirdly saw,
Speaker 2: like on A and E on a Sunday afternoon. There's
Speaker 2: like there's certain films. They're almost all seventies films, and
Speaker 2: for some reason, like A and E was really into
Speaker 2: playing them on Sunday afternoons. I don't know what it was. Anyway.
Speaker 2: He was in seventy three's Cleopatra Jones. He was in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy six's Doctor Black, Mister Hyde, nineteen seventy seven's Ants,
Speaker 2: Exclamation Point Roots the Next Generations. In seventy nine. He
Speaker 2: was also in Sharky's Machine, an Atlanta movie that came
Speaker 2: out in nineteen eighty one.
Speaker 3: I haven't seen that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I haven't either, but it's I'm always kind of
Speaker 2: interested in older Atlanta movies, you know, as I've explained before,
Speaker 2: like The Visitor. Yeah, yeah, yeah, The Visitor especially. He
Speaker 2: was in Never Say Never Again from eighty three. This
Speaker 2: is the second adaptation of the James Bond Thunderball novel.
Speaker 3: Did he play Felix Lighter in that?
Speaker 2: I'm not sure what This was the one where Sean
Speaker 2: Connery came out of retirement, right, and there was like
Speaker 2: some sort of rights issue that allowed them to do it.
Speaker 3: That sounds right. So it was not sanctioned by the
Speaker 3: official I don't know, the James Bond media machine. It
Speaker 3: was not one of the official franchise films. It's just like,
Speaker 3: we got Sean Connery for some reason. It's legal for
Speaker 3: us to make Thunderball, so we're just gonna do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I've maybe seen it once. Let's see
Speaker 2: what else? Was Bernie Casey in eighty eight, so I'm
Speaker 2: gonna get you sucka in eighty nine, he was in
Speaker 2: Bill and Ted. He was an under siege in ninety two,
Speaker 2: and oh, he's in John Carpenter's in the Mouth of
Speaker 2: Madness from ninety four. I forgot about this. I believe
Speaker 2: he plays one of Sam Neil's characters, insurance Buddies.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, yeah, was he his boss or something?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like it's not a not a huge role, but
Speaker 2: there there. I think he's in that sequence where they're
Speaker 2: having lunch at a cafe and a sutter cane fan
Speaker 2: smashes the window in Oh that's right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like a guy runs up into like smashes the
Speaker 3: window with an axe or something.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm, yeah, yeah, so Bernie Casey also has some
Speaker 2: interesting TV credits star Trek d Space nine and Babbylon
Speaker 2: five sequest twenty thirty two, and also a voice roll
Speaker 2: on Batman Beyond And Yeah, like you're saying, this is
Speaker 2: another role that doesn't call for any fleshing out. Really,
Speaker 2: this is just not even a secondary character in the film,
Speaker 2: but Rogue goes the extra mile to give his insight
Speaker 2: into his romantic and family life.
Speaker 3: Wait did you mention also has him skinny dipping.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah. Of all the actors I've mentioned here, Buck
Speaker 2: Henry is the only one that doesn't have a nude scene. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we get this scene between and Peter's wife where they're
Speaker 2: skinny dipping, and it's kind of this dream like, Yeah,
Speaker 2: a dreamlike nude bathing scene that I guess it's probably
Speaker 2: less talked about in terms of the other nude scenes
Speaker 2: in this film, but I thought it was. It was
Speaker 2: very again, very beautiful, very dream like. Again, a sequence
Speaker 2: that shows a lot of skin, but it isn't about
Speaker 2: their skin like, it's about it's about their hearts. I
Speaker 2: know that sounds cheesy to say, it out loud, but like,
Speaker 2: like that's what it is. It's like, this isn't about
Speaker 2: their bodies. It's about the relationship between these two characters.
Speaker 2: And we can argue to what extent we really needed
Speaker 2: this insight into their their the way they feel, because
Speaker 2: their characters are not as central to the plot as
Speaker 2: other characters.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Again, if this were another movie, what Peters does
Speaker 3: is primarily be involved in a conspiracy to imprison David
Speaker 3: Bowie in a hotel room.
Speaker 2: Yeah. One last actor I'm going to mention here, and
Speaker 2: this is Claudia Jennings, who plays Peter's wife. She lived
Speaker 2: nineteen forty nine through nineteen seventy nine. Not a huge role,
Speaker 2: but we do get some sense of her character. We
Speaker 2: get a sense of her as a mother even she
Speaker 2: was Claudey. Jings was a was nineteen seventy Playboy Playmate
Speaker 2: of the Year and made quite a splash in B
Speaker 2: movies during her short career. So her credits include seventy
Speaker 2: twos The Unholy Rollers. I think that's a roller derby
Speaker 2: kind of a movie. A movie also from seventy two
Speaker 2: called Group Marriage, So future shock alert on that one.
Speaker 3: Uh huh.
Speaker 2: Seventy three's Gator Bait, which is a swamp movie, like
Speaker 2: some sort of an action swamp movie. I don't think
Speaker 2: i've seen it, but I'm familiar with the title.
Speaker 3: Seventy eight exploitation film, sowe it is.
Speaker 2: It's a swamp'sploitation film, and I think they made a
Speaker 2: sequel that she's not in with something like Gator Bait
Speaker 2: to Cajun Justice. That's it. She's in seventy eight to
Speaker 2: Death Sport, and she's in the nineteen seventy nine David
Speaker 2: Cronenberg car racing movie Fast Company that also has John
Speaker 2: Saxon and George Buzza.
Speaker 3: Never seen it.
Speaker 2: All right. Getting to the music on this picture, it's
Speaker 2: interesting because there's a whole like saga here. There's a
Speaker 2: whole story, and there are also differing details about how
Speaker 2: it all came together. But basically David Bowie was originally
Speaker 2: going to tackle the score and soundtrack for this film
Speaker 2: as well, but apparently a variety of issues prevented this
Speaker 2: from happening. So there was like there were time issues,
Speaker 2: there were like royalty issues for some of the tracks
Speaker 2: that he was eyeballing. There were creative hurdles, like you know,
Speaker 2: we're talking about the different personas and phases of David Bowie,
Speaker 2: and it sounds like like maybe he was kind of
Speaker 2: between phases to a certain extent at that time. So
Speaker 2: instead we have a very fractured soundtrack, which I think
Speaker 2: ultimately fits the film and was intended to capture a
Speaker 2: diverse sense of American music. But we have two chief
Speaker 2: individuals contributing tracks here. The first is John Phillips, who
Speaker 2: lived nineteen thirty five through two thousand and one, and
Speaker 2: so yes, this is John Phillips of The Mamas and
Speaker 2: the Papas. He wrote most of the songs that we
Speaker 2: associate with The Mamas and the Papas, as well as
Speaker 2: what San Francisco be Sure to Wear Flowers in your Hair,
Speaker 2: though I'm not sure was that a Mama's in the
Speaker 2: Papa's song without somebody else performing it?
Speaker 3: I don't know anyway.
Speaker 2: He was also one of the writers on the nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty eight Beach Boys song Kokomo for the Tom Cruise
Speaker 2: film Cocktail, and this was his first picture as a
Speaker 2: composer and probably the best known of the handful of
Speaker 2: films that he composed for. Now, I assumed that Phillips
Speaker 2: was ultimately going to be responsible for only the folkier
Speaker 2: tracks and the rockier tracks on here, and certainly he
Speaker 2: does give us the track Bluegrass Breakdown, which you can
Speaker 2: listen to on You know that you can stream this
Speaker 2: soundtrack wherever you can get your music. But he also
Speaker 2: did an excellent electronic track on this titled Space Capsule,
Speaker 2: so that that track I really liked as well. But
Speaker 2: then we have other tracks contributed by Stomu Yamashta born
Speaker 2: nineteen forty seven. We talked about him previly on Weird
Speaker 2: House Cinema as he did the montage music for Phase four,
Speaker 2: the Weird Saal bass Ant movie.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, I'm trying to remember what the music for
Speaker 3: that movie was like, I don't quite I remember the
Speaker 3: visuals far more.
Speaker 2: But Yamashta it is a Japanese percussionist, keyboardist, and composer
Speaker 2: known for helping defuse traditional Japanese percussive music with Western
Speaker 2: prog rock in the sixties and seventies. He was a
Speaker 2: member of the super group Go, alongside such names as
Speaker 2: Steinve Wynwood, best known for the track Higher Love, and
Speaker 2: German electronic music pioneer Klaus Schultz. Yamashta also recorded also
Speaker 2: scored I'm Sorry nineteen eighty two's Tempest, starring John Cassavetti's
Speaker 2: Susan Sarand and Molly ring Wald and rawl Julia. So
Speaker 2: his musical contributions on this film are are also really
Speaker 2: interesting and also kind of varied. Two tracks in particular
Speaker 2: is one called Poker Dice, and there's another one called
Speaker 2: One Way.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm just thinking about how different this movie
Speaker 3: would have been if it had had a David Bowie soundtrack.
Speaker 3: That seems like that really would have changed the effect
Speaker 3: of it. And I guess we don't get to know
Speaker 3: exactly what that's like, but I expect that would be
Speaker 3: more than a superficial change in the experience. It would
Speaker 3: be significant.
Speaker 2: I found that in just thinking about this movie, just
Speaker 2: knowing that I was even going to watch it, having
Speaker 2: not watched it yet, I still had myself constantly earwormed
Speaker 2: with Space Oddity and then also the Flight of the
Speaker 2: Concords parody song Bowie's in Space without even listening to these, like,
Speaker 2: you can't help but think about Bowie's music when you're
Speaker 2: thinking about Bowie and even in his acting work.
Speaker 3: All right, we ready to talk about the plot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this man's not going to fall to Earth on
Speaker 2: his own. We got to help him.
Speaker 3: So this is not one of those movies where it
Speaker 3: would make sense to discuss things seen by scene. Instead,
Speaker 3: I think what I'm going to do here is give
Speaker 3: a short synopsis of the whole film, and then we
Speaker 3: can come back and focus in more depth on things
Speaker 3: that stood out to us. So basically, the plot goes
Speaker 3: like this. A spacecraft crashes down in a lake somewhere
Speaker 3: in the American Southwest. I think it's in New Mexico,
Speaker 3: and we see a hooded figure emerge and make his
Speaker 3: way down a hill and through these ruins of an
Speaker 3: old mining town and into a currently populated town. And
Speaker 3: this is David Bowie, and he looks human. In fact,
Speaker 3: he even speaks English, and he speaks with a British accent.
Speaker 3: So he is an alien disguising himself as a human.
Speaker 3: He's trying to blend in. He doesn't want to be
Speaker 3: found out, and he goes around telling people his name
Speaker 3: is Thomas Jerome Newton and explains some of his weirdness
Speaker 3: by claiming that he is British.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like it's rural New Mexico, so everyone's just like,
Speaker 2: all right, that sounds about right.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yes, the British are known to levitate. No,
Speaker 3: he doesn't levitate. So he immediately starts trying to get money,
Speaker 3: which is interesting. I'm like, oh, why is he trying
Speaker 3: to get money? Like, he tries to sell some jewelry
Speaker 3: at a shop, but he can't get what he wants
Speaker 3: for it, so he ends up meeting with a lawyer
Speaker 3: named Oliver Farnsworth. Farnsworth is a patent attorney and Newton
Speaker 3: brings with him schematics for a number of technologies on
Speaker 3: which he wants to take out patents and these are
Speaker 3: all revolutionary alien technologies, things that we can't do on
Speaker 3: Earth at all yet. So Newton quickly becomes a multi
Speaker 3: millionaire and he becomes the head of a corporation called
Speaker 3: the World Enterprises Corporation and hires Farnsworth to run the
Speaker 3: company for him. So now he's rolling in money. And
Speaker 3: Newton rides around in a limousine, remaining polite but aloof
Speaker 3: like he is nice to people but does not form
Speaker 3: any intimate connections and is always awkward and reserved. But
Speaker 3: that changes while he is on a visit to a
Speaker 3: hotel hell somewhere in the Southwest, he meets a woman
Speaker 3: named Mary Lou played by Candy Clark. She is initially
Speaker 3: a worker at the hotel where he's staying, and he
Speaker 3: has like an episode in an elevator that the elevator
Speaker 3: is going up and he is like, I don't know,
Speaker 3: rendered woozy by the g forces of the elevator or something,
Speaker 3: and collapses on the floor and she carries him. She
Speaker 3: picks him up and carries him to his room and
Speaker 3: then takes care of him once he's there, and they
Speaker 3: form what at first seems to be a fast friendship,
Speaker 3: Like they hang out talking all night. I think they
Speaker 3: play cards or something. She takes him to church and
Speaker 3: she introduces him to her favorite drink. Gin Bee Feeder
Speaker 3: is a brand with a serious presence in this film.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I guess this is kind of a
Speaker 2: shame because prior to this, he's he's always turning down
Speaker 2: alcohol and insisting on water. He's like, as we learn,
Speaker 2: he's from a desert planet where there's little to no water,
Speaker 2: and so the mere fact that anywhere you go they
Speaker 2: offer you a water, He's like, yes, please, I'll take six.
Speaker 2: And then she's like, you know, you could just be
Speaker 2: drinking gin and he's like, oh, well this is great,
Speaker 2: I'll do this now.
Speaker 3: But Mary Lou does not know that she is causing
Speaker 3: severe harm to him by getting him to switch from
Speaker 3: water to gin. But yeah, that is a good point
Speaker 3: that early in the film, like he's always asking for
Speaker 3: like when he goes to meet with the lawyer. At
Speaker 3: first he goes to Farnsworth's house and they're like, would
Speaker 3: you like a scotch? And he's like, I'll have a
Speaker 3: glass of water if you have it, and they actually
Speaker 3: kind of amused by this. But yeah, he's always just
Speaker 3: looking for water everywhere he goes. I think there's even
Speaker 3: a scene where he dips a cup early on in
Speaker 3: just a stream of what looks like cloudy, dirty water,
Speaker 3: just like runoff running through the you know, in a
Speaker 3: ravine and the desert, and drinks it and is really
Speaker 3: enjoying it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's worth noting here that this is a film that,
Speaker 2: maybe almost stealthily, if you don't know to expect it,
Speaker 2: you might be surprised that it is a film that
Speaker 2: does seem to be in a large part about alcoholism. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and I understand that they the author of the novel.
Speaker 2: Part of this was semi autobiographical, so you do see
Speaker 2: him like struggling through alcohol addiction through much of the
Speaker 2: film and having to interact in a world that also
Speaker 2: seems to be heavily dependent on alcohol and constantly enabling
Speaker 2: of his alcohol consumption.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that. Yeah, that's right, that those are
Speaker 3: constant themes, and in many ways you could almost say
Speaker 3: that it's a story about a man who begins on
Speaker 3: a mission of supreme importance and is derailed from that
Speaker 3: mission by alcohol.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and derailed makes sense too, because there is a trait.
Speaker 3: Oh, we'll get to that.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: So eventually Mary Lou and Newton their their friendship blossoms
Speaker 3: and they fall in love. Though at one point she
Speaker 3: asks if he is married, and he sort of matter
Speaker 3: of factly says yes, But they continue with their love
Speaker 3: affair nonetheless, and Newton has a house built for them
Speaker 3: on a lake in New Mexico and they start living together. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: we've also been been getting to know Rip Torn as
Speaker 3: doctor Nathan bryce A. He's portrayed as a university chemistry
Speaker 3: professor who has a series of inappropriate affairs with college students,
Speaker 3: and he is hassled by the man in university administration,
Speaker 3: Like there are scenes of his boss getting on his
Speaker 3: back about things, including his affairs. So he leaves academia
Speaker 3: and takes a position with Newton's company, and he's sort
Speaker 3: of recruited to design some kind of spacecraft. I seem
Speaker 3: to recall a scene where he's arguing with his boss
Speaker 3: at the university about how he's like, ah, they want
Speaker 3: computers to do everything these days. Computers leave out the errors.
Speaker 3: That's where creativity comes from.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, he does rail against computers there for a bit,
Speaker 2: and he's like, I think I'm gonna go work with
Speaker 2: this company that's actually hiring human beings, and that, of
Speaker 2: course is David Billie's company. Right.
Speaker 3: So as time goes on, Newton in several ways would
Speaker 3: say becomes more human, like his relationship with Mary Lou deepens,
Speaker 3: but he also becomes deranged by addiction to alcohol and television.
Speaker 3: Why would he need a TV when he's got t Rex. Well,
Speaker 3: I don't know, but maybe in the world of this movie,
Speaker 3: t Rex does not exist because David Bowie needs not one,
Speaker 3: but seven TVs to watch simultaneously, and later about twenty
Speaker 3: TVs to watch all at the same time, he is
Speaker 3: obsessed with television.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, Like sometimes there's just a random TV. Like
Speaker 2: there's one scene where he's watching TV and like a
Speaker 2: shack and it's just sort of like haphazardly stacked on
Speaker 2: some kindling.
Speaker 3: Now, eventually both Nathan, Bryce and Mary Lou figure out
Speaker 3: that Newton is an alien. Nathan figures it out by
Speaker 3: secretly taking X ray photographs of him while they're talking
Speaker 3: about work, and then when he goes to confront Newton
Speaker 3: about this, Newton admits it. And actually in this scene,
Speaker 3: that's the scene you were talking about, which I think
Speaker 3: I want to get into more detail about in just
Speaker 3: a bit. But basically, in the scene, Newton explains his mission,
Speaker 3: this is why he's on Earth, and he says, quote
Speaker 3: where I come from, there's a terrible drought. We saw
Speaker 3: pictures of your planet on television. We saw the water.
Speaker 3: In fact, our word for your planet means planet of water.
Speaker 3: So Newton's home planet it's all dried up, it's a desert,
Speaker 3: and he is here for Earth's water. I think, not
Speaker 3: to steal it all and kill us, but to somehow
Speaker 3: do something to get a significant amount of water back
Speaker 3: to his home planet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like, you get the sense that he's not greedy.
Speaker 2: He just knows that there's so much water here that
Speaker 2: he can easily well not easily, but the big challenge
Speaker 2: is how to bring it back. But clearly, like we
Speaker 2: could stand to lose some of it and it would
Speaker 2: make an enormous difference for his people.
Speaker 3: Newton also reveals what he is to marry Lou in
Speaker 3: a different set of circumstances. He reveals himself to Mary Lou,
Speaker 3: I think as a kind of atonement after they have
Speaker 3: a fight and he is mean to her, and this
Speaker 3: leads to a bizarre reptile pupil alien sex scene.
Speaker 2: Yeah, following a rather weird sequence where he begins to
Speaker 2: take off all of his like fake human parts, including
Speaker 2: using tweezers to remove his contact lenses that hide his
Speaker 2: reptile highs. This movie seems convinced that the way to
Speaker 2: take contacts out is with metal tweezers, which I found
Speaker 2: particularly horrifying to think about, because you know, I've been
Speaker 2: wearing contact lenses for like thirty years at this point,
Speaker 2: and I've never used tweezers to take them out. Thank God.
Speaker 3: Now, eventually Nathan, Bryce and Newton complete the spacecraft that
Speaker 3: they've been working on. But just when Newton is getting
Speaker 3: ready to depart Earth, a conspiracy against him is unleashed.
Speaker 3: So there's like a shadowy government organization I don't know
Speaker 3: if it's the CIA or what. And also a consortium
Speaker 3: of rival corporation have like joined forces to do something
Speaker 3: about Newton. I honestly don't recall exactly what triggers this,
Speaker 3: do you.
Speaker 2: No, there's kind of there's this whole sequence where he's,
Speaker 2: you know, Bowie seems to be about ready to board
Speaker 2: this spaceship and we're like, all right, let's do this,
Speaker 2: let's take off, and then it doesn't happen, and everything
Speaker 2: feels fractured at that point, and so you kind of
Speaker 2: have to piece together what is happening and what happened.
Speaker 3: Right, So, they the bad guys kidnap Newton and they
Speaker 3: sort of old boy in prison him. They lock him
Speaker 3: in a hotel room, and then scientists come and do
Speaker 3: experiments on him and try to study his body, and
Speaker 3: they treat him cruelly, Like there's a scene where they're
Speaker 3: they're trying to look at his eyes and he's like, no,
Speaker 3: don't do X rays on my eyes, and they do,
Speaker 3: and it fuses his contact lenses to his eyes so
Speaker 3: he can't take them out. So now he can't reveal
Speaker 3: his real reptile eyes. He's like stuck with human looking eyes.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, they kind of treat him like child. They're
Speaker 2: not even like really treating him like an alien prisoner.
Speaker 2: It's more like he's a child who's been grounded. But
Speaker 2: they keep giving him alcohol to make him compliant with
Speaker 2: these various tests, and presumably they never really learned much
Speaker 2: of anything from him, right.
Speaker 3: And there's a scene where like when they finally get
Speaker 3: the X rays, they're all like grinning with these evil
Speaker 3: faces while you know, while he's clearly there suffering. But yeah,
Speaker 3: they just keep shoving beefeed or in his mouth to
Speaker 3: keep him compliant. They also unfortunately murder Oliver Farnsworth and
Speaker 3: his lover Trevor by throwing them out of skyscraper windows.
Speaker 3: And also for some reason, they throw out the barbell
Speaker 3: that Trevor was bench pressing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's weird because that out the window. I don't
Speaker 2: know it just I guess it made for a nice sequence.
Speaker 2: It's it's so weird looking back on this now, because
Speaker 2: again the film takes the time to develop Farnsworth and
Speaker 2: his partners as people that you care about to some degree,
Speaker 2: but then they are dispensed with kind of comedically, and
Speaker 2: so you don't feel as bad for them as you might.
Speaker 2: Like you might think a scene like this would be
Speaker 2: would be played more for tragedy's sake, and it's it's not.
Speaker 3: This is the scene where like Buck Henry, I mean,
Speaker 3: he's good in the scene. He's quite funny, where like
Speaker 3: they throw him against the window and he's like, oh,
Speaker 3: sorry about that, like apologizing that he didn't break through
Speaker 3: the window as he was supposed to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's a great, great Buck Henry scene for sure.
Speaker 3: But anyway, so Newton is imprisoned for many years and
Speaker 3: finally Mary Lou finds him. She comes to visit him,
Speaker 3: and they briefly rekindled their love affair in a bizarre
Speaker 3: series of scenes, but eventually she starts asking him about
Speaker 3: his wife and family back home, back on his planet,
Speaker 3: and they decide they do not love each other anymore,
Speaker 3: and they go their separate ways, and Newton escapes his prison,
Speaker 3: but now he has no hope of ever getting back,
Speaker 3: ever getting the water back to his home planet, or
Speaker 3: ever seeing his family again, so he takes a sort
Speaker 3: of a sharp right turn. He becomes a musician and
Speaker 3: a recording artist of some kind. We never actually see
Speaker 3: him playing music. Instead, we just see rip Torn go
Speaker 3: to a record store and listen to one of Newton's albums.
Speaker 3: And then, in the final scene in the film, Rip
Speaker 3: Torn finds Newton drinking on the patio of a restaurant
Speaker 3: and asks him about his music, and Newton says it's
Speaker 3: his only chance of ever speaking to his family again
Speaker 3: back on his planet. He's hoping they will hear his
Speaker 3: music on their home planet over the radio beamed through space.
Speaker 3: And then like the waiter cuts him off. He says,
Speaker 3: you can't, you know, I think you've had enough to drink,
Speaker 3: and then he bows his head, and then the credits
Speaker 3: roll over the downturned brim of his hat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the ending alone, there's not a lot of wonder
Speaker 2: to it, you know, it doesn't end on a note
Speaker 2: of wonder. And I'm not saying it doesn't work. And
Speaker 2: I guess it's kind of a it take on the weary,
Speaker 2: ageless immortal trope because at this point in the film,
Speaker 2: everyone else has aged significantly, but Newton has not. Aged,
Speaker 2: he still looks exactly the same. And you know, I
Speaker 2: guess this is one more rumination on alcoholism and loneliness
Speaker 2: and so forth. But it doesn't feel particularly cosmic, So
Speaker 2: I could see where people would have differing impressions on
Speaker 2: the actual ending to the film.
Speaker 3: So one of the things I wanted to think about
Speaker 3: in the movie is the recurring visions of Newton's home planet.
Speaker 3: First of all, I would say, I don't know if
Speaker 3: it actually was, but it looks like it was shot
Speaker 3: at White Sand's National Park in New Mexico. It's got
Speaker 3: these kind of like white dunes. It's kind of a
Speaker 3: pale aracus, some sort of desert environment, and we see
Speaker 3: visions of a family with rubber skin and reptile eyes,
Speaker 3: and they are wearing still suits. Basically, they're wearing some
Speaker 3: kind of suit that looks like it's recycling water in
Speaker 3: these tubes around their skin.
Speaker 2: Yeah, these are one wonderful makeup, wonderful weird costumes. They
Speaker 2: also kind of walk around oddly. They look like they
Speaker 2: have emerged from some sort of a fringe animated sci
Speaker 2: fi picture that it's a great look.
Speaker 3: Sometimes we see them languishing and apparently dying in the desert.
Speaker 3: I think this seems to be Newton's like fear of
Speaker 3: what is happening to them in his absence without him
Speaker 3: completing his mission. Also, a lot of the visions of
Speaker 3: his home planet involve what should we call it, the
Speaker 3: furry orange tram. There's like a train car that runs
Speaker 3: on a track through this desert. It's covered in orange
Speaker 3: shag carpet or fur of some sort, and it's sort
Speaker 3: of pyramid shaped and it has this I don't know,
Speaker 3: it has like a tarp covering to block the sun,
Speaker 3: I think, but it's a furry train.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's amazing looking. It looks again, very seventies euro
Speaker 2: sci fi looked at this thing. It raises so many
Speaker 2: questions about the technology of these alien creatures, in the
Speaker 2: same way that you have so many questions about their biology.
Speaker 2: But I like that you have more questions than answers
Speaker 2: regarding any of this, because it is supposed to feel
Speaker 2: completely alien to us.
Speaker 3: Another thing I was thinking about with the flashbacks to
Speaker 3: his home planet, one of his Earth based sex scenes
Speaker 3: with Mary Low is intercut with what seems to be
Speaker 3: a memory of sex on his home planet, which involves, like,
Speaker 3: I don't know, rolling around in Ian Holmes's Blood from
Speaker 3: Alien there's just like this frothy white milk everywhere is
Speaker 3: really gross. But I guess if you're from his planet,
Speaker 3: it's quite romantic.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I didn't know what to make out of that
Speaker 2: other than it was weird.
Speaker 3: Another thing that I thought was interesting about the film,
Speaker 3: and did involve a lot of filmmaking technique, was Newton's
Speaker 3: relationship with and eventually obsession with TV, starting with him
Speaker 3: just wanting to watch television and then wanting to watch
Speaker 3: multiple televisions at once, and he would and like you,
Speaker 3: it would cut between the programming on the different televisions
Speaker 3: showing all these sort of aspects of humanity. And there's
Speaker 3: one part where he has a sort of alcoholic TV
Speaker 3: freak out mom where he's like drinking and he's watching
Speaker 3: twenty TVs at once and they start overwhelming him clearly
Speaker 3: and he starts screaming, get out of my mind. But
Speaker 3: I wonder where this comes from.
Speaker 2: I feel like there's this It's interesting to look back
Speaker 2: on pictures like this. There are various pictures I can
Speaker 2: think of off the top of my head that do
Speaker 2: get into this idea. You know, sometimes for comedic effects
Speaker 2: sometimes for fantastic effect about just how overwhelming it suddenly
Speaker 2: felt like to have access to especially cable television or
Speaker 2: even satellite television. You know that very well may line
Speaker 2: up with this idea of overchoice that we've been discussing
Speaker 2: in our Future Shock episodes. You know, this idea that's like,
Speaker 2: suddenly you can watch television all the time, and you
Speaker 2: have access to tens, dozens, maybe hundreds of channels. You
Speaker 2: can basically start watching television and not stop. And it can,
Speaker 2: I guess, feel kind of alien for us to think
Speaker 2: about this, because you know, certainly we can still watch
Speaker 2: a lot of television, as we've discussed, but I feel
Speaker 2: like our relationship with television is a little different now
Speaker 2: because we have these other major super time suck distractions
Speaker 2: via the Internet that are also vying for our attention.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there was actually one thing about TV in this movie.
Speaker 3: It was a scene that I thought was really fascinating
Speaker 3: that I want to get into in more depth here.
Speaker 3: So it's the scene where rip Torn confronts Bowie about
Speaker 3: being an alien. So to at the scene, Newton is
Speaker 3: like hiding alone in a dilapidated shack in the desert,
Speaker 3: watching TV. He's like watching a Western, I think drinking.
Speaker 3: And then Bryce arrives and Bryce confronts him and Newton
Speaker 3: admits that he is an alien, and this is the
Speaker 3: scene where he explains his mission. You know, on his
Speaker 3: home planet there's a terrible drought, he says. He says
Speaker 3: that he saw pictures of our planet on TV, on
Speaker 3: the TV that reached his planet and saw the water
Speaker 3: on the surface, so he is here to get the water.
Speaker 3: So he knows Earth from television, which this in one
Speaker 3: sense maybe explains part of Newton's obsession with watching TV,
Speaker 3: or maybe it's just the raw appeal of TV to
Speaker 3: any sentient being that can see it. But anyway, so
Speaker 3: he explains his mission and then Bryce says to him,
Speaker 3: are you the first? And Newton says there have always
Speaker 3: been visitors. In fact, he says, even on his planet,
Speaker 3: they found evidence of visitors who had been there. And
Speaker 3: then he says to Bryce, haven't you seen them here
Speaker 3: on Earth? Haven't you come across them? And then Bryce
Speaker 3: says no, he doesn't think he's seen them, and then
Speaker 3: Bowie says, I've seen them. And first of all, like
Speaker 3: that was a cool moment. I was like, oh, oh,
Speaker 3: there have been other aliens here. But then it develops
Speaker 3: further and goes in a totally different direction. It seems
Speaker 3: to me so like Bryce seems unconvinced about Bowie saying this,
Speaker 3: and he's like, what do you mean, what's the evidence
Speaker 3: of them being here? And then I think it's sort
Speaker 3: of implied that Newton thinks there have been other alien
Speaker 3: visitors to Earth because he's been tricked by stuff he
Speaker 3: saw on TV, Like he literally has been watching In
Speaker 3: Search of and stuff about UFOs and ancient aliens and
Speaker 3: stuff like I think he's talking about Eric Vondanakan or
Speaker 3: something and bry and Bryce is like, well, I don't
Speaker 3: believe in any of that, and then Bowie just just
Speaker 3: kind of like, oh, okay, well you know there has
Speaker 3: to be something out there. But that was so so
Speaker 3: like imagine an alien coming to Earth and then falling
Speaker 3: for all of the like UFO stuff and being like, oh,
Speaker 3: I guess there have been a bunch of other visitors here,
Speaker 3: just like the rest of us seeing stuff on TV.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I like that side of this scene, but even
Speaker 2: like that initial feeling of like, well, here's the alien
Speaker 2: visitor potentially confirming that there are yet other alien visitors,
Speaker 2: like in a sense like he has insight that we
Speaker 2: don't have, because he does have like some like he
Speaker 2: knows there are aliens and he can he can, you know,
Speaker 2: sort of compare with what they know on his world
Speaker 2: as well. And Yeah, I liked it. It's a nice
Speaker 2: weird section of the film.
Speaker 3: I love that the one too. Yeah, you think he
Speaker 3: has special insight, but then it becomes maybe he actually
Speaker 3: has the same insight that lots of people think they have,
Speaker 3: which is they watched in search of Yeah, I just
Speaker 3: looked it up. It wouldn't be in search because that
Speaker 3: didn't start until the year after this movie, but would
Speaker 3: have been whatever the equivalent if that wash. Now there's
Speaker 3: another thing I wanted to get into, which is Newton's
Speaker 3: relationship with Mary Lou. She obviously really loves him, she's
Speaker 3: in love with him. Does he love her? As I
Speaker 3: was saying earlier, Bowie's performance is very ambiguous. He's often
Speaker 3: kind of aloof and kind of tranquilized and seems to
Speaker 3: be not reacting to things very strongly, but then sometimes
Speaker 3: reacting very strongly and in sudden outbursts and unexpected ways.
Speaker 3: So he's often kind of somnambulent and then suddenly he
Speaker 3: shows clear warm emotion toward toward Mary Lou. But even
Speaker 3: in the moments when he does that, it feels kind
Speaker 3: of random, like other times he has these strong emotional
Speaker 3: outbursts like anger or dangerous playfulness at her, or kind
Speaker 3: of love bombing, and it's not easy to tell like
Speaker 3: why each particular emotion is coming out at the time
Speaker 3: that it is. And I guess you could just say, like, well,
Speaker 3: he's an alien and he can't relate to us, and
Speaker 3: you know, so it's hard to understand his you know,
Speaker 3: the way his mind works. But what is his relationship
Speaker 3: to the people of Earth, especially the few people close
Speaker 3: to him? Does he care about them? Does he love them?
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess the feeling I got from the
Speaker 2: film is that it's it's paradoxical, you know, it's and
Speaker 2: it's and it may vary from one point to another,
Speaker 2: you know, He's it seems like one of Nicholas Rogue's
Speaker 2: approaches here in this film anyway, is that like all
Speaker 2: humans and even non human characters are complex, you know,
Speaker 2: and it's like just because they even have a reduced
Speaker 2: role in the plot doesn't mean that they're not complex
Speaker 2: people with passions and fears and moments of tenderness. So
Speaker 2: I think it's very possible, Yeah, that there are times
Speaker 2: and there there is a part of him that does
Speaker 2: feel this deep attachment to Mary Lou and perhaps that
Speaker 2: grows over time the more of an earthling he becomes.
Speaker 2: But then also he is still other. He is still
Speaker 2: an alien. He still has this family that he has
Speaker 2: essentially kind of abandoned. Like there's there's this movie again
Speaker 2: kind of triangulating different ideas, Like you have you have
Speaker 2: his character who has an alien wife and children in
Speaker 2: another world, perhaps dying because he has gone to get
Speaker 2: help and hasn't come back yet. And then you have
Speaker 2: rip Torn's character, who also has a wife and child
Speaker 2: that he is distant from and is strange from. And
Speaker 2: then we also see the Peters character, you know, the
Speaker 2: government agency guy, and we see his family, and this
Speaker 2: is an example of where the family unit is intact.
Speaker 2: And so we're you know, I think we're supposed to
Speaker 2: compare these, We're supposed to think about how these apply
Speaker 2: to these models apply to each other.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there is definitely something going on with the theme
Speaker 3: of like the families elsewhere and I think the way
Speaker 3: it resonated for me with like these weird moments of
Speaker 3: like seeing Peters at home with his family suddenly like
Speaker 3: you know, tucking his children in and then discussing with
Speaker 3: his wife whether he knows he's like, are we really
Speaker 3: doing the right thing? Is a strange moment again that
Speaker 3: you would not expect with this type of character in
Speaker 3: another movie. It's almost like it's a different way of
Speaker 3: reminding someone that even though he has shown with his
Speaker 3: family here, it's like showing you that in these other
Speaker 3: scenes where he's just doing the conspiracy, he had a
Speaker 3: family elsewhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a very thoughtful, very thought provoking film that
Speaker 2: I guess ultimately it puts a lot of the legwork
Speaker 2: on the viewer to try and sort of piece things
Speaker 2: together and figure out what is being said. It doesn't
Speaker 2: necessarily hold your hand.
Speaker 3: I like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, I wanted to touch on the eroticism of
Speaker 2: the film again. I don't think it would be accurate
Speaker 2: to classify this as an erotic film by any sense,
Speaker 2: though it certainly makes frequent use of eroticism. We have
Speaker 2: scenes that feature male and female nudity, as well as
Speaker 2: alien in human nudity, I suppose, and they feature human
Speaker 2: nudity in a way that is generally unapologetic and frank,
Speaker 2: in ways that viewers might not be accustomed to. But
Speaker 2: Rogue again doesn't seem to be doing this just for titillation.
Speaker 2: At least to me. These scenes feel less exploitive, maybe
Speaker 2: more voyeuristic, though, because instead of flesh again being the
Speaker 2: destination of the scene as it often is in other films,
Speaker 2: especially the kind we often end up watching on Weird House,
Speaker 2: flesh is another tool that the filmmaker uses to explore
Speaker 2: a character, to explore a relationship between characters. But then
Speaker 2: this actually ends up making the scenes more titillating because
Speaker 2: they feel more genuine and actually provide insight into the
Speaker 2: inner depths of the characters on the screen. You're not
Speaker 2: just watching You don't feel like you're just watching flesh.
Speaker 2: You were watching flesh and emotion as one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would say that this just seems like a
Speaker 3: film in which sex is, more so than in most films,
Speaker 3: a locus of drama itself, like it shows how the
Speaker 3: characters are relating to one another, and what their lives mean,
Speaker 3: and how what they and how the ways they relate
Speaker 3: to each other is changing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree. I was looking at an article from
Speaker 2: twenty eleven. This was in The Guardian by Danny Lee
Speaker 2: titled good screen sex is hard to find unless you
Speaker 2: watch a Nicholas Rogue film, and the article is very
Speaker 2: interesting and in depth if for people interested in this
Speaker 2: filmmaker's work. But the article speaks of The Man Who
Speaker 2: Fell to Earth as quote, a deeply melancholy film with
Speaker 2: a strange and genuinely beautiful sex scene between David Bowie's
Speaker 2: stranded alien Newton and Candy Clark's hotel made Mary Lou
Speaker 2: that replaced the felt's heat of Don't Look Now with
Speaker 2: an existential ache and plenty of gunplay.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, so this is this talking about the quote
Speaker 3: Hello Mary Lou scene where they've got a revolver involved there.
Speaker 2: Yes, this is a deliriously ludicrous scene. It begins with
Speaker 2: a kind of like rough edge of meanness and potential
Speaker 2: violence where Newton has this shiny revolver and you know, see.
Speaker 3: His drink with it. He's making darkness.
Speaker 2: Drink with it, Yeah, and then like licking it. He
Speaker 2: like puts the barrel in his mouth to look the
Speaker 2: alcohol off of it. And then he's like brandishing it
Speaker 2: at Mary Lou and you know this, again, this feels
Speaker 2: potentially like it's going to go in a really horrible direction.
Speaker 2: But then the whole scene transforms into just an absurd
Speaker 2: erotic romp with a kind of a heartfelt eroticism at
Speaker 2: the core, but also just a laughable and intentional disregard
Speaker 2: for how blank fire arm cartridges work and just how
Speaker 2: basic cam gun safety works, because as they're engaging in
Speaker 2: this kind of like playful four play, they are also
Speaker 2: firing this gun at each other at like point blank
Speaker 2: range and be like beyond fo yeah, not at all safe, like,
Speaker 2: not at all realistic. Do not get any actual four
Speaker 2: play ideas from this film, but it Yeah, it's just
Speaker 2: completely bonkers but also very tender. So again, this film
Speaker 2: is like that, it's uh, you'll it'll have different energies
Speaker 2: and also the like same similar but opposite energies in
Speaker 2: the same sequence.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's strange, emotionally complex. Uh yeah, I thought this.
Speaker 3: See I when you said that this sequence is part
Speaker 3: that was cut out, I was like, what they cut
Speaker 3: out that part? I don't understand how you have this
Speaker 3: movie without that part?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 3: But then it transitions to to Newton and Mary Lou
Speaker 3: playing tennis in this room with bizarre forest patterned wallpaper,
Speaker 3: and they decide they don't love each other anymore.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is one of many sequences too, where
Speaker 2: there's just way too many half consumed bottles of alcohol
Speaker 2: just sitting around, like it's clear that the alcoholism is
Speaker 2: just out of control. And oh, and then there's a
Speaker 2: weird sequence in there too, where like she asks him, like,
Speaker 2: why does he drink because he apparently doesn't physically get drunk,
Speaker 2: and he's like, well, I see things when I drink.
Speaker 2: And I didn't know what quite what to make of that.
Speaker 3: She says, you never get sick. I think she means like,
Speaker 3: you know, you never hung over, But I don't know
Speaker 3: if I buy that, because he seemed hungover a lot.
Speaker 3: And yeah, but that's what she says. And then he says, yeah,
Speaker 3: I see things. I see bodies. I see the bodies
Speaker 3: of men and women as just Newton being Newton. Yeah.
Speaker 3: She's kind of scandalized by this, like, oh really.
Speaker 2: Oh, yes, yes, I do remember this part. Yes, but
Speaker 2: then we never actually figure out what he's talking about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is the part where he's pointing the gun
Speaker 3: at her. Yes, but she thinks it's funny.
Speaker 2: So they end up going their own separate ways. Bryce
Speaker 2: and Mary Lou end up becoming a couple. They say
Speaker 2: they have Christmas together. We get a whole Christmas sequence.
Speaker 3: They're both drinking a lot, also continuing with the themes there,
Speaker 3: but yeah, they have Christmas. We have Rip Torn drest
Speaker 3: as Santa Claus in a wicker store, and yeah, they're
Speaker 3: getting ready for Christmas. And then somehow this leads to
Speaker 3: Bryce ending up listening to the record and then going
Speaker 3: to talk to Newton one last time, and Newton asks
Speaker 3: him did you like the record? And Rip Torn says
Speaker 3: not much.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, it doesn't have to be good. It
Speaker 2: just has to be popular enough to get enough airplay.
Speaker 2: So those signals make it out to the mystery home
Speaker 2: planet of David Bowie.
Speaker 3: That's right. So I guess he's trying to specialize in
Speaker 3: radio ready, commercial, commercially marketable hits that have secreting code
Speaker 3: messages that his that his rubber still suit wearing family
Speaker 3: will understand.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you know, seriously, there's a lot to sort
Speaker 2: of dissect there too, like this idea that he sets
Speaker 2: out to do something to support his family, to reconnect
Speaker 2: with his family, but eventually he just tries to create
Speaker 2: art instead that may somehow reach them in a distant
Speaker 2: and non physical fashion.
Speaker 3: He came here to save their lives, he failed, and
Speaker 3: in the end all he could do was hope to
Speaker 3: speak to them again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's you know, it's powerful stuff, all right,
Speaker 2: that's the man who fell to Earth. So yeah, this
Speaker 2: is a very interesting film to look at. I'd be
Speaker 2: interested to hear what listeners think of the movie, what
Speaker 2: your relationship with the movie over the years has been.
Speaker 2: If we have any Bowie fans out there, how does
Speaker 2: it play into your understanding and appreciation of the artist?
Speaker 3: Why does he need a TV when he's got t Rex?
Speaker 2: And you know, I'm tempted to rewatch The Witches now
Speaker 2: because it's like I've seen this whole, Like I've seen
Speaker 2: the real Nicholas Rogue. I want to like, maybe watch
Speaker 2: something that is more commercial and more family oriented and see,
Speaker 2: like what did he bring to the table on that,
Speaker 2: because I don't it's been a long time since I've
Speaker 2: seen the original adaptation of The Witches has some great
Speaker 2: performances in it, some great puppetry in it, but I
Speaker 2: can't speak to like the fingerprints of Nicholas Rogue on
Speaker 2: that picture. But hey, maybe some of you listeners have
Speaker 2: watched it more recently and you can speak to that
Speaker 2: for us. So we'll go ahead and close the book
Speaker 2: on this one. But just a reminder that Stuff to
Speaker 2: Blow Your Mind is primarily a science podcast, with new
Speaker 2: episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Mondays we do a
Speaker 2: listener mail, On Wednesdays we do a short form artifactor
Speaker 2: monster fact episode, and on Fridays we set aside most
Speaker 2: serious concerns to just talk about a weird film on
Speaker 2: Weird House Cinema. And if you want to see all
Speaker 2: the like a list of all the films we've done
Speaker 2: over the years, the main place to go is go
Speaker 2: to letterbox dot com. It's l E T T E
Speaker 2: R B O x D dot com. You'll find our
Speaker 2: profile there. We are a weird House and we have
Speaker 2: a list and you can pull up all the like
Speaker 2: the poster images and the details of the films we've
Speaker 2: talked about.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks to our excellent audio producer, Jjposway. If you
Speaker 3: would like to get in touch with us with feedback
Speaker 3: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic
Speaker 3: for the future, or just to say hello. You can
Speaker 3: email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 3: dot com.
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