Speaker 1: Welcome to Movie Crush, a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey everybody, Welcome to Movie Crush Friday Filmmaker Edition with Paul.
Speaker 1: Welcome back, Paul, good to be here. Thank you for
Speaker 1: having me. We're on the Sofia couplet tips still today
Speaker 1: with the bling ring, and I feel like we should
Speaker 1: just go ahead and say what we were talking about,
Speaker 1: that you didn't print out notes and you were worried
Speaker 1: that this was not going to go well. Yes, so
Speaker 1: let us know in the comments sound off at the
Speaker 1: end of this episode if it's terrible, confirmed, did not
Speaker 1: go well. But why didn't you print out notes or
Speaker 1: make notes? Or did you make notes? I just had
Speaker 1: a tough time with this one, uh, putting my thoughts
Speaker 1: down cogently or something, and I just felt like seeing
Speaker 1: how it went, you know, a bit of a confounding movie,
Speaker 1: you know, it's Uh. I think part of it is
Speaker 1: having gone through these other Sofia Coppola films. I feel
Speaker 1: like with each of them we've done already. I've always
Speaker 1: had a sense of having been able to wrap my
Speaker 1: head around what those other films are doing much more clearly,
Speaker 1: either what the thesis or the argument of those films
Speaker 1: are this one. I have a tough time really nailing
Speaker 1: that down, not necessarily to the film's detriments, though yeah,
Speaker 1: I had you know, here's my history. Um. This film
Speaker 1: came out in two thousand, I believe. I think I
Speaker 1: saw this in the theater if I'm not mistaken, Emily
Speaker 1: and I did, um and wasn't sure what to think
Speaker 1: about it at the time, and it came across as
Speaker 1: sort of without sounding hard, like you know, B level
Speaker 1: Sofia Coppola, And it's still may reside there, but I
Speaker 1: definitely got a lot more out of it last night
Speaker 1: after watching it again through this lens. Uh And And
Speaker 1: I like the movie. I don't love it because it's
Speaker 1: hard to like a movie with so few It's it's
Speaker 1: very uh and I think it's supposed to be this way.
Speaker 1: That's what I finally came to. It's very surface level,
Speaker 1: very what's the word I'm looking for. It's not very substantial,
Speaker 1: and I think that's kind of the point, because that's
Speaker 1: these people are vapid, awful creatures, and it's hard to
Speaker 1: get into a movie like that when there's no one
Speaker 1: that you can identify with or root for, especially being
Speaker 1: my age, it's like, oh boy, this is that generation
Speaker 1: where they're living their life, this fake life through Instagram
Speaker 1: and Facebook, and it was hard to so you love
Speaker 1: a movie like that, But I think that's kind of
Speaker 1: the whole point. Yeah, I I so. I Also when
Speaker 1: I saw it in theater, I kind of left the
Speaker 1: theater thinking, huh, that didn't do much for me at all,
Speaker 1: Like what was the point? Why did she feel the
Speaker 1: need to make this movie? And I never really thought
Speaker 1: about the movie again until we revisited it today, having
Speaker 1: and I rewatched actually twice two nights in a row,
Speaker 1: and it, uh my, my, My feelings toward it have increased.
Speaker 1: I like it quite a bit now actually, um, And
Speaker 1: I think I agree with what you're saying that there
Speaker 1: is this kind of surface level approach to everything intentionally,
Speaker 1: and I kind of feel like that's the way to
Speaker 1: do a movie like this, if you're going to talk
Speaker 1: about this subject, this story, these people, right, yeah, because
Speaker 1: it's a and I've seen it's sort of the constant
Speaker 1: criticism she gets, which is not critiquing her subject matter
Speaker 1: ors who people feel like should be critiqued more heavily.
Speaker 1: And I've really come to appreciate her tone, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, she gives a lot and maybe more so
Speaker 1: than many other filmmakers, gives a lot of leeway to
Speaker 1: the viewer to make up their own damn minds about
Speaker 1: something and not like being super judgy about her subject matter.
Speaker 1: And this one maybe more so than any other, could
Speaker 1: you know be judged. Yeah, I agree, Um, I think
Speaker 1: the critique is there. She's just such a subtle filmmaker.
Speaker 1: She's this filmmaker who doesn't insist upon herself that it's
Speaker 1: easy to miss some of the critiques that are present,
Speaker 1: Yeah within the film. Yeah, Like the whole thing to
Speaker 1: me is a critique when you really look at it,
Speaker 1: but she's not wagging her finger at it. It's Uh,
Speaker 1: it's interesting because she uses she utilizes a lot of
Speaker 1: reality TV techniques, um, very purposefully I think, and all
Speaker 1: of that creates this sort of like slime here that
Speaker 1: you just want to wash off of you at the
Speaker 1: end of it. But I thought it was super effective.
Speaker 1: Like especially one of the things that stands out is
Speaker 1: her use of the webcam stuff. Um, that one great
Speaker 1: scene with Mark where he's like smoking weed by himself, yeah,
Speaker 1: and dancing in front of the webcam and it goes
Speaker 1: on for quite a long time, and it's really like
Speaker 1: it's her saying like, this is this generation to a degree,
Speaker 1: and certainly these people to the nth degree. You know.
Speaker 1: It's I did not realize this until this morning. I
Speaker 1: was just kind of scouring YouTube and looking for videos
Speaker 1: about the actual people in the crime. Yeah, some of that.
Speaker 1: There's a few few of those videos out there, and
Speaker 1: one of them has a video of the real life
Speaker 1: Mark whose name is not Mark in real life, and
Speaker 1: he something maybe I say it was Nick. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think you're right. I don't know. There's a video of
Speaker 1: him doing that. She basically took that scene from an
Speaker 1: exact thing he did. There's a black and like webcam
Speaker 1: video of him listening to the same song drop It
Speaker 1: Low and smoking a bowl and kind of singing along,
Speaker 1: dancing in his in his room. She recreated it, which
Speaker 1: is just crazy to me. And it's funny. I I
Speaker 1: read the article, the Vanity Fair article too, that was
Speaker 1: basically I haven't read that yet. I bet it was great.
Speaker 1: It's good, and it astounded me how how much she
Speaker 1: just basically adapted that. Like she doesn't change very much
Speaker 1: at all, aside from the names of the kids, and
Speaker 1: some of the quotes in there, some of the quotes
Speaker 1: in that I could not believe are real quotes that
Speaker 1: she used in the movie. For example, at the beginning,
Speaker 1: when you hear Emma Watson's character saying, I'm a firm
Speaker 1: believer in karma and this situation was visited upon me
Speaker 1: too as a learning you know, blah blah blah, I
Speaker 1: want to lead a country for one day. Well, no,
Speaker 1: that I have to read it for not the whole line,
Speaker 1: but the very last line there is so great. I
Speaker 1: want to lead a country one day for all I know.
Speaker 1: That for all I know, that is a real quote
Speaker 1: from the girl she's based on. Also another quote is
Speaker 1: that's real? Is the character Rebecca kind of the ringleader
Speaker 1: in the movie uh? In the movie when she is
Speaker 1: talking to an investigator and the investigator says they've she
Speaker 1: asked if they've interviewed any of the victims and said yes,
Speaker 1: she says, what did lindsay say? That is also a
Speaker 1: real quote. Wow, yeah, yeah, yeah. There was a couple
Speaker 1: of lines at the end there that what did lindsay
Speaker 1: say was just like you gotta be kidding me? And um,
Speaker 1: because she sort of lit up when they were like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, you actually talked to Lindsay. Um was
Speaker 1: She's uh, she says, you know, well, you know, if
Speaker 1: I give everything back, can you just let me go? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that sort of reaction apparently was pretty real, like
Speaker 1: her her denying everything and then realizing she's caught and
Speaker 1: then thinking, oh, if I give all the stuff back,
Speaker 1: I'll somehow get away or that'll give me leverage, right,
Speaker 1: which is just It's emblematic of the entire movie, which
Speaker 1: is that these kids are so privileged. And I know
Speaker 1: people throw that word around a lot, but this is
Speaker 1: the true definition of privilege. Even though they're at the
Speaker 1: bad Kids school. Um, they are so privileged, and they
Speaker 1: have so little of a barometer for ethics and doing
Speaker 1: right and wrong, Like you never get a sense even
Speaker 1: afterwards that they felt like they did something wrong. But
Speaker 1: they're so privileged that they have no idea that this
Speaker 1: is even they could consider it shopping. They even call
Speaker 1: it that, let's go shopping. And and the fact that
Speaker 1: it's reprehensible, it's so gross, and the fact that in
Speaker 1: some ways maybe they kind of got what they wanted,
Speaker 1: which was a form of being a celebrity, dealist celebrity,
Speaker 1: because if you also kind of read about the real
Speaker 1: life people that's happened to, most of the the sentences
Speaker 1: they were given at the end, they're pretty light. They're
Speaker 1: pretty light, and most of them did not. You know,
Speaker 1: one character sentenced to four years in real life, she
Speaker 1: served one of that. That was one of the longer ones. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think some of them sort of like, you know,
Speaker 1: thirty to sixty days. Yeah, the Niki character, Emma Watson's character,
Speaker 1: she's given six months in real life and in the movie,
Speaker 1: and she served thirty days in real life. She was
Speaker 1: in a cell with Lindsay Lohan for or in a
Speaker 1: cell block with Lindsey Lohan. But I hear her crying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But it just goes to show you that, I mean,
Speaker 1: there's a critique in and of itself when you think
Speaker 1: about people who are sentenced to much longer prison terms
Speaker 1: for possession of marijuana, for example, especially people of color.
Speaker 1: You know, we can go down that road, which is
Speaker 1: absolutely true when when these privileged Calabasas l a. People
Speaker 1: with wealthy families can kind of get off with just
Speaker 1: can steal three million dollars worth of stuff, you know,
Speaker 1: it was not a light crime, and you get the
Speaker 1: feeling that they thought they won't sit, which is partially true.
Speaker 1: And that's also the whole other thing is that the
Speaker 1: opulence is so much that like they're not missing a
Speaker 1: fifty handbag. It was probably I think several of them
Speaker 1: got broken into three or four or five times. Paris
Speaker 1: Hilton especi't notice for a while and then didn't even
Speaker 1: want to say anything after they did notice. I think
Speaker 1: Paris Hilton was aware and didn't even report it to
Speaker 1: the police until like the third or fourth time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I mean, because to her it was like not
Speaker 1: worth the hassle of the press, and it's just you know,
Speaker 1: she'll just buy a new ship exactly. And and her
Speaker 1: leaving her key under her was that really happened, really happened, Yes,
Speaker 1: But the door was even unlocked. That's what I read
Speaker 1: was the key was under the map, but they didn't
Speaker 1: even need it. And that's the whole thing. It's like
Speaker 1: they opened cars that were open and rifled through them.
Speaker 1: They never broke a window. All these doors are open.
Speaker 1: These people lived this luxury is lifestyle in the hills,
Speaker 1: and you know, they feel safe behind their walls. They
Speaker 1: you know, they would track them down when they're out
Speaker 1: of town. Let's find out how to get in on
Speaker 1: Google Earth. And they made it look so easy because
Speaker 1: it was you know, I mean, it's it's funny because
Speaker 1: part of this what's interesting about watching this movie a
Speaker 1: few years removed is kind of how it is a
Speaker 1: time capsule, a little bit of this very transitional time,
Speaker 1: I would say, when you're kind of going from the
Speaker 1: twenty that the odds to and how the idea of
Speaker 1: just being able to google a celebrities address was available
Speaker 1: and it's not like you had to be some kind
Speaker 1: of computer hacker to find this stuff. People thing going
Speaker 1: on super easy. And and you can also, yeah, track
Speaker 1: winning celebrities out of town because they're going to be
Speaker 1: in Miami for a club opening. Yeah. And it was
Speaker 1: also um pre the ubiquity of home security cameras, Like
Speaker 1: a couple of them had them and that's how they
Speaker 1: eventually get undone. But uh, it's not like now like
Speaker 1: now like I mean, I have home security cameras and
Speaker 1: I'm I'm F list celebrity no lower than that, I'm
Speaker 1: more more like a P list No, but everyone has
Speaker 1: these now all over the neighborhood which which is. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't know how people feel about that. I think
Speaker 1: it's I think it's kind of great because people can
Speaker 1: look out for one another and stuff like that. But um,
Speaker 1: listeners sound off what level of celebrities, Chuck good Lord?
Speaker 1: So maybe we should just really quickly tell people what
Speaker 1: this movie is in case you don't know when you
Speaker 1: like to listen even though you haven't seen it. It
Speaker 1: is tells the true story of a series of robberies
Speaker 1: from the Bling Ring. These five ended up being more
Speaker 1: than five in the end. Yeah, only five I think
Speaker 1: are shown in the movie, but there are there were
Speaker 1: a few more people in real life. Yeah, and it
Speaker 1: showed a couple of people fringe people in the movie,
Speaker 1: like the one guy Latino guy breaking in and he
Speaker 1: got sentenced, but they didn't really focus on them too much,
Speaker 1: sort of focus on the four ladies and uh and
Speaker 1: the one guy. Um, and they did change the names,
Speaker 1: as you said, the one guy was Nick Prugo. But
Speaker 1: it's really interesting to read the real stuff. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: read the Vanity Fair article, but I read a bunch
Speaker 1: of articles about this stuff, and um, it's just like
Speaker 1: I think, Sofia Coppola was the perfect person to make
Speaker 1: this into a movie because she deals in she loves
Speaker 1: shooting pretty things and pretty people, and some people criticize
Speaker 1: her for that, but to me, that's just her aesthetic
Speaker 1: and the world that she's in. So that's fine. Um,
Speaker 1: But it's always the pretty stuff and the fractures within.
Speaker 1: It's never just a love letter to anything. It's always
Speaker 1: like here, these people are really kind of broken in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways, um, and not like, oh, feel
Speaker 1: sorry for them necessarily. Like I said, I think she
Speaker 1: gives the viewer a lot of leeway to feel how
Speaker 1: they want to feel. She's not there hand holding your
Speaker 1: hand and really forced feeding you and saying you should
Speaker 1: feel this way about this thing. Yeah. And I think
Speaker 1: what makes her a good director for this is because
Speaker 1: she's not above taking enjoyment in luxurious things. You've seen
Speaker 1: it in reads Antoinet, You've seen in all our movies.
Speaker 1: She you know, she's she's worked with fashion people before
Speaker 1: she's shot fashion like she to a certain extent enjoys, uh,
Speaker 1: the fashion world and ideas of luxury and nice things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's a rich kid, And so that's why she's so
Speaker 1: good because she can actually while still critiquing all of this,
Speaker 1: she cannot sort of turn up her nose at the
Speaker 1: fact that, yeah, there is kind of pleasure in having
Speaker 1: nice things. Yeah, it's an interesting perspective because usually you
Speaker 1: would see a movie about this stuff that's um, you know,
Speaker 1: made by someone who came from more meager backgrounds, who
Speaker 1: would really have a pretty scathing critique of they devistrated,
Speaker 1: and rightfully so probably you know, but this is this
Speaker 1: is just an interesting take, you know. I totally agree.
Speaker 1: The movie starts out with that great sleigh Bells needle drop,
Speaker 1: and and this is you know, she's known for her
Speaker 1: music and using popular music in her in her movies,
Speaker 1: but it's always sort of that aesthetic. She has the
Speaker 1: sort of dreamy um kind of brit pop. In this
Speaker 1: movie she totally abandons all that with this very hard edge.
Speaker 1: I don't even know what you call this stuff because
Speaker 1: I'm so old and unhip. I just think it's very
Speaker 1: very contemporary pop and hip hop. Yeah, yeah, it's all
Speaker 1: very hard edged. Yes, none of it is as soft
Speaker 1: around the edges like that Slive Bells song. Is is
Speaker 1: great because it's it's at the beginning and it's all
Speaker 1: quiet and as soon as they go into the house,
Speaker 1: you hear the guitar note. Yeah, and it almost sounds
Speaker 1: like an alarm. Yeah, it sounds like, oh, they've tripped
Speaker 1: the alarm. But no, it's just the music plan, which
Speaker 1: is a nice little, nice little joke there. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it shows that perfect that that robbery with that perfect
Speaker 1: music playing, and um like right away she starts inter
Speaker 1: cutting some of the interview I guess, like deposition stuff,
Speaker 1: so you know the deal and you may have even
Speaker 1: heard the story going in, so you know they get
Speaker 1: caught eventually. And what I was I thought was fairly
Speaker 1: remarkable last night was if you strip out the millennial
Speaker 1: social media aspect and sort of the contemporary music, it
Speaker 1: follows the note of a of a crime drama, like
Speaker 1: kind of all the stuff, like you know, your ride
Speaker 1: and high, you can get away with anything, Greed gets
Speaker 1: the best of you, you go too far, you get pinched.
Speaker 1: It's like, I mean, it's fucking good Fellas at the
Speaker 1: same time, it is you know, that's a good point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it really does. I mean, she does some interesting structural things,
Speaker 1: but ultimately the template is a template we've seen before.
Speaker 1: Emma Watson's great you kind of steals the movie. Man,
Speaker 1: I've I've read some people who have critiqued her performance great,
Speaker 1: she's so good and and if you listen, so that
Speaker 1: the girl she's based on is a named Alexis Nie
Speaker 1: And if you watch, if you go on YouTube, you
Speaker 1: can see videos her of her and she sounds exactly
Speaker 1: like Watson and she's not overdoing it. And this girl
Speaker 1: actually was at the time, right around the time she
Speaker 1: was arrested, she was shooting a reality TV show for
Speaker 1: with her mom AND's and sister and sort of fake sister, right,
Speaker 1: And there's a great clip of her. Uh So at
Speaker 1: some point after she's you know, been arrested in all
Speaker 1: this stuff, where she's calling up some writer who wrote
Speaker 1: a story about it, and she's hysterical crying, and she's
Speaker 1: she's telling this writer, you got you got. You put
Speaker 1: so many lies in there, You've got so many things wrong.
Speaker 1: You were you said that at the court I was
Speaker 1: wearing six inch lu Baton heels and it's not true.
Speaker 1: I was wearing four inch BB something or other shoes.
Speaker 1: Like that's what she's mad about, that she got the
Speaker 1: style of shoe wrong. Yeah, it's just it's well, the
Speaker 1: interview with her at the end was that her mom
Speaker 1: played by Leslie Man. It was kind of great and
Speaker 1: as well is so good because Leslie Man keeps jumping
Speaker 1: in there. She's like, Mom, you know this isn't about you,
Speaker 1: and it's just you. Wonder if any of them learned
Speaker 1: any lessons. I mean, I tried to find some follow
Speaker 1: up stuff. Apparently, um alexis Snyers and I think both
Speaker 1: of her sisters got really bad into drugs like heroin
Speaker 1: and have cleaned up, and I think it are on
Speaker 1: a better path in life. But can a zebra really
Speaker 1: changed his stripes that much? Well? Yeah, And you've seen
Speaker 1: quotes of various people involved in this sort of giving
Speaker 1: lip service to either they've become very spiritual or they've
Speaker 1: done charity work, and they sound like how honestly celebrities
Speaker 1: sound when they talk, trying to make themselves sound like
Speaker 1: real people. You know, I've got my charity, I've got this,
Speaker 1: I've got that to sort of keep me grounded. But
Speaker 1: it's that like l a version of being air quotes grounded. Yes, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, boy,
Speaker 1: that's a whole other thing. And I also thought, you know,
Speaker 1: it was interesting how it wasn't even about I mean,
Speaker 1: they did get cash, but it was it was all
Speaker 1: as a means to live a lifestyle. You know. It
Speaker 1: wasn't like a typical robbery thing it was and maybe
Speaker 1: that's always the case, but and maybe it's this particular
Speaker 1: lifestyle that seems so offensive and so wasteful. But they
Speaker 1: were robbing this money just so they could throw it
Speaker 1: away on bottle service at the club and be a
Speaker 1: part of the people that they were robbing. Like you
Speaker 1: get the picture that if one of these people would
Speaker 1: have come home, they would have wanted to be friends
Speaker 1: with them more than you know, like run away and
Speaker 1: try and escape. They try and twist it into like well,
Speaker 1: what can we hang out? Absolutely, it's not robbing out
Speaker 1: of necessity, of course, it's it's so funny too. A
Speaker 1: lot of the times you them go into the houses,
Speaker 1: they're already dressed very stylishly, you know. I mean, if
Speaker 1: if police did show up, they might be able to
Speaker 1: talk their way out of it because they're dressed very
Speaker 1: expensively already like like we're friends, yeah, I mean, just
Speaker 1: because they don't have the quote unquote look of a
Speaker 1: thief or something. Yeah, and they never feel threatened and
Speaker 1: like that's how how deep their privilege runs is. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess Mark is a little bit like he's the
Speaker 1: only one that's ever saying we should probably get out
Speaker 1: of here. We've been here a long time. The rest
Speaker 1: of them are like rolling around in their beds and
Speaker 1: they're not They're not taking a Duffel bag and just
Speaker 1: raking stuff in their shopping They're like, oh, this looks nice,
Speaker 1: does this fit me? And like, let me take this bracelet,
Speaker 1: but not all the bracelets. It's really interesting. You wouldn't
Speaker 1: think if this would have been written, some would have
Speaker 1: been like, come on, like this would never happen like this,
Speaker 1: but it did. Yeah, and like you said, the fact
Speaker 1: that they a lot of times just hang out, like
Speaker 1: they'll just hang out in Paris Hilton's party room because
Speaker 1: they can, yeah, taking selfies and I think yes, and
Speaker 1: Paris Hilton makes a brief cameo. Uh and yeah they
Speaker 1: let her shooting her real place, which kind of adds
Speaker 1: a whole another meta layer to this movie, I think,
Speaker 1: which is interesting. But yeah, they're stealing. They're stealing because well,
Speaker 1: we don't know. That's that's probably what makes the film difficult,
Speaker 1: is we don't know the true motivations for why they're
Speaker 1: doing this because they can, because they can, because they
Speaker 1: want to feel like they're close to the celebrities, they
Speaker 1: want to be friends with them. And also because of
Speaker 1: the the idea of social media where it's not just
Speaker 1: about stealing this stuff, but it's about stealing it and
Speaker 1: then showing it off. It's about exhibitionism. It's about taking
Speaker 1: a picture of yourself in holding this this purse it
Speaker 1: didn't happen, and posting it. And how dumb is that,
Speaker 1: Like the fact that the police could just track them
Speaker 1: so easily because they posted all these selfies on I
Speaker 1: know it was I think in actual in real life
Speaker 1: it was about nine before they were caught and they
Speaker 1: were telling it. You know, there was their bragging where
Speaker 1: they're bragging about it their friends and you know, yeah, bitch,
Speaker 1: I broke. I was hanging out at Paris this last night.
Speaker 1: It was so chill well, and they're stealing the stuff
Speaker 1: because they can't break into that world. If they could
Speaker 1: have somehow befriended Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan, they probably
Speaker 1: never would have done anything like this, Like this was
Speaker 1: their only way in was to and that and That's
Speaker 1: what makes it so gross too, because it's all fake.
Speaker 1: They weren't in this world. I mean, they sort of
Speaker 1: ended up being in that world and that they had
Speaker 1: the money to go to the clubs, but they weren't.
Speaker 1: And what they were aspiring to be was, you know,
Speaker 1: reality star, Like this is who they idolized. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean at the beginning, the Rebecca character says, you know,
Speaker 1: she wants to go to fashion school and then have
Speaker 1: her own reality show. Mark once to have his own lifestyle. Man. Like,
Speaker 1: the people they idolized are are mostly people who are
Speaker 1: just famous for being famous. Not all the Orlando Bloom
Speaker 1: obviously as an actor, Rachel Bilson as an actor. But
Speaker 1: Paris Hilton, she was one of the first ones. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like she ushered the whole movement in and it's it's
Speaker 1: so funny how Also, this movie is kind of a
Speaker 1: time capsule because most of those people they rob in
Speaker 1: we're at the peak of their fame and now, like
Speaker 1: you haven't heard much from Paris Hilton these days, or
Speaker 1: Orlando Bloom or I mean, or Lindsay Lohan. Orlando's blooms
Speaker 1: obviously still acting, but he's not like at the peak.
Speaker 1: Pirates of the Caribbean level. He was a you know.
Speaker 1: And it's so interesting how quickly fame comes and then fades.
Speaker 1: I think it kind of makes this film more interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it was shot at a time when we were
Speaker 1: peak sort of people famous for being famous. It's kind
Speaker 1: of that whole idea has faded a little bit, I
Speaker 1: think a little bit a little bit gotten a little
Speaker 1: smarter about saying that's bullshit. Yeah, agreed all that the
Speaker 1: Kardashians really took the baton and ran with it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's very true. Card Asians would be an exception. But
Speaker 1: I don't know anything about any of this stuff. I've
Speaker 1: insulated myself so much from that world. Um, but I
Speaker 1: do know it it's out there, and that it existed
Speaker 1: and still exists, you know, Yeah, very much still exists.
Speaker 1: And I know you're so in that world, like talking
Speaker 1: to you, like your like, uh, I'm right in the
Speaker 1: middle of this, you know. You know what I will
Speaker 1: say is that I I am somebody who to a
Speaker 1: certain extent enjoys fashion like I enjoy dressing a certain
Speaker 1: way or whatever. Very cool, thank you. I'm less concerned
Speaker 1: with brand names than these kids are, but I can
Speaker 1: at least understand the idea of how good it feels
Speaker 1: to be in a shirt that fits you just right
Speaker 1: and to get a new piece of clothing and the
Speaker 1: sort of high that comes along with that, And I
Speaker 1: think Sofia Coppola does a good job of capturing that
Speaker 1: that high. And you know she doesn't she definitely doesn't
Speaker 1: any sympathy for these kids, but there is at least
Speaker 1: some degree of I would say empathy where she allows
Speaker 1: us to kind of like that scene where he's dancing
Speaker 1: in front of the webcam or just the slow motion
Speaker 1: scenes when they're partying in the club, there is that
Speaker 1: sort of that euphoric feeling after it, maybe after the
Speaker 1: Pair of Hilton, the first par of Hilton break In
Speaker 1: when they're at the club and they're dancing and you
Speaker 1: get some some of that sort of dreamy Sofia coppla
Speaker 1: stuff is just like looks so great, it looks great,
Speaker 1: and you know, we've seen it before and her other movies,
Speaker 1: and here is kind of being used in a little
Speaker 1: different way where you can sort of appreciate being kind
Speaker 1: of in the mindset of these kids a little bit,
Speaker 1: that that feeling, that rush, while also being like very
Speaker 1: turned off by it because of how it came about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and because she's not delivering a really hard judgment upon
Speaker 1: these characters, she gets knocked for it as a filmmaker,
Speaker 1: I think, and I don't think that's fair it. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's still endorsing it now. And it's so easy to
Speaker 1: just make a film that's like sla you know, wagging
Speaker 1: your finger and saying these kids are bad and we
Speaker 1: should we shouldn't feel bad for them. But you know,
Speaker 1: depiction does not necessarily equal endorsement, which we always remember, agreed, um,
Speaker 1: And we should mention the cinematographer. Yeah, the cinematographer, Harris Savides,
Speaker 1: who this was his last film. Yeah, man so sad
Speaker 1: one of the great young Ish cinematographers. Yeah. He I
Speaker 1: believe he passed away during post production. Um brain Cancer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. And uh, this was his last movie and
Speaker 1: he had done Um Somewhere with her before that shot Zodiac.
Speaker 1: David Fincher. He's had a lot of great movies, really
Speaker 1: good cinematographer, and and this film he looks great and
Speaker 1: it has a very unique aesthetic that is a little
Speaker 1: different than Sofia Coppola's other films. I think, while still
Speaker 1: having her still feeling like it's very much a Sofia
Speaker 1: Coppola movie. Yeah, like she usually, like we talked about,
Speaker 1: does he sort of ethereal soft, dreamy things, And this
Speaker 1: is a little more hard edged with the music and
Speaker 1: the way it shot. And it's uh, like I said,
Speaker 1: I think it's sort of mimics social media and reality TV,
Speaker 1: and maybe that's why the movie is a bit of
Speaker 1: a turn off. Um. But there are those little glimpses,
Speaker 1: like the club scene and then that great shot, um
Speaker 1: when they're in silhouette in Malholland up on mah Holland
Speaker 1: and that the sea of lights and of l a
Speaker 1: is behind them. It's a really really great shot. It is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but the best what's the best shot of the movie.
Speaker 1: We'll see what you think. I mean, I'm guessing we're
Speaker 1: talking about the long push in Yeah, while they're breaking
Speaker 1: into Uh. I think it's a drain of Partridge. I can't.
Speaker 1: That's the one, man, it was so cool. It was.
Speaker 1: If you haven't seen the movie, it's, um, you know,
Speaker 1: they're doing all these break INDs and most of them
Speaker 1: are and all of them are just sort of handheld,
Speaker 1: sort of burglary style um. And this one, they set
Speaker 1: the camera this great, great house basically made of glass
Speaker 1: is what it looks like. And they just set the
Speaker 1: camera way way way way back on a hill and
Speaker 1: you don't even it's one of those slow creeps that
Speaker 1: you don't even realize the cameras moving in and it's
Speaker 1: like this glacial push. Which is one of my favorite
Speaker 1: shots is when like twenty seconds and you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: ship the cameras moving. Uh, And they just show these
Speaker 1: kids in shadow, just sort of working their way through
Speaker 1: the house. Yeah. And because it's all glass, you can
Speaker 1: easily see them their every move. You see them go in,
Speaker 1: you see them go upstairs, route around, totally silent, totally
Speaker 1: silent except for this sort of l a exterior sounds
Speaker 1: of like coyotes in the distance. Plane overhead, it's tripping,
Speaker 1: just kind of that atmospheric ambient noise. Really really cool.
Speaker 1: It's so cool in it, you know. It's it's a
Speaker 1: shot that I'm trying to I'm trying to articulate what
Speaker 1: it's doing within the movie, you know, and it kind
Speaker 1: of to me emphasizes this. It makes the it makes
Speaker 1: the house feel like a play set, you know. Uh.
Speaker 1: And these kids are just playing or something. I don't know,
Speaker 1: and also the idea that there's really no danger here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it has this uh and maybe it's just seeing
Speaker 1: too much hitchcock over the years, like that kind of
Speaker 1: shot with the glass that you're seeing in and you
Speaker 1: see them downstairs and then making their way upstairs, and
Speaker 1: in another movie you're waiting for the person to be
Speaker 1: home and to come out around the corner from the
Speaker 1: bathroom and to like shoot them. But and that's kind
Speaker 1: of the point. I think it's since his has his
Speaker 1: foreboding quality, but nothing ever happens that. Yeah, that that
Speaker 1: reminds me of another shot in the movie that I
Speaker 1: really like, which is when they're driving in the car,
Speaker 1: and it's it's a shot that you see in many
Speaker 1: many movies because it's a shot where you're anticipating a
Speaker 1: car wreck happening. Yeah, they're they're singing, they're drunk, they're
Speaker 1: singing to the M A M I A song Bad Girls,
Speaker 1: and you're just waiting. You know something bad is going
Speaker 1: to happen. And yet she hold on that shot so
Speaker 1: long that eventually kind of let your guard down and
Speaker 1: you say to yourself, Okay, she's not going to do
Speaker 1: the thing where they get in a car wreck and
Speaker 1: then as soon as you let your guard down, the
Speaker 1: car hits and they get t boned, and then it
Speaker 1: cuts away and it's like a couple of days later
Speaker 1: and one girl has to do community service, but otherwise
Speaker 1: they're fine, no consequences. Yeah, and what is she doing.
Speaker 1: She's bragging about the what she blew on the breathalyzer. Yes,
Speaker 1: he was like I was like three times the legal limit.
Speaker 1: They didn't even know how I was alive, let alone driving. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Oh my god. See, Like, to me, this is the judgment,
Speaker 1: Like this whole film is a judgment and a critique.
Speaker 1: But it's just, uh, she's not doing it in a
Speaker 1: finger waggy way, so it doesn't come across as as that,
Speaker 1: like that her shooting, her saying that line as a judgment,
Speaker 1: and as the viewer, you're supposed to say, what a
Speaker 1: fucking creature this person is, you know, and I will
Speaker 1: I'm not going to defend her or these kids. But
Speaker 1: she Coppola is also saying that it's not just I mean,
Speaker 1: these are teenage kids, and it's also a product of
Speaker 1: the environment they're growing up in, you know, I mean
Speaker 1: when you have parents that say, hey, time for your
Speaker 1: daily adderall and homeschooling them to do vision boards about
Speaker 1: Angelina Jolie. What else are you gonna expect from kids? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's seeing at dinner whether so the parents are
Speaker 1: so unaware, and that's you know, can be true for
Speaker 1: a lot of parents of teenagers, um, unaware of what
Speaker 1: their kids are really doing. But they're just you know
Speaker 1: that when Emma, Emma Roberts or Emma Watson is um,
Speaker 1: you know, oh well we borrowed this stuff. You know,
Speaker 1: they're like, where did you get you know, this the
Speaker 1: shirt you're wearing or whatever. She oh, well, we borrowed
Speaker 1: this stuff because um, you know, we're doing this photo shooting.
Speaker 1: Our friend is a stylist or he's a photographer, and
Speaker 1: you know, it's just so easy when you're in that
Speaker 1: world to explain away the fact that you have uh
Speaker 1: ten tho dollar sunglasses on. The parents don't even question it, like, oh,
Speaker 1: like you borrowed it from your friend, your other rich
Speaker 1: friend because his dad has a production company. So of course, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're just woundering their their way through that. But the radar,
Speaker 1: the parents are so oblivious. The radar never goes off
Speaker 1: at all. And then in the end when the cops
Speaker 1: are coming all the they're all just like, what are
Speaker 1: you doing here? What's going on? Yeah? I love uh
Speaker 1: when the cops are coming. I love when they go
Speaker 1: in down the Watson's home because and the Watson it's
Speaker 1: like the first time anyone's treating her how she probably
Speaker 1: should be treated, which is, you know, a little to say,
Speaker 1: to put it lightly sternly, a little you know, a
Speaker 1: little tough love. And they're like, she's like, why do
Speaker 1: we have to sit down? You know, and she's like,
Speaker 1: I want to talk to my mom. And it's just
Speaker 1: those a little bit of delight in the police car
Speaker 1: when she was like, oh yeah, kind of like yeah, good,
Speaker 1: because that's probably the most she suffered. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess thirty Days in Jail was no picnic, sure,
Speaker 1: but come on, yeah, like what kind of jail was it?
Speaker 1: If Lindsay Lowen was in it, probably pretty because you went.
Speaker 1: You know. I will say though, that there isn't really
Speaker 1: a moral center of this movie. If there's anything close
Speaker 1: to that, I would say it's in the character of Mark.
Speaker 1: Would you agree she's the one that at least always
Speaker 1: feels kind of like he's the one that doesn't really
Speaker 1: necessarily want to go on these robberies. And when he's
Speaker 1: doing the Vanity Fair interviews in the movie, he seems
Speaker 1: at least a little bit actually remorseful. Yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: little bit of contrition, and I think, you know, it's
Speaker 1: weird watching it this time. So much of this movie
Speaker 1: felt very sad to me, and especially watching him his
Speaker 1: relationship with Rebecca, because they kind of connect at the
Speaker 1: beginning and they're kind of best friends, and then it quickly,
Speaker 1: in my mind, turns into an abusive relationship where she
Speaker 1: keeps being like, let's Rob, let's Rob, and he doesn't
Speaker 1: want to do it. And I'm not saying he's innocent here,
Speaker 1: because he does go along with it, but it is
Speaker 1: kind of like, man, she's not being a very good
Speaker 1: friend to you. You know, she's using UM and he's
Speaker 1: I totally agree with all that he is the new
Speaker 1: kid he uh. In the interviews, he talks about UM
Speaker 1: like this is the only person you can have the
Speaker 1: remote shred of empathy for. In this movie, he talks
Speaker 1: about never feeling attractive. I never thought I was good
Speaker 1: looking UM and he's so quick to jump in. It
Speaker 1: was it's that first day. I don't know how it
Speaker 1: happened in real life, but that first day in school,
Speaker 1: he's immediately falling into this crowd and going along with whatever.
Speaker 1: Uh rate is it? Rachel. In the movie, Rebecca is saying, um,
Speaker 1: he he doesn't not do it. You're right, and he's
Speaker 1: not off the hook for sure, but you get the
Speaker 1: feeling that he, like, I don't think any of the
Speaker 1: rest of them even think what they're doing is wrong,
Speaker 1: and I think he does, but he's doing it anyway. Yeah,
Speaker 1: He's the one who you maybe are able to closest
Speaker 1: identify some kind of motive or or or empathy for,
Speaker 1: because he you can see that sense of wanting to belong,
Speaker 1: of wanting to have friends, basically I wanting to have
Speaker 1: a community of people who you know are there for you,
Speaker 1: And he does, in some sense get that in a
Speaker 1: twisted way with this group of people. And I also
Speaker 1: love the fact that the way she depicts him because
Speaker 1: he is he is gay. Oh I think he's meant
Speaker 1: to be gay. Well, I couldn't really tell, like it
Speaker 1: it seemed like because he was always he never made
Speaker 1: it past any of the girls. Um, and I kept
Speaker 1: waiting for that to happen, like the first time I
Speaker 1: saw it, But she didn't make it super super obvious
Speaker 1: either way. I think there's a scene where they're going
Speaker 1: to break into his friend's house who's out of town,
Speaker 1: and she says something like do you know him well?
Speaker 1: And he said something like no, but he's pretty hot
Speaker 1: or something like that, and then you know, you see
Speaker 1: him trying on the pink heels and things like that. Right. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's just kind of presented. I don't know, it's
Speaker 1: just a it's a it's a depiction of of somebody
Speaker 1: being gay in a movie that that doesn't sort of
Speaker 1: that feels real center on that for sure. I I don't.
Speaker 1: I think it's just kind of a positive depiction of
Speaker 1: of somebody who's a gay person in a movie, right,
Speaker 1: which is ironic because they're like robbing people. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: I know what you mean. I totally know what you're
Speaker 1: talking about. Um, she doesn't make it like a caricature
Speaker 1: or anything like that or make him like over the top,
Speaker 1: you know, with how he's behaving. Um, he's just a
Speaker 1: kid trying to fit in. Yeah, and you you mentioned
Speaker 1: where one of the lines he has at the beginning
Speaker 1: where he talks about how he's not very good looking,
Speaker 1: and specifically what he says, I even wrote a town
Speaker 1: when I watch because I love the line. I know
Speaker 1: I'm not ugly, I just I don't know. I never
Speaker 1: saw myself as an a list looking guy, which just
Speaker 1: I mean, there it is, you know, the fact that
Speaker 1: he thinks all these kids think in that kind of vocabulary,
Speaker 1: that same line the TMZ sort of like only thinking
Speaker 1: in terms of celebrity A list looking guy. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: he's the only one. What's interesting is that they're in
Speaker 1: Hollywood and his dad's in the biz, you know, and
Speaker 1: like distribution or something. And he's like, yeah, it's kind
Speaker 1: of cool. Sometimes you get to go to screenings, but
Speaker 1: none of them are interested in the art of any
Speaker 1: of it. Like there's Kirston Dunst and it's not like
Speaker 1: I loved her in blank it's there's Kirston Dunce at
Speaker 1: the club and what is she wearing? And it feels
Speaker 1: like that's the mindset of I'm not saying like all
Speaker 1: these kids are like that, but these kids are like that,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, And I keep I I keep always
Speaker 1: wanting to push back a little bit and not defend
Speaker 1: the kids, but at least you know, well, you're a millennial, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm a little older than them, but not that much. Um,
Speaker 1: and at least acknowledge the fact that it's not just
Speaker 1: them as individuals, but it is a construct of a society,
Speaker 1: of a lifestyle that is presented to us via all
Speaker 1: forms of media, not just movies, but social media Instagram, Facebook,
Speaker 1: all these ideal life that allow these types of kids,
Speaker 1: with these types of mentalities and personalities to develop. That's
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. Yeah, and the whole thing with them,
Speaker 1: I get to go to screenings and stuff. Like if
Speaker 1: it's us, we would think that's awesome because you get
Speaker 1: to go to a movie screening and see it before
Speaker 1: everyone else. And like for them, it's you can go
Speaker 1: to a screening because you might be seen or photographed.
Speaker 1: Like it's never again like about the art of it,
Speaker 1: there's not a follow up question like, oh, interesting, what
Speaker 1: kind of films has has your dad worked on? Or
Speaker 1: anything like that. It's like the Red Carpets, Like that's
Speaker 1: what they're they're Wonderingly, It's it's really hard not to
Speaker 1: just go off on that kind of thing. But you're right,
Speaker 1: I don't think they're victims, but it is a societal issue, right,
Speaker 1: and the fact that and it's hard also because they
Speaker 1: are not victims. Nor are the victims victims. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: rich people, the actually really rich people who have entire
Speaker 1: rooms dedicated just to their shoes. You know. Uh, there's
Speaker 1: definitely a very strong critique in there of just the
Speaker 1: fact that this lifestyle is able to exist. You know,
Speaker 1: I agree. I don't know if I want to say
Speaker 1: it's a critique of capitalism, but it's well, I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't think Paris Hilton escapes critique in this movie,
Speaker 1: Like she was like, yeah you did in my house
Speaker 1: because I was a victim of this thing. But when
Speaker 1: you're watching this stuff, all I could think about is
Speaker 1: how much does one person need? You know? But you
Speaker 1: know it's their money. It's not her money. She inherited it,
Speaker 1: of course, but she didn't work for it. Uh. Try
Speaker 1: not to yuck people's yums. People like what they like,
Speaker 1: but it's hard not to get a little up on
Speaker 1: your own high horse. Yeah. Um. But going back to
Speaker 1: Mark and and empathy for him, I think one line
Speaker 1: in particular um sort of reinforces is when he's in
Speaker 1: one of his interviews or depositions, which I don't know
Speaker 1: if you I'm sure you notice is sort of set
Speaker 1: up in a reality TV diary room sort of way
Speaker 1: they always have the diary room where you can just
Speaker 1: go and like talk to camera. Sort of has that feel. UM.
Speaker 1: But in one of those interviews, he's talking about um
Speaker 1: her being his first like best friend he's ever had,
Speaker 1: and he flat out says, I think that's what he's
Speaker 1: The line is, it's like she's the first best friend
Speaker 1: I've ever had. And you don't get any of his background,
Speaker 1: but aside from the fact that he went to the
Speaker 1: bad boys school because he skipped too much school otherwise,
Speaker 1: but he seems like a kid without a lot of friends.
Speaker 1: Yeah until this, Yeah, agreed, and that's what again. Not
Speaker 1: feeling sorry for any of them, but it does kind
Speaker 1: of sting a little bit at the end where they
Speaker 1: show up at the courtroom and she doesn't even look
Speaker 1: at him. Yeah. Well, one of them says, how how
Speaker 1: does it feel to be a rat? Yeah, because he's
Speaker 1: the one who kind of I guess told tops everything.
Speaker 1: They would have found them all anyway. I mean when
Speaker 1: you're you're posting all this stuff on Facebook, like yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean they're on the they're on the home security
Speaker 1: on TV, and they still do a robbery after that
Speaker 1: a couple I think, and maybe there's a sense of
Speaker 1: like they're hoping to get caught, or they at least
Speaker 1: are hoping to be noticed, you know, Yeah, that's why
Speaker 1: they keep doing it. Maybe well they were finally on
Speaker 1: the news. Um, they're so brazen. But it's again, although
Speaker 1: it follows a sort of standard crime film, they're not
Speaker 1: brazen because they're brave, or because they're skilled or experienced,
Speaker 1: because they're not even you know, they're just walking into homes.
Speaker 1: They're brazen because they're entitled and they don't see any repercussions.
Speaker 1: At the end of this, like you get the feeling
Speaker 1: these kids have never been punished for anything, and except
Speaker 1: for maybe having to go to the you know, the
Speaker 1: bad person school and the fact that you know, talking
Speaker 1: about how it follows the standard crime story except for
Speaker 1: the epilogue at the end with with Nikki where she's
Speaker 1: on that interview show and you know, it's the right
Speaker 1: up until this point, the hammer has finally come down
Speaker 1: and they've gotten their sentences and then boom, she's on
Speaker 1: a TV interview show and she's telling everybody, you can
Speaker 1: hear my side of the story, what's the last thing
Speaker 1: you hear at Nicki Moore forever dot com. And she
Speaker 1: has charlaid this experience into some minor form of celebrity. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they all did for a little while. Um, the gun
Speaker 1: scene was uh, And I've seen this in other scenes
Speaker 1: like this, when an idiot has a gun and they're
Speaker 1: waving it around, it makes me want to crawl out
Speaker 1: of my skin. It makes me so nervous and uptight.
Speaker 1: I can't explain it, no exact same reaction. I am
Speaker 1: so tense me too, because I've I've been in sort
Speaker 1: of not not quite that way, but I've been in
Speaker 1: situations where somebody has a firearm and somebody you're afraid
Speaker 1: of them handling it wrong, you know. I've been at
Speaker 1: friends houses who they're hunters and they have their shotgun
Speaker 1: in the room and somebody just picks it up and
Speaker 1: immediately nervous, And you're immediately nervous and the barrel might
Speaker 1: come near you a little bit, and I freaked the
Speaker 1: funk out. I can't even I have to get out
Speaker 1: of the room. Now, I'm with you. I like, we've
Speaker 1: we've read the news stories. That's how people get their
Speaker 1: sucking head blown off on accident. And she's being so careless,
Speaker 1: and you know that it's even ramped up even further
Speaker 1: because she's never held a gun before. She has no idea,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean everyone knows you squeeze a trigger,
Speaker 1: but like, it's just the carelessness is so off the
Speaker 1: charts that I like at a hard time even sitting
Speaker 1: through that scene. And I knew nothing happened. I had
Speaker 1: seen it before, and I was still just like, God,
Speaker 1: somebody because he was shoving her armed away, and then
Speaker 1: she started to get aggressive, like you canna shove me,
Speaker 1: You're gonna shove me, And I was just like Emily
Speaker 1: and I were both just like, oh my god, please
Speaker 1: let this end. And then yeah, it doesn't go off.
Speaker 1: In the next scene, she the girl who's holding it.
Speaker 1: Um I forget the character's name. She's one of kind
Speaker 1: of the minor members of the Bloom Ring. Yeah, she's
Speaker 1: the pseudo adopted sister. She goes to her boyfriends and
Speaker 1: sneaks in and then they start kissing and the gun
Speaker 1: goes off and then they just drop it. It doesn't
Speaker 1: shoot anybody, and then they just go to have sex,
Speaker 1: which is just kind of repercussions. No repercussions. Yeah, very
Speaker 1: good point, no repercussions. Yeah, this sort of reinforces that.
Speaker 1: Um just you know, but like every Sophia movie, like
Speaker 1: it looks great, it sounds great. Um, she always does
Speaker 1: such a great job. Like I can never wait to
Speaker 1: see what she does next, especially as we've seen her
Speaker 1: career um progress to do. You know, we're going to
Speaker 1: hit the B Guild at some point, which is a
Speaker 1: whole different left turn for her. But um, she's one
Speaker 1: of those filmmakers that I just can't wait to see
Speaker 1: what happens, you know. Yeah, And um, you know, talking
Speaker 1: about the cinematography, we mentioned it earlier, but uh, this
Speaker 1: film was for the first film she saw digitally. All
Speaker 1: of our other films were shot on film. Interesting, and
Speaker 1: I think this is the perfect perfect type of story
Speaker 1: to shoot digitally, right because it has that very you know,
Speaker 1: it doesn't have the greenness of film, has that almost
Speaker 1: too crystal clear um look to it. I love how
Speaker 1: she shoots the neighborhoods where it's just all this kind
Speaker 1: of washed out white or page you know, and like
Speaker 1: the the interiors of the homes, and then that's contrasted
Speaker 1: with the scenes at the clubs, are the scenes in
Speaker 1: the celebrities homes where there's much more sort of life
Speaker 1: and color, whereas they're kind of in the suburbs in
Speaker 1: this very monotonous Calabasas is pretty terrible. I've never been there.
Speaker 1: You've been there, Yeah, Yeah, it's it's awful. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it's just deep, deep valley, Like, uh, I had
Speaker 1: to shoot out there a couple of times. Is the
Speaker 1: only reason you would ever go to Calabasas unless you
Speaker 1: live there. Like there's nothing there except for you know,
Speaker 1: the exurbs of l a Um, just the sprawl of
Speaker 1: the south Land. It's depressing. She definitely feels like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: absolutely Sofia Coppla has a knack for nailing like a
Speaker 1: time and place, uh more than many filmmakers that I've seen.
Speaker 1: And and they are always different times in places. So
Speaker 1: it's not like she really knows this one thing, Like
Speaker 1: you know, Woody Allen's Manhattan in New York, not the
Speaker 1: movie Manhattan, but you know, um, she she's all over
Speaker 1: the map, but she really nails the time and place,
Speaker 1: and boy, certainly this movie with the club scene and
Speaker 1: uh and just that deep Valley x urb contrasted with
Speaker 1: the Hollywood Hills. I mean, it's all very, very spot on.
Speaker 1: It just gives the viewer real sense of exactly what
Speaker 1: it's like. She's yeah, and we've talked about this before,
Speaker 1: how she's a master capturing a mood. Yeah. And that's
Speaker 1: also maybe why this film is a little befuddling at first,
Speaker 1: because it is still just in some ways it is
Speaker 1: another mood piece, and yet it's a mood piece with
Speaker 1: characters you don't really feel any sympathy for. But watching
Speaker 1: it this time, I feel like when I first saw it,
Speaker 1: I was kind of like, I don't know if this
Speaker 1: felt very different for a Sofia Coppola film. But then
Speaker 1: watching it again now, I was like, no, this is
Speaker 1: very reaction, natural progression from Marie Antoinette to somewhere to this,
Speaker 1: Like it doesn't feel out of place in her filmography
Speaker 1: at all. I totally agree, man. And the first time
Speaker 1: I saw it, I thought the same thing. I was like, boy,
Speaker 1: this is a departure and it's really not. It's it's
Speaker 1: sort of a similar there's there's a through line through
Speaker 1: all her movies. I think, Um, I don't know about
Speaker 1: The Buguild yet because I need to revisit that only
Speaker 1: saw it once. That did feel like a departure. Um,
Speaker 1: although it's still you know, about a group of young women,
Speaker 1: which you know she's always sort of attract did too.
Speaker 1: Um as far as the movie goes, you know, they
Speaker 1: finally get busted and then they're still so you know,
Speaker 1: they're trying on what to wear the court and talking
Speaker 1: about it and they're still the only thing they're consider
Speaker 1: You get the feeling they still don't even know they
Speaker 1: did anything wrong. And I love the shots of them
Speaker 1: sort of walking in to the to the courthouse where
Speaker 1: there's paparazzi all around, and the way it's shot, it
Speaker 1: feels like watching celebrities watch walk into courtrooms. Were just
Speaker 1: like the way paparazzi stocks celebrities. Marks got his black
Speaker 1: suit on and his sunglasses and they all kind of
Speaker 1: are wearing their their their Sunday best a little bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think they enjoyed the moment, oh absolutely, Like this
Speaker 1: is almost like they got what they wanted a little bit. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And they the way she handled the court um scene,
Speaker 1: which didn't even happen, was kind of perfect. Like you
Speaker 1: see that that great shot of the court room doors
Speaker 1: open up and they're all in there and getting seated,
Speaker 1: and you think, all right, the trial is about to begin,
Speaker 1: and and then all you see is the door shut
Speaker 1: and then reopen afterward. And that's kind of the point.
Speaker 1: You don't need to see any of that. Like, as
Speaker 1: a viewer, part of me wants to hear what is
Speaker 1: said in there. You almost want to hear, like the
Speaker 1: judge tell these yeah, lay it to them, tell these
Speaker 1: kids off. But it actually kind of fits with what
Speaker 1: she's going for, which is not many consequences. You're not
Speaker 1: gonna get. You're not gonna get that satisfaction as a
Speaker 1: viewer of knowing that I'm better than these people. You know, yeah, man,
Speaker 1: and it and it's I get why it frustrates people.
Speaker 1: It frustrated me. I never really thought about that, man,
Speaker 1: that that kind of nails it on the head, Like
Speaker 1: you want to sit there and see the judge throw
Speaker 1: the book at him and tell them like you have
Speaker 1: no idea about consequences, and you're all privileged and you're
Speaker 1: you know, you've dressed up to come here like all
Speaker 1: the things that you're thinking as a viewer, and she
Speaker 1: doesn't give you that. She denies it because it's it's
Speaker 1: easy to do that. Yeah, and it's it's an easy,
Speaker 1: totally way to in araciate yourself to the viewer, which
Speaker 1: I don't think is what she's going for. She's a
Speaker 1: much more thoughtful filmmaker than that. I don't Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And really interesting the you know, talking about the critique,
Speaker 1: the critiques that are in the movie. One thing I
Speaker 1: just want to mention, which I think is really interesting
Speaker 1: in another very subtle critique is the character of I
Speaker 1: think it's Chloe, and she's the one. She's she's blonde,
Speaker 1: and she's the one that's like friends with the guy
Speaker 1: who works at the club played by Gavin Rosdale. She's
Speaker 1: the one that gets in the in the car crash
Speaker 1: the d So what's interesting about her is she the
Speaker 1: way she sort of carries herself is she's she's one
Speaker 1: of those those white people who loves to appropriate hip
Speaker 1: hop culture. She's listening to Rick Ross, She's singing along
Speaker 1: to these rap songs. She's she's, you know, talking about
Speaker 1: how Gangsteres she looks and then you know all that stuff,
Speaker 1: and then it isn't until near the end when they're
Speaker 1: in the police are coming to everyone's house that you
Speaker 1: see where she lives and hers is the scene where
Speaker 1: the you don't see the police come in, but you
Speaker 1: just hear the sirens approaching, but she lives in. She
Speaker 1: lives in like probably she's probably the most wealthy one
Speaker 1: of them all. She's that kitchen where you see the
Speaker 1: mom and a dad in the business suit and the
Speaker 1: two dogs and then the maid who is a person
Speaker 1: of color in the background, and it's just this very
Speaker 1: probably the nicest house you've seen out of the kid
Speaker 1: where and how you know she's she comes from the
Speaker 1: place of more privilege than any of the other people,
Speaker 1: and how she sort of still parlays that into appropriating
Speaker 1: hip hop culture and trying to trying to you know,
Speaker 1: her privilege allows her to do that. And it's just
Speaker 1: it's another one of those very subtle critiques that is there.
Speaker 1: But you see, man, she's more than the other kids.
Speaker 1: That spoils just that one static shot and that was
Speaker 1: so well done too, because you hear those sirens in
Speaker 1: the background and no one notices and everyone's going about
Speaker 1: their morning and then you hear him get a little
Speaker 1: bit closer and she plays it out for a nice
Speaker 1: long stretch and you see her at the kitchen island
Speaker 1: just sort of like ship like she sort of realizes,
Speaker 1: you think, like she knows what's coming. Um. And then
Speaker 1: the other thing that that was real telling was was
Speaker 1: Gavin Rossdale, who plays what was he the he's a
Speaker 1: club owner, right, who moves the rolex is at one point, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is why he got busted. I guess he helped
Speaker 1: move some of the stuff, but his place which was
Speaker 1: I mean, dude, you still haven't been to l A, Right,
Speaker 1: I've been there but briefly. Okay, well you need to
Speaker 1: go again, and like come out there when I'm there
Speaker 1: and I'll drive you around to show you, like on
Speaker 1: a tour of these built in the fifties or sixties
Speaker 1: l A apartment complexes called like you know, you know,
Speaker 1: the Palm Springs or something. They always have these like
Speaker 1: sunny names, and that's what this one had. And it's
Speaker 1: so like I gotd have been in those apartments before
Speaker 1: I was just shitty. I was just in a Tucson,
Speaker 1: Arizona for work, and they have a lot of those
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah, yeah, two sounds pretty cool. It is
Speaker 1: actually a cool town. Yeah, I liked it a lot.
Speaker 1: That's awesome. Uh, well, you got anything else? Closing thoughts?
Speaker 1: Closing thoughts. Man, I just gotta say I underrated this
Speaker 1: one when I first saw it. It's a much better
Speaker 1: film than I originally gave a credit four. If you
Speaker 1: haven't watched it in a while, watch it by low
Speaker 1: by low. The stock is rising on the blingering, I
Speaker 1: think because it's a it's a it's a it's a
Speaker 1: very good film. Yeah, I read. I read a few
Speaker 1: reviews this morning, and um, many of them are tepid.
Speaker 1: But this one review I can't remember where it was.
Speaker 1: A sort of was really jobbing with this guy because
Speaker 1: he was like, I think it's sort of very underrated,
Speaker 1: and he said, you know, I think it's one of
Speaker 1: her best films, even and everyone got it wrong, like
Speaker 1: no one, No one got it that what she was
Speaker 1: trying to do here, And I think I think I
Speaker 1: sort of agree. And you know what my client kind
Speaker 1: of closing thought is. And even I actually thought this
Speaker 1: when I first saw it in theaters, I was thinking,
Speaker 1: I wonder how this film will play, how it will
Speaker 1: feel years from now, and we're what six years on now,
Speaker 1: it already feels a little dated, dated, not in a
Speaker 1: way that makes it feel like it's not not a
Speaker 1: good film, but it feels very of its time, and like,
Speaker 1: twenty years from now, how is this movie gonna play?
Speaker 1: There's something, There's something. It's almost like watching an Antonioni
Speaker 1: film like Laventure or something where it's about this sort
Speaker 1: of on we this sort of listlessness of that time
Speaker 1: and place, and I'm very curious to you know, see
Speaker 1: when we revisit it again twenty years from now. I
Speaker 1: think I think so too. I think it lays well yea, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's a satire and I think I think
Speaker 1: twenty forty years from now it will be you can
Speaker 1: look back and like you said, it's like, oh, America
Speaker 1: in two thousand eight or whenever, two thousand nine, this
Speaker 1: weird period it um because hopefully things aren't like that
Speaker 1: anymore in forty years, and it will be this little
Speaker 1: snapshot of this weird time in our culture where it'll
Speaker 1: probably be, oh, that's how we got to where we are,
Speaker 1: and maybe so this was it might be the seed
Speaker 1: of it all. Yeah, But I think this film is
Speaker 1: gonna age well, uh, anyone who's not appreciating it, now
Speaker 1: you're gonna be eating crow in when they're doing best
Speaker 1: of the ads lists again. Yeah, so well done. Sofia Coppola,
Speaker 1: um much more enjoyed at this time. And I look
Speaker 1: forward well, I mean we gotta do. We an't got
Speaker 1: two more right, Virgen Suicides, which Emily is still going
Speaker 1: to join us for that, and then The Beguiled, So
Speaker 1: I'm not sure which one will be next, but um,
Speaker 1: I'm looking forward to doing those and then you and
Speaker 1: I moving on to something else. But I want to
Speaker 1: complete or like Casey bailed on Kubrick because there's just
Speaker 1: too many. Yeah, we did our nice Kubrick run and
Speaker 1: then started mixing it up. But she's contained enough and
Speaker 1: then her next film that comes out, we should just
Speaker 1: kind of jump in and do those right away. I
Speaker 1: was gonna ask you, what did what does Emily think
Speaker 1: of the Bling Ring? She? Uh, I think she's sort
Speaker 1: of with me, like and us, Like the first time
Speaker 1: she saw it, we were both thought it was a
Speaker 1: little slight and a little not super substantial, and now
Speaker 1: both realized like, oh that's kind of the point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but she watched most of it last night, ended up
Speaker 1: going to sleep kind of before the end. But um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think she's on she's on board with us. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm only I can't wait to uh to talk about
Speaker 1: virgin suicides with you. Yeah, we'll get in here that
Speaker 1: that should be the next one, I think, and then
Speaker 1: we'll finish with the guild. All right. Well, thank you everybody,
Speaker 1: and thank you Paul, and we'll see you next time.
Speaker 1: Loomy Crush has produced, edited, and engineered by Ramsey unt
Speaker 1: here in our home studio at Pont City Market, Atlanta, Georgia.
Speaker 1: For I Heart Radio from more podcasts. For my Heart Radio,
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