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Speaker 2: Hey, folks, Michael Phillips here, thanks for checking out this
Speaker 2: new enterprise called the Movie Racket. It's the latest addition
Speaker 2: to the expanding podcast lineup under the Film Spotting production banner.
Speaker 2: And you know, some of you probably know that I've
Speaker 2: joined Adam and Josh Over on Film Spotting here and
Speaker 2: there now and then for a few years now. And
Speaker 2: we've also talked about me doing something on my own
Speaker 2: for a little while, just so they could take a
Speaker 2: break from all my undermining of their opinions. So here
Speaker 2: it is Season one of the Movie Racket. And the
Speaker 2: idea is this. For more than a century, the movie
Speaker 2: industry has spun off a long list of unwritten rules
Speaker 2: and guidelines for what makes a movie work, the secrets
Speaker 2: of success, the theories to live by, or at least
Speaker 2: film by. You could start with screenwriter William Goldman's epic
Speaker 2: three word reminder that in Hollywood nobody knows anything comes
Speaker 2: from his book Adventures in the Screen Trade. Quite famous,
Speaker 2: and even people who don't know what the hell they're
Speaker 2: doing currently in Hollywood, even if they're twenty two, they
Speaker 2: have memorized those three words and pull them out at
Speaker 2: meetings just because they think they're the first one to
Speaker 2: quote William Goldman. Most of the great directors, a lot
Speaker 2: of ordinary ones I think too, had their own Quippi
Speaker 2: theories over the years about their line of work. A
Speaker 2: good movie is three good scenes and no bad ones.
Speaker 2: Howard Hawkes said that what the public wants is a
Speaker 2: gun and a girl. That one's usually quoted the other
Speaker 2: way around, a girl and a gun. Either way, that's
Speaker 2: what makes a movie. That's the idea of sex and violence.
Speaker 2: No argument that we're done talking about it, although in
Speaker 2: America we sexualize everything except sex.
Speaker 3: But that's another story.
Speaker 2: Who said that?
Speaker 4: Who said what the.
Speaker 2: Public wants is a gun and a girl? Was not
Speaker 2: Howard Hawks wasn't Jean le Goadar. The answer may surprise you,
Speaker 2: and we're going to get to that one in upcoming
Speaker 2: episode of the movie Racket. So the more we looked
Speaker 2: at these truisms, these ideological beliefs about cinema, the sneakier
Speaker 2: they got, the ones that sounded and maybe still sound
Speaker 2: like total bs actually might be hiding something kind of
Speaker 2: useful and instructive for young filmmakers, young audiences, young podcasts listeners,
Speaker 2: old podcast listeners.
Speaker 4: The so called.
Speaker 2: Rules blueprints for success that sound reliable, solid. Maybe time
Speaker 2: has done its thing and rendered him antiques, and maybe
Speaker 2: they never were all that.
Speaker 4: To begin with, the writ is king here at Capitol Pictures.
Speaker 4: We're only interested in one thing. Can you tell a
Speaker 4: story bot? Can you make us laugh? Can you make
Speaker 4: us cry? Can you make us want to break out
Speaker 4: enjoy a song? Is that more than one thing?
Speaker 2: Okay mondays here on the Movie Racket, our special guest
Speaker 2: co star and I are going to examine a nugget
Speaker 2: of film theory, a truism that may or may not
Speaker 2: be true, a few words of Hollywood wisdom or filmmaking warning,
Speaker 2: and you might just come away with something new to
Speaker 2: think about. Sir Isaac Newton had his Laws of Motion.
Speaker 2: The twenty twenty sixth season of the Movie Racket gives
Speaker 2: you the Laws of Motion Pictures and this week's guest.
Speaker 2: Our first guest is actor director ari Em Cover, band
Speaker 2: Touring Phenomenon, and two time Academy Award nominee Michael Shannon.
Speaker 2: Since he's a two time Academy Award nominee for Revolutionary
Speaker 2: Road and for Nocturnal Animals, I gave Guy a couple
Speaker 2: of options to pick for our inaugural movie Law, and
Speaker 2: Michael chose the one you're about to hear. It comes
Speaker 2: from Francois Trufau and this interview he did with Gene
Speaker 2: Siskel of the Chicago Tribune that was three film critics
Speaker 2: before me back in nineteen seventy three. This is when
Speaker 2: Trufaux was promoting the US release of Day for Night.
Speaker 2: So Cisco and Trufau got on the topic of what
Speaker 2: Trufau believed to be the central paradox with war films,
Speaker 2: especially war movies partly or largely driven by combat life
Speaker 2: and death survival, and Trufau said simply, this, every film
Speaker 2: about war ends up being pro war. In other words,
Speaker 2: there's no such thing as an anti war film. And
Speaker 2: ciscl was like, wait a minute, Francois, what about Kubrick's
Speaker 2: Paths a Glory, and Trufau said no, and he wouldn't budge,
Speaker 2: and Siskel thought he was just being reductive or dismissive.
Speaker 2: And then, as Ciscle wrote later on, he couldn't shake
Speaker 2: Truffau's assertion that had so shaken his own ideas about
Speaker 2: anti war films and war on screen in general. So
Speaker 2: was true, Faull Wright does putting war and combat on
Speaker 2: screen somehow invariably juice the narrative you're telling in the
Speaker 2: direction of excitement and a kind of bloodthirsty instinct, even
Speaker 2: in a well behaved audience or the most pacifist temperament.
Speaker 2: Shannon goes at that question as a working actor and
Speaker 2: as a longtime movie lover, and he also reveals which
Speaker 2: war movie for him was the first one that really
Speaker 2: meant something to him as a young moviegoer. And he
Speaker 2: talks about working on Pearl Harbor, the movie, not the
Speaker 2: actual event, with director Michael Bay, who will never be
Speaker 2: confused with an anti war filmmaking temperament.
Speaker 3: We're going to talk today about something that Francois Truffau
Speaker 3: said in an interview with Jeene Ciscoll and The Chicago
Speaker 3: Tribune back in nineteen seventy three, and the sentence is
Speaker 3: very simple. Trufo said, every film about war ends up
Speaker 3: being pro war.
Speaker 4: I know that I've always been fascinated by war for
Speaker 4: a variety of reasons. I find it one of the
Speaker 4: most confusing things that human beings do is that we
Speaker 4: wage war upon one another. I've never heard a reason
Speaker 4: for it that's made any sense to me. And the
Speaker 4: fundamental question I think for me with war is war necessary?
Speaker 4: Because it seems like it must be necessary because it
Speaker 4: happens all the time. It's been happening for millennia, that
Speaker 4: people have to form groups and be in opposition to
Speaker 4: one another. And I guess one of the things that
Speaker 4: struck me about what Trufo said is that I think, fundamentally,
Speaker 4: like underneath it all, I think everybody understands that killing
Speaker 4: another human being is not something you should do for
Speaker 4: any reason. It's kind of like in the film I directed,
Speaker 4: Eric LaRue. At the end of the film, Eric Daru,
Speaker 4: who is in prison for killing people, says to his mother,
Speaker 4: no human being should kill another human being, period. And
Speaker 4: this is a person who has actually killed people, so
Speaker 4: he should know. And yet we constantly are killing people
Speaker 4: and trying to justify it with history or religion. But
Speaker 4: all of that say, I think filmmaking can't help but
Speaker 4: make whatever it's portraying alluring, whether it's war or murder.
Speaker 4: You don't make a film to bore the heck out
Speaker 4: of people. You don't say, Okay, let's get all these
Speaker 4: cameras and this big crew and go out and make
Speaker 4: the most boring, unappealing nonsense we can possibly make so
Speaker 4: that nobody will have any interest in watching it. So
Speaker 4: if you're making a film about something, you're going to
Speaker 4: make it look interesting, intriguing. You want people to be
Speaker 4: curious about it, And so that's inherent in the process,
Speaker 4: whether you're making a picture about war or anything else.
Speaker 4: But I also think it's because, like I said, people know,
Speaker 4: people know it's wrong. Like I don't care. I've heard
Speaker 4: all this stuff. You know, you take the Israel Palestine
Speaker 4: situation and you try and insert yourself into that, and
Speaker 4: people will say, well, it's too complicated for you to understand.
Speaker 4: You don't understand the history of this place, this land,
Speaker 4: you don't understand how many centuries this has been going on,
Speaker 4: and a la da da da da I'm like, I
Speaker 4: may not I may not understand it as well as
Speaker 4: you do. I may not be as as informed as
Speaker 4: you are about the history of it. But the one
Speaker 4: thing that I and every other sentient human being in
Speaker 4: the universe knows is that you shouldn't kill somebody like
Speaker 4: you just shouldn't kill somebody, period. So it's a huge
Speaker 4: obstacle to overcome if you're going to go out and
Speaker 4: kill a bunch of people. Is that that fundamental understanding
Speaker 4: that we all have. And part of that, I think
Speaker 4: is cinema of war. It makes war look like it
Speaker 4: is a noble thing to go out and kill people
Speaker 4: like and it's justified or you know, and god, this
Speaker 4: answer is like two hours long, but it's all right there.
Speaker 4: The show is going to be six okay. Cool, And
Speaker 4: inevitably a war film has a hero, like you can't help.
Speaker 4: If there's a war, there's a hero, And if you're
Speaker 4: making a film about war, you're not going to leave
Speaker 4: the hero out of the film, because that would be silly.
Speaker 4: Because again it goes back to the earlier point I
Speaker 4: was making about wanting to make a film that's appealing
Speaker 4: and intriguing to other people to watch. So one way
Speaker 4: you do that is you put a hero in the movie.
Speaker 4: So every movie about war, I think he's going to
Speaker 4: have a hero.
Speaker 3: I guess I would push back though, with you on
Speaker 3: one thing, Michael, so far of what you said, I
Speaker 3: don't know if these are commercial dictates of the medium
Speaker 3: of movies that must make films about war. Focus on
Speaker 3: what you say, you know, the hero or just see
Speaker 3: the kind of visceral, gripping thrill of some of the action,
Speaker 3: the life and death moment to moment, kind of rhythmic
Speaker 3: beats of combat and who's living and who's dying. You
Speaker 3: can't help a big grip by that. And I think
Speaker 3: we all were at a certain age, especially boys, you know.
Speaker 3: I mean it took me a while to realize. At
Speaker 3: age eight, when I saw The Green Berets on TV,
Speaker 3: I thought it was I don't know, I thought it
Speaker 3: was all right, pretty good, you know, And then I
Speaker 3: saw it as an adolescent, and then by then the
Speaker 3: aggravating critic NERD was born, and I thought, what in
Speaker 3: hell did I fall for when I was just a
Speaker 3: kid at a.
Speaker 4: J that's as two nine or Savoy over buffed the Brown?
Speaker 4: Where do you want it put? It on a camp.
Speaker 1: Other people have it way, don't over you only take.
Speaker 5: Him in it, you know.
Speaker 3: In other words, a war movie that only has propaganda
Speaker 3: and villainizing the obvious adversary. It's mine, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean? I mean that was mine. My kind of
Speaker 3: like we're awaking. But I you know, when you're young,
Speaker 3: you don't really think through what's going on on a
Speaker 3: movie because it is literally life and death all the time,
Speaker 3: which is as a moviegoer, is kind of almost beyond aesthetics.
Speaker 3: But I don't know, was there a war movie for
Speaker 3: you when you were young. It's sort of just like, yeah, wow,
Speaker 3: I really grabbed me. This one grabbed me.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Star Wars. Fear will keep the local systems in line.
Speaker 4: Fear of this battle station and what of the rebellion.
Speaker 4: If the rebels have obtained a complete technical read out
Speaker 4: of this station, it is possible, however unlikely, that they
Speaker 4: might find a weakness and exploit it. The plans you
Speaker 4: refer to will soon be back in our hands. Any
Speaker 4: attack made by the rebels against this station would be
Speaker 4: a useless gesture. No matter what technical data they've obtained.
Speaker 4: This station is now the ultimate power in the universe.
Speaker 4: I suggest we use.
Speaker 3: It war film. Interesting, nobody calls it that, and it's
Speaker 3: in the title.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's in the title. But you know, I don't
Speaker 4: want to like too my own horn or anything, but
Speaker 4: I've had I don't know if i'd say the pleasure,
Speaker 4: but the opportunity to participate in a lot of movies
Speaker 4: about war and the military and a lot of movies
Speaker 4: that have violence in them. And I don't dispute what
Speaker 4: you're saying. I'm just thinking about what the proposal that
Speaker 4: Truffo is making with his statement that a film about
Speaker 4: war has to be pro war. And I'm not even
Speaker 4: necessarily agreeing or disagreeing with what he's saying, but I
Speaker 4: do think again, I just go back to and this
Speaker 4: is based on my experiences, like I said, having participated
Speaker 4: in so many projects having to do with war, is
Speaker 4: that war is inexplicable and ridiculous, and we do it
Speaker 4: and we have to spend a lot mental energy like
Speaker 4: justifying why we do it, because it's it really shouldn't happen.
Speaker 4: There's no justification for it. In my mind, it makes
Speaker 4: no sense, you know. But my favorite writer is Ian Esco,
Speaker 4: Eugenie and Esco and he used to say, I actually
Speaker 4: did a play and you might have seen it because
Speaker 4: we did it at Red Orchid. We did it at
Speaker 4: Red Orchid twice. Actually we did it in our early days,
Speaker 4: and then we remounted it. It's called Victims of Duty
Speaker 4: by Eugenie and Esco. And in the play there's a
Speaker 4: character who has a line says, every story is a
Speaker 4: detective story. I believe that. I believe that's true. Every
Speaker 4: story is a detective story. You're always trying to solve
Speaker 4: a mystery, and so yeah, war movies are trying to
Speaker 4: solve the mystery of why we go to war. I
Speaker 4: guess it's such a waste war. It's not just a
Speaker 4: waste of human life, it's a waste of money, resources, time,
Speaker 4: and it never seems to lead to anything. I mean,
Speaker 4: I guess every movie about war winds up being pro
Speaker 4: war because in a war, there are at least two sides,
Speaker 4: and you're going to align yourself with one of the
Speaker 4: two sides as a person. If you're watching Group A
Speaker 4: and Group B at war and you're watching a movie
Speaker 4: about it, eventually you're gonna be like, well, I want
Speaker 4: group B to win, or I want Group A to win.
Speaker 4: I want somebody to win. You don't want both sides
Speaker 4: to lose, right, you don't want everybody to just die
Speaker 4: and that's the end, like somebody wins. So that's what
Speaker 4: I guess Troupfo probably was maybe was thinking, is that
Speaker 4: if you're watching a movie about war, you wind up
Speaker 4: rooting for somebody. But I don't know how you can
Speaker 4: make a movie about this current conflict and have a
Speaker 4: side that you're rooting for. I mean, look, one of
Speaker 4: my closest dearest friends is a filmmaker I've worked with
Speaker 4: a couple of times, Ram and Barani, and we just
Speaker 4: had lunch the other week, and he's his family's from
Speaker 4: Iran and he spent a few years there and his
Speaker 4: wife is Iranian and he can't even talk about it.
Speaker 4: He's so upset he can't even talk about it. And yeah,
Speaker 4: like you said, I you know, I don't think this
Speaker 4: is a podcast in which people will discover the secret
Speaker 4: to world peace or something, but I do think it's
Speaker 4: it's very strange how they changed the name of the
Speaker 4: Department of Defense back to the Department of War. That
Speaker 4: didn't seem necessary or beneficial to anyone. Really, I get
Speaker 4: the feeling that there's a lot of stuff that's happening
Speaker 4: right now. That is basically what it boils down to
Speaker 4: is there are super rich people that kind of want
Speaker 4: things to happen the way they want them to happen.
Speaker 4: And if that sounds like a conspiracy theory, so be it.
Speaker 4: But it is all connected. It's connected in scary, freaky
Speaker 4: ways now because what happened is destroying show business in
Speaker 4: this industry that I somehow managed to find my way into.
Speaker 4: Is that big tech billionaires said, hey, let's take over Hollywood.
Speaker 4: And that is like destroying the whole shebang. But there's
Speaker 4: always been money in Hollywood that comes from questionable places,
Speaker 4: but it's really beyond the pale right now. And so
Speaker 4: war movies are expensive buy and large. It's pretty difficult
Speaker 4: to make a cheap war movie, yeah, and so that
Speaker 4: money's got to come from somewhere, and I mean particularly nowadays.
Speaker 4: Maybe back in the twenties you could have made a
Speaker 4: cheap war movie I don't know, you know, out in
Speaker 4: the desert or something. But nowadays they got to have
Speaker 4: all the exciting effects and gizmos and all that, and
Speaker 4: you know, big expensive movie stars and all that. So
Speaker 4: they need a lot of money. So the people that
Speaker 4: give the money to make the Warfroone were like, we
Speaker 4: will give you this mountain of money to make this movie.
Speaker 4: As long as the movie says this and it makes
Speaker 4: these people look like this and it makes the audience
Speaker 4: feel this way, then we'll give you the money. If
Speaker 4: you don't want to do if you don't want to
Speaker 4: agree to all that ahead of time, then you can
Speaker 4: go somewhere else and see who will give you amount
Speaker 4: of money, because it won't be us. And that's kind
Speaker 4: of how it goes now.
Speaker 3: Generation ago early film for you was Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor, Yes,
Speaker 3: which would fit the description just in terms of the
Speaker 3: size of it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, in honor of our trip to Japan, I got
Speaker 4: some uh hectree cigar, Yeah, gigar there you go, get
Speaker 4: in your inside pocket pet to your art. You know, Jack,
Speaker 4: we may lose this battle, the would and win this war.
Speaker 4: You know how I know? No, because they're rare.
Speaker 3: What's your memory of the whole thing? It's uh, it's
Speaker 3: not the best written war film ever.
Speaker 4: Oh it's funny you say that, because yeah, it was
Speaker 4: not as grip that you get embossed in gold or
Speaker 4: something and frame for posterity. But there's two things I
Speaker 4: would say about that is one day I was on
Speaker 4: the set, because you know, we spent a considerable amount
Speaker 4: of time in Pro Harbor itself, and the whole Pro
Speaker 4: Harbor sequence we shot filmed there, and we took it over.
Speaker 4: We ran around like crazy people for a while a
Speaker 4: month or so. I remember getting these incredible headaches from
Speaker 4: just running around inhaling smoke and listening explosions all day long.
Speaker 4: And you played I just played some random you know.
Speaker 4: I was a co pilot. Goose was my name. I
Speaker 4: was a surfer. But the main heroes were being Affle
Speaker 4: like and Josh. There were some of us to add
Speaker 4: a little bit of color, character, funniness or comedy. So
Speaker 4: that was me and a couple other fellas, you and Bremner,
Speaker 4: who's remained a dear friend of mine. He played a
Speaker 4: character named Red because he had red hair. You know,
Speaker 4: these are the massive concepts we're dealing with. But it
Speaker 4: was a very very odd thing to run around where
Speaker 4: this actually happened and pretended pretend to recreate it because
Speaker 4: it was a catastrophe. It was a complete disaster. It
Speaker 4: was one of the saddest events in human history. And
Speaker 4: yet we're here and it's not like we're trying to
Speaker 4: make it seem like something else, like it was a
Speaker 4: big party or something. I mean, we are running for
Speaker 4: our lives. You know, people are dying and things are
Speaker 4: on fire, and like I said, there's explosions and smoke
Speaker 4: and all this. But it is being recreated for the
Speaker 4: entertainment of other people. Like I said, it's not being
Speaker 4: recreated to be like a drag or like something you
Speaker 4: don't want to watch. It is being recreated specifically and
Speaker 4: thought about as like I said, as Michael like you
Speaker 4: were saying, Michael Bay, He's not thinking about the moral dilemma.
Speaker 4: He's thinking about how do I make this as irresistible
Speaker 4: as possible. That is his That's what he wakes up
Speaker 4: thinking about when he's making that move. Whether he's successful
Speaker 4: or not. You can debate that there's some people that
Speaker 4: think the movie's crapped or some people that love it.
Speaker 4: I've heard every kind of opinion you could possibly hear
Speaker 4: about Pearl Harbor. You can't surprise me. But that is
Speaker 4: what he was doing when he went to work every day.
Speaker 4: He was not saying, oh, I should really think about
Speaker 4: this big moral issue about war. There's not no nothing,
Speaker 4: But you know, you'd run around and you'd have these
Speaker 4: fake rounds being fired out of like gatling guns and
Speaker 4: all this and straping that that was done with special effects,
Speaker 4: you know, little bags that would explode with dust in
Speaker 4: it and make it look like bullets, right, But you'd
Speaker 4: run past the building and you would see actual bullet
Speaker 4: holes from back in the day when it was actually happening,
Speaker 4: Like I saw actual bullet holes from the actual December seventh,
Speaker 4: nineteen forty one assault on pro harm And then for
Speaker 4: a bonus, I got to go up in a plane
Speaker 4: because they actually had some pilots there that had flown
Speaker 4: around in these planes, like the P forty two's I
Speaker 4: think it's been a while. I think it's P forty
Speaker 4: two it is called. And we went I went up
Speaker 4: in a plane and you in went up in a plane.
Speaker 4: We flew in a formation over the USS Arizona and
Speaker 4: I looked down out of this little two seater plane
Speaker 4: into the water and I saw the entirety. When you
Speaker 4: go out on that little bridge that's over the top
Speaker 4: of it, you see the oil bubbling up and you're
Speaker 4: like oh my god, they're still oil in there. But
Speaker 4: you don't get a sense of what you're standing on
Speaker 4: top of. But when you're up in the sky and
Speaker 4: you look down at it, I mean, it's one of
Speaker 4: the most awe inspiring things I've ever seen in my life,
Speaker 4: and also one of the saddest because you know that
Speaker 4: that vessel is just filled with corpses, and like I said,
Speaker 4: so unnecessary. And at the time, you know, nowadays, if
Speaker 4: somebody came to me and said, hey, we're making Pearl Harbor,
Speaker 4: and I was at the point I'm in now in
Speaker 4: my career, I would probably frankly would say, you know what,
Speaker 4: I think, I'm good. But back then I was. I
Speaker 4: had just got in LA. I was in fight or
Speaker 4: flight mode. It was like, you know, people were going
Speaker 4: to LA from Chicago and a lot of people weren't
Speaker 4: getting any bites. And you know, I was lucky. I
Speaker 4: was lucky I got in that room at all. I
Speaker 4: got in a room with Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer,
Speaker 4: you know, two of the most powerful guys in Hollywood
Speaker 4: at the time. When they said yes you, I would
Speaker 4: have been a fool to say, oh, I'm no, I'm leaving.
Speaker 4: But now I don't know. I don't know if I'm
Speaker 4: going to tell that story now, I don't what.
Speaker 3: It just feels what to you well, it.
Speaker 4: Kind of like I said, it just feels like, you know,
Speaker 4: I had that opportunity to look down at the USS
Speaker 4: Arizona from that plane the story I just told. I
Speaker 4: had that opportunity after we had finished filming, and I
Speaker 4: think it dawned on me as I was looking down
Speaker 4: at that ship in the water, I was like, Oh,
Speaker 4: this is really sad, and I'm not sure that this
Speaker 4: movie is going to capture that or be so concerned
Speaker 4: with that, with how sad this is. You know, I
Speaker 4: don't know if Truffau is he's saying, you can set
Speaker 4: out to make a film that you think is depicting
Speaker 4: the horror of war, and yet in the process of
Speaker 4: doing that, you're just going to make a film that
Speaker 4: makes war look alluring. But in the case of Pearl Harbor,
Speaker 4: I'm not even sure. Like I think we both said,
Speaker 4: I don't think Michael Bay was saying I'm going to
Speaker 4: make a film that makes everybody realize how horrible war is.
Speaker 4: I don't think that was ever in his diary, his
Speaker 4: journal and his notebook. That's what I'm going to do.
Speaker 4: For context.
Speaker 3: Let me just throw a couple of things, because there's
Speaker 3: an interesting triangle here. First of all, the full quote
Speaker 3: that Cisco got truefall. During that interview in seventy three,
Speaker 3: Trufau said, I think that violence is very ambiguous in movies.
Speaker 3: For example, some films claim to be anti war, but
Speaker 3: I don't think I've ever really seen an anti war film.
Speaker 3: Every film about war ends up being pro war. So
Speaker 3: that's his line. So you have other major filmmakers who
Speaker 3: have come to the much different conclusion, and a couple
Speaker 3: of them surprised me frankly, and I want to talk
Speaker 3: about these two films, Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket.
Speaker 3: Francis Warcoppolo, the former Stanley Kubrick, the latter, the interview
Speaker 3: in The Guardian couplated back in twenty nineteen, said that
Speaker 3: he will not ever put the phrase anti war as
Speaker 3: a description of Apocalypse Now. He says, nobody wants to
Speaker 3: make a pro war film, but you know, an anti
Speaker 3: war film. This is not basically I'm paraphrasing there, but
Speaker 3: he said quote an anti war film shouldn't have sequences
Speaker 3: of violence that inspire a lust for violence.
Speaker 5: Aloud the romeo shall We Danced?
Speaker 3: The Apocalypse Now has stirring scenes of helicopters attacking innocent people.
Speaker 3: That's not anti war, A shot.
Speaker 5: Outstanding, but the amount stand education BA for that one.
Speaker 3: And then he went on to say an anthony war
Speaker 3: film cannot glorify war, and Apocalypse now arguably does. To
Speaker 3: your point, the word alluring. Yeah, I think the reason
Speaker 3: that film is still talked about. I mean a it
Speaker 3: was such a crazy undertaking and such an insanely expensive undertaking,
Speaker 3: and you know, you had a director essentially losing his
Speaker 3: mind while making it and then regaining it. But it's
Speaker 3: not the kind of war film you can point to
Speaker 3: one ideology in it. You have the screenplay coming from
Speaker 3: a guy like John Mealyus, who was just a proudly
Speaker 3: right wing reactionary, delightful, delightful guy I interview know what
Speaker 3: you know who wrote well Red Dawn, which is a
Speaker 3: hilarious comic book of a movie from the mid eighties.
Speaker 3: And it couldn't be you know, simpler in its sort
Speaker 3: of political directive of like Gilly's comedies. And yet you
Speaker 3: also got narration spoken by and Sheen's character Willard, written
Speaker 3: by Michael Hare, who wrote Dispatches, who was a guy
Speaker 3: who came out of the wartime experience in Vietnam just
Speaker 3: a changed man. And you know, that's a very right wing,
Speaker 3: left wing tension point in that movie, and that's why
Speaker 3: I think it's hard to get your hands on it. Similarly,
Speaker 3: I think Full Middle Jacket, right Kubrick based on Christoph
Speaker 3: Hasward's The Short Timers, And I've read descriptions and heard
Speaker 3: descriptions of Full Metal Jacket every which way, and I
Speaker 3: want to know what you think of these films too.
Speaker 3: But R Lee Ermi, who played the drill sergeant, who
Speaker 3: was in fact the drill sergeant in life, he said
Speaker 3: that seventeen years after I made that film, there's not
Speaker 3: a day goes by on the base at least one
Speaker 3: person doesn't come up to me and tell me that
Speaker 3: I am the reason they're in the Marine Corps, and
Speaker 3: Full Middle Jacket was their motivation. You know, you just don't.
Speaker 3: You do not know how some of these scenes well effectual.
Speaker 3: And Truffau in that Cisco interview way back in seventy three,
Speaker 3: Jeane was kind of puzzled by Truffo's quote about how
Speaker 3: all films are inevitably in his view, pro war and
Speaker 3: and and Cisco said, well what about doctor Strange? What
Speaker 3: about Kubrick's paths of Glory?
Speaker 4: He says, no, I don't know that.
Speaker 3: Soja ready to kill more Germans?
Speaker 4: Watch? Your name is Soja Private? Private?
Speaker 2: Well, I'll bet your mother's proud of you.
Speaker 3: Well, counry on Private, and good luck to you. Now
Speaker 3: if I think Kubrick really likes violence too much for
Speaker 3: him to ever so interesting triangles here?
Speaker 4: You know who is right? Who is right?
Speaker 3: Here?
Speaker 4: Anybody who is right? Well? I need clarification on right
Speaker 4: about what? It's not really right.
Speaker 3: It's just more about, like I guess, are we really
Speaker 3: chasing anything that we can catch?
Speaker 4: Okay? So violence, like I said, violence is inherent in
Speaker 4: human nature. Violence and war are inherent in human nature,
Speaker 4: even though we all know we're not supposed to do
Speaker 4: it and it's wrong for me. There's no even just
Speaker 4: from a logic standpoint, there's no arguing that. Really, I mean,
Speaker 4: do you see an argument against that? Do you see
Speaker 4: an argument in pro killing that killing is actually a
Speaker 4: fruitful thing for human beings to do? No? No, it
Speaker 4: brings about some positive change. Okay, so we can agree
Speaker 4: on that. So but it is part of us, and
Speaker 4: it's interesting. I'll tell you what's interesting. This is what's interesting.
Speaker 4: I was at funeral yesterday the same when I was
Speaker 4: talking about the Confederate cemetery, and during the funeral, the
Speaker 4: grandson of the woman who had passed, he got up
Speaker 4: and he read a passage from the Bible. I think
Speaker 4: it was from Ecclesiastes, but I'm not sure. But it's
Speaker 4: kind of a litany of there's a time for this,
Speaker 4: there's a time for that, there's a time, there's a
Speaker 4: time to embrace, there's a time not to embrace. There's
Speaker 4: a time to speak, there's a time to be silent,
Speaker 4: there's a time to time, to times and time. And
Speaker 4: then it gets a certain part and it says it
Speaker 4: literally says, in the Bible there's a time for war,
Speaker 4: there's a time for peace. I'm like, okay, that's cute.
Speaker 4: There's a time for war. They say, well, they are
Speaker 4: the opposites. But literally in the Bible is the phrase
Speaker 4: there is a time for war. And it's not the
Speaker 4: only time that war is mentioned in the Bible. And
Speaker 4: I find it very confusing because one of the Ten
Speaker 4: Commandments is thou shall not kill. See when I made
Speaker 4: Eric Guru, I told everybody I said this movie. Everybody's like, oh,
Speaker 4: you made a movie about school shooting. I'm like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: I did, I suppose. But what the movie's really about
Speaker 4: is confusion. It's about how freaking confusing this all is.
Speaker 4: It's about how confusing religion is. It's how confusing it
Speaker 4: is to live in this country, how confusing humanity is.
Speaker 4: It's just so confusing it makes no sense. It's like, so,
Speaker 4: for example, something like Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jack,
Speaker 4: as far as I'm concerned, I think you know. Obviously,
Speaker 4: Kubriak's filmmaking style and Coboela's filmmaking style are pretty different,
Speaker 4: and that's what makes them both extraordinary filmmakers is that
Speaker 4: they are unique to themselves. You could try to imitate them,
Speaker 4: but you will not. You will not make a film
Speaker 4: the way Stanley Kuber makes a film. You will not
Speaker 4: make a film Away Francis for Cobla makes a film
Speaker 4: at the height of their powers. They're they're arguably two
Speaker 4: of the finest filmmakers that ever walk the earth. At
Speaker 4: the height of their powers. But both of those films,
Speaker 4: beyond being like pro war or anti war or whatever,
Speaker 4: I think what they are illuminating, and what I think
Speaker 4: fairly undebatable is they are illuminating how insane war is.
Speaker 4: I mean, they're but in both of those films, in
Speaker 4: addition to being about war, are about being insane and
Speaker 4: contain characters that are basically seen as like our typical lunatics,
Speaker 4: like the character that Marlon Brando plays in Apocalypse Now
Speaker 4: is one of the most well known figures of lunacy
Speaker 4: in the history of cinema. The same with the character
Speaker 4: that Vinc's Sinapio plays Influmental Jaggett, who blows his own
Speaker 4: brains out. So beyond whether it's saying, oh, war is,
Speaker 4: I mean, look, trying to identify things as good or
Speaker 4: bad is always just a waste of time. But rather,
Speaker 4: and I think what Copola's point is is like, I'm
Speaker 4: not gonna sit here and tell you that this film
Speaker 4: is prescriptive or non prescriptive for war, but I do
Speaker 4: think it's a fever dream. It's insanity. It shows what
Speaker 4: you know. So basically you get to decide whether you're
Speaker 4: in favor of insanity or you would rather not have
Speaker 4: so much insanity around. But it's a depiction of insanity
Speaker 4: the same way that Guernica by Picasso is his visualization
Speaker 4: of the insanity of what was happening, like apocalypse now
Speaker 4: is Copea is guanic As far as I'm pretent.
Speaker 5: A shot outstanding, but the outstanding educ should be for.
Speaker 3: That rem the films I resist on this topic, whatever
Speaker 3: the political ideology of the filmmaker, if it's based on
Speaker 3: a real war, whatever the war and what got the
Speaker 3: combatants into it in the first place, I guess I
Speaker 3: come back to it's kind of just a liberal humanist,
Speaker 3: impulsive feel something beyond easy villainy. For the other side,
Speaker 3: I think on what Mary Zimmerman, the Chicago Theater director was.
Speaker 3: For people who don't know her, it's you know, she
Speaker 3: did Metamorphosis, and you know a lot of her stuff
Speaker 3: has done worked in New York, and her work has
Speaker 3: been extraordinary over the years. And she convinced the Goodman
Speaker 3: Theater to swap out The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci,
Speaker 3: a revival of one of her earlier works, for a
Speaker 3: production of Seneca's The Trojan Women. Right after the American
Speaker 3: invasion of Iraq was first threatened in early two thousand
Speaker 3: and three, and then clearly nothing was going to stop.
Speaker 3: But at that point and then in the fall, she
Speaker 3: wanted to do that place. She said, civil you know,
Speaker 3: all wars or civil wars, if we believe that we're
Speaker 3: all brothers and sisters in this world. You know, you
Speaker 3: could call that sentimental or just squishy humanism, but I
Speaker 3: don't know. And then she said, look, wherever, wherever the
Speaker 3: bombs fall, that's ground zero, you know, and that we
Speaker 3: we got obsessed with that phrase ground zero after the
Speaker 3: Twin Towers were destroyed. Sure enough, But I just feel
Speaker 3: like it's been a hell of a century for questioning what.
Speaker 3: I don't know, what what what a war movie should
Speaker 3: or could do or can do, or how can it
Speaker 3: at least be a little honest about some things about
Speaker 3: human psychology, even in the midst of a movie that's
Speaker 3: essentially just about survival and camaraderie among warriors, whatever the
Speaker 3: mission is, you know what I mean?
Speaker 4: Hard to say, well, everything you have, everything, in a sense,
Speaker 4: is of war. We're all we're all struggling more all
Speaker 4: badly against something, whether it's other people or just in
Speaker 4: our own lives, even if you're waging a war against
Speaker 4: inertia or feeling like you're you know, conflict is the
Speaker 4: nature of drama. Without conflict, there is no drama. So
Speaker 4: in a sense, maybe you know drama, drama exists in
Speaker 4: order to help us understand or deal with the fact
Speaker 4: that we're essentially creatures of conflict.
Speaker 3: Yeah, then you get to do it for a living.
Speaker 4: Sure, sure do, I sure do.
Speaker 3: Does it feel like a privilege to kind of investigate
Speaker 3: some of these darker corners of life and death without
Speaker 3: actually having to deal with life and death circumstances firsthand?
Speaker 4: Sure? Yeah. I mean I've had an extraordinary privilege of
Speaker 4: getting to spend a time with a lot of incredible
Speaker 4: members of our military over the years, and without fail,
Speaker 4: I'm always very moved by them and their service, and
Speaker 4: I would never denigrate them at all because they personify
Speaker 4: a lot of the finer qualities I think of people,
Speaker 4: despite the violent nature of their obligation. They're certainly the
Speaker 4: hardest working, most loyal people that I've come across in
Speaker 4: this business, and I've learned a lot from them. You know.
Speaker 4: It's not like I've had the experience of being in
Speaker 4: the military just because I've pretended to be in the military.
Speaker 4: But sometimes, like for example, on Pearl Harbor, if you
Speaker 4: were in the movie, you had to participate in this
Speaker 4: very brief kind of boot camp situation before the filming started.
Speaker 4: And we were all there, you know, the whole cast,
Speaker 4: all the dudes were there, even Ben Affleck and Josh Harden.
Speaker 4: Remember they they put us all on this bus and
Speaker 4: they drove us up into the mountains in Hawaii, far
Speaker 4: away from like the beach or whatever, and we pulled
Speaker 4: in this little camp and they started pounding on the bus.
Speaker 4: It's like goal line up, La da da. And within
Speaker 4: like two minutes of being there, I was watching Ben
Speaker 4: Affleck like down on doing push ups because the drill
Speaker 4: instructor was like, god, da da da, Like that's Ben Affleck.
Speaker 4: He's doing a lot of push ups because this guy's
Speaker 4: shouting at him. And it was only I don't know,
Speaker 4: it was like two weeks or something, but the experience
Speaker 4: of doing that little boot camp, which was absurd. I mean,
Speaker 4: we're a bunch of you know, actor like, it's not
Speaker 4: like we were ready to go to battle afterwards, but
Speaker 4: at least we had some semblance of an idea of
Speaker 4: what that experience might be like. But that is the
Speaker 4: experience of making that film that I carry with me.
Speaker 4: The like closest to my heart is that experience, not
Speaker 4: the actual filming. Forget me.
Speaker 3: If we talked about this already. Do you have one
Speaker 3: war film that really just means more to you than others?
Speaker 4: New wor old My favorite movies. None of my favorite
Speaker 4: movies are war.
Speaker 3: Movies, none of them.
Speaker 4: My favorite movies are like Being There or King of
Speaker 4: Comedy or Alphaville. I don't like warm movies so much. Interesting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so you're really born for their Criterion closet.
Speaker 3: It sounds like that's that's great, I am. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean, like I said, the first war movie that
Speaker 4: came into my head with Star Wars. Yeah, and it
Speaker 4: might as well. As far as I'm concerned, it might
Speaker 4: as well all be Star Wars, because that's how absurd
Speaker 4: it all is.
Speaker 3: Too. O God, that's great, and that is crazy to
Speaker 3: me that I'd never really lot hard about Star Wars
Speaker 3: as being the zingiest, zippiest, funnest war movie. And back
Speaker 3: in seventy seven it was just like you couldn't play
Speaker 3: that arcade game often enough people saw it seven times,
Speaker 3: you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, and now it's
Speaker 3: the national religion.
Speaker 4: So yeah on we go, gosh and keep cranking them out. Yeah,
Speaker 4: Mandalorian and that baby Yoda heank never touch the buttons.
Speaker 3: Thanks for war, criminals, Long live the Empire. We'll take
Speaker 3: out every bad guy in your deck of cards.
Speaker 4: Michael.
Speaker 3: I appreciate your time.
Speaker 4: Thanks so much. Thanks for thinking to me. Michael, Yeah,
Speaker 4: of course you always all right.
Speaker 3: Thanks for being guest one here on the movie Racket,
Speaker 3: and I'm glad you're in the movie Racket yourself.
Speaker 4: Thanks, thank you.
Speaker 5: Yeah here Rock, come right back where I started from.
Speaker 2: The movie Racket is produced by Joe Dessou and Little
Speaker 2: Old me Adam Kempinar and Sam van Holgren and executive producers.
Speaker 2: Special thanks to Michael Shannon. He's in Germany right now
Speaker 2: filming The Cabinet of Doctor Kligari, and he just finished
Speaker 2: King Snake with writer director Jeff Nichols. And this December
Speaker 2: he's also going to be on screens as New York
Speaker 2: Giants coach Bill Parcells in Mister Irrelevant, The John Tuggle Story.
Speaker 2: He's also touring with Jason Nardesi this summer and a
Speaker 2: little bit into the Fall, performing Arim's fourth album, Life's
Speaker 2: Rich Pageant, and Michael's getting married August First Congratulations. Check
Speaker 2: out the latest episodes of Film Spotting, of Course and
Speaker 2: it's affiliated podcasting adventures, The Next Picture Show, Film Spotting SVU,
Speaker 2: and brand new Like Myself Movie Deathmatch with Chris Klemick.
Speaker 2: Next week on the Movie Racket, La Times film critic
Speaker 2: one of the Best, Amy Nicholson enjoys me for a
Speaker 2: lighthearted romp through Preston Sturge's eleven rules for box office appeal,
Speaker 2: Among them, a bedroom is better than a living room,
Speaker 2: an arrival is better than a departure, and a pratfall
Speaker 2: is better than anything. I'd love to hear from you, comments, questions, ideas,
Speaker 2: some gossip about your family, whatever. Email me at Movie
Speaker 2: Racket at film spotting dot Net. I'm Michael Phillips. This
Speaker 2: is a Film Spotting production, California, ELI