Speaker 1: The subject of suicide does come up in this episode
Speaker 1: If You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet, it is dealt with
Speaker 1: in the movie we are discussing today. If this triggers
Speaker 1: anything for you, reach out to Lifeline thirteen eleven fourteen,
Speaker 1: Good day, Peter, Hell ay you here? Welcome to you
Speaker 1: Ain't Seen Nothing Yet? The movie Podcast, where I chat
Speaker 1: to a movie lover about a classic or beloved movie
Speaker 1: they haven't quite got around to watching until now. And
Speaker 1: today's guest television producer, writer, creator, and mate Chris Walker.
Speaker 2: You ever dance for the Dead of the Dale line?
Speaker 1: I'm walking here? Walk good?
Speaker 3: Heeare of all the gin joints in all the towns
Speaker 3: in all the world? She walks in the.
Speaker 1: Mine, haven't a crip. I first met Chris Walker aka
Speaker 1: Walks when I joined the Project team a bit under
Speaker 1: ten years ago. We became mates very quickly. Chris enjoyed
Speaker 1: my friendship so much he decided to lead the project
Speaker 1: a couple of years after I joined, reuniting with Project
Speaker 1: alumni Charlie Pickering to executive produce The Weekly with Charlie Pickering.
Speaker 1: Rich also produces award winning quiz show Hard Quiz with
Speaker 1: Tom Gleeson. And Tomorrow Tonight with Annabel Krab and Charlie Pickering. Recently,
Speaker 1: he hosted and produced a podcast named Rainstrust, which had
Speaker 1: well known as his reflecting on the Clusterfuck that was
Speaker 1: twenty twenty. Walks is a critical thinker, Sharper's Attack and
Speaker 1: one of the thoroughly decent human beings I've met during
Speaker 1: my time in this biz they call show. Here is
Speaker 1: sadly though, a Richmond supporter.
Speaker 4: My name, as Pete said, my name is Chris Walker.
Speaker 4: I am sharp as attack. My three favorite films which
Speaker 4: we I want some cave its on this latter on,
Speaker 4: but my three favorite films are Terminator Too and if.
Speaker 5: Your clothes, your boots, and your motorcycle Gladiator.
Speaker 3: Time for honoring yourself will soon be at.
Speaker 5: An end, and the silence of the lambs.
Speaker 1: People will say we're in love.
Speaker 4: And until recently I had not seen the film Network,
Speaker 4: much to my surprise, and Pete's podcast gave him the opportunity,
Speaker 4: and I watched it this week.
Speaker 6: I don't want you to protest, I don't want you
Speaker 6: to ride. I don't want you to write to your congressman,
Speaker 6: because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write.
Speaker 6: I don't know what to do about the depression and
Speaker 6: the inflation, and the Russians and the crime in the street.
Speaker 1: All I know is that first.
Speaker 7: You've got to get Matt. You've got to say I'm
Speaker 7: a human being. God damn it, my life has value.
Speaker 7: So I want you to get up now. I want
Speaker 7: all of you to get up out of your chairs.
Speaker 7: I want you to get up right now. But go
Speaker 7: to the window, open it and stick your head out
Speaker 7: and yell him as brag as hell.
Speaker 6: And I'm not trying to.
Speaker 7: Take this anymore.
Speaker 5: Yes.
Speaker 1: Veteran news anchor Howard Beale, played by Ozzie Peter Finch
Speaker 1: in his Oscar winning role, has been told, due to
Speaker 1: dwindling ratings, he will be finishing up at the network.
Speaker 1: Howard takes news well. He announces that he will take
Speaker 1: his own life on air on the fourthcoming Tuesday, as
Speaker 1: the fictional TV network UBS rushes to get him offair.
Speaker 1: Fade Dunaway's Diana Christensen has other ideas as she strives
Speaker 1: to give the new Matt Profit of the air waves
Speaker 1: as much time on the airwaves as she can. Muster
Speaker 1: sidnella Met's rather prophetic nineteen seventy six classic continues to
Speaker 1: be as relevant today as it was forty five years ago,
Speaker 1: A scathing satire on how corporate influences can corrupt not
Speaker 1: only programming, but the people behind the camera walks you
Speaker 1: work in television? Are you as mad as hell? And
Speaker 1: if so, are you going to take it anymore?
Speaker 5: I'm always mad as hell.
Speaker 4: I don't know if it's corrupted, just the people behind
Speaker 4: the cameras, possibly corrupted the people in front of the camera,
Speaker 4: isn't it, Pete?
Speaker 1: Yes, Well I'm come on mate, let's not. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: both of those. I mean, I've given you a big
Speaker 1: introduction and announced your overhead line or your credits. Note
Speaker 1: perfectly on point. We both work in television. We're working
Speaker 1: news television. So this is an interesting one for us
Speaker 1: to discuss. Did you did you see? Was it you
Speaker 1: feel like a satire to or did it feel like
Speaker 1: a mirror?
Speaker 4: There's two things I reckon about that. First of all,
Speaker 4: I think it it was confronting in one way, and
Speaker 4: I think we can talk about that. But the very
Speaker 4: you know, the very first thing I thought when I
Speaker 4: watched it was how interesting it was to have watched
Speaker 4: it for the first time. In twenty twenty one rather
Speaker 4: than have I mean, obviously I wasn't alive when it
Speaker 4: was first made, but even if you'd watched that movie
Speaker 4: thirty years ago, just how precient it was about the
Speaker 4: world that was to come. Like back then, it would
Speaker 4: have seem controversial to have this guy standing up and
Speaker 4: basically spouting bullshit in order to please the masses. But
Speaker 4: now we have networks dedicated to doing stuff like that.
Speaker 4: We had until fairly recently, we had a president that
Speaker 4: was a reality TV star that would literally just say
Speaker 4: whatever it took in order for the masses to vote
Speaker 4: for vote him in and to be a populist, and
Speaker 4: so in some ways when we watch it or I
Speaker 4: don't know what you felt, but when I watched it,
Speaker 4: I was like, oh, you know, there's yes, you can
Speaker 4: clearly see it's a satire of the world back then,
Speaker 4: and to some degree it's a satire of the world
Speaker 4: that we have now, but it's just not as confronting
Speaker 4: because we live in a world that is sort of
Speaker 4: twenty thirty forty years on from that. But at the
Speaker 4: same time, and this is why I'm so interested to
Speaker 4: talk about this movie. Particuan, you and I have talked
Speaker 4: about talking about this movie in the past, is it
Speaker 4: does make you think about what, in your case, what
Speaker 4: you say on television, but also what we create to
Speaker 4: put on television, and all of the motivations and pressures
Speaker 4: and and reasons good and otherwise for wh why we
Speaker 4: put the thing we put on air. And clearly that
Speaker 4: movie is a satire about corporate and economic you know,
Speaker 4: stockholders and shareholders and stuff, effectively deciding what should and
Speaker 4: shouldn't go on air, you know, if not, if not overtly,
Speaker 4: just by the nature of that, everyone answers to shareholders.
Speaker 4: So the fade done away character essentially sees sees the
Speaker 4: matrix a little bit and says, you know, this is
Speaker 4: what we'll put on.
Speaker 5: This will work, And it does.
Speaker 4: And she puts this, you know, half crazed dude on
Speaker 4: air and he starts his demagoguery and and you know,
Speaker 4: it's all beautifully written, and you know, and he performed
Speaker 4: it beautifully well and and and all of America attaches
Speaker 4: to it and and neither of you I have been
Speaker 4: at that level.
Speaker 5: But I think, and this is what I think is interesting,
Speaker 5: is I think.
Speaker 1: In my life in lockdown, Sotty Big.
Speaker 4: So we're both in situations where I think we've probably
Speaker 4: said and done things for reasons of populism.
Speaker 5: I mean, I know we have.
Speaker 1: Well, I know, because it's not just I guess you're
Speaker 1: I guess you're referred to Trump. I'm going to read
Speaker 1: between the lines. And this film has gotten seemingly more
Speaker 1: relevant over the last five years because of Trump, but
Speaker 1: also the social media of the you know, who the
Speaker 1: masses follow and what the points they can to latch
Speaker 1: onto until they decide not to latch onto that anymore.
Speaker 1: And yeah, the things that kind of jumped out for
Speaker 1: me were that, and also I had to really think
Speaker 1: about because I you know, I'm a pretty easy, go
Speaker 1: lucky kind of guy. You know, my job on the
Speaker 1: news program I work on is to provide comic relief.
Speaker 1: It's not all, you know, it's not the only thing
Speaker 1: I do on the show. Sometimes I will, you know,
Speaker 1: have an opinion on various things and in courage to
Speaker 1: do so. But it made me think of the times
Speaker 1: when the network necessarily we're in different hands. It has been.
Speaker 1: I've been at the Channel ten pretty much for twenty years.
Speaker 1: You know, I had a year or two off in
Speaker 1: the middle of there, but and so there's been a
Speaker 1: few different own owners, both owners, but also people you
Speaker 1: know overlooking the station as far as you know, executives,
Speaker 1: And there was a time you know where there was,
Speaker 1: you know, a Murdock in charge and that creative content
Speaker 1: was not at the front of their mind. It was
Speaker 1: a pretty depressing place to be around that time.
Speaker 4: I must admit that I was actually wondering before I
Speaker 4: came here whether or not the Murdock period predated you,
Speaker 4: because that was the I was at the project for
Speaker 4: people who don't know, for five years as the I
Speaker 4: guess you'd call the series producer, and that period he
Speaker 4: both came and went in my time from memory, and
Speaker 4: it was significantly different when he was even though you
Speaker 4: didn't see him like you said, I saw him once,
Speaker 4: but you absolutely understood that he was in charge of
Speaker 4: the network. And all of a sudden things started changing,
Speaker 4: like there was different, Like you started hearing things from
Speaker 4: on high and we can't do this and we should
Speaker 4: be doing that, and why is this person, why is
Speaker 4: this left person speaking, and why is this And you
Speaker 4: felt absolutely like in this film that you were both
Speaker 4: making a show for an audience of one and an
Speaker 4: audience of stockholders Channel ten stockholders, and at the time
Speaker 4: I wasn't sure whether that was right or wrong. I
Speaker 4: was young in experience. I'm still not sure about the
Speaker 4: ethics of you know, there wouldn't be a Channel ten
Speaker 4: without stockholders, and you know, they largely are responsible for
Speaker 4: its longevity and its life. So and I think that's
Speaker 4: what's really interesting about Network is that, you know, the
Speaker 4: Fade Dunaway character, who I thought was possibly the most
Speaker 4: interesting character in the film, although there were several is
Speaker 4: you know, she is almost almost a character turre, I guess,
Speaker 4: or of someone who's just you know, I mean they
Speaker 4: talk about this in the film. You know, she falls
Speaker 4: in love with with Max, you know, who is the
Speaker 4: producer of the news show, and they sort of have
Speaker 4: a what I thought was a pretty strange actual relationship really,
Speaker 4: Like I didn't feel like that was actually eat out
Speaker 4: that well in the film, Like it was sort of
Speaker 4: it sort of happened, and then all of a sudden
Speaker 4: they're in love and then they're breaking up and and
Speaker 4: and that really revolved essentially around her just being a
Speaker 4: complete you know piranha really for ratings, Yeah, and she
Speaker 4: would will she would absolutely do anything for them.
Speaker 1: Yes, Yes, she was a shark. She was a machine
Speaker 1: and and and I'll make this point and then we'll
Speaker 1: we'll go back and talk about some of your favorite films.
Speaker 1: We'll come back to the network. But when Sidnela met
Speaker 1: the director, met with Fate don Away to discuss the character,
Speaker 1: he said to her, he goes, I know what you're
Speaker 1: gonna ask. You're going to ask, where's her vulnerability? He says,
Speaker 1: there is none. Don't look for it. If you put
Speaker 1: it in, I'll edit it out of the film. Really yeah,
Speaker 1: and she wants she wanted to ask her for this
Speaker 1: film wins four Oscars. She wins for Best Actress or
Speaker 1: Best Supporting Actress, and which is pretty incredible because so
Speaker 1: that there's cifaying a woman with no vulnerability and with
Speaker 1: nor her story is almost a straight line. But she
Speaker 1: doesn't get corrupted. She starts pretty much corrupted and everyone
Speaker 1: else kind of gets corrupted, you know, she doesn't. She
Speaker 1: kind of starts corrupted and it stays corrupted.
Speaker 5: And completely unmoved by Yes.
Speaker 1: Doesn't have it like any kind of feeling of remorse
Speaker 1: at the end of like, oh this is you know,
Speaker 1: I mean that we'll get to the end later, but
Speaker 1: we'll come back and obviously talk a lot more about network.
Speaker 1: There's a lot to dissect and jump into. But I
Speaker 1: want to talk about your three favorite films, some big ones,
Speaker 1: some big heavy hitters. Here germinated. So this has come up,
Speaker 1: This has come back pretty recently. I forget who it was,
Speaker 1: but yes, I mean I remember seeing tournamated two twice
Speaker 1: at the cinema and being all there for it, particularly
Speaker 1: because Guns and Roses had Yeah in the sound.
Speaker 4: I just want to put a quick cave it in
Speaker 4: for my favorite, okay favorite three films. It's only because
Speaker 4: it's you that I'm willing to say three films. I
Speaker 4: am very uncomfortable about sticking my name to my three
Speaker 4: favorite films. Yes, I feel like I've read a great
Speaker 4: quote from Vince Skillig and the guy make Breaking Bad
Speaker 4: about how picking you best films is like having a
Speaker 4: package of two thousand doritos and you're picking three of them.
Speaker 5: Which I agree with.
Speaker 4: And I also think my favorite film changes as well,
Speaker 4: and I don't know if that's the same for you.
Speaker 4: But so I wrote down a couple of things I
Speaker 4: think you'll be interested, and then we can talk about
Speaker 4: the three, I said.
Speaker 5: The film that I was affected most by was Spotlight.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah.
Speaker 5: The film that I laughed most at on first watch
Speaker 5: was Me, Myself and Irene, which has got some problems.
Speaker 1: Was it a pissing scene?
Speaker 5: I've interest all of it.
Speaker 4: The movie I was most enthralled by was Gladiator. The
Speaker 4: one I was most impressed by was the Matrix. The
Speaker 4: one I'm most attached to is stand by Me. And
Speaker 4: the one I was most impressed by was the Silence
Speaker 4: of the Lambs. And from that fairly strange, arbitrary matrix,
Speaker 4: I came up with the three films that I've said,
Speaker 4: Terminator two, Gladiated, the Silence of the Lamps. Now, Terminator
Speaker 4: two obviously wasn't in those first time I noticed that.
Speaker 5: So Terminator two.
Speaker 4: I was ten years old and I was on holiday
Speaker 4: in the Gold Coast when I went to the local
Speaker 4: Gold Coast multiplex and watched Terminator Too. And it was
Speaker 4: for the next forty eight hours I was so pissed
Speaker 4: off that I wasn't Edward Furlong like I was. Just
Speaker 4: all I could think about was being Arnie's mate, and
Speaker 4: being even though it was a robot, and being in
Speaker 4: that film and just everything about it, you know.
Speaker 5: I mean, obviously these days.
Speaker 4: It's well, actually I think the special effects stand up
Speaker 4: when you watch it again. But the liquid T one thousand,
Speaker 4: which is played by Robert Patrick, was just the absolute
Speaker 4: edge of special effects and the fact that they reimagine
Speaker 4: Arnie is a goodie, and it just was everything you
Speaker 4: could hope for as a ten year old.
Speaker 1: It's hard to think of a film that is a
Speaker 1: sequel that has gone up as many notches as Tea
Speaker 1: two went from the original Terminator.
Speaker 4: Well correct, like even Godfather. You can argue that two
Speaker 4: is better than one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I often argue that, But it's not like it's.
Speaker 5: A mile in front at all. I was thinking about
Speaker 5: that today. Actually, I think there is another one that was.
Speaker 5: But yeah, I agree, it's it's.
Speaker 1: My Empire strikes back. It will be argued as being
Speaker 1: the best Star Wars would be better than I just
Speaker 1: don't think it's leaps ahead of it. You can have
Speaker 1: the same argument as you have with the godfarmerl.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's not like Phil Smith and Lebron James, is it.
Speaker 1: I'm Team Smile.
Speaker 5: Hell of a one on one game. Yeah, So I
Speaker 5: just loved it. I just it was.
Speaker 1: It was pretty thrilling and that and that Robert Patrick
Speaker 1: as as the one thousand.
Speaker 5: Yeah, two one thousand, Yeah, that was just you know when.
Speaker 1: You when you come up with a villain that you
Speaker 1: just kind of go, how's he going to get?
Speaker 5: Has he gonna be beating?
Speaker 4: He was such an immovable force and there was he
Speaker 4: just kept up and get like basically by definition, he
Speaker 4: would just get up and keep going like you're shoot
Speaker 4: him with a shotgun. He blows apart and then he
Speaker 4: breaking jeals and off he goes again. He's just constantly
Speaker 4: dusting himself off and coming again and like there aren't
Speaker 4: that man. And I think that was the the difference
Speaker 4: between T one and Sorry Terminator and Terminator Too was that.
Speaker 4: I mean, Arnie was a good baddiean Terminator, but the
Speaker 4: villain in Terminator Too is you know, it's right up
Speaker 4: there with in my view as the best.
Speaker 5: And he doesn't really talk.
Speaker 4: Like he's just this it's this new type of villain
Speaker 4: that I think, you know that didn't have vulnerabilities.
Speaker 1: Yeah, really, yeah, I remember the feeling I had, and
Speaker 1: I cot you almost picture myself in the theater when
Speaker 1: he's chasing he's chasing after the Arnie and forlong in
Speaker 1: the car and they shoot him all day and you
Speaker 1: think it's over, and I remember feeling the relief that
Speaker 1: it was over, and then he starts running again and
Speaker 1: then he gets his hooks into that, you know, and
Speaker 1: it's just like.
Speaker 4: Oh, it's so funny you said that, because it's exactly
Speaker 4: the feeling you had, Like do you actually despaired for
Speaker 4: a minute for Arnie and and you're like that can't
Speaker 4: beat this guy.
Speaker 5: No, this, this guy's unbeatable.
Speaker 1: So it's wrought it up. Actually, when we chatted to
Speaker 1: Bob Murphy about Butchercshid in the Sundance Kip like the
Speaker 1: gang that are chasing Butcher and Sundance, it feels very
Speaker 1: similar in that kind of feeling that then they never
Speaker 1: going to get away from this, from this gang, and
Speaker 1: I think, if you can, if you're can achieve that,
Speaker 1: and then you know it ends up differently for Sundance
Speaker 1: and Butch, but you had to set up your heroes.
Speaker 1: If most heroes win the day, So you know, it's
Speaker 1: great writing because they've made it hard for themselves. I
Speaker 1: haven't cheated by making it easy where you can say, okay, well,
Speaker 1: you know. The reason we don't talk about these film
Speaker 1: because they're shit films because heroes know the villain's no good.
Speaker 1: But this is a great villain. And yeah, speaking of
Speaker 1: great villains. Funnily enough, I watched this recently just for fun.
Speaker 1: I watched Silence of the Lambs and it's come up
Speaker 1: a couple of times. I remember seeing this at the
Speaker 1: cinema as well. Hand to elect one of the great villains,
Speaker 1: Jonny Foster both got oscars for this.
Speaker 4: I did, and I think it was also Best Picture
Speaker 4: for ninety one. Perhaps, so this movie is interesting for me.
Speaker 4: So growing up, I was allowed to watch anything growing up,
Speaker 4: Like I watched RoboCop when I was six. I don't
Speaker 4: know if you've gone back and watched the first ten
Speaker 4: minutes unbelievably violent like In fact, I think it got
Speaker 4: knocked back from classification in America seventeen times before they
Speaker 4: finally got an R rating for it because it was
Speaker 4: just so violent. They kept giving it what was in
Speaker 4: X rating there, which is different to what it is today.
Speaker 4: But the so I wasn't But the one film I
Speaker 4: wasn't allowed to watch was The Silence of Lambs. In fact,
Speaker 4: it was that in the hand that rocks the cradle,
Speaker 4: and as it turns out, Mum was mistaken. She thought
Speaker 4: that the Science of the Lambs was based on a
Speaker 4: real story, so she thought the film was sort of
Speaker 4: exploiting someone's misery.
Speaker 5: As of course it's currently made up book.
Speaker 4: And anyway, So for all these years, I wasn't allowed
Speaker 4: to watch it, and it wasn't until I was like
Speaker 4: a I think, probably sixteen, even sixteen, maybe not that old,
Speaker 4: but until I watched it, and you know, I was
Speaker 4: just I was captivated from the first ninety seconds, Like
Speaker 4: the first ninety seconds of that film is a great
Speaker 4: illustration of what you can do, in my view, without
Speaker 4: any dialogue and setting up characters. It's a bit like
Speaker 4: with the I don't jump around too much. But in seven,
Speaker 4: the Morgan Freeman character, there's a scene when he wakes
Speaker 4: up and he's throwing knives at a dartboard, and really,
Speaker 4: what it's trying to tell you is this guy's meticulous
Speaker 4: and he's a bit of a loner. And with the
Speaker 4: silence of Lambs, you know, you have her at the
Speaker 4: training camp and she's running, so you realize she's determined,
Speaker 4: You realize she's she's not the boss. You realize that
Speaker 4: she's a trainee. And this goes on for about ninety seconds,
Speaker 4: and we ended up studying I think I ended up
Speaker 4: studying it when I did cinema at UNI, and we
Speaker 4: went through the whole film and just the way they
Speaker 4: set up the characters of that film, and the way
Speaker 4: they set up Hannibal Lecter, you know, you know, going in,
Speaker 4: before you even see him, you know he's accounibal. You
Speaker 4: know he's done all this horrendous stuff. You know, he's
Speaker 4: a psychiatrist. You know, he's possibly insane. And then when
Speaker 4: the camera pans into that plexiglass dungeon that he's living in,
Speaker 4: and he's just standing there with his arms yeah, sort
Speaker 4: of slunk to once, you know, side by side in
Speaker 4: a completely calm, sort.
Speaker 5: Of menacing way.
Speaker 4: And then you know, and then Anthony Hopkins just sort
Speaker 4: of takes over from there.
Speaker 1: And there's his choice to stand like that. That had
Speaker 1: to be. The director asked him, how do you want
Speaker 1: to be like when we come to your what do
Speaker 1: you want to be? Do you want to be in
Speaker 1: the corner? Do you want to turn around the review?
Speaker 1: So he goes, no, I's going to stand there still.
Speaker 5: I mean that's he's just I mean, he was playing
Speaker 5: in a different ballgame, wasn't he He was?
Speaker 1: I mean, he he It's funny when I think of
Speaker 1: Anthony Hopkins, like not a whole bunch of films come
Speaker 1: like Scions of the Lamps is clearly the one that
Speaker 1: comes to my mind. And like, I know he was
Speaker 1: being good in Remains of the Day, yeah, and those
Speaker 1: kinds of films. But when I think of like, you know,
Speaker 1: considering how great an actor he is, I sometimes don't
Speaker 1: have the amount of films that I kind of love
Speaker 1: to watch that star him outside of the you know,
Speaker 1: he's been in The Mission Impossible, in the thor movies,
Speaker 1: and but this one is clearly like he's best yes before.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's what's amazing to me is that he's
Speaker 4: so Jodie Foster won the Oscar and he's clearly the
Speaker 4: best part of that film.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's I think it's an awesome combination.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, But to me, he was just the impact he
Speaker 4: has in every scene and just like I mean, it's
Speaker 4: could be what were saying before, like could there be
Speaker 4: a better villain? Like he's such an incredible villain?
Speaker 1: Yeah, what a great. You kind of forget that he's
Speaker 1: actually not the main villain in him, like he's not.
Speaker 1: Crime is not really about him, like he's.
Speaker 4: And he's not even a typical villain, is he because
Speaker 4: he helps as well, Like he's he's obviously Buffalo me.
Speaker 5: I'm sure most people a sense stands. But Buffalo bills
Speaker 5: the villain villain. Yeah, he's the one going around doing
Speaker 5: naughty things but horrible.
Speaker 1: But and he was based on three different serial killers
Speaker 1: I believe, like Bundy being one of them, son of Sam,
Speaker 1: and yeah, I forget the other two ones that I
Speaker 1: hadn't really I don't think I heard I heard of Bundy,
Speaker 1: but because one of the I think might have been Bundy,
Speaker 1: who would often use like pretending his hand was in
Speaker 1: a car right to trap his victims.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and put him in a van.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I did forget when I was watching it
Speaker 1: recently that when Jodie Foster walks out that she cops,
Speaker 1: she cops, that that little surprise to the eye, Yeah,
Speaker 1: throwing that took me. Actually, I think I flinched the
Speaker 1: multiple MiGs, yeah, yes, yes, mix MiGs. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: I literally flinched. And I think.
Speaker 4: Even that scene I think shows just how much restraint
Speaker 4: there is like in the in that film for its
Speaker 4: all entirety, like because there's only really sort of.
Speaker 5: Imply you sort of hear him.
Speaker 4: Talk about how Anthony Hopkins Hannibal Lecter gets into MiGs, Like,
Speaker 4: so the story is supposed to be that Meg swallows
Speaker 4: his own tongue ye in distress because Hannibal Lecter effectively
Speaker 4: for his own amusement, you know, berated him to death.
Speaker 4: And I mean you get all of that in such
Speaker 4: a fleeting scene and it's just and just yeah, just
Speaker 4: the way they just so much show and so little
Speaker 4: tell is I just love it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, It's it's incredible. Gladiator also has a pretty good
Speaker 1: villain in Juaquin Phoenix. But I funnily enough, also saw
Speaker 1: this at the cinema in on the Gold Coast, right,
Speaker 1: I believe we've tripod that. We were on on.
Speaker 5: Just doing the soundtrack, just doing the soundtrack. We were on.
Speaker 1: This, just laying down some tracks. My good friends and
Speaker 1: they were on the road show and Melbourne conference saw
Speaker 1: a road show and it was playing. It was out
Speaker 1: and we're pretty exciting. There's a lot of hype because
Speaker 1: of Russell Crow and being yeah, we're excited to see it,
Speaker 1: and yeah, I love I love Gladiator. I have watched
Speaker 1: it for a while.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I just thought for me, I think it came
Speaker 4: out in two thousand and it was just you know,
Speaker 4: there's been some great epics up until that point, you know,
Speaker 4: the Brave Heart and I mean all sorts of great epics,
Speaker 4: but this one just just delivered. I thought on what
Speaker 4: it promised, like, you know, there's a lot of hype
Speaker 4: about it.
Speaker 1: I remember they hadn't made like a you know, they
Speaker 1: called them the Sword and Sandal film for a while.
Speaker 1: No Braveheart. Obviously it was huge. That was as an epic,
Speaker 1: but they hadn't gone back to Roman times. But that
Speaker 1: was kind of bringing the Western back on.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's what I'm sure, that's right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but I remember, I mean I remember being at
Speaker 4: the MCG watching the Tigers beat the Pies probably and
Speaker 4: there was a huge I think the scoreboard I think
Speaker 4: at one point became you know, like it was like
Speaker 4: massively promoted from memory, like big big bit, and I
Speaker 4: just thought when I went.
Speaker 5: There, it delivered interestingly.
Speaker 4: In preparation for talking to you, I went back and
Speaker 4: read some reviews of Gladiator, thinking that all be pretty glowing, right.
Speaker 5: And it wasn't the case. There was a lot of like.
Speaker 4: You know, the characters aren't well formed, and you know,
Speaker 4: the commedist character is he's almost a bit cartoony. And yeah,
Speaker 4: just the fight scenes, you know, I mean, this is
Speaker 4: where I'm out of my league here a little bit.
Speaker 4: When they start talking about the fight scenes aren't choreographed properly,
Speaker 4: I meant to me, I remember watching it just thinking,
Speaker 4: you know, he's sticking a couple of swords in him
Speaker 4: and cutting his head off and throwing swords into the crowd.
Speaker 5: It was awesome.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I don't remember having an issue at all
Speaker 1: with the fight fight scenes. It's interesting and you know,
Speaker 1: often I'll have a quick look at some reviews for
Speaker 1: the movies we're talking about. This is the film we're
Speaker 1: going to get back too soon. Network. Pauline Kale is
Speaker 1: a famous New York Times I think, and she didn't
Speaker 1: like this film. She thought it was too stagy and
Speaker 1: too kind of too actor y and and you know,
Speaker 1: and I can understand what she means by that, but
Speaker 1: I think you just you kind of you either have
Speaker 1: your arms and mind open to receive some film the
Speaker 1: way it is presented like this does feel like a play.
Speaker 1: At times. It is very wordy, it's very you know,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be shocked if Aaron sork And this is
Speaker 1: his favorite film. You know, it's very it does feel
Speaker 1: like a play, but it's brilliant. You know, you can
Speaker 1: be talkie and chatty and have lots of dialogue. If
Speaker 1: the dialogues is good, I'm up for it.
Speaker 4: I also think I think I probably watch films in
Speaker 4: a very different way to what I mentioned.
Speaker 1: Critics, of course, yes, because they're not having I would
Speaker 1: find it impossible really to watch as many films as
Speaker 1: they have to. You know, we watch films. We love
Speaker 1: films when we have time to watch, when we watch them,
Speaker 1: and we generally deal it with an open mind. I
Speaker 1: think critics are watching it. You know, they might have
Speaker 1: three films a day, you know, and they have to,
Speaker 1: you know, they have to have this critical kind of
Speaker 1: response to it, and they're dissecting, and they don't you know,
Speaker 1: often they're not going off any kind of bars or
Speaker 1: any kind of often and or any reactions from their
Speaker 1: friends or their coworkers or their family. They're just you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes they get horrifically right, Rogerie. But it's got some
Speaker 1: massive you know.
Speaker 4: Well, I mean I actually we will talk about Roger
Speaker 4: d but because I read his take, well, I'm both
Speaker 4: on Gladiator and on Network, and in some ways it
Speaker 4: kind of ruins it for you a little bit. Like
Speaker 4: I'm so I so easily slip into films, like to
Speaker 4: the point where like I have to actually think quite
Speaker 4: hard afterwards to go, Okay, what were the what were
Speaker 4: the thematics of this film? What were they trying to say?
Speaker 4: And what were the and and even like when I
Speaker 4: watch TV shows and movies in my partner carries, She's
Speaker 4: often like, I.
Speaker 5: Know what will happen.
Speaker 4: I'm like, oh, really, I don't like because I just
Speaker 4: I just get it just to think because I've I mean,
Speaker 4: when I was a kid, I would just like go
Speaker 4: to the video showp and just go all right, stack
Speaker 4: them up and just watch them, and I think, I
Speaker 4: just I just let myself be in them and then
Speaker 4: don't worry too much about the floors and don't worry
Speaker 4: too and obviously if the floors are too great, the
Speaker 4: film shit and you don't like it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, the nitpicky stuff very.
Speaker 1: Much I'm the same way. I let films wash over me.
Speaker 1: I don't try to get ahead of it. I don't
Speaker 1: try to think how who the villain necessarily, so yeah,
Speaker 1: if it's yeah, like Knives Out was a good film recently,
Speaker 1: Ryan Johnson and I try to try to, you know,
Speaker 1: times to think who the killer might be.
Speaker 5: But that was part of the purpose that exactly.
Speaker 1: It's who done it, So they're inviting you to ask
Speaker 1: that question of yourself. But generally, I let films wash
Speaker 1: over me, and I'm like you, I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: kind of get to the end of the film where
Speaker 1: the credits roll and go, oh, this film's about the
Speaker 1: you know, the corp of corruption in television, you know,
Speaker 1: like this one's you know, it's it's it's more prevalent
Speaker 1: probably in this than most films. But I started to
Speaker 1: really think about it. Yeah, and you know, and I
Speaker 1: you know, I read some articles and I, you know,
Speaker 1: and this is I talk about it. I'm still like
Speaker 1: this loving thing about this podcast. It's it is a review,
Speaker 1: you know, podcast to an extent, but it's also about
Speaker 1: at least one of us, my guess, processing something they've
Speaker 1: just watched. Absolutely, so you might and any of my
Speaker 1: guests may feel differently about the film a week from now,
Speaker 1: six months, and now a year from now. We've had
Speaker 1: people who have come on the show Rachel, call with Castaway,
Speaker 1: and email with Nail and I who weren't necessarily blown
Speaker 1: away by the film, but then after discussing it for
Speaker 1: an hour, they were actually, I might go back and
Speaker 1: give it a watch.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, having listened to a lot of the podcasts,
Speaker 4: like I feel like those a lot of your guests
Speaker 4: are much closer to where I'm at than the critic.
Speaker 5: But we'll get there.
Speaker 4: But it's actually, I mean some of the stuff that
Speaker 4: the critic bring up are interesting, and I think having
Speaker 4: spent the day I finished watching it last night, having
Speaker 4: spent the day thinking about it and reading about it,
Speaker 4: it's grown on me sort of twofold.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just in a day.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Like it's interesting. You said there's a lot of dialogue,
Speaker 5: Like there's bits of.
Speaker 4: It, and I was, oh, this is a bit you know,
Speaker 4: this is a bit overaught now like there we can
Speaker 4: chill out guys on the dialogue. But then I thought
Speaker 4: about it. I was like, actually, quite like I mean,
Speaker 4: you just put it. I quite liked the play of it. Yeah,
Speaker 4: Like there's a scene which if you haven't seen the film,
Speaker 4: that makes the sense. But he ends up speaking to
Speaker 4: the sort of the head honcho of the network that
Speaker 4: I think is called Arthur Jensen from memory, and they
Speaker 4: have this scene from a long, long table where he's
Speaker 4: at the other end and they've shot it from quite
Speaker 4: far away, which I thought was interesting, and he has
Speaker 4: this huge soliloquy almost like I mean, it's had another character,
Speaker 4: but it's like it's and it's incredibly flamboyant and it's
Speaker 4: almost again cartoonish.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but I loved it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's satire, so you know, it's I think
Speaker 1: it's allowed to have those those moms. I love that
Speaker 1: it's played by Ned Beatty. He's the easy character. The
Speaker 1: actor's name and out the Jensen is the character name.
Speaker 1: And he got nominally for an Oscar for this basically
Speaker 1: for this speech and it goes on for about five minutes.
Speaker 1: It's lovely. He he kind of he comes in and
Speaker 1: he kind of takes me. He says, you know, I
Speaker 1: want to have a chat to you, but we'll go
Speaker 1: into the conference room and he just kind of like
Speaker 1: genterally kind of guides him in, and then just before
Speaker 1: he goes in, he kind of almost pushes him into
Speaker 1: the room. And then he kind of goes into this room.
Speaker 1: He says, welcome to Valhalla, and then he closes the curtains.
Speaker 1: Like to be Peter Finch on that day, because he
Speaker 1: basically has two lines maybe and right at the end
Speaker 1: of you know, right in the saying like this. Watching
Speaker 1: him do that would have been quite amazing. It's one
Speaker 1: of the best monologues in movie history. In fact, let's
Speaker 1: have a little bit of a listen there. This is
Speaker 1: ned Beatty in the conference room talking to Howard Bill.
Speaker 1: Let's have a listen, and you have meddle with the
Speaker 1: primal forces of nature.
Speaker 6: And you will tone.
Speaker 8: Am I getting through to Yoursterdill. You get up on
Speaker 8: your little twenty one inch screen. And how about America
Speaker 8: and democracy? There is no America. There is no democracy.
Speaker 8: There is only IBM and it T A AT and
Speaker 8: T and DuPont dow Union, abide and excellent.
Speaker 5: Those are the nations of the world today.
Speaker 8: What do you think the Russians talk about in their
Speaker 8: Councils of State, Carl Marks, they get out there linear
Speaker 8: programming charts statistical decision there has been in max solutions
Speaker 8: and compute the price cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just.
Speaker 5: Like we do.
Speaker 8: We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies,
Speaker 8: mister Bell.
Speaker 3: The world is a.
Speaker 8: College of corporations, inexorabally determined by the immutable by laws
Speaker 8: of business.
Speaker 5: The world is a business, mister Bill.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's it's hard to h We've played about
Speaker 1: a minute of it there and let's say it goes
Speaker 1: to five minutes, and there's a lot of the loud
Speaker 1: of stuff way he begins, which is very dramatic. Uh,
Speaker 1: And it's it's really fun. I quite like he's he's
Speaker 1: changed of tone after when he says you will you
Speaker 1: will I tone am I getting threugh to your mister Bill.
Speaker 1: But it's it's it's really lovely. But yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: and it makes it kind of makes sense love from
Speaker 1: his point of view, you know, not saying we agree
Speaker 1: with the the the idea, but I think it's it's
Speaker 1: probably it's valid, it's valid, the very valid point is making.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And I think so clearly.
Speaker 4: This film at its core is a satire of television
Speaker 4: and the power of television.
Speaker 1: So the question of horses and the forces and the forces.
Speaker 5: Behind television correct.
Speaker 1: Correct.
Speaker 4: The question I had for you coming here today was
Speaker 4: do you reckon television has been a net good?
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, it's funny because we have this conversation has
Speaker 1: been happening a lot about social media recently. It's probably
Speaker 1: overtaken that the question you just asked, but I think
Speaker 1: it has. I feel like television has done less damage
Speaker 1: than what social media has already done.
Speaker 4: This one of the things I read today, which I'm
Speaker 4: just going to read to you, has TV proliferated after
Speaker 4: the war, which is when it sort of really went
Speaker 4: gang busses after World War Two. In Britain in nineteen
Speaker 4: seventy one, ten percent of homes still had no indoor
Speaker 4: laboratory or bath, thirty one percent had no fridge, and
Speaker 4: sixty two percent had no telephone, but only nine percent
Speaker 4: didn't have a TV. And it goes on to make
Speaker 4: the point that there's something about TV that almost trumps reality,
Speaker 4: that you don't believe it until you've seen it on TV.
Speaker 4: And I thought about that for a second, and I
Speaker 4: remember Evie, my five turning six year old, said to me,
Speaker 4: she was talking about the olden days, and she goes,
Speaker 4: but in the olden days, Daddy, everything was black and white,
Speaker 4: wasn't it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's always thinking that. Yeah, almost, I could not.
Speaker 1: I still have trouble picturing world without without it not
Speaker 1: being a black and white But.
Speaker 4: That is that is purely a phenomenon of TV. Yes,
Speaker 4: because if we didn't have TV, I mean, there's lots
Speaker 4: of things that would be different. Obviously wouldn't have seen
Speaker 4: the moon landing, would see nine to eleven. But that alone,
Speaker 4: like a six year old genuinely believing that at some
Speaker 4: point the world turned from black and white into color,
Speaker 4: is a fairly extraordinary feat of TV. And it makes
Speaker 4: you think, like if that's obviously an incredibly basic thing,
Speaker 4: but it's like, is it any wonder how much impact
Speaker 4: TV has had? And again I don't have the answer either,
Speaker 4: but I was sort of I was struggling with it
Speaker 4: a little bit, like there's been plenty of times when
Speaker 4: you know, moving on from what we're talking about the
Speaker 4: project when we make TV, where I do worry about
Speaker 4: what we say and what impact it has on the
Speaker 4: people that are listening. Like, for the most part, I'm
Speaker 4: fairly libertarian, it's like, we'll make up your own mind.
Speaker 4: We should be allowed to say or do whatever we want,
Speaker 4: and people should can and will react however they like.
Speaker 5: But having said that.
Speaker 4: Like often with something like The Weekly, which pickering, I'm
Speaker 4: often saying, hey, let's balance this with that, Like if
Speaker 4: we're going to say this, let's say that. And you know,
Speaker 4: in some ways, I'm in sort of this constant negotiation
Speaker 4: with our host about what we're saying, partly because I
Speaker 4: want to broaden the possible audience. So what I'm actually
Speaker 4: doing is saying, no, I want you to say things
Speaker 4: that most people are going to want you to say. Yeah,
Speaker 4: And that's there's something weird about that, Like.
Speaker 1: I think there's something that happened, you know, not long
Speaker 1: after I joined the project. I've been on there, you know,
Speaker 1: eight years or so, give or take, and I remember
Speaker 1: having a conversation with Carrie about We're just talking about
Speaker 1: how we've sometimes I think we're going through a bit
Speaker 1: of a phase where we were thinking a lot about
Speaker 1: what was happening online, about the reaction of not holding
Speaker 1: back saying things, because you know, whether it's online as
Speaker 1: far as Twitter goes or even you know, news services
Speaker 1: online you know, like you know, the things sometimes that
Speaker 1: get grabbed from any show, but you know, I show
Speaker 1: like the project and taken as a headline because it
Speaker 1: is sometimes sometimes baffling, not not all the time, but
Speaker 1: sometimes it's baffling, you know. And carriage us a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot more than I do, and well it
Speaker 1: does as well, but it is something And even with
Speaker 1: me my role being the comedian on the show, sometimes
Speaker 1: I've not gone for a joke because I think I
Speaker 1: it could be taken out of content.
Speaker 4: But isn't that I mean, that's that's really interesting because
Speaker 4: that's almost the antithesis of being a comedian.
Speaker 1: Yes, like, oh yes, I mean I think I think
Speaker 1: people have forgotten I think comedians have forgotten their role.
Speaker 1: I think some some percentage of the audience have forgotten
Speaker 1: the roles. I mean lit maybe that's some fair. Maybe
Speaker 1: there are comedians who have forgotten their roles and maybe
Speaker 1: might look at me and go, maybe they think I've
Speaker 1: forgotten my role because I'm on the new show and
Speaker 1: I express opinions that aren't necessarily funny. I did have
Speaker 1: somebody on Twitter who I made a comment about something
Speaker 1: about Lockdown. It wasn't particularly controversy. I was told to
Speaker 1: stay in my lane, and I just happened to go
Speaker 1: to their pages so that there was a Pilates instructor.
Speaker 1: Now would I would be told to stay in your
Speaker 1: layed by a Pilarate's instructor. Is slightly weird, but it's
Speaker 1: also just everyone's entitled to do an opinion on this.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like I was. I was.
Speaker 5: I was also opinion.
Speaker 1: It was a medical side. I wasn't trying.
Speaker 5: It's everyone's lane.
Speaker 1: Yeah, everyone should have an opinion.
Speaker 4: But what's interesting though, is it Okay, let me ask
Speaker 4: you this, because this is relevant to network, do you
Speaker 4: ever change what you say based on whether you think
Speaker 4: you're going to lose or gain audience?
Speaker 1: Yes? Absolutely, absolutely, yes, you would have to do before
Speaker 1: live on it and also tweeting. You know, if I
Speaker 1: was the tweet something, I've certainly written a tweet and
Speaker 1: gone deleted it because I've got that I think that
Speaker 1: could be taken the wrong way or in this taking
Speaker 1: the right way. But I just I just don't feel like.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I think there's a there's a that's just
Speaker 4: sensible because we're in the game of wanting to survive
Speaker 4: in media but I think what Network points out where
Speaker 4: it gets different is it's when the the corporate structures
Speaker 4: are behind what you can and can't do, and they
Speaker 4: suddenly start changing things and moving things.
Speaker 5: Around in order to protect their dollar.
Speaker 4: And I guess the question is, then is there anything
Speaker 4: wrong with that if they're putting up the money?
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, absolutely, I mean you can yeah, we can't think.
Speaker 1: And it's where it's interesting. And you're in a different
Speaker 1: situation being on the ABC because it's a government funded
Speaker 1: and it's taxpayers seven cents of is it still seven
Speaker 1: cents or sixth sense?
Speaker 4: Although it has a similar it has a similar tenor
Speaker 4: because people get pretty pissed off about their eight cents
Speaker 4: a week.
Speaker 1: Oh of course, it's just as dangerous if you like.
Speaker 4: It's different, Like there's one thing to have the autonomy
Speaker 4: over what you say because you're trying to eat it,
Speaker 4: you're trying to maximize your audience.
Speaker 5: That's that's pretty normal. It's different.
Speaker 4: And I think what Network points out and clearly what
Speaker 4: the director and the writer they clearly had an issue with.
Speaker 4: Then they used film to satirize TV because they didn't
Speaker 4: like where this was possibly going. And and I think
Speaker 4: we're I mean, I mean I often see people, especially
Speaker 4: on air, people you know, Bristol, at the idea that
Speaker 4: the suit upstairs in Sydney is going to tell us
Speaker 4: how what we can and can't say because they've got,
Speaker 4: you know, their mate who works for excell I mean,
Speaker 4: I think we all, I mean to a degree, don't
Speaker 4: like that. But the question I guess really is, in
Speaker 4: this world where everything is really owned by smaller and
Speaker 4: smaller number of conglomerates, is whether we can be you know,
Speaker 4: we sort of have to live and die bite a
Speaker 4: little bit, don't we.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It used to be that you you would just
Speaker 1: read an article or watch a report and that's how
Speaker 1: you would You would feel informed by that. And now
Speaker 1: you feel like you need to be informed by the
Speaker 1: forces behind whoever's giving you this report or this article,
Speaker 1: which is something that you know growing up, and until
Speaker 1: recently I wasn't. You know. I think we all have
Speaker 1: to make conscious decisions about where we get our news
Speaker 1: from and keep keep being informed if things have changed,
Speaker 1: you know. So it's it's I mean, it's pretty depressing.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's I think it's really depressing with what's
Speaker 1: happening in like I said, the amount of the very
Speaker 1: few people who control media.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I think that was what I loved. I
Speaker 4: think that's what I really connected with with network. You know,
Speaker 4: this was telling that story a long long time ago.
Speaker 5: You know. You know, this film, I think is.
Speaker 4: Made what need to come out six seventy six, so
Speaker 4: it's like sort of twenty years the sort of the
Speaker 4: putative golden age of television.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So I did.
Speaker 1: Think of that during it, Like television was still pretty new,
Speaker 1: correct when this film comes out, right, you know, even
Speaker 1: the whole you know, the conceiving and development of the
Speaker 1: writing of the scripts by Patty Chevski, it's not like
Speaker 1: it'd been Television got corupted pretty quick. I saw the
Speaker 1: opportunity really quickly.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 4: The other thing that I wanted to ask you about
Speaker 4: with the film, which I think you have some interesting
Speaker 4: interest take on, it, says this. So this is part
Speaker 4: of the I was saying before about what Roger Ebitt
Speaker 4: said about the film, and when I read back it
Speaker 4: sort of, you know, it wasn't quite as positive. Like
Speaker 4: he was incredibly positive about the film generally and thought
Speaker 4: the acting was great and stuff, but he said if
Speaker 4: the whole movie had stayed with this theme, with the
Speaker 4: theme of corruption in TV, we might have had a
Speaker 4: very bitter little classic here. As it was, it was
Speaker 4: a supremely well acted, intelligent film that tries for too much,
Speaker 4: that attacks not only television but also most of the
Speaker 4: other ills of the nineteen seventies. We're asked to laugh
Speaker 4: at and be moved by or get angry about a
Speaker 4: long list of subjects sexism, agism, revolutionary ripoffs, upper middle
Speaker 4: class anime, capitalist exploitation, Nielsen ratings, sidekicks, and the perennial
Speaker 4: stand by.
Speaker 5: The failure to communicate.
Speaker 1: I mean, is he having one foot in each camp?
Speaker 4: Is because interestingly, before I read that, I was kind
Speaker 4: of impressed with how many things they ticked off.
Speaker 1: I mean, I didn't come away being angrily individually at
Speaker 1: those things. The one thing I really I just took
Speaker 1: away and it made me think about it. And I
Speaker 1: guess we've probably already chatted about the idea of these
Speaker 1: forces behind television. And it's interesting because you know, I
Speaker 1: work on a show and it is, you know, news
Speaker 1: delivered differently because we have an entertainment approach to it,
Speaker 1: and this show is largely about what happens when the
Speaker 1: entertainment division kind of starts meddling with the news division.
Speaker 1: So it's like, and I'm just leaving my little world,
Speaker 1: and I'd love to tell my jokes on the TV
Speaker 1: and through out of my silly segments. But I am
Speaker 1: I naive to think you know that there are no
Speaker 1: puppet masters. I can hand on my heart, can say
Speaker 1: that I've never been told to have this opinion or
Speaker 1: that opinion, or that we're skewing left or we need
Speaker 1: to scure more right.
Speaker 4: You know, what did you make of the part of
Speaker 4: what the film's saying that I don't know if it
Speaker 4: was saying this before it's time without knowing it was
Speaker 4: saying but the guy's the mad prophet is mad. Part
Speaker 4: of the part of the thing is he's mentally unstable.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's not like you are. And the fact that
Speaker 1: he changes, he flips. When the Seaman has listened to
Speaker 1: before with Arthur Jensen, he basically TOAs the company line,
Speaker 1: you know, because they're they're they're afraid of losing money
Speaker 1: from the from the Arabs who just called the Arabs.
Speaker 1: I imagine a conglomerate out of the Saudi Arabia and
Speaker 1: he says, you know, I've just seen the face of
Speaker 1: God and and he toes the company line. So I
Speaker 1: thought it was kind of interesting that, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: this great kind of you know, Soothsayer was you know,
Speaker 1: and the People's Champion flipped on, you know, turned on
Speaker 1: and turned on a dime.
Speaker 4: But it made me think about, like, I mean, we've
Speaker 4: had these conversations, we had these conversations a lot back,
Speaker 4: going back to the project. But when you do and
Speaker 4: don't put a mentally unwell personal on television.
Speaker 1: Well, there's a one of the biggest shows in the
Speaker 1: country at the moment puts people who have failed that
Speaker 1: you know, a reality TV show about people. I wan
Speaker 1: say which one, but it's about getting married really quickly when.
Speaker 5: You've just seen someone.
Speaker 1: And they So a lot of the shows have psyched tests,
Speaker 1: so it's you know, psychiatric tress. So you you know,
Speaker 1: and I've been told by extremely reliable source that a
Speaker 1: lot of them don't pass, don't pass, and they put
Speaker 1: on air.
Speaker 5: How do you feel about that?
Speaker 1: I think it's disgusting, yeah, because I feel like and
Speaker 1: anyone who tells me they watch that show, I take
Speaker 1: it up with them because I I think it's gone
Speaker 1: past entertainment, you know. I think it's it's I have
Speaker 1: an undeniable sinking feeling that there's going to be someone
Speaker 1: get hurt, somebody get worse than hurt on that show.
Speaker 5: So I can honestly say I haven't watched that show,
Speaker 5: except that we make fun of it on my show,
Speaker 5: on our show, The Weekly.
Speaker 1: Disgusting.
Speaker 5: I well, that's a fair question.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's it's like when are you it's
Speaker 1: I think it's a big thing in comedy, isn't it
Speaker 1: like when you some people and Ricky Gervaso's about a
Speaker 1: lot the idea of confusing the punchline with the target,
Speaker 1: you know, and people get triggered by words, not the sentiment.
Speaker 1: Bend the joke. You can actually talk well one, I
Speaker 1: think you can. It's a comedian's job that, you know,
Speaker 1: go and make jokes about anything, and that that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean you can't you know, that can't be a bad taste.
Speaker 1: And then you have to you know, a tone for
Speaker 1: it or and ideally you know you have a good
Speaker 1: if you have a good sense of what the joke
Speaker 1: is about, and you can stand by it, then go
Speaker 1: I say, I say, go for it. But if you've taken,
Speaker 1: if you've rolled the dice and you you.
Speaker 5: Know, and then you're not clear on the target.
Speaker 1: If you're not clear on the target, then then that's
Speaker 1: when you can get yourself down.
Speaker 4: And what's worth saying that in the jokes that we make,
Speaker 4: they're quite specific. There's a certain producer who produces those
Speaker 4: little bits. It's usually like a recap of that show
Speaker 4: and it has it's essentially a joke about the production.
Speaker 4: It's a show that it's a joke about the fact
Speaker 4: that this show exists at all. But there's no question
Speaker 4: that the people, the participants what do we call them,
Speaker 4: the contest, I don't know, whatever they call they are
Speaker 4: collateral in the jokes because they are strange people to
Speaker 4: put on TV. It's part of the reason it's a show.
Speaker 1: Yes, and no doubt, you know, with think your producer
Speaker 1: had on. If I know, if I was working on
Speaker 1: the weekly, I'll be going, well, this is the number one,
Speaker 1: you know, closer to number one rating show on. Tell
Speaker 1: about them if we have a little bit of you know,
Speaker 1: we can have a little slice of that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And it's sort of it all comes under this
Speaker 4: sort of bullshit thing that well, you know, it's a
Speaker 4: bit like footy Like if they're out there, they're fit
Speaker 4: like you. I mean like it's like if they're on
Speaker 4: that show, they're fit for satire and fit for jokes.
Speaker 4: But as we know, you can go onto the footy
Speaker 4: field and you can not be that fit. And it's
Speaker 4: just a network made me think about it again, you know,
Speaker 4: like it wasn't really major theme of network like it was.
Speaker 4: You know, you can imagine that because it was made
Speaker 4: in nineteen seventy six. It was just called the Mad
Speaker 4: Profit and none really gave a fuck about his mental
Speaker 4: health really other than his best mate. For the rest
Speaker 4: of them, it was just part of his act. But
Speaker 4: it did make me think about it, you know.
Speaker 5: And there's been it's probably too dangerous for us to
Speaker 5: talk about this, but there's been times, you know, particularly
Speaker 5: back at the project was much when we interview people
Speaker 5: where we you know, we put this is one of
Speaker 5: them one of those times before your time, but we
Speaker 5: put a person on who's clearly not It wasn't safe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, usual walks. Have you ever walks? Have you ever walks?
Speaker 1: I got a question, have you ever used the word cockman?
Speaker 5: No? But I'm going to from now on.
Speaker 1: I've never heard the word cockman ship.
Speaker 5: I don't think it's the perfect way to describe one's
Speaker 5: ability in the sack. Yeah, so in the in the
Speaker 5: Fields where they say the show in the film, Diana
Speaker 5: has a go at Max for not being particularly good
Speaker 5: at having sex. She also admits that she's not particularly
Speaker 5: good at sex, and he says, I don't know why.
Speaker 5: And he's about a sixty year old man.
Speaker 1: He's like, I mean, you know, were you in this
Speaker 1: relationship for the hot sex, Diana or forman ship? So
Speaker 1: he says, And he says, he says, why why do
Speaker 1: women think the worst thing they can say to her
Speaker 1: man is to, you know, have a go at his
Speaker 1: cockman ship?
Speaker 4: That's right, yeah, of which I can't actually remember what
Speaker 4: she responds. Either way, it's a great word.
Speaker 1: It's a great word, and we'll use it. Or has
Speaker 1: your copmanship.
Speaker 5: Say he's gonna ask first.
Speaker 4: I think it's fairly moderate, to be honest, I feel
Speaker 4: I feel quite similar to Max.
Speaker 1: I'm not representing Australia. I'm not, but I'm getting I'm
Speaker 1: getting around the community cap I'm getting a few.
Speaker 9: Kicks moving on networks about a network for let's ever
Speaker 9: listen to HOWD Beal and HOWD Beal showed the mad
Speaker 9: profit of the airwaves as he rives up his studio audience.
Speaker 10: Had you in charge running eyes today, and you in
Speaker 10: charge running with the chairman of the board of the
Speaker 10: Union Broadcasting Systems. And he died at eleven o'clock this
Speaker 10: morning of a heart condition. That wyss, We're in a
Speaker 10: lot of trouble.
Speaker 7: So a rich little man.
Speaker 5: With white hair died.
Speaker 6: What is that going to do with the price of rice?
Speaker 7: Right?
Speaker 6: And why is that woe to us? Because you people
Speaker 6: and sixty two million other Americans are listening to me
Speaker 6: right now, because less than three percent of you people
Speaker 6: read books, because less than fifteen percent of you reading newspapers.
Speaker 6: Because the early truth, you know, is what you get
Speaker 6: over this tube right now. There is a whole an
Speaker 6: entire generation that never knew anything that didn't come out
Speaker 6: of this tube. This tube is the gospel, the ultimate revelation.
Speaker 6: This tube can make or break presidents, pots, prime ministers.
Speaker 6: This tube is the most awesome, goddamn force in the
Speaker 6: whole godless world. And woe is us if it never
Speaker 6: folded the hands of the wrong people and that's why
Speaker 6: woe is us that Edward George Ruddy died. Because this
Speaker 6: company is now in the hands of CCA, the Communication
Speaker 6: Corporation of America. There's an old chairman of the board,
Speaker 6: a man called Frank Hackett, sitting in mister Ruddy's office
Speaker 6: on the twentieth floor. And when the twelfth largest company
Speaker 6: in the world controls the most some goddamn propaganda fast
Speaker 6: and the whole godless world, who knows what ship will
Speaker 6: be better for truth on this network. So you listen
Speaker 6: to me, Listen to me. Television is not the truth.
Speaker 6: Televisions are goddamn amusement.
Speaker 1: Park m It makes him battled point.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean I think I agree with him. Everybody
Speaker 5: I was listening to us like, yeah.
Speaker 1: What did what did? One of the things I liked
Speaker 1: about it when when Howard Beale makes his first the
Speaker 1: announcement that he's the action he's going to take, He's
Speaker 1: going to take his own life on the air next Tuesday.
Speaker 1: I really liked that the people kind of in their
Speaker 1: own station had missed it. Well, they weren't watching.
Speaker 4: It's an incredible saying. Yeah, I mean, I kept thinking
Speaker 4: they're going to put the lifeline THINGU. But yeah, I
Speaker 4: mean it was a beautiful illustration, wasn't it. Of just
Speaker 4: like they were too busy, I think, you know, trying
Speaker 4: to what were they doing.
Speaker 5: I think it quite quite specific they were.
Speaker 1: I do forget what they or what it was.
Speaker 4: Just the very fact that they the very fact that
Speaker 4: this guy is saying on ed that he's going to
Speaker 4: kill it any he says it two or three times
Speaker 4: and everyone misses it and never misses it. Everyone misses
Speaker 4: It's a beautiful illustration I think of of just I mean,
Speaker 4: it's actually not exactly how TV works. I mean, obviously,
Speaker 4: if someone said that on air and you're in the
Speaker 4: control m, obviously you'd clock it.
Speaker 5: But it was a beautiful illustration.
Speaker 1: I thought it's a great illustration that it came at
Speaker 1: times become a production line and it's just nobody's really
Speaker 1: paying attention and they're not being aware of the the
Speaker 1: weapon that they have.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I mean what he said then is incredible.
Speaker 5: Wasn't it the that you know it can make and
Speaker 5: break presidents and that you know fifteen percent of people
Speaker 5: read the newspaper.
Speaker 1: I mean it's yeah, I mean, and I can only
Speaker 1: imagine those those stats were on the money, like researched
Speaker 1: and they writer Padichevski, did you find the did it
Speaker 1: feel like TV station? Do you someone? I'm sure we've
Speaker 1: both seen TV shows and movies set in TV stations.
Speaker 1: Week it doesn't feel like it was pretty I mean.
Speaker 4: It was it was I think it was purposely poky,
Speaker 4: like I think they were trying to illustrate the fact
Speaker 4: that the UBS News was the fourth rated news, and
Speaker 4: it was like I think at one point that Robert
Speaker 4: Deval character refers to it as a whorehouse and that
Speaker 4: you know, it's really the bottom of the pile, which
Speaker 4: is great because it's the story of it coming from
Speaker 4: fourth to first on the back of this crazy I.
Speaker 1: Did like that he only got to the fourth in
Speaker 1: the ratings, like he wasn't like did he make his
Speaker 1: number one? And like Phyllis was that he was behind
Speaker 1: Phyllis and the Little House in the Prayer and all
Speaker 1: in the families.
Speaker 4: But yeah, so, but I mean, in essence, it is like,
Speaker 4: you know, everybody sitting around and there's always someone on
Speaker 4: the phone yelling at someone else. No one's taking responsibility him.
Speaker 4: But you know he's best mates, you know, he's producer,
Speaker 4: but he doesn't really have control over him. All he
Speaker 4: can really do is taking him out and get drunk
Speaker 4: and giving him somewhere to sleep. And so, you know,
Speaker 4: I means, obviously it's exaggerated, but it's you know, I
Speaker 4: mean everybody has those stories in TV.
Speaker 5: Yeah, everybody.
Speaker 1: Patif said that he wanted I think he's a really
Speaker 1: good lesson for writers actually, but he knew there was
Speaker 1: maybe some terms in that the audience wouldn't know what
Speaker 1: they meant, but he wanted it to. He said he
Speaker 1: didn't care that the audience didn't understand those bits. He
Speaker 1: just wanted to feel authentic. Yeah, and I think that's
Speaker 1: that's really important. And you've written stuff and somebody might
Speaker 1: say that people get that, it's like, no, it feels right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: then that's what you're after.
Speaker 5: Well that's right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I mean I imagine you know, you must
Speaker 4: find that when you're writing. You must have there must
Speaker 4: be an incredible motivation to try and explain everything because
Speaker 4: you know the network note's going to come back that,
Speaker 4: oh I don't understand this bit. I guess the point
Speaker 4: where you've got to say, who blew up Batman's tires?
Speaker 5: Like it's how far back. Do you go like, is
Speaker 5: it ever reductive? Like?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Often the de bait we often have is about time,
Speaker 1: and time is important, how explaining the jumps in time
Speaker 1: between scenes and and some people are really really finicky
Speaker 1: about we need to know why and how and where.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, no, that's just this is another part
Speaker 1: of the day, and like and I don't like, I
Speaker 1: feel like shit's creaked? Does it really?
Speaker 5: Well?
Speaker 1: They're just you know, you can have you know, Dan
Speaker 1: Levy in the scene, you know, at the at his store,
Speaker 1: and then he's in the next scene at the hotel,
Speaker 1: you know, with his dad and you know it.
Speaker 5: But you and while Leader Think in this podcast talked
Speaker 5: about Star Wars and Moley brought up a point that
Speaker 5: I've never actually bothered to think about, was that why
Speaker 5: why did the rebels? Sorry? Why does the Empire want
Speaker 5: what they want?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I was the same, why are they good?
Speaker 5: And why? Sorry? Why are they bad? And why the rebels?
Speaker 5: But I mean, I was thirty thirty nine when I
Speaker 5: heard your podcast two weeks ago, and I was like,
Speaker 5: I hadn't cared too, Like it didn't matter that.
Speaker 1: That's one of the big questions that has come out
Speaker 1: of this podcast for me, and the other one was
Speaker 1: Tony Martin's Top Gun where he said who is that
Speaker 1: enemy at the end, like who are they? The Canadians.
Speaker 1: It's crazy. It is absolutely crazy for Costa Ricans because
Speaker 1: it's just off the coast of San Diego. You know,
Speaker 1: Patty Chamsky wins three Oscars. He's only the only writer
Speaker 1: to win three Oscars without sharing the credit so solo.
Speaker 1: He won it for Marty, he won for the Hospital,
Speaker 1: which I haven't seen in the hospital, and he won
Speaker 1: it for Network.
Speaker 5: He is superstar.
Speaker 1: He's an absolute superstar. And it's like I said, it's
Speaker 1: quite prophetic this and I heard somebody you refer to
Speaker 1: it as the Fifth War. So this idea, so we
Speaker 1: know what the fourth wall is is when a character
Speaker 1: talked to the camera in the audience, you know, like
Speaker 1: Kevin Spacey in House Cards. Sorry, couldn't think of another example.
Speaker 1: I was space in the first one that came to no, no,
Speaker 1: we'll leave that in. So the War, which I'd never
Speaker 1: heard of. But it's it's and I'm not sure how
Speaker 1: much if it's somebody's opinion, you know, their idea or
Speaker 1: actually is something that is a thing but is a
Speaker 1: fifth war is when the characters are kind of almost
Speaker 1: the characters almost know they're in a movie. Like the
Speaker 1: way they are referring to scenes and seedy little drama
Speaker 1: is almost like they know what that they're in a
Speaker 1: film about.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, there's a beautiful little scene where where Max he's
Speaker 4: been sleeping with Diana Faate Danaway's character for a bit
Speaker 4: and he and he kicks the script off the table,
Speaker 4: saying referring to the script of his own life and
Speaker 4: that she's she's literally living inside.
Speaker 5: A TV herself. Yeah, so it's very sort of like that.
Speaker 4: It's like sort of TV inception or something weird like
Speaker 4: it's but yeah, it was very much like that, like
Speaker 4: it was sort of reflected on it reflexive on itself.
Speaker 1: Let's have a listen to that. So this is Max
Speaker 1: Levy or you know, announcing these guns leave Diana.
Speaker 2: And it's a happy ending.
Speaker 1: Wayward.
Speaker 2: The husband comes to his senses, returns to his wife
Speaker 2: with whom he's established a long and sustaining love. Heartless
Speaker 2: young woman left alone in her art desolation music up
Speaker 2: with us, Well, final commercial, and here are a few
Speaker 2: scenes from next week's show.
Speaker 1: It's a good one. It's a William Holden so good.
Speaker 1: All the actors are amazing.
Speaker 5: He's amazing.
Speaker 4: He I did feel like his wife took the whole
Speaker 4: thing quite well. You know when he breaks to his
Speaker 4: wife having an affair for a month, that she cracks
Speaker 4: it for about thirty seconds, but she's laughing by the
Speaker 4: end of the scene.
Speaker 1: And even in this scene, it's like, you know, Diana's saying,
Speaker 1: you know, leave and leave, and then she said, then
Speaker 1: don't leave. You know, he makes the point, and it's
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a lovely kind of kind of flow.
Speaker 1: Beaches Straight was on screen for five minutes and two
Speaker 1: seconds and one an Oscar. She's a wife. She won
Speaker 1: the Oscar. It's the briefest appearance on stage ever to
Speaker 1: win an Oscar.
Speaker 5: What did you make of their relationship the Max and Diana?
Speaker 1: Did you? I? I mean I kind of saw it
Speaker 1: from Max's point of view, like he's going through a
Speaker 1: bit of a crisis and Diana is doing it. I
Speaker 1: think part not purely out of out of her career.
Speaker 1: I think it's a lot a lot of it's loaded
Speaker 1: into that, but you know, he was her mentor, and
Speaker 1: you know that.
Speaker 5: I think the story about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, there was that scene where he William Holden
Speaker 1: played Max Shoemaker. He's trying to tell her that he
Speaker 1: loves her, and apparently William Holden was apparently not. He
Speaker 1: was always a little bit uncomfortable with acting like he's
Speaker 1: a legend, like he's in some Bulevard Sabrina star like
Speaker 1: seventeen The Towering Ferno.
Speaker 5: And he was always the river choir as well.
Speaker 1: He might have been into rigid. That was certainly alec
Speaker 1: I'm sure everyone I was in there. But and he's
Speaker 1: doing it and for some reason couldn't quite get this
Speaker 1: scene right. And then he Sidney Lamette noticed he wasn't
Speaker 1: looking at her in the eye, and he just kind
Speaker 1: of said the next tape, look her in the eye
Speaker 1: when you say this, And he looked her in the eye,
Speaker 1: and he started like welling up and like just he
Speaker 1: was amazing an actor of his experience.
Speaker 4: Hadn't thought of looking there in the eye, look in
Speaker 4: their eye. I mean, I did find that that possibly
Speaker 4: that relationship was underdone, like whether it was just for
Speaker 4: the purposes of time. But I found it hard to
Speaker 4: buy into the fact that been living together for a
Speaker 4: month and that he genuinely thought that there was genuine love.
Speaker 1: But I took that as being a man of his
Speaker 1: age going through a crisis and like being a little
Speaker 1: bit deluded by it. And it's also I think there's
Speaker 1: a comment about people who are buying into drama, you know,
Speaker 1: like max Is He's sorry, Howard's buying to the drama.
Speaker 5: Of being the max Is antipathist.
Speaker 1: Profit Diana's buying to the drama of having an affair
Speaker 1: with the man, and He's he's buying into the drama
Speaker 1: of leaving his wife to be with his.
Speaker 5: But he also he also.
Speaker 4: In some ways he feels like an antidote to it
Speaker 4: a little bit, because even when he's going through like
Speaker 4: when Jane is cracking the ships at him and saying,
Speaker 4: you know, I'm leaving you and whatever, he's just happy
Speaker 4: to get he just pracks the bag for like he's
Speaker 4: just it's almost like he's a bit exhausted by all
Speaker 4: of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think by then, by then it shifted. Is
Speaker 1: that great line where he says, you know, I'm closer
Speaker 1: to the end that I am in the beginning, Like
Speaker 1: death has definable features.
Speaker 5: That's amazing that. Yeah, I'd never thought about definable feach,
Speaker 5: just like that's just such incredible sentence.
Speaker 1: That stood out. Peter Finch is great. One of the
Speaker 1: reasons when I first watched his film, and I've probably
Speaker 1: watched it maybe fifteen years ago, is I thought, I
Speaker 1: gotta watch this guy, Peter Fincher. I haven't really seen
Speaker 1: any of his other films, and he's in Australian and
Speaker 1: he's running Oscar and I haven't seen it. So that's
Speaker 1: why I watched it. He's so good in this in
Speaker 1: this film. So he was born in London, moved out
Speaker 1: to Australia when he was ten, and then Sir Lawrence
Speaker 1: Olivier kind of saw him, spoted him and said, when
Speaker 1: you come out to London and be my plays because
Speaker 1: he kind of ran the theater and so he came
Speaker 1: back and ended up having an affair with Sir Lawrence
Speaker 1: Oliviy Cuddy's lunch Vivian Lee was not good at them,
Speaker 1: known as a hard drinking woman iSER whin It didn't
Speaker 1: have to act to no Win's five Baftors. He was
Speaker 1: nominated for an Oscar for another film, Sunday Buddy Sunday,
Speaker 1: where he played a gay joy instructor and died months
Speaker 1: after this and won the Oscar posthumously. Ironically, the next
Speaker 1: person that went it posthumously was also in Australian Eth
Speaker 1: Ledger Heath Ledger for The Dark Knight.
Speaker 5: Forty eight what is it? Forty eight years apart?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 5: What did he win? When did he know he would
Speaker 5: have been? When would he won this Oscar?
Speaker 1: Nineteen seventy six, seventy six or when it was seventy
Speaker 1: six or seventy seven? Yeah, yeah, he he's amazing in
Speaker 1: this and yes, yes, sadly wasn't need to receive it this.
Speaker 1: I get some fun facts for you. We love doing
Speaker 1: fun facts.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So beat You Straight won the on the Oscar lost
Speaker 1: the Rocky for Best Picture the film. Yep, really yeap
Speaker 1: beat You Straight? I said, wins it for five minutes
Speaker 1: and two seconds on screen. Ned Beattie, who played Arthur Jensen,
Speaker 1: also got nominated. Only worked the one day on the
Speaker 1: on the on the movie literally turned up for one
Speaker 1: day one day, so they basically shot all that in
Speaker 1: one day.
Speaker 5: Yeah, oscar nomination.
Speaker 1: That's a nomination. It's not the quantity, it's quality.
Speaker 5: Sadly, when asking you happy that he happy satisfied with
Speaker 5: the result of Rocky beating Network.
Speaker 1: It's a tough one. It's a genuinely, genuinely tough question.
Speaker 1: Rocky is a great movie, and you know, I don't
Speaker 1: have as big an issue as you might think. Rocky
Speaker 1: four was pretty good, Tommy Gunn, Rocky four was no
Speaker 1: Drago Dolph, Yeah, Ivan Drago Sorry, Yeah, rock was five? Five? Yeah,
Speaker 1: three Club of Lane. That's correct again, And then it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. After that they shot the scene I'm mad
Speaker 1: as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore.
Speaker 1: Day one, that was the first day of shooting they
Speaker 1: shot that. There were other people in contention for the
Speaker 1: role of Howard Beale that went to Peter Finch eventually
Speaker 1: long listed names.
Speaker 5: Is mad as hell? Is this film? The beginning of
Speaker 5: that saying.
Speaker 1: Yes, so John mchayld reference to imagine it has to be, but.
Speaker 4: To a certain degree, yeah, yeah, because you say mad
Speaker 4: as hell like it's nothing now.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 1: As far as whether it was the first time anyone
Speaker 1: had said mad as hell those words.
Speaker 5: It was the reason.
Speaker 1: I think us unconscious. I think so yeah. I don't
Speaker 1: know absolutely, I mean so yeah, I'm going with it
Speaker 1: from some of these some of the reading.
Speaker 5: It seems to be. I was just interested whether or
Speaker 5: not that literally was the first, but I guess there's
Speaker 5: no way possibly knowing that, but.
Speaker 1: Not right now. No, Peter Fincher's living in England and
Speaker 1: they were not convinced he could get the New York
Speaker 1: accent down in time and convincing enough. And he said,
Speaker 1: give me, send me some tapes with water Kronkite and
Speaker 1: give me two weeks. And he sent back in two
Speaker 1: weeks the perfect kind of accent that he has in
Speaker 1: the film that's crazy. Yeah, it's it's it's it's it's
Speaker 1: so good.
Speaker 5: And when he he was doing that while I was
Speaker 5: getting pissed, most.
Speaker 1: Probably having a few of fans on accent, or maybe
Speaker 1: he's like the character Dane Christinson who actually he talks
Speaker 1: about TV whiles he's having sex.
Speaker 5: Oh she's just no stop But there was no.
Speaker 1: Stop button, not a single one. Sadly, Peterfnch dies I
Speaker 1: mentioned that a couple of times, but similat witness his death.
Speaker 1: He had a heart attack. They'll be about to go to
Speaker 1: do an interview and meeting in the lobby at the
Speaker 1: Beverly Hills Hotel. Peter Finch had a heart attack, in
Speaker 1: the arrived. Yeah he was having a heart attacked.
Speaker 5: Director saw it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I imagine probably canceled the interview.
Speaker 4: They're plenty of practice for a big out though, didn't
Speaker 4: he because he's constantly collapsing in the film.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, I know, I know. I mean you're not
Speaker 1: seriousness like you do something you do one. I did
Speaker 1: wonder like quite a stressful role, like a lot of
Speaker 1: yelling like that would have been yeah, you won't even
Speaker 1: did Yeah, haven't he If.
Speaker 4: You just had a big night on the mattress and
Speaker 4: a few gins, you'd be I mean, he could have
Speaker 4: knocked him over early.
Speaker 5: He might not have made them. He might have digitized
Speaker 5: him in for the Last Lady.
Speaker 1: They got the film shot. We spoke about Waking Fright
Speaker 1: Ross Noble a couple of weeks ago Chips Raffi. He
Speaker 1: died not long after. That was his last film, and
Speaker 1: he was drinking like thirty pints a day because he
Speaker 1: wanted to be drinking for real on that and died
Speaker 1: of a I think a heart attack months later. You
Speaker 1: kind of think, you know, a few days probably would
Speaker 1: have only shot for you know, maybe a week, but
Speaker 1: also if thirty pints, but it.
Speaker 5: Feels like you could have done that on a fifteen pint.
Speaker 1: I think he was offset for the last th just
Speaker 1: back at his hotel. It's incredible, incredible.
Speaker 5: Can you do accents because you acted?
Speaker 7: No?
Speaker 1: In fact, when I so?
Speaker 5: If I sent you a tape saying I want you
Speaker 5: to sound like.
Speaker 1: Well, it'd be interesting. I've never dedicated time to doing it.
Speaker 1: When we're in lockdown. I thought one of the things
Speaker 1: I might try to do is like this, bunk down
Speaker 1: on one accent and try to learn an accent. It's precared,
Speaker 1: you know. I just kind of forgot to do it.
Speaker 1: I was busy learning French.
Speaker 5: Are you learning French?
Speaker 1: Well, I was in lockdown and then I stopped some
Speaker 1: un learnt it.
Speaker 4: Sorry, Railroad, your podcast. I've often meant to. I don't
Speaker 4: know why I haven't asked you this over beers. How
Speaker 4: in the fuck do you fit everything in? You asked
Speaker 4: me the day to play tennis. You've got your shooting
Speaker 4: and comedy.
Speaker 1: Now we haven't played.
Speaker 4: You're on the Pack project. You've written about forty eight books.
Speaker 4: If you're doing this, I've seen the list. This podcast
Speaker 4: must have thirty episodes.
Speaker 1: Forty and this is the season finale. You know this
Speaker 1: is the seasons, the season finale.
Speaker 4: If I've known that, I would have done in an accent.
Speaker 1: No, Well, you just you just you know, like you
Speaker 1: just do it. You just do it that. Somebody asks
Speaker 1: my manager that same question, and her reply was he
Speaker 1: just does it. And I think that's that's the best
Speaker 1: answer I can give.
Speaker 4: That's not a good enough answer, because is this there's
Speaker 4: a mathematics involved, like there's only some of the fact
Speaker 4: you've got three kids, you've got a wife. Not that
Speaker 4: I'm saying your wife takes up time. She's in fact
Speaker 4: probably gives you more time.
Speaker 1: Yes, you go to compartmentalizes, basically your compartmental lives. You
Speaker 1: work out what needs to be done next.
Speaker 5: I need don't I just need? I need your help
Speaker 5: or you're.
Speaker 1: You're running about five shows at the moment. You've got
Speaker 1: your podcast.
Speaker 5: Yeah I know, but it's just I don't know. You
Speaker 5: just managed to get.
Speaker 1: And you're you know, and my kids are a bit
Speaker 1: older as well. Yeah, that's it, that's that helps. Sorry,
Speaker 1: wait did they get a bit older?
Speaker 5: Stuff? You can't?
Speaker 1: Season finale, Season finale, We made the record another one.
Speaker 1: I bet you when this comes up, get Tom Bellard.
Speaker 1: In next week, Tom Bella will be appearing in season
Speaker 1: two of Swing to Him and we're working out a
Speaker 1: film to watch. Hey, uh, we mentioned it's been quite prophetic,
Speaker 1: this film network. One of the things is, you know
Speaker 1: that this was UBS was the fictitious station, and not
Speaker 1: long after the fourth station did arrive in America, which
Speaker 1: was Fox News Thank god, Am I right? And kind
Speaker 1: of you know, try to mix entertainment with news and
Speaker 1: deliver news differently. What a strange parallel that could blow
Speaker 1: back together? Last Yeah, that, but to be anti establishment
Speaker 1: and you know and all that. So that was kind
Speaker 1: of one of the one of the things that kind of,
Speaker 1: I guess Chesky prophesized in a way. But also the
Speaker 1: h I wrote saying the idea of the almost reality TV.
Speaker 1: So the idea when Brian's you know, she wants to
Speaker 1: she starts working with the Ecumenical Liberation Army and and
Speaker 1: she wants to put real robberies and vision there, it's
Speaker 1: basically reality TV. Fox News. In nineteen eighty eight, there
Speaker 1: was a writer strike which went for like twenty six
Speaker 1: weeks or something like that that they started running long content.
Speaker 1: So Cops. The show Cops was born. They just boot cameras,
Speaker 1: not squads, and and the show that now only ran
Speaker 1: up until recently was born. So it's kind one of
Speaker 1: also also kind of prophesized, I guess the rise in
Speaker 1: in reality television, which we all love so so much.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, I mean it's it's it's I mean, it
Speaker 4: folds back a little bit to what we were saying before.
Speaker 4: But you know, the ethics of that are interesting as well,
Speaker 4: like the ethics of in So in the film, it's
Speaker 4: a robbery, a live robbery, which you know, and then
Speaker 4: Diana spends her time trying to court more crime. She
Speaker 4: wants more crime to happen and put cameras in front
Speaker 4: of it so that she can put it on TV
Speaker 4: and then write narratives around that, which is you know,
Speaker 4: and it does speak.
Speaker 1: To the idea you know in television sometimes and even
Speaker 1: we've radio this is in a much smaller degree. I've
Speaker 1: worked in radio before, where this is a much smaller
Speaker 1: example of what we what we've got to talking about,
Speaker 1: but this idea that this is what matters and nothing
Speaker 1: else really matters. I've worked in radio where it could
Speaker 1: be like five third in the morning and we're like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'd be good to get somebody to talk about this
Speaker 1: and let's give a call, and I'll be like, it's
Speaker 1: five thirty in the morning, like it doesn't matter's wake
Speaker 1: them up, give the call. It's just like it's not
Speaker 1: making tho.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you crashed through the normal societal norms of like yeah.
Speaker 1: Because we're a radio show to do Yeah. Not someone
Speaker 1: who would be expecting I'm not talking about you, a
Speaker 1: regular who you might might expect a call every now
Speaker 1: and then. But there's somebody who.
Speaker 4: We're shooting a promo this week for the weekly with
Speaker 4: a cow. I was thinking, and they said, can we
Speaker 4: bring the cow in the studio? And half a beat
Speaker 4: for me out? I just watched it was I said,
Speaker 4: I don't have a cow. What's to be in the studio?
Speaker 5: Does anyone ask the cow?
Speaker 1: There's the car of an agent, there is the cow. Expensive?
Speaker 5: I don't know. I never asked about the dollars.
Speaker 1: We had a turtle.
Speaker 5: I mean, it can't be that expensive because we're doing
Speaker 5: it on a weekly.
Speaker 1: We had a turtle on series two of How to
Speaker 1: Stay Married and it was probably the highest paid actor
Speaker 1: and actor on the series. In fact, it gets that's
Speaker 1: what it gets cooled off. In season three, someone just
Speaker 1: frizbeesit out a window. I think I'm joking. I got
Speaker 1: some news, but okay, let's get to do What do
Speaker 1: you think of the end the conversation I had that
Speaker 1: just comes up and how economical and like almost heartless.
Speaker 5: It is the.
Speaker 1: Idea of like, let's it's not thrown out as a
Speaker 1: joke and then kind of like and then read the
Speaker 1: room it's like, no, you're kill him, and then that
Speaker 1: that idea is taken and then added.
Speaker 5: To I mean that scene. I it was interesting because
Speaker 5: at first when I was first borderline unbelievable, Like the
Speaker 5: way they were discussing. It's like if I said to you,
Speaker 5: went back when we were working on the proje together, Hey,
Speaker 5: what if we kill Hughesy? Yeah, maybe I'll pick a
Speaker 5: different person, and what if we kill what if we
Speaker 5: kill Carrie? You'd be like, ah, it's really funny walks.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we kill Carry And it's like no, no, no, no,
Speaker 4: she's too expensive.
Speaker 1: We've got to kill We just ask her to take
Speaker 1: a pay cup.
Speaker 4: But the way they do it in the film, it's
Speaker 4: like but then I reflected and I actually quite liked it,
Speaker 4: like it showed how well kind of what you're saying
Speaker 4: before their world had become so important to them, TV
Speaker 4: was so it was everything that the idea of someone
Speaker 4: just being liquidated was secondary to them, and it really
Speaker 4: just became a question of how to do it, of
Speaker 4: which Diana had the answer almost within almost immediately.
Speaker 1: I kind of like that. You can imagine a version
Speaker 1: of this film where they really go into the mechanics
Speaker 1: of making this happen and the hiring of who they
Speaker 1: didn't they just got. They got straight to it well interestingly.
Speaker 5: And I don't know what you think of this, because
Speaker 5: then we might as well do the spoiler.
Speaker 1: Now you get the.
Speaker 5: Two people stand up and shoot him live on air,
Speaker 5: and he obviously died. He's assassinated, and the two people
Speaker 5: shoot him on camera perfectly ever seen. You know, you
Speaker 5: have to think, well, that's pretty strange way to do it,
Speaker 5: Like these people are now going to jail, although I
Speaker 5: think they do say that one of them escapes. But
Speaker 5: I just thought about it, and I think if you
Speaker 5: made that film today, I don't reckon the scene would work.
Speaker 1: Well. This is the thing about I think films on
Speaker 1: the seventies, and I brought it up they just do.
Speaker 1: They they cut through a lot of bullshit, I think,
Speaker 1: and then they're going to go that's we don't need
Speaker 1: to see. We don't need to see who they hire.
Speaker 1: We don't need to see the meeting with the I mean,
Speaker 1: even though there could be some great drama in those moments,
Speaker 1: you know, but we don't need to see. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: don't need to They do say one scares, but by
Speaker 1: then they didn't even need that, Like that was just
Speaker 1: a little detail they threw in. But now I feel like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it would it would be we would ask we want
Speaker 1: to know more information, and those filmmakers, most filmmakers, I think,
Speaker 1: offer up a lot of that information.
Speaker 5: And all the loose ends would have to be attended to. Yeah,
Speaker 5: which takes time, because.
Speaker 1: Of course you could ask a question, why didn't they
Speaker 1: just kill him in his apartment? But every movie comes
Speaker 1: with those questions.
Speaker 5: No, I mean, I mean I think there was a
Speaker 5: good reason for that in this one. Is they want
Speaker 5: to I mean, part of the satire of the movie
Speaker 5: was having it live on air.
Speaker 1: Was I've got that's that's why the movie did it.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: As far as the character.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the characters never it never the characters go, hey,
Speaker 5: we could.
Speaker 1: Just do this yeah in a dark alley.
Speaker 4: And not have people doing life sentences at the end
Speaker 4: of it. But the scene, I mean, obviously he gets
Speaker 4: shot and he eyes and then the very final scene
Speaker 4: is sort of a replay of him being shot and
Speaker 4: you know, his bloody head and body and stuff, with
Speaker 4: other images of fairly banal, mundane TV things like a.
Speaker 5: Kid commercials TV commercial. Yeah, and I was I think
Speaker 5: possibly my favorite scene.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was great. I thought it was great the
Speaker 1: way what I was waiting for was almost because so
Speaker 1: there's the four squares that we kind of started at
Speaker 1: the start, and then one kind of goes to a
Speaker 1: commercial and then there's reports of him, you know, and
Speaker 1: I was kind of waiting for the four squares to
Speaker 1: all become commercials almost like it just like the world
Speaker 1: moved on. Yeah, I still got that feeling, you know,
Speaker 1: that this was just you know, Tomorrow's is a new day.
Speaker 4: And to me, to me, it was just a real
Speaker 4: expression of just the banality of it that it that
Speaker 4: he was worth shit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they need television are still selling commercials and they're
Speaker 1: still making profit.
Speaker 4: The other aesthetic or the other device that used in
Speaker 4: the film, which I thought was interesting with the narrator
Speaker 4: because it wasn't like a normal narrator, like he was very,
Speaker 4: very sporadic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's always there's almost there was almost one at
Speaker 1: the top, one at the end of one in the middle.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it wasn't like that normal like Shawshank.
Speaker 4: When you know, Red's walking through every single scene virtually
Speaker 4: we're in this one. He just sort of popped up,
Speaker 4: linked you to the next bit, and off he went.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it was really interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it worked. I was happy with that.
Speaker 1: To people hate voiceovers, but I when done right, I
Speaker 1: think why not? And I mean, you know, you mentioned Shorwhank.
Speaker 1: Redemption one of the great, one of the great voiceover movies.
Speaker 5: I was going to put that in my top three,
Speaker 5: but I just figured everybody.
Speaker 1: Does oka a bittle of avoided, mostly because I think
Speaker 1: that reason. But we did have Phil Lloyd who was
Speaker 1: brave enough to put your shape re empty stop through.
Speaker 1: I think it is one of those ones that feels
Speaker 1: a little well, you know, of course. And he noted
Speaker 1: when he said it, like he said, you know, it
Speaker 1: seems obvious, but it's the one movie that I put
Speaker 1: on and.
Speaker 5: You know, I mean every time you see it on
Speaker 5: you end up watching the whole thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, mate, thank you so much for doing a
Speaker 1: little bit of homework for me.
Speaker 5: I'm just so pumped that you. If it wasn't few,
Speaker 5: I wouldn't. I don't think I would have watched it.
Speaker 1: Well, this is what the podcast has been quite nice
Speaker 1: for and often it's been lovely for me to revisit
Speaker 1: it and when I watch it the first time, you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't necessarily do it the deep diving afterwards that
Speaker 1: I do when I watch it. So what it's been
Speaker 1: lovely about the podcast is watching films either I haven't
Speaker 1: seen before or that I haven't seen for a while.
Speaker 4: Especially encouraged me because I've been doing a lot of
Speaker 4: TV series. But I'm actually now going to go back
Speaker 4: and just do like a month or two of just
Speaker 4: watching films that I should have seen.
Speaker 1: Ye have you seen the Big One? The last years
Speaker 1: for me? And we did it with Jerdie Hicky a
Speaker 1: few weeks ago, Harold and Maud. Have you seen that
Speaker 1: first new list? Put it on? Yep? Done mate, Thank
Speaker 1: you so much. Watched the Weekly Watch Hard Quiz Listen
Speaker 1: to the Brains Trust or Brains Trust, which is a
Speaker 1: great podcast you did about people reflecting on twenty twenty.
Speaker 4: You got season two of Brains Trust coming, so you'll
Speaker 4: have to return favor for me on the on that podcast.
Speaker 1: No, I've got nothing to say. Ronnie Chang, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: too busy, man. You got Ronnie Chang in there, this
Speaker 1: podcast you got, you got Blake Can you Find Again?
Speaker 1: It's it's really it's a really great listen. So well,
Speaker 1: I'm congratulations on.
Speaker 5: That and thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: We'll go for a beer, play some tennis.
Speaker 5: Awesome.
Speaker 1: What the hell is going on?
Speaker 2: Prepare yourself for a perfectly outrageous motion picture?
Speaker 3: Howard Beale one up there last night and said what
Speaker 3: every American feels, that he's tired.
Speaker 7: What a lot of.
Speaker 5: Bakes, Diana.
Speaker 6: We're talking about putting a manifestly irresponsible man on national television.
Speaker 1: Yes, that was Chris Walker. Great smart man, smart man,
Speaker 1: funny man, and it was great to chat to him
Speaker 1: about a network. We did discuss doing this a while ago,
Speaker 1: so I was really curious as to what he thought
Speaker 1: of it. And yeah, I really enjoyed that chat. That
Speaker 1: was a season finale of season two of You Ain't
Speaker 1: Seen Nothing Yet. I'm going to take a few weeks
Speaker 1: off reload, I finish, finish up on filming How to
Speaker 1: Stay Married. It'll be on air late April. Also, I'm
Speaker 1: at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival for a couple of
Speaker 1: nights three nights late March. Check Comedy Festival dot com
Speaker 1: dot au or Comedy dot com a good promoting show.
Speaker 1: It's good, Loopy. I'm really proud of the show. You
Speaker 1: got put on hold after the lad Fringe last year,
Speaker 1: so I can't wait to get back into it next season.
Speaker 1: If you ain't seen nothing yet, people have approached already.
Speaker 1: Judith Lucy will be coming off watching. Finally the Sound
Speaker 1: of Music, as I mentioned in the show, Tom Ballard
Speaker 1: will be coming on. I'm chasing Denise Scott and many
Speaker 1: many others. So thank you. I've such a great time.
Speaker 1: Derek Meyers Castways Studios dot com dot au for all
Speaker 1: your podcast needs a great space to record a podcast.
Speaker 1: There is a turn table and a bar set up
Speaker 1: in here now, so look out. Yasny podcast at gmail
Speaker 1: dot com. Send me an email thank you for everyone
Speaker 1: who's reached out. We will be back in a few weeks.
Speaker 1: We won't be a long break, it just gonna be
Speaker 1: a chance to finish up on how today married and
Speaker 1: record a few more of these. So thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Everybody keeps safe, keep watching movies, and until then life
Speaker 1: and our
Speaker 6: And so we leave all Pete save Mansul, and to
Speaker 6: our friends of the radio audience, we've been a pleasant
Speaker 6: over time.