Speaker 1: Gid A Peter Hell, are 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 is singer, songwriter, composer, pianist, comedian, writer actor
Speaker 1: Eddie Perfect.
Speaker 2: All below. I want to stay here with you, hey,
Speaker 2: little jobble, Why hate snake shuck hy.
Speaker 1: Hail the happening right?
Speaker 3: You ain't seen nothing you.
Speaker 1: Eddie Perfect may not be perfect, but he's bloody well close.
Speaker 1: I think the bloke is an out genius. He has
Speaker 1: had one of the most well rounded careers in the
Speaker 1: Australian showbiz landscape. He exploded onto our scenes and our
Speaker 1: stages in a show called Drink Pepsi Bitch, which he
Speaker 1: toured around the world. He has appeared on all the shows.
Speaker 1: He's been a judge on Australia's Got Talent, he was
Speaker 1: on The Mass Singer. Recently, he won All of Our
Speaker 1: Hearts in Offspring, where he played Mick alongside the wonderful
Speaker 1: Claire Botage and that wonderful cast of Ossie Talent, including
Speaker 1: Asha Kenny and Kat Stewart and Rick Davies and deb
Speaker 1: Mailman and Lucky Hume. What a show that was. Some
Speaker 1: of the stage works include Keeping the Musical. The one
Speaker 1: that people might know more than others is Shane warn
Speaker 1: the Musical. He went there and produces amazing work called
Speaker 1: Shane warn the Musical, which was massive, made massive on
Speaker 1: the headlines at the time because everyone was like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: what's he going to think? Because you know, he delved
Speaker 1: into Warney's personal stuff. This is obviously when Warnie was
Speaker 1: still with us, and Warnie eventually kind of went there
Speaker 1: I think, perhaps reluctantly and nervously and watched it and
Speaker 1: gave it his full blessing, loved it, And I don't
Speaker 1: know for me that maybe maybe I'm wrong, but maybe
Speaker 1: it was the start of Warny kind of being able
Speaker 1: to laugh at himself a bit more and to embrace
Speaker 1: his flaws more publicly. I might be wrong on that,
Speaker 1: but that was just the timeline and seems to kind
Speaker 1: of add up to me. But I think it meant
Speaker 1: a lot to Eddie that Warney did give it his
Speaker 1: full blessing too. Around the World won the Helpman Award.
Speaker 1: It was a staggering success. It is also another It's
Speaker 1: a Date alumni. He was in an episode which I loved,
Speaker 1: alongside the wonderful actress Amber Clayton, playing a player who
Speaker 1: gets outplayed. Also in that episode was the wonderful Dead
Speaker 1: Mailman and Jim Owen in a date that I also love.
Speaker 1: Eddie were recently has spent a lot of time in
Speaker 1: New York City. He developed a stage musical a King Kong,
Speaker 1: which didn't kind of work out I think as well
Speaker 1: as Eddie had hoped. But what he did next has
Speaker 1: been staggering. He produced and wrote Beetlejuice the Musical, a
Speaker 1: movie we've covered on this podcast with Nate Velvo, and
Speaker 1: it has been a staggering a staggering success on Broadway
Speaker 1: on the West End, around the world, and it is
Speaker 1: coming to Australia I think for twenty twenty five. I'll
Speaker 1: find out and at the end I'll let you know
Speaker 1: if tickets are on sale yet. But Beatlejuice the Musical
Speaker 1: has been a smash hit, and I'm so stoked for
Speaker 1: Eddie because he's a bloody hard worker. He's a great guy,
Speaker 1: very generous, particularly generous of his time coming in and
Speaker 1: doing my podcast. It was great to work with on
Speaker 1: It's a date. I remember when he started out. I
Speaker 1: was a bit kind of like, I don't that I
Speaker 1: have this thing sometimes when you know, new artists come
Speaker 1: out and then particularly they're a bit cutting edge and irreverent,
Speaker 1: I'm like, they're not gonna they're not gonna like me.
Speaker 1: And then when I finally met Eddie, he was he
Speaker 1: was so kind of respectful and polite and funny and
Speaker 1: we got along really well. So he is inventive. He's
Speaker 1: endlessly creative. He's a joy to be around, and I'm
Speaker 1: bloody stoked to be hanging with him today.
Speaker 3: Hi there, my name's Eddie Perfect and my three favorite
Speaker 3: films are Aliens. That's the second one. Get away from her,
Speaker 3: you bitch, Jesus Christ Superstar the original movie seventy seven
Speaker 3: and Children of Men. One hundred years from now there
Speaker 3: would be one sad funk to look at ONID.
Speaker 2: What keeps you going?
Speaker 3: How to test now? I just don't think about it.
Speaker 3: But up until this week, I had not seen an
Speaker 3: American in Paris.
Speaker 1: It's post World War two and Jerry Mulligan, Gene Kelly
Speaker 1: and American Gi has decided to stay on in Paris
Speaker 1: to live out his dream of becoming a painter in
Speaker 1: the French capital, living in a broom closet that he
Speaker 1: is rigged up beautifully to serve his needs. Jerry has
Speaker 1: collected a bunch of friendly French folk to keep his
Speaker 1: artistic struggle stay cheerfully upbeat. When selling his artwork in
Speaker 1: the feigned alleyways of montmart And, heiress to a Suntan
Speaker 1: oil empire and aspiring sugar queen Milo Roberts, Nina Fosch
Speaker 1: takes an interest in Jerry and his work, but really
Speaker 1: more so in Jerry himself. But Milo is not the
Speaker 1: object of Jerry's affections. That belongs to nine year old
Speaker 1: Parisian dancer Lisa leslie Kron in her screen debut, who
Speaker 1: incidentally is engaged to an associate of Jerry's singer Henri
Speaker 1: Barrell George Gortore, setting the seeds of a classic, if
Speaker 1: not slightly bizarre love triangle, winner of six Oscars in
Speaker 1: nine point fifty two for Best Film Cinematography, costume Design, screenplay,
Speaker 1: music and Art Direction, Surprisingly no nomination for gene Kelly himself,
Speaker 1: shot the year before, Singing in the Rain, which garnered
Speaker 1: zero oscars, incidentally directed by Vincent Manali, Father of Liza,
Speaker 1: music by George Gershwin and American in Paris is a
Speaker 1: big old school MGM musical showcasing the early days of
Speaker 1: technic color, Eddie Perfect the Gene Kelly's depiction of a
Speaker 1: struggling young artists compared to your early days of breaking
Speaker 1: into the artistic community.
Speaker 3: A little bit. I mean, it's way more romantic, isn't it.
Speaker 3: This idea of you know, being an artist in Paris
Speaker 3: and all of the kind of interesting characters that populate
Speaker 3: the town. And you can't help but look at his
Speaker 3: quite crisp chinos and loafers and beautiful skin type hollow
Speaker 3: shirts and things. This dude's got a bit more money
Speaker 3: than he's letting on. And it's a very romanticized idea
Speaker 3: of Paris. But you know, you want to believe it.
Speaker 1: Well, I imagine it's if you were watching this with
Speaker 1: you know, early thoughts of being an artist in your head,
Speaker 1: this would like to you know, this would take you
Speaker 1: to Paris.
Speaker 3: I think you know, that kind of idea of being
Speaker 3: an artist in Paris, and the romanticism of that has
Speaker 3: been explored by lots of different people, both kind of
Speaker 3: older and more contemporary because it is that place where
Speaker 3: you know, we've all seen cabarets in No, that was
Speaker 3: in German.
Speaker 1: It wasn't as earlier German. Yeah, yeah, what am I
Speaker 1: thinking of? I'm thinking of, like I mean, not in Paris.
Speaker 1: Only He's one that jumps out immediately is.
Speaker 3: The Woody Allen film. Yeah, that with Owen Wilson's at
Speaker 3: the Yeah, the bally Poch and beautiful time. It's gorgeous.
Speaker 3: But you know, I do, as a contemporary person have
Speaker 3: to suspend a lot of disbelief watching this film because
Speaker 3: I kind of am not. I not really received a
Speaker 3: lot of Gene Kelly in my life, and it only
Speaker 3: been y clips. So this was the first time I
Speaker 3: really wanted to watch this film because I wanted to
Speaker 3: see how the whole thing hung together as a story.
Speaker 3: And he lives in this tiny Apartment's his incredible sequence
Speaker 3: in the beginning where he's getting ready for the day
Speaker 3: and making I think toast and coffee and the whole
Speaker 3: it's a bit of a Wallace and Grommet type setup
Speaker 3: with his studio in and out of things, tables appear
Speaker 3: and cups, sources go onto tiny little benches that flip
Speaker 3: up and flip down and things go up into the
Speaker 3: roof and come down. It's quite.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, I was thinking it could almost be a
Speaker 1: Lena and Woodley sketch, but more elegantly done in the
Speaker 1: like Frank would obviously be banging into these things and
Speaker 1: knocking himself out probably, But it's really like crafty little
Speaker 1: opening sequence there. So I don't want to go too
Speaker 1: much into the film yet. So why did an American
Speaker 1: in Paris? We discussed a couple of films that were
Speaker 1: on the list and something you hadn't seen, Why did
Speaker 1: this one jump out?
Speaker 3: Well, the great thing about your podcast is an opportunity
Speaker 3: to plug holes in movie knowledge. And for a start,
Speaker 3: I just never seen this film, and I am obsessed
Speaker 3: with movie musicals. I think when I from first, I
Speaker 3: think I first saw MGM musicals when I was a
Speaker 3: kid and Bill Collins would present films, and so this
Speaker 3: one was someone that I had never seen that I
Speaker 3: always wanted to see rather than just seeing clips out
Speaker 3: of context. And because I'm interested in writing musicals, I
Speaker 3: write musicals myself, and I have an ambition in the
Speaker 3: tank to write my own and create my own movie musical,
Speaker 3: even though I'm not quite sure whether they're in vogue
Speaker 3: or out of vogue at the moment. They always seemed
Speaker 3: to kind of wax and wayne quite dramatically. But this
Speaker 3: is a great example of it. I know, the Gershwin piece,
Speaker 3: the piece of music called an American in Paris, and
Speaker 3: I've been at concerts where it's been played, and it's
Speaker 3: extraordinary and really kind of butts up that musically kind
Speaker 3: of rams that idea of like you know, American jazz
Speaker 3: with you know, syncopated rhythms and really bluesy kind of
Speaker 3: scales up against a much more romantical, almost classical music tradition.
Speaker 3: And it was very much George Gershwin thing, the kind
Speaker 3: of clash of cultures and new art forms coming in
Speaker 3: and out. And I know gene Kelly was a very
Speaker 3: masculine dancer and choreographer and as opposed to maybe some
Speaker 3: of the more genteel stylings of like you know, gene
Speaker 3: Kelly's and not gen Kelly's Freda Staire, Yeah.
Speaker 1: You mentioned that, you know, watching gene Kelly and his
Speaker 1: loafers like that was even a big difference between fred Astaire,
Speaker 1: you know, his top hat and tails and it was
Speaker 1: those musicals always seem to be set on shiny flows
Speaker 1: and in high society, where gene Kelly was like the
Speaker 1: first like every man who like wore a polo shirt
Speaker 1: and loafers and chinos and was dancing on kitchen tables
Speaker 1: and apartments and on the streets. And also he was
Speaker 1: very He's very sexual, like compared to fredis is like
Speaker 1: pretty high for lutin and innocent and smiling and him
Speaker 1: and Ginger Rogers. This is like Jean Kelly is here.
Speaker 1: The fuck he's there?
Speaker 3: Fuck and he for modern audiences, it's relentless, is it?
Speaker 3: Jerry Mulligan? Is that the name of Jerry Mulligan is
Speaker 3: like has got a lot to learn about consent.
Speaker 1: I will definitely get to that because that is a
Speaker 1: big part of this, and I probably led you back into.
Speaker 3: Putting that aside for a minute. Like what it really
Speaker 3: interests me is the way gene Kelly uses dance as
Speaker 3: an extension of storytelling. It's not just like, Okay, we're
Speaker 3: going to stop for a bitting and season, people move around.
Speaker 3: I was really fascinated by the way he gets into
Speaker 3: dance and when he chooses to put dance in and
Speaker 3: a lot of the time, some of the romantic scenes,
Speaker 3: it's always about being able to express the unexpressible or
Speaker 3: you know, physically embody the things that can't be said.
Speaker 3: So as a result, there's a lot of like I
Speaker 3: want to be with you, but I can't be with you,
Speaker 3: But isn't this nice? And what gen Kelly does so well,
Speaker 3: which you alluded to on the table, is that he
Speaker 3: explores the space of whatever setting he's in, if it's
Speaker 3: a restaurant or cafe, they use every part of that.
Speaker 3: It's about like how can I be here and be here?
Speaker 3: And it's about imagination and play and bringing objects to
Speaker 3: life and interacting with the world. And it reminds me
Speaker 3: of when I was a kid and I used to
Speaker 3: watch Jackie Chan movies. That was the thing that blew
Speaker 3: my mind about Jackie Cham is exactly the same. It's like,
Speaker 3: you know, whatever he needed in this moment, it was
Speaker 3: such a beautiful dance. You know, I need this crate,
Speaker 3: I need this stool, I need to stand on this table,
Speaker 3: I need to swing from these rafters. I love that
Speaker 3: sense of exploring space, and I love the idea that
Speaker 3: dance is like a physical embodiment of movement and you
Speaker 3: can get a narrative out of it, and of course
Speaker 3: the end sequence where they dance to Gershwin's American in
Speaker 3: Paris Pieces. I think it's sort of the final moment
Speaker 3: of the film. Maybe it's the last seven or eight
Speaker 3: minutes of the film and reportedly costs like four hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty thousand dollars to make, and it's quite an
Speaker 3: extraordinary standalone.
Speaker 1: It's last eighteen minutes?
Speaker 3: Is it eighteen minutes? I think O time flies when
Speaker 3: having technical fub.
Speaker 1: We'll move on because I want to talk about your
Speaker 1: three favorite films. But I don't think I've ever seen
Speaker 1: a man more in control and Jackie James a really
Speaker 1: interesting comparison. I don't think I've seen a man more
Speaker 1: in control of his body and a man who can
Speaker 1: just float.
Speaker 3: And he doesn't look like he's able to do it,
Speaker 3: does he He doesn't look kind of like a dance just.
Speaker 1: Like a movie star, like he's a complete movie star,
Speaker 1: like he's you know, he's beautiful, but he just floats across.
Speaker 1: It's it's incredible. Let's talk about your three favorite films
Speaker 1: because there's a lot to talk about. An American comparison
Speaker 1: and everything in their aliens as opposed to alien Why
Speaker 1: why more the more when you accept one alien when
Speaker 1: you can have aliens.
Speaker 3: I found the first film both just terrifying and boring.
Speaker 3: I just felt I spent the whole time terrified when
Speaker 3: this alien was going to come out.
Speaker 1: And of course he's so young.
Speaker 3: I was young, and of course that that scene, that
Speaker 3: scene where the alien first is born is probably a
Speaker 3: nice way of putting it. It's just so horrifying as
Speaker 3: a kid, but cool, the coolest thing ever. And then
Speaker 3: if they spend the rest of the time in the
Speaker 3: first one just dealing with that that one alien, the
Speaker 3: second movie just it's got way more action in it,
Speaker 3: and it's sort of like Sigourney Weaver in control, so
Speaker 3: I the pacing of it is just perfect. I just
Speaker 3: find it like such an extraordinary film. I love it.
Speaker 3: It's on.
Speaker 1: It's going back when you're older to watch films like Alien.
Speaker 1: Jaws is another one. They've a mad Max and you
Speaker 1: kind of realize, wow, not a lot happens, and they're
Speaker 1: all great films. And part of it is, I think
Speaker 1: the suspense of waiting for something to happen, and you know,
Speaker 1: there's the folklore and Jaws that they couldn't have mechanical
Speaker 1: shark at my fucking up. So that's the reason why
Speaker 1: you don't see it. It wasn't supposed to be like that,
Speaker 1: but as a magical accident because it makes the film better.
Speaker 1: But you realize that not a lot happens, and I
Speaker 1: think maybe when you're watch it when you're younger. I mean,
Speaker 1: for Mad Max, I went along with it, but when
Speaker 1: I watched it when I was old, I went back
Speaker 1: and watched Mad Max and I was like, jeez, not
Speaker 1: what happens here? Like this is it takes a long
Speaker 1: time for anything. Yeah, really the happen And then when
Speaker 1: Mad Max two comes along, it's just like I funk,
Speaker 1: we're in it now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we've done. We've kind of the world building has
Speaker 3: been done for us. And you know, I think that
Speaker 3: even as a kid, what I really loved about Ripley
Speaker 3: is a character. But the second Alien's film was that
Speaker 3: it's about what happens to people when everything goes wrong.
Speaker 3: You know, what happens to you know, Bravado and Braggadocio
Speaker 3: and kind of like you know, this kind of veneer
Speaker 3: when you're put in a situation where you're losing and
Speaker 3: you're you know, you don't know what's going going on,
Speaker 3: and so it's about hubris, really like about arrogance. And
Speaker 3: ever since then, I've always been interested in stories that
Speaker 3: take human beings from being the kind of top of
Speaker 3: the food chain and lowers them down. I always think
Speaker 3: that I think it's a healthy thing for us to
Speaker 3: see stories that are about our flaws as a species,
Speaker 3: because I think we we often, if we're honest with ourselves,
Speaker 3: let's sit around thinking that we're really really important and
Speaker 3: maybe even perfect, you know, because there's not really anything
Speaker 3: else that's a challenging us. But I'm always fascinated with
Speaker 3: the one you know, you tilt the odds slightly in
Speaker 3: another species favor, whether that's a you know, a shark
Speaker 3: or a crocodile or you know something that we know
Speaker 3: it on this planet, or bear or whatever, you know
Speaker 3: those stories of wolves, whatever, but you know, or it
Speaker 3: could be like an alien another species is another planet.
Speaker 3: But suddenly when the odds are tilted out of a
Speaker 3: human beings favor, it's a lot about like what is
Speaker 3: it that's going to keep his personal alive? What is
Speaker 3: it that's going to allow us to survive and what
Speaker 3: are our faults are going to cause us to get killed?
Speaker 3: And almost all the time it's underestimating the enemy. It's fear,
Speaker 3: it's panic, it's all those things. And I'm just yeah,
Speaker 3: whether that zombie films or whatever, I love that kind
Speaker 3: of stuff.
Speaker 1: I love it. And Alien the original one was that
Speaker 1: Cameron or did he come on for the second one?
Speaker 1: What was it? Do you remember the ship was really
Speaker 1: Scott was also involved? Was honest?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, because I know there's been changed. And then Fincher
Speaker 1: kind of comes in to do I think the later one, and.
Speaker 3: There was a French director on one of them. There
Speaker 3: was a really big surge in French films around I
Speaker 3: feel like maybe later of his early nineties, and I
Speaker 3: remember there were films like Delicatessen and Emily was later. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Children of Children of Men?
Speaker 6: Was that?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 3: Not Children Men, Tom Thumb, you know children something of
Speaker 3: City of Lost Children, City Lost Children. Yes, Yes, I
Speaker 3: feel like one of those directors directed one of the
Speaker 3: Aliens and it was really weird. I don't know if
Speaker 3: it particularly, but it was good.
Speaker 1: So Aliens was directed by James Cameron, and I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure the first one was directed by it really Scott,
Speaker 1: So really Scott directed the first one. James Cameron comes
Speaker 1: on for the second one, and then the third one
Speaker 1: I think is David Fincher. It's interesting, isn't it like
Speaker 1: a successful you know, a trilogy. I know it when
Speaker 1: on further and you had Alien versus Predather and Prometheus,
Speaker 1: and but putting those aside, a successful trilogy directed by
Speaker 1: three different directors who are massive, massive names, three the
Speaker 1: biggest names.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And why is this idea? Why? It's because
Speaker 3: this creature is just terrifyingly unstoppable, and it's something that
Speaker 3: you know that it's similar to, I think like the
Speaker 3: Jurassic Park films. You know, he the greed of corporate
Speaker 3: humanity wants to own it and possess it and exploit it,
Speaker 3: and it can't really be controlled or contained. And so
Speaker 3: it's that arrogance to possess something which is too dangerous
Speaker 3: that leads people into being killed and also leading, you know,
Speaker 3: leading other people unwittingly to their demise. So it's got
Speaker 3: a kind of a strong sense of ethical righteousness about
Speaker 3: it too. You know, you can't do this to people,
Speaker 3: you can't lie to people, and you can't put people
Speaker 3: in danger. So you know, I love that film.
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ Superstar.
Speaker 3: Also aliens.
Speaker 1: Speak to us about your love of I think I've
Speaker 1: ever seen the film.
Speaker 3: I think it's the seventies. It came out in seventy seven,
Speaker 3: which is coincidently year I was born. Also the year
Speaker 3: of the Muppet Movie. Original Muppet Movie came out. Good
Speaker 3: year for films. Yeah, it was shot in Israel. Little
Speaker 3: film Star was I think came out all of that.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, it was seventy seven. Yeah, it's shotten
Speaker 3: in Israel. It's shot in Jerusalem. I think the concept
Speaker 3: of it is really quirky. If anyone that knows the
Speaker 3: stage musical that basically this kind of it's like a
Speaker 3: Priscilla Queen of the Desert moment. At the beginning of
Speaker 3: this film, this giant bus full of outrageously thin, long
Speaker 3: haired hippie Americans rocks up in the desert of Jerusalem,
Speaker 3: nothing around, and they get out of this bus and
Speaker 3: they're pulling costumes and wigs and props and stuff off
Speaker 3: this bus and everyone's just throwing them around, and it's
Speaker 3: like a kind of a community theater group and very
Speaker 3: seventies and they all kind of just fall into their roles,
Speaker 3: which is a very very interesting and smart way of
Speaker 3: sort of saying that the New Testament story of Jesus,
Speaker 3: it was almost like it was fated to happen, and
Speaker 3: that people were fated to play their roles. You know,
Speaker 3: the pilot was fated to be the one that oversaw
Speaker 3: Jesus being executed, being crucified, that Judas his best friend,
Speaker 3: was fated to betray him. That you know, all of
Speaker 3: these things were kind of preordained, and Jesus knew that
Speaker 3: and yet still went through that process. And so it's
Speaker 3: quite a strange film in that regard. It's beautifully choreograph,
Speaker 3: beautifully director, beautifully shot, and the music and the singing
Speaker 3: is extraordinary. So it's a really great movie musical. I
Speaker 3: feel like, especially the earlier movie musicals were shot nice
Speaker 3: and wide and you could see everything, and they went
Speaker 3: relying on super fast editing, and the music was yet
Speaker 3: to be over produced, and so you could hear what
Speaker 3: people sound like when they sing, rather than this kind
Speaker 3: of very sort of filtered and tuned version of singing
Speaker 3: that we get nowadays, which I think kind of puts
Speaker 3: Us at a distance from especially communicating you know, emotion
Speaker 3: and ideas with a voice when you're when you're singing
Speaker 3: and acting at the same time, nothing like like if
Speaker 3: you compare. The only modern musical that really nailed out
Speaker 3: I thought was Leamy's a Rabla where they sung live
Speaker 3: and I just I love that. Not everyone did, but
Speaker 3: I thought that was really effective. And then something like
Speaker 3: the remake of Anie with Jamie Fox and Rose Byrne,
Speaker 3: where they just auto tuned a living shit out of everybody.
Speaker 3: It's just like watching you know, it's this robotic as
Speaker 3: its no feeling in it. So I love that about
Speaker 3: Jesus Christ Superstars. It's beautiful something. It's a beautiful score.
Speaker 1: Obviously you didn't see it in the cinema because you
Speaker 1: were you were literally shooting your nappy and yeah, other
Speaker 1: things on your mind. But have you gone back and really,
Speaker 1: like you how much controversy was there around Jesus Christ
Speaker 1: Superstar because obviously Monty Python and Martin Scorsese would have
Speaker 1: tested if you if you do something around in this
Speaker 1: area that it can draw, it can draw you know protesters.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, Jesus Growth Superstar is not a comedy, so
Speaker 3: you know, they didn't have to walk that gaunt that
Speaker 3: I felt Monty Python had to walk, which was, you know,
Speaker 3: if anybody is laughing during a piece that concerns religion
Speaker 3: and they're laughing at us, right, which is such a strange,
Speaker 3: reductive way of looking at it, that almost like, you know,
Speaker 3: religion has to reject humor and it has to be
Speaker 3: serious at every level or the whole facade of it
Speaker 3: will fall apart, which I don't. I don't agree with,
Speaker 3: but I think most people don't either. I don't know
Speaker 3: whether there is any controversy with Jesus Christ Superstar. I
Speaker 3: know that it was the kind of musical that defined
Speaker 3: my parents' era. Like they would they would go to
Speaker 3: parties and put the record on and on the stereo
Speaker 3: and they would all sit around singing the show.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 6: Sounds kind of cash what a party Jesus Christ, you know,
Speaker 6: but it was.
Speaker 3: It was a modernization of the of the New Testament story,
Speaker 3: and I think it was radical because it really humanized
Speaker 3: the characters. There's not a lot of magic, In fact,
Speaker 3: there's somebody any magic in Jesus Christ Superstar. It's it's
Speaker 3: kind of a this song and dance obviously, but it's
Speaker 3: about the political climate of the time, about the Roman
Speaker 3: occupation of Jerusalem, about tension with the occupying forces, and
Speaker 3: who should be allowed, about the controversy that g This
Speaker 3: is caused in his teachings. The concept of whether he
Speaker 3: was a god or just a man comes into it
Speaker 3: a lot, but is not really confirmed or rejected through
Speaker 3: any kind of representation of a magical god or anything.
Speaker 3: It's just about perception and political pressure and expediency. And
Speaker 3: it's also about what happens when you know you're trying
Speaker 3: to change you're trying to change things. It's really hard
Speaker 3: as a group to have a particular ideology and try
Speaker 3: and change things. And they fight amongst each other in
Speaker 3: Jesus Christ style, which is great. I mean it's like
Speaker 3: people probably know that, you know, trying to tag after
Speaker 3: bar we try not to turn Everything's all right, Yes,
Speaker 3: that has a big fight, but I mean an amazing
Speaker 3: kind of fight between Jesus and Judas, which is about
Speaker 3: jesus relationship with Mary Magdalene, and also about you know,
Speaker 3: like whether or not it's worth spending money on oil
Speaker 3: or relaxation or fun or do we deserve any of
Speaker 3: that stuff when there are poor people and the kind
Speaker 3: of ideological things I think really spoke to a generation
Speaker 3: the seventies who were interested in ideals of social justice
Speaker 3: and equity and education and healthcare and all the things
Speaker 3: that you know we've kind of inherited today and probably
Speaker 3: take definitely take for granted that didn't we were emerging,
Speaker 3: I guess in Australia under GoF Whitlam and those sort
Speaker 3: of people. This notion of religion was isn't just like
Speaker 3: a just be good and you'll go to heaven or
Speaker 3: magical miracle things will happen and take care of you.
Speaker 3: It's this notion of the where it's more of a
Speaker 3: humanist thing. Really, we're here to look after each other
Speaker 3: and wherever we're going, we're going to all go together,
Speaker 3: and that education is important and that we shouldn't reject
Speaker 3: the kind of least of us in society. And there's
Speaker 3: a miracle of Jesus that he was that he went
Speaker 3: and spoke to lepers and sex workers and was not judgmental.
Speaker 3: I think those ideals are really in Jesus Christ Superstyle,
Speaker 3: which was written by Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber who wrote
Speaker 3: the music, and Tim Rice I think wrote the wrote
Speaker 3: the and it's all sung, so it's a rock opera
Speaker 3: and that was a very big deal back then.
Speaker 1: It's funny because a show like Jesus Christ Superstuff becomes
Speaker 1: its own thing because there's been, you know, countless versions
Speaker 1: on stage from it, and people if you haven't seen
Speaker 1: it and what you speak about it, I'm not sure
Speaker 1: if I have seen even on stage. I one of
Speaker 1: those things. I thought I had, and then I realized
Speaker 1: that you kind of explained the story. I think I
Speaker 1: don't think I have. I remember who was in it.
Speaker 1: I remember John Stevens being Jesus all that you know,
Speaker 1: and I think probably like Rod Laverna like multiple.
Speaker 3: That was with John Farnham playing Jesus, of course, and
Speaker 3: he's the most that recording. I mean, if anybody is
Speaker 3: like a spare hour and wants to listen to John
Speaker 3: Farnham singing his face off, and who doesn't. His vocals
Speaker 3: on that album are extraordinaries, like it's it's it's a
Speaker 3: staggeringly difficult part role to sing. It's got both Judas
Speaker 3: and Jesus are like these rock tenor roles, and Jesus
Speaker 3: is the way it's scored for Jesus just kind of
Speaker 3: like in Saints. In the stratosphere of be natural I
Speaker 3: think quite a lot of be naturals all the way through,
Speaker 3: maybe a couple of Caesar or a Sea sharp, which
Speaker 3: is for people who know singing, it's like the top
Speaker 3: tenor range, you know, like a top seed. So it
Speaker 3: requires a pretty unique voice. And John Farner is probably
Speaker 3: one of the best jesus Is the world has ever produced,
Speaker 3: just Australia, but the world's ever produced. His singing that
Speaker 3: role was absolutely extraordinary, And yeah, it was him playing Jesus.
Speaker 3: John Stephens was Judas.
Speaker 1: I think maybe I never saw it, so I remember
Speaker 1: it was very so big that I kind of felt
Speaker 1: like in case of Brano, I think was Mary Mary?
Speaker 1: So by the way, on they're playing back from the
Speaker 1: Gold Coach. Recently I watched finally, I watched the John
Speaker 1: Farm documentary Finding the Voice. Oh right, have you seen it?
Speaker 3: No, I kind of been avoiding it. I don't know
Speaker 3: why I'm avoiding it.
Speaker 1: I was a little bit of same and I don't
Speaker 1: know why. I thought maybe was an opportunistic because find
Speaker 1: his Heady's health concerns and I was a bit you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if I was subconsciously put off by that.
Speaker 1: It is extraordinary. It is you know, there wouldn't be
Speaker 1: too people listening to this podcasts who obviously does don't
Speaker 1: know who John Farnam is. If you're from overseas, you
Speaker 1: might not know him. But he's I think the greatest
Speaker 1: voice Australia's ever produced.
Speaker 3: The one of the world's greatest singers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and like Tom Jones, and you know, there's people
Speaker 1: around the world who who I've got to know him
Speaker 1: and who will vouch for that he's extraordinary. But he
Speaker 1: hasn't always had it easy and he got dismissed early
Speaker 1: because he had this kind of you know, song about
Speaker 1: a cleaning lady.
Speaker 3: That kind of got you know, he was a total
Speaker 3: matinee idol.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he got to put into a corner. We
Speaker 1: pigeonholed him and it took him a long time to
Speaker 1: get to where he wanted to be and to finally
Speaker 1: make the album that was reflective of Whispering Jack, which
Speaker 1: just became the album that I remember everyone having it.
Speaker 1: I was in grade five and I just remember everybody
Speaker 1: having that album and it's still to hear you're the
Speaker 1: voice sung I've heard. I don't think I've heard it
Speaker 1: twice him sing it in a room and it's just
Speaker 1: spine tingling.
Speaker 3: Really, Oh my god, I've never seen John Farnham live.
Speaker 3: I don't think, even though I'm a big, big fan
Speaker 3: of just never had the opportunity. He's so extraor that
Speaker 3: album is so extraordinary. It's an incredible album. But I
Speaker 3: remember in the days of Hey, Hey, it's Saturday. Every
Speaker 3: now and then he'd be on the show and there'd
Speaker 3: be like a Tom Jones or you know. I think
Speaker 3: even one time he had to chat to Stevie Wonder
Speaker 3: and they were talking about their vocal range, how high
Speaker 3: they could sing, and they're both sort of singing stuff together,
Speaker 3: and it was like quite extraordinary that John Farnham and
Speaker 3: Stevie Wonder had a really similar vocal range but totally
Speaker 3: different tones. And that was one of the great things
Speaker 3: about that show, was the kind of cross pollination that
Speaker 3: happened between artists from here and overseas, and and yeah,
Speaker 3: John Farnham was no one, no one like John Farnon.
Speaker 3: I got to see that.
Speaker 1: Anybody listening to go see Finding the Voice. I think
Speaker 1: it's available to rent on some of the streamers now,
Speaker 1: but we'll move on, the Children of Men. Clive Owen.
Speaker 1: I feel like this film I find so Coron directed this.
Speaker 1: I think so this film, I feel like, is getting
Speaker 1: the further it gets away from when it was made,
Speaker 1: the more people are finding it almost and it's becoming
Speaker 1: a like more of a classic that the further it
Speaker 1: gets away from this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel like, now if I bring it up
Speaker 3: with people, people are like, oh, I love that film.
Speaker 3: Whereas there was a good kind of a wild I
Speaker 3: saw it at the cinemas and then you know that
Speaker 3: thing when you come out of the cinemas and it's,
Speaker 3: oh my god, it's all this amazing film, and it
Speaker 3: just people were really into it. People weren't really watching it,
Speaker 3: and so I was like, did I really see this film?
Speaker 3: Because it's got so many Julian Moore right and Climber,
Speaker 3: it's a star in it. It's got a Michael Caine
Speaker 3: cameo in it, and he plays crazy. But it's it's
Speaker 3: so tense and so wonderfully shot in this kind of
Speaker 3: futuristic place where peop where humans have stopped having babies
Speaker 3: and there's been pockets of resistance and stuff. But it
Speaker 3: opens with this I think a terrorst bomb going off
Speaker 3: in a cafe and that scene is just so alarming,
Speaker 3: you know, okay where this is going to be a
Speaker 3: terrify the whole thing. And it's a brilliant film. It's
Speaker 3: so great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you invested straight away. It is a great thing.
Speaker 1: I'd love to cover it for this podcast. Actually, that'll
Speaker 1: be a great one. Okay, great to try to about you.
Speaker 1: Three fair films, Aliens, Jesus Christ, Supicide, remember a bit
Speaker 1: of fancy thrown in there for good measure. But we're here,
Speaker 1: of course the chat about this one.
Speaker 5: Thank you? Read music, My gal, who could ask for
Speaker 5: anything more? Daisy in Green Pasture, My gal, who could
Speaker 5: ask for anything more?
Speaker 3: Old man Trouble, I don't mind him.
Speaker 5: You won't find him around my doors.
Speaker 1: Six oscars in nine to fifty one in an American
Speaker 1: in Paris, owned Jean Kelly, directed by Vincent Menali who's
Speaker 1: going through a bit of a divorce I think with
Speaker 1: Judy Garland so a bit distracted and Gene Kelly would
Speaker 1: have to come in and direct some scenes edy perfect.
Speaker 1: Did you enjoy an American Parish?
Speaker 3: I did, Actually I did enjoy it, but I I
Speaker 3: the Big caveat around that is there is a there
Speaker 3: is a huge age difference between let's say On and
Speaker 3: Gene Kelly. Let's just because it's there, it's it's and
Speaker 3: it does only wanted to work. My god, she's so
Speaker 3: beautiful because when she's getting described I think we're introduced
Speaker 3: to her on screen in the film, when she's being
Speaker 3: described by the French character, Yes, it's his fiance, he's
Speaker 3: in love with her. She's amazing, and he's describing her
Speaker 3: to Gene Kelly, and it's ridiculous that.
Speaker 1: Gen Kelly, it's it's to Jean Kelly's composed of the
Speaker 1: piano friend. Yeah, the piano friend Adam something, Adam Cook,
Speaker 1: I think his name is. Like, let's have a listen
Speaker 1: to the sum of the it's And so he's described
Speaker 1: being her, and then it's we see her dance. She's
Speaker 1: an amazing dancer, and Jean Kelly in real life is
Speaker 1: vacationing in Paris, sees her and basically puts it in
Speaker 1: the movie. Her film film debut didn't speak much English
Speaker 1: before this had learnt a bit from the movie. But
Speaker 1: let's have listen to some of the descriptions and the
Speaker 1: music as we get introduced to Lisa.
Speaker 7: She seems to be a lusty young lady. Oh no,
Speaker 7: she's sweet and shy, old version girl.
Speaker 4: Huh, of course not. She's divacious and modern, always jacking up.
Speaker 4: Don't be silly. She is incessantly.
Speaker 7: There'sn't all that reading meger Moody.
Speaker 4: Never, she's the gayest girl in the world.
Speaker 3: Yes, she's everything.
Speaker 1: She's everything, everything at all. Whatever you wanted to be,
Speaker 1: she's that.
Speaker 3: And every one of those musical breaks is like a
Speaker 3: fantasy segments where we see her dressed up in a
Speaker 3: different way and she's either being coquettish or she's doing
Speaker 3: mod jazz, and she can really Dance's one point, she
Speaker 3: does a series of fetes on point and you're just like, okay,
Speaker 3: so she's a proper ballet training, classical dance.
Speaker 1: It's extraordinary that her dancing is extraordinary. But when she's reading,
Speaker 1: she's on the piano and she kind of moved. I
Speaker 1: don't know how to describe it all. But and then
Speaker 1: she does like a what I would say is like
Speaker 1: a kind of a cartwheel off one foot, and then yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's incredible.
Speaker 3: It's extra extraordinary, and she looks amazing. She's got these
Speaker 3: big eyes and the beautiful, big smart because her face
Speaker 3: looks incredible, but she's quite tiny.
Speaker 1: So she's doing this amazing work on screen. And then
Speaker 1: you have these two blocks sucking it up for the
Speaker 1: rest of us. I know she reads incessantly, one of
Speaker 1: those series.
Speaker 3: Reading must make her moody. You're like, wow, yeah, it's
Speaker 3: it's look at gender politics are not great?
Speaker 1: No, And in this podcast, obviously you imagine it's come
Speaker 1: up a lot, and so sometimes it's easy the shift
Speaker 1: of the side. I felt this hung over this movie
Speaker 1: for me quite a because, by the way, it's the
Speaker 1: first time I'd seen this movie as well, so I'm
Speaker 1: still processing it a bit.
Speaker 3: He just it's just his the character Jerry Mulligan sees
Speaker 3: this woman. Where does he see her first at a
Speaker 3: party or something or.
Speaker 1: He's kind of nightclub so he has already met Milo. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot to say about Milo as well.
Speaker 1: She kind of takes an interest in him, both romantically
Speaker 1: and eventually his artwork, but it kind of feels like
Speaker 1: it's more romantic. Takes him out to dinner and he
Speaker 1: just starts.
Speaker 3: Leering, leering. He's leering.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's also the trouble, says the age difference.
Speaker 1: And then for me, it's how this relationship begins.
Speaker 3: She says no to him so many times. In fact,
Speaker 3: I think she actually says, leave me alone, go away.
Speaker 3: She gives him a phone number, and he only gets
Speaker 3: the right one because the father is sitting next door
Speaker 3: is oh, silly girl, it's four or five and seven,
Speaker 3: and he's like, aha, I got your number, you know
Speaker 3: what I.
Speaker 1: Mean, Like, dude, yeah, not reading the room at all.
Speaker 3: Was no, And she's very clear about it being no.
Speaker 3: And I guess at some point you've got to believe
Speaker 3: that there's a she transitions from you know, a no
Speaker 3: to a year.
Speaker 1: So that seems to happen while they're suggesting. It happens
Speaker 1: in the jewelry store where he rocks up to her
Speaker 1: work after he said she said, don't come again. That's right.
Speaker 1: He rocks up to her work and again she's saying no, no.
Speaker 1: He helps out with a customer. He recommends some perfume,
Speaker 1: I think, and she makes her say but she's still
Speaker 1: that's not the bit that impresses her. It may soften
Speaker 1: her a bit, but she's still pretty much get out
Speaker 1: of here. And then he makes it kind of a
Speaker 1: weird joke. Weird joke drinking the perfume or putting on
Speaker 1: his head and that makes her crack up laughing, and
Speaker 1: then it's all everything's forgotten about and we are on here.
Speaker 3: That's a lot of pressure on a joke, rips to
Speaker 3: like go, You've gone from being like somebody that you
Speaker 3: would Okay, I think I need to call the police
Speaker 3: or something at this point because he is so intense
Speaker 3: and weird. Yeah, I didn't really buy that. Also, I
Speaker 3: don't think she's written very well that character, and I
Speaker 3: don't think any of the women in the film are
Speaker 3: written very well. And it's the screenplays by Alan J. Lerner,
Speaker 3: who is a Britant writer who wrote the book for
Speaker 3: My Fair Lady and the book for Brigantoon I think
Speaker 3: as well, and the lyrics Camelot as well. He wrote
Speaker 3: the music the book and the lyrics for Camelot. And
Speaker 3: he is an interesting guy. I've actually read his memoirs.
Speaker 3: He's written his memoirs called a Terrible Name called on
Speaker 3: the Street where I Live, which is after the song
Speaker 3: from My Fair Lady. But he's an interesting guy. But
Speaker 3: I just don't think they really think know or care
Speaker 3: about maybe the complexities of a female character at all.
Speaker 3: They're just a sort of someone to be one or lost,
Speaker 3: or to come or to go to be you know, lovely,
Speaker 3: and then just sort of flit off with no real
Speaker 3: opinions of their own. It's weird.
Speaker 1: It's really weird. And you might be listening to this
Speaker 1: thinking are we just being woke? But it's not even
Speaker 1: about that. It's about the story suffering because you're not invested.
Speaker 1: All of a sudden, I don't believe this romance at all.
Speaker 1: It's interesting, I do feel because the Gershwin. Gershwin writes
Speaker 1: an American in Paris as a piece in nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: eight I think it is twenty seven or twenty eight,
Speaker 1: and then Arthur Freed buys, well, it becomes obsessed with
Speaker 1: the idea of the title, and American in Paris wants
Speaker 1: to make a movie. Arthur Freed is like, I think
Speaker 1: one of the heads of MGM and Gershwin dies in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty eight, and Arthur Fred goes to Ira Gershwin,
Speaker 1: his brother, and says, I want to buy an American
Speaker 1: in Paris to music and the title, and he said
Speaker 1: you can use it, but only if you use other
Speaker 1: Gershwin music, so then they have to retro fit these
Speaker 1: bits of music. Ira Gershwin writes the lyrics to his
Speaker 1: brother's songs or pieces of music. Here ross lyrics, but
Speaker 1: they are retrofitting the shoehorning songs into a story. And
Speaker 1: you can when you know that it makes complete sense
Speaker 1: and that's how it's happening.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, And it's very theatrical in the way it works,
Speaker 3: and I think this is one of those films where
Speaker 3: people don't really recall the plot, all the characters. They
Speaker 3: just sort of they remember the grandiosity of it. It's huge,
Speaker 3: and the set pieces the way that they work so well.
Speaker 3: You know, early on there's a brilliant piece which is
Speaker 3: by Strauss, which is a song of ersions that I
Speaker 3: never really paid much attention to before. It's a great
Speaker 3: lyric it's just really an ode to Charles Strauss, the
Speaker 3: Viennese composer, Walt's composer, and so it's got that kind
Speaker 3: of jauntiness to it. But everybody gets involved from that,
Speaker 3: chambermaids and domestic servants, and it's beautifully beautifully shot and
Speaker 3: beautifully performed, and it's really vivacious and fun, and I
Speaker 3: think people remember that sort of stuff rather than the
Speaker 3: storyline you.
Speaker 1: Imagine when you're shooting those because stream Kelly was a
Speaker 1: perfection and not the easiest person to get along to
Speaker 1: and was pretty hard on his fellow actors and people
Speaker 1: around him. In fact, the lady who played Lisa Leslie Kron,
Speaker 1: she suffered malnutrition during World War Two. And this is
Speaker 1: the other thing that blows my mind about movies around his,
Speaker 1: like Casablanca, like all these movies have made. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think Blank, it's made while the wall is still going,
Speaker 1: you know, and this is made not long after the war.
Speaker 1: So yeah, she suffered malnutrition in World War two, so
Speaker 1: it couldn't necessarily do day after day and the kind
Speaker 1: of schedule they had it which kind of pissed gin
Speaker 1: Kelly off. So even though he founded her put it
Speaker 1: in the movie, eventually, I think their relationship sound because
Speaker 1: he was like, you can't you know, you know, I
Speaker 1: need you to work this hard. But you did watch
Speaker 1: those scenes. Do you think that this one person to
Speaker 1: kind of fuck up, like even like you know, a
Speaker 1: background dancer, to kind of trip or to kind of
Speaker 1: not be looking at the wrong camera looking at it
Speaker 1: in there and they have to do it again.
Speaker 3: I imagine it's extraordinary and it's not inter cut like
Speaker 3: we're used to sing with contemporary stuff, and I think
Speaker 3: that plays so well into dance and the sense of space.
Speaker 3: And there are a couple of beautiful crane shots where
Speaker 3: you get to see the whole sound stage and you
Speaker 3: can even kind of get the idea of where it
Speaker 3: blends into the big imagine those big painted backdrops of
Speaker 3: like Monmatra, you know, like the lights coming up and
Speaker 3: Paris and in his Eiffel Tower. It's all the beautifully
Speaker 3: made sets and stuff. It's really loved to see. But yeah,
Speaker 3: it's quite random. And there are kids in this as well.
Speaker 3: Like I think you've played a clip before, you know,
Speaker 3: I Got Rhythm where GM Kelly's getting each of them
Speaker 3: to say I got before that song.
Speaker 1: I thought that was one of my favorites and as
Speaker 1: close to outside of the American Parish which I've heard
Speaker 1: of music, that was the one I was expecting more
Speaker 1: for me to watch this film, going oh, that's where
Speaker 1: this one comes from, you know, that's why we reference that,
Speaker 1: That's where that song. That was maybe the only time
Speaker 1: I went, oh, that's from this movie yeah, right, very
Speaker 1: little recall. Yeah, any other time I did like that sequence.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's good. Yeah, they're amazing sequences. I mean, I mean, like,
Speaker 3: just to talk about the Milo character, you know, there
Speaker 3: is that thing where I reckon that actress is probably
Speaker 3: younger than Gen Kelly, but you know, they're sort of
Speaker 3: made to look like the older woman and they're just
Speaker 3: sort of automatically suspicious from the beginning. Yeah, and you know,
Speaker 3: she comes in, she's wealthy, she buys his paintings. She
Speaker 3: wants to help him, and she's interested in his art
Speaker 3: and she believes in him. But there's something kind of
Speaker 3: I don't know what it is. The film kind of
Speaker 3: makes her suspicious and gross and foolish really, and he
Speaker 3: doesn't treat her very well either, because he sort of
Speaker 3: like ignores her. And then and then when things turn
Speaker 3: sour with the romance with the young lady with Lisa,
Speaker 3: he just pretends to be into Milo all of a sudden,
Speaker 3: and that's quite cruel. Takes her out to a party
Speaker 3: and he's like, you know, we're going to be together now.
Speaker 3: And when it doesn't work out with the young girl,
Speaker 3: he sort of breaks it off with Milo, and I
Speaker 3: just felt so sorry for her. I sort of used
Speaker 3: and discarded.
Speaker 1: They didn't give her any dignity or like it. I
Speaker 1: recall the sound of music, you know, where the baroness
Speaker 1: who is obviously in love with von Shrapp, they give
Speaker 1: her her mate where she breaks up with him and says,
Speaker 1: you know, she knows that he's in love with Maria,
Speaker 1: so she's given that that moment where through kind of
Speaker 1: you know, holding it together, she holds her shit together. Well,
Speaker 1: but she she breaks up with him. We know that
Speaker 1: she doesn't want to do that because she can see
Speaker 1: this somebody else. This movie lacks that that moment.
Speaker 3: It does. And do you think it also lacks any
Speaker 3: conversation about art.
Speaker 1: Well, you barely see painting.
Speaker 3: He's a painter. He's not interested in talking about paintings.
Speaker 1: To the point where they forget about it, like to
Speaker 1: the point where.
Speaker 3: He's selling encyclopedias or something, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: It's so kind of cold. And he paints like the
Speaker 3: paints you do see. He's painting like street scenes or
Speaker 3: I think he paints one figure. He paints a young
Speaker 3: girl holding a balloon at one point, but mostly it's
Speaker 3: paintings of buildings and stuff, but he just sort of
Speaker 3: every scene is carrying them all these canvases around, is
Speaker 3: trying to seldom to people, but he never really has
Speaker 3: a this is what I want to say with my art,
Speaker 3: or this is why I'm an artist, or it's just
Speaker 3: he just seems like a rich guy.
Speaker 1: And then what happens to his dream like becomes about
Speaker 1: the girl. Yeah, and there's no like where what was
Speaker 1: he trying to get to? Like, surely there could have
Speaker 1: been an exhibition that he was trying to put on,
Speaker 1: and we see that happen, and you could have instead
Speaker 1: of gone to that party that we'd kind of black
Speaker 1: and white artistic party, could it could have been at
Speaker 1: his exhibition, you know, like have something that kind of
Speaker 1: informs gives us an idea where his journey, his art
Speaker 1: journey's at. And also his friend is the composer who
Speaker 1: we have this elaborate kind of dream sequence of him playing.
Speaker 3: Then nothing happens, Then nothing happens with him.
Speaker 1: Does he achieved his dream?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 1: And in fact, I think he has a.
Speaker 3: Couple of lines where he alludes to the fact that
Speaker 3: Jerry Mulligan or Jeffre Mulligan is is not a good painter.
Speaker 3: Did you get that sense that said?
Speaker 1: Or am I early on? Which I love the opening
Speaker 1: before we even get to we spoke about early all
Speaker 1: the contraptions and and the way he's designed his apartment
Speaker 1: to you know, fit his needs. The way the camera
Speaker 1: moves up to this to reveal the windows, and there's
Speaker 1: a lot of misdirecting going on, like so, no, that's
Speaker 1: not me. You know, he's too happy and he comes up.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, you see him in these pajamas. There's
Speaker 1: a bit where he said, back home they told me
Speaker 1: I was no good. They probably said the same thing here,
Speaker 1: but in French it sounds nicer. Yeah, there's some nice
Speaker 1: lines in all of that stuff. Actually, the humor in
Speaker 1: this movie is not consistent, Like sometimes it feels on
Speaker 1: the nose and heavy hand, and other times it's like
Speaker 1: it's just quite Yeah, it works quite well.
Speaker 3: And I know that, you know, there's there's obviously subtexting
Speaker 3: them when you look at the period of time in
Speaker 3: which it was made and where it's set. You know,
Speaker 3: you just had the second one was horrible, absolutely horrible.
Speaker 3: He just had the Holocaust. I mean, how do you?
Speaker 3: I mean, I still think it's almost still impossible for
Speaker 3: humans to console what happened and the atrocities of the
Speaker 3: Second World War, and so they're very sort of present
Speaker 3: and people were recovering from that. So there's a sense
Speaker 3: of like, you know, wanting to there. But there could
Speaker 3: be a lot to say in that film about ideals,
Speaker 3: about artistic integrity, about what you're willing to do for art.
Speaker 3: And one point one of the maids is like, are
Speaker 3: you going to sleep with this woman to get your art?
Speaker 3: And she's quite supportive of that in a sort of
Speaker 3: a French European you know, whatever you've got to do
Speaker 3: to make it that that was something that was like
Speaker 3: pragmatism at some point, you know, you need to you
Speaker 3: want to sell your art, you want to get ahead,
Speaker 3: you want to put food on the table and survive
Speaker 3: as a painter. You know, maybe you get into an
Speaker 3: ethical issue where it's like do I have to fuck
Speaker 3: this woman?
Speaker 5: You know?
Speaker 3: Do I have to do that in order to to
Speaker 3: get a He doesn't. She's like, I'm gonna We're going
Speaker 3: to give you an exhibition and he's like, wow, hang on,
Speaker 3: hang on here, you know three months, you can't rush
Speaker 3: my art. I like, just during some more painting building,
Speaker 3: what are you doing?
Speaker 1: But like you say, I don't believe that Geene Kley
Speaker 1: or Jerry Mulligan's not fucking it up. He doesn't present
Speaker 1: as the guy who's so passionate about his art. He
Speaker 1: basically goes to montmart because he needs some lunch money,
Speaker 1: I think, he says, you know, so he brows some money.
Speaker 1: So he's not painting enough. He's not talking about art
Speaker 1: enough to have these these lines where he's drawing a
Speaker 1: line and going, no, I'm not you know, you're an
Speaker 1: attractive woman and you are you're you're you're successful, and
Speaker 1: you like my art. Why wouldn't I be attracted to that?
Speaker 1: You know, like the idea. I mean, you know, I
Speaker 1: can certainly understand where you know, he's saying, I'm not
Speaker 1: an escort, and you know I do get that, But
Speaker 1: it just doesn't marry up to the Jerry Mulligan that
Speaker 1: we've met.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no it doesn't. And when there's a sort of
Speaker 3: a montage of sequence of him painting, it's like supposed
Speaker 3: to be like, oh, you know, getting ready, getting rid
Speaker 3: of the big show, might have to do something, and
Speaker 3: it just looks like a normal guy going around painting,
Speaker 3: But it's sort of got this sense of like, oh,
Speaker 3: he's got a guy has to actually paint now because
Speaker 3: he's got an exhibition coming up, and then we never
Speaker 3: get the exhibition.
Speaker 5: Do he no?
Speaker 1: No, like he really they really do. Forget about the
Speaker 1: idea that this started off as a guy who had
Speaker 1: steady parents after the war to pursue his dream of
Speaker 1: becoming an artist. And one of the very few in
Speaker 1: fact artistic conversations I have is when he first meets
Speaker 1: Milow in the streets of mark Mark, Let's have her
Speaker 1: listen to that.
Speaker 4: Do you mind if I look? Or will you chew
Speaker 4: my head off too?
Speaker 5: Nah?
Speaker 3: Go ahead, you're okay, Oh, thank you.
Speaker 4: She's one of those third year girls. I graped my lever,
Speaker 4: did you go?
Speaker 5: Yeah? You know, American college kids come over here to
Speaker 5: take their third year and lap up a little culture.
Speaker 4: They give me a swift pain.
Speaker 5: Why they're harmless enough, they're officious and ball they're always
Speaker 5: making profound observations they've overheard.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's kind of an interesting little you know inside,
Speaker 1: it's probably talk more to the American experience.
Speaker 3: Shut that student down faster, doesn't mean like she's like,
Speaker 3: what's what is your painting? About and he's like, get
Speaker 3: the hell out of him. I'm talking about my work
Speaker 3: with what meaning.
Speaker 1: I wonder why you're a struggling artist because you tell
Speaker 1: somebody the fuck off. Yeah. Seconds into the conversation it was.
Speaker 3: A pain adult bah.
Speaker 1: I don't know again. I mean, maybe you're gonna that's
Speaker 1: a counter argument to what I just said. Maybe he
Speaker 1: is his artist who has his you know, his morals.
Speaker 3: And his virues, and part of it is just refusing
Speaker 3: to talk about any deeper meaning with his work. You
Speaker 3: know the movie, you know, the movie that does the
Speaker 3: idea of which is like relocating to a new place,
Speaker 3: becoming you know, a European city or a town, and
Speaker 3: becoming sort of healed by the new environment that is
Speaker 3: different to America. The film that, weirdly is a weird parallel,
Speaker 3: but I feel like it doesn't better is the Equalizer three?
Speaker 3: Were you expecting that?
Speaker 1: I was, you know, my brain was doing its work
Speaker 1: and going, well, okay, where's it going with this one?
Speaker 1: I was going there. The Michael Winterbottom film set in
Speaker 1: the town in Italy, and I think that's about kind
Speaker 1: of somebody healing in a in a place in Italy.
Speaker 1: But that's no I wasn't expecting equalized the threat, right,
Speaker 1: and I haven't seen it right.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, I won't give anything away, but essentially equalized.
Speaker 3: He I mean, there's a lot. It's a big world
Speaker 3: out there, there's a lot, you know, like he's never
Speaker 3: going to get through it. He certainly equalized. The ship
Speaker 3: out of that town, he goes to some it's a
Speaker 3: town in Italy. It's I can't remember the name of it,
Speaker 3: but it's I don't know, and I don't even know
Speaker 3: whether that's Alta, Montel de Monte, the hell did I
Speaker 3: remember that? And it's beautiful. The town is beautiful. I
Speaker 3: think it might even there's a couple of months where
Speaker 3: they go to Naples as well. It's also really beautiful.
Speaker 3: And he sort of finds peace and meaning amongst these
Speaker 3: people in this new life and then sort of you know,
Speaker 3: but then trouble comes and then he has to kind
Speaker 3: of rise of the occasion, and now he has a
Speaker 3: purpose of the people that he cares about in this
Speaker 3: world that he cares about, that he wants to he
Speaker 3: wants to have them free from tyranny. So he steps
Speaker 3: up and does his equalizers. Shit, it's sort of about
Speaker 3: you can be in a new place, but you still
Speaker 3: have your wounds and your issues. And I felt that
Speaker 3: that explored the psychology of how we the notion of
Speaker 3: how much can you run from who you are? How
Speaker 3: much can you reinvent who you are? How much acceptance
Speaker 3: of is there of who you are? But this film
Speaker 3: sort of feels like he played the American imp Paris,
Speaker 3: feels like he plays at art a little bit, that
Speaker 3: art really is. Art gets dispensed with very quickly in
Speaker 3: order to make way for the love story, but also
Speaker 3: for frivolous things like you know, dancing and singing and
Speaker 3: drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes and cafes and stuff. All
Speaker 3: the glamorous stuff seems to kind of come first.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And another thing I noticed that I'm surprised that
Speaker 1: Paris wasn't more of a character in this movie, if
Speaker 1: you like. And I know that Geene Kelly wanted to
Speaker 1: shoot this on location in Paris and they wouldn't allow him.
Speaker 1: There was permit problems and also the costs. So I
Speaker 1: think there was forty four sets built the n GYM
Speaker 1: lot in California, but you only see the Eiffel Tower once,
Speaker 1: and it's in there at the end when he's on
Speaker 1: the balcony in the distance, and then they do an
Speaker 1: incredible job painting these sets. And you know, I'm not
Speaker 1: saying you don't feel a little bit of Paris in there,
Speaker 1: but like there's a lot of shots in rooms, you know,
Speaker 1: as opposed to being out in the streets.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and the couple of shots there are out in
Speaker 3: the streets. It's a little it's got a kind of
Speaker 3: a French overlay, but it doesn't really feel like anywhere
Speaker 3: in particular. So it does feel like a fantasy because
Speaker 3: of that. I mean, obviously it's a very well manicured
Speaker 3: and curated fantasy, but it's like he's living inside a painting.
Speaker 3: And there are actually some quite a lot of moment
Speaker 3: including the sequence at the end to an American in
Speaker 3: Paris where paintings come to life, and there are a
Speaker 3: lot of sort of sort of references to French Impressionism
Speaker 3: and things like that. Yes, so it's it's not really
Speaker 3: of the real world. Is that it really is a
Speaker 3: kind of a dream. Yeah, And let's talk about that.
Speaker 3: Some people listened to this podcast before they watched a movie.
Speaker 3: They've told me, so, ah waits so obviously the spoilers
Speaker 3: throughout all this, but some people don't mind. So one
Speaker 3: of the important parts of this story is that there
Speaker 3: is is the Three Men. Who is Gene Kelly, Jerry Mulligan.
Speaker 3: There is Jerry Mulligan is a weird character name Jerry Mulligan.
Speaker 1: It's not the most inspired of names. And there is
Speaker 1: Adam Cook oscar Levant, who's a comic relief. Have you
Speaker 1: seen Singing in the Rain, by the way, I have
Speaker 1: seen singing that. No, he's not in that, but donad O'Connor,
Speaker 1: I think his name. He plays almost that, you know,
Speaker 1: they make him laugh and he is so fucking good,
Speaker 1: like he's like. So I saw Singing in the Rain
Speaker 1: for this podcast a couple of years ago. Actually I
Speaker 1: watch it before this part because Tony Martin said it
Speaker 1: was one of his three fraight films.
Speaker 3: So when I watched it, the flip off, the make
Speaker 3: them laughter them when we got the back flip off,
Speaker 3: the war.
Speaker 1: The whole sequence is extraordinary. And I got to say,
Speaker 1: because I was so looking forward to seeing because I
Speaker 1: knew once six oscars, I love Singing in the Rain.
Speaker 1: It is so good, and so I'm holding this to
Speaker 1: a very high bar because I think Seeing the Rain
Speaker 1: is extraordinary, and I think this doesn't reach those standards.
Speaker 1: In parts it does. I think in parts it does.
Speaker 1: But you have these three characters, and you have then
Speaker 1: you have is a composer or a musician. He's got amazing.
Speaker 3: Voice and French cabaret singer.
Speaker 1: Engaged with Lisa, so they both have these secrets that
Speaker 1: they don't know. Once once Jerry falls in love with Lisa,
Speaker 1: and then it's kind of they talk about in a
Speaker 1: roundabout kind of way, and Henri encourages him to kind
Speaker 1: of pursue this opportunity with this woman. He doesn't know
Speaker 1: who it is obviously, and we.
Speaker 3: Have to just go tell her how you feel, tell
Speaker 3: her you love her. Right, And then instead of going,
Speaker 3: well this is this book, he's.
Speaker 1: A no, does he I love you? Yeah? He says,
Speaker 1: this woman stuck on his shop with you, that's half
Speaker 1: the battle you've won. Just go go and tell her.
Speaker 1: Adam Cook he's doing some nice comedic work. He's got
Speaker 1: a cigare in his mouth, he's undering coffee and he's
Speaker 1: he can't he can't, you know, he can't say, But
Speaker 1: what do you think of Adam Blood? Did he did
Speaker 1: he bring the last for you.
Speaker 3: I found myself like Becaure's a lot of like three
Speaker 3: shots where you know, there's a scene playing out and
Speaker 3: it's just him trying to be funny, mugging in the background,
Speaker 3: or you know. And I found myself like being my
Speaker 3: focus being pulled towards him a lot and watching him
Speaker 3: a lot. But I did not find him funny and
Speaker 3: I kind of or really even like enjoyable to look
Speaker 3: at on screen. I was like, what's going on with you?
Speaker 3: Like he's like the I'm like, are you seventy years old?
Speaker 3: Are you thirty five years old? And like he had
Speaker 3: that kind of you know, I didn't didn't make the
Speaker 3: cut for the rat pack or something. You know, he
Speaker 3: couldn't get in and he's like, you know, if you
Speaker 3: had that vibe. But I never really believed in him
Speaker 3: as a character well, and.
Speaker 1: I don't think they invested much into his journey. And
Speaker 1: he was a friend of Gershwin and Arthur Freed, so
Speaker 1: it was more of a penis and an actor. So
Speaker 1: I think knowing that, I think he does a pretty
Speaker 1: good job of it. But I agree, like when you
Speaker 1: said like it was it wasn't good to look at
Speaker 1: and that sounds harsh, But like I think, maybe is
Speaker 1: it Daniel O'Connor in Singing the Rain. He's such a
Speaker 1: good comic, kind of relief sidekick. I think I just
Speaker 1: wanted him in the film, to see him and Gene
Speaker 1: Kelly together again. But also, like I said earlier, they
Speaker 1: don't invest anything into his storyline. He's got, like he
Speaker 1: starts off, we know what he wants, so he's got
Speaker 1: the starting point of something. He wants to be a
Speaker 1: famous composer in the Great concert Halls of Europe. We've
Speaker 1: seen in the dream sequence, but we barely see him
Speaker 1: again after that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think he is reduced to a bit of
Speaker 3: a function, you know, like so that characters don't have
Speaker 3: to talk to themselves in a soliloquy. He's sort of
Speaker 3: they're bouncing little one liners, but the one line is
Speaker 3: a kind of I don't know. I felt myself getting
Speaker 3: a little worn down, and I was like, am I
Speaker 3: being unfair? Because this is quite an old film. Maybe
Speaker 3: all of the dialogue feels really tropy and a little
Speaker 3: bit on the nose because other people have copied it
Speaker 3: a lot since then, But even still, I found his
Speaker 3: dialogue pretty clunky and his humor pretty layman. Because he's
Speaker 3: playing somebody that's sort of quote unquote cool, or at
Speaker 3: least he's trying to be someone that's cool. It's it's
Speaker 3: less interesting to me, whereas like a performance, like a
Speaker 3: comic performance like Robert Moose in How to Succeed in
Speaker 3: Business is not really trying, which is just for a minute,
Speaker 3: going to be in my top three because I love
Speaker 3: that film. That's a really weird comic performance. I don't
Speaker 3: know if you've seen that film.
Speaker 1: But no, I think I have Robert Moose. I thought
Speaker 1: I have it. I think I was thinking of the
Speaker 1: secret of my success.
Speaker 3: Right, Robert Moos is sort of I think I get
Speaker 3: in the right actor. It's a guy that he just
Speaker 3: passed away semi recently, and he has played the boss
Speaker 3: in mad Men. You know, it's a big oh Bert
Speaker 3: Bert someone he's amazing. That's a really funny comic performance.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I wasn't loving I wasn't loving Adam Cook.
Speaker 1: Yeah I was a bit the same sweet smell of
Speaker 1: my success, well not not the Michael J. Fox the
Speaker 1: secret of my success. So we had an email from
Speaker 1: somebody who thanks yes any podcast at gmail dot Com
Speaker 1: is where you send it, and this is one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why I did kind of push you towards
Speaker 1: doing this movie. And it's it's got a long aim.
Speaker 1: I won't get to all of it, but it is
Speaker 1: from Justine McGovern. Thank you, justin for getting in touch
Speaker 1: with this. She loves the pod. She's a jen X
Speaker 1: film graduate, although she never ended up working in the industry,
Speaker 1: but she's obviously a cinephile and she loves watching musicals
Speaker 1: with a nana on a Saturday afternoon. Her nana's favorite
Speaker 1: of South Pacific hers is Singing in the Rain, mainly
Speaker 1: because it's about the Bierz and who doesn't love Geen
Speaker 1: Keley Donald O'Connor's being saying Daniel O'Connor good comic Dan O'Connell,
Speaker 1: but the make him Laugh piece with Debbie Reynolds is
Speaker 1: just adorable. She also loves an American in Paris and
Speaker 1: also Meet Me in Saint Louis pretty much everything with
Speaker 1: Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. So she was hoping we
Speaker 1: could get somebody to cover an MGM musical. Obviously we're
Speaker 1: doing that now, So what I would like to be
Speaker 1: able to do now because we have found a few
Speaker 1: things that we didn't like about it, but there are
Speaker 1: some things that are really good. Like Jim Kelly is
Speaker 1: so watchable whenever he is on screen. Yes, like you're
Speaker 1: feel in safe hands, and I felt I always talk
Speaker 1: about the feeling in safe hands? When do you feel
Speaker 1: in safe pans in a movie? And to be honest,
Speaker 1: that opening shot with the into the windows of the apartments,
Speaker 1: I thought, I actually got excited. I was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: this is gonna be It's gonna be good. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm excited here and then I don't know, it fell
Speaker 1: apart not long after, long, not long after.
Speaker 3: I think that what happens with this film? And it's
Speaker 3: the same feeling I got when I saw a musical
Speaker 3: On the Town, which is music by Leonard Bernstein, booking
Speaker 3: music by Betty Comden and Adolph Green. I saw revival
Speaker 3: of it on Broadway when one of the first trips
Speaker 3: to New York.
Speaker 1: I made Green does the scene in the rain music?
Speaker 3: I think, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think Comdon and Green
Speaker 3: wrote a lot of lyrics and a lot of scripts
Speaker 3: for things. They were really successful. They wrote On the
Speaker 3: Town in three months and it's got three dream ballets,
Speaker 3: in it, which is a lot. Even one dream ballet
Speaker 3: is a lot. And the whole dream ballet thing I'm
Speaker 3: kind of obsessed with and was something that was was
Speaker 3: I think it could be wrong, but I think it
Speaker 3: was championed in Oklahoma when Oklahoma premiered, that was that
Speaker 3: had had a dream ballet in the in the second
Speaker 3: act where the two main main characters, Laurie and Curly,
Speaker 3: dance together and she smells some smelling salts from the
Speaker 3: traveling salesman and she has this crazy dream. And it
Speaker 3: became a big part of musical theater culture to put
Speaker 3: a dream ballet in there. This idea that you could
Speaker 3: express unexpressed thoughts and nightmares and dreams and fantasies and
Speaker 3: sort of things like that and would live inside this piece.
Speaker 3: It really works well with musicals, and you could have
Speaker 3: two characters who were different who were dances and weren't
Speaker 3: the actual central characters come in and dance that part.
Speaker 3: And On the Town has three of those, and it's
Speaker 3: a similar thing. Even though the music was written, the
Speaker 3: songs were written for that piece. It was written quickly
Speaker 3: and it was one of those things we were like,
Speaker 3: it's about using the talents of people that you've got
Speaker 3: around them and using people like Jerome Robbins, the great
Speaker 3: director choreographer who could tell story through dance in such
Speaker 3: extraordinary ways. You know, I feel like an American in
Speaker 3: Paris is a is a jukebox musical in that it's like,
Speaker 3: let's use all of Gershwin's songs, let's try and create
Speaker 3: a story that goes around it. But it's really a
Speaker 3: support for these moments that are going to be like
Speaker 3: big song and dance moments, and it's going to be
Speaker 3: generally a love story. And I think that what happens
Speaker 3: is because the songs aren't written specifically for each of
Speaker 3: those moments, there's a non specificity about them that means
Speaker 3: it's enjoyable. But generally the action stops, the narrative stops,
Speaker 3: and we just enjoy, you know, some singing and dancing,
Speaker 3: Whereas if it was purpose written, you know, you could
Speaker 3: have you know, what's it mean to fall in love
Speaker 3: and how difficult it is to fall in love or
Speaker 3: find the right person, or to be an artist in
Speaker 3: this town, or.
Speaker 1: To choose between art and love, you know, children, art and.
Speaker 3: Love, yeah or yeah, money and not money and friendship
Speaker 3: or love which is more important, you know, following dreams,
Speaker 3: giving up and all those things that kind of aren't
Speaker 3: really in there. I mean they're great Gershwin songs. That's
Speaker 3: wonderful and by Strauss and I Got Rhythm And what's
Speaker 3: the one they sing when they're down on the banks
Speaker 3: the river send the two of them. I think it's
Speaker 3: like embraceable you or like.
Speaker 1: Embraced by you. I think maybe it's called yeah, which
Speaker 1: I think Jim Kelly directed that sequence. In total. I mean,
Speaker 1: there are some of those scenes by the river which
Speaker 1: I didn't love. The first one where taking them how
Speaker 1: pretty she is and you're you're, oh, yeah, you're a
Speaker 1: body of work or something, and remember me of high school,
Speaker 1: you know where like yeah, and again it's it's you
Speaker 1: do see the age you know it is?
Speaker 8: You know?
Speaker 1: And I know it's a Hollywood thing, which I think
Speaker 1: they've corrected more recently as far as having more age
Speaker 1: appropriate couplings in film. So I understand that it was
Speaker 1: a thing, but watching it now, did it certainly hungover?
Speaker 1: Hung over it from me?
Speaker 3: Yeah, And then the outrageous outfit that he's wearing an
Speaker 3: American prower that skin tight beij.
Speaker 1: What is it.
Speaker 3: It's got a little cap on as well.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he looks I mean.
Speaker 3: He's a fit dude, but he's like got that he
Speaker 3: sort of he's filled out like a man, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so that sequence, let's talk about that. I mean,
Speaker 1: because that is an extraordinary piece of filmmaking to commit to.
Speaker 1: The studio said they wanted to cut it because it's
Speaker 1: going to it cost half a million dollars. I think
Speaker 1: Arthur Freed, the producer, or at least Gene Kelly and
Speaker 1: Menale all went to the head of MGM, the top head,
Speaker 1: and said, you know, we can't cut this, and told
Speaker 1: him all the reasons why, and he eventually said, I
Speaker 1: don't understand a word you're saying, but I believe in
Speaker 1: you guys. Go and do what you gotta do. Get
Speaker 1: out of here, which is great. That is awesome, And
Speaker 1: they went and shot this got pretty amazing. Like there
Speaker 1: were times I was watching going what I think, I'm
Speaker 1: getting lost in the I'm not sure what the storytelling's
Speaker 1: I'm the following it, and then I kind of I
Speaker 1: watched it again and just like let it, you know,
Speaker 1: wash over me. And they're almost traveling through Paris, like
Speaker 1: the history of Paris almost.
Speaker 3: It's almost almost like all of America and all of
Speaker 3: Paris sort of smashing into each other and culture clash.
Speaker 3: And then it's interesting because it's sort of, yeah, it's
Speaker 3: it's that's what I thought it was. I thought it
Speaker 3: was sort of his whole story of coming to Paris
Speaker 3: falling in love, the flower representing the kind of potential
Speaker 3: of their love, and she sort of leaves it, and
Speaker 3: when he comes back to it, he's like a ghost
Speaker 3: and he can't really pick it up. And then then
Speaker 3: he kind of becomes more solid and he's like, I
Speaker 3: don't know what the fuck.
Speaker 1: Really, and he's holding these flowers and he drops the
Speaker 1: flowers and he's feeling sad because maybe love's lost. And
Speaker 1: then these other three dances and are his sailors or something,
Speaker 1: and they kind of give him a nudge and then
Speaker 1: he's like, oh, we can dance, and I'm back there. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's back in a sequence.
Speaker 3: I got so distracted with the flowers because I kept
Speaker 3: thinking about just the kind of technical part of Technicolor,
Speaker 3: you know, because I think they had to hand pain
Speaker 3: pain yeah, and like, that's beautiful job they've done. On
Speaker 3: this like the flowers especially, like, wow, looks amazing. So
Speaker 3: the whole thing is it's pretty baddy, and it's he
Speaker 3: looks extraordinarily odd in that first outfit, but it's a vibe.
Speaker 1: They go for it. Well that's it. I mean, eighteen minutes.
Speaker 1: It's no dialogue or dance like it's if you put
Speaker 1: yourself in the nine to fifty one seeing that must
Speaker 1: have been pretty mind blowing. I mean this is like,
Speaker 1: this is I guess one of the beginnings of the
Speaker 1: modern musical. You know, you went from you know, the
Speaker 1: Gay Divorcee or your musical is like that and the
Speaker 1: friend of stair of Ginger Rogers into this kind of
Speaker 1: kind of sexually charged kind of you know, loafer wearing
Speaker 1: George Croney dude.
Speaker 3: You know, it's kind of yeah, he's nuts, he's old.
Speaker 3: And I like the French guy that sings the song
Speaker 3: on the staircase, the light up staircase. It sort of
Speaker 3: illuminates the women along the on the balustrades, and then
Speaker 3: there were women are kind of making up a Roman
Speaker 3: columns and stuff and they were draped around and it's
Speaker 3: very old school Hollywood, And yeah, I really, I really
Speaker 3: enjoyed that. It's beautiful.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Also, I didn't realize so Jeen Kelly served in
Speaker 1: the wall, but he served in the film unit, where
Speaker 1: he made basically education videos and directed like.
Speaker 3: Danced in them literally escape shelling.
Speaker 1: He did do one good how to assemble and disassemble
Speaker 1: your rifle. I would love to have seen him this
Speaker 1: do you know dance moves into that the old kicker
Speaker 1: on the ground and kicking it up and putting over
Speaker 1: your shoulder. That that would have worked.
Speaker 3: That would have been great. And then.
Speaker 1: But it was yeah, it's it's listen. I'm really glad
Speaker 1: I watched it. There were things that impressed me. I
Speaker 1: still think gene Kelly is an absolute superstar, but it
Speaker 1: just doesn't as far as singing in the Rain. How
Speaker 1: did it compare? Do you like?
Speaker 3: Do you have a I much preferred singing in the Rain,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna say, and I love Jean Kelly's dancing. But
Speaker 3: I think this is probably like if I was going
Speaker 3: to run a gene Kelly appreciation course, I would make
Speaker 3: students watch an American in Paris quite late in the unit,
Speaker 3: because I did I found the sort of the tone
Speaker 3: deafness of the intensity of that relationship and the age
Speaker 3: difference and the kind of sort of coercive control going
Speaker 3: on really did not do wonders for gene Kelly. But
Speaker 3: then he makes up for it when he dances. But
Speaker 3: he's not the most likable character in this in this
Speaker 3: movie is like, there's not a lot of sympathy for
Speaker 3: him or why he should get what he wants. He
Speaker 3: makes no sacrifices, he doesn't think about anyone else but himself.
Speaker 3: He is an artist, but he doesn't sort of seem
Speaker 3: to care about art very much. And then when he
Speaker 3: works out that the person that he loves is going
Speaker 3: to marry his friend, isn't back off one inch to.
Speaker 1: The point when Lisa kind of comes back, so we
Speaker 1: come out of the sequence of the rose and all that,
Speaker 1: and then he looks down and she comes back. It's
Speaker 1: just like and the guy who gives her a hug
Speaker 1: and always gives him a ways up.
Speaker 3: And then you know, and that was an interesting choice.
Speaker 3: Why did they need why do they need the idea
Speaker 3: that the conversation that would have happened in the cab
Speaker 3: would have been I'm in love with Jerry Mulligan whatever.
Speaker 3: And while they're doing American in Paris dancing. They would
Speaker 3: have had a conversation and the cab would have turned
Speaker 3: around and would have brought her back. But there was
Speaker 3: obviously a real need for the friend to not just
Speaker 3: lose his fiance, lose the love of his life potentially,
Speaker 3: but also that he had to approve of her going
Speaker 3: to his friend. And I don't know, I don't know why.
Speaker 3: I don't know what. Gene Kelly's character doesn't deserve that, really.
Speaker 1: No, because he just stands on a balcony like he
Speaker 1: doesn't even go out and doesn't awkward castaway moment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I did say thanks to his mate.
Speaker 1: No, yeah, And he just doesn't feel earned. I think
Speaker 1: the best moments in movies you earn those moments. And
Speaker 1: because it's not set up well at the beginning, and
Speaker 1: it's a bit creepy, you don't buy that love at
Speaker 1: any point. You know, there's nothing your age difference. She's nineteen,
Speaker 1: he's thirty eight. Jin Kelly thirty eight. His mate Henri
Speaker 1: is two years younger. But they had the gray his
Speaker 1: haird and make him look older, so he's supposed to
Speaker 1: be a bit older. There's a little creepy detail about
Speaker 1: they explain the history like that he hid Lisa on
Speaker 1: behalf of a parents during the war, and that's a
Speaker 1: noble thing to do, but for five years, and so
Speaker 1: he's especially hit her as a fourteen year old and
Speaker 1: then falling in love with her being at least nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty plus years older. It's pretty creepy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you'd like you're opening up the trap door every day,
Speaker 3: putting some bread down in the air, and like you like, yeah,
Speaker 3: I'll keep you hidden for a few more years.
Speaker 1: Was done ever full context? There's been Russell brand in
Speaker 1: the news this week, so maybe you know, I don't
Speaker 1: know what we're projecting.
Speaker 3: They certainly weren't hoping we were not going to think
Speaker 3: about that and do the mats on that. But that
Speaker 3: is super creepy.
Speaker 1: There's a few fun facts. Leslie Karan wears some costumes
Speaker 1: that were warn by Liz Taylor the year before in
Speaker 1: The Father of the Bride, the original Father of the Bride.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they shared the wardrobe around and writer Alan Jay
Speaker 1: Lerner that you mentioned before, wrote this in four months,
Speaker 1: including finishing in a twelve hour stretch the night before
Speaker 1: his wedding. You know, sometimes when you hear film has
Speaker 1: been written quickly, you kind of go, yeah, I reckon,
Speaker 1: you could have taken a bit longer.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was. I mean from reading his memoirs, he
Speaker 3: was a big believer in the lock yourself in a
Speaker 3: hotel room and write the lyric all night. And so
Speaker 3: that's a lot of his story about like writing, you know,
Speaker 3: wouldn't it be lovely or whatever? You know, I put
Speaker 3: myself in the hotel and I wrote on And it's
Speaker 3: like he's of that era where they're just everybody's cool
Speaker 3: as shit, Like you know, there's so they're swarming around
Speaker 3: town and they're smart and they're error diet and they're
Speaker 3: funny and everybody's like Oscar Wild in New York. And
Speaker 3: Alan J. Lerner was very similar to that. But he
Speaker 3: obviously wrote with Frederick Lowe, who was the composer not
Speaker 3: on American Paris, but just in their career. They were
Speaker 3: a partnership Learner and low And there's a great book
Speaker 3: and there's nothing to do with anything, but it's a
Speaker 3: great anecdote and it's about Lorenz Heart, who was one
Speaker 3: half of Rogerson Hart, which was Richard Rogers and Lorenz Heart.
Speaker 3: Richard Rodgers left Lorenz Heart after writing many musicals together,
Speaker 3: and many incredible songs, but which bothered and bewildered. You know,
Speaker 3: there's like I wish I were in love again, falling
Speaker 3: in love with love, like just extraordinary. Part of the
Speaker 3: American songbook canon was Rogers and Hart and then Richard
Speaker 3: Rogers left to work with Oscar Hammerstein, and that was
Speaker 3: a devastating blow to Lorenz's Heart, who was definitely like
Speaker 3: an alcoholic and had some health problems, obviously a closeted
Speaker 3: gay man I think at that point, and dealing with
Speaker 3: a lot of sort of bitterness anyway, and it was
Speaker 3: quite a difficult personality. Richard Rodgers left to work with
Speaker 3: Oscar Hammerstein. The first thing they did with Oklahoma, which
Speaker 3: sort of rewrote the rules on musical theater. It was
Speaker 3: such a hit that it was impossible to kind of
Speaker 3: avoid it. And Alan J. Lerner talks about going over
Speaker 3: to Lorenz Heart's apartment and Lorens is deeply kind of
Speaker 3: sliding into the alcoholism, which I think killed him. And
Speaker 3: they're hanging out and talking and he was trying to
Speaker 3: avoid anything to do with Oklahoma, and Lorenz is smoking
Speaker 3: a cigar and there's a blackout in New York and
Speaker 3: they don't really want to do. And someone turns, well,
Speaker 3: let's turn the wireless on, and of course they turn
Speaker 3: on the first thing that's playing in Oklahoma, and so
Speaker 3: someone quickly turns the channel on another channel it's also
Speaker 3: playing Oklahoma. And in the dark all they could see
Speaker 3: was this red glow of this cigar of Therenz heart
Speaker 3: is going brighter and brighter and brighter. Him just seething,
Speaker 3: and I was like such a sad and he died
Speaker 3: several months later, which is quite a sad story. But
Speaker 3: they were part of that incredible era of musical theater making.
Speaker 3: It's extraordinary works of musicals for the stage. Incredible time.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. And one final thing is that there's a film
Speaker 1: dance scene called I've Got a Crush on You, which
Speaker 1: Geen Kelly performed in his pajamas, but it was cut
Speaker 1: due to censorship concerns, And I thought, has he got
Speaker 1: the morning charb? I think.
Speaker 3: It's all down to underwear, isn't it.
Speaker 1: You gotta wear. If you gotta wear, you're under this.
Speaker 1: If you're going outside with pajamas on, you gotta get
Speaker 1: some under.
Speaker 3: I mean he's a dancer. Surely you would have had
Speaker 3: a dance support. But there is something about the things moving.
Speaker 1: But I've read that. The only thing I could think
Speaker 1: of why it was sensited. Oh you're flopping around.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's surely that's what it is. I'm good. A
Speaker 3: good call.
Speaker 1: Call, a very good call. Sometimes the senses get it right. Yeah, mate,
Speaker 1: this podcast comes with homework. I really appreciate you're extraordinarily busy.
Speaker 1: It's great to see you going Beetlejuice. Congratulations. What has
Speaker 1: that ride? Bean?
Speaker 8: Like?
Speaker 3: It's been amazing because it was like, you know, that's
Speaker 3: the that's the show that I you know, in terms
Speaker 3: of I always wanted to write for Broadway and I
Speaker 3: was going to New York and I was just sort
Speaker 3: of taking any meeting I could and trying to keep
Speaker 3: my ear to the ground and trying to work out
Speaker 3: how to There's no like, you don't put your name
Speaker 3: on a list or anything. It's just how do you
Speaker 3: get on the great big writer list in the sky,
Speaker 3: you know, And to be honest, I thought, I don't
Speaker 3: know if it's going to happen. And all the examples
Speaker 3: I had of my work were very Australian.
Speaker 1: One the musical one.
Speaker 3: The musical and the other one. I had an album
Speaker 3: of a song cycle I wrote called Songs from the Middle,
Speaker 3: which is about growing up in mentone. And I'm like,
Speaker 3: that was a niche is a niche, like, hey, can
Speaker 3: you relate to this? But I found an agent who did,
Speaker 3: who like who managed to see past the kind of
Speaker 3: austrainers of it and liked my writing. And I knew
Speaker 3: that Beadle Juice was going around without it that they
Speaker 3: were out to pitch for composer lyricists and they were
Speaker 3: out to pitch to really fancy people. And I asked
Speaker 3: if I could pitch on it and they said no,
Speaker 3: They're like, who's it? No, this is Australian, weird Australian
Speaker 3: guy with a cricket musical. No, And I said what
Speaker 3: if I just a my ageent was like, yeah, they
Speaker 3: don't want to spend any more money, and I had
Speaker 3: no idea there was money involved in the pitch process,
Speaker 3: but they do. They pay compose the lyricists to submit
Speaker 3: a demo, and I think it's just a way of
Speaker 3: making it worth people's time, which is lovely. But I
Speaker 3: was like, what if I just wrote songs for two
Speaker 3: songs for free and they like them? They like them.
Speaker 3: They don't, they don't. And my agent was like, oh
Speaker 3: my god, you do that. It's like, dude, you don't
Speaker 3: know what I would do at this point just to
Speaker 3: get my music in front of somebody. So I got
Speaker 3: sent the script and I wrote the songs, and I
Speaker 3: really went, you know, took a big creative swing on
Speaker 3: the songs, and thankfully they really liked them, and we
Speaker 3: all got along, Me and their book writers got along,
Speaker 3: and so it was clear that we're going to be
Speaker 3: able to collaborate together. And then what followed was five
Speaker 3: years of development, extraordinary, all workshops in New York, flying
Speaker 3: across the New York to do workshops, and sort of
Speaker 3: three to four years of doing that, and then I'd
Speaker 3: moved my whole family across to put it up and
Speaker 3: we did it in Washington, d C. Beatle just opened
Speaker 3: in Washington, d C. And the end of twenty eighteen
Speaker 3: and did the show was great, but it's kind of frenetic,
Speaker 3: and it got reviewed pretty harshly out there, and so
Speaker 3: by the time we brought it into Broadway, no one
Speaker 3: really thought it was going to be any good. But
Speaker 3: we'd rewritten a lot of it and it was vastly
Speaker 3: improved when we opened on Broadway, and in the beginning
Speaker 3: it looked like no one was going to come, and
Speaker 3: then we miraculously got nominated for a Bunch of Tony,
Speaker 3: which gave us the opportunity to perform at the Tony Awards,
Speaker 3: and the producers allowed me to rewrite the opening number
Speaker 3: from scratch, write a whole new lyric about Beatle Juice
Speaker 3: crashing the Tony Awards, and you know, making specific references
Speaker 3: to people we knew would be in the audience, people
Speaker 3: like Adam Driver and stuff like that. I got to
Speaker 3: write like an Adam Driver joke into the and I
Speaker 3: was like, this is great. I'm gonna I was so
Speaker 3: pissed off with Kylo Wren killing Harrison Ford. You know,
Speaker 3: it's just like I got to you know, I think
Speaker 3: there's a I wrote a lyric about, like, you know,
Speaker 3: Adam Driver, you killed Han Solo not cool bro, and
Speaker 3: having Beetle Juice like admonish Adam Driver, and the audience
Speaker 3: was really fun and it worked and that and the
Speaker 3: cast album took off, and sudden the audiences started coming
Speaker 3: and uh, you know, we were selling out and breaking
Speaker 3: box office records, and we went from being nothing to
Speaker 3: be a hit, and then the pandemic shut it down,
Speaker 3: and then we lost our theater, got kicked out of
Speaker 3: our theater. That's another story. And then we got a
Speaker 3: new theater, the Marquee. We opened at the Marquee, we
Speaker 3: did okay, but you know, New York was still and
Speaker 3: is still recovering. Things are not like what they were,
Speaker 3: and so it's an expensive show. So it shut down.
Speaker 3: But then now there's a North American tour that's going
Speaker 3: around American cities and it's just an absolute smash. So
Speaker 3: it's bizarre, Like I saw the show from when people
Speaker 3: went really into it and to when it became like
Speaker 3: a cult thing, and nothing about the show changed.
Speaker 8: So I.
Speaker 3: Have you know, in writing a comedy or writing any musical,
Speaker 3: you're very interested in the audience and curating an experience
Speaker 3: for the audience, and I think you get mostly, in
Speaker 3: quite a creepy way, standing at the back of the
Speaker 3: house watching the audience more than you're watching the show,
Speaker 3: Like when are they in, when are they out? What
Speaker 3: are they responding to? What's funny? Where are the laughs?
Speaker 3: How do we not trample on the last by creating
Speaker 3: more more space than I missed the next thing, all
Speaker 3: that stuff. It's just sort of like making a ride
Speaker 3: for grown ups, which is pretty weird, but we did it,
Speaker 3: and now the show is doing really well and where
Speaker 3: it's had a South Korean production, I went in sort
Speaker 3: of Japanese production in Tokyo. It was I didn't understand
Speaker 3: a word of it and there was just all this
Speaker 3: weird extra shit in there that I was like, I
Speaker 3: don't know what's happening. It's just a joy. It's opening
Speaker 3: in Brazil in Rio in October, coming to Australia in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty five. They want to do it in London.
Speaker 1: When a ticket's on sale, when when can people stop?
Speaker 3: I don't think tickets are on sale ages. Actually, I
Speaker 3: feel like tickets don't go on sou until maybe middle
Speaker 3: of next year or something. There's like a waiting list.
Speaker 3: I think that just keeps people aware of stuff. But
Speaker 3: they announced things early because I don't know why they
Speaker 3: announced things early. A lot of it is about just
Speaker 3: kind of drumming up awareness, but it's also things are
Speaker 3: planned so far in advance, especially with theater availability. So
Speaker 3: it's great that it's happening in opening in Australia and
Speaker 3: it's opening in Melbourne. I'm really excited to see what
Speaker 3: Australian audiences think of it. And in the meantime, it's
Speaker 3: been great to have that be successful enough that i
Speaker 3: can just get back to writing the next thing. And
Speaker 3: I'm loving I'm just loving writing musicals and writing two
Speaker 3: musicals for three musicals on the go to that are
Speaker 3: with Americans and going to be be born and developed
Speaker 3: in the United States. And then I'm writing an Australian
Speaker 3: musical for my old drama school, the West Australian Academy
Speaker 3: Performing Arts over in Perth. I'm being commissioned to write
Speaker 3: a musical and so I'm writing a musical set in
Speaker 3: the Tivoli circuit in the mid nineteen fifties, which is
Speaker 3: an homage religious a love letter to the extraordinary theatrical tradition.
Speaker 3: Australia has that Vaudeville tradition with all of the good
Speaker 3: and the bad and the weird that goes at the
Speaker 3: time of great variety and change. And similarly, the golden
Speaker 3: eror of Australias Tivoli was in the fifties after the
Speaker 3: Second World War, and you know, similar you know, we
Speaker 3: had a whole generation of men who were either killed
Speaker 3: in war or returned with extreme post traumatic stress, extreme
Speaker 3: mental health problems, and then just took them out on
Speaker 3: their families. And so it was multiple generations after that
Speaker 3: of of families that had to deal with violence and
Speaker 3: alcoholism and sometimes physical disability. You know, you'd see men
Speaker 3: missing limbs out on the streets, and it was a
Speaker 3: different time to now, a lot of trauma in the world.
Speaker 3: And I think that that that that was in the theater,
Speaker 3: and I think that you know that it reflects what
Speaker 3: you see on stage almost like the more sunny and
Speaker 3: optimistic the art form is, or the expression of the
Speaker 3: art for me is it's it's it's almost like it's
Speaker 3: not what is happening, it's what people need. It's a
Speaker 3: world that people need to enter into.
Speaker 1: And they say that, they say, out of out of
Speaker 1: George Bush, we got West Wing and out of Brack Obama,
Speaker 1: We've got House of Cards. You know, it is that
Speaker 1: it is whatever, you know, it's just that, Yeah, we
Speaker 1: needed optimism out of Bush and we need you know,
Speaker 1: Obama was giving us all the optimism in the world,
Speaker 1: so we needed we didn't need that on our screens.
Speaker 1: We needed you know, we wanted to be dark.
Speaker 3: And it's so extraordinary because you know, an idea that
Speaker 3: we're talking about in a success of Beetle Juice, And
Speaker 3: it's very hard to predict because I think you can
Speaker 3: have a great piece, but if it's not at the
Speaker 3: right time, it won't succeed. If people aren't ready to
Speaker 3: hear that idea, it's not if it's a time of
Speaker 3: great optimism, then people don't want a snarky, difficult, disturbing
Speaker 3: piece that's about machiavellian machinations and politics. But in a
Speaker 3: time of political upheaval. But people do, you know, So
Speaker 3: it's a really like Hamilton and Musical Landed, you know,
Speaker 3: is absolutely born of the Obama here. You know that
Speaker 3: the migrant story. You know that anybody can write there,
Speaker 3: you know, can can write their story and go from
Speaker 3: being the poorest or the poor to being an influential
Speaker 3: player in creating the Great American story. And that the
Speaker 3: Great American story is not just one person or it's
Speaker 3: not really about wealth necessarily. It's about all of these
Speaker 3: people coming together and combining their stories. And it's almost
Speaker 3: like an improbable expect ferment that the United States is
Speaker 3: and it fed into that narrative and people loved it.
Speaker 3: And then by the time it was sort of filmed
Speaker 3: and made it onto Disney Plus and everyone could watch
Speaker 3: the stage show on it was really interesting the critical
Speaker 3: lens that had changed. You know, Trump was the president.
Speaker 3: Whatever kind of experiment in optimism was being carried out
Speaker 3: under Obama seemed to run out of steam, and there
Speaker 3: was a much more critical sense of what linn Manuel
Speaker 3: Miranda had done with that show, the way he treated slavery,
Speaker 3: for example, And you know, it was interesting to see
Speaker 3: Lin's journey from going from being like, you know, absolute
Speaker 3: so creating this kind of progressive masterpiece really and creating
Speaker 3: work for non cast of like completely except for one actor,
Speaker 3: maybe a one or two actors in a non Caucasian
Speaker 3: cast that coming under scrutiny and being challenged down the line.
Speaker 3: I was like, wow, you know, you cannot fully and
Speaker 3: you cannot control the circumstances in which the world in
Speaker 3: which we're judging an American in Paris with it through
Speaker 3: a twenty twenty three lens. And that's going to happen
Speaker 3: to all art and as it should. And so you know,
Speaker 3: when people were going back to Lynn and going why
Speaker 3: didn't you make it this? And why didn't you make
Speaker 3: it that? And why didn't you talk about slavery? And
Speaker 3: it's like and he was very I thought, patient and gracious,
Speaker 3: but I think the message of him was bits just
Speaker 3: going right your own musical, you know what I mean, Like,
Speaker 3: I didn't set out to save the world. You know,
Speaker 3: I wrote something that was in my head. I related
Speaker 3: to that story, and I felt like it was a
Speaker 3: hip hop story. It felt related to his experience of
Speaker 3: hip hop and his own personal experience of being a
Speaker 3: super smart writer who could take one art form and
Speaker 3: use it in another in a way that hadn't been done,
Speaker 3: and to create to take a ginormous book like Churno's
Speaker 3: book on Hamilton and be able to find an expression
Speaker 3: through hip hop, which just in terms of its strike
Speaker 3: rate and getting a lot of narrative the story really quickly.
Speaker 3: Hip hop does that, you can just boom heaps of words.
Speaker 3: And he found an affinity with a with Alexander Hamilton,
Speaker 3: who kind of wrote his way out of poverty and
Speaker 3: destitution and Caribbean Island and into being a major player
Speaker 3: in the creation of America's constitution. And it's an extraordinary
Speaker 3: story and really well executed. But even that is not
Speaker 3: free from times changing, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And when you sit down to create something, you know,
Speaker 1: people forget that you are generally an artist in your
Speaker 1: room by yourself on a piano or with a blank
Speaker 1: of paper or a computer, and there's nothing on the paper,
Speaker 1: and you create something and you can you have it
Speaker 1: in your head what you're trying to achieve, and you
Speaker 1: have no idea if anyone's going to see it. And
Speaker 1: then yes, I imagine and I've I've never had anything
Speaker 1: that's going like massive, massive, but imagine when it does,
Speaker 1: coming up like a global hit where everyone needs to
Speaker 1: have an opinion on it. There are so many projections
Speaker 1: that get put on that which are never part of
Speaker 1: the original intention of the piece.
Speaker 3: Totally. I also that thing about you talk the blank page.
Speaker 3: It's a very different thing. It's almost like once you
Speaker 3: write something down, you can have an empty room and
Speaker 3: once you you go, you know what this room needs.
Speaker 3: It needs a chair. I'm going to put it. I'm
Speaker 3: going to invent a chair. I'm gonna put a chair
Speaker 3: in it. And then there's a billion people that will
Speaker 3: come in the door and go, why don't you put
Speaker 3: the chair over there. No, I think the chair will
Speaker 3: really work if it's over here and it's liked. But
Speaker 3: no one was there, you know, like no one was
Speaker 3: there when you were like, should there be a chair?
Speaker 3: You know what I mean? And that happens a lot
Speaker 3: in the theater. Doesn't mean that people don't know what
Speaker 3: they're talking about, but I think there is when I
Speaker 3: heard I've known Lynn mal Miranda like a long time,
Speaker 3: because we did we started out in comedy together, like
Speaker 3: his group Freestyle Love Supreme were doing their thing when
Speaker 3: I was sort of first doing my kind of comedy
Speaker 3: cabaret thing. So I met them in I hung out
Speaker 3: with them a lot in Edinburgh in two thousand and
Speaker 3: five and then in Melbourne Comedy Festival and they came
Speaker 3: out maybe two thousand and six, and I remember talking
Speaker 3: to Lynn and going, what are you going to do
Speaker 3: when you go back home? And he was like, I'm
Speaker 3: writing a musical and I was like, no way, I'm
Speaker 3: britting to musicals as well. What's the musical you're writing?
Speaker 3: Is writing a musical called In the Heights, which went
Speaker 3: on to be a smash and win him Tonian Wood
Speaker 3: and is about his migrant experience on the in New
Speaker 3: York City and Washington Heights. And then I remember talking
Speaker 3: to him when he was writing Hamilton, and I was like,
Speaker 3: this is either the genius idea or is the worst
Speaker 3: idea you've ever heard. It was such a scary idea.
Speaker 3: And now that it's like exists, you know, a musical
Speaker 3: hip hop musical about the founding fathers of the American
Speaker 3: Constitution where there's no Caucasian actors playing any of the roles,
Speaker 3: like that seems like a Fatti komplete. But at the time,
Speaker 3: I was like, this is You've got to pull this off.
Speaker 3: This is going to be terrible. This could be so bad.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 1: We had John I think he the first time he
Speaker 1: sang any of it was at the Correspondence, right, and
Speaker 1: John Stewart on The Daily Show I think was hosting,
Speaker 1: or at least was when he was hosting The Daily
Speaker 1: Show next week kind of took the piss out of it,
Speaker 1: kind of going, what is this guy doing this? You know,
Speaker 1: Stuart thankfully is I think since apologized and said, you know,
Speaker 1: I was just gonna let you wrong, and I'm been embarrassed,
Speaker 1: and I you know, maybe had to go with an
Speaker 1: artist who not just because it became his success, but
Speaker 1: it's not really his thing that he generally does, where
Speaker 1: you have a go on an artist for creative expression.
Speaker 1: But yeah, like you forget, you forget how bigger hit
Speaker 1: Star Wars was and you know Hamilton like because they
Speaker 1: become part of the furniture.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. But then when you read anything about
Speaker 3: like what was the guy that played overyone can be
Speaker 3: you know his what is this ship? These terrible lines
Speaker 3: and you're like, yeah, he's right, He's totally right. On
Speaker 3: the inside. He would have been like this is a
Speaker 3: total dog. I mean it's Star Wars. This is just
Speaker 3: terrible and you just don't you do not know. And
Speaker 3: that's what I love about writing and creating stuff. I mean,
Speaker 3: even making this Australian musical, I'm you know, I'm not
Speaker 3: collaborating in the way I do in America, where I'm
Speaker 3: just writing the music and lyrics. In there there's either
Speaker 3: one or two book writers. You know, this is me
Speaker 3: writing the book and the music and the lyrics. And
Speaker 3: it's a weird idea. It's an original idea and it's
Speaker 3: really scary. So I find myself having to go around
Speaker 3: and try and you know, I love reading memoirs and
Speaker 3: biographies of other artists, especially you know, like composers and lyricists.
Speaker 3: And I find myself most happy when you know you've
Speaker 3: rewound the clock and they're creating something that's gone on
Speaker 3: to be successful or groundbreaking, but just the absolute fear
Speaker 3: and just this sense of like what are we doing,
Speaker 3: you know, like we're making There's a great book that
Speaker 3: James Lapine wrote called Finishing the Hat, which is about
Speaker 3: interviews with Sondhime and other people about the creation of
Speaker 3: Sunday in the Park with George. And it's an extraordinary
Speaker 3: insight into a collaborative process that made quite an extraordinary
Speaker 3: work of art in Sunday in the Park with George.
Speaker 3: It's musical written by James Lapine in the book Who
Speaker 3: and music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim about the French
Speaker 3: Impressionistic painter George Sarah, in particular the one paint that
Speaker 3: famous painting I think this is Sunday Afternoon Lagrangeet, which
Speaker 3: is made up of a pointism, you know, all those
Speaker 3: dots and mixing colors with the eye rather than on
Speaker 3: the canvas and way I put them together. It's just
Speaker 3: but about it's about seeing how do we see the
Speaker 3: world and what is creation about? And how much do
Speaker 3: you how much should an artist shut the world out
Speaker 3: or shut relationships out and make sacrifices for their art
Speaker 3: and what has gained and what has lost? And YadA YadA.
Speaker 3: It's a it's a piece of art about art, about
Speaker 3: making art, which I find really fascinating. But even that,
Speaker 3: the insight into that is so extraordinary, and how it's
Speaker 3: kind of collaboratively made and how you know, unfinished, there
Speaker 3: are moments and how people are like this is this
Speaker 3: a terrible idea? Or this is a great idea? Or
Speaker 3: and it doesn't nobody's really made a piece it's quite
Speaker 3: like it, so there's nothing to compare it to. And
Speaker 3: that's really exciting. The doubt having a having an idea
Speaker 3: and being bold enough to see it through. I have
Speaker 3: to read a lot about had to remind myself that
Speaker 3: that the fear that I feel when I'm creating, especially
Speaker 3: this Tivoli piece, I'm like, is even going to buy
Speaker 3: this idea?
Speaker 1: Or this world?
Speaker 3: Or you know, who? Do I know enough about this?
Speaker 3: All those little doubts that sort of plagued me continuously.
Speaker 3: You know that that that the great masters that I
Speaker 3: have studied and read about and formed all over all
Speaker 3: felt this and that's really important to connect to that
Speaker 3: feeling of I don't really know what it is.
Speaker 1: I'm well, we just recently did making eight and a
Speaker 1: half if Lenny's eight and a half with Sean Michayla
Speaker 1: watching for the first time, and that's the whole films
Speaker 1: about that, the you know, the the great master not
Speaker 1: fucking knowing what you know, having this director's block, not knowing,
Speaker 1: and people wanting answers and expecting him to have all
Speaker 1: the answers and he doesn't have the answer. He's stalling.
Speaker 1: You know. It's it's incredible, mate. I cannot wait to
Speaker 1: see your Beetlejuice in twenty twenty five. But also, you know,
Speaker 1: if i'mucky platively apply I do hear though there's none
Speaker 1: in your age difference between the leader, you might you
Speaker 1: might just want to fix that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, all of our students, the others of our
Speaker 3: students is twenty years old. And that's been really actually,
Speaker 3: it's been really interesting because I have not worked with
Speaker 3: young people like that. I mean, I've done like the
Speaker 3: odd kind of masterclass or unit in songwriting where I
Speaker 3: kind of have gone to a university for a couple
Speaker 3: of days or a week or whatever. This is a
Speaker 3: this is a three year relationship with these students, and
Speaker 3: you very quickly get great affection for them because they're
Speaker 3: they're receptacles for so much. They've obviously done a lot
Speaker 3: of work to get to where they are, but they've
Speaker 3: got all of this talent and all these skills, but
Speaker 3: it's just wild. It's all just everything smashing it all
Speaker 3: over the place, and they make crazy choices and they
Speaker 3: and or they've got like they've got little blocks, or
Speaker 3: there's things they can see and things that they can't see,
Speaker 3: and they're all still trying to put it together. And
Speaker 3: that's what drama school does. There's really just kind of
Speaker 3: like you're working in your skills, but it's really sort
Speaker 3: of stripping everything away and then putting it back together.
Speaker 3: It's quite an extraordinarily vulnerable time in a student's life.
Speaker 3: And I am so excited to, you know, to work
Speaker 3: on a new musical with these they're kids, and I
Speaker 3: was in that position myself, and they're dealing with life.
Speaker 3: They're dealing with having to pay the bills and working
Speaker 3: cafes or whatever, they're doing to make ends meet on
Speaker 3: the other side of this country in Perth, and it's
Speaker 3: really it's it's really joyous to see what young people
Speaker 3: are like. I mean, they're lovely, they've got an energy,
Speaker 3: they're not tired.
Speaker 1: I see them all on Instagram.
Speaker 3: A lot of napping. I'm doing a lot of napping.
Speaker 1: I've been getting to my greens in the afternoon to
Speaker 1: get me some energy to get through the afternoon these days.
Speaker 1: But it has been a nactually joy won to catch
Speaker 1: up with you, but to to kind of follow from
Speaker 1: a far often on socials you living out a dream.
Speaker 1: It is really inspiring one way, but even more than that,
Speaker 1: just really fulfilling to see me to see you go
Speaker 1: through it and meet your heroes and work with your
Speaker 1: heroes and see achieve a dream at a really fucking
Speaker 1: high level. And I know you're just getting started in this.
Speaker 1: It's going to be more and more. It makes it's joyous.
Speaker 1: It's joyous to watch.
Speaker 3: Oh thanks, well, I mean you and know what it's
Speaker 3: like doing comedy as long as you have when you start,
Speaker 3: you have a very Your relationship with your art form
Speaker 3: is partly about loving comedy, but there's also a lot
Speaker 3: of other stuff that goes into the world as well.
Speaker 3: It's about how to build a career and how to
Speaker 3: stay afloat long enough. And then if you're really lucky
Speaker 3: enough to hang around in your art form and make
Speaker 3: a living out of it, you start to get like
Speaker 3: much better at it. And then art is not always
Speaker 3: actually it's not even really about the end product. It's
Speaker 3: about the relationship you have with the art itself and
Speaker 3: how like you do things that when do you go
Speaker 3: and write? And where do you go and write? And
Speaker 3: how do you balance like kids and writing, and you know,
Speaker 3: how do you how do you shut your brain off
Speaker 3: and be a dad or you know, take care of
Speaker 3: the things he needs to take care of the in
Speaker 3: the real world. And you know, I find that really interesting,
Speaker 3: especially the fatherhood art thing, because there are not many
Speaker 3: great examples of like smashing artists who are good dads.
Speaker 3: You know, everyone's like kind of Miles Davis, like, we're
Speaker 3: like he doesn't mention his kids until they're like they're
Speaker 3: like twenty eight, and he's like, who the hell are you?
Speaker 3: You know what I mean? Like I want to be
Speaker 3: and even in my agent's in New York, my agent's
Speaker 3: office he has this frame thing and he's framed the
Speaker 3: photograph of a war with graffiti on it and it says,
Speaker 3: the greatest enemy of art is the pram in the hallway.
Speaker 3: And I picked it up and I was like, what
Speaker 3: the fuck is this? And he's like, well, it's true, right,
Speaker 3: And I was like, I actually challenged that. I think
Speaker 3: that that my relationship with my art in terms of
Speaker 3: just pure efficiency, just getting more shit done. Once I
Speaker 3: had kids and my time was compressed, everything changed. I
Speaker 3: just I wonder whether like a lot of like writing
Speaker 3: a joke or writing a lyric or writing a scene
Speaker 3: is you know. I think Bernstein said that it's like
Speaker 3: you need a plan and not enough time, and I
Speaker 3: think that's kind of what it is you consider around
Speaker 3: going Should I go left? Should I go right? Should
Speaker 3: he say this? Should he say that? Whereas when you're
Speaker 3: under time pressure, you make decisions really quickly, And I
Speaker 3: think that's that's the most important thing with art is
Speaker 3: just make a decision and move on to the next
Speaker 3: thing and just keep going, and you get quite fit,
Speaker 3: you know, quite muscular at making those decisions. And so
Speaker 3: I really love writing now and I enjoy it now
Speaker 3: more because I'm less afraid of it, and I know
Speaker 3: I can sit down and I know how to do it,
Speaker 3: and I still make things that suck and the world
Speaker 3: never hears that or that was a waste of a
Speaker 3: week trying to write that song. But I still have
Speaker 3: these moments of discovery and I do them all on
Speaker 3: my own. So it's a very weird solo thing where
Speaker 3: you're like in a room, going, yes, it's an amazing idea,
Speaker 3: and there's no one there to share it with. So
Speaker 3: I've now got to a point where I really love that.
Speaker 3: And so I'm at peace with the loneliness and the
Speaker 3: weirdness and the fear of it all, and I just
Speaker 3: feel really grateful that I get to do it at all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I completely compartmentalizing time. I've gotten a lot better
Speaker 1: since I've had kids. And and you also, you're working
Speaker 1: for something. It's something you're not just working for yourself.
Speaker 1: You kind of got this. You know, you've got a
Speaker 1: family who you want to You don't want to give
Speaker 1: up your dream of being in the arts and pursuing
Speaker 1: comedy or musical thing, whatever it is. So but you
Speaker 1: know you need to take it seriously. Whenever I go
Speaker 1: to a gig. I never not do new material. Like
Speaker 1: it's like I'm not saying there's not other material, but
Speaker 1: there's never not a new thing. I don't try because
Speaker 1: my attitude has always been if I'm leaving the home
Speaker 1: and my life with my kids at home, I'm not
Speaker 1: going out just to be a kind of a rockstark
Speaker 1: comedian and and be, you know, like have the best
Speaker 1: time for just personally. I want me audays to have
Speaker 1: a great time, obviously, but I need to advance what
Speaker 1: I'm doing a little bit. Yes, you know, so that's
Speaker 1: if that's coming up with a new bit, even if
Speaker 1: it's a premise, so I can come home and go, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's the next bit I'm going to work on. That's
Speaker 1: what I do, you know. And yeah, another quote I
Speaker 1: love is somebody who said, I forgot who said it that.
Speaker 1: Somebody said, you know, be wrong quick, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's right. So you just kind of you're working harder,
Speaker 1: you working quicker, you're working smarter.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's certainly a lot of fun.
Speaker 3: And you know, I I love movies and you obviously
Speaker 3: love movies too, But I am not like a film aficionado.
Speaker 3: I can't like tell you who I'm not great with
Speaker 3: directors or any of that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: Remired to like I have some some recalling other things
Speaker 1: I have I blank and I And the reason I
Speaker 1: said this podcast because people keep on calling me like
Speaker 1: a cinephile and there's so many gaps in my film
Speaker 1: and this is why these podcasts exists.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's quite extraordinary. When you set me to listen,
Speaker 3: I'd see all the titles and I'm like, it's weird.
Speaker 3: I had almost like a not just like a lack
Speaker 3: of recognition on some of the titles, but a real
Speaker 3: resistance to it. I'm like, oh, I don't I don't
Speaker 3: want to watch that one. Because you can get into
Speaker 3: a thing. When you get older, you start to just
Speaker 3: churn through things that are familiar and you go back
Speaker 3: to things that you've enjoyed before. But I know when
Speaker 3: a movie comes, I love the you know, I love
Speaker 3: TV series, but I do sometimes have that feeling of like, oh,
Speaker 3: I'm going to get into that river. I'm going to
Speaker 3: be floating down that river forever and it's never going
Speaker 3: to be anything waiting at the end. It's just like
Speaker 3: it's just a downstream forever kind of experience, and I'm like,
Speaker 3: I want to. I like the structure of a movie,
Speaker 3: how you know, you get into it and it's enough
Speaker 3: time to have lots of characters in a whole world built,
Speaker 3: and for there to be a real kind of a
Speaker 3: hero's journey, whatever that idea is. I like the format
Speaker 3: of it. So when a movie comes on, I can't
Speaker 3: turn off a movie. I don't fall asleep in movies.
Speaker 3: I'm like this, this movie's on, I'm watching it. I
Speaker 3: just love them, especially well, actually not especially any but
Speaker 3: I do love action. Sci fi films are fun to
Speaker 3: watch because they don't require that much thinking. But I
Speaker 3: do really love comedies, and I mean think about I
Speaker 3: just think we treat comedy movies all comedy in a
Speaker 3: very disrespectful way where we don't think that they're important.
Speaker 3: But it's so hard to make people laugh. And when
Speaker 3: you do, I mean you think about all your favorite films.
Speaker 3: Often you grab the films that you love the most.
Speaker 3: You just want to pull it into a big, warming brace.
Speaker 3: So the movies that make you laugh, if you think about,
Speaker 3: you know, for me as a kid, it was like
Speaker 3: the naked gun movies, you know, or Monty Python, and
Speaker 3: they're not just like wonderful, astonishing films that often have
Speaker 3: very deep things to say, but they teach you how
Speaker 3: to be funny. They teach you what funny is really.
Speaker 1: Oh, I mean for me, it's playing strains and automobiles.
Speaker 3: You know, an amazing and how sad that film is.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, just and it gets me every time.
Speaker 1: It gets me every time. John Canny's best performance.
Speaker 3: Well, I loved Uncle Buck was a big one in
Speaker 3: our family. And the other one that I really love
Speaker 3: is Don't Tell Mom the Babysit is Dead. That film
Speaker 3: that's the nineties film that sort of like Disappear. I
Speaker 3: don't really know about it. Christina Applegate, it's one of
Speaker 3: her best performances and it's extraordinary coming of age film.
Speaker 3: I love that film. You can't find it anywhere. It's
Speaker 3: not on stream milk. I've got a DVD of it.
Speaker 1: So that's anything that very occasionally like Somebody We have
Speaker 1: Axio Scott from Below Deck and was in the jungle
Speaker 1: with me with Don a celebrity earlier this year and
Speaker 1: she nominated. Well, I said to her, why don't we
Speaker 1: watch Dead Calm? Have you said Dead calm, she gets no.
Speaker 1: I've never seen Nicole Kid mcbilly's aye sound there amazing,
Speaker 1: she's a keywa can I find it? And he's not
Speaker 1: available on an ex streaming sept not even to rent
Speaker 1: it seems so.
Speaker 3: I think some movies fall into a weird rights basket
Speaker 3: where like there's there's a complication in them, and then
Speaker 3: they can't go back to them. Like we're trying to
Speaker 3: get to the rights to develop an old film into
Speaker 3: into a musical, and it's really hard. The rights process
Speaker 3: is really hard. I don't know what's taking like years
Speaker 3: of time to try and get the rights to this film,
Speaker 3: but it's just like who owns it? I just feel
Speaker 3: like there's just like a tiny or shrivel old man
Speaker 3: in an office somewhere that's.
Speaker 1: Like, now you can I'll get around to it one time.
Speaker 1: I can't.
Speaker 3: I can't be. It's better to work this hard.
Speaker 1: But it's been a delight. We can't wait to see.
Speaker 1: Like I said, Beetlejuice in all your projects, and mate,
Speaker 1: thanks for watching.
Speaker 3: It, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1: There we go the wonderful Eddie perfect. I was curious
Speaker 1: as to what he thought of this. Gene Kelly musical
Speaker 1: from nineteen fifty one six Oscars in nineteen fifty two,
Speaker 1: An American in Paris. I hope I didn't get too
Speaker 1: hard on it for some people. I know it's a
Speaker 1: beloved film. Whenever I don't like a film or don't
Speaker 1: relate to it does not take away whatever you think
Speaker 1: of it. It is a much blood film, so keep
Speaker 1: loving it if you love it, and if you haven't
Speaker 1: seen it, I still recommend seeing it particlarly. If you
Speaker 1: are a in a file and you want to tick
Speaker 1: off certain movies before you die, there's one of these
Speaker 1: worth watching. It's got very impressive things about it. Get
Speaker 1: onto our to speak pipe. It's good to hear some
Speaker 1: voices in today's show. We'll have some more next week.
Speaker 1: Follow the pages page at the link speak pipe and
Speaker 1: leave a message and tell us what you think. Did
Speaker 1: we get an American in Paris? Right? We had field
Speaker 1: of dreams last week. There's plenty of them. There's one
Speaker 1: that I wouldn't mind playing now actually, and this is
Speaker 1: from Becky.
Speaker 8: Hi Pete. I just wanted to leave a message and
Speaker 8: say how much I'm really loving Yasi and most recently
Speaker 8: your interview with pauln y'ao. I really appreciated each of
Speaker 8: her movie best and I'm intended on looking at those.
Speaker 8: I'm just wondering that I haven't seen in the list
Speaker 8: about whether or not you've considered looking at the Before
Speaker 8: trilogy with Ethan Hawk and Julie Delpy. Before Sunrise was
Speaker 8: a really formative movie for me, and I'm assuming a
Speaker 8: lot of other gen xs and the one that followed
Speaker 8: Before Sunset and then Before Midnight. Anyway, I just left
Speaker 8: that with you, and I hope someone gets around watching
Speaker 8: it because it's certainly one of my coming of age favorites.
Speaker 8: I just love the wandering through the streets of all
Speaker 8: these foreign cities that they do, and the almost endless
Speaker 8: conversation that you'd always imagined having with Ethan Hawk of
Speaker 8: here was your boyfriend? Anyway, Thanks Pete, bye.
Speaker 1: Thank you Becky forgetting on our speak pipe. Great to
Speaker 1: hear your voice, and I've got some news for you.
Speaker 1: First of all, thanks, I loved a great reaction to
Speaker 1: pose Moonstruck episode. She was so great to talk to.
Speaker 1: Also has some really great reaction to Greg Larsen with
Speaker 1: Jerry maguire and Sean Mchaelis Feleni doing it and a
Speaker 1: half was a huge reaction. So thanks to everyone. Either
Speaker 1: hear your thoughts and all the movies we cover, and
Speaker 1: I've got some good news for you because next week, Becky,
Speaker 1: my good friend Mark Watts will be joining me and
Speaker 1: he will be covering Before Sunrise Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy,
Speaker 1: the film by Richard linc Later. He doesn't know yet
Speaker 1: that the onus is on him to cover the trilogy.
Speaker 1: I'll break that to him next week. But that's next week.
Speaker 1: Thanks Becky. I hope that puts a smile on your face.
Speaker 1: Get on that to speak part. If you have any
Speaker 1: request for guests or movies, that's how you do it.
Speaker 1: Next week before Sunrise, Merrick Watts, and you ain't seen
Speaker 1: nothing yet until then. Take care. And so we leave
Speaker 1: old Pete save Mansul, and to our friends of the
Speaker 1: radio audience, we've been a pleasant good name.