Speaker 1: Hello, Peter, Hell, are you here?
Speaker 2: Welcome to you ain't seen nothing yet the movie podcast
Speaker 2: We're outch out to a movie lover about a classic
Speaker 2: or beloved movie they haven't quite got around to watching
Speaker 2: until now. Today's guest comic legend Sean mckayliff.
Speaker 3: Oh blow, I want to stay here with you, jobber?
Speaker 1: Why hate snake shucked? Hi hail could happening right?
Speaker 3: So, you ain't seen nothing new.
Speaker 2: There's not too much I really need to say about
Speaker 2: today's guests other than I'm absolutely stoked that he is
Speaker 2: visiting us. Sean has been a huge presence on the
Speaker 2: Australian comedy landscape for over two decades.
Speaker 4: He is one of the most revered of the comedians.
Speaker 2: When Sean hits the stage, whether it be at the
Speaker 2: Logis Where, believe it or not, people aren't always listening
Speaker 2: when you go when you hit that stage, but he's
Speaker 2: one of those few people. When he hits the stage,
Speaker 2: the industry just shuts the fuck up and they listen.
Speaker 2: They listen and they laugh. He is wildly inventive, whip smart.
Speaker 2: You'd know him from many many things. Is on talking
Speaker 2: about your generation. The first thing you would know him
Speaker 2: from Hi. If you've been a longtime comedy fan, is
Speaker 2: the michaela program, great sketches, surreal, weird. It was just brilliant.
Speaker 2: More recently they wrapped up after about I think ten seasons.
Speaker 2: They did mad as Hell. I mean the fact that
Speaker 2: he created the show called mad as Hell informs you
Speaker 2: that Sean is a movie fan. Sean mchaeless mad as
Speaker 2: Hell on the ABC just a brilliant week in, week out.
Speaker 1: If you listen to this.
Speaker 2: Overseas, think a kind of version of the Daily Show.
Speaker 2: But it certainly had its own, its own thing Seanan Interview.
Speaker 2: You know, characters as opposed to necessarily real people. It
Speaker 2: was a parody show, a parody news show, and it
Speaker 2: was just brilliant. Yeah, absurd, but also very real. There
Speaker 2: are so many other things I could mention that Sean
Speaker 2: has done, but I'm just going to say he's brilliant.
Speaker 1: We all love Sean.
Speaker 2: He's just a very kind man, a very supportive of
Speaker 2: other comedians, has always been very supportive of me. I've
Speaker 2: really enjoyed working with him. We did an episode of
Speaker 2: It's a Date Together. I wrote it, but Sean certainly
Speaker 2: through a lot of ideas in and came up with basically,
Speaker 2: his character wrote some of his dialogue. It was with
Speaker 2: Roe McManus and Adriana Pickering and it was a lot
Speaker 2: of fun. If you can catch that episode.
Speaker 1: It was great.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I love Sean. You guys love Sean. I'm
Speaker 2: bloody stoke to be hanging with him today.
Speaker 5: Hello, everybody, I am Sean Mcaloff and my three favorite
Speaker 5: films are in order. It's a wonderful life with James Stewart.
Speaker 1: You see, George, you really had a wonderful life. Don't
Speaker 1: you see what a mistake it would be to throw
Speaker 1: it away? Light Runner, The.
Speaker 6: Light that burns twice is break burns half as long,
Speaker 6: and you have burned so very very brightly?
Speaker 1: Why and pee wee speak adventure.
Speaker 4: Do you have any dream?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm all alone.
Speaker 3: I'm rolling a big donut in the snake wearing a best.
Speaker 1: No, not that kind of dream.
Speaker 5: And up until yesterday I had never seen Federico Fellini's
Speaker 5: Eight and a Half.
Speaker 2: Yes, Italian maestro Federico Fellini is in full flight in
Speaker 2: his nineteen sixty three surrealist comedy drama Eight and a Half,
Speaker 2: a semi autobiographical dreamscape off Elini's life and career and
Speaker 2: the manners in which those two things become entwined. Guido
Speaker 2: is a successful avant garde director who has pushed back
Speaker 2: production on his latest science fiction film by two weeks
Speaker 2: because he's suffering from direct block. He has forgotten what
Speaker 2: the film is about. He has a launch pad, but
Speaker 2: nothing to launch. What follows cuts between reality and fantasy,
Speaker 2: the past, the present, and the in between. There is
Speaker 2: a particular focus on the women in Guido's life, past,
Speaker 2: present and fantasy, and how they have shaped him. Eight
Speaker 2: and a half is largely considered one of the great
Speaker 2: films A European citizen Kane if you will. Scored by
Speaker 2: the great Nino Conti, shot by Gianni the Fnanzo. This
Speaker 2: is filmmaking and the science axis, which is not to
Speaker 2: say it's necessarily for everyone. Winner off two Oscars for
Speaker 2: Best Foreign Language and Costume, it is indeed a classic.
Speaker 2: Sew Mkhaaleff. Are you suffering from director's block at the moment?
Speaker 5: Can I just can I just pick up on one
Speaker 5: mistake during the end version It'll be flawless, shan, but please, well,
Speaker 5: just just the score done by Nino Roti, right, I said,
Speaker 5: Nino ro You said, Gino Conti, I said, who is?
Speaker 2: I mean maybe when this goes away, I mean it
Speaker 2: will I will have I will have, said Nino Rotty.
Speaker 5: It's very interesting, Nino Rotten. So the soundtrack to eight
Speaker 5: and a half very similar to the soundtrack that Danny
Speaker 5: Danny Elfman did for PE's Big Adventure. It's absolutely that
Speaker 5: carnival less that that's all the way through. In fact,
Speaker 5: I'm sure there are the same cues. I'm sure that
Speaker 5: Elfman has been influenced by by Rotty or Conti, and
Speaker 5: it's it's very similar. So you know, there's there's a
Speaker 5: nice there's a nice natural segue there.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I want to get the pee Wee's
Speaker 2: Big Adventure because that was one that leapt out three
Speaker 2: favorite films. And I'm sure listeners are wondering if your
Speaker 2: tongue in your.
Speaker 4: Cheek over fairly removed.
Speaker 1: We'll get to it.
Speaker 4: OK, But why hadn't you seen eight and a half?
Speaker 2: Full disclosure, I had not seen it, and I've seen
Speaker 2: it twice now, twice this week in preparation. It's a
Speaker 2: film that's has loomed large. You know, you know that
Speaker 2: this is a film if you love film, I have
Speaker 2: seen Yes, what did you know about it? Why hadn't
Speaker 2: you seen it?
Speaker 5: Well? Yeah, I love film, And it surprised me that
Speaker 5: I hadn't seen it because I thought I had, right,
Speaker 5: but I hadn't. I'd actually watched about ten minutes of
Speaker 5: Lestrata by Federico Fellini, yes, nineteen fifty eight, I think,
Speaker 5: and I hated it so much that I just.
Speaker 1: Turned it off. I think it was probably on it.
Speaker 5: It would have been so long ago, it would have
Speaker 5: been pre DBD, so I must have seen it as
Speaker 5: a like a film festival on television sort of thing,
Speaker 5: and I just couldn't stand what's her name, Julietta Massini
Speaker 5: playing kind of a chaplain esque character, and just she
Speaker 5: was so annoying. And also Anthony Krim was in it,
Speaker 5: so and that was annoying too because I find him
Speaker 5: a very annoying actor. So there were two reasons for
Speaker 5: me toll oath it, none of which I was neither
Speaker 5: of which I had anything to do with Federico Fellini,
Speaker 5: although it may be that Julieta was probably Federico squeeze
Speaker 5: at the time, I think.
Speaker 1: Right, so he did have something to do with it.
Speaker 2: He cast it, yes, right, and I mean women obviously
Speaker 2: in eight and a half play obviously a big role.
Speaker 1: And he's got problems.
Speaker 2: He's got he's got some problems and he's working through issues,
Speaker 2: which is basically what that film is about, I guess
Speaker 2: in the end. But let's talk about your three favorite
Speaker 2: films will come back. There's so much to discuss about
Speaker 2: eight and a half as we try to get our
Speaker 2: heads around it.
Speaker 1: Let's start.
Speaker 4: Let's start with Peewee's Big Adventure.
Speaker 1: Great film.
Speaker 5: I think like it's comedy films go. It's one of
Speaker 5: the perfect comedy films because the comedy sequences and the
Speaker 5: comedy in it actually drive the plot forward.
Speaker 1: Often.
Speaker 5: The problem a lot of people have with comedy films
Speaker 5: been good films is that you get these set block
Speaker 5: comedy pieces where the where the plot just stops or
Speaker 5: the progress of the film, or the narrative stops for
Speaker 5: the person to be funny, or the character who is
Speaker 5: the main comic voice in the film works against the plot.
Speaker 1: A little bit. You know, they stop and they straight things.
Speaker 1: But this is not that.
Speaker 5: This is a very smartly written film, a bit like
Speaker 5: A Night at the Opera, The Marx Brothers film, and
Speaker 5: that each comedy sequence, if you leave out the music
Speaker 5: of Numbers, actually pushed the plot for it. Same with
Speaker 5: The Court Jester with Danny Kay. Again, each comedy sequence
Speaker 5: is actually part of the narrative. So that's one reason
Speaker 5: I really like it because I think it's a really
Speaker 5: well written and well constructed film. Also, it looks beautiful
Speaker 5: because it's Tim Burton's might even be his first feature film.
Speaker 5: It's a very very handsome film. Danny Hoffman's done't score,
Speaker 5: and as we mentioned, Gino Conti's music so proud, very similar,
Speaker 5: very similar sort of carnivalesque beat behind it, with probably
Speaker 5: a little bit of the Witch riding the bike in
Speaker 5: Wizard of Oz.
Speaker 1: That's kind of that.
Speaker 5: It's understandable because most of the film is pe we
Speaker 5: try to reclaim his bike. You would have thought the
Speaker 5: bicycle Thief by by Deseko would be the inspiration, but no,
Speaker 5: it's not. So yeah, so there's a lot of and
Speaker 5: also I just find it very funny though. The comedy
Speaker 5: sequents are hilarious, and Peewee's a very funny comic character.
Speaker 2: And you've got so full disclosure, I haven't seen the movie.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, and and I have I will admit I
Speaker 2: very rarely have discussed peewee. He very rarely comes up, like,
Speaker 2: you know, I feel like I'm sure I'm not alone
Speaker 2: that I have put peewee into a corner. Yes, that
Speaker 2: he maybe does not deserve to be like I just
Speaker 2: kind of gone, I don't think it's for me.
Speaker 5: Well he didn't really, he never really How old are
Speaker 5: you forty eight? Okay, forty eight, Well you're considerably younger
Speaker 5: than I am. And I came across him in the
Speaker 5: eighties as a sort of video what are we going
Speaker 5: to watch tonight?
Speaker 1: Thing?
Speaker 5: You're down at the video shop and there's this thing
Speaker 5: in the corner. He was speaking of Vega, which I
Speaker 5: think was probably come out about a year after the
Speaker 5: film was made on video. So I had never heard
Speaker 5: of him. No idea who Tim Burton was. I don't
Speaker 5: think he was anything at that point, No idea. Pee
Speaker 5: with him was just look like a funny cover.
Speaker 1: That's one of those purchases you do for your children.
Speaker 5: And so yeah, absolutely, It's like when Steve Martin's The
Speaker 5: Jerk came out in Australia.
Speaker 1: We'd never heard of him.
Speaker 5: So I took it home, and my wife and I
Speaker 5: watched it and pissed ourselves lasting, and I took it
Speaker 5: to work and gave it around the law office I
Speaker 5: was working, just loaned it around. Everyone watched it and
Speaker 5: then and then everyone sort of caught up after that.
Speaker 5: So I like to thinking I was the one who
Speaker 5: introduced it virally to Australia.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, because I always saw him as like like
Speaker 2: big in America, you know, didn't really cut through here.
Speaker 2: You know the name, yes, the idea of the characters.
Speaker 2: Is he a simpleton? Or well, what's his vibe?
Speaker 5: I guess all comic characters who are a certain extent
Speaker 5: are degrees of simpletons. He's a perpetual child. I suppose
Speaker 5: he kind of lives in this called proto Where's Andersen
Speaker 5: world of the nineteen fifties. So the colors and everything
Speaker 5: that are chosen for that Tim Burton has chosen.
Speaker 1: It fits fits that palette that he uses.
Speaker 5: Everything's big and glossy and shiny and bright, and that's
Speaker 5: the world that Pee Wee inhabits. And you know, he
Speaker 5: started off as a heart of as a stage character,
Speaker 5: I think, part of an improvisational troop. In fact, you've
Speaker 5: seen the Blues Brothers. Yes, okay, the waiter in the
Speaker 5: Blues Brothers that turns up to take the order from
Speaker 5: from Jake and Elwood when they're trying to get the
Speaker 5: mater d to join the band. That's Paul Rubens. That's
Speaker 5: pee Wee Herman this first film appearance, and.
Speaker 1: So you know he exists.
Speaker 5: He's in that group, he's in that sort of Chicago
Speaker 5: second city, in the orbit of that, and he turned
Speaker 5: up on Letterman. This is so when the film came out,
Speaker 5: we hadn't seen Letterman, we'd only seen Steve Wisart.
Speaker 1: Lehman did a great impression.
Speaker 5: Ads later on you realize just how much how much
Speaker 5: lettermanos de vis Art.
Speaker 1: So there was there was that.
Speaker 5: So he turned up and he beat this odd character
Speaker 5: in this modern urban world of Letterman, and he was
Speaker 5: the dissonant note. You know, he was a strain weird character.
Speaker 5: But of course in pee Wee's Big Adventure, the whole
Speaker 5: world just accepts that Pee Wee is wonderful and they
Speaker 5: love him and everything, So you know, it's a it's
Speaker 5: a it's a bit of a flip on that.
Speaker 1: He's not the outsider.
Speaker 5: He's pretty much the central human focus of the world
Speaker 5: that he created. I have to, well, I need to
Speaker 5: because it's it's such a I think you'd appreciate As
Speaker 5: a writer.
Speaker 1: I think you would really appreciate it. I think I
Speaker 1: think you'll find the set piece is funny. It was
Speaker 1: co written with Oh it is.
Speaker 5: His name Hartman, Phil Hartmon, Phil Hartman and Paul Rubens
Speaker 5: were friends and they both wrote that movie together. And
Speaker 5: it's also there's a great cameo by Milton Berle. There's
Speaker 5: so much, so much to recommend it to.
Speaker 2: You, Okay, I mean in Twist and Sister, Well, Milton
Speaker 2: Berle and Twist assistant together at last Pee Wee's Big Adventure.
Speaker 2: I'm putting it on the list. It's a wonderful life.
Speaker 2: I covered this with Broden from Annie Donna.
Speaker 1: Oh that pleases me that that's this one of his favorites.
Speaker 2: Well, he hadn't seen it. Oh you haven't seen it,
Speaker 2: so in the same way the Eight and a Half
Speaker 2: you haven't seen that. So that was a film we discussed.
Speaker 1: Did you like it?
Speaker 4: He did?
Speaker 1: He did. It's a lovely film.
Speaker 2: It's a great film. You've seen it, yes, And I think,
Speaker 2: funnily enough with that jumping ahead. I don't like to
Speaker 2: talk about that. Maybe he had discuss too early, But
Speaker 2: I think in eight and a half, the woman who
Speaker 2: plays his wife, Louisa, I think is maybe the best
Speaker 2: performance in it. I think she's very good, and sometimes
Speaker 2: you find like a modern performance in an older and
Speaker 2: I think the I don't know the actress's name, his wife, Yeah,
Speaker 2: Donna Reed, Donna Reed, I think gives a really great
Speaker 2: She could step out of the black and white into
Speaker 2: a color film in twenty twenty three and not have
Speaker 2: to change her acting style that much.
Speaker 1: Agreed.
Speaker 5: I'd say that of a few of them, but definitely
Speaker 5: you're quite right about her. So it is a very
Speaker 5: modern performance. So that film with the It's Wonderful Life
Speaker 5: is nineteen forty six one of those one of those
Speaker 5: post war films, a very dark film. As you would
Speaker 5: have discussed with Brydon. It's a favorite of mine. It's
Speaker 5: the only film that makes me cry. So I find
Speaker 5: it very difficult to watch it every year because I
Speaker 5: know that I'll be a mess.
Speaker 1: Do you watch it?
Speaker 4: When you do watch it is at the back end
Speaker 4: of the years a Christmas is it?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Yeah, it will kind of be Yeah, it'll kind of
Speaker 5: be around that time, because that just feels I think
Speaker 5: probably that's when I was introduced to it. It was
Speaker 5: one of these films that fell into the public domain,
Speaker 5: and so it was on television quite a lot when
Speaker 5: I was growing up, usually around Christmas time, so it
Speaker 5: was one of those ones that you could just count
Speaker 5: on would be on in December.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's funny when people haven't seen it. I think
Speaker 2: Broden kind of got a bit of a shock of
Speaker 2: how dark. Oh yes, yeah, well people don't remember. Even
Speaker 2: people who have just seen it think that it's a
Speaker 2: wonderful Christmas film. It's actually a nightmarish. It's a bit
Speaker 2: like Back to the Future too. There's a lot more
Speaker 2: dark and terror in it than there is fun.
Speaker 1: I mean the.
Speaker 5: Setting up of the character, which takes maybe very quick
Speaker 5: ten fifteen minutes, and the rest of the film is
Speaker 5: this nightmare where he doesn't exist. So it is about
Speaker 5: suicide and it's about I guess it's about what a
Speaker 5: lot of families faced post war, where someone came back
Speaker 5: shattered or not at all, and it's about duty. And
Speaker 5: he's quite grumpy for most of it because all of
Speaker 5: his ambitions are frustrated he doesn't get to.
Speaker 1: Do what he wants to do.
Speaker 5: But then he goes, oh, yes, of course, it's not
Speaker 5: about me. It's about paying it forward. And in a way,
Speaker 5: it's a kind of it's a flip or an inversion
Speaker 5: of Christmas Carol. So you've got the Henry Potter character's
Speaker 5: kind of Scrooge, but instead of him having his intervention
Speaker 5: by the angels or by the ghosts or by the.
Speaker 1: Spirit, it's Bob Cratchett. Instead.
Speaker 5: It's kind of the character who's quite good either. He's
Speaker 5: done all the good things, so you know, and I
Speaker 5: Think back to the Future actually owes a bit of
Speaker 5: a debt to its wonderful life, because you might remember
Speaker 5: I think back to the Future too. They discover George
Speaker 5: McFly's grave, which is.
Speaker 1: A bit similar.
Speaker 5: It's a bit similar to where George Bailey, George Bailey,
Speaker 5: George McFly, George Bailey goes to the cemetery and sees
Speaker 5: his brothers that he's saved when he was young when
Speaker 5: he fell through the ice.
Speaker 1: He said that he died as a child.
Speaker 5: So yeah, but the other thing is it's just such
Speaker 5: a wonderful performance by James Stewart as well, I mean
Speaker 5: you mentioned Donna Reed, and she's fantastic in it, but
Speaker 5: he is a revelation.
Speaker 1: He's just so good.
Speaker 5: That's Frank Capra, who would have probably you know, ten
Speaker 5: years earlier, have been making films that were just more
Speaker 5: fun and more funny.
Speaker 1: And there's that in it, but none of the dark
Speaker 1: stuff in his earlier films.
Speaker 4: So Missus Smith comes to Washington, goes to Washington's one
Speaker 4: of my favorites as well. It was that pre date.
Speaker 1: It's a wonderful life. That's a good question. I notice
Speaker 1: a good question.
Speaker 5: I don't know. I think that might be pre war.
Speaker 5: I think that might be before Capra and Stuart went
Speaker 5: and played a reasonably significant role in the Second World War.
Speaker 4: It's Jimmy Stewart.
Speaker 2: For those who may not be aware of him, I
Speaker 2: think the closest actor who comes close to him these
Speaker 2: days would be Tom Hanks.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, Tom Hanks. I can see Tom Hanks playing
Speaker 5: a few of those roles. Yeah, there's a sort of
Speaker 5: it's a very American thing, kind of that idealistic. There's
Speaker 5: a goodness I think in Tom Hanks that he brings
Speaker 5: to every role regardless of what it is, even when
Speaker 5: he I don't know. Actually, James Stewart played a few
Speaker 5: villains in westerns, and I think Tom Hanks I think
Speaker 5: he's done any villains, but he could, I imagine, play
Speaker 5: a villain very well for the same reason because he's
Speaker 5: going a wrong foot. You but like Ellen Older, when
Speaker 5: you see Allan Older suddenly play villain, you think, well,
Speaker 5: that's very believable.
Speaker 4: But there's a film recently a man called Otto.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, he's grumpy, yeah, and you do kind of
Speaker 2: go at the start of that, I was like, Okay,
Speaker 2: Tom's made a movie where he's going to be a
Speaker 2: bit grumpy and then he's going to be good, and
Speaker 2: it's kind of exactly what happens. But it is a
Speaker 2: much more enjoyable film than you think it's going to be.
Speaker 1: I think that's right if that was your elevator pitch.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you're right.
Speaker 5: As soon as you cast Tom Hanks and you know
Speaker 5: he's going to turn good. Yeah, maybe it's more interesting
Speaker 5: if it's Jack Nicholson.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, all right. Blade Runner is a movie.
Speaker 2: Funnily enough, I've never seen Wow, I know no, actually, sorry,
Speaker 2: I take that back. I've tried to watch twice. I
Speaker 2: know both times, one many years ago, one kind of
Speaker 2: more recently. And I forget the first time why I
Speaker 2: stopped watching it. The second time, I was like, I
Speaker 2: was like, no, I'm not in the mood. Wow, when
Speaker 2: did you bail out?
Speaker 1: Do you remember?
Speaker 2: I reckon, I wouldn't have got passed. I couldn't tell
Speaker 2: you that the scene or anything, but around about the
Speaker 2: half hour.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's interesting.
Speaker 5: So that for me, Chi Chia Bang Bang is that
Speaker 5: film I can I have tried to watch it several
Speaker 5: times because I have three children, so I've made a
Speaker 5: few runs at it since I was young, and I bail.
Speaker 1: Out about halfway through. I can't get past it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well I am covering it now. I reckon I
Speaker 2: would have gone back to it. Funnily enough, my son,
Speaker 2: my son is going to a fancy dress party this
Speaker 2: week dressed as Dearhanna Harrison derrelanda from Splash from.
Speaker 4: From Harrison Ford. Another character's name.
Speaker 1: Deca Decker Decker.
Speaker 5: I'm going to spoiler for you when someone's going to
Speaker 5: not see it, they're going to want to see it
Speaker 5: on the show.
Speaker 2: I'm literally doing it in a few weeks. So Cal
Speaker 2: Wilson has never seen Blade Runner, so.
Speaker 1: I will be I will have no respect for her.
Speaker 2: Now I'm talking behind her back into a microphone. Why
Speaker 2: why do you love Blade Runing? Was say great about
Speaker 2: Bade Running?
Speaker 5: Well, I love Blade Running because it's a well, it's
Speaker 5: a beautiful looking film. That's always the first thing that
Speaker 5: has to win me over. I mean, it is a
Speaker 5: gorgeous film. A lot of films made since use the grammar,
Speaker 5: the art department grammar of it. I suppose you know,
Speaker 5: so you watch Batman, you know, you watch the more
Speaker 5: recent Batman's for example, and you can see what's been borrowed,
Speaker 5: you know, the sort of futuristic view of the city.
Speaker 5: It's been this mishmash of Japanese and Western influencers and that.
Speaker 5: But it was quite original to my eyes anyway, at
Speaker 5: the time it came out in I think seventy nine,
Speaker 5: I'm guessing, and I actually saw the work print. I
Speaker 5: saw it before it was for some reason. It's so
Speaker 5: there's a work if you're a real nerd when it
Speaker 5: comes to Blade Runner. There's a five disc DVD set
Speaker 5: that includes all of the different versions, because there was
Speaker 5: a TV version made that had decas narration and it
Speaker 5: wasn't written that way, and you can hear Harrison Ford
Speaker 5: not really being.
Speaker 1: That into it.
Speaker 5: Then there was that saying that might have been the
Speaker 5: version that was released in Australia. And then there was
Speaker 5: the next version that didn't have any narration on it,
Speaker 5: So you don't get that film noir Philip Marlow kind
Speaker 5: of hard boiled cop kind of narration.
Speaker 1: Don't get that at all.
Speaker 5: And then there's a couple of other versions where they've
Speaker 5: done a director's cut, and then there's a final cut
Speaker 5: and that sort of thing, and then there's a work print.
Speaker 5: And when I watched, as I did because I'm such
Speaker 5: a nerd, all versions of it on this five disc
Speaker 5: DVD set, I said, oh, that's what I saw at
Speaker 5: university in nineteen eighty one. It's very different and it's
Speaker 5: actually got temp track music which has been taken from
Speaker 5: Planet of the Apes.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that was the I don't know how they
Speaker 1: got it, but that's how does that even get the
Speaker 1: same with Brazil.
Speaker 5: I saw Terry Gilliam's kind of pre release print of
Speaker 5: our university somehow had access to these weird versions of it.
Speaker 4: It's amazing. Yeah, what did you set a sequel?
Speaker 2: That was done, you know now maybe five years ago
Speaker 2: so now with Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford, Ridley Scott.
Speaker 1: I think it was a film of a director. It
Speaker 1: was very good. It was a kind of standalone piece.
Speaker 1: I enjoyed it.
Speaker 5: I don't I didn't have any of these purest objections
Speaker 5: to it. I thought it was I thought it was
Speaker 5: very well done. It's hard to imagine enjoying it as
Speaker 5: without having seen the first one, and not just in
Speaker 5: terms of knowing what the story is, but just going well.
Speaker 5: It owes so much to so there's a kind of
Speaker 5: secondhand quality to it, and I guess maybe it gets
Speaker 5: lost because when Blade Runner came out, it was so
Speaker 5: startledly original, whereas this one looks like part of a
Speaker 5: brace of films that look a.
Speaker 1: Bit like Blade Runner. Yeah, yeah, okay, all.
Speaker 5: Right, it's the Frankenstein myth, you know, it's it's the
Speaker 5: idea of a crash and coming back and seeking. It's
Speaker 5: like it's our story. It's the story of man and
Speaker 5: God and that sort of thing. So again, that's why
Speaker 5: that's why it works for me.
Speaker 2: I'm actually I am looking forward to sitting down I
Speaker 2: think sometimes doing this podcast, sitting down. Knowing I'm going
Speaker 2: to have to talk about a film makes you pay
Speaker 2: attention and invests in different ways.
Speaker 5: I think, yeah, yeah, well I guess. I guess it's
Speaker 5: a bit like having to study The Great Gatsby in
Speaker 5: year twelve.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Quite, you wouldn't have read it otherwise you don't quite
Speaker 5: enjoy it as well as you might if you've just
Speaker 5: drifted or fallen into it. Yeah, it's going to be
Speaker 5: no pee wee's big adventure just because you're saw the
Speaker 5: cover in the video shop.
Speaker 4: Okay, let's get into it. I've avoided as soon as
Speaker 4: I saw you.
Speaker 2: When you arrived, I wanted to ask even one of
Speaker 2: the text you, but I'm very strict on not knowing
Speaker 2: what my guests thought about the film until this moment.
Speaker 4: Sean Mchayley, you enjoy Federico Fellini's Eight and a Half.
Speaker 5: I absolutely loved it. Oh, it was fantastic at first.
Speaker 5: They tick that box in terms of visuals. I mean,
Speaker 5: it just looks fantastic. And I don't know which version
Speaker 5: of news saw, but it was a very crisp print
Speaker 5: and betiful black and white photography. I'm not sure who
Speaker 5: the director of photography is, but there's that there's a
Speaker 5: beautiful choreography of the camera work with the crowd scenes.
Speaker 5: Fellini has this wonderful I noticed this even in the
Speaker 5: half hour I saw of Lostrado. It's got this wonderful
Speaker 5: ability to pick people's faces, and there's plenty of them
Speaker 5: on display. What struck me though, was like ten minutes
Speaker 5: apart from apart from the Danny Elfman pee Wee's Big Adventure.
Speaker 1: Music being in there.
Speaker 5: Also thought, because I remember seeing Woody Allen start US
Speaker 5: Memories when it came out, I thought, oh, well, I
Speaker 5: knew that he liked Fellini, but this is a good
Speaker 5: STARTUS Memories is a complete ripoff of Eight and a half.
Speaker 2: I mean that this film has a massive legacy, doesn't it.
Speaker 2: I mean US Memories even pulp fiction. You know that
Speaker 2: the dance at Jack Rabbits Slim's yeah, basically basically the
Speaker 2: dance he's seen here.
Speaker 5: Yes, yeah, it's so it's loos likee for a lot
Speaker 5: of people watching The Simpsons. My children saw that. You
Speaker 5: watch the Simpsons and they go and then they see
Speaker 5: Psycho and they go, oh, that's from the Simpsons. So
Speaker 5: it's a you kind of have to get rid of
Speaker 5: the the lens through which someone else has seen the
Speaker 5: film when you're watching the film itself for the first time.
Speaker 5: But yeah, I mean what he Allen's just basically, I mean,
Speaker 5: it's not homage. I knew that it was homage to Fellini,
Speaker 5: but it's not. It's exactly the same film. He's just
Speaker 5: put Woody Allen in the Guido role. It's good, it's
Speaker 5: very entertaining and everything. But anyway, so it was quite
Speaker 5: nice to I just stripped that back in the first
Speaker 5: ten minutes. Oka, I've got to get rid of Woody
Speaker 5: Allen being Guido here and see it for what it is,
Speaker 5: and it's and it's an original, pure piece of work.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, it really is. And Martin Scorsese obviously became well.
Speaker 2: He saw Lestrada when he was twelve and had a
Speaker 2: very different reaction than what.
Speaker 1: He loved it.
Speaker 5: He loved it and banging on about it with his
Speaker 5: quick voice. It's fantastic, it's great.
Speaker 1: I love you.
Speaker 4: His recall.
Speaker 2: He's amazing. Yeah, I think eight and a half he
Speaker 2: became his favorite film. It's it's Terry Gilliam's favorite film.
Speaker 2: Who was I think Terry Gilliam said he hasn't seen
Speaker 2: a example of a movie that makes you feel like
Speaker 2: you are the one trying to make a film, but
Speaker 2: this is what making film actually feels like.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I can see it really appealing to filmmakers, absolutely,
Speaker 5: especially filmmakers with some legacy behind them, which I guess
Speaker 5: Gilliam and Scorsees definitely have have that. And you know,
Speaker 5: if someone like me who's not a filmmaker, I kind
Speaker 5: of got where his head was at. Yes, I guess
Speaker 5: I understood what it was like to have to well lectu.
Speaker 5: He says that there's a line in the film there
Speaker 5: where he says, I have nothing to say, but I
Speaker 5: still want.
Speaker 1: To say it.
Speaker 4: I've wrote that down and I think that's It's.
Speaker 5: Like McCartney writing music. You know, you think McCartney's a genius,
Speaker 5: but quite a few of his songs aren't about anything.
Speaker 1: No, no, but they're still worth doing.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And I think that's what there are so many
Speaker 2: things about this film because it's about about a filmmaker
Speaker 2: who has lost his inspiration. He's kind of forgotten and
Speaker 2: apparently feeling he would often go into his productions with
Speaker 2: half written scripts or you know, these vague ideas, had
Speaker 2: this fear that he would actually arrive on set and
Speaker 2: he wouldn't be there anymore, he would forget it.
Speaker 1: And so that's what I ate nasserally about. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Well, and also just the way in which because watching
Speaker 5: the film. The thing is with the foreign film is
Speaker 5: you can really fool people who don't speak the language
Speaker 5: into thinking the acting is good because because you're you're
Speaker 5: reading it, and you're also as you when you read
Speaker 5: a novel, you tend to project a little bit onto
Speaker 5: the onto what you're reading. So you're kind of doing
Speaker 5: that a little bit with with any foreign film where
Speaker 5: you don't speak the language. But also I was noticing
Speaker 5: that even the Italian didn't really fit the lip sync,
Speaker 5: so and I've since realized, of course the ADR is
Speaker 5: the entire thing, and a lot of the time the
Speaker 5: actors on the set aren't saying anything even approximating the
Speaker 5: lines that been given in their subtimes.
Speaker 1: There's a rewrite.
Speaker 2: Sometimes there's they're literally different, completely different lines.
Speaker 5: That's why so many of the scenes I'm assuming are
Speaker 5: on Guido while he's listening to somebody else, because they've
Speaker 5: they've just got the dialogue in me And I guess
Speaker 5: I know, I guess he knows where he's going generally,
Speaker 5: and the ultimate the ultimate thing that Guido says, of course,
Speaker 5: is you know, he says, happiness is being able to
Speaker 5: tell the truth without other people suffering, and then he
Speaker 5: comes up with a beautiful solution to that at the
Speaker 5: end of the film. So there is there is this
Speaker 5: sort of post production writing going on, but I don't
Speaker 5: think the film suffers from it at all. If anything,
Speaker 5: it's probably enhanced. Yeah, it's a film where I think
Speaker 5: I was. I was a bit paranoid early on, like
Speaker 5: I'm going to am I going to get this? Am
Speaker 5: I gonna really? I really want to like this film.
Speaker 2: Sometimes I feel I feel I'm not sure if you
Speaker 2: feel the pressure of liking a film. Sometimes I really
Speaker 2: want to like this film. What I realized is it's
Speaker 2: actually quite a simple film. It's a very simple films,
Speaker 2: and it's it's a film that I think you just
Speaker 2: want to have washed over you. And that's why I
Speaker 2: watched it twice. I just kind of stopped making notes
Speaker 2: and I was just like, Okay, I'm just going to
Speaker 2: let this film wash over.
Speaker 1: I think that's right.
Speaker 5: I think I don't think there's an intellectual process that
Speaker 5: helps you get through it. In fact, I think Fellini
Speaker 5: even's pushing that this is a lovely little fantasy moment
Speaker 5: where he he orders the execution of his writer, you know,
Speaker 5: in the theater. He just sort of flicks his holds
Speaker 5: his forefinger up and suddenly his writer is hung from
Speaker 5: a noose.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I do love Flenny wanted to basically represent the past,
Speaker 2: the present, and the and dream or fantasy and you know,
Speaker 2: and that so I do love that. It becomes harder
Speaker 2: to pick when the fantasies are like you can argue
Speaker 2: him to the at the end, at what point is
Speaker 2: the fantasy? And obviously the harem with all the women
Speaker 2: and his wife happy, that's all fantasy.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there's a little visual cue, there's a slight overexposure
Speaker 5: before we get into the fantasy. And other times he's
Speaker 5: he taps his nose a little bit.
Speaker 2: And there's one point where he's where he's mistress is
Speaker 2: sitting by herself and his wife has now known, and
Speaker 2: she's she's angry and she's you know, calling her a
Speaker 2: cow and all that, and then he just goes but
Speaker 2: yet and yet, and and he kind of SLINKs to
Speaker 2: his chair and all of a sudden, the wife and
Speaker 2: the mistress are getting along and commenting stylish as she is,
Speaker 2: and the mistress is singing in what a beautiful voice
Speaker 2: she has, and he's got his son.
Speaker 5: He's on, yeah, very nice. Well that's in Startus Memories.
Speaker 5: There is a similar scene, of course, where what he
Speaker 5: is trying to he's got two women in the same
Speaker 5: sort of way. There's a there's a perfect woman and
Speaker 5: then there's an earthy woman who's attracted to and he's
Speaker 5: playing a mad side, just trying to switch their brains around,
Speaker 5: I think in an operation. So again, very similar in
Speaker 5: terms of well, fantasy daydream film. What's the difference film
Speaker 5: is a dream state. There's a whole bunch of things
Speaker 5: that and Woody Allen played with this with Annie Hall
Speaker 5: as well. The way memory is triggered by. I think
Speaker 5: there's a moment where a Guido in eight and a
Speaker 5: half looks out and happens to see somebody walking through
Speaker 5: an archway, and he's taken to his fantasy girl, who's
Speaker 5: the new one, which is Claudia. Yes, And he also
Speaker 5: sees an old woman, an older woman, walking down and
Speaker 5: she has has kind of thick legs, and suddenly he's
Speaker 5: taken back to Sagria. I think the large woman on
Speaker 5: the beach, yes, who was obviously his.
Speaker 4: First sexual awakening, I guess.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so you're given some clues, but you've got to
Speaker 5: watch very closely.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I probably didn't pick those up. Why didn't you
Speaker 2: feel comfortable that you were going to? Like I said,
Speaker 2: I kind of was like it was being a little
Speaker 2: pressure on myself and then eventually put the notes down
Speaker 2: and it's watched it and loved it. But do you
Speaker 2: feel comfortable straight away? Like I mean the opening sequence,
Speaker 2: I must say, I thought, was this incredible?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's just the cars and being trapped and.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wondered, I wondered, Yes, that's right.
Speaker 5: Well, for those of you listening I haven't seen yet
Speaker 5: spoiler alert, it does open with her kind of it's
Speaker 5: kind of like a traffic jam. And if you if
Speaker 5: you've seen Startus Memories, Wady Allen's in a train looking
Speaker 5: at another train and seeing all these people looking at
Speaker 5: him and anyway, it's a bit similar. So but it's
Speaker 5: a kind it's a he's suffocating because there's smoking the
Speaker 5: car and he escapes through the roof and he flies away.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but there's still a rope.
Speaker 5: Around his legs and hauling him back down down to earth,
Speaker 5: and that's a it's a suffocation dream. And he wakes
Speaker 5: up from that and he's in a kind of wellness
Speaker 5: center where he's trying to get better. He's obviously having
Speaker 5: some sort of nervous breakdown. That's right, yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 5: So there's this kind of fantasy location where everybody comes
Speaker 5: to him, much in the way of the Stardus Hotel,
Speaker 5: and it's start us memories. But yeah, look, I was
Speaker 5: there from the very beginning. I did notice a very
Speaker 5: strange thing when they're doing the little pans, like you
Speaker 5: don't see Guido for a while. So we'd Guido, we're
Speaker 5: in the car and we're looking out the windows and
Speaker 5: we might see every shoulder slightly, but you know, we're
Speaker 5: not We're supposed to identify with him from the very start.
Speaker 5: But do you notice the panning shots out of his
Speaker 5: car and he was looking at these odd felliniesque faces.
Speaker 5: Sometimes he would just stop it. It was done in
Speaker 5: post production. It wasn't wasn't a camera move. It would
Speaker 5: the camera would move and then and then he'd stop
Speaker 5: it in the edit suite and it would just become
Speaker 5: a still photo for about one second and then it
Speaker 5: move on. That's three times. I thought it was very
Speaker 5: I thought that was poor. So I take a star off.
Speaker 4: We may be able to work it back up. You
Speaker 4: might find things that you are.
Speaker 5: He obviously changed his mind in the edit. Sweet thought
Speaker 5: we have to linger on the face a little longer.
Speaker 2: I did, like he I know, he moved the camera
Speaker 2: kind of forward, like a like a really tiny kind
Speaker 2: of bit with a bit of a stop, which kind
Speaker 2: of made it feel like you were actually kind of
Speaker 2: in that traffic jam.
Speaker 5: I'm assuming that movement all those cars and at the
Speaker 5: very end when they go to the site of the
Speaker 5: launch that never happens. They seem to be on the
Speaker 5: same journey. So I'm assuming the whole thing is a flashback.
Speaker 4: Well, I mean I just saw it as which both
Speaker 4: both can be both.
Speaker 1: It can be true.
Speaker 2: Obviously that's Fellini feeling the anxiety and the pressure of
Speaker 2: the world, kind of waiting for his next thing.
Speaker 5: You know, he's and that's what he said his traps.
Speaker 5: But as we know from the press conference, that happens
Speaker 5: once they arrive at the launch side. He spoiler alert,
Speaker 5: he apparently ends his own life. A gun has been
Speaker 5: supplied to him by the producer, which is in his pocket,
Speaker 5: which in your pocket.
Speaker 1: That's very interesting.
Speaker 5: Again, sat ups memories very similar scene where where Woody
Speaker 5: Allen is killed by a fan at about the same
Speaker 5: time and meets the Martians because he just complete.
Speaker 2: Ripoff watching I'm watching People's Big Adventure, and then I
Speaker 2: have sees of those memories. I don't have the recall
Speaker 2: that you do on that, but I'm going to be
Speaker 2: watching both of those films later on. Today he shoots
Speaker 2: himself in the head. Does he shoot himself in the head?
Speaker 1: Well, we don't hear it, I don't think, do you.
Speaker 1: I don't think so.
Speaker 5: See, that's interesting. I can't remember hearing the gunshot because
Speaker 5: I was listening for it, but I don't remember it happening.
Speaker 1: I reckon you do, Okay, we have to watch it again? Yeah,
Speaker 1: watch it again? Were speed up?
Speaker 4: And so do you think he's dead or fantasy? At
Speaker 4: the fantasy?
Speaker 5: I think that's another It's a version of the suffocation fantasy.
Speaker 5: I think the idea that the step beyond that is
Speaker 5: to kind of end it all, because you might remember
Speaker 5: the press conference is slightly surreal and that the desk
Speaker 5: they're sitting at as a mirror, and he looks down,
Speaker 5: he sees himself and he may have.
Speaker 2: These conversations with his wife that I assume it's not
Speaker 2: happening in real time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, although you know, you could argue either way.
Speaker 5: I think that's the maybe that's the beauty of it
Speaker 5: is that at the end of course, he abandons the
Speaker 5: idea of the traditional ending that he was going to have,
Speaker 5: and everybody's this probably is more fantasy where everybody else
Speaker 5: lines up and they're all going around in a lovely
Speaker 5: circle holding hands, which is the it's art rather than life,
Speaker 5: and he joins them, and I'm thinking, oh, well, that's
Speaker 5: his solution to the idea of telling the truth where
Speaker 5: there's no suffering, is that he just becomes part of
Speaker 5: the fiction himself.
Speaker 1: He just willingly accepts it and embraces it. So everybody
Speaker 1: from his.
Speaker 5: Past, including himself in the now, are kind of this
Speaker 5: never ending conger line where they're going around to Geno
Speaker 5: knock his music whatever it is.
Speaker 1: Where where his younger self is playing a flute.
Speaker 4: And I love that he was almost directing his younger self.
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, he was going over and whispered in his
Speaker 5: ear and then he's marching to the beat of his
Speaker 5: youthful memories. Is happy that that be the film rather
Speaker 5: than taking what the writer has been suggesting a lot. No,
Speaker 5: you need literature or you need history to inform what
Speaker 5: you're doing. You don't, you know you're what does he say?
Speaker 5: How do you do you really expect people to learn
Speaker 5: anything from your squalid catalog of childhood memories where you
Speaker 5: got things wrong.
Speaker 2: I write some of that down because I thought, because
Speaker 2: he got he's got this kind of critic who he's employed.
Speaker 5: Well, that's his critic writer, I think, or at least
Speaker 5: somebody somebody who's maybe not writing, but he's always constantly
Speaker 5: on him to be more intellectual or to be more
Speaker 5: I took it. I took it as being a Yes,
Speaker 5: he's definitely a critic, but I took it as being
Speaker 5: somebody who was basically writing the script for him or.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: I thought I wasn't know if it was writing or
Speaker 2: consulting on it. But he also says it at some point,
Speaker 2: if you want to make a polemic piece about the
Speaker 2: Italian Catholic consciousness, you need a much higher degree of culture.
Speaker 4: And he says you need logic and clarity. You know,
Speaker 4: your naivety is a massive failure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but then they go onto that scene with Oregon.
Speaker 5: Oregon's been quoted in it, and of course everyone's dressed
Speaker 5: up like Roman senators in that sauna.
Speaker 1: Yes, so that's that.
Speaker 5: That is in contrast to the earliest scene where the
Speaker 5: large woman, the large prostitute I assume, is dancing at
Speaker 5: the beach for the for the boys, like, that's not
Speaker 5: good enough. What you need is something drawn from history.
Speaker 5: You need something, you know, more August. And so that's
Speaker 5: interesting that he puts those two scenes right next to
Speaker 5: each other, and then of course that it forms the
Speaker 5: Harem scene later where he's even in his fantasies, it
Speaker 5: doesn't work out. He's got to get the whip out.
Speaker 4: It turns against him.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: There's a film called What's New pussy Cat which was
Speaker 5: made in ninety sixty five that stars Peter a Tool
Speaker 5: and Peter Sellers. So this is like, okay, two years
Speaker 5: after eight and a half. If you watch that one again,
Speaker 5: put this one on your list. You'll see Peter Otol
Speaker 5: dressed up pretty much like Guido cracking the whip.
Speaker 1: You know who wrote What's New? Pussy gap. He doesn't,
Speaker 1: he's in corrigible.
Speaker 4: I hope you're listening to this woody album.
Speaker 1: Never said I wasn't influenced by Fellini.
Speaker 4: I love it, but that kind of because i'd heard
Speaker 4: a lot of people think that Eight and a Half.
Speaker 4: It's critics will say it's very stylish, but it's got
Speaker 4: nothing to say. But I think that's sometimes the point.
Speaker 2: That's what the movie is about, really somebody who doesn't
Speaker 2: have anything to say, but he still wants to say.
Speaker 2: As you mentioned earlier, but I think there are things
Speaker 2: in this film that feel like really relevant and that
Speaker 2: feeling he's got this ambition to do something, but he's
Speaker 2: been made to feel like intellectually you are not. This
Speaker 2: is not your playground. Go back to making your fun
Speaker 2: little films. And I really responded, I really responded to that.
Speaker 2: It kind of got me a little bit.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think Guido is forty three in the film.
Speaker 5: He's got a body of work behind him. In fact,
Speaker 5: he's got eight films behind him. That's why it's called
Speaker 5: eight and a half. He's halfway through this other thing.
Speaker 5: He has to fit into the machine of expectations in
Speaker 5: order to make the film that's the thing that's causing
Speaker 5: great frustrating as well as whatever the hell is left
Speaker 5: of his private life. But again, he has that arrogance
Speaker 5: and that narcissism of an artist who feels that they
Speaker 5: should be entitled to live their lives without having to
Speaker 5: obey the strictures what he sees as strictures of a
Speaker 5: normal person. He should be allowed to do whatever he wants,
Speaker 5: and anyone who objects that's getting in his way. It's
Speaker 5: a very very hard point of view to defend. And
Speaker 5: I wonder, I mean, we're all, in our quiet, private,
Speaker 5: dark moments, probably think that we should be able to
Speaker 5: do what we want to do. I suppose, regardless of
Speaker 5: whether we're in the arts or not. We just think, oh,
Speaker 5: why things are easier. Why isn't that lie acceptable? It
Speaker 5: just gets It's a bridge I get from ear to
Speaker 5: hear and as no one gets hurt, but of course
Speaker 5: they all mount up. Part of that, I suppose, is
Speaker 5: him having to reconcile what he feels is he's due
Speaker 5: versus what he should do in order to be a
Speaker 5: good person living in the real world. And it's interesting,
Speaker 5: in my interpretation of the end, he opts out of
Speaker 5: the real world, and all right, I'm going to live
Speaker 5: in fantasy. I'm going to live in a world where
Speaker 5: I can order everything, so everything's fine. And that's why
Speaker 5: art is, isn't it. It's this need that humans have
Speaker 5: to draw a picture or to play a piece of music,
Speaker 5: is to order their feelings or some past event into
Speaker 5: a certain order that makes more sense. And it's kind
Speaker 5: of in our nature to try and do that. And
Speaker 5: the only way we can really do it is in
Speaker 5: our head. And if we are blessed with the ability
Speaker 5: to render something in paint or film or music, then
Speaker 5: we do it in that way too. And I think
Speaker 5: it must be really frustrating. And you need only look
Speaker 5: at Ambidaeus and the story of Saliari to see how
Speaker 5: frustrating this space. If you have the urge and the
Speaker 5: need to make something, but not the ability to make
Speaker 5: it as good as you see it or as good
Speaker 5: as you hear it, and that must be really frustrating. Well,
Speaker 5: it is frustrating.
Speaker 1: It's I know what it's like.
Speaker 5: I wish I was funnier. I wish I was funnier,
Speaker 5: But you know, there we go. You know, you've only
Speaker 5: got what you've got.
Speaker 2: And no matter who you are, whether you are fully
Speaker 2: fleeing himself or a Scorsese or michelib Er, a HALLI
Speaker 2: you are. Basically, it would be something well, no matter
Speaker 2: what lever you're at, whether it's intellectually or logistically, that
Speaker 2: there's something that you want to make and you can't
Speaker 2: get it done.
Speaker 1: Whether it's fine.
Speaker 2: I mean, in these dying days, Lenny was trying, you know,
Speaker 2: it was raising money to get a series of films
Speaker 2: made with Scorsese. They got it done in the end,
Speaker 2: but like he, even the great, the great Maestro revered
Speaker 2: fifteen thousand people go to his funeral I think it
Speaker 2: was ninety three, was scrapping around to raise money.
Speaker 4: So there's there's always well.
Speaker 1: That's the machine. At the end of the day.
Speaker 5: It's a business and there are people you have to
Speaker 5: work with, and he parades them before us in eight
Speaker 5: and a half, who he doesn't like, he has nothing
Speaker 5: in common with, but who he needs to This is
Speaker 5: a transactional relationship. I mean, in our small way in
Speaker 5: the Australian television industry, most of the relationships you have
Speaker 5: with people are transactional, you know, and most of the
Speaker 5: friendships that you I mean, if youre lucky enough to
Speaker 5: have them and build them and have them exist outside
Speaker 5: of a piece of work that you're doing. That's great.
Speaker 5: But most to the people we meet and that we
Speaker 5: get on well with are in a transactional situation. So
Speaker 5: on one angle, it's a pretty soulless way to have
Speaker 5: the human experience.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, Jacques Tarti.
Speaker 5: Has a similar story. By the end of it, he
Speaker 5: didn't own any of his own films. I think he
Speaker 5: had to sell most of them off. A beautiful filmmaker,
Speaker 5: just a wonderful, wonderful sort of again, he's scrabbling around.
Speaker 5: Awson Wells another one, scrabbling around.
Speaker 1: It was kind kind of sad, you know, to have
Speaker 1: to have to do that.
Speaker 5: But yeah, it's not the days of the medici where
Speaker 5: you would be Yeah, whatever, however much money you want,
Speaker 5: to make, whatever you want. I think maybe Kubrick is
Speaker 5: the only filmmaker I can think of who was indulged
Speaker 5: to that extent right through to the very end, right
Speaker 5: from the very beginning probably, I mean, what was his
Speaker 5: first film, Spartacus, He was a kind of came in
Speaker 5: as a replacement, it might have been, was it Spartacus
Speaker 5: came in and did Spartacus, and he replaced Anthony Mann,
Speaker 5: so he came in about a week later. And then
Speaker 5: on the back of that, which is a great film, Spartacus,
Speaker 5: on the back of that, Paths of Glory, I think
Speaker 5: with Kirk Douglas.
Speaker 1: And then every film since then was an event, was
Speaker 1: an event. You know.
Speaker 5: The sad thing though, I think if you are indulged
Speaker 5: in that way, like having sort of sponsorship from some medici,
Speaker 5: is that you end up making like Chaplin did and
Speaker 5: Kubrick did. You're making oh, one film every ten years.
Speaker 1: You know. That's the thing.
Speaker 5: Sometimes it's more interesting to see what you have to
Speaker 5: make under pressure, and all the solutions that you come
Speaker 5: up with to work around and navigate the difficulties that
Speaker 5: are in your way. You can end up actually with
Speaker 5: a much more interesting and better film. I sometimes think
Speaker 5: it was Spielberg, like I think, if only you didn't
Speaker 5: have as much money like you did when you had
Speaker 5: to make Duel or Jaws, you know, maybe films that
Speaker 5: actually wouldn't look so glib and slick, because I you know,
Speaker 5: there are moments in Spielberg's v where you look at
Speaker 5: the color purple, you know, when that moment when Harpo
Speaker 5: falls through the roof.
Speaker 1: It's a gag.
Speaker 5: It's a cartoon gag that would fit in Indiana Jones.
Speaker 5: Even in Amistad. There's a moment where there's a whole
Speaker 5: there's a sword fight going on in a move behind
Speaker 5: some sail on a boat. Sudden there's a big splash
Speaker 5: of blood all over the back of a sail. Again,
Speaker 5: it's a cartoon joke. Shindler's List. They're coming down the
Speaker 5: stairs and others are going up the stairs, and he
Speaker 5: just holds on the staircase, the stone staircase. You hear
Speaker 5: the machine gub blast and all the blood hits the wall.
Speaker 5: It's straight out of Indiana Jones.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So I wonder if he had, you know, fifty million
Speaker 5: dollars less, whether we'd get a kind of a more
Speaker 5: interesting film.
Speaker 4: I was seeing that recently in regards to Where's Anderson?
Speaker 1: Whose new film. I really enjoyed Asteroid City, but.
Speaker 4: I would love to see him do a Rushmore again,
Speaker 4: a Rushmore, just do a two hand or a three hander.
Speaker 2: You know, there's this, you know that, please everyone stopped
Speaker 2: working for unders for Where's Anderson for a little while.
Speaker 2: If people say no to him, and this make him
Speaker 2: write a film or make him you know, well.
Speaker 1: Where's the shooting?
Speaker 5: I think to be able to build a studio so
Speaker 5: that you can do your lovely pan shots or it's
Speaker 5: an elevator shot or whatever it is. Whereas he had
Speaker 5: any of that and rushmore, he had to kind of
Speaker 5: the symmetry that he so enjoys and works acting actually
Speaker 5: made more sense when you're watching a film about somebody
Speaker 5: who's putting on a stage production.
Speaker 1: It's kind of what it was.
Speaker 5: It kind of makes more sense that way, the abstract
Speaker 5: nature of a lot of it. And there's a kind
Speaker 5: of simplicity in seeing Bill Murray asked to go out
Speaker 5: with the female lead and she says yes, and he's
Speaker 5: so happy that he just runs that scene where he
Speaker 5: kind of just turns it. He runs, He runs right
Speaker 5: into the background and then maybe falls over a fence.
Speaker 5: I was reading a story about that. He said, like,
Speaker 5: that's what was Anderson wanted Bill Murray to do. And
Speaker 5: Bill Murray's there. He said, okay, so you want me
Speaker 5: to just run away in the scene and he stopped
Speaker 5: and paused and he said, oh yeah, because my heart's beating.
Speaker 5: So Bill Murray like, where's Anderson just wanted that moment
Speaker 5: on film? He didn't give me any motivation or anything.
Speaker 5: But Bill's there, Oh okay, Well I really like this
Speaker 5: girl and she said yes. So my heart's beating really
Speaker 5: quickly and the only way I can justify it is
Speaker 5: to be out of breath or running, like there's so
Speaker 5: much adrenaline running through me. So that's a really good
Speaker 5: director actor relationship. I mean, Film's doing a lot of
Speaker 5: the heavy lifting there, but coming up with a motivation.
Speaker 5: But I thought, wow, I had more respect for him,
Speaker 5: I guess maybe than I did before I heard that
Speaker 5: story as an actor, because I always thought maybe he
Speaker 5: was just kind of doing what he wanted to do,
Speaker 5: but he actually did think of it in the way
Speaker 5: of an actor.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So I think if maybe if Wes Anderson got back
Speaker 5: to doing stuff where he was losing the light and
Speaker 5: you know, I had to get something done and wasn't
Speaker 5: controlling the environment so much, maybe.
Speaker 1: Everything would look like fantastic mister Fox enjoyable though that film.
Speaker 2: Is very good film, very good film I listened to
Speaker 2: sometimes when I'm doing this podcast, particularly big films, and
Speaker 2: I will drive around, I'll find another podcast and maybe
Speaker 2: discuss it.
Speaker 4: This is to keep it in my head. I'll listen
Speaker 4: to YouTube interviews with the directors or.
Speaker 1: You know, creatives.
Speaker 2: I found a podcast about this, and I never listened
Speaker 2: to podcasts before. It was young Americans, one woman and
Speaker 2: three guys, and one of them enjoyed it, and the
Speaker 2: rest they were deflated and depressed about what they had.
Speaker 1: Seen because they felt it was it was full of misogyny.
Speaker 2: I listened to about twenty minutes and I had to
Speaker 2: I had to stop because I bailed out lestrata style.
Speaker 2: I bailed out ye because they young, well young nineteen
Speaker 2: and you know, in their early twenties, and they seem
Speaker 2: to completely disregard the fact that one this was made
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty seven. They all, of course and are
Speaker 2: very articulate, and they all seem like sixty three sixty three.
Speaker 4: Sorry, Gino Contie was very well researched, you know, nineteen
Speaker 4: sixty three.
Speaker 2: They were doing the thing without putting today's values and
Speaker 2: half af come instead of because you do have these
Speaker 2: women in eight and a half.
Speaker 5: Well, you've got a you know, a guido on any reading.
Speaker 5: Whenever you looked at it would be somebody who you
Speaker 5: would say, this is a guy doesn't treat women very well.
Speaker 2: Exactly, And I think they're the character is a misogynist, yes, yeah,
Speaker 2: and we need to betray those darker bits of people's lives.
Speaker 5: And I don't, Yeah, I don't think they're They're not.
Speaker 5: Fellini isn't holding himself slash Gino up as an exemplar
Speaker 5: of how to treat women. He's My reading is that
Speaker 5: he was quite critical of that attitude that he had.
Speaker 1: How unfair it was.
Speaker 5: You saw how Louisa was so depressed and hadn't enjoyed
Speaker 5: the experience at all after how many years they were married,
Speaker 5: and the only way that she could be happy was
Speaker 5: in his fantasy.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I don't know.
Speaker 5: I guess I guess people read things differently. And if
Speaker 5: you're younger maybe and you haven't had a midd lofe
Speaker 5: crisis and you maybe haven't experienced how gray areas are,
Speaker 5: then maybe that would be enough to shut the door
Speaker 5: on the film for you.
Speaker 2: Because I also think that he's this fantasy woman who
Speaker 2: appears throughout it's Claudia, is it, yes, Claudia, so that
Speaker 2: she is seen as the ideal, this vision of beauty,
Speaker 2: and you know something to strive for, and then he.
Speaker 4: Drives off with her and he realizes that doesn't exist.
Speaker 5: Well, yes, he in his way as being a casting
Speaker 5: couch kind of guy. He invites her over on the
Speaker 5: pretense or the pretext of getting a film role, and
Speaker 5: she's not quite as pliable as she as he thought
Speaker 5: she would be. In fact, I think she laughs at
Speaker 5: him and cause him an old man at one point.
Speaker 5: And so the fantasy disappears as soon as you shine
Speaker 5: enough light on it. You know there's a payoff, there's
Speaker 5: some sort of self awareness, and yeah, I think films
Speaker 5: that deal with misogyny are different from films that are misogynistic. Yes,
Speaker 5: so don't have any self awareness about them. So I'm
Speaker 5: not sure that's a valid criticism. I would argue against
Speaker 5: that one.
Speaker 2: So, Claudia, so you have the vision and then you
Speaker 2: have that aging actress. Are they connected?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 5: I just thought that was somebody who he remember he
Speaker 5: was he first came across, who first saw her? When
Speaker 5: you're speaking of the aging Oh, the aging actress, the
Speaker 5: one that wanted the role I.
Speaker 4: Wanted, deseritly wanted the role. I kind of is only
Speaker 4: like the second viewing that I kind of thought, hang on,
Speaker 4: is that supposed to be?
Speaker 5: I think a suggestive of a pattern in his life.
Speaker 5: I think that he probably, yeah, you could probably wind
Speaker 5: back twenty five years and he might have done the
Speaker 5: same thing to her, But he never gives it the role.
Speaker 1: He never gives it a role.
Speaker 4: But he always says, you're beautiful, You're beautiful.
Speaker 2: And I had this in my mind that he thought
Speaker 2: he had followed her career for a while, maybe when
Speaker 2: she was younger, because they're very similar looking. You can
Speaker 2: imagine that that would be a fit as far as
Speaker 2: you know that, the vision being that Claudia being the
Speaker 2: younger version of that aging actress and.
Speaker 1: That fili or Guido.
Speaker 2: The reason he wasn't really discussing the film not giving
Speaker 2: her a role because he still had the younger version
Speaker 2: of her in his head, the ideal version of her in.
Speaker 5: Oh, okay, so you think we're going back to the past.
Speaker 5: I'm not sure about that, because I think Claudia is
Speaker 5: not buying any of it from him. I don't think
Speaker 5: she's She's not somebody.
Speaker 2: Who's been away a younger like they say they both Claudia,
Speaker 2: because I forget the other okay, like a younger Claudia
Speaker 2: probably wouldn't put up with Guido, but now, when parts
Speaker 2: maybe few and far between, she is. I think that's
Speaker 2: potentially a comment on the aging and in that industry
Speaker 2: and not getting the rolls and you know, you keep
Speaker 2: saying I'm beautiful, but you don't give me the roles.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I think my reading of it is that's his pattern,
Speaker 5: that's what he's done, and it doesn't work anymore. I
Speaker 5: think Claudia is representative of that. That's either that or
Speaker 5: she's not that sort of person, whereas the older version
Speaker 5: is somebody who did hang on and did hope that
Speaker 5: he would eventually pay off. And there's a there's a
Speaker 5: kind of middle ground there where Ry asks the guy
Speaker 5: with a bucket to dance for him because he might
Speaker 5: get a part in this film, and the guy guy
Speaker 5: sort of tat he's down at the launch pad. He's
Speaker 5: kind of tap dancing and it's just cruelty. He's just
Speaker 5: been cruel to the guy making a fool of him,
Speaker 5: and he said, well what about the role. He's ah,
Speaker 5: go away, go away, but he still hangs on. That
Speaker 5: guy turns up at the end, he's still tap dancing. Hey,
Speaker 5: what do you think about this, So I think that's
Speaker 5: the I don't know if I saw that as a
Speaker 5: bit of an exploration of the cruelty of Guido promising,
Speaker 5: as he does to a lot of people in the film,
Speaker 5: promising them everything and and not really wanting to follow through.
Speaker 1: Is a bit of a flake in that regard.
Speaker 5: Claudia is the has come up, so I guess in
Speaker 5: a way because he's not going to sleep with her,
Speaker 5: because she's just not interested in sleeping with him.
Speaker 2: And there's also women who I think have you know it,
Speaker 2: kind of own it. The wife, you know, she comes
Speaker 2: and she has drawn a line in the sand. And
Speaker 2: again I'll repeat it I said earlier when we discussed
Speaker 2: It's a oneful life. But I think that performance is this.
Speaker 2: I think I thought the film was better when she
Speaker 2: was in it, like it went up a level.
Speaker 5: You're right, she's got a very there's a very modern
Speaker 5: performance in that. There's a great independence, there's this grey
Speaker 5: honesty to it. Whereas Carla, who plays the kind of
Speaker 5: more earthy, blousy woman who's probably informed by his experience
Speaker 5: as a young boy with Sagarina on the beach. She's
Speaker 5: more of a comic figure in fact, he does her
Speaker 5: eyebrows like.
Speaker 2: The eyebrow, so he's till inxteen too, isn't it When
Speaker 2: he's this is real and he's getting her to indulge
Speaker 2: in his fantasy of coming into the room and pretending
Speaker 2: she's found somebody new and she goes down to the
Speaker 2: room and in the town and that the owner says,
Speaker 2: do you want to do you want to drink?
Speaker 1: Or something like that.
Speaker 2: But that's an interesting element to where is again playing
Speaker 2: with you know, real and fantasy.
Speaker 5: Guido's a director, so he's saying, I'm going to put
Speaker 5: your makeup on, You're going to go ahead, and you're
Speaker 5: going to come in. And he's does that quite a
Speaker 5: lot in the film, and it's going to reorder things
Speaker 5: so that they work. It doesn't work in the real world,
Speaker 5: doesn't work, as he finds out again and again and again,
Speaker 5: that does just doesn't work as neatly as it would
Speaker 5: in a film, and that's why this abdication of reality
Speaker 5: by the end of it, when he goes we're all
Speaker 5: in the line holding hands, dancing. Yeah, And I'm going
Speaker 5: to be a fantasy figure too. I'm not going to
Speaker 5: try and live in the real world anymore. That's my
Speaker 5: reading of it. I don't know where that's right. I
Speaker 5: have to listen to that other podcast, Those Young People
Speaker 5: Rail Against You.
Speaker 2: Rosette again was Louisa's friend. She was really interesting as well.
Speaker 5: Again, you know, I look at you know, I want
Speaker 5: to concentrate her performance as being her face, but really interesting, right,
Speaker 5: really wonderful, angular looking. You know, this is able to
Speaker 5: cast really well. Yeah, she was a very strong, you know,
Speaker 5: real modern character. And then they're kind of contrapuntal castings
Speaker 5: going on there where you see like the relationship with
Speaker 5: his friend Mario and the I think her name of
Speaker 5: the actress is Barbara Steele. She did a lot of
Speaker 5: Hammer horror film. It's very very dark hair, very great face,
Speaker 5: you know, very photographs really nicely who was kind of
Speaker 5: just along for the ride. They look like a kind
Speaker 5: of an anodyne, happy, two dimensional version of Luisa and Guido.
Speaker 5: You know what could have been, Yes, but you give
Speaker 5: up so much else. There's no depth, there's no They
Speaker 5: look like they're drunk most of the time. I don't know,
Speaker 5: I saw that as a comedy bait. Well, you don't
Speaker 5: want to go through your life being numb. You want
Speaker 5: to go through your life, experience everything, even if it's horrible.
Speaker 5: You must much rather have a keener sense of the
Speaker 5: pain and the joy, otherwise you don't feel anything.
Speaker 2: And I think also just to go back to the women,
Speaker 2: I mean, I think they also does a good job
Speaker 2: of almost explaining where his attitudes to women come from.
Speaker 2: He's got he gets put in the bed, there's two
Speaker 2: women saying, you know, who do you love the most?
Speaker 1: Am I your favorite? You know?
Speaker 2: His first sexual kind of awakening is with a sex
Speaker 2: worker on the beach, you know, and he gets told
Speaker 2: she is the devil by the priest.
Speaker 1: And what does he do? He goes back to her, like.
Speaker 5: Well, he has to go into his classroom with a
Speaker 5: sign on his back that says shame and Italian, and
Speaker 5: he's wearing a conical hat and one's laughing at him.
Speaker 5: And it's not fair because he was encouraged to go
Speaker 5: his friends. It wasn't like his idea or anything. But
Speaker 5: then he's kind of stuck because that's his formative experience,
Speaker 5: whatever it is, and he's got his version of the
Speaker 5: harem later on as a version of what it was
Speaker 5: like to be bathed by his maids and his helpers
Speaker 5: and his mother substitutes his Mum's not around that much, no,
Speaker 5: which is quite interesting. I think there's a moment where
Speaker 5: he helps his father into his grave and he's dressed
Speaker 5: in the same uniform that he wears as a student,
Speaker 5: so as an adult he still sees himself as a schoolboy,
Speaker 5: which I was assuming. His father died when he was
Speaker 5: quite young, so he only had his mother, who seems
Speaker 5: to be running a house where her motherly duties to
Speaker 5: her son are delegated out to maids and cousins and
Speaker 5: family members and that sort of thing. So it's kind
Speaker 5: of yes, you're right. They set up why he might
Speaker 5: be like he is in terms of the world he.
Speaker 1: Needs in order for him to feel comfortable in love. Yeah.
Speaker 2: The shot of the after he helps his father into
Speaker 2: his grave and he kisses his mother, which becomes like
Speaker 2: a turns into Luis's.
Speaker 1: Right of course, so he's making it very clear.
Speaker 2: There's also another libeby of dialogue which I thought was
Speaker 2: fascinating and I think today it really was interesting. It
Speaker 2: was about being on the left or the right. I
Speaker 2: thought i'd write it down. They say, what is right
Speaker 2: and left? Mean he's such an optimist to believe in
Speaker 2: a world this confused and chaotic, that there are people
Speaker 2: so lucid to know whether they are left or right.
Speaker 2: And I thought it was really interesting in today's confusion
Speaker 2: of what the left is now and what the right is?
Speaker 2: You know, can you be left enough? Can you be
Speaker 2: right enough? You know, you can be left on these issues.
Speaker 2: You can believe in changing the date, and you can
Speaker 2: believe in same sex marriage. You could have supported that,
Speaker 2: but if you go to the Melbourne Cup, well fuck,
Speaker 2: that's a different story, you know.
Speaker 4: And I just I don't know.
Speaker 2: I just kind of wasn't expecting a comment about even
Speaker 2: though obviously Italian Italy has always been a very political country,
Speaker 2: but I wasn't expecting a comment on left and right politics.
Speaker 5: I wasn't thinking it was political. Really, No, I didn't
Speaker 5: take it that way. I mean, I see now that
Speaker 5: you've said that, I can hear that that is perfectly valid.
Speaker 1: It's been trained over the right means maybe, yeah.
Speaker 5: I mean I thought it was a question of where
Speaker 5: are you in good or bad or you know, over
Speaker 5: there or over here, rather than say good or bad
Speaker 5: and make a judgment about what you might be if
Speaker 5: you're over there versus over here. I just I don't know,
Speaker 5: I just read it as being a binary way of
Speaker 5: looking at things.
Speaker 1: Whatever it was.
Speaker 5: But yeah, there's clearly a lot of Catholic stuff going
Speaker 5: on there, like in a way that I don't quite
Speaker 5: understand how it could possible.
Speaker 1: And of course he's he's the same. There's this kind
Speaker 1: of weird weird is like he is very religious.
Speaker 2: If Leanie wasn't as religious, and he knew he was
Speaker 2: kind of poking the bear a little bit with the church,
Speaker 2: but then when he was, you know, he was buried
Speaker 2: and given all the religious kind of ceremonies upon.
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, yeah, look there he might not have been
Speaker 5: a devout Catholic, clearly he was when he was young,
Speaker 5: or clearly he was expected to be when he was young.
Speaker 5: I mean, however, whether you reject it or not, if
Speaker 5: you reject it to the extent that he's rejected it
Speaker 5: enough to put it in seventy percent of that film,
Speaker 5: you know, it's clearly weighing heavily.
Speaker 1: It's informed who he is.
Speaker 5: It's absolutely informed who he is, even if it's a
Speaker 5: reaction against it. Yeah, and there's something about there's something
Speaker 5: about the shame and.
Speaker 1: The guilt that is still clearly with it him.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, he's still having to work his way
Speaker 5: through through it, which is a pity because it's such
Speaker 5: a pointless stone around your leg.
Speaker 1: You know, it's.
Speaker 4: Have any religion in your life, No, I need to
Speaker 4: the extent.
Speaker 5: Where there are people in my life to whom it's important.
Speaker 5: So therefore, if it's important to them, and they're important
Speaker 5: to me, it's important for me to know respect what
Speaker 5: they want to do. And I like to think I
Speaker 5: did that with everybody. But yeah, my personal view is
Speaker 5: that it's terrible nonsense and causes more trouble than good.
Speaker 5: To be perfectly honest, Yeah, and even in even in
Speaker 5: a lot of the good that has done in the
Speaker 5: name of God, it's got a string attached to it,
Speaker 5: significant string.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: We'll give you some water and well and maybe a school,
Speaker 5: but first we build a church. We build a little
Speaker 5: chapel for you. In the first book you're going to
Speaker 5: read is this one here, which we It's a popular favorite.
Speaker 5: The Gideons love putting it in the drawers in the
Speaker 5: hotel room. You know, that sort of thing doesn't strike
Speaker 5: me or you know, we're going to educate you, but
Speaker 5: you you know, if you've got to wear this cross
Speaker 5: around your neck strikes me, or whatever shape it is
Speaker 5: always strikes me as a bit of exploitation, because I'm
Speaker 5: not the first person to think that.
Speaker 6: No.
Speaker 2: No, but I was raised Catholic and have similar feelings
Speaker 2: to you. But I have, like you mentioned people around
Speaker 2: me and my grandparents in particular, who I and I did.
Speaker 2: I don't know you've done this before as well, who
Speaker 2: do you think you are? At the end of last year,
Speaker 2: went to air in June, and I learned a lot
Speaker 2: about my great grandparents. And it's interesting when you see faith,
Speaker 2: you know, and how it can work and get people
Speaker 2: through oh, really troubling times. How amazing that is. It
Speaker 2: is just a pity it is connected.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, it's a pity it's connected.
Speaker 5: A pity that God is connected with faith, Yeah, because
Speaker 5: it's just that's kind of a different thing.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, I did.
Speaker 5: I did a series called Stairway to Heaven, which was
Speaker 5: essentially an exploration of faith in God versus religion.
Speaker 1: Right, it wasn't versus religion.
Speaker 5: It was just trying to ignore religion a bit because
Speaker 5: it was more about whatever personal relationship people had with
Speaker 5: some higher authority, and yes, I can definitely see it
Speaker 5: being a very, very human need to believe there is
Speaker 5: a life after this one, because often for many people
Speaker 5: is so miserable, and so in order to get through
Speaker 5: the shit, you're going to have to think that thing
Speaker 5: you're going to there's a reward, or there's a better,
Speaker 5: more perfect version. And we think that of ourselves, Otherwise
Speaker 5: we wouldn't try and better ourselves. I don't necessarily believe
Speaker 5: in the perfectibility of humanity, but it's imperative that we
Speaker 5: believe that. So if you need a perfect God or
Speaker 5: a perfect version of somebody who has made flesh, and
Speaker 5: that's you're going to be your version of what you're
Speaker 5: aiming for. It's kind of the same as going, well,
Speaker 5: I'm going to be the best version of myself that
Speaker 5: I could possibly be. I'll make choices that move one
Speaker 5: thing to one side and something else to the other side.
Speaker 5: I get that if that gets you through whatever amount
Speaker 5: of time we've got eighty.
Speaker 1: Years, right give or take.
Speaker 5: But the reality is, it seems highly unlikely that there's
Speaker 5: any sort of verdant garden for us to walk in
Speaker 5: after we shuffle off.
Speaker 1: I do I mean whenever I'm in the air a plane.
Speaker 4: I look over the clouds and I look for it,
Speaker 4: but no, it's nothing here.
Speaker 5: But you know, I reckon it's healthy to think we
Speaker 5: only got this, because otherwise it's not precious. If you
Speaker 5: think you've got an inexhaustible supply of happy life coming up,
Speaker 5: you're not going to give a fuck about what's going
Speaker 5: on now. I think our job is to try and
Speaker 5: make life a little less miserable for firstly ourselves, because
Speaker 5: we're very selfish creatures humans, but you know, for your
Speaker 5: family next, and then maybe for your friends, and then
Speaker 5: maybe for other people. If you happen to have a
Speaker 5: little bit of time and ability on your hands.
Speaker 2: Have you ever had or do you have ambition to
Speaker 2: direct at all? Because you are well versed obviously, Yeah, I.
Speaker 5: Don't know whether at my age I'm sixty one now,
Speaker 5: you know the only thing I mean, I definitely I'm
Speaker 5: absolutely completely sick of myself as a as an on
Speaker 5: screen performer. I don't know if you've ever had that
Speaker 5: experience where you go, oh fucking how if I see
Speaker 5: my if I see that look on my face one
Speaker 5: more time? Sitting in the edit, sweet mad as Hell,
Speaker 5: I used to sit and go, Oh Jesus, I'm sick
Speaker 5: and tired of seeing that shit eating grin and I
Speaker 5: would like to move behind the camera again. If I
Speaker 5: have stories to tell, I don't want to do. I
Speaker 5: don't think I was talent as Felini. I don't think
Speaker 5: I could I could or McCartney. I don't think I
Speaker 5: could sort of turn the handle and make something if
Speaker 5: I have nothing to add. But the only thing that
Speaker 5: makes me think I wouldn't want to direct is the
Speaker 5: fact you have to get out pretty early in the morning.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you don't have to be first on set, but
Speaker 4: you know you can't be.
Speaker 5: You know what, I couldn't do it any other way.
Speaker 5: I think I would have to probably be the first
Speaker 5: on the set. I would have to one hundred and
Speaker 5: ten percent or nothing.
Speaker 1: You know, I can't.
Speaker 5: It's one of the problems I've got at the moment,
Speaker 5: having finished Man as Hell, which was you know, pretty
Speaker 5: signiaving a workload for a weekly turnaround show. Now it's
Speaker 5: only a TV show, but you know, it's sort of
Speaker 5: occupy most of most of the week, if not all
Speaker 5: of the week. But the idea of trying to think
Speaker 5: of a version that I could do where I wasn't
Speaker 5: doing seven days a week to say, and you see,
Speaker 5: I couldn't do it. I'm like one of those fish
Speaker 5: that grow to the extent that the aquarium will allow,
Speaker 5: and I couldn't get any smaller. I couldn't do it
Speaker 5: any other way. And so that's a problem I've got,
Speaker 5: is that I'm so used to being like making all
Speaker 5: the creative decisions and being there for every step of
Speaker 5: the way that I'm finding it hard to think of
Speaker 5: of doing something just as a writer or just as
Speaker 5: a director or.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've directed some episodes of It's a Date, which
Speaker 2: you were amazing in and directed your episode.
Speaker 1: But that's why I was amazing. It's funny though he
Speaker 1: wrote it, though.
Speaker 2: There isn't terrible performances in there, and the other ones
Speaker 2: that I directed, John would have never been so bad.
Speaker 4: No, that was that was if you haven't seen it,
Speaker 4: Sean plays.
Speaker 5: Offer my offer, Smith Row, good Way, Pete and Rover
Speaker 5: worked with those guys and Adriana yeah you're pickering. Yeah,
Speaker 5: so that was a really good opportunity and my offer.
Speaker 5: I thought, well, this character is interesting, could I make
Speaker 5: him hungarian? I had to do a voice that I
Speaker 5: couldn't act.
Speaker 2: And yeah, you basically play is playwright hung your own
Speaker 2: playwright who works in the theater restaurant, but basically draculas
Speaker 2: and you would quote Peter Laurie and you wrote your
Speaker 2: own did you work?
Speaker 4: Because there's a song in the performance in it? So
Speaker 4: did you do you think I had lived that one?
Speaker 1: You had lived it?
Speaker 5: Yes, yeah, and then you put music on at the end,
Speaker 5: music on the as reason too. It was directed by
Speaker 5: a wonderful director by the name of Jonathan Brow, and
Speaker 5: Jonathan had said to me, I think that he would vape,
Speaker 5: and I thought, oh, that's interesting. This is very the
Speaker 5: very early early stages of vaping coming. And I thought, okay,
Speaker 5: that's interesting. So I was vaping in one scene and
Speaker 5: I really went for it, and I was really a
Speaker 5: vaping hungary and kind of guy. And then obviously at
Speaker 5: some point the ABC had said, oh no, we can't
Speaker 5: have anybody smoking or vaping at all, so all that
Speaker 5: is cut out so often. It's it's really interesting cutting
Speaker 5: pattern because at the very ends of my lines, of
Speaker 5: course I start sucking on the vape thing, but you
Speaker 5: cut off just before I bring the vape into frame.
Speaker 1: So because I wasn't even aware of that.
Speaker 5: And there's but occasionally there's a little bit of mist,
Speaker 5: you know, just just floats across the rope's face as
Speaker 5: he's doing a line.
Speaker 1: So I wonder what the audience must think, you know,
Speaker 1: what's going on there? Bit of sulfur? Is this satan?
Speaker 4: Well, it's a jacular. There's smoke machines probably around.
Speaker 5: If Fellini didn't have this problem, he would have just
Speaker 5: had the guy vaping. There's a lot of smoking that
Speaker 5: goes on, and I'm sure it was the cause of
Speaker 5: those young people turning off on their podcast that they
Speaker 5: didn't like the smoking going on.
Speaker 1: It does look cool, doesn't it.
Speaker 2: I was told when we may I met a movie
Speaker 2: kind of Love You Too, which Dana Reid directed, who
Speaker 2: has gone and to have great success in American TV.
Speaker 2: And Petered English is in the film and really droad
Speaker 2: show we're making that and they they they it wasn't
Speaker 2: a demand, but it was like very They were very.
Speaker 4: Big on those smoking in their films unless it was
Speaker 4: absolutely necessary.
Speaker 1: And you have to do if you have it, you
Speaker 1: need to have a scene or a line that's critical
Speaker 1: of the person. Is that right? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Well so yes, and The one thing in the script
Speaker 2: was that my character was going to be smoking, but
Speaker 2: then I basically put it that straight away and I quit.
Speaker 2: And the joke is that I only took up smoking
Speaker 2: that morning, so they were that got through. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I forget we even got on to all of that.
Speaker 1: I was directing.
Speaker 2: That's right, directing, So I think I think it'd be amazing.
Speaker 2: I think age is no barrier.
Speaker 4: Sean sixty one, you're still very young, and yeah, I'd
Speaker 4: love to see behind the camera.
Speaker 1: Yeah, look, that might be.
Speaker 5: I think what I would like to do is to
Speaker 5: I've had a pretty good run, you know, in terms
Speaker 5: of being able to realize what I want to write
Speaker 5: or perform, So it would be I'm attracted to projects
Speaker 5: where I'm helping real like somebody else's vision. I think
Speaker 5: that would be nice. So yes, perhaps directing somebody else's
Speaker 5: script where I get to collaborate with the writer and
Speaker 5: the producer and the creative people behind that, people I
Speaker 5: haven't worked with before, you know, that would that would
Speaker 5: be appealing And.
Speaker 1: I think I probably. I don't know.
Speaker 5: I used to think again, you'll get back to Wody
Speaker 5: Allen because he said that somebody asked him whether writing and.
Speaker 1: Three he probably said it first.
Speaker 5: Yeah, probably did, he probably did. I think Alan actually
Speaker 5: appeared in a Felleni film which I haven't seen. It
Speaker 5: was a version of King Lear where Woody Allen played
Speaker 5: a character called mister Alien and I haven't seen it,
Speaker 5: but it's it's king Lear, and I think Alan plays
Speaker 5: a kind of Jester, plays the full character in this
Speaker 5: whatever this version is of king Lear.
Speaker 1: I've read that. Anyway. Somebody asked Woody Allen whether writing
Speaker 1: and directing. You know that must be hard.
Speaker 5: You know, you come in, you know you've got to
Speaker 5: you know, you've got to set the cameras up, then
Speaker 5: you've got to change your clothes and you can come
Speaker 5: back on.
Speaker 1: And what they Allen said, No, you're you're editorializing with intimation.
Speaker 1: It's it's not a question of doing that. You just
Speaker 1: go in and you set the cameras up and you
Speaker 1: change your clothes, and you were going to do the lads.
Speaker 1: It's not place the work, it's half the work.
Speaker 5: So for him, for him, it was a lot easier.
Speaker 5: And I guess you know, as a stand up you
Speaker 5: would know this being able to go on and just
Speaker 5: with you and the mic. I think the only person
Speaker 5: you're relying on is the sound guy. Yeah, to be
Speaker 5: able to tell the joke, you know where it is,
Speaker 5: you know where the emphasis is, you know how to
Speaker 5: tell the joke. You know where you need to be,
Speaker 5: you know where your head needs to be. Directing is
Speaker 5: a comedy?
Speaker 1: Is that as you are, you are going well.
Speaker 5: I want the audience to be in this comic environment.
Speaker 5: I need the person to kind of lean in and
Speaker 5: emphasize this thing which you do visually with your Mazon
Speaker 5: scene or whatever your cutting patterns are.
Speaker 1: And that is not hard.
Speaker 5: There's about ten ways you can get it right, and
Speaker 5: there's about probably a million ways you can get it wrong.
Speaker 1: And there it's just to avoid them absolutely.
Speaker 2: And there's so many different there are so many different
Speaker 2: kinds of directors. I mean there's the boody ol on
Speaker 2: the approach, and then there is the you know, the
Speaker 2: Paul Thoma sanders An approa, which will be a very
Speaker 2: different approach. And you can be a different You could
Speaker 2: be a collaborative director or you can be like, this
Speaker 2: is the way we're doing it, you know. And what
Speaker 2: I found when I directed the episode of it today
Speaker 2: and then how to say married is I wasn't aware
Speaker 2: of how important that relationship is between the d P
Speaker 2: and the director. I knew they obviously worked together, but
Speaker 2: you know, to be able to say sometimes, what are
Speaker 2: you thinking?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: It was really amazing. And I got to work Joanna
Speaker 2: Beck with Donaghue and fist recently and done.
Speaker 1: She did, she didn't news type, She's great.
Speaker 2: Jo's great, and more recently Matthew Temple, who is amazing.
Speaker 2: And to be able to say to them, you know,
Speaker 2: usually the first thing you do, you arrive on set,
Speaker 2: you have breakfast with them, you know, and you say, okay,
Speaker 2: you know this, this is what I'm thinking for the scenes.
Speaker 1: Does somebody else have any other other ideas?
Speaker 2: And there were some scenes where you know, I got
Speaker 2: to the point where I was just like, I'm not
Speaker 2: sure about this one. I don't know, you know, and
Speaker 2: we will talk about it and then you know, and
Speaker 2: it would collaborate and and it would be you know,
Speaker 2: I would shoot the scenes and I go, okay, I
Speaker 2: think we can move on, and they'll go listen, have
Speaker 2: you thought of about this shot over here? And there
Speaker 2: were times where I said, I don't think we need it.
Speaker 2: It could be a time thing, yeah, or it's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's a great idea, and that's it. That's what Yeah,
Speaker 2: possibly that's probably the one we end up using.
Speaker 5: You know, Yeah, I look, I think I think I
Speaker 5: find it fascinating. I recently did a thing in New
Speaker 5: Zealand where I was just an actor and it was
Speaker 5: a budget that I have not experienced.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: It was kind of really big sets, and you know,
Speaker 5: so I was I was just in for you know,
Speaker 5: a week or so. So I'm helping out with this
Speaker 5: thing as a as an act not which I learned
Speaker 5: my lines, you know, and I treated the text a
Speaker 5: lot more respectfully than I would treat anything I wrote myself.
Speaker 5: So what was really interesting was watching the director's work
Speaker 5: and thinking, oh, okay, so that, yeah, that's okay. Now
Speaker 5: we're running out of time. I can till we're runing.
Speaker 1: Out of time.
Speaker 5: I can tell this is And then at the end
Speaker 5: of the day, it's just like an episode of It's
Speaker 5: a Date or an episode of Mad as Hell. You've
Speaker 5: got half an hour left, you've got two scenes to shoot,
Speaker 5: you're losing the light, someone's not around, you're acting to
Speaker 5: somebody's hand.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it is the same thing. No matter
Speaker 1: what the budget.
Speaker 5: This thing would have had a decent budget, but it
Speaker 5: doesn't buy you any more hours of the day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love I love the expression. I'm sure you
Speaker 2: had it gone with the wind in the morning, neighbors
Speaker 2: in the afternoon.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess.
Speaker 5: I guess that the skill of the director slash producer
Speaker 5: is to is to say this doesn't matter. Not everything has.
Speaker 5: In Fellini's case, I would argue every frame is a
Speaker 5: work of art. You could probably screen grab any moment
Speaker 5: from that film, and if it was sharp enough, it
Speaker 5: had looked like it'd be a beautiful picture on the wall.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: There's just something astonishing about his ability.
Speaker 5: And whoever his dop is, who would he Ellen's probably
Speaker 5: work with sins would probably Gilliam I think worked with
Speaker 5: a few. I might have even worked with Fellini's dop.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was.
Speaker 2: I did love the Felleni the casting, by the way,
Speaker 2: and the actor because Felleni I had no idea what
Speaker 2: Feleanni looked like. He actually looks like Joe Hockey's kind
Speaker 2: of struggling brother.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he's kind of flattering himself when he casts. Yes,
Speaker 5: Marcello Mastroiani, Yes.
Speaker 4: I was just his name yes, and and I like that.
Speaker 2: I think those all flourishes he has of the dancing
Speaker 2: down the hallways really lovely.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's a pretty cool guy. Yeah, pretty cool guy.
Speaker 2: All his flaws we recognize those, Yes, but yeah, I
Speaker 2: mean I mean the black and white and as sunglasses
Speaker 2: and the suit helps it's pretty cool. Yeah, there's one
Speaker 2: more bit I just wanted to Actually, we have a
Speaker 2: lot of grabs today. Obviously there's usually we play grabs,
Speaker 2: but played many.
Speaker 5: Because I think our description of the film, I don't
Speaker 5: think people need to see it.
Speaker 4: No, this is this is ten out of ten.
Speaker 1: This.
Speaker 2: There's one quote as well, which I thought was also
Speaker 2: pertinent to today's society. We are surrounded by sounds and
Speaker 2: images that have no right to exist, coming from and
Speaker 2: bound for nothingness.
Speaker 1: That's that's Instagram. Yes, yes, you're quite right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I did love that. There's a couple of little
Speaker 4: fun facts we like the throat. We've already covered some.
Speaker 2: Actually, the fact that eight and a half gets its
Speaker 2: name because he had made six features, two shorts and
Speaker 2: was making this film. The dialogue. No dialogue was recorded
Speaker 2: on set. He'd often play music or shout directions on set.
Speaker 2: That often he would rewrite dialogue, which meant that that's
Speaker 2: part of the reason why it doesn't match.
Speaker 1: Often, Yeah, it was.
Speaker 5: Kind of working like a painter. You know, well, I'll
Speaker 5: do that and maybe cover it up later. Yeah, that's
Speaker 5: really interesting, and that knowing that he's yelling out at
Speaker 5: you while you're performing. Apparently bes Leman works that way.
Speaker 5: Apparently I heard a story where he's just sort of
Speaker 5: yelling out and maybe and then his assistant comes to, look,
Speaker 5: we have to be quiet for at least one of
Speaker 5: the takes.
Speaker 1: Actually know how this works.
Speaker 5: I don't think he wears job person uses allowed halo,
Speaker 5: but and apparently I remember reading a story about a
Speaker 5: film that Olivier directed. Lawrence Olivier directed Marilyn Monroe in
Speaker 5: a film called The Prince and the Showgirl. And the
Speaker 5: best scenes, apparently are the ones where he was just
Speaker 5: yelling directions off like a lucky would to in a
Speaker 5: fashion shoot or something like that. So I look up,
Speaker 5: look to the left, look to the right. So he's
Speaker 5: basically painting moving people around rather than rather than allowing
Speaker 5: the actor to act.
Speaker 2: You often hear of directors or reviews and movies it's
Speaker 2: like it's like a it's like a canvas and it's
Speaker 2: almost like it's like painting as an artist. But I
Speaker 2: think I've seen a film that that fits more than
Speaker 2: eight and a half.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he really does.
Speaker 2: I really feel that the imagery is that of an
Speaker 2: artist with the brush.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah. And particularly there's three, I think almost three sixty
Speaker 5: pans where where choreographing extras and actors woving in the
Speaker 5: foreground or popping up in the background or whatever. The
Speaker 5: camera's constantly moving and people are turning on and acknowledging
Speaker 5: the camera, acknowledging Fellinia, knowledging us, acknowledging Guido.
Speaker 1: However you want to look at it.
Speaker 5: And there's even one little bit where there's a woman
Speaker 5: who blows a little kiss, a little kiss to the camera.
Speaker 5: Again startus memories. Sharon Stone in the train blows a
Speaker 5: kiss to the camera.
Speaker 1: Is okay.
Speaker 2: I think some legal proceedings are going to have to
Speaker 2: begin now. I'm not sure how he's gotten away with this,
Speaker 2: But there's also going back to Gino Conti.
Speaker 1: Nino Roddy that you can hear of Bill Conti, who
Speaker 1: did the Rocky music Bill Conty.
Speaker 4: That's right, Bill Conti, No Nino Rota Roter.
Speaker 2: We've fakedout Nino Rotter before because we've covered to Godfather
Speaker 2: films with Luck McGregor. There's a part of the Godfather
Speaker 2: score is heard on the playing on the piano, which
Speaker 2: I think was the reason why he was not able
Speaker 2: to be nominated for an Oscar because part of that
Speaker 2: music had been used.
Speaker 1: So was the best original screenplay?
Speaker 5: Yeah, okay, obviously original, but he uses a bit of
Speaker 5: in eight and a half Nino quotes. In fact, just
Speaker 5: he uses a whole bunch of the saber Dants by Katchaturian.
Speaker 5: I think it's there at one point, yea and quite
Speaker 5: and right of the Valkyries.
Speaker 1: Yes, is there?
Speaker 5: Yeah, probably the first time it was used in a film.
Speaker 5: Possibly it probably influenced Capola deciding that's not a bad
Speaker 5: bit of music.
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 2: I assume a se Stardust memories as well. This is
Speaker 2: this is I found fascinating this final fact. There was
Speaker 2: a strike at the print lab during production, so Felenny
Speaker 2: wasn't seeing Russias at all, so he only saw what
Speaker 2: he had shot when he hit the editing suite, which, considering, wow,
Speaker 2: what we see and what we've just been talking about
Speaker 2: is amazing like, I'm amazed. Franch for a couple had
Speaker 2: a similar thing with the Pickalypse. Now where the print
Speaker 2: lab was back in the US, and he's obviously shooting
Speaker 2: in Asia, so he didn't get those until he wasn't
Speaker 2: seeing Russias.
Speaker 4: He was seeing them when he got back to the stage.
Speaker 4: Also equally amazing.
Speaker 5: He might have had the advantage of video assist. Possibly, Yeah,
Speaker 5: some idea, but of course Feleni wouldn't it.
Speaker 2: No, you've been completely blind. So I do wonder how
Speaker 2: many I mean, there's long there's long shots here. I
Speaker 2: wonder how many takes. I'm not sure how long it
Speaker 2: took them to shoot. Actually, I'd love to know how
Speaker 2: on the shoot I went for.
Speaker 1: But there we go.
Speaker 2: Well, mate, this podcast comes with homework, and you know
Speaker 2: it's not a short film. Sampang deliberately chose the cast
Speaker 2: because of the eighty eight minute running time.
Speaker 4: But yeah, nearly a three hour film. I'm so glad
Speaker 4: you enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, it would have been awful having to sit
Speaker 1: here for this long and say how much we hated it.
Speaker 4: Well, we've had the occasional episode.
Speaker 2: Hami smec donald did not enjoy punch Drunk love Greg
Speaker 2: Larsson wasn't necessarily on board the Jerry Maguire Express.
Speaker 5: They're probably the better ones, you know where you like
Speaker 5: them and they don't. Here we are in furious agreement
Speaker 5: for almost an hour and a half.
Speaker 2: Well you know, I thought we butter the heads a
Speaker 2: bit with the Pee Wee's Big Adventure. But no, they're
Speaker 2: both equally you know, fun because as long as we
Speaker 2: can have a chat. But it does coming home, So
Speaker 2: I do appreciate. I love that you liked it. And
Speaker 2: do you think you're visit with some more Fleannie.
Speaker 5: I won't watch Lastrata right the feelings that I had
Speaker 5: as a fourteen year old what happened. What happened was
Speaker 5: just I just it was so nothing worse than watching
Speaker 5: somebody trying to be funny or thinking they're funny. Actually
Speaker 5: is even worse because everyone thinks she's so funny. Clearly
Speaker 5: the director thinks she's funny. She thinks she's funny.
Speaker 1: To me, she wasn't.
Speaker 5: Other people may disagree. Other people may love the film.
Speaker 5: Is there nights in Cabria? Yes, I might see that,
Speaker 5: I think he might. Yes, Okay, oh well there's then
Speaker 5: I have I have continued studies ahead of me.
Speaker 4: Excellent. And is there anything you've got coming up that
Speaker 4: you want to You got to.
Speaker 5: Know, I'm here just a new joy of spending time
Speaker 5: in your car. Do you love that he's not selling anything?
Speaker 1: Not selling a single thing?
Speaker 2: There was Fleannie had a sign on the camera which
Speaker 2: it said a reminder, this is a comedy, which I thought,
Speaker 2: did you find it funny?
Speaker 4: Like, did you you have?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I found the I found the actor playing Carla
Speaker 1: was very witty. Yeah, yeah, I didn't.
Speaker 5: I thought, at no point did I think the actor
Speaker 5: talked down to the character, which I really liked. She
Speaker 5: found the humanity in the kind of ludicrousness of her,
Speaker 5: which I think is good because you do see a
Speaker 5: lot of films where they go, oh, yeah, we're not
Speaker 5: supposed to like this character. I mean, there's there's a
Speaker 5: certain amount of cruelty in Fellini's use of certain people
Speaker 5: in the foreground or the extras, or something's going, well,
Speaker 5: that's that's a weird face.
Speaker 1: I'm going to use that one. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Apparently people would like extras would arrive and the crowds
Speaker 2: would gather to because whenever he made a film in Italy,
Speaker 2: who became a massive event.
Speaker 1: And he just just grabbed people off the street with well,
Speaker 1: no but people.
Speaker 2: I'm not what he's casting process was where he found
Speaker 2: these people, But people would arrive to the set to
Speaker 2: see who he was using and people he was using.
Speaker 5: Rightly a realist style at Victoria. The secret I think
Speaker 5: for we talked about just briefly with the bicycle the
Speaker 5: I think.
Speaker 1: He would just go you you.
Speaker 5: Standing by that ice cream cartter, come up, come here.
Speaker 2: Well, the freedom of those shooting back then with permits
Speaker 2: probably weren't a thing I wouldn't imagined.
Speaker 5: I don't imagine it even today, even today, if you
Speaker 5: watch any documentary about some nightmare Gilliam shoot China Chetta
Speaker 5: or something like when he was doing a baron Munchaus,
Speaker 5: there's a film that you should get somebody to watch
Speaker 5: and talk about.
Speaker 1: But yeah, look, it'd be a nightmare. Yeah, it'd be
Speaker 1: a nightmare. Mate, Thank you so much, and yeah, see
Speaker 1: you around. Okay, bye, there we have it.
Speaker 2: An episode of You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet and one
Speaker 2: of my favorites. That was so nice chatting to Sean
Speaker 2: about Fellini's Eight and a half. It was a big film.
Speaker 2: It's one of those films that if you love films,
Speaker 2: you feel a little bit guilty, Like if you're a
Speaker 2: real cinephile, you feel a bit guilty, a bit unworthy
Speaker 2: of being named the cinephile.
Speaker 4: If you haven't seen Eight and a half, now I have,
Speaker 4: and I can judge other people.
Speaker 1: I loved it. I really did.
Speaker 4: Enjoyed it the first.
Speaker 2: Time, loved it the second time. I think, if you
Speaker 2: are watching it, just let it wash over you, just
Speaker 2: bathe in it. It is a beautiful looking picture about
Speaker 2: an artist trying to work out we're trying to navigate
Speaker 2: the hurdles in his own life, hurdles that he has
Speaker 2: placed them himself and his career to avoid or to
Speaker 2: please to people around him. It's fascinating the thing. It
Speaker 2: was made in ninety sixty three and then later on
Speaker 2: by Body Allen Stardust Memories.
Speaker 1: Incredible. Thank you.
Speaker 2: I really hoped you enjoyed the show. Please let me
Speaker 2: know what you thought of it any when anything, any
Speaker 2: thoughts you have about Fellini, please let us know. We
Speaker 2: really want to hear them. Go to our speak Part.
Speaker 2: Follow the pages our page there'll be a link to
Speaker 2: speak Part. It's like an answer machine message. Just leave
Speaker 2: us a message We'd love to hear your voice, or
Speaker 2: you can write to us at Yasney Podcast at gmail
Speaker 2: dot com. Thank you everyone for listening. Please go to
Speaker 2: iTunes and give us a rating. I wreckomend five stars
Speaker 2: and leave us a review.
Speaker 1: It all helps with the.
Speaker 2: Algorithm, helps push this little podcast out into the world.
Speaker 2: Next week on the show, very good friend of mine.
Speaker 2: Don't catch up with him as much as I would like.
Speaker 2: I'll work with him many times. He had a small
Speaker 2: role in my film I Love You Too.
Speaker 1: He played a.
Speaker 2: Waiter, a small role, didn't have a name. I made
Speaker 2: a short film and he was good enough to jump
Speaker 2: in and be the lead in that film, Call Christmas Clay.
Speaker 2: He is was in an episode of It's a Date.
Speaker 2: Funnily enough with recent guests Poe's lawson you might know
Speaker 2: whom from the Toyota Ads with his great mate Steve Curry,
Speaker 2: but more recently on Utopia, where he is absolutely brilliant,
Speaker 2: one of the funniest guys I know, a joy to
Speaker 2: be around, and next week could be joining me in
Speaker 2: the studio to discuss We're getting or feely as we
Speaker 2: record this. It's kind of like just at to Father's Day,
Speaker 2: so it's appropriate, even though you might be listening to
Speaker 2: it later on obviously, But Field of Dreams, Kevin Costner,
Speaker 2: if you build it, they will come. I haven't actually
Speaker 2: seen it before, which is embarrassing, but I know that
Speaker 2: line is from it, and I know Radio is in
Speaker 2: there as well. Anyway, looking forward to Field the Dreams come,
Speaker 2: wait to watch it, coming to discuss it next week
Speaker 2: with Dave Lawson.
Speaker 4: And you wanted nothing yet until then?
Speaker 6: By for now, And so we leave old Pete Steve
Speaker 6: Man sul and to old friends of the radio audience,
Speaker 6: We've been a pleasant good name.
Speaker 5: Two