Speaker 1: Kiday, Peter Hell, are you here? Welcome to you ain't
Speaker 1: seen nothing yet?
Speaker 2: The Movie podcast will rotch out to a movie lover
Speaker 2: about a classic or beloved the movie they haven't quite
Speaker 2: got around to watching until now. And today's guest writer
Speaker 2: actor legend Lucky Hume.
Speaker 3: All below.
Speaker 4: I want to stay you with you, go to the
Speaker 4: jobbery snake shucked?
Speaker 1: Why fail? It couldn't happening right?
Speaker 3: So you don't see nothing?
Speaker 1: Quite simply. Lucky Hue is Australian acting royalty.
Speaker 2: He broke into the beers by writing screenplays including Men
Speaker 2: with Guns and the controversial Let's Get Skase. But from
Speaker 2: there he has largely been a presence on screen, and
Speaker 2: what a screen presence. Lockeye is or Lockie is one
Speaker 2: of our most incredibly gifted actors.
Speaker 1: He can play everything.
Speaker 2: From Leo Nazis to politicians, from Kerry Packet to Welt
Speaker 2: Frank Packer. Audiences saw a softer side in Lockey's as
Speaker 2: Martin Klegg in Offspring, which Australians audience has just absolutely loved.
Speaker 2: He was so brilliant as the socially awkward doctor, surrounded
Speaker 2: by other acting royalist such as Asha Kenny and Kat
Speaker 2: Stewart and of course Dead Mailman.
Speaker 1: I also urge you to check out his role as Rory.
Speaker 2: The sperm donating stripper in an episode of It's a
Speaker 2: Date we shot alongside another icon magne Zebanski. Locky's credits
Speaker 2: also include Gallipoli, The Matrix Films, George Miller's Three Thousand
Speaker 2: Years of Longing, Secret River, Macbeth Preacher, and.
Speaker 1: Of course gun Bus.
Speaker 2: Seeing Locky work on set and go about his business
Speaker 2: is is to witness a true professional.
Speaker 1: I've had the honor of doing it.
Speaker 2: He is absolutely dedicated to his craft, but Lucky is
Speaker 2: also incredibly considerate of all cast and crew. He knows
Speaker 2: for any production to work, it needs to be a
Speaker 2: team effort. But he's also happy to be a leader
Speaker 2: on set in a truly wonderful way. Lockey is one
Speaker 2: of the most passionate and loyal people I know. He's
Speaker 2: constantly supporting the Australian comedy scene. He's insightful, he's engaged,
Speaker 2: and he's dedicated. These are to some of the reasons
Speaker 2: I'm stoked could be hanging out with Lucky Hume today.
Speaker 3: Gooday, I'm Lucky Hume, Australia's actor and My three favorite
Speaker 3: films are The Godfather Part two nineteen seventy four, Francis
Speaker 3: Ford Coppola. We've got a college to get stillpord really
Speaker 3: steal The Godfather nineteen seventy two, Francis Ford Copola. What
Speaker 3: have I ever done to make your taken service? Respectfully?
Speaker 5: It'd come to me in friendship, and this coum that
Speaker 5: wounded dollar would be suffering.
Speaker 2: This very day.
Speaker 3: The Conversation nineteen seventy four, Francis Ford Copola. I need
Speaker 3: to have no work of nine. And since I don't
Speaker 3: want you to think I'm just obsessed with Copola, I'm
Speaker 3: going to give you a couple more. My fourth favorite film,
Speaker 3: Supergo nineteen seventy three, Sidney Lamett.
Speaker 5: Please I beg of your come out and potatoes come Out.
Speaker 3: You're pretty fucking weird. Of all the President's Men nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy six, Alan J. Pacola, Follow the Money. I can't
Speaker 3: tell you that, but up until this week, I'd never
Speaker 3: seen Awson Wells nineteen fifty eight film noir Touch of Evil.
Speaker 3: Some groovy tunes from Henry Mancini.
Speaker 1: You feel it.
Speaker 2: When a car bomb explodes on the American side of
Speaker 2: the Mexican American border killing a wealthy businessman and his
Speaker 2: blonde stripper mistress, Senior narcotics officer Mike Vargas Shelton Heston, Yes,
Speaker 2: Chelton Heston plays a Mexican. It just happens to be
Speaker 2: nearby smooching his new bride, Susan Vargas pre psycho Janet Lye.
Speaker 2: Such is his nature. Mike can't help but get involved.
Speaker 2: But when local law enforcer Hank Quinland arrives, played of
Speaker 2: course by Awson Wells in a fat suit and heavy prosthetics,
Speaker 2: He's keen to wrap this investigation up quickly. What follows
Speaker 2: is a study of justice, betrayal, racism, and corruption. Famous
Speaker 2: for its stunning opening, a four minute tracking shot. Touch
Speaker 2: of Evil is regarded by many as the last great
Speaker 2: noir film of the classic era. Citizen Kane, made by
Speaker 2: Well seventeen years earlier. May garanna or the kudos and acclaim,
Speaker 2: but there is just as much to admire in this
Speaker 2: dense thriller. Lucky Hume, be honest, have you ever planted evidence?
Speaker 3: Not since Breakfast? Well, this is a special episode, mate,
Speaker 3: Well it's funny you should mentioned now listen. I just
Speaker 3: want to get some of the ground rules on the
Speaker 3: show here, Pete, because you know I like flying blind
Speaker 3: a little bit. But can we do spoilers on the show?
Speaker 5: Yes?
Speaker 2: Okay, yes, So if you haven't seen a Touch of
Speaker 2: Evil now and this episode, this podcast, what is fascinating
Speaker 2: Lockie is I assume when we started this people would
Speaker 2: watch the movie.
Speaker 1: First and then listen to the podcast.
Speaker 2: But I've had a lot of anecd evidence where people
Speaker 2: have been telling me that they will happily listen to
Speaker 2: the spoiler full episode and then go and happily watched
Speaker 2: the movie afterwards. So as long as it's the warning,
Speaker 2: you've been warned, spoilers all through this for a Touch
Speaker 2: of Evil and obviously Capola's entire filmography.
Speaker 3: A lot of people will shoot me because they say,
Speaker 3: you haven't got a picked a couple of films, if
Speaker 3: you're your top two and you haven't got Apocalypse Now,
Speaker 3: And it's like, nah, but we'll talk about this later.
Speaker 3: He never got the final ten minutes right on Apocalypse Now.
Speaker 3: It's always been my big complaint. People have threaten to
Speaker 3: kill me over that. But anyway, we're not here to
Speaker 3: talk about Apocalypse and.
Speaker 2: Beig caause and we'll get to your favorite movie soon.
Speaker 2: But let's this, This is like a big episode because
Speaker 2: you have been seen as the Unicorn, my white Whale.
Speaker 2: How do I get lucky Hume? How do we find
Speaker 2: a movie you haven't seen? People thought Tony Martin would
Speaker 2: be difficult. Tony actually had quite a few. We haven't
Speaker 2: seen Top Gunners where we we got to Tony fantastic.
Speaker 1: And we had We've had many conversations.
Speaker 2: We had like a three hour conversations during lockdown, and
Speaker 2: we're talked about we got sidetracked and we talked about
Speaker 2: other things.
Speaker 1: Other things.
Speaker 2: When I say other things, movies, maybe a bit of
Speaker 2: footy as well. But recently you just text me out
Speaker 2: of the blue and said got it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, I mean I initially all this process started,
Speaker 3: you sent me a huge email with hundreds of movies
Speaker 3: on it saying pick one. This is how the show works.
Speaker 3: Come on and talk about something you haven't seen, and
Speaker 3: I guess sent back to see them all because I had.
Speaker 2: I went, well, it was one movie I hadn't seen
Speaker 2: what you refuse to do for this podcast, which is
Speaker 2: legally Blonde.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've seen half of Legally Blond, seen half so
Speaker 3: it's like that was enough for me. So tell you what.
Speaker 3: I was watching Get Shorty, which was part of the
Speaker 3: sort of the Travolter comeback in the nineties. You did
Speaker 3: it right. I booked it right after you did Pulp
Speaker 3: Fiction for Tarantino. That's a great film, Get Shorty. If
Speaker 3: people haven't seen it, it's one of the funniest satires
Speaker 3: of Hollywood. And it's based on Elmore Leonard's novel of
Speaker 3: the same name. Fantastic movie. John Travolta, Gene Hackman, Renee Russo,
Speaker 3: Danny DeVito, on and on and on. And there's a
Speaker 3: scene where Travolta's character plays a sort of a standover
Speaker 3: man and a debt collector for the mob in Miami,
Speaker 3: but he's also a movie tragic and he goes off
Speaker 3: to he's in La finds himself through circumstance in Los
Speaker 3: Angeles and he goes to a revival movie house on
Speaker 3: Sunset Boulevard and he's watching Touch of Evil. So I
Speaker 3: was watching this on Blu Ray again. Yeah, I'm watching
Speaker 3: Travolta watching Touch of Evil. And I've seen Get Shorty
Speaker 3: many times, and it suddenly occurred to me. I don't
Speaker 3: think i've ever seen Touch of Evil. And it occurred
Speaker 3: to me because at the end of this sequence where
Speaker 3: Travolta's character is watching Touch of Evil, he is lip
Speaker 3: syncing or mouthing the dialogue that Marlena Dietrich who has
Speaker 3: a great cameo and Touch of Evil towards the end,
Speaker 3: and I'm going he knows the dialogue, which means this
Speaker 3: must be a good film, and I haven't seen it.
Speaker 3: And I went get on the phone to Hellia straight away.
Speaker 3: It was like, Bang, we've got it, buddy. It's Touch
Speaker 3: of Evil and so great. You're excited. I'm excited for
Speaker 3: the listener at home. I'm a huge believer. I'm not
Speaker 3: a streamer. I don't I've been on shows that have
Speaker 3: been on streaming services and I've actually got a free
Speaker 3: subscription to Stand for Life, but I've never hooked it
Speaker 3: up because I actually believe in owning movies, and so
Speaker 3: I have a Sony Blu Ray multi region, which means
Speaker 3: I can just get a Blu Ray from anyone or
Speaker 3: plays DVDs as well, Okay, and so it's great because
Speaker 3: you get like a DVD from the States, from the UK,
Speaker 3: from wherever you are, Blu Ray from wherever you want,
Speaker 3: and sometimes and you put it in, it says not
Speaker 3: compatible operating, you know, But with this machine, you just
Speaker 3: I always list laugh out loud. I see on my
Speaker 3: caction and go we can play this game all night.
Speaker 3: So what you do is eject it and as you
Speaker 3: as you hit it to go back in, you hit
Speaker 3: one of the buttons and it gets suddenly, did you've
Speaker 3: got your movie going? So I ordered the Blu ray
Speaker 3: of Touch of Evil and it has there. There's three
Speaker 3: versions of it. Yes, So there is the work cut
Speaker 3: that Awesome Will submitted to the studio in nineteen fifty eight.
Speaker 3: They took it out of his hands inherently, which often
Speaker 3: happened with Awesin Wells, and re started re editing the movie.
Speaker 1: Because he went on to another project.
Speaker 2: It wasn't because when you hear of somebody taking a
Speaker 2: project out of the creator's hands, you know, you think, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: these an image of what that must have looked like.
Speaker 2: But I think it really was almost out of frustration
Speaker 2: that this wasn't moving fast enough. And now he's gone
Speaker 2: to work on another project. This is not going to happen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And you've got to remember that. I can't remember
Speaker 3: the name of the producer of Touch of Evil, but
Speaker 3: he was sort of one of the King of the
Speaker 3: b movies kind of guys who wanted those sort of
Speaker 3: get it done, get it done quick, get it done fast,
Speaker 3: get it into the cinemas, get it into the drive
Speaker 3: ins log Corman. Yeah, yeah, part of a double bill whatever.
Speaker 3: So Wells had gone off to act in another film,
Speaker 3: and so the studio and the producer assigning you editing
Speaker 3: team to it. So I've got that. I haven't watched
Speaker 3: that version. I've got that was the theatrical release version.
Speaker 3: But anyway, as a result of that happening, Austin Wells
Speaker 3: wrote a very impassioned fifty eight page, single spaceed memo
Speaker 3: to the studio outlining his vision for Touch of Evil,
Speaker 3: the changes he felt should be made to it that
Speaker 3: could still be made. It was ignored, but the memo
Speaker 3: became quite quite famous among movie buffs when the film
Speaker 3: was sort of rediscovered in the seventies by the sort
Speaker 3: of movie brat generation, the Spielberg's and the Coppolers and
Speaker 3: the Lucases and the Scorsesees and all those guys and
Speaker 3: part of that core, especially talking about Copler again, of course,
Speaker 3: he formed American Zoo Trophy's own company up in San Francisco.
Speaker 3: There was a guy who worked for copeler still does,
Speaker 3: called Walter Mersch. Now Merks is one of the great
Speaker 3: film editors, but most famous in film history. When you
Speaker 3: see in the movie credits sound designer, that term was
Speaker 3: invented for Walter Merch for Coppola's film The Conversation, where
Speaker 3: he did the sound design for the film. And so Merch,
Speaker 3: who's part of that group of great filmmakers who believe
Speaker 3: in the restoration of films and the preservation of motion picture.
Speaker 3: He took Wells's fifty eight page memo, he got into
Speaker 3: the vaults at Universal. They found a lot of the
Speaker 3: footage had been discarded that Wells had addressed in his memo,
Speaker 3: and Walter Merk's painstakingly put the film back together, which
Speaker 3: was released in nineteen ninety eight to greater claim. So
Speaker 3: that's the version that I've watched, and that's the version
Speaker 3: of Pete's Watch Listener. There's a little sidebar to that though,
Speaker 3: that Usen Hill's daughter sued them, Beatrius Well yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: sued them for doing this. So it sort of really
Speaker 3: gummed up the works. And getting this film out there.
Speaker 3: And then she said later she won the case, saw
Speaker 3: they done totally approved of it anyway, and so I
Speaker 3: wish they just told me that that's what they were doing.
Speaker 3: We wouldn't have had all this lawsuit to begin with.
Speaker 3: So I don't know where the lines of communications broke
Speaker 3: down there, But anyway, so we're going to be talking
Speaker 3: today about the I suppose you would call it the
Speaker 3: Awesome Wells Vision version of Dutch People. Courtesy of the
Speaker 3: fifty eight page memo and courtesy of Walter Merch.
Speaker 2: Possibly one of the earliest I guess director's cuts, because
Speaker 2: usually the director's cut is this we get used to.
Speaker 2: You know, Tarantina doesn't do directors cuting. He guess, no,
Speaker 2: because I've got you know, I've got Can't Blanche. I
Speaker 2: can make the film that you want to see. So
Speaker 2: this was one of the earlier examples of a director
Speaker 2: being able to, I guess put out his version even
Speaker 2: though he had passed. But based on this fifty eight
Speaker 2: page memo, so it's quite it's quite fascinating that Walter Merch.
Speaker 1: I don't want to go too deep because I want to,
Speaker 1: but it's fascinating.
Speaker 2: Can chatter about later Walter Merch, I assumed he did
Speaker 2: the SMA sign on the conversation. Yes he did, and
Speaker 2: then that comes out obviously the play would be fascinating
Speaker 2: that here in between the original towards the back of
Speaker 2: that film, the third act with the surveillance, and and
Speaker 2: how that sounds because I was watching it, going this
Speaker 2: sounds amazing, Like the sound design on this is incredible?
Speaker 3: Are you talking about in Touch of Evil?
Speaker 2: Following? And it kind of switches perspectives, and I wonder
Speaker 2: I would love to listen to the original and see
Speaker 2: the difference even he made it to the sound.
Speaker 3: As I'm sure fascinating.
Speaker 1: There be so much we are chomping at the bit.
Speaker 3: Okay, let's get into what this story is about you.
Speaker 1: I want to ask you about your favorite films.
Speaker 3: Okay, so we're not going to talk about A Touch
Speaker 3: of It.
Speaker 1: No, we'll be coming out the Touch of Evil.
Speaker 2: Don't worry about that. We are coming back to that.
Speaker 2: We want to touch It. So we wont talk about
Speaker 2: all five films, but we can talk broadly. Maybe let's
Speaker 2: talk about Coppler. For first of all, do you actually
Speaker 2: Godfather Part two? I also have like a bees dick
Speaker 2: gun to my head, it's Godfather Part two, just ahead
Speaker 2: of Godfather from me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, what I always say with I was just
Speaker 3: trying to be good for your broadcast. Normally, normally what's
Speaker 3: your favorite film? I always say Godfather one, Godfather Too,
Speaker 3: Godfather to Godfather one. Okay, you can't have Godfather Too
Speaker 3: without Godfather one because you have no perspective. The Godfather
Speaker 3: is absolutely sublime. It's perfect cinema. As Stanley Kubrick said
Speaker 3: about it, if you put the two together, it becomes
Speaker 3: one Part one and Part two. It's a six and
Speaker 3: a half hour viewing experience. And kubric said it is,
Speaker 3: hands down, over that six and a half hours, the
Speaker 3: greatest cast ever assembled in motion picture history. And he's right.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's just a shopping list of the greatest
Speaker 3: actors of all time. I think the thing about Godfather
Speaker 3: Part Two is the conception of it to do ultimately
Speaker 3: what it is. It's the story of a father and
Speaker 3: a son at the same point in their lives using
Speaker 3: flashback and flash forward device, but it takes it continues
Speaker 3: the story of the first Godfather film really through the
Speaker 3: eyes of Michael Corleyoni played by Alpatuno, whose accumulation of
Speaker 3: power no longer centers around trying to tech the family.
Speaker 3: It actually becomes power for power's own sake, and it
Speaker 3: takes him down to the seventh level of hell, and
Speaker 3: he finds that he's perfectly comfortable being there. So it's
Speaker 3: a dissent. It's I rate Chino's performance in Part two
Speaker 3: is the greatest on screen male actor performance in the
Speaker 3: history of cinema. It is an incredibly subtle, annuanced performance,
Speaker 3: and there's not a lot of arc for him to
Speaker 3: go on, okay, because he kind of starts bad and
Speaker 3: just gets worse, you know what I mean. And it's
Speaker 3: done by degrees, and it's so subtle, the degrees, I mean,
Speaker 3: if you're just getting inst to the mechanics of acting.
Speaker 3: The flashback sequences. So, of course, in the first film,
Speaker 3: Marlon Brando most famously played Don Vito Corleone for the
Speaker 3: flashback sequences for his origin story, they cast a young
Speaker 3: actor called Robert de Niro as the young Vito Corleone.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's just astonishing when you think about it.
Speaker 3: And interestingly, up until Heath Leger and then later or
Speaker 3: Kent Phoenix, both winning Oscars for playing Batman's enemy, the Joker.
Speaker 3: The only fictional character that's been awarded to Oscars was
Speaker 3: Brando for Godfather one for Veto and DeNiro for Godfather
Speaker 3: Part two for Veto. Okay, and it's interesting. I almosto
Speaker 3: a Batman fanic. So it's Godfather and Batman seem to
Speaker 3: be the go tos are you're gonna win Oscars. But
Speaker 3: I think with part one and Part two also, and
Speaker 3: I saw Alec Ball when interviewed about it once and
Speaker 3: he said, you almost feel like you're watching your own
Speaker 3: family movies when you watch it, because you become so
Speaker 3: invested in these characters, even though it's the gangster genre.
Speaker 3: It's very different for something like The Sopranos, where the
Speaker 3: characters in the Sopranos are actually really quite repellent, and
Speaker 3: it's a real difficult watch the Sopranos just I found
Speaker 3: the verbal violence between the characters is so confrontational, particularly
Speaker 3: between Tony Soprano and Carmella, his wife, when they get
Speaker 3: into it, it's really oh Man. Whereas the differences with
Speaker 3: the Corleone crime family in the Godfather films, I think
Speaker 3: Albert Raddy, who produced the first one, summed it up best.
Speaker 3: He said, We're going to make a film about ice,
Speaker 3: cold blooded killers that you love, and that's really what
Speaker 3: it is. You love these people. You know. I was
Speaker 3: talking with Rob Sich once about the Godfather films, and
Speaker 3: he said to me, if you notice that the only
Speaker 3: actor who takes it really seriously is Baccino, said, everybody
Speaker 3: else plays it really light in the film. And it's true.
Speaker 3: You think about it. You think about in the opening
Speaker 3: scene of The Godfather where Bonnasarah, the undertaker, is asking
Speaker 3: the don for revenge against the guys who raped his daughter,
Speaker 3: and you know, there's almost like a petulant, little child
Speaker 3: thing going on with Brando's performance, you know, he sort
Speaker 3: of shrugs. He said, I don't know if I want
Speaker 3: to do this. It's like, okay, all right. You know,
Speaker 3: if you look at James Kahn's performance is Sonny, which
Speaker 3: is my favorite character. I read a great interview with
Speaker 3: Jimmy carn where he said I couldn't get my handle
Speaker 3: on Sunny until one night in New York during rehearsal period.
Speaker 3: I went and saw Rodney Dangerfield at a club. Okay,
Speaker 3: and he said it wasn't Dangerfield that switched it on
Speaker 3: for me, it was the nice started thinking about Riles,
Speaker 3: the insult comedian, and he said, so, Sonny is really
Speaker 3: don Rickles that it was Roddy Dangerfield that sent him
Speaker 3: off down that path. Allegedly, that's the story goes, and
Speaker 3: it is. It's brilliant and so once he locked into that.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know that famous shot you in the
Speaker 3: wedding sequence at the high and wide shot with the
Speaker 3: FBI guys are taking down the license plates numbers of
Speaker 3: all the mafios were attending the wedding. When James Kn't
Speaker 3: comes out commit commit comme come here, commere it's my
Speaker 3: sister's wedding, and he smashes the camera and then throws
Speaker 3: the money at him. There was just action, do whatever
Speaker 3: you want. Yeah, you know, they were so in the zone,
Speaker 3: which when you.
Speaker 2: Think about it, the film is really about the one
Speaker 2: member of the family who now has a responsibility. He
Speaker 2: needs to be a responsible one and he's just come
Speaker 2: back from war, so you know, he's not coming back
Speaker 2: from the holiday. He is responsible. And where the others
Speaker 2: have that response.
Speaker 3: You've got to think about them as trust fun kids. Yeah,
Speaker 3: in a lot of ways, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: Whereas Michael. Now, this is the interesting thing about Michael.
Speaker 3: Everybody interviewed ever, you know, whether it be Spielberg talking
Speaker 3: about the godfil films or anything, they always talk about
Speaker 3: the transformation of Michael from World War II hero to
Speaker 3: mafia boss. It's not a transformation. It's a simple transition
Speaker 3: now you think about it. Right, This guy joined the
Speaker 3: Marines on Pearl Harbor Day. Okay, all right, he was
Speaker 3: a college kid and joined the Marines. First of all,
Speaker 3: you choose them, they don't choose you. That's the United
Speaker 3: States Marine Corps. Right. He fights in the South Pacific
Speaker 3: at Guadalcanal. That got down to hand to hand bayonet
Speaker 3: content combat against the Japanese. Okay, that was one of
Speaker 3: the most bloodiest campaigns of World War Two. Michael wins
Speaker 3: the Navy Cross for his bravery in that situation.
Speaker 2: It's fascinating because you don't like, they don't lean into
Speaker 2: that at all, right, which.
Speaker 3: In fact, they make a joke about it. When Sonny
Speaker 3: is another the army where you shoot him a mile away,
Speaker 3: you're gotting him my course, like this, but a bang
Speaker 3: one of the brens Oliver and a saving league silt right, Okay,
Speaker 3: Sonny's conception is that soldiers are in trenches shooting rifles.
Speaker 3: Michael's reality of the war was getting a bayon out
Speaker 3: and cutting throats. Okay, So that's why he's so quiet
Speaker 3: about it. That's why they don't lean into it. Okay.
Speaker 3: But if you've done your background, if you read Pizzo's
Speaker 3: novel and Stuff, which Mary puss novel, which is based
Speaker 3: on hints at that. Michael's also loosely based on John
Speaker 3: the future President, John F. Kennedy, who was a great
Speaker 3: war hero. I also served in the South Pacific, not
Speaker 3: in close combat circumcisces like that. But if you look
Speaker 3: at the structure of the Colioni family, it's actually the
Speaker 3: Kennedy structure. Okay. You've got the favored son in Sonny,
Speaker 3: which is Joe, who died in the war in real life,
Speaker 3: and then you've got the middle son Jack, and then
Speaker 3: you've got the sort of perceived weakling son Ted, who's Freido. Okay.
Speaker 3: So Michael is sort of based on John F. Kennedy.
Speaker 3: So it's not a transformation into being a mafia killer
Speaker 3: and a cold blooded bastard. He already is one. Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 3: that's the key to understanding Bicino's genius in his performance,
Speaker 3: the quietness of him, the watchfulness of him. He's like
Speaker 3: a cobra. Okay, He's ready to strike, and no one knows.
Speaker 3: He's completely underestimated by everybody in his own family. You know,
Speaker 3: there's little hints. You know, Clemenza sort of gets it
Speaker 3: a little bit when he says, you know, we're all
Speaker 3: proud of you have being a war hero. Your father too,
Speaker 3: they know, you know, when Michael's down in Clemens's basement,
Speaker 3: in his garage, his workshop, practicing with the gun that
Speaker 3: he's going to use to kill salots on McCluskey, which,
Speaker 3: by the way, is Michael's idea to do it up close,
Speaker 3: point blank right, think about that? Ye all right? Notice
Speaker 3: that Michael's wearing his army sweater. He's a Marine Corps sweater.
Speaker 3: He dressed militarily for that sequence. You know, there's little
Speaker 3: hints that's you know, that's all those little feathered details.
Speaker 1: It's so good. I love the assassination scene.
Speaker 2: I love it because and I had the pleasure of
Speaker 2: chatting to young young Miles Taller.
Speaker 3: Who plays Albert Ruddy in the offer.
Speaker 1: Absolutely fantastic series.
Speaker 2: If you haven't seen it, and and we spoke about
Speaker 2: that scene of the difference. It's just a the best
Speaker 2: scene you can show somebody that kind of go. This
Speaker 2: is how they used to make movies. Yeah, the best movies.
Speaker 2: Not every movie was made. Like the gun, Like the
Speaker 2: pouring of the wine when they sit down, fascin.
Speaker 3: I know, the pop of the pop of the wine
Speaker 3: bottle for stuff, right.
Speaker 2: Can you imagine now that would have been You have
Speaker 2: Michael say I'll pull the wine thanks all you know,
Speaker 2: like get get the waiter away and let's start this scene.
Speaker 2: A couple of those that now, this is the scene.
Speaker 2: It's the tension. The audience is fucking feeling every fucking
Speaker 2: absolutely and the play that out is so because he
Speaker 2: knows he's got this tense scene when he goes back
Speaker 2: for the gun where the tension even are even more.
Speaker 1: And then when he comes back out, so this intention.
Speaker 3: I don't forget when he comes back out of the
Speaker 3: toilet where the gun has been hidden, take by you know,
Speaker 3: I want somebody good and iman very good to plant
Speaker 3: that gun. I don't my brother coming out of that
Speaker 3: toilet with just he's dicking his hands right and gets
Speaker 3: that he's got the gun, which, by the way, each
Speaker 3: take cope they can move in the gun, so that
Speaker 3: Piccino didn't know where it was. And of course, like
Speaker 3: I still remember the first time we ever saw The Godfather,
Speaker 3: and I was third eight on VHS, terrified, terrified, Oh
Speaker 3: my god, the gun's not going to be there now.
Speaker 3: Clemenza is instructed Michael. Remember when you come out, you
Speaker 3: shoot him two times. And they had a beast right, literally,
Speaker 3: as soon as you step out of the bathroom, that's
Speaker 3: when you do it. And so when Michael steps out,
Speaker 3: we're dirty over his shoulder in the shop where you
Speaker 3: see McCluskey and Salotso sitting at the table, and there's
Speaker 3: mcluskey wolfing down his veil. Trail, the veil. It's the
Speaker 3: best in the city. All right, Michael can shoot them.
Speaker 3: Then he doesn't.
Speaker 1: He's down.
Speaker 3: He stalks over very slowly and sits back down. All right.
Speaker 3: Brando wrote in his memoir that you know, it's the
Speaker 3: only film with Brando's that Brando's ever seen, was The Godfather.
Speaker 3: And it was only because he caught it late at
Speaker 3: night on a cable years and years later, and he
Speaker 3: couldn't turn it off right, and he said, watching My
Speaker 3: boy Alpuccino as the camera slowly starts pushing in on
Speaker 3: him as he's making a decision. I've never been able
Speaker 3: to read an actor's mind. You can read his mind.
Speaker 3: That is true acting. And of course when he pulls
Speaker 3: the gun out and he's just point blank on these
Speaker 3: guys and he doesn't even blink while he's doing it.
Speaker 3: So this transformation theory is bullshit. It's just Michael doing
Speaker 3: what he does best. He didn't know how good he was,
Speaker 3: but he knows. I don't need I don't need my
Speaker 3: Marine Corps uniform to do this. I can just do
Speaker 3: it in a three piece suit.
Speaker 2: Now, So do you reckon that. Michael came back and
Speaker 2: he was expecting. He knows who his family is, what
Speaker 2: the family business is.
Speaker 1: So there's two ways.
Speaker 2: Is he coming back thinking I will get involved, It's
Speaker 2: not the way that's sold. He certainly sold like he's
Speaker 2: coming back to restart it a new life. Yeah, he's
Speaker 2: almost awakened, so he's almost come back. I'm not part
Speaker 2: of the family, he tells, Kay, that's my family's business.
Speaker 2: I'm not part of the business. Obviously things change, so
Speaker 2: that awakens.
Speaker 3: It's interesting, you said, Michael knows the family business. Michael
Speaker 3: knows the family business better than anyone. It's if you
Speaker 3: watch all of his interactions with his family. When it
Speaker 3: comes to the business, he's the only when it clearly
Speaker 3: understands the hierarchies, the systems, the codes. You know, when
Speaker 3: he's when after the Don's the assassination attempt on the Don,
Speaker 3: when they're all in the Don's office and just before
Speaker 3: you know, they're having the discussion about you know, I
Speaker 3: want Pauly gadd I want that's you know that strungs
Speaker 3: he set up the old man, I want to dead.
Speaker 3: Make it in the morning, your list, all that stuff,
Speaker 3: and Michael's sitting around and there's so basically, Mike, you
Speaker 3: stay out of this. You stay out of what we're
Speaker 3: doing here. But try Luca Bradsey again. Luca Bradzey, the
Speaker 3: great enforcer for the family, who's been bumped off earlier
Speaker 3: in the evening, and he's dial number when the when
Speaker 3: Tessio brings in Luca's body armor with the fish in
Speaker 3: at what theell is this? It's a Sicilian message. She
Speaker 3: means Luka brights he sleeps with the fishes. Before anyone
Speaker 3: else reacts Michael just who's been ringing words of Brackley's house.
Speaker 3: Mike just hangs the phone up. It's like, I won't
Speaker 3: need to make that call. But it's like straight away,
Speaker 3: you know, when he proposes after McCluskey bashes him and
Speaker 3: breaks his jaw and disfigures him at the hospital where
Speaker 3: he's going to visit his father, he's saying, I'm with
Speaker 3: you now, I'm with you now. He's made the decision
Speaker 3: because he loves his dad. You know, I think the
Speaker 3: answer to you earlier, you know, your point being though,
Speaker 3: when Michael came back from the war, I don't think
Speaker 3: he really knew what he was going to do. Like
Speaker 3: a lot of veterans, they come back a bit directionless.
Speaker 3: He's gone back to Dartmouth, colleague, that's the plan. He's
Speaker 3: going to go back and continue his studies in history
Speaker 3: and English literature, which we of course John F. Kennedy's topics,
Speaker 3: and political science, which is John F. Kennedy's major. Okay,
Speaker 3: at Harvard, not Dartmouth. Andover isi goes he goes to
Speaker 3: Andover College, and I think he's a bit directionless. He's
Speaker 3: got his beautiful girl, kay. You know, it's he needed
Speaker 3: something to yank him into action, and which is of
Speaker 3: course part of the hero's journey. There is the call
Speaker 3: to action or the anti hero's journey in Michael's case,
Speaker 3: you know, and it's the attempt on his father's life.
Speaker 3: And he knows that Sonny's too hot headed, even though
Speaker 3: he loves Sonny and Sonny loves him. Fredo's beautiful but useless,
Speaker 3: you know, he says in Godfather Too. Fredo's got a
Speaker 3: good heart, but he's weak and stupid, all right, Okay,
Speaker 3: he knows he's the right man at the right moment
Speaker 3: in history. So when he goes and when they're sitting
Speaker 3: around on the Down's office later after McCluskey's bashed his
Speaker 3: face in and he says, I'll kill him both. I'll
Speaker 3: kill mcluskey in slants and they all start laughing, but
Speaker 3: he says it's the pros Salatso is the key. We've
Speaker 3: got to get rid of Salatza. Okay, but he's I'll
Speaker 3: kill him both. They all start cracking up, right, but test,
Speaker 3: after they had their bit of funny goes, you know,
Speaker 3: but make his right. You hear that in the background,
Speaker 3: Mike's right. Mikey knows it's the only way. The key
Speaker 3: to this is getting rid of slaughter. Everything will fall
Speaker 3: into place once we bumped that basket off, and.
Speaker 2: We always see a Godfather too is did Nero bring
Speaker 2: everything to Niro brings? But I think the other X
Speaker 2: factor with there's two other X factors for me Godfather Too,
Speaker 2: which may in my mind emotionally kind of makes it
Speaker 2: a bigger film than Got a slightly preferred film.
Speaker 1: Is the Fredo. The Fredo I've got sympathy for.
Speaker 2: I don't know where it comes from, to be honest,
Speaker 2: but that that member of the family who can't quite
Speaker 2: be part of the family business is not quite like
Speaker 2: this the way you described where Michael describes Fredo was
Speaker 2: simple and beautiful but stupid and him finding his finding
Speaker 2: himself in his predicament and how Michael reacts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the other X factor is Harmon Roth.
Speaker 3: Right, Well, let's talk about We'll talk about Friday too. Actually,
Speaker 3: in al Pacino's life, the two actors here, John Kazal,
Speaker 3: the late great John Cazal, who played his brother Freda,
Speaker 3: was Paccino's acting partner.
Speaker 1: A batter one hundred five films.
Speaker 3: Five films and every just as it's one of the
Speaker 3: great tributa questions what actor every single movie did he do?
Speaker 3: Was it either one or nominated for Best Picture? And
Speaker 3: that's John Gazzale did five films, and actually posthumously with
Speaker 3: the flashback scene and Godfather Part Three that was still
Speaker 3: nominated for Best Picture as well. So and of course
Speaker 3: Hayman Roth is played based on Maya Lanski. The famous
Speaker 3: gangster is played by acting coach Lee Strasburg, who at
Speaker 3: the age of seventy two, did his first ever movie
Speaker 3: on al Pacino's recommendation, because I guess he was al
Speaker 3: Pacino's acting teacher. And the great thing about Godfather One
Speaker 3: and Godfather too are there villains. Godfather three doesn't have
Speaker 3: a great villain, and that's and the story suffers immensely
Speaker 3: for it. And Godfather One you've got slots O the Turk,
Speaker 3: You've got Captain McCluskey, and then you've got Milio buzz
Speaker 3: and I and Philips t Talia towards the end of it.
Speaker 3: And in Godfather Part two in the flashbacks, first you've
Speaker 3: got Don Chicio in Sicily murders Veto's family. Then you've
Speaker 3: got Don Finucci in the little Lialy scenes he's like
Speaker 3: this great pantomime bad guy. He's just fantastic. But in
Speaker 3: the late nineteen fifty sequences the Michael storyline, we've got
Speaker 3: the character of Hyman Roth, who is the most insidious
Speaker 3: of all characters in the Godfather film because he's this little, wise,
Speaker 3: old man, gentle and self depreciating. He's actually a conniving,
Speaker 3: vicious snake who is simply motivated to kill Michael and
Speaker 3: destroy the Colioni family because at the climax of Godfather One,
Speaker 3: Michael orders the assassination of Moe Green and Vegas, who
Speaker 3: is heimen Roth's spiritual brother. Mo Green based on the
Speaker 3: late Ben Buggsy Siegel and of course Hermon Roth is
Speaker 3: based on Maya Lansky, and they all grew up together
Speaker 3: in the slums, and of course Lansky s Hyman Roth
Speaker 3: gives the great speech about you know some aiden Morastill
Speaker 3: gave the ida about who put the bullet in his eye,
Speaker 3: right talking about Mogreen, and that is what is motivating Hymen.
Speaker 3: That's it. That is it. It's as simple as that.
Speaker 3: And the other thing is it's overlooked. There's a great line.
Speaker 3: Everybody remembers the line from Harmon Roth Michael, we're bigger
Speaker 3: than us steel. It's what the line he says before that.
Speaker 3: Basically he's talking about, we're going to take over Cuba.
Speaker 3: It's going to fund our operations through the casinos, and
Speaker 3: that is going to fill up our coffers so that
Speaker 3: we get to pick the next president of the United States.
Speaker 3: That's what his master plan is. But he wants Michael
Speaker 3: out of the way because he wants it all for himself.
Speaker 3: And it's simply because of Maogrn. But the Heyman Roth
Speaker 3: character is so brilliantly played. Originally, I know what you
Speaker 3: can probably YouTube this. Coppola was really interested in the
Speaker 3: director Elia Kazan to play Harmon Roth. So the famous
Speaker 3: image in Godfather Part two where Michael goes over to
Speaker 3: Heiman's penthouse suite at the casino this day out in
Speaker 3: Cuba and he's lying on the couch with his shirt off,
Speaker 3: just wearing a pairis slacks, that came from Copola going
Speaker 3: over to Elia Kazanne's bungalow on I think it might
Speaker 3: have been the Paramount lot or the Warner's lot or something.
Speaker 3: Went in to see Elia Kazan and he was lying
Speaker 3: it was the hot summer's day and he was lying
Speaker 3: on his catch with his shirt off, and it really
Speaker 3: struck Copola the image of an old man. He just
Speaker 3: I'm hot, I'm just taking my shirt if I don't
Speaker 3: care what anyone thinks. So he screen tested Kazan and
Speaker 3: this is what you might be able to find on YouTube.
Speaker 3: I just I'd type in Elia Kazan godfather test or
Speaker 3: something like that, and you can see why he's not
Speaker 3: right for it, because when you see the nuance that
Speaker 3: that Strasburg brings to the performers, especially in his interactions
Speaker 3: with Picture, you know, because it's they've known each other forever.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's the man's spreading the legs, breading on
Speaker 1: the couch.
Speaker 3: I mean.
Speaker 1: Not seriousness.
Speaker 2: It sounds like, you know, something kind of flipping that
Speaker 2: he's sitting on the counts, but he's got his leg
Speaker 2: draped over one one of the art of counts. That's
Speaker 2: a that's a bold choice. That's somebody who obviously has
Speaker 2: a support of his co star and also to director
Speaker 2: and somebody who knows his craft, because you know, there'd
Speaker 2: be a lot of actors who would have that in
Speaker 2: their mind and then not go through the on the
Speaker 2: day because they're.
Speaker 3: Like, oh, I think you know, Coppola with those films
Speaker 3: certainly encouraged, you know, real risk taking from his cast.
Speaker 3: I mean, the backing in of Brando and Piccino on
Speaker 3: the first film to begin with, you know, which wouldn't
Speaker 3: happen today. It's you know, a lot of people, there
Speaker 3: is debate that goes on. You know, you only gay
Speaker 3: actors should play gay characters, and only this should play that,
Speaker 3: you know, in other words, let's just remove the whole
Speaker 3: concept of acting as a craft to begin with. People
Speaker 3: I've said, I've had actors saying to me, oh, you know,
Speaker 3: only gay actors should play gay characters, and I say, well,
Speaker 3: then therefore gay actors can't play stray characters. Is that
Speaker 3: what you're telling me?
Speaker 2: It's a it's a weird line. And you know, I mean,
Speaker 2: we'll get the chut in Heston soon.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which is good. This is all precursor to go with.
Speaker 3: But just Visia. But today you wouldn't able to cast
Speaker 3: you know, Marlon Brando as Veto because they'd say no, no, no,
Speaker 3: You've got to get a sixty five year old Sicilian
Speaker 3: American to do it. Yeah. Well, back then, you know, Coppola.
Speaker 3: They said, all right, find me somebody who's famous who
Speaker 3: can carry this film. Or do we get a forty
Speaker 3: six year old white boy from Omaha, Nebraska, Marlon Brando
Speaker 3: who happens to be the world's greatest actor, and make
Speaker 3: him look like a sixty five year old Sicilian American
Speaker 3: and let him act. Well, yes, that's what you do.
Speaker 3: I mean, David Chase created the Sopranos. He still pictures
Speaker 3: by saying, you know, Brando's not an Italian, and James
Speaker 3: Kahn was an Italian, so who cares? Their performances are brilliant.
Speaker 3: And you know Jimmy Kahn, who's actually a German Irish
Speaker 3: I think he won Italian American of the Year in
Speaker 3: New York two years running.
Speaker 2: Godfather it is a strange one. I mean, there's the
Speaker 2: there's that film. There's a French film, the about the
Speaker 2: I'm sure it was paraplegic and in his care who
Speaker 2: was a black Frenchman, and they've remade it in the
Speaker 2: stage of Brian Cranston in the lead role. And there
Speaker 2: was some you know, some some corners of the internet
Speaker 2: that were upset that why didn't you get a you know,
Speaker 2: Brian Kranton's able body that how can he play this role?
Speaker 2: And Bill Byrd does I think a pretty great routine.
Speaker 2: And I'm not I'm very much paraphrasing it, but it's
Speaker 2: almost like who are your favorite paraplegic actors?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 2: And and there may be a fantastic actor, you know,
Speaker 2: actors who are paraplegic.
Speaker 1: But the fact is, and these were the.
Speaker 2: Grown up conversations have to kind of take place, and
Speaker 2: it needs to be a balance that there's some roles
Speaker 2: that some actors shouldn't play.
Speaker 1: I think it's carte blanche as far as you know.
Speaker 2: And again Charlton Heston, but I that movie doesn't get
Speaker 2: made if they don't. You don't have a name that
Speaker 2: people put. People putting money into this, they want to
Speaker 2: see it.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's called show business, not show friends.
Speaker 2: And there are lots of things that go into making it. Like,
Speaker 2: as you know, you've made so many movies, it's a
Speaker 2: miracle any of them get done. But the symmetry and
Speaker 2: the things that have to happen together, a perfect storm
Speaker 2: has to kind of brew for.
Speaker 1: Any film to be made, whether it's any good or not.
Speaker 2: So you know, I think some films just won't get
Speaker 2: made if certain people don't get cast.
Speaker 1: Like I said, it's called elements.
Speaker 3: That's basically called putting the elements together for the financials.
Speaker 3: That's really all it comes down to. And Brian Cranston
Speaker 3: is an excellent actor for a stunt, you know, I
Speaker 3: mean he's.
Speaker 1: Off the back of breaking bad.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: That's just one example. And I just it's a very
Speaker 2: nuanced debate. And I think in society now, nobody wants
Speaker 2: to be nuanced. They just want to be you know,
Speaker 2: you know, like I said, gay actors kind of play
Speaker 2: gay actors and that's not Yeah, I'm not sure if
Speaker 2: that's where the element of acting. I have a lot
Speaker 2: of people, you know, a lot of actors say this
Speaker 2: to me. We still need to allow actors to act.
Speaker 2: We don't want to see lucky human be lucky hume.
Speaker 3: No, you know, I don't ever do that, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean. I try to be the master of disguise.
Speaker 2: Exactly, exactly right. That's the art, that is the craft.
Speaker 2: All right, let's get We can talk about Coppler all day.
Speaker 3: And if you haven't seen Godfather one and Godfather to
Speaker 3: I envy you because you've got that to look forward
Speaker 3: to in your life.
Speaker 2: It really is one of those things. It's like, Wow,
Speaker 2: what a treat. And if you're gonna watch Godfather Part three,
Speaker 2: I urge you to do so. But again, like Touch
Speaker 2: of Evil, watch the recent one that the code Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yes, when Godfather three coda the Death of Michael Corleone
Speaker 3: is the full title.
Speaker 1: There are some tweaks, some pretty small tweaks, but I.
Speaker 2: Think they're significant, and I think it's a much more
Speaker 2: enjoyable experience.
Speaker 3: Yes, But as we were saying, and Copler himself has
Speaker 3: said that the fatal weakness of part three is that
Speaker 3: we did not have a strong enough villain for Michael
Speaker 3: to combat, to outwit.
Speaker 1: I completely agree.
Speaker 2: Okay, Lucky Hume, let's get into it. Nineteen fifty eight,
Speaker 2: directed by Awson, well written and directed by It written directed, Yes,
Speaker 2: that based on the book A Badge of Honor.
Speaker 3: Bage of Evil, Badge of Evil now Bage of Evil
Speaker 3: was written by a guy called Wit Masterson, who I
Speaker 3: did a little research in that it has actually a
Speaker 3: pen name for two guys who used to write together,
Speaker 3: so it was actually the book is written by Robert
Speaker 3: Allison Wade and H. Bill Miller wrote Badge of Evil.
Speaker 1: Now, thank you for your work, gentlemen, if you're listening.
Speaker 3: But originally this producer hired Paul Monash, who was a
Speaker 3: TV writer, to come in and do the screenplay. Paul
Speaker 3: Monash sort of, I suppose he did a lot of
Speaker 3: good films. He famous for producing books Cassidy and The
Speaker 3: Sun Dance Kid, for example, and also paulsh wrote the
Speaker 3: screenplay for the Friends of Eddie Coyle Star and Bob
Speaker 3: Mixham many years later, but it was adapted. The original
Speaker 3: story is set in San Diego, so the whole all
Speaker 3: the events take place in San Diego. Charlton Heston gets
Speaker 3: attached to play not Miguel Vas the Mexican, but a
Speaker 3: guy called Mitch Holt, a detective. Okay, so it was
Speaker 3: Heston who goes to the studio and says, look, the
Speaker 3: script's not quite there. Why don't we get all some
Speaker 3: Wells convince him to direct it and do a rewrite.
Speaker 3: So Wells, I think, did a pass on the material.
Speaker 3: It took about four or five weeks everybody signed off
Speaker 3: on it. But what Wells did was then set the
Speaker 3: milieu on this border town, which is brilliant.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's almost like, I can't imagine it
Speaker 2: not being partly about that.
Speaker 3: That's right, and he wanted that wells wanted it because
Speaker 3: it brings in all these political implications, particularly to do
Speaker 3: with race and the whole bit. So the Mitch Holt
Speaker 3: character gets changed to Miguel Vargas. Now the thing is
Speaker 3: Heston's attached. He's a pretty big star at the time,
Speaker 3: so he is now playing a Mexican cop and prosecutor.
Speaker 3: My problem is getting back to this thing about you know,
Speaker 3: casting the right actor in the right role is you
Speaker 3: take on responsibilities as an actor. Then if you are
Speaker 3: going to be playing Vito Corley, only you better look
Speaker 3: and sound like a Sicilian man. Okay, years ago, at
Speaker 3: an awards night, an actor came up to me, I
Speaker 3: won't say who. He just finished playing a very infamous
Speaker 3: Australian businessman in a mini series and he came up
Speaker 3: to me and he said he introduced himself to me.
Speaker 1: And he.
Speaker 3: Said to me, I hope this does for me what
Speaker 3: Kerry Packer did for your career when I played Kerry
Speaker 3: Packer and how I had seen the miniseries in preview
Speaker 3: and I just said, look, I'm going to give you
Speaker 3: a bit of advice. Don't get your hopes up. And
Speaker 3: he said why And I said, because the pro tip
Speaker 3: would be when you're going to play a real life person,
Speaker 3: trying to look and sound like that person. And you
Speaker 3: made no effort with either.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I said, you asked me, and I'm telling you,
Speaker 3: And so don't get your hopes up. Okay. And this
Speaker 3: gets back to Heston with Charlton Heston, going from Mitch
Speaker 3: Holton mcgwell Vargas is Heston makes no effort at all
Speaker 3: to have any Mexican accent inflection anything. He's speaking like
Speaker 3: he's in the like the Wells has got the line
Speaker 3: and you don't sound like a Mexican. It's like, yeah, no, ship, dude.
Speaker 3: He sounds like he's doing freaking king we yes. Well,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 2: Occasionally there's like there's like an inference in some of
Speaker 2: his dialogue that you're gonna go maybe in that scene
Speaker 2: he's tried to nudge it towards something something Mexican, but
Speaker 2: like it's a very subtle inference. But he actually has
Speaker 2: been on the record to say his biggest regret is
Speaker 2: not doing a Hispanic accent.
Speaker 3: He has said that Okay, Well, then I kind of
Speaker 3: because it's almost like the fatal floor of the movie
Speaker 3: because it by not really leaning into the mexicanness of
Speaker 3: this man. He's a Mexican man, he's married a white
Speaker 3: American woman, that in itself there's summitch fodder. By not
Speaker 3: leaning into it, you've robbed the audience of all the
Speaker 3: implied racism of Arson Well's corrupt cop Hank Quinn learnon.
Speaker 3: You know, it just removes a layer from the film
Speaker 3: that I would have added more menace, more threat to
Speaker 3: it all. And it's just disappointing. It's like, man, come on,
Speaker 3: you had a god. It's almost like, oh, well, they
Speaker 3: just changed the name. So I put a bit of
Speaker 3: darker makeup on to sort of make my skin more olive,
Speaker 3: and I'll dye my hair black and that'll do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it will bush out the eyebrows.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, no, no, it's a little bit more effort
Speaker 3: would have been required.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I mean the hackback obviously to our conversation earlier.
Speaker 2: I think if this film is remade, Brad Pitt or
Speaker 2: George Clooney doesn't play this role.
Speaker 1: This guy's a heavier bad damn Well.
Speaker 3: It's interesting I did a little bit of research what
Speaker 3: famous Mexican American actors were there of that era. Number
Speaker 3: one Anthony Quinn, Right, okay, yeah, Anthony Quinn would have
Speaker 3: been perfect as Vargas. Yeah, you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: you really got You've got some juice that. But there's
Speaker 3: no point we're all playing Monday Morning quarterback on it.
Speaker 3: I mean, look, the fact is Heston did it. We're
Speaker 3: stuck with that, and it's interesting. It becomes more Quinlan's
Speaker 3: story as a result.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I completely agree. This is this movie as much
Speaker 2: as it starts. And we're talking about the stunning start
Speaker 2: of this movie in a second, but I feel it's
Speaker 2: Quinland's movie too, like you know, yeah, but.
Speaker 1: Let's just start from the start. This opening shot.
Speaker 2: It's funny when I watched it back, I watched it
Speaker 2: and then I just basically rewound it and you know,
Speaker 2: click back and watch it again. And I noticed when
Speaker 2: they the first thing you see is that the bomb
Speaker 2: and the times and like the old egg time bomb,
Speaker 2: And I was how long is and I reckon, it's
Speaker 2: exactly three and a half minutes, That's what I thought,
Speaker 2: So I timed it and three and a half minutes later,
Speaker 2: exactly boom boom.
Speaker 3: Okay, So we'll set the scene for you listener. So
Speaker 3: we're in this sort of border town and it's it's grubby,
Speaker 3: there's news bits of all news paper for scattering the wind,
Speaker 3: and there's dust everywhere, and it's festive, you know, but
Speaker 3: it's sort of border town stuff. So it's brothels and
Speaker 3: strip clubs and it's sleazy and dirty. And we open
Speaker 3: on this shot of this young hand setting the egg
Speaker 3: timber on the dynamite, putting it in the back of
Speaker 3: a cadillac. Then this old guy, white guy gets into
Speaker 3: the cadillac with his stripper girlfriend and off they go.
Speaker 3: And as we start following the car, the cinematographer on this,
Speaker 3: by the way, is Russell Metti, whose next film is Spartacus,
Speaker 3: which he won the Oscar for. Okay, and we'd later
Speaker 3: work with Heston again on The Amiga Man, which is
Speaker 3: one of my all time favorite cult films, which was
Speaker 3: later remade as I Am Legend with Will Smith. Yeah, anyway,
Speaker 3: and so we start following the car and then into
Speaker 3: this this comes Charlton Heston's Vargas with his is it
Speaker 3: Susie who yeah, played by Janet Lee whose daughter Jamie
Speaker 3: Lee Curtis just won an oscar Hollywood Royalty. They're walking along,
Speaker 3: it's date night and they're going to head across the
Speaker 3: border and then Bluey the car bomb goes off. But
Speaker 3: it is this astonishing tracking shot. But it's just one
Speaker 3: of many the whole film. I mean, it's like you
Speaker 3: can see the influence on, for example, Goodfellas. You know
Speaker 3: the way Michael Bauhaus and Scurse is you put good
Speaker 3: Fellas together where the camera is constantly restless and moving,
Speaker 3: and I mean even just for they'll do a quick
Speaker 3: push in and a til top just for one shot.
Speaker 3: You know, it's it's so brilliantly shot, and it's in
Speaker 3: black and white. And the great advantage of black and
Speaker 3: white you can get incredible deep focus on your shots too,
Speaker 3: so you can fill the frame a lot easier than
Speaker 3: you could with color. It's just a fact, you know.
Speaker 3: That's why Bogdanovic shot The Last Picture Show in black
Speaker 3: and white. Wells actually told him, if you want to
Speaker 3: get that focus, yeah, you know, you want to do
Speaker 3: it in black and white.
Speaker 2: Episode of Josh Lawson if you haven't listen to that one,
Speaker 2: that one, that's a good episode But what I love
Speaker 2: about that opening shot is I mean, I wouldn't be
Speaker 2: surprised if that if the term ticking time bomb came
Speaker 2: from this this same because you are it is just
Speaker 2: the car is moving slowly through and it's it's almost weaving.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of pedestrians on the road, but it's
Speaker 2: enough for the weave through. It's going on one side
Speaker 2: of the road to the other. And there's a dance
Speaker 2: that's going on between between Mike and Susie and the car.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know there's a bomb in the car.
Speaker 1: This is going to second So.
Speaker 3: It heightens the tension because you're thinking, we haven't even
Speaker 3: started in our are we going to do this in flashback?
Speaker 3: Our heros going to we know there? Yeah, heros? Are
Speaker 3: they going to get blown up at the beginning of
Speaker 3: the film, So you are you're still getting a little
Speaker 3: antsy right from the get goards.
Speaker 1: And then there's a conversation happening with the border guards.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then they're informing us we learned that they're
Speaker 2: just married.
Speaker 1: They're on their honeymoon.
Speaker 3: And we know that that Fargas is well known because
Speaker 3: when he mentions to the border guard that the American
Speaker 3: border guar because they're crossing over to the American side. Yeah,
Speaker 3: we just got married. He's like, ah, great, because wow,
Speaker 3: Fargas is a big man on campus. That's a great
Speaker 3: So it's so cleverly setting all the and bobs up.
Speaker 3: When the bomb goes off, suddenly Vargas finds himself launched
Speaker 3: into unexpectedly investigating what the hell has happened here? You know,
Speaker 3: technically it happened on the American side, so it's not
Speaker 3: his turf, so he's in. But he's the first senior
Speaker 3: officer on the scene. So he's injecting himself into other
Speaker 3: people's business effectively. And when I say other people's business,
Speaker 3: I mean awesome, well's business. As Detective Hank Quinlan, this obese,
Speaker 3: grask grotesque looking creature, walks with a cane. We find
Speaker 3: it much later it's because he took a bullet for
Speaker 3: his partner, Mensies, and Mensies is one of this sycophanic
Speaker 3: hero worshiping Queenland guys that've been on the force together
Speaker 3: a long time. But it doesn't take long for us
Speaker 3: to figure out that with Quinlan, corruption has now become
Speaker 3: simply second nature to him, and it's disturbing. It's disturbing
Speaker 3: how quick he is to plant evidence, how quick he
Speaker 3: is to lie. And he keeps referring to it as
Speaker 3: my instinct. I am an instinct for things, you know.
Speaker 3: It's his famous hunctures that he has. Yes, so they
Speaker 3: get their hands on this young kid who is secretly
Speaker 3: about to get married to the blown up guy's daughter. Yes, okay,
Speaker 3: And turns out he's a rich American businessman and the
Speaker 3: daughter is now slumming it with this Mexican guy who
Speaker 3: works in a shoe shop.
Speaker 2: And can I just can I just say how quickly
Speaker 2: they get the daughter to identify the body is everything
Speaker 2: happens when that bomb goes off. Everything it's like the
Speaker 2: body's identified or the daughter arrives on the scene within
Speaker 2: a minute and identifies the body and then talks about
Speaker 2: I don't know my father's girlfriend. So there's there's a
Speaker 2: bit of friction there, which pays off later. But yeah,
Speaker 2: it's almost it's almost comical how quickly things happen.
Speaker 1: And then you have.
Speaker 2: Charlton Heston's character, Michael Vargas, who's kind of taking care
Speaker 2: of his wife but kind of not you know, he
Speaker 2: could have done a better job of getting her to safety.
Speaker 2: But he's he's all about the job, even more so
Speaker 2: than you know, the marriage.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which leads to a big sequence segment which we'll
Speaker 3: get to the motel sequence, the gang rape sequence in
Speaker 3: the motel. Yes, it's family viewing this one touch of
Speaker 3: evil it is. Look, we should just point in this.
Speaker 3: This is dark stuff.
Speaker 2: It's dark, it has it's in the film, but it's
Speaker 2: also it's got the title A touch of evil.
Speaker 1: You can ask Molly coddle your way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. First of all, there's a great score
Speaker 3: through all of this by Henry Mansoni, by the way,
Speaker 3: we should point out out it who's famous for the
Speaker 3: Pink Panther school. But there's that.
Speaker 1: Well, guys, ask you about the music.
Speaker 2: Yeh, was it just a stylistic because there's a music
Speaker 2: playing all the way through this? Is it playing through
Speaker 2: the radio you know in cars? Is playing in that
Speaker 2: And we'll get to the hotel stuff later, but the
Speaker 2: speaker into the hotel room constantly, and it's also playing.
Speaker 1: And the piano from the pianola the pole.
Speaker 2: Yeah, kids going, so is that do you think is
Speaker 2: that the stylistic purely stylistic.
Speaker 1: Or is there something else that they're trying to do
Speaker 1: with the music.
Speaker 3: Oh, I don't know. I'd have to do a deeper
Speaker 3: dive into really just paying attention to the music. Firstly,
Speaker 3: you've got Mancini's score, which is very tense, very cool.
Speaker 3: It's almost very sort of Lalo Schiffer and almost type score.
Speaker 3: Then you've got that bit of music you're playing earlier,
Speaker 3: that pianola, which is the closing music, which reminded me
Speaker 3: very much of the zither music from Third Man and
Speaker 3: which Wells didn't direct, but of course started and Caro
Speaker 3: Read directed it. And it's almost a similar ending, you know,
Speaker 3: with the walk off into the distance of the woman.
Speaker 2: I started at school Harry Lyon character its great, great film,
Speaker 2: great novelty by Graham Green.
Speaker 3: So it's an interesting question. Yeah, the music is a
Speaker 3: constant thing. Noise is a constant in it.
Speaker 1: It's a very busy film.
Speaker 3: Is it's clatter and noise, and there's very very few
Speaker 3: down moments in terms of quietness. For there's very few
Speaker 3: moments of reflection. But let's get to the Quinland character.
Speaker 3: This guy we find out very quickly that he's been
Speaker 3: on the wagon, hasn't had a drink in a long time.
Speaker 3: He bumps into an old girlfriend who's sort of like
Speaker 3: a played by a cameo by Marlana Dietrich, who's kind
Speaker 3: of like a prostitute slash fortune teller, kind of a
Speaker 3: woman who he reminds her that, you know, we once
Speaker 3: spent two weeks going through a whole case of whiskey together,
Speaker 3: and she points out to him that now your habit
Speaker 3: seems to be candy bars to explain his obesity.
Speaker 1: She comes back to that point quite a few times.
Speaker 1: You really hammers that hard.
Speaker 3: That's right. It's interesting. You know you said earlier that
Speaker 3: Wells was wearing a fat suit. I wouldn't be so
Speaker 3: sure about that.
Speaker 2: Well he might be one of those things that he
Speaker 2: said he was wearing a fat suit, but maybe he
Speaker 2: was forty TuS he's playing somebody, you know, twenty odd years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he might have had a fat suit on him,
Speaker 3: had a fake nose, oh, and a lot of fake
Speaker 3: and a lot of prosthetic under the eyes, and the
Speaker 3: whole bit. It's in a stony wish when we grow
Speaker 3: test character really like Java the hut.
Speaker 1: Yes, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: So he claims the investigation and he's you know, Hank
Speaker 3: Clinland is one of those guys likes to wrap things
Speaker 3: up quickly, and he doesn't like the interjection of this
Speaker 3: Mexican cop Vargas, which gets back to what we were
Speaker 3: saying about, had you know, heston Land into the Mexican
Speaker 3: a Mexican accent of a Latino aspect on him, it
Speaker 3: would have made for a much more effective performance and
Speaker 3: movie overall. But anyway, they get their hands on the
Speaker 3: on the daughter's boyfriend, the shoe salesman, and they've got
Speaker 3: him in this fancy apartment, and Vargas goes off to
Speaker 3: freshen up in the bathroom and he accidentally knocks over
Speaker 3: this empty shoe box into the into the sink, and
Speaker 3: he picks it up and puts it back where it was.
Speaker 3: And that's a little diversion, because there's going to be
Speaker 3: something for the audience, because what happens is they start
Speaker 3: accusing this young kid of dynamiting the old man because
Speaker 3: he won't approve of the marriage to the daughter. And
Speaker 3: so Menzies, the secophantic partner of Quentland, goes into the
Speaker 3: bathroom goes, hey boss, hey boss, Hank, I found it.
Speaker 3: I found the dynamite, and he brings up the shoe
Speaker 3: box and these two sticks of dynamite in it.
Speaker 1: Let's have a listen. Let's have listened to something.
Speaker 5: Let's say that's impossible. I found two sticks like fox,
Speaker 5: right number?
Speaker 1: Where did you find this?
Speaker 5: Right here? And you had of stas of course?
Speaker 3: What are you trying to do? Trying to strap you
Speaker 3: to the electric chair?
Speaker 4: We don't like it.
Speaker 5: One innocent people have blown to jelly in our town.
Speaker 5: There's an old lady on main street last night picked
Speaker 5: up a shoe, shoe and a foot in it. We're
Speaker 5: gonna make you pay for them. They're trying to railroad me.
Speaker 5: I don't know why. I never stole any dynamite, So
Speaker 5: you know, Hindu mother. He swears on his mother's grave
Speaker 5: that there has never been any dynamite in this apartment. Sure, sure,
Speaker 5: take him in, book him, let's go. You say you
Speaker 5: found this dynamite their bathroom?
Speaker 3: Pete founded?
Speaker 5: Can't you do something to help me?
Speaker 3: What are you scared of?
Speaker 6: Point that stuff is nearly as easy to blow up
Speaker 6: as people seem to think.
Speaker 3: It doesn't go.
Speaker 5: Off quick any you found the dynamite in this box?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Pete found it told you.
Speaker 5: Then I looked in that box just now there wasn't
Speaker 5: anything there.
Speaker 3: I know how you feel, sure, I do. You people
Speaker 3: are touchy.
Speaker 5: It's only as human water come to the defense that
Speaker 5: you fell a countryman. Wow.
Speaker 2: Regon in that saying you can as one of those
Speaker 2: things I was talking about where you can hear very
Speaker 2: subtle inflection in Heston's kind of accent where he's just
Speaker 2: he's just hinting at, you know, being Mexican. Not not enough.
Speaker 2: Obviously he hasn't. He certainly hasn't gone full blown. But
Speaker 2: really performance by Wells it is.
Speaker 3: It's if you noticed that in the performance, the overlapping
Speaker 3: almost sort of precursing Robert Holtman's sound layouts things like
Speaker 3: Nashville and stuff to come. How it's like he's he's
Speaker 3: constantly rumbling through like he can't hear properly, or it's
Speaker 3: just it's it's not almost a David Mannett style dialogue
Speaker 3: where it's you know so through it. But that's the
Speaker 3: first indication of he's just happy to frame somebody now,
Speaker 3: which he doesn't really because it turns out the kid
Speaker 3: did do it, my corrector I didn't. I've watched the
Speaker 3: film twice.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, yeah, so right at the end, which is
Speaker 2: it's it struck me as a tad strange. It almost
Speaker 2: feels tagged on or that it's significant because the idea.
Speaker 1: Is that Hank was actually right. Yes, his instincts were right.
Speaker 2: Yes, So if he hadn't gone to war with maybe
Speaker 2: Vargas and actually just follow through it a proper investigation, yes,
Speaker 2: he could.
Speaker 3: Have actually got it. I'm still unclear about. It's still
Speaker 3: been ambiguous to me because they say, oh, the kid confessed,
Speaker 3: but yeah, they could have been using the rubber hose
Speaker 3: on him or a phone book over his bloody head,
Speaker 3: you know. So it's under and we know that quinlanns
Speaker 3: this crappy two acre little turkey farm where that's where
Speaker 3: the dynamite came from. So it's all a bit ambiguit,
Speaker 3: but it's it's not. It's meant to be ambiguous. There
Speaker 3: is meant to be ambiguity and ambiguity.
Speaker 2: And and in the way, it's not really about this
Speaker 2: bomb and this case. It's about it's about a career.
Speaker 2: It's about the rise and fall of Handkuick.
Speaker 3: It is, and it's also about Vargas trying to bring
Speaker 3: down a crime family. So the implication is is did
Speaker 3: this crime family, the Grandees, did they plant the bomb
Speaker 3: at the start knowing that the car would be going
Speaker 3: past Vargas and Susie on their walk. That's another possibility.
Speaker 3: So now, but to talk about the Grande family, because
Speaker 3: they're the real bad guys of the peace. Yes, so Quinlan,
Speaker 3: sorry not Quentlan. Vargas decides to get put Susie out
Speaker 3: Hahn's way as the investigations the plot starts to thicken
Speaker 3: and he gets Mensies Quinlan's partner to take him take
Speaker 3: her out to this remote motel.
Speaker 1: Before we get to that remar.
Speaker 2: There's a very weird there's a I mean, I would say,
Speaker 2: I just it's it's weak what this this scene as
Speaker 2: far as motivation, certainly by modern standards. So Susie is
Speaker 2: going back to the hotel. I think by this stage
Speaker 2: she's actually walking by herself. She's confronted by a local.
Speaker 3: Tough is one of the Grande.
Speaker 2: One of one of the Grande's. So he says, come
Speaker 2: with me, and she's like, no, I'm married, and you know,
Speaker 2: and then that is she's surrounded by three or four men.
Speaker 2: You know, it's daunting scary, and he says, no, wants
Speaker 2: I need to tell you something about your your your husband.
Speaker 1: And she says, okay, well, what have I got to lose.
Speaker 1: You've got your fucking life to lose.
Speaker 2: The switch from going Now I'm a married woman and
Speaker 2: this is a frightening.
Speaker 1: Situation I got to lose.
Speaker 3: I know, yeah, I know.
Speaker 1: It's even as a piece of dialogue. The fact that
Speaker 1: she goes is one thing.
Speaker 3: And Janetly, who I adore as an actor because I
Speaker 3: will never she performance in The Manchurian Candidate is still
Speaker 3: undelible to me. It's a brilliant that everybody's bringing in
Speaker 3: that film. But she plays suit you with a sort
Speaker 3: of a lightness of touch in that scene that there,
Speaker 3: it's like, yeah, it's so fro away that you go,
Speaker 3: oh my god, will they lead her anyway? Now? Willingly
Speaker 3: to meet the uncle, the brother of the Grande boss
Speaker 3: whose Vargas is put behind bars, and so we get
Speaker 3: this show down with him, and that's all a bit weird, and.
Speaker 2: They take a photo outside of the which they present
Speaker 2: to her like ten minutes later when and that doesn't
Speaker 2: really go anywhere.
Speaker 3: It it's all, yeah, it's you know, I forgive ambiguity,
Speaker 3: but it's all it's it's it's I think that her
Speaker 3: characters is a little undercooked in terms of the writing process.
Speaker 3: And Janet Lee was from all accounts, you know, she
Speaker 3: wasn't backward and coming forward about She's a very assertive woman.
Speaker 3: And I suspect I get a feeling like all that
Speaker 3: sort of stuff is sort of tacked on a little
Speaker 3: bit because she might have said, I need more to
Speaker 3: do here because I'm just a bit of a you know,
Speaker 3: an object being pushed around the chessboard here.
Speaker 1: Who knows?
Speaker 3: Who knows?
Speaker 1: She said awesome, Myles was very collaborative, which it comes
Speaker 1: with surprise.
Speaker 3: And so that's why I suspect you might have said, well,
Speaker 3: come on, can we do some more with this that
Speaker 3: or the other? But anyway, it's all a bit weird
Speaker 3: and cut a long story short. Yeah, Vargas says to wherever,
Speaker 3: we're going to put you on a plane and get
Speaker 3: you out of here, and somehow that goes out the
Speaker 3: window and instead of doing that, we're going to take
Speaker 3: you to this remote motel in the middle of nowhere
Speaker 3: where you'll be the only guest.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: After the photo is presented and she's about a show
Speaker 2: and it says from a thousand with a thousand kisses
Speaker 2: from yeah, yeah, yeah, Pancho.
Speaker 3: He brushes over her. Yeah, he is, like, it's like,
Speaker 3: look what they're trying to do. They're obviously trying to
Speaker 3: set us up. There's something more going on here. But
Speaker 3: he's being the bigger seriti of Charlton Heston man instead
Speaker 3: of saying, no time for that, dear, We've got to
Speaker 3: get you out of here. And that's so that goes
Speaker 3: nowhere alloy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but she has this again, another switch of going
Speaker 2: going no, I'm not leaving my husband. I'm going you know,
Speaker 2: but I want to stay on the American side of
Speaker 2: the border, because you know, for comfort, not safety.
Speaker 1: She's trying to you know, iron iron across that.
Speaker 3: She is playing it though, like she's exhausted. I'm really
Speaker 3: not making I'm not thinking clearly. I just want to
Speaker 3: get to bed. I just want to get rest. She's
Speaker 3: doing that well yeah, yeah, yeah from a performance point
Speaker 3: of view, so I buy that. It's like, you know what,
Speaker 3: I'm sick and tired, I'm full, I've had a big dinner.
Speaker 3: I just want to go home now. It's that kind
Speaker 3: of energy that she's bringing to it. Can we just
Speaker 3: move things along now.
Speaker 2: So I get to the hotel and talk about lightness
Speaker 2: of touch. You talked about Dennis Weaver's performance, The.
Speaker 3: Great Dennis Weaver. I was a big fan of was
Speaker 3: it McLeod that he did when he played the cop
Speaker 3: on Horseback? The TV series? But of course Jewel Spielberg's Jewels,
Speaker 3: which I think this.
Speaker 1: Really this was the performance that got him that role.
Speaker 3: I know wouldn't because Jewel was seventy one. This is
Speaker 3: fifty eight, so it's pretty pretty big leap.
Speaker 1: Spielberg saw.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure what he saw because I I just
Speaker 2: thought this guy was in a different film, and I, like,
Speaker 2: I wasn't sure if it was an offensive performance or not,
Speaker 2: but I just thought he was in a different movie.
Speaker 2: And I know that Austin Wells wanted it to be
Speaker 2: more comedic and he encouraged him to go for it.
Speaker 1: Shakespeare in Loon.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's right, So, folks, Dennis Weaver plays the nightman,
Speaker 3: the nightcaretaker at this desolate motel on the outskirts of nowhere.
Speaker 3: Just picture in your mind, like anybody who's seen No
Speaker 3: Country for Old Men, pretty much remotel in No Country
Speaker 3: for Old Men is like this plays the Coen Brothers.
Speaker 3: By the way, I'm not an advocate of remakes, but
Speaker 3: if you put this material in the Coen brother's hands,
Speaker 3: you'd have a very interesting.
Speaker 1: I think there is a case of remakes, honest anyway.
Speaker 3: So but he plays what I suppose you would call
Speaker 3: a simpleton, you know, to use that. I'm doing air
Speaker 3: quotes here, folks, you can't see it, but this podcast
Speaker 3: is a visual medium.
Speaker 2: Imagine Forrest had at a brother, and Forrest was a
Speaker 2: smart one in the family.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 1: It's like by it by a lengthy.
Speaker 3: And so we'll got the band tuning up outside. I
Speaker 3: don't know whether you can hear that, folks, that's all right,
Speaker 3: And so he tries to be helpful. So we checked
Speaker 3: Channet Lee into this motel and she just wants to
Speaker 3: get some sleep. But there's this big wall mounted speaker
Speaker 3: in the motel and our friend Dennis Weaver the Nightmare
Speaker 3: and day man too apparently because he's the only one
Speaker 3: who works there. So it's bit Norman Batsy, you know,
Speaker 3: it's a bit Baits motelly vibe. He cranks out this
Speaker 3: jukebox music into her room, where it's like, wouldn't you
Speaker 3: just pick up the phone straight away and say can
Speaker 3: you cut the music please? You're going to get some sleep.
Speaker 2: Here, Yeah, you know, because he's saying I need to
Speaker 2: get some sleep, and I'm you know, and don't don't
Speaker 2: disrupt and and yeah, this music keeps on. That's why
Speaker 2: I'm not quite sure, because that's him doing it, and
Speaker 2: he's not part of this conspiracy theory, you know, he's
Speaker 2: not part of the you know, the the Grundes.
Speaker 3: So as it turns out own the motel.
Speaker 1: Yes, so they move in the gang, the gang move
Speaker 1: in Vargas.
Speaker 3: You would think the man who put the head of
Speaker 3: the Grande family criminal empire away might know where some
Speaker 3: of their assets are, where some of the money's hidden,
Speaker 3: like this desolate motel where you've just made sure your
Speaker 3: wife goes to it. Well, then again, Fargas doesn't take
Speaker 3: her there. It's Men'sies it takes her there, So maybe
Speaker 3: he's in on it from that point of view.
Speaker 2: Well, I think Mensies, I really I think you can
Speaker 2: make a case that Mensi is almost the heart of
Speaker 2: this film because I feel like he's the one you
Speaker 2: talk about betrayal and you think when he and there's
Speaker 2: important that see me. Just listen to Hank says, you know,
Speaker 2: Pete found it, so we think and he's his biggest
Speaker 2: you know, cheers squad.
Speaker 1: He is Hank. He's done it again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he's so happy and he has you know,
Speaker 2: and he's happy with not being part of this partnership,
Speaker 2: you know, and he knows that Hank's the genius and
Speaker 2: he is the guy who helps out. But he hasn't
Speaker 2: realized that he has been part of this conspiracy unwillingly.
Speaker 1: And we're not sure. I kind of thought while they're
Speaker 1: both in on it together.
Speaker 2: But he we learn later that Pete's not in on it,
Speaker 2: and he's kind of really hurt.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 3: The scene in the records room, which is my it's
Speaker 3: my probably my favorite scene in the whole movie, where
Speaker 3: Vargas gets actually he knows this is after all the
Speaker 3: young kid away on the charges of blowing up, where
Speaker 3: Vargas knows the dynamite has been planted. We've sent Susy
Speaker 3: on her way to the middle of nowhere now teaming
Speaker 3: up with Schwartz, the local DA. Vargas gets access to
Speaker 3: the record room because what he immediately knows is I'm
Speaker 3: going to go through all of the arrest reports, all
Speaker 3: the convictions that Quenland's got. Don't forget Quinland said in
Speaker 3: that scene, I'm going to send you to the electric chair.
Speaker 3: You know, we're going to send you to gas chamber.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's gone straight there, that's boom.
Speaker 3: Straight away because because a little old lady picked up
Speaker 3: his shoe and it still had a foot in it,
Speaker 3: and you're going to pay for that. So he goes
Speaker 3: to the records room and he starts going through all
Speaker 3: the old Queenland case files and it course, every single
Speaker 3: case involves a piece of miraculous magic evidence that was
Speaker 3: planted because he knows it was planned, because every person
Speaker 3: who was convicted denied of and seeing that thing before,
Speaker 3: every defense attorney said it's rubbish, it was planted. Anyway,
Speaker 3: Mensies comes to confront Vargas at the record room, which
Speaker 3: is brilliant set piece. This the whole design of the
Speaker 3: records room, and it's like, literally, you know, it's something
Speaker 3: out of Citizen Kane, it really is. And that's the
Speaker 3: most of You're right, you know, Mensis is the heart
Speaker 3: of the piece because he can be so distressed, you
Speaker 3: know when Vargas points out the bleeding obvious to him.
Speaker 3: It's like, you know, there was a piece of false
Speaker 3: there was some false teeth found at the crime scene,
Speaker 3: and that linked to the suspect. There was this found
Speaker 3: at the crime scene. Quinlan's thirty. He's been doing this
Speaker 3: for years and you've been helping him.
Speaker 2: And he's also before because before this is also witness
Speaker 2: Hank go across the road with Grunde Grundy.
Speaker 1: It's at a bar, which.
Speaker 3: I don't want to get we'll get to that because
Speaker 3: that becomes a major plot point. But this mensi says
Speaker 3: this incredible apps where he says you're going to ruin
Speaker 3: his life's work, and it's so heartbreaking, you can say
Speaker 3: that's the patheticness of it, and how easy years has
Speaker 3: all become for these guys. It's just like, we've got
Speaker 3: your guilty, will plant the evidence to prove it even
Speaker 3: if you're not. There's railroading people, so they're not really
Speaker 3: doing police people, or are they, Because you know that's
Speaker 3: the question. Maybe Quenland's instincts, hunctures are correct and he
Speaker 3: just fills in the blank to get the conviction done.
Speaker 3: Who knows it's ambiguity yet again. So that's a brilliant sequence,
Speaker 3: and Vargas vows to bring Quinland down. So now we're
Speaker 3: right getting into the meat and potatoes of what the
Speaker 3: story really is about. It's a battle of wills between
Speaker 3: an old school cop and a new school cop, and
Speaker 3: obviously could have been a far more fascinating battle of wills.
Speaker 3: I it was also a real culture clash y Sarga,
Speaker 3: but anyway, two little too late on that. So meanwhile,
Speaker 3: Grande takes Quenland across to his bar to hatch your plan.
Speaker 3: He says, we've both got the same problem, and that
Speaker 3: problem is Fargas. Vargas is going after my family. Vargas
Speaker 3: is going after your reputation. Okay, wow, dance.
Speaker 2: Party, party happening without us, and I'm not getting invited
Speaker 2: to these things.
Speaker 3: And so they go to get together in this bar,
Speaker 3: just the two of them, now, bearing in mind, folks
Speaker 3: that Quenland hasn't touched to drop and like something like
Speaker 3: eleven twelve years or something that they mention. And the
Speaker 3: first thing Grande does is poured two big double bourbons
Speaker 3: and puts one down in Quentland. In front of Quenland.
Speaker 3: It's like bait. It's like it's like literally, it's cheese
Speaker 3: and the mouse trap. Show him. Okay, and what happens
Speaker 3: Quentlan starts drinking again, and Grande knows he's got him.
Speaker 3: I just keep him looking up and I'll get him
Speaker 3: thinking my way, which is what starts to happen. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 3: We're going to jump forward a little bit where Quentland
Speaker 3: says Vargas is a drug add actors his wife sent
Speaker 3: it too. In fact, I saw the hypodermics, you know,
Speaker 3: straight to the chase of corruption. Anyway, I'm jumping ahead
Speaker 3: a little bit there.
Speaker 1: No, it's great.
Speaker 2: There's a great scene then when Hank so Hank goes
Speaker 2: and confronts Vargas.
Speaker 1: I want to get to the bottom of it. And
Speaker 1: and uh, and there's a.
Speaker 2: Great debate about what the job of law enforces actually
Speaker 2: is and what makes a dirty cop, what makes a
Speaker 2: clean cup.
Speaker 1: Let's listen to this friend.
Speaker 5: Vargas has some very special ideas about police procedure. He
Speaker 5: seems to think it don't matter whether he kills Hangaring not,
Speaker 5: as long as we made the fine.
Speaker 3: I don't think a policeman should work like a dog ketchen.
Speaker 1: Criminals behind bars.
Speaker 5: Now, in any free country, a policeman, you're supposed to
Speaker 5: enforce the law, and the law protects the guilty.
Speaker 1: Is tough enough, it's supposed to be.
Speaker 3: It has to be tough.
Speaker 5: Policeman's job is only easy in a police state.
Speaker 3: That's the whole point. Captain, who is the boss the
Speaker 3: cup with the law? Where's your wife? What do you
Speaker 3: what do you mean?
Speaker 5: You know where she is as well as I do
Speaker 5: certain Mensi's drovers us at the motel.
Speaker 3: You're still here? Yes, I'm checking out now and enjoining it.
Speaker 3: Do you have a reason, No special reasons. I just
Speaker 3: wondering what you know?
Speaker 5: Rather pigeon in the nest pigeon, Captain, you did buy seven?
Speaker 1: Done?
Speaker 3: You are checking your story of Vargas. I don't have
Speaker 3: to answer your question.
Speaker 1: I attended to a rat, says he sticks.
Speaker 3: We've been spying on it, my rat.
Speaker 5: For my knowledge, Hank, you use fifteen sticks of dynamite, Quinn,
Speaker 5: and that leaves two sticks missing, and two sticks were
Speaker 5: found in that shoe box.
Speaker 1: He's just asking, Hank henk.
Speaker 2: So that's there's a lot, a lot to be taken
Speaker 2: in there, because it is about they are two different men.
Speaker 2: They Hank just wants to get the results and and
Speaker 2: Vargas follows the process and the procedures. Is a great
Speaker 2: line where I think Vargas says, who's the master cop
Speaker 2: or the law?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's such good dialogue. It is so good. I mean,
Speaker 3: just listening to that again, I mean, watched it again
Speaker 3: last night. That's it. I mean, it's I think that
Speaker 3: you forgive so much because there are so many memorable
Speaker 3: moments in this film.
Speaker 2: Well, that's right, because there are things about this film.
Speaker 2: There's and we're kind of creeping up behind characters there,
Speaker 2: you know that there is things that are I said,
Speaker 2: you know, Susan's kind of flipping of you know, like
Speaker 2: don't you touch me?
Speaker 1: To say, okay, what have I got to lose?
Speaker 2: There are some weird things and some performances that don't
Speaker 2: quite hit. But the performances that do hit, and the
Speaker 2: moments and the artistry on the screen, you don't worry
Speaker 2: about any of that.
Speaker 1: It's phenomenal.
Speaker 3: It's the Kubby Broccoli theory. You know, Cubby Brockley produced
Speaker 3: the James Bond films. You know, he before Spy Loved
Speaker 3: Me Opened, he said said sometimes of the movie you
Speaker 3: just got to sit down in your seat, open the
Speaker 3: top of your skull, take your brain out, put it
Speaker 3: underneath the chair, and enjoy. Just enjoy the show exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, and it's true. It's true. It's got moments.
Speaker 3: So you forgive, you forgive things. You know. It's talking
Speaker 3: about this the other day with some buddies, and we're
Speaker 3: talking about, you know, when you right yourself into a corner,
Speaker 3: how you can get out of jail really quickly. And
Speaker 3: one of the best examples of that is Raiders of
Speaker 3: the Lost Arc. Okay, the foot chase through the streets
Speaker 3: of Cairo where Marion gets into the basket. Okay, Indy's
Speaker 3: chasing her. The bad guys have got her in the basket, Indy,
Speaker 3: and he's chasing her down all the dead ends and
Speaker 3: the alleys and the whole bit. They put her in
Speaker 3: the back of the truck loaded with explosives. Indy blows
Speaker 3: it up. Boom. Marion's dead. Okay. Later when he's when
Speaker 3: he gets to the to the dig site with Salah
Speaker 3: when they're gonna they're on the hunt for the Ark
Speaker 3: of the Covenant and they're undercover and he's to avoid
Speaker 3: some Nazi troops walking past. He sort of quickly Indiana
Speaker 3: Jones ducks into the tent and there's Marion alive, tied
Speaker 3: up against the pole with the gag in her mouth,
Speaker 3: and he's like, Marion, you're alive. They must have switched baskets.
Speaker 3: Why would they, Hey, they didn't switch baskets. We know
Speaker 3: they didn't switch baskets. I'm not an idiot. I watched
Speaker 3: that sequence. Why would they switch baskets anyway? On the
Speaker 3: off chance that the truck was going to blow up,
Speaker 3: that that would hand it on that okay. So, but
Speaker 3: this is how they get out of it, because the
Speaker 3: second you start pulling threads on stuff like that, you're doomed.
Speaker 3: So this is how they get out of it. And
Speaker 3: they wrote themselves into a complete and outer corner. And
Speaker 3: Lawrence Kasden, the screenwriter, gets us out of it so
Speaker 3: quickly by distracting us with shiny baubles. And we are
Speaker 3: easily distracted as the human species with movies. We're also
Speaker 3: film literate without even knowing it, but we're also still
Speaker 3: children when you go to the movies and it's like, oh,
Speaker 3: what's that show? Anything over there? Now?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Okay. And the way they get us to look over
Speaker 3: at the shiny bable is. He starts getting ready to
Speaker 3: escape with Mary and he's going to untire or they're
Speaker 3: going to get out of there, and he suddenly has
Speaker 3: a thought because she's gonna get me out of here.
Speaker 3: Jone's getting out here, and he suddenly has this thought,
Speaker 3: and he starts putting the gag back in her mouth
Speaker 3: and going, if they know if they find you missing,
Speaker 3: they'll know I'm here, and that means I won't be
Speaker 3: able to get to the Ark. And you go, oh, yeah, right,
Speaker 3: that's what it's all about. So you completely forget right
Speaker 3: because the shiny buble is, Oh my god, Yeah, we're
Speaker 3: gonna go after the Ark. That's the mission of the movie,
Speaker 3: and so you forgive them. You know, los Ark arguably
Speaker 3: one of the greatest movies ever made in the action
Speaker 3: adventure genre. Some people say the greatest action adventure film
Speaker 3: ever made. It's got some riding into the corner stuff
Speaker 3: that you get out of real quick. So it's perhaps
Speaker 3: far more definitely handled than saying I'm a married woman,
Speaker 3: I'm not going with you guys, Oh what have I
Speaker 3: got to lose? I think that touch of evil's not
Speaker 3: quite as ingenious as Lawrence Kesden's screenplay for Raiders. But
Speaker 3: you forgive films.
Speaker 1: You do and this and this it plays with.
Speaker 2: Apparently there's many, many more scenes with the Grundy family
Speaker 2: that were lighter, that they were going to even bring
Speaker 2: a bit more comic relief, because Joe Grandi is quite
Speaker 2: is quite an essentric kind of.
Speaker 3: He reminded me, you know, talking about the Coen Brothers,
Speaker 3: the late great John Polito who appeared in a lot
Speaker 3: of the Coen Brothers films, you know, and Martin Finky's like,
Speaker 3: you know, he plays the fat Italian. My boss is
Speaker 3: constantly upset. He's slapping his should and it's like, oh no, darling,
Speaker 3: come here. It's kind of like a John Polito, yeah
Speaker 3: character who's also in The Big Lebowski is the private
Speaker 3: detective and all that kind of stuff. He really is.
Speaker 3: It's it's Amarov who played it to me, am I
Speaker 3: think I'm getting wrong. Who's excellent he is. It's like
Speaker 3: a Danny de Vito, a kind of yeah character, you know,
Speaker 3: where's sleazy but sort of likable but could turn on
Speaker 3: you at any moment kind of thing. But he's thoroughly
Speaker 3: lighting up the screen with his energy of the performance.
Speaker 3: Now he meets a particularly brutal.
Speaker 2: And so before we get to that, we mb just't
Speaker 2: cover off you refer to it earlier and this moment
Speaker 2: where the gang going to Genetly's yeah motel.
Speaker 3: So basically the party shows up. So you can imagine
Speaker 3: the grande Boy gang. The boys in the gang, they're
Speaker 3: all the grande boys. They're kind of like traditional greases.
Speaker 3: You know. They've got the jeans, they've got the white
Speaker 3: T shirts, they got the leather jackets, they've got the
Speaker 3: ducky roll haircuts and the whole bit. And one of them,
Speaker 3: the sort of leader of the pack, menacingly, takes over
Speaker 3: from the night watchman played by Dennis Weaver. And every
Speaker 3: time she starts ringing to say, you know, could you
Speaker 3: turn the music down, he says, oh, yeah, we'll get
Speaker 3: that done for your straightaway, Missus Vargas, and then chearings again,
Speaker 3: can you put me through to this number that cops
Speaker 3: and he goes, oh, the numbers busy. At the moment,
Speaker 3: Missus Vegas, this sort of the starts increased ractioning up
Speaker 3: the tension and leading to the inevitable where they burst
Speaker 3: into her room. Now they've also got to part in
Speaker 3: the expression bull dyke by ky chicks.
Speaker 1: With them, one of them being.
Speaker 3: Of course. For those who don't know who Mercedes McCambridge was,
Speaker 3: if you've seen The Exorcist, she is the voice of
Speaker 3: the possessed Reagan. Your mother sucks caccent ol.
Speaker 2: And she has a shilling line. Her one line is
Speaker 2: I want to watch watch terrifying it. And she was
Speaker 2: having she did this as a favorite awesome while she
Speaker 2: was having lunch with him, and she said, he said,
Speaker 2: can you can you do this part.
Speaker 1: Today or tomorrow whenever?
Speaker 2: It was so she basically Austin Wells cut her hair
Speaker 2: and they got her in the leather jacket and she
Speaker 2: won the oscar for all the King's Men.
Speaker 1: Yes, and also was in a giant as well.
Speaker 3: Wonderful great one of the great voice actors of all time.
Speaker 3: But she talk about leaning into the Mexican side of
Speaker 3: the character. She comes on set with the full Mexican
Speaker 3: accent haircut and dyed, looking the part scary as she's
Speaker 3: the one with the hypodermic needles. She's the one with
Speaker 3: the married Juana. Then when they've got they go, hey,
Speaker 3: lady in the next room. He generally puts her eer
Speaker 3: up against the wall. He goes, what and he goes,
Speaker 3: do you know marijuana? You know the maddie ja. She goes, yeah, maybe,
Speaker 3: but what's it got to do with me?
Speaker 2: I don't really know what the marijuana was really doing
Speaker 2: outside of drugging her, because she ends up drugged, which
Speaker 2: remember they.
Speaker 3: Said to her though we blew it all over her body.
Speaker 3: The whole idea is that this is Grande's plan that
Speaker 3: he hatches with Hank offscreen, is that we're going to
Speaker 3: make Vargas look corrupt, that he's actually in on the
Speaker 3: narcotics racket that he claims to be busting wide open.
Speaker 3: He's just as bad as the people he's going on,
Speaker 3: so he can't accuse me of being bad when he's worse.
Speaker 3: That's what it's all about.
Speaker 1: So do you then, because when the door shuts and there.
Speaker 2: He says, grab her, grab her ankles, ankles, and and
Speaker 2: you think there's a rape about occur, and then later
Speaker 2: on they say it didn't didn't happen.
Speaker 3: Yes, I don't buy that. I think that is something
Speaker 3: studio imposed, probably saying no, no, no, you can't. You
Speaker 3: can imply it, but then you've got to get out
Speaker 3: of jail on that one and say no, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: we just make her think that that's what happened. There's
Speaker 3: absolutely no way that those guys didn't rape her. There's
Speaker 3: no way. I mean, you don't end a scene with
Speaker 3: the door closing with her there's like six guys and
Speaker 3: two women grabbing, screaming, generally off the bed, physically off
Speaker 3: the bed, and the last line is grab her ankles. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and they start spreading her legs and the door closes.
Speaker 2: And what's Mercedes mc cambridge. Then what's what's what's her line?
Speaker 2: What's she watching? You know, she watching.
Speaker 1: People blows, She's here to watch the rape?
Speaker 2: And when because when Joe Grundy says that, who does
Speaker 2: he say that, Sue?
Speaker 3: Because he says it to Hank and when they go
Speaker 3: into where she's been taken back.
Speaker 2: To this she could actually be almost kind of, you know,
Speaker 2: covering the freeze actually happened.
Speaker 3: In the game. That's what I think it is. But
Speaker 3: it seemed studio imposed to me. But he might be saying, yeah,
Speaker 3: you're right, I mean, logically he could be saying to Queenland, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: we didn't. We're just making.
Speaker 2: It making it all a good job making happen, but
Speaker 2: it will serve.
Speaker 3: Your purpose just from looking bad. So they get her back.
Speaker 3: She's been knocked out, and they said with sodium pentathole,
Speaker 3: which doesn't make any sense because Sodi and penthes all
Speaker 3: his truth serum, right, that's what you inject into That's.
Speaker 1: Just that's exactly what they don't want.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. I mean they just said, we used to
Speaker 3: said it, right, but they don't. They say, Sodi and pentadon.
Speaker 3: I think back then in the fifties to the implication
Speaker 3: of marijuana, the demon and Sodi and PENTEO, what's that?
Speaker 3: It all sounds spooky with the reality marijuana. If they
Speaker 3: were all high, they wouldn't be sitting around doing gang rape.
Speaker 3: It would have been sitting around going where's where's the nark? Shows?
Speaker 3: Many know what I mean. Yeah, but you know back
Speaker 3: then it was a reef for madness and all that
Speaker 3: kind of bizar. So they get it back to Grande's hotel,
Speaker 3: the Ritz, which he owns. It's part of his empire,
Speaker 3: and so genetly he's sweaty and she's in this dimly
Speaker 3: lit room and Quinlan comes in Grande and Grande is saying, look,
Speaker 3: we've done the job for you. She reeks of marijuana.
Speaker 3: You know, there's needle marks in her arms. So with
Speaker 3: the setup of Vargas is going to be complete because
Speaker 3: you got earlier that bit. He goes, oh, Vigus, you
Speaker 3: know he's he's worse than the Grande's. He's worse. He's
Speaker 3: in on the rack and men, he's going you think
Speaker 3: he's in on it, chief, and he's like, I know
Speaker 3: it for sure. I've seen the hypodermics. He goes, well,
Speaker 3: I never saw no hyperdermis. He goes, oh, well, you
Speaker 3: don't have my hunction, you know, all that stuff and
Speaker 3: that that that's one of those shocking scenes that he gets.
Speaker 3: He's just so quick, he's so quick on his feet
Speaker 3: just for the frame up. He's got a down pat.
Speaker 2: He said earlier, not any framing, but sending someone through
Speaker 2: the chair. Yeah, it's it's phenomenal.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. And so now you're gonna remember, folks, Quinlan
Speaker 3: is now absolutely shit faced. He's been on the booze
Speaker 3: now for like twenty four hours. Okay, he's literally necking
Speaker 3: bottles of bourbon. Okay, And so he comes into the
Speaker 3: room where gently he is and it's one of those God,
Speaker 3: anything could happen. He is, there's Grande Quinland, and there's
Speaker 3: Genitly he passed out on the bed. Okay, it's all
Speaker 3: going to be to frame up mcgwell, her husband mcgwell,
Speaker 3: Vargas and earlier Quentland sets it up about the best
Speaker 3: way to kill somebody.
Speaker 2: He is with mister strangle, to strangle them. You can
Speaker 2: leave fingerprints on string, that's right. And his wife he
Speaker 2: explains that his wife had been murdered that way and
Speaker 2: the one crime he didn't he wasn't able to solve
Speaker 2: that he was the guy could was caught in Belgium
Speaker 2: and murdered or God took care of him or something
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so they're they are in the room. And
Speaker 3: so now we're getting into the Quinlan tying up all
Speaker 3: the loose ends, which anybody who's ever seen a story
Speaker 3: about police corrupt is it's one of the great thrilling
Speaker 3: tropes of the police corruption saga, whether it be Dudley
Speaker 3: Smith and l A Confidential tying up the loose ends everywhere,
Speaker 3: or you know, sneelamitz Q and a where Nicknldy's cop
Speaker 3: Cop is to you know all the loose ends getting
Speaker 3: it's it's the to me, there's a lover of crime
Speaker 3: and corruption films. It's like, oh, here we gow. How
Speaker 3: does the bad guy win? How does the bad guy win?
Speaker 3: And so what does he do? He chokes Grande to death.
Speaker 3: He garrets him in the in the in the hotel room,
Speaker 3: over and unconscious. It's literally over her.
Speaker 1: She's asleep, so she wakes up to this kind of guy.
Speaker 3: The guide cul lo tongue lolling out literally Jara the
Speaker 3: Heart style when Jarba gets choked.
Speaker 2: Boson Wells wanted an ox tongue like to almost have
Speaker 2: it even more grotesque, and they tried it and it
Speaker 2: just said, that's okay.
Speaker 1: That's too much, right, yeah, because it's it's full on already.
Speaker 3: The way it is, it's a terrif. And you know,
Speaker 3: and always in the precursor' always seen this shot in
Speaker 3: the movies, but I Reckon Wells might have pioneered it
Speaker 3: in Touch of Evil, where the bad guys pull the
Speaker 3: pools on the black leather clubs. And when he starts
Speaker 3: doing that is he's talking to Grande and the gloves
Speaker 3: start coming on in years here we go.
Speaker 1: That's the moment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we go and of course chokes him to death,
Speaker 3: and quite a terrifying scene too, because Grande's trying to escape.
Speaker 3: He's in his own premises and he's going to be killed,
Speaker 3: and it's all part of Quinland saying, look how depraved
Speaker 3: the Vargases are. They're doing drugs, that killing the hotel owner.
Speaker 3: It's all that kind of thing. And so Grande is dispatched,
Speaker 3: which leads us to what happens after that, because we're
Speaker 3: riding to the final the CLINICX of the show.
Speaker 2: Yeah, around this time, this is where I think Pete
Speaker 2: is putting, putting the pieces together, Mensis Pete mensis. So
Speaker 2: then so Hank then tells people to get the vice
Speaker 2: boys and come down there.
Speaker 1: He's found Susan.
Speaker 2: That happens there is and that's when Vargas he is
Speaker 2: looking for his wife, and then you know, finds out
Speaker 2: what may have happened, and there's the bar fight and
Speaker 2: he oh, he takes on everyone. His shirt gets a
Speaker 2: bit rips.
Speaker 3: And then when he says, when we say the bar
Speaker 3: fight we're talking about, he takes on the punks who
Speaker 3: raped his wife.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so he's he's starting to cross that line, you know,
Speaker 2: and you know we understand why. And and then also
Speaker 2: Pete shows then the cane was found, the cane behind.
Speaker 3: The cane, so we have were sort of lift this out.
Speaker 3: Of course, Quinland gets around, hobbling around with his walking
Speaker 3: stick and idiotically leaves it in the heat of the
Speaker 3: moment in the room where janet Ly has Bridge just
Speaker 3: committed the murder, where Genetly is so and why because
Speaker 3: he's drunk and he's not thinking clearly, you see what
Speaker 3: I mean? So what does he do? He staggers off,
Speaker 3: then to Marlene. Back to Marlene and Dicres joint to
Speaker 3: sit alone, listen to the p andol are playing, where
Speaker 3: she's basically saying, get out.
Speaker 1: You know you have no future.
Speaker 3: You have no future. You know that's it. You know
Speaker 3: you're doomed. You're doomed. So what happens. Vargas convinces Quentland's
Speaker 3: loyal dog Mensies to wear a wire and we're going
Speaker 3: to get him on tape admitting what he's done and
Speaker 3: that he's behind all this corruption, okay, and which is heartbreaking.
Speaker 3: Now he's got to redeem himself. He knows that the
Speaker 3: line there's no future for you also applies to Menzies,
Speaker 3: you know, so he's going to go well.
Speaker 2: He knows he's been betrayed out and not just on
Speaker 2: this one scene. Because the fascinating thing about this movie
Speaker 2: is it's Hank Quinland's self righteousness because this crime had
Speaker 2: nothing to do with him. Really, it was the fact
Speaker 2: that somebody was trying to encroach on his space and he.
Speaker 1: Felt it was his pride. Pride was hurt.
Speaker 2: And he could have he could have, like if he
Speaker 2: had a follow procedure, he would have actually finally left.
Speaker 2: If we were to believe that Sanchez actually did confess,
Speaker 2: you know, honestly, you know, and not under and not
Speaker 2: under duress, he would have solved the crime. But he
Speaker 2: gets himself in this because of pride. He gets himself
Speaker 2: in this, this awful situation where I think it's not killing.
Speaker 3: People, not just pride, but I think paranoia too, because
Speaker 3: if you've got somebody else encroaching on your turf, god
Speaker 3: knows what they'll turn up, which is what happens.
Speaker 1: And it's race as well, isn't it.
Speaker 2: Like I mean, you know, it's always you people and
Speaker 2: you people this and you know, a foreigner looking at
Speaker 2: my Turkey Farm. You know, there's a lot of which
Speaker 2: I think is played, you know, for the time pretty
Speaker 2: you know, pretty well, it's it's it's it's certainly there,
Speaker 2: but in a way that you know, I think ages
Speaker 2: you know, it's not like hard to watch because of it,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, Like it feels like part
Speaker 2: of the story and it's not grat shuitous.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So then and then well let's have a bit of
Speaker 2: a listen to our final scenes of Pete trying to
Speaker 2: get a confession.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and bear in mind though we've got to get
Speaker 3: we've got to get Quenland out of Marlene and Dietrich's
Speaker 3: chamber because the p and ole was playing, so they
Speaker 3: won't get a good recording. And we should also point
Speaker 3: out when we're talking about wearing a wire, this is
Speaker 3: nineteen fifty eight technology, okay, folk, So it's not just
Speaker 3: like putting a little subtle microphone under the lapel and
Speaker 3: you know, the recording places like in you know, Miami,
Speaker 3: which you can get away with. Now, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: Vargas is going to have to follow with the recording
Speaker 3: equipment with the antenna up close by. But we've got
Speaker 3: a lure quinlan out of the house.
Speaker 1: First, and then and then there's there's all.
Speaker 3: The high suspension wise much wise the oil dereks are
Speaker 3: pumping up and downside.
Speaker 2: This seeming is about that's about the money. And he's
Speaker 2: and he's like, I could have you know, I could
Speaker 2: have earned a lot more, you know.
Speaker 3: And I've got some lakers, a couple of lakers in
Speaker 3: a Turkey fun yeah.
Speaker 2: And and and I mean the you know, the allegory
Speaker 2: going on here with you know, there's the the dirty river,
Speaker 2: there's the mess that's in the river, There's there's all
Speaker 2: this stuff going on. It's it's pretty perfect. And listen
Speaker 2: to the sound design as we refer to earlier. Between
Speaker 2: we we got to switch perspectives between Hank and Vargas.
Speaker 3: Who's tailing him under the bridge?
Speaker 6: Bargash feeling place around here.
Speaker 3: Close to me? Wait, Vigas, why should he.
Speaker 5: You sound kind of nervous?
Speaker 6: Game leg it's tarting to talk to me, Burgus. Maybe
Speaker 6: he's tailing me with the bug.
Speaker 3: Recording. Hey are you carrying a bag for him?
Speaker 5: A microphone and.
Speaker 3: Met nod you better commit that gun? Where is he?
Speaker 5: Where is he?
Speaker 3: How did you figure the frame?
Speaker 1: Vigus with the.
Speaker 3: Framed husband, Frank, where is he?
Speaker 6: August?
Speaker 3: Where is he?
Speaker 5: Heck, look, I'm talking to Vargas.
Speaker 1: Now, August, hear me.
Speaker 5: Talk to you through this this walking microphone to work
Speaker 5: for me.
Speaker 3: No, I ain't working for Bigus. I'm working for the department, Hank.
Speaker 3: But they give me the vigus is good. Okay, here this.
Speaker 1: Stupid maybe's shot. Yeah, bye bye, Hank.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I talk about telling up all the loose ends. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but also the sense of betrayal from both of them.
Speaker 3: But you know, yeah, of course he fucking shoots him
Speaker 3: and now correct him wrong. It's Vargas is gune.
Speaker 2: That he is to do so then, so then Hank
Speaker 2: tries to basically tells him he's not he's not killed.
Speaker 2: Hank goes down to the river because he's he's hurt,
Speaker 2: and he's drunk. He's drunk, and he basically stumbles back
Speaker 2: in and he's lying down and he has one more
Speaker 2: interaction with Vargas, who has appeared now, and he tries
Speaker 2: to convince him that Hank Quinland he is still going
Speaker 2: to come out on top.
Speaker 3: Well, Captain, I have a friend. His family is something
Speaker 3: you can't talke your way out of. You want him back,
Speaker 3: you'll kill him.
Speaker 5: Bars commander, give me my gun back.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's just telling me you killed Pete.
Speaker 3: Bullet is from here?
Speaker 1: Gun?
Speaker 5: Do you think anyone would believe that?
Speaker 1: They always believe me anyway.
Speaker 6: I never believe I killed him a gun.
Speaker 3: You're resisting arrest.
Speaker 5: How could you arrest me here?
Speaker 3: This is my country?
Speaker 5: This is where you're gonna die.
Speaker 3: There wasn't no miss pocus. I was just to turn
Speaker 3: you around.
Speaker 5: I don't want to shoot turn my back. I should rather
Speaker 5: try around for it.
Speaker 2: So it's a brilliant shot in the film shot, not
Speaker 2: the actual gun shot. Then we have pet not quite dead,
Speaker 2: hanging over and gets a shot off, and we don't
Speaker 2: know if it's a fatal shot. Well it's not because
Speaker 2: he could who knows how he dies in the end,
Speaker 2: but he's probably died from the gunshot or he's round.
Speaker 1: But he goes over and he.
Speaker 2: Says, this is the second bullet I'm taken for you,
Speaker 2: which doesn't really I thought long and hard, where what
Speaker 2: was the first bullet?
Speaker 1: There was a scene that was taken out.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, this is where the limp comes from.
Speaker 3: I've always assumed that that's where the limp comes from,
Speaker 3: is that during many years ago, he took a bullet,
Speaker 3: took a bullet for Pete and got the limp and
Speaker 3: saved him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there's a scene that was cut that was
Speaker 2: explained that went into that a little bit more, which
Speaker 2: I'm not sure if you completely need. I mean, I'm
Speaker 2: not saying it's a perfous, but it made that line
Speaker 2: at a critical moment in the movie where everything should
Speaker 2: mean something that this is a second bullet took for you,
Speaker 2: didn't quite land for me.
Speaker 3: Well, what is the implication is that you've shot So
Speaker 3: there's a logic to it because you say you just
Speaker 3: shot me and that's the second bullet I took for you.
Speaker 3: But is he saying by taking that bullet, I'm saving
Speaker 3: your neck because I go out the bad guy? You
Speaker 3: draw that bow from it, you know, And of course
Speaker 3: that causes Quinland to stagger back into the into the
Speaker 3: sewer basically and drown and float away like a turd. Basically.
Speaker 3: He goes back from whence he came.
Speaker 2: And Alena arrived and she said, is anyone going to
Speaker 2: fish him out? And they said, yeah, they will soon.
Speaker 2: There's no real.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's of course when she says the line,
Speaker 3: what can you say about any man? You know? Was
Speaker 3: he he was? What was the line? He was a
Speaker 3: good detective but a bad cock lowsy cop, but he
Speaker 3: was a man? And what can you say about any man?
Speaker 3: Which brings us full circle, because that's the lines that
Speaker 3: John Travolta as Chili Palmer is mouthing in the scene
Speaker 3: from Get Shorty, which made me go, oh, ship, I
Speaker 3: better ring Ellie out? And I haven't sent touns of evil.
Speaker 1: That's how you wrap up podcast, ladies and journal that
Speaker 1: is that is a man who knows how to tell
Speaker 1: a story.
Speaker 2: And there are a couple a few little fun little
Speaker 2: facts that I want to share and a ho we.
Speaker 3: Get to that? Can I gets it? Now that you've
Speaker 3: seen it? How do you feel about it? I feel
Speaker 3: about it?
Speaker 1: Listen? So I watched it twice.
Speaker 2: The first time I watched it, I wasn't sure about it.
Speaker 2: It was a second time watching it family enough with
Speaker 2: subtitles on. Sometimes I find with older films, I don't
Speaker 2: know it's my ear or the sound. The sound I
Speaker 2: just don't often pick up some detail. And there is
Speaker 2: if it's some overlase.
Speaker 3: There is a lot of subtlely in the performances too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I enjoyed it more and I've picked up
Speaker 2: a lot more the second time I watched it. I
Speaker 2: really like it. It's stunning. It's you know, like you said,
Speaker 2: there are things you forgive in this film, but I.
Speaker 1: I really yeah, I look, I see you.
Speaker 3: I watched it the first time, like you, I thought
Speaker 3: to myself, there's a lot of mist here. But I
Speaker 3: couldn't stop thinking about it now. I kept thinking myself,
Speaker 3: I can't wait to watch it again, and I put
Speaker 3: it off, put it off until last night, knowing i'd
Speaker 3: be seeing you today and so it was going to
Speaker 3: be really fresh. And I love it, you know. I
Speaker 3: tell you that my favorite shot in the film, this
Speaker 3: is going to be a weird one. When Schwartz and
Speaker 3: Vargas decide they're going to team up together, and there's
Speaker 3: a shot where they're racing off in the convertible, but
Speaker 3: they've got a huge dolly that's on a crane chasing
Speaker 3: after them from sort of almost like a bird's eye
Speaker 3: point of view as they race off between.
Speaker 1: What's that scene? I thought, this looks amazing because it's
Speaker 1: so use.
Speaker 2: It was one of the first shots ever where dialogue
Speaker 2: was shot on the moving car.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and can you know too, people can no. I
Speaker 3: mean obviously your audience on this show, you've got a
Speaker 3: lot of movie lovers, but you've got to remind people
Speaker 3: sometimes the size of the cameras back then to get
Speaker 3: away with these camera moves. We're talking if Pete and
Speaker 3: not pretty big guys. It's like like six of us,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, Like we didn't you know,
Speaker 3: filmmaking wasn't changed until the Paniflects came out, you know,
Speaker 3: in the late sixties, which allowed Dennis Hopper to go
Speaker 3: off and make Easy Rider. That's when you could just
Speaker 3: pick the camera up and put it on your shoulder
Speaker 3: and go. These things were behemoth. It's like the Imax
Speaker 3: cameras are now. They're huge. They sound like lawn mowers
Speaker 3: when you get started cranking the film through them. So
Speaker 3: some of the shots, I'm just going, man, who's ever
Speaker 3: in your grips department on this one? Where's the oscars
Speaker 3: for those guys?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: You know what I mean. But it just the thing
Speaker 3: about the film, folks, is it sticks with you. It's haunting.
Speaker 3: You can see the influence on films like Chinatown. You
Speaker 3: can see the influence La Confidential in particular. La Confidential
Speaker 3: actually lifts some shots directly from it. But it is
Speaker 3: really one of the last great film noirs of American cinema,
Speaker 3: and it's almost like it's really Wells's last great film
Speaker 3: as direct A lot of people love Is for Fake,
Speaker 3: but that was sort of cobbled together over many years,
Speaker 3: which you mean, you know, borrowing money here, there and
Speaker 3: wherever to get the film made. This is your sort
Speaker 3: of last really big, great studio film, and they bug
Speaker 3: it around with it, but you know, welcome Merge fortunately
Speaker 3: got it all back together. I highly recommend it. I'm
Speaker 3: going to out of five stars, a deduct star for
Speaker 3: Heston not leaning into the Mexican accident, yeah, okay, yep,
Speaker 3: and but for everything else, yeah, four stars out of five.
Speaker 1: I reckon fantastic and I'm I'm so glad you loved it.
Speaker 2: I assumed you you would at least find it interesting,
Speaker 2: so you know, and now you can tick it off
Speaker 2: that you've seen a touch of evil and we'll spend
Speaker 2: another three years finding the next film for.
Speaker 1: You to come back and talk about this.
Speaker 2: I think it's a premier one of the early screenings
Speaker 2: was in the nine to fifty eight Brussels World Fair
Speaker 2: and at one top prize. Two of the judges was
Speaker 2: Jean Luke Gottarde and Francis a true faux who they
Speaker 2: make got Jean luc makes Breathless two years later and
Speaker 2: Trifoe makes four hundred Blows a year later.
Speaker 1: So obviously those films will be.
Speaker 2: They would have been prepping, but they both say this
Speaker 2: was a big influence and seeing that although at least
Speaker 2: inspired by this, so you know who knows with editing
Speaker 2: choices and even production choices, how that kind of manifested
Speaker 2: Marlon Ditrich, there was a lot of favors being done.
Speaker 2: He mentioned me, said he's mc cambridge.
Speaker 1: Malena.
Speaker 2: Dietrich did this as a favor to Owen Wilson. The
Speaker 2: Owen Wilson, I write, my notes have shortcuts, Owes Well,
Speaker 2: can you imagine.
Speaker 3: Hey, you nothing gets by you, buddy, mister movie.
Speaker 1: But she even the executives weren't.
Speaker 2: It was kept top secrets, and the executives didn't even
Speaker 2: know that she was appearing in this movie. And and
Speaker 2: and shot all her in one night.
Speaker 3: Oh wow.
Speaker 1: And he was awsome.
Speaker 2: Wells was so paranot about having any executives on set
Speaker 2: that the first day of shooting, knowing there was going
Speaker 2: to be like studio spies on set.
Speaker 1: In fact, he might have actually known that they're on
Speaker 1: set for the first day.
Speaker 2: So he just organizes quite simple shots for him and
Speaker 2: he started at nine am, finished the second one at
Speaker 2: nine to fifteen, had the second one done by nine
Speaker 2: twenty five. The executive ran over to the phone and said, no,
Speaker 2: I think we're all safe for you. He ran over
Speaker 2: and then he shot like a two day scene as
Speaker 2: soon as they left, which is its great generally broken
Speaker 2: arm before filming, and they kind of covered that up
Speaker 2: in various ways. I mentioned that has one of the
Speaker 2: big scenes which if you watch the original scene and
Speaker 2: one of the things that Auson Wells was really fighting for.
Speaker 2: In that opening scene in the original they had credits
Speaker 2: going over, which Austin Wells did not want. He wanted this,
Speaker 2: you know, opening scene to speak for itself. And as
Speaker 2: you know, the older movies they have all the all
Speaker 2: the all the credit of course, yeah.
Speaker 1: You know they you know.
Speaker 3: Well, it was not only Studio Post because it became
Speaker 3: part of the Director's Guild of America that that had
Speaker 3: to happen, which famously led to the showdown between George
Speaker 3: Lucas and the d GA over Star Wars because there's
Speaker 3: no credits at the start of Star Wars, so he
Speaker 3: had to quit the DGA, and which is why Spielberg
Speaker 3: did not direct a return of the Jedi, because Spielberg
Speaker 3: didn't want to give up his DGA membership.
Speaker 1: Rather, that's amazing, Yeah, that's fanta. I love that. I
Speaker 1: love it.
Speaker 2: And the final one, the custom officer at the boomgates.
Speaker 2: This is the one tracking shot, and he kept on
Speaker 2: fucking up his lines. You must know you would have
Speaker 2: been in his scenes where you know the pressure of
Speaker 2: even a long you have when you have maybe lines
Speaker 2: at the end of it.
Speaker 3: No, mate, I can tell you. I've just come off
Speaker 3: a film where big scene, whole cast in the scene,
Speaker 3: big long walk up, me walking up into close up line.
Speaker 1: Fuck hit your mark line line. Oh the pressure.
Speaker 2: Well, this custom officer kept on fucking up his line
Speaker 2: and eventually all some wells because I'm losing. Actually, I
Speaker 2: think there's one lunchhot towards you. You can see a
Speaker 2: little bit of morning light, you know, because they're losing.
Speaker 2: They losing and and.
Speaker 1: So also Wells.
Speaker 2: I said to him, just if you forget your line,
Speaker 2: just mouth the words. Just mouth something and I will
Speaker 2: put it in in posts. Whatever whatever you do, don't
Speaker 2: say again, I'm sorry, mister Wells.
Speaker 3: So do you know how many takes they had to
Speaker 3: do to get that opening track?
Speaker 2: I'm not exactly sure how many. It's probably it's probably around,
Speaker 2: it's probably available.
Speaker 3: That would have been a whole night's worth of work, though.
Speaker 3: I mean they would have set up the timing and everything,
Speaker 3: blocked it during day and then had dinner break and
Speaker 3: then we're working. Let's go.
Speaker 1: Got it done, got it done?
Speaker 2: Well, mate, this this podcast comes with homework.
Speaker 1: I appreciate you doing it.
Speaker 3: Like absolutely pleasure.
Speaker 2: But did you watch it your you're a man of ownership,
Speaker 2: so you actually had to wait for the criterion.
Speaker 3: It's not the criteria I was hoping. I couldn't find
Speaker 3: it on criteria. I'm sure it's been done on criterion.
Speaker 3: But do you wait for the three version version to come?
Speaker 3: But I only watched the ninety eight cut twice.
Speaker 2: Well, mate, you've gone above and beyond it. I love
Speaker 2: it as I knew you would, mate, love you. And
Speaker 2: there's an exciting things happening in the next thing, you know,
Speaker 2: which none of which we can talk about, none of
Speaker 2: witch you talk about.
Speaker 3: But I'll tell you what this this this thing that
Speaker 3: I'm working on, not the film that I've just shopped at,
Speaker 3: this thing that we're going to be doing hopefully later
Speaker 3: in the year. Yes, you will be getting a tap
Speaker 3: on the shoulder, but you will be involved.
Speaker 2: Oh well, I wasn't fishing, but I got more time
Speaker 2: in my hands, and so.
Speaker 3: Well we all do, we all do? So yes.
Speaker 5: No.
Speaker 3: I was talking with Cavalier about it and said, you know,
Speaker 3: Hellia would be perfect for this part, and Ed said, yeah,
Speaker 3: you're right, that'll be that'll work.
Speaker 1: It's on public record now, so that's good.
Speaker 3: So I just deny it and backpedal, and so just
Speaker 3: say I wasn't sober for that podcast. I what the
Speaker 3: hell you're talking about?
Speaker 1: When the investors go no, we actually we go on hall,
Speaker 1: we we want Hughes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we don't, we want hem which one? Anyone?
Speaker 1: Just not HELLI Now, thanks so much, man.
Speaker 2: After an hour I've talking now almost two hours of
Speaker 2: talking to you, I'm not sure if I want to
Speaker 2: watch another movie or watch some footy I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: I'm confused.
Speaker 3: Bring on the weekend, Bring on the weekend.
Speaker 1: Love you mate, Thanks, love you too.
Speaker 3: Brother. Come on read my future for me.
Speaker 2: You haven't got any There you go the Unicorn episode.
Speaker 2: What a way to kick off season six. Have you
Speaker 2: ain't seen nothing yet? With Lucky Hume? We thought he
Speaker 2: had seen everything. We finally found one. When I got
Speaker 2: that text measure saying we you know I found one,
Speaker 2: I genuinely felt like it was Christmas. It was so
Speaker 2: exciting to get it, so exciting to finally find the
Speaker 2: time for both of us to sit down together and
Speaker 2: wrap this one out. And you know, I went and
Speaker 2: picked Locky up before the podcast. We drove over here.
Speaker 2: It was very hard. We had to stop us force
Speaker 2: ourselves not to talk about this movie.
Speaker 1: We always want to feel fresh.
Speaker 2: So yes, Lucky Hume is finally seen a touch of
Speaker 2: evil and we're all the better for it. Such a
Speaker 2: passionate guys, as encyclopedia, as far as his knowledge of
Speaker 2: film and many things, and it's always I just love
Speaker 2: being in his company. So thank you, Lockie, You're a
Speaker 2: bloody legend, Matin and thank you bye and now
Speaker 5: And so we leave Old Pete save man soul, and
Speaker 5: to our friends of the radio audience, we've been a
Speaker 5: pleasant good name.