A Clockwork Orange with Alex Ross Perry

[00:00:01] Blank Check with Griffin and David Blank Check with Griffin and David Don't know what to say or to expect All you need to know is that the name of the show is Blank Check

[00:00:21] It's funny how the colors of the real world only seem really real when you viddy them on the podcast. God damn it. It's fine, you did a great job! Tried. He's got such a... Well, he's doing a Yorkshire accent and you were doing like a Yorkshireman but like...

[00:00:36] Like a farmer Yorkshireman. You were getting more farmer. I'm so lost already. I know. I also like hiccuped in the middle of it. I'm sick. I need a new cough drop. But part of it is also...

[00:00:45] I understand the accent he's doing but like Malcolm McDowell has an incredibly unique voice. He is a... There's a musicality to his voice. Yes. That is very hard to replicate. And it's funny... Look, we're going to talk about McDowell a lot.

[00:01:02] You don't want to? I think there's a lot to talk about. He's like the seventh most important thing in the movie. I just think we've maybe never talked about him on the podcast before and he's such an interesting bizarre movie star.

[00:01:14] Right, but we can only talk to him up until this movie. We can only talk about him. We can do whatever we want. I'm saying his subsequent career is not under discussion as of 1971.

[00:01:23] We can talk about whatever we want. There are no rules like that on this podcast. We can talk about whatever we want but you're pretending that you only have four hours until we have to leave. Which means you have to make some diligent cuts on what we're discussing.

[00:01:36] This podcast is a Warren Beatty production as far as I'm concerned. Rules don't apply. Now David has continually tried to stress a heart out. Yeah! It's three hours from now! Which he seems to do with more severity when this guest is on the show.

[00:01:52] He comes in, a guest loaded to bear with a printed... Is it printed? No. Or is it handwritten? This? The shirt? The shirt's printed. This is seven single space printed pages. And not a big font I'm seeing from here.

[00:02:09] I just feel like every time there's an art episode, Alex comes with printed documents in hand and David comes with a heart out in hand. Two incompatible things. Yeah. I mean we'll talk about this actor, Mr. Malcolm McDowell of course.

[00:02:23] I will say, you say, I mean I think I agree with Alex, he's not really... He didn't really have a long movie star career. This is what I think is fascinating about him. Is that he has this kind of great young angry man career, right?

[00:02:39] Where he becomes sort of a cultural avatar. Briefly at least. Across the Lindsay Anderson movies and this, right? Yeah. But like, especially you look at If, A Lucky Man and this. But that's all 67 to 73, right? Absolutely. Is If 67 or did I miss that? If is 68. 68.

[00:02:58] To me he almost seems like the definition of a guy where you're just like, well his career is going to be totally locked to this period. When someone's this tapped into the youth culture and a certain energy and whatever, it's like is he bud court?

[00:03:09] Is he like not going to be able to age?

[00:03:12] And then there's sort of like weird period, but he does have this odd career where it's like A, he's got like the Eric Roberts thing where you look at his IMDb and you're like this guy does 18 movies a year. He does work a lot. He'll do anything.

[00:03:23] He also does a ton of television. Yes. So much TV. And he'll do anything. But you're like he has transitioned pretty well into being like elder statesman both in terms of like villain.

[00:03:36] I say this with a lot of respect for Malcolm McDowell who I do like a lot as an actor even as current Malcolm. Yeah. But he's like he's like the eighth elder statesman you call. You've gotten some hang ups. I'm not disagreeing. And he's like, oh, do it.

[00:03:53] I'm not disagreeing. And he does enough bullshit that he'll like never have like Brian Cox gravitas to him. Cox is above him. And I would say Cox, especially pre succession was not that high. Would you agree?

[00:04:06] They must have called Malcolm for X to maybe did they call or were they like Cox fucking turns us down. They're looking at the pin board. They're like Malcolm McDowell, I guess. Neck and neck. That's the question. Yeah. He because Cox is a little more sprightly.

[00:04:22] Was it gangster number one? What was like the one? He plays young him. The one huge like old man McDowell part that people were like, it's gangster number one. And that movie was very niche.

[00:04:33] But I mean, yeah, I'm surprised we've even all heard of it because I feel like that movie didn't come out. Well, yeah, it's a movie. And I sat next to Paul McGuigan at a dinner once for three hours and had a wonderful conversation with him.

[00:04:46] Hey, well, that's a humble brag. Well, speaking of three hours, I will say that the McDowell thing. Yeah, just because I was all keep trying to do bring it back to Kubrick for this.

[00:04:56] He's just like the perfect Kubrick lead because he's one of many people that had a tremendously huge career after the Kubrick movie they were in. And this would still be the first thing on their 100. It's certainly a pure delay.

[00:05:11] Ryan O'Neill, I would say almost undeniably Modine and D'Onofrio. I feel like a lot of people in these movies. It's kind of their defining role. I think that D'Onofrio will get the wide spanning character actor of note. But maybe no question. This is kind of his defining performance.

[00:05:30] And Modine has certainly like made so much of his life around that. Modine, there's no making that movie. There's no question. And then the only McDowell, there's no question. Obviously, it's just it's true of more Kubrick leads than it's not.

[00:05:45] And I feel like that's always one of the interesting things about his body of work and his actors is oftentimes it's their signature role. There was a 40th anniversary look back thing on the Blu-ray or maybe it was 50, whatever it was.

[00:05:58] But it was Malcolm McDowell in some office with a bunch of different documents that the Warner Brothers archives had pulled up, like going through memory lane about the movie. And he just flatly says, like, what? You're an actor.

[00:06:11] You only get to be in like one movie this great if you're lucky. I mean, by and large, obviously, some actors would disagree and be like, hey, it was actually in a lot of really famous movies.

[00:06:21] And then he's like, sorry, I have to go tour my one man show talking about Lindsay Anderson steps out on stage and goes, you only get to be in two Mick Travis movies as great as these. And these are my defining. You only get to be on three.

[00:06:33] Well, three. He only really talks about if and oh, like, sure. He doesn't talk about that. You'll do that on Patreon. I do think. Oh, absolutely. Did you know that Alexander Sidig, a.k.a. Sidig El Fadil? Do you know who that is? He was on Battlestar Galactica.

[00:06:52] Yeah. Deep Space Nine, but also a million other things. Yes. He's Malcolm McDowell's nephew. Really? The more you know. What would we do without David's computer? Introduce our podcast. Podcast is called Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. I'm David.

[00:07:07] And you know that, of course, his son, Malcolm McDowell's son, directs movies. Charlie McDowell. Right. He made The One I Love. Yeah. And some other stuff. Now, do you know who Ben, do you know? Yes. Who is the mother of Charlie McDowell, Malcolm McDowell's son? No.

[00:07:21] In my opinion, one of the. We'll put a pin in the Charlie McDowell talk and just move on to your podcast. One of the stranger celebrity couples. A brief celebrity couple, right? Yeah, but a weird one. Like a decade. I think they had like a decade together. Yeah.

[00:07:34] Malcolm McDowell married Steenburgen were married. They are? Oh, really? Those just like seem like such opposite energies, right? Made a movie together. I have such a crush on her. Only if you saw Time After Time. Time After Time. Yeah.

[00:07:46] Ever since I saw her in Clifford, I've had the biggest crush on her. So it makes perfect sense. David, you might need to clear out an extra hour. We got to dig into that. The psychosexual energy of Ben. We have talked enough about Clifford.

[00:07:57] The other crazy thing is. Gotta do a third Clifford episode. The other crazy thing, of course, is he's one of those guys who then married again later in life and had kids when he was like 70. Sure. So he's got like young children now. Yeah. He's got rugrats.

[00:08:11] He likes to work. He's an active fellow. You guys, you guys should plan play dates with Malcolm McDowell's kids. They're probably the same age as Kirk. He lives in Ojai apparently. So it's a bit of a trek from here. Ojai. Ojai, California. Sure. Ojai.

[00:08:24] It's a podcast about filmographies. Directors who have massive success early on in their careers and given a series of blank checks make whatever crazy passion projects they want. And sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce. Baby. Yep. It's a miniseries on the films. Stanley Kubrick.

[00:08:38] It's called Pods Widecast. Today we're talking Clockwork Orange with the clock buster himself when it comes to episode length, Alex Ross Perry. Punching the clock. A Clockwork Orange. A Clockwork Orange. Which brings me to one of my first questions. David, do you like organization? Sure.

[00:08:58] You like compulsive list making? Yes. Alphabetically? Alphabetically. A and then the title or title comma A. Oh, like where? This is one of my pet peeves. Whichever one of these I disagree with. And you say this is a former video store employee. Yes.

[00:09:17] Someone who had to organize things. The Clockwork Orange is an A movie to me. No, but I'm... So if you were listing movies alphabetically, this would be first. Yes. Correct. It drives me nuts when people... I don't like... Yeah, I'm not into Clockwork Orange comma A.

[00:09:29] Yeah, it's not V. Z is the only one that you're allowed to pull back. I couldn't agree more. I've been waiting to litigate this with you for months. I'm glad we already reached a resolution. We're on the same page.

[00:09:39] I just like a title that is this oblique and also has an unnecessary element to it. Because this is not the story of the Clockwork Orange. No. This is just A. One of many. It would be funny if at one point he was like,

[00:09:53] all right, feel like a bit of a Clockwork Orange right now. If he just said the title. Right. Well, it's like A Wedding, the Altman movie. Yes. I think you guys talked about... That would drive me crazy too. Right, if I'm looking for A Wedding in the A's,

[00:10:04] some clerk shuffles over and is like, um, it's Wedding comma A. It just drives me nuts when people abuse the alphabet that way. As a... Not only an A name, but a... Does it make you want to do a bit of the old ultraviolence?

[00:10:15] That doesn't drive me that nuts. All right, good. We're not at that stage. No, we'll get there. Let's talk reasonably. Circle back. Let's check back in in about an hour and a half or so. We'll see how we're feeling. An hour and a half.

[00:10:26] Well, I think I'll be ready to commit some of the old ultraviolence. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we'll see. I think the thing that's interesting to me about McDowell is... Malcolm McDowell, star of A Clockwork Orange. You said this is Kubrick, right? Yeah, I said that A Clockwork Orange was.

[00:10:38] I don't know, we interrupt each other a lot. I'm as guilty as anyone. I'm not sure if you said the name of the show. I did. I heard it. I'm Griffin. I'm David. I'm sorry. All right, all right. Kevin Kubrick. Yeah. Kevin introduced our guest. I introduced him!

[00:10:53] Wow. I said that I do the clock buster. Or maybe you didn't. I said that. I said that. I said Alex Ross-Perry. I did, I said Alex Ross-Perry. Here we are. Alex Ross-Perry to some, Alex to his friends. Alex DeLarge? I went through a...

[00:11:06] My parents famously, David, you know this, it's hard to name a child. Now, you obviously picked your child's name from watching a movie. I don't want to say my kid's name on that, but I also don't know what you're referencing. Is it? Boss Baby. The Boss Baby.

[00:11:22] Oh, right, right. It's hard to name things. My parents just said, much like you may have done, we have a list of names. And we just clocked a name in a movie credits and we wrote it down, and that name was Alex, and it stuck. Oh, really?

[00:11:35] That's how your parents... Yes. Now I imagine your parents being like, they don't remember what movie. They don't remember what movie. They don't even remember. It's just it was in the credits or a TV show or something.

[00:11:45] But then for years I told people I was named after Alex in the Clockwork Orange. Right. And then I realized that reflected very weirdly on my parents. You refer to this as your favorite movie of all time.

[00:11:55] On any given day, I could easily rank this number one without feeling like that is fraudulent. Did it make your sight and sound list? Not only that... If it's number one on any given day... You said to me it's number one with a bullet.

[00:12:07] Number one, yeah, on any given day. It's easily the only thing I... Imagining that I'm a chorus of people could all reach a consensus on and just say it's just number one. But we were talking, both of you recently submitted your sight and sound list,

[00:12:21] and we were talking about this, Alex. And you said, like, my list is Clockwork Orange number one. And then here's the rest of them. Alphabetically it was number one as we just covered. But you were also saying like that is the one.

[00:12:35] It's the movie. It's the movie of my life. And then it's nine other films even though the list isn't technically ranked. No. Yeah. It's a very important film to me. And I remember exactly when I saw it, which is fun. Tell us. When did you see it?

[00:12:47] Well, so I came up with some dates here. On June 16th, 1998. Prince of Single Space. So I don't know what's happening in the world. The AFI 100 is released. Oh, sure, sure. Okay. On June 16th, 1998, the AFI 100 is released. On June 29th and 30th, 1998,

[00:13:05] I from Philadelphia take the train up to New York to visit my grandparents who live in Westchester. Humble Grace. So that on July... And you don't live in New York, so it's a long train ride. No, it's two hours.

[00:13:17] So that on June 29th, two weeks after the AFI 100 is released, I can go see The Prodigy at Hammerstein Ballroom by myself. Oh, the electronic music act. Absolutely. Wow. Who I was a huge fan of at the time. Ben, Prodigy? Sure. Yeah, I've hooked with The Prodigy. Underrated.

[00:13:35] Still listen to Outer Space all the time, and my wife will be like, turn this off. You listen to The Prodigy all the time? Outer Space is a constant car jam for me. Pen in this, pen in this, pen in this. We're coming back to this.

[00:13:45] Is that a song or is that the album? Pen in this. It's a song on their first album experience. Alex, we were debating whether or not to talk about it, but that's a huge ass pen. We'll put a pen. Okay. So what pen is it?

[00:13:55] Is it like a sort of Gallagher size? It could be. So what is it? It's a Prodigy experience, Jilted Generation, and Father of the Land. Yeah, those first three albums are the good albums. Father of the Land is blowing up. They're not playing in Philadelphia.

[00:14:08] I'm obsessed with them. I have to come to New York. So it's on that trip that I was already making my way through the AFI 100. And I remember sitting in my grandparents' basement, and they took me to Blockbuster, I guess. And I rented it and watched it there.

[00:14:20] And that was my exposure to it. Because within two weeks, I must have looked at them, and I thought, this seems like probably one of the first ten movies on this list I should see. Now, in 1998, how old are you?

[00:14:32] I guess I was a few weeks shy of turning 14. So I would say on the younger, it's a very violent and sexual- To paraphrase the final line of the first part of the book, and me, only 13 years old.

[00:14:44] I mean, I saw this movie for the first time in English class. We read this book. You're fancy. Stupid. Liberal school. That your wife went to as well. I know! I make fun of her too! You mock my stupid school that I hate that I went to.

[00:15:01] I fucking make fun of her as well. Yeah, you gotta. Dorks. But we read the book, and then the first time I watched it was in English class. I was either 15 or 16. But like a weird movie to watch with a teacher watching you watch it.

[00:15:15] Yeah, I probably wouldn't do that. A girl in my class when we watched it fainted and hit her head on the corner of a desk. And they had to call the ambulance. So you also watched it in school? Did you read it in school? No.

[00:15:29] Why did you watch it in school? P.E. class. This movie is not like- I think it was like a psychology class, but it was high school though, so that doesn't make sense. I don't know what subject it was,

[00:15:42] but it was like kind of maybe the teacher really phoning it in. Yeah, but beyond that, it's also like two and a half hours long. I know! That's a bunch of classes you gotta do. You're sitting there and your teachers are like,

[00:15:51] we're going to watch this movie, just by the way, this movie is illegal to watch in certain other countries. It was illegal. But we'll just show it to you teenagers and assume that this is fine.

[00:16:01] That's what's insane is that like I'm watching this in a high school class in like 2003 or 4, and you're like 5, 6 years removed from this movie finally. I guess it's not banned. I guess I forgot that. No, it was- well, so in America, I don't think it was ever-

[00:16:17] No, in so many other countries. It's really just Britain, I think. I have a longer list for you. South Africa, Singapore, or whatever, certainly. But the thing about Britain is, when I was a teenager where I grew up in that country- Wait, what country?

[00:16:34] The country of the United Kingdom and Great Britain, Northern Ireland. When you say grew up, what do you mean? You feel like you grew up there? Wouldn't that be funny if that's what I meant?

[00:16:43] Like you sort of had a coming of age kind of voyage of self discovery. Is this some kind of weird slang that you've invented for yourself? I don't understand what you're saying. I believe this might be the most British film you've ever covered on the show.

[00:16:54] It might be because we have not covered enough. I mean, Stanley Kubrick is almost the most British director we've ever covered. And I'm glad that you've let- I feel like you should have had a British person on. I'm glad I got to come in, but there's nobody here

[00:17:06] that can really speak to the culture of this movie. The problem is that there's no one here who has any sort of lived experience of being a youth, an angry youth. In England. A disenfranchised teen male. I moved to England in 1995. I'm sorry, I don't understand this bit.

[00:17:19] I've lived there for 13 years, which I've discussed on this podcast many times. This has never come up. It's just like an unreliable sense of narration. It is. Our film co-narrators lied to us. As many might know, Kubrick withdrew this film from Britain. Yes. Entirely, pretty much in 1970,

[00:17:36] pretty much just a year after it came out. And it was just not really shown again until he died. There's this one cinema club that showed it in 93, and people sort of cite that as like, see, but he sued them and they went into receivership or something.

[00:17:52] So really, it was his death that brought it back in Britain. Because this sort of self-imposed thing was gone. In Ireland, the film was banned in 1973. It was finally released uncut in 1999. Same thing, right. Right. What were the other ones here? Brazil? Yeah, but that's... South Africa.

[00:18:11] These are military dictatorships. Spain. Those are all dictatorships. Malta. I can't speak to Malta, but the other three. Why was it banned? Well, for various reasons. It was too good. It was too good. Okay, okay, that checks out. It could be because of the sexual violence of it,

[00:18:26] or just because it's... Sure, of course. Does every time something happens that was vaguely copycat-ish? It was not banned in Britain. That's what I'm trying to say. When I was a teenager, we were like, that movie is unwatchable because it's so fucked up. Yeah.

[00:18:40] Like the other video, Nasty. But no, it was just Kubrick saying, no, fine, you think it's too violent? I won't show it. Sure. And if you did, he would come after you. Because he had a bee in his bonnet. And he did wear a bonnet.

[00:18:55] A famous bonnet wearer. Yes. But like, so... That's why he didn't go out in public much, because people made fun of his bonnet. When I was 13 years old, he died. Okay. That must have been tough for you, walking down the streets of New York City,

[00:19:11] an American boy, born and raised, mourning the death of Stanley Kubrick. A fellow New York... Yeah, my Bronx brothers, fellow New York legend. I remember my dad picked me up at the mall, and I got into the car, and he just looked at me,

[00:19:22] and he said, Stanley Kubrick died. And I just was like... I couldn't believe what I was hearing. It was already... This is about one year into my love of... At that point, I'd seen many other of his... Not all, but at that point,

[00:19:34] I just couldn't believe that this had already happened. I remember being fairly shocked too. Obviously, it was also that... Because I've been looking for a guy who I'd shot for a year at this point. But he dies, and then pretty quickly after that,

[00:19:44] the movie is suddenly released on DVD, and VHS in Britain, and we... I was 13 years old. We were all like... Griffin, describe what I just did. His jaw dropped. Right. We were like, we're gonna see this fucking crazy movie. And so it was just...

[00:19:59] This movie had a gargantuan... Like, every teenager I knew was obsessed with it, including me a little bit. It was just sort of like... Because it gave this view into a culture so far away from New York. Right. Fuck's sake, stop doing the bit. I'm canceling the bit.

[00:20:14] No more bit. I want to talk about my life on this podcast. And this is such a British movie that there's this chasm here. People are trying to be so crazy. Can I tell you that Alex texted me like two weeks ago and was like,

[00:20:25] we need to plan... the most aggressive attack on... It's just the most British movie. It's the most British movie possible. Someone tweeted at me... At this time. Something... I can't remember what I tweeted back, but I was like, I'm just afraid to ever talk about anything

[00:20:41] because I think people will do the bit. And then someone texted me privately and was like, this is a very sad message from you. And I was like, yes, I meant it sincerely. Well, it's nice to have friends that are like... Someone clearly texted me being like,

[00:20:53] you're just kidding, right? And I was like, no, not really. And it's good to have people in your life that are like, that is sad. I'm going to keep doing it. I'm getting pregnant. The sadness is what fuels the engine in the car.

[00:21:02] Your wife essentially did the bit at your wedding. Yes. Which we discussed. It was a legendary moment. We gave her so many comedy points. She did a great job. It was like rice beef. She did a great job. This episode, I think, is coming before the Shining episode.

[00:21:16] Yes. I certainly hope it is. I can exclusively tell the listeners that for whatever reason, the Shining episode also contains a sort of like, we've been too soft. You know, like someone taking their foot, their shoe off and banging on the table being like, the bit must return.

[00:21:29] The bit must return. You picked a bad... Yeah, well, because this episode... I mean, you picked... I hope this episode comes in between 2001 and Barry Lyndon. It does. Okay. I like this bit. Because you seemed unsure about where this movie fell before or after the Shining.

[00:21:43] No, I'm just... We've recorded that episode anyway. Yes. We can refer to it as a done deal. I'm just alerting viewers to more of this nonsense in a couple of weeks. This is a very British movie. It's a very British movie. Written by a very British novelist,

[00:21:56] based on source material, very British actor. Yes. And a British-ish filmmaker. And stunning British character actors and locations. British character actors with lovely voices. Yes. And British character actors and locations. And British characters with locations, I would say. It's a very British movie.

[00:22:11] But I'm also trying to say that, like, for my generation of English teens... What's he doing? And I was a teen when this movie was, like, on ban. I don't get this. He said he doesn't want to do bits. He's going to murder you guys.

[00:22:23] And I'm going to have to clean up my apartment. Like, it was just, like, I don't know. It felt like our movie, even though this was an old film, like, it felt like we got to discover this secret thing,

[00:22:35] even though that's kind of not even what it was. It was just Kubrick's bee in his bonnet. Right. My thing is... I mean, Alex raises a good point of just, like, this is essentially a movie made by a British filmmaker. But what complicates this,

[00:22:49] and I have to explain this to you, David, is that Stanley Kubrick was born and raised in New York City. He was! He was born and raised in Yawn, Bronx. But then he moved to England. Now, is The Bronx Bronx comma The, or is it The Bronx?

[00:23:03] If you were listing the boroughs alphabetically, it would be under... Well, I don't know. The Bronx is burning, you would list under The. It could be like Ukraine, where they drop the The over time. That, Griffin, is a great way to put it.

[00:23:16] Is The Bronx is burning, Bronx is burning comma The? Because the answer, according to a lot of style guides, would be no, because The Bronx is actually considered sort of like a proper name. On the subway map, does it say The Bronx

[00:23:27] when you look at the subway map? It's like you call it Batman. Yeah. The Batman. You know, sometimes when we do episodes on movies that are like, you know, gonna potentially bring in new listeners, I always like to sort of check in about 15 or 20 minutes.

[00:23:40] We're giving a good stop. Ben, Ben, on the subway, it is The Bronx. I said a page of single space. Ben, seven pages single space. I just remember when I... Yeah, I'm sure a lot of people have hit the stop button is what I'm trying to say.

[00:23:50] We've covered this much of page... Oh God. We've only covered when the AFI list came. Yeah, that's all I've gotten to. I can just, you know, speed round. This has the great benefits. No, no, slow down. This has the great benefit of,

[00:24:01] very rarely do I get to come in for an episode where I've already heard part of the mini series because of you guys already released. So I get to sort of join the conversation. Okay, so... Of Kubrick rather than not knowing how you're talking about him.

[00:24:13] Okay, but did you finish your thought about teen David? Yeah, I'm done. Should I do more about me being English? David and his droogs. Do you want to? I'm sure it'll come up again. Yeah. Just like a classic, I don't know if this was true for you guys.

[00:24:25] What? Did you guys dress up as the droogs? He beat me to it. Any Halloween I went to as a teenager, someone was dressed up. Which one were you? Dim. I mean, Dim's kind of the big one, right?

[00:24:35] So I probably would have been Dim if I had to do it. David Dims. No, Savid Dims. You blew it. Savid Dims. That was people would hit me with that all the time. They flip me out if you swapped the letters. That's funny.

[00:24:49] Like, you'd be like Niffin Groomin. Right. Kind of cool. It is cool. Yeah, exactly. I like that guy. You'd be like, Alexi Kim. You can't flip vowels. But then people would be doing it, and then they'd go, you'd be what? Savid Dims.

[00:25:02] And they'd be like, wait a second, Savid Dims. Savid Dims. So no one ever got you into a dim bowler. You never went full dim. No, I've never dressed up as a droog. No. Even though it's an easy-ish Halloween costume. I suggested doing it today. Bart did it.

[00:25:15] Who did it? Bart Simpson. He did do it. Bart did it. He's one of them. I just feel like it's very appealing. The droogs were at Space Jam, right? They went to the... Yes, I did see the movie, but that was one of the IP.

[00:25:26] I have an IP-related quandary for Kubrick. Yeah. You could bring it up now, since it was something I wanted to bring up for closing thoughts. It could also be opening thoughts. Yeah. It's more of a closing thought. Let's start the episode. Yeah. Enough dicking around.

[00:25:39] I just feel like it's very daunting for you guys to cover Kubrick. These movies are not easy to talk about. There's no lack of information on them. And everyone, after a certain point, is absurdly complicated and thorny to understand the intentions or the filmmaking of.

[00:25:50] Well, and also, it's just sort of like... We've only got two to three hours here. No. I mean, I would say three to four. But you know, it's like, we're gonna say whatever we think. But there's no way we could possibly encompass

[00:26:02] everything that's been thought about these movies. They're basically movies that could do... You know, someone could say, I'm doing a ten-episode podcast on 2001 or Clockwork. The exercise for me has been like... Barry Lyndon could be one of those like minute and episode movies. Yes.

[00:26:15] The exercise for me has been watch the movie and try to take all the pressure off of it and then just do an episode responding to what I thought watching the film just now. Agreed. Rather than feeling the pressure. Being like, this is the Clockwork Orange episode.

[00:26:28] We have to do everything about the clockwork. That's my approach, unfortunately. Unfortunately, that's my approach. But I do feel like... It's been interesting hearing you kind of get Kubrick started. I think I told you about this, you know, previously. But I feel like you were a little hard

[00:26:41] on fear and desire in the earlier movies. You're a big fear and desire defender. I defend fear and desire. Your first feature film that you made was sort of an homage. Not sort of. It's not an homage. I just think that if you're young,

[00:26:52] as we were when discovering Kubrick, you and David were both renting NTSC VHS tapes of Kubrick movies and watching them. My VHS tapes were long. They were languorous. Is PAL longer? I can't remember. Longer? Because there's a time difference with PAL and NTSC. It's 24 to 25 frames a second.

[00:27:09] Which is the longer one? PAL is an extra frame. Yeah, a nice long VHS tape. So your family had like an import deck, right? Yeah, of course. That's so crazy. I was just like, I want to spend more time with these movies. Give me an extra frame, baby.

[00:27:20] You had to go to BH Photo to get one of them? The excitement of discovering him as the sort of, to reference obvious, monolith of film, which he was already before he died. He's sort of by that point the defining filmmaker

[00:27:33] of the second half of the 20th century in many ways. Sort of baton passes from Hitchcock to him in terms of just Mount Rushmore. And just also, at least for decades, probably the most famous named director. Yes. Even though he made, I don't know,

[00:27:47] 25% as many films as Hitchcock. Sure. But I felt like seeing Fear and Desire and to a lesser extent Killer's Kiss is just sort of this important thing from an artistry standpoint of like, wow, Stanley Kubrick started here. Right. That to me is I think something that was just,

[00:28:01] I just wanted to correct the record a little bit. You didn't really mention, it's just you see 2001. You see this movie. You're coming in just to correct the record on the stupid Fear and Desire? Yeah, that's right. Where we were just like tired? No, no.

[00:28:12] I don't even remember what we said. Insofar as I'm saying that's my relationship with Kubrick. Also, that movie's a piece of shit. I just think it's incredibly crucial because Hitchcock, it's like, you know, those early silent films, they're not masterpieces. And also no one really listens.

[00:28:23] It's a different era. Right. But I just feel like watching Fear and Desire and Killer's Kiss because nobody, Killer's Kiss is probably the last Kubrick movie most people would get around to seeing prior to Fear and Desire being available. Being available, right. Seeing those movies is just like,

[00:28:37] wow, so he really like, he started small. That is such a crucial lesson about him that kind of got written out of history with the availability of the white box set being so common. Did the white box set begin with... Lolita. Lolita. And no Spartacus.

[00:28:53] Didn't have Spartacus, right. And then when it was originally released, no Eyes Wide Shut. But just those three early ones, the MGM DVDs, those were not, you know, you had to go get those separately. There was no box set. And I remember as a teenager,

[00:29:04] the rap on those was like, yeah, and he made those, you know, whatever. It was like for hire. They're all shorter. They're all kind of rougher. They're black and white. The white box set, which was like the 98, 99 release, which got updated with Eyes Wide Shut.

[00:29:17] Warner Brothers licensing some of the other films. Just Strange Love. Oh, right, right. It did feel like it was like, these are the films that he is presenting at Sazoov. Yeah, this is the collection. The other ones you're not like... They don't really count.

[00:29:31] Well, it's like, well, they got, I'm looking at the spine. Strange Love has the Columbia logo. So obviously they could have gotten Paths of Glory if they wanted just in the box set. But I feel like those earlier ones, you know, it was sort of like,

[00:29:40] I'll get to them. So I just think as like a filmmaker, it's just invaluable to be like, you can make Fear and Desire and then later you can make 2001. That is a truly possible arc for an artist. You don't have to start by making Lolita.

[00:29:54] You don't have to start by making an Academy Award nominated film. You get to make like a scrappy kind of thing and still become Stanley Kubrick. There's something about him not being this like out of the box wunderkind. It's just worth mentioning

[00:30:06] rather than saying that the movie is valueless. You are correct. I didn't say it was valueless. I think you just threw your hands over your head and said it stinks. Yeah, it stinks. Stank up the joint. And it's open all the windows.

[00:30:17] To me, that sounds like you're saying its value. You're saying its value is as something that stinks. I saw people saying this on the reddit. I think we said, you know, I cannot remember anything I've ever said in this podcast.

[00:30:27] But you know, I think we were sort of like, oh, there's some interesting imagery. Sort of starts out more interesting than it ends. I saw someone on the reddit say like, there is this thing that's kind of beautiful about watching Fear and Desire

[00:30:37] and seeing like the mortality of this man in a way. It's very important. Even like you're talking about following, you're like, oh, it's all there. Everything is there. The character has the same name as Inception. He just refines it. It's all there.

[00:30:50] Then the leap to memento is not as huge as we thought it was when it's like, and he made some other. But Fear and Desire to these movies, once you're in this run, it's like, Jesus, that is crazy that this guy leveled up that strongly

[00:31:00] just like in the span of seven movies. We were also talking about this, Alex, and I feel like this is the other thing. If we have any sort of like, not agenda in doing Kubrick and our approach,

[00:31:12] but I do think it's a thing we keep on coming back to is like, I do find it annoying the way he's sort of been mythologized into being like other world. Well, Griffin, you'll see the next section on my thing says correcting the Kubrick myth. There we go.

[00:31:26] Which I would like to talk about. Watching Fear and Desire where you're like, this is a guy who just like gets in over his head and fucks up and can't figure out how to make a good movie. And so much of him not doing press,

[00:31:37] being quote unquote reclusive, which just means that he wasn't like going on the Dick Cavett show. Sure, but I mean also, he did press and was fairly accessible up to around now. Up to a point, yeah. He now is when he starts to stop

[00:31:51] really doing interviews and stuff. And this movie might have been part of it. But it's that thing when people talk, like people who are friends with Terrence Malick and they're like, he's not reclusive, he just doesn't like talking to the press. He's a little reclusive, but yes.

[00:32:02] But similarly, both of those guys, the mythologies around them become so great. This is a huge problem that happens with mythologizing. And Kubrick is someone that even when he died, it was such, he was such a mystery to the public. Yeah.

[00:32:15] And then like as I sort of outlined here and we can talk about, like this idea that you know, has been mentioned once or twice, not by you guys on earlier episodes, that like, oh, he just, like, you know, he's just this maniac, he's controlling,

[00:32:30] he has to, he can't shoot on the street, he has to build New York City. It's like, well, the movie I just watched for the 100th time is entirely locations. All locations. Four built sets. Four built sets. Barry Lyndon, locations, obviously a lot of them

[00:32:45] with some interiors perhaps dressed or changed. Full Metal Jacket obviously has this wonky kind of sense of British. Yeah, it's got the weird UK vibe. It's location though. This idea that he's like this cloistered, like he can't breathe fresh air, he has to create these worlds.

[00:32:58] That's just people that are like, well, 2001's probably his most huge accomplishment. I love The Shining. And then Eyes Wide Shut's his last movie. So I look at those three films, I see a lot of interiors and a lot of sets.

[00:33:09] I made up my mind about who he is as a filmmaker. And it's like, well, every other movie in the middle there kind of dispels this notion. I mean, this is a very loose movie. This is a wild and frenetic and chaotic movie by his standards.

[00:33:24] By his standards. Yeah, by his standards. I don't know that I would call this movie wild. You would not call Clockwork Orange wild? I'd call it wild. Wild, I think wild is certainly an appropriate word. When you're swinging a handheld camera around, filming like a physical assault,

[00:33:39] you're like, this is very orderly, this is very British and very proper. No, I didn't say it was orderly. I'm just saying this is in between 2001 and Buryland. David also doesn't have a frame reference for what proper British. Yeah, right. I wouldn't know.

[00:33:51] But in between those two films, which are obviously immaculately designed both in terms of the aesthetics, the sets, the camera, the movie is very much not that. And it really pops the bubble on the idea that he's just like this creator of these false sets

[00:34:04] and everything has to be perfect and just so. I mean, I really think a lot of that is The Eyes Wide Shut. And Full Metal Jacket. It's like the end of career thing of like, oh, now he really can't leave England and he's stretching reality

[00:34:18] in that he's making a Vietnam movie and a New York movie without leaving England. And it overwrote a lot of what was actually true about it. And The Shining as well. This, you know, American Rockies thing built in this. But like, it just sort of changed the perception

[00:34:30] of the earlier works. Whereas what I think he's more interested in, you see it in this movie, but you see it in all the movies really. I mean, certainly 2001. He's more interested in these perfect worlds that are broken by chaos. He's not interested in perfect worlds

[00:34:43] that remain perfect. Even in Barry Lyndon, the sort of decline of the fortunes of these characters, he really loves, especially in Lolita as well, these characters that you start off and everything is just so. Either in their lives or in the world they live in.

[00:34:59] And by the end, it's all thrown into chaos. And that's really more his thing than like everything just is its own perfect. I mean, this is literally the plot of Eyes Wide Shut. And my problem with him, yes, absolutely. And my problem with the mythologizing also

[00:35:12] is like, I just think it gets boring to call him cold and hermetic. And I feel like these are just words people throw around that don't apply to most of his movies or whatever. I wouldn't call him wild either, though. But I don't know.

[00:35:26] Maybe I also think the idea that he was just like this genius with perfect judgment who built the world as he saw it in his mind, was correct, didn't talk to anybody, and then died is uninteresting to me. I think people love this idea where it's just like

[00:35:42] he was blessed with the perfect sense of cinema and he like came down to Earth, made his perfect movies, and then died. Extended to God. So much of our fucking podcast is about trying to figure out these fucking people who made these movies to some degree,

[00:35:58] not even necessarily psychoanalyzing them, but it's like obviously tracking this within their career and their films being responses to their previous films, what's going on in the world, their own life, all this sort of shit. And like the more people try to put Kubrick

[00:36:14] in this like alien box, the less interesting I find him. I wonder how his career would be perceived if he'd made Napoleon or whatever, you know, the Napoleon movie. Like if he had thrown a sort of more traditional biopic massive epic into the later stage of his career,

[00:36:33] if that would have changed. Or the Aryan Papers is the other one. If he just made a Holocaust movie. Like rather than ending his career on oh and then he like drove the most famous couple alive insane with his, you know, many take matches.

[00:36:47] The fact that that whole movie is about like secret societies and shit. And then he died and they divorced. You know, like he died suspiciously close. It all sort of has overwritten like the sort of oh he hated actors. Like, you know, if he worked without actors.

[00:37:03] But it's like, you look at the looseness and the freedom that he's giving Peter Sellers, Malcolm McDowell in this movie. There's like, there's a looseness to his trust of actors in this middle period. That did clip Malcolm's eyes and probably made him do that for like many days.

[00:37:20] We'll get to that. That's just part of the movie. We'll get to that. But Alex did raise this good, Alex and I went to a drive-in last weekend. So we had a long day together. Two three hour car rides just talking about things in depth.

[00:37:32] But you did bring up this point where you're like the two actors he gave primary roles to twice. He never worked with actors twice except for two examples in lead roles. Peter Sellers and Timothy Carey. Two of the most. That's it? In terms of like leading roles,

[00:37:46] obviously there's lots of. Right, like Patrick McGee. There's lots of bit players. But no, in terms of like people that would be quote unquote on the poster. He never did the kind of Nolan or PTA thing. Like, hey, Joaquin, come back.

[00:37:58] He had no company and he certainly didn't have it in the last eight, you know, seven movies. Early on, he did have this kind of sense of letting these two unpredictable performers come back for seconds. Or in the case of Sellers, like for fourths and fifths.

[00:38:15] And that to me is like when people don't realize that or they don't point that out, it's just like, oh yeah, he hated actors. It's like if he hated actors, why did he let Peter Sellers come back a second time just to fuck around and be crazy?

[00:38:26] Sure, but there's a bit of it. It is interesting because like 2001 has no movie stars in it, obviously. Right. But then post that, I mean, you could. McDowell is the biggest stretch. This is the other thing we were saying

[00:38:37] is that like they are men who know how to comport themselves within a professional environment more than Carrie and Sellers perhaps. But like McDowell and Nicholson are both like insane live wire behavioral, uncontrollable actors. As is, to a lesser extent, Tom Cruise. Right.

[00:38:54] And Ryan O'Neill is a pain in the butt. Is a pain in the butt. I wouldn't call him a live wire actor. But he's a major movie star. He worked with major movie stars in everything but Full Metal Jacket after Strange Love.

[00:39:07] But a lot of the people he favored are famously then or now like, well, he's just like a total maniac of an actor. And O'Neill also kind of like notoriously. And he likes just, it's interesting that he would often work with

[00:39:19] major stars at the heights of their career. Yes. Right. And I just think he liked Chaos. He liked Chaos is the movie star version of the Chaos. That's the thing. It was like, that's a guy who knew how to like control the Chaos. This is the point.

[00:39:32] More than people have now given him credit for, especially post Eyes Wide Shut. Which again is like taking, you know, Tom Cruise, he's a very chaotic, physical, exuberant performer at his best. I mean, certainly can be. And he puts him,

[00:39:46] like I just think that this sense of Kubrick has once again kind of been lost to time and is worth scrutinizing ever so slightly. Cruise's performance in Eyes Wide Shut, which we will discuss later, is unusual in the Cruise canon. It is, but no one's like,

[00:39:59] Tom Cruise is kind of like a boring, low heart rate actor. Especially now when things are that way. No, but people said that about his performance in that movie. Well, sure. Yeah, right. I mean, I wouldn't agree. But that's, you know, whatever. You'll talk about it later.

[00:40:12] But also the idea that it's like, oh, here's this guy who creates these like hermetic controlled airless ecosystems. How do this is Eyes Wide Shut? And then you're like, It is! No, I'm just saying, he did have a tendency to put like wild animals into those ecosystems.

[00:40:25] Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Shining and Eyes Wide Shut especially, right? Those are two of your three last films that define basically the back third of your legacy. It's hard for people to not be like, that's been over, everything from these movies has been overwritten.

[00:40:37] Maybe he should have like, you know, done some contract stuff. You know, Sister Act? He could have come in on that. He should have done Sister Act. You know what I mean? He should just sprinkle in some other stuff. Sister Act. Sister Act? A Sister Act?

[00:40:48] Getting Even With Dad? We were just talking about that in the car. We were talking about Getting Even With Dad. I had my own car ride with Alex Russo. Oh, it was a three hours each way. I'm very sure. But we were talking about Getting Even With Dad.

[00:40:59] We were talking Macaulay. Yeah. Why were we talking Macaulay? It's not worth going back there. It's a shame Kubrick never got to do Macaulay. Macaulay could have been a David and an earlier version of AI if that had gotten up on reels a little bit earlier.

[00:41:11] That's certainly true. But, but I just, again, like this is... Might have even been good. This is a crucial thing that you guys are fortunately, I believe able to do throughout the run of this series and already are to an extent. It's just like re-examining these

[00:41:22] not from the mythological perspective that they've taken on. Which I... Really opening the conversation back up and hopefully getting to sort of reappraise like, you know, to me the sort of like, it is possible to view his body of work as a consistent rumination on a theme

[00:41:38] even though as is often pointed out, he never really made the same movie twice and almost every movie he made is a different genre. And as has been pointed out, almost all of his movies could be in the running for the number one greatest movie

[00:41:51] in their respective genre. The only thing I'll say, and it's loose, is that you could kind of argue that Strangelove 2001 and Clockwork Orange all have science fiction elements. Well, that's not even... I mean, that's in the Michelle Sima interview book that I have. I don't have that.

[00:42:08] Well, I pulled some quotes from it and I brought it with me. That is just a Sims original. He says, he says to... I mean, I can pull that quote up. He says like, you've kind of made this trilogy about man's grappling with the future. Right, right.

[00:42:18] And I have quotes about that. Also, David, I... But he... That's what I'm saying. He's always on... Griffin's about to drag me. He's always on these themes. It's not that... Yes. No one would look at those movies in a superficial viewing. Griffin is pinching me up

[00:42:30] to a Toyota Camry because he's going to drag me. I'm not going to drag you. I just want to push back on something. Oh, what? While you drag David? What? That shouldn't be the one thing you say for the rest of this episode.

[00:42:40] We have multiple hours left to go. Did I say it? You said this in a bar. I'll say it if I can just say one thing. No, I'm done. I'm out. You can expect Alex and I to do all the lifting from here. You don't think that...

[00:42:50] I just left it all on the table. You don't think that's... No, it's an okay point. It was a Sims original and you branded it as such. All right, I'm ready to do it. If I got them, I'm going to just throw the baton to Ben.

[00:43:00] I'm going to take the laptop. Box office game is in there somewhere. Okay, so that pod chair in the one room is pretty cool. Ben has his own notes. This is Ben's note pad. Top note. Okay, wait. No, I just want to say...

[00:43:13] This is not the only thing I'm going to say. But if I can say one thing right now... You can. People in the Fear and Desire Killers Kiss episode were like... They sound bummed out that they have to do Kubrick, that we forced their hand. No energy.

[00:43:28] Is this going to be a slug? When you say people, we mean, you know, some people on the Reddit that we maybe should just stop looking at. Our humble Redditors. Right, exactly. Yeah. But as you said, we were just fucking tired of that episode

[00:43:40] and stressed out and whatever. But the other thing was, I say in that episode, admittedly, which I think is a thing that people were like, oh no. I was like, Kubrick, not one of my guys. Admittedly, not one of my guys. I guess you say that

[00:43:49] right at the top of the mini. Right. I will say, watching and re-watching these movies, I'm like, oh, I like Kubrick a lot more than I think I do. And I think a lot of the reason why in my mind

[00:44:00] I don't think of myself as a Kubrick guy is because of how much I resent the mythology that's built around him and the attitude of quote unquote Kubrick guys. And you watch these films and they are... And just take them as movies. They are vibrant and bizarre

[00:44:13] and clumsy. They're not these perfect objects. They're awkward and weird and inscrutable and mysterious. And people are just like, yeah, they're just like these terrariums of filmmaking. But the mysterious shit also ends up feeding this. Every one of his movies was some mystery. Some Dan Brown,

[00:44:31] so dark the kind of man, mystery for us to solve. I've got the quote here. Okay, here's the quote. This book that I've always had since I was a teenager. French critic, Michel Simon, I don't know. Don't quote me on my mispronunciation. It would appear that you intended

[00:44:45] to make a trilogy about the future in your last three films. Have you thought about this? There is no deliberate pattern to the stories I have chosen to make into films. About the only factor at work each time is that I try not to repeat myself.

[00:44:58] Since you can't be systematic about finding a story to film, I read anything. So no, he's just like, I reject your hypothesis. Also, my next plan is to make a trilogy of films about Tetris, the game. We think this narrative is too big for one film.

[00:45:11] Do you remember that? No. I don't know. It's some fucking pandemic variety headline that was like, studio announces trilogy of Tetris movies and they were just calling their shot. Why not make it? Is it five? There will be a tetrology. Why not make it the Tetris tetrology?

[00:45:27] Yeah, it would be the way to do it. Well, he's a coward. Put it on the blank check slate. I think that's four. You'll just get the right... Tetrology is four. Isn't that quadrilogy? That was the alien box set. Quadrilogy is not a real word. I believe quadrilogy

[00:45:37] is in the encyclopedia next to a picture of the alien quadrilogy box set. It's amazing how that box set has ruined the minds of men like us. Of course, the quadrilogy. Quad for, ilogy, movies? Absolutely. That word is valid forever

[00:45:51] because whoever in the Fox fucking home video department... It's the monorail man saying... No, but it is 100% Quad equals four, rilogy equals movies. Yes, I mean that's the thing because some guy was like, here we are in the alien tetrology box set and some exec was like, Tetrology?

[00:46:08] Tetrology suck. Come on, let's zazz that up. No, five would be pentology. Well, then it's only four Tetris movies. Perfectly reasonable. Anyway, there's your quote. Let's move on to... What's the next line item in your... Well, look, I just want to talk about two... You've already brought...

[00:46:23] I'm not rushing him. I'm actually genuinely interested. Are you dragging me? You've already backed us into one of these so we're right there. Are you rushing or dragging? There's two important things, one of which you just brought up, which is either in the surface or under the surface

[00:46:35] of I think almost every Kubrick movie and certainly here it's the surface and you just mentioned it is this recurring theme he's always grappling with of technology or weaponized machinery aiding man in its ongoing inevitable downfall. Uh-huh. This is in some way or another

[00:46:51] just this distrust of technology or this looking at innovations and the reminder that man would be smart to not try to innovate further but to control themselves within, right? Like Doctor Strangelove in 2001 and this movie are very literal examples of that theme for sure.

[00:47:10] The amount of war films he made that it's like ostensibly the only quote-unquote genre that he did multiple times and it's the very nature of just like self-destruction. What was the difference between the firing squad at the end of Paths of Glory

[00:47:24] and the sniper at the end of Full Metal Jacket? That's an advancement of a gun. Yes, right. It's designed to deliver a bullet. One of them you have to line people up and look them in the eye and the other one you can just be

[00:47:34] a complete absent figure and kill someone from half a mile away. And this is him looking at the development of something as simple as a gun, which of course you see in its rudimentary musket form in Barry Lyndon and being like, the more we innovate

[00:47:47] this stupid thing called a gun, the easier and less human the act of killing someone in combat becomes. And obviously the end of Paths of Glory is very human, devastatingly human. And the sniper at the end of Full Metal Jacket is just random, arbitrary, and violent.

[00:48:02] And that's the sort of progression that he looks at throughout the 20th century of just mankind doing everything they can to hasten their own destruction. And the Ludovico technique in this movie is just that writ large, which is why I love this movie so much,

[00:48:17] is it takes all of his themes and makes them basically the main course in one film. So just the final thing on the technology aspect, he has a quote here from this book as well. Modern science seems to be very dangerous because it has given us the power

[00:48:34] to destroy ourselves before we know how to handle it. On the other hand, it is foolish to blame science for discoveries. And in any case, we cannot control science. The people. So he's basically just like, his attitude is just like, look, we're going to invent things

[00:48:48] we don't know how to control and that's going to be a huge problem for us. People shouldn't do that, but they're going to because that's the way progress works. Right, and this movie's all about the folly of trying to control human nature when even you can.

[00:49:00] Griffin, you just backed me right up into the other point I wanted to make. There we go. Because that is what every one of Kubrick's movies is about, I believe and I'm quite certain. Every one of his movies is about the inherent flaws of the human character

[00:49:11] and the inability of man or mankind to not give in to their instincts of being unpredictable and therefore leading yourself into destruction. Instincts such as fear and desire? Fear and desire is that because it's examining the cowardice of people. I was saying the literal.

[00:49:26] Yes, but also, I mean, but you know, Killers Kissed is kind of like Boxer's Lament. Fear and desire, are they in Inside Out? Yeah, absolutely. In the what? Fear and Inside, well, Fear actually is in Inside Out. Oh, you're listing the characters in Inside Out. The little guys.

[00:49:39] But like, Desire was played by Creed Bratton. You look at like even the, like, you know, the Boxer in Killers Kiss up to Eyes Wide Shut, like the central theme in all these movies is about the morality of the plot driving the characters to a decision

[00:49:54] where they either have to act in the spirit of free will or give themselves over to making a huge mistake, which is what Alex does in this movie. In the way that Hal malfunctions and says it must be human error. A computer can never be perfect

[00:50:08] because it's still built by a man. Yeah, I mean, my favorite, obviously 2001 does not endeavor to tell you why Hal goes crazy. But Hal offers the explanation that he says maybe it's human error. It's a programming error. But I've just always liked it as like Hal just,

[00:50:22] his continued existence eventually comes to like people. I think he just spent too much time on Twitter. That's what it is. He got red pills. He got posters disease. He got brain worms. But if you look at that in the context of his other movies,

[00:50:33] like his point of view is like, of course there was a human error. There's always a human error. What's the human error in the Ludovico technique? It's that you can never count on this programming being undone. What's the human error in Bill in Eyes Wide Shut?

[00:50:46] It's that he's just too damn curious. He can't leave well enough alone. What's the human error in, you know, Barry Lyndon? It's that he just can't quit while he's ahead. Every one of these movies is about someone. Barry Lyndon is like Uncut Gems,

[00:50:58] but twice as long where you're just like, Barry and he's like. And pastoral. I don't think it's. I'm not sure. I'm not sure it's like that necessarily, but I see what you're saying. Barry just keeps, like you said, like there are just moments in Barry Lyndon

[00:51:12] where you're like, okay now Barry, you got out of that scrape. You make me realize Barry Lyndon's a bit of a ghillie. Barry? But you see what I'm saying? Sorry. Billion Eyes White Shirt is more of like a Target lady? You see what I'm saying though?

[00:51:27] That like this theme of like the fact that his belief in human, and you see this basically in the bones of AI, is that nothing touched by man can ever not fail. My favorite theme of AI, right. Is that if mankind and the brain of man

[00:51:41] and the spirit of man is ever given a chance, they will somehow fuck it up. Yeah, we suck. That's lowly. That temptation, that's Lolita, that's Spartacus even to an extent, even though that's like obviously an asterisk of a movie in terms of his development of it.

[00:51:54] No, but like yeah. He's attracted to this theme over and over that it's like I believe man is capable of many great things. The one thing I believe they are definitely capable of is failure and making the wrong decisions. Because in Spartacus,

[00:52:06] a lot of it is them being like, we built this Roman society that functions and a lot of the movie is these senators being like, why do we just want to be powerful instead? Right, like why can't we help like just wanting, you know,

[00:52:20] tending towards tyranny at the end of it. And like with AI, I mean we've ranted about AI, although we could probably just do another AI episode. Yeah, maybe we should. I mean such a good movie. That'd be fun. It's just like the idea of like humans being like,

[00:52:31] what do robots not have? I know, they don't love. We love. Love is great. This robot should love. And then robot is like, I love, oh God, this is so existentially crushing. It's the like fucking consciousness is a prison thing,

[00:52:44] but also like intellect and the idea of intellect, the idea that we perceive ourselves to be like smart and evolved and look at what we built and look at how far we've come as opposed to these other fucking animals. We are clearly superior and you're like,

[00:52:57] those animals like there is an order, there's a structure basically to how they behave and we like pat ourselves on the back for like Jamba Juice, but then we're just like none of this makes sense and we're fucking everything up all the time. 2001 ends with Jamba Juice, right?

[00:53:11] It does. That's what all the colors, the colors are the different varieties of Jamba Juice. He's getting a razzmatazz. It's full of juice. Strawberry Surfrider. But this is like, again, like what I love about this movie above all his others

[00:53:21] is that it takes all the themes of his other movies before and after and literalizes them into the actions of the character and the actions done to the character. I like that it has a big fiberglass dick. That's what I like about it the most.

[00:53:33] Well, hold on, put a pin in that. Okay. Alex, what's next on your document? Well, what's next on my document is really digging into the movie A Clockwork Orange. The rest of it gets into issues more. I feel like, you know,

[00:53:44] I wanted to just set up the Kubrickness of this. Sure. And I pose something. And give Ben the opportunity to. To you, Alex. Yeah, Ben is drinking a glass of milk. And a huge glass of milk. None of you touched your drugged milk. I'm sipping some tea,

[00:53:57] which David is a beverage that's incredibly popular in British culture. Very true. Chai, as Alex calls it. Yeah. Kubrick's kind of. Go on. This movie is like a punk. It's pre-punk. It is. It's a very erotic. But you see, even in its supposed,

[00:54:16] again, no one here can speak to this, banishment in England from the 70s. It does coincide very nicely with the appearance of fairly radical British cultural shifts. But also as a 71 movie, like this movie just looks like the worst of 80s England somehow.

[00:54:29] Here's a question for you guys that kept on running through my brain while watching this movie. While re-watching this film. How would you describe the aesthetic of this film? Brutalist? Yeah, I would say, I would just say dystopian. And I feel like people's idea of a dystopian society,

[00:54:45] they're just picturing this movie. There are like four or five contradictory aesthetics, I think, coexisting in this movie where I'm like, I'm even not as synthesized. Well, because you, I guess, like, right. The interiors, especially the fancy houses are the sort of like mid-century modern-y

[00:54:59] or white and there's all kinds of. But he goes Britain, not to speak of a country that I grew up in. I'm sorry, what? But in the 60s, Britain embraced brutalist architecture. I would say probably more than some countries. So you grew up like, yeah.

[00:55:13] So now he's just saying he grew up in the 60s. This is just a bit. I guess he's not grown up in the 60s. He's trying to last night in Soho us. Yeah. He fucking took a nap and woke up in 60s swinging. Let's go downtown.

[00:55:26] Like, I feel like now that brutalism is regarded almost. Brutally? No, I mean, now there are people who are like, that was a legitimate movement in architecture and like there's brutalist art and architecture that should be, you know, landmarked and you can't destroy it.

[00:55:41] Even though like at the time people were like, oh, these ugly concrete blocks. Like, sure. What is the world coming to? Now Britain has like, you can walk around England and find some of those amazing brutalist architecture and be like, look, this thing is incredible to look at.

[00:55:52] But it all just looks like clockwork orange to me. Yeah. It's got a bit of a clockwork. It all feels ominous. But also like the aesthetic is, it's also like it now looks like what we think of as kind of post-Cold War.

[00:56:02] Like I remember a couple years ago, I went to Bratislava and everything there just looked like clockwork orange. It's very influenced fashion-wise by mod. It feels like kind of proto new wave. But you're right, like there's this pre-punk element to it.

[00:56:17] There's like this pre-rave culture element to it. You know, there's this very top-arm biker gang culture too. It's right in between like the leather biker boys and their gangs and like, you know, a roving street gang of thugs in the late 70s.

[00:56:35] It's just synthesizing so many different things into like a mashup that I don't even know how to quantify. But then what's inside, but then the contradiction that I love about Kubrick as a filmmaker and about this movie and Alex as a character is all of that is true.

[00:56:47] But as David said, like what is inside of that? You have exactly what you're describing and inside of it is beautiful mid-century homes. Inside of that is a deep, like a love of Ludwig van. Inside of that is this sense of class

[00:57:00] and culture that is nestled within a rotting society. And that to me is just this beautiful kind of, you know, up-down black-white version of the movie where it's like you walk out of these horrible housing tracks and you drive a little bit

[00:57:15] and you're in these just like stunning rural homes because society has gone to seed. But there's some people hanging on to the nice version of society just outside the city limits. But everything within the city is like, you know, fucked beyond repair.

[00:57:29] You see the state of Alex's lobby. They believe in the system still and they still like march around and tap their fucking shoes and shit. Well. And salute. I mean, but like he's mocking. But it's also, it's yeah. He's just, he's mocking the system

[00:57:45] and he like scoffs at authority. And those are all punk ass things. But as much as you're mocking it, there's also an element of like what you're saying, Alex, there's this sort of odd way in which they're upholding it

[00:57:58] in the way that like kids pretend to be cowboys, you know? So one of the most famous, what I think is also interesting about everything you're saying is one of the most famous sequences is that, you know, by the water, right? There's that estate, the concrete estate,

[00:58:11] where it's by the water. Really jumping around. I'm not jumping around. Look, this, this, this location, right? They use it, I feel like a couple times. It's where he beats up the other Droogs. Yes. Right? And it's like that to me,

[00:58:23] I understand completely why Kubrick found it appealing because it's like, it does look post-apocalyptic almost, right? Or dystopian, whatever you want to call it. But then there's the water element that like suggests that someone was like, well, this could still be naturally beautiful

[00:58:36] and it makes it even creepier to me. And that's a real, that's the Thames Mead estate. It's like a real place. And that's why, again, it's like, oh God, he, you know, he built these sets. It's like, no, look at this movie.

[00:58:45] This is the opposite of all of those ideas. The four sets, by the way, he mentions that he built, did you guys? It's in my dossier. All right, well then I won't read it. Good. Because we'll get there when we get there.

[00:58:54] We'll get there when we get there. But no, just like that movement at the time, right? Is like, well, we can plan for everything. Like we can build the perfect tower block. Ben's just smirking at me. I thought of a good joke. Oh, go ahead.

[00:59:08] You have a dossier and Alex brought his own dossier. So it's a dossier kind of going on right now. A dossi dossier? Dossi dossier. There's something very funny to me about the idea of building these estates and being like problem solved. Right.

[00:59:28] You've got your water, houses over there. Here's a nice walkway. Everything you might want. Just try and complain about this. Exactly. Boxes checked and you look at it and you're like, well, this is kind of like chilling. That's a literalization of what I love about all these films.

[00:59:43] Like it's chilling to Kubrick to think that people were like, well, we made the bomb. We have a system to control it. Problem solved. Right. Nothing could go wrong. Yeah. And it's chilling for him to be like, well, we built the spaceships

[00:59:57] and we have a computer running them. Problem solved. And the lunatic technique is the best version of that where it feels like something a kid would come up with. It's like, well, what if you just made, like punch someone in the stomach anytime they saw boobs

[01:00:08] and then eventually anytime they saw boobs in real life they would double over. And then he's like. It feels like the logic of a five year old. But what's incredible is then his whole thing of the fallibility of man is,

[01:00:20] well, what shoes are you wearing when you're punching him? Well, what happens if he sees someone with those shoes on again? I don't know. I guess he'd go insane. I guess he wouldn't like that. Yeah, sure. Well, have you thought about that? No, not really.

[01:00:31] And that's what he finds so frustrating, I think, about the flaws of man as an organism that is just so irresistible as he revisits it in 10 different genres across his career is that it's always the same thing. It's just him looking at the behavior of man

[01:00:48] and going, these fucking animals can't figure it out. Everything they do is going to lead to their ruin and I'm the only person who sees this clearly and I love that about him. Have you ever seen Stanley Kubrick's Boxes? No, but you guys are doing the episode

[01:01:02] on Color Me Kubrick, David said, right? I did not say that. I'll watch that. I was trying to remember last night what was Stanley Kubrick's Boxes, like a documentary about his treasure chest or something? It's like a documentary short that I think Sean Ronson did.

[01:01:17] It was like, you know, Julio's Favorite Shapes. It's just Stanley Kubrick being like, this is a great box right here. It's like a conveyor belt. It's like Orson Welles' sketchbook where he weirdly had a six episode TV show where he just drew pictures and talked about them.

[01:01:32] Sounds fun. Orson Welles' TV show where he opens a magic box. You're correct, it was John Ronson. He opened a box. It was like going through his archives after he died. All his memorabilia. Right, and all the things prepared for Napoleon. Is that watchable?

[01:01:47] Because it sounds like it could be boring. Just him being like, oh, and here's some pictures. You know, like you got to dramatize. You're saying it's like Geraldo's tomb. Well, he found nothing. Right, but there was his Geraldo. All right guys, we're going to open Kubrick's box.

[01:02:02] So it turns out there's nothing inside. I remember being semi-watchable, but the way I found out about it at first, I don't know why I end up on this website, but the company who made his physical boxes was so proud of their mention in the documentary

[01:02:20] that they posted a clip on their website. Why would you want a box company's website? This is my question. I'm like, how did I end up there? You box shopping? But I was like, oh, there's a documentary about his. Previously, the boxes were only used for shipping nails.

[01:02:36] Yeah, yes, but he talked. One of my favorite Simpsons. I mean, just the box factory in the Simpsons. The density of that. This is a great second minute. We only make boxes for shipping nails. Every product that needs to be shipped has its own box factory.

[01:02:53] People should know that like 25% of being friends with Alex is receiving Simpsons quotes or gifts via text, and then the next time you see him in person going, why didn't you give me credit for that Simpsons reference?

[01:03:05] I think David gets a lot more of those than maybe you do because he's a more reliable responder, but I do love a good Simpsons reference, but the box factory. The box factory is just great. So you're just online checking out some box company.

[01:03:16] I don't know why I'm on this fucking website. The final button of the guy, what is it, the Simpsons, like the line of like, well, you could end up being a schmo working in a box factory and he's in the other building. He's like, I heard that.

[01:03:25] He kills me. You saw the boxes. I don't remember why, but this clip, right? The guy is talking about, and I was just like, oh, is the documentary literally this? And it's like, no, it's mostly about the contents of the boxes,

[01:03:39] but there is this section where they talk about the boxes themselves. Right? And this guy is like, Stanley came to us with a very specific demands. We made him hundreds of boxes before he agreed. David, truly. And he's just like, Stanley came to us with a 40 page document

[01:03:59] and the whole thing was just like, he had never found a box that truly satisfied him. And he was like, we went back through so many iterations. I sympathize. Yeah. And he was just like, look, either the lid is too tight.

[01:04:11] And when I tug it, it doesn't come off. The whole box gets lifted or it's too loose and it falls off like this. And the guy's talking about just the back and forth to get the exact right snug fit on the lid.

[01:04:23] And then he goes like a monster baiting the micron of cod. He uses the term micron of card to get the right thickness. These are very technical box terms. Right? Right. Now, like. But these are stuff like this in the presence of this movie I haven't seen.

[01:04:41] Like this has done more damage to his reputation than it has. Than anything else. Right. I agree. Now, this is my point. This is the point I'm trying to make. The takeaway from that is just like, oh, insane obsessive perfectionist needs to control the entire world around him.

[01:04:55] This and that. Right. My current perspective on it is more of the like what you're saying. Kubrick driven crazy by people who don't think about. Well, what happens if. Right. If I get this, if I get this box and then there's a leak in my roof,

[01:05:12] everything inside is going to be ruined. Right. Because your box is faulty. I think Kubrick is someone who like thought so thoroughly about everything. You guys should do a patron episode on the box. Get a box from this company and just kind of review it.

[01:05:26] That sounds pretty fun. Sit here, unpack the box. I want to see what micron of card it is. It's an unboxing a box video. Yes. But I feel like that's two minutes and then it's sort of like, well, it's a challenge. Wait. Okay. So bonus episodes.

[01:05:38] How are we going to do it again? But slower. Second AI, AI, hyper AI. Right. Stanley Kubrick's boxes, the documentary box and unboxing. Yeah. If we watch. What if we put a DVD of Richard Kelly's the box into a box, the boxing, the reboxing. Exactly.

[01:05:54] When you finally run out of talking, you can do boxing in the box. Not when we run out. It's worth creating a new franchise. The first annual boxing. What if we watch AI backwards and call it IA. Now we have seven Patreon bonuses for Kubrick.

[01:06:07] The man, the man would approve. Let me give you some dossier unless you have. I'm ready to talk about the actual movie of a car. Everything else will come up organically. The only other things I want to,

[01:06:17] I feel like I should mention from the dossier that are sort of like three movies. Like Napoleon is the thing he thinks about for a while post 2001. Like that. This is a big so soon after 2001 though. This is three years. Three years. Isn't that soon?

[01:06:30] It's pretty fast by the measure of. I mean, but this was a big Napoleon disruption, right? I think he was working also, you know, plotting Napoleon pre-2001. Like it's a long running project span, spanned a long time. And he's fascinated by Napoleon.

[01:06:45] It just feels so exciting to be like, you just made 2001. The most grand opulent visionary film that imagines an entire civilization and a fucking blockbuster. And it was a hit. Yes. And it made money and people loved it. And the counterculture embraced it.

[01:07:00] What do you want to do? I guess I should just make this punk movie about a guy who beats people up and listens to Beethoven and all. It'll be done in two years. And people are like, that sounds fine. What will it be rated X? Well,

[01:07:13] people hate it. Actually, it'll be nominated for best picture. I have to, I regret it's like, okay, I guess to go knock that one out after two. While that a clockwork orange is not ready for best picture in 2001. Wasn't yeah. Like it's a better film. Well,

[01:07:26] that's I mean, they're, you know, like an 11 out of 10 and a 10 out of 10. But, but yeah, that is that's the wild statistic. I also think it's bizarre that McDowell wasn't nominated. I don't know how to appreciate a performance like this in 71. I guess that's true. But like,

[01:07:43] I don't know how you give this movie picture and director and not go like, well, obviously this guy at the center, because people were just like, he's just some guy Kubrick thing. Yeah. I think it's just like, well, they discredit the actor. I mean, it's a good guy.

[01:07:56] If you haven't seen if you're not bringing any context to McDowell. So, I mean, it's a fairly loaded year. It's Hackman and French connection. Good performance. Peter Finch and Sunday, buddy Sunday, which is actually a great performance. George C. Scott in the hospital,

[01:08:09] which is a big George C. Scott. Don't you even fucking nominate me? I'll kill you. Topple and fiddler on the roof. The fuck out of that one. Yeah. And then Walter Matthau and hot, which is not a movie I've seen.

[01:08:23] I like how you say this is a loaded year and then offer three, just non-existent movies and performances. The hospital is not non-existent and George C. Scott is movie is non-existent. No, it isn't. And George C. Scott in that movie is like a 1 billion out of 10 Oscar

[01:08:38] who directed the hospital. Don't look at it. I asked, he wrote it. It's a movie. I'm not saying who wrote the hospital, but that's the thing with Shiavsky movies. It's shy. Yes, it is. Shiavsky is an Otero directed network. So you knew that. But it's called Shiavsky's network.

[01:08:54] But Sidney Lumet is like, I don't know who directed the hospital. Arthur Hiller. That was giving me my fucking guess. I wish I had the courage to say that. That doesn't exist. That is if that movie played tomorrow at Walter Reed, there will be six people there. Well,

[01:09:07] wait, that's not a good measurement of anything at this point. 50 years. No voting 50 years ago should not be measured by what? I'm not saying it didn't exist. I'm not saying it didn't exist at the time. I'm saying the cultural legacy of that. I'm saying at the time.

[01:09:25] I'm talking, I'm saying now you can't hold this up. We read to the Oscars. Yes, they would be different. Gotta get McDowell in there. Walter Matthau and Koch to me is the soft one there, but it's Walter Matthau. Yeah. I also bet if I saw Koch,

[01:09:37] it would fucking rip. It's probably among the top five best Walter Matthau performances, but this is, this is the performance. Here's my point more on this. And then we can move on. Like Clockwork Orange. That's it's French Connection, Fiddler on the Roof, Last Picture Show.

[01:09:52] Nicholas and Alexandra is kind of the forgotten movie of those five best picture nominees, but those are three, you know, heavyweights. Then you look at the fucking 2001 year that garbage. Do you want to, you want to hear about this? We probably already debated it. 2001. It's what?

[01:10:07] It's a beautiful mind fellowship of the ring. No, listen to this. It's okay. And these are none of these are bad movies in my opinion, but it's, it's all funny girl, the lion in winter, Rachel, Rachel and Romeo and Julie. No, that's a shitty year.

[01:10:22] It's like one of those things where you're like, you couldn't squeeze 2001 in here. Like what the hell is going on? And then three years later they're like Clockwork Orange. People are like, is this movie too violent to exist? And the Oscars are like, eh, best picture.

[01:10:34] Throw it in there. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm just saying it's just a stunning pivot. It may also be partly just 2001's legacy. They were like, well fuck. That's the other thing. I mean, you talk about like 2001 getting reclaimed by the counterculture and whatever. That movie just claimed immediately.

[01:10:50] That's what I'm saying. But it just, the tail on it was so immediate and so long. Whereas this is just, and then it's like, well, you made the best picture nominated X rated band film with all this. What do you want to do? It's like,

[01:11:01] I guess I'll have to make a movie by candlelight. I guess I'm going to, I have no choice. I'm afraid I have no choice. Make a movie about this Tri-Corner hat motherfucker. And I'll only use candlelight.

[01:11:08] Make a three hour movie about just like a foolish loser who scams his way into upper crust society. And it'll all be lit by candles. And they're like, best picture. They're like, yeah, great. Go for it. That sounds like a reasonable, you know, rebound from this,

[01:11:22] from this violent movie. Don't talk shit about Barry. That's my boy. Look, we're getting there. Ben reacted very strongly to Barry. He turned to me like 10 minutes in and went, very excited for this. Those are my people on screen. Irish liars. Barry's name out your mouth, David.

[01:11:34] Don't you dare. He's an Irish liar. He's an Irish liar. He's an Irish liar. He's an Irish liar. He's an Irish liar. He's an Irish liar. He's an Irish liar. I love the guy. So is Ben. Sometimes people have to let us get by. I know. All right?

[01:11:47] It's not easy out there. Meanwhile, Ben. Judgment-free zone. Should mention that Ben only has one leg now for reasons unknown. Peg leg Ben. That's a new nickname. Now look, I'll just say about Napoleon. There's a lot that JJ's putting in the dossier here, but it's just too much.

[01:12:01] You're talking about Carrie Fukunaga's Napoleon, right? A movie that will definitely be in. Yeah, that one's definitely. I'm sorry, Griffin, a mini series. Anytime Kubrick talks about it in interviews, you're like, well, of course this never happened because he's like, so I've read 700 books.

[01:12:15] We're hoping to stage some of the battles like in the actual locations. And I'm just like, even you at the top post 2001 with MGM being like, we'll write the check. It does sound impossible. What do you want? It's also just, it's crazy that he made that complicated.

[01:12:29] Cause what? Like Jared Hess was able to make it for like what? $200,000. And it was dynamite. Dynamite. You know, like, listen to this quote, we intend to use a maximum of 40,000 infantry and 10,000 cavalry for the big battles.

[01:12:41] So we're going to need to find a country that's going to hire out its own armed forces. He's just looking at Bondarchuk's war in peace, right? He's just looking at that and being like, I could do this. And like, right. I mean, studios are looking at it.

[01:12:53] When was that movie? When was war in peace was, was that 60? Yeah. It's in the sixties. Right. It has to be. I think it's late sixties, 67. So he saw that and he was like, I'm going to do this. That'd be fun. But that's the whole thing.

[01:13:06] I wear studios are looking at movies like that. And like Waterloo, those sort of like late six, you know, where, and they're like, these things are less and less sexy and so expensive. Right. We can't underwrite. And he's like, if I could just find a country. I just,

[01:13:20] he's like calling me Gary. And he's like, Hey, do you have like 10,000 cavalry? Are they for, I will bring the costumes. Don't worry. But I just need them all to show up in the same place at the same time. Some of the countries, you know,

[01:13:31] I just need them all to show up in the same place at the same time. Some of the countries they reached out to France, Italy, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Romania. How do you call an entire country? I don't know. That's the prime minister in the yellow pages.

[01:13:41] This war in peace movie was like produced by Russia. Right. Cause Russia was like, we should have a fucking big epic. And they were like, so that's what she was. We'll just make a 10 hour movie. That's literally every page of war and peace.

[01:13:49] And we will put a 5,000 person army in front of the camera. Like, that's what he was jealous of was he was like, why can't I just be like, I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like a fucking shit.

[01:13:57] And then there's like a certain point at which MGM is like, we're not fucking doing this. Jack Nicholson was going to play Napoleon. Obviously. Of course. I mean, that's the funniest thing about it. And then there's this quote from Bob Gaffney, which is like,

[01:14:06] we need 200,000 gallons of blood. Like, things like that had been itemized. Like for us to stage all these battles, we're going to need this many horses. This way, you know, like so, and then just, there's a certain point at which MGM is like, we're not fucking doing this.

[01:14:17] Jack Nicholson was going to play Napoleon. Obviously, of course. I mean, that's the funniest thing about it. He's like all that ridiculous. He's like, who do you want for Napoleon? I don't know. Jack's pretty good. Right. He's kind of like short and angry. Right. Exactly.

[01:14:32] He's got kind of that energy. Jack Nicholson does not scream France to me. Like his face does not. Hold on. Let me get this hand out of my tummy pocket. Hey, Josephine, what say you and I skedaddle? God, this Waterloo thing, I'm never going to get over it.

[01:14:43] I don't know. We're going to get it. We're going to get it. I don't know. We're going to get it. I don't know. We're going to get it. We're going to get over it. And he even as he starts working on Clark Rick Orange,

[01:14:55] he even like said to Anthony Burgess, like, hey, do you want to take a swing at Napoleon? Like, you know, like while he's working on this movie. Yeah. So like he can't fucking stop talking about Napoleon. No. And then Burgess's next books about Napoleon. Yes.

[01:15:09] It's called Napoleon Symphony, a novel in for movement. Yeah. I like that. There's these books like Terry Southern's blue movie where people are like, I worked with Kubrick. I should just write a book about what it was like to work with that guy. And it'll be a novel.

[01:15:22] You guys doing a blue movie episode? Yeah. We're adding that as another bonus. Can I give a second on context? No one responded like they knew what I was talking about. Go on. Terry Southern wrote Dr. Strangelove. Yes. And he worked on Lolita and he worked, right.

[01:15:38] He worked on a bunch of yeah, whatever. It's not interesting in the book. I just read it. I just read it recently. It's not, but he basically had a conversation at one point with Kubrick that is a kernel of eyes wide shut.

[01:15:47] Why can't they make an erotic film that looks like an A, but looks like a film? Why do these films? Why can't we make pornography that is right. Like produced in the way of them. Obviously Kubrick does that, you know, 30 years later in some ways,

[01:15:58] Terry Southern writes a novel about a filmmaker trying to make a movie that is a pornography film. That is a film and it's fine. Yeah. But it's another thing where someone's like, you know, Kubrick says something to me.

[01:16:08] I think I've got a novel and what that guy was thinking about. I was reading that when Burgess adapted the Clockwork Orange as a play with music. There was a point where a Stanley Kubrick character came on singing, singing in the rain,

[01:16:21] get an actor dressed like Stanley Kubrick with an umbrella, like singing, singing in the rain. They beat the shit out of him on stage. Sounds fun. Like it is funny that all these, whenever he adapted someone's work,

[01:16:32] they sort of were like simultaneously enraged and obsessed with him in the way. Have you guys read A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Bird? I just read it. I read it just a few weeks ago. In fact,

[01:16:44] my copy is right here next to Ben who requested to borrow it. Ben asked for someone to bring a copy. Ben, you're borrowing it. You're planning on reading it. No, I've read it before. You guys didn't read it in high school. I read it in high school too.

[01:16:55] It's short. Yeah, it took me just a few days just now to reread. It's shockingly similar. My Penguin Classics had a glass of milk on the cover and I thought that was so cool. Dude, we were just talking about this.

[01:17:07] There's so many fucking cover designs for this book. You know, it's a cool book. I have this canvas bag. Sure. That's like the really famous, like 70s. I didn't even see that back there. Bright colors. The cartoon of Alex. I reread it for this. It's much like 2001,

[01:17:25] which is obviously kind of written concurrently as a book and a screenplay, but it's just, it is so similar to the movie to the point that as much as I know this movie backwards and forwards reading the book,

[01:17:35] it was just like just listening to reading the script or just listening to the movie with my eyes closed. It is so similar. The dialogue is, it's just unbelievable how little he changed, which makes, and again, this is an important thing about Kubrick also,

[01:17:49] which I guess kind of now in the mini series is a great time to, you know, talk about it briefly, but like he's the, he's such an adapter, right? None of his nothing he did was an original. No, he would be, I mean,

[01:18:03] if maybe he's got some book or something, usually the first, I forget if Killer's Kiss has any source material, but you know, from, from the killing on. Yeah. He's, he's an adapter and therefore the sort of the grand most original visionary

[01:18:15] filmmaker of the second half of the 20th century, all of his ideas, he finds ideas and then he creates this visual version of them, which makes the things he changes really interesting because that's where you really see like, so he added the snake. That's interesting.

[01:18:32] There's no snake in the book. What's up with that? And the things he changed just become, they really stand out when you know the movie well and you reread the book or you reread it because like, huh. So that's the thing he felt the need to. He okay.

[01:18:43] So that scene he didn't feel was necessary. This is only like two or three scenes in the book that aren't in the movie. The book is really, really similar. Including the final chapter. Well, the final chapter will get there. Yeah. We'll have to get there when we chronologically.

[01:18:55] We can get there now. Well, we can't get there now. I refuse. So Anthony Burgess wrote that book. There's a lot of sort of legends of Anthony Burgess like was supposedly told he was dying and wrote like five books in a year.

[01:19:05] And he says he wrote that book practically in a weekend or whatever. Who told him he was dying? A doctor, but this is a JJ makes it kind of alleged. It's disputed by some biographers and they say like, eh, he kind of had us.

[01:19:19] He would tell tall tales and it's hard to tell if this is true. Blah, blah, blah, blah. He writes the book, but you know, the Rolling Stones were the original people who wanted to make this book. Right. Jagger wanted to play Alex. Or droogs themselves. Exactly.

[01:19:33] Maybe five at the time. Ken Russell, who's very logical. Yeah. I'm not getting this into it. So it's, it's a known cinematic quantity, right? When Kubrick's getting, it's not like some of these things, I feel like they were like, if we can't get Lord of the Rings,

[01:19:45] we'll do this. Or was that the Beatles that wanted to make Lord of the Rings? Beatles wants to make Lord of the Rings. But do you think there's some other thing the Rolling Stones wanted to? The Rolling Stones were always like, let's make this.

[01:19:54] There was some other fantasy thing. Whatever. Maybe I'm just conflating it, but yeah, who knows? Um, but I mean, I think Rod Stewart was going to make Aragon, right? As the basis we're gonna go on. Yeah. What other seventies rockers and, and, and yeah, who was going, the,

[01:20:12] the, the birds were going to make water horse legend of the deep. As you say, Kubrick reads the book. All right. Kubrick reads the book. That was my kind of joke. Throw some points. Yeah. Flip you some points. Um, Kubrick reads the book and is like,

[01:20:26] I didn't have to do much. Like he did very little. He did very little. Yeah. And then of course the book has, in it's in Britain that the book has a, a 21st chapter. Yes. That is a happy ending.

[01:20:36] The book has three sections of 20 of seven chapters apiece. Right. If you read it at the time, it would have been a two at seven and then one at six. Right. And Burgess has said there's supposed to be 21 chapters. It's supposed to reference like 21 being pivotal developmental maturity.

[01:20:43] Right. And then there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a two at five, there's a two at five, there's a two at six.

[01:21:03] Right. It's supposed to reference like 21 being pivotal developmental maturity. And it had, I put it in America, it was 20, but it had a happy ending and the American publisher was like, that was a pal ntsc joke by the way.

[01:21:10] And they tossed the final chapter and Kubrick read it without the final chapter. And just like, well, that's the book. And he calls it the extra chapter. He was like, well, this book ends with the absolute catastrophic events of what happens when man tries to control anything. Right.

[01:21:21] Perfect ending. And if any burden is like, excuse me, I wrote an extra chapter. It's like, control anything, perfect ending. And Anthony Burgess is like, excuse me, I wrote another chapter, and Kubrick's like, talk to the hand. Kubrick was essentially like.

[01:21:33] He actually invented the phrase, talk to the hand. And Anthony Burgess was like, huh? And he was like, because the face ain't listening. He was like, if I had read this before I. I expect a flurry of Kubrick memes of

[01:21:47] talk to the hand because the face ain't listening as subtitle dialogue. Jack and the bartender on The Shining, The Monkeys, the beginning of 2001. Hal and David playing chess, talk to the hand. Hal and Simms playing chess. And the extra chapter's fascinating. We'll talk about it at the end.

[01:22:03] But Kubrick was basically like, I didn't know this existed. And at the time they brought it to me, I was almost adapting it. And I went, if I had known this had existed, I would have ignored it anyway. He's fascinated by the syntax of the book, right?

[01:22:15] This sort of invented language that's in it. He's fascinated by the language. He says there's been very little experimentation with the form of film stories, except in avant-garde cinema, where unfortunately there's too little technique and expertise present to show very much.

[01:22:30] That's the avant-garde cinema found dead in a ditch. Stan Pratt got pissed on by Stanley Kubrick. Jumping off the Empire State Building. Well, of course, you know, there's filming it probably. You mentioned Warhol, but of course, there's the unwatchable Warhol version of this book. I've never seen it.

[01:22:43] It's called Vinyl? Is that what it's called? It's called Vinyl. Not to be confused. I didn't know that existed. Well, it's RIP with the lightly inspired. I think it's literally. If you're talking about movies that don't exist, David Zaslav is really raising the stakes

[01:22:57] in terms of actually unexisting movies. He's coming for the hospital next. I think the Warhol vinyl, which I just saw as a clockwork orange nut, it's just, I think it's literally two shots of like 25 minutes in duration. I might be misremembering the syntax of it,

[01:23:13] but it's like all Warhol movies unwatchable. And just a kind of semiotic exercise. And like, what if a gang of people did violence? It's just that. Basically, there might be some lifts more from the book, but it's, I mean, you'll do it on Patreon, obviously.

[01:23:27] Yeah, that's another episode. Commentary on Warhol's vinyl. But it's an interesting adaptation. But again, it just shows that he was omnivorous in his taste and his consumption and anything for him was valid as material as a potential next project.

[01:23:40] He had no, he did not really discuss with Burgess before he adapted it. The rare solo writing credit. It is the rare written indirect to buy, yeah. Much like AI later for Spielberg. The rare solo writing and producing. Solo producing credit. Yeah, that is interesting, yeah.

[01:23:58] He did it all on this one, which again, is part of the legend, but the wrong part of the legend. And he cast Malcolm McDowell without auditioning, essentially, right? Just kind of like off the bat. Well, you see if and you're like, yeah, I mean, he's the guy.

[01:24:11] And he just calls him up and is like, how would you play this character? And Malcolm McDowell was like, oh, okay. And like, that was it. The contract was sent over. He's one of those guys, and we were talking about this in the Nicholson Shining discussion,

[01:24:27] which will be coming in future weeks. But like, at his best, and circle back to opening conversation, he is in that weird Eric Roberts zone where it's like he does so much schlock where you just go like, well, Malcolm McDowell, whatever.

[01:24:44] And then every once in a while he'll show up and you'll be like, oh right, he does still have his fastball when he wants to. Like when he shows up in a real thing and actually wants to give a performance. Like what?

[01:24:52] I don't think he's ever lazy or phones it in. It's like he rises to the material of what he's given. It's wild that he's fucking Dr. Lomas. Yeah, in the remix. Yeah. He's good in those. Yeah. I like him in those.

[01:25:09] He's a valid inheritor of the Donald Pleasant's mantle. Absolutely. In that sense, it's kind of thing of like, oh, this guy kind of has gravitas to him. But you would not think Alex DeLarge ages into that. I also think it's a bad movie,

[01:25:23] but I think he's like one of the better parts of Bombshell. I think his Murdoch is like weirdly good. Okay. He's good in Bombshell. Sure. I mean, that movie eats blood. That movie sucks. Yeah. But like the weird thing is like him popping up

[01:25:37] in like In Good Company. He does stuff like that where it's like, and who's going to play the wacky boss? Kind of the Murdoch, you know? Right, right. And then he'd be like, oh, Jensen. And you're like, oh, here's McDowell.

[01:25:47] He kind of feels like this guy could kill you. He's just such an electrifying performer in this movie. And in If and in A Lucky Man, of course. But like, he's one of those guys who can go very big without really feeling like he's overacting.

[01:26:01] This is the thing we were talking about with Nicholson, but it's just like, they seem to just have such energy and vitality that it doesn't feel like they're reaching out of their temperament or like pushing for something. Not at all. And that's why when people say,

[01:26:15] oh, he just, if he could have not had actors and had robots, he would have been happy. It's like, look at who he wants. He wants these people that are like electrifyingly alive as performers that like vibrate in front of the camera.

[01:26:27] And he just loves that because he can control everything, but he knows he can't do that. He can't, and he doesn't want to. He wants to let these people do the work perhaps many, many times, but he wants to let these live wires

[01:26:40] just spark in front of the camera. And you look at this performance and what he plays off of with all these other people, and there's so much to say about the totally insane supporting cast of this movie and these wonderful British actors,

[01:26:50] but he's just bouncing off of these people, which is again, that's the text of the movie. It's this guy, this character, up against these older establishment fuddy-duddy types. It's him and Mr. Deltoid, and it's him and the prison governor, and it's just these stiff upper lip Brits.

[01:27:08] And then there's just this agent of chaos smashing against them. To Kubrick, that's like, what's better than just watching chaos smash against order? This is it. This is what it's about. This is what my entire life is about exploring. Kubrick also says he thinks the audience

[01:27:21] identifies with Alex on some unconscious level, right? We perhaps have the same, I have a whole, there's a whole thing here. I want to, just the sympathy of Alex question as it exists for 50 plus years now. He compares him to Richard III, the Shakespeare character,

[01:27:35] where he's like this grand monster in the play, obviously, but we are somewhat sympathetic to him, partly because it's just the pathos and drama of this man. Well, also because Spacey played him so well. God. Jesus Christ. I really related to him as a young man. Of course.

[01:27:56] I mean, an aggressive, angry young man. This is like the movie. And if you're- He's pretty bad. If you're coloring within the- He's a bad guy. If you're coloring within the rules of society, we're taught to, and you get to watch a character who forsakes all of that.

[01:28:12] For me, it's like, I can enjoy that sense of rebellion through the movie. I don't have to go out with my droogs and get my weapons. I can just watch this and be like, chaos is very appealing. I've gotten my fill of it on the couch. Right, right.

[01:28:27] The argument for so many a thing, like a video game or whatever, right? Of like, yeah, you're getting your- To Ben's point, like- Yeah, you're channeling something. I sort of feel like, and this is something I think is more or less under-discussed for this movie.

[01:28:38] Like, to me, as- We're flipping a page on the document. Yeah, well, we're into the movie pages now. Don't we? The document's moving. It's moving. We're over half way. We're in the back half of the document. We're still the first half of the show.

[01:28:51] Yeah. Okay, well, that's not true. This movie, I think, and this was a huge inspiration when I was writing Her Smell. Like, this movie, to me, has five very clear acts of the film. Five acts that are- That sounds right. Radically delineated- Okay, it takes through the act.

[01:29:04] In terms of how Alex acts, what the camera is doing in relation to him, and the style of storytelling. I think it just changes, you know- Give me the five acts. Well, the first act is up through when he goes home.

[01:29:16] So it's sort of like an opening, you know, an overture of, and this is when, this is the only time in the movie that he's actually inherently evil. Yes, he's just committing acts of violence. And this is 20 minutes, 20 minutes or so. And if you're talking about, like,

[01:29:30] his behavior as a character, it's just the opening night. It's the first night of the story. Because everything up until his imprisonment is two days. So the first two acts are day one and day two. It's him with the milk bar up through coming home,

[01:29:43] and then the next part starts when he's at home, and then, you know, the morning with Mr. Deltoid. So by that point, the camera has settled, and his home life, even though his parents are out, is so static, and so normal, that the chaos and the anarchy

[01:29:58] that we've been watching for the first act, at this point, is just, you see the dichotomy here. He doesn't live in a gutter. He has a bedroom with a maid bed. Yeah, sure. With belongings and stuff that he keeps. He's materialistic in a way

[01:30:13] that a real anarchist or punk would not be. And that is this wonderful contradiction that Kubrick clearly is fascinated by. Well, yeah, and like one of the weirdest parts is when he silences the other Droog for making fun of the classical music. And you're like, dude, you were,

[01:30:29] you know, you can't walk in here being all high and mighty about how to behave with these guys, you know? He's like, be quiet. And you're like, well, you know, you guys all have been beating up homeless people. You might wanna think about getting a cane

[01:30:43] to hit Griffin with when certain bits. That'd be so funny. You're telling, you've been pushing me for weeks to come in being heavy. You can hit me. And I'm telling him to come. The thing is, I'm not always here. If David wants to crack the cane

[01:30:58] when something is not to his liking in the way of interrupting ode to joy, I'm just saying Alex shows that it can be done. But that's like, okay, so again, let's talk about the movie. The movie hasn't even begun yet. And the music is just already wailing.

[01:31:13] It's already a 10 out of 10, the electronic score. It's just undeniable. It's incredible that this is how he starts this movie. It's Wendy Carlos, right? Yes. Who I was like, what a prolific, one of the most prolific and important composers. And I looked up the Wendy Carlos discography

[01:31:29] and it's like, Kahrigarans, Tron, The Shining, and that's it. And I was like, oh, okay. So I only consider, she's knocked out of the park three times in a row. I was like, wow, you know, really an early electronic music composing pioneer.

[01:31:42] And then I looked, I was like, there must be so many movies. I'm not even gonna- You're like, I forgot she scored best defense. Yeah, but it's like, no, it's just three to 10. Right, it's not like, oh yeah, there's 45 Tangerine Dream scores I've never heard.

[01:31:53] But they're still the best who ever did it. It's like, no, there's really just the three movies and each one is like indelibly iconic, even though Shining has very little music. But just before it even begins, the first shot, I mean, what an iconic,

[01:32:06] it's just, you're already in masterpiece territory here. Like just the positioning of his hat, and how it's like lining up with his eye. Again, it's just old and new. It's this future past, this liminal space in between times where they're dressed in a very dystopian, bizarre way,

[01:32:24] but with these kind of hats that by the 70s were not in fashion, even ironically. And the way he's talking is not in fashion in any way. Like he has this like very old fashioned way of talking. And vaguely invented way of talking. There's a good quote.

[01:32:37] But like, did you have the quote on the Zoom shot? I feel like a lot of what JJ pulled maybe from the same one. No, no, no, hit me, hit me, go on, I don't know. No, again, oh, Kubrick, everything's a perfectionist. He can't leave anything to chance.

[01:32:48] Well, this is nonsense. Here's the interviewer saying, how do you prepare this opening Zoom shot? There was no special preparation. I find that with very few exceptions. It's important to save your cinematic ideas until you have rehearsed the scene in the actual place you're going to film it.

[01:33:02] No matter how carefully you have pre-planned a scene, when you actually come to the time of shooting and you have the actors on the set, having learned their lines, dressed in the right clothes, you have the benefit of knowing what you have already got on film.

[01:33:13] There's usually some adjustment that has to be made to the scene in order to achieve the best result. And I just love that he's not like, I know what I want before I get there and the execution is just about getting it.

[01:33:23] And I love that his answer is like, look, you show up, you look at the set, you look at the clothes sometimes, you have to, you have to- It's just fundamental misunderstanding that I feel like we keep on going back to where it's like-

[01:33:31] And this is one of the four built sets, we should, as we'll call them out. The milk bar is one of four- Well, and the fiberglass furniture of the naked women is such specific and invented, they didn't find those, they made those. But the doing 100 takes thing

[01:33:43] is so much more about finding the thing he couldn't think of that can only happen in the moment than it is about waiting for them to perfect the thing he has in his head. There's a lot of improvisation in the film,

[01:33:53] the singing in the rain thing is a Malcolm McDowell idea. Is that confirmable? Yes. You want me to redo the quote? No, no, I know that this is a matter of public record via McDowell. Right. I never, I didn't find an interview where Kubrick says that.

[01:34:07] No, because he doesn't give a lot of interviews. But he has this long interview here at the time. That would require looking at the script because it comes back, the reason that I doubt this is two things. One, McDowell loves to tell tall tales.

[01:34:19] And I think over his 50 years of telling stories, he may have invented a few details. Two, this is one of the biggest changes of the book is that there's no singing in the rain in the book. So when Alex is identified by the writer,

[01:34:30] he's identified because it's like Columbo shit. He's just like, I thought you didn't have a phone. And the guy's like, why would you think we don't have a phone? It's all stuff like that. So the fact that one of the biggest changes to the book

[01:34:40] hinges upon this song makes me feel like how could that have been spontaneous in the filming? Because that is now the way that the fulcrum of the identification of Alex is handled in the end of the book. It also could have been not spontaneous mid-take.

[01:34:56] That's what I wanted clarity on and I couldn't find it. Something created, suggested by McDowell. McDowell says created mid-take. I mean, I can read you the quote. I believe that McDowell says that. I know, I know. It's what I've got for you,

[01:35:07] which is basically that they had the script, but as you say, Griff, they would do the script and then they would be like, let's do other things, right? Try and find other things. You know, he says like, for example, the sequence in the writer's house,

[01:35:20] the script called for everything that we do. Breaking the windows, like throwing the bottles. Did any pipes come through the windows or what did they break them with? Yeah, how else could you break a window? Bottles. And during that sequence, Stanley says to him, can you dance?

[01:35:36] And he said, of course. And so I began to sing a singing in the rain and Stanley burst out laughing. It was the first time in a week that something had happened. He went to Bournewood Studio, Telephone New York and purchased the rights to the music immediately.

[01:35:51] So his telling is certainly- So this story is great if true. This really shows that Kubrick is much more elastic than anybody has ever wanted to give him credit for. And here you go, to complete the quote, it's a great moment.

[01:36:04] I have to tell you that when we were filming the next scene in the shooting script, the retribution scene, it was Stanley's idea to have me hum the same tune while I'm in my bath. So they threw out what was written. That suggests that this was all spontaneous.

[01:36:16] Because in the book, it would be when he's downstairs having been brought in, that he's then revealing things he already knows about this house. So that would mean if true, which I believe it could be, just there's, I couldn't really, you know,

[01:36:31] you have to only take McDowell's word for it unless you see like the shooting script. That would mean that Kubrick then threw out entire pages of adaptation in favor of a spontaneous idea, which could be true or could not be, but if it's true, it's really interesting.

[01:36:45] And the kind of thing people assume he would never in a million, people assume that he would have McDowell shot on the spot for daring to go off script. The part for me that I just remain surprised by is that they were given the rights of the song.

[01:37:00] Sure, I mean maybe it was just like, hi, this is Stanley Kubrick. And they're like, oh, you know? And like, it's like, I need the song. No further information. And they're like, wow, 2001 was great. I can only imagine what magisterial and gentle film you're making now.

[01:37:12] Especially when they play the Gene Kelly version over the end credits. I'm just like, he must have been so outraged. Kelly must have been like. Maybe not, maybe Kelly was like. Arf, arf, arf, arf, arf. I don't know, like. Truth, truth, truth.

[01:37:25] He famously invented that as much as Kubrick invented talk to the hand. Right, Arsenio ripped him off. You remember in Invitation to the Dance where Gene Kelly does the Arsenio whoop silently and invents a new form of expression? There's also, there's a lot of other McDowell quotes

[01:37:41] about how difficult things could be. The dunking, being dunked in the water. He got like pneumonia. He says he flipped out. I mean, his head is underwater for over 60 seconds. It seems horrible. And he said he flipped out at Kubrick at one point.

[01:37:54] You know, because he's like freezing. Well, we'll get to the water. I have big thoughts on the water. On the water. I'm at the water now. No, but we're in act one. We're not yet at the water. We gotta back up. We gotta slow down and back up.

[01:38:04] The most in. I arrange my notes chronologically. That's great. McDowell's thing here that is interesting to me. And I do think McDowell is a bit of a mythologizer. So you do have to take that with a grain of salt. But like, is that he says,

[01:38:16] I did flip out at him in that moment. Like we had a confrontation over it. And then after that, Kubrick just kind of, you know, walked away and things resumed. And he was like, he was not a, he didn't like confrontation.

[01:38:31] So it would just kind of be forgotten. But it's, he says like, it was never quite the same after that. Like that there was tension that was just not really spoken. I mean, that's the funny thing is like, obviously he's a withdrawn introvert as a fellow.

[01:38:45] He's not a reckless. He's not a weirdo. He's not a germaphobe. No, but he's just shy. Yes. But what I love about him and we'll start getting into this like as we move forward a little bit now is this bizarre notion that he's humorless.

[01:38:56] That he's, where it's like humorless. No, not at all. But anyone who knows anything knows that. But this has become one of these myths that gets repeated. I feel like we need to move on from the weird, we're just dispelling the myths of Kubrick.

[01:39:07] Cause we're getting too far. We're getting two more pages of that. Via the film Clockwork Orange and the various scenes within it. Okay, so tell me about some scenes in the Clockwork Orange. Talk about the milk bar, Ben's on the bathroom. Well, the just like, I mean, again,

[01:39:20] like there's really nothing to this opening act except for repeated series of attacks and sexual assaults. Yes. Done in the name of fun and done basically with a smirk on your face that culminates with the singing in the rain scene. Like the- So then act two begins.

[01:39:36] When he goes home and it's dawn and he's walking up the sort of housing flats and the concrete hellscape. Then he goes in and then, you know, the lobby is a wreck. Weirdly, the graffiti on that poster is written in the book.

[01:39:49] You think that's like this big production design conceit of like suck it and see and all the other things written on there. Most of those things are like, it's like, oh, this in the book it's described as like, oh, this Greco Roman image that's been-

[01:39:59] They described the boners? With phalluses drawn on it. Yeah, it's like, it's all written in the book. But at that point, Alex is no longer a villain. He's just a teenager at this point. I can't go to school, I'm liable to miss more school.

[01:40:12] His corrections officer comes by. At this point, he's just a child with a bedroom. And this is now a totally different version of the character than who he has been in the beginning. And obviously McDowell arguably miscast simply just age wise.

[01:40:26] I don't think he's miscast to be clear, but Kubrick acknowledges like we just had to get over that. Well, in the book he's 15. He's 15, yes. Obviously he's closer to 18 in the book. Right. Which is fine. And you know, like the sort of,

[01:40:38] this is where the Christ allegory is introduced, which kind of continues to pay off. But again, like you see Alex with his Christ statues in the room, right? And like, this is just such a wonderful little sly nod to the way that like truly evil people

[01:40:53] really always view themselves as victims. Like he, Alex identifies with Christ because he views himself as like a victim of the modern age. As he says, already he's like, I'm just, the society has gone to rot. There's no future for me. This is again, a very punk thing.

[01:41:08] I'm just a victim. Like whatever I do that's bad is because society has left me no choice. The world has failed me. He's emo in that way as kids are. He is highly emo. He is. He wants to listen to classical music.

[01:41:21] And they beat up a homeless guy and the homeless guy is like, you might as well. It's so shitty around here these days. That's his reaction. I have a friend. Stinking world with no law and order. I have a friend who works

[01:41:34] with teenagers mostly as like a school psychologist. And he always says, I will not name him, but he always says like being a teenager should be legally admissible in court as an insanity defense. Sure, sure. Which I just think about all the time,

[01:41:53] but he's just like, this is my, like I have a degree in this. I work with these people all the time. There is just the thing of like what chemically is going on in those years and the way your brain is developing and redeveloping.

[01:42:06] It is just going so fucking out of control. And you can have such strong convictions about what you're doing or feeling at any moment, but they're driven by like such insane adrenaline and everything. Yeah, your body is attacking your brain and vice versa for five years.

[01:42:25] There's something about this character and especially McDowell's performance of him where it's like, and I guess it's the contrast between, I mean, what's interesting about this performance being kind of bifurcated because it's like so much more of his dialogue is in voiceover than it is in scene, right?

[01:42:41] Sort of just issues, declarations, and scenes. On camera he exists so much as a physical presence. And then you're hearing his voice the whole movie. He's got this expansive inner mind sort of. Right, and there's something so calm and confident about his voiceover narration.

[01:43:01] As Kubrick says in his thing about the identification that David was reading, he feels one of the reasons people identify with him is because he is quote, completely honest in his first person narrative, perhaps even painfully so.

[01:43:15] So he just believes that like this is truly his inner thought. Can I try to take though? Yeah. I think he's a jerk. I think he sucks. You think he's a big jerk? Yeah, I think he's rude. Well, what do you think Mr. Deltoid has to say

[01:43:25] when he comes around? What do you mean? Well, Mr. Deltoid feels he's a jerk. Well, yeah, I guess I'm with Mr. Deltoid. So you're kind of a deltoid in this scenario? I'm sort of if you have a big... You're saying you're a big deltoid?

[01:43:36] I got a pick between Alex and Deltoid. Deltoid nasty though. He drank his teeth juice. But that's the kind of... That's the kind of... How does he meant to drink the teeth juice? I don't know, it's up to the face. He seems a little gross.

[01:43:47] He seems into it kind of as my reason. Yum yum, give me more. That's just like how could anybody be like, well, Kubrick was humorless. And it's like he had the guy drink the teeth juice. I don't think Stanley Kubrick is... I don't think anyone here thinks that.

[01:44:00] No one here thinks he does. This is a knock on him. Enough, let's stop litigating the jerks. Come on, let's talk about the movie. We are. Think about like the static shot of Alex and Deltoid sitting on the bed.

[01:44:12] It's gotta be like two, two and a half minutes. And this comes after the handheld chaos of the scene in the rain. Like at this point, this storytelling approach and the visual language of how Alex is framed is so different. This sped up sex, the threesome...

[01:44:26] We're not there. Makes me laugh too. We'll get there in just a second. The record store just can't not be talked about. Sure. We have to talk about the pickup. That's a real location too? Yes, it's the basement of a drugstore. Yeah, down in Chelsea.

[01:44:38] That's another thing where I'm like, the aesthetic of this movie is like indescribable. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Doesn't he pull out the 2001 soundtrack at some point? It's just right there in the frame. Right, that's what it is, right. I remember that. Yeah, what you see...

[01:44:48] That was one of those like teenage film facts. You've never seen anything like it as a teen. And also again, it's like, oh, he's so serious. And it's just like, but he's kind of like being like, guys, I made that movie. Just putting my own soundtrack.

[01:45:00] It's like Michael Bay referencing Armageddon in Transformers. It's exactly like that. This is even cooler than Armageddon. But yeah, just that set. And then again, one of the big changes is those girls in the book, he drugs them and kind of takes them home unwillingly.

[01:45:13] Whereas in the movie, it seems to be entirely... Pure charm. Right. Pure charm. And again, this is just completely exciting to... The milk they're drinking has drugs in it, right? They are. I mean, the molecule plus. I just think that's not cool. You can't do drugs.

[01:45:28] Wait, you can't do drugs? That was like my dream. To go to a bar and just have choice of drugs. I'm now thinking it's funny if I'm... My reaction to this movie is like, well, he's breaking the law. This guy should go to jail. You can't drink drugs.

[01:45:42] Drugs really makes you a Mr. Deltoid. Milk should be only milk and no drugs. Yeah, say no to drugs. Yeah. In the book, the detail about the milk is there's three different kinds. Right, you can pick your... I think he says that in the voiceover at the beginning.

[01:45:56] Does he denote the different types? I don't know if he does. Velocet and... Are we thinking like it's like throwing up, but down? So one's got mescaline. Sure. One's got amphetamines, and the other one's just a fucking cocktail of goodness. Ben looks happy. Yeah. Ben looks thrilled.

[01:46:11] I'll say this is the most effective anti-drug campaign I've ever seen. You talk about putting drugs in milk. I'm like, no, thank you. I don't need to get high. If you can only drink drugs in milk, you're like, yeah. Milk's soft. Straight edge over here, baby.

[01:46:21] Yeah, straight edge of shit. So you laugh at the sped up scene. I just think that scene is brilliant. I don't know. There's something about it that I've never forgotten, I guess. The weird arcs of it, like even sped up where you can track like,

[01:46:38] oh, he's focusing on one woman. The other woman sort of feels left out. She goes, she starts to get dressed. He goes to her, he consoles her, undresses her. Like the shifts of their dynamic. I did something about the orgy, just like, or was it threesome?

[01:46:51] It's not an orgy, really. It's described as an orgy here, but that seems... And also just how disconnected he is from it. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, I'll say another thing. Watching this movie as a high schooler in a class, right?

[01:47:06] And watching it as a big old virgin. Weird, like weird to watch this with a teacher. It just seems nuts to me. It has like rape in it. That's very upsetting. And like so much in the first 10, 15 minutes where you're just like,

[01:47:19] this feels really weird to be watching this environment. Dick at one point when he undresses for the police. And his balls. You only see a little ball. You see one ball? No, I was just gonna say, I think as a teenager who had not had sex.

[01:47:35] Yes, yeah, sure. Watching this scene, I feel like, oh, like this is like the first time I've seen sex in a movie where it's like, because it's all this one static shot, right? It's sped up. You see so much behavior, but it is just like hammer back ceiling.

[01:47:51] You're seeing a more, a less Hollywoodized version of sex. No, yes, no, no, that's the point I'm making. It's like it's brightly lit, but there's no like gauzy close ups. There's no like camera panning over the body.

[01:48:02] So it's even just like it felt like the first time I had seen like, oh, there's the awkwardness to like before and after sex where you're just standing fully naked with a person. Like all the other weird business around the sex.

[01:48:16] I do still think that scene weirdly captures a lot of that better than most movies I've ever seen just by the nature of how it's shot. Also, the animal in this animal, animal, animalistic. Thank you. Nature of sex. Yes. Like they're just going at it. Right.

[01:48:32] That you're just not like kissy and like, it's like, no, we are sped up like that. You're like doing a bit of the old. This doesn't go in out. He says a bit of the old in out and out too much.

[01:48:43] And that's one of those English things to me. Even though he's crazy, Alex, we're like, you know, he's such a fucking punk rebel. But I'm like the English have spent their entire existence trying to find ways to not

[01:48:57] to say not say sex, you know, like a bit rumpy, pumpy. They just can't wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Say no more. Say no more. No, but it is. Say no more. Say no more.

[01:49:08] It's a good point, because that's the other thing by like speeding it up like that. You the romanticism is gone, but it also like doesn't look cool. Like it just starts to look like two monkeys fucking in a zoo where you're like,

[01:49:21] what a weird, embarrassing thing we all do. He also seems to have like seven layers of sheets on his bed. He does take off a lot of sheets. Which is another like very fae dandy-ish touch to his brutality that makes him a very contradictory and interesting character.

[01:49:34] His top sheet fucking rules. The one with like the cones on it? The foam like spikes or whatever the fuck. It's so distinctly strange. Well, just because he's a dang rebel and it's funny that he has such a well put together bedroom.

[01:49:46] Yeah, that's part of the sort of visual and narrative contradiction that is in every aspect of him. But like my, you know, the sort of distinction of these first two acts of the movie is like

[01:49:56] you would if you you would never guess that this is what this character's bedroom looks like after they break up Billy Boy and the other guys raping at the other casino. You'd be like, I'm sure he has a very tasteful series of sheets. Okay, and he's put together.

[01:50:10] Dim would be have a messy room like the other one looks like maybe he could be like kind of like, you know, come from like a batter family. The little one, you know, he's just kind of like, you know, whatever.

[01:50:21] He doesn't have like a specialized room, you know, but to me, Alex, he's so balanced and purposeful and how he moves and he just has grace. So it makes sense to me. I don't know. It makes sense once it happens. Sure.

[01:50:35] But if you're watching this for the first time, you're just like when they're walking to beat up the bum in the underpass, you're just like, this must be where they live. Sure. They must just like live under the bridge like trolls because these guys are just evil. Right?

[01:50:49] It's hard to imagine them going home to a fairly normal home to a family in this kind of bizarre course. People that this is a time where Britain is worried about the teens. What are they up to on this? They can't be controlled. What do you mean?

[01:51:02] Britain is worried about the tiny source for this. I can actually find a source for you guys. Going to find some social study of British teenagers. Do they always call like the bad people in the UK? I mean, is that like a popular term?

[01:51:16] It's going to end up with us doing hooligans. That's another term that I love and I feel like we don't use it enough here in the States. Hooligans and hooligans. I like hooliganism. Yeah. I'm talking about hooliganism.

[01:51:31] You like hooliganism as a word or like it as a word. Hoodlum to me has no menace to it at all. And you think of Sinatra calling himself the hoodlum from Hoboken. Sure.

[01:51:41] And you're just like, so a hoodlum is like a guy with a fedora and a cigarette who likes to sing? Hoodlum doesn't sound very frightening to me. Sounds like a hoodlum is like my, you know, my grandma's favorite recording. I don't think of it.

[01:51:54] Whereas a hooligan, that's like a soccer hooligan. Hoodlum ends up on a fucking mural at a pizzeria. Yeah. The hoodlum is just like kind of a gent who likes a little bit of whiskey every now and then. I would just say, you know, post 68, right?

[01:52:05] Like, you know, teenage and young youthful rebellion is much more prominent. I mean, that's the thing this movie is coming out as quickly in response to was anything. Yeah. Which is just, again, like this, it's just a fast turnaround of the post 68 youth movement

[01:52:20] as this huge sweeping Hollywood financed anarchist movie. Well, I think Alex is no good and I don't think he should do any of the things that he does. Let me ask a question. I'm for Ludovico technique. Well, not quite yet.

[01:52:31] I feel like what's happening in the back half of the second act here is like they're getting one up on him. Obviously, they're like, we got to do more than just beat up homeless guys. And they're trying to sort of make money out of what he wants.

[01:52:43] And that's when he pushes them into the river and the image you were showing. But also, like at this point, when they're going to the Cat Lady's house, it's been almost 40 minutes of straight music. Like the movie is just music. It's just it's the classical. It's the score.

[01:52:58] It's one or the other at all times. And it's just so much sound in a way that it's kind of pre setting up how bizarre the silence is going to feel when music is taken away from him,

[01:53:10] which is just again, the movie putting you inside his headspace by being like for him, it's just always music. It's classical. It's whatever's on. It's Beethoven. It's this. It's that. It's fast. It's slow. But just for this guy, it's just always music, music, music.

[01:53:24] So with classical music, right? Is this the first movie to make like for classical, like a love of classical music equals this person is actually really evil, like a Hannibal Lecter kind of thing? Because it's become a trope. Now I feel like any time a character.

[01:53:40] That's a classic World War Two thing, too. Like there's always like generals, right? You're listening to Wagner or whatever. Right. You know, I don't know. I don't know. I wonder where's the satanic panic around class music.

[01:53:52] It puts it in a very in a youth mode, which is incongruous beyond. Obviously, this is nothing compared to sleeping with the enemy, the ultimate villain who listens to classical music before doing a bad thing. Does anyone? Yes, of course. Alex gets that terrible thing.

[01:54:05] He sleeps with the enemy. One of Anna's favorite movies. Absolutely bananas movie. Um, okay. They kill the cat. Well, they kill the cat lady. She dies of her injuries, right? They kill her. Yeah. Well, he killed. I mean, they don't do anything. The guy is the drugs.

[01:54:18] You know, they're innocent. Essentially, they sort of set it up. But again, like this sequence is incredible. Also, like there's a trick he does here once that never occurs elsewhere in the movie where they're like talking about her over the establishing shot of her doing the yoga

[01:54:31] with the cats, and then he just walks into the door like it or that he knocks on the door downstairs when you see her and you think you think what you're seeing is the drugs describing it, and then you would cut back to them at the booth.

[01:54:44] But instead, it just condenses time only by a matter of a couple of hours. But it's a really clever editing trick. Is it weird that I find all of the opening two acts, as you would say, of this movie upsetting, but I don't find it scary.

[01:54:59] Is that weird or is that not weird? Like, I don't find his home invasion scary. I don't find him scary exactly. Is that crazy? This movie upset me and it upset me at the time when I was a teen when I first saw it,

[01:55:13] but I don't have like a lot of tension to what he's doing. Yeah, I don't know if I find it scary. You don't think random attack. I do. That's what I'm saying. I should be more.

[01:55:23] I feel like I should be more frightened because there's no identification with the victims. I mean, it's a thing that people threw out at this movie as a complaint, but it's right. You're not really getting to know them as anything other than victims and you're seeing

[01:55:39] everything from his perspective. So that does result in it being more upsetting than it is scary because there's not that sort of tension there. Yeah, I mean, the wife, you're implicit in having to watch these.

[01:55:56] The writer's wife and the cat lady, I mean, combined must have fewer than 20 lines before they're out of the movie, right? They're not characters. They're just pins for Alex to knock down. Yes, it is. That's what I mean.

[01:56:08] It feels like we're moving through this because we have to understand the lengths of his depravity, but I just that it's not even a complaint. It's just an observation. It's just interesting.

[01:56:17] It's part of the way that the movie just basically puts you on Alex's shoulder or often quite literally as the movie goes on, really starting in the next bit. It's starting when he's in jail in just a few minutes.

[01:56:29] You have people looking at the lens talking to Alex. So already it's just setting up. You're with him. He is your host and humble narrator for this movie. And very soon you're going to have people talking to Alex looking at you, the viewer.

[01:56:45] So you don't get anything outside of him. I do always love the device of a narrator who is aware that they're a narrator, like sort of calling Alex Deadpool Deadpool. No, but you know, I'm saying like calling the frame of the question,

[01:56:57] because sometimes you have narrators who are just telling you a tale and they're acting like they aren't telling you a tale. They're not acknowledging the weird artifice of the conceit. I like himself identifying as a narrator.

[01:57:08] I just prefer narrators to tell me if the story is not for the faint of heart, because otherwise, well, I love that. I love for narrators to do that and then peace out for the rest of the movie. That's the specific trigger warning I need.

[01:57:19] Like, I'm like, is this for the faint of heart? I'm always worried. But by not saying it here, Alex is implying his story is for everybody. It's for everybody. Surely. Come on, come on down. He's not, he's not.

[01:57:29] But you know, just one thing about the attack with the cat lady is like one of the most underanalyzed aspects of Kubrick, which, you know, think about this in the future. Like every time there's a handheld image in one of his movies, it's electrifying.

[01:57:42] One of the low key, absolute best handheld image makers of all time. He says, and I can probably find it. I have the quote if you can't find it. Because this is one of my favorite things about him ever. That he did all the handheld stuff himself.

[01:57:56] On all movies. Right. And the handheld in 2001, brief though it is, when he's kind of going into disconnect, how it was very exciting. This handheld melee here is just electrifying. It sort of goes back to his photojournalist documentary filmmaker days. He says, um, the camera's on a dolly.

[01:58:12] You can go over the action of the scene with the camera operator and show him the composition that you want at each point in the take. But you can't do this when the camera is handheld.

[01:58:20] Sometimes there are certain effects which can only be achieved with a handheld camera. And sometimes you hold it because there's no other way to move through a confined space or over obstacles. Yeah. And again, it's just like if he were the way people thought he was,

[01:58:32] he wouldn't have that attitude. Right. He'd be like, fix it. And instead he's just like, just give it to me. Let me just hold it. And I'll just... The pragmatism. I can't describe the way I want it to look because it just has to be crazy.

[01:58:42] Just give it to me. Yeah. And then every time he does that, the results are just out of this world. And this is one of the finest examples of that. So the third act of the film is... It ends with he goes to jail.

[01:58:52] I mean, this is the end of the second act. But again, this ends with Deltoid and the cops looking at the lens. And then there's just a full reversal from Alex looking at the lens in the first shot. And now everyone's looking at him at the lens,

[01:59:03] just showing that he's lost control of his own story. He is no longer... He should have gone to prison earlier. Just... But David, I feel like the vibe I keep on getting from this episode is that you endorse him and his behavior.

[01:59:14] You think he's cool and nice and normal. David really weirdly... I don't know why culturally this is, but he really seems to identify with the British rulers in this film. It's so bizarre. I just also like the idea of like...

[01:59:25] It's because he has no perspective of what it would be like to be a teenager. Yeah. Yeah. He only... The cops asking who attacked you. And the person being like... He was like, these four guys dressed in white with bowler hats.

[01:59:36] And the cop's like, I don't know anyone who dresses that. Where are the cops? Like, oh, I know the four guys you dressed in white with fucking bowler hats. In lieu of cufflinks, they had like sculptural eyeballs with like gouged viscera around them. We saw...

[01:59:50] We picked up a couple guys like that, but they didn't have suspenders. And you said that these guys had suspenders, so we let them go. They didn't have any weird crotch guards. They had pups, but they were on their butts. They weren't in front.

[02:00:00] Ben, do you know how the outfit came about? I mean, some of the details, right? Other things, obviously. Yeah, I mean, I looked up a little bit about the... Her name is Melina or Melina Canonera. Melina Canonera, one of the most famous costume designers of all time.

[02:00:14] Yeah, like basically though, the idea was just all of the clothing had to be really easily attainable. Like they weren't going to create stuff. So like Kubrick was with Malcolm McDowell and was like, let's go through your clothes. Like, what do you have?

[02:00:31] And he was like, well, these are my cricket whites. Sure, they do wear white to play cricket. This is like the cricket uniform. How would I know that? And then was like, on the outside, we're all giving you a thumbs up. We're proud of you.

[02:00:43] Thank you for doing it. Right. That's... There you go. But even like... That has to be where things go, is that David just mutters under his breath, like the old Jim Gaffigan routine. He'll just say something and David will just go, how do I know?

[02:00:55] How do I know? The third act is all prison. It's subverting sort of... British classism. No, because it's very formal. But then the other subversion of that is when he goes to the record store, he's dressed like a dandy from the 20s. Right.

[02:01:12] Which is just ostentatious and insane. Yes, he looks like Austin Powers. He looks like a shaggy dildo. He is a little shaggy dildo. I mean, the other thing... I don't think his actions are shaggy dildo, to be clear. And they do not make me horny.

[02:01:21] David, I don't know why you like everything he does in this movie so much. Hey, when you're a teen though, and you are making money as a hoodlum, like you spend it on dumb ass clothes. That's what you fucking do when you're a bad kid.

[02:01:32] Because all your other needs are taken care of. Yeah. He eats breakfast at his parents' table every day. He doesn't have to pay rent. But again, you see Billy Boy and the other guys at the beginning, like they're dressed kind of... They have Nazi symbols on them.

[02:01:45] But again, much like Alex and the Droogs, they're so British, so 70s. Their hair, their sideburns, their aesthetics, but their clothes are very bizarre. But the idea that each gang has their own little uniform, certainly something, Ben, you can get behind is that

[02:02:00] whether it be four or five guys per gang, we all have to get on the same page about what we're wearing. We gotta be strong in our theming. We have to have a unified vision. Yeah, yes, yes. Which is what you guys should have.

[02:02:11] Oh, you think we should have a uniform? We should all dress identical. It would certainly throw people off when they show up. Yeah, that'd suck if the three of us are in boiler suits and some poor guest comes in and we're like, hey, what's up?

[02:02:19] I like this challenge though. Can I come... All right, I'm gonna work on this. You wanna talk about that person? Everything he gives us will be cut off. Cut off shirt, cut off pants, cut off... Cut off socks? It's dirty. It just covers the ankles. Yeah.

[02:02:33] David wants to talk prison? Well, I just wanna move forward. Well, this is the real tragic and weepy part of the story. As Alex says. Well, that's what he says. Right. I mean, I love how long the undressing and putting his...

[02:02:46] And that scene is, there's not a fragment of that in the book. This is one of the weirdest scenes that is... The book just basically goes right into him being doing the choir practice. Sure. But the whole check-in is also one of the only other sets they build.

[02:03:01] And a scene that's entirely invented. There's not even like a reference to it. I just love bringing the movie to a clanging halt with the most stereotypical British prison bar guy. I mean, we have to talk about... Are you a homosexual? I don't like all that stuff.

[02:03:16] Michael Bates. I mean, this is just... Antibiotic diseases! It feels like a Monty Python sketch. A little bit. It really does. I mean, Ben, this guy, deltoid, and then the writer at the end of the movie, all three of these performances are so insane.

[02:03:31] They do not live in a world of either realism nor science fiction. They are coming strictly from a place of broad-ass comedy. And they somehow, they fit into this world. But no one is ever like, why are you acting like this? Why do you talk like this?

[02:03:46] Especially the writer. Like, his face just constantly being wide-eyed and shaking. I mean, at least he's endured trauma. But the warden here, he's just like... No one's like... The warden acts insane. And we all just kind of take him as like,

[02:04:02] you know, the chocolate and tobacco you lose. Everything he says is just like... You can imagine Kubrick just dying at what this guy is doing. It's an insane performance. And Dave is right. I mean, it's four or five minutes of the check-in. Michael Bates is also...

[02:04:18] He's quite well known in Britain for Last of the Summer Wine, which is a sitcom. I've never heard of that, Griffin. Have you ever heard of that? No. I mean, my favorite thing about Britain is... They didn't air it in PBS.

[02:04:28] I was just saying this for the Doughboys, where I mentioned Parage, which is a famous British sitcom. How do you know that? They were making fun of me. And it is one of those when you arrive in Britain, especially when I was nine years old. Yeah.

[02:04:40] And I'm like, so what are your cultural touches? You guys got like Power Rangers? Like, and they're like, well, there's like a famous sitcom called Parage. And our biggest adventure is this guy in a scarf who's in a phone book. Britain is so weird.

[02:04:52] That's all I'm going to say. That's all my only response. He's such a definitive type. Yeah, he's incredible. Like the stick up his ass prison guard guy. Oh, I mean, what they're doing. I'm sorry. I just want to quote, because David's text was really funny here. He says,

[02:05:08] really no better example of classic UK sitcoms that one of the best ones is called Parage and it's about a prison. Yes, exactly. Where people are like, oh, we all have to have a good laugh. And you're like, oh, what was the show called? Parage.

[02:05:22] Oh, what's it about? A guy goes to prison and lives there. It's about wet mush. Like when I was 10 years old and living in the UK and watching TV news to me and you'd stumble on Parage and be like, this is their Mary Tyler.

[02:05:36] He's in this show, Michael Bates. He's in Parage. He wasn't in Parage. He was in Last of the Summer Wine, which is just another hilarious where you're like, Last of the Summer Wine. Is that some sort of melancholy, like work of literature? No, it's a sitcom.

[02:05:49] Our longest running sitcom, three episodes. And then we get laughed our asses off. Yeah, this whole scene, like the gradual loss of his humanity and him becoming 6-level-5-3-2-1. And him being compliant. He's so compliant. He has this idiotic smirk on his face the entire time.

[02:06:05] It's like even still, he's not taking this seriously. He just doesn't really view his imprisonment as anything to be that worried about in the telling. It makes me think a lot about when you're at that age and how capable you are of manipulating adults

[02:06:20] in this really diabolical way. You're all looking at me like you don't relate. No, no, no. I know what you're talking about. I think David might not. It's the thing I was talking about. David was like, I like to manipulate other children from a position of authority.

[02:06:32] I feel like people focus on teenage insecurity, awkwardness, but there's such a bizarre confidence to teenagers that is just this weird sense of immortality. There's a bit of that, although obviously there's also— And I'm starting to understand how to control my environment.

[02:06:47] But I mean, when I feel like kids are their most terrifying, it's kind of when they're like 11, when puberty, the awkward hammer of puberty is not yet hit. And you're kind of like, I'm a big kid, man. I really do run the world.

[02:06:59] I got no pressures, you know? But when you're 15, you're actually walking around places by yourself and shooting. You are allowed to walk around by yourself. And people might treat you like an adult. David, you're steering it off topic.

[02:07:12] I feel like this is not what you want to be doing. And we're almost done with the film, which is— Not really. We still got the product. The loot of Ico and the recovery is half of the movie. It is.

[02:07:20] And if we're going to go on a tangent about what age people walk around, we're never going to get there. What age people walk around? Great tangent by me. I will say what you just— Everyone weigh in on what age you remember walking around.

[02:07:33] I was gonna bring up— And I don't know if you felt this way, but the mortal terror at 15 of like, oh no, I'm gonna have to interact with a grown-up to like buy my movie ticket or, you know, get my McDonald's. The grown-up being 20. Exactly.

[02:07:49] But like, you're still just sort of like, I better do this right. That's the thing. There's no one in this movie that's in between his age and basically his parents' generation. It's all a bunch of stick-up-their-ass Brits. You never see people that are in their 30s.

[02:08:01] It's either the teenagers or teenage adjacent and old people. But even his parents seem like they're 60. Even though they're dressed like very hip. Sure, they're in this— Weird fucking way. Like it just makes them actually look more uncool.

[02:08:16] But this sequence, like there's no NADSAP talk as he's in prison. There's a little bit I think in the voiceover, but basically his personality as we saw it in the opening sequence is gone. Like he is not the same person anymore.

[02:08:28] In that he's now 6-double-5-3-2-1. Right. And like the back half of the movie is slower. Am I allowed to say that? Well, yeah, we're almost there. Slower than the sex scene. Two years have passed. He's— I think it's two years of a 14-year sentence.

[02:08:44] I do have— I mean, this is— We can't really get into this, unfortunately. I'm sure this is what people are clamoring for. But the thing that this movie sort of like I think can be studied philosophically, especially this segment in relation to— Ben, I'm sure you're familiar.

[02:08:56] I'm sure you guys are all getting— The balance power shifted and I like it. The table's tilted this way. This would— You guys— I feel like this is obvious, but like whenever you guys were asked to do an assignment in school,

[02:09:05] you were always like, how can I make this about movies? I definitely could be guilty of that. So at some point, I read and had to do for a philosophy class an assignment on Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish, his 1975 book about the carceral state.

[02:09:19] You guys are so fancy high schoolers. This was not high school. This is college. Oh, this is college. And the way that the sort of Western approach to penal systems in the modern age post-executions had evolved.

[02:09:28] And I was just like, obviously, I'm just going to write a paper on Clockwork Orange. Like, obviously, I have nothing to say about philosophy divorced from movies. I remember I had a science class where they asked us to do a presentation on a

[02:09:39] modern phenomenon in science and I picked— Spider-Man. Spider-Man. Please say Spider-Man. I told them I did Face Off. Face Off. And I just talked about the movie Face Off for like 10 minutes and I was like, so is facial transplant surgery possible? Maybe. Who can say?

[02:09:53] Stay tuned for the future. Truly. I listed the box office. You can go to Nigeria's Land of Contrast. I did. That's what I said. Libya, I believe. Yeah, that's all I said. And at St. Ann's, they were like, Griffin, A+. No, I mean, that's— They didn't give grades.

[02:10:07] That's how bad of a student I was. No, but they brought out the A plus for Griffin's Face Off paper. No, it sounds like Griffin was taken aside and given a conversation. I was like the academic Alex DeLarge of my shitty stupid school for dumb special kids.

[02:10:19] Basically, again, this is only interesting in that by the 70s, after this movie is made, there's this conversation about what do we do now that we don't kill criminals? Right. Is reform possible because we can't just have people locked up forever?

[02:10:34] Which is exactly what the government comes and says in this movie that predates this Foucault book by like four or five years, which is like prisons are— Now this is still a thing. You want to lock up a criminal to get them off the streets.

[02:10:45] You're not going to kill them. You're not going to cure them. So what do we do with them? And Foucault engages in this in a way that's very— I just will also—and not to be Mr. Britain again, but death penalty had been recently abolished in the UK.

[02:10:56] I feel like it was a present concern. Like, what are we going to do now? Yeah, and you hear the government say that when they show up, and they're basically—they say something like, soon these prisons will be needed for political purposes,

[02:11:09] and that common criminals can't take up all this space. And basically the government is coming and being like, we have to lock up our enemies. So if someone's arrested for like violence or drugs—

[02:11:18] Yeah, just give him a Ludovico and then he'll barf any time he wants to be violent. Right. Problem solved. Problem solved, right? Problem solved. But again, like when Alex talks to the chaplain, however it's pronounced. Chaplain, sure. Chaplain or chaplain. I would say chaplain.

[02:11:33] I would say chaplain too, but you know. Carly? I wouldn't swear that I'm right. Robert Downey. The two-shot of them is he's revealing that he's heard about the Ludovico technique is the same as him talking to Deltoid.

[02:11:45] And again, you're kind of putting him in conversation with these adults for two, three, four minutes at a time, as opposed to Ben, like you're saying, like he's not talking at the beginning of the movie. He's just kind of yelling things and running around.

[02:11:58] And now he's having these long conversations with these people that are tasked with keeping him under control. And he's again, just in a completely different state than he is at the beginning of the movie as he begs to be given the treatment. Right. The Ludovico technique.

[02:12:10] Which is all of that for. Is obviously horrifying to consider and is horrifyingly presented, but it is incredibly comical to me as well. Like it does like, it is like a weird square peg round hole thing where government's like, that'll solve it. Like, does this, am I crazy?

[02:12:26] No, it's what you said about it being like the logic of a child. Yeah, right. Right. I already said that. Right. There you go. It's got Milgram experiment vibes. Definitely. Yeah, just big time. Don't do it. Kind of has Homer being forced to eat all the donuts vibes.

[02:12:40] Ironic punishment department. Yes. I mean, this is the ironic punishment department. It is. It truly is. They're like, well, we're just going to make a movie that looks like the first part of this movie, but cheaper and crappier. Right.

[02:12:49] And you'll just have to watch your own horrible life. Yeah. Until you go insane. Yeah. And it's just, it's very, but like, again, like the handheld shot with the assistants bringing him the food. And I believe the, you know, the liquid, the vaccine or whatever,

[02:13:03] they're giving him the injection. Like this is just this long handheld shot down. And again, it's like he makes this shot so loose and so excellent to establish this insane new center that Alex is now being held in. They just viddy the films.

[02:13:18] And the fact that they look exactly like him and his drugs, he doesn't acknowledge that at all. He really has this dissociative quality where he's not like, I dressed like that as recently as two years ago. He's just like, oh, as Griffin says,

[02:13:31] it's funny how the colors of the real world only seem real. Like he's just like, this is a movie. Yeah. Here we are. He has no awareness that there's any resemblance between his own actions and what he's seeing,

[02:13:41] which again is Kubrick just saying like, don't you idiot people get it? Like what you're guilty of and what you want to avoid are the same things. You want to abolish violence. So you do violence to others. You want to, you know, be sexually secure.

[02:13:57] So you get obsessed with sex. He's just so frustrated with people's lack of finding the proper balance of their own humanity. On a very base level, I stuff freaks me out more than anything. It certainly is uncomfortable.

[02:14:10] It's absolutely in a movie filled with a lot of sequences of very upsetting imagery. Also that it's basically real what you're watching. Yeah. That's what really fucks me up. Yeah. This McDowell 40, 50 years later interview I was watching.

[02:14:24] He said that the guy who's next to him administering the eye drops is like a real eye. Right, right, right. Makes sense. Kubrick's whole thing was like, I have this idea we can do it for real. And McDowell was like, well, I'm not fucking doing that.

[02:14:36] And he's like, I got a doctor. It'll be fine. And he's like, no, you're going to use my stand in. My stand has similar eyes. And he's like, we're not using your stand in. It's going to be you. They were just fighting about this back and forth.

[02:14:47] But he was like, this guy's going to be here. He's going to give you drops every 15 seconds on camera. He'll be on camera. It'll be fine. And then they're there on the day filming. And Kubrick's like, we should give him a line. He's on camera.

[02:15:02] He should say something. So he says, like, what is it? Like, little Alex, are you ready for your drops or something like that? Sure. He says some line like that. But the way McDowell told it is like, here's this guy whose job is just like,

[02:15:14] you need to make sure this guy's eyes don't get fucked up. And then Kubrick said, like, we're going to throw you a line. That's fun. And then the guy was so obsessed with the line. God, right. He's like, don't worry, Mr. Kubrick. I won't get this wrong.

[02:15:25] And then he's fucking up the eye drops. Exactly. So he was like, McDowell was doing the count in his head every 15 seconds and like hitting the guy. And the guy kept on leaning over and going like, what's your character's name again?

[02:15:37] And he was like, don't think about what do you think my motivation in this scene is? Yes. But you're giving me eye drops, you fucker. Like, A, it's always the hardest thing to do in a scene is only have one line.

[02:15:47] And B, if you have a non-professional person being told they have to act on top of doing the thing that they're used to doing on a regular basis, suddenly they come all consumed with the obsession of that.

[02:15:56] The other thing he said that just really haunted me is that like, they're giving him like numbing agents right throughout this whole sequence. And then it's like, you know, shitty, scary, upsetting, whatever. But he's not feeling it. He goes home from set.

[02:16:13] He's driving the car and it like wears off. Right. And then he had scratched his cornea. He was in incredible pain. And he said he hit a speed bump on the road and he described it as it felt like a razor blade went straight down my body.

[02:16:28] And I got to my home, I had to call my doctor and he had to like just inject me full of everything. That is upsetting. Yeah. Sounds like fun. Sounds like fun. Anyway, this is the portion of the movie where I have to like kind of like.

[02:16:40] It's just incredible. All like the sort of wonky things on his head, like this, the design of everything on his head and this sort of so-called technology that they're using to monitor. It's so silly looking. Yeah. We have to talk about the sort of post-treatment demonstration.

[02:16:56] Oh, my God. Yes. It's one of them. It's just an insane scene. It's just like a genuinely deranged scene with the comedian. Who are these performers? This is what I'm talking about. The world of this movie is a world of just such grotesque caricatures of human beings.

[02:17:13] But these all must have been like British comedy television guys, right? There's no way to know. If only we had some resource. I think the comedian's name is Michael Clive. OK, the Clive is in his name somewhere, which, of course, it sounds very British.

[02:17:27] But the rhythms of them. But he comes in like he's he comes in like he's Moe. He comes in and he's poking him in the nose and yanking his ears and stepping on his toes. And then bows. And then he claps. He tells him that he stinks.

[02:17:43] And throughout the whole time that this guy is torturing him, it's like this Fife March playing. It's like this very medieval. It's just nothing about this scene has any bearing on reality or logic.

[02:17:54] And yet the sort of agony of it sticks out his tongue and licks his boot. While this bizarre looking man does this silly slapstick routine. It's just like you can't even believe that there's people that have made it this far

[02:18:06] in the movie thinking like this movie glorifies violence and celebrates an anarchist, violent main character. And it's like the main character has now watched the beginning of the movie. And basically said to the audience, violence is a horrible thing. And this makes me sick to have to watch.

[02:18:22] And the idea that you've gotten this far and you're like, I'm sure the filmmaker doesn't agree with that. It's like really the main character just basically turned to the camera and said, the content of this movie is violent and upsetting.

[02:18:33] Well, you know, you have like this audience of like buddy daddies laughing and applauding. Well, the reaction shots of Michael Bates here. How can anybody say Kubrick has no sense of humor when you're watching Michael Bates? People say that. I've heard it said, yes.

[02:18:47] When Michael Bates watches the naked woman walk out, the series of reaction shots of him watching her are just like all time reaction shots. And then the way he's clapping when she leaves. Yeah. He's just like he's like he's never seen a naked woman before.

[02:19:02] This guy is giving an incredible silent performance. Like these people being like revolted by the idea of these violent youths and then just like cheerfully watching them subject this guy to violence as quote, unquote proof that he's cured of violence.

[02:19:17] But it's like, yeah, but you're watching and enjoying him getting fucked with in the same way. There's nothing funnier than telling someone that they stink. It's just so solid. Maybe the all time greatest burn. Yeah, he does.

[02:19:30] He moves the hand and Alex is like, I took a shower just yesterday. And he's just like a horrible stench. You it's just incredible. Let's talk about the fifth act. A free man. Yes, free man. The long kind of the longest or maybe the longest feeling.

[02:19:43] These both are like 40 ish minutes. Yeah, the whole Ludovico sequence. Every time I watch this movie, which I've seen several times, mostly as a teenager, I really associated with being a teenager and like my friends being obsessed with it as well.

[02:19:57] I always forget how fucking long it is at the back end. Like, you know, yeah, I always think of the treatment being so much closer to the end. Now there's a full 40 minutes. Yeah, that's yeah.

[02:20:09] But again, like at this point, a lot of these scenes are getting really long. The demonstration scene with the comedians really long. So then, yeah, but what does it get? One of the other big changes in the book is that here his parents are reading

[02:20:20] in the paper cat killer free cat lady killer freed in the book. He just shows up and they're like, what on earth is happening? Like, what technique? How did you get out? Yeah, sure. Interesting change. I think it's got his big parcel. That is far.

[02:20:35] Yeah, OK, fuck Joe. I don't like Joe's attitude at all. I think Joe's the villain. Ben, I was about to say the exact same thing. He has one of my favorite lines in the movie. He's bad roommate.

[02:20:46] Yeah, like he and he's like, he's like, these are my parents now. Like not do it with your so weird. Do it with your mouth covered. It's bloody revolting. Incredible line. Joe stinks. But also like what kind of world is this that this government is

[02:21:01] kind of building these systems of protection and that grown men have to just live with adult married like there's nowhere else for Joe to live. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if that's a symptom of society. I think that's Joe's deal. Yeah, fucking Joe, man.

[02:21:15] Like I wish Cooper could do a Joe spin off called Joe's deal. Because I got some questions. David, you want what do you think of the free man stuff, David? I mean, I love Patrick McGee. Right. So huge. Humble. Right. Is it McGee or Maggie? Huh? I've never.

[02:21:34] Is it McGee? Like, you know, McDuck or is it Maggie? No, it's McGee. McGee. McGee. Because his real name is M C G. I see. It's not. I thought it was McGee with the A as a stage name. I'm not sure why he changed it.

[02:21:47] But I probably to there was probably another Patrick McGee out there. You want to talk about the return of McGee? I want to talk about one quick shot before getting there. Sure. When they're taking Alex after it's this whole parable of recidivism. Obviously, he retrieved. He's out there.

[02:22:00] You like your healed. You're out. And they're like, by the way, you have nothing to your name. We sold all your possessions. You have nowhere to live. So you'll figure it out. Right. You know, I mean, right.

[02:22:08] But again, it's just this deeply cynical view of like, they want. Yeah, it's his old droogs or cops. Now the cynicism is just hitting so hard at this point. But this handheld shot where they're dragging him into the setting sun to beat him into the water tank.

[02:22:23] Like just this shot goes on. It's got to be like 45 seconds of them just dragging him through the field. And there's just no set design. There's nothing. It's just a field with the setting sun. And it's just so incredible.

[02:22:35] And I would love to know how many takes of that they did. Like this, just this is not precise. You can't do 100 takes of something with a setting sun like that, unless you do three a day for a month. I just want to make something clear.

[02:22:48] Stanley Kubrick is a humorless scold who made hermetic movies. And he did 100 takes every time and it drove everyone crazy. David, I heard. No one disagrees with me. So you love everything Alex does in this movie. David, I love it. I heard it on the killing episode.

[02:23:00] I don't need it repeated. It's almost like you're talking about someone who's not in the room and I have no control over. Well, it's almost like you're talking about like you have any knowledge of British society, class or culture. Stop making yourself to be this self-appointed expert.

[02:23:14] Have you ever seen the freaking, uh, the birthday party? Uh, no. Patrick McGee, incredible in that. And I watched that as a teenager, I think, because it was had a real pinter face as a teenager. Oh boy. What American boy has a pinter face?

[02:23:27] Ah, you grew up in the United Kingdom. What? Is that even a common thing there to have a pinter face? No. Little English major nerds, it might be, but I don't know if it's a common... I don't think it's like,

[02:23:50] oh, he's having his pinter face and he goes, oh, everyone's folding their laundry. I mean, as fun a pinter as you. Oh, with the pauses, eh? All those pauses. I have a big pinter face. A pinter face coming out party. It started! It started! Oh, you're 15 years old.

[02:24:13] Here's your collected pinter. Starting to worry it might never happen for him, but then it came in one day. It came in really strong. Oh no, he was just on the becket always. And then finally I hear, oh, what is that? The caretaker.

[02:24:29] Anyway, I had a bit of a pinter face. I think he's incredible in that movie, Patrick McGee. He's got... You know who he reminds me of, and this is silly. Um, fucking what's his name from Breaking Bad? Margulis? Mark Margulis? You know the guy... Oh, Mark Margulis.

[02:24:44] The crazy old grandpa. Yeah. They both have the similar... I guess because they're just both wheelchair bound. Sure. Though they're similar brooding intensity. Yeah. I thought about Arrested Development. Shoot me! Shoot me, dragon! Shoot me, dragon! They have the same look.

[02:25:02] That is the funniest thing on Arrested Development maybe ever. And yet it's so incongruous with the show in a way. Yeah. When Martin Short comes in and is doing that, even in the heightened version of that, you're kind of like, Jesus, this is a lot.

[02:25:16] Like this is a very complicated, bit heavy character. He's too small, but he's like a buff old man and he needs a big man to throw him around and his legs don't work. And also he has acid reflux. He's always like barfing. Swoop me, dragon! Swoop me, dragon.

[02:25:37] Sorry. The way that we get back into the writer's house is all the same shots from Act One. It's a complete, I mean not beat for beat, but like, you know, the doorbell and then kind of going over... The track shots are identical. Yeah.

[02:25:49] It's all, he's repeating a lot of, you know, the establishing shot of the home sign. Now in the rain. Like it's just, he's using all these cues to be like, it's the same, but it's horrible now. Then the room is all different. The wife is gone.

[02:26:01] Who was there lifting weights? His helper. Drag Short. Dragon. Dragon. But like the whole thing... But the character's called Alexander, right? The writer, yeah. F. Alexander or something? Right. He's like this guy, perfect example of like government overreach, right? Like he's like... Yeah.

[02:26:21] A figure of the fringe, you know, left if the government is conservative and he's just like, this is, you know... We've gone too far. This is crazy. We can't be rewiring people's brains. But yeah, but he much like the people in prison

[02:26:34] and the Ludovico people, they just look at him and they're like, finally a means to my end. Right, right. You... That's the thing. You boy can be a pawn in my goals. And the kid, the 18, 19 year old kid at this point

[02:26:45] is just like, I have no free will. Yeah, whatever. You'll give me a bath? Like, I guess I'll be... But like, that's the thing. Like, it would be a little too easy for it to be like, he's just this compassionate guy who's...

[02:26:58] Even though he was attacked, like, you know, he's like, no, come in your all you poor kid. But like there is that edge of like... No, I can use you to prove a point. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And this... But again, like by this, the way he's acting here...

[02:27:09] He's still probably better than teen Alex DeLarge though. By this point, like the way that he's acting now is like, when he's like, the food! It's just another person that Alex is just like... He should say like... And this is one of Anna's like...

[02:27:26] The things that drive her the craziest and make her the most uncomfortable in David Lynch things is... That's some future guests. When someone is acting insane. Almost owner of the Riddler Cape. Yes, owner. Yes, still owner of the Riddler Cape. As I told you both recently mentioned,

[02:27:39] Riddler Cape, alive and well. Yes. It just drives her so crazy in a fun, you know, reactionary way of like, how come no one is pointing out that this person is acting the way that they're acting? Oh, you mean just classic movie thing of like,

[02:27:52] everyone's just sort of looking to the left and so they don't... Yeah, I mean for her it was... For her it was Dougie Jones and all of Twin Peaks The Return. Where it's just as 12, 13 episodes of this, she just kept going,

[02:28:03] how come no one is turning to him and going, what is wrong with you? Well, it's the... And the way all these... She's got a great ass thing where it's like the kind of performance that comes out of 100 takes where someone's losing their mind.

[02:28:14] They're like, I don't know, what the fuck do you want me to do? And they do something insane. But the writer here is getting... But the other actor... Give me what you got! But the writer is getting to just play like the bookend of his earlier sequence

[02:28:24] where he's not like this at all. It's really bizarre and exciting. And again, like the spaghetti scene is so long. And it's not like this in the book because in the book, this is where he's kind of putting the pieces together. Whereas now he already knows.

[02:28:39] Because much like Alex, he heard music that triggered his insanity. Right. So already, even though he didn't go through the Ludovico technique, the meaning here is like, you can not go through the technique and have the same psychological reaction. Right.

[02:28:51] And this guy, it was one 20 minute part of his life. For Alex, it was two weeks and you hear music and your brain just breaks. And then this spaghetti scene, you kind of believe how long the scene goes on for. It contains no new information.

[02:29:04] They're just repeating things we already know. And it's captivating. The wine, like drugging is such a funny button. He knows it's drug too. He's holding it up. Yeah, no, I know. And like all the, like, you know, he's like smelling it, checking it,

[02:29:19] but then always like, you know, justifying why he's taking so long. And then he takes two big gulps and then starts relaying like sort of his story. Have another glass. But then it's just like when it hits, he smacks into the fucking spaghetti. Like it's a sketch.

[02:29:36] It's a Simpsons joke. It's just unbelievable. And like if you had a comedian who said Kubrick is humorless and they had ever seen this movie where he's like, I just have the feeling that any second something terrible might happen to me.

[02:29:48] You'd be like, oh, they must've missed this movie because that's like, that's just perfect comic timing. And it's a great McDowell timing too. A lot of Simpsons reference in this app. Yeah, but the Simpsons references Kubrick's Orange a lot. Yeah, it does. So that's why it feels sympathetic.

[02:30:00] That's right. That's the reason they nailed it. You know, it's probably one of the most inappropriate for children movies that they reference a lot. There's the shot of Bart reaching for the cupcakes. That's exactly the same. You're right. You're totally right. I mean, it makes sense.

[02:30:13] It's generationally perfect for that writer's role. It's also what you're talking about too. The fact that this movie existed as forbidden fruit for so long where you're like, this movie is rated X and it's banned in all these countries. It's why I associate with teenagehood.

[02:30:23] So specifically, not just the subject matter, but just the fact that as teenagers, we were all like, can you believe this exists? Right, because it's not like, oh, this is a rated R movie I might accidentally see on TV or whatever. Yeah, you have to find it.

[02:30:35] I saw one of, I've seen this movie in the theater, I would say over 15 times. But one time I saw a six. That's a lot of times. I mean, to this day, if I saw it was playing on 35, I would make a point of going.

[02:30:47] I'd try to never miss it. For the future, David, if you ever want to end an Alex episode early, tell him, Hawker Orange is playing at IFC and it starts in 30 minutes. And I'll be like, IFC has a print. Are you sure? That doesn't sound right.

[02:30:59] But I saw a 16 millimeter print of this in a library once. Because I saw that it was playing and I thought, that sounds fun. I'd like to watch that. Where was this library? It was in Philadelphia. Fair enough. It was in my teenage years. Wait, I'm sorry.

[02:31:13] You grew up in Philadelphia? The Liberty Bell in Independence Hall, Philadelphia. The shot of him throwing himself out the window, that's kind of an iconic shot, right? Because that's like Amaranth box. Right. Yeah. Devising this whole crazy contraption. Whatever kind of box that was. Kubrick's boxes.

[02:31:33] But my crown of card. But even before that, the long zoom out of all the people listening to him in agony upstairs with the speakers turned upright on the pool table and they're just throwing the billiard. That shot is incredible. Just everyone sitting there.

[02:31:48] You guys have I kept waiting. Someone David Prowse is in this scene. Yes. Can I give you the Prowse story? I mean, I do want to wrap up soon, but like it isn't, you know, the story, right? Or maybe not.

[02:31:56] The story is that David Prowse is Darth Vader. I mean, he's dragging. He's a bodybuilder. Right. You know, David Prowse is a very large man. He played Darth Vader. And there's a scene where he has to carry him in the wheelchair down the stairs.

[02:32:08] There's lots of scenes where he's not in the wheelchair. And Stanley says, this is the bit where you carry him down the stairs in the wheelchair. And Prowse said, hang on a minute. Stanley Patrick weighs about 170 pounds. The wheelchair is probably another 30.

[02:32:21] I've got to stagger down three flights of stairs. Wheel them into the table and hold a conversation. And Kubrick's like, yeah, you're a strong guy, aren't you? And Prowse says, yeah, I am. But your name's not one take Kubrick, is it?

[02:32:33] And the whole set goes like totally quiet. And Kubrick apparently smiles and says, we'll get it done as quickly as possible. And Prowse says, we did that in six takes, which was amazing for him. So Prowse actually successfully called him out on set of like, look,

[02:32:49] I'm not fucking bringing this wheelchair down the stairs 50 times, buddy. I don't care how big I am. It's an incredible physical presence and performance. It's like Schwarzenegger in The Long Goodbye. It's just like this. I think the whole line on Prowse is like,

[02:33:03] the man had fucking presence beyond just like being big. He looks so good in the suit when they're listening to Alex Luz's line. It's just that he sounds so ludicrous when he talks that they could not use his voice. Have you ever seen the footage?

[02:33:13] He's got this lovely West Country accent. Like he did all the Darth Vader dialogue on set and was under the impression that his voice was going to be used in the movie.

[02:33:20] And it sounds like Darth Vader wants you to get him like a bunch of potatoes or whatever. Like he has this like really thick kind of like farmer accent. I find your lack of faith disturbing. Really? Yeah, I'll look this up. I'll find you a video.

[02:33:32] It is one of these things where like everyone who's working on Star Wars is like, this movie is going to fucking flop. This sounds stupid. That having been said, It's very funny. When you look at modern Star Wars stuff where it is not Prowse in the suit

[02:33:44] and you still have James Earl Jones's voice, the performance never works as well as when Prowse was the guy. Like he did undeniably have a thing. This movie and the sort of, you know, all the other British people from the bums

[02:33:58] to, you know, all the, you know, the prison warden. This just feels like it lives in the same world of casting as Star Wars to me. Yeah. Like it's only, you know, six years apart of casting.

[02:34:09] But this kind of Englishness where you look at Star Wars and you're like, that's what people looked like in England in the 70s. Despite being the future, this is exactly the same to me. And yet that's what I love so much about both movies. But that's right.

[02:34:21] Both movies where they're like, what will the future fascist state be like? And it's like, you know, there's going to be some scary stuff, but it's also going to be like a lot of English pencil pusher guys in the background.

[02:34:30] Before we talk about the final scene in the hospital, which is where the cynicism of this movie goes nuclear. The one other big change is that in the book, when he gets out, when he takes his bundle from his parents,

[02:34:39] he goes to the library to look up how to kill himself painlessly. Yes. And that is where he encounters the bum and then it plays out the same. Right. But yes, I remember that in the book, that the painlessly thing, like, cause he's had enough pain.

[02:34:53] Right. And then in the movie, it's just kind of him looking at a bridge and you get that he's thinking about jumping off of it. No, it'd be a bit weird in the movie. Then the library and Googling suicide or whatever.

[02:35:03] There's something that has that joke in it where someone's Googling like how to kill self painlessly. Sure. It's like from whatever. I'll remember it tomorrow. But like throw that in tomorrow. The the way the bums attack him is very insane and funny.

[02:35:18] Just the group that he says in the voiceover, like the filthy stinking bums descending upon him. And the one that steals his package just shuffles away. Well, but I mean, yes. But I just love the conceit of like them being like,

[02:35:30] all right, technique didn't really work, but we can't be admitting that. So can you just kind of go along with it? This is where the movie to me gets like if people are like that movie is kind of hard to watch and morally dubious to me.

[02:35:44] Yes, there's the violence that I think the movie self critiques. But by this point, just like the audacity to be so cynical, to have the prime minister come in and be like, look, I'm sorry. Now the writer, we put him away.

[02:36:01] That guy is a menace to himself and to others. And it's just like that poor man. He's like and the fact that the movie is just like, oh, the writer. Yeah, he's just in an institution. We've just seen what institutions look like in this world.

[02:36:15] That crippled man is in there now. Having survived horrible trauma. And he's just like, oh, we put him away. And to have Alex after everything, just have this guy go. How would you like to be a friend to us? And he just goes, sounds good to me.

[02:36:29] It's just like his embrace of every what is he rebelling against at this point? If not the government, it's not he's not rebelling against society because he essentially becomes a government employee. Yeah, he agrees to be like, sure, I'll be kind of your spokesperson.

[02:36:43] And the full and again, like you talk about Kubrick's outlook and his cynicism. Here's the here's the end. This guy starts off as a raping, murdering psychopath. And by the end, he is a government employee posing for the photographers

[02:36:58] that were already there knowing that this was going to work out. The idea that there's no chance that he would say, get lost. I hate you. I will spend my life crusading against this government. The pictures would all be with him with thumbs down. Yes.

[02:37:12] And instead, the prime minister is like, he's going to say yes. There's no doubt he's going to say yes. And this final moment to me is like there is this so devoid of optimism or hope. It is so cynical. Right.

[02:37:24] And then he just becomes his government propaganda tool instead of what he is in the extra chapter, which we can now finally recap, which I had a real, real Mandela effect reading. I don't know how. What do you mean?

[02:37:36] Because in my memory, I was like the extra chapter, Alex is like 50. And he's an old man and he's kind of reformed. And you get the sense that still inside him is something of a psychotic.

[02:37:47] And for 20 years, since I last read this, I thought that was the extra chapter. But he's right. He's like, it takes place like he's 18 years old. He's like a year later and he just has a new gang

[02:37:56] and then runs into one of the old gang who's like, I have a family now. And Alex just goes, well, interesting. I wonder maybe I'm just going to go home and not go out tonight for the violence. Maybe I could have a family too. He's shaking his sillies.

[02:38:10] It's basically true. But like the ending of him becoming a government pawn to help assuage people's nervousness about the mistreatment of prisoners. It's just like that's dark. That's a darker ending than I think people get credit for.

[02:38:23] The cynicism of if you track his parents relationship to him, right? And that they are at their most terrified of him when he is coming out of what has then been presented to them as an entirely successful treatment, right? They're oblivious when he is at his most criminal.

[02:38:43] Then when he comes back and they're going this fucking work, we cured the guy. They view him as like a ticking time bomb. And then at the end, when he's the victim of like malpractice, the modern age, they once again just have endless sympathy, empathy,

[02:38:56] even though they know that he is now not. That's the point, you know, right? Like he is violent or he has the capability. They finally have more compassion for him at that moment.

[02:39:05] And his rejection of them of his own, you know, MNP or MND or whatever he calls them. Yeah. And his embrace of the prime minister. It's just like that is so cold. And again, OK, fine.

[02:39:16] Maybe Kubrick is cold by reputation, but like that is that is ice cold. That is crazy to have him. Kids are cow. Like when you're that age, you're so fucking callous. He's trying to manipulate himself back into the position that he started at.

[02:39:31] Yeah, this is getting him as close to it. But now he has fucking money and status and power. It's the natural progression of basically being a fucking bully. Yeah. The bully ends up being like you sell out and you become a fucking cop bastard. Yeah, right.

[02:39:46] Become a fucking cop. The bully becomes a cop and then gets to keep being a bully. Yeah. And Alex gets to continue to have his visions and maybe even act on them with complete protection and approval of the government.

[02:39:57] Now he's insulated and he can be he can exist in the shadows and like do all kinds of more sick shit and in this version without the extra chapter, if this guy gets in trouble with the law, it's going to go away.

[02:40:11] It's you know, someone's going to come and be like, you can't touch him. He's one of ours. Right. And that's the note the movie ends on with him continuing to have these fantasies.

[02:40:19] And you know that he can go out and get whatever he wants tomorrow, robbing and whatever. And then the prime minister will say, don't touch him. He's very important to the administration. And that to me is just like, Jesus, that's the meaning of the movie.

[02:40:32] This is also just cutting into the hospital when he wakes up and the people are the nurse and the doctor having sex. It's just like... Yeah, that is funny. Such a dim view. Very English, too.

[02:40:42] That's a very English like, oh, nursey, you know, like chasing after a topless nurse. It feels very Benny Hill to sort of just encounter a diddling nurse and doctor. But again, it's just like... Diddling. Rumpy pumpy.

[02:40:53] The view here is just like everyone in the position of authority in this world is a fool and a failure. Yeah. And no one's doing their job well and everyone is basically just useless. Okay. Before we play the box office game.

[02:41:05] I remember also we have a giant pin in the prodigy. That's what I was about to say. Should I unpin the prodigy? Look, this is very brief. And I have one thought exercise that we can say before box office game. And it'll be an easy answer. Okay.

[02:41:18] And I don't think we can... The pin can come out, but it can only say this. And there can be no... When the pin comes out, it's going to go like clang. Yeah, but we're not going to belabor this. As you remember, last year before we recorded Halloween,

[02:41:29] Griffin and I went to see Guns N' Roses. That's right. That's right. You guys have done road trips both times. This year we went out to the Mahoning Drive-In in central Pennsylvania to Universal Monster Films. Did you go to Waffle House? We did not go to...

[02:41:42] We went to Wawa. No, but there's a Waffle House in central Pennsylvania. We didn't and we should have. We didn't get that. I went when I was in Atlanta recently. It was delicious. It's the best. We went to Wawa. We had a good Wawa trip.

[02:41:52] Griffin got the Kevin Hart combo. Do you know what the Kevin Hart combo... Can I... David, I have to talk about this for 30 seconds. Just do it quickly. You know this fucking trend of music stars who have their own fucking fast food menu combo meal?

[02:42:06] Where it's like, this is the Saweetie meal. What I get is this but with this sauce and this on the side or whatever. And the entire idea is like, this is a personal reflection of their... What is the Kevin Hart combo?

[02:42:16] The Kevin Hart combo is some shitty fucking energy drink that he has some pre-existing sponsorship with called like C12 or some shit. It's not a Hart-branded thing. It's some deal he already has. Heartbreaker. It's called C12, I believe, or something like that. Okay! And any sandwich you want.

[02:42:35] So the combo is... I don't know. What do you like? Drink my drink, you jerk. Are you that much of a fucking sociopathic fame hound? We didn't need the sandwich because Alex told me that the food was going to be so

[02:42:46] fucking good at the drive-in that I went back for seconds. It was really good. Yeah, let's be fair. I told you it was going to be good and you said it was better than I set up. Well, it's just... Come on. What was your sandwich?

[02:42:55] I didn't get a sandwich! He didn't get one. I just want you to say turkey club. Turkey club. So you got the Kevin Hart combo turkey style. I just wanted to say that. Okay. I hied to Griffin.

[02:43:07] I was like, all the food at the drive-in is beige and fried. You're going to be in heaven. And then when we went through the first time, he said, there's almost too much choice for a guy like me. Right.

[02:43:15] And I said, I have to be selected now so I can come back for seconds. What is the thought? Okay, I can't tell you why, when this started or any context for it. But I will say that when Griffin and I go on these trips... You're chatting.

[02:43:29] We're chatting. We chat a lot. You are referred to as hip hop Sims. Now moving on to the other thing. Excuse me. Moving on to the thought experiment. I'm not objecting. This is the thought experiment. Next August, whenever I come back next August,

[02:43:46] we'll give one more tidbit on hip hop Sims. Alex texted me today. For reasons I can't reveal. A photo of Cartman from season one of South Park looking like MC Search in like the red jumpsuit.

[02:43:57] Because you said when you picture hip hop Sims, you picture hip hop Cartman. We can't say why this started in what context or what it means. Are you saying that because you don't know? No, we know. We know why.

[02:44:10] But I don't know what the fuck they're talking about. We don't want you to know. Yeah. Why can't I know? Because it might... Put the pin back on the board. It might by revealing... It's not going in. It's like a social...

[02:44:21] You can't let the jury read the news because it will ruin the outcome of the trial. You can't let hip hop Sims know why he has... Why do you call me hip hop Sims? It can't be answered. All right. You have to put Alex on another episode.

[02:44:33] We have to put another pin in there. I'm happy to book him on another. I don't need a threat. Great, then put a pin in it. Put a pin in it. I have... No, I have further questions. Is it insulting? No. Is it complimentary? No, it's merely factual.

[02:44:47] It's a reflection of reality with no editorialization. But it's not... You're not being mean about me? Look, I'm not saying... I'm just asking. I'm not saying that this started last year at Guns N' Roses. I'm not saying that it started after your wedding. All possible. Anything is possible.

[02:45:01] I'm not saying this is because of comments you've made on episodes. I'm just saying to us, you are hip hop Sims. I was just gonna say at the Guns N' Roses concert, this was introduced to me by Alex. I accepted it. Or it was introduced after the wedding.

[02:45:14] One or the other. But now anytime we talk, at some point, we refer to hip hop Sims. Okay. At the Guns N' Roses concert, it was... This is the last thing I'll say. It was said during their astonishing cover of Live and Let Die. Incredible.

[02:45:26] That you had claimed this was the worst thing that ever happened to music. I never said that. Maybe the best thing ever. I never said that. I think Griffin sent you a video of them performing it, and you made some disparaging remarks. Yeah. And I...

[02:45:35] I'm not that good. Maybe that was when hip hop Sims started. Maybe there was... I was just sending you that video of me opening the ultimate fucking box. Maybe there was something at the wedding that gave birth to hip hop Sims. The point is he's out there.

[02:45:45] He's out there. He exists. He's real. And the memes will be created. Well, actually, okay. I wanna speak to... Listen, people out there, David has gone through enough of the British bit. Please be gentle about... I'm just saying... I'll take hip hop Sims. That's all I'm saying.

[02:46:01] Just be gentle. I'll take hip hop Sims over the UK bit. And I'll certainly take it over the depth of the UK. You'll never go over the... What are you talking about? You'll never go over the top of the UK thing after Clockwork Orange. No.

[02:46:11] I just don't want it to be mean. It's not mean. Okay. There's nothing mean about it. Much like the UK... It could be mean. If it was mean, we wouldn't say it to your face. And know that when this is revealed... Sure, that's true.

[02:46:22] Know that when this is revealed... That's not really comforting, but sure. To know that when this is revealed, you'll just laugh and go, okay, that's funny. But I have to wait? Yeah. I just want to let it sit out there. Here's another thing to sit out there.

[02:46:32] Put it in it. This has been sitting out there for so long. You guys, I almost mentioned this on Halloween last year. Like a fat meatball just sitting in the air. Do you guys remember at the barbecue that we had a few months before the Halloween?

[02:46:43] You all showed me on your phone something that a friend of mine who I turned on to this show made you. Yes. That still has never seen the light of day. Here's the answer. Here's the answer, Alex. Coming soon. Yes. Yes. What are you talking about?

[02:46:56] I know what he's talking about. Oh my God. The answer is we have plans connected to a live show where we would debut that. You just... We've been sitting on it forever. It is so incredible. No, no, no, no. It's incredible. It has to wait.

[02:47:07] It does have to wait. I just wanted to set this up. If I said this a year ago, people would still be waiting because what you guys have is so... Well, there was this pandemic. I won't say who made it or what kind of work they do,

[02:47:18] but this is so good. It's incredible. It's not that we've forgotten about it. In fact, it's quite the opposite. There's emails being sent. Things being arranged. Here's my thought exercise. Jesus, we're not even in the fucking thought exercise.

[02:47:30] We haven't even played the fucking box office game, I believe, 10 minutes ago. In conclusion, this is a simple yes or no. Do you feel like in the modern world of mining every corpse of IP, any piece of Kubrick IP can ever be touched? Oh, could there be like...

[02:47:47] Someone's like, I'm going to offer my take on A Clockwork Orange. Or they're doing a six episode 2001 prequel series. Well, here's a few things to say on that. There is a sequel to 2001. There's three books. Well, there's three books, but there is a filmed...

[02:48:00] Some director, and we're going to talk about it. Peter Himes, some director, Peter Himes. Put some respect on Peter Himes. Put some respect. He rolled up his sleeves and he was like, 2001? I'll follow that. Right, well, he had the book. He had the book.

[02:48:12] Arthur C. Clarke was like, I'll follow that three times. There's also Doctor Sleep. But that, of course, you've got the shining Stephen King thing. I'm talking about literally being like, we are doing... There's a... Like, literally an in-world. Like, if they did 3001 now, or...

[02:48:30] I think it will happen. It's 2061 and then it will happen. You think some of the Kubrick stuff can be touched? I think someone will take a swing at one of them. I also think... But what would it be? Is it 2001 or is it... It's probably 2001.

[02:48:39] It's probably 2001, but I think there was such a tight grip on this stuff for so long that like, not just Doctor Sleep, but like... Ready Player One. Ready Player One. Ready Player One. I think putting the Droogs in a space jam.

[02:48:55] I mean, just a ludicrous thing that literally happened. Part of it, by the way, was just that like, Warner Brothers even was so respectful to the Kubrick estate that even if they had the legal grounds to do something,

[02:49:08] they wouldn't because they didn't want to piss them off or like, earn the ire of film fans. The other thing was they always were like, don't fucking merchandise the shit. I just texted you guys a photo of a real product that exists

[02:49:22] that is a baby doll of Alex DeLarge. I mean, I... It's a toy line called the Living Dead Dolls. We've got some babies, so... Like, it looks like a child. Oh yeah. I'll be buying this. It kind of looks like Chucky Alex DeLarge.

[02:49:33] This is like real hot topic shit though. Yeah, absolutely. But like, that's a thing that was always kept at bay in the last five years, the Floodgates. I just wanted to add though to this quandary of yours, Wanting Seed. Hip-hop sounds.

[02:49:47] The novel, the Anthony Burgess novel before A Clockwork Orange is very similar in that it's a dystopian future. But instead of focusing on violence, it's focusing on overpopulation and hunger and like scarcity of food. But it has very similar extreme themes.

[02:50:13] Yeah, I don't know his other work at all. The Wanting Seed. That's right after. Right after. I think it's right after. So in conclusion, I'm interested in him now that I just read this. Check. I think you'll really like the book. It's good.

[02:50:28] So I could see that being an expansion. Like the expanded Burgess world. It's sort of a soft Clockwork Orange spinoff. It just feels improbable that there's an entire body of iconic work that no one has pillaged for grass IP extension.

[02:50:42] His big masterpiece is Earthly Powers, which I have read. This is Burgess. New York's on Burgess. Yeah, Burgess Corner. All right. So you guys are calling your shot. There may someday be a 2001 HBO Max streaming show. I think we could rush it like 2010.

[02:50:55] The follow up novels, the Marvel comic, the Kirby shit. And then it's like they've been trying so hard to do the fucking shining shit for so long leading up to Doctor Sleep. Mind you, the Overlook prequel, all this shit. Right, Overlook. Right.

[02:51:07] I do think there will start to be more and more. Yeah. Especially. I just was wondering that. In the Zazlovic. Yeah, it just feels weird that there feels weird and obvious that there isn't. Of course, there isn't. We want to talk about the prodigy. The prodigy pin.

[02:51:23] Has anything better ever been said at roughly three hours of recording? The prodigy pin was pulled out. That was Hip Hop Sims. It came out. To be clear, the prodigy is not a hip hop. Well, please tell us more. Please tell them. Hang on. Tell us more.

[02:51:35] We're an electronic music act. But is there like a rapper in the group? You were just huh? Is there a rapper in the group? Well, Keith Flint. Yeah. Is there another vocalist in the group that may be sort of more in the trip hop hip hop world

[02:51:47] that only you could educate us about? Wait, what the fuck are you doing? I'm just actually wanting you to go on about the prodigy. Oh, I don't want to go on about it. Because there were the two. What's the other vocalist? Maxim. Maxim Reality, I think. Maxim Reality.

[02:51:57] So what album did you mention was the one with the crab on the cover? That's Fat and Alive. That was kind of their big. That's the breakthrough. That's the one with Smack My Bitch Up and Firestarter. Wait, what the fuck album were you talking about?

[02:52:06] Their first album is called Experience. They broke in America in 98. They had been big in Britain for years. Decades. Yeah. Oh, not a decade. Like, you know, the whole 90s. Their first album, Ben. Ben, I'm going to send you a song. You know what?

[02:52:20] On my way home, I'm going to send you a song. All right. And you're going to listen to it. All right. I just want you when you listen to it, it's called Out of Space. It's from Experience.

[02:52:28] I just want you to imagine yourself hopped up on so many goofballs in some English fucking marsh, you know, with like mud around you, right? You're Glastonbury or Reading or one of these one, one of these festivals listening to this. So many goofballs. Okay.

[02:52:44] And listening to this music. How many goofballs did Teenage David take to when the day music from the Jilted Generation came out? Well, I was far too young to be taking goofballs when that guy was like 10.

[02:52:53] Ben, do you know what the cover is of their album before Father of the Lambs? I'll show you the album. Music from the Jilted Generation. No. Why would I know that? Because maybe you like the prodigy. Once Father of the Lambs became so prodigy.

[02:53:04] But I can't retain all this information. Okay. Okay. That's kind of like a bad, who's the art director for alien stuff? Yeah, H.R. Geiger. It's like a bad Geiger kind of thing.

[02:53:17] Which any EDM album band from the 90s probably should have that kind of an album cover, right? Yeah. Father of the Land is a pretty cool guy. So David pulled out without looking it up, MC Maxim Reality. And with that, we can play the box office game. Yeah.

[02:53:30] All I'm going to say, David, all I'm going to say is we are very aware the prodigy is not a hip hop group. Okay. But it's just mere fact that you started to go deep on a prodigy tangent like that is the thing

[02:53:43] that made Alex and I look at each other and go, let's pin hip hop sims for later. Hip hop sims needs to at least peek out the door. Because we had texted this morning. We texted last night. We were just like, should we touch it or not?

[02:53:53] And then when you said the prodigy thing, we looked at each other and went, get in close. Has to happen. And I'll say that if anyone. Is there something I could say that would bring it to the fore? There may be. It's like an AI.

[02:54:06] You just have to read the words correctly. And suddenly, you guys are just like, okay, here's what's going on. Okay. We'll tell you the truth. I will say that this is something that perhaps a guest of the show.

[02:54:19] If someone figures this out, they win a no prize is all I'll say. That's all I'll say. But be gentle. When did Clockwork Orange come out? It came out in like Christmas 1971, but I want to do January, early January, which is when it's in the top 10.

[02:54:33] Take the fan wide. Okay. So this is January 72, January 1972. Cool. And it's opening on number nine. So it's not in the number. It's not in the top five. Naughty number nine. Number one is a James Bond film. In 1972. One, two. Yes. Oh, it came out in one.

[02:54:49] It's a 71 carryover. Is it Diamonds Are Forever? It's Diamonds Are Forever. Right. Because I knew it was pre-more. Exactly. It's Connery's last run. Yeah. In Diamonds Are Forever. A very bad movie. Do you have any opinions on Diamonds Are Forever?

[02:55:00] You know, I watched all those Bond movies when I got the three box sets. Circa, World Is Not Enough. And I have not revisited all but a few. I mean, a few of them I've not seen since I got those three boxes. Yeah, sure.

[02:55:11] I've enjoyed watching the mores. I watched every single one of them and I hold them all as just fond childhood memories. The power of DVD was in my hands. I had 20 Bonds in a row. I mean. And at some point I'd like to rewatch all of them.

[02:55:23] I saw someone on, I think the Reddit after the Live or Let Die commentary came out said like, they ran down all the problems with the movie then said four out of 10 will definitely rewatch. Yeah. And like, that's how I feel with all the mores. They're just comforting.

[02:55:34] They're just so. Even when they're a bad Bond movie, it's like, look, James Bond's in it. He saw their stuff, gadgets. Diamonds Are Forever is just, you know, just that classic end of an actor's run where you can just feel him going through the motions. Yeah.

[02:55:46] I can't like, I can't differentiate beyond like the four core Conneries. What else is in there? Well, it's the sixth Connery. Number two at the box office. Go on. How would I know that? Is a big weighty actory drama from a big director. That's quite challenging.

[02:56:01] It was a Christmas award. Awards, but it was not a big awards player. It only gets one Oscar nomination. Probably a little too dark in a way. Was it was an acting nomination? Yes. Best supporting actress. The movie is too dark. It does get a supporting actress nomination.

[02:56:16] It's also like maybe too frank. Although then again, A Clockwork Orange is. Is it? Let me be frank. It's not let me because that's very frank. It is very frank. The frankest. Ned also got no acting nominations. Weirdly. Got a webby. I don't think so. 1971.

[02:56:32] It's a huge actor who we've mentioned. Two huge actors or one? No, one. And then a musician is the other leading male part. And then two ladies. An actor who was mentioned today. And then a musician and then two ladies. And one of the ladies gets nominated.

[02:56:49] Oh, it's Carnal Knowledge. Carnal Knowledge. As we were mentioning Jen. Nicholson, Garfunkel. Candy gets the nomination, right? No, Anne Margaret. Oh, why did I get that flip? Anne Margaret has two Oscar nominations. Okay. That's cool. Yeah, it is cool. Yeah, it is. You're right. She does have two.

[02:57:05] Candy ever get nominated? Candy ever get nominated? Candice LeBron James. She's been nominated twice, right? Starting over. No, just once. Just once for starting over. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Number three is the best picture winner of 1971. Already mentioned. Well, it's not The Godfather. No, that's 1972. Right.

[02:57:28] Movies that we talked about. The French Connection. The French Connection. Yeah. A great movie. Yeah. Do you like The French Connection? Yeah. Yeah, rules. Yeah, it's a good movie. It's freaking cool. Hoffa Doyle. Number four is another. A lot of hats in the best picture nominees.

[02:57:41] The shirt, Clockwork. I mean, Fiddler on the Roofs probably got some hats. I definitely have some hats. Whoever hosted the Oscars should have come out wearing all the hats. Would have been like a whoopie Elizabeth bit. That would be really funny if he took off.

[02:57:53] Oh, that'd be good. Like took off the Fiddler hat and the Clockwork hats on me. You can just picture Billy in the Clockwork Drew get up coming out. Only Billy had been. The host, of course, was Helen Hayes, Alan King, Sammy Davis Jr. and Jack Lemmon. The funniest.

[02:58:06] The Drews. They should have all come out in Drews with one hat each. All right. Bring out some star from the 30s and beat them with a cane. Number four is also a cop movie. Number four is also. Huge hit. It's a huge hit.

[02:58:21] Is it a Dirty Harry? It is. Is it Dirty Harry? It's Dirty Harry. Yeah. And number five. I mean, this is really that rush of like violence. Exactly. Breaking the streets are not safe. Yeah, yeah. We need a big man with a gun.

[02:58:34] It's a wild December into January. It is a couple of movies here. Well, it's like Bonnie Clyde, Dirty Harry, Clockwork Orange. And I feel like there's one other like the four movies that are cited of like that blue violence. Straw Dogs. Isn't there? Straw Dogs, which is.

[02:58:46] Straw Dogs. That's the fourth. There you go. That's number eight. OK, this week. Number five is a big musical that was not a real for us. Picture we just. Oliver. No, we just mentioned a million times. Fiddler on the Roof. The highest grossing film of its year.

[02:58:58] And then you've got dollars. The Warren Beatty Goldie Hawn comedy caper movie. Wait, wait, wait. That we just watched that that was on Criterion last year. It's bad. Really? It's a good title. It's Richard Brooks. Richard Brooks. Yeah, it's it's we are just like, huh?

[02:59:15] You know, there's you know, there's like 13 Warren Beatty movies total. Yeah, sure. Watch this one of them is Richard Brooks is like not someone I would see as a comedy caper guy. Is he totally cold blood? I was like, there's so many Warren movies.

[02:59:27] We haven't seen this one. Goldie, of course, the best. And it's just like, man, this movie is lifeless. It has a good heist scene in like a safe, like the actual thievery of it is fun. Just in like a construction of heist movingness.

[02:59:39] But man, is it man, is it dull? Well, you've also got Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Kind of a minor classic. Yeah. Tomlinson. Tomlinson and Lansbury. Riding to bed. Yeah. You've got Straw Dogs, previously mentioned. You have House of Wax in re-release. Oh, wow. The Vincent Price film. Very cool.

[02:59:59] Cracking the top 10. Yeah. In January. In January. Is that holding over from October? Did they just re-release that at Christmas? It's it's it's I don't know. Probably re-releasing. Would they all be like 3D releases? I would assume. Yeah. I don't know. Part of the novelty, right?

[03:00:11] And then O'Clocker Crunch. That's your 10. Ben, that was like the first like major studio 3D movie. And there's like a two minute sequence where someone just paddle balls at the camera. And it's like as jarring as you would imagine. Especially if you don't watch in 3D.

[03:00:27] You're like, what the fuck? Yeah. No, I watched it like 2D in high school on TV. There's a character who's like a carnival barker. And he's like, here you come here. Let me show you the new tricks. It's not like a character you've met before in the film.

[03:00:38] He just fucking paddle balls the camera for like two minutes. And they're like, anyway, back to the House of Wax. Yeah, that that doesn't sound like they figured it out. No, it's good. It's really good. Alex, final thoughts? Great movie. Great director. Yeah. A real Ben movie.

[03:00:56] Oh, God. It's changed for me from watching it. Changes every time. All those years ago to getting older and older. It's going to be a really interesting movie, I think, to watch as I get older and older. Yep.

[03:01:06] Being younger than the protagonist when I saw it, but even younger than he is in the book. And that's our parent. That is true. I can't wait to show the child, Clark Rueggarn, for the first time. That'll be really huge.

[03:01:18] You know, at the age of 13, like I was. Yeah. I mean, to be fair, she was around while I was watching it the other day, but mostly asleep. David, I do feel like we owe you an apology. We did go very hard on the England bit this week.

[03:01:33] Only because it's just so funny. It's funny for this movie and it's not going to be relevant again. Anyway, tune in next week for Barry Lyndon. Well, I do think knowing the guest and the format of that episode, it will probably be lighter on bits.

[03:01:44] That's a challenge I'll take. But you never know. That's a challenge I'll take. Well, you know, you may not have as willing a collaborator, I guess is what I mean. It's a challenge I'll take. Alex, thank you for coming here.

[03:01:55] Thank you for removing the pin on Hip Hop Sims. A promise to fulfill later. Stay tuned for that one. Stay tuned for that one. I think David's going to be so flummoxed when he hears the explanation too. And thank you all for listening.

[03:02:08] Please remember to rate, review and subscribe. Thank you to Marie Barty for our social media and helping to produce the show. Thank you to Alex Baron and AJ McKeon for our editing. JJ Birch for our research.

[03:02:21] Thank you to Lee Montgomery and the Great American Novel for our theme song. You go to BlankCheckPod.com for links to some real nerdy shit, including our Reddit aforementioned and also Blank Check special features. Our Patreon where we do commentaries on,

[03:02:35] right now, the Roger Moore movies as we also just talked about. Tune in next week for Benny Lyndon. Which I'm calling now is going to be the nickname. I dare you. And as always, Hip Hop Sims.