Battling Butler / The General with Jamelle Bouie

[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 neighbors are shy with Blank Check There were two loves in his life. His engine and...

[00:00:27] Cut to picture a Blank Check podcast artwork. Oh great, perfect. There you go. You're saying we're like a... A sweetheart. A sweet lady? A little sweetheart in a little framed picture. Absolutely Griffin, thank you for that. What do you do when you're looking for the quote there?

[00:00:44] There are quote pages for these. Like on IMDB there's like the title cards. Yes. I want a fucking tagline for one of these. This is what I was searching for. I was like, this must have had a tagline. But I can't find one.

[00:01:02] It's a fair question. I feel like movie taglines have always existed. Oh, okay, okay. Here's one. But some of these, it says like trade paper ad. Here's the one that seems to be semi-legit. The Tale of a Lad, a Lass, and a Locomotive. That's a fine tagline.

[00:01:22] And then there's another one that is Love, Locomotives, and Laughs. That's what I'm looking for. But then a lot of them are like, what they list as taglines are like This is his first United Artists picture. Right, that's not really going to make me run to the theater.

[00:01:36] I just thought of one. The South Will Ride Again. Well, truly. That is kind of the pitch for this movie. Oh boy! Hello everyone, this is Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. I'm David. No giggling, David. This is a very serious episode. Can't giggle. Ever.

[00:01:57] Dead serious. Dead pan. We need flat pans and no laughs, no breaking. Stone faces. Yes. We're going to talk separately and not giggle. Out of respect to the great Buster Keaton. Blank Check with Griffin and David. Griffin and Data. Good lord.

[00:02:13] This is Blank Check with Griffin and Data. Me and a gorgonskin android. That'll be fun. It's a podcast about filmographies. Directors who have massive success early on in their careers are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want

[00:02:29] Sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce. Baby, today we're talking about what is his ultimate blank check and what was basically an entire blank check career. This whole run we're talking about is a blank check run. This is maybe his most ambitious project.

[00:02:45] And his biggest bounce at the time. That has then become his most critically sort of respected film but also challenged in ways we will talk about. This was in the top ten of the site in Soundpoll for multiple times. Forever. For many, multiple decades. The unanim, or whatever.

[00:03:01] This became the critical consensus masterpiece. And I think was kind of key. Partly because it's long and partly because it has a real story. Yeah. And look, it is stunningly well directed. Yes. I mean it looks great. It looks so good.

[00:03:18] And the stunt work is still incredibly impressive. I think a lot of, you know, there's sort of the like somewhere in the 60s and 70s there's sort of this critical reevaluation where people start going like actually I think Buster Keaton's the good one.

[00:03:33] When Chaplin had remained really large in the culture. And I think this was one of the movies that people were holding up as like look at this through a modern lens. And most of looking at it through a modern lens was

[00:03:44] oh he kind of made the first proper action comedy. And it plays in a modern way in that sense in a genre that continues to be humongous. It moves! It moves. This thing's moving! And just the balance of like story beats, action beats, comedy beats

[00:03:58] all that sort of stuff. We are talking about two movies today of course but the movie we're referring to right now is The General. The General. And then we're also talking about Battling Butler which is just one of his movies. And I don't say that derisively

[00:04:09] but it comes from the opposite side of Buster Keaton's personality which is just let's find a really simple hook for a picture versus The General is like all of his ambition. I do think he thought very highly of Battling Butler. We'll get into it I think

[00:04:24] because it was a hit. I don't say it derisively. He was just very pro his movies that succeeded I guess. But there was this very blue collar working man I'm not a pretentious artiste right? He would push back against I think especially compared to Chaplin and Lloyd

[00:04:40] who were thought of as these very particular controlling self-serious artists. He was like my job is just to make pictures and make people laugh. And then kind of every couple of movies he'd like swing for something bigger like A General.

[00:04:54] But I think he would try to keep that ambition in check and just be like all I need is a picture where I get in a boxing ring. That's all I need. That's my job. Yeah, I'm little so it'll be funny. And it is funny. It's funny!

[00:05:06] This is the thing. You know what else is funny though? Just this. The pose. The old-fashioned. The put them up. Show me your jokes. You know, Marky- Queensbury rules type boxing. Well, and the old boxing posture where the tush

[00:05:20] is just all the way out like you got a full diaper. Yeah, arched back. You know, the reason why you hold your fists like that in that kind of boxing is because they're not really wearing gloves. And so, The backs of the hands you're saying

[00:05:32] you need to lead with that? And you're trying to keep the other person's fist away from your face as much as possible. And that kind of helps out. Right, whereas once you got the gloves this became like sort of over your face. Right. That's interesting.

[00:05:47] Hey, look, this is the kind of historical context. Hard facts. Boxing expert. Yes. This is a May series on the films of Buster Keaton. It's called Podcast Junior. Today we're talking the general and battling butler and our guest returning to the show one of our favorite people,

[00:06:03] one of the smartest people on the planet, Jamelle Buit. You like being introduced as one of the smartest people on the planet. So I don't think it's true. He wrote his own bio, by the way. He wrote his own bio and he passed me a notecard that said...

[00:06:16] And he underlined that. Yeah, I underlined it and then I had like a Switchblade the Griffon. You were doing this. Switchblade fisticuffs. It is always a pleasure to be on the show. You guys know that I love you and I love the show. So glad to be here.

[00:06:32] You tweeted about watching Buster Keaton movies with your son a while ago because we planned the show out very far in advance. And I immediately did the old DM slide and I said, have I told you we have this on the books that we want to do this

[00:06:45] and immediately knew we had to get you on for one of these to talk about two of them because we're doing these all as double features. Now, General was your pick. The General Battling Butler thing was your pick. I was hoping you would pick this just because...

[00:07:03] It's kind of like me bait. Yes, yes, but it's also like this movie is I think so fascinatingly complicated as like a piece of American historical fiction and within it contains so much of what is weird about how our country mythologizes itself and its popular culture

[00:07:26] which is the kind of stuff you like to dig into. That's right. I assume we'll get into it later but I think the General is for as much as it does stand as an exemplary piece of film making it's also extremely of its time. Yes. It's so specifically

[00:07:46] the middle of the 1920s in the United States that it's almost like striking how specific it is as a cultural artifact in that regard for a lot of reasons. That's what's fascinating about it is in its construction it is maybe the most modern of his movies

[00:08:04] and the movie that is most accessible but in its viewpoint it is so of its moment where you watch something like Sherlock Junior and you're like well this is very modern and relatable on a human behavioral level like I understand the motivations behind this and everything

[00:08:23] whereas the General just plays like It does. You could make the General now You could. It would be the same basic concept. You might want to make some tweaks in my opinion I have a quick notes pass I think I have a very fun

[00:08:43] laugh right now with my cold I kind of have this dying laugh I said there was no giggling allowed in this episode Giggling would be different I mean if you were to remake the General you'd kind of be like halfway to Unstoppable Yeah The best movie

[00:09:03] Honestly, the General is easier to remake than Unstoppable. Now there's a movie that you can't remake No Unstoppable has my favorite Denzel moment ever which is when Chris Pine tells him that he had a gun when he confronted his wife's ex-boyfriend or whatever and Denzel goes, uh oh

[00:09:22] He literally says, uh oh I need to rewatch that movie It's so good It's also incredibly rewatchable It's also like 95 minutes long It's very easy to rewatch Were we having this conversation in some recent episode about like, yeah we were 98 minutes Best final films in a career

[00:09:43] It's a really good And it's like for tragic reasons it was not made with the intent or you know I think from the viewpoint of someone who thought it was their last film versus most bad final films are someone who's kind of lost their

[00:09:57] fastball and is fading out That's one of the best final films in anyone's career I feel the best at this I make these kinds of movies in a way that is unique and unlike the other people who make these kinds of movies and you know

[00:10:11] Give me an old star, give me a new star Make them both do great stuff It doesn't have the self-importance of certain older statesmen filmmakers being like here's the one, my final statement for the world It's also in the incredible in my opinion body of work

[00:10:32] Which like with every year you're just kind of like this guy is stacking bills He's so good He keeps making the right choice I don't mean any disrespect to the other Chris's Even when he makes the wrong choice you're like I get it though Don't worry darling

[00:10:50] or wrinkle in time He's bad in none of these That's the thing When he picks a wrong project you're like he comes out kind of looking He uses his fame and his sort of leading man status in the most interesting way

[00:11:06] I mean no disrespect to the other Chris's but it is absurd to me anytime this is brought up as a debate When it's like he's running laps around the rest of them He seems to have almost total clarity about what his persona is and knows

[00:11:22] exactly how to deploy it And none of the other Chris's can can still barely figure out what he's trying to do Yes And there's a weird balance to Pine where it's like he's really willing to hand himself over to a director and go like use my persona

[00:11:43] And to take an off ball like Wonder Woman, Dungeons and Dragons these kinds of movies where he's like I'll be a star but you don't need all of it to be Chris Bartlett Some of those guys in that position the last thing they want to do is play

[00:11:58] the normal straightforward leading man because they're like I need to hide behind tics and weirdness But Pine also is like if that's what you want in me I can do that If you want the earnest version of this I can do that My guy's throw in fits

[00:12:12] He looks incredible He really does That's true and what do you think that is? Do you think he just has a really good guy who like you know finds some good stuff I think he works with good stylists I've told this story before on the podcast

[00:12:26] He's not afraid to like go there and like be a little wild, wear color like just like wear untraditional kinds of clothes So admittedly he's a guy who looks good wearing anything He looks good with short hair, long hair, clean shave But he's kind of discovered that he

[00:12:44] can pull off almost like a Diane Keaton look Really? A male Diane Keaton look He went through like a something's gotta give I feel like a round He looked incredible Whenever some of those photos I think it was like a Vogue shoot came out

[00:13:03] I was like Tess, my wife Have you seen how good Chris Pine looks? Angelic But then he also can just like throw on a leather jacket and fucking wafers and jeans and you're like yeah cool The story I've told a thousand times before

[00:13:17] on the podcast Jamel is Brendan Hines friend of the show, past and future guest invited me to a birthday party when I was in LA with some friends if you want to come join us and I was like absolutely I have no plans tonight

[00:13:27] and then he was like cool Chris is driving, he'll come pick us up He'll pick you up from your hotel and I was like Chris Pine? and he was like yeah and I went I can't go I cannot Even though you probably did even at the time think

[00:13:43] look I know that guy's probably the chillest of the major stars Brendan is one of my very good friends Chris is one of his good friends I have never met him I'm not on first name basis but I've heard only the loveliest things about him

[00:13:58] and I was like if I went to a party and Chris Pine was there I would A. be starstruck but B. I'd be like well I didn't know what I was getting into I'm gonna feel emasculated just because my body sucks

[00:14:10] I look like a pilot with wet laundry or whatever I have to stand in the same vicinity as him but the idea of getting into a car that he's driving and like opening the door and walking out with him I was like I can't do any of this

[00:14:25] I cannot do any of this I fucked up really hard What kind of car do you think he drives? I couldn't deal with any of this DeLorean Probably a Tesla I like to think he's driving like a muscle car or something cool

[00:14:41] He gives me like drives a sedan vibes Right he's just like pulling up in like a really nice like infinity I could also see him in a vintage like Land Rover Is he not proving our point here? Any car we imagine him having is cool Family midsize sedan

[00:14:57] fuck that would be cool Vintage muscle car You know Pine drives a golf cart That's fucking cool He's got power wheels He has a power wheels car Cool that's fucking cool Alright we should talk about Buster Keane Can I just say one thing? About Chris Pratt It's illegal

[00:15:20] I'm just gonna say I think I should be brave on this podcast and say things that people aren't gonna like Brave and strong I think he is excellent in Guardians of the Galaxy 3 I cut all this out so it's just I think beep

[00:15:32] You just hear that I'm agreeing and no one ever hears what I'm saying That would be funnier I think Chris Pratt's given a lot of very weird phone-to-performances recently I think he's like clearly in some kind of crisis over what his persona is

[00:15:48] He talks about Jesus a lot I don't mind people talking about Jesus if they want to but it's not really my area of interest He's obsessed He is obsessed with people criticizing him in a way that is absolutely a self-perpetuating problem Right it's like Chris chill log off

[00:16:06] You're doing great You're successful I think he's so good in Guardians 3 Have you seen it yet? I've seen it significantly less than you did but that was almost my immediate takeaway We can talk about this off mic Not because I don't want to

[00:16:25] That's a movie where he's just like I'm gonna do what this requires of me and I'm in the hands of the director Frame one and you're like right this is why you became a movie star Can you please not lose sight of this

[00:16:37] He's a guy who's got a very specific strike zone but within it he is so effective He's focused on losing sight of what his movie star persona is whereas fucking Pine Piney He's got perfect control Piney can throw a ball at the third baseline

[00:16:54] and the umpire will be like strike clean Clean strike Took the words right out of my mouth That was the exact analogy Well you said strike zone Pratt is phenomenal in that movie Should we talk about Buster Keaton in general Do you have sort of a general

[00:17:16] Let's make it very clear because of recent things we've covered on this podcast for anyone who's confused This film is not a biopic of Rosario Dawson's vagina No We did find out in our episode on Trance that Rosario Dawson refers to her vagina as the general

[00:17:32] She said the general was mad one day Public information Yes This is about Buster Keaton What do you think I am a fan I really enjoy watching Buster Keaton films Griffin mentioned that I had talked about watching Buster Keaton movies with my son who is old enough to

[00:17:55] watch stuff now He's almost 5 The reason I do that is because It's for a couple reasons The first is that I am on TikTok enough that I see young people complain about black and white movies It's a bummer The idea of having children

[00:18:13] that if I wanted to pop on The Manchurian Candidate They'd be like, I don't want to watch that because it's in black and white You gotta cut that off at the pass You gotta set the right tone in your household Part of it is Let's actually

[00:18:27] start introducing really early stuff Getting him used Because they have no prior context Just getting him used to the idea that things can look different Because I'm a photographer and have lots of black and white photos and prints and stuff at home

[00:18:42] He's also aware of the fact that pictures can be in black and white and may represent color You want this to exist in his perception of the world That's the first reason The second reason is that The great thing about silent comedies

[00:18:56] is that they did provide so much of the visual language for early American animation For a kid watching Buster Keaton It's extremely legible Because if they've seen cartoons steps away from Looney Tunes They immediately get the intent of what is happening I think there is something

[00:19:19] in Buster's persona that is very much like a child in his understanding of what's going on around him His sort of guilelessness Without being dumb He's slightly oblivious or his perception of things is a little bit skewed He's not always so open to others into situations

[00:19:39] But his comedy is also so behavioral in a way that I think a young child can lock into They understand the language of what he's doing Because it's in their understanding of learning how to read people around them and situations and everything It's very close to the perception

[00:19:55] of a little kid That's the other reason I like to watch it with him because he can actually really enjoy them in a way that is so verbal You need to be a couple years older for that The Marks Brothers movies are so much about class

[00:20:12] and social mores You need to understand not only adult society but then entrench yourself in some sort of understanding of what it was like 100 years ago on top of that I like Buster Keaton The other thing for me talking about liking Buster Keaton

[00:20:34] is that the way I got to Buster Keaton was through Jackie Chan which I think is probably the case for a lot of people who are interested and either love Jackie Chan or the kind of person who wants to learn more about the guy's influences

[00:20:50] And you are on the record when a couple years ago during our March Madness we let you pick a candidate You picked Jackie Chan and you proudly disclaimed That's right We have to fund and the super cops We need more super cops There's been a lot of them

[00:21:11] Not enough If you look at the animals of film history there are a weird amount of films that are not police stories I don't mean stories about policemen I mean proper entries in the police story franchise Jamelle, the anti-silent black and white bias you're talking about

[00:21:27] you're seeing from people on TikTok is so fascinating to me because as many smarter people than I have pointed out and written about at length there is something really fascinating about how TikTok has gotten closer to something approximating silent film language and especially silent comedy language

[00:21:48] when you look at the things that go very viral and they rarely have dialogue There are obviously a lot of TikToks that are based on talking but so much of them are behavioral are using camera positions and performance to convey something very quickly and it's like

[00:22:04] they don't understand it but the people who are on TikTok saying they don't want to watch these types of movies are actually more fluent in this language than many generations before them Yes, I think that's exactly right Just the constraints of that medium are essentially reinventing early techniques

[00:22:24] but for a variety of reasons some of it is just a standard being young and not really wanting to look at old stuff some of it is I mean I'm not going to psychologize too much but there is asking someone with no familiarity

[00:22:47] with not just black and white films but older films that have a different editing rhythm that have a different level of direction I'm not just talking about the 20s and 30s but asking someone to watch a movie from the 50s and they don't really watch anything before 1980

[00:23:05] and you're asking them to learn how to watch a movie in a different way You come across people I do often people who I think of as being intelligent and cultured and curious On the internet? You're sure? I'm talking more in real life

[00:23:24] I've had people who try watching great films from the 70s and are like, it's just too slow for me They can't deal with the shagginess of 70s new Hollywood stuff They can deal with Netflix shows Take a season to do anything This is my fucking thing

[00:23:42] Tapping my watch You should beat that out too Just keep doing that Or do it Yeah, no Well, silent movies especially They require some discipline or whatever in our phone addicted culture They do That's the biggest thing You cannot take your eyes away You have to watch

[00:24:09] You have to fully engage You can kind of watch a basketball game looking at your phone because if you've got the sound on you'll know when something's about to happen Yeah, and you'll just hear the crowd or the announcer get a little more excited You're like, alright

[00:24:25] You can't do that with a silent movie I know everyone knows this but the most you're going to hear is a piano going like None of these have definitive scores So even if you're just going off the music, it depends where you're watching it

[00:24:39] It depends how you're watching it There's no definitive version where that's going to guide you through the story better than one or the other It's all subjective None of it is the specific director's intent of how that score is being employed It's an interesting thing

[00:24:58] This is our first episode to come out in this miniseries since our first episode was released in this miniseries and it has been really heartening to me to see how many people have been watching these for the first time and having that feeling of like

[00:25:12] Oh shit, that's funny I've just seen a lot of like In a way where they're going into this I think a lot of this is like the framing in our culture I'm watching this for historical purposes I'm watching this for a sense of film history and knowledge

[00:25:28] rather than expecting to get genuine enjoyment out of this in the way it was intended for its audience at the time And I think that's just I know to move on but I just want to emphasize that point, I think what is so rewarding when you can convince

[00:25:42] people to watch not just a silent comedy but older films is if you can convince them to try to put themselves as much as possible in the minds of an audience member you'll find that the stuff still works It still works It's not dated It's different

[00:25:59] but it's not necessarily dated I'll say for Battling Butler I had a good chuckle when he falls into the lake and tips his hat to the mountain lady as she goes by I thought that was a good bit I laughed

[00:26:14] Battling Butler is chronologically the first movie we were discussing I will also give you just a little bit of context about it I'm a connoisseur of context We talked about this on We talked about this a little bit on the next episode

[00:26:30] We've been going a little out of order I don't know I don't remember But Buster Keaton did have the rights to this story that was about a skyscraper that he kept trying to crack and couldn't figure out We talked about this on Jamie's episode

[00:26:44] I just don't remember where it was This was sort of his great water loop project He could never crack the skyscraper movie Which sounds fun Like girder, skyscraper Guys up in the sky The premise of this movie basically was a giant skyscraper being built and this guy

[00:27:06] and his love interest getting stuck at the top of this in construction skyscraper and you have It feels like it's kind of his die hard minus the terrorists But it is like how does Buster Keaton deal with modern architecture being at raised heights being on steel girders

[00:27:27] and scaffolding and all this sort of shit and the reason it never got made was they could never figure out how to get down from the building Yeah he just could not put a plot together Right They never had a draft where they came up with a good

[00:27:39] end for the movie The other thing he purchases around the same time he purchases this skyscraper concept is Battling Butler There's a British musical that had been running on 42nd street in the Selwyn Theatre which had music and lyrics which is why those music and lyrics are credited

[00:27:57] on screen even though obviously this movie does not have music Contractual obligation But he saw it and was just like that's a very good simple premise that I could fit into He just liked the false identity thing A sort of fancy lad who is trying to prove

[00:28:12] his sort of masculinity and grit to the world finds out he has the same name as a tough guy boxer and sort of allows the mistaken identity to happen which leads to him needing to prove himself in the ring which is like yeah perfect Buster Keaton set up

[00:28:30] In the stage play the character Buster would eventually play Does this whole thing becoming the prize fighter to escape his ball and chain wife Less kinda classic Right exactly So they switch that to he's trying to impress a lady not he's trying to escape a lady

[00:28:53] Which is almost always the Buster movie Buster exists in this world Everyone else sort of judges his perceived lack of masculinity He doesn't care until he realizes If I assume the role of how men are supposed to behave in society or in this moment in this culture

[00:29:11] whatever sort of silo that movie is focused on then perhaps that is the thing that wins her over He's always sort of assuming a role, a task Not always but that's often the set up And this adds the fun mistaken identity

[00:29:23] thing on top of the what if Buster tried to be a boxer The other problem he has with the original story is how it ends with just like Oh you don't actually have to do it He's like that would be too boring as an ending

[00:29:36] So we have to tack on you know all the other stuff The fight in the dressing room is basically his way of being like can we have a more fun action packed ending It's more dramatically satisfying 100% I agree And the movie was a huge hit

[00:29:56] We can talk about it now but basically It's one of Buster Keaton's favorites but that's partly because it did really well and he was really happy Which just seems to be how he feels about his career when he is interviewed retrospectively And you know anytime people think

[00:30:10] yeah that one did really well But also boxing is a weirdly cinematic sport Not that weird Let me correct myself here I think boxing's prominence in cinema relative to its prominence in sports culture at large is kind of interesting to me But it's because it is so cinematic

[00:30:31] It is so simple and boiled down in its dramatics in its framing, in its staging And it comes down to like two people with very clear accent I will say also boxing has just not been as relevant in our lives But it used to be so much more

[00:30:47] Boxing used to be the sport In part because it was so accessible And so They're hitting each other Who hits more than the other guy Who hit the guy You could say it was more democratic Anyone sufficiently strong enough could be a boxer And so schools

[00:31:12] Robert Ryan is in a boxing picture, the set up And part of why he was cast is that he was a collegiate boxer and that was like a thing that used to be very common High schools colleges, boxing was just a thing that people did recreationally

[00:31:30] Get all these teenagers at digression out as well, just let them run around the ring throwing punches I just feel like Mike Tyson at all like the mid 90s is sort of the end of superstar boxing in a way that it's sort of all dwindling after that

[00:31:46] You still have like Lennox Lewis or you know you have a few Pacquiao, Mayweather It does get supplanted by UFC and stuff and become kind I feel like boxing is irrelevant It used to be So culturally significant that Ali beat Foreman or that Jack Johnson Jack Johnson

[00:32:11] wins the title and there are riots in American cities That used to be the significance of boxing There is that weird you can't tell me that's the strongest guy back then Yeah, boxing is weird Boxing is still weird It is just kind of wild The percentage of canonical

[00:32:33] boxing movies both in terms of pop culture staying power critical reception box office grosses at the time you know it's just like it's a big footprint It is just also compelling It's like why would someone do this and the reasons are often compelling

[00:32:51] I like that when boxers retire and they walk around going Hey how you doing and they take a picture with someone They let you pretend that you're punching them Yeah Retired boxers are fun or depressing Yeah I was about to say

[00:33:10] They're either fun or they have separate debilitating It's brutal Like I punched in the head so much It's so weird There's like federations that govern the punching of heads Or are tum tums Yeah sure you work the body I've talked about this a lot before

[00:33:29] on Mike but my brother almost became a boxer He had a golden gloves license and everything and was sort of right on the precipice of maybe trying to pursue it as a semi-professional thing You know within low level featherweight Yeah your brother is small

[00:33:45] Small boxers are kind of cool Yes he was very good at it and then the first time he had a licensed fight where he was up against someone whose only career path in life was boxing He was like oh I don't care about this that much

[00:34:01] I like doing this The field of people who this is their whole thing is a very different relationship than I have to this sport but growing up he made the desktop background on the family computer or I guess we had but whenever he was using the computer

[00:34:22] his background was like a slow motion shot of a guy getting punched in the jaw where his whole face is rippling and my mother would just walk in and see the computer screen and be like please don't do this Please don't You're constantly showing me the most barbaric

[00:34:40] image in the world and trying to get my permission to pursue this professionally I too would not when he was 13 years old The beginning of Batman and Butler I do love Buster Keaton as a fancy boy He's very good at it

[00:34:56] He's really good at the fancy lad stuff His flat pan as he calls it his blank expression his great stone face can be used very well as this sort of disaffected oblivious The bored aristocrat thing but he's able to do it in this sort of unpleasant pomposity

[00:35:19] You buy it as the sort of bored aristocrat thing without him being despicable You know? A lot of comedies like this very often in the movies where he's playing someone of a lower social class the villain, his romantic rival is a guy like this played by

[00:35:39] a taller man who comes on screen and you're immediately like fuck this guy and Buster can play this role at the center of a movie He's foolish, but I don't hate him out of hand immediately You want to see him get smarter and more aware

[00:35:54] The thing is that once he does perk up everything about him changes It's like the bored aristocrat thing is the air he's putting on but his actual self is something much more playful and appealing Which is fun. You get to watch him

[00:36:14] unlock what we want him to be He's so good at it He's so good at all this sort of very minute body language behavioral stuff We'll get to it in the general but the scene where he gets back in line and pretends to be the bartender

[00:36:32] and the shift is so slight This film is such a great study of him basically stripping away all the airs of this guy He's in the lap of luxury He's told You're going to go on a camping trip It'll do you some good

[00:36:50] He brings his butler played by Snits Edwards The great Snits Edwards with the wonderful face he has He's sort of the anti-Buster Keaton in that his face is all personality There's too much going on in his face at all times I do very much enjoy just his version

[00:37:08] of camping. He has a brass bed He has big fancy He's got a fucking icebox They go shooting and they just kind of look around at a bunch of pheasants and stuff and they're like there's nothing here to shoot Well yeah because he's bad at it

[00:37:25] That's such a good sequence This is where you're just like He was so tight in his visual storytelling of that sequence where he steps out and then you get the nature photography, the close-ups of all the different animals out in the wild

[00:37:39] and you think it's just sort of like establishing shots and then it cuts back to him saying there's nothing here for me to shoot and he's like using cinematic language to, you don't even realize he's setting up a joke until the punchline hits you but this is inversion

[00:37:56] of the usual Buster Keaton dynamic where it's often like the woman is of a higher social class than him The parents are trying to set her up with someone of a similar social class He's a working man who's trying to get her attention and prove himself to her

[00:38:10] In this, he immediately falls in love with a wild mountain woman who lives in the woods with her trapper family and he needs to prove that he's as tough and rough and rumble and of the land as they are because he doesn't get it

[00:38:26] I think it's really funny that he meets this woman by he cocks his gun backwards under his arm, shoots it and then hits her handkerchief That's what he does That's when she gets mad at him

[00:38:39] He's putting out the camping chair and then it goes straight into the ground And she's a lot of fun in this She gets to be a real firecracker Sally O'Neil is the actress Did she ever work with him again? He rarely repeated leading ladies

[00:38:53] but I think this is one of the ones where, I mean general also to its advantage lets the female lead get in on the action more, but this is the one where she's more of like a challenge to him Which is kind of funny

[00:39:09] Well he's such a doofus So yeah, there's a lot of camp business, there's a canoe bit Him trying to shoot the duck from the canoe is funny I mean this is like the Buster Keaton use every part of the Buffalo sort of thing

[00:39:23] of like, even if the plot has to get to him taking on the identity of the boxer It's like one of those Simpsons episodes where you're like, this is about boxing? They don't go to itchy and scratchy land until minute 14 But part of it is

[00:39:40] like, for him it's like if I've gone to a campsite I'm gonna get every good bit I can out of Fancy Guy Goes Camping I'm in no rush to get to the plot set up Why would I leave bits on the table?

[00:39:52] Right, you got her big dad and brother who are, you know, big and scary Large scary people always a good bit always funny Especially against Buster Keaton Another thing that's great about Snits Snits is maybe the only man in Buster Keaton movies

[00:40:09] who ever makes Buster Keaton look a little big His leading lady is usually basically the exact same size as him Everyone else in the world is so much bigger He's so skinny And then Snits is like tiny Yeah, Snits is small He's like old, he's shriveled

[00:40:25] I say this with love He has the date with the girl where they're at the table and the table keeps sinking into the ground Sinking into the ground is a very underrated easy, simple bit of practical comedy Yeah, and just It ends with them doing a picnic

[00:40:41] But the joke isn't that the table is sinking The joke is he refuses to accept that the table is sinking That will not get in the way of his flirtation Yes, okay The advantage of these movies is I can just cue them up That's what I'm doing too

[00:40:55] Just remember because they are silent And then yeah, about 20 minutes in is finally like Snits found the newspaper Here's your end And that's I guess when he tries to impress the big boys The big cowboy headed boys With no, I'm no shrimp I'm no coward

[00:41:18] Here I am, the battling butler And you know, there you go I mean the butler kind of pimps him into it Snits is really pro this I think he's kind of left that as his only option Convincing the dad and the brother Well there's nothing

[00:41:34] Like anything he's trying to do In real time before their eyes Fails But he can take on a reputation that has already been established that has a paper trail And he thinks just sort of wear it And go see here's the proof Without needing to actually

[00:41:50] Prove any of that to them I mean he is wearing a tux Yes, he is Which is an insane thing to do It makes actual sense because he's like a boxer There's something about that that just works Well and what you're saying

[00:42:05] Is a very nice tweed suit later I'm sorry what? Is a very nice tweed suit later I thought you were saying these are very nice tweets These are some very nice tweets We should never ever, that should be dropped from our Vocabulary as a people

[00:42:19] I didn't say it Thank god No but what you're saying Jamal about like boxing being this more Democratic sport right Well they already see him as a fancy man But if he's only fancy because he Earned his way there through boxing Retroactively they're less judgmental And even though

[00:42:38] He's small, he's a lightweight Fighter so they respect him He has talent, he has grit Any other thoughts? This training dummy On the beginnings, ok you have a training dummy The other thing I guess His relationship with the woman is very settled She loves him

[00:42:58] Like it's all good, he's not pursuing her anymore He has to impress her But he's not worrying about that anymore No The training dummy, is that what happens? Because they go see the boxer Yeah they go see the boxer, you see the battling butler

[00:43:12] He's some pretty good fighting Yeah He beats the, what's the guy's name Alabama something Yes absolutely Alabama something Well it's the Alabama murderer Yes Very evocative So he sees battling butler Beats the Alabama murderer In my head what happens is They're on the train heading back Exactly

[00:43:46] And he's like I have to tell her the truth I can't keep this up But then he is welcomed as the battling butler On the train And the battling butler sees this And is like what the fuck Who doesn't really look like him By the way

[00:44:03] And I had to think about it for a sec But you know people are probably listening To fights You don't really know what someone looks like Apart from this one picture of them in this stance They have similar hair

[00:44:15] Was there no discussion of having Buster play both characters In some sort of feat of Double acting That's what I initially thought I thought it was going to be like oh there's a tough Buster and a silly Buster But that would get in the way

[00:44:27] Of it's nice that the final fight Is actually good Yes 100% Comedically he could maybe pull off something Like what's McCall it The Playhouse Where he's using crazy photography And doubles to do it But it's nice that the final fight is a real fight There's like emotional catharsis

[00:44:47] To that I mean this is A lot of as Buster went on In the General's big proof of this Is he sort of was refining What he felt were Changing sensibilities In the audience Away from them just wanting Silly slapstick gags He got increasingly obsessed with

[00:45:10] You need to have a real story Emotional stakes Characters you can root for Things they can triumph over You need to be able to like hang a hat So I think yeah it's like He's no longer going for I was watching there's a really great

[00:45:27] Every fame a painting Video about Buster Keaton And his approach to film making Which is a great shot chaser With the every fame painting Jackie Chan Video which is like one of the best Those are just two perfect like 10 minute Distillations of how to read their movies

[00:45:43] And value what they did in their process And everything But there's some audio interview With Buster Keaton talking about Like as his career went on He tried to move further and further away From cartoon gags Which were sort of like Looney Tunes-esque rewriting of the universe Around you

[00:46:03] For the gag has to be earned through personality Through behavior And something like him playing both guys I think is more of a cartoon gag Sort of thing Yeah that makes sense These movies are longer and slower They do spend more time trying to Invest you in everybody

[00:46:22] Rather than just do like Bit, bit, bit His approach was sort of like first 15-20 minutes Really set up the stakes of the thing And then you can stack the gags up An advantage to this movie is His fancy lad persona is so funny

[00:46:36] The first 15-20 minutes of plot building Are all so funny Cause just him doing it Going through the motions is funny I do wonder how much of it though The characters at the same time are getting more and more Openly emotional Chaplin's movies are very beautifully emotional

[00:46:52] Which I love But you know Buster was very unsentimental in his approach He's not going to try to outdo Chaplin On that level But I do think he was like There needs to be a narrative rigor to my films I can't just be doing just silly goofs

[00:47:08] Chaplin of course is also A famous boxing movie Yes I just think this dummy is so It's a big sabudio That's for our British listeners I'm sorry what? What is a big sabudio David? Sabudio is Is a British Board game It's like soccer

[00:47:33] It's like you play it on a big mat With these guys who are standing on these little semicircles Who are little weeble wobbles Exactly and you sort of flick them And they do football I don't know why it's called sabudio

[00:47:46] But anyone who is from the UK knows what I'm talking about And he's a big Because he's in a big weeble wobble I think this dummy is really funny It's very well designed It has these like flappy arms Where without feeling like unrealistic Anytime he punches it

[00:48:02] It just sort of moves wildly And will just always hit him Even when it doesn't feel Like it should be that threatening I think there should be a new boxer I should claim my moniker What a straight forward I'm from Alabama and I'm going to murder you

[00:48:18] I'm murdering you in the ring How do you think he got the name? I don't know Back then you could kill and get away with it pretty easily So he might have actually just murdered someone And he did it enough times that they were like You know what?

[00:48:32] You're really good It was like illegal to like Poison or shoot somebody as long as you did it in a boxing ring You just had to break into like a gym Yeah there's just a lot of boxing stuff There's the dummy There's him sparring with the real Alfred

[00:48:47] I don't know Just a lot of great physical humor He also keeps Flirting with the guy's wife Inadvertently One of my favorite bits is when he Is trying to help her change the light bulb in her room And then the actual battling butler

[00:49:03] Is like what the hell? What's going on in there? And then the light goes out And he's like oh my god Sleeping with my wife Very funny There's this bit where he's just Sort of like winding up and

[00:49:17] Trying to spar with the really big guy and he keeps missing him That's really funny I also think it's funny when When they get married And he just says promise me We never camp and you never come see me fight Just immediately

[00:49:31] He lays out the yeah I'm too crazy You don't want to see what an animal I am The reason I'm not There's this sort of Rocky-esque training montage Where they like run across a farm And run like with a car That like gets flipped over

[00:49:46] I mean this is the thing It's such a good set up for Buster Because he's going to take everything so seriously So like you know Things are going to like fuck with him You know he's going to fall down You know he's going to get hit or whatever

[00:50:00] But he's never going to play it goofy He's going to play it with the intensity of a fighter Who is just not equipped for this I'll say another good bit This is when they're coming to I guess his country town Is they're driving And his butler

[00:50:15] Is like he says to him You got to drive carefully because you know These are country folk And then everyone's driving like a maniac I thought that was pretty funny Well you were mentioning he's fighting with Because he basically gets pawned Into pawned off to be the fighter

[00:50:31] Right? I guess it's just basically like The actual battling butler is upset With him flirting with his wife Who he also There is that weird cut of her the next day With the black eye Yeah That's not good No That's not chill I don't like that

[00:50:55] It's a hundred year old movie Don't like it Don't like it But he And I'm just gonna Watch and see this unfold And that kind of takes you to the last Segment of the film Sure Where they like They watch a different fight happen

[00:51:18] And the guy gets the shit beat up There's like an ambulance parked outside There's all this stuff going on But that's also just like such good use of Buster Stoneface Of like show us a real boxing match And then anytime you cut to him in the stands

[00:51:30] Wearing a tuxedo And project all the terror onto him Of what he's gotten himself into Seeing boxing at like a real level And then his wife shows up Right in a nice frilly coat And When does the ruse get You know

[00:51:48] Cause she's like we bet all our money on you Yeah Oh boy oh boy Butler What have you done You've gotten yourself in so much trouble And then he finally just does it himself Right he's just like we weren't gonna fucking Lose our title belt

[00:52:07] Just to prove some point to you That is That is an unsatisfying ending Like if they didn't have the final fight That would be boring Terrible It's just kind of You know Yeah it's a little Okay There's no like real triumph for Buster Right There's a kind of

[00:52:34] There's something Kind of beautiful about the ending being Like he actually does need to defend his honor And like apply what he's learned But it's without The public spectacle of it He's not doing it for fame He's not doing it for money

[00:52:50] He's not doing it in the same way To like earn the respect Of the public He's not defeating the Alabama murderer He's doing it for himself And he's beating a guy who to be fair Literally just had a boxing match So it's sort of plausible

[00:53:06] That he might get one over him It is good I feel like this is the closest he comes In any of his movies To breaking the stone face In this final dressing room fight Where you see real anger In him And on his face

[00:53:24] And then he treats this final fight seriously It's pretty exciting to watch him Actually hold his own against this guy He's picking the guy up And punching him back down That's how angry he gets Yeah he's really angry Unfortunately the guy didn't bounce back up I know

[00:53:43] Did he ever smile In like a later movie In his sort of non Like did they ever do the Garbo laughs thing Where they're like We got Buster Keaton out of mothballs I can't think of one But that I haven't seen all I'm not really seeing anything

[00:54:01] That just feels like a thing he was like Just beyond Firm about Did he ever smile Like in life Who knows maybe he just couldn't work the muscles I mean there's a lot of stuff Yeah they weren't born Right right right There were like a baby's muscles

[00:54:21] There's a lot of stuff JJ pulled up About how unbelievably shy he was The leading lady from the general Thought he was kind of like an aloof asshole On set because she was used to Directors who were sort of louder And more domineering

[00:54:38] And movie stars who were more sort of gregarious And he was just kind of all business And she was like Does he not like me Is he like an asshole Like everything is really blunt And it was like no it's just kind of like a job for him

[00:54:53] He worked with the same people most of the time Because he was mostly only comfortable With the same group of people You know he wasn't a very social dude So I do think like I don't think he was Dour But it's not like I think he was smiling

[00:55:09] A lot in his daily life And then just turning it off When he got on camera Some other few You know that final fight is kind of real They had boxers come in to train them The hits are kind of real

[00:55:23] It's a buster thing where you're just watching it play out in a wide shot Without cuts You can tell it's not fake Martin Scorsese says the only person who had the right attitude About boxing in a movie for me Was Buster Keaton I mean that's

[00:55:37] Since we have talked about Jack Chan a little bit That approach to just filming action Just like keep it wide And show as much of the real thing as possible Is still incredibly effective That's why people But half of what made that movie

[00:55:52] So I think breathtaking for a lot of people Is you would have these extended wide shots Of just Keanu fighting people And Not really anything like that In American action cinema You'd have to look Internationally to find Action directors doing that kind of stuff

[00:56:10] So I mean that fight At the end of Battling Butler A lot of ways is like that's just how you should shoot a fight That's like how you have to do it You don't do anything stylish You don't call attention to the film making

[00:56:22] I mean it's also like It's the reason Jackie Chan movies are so famous For their blooper reels Is like for him it's a statement It's not just I want you to laugh At the times the take went wrong It's sort of like you've watched

[00:56:38] These takes that feel impossible How could he have gotten this on camera And the answer is I did it 150 times By messing it up a bunch You've seen that thing Jackie Chan My Stunts That documentary which is incredible That's him sort of like guiding

[00:56:53] The audience through his whole Approach to stunt work and film making Going through some of his best sequences But he's got this great line Where he says like people always say Jackie good Jackie good and he's like Jackie not good Jackie just do it a hundred times

[00:57:07] Until he gets it right You know He's like I get it wrong 99 times Until the one take I think these movies took a very long time to make Especially compared to the production schedules Of the time like you would take months On these films Because he would

[00:57:26] Work very hard to get it right He did fall on his head From the practice ring And was taken out for a few days He strained ligaments In his leg and back As usual He just kind of got the shit beaten out of him Making this movie

[00:57:44] Made about a quarter of a million dollars Which is a lot of money back then And this is a simpler cheaper movie On his sort of oscillation Between You know I think he always tried to keep his budgets under control as much as he could

[00:57:58] But when his movies became more vehicle based Right The cost ballooned in a way he couldn't control Also like you know the next film In general is United Artists This is the last like Metro MGM Sort of like you know back in the day

[00:58:13] Because Charles Skank has signed this big deal With United Artists Joe Skank His manager his producer So that is where things will get balloons Should we do the box office game for Battling Butler now? Yes Great Do you have any final Battling Butler thoughts Jermel?

[00:58:31] No final Battling Butler thoughts Other than that I enjoyed it It was a good time A good fun time We all had a nice time with the Battling Butler So we're going to do the box office game for September 18th 1926 Ok

[00:58:47] So you basically know what this is right Griff? You know these movies I know these movies Really well And all that This is before So like It chapter 1 is the first September to release to make over $100 million Opening weekend So I know the number would be below

[00:59:07] No I'm not even seeing it on this list here So number 1 at the box office Is a film It's a film Looks like a drama Produced by famous players Released by Paramount Pictures It's not a title you recognize No It stars Renee Adore What a name

[00:59:30] I'm going to guess this movie is called I'm going to guess This film is called Au revoir No it's not It stars Renee Adore And Thomas Megan There's not even anything about the plot Of this movie So that's all I got for you

[00:59:51] It seems to be based on a play or something It's called Tin Gods Not a bad title Tin So I don't know If they work in like Some kind of industry I just don't know What's it called? Aluminium Gods? It's just that Brits say

[01:00:11] Aluminium and you guys say aluminum It's the same elemental substance That you're referring to I know I just wanted to Accept the joke logic It's a cartoon gag Absolutely the next film has a really good title It's a lost film It's a comedy Also from famous players

[01:00:31] And Paramount It stars B.B. Daniels I love these names You say it has a great title? I'm gonna guess it's called Hey Fuck You Man I gotta guess too Honk honk I'll give you this It's a college film And the lead is a woman

[01:00:52] The poster is her And she's got a sweater tied around her neck And she seems to be holding some cleats Some kind of footwear And she's winking Is it like a woman in school? It's called Mrs. Student? It's called The Campus Flirt I was close This sounds like

[01:01:14] The Marco Robbi Babylon movie Yeah Like uh oh You all know B.B. Daniels And I'm like sure Well she's going to college We know she flirts at a bar but what happens if she went to college? Number three Is a silent Feature length drama

[01:01:35] I call it a silent film Because it doesn't have any dialogue But it was actually the first film to use the Vitaphone Sound on disc Sound system so it had a synchronized score And sound effects So it actually had Like if you watched it today

[01:01:51] It's based on a famous epic tale A poem And it stars the legendary John Barrymore One of the most famous actors Is it a Beowulf adaptation? No Is it a Famous epic tale Can you give us a century in which this epic tale was written

[01:02:12] It's from the 19th century So it's not like a classical epic tale It is a romantic poem A long romantic poem Is it The Wasteland? No that would be amazing if that had been popping on Hollywood screens It is Don Juan Byron's tale So when you say

[01:02:32] It was probably really popping off When you say it had like synced Vitaphone sound effects It was just like sex noises Kissing As it puts it here John Barrymore is the hand kissing womanizer Have you seen like You know 20th century or later John Barrymore movies

[01:02:52] Like he is the most actor He's just like screaming You're just like okay buddy I get it So I imagine it's quite You think he went big playing Don Juan The world's most famous lover Alright number 4 I just love looking up these movies Is called Another lost film

[01:03:13] Silent comedy Starring Gilda Grey As an erotic dancer She was a famous actress known for Popularizing a dance called the shimmy Okay David just did a little shimmy It's from Maurice Tourneur French director of some renown And it's called I'm gonna guess it's called The shimmy

[01:03:37] It's called Aloma of the South Seas We used to have titles In this country We got through all the good ones In 1920s Let's dust some of them off How about this one Silent comedy, romantic comedy The star is the star You probably heard of her

[01:04:00] The divorcee herself She plays a lawyer Who is resented by a guy Lawyer And she gets a quiddle for a man chasing Widow and defeats Said widow in romancing The guy That seems to be It's a lot of plot It's called What's it called It's called

[01:04:27] She can have it all It's called The waning sex I assume sort of a joke about Girls rule, boys drool It's the 20s The classic 1920s Woke agenda MCU The mind virus has got him You've also got Ben Hur Still blowing up the box office

[01:04:53] Which is like I think Roman epic Or something And this is the one I want to look up A movie called Blarney Ben, does that sound fun? Blarney It's about an Irish prize fighter Who gets involved with two New York girls Oh ok He's got to pick one

[01:05:15] It has everything we love Girls fighting in ethnic minorities Exactly He's kind of persecutive across this mini series As he realizes how much of this era of film Was just making fun of Irish people Oh yeah, it's like the Irish Are they human? Who knows It's right

[01:05:34] By the 20s they're sort of like Well they're here to stay But that doesn't mean we can't constantly mock them I mean there's the picture of Little Buster Dressed up as Have you seen Little Buster dressed as an Irishman When he was like 5 years old No I haven't

[01:05:52] He's got the weird receding hairline bald wig on Yes That is supposed to be an Irishman In quotes That's what that get up is I mean ok so we joke but like in 1910s During the first world war in the United States When the Wilson administration was basically

[01:06:08] Arresting dissidents Like one thing, if you were like Happened to be a little too enthusiastic about Irish independence Because we were allies with the British That could get you thrown in jail It's just so funny to think of a time Where America was taking this stance of like

[01:06:23] There's a type of Anglo-Saxon male We don't like We're one of them in a corner As we transition to the general general It's going to get more historian-y And I mean the interesting thing is that like Part of the relationship of Ireland

[01:06:37] To Great Britain is that like the Irish Were like quite racialized So like not necessarily understood As being Anglo-Saxon Or like something else At that time yeah That's what's wild to think about Yeah no for sure Because as much as it was About religion differences

[01:06:57] They also really though made it Like racial It's sort of like They're stupider for us because we decided They are inherently You can see in sort of like the development Of Ireland's relationship to England The process of racialization Take place over centuries

[01:07:18] There's an argument that has been made That like the colonial relationship Of Ireland to the UK Is basically the first instance Of that kind of like racialized Colonial relationship I will say as someone who grew up in England It is crazy how it is still baked in

[01:07:34] That you're like people are suspicious Of red-headed people You know and they're like that's like a dirty Ginger and you're like why do we hate this guy And I go home and my mom's like That's like fucking you know Irish Like a thousand years of Irish shit

[01:07:48] It's like the kids don't even think about That obviously because like it's not But like she's like that's all that is It's just like that Irish and Scotch People you know with their red hair Their fiery red hair Can't be trusted And you can't be trusted Ben

[01:08:04] Well look we're not stereotyping here But it is a fact that Ben can't be trusted And I'll accept that Not only do I love the Irish people But I support Irish independence As do I But you also think Ben can't be trusted No Ben can be trusted

[01:08:21] Ben gets the episodes posted week after week He's the most trustworthy man I know That's a good point This show would be eight years On a hard drive if Ben didn't exist There would not have been One episode yet released for the public Fucking Woodrow Wilson

[01:08:39] What's the matter with that guy Like when I was a kid I think I had this I'm sorry to do this Do I gotta put on my Andy Brock right now? What's the matter with that guy What's your deal with that guy

[01:08:52] I feel like you were just tweeting about Wilson His effect on The sort of quote unquote hard left In society back then He was obviously The hero of liberalism And the first democratic president You know But like when I was a kid

[01:09:10] I was like yeah that was a good guy He believed in a social safety net The League of Nations Edith Wilson was a very influential Post first lady And did a lot of work to basically sustain His reputation Liberal historians in the 20th century

[01:09:26] Beginning of the administrative state Progressive era There have always been dissenters To this view But it's really been in the last generation Where people have taken much more seriously Not just Wilson's racism He's a man of his time Wilson was a weird racist For the time

[01:09:47] He was super racist for the time He was unusually so At the Paris negotiations At the end of the war Other European heads of state were like It's really weird how racist this guy is And those guys were so racist They were colonial leaders

[01:10:03] They were carving up continents So it's not just his unusual racism But the Wilson administration It's like they're carving up a police state People were getting thrown into jail There's one story I recently read Adam Hochschild's Most recent book American Midnight

[01:10:19] Which is all about this period of US history And there's a crazy story Of three Polish immigrant dudes In a shoe shop just talking Maybe they were German immigrants And one of them was like Ludendorff the German general He's a good guy Germany they're not doing good stuff

[01:10:38] A customer overheard this He was nice to me He certainly enjoys his social life He overheard the authorities And all three guys got arrested And sentenced to 10 years in jail They weren't just getting thrown In jail for 6 months Oh you are talking bad about Wilson

[01:10:58] Or you're talking good about Germany What's that What's his name Fred Armisen Direct to jail And that's like That part of Wilson Was really downplayed In sort of popular memory for a long time But then when you read about it You read things like Prior 1912 the Socialist Party

[01:11:23] Wins like 2 million votes Huge numbers Electing congress people Electing governors and everything And then 6 years later barely exist And it's like that's the Wilson administration That's just what that is Yeah he sucks I wanna like give that horse face an uppercut He really had a very long face

[01:11:43] He had kind of a bustery face Very long and thin face old Woody And the other thing is like I thought of him as like oh yeah he was this like genteel Princeton dude No he was like a southerner Who had made it up to the north

[01:11:55] And like you know was actually not very He looks like a Scarlet Bones Club motherfucker He does He is not just Just to Wilson's southerness And his racism It's not just that he screamed Birth of a Nation at the White House

[01:12:10] But he is quoted in Birth of a Nation History written by Enlightening or whatever Wait he yelled Birth of a Nation? He screamed it Until they showed it to him In the screening room No he's quoted in the movie Oh wow Being like I like this

[01:12:30] About sort of how The construction was like a horrible thing that happened to the country A friend of mine Colin who is an old friend A listener of the show And is far more academic about film history Than I am an idiot Was this Colin I know? Yes

[01:12:48] I didn't know he listened Yeah But we were talking about In the Three Ages episode How that movie Is buster parodying The sort of intolerance D.W. Griffith's Sort of Correction movie to Birth of a Nation criticism And I was sort of making the point of like

[01:13:13] That existed back then Right Like that people Anytime anyone is getting mad About any piece of pop culture Being quote on quote politicized There's this sort of argument Of why can't you just let people enjoy stuff You just have to be read into And weaponized

[01:13:34] And Woodrow Wilson did say that in his State of the Union Let people enjoy things Famously smooth brain Woodrow Wilson Alright the general But my point was Colin was like You're right that there was pushback to it But the pushback was the minority As proven by the fact

[01:13:54] The sitting president Was just like this fucking movie And it's you know These things are connected Because Buster basically credits Birth of a Nation as the movie That made him see the value In filmmaking as a medium Which is part of Birth of a Nation Weird fucking legacy

[01:14:14] Technically virtuous But not even that It's just like film language being synthesized With a clarity and a scale For the first time To like fucking horrendous means I don't know The weird DNA of film history Is like it was used so much To perpetuate narratives

[01:14:35] As forms of propaganda Or You know history trying to be Written enlightening by Those in the positions of power Or what have you All of this tied into the general Is like you know Buster I think was Tried to define himself As a political artist

[01:14:57] You know I don't think He ever would have made a movie There's not a lot of politics in his work No and he had no ambition to make something Like The Great Dictator right Like there was no bone in his body

[01:15:09] That was ever going to make a film That ends with a fucking 8 minute monologue That's a direct plea to the audience against fascism I think he viewed that kind of thing As well who knows Sure but who knows How he would have felt in the mid 30s

[01:15:24] He wasn't really making movies anymore Things were getting hot But I don't know He sees Birth of a Nation And it's sort of like setting this template Of a thing to riff upon A lot of the stuff J.J. brought up In his research

[01:15:40] Is like it was very documented That Keaton had this weird fascination With the sort of reputation Of the south in the early 1900s These sort of like What's the term I'm looking for The lost cause Sort of south But sort of the manners of it

[01:15:59] Weirdly without him having Any direct family ties To that That's not where he grew up They were like even the times That the Keaton family played in the south Were basically only during the worst years Of the family dynamic Before his mother left his father

[01:16:17] It was a very poor part of the country I think you probably gave some context on that too In the 1910s 1920s The south is still pretty fucked up Yes it's still very poor You have to remember It's heavily agricultural Heavily rural And most southerners White and black

[01:16:37] Are working Doing agricultural labor For very low wages And there's way less of any kind Of social safety Right And there's something to Huge systemic racism Buster is such a modern man He's like growing up a city boy Placed into a career At his youngest possible ages

[01:17:02] Surrounded by drinking adults I think there must have been Something really fascinating to him About what he viewed As some sort of I don't know A relative tranquility You know This is a slower life These are people of manners There's less of this sort of

[01:17:24] I think there's a lot of that generally And also just the nostalgia That every era has for other eras Like all the time Things were different People can slip into this very easy And they were the biggest proponents Of things used to be different

[01:17:40] Because if you're growing up in cities like he was The city people are all looking forward What if we built a what? I'm saying fill in the blank They're trying to build things This book called Daring and Suffering Is Is One thing that he's thinking about

[01:18:00] Making after Bad Link Butler But then Clyde Bruckman I wonder That's a big Keaton contributor He worked on a lot of Keaton movies It's the name of one of the great X-Files One-off episodes You're not an X-Files guy There's an episode called Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose

[01:18:23] And it stars Peter Boyle He won an Emmy for it It's a Darren Morgan written episode In my opinion I think it is the single best Episode of television ever made And a lot of people don't even think it's the best X-Files episode But I do

[01:18:37] And I just have to assume It has to be a Buster Keaton homage Right? That he's named that I think the guy who wrote it Who's sort of a legendary X-Files writer Must have been He seems like the kind of guy who would have loved Buster Keaton

[01:18:54] So Clyde Bruckman is the guy who brings Keaton This book called The Great Locomotive Chase That is The tale of this real military raid In Georgia During the Civil War Where volunteers from the Union Army Commandeered this train called the General And took it to Tennessee

[01:19:12] It was like this crazy Barnstorming Train raid I don't know An action packed thing Right and he kind of looks at that the same way he looked at The Whatchamacallit The Battling Butler premise Oh within this This train is great

[01:19:34] We can do all kinds of things around this as it's moving Yes I mean the train is great I feel like I'm going to come on this episode and be like This train stinks Dude I'm like all in on this train We should have these trains now

[01:19:49] It's basically just a friggin fireplace That you drive Oh wait I'm sorry You're just in on steam trains Yeah I like that they're on fire I think that looks like a fucking blast Yeah sure I mean it was kind of hot David Ben and I went to

[01:20:09] We went to see Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 and 40X And the trailer for Pixar's Elemental Came up And that was my response And I said Ben I think this movie looks like shit I think it looks Fucking garbage And Ben is sort of like looking

[01:20:25] We're seeing the trailer in 40X so we're getting sprayed A lot in the face with water That's not a movie to see in 40X That movie is going to blow out the systems The circuit board at 40X Theaters is going to catch on fire

[01:20:38] But we're watching this trailer And I'm sort of sitting there rolling my eyes And I'm looking at Ben and Ben's sort of tilting his head And he looks to me and he was like So is the premise of this movie What if fire met water

[01:20:50] And I was like Oh fuck This is a movie you wrote Opposites attract Oh it's like dry and wet Trying to fall in love And I was like this is a Ben premise This is what Ben would go into Pixar and pitch

[01:21:07] But it does actually kind of look like dog shit It just looks bad I hate how it visually So they bring him this story Keaton's like Well look I mean there's a lot of plot here There's not going to be laughs

[01:21:21] Everyone around him also kind of warns him Where they're like are you really going to build A movie on top of the civil war I understand the thing that you think is funny Here and like in the premise And is like exciting to tackle As a director

[01:21:35] Audiences might just turn off at the idea That you were trying to put jokes Into a movie based around A bunch of people dying And not only that but a real thing that happened in the civil war Not even just a generally set during a war

[01:21:47] No but it's like an interesting counterpoint To think about today when like the only comedies We get are action comedies where everyone's Getting shot in the face And you become desensitized to it And it's all like Looney Tunes violence Where you don't really think about people dying

[01:22:01] And at this time people were like terrified And it's like a notion of like you cannot make a movie That purports itself to be a comedy On top of actual human suffering And tragedy That's why Keaton takes such pride in this film

[01:22:14] He figured the minute he gave me a locomotive This is the quote Well the moment he gave me a locomotive And things like that to play with As a rule I'll find some way of getting laughs with it But he likes that they Took a real life story

[01:22:28] Paid very careful attention to You know like the sort of procedure of it And represented it on screen Even though they changed massive parts about it But whatever Well here's the single biggest thing Did you know that Disney made a movie called The Great Locomotive Chase

[01:22:44] Have you seen it? No I've never seen it I didn't realize it existed until today Buster was talking greasy about it He said it fucking sucked The big quote, you're cueing this up I might as well just read it He told the story from a northerner's standpoint

[01:23:01] For a motion picture audience For some reason to make heroes out of the northerners Right so in real life I guess it's essentially a sort of thinking of like Well you don't want to make fun of the losers They are already lost That was his attitude

[01:23:15] That's the part of it that makes the most sense Is he was like Well if I switch the allegiances And make my character a southerner He becomes low status Which is inherent to The Buster persona He's going to be the guy who's fighting against the odds

[01:23:32] And we know how his journey turned out So if I have him on the winning side It already throws off the power balance Of the thing But it is an odd choice Jamelle This is where I sort of turn to you In terms of like

[01:23:48] Because you could think Oh yeah a jingoistic movie about how we won the civil war How the union won the civil war Would that not go over Was there just no sympathy Or like triumphalism About that in the 1920s Or maybe not enough

[01:24:04] It's also just like a horrible war Like it's legacy is beyond anything else It sucked It was the worst I want to hear your answer But the other quote in here that was interesting Is he Because Buster was just like

[01:24:20] The number one thing I serve is the audience And I want to make the audience laugh That is my primary job I'm not making fun of southerners And they die They die in the theater He was like it just seems comedically impossible For whatever reason So 1920s

[01:24:39] The mid 1920s Is 10 years After the half century anniversary Of the end of the civil war So 1915 It's 50 years since Appomattox There's actually a big called blue and grey Kind of reunion President Wilson goes and speaks before it Motherfucker he's back And the key thing Is that

[01:25:03] The political context And cultural context Is one of like sectional reconciliation It's not so much That there's no appetite for doing stuff About the war But the Consensus position among white Americans Is the war was a terrible tragedy Brother against brother The aftermath was an even greater tragedy

[01:25:26] Reconstruction And we need to put all that behind us And kind of recognize That both sides were brave Both sides fought with valor And that's the thing we're going to honor And 50 years on you would still know Veterans of the civil war And your families Things like that

[01:25:46] Was there not also a bit of a thing A sort of abstraction Which was I think Constructed and manipulated Of like what the war Was over This reframing that was happening In real time So yeah The cause of the conflict is abstracted Away from the specific

[01:26:09] Conflicts of which slavery is sort of The thing on which they are rest The facts are not being suppressed But the language around it is constantly Sort of being massaged Whether it was possible to secede Whether or not Obviously we all know the language of states

[01:26:25] Rights and that kind of thing But that was less of a part here Than it simply was I mean there's an even larger context Here that this is the Early 20th century is the beginning Of an imperial America We have our occupation in the Philippines

[01:26:41] We have the invasion of Haiti We have an occupation In Central America And the United States is becoming an imperial power And so part of what's happening politically Is there is In order to unite the public Around Which when this begins in the 1890s Is still

[01:27:02] The Civil War is still fresh in everyone's memory For the most part In order to unite the public We have to reconcile We have to come to some agreement about what the war was about And kind of end the political and cultural conflict Over it

[01:27:16] And so part of that Is for lack of a better term It's white supremacy It's sort of well we're all whites here And we have a destiny to conquer the continent We have a destiny to expand beyond our borders And so that's what we're going to do

[01:27:30] And we can recognize That our forefathers who fought in the war Were all Of good faith and good nature And this was just a tragic thing That happened And we can put it past us I also sense that in the context of making a film

[01:27:47] And making a comedy It's not just that Like you gotta sell stuff to southern audiences And so you don't want to Turn them off But also that there's been kind of like a collective agreement Among white Americans That We're gonna treat the south As being noble and honorable

[01:28:07] And so it would Kind of cut against that collective agreement To then do a movie Where it's the reverse Whereas you can present the union As being less so Not because there aren't union veterans Around I think Oliver Wendell Holmes Is still alive

[01:28:30] So he is a Supreme Court Justice And he was a union soldier Union veterans are still very much alive And even in public life But the north I'll put it this way There's this discomfort In the cultural discomfort With industrialization And like the consequences of that culture

[01:28:52] In the United States in the 1910s and 20s And so the industrializing north itself Occupies a different cultural space Than it might have a couple decades earlier Like it can kind of be the bad guy Because of all this collective discomfort With sort of like

[01:29:06] You know, modern life Right, which then becomes The philosophical battle of Are we losing some sort of Gentile nobility, grace, courtesy A culture of manners And tradition Abstracting the things that that was built on Versus here's this bustling city life And modernism coming in And tearing up everything

[01:29:33] And making a crasser society And that's winning by the way So there's a sort of like punching up versus punching down Well you can poke that balloon Because that is unstoppable It is a locomotive It is steam rolling ahead Which is sort of interesting

[01:29:49] I mean that's kind of the interesting tension About the whole motif here Is that like the train, the railroad Literally does represent modernization When you tell the story of Industrialization in the late 19th century United States You're in a lot of ways telling the story of railroads

[01:30:05] And the expansion of railroads across the country The extent to which railroads were sort of like the driving The driving engine No pun intended Of the expansion of northern capital across the country And so like In the original story Both because of actual events But just thinking thematically

[01:30:24] It makes sense that this should be the north Like that makes all the more sense Right? Like in a locomotive getting Taken by your opponents Makes all the more thematic sense Because you representing this engine of progress And your enemies Who represent an agrarian Backwards society

[01:30:45] Have like seized that from you So there's like this funny way In which the inversion makes sense Given the politics of the era But then it kind of just like Makes the themes Of the story kind of like throws them out of whack That's the thing

[01:31:01] Because you almost want to go like Is there something subversive to You know he's flipping the politics of the actual story To then placing The Buster Keaton comedic persona In the position Of the person Trying to help The confederacy But the movie doesn't quite And I should say

[01:31:23] Here's the other thing that kind of clue you in On sort of like the political and cultural context Here The movie never refers to the confederacy The movie says the south That's basically it Obviously there's not much discussion of the values Being fought over It says the south

[01:31:42] Which can stand for honor And gentility Which are all the things That the other characters Are embodying that like Buster Keaton Wants to also embody By enlisting and becoming A soldier In this way we're talking about The southern soldier That the way the movie frames it

[01:32:04] Is like the boxer in Battling Butler This type, this role, this costume Of modern masculinity Of social capital Of respect That he wants to figure out how to wear But as is always the case in Buster movies He doesn't quite understand what the thing

[01:32:20] He's pretending to be is You know he's barely got this grasp on it And this movie is just like We're not even going to talk about what they actually are Or what they're standing for The fact that they're not talking about it

[01:32:33] Might seem like oh we're purposely avoiding it But you really have to think of it as like No one's even thinking about Like there's in the beginning When a train is being unloaded You see some black laborers

[01:32:45] I think it's the only time you see black people in the movie And it's not like we're going to deliberately Exclude black people from the narrative Just like this was reconciliation Among white Americans It wasn't, black people were out of sight Out of mind

[01:33:00] Like Jim Crow was essentially to put You do what you want They're out of sight, out of mind For the rest of us Not to open up a conversational quarter That's absolutely going to make David roll his eyes audibly Oh boy It's a horrible set up

[01:33:16] But does this not feel like an echo Of this thing we're going through right now Where it's just like David put his head down on the desk I don't want to talk about this for a while But I'm trying to understand the perspective And I feel some echo

[01:33:30] In the sort of like The sinister brilliance of Make America Great Again As a statement that says Everything and means nothing at the same time Where you're like the idea of what they're fighting for Is like we lost sight of Leave it to Beaver

[01:33:42] That's what America used to be It's always been this way That's always been the dog whistle Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't Fictionalized, abstracted version Of the past that you're fighting for And you're just sort of conveniently ignoring

[01:33:57] It's always been happening right outside the boundaries of the frame Yeah but right But it's more like When does it resonate to be like You know things were better back then And it's like what was better What are you talking about

[01:34:11] And it's like well you can figure that out I feel like that like argument When it comes to toilet paper for me You see this is where I'm like Toilet paper Like I need that Look not to talk about Donald Trump When we can cut this out

[01:34:29] But like the magic of Donald Trump Is that sometimes such as when he'll be like You know showers don't have the kind of water pressure They used to You have this sort of twin reaction of like What on earth is he talking

[01:34:41] Like why would he be saying this at like a political rally And you're also like He's not wrong though You know showers do kind of suck Toilets don't flush like they used to But also anyone who comes out and stands against him

[01:34:54] It's a position that no one wants to embody You know you gotta conserve water Or whatever But anyway Sometimes you'll tap into something where you're like Yeah things were better back when And then you're like wait a second What is the matter with me

[01:35:10] I'm not trying to apologize for his viewpoint But it's this thing JJ was bringing up That all these biographers are like It was weird how much he was kind of fascinated By the south As just like a culture And it does sort of make sense

[01:35:25] Where it's like here's this guy who was thrown into an adult world Really young In a really brash, really rapid, really aggressive way Right And then he goes to this place where everyone's like Well let's just sit in a rocking chair And talk about the good old days

[01:35:39] You can romanticize these things I think there's some energy That he finds romantic there But also part of it is possibly just Him feeling like He works for the audience And perhaps the south is less willing To laugh at themselves than the north is

[01:35:55] I can make a comedy where the north Is the butt of the joke I've done it before And no one bristles I mean the other thing is just that That romance of the south Is just like a part of American culture It's a birth of a nation

[01:36:11] Again that's 1915 But it's based off of a book by Thomas Dixon Called The Clansman Which is 1905 I think It's a romantic tale Of a confederate The Virginian, one of the first westerns As a novel Is about an ex-confederate The romanticized loser Basically Sort of like the loser

[01:36:40] Again this all ties into sort of industrializing America Like the country is I mean it's already becoming Rapidly industrialized at the close of the 19th century But really by the Tens and twenties it's like abundantly clear That this is where we're going This is what the country is

[01:36:58] There are cities and there are cars And there are, we've witnessed this horrible war Mechanized war Across the ocean This is where we are now And so The confederate south Represents Sort of what we left behind In like the most literal sense The destruction of the confederacy

[01:37:23] And the end of chattel slavery Did destroy an entire Social system And in the romantic imagination That social system Was very genteel It was like gentlemen And beautiful homes Etc etc Which I should say That trope still very much exists in the present

[01:37:46] One of the things I love to point out Is that Firefly The Joss Whedon Television show Our hero Mal Is modeled after a classical Western hero And he specifically was a veteran In like a civil war like Conflict in which he fought For like, I think it's referred

[01:38:08] It's like a confederacy And it's all You know, deracinated and attenuated From its source But the trope This is an accepted Dramatic archetype That works as storytelling shorthand Because of how we've been conditioned to Accept these characters Within the larger sort of narrative Construction of our history

[01:38:32] Firefly has so much of that going on There's that character called Jubal Early It literally starts borrowing names from the time Just to put a pin on this There's a reason why The post war Apologist mythology Around the south was called The Lost Cause It's a romantic notion

[01:38:53] Of what Was lost In the defeat of the In the defeat of the south It's obviously a false notion But it's all It's just like in the culture It's just part of Very much in the culture of the 1920s

[01:39:11] To me, there's no mystery as to why Buster Keaton Would have been fascinated by this stuff Because a lot of Americans were And it would continue to go on to shape So much of our Visual mythology Like the entire genre of the western Not only

[01:39:27] Is the entire genre of the western Built on this But then all the inversions and subversions Of the western are commenting on it as well It's sort of like That's the thing That the modernist and sort of film language Were often used for semi-fascist purposes

[01:39:44] And sort of like using it To really Define an iconography A sort of cultural legacy A sense of a history Through this like incredible Just like brain-wormy populist medium That really can take hold Of people's imaginations And emotions Anyway, so the general is about The general, yeah

[01:40:09] He's a young train engineer Who runs a locomotive called the general Which he loves very much It's a real locomotive It still exists, you can go see it It's a nice looking train We already discussed that Are they expensive? Like what you want to like buy it?

[01:40:27] I mean I just think it would be cool To have your own steam engine train I think that it would be quite expensive to buy it More expensive to move it To get it to you I think the Patreon got rid of stretch goals and tears

[01:40:39] Because we could have set it at 2 million subscribers We will buy the general Which is currently stationed I think in Georgia Or something Most of this movie was shot in Oregon This movie was shot in Oregon Because he went to the original locations in Georgia Near Chattanooga

[01:40:55] And he said it just didn't look good The railroad tracks he didn't like The scenery was bad Portland apparently, or Oregon in general Covered in narrow gauge railroads So that's why he picked it They shot all over Oregon And they had a lot of trains available to them

[01:41:16] He wanted to use the actual general His requests were denied Because they were like We don't want to put this war artifact into a comedy Everyone was on edge about him doing this Understandably The gun however That they used Is an actual gun from the Civil War

[01:41:34] It's the first railroad gun according to Buster Keaton Which he found in his research And almost excluded it from the movie Because he was like people will think this is A Buster Keaton invention For the sake of a gag It feels anachronistic But it is actually real

[01:41:52] So yes, it's about this railroad man He loves Annabelle Lee And he loves the general The Civil War has broken out In the Buster movie He has a romantic rival who's a big guy Who's fighting for the attention of the woman A Bluto

[01:42:11] In this his Bluto is the war Basically And is the train I suppose as well The train is his ally But it's this idea Of like You have no honor if you are not Fighting on the front lines He is immediately emasculated

[01:42:32] In her eyes if he doesn't fight He goes, he tries to enlist They immediately decide You are more valuable to us As a railroader You run a train Why would we take you out of the system We're gonna need your support This great bit I already alluded to

[01:42:52] Where he then tries to get back in line As a bartender And take on a different character But it doesn't fly I will say versus a lot of these other movies We've covered this movie sets up its plot Really quickly It gets to the point Pretty fucking fast

[01:43:10] Buster also has long hair Very iconic obviously Sort of what I thought Buster Keaton looked like But it's really just in this movie He has this haircut The Buster Keaton iconography Comes from this film Him on the train But there's this sort of

[01:43:29] He has to admit that he was rejected Which her father and brother interpret As him being lily-livered Her brother says He didn't even get in line Correct And then you create this central Misunderstanding In which she doesn't want to speak to him again

[01:43:47] Because she thinks he's a coward Because he's too embarrassed to tell her That he was turned away And he's got this chip on his shoulder Of wishing he would someday find the way To prove himself As a value to the south And I'll say

[01:44:03] As we keep on going With the plot Even this characterization Of the card says For some tourism fired upon Notice the passive voice Very New York Times Sorry For some I'm trying to headline it Damn you're getting bleeped a lot Yes, yes In the south

[01:44:30] A fort is fired upon A fort fired upon But like everyone immediately Is like I gotta go enlist And that really is speaking to These were honorable people These were Brave and courageous people So it's really kind of playing in To The cultural message

[01:44:52] That we want to send about Our defeated fellow citizens here And I do think there's something interesting To the fact that like Because of Buster's physical type Right? It would be very easy to have the set up Of this movie be He's flat footed

[01:45:11] He has a weak disposition He is being rejected from the military Because he does not have the physical constitution For it or the makeup But instead it is like You have a value in society You actually are a greater value to us Doing the thing you do

[01:45:27] That you think makes you look like less of a man Right? And that you are afraid makes you look like less of a man To the woman That you love Versus you have been deemed less of a man Right, right By us There's something there

[01:45:45] That's kind of interesting And I think how much Buster movies are always about Like you know Modernism versus tradition And also just about Perceptions on different Roles of masculinity in society And him sort of pushing back against them Or feeling like they're pushing back against him So

[01:46:06] The year passes Right? We jump ahead in time She finds out her dad's been wounded And she travels north to go see him With the general pulling the train And that's when the Union spies come to steal the train She, by the way, being played by Marion Mack

[01:46:22] Buster wanted an Old fashioned girl with curly hair To have that sort of Civil War era look Marion Mack was a bathing beauty You know about bathing beauties But there were these women who wore bathing suits On camera To look beautiful And swim around

[01:46:42] Not that different from Instagram models I just like the word bathing beauty Oh I love it You know as you said The actress thought Buster was Standoffish and weird But realized he was just kind of shy And yeah There's this odd story, Buster liked pranking people a lot

[01:47:01] The George Clooney of his day Yeah And she had gone through hair and makeup And got all made up And then Buster did some prank where he had some of the other cast Pick her up and hold her upside down And it messed up her makeup

[01:47:15] And he, like because they had not bonded He was so professional and sort of standoffish With her She didn't take it as like funny jabbing So she went up to him and she punched him straight in the face Punched him in the eye Got him a black eye

[01:47:30] He couldn't film for a week But it also sounds like Oh she really punched him straight in the fucking face But it also sounds like that kind of Broke the tension between the two of them Where then suddenly it was like Oh we're equals

[01:47:44] And it is this thing I like about the movie Yes, that is true They are really partners throughout the film It feels like he gives her more Agency in those scenes Than he often does as female characters Yeah for sure So yeah, so the union steals

[01:48:02] They want to steal the train And so Johnny, our hero, Buster Keaton Chases after them He gets on a bike, a bone shaker Always funny It's a terrible name for anything But it's funny that this was called a bone shaker It looks like a bone shaker

[01:48:21] A big wheel bike We watched this one with the boy and he thought this was all very funny It is very funny He cracked up He also had a hand car at one point Those are also funny Those should come back Those are always funny

[01:48:37] And seem like it would just be a way to get around Like an alternative way to commute I don't really exist anymore I want to take my bone shaker Or my fucking hand cart Around Brooklyn There's decommissioned rail lines You know this

[01:48:55] People should be able to get their own hand carts I just want to do it in the bicycle lane Oh that's fun I'm looking over at Ben and on his computer screen He just has a picture of a train I swear he just has a window open

[01:49:07] Steam locomotive.com There's damn trains available I was just looking and it basically looks like a Geocities page Where it's just a black screen And a full image Just one train Ben just had a picture of a train How much is a train, Ben?

[01:49:24] They don't list the price You gotta negotiate So you start at like $10 Work your way up from there This is this thing We were talking to Jamal about How Buster can cut through to a kid Really easily There's something to just how small he is

[01:49:43] We talk about like His perception of the world is very similar to a child So they can relate to him But it's also just like He positions himself against larger people Against large vehicles Against technology In a way that just like I think cuts through to a kid

[01:50:01] Where they're like well this is how I feel In the world around me I don't have control Everything's sort of out to get me Especially as we're living through an era Where it's very difficult to get Male action stars To like show Any kind of physical vulnerability

[01:50:19] On screen Not even emotional vulnerability But I am threatened by the things That are arrayed against me Or they overshadow me Or they're bigger than me In some way shape or form Which like Cruz has gotten really good at Baking vulnerability into his action sequences

[01:50:38] He's gotten better at it Like he'll put him in Cavill next to him Occasionally He'll look small He will And he'll look scared Which I feel like some people won't really do He's really started owning looking scared Being in over his head A Keaton-esque approach would have been

[01:50:58] For Cavill to loom over him That's the thing You watch any Keaton movie And he never lets you forget how small he is He's got a way to cast the biggest people he can Around him To create the biggest set pieces around him

[01:51:12] Everything is putting him in a context physically Which is so huge And Jackie Chan is another example He was never the tallest guy The buffest guy The strongest guy Any of that And he frames it as such But this movie structurally Is sort of like We said Unstoppable

[01:51:35] So basically from this moment It's like a 30-40 minute Chase set piece And then you have this brief kind of reprise Where we set up the plot stakes for the second half of the movie And then the second half of the movie is another extended chase

[01:51:47] The first chase is that he gets on this train Called the Texas And he's trying to bring soldiers with him After the train He forgets that they're not tied He's just driving a locomotive by himself And so he has to figure it out all by himself

[01:52:01] And then you have the big chase The union trying to shake him off They're trying to intercept The delivery of supplies Yes Anytime we cut to the union They are all So snidely whiplash Sort of like Maniacally evil You know It's kind of wild How explicitly sinister

[01:52:28] They just seem like a bunch of assholes Yes Yes Sort of similar to how they are in The Wind and other movies about the south They're brutes They're invaders They're uncouth often I mean think about Not to do this too much But think about how

[01:52:50] Up until quite recently What was the standard narrative On how the north won the civil war Was not that they didn't have superior generalship Or superior soldiers They just had more people and more armaments And more supplies And we can just wear you down

[01:53:07] They were tougher in a way that was viewed as callous Grant is the butcher Just like throws people to the slaughter Or is this something Robert E. Lee and Stenwald Jackson These were tacticians These were underdogs It was a romantic loss Versus a sort of like Ignoble victory

[01:53:27] In reality none of this is true whatsoever I mean it is true That it was a horrible grinding war On both sides Lee Was a decent tactician with terrible strategic sense So would throw people Into the grinder And not worry about the supply lines Grant

[01:53:47] Too many people don't know Was actually sort of A genius About thinking about movement and supplies So much of the success of his armies Was actually less about throwing people Into the grinder And more about exhausting his enemies Supply lines and then going in for the kill

[01:54:06] Because it's like their first industrial war Right? It's like all this stuff is getting figured out How to do all of that How to move quickly You have railroads, how to use them Things like that But that's in terms of cultural memory The union

[01:54:24] They're a bunch of snobby whiplashes They're gonna win but it's gonna be without honor And the south will lose But it will be an honorable loss Yes Now relating this again to Fury Road Right? There's that thing that makes Fury Road so Incredible in its construction

[01:54:43] And its craft When you look at behind the scenes footage You watch like B-roll from the set And you're like oh for most of that movie The cars were stationary When you watch like behind the scenes footage You're like George Miller yelling at a parked car

[01:54:57] In the middle of the desert And they're just blowing a lot of wind on them And they're acting with the intensity of like We're moving at a really fast speed But most of the time unless it's a super wide shot Why bother moving them? Right

[01:55:11] What is so astonishing for this movie In this movie and I think it's so much of why It gets this reputation as like Keaton's Ultimate technical accomplishment Is he is always filming this In a way where you have the perspective

[01:55:24] Of how quickly the background is moving behind him How much the vehicles are constantly Actually moving forward In real time That makes this movie just mind boggling Where you're like how do you do multiple takes of this? How do you get one that works?

[01:55:38] How are you filming it at these speeds? What are these rigs you have? Where's the camera mounted? You know like all this shit He's constantly just kind of showing you That he's not doing any trickery And there is

[01:55:52] I feel like the gag that I feel like is most Infamous quietly As just like this feels impossible Like how is there no trickery to this? Which is when They're trying to derail the train And they're placing the rail ties In the middle of the track

[01:56:08] There's the one coming up He gets off the train Runs ahead to try to grab it The train comes up behind him The grill of the train basically just functions as a seat A cow catcher And it's like without looking behind him suddenly

[01:56:23] He lands perfectly on the cow catcher He's holding onto this tie Another tie coming ahead All this is happening in one shot Mounted on the back of some other vehicle Ahead of them on the train He sees the tie He's holding this thing that's larger than him

[01:56:39] He throws it at just the right moment It perfectly springs off of the track And it's fine And everyone around him was like You cannot do this shot You cannot actually push the tie further ahead Instead of off the track The train derails You die

[01:56:58] You could kill yourself And we lose the fucking train The most expensive thing in this movie And you watch it and you're just like How did he get one take of it working this perfectly And it feels like The geometry of the arc

[01:57:12] Of the throw of the tie And the way the other one springs up With a perfect curve Astonishing Yes, I mean I guess the most famous shot In this movie is the bridge collapsing Because that became just like The most famous shot in cinema history

[01:57:28] In a weird way And also was just like this is the most expensive shot Right, like how was this done? This is crazy But I do think him throwing that railroad tie Is the most sort of quietly astonishing stunt Yes Now my thing with this movie

[01:57:44] On top of the political stuff That we're talking about Is I do think this is like The least funny of his features Yeah sure And it's almost by design It's more thrilling than funny Yeah Buster is also less Of a sort of Stinker isn't the word

[01:58:07] But his persona is a little different Because he really is like a lovable underdog He's a lovable underdog There's a sense of desperation in his persona And the stakes are quite high Yeah, like there's so much crap On the tracks This really is kind of like

[01:58:23] The Ethan Hunt template The entire time we've been talking I've just been thinking about Mission Impossible As sort of like this is The structure of a final Mission Impossible Sequence He's got to save everybody And the things keep on piling up against him And he is very

[01:58:41] High functioning, he is very capable And he's got to keep on figuring it out And it doesn't feel like it's by accident Right, he's not really doing that thing That he does sometimes that Jackie Chan does Or whatever Oh by mistake I have defeated a room of enemies

[01:58:56] The layering of obstacles In an almost sort of like puzzly way Feels very Brad Bird as well Like just sort of Every time he makes a gain There's a reaction That he now has to overcome It's not exactly a high octane movie Yes

[01:59:15] Like they can stop the train It does have brakes Like it's not unstoppable No It is the size of the Chrysler building But the fact that As the General's owner once said The fact That the train is By and large moving Creates this tension And these stakes

[01:59:39] And the set pieces are so clearly designed That it builds tension so well That when it does go for a joke The jokes hit really hard Because it's built up so much tension That is being released By the comedy

[01:59:53] The one I think of is like when he's off the train And it goes around to Ben And he's like fine I'll cut across down this hill To catch up with it But then Annabelle like reverses the train Before he, you know Which is very funny

[02:00:07] But you're also just stressed out There's also that moment right before The Union guys start throwing the ties Onto the tracks Where he's like just He feels like he made it out alive And everything's okay And then there's a great moment of like Buster Using the flat pan

[02:00:26] His punim Where he just sort of like has a moment of relaxation And then you see on his face him being like Wait what the fuck just happened And then he starts looking at his surroundings And realizing like I lost that

[02:00:38] And then he's like I'm going to the wind It's all of that Works really well But he also talked about like I think this was so much of a challenge for him Where he was like the audience is moving past A sort of like crazy gag heavy comedy

[02:00:52] I need to make something That's a little bit more of a drama And I want to challenge myself To be able to go seven minutes without a joke And keep people invested in what's going on And present myself as a different type of leading man

[02:01:04] That can carry a different type of story And you know they had a lot of insane Logistics to making it Obviously you can read about a lot of All the sort of crazy production stuff We don't have to go through it all The like night scene

[02:01:19] When they were like getting poured rain on them Like this sort of interlude scene Where between the two train chases Where he unites with her again They almost like got pneumonia Because they were just like you know Being doused day after day or night after night

[02:01:33] So that was actually raining? Right I mean whatever They were pouring water all over them And you know I think You know There's obviously the major thing There's no back projection Anytime anything is moving It's moving And he's framing it to remind you

[02:01:56] He doesn't want you to lose track of it So yeah How does he do The railtide gag He just did it That's the thing With all these it's just like He just did it You know the reason the bridge collapsing is so famous

[02:02:14] Is because he refused to use models Yeah that cost like 40 grand That was like the most famous shot ever I mean the most expensive shot of the time The whole thing with the water spout That's like a crazy gag

[02:02:26] He'd already hurt himself once with a water spout gag On Sherlock Jr. Where he breaks his neck Tough it up Buster Buster King should toughen up But I think that was Logistically crazy because the way that works Where they have to misalign it

[02:02:43] And then they miss it and then they swing it It's hard to Reset a take on Railroad tracks You know it's not easy to just be like let's back it up to one Yes And Yeah I don't know What else You have this The mid section where he

[02:03:05] Breaks into the house to look for food And ends up realizing There's a surprise attack He's the spy underneath the table Yes They've kidnapped his love interest Annabelle And that's like suddenly he has all the information For the second half of the movie

[02:03:23] To understand how to get ahead of everybody Prove his worth And then from there it really does Sort of gets the general Over the lines Yeah I don't know I think this movie is great I like others of his movies more But it's such a profound technical

[02:03:42] Accomplishment or whatever I tend to like In my personal ranking of just Preference and taste We will get there But this tends to be dead center of the list for me Just because It embodies less Of what I like about the Buster Keaton comedies

[02:04:01] Even if I do think it's probably the crowning Achievement of his career just as A film maker Right and it was regarded As such Yes as a technical artist Much In the same way that The closing fight of battling Butler Is sort of this real Enduring class

[02:04:23] And how to shoot a fight And make it compelling I think that what is so remarkable About this movie Almost 100 years later Is how you can kind of see The basic principles of action film making Worked out And still entirely apply If you are a budding

[02:04:43] Filmmaker who wants to make action films You can watch this movie And draw real lessons About how to structure my film And that's why I think it's canonized As his masterpiece The influence of this is still profound It's immediate The thing with fucking John Wick and Ethan Hunt

[02:05:02] Right now is you can feel it more than ever Right now Because those movies are trying to strip away Personality And people are yelling Can we please get back to this That's the whole conceit of the new Mission Impossible Is that look at Tom Cruise Do a Stunt

[02:05:22] An impossible thing He's doing a thing And the John Wick movies Are Especially the sequels Are like he can't stop moving There's constantly a new threat There's something chasing him He has to keep on figuring out his way Around the new circumstances And Keanu is so smart about

[02:05:44] The longer this movie goes on I will play the wear and tear of everything I've been up against So you're constantly feeling the stress He's tired John Wick 2 opens with a fucking shot of Buster Keaton The shot of that movie Is Buster Keaton being projected against a wall

[02:06:01] Chad Sehelsky is very vocal About his adoration And it's also Jackass Is so tied to this as well Maxwell has talked about that a lot Where it's the same thing Just place a camera down and watch people do shit for real And you build up the tension

[02:06:19] You don't know how it's going to go Is he going to do another one? I don't know He almost killed himself in the last one I think he's been very clear That he's Out of the game And that's why they added so many young people

[02:06:36] I have to imagine they'll do some Next generation But I mean Jen and I saw We went to that jackass marathon Where he did the Q&A afterwards And he was very much like And there were like 10 bits he had planned After the bullfight Shot for Jackass Forever

[02:06:56] That his doctors were like You cannot do another one No, no, no, yes They were just like That was your last jackass stunt ever You do one more you die So this movie was very expensive to make The general The other thing

[02:07:14] I don't know if you know about this Buster Keaton was also making a house For himself and his wife That was also extraordinarily expensive I think it cost $300,000 To make it Which in 1926 is a lot of money If I've learned anything from watching Buster Keaton's work

[02:07:31] It's that he's not terribly good at constructing a house He's very bad at making houses It's one of the things he's almost comedically bad at No, I would say $300,000 In today's dollars is probably going to be something close Like $3.5 million I would think of it as Yes, exactly

[02:07:47] They were worried They were like Buster you're going over your head On this place And then he divorces his wife and she gets the house Sort of a classic Buster Keaton story I'm wrong, it's closer to $5 billion It's a lot of money Buster The general itself costs like $750,000

[02:08:07] It's taken so long He screens The movie for people He shaves 30 minutes out of it It's 120? It's an hour 15 maybe It feels like almost Like a modern feature length movie More than some of this stuff he made The test screenings went great It premiered in Tokyo

[02:08:32] Which is crazy Yeah, isn't that wild That was not the initial plan The initial plan had been to premiere it in New York Because this was a United Artists film MGM slash Metro starts shutting them out Of theaters The old pre-Paramount ruling Where studios own theaters

[02:08:53] You can't premiere it at the Capitol Theater in New York Because we own it So instead they Release it in Tokyo which is bizarre And then they start haphazardly Rolling it out around the country The big Reason people don't like it Is what you said Griffin Enough

[02:09:15] This is too dramatic I'm not laughing And rolling on the floor I might be chuckling but where is my buster Who makes me roar with laughter The movie right before this was just Wouldn't it be funny to watch him box It's so simple

[02:09:31] And everyone's like you don't need to complicate this anymore And there is some reviews That are like this is in bad taste Like that you would do this about the war Not the Civil War specifically I think just like anything with people dying Can I say I've been

[02:09:46] For this series Watching splitting between Because I own basically The buster catalog in like three different Versions on physical media Because you have so many differences In which distributors have the better special features Which ones have the better restorations The better soundtracks whatever

[02:10:04] But I was watching the kino version For this The more recent kino release Which is the lobster film Restorations I can't remember if it's an episode that's come out yet Or not but the two main camps Of the buster restorations are The bologna restorations and the lobster

[02:10:22] Bologna and lobster But so I was watching the lobster restoration Which I think is not supposed to be as good As the bologna but the reason I want to watch the kino version Is because I noticed And I had never walked the film this way

[02:10:36] Despite seeing it several times And I'm gonna fuck up his name But Miyazaki's composer Joe Hisashi Wrote a score for this movie I've never listened to it is it good? It's so good Well that guy is pretty good at his job

[02:10:53] But it's interesting that the score is very serious It is like a stirring It sounds like the score for the wind rises It is a very dramatic score That is like It's beautiful and it plays up The tension of the movie very well

[02:11:08] But it makes it even less comedic I would argue So watching it today I was just like man this movie doesn't have A lot of jokes in it No it's just very thrilling And it's yeah I don't know It obviously it's just sort of one of those

[02:11:26] Classic cases though Of like yeah rejected at the time Or you know semi rejected Seen as a bit of a folly And then like slowly whatever He always said it was the one he was most proud of Usually his flops he would be Kind of negative about

[02:11:42] I think he always felt like If the audience didn't like it then I failed I work for them And this is the one he was like I do think that was the best I ever did as a director But it was in the top ten

[02:11:54] Of the sight and sound polls In the 70s and 80s Has Sherlock Jr. surpassed it In the recent polls Or is this still his highest rated film I'm asking you to find out I'm trying to say things to buffer as you look it up

[02:12:09] Well you're gonna have to say something else Okay here's what I'm gonna say Do you have any final thoughts on the general? Any final thoughts on the general Okay so First of all if you're gonna show this to your kids Be sure to be prepared to explain

[02:12:23] What the Civil War was I made the mistake of forgetting about All that when I showed this to my kid And then I had to explain in four year old words What the Civil War was I'll say this For any parents listening

[02:12:37] And in the context of lots of stuff Happening in the country I was able to explain to my kid What slavery was And also to get him to understand That not only was it wrong But the people at the time knew it was wrong

[02:12:51] He could like totally grasp that So it's like Jamelle that's impossible All I've heard on the news Is it's not only impossible It's dangerous to tell kids the truth And it's selfish Why would you do that?

[02:13:08] Why do you feel the need to say the thing that is true? Yes No I think this movie Like I said I think this movie is I've not seen I've not comprehensively seen Every Buster Keaton movie But I think even if I do do that

[02:13:24] This is gonna be at the top for me Because I do find it so thrilling And exciting And I think the Keaton comics I've seen are a lot of fun Just for dispositionally for me I like this kind of movie Like

[02:13:39] This is the forebear to basically your favorite genre Right yeah And so I think it's I think it's like a totally compelling watch I watched it last year And then when I heated up on Sunday to watch it I was just like immediately

[02:13:53] I'm in for this for this hour and fifteen minutes It's a gripping watch Yeah Let's play the box office game I just want to honorable mention The chain plays a big part In this Yeah you also texted me a picture of a train

[02:14:09] I texted the group just now There's more than just a picture It's a tin type of a train Going around a circle A Relative Who was an early photographer Oh Mr. Hosley took this picture Really? Yeah so his name is Harry Hugh Hosley This is called steam engine

[02:14:32] Coming up the hill at Keaton summit Where's this photo displayed right now? It's from 1904 You can see his work at the Eastman Museum Is that where this lives? That's really cool But this photo you just sent us is that it on display at the Eastman Museum?

[02:14:46] No that's the copy that my dad has Very cool Is it a tin type or is it just a straight photo? Did people call him Triple H or not? It probably would have been It probably would have been a tin type At that time I believe so

[02:15:02] Because when you're saying tin type It's like the advancement of a daguerreotype Right That would have been The most affordable and easy Format for Taking film because negative film Of the kind that we know of doesn't show up In this kind of routine use For a little bit

[02:15:22] Like a decade later This is foreshadowing For what's to come I knew Jamelle was a camera buff So I had to Brag a little bit I think it's good I'm going to be in upstate New York at the end of the summer

[02:15:39] And I'm going to have to make a trip to The Eastman Museum I shot a movie in Rochester last fall In that museum It's great It's also cool how much that entire town Is seeped in this history of photography They have all these sepia screenings Nitrates or whatever

[02:15:58] All that stuff Number one Come on let's see the box February 1927 The General is opening at number five Number one Is A famous hit Vehicle As I was digging into the research I was reading the reviews of this movie That were critiquing it

[02:16:24] Why can't Buster take a lesson From the number one movie The hit that everyone wants to see And I was like I'm going to have this unfair advantage Where now I know this title Because I read all these negative reviews of the General

[02:16:36] Saying he should have made it more like this film And I already forgot the name of it It's called Blank and Blank Is the structure of this title Blank and Blank? I don't know what you're talking about I must say I don't know what you're reading

[02:16:51] It was so different back then They were saying this movie had been number one for months What's the number one movie in America at this point? I'm telling you That the number one is a massive star vehicle For one of the biggest stars of the time Clara Bow

[02:17:05] Clara Bow? Not actually sure It's not It It's It The original It Girl The term It Girl exists because of this movie In which she plays a character called Pennywise the Clown And she torments a group of people And she torments a group of young Maine children

[02:17:21] This movie is called It And she was this hip modern woman And everyone was like, she's the It Girl This is like the new cool archetype in pop culture And so that The next moment that someone presents themselves As like the new Clara Bow

[02:17:35] They became the new It Girl That's really interesting Because it didn't come up In the New York mag feature At all They just did a whole thing about It Girls It's really good I read it Yes, Clara Bow's It In Yeah, and like Bill Hader's in it

[02:17:58] And fucking Jessica Chastain You know, a lot of jokes I could make here But Clara Bow obviously Margot Robbie's character In Babylon very obviously inspired by Clara Bow So Clara Bow is ruling the box office Now number two is a great rival Of Buster Keaton's

[02:18:17] Is it Chaplin or Lloyd? It's a Lloyd, a Harold Lloyd film considered one of his best Speedy? No Safety Last? No The Freshman came up in another box office game I don't know this movie It's got a good poster, he's sort of hanging from a trapeze Interesting

[02:18:33] And he looks, maybe it's not Because this looks like it's a western He's hanging from some kind of It's not Grandma's Boy is it? No, it's not Grandma's Boy It's called The Kid Brother It's a western Good title Sounds like he's some kind of kid brother

[02:18:51] Alright, number three is Another title I know very well It's a Raoul Walsh film I think it was made into a Talkie in the 50s Is this Flesh and the Devil? No Is that in the top five? It is in the top five the week before

[02:19:09] That is the movie I saw coming up in the reviews of this That was number one That's a John Gilbert film They delayed the release Of this for several months Because Flesh and the Devil Was like fucking E.T.

[02:19:24] Just like owning the box office for months and months So I guess they finally released it As it started to drop off That is maybe the most famous John Gilbert movie That or The Merry Widow No, this is a Raoul Walsh film It is a war film

[02:19:38] It's set during World War I Stars Edmund Lowe And it's called What's it called? Guns Away What Price Glory Another good title I was gonna guess Gold It's called Gold And then, okay Number five at the box office Sorry, number four at the box office

[02:20:08] Is a Lon Chaney film Lon Chaney What were you correcting? I was just checking to say Lon Chaney L-O-N Not Lon like a lawn mower L-O-N Not really a movie So unknown that it does not have a Wikipedia page Let's see if I can find any version

[02:20:31] But it's Is it called The Unknown? No, I think I was Dropping off something I think I lost Lon Chaney film called The Unknown Because I made a mistake in a previous episode That people always correct me Where I attributed a different movie to be called The Unknown

[02:20:48] Well, I don't know anything about that But it's a Lon Chaney film It's another World War I movie What do you think? It's called Guns Away It's called Tell It To The Marines Kind of an intense title A silent film about a marine recruit

[02:21:04] And the sergeant who dreams in the middle Well, you know what? They're telling you Those are the top five And you've also got a movie called Blonder Brunette We'll never know A movie called Old Ironsides That might be about It's a Michael Ironside prequel

[02:21:20] Well, I guess it's about a boat But it wasn't fucking Didn't we talk about someone who was called Paradise for Two McAdams Flats Altars of Desire Killer Box Office Pretty good So that's that and we are done Talking about these movies

[02:21:41] But let's also say this ends Buster Keaton's Independence basically, right? He's followed Skank over now To the studios As Skank himself has moved over to the studios And this is his big play Within that ballgame And this movie is seen as Such an out of control production

[02:21:59] As him sort of Falling into self-indulgence Underperforms And it's like the end of the line Buster You gotta figure out how to play Within the system now You gotta play everyone else's game You gotta get more strategic and responsible About how you make these movies

[02:22:17] And that leads to him going over to MGM Yes, well not yet though He has two more movies that he makes for UA And then MGM It's the beginning of the end Of the independent productions But no, next week we will talk

[02:22:31] About College and Seen by Bill Jr I like Seen by Bill Jr Seen by Bill Jr is good College is good or? College is the one that Has the most blackface Yes, I think I knew that So be prepared for that Listeners, obviously

[02:22:50] When dealing with movies of this era You know what's odd in watching these films Sometimes it will sneak up on you Yes, and it's always not fun He will have gags That are based around the reveal Of someone being black He very often does this gag

[02:23:09] Seen by Bill Jr has one at the beginning Where his father is waiting for him to arrive By a train and you see a guy Who from behind looks like Buster Keaton And has the hat and then he turns around

[02:23:19] And the guy is black and the joke is clearly Well this is a very easy way to communicate That it's not the right guy And that is played by an actual African American actor And then he will just have supporting roles Occasionally played by someone in blackface

[02:23:33] In some of his movies To no narrative end But most of them are devoid Of the thing that College has Which is an extended sequence That is playing in Menstruary Maybe I should have been on that episode Because I can do a whole riff Keaton is working in

[02:23:51] What might have been One of the most Racist decades in American history Just like straight up It's post-World War I America is kind of high on its own supply High on its own supply It's the height of early imperial America Business is booming

[02:24:10] It's the height of American nativism We have the 1924 immigration bill That basically ends immigration To the US for the next 40 years It's like Every other week There's some new pogrom against black people In the country It is no exaggeration To be the most racist decade In American history

[02:24:32] Like the Tulsa massacre 1921 Rosewood massacre 1922 Ku Klux Klan Has a couple million members It is the thing You get on edge When you see an actor show up in blackface In one of these movies And then it is to no end That is kind of a relief

[02:24:57] It is a humbling joke But it makes it all the odder When it doesn't happen In a way Especially because he would then hire African American actors In other parts Bad decade Bad decade 1920s suck It's always been When I was in high school

[02:25:19] You're never going to see VH1 do I love the 20s When I was in high school People loved doing I never understood This decade was terrible Bad decade People were depressed People weren't I think we're killing it In retrospect In the moment People were like

[02:25:44] This kind of sucks Everything is bad I think a black historian It's called informally 1900 to this time We're calling it We don't need perspective We're in the worst pocket The 30s are terrible too But the fashion is better So you got that going for it

[02:26:06] There's a democrat in the white house Frankie D He's tearing shit up Alright We're done I gotta pee Congratulations Thank you so much It's my pleasure Pleasure is always ours People should Keep up with everything you're doing I guess I do have stuff to plug Yes

[02:26:35] I have a podcast myself With my friend John Gans It's called It's about the political and military Thrillers of the 1990s And what they say about the politics of that decade Basically watch movies like the fugitive And then talk about their politics Our most recent episode

[02:26:53] As of this recording Is on It's not We just watched true lies So we haven't recorded that yet Okay This is coming out in two weeks This episode basically Yeah this episode is coming out May 28th I went through my spiel

[02:27:13] And then I neglected to see what was the last thing we did Hey I can't relate We do basically every episode But you guys are in the mid 90s Yeah we're in the mid 90s We're moving chronologically Our last movie was Canadian Bacon

[02:27:30] Oh my god that movie is so weird Good conversation But that's the podcast We have a Patreon Where we do Cold War stuff We're doing some highbrow Costa Gavras thrillers Zed I'm sorry what movie? Zed Oh you mean Z? Aluminium I take no side In the pronunciation wars

[02:27:59] Yes The true most tragic wars Brother against brother Syllable against syllable No winners Innocence lost But everyone should listen on Clear and Present Danger You should go to the general And save some time Or how does the jingle go For a great low rate You can get online

[02:28:27] Ben stop doing an insurance ad on my podcast Right now You're telling me Rosario Dawson's vagina can save me time I'm just gonna do it That's fine go It feels like it would take time Thank you all for listening Please remember to rate review and subscribe

[02:28:43] Go to the general and save some time Thank you to AJ McKee and Alex Barron for our editing Pat Reynolds, Joe Bowen for our artwork Lane Montgomery and the Great American Novel for our theme song JJ Burch for our research Tune in next week for as we said

[02:28:56] College and Steamboat Bill Jr Over on Patreon You got the schedule up Ben? Yeah coming up on Patreon We're getting close to the end of our run of the original So stay tuned We'll see you next week The original Planet of the Apes On June 1st is Conquest

[02:29:20] My favorite That movie is unbelievable So hard It is so thrilling And captivating Oh god I love that movie I'll just say this I think it is dead to rights the best Planet of the Apes movie It's not even close for me

[02:29:38] If you're watching the director's cut which you have to watch David starts the episode and is like This is some stupid fucking Griffin contrarian take And about an hour in he's like I think you might be right Because people they're like

[02:29:50] If that was that good then how is it's reputation not better than the original And that's my question Because everyone should fucking watch this And I have to say Conquest is the fourth one Correct Man Roddy Mcdowell gives one of the most incredible performances of that decade

[02:30:04] That I I watched that I bought the box set And this was making my way through No one ever talks about the fourth one And I really like the third one Because it's this slice of life comedy And it gets super bleak at the end

[02:30:21] Four is unrelentingly bleak beginning to end And some of the shots During the ape uprising Are just so evocative It's like everyone involved in that movie Is like we have no money We have no resources We're still going to do literally as much as we possibly can

[02:30:37] It is one of the most Astounding Resources versus impact movies Yeah Even if you are not signed up for our patreon I highly recommend just watching it It's a film I endorse as much as almost any movie Apes series Pound for pound Best sci-fi franchise Heart agree

[02:31:00] It's the reason I have wanted two years for talk about them And that's what we're doing now Over on patreon And by the way as we try to remind people We unlock every patreon episode After two years So right now The early 2021 stuff is being unlocked

[02:31:16] And patreon has its new free membership program If you want to sign up for that You'll get the notifications when those episodes become unlocked You can listen to them In the patreon browser Or download the patreon app And at some point In the future

[02:31:32] There will also be the ability to get a private RSS feed For the free membership I presented that right? You did that was alright You could listen along To us watch Toy Story Yeah that's what's happening right now Another deep I'm very normal in those episodes

[02:31:51] Very low key There's no reason why I would be super amped up March and April 2020 Or no this is 20 Yes right So it's three years we unlock them Yeah I guess I'm sorry I was wrong Early lockdown me going insane Talking about the Toy Story movies

[02:32:13] And you can find links to that And all other sorts of nerdy shit At BlankCheckPod.com And as always David's gone David just left Well he said he had a thing But I am reporting the facts That's true