Fear & Desire / Killer's Kiss

[00:00:01] Blank Check with Griffin and David, Blank Check with Griffin and David Don't know what to say or to expect And all you need to know is that the name of the show is Blank Check There is a podcast in this forest.

[00:00:23] Not a podcast that has been recorded nor one that will be, but any podcast. And the podcasters who struggle here do not exist unless we call them into being. This podcast then, and all that happens now is outside history.

[00:00:36] Only the unchanging shapes of fear and doubt and death are from our world. These podcasters that you see keep our language and our time, but have no other podcast but the mind. So that's the opening narration to Fear and Desire. Yeah.

[00:00:52] Turned even more incomprehensible by you putting podcasts in for a bunch of things. Look, I'm not saying that totally makes sense. What I did or what they say in the movie, this did start. It's black and white. It's an hour long. Fear and Desire. Yeah. And I mean-

[00:01:09] It's black and white? Did you watch the colorized version on YouTube? I mean, it was like, what is going on, Stanley? This is cuckoo. Wait, there's a colorized version on YouTube, really? Is that what you watched, Ben? It was on Tubi. Oh, oh, you're right.

[00:01:22] Yes, and Amazon too. Amazon has a fucking colorized version of this movie. Multiple streaming services have this film colorized, and let me say, poorly. Not even poorly? Like where I'm like, am I on acid? It looks like it was done by some very rudimentary $5 AI,

[00:01:40] but it's this thing where the color can't stick to their faces. Like it's smudgy. Oh, this looks so awful. It looks really bad. Because you know what I was looking at? Richard Elfman colorized Forbidden Zone. Okay. His sort of transgressive musical he did with his brother, Danny.

[00:01:58] That looks really good. Yeah, but it's never a good idea, really, is it? No, but it was done artisanally by the person originally. Oh, yeah, but this is so weird. It was done by hand very carefully. This is like, it doesn't track with the movement.

[00:02:10] No, this is awful. And you'll be on someone's face and then like gray spots will appear. Like the color will fade in places. Yes, this was a black and white film. It's an hour long.

[00:02:18] It started with that narration, and I was like, pumping my face going, holy shit. Am I about to watch like a fucking Kubrick Twilight Zone? Because that intro narration, despite not making perfect sense, feels very Twilight Zoney. Where you're like, we're dealing with the symbolic idea of war.

[00:02:35] This is no specific war that's ever existed. The enemy is the mind. I was like, yeah, great. Here we go. And then the movie doesn't really have that. The movie happens and you're sort of like, oh, okay. There's some visual ideas here.

[00:02:48] It's, you know, sort of maybe a little bit of a sandbox. You're watching a guy like just start to figure things. I don't know what to say about that movie. But then the poster, you look at the poster, right? The poster for Fear and Desire.

[00:03:01] It's got a lady on it. Yes, this is Virginia Leith, Virginia Leith. It's got two big quotes. Life Magazine calls her a big find. The wolves are breathless about Virginia Leith, Walter Winchell. And then what's essentially a cheesecake shot of her.

[00:03:15] And then there's a photo of an illustration of her legs. An illustration of a Paul Mazurski kissing her neck that makes it look consensual. And says, Fear and Desire trapped four desperate men and a strange half animal girl. Right.

[00:03:30] So then while they're trying, look, we'll get into that. Also makes it seem supernatural. But David, that's not the only movie we're talking about today. Yeah, it's not the only movie we're talking about today. You sound so excited. Thank God. You sound so excited. Yes.

[00:03:41] But you were right before we start recording reading the tagline of the second movie we're talking about today, which is a good one. The second movie is great. I love this movie, right? You like this. Yeah. This rules. Watched it this morning. It was a blast. Yeah.

[00:03:55] Her soft mouth was the road to sin-smeared violence. That's the tagline to Killer's Kiss. Her soft podcast was the road to sin-smeared violence. The mobs, moles and mayhem of New York's clip joint jungle. That was the other tagline. That one's pretty good too.

[00:04:09] Do you hear that off in the distance? This parade, David, can mean only one thing. I never we've never done a parade before. Marching towards us. It's the new miniseries parade. Yes, the March Madness winner wearing his crown.

[00:04:44] It's March that the parade is marching towards us because this director we're talking about now won March Madness. Right. We don't have to sound so depressed about it. It's very exciting. Stanley Kubrick. The director is Stanley Kubrick. Quite well known. Blank Check with Griffin and David.

[00:04:59] And this podcast is Blank Check with Griffin and David. We're not as well known as Stanley Kubrick. No. My name is Griffin. My name is David. It's a podcast about filmographies. Directors who have massive success early on in their careers are given a series of blank

[00:05:09] checks to make whatever crazy passion products they want. Sometimes those checks clear. Sometimes they bounce. Baby, it's a miniseries. The film's a Stanley Kubrick. It's called Pods Widecast. Yeah, that's what it's called, right? That's what it's called. And today we're talking about his first two films.

[00:05:26] One of which he essentially disowned. Uh, yes. And the second one, which he counted as his first film, but didn't count as his first good film. I feel like The Killing is the first one he stood behind and was like,

[00:05:37] this is reflective of who I want to be as a filmmaker. Yes. I think he viewed these as two rough drafts and one of them he kind of disqualified. And Killer's Kiss was also messed with. So maybe he resented that, which he didn't like the ending. Right. Yes.

[00:05:52] These are his early works. And I feel like in the case of Fear and Desire, that was a movie you couldn't even see for a long time. And so it was truly forgotten. It was really this sort of like, Killer's Kiss was like the first one.

[00:06:07] Because the Fear and Desire would like went away until it was restored in like the 2010s basically. He tried to strike it from existence. And even I think in the 90s, 80s or 90s, Film Forum got a print and they started screening it.

[00:06:20] And he was like, please don't do this. Yes. He wrote a letter. He kind of protested. He was like, I don't want this scene. He called it a bumbling amateur film exercise. After he died, it was restored by the Library of Congress.

[00:06:32] Because the other thing was it was in public domain, which is why you can so easily see crappy color versions of it. Because anyone can do anything they want with it. So it wasn't really preserved. And the National Library of Congress put the money in to restore it,

[00:06:46] put it back into circulation. Well, we'll get into all that. We'll get into all of that. But this is our table setting introduction episode for Stanley the Manly Kubrick, who is an American film director of some renown. He lived for 70 years and made around 13-ish movies, right? Sure.

[00:07:01] And you know, he's got a couple hits to his name. And I don't know, how would you describe him? Looming figure? Yeah, looming, right. I don't know if you've experienced this, but when he won, we put him on the bracket, right? It was our 20th century bracket.

[00:07:17] Only directors from the 20th century allowed. And when we were sort of spitballing, eliminating people, trying to figure, settle on the final 32. Marie Barty, the great Marie Barty, said, are you sure you want to put Stanley Kubrick on there? If you put him on there, he'll probably win.

[00:07:34] And we went, fine, the worst case scenario, we do Stanley Kubrick. It did feel like a little bit of a foregone conclusion, perhaps. A little bit. We were hoping to be an upside. But it was one of those things where you're like,

[00:07:47] so we talk about one of the most interesting filmographies ever. And I don't know if you've had this experience, what I was trying to tell you, but when people were asking me, friends, listeners of the show, how I felt about Kubrick winning,

[00:07:58] they were like, I mean, the downside is it's such a long series, right? I'm like, no, only 13 movies. Yeah, it's not that long. They span 40 years. He slowed down quite quickly. He got so selective about what he did that it's like,

[00:08:11] we're covering the earliest films we've ever talked about on this podcast. Right. We're going all the way to the very end of the 20th century. But it's only 13 movies and two of them we're knocking out today. Yeah, Fear and Desire and Killer's Kiss, baby.

[00:08:26] And we're going to give you some little whatever, some Stanley intro. Let me tell you a little about Stanley Kubrick. Let's stop beating around the bush. Can I ask you something before we get into this? What is your sort of relationship to Kubrick on whole?

[00:08:42] That's a good call. My relationship to Kubrick, like many a film fan. We put him on there. We understood high likelihood we'd end up with him, but we didn't choose this one. So I want to talk through it because certainly if you're a cinephile,

[00:08:55] he becomes a point of debate in a lot of ways. But he's also just an early one that you've got to check in, right? Yeah. I don't know what everyone's first Kubrick movie is,

[00:09:05] but I do think my first Kubrick movie is the same for a lot of people, which is that when I was like seven or eight, my dad showed me 2001. I think we watched. It was like I was a kid.

[00:09:20] I think we watched all the way to the end of the how part. And then he was kind of like, I mean, I think I may have been like, you know what's going on? And he was like, well, and then there's more. We'll watch it again later.

[00:09:30] We'll watch the rest. Like, you know, like I think that was my first Kubrick. I saw it in a theater. My mom took me to see it in a theater when I was maybe nine. And it was a similar thing.

[00:09:38] I probably would have drifted away from the TV if I was watching at home. But in the theater, I was held captive. And I think my dad knew like at least the how part would, you know, this is common for a lot of young cineasts. I think.

[00:09:51] And then like I saw Dr. Strangelove at a young age. And I probably saw Spartacus at a fairly young age, but I don't think I had the, I gotta, you know, dig into Stanley Kubrick moment until I was a later teenager or something.

[00:10:10] You know, when I guess when then when you're a later teenager, I can't, I'm generalizing, but I do think this is general. You're sort of like, well, I should see a Clockwork Orange, right? And like, you know, and I should see The Shining.

[00:10:21] He becomes an activation point for a lot of people where I think they see one of his movies and they go, holy shit, who the fuck is this? Like, I see everything else this guy did. And then I think for other people like you and I,

[00:10:32] it's almost just like out of, I hate to call it obligation, but a sense of like, if I'm getting serious about movies. It's one of the first ones you do. You gotta do them. And it's also the thing that like,

[00:10:40] he has this template that I think a lot of blank check directors follow where it's like, we're transitioning out of the studio system where directors are just thrown onto pictures and you make three a year or whatever it is, where it's like very deliberate.

[00:10:54] And the guy is like, I'm ready to make my war film. Here is my horror film. Here is my sci-fi film. Like wanting to like take a swing at each genre, you know? Yes. I made a satirical comedy. Here is my historical epic. Certainly.

[00:11:12] I also just feel like everyone's got, I mean, when I saw Eyes Wide Shut, I must have already seen most of the Kubricks. And I think like that was just, that's my favorite Kubrick. And it's the one that like kind of made me go back

[00:11:26] and take him like, you know, a movie at a time when I was in college or, you know, be like, okay, okay. I need to understand everything about how this guy made movies. That's my favorite too. I've always admired him a lot more than I love his movies.

[00:11:41] I love Lyndon shining in Eyes Wide Shut so much and have seen them all so many times. I've never seen Lyndon. I'm really excited to watch it for this. You've never seen Barry Lyndon? Blowing your fucking mind. Yeah. Did I know that? Maybe. Maybe you've said that.

[00:11:56] I've watched like parts of it on TV, but I've never actually watched Lyndon. That's the best one, I think. Okay. And I've never seen Spartacus either. Sure. And I feel like I've seen all the other major ones. Well, what do you mean by major one?

[00:12:10] Well, Shining, Full Metal Jacket, Clockwork Orange, 2001. Right. I've seen Paths of Glory. You've seen Lolita? I've seen Lolita. So you're naming all his movies. Right. So these first three I hadn't seen before. Oh, sure, sure, sure. Right. Yeah. Haven't seen Lyndon, haven't seen Spartacus.

[00:12:26] I had never seen Fear and Desire. I bought the Blu-ray and I watched it for this episode. Killer's Kiss I saw at the Film Forum several years ago and had a great time. But yeah, no, Kubrick, I know what you mean about passion for him.

[00:12:40] But like, I do know every inch of some of his movies and they are so worthy of obsessive re-watching. Well, that's the other thing with him. He was the first, not the first, but he was one of the first directors who got mythologized in this way.

[00:12:56] And I think it was partially by critics in the community and partially by himself, you know, being this sort of elusive figure. Yeah. Kind of unknowable. I was reading Roger Ebert's review of Killing, or maybe it was when he did his like sort of updated His great movies.

[00:13:12] Capsule for great movies. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he was sort of talking about the temptation to find the links in the killing to the rest of his body of work. But he was like, isn't the whole appeal of Kubrick that unlike other filmmakers,

[00:13:25] he wasn't just making the same movie over and over again? Like part of what's fascinating about Kubrick is that how could this one guy make all these different films? Right. And there's a technical style that follows through all of it,

[00:13:38] but he's a little inscrutable in his world view as opposed to like Rakhanov and Fossey, where it's like, you know everything about how Bob Fossey's mind works. Such an incredibly personal filmmaker. Whereas Kubrick is more like, I'm not going to tell you what this movie is about.

[00:13:50] I'm not going to talk about it in that way. And people who think Kubrick is overrated tend to go to that argument of like, he was cold, he was dispassionate, he was technical, but there's nothing personal in there.

[00:14:02] I don't think that's ever been my stumbling block with him. Okay. I just always like his movies and respect them, but I don't feel fanatical about them or him. But there's also, it's just the thing of, he created, he pushed things technologically, he advanced the language.

[00:14:17] Ben, what do you think of Stan, the man? You a Stan boy? People are always so intense about him. That's the other thing. Sure. And I just was kind of contrarian in the sense, similar to Griffin. I liked A Clockwork Orange quite a bit, still do.

[00:14:34] It's a little though complicated these days. Complicated in those days too. By the way, a film that is forever complicated. Indeed. David wouldn't know this, but it was banned in the UK for decades. Talk about it later. Like fully banned. Wow. Illegal to watch.

[00:14:51] And The Shining, I mean, is a gosh darn classic. But people were so fanatical and intense. And it just felt like if you did any kind of deep dive and then wanted to talk to somebody like that about those things,

[00:15:05] they would always know so much more and get really like, you know, just like, I was avoiding that kind of interaction basically. I also think this isn't his fault, but a lot of the worst people in film think that they're Stanley Kubrick.

[00:15:19] Both the most insufferable and the cold assholes. It's either him or Hitchcock is like the most sort of like legendary director of all time, I guess. Or, you know, I mean, that's a very broad brush. But you know what I mean?

[00:15:30] Or whatever, you know, the most spoken of director, the most well-known director. Whatever, you know, so it's like, it's impossible, you know, there's too much baggage that comes with that. And they both had that thing of like exacting control. It was perfect in their head

[00:15:43] and they manipulated the universe to their whims to get it done exactly how they wanted. And they were right. Um, yeah, Stan the man. More films and, you know, at least a sense of humor. God bless Hitchcock. Yeah.

[00:15:58] Who made a ton more movies, but he made the same kind of movies. That's what he made over and over. He had his personal objections that are right there. Yes. Very easy to access. Kubrick gets much more remote. And he was reclusive. He wouldn't do interviews. He would.

[00:16:12] Hitchcock could do a fucking horse and hound. Whatever. Right. It's the thing that people don't, people want to make Hitchcockian movies, but I don't think they want to be Hitchcock in the same way that they want to be Kubrick. What do I think? The personality. Like tortured genius.

[00:16:31] And the control of the public perception. Yes. I mean, that's another thing I'll say. You just like saying like the lack of humor, like the seriousness of it all too. And like almost to a point of not, not even being self-aware. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:16:48] And then he makes a movie that's like one of the most well regarded comedies ever. And at the beginning of his career, and he was by all accounts, a very big fan of comedy. Like he fucking always wants to do a movie with Steve Martin.

[00:17:01] He loved Albert Brooks. He gets all mythologized with this too, where people are right. Like every passing comment he ever made becomes like totemic. Like, oh, he loved all that jazz and modern romance. Right. Things we just cite like, Kubrick loved it. You know, like, and like,

[00:17:16] But it's because he's unknown. He was unknowable. Right. So it's like the few things we know are the things he said to other artists. Right. Like we find out these things in interviews because those people say, he actually called me up once and told me this.

[00:17:32] He was never making these statements publicly. He wasn't doing director's commentaries. He wasn't going on The Tonight Show. He wasn't doing much press, you know? Stanley Kubrick. Stanley Kubrick. Was born on July 26th. Birthday's coming up, Stan. Okay. 1928. Brooklyn. No? Where was he born?

[00:17:50] He was born in Manhattan, just like you and me. To parents Jack and Gertrude Kubrick, who resided in the Bronx. Okay. He's from the Bronx. Why do I think he was from Brooklyn? I'm wrong. I'm very wrong.

[00:17:59] Well, I don't know, but he's from the Bronx and he was an intelligent boy, but he wasn't good at school. He didn't fit into the American education system. Poor attendance, poor grades. And so he was sent to Pasadena for a year as a child.

[00:18:18] They were hoping maybe that would sort him out. Didn't work. By 1941, he was back in the Bronx. Wasn't doing well. Eventually ends up at Taft High School in the Bronx. Graduates with a 67 average, which I guess is bad. That sounds bad. Yeah. Out of 100, I'm assuming.

[00:18:33] I think that's a D. Right, right, right. I used to have the attitude when I got a poor grade, I was like, anything that's passing, I'm happy with. We were like, oh, God. Right, but it isn't like, I mean, again, I did not...

[00:18:46] 60 out of 100 is a bad result. And I'm like, I got above 65. I don't know what to tell you. Straight Cs, baby. I'm killing it. Well, Stanley would agree with you. I'm like, good, made it. But no college...

[00:18:59] Indiana Jones, slipped out of the boulder just in time, grabbed my hat. You know? I don't fucking care. No college in the United States would consider his application. So I guess that's the problem he runs into with his 67. Uh, average. But he does meet...

[00:19:11] His father was a doctor? Yes, his father was a doctor. So he's sort of, uh, he is sort of wealthy within his immediate social circle. You know, I don't know. He's like a middle class kid in the Bronx, a Jewish guy.

[00:19:27] But, you know, I think they were doing fine for the Bronx. Yes, or for the West Bronx. Yeah, sure. You know, yeah, totally. And yeah, it's a D plus grade average. There you go. Confirmed. Not enough though.

[00:19:40] I think part of the problem he had college-wise also is it's 1945. People are coming back from the war. There's a lot of demand. Oh, sure. You know what I mean? Like, so like that makes it even harder.

[00:19:52] He did meet Alexander Singer in college, who's one of his early collaborators... I mean, sorry, in high school. One of his early collaborators. And he did get into photography on the school's newspaper, which of course is Stanley Kubrick's early profession. Taking pics. Click, click, shutterbug.

[00:20:10] But not moving pics. No, still. Still pics. And so he had a darkroom at home. He was very sophisticated about that. There weren't a lot of, you know, people doing that kind of stuff at that age. Okay, listen. I'm listening. Singer says, richest kid I knew.

[00:20:27] So there you go. Thank you. I read the dossier. Right, right, right. You know, they had their own house. But I mean, the way Singer is putting it is like, look, we all live fairly rough. That's what I said. His stable life. Wealthy within that social circle.

[00:20:39] I think he had a slightly more stable sort of home setup. And look, yeah, his dad was supportive of that. He got in the darkroom. His dad's like, if you want to take pictures, at least, you know, he's not like sending Stanley to military school, I guess. Right?

[00:20:52] Right. Gets him a Graflex. And Alexander Singer wants to be a film director. Right. Singer's the one who kind of turns him on to the idea of film, right? And I think more than anything, what's appealing to him is how confident Singer

[00:21:10] is in knowing what he wants to do and how to do it. Yes. Like he's a kid looking for a fucking purpose, you know? Singer's idea is to make a movie of the Iliad, Homer's epic poem. Easy. Yeah, exactly. Seems easy in the Bronx in 1945 or whatever.

[00:21:25] So he draws sketches of how to do this. Kubrick is supportive. Kubrick starts going to night classes. But before he even really gets into that, he gets an apprentice photographer job at Look Magazine. Now can we say a great name?

[00:21:40] Reading through this dossier, seeing the name Look Magazine over and over again, every single time I saw it, I went, cool. And he works there from the age of 17 to 21. Big break. And learns all about photography. It's, you know, he learns on the job, right?

[00:21:55] You know, he's learning at the hands of skilled people. I talked about, I think in one of the Demi episodes that I feel like most filmmakers, and then getting back to what we were talking about, are either like architects or anthropologists, right?

[00:22:09] There's either a thing they want to construct or there's a thing that exists they want to capture. And it is a thing that's interesting about Kubrick. And it's interesting when you start with these early films as we are,

[00:22:20] that it's like he goes from being a photojournalist to a documentary short subject filmmaker, to making these short, his first couple films feel a lot more documentary-esque. And as time goes on, it becomes more and more precise.

[00:22:35] Like he does go from being a person who's trying to capture things out in the wild to a person who's trying to create his own reality. Right. Photography seems fun. Yeah, photography rules. He shot Montgomery Cliff with a camera. Not with a gun.

[00:22:50] That's a cool thing he did. Yeah. Have you guys ever worked in a darkroom? Yeah. Worked with like film cameras? Yeah, I was a big photography kid. Same. Yeah. I got really into it.

[00:23:00] It's such a fun thing, but in these days, it just feels like it's almost, it's expensive. You got to put it in the magic juice and then you move it around with tongs and then the picture appears and then you put it on a little clothesline. It rolls.

[00:23:14] It's so fucking cool. It is really cool. Drip, drip, drip, dry. And if you open the door and the light comes in, you're going to ruin them. It was one of those things where I was like that was like... Did I nail it? Yeah.

[00:23:24] Yeah, that was like one of the better hobbies I had. That does seem nice. That I really enjoyed and I enjoyed the whole process of it. I enjoyed the darkroom and everything. And it was just like in the years of my adolescence, my teen years,

[00:23:37] I saw it become harder and harder to buy film, to find places that gave you access to a darkroom. You know, I was like taking classes and then they were like disappearing in real time. And just getting really expensive. Yeah.

[00:23:50] The paper, everything was just becoming less and less available. Yeah. And I had like an old Russian Krasnogorski 8mm film camera and I made like short films on it. And then it was just like, oh, there's one place you can get this developed.

[00:24:09] There's one place that will transfer this for you. Right. You know, and it's like a window and it costs a billion dollars. Like all these things just became so fucking difficult to do. But there is, it's a great process.

[00:24:21] It's a great excuse to break into abandoned buildings and take pictures of decay. Well, that was a big subject of mine. Decay. Decay. I like the idea of you dressing like Jimmy Olsen with like an old school camera and a flashbulb as a cover

[00:24:38] for people who would yell at you for loitering or trespassing and be like, gee, Willeker sir, I'm just a photojournalist. I'm not doing anything. I was never that smart. While working at Look, Kubrick marries his first wife, Toba Metz,

[00:24:53] Taft graduate, who I think he was married to for just a couple years. They get divorced in 51. I think Singer had a quote where he was like, they weren't really married. It was just like a relationship. They were just dating. They were in their teens.

[00:25:04] They got married essentially right to avoid whatever. Indecency. Lodging propriety. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. So they could hold hands in public without getting arrested. His second wife is Ruth Sobotka, a dancer. Who's in Killer's Kiss. Who is in Killer's Kiss.

[00:25:18] And eventually, yeah, when she meets him, he's still married, but they get divorced in 51. And Ruth marries Stanley Kubrick in 52. Isn't that crazy to think about that era in time where if you wanted to ask someone out on a date,

[00:25:32] you essentially had to ask them to marry you and go like, I'll give this a shot. Yes. It is really crazy. It is weird. Right? It's also crazy from then the other side of it, right? Where it's just like thinking as like a woman in those times

[00:25:46] truly had like no rights. No, absolutely. And very often it wouldn't be like Kubrick in his first way. They just stay married forever. Even if six months later they realize they didn't like each other. Well, what Stan liked to do. Divorce women? No.

[00:26:02] Well, he did that twice, but no. Go to the movies. He would see every single movie. Every single movie. We used to go to terrible double features. This is David Vaughn who shoots, who's the director of photography on Killer's Kiss, I think. Maybe not. He's an early guy.

[00:26:18] But, you know, they go see double features just on 42nd Street. He was only interested in the way films were made visually. If actors started to talk too much, he would read his paper by whatever light he could find until they stopped talking. Very annoying audience member.

[00:26:33] Incredibly annoying. Just rustling the paper. He was very critical of films. He was obsessed with them. He wanted to see everything. You go to the important movies too. Go to Museum of Modern Art to see Diary of a Country Priest, an early favorite of Steven Spielberg.

[00:26:48] I mean, Stanley Kubrick's. Maybe Steven Spielberg's as well. This is another Kubrick mythology thing though, is that he like sort of willed himself into being a film genius. Right? He didn't work up the ranks on shoots.

[00:27:01] He obviously didn't go to film school because that was not really a thing. But it's like he just saw a billion movies, then made his first film Fear and Desire, which was essentially making a film as film school. Teach myself to do this by doing it.

[00:27:16] And then he was a filmmaker. You know? I mean, Nolan sort of has a similar trajectory. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, part of what they keep saying is that he would keep seeing these movies and be like,

[00:27:29] I know why this is bad and this is what I would have done differently. Like he's very obsessed with sort of like, I can see how this could have been made better with these run-of-the-mill Hollywood movies. That was his whole thing was he was like,

[00:27:41] I don't know if I can make a great movie, but I know I can make a movie better than 40% of what I'm seeing. The first two movies, he essentially gets financed by parents, friends and relatives who run pharmacies.

[00:27:57] It's funny on both of these films you read that all the money came from like fucking pharmacies and drugstores. Those were the sort of most cash liquid people he knew. And he just gave them the pitch on the investment.

[00:28:12] He was able to teach himself a lot of photography, right? So it's like he understood that language, that workflow. But by all accounts, these first two movies, especially Fear and Desire were like, I'm going to learn how to do everything right by doing everything wrong first.

[00:28:25] Before we do talk about that. Yeah. Just answering his question. He's obsessed with Sergei Eisenstein and Vesvolo Pudovkin. The second Pudovkin especially who wrote a book called The Film Technique. He read that obsessively. He also played a lot of chess.

[00:28:42] And he won with enough frequency that he actually made money. And he saw chess as a great analogy for filmmaking because you have to balance resources against the problem, right? You know, you're you have to think ahead calmly. You have to be like, is this the best idea?

[00:28:58] Are there better ideas? This is this whole thing with chess. In a lot of ways, I think that's the thing that gives him a weird advantage. That he's able to shift into that mindset. Because I do think a lot of the sort of self-taught,

[00:29:10] self-proclaimed film geniuses who just watch a billion movies and then go like, I can make things better than this. Know how to theoretically make a great film in their mind. But the thing they struggle with is when they get to the stage where it's like,

[00:29:23] now you are interfacing with other real people in real time, working against a clock with a set amount of money. And then a lot of those people crumble. You know, they don't know how to win over people. They don't know how to communicate their vision to other people.

[00:29:38] I do think the sort of strategic thinking of the chess thing helps him. Um, his first film is a 1951 documentary short entitled Day of the Fight. Alex Perry asked me if we're doing that one on the podcast. I said no!

[00:29:53] You can watch all these on YouTube and one of them is on the Fear and Desire. Yeah, I think Day of the Fight is? I can't remember. What is it? The Wayfarers. Is that what it's called? Oh sure, yeah, yeah, yeah. The Seafarers? The Seafarers. Yes.

[00:30:06] Yes, and there's also Flying Padre. Right, I think the British release of Fear and Desire has Flying Padre and what's it called? The Big Fight? The first thing he did was called The Day of the Fight. The Day of the Fight.

[00:30:18] And it was based on a photo feature he'd shot for Look. And it's about a middleweight boxer at the height of his career named Walter Cartier. It seems like a bit of, you know, an inspiration for Killer's Kiss, right? I watched this. It's really good. Yeah.

[00:30:31] And he, you know, basically is kind of like, well, I can, you know, give it a shot, right? I can give, you know, moving cameras a shot. Look, he came from a relative amount of money. Right? Beyond that even, he had resources.

[00:30:48] He had direct ties to people who had money. Sure. And like you read about even Day of the Fight and it was like a business proposition where he was just like, there's a market for short films or for documentary shorts and newsreel

[00:31:00] shorts sort of adjacent things that will play before theaters. I can raise $3,900 to just self-produce this. And then he sold it for $4,000. Right. Because what he was inspired by was Alexander Singer had worked on another, The March of Time, which apparently it's like, they'd spent $40,000 making it.

[00:31:22] And Kubrick was like, I can make something for a tenth of that or whatever, you know? I think part of that was just that he knew that he understood the technical aspects of the camera,

[00:31:29] lighting, all of this so well that he was like, I'll save money by doing it all my fucking self. So he does. And he does, as you say, make a tidy $100 profit. He was told that was the most RKO Pathé had ever paid for a short.

[00:31:42] So they must've liked it. And he had lots of experience making this. He was cameraman. He was the editor. He was the sound effects guy. He did it all himself. He gets a grasp of the technical aspect of filmmaking. And so RKO, happy with what he made,

[00:31:58] gives him $1,500 advance to make Flying Padre, which is about a priest who is, I guess, flying from settlement to settlement in New Mexico. Giving supplies, right? Yes. It's only nine minutes long. Uh-huh. It's like 12, 13 minutes. They're all short, right? Seafarer's like half an hour long.

[00:32:19] And that was sort of more for hire job. He barely breaks even on Flying Padre, but I guess he's inspired enough to quit look. And he wants to make his feature film debut. And he's sort of trying to figure that out.

[00:32:34] He raises 10 grand from friends and his father and his uncle who he lived with in Pasadena that one time. I guess he has these movies that people have seen. So he can at least point to that when he's raising money. Right.

[00:32:49] And he signs a one-picture deal with this guy, Martin Perlever. That's his uncle, with his uncle. Right, who owned a drugstore, right? Right. Yes. He's the one with the most money. But he said, like, I think you're gonna be a big director.

[00:33:06] I'm not giving you money for one movie. You're signing a deal with me where I get a percentage of the rest of your career. It was essentially the deal we talked about in the Fosse. JJ drew this connection. Yes, that's right.

[00:33:16] But the guy who sort of discovered him as a dancer. It was like, I get 15% of everything. It's the Rick Mackey, King Richard deal. And Kubrick, stubborn fuck that he was, was like, I'm not fucking signing a deal with you. You get one movie or nothing.

[00:33:28] He's fucking savvy. I know. I'm getting, I'm like impressed. And his uncle was like, then no money. Sorry, I'm not interested in one film. And like, he fucking caves like a month later. It's like, God damn it. I'll fucking give you the money for the one movie. Right.

[00:33:42] Like this guy just, it's the chess thing. He knew how to like get in people's heads and outplay them very quietly, you know? Howard Sackler. Uh-huh. Who eventually is going to be a Pulitzer Prize winning playwright who writes The Great White Hope in the 60s. Right.

[00:33:59] Is a high school friend of his or whatever. And he had written this little screenplay called The Trap. And this is fear and desire. This is what they make. They were going to shoot it in New York, but it was too cold.

[00:34:10] So they go to California, the San Gabriel Mountains outside Los Angeles. Kubrick's the camera operator and the director. They had three Mexican laborers who carried the equipment. That's the only crew, essentially, that there is. It was less than 15 people, including the full cast. Right.

[00:34:25] Worked on the movie in totality. At least in terms of shooting. Because you've also got Kubrick's wife, actors, a couple other friends apparently. For sure. Some sort of like, yes. He shot it on a 35 millimeter Mitchell camera, rented it for $25 a day. Shot it without sound though. Yes.

[00:34:43] Was the prevalent technique, especially for documentary filmmaking, where you would just dub it in later. Do it later. Because it's too hard to mic up. It's a fucking sound technology. Hold a boom. You see these guys? He hated the way the bloom interfered with his lighting setups.

[00:34:58] Like he was just like, I'll do this later. And and so he wanted he wanted the thing to be silent. He wasn't even going to dub it over. He wanted to be silent. And then they watched it and he was like, God damn it.

[00:35:09] I fucking got to go in and add all the sound and. Rerecord all the dialogue. And then it like tripled his budget. It was a huge mistake on his part, he said, because shooting the movie still cost $9000. And all the post stuff cost $30,000. So that's not great.

[00:35:24] But he didn't know what he was doing, but he's learning. He'd never used a movie camera like this before. The Mitchell that he's using, he's learning that too. He's learning how to like load film, 35 millimeter film and all that.

[00:35:35] Dave and I were texting about this while I was watching the film. But, you know, a lot of first films on this podcast. And sometimes you see them where you're like, holy fucking shit. How's this person's first film? Right.

[00:35:49] And usually the answer is they there was there was some gradual process working up to that. Right. Nora Afron established herself as a writer and then as a screenwriter. By the time she's directing her own film, she's been on sets a lot.

[00:36:03] She's dealt with studio politic and what have you. You know, the Wachowskis were doing like for hire screenwriting specs, scripts, whatever. Like all these people have these things. The hardest thing to do is, I think, to not even step foot onto a production for the first time.

[00:36:19] As a director, when you've never done it before, but to like make your own production. So he's not even stepping into like an established studio system thing. He's bringing a bunch of friends out to the fucking woods of California

[00:36:30] with equipment he rented and assuming he knows what he's doing. And like Christopher Nolan's first movie following is like this, where it was like shot over four years, renting out the footage whenever there was a free

[00:36:41] the equipment, whenever there was a free weekend, doing it with his friends, whatever. And when you watch a movie like that, it's like, oh, it's really impressive when you consider you're watching this guy figuring it out in real time. This movie is interesting because he doesn't really.

[00:36:58] He doesn't figure it out. No, I mean, this is not a good movie. The killer's case, you throw this on your like beginning, middle and end. Right. Thrilling sequences. Yeah. Some really interesting photography. This is a movie.

[00:37:09] Some interesting thing. I went to see it in the theater and I was like, even though it's short and I was like, I had a good time with the theater. If I saw fear and desire, I'd be like, what the fuck is this shit?

[00:37:18] Like not knowing that it's Stanley. Yeah. I'd be like, oh, there's a couple of ideas here. But like, I would basically think like, is this a student film? Right. We'll talk about that. The cast, Frank Silvera, who's also in killer's kiss is the only like real actor here.

[00:37:33] And he's good. He's got more pizzazz. He's good. I think Misurski is kind of good. You think Misurski is kind of good because he's Paul Misurski. I don't think he's like amazing, but it is interesting to see him.

[00:37:44] He was working for me before I put together. It was Paul Misurski. So the guy who's the creep in fear and desire with that's a guy who becomes a very good filmmaker. Did the Harry Panto, which we were disparaging in a recent episode,

[00:37:56] but Bob and Carol Ted and Alice are unmarried woman. Yeah, sort of a films comedy drama legend of the early drama. Seventies. Yeah. Actors director, Virginia Life Leaf. I'm not sure how you say her last name, but, you know, she's in some movies.

[00:38:12] What's it called? The man with the screaming brain. What's that movie? The brain that wouldn't die. Now, the screen brains of Bruce Campbell. Very good name. I know. I mean, I like that. Bruce Campbell. It's like 2000s. He did his sort of homage to Corman movies.

[00:38:25] I think it's called the man with the screaming brain. The way Misurski puts Kubrick is here he is, right? He's doing it all. He's doing the lighting. He's doing the camera work. He's doing the editing. He doesn't know how to talk to actors.

[00:38:35] There's not a lot of guidance from him on that front. Which he's not worked with actors at all at this point. He's just had to step back and observe people doing their thing. Frank Silvera at one point has a story. They had run out of money, I guess.

[00:38:49] And Frank Silvera was like, well, I'm getting my money no matter what. I'll tell you that right now. And he got his money, I guess. I guess he was worried that they would have no movie and he would not get paid. But they do figure it out.

[00:39:03] But it does just feel like a lot of the stories are like the thing he had not yet figured out at all is how to direct actors or anything like that. And then there's the other thing you said about the dubbing and all that.

[00:39:15] A lot of mistakes are being made. It's partly why he disowns this movie probably. I know. But for me, that's not even my issue with this film. I don't think they had a clear enough story. There's not really a story.

[00:39:28] Right. That's the thing, because I'm like, I love watching fucking rough primordial first films from directors. Such as? What's a good version of this, right? Well, I agree. I think Following is a good version of this. Yes. In that it's reasonably entertaining. You see the pieces.

[00:39:45] Following is a better movie. It's not. It's not a great film. Great. Right. But at least it's something. And I kind of like these early films where the filmmaker's process is so apparent.

[00:39:58] I mean, a movie that I think is great is, which I saw for the first time recently, Story of a Three Day Pass, the Melvin Van Peebles movie, which was similarly a first film that he kind of scraped together outside of the system.

[00:40:10] That movie's got such incredible feeling in it. I mean, the fucking original version of Shadows is unwatchable. It's tough to watch. I've watched that. No, no. I mean, literally, it's the one he won't let anyone see. Oh, you mean, oh, I've never seen. No.

[00:40:25] But I think the version of Shadows that exists is like that. Is similarly like, there's interesting stuff in here. It's very much a first film. It's a movie. Right. And then Faces is like a first proper film. I remember I watched Shadows because it was,

[00:40:36] was it restored and there was like a New Yorker article maybe about the restoration? Yeah. Like, oh, this lost, like, you know. And like, I remember I watched it as a teenager and walked away just being like,

[00:40:46] I don't know what, like, I might as well have just read the magazine article. I don't know what I'm supposed to take away from this. I'm thinking what the guy's name is. I think it's maybe M.T. Carney, who's like the leading Cassavetes historian,

[00:40:57] uncovered the first version of Shadows, which Cassavetes hates so much. He like put it in a box and said, like, no one will ever see this and reshot the movie entirely with different actors. And then he got a copy and was- Ray Carney perhaps? Yes. Thank you. Yes.

[00:41:11] Was going to restore it and release it. And Jenna Rollins, and I'm forgetting the guy's name. He was Cassavetes producer, blocked it from happening. But like, I wonder if that movie looks like this. Uh, they get, um, the music done by Gerald Fried,

[00:41:28] who is like some oboe major at Juilliard that Alex Singer knows. He's like the only musician he knows. It's a lot of shit like that, right? You know, just sort of bringing in people. He says the music was supposed to mourn the world's innocence. Okay.

[00:41:41] Did you get that from the music? Sure. Okay, cool. The movie is then retitled Shape of Fear. And Kubrick is looking for a distributor. I mean, especially in the fifties, this is an insane way to make a movie. This isn't how you do it. No, not at all.

[00:41:54] You don't make a full-ish, you know, like a 60 minute movie. No. With no real plot about like soldiers in a war who are like, who meet a woman and then try and find a distributor. I mean, like that's- No.

[00:42:06] No, this movie also feels like it's like adapted from a poem. Like it doesn't even feel like it's a short story adapted to an hour. It feels like it's, they had an idea of a feeling and a theme and is not really dramatized.

[00:42:19] And there'll be moments that are kind of gripping, but it's like, he's basically got the thing of like, in war men go crazy to become so overtaken by their primal fear and desire. Right? Like that's his whole fucking thing.

[00:42:30] And then you're just sort of like at minute 10, you're like, I get it. Yeah. Because at times I'm like, is this kind of referencing the Spanish-American war? The Spanish-American war or the Spanish civil war? The Spanish-American war. I don't know. Which took place on an island, right?

[00:42:47] Well, I mean, obviously it's coming out during the Korean war. No, I know. And maybe there's some- Referencing a past conflict. The opening narration I found so interesting because it felt like- War is mostly Cuban, Puerto Rico.

[00:43:00] It's abstracting the war and being like the enemy doesn't matter where they are, doesn't matter. They're in the primal state of war. And then the movie doesn't feel like it's really doing that. And I wonder if the narration is just him being like,

[00:43:12] I don't want to have to fucking pick. Like it almost feels like a Top Gun Maverick thing of just like, just let me tell a story about war without like- Right. Without it being a specific war. Being anything. I don't know. Yeah.

[00:43:22] He eventually gets an indie film distributor called Joseph Burstyn, who released foreign films like Rome Open City or Bicycle Thieves. Sure. He sees it- Good movies by the way. Those are good movies. Yeah. He sees fear and desire and says he's a genius.

[00:43:37] This is an American art picture without any artiness. I don't know what that means. I don't either. I guess it's also hard to identify at this point because it's stuff that we just take as a given.

[00:43:46] But there must be shit that if you're watching this movie in the early 1950s, you're like, fuck, I haven't seen that technique before. This is poetic. There's no scene enemy. Like what does it mean? So it gets our head distribution. It gets a couple of reviews.

[00:43:59] With the newness of it is gripping enough to overwhelm the fact that there's not a lot going on. You know? It makes no money. But when Kubrick later gets money, he pays back his investor. Nice. Yes. Kind. Um, but- Well kind, better. Thoughtful. Fucking real-

[00:44:16] Yeah, I guess a little bar, but you hear so often about people not doing that. Kubrick is embarrassed by this movie. Yeah, it doesn't like it. This owns it. It's not a film I remember with any pride, he says.

[00:44:27] The ideas we put across were good, but we had no experience to embody them dramatically. It was really just a 35 millimeter version of what a class of film students would do in 16 millimeters. Yeah.

[00:44:36] And you feel like if he was in film school, he would have made a 15 minute version of this and got it out of his system rather than having to put on it. This needs to be a commercial enterprise. I'm raising money.

[00:44:45] I have to make it back by distributing it. It's the challenging thing of this medium that we all love and we've been talking about on this podcast for how many fricking years? You need a lot of people and a lot of equipment and a lot of planning.

[00:44:58] It's not like something that you can just, oh, I want to try this out. No, it's why film school is popular because it's like, you know, art school for other concentrations is teaching you technique, form, all of that.

[00:45:11] Film school is also giving you the structure of like the school is operating like a studio. The crew is going to be your classmates. You know, there's common equipment you're all renting and sharing. Like it's hard to do it outside of that.

[00:45:26] And the people who get there without going to film school, as I said, tend to take circuitous paths and work their way up to the position of director, having first done other things surrounding a film production.

[00:45:39] In 1999, Mazursky remembered that at one point John Borman was going to introduce this print of Fear and Desire that had been rediscovered at like Telly Ride or something. Sure. And Stanley called him up and was like, please don't. I hate that movie. Don't do that.

[00:45:53] So Ed Borman was like, okay. It's like me when people try to share pictures of the two years where I had long hair. Oh, wow. Sure. Or when they try and screen butt whistle at Telly Ride or whatever. Well, no, that's probably the best movie ever. Fair enough.

[00:46:07] Um, I want to see this long hair pic. I think I've seen a couple long hair grifts. Dad, it's not your best look. It was not. This one is like 13. Yeah. I want to look like Tom Cruise. It's a little stringy.

[00:46:19] Is from what I remember of like a Facebook photo I saw or whatever. A little more caratopy. That sounds great. I kept on being like, when is it going to flip back like Tom Cruise? And no one explained to me you have curly hair.

[00:46:31] Maybe someone could have sat you down. My parents made several mistakes. Go on. That's it with fear and desire. Do we want to talk about the plot of fear and desire? Act one. Soldiers are walking around. Yeah. They're stranded. Their plane went down. Their plane went down.

[00:46:46] They're trying to get back across enemy lines. Starting to feel a little bit tense. And then they find a raft. So there's some raft business. And then they see a girl, a peasant girl who does not speak their language, I guess. She doesn't talk.

[00:47:00] The poster refers to as half animal. Yeah. She seems pretty calm. Right. But between the opening narration and that tagline of the poster, I was like, is Stanley going supernatural? Is there some fucking twist here?

[00:47:10] And it's like, no, they're saying she's half animal because she doesn't speak English. Tie her up to a tree. I don't really know why. I guess for her to not reveal them, their position. Yeah. And then and then Mazursky kind of goes.

[00:47:21] Mazursky is left alone with her and goes nuts and unbelts her. And she tries to escape and he shoots her. And then eventually Frank Silvera, who's the one with a little more chazaz, goes off on his own.

[00:47:36] And so he's sort of on a raft for a while kind of talking to himself. Right. Because once you get tied to the tree, I was like, so is this whole movie? Is this the drama? Right. In the woods. Is this it? Right.

[00:47:44] The presence of a woman finally unraveling them. Or is it is it the unravel of the accidental death and the cover up or whatever? And it's like, no, that's sort of just a thing that happens. Well, also, the the youngest soldier loses it. Right.

[00:47:58] And his like his like the way he's playing shell shocked or whatever. It's it's so it's so crazy. And like day one, like acting stuff. It's the other thing. I mean, I just find it fun.

[00:48:12] But it's the other thing that Kubrick becomes famous for this very clamp down, toned down acting style. Right. OK, it's not naturalistic because it's very stylized, but he likes sort of bottled emotions. He likes quiet. He likes stillness. He likes all these things.

[00:48:28] It's weird to watch these first couple of movies where you do have people who are still going like, you see here, you know, I've gone badly. Like, yeah, it's going to iron all of that out of his cinematic language. Once he realizes how to control actors. What else?

[00:48:44] Well, then there's the weird thing where we suddenly are cutting to these two generals just talking in a room, which I think the like, well, it's it's cool. Interesting. It's a yes. But you are kind of like, who's this? Right.

[00:48:59] You know, like just if you're again, just trying to follow a plot here. Right. You're like, I don't really understand. But yes, they are. The almost feels like a grand illusion thing where you like you then cut to the office and

[00:49:08] you stay in their perspective for a while. You know? Yes. It's interesting. Yeah, it's a very interesting idea. It just kind of comes out of nowhere. Sure. But it partly just sort of seems motivated by like, look, we only have so many locations and actors.

[00:49:21] So yeah, we'll just cut to them. Once again, this thing shouldn't be an hour. I don't know who I'm saying this to. Like Stanley. Right. Cut it down. And then they kill the enemy general and escape and then they get on the raft. Yeah.

[00:49:39] War is bad for the human psyche. That's pretty much what this movie is saying, which I agree with. I'm no more convinced by the end of it. Right. I was talking the other day about how anytime I watch a war film, I'm just like, you should

[00:49:52] stop doing this. Oh, that's right. You're not a big war film guy. No, because I just I go like everyone should just meet in the middle and go like, just leave. Just leave. Yeah. So they tend to. What the fuck are we doing here? Yeah.

[00:50:06] I mean, if human history has shown us anything is that I think we're working towards eventually coming to that conclusion. Gotta leave. Very gotta leave and just, you know, shake hands. Yeah, sure. What are we doing here? What is it good for? One might ask. Yeah. Hey.

[00:50:23] Good God. Good God. Y'all. All right. So this movie makes no money. One would think. Oh yeah. I guess we might as well just do it now. Do we want to do the box office game for fear and desire? Absolutely.

[00:50:35] Oh, you guys just got so much more excited. I know, right? That's why I'm throwing it in here. Thank God we didn't do this. We need to do a bump. Thank God we didn't do this as just a solo episode. Yep. All right.

[00:50:48] The box office game for fear and desire, which came out the 1st of April, 1980, 1953 or something open to zero. Yeah. I mean, like, look, I'm doing my best here. Yeah. Number one at the box office is a musical film. Do I need to hear again? Sorry. 1953. Okay.

[00:51:03] Musical film directed by Walter Lang based on a stage musical. Okay. Not one I really know. Okay. Starring, you know, a famous musical actress. Color picture? I think it is in color. Is it an Ethel Merman? It is an Ethel Merman. Okay. You nailed it. Okay. It's a 1953.

[00:51:27] It's also got Donald O'Connor. Is it anything goes? It's not anything goes. Okay. But Donald O'Connor and Ethel Merman did do an anything goes movie. But that's not what this is. I know. This is set in Washington, D.C.

[00:51:41] And it's about a socialite who is appointed ambassador to a tiny fake country. Did you know this title? Have you heard of this movie before? No, no, I don't think I do. The songs are by Irving Berlin. Okay. George Sanders is also in this movie.

[00:51:58] I don't know it. Is it called those fat cats up on Capitol Hill? Essentially. I mean, this is wild, but is it Dr. Doom? Dr. Doom? A fake country. Yeah. It's not the musical Dr. Doom. As good as that would be.

[00:52:16] Yeah, that was 51 when Ethel Merman played Victor von Doom in a musical. That was 51 then. That's the only thing that's foolish about your guesses. Wrong year. The movie is called Call Me Madam. Okay. Yeah. No, I did. All right. At least I guess Ethel.

[00:52:31] I get half credit for that or something. No, I mean, Ethel was kind of a good one there. Yeah. All right. So the next one is... Remember when Ethel Merman and Irving Borg and I were married for like two hours? Sure.

[00:52:43] And then they were like, we got married at sex and we were like, what are we doing here? God, it looks... Terrible. This is going to gross everyone out for decades. That's later in life too. I think she would... Yeah. This is awful. We all make mistakes.

[00:52:58] That's what she said about her many marriages. In her autobiography, Merman... Merman? Merman. It's called Merman? It's called Merman. Okay. I just read that as cold red that is Merman. Yeah. In her autobiography, Merman, the chapter titled My Marriage to Ernest Borg-9 consists of one blank page.

[00:53:18] Pretty good burn. That's a good bit. All right. Number two at the box office. It's a biblical drama based on a famous biblical figure who has been dramatized many times. King of Kings? No, it's directed by William D. Terrell. D. Terrell. Is it a Jesus movie?

[00:53:37] Who's the guy who made like... It's not a Jesus movie. He made Life of Emile Zola and Story of Louis Pasteur. A lot of those famous old biopics. So it's like the David O. Russell of his time. He's a guaranteed Oscar for any of his actors. Yeah.

[00:53:49] And he was always screaming at Lily Tomlin. This is a Rita Hayworth film. It's a Rita Hayworth film. Biblical figures. Did she marry Magdalene? No. I'm not gonna get it. I'm not gonna get it? I don't think so. What is it? It's probably some of the other actors.

[00:54:04] Charles Lawton. Okay. Okay. Stuart Grainger. You know him? He's in the Hitchcock movies. Is it Moses? Is it a Moses movie? This is why you're not gonna guess. It's Salome. Salome. Oh, okay. Salome? Yeah, I don't know. Salome, is that it? I think so.

[00:54:20] They're always doing him, her. They're always doing her. Yeah, sure. Isn't it Pacino who's always doing Salome? Yeah. Anyway. He did Salome with Jessica Chastain, and then he made a documentary about himself making Salome. This is the thing. All right, so we're moving on. Who's Salome?

[00:54:32] She's like a biblical princess, like from, you know, the daughter of Herod II. She's, you know, it's a whole thing. Anyway, we're not gonna talk about it. No, I don't need to know. We're moving on to a movie we've all heard of. It's animated.

[00:54:45] Do you think there are people yelling at us right now? The way people yell at us when we're disrespectful to certain genres. We're like, who the fuck's Salome? Probably. Sorry, Queen Salome, if I said your name wrong. Yeah. Salome, Salome. Maybe I'm wrong.

[00:55:02] Number three at the box office is an animated film. Number three at the box office. From the Walt Disney Corporation. Animated film in 52. Three! Fuck. In 53. Would it be? It's only been out for about a month. Sleeping Beauty? No. Is that earlier or later? Later. It's later.

[00:55:22] Sleeping Beauty is 59. Okay, 59. Is it Cinderella? It's not Cinderella. That is 50. Is it a princess? No. It's not. No. 52. Oh, Cinderella. Three! Oh my god. 53. Not a princess. No, it's a hero. It's a hero. Yes. In 53. It's not Pinocchio. It's not Bambi. No. It's not... Jumbo Book.

[00:55:52] It's not 101 Dalmatians. No. Those are later. Those are all later. Bambi and Pinocchio earlier. It's not Fantasia. No, that's very early. I'm aware. So why'd you bring it up? Because I'm rolling things out. I'm not embarrassing. I'm special. I think this came later. Goofy movie?

[00:56:09] It's a goofy movie, yes. It's extremely goofy. Only 50s kids understand. No, it is being remade for Disney+, I think, very soon. Oh, is it Sword in the Stone? No. Fuck! That's 63, baby. It's Peter Pan. It's Peter Pan. Disney's Peter Pan. Sorry. A good movie.

[00:56:30] Yeah, I like Peter Pan. Captain Hook? Yeah, best ride of all time, maybe. Okay, I don't know from your rides. You will. Someday I'll make you on a fucking little pirate ship. What do you have to go to Neverland or something?

[00:56:39] And you'll be charmed and it will cost $8,000. God. Anyway, so Peter Pan, that's number three at the box office. Number four at the box office is an Oscar-winning film. That is about a place, a location. Hawaii? No, like a club. I'm gonna be honest with you.

[00:57:04] It's a club. Club Cabana? No, but you know, yes, a club of that kind of renown. It won Best Actor, I wanna say, right? Yes. No, no, I'm sorry, you know what? It was only nominated, but it did win some design Oscars. Huh. Moulin Rouge?

[00:57:21] It's Moulin, John Huston's Moulin Rouge with Jose Ferrer and Zsa Zsa Gabor. Yeah. Is Jose Ferrer a Toulouse-Lautrec in that? He sure is. Wow. Is he dorphing yet? I don't know. I mean, I assume so, right? Shoes on his knees? He was a very short man, yes.

[00:57:36] I mean, didn't Leguizamo do something like that too? Well, but that's Baz Luhrmann. I'm sure he did a version of it that cost $1 million per minute. Well, Leguizamo was very short. He wasn't just dorphing. He's not quite as short as Toulouse-Lautrec. He was a straight dorp.

[00:57:49] But yeah, I've never seen it. I've always wondered about it. It was a big hit at the time, Moulin Rouge. Yeah, yeah. But obviously, it's mostly about Toulouse-Lautrec and all that. Right. That's number four. And number five at the box office, look. I mean— Just tell me.

[00:58:04] It's about—the name of the movie, it's like a Hollywood big musical. The name of the movie is just the name of a famous author. William Shakespeare? No, it's an author who did fairy tales. Hans Christian Andersen. Correct. And what is this movie's star? This movie stars—

[00:58:23] Have you ever heard of the movie Hans Christian Andersen? Yes, no, I've seen this one. It's Danny Kaye. Danny Kaye, that's right. I've seen this movie. Farley Granger. I've never seen it. My mother liked it.

[00:58:31] My dad really liked Danny Kaye, and I've seen like Walter Mitty and stuff. I've never seen that one. Yeah, Court Jester. I mean, that's the best one. Court Jester is good. I just remember when we first got a DVD player in like year 2000 or whatever. Yeah.

[00:58:43] And we had like five DVDs. And my mom was like, I decided to buy a DVD. And she put Hans Christian Andersen on the shelf. That's number six. Like we never had that many VHSs and like suddenly we have DVDs.

[00:58:56] And it's like, oh, we have Nightmare Before Christmas and The Matrix and Blazing Saddles and like a couple of things. Then she's like, I'm adding to the shelf. Well, she's allowed. She was, but everyone was like, are you going to watch that a lot?

[00:59:06] And she was like, maybe I will. And I don't think she ever did. I remember watching it with Romilly once though. It's fine. I think Walter Mitty and Court Jester were the ones we had on video or whatever. Court Jester is the one that's like still funny. Yeah.

[00:59:23] Is Walter Mitty funny? Walter Mitty's got- He has the fantasies. It's got some good sections in it. It's got a good number, Boris Karloff's in it. He's kind of fun. It's got some fun stuff. And I mean, I haven't seen them since I was a kid.

[00:59:33] Anyway, that's the box office. But this is the problem with Walter Mitty is people get so obsessed with how to fucking dramatize Walter Mitty. And it's like he goes on a bunch of dreams without stakes. Right. And he has his fantasies. He has some fun little-

[00:59:44] He has quite some fancy. Yeah. All right. Some of the other movies in the top 10 this week. There's a movie called Off Limits. Okay. Which stars Bob Hope. We love Bob Hope, right? Yeah. Is it a comedy? I'm trying to find out more about it.

[00:59:56] There's another movie called Off Limits, but that's not what I'm looking for. Looking for 1953 Bob Hope and Mickey Rooney. It's about, oh, Mickey Rooney plays a boxer who's been drafted. And Hope has to enlist-

[01:00:09] He's his manager and he has to enlist in the army to keep an eye on him. That sounds fun. Yeah. I would get more excited about the premise. The heightening of it is just his manager also has to go into the army. You know what?

[01:00:21] Why don't you go fucking make a boxer movie then, you dick. Maybe I will. Maybe I will. Maybe I will. You've got Trouble Along the Way, which is a movie with- I just feel like we have to talk about it briefly, you know?

[01:00:36] Because it's like we never talk about this shit. No. A movie directed by Michael Curtis. Oh, okay. Who made a little movie called Casablanca. Ever heard of it? Curtis. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Was he Hungarian, I think? Starring that iconic rom-com duo, John Wayne and Donna Reed. Oh boy.

[01:00:54] Does that sound fun? Yeah. Those two? Yeah. It's called Trouble Along the Way. Okay. Is it a Western? No, it's like there's a Catholic school that's in trouble, dire financial straits. Okay. And so the rector, who's played by Charles Coburn, has to hire a former big-time football coach,

[01:01:16] John Wayne, the Duke himself, in the hope of getting a sports program so they can get some money in, I guess. And it turns out that, I guess, Donna Reed is a social worker who's maybe trying to fight him and they're going to figure it out.

[01:01:32] I don't know. Again, it sounds kind of convoluted. Yeah. It also sounds like this was the 50s equivalent of Kindergarten Cop. Where it's like, can we put John Wayne somewhere he doesn't belong? A school! It's one of those things. Yeah, right. You'll never believe. I don't know.

[01:01:47] It's one of those things where they're fighting over this and then they eventually fall out. John Wayne impression. There's a John Wayne clip from some movie, I don't know the name, where it's him by a lake

[01:01:59] and there's this kid and I guess they're fishing or something and the kid's like, I can't swim. Do you know what I'm talking about? No. John Wayne's like, what do you mean you can't swim? And then he just takes the kid and throws him in the lake.

[01:02:12] You're not thinking of Frankenstein? No, I know that this is a John Wayne clip. Okay. All right. It's highly recommended. I'll put the link in the description. Please. We have another movie in the box office called I Love Melvin,

[01:02:26] starring Donald O'Connor once again and Debbie Reynolds, reunited from Singing in the Rain. Donald O'Connor, the Ryan Reynolds of his day. And in this movie, Donald O'Connor plays a Look magazine photographer. Hey! I think Kubrick saw this and was like, excuse me. I don't know.

[01:02:43] Maybe he didn't care. Then there's also I Confess, which I feel like that was a big movie. Yeah, that's a... That's of the time. That's a Hitchcock, obviously, with Monty Clift himself. Never seen. It's a Hitchcock I've never seen. Yeah. And then Bawana Devil is the 10th movie.

[01:02:58] Oh yeah, that was the first 3D movie, I believe. I believe that gets credit for being the first. It is the first feature length 3D film. It's got a lion in it. Sounds cool. Yeah. Robert Stack. Unsolved Mysteries.

[01:03:13] Yeah, but in this one, the mystery has been solved and it's lions. Sure. You gotta watch out for them while you're building a railroad. That's what it's about. I gotta watch that someday. Moving on. Here, because you're the 3D boy. I love 3D.

[01:03:24] Fear and Desire makes no money. Stanley Kubrick has no money. Oh no. No one wants him to make any, you know, movies, right? End of career. Thank you for listening to our mini series on Stanley Kubrick. It would be funny if he was like, forget it! I'll toothpaste.

[01:03:39] So he writes another script. He's like, fuck it. I'll do it myself again. Yeah. And in the contrast of the first one, this one was nothing but action sequences strung together on a mechanically constructed gangster plot. And that's this movie? Well, yes.

[01:03:52] Or is this a film that doesn't get made? I don't know. Well, let me keep going. Because the crucial thing, of course, is in between, he does make the Seafarers. Right. He makes on contract for the Seafarers International Union. Right. And obviously... It's a four hire gig.

[01:04:05] It's a four hire gig. It's just to make some money. It's also the first time he shoots in color for the first time. And he won't do it again until Spartacus. But he is starting, yes, I think Killer's Kiss is the script that he's shopping around.

[01:04:18] He eventually raises $40,000, mostly coming from a Bronx pharmacist. That's the pharmacist, Morris Boussel. Okay. The other one was a drugstore. You know, all right. A candy shop guy. I don't know. A druggist. A druggist. And they shoot... He got $15,000 from a soda jerk.

[01:04:36] And they shoot this movie in New York City, guerrilla style. Okay. No permits. Any scene you see in this movie that's like on the streets? And there are a few. They just fucking, you know, did it sub rosa. You know, they were just like, okay, start rolling.

[01:04:50] You know. Another just funny thing to contrast with his career ending with Eyes Wide Shut, where he's like, I'm going to fucking make my own New York City. I have no interest in being in the streets of New York City.

[01:04:58] I don't want to deal with those elements at all. So he hires a sound team, this guy. Nat Boxer is the lead of his sound team. But then he fires him. Nat Boxer's the lead of his sound team, but also a boxer, the lead of his picture.

[01:05:10] Very true. But he fires Nat Boxer because he doesn't like all his equipment. He thinks the equipment stinks. I guess he doesn't like all their business. Okay. You know, he's like, I set up this shot and they're like, well, we need to put a microphone there.

[01:05:25] And Kubrick says, cut. You don't make a movie that way. You guys are all fired. Oh, great. He does the same fucking thing again where they shoot it without sound and dub over every line of dialogue. Yeah, it's crazy.

[01:05:34] And once again, he's kind of just doing it all himself. You know, so many of the cameras, he's just loading the film himself. I will say the dubbing in both of these films is pretty strong.

[01:05:45] I think when you watch a lot of other movies from this era, it feels a lot more disconnected. Can I say though something to the way you're talking about the sound?

[01:05:52] I feel like I watch still now, like contemporary movies and it sounds like shit in a way where I'm like, is this just kind of continued with film production where sound just kind of gets the short shrift comparatively to the visual aspect?

[01:06:10] I think everything is generally too rushed these days. And I think the visuals also are being rushed. And it's just easier to fix visuals in post than it is to fix sound. Because the way to fix sound is to re-record it and often it just sounds inorganic.

[01:06:30] It doesn't. I will say another thing, though. Yeah. And I think this is a plague, modern plague. Is that everything is mixed badly for home. This is where the music is always too loud and the dialogue is always too quiet.

[01:06:41] And it's something to do with, you know, I don't know how like sports and other TV stuff is mixed or something, but like it's a nightmare. It really is. Now the TVs will sometimes have sort of like cinema mode on sound as well, but even it's

[01:06:54] not that good. No. And so you can't hear the fucking dialogue. And then you turn it up and then someone like, you know, closes the door and it's like boom. Like what the hell? Excuse me.

[01:07:05] It is another pox of like, I mean, and this has affected visuals in a different way, but the sort of like, how do we make things that will play properly on a phone?

[01:07:17] Like it's not like they all are designed for the phone, but they need to not thinking about the phone. It's the reason why like every Netflix thing has like the look that's like a little too sharp, a little too clean, a little too vibrant.

[01:07:32] Even if it's going for dark and murky, it's like the most vibrant noir you've ever seen because it just everything has to be like so vivid. Kubrick does not like Killer's Kiss much either, right? He calls it a frivolous movie, amateurish, badly developed.

[01:07:49] But as you say, he does at least accept it as a film. Right. No, just what I find surprising and why I called out when you said this was the script he designed to just have all the action beats. Yeah.

[01:08:00] This movie is so much more of a romance than I thought it would be. Like I thought this was going to be just sort of like, well, a guy and a girl and a gun and right. This movie is really about like her. Yeah.

[01:08:11] And also the thing is love of her rather than her being like an element. That's the thing you keep thinking, like when will these plots intertwine in some plotty way of like it turns out she's I don't know. The double cross. Yeah, exactly.

[01:08:28] She's been in on it a lot all along or something and then they fall in love anyway. You're waiting for some double indemnity thing. It's like, no, they just live next to each other. Right.

[01:08:35] And they just have this sort of tender romance of they're both kind of like people who've been disregarded by society. They're exactly there. They want to stick out and they're just in the, you know, in the middle of nothing. Yeah.

[01:08:46] I just feel like even when when like the love of a good woman, the idea of getting out and starting a new life is sort of the motivation for these movies. They're a lot more concerned with the crime.

[01:08:56] And this movie is so much more concerned with the time the two of them spend together. And it's kind of lovely. It's just odd for him to be like, and now I'm just going to design a fucking potboiler. Like, here's his balls to the wall.

[01:09:09] Give you all the meat and potatoes. Well, I guess it's just very. And he's not thought of as an emotional filmmaker. It's very light on detail. Right. Yes, is the way to put it. But it does have these kind of tender recollections.

[01:09:22] It has the very long sequence where she talks about her mother and flashback and the woman's dancing and all that. It's kind of incredible. Super interesting. This is not some like usual, like you say, potboiler thing.

[01:09:35] And also more interesting when you consider that's his wife at the time. Right. That's Ruth Sabaka. Her whole thing was she was sort of aging out of her dance career. That's sort of like a swan song for her as a performer. Right.

[01:09:46] Because at this point, she's in her 30s, I think, when she's making this movie. Yeah. And she's getting, you know, that's older for, you know, a ballet dancer. I love the motif kind of with really the other two main characters. You keep seeing everyone's family photos. Yeah.

[01:10:01] It's like just nice little touch that humanizes all of them. Including the guy who runs, what do they call it? The Pleasure Land. Well, it's the second time this year we've covered a movie about fucking taxi dancers. Yeah, it's true. Weary taxi dancers. Weary taxi dancers.

[01:10:21] Looking for love. Looking for something better. Pestered by crappy guys. Yeah. Including Frank Silvera, who plays the evil Vin. Can I call out one technique thing I liked in Fear and Desire I forgot to mention? Yeah. When Mazurska accidentally kills the woman. Yeah.

[01:10:42] She's lying there, and I think it's Silvera who's like checking her body. Yeah. They cut to a POV shot. I know. Of him waving his hand in front of her eyes. It's one of the coolest like little things in the movie. And it's kind of a quick pop.

[01:10:56] You see his hand sort of above her head. Then you see from her dead POV the hand wave, and then it cuts to him running his hand on her neck, checking for a pulse. There's something very eerie about it because he's getting at something of like, well,

[01:11:12] you usually don't see POV shots of people who are dead, but also your role as an audience member is closer to that of a corpse. You cannot affect the action of this film. You know? Sure. I don't know. No, it's cool. You're right.

[01:11:25] I thought that was a cool shot. I feel like there's that, and there was one other shot in Fear and Desire that I thought was cool. Those are the two things that I know I don't. And I watched it like yesterday. Yeah. Killer's Kiss.

[01:11:36] You've got Davey, the boxer, played by Jamie Smith. Kind of looks like Kirk Douglas. It's kind of got a Douglas-y jaw. Sure. And then you've got Gloria is the taxi dancer, played by Irene Payne. Who later becomes one of the early CNN onscreen personalities. Is that true?

[01:11:56] She becomes like a writer. Yes. She hosted a show called Media Matters, I want to say. Media Watch. Media Watch, sorry. And she wrote a bunch of celebrity autobiographies. Yeah. She wrote one for Betty Ford, Rosalind Russell. Right. She changed her name.

[01:12:07] She went back to her birth name. Yeah. Yeah. Chase? Chris Chase. Yeah. That's funny. Or well, actually, her birth name was Irene Greenguard. Weird. But she married a Chase. Three different names. What can I tell you? But she's pretty good. Yeah. Would you say?

[01:12:23] Yeah, I liked her in this. Yeah. And he's, you know, he's got the right. He cuts the right figure. Yeah. I guess. Yeah. It's the same guy. Yeah. And then you got Frank Silvera. That's kind of it.

[01:12:34] And like you say, Sabaka as the dancer in that sort of one amazing sequence. And they just live next to each other, right? He lives in a shitty apartment. Yeah. She lives in a shitty apartment. They look at each other through the window, right?

[01:12:47] Like that's the only setup for Killer's Kiss. Shot that's so good. What is it where he's shaving? And then you see his mirror. And you see in the mirror her window. Do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah, it's like the night before the fight.

[01:13:00] He's like kind of you get like a 360 of his room. Yeah. And I think at one point you can kind of see through the mirror her. Right. It's like through the mirror. You see the reflection of her window that he's looking at over his shoulder.

[01:13:18] It's just a really it's an interesting like, oh, they're so close. And yet they haven't made that. They haven't breached that line yet. Kind of run one shot. Yeah, because with those air shafts a lot of times in New York City, I mean, some of them.

[01:13:29] I've seen people's places where it's like the apartments like you could reach into the other apartment take shit off their windowsill. But they're truly in another building. You guys don't have the same entrance. No, you're in a different building. It's very unusual.

[01:13:43] But you could you could fucking throw a soup can with a string over to them. And yeah, right. That was my apartment that I grew up in. You could see into the next building over.

[01:13:51] It's obviously not a thing that's only unique to New York, but New York is such a condensed city. You know, we're all so crammed here. It is that bizarre thing where it's like, especially when you're young and trying to

[01:14:03] fucking make your way, you're often living in an apartment where your view is of someone else's apartment and their apartment is a foot away from yours. And as you said, they're in a different building. Where do you think they live?

[01:14:15] Well, a lot of this movie is in Times Square. But that's sort of the places of business. I think right. That's just like where they were sort of. But maybe that looks kind of like a tenement. I would like guests like downtown. Yeah.

[01:14:26] What happens is he's a boxer. He loses a fight, right? And then he wakes up to her screaming and she's being pawed at by Vincent. Pawed at. I like when he pulls down the the blind and it doesn't work. Yeah, it goes back up again.

[01:14:41] And rather than even try it, he just runs off. Remember that? Yeah. Yeah. He's also nearing the end of his career. Davey is nearing the end of his career. He will never be a star boxer. It's not going to happen for him. Right. It's all downhill from here.

[01:14:54] And then that's when they finally meet up. And that's when she tells the long life story about her mother and all that. Right. Right. That's that sequence. Right. He sort of it comes to her aid and then there's this really sweet morning breakfast.

[01:15:09] So what are your what were your parents like? Kind of story. Swapping session. Another small detail is that she watched the fight. Yes. And is familiar with his loss and I feel like has gotten some information from Vincent. They're both looking to get out of Skid Row.

[01:15:29] Sony Pictures Animation developing an R-rated film from Genndy Tartatosky. Is this fixed or is this something else? Fixed. This was announced like five years ago. I'm a little encouraged that they're re-announcing it. This was announced after Hotel Transylvania 3.

[01:15:44] He said he was going to do that and he was doing there was a medieval like action movie. The something night the Black Knight maybe. He just signed a crazy big Cartoon Network HBO Max deal Warner Brothers deal. I just want to make another fucking movie.

[01:15:59] If he makes a movie we'll cover it on this podcast. I know. Yeah. I'm excited if it's moving forward. And they're just like let's go away together right? I mean it's like that's all it really they share the life stories basically

[01:16:09] and then they're just like let's go to this ranch. Yeah. Up in Seattle or whatever right like that's it. They're just gonna go away and so he's like all right I'll get there like my last share of the

[01:16:21] last fight I did she's like I'll get my back pay and she was also assaulted by her boss Vinny who sucks we should say also this is all being recollected by him in Penn Station. Oh yes. You get to see gorgeous old Penn Station. Oh my god.

[01:16:37] Yeah that's Penn Station bitch before we tore it down. Like fucking idiots. I mean of course we replaced it with something beautiful. Oh yeah. A tunnel in hell. The worst. Truly it's like enter hell to get on a train.

[01:16:54] That is what current Ben said but yeah used to be this gorgeous. Hell's cleaner. Hell's cleaner. Right hell's actually better run. Yeah. Hell they actually give you they deliver the torture quicker and more efficiently at least. Doesn't Getherd have that whole bit about Penn Station saying Giuliani forgot.

[01:17:09] One place he didn't get. He didn't get there. Now you have the fucking Moynihan Hall which looks more like this. You do it's it's trying at least to bring back like hey remember light natural light people like that to be upon them. Yes.

[01:17:25] But yeah no he's in Penn Station essentially waiting for a train and waiting for her. Right so the story is being recounted. It's kind of like how did I end up like this let me tell you.

[01:17:32] Yeah well and here's the thing with that framing device you're like he's gonna get fucking stood up you just feel it you can feel it in your bones and when she shows up it's just like I don't think this was designed to be the end of this film.

[01:17:45] That is true and the ending was forced on this movie I think so that's fair. Because the whole movie seems sort of nervously pacing back and forth. I also feel like in a train station I just think of like Casablanca or whatever like

[01:17:56] you're getting on that fucking train alone. Exactly that's what I'm saying. Yeah you're you're and you're gonna be like and it pulls away and the steam's going. If you start the movie with a guy pacing back and forth worrying about whether or not

[01:18:09] this connection is real and if she's gonna show up and if he's gonna be able to get away and have a life of his own I'm like you're setting me up for fucking poetic tragedy. Yes. Right?

[01:18:19] You're not setting me up for she's gonna run to the station and kiss him and hug him and the movie ends so abruptly. It does end abruptly but what else happens I mean what else happens before they have the giant fight in the mannequin. The mannequin fight.

[01:18:31] Which is the coolest part of the movie like I guess it's just like there's a thing in the alleyway. His manager is kind of mistaken for being. For him for being him. For being him and these two thugs. These goons try and rough him up or whatever right.

[01:18:44] I mean they rough him up to death. Yes which is not. They rough him to death the roughest. Rough him up to death. Hard to get rougher. You're right and so that puts the cops on Davey because they assume well he must have

[01:18:57] killed his manager and taken the money right and so then he's got this whole chase where he's trying to rescue Gloria but he ends up in this warehouse filled with mannequins. And he faces off against. Classic New York City only in New York problems.

[01:19:12] It does feel apt doesn't it. Yeah. It's like you know what yeah there's a basin full of mannequins within a mile of here right. Absolutely. Yeah. My guess is that area is downtown Brooklyn. Could be. Did you think? Down in like Dunbar or whatever.

[01:19:25] With the views of the bridge and just the sounds of also because there's a lot of like active peers in those days along that part of Brooklyn's waterfront. Sure. I just feel like if I there's like I want to meet that guy today where I'm like hey buddy

[01:19:44] I got one for you you're not gonna be able to do it I need 400 mannequins in an hour and he's like oh I know what I can get you that second are you fucking kidding me. Yeah over on Star Street there's a warehouse filled with the things. Yeah.

[01:19:54] Just sweep them up. Two. Huh. Are they porcelain. They're smashing. They are smashing. I don't know. The problem is the guy today who'd be asking for 400 mannequins and be for a pop up. I'm gonna sell artisanal pork at a I need 400 mannequins I don't know what.

[01:20:15] It's a fucking Amazon for your consideration activation some shit. Yeah but right you know there's still mannequins out there that's all I'm saying I think there's mannequins in this city right now. Mannequins are fucking booming. Yeah. Oh absolutely. I bought mannequins recently. Did you really. Of course.

[01:20:30] For my jeans to display them on. I might I might I might want to buy a mannequin off you. Did you get legs only. Legs only. I bought it from a really chill guy on eBay who only had mannequin parts. And let me tell you the photography.

[01:20:46] Mr. Mannequin. Oh boy the photography because it it it only could have been shot on a digital camera from 15 years ago is like the fidelity. Sure. It is terrifying. And I mean I have to respect this person's privacy but I someday would love to show you

[01:21:04] that gallery of photos guys. Ben I'm checking your eBay history here the Robert Durst estate. You like one of those Zillow real estate things where you're like looking at a normal house and it's like kitchen dining you know you're there's just four pictures of a basement filled

[01:21:21] with mannequin legs. Skeleton feet. I'm just imagine comes with the house. This looks normal. It's where it's in the suburbs of St. Louis. Sure this makes sense. Mannequin legs mannequin mannequin pieces organized by body parts shipped in separate garbage bags. Anyway the fight's just so cool.

[01:21:42] That's just the most I don't know. Yeah it's so cool. Like this is not fair but we recorded this out of order because of guest availability. Yeah we did the killing fucking rules. The killing kind of just like puts all of this in a cooler package.

[01:21:56] Yeah better actors no offense to the actors. Yeah with actors who have real like you know right more credibility. So like watching killers kiss after fear and desire is like oh now we're cooking.

[01:22:09] But if we've just as we have recently watched the killing before this it feels like give me the give me the fully big for OK but to kind of get us back and get us back on track get us to the mannequins. He gets in a cab.

[01:22:23] Yeah to follow Vincent. Yeah and he goes follow that guy right. I guess I don't know if they actually say that but you know how they always do that. And all these guys to do classic thing to do. Right.

[01:22:34] And I'm just like we're cabbies just implicit in like crimes and murders constantly. Yeah because that was just accepted to be like follow that guy. I don't know what he wants. Well also did you just have to was there like a driver.

[01:22:47] Do you know I'm saying it's like a Hippocratic Code almost of like cabbie driving. We're like hey all right I'm just going to take you where you want to go. Yeah. There's driver passenger confidentiality but like is it like if I got in a cab today and

[01:22:59] I was like hey follow that you know follow that Honda you know Civic would he just immediately go like what. No I'm sorry address. And he'd be like type the address into Google Maps.

[01:23:11] Like or would like how many cabbies right now would just have that kind of old movie instinct where they're like on it like. I throw out a gripe. OK. One of the benefits of ride sharing especially in New York City where you would hail down

[01:23:24] a yellow cab and if you were giving them any address that was not numerical they'd be like do you know how to get there. Sure right. If there wasn't a thing in the grid where you're like 13th and 7th and they're like

[01:23:34] I understand the number of moves I have to do in each direction for that they'd be like do you know how to get there and be like got a fucking guide you through I got to be. Yeah sure. Right. Yeah. Over here. Yeah.

[01:23:47] A couple times recently I've gotten like a Lyft or an Uber and then I get in there and they're like do you know how to get there. I'm like no I typed it in. You don't you have you know.

[01:23:56] And they're looking at the Google Maps and they're like so where where is it exactly and I'm like where it is on your screen. I don't say it like this. I go what is this is a weird gripe though like who's doing this. I don't know.

[01:24:07] I look in Britain where I grew up in London England where I grew up. You just talked about your New York City apartment as a boy. I did but where I grew up in London London the cabbies have to do something called the knowledge.

[01:24:21] Yeah you know about this. Oh I do. Where they like ride around on a bike for like two years learning every fucking street and it look I haven't lived in London in a while but it was used to be incredible.

[01:24:31] Yeah because London has no grid system has no numbers. Yeah and you would just get in there and you would say the name of the street and it would I was like. There's so many good street names in London.

[01:24:40] My mom and I would always be if we ever saw a good one we'd be like and we would tell each other later. But we never top cold bath square. I want to live there. Chimney sweet place. Probably.

[01:24:49] But the best thing is you would say like cold bath square and they'd be like oh yeah right near to Beauvoir Square. And you be like yeah yes yes yeah I know how to get there. You know your phone. You're like okay I'm right there.

[01:24:58] Think you're on the wrong street. I'm sorry. Is that what you do? Yeah yeah I'm sure. That's the best thing. Is it? Yeah you're like yeah. Yes, yes, yeah, I know how to get there. You know, like they just knew every fucking street.

[01:25:09] Which is so many things about ride sharing suck now, especially the way it's just crushed at multiple other types of businesses. You're like, the one clear advantage is it's now hooked, you hail it by typing in the address

[01:25:23] and then they get the sort of route delivered to them where anytime the driver asked me how to get there, I'm like, I don't know. Well, but I say it like this. But as you were, but wait, this is all set up

[01:25:36] by Ben saying the guy gets in the cab and the cabbie follows him. Was there a further point, Ben? Or did you just wanna talk about enterprise cabbies? It was just setting up how in a modern sense that's ridiculous to do that. That's so like weird.

[01:25:49] I mean, we like that bit with John Braylock in How to Be Single. Oh, that's a good thing. That's so funny. You remember that? No. Where she gets, it's near the end, right? Yeah. Or whatever, it's in her downswing. Yeah. And he gets in and I guess he's,

[01:26:03] Braylock's the cabbie, right? Yeah. And he says, where to? And she's like, just drive. I believe she gets in, she's feeling heartbreak. He goes, where to? And she goes, just take me home. And he goes, I don't know where you live. That's what it is.

[01:26:15] No, it's I don't know where the fuck you live. I think, I think he swears, right? Right, right, because they got Braylock to swear on camera. Just take me home. That's what it is. It's so funny. It's like the funniest thing in that entire movie.

[01:26:25] It's a really good joke. Yeah. Why in Killer's Kiss, after he defeats Vin in the mannequin basement, does he, because he then is exonerated. I guess it's like he just didn't do it. I guess they just figure it out. Yeah. Because he really seems like he's screwed.

[01:26:42] You know, when they, you know, and they think he killed his manager and all that. Like, but then he just gets off. Look, David, you have to understand, in 1953, there were no CinemaSins. What year is this? 55? 55, you fucked it up. There were no CinemaSins.

[01:26:54] People were pointing out plot holes. You just go, eh, I'm not even saying it's a plot hole. I just don't even remember if there's like much explanation. I'm saying it's a plot hole, and I'm saying CinemaSins better do fucking Killer's Kiss. They should.

[01:27:04] I mean, they should take it to task, yeah. I think it's the witnesses of the two goons. Like it wasn't him, it was these two guys. Yeah. And that's when he's like, well, I'm gonna buy a train to Seattle. He doesn't think she's gonna come,

[01:27:19] and at the end, she does. He can buy a train ticket. Eh, I'm gonna kill her. He's not buying an entire choo-choo train. No, you're right. He's not buying the train. He buys one ticket to Seattle. Yes. And she shows up right at the end of the kiss.

[01:27:30] The end, happy ending. That was the titular, it truly was a Killer's Kiss. I guess so, right? I mean, he does kill then, so he is a killer. Yeah. What are we forgetting about Killer's Kiss? Nothing really. The things I really love are that flashback

[01:27:48] with the dancing mom. Yeah, that's the best thing. And the fucking mannequins. Those both are really good. And I just went to see it at the film forum like when I was 25, and I had a great time. That's what I remember about Killer's Kiss.

[01:27:58] Best thing about these two movies, combined a cool two hours and five minutes. That's true. Nice to knock two movies out. What's his longest movie? I think it, 2001. 2001 ain't short, that's for sure. Oh, I have something I wanted to talk about really quickly. The elevator. Lyndon's long. Normally,

[01:28:17] Well, I just wanna show him his long. Normally, I like things when they're slow. Sure, Christmas. But that elevator, boy oh boy. If I had to live in those times, I'd be pissed. That shit looks like it takes forever. Yeah. Yeah, things moved slow back then.

[01:28:37] It's like the Oregon Trail. Everyone just was cool with that. People would die. Everyone was cool with everything being slow. It was a slower time. Maybe that's the problem with these days. Everything's moving too fucking fast. Now, now, now, now, now.

[01:28:49] Maybe we need to all take a break and take in the elevator. We're all on our phones. We're all looking at our phones. We're all on our phones. Right, man. His longest film, by the way, is Spartacus, which is three hours and 12 minutes long.

[01:29:02] I forgot that Spartacus is a classic Hollywood epic. Can we push back the recording on that one? No. It's next Friday. I know, I'm doing the bit. I'm already acting like I started the movie too late. Should we just break the episode into two parts?

[01:29:17] Just now decide that? Yeah, three. Three parts, just stretch it out. Does it have an intermission? I don't know, but probably. I haven't seen it in a while. I do have The Steel. Do you have The Steel? I got The Steel. Good for you. Thank you. Spartacus.

[01:29:31] Good for you as well. Of course. Let's see the box office game, Keller's Kiss. How long we been running, Ben? It says here long enough. Yep. Great answer. Number one at the box office in October, the fifth of October or whatever, 1955, is a movie I've never heard of.

[01:29:50] Okay. It's a war film, account of World War II based on a soldier's autobiography. And it stars the author of that book as himself. It stars a real soldier. Wow. Yes. And he became a truly famous actor. Very interesting figure. Made 21, made lots of movies, not 21 movies,

[01:30:15] 21 year acting career. Mostly did westerns apart from this. Had PTSD, slept with a handgun under his pillow, struggled with pills later in life, but was a famous sort of post-war figure. His name is Audie Murphy. Oh sure. Heard of him? Yeah, yeah.

[01:30:33] And he wrote a book called To Hell and Back. Oh, I know that title. And that's this movie. Okay, wow. Well, never would've guessed it. Directed by Jesse Hibbs. I did not know that's what that movie was or that was his background. That's wild.

[01:30:45] And this is after Best Years of Our Lives, right? Yeah, because Best Years of Our Lives is very, it's like 46 or something. It's like very shortly after the war. Right. And that movie is, if people haven't seen it, incredible and really worth watching.

[01:30:58] That's like one of the best American films ever. Yes. In my opinion. This is, I have not seen, but I think more of a straightforward action picture just with the grit of this is based on a real war. It's like that fucking Act of Valor movie or whatever

[01:31:11] where they were like, the soldiers are real. Sure. That's what it's like. It was inspired by that movie actually. Great. Anyway, number one at the box office is that. Okay, number two is one of those, it was like one of the highest grossing movies of the year. Okay.

[01:31:27] It's one of those movies that's literally just footage of vacations that you could take in Europe. God, is it called This Is Europe? It's called Cinerama Holiday. That was gonna be my second fucking guess. Okay, I know that title. Yes, because you know, the Cinerama was like Yes.

[01:31:44] The wide screen. It's like a dome. It's like three screens and it's sort of curved. It's three screens, three protractors, curved. Yeah, and they would make these Cinerama movies that were just like, our great national parks. Right. And you just sit there and you couldn't believe

[01:32:01] how this thing looked. This one is much like the ones you're describing. Emphasis on spectacle and scenery. Sure. A bobsled ride. Okay. A landing on an aircraft carrier. Cool. So it's truly just fucking cool photography. Right. But it is called Cinerama Holiday,

[01:32:18] so it's supposed to be about holidays you can take. I mean, I don't know how many fucking holidays involve you landing on an aircraft carrier. Sounds like a proto-sauron. Number three at the box office has just a great title. Just a fucking bananas good title.

[01:32:32] Oh, Casper, A Spirit of Beginning. It's a John Wayne picture. Okay. Once again, Mr. Wayne is coming up in the box office. Lauren Bacall. Fuck. Pretty good pairing. Yeah. It's a Cold War movie, and it's set in China. And I think it's about Chinese communists. Wow.

[01:32:49] And it's sort of like him fighting the Soviets maybe on the side of the Chinese? I'm not sure. What's it called? I'm not gonna guess the title. It's a William Wellman film. It's called Blood Alley. Pretty cool title. Fuck. Ben's eyes went wide. What a good name. Yeah.

[01:33:09] One of those movies where it clearly has Asian characters, Chinese characters. And I'm scanning the cast list here, and I'm not seeing a lot of Chinese names. Eli Wallach. Barry Kroger as Old Feng. I'm guessing not a Chinese guy. But anyway, I've never seen it.

[01:33:27] Never really heard of it. No, that's a good title. But apparently it was an early movie for Anita Eckberg. Oh, sure. Who has a small role in that. A lot of yellow face. Oh, including her. Great, cool. Great, cool. Fantastic.

[01:33:41] Hey look, it's the 50s box office game, baby. I take what I get. Vacation movies, racist John Wayne shit. Look, number four. Racist John Wayne shit was kind of the Marvel Cinematic Universe of its time. Number four at the box office is a Humphrey Bogart film

[01:33:57] that I've never seen. I have heard of it, I've never seen it. It's about, like, he has to masquerade as a Catholic priest. I think it's also set in China. It's not, what's it called? We're No Angels? No, it's not that.

[01:34:14] That is a Bogart movie where it's pretend to be a priest though, right? But it's not that. I know, but I just want to confirm. Yes, and it was, wasn't We're No Angels then remade as a. And you're on that? There you go, yes. Yeah.

[01:34:24] And you are, yeah, yeah, it was a Bogie movie. Sometimes I'm right about something. But you know what? This is set at a small American mission in China in 1947 at a time of civil war and Humphrey Bogart plays a hunted man masquerading as a Catholic priest

[01:34:35] and Gene Churney plays a nurse. Lee J. Cobb and Agnes Moorhead and E.G. Marshall are all in it and those are all good actors. It's called. It's called The Left Hand of God. Okay. I've never seen it. No. I love Bogie. Yeah. And apparently got bad reviews.

[01:34:54] Number five of the box office. It's a Hitchcock. It's a Hitchcock in 55. Not one of his best in my opinion. Okay. But a movie star movie. Is it a Stewart? No, who's the other one? Grant. It's a Grant. Cary Grant himself. Archie Leach to his friends.

[01:35:13] What's his name? Good thing he changed it. Pee-ew. Yeah, but what about a guy called Cary Grant? Interested? Very. Cary Grant, he's opposite a Hitchcock blonde. One of the most iconic ones. Not Grace Kelly? It is Grace Kelly. It is Grace Kelly. What's the movie they made together?

[01:35:36] Why am I fucking blanking? In my opinion, it's one of his more boring movies. I've seen it. I've never loved it. It's very pretty. Suspicion? It's not Suspicion, that's a great movie. Who's in Suspicion again? Isn't it Ingrid Bergman? Yeah, you're right. I haven't seen Suspicion.

[01:35:50] It's not Spellbound, right? It's not Spellbound. It's Joan Fontaine in Suspicion. It's Ingrid Bergman is in Notorious. What a fool I am. And Spellbound is Bergman as well with Gregory Peck. Right, right, right. Spellbound I haven't seen, I just haven't seen it in so long.

[01:36:07] What the fucking movie is this? Why am I not putting this together? Well, it's Cary Grant playing a cat burglar. Does that help? What's another term for cat burglar? Oh, it's to catch a thief? A thief. Duh, duh. You gotta catch him!

[01:36:21] I know, why did I not fucking get that? Because that's not one of Hitchcock's better movies. Yeah, that movie's fun though. It's fun-ish. It's fun-ish. It's fun-esque. It's very, you know, everyone looks amazing. It's a movie star movie. Great gowns. Yeah. Good hair. Yeah. Nice locations.

[01:36:39] It's set in the French Riviera. I just remember when I was in my true teen Hitchcock days of watching them all, that one I was kind of like, you know those ones where Cary Grant's like, well, I think you're great. You're just like, you know.

[01:36:51] It doesn't, it doesn't. He's getting a little old for this shit. It doesn't super feel like a Hitchcock movie. It's a little less Hitchcocky. It feels like Hitchcock directing a Cary Grant film rather than Cary Grant being in a Hitchcock movie. Some other movies in the top 10.

[01:37:04] Jane Russell and Jeanette Crane in Gentlemen, Mary Brunettes, which was sort of a sequel to Gentlemen Prefer Bronze. I don't think I knew that was a sequel. Also, a little rude to just tell brunettes that they're the consolation prize. Well, there's also a film called Ulysses

[01:37:22] that is an adaptation of The Odyssey, an Italian film starring Kirk Douglas. That sounds cool. Really? Yeah. Wow. Okay. Also Anthony Quinn. Uh-huh. So. Okay. You know, that's cool. There's also I Am A Camera. Which is of course, a Julie Harris movie that will eventually become cabaret.

[01:37:44] Inspire the cabaret Broadway musical. Yes. About the Berlin stories. Fascinating. Which are interesting. And then you've got something called The Shrike. Jose Ferrer stars and directs. What? I had to do something dramatic. David pulled his microphone off the table, leaned it. I'm getting sleepy.

[01:38:06] Oh, which sounds kind of cool. I'm getting sleepy too. Yeah. And all that stuff. Sure. But yeah, I don't know. Successful stage director driven to a mental breakdown. Okay, sounds fun. And then something called The McConnell Story. Not about Mitch. No, it's about someone called Joseph McConnell

[01:38:22] who is an Air Force pilot. That's a lot of World War II shit still in the air. Starring Alan Ladd. Alan Ladd. You know, senior. Him of shame. Yeah. So that's the top 10. Okay. Look, we'd love to talk about the fucking, 50s is a golden age of cinema,

[01:38:41] but then you realize there's a lot of programmers came out. Well, that's what's interesting about the box office game back then. Yes, you're like, oh, well we think of X movie, oh, these are the, but of course they were not the biggest sellers.

[01:38:53] Right, they're movies that both are completely forgotten and movies that are literally lost to time. Sure. That just aren't in circulation anymore and we never talk about them. And they only exist as like, oh, this was one of six movies that movie star made that year.

[01:39:08] Like it's just a title on a list. No one ever wants to talk about How Gentleman Mary Brunette's, but they do. They do. Okay. We're done. How long has it been? It says here, stop. It says stop. It just says stop. It says stop.

[01:39:23] Wait, Ben, did you press stop? Oh no, okay, it's still going. Hey look, next week. Yeah. We recorded it already. The Killing. With Patton Oswalt. Hey! Fucking corker of a guest. In good episode. I think good episode. Yeah, for a Zoom app? Yeah, we had some tech difficulties,

[01:39:39] but I think we'll come together in the edit, right? Oh, it's great. It's great. It's a good episode. Fun conversation. And a banger of a movie. It's a movie that rules and also the three of us just dorking out so fucking hard.

[01:39:51] About like, you know, 50s noir guys. Yeah, for sure. Talking greasy on Victor Mature. Oh man. It gets deep. It gets deep. Yeah, it was a good time. So that's next week. That's next week. And this was this week and the episode's over. Thank God.

[01:40:07] I know, it's hot in here. You know what I don't like? Summer. I like things about it. I don't love the heat. I always think I like it more than I do when it comes. Well this is why we're gonna have air conditioning in our office, goddammit Ben.

[01:40:21] We will. We're not fighting on this. We're all on the same page. It's a must. And Olaf, as far as I'm concerned, that guy's crazy. Is that it? So much for the birds. Oh sure, yeah, Olaf is crazy. Olaf is crazy. Look, thank you all for listening.

[01:40:35] Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Thank you to Ben for putting the air conditioning on. Thank you to Marie Barty for our social media and helping put together the show. Alex Barron, AJ McKeon for our editing. Pat Reynolds, Joe Bowen for our artwork.

[01:40:50] Thank you to JJ Birch for our research. Did a lot of goddamn work for this episode. Get two movies and all the table setting for Kubrick. Thank you JJ. JJ continues to kill it. And we're never ever gonna mention on mic how late he sends us the dossiers.

[01:41:06] Not late like they're overdue, like he just sends them at odd hours of the night. But we're not gonna mention it. We're never gonna talk about it because he already has told us he gets self-conscious when we do it, so we're not mentioning it ever again.

[01:41:15] Thank you to Lane Munker and The Great American Elf for our theme song. You can go to patreon.com slash blank check for blank check special features. We do commentaries on franchises like the Roger Moore James Bond movies, but we're also gonna do a bunch of Kubrick bonuses.

[01:41:29] So I think we're gonna do 2010. We're thinking 2010? We're thinking Dr. Sleep? Hell yeah! Get your hats. And we got a Kubrick themed talk in the walk coming later this year. That's all I'll say about that. Go to blank check pod for links to some real nerdy shit.

[01:41:47] Killing next week with Patton Oswalt. And as always, Ben bought mannequins from the Robert Durst estate. Do you wanna dispute it? Yeah! What's up Ben? I would've never, literally. Anyway. We're talking about, I don't know, Killer's Kiss? Literally nothing.