[00:00:01] Blank Check with Griffin and David to say they're too expert All you need to know is that the name of the show is Blank Check I love doing a nolte impression. I've done it too many times on this podcast.
[00:00:46] You have, you've done it many times, but usually you're doing Hulk or Warrior, older nolte. Bad dad, Nick Nolte. Right, exactly. I'm your father, Hulk! This is good dad, Nick Nolte. It is! That's true! Great dad, Nick Nolte. He really goes above and beyond.
[00:01:00] We're going to get into this, but there's like a chaotic neutral, lawful good kind of chart of just like... Of noltees. Good dad, Nick Nolte. Bad dad, Nick Nolte. Good movie, bad dad, Nick Nolte. Like it's you know. But this is probably...
[00:01:16] This is like good dad, good movie, Nick Nolte. I think this is the best good dad, Nick Nolte movie. It's very interesting. And it's also probably the best dad he's ever played. It's both.
[00:01:26] I have a lot of questions about this movie, but do you know, does he look like the guy? Like how does he get this role? Do you know anything about that? Like I know he was obviously a big star at the time.
[00:01:38] He had recently been people's sexist man alive. Yeah, so recently. And he hasn't done Cape Fear yet? Cape Fear was the year before. Yeah. You know, he's had a good... Bad dad, Nick Nolte. You know, he got his Oscar nom for the Prince of Tides the year before.
[00:01:54] Like he's... He's that kind of peak movie stardom. Peak, like here he's the burly sort of slightly older guy that you know, mom's love and... Like he's finally hit his ideal form in his early 50s. His next film is I'll Do Anything. And he's quite vulnerable.
[00:02:11] Yes, he's unafraid of... Like like hulking but vulnerable. Which is not, you know, which is not a thing you get that often in America. No, I think he's... He's always had those the guts to be vulnerable, I feel like. In the 90s, he finally hit that perfect balance.
[00:02:26] And I think it's also a thing of just the way he aged, you know? Like this is when he's still aging well. But how much more interesting his face becomes when there's a little more wear and tear on it. Yeah, yeah.
[00:02:39] When you look at him like, you know, in the 70s when he's very young and he's kind of pretty. Yeah, he breaks beautiful. Because he's a very angular face and you know, he's got a big jaw.
[00:02:51] But he's got the Joel Edgerton thing where he's like, he's very pretty but also has this kind of like, craggy mountain bone structure. Right, it's the chin. It's the rich man, poor man, that's his big breakout, you know? He's got a... It's a 70s handsome. Yes.
[00:03:07] It's an interesting handsome. Right, but then once he starts getting, you know, some lines in the face, it's like incredible and then there's like 10 years between this movie and Hulk. In which it feels like he's lived eight lifetimes.
[00:03:18] Like he just like is aging so well, so well, so well and then suddenly becomes the most damaged looking man in America. I love him. I do too. How do you feel about an old tea? I love him.
[00:03:29] I believe in rich man, poor man, his character's name was Tom, right? Let me just... Yes. I remember in Turkey watching rich man, poor man as like a six year old or something like that
[00:03:40] and you know, it was one of the very few things that was on TV so you just watched it. I mean, again, hard to overstate. Like this thing was huge. It was a huge miniseries.
[00:03:50] People, you know, like it's like that sort of like North and South or roots or like back in the day when those things really were watched by everybody. I'm sorry, I just can't get over this. You said his name is Tom. The character's name is not Richard Mann.
[00:04:01] I always assume that was the premise of the miniseries. Complete your anecdote. No, no, that's Peter Strauss. I have no anecdote. It's just like... That was your first introduction. I think it was Peter Strauss. He's one of those actors that kind of like known since I know myself.
[00:04:17] He is the poor man. He's one of my favorite dudes. I'm always happy when we crack into an old tea but I was watching this last night going, oh boy, David is going to expect me to do an Italian nolte impression and I was like
[00:04:32] staying up late going like... Here's who sounds like this. No one in the history of Earth. And I was like trying to do the exercise of like let me do a little nolte. I'm like nolte, nolte.
[00:04:40] And I was like let me do an Italian pizza pie and then I was like trying to combine them. It's like two magnets. Oh, you get the spaghetti. I couldn't melt the tip. I mean, Gepetto kind of sounds like it. Yeah, that's fair.
[00:04:56] I knew very little going into this film. I thought of it... Its rep to me was Stodgy that it was a sort of like inspirational... You look at the poster for this film and it looks like... You feel like it's a movie people.
[00:05:09] It was like a punchline title in the 90s, like Lorenzo's oil. Boring. The trailer was terrible. It was called Lorenzo's Oil. And if you don't know what Lorenzo's Oil is, you're like why the fuck would you call Lorenzo's Oil? And so that's what I knew going in.
[00:05:27] But then I flicked this on and I'm like am I on a different audio track? What's Nick Nolte's... Who's dubbing Nick Nolte right now? It's like fucking Bert Lancaster in the leopard or something. And then I realized like no, he's just playing an Italian man.
[00:05:42] A very Italian man. Now I knew... Okay, the title's got Lorenzo in it. Sure. I peeped the Wikipedia page before I watched the movie. I knew the character had a very Italian name, right? I don't understand that he was going to be playing an Italian man.
[00:05:56] Like a man whose first language was Italian. And you watched this movie the night before I do. We're in the middle of a text thread between you and I and my brother, passing future guest James E. Newman. We're texting about the movie Warrior,
[00:06:10] which is one of my brother's favorite movies the last 10 years. Yes, Warrior. How do you feel about Warrior, Bill? I like Warrior. I need to see it again though. I love Warrior and I have to say, rewatched it a little last night. Even better than I remember.
[00:06:23] Just kind of to be in a Nolte zone or to get hyped for the way back? Nolte zone, Insomnia zone, Wayback zone. I'm in all of it, right? It was a cross triangulation kind of thing. I was watching some of it, reminded how hard that movie honks.
[00:06:37] But James and you and I were texting about Gavin O'Connor and Warrior in the anticipation of what I assume will be the blockbuster released of the way back. And you said Griffin, you have to get ready for Nolte's accent in this movie.
[00:06:52] Right, I did spoil you on the accent. You said... Nolte accent. What's he doing? Southern? I immediately thought, what accent could Nolte be attempting to do a man with that distinctive of voice? Well, I've never really witnessed trying to camouflage that voice in any major way.
[00:07:08] It's true, usually he's just doing himself. That's what you're paying for. I can't remember Jefferson in Paris, like how he speaks in that. Never seen that before. Never seen Jefferson in Paris. A good movie, I really like it. I can't remember what his voice is like in that.
[00:07:20] He's got a great voice though. That's an incredible voice. I think he falls into kind of that Sean Connery camp where it's like, it doesn't matter if he's playing a Russian. He should sound like Sean Connery. Like, Nolte's voice is a special effect.
[00:07:32] He doesn't need to sound like the real person. And then you say, he's playing Italian. Yeah. And my mind reels. And then I'm like... And I didn't even specify Italian Italian. Like maybe I thought, maybe you think Italian American, no. No, but you said Italian.
[00:07:47] I did say Italian. Right. And then you went, I think it works? Like it pretty much works? Yeah. And even with that, I sat there and was like, there's no way this works. And every single scene, every time you open his mouth, I was like,
[00:07:59] God damn it, he's just making this work. Yeah, it totally works. It shouldn't work at all. Because I think that accent makes the script work. Because and this is a very George Miller thing. I mean, you'll see it in, you know, like Fury Road.
[00:08:16] You know, the lines sound like they're out of Melville. I mean, they're very operatic. Yes. And the thing is like... And the whole movie's operatic and that character in particular is the most operatic. I'm not sure that part would work if you didn't have kind of
[00:08:29] a thick accent to go with it. Because it doesn't like, in ordinary conversation, those lines don't make sense. No, they don't. I'm trying to imagine like Roberto Benini playing this. I'm trying to imagine like, you know, like a scary typical Italian man.
[00:08:42] What is like William Hurt doing this? You know? Like I'm like trying to think of someone who was sort of at like a kind of nulty parallel at that point in the studio system in the 90s. And it doesn't work with someone who is...
[00:08:57] How do I even say this? A Pacino, I mean, Pacino kind of like claws his way back to respectability right around the stage. It's true. Right. Pacino could have done it. But it is that weird thing where you're like, Pacino's getting bombastic at this point.
[00:09:11] Nulty is that exact right balance of like that weird, like aggressive masculinity and a very quiet, subtle vulnerability where Pacino probably would have been too big and someone like Hurt would have been like too simmering and you need someone who can do like,
[00:09:27] you know, like at times like Fritz Lang acting in this movie. There's like the scene where he's... I mean we're getting ahead of ourselves, but the scene where he's like reading all the papers of diagnosis for the first time and then he falls down this staircase.
[00:09:41] I mean that's the best scene in the movie. I love that scene so much. That is the scene where you're like, oh my God. Yeah. Well that's the scene where you're like... That's the scene where this is George Miller. This is George Miller. Yeah.
[00:09:51] And this is a fucking master for him. Yes. I mean, I love this film. I love this film. That's one reason we're on. We're gonna comp-hension. We're gonna back up. Yeah. I'm getting interested. Yeah, I agree. And then I'm gonna set this table cleanly
[00:10:02] because this of course is blank check with Griffin David. It's a podcast about filmography. It's directors who have massive success early on in their careers and give it a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion products they want and sometimes those checks clear
[00:10:13] and sometimes those checks fund a new type of oil. Right. And this is main series on the films of George Miller. It is called Mad Pod Fury Cast. And today we were talking about Lorenzo's Oil, which the IMDb trivia section states,
[00:10:30] and I think it was sort of like I had to run the calculus in my head, but both of these are correct. The only George Miller film completely devoid of fantastical elements. Right. It's the only film of his, even though the film is very heightened. Sure.
[00:10:45] It is a film that takes place entirely in our real world. Because even your Witches of Eastwick or whatever have the sort of the supernet. It's got a magic. It's got Satan and it doesn't. Satan is there. Yeah, which is in the devil. And he's fantastical.
[00:10:57] He's not real. Right. No, yes. No, right. Yes, Satan definitely isn't real. But also they said this is the only film of his that is not part of a franchise, which you have to be a little unconventional. Which is a piece of like adapted from a book.
[00:11:16] Is that the thinking? Yeah, you're like the book. A book that got a sequel. A book has a sequel. The thing's been readapted a number of times. You're like in a way, Witches of Eastwick as a property. It is a weird sort of piece of intellectual property. Right.
[00:11:28] It's like a piece of intellectual property. Plus it's in the up-dike verse. Right. If anyone ever, if Disney wanted to be like, all right, come on a Hulu, up-dike verse, baby. So that one's obviously a little bit more of a stretch,
[00:11:36] but then it's like Format Max's, The Babes. Sure, The Babes, yes. And Two Happy Feet. This is like such an anomaly in his career. And I had always, as I got more and more into George Miller over the years, like looked this up, see the poster and go,
[00:11:52] this is so strange that George Miller in the early 90s after like a five-year break or whatever just inexplicably made what appears to be a Sub-Marvin's Room movie? You're sure. You know, like everything about it and even just like, oh, it got like the token,
[00:12:07] Susan Sarandon Best Actress nomination. I'm sure this is one of those like six movies that she just got an automatic nomination. She was in the early 90s sort of right, like she would always show up.
[00:12:16] She had like that run where it was like by the time she won... Right, it was like she was Amy Adams, she was Kate Winslet, she was whoever. Well yeah, that was her fifth nomination. So yeah, Atlantic City, Thelma Louise, Lauren DeSoyle, the client,
[00:12:30] and then she wins that men walking. So I was just like everything about this movie feels so generic, I can't understand how this guy made this. And then at some point I looked up the trailer. I think after we had started this podcast and knew,
[00:12:42] we're probably going to talk about George Miller someday. And the trailer is not good. Terrible trailer. But also, the trailer cannot hide how weird the movie is. The trailer does not represent the movie well, but the trailer is almost entirely wordless, right?
[00:12:57] I mean it's set to opera music and it like is showing off all the crazy camera moves and the sort of frenetic energy. Rule! And the like heightened sort of exaggerated performances and everything. It doesn't make sense in context, but it became very clear to me,
[00:13:12] okay this is a George Miller movie, this isn't him putting on some other hat. But then the thing that stuck in my mind, as we've talked about doing him over the years, as he came close twice to winning our March Madness Bracket
[00:13:24] and as we finally settled on doing him and we were looking at the spreadsheet trying to pick guests, I went, I think Bill Good tweets about this movie all the time. I had it in the back of my head.
[00:13:37] And I went, let me just do a quick search and I looked up and sure enough, multiple tweets including you about once a year I would say. Whether it's in an ad tweet, I just want to remind everyone, you have gone on the record extensively saying
[00:13:52] it is the single most underrated movie of the 90s. Possibly of all time. I mean I love this. You also once called it possibly the greatest film of the 1990s. I mean it's definitely a contender. The 1990s were, I mean that was a good decade for me.
[00:14:08] There are a lot of contenders there. Here's, this you tweeted is not just last year. Your favorite films of the 90s. Bo Trevi, Night, Lorenzo's Oil. Three great movies. The Sheltering Sky, The Thin Red Line, Love It. I know your Big Bertilucci guy. Titanic and Underground, great seven.
[00:14:25] That's a great seven. You're sort of almost saying like that's the, if you're looking for the Bill Gebirry experience. I mean that's like, yeah exactly. I mean that's like, you know, at least half of those movies could be on an all-time list for me.
[00:14:40] You once called it the best Christmas movie? Because it's great and there's a Christmas tree in it at some point. There is a Christmas tree in one shot. So you're looking, you essentially want to insert Lorenzo's Oil into the conversation of best blank of all time.
[00:14:56] The most blank. It is definitely a most movie. It's also, I think- Would it be like your Sight and Sound 10? You know, if you were doing one of those. That's tougher. Yeah, I mean, there are, I mean, you know. Basically your take is like,
[00:15:11] I love this movie more than anyone I've ever met. Like I may be actually the biggest Lorenzo's Oil. I just knew that. I was like, I think it's Bill Gebirry. But I know there is someone who has clearly carved out a corner for themselves
[00:15:22] as the world's biggest Lorenzo's Oil fan. Well, part of it is also because it's so undervalued. Yeah. And part of it is all, I mean, and it's undervalued in part because of all the things that we just talked about. Like, you know, it was not marketed well.
[00:15:35] It doesn't seem- It wasn't a very big- And also if you know what it's about, you're like, oh, I don't want to see that at all. Yeah, right. No, no. It seems like it'll be grueling and challenging. And I know a lot of people who haven't seen it
[00:15:48] who love George Miller and I'm kind of like, just like, see this movie. It's really good and it's also really personal. Yeah. Yes, yes. Well, right. That's the thing is that as I'm watching it, I remember like, oh, right. He's a doctor.
[00:16:01] I mean, there were two things that immediately hit me once I started watching this movie in this genre that is very unappealing to me of sort of a medical issue, you know, like weepy on its face, right? The worst example of which or the most generic example
[00:16:17] of which is like Harrison Ford Extraordinary Measures, right? Right, right. I'm going to find this cure. And I'm like, don't want to watch this movie. Seems punishing and also kind of modeling and generic. So for me to want to watch a film like this
[00:16:31] where you know even in its best execution it is going to be so fucking painful and grueling to live through this process, I have to know that it's so fucking good, right? So even though I was sold on the idea of I'm probably going to like this movie,
[00:16:47] I go into it a little bit guarded. And then the first two things I recognize almost immediately because we're watching all these movies in order and we're like living in this Miller headspace is, oh right, this guy actually has a medical degree, worked as a doctor.
[00:17:02] This immediately feels different than any other time I've seen this movie because of how much more intimately this guy understands all the different dynamics of play. It's very ready. It's a very visual fucking science of play. But also very good at dramatizing like the very alienating experience
[00:17:19] of talking to a doctor who's trying to explain to you like why your son's brain is melting. And also understanding both sides of that death. Yes, 100%. Right, being the person supporting the patient being the doctor. I mean it's got such a nuanced, complicated understanding of that entire landscape.
[00:17:36] But the other thing is, oh right, this is the movie he makes, two films after he makes his movie where his best friend and closest collaborator dies. Right. And he constantly talks about that being an enormous grief in his life.
[00:17:51] Like a really, really long drawn out grieving process. And you know, he's not reticent to talk about Byron Kennedy but it always feels like it's tinged with this like, I wish I could have prevented that even though there's nothing he could have done. Yeah.
[00:18:11] And that desire in this movie feels very personal and palpable to him. Yeah, I mean it's, he understands the medicine but he also understands grief and the helplessness that comes with kind of the other side.
[00:18:25] And I just loved, I mean the fact that the film is so bold in its style and kind of its effect and yet is also extremely compassionate. Even though I mean, I think the real doctors that were portrayed in the film, you know, under pseudonyms, we're not happy.
[00:18:45] The guy that used to snuff is based on was furious. I think he called it squirrel-less. Is he curious because he feels like you snuff becomes too much of like an impediment in the later part of the movie? Was that his issue? Well maybe look it up David.
[00:18:57] I tried to and I couldn't find anything particular. I mean I think it, well I think it's a, I don't think that character is a one-to-one representation of why I think they changed the name. I think he did it out of a sense of,
[00:19:10] my sense, my presumption is that he changed the name not because it's a composite as much as because he is using this character to dramatic ends and he doesn't want to. He thinks that it's too negative. Like he's like I was not as sort of obstinate
[00:19:26] or whatever into that movie. I don't think Oostin and I's character really is that obstinate. He's not either. He's actually, I find him very compassionate and very touching. If you're the real person how would you might? But that's why he changed the name.
[00:19:39] Yeah, he changed the name and also like he's dramatizing stuff so in many cases I mean there has to be some oppositional figures and things like that and there's also this whole, I mean meta-narrative isn't quite the right word but there is this idea that
[00:19:55] in some ways what we're also watching is related to some extent to the AIDS crisis which is referenced like once in the movie. But this is coming. At the time people were very much aware that like that is kind of a sub-narrative happening here.
[00:20:09] So in that sense, you know this is a very symbolic character and the fact that he can do so much with that character and still make me feel bad for the guy. I think it's a really, really skillful performance.
[00:20:20] I mean I would love to be played by Peter Yusuf. That'd be fucking great. Have you guys seen those videos? I don't know what the origin is. It must be from some like old BBC special or something. It doesn't even look that old
[00:20:32] because it's him at an older age. I mean I think it's him in the 90s where he like is telling old show biz stories and he does impressions of all the actors he used to work with. Have you ever seen these? No.
[00:20:44] For whatever reason we'll stumble upon them on YouTube every once in a while through that tricky algorithm and then we'll end up down a rabbit hole but he'll be like telling stories about working with Charles Lawton. I mean he's just sort of like dishing goss
[00:20:58] on that whole generation of actors and he does the most insane impressions of everyone including a Jim Carrey level of his face transforms when he does the person. I wonder if he ever did a... Nick Nolte in Lorenzo as well. I mean it makes me wonder
[00:21:16] because Peter Yusuf does not look like Charles Lawton and he'll tell a story about being on set with Charles Lawton and he'll be like, and then Lawton said and then his face just turns into Charles Lawton. It looks like those dumb deep fake videos
[00:21:29] that now circulate where a comedian is doing impression of a person. Yusuf rules, it's an awesome person to have play you and I think he's playing this character very responsibly understanding that it is not a villain even though he is a dramatic obstruction for much of the film.
[00:21:48] Man he didn't die for another 12 years after this. Peter Yusuf really stuck around. Did he work much after this film? That's a good question. The second he came on screen and made me realize I don't think I've ever seen Yusuf at this age.
[00:22:04] He did stuff, I mean I think he took little roles. His last on-screen role is the Joseph Fiennes Luther biopic. Don't forget Luther. Pilger, from Vulture. The last two times you've been on this show, first of all welcome to the Three Timers Club,
[00:22:25] the last two times you've been on this show were Christopher Nolan and Michael Mann who are very loudly two of your favorite filmmakers and people you've written about extensively and thought about deeply. And then this movie you vouch for very hard.
[00:22:40] Is Miller a big guy for you in general? Is it really this film that stands head and shoulders above the rest of the filmography? I love Miller, but this is the movie that made me fall in love with George Miller. Sure. At the time that I saw it.
[00:22:55] We were talking about this. You saw this when you were in college. I saw this when I was in college and I saw it out of a sense of duty. It wasn't like oh yeah, I want to go see Lorenzo's oil.
[00:23:03] A friend and I had started an arts and culture magazine and I had appointed myself film critic. Congratulations! And it was coming out. This was coming out. We had some invites to press screenings, but not for this one if I remember correctly.
[00:23:20] So I went out by myself on a one weekend afternoon or evening to the local multiplex and sat in the theater where I think I was the only other person. It was maybe two people. This was not a hit. Not a hit. Yeah, it was like opening weekend.
[00:23:39] And kind of was just like I guess I have to fucking see Lorenzo's oil because that's one of the movies opening. So I went and saw it. With a sense of like nine to five grind. Right, got a clock in at Lorenzo's oil. Exactly.
[00:23:52] And I had seen Mad Max as a kid, but like it hadn't like the first Mad Max and it hadn't made like that much of an impression on me. You know, I just, I mean, I think I enjoyed it,
[00:24:03] but you know, I didn't really even make the connection. Sure. Because at the time there was another George Miller. There's also this. Do you remember this? A man from Snowy River, George Miller. Also Australian frozen assets George Miller. Whoa. It's just funny because for a long time
[00:24:20] we actually thought they were the same guy. Right, of course why not? They seemed like they're making the same kinds of movies. Yeah. No, yeah, of course. He made Andre, the movie with the seal. I saw Andre. Remember Andre? And he has no like middle initial.
[00:24:34] He is just George Miller. It's so funny that you think that they were like friends of like chimpanzees. Yeah, he did die. No, no initials. But they were just like, I don't know, what could a kid be friends with? They're just like walking around to zoo
[00:24:45] and someone sees the seal and like, sure, let's do a seal. 90s had a ton of... You didn't have to be on a dock the whole time. A kid and an animal. And eating mumbucket trouble. In a small town. And the kids either on vacation
[00:24:57] or it's a single parent or something. Light hijinks. Very light sort of velvet glove hijinks. And then you save the community center and like, woof, great. You know what you want in movies? We'll get back to Lorenzo's oil in a moment.
[00:25:10] And then talking about it for the rest of this episode. But one of those movies where I'm just like, what a weird series of things that culturally led up to this being a project that was green lit. The live action mid 90s flipper movie
[00:25:22] starring Elijah Wood and Paul Hogan. It's true. Which my grandmother took me to see in the theater. I remember very clearly. She was like, this is the movie for a grandma and her grandson. Here's this weird guy who suddenly became like an overnight pop culture phenomenon
[00:25:38] had these two massive films. Then like no one really knew what to do with him afterwards, including himself. And most of his projects are self started. And it's like, you should play a salty guy. Right? Like, are you going to wear a Hawaiian shirt
[00:25:52] and drive a boat, Paul Hogan? Call him up. That's like the very tail end of his studio run where he's like, I don't know, just put me in a flipper movie. Like I'm not going to write a script for myself. Put me in a goddamn flipper movie.
[00:26:04] Elijah Wood is just at the precipice of graduating to like puberty. Right. Like he's sort of on the precipice of being like post child star. And then it's that era where they're just like, oh, any 60s television show still airs on repeats enough that it has
[00:26:20] name recognition with five year olds. Like it's insane. Why would I have known what flipper was? I don't know. I don't know why. Well, you knew because you knew from dolphins. I knew from dolphins. I don't know. I had certainly never seen flipper.
[00:26:35] I'm on TV pretty regularly when I was a kid. I'm a little older than you guys, but like it was like the, you know, you came home in at 3 p.m. or 3 30 p.m. Like that was on TV along with, you know, the old Batman. Yes. Yeah.
[00:26:52] I fully remember flippers. Andy Griffiths. Yes. I remember flipper rerunning alongside all those shows, usually at after school times. And it was constantly the show that I just clicked past on the remote. Who's the villain in the flipper movie though? Who's the actor? Yeah.
[00:27:08] I mean, apart from like I assume society is a villain in flipper. You're gonna proc now. I'm going to guess you're gonna proc now. It's a strong guess, but no. The only thing I remember strongly about flipper is Paul Hogan forces Elijah Wood to smoke an entire cigar
[00:27:22] and then Elijah Wood to vomit in a blanket. Yeah. So when you say villain, that's what immediately comes to mind. A deeply traumatizing thing. Jonathan Banks plays the villain in flipper, which is just, it just sounds good. I saw that movie, I have no memory of Jonathan Banks.
[00:27:36] That rules. But you know. Kirstami directed that? Who directed the flipper movie? That was a Kirstami. A guy called Alan Shapiro directed it. Who sounds like, I don't know, someone who takes your name as you enter your agent's office.
[00:27:50] So you think George Miller might be the same guy who directed Andre? Andre. You're walking into oil, right? You're like, I don't know, he made Mad Max, he made Andre. Andre the Champagne of flippers. I just sense in my head, oh yeah, this is an auteur.
[00:28:08] This is an auteur I need to pay attention to. And I hadn't seen Road Warrior at the time. That's funny, that had just passed you by. That had just, I mean I remember opening and being that thing and I just hadn't seen it. And you hadn't seen Thunderdome
[00:28:20] and you hadn't seen Witches of Eastwood, which was a pretty big hit. I had seen Witches of Eastwood. Yeah, that makes sense to me. But like, you know, it wasn't a movie I particularly cared for. And it's a guy whose career at this point is
[00:28:30] three films all in the same franchise. Three Australian car exploitation movies. Which for me growing up, I was like, I watch parts of these movies on TV all the time and it wasn't until years later that I sat down and like distinctly interpreted them as separate things.
[00:28:44] Mad Max just sort of felt like a mash of stuff. And then like Witches of Eastwood, which you're like, oh that's like an above average studio comedy. That's like a good studio comedy. But it doesn't feel like that guy is defining himself as like...
[00:28:58] Also that was a very star driven movie. And Sharon and Michelle... You know, like it's... Susan Sarandon. Susan Sarandon again, you know, like yeah. You don't think of that as a Miller movie so much. Yeah, you sit down ready for your play to broccoli.
[00:29:10] You have no strong feelings on Miller either way. Right. And the movie starts. And I mean... Universal logo. Universal logo. Yeah, it's the opening scenes in the Camaros where you're kind of like what is happening? But... Yeah, actually the opening is kind of amazing. It's freed Kinesk.
[00:29:31] And kind of like I am going to start this movie in a place where you have no anticipation. Right, you don't think this is going to be in the movie and it's not going to be terribly relevant to the movie
[00:29:42] but it's very crucial to the sort of soul of this character especially the Nick Malting. But I was certainly dreading when you get to that opening you go, oh god, is he going to catch an illness from the fact that he is family part in? Oh sure.
[00:29:55] Right, so I'm sitting there like clenched from that opening as beautiful and well done as I think it is. I was like, oh god, is that the narrative of this thing? Right. And then... But fairly quickly I become aware that
[00:30:10] I'm watching something that is nothing like what I anticipated. And that's the thing that... Why I'm always so kind of militant about this movie because it really is like just this high operatic sense of style in it is there from frame one. Like it does not stop.
[00:30:28] It stops at one point but very pointedly stops but like it really just never lets up. Yes. And that sense of style, like suddenly I was completely just overwhelmed by this thing and it was still to this day one of the greatest movie-going experiences I've ever had
[00:30:45] and after I saw it I was just like, oh my god, what the fuck was that? And of course I immediately went and like I was like, oh, I've never been a real world warrior and stuff. And I'm watching Road Warrior, I'm like, oh,
[00:30:59] this is actually kind of the same aesthetic. This is very much his imprint. And at the time, I think in my review at the time I said something like, you know, Mad Max is like that Lorenzo's oil is basically like the Road Warrior aesthetic
[00:31:13] and to the real world. There are camera movements in this movie that reminded me of Fury Road. Like this is him. Right, yeah. That thing in the library where it's like God is coming down to look on this woman, essentially. You cannot beat it out of this guy.
[00:31:29] You get the sense that he fundamentally could not make an anonymous film as hard as he tried. Sure. Like I think this movie is actually more stylized than any of his other movies too. Except maybe Fury Road. Fury Road maybe just because it has all...
[00:31:44] On top of its very fear of how the Mad Max stuff has got the speed ramping and the colors. I also want to remind the panel that Babe was a pig in a city. Copulated. That's the thing! By little animals who wear little clothes.
[00:31:58] The thing is that Babe is a great movie about a talking pig. Yes. And you're like, I mean this is pretty out there and it worked. Right. And then he's like, you don't even know how fucking out there this pig can be.
[00:32:09] I'm going to take him to the city and you're going to cry and scream. Yeah, you want to chimpanzee wearing a three piece? I want children to never want to go to a movie theater again. Right, animals somehow paying rent in a flop house?
[00:32:22] I mean we'll get to this but it's just so crazy the leap that Babe Pig in the city makes where it's like, Babe won. Here at Animals. And what if a pig wanted to be a sheep dog? You're like, insane!
[00:32:32] We all have, we all play that mind game. What if the animals are talking to each other and we can't hear it? But they move like animals and they're not doing people things. And then Babe too is like, no they have a little city.
[00:32:44] They have a little city where animals rule. So strange. Have you ever had a little animal city? Have you ever interacted with them? Because I feel like with Nolan and Man, we discuss both times you've interacted with those people. No, I've never interacted with Nolan.
[00:33:01] Oh no, you never did like a Q&A with him? No, I've never done a Q&A with him. You shouldn't do a Q&A with him. Come on, tenants come up to see you. I'm going to send Warner Brothers an email. I have tried too.
[00:33:12] I know, sure. Well at the Village Voice I came very close. He just doesn't do a lot. It is my understanding that Christopher Nolan hates New York. Because he says David Edelstein hates his movies. He feels like someone who reads The Atlantic.
[00:33:27] It just feels like in that kind of calm middle, you know what I mean? Like he doesn't know who I am, but maybe the Atlantic will catch his eye. What if Christopher Nolan's a blankie and when this episode drops, all three of us get a DM.
[00:33:40] Hold on mate, I'd love to be on the podcast. Who won March Madness? It's too bad Tom Green lost. I would have done Freddie Gottinger. But you've never talked to Miller? I've never talked to Miller. I was supposed to interview him right before Fury Road came out
[00:33:56] and then we got canceled. It's not like he makes that many movies. So it's not like there are times of opportunities to talk to him. That's the thing about almost every project he's picked, including this one, like you said, it's a five years after Witches of Eastwick.
[00:34:08] Why was this the film he zeroed in on? For his fifth film and his second non-Mad Max movie? To contextualize it's a little bit, three Mad Max's which are just this thing that grows and grows. This sort of master he has to serve
[00:34:22] and I think serves with pleasure. But the third film is then tainted by the grief and the loss of Byron Kennedy. Then his first film he makes fully on his own is the only film that he really made properly within the American studio system
[00:34:37] and also as just like a director being hired rather than someone who was fully developing the thing that was part of his mind. I think it's the only movie he didn't write, right? I can't remember if he wrote The Happy Feast. No, he did.
[00:34:49] Everything else is so fully his blood. Eastwick is the only one he's not credited as screenwriter. And he talked extensively. I'm sure we talked about this on the episode that Eastwick was a very difficult process for him the first time he was dealing with like notes
[00:35:03] and studio pressures and that Nicholson insulated to him from it a lot and sort of taught him to stand up for himself. But he had weirdly like developed this kind of like, you know, Miyazaki of Australia sort of career where he just like got to do everything
[00:35:20] exactly the way he wanted it, you know? Because he raised the money himself. He had the same collaborators. He had a sort of workflow and everything. And that was the first time that he was having to like serve other people.
[00:35:34] And then he doesn't make a move for five years. And he comes back with this, which does feel like a sort of time delayed processing of the sort of everything he was going through during Beyond Thunder Joe Man, which is of Eastwick. Then with some time to rest.
[00:35:52] I think he gets divorced in between these two movies also. Is that possible? Is that true? I think he gets divorced between Eastwick and Lorenzo. I can't remember, but he married Margaret Sixle who's married you now in 95. So it sounds about right. Yeah. Lorenzo's Oil.
[00:36:07] So you've seen Lorenzo's Oil in 1992. You have a profound experience with it. How many times have you seen this movie? Many times. Many times. More than 20, I would say. That is a lot of times. I don't mean that judge mentally. It's just very interesting to me.
[00:36:22] I mean, it was in theaters for like, you know, three weeks or something. Right. It was brief. It was in and out. Yeah, but I bought the laser disc. And I watched it. And I also... Did you have to flip that sucker? I mean, 135 minutes. That's...
[00:36:34] You must have been flipping like Paul Huggett. Smoking a stone. I will say while we were talking, I looked up if you can buy a flipper laser disc because I was... Oh, sure. You got to flip those. Five bucks. If you want to... Comment here.
[00:36:45] I have one still. I think I have the laser disc for this still. For this. But this is also one of those movies that I would go to... I think it doesn't have a blue ray. It just was announced. Keena Lorber is just announced one
[00:36:55] that I think will hopefully be coming out around the time. This episode airs soon. That's cool. For them. But yeah, it's... I mean, this is one of those movies that I would show people. Yeah. Like if you were my girlfriend, you would have to watch this movie. Right.
[00:37:10] And I showed it to my roommates. And I mean, it's... Would people always walk away after that being like, you're right, this is an underrated movie? Or were some people like, why did you show me that? Because when I watched this film,
[00:37:21] I was surprised by how much I liked it on them. But I had very low expectations. They're not very low, but like... Well, I mean, I don't know that... I don't know that I've ever had someone say, why did you show me that? Sure. Maybe they were afraid.
[00:37:33] But no, I mean, not everyone has loved it. But a lot of people have loved it, or at least so they told me. Sure. It's a special movie. But yeah, I mean, it's a very moving film too. Yeah.
[00:37:46] I mean, you don't necessarily have to appreciate the aesthetics to... You know, a lot of people have problems with Nolte's accent and whatnot, but... I can't be mad at his accent. I can't be mad at his accent. It works. I can't do that. It works.
[00:37:59] It's too unusual for me to be mad at. It's also the other thing, and I have to... I should note this. And I didn't know this at the time. I mean, it was only after I saw the movie that I realized this.
[00:38:07] Or as I saw the movie, I realized the story. You know, my father worked for the World Bank. Oh, interesting. So when I saw that this was a World Bank family... Like there are certain things about World Bank families. Not that I knew that many of them,
[00:38:22] but we know a lot of Turkish World Bank families and a couple of others. But, you know, there was something about the way it depicted that family that felt very authentic to me. I love good Washington D.C. movies. Is it sure?
[00:38:35] And I think of this as one, even though, you know, it's not really... Yeah, but it's a good movie about, like, being confronted with an insurmountable problem and sort of charging into it and charging into bureaucracy. And right, like, I get the Washington D.C. vibe.
[00:38:52] Which, you know, aside from the fact that he is a doctor, I know it is the easiest thing in the world and an overly tempting thing to do to track the character struggle in any movie onto the director expressing something about how hard it is
[00:39:08] to make a movie. But it does feel like there's something in the sort of single-mindedness of, I need to solve this seemingly impossible problem. You know, and the type of mentality that gives you the persistence and the stubbornness and the mix of realism but also optimism
[00:39:31] to keep going through it. And to have that also be someone who has been both a filmmaker and a practicing doctor. Yeah. Yeah. But also, I mean, there's also a certain arrogance to these characters. I mean, they even say this in the movie. It's a whole thing.
[00:39:48] And he doesn't shy away from that. Like, they are allowed to be, you know, they're persistent but they're allowed to be a little annoying in their persistence as well. And I love that. And I love the fact that... It's part of why they succeeded. Right.
[00:40:03] And the way that Susan Sarandon's character, you know, kind of becomes almost monstrous at a certain point. Yeah. I'm almost shot like a horror movie character where she's kind of like lurking in the background. You know, she's like a shadow or we see the back of her head.
[00:40:18] Even as we understand why she's doing the things that she's doing and even as, you know, we feel great compassion for her. The film also is willing to acknowledge this sense that, you know, she is, you know, she's becoming this like, you know, kind of monstrous figure.
[00:40:37] Well, and, you know, the mapping is easy because making films is something that all filmmakers and neatly have experience with. So you can watch any movie knowing that they can always relate whatever's happening in the film to going through that. Yeah. But that's...
[00:40:53] Keeping your eye on the goal. Right. At the risk of offending, alienating all sorts of people. Which by the nature of this podcast and the types of films and directors we cover, we're constantly coming up against those anecdotes where it's like everyone said you can't do this thing
[00:41:08] or the stories of how they someone trick someone into doing the thing they wanted them to do. Right, right, right. Or you act like an asshole and hard ball on this thing so they ultimately come around like that sort of bull-headedness
[00:41:19] all in the name of some single-minded and purpose, you know? I think what is interesting is that in the same way that he portrays the Yusinov doctor as inherently a well-intentioned moral man who is beholden to... He's like, I want to help you in any way.
[00:41:41] I have ideas, but right when they're like, how do we just like crash through the system? He has to be like, well, I still represent, you know, a methodology that I can't go around. And it is this thing that I genuinely just don't think about much
[00:41:55] because we are so frequently talking about how completely fucked our healthcare system is and it's very easy to just think of the binary of like, we should all get treatment and it shouldn't cost us all literally an arm and a leg, you know?
[00:42:09] That you don't think about the intricacies of... The double-edged sword of bureaucracy needing to coexist with medical science because of what is at stake in every single instance and that you are essentially, if you are working in the medical field,
[00:42:29] you're working in a field where mistakes are truly fatal, you know? Where the stakes are so high in terms of what can go wrong that you understand the sort of trepidatiousness and the sort of like, the instinct to follow the line and not veer off
[00:42:50] because it's like, how are you going to defend the choice to do something that hasn't been thoroughly tested and approved if that goes wrong versus if you follow the book and the person dies and you're able to say, well, it's just a horrible disease.
[00:43:06] We couldn't have done anything about it. But it's like, you're kind of damned if you do, damned if you don't. Yeah. And you see that depicted even in like the nurses. Yeah. And that's another thing I love about this movie
[00:43:19] and I think why someone like Miller was ideal for it. You'll see these weird scenes or shots where you see a nurse talking to the Odones or to Lorenzo and they walk away and then you see her face and her expression just changes.
[00:43:38] It's not like a, I mean it's almost like a horror movie thing, but it's not. Her expression just changes to completely neutral, almost robotic. And you realize this is part of their job. This is this person's job. And I mean you'll see it with the nurses
[00:43:55] that come to their house and they're like, this is how we do things. You have to do it this way. I can't be a party to this. And even as they want to help and it's not like they don't care, but there is a certain amount of self-preservation,
[00:44:08] professionalism, all these things that come into it. And I think Miller as someone who was a doctor probably saw this and understood this on some level with the doctors as well. I mean I'm sure it's something, he worked in an emergency room, right?
[00:44:22] Isn't that how Mad Max came about? Yeah, he would like drive an ambulance around and do like DIY surgeries on people. But it is, I mean I'm gonna mingle it here, but Yusinov has that line at one point where he's like, your job is to be parents
[00:44:36] and my job is to not. Like my job is to see this from the objective point of view and not get clouded by emotions because that's my responsibility. You are not gonna be able to extricate your emotions from this situation and that onus is on me.
[00:44:53] And they can view that as, oh you're disconnected, you're at arm's length, you're not understanding the stakes of this. And he's like, if I was getting as upset about this as you were, I wouldn't be able to do my job.
[00:45:04] Then also this movie is not clinical at all, it feels like a fucking opera and he'll stage a conference with a doctor in like Charlie Rose black room and things like that. It is as operatic as any movie I have ever seen.
[00:45:18] And it's using Barbara Zadazio for strings and Platoon had just come out like six years earlier. So it's kind of like an almost hacky piece of music in a way to use but it worked. And it's repeating at 8000. It's very referential in that way.
[00:45:31] I mean this is also George Miller's like movie love movie because the scene where they talk about the night of the shooting stars, La Notte di San Lorenzo, he's using Verdi's Requiem which is the music that's used in the Taviani brothers night of the shooting stars. Very memorable.
[00:45:49] Like this is a movie that is you know, referential in that way and that's another thing that I mean this is 92. An incredible movie year. Yeah incredible movie year but like 92 there was this period in the early 90s and maybe even starting
[00:46:06] in the late 80s where we get these kind of highly referential, highly stylized Altura films. I mean Cape Fear, Age of Innocence, Dracula, This One. Well you have all these guys like Di Palma and Coppola and Scorsese making quote unquote like studio
[00:46:25] tentpole movies. Making sort of pulpy movies. Like signing on to pre-existing IP and then you get things like the Untouchables Carrage scenes. But they're filled with like lap dissolves and all this stuff and a lot of it I think comes from
[00:46:38] in the 1980s there was this kind of run of great like restorations of silent films right? In part because of the video revolution but like you know I think Napoleon is restored in 81 or you know released in 81. I think Sunrise is restored at the end of the
[00:46:55] decade. I mean but like there's this period of reconnecting with movie history and suddenly you start to see these movies. I don't know that any of them has directly referenced like why they did this but you really sense this you know reconnection and the return of this like
[00:47:11] very lush stylization that feels like I think around this time there's also a restoration or a re-release of Magnificent Ambersons. You feel like you're watching like you know if Orson Welles had continued to make movies. West Copalit does his Napoleon reconstruction.
[00:47:27] Right. I mean I think part of that is I hadn't thought about this but it is like that's the period of time in the late 80s early 90s where suddenly the movie brats are becoming the establishment. Right. Like if not the old guard
[00:47:41] they're becoming the guys who are at the absolute peak of the mountain and unlike Spielberg who had just sort of pretty much started at the top as someone who was really successful at being populist and in touch with the culture the other guys
[00:47:55] had to fight to sort of get to the point where they were able to get access to those major budgets. Big name IP whether it's a remake or it's a book or it's a adaptation of a TV show or whatever the fuck it is Coppola had sort of
[00:48:09] gotten to that point accidentally and then lost it hard is now being given the keys to the kingdom again. Like all these guys are getting to do these things and that's the first major wave of filmmakers who are like the product of serious film school.
[00:48:25] It's real film school kids. That's what I was thinking about too. They're coming up at the time. You also have Malcolm X this year which is like Spike Lee's big first magnum opusy kind of movie. You have Unforgiven obviously which is more swansongy although 20 more movies.
[00:48:41] Dedicated to Sergio and Don. That's his referential movie. You have Altman coming back and making a big fucking movie and the player rather than like his weird 80s output. Which is also his version of movie love is like get a load of these fucking assholes in Hollywood. Yes 100%.
[00:48:57] And then you also have like the dawn of Tarantino this year. The dawn of Miramax with the crying game. And the dawn of like well I guess it's not like the sort of 90s sexy thriller but like basic instinct is this year.
[00:49:09] Which is maybe the peak of the really hard R sort of. Well they kind of come back with basic instinct because before the 80s had had that body weight and all those but then basic instinct is like more vulgar. Body heat is fucking Disney compared to
[00:49:25] this shit. We can go further guys. But I think I saw Scorsese, I'm sorry, Scorch easy speak at the New York Film Festival years ago because he'll like every year pretty much I think almost every year he'll screen a restoration that he'd help
[00:49:41] supervise and do a little talk back after it. And he did this Q&A I forget who moderated it but they actually asked him one question that took up the entire 45 to hour long Q&A. It was the best Q&A I have ever seen.
[00:49:55] It must have been Ken or whatever. I think it was. It was perfect but it was just literally so you've done a lot for preservation and for film history. How did you get started with all of this? And it was one perfect 50 minute But that question is designed.
[00:50:09] Let's just talk about that. How did you get started with film history? Maybe I'm smoothing it over picture my mother slaving over the stove. I'm like alright baby we're on Mulberry Street. I'll buckle your belts you know take your shoes off Maybe I'm rewriting this in
[00:50:27] my mind but I literally don't even remember the other person interjecting with like can you elaborate on that? I just remember the other person sitting back with their arms crossed and letting him go but he was talking about the baby steps that led to him
[00:50:41] starting what's it called the film foundation and all of his sort of preservation and such and he talks about when all those guys started to break into the studio system and have access to the lot they were all like these film school kids
[00:50:59] who are hyper literate and hyper obsessive with everything in a certain way where I think influenced by what the whole Kaya De Cinema gang looked like to them Sure, they wanted to be a new gang. Right. If you were these like eight people
[00:51:13] who all just sit around all day watching movies like non-stop and talking about them extensively we want to promote that same sort of like excitement and cultural literacy about the history of film in America in California when they got access to all these
[00:51:29] backlots they'd go like oh my god we can just go in there they have prints of everything and we can watch them. We can just take a print and we can go into a screening room and we can just stay there and watch whatever we want
[00:51:41] and Square says he said as they started getting these prints and screening them all of them were horrible Right. Like they were like orange and they were melting and it started with them being like we have to complain to them
[00:51:53] which they of course were like who fucking cares and I think it became like a real cause for them is like the more successful they got the more responsibility they felt to continue that cycle which then perpetuated itself onto the bigger their opportunities became as filmmakers the more
[00:52:09] their films had to promote a sort of sense of if I like this movie I want to step away and research what this is referencing Let's get back to George Miller though because now we're just completely off the George Miller track. I'm interested in the whole thing.
[00:52:23] But like because he's not one of those guys at all and he's bit of an interloper and he's using Hollywood tools and stars here but I feel like he's making something that I'm sure they like this or like I'm sure that the
[00:52:37] Scorsese's of the world were intrigued by this movie or whatever if they even bothered to see it right but like it's not like this movie is coming out and people are like you gotta stick around like I wish to welcome to the Hollywood
[00:52:49] establishment right like you know I wish this movie has come out in the age of Twitter there's one of the few things that I wish had happened in the age of twitter the malty memes but I feel like it would have found an audience
[00:53:01] well just in the way that something like Dark Water or like Margaret like Sully right right we're talking about three these guys they eyeballed it with the oil no I don't know I can't do a solid but all three of those are movies
[00:53:13] where I had experiences that are kind of similar to what you described seeing Lorenzo so right we're walking out being like why isn't why isn't everyone talking about right like Sully I saw a couple weeks in but I was like no critics are standing
[00:53:23] out for this I guess this movie sucks after thinking the trailer was good and then I sat there in a theater like alone at 11 o'clock on a Tuesday and was like why is no one addressing the fact that this honks he's good no insensitivity to the geese
[00:53:37] I don't love Sully I don't love I like do you know how many souls are on that plane I forgot and do you know how many survive all of them every single one there was no chance he could make it to Tita burrow he couldn't
[00:53:53] so the plot of Lorenzo they didn't have to throw us they lost thrones he couldn't make it to Tita burrow he's he's a what's his name Augusto he works for the World Bank they're on the Kamaro Islands that's what they're called right
[00:54:09] this is just the open credit sequence by the time the titles are done you're landed in DC and then they're back in DC he has this brain degeneration sort of disease like it's like his body lacks the enzymes to process these fatty oils and so it starts to
[00:54:29] destabilize your entire nervous system degenerative right yeah it like melts away your fucking brain yeah basically and the film does we're doing a poor job of explaining it but the film does a great job of explaining really invested in explaining it and every five or ten minutes
[00:54:47] you get like an analogy you know a comparison sure someone will be like well this is like the wiring of the brain and here like that's well explained what my lin is yeah and I love all those explain it
[00:54:57] like it's like you know like I can easily see a critic saying why are we getting so many explanations I would not cut a single one in fact I would love like a four hour director's of just then explaining the use of this movie well one might say
[00:55:13] and it's also this like incredible in he has from the actual true events which are like here are two people who are very intellectually curious but have no background in Madison Madison medicine I mean right because like one of Nolte's biggest scenes
[00:55:27] is that scene where he's at the white board and he's trying right and like she's like right you this is you it's just you tackling something you've never had to tackle excessive people who like believe in the like never ending quest for knowledge who just then go like
[00:55:43] there's gotta be some we don't understand this but let's discuss this in detailed terms right that can appeal to a lay person and let's get into it deeply because we want to know this shit first yeah and the fact is they're smart yes and the movie is
[00:55:57] not afraid to make them smart and the movie is not afraid to also say you know the fact that these people were intellectually curious like led to their being able to do this there's a certain amount you know and that's interesting and it also
[00:56:09] but it does acknowledge that like they were a little alienating and they you know they become part of a community of people who suffer whose kids suffer from this disease and the community doesn't community of great character I mean we got Reb Horn you got Marga Martindale
[00:56:23] and out and Marga Martindale in the same movie you're playing with a hot hand I mean Laura this is Laura Linney's first first first movie number one first and when she shows up you're like hey it's Laura Linney like same as ever like you know it's
[00:56:35] not like she's she really just hit the ground running like her first appearance that she looks like Laura Linney she's giving a perfect Laura Linney performance like she had no adjustment time being a film actress you also have the great Kathleen I never know how to say
[00:56:49] her name will Hoyt will Hoyt like that as the sister who is in ER as Dr. Lewis's sister is in Gilmore Girls as Luke's sister she's always a good sister character who has like kind of like a sort of fun sister energy
[00:57:07] right you imagine like her house is a lot of Chachki's she's the sister who went backpacking in Europe in Asia but we're jumping all around here it is like I kept on waiting and I don't know why because I inherently trust George Miller I trust your judgment Belga
[00:57:23] I've never heard anything bad about this movie even if it isn't discussed much but I kept on waiting for the movie to make a sort of cringy mistake and you know are they going to demonize the doctor are they going to demonize the other families
[00:57:37] in the support group any of those sorts of things and I think this movie is so good at the sort of the rules of the game the great tragedy of the world is that everyone has their reasons right you know in a way that is so heartbreaking
[00:57:51] and is kind of equally devastating to the story of this young man's physical and mental deterioration is the story of everyone has a reason for doing something that seems obstinate destructive closed-minded and it's doesn't shy away from showing you that
[00:58:11] that's the thing like it's not like it doesn't it man it avoids making those mistakes but it doesn't avoid doing the things that you think it's going to do it just does them really well it's not like everyone in this movie is a saint
[00:58:23] they're killing right they're just people I mean there's tons of conflict between them and the other families there's tons of conflict between them and the doctors and then also you know I mean I always bristle sometimes when people say movies certain movies are emotionally
[00:58:37] manipulative but this seems like a movie that would be emotionally manipulative you've got a sick child in danger who's basically dying you know they could you know they could tiptoe around it but they don't they show you the things that are happening to them
[00:58:53] they show you the things that are happening to the other kids they show you a child witnessing his future looking at another child who is further along when he has the pumpkin that's the kind of thing that a lesser director would either cut or just fuck up completely
[00:59:11] and George Miller is like no no no I'm going for it not only that and I feel like I'm going to lack the language to explain this properly and hope that you will step up to the play but
[00:59:21] the first chunk of the movie where Lorenzo is being played by this main young actor who never acted again and do you know this became an editor in chief at Forbes magazine has written three books on the hip hop industry he's like some media
[00:59:35] and is now writing about celebrity VC culture yes he is but also his voice as he degenerates is being done by E.G. Daly the one thing I wish I hadn't looked up before watching the movie is being done by fucking Tommy Pickles from Rugrats
[00:59:49] but also am I wrong about this am I wrong in thinking she is also the voice of Babe you're right she's the voice of Babe in Babe Pig in the City and the first one I believe Babe is voiced by Chuckie Christine Kavanaugh the voice of Chuckie Finster
[01:00:05] how strange it really is funny to think there were just like eight ladies like in the 90s who did all children with Smith exactly I regret looking that up in advance because then every time Lorenzo screamed I was like that's a Rugrat
[01:00:23] I recognize the tones of a Rugrat but also I think the actor playing Lorenzo changes obviously as he's getting older and four different actors most of them is Zach O'Malley the first third of the movie is like Zach O'Malley doing performances with makeup augmentation
[01:00:39] but he is very visible he is present in scenes he is very visible in his degradation and then the last chunk of the film you have an older actor he's more visible again you're watching him sort of find a pathway back to some level
[01:00:55] of agency in his own life but there's the midsection of the film in which Lorenzo becomes very visually abstract like the movie is not shying away from what he's going through but you are rarely seeing his face it always becomes this sort of like
[01:01:11] this very sort of expressionistic tapestry and it feels like the sounds of the machines that are keeping him alive or overpowering everything else I mean he starts to feel like some sort of bizarre monster within their home and it's everyone's talking about him
[01:01:27] and he is almost always in frame but you're almost never seeing him cleanly and I think there's an interesting balance of trying to make sure you understand you're feeling the disturbingness of the state that this child is in but the film also doesn't become exploitative
[01:01:47] in trying to show you sort of the medical degradation but it kind of has to do that I think because it's also conveying it's trying to make you think because it's going to sort of pull the rug out from under you later
[01:02:03] but he wants us to think that this child has no self anymore no sense of self anymore the rents are just an idea now that everyone in the movie is debating we're not showing you his face because his face is kind of irrelevant at the moment
[01:02:15] there's that scene where the nurse is just he's the Palpatine clone we're all just arguing around him but there's a scene where the nurse is like rushing through the story that she's been asked to tell him and they get in that fight over
[01:02:29] like later on when Susan Sarandon is reading that story and he starts to blink and roll his eyes and then he goes through that scene and he's like that's the scene and he's like he's just like oh my god you're there you just can't communicate with us
[01:02:45] but you're there you're growing up you're older and I've been reading you Peter Rabbit all this time my fucking nightmare that flipped me out so hard as much as it's a moment of victory but it's also tinge with like
[01:03:01] wait a second this guy has just spent ten years over and over and over again he couldn't express himself it's yeah I mean what existential terror it really is like and at that point you kind of lock into and I believe it's right at that point
[01:03:15] that you get a Lorenzo's eye point of view shot of the mobile hanging above him and then you know you get a close up of him and suddenly you're like oh my god there's a person in there that's been in there for the first time
[01:03:33] in a long time and it also feels like that scene is the first time you're clearly seeing his face in like 40 minutes of screen time sure you know the movie has just been shooting him from angles where you're seeing someone working his leg
[01:03:45] or you're seeing him in the background out of focus with the machine wearing or whatever it is there's so many scenes in this movie that made me sit up like obviously Nick Nolte falling down the stairs in operatic agony as the camera zooms in a diagnosis book
[01:04:01] that was when I first was like oh this is George Miller is here like this is crazy but the scene where the doctor helps him walk in front of all the other doctors is another scene where the whole time you're like what is this scene doing here
[01:04:15] this doesn't have anything to do with anything except that it's something that's happening right do you know what I mean? it's not like that informs the plot in a major way but it is I'm not saying it's superfluous at all it's very you know
[01:04:29] you're seeing that side of the medical industry that's trying to help him like how it can be a little sterile but it's not unfeeling the paradox of the fact that in order to help you and in order to help cure this thing
[01:04:43] we have to treat you almost like an object like a zoo animal and also that the whole time the doctor is sort of saying like I'm going to help kids like you that the doctors are all kind of acknowledging like
[01:04:55] you know this is a disease that you can't reverse like this isn't we're not going to be able to put the two back in the tube right the thing that feels very callous and unfeeling but is sort of just didactic of look there's no pathway out of this
[01:05:09] it's two years it's done it's too late the best thing we can do not to be unfeeling is to be able to extract whatever data we need and can it's like a doctor organ donation 15 years from now we might crack this you know which it's like
[01:05:30] if you're on the other end of that table once you start being able to put aside your grief for a second I think you go how dare my kid get reduced to I mean the show almost directly says this this is my child
[01:05:44] this is not some number he's not a case study he's not an example you know he's not a data point but that's the most responsible thing for them to do clinically yeah and that's why I think that scene of Nulti breaking down in the stairs incredible scene
[01:06:03] incredible scene and so important you know it's like I mean to a parent who is discovering this I mean this is the thing I have a problem sometimes with the way grief is depicted in movies because it's you know people are such kind of noble sufferers sure
[01:06:20] and I've seen some films recently where it's like scene after scene after scene of people you know kind of lightly crying like the idea that you have to be understated with this sort of thing and here George Miller is like let me tell you what it's like
[01:06:34] to be a father who just found out his son is going to die his like six year old son is going to die and it is brutal and also incredibly beautiful like you know if I had to rewatch a scene
[01:06:45] from this movie it would probably be that scene even though it is utterly emotionally devastating but then you have the other thing too I mean the scene where the doctor delivers the news to them for the first time Serendin does like a master class of underplaying
[01:06:58] where it's just locked into this two shot picture that's kind of like you're hearing the words but not really understanding them and she's just very calmly asking the logical series of follow up questions and as she's asking them she is recognizing oh my god
[01:07:11] I'm on the verge of crying like she's playing that thing of oh I'm surprised that I suddenly can't say these words I can't get them out of my throat and that's the shot that's the scene where the style stops right that's the scene where like
[01:07:24] the camera stops moving they even like do this whole thing of like the you know there's this fan in the background and the doctor is like oh my god we don't need that thing you know and it becomes totally silent
[01:07:35] really I think the only time in the movie where it's like total silence and totally locked down another very weird little interesting moment in this movie too right why are we seeing this I love to be clear that we're seeing that oh well we'll get to my favorite
[01:07:49] little weird thing in this movie but he is for a guy who is so his films are so designed they're so controlled they're so him trying to fully get the thing in his mind down on film he does really let actors control a scene
[01:08:11] you know in a weird way even if he's specifically directing them to hit a specific thing the very nature of his filmmaking and storytelling style the fact that he is such and sort of such a subjective emotion first visceral expressionistic filmmaker means you're sort of
[01:08:34] saying to both the camera and the actors you're going to sell the feeling of this thing because I don't want conventional Hollywood sort of histrionics he's not afraid of melodrama which requires a lot of the actor I mean it's like Douglas Cirque one of the most stylized
[01:08:55] film makers of all time but also includes actors just going for it the staircase thing the moment leading up to it where he's reading through all the papers and the papers are cross fading into one another and you're landing very quickly on certain words that are standing out
[01:09:12] and the shot that they keep on cross cutting with is nolte just reading intensely and his eyes are so wide open it is fully cartoonish no one looks like that when they are reading something regardless of how worrying the thing they're reading is
[01:09:27] but that is how you feel when you're reading something like that and it's a thing that Miller understands and it allows him to avoid the scene where people explain everything they're feeling which is where these movies slow down and become boring these movies that often are like
[01:09:45] don't worry we'll have a scene that does all that work and that scene is a miserable slot I want to try to very concisely express the thing that I struggled to say in our Fury Road episode which is already in the can
[01:09:57] Rachel marked this as maybe an excuse to cut this tangent from the Fury Road episode Susan Sarandon said in some fairly recent career retrospective where she was going over all of her different roles Michelle Pfeiffer was the first choice for this movie she was supposed to do it
[01:10:13] she dropped out because she was offered Catwoman because Annette Benning had gotten pregnant there was like a domino effect but so then he goes down the line to the next which is the B-Stick call sheet person he's like Sharon Nolte might not work for this movie
[01:10:30] I'll do it with Sarandon and Sarandon said that the plan when they were making this film as it was designed was it would look how it looks at the beginning and then over the course of the film it would slowly desaturate and desaturate and desaturate
[01:10:45] into black and white until the scene with the book where Lorenzo suddenly sort of is able to communicate with them and they would come back into color that that was the whole idea and that they literally could not afford to do it because as opposed to today
[01:10:59] when Bong Joon-ho or George Miller can Justin right and put it out online and then re-release it into theaters it was a photochemical process that required re-timing every single shot and she said we just ran out of money weird anecdote she said the second
[01:11:14] that was the second time that had happened in my career Rocky Horror was supposed to be in black and white until Frank and Footer shows up on screen and then go into color also a fun idea fun idea couldn't afford it so did they
[01:11:25] did they shoot it that way and then later realize they couldn't do it they shot everything in color and what they couldn't afford to adjust it so because there is I mean the film does have a unique cinematography the way everything is lit
[01:11:42] there is, I mean the actors always just pop in a way that they tend not to in modern films it's very stark high contrast hard lightening even a bunch of times does that effect that you and I love which I've never figured out the formal name for
[01:11:58] but it's the thing that dare I invoke him Barry Sonnenfeld does in Adam's family with Angelica Houston where he likes the actors there is literally just like a little light on their eyes it's just the slur of their eyes that's a I mean yeah
[01:12:09] like they're in a confessional booth sure I mean the thing with Morticia obviously it's hysterical because it's true no matter what environment she's in but he'll do that in this too and it's this thing that I was trying to get at
[01:12:23] when talking about the black and white version why I don't really care about it in the Fury Road episode is that for me it feels like a half measure but it also feels redundant because what he's trying to get at is making you
[01:12:36] think differently about the film you've already seen right by presenting in a slightly different format you reconsider it a little bit but all it makes you really reconsider is George Miller is one of the few filmmakers who still makes movies like a silent filmmaker yeah
[01:12:51] you know when you put a thing in black and white like Fury Road oh I remember your Fury Road tension now cut all of it out no don't cut it out but this is like watching this I kind of dunk on your ass when you say it
[01:13:02] that's a great moment it's a savage burn I'm like Boston Mark and I'm roasted with a side of Mack and Shea but but it is that kind of thing where I was like it's unnecessary as much as I would love to see him put out the version
[01:13:15] where he's color timed it the way he wanted to originally it's the fact that he is willing to say to Nick Nolte in this scene you have to go full Valentino in this scene I'm gonna light it in a way where no room would ever possibly look
[01:13:28] because I'm gonna light it in the way that their brain feels at that moment right you know when they receive this news and it is this thing that like you know the old silent filmmakers used to talk about
[01:13:39] where they're like it's such a shame that sound came along people were finally figuring out how to use film yeah and then it became this easy crutch where you can just have a person walk on and be charming and I love dialogue based films
[01:13:51] I love performance based films I love naturalistic films I love comedies whatever but there was something to the fact that people had to really figure out a way to convey an emotion when so many basic tools were stripped away from theater
[01:14:05] you know from most performance that we knew and Miller is this guy where his movies kind of play like silent films you could watch this movie for as much as it has all the detailed science medicine talk you could watch this film and I think pretty much get
[01:14:20] the entire emotional narrative just from the images and from the visuals of the performance That's funny considering how much information is actually dispensed in this film but yeah No that's what I think makes him a master
[01:14:32] is he is using the dialogue for things that only dialogue can do and he is using the visuals for the things that people usually rely on It's also just funny that there are so many people in this movie who are obviously playing themselves these professionals
[01:14:44] the best of them of course being the British fucking olive oil guy being his son of the oh my god rules and there's that scene where he's like can you tell him I'm done with that and I'm going off to home now
[01:14:56] So this is my example of my favorite little thing that doesn't need to be in the movie Of course this guy is an important character but for this guy to have his own little mini-beam It rules
[01:15:04] His little story that's like well I figured I was going to retire in six months anyway and I'll give it a shot and his co-workers being like should we be worried about him But I love that shot of the two guys
[01:15:15] which is like you know like something out of 1940 it's like some kind of an E-Link comedy Guys to be clear what's happening in the film is they need to extract certain fatty acids from oil to create Lorenzo's oil right Like it's like a chemical expensive chemical process
[01:15:31] that no one would ever do because it has no purpose In the dumbest most reductive way after like sort of hitting their head against the wall doing all the things the doctors tell them to do being told that nothing's gonna work
[01:15:42] Nolte and Sarandon pushed through and recognized that one of the key issues is that his body is misinterpreting these what do they call them long chain fatty acids and they land on this thing that is
[01:15:56] what if we could trick the body into thinking that that was being done or that it didn't need to do that and recognizing that there's a relationship between that action and an element in olive oil and thus this film becomes and rapeseed oil later on
[01:16:12] This film becomes an oil thriller but when you hear the title you go like what's it oil barons and the Texas Plains It is the greatest food movie of all time Right! And of course that makes sense The hero should be Italian it's an olive oil movie
[01:16:26] The meals in this movie look so good anytime he makes a little pasta And then those scenes like when he's eating the spaghetti with his hands but you don't see him doing that you see Nolte doing that
[01:16:36] and then we move around and see the rest of the family's imitating Lorenzo I love shit like that and all those things are very sweet until they, like you say they almost become sort of fetishistic in a weird way, right? Like the Peter Rabbit thing
[01:16:54] They become obsessed with this Understandably so What else are you going to be obsessed with if you're a mom to a sick child that's your obsession in life And then the scene where she outlines it and she's just like, maybe you're right
[01:17:08] but I cannot live with the idea that maybe he's in there and his mind is totally alive and we're doing nothing Right, it's a freaky idea Even if it's unlikely, what a fucking nightmare that would be Well, and also the emotional trajectory of the fact that she learns
[01:17:24] fairly early on that he got it from her Like the fact that this is a thing that mothers carry That scene is incredible And only boys get it Which is just devastating and it informs everything she does And you only ever, you hear it
[01:17:40] You learn it once and then later on And of course it's this thing that's like this unspoken thing between them until finally Nolte blows up at one point It's just like, you know, you're ashamed of you and your poisoned blood But he has to say it in Italian
[01:17:54] The subtitles are kind of cool and interesting Like a more reserved version of Tony Scott Right And it's really really, you know Like that is this thing that is informing her character But the film only touches on it a couple of times It's sort of unspoken
[01:18:12] And you have people talk around it too The fact that this is presumably Nolte's second marriage He has two adult children This is her first and only child She had a child late in life And her siblings did not pass on this gene to their kids
[01:18:28] It was a di-roll every time She got the bad di-roll And they say like this must be so hard for her because she waited this long to finally have one child You already have two other ones Yeah And he has that weird guilt about that too
[01:18:42] You can tell The whole time watching the movie I knew Serendon had gotten an Oscar nomination And I was sort of like At first just sort of waiting for her Like whatever, big histrionic moment And then I guess she has, of course A very emotional moment
[01:19:00] But she never has those She never has like an Oscar scene Which I loved It's sort of a surprise she snuck in Especially because this movie wasn't a big deal I think it was partly just She was very respected I think she was automatic And it's weird that
[01:19:18] The only other nomination this got Was the screenplay nom Which is a good screenplay But that also feels not like You were right outside of our five So we'll give you that as a consolation prize I don't think the film would have gotten nominated
[01:19:32] For screenplay if George Miller hadn't Also written the screenplay If that makes sense Yeah, I have no idea What the actual Oscar campaign For this movie was like If there even was one It was released at Oscar time by Big Studio
[01:19:48] But I'm sure they played up the fact That he was a doctor I do remember them playing that up That was in the press materials And I think That was an acknowledgement But I don't think this was a case where If there had been 10 best picture nominees
[01:20:06] This was not going to be one of them This was not that well regarded It clearly had its defenders In small pockets But this is such a directors movie That it feels so perverse Even if you know it's because the movie didn't make much
[01:20:20] But it got a screenplay That's like Did Fury Road get a screenplay nomination I'm sure it didn't And that too Is actually such a well written It's filled with just Quite aside from the fact that screenwriting is not just dialogue But it's filled With incredibly beautiful
[01:20:40] Like poetic dialogue As is this one But I think that is the reason It didn't get the screenplay nomination There's so many people That the writers tend to judge screenplays By dialogue And what they're not acknowledging is That movie has some of the most airtight
[01:20:58] Economic characterization and plotting Of anything in the last 25 years He's got such an interesting Oscar run It's so weird Because of this random nomination This is his first nomination of any sort Which is then followed by Two babe producing and writing babe
[01:21:16] And then followed by winning an Oscar And making happy feet And then followed by of course The Mad Max Fury Road His fourth sequel to Mad Max A critical and awards darling We can talk about it in every single Episode of this miniseries
[01:21:32] And it never will seem like reality I remember at the I don't think you were a member yet Of the Critic Circle? No But I remember While the I mean it didn't win anything from us Because we're idiots That was the Carol year
[01:21:50] Carol did really well that year Yeah I think Carol won But I do remember Whoever was reading off The The votes The first vote they got That said Fury Road I think it was for best picture I remember them going Huh Really? And I was like
[01:22:14] It is so funny how we make I don't remember if that Someone said huh There was that energy And I was just like This is coming There was the year that Support the Girls Was a contender and Eric Cohen had to say Jungle Pussy like 25 times
[01:22:34] During the supporting actress votes Best supporting actress contender Jungle Pussy For those who don't know It's a great I actually loved her performance in that movie so much It made sense to me but like just Because he has to read out
[01:22:50] At certain point you might be reading three names per ballot So it's like you know Sir Charon and Chris and Stuart Jungle Pussy You know like just over and over again Anyway It's a very funny thing we do every year Just a bunch of you know
[01:23:04] Adults sitting in a room Writing little names on pieces of paper Yeah Changing those names Yes I love all these little side narratives though In the sort of everyone has their reasons Everyone has their own internal life This guy who finally cracks the code
[01:23:23] And distilling the missing element The other oil they need to Perfect this cocktail Is this is his last thing Before he hangs it up In his illustrious career Making cosmetics And then the other guy With his like little like Workplace affair that's happening
[01:23:43] Becky Ann Baker who's constantly like He's like I don't have time for this And she keeps calling out and being like You got a bunch of that lying around You know you have six people who could do that And I mean the other thing after you
[01:23:55] Watched this movie so many times Like everyone from this movie That I ever see in another movie Oh yeah it's the guy from Lorenzo's Oil For you this is the baseline You still see Laura Linney and you're like She's kind of mean about His behavior in school
[01:24:11] Each of them has a story Like I don't know them as the actor from Lorenzo's Oil I know them as oh that's the nurse That like didn't want to read the thing Or that's the nurse who you know Just felt like they really needed to take him
[01:24:23] To a hospital like everyone has A purpose and kind of a Life beyond the frame Even though the film is not like kind of this You know like Lee Ken Loach style It's this very controlled type of film That kind of breaks free of the frame too
[01:24:37] The Reb Horn scene He's great So rarely plays compassionate people Like he plays so many villains and like A lot of judges, a lot of people It is always interesting to see him playing More of just like a concern to that If you want to cry
[01:24:53] Which anyone who watched Lorenzo's Oil In preparation for this movie is probably Pretty dried out at this point Yeah I don't know that there's a movie that makes me cry more than this I watched it again This morning at like 4am And My god
[01:25:09] I was just like oh god I know everything that's happening I've seen it so many times I just couldn't stop I very rarely cry at movies I didn't cry watching this But it did give me that all Consuming sense Of grief and dread
[01:25:27] That I have not felt for a movie On this podcast in Saving Private Ryan Ryan like this is exquisitely Torturous I understand why it's doing so, it's not manipulative But Jesus Christ is this hard to watch And I was worried that I was not going to be able
[01:25:41] To like you know Keep a straight face like talking about it I was like I was actually worried a little bit this morning I was like I hope I'll be able to actually talk About this movie without like breaking up Well so I uh
[01:25:53] If you want to cry look at the stories about When James Redburn died a couple years ago He was a fucking one of the Best under sung characters In the world To me a very big deal as well
[01:26:05] He was just in a lot of movies I saw as a kid He was off you know Independence Day Things like that I got to work with him I love the game I got to work with him on the Failed Chris Gethard to come Big Lake
[01:26:19] Oh yeah of course he was the dad Which was a multi-camera show So I wasn't seen with him but everyone's there All the time I had to go in to do ADR They were running way behind and he was the person Before me in the sign-in sheet
[01:26:33] And I just sat there And talked to him for like 85 minutes Which uh there are the times that I Feel most confident In my decision to pursue acting Is when I get to just talk to like A just total consummate pro Nice person to interact with
[01:26:49] Work with a zillion people And just hear their stories about everything But when he died He was like a father to his children That were published that are unbelievable Are just some of the most elegant graceful Uh uh He also wrote his own obituary
[01:27:05] That's what I'm thinking of It's his own obituary Where people talk about like Oh he died gracefully He faced his oncoming death With grace and so often We want to reduce these things To these narratives Who is graceful in the face of death And it's something like this
[01:27:25] And it is astonishing Anyway parallel to this movie and this emotion The opposite end of that spectrum The scene where they invite them over for dinner And they're trying to sell them on the effectiveness As the oil you know And just seeing the begins And it's very friendly
[01:27:41] Right and they've already had tension back and forth That this couple they proactively reach out They're so happy that they're being involved in this Something and they get there And they realize that the group is a little bit more Than trying to find a cure for the children
[01:27:53] Because everyone has told them It's impossible it's two years You're done there's no sake in fighting it The best thing your kid can do is Be another data point So just figure out how To not let your relationship fall apart You know and Serandon has that thing
[01:28:09] Where it's like I have not heard one person Say anything about their kids And Martindale is the one person who they kind Of relate to who's similarly bullheaded Right And they're going back and forth With Reborn and his wife They make this slight breakthrough with the first version
[01:28:25] Of the oil right where it's like Before you say that though This film does I mean here's how Here's how good and effective this film is This film includes the line But what about the children Won't somebody think of the children And it works
[01:28:41] And it doesn't sound like a Simpsons character Right It does so many things like that And the mob is standing up and going Wait a minute the oil give us the oil Like this film could have Chappy and it would be perfect
[01:28:55] Like it'd be like yep there's Chappy Of course we all might be Chappy he was part of that synthesizing The oil we have to give him an appearance Bill I think You might have just added something to the blank chat Vernacular there are certain terms
[01:29:09] That guests have granted us that we then applied Other movies I think the Chappy test Is one of them This movie and not It's tonal balance Would Chappy disrupt The ecosystem of this movie And look many great films could not survive A Chappy it is not the only
[01:29:27] Limus test that matters but it is a Test of a certain type of control And conviction and I think Sincerely that he could be a Chappy Bram Stoker's Dracula Could pull off a Chappy You think it could I think it could Just because of tonal control
[01:29:43] That Reborn scene where You know it's like okay they seem to be on good terms Again these people have sort of Bristled at any time that they've tried To suggest any kind of unconventional methods Pushing back against the system But seems to be friendly then they bring up
[01:29:59] The oil and Reborn And wife just sort of go like Look you understand how these things work Big business This is the it takes this much time You have to invest this much money This and that And Nolte and Sarandon push back
[01:30:15] In the way they do in the self righteous Like not without my child kind of way And Reborn just lets loose on them Not with anger but just with pure frustration Of like do you not understand how fucking Difficult my life has been I've had three kids
[01:30:31] I've had three of these I understand how frustrated You are I went through the same fucking Thing like welcome to the club Now add two that's been My goddamn life I don't have the bandwidth to deal with this I don't have the bandwidth to try And fail anymore
[01:30:47] And it's such an empathetic thing The horrible concept of like allowing yourself hope again Like you know like which just seems so frightening Right where like in movies like this It is very easy to turn those people into villains To be like why are they being so unimaginative
[01:30:59] And stubborn But the reality is it's really fucking Difficult to believe in something It's like the most painful goddamn thing In the world and it's I imagine A billion times more painful When the thing you're believing in Is what you have been told is a completely incurable
[01:31:15] Terminal illness The other thing that we haven't talked about That I think this movie does so elegantly Is the way it uses Times and when it employs Its intertitles about time passing And how much of the movie goes on Where it's just updating the month and the year
[01:31:31] And how long it takes until they make It clear 12 months After diagnosis I mean there's a lot of restraint It's like a case study And it reminds me of Wendy and Lucy Where she keeps on going back to the imagery Of her ledger
[01:31:47] And you keep on seeing the numbers And being so aware of exactly how much money Michelle Williams has And how much everything is gonna cost So that every decision that is made in the film You have that info just constantly pounded Back into your brain
[01:32:01] And the way they just Abstract you're like okay we're what We're December of 84 But when did this start I'm forgetting how much time passed And I was thinking oh it's been Three or four years Somehow this kid is outlasting the diagnosis And then that title card comes in
[01:32:17] Like halfway through that is 12 months After diagnosis The sister shows Nolte the picture Of the three of them on the beach and goes like Do you remember that was 21 months ago I mean all these things where It's how I imagine Feels to be in a position like this
[01:32:33] Where the days just feel Endless Where life just slows down And it feels like you've been stuck in this forever And as you're coming up against Well you know the prognosis they gave him Was 24 months So now we're 18 months after diagnosis Now we're 20 months after diagnosis
[01:32:51] The second we crack 20 You're like he could just go at any moment It's really elegant the way he does it Which is why all the people That they interact with along the way Gains such significance Especially once they start helping them Like
[01:33:09] I mean Sadaby is a perfect example I mean he becomes the hero of the movie In that little scene I'm popping off to the shops Oil's on the desk Everybody who helps them it just feels like Such a huge monumental Thing they've done when they're just like
[01:33:25] We have the oil Or you know I have Three dogs that Black Mile in Or even like the little The Polish rat study That they find it just feels like this Monumental thing and it's shot With like this you know like this Heroic crane
[01:33:45] What's that the scene the medical conference Where the Japanese doctor is speaking And it's like almost a freaking like Bond movie or like a Tom Clancy Movie or something like this thrilling Conference in this other language Literally Bribing everyone with perfect pasta But it's also interesting because you'll
[01:34:03] See that You know I think this is that one That conference where they're all sitting there And they're talking and then the camera Tracks I believe and you realize They're still in the hospital and outside There's a corridor and there's like two sick kids
[01:34:19] Like walking down the corridor And it's like let's never forget What this is actually about like he doesn't Allow you to forget that and that's really Important there is a thing I love that movies Can do where they Get you to acclimate to
[01:34:33] A normal you never thought you would have Excited at the beginning right so when At the beginning the Symptoms that Lorenzo is experiencing Are really treated one by One and you're watching a very very Subtle gradual Sort of diminishing right Where every single little thing he loses
[01:34:51] Makes a big impact and the scene Where he's coming down the stairs and he Can't speak and she has to translate him And it's the first time in the movie where he Hasn't really been coherent To anyone other than his parents Hits you hard and then it being
[01:35:05] Martindale's son in the door Frame holding the basket That scene is it's all I mean everyone Remembers I think has some experience as A kid when you write you see someone who's Ill in a way you've never understood before You don't know how to deal with it it's
[01:35:19] Worst if you know that you have the same Disease that this kid is just A year ahead of you on but then When you know an hour later Into the movie Martindale comes over And the kid is shotgun in her truck
[01:35:31] Truck yeah and she goes like he's having A bad day and Susan Sarandon walks Over to him very calmly and where's Margot Martindale is clearly Equally uncomfortable at Lorenzo Coming down the stairs and not being able To speak she's now at the state Of resignation that
[01:35:47] Sarandon was at with Lorenzo And Sarandon is so past that She is completely unaffected by The fact that now Margot Martindale Son is starting to show those symptoms Of losing his sort of verbal ability Because she's just like I remember this and it gets to a point
[01:36:03] Where you go God I wish we were still At that stage of the movie We're 40 minutes past him being able to talk Period the idea Of this thing that previously Was heartbreaking and was too uncomfortable To watch now seeming like a Respite is insane
[01:36:19] The shot of the kids coming out of school And you know tracks To the house to the window You know beyond which like Lorenzo's lying In bed basically dying Which echoes the shot earlier Of the kids coming out of school Lorenzo was one of the kids
[01:36:37] There's that amazing shot too Their holiday party the scene that Canonically makes this a great Christmas movie Santa coming to the Falling into the camera It's great But then there's also that scene where she's like Entertaining guests and she's telling a story
[01:36:53] And it's deep focus of the windows behind her And you see all the kids playing in the snow And Lorenzo riding by in the bicycle And then one kid running off in his direction And then everyone running off in his direction And the frame becomes completely empty
[01:37:05] Until the girl runs through the door And he's bleeding a lot There's something fairy I was gonna say He's using the tools of horror Something like that in Twin Peaks Has that too, you know the first episode of Twin Peaks
[01:37:21] It's one of the most unsettling episodes of TV ever He's strict It's so sad Lynch movies are so sad I think people underrate how fucking sad they are Like in a good way Mulholland Drive Could have pulled a chappy 100% So Lentio, I am consciousness Chappy loves Selentia
[01:37:45] He only loves Chappy What's he up to, Boncamp? He has something, right? He just announced a new thing He's always announcing that he's gonna restart some franchise You're forgetting The Robocop thing He was supposed to do Robocop And it was the Halloween Superman Return style
[01:38:05] It's a direct sequel to only the first one And then the movie is back and New Meyer Is writing the script He has now quit that Thank God I feel like they hired someone else who is not the right choice Because the only right choice for that is
[01:38:19] Paul Verhoeven But he announced he's doing some new Low budget He's doing a horror movie for MGF And Chappy has not booked anything since that movie came out I think he's running in South Carolina or something Like he's gonna try and He's stealing votes away from Bernie
[01:38:35] He's also often going to movie theaters And pointing out when Leonardo DiCaprio Shows up on screen He's gonna be at every first cow screen He'll tell you that that's the first cow I believe there is literally a scene in first cow
[01:38:47] Where someone says this is the first cow I wanna check my notes here quickly It also just says that Chappy loves mommy And mommy loves Chappy I haven't seen Chappy I saw it a second time recently And Chappy I was with my friends who I usually
[01:39:03] When we hang out So it was like a fun thing to do You weren't just flipping channels And sort of like This is the friend group who I made Watch Old Dogs and Book of Henry Like all my Curio movies
[01:39:17] Where I'm like I really think this needs to be studied And like Old Dogs and Book of Henry Watching Chappy the second time has that weird effect Where you're like well now all of this feels less weird Because I've just accepted that Chappy is Chappy
[01:39:27] The first time you're watching Chappy And most people never make it past the first time You go I can't accept any of this And the second time you go into it and you go Well of course this is Chappy and Chappy loves mommy
[01:39:37] Mommy loves Chappy and Chappy's a real gangster It's like you're in a film directed by George Miller It's a given Where the Overton window Of what is acceptable has just completely That's what Miller's pushing that window baby I mean it's just a Fury Road is all about that
[01:39:51] You know it's just like the things that Are now normal The best thing about Fury Road is right Is they're just like we have to go to Gastown And I guess I know what Gastown is That's what I love But as opposed to someone like Blomkamp
[01:40:05] Someone does this and I'm like yeah David's Miming the Spraying Blomkamp who Chappy is him trying to do I'm gonna mix 18 different tones And emotions and genres at the same time So glad we're talking about Chappy And can't pull it off George Miller it is
[01:40:21] Should have made Chappy He probably would have nailed it He nailed the talking pig movie Exactly he didn't nail anything Part of a talky but a talky piggy We're gonna talk about it Negative 5-county points It is bizarre for someone who is Such a manic filmmaker
[01:40:39] In so many ways to also be so thoughtful Sure And it is contradictory in a way that I can Never quite understand how he pulls off that balance I guess I don't really think of him as manic He's high energy but his movies do
[01:40:51] Always feel very considered even like The Thunder Domers of the World And I think they are manic and considered At the same time Those two things seem counter intuitive Are there any other Things we're forgetting to talk about with the movie The Rain's As All
[01:41:07] Right as the sort of Having seen it so many times Are there little details that we haven't hit on Oh god Professor Emeritus There's all this I was actually gonna look this up because I seem to recall I mean there's that scene Where Amore arrives In DC
[01:41:27] In their Dulles airport And it's shot Like a scene out of an opera Yes that seems very interesting because this is a character From the Comorow Islands Who is like Lorenzo's friend in the first 10 minutes And they fly a kite together and then he doesn't reappear
[01:41:43] Until basically 2 hours into the movie Almost near the end And apparently this is a real part of the story Real person, real part of the story But it reminds me of the scene Earlier where Where Nolte goes to Peter Yustanov at the opera house
[01:42:01] And Nolte is wearing the same Overcoat The confrontation in the opera house is great But then you see the scene later on It's kind of a throwaway shot Of Amore arriving at the airport And Nolte is wearing the same outfit I believe Dulles airport I think
[01:42:19] You can correct me on this I didn't get a chance to look it up But I think it was designed by the same person Who designed the Metropolitan Opera House And it was the first time after having grown up In DC, lived in DC The first time
[01:42:33] It wasn't until I saw Lorenzo's oil That I thought to myself My God Dulles airport looks like an opera house That's cool Eero Sarenen The Finnish architect Who designed the Gateway Arch The famous TWA Flight Center JFK, you know the really cool
[01:42:51] Do you know what I'm talking about? But did he design the opera house He Maybe didn't Maybe not But he has designed opera houses As he do Who to grow up for me with this movie The thing that maybe blew me away the most Just because I went
[01:43:11] How is it possible that this movie is nearly 30 years old And every film of its built has not instituted This choice has not followed this example When this movie gets to its end Sort of Title cards explaining what happened after the film ended Sure
[01:43:25] It starts with the preface This film was completed in 1992 Right In December of 1992 As of the time of its release It contextualizes Yeah, I get you It's not in print Lorenzo is still alive And doing great things It's very specifically like Here's the update folks
[01:43:49] You've been aware that you're watching a movie Because it's such a self-conscious thing But Yeah, it's kind of like We're in the theater This is the movie Here's what's going on now The movie is just this story This is our understanding There are so many fact based movies
[01:44:09] Where I think even if The craft is incredibly strong They can become invalidated over time Because our understanding of the actual events Changes so radically That it's hard to divorce the film from that And the movie is very smartly Like setting up a frame around itself
[01:44:25] Saying like this is the film made At the time that we made it With our understanding And what results we had seen As of the making of this film We call them computers Right This was like an additional 20 years Past his life expectancy
[01:44:43] The father outlived him the mother He outlived mom Which is also like It's Obviously As a child you're supposed to outlive Your mom She died relatively young She died relatively young But also he was so dependent On these people The fact that he lost his mom
[01:45:07] And he was like Can you imagine how hard That must have been It's very difficult to reckon with I remember They're both there Not mom's obituary But I remember reading Lorenzo's obituary And then Augusto's obituary Which was not long after Lorenzo's died Yeah, Lorenzo died in 2008
[01:45:29] And Augusto died in 2013 He moved back to Italy He was basically there I'm not sure Lorenzo was okay for as long as he could be Let's Play the box office game This film opened limited Basically in the years 1992 It's not in the top 5
[01:45:49] And it did one black hat? It totaled 7 million dollars It black-headed it But it cost a lot less than a black hat That's true It cost about 1 quarter black hats It still cost 30 million dollars Which is a sizable enough budget that it was viewed as
[01:46:07] Just that is unequivocally a flop Didn't do well Number one of the box office in its 8th week A huge, huge, huge hit Children's film I saw it in theaters In 8 weeks it's made 114 million dollars It's very well remembered Is it a Disney film?
[01:46:25] Is it an animated film? Is it Aladdin? The highest grossing film of its year I saw it in theaters One of the first films that I consciously remember Being excited to see I was aware of its release My dad coming home with tickets
[01:46:41] Physical tickets he bought on the way home We took my brother and 5 minutes And he put my dad's coat over his head I have a similar memory I was 3 years old or whatever But I remember going to theaters to see it
[01:46:55] I remember looking at the poster as I walked into the theater And I remember going, oh Rob Williams is playing the genie Really? What a weird fucking 3 year old Oh, they got Robin? That's cool Bill, do you care about Aladdin? Do you like Aladdin?
[01:47:07] I like Aladdin, I was in college I know But Aladdin was actually another movie that we Reviewed in the In your arts publication Possibly in the same issue that my Your Lorenzo's I say Possibly, but it was not actually, I didn't write the review
[01:47:23] My co-editor wrote the review Under a pseudonym Which is weird, I don't remember I am Not a huge fan A thing that people will drag me for You should get dragged for that all the way to A cave of wonders
[01:47:39] Here's the most surprising griffin take of all time I think the 90s Disney renaissance Is over 8 Now let me ask you this Have you seen the thief in the cobbler? Yes I have The thing I remember about Aladdin I like Aladdin when he came out
[01:47:55] I remember at the time of Roger Rabbit Time Or Newsweek or one of these magazines Did a feature on Richard Williams And I remember a still From the thief in the cobbler And then when Aladdin came out
[01:48:09] I was like, oh this must be the thief in the cobbler Because that guy looks exactly like the guy And it wasn't And there was no Richard Williams Mentioned anywhere And I remember like for you and this was obviously Free internet, for years I was like
[01:48:23] Did I imagine this other movie called The Thief in the Cobbler? Like Richard Williams, Roger Rabbit I had no reference things to look at I was just like, I must have dreamt this I must have dreamt this other movie Right right right right This is a whole thing
[01:48:39] It is like ants in a bug's life Except he never got to finish his movies But they were also like The designs are the same And a lot of the animators who worked on Everybody and his mom
[01:48:51] They worked on Thief in the Cobb because it took so long Some of them moved to Disney and became anime The Lion King was literally like Intellectual theft It was them seeing something and being like Let's copy that Aladdin is a little more like
[01:49:05] That movie, Thief in the Cobb was from the 60s He was working on it for 30 years And he was self financing it So he would only be able to hire animators To work for like 2 months And then he'd be like, well maybe a year or two
[01:49:17] For now I'll call you back The thing I feel about the Disney Renaissance Maybe your slaps Maybe your problem is The music, because to me The thing I like about those is that I think Ashman is just a genius and that's why
[01:49:31] I love those 3 movies because of his Lyrics, like those are the That's the thing I was the biggest Disney kid I don't want to 25 years later now Assume the role of the Gen Xers who were Pooing these movies at the time All the songs work
[01:49:47] I love Grinch, okay? I love these movies, I have great fondness for them Re-watching them all pretty recently As I have Disney Plus And even like 8 years ago when they were all on Netflix I gave them all a run through I just find them so
[01:50:01] Unnuanced in their storytelling and so Manivial of it Well Disney's blank The thing is I don't really like The Lion King That's where they lose me The Ashran movies What do you guys think of like some of the What do you guys think of that? I love Hunchback
[01:50:19] Hunchback is great Hunchback is best Disney's renaissance As long as we're not counting Emperor's New Groove No, that for me is post renaissance That's its own thing But that's Emperor's New Groove and Lilo and Stitch I like more than any of the 90s 80s movies
[01:50:33] I think of that era Hunchback's the best one And I think the other ones The songs are undeniable But I don't love the movies For some reason the score clicks The songs click in that one better than they do For me and I don't know
[01:50:49] I'm trying to think of the other late night I don't like it I was never a huge fan of the songs I mean I was the Gen Xer Who was like yeah whatever The Disney songs, that wasn't a thing For me but Re-watching Beauty and the Beast
[01:51:05] Recently for a piece That piece was really good Thanks, it really Like how good it is Beauty and the Beast is really good And the score is quite Beside the songs Are fine again But the score is great The score is fucking incredible That opening with the score
[01:51:27] Yes, the score is incredible As for Mankin Margenius' Especially as Mankin can sometimes put it in 100% It'd be great, I love Chapie of Beauty and the Beast Right now I wish we could figure out a way Must-be plans They did Aladdin though That covers enough of it, yeah
[01:51:49] They did Great Mouse Detective Little Mermaid Aladdin They do do Aladdin, I can't remember how it trades off Treasure Planet, it's perfect It's the entire Rise and Fall It starts pre-Revison and Post-Rent and Moana Beauty and the Beast are the ones who never really did
[01:52:05] Another big movie again Minkoff is Lion King Lion King is Beauty and the Beast, Trousedale and Wise Yeah, okay, that's it And then Minkoff is The Lion King guy Anyway Obviously our whole director thing doesn't work Quite as well with the Disney animated movies
[01:52:27] You'd have to do like a Katzenberg We're gonna do Musker and Clements Because they present a nice Minkin Cosm I'll call you right now 2027 Great, no, we'll do it earlier than that Alright, number two Good movie Just like a real
[01:52:45] Fucking movie that you watch on cable all the time And like Old Dogs? I wonder what you think of this movie I genuinely have no idea It's like a really solid Hollywood movie with big movie stars Written by a big shot screenwriter Big shot director is the screenwriter
[01:53:01] He's a big director at the time He's become a bit of a laughing stock Is it a Reiner? Is it a Few Good Men? First I thought maybe sneakers Well sneakers is a 92 But sneakers had two screenwriters Because it was Walter Parks and His writing partner Really?
[01:53:21] But, I mean If it were sneakers, David's hint would have been What movie fully thrusts his consciousness into you Because by the way I'm no longer saying that things fuck I'm not saying that things thrust their consciousness What do you think of a Few Good Men?
[01:53:35] I genuinely wonder I really like a Few Good Men I did not love a Few Good Men at the time A few years ago I had to do a Tom Cruise ranking For Sometimes they just need some gris for the middle It was great because
[01:53:53] I had like six, seven months to do this piece Possibly even longer And I just rewatched every time I'd seen a bunch of times I just rewatched everything In order And I really Just got this renewed appreciation For Tom Cruise and the choices he made
[01:54:11] And a Few Good Men It was in there, I was like Why don't they fucking make movies like this anymore Please somebody fucking make movies Practically avant-garde Reiner though His run up until point is incredible That is one of the greatest runs ever I'm not gonna be bulletproof
[01:54:29] Except for North But then he comes back briefly North is the exact kind of bad movie I want to cover on this podcast North, I'm all in on It's everything after American president Doesn't exist and there are eight of them That's even more There's so many
[01:54:47] One written by a son, they're like three woody Harrelson political dramas Go sub-Mississippies Go sub-Mississippies is the one right after The president And then there's 96 And then there's story of us And that's sort of when he just I don't know If his career ended at story of us
[01:55:07] We would do it no question Everything in the 21st century We don't want to talk about it You have to do that one with like Morgan Freeman on an island Yeah, Magic of Belle Island And like the four LBJ biopic type movies
[01:55:19] He's got a kid romance called Flip He took over as the director of The bucket list Bucket list might be the worst film ever made We just can't do it Anyway, if you could mend a huge hit It's made $77 million in a month
[01:55:33] It was a big fucking movie People went to see This was the run where he couldn't miss Where it's like Spinal Tap, Princess Bride Stand by me Like the guy just every time hit Straight bullseye Number three at the box office A kid's movie It's a colossal
[01:55:53] It's a bit of a rejection of its fundamental premise Honey, I blew up the kid No, but it's also just a complete Repeat of the first movie Interesting, I mean this is You know what I mean? Like he's not actually Title, but I mean you are just repeating
[01:56:07] He's not actually Adam's family value You're talking about one of my favorite Phenomenon, right? I mean I always talk About Big Mama's house too and how much It reflects how you can't replicate The exact same circumstances So it rejects the premise but it has
[01:56:21] It doesn't reject it at all though It's just like when you think about it The title no longer applies really It doesn't fully apply, I mean they add a subtitle To make it make sense So it's not a full bait, you're not saying the rules don't apply
[01:56:33] They're partially applied I've gotten myself in the weeds here This thing made $173 million And that's probably half of what the original made The original was such a big hit Wow, big star I mean at the time, I guess so He's famous for these movies
[01:56:49] He's famous for these movies And he made other movies, like he was a big star When we were kids, sure He would be above a title I mean this is an obvious movie Plossal How many movies made like $350 million in the early 90s
[01:57:05] Like a family movie that made $350 million It's not Terminator 2 Judgment Day No, family movie I mean this movie is about a kid Who's homo on 2 Lost in New York He's not home alone I mean like I watch both of those on Disney He's city alone
[01:57:25] It's the title itself Like Home Alone Lost in New York He's un-parented New York alone I had never watched That sounds like an Ed Burns movie I was gonna say it's like Tom DeSoto Made that movie sometime in 1997 I had never watched That movie in its entirety
[01:57:45] Had just seen many parts of it on cable That's the one I've seen 40 times For some reason I've never watched it straight through Those weren't movies I grew up on My parents were anti-Colkin They thought they were cynical And violent But as with my Disney renaissance Sort of
[01:58:05] Flush Disney Plus reopening a lot of these films That were not very streamable for a while Home Alone's Back to Back And mostly with the test of I know everyone makes fun of this But how do they justify it And how do they justify that
[01:58:21] They just have so many children They should call the herd It's the one scene I love In Home Alone 2 Where they're meeting with the person And they start to realize Wait is this a pattern? The detective is like She's very funny Another huge hit of 1992 A fucking phenomenon
[01:58:43] Not a good movie in my opinion But a huge hit Like a Music drama It's the bodyguard How do you describe the bodyguard It's like a romantic drama Yeah, romantic drama Romantic action movie It's not but are we allowed to say that
[01:59:03] I feel like people love that movie now Do they? Do they just love Whitney Is it just the sort of Whitney Power Nick Jackson film Not like a But a project that was passed around 100% and was one of those They put a million people into both roles
[01:59:21] And I think the reason he has the haircut Is because it was originally supposed to be Steve McQueen but somehow his hair stayed Right, cause they would just keep pasting people's Faces I do It's like Alien 3, they're all bald Originally they were supposed to be monks
[01:59:37] Or something like that Yeah, I don't like the bodyguard that much I remember I've seen it like once It's very long Rarely and I guess this has to do with It being Christmas time Rarely do we get a top 5 That is just such a perfect snapshot
[01:59:53] Of this year Sure Alright number 5 Yeah boy Is this gonna break the pattern I just No I don't think so It's a bad movie No good very bad don't do it I feel like sort of a mocked movie at the time A star we've discussed that Miller
[02:00:15] Works with a lot Oh, Mel Gibson Mel Gibson And the movie is mocked I feel like this was a People made fun of this movie It's a period piece Oh it's Hamlet I think it's the screenwriting Debut of a big name Huh So it's not Maverick
[02:00:39] It's not Maverick Which is a perfectly fun movie No it's not his screenwriting Debut he'd already written a movie or two Jesus Fuck I don't fucking know It's Gibson It has like a weird sort of sci-fi twist Oh is it Forever Young Written by J.J. Abrams
[02:00:59] I don't remember seeing that in theaters I've never seen Forever Young I remember not liking it very much Another very romantic movie Forever Young Hollywood used to make those with grown-ups Now it only makes them with young people I feel like
[02:01:15] I mean I think it barely makes them even with young people Even with young people You know when you think of the far and away Right just like a Quote-unquote chick flick That stuff only exists For years long serialized television You sure
[02:01:31] Like Outlander single-handedly has to carry the weight Of all adult romance films that used to exist It is one of those genres That I often looked on With suspicion when those movies were coming out And now I would really just love
[02:01:43] You would just give me free of those out here Yeah seriously just please bring back Knights and Rodents Bring back the mid-range Any thing I am laying Tole Touchstone run We were talking about this Bring back Martha We were talking about this when we did
[02:02:01] The Manchurian candidate remake For Demi where there was like so much cynicism To like Why won't Hollywood stop remaking These classics Oh by the way I did an interesting thing about The Manchurian candidate remake I was listening to your podcast About I don't know if you guys
[02:02:17] But like The fact that it came right after Stefford wives The thing about truth about Charlie was I didn't listen to that episode so it's possible you discussed this You would enjoy that It was originally supposed to be Will Smith
[02:02:33] A friend of mine was an assistant to Jonathan Demi And I remember she said Jonathan Demi's project Is to try and remake these classic Hollywood movies with black leads Like he wanted to do that That makes much more sense as an impetus For those two movies
[02:02:49] And then it's so funny That Wahlberg is the one Not even like you know I mean that's a whole other thing But it is, but in the case of Manchurian candidate it's Jen Zell and Kimberley I think it was very much like
[02:03:03] He didn't get to do that with truth about Charlie So he's trying again That makes a lot of sense It does make a lot of sense, it's fascinating Here are some other movies that were in the top ten Hoffa
[02:03:15] Which we were just talking about a Danny DeVito miniseries Little series for a little bit The distinguished gentleman that's an Eddie Murphy I'm just going to take one of those I feel like that was such a Video store movie That VHS cover so burned my brain
[02:03:29] Where he is lifting the top off of Capitol Hill And he's like pulling money out of it I mean pretty funny Have you seen the distinguished gentleman? I have not seen the distinguished gentleman I've never even come close to watching that movie
[02:03:41] No, a movie I saw in theaters at this time The Shit Outta Me, The Christmas Carol Incredible film And Toys Displank Checks of All Harry Levenson's Toys I like Toys I mean Talk about a weird movie But also A huge bomb
[02:04:03] I cannot be overstated how badly that film A huge bomb That everybody thought was going to be a huge hit Because those trailers People loved the trailers It just seemed like it had everything going for it They were talking about how
[02:04:17] Doctor Strange Love was one of their models It just seemed like It's like a Genesis game This movie was going to be like Sweep the Oscars Everybody thought this was going to be a huge hit People were disgusted People were like What the fuck is this
[02:04:35] They were angry, they were furious Anytime you got your robin You lean too much into the child at heart It sort of like Chappy people are just like Faulted Chappy though Would fit in fine toys He waltz right in And also Robin Williams would do great And Chappy
[02:04:57] Or you can say sorry No I was Toys is a great example of tonal control Diner the natural Young Shrug Holmes 10 man Good morning Vietnam Rain Man Avalon Bugsy It's like this guy can do no wrong He's like I'm going to do it
[02:05:13] At the time I was really down on Levenson Because I hated Bugsy And Bugsy does have that kind of Like sort of glossy Big biopic But also like it's trying to be a godfather But it's not the godfather And it was also nominated for all these Oscars
[02:05:29] It got a zillion Oscar nominations It still kites only nomination I believe With one of the strangest things ever I was watching like the Didn't want a single one But I remember we were so happy That we just swept the Oscars
[02:05:43] Because people really thought Bugsy was going to win That's the thing I was watching the So Scolny we were special from that year And they're like well obviously Bugsy is the front runner Like that's the behemoth 11 Oscar nominations already? It actually did it won for production design
[02:05:55] But it got two separate Supporting actor nominations 10 nominations, Kitellen Kingsley both nominated Obviously Beatty director Tobak for writing it Cinematography, Ennio Maricone's score I mean he really did He should have won for score Of course Maricone never won anything back then Because the Disney movies kept winning them
[02:06:15] Yeah, Beauty and the Beast A good score A good score Admittedly Bugsy terrible movie Do you think Bugsy is the most tobacco Of all of Levinson's films? Oh my god Levinson falls into that exact Rob Reiner category It's what you're saying like the thing you just outlined
[02:06:33] Is an amazing blank check arc And then there are 10 movies after that That just our ratings would crater The humbling Interesting movie Humbling is an interesting movie But I mean how many Professional critics at gunpoint Would remember that in the last five years There was a Barry Levinson
[02:06:53] Greta Gerwig, Al Pacino Romantic dramedy I just watched it like six months ago Are you doing a Pacino or Gerwig Ranking or something? No, but I did I did rewatch it because I was Not rewatch it, watch it because I was just like
[02:07:09] What the hell is this? I didn't know about this movie I saw the DVD and I was like What the fuck is this? How does this exist and no one's ever discussed it? One crazy final thing About Toys Toys was the root of Robin Williams suing Disney
[02:07:25] Because he thought Aladdin was taking Box of Space from Toys And he was like Toys is my precious It's kind of like Well this candidate's taking Box of Space I don't know if Toys is taking Aladdin Toys was Robin The Bloomberg of its time
[02:07:41] And it was also that thing that when Lorenzo's oil flopped It pledged all of its delegates to Aladdin That's true And that is true Don't blame Aladdin for Toys Because that lamp's empty now, Genie not in it anymore They had to fill a little oil in that lamp
[02:07:57] Yeah Thank you very much for being on this very stupid show It's a great show and what a wonderful episode I'm just kidding, it's always a pleasure When you're on the show This was fun And I'm glad we got to engage with this movie Me too
[02:08:13] I mean this is a How many podcasts ever have any reason to do Who the fuck ever talks about Lorenzo's oil Two plus hour Lorenzo's oil episode Bill guy people should read everything you're writing on Vulture Because you're one of the best people in the biz Thank you
[02:08:27] You're an incredible critic Amazing writer I don't know, you want to plug Twitter? Oh god I hesitate to even name on Twitter Honestly, maybe just Lorenzo's oil Log off Blu-ray coming soon from Kino Lorre Hopefully by the time this comes out Hey baby
[02:08:49] And thank you all for listening and please remember to rate, review, subscribe Thanks to Andrew Gouda for our social media Les Moncavering for our theme song Joe Bonaparte rounds for our artwork Go to Blankies.red.com for some real nerdy shit Go to Patreon.com
[02:09:03] Blankcheck for special features Our second bonus feed And As always Chappy Thrust his consciousness Until all of us