[SPEAKER_04]: Welcome to the lower hounds and the into the West podcast.
[SPEAKER_04]: This is our conversation about the conversation 1974 Gene Hackman movie.
[SPEAKER_04]: This is part of our Gene Hackman coverage.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm David one of the main hosts of the lower hounds and with me for this podcast, our lower master's Brian aka Brian 863 and Lisa aka a red zippy.
[SPEAKER_04]: How you guys doing?
[SPEAKER_04]: We're doing good.
[SPEAKER_04]: Don't good.
[SPEAKER_04]: Great.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's taken over so a while to get this schedule, but we finally got it in and we'll keep moving forward here.
[SPEAKER_04]: We had a conversation about Gene Hackman's filmography.
[SPEAKER_04]: That is available in this feed if you're listening to or the cinema house stuff, otherwise on the main feed, everything's there.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then we also had that lovely conversation with Marilyn Arquilla talking about the meaning of into the West and what it's all about.
[SPEAKER_03]: That was great.
[SPEAKER_04]: We have a dedicated email set up if you want to get in touch with us, if you have questions, comments, if you have feedback on films that we're going to be covering or actors or whoever we're talking about on this podcast.
[SPEAKER_04]: And that is into the west at thelorhounds.com.
[SPEAKER_04]: Of course, we have our community discord where we have a lot of great conversations happening about all the different shows and the movies.
[SPEAKER_04]: This summer is like movie heavy.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, I'm noticing like television wise, there's some stuff out there, but it's not like it was last year.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'm having no problem going to a new movie every single weekend.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right, it's wild.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I'm going to go see the back room on Saturday.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, I'm seeing it on Sunday.
[SPEAKER_04]: Nice.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay, won't leave.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'll have to talk about it.
[SPEAKER_04]: So we'll have conversations about that and many more other things on the community discord in here invited to join us.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a great space.
[SPEAKER_04]: A lot of great people.
[SPEAKER_04]: And of course, we are an independent podcast.
[SPEAKER_04]: So as much as advertising dollars, you know, go to support the podcast subscriptions matter a lot more and so if you have the means and the interest we didn't invite you to subscribe as well.
[SPEAKER_04]: There'll be links in the show notes.
[SPEAKER_04]: go to our link tree and there's the whole spread of links there including our Patreon and supercast subscription sites and of course we host a number of other podcasts shout out to the Dungeons and Do Rags guys who just joined the network recently and all the other affiliates so check all that stuff out on the show notes.
[SPEAKER_04]: So we're here to talk about a particular film, the conversation, Francis Ford Copeland is 1974, psychological thriller, and we'll talk about some of the genre stuff coming up here, but it's a mystery, it's a new noir, but the film is about surveillance, privacy, and moral responsibility.
[SPEAKER_04]: with a film follows Harry Call, a skilled surveillance expert played by Gene Hathman, who's hired to secretly record a conversation between a young couple in San Francisco.
[SPEAKER_04]: As he analyzes the recording, he becomes convinced that the couple may be in danger, and that his work could contribute to a murder.
[SPEAKER_04]: So he's carrying some emotional scars from a previous
[SPEAKER_04]: And as Harry slips into paranoia and obsession, he starts to have a sort of a crisis of conscious, he begins to question not only what he heard, but can he trust his own perception?
[SPEAKER_04]: of reality.
[SPEAKER_04]: And that's where the film gets a little weird.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a short goblath role.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, true, true, true.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And speaking of, yeah, the movie was written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola, who was coming off the enormous success of the Godfather.
[SPEAKER_00]: and in addition to Jean Hackman as Harry Call, the film features a supporting cast that many of us recognize includes John Kuzali, who we know is Fredo, mostly from the Godfather series, Terry Gar, I know her as a comedian, Robert Duval, Robert Duval, who we're going to talk about that guy right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Frederick Forrest, who, if you Googled and saw his image, you would go, oh, yeah, he's a character actor.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's been in a lot of Copila movies, and he's an Oscar nominee for the Rose with Batman Alert Interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: Cindy Williams, again, you know, Laverne and Shirley.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that's good.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's good.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's good.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_03]: And Harrison Ford.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_04]: Young Harrison Ford.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's interesting because he.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think was good friends with George Lucas, they made American graffiti together in 1973.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I ran across the interview that Ford did about his part.
[SPEAKER_02]: So
[SPEAKER_02]: He goes with the costume designer.
[SPEAKER_02]: He gets this part, it's called the young man.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not step, but this young man.
[SPEAKER_02]: So he goes with the costume director who worked with Lucas and an American graffiti.
[SPEAKER_02]: So they go shopping, and he convinces her to buy this $900 Breoni high end Italian luxury suit like $4,000 if you bought it today.
[SPEAKER_02]: He puts it on and goes to meet Coppola, Coppola says, wow, that's amazing.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's amazing suit.
[SPEAKER_02]: Are you wearing it?
[SPEAKER_02]: It is that discussion and him wearing this green, amazing suit that got inspired for Coppola to expand his role to become.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, okay, very cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: So again, the movie came out in 1974, but it was made before the full impact of the Watergate scandal, but the Richard Nixon, it was like two months while Brian will fill a sin that the movie came out either two months before or two months after we heard about the tapes.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, the theme of surveillance and privacy in paranoia really stuck a chord with the audiences in the critics at that time.
[SPEAKER_00]: The conversation went on to win the Palm Door, which for this year has just concluded about a week ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it earned Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Sound.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and the history of this movie is fascinating because it came out of the Godfather's sequel deal.
[SPEAKER_02]: He said, I'll do Godfather too, but I'm going to do this movie and they said, okay, studio says yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's a patch and project that took him nearly 10 years to make.
[SPEAKER_02]: So the first draft was 1969.
[SPEAKER_02]: So he had to film the Godfather too.
[SPEAKER_02]: So he let someone else Walter Merch.
[SPEAKER_02]: finish editing the movie, which is a little bit unusual because he liked to edit his movies.
[SPEAKER_02]: So he had to quit about 10 days, you know, they had 10 days left, sponsored, I've never seen.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, 78 scenes left to shoot.
[SPEAKER_02]: Wow, that's a lot.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that is a lot, that is a lot.
[SPEAKER_02]: And as Lisa was saying, this was made before water grade.
[SPEAKER_02]: So no one knew about the White House tapes until 1973 when Nixon aid Alexander Butterfield revealed in a set of hearing that there were White House, secret White House tapes and it blew the lid off the country.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like what tapes?
[SPEAKER_02]: And so,
[SPEAKER_02]: So when, but it was inspired actually by a conversation, I think probably in the 60s, right, with Irwin Kirchner, about directional microphones, and Copa was fascinated by the idea of a private conversation between two people being documented in this way, again, before Watergate.
[SPEAKER_02]: But decided he would rather focus on the person doing the eavesdropping than those in the privacy being violated, so, of course, later audiences assumed it was about watergate and it's not.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, Copula kind of thinks that his movie, the conversation took a little bit of a hit, because in a negative way, people associated it to Watergate.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, you've got to realize however you want there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Copula wanted Gene Hacklin for this role, although I think with anything with Copula, you can say, well first, it was given to Marlon Brando, who refused, which you can probably say about any Copula movie.
[SPEAKER_00]: But, you know, Hackman looked ordinary and invisible, just making him perfect, you know, for the role.
[SPEAKER_00]: He, of course, we know Gene Hackman for winning an Oscar for a very extroverted and aggressive performance from the as Papai Doyle in the French connection.
[SPEAKER_00]: But, you know, Copila wanted someone who could disappear into a role, someone ordinary and unexceptional in appearance that would make him believable as his surveillance agent.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, so it's really kind of different, you know, between being outgoing and being introverted there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hackman found Harry
[SPEAKER_00]: the character emotionally difficult to play, but he later feels it was one of his finest performances of his career.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and I kept thinking about least the Royal Tanabams because he also write, he had difficulty with that character.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's like you're kind of like separated from your kids, you're kind of have this wall up, and it's hard to make these connections,
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it's kind of like a vibe like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's there's something about, you know, Gene Hackman and other actors, you know, being.
[SPEAKER_00]: being asked to sometimes play a character that isn't yet fully developed.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was very common with Copa as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: Kind of like building the plane as it's fine.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, Harry Jean Hackman really kind of had to live in the role in a way that he felt really uncomfortable, you know.
[SPEAKER_02]: Good point.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it kind of like rubbed off on kind of like when you get, I always think of who's my favorite guy, the Joker.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, he fledger.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: So sometimes when actors are just stuck in a roll for a long time, it really affects them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is kind of the way it was for for Hackman, but really today most critics consider Harry call one of the finest performances of Hackman's career.
[SPEAKER_00]: Brian and I are too favorite.
[SPEAKER_00]: Film critics, so we grew up on Rawton Curtain Gene Siskel, so Roger Evergabe at four out of four, saying that Harry Cole is one of the most affecting and tragic characters in the movies.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Gene Siskel says it's a brilliant performance, is nothing less than one of the decades finest.
[SPEAKER_00]: But he wasn't even nominated for a best actor this year.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the guy who won is Art Carney, who I know from like the Honeymooners.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's good.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, any wins for Harry and Tonto.
[SPEAKER_00]: He plays like an elderly man going on the road with his pet cat.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, archwins over Albert Finney from her New York Oriental Express, Dustin Hoffman for Money, Jack Nicholson for Chinatown.
[SPEAKER_04]: Come on, Chinatown, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, she know for the Godfather.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, my God.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, I'm like, I was our carny in here, it should be Gene Hackman, but, you know, and, you know, one of the things that we're kind of discovering is a lot of vote splitting, I think, for the Oscars happening around this time, because how in God's name do you choose between Dustin Hoffman, Jack Nicholson, and now, but, you know,
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
[SPEAKER_04]: Three of their most iconic roles.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Great.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I kind of think that, you know, there was so much amazing performances during this time period, these same people are always getting nominated.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just really think there was a lot of votes splitting and that's why it took a while, at least for Al Pacino.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Dustin Hoffman, I think, you know, to finally get Oscar.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, exactly.
[SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's that I couldn't, you know, and these, and these actors were all part of like this little group that Copila actually and then like Warren Bady, all this stuff a new Hollywood, they knew each other really well and be Amber Friends.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, here they are competing against one another.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that way.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: So the ratings, Metacritic has this at an 88, Rotten Tomatoes at a 94% and Letterbox is a 4.1 and I think.
[SPEAKER_04]: usually anything on letterbox that breaks that four point of schedule is a pretty high thing, but this is a consistent set of numbers across.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I think it's pretty well, well, what do I want to say?
[SPEAKER_04]: The critics, yeah, the critics people who care about film and stuff like that are giving it a pretty consistent remark.
[SPEAKER_04]: So that's pretty good.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then David, I wasn't sure, Brian and I will eventually be developing some of additional scales and cows that were on, but you know them, David, so well.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I didn't know, well, you mean the like framework, the frameworks that we have existing, the key a lot.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I was like, you know, we're going to watch this.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, give me one second here.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm going to work with you this as well.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to pause this really.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_04]: After a little technical wizardry and whatnot, I got the document up in question, and it's our analytical frameworks.
[SPEAKER_04]: And yes, we've got a bunch of them.
[SPEAKER_04]: Some of these are not going to apply to this particular movie, but we'll just sort of run down the titles just to refresh everybody on them.
[SPEAKER_04]: So there's one test called the Lopez test for compatibility with story verse.
[SPEAKER_04]: And that's to say like, oh, does this, does this installment of true detective belong within the true detective franchise?
[SPEAKER_04]: So this doesn't really pass a count for this because it's, it's not part of a story verse.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Then we have the Sanderson slider for adaptation.
[SPEAKER_04]: which evaluates adaptations along sort of a spectrum from faithful to the text versus sort of a redo for the medium and I don't think it applies here because we don't have original source text for that.
[SPEAKER_04]: Same route.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's an original screenplay.
[SPEAKER_02]: Exactly, yeah, exactly.
[SPEAKER_04]: same for the shipy test for source versus screen changes.
[SPEAKER_04]: The Sanderson slider in the shipy test are really connected to each other in a lot of ways.
[SPEAKER_04]: And this just looks at when you're doing an adaptation are the changes necessary and driven by the medium, like so the way that we're telling film versus the what we're reading from a book.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know if there's commercial pressures
[SPEAKER_00]: David, do you guys use it if someone made a remake of a movie?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, for sure.
[SPEAKER_04]: You can do a scene test.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then that would also be a Sanderson slider.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
[SPEAKER_04]: As you could say, okay, is this is an original definitive thing and how do they compare to against each other?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: And these are all things that we all talk about all the time, but we don't have a way to make it consistent, have a consistent conversation about things, so I sort of made these frameworks as ways to be able to normalize a conversation and have people talk about the same things rather than their own personal point of use.
[SPEAKER_04]: Then we have the Pukillus scale for violence that measures violence, it could be physical, psychological, sociological.
[SPEAKER_04]: Using the rings of power, season one is like our baseline zero, because that's what Marilyn was just able to tolerate that.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's sort of a plus five minus five.
[SPEAKER_04]: So we have some violence in here, some psychological horror.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: So on a relative scale, Lisa, how where would you sort of put this on your own personal?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I'd say it's somewhere between a plus two plus three meaning.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, that high.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So maybe it's part two.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is very disturbing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I had a couple jump scares and, you know, the back half of the movie when he's checked into the hotel and is doing all of that is just heart attack city and and gore not gore, but it's bloody.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, one thing we didn't do is we didn't prep anybody first point assuming that you're listening to a podcast about a 1974 movie.
[SPEAKER_04]: We should have prep due for spoilers.
[SPEAKER_00]: Are we doing full spoilers up until we're going after we once we do our first takes.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're still kind of on no spoilers.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I kind of ruined that for you guys.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay, well, I didn't spoil it, it's like a hotel room, what a hotel room.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, and Eric and that got it.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay, so we're spoiler lights free up until our until full spoiler discussion.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's right.
[SPEAKER_04]: All right, Brian, keyless scale for violence.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I was thinking probably around a point,
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, because again, you know, it's intense.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know if, you know, Maryland could handle that intensity and it's emotional.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's isolation.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's rough.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, there's a lot of stuff going on here.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's uncomfortable.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: I was going to say like a plus one.
[SPEAKER_04]: I wasn't.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's mostly in the psychological realm.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, there is a little bit of physical towards the end, but it's not bad.
[SPEAKER_04]: Then we have the Sims Nard morality scale for main characters.
[SPEAKER_04]: And this is one that I believe Alicia and Luke developed when it was what season two of silo that they got this one.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it evaluates, or what are we, are we on season three already, or season three is going to be this year, right, my brain is mushed to begin with, and I wasn't sure where we were.
[SPEAKER_04]: uh... it's not a numerical rating is just sort of a spectrum placement between these two polls brine would you look at hairy call where would you put him between juliet and sims and burnard you know it's it's i would probably boy it's like maybe down the middle maybe toward a little of
[SPEAKER_02]: Bernard.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, because yeah, it's he's got some moral wrestling.
[SPEAKER_02]: He wants to do good.
[SPEAKER_02]: But he's done some bad stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's haunting him.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: And the way that he lives his life right now.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
[SPEAKER_04]: He treats his relate people that are close to him.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
[SPEAKER_04]: So Lisa.
[SPEAKER_04]: I agree.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm not far off there either.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think because he is trying to be moral and he's trying to be ethical in his profession, but he also has to do some untoward things and then his own inner psychological protections lead him to be a little compromised morally, I'd say.
[SPEAKER_04]: But it's more of a lean rather than a step.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: I would say yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well said, yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: So we have the Falky Powell Daredevil verse empathy scale.
[SPEAKER_04]: This is a brand new one that I believe and I believe John just made.
[SPEAKER_04]: I haven't listened to that podcast ever yet, but it comes out of season two of Daredevil.
[SPEAKER_04]: And we don't have a description in our document yet, so I got to get from Alicia the bullet for this.
[SPEAKER_04]: So we'll just place that one on the side.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_04]: We have another one called the Zat to each scale for AI capability, not relevant here.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then there's a couple of other ones that are more deeper level analyses where you actually have to sit and do a discussion that we're not going to do these.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I really haven't built these out yet for us to use on a regular basis.
[SPEAKER_04]: One is a tool kit to analyze villains and their motivations and how they operate.
[SPEAKER_04]: But then there's another one called the Miranda Presley Perfect Movie Paradox, which is an assessment of whether a film is perfect, relative to story acting editing and production.
[SPEAKER_04]: So you can just take those sort of four criteria.
[SPEAKER_04]: And think, okay, based on the intent that the filmmakers have put into this, do they hit?
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, do they achieve a good story?
[SPEAKER_04]: Do they achieve is acting achieved?
[SPEAKER_04]: Is editing achieved and is overall production achieved?
[SPEAKER_04]: And if so, could you then consider it for yourself a perfect movie?
[SPEAKER_04]: And the paradox is as we move as individuals through time and our sensibilities change, and cultural sensibilities change, things may change there in.
[SPEAKER_04]: But then also you could have something like, Devil Wears Prada, the very first one, in my opinion, that's a perfect movie, because it hits all four of those things so well.
[SPEAKER_04]: deserving of perfect, you know, or of being lauded and then put up against, you know, other lot of movies.
[SPEAKER_04]: So that's part of the paradox as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: Interesting.
[SPEAKER_04]: So Lisa, any thoughts on, is this a perfect movie for you based on sort of those four ideas?
[SPEAKER_00]: Based on those four ideas, I'm going to have to say yes, acting.
[SPEAKER_00]: no brainer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Gene Hackman, as we'll talk about editing, no brainer, Walter Merch, which we'll talk about later in Bill Butler, Bill Butler, Bill Butler.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, especially since the flip is, you know, we're, again, we're the eavesdropper and not so much the people that are getting
[SPEAKER_00]: right of you and then production again as we'll talk about you know especially for when this film was made incredibly well shot but just amazing you know in San Francisco yeah so for me it's a perfect movie interesting Brian
[SPEAKER_02]: I agree, it, you know, and this comes, you know, we'll talk fresh to you soon, but the more I see it to me, the better it gets, because you're seeing the the creativity, the genius, really of all these creators coming together.
[SPEAKER_02]: And to me, I agree.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's perfect.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's one of my, one of my favorites.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_04]: It misses for me a little bit in story.
[SPEAKER_04]: The Harry's Journey into Madness is just like, okay, Francis, uh, you're just having one of your little moments here of like weirdo filmmaking and there's some shit in here that I was just like, what is going on like this, this pushes it a little bit beyond what I'm expected.
[SPEAKER_04]: So from a story standpoint, it just, it just follows short a little bit of me.
[SPEAKER_04]: but acting incredible.
[SPEAKER_04]: The production, the cinematography on this thing is just stupid.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like the lighting is incredible.
[SPEAKER_04]: The camera work.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like I don't know how they filmed this thing with the big clunker cameras that they were using.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's really good.
[SPEAKER_04]: okay well that that was kind of fun.
[SPEAKER_04]: I haven't actually walked you guys through those frameworks for a little bit so or you know at all really.
[SPEAKER_04]: So this is kind of a new thing.
[SPEAKER_03]: We talk a little bit about on some of our other podcasts but
[SPEAKER_04]: Anyway, cool.
[SPEAKER_04]: So Lisa, you had a note here about the timeframe for this movie.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, again, with a kind of like we were talking about filming in San Francisco, you know, couple is Zotrop Studios was the first major, you know, a bigger studio based outside of L.A. And the movie really came out during an incredible period for American film.
[SPEAKER_02]: this is the new Hollywood era where has just over like those few years you have the excess American graffiti mean streets by Martin Scorsese the sting right 74 same year conversation of course got father part two Roman Planski's Chinatown
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, there's your wild movies, isn't it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's in young Frankenstein.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's right, exactly.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's right.
[SPEAKER_02]: The horror classic Texas Teen Saw Massacre, that made a huge impression.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then David, you know, well, 1975, jaws.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: One clue over the cookers nest.
[SPEAKER_02]: Amazing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Nashville, dog day afternoon.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, shit.
[SPEAKER_02]: Stanley Kubrick's Barry London and he already did 2001 and Clockwork Orange.
[SPEAKER_02]: So these are, you know, maybe our listeners have not seen most of these movies, but in it permeated the culture that those titles probably resonate with most people.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, oh, yeah, I know about the sting.
[SPEAKER_04]: The 70s and the 80s, both, are just rich, cinematic thing.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's driven commercially, but there is just so much film for us to enjoy.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so many different genres, big films, little films, and these movies influence filmmakers today in 2020.
[SPEAKER_00]: Great.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's right.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm making an impact.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_04]: So what did you think?
[SPEAKER_04]: What are your fresh takes?
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_04]: So now that's sort of all that administrative stuff is out of the way.
[SPEAKER_04]: We can now start to get into the movie proper.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: And we'll give our our light takes here and then after that we're going to start getting into spoilers.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: So we said, what did you think about the movie?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, one of the questions that I really liked posing to myself that Brian and I talked about was what did I think the movie was going to be about before I watched it and what did it become after I watched it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, but then on a rewatch is where I get the morality, the guilt, the shame, the interpretation or the interpretation of information and mistaking our assumptions for truth.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, you know, and I was also very attracted to this film because of, again, the sound design and editing for Walter Merch and then, uh, cobalt.
[SPEAKER_00]: So really for me, it's one of my top two or three roles, you know, of Hackman.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just love it and, um, my pitch is it's blow up meets rear window with the paranoia of all the president's men, let's do it again.
[SPEAKER_00]: Robert didn't hear on the taxi driver.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_02]: Dang.
[SPEAKER_02]: You talking to me?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a
[SPEAKER_02]: But by the end, it's so much more nuanced context of piracy, privacy, morality, that paranoia, the power of information, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Which is something that we forget, but it's always around us today.
[SPEAKER_02]: And of course, with the isolation that he builds walls around himself.
[SPEAKER_02]: So this is one of my,
[SPEAKER_02]: This is one of my all-time favorite movies, and it started inching up as we were doing this podcast into the last time we're watching this movie is just amazing, and it's one of my favorite hackmen roles.
[SPEAKER_02]: As he plays a loner, this awkward paranoid character, so brilliant way.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's so good.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, what about you, David?
[SPEAKER_04]: So I didn't know about this film until we did a Gene Hackman film festival for our subscriber, only podcast 11's.
[SPEAKER_04]: I literally had never heard of this move.
[SPEAKER_04]: I did not know of its existence.
[SPEAKER_03]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_04]: Great attention.
[SPEAKER_04]: It didn't win for that.
[SPEAKER_04]: I forget what we talked about for that.
[SPEAKER_04]: Did you guys remember?
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't remember.
[SPEAKER_00]: How for what we did as well?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, no, no, no, no, what we did for for 11's is.
[SPEAKER_02]: For 11's is, um, anyway, what's in the real tan and bombs?
[SPEAKER_04]: No, that was a different one.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Anyway, uh, it doesn't matter.
[SPEAKER_04]: Anyways, it didn't, it didn't win on the, in the poll.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so we didn't, so I talked about it.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I, but I wanted you because when I was doing my prep work, a lot of, what I was reading were that this is a well-regarded movie.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I was like, oh, okay, well, I hope, you know, I should, I should, one of these days get around to seeing it again.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think like both of you, I thought, oh, it's going to be a bit of a spy, procedural cat and mouse type thing and what have you.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I was not at all prepared for where the film wins.
[SPEAKER_04]: I, uh, I remember to watching it when Harrison Ford popped up and I messaged you guys on the disc.
[SPEAKER_04]: looking and hand some.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_04]: And, you know, it's really, we talked about this earlier in hackman's approach to the role and what he was dealing with.
[SPEAKER_04]: It really is not a typical
[SPEAKER_04]: role for what he does, sort of an angry guy or a real sort of alpha, sort of, you know, boisterous guy, he's, you know, or an extrovert, like scary.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, or exactly.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, he was French connection.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's what we talked about for, for 11 days.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, nice.
[SPEAKER_04]: So yeah, this is, he's introverted.
[SPEAKER_04]: He's material.
[SPEAKER_04]: He's,
[SPEAKER_04]: He's just not his usual rule that Hackman plays and not what we know him for.
[SPEAKER_04]: And he's really, I really felt him acting here, but not in the bad way of an actor acting.
[SPEAKER_04]: I was like, oh, I'm really noticing because I'm not used to him playing this type.
[SPEAKER_04]: Of character, I'm like really noticing that he is acting, he's actually doing it.
[SPEAKER_04]: He is job.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think this is a kind of movie too.
[SPEAKER_04]: it has a twist, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: We were sort of front about that and I think a lot of folks would, would, if you read a little bit, you'll, you'll catch that.
[SPEAKER_04]: And that the twist I didn't expect, so that was great.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's a bunch of stuff in here that also seems to be there's a surveillance fan thing.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like, oh, is this like, is this where the trope of this surveillance fan comes from?
[SPEAKER_04]: use is of it that sets the trope into making it a trope.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, to make it a trope.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, iconic.
[SPEAKER_04]: And or the secret layer and the, you know, the, and if we go to enemy of the state, yes, that's right.
[SPEAKER_04]: Hackman and Will Smith, this is almost like a reprise of that role, you know, this lone guy in this very warehousey space, doing his thing.
[SPEAKER_04]: So a lot of interesting stuff there, but then the psychological aspect of it and where it goes, I think this is a movie that rewards multiple viewings, but not in the sense of, because once you know the twist, then you're kind of like the energy is changed, like the way I try to watch for a second one today.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, the propulsion isn't quite there.
[SPEAKER_04]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I fell asleep.
[SPEAKER_04]: Towards the end, it was a long day.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's hired a lot of Paul in the air right now, so I crashed out.
[SPEAKER_04]: But thinking about it, I think it's a kind of film that if you do watch in multiple sittings, you watch certain chapters of the movie and you what you should watch for, what I was watching for was camera movements, lighting, sound design.
[SPEAKER_04]: character portrayals.
[SPEAKER_04]: The way that this film is constructed because my God visually is just incredible.
[SPEAKER_04]: What they do, that opening shot, looking down on the on the square, like yeah, the square, the union square, absolutely mind-blowing.
[SPEAKER_04]: How smooth that camera and that slow zoom in is from that distance, mirroring the action of them doing their surveillance as well.
[SPEAKER_04]: So like
[SPEAKER_04]: And so there's just so much richness to this film.
[SPEAKER_04]: But then like, when you get towards the end, man, it's like, it's a whole other movie.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a whole other weird thing.
[SPEAKER_04]: And you know how they're shaking on me?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, right.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's my thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a good poll.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: So yeah, I'm so glad that I discovered this movie.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think I'll just keep it around.
[SPEAKER_04]: And oh, it's like, OK, I want to watch that scene again.
[SPEAKER_04]: And how did Francis shoot that?
[SPEAKER_04]: Or how did he do?
[SPEAKER_04]: There's just a lot there that you can pick out
[SPEAKER_04]: Because, yeah, once the storyline is revealed, then you're kind of like, okay, got it, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: But then you get to get to have some fun with Hackman trying to decode the mystery and be part of the mystery, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, 100%.
[SPEAKER_00]: It becomes the hunted.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_04]: We get into spoilers for here.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, uh, not yet.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to talk a little bit more about well, we are talking about Harry as a character.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_04]: So let's roll into that.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_04]: All right.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Because we it's like harder and harder now to not exactly know right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's it's really just looking to see if Harry, you know, is he a good person is the empathetic.
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, like, would you trust him?
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and I thought one of the things that I'm noticing as I go back and forth is whether he was actually good at his job, you know, because, you know, his colleagues, he's introduced in the beginning of the film as this, you know, just genius, you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, but his triple locked apartment is so insecure that the landlord was able to come in and leave a birthday present, you know, his mail is open and read he thinks his phone is unlisted, but everyone seems to be able to call it, you know, it just kind of makes me wonder like dude.
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, and at a trade show that we'll talk about later, you know, he allows his chief competitor to fool him and let's his employee quit and then the next day go work for his competitor.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my dude, you know, so I don't know if that was like, you know, yeah, and letting everyone in to come party in his warehouse, including his competitors, dude, no.
[SPEAKER_04]: But I think isn't that going to the psychological makeup of him that he's deep in his paranoia and his sort of isolationist.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's things that he's missing because he doesn't.
[SPEAKER_04]: He can't have conversations with other people.
[SPEAKER_04]: We're all incomplete as people in a way.
[SPEAKER_04]: We may be, you know, a whole, right, as persons, but we're also sort of, it's a complex and busy world and there's just no way that we can be present to all those things all the time.
[SPEAKER_04]: And we need society to be able to cope with all of this stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: And when in isolation, he is
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, it's, it's, it's failing.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: He becomes so insular.
[SPEAKER_02]: that he has all this disconnect as you're saying that this his mind just isn't fully fully functional.
[SPEAKER_04]: He may be a genius Fred.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, but he's running a whole business on his own in such right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, exactly.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, no, it's a good point.
[SPEAKER_02]: I put down he was, you know, he was good as job, but I think parts of it he was.
[SPEAKER_02]: He was this legend, but he's also a bad boss.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's
[SPEAKER_02]: misses us so much social cues and just makes mistakes that in corporate espionage 101, you just don't do.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right?
[SPEAKER_03]: So, yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, would I trust Harry?
[SPEAKER_02]: No.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're not.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, the dude even just like, you know, rigged down on his client.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, not taking the tapes.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, ooh.
[SPEAKER_02]: Is Harry a good person is a great question, and we're going to talk about it.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it goes into the Sims Nard of it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
[SPEAKER_02]: He wants to or tries to be, but because he has, I think, some moral morals in there, but he's been burned, he's been, he did bad things, he's living with them, not very well.
[SPEAKER_02]: And he's complicated like a lot of us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like the fortnight weren't identity, you know, where you had him doing bad things and he gets him kneesha and it's like, oh, here's a chance to wipe the sleep clean, but he has a past of bad things, you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the interesting part of the character I saw too to kind of close out this this segment is and cobble is this way, cobble is Catholic.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he's just going to bring a lot of that to line with that.
[SPEAKER_04]: Why is that why that's brought in so heavily layered in.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, he made, he deliberately made Hackman Catholic when Copila was thinking about the story for this film.
[SPEAKER_00]: He remarks in an interview that the confession booth in the Catholic church is one of our earliest.
[SPEAKER_00]: versions of loss of privacy and he's dropping, you think about it that way.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that was always embedded there, you know, so by making him Catholic, where he's not so much rooted in faith, there's definitely not a lot of hope there, but in the shaming and the guilt.
[SPEAKER_00]: as you know as a calf like we we see a lot of that so yeah no so it's it's really cool and I think you know uh we'll we'll take a break I think for sure because when we come back we'll talk about um full spoilers when we come back we knew.
[SPEAKER_00]: And just really kind of break down for the three of us, what scene, just really unlocked the movie for us, what clue fooled you, all that kind of thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I also look forward to talking about the art of the filmmaking just a little bit that you talked about David.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Great.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, let's take a break.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then we come back, we'll get into full spoilers.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay, and we're back.
[SPEAKER_04]: We're going to get into full boiler discussion.
[SPEAKER_04]: So if you haven't seen the movie at this point, maybe check out here, pause this, come back, and then here us talk about the movie in full.
[SPEAKER_04]: So Lisa, do you want to?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, exactly.
[SPEAKER_04]: Lisa, do you want to pick it up from here?
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, yeah, it's, uh,
[SPEAKER_00]: There were so many scenes that just stood out for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I thought that each of us could kind of share what we thought I think what I can come in back to is in the middle of the movie when Harry is at the convention, security and surveillance convention.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he invites everyone back to his workshop to kind of party, have a few drinks and that kind of thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is a woman there that is trying to seduce him, not very successful issues, very pushy about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the way that it is filmed, and it grows more and more, and I think this is really the breaking point for Harry, is Harry cannot stop playing over and over in his head the conversation.
[SPEAKER_04]: All right.
[SPEAKER_00]: that he taped.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he is to the point now where you think he and he thinks he's in conversation with one of his peers and he cannot stop thinking about, you know, what the conversation was and it was edited in such a way that it was almost like a voiceover.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we saw Gene Hackman kind of
[SPEAKER_00]: connect and detach, but you know, but all you heard over and over again were these these parts of the conversation.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he does finally give in to Meredith.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's very persuasive, which of course we learned later.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why?
[SPEAKER_04]: But anyway, so do you think she was a plant the whole time?
[SPEAKER_04]: She was a plant.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Corporate, corporate espionage.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right exactly.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: And she's desperate enough to take a job like this.
[SPEAKER_04]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_04]: in her life.
[SPEAKER_04]: She seemed like she ended in a sort of a ron of not great.
[SPEAKER_04]: She's not where she would like to be in life.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Hathman hadn't given the tapes to his client yet because he was in her strict instructions to only give them to the director, the man hired him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so when Harrison
[SPEAKER_00]: There's like nope, you know, so that's why he's still in possession of those tapes.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, you know, the corporation definitely wants to find a way to get their hands on those tapes.
[SPEAKER_04]: Can we just quickly segue on to the assistant played by Harrison Porter?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Did you and both interpret his trying to intercept it as a way to protect his boss?
[SPEAKER_04]: Like he was trying to be a good
[SPEAKER_04]: But he knows that what's on these tapes and in these photographs is going to hurt the directors thing.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's going to cause a lot of problems for the company and for everybody and that it's not like Harrison Ford's characters trying to not give the tapes to his boss, but he wants to control.
[SPEAKER_04]: the delivery so that he can mitigate the impact and manage the fallouts.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's one of the twist, too.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sorry, Ryan.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just jumping in here.
[SPEAKER_03]: No, no.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, my impression of it was just quite simply that he didn't have a real respect for herity or the kind of job that they do.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was just another to hire, you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, they don't think of Harry and what he does for them.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was more like I interpreted more as a hired hand and the way that Martin kind of threats threatened Sam and says, you know, look, you really don't want to hang on to those tapes, you know, there could be dangerous stuff on those tapes and that would normally scare and underlaying to say, oh, okay, you know, and they are surprised that Harry holds onto it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, um, yeah, and this is Harrison Ford's
[SPEAKER_04]: the whole stealing of the tapes was not the director.
[SPEAKER_04]: This is all this on here.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it's all set.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I agree with David.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was thinking that he wanted to control the situation so he can manage the situation.
[SPEAKER_02]: The following.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm in exactly.
[SPEAKER_02]: And kind of steer him maybe
[SPEAKER_02]: to, you know, is that decision making process?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I want to first.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Keep a staff.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me hear what's on the tape.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Before I go to my boss.
[SPEAKER_02]: Totally.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_04]: And we're in that conversation and Robert Devol is saying, I forget what Robert Devol says to him.
[SPEAKER_04]: But he says some sort of comment, like you wanted something.
[SPEAKER_04]: You want something.
[SPEAKER_04]: He's trying to, Robert Devol's characters trying to,
[SPEAKER_04]: to not accuse Ford's character or something, but he's saying, oh, you just want it this way, or you just want it that way, which is clearly an indication that Robert DeValle's character is feeling being managed.
[SPEAKER_04]: He's being managed by us.
[SPEAKER_02]: I agree.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, there's some pressure going on a little bit.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's really like, you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: As Harry is in this scene and he gives in to the seduction or whatever, he just really starts spacing out.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was then that I literally, the way again, it was edited and shot and filmed.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, oh my god, this guy's broke his breaking.
[SPEAKER_04]: Uh, okay, that makes sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's for me, you know, and then that right after that is when he has his foggy dream sequence.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, and everything like that and he wakes up in the tapes are gone.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, oh, okay, new game, you know, he's becoming more disconnected and paranoid and just steeped in the conversation.
[SPEAKER_04]: I have an audio clip from the from the dream sequence.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a little bit rough.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's very short.
[SPEAKER_04]: I kind of truncated.
[SPEAKER_04]: So let me play that because I think it goes into your point here, Lisa.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: So does that go to your point that you're sort of like one of his psychological things is that
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, and you know, and for me a lot of it is is the guilt because again, you know, he's not saying I'm a murderer, but he is afraid of murder the act of murder, which again is a Catholic as a big deal, but as right, but as he talked about he had a previous case, you know, a consequence, you know, of a recording he did for clients resulted in the death of two people and so, you know, he's he's trying to
[SPEAKER_00]: I slate that and say, yeah, no, no, no, no, but in that whole dream sequence, he like tells Anne, Cindy Williams his whole life story.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he just becomes someone really different.
[SPEAKER_00]: He opens up to her in a way.
[SPEAKER_00]: He couldn't open up to anybody else.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then yeah, he's he's yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: And and he just had he was just being prodded by Moran, right, to say, tell us what happened in
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it's like, oh, it's like, in the rain, it's just neatly and neatly.
[SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, everything's bubbling up in his brain.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's subconscious.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that was my, that was the big scene for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_04]: I've got another audio clip from that scene, though, too, which I think goes back into, to calls interiority.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's interesting because we talk about, you know, he's a, he's a, he's not afraid of death.
[SPEAKER_04]: He's afraid of murder, so that's a Catholic thing.
[SPEAKER_04]: But yet, he is not afraid of relations outside of marriage.
[SPEAKER_04]: And that goes into the Terry Garthing, and then this conversation that he has about that.
[SPEAKER_04]: So this is a kind of a long one, but I think it goes into something that's very important to his character.
[SPEAKER_03]: When you were going to come to see you, you just lived in a room alone.
[SPEAKER_03]: And you knew nothing about him.
[SPEAKER_03]: And if you loved him, your patient wasn't.
[SPEAKER_03]: And he didn't know he didn't do anything about himself personally.
[SPEAKER_03]: Even though he may have loved you, did you?
[SPEAKER_03]: Would you go back to me?
[SPEAKER_03]: How would I know?
[SPEAKER_00]: How would I know if I could eat that?
[SPEAKER_03]: Why are you nodding around?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: I didn't have no way of nodding.
[SPEAKER_04]: So it's interesting because in that moment he realizes that he's with whole he's been withholding his feelings from Terry Gar.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and she's really telling them on that like I know nothing about you, dude.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why would you tell me anything?
[SPEAKER_04]: And how am I supposed to know that you loved me because they're my friends and you come over and sleep with me, but you don't share yourself with me.
[SPEAKER_00]: No other love language.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no love language there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're just just so again, theme of isolation, where you're to leavely cut off that you's finally beginning to see in that moment at it, the loft with with Meredith.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, oh yeah, oh boy.
[SPEAKER_02]: I might have blown it.
[SPEAKER_04]: This is interesting, you know, because
[SPEAKER_04]: This movie is operating on a lot of different levels.
[SPEAKER_04]: And on the one level, there's the neon war thing where the hard voiled character suddenly realizes that the world is bigger than he imagined.
[SPEAKER_04]: And that sort of psychological horror and that realization is affecting, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: And it affects the character.
[SPEAKER_04]: So there's that, there's the weird dream
[SPEAKER_04]: there's the murder mystery, but then this is this descent into madness story, where call is being confronted with a whole bunch of different stuff about the way how he lives his life and the job that he does, that it's about, like you were saying, he's a psychological undoing.
[SPEAKER_04]: And now that dream say, I didn't think about this before, but that's, it makes the dream sequence or the blood and the toilet sequence makes so much more sense, because this is really him rupturing, this is his psychology rupturing, yes, is sense of self rupturing in the moment.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it's, it's really, it's really, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, where my question was, you know, what scene really unlocked the movie for me because really after that scene, I didn't know what they're to trust.
[SPEAKER_00]: the POV, you know, is right, Harry's head, you know, and I hope that we're going to talk about, you know, the bloody toilet scene because his never answered that question, you know, about whether that was all Harry's head or not.
[SPEAKER_04]: So interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, so yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that was a, you know, turning point for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Brian, what was your, some of your big scene, like if you had to pick a scene,
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you know, it's like, you know, it's talked about it's the most seen that's talked about it's the ending it's the climax five minute ending, which to me, you know,
[SPEAKER_02]: totally unraveled.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think also we should acknowledge that he may realize he doesn't control anything, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: He thinks he lives in a world where it's controlled, locks, you know, microphones, I, you know, run all this equipment, I'm in charge, I'm running my own company and you realize
[SPEAKER_02]: is a bigger world out there, I'm seeing it, I'm facing it, and I could throw nothing, and I'm losing my mind.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think that was something that really unlocked the movie for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: What happened in that scene?
[SPEAKER_00]: What would you tell people, you know, like if you were to tell, you know, to show people, like, well, what does this movie about?
[SPEAKER_00]: If you really wanted to get across that, essentially, it's an unraveling of the psyche,
[SPEAKER_00]: describe that last scene.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it paints that really great picture.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, he is literally looking for a bug because he knows you know that he's continued to be spied on and he's been threatened and he literally tears his apartment apart.
[SPEAKER_02]: every piece of drywall, every floor board, every piece of furniture, even breaks the uh, uh, Mary.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is like, you know, a statue of Mary, statue of Mary, statue of Mary, has it in Lee?
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: As Catholic, you know, you don't want to break the stuff, and he finally does it, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: So he and at the obsession to find it is just heartbreaking.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: He can't stop.
[SPEAKER_00]: No.
[SPEAKER_00]: He can't stop.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's just ruined everything around him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Literally.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, he's stripped.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, stripped him.
[SPEAKER_04]: He stripped his interiority.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, that's the ending is is really good.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, David, how about you?
[SPEAKER_00]: What seemed really kind of did it for you?
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, you know, I can't put it on one scene.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I've mentioned a bunch of stuff already.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I don't want to monopolize too much more because I think I've been rejected where I have some things that I feel are important.
[SPEAKER_04]: But it's almost like there are the unraveling of the multiple stories.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like they're different movies, but they're all perfectly welded together so like what's the one scene that unlocks it?
[SPEAKER_04]: I can't say that because you can't unlock this part until you unlock that part.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's a process, this movie is a process.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so there's no one Russian doll for me.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's a Russian doll for sure.
[SPEAKER_04]: Our Hall of Mirrors or something like that.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think the I would guess.
[SPEAKER_04]: that maybe the pivot point for the movie is the party at the warehouse because he's getting drunk, he's letting a Moran needle him.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, he's talking with, I forget, is it Meredith?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, Meredith, Meredith is all up in on him.
[SPEAKER_04]: and but then he's starting he's he's obsessing about the tapes and he's he's evaluating his self-worth relative to you know a business competitor and and what this strange little society that he has around him all of these odd balls and misfits that that he sorts with
[SPEAKER_04]: And so I think that's the pivot point, at least of the movie, and that's where we switch from the sort of hard-boiled, no-art-neon-war thing into the psychological territory.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's that dream sequence, I think, is the book.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's good.
[SPEAKER_02]: I like it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: For me, I mean, it's...
[SPEAKER_00]: the movie is also about eight words.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's about specific eight words.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: He'd kill us if he got the chance.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: And three little words.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, eight little words.
[SPEAKER_00]: So,
[SPEAKER_00]: because it's all in the context and the meaning that we put on words, so throughout the film, Harry is sitting along, replaying recordings, obsessing over tiny details, searching for hidden meanings, constructing theories about what he thinks happened and what was said in the conversation.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as viewers, we do the same thing, you know, it's a miss, it's a puzzle, it's a mystery box.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to totally break down everything that he's breaking down.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm putting an eye putting it all together.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, they do, yeah, yeah, and so, and we listen to the table over and over and over again, and we focus on certain words, we study facial expressions, we look for cues, and it really reminded me of like what we as law hounds and a fandom cost.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, what comes out of it, the coup de grieve, you know, is that Harry finally, you know, gets the audio recording clear enough to where he hears Mark, you know, who's having an affair with Anne,
[SPEAKER_00]: because of the work he's done in the cases he's worked on.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, his past.
[SPEAKER_00]: He hears, he kills us if he had the chance.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, hairy things, these are two people who are in crisis, who are frightened, who are scared, and they're in danger.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're in danger, and he is, you know, probably the director is where he's going there, maybe he's Martin, you know, Harrison Ford.
[SPEAKER_00]: We need to hear us afford as a murderer one day.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, yeah, you know, so, but before we realize that we're trapped inside Harry's perspective and we're interpreting the evidence the way he does and as Harry becomes convinced that's what the truth is we continue to share that that's what it is and it's all the way into where he checks himself Harry does into the hotel.
[SPEAKER_00]: that a rendezvous has been arranged where Anne will bring her husband, the director, a hotel on a Sunday.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, this is where the moral and the crisis comes in where, oh my god, maybe I should do something with this information I have to prevent it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Should I say something?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: So he thinks, well, I'm going to go and hold his own cardinal rule.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
[SPEAKER_04]: It has nothing to do with me.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_04]: He's a quite good job in a walk away.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm the observer.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm collecting this information through sound.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I just give it to the person.
[SPEAKER_02]: I climb in my way.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't care.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: But he's guilty.
[SPEAKER_04]: He feels guilty over what happened to the people.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
[SPEAKER_04]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_04]: So, so now we have this moral dilemma, which is undoing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so yeah, so he goes to the, you know, hotel and he gets the room right next to the room that the couple had booked and another just powerful and amazing sequence and scene is when he's setting up his surveillance equipment under the toilet, you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: believes that, you know, that there might be a murder, like it's happening and he freaks out and he goes to the balcony and there's just really a big jump scene where, you know, he sees Cindy Williams, you know, and, you know, and talking a touch and all that and he freaks out.
[SPEAKER_00]: and just he's like he's he's stuck between oh my god I couldn't save them to it's not more job to save them one of my doing here and oh my god this man is going to kill me you know it's just you know jean happened just rolls up in a boat you know a little ball and just climbs into bed because he's so overwhelmed by what he saw and then when he wakes up
[SPEAKER_00]: And he's like, hmm, okay, you know, let's let's just take a breath and see what's happening.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he jiggies, he breaks into the hotel room next door.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's right.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's going to find all the evidence, you know, saw cleaning, nothing disturbed, nothing's happening.
[SPEAKER_00]: He goes into the bathroom.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's like, you know, looking at the toilet, you know, they put that little ribbon on.
[SPEAKER_00]: and he opens the toilet.
[SPEAKER_00]: And for a reason, I don't quite understand he flushes the toilet and what comes out reminding me of the shining.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, it's blood.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's blooding out the toilet.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was clogged, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know?
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's just, you know, oh my god, and you know, it's still at this point, he thinks Sidney Williams, you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, and he really, he gets all bloodied and he's seen blood everywhere and he's just visualizing when he thinks happened and, you know, it's, it just blows him away.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just really devastating.
[SPEAKER_00]: But when he leaves the hotel to confront the director,
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you're a murderer, I know what you did.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you think that's what he's going to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're not letting him go anywhere near the director.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he kind of haul him out of there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he ends up seeing a press news story and a press conference that the director has suddenly died.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right, he twist.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to try to get accident.
[SPEAKER_03]: And you go.
[SPEAKER_00]: Vah.
[SPEAKER_04]: So all of a sudden those eight words are now heed kill us if you got the chance.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we better kill him.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, pre-empt, my pre-empt.
[SPEAKER_00]: So more than he kill us, if he got the chance, we're in danger.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a rationalization.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, he kill us, the chance.
[SPEAKER_04]: So it's a rationalization statement, not a fear statement.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's that's a great summary there says, you know, it's and you're just going with to great about this movie and and a hallmark of a good like mysteries, you're going for the ride, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Because you are in the same, you're viewing it the same way he does.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, he does.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's an early question in, you know, and it's like a good mystery.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're just riding the wave and it's like bam.
[SPEAKER_02]: the context changes or you know the information is in the wrong context and it's like oh that for you are seen was was great and is like his face like oh my god
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it was just, you know, holy crap.
[SPEAKER_04]: So thinking about the the toilet and the blood too, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: So we know that he's suffering from some PTSD, you know, and he's isolated and he's in this altered psychological state.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, with toilets and plumbing, we think, okay,
[SPEAKER_04]: we put it in the magic bowl and it just goes away and we don't have to think about it anymore.
[SPEAKER_04]: And what's happening with the toilet is that it's reversing its flow and it's back filled.
[SPEAKER_04]: So all of this gunk that has been jammed up in there is now reversing and coming out.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so, you know, psychologically for Harry, that's what's happening here as is all this pain and guilt and the isolation and how he's lived his life, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: It's all, yeah, it's all sort of coming out.
[SPEAKER_04]: In the most wild Francis for Copeland, cinematographic, you're like, you're like, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm like, okay, Francis, I like it and that's what I remember too.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm like, oh, yeah, this is a couple of movie, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay, right.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: So, but yeah, all that psychological, you know, garbage is now dumping out and then yeah, like the whole question of.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, who do we trust as our narrator now?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, the conversation, Harry's point of view, what's real and what's not real with the toilet and the blood.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and one of the things that always bothered me until we were, you know, talking about this.
[SPEAKER_02]: If it's real, it's like the body is already wrapped up in plastic.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's being taken care of.
[SPEAKER_02]: What always bothered me was, why didn't you just take that stuff and put it in the last bag?
[SPEAKER_03]: We have to put it right there.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, right.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, oh, well, it's a couple of, hey, come on.
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's make a statement here.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's good.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is head in the bed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, the pack way.
[SPEAKER_02]: Sleep with the fishes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's definitely one of the most famous images in 70 cinema and it is still like I I led with.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's deliberately left.
[SPEAKER_00]: murky like in the whole DVD commentary where both Walter Merch for sound and netting and then of course cobalah they don't they don't ever answer that question so you know it's interesting so yeah obviously the director did die yada yada yada but i mean how much of that violent
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, realism, how much of it was in his head and how much wasn't, you know, so yeah, it's.
[SPEAKER_04]: So here's the question for both of you, I'm curious about, because for me, when a film
[SPEAKER_04]: has an ambiguity like that like inception with the top right blade runner is decker you know is here is a yeah yeah I'm like leave me with that tension I don't ever ever resolve it for me.
[SPEAKER_04]: I do not want to know, because that vibration, that sympathetic vibration that's making me psychologically go, but I want the answer.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's what's interesting for me in terms of thinking about what the film was trying to say, asking questions, thinking critically about process and the storyline.
[SPEAKER_04]: For me that they've never revealed what their intention was there,
[SPEAKER_04]: Perfect.
[SPEAKER_04]: I love that.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_04]: Do either you do you feel driven for the answers are you okay with ambiguity.
[SPEAKER_04]: No, I'm okay with ambiguity.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay
[SPEAKER_02]: I am as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, like, all us great lower-hounds and human beings.
[SPEAKER_02]: We've wanted no and dick for the exact exact right.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, but it's so important to have that that world where you can start building all sorts of things in your brain.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, that's just the magic.
[SPEAKER_00]: I like that idea.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, and the other thing too that I wondered, and then we'll kind of talk about, since we're talking about these scenes so vividly, you know, we'll kind of talk about the art of the filmmaking of this to close out.
[SPEAKER_00]: But, you know, I wonder, like, what happens to Harry once the film is over?
[SPEAKER_00]: What happens to him the next day?
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: What is he become now?
[SPEAKER_04]: Hmm, can you rebuild himself?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, right, and me.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a fun exercise to do exactly what I don't need the answer, but it's a really interesting exercise.
[SPEAKER_03]: But it's like you do do more questions.
[SPEAKER_03]: What?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, definitely.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, what else should we talk about?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, David, especially since you were marked on the cinematography and things like that, you know, what really resonated, you know, for you, like I, you know, you saw a lot of the visual, you know, he's always in these really tight elevators.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's an elevator's where people keep coming in after he keeps backing up into the corner.
[SPEAKER_00]: Confession booths, hotel balconies, his warehouse is expansive, but he's way over on one end in the right floor as bare.
[SPEAKER_00]: He did him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you know, and it just it talks so much about the isolation of our main character and the costume choice was interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: I read it in an interview that and I didn't notice until second watch, but you know, like if you go to Niagara Falls and you get one of those transparent written coats.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what he wears.
[SPEAKER_00]: But he goes outside and he's in this transparent raincoat and that was a very deliberate choice that they made.
[SPEAKER_04]: I clocked that and I didn't understand.
[SPEAKER_04]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: The one thing that I racked it up to was that especially with Harrison Ford's, you know, $4,000 suit wearing high.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think it's sweater.
[SPEAKER_04]: is that he's, he's a little bit low rent, but I didn't, I didn't understand the, the meaning of the raincoat today.
[SPEAKER_00]: Did they unpack it at all and what you?
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, yeah, they did it was it was meant to be that Harry thinks he's closed off and guarded.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know when he can get in to see who he really is, but in reality, as we talked about his landlord can get in okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm in front of him.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's, you know, his competitors are clawing all over the place.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he, he really is like an open book, but he doesn't understand that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the costume can tell that story.
[SPEAKER_04]: What do you guys make of the mind in the square?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that was a great touch.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I was trying to understand what, you know, what was that saying?
[SPEAKER_04]: What was the mind saying about Harry and the character in the film?
[SPEAKER_00]: same kind of thing, they're, well, you know, a mine because they can't talk, obviously.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah, right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Go ahead and do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they they learn who you are by your body language.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think a lot of times, you know, Harry, it was like a demonstration of, you know, how uptight and rigid, Harry is or, you know, and that kind of thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I thought it was just another visual manifestation of the impression that we're supposed to get.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and you know, in that scene, you had Anne was picking up on the body language of the people of Harry's crew by locking around and you have, yeah, you have our own body language.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you're trying to tail someone and get someone on tape, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's like, yeah, there's a lot of stuff going on here.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I thought it was an interesting device as well because when we're on that long shot,
[SPEAKER_04]: Which, uh, I-
[SPEAKER_04]: So, if you do any, you know, I would say to anybody, just watch at least the first five minutes of this movie.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Because that camera move to have it so steady and so clean and have such a long, clean, zoom, you know, that long pole that are going down into there.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then angling the camera just right.
[SPEAKER_04]: So, because when you zoom something in,
[SPEAKER_04]: You end up you have to reframe on the fly to keep everything proportional and right because you're changing the focal length and so the to get get us down on to that is incredible, but then the mind is the introduction to hairy.
[SPEAKER_04]: and a couple of the other people, but mostly Harry, and I thought that was an interesting way to end to our antagonists, I guess you can say, or they're not our crime victims, they're our crime perpetrators, because they are in the shots as well.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I just thought it was
[SPEAKER_04]: that sort of closing, we're very far away.
[SPEAKER_04]: And that's how Harry lives his life and then you get up the sort of close.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's a lot going on in that shot.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it could have been just like, hey, how are we going to do this?
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, let's mimic the guy being up there with the sort of rifle like, or like radar kind of thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, the directional microphone.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, the directional mic from that's what you have.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, maybe they're just mirroring that, but in fact, it works for so much around the film.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I think on second viewing, I listened to the movie with my iPad, my headphones.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, because that's another thing, you know, in terms of the sound.
[SPEAKER_00]: of this movie because it just goes in and out to.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what we're trying to do, you know, it's just all the different recording devices have different styles and manners in which they're collecting the conversation.
[SPEAKER_00]: So those are all going to sound different and we're often following Harry back in the workshop of how he's manipulating the sounds and putting everything together.
[SPEAKER_00]: The conversation, the sound is the story, you know, the sound design, there's no movie.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the entire movie depends on, you know, sound interpretation.
[SPEAKER_00]: It reveals information.
[SPEAKER_00]: It conceals information.
[SPEAKER_00]: It misleads, you know, the entire mystery and his obsession.
[SPEAKER_00]: And ultimately, our misunderstanding all emerge from a single recording, a sound recording, and how we interpret it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, and so the sound is is just really, I mean, into this day, it really launched Walter Merch.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, he worked with copula, but he became sound and editor.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he later worked on, oh my gosh, like, well, I know from the English patient, because that's when he won all of his Oscars, but anyway.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, yeah, no, it's Walter's amazing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, being the Laura Hound that I am, I'm reading a book that he wrote, you know, and it's really just more about the lectures and interviews he's given, kind of compiled together.
[SPEAKER_00]: But one of the things that he says, I just thought was so, wow, was, you know, being a sound designer, he says, we, as humans,
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we're here.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was hard being all that kind of stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're born into sight.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: The first time we're seeing things as humans.
[SPEAKER_02]: Open our eyes.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a world fuzzy, but here it is.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Simma.
[SPEAKER_00]: is just stated in sight, it's a visual medium for stever films.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're obviously, you know, visual films.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, but it was born into sound to nice, you know, once you start doing the sound and it's just we just stayed in sound and are born into sight, cinema just stated in sight and was born into sound.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's the movie.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, this movie introduces us to merch, who is considered by his peers, is one of the greatest sound editors.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like ever, ever.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, he's that good.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and it is.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know all my notes that I was writing as a washing the movie.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I saw twice.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was like, oh, cool sound.
[SPEAKER_02]: Do with, you know, with the electronic equipment and how he edited to clean up that that's eight words, which was amazing.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was amazing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, amazing.
[SPEAKER_00]: He did the sound on the God, both God fathers,
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, that's another part three ghost first night the English patient talent and Mr. Ripley hold Mountain um, you know, and just keeps going on.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, a legend.
[SPEAKER_02]: A legend and born for sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then that kind of, for me, goes into the last thing that I know we like to talk about, especially with never mind the music, is the soundtrack.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, and that's kind of what I want to kind of close on because it was like,
[SPEAKER_00]: just very simple piano and some jazz, you know, wasn't like, you know, that kind of thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: The score was written by David Shire, who at the time was married to Copa Licester, Talia Shire.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you know, Copa Licester, you're gonna get somewhere, somewhere, you know, he was already an accomplished composer but it became one of his signature works.
[SPEAKER_00]: He later did all the score for all the president's men,
[SPEAKER_00]: Saturday night fever, not the beat.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's been so hard.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: A few original score, and then Norma Ray, he actually won an Oscar for about four Norma Ray.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's a great movie.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we'll hear the music and the tinkling of the piano for sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what's fascinating is that Shire didn't just simply record the piano.
[SPEAKER_00]: He actually manipulated and distorted
[SPEAKER_00]: Recorded piano sounds to create unusual textures, much as slow in manipulates and filters audio recordings throughout the world.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's cool.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, and how the machines, yeah, the machines themselves create distortion that you have to clean up.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why into the square, remind you of,
[SPEAKER_01]: are both again.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, there was, you know, there was a couple movies, actually, and I'll mention one for David.
[SPEAKER_02]: He may have a better memory, but there are a couple scores that come to mind.
[SPEAKER_02]: One is a zodiac, which I think is around 2007, has that simplistic kind of intensity to it.
[SPEAKER_02]: The other one, too, is blowout.
[SPEAKER_02]: Brian de Palma's 1980 movie, which has us also simplicity to it, but powerful and then, you know, it's just, just reminds me of that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, David, you may have a better memory because I think you podcast severance.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think some of the shows had a certain simplicity kind of the that was the first thing that I thought yes when I heard that piano motif.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I thought that too.
[SPEAKER_04]: I was like whoa and I went in a check tonight.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I dug it and they're they're not the same and I don't think that there's any direct evidence that whoever did the soundtrack for severance.
[SPEAKER_04]: has said anything about this movie, but like you got to think that there's an homage here.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's a there's a polling of something.
[SPEAKER_04]: Somebody has got to have taken some inspiration from the conversation for
[SPEAKER_04]: the jazz music thing and having hairy jazz music a saxophone player, so that goes to, you know, this interiority again, where he's all buttoned up on the outside, but on the inside, he really, there's something that wants to cut loose and live.
[SPEAKER_04]: and, you know, pay play fast and loose and not be so controlled, and that, again, is part of that psychological tension, that complexity for his character.
[SPEAKER_04]: So yeah, not only does sound design, but sound track play a really, really important part of creating more dimension for the story in the character.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Jazz is built on improvisation.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're just opposite of opposite of what security person is going to go.
[SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's a very interesting.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I guess to close it out.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I think we can all say we very highly recommend this film.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think it should be required doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it still brings up the same kind of themes that we are still talking about today.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, so whether it's smartphones, security cameras, you know, the CIA, spying on a data tracking, just the constant digital surveillance, you know, it's still something that we as a society,
[SPEAKER_00]: reckon with, not really cool what we're doing, but we are literally recording everything that you were saying.
[SPEAKER_04]: But I think to now, in literally a post-tooth world, all here, these short ads on different podcasts that I'm listening to.
[SPEAKER_04]: Uh, for like, I think Starbucks is running a bunch of these and you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you
[SPEAKER_04]: The at a short enough.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's clean enough.
[SPEAKER_04]: It is stylistically enough that I think it's an AI-generated voice really program script, but I have no way of knowing.
[SPEAKER_04]: I have no way of knowing what the truth is in that moment if that's our human being or not Right, yeah, and I think about you know Harry like he thought he knew the truth Yeah, and he did me heard what he heard right
[SPEAKER_04]: And so that's a question of meaning making and applying meaning, you know, and that's what we do as human beings is we give meaning to things, things exist in the world.
[SPEAKER_04]: They just exist.
[SPEAKER_04]: But we create meanings so that we can interact and understand and encourage learning and teacher.
[SPEAKER_04]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, 100%.
[SPEAKER_04]: But now.
[SPEAKER_04]: we don't know what's real any more, you know, whether an image is real or fake, whether an audio is real or fake, whether a particular website, a news article is real or fake.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it all stems out of this
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know how to relate it back to the movie.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm trying to read it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, sometimes I feel like Harry, like, you know, especially in like in the hotel and he's listening and he's just, he's like almost screaming and it was pillow.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's just something about what is going on.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're just going down.
[SPEAKER_00]: What is real?
[SPEAKER_00]: What is happening?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is this my head or did this just happen?
[SPEAKER_00]: And oh my god, you know, and just that whole,
[SPEAKER_00]: Freaking, you know, it just hits you, your brain is just giving all these different mixed messages about what's going on, and he just can no longer make sense of it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it feels like with information just dinging at us.
[SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: And if you bring it up to like a metal level, we're looking at how.
[SPEAKER_02]: this anxiety that Harry has and all of us have about institutions, whether it be corporate, like director or government or influencers today, using information as power, yes, yes, yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: And
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, he's just like in the movie, he's like, you know, what are you going to do with this information?
[SPEAKER_02]: I think he asked the director that, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, yeah, it's corporate espionage and information is power and yeah, exactly.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, there's a lot of interesting themes, cross-cutting themes there.
[SPEAKER_04]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's next?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, we have now concluded our Gene Hackman section.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we are gearing up for Catherine O'Hara.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we get to go through all of the Christopher guest and a lot of her Canadian improv and things like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, look for it on this change of tone.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, we're saying that she's gone, but you know, she brings us laughter and joy.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we'll do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then Robert DeVal.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's good.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_04]: Sounds good.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, we'll get that schedule.
[SPEAKER_04]: We'll get the Catherine of hair retrospective.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then we'll run another poll.
[SPEAKER_03]: And we'll pick something to watch from that.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then we'll come back and do the same here.
[SPEAKER_04]: Great.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, thank you guys for organizing all of this.
[SPEAKER_04]: This is a lot of fun.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I don't know, I feel like we're, yeah, we're starting to get it together.
[SPEAKER_04]: We're starting.
[SPEAKER_04]: This is our what third into the West podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, I first fell in synopsis right.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's right.
[SPEAKER_04]: And we're supposed to be learning on the go.
[SPEAKER_04]: But I think I think it worked out well.
[SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, this is fun.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, let me give a quick shout out.
[SPEAKER_04]: to our community and for everybody who does everything to help support these podcasts to make them happen.
[SPEAKER_04]: First, our Discord server boosters, Aaron K. Teller, the thriller, do 71, Athena, Agilea, Lestu, Nancy M. Goes to Perdition, Radioactive Richard and Audriaon.
[SPEAKER_04]: They all donate a little bit extra something for the
[SPEAKER_04]: Discord server and so that makes it more of a fun and interactive space and we get a couple of cool features because of it.
[SPEAKER_04]: So thank you for that for really for making the space a little bit better for your peers, for your fellows.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then we have our lore masters, our top tier subscribers, folks who
[SPEAKER_04]: Donate, not donate, but subscribe at our highest level, which really is our foundation to make everything else work.
[SPEAKER_04]: So, Samarshan, Michael G, Michelle E, SC, Peter OH, Nancy M, Duf71, Brian, 863, who is this guy?
[SPEAKER_04]: Aaron K. Dalibe, mothership 61, Naurals, Kathy W. Lustu, Jeffrey B. Alyssa U, Ben B. Scott F. Steven N. Julia F. Collie S. Bill Mariel, Rocky Zim, Jessica A.
[SPEAKER_04]: Red Zippy, another personal note.
[SPEAKER_04]: Suspersonal note.
[SPEAKER_04]: Daling their name.
[SPEAKER_00]: The B is our mascot at University of Akron, and they're used to have red here, so I was the red headed.
[SPEAKER_04]: The TCS, Duba Minim, LNR, Mrs. Tenant, AC Wilson, ELIW, Cassicae, Chumbaruni, Katilla, Josh Lu, Paint in PDX, Cori G, Quinch, G-N-L, and Slavaneidor.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, and of course, Adrián who's always last but never least.
[SPEAKER_04]: We have lots of subscribers, but these are our top tier ones and we literally could not do it without their support.
[SPEAKER_04]: So thank you all so very much.
[SPEAKER_04]: and Brian and Lisa, we will see you on the Katherine O'Hara podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sounds good David.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was trying to do a Shits Creek accent.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, it's not work, it didn't work.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll work on that.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, there you go.
[SPEAKER_04]: See you soon.
[SPEAKER_04]: Bye.
[SPEAKER_01]: The lower-hounds podcast is produced and published by the lower-hounds.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Any opinions stated or are as personally and do not reflect the opinion of or belong to any employers or other entities.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for listening.