Talking Pondo: Before Sunrise and Night of the Hunter

 In this episode, Marty gives Clif the movie Before Sunrise to watch and Clif gives Marty Night of the Hunter to watch.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome to season two of Making Pondo and Talking Pondo. Talking Pondo is a podcast where Cliff and Marty give each other a film to watch and talk about them in detail. Some episodes will include a special guest. Making Pondo is a podcast where Cliff and Marty talk to people they have worked with and discuss their experiences on set.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

We're back.

unknown 0:26

Back again.

SPEAKER_00 0:28

Back again. Once again, I think I had something. What are you gonna say? I thought I had something clever to say at the beginning once again. Didn't write it down. Well maybe maybe that'll happen next week. It's Talking Pondo.

SPEAKER_02 0:49

That's right. Episode season two, episode 15, I believe.

SPEAKER_00 0:54

Yeah. Yeah. Strangely enough, is overall episode 51.

SPEAKER_02 1:01

Yeah, 51.

SPEAKER_00 1:02

So you got that you know reciprocal thing going there.

SPEAKER_02 1:05

I hope our listeners are proud of us that we're keeping up with this now. You know, it's not like I don't know, it's the you know, the makeup behind I don't know, talking something.

unknown 1:12

You know.

SPEAKER_00 1:13

The numbering system's important for us because that way we know what we're publishing. That's really what it helps with that immensely.

SPEAKER_02 1:23

So that's literally why we keep track. Otherwise, we'd just throw them out and call them talking pondo, you know, and then just the title of the the movies call it a day. Speaking of, we had two movies this week, didn't we?

SPEAKER_00 1:40

Wow, we we watched movies, it's crazy, but it it's it did happen again. We watched two more movies, and uh yeah. Well, I think it's safe to say that both of us are kind of dipping into some of our back catalog of ideas of movies we wanted to put on the show or things that we've been sticking around since we started doing the pod. And now that we finished all of our seasonal stuff, we are kind of skyrocketing back through the list. And so I gave you our first Richard Linklater movie. It's an interesting choice for the first Linklader movie, which was his third film uh before sunrise from '95. And then you gave me a movie that was 40 years older than that from 1955. The Night of the Hunter. You know, it's Criterion Week here on Talking Pondo. I think that was gonna be my intro. I was you're gonna go, we're back, and I was gonna say it's Criterion Week here on Talking Pondo, something like that. Yeah. Because both I guess we could start over if you want.

SPEAKER_02 2:46

You want hey, we're back, Marty. And we're back, and we're back.

SPEAKER_00 2:51

Speaking of starting over, we at the time of recording this, uh, we had just released that breaking away episode. And I listened back to it, and then at the end of it, we revealed that we had to record the whole episode over again.

SPEAKER_02 3:05

I was like, oh yeah, I kind of forgot that we had to do that. So well, luckily that's the only time so far knocking on a lot of wood that we've done that.

SPEAKER_00 3:12

We're real podcasters. We forgot to hit record once.

SPEAKER_02 3:15

So, you know, that's I listened to that breaking away episode after it came out, and I thought, you know, that really is a good fucking movie. I I I really liked that movie quite a bit. And uh, I think people should definitely watch it. I think it'd feel like it's a forgotten gem. Like you, like you said, it's in the family section. What the hell is it doing in the family section? This is an awesome movie about you know, kind of coming of age, growing up, and you know, and figuring out who you are and and that type of thing, you know. It's a great movie.

SPEAKER_00 3:44

Yeah, if it's the between thing, you know.

SPEAKER_02 3:48

Yeah, I I I don't know, it feels more grown up to me than that.

unknown 3:51

Right.

SPEAKER_02 3:51

Oh I know. No, it's but but that's not the let's not need to rehash breaking away, right?

SPEAKER_00 3:58

We've got two new movies on the segue is movies are hard to categorize sometimes, and that movie's hard to categorize in today's movies. You could argue where do these belong, you know.

SPEAKER_02 4:08

Yeah, yeah. I Night of the Hunter for sure, before sunrise, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I've got some thoughts on both of those, and I'm sure you do too. Um which one do you want to start with?

SPEAKER_00 4:19

Yeah, what do you want to start with? I I don't mind this week.

SPEAKER_02 4:22

Let's start with Hunter first because it leads into some of my comments for before sunrise. Do you mind? Yeah, yeah. All right, so 1955's Night of the Hunter. Um, this film is uh in black and white, uh considered to be kind of classic noir, if I'm not mistaken. Um Robert Mitchell's Shelly Winters, and directed by Charles Lofton. And this is the first one. Shelly Winters Again. Shelly Winters Again, doing her doing her best. Oh, and Lily and Gish, too, which was uh uh I'd forgotten about that. But Lofton, this is the only picture Lofton directed. Um and after having watched it, I I would have really liked to have seen another film by him. Um self-proclaimed preacher marries a gullible widow whose young children are reluctant to tell him where their real dad hid the$10,000 he'd stolen in a robbery. My daddy told me not to talk to you. So, storyline it's the Great Depression. In the process of robbing a bank of$10,000, Ben Harper kills two people. Before he is captured Peter Graves. Um and this is Peter Graves' actual first unsolved mystery. Um so uh before he is captured, Ben is able to convince his son John and his daughter Pearl not to tell anyone, including their mother, where he hid the money. And he hid it in Pearl's favorite toy, which is a doll that she carries everywhere with her. Ben is captured, tried, and convicted, and is sentenced to death. Before he's executed, Ben is in the state penitentiary with a cellmate, a man by the name of Harry Powell, a self-professed man of the cloth, who's really a con man and a murderer, who swindles lonely women, primarily rich widows, of their money before he kills them. Uh Harry does whatever he can unsuccessfully to find out the location of the$10,000 from Ben, can't do it. So after Ben's execution, Harry decides that Willa will be his next mark, fearing that someone in the family knows where the money is hitting. Uh devout despite vowing not to remarry, Willa ends up being prey for Harry's outward evangelism uh evangelicalism. She is a pious woman who feels the need to atone for her sins, which led to Ben doing what he did. Essentially, as Harry presents himself as the preacher who worked at the prison and provided salvation to Ben before his death. So Harry quickly figures out that John and Pearl know where the money is. Conversely, John doesn't trust Harry, although Pearl loves him. And John, who first tries not to show to Harry that he indeed does know where the money is, um, and constantly reminds a more trusting Pearl of their promise of their now deceased father. Um John and Pearl become more desperate in evading Harry's failed threats, and it eventually eventually capitulates into uh a night of violence and them on the run from him. So that's a that's a terrible storyline synopsis from IMDB, Jesus.

SPEAKER_00 7:10

Yeah, that's that's kind of basically the fairly accurate to the first 50 minutes. Yeah. And then a whole other movie starts. The kids go down the boat on the raft from they you know they're on the boat getting away from the bad guy, and then they run into a whole new group of characters, which is Lily and Gish, and she takes them in, and and then of course, one day Robert Mitchum shows up looking for nap money.

SPEAKER_02 7:37

Well, and he's he's following them the whole like that that so um I'll start off by saying I I loved this movie, I absolutely fucking loved it. I thought it was fucking brilliant. Um it has a menace and a sinisterness to it that's um Mitchum is is really great in it. Uh it also has some weird moments of comedy, dark, dark comedy in there. Um I like the fact that the kids are while they're kids, they're not stupid, naive. You know, John's pretty smart for a kid his age. Um anyway. Uh so right away, like when when Mitchum's driving in the beginning and they got that old school rear projection going, as he's driving in the car, I'm just like, yeah. Way better than Axel F. Absolutely. That's exactly that was my exact thought. I I thought of you bitching about the the car in Axel F, and I thought, just do rear projection. It's like it still sells. Um it does feel like an old school play style of storytelling. Like, yeah, they feel like they shot it like a play. I definitely feel like they borrowed elements from silent movies to do it.

SPEAKER_00 8:47

Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah. Um he's homaging a lot of that. But see, a lot of that is because he hadn't direct it before, too. I think that's why.

SPEAKER_02 8:55

Well, and yeah, I think so. I mean, he he's a pretty successful actor, so I think he'd been exposed enough to ideas and things, but he also um from what I read in uh uh in the it was also limited by budget. Like he like Mitchum wanted to shoot in in rural Appalachian locations. They just didn't have the fucking. You could tell they didn't have they had just enough, yeah. Yeah, they shot it kind of like a play, but they the way they lit it and the way they built the sets and designed everything really lended to the film, I thought, to to selling the film and making it unique looking, making it reality but almost not reality. It felt like kind of like a like a sinister fucking fairy tale to me. You know, like a sinister um who's the guy that Hans Christian Anderson story or Grimm's fairy tale. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 9:50

You know, chasing after these kids in a movie from the 50s, yeah. Very dark.

SPEAKER_02 9:55

And I mean, I mean, dude, he when when he's in the when he's in the bedroom with her and she comes out to have sex with him, and he's just completely changed as a you know, like he's we're starting to reveal his true self of who he is and how he's gonna treat her, and then later on he stabs her and kills her. That's some that's some great imagery and some great scenes.

SPEAKER_00 10:13

I think that's it's it you see how a lot of things were inspired by this. Uh you know what wouldn't exist without this, I think? The stepfather. Yeah, oh hell yeah. Remember, the stepfather is the same thing in a way. After money in that one, but it's the whole, you know, it's almost trait and take over the family unit. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:36

Yeah, the stepfather is almost just a retelling of Knight of the Hunter in a weird way. Without the, you know, without the the uh the the pure the setup of the uh he's a preacher type of thing or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 10:48

Yeah, right. He doesn't have that slant, he's just crazy.

SPEAKER_02 10:52

I thought Mitchum was fucking really good in this. He he he really chewed the fucking scenario when he's explaining his love-hate tattoos and the love-hate tattoos. I'm like, that's where that fucking comes from.

SPEAKER_00 11:01

That's the iconic part, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:03

Yeah, holy shit. I had no idea. And I'm pretty sure isn't um Meatloaf have those on his knuckles in Rocky Horror?

SPEAKER_00 11:11

Probably, yeah. Yeah, yeah, you're right. Yeah, so it's even in that. Well, there's so much, it just This movie's almost 70 years old at this point, so it's been stirred so much into the pop culture consciousness that you don't even realize how much it's everywhere and it's been taken from. I think that took some of the impact away for me when finally having watched it, is like, oh yeah, I see that this is the granddaddy, but my god, everybody fucking took from this, right? I mean everybody.

SPEAKER_02 11:39

Well, it's it that shows it's to me, that shows its brilliance. Where it's like everybody's been influenced by this fucking thing to one extent or the other, and for good reason. The performances are solid, set the production design's great, camera work's pretty good. Again, this the way they decided to make the movie, like you said, it creates this sort of reality, but it's all uh just alternate, like you could you could possibly see like possibly like a gnome popping up somewhere or scrim's fairy tale, you know. That's like this guy's a uh sinister preacher, like it, but he's an amalgamate amalgamation of evil, you know.

SPEAKER_00 12:16

Um it was yeah, there's enough interesting things in it and iconic things in it, and like we've said before, movies are made up of moments that you remember, and I think that's what carries it overall. Uh I'm glad we had watched things like Sullivan's Travels and stuff that show me how the different odd pacing of movies used to be and more novelistic. Like this is even based on a book, which made sense to me why suddenly in the last hundred pages now there's seven new characters that show up I'm supposed to care about, and here's Ruby, and she's hanging out with these teenage boys, and I'm sitting here going, Yeah, where's why do I yeah, why do I care that Ruby You don't care, but she's just the vehicle for Robert Mission to get it. I get it, but to get back into the family, right? Yeah. They there's a weird clunk to it in that respect. So I understand why uh critics originally and audiences were like, eh, nobody seemed to care about this when it first came out, and then it started to get that slow, it found its audience over time. It sure did.

SPEAKER_02 13:23

It sure did. It's like it's like whatever happened to Baby Jane or something, where it's like at the time it came out, people were like, What the fuck? But then later on, everybody's like, This is fucking brilliant. You know, it it went to it went to the UHF stations in the 60s and the or in the 70s and the 80s and found its audience, where these people were like, This is fucking brilliant. I mean, I think it is. I think it's I think it's brilliant filmmaking.

SPEAKER_00 13:45

Well, there's enough pieces in it that that prove that its worthiness and its inclusion in in the annals of film history, definitely. But for me, I understand why this guy only made one movie because this wasn't well received enough. Right, yeah, yeah, and put him into director jail.

SPEAKER_02 14:06

Yeah, back then that'd kill your career too.

SPEAKER_00 14:08

Yeah, maybe it's a good thing because what if he had made other movies and they weren't as good? It might make this one not people might not care as much. They'd be like, Oh, he was a one-trick pony, because look, he made my hunter three more times, you know. But we'll never know. We'll never know because he never he wasn't really given the opportunity to do another one. But he didn't need to do another one, he made his mark.

SPEAKER_02 14:28

This is he really, I think he again, I I think it was a little ahead of its time.

SPEAKER_00 14:33

It the the film definitely is dated because it's black and white and because of the way it's shot and some of the you know technical things, but it's like an episode of like Route 66 or something that starts shot for black and white television. You know, everything's crisp and in focus, very crisp and in focus, yeah. And it looks good.

SPEAKER_02 14:51

Um there's a shot where you remember when they're at the um the picnic and he uh he straightens the boy's tie and they cut to him and it's a close-up of him leaning down, straightening the tie, but everything in the background is like perfectly in focus. I really wonder how they fucking shot that. Was did they reproject that to get because everything, I mean he's in focus. That was a reprojection.

SPEAKER_00 15:19

It's a really weird-looking shot that's super effective. I know what you're talking about. That looked like an early example of what the Palma liked to do, like in movies like Fairy with that weird split screen, right?

SPEAKER_02 15:31

Yeah, it it wasn't a but it wasn't a diopter. No, it wasn't a lens, it wasn't a diopter lens. I fucking it was cool. It was just I I guess that maybe it was just the lens that they used, maybe they were able to get that depth of field to keep everybody in focus at the same time, or it was rear projection, but it's a cool fucking shot amongst many cool shots in that fucking movie. You know, again, I I I go back to that stabbing, um, that great shot of him running up the stairs trying to get to the door before they close it on him in the basement. Um, so many good fucking shots in this movie. I I I really love it.

SPEAKER_00 16:07

Stabbing, we don't see a stabbing because it's 1955, and then five years later, Hitchcock makes Psycho. That must have really fucked with people's minds. Yeah. If you put it in that context, where it's like, and you could tell they were really they wanted to be Hitchcock here, is what it felt like to me. But it just you're not Hitchcock, it's like you're boondot saints compared to the Quentin Tarantino. You're gonna be remembered, and a lot of people are gonna like it, but to me it's like hmm I feel like Hitchcock's a lot trickier.

SPEAKER_02 16:37

This is this is a pretty straightforward laid-out film, just giving you the elements, you know, and moving through. The creepiness goes of the uh okay, yeah. I can see that. Yeah, I can see what you're saying there. Um, a lot of singing in this movie, a lot more than I expected, and some of it is fucking creepy. Yeah. Like when Mitchum sings, he's standing outside of that house at the end where he's just he's just basically singing to that old lady and she's sitting there with a shotgun. It's like, what the fuck?

SPEAKER_00 17:04

Am I watching Poltergeist 2? The old the creepy old man coming to the house looking for Carol Ann is what it kind of reminded me of, too, you know.

SPEAKER_02 17:14

Again, stolen from fucking night of the The Knight of the Hunter. It's it's insane how influential this movie is.

SPEAKER_00 17:20

Now, this is way before the age of irony. So I wonder if the really how much religious uh uh like uh what not not subversiveness there really was in the script because over time it's obviously transgressed to this is another example of somebody who's not an American citizen making a movie about how Americans are, but in this case, kind of getting the whole fucking religious right thing a little on the head a bit of like see how entrenched they can get into this. And I'm sitting there watching the movie going, here we are 70 years later, shit don't change, man. Well, to me, it's to me it's making fun of it, or is it just presenting it, right?

SPEAKER_02 18:04

I think I think what it nails is the idea that people are, especially people in in who don't have a lot of education or experience with that type of thing, who maybe I don't want to say rural people or whatever, but this this happens to deal with people who are rural, but people in general can be snake oil. They can be swayed by these type of people, these snake oil salesmen, these preachers who are basically you know telling you about everlasting life and your soul and where you're gonna be after you're dead and all these things, and offering you salvation and offering you, you know, a way to get you know, it's like she says in the movie. It's she says to him at one point, how do I get clean? Right? And I think that that's when when somebody f hits that nerve in a person, they have control over them. And if it's the wrong person, it's not gonna turn out well. And with Mitchum, it turns out really bad, you know. Um yeah, I I think that's what it nails is this idea that people can be susceptible to being buffaloed especially by religion because they're because out of fear or ignorance or whatever it is. And usually I think it's fear, ignorance, and also just like you know, people who have a lot of regrets in life, you know, and they're like, Well, how do I, you know, get rid of that regret? How do I, you know, move on from it? How do I feel better? How do I forget or whatever, you know? I don't know. Um but to me that's like I watched my family uh they were in a f I mean, oh my god, man, my my mom grew up in a a kind of a cult. My grandparents were went to a church that was so culty it was ridiculous. Like it wasn't it was Christian, but they worshipped on Saturdays and they didn't eat pork and you know, all this weird type of stuff. You know, I ate pork at my grandparents' house ever. They never ate pork. That was just how they were, and it was and it turned out that the guy who led the church was a real piece of shit who was screwing all the women in the church, and the church ended up splitting into different sections factions or whatever, and it was like it was weird and culty as hell. Um all because this guy is offering, you know, he's and oh, that's the other thing. He convinced a lot of people like my mom not to go to college because he said, Why bother? The world's gonna end in 1977. He made a he was a prophet of God and made a prediction that the world was gonna end in 1977, and so why why go to college? I mean, why bother? Just enjoy, you know, be a servant of God and enjoy your as much as you can, and because it's all gonna, you know, be done when Jesus comes back in 1977.

SPEAKER_00 20:35

So I don't know. That's yeah, it is interesting where you know we come into this world not knowing anything, and yet we start listening to other people who also came into this world not knowing anything, and then we start all believing each other. It's it's really kind of you know wild when you when you think about it.

SPEAKER_02 20:52

But back to the movie. Um uh the old man's song on the banjo reminded me of Big Rock Candy Mountain, which I I laughed at. Um Shelly Winters has the shortest courting on record with Robert Mitchum. She's like she's like married to that dude like a day after he shows up, it seems like.

SPEAKER_00 21:11

Yeah. Um there it feels like there's I guess it's first time director combined with letting just the camera run without slating it, the editor's worst nightmare, probably. And so it feels to me like pieces are not there of the movie. But see, I'm looking at it through a modern film, right? That's the that's that's the other thing you have to do. Suddenly he's just dead, and we've moved on. Suddenly she's married. Well, right. Did I miss something? Right, and so we get to about 50 minutes in, we've run out of story. No, we have to well, we have to put the kids on the boat and send them off to the other people, and it's more novelistic that way. In a modern one, you'd have it just be about the winters and the kid at The house, right? They'd do the whole story in the 90 minutes there. Not saying that that's bad because they did it that way, but I think if you do that, you lose it.

SPEAKER_02 22:09

I mean, the the the journey down the river, first off, journeying down the river in these type of novels and in these type of books and in the south is sort of like um it's a metaphor. Uh it's it's metaphorical to a certain extent. Journeying down the river, going up the river. These are these are traveling, it's very kind of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn in a way. You know, um, it gets set up early on when they talk about the skiff, and there's Pa's skiff, and we'll drag it out of the water, and we'll caulk it when it gets dry, and then so it's all been set up, and he takes the skiff and they leave, you know. So I like that. It's not a sudden like he just finds a fucking boat, jumps in it with his you know sister, and they're off and running, right? And I also like every time they seem to stop or find a place that they're just trying to rest, this dude keeps showing up singing his fucking songs and shit. It's kind of eerie.

SPEAKER_00 22:56

It's really stuff where I can see it falls into horror. Yeah. Um influences so much that comes after, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:06

It's almost like mini montages for exposition. Like they do a lot of mini montages for exposition, bam, bam, bam, bam, and then they land on three or four scenes. You know what I mean? Like the singing, the robbery, the thing with the kids, land in jail for a while, and then land back at the house where he when he comes back for a while, and then these more expositions and these little montages, and then land, you know, land at the river, and we'll watch him do the river for a bit, you know what I mean? Um You hit daddy with a hairbrush is uh probably one of my favorite lines, along with um I don't want no fudge, uh, and then that woman saying shilly shady, shilly shall we and flapdoodle, and then basically dogging her husband for being bad in bed. That was that was the other did you hear that at the when she was talking to the old lady at the picnic? And she was just like, I never I never worried about that, nothing never meant to me. I always thought about canon while it was going on. I'm just like, oh dude, wow. Um yeah, I thought the use of shadow and light was superb, but I thought it was well, really well lit. Um, I thought it kept ratcheting up slowly. Um I loved the shot of her dead in the water, the underwater shot. I thought that was really cool uh in the car.

SPEAKER_00 24:32

Well, I understand its importance, but I didn't like it. I thought it was kind of you know, it was imminently watchable, but it felt like it felt like the shortest, longest movie I've seen in the longest time, especially like I said, when I felt like after he kind of Looney Tunes tries to chase the kids up the cellar, it kind of stopped. The movie stopped, and then then they end up with these new kids, and then eventually it made sense why they're doing that, but I was already kind of checked out at that point, and then it gets a little more religiously overhanded. Uh another Christmas movie. We seem to keep running into the holidays over and over again. And so ultimately I and the older I get, the more like I tend to agree with critics at the time on things. So I I didn't really, you know, I understand why it it became popular later and the moments of it that are important, but overall, yeah, I didn't really care for it that much. I don't think it's bad or anything, but I just didn't really, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:39

I thought um I thought the the imagery and the shot selection was damn near perfection. Um if you want to talk about a movie being art, this is art. Um, I put it up against damn near anything you want to throw at it, and uh it'll it'll hold up. It's 70 fucking years old and it's better, it's it's better than 95% of the trash that comes out now all day long. Um it's gorgeous, it's sinister, it's fucking brilliant. Um based on a based on a true story from the 30s. Um I could I just couldn't take my eyes off it. It was so fucking good.

SPEAKER_00 26:14

You can't right, you can't take your eyes off of it. It's definitely watchable.

SPEAKER_02 26:18

It's it's very watchable. It's it's well fucking made, it's brilliant. The the eye candy is everywhere, and it's and that's part of what it why it makes it a noir film, in my opinion. It's got the black and white, it's got the use of light, it's got the use of shadow, it's got the use the use of negative space, all those things that noir movies do that make them so fucking cool. Um when that lady when that lady says um get moving or I'll get a switch, that old lady to those two kids, I was like, oh shit, I haven't thought about a switch since I was a little kid. I've been I've been I've had my butt spanked with a switch, and that shit's not fun. Um but I thought, oof, damn.

SPEAKER_00 26:58

Yeah, the interesting thing I think about it is uh will I appreciate it more over time? Will I go back to the phone? I definitely think I will and think something different from it because it's very well possible because there's things in it that kind of twist and turn. The further I get away from it and get away from my structure issues, the more the images and the certain things stick. And like we said, movies just being a series of uh you know moments, and this certainly has it, that this could very well be one of those that I look back and go, Oh, I had a completely different opinion at the time. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:38

I don't see why they teach this one. Yeah, I was sure he was gonna kill that old lady. Um the music is the singing again. That when he shows up and and he starts singing and she joins him in that song, that is fucking. I was like, I got chill. I was like, can you imagine your killer standing outside of your fucking porch and starting to sing and you sing a duet with the motherfucker?

SPEAKER_00 28:02

I don't think that uh Texas Chainsaw 2 could exist without this film because Dennis Hopper is Robert Mitchum in a way. He shows up singing, bringing in the sheaves, very similar to this film, and they don't know what he's singing, so it's it's weird how it's like all these things from it, and then here comes Hitchcock with Psycho five years later, and it's like, oh my god, film was getting weird at that time.

SPEAKER_02 28:30

So this must have it's great, it's artistic, it's fucking unique, it's it's it's it's it's it's trying to do things, it's reaching for things, it's it's so fucking well thought out. Um I love the quote, it's a hard world for little things. Um, I thought that was a great line. Um the only thing the two things, a couple things I didn't like. Um I didn't like that the kid at the end turned and cried over him. I know he's seeing his dad.

SPEAKER_00 29:00

I know he's seeing his dad but down the night land at that.

SPEAKER_02 29:02

But still, I'd have been it should have he should have been a little bit more relieved in that point. And there are two two Looney Tunes moments in the film, two just straight up fucking Mell Blank Looney Tunes moments. And the first one you've already alluded to is getting his fingers caught in the door and he does that. It's a Bugs Bunny scream. And then when he gets shot, he does the same thing. Um but when he I but I I also love how they handle it, right? Because like once he gets shot, it doesn't if this is a fucking movie done now, that that old lady scene is 15 minutes long and he shoots her and he stalks her and she shoots him and then he disappears and he pops up again, the whole fucking thing.

SPEAKER_01 29:42

You know?

SPEAKER_02 29:43

It's like that Whitewater Rapids scene when the kids are going down the rapids in the boat. It takes 30 seconds. If it's a shot now, that is a fucking five-minute action scene where the little girl almost falls over, and of course the doll, the doll definitely goes over, and the kid has to grab it at the last second with the money in it. You know, it I it's better this way. It's just better this way.

SPEAKER_00 30:06

It is, but I still, you know, not everything is for everybody.

SPEAKER_02 30:10

Oh, I no, I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 30:11

No, I'm just giving you my reasons.

SPEAKER_02 30:12

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, totally. Your reaction's your reaction. I get it. Um, for me, I can't give it five stars because it's got a few paws, but it's a four-star movie for me.

SPEAKER_00 30:19

Yeah, I give it two. Yeah. I I I mean, okay. It just felt like I was watching an episode of Lassie or something, you know. Unbelievable.

SPEAKER_02 30:30

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 30:30

Yeah, well, I kind of understood why it was panned at the time, but there's enough stuff in it that like I could never go below a two because that would be an insult to the film.

SPEAKER_02 30:40

Well, I mean, a two is I mean, I mean, a two is less than in my opinion, two and a half is like right in the middle, mediocre. You know, a two is indicates that the film is lacking in some way. And I don't think this film lacks, but hey, two is a two is a two for you, but that's fine. Um, all right, before sunrise. Here we go.

SPEAKER_00 30:59

Criterion collection, so you know.

SPEAKER_02 31:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:02

Yeah. Well, and there's I mean, I'm always the heretic on this stuff. You know, the a lot of people love things. You know, I go to Letterboxd and I'm start trying to find people who have any sort of agreement with me. And I did find more of them than Fandango. Fandango, I'm really an outlier on. But this one, there are some people who kind of feel the same way with me on this one.

SPEAKER_02 31:28

Um, I I I don't know. I think it's I I yeah, I I won't say anything other than you're just you're wrong, but we'll move on. Uh before sunrise. Richard Linklater, here we go. Starring um Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpey. Is that her name?

SPEAKER_00 31:44

Yeah. And speaking of movies, the more time goes past and the more you think about them. Here we're talking about before sunrise.

SPEAKER_02 31:54

Um, yep. So um story is let me give you the quick slog line, I'll give you the story. A young man and woman meet on a train in Europe and wind up spending one night together in Vienna. Unfortunately, both know that this will probably be their only night together. Um, storyline. American tourist Jesse and French student Celine meet by chance on the train from Budapest to Vienna. Sensing that they are developing a connection, Jesse asks Seline to spend the day with him in Vienna and she agrees. So they pass the time before his scheduled flight the next morning together. How do two perfect strangers connect so intimately over the course of a single day? What is that special thing that bonds two people so strongly? As their bond turns to love, what will happen to them the next morning when Jesse flies away? Oh shit shot in 1995. That's uh that makes complete sense.

SPEAKER_00 32:42

Yeah, they spent what two and a half million on it and ended up making twenty-two and a half million on it. So that's that's a pretty good return for a tiny little movie.

SPEAKER_02 32:52

Well, this is this is I mean Ethan Hawke's pretty popular at the time. Uh it's I mean it says gross worldwide, it made six and a half million.

SPEAKER_00 33:00

Oh.

SPEAKER_02 33:01

Um, so on on IMDB.

SPEAKER_00 33:03

So I'm looking at Wiki. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:05

Oh, okay. Oh, maybe that's like video sales. I think too.

unknown 33:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:09

But I mean, uh you you put Ethan in a movie, I think at this time you're gonna get you're gonna get the return on your dollar. This is back when that actually kind of mattered for small indie films. I don't think it matters as much anymore.

SPEAKER_00 33:20

It said uh Link Later spent nine months casting the film because he had trouble finding the right actors. Interesting. So I guess it just everybody kind of fell into where they were supposed to be because then Ethan Hawke goes on to make how many more movies with Linklater after this? Uh quite a few. I mean, there's the sequels to this and Boyhood and uh Boyhood, yeah, that's the other one I was thinking. This is an interesting follow-up to Days and Confused, right? It kind of reminds me like where Kevin Smith made Chasing Amy as his third movie. It's this weird kind of understated little thing. Uh Adrian described it as my dinner with Andre, but and I'm like, yeah, but moving around. But it kind of slacker, but with a plot, his first movie.

SPEAKER_02 34:06

I had a I had a My Dinner with Andre sort of um reaction to it too. Um it's very it's just so obviously just Mumblecore. Oh, it's one of the like it's like the fucking height of height of Mumblecore. Um everybody fucking talks. These two just fucking talk constantly. Oh no, guys, it's a whole fucking movie. I mean it it's it is it is the whole movie. It's 90 minutes of fucking dialogue. It's just a solid wall coming at you. Um my first thought was why don't we have better train travel in this country? Um uh I love traveling by train. Um I've done it before, and I think that's America's biggest crime is that we don't have the abil like I should have the ability to get on a train in Oklahoma City and hit Phoenix, or you should be able to go from Tucson to Phoenix easily and then from Phoenix to LA and back and things like that, you know. That should be that should be a no-brainer. And it shouldn't cost you a fucking million dollars to do it either. But anyway. Um it was interesting, I guess. The meat cute happens five minutes into the movie. Um that's pretty early.

SPEAKER_00 35:31

Normally they're galley around. Yeah, it starts on that couple and then they have an argument. And the first thing he says to her is like, I wonder what they were arguing about or whatever. Right. And then next thing you know, we're just off to the races. But yeah, it did remind me a lot of Slacker, his first movie, where it's just going from person to person doing a rant, but this time he has the two people doing the rants to each other in pure 90s fashion. There's a lot of master shots or walk and talks where both of them clearly had to have all of their shit down because if you fuck up, you gotta start over again, you know.

SPEAKER_02 36:09

I mean, you should call this walk and talk the movie.

SPEAKER_00 36:11

Oh, yeah, really that's all it is.

SPEAKER_02 36:13

It's one fucking massive walk and talk with in interspersed with a few sets where they actually stop and sit down for a minute. Because you know, they can't because you can't make out while you're walking, basically.

SPEAKER_00 36:29

Yeah, they could wander around and then they get back to their home base. One of the things that I find most interesting about it that I always did when I saw it for the first time, like 30 years ago, was Link Later between this and Daisy Infused, he seems to know how to capture that you're up all night, and then the next morning vibe has started, like that real feeling of like like I've been awake all night, kind of by the end of it, and real life kicks back in, you know. I don't know, that's just what I got from those two anyway. Um and I remember when I first saw it in the 90s, it was just like, yeah, they're just fucking bop. It was just like, oh my god.

SPEAKER_02 37:12

They don't those two don't fucking stop talking.

SPEAKER_00 37:15

It was like it's Kevin Smith, but like we're gonna go even more fucking, you know. One of my notes is where is it?

SPEAKER_02 37:24

Um one of my notes is uh where is it, where is it, where is it? Because it's a Kevin Smith note. Um Yeah, this feels like I'm watching Kevin Smith on a first date with his wife Jen.

SPEAKER_00 37:38

Like I feel like this that's what I feel like this is, you know, it's it's it's weird how that stuff kind of fed into itself too, because slaughter leads to clerks, leads to, you know.

SPEAKER_02 37:49

It's just it was for me, it was just too much. I mean, it was just I wanted something to break. It's like And you had never seen this before, right? No, I'd never seen it before. Uh it's like I want something, it's like eating something that's really rich. You want something to break it up. Like you need something, you need something to go to to break away from the richness. It's kind of more of an expensive. And this was just like, no, more fucking dark chocolate bitch, eat. And I'm just like, oh fuck, I can't with this fucking movie anymore. I can't.

SPEAKER_00 38:17

And um, at the time, you know, that's kind of funny.

SPEAKER_02 38:20

It really, it really made it feel like it was two hours, two ten. Like it was it, it it felt torturously long. It really did. Um I don't buy the premise of just like, oh, hey, I'm an American, you're a French girl, let's get a drink, and why don't you get off the train so I can multiple murder you in Venice? Congratulations.

SPEAKER_00 38:40

You know, I this is the one talking about murdering I get it, but uh yeah, I she gets off the train and she goes, What's your name?

SPEAKER_02 38:52

I mean, you don't want to know that before, like maybe if you ask you, you go, sure, what's your name? Let me think, you know, maybe we should introduce ourselves before I decide to just leave the, you know. I mean, that is a that is a last known photo on a fucking subway topic.

SPEAKER_00 39:06

It has a lot of horribly romantic notions in it. It does, which is weird very much. This turns into like this accidental trilogy where nine years later they made another one, and then nine years after that, they make another one after that, and so you're visiting these characters at different times in their life. And this one, the older I get looking back at it, as oh shit, you when you're in your early 20s, you don't know anything. You think you know how relationships work and how the world works, and you're so certain of how things are going to be. And it's interesting in the sequels, especially when you get to the third one, how it reflects back. It's it makes the first film in a in a weird kind of way. So it's it's it's strange. But yeah, when this this one came out, I thought, okay, what a weird. I checked it out because I I liked his other movies. I'm like, what a weird, probably singular piece of work, and he'll move on. And then strangely enough, they got back together and did a follow-up, which is only like 80 minutes the second one. Um and spoiler, in part three, there's actually some more characters, so it's not all just people, you know, two of them talking to each other.

SPEAKER_02 40:16

I think it would have been better served if he had shot this movie, waited nine years, shot the next movie, waited nine years, shot the next movie, and then cut all three of them together into one fucking movie.

SPEAKER_00 40:29

Well, in a way, that's boyhood. Which is another one of his weird experiments, in fact.

SPEAKER_02 40:36

I get it. But I just I it's just like it's just it's just like watching somebody just I don't know, like watching somebody punch a board over and over again. It's like you're never gonna break it. Like, why are you punching the board over and over again? It's just it's relentless in its premise of and its one premise is will they fuck or won't they? That's the premise. You know, it's I I don't know. I I I I found parts of it kind of cute, but I found it, I found it just goddamn, I went again. I wanted I wanted something to cut away from the just the dialogue for a minute and do something else, anything else, other than just it it had this pattern of like um I wrote it down, what was it? It was uh um where is it? Why this? Why that personal story? Why, kiss? What why this? Why that more personal story, kiss? That's what the movie is basically. It's just them basically asking each other questions about the world and talking about their personal lives and then making out and then stopping somewhere to I don't know, and the the the wandering in the cemetery was kind of weird. I guess Europe's different, but like if you're wandering a cemetery and here you're gonna probably be asked, like, what the fuck are you doing? Instead, they're just like walking around like hey, dead people, and she's thir 13 when she died, and and then they go to the park, and again, I guess it's different in America because they just lay there all night and get drunk in a public park.

SPEAKER_00 42:10

It is the almost 30 years ago, too.

SPEAKER_02 42:13

Yeah, and it is again it's Europe. I don't know if I don't know what the social uh is it cool to like in Europe just hang out in a park all night? I mean, maybe it is, I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 42:22

Link later uh shot it uh in a in a different country so both of them would feel you know like they weren't in familiar surroundings because he thought that would take away from it. They have to both be kind of isolated from what they're used to. Like if they made in America, it would have a different vibe, right?

SPEAKER_02 42:44

One of my notes is uh this seems like an excuse for Link Letter to take a European vacation and have somebody else pay for it.

SPEAKER_01 42:50

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 42:51

And so I've got all these fucking locations I want to shoot at, and I got this idea for this movie, but really it's just so I can, you know, after the successive days confused, I can have a nice European vacation, you know.

SPEAKER_00 43:03

And just shoot this little two-hander here, which must have been easy and tricky to shoot all at the same time, I imagine, you know. But if those two actors know their shit well, you can capture those takes.

SPEAKER_02 43:17

If you've got two good actors that are off book, I mean it wasn't a complicated shoot. There wasn't anything super complicated about the sets or anything tricky in that regard, other than you know, making sure you had permission to shoot the locations that you were shooting. He didn't do anything tricky with the camera.

SPEAKER_00 43:31

No, but they have to nail their performances. If that's right, that's what I'm saying. You know, it's not it's not tough. It's funny because uh Adrian's note was uh she wished they had cast somebody other than uh fucking Ethan Hawk. She thought that he didn't quite capture the uh a likability factor enough that the character needed. And I'm thinking the character was supposed to be a little unlikable on purpose.

SPEAKER_02 44:00

But I felt the same way about her. I wish they hired a different actress. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:06

Yeah. I I he's fine, I guess. I've never been a huge Ethan Hawk fan, but he's a sort of early on.

SPEAKER_00 44:13

I mean, they're good, you know. When you think about it, you know, the everybody's so young here. He was in predestination, right?

SPEAKER_02 44:22

Yeah, and that's what the different feelings, right? He was good. Yeah, he was good in that. So I, you know, he's he's a serviceful actor. He's he can he can pull the part off. This one, he just kind of seemed like a classic kind of American.

SPEAKER_00 44:35

And I think he was supposed to be kind of the you know, abrasive, overly cynical. And then we find out, well, yeah, he just broke up with his girlfriend like a day or so ago. No wonder he's pissed off when he doesn't want to talk about love and all that. And I mean, I know it's a little tropey, but especially the second time I watched it this week, it made it made more sense. Like my tropey.

SPEAKER_02 45:01

If we go to another mumble core guy who we've mentioned already, Kevin Smith, and we look at his relationship movie, which is Chasing Amy, I would much rather I would much rather watch Chasing, which he also made on 10% of the budget before Sunrise.

SPEAKER_00 45:18

They feel kind of a kinship in a way to me. They do.

SPEAKER_02 45:21

They they definitely do. I had I I thought a lot about Chasing Amy while I was watching this.

SPEAKER_00 45:25

Um they're trying to figure it out. Like, how do I make this relationship movie? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:31

This was such a letdown after Knight of the Hunter. I've watched them not back to back. I watched Knight of the Hunter first, and then a couple days later I watched before sunrise, but I had just been kind of marinating in how fucking awesome Hunter was. And I put this on and it's just fuck it's like listening to two fucking small dogs just bark. I'm like, God damn, take a fucking breath and try some acting remote look, you know, and if they're not if they're not talking, then they're they've got these kind of puppy dog moony eyes at each other. And I get it, it's a romantic movie, but to me this would almost work better as a fucking comedy, as like a rom-com.

SPEAKER_00 46:13

Well, like we were saying, what section does it belong in?

SPEAKER_02 46:15

You have to put the put Seth Rogan in the fucking Ethan Hawk role, and then put like Elizabeth Banks in the, you know, in the in the Julie Delphi role, and you've got a pretty fucking you've got a pretty fucking funny comedy.

SPEAKER_00 46:28

That makes before midnight pretty different.

SPEAKER_02 46:33

Uh I I'm sure, but I mean, I don't think at the time he made this, he was like, nine years later, I'm gonna make before midnight.

SPEAKER_00 46:40

Oh no, I don't think it was the singularity, and then they had an idea to come back because they knew if anybody showed up again in six months. Because remember that they were like, we're gonna fuck all that, let's meet up again in six months. So do they or don't they?

SPEAKER_02 46:55

Well, I know the answer because I saw part two, but uh I guess they never made it to the play was one of my notes, and then later on they call out that they didn't make it to the play, and I was like, Okay, I'm glad that you I'm glad you just didn't skip over.

SPEAKER_00 47:09

That was kind of the signal of oh, the night's over, you know, the reality kicking back in. Because they were kind of like out of time in their own little world together for objects. And then they it's like, oh, now we're you know that's the whole romanticism's about.

SPEAKER_02 47:24

Isn't he fucking broke? Like, but somehow they're in places where they're getting drinks and they're gonna be food stuff costs money. But he's but he's fucking broke, and but but then when he when they need it as a story device to get the bottle of wine, suddenly they're out of oh now he's gonna beg money for money.

SPEAKER_00 47:42

Maybe by the end of the night there's nothing left. But yeah, they don't really impress that very much. But he bought that pass so we can ride the rail.

SPEAKER_02 47:48

He says early on he's he's basically out of money. He says early on, he's like, you know, I don't have any more money, and I'm you know, I'm waiting for this plane flight, and then I'm gonna get the fuck out of here. So it was just, but yet every now and then he's like like he gets the poet all of this change, and you know at that point he's out of money because he shrugs his shoulders like here you go, dude, it's all I got. But yet later on he's drinking beers, he's eating food, and then finally he's begging for wine. Like, are you broke or not, dude? Anyway, is it's uh I love Link Later's films. Um, I don't like this one very much at all.

SPEAKER_00 48:20

And it it's also interesting that uh they sprinkle in little things talking about 10 years or 20 years from now, what are things gonna be like, and so much like Star Wars, when we get to those, it's reflecting on the other decades as well. So it's it's pretty trippy. But I I understand why you wouldn't necessarily care for this one, it's not universally loved or anything. It usually falls somewhere in the middle, but I think it's interesting to the rest of his work because I can it's like, oh, so this is where he went, and then he goes off to like Newton Boys and you know, Bernie and all this school of rock and stuff like that. So yeah, but it's like okay, he it's like he had an idea of like I'm gonna do slacker again, but with kissing. And it says uh it was based on uh personal experiences with him and the uh co-writer, which I think is somebody who was actor and Dazed and Confused, Kim Krizan. But apparently uh it was based on like he took a walk with a friend of his and they talked all night and into the morning, and it kind of gave him a movie idea of he wanted to make a movie like that. And obviously it turned into something else. But very early on, he was a very strange experimental filmmaker, probably more so than a lot of the other mumble core people, right? They were more trying to make like direct like act one, act two, act three, and he's just making bizarro shit like Slacker and Waking Life, which also has Jesse and Celine in it briefly for some strange reason. Waking life, that weird cartoon one he did. Yeah, but anyway, as you were saying.

SPEAKER_02 50:16

I like him as a filmmaker. He he tends to it's it's like I was talking about Knight of the Hunter. You know, it it took some fucking chances. Yeah, there you go.

SPEAKER_00 50:24

It did some it you know, it really tried to, you know, there was intent there and things going on, and they they're both different, they're both oddball movies.

SPEAKER_02 50:33

For me, this one this one is just this one is just too much fucking and I hate to say that because I write a lot of dialogue in my script, but this motherfucker's got too much dialogue. No, other stuff they were, yeah. There's just nothing else. I mean, I don't want to watch two people walk around a town for an hour and 40 minutes and talk. As much as now, unless unless the sit the conversation is so scintillating and so interesting that I can't stop, you know, that's that's why my dinner with Andre is a good movie, right? But this it it it fails that it starts to fall apart in in points, you know. Some of the personal stories are kind of boring. Some of the again, it's that why this, why that. You know, why do you think why that you know what about Bob? You do you remember when you know mixing a little throwing a little nostalgia there, you know? Um, and it just it it just it the engine starts to sputter on it for me. About about 30 minutes in, I was checking to see how much longer I had. And by 50 minutes, I'm like, fuck, I got another 50 minutes to go on this thing. Oof. And um I was looking forward to the play because I was expecting it to be a spectacle that they would go to that would break up the is like, oh good, they'll sit in the dark and not fucking talk. Perfect. But no, even that, you know, and I kind of wanted to see this smoking cow weird ass play that these Germans were talking about. It was like that sounds interesting. Okay, because I would have made sure to have taken her to that. Like, we gotta go see this shit. This is gonna be wild. Starts at 9 30, we'll be out of there by 11. We you know, we can't skip this. This is gonna be great. Anyway. Nice pink lips. That's my favorite quote. Favorite quote from this film.

SPEAKER_00 52:17

Oh, yeah. Nice pink lips. The guy who writes them the uh was that the for the guy who writes the poem with the milkshake in it?

SPEAKER_02 52:26

No, she says that to him when she's they're in the bar and she's like, I'm gonna call my friend in Paris. And then she's talking about it. And she's like, he has nice pink lips. I was like, that's okay. Alright. Sure. Nice pink lips. Interesting. So say that to a girl and see if you can get slapped.

SPEAKER_00 52:48

This was the uh third and fourth time I've seen this. I saw it in '96, probably on video, and then I saw it around 2013 when the I realized they had made a third one. And now revisiting it yet again, it's very strange how to me, anyway, Richard Linklater is some kind of weird master of time with his films, and as time passes with them, and a lot of his movies are about time actually, I get completely different reads from than when I used to. This movie has completely changed for me every time I've watched it. When I watched it originally, I had your opinion almost to a T. And now after all these years later, it just hit me completely different to where I feel like, was that even the same movie? I don't know how that works. Maybe it's because I've seen the other two and it changed my opinion a little bit. But if I try to look at this as a singularity, I can understand why it's too much talking. But I don't find it.

SPEAKER_02 53:47

I mean, it's gonna be a singularity for me. I have I have no intention of watching the next two films.

SPEAKER_00 53:51

And it's a Mo Henry movie.

SPEAKER_02 53:54

Well, fuck. Good for that. Good for her. But uh yeah, I don't, I mean, unless I'm forced to on this podcast, I probably will not be watching the other two films. I just it just wasn't for me. You know, I I like Mumblecore, I like Link Later, I like that time period in filmmaking. I even kind of like, you know, I like the balls of making a film that really isn't about anything other than these two people.

SPEAKER_00 54:18

And the other two aren't this over again. They are a little bit different.

SPEAKER_02 54:22

I liked the concept a lot. I think he failed in execution. He opens up. He really failed in execution. You know, and for 2.5 million, what else are you gonna do but to put you know, put two people in front of a fucking camera and have them talk? You know, that's about your only option with if especially when you're shooting in Europe and you're shooting on a limited budget and you're paying everybody. So I don't know. Um yeah. All right, so what are you gonna give us one? Uh I'm gonna give it one and a half stars. One and a half. All right. I give it a four. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 54:57

Wow, no. Yeah, for me, it really hits a lot of relationship stuff correct for my own personal experiences. Uh but I understand everything is different. Every people are all different and they get different things out of out of things. But what I find interesting about both of these films is I think if I continue to revisit them, I will get a different read from them every time I watch both of them. I think Knight of the Hunter is gonna hit me different when I watch it in five years, and I bet this will hit me different if I watch it again in 20. So I I don't think this movie's gonna hit different for me, honestly.

SPEAKER_02 55:28

I can't I can't get past its flaws to be able to enjoy it. Um mainly, like I said, great concept. I get what he was going for. I I feel like it really needed to be a comedy. It needed to be funnier and have these particular humorous notes along with the romanticness and the poignancy that he put into it, would have been nice. But instead he just went kind of straight, like you said, slacker with a budget mumble core.

SPEAKER_00 55:57

Well, I don't think you can get it.

SPEAKER_02 55:58

Two people in front of a camera look at me, I'm I'm Richard Linklater, look what I can do. I can put two people in front of a camera for an hour and 40 minutes with dialogue, and you'll watch it. You know.

SPEAKER_00 56:07

Um well I I did watch it, but I'm not gonna watch it again. Do you think you would have had a different opinion had you watched it in the 90s?

SPEAKER_02 56:17

Yes. Uh in fact, that's a note I had. Actually, in 95, I probably would have been in love with this movie. I would have been like, it's fucking brilliant, all for exactly the reasons I stated. For ex for his attempt for you know making a movie that's basically just two people on the screen. All the balls, it's ballsy. Like I said, concept ballsy, execution lacking. And that's I I would have forgiven that in the 90s because as a young kind of trying filmmaker, I'd have been like, but yeah, but man, he tried this and that, and it's this, and look at that, and look at all this dialogue they had to, and fucking all the walk of talks and all that shit, and you know, and I would have been really into that. Now I'm like, I know I know the tricks of the business and how you shoot movies, and I know where he cut the corners, and I know where he probably should have edited himself a bit, and he didn't. So for me, it just doesn't, it just doesn't work as a film, it works as a cool concept.

SPEAKER_01 57:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 57:09

In fact, the all three movies, that's I guarantee you, if I'm forced to watch the other two, I'll be like, Yep, okay, I get it. It works as a cool concept, it's probably not gonna work for me as a trilogy, as a set of movies, right?

SPEAKER_00 57:19

Well, it's nice that you don't know what those other two movies are, so if they ever do creep up, it'll be a surprise. Because you didn't make the same movie three times at least.

SPEAKER_02 57:27

So you and I stayed away from looking at the others because I didn't want to ruin anything because I figured you might be like, all right, well, I'm still gonna make you watch the trilogy because I want to see what you think about the other two movies. And that's really what this fucking program is about. Yeah, but I sit through stuff too, you know. Right. It's not about whether or not I'm going to like the movie. It makes an interesting episode from something. It's about I want to hear you. Sometimes I want to hear you for 25 minutes just scream about what a terrible fucking movie it was. Like fan, like that last fandango. I was just I man, we got off that call and I was laughing so fucking hard because it's just like, man, he I liked that and he hated the shit out of it. Like he just he would have just taken that movie in the desert, shot it in the head, and buried it, man, and just fucking we don't we don't talk about that, you know. So, you know, that's what the that's what this whole show is about. And I think it's brought a movie on that I say don't watch, so right. But it's even it's even better when it's I'm I'm gonna try and give you more blind picks because I think it's even better when it's something you haven't seen, which is a lot more fun.

SPEAKER_00 58:26

Yeah, and one of the reasons I like uh the sunrise movie so much is because I just like the dynamics between the uh the sexes, and I feel like it's more just yeah, it reminded me of something I would have tried to write back when I was that age, but I didn't have enough life experience to reflect back on how naive people in their 20s could be, but at the same time still kind of know some things.

SPEAKER_02 58:49

I don't know. But I the writing felt a little heavy-handed. I think he gets better as he goes along.

SPEAKER_00 58:56

Um it's not as well by a long shot, no.

SPEAKER_02 58:59

He's really pushing that I'm an independent woman, I'm an independent European woman angle. Um, you know, with the whole I I'll kill you and I'll eat you. All the women are just eat the man and all this type of thing. And I'm like, I shouldn't have told him that story.

SPEAKER_00 59:12

Now he's gonna do kidding freaks out, I guess. You know, the second time I watched it this week, I noticed something I didn't notice the first time, how kind of morbid it was, how they kept talking about death, and they go to the I'm like, oh yeah, they keep bringing up the end of life quite a bit in that movie. I didn't realize that as much. But he likes to talk about time.

SPEAKER_02 59:31

Why don't you point it out? Yeah.

unknown 59:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 59:34

So anyway, will this be the end of the near three-month streak where I haven't really cared for the movie that Cliff has given me? The last one I really liked was like Get Out. There's been a few where I was like, that was over hey, like Adam's family or whatnot, but there hasn't been more of them than like, oh yeah, that's fucking awesome. It's going to happen at some point. I was sure it was Night of the Hunter, but I thought it might be too. But not a bad movie. I would never say that's a bad movie. No, you grab me.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:11

Yeah. Um, okay. Well, what do you got for me next week? I'll I'll keep subjecting to shitty movies. We'll see what we can do.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:18

Hey, let's see what happens. We're both Dr. F, right? We're we subject each other to experiment this week.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:26

I'd I I would prefer to be TV's Frank. I would prefer to be TV's Frank.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:29

I'd rather be the TV's Frank.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:31

Yeah, I kinda do.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:32

Uh so uh this is a relatively new addition to my list, although the rest of my list is older movies. Because this is one I found a copy of recently, and I was like, oh, I remember this. This is from when I used to watch movies on IFC in the early aughts, and they'd show all these weird films. And I revisited it a few years ago, and I still thought it was quirky enough. So when I found it again a few weeks ago, I was like, well, let's just rocket this to the top of the list, shall we? It's uh Steve Buscemi's directorial debut, I believe.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:06

Living in Oblivion?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:08

Uh well, maybe he maybe it's another movie he made. But I know he directed this one. I think you're right. Oblivion's the first one, probably. This one's from the year 2000. It's called Animal Factory. It's Willem Defoe. He's back again with uh Edward Furlong and Danny Trejo. It's a prison drama. And I remember it being just fucking weird. So let's see if this is interesting or not. But I remember it having enough quirks. It's not a perfect movie, but there was some bizarress going on. So let's switch it up a little with a prison film called Animal Factory from the year 2000, directed by Steve Buscemi.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:44

Okay, so I have two I have two movies here I want to give you. I don't know which one I'm having trouble, so say up or down. Uh let's let's go up. All right.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:01

Your movie is Get Him to the Greek. Hey, that's a good follow-up to my chauffeur, and I've never seen it. Right. But I saw the first one, the Sarah Marshall, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:02:12

Uh well, oh, but by the way, just because you brought that up, one of my favorite scenes in in film, one of the most uncomfortable, one of the things where I was laughing and I was uncomfortable at the same time, which is very rare to laugh and be sort of awkwardly uncomfortable, is watching Jason Siegel come out of the room to surprise his girlfriend if she comes back. Remember? He's just completely naked and she breaks up with him and he's crying while he's naked. And it's just it's hilarious, but at the same time, you're like, dude, put something on.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:42

How perfectly fitting that maybe one day you will need to watch the other before movies that you bring something like that up. So all right. All right. Well, I don't want no fudge. You ain't getting no fudge or whatever. But you can have the fudge you want, you know. And then she turns on him like that as soon as he becomes evil.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:06

Burn! Burn the motherfucker!

SPEAKER_00 1:03:08

Burn the motherfucker. It's like, oh man, these people are crazy.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:13

Yep. I'm the cow. I'm the rooter prick. All right, Marty, I'm gonna shilly shally my way out of here. All right, uh, let's see. So it's Animal Factory and uh get him to the Greek next week.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:31

Yeah, that's that's a change of pace right there.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:33

Yeah. All right. All right, well then we'll see you then.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:36

Enough of this criterion nonsense.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:38

Enough of this serious film nonsense where we talk shit about it. Next week, man. See ya.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:45

Later. Au revoir.