Talking Pondo: Hope and Glory and Yellowbeard with Geoff Notkin

 In this episode, Geoff Notkin joins the podcast. He brings along the movie Hope and Glory. Marty and Clif give Geoff the movie Yellowbeard to watch. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Beat the heck out of you. Yeah. But that's that scene when they go into the giant air raid shelter and they're all wearing their gas masks and the headmaster goes, we're going to do our nine times table. When I was at when I was about Billy's age at British school, one of my teachers had gone to that same school as a kid during World War II. And he told me that same story. And he even the old air, the old air aid shelters were still there out in the grounds, buried in the grounds. And he said classes continued during the bombing in their in their gas masks. So something that seems preposterous was actually very authentic, and I thought really well done.

SPEAKER_03 0:44

Welcome to season three of 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.

SPEAKER_06 1:03

That's us, we're back.

SPEAKER_04 1:05

Hello, hello.

SPEAKER_06 1:07

Here we go, Marty.

SPEAKER_04 1:08

It's another episode of Talking Pondo with guests. With guests. Yes. Got a hot one coming in TA for you today, boys and girls. Here we are, uh season three, episode seven. Episode 79 overall. Wow, rapidly approaching. I think it's uh the middle of summer by the time you're hearing this. I think this is a late July release, if I'm estimating right. And you would think we would be watching movies better set in the dead of uh winter to cool you off as you watch them. No, we've watched enough movies with Christmas decorations in them for the time being. This week we are going back to the 80s, once again, because we love to dwell in the 80s, because after all, if it wasn't for the movies in the 80s, would Cliff and I be the filmmakers that we are today? Probably not quite. And so today is uh what is the commonality here, other than uh the effect of fathers on their children, perhaps, in both of these films? Uh there are also two uh slices of film from the British film industry, right? Uh we have Yellowbeard from 1983, and then we have Hope and Glory from 1987. And you're right, they are both about family. They have different approaches, definitely.

SPEAKER_06 2:36

But they are both definitely family approaches, yes.

SPEAKER_04 2:40

Oh, but who is the guest today, you might be asking? You did say this was Talking Pondo with guests. Well, uh today we have Jeffrey Notkin on the show. We haven't had him since our uh making pondo episode back when. So now he's joining us today to talk about these films.

SPEAKER_06 2:58

This is the guy that came on and launched the podcast with us. This was this this he was on the inaugural pilot episode of Making Talking Pondo.

SPEAKER_02 3:06

Welcome to the show. How about that?

unknown 3:07

Right.

SPEAKER_02 3:08

Well, thank you very much for having me back, as uh as you know. I am fans of your work, very much including this podcast. And when you were saying that this is season three, episode seven, I was I was going, uh, which episode where was I with Meteorite Men season three, episode seven? And I used to be able to remember things like that off the cuff, but I had to look it up. That was our our Heartland episode filmed in uh largely in Iowa. So yeah, that was uh that I got probably my favorite photo from the whole run of the show in that episode. So let's hope that this one has similar charisma and longevity. Indeed. Indeed, sir.

SPEAKER_04 3:50

Right. And and hopefully we'll have you on more often than every 79 episodes. I I think uh I think we'll speak.

SPEAKER_02 3:57

I would love that. Yeah, I would love that too, actually. Thank you. We have a lot of favorite films in common, and some of them rather on the obscure side that would be good introductions to your listening fan base for films they have not seen but might fall in love with, as we have.

SPEAKER_06 4:16

Right. These these two that we have today, I think, are if you if you've if you've lived the 80s, these are kind of perfect examples of early 80s movie, later 80s movie. The style, the the difference in the film stock, the look, the whole deal is completely and it's yeah, two British filmmakers, but they're and and agreed the budgets are definitely probably different, but this movie from 83 looks a lot different than this movie from 87.

SPEAKER_04 4:45

So, do you want do you want to do chronological?

SPEAKER_06 4:47

Does does that make let's let's do do you want to do chronological, Jeff? Start off with yellow beard?

SPEAKER_04 4:52

Yeah, I'd rather do yellow beard first.

SPEAKER_06 4:54

Let's start off with yellow beard, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 4:56

So let's go back to the weird, weird world of 1983 where it wasn't quite 1984, the 80s that everybody remembers, and it is still the 70s hadn't completely died yet. It was what I think is the probably the oddest year of the 80s, 1983. So what was Yellowbeard for those not in the no cliff? Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 5:20

1983 is the year that you get the Return of the Jedi, the final episode of MASH, Rise of New Wave and Punk. You know, it's a it's an interesting year. So Yellowbeard, 1983. Yeah, this is PG film, hour and 36 minutes. I think that's right away where they went wrong. P fucking G. Wow. After serving two decades in prison, Yellowbeard, played by Graham Chapman, breaks out to determine to recover the treasure that he buried so long ago alongside his son, old crew, and the British Navy. Uh let's see. Writer written by Graham Chapman, Peter Cook, Bernard McKenna, stars Graham Chapman, Peter Boyle, Cheats Marine. Let me find your storyline here. Storyline Yellowbeard, a pirate's pirate, is allowed to escape from prison to lead the authorities to his treasure. He finds that his wife neglected to tell him that they have a son, now 20 years old, and shame of shame, an intellectual. The British Navy, Yellowbeard, his son, and members of Yellowbeard's old crew all go after the treasure.

SPEAKER_04 6:18

So that's what happens. This I've seen this movie so many times. This was the first time I actually followed the plot from beginning to end.

SPEAKER_06 6:30

The plot makes no fucking sense.

SPEAKER_04 6:31

I think if you don't pay close attention in the very beginning, you might be like, okay, what's going on? Who's on what boat? Who's going where? And now I'm like, oh, they got him mad by not letting him out of jail. So then he breaks out and he'll lead us right to the treasure. That's the story.

SPEAKER_06 6:47

Okay. But he's gonna get out of jail that day, anyways. Wouldn't he just go to his treasure? Why do you have to piss him off by giving him 125 more years? Because the first thing a pirate's gonna do is go get his treasure. Mm-hmm. Anyway, it's Marty. This movie makes some sense.

SPEAKER_02 7:08

I had a really hard time following the plot uh such as it is. Same. Now, uh I'll actually first things first, I want to ask you guys did you pick this film for me because you know that among all your friends and colleagues, none are a more obsessive Python fan than I. And in the Python canon, this is pretty much at the most obscure ends. This is this is one of the least known Python-related films. It's not strictly speaking a Python film, but obviously we've got three of the Pythons in it.

SPEAKER_06 7:41

So on the show, we don't like to go directly at a director or a star's work. For instance, uh Steven Spielberg, we kind of went sideways with always was our first Steven Spielberg movie. Um, yeah, we so we don't do like uh uh the first uh David Lynch film we're gonna do is the probably the most normal film that he's ever done called a straight story. So like we don't do like you know, we don't do Return of the Jedi or yeah, Raiders of the Lost Ark. So this seemed like so so Yellowbeard seemed like a perfect way to kind of sideways into Python without doing a life of Brian, Holy Grail, all these other things, right?

SPEAKER_02 8:22

Well, fish called Wanda, you know. No, very good thinking. I've seen all of them, of course, many times. I do believe I've seen every single documentary that's been made about Python, about the making of Python, about the Pythons before Python, after Python, I am currently reading Michael Palin's published diaries. What what a fantastic read. So I'm on to volume three, and I think it's about I'm about 1600 pages in. And there's quite a bit about Yellowbeard in in the second volume, actually, which we'll we'll come to later. But I so I wanted to to flash back to what Marty was doing is well, what happened in 1983? So 1983, I just I'd moved to New York City. I it was my first year at art school. I definitely saw Yellowbeard on its first release, so I would have seen it at one of those great indie cinemas in New York, I think at the Grammarcy. Pretty sure I saw it at the Grammarcy on East 23rd Street, which was a beautiful cinema, just up from Gramercy Park.

SPEAKER_06 9:25

No. And was it a crowded theater? Was it a crowded theater when you went to see it?

SPEAKER_02 9:29

I I think I saw this at the drive-in. I think it was pretty it was pretty busy. Well, to be fair, the Grammar C was usually always busy. It was a relatively small cinema in a really great neighborhood in New York, the East 20s. It showed a lot of art films, a lot of sophisticated things. It didn't typically do your your standard Hollywood fair. It was usually something a little bit more on the intellectual side. And let's also remember that this so this film came out pretty soon after the immense success of Time Bandits. A fellow a fellow Python film that was that was written by Michael Palin and the great Terry Gilliam, and which was a surprise to everyone's surprise, an enormous success in the US. And in in Palin's diaries, there is an there is a there's a mention where he's having a meeting with some of the production uh team, and it says they're expecting Yellowbeard and Time Bandits to be equally successful as film. And I promise you that did not happen. So I have a long history with this film. I I think I've seen virtually everything that's been done in any form that features any of the pythons. And uh without I guess I might as well get straight to it and say this is not among my favorites in a canon. You're kidding. Although it has a pretty terrific cast, it's got a fantastic cast. I I guess the thing that bothers me the most about this film. Well, the thing that bothers me the most about this film is that whenever there's action scenes on the boats, the boats are very obviously not moving, the ships, I should say. Very obviously not moving, and that's quite a common failing in films that have nautical action sequences, but it's particularly bad and obvious in this one. Yes. But the other thing that really bothers me is how could you put so many very, very funny people together in one film and it really not be that funny?

SPEAKER_04 11:44

It's like a super group, not necessarily. Yeah, oh yeah, no, it really is.

SPEAKER_06 11:48

This this happened so much in the 80s. This happened so many fucking times in the 80s, it's not even funny, dude. You'd you'd you'd get two great comedians together, you'd get two fucking Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase could never seem to make a great movie together. You know, you'd you'd always get these stars. Ishtar is a perfect example. Happened over and over again in the 80s. I don't know what if it was just Coke and egos or whatever, but you'd go, oh well, here's Richard Pryor and and uh Gene um uh um not Gene Hackman. Um the guy from See No Evil, Hear No Evil.

SPEAKER_02 12:28

Gene Wilder. Oh, Gene Wilder.

SPEAKER_06 12:30

Yeah. And very hit or miss. You know, very hit or miss. After Stir Crazy, it was all kind of downhill.

SPEAKER_04 12:36

I think maybe possibilities movie. They all wanted to hang out and make a movie together. All reports on Yellowbeard, it seems like it was much more fun to make than it was to watch. To watch.

SPEAKER_06 12:54

Well, I'm glad somebody had a good fucking.

SPEAKER_04 12:56

Like Eric Idol is like, I wouldn't change that trade that opportunity. That was a great time. The movie, not not, you know, didn't come out as so great, but that's a really interesting observation, Marty.

SPEAKER_02 13:10

And when you think there's Peter Cook, Marty Feldman, James Mason, there who wouldn't want to hang out with these with these people. And there's uh again, going back to the Palin diaries, there's a very interesting, very short snippet where there's a meeting going on about Yellowbeard, and and the producer said he's willing to finance it, but he doesn't like the story, it needs to be rewritten, and they bring on Peter Cook. And to me, the few howlers in the film all have Peter Cook in them. And I really feel I I I can't back this up, but I feel that he wrote his own dialogue and his own character. And he is such a he's such a giant in British comedy, and I love the way he underplays it in this. And he's he's he's quite spaced out, like there's that that great scene when when they're they're walking through the stately home and he's talking to the admiral, and and I I can't he says something like, Oh, I I imagine you must know uh being in the navy, you you must know a great deal about the sea and and and and what's in it. But and and a lot of his dialogue just trails off like that. And I had to play it back a few times to listen to it because there are some wonderful bits. There are some.

SPEAKER_06 14:37

And it's the one where the little girl throws shit in Martin Hewitt's face. And then and he's drinking behind them as the dude's as Martin's wiping his face off and talking to the other guy. He's like, Oh, excuse me for a moment, won't you? And he just wanders off, and then they cut to him, I'll buy some shit, and he throws those farthings down and kicks that little girl in the ass into the cellar and just fucking goes about his business. It's so that's the best, and that's in the trailer, of course, and it's the best fucking one of the best parts of the movie, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_02 15:06

Um, I'm all for that is one that is one of the bits getting their come-ups. It is it is one of the really good bits. So I saw this film as mentioned, I saw when it came out, and I didn't really think much of it. And to be brutally honest, I have not watched it again in all that time until you invited me to come onto the show to talk about it. So, since I have now, as previously mentioned in great detail, seen, read, and experienced every conceivable thing there is that one could experience about the Pythons, including being very fortunate to have met both Michael Palin and Terry Gilliam, I thought, well, but I'll come to it with a new perspective now, and now it'll be funny and I'll enjoy it more. I'm sorry to say that now I didn't. And in fact, I watched it twice. I so I watched it a couple of weeks ago and I watched it again today, just so that I would be really up on it. The the odd part is that on the third viewing, which was today, I did laugh the most. Maybe it's because I've gotten over the initial horror and I've come to the realization that I'm not going to be able to follow the plot and I'm not going to be able to tell which ship is which. And so you can just really enjoy the few extremely funny bits, which are few and short, but they do exist.

SPEAKER_06 16:20

John Cleese calls it one of the six worst films ever made.

SPEAKER_02 16:25

And he was in it.

SPEAKER_06 16:26

And he was fucking in it. His I liked his character in it. I thought it was I thought that that my one of my other favorite bits is the is the the the the money on the string where he keeps paying the blind guy and pulling the money out of the out of the gun purse on a yo-yo. That was really clever. Um it's uh it's just it's it's funny because what it seems to be is a bunch of bits. It's it's like here's a skit, here's a skit, here's a skit, here's a skit, now here's the rest of the story to tie everything up, right? And let's get to Cheech and Chong and do this weird thing where we invade the island and they all act like they're dying because they want to lure everybody in, but that they don't spring up and spring the trap ever, and then we just easily walk in on Tommy Chong. It's the fucking weirdest movie. Like the plot just been.

SPEAKER_02 17:13

It's very strange, and I still don't get that part because it seems like they're all so they're laying a trap, they're all pretending that they've died.

SPEAKER_06 17:21

Yeah, and they're all being rude, they're all being admonished not to overact to sucker them in, right?

SPEAKER_02 17:26

But then they do actually all somehow die in the staging of this, which I I don't I it's not at all clear. It makes sense. And so, since you've mentioned Cheech and Chong, also let me say, I take no pleasure whatsoever in criticizing anything that Graham Chapman was part of. He was King Arthur in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. He was Brian in Monty Python's Life of Brian, he was Mr. Neutron, he played all these fantastic parts in the show, and yet poor Graham Chapman is the one who had the tragic life. He died young, he got he got cancer, he had substance abuse issues. And I feel that of all the pythons, he is the one who didn't have the chance to go on to greatness afterwards. Or they all the others have. They've had immense careers, especially Palin and Cleese and Terry Gilliam, of course. But they've all had multiple successes, and and Chapman just didn't. And I think he was looking for his thing, he was trying to find his way post-Python. What am I gonna do? Uh and that goes for a very conventional, silly pirate comedy that gets extremely bizarre and hard to follow and really doesn't make any sense. And as you said, is just peppered with some funny skits.

SPEAKER_06 18:44

Some bits, yeah, some good, some good bits. There's there's always there's it's weird. It has this sort of like I think Marty mentioned it, like this Zucker airplane feel. Like it feels like this this movie's post-airplane, so it's trying to incorporate some of that stupid comedy, but it's also got those Python bits in there at the same time, that Python humor.

SPEAKER_04 19:07

You have people dying, but then, oh, this is just a joke. And so it's like, what is the tone? Yeah, it's very strange. I think this. Oh, go ahead, go ahead.

SPEAKER_06 19:17

Let me let me ask you this. Do you guys think if Graham Chapman was had lived as long as the rest of them, that Kevin Klein gets that role in A Fish Call Wanda? Or does Graham Chapman play it?

SPEAKER_02 19:27

Oh, great question. I I it's it's so difficult to imagine anyone other than Kevin Klein in that role. That's my favorite Kevin Klein model of anything. He's he's so good. In fact, I was just doing that asshole thing just yesterday. And and I mean, once you've seen that film and become immersed in that film, you can't not do that under certain circumstances. And him inhaling from Jamie Lee Curtis's boots and hanging junk leaves upside down out of the window. I mean, that is a genuinely hysterical and brilliant film. So that's the there is a Python film. I I'm using the term loosely. I know it's not officially a Python film, but to me, when multiple Pythons are involved in a film closely, very involved in it, it's part of the canon.

SPEAKER_06 20:17

So that, unfortunately for Graham Chapman, Fish Cold Wonders at the other end of the scale of but I can but I can just see Chapman doing a kekins to Michael Palin. I can see that. I can really see that.

SPEAKER_02 20:32

I don't know that he's visceral enough for that role. He's he's quite gentlemanly. He, I mean, think of him, think of him in in Life of Brian, when when he when he's outside the castle. Tell your master if he may join us in our quest for the holy grail. He's very grand. He has this uh he has a a regal quality about him, even when he's being absurd. Maybe not so much in Yellowbeard with the stuff burning in his hair, but you know what I mean.

SPEAKER_04 21:02

I wish he would have been the lead of his own movie. I feel like Yellowbeard's not even the main character, like he's barely in it. He pops up here and there and with his hair on fire, like you were saying, and I still can't figure out what's going on. Mental look intimidated.

SPEAKER_02 21:20

I like what Cliff was saying about the 80s films and airplane, and to me, this feels like a bad Mel Brooks film, which is ironic because Madeleine Kahn and Marty Feldman are both in it and they were regulars. Very much. It's got that that silliness, that the bad puns, the stupid gags, and it really goes downhill that way once Cheech and Chong come on board.

SPEAKER_06 21:43

Yeah, it's also that cruder piss and shit fart joke type stuff that I don't remember Python doing as much of.

SPEAKER_02 21:52

Really, only in the in the last film, in the in the meaning of life film, I think, do they they they get into that. But no, you're right, even though Even though Python humor was intellectual and absurdist and zany, it was it was cleaner. It was cleaner, exactly.

SPEAKER_06 22:07

That's right, but a little more intellectual, a little more hybrid.

SPEAKER_02 22:10

Yeah, these are super over-educated people that they can write skits about every cheese in the world or jokes about uh about famous philosophers that in the Ministry of Silly Walks and shit like that. Yes, exactly. These are obviously people they've gone through British public school education and Oxford and Cambridge, been way overeducated, and now all of that stuff that's been pounded into them, and believe me, I know what it feels like, is now coming out. And since we're talking about this, I have to say, look, I watched, I was watching Monty Python first run in the 60s when I was a kid. My mother did not want me watching the show. She thought it was too risque and uh too subversive for a child, which it was, but I absolutely loved it. And it was the only other thing in England that was of similar level of intense adulation at the time was Doctor Who. So every kid watched Monty Python's and Doctor Who, and we would come in to school and we would reenact the skits or talk in Dalek voices based on what we'd seen the night before. And I, in retrospect, looking back, the BBC had a really good sense of humor because the Pythons were brutally sending up the BBC, the British establishment, the royalty class system ruthlessly, and even doing those things like they would show the BBC logo, go, well, BBC is television, it's now closing down for the night. And nothing like that had ever been done before. It was so radical. And yet the BBC allowed them to keep doing it for multiple seasons. And I really respect that. They they the BBC seems at that time so stuffy, yet they were aware enough to allow themselves to be sent up like that. And that's commendable.

SPEAKER_06 23:56

Well, that's that's and that's honestly, I think, the government's best answer to art is just to get out of its way and let art do what it needs to do, right? Like if you comment on it or if you try to shut it down, you just make it worse. Like, you know, if you're getting roasted, just let yourself be roasted and move on with life. Um uh I miss Orion. Like, I miss the like when I we in the 80s, if it was an Orion movie or a tri-star movie, it might be pretty good. Or you might it was usually something kind of a little off-kilter, something a little bit weird. Um, I miss Orion movies, anyway.

SPEAKER_02 24:33

Another thing we we should mention uh along the lines of the great the great casting is how lovely it is to see Nigel Planer in this film. Right. And if you consider this film was released in 1983, Nigel Planer was becoming, or just about to become, a legendary icon of subversive comedy, since, as you well know, he played Neil on the young ones, which aired between uh bracketed this film, aired between 82 and 84. And so he's he's playing a very well-dressed, quite proper character. And it's obviously him because he's so distinctive looking, but that was a really fun element for me. And uh it's whenever I see anyone from that show, I always go, Yay, Nigel Planer, yay, Adrian Edmondson. That's to it's interesting this came up because to me, Monty Python's was the definitive, subversive, anti-establishment, groundbreaking, fiercely original comedy series of the 1960s and early 70s. And the young ones for me was that in the 80s. Yeah, yeah, it was the defining comedy of that generation, it was so spot on and so anarchic. Again, we'd never seen anything like it. You would never seen anything like Vivian with those stars glued onto his forehead, driving his car into his own living. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_06 26:00

Oh, you're fine because vampires only drink virgin blood.

SPEAKER_04 26:04

So yeah, it's an amazing cast, and it it's also crazy to think what could have been with the cast. So it's going to originally be Keith Moon as Yellowbeard. And that didn't happen. And then Dan was going to be Adam Ant. And that didn't happen. But Dan was going to be Sting. Now, Sting as Yellowbeard's son. Now that's perfect casting. Even Martin Hewitt is quoted as saying, Sting should have had my part for crying out loud, I would have hired Sting over me any day.

SPEAKER_06 26:45

I'd watch that shit.

SPEAKER_04 26:46

Of course, they're different movies, but I think there's two reasons I'm guessing, anyways, speculating, as to why this film is so damn weird and off-kilter. And one is probably the origins of the film. Uh, here on Wikipedia, it says Peter Cook remembered it all started when Keith Moon, Sam Peckenpaw, Graham Chapman, and myself were dining at Trader Vicks. Keith suggested doing a movie about pirates. And we were all discussing it and being enthusiastic when I saw Sam, who was too tired to actually go to the lavatory, relieving himself in the artificial palm tree by the table. It was then that I thought the whole thing was rather unlikely to get off the ground. And then it proceeds to go through many different script drafts as we were discussing, uh, strange casting, and yet great casting. But then, death during production. I feel anytime somebody dies and the movie's not done, the movie's always a little off, weird, or hollow in some way. And Marty Feldman died on location while shooting this film. His character is a stunt double who's killed off unceremoniously at the end. It makes me wonder. Yeah, is that why the ending doesn't make sense? Perhaps they had to change things, or I don't know. I'm speculating. I don't really know how much he had gotten in the can by then, or what if he was if his character was even going to live to the end of the movie, perhaps, or who knows? But it does seem like every time from the Matrix sequels to oh, I can't even think of some others, but or like uh that Natalie Wood's last movie, Brainstorm. Yeah, I was just gonna bring that up.

SPEAKER_02 28:35

Brainstorm. It's a brainstorm. Brainstorm directed by Douglas Trumbull. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 28:39

Yeah, and that one and that one's fucking weird too. That seems like it's missing pieces or is not complete.

SPEAKER_03 28:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:45

You know, I I met Doug Trumbull, and I and I love that film, and I talked to him about it, and he said that if Natalie Wood had died one day earlier, they never would have been able to finish the film. That they shot a critical scene, and he said that after she died in that tragic accident, and I and I'm a real fan of hers. I I think she she was a wonderful actor, that the insurance company wanted to kill the film and they wanted to just take the bond money. And he said he fought for months to be able to release that. And it's it's a it's a tremendous film. I do enjoy that. One of the films from that era I really enjoy.

SPEAKER_06 29:23

I've always found it really a fascinating. The the the the the basically the VCR of of your mind and being able to record that shit is fucking that's that's a really cool concept.

SPEAKER_02 29:34

And also when you think that he was an effects guy, of course, 2001, and and uh Silent Running and many other films, who went on to be an excellent director, and that doesn't happen every day. Special effects guy becomes an accomplished feature film director. That's true. It's so interesting that you said that because when when you were talking about uh actors dying during production, I was gonna say, and can you think of another film where that happened? I was thinking of brainstorm as you said that. I told you we like the same things, right?

SPEAKER_04 30:08

And so this movie, this impossible production of it all, is kind of like as if they actually made Who Killed Bambi? The Sex Pistols movie that Russ Meyer was gonna direct, and that all fell apart after what one or two days of filming. No, Yellowbeard actually got completed. But you know, we didn't get Keith Moon, but you got David Bowie as the shark. That's true. Apparently, here it says on uh Wikipedia that uh well basically didn't they just meet him on the beach or something? Yeah, they ran into uh Chapman and Idle ran into Bowie on the beach on holiday and was like, oh, we're making a movie. Do you want to be in the movie? Sure, I'll be in the movie. And next thing you know, he's the shark.

SPEAKER_02 30:51

So that's a that's a that's a nice bit of background story. I didn't I didn't I didn't know that. Uh for some reason, well, maybe a shark reminds me of parrots, but there's there's another funny bit when Eric or early on when Eric Idle's interrogating the the old the classic old pirate guy in the bar who's got the parrot on his shoulder. And I would I'm just I'm so waiting for them to make a funny reference to the parrot sketch, and they don't do it. And I I don't get that because there are multiple other lifts from Python type dialogue and scenes in the film that don't work, like the the Cheechin Chong routine where he's going, Oh, uh the French in the silly French accent was going, oh, I gladly moisten your foot against my nostrils. It's just a bad takeoff of of John Cleese's brilliant uh French night in Holy Grail. So there are some ineffective reworkings of Python material, but it seemed like they missed the really obvious ones that could have been a howler if the if the the parrot had made some clever reference to to that or or someone in the in the in the bar had just said, oh that parrot's dead, or it's a it's a palette, it's not a palindrome, that would be nutlob.

SPEAKER_06 32:08

Anyway, it's missed missed opportunity there. Um I love the bit with the dude where they where they nail his foot to the deck. I mean his foot is nailed to the to the deck for like 15 minutes, like you know, they they like they're going through rough seas and he's still there going, oh, oh and he's like, oh land, and he's still there. Oh like uh that that always makes me laugh. Uh and Mr. Prostitute always makes me laugh for some fucking reason. I think it's funny.

SPEAKER_04 32:36

That guy with the the he gets his foot nailed, and then he's he's fine running around later, but then he gets stabbed on the beach, so he had a hard go, that character. He didn't make it.

SPEAKER_06 32:50

It does have some some good lines. Um They'll have to kill me before I die. Um Prison has reformed him. He never bothered taking off his clothes in the old days. Um never trust a woman or a government.

SPEAKER_02 33:05

Oh, yeah, that was a good one. That did make me laugh.

SPEAKER_06 33:08

Uh your ass you're uh I love I love all the cheeches, all of his like weird, kind of subversive, like, oh you're yes, your ass holiness. You know, and uh yes you're yes, your molestation. You know, I I love that. And then uh, you know, you'll never go around killing everyone if you if you're thinking you know, it's kind of fun. But yeah, yeah, this this movie just it struggles. It struggles to be funny, it struggles like it's the timing's just not right. It's just not fun, it's just not funny.

SPEAKER_04 33:36

Yeah, you gotta get to it.

SPEAKER_06 33:39

Yeah. I saw this in the in the at the drive-in when I was 10. My dad took me to see it during the summer. And I remember even back then, my but my dad was not a huge Monty Python fan, but he he thought they were funny, and and he and his best friend, we all three went, and uh it's just boring. They just hate they both hated it. It's like that was terrible. You know, also my first also my first encounter with Cheech and Chong.

SPEAKER_02 34:03

Oh wow. Oh, that's an odd way to start. Uh not not their greatest role. Uh, also talking about not greatest roles was just a horrible part from Adeline Kahn. And yeah, her English accent is the worst fake English accent I've ever heard. I never thought I would be able to say this, but it is even worse than Carl Urban's English accent in The Boys. And I really like Carl Urban. I think he's a perfect actor, he just does a crap British accent. But why I mean, why would you do that when you've already got you've got uh so many powerhouse British actors in this film, and then you bring in an accomplished American leading woman actress who's who's been in multiple successful films. I mean, how could you allow that to happen? She she you couldn't have found a British female actor to do it, they couldn't have said, hey, just drop the English accent, it's not working, just pretend that you're an American. It it's so painful to listen to that.

SPEAKER_06 35:06

Maybe they were going for that Lily von Stupp blazing saddles thing that she was doing.

SPEAKER_04 35:14

As far as PG movies go, this is one of the last before PG 13 happened. We were trying to determine the cutoff. And yes, there is brief nudity in this film and a lot of violence. This totally would have been a PG-13 if it had come out later, I think. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:30

Yeah.

unknown 35:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:32

That's an interesting observation.

SPEAKER_04 35:33

The glory days of PG. It's fine. Take the kids.

SPEAKER_06 35:38

It's fine. It's just naked women.

SPEAKER_04 35:40

This is from the director of mischief.

SPEAKER_06 35:44

Which is a I which I love.

SPEAKER_04 35:47

I like that movie too. Isn't that strange? Because it does not feel so much like that uh director's other movie there that I can think of.

SPEAKER_06 35:54

No, I mean, Mel Mel Damsky, I mean, he he does a he he um he does he is a deft hand at mischief because that movie could be kind of creepy and gross, but it said it's much more innocent and in and um coming of age.

SPEAKER_02 36:11

That's he had a huge career in television. Yeah, he's got 103 directing credits on IDB. He's a creator and so was was working regularly up until 2018, yeah. Which makes me think this is not a movie, and I actually really like some of these shows that he's directed. He's really done some good stuff. Makes me think you probably can't blame the director for yeah, I think this is all script. Sorry, was there a script? Well, I mean, I mean Was it just a few jokes stitched together?

SPEAKER_06 36:49

I mean, maybe it's one of those things where they show up every day and they're like, all right, what are we shooting today? Well, okay, I'm the pirate and you're the bad guy, and you're blind, and there's a little girl who's selling everybody shit.

SPEAKER_02 37:00

Go. Let me read you this entry from Michael Palin's diaries. I think this sums up what we've been saying. So this was Wednesday, September 28th. I read. Oh, sorry, I'm reading I beg your pardon, I'm reading the wrong paragraph. Wednesday, September 28th, to Shaftesbury Avenue in London to see Yellowbeard. On the plus side are likable performances from Eric and Nigel Planer and Marty and Peter Boyle, and a neat classy cameo from Cleese. Good costumes and some fine Caribbean scenery and excellent music. Against this, a very disjointed piece of direction. No one seems to know what they are doing or why. Some dreadful hamming by the likes of James Mason and Cheech and Chong, which kills the few good lines stone dead. And he's writing about his friends. His diaries are very good-natured. That's a rare bit of criticism.

SPEAKER_06 38:00

James, that's a good call. James Mason does do a lot of hamming in that movie. Like a lot of hamming in that movie.

SPEAKER_04 38:09

And then Cheech and Chong would go on to make the Corsican brothers. I think the following.

SPEAKER_05 38:14

Which is basically this, right?

SPEAKER_04 38:16

It feels like they're stuck in Yellowbeard. They're still making period pieces. They never got back to making, you know, up in smoke and whatnot. And we've watched a lot of movies on this show about boats already, but this is probably towards the bottom of the stack of all of those other stepbrothers.

SPEAKER_02 38:35

Boats and hoes. Boats and hoes. Serious question, fellow film producer directors. Why is it when we see these action scenes on boats? And it can be anything. It can be it can be a little skiff, it can be a PT boat, it can be an ocean liner, it can be a pirate ship. Whenever there's an action scene on a boat, if you look out at the water, it is the boat is almost always stationary. And I thought, well, could that be because of the engine noise? Or I the the exception, a sterling exception being Tom Hanks Greyhound, which is a stellar war film, and that's all action non-stop. Most of those books are CGI. Yeah, it also wasn't it. They didn't it was partially filmed on a real destroyer, but that destroyer was not underway in the ocean. I'm just really mystified by that. Couldn't you have a little tugboat towing the towing the ship so it has some motion? It's so distracting. It's uh I think mainly it's two things.

SPEAKER_06 39:34

Safety concern, first off. And secondly, uh once that boat starts going, you know, if if unless you're on really calm water, you're hitting the waves or anything, you then you know, you know, you're going up and down, you're having to worry about the camera moving, you're having to worry about, you know, I I don't know. I think it's I think it's in general easier to shoot. And also those old wooden ships, they may not even take those things out of dock. They you maybe only be able to get them out of dock for a certain amount of time before you got to take them back and park them. So you end up shooting stationary because you, you know, you you can't move it.

SPEAKER_02 40:08

I've always wondered about that. Well, you movie fans, watch out for that next time you see you see an on-ocean shot that is being done with a real ship or a real boat, not a CGI, as we mentioned in Greyhound. It's damn distracting.

SPEAKER_06 40:23

That's why Master and Commander works so well. Is because it it just I mean, a lot of it's some of it's green screen, it's but it's you know, they they put those boats onto weather conditions and then made it look like those things were they were sailing them, you know. Yeah, good film. Um let me see what else. It yeah, um this film doesn't make any sense. I don't have any more notes. I got one more thing. It's it's just such a wacky fucking movie.

SPEAKER_04 40:52

Harry Nilsen created a preliminary soundtrack, including one song specifically for the film, but it was not used because the producers felt he could not be relied on to finish it.

SPEAKER_00 41:05

Oh well.

SPEAKER_04 41:06

One strange last piece of trivia there. And I guess another thing this has in common with Hope and Glory, both films have a two-minute opening credit sequence.

SPEAKER_01 41:18

Oh interesting. Oh, well noted.

SPEAKER_04 41:20

I was like, oh yeah, they got you know, because you used to just roll the credits, you're getting your popcorn, having your seat. So, uh, any other thoughts on Yellowbeard before we give our rating?

SPEAKER_06 41:33

I'm done. It's it's you know, it's it it just it just didn't hit. It tried so hard, but it just didn't hit. And it's it's it was silly as hell, though. I'm gonna give it a two.

SPEAKER_04 41:46

You gave it a two? Alright. Yep. I'm gonna give it a two and a half because throughout the years it grows on me a little bit more each viewing, and this time I actually figured out what was going on. At least, good for you. And I was like, oh it makes one of you. I guess if you get in just the right groove with it, it's like, okay, I see what you're trying to do. It's still kind of a mess, but I'll give them the two and a half.

SPEAKER_06 42:17

You know, there isn't enough weed to save this movie. There just isn't.

SPEAKER_02 42:21

Go ahead, go ahead. Jeff, what do you think? I'm with you, Cliff. I I'm giving it two stars, and and largely because of the screen presence of Peter Cook, and and I thought Eric Idle was also very good and underutilized.

SPEAKER_06 42:36

Agreed.

SPEAKER_02 42:37

Well, sorry, Graham. Uh, we do miss you and do salute the other marvelous roles that you played, especially Mr. Neutron in my book.

SPEAKER_04 42:48

And so a lot of the time we'll have a guest and they'll bring us a movie, and it's like their favorite movie, and then Cliff and I are like, uh, three stars. And the guest is like, what the fuck? I thought it was so good.

SPEAKER_02 43:03

I've I've been terrified that was what was gonna happen all along.

SPEAKER_04 43:08

But I I I don't know if I can't speak for Cliff, but I don't know if that's necessarily gonna happen today. Our second movie is Hope and Glory from 1987, a movie that I don't think I had ever seen before. And it was kind of neat in a way to wait all this time to watch it because if I didn't know better, I think it was made last week. Well, anyways, Glenn, what is Hope and Glory? That's quite a compliment.

SPEAKER_06 43:34

Hope and Glory. Uh let me see here. Sorry, you caught me off guard. I thought you were going to keep talking versus. Um, so Hope and Glory. 1987, PG 13, hour and 53 minutes. A young boy living on the outskirts of London comes of age during the uncertain days of World War II. Uh let me get your plot. Storyline here. A semi autobiographical project by John Borman about a nine year old boy called Called Bill as he grows up in London during the blitz of World War II. For a young boy, this time in history was more of an adventure, a total upheaval of order, restrictions, and discipline, the liberating effect of the war on the women left behind, and the joy when Hitler blows up your school.

SPEAKER_04 44:13

I thought we were watching Honor and Glory, the Cynthia Rothrock Kung Fu film. No, I'm kidding, guys. I know we were watching this one. This is our third director biopic in this season alone. We've done The Fablemans, the Spielberg film, we've done the 430 movie, the Kevin Smith move film, and now we've done Hope and Glory, which uh predates all of those. But yet it still felt so modern to me. Had you ever seen this film before, Cliff?

SPEAKER_06 44:47

Yes, I had, but it was a long time ago. Like probably in the 80s, around the time it was on cable. Yeah. And then and then, but I was I I I also think that I was so young I really didn't get the gravity of what I was watching. That's true, too. It's kind of like watching um, what's the one with the kid uh with uh it's um Christian Bale's first movie plays the kid, Empire of the Sun. I think. Yeah, um, which is also a fan also a fantastic movie about growing up.

SPEAKER_04 45:15

The last emperor, which was also 87. Last Emperor, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 45:19

But um the I think this other one I'm thinking of with Christian Bale is I think it's Empire of the Sun, the one where he grows up uh during World War II.

SPEAKER_02 45:29

Um that's the that's based on the JG Ballard novel, which which well was semi-autobiographical, and most of Ballard's material, as I'm sure you well know, is is very they're very dystopian works. And I found it super interesting to read a memoir, a semi-memoir of his, and also see the film. And and you guys have right away touched on a really a key thing for me, which is you you know me pretty well, and you know that I love the the writer, director, auteurs like Cameron Crowe and Paul Schrader and Francis Ford Coppola. And I particularly love it when an otter filmmaker does an autobiographical film about his or her childhood, and you you've you've already touched on on that. This is one of those, so is Fellini's Amarchord, so is Richard E. Grant's Wawa, which I love, Cameron Crow, almost famous, of course. So there's something super particularly intriguing for me when I see an autobiographical film by a great filmmaker about that filmmaker's early years. And that is part of what is so magical about this film for me. But uh I I want to hear more about I could talk about this film all day, so and probably will. So I want to hear more about what you gentlemen have to say first.

SPEAKER_04 47:00

Well, uh, for me, uh this quote from Roger Ebert really kind of sums it up. Uh he writes in his review, through American eyes, it is a more universal film, not so much about war as about memory. When we are young, what happens is not as nearly as important as we think happens. Perhaps that's true even when we are not so young. Like, I it it felt kind of like uh like boyhood in a way, if you've seen that film. Uh but I also liked the it starts and you think, oh, this is going to be kind of really dark and somber, it's about the war, and you know, it's gonna be bleak, and then you you're seeing it through Bill's eyes for the most part, and he doesn't know any different. So it becomes kind of the very definition of keep calm and carry on in a way, where to him it's like, oh, this is just life, you know, there's a war going on, but we still gotta live our life, and yet this is kind of an adventure. I get to go hunt for shrapnel, and crazy shit could happen at any time, and and it's not so much as a PTSD thing as it is just a life adapts, right? And and a lot of the time we see in the war movies they're so bleak, and this one it's listed as sort of a comedy sometimes, and I guess I guess it kinda is, but maybe it's just because it takes a I don't know, not necessarily a lighter approach, but maybe it's a better way to look at life in general, where I'm driving down the street and some asshole cuts me off and I want to scream and rage at him, I should go, no, this is a fucking adventure, man. That guy almost killed me. I should be having fun and enjoying life. Fucking Bill could do it. Bill was a little kid and he's climbing through the rubble and shit. But anyways, this this movie had a large impact on me. I and what as soon as it was over, I was just kind of sat there and reeled for a few minutes. I'll talk about the ending of it later, but it was, yeah, this is pretty exceptional, I thought.

SPEAKER_02 49:09

Oh gosh, I'm so pleased to hear that, Marty. And you've touched on one of the key elements of the film, which is to nine-year-old Billy, war is a wonderland. He's he hasn't experienced loss and death yet, except seeing the houses of his neighbor that he doesn't like very much blown up. But the the kids' lives haven't haven't been exposed to relentless tragedy yet. And so the bombed-out houses are a playland for them. And I I love the headquarters with the little gang of the kids, and they've collected somehow incredibly all this unexploded ordnance and a handgun, and they've got helmets, and they they are they've turned this wasteland into their kingdom, into their playland.

SPEAKER_06 49:54

And it's the it's the lost boys. I mean, it's Peter Pan and the Lost Boys only with violence and and and ammunition. You know, it's it's it's a violent, like it's a it's almost like a you know, when they grab him and they put that bullet in a vice and he's gonna threatening him, you know, to hit the primer with the hammer. And I mean, it's very fucking scary scene in the film.

SPEAKER_02 50:16

Man, that is some Lord of the Flies type stuff there, man. Well, but and don't you recognize that behavior? I mean, think absolutely when we were kids, when uh eight, nine, ten-year-old gangs of boys were like, we could be absolute monsters and terrorize other children. And and I love the way there are these rumors that percolate through the film that they're and it goes hand in hand with this idea of the wasteland being a being a magical place, a wonderland that the boys play in. And so early on, Billy says, Haven't you have you heard there? You can't go on the bomb sites at night. They're dropping Germans on the bomb sites at night. Like these bomb sites are some sort of portal. Like you would why would you drop a person on top of a place where you'd already dropped a bomb? And then later, one of the, I think it's one of his aunts goes, Oh, they're dropping the the Germans are dropping diseased rats on the bomb sites. And so it's war time.

SPEAKER_06 51:13

That's what that small parachute was for.

SPEAKER_02 51:17

So everyone's perception and experience is already turned upside down. And I love the way these wild rumors f fly through the society or the group that we that we encounter, and it adds to that to that feeling of of un of unreality or being detached from the normal conventional world. And and it's filmed in a very, very conventional London suburb. I I grew up in a suburb that looked very much like that with those roadbruns.

SPEAKER_06 51:46

That's an entire that's an entire setup set that was entirely built. It was one of those sets for like 25 years in England every year.

SPEAKER_04 51:54

Oh, that street. Yeah, he rebuilt his childhood.

SPEAKER_06 51:56

The whole street. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:58

At first, when I the on early viewings, but the of course pre-internet, before you could look things like this up, I was convinced it was filmed in a real London suburb. Down to the detailing of the houses, the the little type of gravel and plaster mixture that they would put on the fronts of kind of an English version of stucco that they would put on these houses. It was it was uh relentlessly authentic. And the another thing that I love, and this also gets established very early on, is that Billy's really an expert in warfare. He's from from the beginning, he's got his little handmade radio and he's listening to the broadcasts at night, and he's playing with his toy soldiers. And when they're hiding in that space under the stairs, which we had in the house in which I grew up, my my house, very similar to that one built in the 1930s, and there was this strange triangular space under the stairway where my mother used to keep the vacuum cleaner. But it was a known thing that during air raids, people would hide in in that. That that was that was quite a quite a secure location. So they're huddling in there and he's going, oh, carpet bombing, and he's counting down the time between the explosions, and he recognizes every type of plane, recognizes this very puzzling line because this piece of shrapnel's from a landmine, which doesn't make any sense. This kid is fascinated by everything military, by the war, the aircraft, everything that's going on.

SPEAKER_06 53:27

Like a lot of kids were back then. I mean for sure. Yeah. I mean, everybody played G.I. Joe. There's a you know, there's always a there's always as growing up as a young boy a fascination with cowboys and the military and all those sort of uh archetypes, right?

SPEAKER_02 53:43

But he gets to see all of this firsthand, and and I think through through really wondrous eyes, he he's he's fascinated by the mechanics of warfare, the planes, the bombs, and everything, and and he get he gets to experience it. And he really he really goes with it. He seems utterly fascinated by every aspect of the war that's happening around him.

SPEAKER_06 54:12

It opens on that wild movie scene. Oh, yeah, or that is mine. Dude, you stole my joke. That was fucking stole my joke. You stole my Minecraft movie joke. Yeah, that joke. Yeah, well, that was my joke too. But yeah, so that it looked like a bunch of kids watching a new Minecraft movie. That's exactly what it looked like. Um edit point.

SPEAKER_04 54:35

No, do that line.

SPEAKER_06 54:37

I I I in particular liked this idea of watching a young child Borman play with Arthur and Merlin action figures and making up a story in the garden. I thought, oh, that's that's nicely done. Uh don't take it.

SPEAKER_02 54:49

It is that's that's extra fantastic, and and for me for two reasons. First of all, he's definitely referencing Excalibur. Absolutely. Because he's playing with Merlin. And he's and he's the guy who's made the definitive version of that, by the way. Agreed. Yes. And also, it's so reminiscent of the beginning of Time Bandits. When when when the the kids in his in his room and all of the toys and all the artwork in the room are things that you're gonna see later in the film. And there there are some other there's a couple of other clever references to other Borman things as well that we'll we'll get to uh later.

SPEAKER_06 55:27

Did um did everyone sneak out of their bed to see what their drunk parents were up to when they were kids?

SPEAKER_04 55:33

Oh, I didn't have to sneak out to find that. I sure did.

SPEAKER_06 55:38

You crack open your bedroom door to watch after you get sent to bed, you know, see what they're what you know, they were having friends over and you didn't want to be excluded and doing the whole like pretending to have my eyes closed, but they're not really closed all the way.

SPEAKER_04 55:51

That kind of shit. Exactly.

unknown 55:53

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 55:54

I want to go back to that to what Marty just mentioned about that very early scene. It's only two minutes into the film when the kids are at the cinema and they're they're watching, they're watching that film. And to me, that's a really clever bit of filmmaking. It sets the tone. And as uh I cliff, I think it was you at the beginning said, I thought this was gonna be a bleak World War II movie. And so very early on, he lets you know there's gonna be a lot of crazy mayhem in this film, and it's about kids running wild. The kids are running wild, and the authority figure comes in and he can't control them at all. And I I I feel that's the that's like it's the snapshot, it's the it's the it's the byline or the intro line of what the film is going to be, and playing the big band music before that and the black and white photo, it really sets the tone for the for the era. Marks of a very sophisticated filmmaker.

SPEAKER_06 56:47

Do you think that the kid's dreams are in black and white because the movies he watches are in black and white? Oh, that's a great question.

SPEAKER_01 56:56

I never thought of that.

SPEAKER_06 56:57

It totally makes me like all of his, like, you know, when he's doing his when he's doing all of his dreams about it being in the Messer Schmidt or being in the planes and shooting there, all that stuff, it's always in black and white. He never has a colored dream.

SPEAKER_04 57:08

Yeah, because those are the movies he's seeing that totally makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 57:13

And one of the reviews, I I don't remember who it was, but one of the reviews at the Times commented that Borman had had really gone to the heart of classic British filmmaking in this. That it's it seems to be his autobiography, but it's somewhat disguised, and it's in part an homage to those classic black and white films that he loved and grew up. So it it's it's like a double autobiography.

SPEAKER_06 57:39

That makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. Um this movie has Dr. Julie's pet peeve in it, which is people spitting up blood when they're injured. Dr. Julie says that doesn't happen. And uh it happened in this movie. So I just wanted to point that out.

SPEAKER_04 57:56

Dr. Julie, also known as uh Sarah and the trilogy we made.

SPEAKER_06 58:00

That's right. You know the guy who gets his hand stuck in the car door and is running by waving as dad drives off. I you know, because they signed up to go to the war together. I thought for sure that dude, like the minute the joke happened and their kids are kind of giggling at him and shit, and they drive off, I thought he's dead. But it's a comedy kill him in this movie. Like it's a movie about war. That guy always dies in a war movie.

SPEAKER_04 58:24

And later on, when they're watching a movie with the train and the woman's running alongside the train, I thought for a second, oh no, she's stuck to the train like the guy was stuck to the car.

SPEAKER_02 58:33

That's interesting. Well, and that scene, that that farewell scene at the train station really harkens back to those those classical films. And and we're we're jumping around.

SPEAKER_06 58:43

There's a black and white scene in the movie later on where the where Billy's kind of rolling his eyes because it's all the women are crying, and it's the this that famous the scene where she's Dunning, just go on the train if you need to. I'll be back. I swear to God, you know that that whole thing, and all the women are crying.

SPEAKER_02 58:58

And that happens three times or four times. I think you clearly see Billy rolling his eyes, like, oh, all of these romantic girly things. And then that ties in so well later when you when you meet his grandfather and you hear his grandfather's opinion on all of that.

SPEAKER_06 59:17

What are you gonna do with four daughters? Create a string quartet is all I could think of.

SPEAKER_04 59:21

Faith, hope, charity, and grace. Wasn't that a Foo Fighters album? No, that was Echo, Silence, Patience, and Grace. But it's like, oh, it's one of those things you realize when you watch the movie, it's like, oh, hope and glory are actually well, I don't know if there's anybody named Glory in the movie, but there is a character named Hope. So now you could always put that crude joke that those are tend to be the stripper names. I don't know why. I didn't make up the joke. I'm just repeating it here on the show. Uh so as we were talking about earlier, this this I feel like this movie is kind of about memory. Like you're saying, it's it's snapshots. And that's why it reminded me of boyhood. It's a lot more about incidents that you experience throughout the early part of your life that stick with you, and not necessarily plot-driven. There's that in there, but it's more about this happened and made an impact, this happened, made an impact, the things that always stick with you, kind of like uh like maybe like Stand By Me. But it also gave me feels of like I just re-watched Room with the View recently. And both of these movies kind of they do this thing where they capture reality like a moment in time. Like the best thing a movie can do is kind of capture the essence of a moment. Almost like it's a dream, but it was like, no, it was like like Ebert said, they're empathy machines. But this one does seem to do a really good job about just like I feel like I'm watching somebody's memories, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:00

It's really well said, Marty. And the movie doesn't have really a lot of plot, it is mostly many great little scenes that are that are put together to tell a narrative of memory. And I think Bormann makes that very clear because the movie opens with a black and white snapshot of the family, and then we see that snapshot again much later in the in the film after the house has been bombed and it's been burned.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:27

It has meaning for us then, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:29

Yeah, but I love that episodic feel. Some it often doesn't work in films, they can feel very choppy, but these these little scenes of memory, these little anecdotes and these bits of unique experience are stitched together so well that it it it flows beautifully. And and I can tell you that uh there's a very high degree of authenticity in in these memory vignettes as well. So, for example, when they early on in the film, when they start building the air-aid shelter in the garden, all the houses in the area where I grew up in suburban London had those, the houses that were from that era. We had one in our garden that was that was built underground. And this the hilarious scene uh when they're at school, and uh digress for a moment. I I think it's it's interesting and a bit harrowing the way the the headmaster is is up there lecturing the boys about God's just war and everything, and he's a fascist. I mean, he's an absolute monster, the headmaster. He's beating children.

SPEAKER_06 1:02:37

That was the kids and praying for the death of others is very church-like.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:41

I went to that school. That that I mean, that was what it was like. They were always up there singing about the love of our Lord Jesus Christ, and then they take you around the corner and beat the heck out of you. Yeah, but that's that scene when they go into the giant air raid shelter and they're all wearing their gas masks, and the headmaster goes, Oh, do our no, we're going to do our nine times table. When I was at when I was about Billy's age at British school, one of my teachers had gone to that same school as a kid during World War II, and he told me that same story. And he even the old air, the old air aid shelters were still there out in the grounds, buried in the grounds. And he said, classes continued during the bombing in their in their gas masks. So something that seems preposterous was actually very authentic, and I thought really well done. And it is funny the way that gas masks are wheezing, and it sounds like the kids are actually going like they're they're actually making obscene noises at the teacher, which m maybe they are, in addition to the noise of the gas masks, but I love that scene.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:47

So I was trying to think, I've seen a handful of Borman's other movies, and a lot of them recently. Like I watched uh Excalibur not that long ago, and then I actually sat through Zardaz a couple months back. And I'm thinking, okay, he's so different in all of his films, even Deliverance. What what what's the commonality in his work? And I think it might be that he does an ensemble cast really well, that he focuses on all the characters kind of equally. He has a lead, but then everybody has a well-developed story and characters that you care about. Maybe that's the similarity to his style.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:25

Oh no. Well, it's very well said, and I was wondering the same thing over these past few days, thinking about how we were going to discuss this film and exactly what you said, Marty. How different his films are. When you think about his early films like Point Blank and Deliverance, these are very action Hollywood style films. And then he makes a magical epic Excalibur, and then he does this very personal film, Hope and Glory. And the the film he did after this one from the heart with Christopher Plummer, which is a really charming, light-hearted, whimsical comedy, so different from his other films, but again, ensemble cast, really, really strong cast, very well uh different, but very well described characters. So that is a that's a good uh observation of of uh uh repeating elements in his work.

SPEAKER_06 1:05:17

Fancy starting a war on such a beautiful day. Right. If I tickle my wife, um she causes me bodily harm. So I don't know. I don't know if I I can arrive with that. Um I admire the Brits for enduring what they endured because they they put up with that shit for a while. I think it was five, what, four or five years of bombings, five two or three, two or three years of heavy bombings. I can't imagine just digging yourself out every morning or waking up to see that your neighbor's house is burnt down or something's gone down. What's the um do you know what the significance was with the painted like they had the painted poles that were painted white, black, white back and stripes? And then it seemed like everybody Everybody's gates were also painted in this weird sort of like reverse rising sun, Japan Japan's rising sun. Was it was there any kind of wartime significance that you guys know about at that, or was it just like an aesthetic aesthetic choice?

SPEAKER_02 1:06:12

Or gosh, I I have to say I didn't even notice that.

SPEAKER_06 1:06:17

As a production design element, I wonder if it's all the fences are painted white and the poles are these black and white stripes going up about five feet. Um I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:28

I don't know what that was.

SPEAKER_06 1:06:32

Um one of my notes is what kind of Lord of the Flies ass World War II kid shit is this? Just popping off live ammo and laughing, you know, as it goes zinging around the fucking room. And but yet not the F-word, that word is special. Like, okay, well, I guess we have some boundaries, right? Like, you know, but everybody remembers as a kid that the F word was that one that you reserved, that was the big one, that was the that was the bomb that you let off, you know.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:00

It's very interesting that you bring that up because this movie is PG-13. The previous movie was PG, it had nudity in it, it had a lot of violence in it, didn't have an F bomb in it. Now, when they made the PG-13 rating in 1984, you were allowed to put one instance of the word fuck in your film. Now, this movie is the rare one that has two utterances of it. And why do they get away with it twice? Because it's used in a non-sexual or threatening manner. And so this is one of these rarities of a PG-13 using the F-word in that subversive manner to get away with it twice when in one film. They did that more in the 80s when the rating was new. Every now and then you'll come across one now, but it's usually you can play a game when you're watching a PG-13 movie, and you know, where's the F bomb hiding?

SPEAKER_02 1:07:57

Oh, that's very that's well researched, Marty. I that that's very illuminating.

SPEAKER_06 1:08:02

I thought for sure that um they were gonna kill that German pilot that that comes parachuting down, you know. Like I thought it was gonna be one of those kind of community death type things turn kind of ugly. Um but then of course they just it's just but then of course as we I remember we're dealing with the British, so they just you know, you have a guy with a Billy Club walk up and threaten him and say, You're a prisoner of war now.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:22

And well, I'm so and I'm so glad you brought that up because that is one of my favorite scenes for a couple of reasons. So of course it's wonderful when he's being escorted out by this Bobby who's very reluctant to confront this Nazi pilot, and the way Dawn looks at him and kind of smiles and winks, and then her mother slaps her for doing it. But the best part about that scene is that's Charlie Borman, the great Charlie Borman, John Borman's son, who really was yes, who was the child lead in uh the Emerald Forest, he was in Excalibur, he was one of the kids in Deliverance, and then with his years later, with his great friend Ewan McGregor, he did that uh amazing motorcycle long way round, yeah, the series. And and Charlie's become a well-known radio and TV personality and very involved with motorcycling and and everything. And when we were doing pre-production for meteorite men or starting to figure out what the show was going to be like, I saw that show long way round and I bought a copy of it and I mailed it to my co-host Steve, and I said, if I could aspire to anything for our show to be like anything, it would be like this because it was so authentic and there was such such good adventure uh buddy movie, but buddy movie, not buddy movie, a buddy documentary, but I I I always adventure, yeah. Real big fan of Charlie Borman's. He's I find him a very interesting guy. What uh what absolutely some he's someone I would love to work with, and so it's marvelous that he has these little parts in many of his dad's films.

SPEAKER_06 1:09:56

I feel like they really missed an opportunity there, though. You remember when he's pulling him away and he's like, Mind the vegetables, you know, they got a Vart garden they're walking through. Yeah, I really feel like Mind the Sprouts Kraut really would have really would have had you know like a really nice punch to that. I feel like they really, really missed an opportunity. Mind the Sprouts Kraut. You are a good dialogue writer, Cliff. Thank you. I appreciate that. Um this movie came rushing back to me as a kid when you know that scene where she's trying to get the two kids into the bomb shelter, they're air, the siren's going off, the daughter won't come down. I want, I'll just want to die here. And they get to that back door and the window just blows in and all the glass goes fine. I just I like it, it was like like my memory just broke open, it just flooded. I was like, oh, that's this movie. Okay. Oh wow, that's really amazing. And I can't believe nobody was shredded by all that flying fucking glass. Right. But what a great shot. It was really beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:55

It's yeah, it's so well done. And in in what is in most respects, a gentle and quite sweet and funny movie, it's a rare moment of of intense violence where uh up until then you're seeing the ruined houses, and you get that there's a war going on, but you haven't really witnessed the power, the devastation, and how, as you said, someone could just be shredded. And that scene really does it. And it's so brief. There's a really similar scene. I think it's in that drama called The Man Who Would Be Bond, about Ian Fleming, where he's in a he's in a building in London with a woman that he's interested in at a party, and there's an air raid, and they don't they don't go to the shelter and they they stand, they put their backs against uh a wall, and the windows on either side of them are blown out. It's an almost identical scene, also extremely well done. Always makes me makes me think of that. Another favorite scene of mine is when is when the dad comes home. Well, first of all, when he comes, it goes, it comes up on the motorcycle and he's frozen and he looks like Godzilla or some kind of monster he's he's walking up. But the whole scene about the jam. The fucking jam. That is that is one of my favorite scenes of any movie ever made, ever. It's so restrained. You you is uh as so for people who haven't seen the film, this is World War II. There's extreme rationing going on. So there's very little sugar or milk or fresh eggs or bread, and they haven't even seen jam, jelly, as we would say, in the States for probably months or maybe even years. And and the the dad comes back on leave and he's got this big tin that's of German jam that's been washed up, apparently, from a wrecked ship, and they are so resistant to trying it. And the mother Sarah Miles thinks that it's poisoned, could be poisoned. Of course when when they when he finds he opens it and he starts eating it, and you it's such good direction and acting from this young cast, you see this desire that's mounting on their faces, and it would have been so easy to overplay that.

SPEAKER_06 1:13:01

Like, yeah, because they're like, he's gonna eat all that fucking jam, and we're not gonna get any of it because he's eating, he's not just eating a little bit, he's eating big, heaping fucking spoonfuls and looking at them, going, All right, all right, and they're and you know, I love his son comes running over. Oh, come on, give us a bite of that.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:18

And then he goes, jam is jam. This is one of my I'll be out on an expedition or something weird will be happening, and I'll just go, jam is jam! Jam is jam the world over. I've been stuck in some places having horrible food, and I'll just say that to cheer myself up. And then Billy's eating it, and he goes, Hmm, it's nearly as nice as English jam.

SPEAKER_06 1:13:38

Nearly as nice as English jam. Yep.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:41

That it's that to me, it's such good writing in such direction, it's good direction, it's such a gentle scene, yet it's so authentic and captivating. And do you guys is is this well known? So do the scene when they're all sitting around at Christmas, I think it's Christmas, and they're listening to the king's speech. So do you know so King George had a speech?

SPEAKER_06 1:14:04

Every every Christmas. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's where the king's speech is from. That's where the king's speech comes from. Yeah, that's where that Christmas is going, too.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:11

Yeah, that and so just as a nice little reference, if that's why they're all holding their breath and they're waiting to see if he can get through his annual message without stuttering or stumbling in it's better this way.

SPEAKER_06 1:14:22

Because he says if he says if the king stutters, the country stutters.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:25

Right. And I love it that one of them says, Oh, he did much better this year. And and then immediately in my head, I go, well, that's because of that film, The King's Speech. Have you seen that? Because that would explain why he delivers better this year. So I love it when there's a a film that you that you adore. Uh it's almost like it's a portal into other films. There's yeah, it's and the king's speech, of course, was made many years after this, but there's a there's a lovely uh resonance or or connection there. There is, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:55

You say he gets better every year.

SPEAKER_06 1:14:58

Oh right. So I'm like when the mom plays the piano, right? And everybody kind of stops and listens to her play play and stuff, you know, it I started thinking about the stuff that you learn and it's and its usefulness. Like, you know, if war and society break down and the and the simple things, the things that you can easily access every day are no longer accessible, the internet, you know, constant power for DVDs and blah blah blah. And somebody can play a piano or play a guitar or sing or do these things, they seem to be like super important. Like they don't provide you sustenance in a in a physical sense, but they provide you the emotional sustenance that you need to survive psychologically in situations like that. I mean it reminds me of how important those people are, you know.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:50

Um that ties into one of my thoughts about uh towards the end of the movie, uh, grandpa's driving in to school, driving Bill to school, and they go past that film crew, and he's kind of fascinated by it, right? Because of course that's his outlet. But the grandpa's like, why are they even doing this shit done during wartime with these crazy fuckers? You know, whatever his muttering is. And it's like, oh, he's kind of like the opposite of what you just said there. But the kid's just like, oh, whatever, you know, he's like, this is this is gonna be me. Like when he goes to the movies, it's kind of like that release, just like when she's playing the piano, you know.

SPEAKER_06 1:16:30

Well, and he finally shows up with a camera at the very end of the movie, which I was like, okay, finally, good. He's got a camera, good. I I like that. Um, but those kids are like that group of kids are like a British South Park, or like the little rascals or like the Bowery boys or some shit. Evil little fuckers, man. The picking through the remains of houses and shit after they've blown up. Yeah, and they pick in his house. Is your mom really dead? Go ask her. Go ask her. Her mom's really dead. Go ask her.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:58

Like, yeah, no, they're kids. Yeah, they don't know grief or anything. He certainly beats the shit out of that kid for picking in his house, though.

SPEAKER_06 1:17:06

He sure does.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:07

And again, it's so well played by the by the kids, by the young cast. It's it's consistently underplayed, and it feels so authentic. Those, I mean, I know those kids. They they they were children 25 years before I was, but I still know those kids. I recognize the the realism of character within them and how they how they act and how they gang up on each other, and then immediately immediately, oh, you're in the gang now. Immediately become friends, the very rapid change of of relationships. And about the about the piano, the scene with the piano, it it's to me, it's very similar to the scene when when Billy and Mac and his mom go to the beach that day. And there's it's really it's shot through the barbed wire, and you see all this wreckage of warfare, and yet they're having a very ordinary day out at the beach, as if you must find ways for a normal life to go on, even if it's in little snippets during warfare. And then there's this incredible side story about Big Bertha. So you you hear that sound, and Billy goes, What's that? And Mac explains it's this giant cannon, and they're they're firing shells over the channel into France every now and then, just to let the Germans know that we're still still here. But there's that very profound line, but Mac he says, each will each one of those shells costs as much as a as a Ford. Yeah, and then Billy says, How are we gonna pay for that? Yeah, who pays for that? And he goes, We will, you will, for for your whole for the rest of your lives. It's a it's a very profound, yet again, gentle comment on the cost of war. And so, and and and so now to to me we get onto the most interesting, this is the most interesting thing. It's it's it chronologically, we're right about here. So at one hour and eight minutes into the film, you first see the character whom I find the most amazing and interesting and funny, and that's grandpa George. So we first see him at the at the Christmas dinner, and then the house is bombed, and they they evacuate to the country. And I cannot think of another film I know that so profoundly changes gears and works so well. Yeah, it's it's astonishing with it, and it's it's just about it's almost three quarters, it's a little over three-quarters of the way through the film. So when they move, when they leave destroyed war horror London, there's this there's this transformation. There's a transformation in Billy as a character, and there's an also complete transformation of the location where all the action they they go from this horrible ruined street in London to this idyllic, magical river setting. Yeah. And I find it extraordinary that he as a director and they as a cast and the crew were able to pull that off so flawlessly. It could have been so jarring, or you could have gone, wait, what what the heck's going on? I don't understand. But it is it's a shift to a completely different experience, and it's handled with such grace and and class, really, really marvelous. So, what what do you guys think about that when that there's this sudden this sudden change of pace?

SPEAKER_06 1:20:46

Well, my first thought was like, why the fuck didn't you just go to grandpa's in the first place? You've got this nice ass place in the fucking country out there, and you know, you're about to ship them off to Australia, you won't ship them to your grandparents' house, and you know, um I I thought it was I liked it. You know, I it it the la it's basically the la the third act. Most of the third act happens at grandpa's house. And you kind of get to you get to read you get to meet the other aunts, you get to meet their, you know, you understand that grandpa's basically discontented with every man that's married, because there's you know, they'll there's never gonna be a man good enough for any of those girls. It doesn't fucking matter if it was the king of England, it still wouldn't be right, because grandpa's you know got permanent fucking hemorrhoids. That guy is the most is the most unhappy motherfucker you're ever gonna meet in your entire life. Um that uh but the funniest thing to me was him bowling to Billy and Billy hitting the balls, him going shit and having to run after him. He's so annoyed about it. He was so annoyed about that, and even to the point where Billy's like, it's just a game. Like he's like, You I've lost the ball, you've got to stop running. He's like, Oh my god, it's just a game. Would you calm down? Like, Jesus.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:53

And did you notice that when they arrive in the boat, they're in the boat and they cross the little river and he comes out and he shouts, deliverance. Yes, it's I mean, of course you noticed it because you're filmmaking. But but they're but I mean they're actually in a boat when he yells deliverance at them. I I thought that was wonderful. That's that's the kind of little self-referential thing that makes autobiographical film so interesting.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:17

The only other movie I can think of that shifts gears like that in the third act, and it's still effective. It reminded me of Night of the Hunter, because the kids get in the boat and then they go to a different location for the last half rebuilds itself.

SPEAKER_06 1:22:32

Oh well done. That's a good call.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:34

We had watched that one for the pod a few weeks ago or a few months ago, it was still fresh in my head, but I was like, oh yeah, this is kind of That's a really good call. Yeah. In a in a not necessarily similar, but as far as you know landing the ending when you switched locations for your third act. But maybe they didn't go to grandpa's for you know the same reason they didn't ship the kids to Australia to maybe they thought it was, oh, this is all gonna be over with by Christmas, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:02

Or well, and also if you stay with Grandpa George, look at what you have to put up with him getting his shotgun to fire at mice and to the March of Progress. And he's the most cantankerous, irritated old man you can imagine. And I absolutely love him. He's my favorite character in the film. He's so funny.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:20

They end up loving it and staying out there.

SPEAKER_06 1:23:22

So I kept waiting on him to have a I kept waiting on him to have a heart attack.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:26

This is a comedy, right? Yeah. So I'm I must may I digress and tell you a uh a side story, but what something that is very relevant and it it also chronologically take is is associated with something that happens right about here. So it's a very, very small scene, but at um what about we're about an hour 26 into the film, they've just arrived at the river, and there's a very short scene when you see Billy going in his little white shorts into the river to swim at dawn. There's no dialogue, it's just it's just a beautiful, it's it's one of the first times we see the transformed Billy. He's immediately taken to country life, to life on the river. Now there's a there's a real big significance to that scene, and I I know this because I was lucky enough to meet John Borman at a special screening of Point Blank in London, and it was in 1994, and it was to celebrate the launch of a publication he founded called Projections, and it was uh a book book-sized journal for filmmakers to discuss their craft, and it was really wonderful publication. So, but to launch this, he had a special screening of a point blank at a beautiful old cinema in Brixton, South London, and the newspaper, The Independent, which I loved, had a really great art section, and they ran a contest, and they were giving away five pairs of tickets and five signed copies of projections, and I was ecstatic about this. I was so excited. I go, I have to, I must win one of these. This is my chance to meet John Borman and get an autographed thing and and watch point blank with him. So I entered this competition multiple times. I I used my mom's name, I called up a couple of my friends and said, Hey, I'm just entering this film competition. Can I use your name? Yeah, yeah, whatever, sure, sure. I won three out of the five prizes because there were all these obscure questions about his film career. So I go, oh, geez, I've got three pairs of tickets. So I called up various friends and said, We're going to this John Borman screening. And uh one of them was my great friend Tony Reeve, the great British cartoonist who passed away some years ago, who was a real big fan of Borman's. So we were we got to talk talking with him afterwards, and he talked about this particular scene, and he said, This, so this really happened. It was shortly after they moved to the country, and he had gone for this dawn swim in the Thames, and it the the location of the grandfather's house was very close to to Runnymede, where the Magna Carta was signed, regarded as the beginnings of modern democracy in the modern world. So Borman said he had this profound, this ecstatic out-of-body experience as he was getting into the cold water and seeing the sun come up and realizing that he was swimming out to this little island in the middle of the Thames where democracy began, and he had this epiphany. And he said he always tried to put that feeling that he had at that moment into his films. And so that little tiny scene is one of the most magical and important in the film, but you would never know that unless you happen to be fortunate enough to hear the story from Borman or learn about it in an interview. So that's a very magical moment for me. And I still have that signed copy of Projections, and my friends all thought I was crazy. I uh I was calling around everyone. I gotta get, I gotta get five five people to go with me to this Borman thing. And for anyone who's interested, by the way, you can borrow, download, and read for free that wonderful publication, projections on archive.org.

SPEAKER_06 1:27:32

Oh, cool. Okay. On the Internet Archive.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:36

Yeah, I thought like a combination of that and where he's running through the woods and discovering it for the first time all kind of had that that vibe to it, that feeling.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:47

Yeah, he gets so into it. There's that lovely little scene where they're in the boat and they go and they're they're rummaging around in the in the greenery and they find the nest of eggs, but they only take one or two. They it's It's as it's not spelled out, but it's as if his grandfather has said, You don't take all the eggs, you only take what you need. And then of course the hilarious fishing scene is so brilliant that they're afraid to go back to the house unless they catch some fish and and bomb drops.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:15

It's like something out of a Mark Twain grade.

SPEAKER_06 1:28:18

Yeah, very much so. Um, I want to talk about the daughter real quick because I I think she she kind of has an important piece of the movie. Um so, first off, that actress looks like the daughter of Kate McKinnon and Matt Lucas. And I and I encourage you to pull both of them up and look at their pictures right now because you'll see exactly what I'm talking about. And I don't mean it in a derogatory way. I just mean holy fucking shit. If Matt Lucas and Kate McKinnon had a fucking baby, it would be that woman. Um I love the kids throwing rocks at the dude who's humping, you know, throwing rocks at the dude who's humping your sister seems like an appropriate response. Like that's what you do when you see your sister getting, you know, having sex with a can with a Canadian of all things. Good God. Have some more self-respect than that.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:07

Yeah, but I I love it when Roland, the kid, the leader of the kid gang, he goes coming over here stealing our women, and he's like coming over here.

SPEAKER_06 1:29:14

Stealing our women, yeah, it's so great. But yeah, so uh you knew you knew she was gonna get pregnant, you knew that was gonna happen. Um but I I like how um I I like how she basically dumps the dude and then he comes back. It's this whole plot line. It's it's kind of it's bringing at least a little bit of levity and a little bit of humor. Um, I especially love one of my favorite memories, not of my favorite memories, but one of my mem favorite moments from the movie that I have a memory of as a kid is climbing through clothing racks at department stores. Your mom, my mom would take me to a fucking department store and we'd be there for two hours, and you just get bored, and you just drop down and get into the clothing racks and hide in between them or move around in them. You know, I mean, I never saw anything like in this movie with you know half-naked ladies or whatever, but still this idea of hiding in a clothing rack is very uh very much a memory that I used to have.

SPEAKER_04 1:30:08

And it's quite funny that this movie this movie got labeled as a sex comedy by some people.

SPEAKER_06 1:30:15

Really? I it seems way too innocent of that for me, but yeah, what do I know? I mean, I love that the soldiers got those googly eyes where they're all listening to the king, you know, they're singing God Save the Queen at Christmas, and he's standing outside with the googly eyes and they're all looking at him. And to me, it it's almost like that's how the Brits view most of the world, is how they're viewing that that dude, like just all that look on their face, like that's how they view the rest of the world. Like, what the fuck is wrong with all your things?

SPEAKER_02 1:30:42

Oh, that's so wonderful. And they're all standing there silenced and horrified, but nobody says anything because he wouldn't say anything.

SPEAKER_05 1:30:49

That's exactly it.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:50

That's exactly how and it's so English that you're so right. And as I'm sure you well know, that's Jean-Marc Barr, who was one of the stars of The Big Blue with Jean Renault, which is another one of my all-time favorite films. And he's had an amazing career. He's a very prolific actor. He I think he he is Canadian, right? He's French Canadian, I think, if I remember correctly. And he's made a couple of features, two or three features every year for many years. A real hard-working actor, and it was fun to see him in that part. Because he's he plays a very he plays Jacques Mayol, the the famous French freediver in the big blue, and he's a very quiet, sensitive character. And I love it that he plays kind of a nutcase in this character with with those eyes. And I never thought about this until you said it, but yeah, he has googly eyes, and of course, there are all those references to that cricket move, the googly. Yeah, exactly. I didn't I didn't know if that was a conscious reference, but that is very clever if it was.

SPEAKER_06 1:31:50

Um I I did anybody else think that maybe mom and uncle Max were gonna hook up at some point? I was just literally did. I'm glad that's my story. I am too, but it sure seemed like it was leaning that way for a minute.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:05

We watch movies like Big Night and the Fable Mans, and you're going along and you go, Oh, that character's cheating on the other character, and then it changes the way you feel about them. But in this one, they're just talk about, well, could happen, didn't happen. Move on, moving on. And also, dad's a good guy. We can't fuck him over. Right, we can't do that to them, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:32:26

And and Jesus, a fire, a fire destroying your home while you're while you're in the middle of a war. Can you can you imagine? Well, sometimes fires just happen, even during wartime. Fire just happened, even during wartime, yep.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:38

And when they show that house burning, that's real fire. That's not that's not that fake gas fire that you always see in films. I mean, they're really burning uh set there, and it it's very impressive, it's very powerful. As is when you when that that that lovely playful scene with the barrage balloon, when when it when it comes down and it starts crashing into the houses, that I mean that that's not CGI. No, no, that's that's real large-scale practical effects with something in the air and a lot of people standing around and wires hanging down. That had to be a very carefully stage-managed shot. Uh as is early on in the film when when she's gonna send the kids to Australia. That that's an amazing crowd scene in the train station. Yeah, I agree.

SPEAKER_06 1:33:21

It's just packed with people and and it's so but uh he's he's a he's a master, like Marty said, he's a master of tracking several stories at once. Like he's you've got the you've got you've got the dad going off to war, you've got mom dealing with all the kids, you've got maybe this thing with Max, you've got her talking to the other, because that you know, the other housewives are are always around, they're always in you know, their coats and their hats scarves up doing something, and then you've got the the young boy running around with the other lost boys and having their adventure, and then you've got the the daughter getting knocked up with the Canadian, and all these things are rotating around, and he's really juggling them deftly, like nothing, nothing lacks, nothing is overdone, nothing is handled poorly, nothing is melodramatic, everything works really, really well.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:09

Very well said, and so often we'll watch the film and go, oh, the subplot with such and such didn't really work, didn't add anything to the story. But yeah, you're so right. He's got all got all those multiple storylines going. And and the uh the point that you made about about the mom and Mac not getting together at the end, there's that authenticity again. It it doesn't have a a dreamboat Hollywood ending because they're they're British in the 40s and and they're not sure. Yeah, there is there is no dreamboat Hollywood ending. They do the right thing and they they just quietly have their regrets as as we all do.

SPEAKER_06 1:34:45

Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way, as Pink Floyd would say. Um I really enjoyed this movie. Uh I thought it was hilarious that when she breaks into labor, he starts screaming for hot water. I immediately yelled out at the TV, get the salad spoons, man. Um that's a Bill Cosby himself reference. Um I I yeah, I really enjoyed it. I'd watch it again in a heartbeat. Um I think it's I again definitely, definitely well done. You don't you don't you feel bad for the characters, but you don't sit there reveling in their misery. Instead, you're you're going along with the adventure and you're watching people ache and go through pain, but at the same time you're watching joy and and triumph. Uh I just know it's great. Yeah, I'm gonna give it, I'm gonna give it. I'll I'll wait.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:40

You guys give it a I still have a little bit more to say about it. Oh, please do all right. Yeah, go ahead. There's a part two.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:48

Yes, he made a sequel many years later. Yeah, I was so tremendously excited when I discovered that he'd made a sequel, and for me it was here. It's not yeah, it's it's nowhere near as magical as this. It's it's it's a it's a well-made film, it's it's an interesting memoir of military experience, but it's to me it can't compete with Hope and Glory, sadly. I mean, it's worth seeing all of his films are worth seeing. Oh sure. He's a fantastic filmmaker, yeah. Yeah, and and he is uh he's a he's a bit of a maverick. He l he's lived much of his professional life in in a rural part of Ireland in Wickl Wicklow County, didn't really want to go to Hollywood and play the Hollywood games. Oh, uh incidentally, I say this just on the off chance that anybody knows what I'm talking about. Years ago, I saw a documentary about Borman, I think it was made for the BBC, and the crew went to visit his house in in Wicklow in Ireland, and he took them for this walk through these ancient woods, and he goes, Oh, look, this is where we filmed that scene from Excalibur, and oh look, there's still ropes and a few things hanging from the trees left over. So he he shot a lot of that film around where he lived, in addition to putting his kids in it and other films. And I've always wanted to see that again. I don't know what it was called, I can't remember anything other than it was a BBC documentary about Borman. So uh, if anyone knows what I'm talking about, get in touch with us. Needs to see that again. No, we need to see that again. Sorry, Marty, I think I cut you off.

SPEAKER_04 1:37:27

Oh, no, no. Uh so endings are hard. And uh movies that land the ending are also very rare. And the best of those are the ones that are a culmination of the whole. The whole movie coming to a head in the last sequence. In this movie, as I first put it on, it was kind of like, oh, this, I don't know. Is this gonna be a slog? And then it starts getting more interesting, and you get more into the characters, and my rating keeps going up, then up, then up, until it finally gets to the point where the narrator comes back on and says, In all my life, nothing quite ever matched the perfect joy of that moment. He's referring to his school being bombed. Which, after the gas masks and all that other shit, of course he's cheering the fact that that school got blown up. It's rock and roll high school years before. My school lay in ruins, and the river beckoned with the promise of stolen days. And then the movie ends. And then you just kind of go, I feel like I just finished reading a really good book.

unknown 1:38:38

Sure.

SPEAKER_04 1:38:38

It has that perfect ending where it's like, oh yeah, the promise of the stolen days, all that time, or some of it that was stolen from him as a kid in the city and all that harshness, he gets a reprieve from it for a while. He gets to live here before and get maybe gaining some of that back before going back out. So it felt like one of those classic novels that you would have studied in in school or whatnot, where you finished it and you went, shit, that affected me, and that'll stick with me forever because that's such a powerful thing, and that's why I say it felt like the movie could have been made last week. It it feels so out of time that it it yeah, there's 80s elements to it, of course, but it's so kind of timeless that it feels like it could have come out last year or something. So to me, it feels like it's a new movie, even though I know it's an old movie. And then when you look at the other best picture nominees of 88 uh Oscars, what do they know? We've talked about that so many times here. Now, The Last Emperor won, that was a good movie, I remember. But what else was this up against? Fatal Attraction? Oh, come on, that's a good movie, but my God. Moonstruck, same thing. And broadcast news, I remember being good, but I think Hope and Glory.

SPEAKER_06 1:40:00

The Academy was in love with Moonstruck. Yeah, the Academy was in love with Moonstruck. I remember that.

SPEAKER_04 1:40:05

Yeah, I give this a five stars. This is somebody brought a movie on and I go three. No, this kept getting better and better until it landed that perfect ending where I just kind of paced my house for a half hour, just unpacking the whole thing. And you know, even Pink Floyd the Wall feels different to me now. To be completely cliched about it, you know, all these people that grew up during that time period, and then the art that they produced, things like Yellowbeard, for example, it does show you, like, oh, all the iconography is being just an American and not knowing as much history as I should, finding out things about the Zeppelins being in the sky and stuff. It really changes your whole perspective on things. But going back to the Ebert quote, since I I lived here, it becomes I see the movie more of capturing those memories, and I feel like you're watching somebody's thoughts in a way. And that's to me, that's why I feel is the best thing that a movie can do is capture those moments. If you capture a moment that feels like you caught a pe a place in time and it felt real, I don't really know what else can top that. So five stars for me on this one.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:23

Well, that's so well said, Marty. That's you're you're so articulate. And I I love that you read out the the final bit of narration at the end of the film. And for listeners, it's not it's not really a spoiler because as we've already said, this isn't really a narrative film. It's a it's a beautiful kaleidoscopic collection of memories of what of wartime and childhood. But that's another that that line lives in my head and my heart, Marty, all the time. I'll I'll be out, I'll be out in the field on an expedition or doing something or some great moment, and I'll just hear that the promise of stolen days. If I skip off work or feel like I'm playing hooky or just doing some extra special moment, I I often think of that. Great stuff. What do you think? Cliff, what do you Cliff, what do you think?

SPEAKER_06 1:42:12

Uh I look, I I think it's damn near perfect. Um I I think it's probably one of Borman's best films. I will always be a um an absolute lover of Xcaliber. I'll put it up against any mite and magic sword and sorcery type film that you want. I think he captures you know Arthur and the Mysterial and that that fucking forest he films and it's got its own creepiness. It's just a great movie. But even after that, you go to Hope and Glory and you're like, oh, this is um this is really him kind of taking everything that he's done and telling his own story and master and doing it doing a masterful job of it. Uh a couple things take me out of it. Uh the the sister is a little uh the sister story was a little annoying at times. Um those fucking kids, man, are just violent little urchins. Um but it it's all great. I mean, it's all makes sense. Um I remember reading Lord of the Flies when I was 12, and I saw this soon after, and they resonate both quite a bit in certain instances. Um, you know, he is he becomes almost a feral kid at certain points, right? Just running around. I mean, he's fucking smoking halfway through this movie, letting his sister and her boyfriend in so they can have sex in her room. It's like, you know, this kid is uh he's seen and done some stuff, you know, he's got a shrapnel collection for fuck's sake, you know. And uh yeah, but anyway, yeah, it's it's great. Yeah, um it but it's not a five. I'm gonna go four and a half, but I but but it's really good, really, really good. I don't give a lot of four and a half or fives.

SPEAKER_04 1:43:53

You know, before Jeff gives his rating, you reminded me of uh of something else that I want to comment on real quick. He doesn't really have a much of an emotional response to a lot of things. But when his soldiers melt, that makes him break down. And also when he sees childbirth at the end, that makes him faint. It's like all of this. But then childbirth is the thing that his little sister goes, it's sticky down there, and he just plop, he just drops like a sack of potatoes.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:30

I think we should uh I'd like to just comment uh on the relate, yeah. Backtracking, he is so upset when those lead soldiers are melted. Yeah, it's as if that represents all of the pain and all the destruction and suffering that he hasn't felt. That's something of that's very personal to him, and they're they're obviously ruined forever. You can't you can't unmelt the soldiers. That that's very moving, uh, as is the connection between between Billy and Grandpa George, and I love the way they immediately connect from the very beginning when he he says, Here, put your hand on the tiller, and he starts showing him how to maneuver the boat across across the river. And we've already touched on this, but this is someone who's found his place in the world. Billy has just he's he's his the place he's been evacuated to has magically become the home that he would all would have wished for if he if he'd known about it. And I think we should mention that Ian Bannon, who plays the plays grandfather George, tremendous Scottish character actor who had an enormous career. He was in Braveheart, Gandhi, Gorky Park, Local TV, just an amazing long career, and uh started uh very young, was acting in the in sort in 1950 or 1951, I think his first role. So he wasn't always a cantankerous uh old granddad. And if you see his publicity stills from from when he was a young man, he was very handsome and dashing. So yeah, he's he's in he's in Waking Ned Divine, which we just reviewed. Oh, oh really? Oh wow, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:46:04

That's why he seems so familiar to me. That's why he seems so familiar. That's the movie we watched with Jessica. Yep. Oh, very good. And she thought we were gonna give her Excalibur while it just keeps going around.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:16

Oh, that's funny. Well, I saw this film when it first came out. I was living in New York City. Again, I would have seen it at some I don't know if it was the grammar series, the Beakman, or one of the great New York independent film uh cinemas. I was already a great fan of Borman's. I'd seen all the films he'd made up till that point, particularly love Excalibur. Uh for me, the and I'm I'm quite a passionate student of the Arthurian legends, and I have been to most of the or virtually everywhere in the UK where where the where the these events were supposed to have taken place, from Tintagel, where Arthur was born, to Glastonbury, which was meant to be the Isle of Avalon. I really was obsessed with with Arthurian history. And so uh for me, the two great Arthurian films are Excalibur and Monty Python and the holy grail. Right. So I was already a big Borman fan, and then I go, oh, world, world, world war two biopic. So I I saw it in the cinema, I was mesmerized. That was uh what was that? Oh almost over over 30 years. 37. So we're getting close to 40, 40 years ago, 37 years ago or something. I would say I've seen it most years since then, in one form or another. Sadly, I believe that is the only time I ever got to see it on the big screen. So uh the loft, if you're listening, or any other indie cinemas, I would travel a good long distance to see that on the big screen. So for me, this film has has everything. As you've pointed out, it's got a great ensemble cast, it's uh it's an autobiographical film by an author, writer, director, filmmaker whose work I love. It's a World War II film, it's funny, it's moving. And to me, it's the it's the work of an immensely sophisticated and sensitive director, absolutely at the height of his powers. For me, Borman's best film. And when people ask me what my favorite film of all time is, I I say hope and glory. So easy five stars for me. And I'm so I'm so happy I brought a film to you, wonderful gentleman, that that you enjoyed so much. No, no, really. I mean, it it means a lot.

SPEAKER_06 1:48:25

Uh sure. I I I I yeah, it's a it's it's I mean, I look, I mean, I guess you could find something they hate in that movie, but you'd have to be really cynical and kind of like you'd have to be a really hunting for it, and you'd have to be a real cynical asshole to really hate it.

SPEAKER_04 1:48:41

The only bad reviews I could find were just people who said it was boring and they just couldn't, they didn't get it. And I'm like, well, if that was the worst thing you can say.

SPEAKER_06 1:48:49

Yeah, if you're if you're an action guy, if you're like, well, my favorite movie is John Wick, it's like you're you're not gonna like Hope and Glory. Don't don't, you know, if your favorite movie is Porkies or John Wick, you're not gonna like it.

SPEAKER_04 1:49:00

I don't know. If your favorite movie is Porkies, you might like Hope and Glory. They're both sex comedies, right? About the past. That one's set in the 50s. I don't know, you never know.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:14

Well, gentlemen, the opportunity to talk in depth about my favorite film with two of my favorite filmmakers and just people uh anywhere has been a tremendous experience. And it's I feel like I'm seeing the film again almost for the first time through your enjoyment of it and your personal insight yourselves as very sophisticated and thoughtful filmmakers to to hear your observations and your take on it has brought even more life into it for me. So I thank you for that.

SPEAKER_06 1:49:45

Oh, yeah. Well, we appreciate you coming on. It was uh and thanks for bringing a banger. Yeah, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:49:50

Oh, you're so welcome. I'm so pleased that you liked it so much.

SPEAKER_06 1:49:54

Well, usually, I mean, I think a lot of our guests were kind of staying middle of the road, but this thing was really a

SPEAKER_02 1:50:00

you know it's a high class high high octane film yeah so um i'm i was i was glad to watch it wonderful well and thank you for for suggesting the the odd and zany humor of yellow beard and uh of making a very interesting and probably never before done double bill of 80s films yellowbeard and hope and glory together nobody could accuse you of doing pedestrian work on your podcast no no and i have no idea what we're doing next week because there's no telling well uh do you got anything you want to plug first Jeff that's a good call generally ask our guests at the end if there's anything they got going on that they want the public to know about or hell just anything in general you could tell them go watch that round the world movie or TV show that was a good show what was it called again where you and McGregor and Charlie get on with bikes long way round yeah long way round I saw that when it came up that was great and they they made a sequel or uh or at least one sequel I think the next one was called long Long Way Up maybe Long Way Up yeah and no long way up yeah and for people who haven't seen it it well it's a bit like Michael Palin's Around the World in 80 days but on motorcycles and they really do go around the world the difficult way on these two pretty pretty hefty the BMWs are they I mean Ewan McGregor and Charlie Borman two fantastic actors two really interesting guys who are great friends on this extraordinary adventure which is quite harrowing at times and I again there's something that's something that's really authentic like Hope and Glory is really authentic. So that is that is a series that I would recommend wholeheartedly it's pretty easy to find and it it's kind of nice when you you see these celebrity friendships. So Charlie Borman not a super well known actor someone of whom I'm a particular fan but to know that his best buddy is youan McGregor and and they hang out and they go on adventures together it's quite heartwarming really it reminds you that that big stars have lives and have hearts too and care about things. So that's a tremendous show highest recommendation for that.

SPEAKER_04 1:52:12

Nice well Cliff we will be back next week with Fool's Paradise and the straight story fool's paradise and the straight story either of these films.

SPEAKER_02 1:52:25

So it's good to go in completely blind sometimes so well as you prepare for that gentleman just remember jam is jam the world over right they'll have they'll have to kill me before I die uh can I have three farthings for a lump of shit later guys take care