Did the Oscars get it right in 1977? Join me, Matti Price, and our fantastic panellists Karen Gordon, Ryan McNeil, and Leslie Byron Pitt as we travel back in time to the 50th Annual Academy Awards, reevaluating the nominees for Best Picture and presenting our own alternative ballots. From Annie Hall to Star Wars, we discuss our personal connections to these iconic movies and their influence on modern cinema.

We delve into the filmmaking techniques used in Woody Allen's Annie Hall, exploring how it shaped modern films like Olivia Wilde's Book Smart and Game Night. Our panellists also analyze the cultural impact of other nominees such as The Goodbye Girl, The Turning Point, and Julia, sparking an interesting debate on overlooked films like Saturday Night Fever and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. As we reflect on the 1977 Oscars.

Listen in as we discuss a pivotal year in film history and ponder if the Oscars truly got it right in 1977. Don't miss out on this fascinating trip down memory lane!

Transcript

0:00:00 - Speaker 1

In 1928, the first winner for Outstanding Motion Picture was Wings. In a few minutes we'll know the 50th. The films nominated for the Academy Award this year are Annie Hall, jack Rollins, charles H Jaffe Productions. United Artists. Charles H Jaffe, producer. The Goodbye Girl. Ray Stark Production. Metra Goldwood-Mair, warner Brothers. Ray Stark, producer. Julia, a 20th Century Fox Production. 20th Century Fox. Richard Roth, producer. Star Wars, a 20th Century Fox Production, 20th Century Fox. Gary Kurtz, producer. The Turning Point, hera Productions, 20th Century Fox. Herbert Ross and Arthur Lawrence, producers. And the winner is Annie Hall, charles H Jaffe. 

0:01:22 - Speaker 2

It's the fourth episode of For Your Reconsideration 1977 has arrived. Yay, apologies to Kermit and the Muppets, i get excited. I'm Mattie Price and along with producer Jamie JD Doe, we are back with a great panel. I'm your host for the conversation once again. Will we need a do-over, or did the Oscars get it right? This episode looks at the mostly American movies of 1977, including Best Picture winner Annie Hall, dance Drama, the Turning Point, unreliable Memoir, julia Star Vehicle, the Goodbye Girl and an obscure film now lost to history, star Wars. As always, our panelists will present their own alternative ballot and winner. Thanks again for listening and downloading. 

As always, this podcast is available pretty much wherever podcasts are available, and you can learn more about this and other great shows at Doveracom. That's D-E-W-V-R-Ecom. Join me. Panelists Karen Gordon, ryan McNeil and Leslie Byron Pitt. This discussion was recorded over the interwebs and feels like it happened only yesterday actually, instead of one or two weeks ago, so let's get into it. Okay, this is 1977. I am Maddie Price. I'm joined by an amazing panel. I'm going to go around and give everybody a chance to introduce themselves. Karen, why don't you start? Let the folks know who you are. 

0:02:55 - Speaker 3

Hi, maddie, thanks And hello everybody. My name is Karen Gordon, i'm located in Toronto and I'm a freelancer. One of the things I do is work as a film writer and film critic. I'm a longtime film fan, so it's really an exciting thing to me to be able to do this. I've done film criticism, writing on a whole bunch of mediums TV, on the CBC, on radio But I'm also one of the founding critics of a website called OriginalSynca, and that's mostly what I'm doing now. 

0:03:26 - Speaker 2

Nice Thanks And thank you for doing this. It's a pleasure. On a personal note, karen Gordon, you are my favorite, maybe one of my top five favorite all-time CBC radio hosts. Thank, you. And I'm so happy that I got to know you really, really, truly. 

0:03:41 - Speaker 3

Thank you. I was always freelance, never full-time there, so maybe I should send this to them. 

0:03:45 - Speaker 2

The first time I met you, i was scared to go up to you. That's how much I think you're great. I like everybody on the show, but I just needed to say that I needed to level set un-Karen. Leslie, please introduce yourself from across the pond, as it were. 

0:04:04 - Speaker 5

Yeah, so my name's Leslie. I am a film writer, podcaster and photographer allegedly all those things in England And I've been kind of freelancing and writing movies for more than I would like to say, mostly blogging, but just I find myself in places like Set the Tape. I've written for Empire, i've contributed to BBC iPlayer and Sight and Sound and Jazz FM and all over the place. 

0:04:40 - Speaker 2

And thank you so much Again. This is such a thrill to meet you in person. I know you threw a website called Row 3, which is now defunct. Yeah, But boy, it's been a pleasure knowing you all these years and to get to talk to you in person Amazing. Last oh, me too. Last, and absolutely not least, because of course I am the worst person here, Ryan welcome. 

0:05:02 - Speaker 6

I'm Ryan McNeil. I'm in Toronto, canada. I feel like I'm the one at the kids table in this little coffee clutch that we've assembled. My podcast is the matineeca. You can find it anywhere. The podcasts are found. We talk about film from the point of view of passion and perspective and a bribe. Fort Knightley used to write a lot more than I do now. Maybe one day I'll try it again, but these days I live behind my microphone and inside of my own headphones and I'm very, very happy to be here. 

0:05:33 - Speaker 2

Yes, this is super exciting. I'm really. This is a great year. I'm really happy to dig into it with you guys. 

Just a level set The Best Picture nominees for this year of 1977, which was presented in 78. The winner was Annie Hall, a little tiny film that nobody had heard of, called Star Wars, the Goodbye Girl, julia and The Turning Point. One thing I like to do to start this off is just a level set with everybody and get a sense of your perspective In a way. What I'm curious about is what is your relationship to this year in movies, like, how did you generally encounter these films And this year in filmmaking, were you alive? You may not have been And, for instance, i was six in 1977. 

Here's what I remember. I remember other six-year-old kids in my class bragging in September about how many times that summer they had seen Star Wars. I've seen it four times. I've seen it five times And I remember thinking that was dumb. I just remember. I very distinctly remember thinking what Five times, that's just dumb And obviously I was wrong. I did not see any of those other nominated films that year. I didn't see any of them until much later The Goodbye Girl and Annie Hall. I probably saw it in early high school, grade nine or 10, something like that. And then I watched Julia and The Turning Point much more recently, and I think that may be the same for you guys. But I'm curious what were you like in 1977? Were you a thing? And, whether you were or not, how did you come at these movies? 

0:07:15 - Speaker 5

It was the first. Well, i think I don't know if I'm the youngest, so I wasn't around in 1977. So how I got to these films? I obviously had seen two of the nominees already in my teenage years, and I do mean my teenage years. I saw Annie Hall and Star Wars when I was in my teens. 

I didn't watch Star Wars when I was younger, and that one decision has kind of really dictated how I view movies. I think so many people watch Star Wars and they're in love with it And I am at times indifferent to it, and fans have not made it easier. But the year of 1977, for me, i just went back and looked at some lists of these movies and I just forget how stacked some of these years of film are. And I just had a look and there was a list of films that I had that I thought was just a little bit more interesting at times. I mean, you got Saturday Night Live, you got A Raise A Head and you got Close Encounters, sorcerer, looking for Mr Goodbar and Free Women And I'm like, wow, this is interesting the nominations they picked up, because I would have changed at least three of them. 

0:08:45 - Speaker 2

We're gonna hold that thought We're gonna get there. Ryan, were you alive? 

0:08:52 - Speaker 6

Not quite. I was conceived Great to go. Mom and Dad. 

0:08:57 - Speaker 2

So you, as my parents would say, you did not have a window seat. 

0:09:00 - Speaker 6

I did not have a window seat. No, yeah. So I mean, star Wars is one of the earliest films I can remember seeing as a boy. I'm a little bit more into it than, obviously, than Leslie is, but not as into it as some, and so I can understand the angst for lack of a better word. As I got into classic film in my early 20s, i would have come across Annie Hall And then, more recently, the Goodbye Girl and Julia. The Turning Point was the only film that I had never seen before, you know, being approached for this show. So that was the new introduction And I find this to be a really fascinating little cross-section, even more fascinating when you mentioned some of those films that Leslie talked about that are on the outside looking in. But this is a really, really interesting group of films. 

0:09:54 - Speaker 2

Yeah, i couldn't agree more. I'm dying to sort of get into it. I will give Karen. Karen, i apologize for in any way referencing your age, but my suspicion is you did see some of these. 

0:10:05 - Speaker 3

Yeah, i would really terrified to talk. I considered hanging up. Not only was I alive in 1977, when I was already into my 20s, i'd already had a job and moved to another city. I was living in Ottawa in 1977 and saw was already. It's funny, at that point in my life I didn't think of movies as anything but the thing I did on the weekend. And so I had. 

When I thought back, when I started writing about movies and thought back to what, which movies? Annie Hall, for me, changed the game, by the way. It was a huge moment for me, and Star Wars was a novelty, a wonderful novelty, but it wasn't for me. I know I've talked to so many people who are younger and who weren't maybe born that are, who were six or five or something. I know who's become a major figure here. Star Wars just riveted him at the age of four or five. He knew then he wanted to work in movies, but for but I saw all of them. 

When I think back at movies that profoundly affected me, it would have started with maybe the Godfather, but I grew up going to the movies on the weekend. You know it was a whole era where if you wanted to see a movie went to the theater. So the movie that I saw three times at the theater was Annie Hall, and so I kind of have a maybe a little bit more of the sort of sociological context of some of these films, because the 70s, i think, is such an underrated era In movies. It was considered in some ways trashy because you ended up with I mean, at that point I was really into music, i worked in radio, i was a newscaster, i did some I still have my scripts for some of my little movie reviews at the time, which is pretty funny, but yeah so so I understand maybe a little bit more from an experiential point of view as opposed to from a film history point of view, why some of those films might have been in that category. 

0:12:02 - Speaker 2

When you saw Annie Hall, did you drag different people to see it? 

0:12:07 - Speaker 3

I have a I unfortunately is now deceased but my best friend at the time, who I met when I moved to Ottawa and became like he was like my brother from another mother, howard and I went. We couldn't believe what we were seeing And you know it's I have a lot of things to say about it. It's like a talk about it for a long time But effectively I'm kind of Woody Allen And and so it. I'm that kind of personality And it was the first time I saw people talk. When you talk about representation and what that means, it's really that movie really, for me, says a lot about it. It was really interesting to see somebody that neurotic and that I was kind of funny and I was fast and and you know. So it was like looking in the mirror. And then it was. 

I loved New York, i love the idea of New York. I always grew up with this fascination for New York. So that era in New York was going through a rough time And Alan encapsulated and captured so much in that movie. So I did not have to drag anyone. Howard and I went back three times in a row because he was also kind of Woody Allen, a more balanced human being. But yeah, i was, definitely it is. I should have been relating to some of the female characters maybe, but that, that, that sort of neurotic And it had it also was kind of of the times you know that was. It did speak to the times in more than just my life. 

0:13:35 - Speaker 2

When, and I'm really curious. So I you know, i don't I didn't come at Annie Hall as a person at the time because I was six and I think I probably would have been lost on me a little bit. I Have Marshall McLuhan right here. I don't think a six-year-old would have Would have understood what that meant really. But I do come at it from the sort of cultural specificity of being Jewish and it having this very strong kind of Jewish cultural impact of On me right and and and I am really curious, you know It, i don't think I have. I have no compunction about understanding why it won best picture But we can talk about it more and why you guys think it won or didn't win, but but I do think it's interesting. Like What is? you know, leslie, what was your reaction to it when you saw any home? 

0:14:27 - Speaker 5

Well, i remember watching any whole first years ago I think I was probably about 16 and kind of Add to what what Karen was saying. I think there is something about a representation of it in terms of there's a universal Universality of it or so just there's something about the way he encapsulates that neurosis of being Being a person trying to get into dates and and everything and being that kind of the odd person Even in somewhere like New York and having this kind of talent. But not sure about this talent and all these little Things about it, about him as a person, and I really that's shon to that, because that's what Alan was really good at doing and that's why in all his movies There is a Woody Allen type character in those, just his way. But Going back and watching it again this week, what really kind of solidified things to me was the filmmaking itself and And it's quite interesting, quite funny that I think people talk a lot about, like the Spielberg one, so the one, the one camera take, where he can make he just has one Camera shot and it's actually just holding the camera at some point and people kind of block and talk around it. And There's this amazing Moment in Annie Hall where, like, the characters talking aren't even in the frame and having this back and forth conversation and they kind of slowly warp into frame. But it's also Gordon Willis cinematography composed in such a way that you've got a leading line up to them as well, so you can't see them first and then they kind of come in and I was just It's such a simple looking thing in terms of like, how do you do that? type moment. 

But one of the things I found is like I look, when I look at especially a lot of modern kind of rom-coms or comedies or anything, i was like no one's putting that much effort into Something so simple, no one's putting effort into those little conversations and Apart from maybe this is gonna be a bit weird, but like I really like to Olivia Wilde's book smart, because I thought that was one of the most well-directed Sequences in something like that and maybe something like game night as well. 

But watching Woody Allen, watching Woody Allen watching Annie Hall, what I loved about it is he was just breaking the mold, it from scene to scene, while also investigating his own neurosis, and For someone like myself who was writing about movies at the time of 16 and whatnot, i was like man, i really want to make films. This is really interesting. It was just his ability to use form to Navigate. His personal aspects were the things that really kind of, kind of I would say, shook me to a core. But just I was just flabbergasted by How he made it look effortless and easy. 

0:17:43 - Speaker 2

It's. So. I find that so interesting because people rarely have ever talked about the filmmaking itself In Woody Allen. We talk a lot about the characters in the writing and you're right, there's there was a lot of formal invention and not just the stuff around, i think, talking directly to the audience, which you know obviously have been done in different ways many times, but but was done very uniquely here. 

0:18:02 - Speaker 5

But but you're right, there's there's an awful lot of visual Ideation going on in how he chooses to sort of expose his ideas right to actually like work them through and that thing I'd say, wow, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's the thing that you realize is like It's a comedy, so how the timing has to be on point and it is cut Yeah, so well, so leanly, and so I Don't feel that you need to have Avert backstory to all these characters because it's already in there. You know, you seem to know so much about these people the moment you meet them, and that is Something quite interesting To see for something. He just seemed to capture those personalities well, and I don't know if Those were the personalities of New York at the time, but I mean, i'm a lot of the writing used to say, well, look what he's doing with these kind of slightly upper-class individuals in New York, and You can only wonder, if you like, how, how good he was right out, how well and how accurately he was putting this together on screen. 

0:19:13 - Speaker 2

Um is there something about it. Ryan, is that sort of your take away as well, or do you sort of come out and bring other things? 

0:19:19 - Speaker 6

I draw other things out of the I think my experience with it is that it's a film that That moves the form. Like when I, when I was a, when I was younger, certainly before I came to it my taste in comedies were things like, you know, dumb and dumber, or crocodile Dundee or you know, like, like silly, slap-dash, big, broad, make money silly comedies and Just like anything any other art form, any one thing can be many things, which I think is why The Academy stood and stood behind it in, you know, in the face of something Much, much bigger and broader, in the way of Star Wars, was it was a comedy. That, basically said, comedy can be something else. Like a minute comedy can be a lot more cerebral, it can be a lot more, a lot drier. It doesn't have to be slapstick, it doesn't have to be screwball, you know, it doesn't have to necessarily appeal to all audiences, it doesn't make it any less genius. You know, you can see the influences of this Touchstone picture when you watch films by Greta Gerwig and Noah Bombach, and I think it's quite a propo that they were together, considering their, their taste, obviously It's. I think it's saying something that, aside from the artist, it's the last picture to win, the last comedy to win best picture and the artist gets a big lift by playing with the silent form, like it. You know you can say that the artist is using that As a gimmick and that's how it ends up being the next comedy to win best picture. 

So that was, that was my thing, was actually the first time I watched it at age 1920. I didn't get everything, which is it was just more my sense of humor at the time. But, like Leslie said, like I certainly, i certainly appreciate the filmmaking was spectacular, like Karen said, like seeing, you know, a story of people who weren't in my immediate community And weren't, you know, it made things far more interesting. And that is everything happening inside of the box. You know there is a broader conversation outside of the box if we are Reconsidering 1977, but inside of the box, that is certainly my relationship with, with Annie Hall. And look, there's there. 

0:21:48 - Speaker 2

Oh sorry, karen. 

0:21:49 - Speaker 3

I'm just gonna say walking Trier. Trier, who did the worst person, is the director of the worst person in the world in other films. This site also cited Alan as a filmmaker. Alan hasn't, i can't remember if he's talked about this. I'm sure this isn't my own thought, but I think he was very inspired by the French new wave when it comes to the style of filmmaking. He'd made a few films before, on hall, obviously, and he'd been. I didn't realize he'd been a theater director, he'd written a lot for TV, but I think that he probably came of age watching those French new wave Movies in New York and a lot of that I. 

I've gone back to them because he's a huge influence on me And as I started to get more serious, that film looked at stuff in that business of people talking off screen. You know some of that, some of his moves are, to me, quite inspired by that and I love the way they work and change American comedy. 

0:22:39 - Speaker 4

Oh, he did do fast Yeah yeah, he did do fast with with bananas early on, like first me Yes And it, it. 

0:22:46 - Speaker 5

This was the one ways where People kind of turn around with, oh he's actually, he could actually be serious. 

0:22:55 - Speaker 2

So he did. He did three farces in a row because he did he very broad. He did one that took off on Sort of revolutionary politics, which is bananas. Then he did one that took off on science fiction with sleeper, and then he did love and death, which is essentially like a parody of Russian literature And and epic movies. And I think he, you know, the thing that's, you know, to me the thing that, like at the time, would have sort of shocked people into realizing Kind of the depths of this guy, was the fact that he had done these movies and they had pigeonholed him. They decided he was a kind of a Mel Brooks the Director. He was a guy that was going to take on genres Maybe they were a little more elevated Genres than Mel Brooks was was taking on, but he wasn't going to take on the genre He was taking on but he wasn't going to turn around and do this. And you know, to be frank, it is astonishing to see the growth between those movies and this. 

The one thing that I don't think really gets talked about a lot, that I think is really key to Maybe like for me, what makes annie hall special or lasting or Influential in a way is Alan's background as a stand-up. Yes, he, he might be the best peer joke writer to ever do it. If you go back and listen to what do you all stand up comedian That is banger after banger and Quick and incredible setups, and the thing about annie hall is that it captures. You talk, you know, karen, you mentioned the neurotic quality, but I think what it really captures is he a stand-up persona of this sort of you know, neurotic person and translates it into a story that is super compelling and, in my opinion, like we can talk about a lot of the films like the Like worst person in the world and a lot of other films that I think benefited from annie hall, but frankly I'm not sure, without annie hall, that there's ever going to be a sign felt. 

No like like how, how would that happen? How would you know? those scenes with him and tony robber's just kind of walking down the street and robber's keeps calling him that nick name and stuff. It's like that's max, that's sign felt, hmm, kind of you know, like, to me, that's where a lot of that sensibility comes from. Where you go, i'm a stand-up and I have this thing. Now I'm going to turn it into a show like a dramatic form, right. 

0:25:08 - Speaker 3

And the sorry I'm interrupting, but the thing. 

No no, no about that movie when you look at the other nominees and then the lord and then even go larger to see what was missed. But when you look at one of the reasons that movie might have been compelling beyond all of the sophistication, the quality of it, like it wasn't a toss-off Thing, is that it really did capture the times. It captured a certain point in feminism. It captured, like annie hall was this kind of conflicted character between old and new, like I was kind of I'm a little younger than annie hall would have been, but certainly that were that generation of women that was raised to be one thing. And then suddenly you had all this freedom. There was the youth culture coming in. 

It was also hollywood was changing And it already started in the early 70s, but it was changing against you. What you had was new york was decaying, it was a mess. There was racism, all this other Stuff that he touches on in the movie. So I think that when you compare it to the other some of the other nominees there And you compare it to star wars, which now, with legacy, may look different in that year, you couldn't have asked for a movie that seemed to encapsulate so much of the culture. 

0:26:16 - Speaker 2

It's fascinating to me that Goodbye Girl was nominated the same year, because it's a very much. We can talk about it, but I feel like it suffers by comparison Very much so. 

0:26:29 - Speaker 5

It's not a bad film, it's just Not at all. It's very charming It looks like a sitcom in just an extra, and I think if I remember in production notes I think they were trying to make it a sitcom And it shows Not in a. I'm trying to say it in a kind of negative way, but I'm just thinking of the old couple and things like that. 

0:26:55 - Speaker 2

Does the Goodbye Girl feel like the real New York The way that Annie Hall feels like the real New York? 

0:27:03 - Speaker 6

I mean it feels like a play. That's the thing. It's not a fluke that Neil Simon wrote. It plays like a play and it feels like a play. It's got those lines that are really, really catchy in that very Billy Wilder, il Diamond kind of way that really really crackle on the screen but where films like Annie Hall and some of the others that we talked about even before that didn't even make the class felt more like they were cut from people sitting around and shooting the shit. This felt very, very. It was like you know well, but very, very rote. 

0:27:40 - Speaker 3

He rewrote it in six weeks. He originally made it about something different. He was married to Marsha Mason, so she was the lead in it. Originally cast Robert De Niro in it and it wasn't working, So none of it was set in LA. I want to see that version. 

He said that De Niro was not funny. It said De Niro was funny in a different way And of course Neil Simons, as you said. But I wonder if you took Richard Dreyfuss out of that movie. I mean to me, with no disrespect to any of the other people, marsha Mason was okay in it. She was good in it. The little girl Quinn Cummings was good in it. But to me that movie rests on the performance by Richard Dreyfuss. It's so charming, it's a tour de force. 

0:28:21 - Speaker 2

Yeah, let me tell you this There is no point in my entire marriage where my wife has not hung up her bra and I have not said I don't like the panties hanging on the line And I can pull like that thing from the bathroom. I just have it in my head constantly. It's just so funny the way he says it And a fun sort of like weird fact. But you know, the sort of the comic set piece of that movie is this horrendous production of Richard III that he gets himself into And the character that Nicole Williamson plays, the sort of maniacal director, is based 100% on Mike Nichols. Oh, yeah, yeah. 

Yeah. So I guess I guess Neil Simon had had like a somewhat bad experience with Mike Nichols on a show And like this was his revenge. I don't know. 

0:29:14 - Speaker 3

I think that role was played by Paul Benedict. 

0:29:18 - Speaker 2

Oh, I'm sorry, You're right. 

0:29:20 - Speaker 3

The director which is even funnier. He was hilarious in that. 

0:29:24 - Speaker 6

He's got one of those voices that, even if you don't remember his name or his face, it's like oh, it's that guy, he speaks that way in everything. Yes. Thank you for the correction. 

0:29:33 - Speaker 3

No, it's okay, I just thought he was to me. That's the point where I thought this guy's so good, he so manipulates that poor actor that played by Richard Dreyfuss and is who's so humiliated by what he's being asked to do, do you? 

0:29:46 - Speaker 2

guys think that, like you said, i think it's inseparable to pull that Richard Dreyfuss performance out. Do you think that this was a case of them, the Academy just kind of liking Richard Dreyfuss so much and having seen him come so far with Jaws and other stuff that they were sort of caught up in it and wanted to put the movie in there. 

0:30:04 - Speaker 3

I think it's Neil Simon. I think it was. The Oscars has a habit of honoring legacy artists. Like I didn't like the Fablemen's. I know some people did. It's like Spielberg got nominated for the Fablemen's. There's not his strongest work to me. I think Neil Simon is. You know he was a superstar at that point. 

0:30:21 - Speaker 2

Yeah, okay. 

0:30:22 - Speaker 3

That's just my. 

0:30:26 - Speaker 6

It's also the era This is still when Hollywood is really very, very still kind of linked with Broadway. We're not that far removed from when a lot of the big musical productions were dominating nominations and even wins, you know, very, very deep into the 60s and early 70s. 

0:30:47 - Speaker 2

So a lot of you had a successful play. They made it into a movie. 

0:30:50 - Speaker 6

They made it into a movie and everybody remembered the play, especially if it happens to Neil Simon play. So it's kind of, you know, while on the one hand it is definitely propelled by Richard Dreyfuss And if you put anybody else in, that it does not work as well. It automatically gets that lift from being a Neil Simon play, from being a very successful Neil Simon play, just because that was kind of the nature of things at the time. 

0:31:18 - Speaker 5

It does feel like a play. I mean it doesn't really move that far out from anywhere Like. One thing about Annie Hall is at one point you do go to LA, it's never stuck in one place. You're all over New York. You get out into the city a lot. Yeah, And then with this you're it's obviously considering what the film is about. It's quite claustrophobic anyway, But you don't really leave that house And yeah, it shows. It really does show in that movie. 

0:31:49 - Speaker 2

There are a lot of movies about New York City, obviously, but there are two that I think captured the geography of New York City perfectly. One of them is Annie Hall and the other one is Diard 3. 

So you don't hear those messages together very often Both films you could put like when he takes a car trip from one place to another you're like, yep, that's exactly the direct, that's exactly how I would drive that, yes, it's exactly correct. I do Now a lot of years. I think you know the all five nominees are movies that people still cherish, they still talk about, they're still kind of top of mind. Not so much this year, i would say, fairly or not. 1977 has two film nominees. That I think if you ask the average, even the average, you know, sort of enthusiastic filmgoer. 

I don't know how many people have heard of Julia or the turning point, really, truly, and so you know, i watched both of those films a couple of years ago and I will be the first to admit they made very little impression on me. You guys have maybe seen them more recently. What are your sort of thoughts around? So just to put this in perspective, i think the turning point had like eight or nine nominations. It got zero wins, it did not win anything. And Julia had like almost the same amount and it I think got one win for Jason Robards, which he pretty much took away from from Alec Guinness. And say what you want about Star Wars, i cannot believe that they didn't give Alec Guinness. So, like you know, did you. When do you guys want to talk about those two films, maybe together a little bit, because like, or should we separate them out? 

0:33:23 - Speaker 6

I will go to bat for the turning point because that film that's the only one of these I had never seen before And you know, if people could see the group chat for this episode, that was the hardest one for a lot of us to source. I'm so much. 

That film was amazing. I loved the holy heck out of that film, oh really. Oh yeah, i watched my wife and I watched it together and she was like she, as a Broadway nerd and a dance enthusiast, was like why have I never heard of this or seen this before? Because, holy shit, you know, you can you see influences of all about Eve in this movie. You can see how it would affect something like Black Swan in this movie. The dancing in this movie is just glorious and they take long time. You have to like dance. I will admit that openly. If you do not like dance, you're in for a long two hours. But if you enjoy seeing dance on film, this is a film where I like dance and Baryshnikov. 

0:34:23 - Speaker 2

Yeah, now we're really getting qualifiers, yeah. 

0:34:25 - Speaker 6

But you know you will hear I don't agree with this. But you will hear a common complaint nowadays that when dance is captured on film, that the editing does not allow it to just play as well as it could play, like it feels the need to to intercut and to really, you know, energize it when maybe it doesn't need it Again. I don't agree with that, but you'll hear that a lot. This is the opposite of that. There are a lot of long shots where, first of all, you just watch Baryshnikov do what Baryshnikov does and it's just stunning to see, but the filmmaking captures the dance in a magnificent way. And then, as if that isn't a treat enough, you watch Kat Ross and White and Miss Kublik's name just drop right out of my head Shirley McClain have this simmering, longstanding rivalry which just plays to the point where they're getting into a catfight in Lincoln Center out in the courtyard And I'm like this is cinema. I was, this was, this was the delight of the of my homework. 

0:35:34 - Speaker 5

Nice episode. 

0:35:35 - Speaker 6

I love this movie so much. 

0:35:37 - Speaker 5

I'm so gutted. I get gutted sometimes when you hear someone talk so passionately about something and I just thought it was so slight. 

0:35:43 - Speaker 6

I was really frustrated. 

0:35:45 - Speaker 5

The dance is beautiful, the dance is absolutely beautiful And as a Philistine, i only know Baryshnikov from Sex and the City. So sorry, but I just found myself just watching this and really wanting more tension, really wanting more out of it, and I just felt so much. It was so slight, i think I thought Tom Skerrie was in. It was in there and he wasn't anymore. And structurally I got frustrated And by the time it got to the end, where you talk about the catfight, i kind of burst into laughter as opposed to, and then they burst into laughter And I was like OK, well, fine, ok, but I wanted more. I wanted more, more fireiness from it. I can see why. Like I think you hit the nail on the head. You can see elements of something like Black Swan in this, but what I like about Black Swan is it is trashy and it is outrageous. 

0:36:49 - Speaker 2

It's certainly more. I think I needed something like that in there. It's more stretched out and theatrical and extreme in its sporadic kind of qualities, right Yeah, at the time. Do you remember seeing Oh? 

0:37:00 - Speaker 3

yeah, i think what's interesting. But it's really interesting to talk about this and I haven't seen Turning Point. It's very hard to get and it's interesting too that it and Julie aren't, because they are films that starred women, right, we all talk about where are women? where are women of a certain age? So the thing about Julie at the time is, first of all, it was Baryshnikov's first. I just looked it up again, double-checked. It was his first movie role and he was a huge star then, which of course, you couldn't have access to unless you were in New York. So this was a big thing. I mean, he'd done one or two things on TV, i think. 

But the thing about the Turning Point for me was that it's this Again it's about women in the era and you're juggling this changeover between career or family. Can you have both? What does it mean? And there is a little bit of that, well, a lot of that cliche, of that women are never friends, there's always a competition. So I think it attempts to resolve that in a reasonable way. So, culturally, that's where it sat for me is you had superstars in it Anne Bancroft and Shirley MacLean. You had this incredible dancer, baryshnikov, and I think the woman dancing with him I'm sort of just blanked on her name was the principal dancer as well. She was yes, so you had. It had a pedigree. It was Herbert Roth. Everything about it was pedigree, but at the same time, it wasn't groundbreaking. It wasn't. When you look at the films that ended up being groundbreaking, it wasn't really groundbreaking and it was attempting to be all things to all people. In some ways, it doesn't diminish the fact that it was a good movie. 

0:38:35 - Speaker 5

I will turn around and say it's got some amazing. This is going to sound really damnemuffering praise, but it's got some amazing blocking in there. 

0:38:45 - Speaker 6

No, that's not fame praise. That's really hard to do. 

0:38:50 - Speaker 5

It's one of those things where you realise how good the craft of the film is in terms of looking at the blocking and looking at having a crowded table and all these people around it and making sure that the one. If you want one person to feel more diminished, you place them there. If you want one person to feel more empowered in the conversation, you place them there. The way the characters move around is that secret source of what makes filmmaking better for certain movies and whatnot. I think Anne Bancroft is really good as well. I'm telling you, Colleen is always pretty good. 

0:39:31 - Speaker 2

I should clarify. It didn't leave a huge impression on me, but I certainly don't think it was bad at all. It's terrific. I think it is Somebody mentioned I think, ryan, you mentioned All About Eve. I think that's a good. The Barbara Streisand remake of A Star Is Born was the previous year. 

I think there was maybe a bit of what can we do to look back on some of these older forms in filmmaking, especially the 70s. They blew the door off the rules. There were a lot of movies that did not play by traditional rules and had become very successful. I think there was maybe a sense of let's try to go back and pull some things forward And make them feel modern and make them feel relevant again, and this is probably a good example of that. I agree that I think a big part of why this movie doesn't survive and why it's very hard to get a hold of is because it has female leads. There's no reason The Turning Point shouldn't be in every DVD anniversary collection of that studio and something that is brought back and held up as a great example of a movie from the 70s. It sucks that it's not. 

0:40:44 - Speaker 3

Well, then again, when you take a look at There are women's movies, like Tcm. The other day did I think it was Scorsese's birthday or Dinear's somebody's birthday. So Alice doesn't live here anymore as often We see that as an elevator. Maybe we need to have Herbert Ross retrospectives. Some of that, i think, has to do with the director. And it was interesting, ryan, when you were talking about the dance. Think about 1977 and the difference in what people expected to see at the movies and the attention span. You could let movies run, that You could let a dance scene go that long because our attention spans weren't jagged. 

And I think that that's really an interesting. I've never thought about that before in that way, but I think that's a really interesting thing. Or, leslie, when you're talking about the blocking, you could do it, then You could hold people's attention. People wanted to be entertained. But I think that it is Maybe it's time to do a retrospective on Ross, and again you're dealing with a time where you've got this young Hollywood pushing against the grain. I mean, star Wars was young Hollywood. It was meant to be a lark, not the beginning of a franchise, and you got a guy like Herbert Ross, who I think came from TV, so even these legacy guys dealing with Hollywood as the changeover. And so this was kind of an attempt to be groovy, or maybe Maybe I'd have to research that, but it strikes me as sort of a compromise. 

0:42:15 - Speaker 2

Or at least to get in front of new audiences. Yeah. 

0:42:19 - Speaker 6

The interesting thing about Ross is I mean, he's a director who He's got two pictures out of these five, which is really hard to do. He didn't get best director for both, but one director getting two pictures into the class does not happen very often. So I mean, well done, herbert. But it's also this thing that as you go back through Oscar history or even just through Hollywood history, you see this thing where directors are a brand for a decade And then all of a sudden they're really not. A case in point with this is somebody like And I say this as somebody who loves his work is Barry Levinson. Barry Levinson, oscar award-winning director, barry Levinson. If you went to the average film student right now and said, talk to me about the films of Barry Levinson, they probably respond with wait which one was he? They recognize the name but they can't necessarily put the two together. I think in five or 10 years you're going to hear that same response with Tom Hooper, but that's a whole other show. And that's the thing is Herbert Ross in the 70s. 

0:43:22 - Speaker 2

You're not going to hear it about Tom Hooper because no one's going to ask about him. All right, Oscar award-winning director Tom Hooper. 

0:43:30 - Speaker 6

That's the thing people would be doing a show like this and be like wait, which one was he? So, yeah very much what Karen was saying that when you're looking at, we all do retrospectives of Scorsese and we do retrospectives of Agnes Varda and we do retrospectives of Pick, the Director, but you don't hear about retrospectives of people like Herbert Ross, despite the fact that their work is, by all measures, really really quite good. 

0:43:55 - Speaker 2

Yeah, So there is certainly a bias against what I would call artful invisibility which happens a lot in these really good films, which is that the director doesn't necessarily put their style on it, but there are just cameras, always in the right place at the right time or right amount of time. What about Julia? How much time do we want to devote to? 

0:44:15 - Speaker 6

I want to award it the best supporting performance by a hat. 

0:44:21 - Speaker 5

It was a bit of a slog. I found it a bit. 

0:44:25 - Speaker 2

It's just a strange movie, right. 

0:44:28 - Speaker 5

Well, looking back at the history of what it's about and realizing that the controversy about it was Julia in real, it's based on a so-called true story but Julia herself may or may not have existed and it was kind of debunked that she did. I found it really really hard Once you also had that knowledge in there. I found it really really hard to kind of sit with a story, especially with the fact that from the tagline and everything that's all about friendship and there isn't that many scenes where the film builds upon this friendship And I kind of just struggled with that. It just seemed to be, i mean, it's difficult because I said at the beginning of this that I would replace three movies and Turning Point and Julia would definitely one of them, and there's something about what Karen says about representation and and women's movies and I'm they're really struggling with these two movies and I was wondering if there was anything I kind of just missed and maybe it's just I was coming from it from a different point of view or or anything and I just think it was just structurally. I just found them just hard to get into and there's elements of the craft that I think is are really good. 

I think performance is really good, i think Jane Fonda was really good. But I'm watching that and I'm thinking, well, i like Jane Fonda, include I don't like her in this. There's just so many. There was just so many times where I've just just found myself kind of drifting off. I didn't seem to be that much as I was like. I was like, oh, is that Dashel Hammett? oh, great, and that was about it, like there wasn't much to it for me, like, although I do like Jason Robarty's you know. 

0:46:20 - Speaker 2

I mean, i think there is a great. There is a great movie to be made about the relationship between the Liz and Helmut and Dashel Hammett. I just I'm not sure this is it, but it's not really about them, is it? 

0:46:31 - Speaker 5

right, it's not it it kind of has him there to say look it is. And when she, when she first says dash, i was like dad, no, oh yeah. And then I was like oh right, okay, and then you're like, oh, this is a. This is an interesting thing and for me a film like this would. I would want to, after watching it, get really involved into looking at the history, looking at those relationships, because I wasn't there at the time and this film doesn't do that for me again. 

0:46:59 - Speaker 3

To me a representation. It's great to see women's films, but they are actually good. 

0:47:03 - Speaker 4

I mean, there's there is that, like you know, yeah representation isn't you know, it's a. 

0:47:07 - Speaker 3

It's an important thing and I think movies should be allowed to fail, like you should be able to make a, have a director with a vision and they make that vision and maybe it doesn't work, like to me. That's you don't have art unless you have failure. It's ridiculous. Otherwise everybody's making just basic standard schlock. I'm not schlock, but it gets to be schlock yeah, if everybody's doing it. 

0:47:28 - Speaker 1

So the question that was an attempt to be to be portentious. 

0:47:32 - Speaker 3

Yeah, like it was. And there were more reasons that Vanessa redgrave's casting. Oh no, was it Vanessa redgrave? 

0:47:37 - Speaker 2

yeah, yeah. 

0:47:39 - Speaker 3

I think I would more. I think she was controversial, but I think they had these two incredible actresses and they wanted to do something with them and so so that has, that has its own, you know, that's its own form of hell. It has to still be a good movie. It's great to see women's movie stars with women and they're great to see the industry taking them seriously. But by 1976 and 77 both of them were well respected. 

0:48:03 - Speaker 2

So let's just say why it did what it did is the failure on the part of the film or is it the failure on the part of the Academy to think that they needed to elevate this movie into a best picture nominee? definitely on the bad academy. It seems like a weird. Seems like a weird choice. Right, we talked about dancing in movies. I just want to quickly go through some of the movies that maybe, like certainly could have been on this list and and didn't. And I really want to start with Saturday Night Fever, because it is. It is mind-blowing to me that that was not on the list of nominees. That's a movie that I feel like absolutely hit a cultural moment in a in an insane way in 1977. 

0:48:42 - Speaker 6

Like I'm not sure there was a bigger even Star Wars I don't think was a bigger cultural moment in that year than Saturday Night Fever because, because the extra boost with the music that's the thing is that it it right, you know bounces over into a whole other art form and captures a moment in that art form, while capturing a moment in film as well. So it's like, but it also does, yeah, the music hides the toughness. 

0:49:05 - Speaker 5

The music, yeah, hides the toughness of that movie yeah, i remember never really get an interstate and I the fever. Until I actually sat down and watch it I was like, oh wow, what am I watching? I was kind of shocked by by the again, like some, the racism involved and some of the just the mood. 

Yeah, yeah, and you're sitting there and you're like, wow, and it's just a really, really tough thing. And I just recently watched Officer and the Gentleman and it's the same thing. It's just this element where all the little things that kind of made it into the mimification of it and turn them into these kind of pop culture like tabletops or counterparts or something yeah, i don't think it's equally important, necessarily, but you know, saturday Night Fever and also looking for Mr Goodbar the same year. 

0:49:59 - Speaker 2

you know they're not celebrating women, but they're certainly looking at the reality, or trying to look at the reality of what's going on with women and what they're facing well, i would have put, i would have put Goodbar and free women in place of Julia and the turning point, and you would. 

0:50:18 - Speaker 5

And I think there is much more complicated and complexity there in those films than I see. In something like Julia, which I don't know, it seemed like he wanted to be an espionage film and I don't know. I just didn't get. I didn't get much out of it, just felt like a bit of a slog what other? 

0:50:42 - Speaker 2

what other hidden gems or like overlooked movies do you guys think we should be thinking about? 

0:50:48 - Speaker 6

close encounters of the film that I, in many ways I wish could have got the love that, are that that Star Wars got to the point where even those two directors made a bet amongst themselves over which one was gonna do better and like each betting on the other, saying, no, yours is gonna be the better one, no, yours is gonna be the better one, and George lost that, that film. I, if I actually had like a time machine and could go back, that is that that would be my by door number three between the Star Wars and Annie Hall divide, as I would just go through the close encounters door. 

0:51:31 - Speaker 2

Karen, is there anything that you feel like we didn't get to or that should be on that list? 

0:51:37 - Speaker 3

and I'm not without going back and looking at 90, like in 19. In that era, when I was going to see movies, i was terrified of going to see something foreign. I was convinced I wouldn't get it. That was the year of a racerhead, which I took years to watch actually watched it on video and that finally happened and was like no idea what I was watching. 

0:51:59 - Speaker 2

Like also also a movie like a racerhead feels like it needs to come out of the discussion only because almost no one actually saw it in the year. It came out like it's a movie that played midnight screenings and sort of slowly over time became well known, but it's not really a movie that got released. Would it make like a grand? like it didn't get, it didn't get put in movie theater story. We think of a movie you know. So it's like it's not really. I'm not sure it's fair to like. I love race with, but it's like that's I'm not. I don't think you couldn't. I don't think there's a way that that movie would have been even talked about in 1977 people were talking about it. 

0:52:34 - Speaker 3

But you know, like it it's a kind of kind of quiet hum. It scared me enough to wait. I mean that there are some interesting movies in that year that I haven't seen the duelists, i mean that that you hear. So there there are some ones, i think. I think Saturday fever I've never actually contemplated that before quite in this context, but I think in that era again it was processed as a music film, as a film about dancing and about this character, tony Monero. It wasn't really. It wasn't. I don't know that we had. 

0:53:02 - Speaker 2

Yeah, it's funny, distance it's it is. It is a film that has music in it, but like I can't think of a movie that's more about it's, it's it's sociology yeah that movie it's. It's a, it's an examination of something that's going on and that you know the fact that it's based on this rather famous magazine article and that it's really, like, i think, very effectively looking at like an experience in a way that's really authentic, and in New York, in a very difficult era. 

0:53:32 - Speaker 3

You know a class with a class and about attempting to. You know what disco it mean. This goes fun. But it was also a place everybody went and got really dressed up. You're coming out of the era down. You know, hippies and all of this stuff. Everybody was wearing this, everybody looked the same, and then suddenly this culture is shifting over and I don't know that. 

0:53:52 - Speaker 2

There will be interesting to try and think about whether this people were sort of ready for what was going on there and then there's a movie that opened the same week as Star Wars and I think in any other or in most other years would have been a movie that people were talking about and that's sorcerer. Oh, i think sorcerer holds up pretty amazingly well, considering it is a remake. I think it is maybe that heard it at the time. I think people thought you can't put a remake into contention, but then a Star is Born was in contention the previous year, so I'm not totally sure and then you start as born, as been in contention in its year, right, right and like side story. 

0:54:30 - Speaker 6

You know, that's right, right. 

0:54:33 - Speaker 2

So, other than the fact that I think people may, maybe, my guess is that people were not really big fans of Friedkin and they were kind of tired of him because he was a bit of a an off on to Rieble in the community and like hard to work with and stuff, and so maybe they were like screw him, but like it's a pretty spectacular, i'm blown away that it doesn't. It gets no nominations, not even. 

0:54:57 - Speaker 5

It was a flop, wasn't it? Yeah, it was a huge flop. 

0:55:02 - Speaker 2

Yeah, it opened the same day as Star Wars. I think he had a lot riding on it at the time. 

0:55:08 - Speaker 5

Yeah, I think he had a lot riding at the time and I think it did knock him for six slightly. I'm always gutted because I met Freakin and instead of saying anything about the water, i just kind of babble because I was like, wow, i just met Winnie Freak. 

0:55:27 - Speaker 6

Something we talk about on my show, though, is that we need to remember that, when it comes to Oscars, that it is a game, and some studios are just really a lot better at playing it. You can see this right now with a studio like Searchlight. It's just basically dominated nominations for at least 10 years. I think they're clicking towards 15 years now, and at the time, if a studio just did not want to push a film for nominations, they didn't want the win, they didn't want any extra money thrown at it, because it does cost. That was just the end of it. It seems terrible to say it, but this stuff just does not happen organically. It takes a studio to want to do it, sometimes out of pride, sometimes out of wanting to elevate an artist for work well done. But whichever studio was behind Sorcerer, if they didn't want to enter it into what they thought was a crowded field, with Star Wars already there after having already taken its lumps at the box office, then that was game. 

0:56:28 - Speaker 2

Are there any movies that people consider to be blind spots for this year, or movies that you really think you ought to have seen from 1977 and just have not gotten around to it? 

0:56:37 - Speaker 6

I mean Sorcerer. Sorry, I was quiet enough for a very good reason. 

0:56:42 - Speaker 2

You are in for such a treat. 

0:56:44 - Speaker 6

Oh my God, it's so great. 

0:56:45 - Speaker 2

I'm so jealous. 

0:56:49 - Speaker 5

It would be the Jullis for me as well, jullis. 

0:56:52 - Speaker 2

Jullis is great. Yeah, that's a. I did see that a few years ago. I haven't seen Cross of Iron, which is the Sam Peckinpah movie from that year, and Fun with Dick and Jane, which is That was good Seagull. That's a good movie. That's a good movie, yeah. Yeah, that's that year. 

0:57:09 - Speaker 3

Yeah, it was caring. 

0:57:16 - Speaker 2

Yeah, but I think the remake has no plot points in common. I think it is a remake technically, but it's all the whole story's changed right, so I don't know. I would like to see it. I did see George Seagull recently in Roller Coaster and I highly recommend. I thought Roller Coaster was going to be really terrible. It's actually pretty good, pretty good, so I'm going to go. 

0:57:39 - Speaker 3

I wish I could remember A Bridge Too Far. I know I've seen it, but I think that might be another Another. I can't. Sometimes, you know, in that era right You it like in any era you stuff a movie with stars and sometimes their demands on their role can kill it. I mean, i wonder that's what I wonder about, julia whether you have these two people saying yeah, I'll do this movie, but this is how I want to. 

0:57:59 - Speaker 2

You're totally right though We didn't talk about A Bridge Too Far and it's a massive World War II film with, like it's, one of those 900 well-known people in the cast movies. You know, yeah, yeah did not. did not get in there. I think, coming off of films like Patton and The Longest Day and like a bunch of other, like maybe it just is, there's some fatigue around World War II movies and maybe because of Vietnam, people Oh definitely because of Vietnam. 

0:58:28 - Speaker 6

Like we're right at that, we're right at the turn of war film, like you're the next year you're going to get coming home the year after, you're going to get apocalypse now. So the fatigue for the World War II films was very much front and center. 

0:58:42 - Speaker 2

Yes, This year did have a movie where with a very conflicted Vietnam vet, Unfortunately that vet was played by Henry Winkler. It was called Heroes, but it was the number 10 movie in the box office of 1977. 

0:58:57 - Speaker 6

He was shell shocked at Mundo. 

0:58:59 - Speaker 2

Yeah, yeah, him and Sally Field Very strict And it was a huge hit apparently. Yeah, okay, let's let No right, it just totally has to spirit. So let's go around the room and talk about what would we actually have on our ballot. I will, i will participate in this, but I'll go last. Let's go to reverse order. Ryan, what would your ballot look like for 1977? If you had to redo it now? 

0:59:24 - Speaker 6

So cast a vote for the winner or my five. 

0:59:26 - Speaker 2

You're five, let's start there. 

0:59:28 - Speaker 6

Five, i would What would you? keep and what would you throw? I would keep Star Wars and the turning point. Knowing what I know, Oh yeah. Knowing what I know now, i would lose Annie Hall, i would lose the good boy girl for its own merit and I would lose Julia. I would replace those three with three women with I'm going to. I would replace it with searching for Mr Goodbar and close encounters of the third kind. 

1:00:08 - Speaker 2

Okay, Leslie, what would you? what would you keep and what would you throw? You've talked about it a little bit, but let's formalize it here. 

1:00:16 - Speaker 5

So yeah, i keep Annie Hall. I would keep Star Wars, just because even though I said a week ago I just been, it been the whole franchise, but I'd keep that. And then I would go with sorcerer and I would go with I didn't know this down It was sorcerer looking for Mr Goodbar and three women. Those are the ones. 

1:00:45 - Speaker 2

I would go with Karen. what would you keep? 

1:00:48 - Speaker 3

I would keep any hall. I would keep Star Wars. 

1:00:55 - Speaker 2

And what would you? what would you add back in? 

1:00:57 - Speaker 3

Well, that is a question, I think. I think that I would have to spend a bit more time rewatching things because I didn't see the free women film. Is it three women or three? 

1:01:08 - Speaker 2

women, three women, robert. 

1:01:10 - Speaker 3

Altman. 

1:01:10 - Speaker 2

Robert Altman. 

1:01:12 - Speaker 6

Okay So she's a space sec post Badlands, pre-kerry Shelly Duvall doing her twee Shelly Duvaliast, all out in this like out in the middle of nowhere. 

1:01:29 - Speaker 2

It's set in a like a sanatorium, right Yeah? 

1:01:31 - Speaker 6

Sanatorium in this like kind of backwoods Texas area where there's just, like you know, like a Melrose place type apartment complex. I'm so excited about this movie I'm smacking my own mic. 

1:01:43 - Speaker 3

Is it 1977, though? Is that the year? I don't see it on any of my lists. 

1:01:48 - Speaker 6

Unless I just should be. 

1:01:49 - Speaker 2

Yeah, no, no, i think we're right. I think it's 77. Yeah, i believe you guys, yeah, um, well, i would, i, okay, i would. I would also only keep any hall in Star Wars, i think, and I think it's unfortunate because there's some good movies in there. But but yeah, i think the other three do not quite make the cut. I think Saturday Night Fever has to be on that list, close encounters And then I think the fifth one it's. It's a toss up between looking for Mr Goodbar and and sorcerer, but I think I would pick sorcerer And that would be my fifth. The real question is did did they make the right choice with Annie Hall, or do we need a do over? I know Karen thinks we do not. I'm going to just go out on a limb here and say you believe they made the right choice, am I correct? 

1:02:37 - Speaker 3

Yes, of this of this group, because at the in that era again, Star Wars was considered, was not considered well, um, i mean, it was really respected and loved and it had huge box office and it was fun and it was a game changer, um. But if you look at what Annie Hall did, it was more refined, it was more culturally. I just think that it was an important film. I think it represented a change in comedies and rom-coms, um, i think that it was beautifully made and and I and I think it kind of hit a cultural nerve. 

1:03:10 - Speaker 2

This is a really fun debate and discussion, because I think what we're getting down to is what is, on a weird level, what's more important the hero's journey or observational comedy, and that is, as that is, as tough a choice as you are likely to have, sir. 

1:03:29 - Speaker 3

But you know the thing about, about oh sorry, leslie I just the thing about the Oscar awards is that people can teach you how to understand a movie, how to make a movie, but no, there's no course on how to choose an Oscar or not winner, but there's no choice on how to compare apples and oranges. 

So so, oh, you know, i mean because it's the, because the distance of history, um, it's possible to say that this is the film that seems to have. Not every year do you get a film that grabs the zeitgeist like this. Well, that's why it's easy for me to say that's why I'm so definitive. Usually I'm floundering all over the place. 

1:04:07 - Speaker 2

And not to put pressure on this conversation, but we are in touch with the Academy and whatever we decide here is going to be what's going to be. Leslie, would you change it? 

1:04:21 - Speaker 5

Yeah. So I feel that I would give Star Wars best picture, even though I know what I've said. All this episode I'll give Star. Wars best picture and I would give Best Director to Woody Allen, i think. I think I think Annie Halls were better directed movie. Watching the two recently, looking at them I was like I now, i now realize, why they do have Best Director, Best Picture. 

I get the feeling that in terms of the success that it came out of it and moving stuff forward, Star Wars is the one that gets it And obviously I've got hindsight with this. But in terms of how the movie is made and what they're doing, I think it's quite interesting and directional choices. I think it would go to Woody Allen And that's how I'll do it. I appreciate that one very much, Ryan. 

1:05:12 - Speaker 2

would you do this over? 

1:05:14 - Speaker 6

I absolutely would do this over. 

1:05:17 - Speaker 2

You are the one person who threw Annie Hall out of your ballot. 

1:05:20 - Speaker 6

Yeah, Sorry, i would give Best Picture to Star Wars. I mean, it changed a lot of things, some for better, some for worse. It's fascinating that in many ways it's a complete antithesis to Annie Hall in the way that Annie Hall is such a singular vision where Star Wars is really a film, where it took a village, like that is not George Lucas' vision entirely. It is the editor's helping him, god knows. It is the composer helping him, it is the production designer's helping him. It is everybody making that thing work. Because if it was just George doing what George wanted to do, it would not work nearly that well. But the fact that the village came together in that way, i would celebrate the village and to go with Leslie's extension of this and say I would also then split off director. But I would split director over into Steven Spielberg for Close Encounters because he is directing his ass off in that movie and making it look so simple. 

1:06:29 - Speaker 3

OK, close Encounters is now that I didn't give my other list, but it is. I just want to endorse that Stump. 

1:06:37 - Speaker 2

Yeah, it is a narrow thing. I love this discussion. I think we have collectively decided that, amazingly, star Wars does win out as our choice for best picture. 

1:06:50 - Speaker 3

Not collectively. 

1:06:53 - Speaker 2

Not unanimously. 

1:06:58 - Speaker 3

I can never forgive that last scene. Sorry, star Wars. It was hokey then, it is hokey now, sorry. 

1:07:05 - Speaker 6

Not a big fan of handing out medals. 

1:07:07 - Speaker 2

No, i think. No, no, no, you're, you're mad because they don't give one to Chewbacca. 

1:07:12 - Speaker 1

I know I understand why, you're angry. 

1:07:16 - Speaker 2

That is some Chewbacca erasure. He flew the damn plane. Look, this has been incredibly fun and what a great year to look at and like. what a stark contrast in nominees, so I couldn't have enjoyed this more, guys. Thank you so much, all of you, for participating. Let's go back through the order again in reverse and we'll just talk about where we can find your work online, ryan. where can people seek you out and find out more of the wonderful things that you do? 

1:07:46 - Speaker 6

People can find me at the matineeca. My show is on pretty much anywhere. you can find a podcast. It's there. I went looking the other day for like new platforms. I was like, oh, i already happened to be there. How about that? So yeah, my show drops fortnightly. We talk about a lot of smaller movies, but we dip over into blockbusters now and then, and thank you very much for having me. This was a lot of fun. 

1:08:10 - Speaker 2

Absolutely, Leslie. Where can we find your work online, Including, by the way you put it down yourself earlier? but you are a hell of a photographer man. Please, Please, Don't. 

1:08:21 - Speaker 5

I love your photography. I'm going through post-its intro at the moment, so please don't So. It's easy to find me on Instagram and Twitter at AfroFilmViewer. At the moment I'm usually writing on set. The tape I can also be found at the erotic Frilla podcast, fatal Attractions. There are a lot. I think we're 98 episodes in now And I'm trying to get my hiatus podcast Hustlers of Culture back when I can, which was unfortunately due to strategy, is just not with us at this moment in time. But we'll see what's going on with that. 

1:09:15 - Speaker 2

Well, thank you very much, Aaron. where can we find you online and enjoy more of your thoughts and ideas? 

1:09:22 - Speaker 3

I'm part of the team at Original Sin Not a lower dash, the one in the middle, originalsinca And that's my most frequent one. I do a few other things. That's the best place And this was fun. Thank you so much for having me. I love meeting all of you guys. 

1:09:40 - Speaker 5

Thank you. Thank you very much. 

1:09:41 - Speaker 3

All right. 

1:10:20 - Speaker 6

Thanks. 

Get ready for a blast from the past as we take you back to 1977, an unforgettable year in American filmmaking. Join me, your host Matti Price, and our fantastic panel of film writers and broadcasters, Karen Gordon, Leslie Byron Pitt, and Ryan McNeil, as we discuss the 50th Academy Awards, the groundbreaking achievements in sound, and the legends we lost during this iconic year in cinema. 

We won't just focus on the Oscars – we'll also pay tribute to the likes of the Marx Brothers, Charlie Chaplin, Elvis Presley, and Bing Crosby, as well as the directors and actors who left their mark on the silver screen. From Howard Hawks and William Castle to the tragically short but brilliant career of John Cazale, we'll explore the magic of 1977 together in this episode of For Your Reconsideration. So, visit Dewvre.com for more great podcasts, and join the conversation!

Transcript

For Your Reconsideration is a podcast. In the next episode, we have a great and diverse panel and really a pretty crazy year 1977. I'm Matty Price and, along with JD, we could not be happier to be able to bring you discussions like the one we have coming up. As per usual, our panellists discuss a specific year in mostly American filmmaking through the clarifying crucible of Oscar's best picture. I'll be your host this time. Our panellists are film writers and broadcasters Karen Gordon, Leslie Byron, Pitt and, of course, a longtime friend of the show, podcaster and writer, Ryan McNeil. 

The 50th Academy Awards were actually held earlier than in previous years, in February of 1978. They were back at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and they went back to a single host for the first time in a while, bringing Bob Hope back as MC for the night. Despite Annie Hall winning Best Picture along with three other awards, it was actually Star Wars that had the best night. Overall, they took home six Oscars. Woody Allen did do something that nobody had done for a while, becoming the first person since Orson Welles to be nominated for writing, directing and acting in the same picture. The turning point still holds the record for most nominations without a single win with 11. They are tied with the colour purple and Close Encounters is tied with two films They Shoot Horses, don't They? and The Poseidon Adventure for most nominations without a Best Picture nod, with eight. 

There were two special achievement awards that year and actually, both of them were for sound. The sound was in a bit of a major renaissance in the late 70s with stereo, surround and digital sounds all coming to audiences really for the first time. One of those awards went to Frank Warner and Close Encounters for sound editing, and you can imagine the editing in Close Encounters and the specific sounds of those organ notes and everything else that happens. I mean it is an achievement. But the real achievement, I think, went to Ben Burt for creating the Alien Robot and Creature Voices in Star Wars Boy. There's a lot to talk about with Star Wars but I can't imagine it without that soundscape. Just amazing. 

Notable presenters, performers and recipients of awards that year included Debbie Boone, who sang You Light Up My Life. Now they decided that when she sang You Light Up My Life they would have deaf interpreters on the stage to sign as she sang. The problem is they turned out to not be real interpreters. They were fakes and their signs were totally unintelligible to the deaf community. Nailed it, Debbie Boone. 

The ceremony also neatly defined two sides of a debate that continues and actually probably will never be settled. Vanessa Redgrave used her acceptance speech to address concerns she had with the rights of the Palestinian community and how she was being treated in the press, and Patty Czevsky used his presenter time to essentially rebuke that by saying he was quite sick and tired of people exploiting the occasion of the Academy Awards for the propagation of their own personal political propaganda. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's no end to this debate. Should actors and actresses and others Stand up for things they are important in front of a global, they feel are important in front of a global audience, or should they shut up and dribble? Yeesh? Anyway, lots of special, special presenters, including Mickey Mouse, r2-d2 and C3PO, as the awards got increasingly sophisticated from a production standpoint and they were able to mix in things like remote-controlled robots and animation and live action. Really a big moment in terms of how the show looked. 

Jack Nicholson presented Best Picture and the Academy Awards. Chorus brought That's Entertainment back again. They really love That's Entertainment. Anyway, for the first year in several years, they gave OJ Simpson the night off. I'm actually not sure what he did with his free time. 

As always, there was no in memoriam until 1993, but for that year it would have been, I think, quite significant. Two of the remaining three Marx Brothers passed away, Groucho and Gummo, and Zeppo would pass really only a couple of years later. So the end of an era in terms of that, and, and kind of interesting that the same year that Annie Hall got nominated, I think there's a pretty direct line between the Marx Brothers and Woody Allen, especially in the early years of his career. Charlie Chaplin also passed away that year, as did Joan Crawford. So some real Titans. 

On the character actor side, three huge influential character actors Zero Mustel, most famously from the producers, but also the original Tevea and Fiddler on the Roof. Sebastian Cabot, who just an absolutely wonderful presence in a lot of Hitchcock films and later movies as well, and also Gene Hagen. Now, the name Gene Hagen might not mean anything to you just on the surface, but if I say I can't see them, maybe you'll realize who she is. Gene Hagen is, for my money, the best part of one of the best movies that I know, which is Singing in the Rain. Steven Boyd also passed away. Steven Boyd had a really interesting career. He was the second lead in Ben Hur, starting a lot of stuff. But the reason I bring him up is that he was the star of an absolutely incredible so bad it's a good movie, The Oscar, which I mean. Check that movie out. It is insane to me that they built that movie the way they did. The minute you start watching it you're like I cannot believe that this is the movie they decided to make and call The Oscar And then cut short, cut down in the prime of his life with four incredible performances and we all lost out. 

John Kazal, who had been Fredo in The Godfather and The Godfather part two, starred in Dog Day Afternoon and had a very strong role in The Dear Hunter and tragically passed away way too young. Elvis Presley and Bing Crosby both died that year, so significantly they left only Sinatra as the last man standing in terms of the greatest pop hero icons of the 20th century. Directors who passed away that year included Howard Hawks, William Castle, Roberto Rossellini and Bob McKimson, who was a director of hundreds and hundreds of Looney Tunes shorts, as well a couple of people in the history of noir, both James M Cain, who wrote The Postman Always Rings Twice. Tay Garnett, who directed it, passed away in that year. Tay Garnett also and this is just for viewers who want to go down this road He directed one of my favorite movies of all time. It stars Marlena Dietrich and John Wayne and it's called Seven Sinners, or sometimes called Cafe of the Seven Sinners, and I love it and I hope you check it out. Last but absolutely not least, Leopold Stokowski, was quite an accomplished conductor but famously was the conductor in Fantasia. Anyway, I'm looking forward to sharing this year's movies with all of you. 

1977 is coming right up. Remember, go to Dewvre.com for all the shows and more great podcasts. Can't wait to talk to you again. On For Your Reconsideration, for Your Reconsideration is the production of Dewvre Podcasts and Such. To subscribe, share, rate and review. Please visit Dewvre.com. 

Join us on a cinematic journey through the best picture nominees of 1976, as our panel of film buffs, including JD Duran, Dave Voigt, Norm Wilner, and myself, Matti Price, revisit the Academy Awards and dissect the impact of these films on the movie industry. We're diving deep into the cultural impact of Rocky, the legacy of Network, and the storytelling approaches of All the President's Men and Bound for Glory, so grab your popcorn and get ready to view these classics through a fresh lens!

Discover how the iconic underdog story of Rocky has stood the test of time and influenced the movie industry, as well as its effect on Stallone's career. Unravel the relevancy of Network's critique on the media landscape, as we analyze its themes and explore how they have become more poignant in today's world. Our panellists will also shed light on the technical achievements and stellar performances that made these groundbreaking films the talk of the town in 1976.

As we wrap up our discussion, we'll pose the question: did the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences get it right in 1976? We'll examine the impact of these films on the industry and explore our own cinematic blind spots from that year. From the horror films like Carrie and The Omen to foreign films like Seven Beauties and Cousin Cousine, we'll leave no stone unturned. Join us as we reevaluate the best picture nominees of 1976 and see if they still hold up today!

Transcript

0:00:01 - Speaker 1

The film is nominated for the Academy Award this year. All the President's Men. A Wildwood Enterprises production. Warner Brothers. Walter Colbin's producer. Bound for Glory the Bound for Glory Company production. United Artists. Robert F Blumoff and Harold Leventhal. Producers. Network a. Howard Gottfried-Patty Chefsky production. Metro Golden Mayor. United Artists. Howard Gottfried. producer. Rocky a. Robert Chardhoff Irwin Winkler production. United Artists. Irwin Winkler and Robert Chardhoff. Producers. Taxi Driver. A Bill Hyphen Phillips. Production of a Martin Scorsese film. Columbia Pictures. Michael Phillips and Julia Phillips. Producers. The winner is Rocky. Irwin Winkler and Robert Chardhoff. Producers. For Your Re-Consideration. 

0:01:29 - Speaker 2

Hey, it's JD here and welcome to, for Your Re-Consideration, an Oscars podcast. Each and every week, i assemble a panel of film buffs to talk about movies, so get your popcorn and join us. This week, we're discussing 1976 and its best picture, rocky. We'll also be discussing the other four films that were nominated in the category, and they are All the President's Men, bound for Glory Network and Taxi Driver. As always, we'll open the table for our panelists to curate their own ballot by removing one or more films and allowing them to add their own. Once we've done all that, we'll get to the nitty gritty and ask the question did the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences get it right? Today we've got an excellent panel including JD Durand, dave Voight and Norm Wilner, along with your host, maddie Price. With that preview out of the way, let's dim the lights and start the show. 

0:02:39 - Speaker 3

This is a spectacular year for movies that were nominated. I don't know if 1976 is the best year for movies, but it might be the best year for Oscar nominees of those movies. Probably we'll talk to our guests or panelists here, but it feels like there's the least amount of daylight between what was actually good in the long run and what the Oscars talked about, which rarely, if ever, happens. So let's just get started. I am Maddie Price. I am your host. I would love to introduce our panelists, starting with JD. JD, welcome to For Your Reconsideration. Would you like to tell us a little bit about yourself? 

0:03:22 - Speaker 4

Yeah, first of all, thanks for having me. I'm really glad to be here. I am the owner of Incession Film, so we've been doing Incession Film for a little over 10 years now, which is hard to believe We have. I guess there's the podcast side of us and then there's the written element of the website as well. So we have two podcasts one that we do each week that has a slew of film topics. We have Our Women in Session a show as well, which is really great, and then we also have a team of writers that I really love that do such a great job of writing written content at IncessionFilmcom as well. So they had just been at this for a little while now and we got a good little team, and I'm very, very excited for everyone that's been doing this with us over the last decade or so. 

0:04:24 - Speaker 3

Thank you, that's great, and we will talk about where we can find all your work towards the end of the show. Norm, how are you? 

0:04:34 - Speaker 5

I'm well, thank you. It's been a while since I've done a film panel and it's kind of nice to know that it's still a thing that's happening. I don't even know how to introduce myself anymore. I used to be a film critic. I still kind of am, But in the last year I've taken a job with Tiff and I don't know when this episode is going to be coming out, so I hesitate to even give you my job title because it's about to change for you to do some stuff happening. It's not I'm not teasing anything, it's just that the things that I have at the top are not going to be the things that's happening anymore. 

Nah, it's just some moving around. It's basically I don't know which order to say stuff in. So I was let's see what was it Programmer Digital Releasing and Industry Selects and Co-host of Secret Movie Club Probably still doing all that stuff, but then there's going to be some other stuff too, so it's just a question of reorganization. On the business card, which is sad because I think I only gave away like seven of those. But yeah, that's my mostly thing. I do that all the time, and I also have a podcast called Someone Else's Movie that will be eight years old on March 14th, I think, and I write a newsletter called Shiny Things where I just talk about physical media and whatever else I want to, because it turns out I kind of miss writing after all. Excellent. 

0:05:55 - Speaker 3

I will be coming back to you for a norm specific question a little later in this show, but I appreciate that very convoluted But Norm is still employed. 

0:06:03 - Speaker 6

That's very hard. 

0:06:04 - Speaker 3

Yes, it's just very hard to talk about. What are our lives anymore in this pandemic age? Bringing me to Mr Voight, dave, how are you I am doing? 

0:06:14 - Speaker 6

well, sir, tell us about yourself, but I mean well, just I mean for those who don't know. For those who don't know, my name is Dave Voight and I'm the editor and producer and host over at InTheSeatsca for all the latest and greatest from the world of film television, basically the moving image at large from all around the world. However, i am also the host and producer of our podcast series, where I sit down with a wide-ranging variety of industry professionals and I pick the brain about current projects, state of the industry and so very much more, in light and conversational fashion, called InTheSeats, with Excellent. 

0:06:47 - Speaker 3

Well, thank you all. You're all well prepared for this. My norm specific question is that, as we get into this year, norm, do you want to tell us all the people we're going to talk about who you have been in a room with, like all at once now, or would you rather drop those names as we go through the show? It is your choice how you would like to approach it. It's honestly 30 years as a movie journalist. you have met a lot of people. It's funny And I feel like you always have good anecdotes. 

0:07:17 - Speaker 5

Not so many for this year. It's weird. I think there's some sort of changing of the guard that was going on where the people who were making movies in 1976, or making movies that got released in 1976, were already sort of aging out of the publicity circuit by the time I started writing. And even in 1989, i guess, is when I first started really doing interviews with people And there's a handful here or there, but really not so many I was surprised to find that even the Cassavetes film Killing of a Chinese Bookie, i never met Gazzara. I never got the chance. He's the black hole in there. I had interviewed Rowlands and Falk and Al Raban and Seymour Cassel, but yeah, missed out on the core of that one. 

0:08:01 - Speaker 3

Well, i don't think there's a bigger sweetheart in the history of Hollywood than Seymour Cassel, so we can talk about that later. 

0:08:07 - Speaker 5

Absolutely Lovely, lovely man. 

0:08:08 - Speaker 3

The best. Met him on the street one time, just great. 

So let's talk a little bit about the 1977 Academy Awards event itself, honoring the films of 1976. This was the 49th Academy Awards, held, as was the usual thing during that time period, at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Interestingly enough, had a four person hosting quad of people. None of them were comedians, i guess, except for Richard Pryor. Ellen Burston, jane Fonda and Warren Beatty were the other hosts. I would love to have seen the rehearsals of whatever those interact with. 

Leading up to the show, chevy Chase came out and explained the voting rules, which also probably was pretty funny at the time, before Chevy Chase became who he is now. Other presenters that year included Muhammad Ali, lillian Hellman and Norman Mailer. Ben Vereen performed Going to Fly Now the theme from Rocky, which I have been digging online, cannot find a clip of it. But boy, i would love to see whatever that was. No honorary Oscars that year, but there were a couple of special achievement awards for effects. The visual effects teams of King Kong and Logan's Run both got special achievement awards. 

Pedro S Berman won the Thalberg and a couple of notable award nominations. The first time a woman was nominated for directing a film was in this year. Did not happen again until 1993, with Jane Campion for the piano And Piper Laurie was nominated for Carrie, which was the first movie she did since the hustler in 1961, where she was also nominated. So she holds some kind of record for being nominated for two consecutive roles, but 15 years apart. That's cool, i don't think. I know That is kind of cool, i thought. 

0:10:08 - Speaker 4

Pick your spots man. 

0:10:09 - Speaker 5

You only go in when you're going to get. 

0:10:14 - Speaker 3

So I guess the best thing to do is just start off by talking about this year in movies, 1976. I was six when most of these movies came out, six years old. My favorite movie if you had asked me in any year up to about 1980 what my favorite movie of all time was, it came out in this year, in 1976. And that movie, of course, was the Shaggy DA, my favorite movie when I got asked that question as a child. 

0:10:43 - Speaker 2

I mean it's a classic for a reason 100 percent It is. 

0:10:47 - Speaker 3

There's clips of it show up online sometimes and it is remarkably silly and good. I didn't obviously six years old. I did not see any of the nominees at the time. I think the earliest I saw any of these was I watched Rocky in 1979 on a 12 inch portable black and white TV in an unfinished kitchen while we were trying to move into our new house, eating Swiss chalet out of takeout containers, and that's how I watched Rocky. That was the only, and then after that I've seen all the other films, more as like a young adult or an adult. I have seen Taxi Driver and Network projected in theaters, but otherwise most of these are at home watches. So, dave, let's, let's go the other way here. What are your kind of relationships to 1976? 

0:11:33 - Speaker 6

Well, i mean I was negative one at the time, so it's, it's. It's definitely a little interesting. But I mean I definitely agree with what you said just about like just how top heavy this year is, because I mean, when you go through it really, i mean things like I mean some of the stuff we're going to talk about, you know have had were, have have been so well recognized and so well loved and still hold it held up. I mean like stuff like Marathon Man Network. I mean Star is born, i mean even going off the grid with you know, stuff like a killing a Chinese bookie, or even something like Josie Wales, which really is a fantastic movie. I mean to me, as I started forming myself as a movie person, this felt like sort of the start point, like this felt like where I was starting And I mean for me it was obviously a fantastic place to start. 

0:12:24 - Speaker 3

Norm, what are your, what are your sort of relationships to these films? You were born, you were not negative. 

0:12:28 - Speaker 5

I was around. Yeah, i was eight, i was in the middle of the August of 76. I Pretty sure I saw Rocky in a movie theater. Also pretty sure I was bored, because I was a kid and there was pictures of boxing and it didn't have a lot of boxing in it. Everybody forgets just how kitchen sinky Rocky is. 

It's like that and Saturday Night Fever, the two films, that they became cultural sensations because of the thing they weren't really about, which is fascinating, and maybe that was the only time that happened in the seventies. I think it's mostly because of television advertising which collapsed a movie to 30 seconds and force fed that image, those images, to people. And it had been happening all along. But it wasn't until, i don't think anyway, it wasn't until Rocky and Saturday Night Fever that you had two films that were character studies that happened to be. You know, they had the brain and the soul of a character study in the body of what would then become a blockbuster and what people now understand as a genre picture. That really wasn't then. Those were just small films that happened to be easily sold high concept, i guess. But the high concept wasn't the driving force of those films And I remember seeing Rocky and thinking this is fine, but it's not very exciting. 

And then, of course, you go back to it as an adult and it's everything. The sequels aren't. It's textured and beautifully acted and it feels like, even though it's a studio picture, it feels like it would now be an indie that premieres its Sundance and goes on to sweep the hearts and minds of the world. In fact, when Coda was nominated for Best Picture last winter, i remember saying something along the lines. It was like this is the movie that would win Best Picture in 1976. That's exactly what happened. 

0:14:13 - Speaker 3

So just clarification, Hold on, Is Coda's? what is Coda's? boxing scenes or dance floor scenes? Is it Clowns? Is it sign language or is it the music performance thing? It's the music, yeah. 

0:14:30 - Speaker 5

The child of death parents thing comes out of the same place that Rocky's background comes out of, but it really is. when you look at it, it is structurally and emotionally more to the point identical in that it's an underdog movie about someone trying to pursue their dream and no one else wants them to. And it's kind of remarkable to see like they're echoing each other, or rather Coda is echoing Rocky, because Rocky's sitting all there by itself 45 years old JD. 

0:14:57 - Speaker 3

what's your kind of overall relationship to 1976 in these movies? 

0:15:01 - Speaker 4

So my relationship is slightly different than you guys in the sense that I am by far the youngest of us here. I wasn't even close to being a thought in 1976. So I caught up with these films much later, even Rocky, i mean, i might have watched that in high school, which for me was, you know and I hate to say this among this panel, but they're early 2000s. So it was, you know, i caught up with it in much later than you guys did, but even in high school it was one of those things, speaking of Rocky, where I liked it. 

I don't know if I fell in love with it, and that could have just been adolescence, it could have been that my mind was on many other things at that time. 

But much to what Norm was talking about there, even though I liked it the first time around, you watch it with a more mature lens and you do come to see all of the nuance that's there in terms of its structure, its performances, its ending, which is something that we don't really see much of in sports movies these days. 

So you know, even all these years later, that is still distinctive of that film. And then, as, like I, started to kind of form. You know my identity around being a Centifile into college and this would have been like mid 2000s into the late 2000s is when I probably started to catch up with a lot of these films, such as Taxi Driver and Network and all the Presidents Man Carrie, i would have seen around that same time as well Outlaw Josie Whales. So I know I'm, you know, especially compared to you guys, i've, you know, i'm relatively fresh on these films. I, you know I would have seen them for the first time and probably the last, i want to say the last 15 years, but time is eluding me because it's 2023 now. 

0:17:08 - Speaker 3

So wait it's. What year is it What? 

0:17:11 - Speaker 5

Yeah, it's like I don't have a concept of time. I am late for a lot of stuff. 

0:17:17 - Speaker 4

Yeah, so it's like I tie, i'm not kidding, we keep track of it anymore. And so, you know, within the last 15-ish years I guess, is when I first caught up with them And I've seen many of these more than once by now but yeah, i mean, that's that's kind of kind of my story with it. And of course, you know, some of these movies have gone on to to become some of my personal favorite films of all time, you know, despite where they sit, you know within the culture in that regard. But yeah, really great year on the whole. 

0:17:54 - Speaker 3

Nice. Well, that brings us to the nominees. This year's nominees were presented by Jack Nicholson, who had won Best Actor the previous year for Cougar's Nest, which is a bit of a departure for the Academy Awards. Normally he would have presented Best Actress, but Luis Fletcher presented Best Actress, So I don't know exactly what the alchemy was there, but they wanted Nicholson for the big award. We've talked a little bit about Rocky, so I do want to say that Rocky was the winner and was the film that tied for the most nominations that year, with 10. I would echo everything everybody has already said about Rocky. I would say that the I think the secret ingredient in Rocky that that sometimes gets overlooked is Talia Scheier, who I think is beyond great in Rocky and sort of gives the whole movie a soul and a kind of a gravitas that it just simply would not have with. I can't think of any other actors that could have done what she did in that movie. She's really spectacular in it. 

I don't think she gets nearly enough credit as a performer generally. That specifically, is a great performer. 

0:19:07 - Speaker 5

Weirdly, the only other person I would say could have done it at that time is probably Sissy Spacek, who's a little too young, just a little. But they hit some of the same notes of introversion and withdrawn and wallflowery stuff. but she's also not Italian, so she just she's from the wrong world. But Scheier just sort of swans right in and nails it Not swans, that's too aggressive. 

0:19:31 - Speaker 2

No, no, no. 

0:19:32 - Speaker 3

she does the work, She takes it over by virtue of not being noticed right, like she just sort of stillness is the thing And she gives so much dimension to what this guy is because, like, the fact that he is attracted to her and so completely head over heels for her is so a part of who he is as a person that informs like everything, the fighting and everything later right. 

0:19:53 - Speaker 6

Yeah, i mean that will import her blood, sweat and tears into rad. So let's look at also, she can do anything she wants as far as I'm concerned. 

0:20:01 - Speaker 3

Oh boy, that's deep pull man Also Porter blood, sweat and tears and some of her DNA into Jason Schwartzman. So there's that, so the Rocky one, and so the producers, of course, win the Best Picture Award, and that's Irwin Waincler and Robert Chardoff, and the film is still on the film, i mean Rocky. The cultural kind of impact of Rocky is pretty well known. There's we have a movie coming out in a few weeks because of the Rocky franchise, you know, i think the Stallone's entire career obviously is, you know, because of this. So certainly the makers of male eyeshadow are extremely pleased that this film came out, because he has supported that industry for many years. So are there any other sort of cultural impacts, anything that you guys think we have maybe not not covered with Rocky, or would we like to move on to the next? 

0:21:03 - Speaker 6

I mean it's. I mean obviously with the underdog story and just sort of the framework of the sports movie in general. I mean Rocky is obviously been such a seminal sort of piece of filmmaking But when you expand off of that just to see you know what it was and how it got made. In many ways I mean I think normally touched on this a little bit. I mean it was a studio movie, but I mean it's basically an indie made inside the studio setting And I mean it's. this is not a movie anybody believed in. This is not a movie that you know would get funded by, you know, any kind of studio. Now, if anything would be funded by you know the, the cavalcade of dentists who are, you know, investing their money to send it over to Sundance. It's that kind of movie. And I mean we haven't seen that kind of movie inside the studio system in a very, very, very long time. I think it's the last of a breed. 

0:21:53 - Speaker 5

Or I was going to say we've seen studios try to emulate it and miss right Yeah it's something that you only know is working when you play it with an audience You cannot Like. You can't make this movie in a vacuum. You can't just think about all the streaming deals that have been made for films that just get made and released without ever interacting with an audience. It's like all those television shows that are bought direct to series And then they have to write the whole thing and shoot the whole thing And no one ever takes notes and no one ever has time to see how it's playing. 

Received Rocky is well, who was? oh, of course it was William Goldman who wrote about, like I think it was about Rocky saying that when, when people were talking about it in studios, because everybody wants to make the next one of whatever it is that was so successful, and I'm pretty sure that somebody referred to Rocky as a non-repeat phenomenon, that there's like this, and they invented this term to explain why they shouldn't try to make another one and try to make something like it. And of course, stallone makes five more, but they're still Rocky, they're just not another Rocky, they're the next Rocky And it's so singular. And, yeah, the underdog aspect is fascinating because after this movie, stallone isn't an underdog anymore. Like you can feel the passion of this guy who just wants to be noticed. He was a struggling actor like really struggling, i think his biggest appearance up until that point. Well, other than the software thing he did that became a demon later. 

0:23:18 - Speaker 1

Lord's of. 

0:23:18 - Speaker 5

Flatbush. I think, Lord's of Flatbush, He's also. he pops up briefly in a Woody Allen movie for like two seconds. He's a subway fan In bananas. 

0:23:25 - Speaker 6

Yeah, bananas, that's right. 

0:23:27 - Speaker 5

But one of the earlier funny ones. And then he just disappears from that because he starts chasing other things. But he had written this film for himself. He refused to sell it until he could be guaranteed to star in it. Like they would have paid a lot more for it if he had gotten out of the way. And Stallone just refusing to do that, i think, is what gets it all the way to the Oscars. Because the success story, the real life success story behind the movie is almost more charming. Because, yeah, i mean, we mentioned it, we haven't mentioned it It ends in a way that most sports movie would not have ended, although at that time in the 70s, that's when they did, that's when you could have an ambiguous or even downbeat ending for a sports picture. Sure, and my impulse is to name them all. but then I would spoil all these movies for people. 

0:24:10 - Speaker 1

But there's a bunch. 

0:24:12 - Speaker 5

There's a bunch of competitive films where the hero does not succeed or the team doesn't win and all of this stuff, and it makes them better for it and we learn a lesson as an audience and all of that. But because Stallone's own story ends with the victory of Rocky coming out A it comes out, or, i guess A it gets made, b it comes out, c it's great, all of this comes back to him and drives the film towards the Academy Awards. And now the thing I find so fascinating about Rocky is that every six or seven years there's a reassessment of the Oscars where people say, well, this really it's a nice movie, but it shouldn't have won. And here's what should have. And the answer is always different. The truth is that in 1976, rocky was the movie that could win and did win and just steamrolled everything else on populism alone, which is sort of the beginning of the end of New Hollywood. 

0:24:59 - Speaker 4

Which is why it's going to be heartbreaking when, in what? five years now that Creed 3 is coming out this weekend and five years the inevitable Rocky remake will come out, because that's the world of cinema we live in today. 

0:25:14 - Speaker 3

I'm hoping 25-part streaming series That starts when Rocky's parents come to America They'll make the origin story before they make the remake. 

0:25:26 - Speaker 2

Oh, yes, i forgot, we got to get to that. And. 

0:25:28 - Speaker 5

I think, as long as Stallone is alive, he won't let it happen. I do feel like he's not interested in seeing like he has played that character for 40 odd years And you know, i think it really is the greatest thing he's ever done Not just Rocky won, but watching that character evolve and change in the later films and the way he plays him in Creed. 

0:25:47 - Speaker 3

I don't know if I will put up with this kind of erasure of the film Oscar itself, which is No just kidding. 

0:25:53 - Speaker 5

We all know the truth. There is one good line in Oscar, and it's not even Stallone's. That's true. 

0:26:02 - Speaker 2

And I mean before we move on. 

0:26:03 - Speaker 6

We just have to acknowledge that this is probably the career pinnacle for not just Sylvester but for Frank Stallone. I mean, seriously, that was a great song, but then, you know, it just went all downhill for there. Like he is sort of the original Nepo baby, even though he's a brother. 

0:26:16 - Speaker 3

Fair enough, right there with Elitra Volta. So so, so, jd, i one thing I did want to come to you on, because you do come to it quite a bit later. I think that most of us I'm pretty sure you're the only person that comes at Rocky having had at least four like at least Rocky four already have come out When you became aware of Rocky, so your relationship to the film is more like the beginning of a franchise than I think it would be for the rest of us. And I'm wondering if that changes for you, like how you view kind of the legacy of it or its sort of impact culturally or anything like that. 

0:26:52 - Speaker 4

I mean perhaps. I mean because obviously by the time I got to it it was already this big thing. So you walk into watching the film for the first time and there are expectations, like there's a hype around this movie because it's, you know, it's so deeply introven into the culture. But my family wasn't like all that, like we weren't a big movie family when I was growing up. So I had never seen any of the Rockies. My parents never watched them, the sequels either. So like I did go into it pretty blind. 

I didn't really know too much about the movie outside of it's, you know, it just kind of being this big cultural thing. So it was a little bit twofold in that regard. Obviously I was aware of it, but because of the home that I grew up in, i also kind of had a little bit of a luxury of really not knowing all that much other than who was the star in it. It was a boxing movie. That's really all that I knew. I didn't even really know at that time it's what he had done at the Oscars that year, so that all of that was kind of on the periphery for me. So I did have the luxury of kind of having a pretty clean first viewing experience, despite knowing. You know how significant it was in the zeitgeist, if you will. 

0:28:24 - Speaker 3

Yeah, i think it's been, it's, it has a place in that zeitgeist And I think that's one of those things that you know informs whether we think the Academy, you know, ultimately made the right choice here. 

But I want to move on to some of the other nominees. So also nominated for 10 Oscars that year was the film network, which I think you could fairly argue had the biggest immediate impact on popular culture, even bigger than Rocky with, you know, i'm Mattis Hallow I'm not going to take it anymore and some other sort of like aspects of the movie. But you know, network is a film that I think, at least for me, there are no limits to the number of rewatches you can do on it, because every time you think you've gotten everything out of it, the actual landscape of media changes And it changes the relationship network has to the world and probably will continue to do so forever. I'm just curious if if you guys have any thoughts in that regard or just generally about network as kind of like an entity in the zeitgeist or in, you know, the world of film. 

0:29:29 - Speaker 5

Anyone can start please, yeah, i just I don't want to step on anybody else, but I mean, i'm assuming I've probably had more time with network than anybody else, because I do remember seeing it fairly early on, like maybe even on Laserdisc or CED, and not getting it at all, not understanding it, thinking that it was loud and garish and noisy and dumb. And then, when I was about 16, i guess, i saw it again and I had to be sort of tricked into watching it And I don't even remember the circumstances, but it was more interesting. And then every time, exactly as you say, every time it gets a little more interesting, although there was a point around 10 years ago when it stopped being prophetic and just became a documentary. Like it feels so strangely apt on the current political moment. That was maybe just before Trump, i think. 

Like you could just sort of feel the rise of the demagogues and the populists and the idea that Fox News had reached a point now where they're indistinguishable from what happens in network and from the mad prophet of the airwaves and all of that where people are being like Glenn Beck is probably the point where it actually tipped, where his ascendance is. I can't believe people are taking this idiot. Seriously, just why is he so? And then Jim Kramer is doing the same thing on MSNBC, right on his show. 

0:30:52 - Speaker 2

Yeah, the Bureau and Yeah well, they're the ones that are chasing. 

0:30:58 - Speaker 5

I want to say Kramer and Becker are the ones that studied network and everybody else studies them, So you can feel like it's a copy of a copy of a copy, but these guys definitely figured out how to strategically get angry and turn red and when to raise their voice and when to lower and how to modulate. Alex Jones is sort of the outgrowth of that too, like the toxic carbuncle on them. who just perfected that? And it's all in network. It is all in this movie that Patty Chafsky wrote in 1975 and was accused of going too far. and how can anyone believe any of this would happen? And it's like are you kidding? How is this man not? How did he not get sainthood at this point? He should be canonized. 

0:31:41 - Speaker 3

Does JD now you? obviously you also came to network a little bit later, so were you an adult when you saw. 

0:31:48 - Speaker 4

Yep, i would have been. The first time would have been sometime in college or like right around when I was ending college And admittedly, on that first go around there was so much I missed, because not part of it was the context in which the film was made And also I was in college, so I was not entirely sober the first time I watched this movie. And then I caught up with it, you know, some years later, like right around when we were a watch or launching in session film, gained a whole new level of appreciation for it. And then I went back and I revisited this at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, like around April or May, and had nothing short of a transcendent experience And I think some of it comes a lot of it comes back to what Norm was saying there. 

Like the last we watch ahead of this, i was honestly moved to tears. I was deeply moved by it And I think a lot of it just kind of circles back to how, how the social and political discourse that in the world we live in today, how it never ceases, how this film taps into it despite it coming out in 1976, how real it feels by today's standards And when it has its catharsis. It was palpable, like I felt, like I was able to have a catharsis alongside the film And, given its commentary and its cynicism, i felt it in such a palpable way in 2020 that I just was deeply moved by it. Yeah, it's. It's weirdly one of those movies that I'm sure at the time, people you know responded to it in some way, but all these years later, like it's, it's more potent now I feel like maybe that's myopic of me to say, but it certainly feels that way from my perspective, for better or worse, but it's certainly, you know, it's. It's incredible how much of a time traveler of a movie this is. 

0:34:09 - Speaker 3

It's a feeling like we wish it wasn't. So. Yeah, that's exactly. 

0:34:14 - Speaker 4

Oh, if only, If only. 

0:34:17 - Speaker 3

Yeah, Dave, are you. How many views of this are you on now? Oh, probably about seven or eight. 

0:34:21 - Speaker 6

It's definitely, it's definitely up there for me. It's, and I mean I remember the first time I saw it I think it was about 16 or 17. And I mean it's one of those movies where I knew I didn't entirely understand it at the beginning, but it was like I knew this was important. I kind of understood the gravity of what Chayesky was saying and sort of putting out there in the universe. And I mean I think especially on rewatch, this was the moment where I kind of understood what popular media was. 

0:34:53 - Speaker 3

Yeah, this is a movie that I think is exceptional to get nominated, because I don't think I know anyone, myself included, who could fully unpack it the first time they watched it. How on earth did it get 10 nominations? Like, how did how did people figure out in the year it was made Just how good it was? Because I feel like most of us need a couple of goes to get it where it needs to be in their heads right. 

0:35:18 - Speaker 5

Yeah, but we were raised in that Like we grew up after we like, we're not steeped in the language and watching Like remember, like this is 76. So everything here is an is an answer to Watergate and probably also the Vietnam War. Everything is about the paranoia. Jfk's assassination is still pretty fresh for most people. Here is a movie that says no, no, you're not crazy, everything is wrong And this is what's going on. 

0:35:43 - Speaker 3

And then it finds framework that dramatically expands. Yeah, this does it in such non-obvious ways that I think are so brilliant. Do you think that there was a sense, even at the time, like we don't fully understand this, but we see its greatness And we're going to? There had to have been. 

0:36:03 - Speaker 6

There had to have been Because, i mean, let's just, i mean, let's face it, the people who are sort of picking the nominees and the people who are sort of you know, out there in the universe doing this are either sort of actors or directors, other stuff. They're either people who are in the business and sort of can acknowledge what another artist is doing, or they're people like us who are, you know, the critical minds quote, unquote when it comes to this business and going okay, maybe I don't even understand all this, but what this guy did is kind of groundbreaking And I think we have to acknowledge it. 

0:36:34 - Speaker 5

Yeah, somebody once mentioned that if you want to unlock the Academy, the way to go through it is to think about the movies that the members wish they had made. 

0:36:43 - Speaker 1

And in 76, you actually have it all This is right down the middle of that. 

0:36:48 - Speaker 3

Every one of these is aspirational cinema, yeah Yeah, you know, you mentioned earlier about Rocky. I feel like I would apply that to this film even more so. 

0:36:57 - Speaker 5

It's a non-repeatable you know, wow, i mean you can see the films that have tried to repeat it and they all fall down the same rabbit hole, like they all fall into the same traps, which is, oh, that's network. I've seen network. 

0:37:10 - Speaker 3

It's weird. There's two movies on this list that I feel like this is one, and the next one we're going to talk about is the other one, and I feel like both these films. The only thing about them existing that I don't like is the last 10 years of Adam Kay's career, Like. 

I really wish these movies almost didn't exist, because that guy keeps trying to make these movies and he's very bad at it. The other film on this list that I think sits up there with this one in that respect is, of course, all the President's Men, which I think is the definition of how you do nonfiction as a sort of a nonfiction novel approach to movies. All the President's Men does not. I don't know, it doesn't have any tricks up its sleeve in my mind. There's no twist. It literally just presents all the events and leaves you stunned by the end. Did who has seen this movie, maybe like the most recently? you think I've seen it like I haven't seen it in probably six years. 

0:38:11 - Speaker 5

About a month ago. Oh, you win. 

0:38:14 - Speaker 3

Oh, there you go. So what was this like watching a month ago? 

0:38:18 - Speaker 6

Again. 

I think watching it, just getting to sit down and watch it, i mean I think I was just turning on Hollywood Suite and then it was like, oh, there it is. 

So I just like, okay, to hell with it, i'll let it run, and I mean you, just sort of getting to sit with it again was one of those things where you appreciate the kind of I mean the simplicity of it, even though this is a movie that's telling a very complex and very intricate story. There is something uniquely simple about just sort of the spearhead of these two characters who are going through this and trying to tell the story And we don't we lose the reality that you know, the whole Woodward and Bernstein saga like this happened over months and years and it doesn't feel like that. If a movie feels like it takes place over years, it could get a little dry, it could get a little boring. This took place over years and it felt fresh and engaging and palpable from minute one to the end. Credits That was. That to me was my big pull away just the how storytelling like this can sort of take you out of time and just put you in a moment like that. 

0:39:29 - Speaker 4

And I think it's interesting how all the president's man is antithetical but also complimentary to network, in the sense that network is obviously this brazen satire around television and you know the absurdities and falsities inside that structure. 

And then all the president's man is a much quieter but equally biting critique on television when you consider the symbolism that is, you know, just that is very full in that movie regarding, you know, because the film doesn't go five minutes without showing us a television in this office space or wherever these guys are, you know, and we see the juxtaposition between these guys finding the facts, trying to discover the truth in the television, doing everything in its power to manipulate that truth or manipulate the facts that these guys are trying to uncover. So I do, i do find it fascinating that you have these two prominent movies from that year that have had these cultural impacts and and they're both, you know, complimentary doing doing it very differently, but but complimentary to each other. So I guess that does speak to a lot of what Norma was saying before in terms of where the culture was at this time and what they consider to be important and why they felt the need to tackle that head on. 

0:40:57 - Speaker 6

I mean, president's men showed us where we, where we were at the time, and network showed us where we were going. That's what makes them both such a unique pairing, yeah. 

0:41:08 - Speaker 5

I think that's really that's a beautiful way to put it. President's men is a film about the cynicism and and basically why people don't trust the media too, right as well as their government, and then network just takes that ball and runs with it. The thing that amazes me about all the president's men is how unfussy it is. Like you, matt, you said there are no tricks. But it's not just that, it is just it's like a casino dealer, just handing out card after card after card and letting you watch the thing pile up and you marvel at the skill and the dexterity and all that. But there's not an ounce of fat on it. There's. There's a story about. You know who was it? It was Efron, right, like somebody went off and wrote. Someone commissioned another script. 

0:41:58 - Speaker 3

Was it, was it. 

0:41:59 - Speaker 5

Efron Yeah, it's some. 

0:42:00 - Speaker 3

Hoffman Because she was married to Bernstein at the time. Was she married at the time? 

0:42:04 - Speaker 5

Yes, i think that's what it was, and so Hoffman and Redford, i love the idea of Nora Efron's, all the president's men. I want to say I hope I'm not wrong. 

0:42:15 - Speaker 3

They're eating in every scene. Yeah and complaining. 

0:42:20 - Speaker 5

But William Goldman. I mean I'm going to come back to Goldman over and over again because he wrote the film that I mean he wrote the draft that was used for the film and spent a lot of time discussing it in print subsequently. And he said that Redford drove him insane because he would not tell him yes or no on a draft, on a scene, on a given moment. He would just say don't deprive me of any riches. And what had ever happened is like ah, give me both versions over and over and over again. And he wasn't even the director And he was just he was producing it very closely, but it wasn't. I mean, it was his job to do that with the script while they were developing it. But it was so infuriating and frustrating to Goldman because he is like, if you've ever read any of his novels, he writes in a straight line, he's interested in subtext, but it's not his thing. And he, with the exception of a couple of books of his that are way too long, and I think even he knew it He is very straight into the point, which is why he was the perfect person to adapt Woodward and Bernstein's book. But what happened during all the President's men was. It wasn't that he got blocked, but that without his knowledge, someone else went off and commissioned an entire script, another adaptation that was more character based. It was more focused on Woodward and Bernstein, to turn them into crusading heroes. And yeah, i'm pretty sure it was. It was Nora, because I said there's a line in Adventures, in Scream, to where he said Nora, nora did this. We take a look at it. I think that's right And if I'm wrong I apologize, but I'm pretty sure it's. It's not because of the way it worked. 

He said the only scene from that script. He was furious that it even existed because he had the contract and had been hired to write this adaptation. But it just happened that Bernstein wanted to be involved And so they got this and all of this stuff happened. So Redford gives it to him and says I don't know, see if there's anything you can use. He said the only scene that survives from that script that made it into the finished film is the scene where Bernstein charms a secretary into giving him a number. 

And he said the only thing that he remembers from that script is that Bernstein was catniped to every woman in every, in every situation that he met. 

He always just came out on top somehow, and it's great because it builds this thing that is in the film, which is that Bernstein is in Woodward's shadow constantly and quietly resentful about it, but it never comes up, it's never spoken aloud, it's just. You just get to watch Hoffman scowl and then get back to doing the work, and maybe that was necessary to find a way through the storyline for the actors, but from the screenwriting perspective that would any personal business would just get in the way. It is so not about who they are, it's about what they did. And by focusing on that shoe leather journalism thing, you get this breathless film somehow about guys sitting in rooms on the phone with a little pad in their hands, and it's amazing, it's absolutely thrilling, despite the fact that you know where it's going, because there wasn't a single person who bought a ticket to that movie in 1978. That didn't know why Richard Nixon wasn't president anymore. 

0:45:16 - Speaker 3

Right, right, i actually think it's sort of, you know, like I said. I mean, i said sort of jokingly, but you know, movies like like W or all these films that are trying to get very close to recent history, they, you know, this would be sort of an obvious touchstone. They generally never get it right, but I do think, the film from a couple of years ago, i think even one best picture, the one with Mark, what's it called about? the investigation spotlight. 

0:45:41 - Speaker 5

Oh, absolutely. 

0:45:42 - Speaker 3

Spotlight, Yeah, Spotlight. It really does template very nicely onto this movie in terms of going look, it's just, we're just going to mechanically go through this horrible situation piece by piece by piece, And that's the. That's what's going to make you want to watch it. 

0:45:57 - Speaker 5

Oh yeah, and Tom McCarthy was open about that. He said they owed it a huge debt And his, his difference was that because spotlight is about abuse and Catholicism and the loss of faith that comes for a lot of Catholics with realizing what the church is up to, he got to play, he got to let the actors play those scenes And the disillusionment doesn't happen in all the president's men because they don't know the scope of it. And in spotlight they know. They might not know that, they know, but they know and you watch them play that. 

Yeah, yeah, and watching them play those scenes is just shattering. 

0:46:32 - Speaker 3

It's just interesting because spotlight, i think, didn't get kind of universally recognized as great the way this one did, and I feel like people miss the point a bit, a little bit. They don't see the sort of the subtlety of what's happening the way, the way president's men does it as well. 

0:46:43 - Speaker 5

Yeah, they just recognize the look of it and think, oh, that's all the president's men. 

0:46:47 - Speaker 2

It's like just keep watching guys. 

0:46:49 - Speaker 5

So let the let the movie do the thing that it wants to do. 

0:46:51 - Speaker 3

Yeah, i also think there's something there about we've passed out of the era where the actors themselves and maybe like their positions like I think there is subtext, just by putting Dustin Hoffman with Robert Redford and kind of two very different types of movie star And that you know that was that quiet resentment that Bernstein has for Woodward is sort of the same sort of relationship that Hoffman would have had to Redford in terms of their sort of relative places in the Hollywood establishment. 

0:47:19 - Speaker 5

Right. Well, especially when you know that they both went up for the role of Benjamin Braddock, right Like they wanted Redford, but they went with Hoffman because Mike Nichols was a genius And I think Alan Pakula is also a genius in the way that he doesn't let that rivalry boil to the top. It's just sort of there. 

0:47:34 - Speaker 3

But it's there And I think audiences, we don't have that relationship to. you know, all movie stars are packaged now to the point where we have no idea what they're really like, unless one of them slaps another one in public. 

0:47:44 - Speaker 1

So you know that's generally the only time we pierce the veil of that. 

0:47:50 - Speaker 3

Yeah, i would watch that remake. Oh would you. 

0:47:54 - Speaker 5

Oh yeah, Smith and Rock and all the President's Men, Absolutely Oh, that'd be yeah. 

0:48:00 - Speaker 3

That'd be great. Okay, that brings us to our last two nominees. The one that I guess sticks out is like the unusual, not to say sore thumb, but maybe the thumb on that hand is Bound for Glory, which I don't think is a movie that necessarily has translated to modern audiences particularly well. It got six nominations that year, and then Taxi Driver, which obviously resonates like crazy, only got four nominations. But I want to start by talking a little bit about Bound for Glory, because I do think there it's a good example of something that the Academy does a lot, which is that they try to overcorrect for past mistakes. In my mind, you know, neither the landlord, nor Harold and Maude, nor the last detail got any nominations, and I think by that point they were looking at Hal Ashby and saying like, oh, we really ought to fix this. So while I don't think Bound for Glory is his best movie, it is a good movie And I think it's there because they're trying to correct for missing Hal Ashby. That's interesting. 

Yeah, i don't know what you guys sort of have your relationship to Bound for Glory or if you sort of feel the same. 

0:49:16 - Speaker 6

Well, i mean I 100% agree with you And I mean just to correct you last detail did actually have three nominations, so but not for him right? 

No, no, the only time Hal got a nomination was for this movie, and you're right. It does feel like one of those things where it's like, ok, well, this was genius and we let the actor win. And then, ok, well, that was genius and we'll let the other actor win. And then Bound for Glory happened, which I mean, in this pack of amazing movies, is like it's not like you said, it's not a bad movie, but it's easily his weakest movie. And then just nothing happened. And then, after being there, it felt like he just went, you know, fuck it, and gave up. 

0:49:55 - Speaker 5

That's fascinating. I would actually say that I mean like I think it is his best movie. 

0:49:59 - Speaker 3

I think it's Oh, we have some sparks fly, OK, I think I mean. 

0:50:04 - Speaker 5

I'm not going to fight about it. 

0:50:05 - Speaker 4

But I love it. 

0:50:06 - Speaker 3

I love it. 

0:50:08 - Speaker 5

I think the blind spot you have here is that the Academy loves movies about real people. 

Always, has always, and this is a history about someone who everybody remembers, and Woody Guthrie is a cornerstone of, you know, american folk music, but also prototox music and political activism and all of those things. And so this is like a. This was a guaranteed Oscar nominee And I'm pretty sure they thought it was going to win a couple. But, and if not for Rocky, it might have been the movie at the moment, because the Oscars also love looking back rather than looking forward. 

What I would say about Ashby is that it is like this is the movie where he is most invested in what it is to be an artist and how it is to live a life that's committed to what you want to do. And if you look back at his career, it's him Like he's telling his own story. He's telling it through the veil of kind of tobacco stain nostalgia, which again in 1976 wasn't exactly new. But the way he does it and the way he uses time to show the, the wear and tear on Guthrie and his, his cultural consciousness sort of awakening and developing, i love it. 

I think it's it's been done dirty over the years because MGM never really did much to support it, or United Artists after the, after the fact It feel because it didn't win anything. It just sort of feels like it was allowed to slip away. But the thing that I keep coming back to is just how heartfelt it is and how much Ashby believes it. And he is telling, and Keith Carradine is amazing, it's a, it's a great performance from the guy just after Nashville to when he was in that moment where everyone was casting him as a singer and he could do whatever he wanted. And again, david, david, did I say Keith shit? 

0:51:55 - Speaker 3

Yeah, yeah. 

0:51:55 - Speaker 5

Yeah, that's okay, it's. David, it is. Oh my God, i'm sorry They're both musical, but it's Dave. 

0:52:02 - Speaker 3

No, that's right. 

0:52:03 - Speaker 5

And because I like, because I was about to say because he was. I'm looking at the list of nominees and I blank because he's not on it, which is also ridiculous to me, because everybody decided it's worth the imagination. 

But yeah, no, david Carradine, of course it's David Carradine, i just mistake it because of the guitar. But yeah, and that's sorry, that's where my brain was going, because it looks like David Carradine picked it up in response to Keith doing natural and proving. That's like, yeah, i can do this too, but it's just not the way that worked, because the film was already in production and it's just, it was just instantly. It was instantly resolved as a rivalry, which is totally unfair to the movie and both actors. But what you get is this weird testament from Hal Ashby which is so personal that of course it was never going to win anything And I'm amazed that it was nominated at all. But I think if it hadn't had that moment where it was thrown into competition with all of these other crowd pleasers, this quiet, meditative movie I mean, okay, taxi drivers are crowd pleasers now, it wasn't then But this quiet, meditative movie would have just sort of disappeared and never and been rediscovered over and over and over again And instead it's just sort of gone to the outskirts. 

0:53:13 - Speaker 3

Jenny, is this of the five? Is this the one you saw last? You could say that Yeah, I feel like this is the one that people get to last on that list, unfortunately. 

0:53:23 - Speaker 4

I watched for a lot of the reasons that. 

0:53:24 - Speaker 3

Norm just said. 

0:53:25 - Speaker 4

Yeah, yeah, i watched this for the first time, ready for it, two days ago. Yeah, right off Two days ago. 

0:53:35 - Speaker 5

That's exactly my point. Where did you find it? 

0:53:39 - Speaker 2

I played the fifth. Okay, yeah, because I have bought the Blu-ray twice. Yes, i will say that. 

0:53:45 - Speaker 5

There was a limited edition Blu-ray. I bought it as soon as it was made available. A friend borrowed it and refused to give it back, so then, I had to get another one. It's a deal with a friend. Yeah, no, this film is. I can't say no. 

0:53:56 - Speaker 4

Yeah, it's very hard to find. It is not swimming anywhere. The only way to watch this movie is to Jack Sparrow it, which is why I'm just going to leave it at that To wear a bunch of scarves. 

0:54:09 - Speaker 3

What was your experience like two days ago? 

0:54:12 - Speaker 4

It's really interesting. I find this film fascinating because a topic of conversation that we've had on our show quite a bit is when it comes to the Oscars, what does that really mean for your legacy? I especially feel like these days, in the world of social media that we live in now, that winning an Oscar, especially Best Picture, is almost detrimental. More than anything else, i think of something like Coda Coda winning was the worst thing that could have happened in that movie If it was just nominated. That's one thing I've argued forever. The best thing that happened to La La Land was not winning Best Picture. It's legacy, i think, will hold up better now, and it's already. You already see the seeds of that in the discourse since it lost, and I say that to say with something like Bound for Glory, you know what's interesting, because the other side of that coin might it might not necessarily lean toward, you know like negative criticism, but sometimes these films just come and go and then just completely forgot. Now there could be outside circumstances, such as distribution, for example, that are a part of this, because Bound for Glory, i'll be perfectly honest, is a film that for a long time I had never even heard of it, and this is a film nominated for Best Picture And I had seen other Hal Ashby films but I wasn't even aware of this one. And then you watch it And I think what's interesting is that it's easy, i think, to kind of put this into the same kind of hat as something like a coda, where it's. You know it's nominated good for it. Should it be there? maybe not. It certainly doesn't hold up in retrospect to the other films around it. You can certainly have that conversation, but I would certainly take Bound for Glory over others that you could put into that same hat, such as a coda, for example. I think Bound for Glory is actually a pretty good film. Should it have been nominated for Best Picture? I don't know, maybe not Of the five it might be the one that I do take out, but I do think it is very good, maybe better than its reputation. 

You know, because I threw out the question like to rank these five before coming on to this show, and almost everybody that responded had this fifth, almost everybody. And of the responses I got, of those that haven't seen one of these five, it was always this one. So it certainly isn't in the cultural landscape as much for sure, and it's a little unfortunate now that I've seen it, because I do think it is pretty good. I don't know if it's Ashby's best film I don't know if I could say that but I do really like it. In fact, as I was watching it and perhaps part of this is top of mind because we just talked about it on our show as well, and I don't know if this is true, but it feels like it is that the Coens probably took some of this movie for Inside Lou and Davis. 

0:57:20 - Speaker 3

I very much think that there's That's interesting, i would have said for O Brother, but that's Or Brother, yeah, o Brother, but I think, in terms of tone and storytelling, this is more comparable to Inside Lou and Davis, i think, sure. 

0:57:33 - Speaker 4

And so I couldn't help but think about that, especially its lead character, because Go 3 in this film is a little prickly, kind of like Lou and Yeah, he's, you know like you don't always love him And like there's like these incredible nuances to the character. I mean, he's a great musician, obviously trying to survive. In fact, now that I'm talking about it out loud, there's so much about these two movies that are very similar, but I do like how the film is willing to take some risk in that regard. It's very methodical, it's awfully slow, it's very long, and I can see why audiences today would really struggle with this film. But if you like methodical cinema, musical cinema, performance-based cinema, i think this film has a lot to offer And I really liked it. I really liked it, even if it's gonna rank five on my list. It's. 

0:58:28 - Speaker 3

I don't think it's as distant as a distant number five than people We're back to like what a year, right, yes, exactly Like it's. Five on this list is like remember if you were a goalie in the original six NHL and you were the worst goalie in the league you were the sixth best goalie in the world. 

0:58:46 - Speaker 4

That's how I feel about my beer league team. I'm still top six, no matter what. 

0:58:53 - Speaker 3

Dave, i don't know. You certainly don't have to walk it back, but I do wanna come back to. You mentioned that for you it's his weakest film. I would say, in your defense, ashby's weakest film. Still pretty fucking good movie, do you feel like I mean? 

0:59:11 - Speaker 6

to quantify it, i mean I would say the weakest of that period, because I mean we can obviously go deeper into the catalog when the drugs sort of really took a hold and we can see him and Jeff Bridges and Rosanna Arquette doing some very crazy cocaine fuel things in different movies. But that's another story entirely. 

0:59:32 - Speaker 3

Do you? the one last thing I do wanna say about Bound for Glory, and we'll move on to Taxi Driver really quickly, but I wonder, norm, you said something earlier that I thought was interesting, which is that this movie didn't all of these films in essence got pushed forward because of the incoming, incipient home video revolution that was about to happen, that sort of resurfaced a lot of 70s films because they were relatively recent when home video became what it became. This movie was MGM, so it would have, i guess, gone to Warner Brothers at some point in the beginning or middle of that era, certainly like it was with a company that was not shy about putting things out and promoting them on home video. I wonder, though, how much the just the politics of Bound for Glory and the kind of very earnest, insistent socialist left-wing sort of like embrace of Guthrie's politics, how much that might have influenced whether they thought they had something commercial in the 1980s to promote it. 

1:00:36 - Speaker 5

Yeah, i've always wondered whether the Guthrie family had any kind of pull or play on that, because it does feel like the film is so small in the rear view mirror as to be, you know, and it's insignificant as a political decision whether or not to release that film. When you're, you know, you're the MGM UA and you've got Zabrisky Point and things like that right right to throw out And those I mean. There's nudity on the box cover, so naturally that one did really well. Bound for Glory is just a hard sell full stop and always was. Like it's Ashby's blank check after shampoo and that's the moment where he takes the shot at doing this biographical drama. 

1:01:16 - Speaker 3

Forgot about shampoo. That's another great movie. 

1:01:19 - Speaker 5

Well, it's Bayley right. Everybody forgets. 

1:01:20 - Speaker 3

Ashby made it. It's also it's a restoration comedy. Yeah, yes, it is Shampoo. is Bayley trying to make School for Scandal? 

1:01:31 - Speaker 5

And almost making it work. Yeah, yeah, i mean, it's not. it's just. I think now shampoo just gets a bad rap because of the promiscuity and the fact that it's so incredibly of its moment. But yeah, structurally it's brilliant. But the thing about Bound for Glory is that it doesn't have that electricity, right, I mean even me just overwriting David Carradine with Keith in that moment. for the younger, less exhausted looking brother, that's how it was received at the time It's like, oh, this tiny little movie that everybody I mean and it is technically it's the first film with Steadycam, right, like the other two were released, what Ahead of it. but yeah, no, it's the one. It's the one where Garrett Brown built the Steadycam. 

And shot almost. I don't know what the percentage is. I think it's like 45%. A lot of the film was shot. Because everybody thinks of it as Rocky And Rocky. Yeah, Rocky comes out the same year. There's another one as well. There are three films that use Steadycam in 76, but Garrett Brown invented it for Bound for Glory, And it's incredibly smart And it did win. 

1:02:30 - Speaker 3

Cinematography, yes, has go excellent for it And it is a beautiful looking film, but it is also a hard sell. 

1:02:38 - Speaker 5

It was then and it only got harder later. I think maybe there was a little window when the Folkways tributes came out in the 80s that people might have gotten on board. But yeah, it always gets pushed back And I'd really love to talk to the people at Twilight Time and find out how they got to release the Blu-ray in the moment. I guess Nick Redmond must have been a fan because he was behind that whole project, but it's just disappeared again, like it's not on streaming. It's not available anywhere. 

1:03:03 - Speaker 3

Is there a harder sell, though, than Taxi Driver? Do you think that was the hardest sell in 1976 to get a? It's funny. 

1:03:10 - Speaker 5

Yeah, wait five years And it would have been very, very easy after John Hinckley. But of course that's the chicken and the egg problem. Taxi Driver also feels like a film of the moment, all these Vietnam vets coming back and not getting the proper support, not getting the proper care. Vietnam, i think, ended, i want to say, at the end of 1975. I might be getting that wrong. Nixon announced the end of it but he wasn't there for the actual pullout. 

1:03:33 - Speaker 3

But also were serial killers in the popular media at the time, Because this feels very prototypically kind of a bad Oh, that's interesting. 

1:03:44 - Speaker 5

It's what we recognize now as a serial killer story. 

1:03:47 - Speaker 3

Yeah, i mean, he is definitely a third person who, yeah, and I don't think there were really like I don't think BTK had happened yet Or like I don't think it was in the popular culture the idea of serial killing. 

1:04:00 - Speaker 5

I'm trying to remember when did Bruce Dern start playing Berserk vets? Because that's Black Sunday, that's 77. But he'd already played a couple of roles similar to that, so it was already in the air. 

1:04:11 - Speaker 6

Yeah, and I think Zodiac and Lake Hills would be a killer had already happened, so yeah. 

1:04:15 - Speaker 5

Zodiac had already happened. But I think the focus on the trans-bickel and the way that Which became Dirty Harry, purposely never really looked at the killers. 

1:04:26 - Speaker 1

Yeah, it's not about him. It's not about him, it's not about them. 

1:04:28 - Speaker 3

Andrew Robbins This is the first time that they really go. The police are not really relevant to this. 

1:04:32 - Speaker 5

It's really about him, well it's because he hasn't done anything, whatever. Right, it's about the pressure cooker. And again, that's. I think the thing that Scorsese does better than any other person in American cinema in the 70s and 80s is put you inside the head of someone and refuse to let you out. And Taxi Driver is this amazing pressure cooker. Slow boil, i don't call it whatever you want, but it's about building towards the explosion to the point where, from the very beginning of the film, with the gas escaping up through the sewers and slow mo and Bernard Herman just sort of trumpeting us into hell, we are in his point of view even when he's not there, which I find fascinating. And De Niro is so good, everyone is so good, sybil Shepard is amazing, albert Brooks is amazing, and De Niro Foster is unquantifiable. 

1:05:26 - Speaker 3

It's amazing, kytel is unrecognizable. 

1:05:30 - Speaker 5

It is just this incredible construction. 

1:05:32 - Speaker 3

I think what Kytel's part I want to get to everybody's. I think was Kytel's part written for Richard Pryor. 

1:05:37 - Speaker 5

Oh, I don't know, It was not written for Kytel. It was written for someone black And he came in at the last one, you can kind of feel it right, like you can sort of feel that in the script. 

1:05:46 - Speaker 3

And then he sort of plays it essentially like Roma, like another disaffected culture, but like I don't want to hog up all the time. But you know, taxi Driver is like a movie that you know certainly registers hard when you watch it. Jd, what's your kind of take on it or experience with it? 

1:06:03 - Speaker 4

So similar to what I was talking about with Rocky, but maybe even more so. This was a film that I caught up with in the vein of, you know, not knowing what I was walking into, necessarily, because my parents would have never have come within 10 feet of this movie And I say that with all the love I have for them But this was never even close to being something that was attainable for me. But you know, so I go in watching it not knowing too much about it, other than that it's this movie that had hit the culture in a significant way And, unlike some of the other films that we've talked about, i was pretty blown away by this film on our first viewing And it's interesting to me that this film was received the way that it was, outside the context of Scorsese's filmmaking, and the craft here is out of bounds. Everything about the craft here is ridiculous. It is so good, but as a film about loneliness and the pathology of loneliness, and it erupting with this, you know, incredible and powerful climax, i just find it fascinating that we find this film as relevant as we do, and it certainly speaks to the universality of loneliness and just how it's, something that many of us, if not all of us, grapple with in some way, shape or form. Obviously, you know, thankfully for most of us it doesn't lead to this kind of conclusion, but to see this character and the depths of despair and also obliviousness in some ways. You know the fact that we cling to this film the way we have as a culture. 

I just find I think it says something about the human condition in that regard, even outside the context of the film, just how we as a culture embrace this film. I think it says something interesting. But when we're talking about this movie as a movie, there's no denying it, denying its prowess. It's one of the best films ever made. To me, this is Scorsese at his very best. This is Robert De Niro at his very best. I don't know, it's interesting. I honestly maybe you guys will disagree with me here I don't know how this would be received today if it came out today, like if it came out beat for beat, the exact same, and especially if you remove the Scorsese part of it. 

1:08:49 - Speaker 3

Because a lot of us love Scorsese, we're biased, you mean the guy that only makes gangster films. Yeah, exactly. 

1:08:55 - Speaker 4

But even if you were like if we just look at the film in a microcosm on its own, away from Scorsese, you put in a different director, but it's beat for beat the same. In the cultural landscape we live in right now, in the social media era that we're in now, i don't know if this film is received the same. I'm honestly a little bit dubious that it would be. 

1:09:18 - Speaker 3

I mean, you could argue that the Joker, as bad a movie as that is, got received the same. 

1:09:24 - Speaker 2

I mean he wants to be, he's trying to be this movie, and so I do wonder about that And that's. 

1:09:30 - Speaker 5

I think maybe that's part of it. Get that movie out of your, out of your it's terrible terrible. 

1:09:36 - Speaker 4

Well, that could be part of why I feel dubious. because Joker, say what you will about that movie, it did not, you know, tried to hide its influences. It was trying to be taxi driver. 

1:09:47 - Speaker 5

Well too, in its own detriment, right? I mean, that's the point. What if Scorsese, but the Joker's in it? Yeah, yeah. 

1:09:55 - Speaker 4

And maybe it's, you know, hard to separate that. You know because we love Scorsese. He's a great filmmaker, he knows how to, you know rein in what that film was doing in terms of if it's themes, it's characters, it's violence, and making something seamless out of that material. Joker definitely does not do that, but I think about the discourse around something like mental illness, specifically, and how this film, taxi driver, again in a microcosm, could be linked to that same discourse. If you remove Scorsese and that is maybe very hard to do, but if you do, i don't know, again, it's a question, maybe people would receive it the same, but I don't know. 

1:10:43 - Speaker 5

I mean I don't think you can remove taxi driver from its context, right? I mean, who is Travis Bickle now, if you're making a present day version of it? The language that we use now to talk about mental illness and PTSD, i mean taxi driver contributes to that conversation to get us there. It's now, i guess, just sort of free-floating, but it's understood that people who go to war. Come back different right Like this is yeah, and that if they're not helped and if they're not given support. 

1:11:16 - Speaker 3

Yeah, in things as diverse as Fruitvale Station and you know Peaky Blinders there's. You can run the gamut of people who've come out of sort of very traumatic situations and how they deal with it. And it's all because taxi driver sort of establishes that blueprint to some degree. 

1:11:32 - Speaker 5

Yeah, that's. The thing that everybody forgets about the film too, is how sympathetic it is. It's an empathetic film, that-. 

1:11:40 - Speaker 3

About a non-empathetic. 

1:11:43 - Speaker 5

Yeah, that lets you sympathize with the people whose lives he destroys, because it understands, like the porn scene, the first date, right, like that sequence where we are allowed outside of him. 

In that moment we get to see him the way Betsy sees him, and it's horrifying. And after that that's the turning point for the film, i think, because he doesn't understand it and it becomes basically an insult and it devolves into someone who fixates and fixates and fixates. But in that moment you get to see the person that she wants him to be and that he isn't. And maybe that's who he was before he went to war, Maybe he never was. But it's the point where the film pivots and becomes a film about the pressure cooker about to explode and understanding that these people we've been watching with him are his future victims. Yeah, and you can't do that now. 

I don't think there's a way to tell that story now because Tax Driver did it and everyone would see it coming. They have tried in many. 

1:12:40 - Speaker 3

There are films that sort of pattern themselves on Tax Driver in different ways. There's that Seth Rogen, malcott. 

1:12:47 - Speaker 5

Oh, Observe and Report, which is brilliant. I mean, he is doing so much stuff in there. 

1:12:53 - Speaker 3

There have been good and bad sort of films influenced by it. But you're right, i think it has to exist in that moment, in that cultural moment. 

1:12:59 - Speaker 5

And it doesn't exist without Vietnam. It doesn't exist without the cultural division that had happened and the way that people do value him when he tells them where he's from, you can see the shift. There are people who sympathize with him and there are people who want to get away from him. We just didn't have that with the Iraq war and we didn't have that with the occupation of Afghanistan. None of that in the present day has translated Now. We just have a different. America is broken in a completely different way. 

1:13:27 - Speaker 3

I want to sort of go on a little bit and just talk a little bit about maybe some of the other films that in other years might have been nominated or certainly are notable. Before I start that, we've all seen these five nominees. But, like any group of people who like movies, there are blind spots. What are the movies from 1976 that you feel like you have not had a chance to catch up to? I will start and just say, because I have watched a lot of films from that year, i think my biggest blind spot is the King Kong remake. I still have not seen that. You don't need to, i know well, that's why I haven't. And then there are a couple of foreign films. Mr Klein and the Fifth Seal are both movies that I'm very interesting but have not had a chance to see either yet. Do you guys have sort of notable, semi-notable movies from 1976 that you feel like should have been on your watch list already? 

1:14:19 - Speaker 4

Well, i mean for me it's probably go ahead, judy. Well, i was just gonna say, the one and only Ingmar Bergman film that I haven't seen is Face to Face, so that's an unfortunate blind spot for me. 

1:14:32 - Speaker 3

That's a good run, though, if you've seen all the others. 

1:14:35 - Speaker 4

Yeah, i've seen all the others. We did a whole series on Bergman a few years ago, so I've seen them all accept that one erotically, and I didn't even think about trying to give that a watch for this episode. 

1:14:48 - Speaker 5

And then the other one It was pretty hard to find for a good long while. 

1:14:50 - Speaker 4

I think it's on the channel now, but it was out of circulation for a good chunk of the last couple of decades. Yeah, and then the other film that I haven't seen that I saw on some others list is Murder by Death is a blind spot, so I haven't seen that one either. It's fine. Okay, i wasn't sure. I just saw it on a few other lists. 

1:15:12 - Speaker 3

Dave, do you have any big holes in this 1976? Anything you'd love to have seen? We may have lost Dave, so he's frozen SoNäver at Ke vaccination While we wait. Norm, have you got any big holes in 1976? You probably have the fewest. 

1:15:28 - Speaker 5

I went through the list and the only thing in the Oscar nominations anyway that I haven't seen is Voyage of the Damned, and I'm not sure how I missed it. I feel like it's the kind of film I should have watched in the 80s, but just didn't see it. 

1:15:41 - Speaker 3

It is a refugee escaping from a war. 

1:15:44 - Speaker 5

Two movie Yeah, it's a very you know it's. it would have been directed by Stanley Kramer five years earlier, but instead it's Stuart Rosenberg And it's not. I'm told it's not bad, but it is not like outright bad Stuart Rosenberg movies, right Yeah not that I know of, like he's always pretty good. 

1:16:04 - Speaker 3

So, norm, do you have any sort of notable blind spot films, movies that you wish you had seen, from 1976? 

1:16:11 - Speaker 5

I don't think so. I went over the list of the Oscar nominees and a bunch of other different lists and I think the only one that stands out that I haven't seen, that I might maybe want to someday, is Voyage of the Damned, just because it is the kind of Stanley Kramer all star big issue drama Kramer didn't direct, it was Stuart Rosenberg, but it feels like that kind of film and that interests me, like Judge Grettenerberg. Yeah, exactly, and I'm and I'm also confusing it in my head with Ship of Fools, which I have seen. So I think that's why I would want to watch it, ship of Fools is the Fellini. 

No, no, no. Ship of Fools is now. I can't even remember who made that one, But it's a similar like all star. You know, a bunch of schemers and dealers on a boat at the captain's table, I think, is how they sold it. Voyage of the Damned is obviously much more serious, but they're crossed over in my head for whatever reason. So I should probably find and watch Voyage of the Damned just so I can stop confusing it with the other film, because I'm pretty sure any movie in which Malcolm McDowell plays a Jewish refugee is going to be a very different movie. 

1:17:06 - Speaker 3

Dave, what is your? do you have any notable blind spots for 1976? 

1:17:10 - Speaker 6

For me there's probably two. I mean, one of them is, you know, the one that won't be shocked at that I probably should have seen. I mean, i've not seen Cassavities killing you with Chinese bookies. So far I've got the box that it's sitting there on my shelf. I just literally have not gotten to it yet, but I know it's definitely one of those ones that is, you know, a should see, as it were. I mean, and for me the other one would be and if I'm just trying to think if this is the right year, but Last Tycoon, the Iliacazan, i mean I know the, i know there's like drama behind it and one of those ones that you know I don't necessarily need to see, but I've always wanted to see it. 

1:17:45 - Speaker 3

Yeah, it's a good year for movies generally, obviously. I just want to quickly run down some of the other movies that I think didn't get nominated. The biggest one I guess on the list is Marathon Man. It could have gotten a nomination over one of the five. It was a cause celebrity at the time, but I don't think it's like a major miss that it doesn't quite make the cut. There's a couple of it's a breakthrough year for foreign films. So, in addition to Lena Vertmuller getting nominated as the first woman director nominee for Seven Beauties which if you haven't seen, seven Beauties, whoo, that is a good movie Seven Beauties and Cousin Cousine both had multiple nominations outside of Best Foreign Film. Neither film won Best Foreign Film. That went to Black and White in Color, the film about the Ivory Coast. 

Yeah, so we all have, i think, pretty significant or insignificant blind spots for 1976, because it is a year that's got so many good movies in it. It was a very good year for horror. Carrie and the Omen both came out and did get some nominations in that year but didn't get into Best Picture. And then Logan's Run, seven Percent Solution, the Outlaw Josie Wales I think we've talked about. Also, it's the year that Harlan County, usa, won Best Documentary, which is, i think, pretty significant. That starts a whole new kind of trend in documentary filmmaking. 

And then there's a whole bunch of other films that didn't even make the Academy's sort of radar that I think are probably worth mentioning. First of all, beyond the five nominees for Best Foreign Film, here's some other foreign films that were made that year. So Novocente 1900, cria Cuervos, which is probably the best Carlos Arra film, dona Flora and her two husbands, allegra and Entropo, heart of Glass, kings of the Road, and I think you mentioned earlier JD Face to Face. So a pretty incredible year for world cinema too. Mikey and Nikki came out that year along with Killing of a Chinese Bookie, so it was a cast of Eddie Sad. I think it's probably the best year of his career. Maybe We've talked about this, i think, in just real life norm, but God told me to did come out that year, the very excellent, weird, what would you call, apocalyptic, magnificent. 

1:19:58 - Speaker 5

Yeah, very strange movie. It's an apocalypse movie. It's a cult movie. It's a Verite documentary about living in New York. It's in 1976. It's amazing. And if you haven't seen it, by all means everyone listening to this stop what you're doing and go watch. God told me to, because it's bananas in the best way. 

1:20:13 - Speaker 3

Prescibly in 4K if you can get it. It's a good disc. Yeah, robin and Marion came out that year, which is a special favorite of mine, and I feel like it certainly could have gotten some nominations. It's my favorite Robin Hood story. 

1:20:28 - Speaker 5

Yeah, it's weird that Connery wasn't nominated. They're heppered. 

1:20:32 - Speaker 3

They're both really good in it And it's a really interesting take on the Robin Hood thing. Anyway, the Missouri Breaks came out that year, which is a really good Western, and then some just foundational comedies. So I think you, jd, you mentioned Murder by Death, which is certainly like a sort of a cult fan favorite all these years later. But Silver Streak was that year as well, so was the Bad News Bears, and I was honestly a little surprised that that didn't get even like a screenplay. No, i think it's like about as good as a sort of a studio comedy gets in the 70s, and then Car Wash. So that's, i think that's a pretty good year. Are there any in that sort of list that you guys felt like should have been pushed up further? 

1:21:19 - Speaker 5

I mean qualitatively, not. The problem is that the category is so strong for Best Picture that the five that are up there I would have a hard time arguing. I mean so I know not everybody loves Bound for Glory as much as I do, but I think it belongs there as much as anything else. I am surprised that there were. 

I always forget that neither Sean Connery nor Audrey Hepburn was nominated for Robin and Marion because they're exquisite performances And they also sort of in play with the actors themselves and playing with their personae as much as they play with their abilities as actors, which is much cooler now than it used to be. It was seen as rude to riff on an actor's image in a project like this, but there's something about the tone of the film that makes it work. Yeah, it's weird that they've got excluded. 

1:22:03 - Speaker 3

Do you think that? does anybody feel like I do that? you know comedy, no matter how good, or just always going to get sort of overlooked when this type of thing happens. 

1:22:15 - Speaker 4

For whatever reason comedy and horror I will never have a shot at the Oscars, unfortunately. 

1:22:20 - Speaker 5

Yeah, where's the hangover's best picture? They expanded it to 10 just for the hangover, I understood, and it didn't get nominated Jerks. 

1:22:33 - Speaker 1

It is an uphill climb, absolutely. 

1:22:34 - Speaker 5

I mean, i think something hybridized like Parasite, where the comedy is so much a part of that story, has a chance, but no like if you're submitting a studio comedy, it's just not going to happen. 

1:22:45 - Speaker 4

No, yeah, i agree with that. You have to infiltrate the comedy and you know, through drama, you know, because I think of also something like The Martian which is like this you know it's this action sci-fi movie that is labeled as a drama but fundamentally the comedy of that film is at its core, like it's thematically crucial to that film. So you can't separate the comedy from something like that. So I think you know that's probably where films have to kind of bridge that gap a little bit, at least when it comes to award season in the Oscars, because they'll never just nominate a straight-up comedy, never going to happen, or horror film. It's kind of the same way. 

1:23:31 - Speaker 5

Yeah, i think, though, the box office is usually its own reward when it's something like that The sixth sense was nominated for best picture, right? Is that the only one? 

1:23:40 - Speaker 2

I think it's the only one in Resize of the Lambs, if you want to fight for it. 

1:23:43 - Speaker 3

The science of the lambs. Yeah, And I think, you know, a film like Science of the Lambs gets in because people can think of it as a thriller more than a horror movie, whether that's a. I've had many arguments about whether that's a fair assessment or not. But I did leave one out, a pretty significant one which in my book would go in the top five movies of that year, just because it has stayed with me for a minute since I saw it, and that's Roman Polanski's The Tenant, which I think is about as fine a movie as I've ever seen. And it's like there's no way that's getting nominated, especially given why Polanski was in Europe just then, Yeah, but not in 1976. But man, that's. I think that's a better movie than Chinatown. It is pretty near perfect And you know, it's kind of a shame that Well, I mean he brought it on himself. I don't want to make an excuse for Roman Polanski, or sorry, I'm going to get canceled, But yeah, that's his best work, I think, or pretty close. 

1:24:51 - Speaker 4

I haven't seen it in a while. I'm curious for those that have seen face to face, and just because I'm a big Bergman van, i'm real curious. Is that one that you guys feel that should be substituted in for best picture? 

1:25:08 - Speaker 3

I think he was coming off the high with Kraus Wispers a few years earlier, and I think he reached that height again when he worked with Ingrid Bergman just after that, and I think this is somewhere in the middle there where it maybe like Gotcha. I think it's a very good film, but I think it didn't get the notice at the time. 

1:25:29 - Speaker 6

Okay, it just wasn't. It's on the wrong side of the bell curve, to be sure. Yeah, i think it is very good, but it was just on the wrong side of the peak, okay. 

1:25:38 - Speaker 5

Yeah it's where there's good, and then there's good for Bergman Exactly. 

1:25:42 - Speaker 4

It's a very good movie. 

1:25:45 - Speaker 5

But considering everything else, yeah. 

1:25:48 - Speaker 3

It also doesn't. There's some Bergman films that fall into little trip-titches of thematically they go together and I feel like face to face doesn't really do that. It's sort of on its own, as its own entity. It doesn't have companion films that go with it the way some of the other ones do. I sort of think of certain runs of his as like they're of a piece, they're kind of in the same, exploring the same territory and they almost like strengthen each other because of it, and then this doesn't, i guess, have that support in the same way. So I guess we need to come to the real question here, which is Rocky. Having won this and having talked about all these films, do we need to reconsider 1976, the 1977 Oscars? Do we need to change the outcome? 

1:26:41 - Speaker 5

This is what I said at the start, right, every few years this argument comes up, for this year specifically, and every few years it's a different contender, for it should have been this instead, and that, i think, speaks to the timelessness of Rocky somehow the people are still mad at it for doing what it does but also that there is no one perfect counter argument to this particular year. Because, yeah, i mean, they're all tremendous, they're all Bamford Glory has sort of fallen away because of the distributors issues, not because of the quality of the film. And as far as the other three Network All the Presidents, men, taxi Driver, they're not going anywhere. They're all classics in their way. 

They may not have had the financial success that Rocky had, but frankly I don't know that the world needs five more Taxi Driver movie sequels like Bickle, just heating up and going off, heating up and going off, heating up and going off. I mean sure you can make multiple Woodbrood and Bernstein movies, but one of them is going to be Nora Ephron's Heartburn, and that's sad. None of these films opens the door to a cinematic universe the way the Rocky films did Not that I'm suggesting that that is in any way an indicator of quality or lack thereof, but I think the fact that Rocky became what it became is testament to how popular it was, how good it was, how much of a film of the moment it was. And so, for Best Picture of 1976, it does kind of It still fits. 

1:28:06 - Speaker 3

Okay, so you are. That's okay. That's Listen. Deciding that they got it right as rare as that is is perfectly okay, i think. So you think they did get it right. 

1:28:17 - Speaker 5

I think we're good yeah. 

1:28:19 - Speaker 3

JD, do you think they got it right? 

1:28:21 - Speaker 4

So this is really interesting because I have such a deep hate relationship when it comes to award season in the Oscars, partially because I'm a fan of celebrating movies and at its core, fundamentally, that's what the Oscars is supposed to be about and I enjoy that. On the same token, or on the other side of the coin, i should say I do not believe that we should turn art into sports and that's what the Oscars is. We are turning it into sports and here we're talking about a movie about sports winning the competition of film about sports. So I love that irony. 

to me That is really funny. but I agree, if I had a vote it would go to network or taxi driver, probably. but I also think the big four is interchangeable Double coin. I don't think there's any reason to really be angry or mad at Rocky simply because you might love taxi driver or network more or all the president's men, which is why we shouldn't turn art into sports. But Rocky's great On its own terms. separated away from all of this, it is a really great film, its legacy, its reputation is well earned, well deserved. 

Say what you will about the sequels, but that original Rocky film is elite, it's great. So I have no problem. even if it's not my vote, i have no problem with it winning And, honestly, the more I think about Bond for Glory, i'm really starting to love that as the fifth as well, even though I have a few blind spots, and maybe that'll change if I catch up with some more of these movies. But I don't know. the more I sit on that movie, the more I'm really quite loving it. It might be fifth on this list for me, but yeah. 

1:30:23 - Speaker 3

It belongs there. 

1:30:25 - Speaker 4

Yeah, absolutely So. Yeah, these are just all interchangeable And there's not a lot of years where you can say that's the case, so that just makes it's a special year for sure. But yeah, rocky, i'm in agreement, i don't think we have to change it. 

1:30:46 - Speaker 3

Okay, i am gonna agree with both of you. I think you're kind of versic correct And I think, for the point JD, to what you said, i think also the other nominees like as much as it was a great year, and there are other great films and there's movies that I guess I would put up, like I guess I would put the tenet on there instead of Bound for Glory, but I understand why that was never going to happen. But yeah, i think I said off the top, here there's the least amount of daylight between what turned out to be good in the long run, like how we look back on this year. Cause I think one of the things that happens with Oscars is they're in the moment, they're in that year, and sometimes things like that Paul Haggis movie Crash seem to be better than they are. And then you get two to three years down the road and you're like oh, that wasn't, that was the greatest show on earth, that wasn't good. You know there was a problem with that. I now understand it and they couldn't see it in the moment. But I actually think in this case everybody could see in the moment what was actually going to carry on and can continue to sort of pay dividends to audiences down the road. 

I think, if you know, like you said, it's a pick them. All four of those films are pretty great And I've seen all four of those films you know, multiple, multiple times. And I've only seen Bound for Glory maybe like a couple of times, but in among those other four I would say the best one is whichever one I watched last. You know, like really honestly, yeah. 

1:32:13 - Speaker 4

That's how it works. You've seen all the presidents. 

1:32:16 - Speaker 3

Man, it's pretty hard to argue. If you've seen taxi drivers, pretty hard to argue, you know. So yeah, so I think, disappointingly for our listeners, we are not going to reconsider 1976. Dave Voight we don't know what he thinks because unfortunately he was taken back to his home planet right before we got to the end of this recording. But he says I can't read it, you'll have to read it for him. 

1:32:38 - Speaker 5

He just messaged me from the tractor beam that is pulling me away, which we call internet connectivity issues. No, we don't need to re-judge 1976, we could, but it's a debate that will never end. And yeah, exactly, proved him right, Exactly. 

1:32:52 - Speaker 3

Yep, all right. Well, thank you all so much. I will speak for Dave and say you should find in the seatsca, is that correct? That is where Dave does his business. I wanna say yes, and I will double check that on the wonderful internet machine. That is correct. So please visit in the seatsca for everything Dave Voight contributes to the world, or many things. You can also find him on Twitter. I believe it's also at in the seats, norm, where can people hear more from you and catch up on your many views and ideas? 

1:33:34 - Speaker 5

Well, let's see, there's the newsletter Shiny Things at. I can do this from memory, i can do this from memory, shiny-thingsghostio. There is me on Twitter at Norm Wilner. And then there's the podcast someone else's movie at someone else'smoviecom or anywhere. You get your podcasts every Tuesday And of course I'm at TIFF doing TIFF stuff. That's a lot of fun. 

1:33:55 - Speaker 3

Excellent And JD, where can we? 

1:33:58 - Speaker 4

Yeah, you can find everything that we do at insessionfilmcom. We have the podcast. That's how every week podcast reviews out every single week as well. For anyone that is interested in One Car Why, we're doing a One Car Why series. We're starting that very soon, so you can be on the lookout for that. We also have written content from our team of writers that I highly encourage. I love them, they do great work And everything about us. You can find us at insessionfilmcom. 

1:34:29 - Speaker 3

All right, and as always, i'm Mattie Price. You can find me at Mattie Underscore Price on Twitter, which didn't used to be my Twitter handle, but then Elon Musk kicked me off And I'm now back It was a whole thing. I won't even go into it. I'm very happy to be the host of this show. I also contribute periodically to another wonderful show called the Saturday Night Live Hall of Fame, which I also recommend you check out on this very same podcast network And we will be back to discuss other years in Oscar history very soon. 

So thank you all. 

1:35:08 - Speaker 5

Thank you, thanks for having me. Yeah, all right. 

1:35:17 - Speaker 2

All right, all right. All right, all right. So there's that. Do you agree with the panel this week? Which film would you have chosen? if not, send me an email, jamieatduvercom, or post to our socials at fyrunderscorepodcast. I want to thank JD, dave, norm and Maddie, and, of course, i want to thank you for joining us each and every week. Don't forget to send us a review through Apple Podcasts or Spotify. We don't crave feedback, but we sure appreciate it. Well, that's what I've got for you this week. Tune in next week when we take a close look at the films of 1977. Now, if you'd please pack up your things. The theater is closed. 

Ever wondered how the Oscars have evolved over time and their impact on the film industry? Join Matti Price and his esteemed panel of guests as we take a trip down memory lane and focus on the awards year of 1976. The upcoming episode will feature series regular Norm Wilner (critic and TIFF programmer), Dave Voight (InTheSeats.ca), and JD Duran (InSessionFilm.com), our insightful conversation delves into the fascinating history of the Academy Awards and their role in shaping the world of cinema.

From the original 5 to the current 17 branches, we'll examine the Oscars' journey and uncover some lesser-known facts about these prestigious awards, like the story behind the iconic gold-plated bronze statue and the original intentions of the Academy's founders. Plus, we discuss how the Oscars have influenced the film industry and why certain categories, like stunt performers, still remain conspicuously absent. Don't miss this engaging and insightful conversation about one of the most famous awards shows in the world!

0:00:05 - Speaker 1

For Your Reconsideration, for Your Reconsideration is a podcast. Next week we return with another year in movies and a panel that can't wait to discuss them. I'm Mattie Price, and myself and Jamie Dew, JD, as we like to say are your navigators through the sometimes choppy waters of the past. Once again, we have put together some great panellists to examine and contextualize a whole year in mostly American movies. Alongside the choices the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences made for that year's best picture, we'll be focusing on 1976. I'm in the host chair this time. Joining me are series regular Norm Wilner, a critic and Tiff programmer, Dave Voight from InTheSeats.ca, also a writer and podcaster, and another great writer and podcaster, jd Duran from InSessionFilmcom. It's a good talk. I'm hoping you'll join us. I've been thinking about how we got here this podcast, but also the idea that the Oscars, no matter what you think of them, have this weird special place in the culture. There are a lot of awards shows, but clearly this is the king Name, the winner of a song of the year at the Grammys from 1976. Not easy, it's. I write the songs. 

By the way, barry Manilow, the Academy was put together basically to improve the image of the film industry. It was often seen as a kind of disreputable business. Its founders, including Louis B Mayer, cecil B DeMille and Irving Thalberg, wanted to promote this idea that there was artistic achievement of the film community and they basically just wanted to give it credibility. That said, they also wanted to use the Academy to mediate labor disputes without unions because of course they did. They actually spent more time initially working on labor disputes, but eventually they turned the Academy away from arbitrations. There were 230 initial members under founding president Douglas Fairbank Sr. The awards were actually approved in July of 1928 with 12 original categories. Ballots were sent out to the 230 members. Actually, some of those original 12 awards are still around Best actor, best actress, best cinematography, and others have really changed over time. There were separate directing awards for comedy and drama. There was both an outstanding picture award, which was won by Wings, and a quote unquote best unique and artistic picture, which was won by Sunrise, a song of two humans, which is why you'll often see both of those films cited as the winner of the first Academy award. There was also an award for best title writing, which I mean. Who knew that was even a job? Where is that job? I could make a meal out of that job. You put the whole movie together, make it and then I come in at the end and just do the title in. I am in for that. 

Most people know that Oscar itself is made of sort of gold-plated bronze and it was designed by Cedric Gibbons, who was the head of the art department at MGM Studios. Just Google Cedric Gibbons His name is on literally 5,000 movies. It depicts the statue sorry, depicts a knight holding a sword and he's standing on a reel of film that has five spokes. There's a spoke for each of the original five branches of the Academy, which were actors, directors, producers, technicians and writers. There are currently 17 branches of the Academy, most of which were actually expanded from that technicians group. As films got larger, studios understood that you needed more people and that films became more of a collaboration of departments. So cinematographers, visual effects, sound, makeup and hair stylists, designers, editors and costume designers all pretty much grew out of that initial technicians designation. The Academy also has branches now for less direct participants in filmmaking casting directors, public relations and executives. But despite the 17, there's still this glaring omission which remains for stunt performers They do not have their own Academy branch and they still have no representation and no award. 

The Academy Awards is the world's longest running show award show that is televised live, and today it's actually broadcast live in 76 countries. Over the years there have also been condensed, edited versions of the awards packaged to be broadcast later around the world, which I honestly that might be something home audiences would enjoy if it were possible in real time. I would certainly sign on to watch a two hour condensed version of the Oscars if I had the choice. Anyway, we will be back soon with the 1976 awards year. Hope you can join us. Go to duvercom for all the shows and more great podcasts. Can't wait to talk to you again. On For Your Reconsideration. For Your Reconsideration is the production of Dewvre podcasts and such

Welcome back to another episode of For Your Reconsideration! This time, we're taking a trip back in time to explore the iconic 1975 movie season. Join me, Matty Price, along with expert panelists Ryan McNeil, and JM McNabb and our host jD, as we discuss the Best Picture nominees – One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Barry Lyndon, Dog Day Afternoon, Jaws, and Nashville. We'll be offering our own alternative ballot and winner, so be sure to tune in!

Listen in as we dissect each of the five nominated movies from 1975, discussing standout performances, unique filmmaking techniques, and cultural impact. We'll also touch on lesser-known gems from the year that could have made the cut for Best Picture. As we analyze each film, we'll share our thoughts on which ones have stood the test of time and which ones might be due for a reevaluation.

In addition to our in-depth analysis of these classic films, we'll be exploring the broader movie landscape of 1975, discussing the role of air conditioning in theaters, the impact of blockbusters like Jaws and Star Wars, and the ever-evolving landscape of the Academy Awards. So grab some popcorn and join us as we revisit the unforgettable movie season of 1975 on For Your Reconsideration!

--------- EPISODE CHAPTERS ---------

(0:00:00) - For Your Reconsideration

(0:15:14) - Film Critique and Analysis

(0:18:38) - Nashville

(0:30:48) - Analysis of "Dog Day Afternoon"

(0:39:06) - Jaws and Its Cultural Impact

(0:48:49) - Movie Business and Academy Awards

(0:53:35) - Cuckoo's Nest Analysis

(1:02:40) - 1975 Oscar Nominee Do-Over

(1:10:48) - Film Podcast

Transcript

0:00:00 - Cold Open

The nominees for the best picture of the year are Barry Linden, a Hawke Film Limited production, warner Brothers, stanley Kubrick producer, dog Day Afternoon, warner Brothers, martin Bregman and Martin L Fan producers. So is Universal, xanac Brown production, universal, richard D Xanac and David Brown producers, nashville, an ABC entertainment, jerry Wyenthal, robert Altman production, paramount, robert Altman producer. And one flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, a fantasy films production, united Artists, saul Zanz and Michael Douglas producers. And the winner is one flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. And the winner is one flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, one flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. 

0:01:25 - Matti

Hey, i'm Matty Price and welcome to another episode of For Your Reconsideration. As always, our expert panel will dive deeply and look fondly at a full year in mostly American movies, ultimately deciding if that year's Oscars got it right or need a do-over. This week we're looking at the films of 1975, including Best Picture Winner One, flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and nominees Barry Linden, dog Day Afternoon, jaws and Nashville, along with many other films made and released in that pivotal year. As always, our panelists will be able to present their own alternative ballot and winner. Thanks for listening and downloading. You can find this podcast through the client of your choice at duvercom. That's D-E-W-V-R-Ecom. A great year and should be a great discussion, so join. Host JD, jamie Dew and panelists JM McNabb, ryan McNeil and oh me, i'm a panelist this time out. Oh, that's a switch. Well, listen, this was recorded live and in the same room, face to face, in the before times when we all could be face to face, geez, i hope I knew what I was talking about, so let's get into it ["Mammo Podcast"]. 

0:02:58 - jD

Hey, it's JD here and welcome to For Your Reconsideration. Let's get right to the panel. Starting on my left, we have. 

0:03:05 - Matti

I'm Matthew Price of the Mammo podcast. I'm nominally half of that podcast. I guess potentially 49%. I'm the Mammo, i'm No, we're both the Mam. Do I need to go through this again? All right, for folks that are interested, there are probably 55 episodes of Mammo that explain why it's called Mammo, so you can buy all of them, just randomly pick one, you'll find it. 

It's in the context And identify those episodes, put them together and, hopefully, tell you We're still working on having some sort of custom price for our contest, but we haven't gotten anything yet. Anyway, that's Hawaii Cool. Thanks, man. 

0:03:44 - Ryan

I'm Ryan McNeil, my site is theMatin8.ca, which is not nearly as complicated to explain, and I also host the Magnatecast. 

0:03:52 - JM

Cool. thanks, man. I'm JM McNabb. I'm one of the hosts of the rewatchability podcast. rewatchabilitycom, or the iTunes or whatever fringe websites people get podcasts on, is probably there. Are you on GeoCities? Probably? yeah, we're on Angel Fire now It's pretty big. 

0:04:11 - Speaker 4

There are a ton. I did a search just the other day and there were like two sites that I've never signed up for or anything like that that were carrying podcasts, Yeah yeah, yeah, that's weird. 

Totally far out, thanks. Well, we're here to talk about an embarrassment of riches, i think, 1975,. We're going to talk about the five nominated pictures today, and then we'll go around the table and we'll hear what you guys have to think, whether the ballot should stay the same, whether it should change, You're scratching your chin? 

0:04:46 - Speaker 5

That's my pencil. look, i'm sorry. OK, is that picking up on the mic? 

0:04:50 - Speaker 4

No, no, no, I was just waiting for you to say 1975. Suddenly, the panel drinks. 

0:04:57 - Speaker 5

I don't have a pipe and a monocle, so that's like I'm going to scratch my chin. 

0:05:02 - Speaker 4

You must feel beardless. 

0:05:03 - Speaker 6

I have no idea how naked I feel. 

0:05:06 - Speaker 4

Three of us have beards, one of us do not. Let's see if you can pick that up. 

0:05:09 - Speaker 2

You're trying to groan, it just won't grow Are you even allowed to talk about movies. 

0:05:12 - Speaker 6

I know, but that's your thing. It'll be your tour of the war, and so already Here's how we come full circle. 

0:05:17 - Speaker 3

In the 1980s, you weren't allowed to make them unless you had a beard Right, You can't talk about them. Yeah, Everyone's sort of seazy. Having the beard like It was like, oh, you have to have one And we're not letting you. What are you? 

0:05:27 - Speaker 5

going to get behind the camera without a beard. You'll cut your chin in the view. Peter, that's fine, that's right. 

0:05:34 - Speaker 3

You can't have a house, come back and you have a beard. 

0:05:36 - Speaker 5

Most people haven't seen the photos. 

0:05:37 - Speaker 3

She was pretty quiet, but Nina Burtmuller had a huge beard Yeah, she had a huge beard. 

0:05:41 - Speaker 4

She was five. 

0:05:42 - Speaker 3

Yeah. 

0:05:43 - Speaker 4

We were running a little hot there with that beard talk. I just had to make some adjustments there. It was all right guys. So I got excited 1975, we had as your best picture that year. One flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. The other four nominees were Jaws Nashville, dog Day Afternoon and Barry Lyndon. Is there a particular film that you guys want to start with? 

0:06:06 - Speaker 3

Jesus throwing darts Can we start with Barry Lyndon. 

0:06:08 - Speaker 4

Yeah. 

0:06:10 - Speaker 3

Because I just feel like it's the easy one to talk about. at least for me, I don't know how everybody else wants to. 

0:06:13 - Speaker 5

Yeah, let's start with. Yeah, it's a brief movie that's easy to talk about Very long. 

0:06:19 - Speaker 3

I mean in the sense that I think, legitimately, if you're looking through the lens of history, it's the one that is the easiest to dismiss as, like this is the least of all the Cooper films. It's kind of not in the same league with the other movies in this year. For me I don't know that it necessarily It feels like a movie that they're giving him because they couldn't give it to him for 2001. Like they're making up to him, yeah, and sort of like no, no, we know, We know Cooper's a genius, so here's a movie he made. It doesn't feel like part of the same cadre. I don't know how anyone else feels. Does anybody really like Barry Lyndon? 

0:06:51 - Speaker 4

Okay. So I went into it thinking I was really going to dislike it. I don't dislike it, but I I guess I come in with this weird bias that for some reason I think I don't like Santa Cooper movies, But every time I sit down and watch one I'm like fuck, that's pretty good. It is pretty good, And this was no exception for me, Other than the fact that the narrator sometimes ground on me a little bit. But I suspect if the narration wasn't there I would have been lost a lot of times. Yeah, I really liked it. I really really liked it. 

What do you like about it? I don't know that I could put my finger on what I liked about it because, again, there's a lot of components of the movie that I shouldn't like Or, based on my history, I shouldn't like, But I found myself appreciating things that I wouldn't normally appreciate. There's a shot, for example, at one point, where the camera is way up on a hill and it's a countryside And it's just to get this stagecoach or wagon or whatever you want to call it carriage going by, And I'm watching the shot and just like Jesus Christ, like the amount of work that must went into just thinking that up is mind-blowing to me? 

0:08:02 - Speaker 5

Well, the one that's cinematography Oscar this year it didn't I think it did. 

0:08:07 - Speaker 4

I'm not sure what was it. 

0:08:08 - Speaker 3

It went four awards, yeah, i think one of the most cinematography And it's the lenses thing. It's the only movie shot Candlelight in natural light. Or he didn't like the candlelight scenes because he had NASA make lenses for him that could take in enough light to. The lenses were the size of people's heads, Wow. 

0:08:26 - Speaker 5

Yeah, so, crossman, i remember in film school when film 101 class, like the first year there when you got to cinematography. I remember seeing stills from Barry Linden. They taught us that to teach us about lens speeds and sensitivity for light And they talked about how they designed those special lenses or cameras to film these candlelight scenes. And it does look distinct. It looks unlike any other movie in those dark scenes and taverns and things. 

0:08:56 - Speaker 3

Yeah, and it looks like paintings, right. 

0:08:58 - Speaker 4

Yeah, it really does. There's a scene where they're looking at paintings And you know like, yeah, i'll leave it at that, jump on. 

0:09:08 - Speaker 6

I'm like, i'm with you. Actually I'm at price where I appreciate it on a lot of different levels, like technically it is amazing And I think that was really where it earned its stripes in this class of five is as a piece of technical execution, but just as a story and as a narrative piece it didn't grab me near as much. Part of it, i think, was this time when I rewatched it for the show. I was seeing the brushstrokes of Napoleon all over this, like this is famously the movie he made when his Napoleon project just fell apart And you can see it a lot Like, especially in those battle scenes you can see, ok, this was going to be used there for sure, and this is where this was going to come in, this was going to come in. I was distracted by that. 

But yet no, certainly it's handsome, it's really really well crafted. But just in that terms of emotional lift and engagement, that was where it lost me, especially in comparison to the other four from this year. 

0:10:07 - Speaker 3

I think the thing for me is that it's and I do really like it. I don't think there's any Cooper films I don't really like, so it's always like the weird thing about the Oscars for me is that it's partly out of contextual. Where does this fit in this person's ability to achieve? And I don't think that this compares. There's six other Cooper films that I think are better examples of his ability to achieve. But also I think what you're talking about the inability to be emotionally engaged by it is purposeful. I think the movie's tone, what makes it good is that it has this tone of kind of ride detachment about what's going on. That's kind of like reading the best books And in a book I just read Lolita And Lolita has that in spades. Like it has that weird detached, almost commenting through language on what's happening, that this has to, but it doesn't make you root for it, it doesn't. 

0:11:03 - Speaker 6

Sivage you. That's why I think you bring that up, because I was much more engaged in his adaptation of Lolita. 

0:11:08 - Speaker 3

Where he did it with this, because he actually takes away that language when he makes Lolita. It's weird. 

0:11:13 - Speaker 5

But also I think this movie is about a sort of detached sociopathic character. So I think that coldness is also kind of embedded in the character Totally agree, which you know doesn't always work in the movie. I don't think It doesn't let you into it Exactly. Yeah, and it's long. Oh my God it's long. I liked it when I first saw it, but rewatching it this time it was just. It was kind of a slog to get through. I found I watched it in two settings. 

0:11:39 - Speaker 2

Yeah, I took advantage of the intermission. 

0:11:42 - Speaker 3

I was like it's weird Why. 

0:11:43 - Speaker 5

It's not tomorrow, absolutely. That's what I did. I watched the rest of it this morning before my daughter got up The performances. 

0:11:51 - Speaker 4

you were just talking about the lead character. What did you guys think of his performance? The out of the O'Brien Right? 

0:11:58 - Speaker 6

O'Brien What did you think? 

0:12:00 - Speaker 2

of O'Brien, i was like, oh, that's the guy who I get confused the whole time. Was he the married fair fossil? No, no, what. I am the subject of debt here Did you make a pass at your daughter Her mother's funeral. 

0:12:11 - Speaker 5

Yes, I Oh, you know. 

0:12:12 - Speaker 6

That was both of them. He's This is probably the most I like O'Neal. My experience with him is kind of checkered, which is to say I'm missing, i'm sure, big performances by him. But I was kind of surprised because a lot of time when you get an actor like that and you put them into a period piece, it can seem ridiculous. So I thought that he carried it, especially in the final crux of this movie where he's got, he's got. He's involved in a duel. 

0:12:41 - Speaker 4

I could have watched him in that duel all day I could have watched that for three hours. Why did he not pick a boxing duel? And he was so good at the boxing one You know? Yeah, why go on that? No way to go, kid. 

0:12:54 - Speaker 6

No, but in that moment where you're just seeing so many things going on all over his face. also, just the other scene that comes back a lot of the time when you talk about this movie is this kind of wordless seduction that happens over a game of cards And there's so much going on both on his face and Shoot. who's the lead actress in this movie? 

0:13:15 - Speaker 3

Who's Yeah? like on both of their faces. 

0:13:18 - Speaker 6

They're doing a lot of acting without saying a damn thing, and that is really hard, and considering it's Gubrik, i can only imagine how many times he told them nope, do it again. Nope, do it again. You know O'Neill and Marissa. They're both really good in this movie. 

0:13:31 - Speaker 4

Not a card playing in this movie, though, now that you say it, yeah, yeah. 

0:13:35 - Speaker 6

Of a game that I don't know. There's no way to follow the actual card game they're playing. You're just like. 

0:13:40 - Speaker 2

I hope this is It's like early. 

0:13:41 - Speaker 3

Bond, where he's playing background. 

0:13:44 - Speaker 5

They're like, i know what he's doing, i just assumed it was a fancy. go fish. 

0:13:48 - Speaker 4

He's like put one up and put one down, Put one up and put one down, All right okay, but yeah, then I got to play a weird game after that, so I guess everybody wins. So we're sitting sort of are you with me? 

0:14:04 - Speaker 5

Chad. I like it okay. I think it's one of the, like you said, lesser Kubricks. I think it's one of the best movies about a guy named Barry. I don't know if I'd put in the five best of that year. In fact I almost surely wouldn't. But you know, you can kind of understand, especially with the Oscars, like they like big, epic, costume-y movies And it is. I like that. It's one of those, but it is kind of a bit off. It's a bit strange. The plot is sort of unconventional, it's very meandering and kind of doesn't really have much of a climax to it. He just kind of fucks off. 

0:14:40 - Speaker 3

I feel like if you're gonna do the epic thing well, you have to hang it on some kind of propulsive story Cause the idea of this of a sort of existentialist epic, where it's kind of like an epic about our real life. 

0:14:53 - Speaker 5

But you know, like that's not a really as compelling kind of hook for me And that's like again it's like it's not, but it's kind of like it's an epic about a douchebag. 

0:15:03 - Speaker 6

Sure. 

0:15:04 - Speaker 3

And only Cooper can make that movie, the epic about the douchebag. 

0:15:08 - Speaker 2

That is so Kubrickian and his sort of like view of the world, and I totally respect that he would make that movie. 

0:15:13 - Speaker 3

I don't love it. 

0:15:14 - Speaker 4

I wonder if I went into it. You know, because I went into it just expecting something that I wasn't gonna like and then I liked it. You know I'm digging in a little bit more than I might normally. I can't say for sure. But yeah, i did enjoy it, like I thought for sure when I saw, you know, two hours and 57 minutes. 

0:15:31 - Speaker 2

I was like I'm gonna be, terrible watching this. 

0:15:33 - Speaker 3

Can I put you on the spot? Sure, of the five movies that are nominated, four of them I would watch again in a heartbeat. This one, i would never watch again. 

0:15:44 - Speaker 4

There's one I wouldn't watch in a heartbeat. 

0:15:45 - Speaker 3

Again, i don't think Okay but this doesn't pass the watch again. Sort of test for me. 

0:15:52 - Speaker 6

And yet the funny thing is like it's almost assuredly coming to the box this fall And in my head I'm like I'm going. 

0:15:59 - Speaker 3

Yeah, I don't really want to. 

0:16:01 - Speaker 6

But it's one of the Kubrick's I've never seen on a big screen. 

0:16:04 - Speaker 5

I'm like you can really see what cards they're playing. Yeah. 

0:16:08 - Speaker 2

I understand the game. They'll actually be bad inside that anyway. 

0:16:13 - Speaker 6

It won't be watch it, and it won't be far off. 

0:16:15 - Speaker 5

I also don't want to say I do like some of the characters, the sort of supporting characters Like I think he stalks them with the interesting character actors and interesting faces. 

0:16:26 - Speaker 6

Yeah, yeah, and he's the butler. 

0:16:28 - Speaker 5

Yeah, and not the skinny face butler guy. 

0:16:30 - Speaker 6

I could not pay attention to a damn thing. anytime he was in the shot, i couldn't not look at his face. I don't know, i don't think I've seen him in anything before or since, but he has one like he has. 

0:16:41 - Speaker 3

well, it's just like you know same thing in Pas of Glory, Like when he does do period stuff, he never just chooses from the usual rogues gallery of the 95 people that are always in every period piece. 

0:16:50 - Speaker 6

It's always new, it's always different Yeah yeah, i think he yanked this guy out of a rogue painting. It's a here we go, yeah, yeah. 

0:16:57 - Speaker 4

I have a feeling if this movie were made now and this is one of the notes that it did take then to say this would have been like a sacrilege, but like I think it would have been a good. You know, over three nights or four nights on television, You know, oh sure, Because you're right, it doesn't have that sort of tightly wound, It feels like episodes, anyway all through it. 

0:17:19 - Speaker 3

Yeah, yeah, Like you can tell. Like I don't know when the book was written, but it feels very much of a piece of Tristram Shandy, Like it's a kind of like let's just take a walk through the sky. You know, like there's not really a compelling like thing that's gonna happen, or copper, i think I've ever heard that before. It's just like that. It's just like let's more stuff that's gonna happen you know, that's why there's no, that's why there's no. 

good like a copperfield movie really, because it's really meandering kind of episode-based thing. I think that the thing about the what I'm sort of discovering now, is that literature from kind of like the late 1700s or late 1800s is all about the fact that they didn't have TV Right, so it's just it's episodes right, like Three Musketeers, is just fucking episodes And that's how a lot I don't know about Three Musketeers, but like a lot of Dickens books were like serialized. 

Like they were written like So Three Musketeers was also serialized. Okay, yeah, there you go. So this kind of feels like a piece of television, exactly So they have little beginnings and endings all through them, but they don't really have and this feels the same, like it doesn't, even though it's illustrating a consistent thing, it's doing it with a bunch of disparate kind of things happening, yeah. 

0:18:27 - Speaker 4

Let's start down the road to Nashville. 

0:18:29 - Speaker 6

Let's. 

0:18:32 - Speaker 4

I'm curious. I'm curious what you guys think of this. 

0:18:35 - Speaker 6

I'm curious to think that that's the other one you didn't like. 

0:18:38 - Speaker 3

I think it's totally possible to dislike Nashville. It's very possible. It's very possible. I totally love Nashville. I don't think it's my favorite film, but I totally love it. It's hard not to love it. It's so expansive, maybe my favorite ultimate film. 

0:18:52 - Speaker 6

Actually, it's out there for me Yeah. 

0:18:56 - Speaker 4

I Walk me through this, cause you're right, this is the film that I wouldn't go so far as to say I would never watch it again. In fact, you know, based on what you guys say, it might make me need to re-watch this, right? But yeah, i certainly wasn't in love with it. 

0:19:11 - Speaker 6

The one thing I've said, i think, every single time I've sat down on your show, is the way a best picture should be of its time. And if somebody wanted to paint a picture of America in 1975, it's Nashville. It's this place that has got a whole bunch of things going on at once. that is a year away from its great big red, white and blue hoopla being 200 years old and a year apart from its one of its greatest catastrophes for its leader. And it's at this point, in the middle of these two moments, when it doesn't really know what it is. 

And meanwhile, in amongst this greater whole of an idea of America, you have this idea of Nashville, which is a very, very conservative place yet at the same time, is very inviting to the common person. So the idea the best way I heard it described is before American Idol, there was Nashville, so where one person with one guitar and one suitcase could go to this place and potentially get discovered and become famous. And that's why you see that happening over and over in this movie to various degrees of success is because that was the way it was And the way it still is, like Garth Brooks, within 30 years ago, was discovered just singing in one of these cafes that we see in this movie. So that's the thing for me is in 1975. 

0:20:31 - Speaker 5

America. 

0:20:31 - Speaker 6

Nashville sums it up very loosely, and that's Kurt saying he is not gonna be here. 

0:20:40 - Speaker 4

I'm sorry. Good timing, kurt. Yeah, that's right at the end of your sentence. 

0:20:45 - Speaker 3

You just watched it for the first time. 

0:20:46 - Speaker 5

Yeah, i'd never seen it before. I liked it. I'd sort of been saving it because a lot of my friends it's their favorite all men movie or one of their favorite movies. I almost had the opposite reaction to the reaction everyone had to Barry Lyndon. Even though it's almost as long, i kind of felt like I wanna revisit this soon. Now that I've kind of seen the whole thing, i wanna watch it again and really sort of pick out those individual moments where, as the first time I was watching it, i was kind of for the first hour at least, kind of trying to get a handle on what the sort of overall architecture of this movie was or was going to be. 

I did end up liking it quite a bit, but it is an unusual movie. I don't quite know how I feel about it And I don't know if I will until I see it again, which sounds a bit strange. But I liked it. I liked the cast, i liked how Audit got, i liked how, like you said, it's very timely Like it is about this kind of almost undefined sort of period in American history where we definitely have a lot of sort of remnants of the 60s. There's sort of this Peter Paul and Mary kind of surrogates in here and they're breaking apart at the seams or kind of. Yeah, it's just this kind of automalgam of things going on, i would say. Actually, what I just mentioned is one thing I kind of didn't like about it was the fact that there were all these sort of stand-ins for a well-known artist. There's like fake Loretta Lynn, fake Peter Paul and Mary. That kind of took me out of it a bit. I wish that maybe all of them Just like the real people. 

Or print out their own personalities. Yeah, yeah, but. 

0:22:25 - Speaker 2

Ali Aguld in there is someone else, so random right And Julie Christie. 

0:22:31 - Speaker 6

I think the one thing, though, is that that's kind of the archetype still to this day, kind of the archetype of what you have in terms of Nashville, in terms of the music, like you'll have, the one thing they didn't have because it was really a thing in 75 was the one that trickles over to being Warhol Rockstar. The closest we get with that is Karateen, because he's the one that they're all fawning over. But they didn't have, like, the 1975 equivalent of, like the Keith Urban, because there was none. But that's the thing, thank. 

0:22:57 - Speaker 5

God. 

0:22:59 - Speaker 6

But that was. I think that's the thing why they all seem so very Loretta Lynn-like and George Jones-like. 

0:23:04 - Speaker 3

It's just the state of the music industry, Yeah yeah, and that was you know. 

0:23:08 - Speaker 6

country was compartmentalized into just four by very, very. 

0:23:11 - Speaker 5

But I think it does get specific, especially in terms of like her look and what and like her manager, husband, yeah, and that can be a trick. 

0:23:18 - Speaker 3

I just think, apart from the specific details of what, the sort of who the characters are, because I think that is all super important, One of the things about Nashville that's so like that, I think, for especially people at the time that certainly feel me watching it, is that there are so many characters and yet they're so delineated and you just totally wanna follow all. For me, I wanna follow all of those characters, and it's a huge group of them. But it also, like it falls into like every culture has a movie, I think, or many cultures in the world in their film kind of history, have like a movie that on some level is like here's everything in the culture in one movie. So, like for French films, it's the rules of the game. Rules of the game has all the French people in the world in one movie. And in Italy it's La Dolce Vida. La Dolce Vida has all the Italians, It has the this level of Italians and it has the lower levels and has the upper levels and has the this movie. Is that for America? 

0:24:14 - Speaker 5

I thought it was a man man man world. Well, that's true too. That has many people in it. 

0:24:20 - Speaker 3

But that's more about all the people that are in cartoons. You're right. 

0:24:24 - Speaker 5

So you're saying you place a higher premium on these actors as opposed to the three Stooges, Correct? 

0:24:29 - Speaker 2

yeah, yeah. 

0:24:32 - Speaker 3

I just I guess what I am saying is that That that that thing of like being the hinge point of of depicting a whole culture is, is in Nashville. It's the hinge, it's the thing, it's the crucible through which all the other movies before and since, kind of in terms of just how you view, like whatever America is, i can't divorce it from that movie. 

So there's before that movie and after that movie, kind of, and it just yeah, like, at least for me It that's how it feels. It feels like like it's like the individual stories are interesting, but it's that. It's that thing where the movie ends and you're like well, that was a sum total of something like that was. 

0:25:14 - Speaker 4

Just can't get past the fact that you know, jeff, go blew him in a movie and not let him talk. 

0:25:20 - Speaker 5

We're really stop it. I think his wardrobe did the talking. 

0:25:29 - Speaker 4

Yeah, i didn't. Yeah, i wouldn't go so far as to say I didn't, i didn't like it. It just it meandered for me it was all over the place and maybe, again, maybe I was not, no, in the right place, my head was swiveling a little too much. I will tell you this I watched that movie on my computer, not on my television. 

0:25:43 - Speaker 3

Sure. 

0:25:44 - Speaker 4

Maybe, maybe that had something to do with it. Yeah, yeah but yeah, it was. 

0:25:52 - Speaker 3

You kind of have to immerse yourself in it, i think. 

0:25:55 - Speaker 6

I think it just requires you to be just because so many, so many of the scenes like they've got so many people in them. 

0:26:00 - Speaker 3

You're looking what's going on, yeah, and it's, yeah, it's also the movie where he absolutely Perfects that thing of the long zooms and the multiple conversations and the multiple mics all coming at once and the pulling and sort of layering of stuff. Like he got closer and closer and closer and like I think the cave is probably a Really good example of it and mash is a pretty good example of it, but this is like it's the best email that did that thing up. Like we're gonna have a room with 200 people. They're already talking and you're kind of gonna hear them all, not the top. 

0:26:32 - Speaker 4

Yeah, it almost feels like one, and maybe this, i don't know, but one Continued. Yeah, you're following your yes. 

0:26:38 - Speaker 3

Yeah, yeah, journalists right, and and just like yeah, and just like I mean and I think if you're watching that, on a smaller screen and you're kind of it's it's harder to like Part of like I'm thinking of, like The Orson Welles movie with a really long take at the trial, no, the one with a touch of you. Yeah, like the whole movie of touch of evil is not that good, but that opening shot is so good that it kind of elevates everything else that you see after it And. 

I think like when you can establish just that technical level of mastery right away and be like boom, like my drop by, just I own. 

0:27:12 - Speaker 5

You know that you, you, it elevates the rest of it. I know what, when I like, i watch it on a you know a larger TV. So, yeah, i wish I could have seen in the theater, but you can pick out like there's always Someone in the background that's doing something that we've seen before, or an actor showing up. 

Like it feels like he's created this space where these characters kind of Yeah and so sometimes you do Pinpoint little things, even though they might not be sort of spectacular big screen Things, i think on a larger screen you might sort of notice details, and that's probably why I want to watch it again. I want to. I feel like a lot of those probably went over my head the first time and I think a lot of If we want to just talk influence. 

0:27:53 - Speaker 3

A lot of that shows up in a lot of other movies. That thing of weaving in Stuff like Pulp Fiction, like that thing of like stuff happening in the background that you've actually. You can later on you connect the dots and be like Oh, these were all half of Paul St Andersen's career. Well, he's a. You know he's a devote. Yeah, famously, anderson quit for a while just to assist All his last couple of movies. Yeah, so he's absolutely huge. 

0:28:17 - Speaker 4

Yeah, you see it in a bunch of movies, but yeah, yep, yeah, i think, yeah, i think that pretty much covers that I mean with that national. 

0:28:26 - Speaker 3

There's no Magnolia, for sure. Oh, that's, that's for sure. 

0:28:31 - Speaker 2

No, he nights either, probably not it's that's. 

0:28:33 - Speaker 3

That was mortis Corsese. I think in some ways It's also the fight. 

0:28:37 - Speaker 5

I remember when I saw Magnolia, like when it first came out, i was in high school and I was like, oh, this is what an important, different kind of movie, right. And then, a few years later I think, i saw short cuts. I was like, oh well, this is where that came from. And now I'm saying natural, like, oh well, this is really the origin. 

0:28:53 - Speaker 4

Yeah, totally Yeah. So you say that boom. But yeah, switch one off. 

0:28:57 - Speaker 3

In my head I I think what's really interesting is this is the year as a total where it's so clear that without television, drama in the 50s like half of these movies don't happen, like Altman and We're gonna talk about Cindy Lumet and dog day and we're gonna talk about Jaws and Spielberg came on the TV and like and like, like it's. It's so beholden to TV as a sort of training ground, so which I'm not sure like the visually. These movies are so expensive and they're so beyond TV. But there's something about those people's ability to jungle actors and kind of get you know Really quickly get great performances out of people. So you can have a movie with 35 speaking roles, major speaking roles, and you can actually direct them all effectively because he comes out of like shooting live Playoffs, 90s and stuff, or it's like I had no time to spend with you on that. That level of economy, i think, is part of what makes this great and what makes him kind of great. 

0:29:55 - Speaker 4

We just mentioned dog day and I think that after talking about two giant movies like big epic sprawling movies, dog is sort of our bottle, the bottle episode Where you guys on dog afternoon, i Really love this movie. 

0:30:15 - Speaker 5

I I hadn't seen it in a while and I still love it. It's great every time you watch it. Yeah it's just all time So there's nothing I I can say About it really in any kind of negative capacity. I just thought it's really it's a great summer movie too, like it feels so of that, like you feel like you're there watching this very visceral. 

0:30:35 - Speaker 4

Yeah, sweaty and Like I was claustrophobic, yeah, sort of claustrophobic, i mean I don't know why it's, it's enough space, but I felt the. you know, it's because of that shot of the dog. 

0:30:48 - Speaker 2

Anytime the calendar turns over August, i start thinking about you know, but I'm due to watch dog. 

0:30:53 - Speaker 6

Has anybody seen the dog? 

0:30:54 - Speaker 3

or whatever. 

0:30:55 - Speaker 6

No, I've never heard that so so yeah. 

0:30:57 - Speaker 3

I'm only curious because this movie is so good. Right, yeah, there is this, there's this documentary about the actual guy, because it's a real. That's not a real. Right, yes, right. And the weird for me, the weird, amazing achievement about dog day is that totally contextualist, like as a person who grew up in the 1980s and saw this movie on home video and and I know Virtually and certainly at the time I do virtually nothing about kind of 1970s urban history, about New York City, the scene where he shows Attica, you still go fuck. Yeah. 

0:31:27 - Speaker 5

I don't know anything. 

0:31:29 - Speaker 2

I don't. 

0:31:29 - Speaker 3

I still don't really know what he's talking about. It still makes you go like they're right at a cut, you know it just the movie puts you in so Compellingly to what he's doing, he's doing, he's doing, doing he's spectacular in this movie. Yes, So the women, if all the women in the bank are amazing. They're all great Yeah. 

0:31:48 - Speaker 5

I, you're Al Pacino, i to show How, how far he's come Or how duty is in this movie. I should say I was. I watched it up at my cottage and we're getting the newspaper, i think the. The day before we watched dog day afternoon and we're reading The tiff announcements and there was a movie with, or I can't remember which movie is Al Pacino And did you guys? 

see someone, someone's new movie and someone we talked about was like, oh, this movie is coming to tiff and I was like, oh, who's in it? and then my wife said Al Pacino. And I went, oh, and we're like, yeah, i know Al Pacino. And then we watched dog day afternoon. It was just holy shit. This guy was so Just on top of his game, just sir, when he had more than one registered for his boy. 

0:32:35 - Speaker 4

I just love that he let himself be so uncool, you know like, you know, so Raw and vulnerable, yeah, when he's sliding around, when he's running back and forth, when they, when they first, when the cops first sort of Uh, come into contact with him and he's just he's sliding across the bank floor like he's frantic and he's absolutely out of control And there's just something so uncool. 

0:32:55 - Speaker 6

Even, just even just the robbery itself, like it's, it's, it's clear, like he had it all mapped out in his head, but the actual execution of it It's not. You know, to use a terrible example as a counterpoint, it's not the bank heist at the beginning of the dark night where they're just, where everything has just been like clocked down to the second. 

0:33:11 - Speaker 2

Yes, you know, this is all very okay, yeah, i got this the biggest idea. Yeah, yeah, no words. 

0:33:16 - Speaker 4

Yeah, You know, and he's like yeah, and his voice is all like pieces out, like Yeah, so it's just watching him. 

0:33:23 - Speaker 6

You know he's got the plan, He knows what he's supposed to do, but what you actually like execute with any kind of level of confidence is just not there. 

0:33:30 - Speaker 5

And that's that's so realistic too, like I feel, like anything I try to do with my friends, one of them will bail. 

0:33:35 - Speaker 3

Right, yeah, that makes sense, and one of them will be John Kazal, so that's no good, yeah, how have we not talked about John Kazal? Well, we need to talk about, because I think, to your point, was it? 

0:33:44 - Speaker 5

Kazal. I've always said Kazaly and now I feel like I'm wrong. 

0:33:47 - Speaker 3

I think it's Kazal, but I guess I it's a guy I'm trying to remember from an interview, but I anyway. But yeah, he is the unsung hero of 1970s because he's a dear hunter in this and the two godfathers, right. 

0:33:57 - Speaker 2

Yeah. 

0:33:59 - Speaker 5

And those were the only kind of movies he made pretty much. 

0:34:02 - Speaker 3

You know, if you look at every like there's a guy that had to earn his way on just into front of the camera. He really didn't like go, or people did not go that you need to be photographing, and then he died. 

0:34:14 - Speaker 5

And then he died and I think, like he was, uh living with meryl street or dating meryl street for a? 

0:34:19 - Speaker 3

long time. I think, yeah, and and it's just like He's. He's this incredible counterbalance to all these Really strong actors like like Pacino and De Niro. Right, and especially in Pacino's case, if you look at what happened, like the progression of him right after Kazal died because he did cruising and like Princess, it like like he. 

All of a sudden he became the opportunity that we are talking about derisively And it's almost as if Kazal was like his spirit animal or something like he was the only one keeping it like On the level, like just imagine him doing, cruising, and then Kazal showed up and being like Dude we work so hard. 

0:35:06 - Speaker 5

I think what stands, or where this movie sort of stands apart from other Pacino movies too At least the ones that sort of come to mind now, like the godfather and movies around that time Is this almost a one-man show and there's a lot of other great actors but it all rests on him And there's so many great close-ups of him that sort of long takes of him and it's just uh, he is Just the star and the focus of this movie and we really get to see what he can do. 

0:35:29 - Speaker 3

And just play scared. so well, like you, wonder why he doesn't play scared more, because he's so You see it like you, just he doesn't have to see it He wants to be, he wants to be cool like all the time. 

0:35:39 - Speaker 5

I just see it right. Yeah, How about a movie where i'm the devil? 

0:35:47 - Speaker 3

There is a comment to be had about that Pacino playing this movie Like that and being like. 

0:35:56 - Speaker 6

How to come. 

0:35:57 - Speaker 3

I can only imagine him reading his last will. 

0:35:59 - Speaker 4

At best, I'll touch that a lot. 

0:36:04 - Speaker 5

I remember reading, uh, or hearing somewhere that, uh, christopher Nolan said that when they made insomnia, uh, when he's directing Pacino, pacino would start out crazy, cartoonishly big And stop him. Be like what are you doing? And he's like, no, no, i do that on purpose. I hit like 11 and then in the later takes I can, sort of new, find the nuances. That's like it. I don't. I don't think he's finding those nuances. 

0:36:31 - Speaker 3

But also if you're al Pacino and whoever, whatever director, you're working with now idolizes you. Do you make him? do? 

0:36:36 - Speaker 5

take eight, take nine Right you don't let him get there, right, you're just like oh no, i guess this is the best You're gonna like. 

0:36:41 - Speaker 3

Unless he tells the person, unless the person has a temerity to go up to al Pacino, i don't think you're doing the best workout like which. Who's gonna do that right? So, maybe the devil, yeah, maybe his path is not And he, i imagine he's a method guy. Imagine he would have lived in this part. 

0:37:00 - Speaker 5

He robbed a bank. for this role He went to jail for a long time. 

0:37:03 - Speaker 3

He also famously went halfway towards sexual reassignment. 

0:37:09 - Speaker 5

And also a great supporting cast uh, chris sarandon, and uh uh Uh. We actually just did the princess bride on our podcast, So it was interesting seeing those two movies within a week. Yeah, yeah, very different chris sarandon roles. 

0:37:21 - Speaker 3

Yeah, yeah, uh, charles Sturning. Sturning is so great and this is the perfect part for during. He should always be a cop, right, yeah, and he's so like. Uh, what I like about Charles Sturning is he's he's great at showing sort of like intense, inappropriate frustration. Like even when he's intensely frustrated, you can tell there's this thing in his voice where he's like I'm fucking this up, i can't be this angry right now, i'm gonna bring it down. 

0:37:48 - Speaker 4

Yeah, so there's a. 

0:37:52 - Speaker 3

I mean, I think it's neat that it comes out the same year as Nashville, because they feel like two different ways of showing something interesting about America Where it is at that moment, and this one feels very much New York. 

0:38:01 - Speaker 6

That's what we're talking about. Well, urban, you know we were talking before we went on about how the American cities there's two or three of them that have a very, very distinct character And like I don't see this as being said in Cincinnati, you know, that kind of thing, that kind of closeness of everybody on top of each other, yeah, and like the dead of summer, when everybody's really bloody irritated, you know, and just anybody can like go on edge, that this, this is where the story takes place. 

0:38:26 - Speaker 5

It's very, again, it's very much of its time and place And the fact that, like it's an anti-authoritarian hero, Like the reason why the you know this neighborhood sort of rallied around him, This is because he was, you know, saying fuck you to the cops, Yeah. 

0:38:41 - Speaker 6

And while cameras rolled and caught it all. 

0:38:43 - Speaker 2

Again. 

0:38:43 - Speaker 6

This is also where we got everybody really wanting to be famous right Like same sort of thing as Nashville, where everybody all of a sudden really wants to be famous because TV is much bigger than it was and Tablo Journal is much bigger than it was. So, everybody wants to be famous just for doing something. So seeing somebody out there, seeing something where somebody is kind of grabbing their moment in front of you, But I also think it's like like a lot of the best 70s movies are about this distrusting authority. 

0:39:06 - Speaker 5

Whether it's the police or the government, And I feel like the fact that everyone was celebrating this bank robber is really we're talking about the other. 

0:39:13 - Speaker 6

There's other to cheer him up. 

0:39:14 - Speaker 3

Yeah, exactly, and also the fact that, at that point in time, new York City itself is basically bankrupt And that the people who live in New York are so angry about the fact that this city, which is supposed to be the greatest city, is basically like a crumbling ruin, yeah, yeah, when he goes into the vault and there's and there's money. 

0:39:32 - Speaker 5

It's a perfect. It's a perfect like I'm showing up in New York. 

0:39:34 - Speaker 4

I'm going to be big, i'm going to be big. 

0:39:36 - Speaker 3

And it's like there's a thousand dollars here. What just occurred? to me is that which I'm surprised, has never occurred to me before but, weirdly, if you take these two films and mash them together, you actually get do the right thing. Oh yeah, mash Nashville and Dog Day together, kind of get through the right thing. You get this big movie set in one of the hottest days in New York City with all kinds of characters. 

0:39:56 - Speaker 4

Are you listening? internet? There's your cue. There's your cue. I want to see a supercut. There's a 35 foot shark in the room? Yes, there is. We're not talking about it all, and I think we should probably give it some, give it some love, give it a hug. 

0:40:13 - Speaker 3

I don't care for this. That's good You guys watch. 

0:40:17 - Speaker 6

Jaws 4, right, Jaws 2 has been on TV a lot. 

0:40:22 - Speaker 4

It's a shark with a water skier in front of it. 

0:40:24 - Speaker 3

We had a conversation a while ago where we were talking about maybe it was the Back to the Future one where we were like, oh, we're apocalypse now. And we were like what do we really need to say? Because I feel like everybody kind of knows how great this movie is. I feel like Jaws is in the same. It's so great and I'm trying to figure out a person who is like I don't care for Jaws. Jaws is great. 

0:40:44 - Speaker 4

Jaws is yeah, yeah, is that what we're going to do when we're sitting here in Gutch? You're right. if that's the case, Well, I can tell a funny story. 

0:40:51 - Speaker 3

Tell a funny story. So my father's not good with scary movies particularly, and Jaws came out in 1975 and so I was four. He and my mother were definitely not going to see the scary movie, so he went by himself to see this scary movie, that he's not good at scary movies. 

And then he drove home suitably freaked out And on the way home he kept hearing sounds like water sounds in the car, to the point where he was driving and whipping his head around and turning it around and stuff. But what was happening? And he came in completely Wacken has, completely freaked out, and my mother said, oh, there's a case of apple juice in the car. 

0:41:36 - Speaker 5

And then, if this were a movie, he'd open up the trunk to get the apple juice in the car, just a shark bail. Yeah, i mean I was just going to say I feel like, looking back, it's easy to say that Jaws was sort of like the populist choice, like the blockbuster that they stuck on here. But I mean, i think like we all agree, it's one of the best movies of all time. 

And I think what people forget or wouldn't maybe acknowledge, looking at this in terms of the other five movies, is how incredibly subversive it is. I mean, we're talking about movies of their time. I mean, i've always read Jaws as an allegory for the Vietnam War. 

0:42:16 - Speaker 3

Well, it's certainly the most pop cultural way of getting at the mistrust of authority, much more than dog days. 

0:42:23 - Speaker 5

Yeah, exactly, really about saying, and also like the divide in men and masculinity and sort of like reuniting these three men, the sort of pacifist Richard Dreyfus and the war hero Robert Shaw, and then started stuck in the middle is Brody, who's kind of his father, who's willing to defend his family, but he he just has violence because he was a cop and he he killed someone or something. So that's when I took this job. This is an incredibly important movie for this time, if that's sort of the lens we're looking through these movies. 

0:42:56 - Speaker 3

I tend to agree. I feel like the Oaks are good. 

0:42:59 - Speaker 6

No, i well. The thing when I think about this movie is certainly, like I said, i was an Oscar movie, because that's why we're here. There's two things I always wonder about is one what would have happened if this movie had one best picture? What would that have done to Spielberg's career? You know, it would have been a case of too much too soon, but he just not had gone on. Geez, if only he had been a success. Well, that's like you know, yeah it's, it's. 

0:43:23 - Speaker 2

I know I want it. 

0:43:24 - Speaker 6

You know how long it kept him hungry doing all of these movies that had a lot going on, that were pop movies that our current pop movies just can. 

0:43:32 - Speaker 3

So you think if it didn't recognize more it would have negatively? absolutely Yeah, he would have posted through big budgets and not have to fight. 

0:43:42 - Speaker 6

Yeah, that's my thought is is there is something to be said, sometimes for too much, too soon. The other thing I wonder about as well, you know, on the flip side is what would have happened if the damn shark had a warrant? 

0:43:55 - Speaker 3

Because, because that's the big city had to shoot around it. 

0:43:58 - Speaker 6

That's what I thought, Yeah you know, like that's a lot of what makes don't even remember the stuff that you're talking about for sure, with the emotional resonance of the men in this movie. That's all in the screenplay. Like he had that from the word go, because he was basically tearing up the book and putting it back to me in his own way. That was there from the start, but I feel that that might have been buried if the damn shark kind of worked and we would have been able to see it more and see what he was able to do with it, even though he said famously I don't want to show up for the first act. 

0:44:26 - Speaker 5

You know, yeah, you know, and that's the other thing is it's hard to sort of speculate because you know, for they could have had a working, you know, motorized shark, filmed all those scenes, then gone in the editing room and been like, hey, you know what. it actually cuts together better when we don't see the shark Like who knows what. 

0:44:42 - Speaker 6

Yeah, exactly, and that's like with both of them. 

0:44:43 - Speaker 3

We don't know, i also think, given the state of technology movie technology in 1974, 73, 74, when he was filming this, there is no universe that exists where that shark would have worked. 

0:44:55 - Speaker 5

I think people would have told him it could work. 

0:44:59 - Speaker 6

Well, it all came down to if he had filmed it in a tank, like Universal wanted him to do. It was because they put it out there and Martha's Vineyard in the salt water that it just started screwing up like no tomorrow. 

0:45:08 - Speaker 4

They wanted it shot in a tank. They wanted to show him a tank. 

0:45:11 - Speaker 6

Yeah, they absolutely saw that because that was every undersea, like every underwater adventure up until then had all been shot in this tank. That's why, and that's why they look so damn terrible. 

0:45:22 - Speaker 5

Well, they did some stuff in the tank right, like the sea worries and the cage which your driver's is down in the tank. Yeah, they did some of that. 

0:45:27 - Speaker 6

I think they didn't do something with real sharks. 

0:45:30 - Speaker 3

Well, they did, They cut it. but they're not like sharks, but they're like little, but yeah, they were still wanting him to do like sharks, And he's like no, we're gonna. 

0:45:37 - Speaker 5

We want you to film it. Jaws the ride. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

0:45:43 - Speaker 3

I do think that the interesting thing for me when you say like if it had won so famously adult field, is both could ever have one in that year, because and they sort of the comparison I would draw is this for me in movies is where music was around 1963. So this is the breaking point. Like for a long time in music what was popular and what was considered highly accomplished were actually mostly the same thing. Like what was what was popular in pop music was also what was popular on Broadway or what was popular in sort of film musicals like those were the popular songs. So what Bing Crosby was singing, which was like a parade popular music, that was also just what Rogers and Hammerstein were writing. 

Right, the break is the Beatles. The break is the invasion a little bit before with Rock and Roll, yeah, but the real break in terms of like widespread, it's like in 1963, the biggest songs come out of My Fair Lady. Those are like the big hits, not so much in 1964. That's where it breaks off right Exchange And Jaws is the break. Jaws is where the big, important movies are no longer. They're really the popcorn movies, the movies that we think of as being low culture or popular culture. They're actually the more important movies than the high culture movies, whatever that means. This is the break, so it's not possible for, i think, the people who are voting on it to actually perceive that that just happened. 

0:47:04 - Speaker 2

It's a lot of ways. It's actually a wonder that it got nominated. 

0:47:09 - Speaker 6

I feel that if that movie came along now that it just it wouldn't happen. 

0:47:13 - Speaker 4

Was it an achievement? It was an achievement, non, is that why it was? It was hard to ignore. 

0:47:20 - Speaker 6

It became the biggest movie of all time at the box office. And yeah, when I was here on the 1993 show, i said that every film except for one that became the biggest box office phenomenon went on to also get a picture nomination. So it's almost like you can't ignore it. And that was the thing, is that even if they wanted to, i don't think they could, just because it was able to do that And not care what the Godfather, which had happened three years prior. 

0:47:45 - Speaker 5

Right, but I think, because of that sort of financial reason, that it sort of started the blockbuster. They released it in more theater simultaneously. All these things have sort of led to the way we sort of digest summer blockbuster. 

It established the summer, summer Yeah which, which you know, some people might think is a negative thing, and obviously it shifted attention away from sort of art house films that were the mainstream. Yeah, i think, because we sort of perceive it that way, historically, people forget just. I mean, people know how great JAWS is, but I think when you stack it up against these other movies, i think it absolutely deserves to be there. I even think it might be the best of the five. 

0:48:21 - Speaker 3

I think it's a great movie. I think it's easily argued to be the most influential of the five. Sure, for those reasons you just mentioned. 

0:48:26 - Speaker 5

Yeah, but even just in terms of the things we've been talking about, in terms of sort of cultural reflections, in terms of even like, some of my favorite moments in the movie are the small moments like where it with Brody and his son, where he sounds like mimicking him And he doesn't realize it's so touching And it's like the small moments, just the fact that, no matter how many times you see this movie, i always forget about the dead dude in the boat. 

0:48:49 - Speaker 4

Yeah, I forget every time. 

0:48:52 - Speaker 3

And every time I like yeah. 

0:48:55 - Speaker 4

I jumped out of my chair I rewatched a few scenes this morning because I hadn't seen it in a while And I absolutely landed on that scene and watched it like an idiot, Thinking I couldn't you know, thinking I would beat it. And I did not beat it even. 

0:49:10 - Speaker 3

No, and just every time you're like what the? 

0:49:12 - Speaker 6

oh my God. 

0:49:14 - Speaker 4

I got this coming up. 

0:49:17 - Speaker 5

I don't know if you guys want to re-release recently, but people screamed in the theater, really Yeah. 

0:49:23 - Speaker 3

And that was how I introduced it to my son, who was 13, and it's like the perfect movie to show a 13 year old. Yeah, i continue. It's uh, i actually wondered because start with this like the summer movie season, the fact there was no summer movie season. Has anyone put together when the majority of theaters got air conditioning? 

0:49:40 - Speaker 6

I'm just, i'm serious because one of the reasons nobody saw movies in the service because it's so hot. 

0:49:45 - Speaker 4

No, this is it. 

0:49:46 - Speaker 5

I was talking about the future last night That's what I was thinking. They had the advertising for the theater in 1955. 

0:49:51 - Speaker 6

I'm delightfully air conditioned. 

0:49:52 - Speaker 4

Yeah, that's exactly what I was worried about. Yeah that's May though. 

0:49:57 - Speaker 6

They turn it off in. 

0:49:58 - Speaker 2

July. 

0:49:59 - Speaker 5

It just brights to spines a library but also back to the future, wasn't real. And I just see on your bookshelf you have easy riders, raging bulls. Yeah, i remember in the movie of that that was like the end of the movie. They're like jaws Before raging bullet, like jaws kind of killed it. Like we were making all these interesting movies and then just came along and then the same week I watched there was a new Documentary about Star Wars. I was on TV and it was like before Jaws and Star Wars, hollywood was making upsetting, weird movies that were dark and about Unlikeable characters. So there's two documentaries completely different viewpoints on. 

0:50:37 - Speaker 3

I mean, you can argue the good and the bad, but you can't argue the fact that jaws to change the movie business from a kind of money losing vanity business that a bunch of weirdos Like if you one things it's great about that easy riders, raging bulls is that the people that own the studios like the ones Is named blue dwarf the guy that owned Elven Lester Yeah they are weirdos, man. 

0:50:59 - Speaker 2

They're nuts right and they don't care what I mean. 

0:51:01 - Speaker 3

It's a. It's a hobby for them. It took it from being a hobby to being like a major business. 

0:51:06 - Speaker 4

Well, just to give you the box office from that year, just the 240 million bucks. Rocky horror was a hundred forty No. 

0:51:13 - Speaker 3

I have to correct you. These are lifetime figures from I am to be their lifetime figures There's no, a rocky horror made 140 million in 1970. It has made 140 million. Okay, you can't make that much, only playing Saturday nights at midnight. Yeah Yeah, it's a misleading figure. 

0:51:29 - Speaker 4

So who's this is 112, and then the next movie is 31 million bucks like after that it drops, yeah, yeah. It drops like substantial. I guess that's what I was trying to illustrate, but but fair enough. 

0:51:40 - Speaker 3

The jaws made the majority. That's money in that year, and it's just. It's a staggering Considering what the next would be like. Well, it's, i mean. The only other example I have is Titanic, like where one movie makes 1.8 billion and the next closest makes 300 million. There's not even, not even close. 

0:51:58 - Speaker 4

Yeah, i thought that was. I was writing it down. It seems odd to me, other than the fact that the pop popular wise it was a it was ranked up there as well. Well, let's, let's go into cookies next, which also was high up there. We're talking about movies that do something substantial. Yeah, at the Oscars, i mean, this movie ran the board of the big big awards for fun and profit. 

0:52:21 - Speaker 3

Everyone want to name the other two movies that have run the board. 

0:52:24 - Speaker 5

I know. 

0:52:26 - Speaker 3

Happen one night There you go only three times. Has a movie, one director, picture, actor, actress and screenplay? 

0:52:31 - Speaker 6

Yeah which which tells you, like, how hard that is to do. It's almost, and I almost say like it's, it's gonna be harder that much more now because the Academy seems to See the screenplay awards as a way to throw a bone to somebody who's who's done. There's somebody smaller or somebody who's done a few things at once, so, like this is where, like Quentin Tarantino tends to get it. 

0:52:54 - Speaker 5

It's like, well, we're not gonna be director, but that was a great script. 

0:52:56 - Speaker 2

It's a great script. Yeah, you know, or? 

0:52:58 - Speaker 6

or the ones that are really weird, like a turtle's on China. This bottle's mine. They got it. It's awesome. 

0:53:02 - Speaker 3

We can't give you an award. 

0:53:03 - Speaker 2

No, you can't give me something up for that. 

0:53:05 - Speaker 6

That's the thing. Because they're looking at the screenplay award in that light, it's gonna get that much harder to run the table of the other four. Sorry, the other four plus that. 

0:53:15 - Speaker 4

Yeah, are we in the same boat with this movie that we were with Jaws a moment ago? Is this? I don't know, because this was a movie that come into the table I didn't see before really Yeah. 

0:53:29 - Speaker 3

All these movies are like movies are like first time, what happened? you know, like it's so great that you fucking loved it. 

0:53:35 - Speaker 4

Yeah, i love it right, you had just you just released your episode the day I watched it, where you were talking about Fargo and TV shows. And I tweeted you immediately and was like I would. I don't want to besmirch the movie by saying It should be a TV show, but I mean, like I want these characters, i want to see them, i want to see them over and over again, before you know, before the end anyway. 

0:53:57 - Speaker 3

It's, it's, it's not possible. I play poker fairly regularly. Not possible for me to play without at some point in the evening going. I bet it died I just So hard every time, every time. 

0:54:13 - Speaker 6

Yeah, we, when I got that message from you and I can't remember you know, it did make it into the show too. I said like I would totally spend 12 hours like watching the characters Absolutely, and like I would want something like six hours or so to be performing her feet and shows up. 

0:54:29 - Speaker 3

I want to sit on the boat, nurse ratchet. I want to see that show of her home. 

0:54:35 - Speaker 4

Performances. Like I mean it. You know why I ran the board, or we need to give that a term, like I want to say triple crown, but it can't be a triple crown because there's more than three stories. 

0:54:44 - Speaker 3

It's the sweet. 

0:54:45 - Speaker 4

It just takes fucking every box Did you need a hug when it was over. It was really quite. Yeah, I was yeah. 

0:54:52 - Speaker 3

Yeah, it's, the bottomies are not easy to watch like it's just not easy to feel like like that movie, so got punches you with its ending, so effectively built up, i think again. 

0:55:07 - Speaker 4

We're going back to Pacino. You know Nicholson, just so good. 

0:55:14 - Speaker 3

He made two films this year. The other one is the passenger, with that Game like it's amazing. 

0:55:22 - Speaker 5

The thing I love about his performance in this movie is he does the Jack Nicholson shtick And then you see the moments where that doesn't work and it kind of gets deflated. 

0:55:31 - Speaker 3

Yeah, and he pulls. It's like he's deconstructing himself right in front of you Yeah. Yeah, oh, that's good, yeah, yeah, and and you know, i also, i read this. It's Amazing to read Oh yeah, how's the adaptation like? I? 

mean nothing, not really like it, but no well, because the book is all from the chief's perspective, oh really, and that chief is the narrator But also, which is why he doesn't say anything in the movie, right boy makes that Simpsons episode make a lot worse. The the thing that I like with the book that's different is that Mc Murphy is much more like a traditional. He's like a sailor, i like Merchant seaman guy and he's and it's more about his kind of Nick doesn't have that Braggado show kind of traditional masculinity thing, he has his own thing. But it works equally as well. Yeah, it's not hoping heroes. 

I mean the thing to keep in mind is that the reason that Michael Douglas is the producer is because this was produced option first. I produced as a play, as a starring vehicle for Kirk Douglas. Really, yes, kirk Douglas is Mc Murphy, so if you put Kirk Douglas in that role, you start to see how it's a very different kind of not worse, but very different Right. 

0:56:45 - Speaker 5

I think. I think also Kirk Douglas tried to get a movie made. 

0:56:48 - Speaker 3

Yes, for a long time. And he gave up and gave it to Michael and said, like what, you make a movie out of this. 

0:56:52 - Speaker 5

And he was too, because he was too old. 

0:56:54 - Speaker 3

Yeah, i'm still playing Murphy. Any, but he gave it to me was like I own this thing. It's really good. Take a whack at it, and that's why DeVito is in it, because they were roommates. Yeah, oh, there's all kinds of weird lore and history around. I love that aspect of this movie that it really like there's a whole backstory to how this movie even winds up getting me, yeah, behind the scenes. 

0:57:14 - Speaker 6

DVD is actually like, really like. I, when I first was buying DVDs, i like go through every feature And inevitably half the time I've had this is boring shit. But every once in a while you come across one of these making of docs that was actually really well done and that was one of them And it's got like a lot of these stories in it. I forgot because I haven't watched that dog so long, but yeah, like of how it was made and how everything came into into play. 

0:57:37 - Speaker 4

This is one that there is no doubt in my mind that, like of the five, this one will be on my next next watch list. First, like I can see this one being an Annual sort of viewing. I don't know if there's a period of time I would watch it. It's been a while for me, but I would totally watch this. 

0:57:54 - Speaker 3

We were talking on the side of this, just a boyhood and how good it is. I'm able to say, having seen it twice now And I think Dogleaf or Goofs and Spits into this as well that even like that, knowing what's going to happen actually makes you more emotional about what's happening and makes it have more impact. So the rewatches are better because it's like it's one thing to see the sort of turn at the end fresh and be like whacked in the face, but it's another thing to know that that is coming and see him act that knowing Because he knows Nicholson knows what's coming and he's read the script right, so see how he plays into that moment is so great. It's like a flawless kind of proficiency. 

0:58:40 - Speaker 5

And everything with Brad Durif knowing what happens is super hard to watch And, again, like great supporting cast, like everyone in the family. 

0:58:51 - Speaker 6

Holy shit, Vincent Giavelli. 

0:58:53 - Speaker 3

Who's going to play as? 

0:58:54 - Speaker 6

Martini, or sorry, not Martini who's going to play as Chadwick? Yeah, i don't know The ball. is that the ball? 

0:59:00 - Speaker 2

No, he's the one. He's the first one we see get the electroshock therapy. 

0:59:04 - Speaker 6

I'll tell you in a second. 

0:59:05 - Speaker 3

Because he's the one who's got it like. 

0:59:07 - Speaker 6

He's dialed back and very meek and very melissian, very VIP the whole time. But then when we see him lose it, it's really disturbing, and because he's been in this box the whole time and all of a sudden he's now and it's all over. 

0:59:19 - Speaker 5

I want my cigarettes. This is the line in the sand And you just like whoa wait a second And you didn't look that up on a mobile device, you went into your mind, palace. 

0:59:32 - Speaker 3

I wish. I my mind palace is mostly just like a tent that leads into a big house. 

0:59:38 - Speaker 5

Just like a mind camper. 

0:59:40 - Speaker 6

That's right. And Fletcher in this movie is just insane to play that, to play that heel that way. Yeah, because it could very easily turn into a cartoon. but to see somebody who knows the line of not even I was going to say passive, aggressive, but it's not even passive Really. it's just an authoritarian who is just not going to take any shit, but knows how to say it in a way that's not going to upset a person who's mentally unstable. 

1:00:08 - Speaker 5

It's friggin chilling And also with the thing I haven't seen this since I was like a student having like work snow, you get the sense from her that like she goes home and totally leaves her job there, like it's just so clinical and professional. That's what really creeped me about that. 

1:00:25 - Speaker 4

I don't know I can see her walking into the apartment hanging up her keys putting a record on Yeah. I get the feeling this is a home record. 

1:00:33 - Speaker 5

I know, it is, but that's what I mean. 

1:00:35 - Speaker 6

Oh, what her life is still like outside of this. 

1:00:37 - Speaker 5

Yeah, like she just goes home and like it doesn't. I don't know, There was just something about the professionalism of it that, just like. oh, I feel like. I feel like I've encountered people Obviously less severe than that, But in my life you know what I mean. Something rang more true or close to home than the first time I'd seen it. 

1:00:53 - Speaker 6

Yeah, And yeah, this time when I watched it, I think I got the most upset watching her get choked. 

1:01:00 - Speaker 2

Like this, like, don't get me wrong. 

1:01:02 - Speaker 6

You would think that a character like this, when they're finally like put under somebody's boot, the audience would be like fuck yeah. 

1:01:08 - Speaker 5

Or something like that. No, no, no. 

1:01:10 - Speaker 6

All of a sudden, when you see this happening, you're like, oh dear God, you know, and it's just. It's. That was why I had to do that. That's why I asked if you needed to hug when it was over, just because that moment that comes just five minutes before the end is so damn visceral. 

1:01:23 - Speaker 3

It's, it's Well, it's. The thing that this movie achieves. Which is really interesting to me is that it's fully subjective, like even though the chief is not actually narrating it, you realize that you haven't really seen her as who she actually is. You've actually only seen her how they see her. Yeah, yeah, it's amazingly cogent in how it's directed. 

1:01:42 - Speaker 5

Was I the only one that found her kind of attractive? 

1:01:45 - Speaker 3

No, I think you're supposed to totally find her. 

1:01:46 - Speaker 5

It's a uniform. 

1:01:49 - Speaker 3

It's the, it's the. Now it's the same reason that I'm weirdly turned on by the by the Joss No the aliens. I was supposed to say Joss The aliens, in in. Oh my God damn mind the clock. 

1:02:05 - Speaker 2

In aliens. 

1:02:06 - Speaker 5

No. 

1:02:07 - Speaker 3

I'm weirdly turned on by women in positions of absolute authority. I think there's something there, Just uh. 

1:02:14 - Speaker 5

Yeah, I wish someone. 

1:02:16 - Speaker 6

Oh, we'll find another way. to be around here He's gonna say whoa. 

1:02:19 - Speaker 5

Yeah, I just want a woman to like put on a nice record and give me some pills. 

1:02:23 - Speaker 4

That I don't know what they do. You should come here Friday night, so you haven't played this game before. but what we do now is we want to go through the five and you know, basically you get to create your own ballot. 

1:02:36 - Speaker 2

Are we gonna talk about all three? 

1:02:37 - Speaker 4

So yeah, you need to basically take away. You know, like here were the original five, i want to pull these three off and add these three from this year and tell us a little bit about the films that you're adding up. 

1:02:47 - Speaker 5

Uh, i, you know it's such a good list of movies They're. It's a really good year. Uh, if I were to pull any off and sub any in. Well, one movie I watched for this because I looked at, like, all the movies that came out in 1975 and tried to find the ones that I hadn't seen that were supposed to be good. Uh, one that I hadn't seen was Three Days of the Condor, which I watched and I did not think was very good. Really. Yeah, you guys seen that movie recently. 

1:03:14 - Speaker 3

Yeah, I dug it. Three Days of the Condor is my absolute one of my near misses. I would put it on. Really, there's something else that I like more. 

1:03:20 - Speaker 5

but Robert Redford's such a dick in that movie. 

1:03:24 - Speaker 2

I like that in a way that's like interesting, he's just like really mean to Faye Dunnaway for no reason. 

1:03:29 - Speaker 3

Uh, it's not for no reason. 

1:03:31 - Speaker 5

Yeah, the reason is because he's a dick. No, He needs her to do certain things, i know, but then, even when it's like, she's like okay, it's all right, I'm going to help you Like we're friends now And he's just like all right, make me dinner. 

1:03:43 - Speaker 3

He never knows that she's for sure not working against him. It's a movie That movie is so. For me it's the essay on paranoia. It's the absolute hype of like what it is like to First of all it has my favorite opening setup thing for a thriller, which is that he goes to get lunch and comes back. 

Oh yeah, i love the openings, yeah, but what's great about that? what's great about that for me when I watched it is that it sets up the whole rest of the movie of like every dickish thing he does is just like nothing. I can't trust anything. Everything is up for grabs. I have no idea who's a random and who's a real person. I have no idea whether anyone is telling the truth. I need to act accordingly. It's his ability to kind of sacrifice everything, because he literally doesn't know when the next thing is coming. 

1:04:29 - Speaker 5

I think he just gets away with a lot because he's handsome, like there's like a line where, like fate is always like you're being really mean to me. He's like oh, i didn't even try to rape you, that's not a joke. 

1:04:41 - Speaker 2

That's what he says in the movie. 

1:04:44 - Speaker 5

But everyone's okay. Okay, that's fine. Anyways, I liked it Okay. I didn't you know I love Pandora, but I, you know I, if we're up to me, i would It is. It is up to me Yes. 

I would say take out Barry Lyndon Yeah, sub and the passenger, which I know is another Nicholson movie, but I didn't. I didn't get to rewatch it for this, but I saw maybe 10 years ago and the Antonioni movie. I think that's a great movie. Maybe a little weird for the Oscars. I also like. Looking at the list. I'm surprised that Man Who Would Be King isn't on here, just because it seems like the big kind of historical drama like today They'd probably give a nomination to. They probably got some like costume-y. 

1:05:27 - Speaker 3

It got some other stuff our direction and costume-y stuff. It's my I would totally Sub-Man Who Would Be King for Barry Lyndon. I feel like they're very similar and far superior to me, definitely. 

1:05:38 - Speaker 5

Well, if I'm just taking one off, I take Barry Lyndon and put a passenger on, but Man Who Would Be King would probably be like a sixth for me. 

1:05:47 - Speaker 6

This is one of those years where I'd actually keep it intact. This is a monster class. even though I'm not crazy about Barry Lyndon, as I said on an emotional level, i cannot deny just what it did in terms of achievement, like technical achievements. I'm like nope, this is as good quintet as you're going to get. 

1:06:06 - Speaker 4

It's a good list. 

1:06:07 - Speaker 6

I keep it intact. 

1:06:09 - Speaker 3

I also. I would lose Barry Lyndon for many of the same reasons. For me, it would be Man Who Would Be King, because I think that movie is The tits man. That is the greatest. I haven't actually seen that one. What's that one about? It's based on a Richard Kipling story. It stars Michael Cain and Sean Connery Oh cool And Christopher Plummer. Now you're talking about it. 

1:06:30 - Speaker 6

I know you're talking about it, and it's mostly about what it's like. 

1:06:34 - Speaker 3

First of all, i don't want to if you have never seen it. The thing that I like the most about it I will forego mentioning until you've seen it. But it's also about the Masons and kind of where there's this whole thing about on the level, on the square, that like figures into it And it's meta, like there's a character who actually is or you're Kipling in it, and it's just and it's John Huston directing it And it's big and colorful and crazy and expansive and has a lot of the themes of Huston's other films. But also Connery's performance is both of them, henry Canard, have such good chemistry. They're so clearly friends off screen, they're so good. And it's also the movie where Michael Cain met his wife, who is your. Cain is in the movie and I have never seen a more beautiful human thing, ever person. You mean Michael Cain, right? 

1:07:26 - Speaker 5

Yeah, him too, and Sean. 

1:07:27 - Speaker 2

Connery. 

1:07:28 - Speaker 3

Yeah, oh, let's check that out. It's great. The other one that didn't get mentioned yet that I would absolutely I'm very close to putting in, i'm very close on three days with Connery. I really think it's like pop wearing movie Absolutely at its best, especially for that period of time. 

But the other one that kind of doesn't get a lot of love now is the Hal Ashby film, shampoo, which is really smart and really funny And Julie Christie and Goldie Hawn and Warren Beatty and it's this comedy of manners and it's sort of like easy to dismiss, a lighter kind of more farcical thing. But it's like school for scandal. It's like a multiple guy sleeping with a lot of women kind of comedy and it gets something California culture perfect, in much the same way that the National gets Southern culture perfect. It gets SoCal perfect and it's really fun and great And kind of doesn't get talked about a lot. It's pretty close for me to being in there. It's such a good year. But you wouldn't put it on. I wouldn't put it on. The only swap I'd make is I throw Men with Men would be King in instead of Barry Lynn. 

1:08:34 - Speaker 4

So Men with Men would be King and the passenger The passenger, and I loved the passenger. 

1:08:40 - Speaker 6

I loved it. 

1:08:42 - Speaker 5

And the other thing is, john Huston is like an American. I can see it being like too British or English, but you know, because it's John Huston, you think they could have thrown it in there. 

1:08:51 - Speaker 4

Is it fair to say that if this was now, you know, the 10 nominate, i think, these movies. 

1:08:55 - Speaker 3

I was thinking that This is one of those years when I wish they hadn't had a 10, because it wouldn't have been hard at all. 

1:08:59 - Speaker 2

Yeah, yeah. 

1:09:00 - Speaker 3

It builds up. 

1:09:02 - Speaker 5

I watched all these movies together. I now have a theory that the shining was made because Kubrick lost the Oscar and sort of assembled the movie based on the elements of all these other movies, that's awesome. It's got Scamman Carothers and Jack Nicholson from the movie The One. It's got Shelly Duvall from Nashville And it's a horror movie based on a popular book like Jaws. 

1:09:29 - Speaker 3

Wow, mic drop, that is a good one. 

1:09:31 - Speaker 5

I'm going to leave this. It's been the do-over Eat it, eat it, whitey, that's spectacular. 

1:09:40 - Speaker 4

Well, i think we have a good idea where this is going to land. But 1975, does it need a do-over? It's a tough one to argue. Should we vote just for shits and giggins? Sure, yeah, i guess. 

1:09:56 - Speaker 3

All right, nobody did anyone else feel like they didn't want to come here today. It's so hard, It's so hard. 

1:10:04 - Speaker 5

I would. maybe, just because I love Jaws so much, i think it's such a perfect movie, i would maybe argue to have Jaws win Best Picture. but then if someone was like, oh, it's a bit of paperwork, i'd be like, okay, keep one for the Kubrick's Nest, that's fine, that's a great movie. Well, it will be a bit of paperwork. Okay then keep one for the Kubrick's Nest. 

1:10:23 - Speaker 6

We have two saying that we're going to have Keep it as Kubrick's Nest as well. This is one of those years when they got it right. 

1:10:28 - Speaker 4

All right, boom, there, it is Got it right. 

1:10:32 - Speaker 5

I actually anticipated that I wouldn't think that. Just from my recollections of all the movies I thought, oh, one film of the Kubrick's Nest, one of those movies is good, but I didn't think it was quite as good as maybe Jaws or like. I heard such good things about Nashville, but watching it again, it's just so good? 

1:10:47 - Speaker 4

Yeah, i think so too. When I read the stat after I watched the movie, i read the stat that it ran the board. Okay, i get it. There's no way we'll redo this. So there was tenetiveness at the beginning, but we'll keep it as it is. And one for the Kubrick's Nest. We'll hold to that. Thanks for coming out, guys. Thanks for having me. Yeah, thanks, cool. 

1:11:17 - Speaker 3

And that, as they say, is 1975. So yeah, we did indeed keep one flew over the Kukku's Nest. There was no do over. That's our second episode in a row with no do over. Boy, those 70s man, they are strong. But listen, thanks again to Ryan, to JM and to JD, my co-host, my producer, my wonderful friend Jamie Doe. We'll be back soon to talk about 1976, for your reconsideration. 

1:12:13 - Speaker 4

Podcasts and such. 

Keywords: 1975 Movie Season, Best Picture Nominees, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Barry Lyndon, Dog Day Afternoon, Jaws, Nashville, Air Conditioning, Blockbusters, Academy Awards, Film Critique, Analysis, Characters, Performances, Filmmaking Techniques, Popcorn, Memory Lane, Cultural Impact, Star Wars, Alternative Ballot, Winner, Realism, Robbery, Subversive, Vietnam War, Mistrust of Authority, Box Office, Screenplays, Big Five Oscars, Deconstruction, Kirk Douglas, Emotions, Documentary, Three Days of the Condor, Man Who Would Be King, The Passenger, Back to the Future

Chapter 1: Introduction

Hosted by Mattie Price and Jamie Dew

Panelists: Ryan McNeil, JM McNabb, and Matti Price

Overview of the podcast's premise and format

Discussion on the 48th Annual Academy Awards held in 1976

Keywords: Podcast introduction, Hosts, Panelists, Academy Awards

Chapter 2: Highlights of the 48th Annual Academy Awards

ABC acquires broadcast rights for the first time

Co-hosts: Walter Mathau, Robert Shaw, George Siegel, Goldie Hawn, and Gene Kelly

Humorous remark on the desire for a heist movie with the star-studded cast

Keywords: Academy Awards highlights, ABC, Co-hosts, Humor

Chapter 3: Notable Films and Achievements

"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" sweeps the five major categories

Comparison with other films achieving a clean sweep

Mention of Isabelle Adjani's record as the youngest Best Actress nominee

George Burns becomes the oldest acting winner

Keywords: "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," Clean sweep, Youngest nominee, Oldest winner

Chapter 4: Memorable Moments from the Ceremony

"Jaws" winning multiple awards except Best Picture

Honorary award presented to Mary Pickford

Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award recipient: Mervyn LeRoy

Gene Hersholt Humanitarian Award recipient: Jules C. Stein

Keywords: "Jaws," Mary Pickford, Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, Gene Hersholt Humanitarian Award

Chapter 5: Musical Performances and Presenters

Ray Bolger's opening number, "Hollywood Honors its Own"

Keith Carradine's performance of "I'm Easy"

USC Trojan's marching band's closing medley

Notable presenters from outside the entertainment industry

Keywords: Musical performances, Ray Bolger, Keith Carradine, USC Trojan's marching band, Presenters

Chapter 6: Remembering the Departed

Mention of notable individuals who passed away between ceremonies

Frederick March, Paul Robeson, Lee Jay Cobb, Sal Minio, Michelle Simo, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Wild Bill Wellman, Busby Berkeley, Master Luo, Rod Serling, Sidney Buckman, Bernard Herman

Keywords: In Memoriam, Departed individuals

Chapter 7: Closing and Future Episodes

Conclusion of the episode's content

Invitation to join the panelists for the next episode on 1975

Website and contact information for the podcast

Keywords: Closing remarks, Next episode preview, Contact information

Transcript

0:00:05 - Speaker 1

For your reconsideration, for your reconsideration is a podcast. Next week we are back with another stacked panel and another great year in movies. I'm your host, mattie Price, and I'm here with the always fabulous Jamie Dew. Together we assemble great panelists with diverse points of view to discuss a specific year in mostly American filmmaking, but through the clarifying crucible of the Oscars Best Picture. Our next episode is a good one, looking at the movies of 1975. Jd is hosting that conversation and our panelists are Podcaster and writer Ryan McNeil, writer JM McNabb and, oh and me, mattie Price. I am in the panelist chair for this one. 

So the 48th annual Academy Awards were presented in March of 1976 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. As was the style at the time, they awarded films made in 1975. Abc had the broadcast rights for the first time and the show was once again co-hosted. This again was a popular thing in the 70s to have multiple hosts on this show. This time it was stacked Walter Mathau, robert Shaw, george Segal, goldie Hahn and Gene Kelly. Here is my heist movie with this cast is my question. 

Most folks know that for the first time since it happened, one night a single movie. Milosh Forman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, made a clean sweep of the five major categories Best Picture, best Actor, best Actress, best Director and Best Screenplay this time adapted. It's only happened one other time so far, and that's with the Silence of the Lambs. At 20, isabella Johnny became the youngest Best Actress nominee ever at the time. Ultimately, her record was beaten first by 13-year-old Keisha Castle Hughes in whale music, and then they both went down hard to nine-year-old Kavanjanae Wallace in Beasts of the Southern Wild. At 80, george Burns became the oldest acting winner, as well as the last person born in the 19th century to receive an acting award, george Oswand. Every award it was nominated for that year, except Best Picture. The honorary award for that year went to Mary Pickford. The Irving G Thalberg Award, which is given to producers of Note, was given to Mervin G Leroy, and then they gave out a Gene Herschold Award. That's something they don't actually do all the time. That award is given for public service and working for the public good. This time they gave it to Jules C Stein, who had founded MCA, which ultimately wound up owning Universal Studios and also helped create the Hollywood canteen during World War II, which was a place where servicemen and women could go to relax and be entertained. 

Ray Bolger sang the opening number. It was a classy little diddy called Hollywood Honors It's Own. I cannot find any evidence of this song anywhere but presumably it existed at the time. There were other notable musical I'm going to start that paragraph again. Ray Bolger sang the opening number, a classy little diddy called Hollywood Honors It's Own, which I can't find any evidence of that song anywhere, but I guess it does exist. There were other notable musical performances. Keith Carradine sang his Nashville hit, i'm Easy, which he also wrote. Then at the end of the show, the USC Trojans marching band played a medley of America the beautiful. And that's entertainment. I'm sure there was not a dry eye in the house. 

There were other notable presenters that year from worlds outside of entertainment Gore Vidal, poet and playwright, poet and composer Rod McEwen. Audrey Hepburn was the presenter for Best Picture. Oh, and for the second year in a row, future murderer OJ Simpson gave out an Oscar. I don't know They loved OJ Simpson, i anyway. There was no in memoriam. Those didn't start until much later. 

But these notable folks did pass away between ceremonies Frederick March, the great actor Paul Robeson, and the activist and brilliant performer as well, actor Lee J Cobb, who had just completed the Exorcist, not a couple of years earlier. Salminio, gone way too young from well, mostly notably from Rebel Without a Cause, but many other things as well. Michel Simond, the great French actor who worked extensively with Renoir and many other great French directors. And then, for the second year in a row, one of the three Stooges died. This time they got Moe Directors Pierpaolo Pasolini, wild, bill Wellman, busby Berkeley and Master Lucchino Visconti all passed away in that year. 

Writer Rod Serling, four-time writing nominee, sidney Buckman, who wrote, among other things, mr Smith Goes to Washington and Agatha Christie. And then composer Bernard Herman died right before his score for Taxi Driver was released posthumously. So we'll be back soon with that episode 1975. Join us and our panelists, including me, and enjoy. Go to duvercom for all the shows and more great podcasts. Can't wait to talk to you again on For Your Reconciliation, for Your Reconciliation is the production of Duver Podcasts and Such. To subscribe, share, rate and review, please visit duveracom. Duvera Ah podcasts and such. 

Hello & welcome to another incredible episode of “For Your Reconsideration - an Oscars podcast.”

This week, Phil, Andrew, Jose, David & Norm join me on the show as we discuss five of the best Oscar-nominated movies in 1974. From Chinatown, The Conversation, Lenny, Towering Inferno to its best picture GodFather part II. Moreover, the panelists share movies they would add or eliminate in 1974.

Tune in to our candid & interesting conversation on some of the best movie scenes and characters as well as our nominee movie from 1974!

Timestamps

[01:23] Introducing this week’s topic, “1974.”

[01:58] About this week’s panelists

[04:12] Why “Chinatown” is one of the best-written films of the 70s in the detective movie genre & Jack’s outstanding character

[17:07] Interesting scenes in “The Towering Inferno “movie & McQueen versus Newman performance

[25:03] Was McQueen’s role supposed to be Newman’s role?

[27:50] Dissecting outstanding characters and problems in “Lenny”

[35:31] Lenny Bruce's exceptional performance in Lenny compared to his actual sets

[37:58] The conspiracy paranoia and what stands out in “The Conversation Movie.”

[52:00] Best scenes & characters in “The Godfather Part II” Movie

[01:04:20] What would our panel take away or add to the 1974 list

[01:13:33] Does 1974 require a do-over?

[01:15:17] The Panel’s nominee movie from the 1974 list

Notable Quotes

“Chinatown is a great stepping stone movie for anyone that wants to get into the film world.” (08:35-08:40)

“Lenny is just too off the moment and too rigidly controlled to try and stick to the story. It's almost too faithful.” (32:10-32:22)

“In a lot of ways, Lenny Bruce was more of a performance artist than he was in stand-up. People respect Lenny Bruce's performance more than his actual sets. They appreciate the craft more than what he was actually saying.” (37:39-37:53)

“The Godfather will always be a classic movie.” (56:20-56:22)

Please share, subscribe & leave a review!

Transcript

0:00:01 - Speaker 1

The nominees for the best picture of the year are Chinatown, a Robert Evans production, paramount. Robert Evans producer. The Conversation, a director's company production, paramount. Francis Ford Coppola producer. Fred Roos, co producer. The Godfather Part II, a Coppola company production, paramount. Francis Ford Coppola producer. Gray Fredrickson and Fred Roos co-producers. Lenny, a Marvin Worth production, united Artists. Marvin Worth producer. The Towering Inferno, an Irwin Allen production, 20th Century Fox, warner Brothers. Irwin Allen producer. And the winner is Godfather Part II, francis Ford Coppola, gray Fredrickson and Fred Roos. For your reconsideration. 

0:01:20 - Speaker 2

Hey, it's Matty Price. Myself and today's host, jamie Dew, are here for you, as we will be in every episode. Welcome to, for Your Reconsideration, an Oscars podcast. As always, we have an amazing panel of film buffs. This week, we are looking at the best picture of 1974, the Godfather, part II, as well as the other nominees Lenny, the Conversation, the Towering Inferno and Chinatown. As always, we will open it up so the panel can discuss those films, but also curate their own ballots. Remove choices they think don't work, add films that they feel like shouldn't have been overlooked. So thanks again for listening. Subscribe through the podcast client of your choice to get new episodes every week as they are available. Welcome to Season 1, and now it's time to join this episode's host, jamie. Panelist Norm Willner, David Brown, david Follows, andrew Parker and Jose Roldan. Listen. The episode was originally recorded live and in person in 2016. Remember 2016? 

0:02:23 - Speaker 3

Before there was a pandemic And we all Oh, never mind, anyway, let's get into it, it's 1974 is what we're doing and of course, i didn't recall that This is the year I was born, so Well of course you wouldn't recall. 

0:02:46 - Speaker 4

I don't remember a whole bunch. 

0:02:52 - Speaker 3

We will go around the table with introductions. Does everybody introduce themselves? I wasn't here when everybody else arrived, but we'll start over here on my left. 

0:02:57 - Speaker 5

Andrew Parker. I am the Film and Performing Arts Editor of the website Dorkshelf. You can find me on Twitter at AndrewJ Parker. 

0:03:04 - Speaker 3

Cool Thanks. 

0:03:05 - Speaker 4

Andrew, i'm Norm. 

0:03:06 - Speaker 3

Willner. You can find me on Twitter at Norm Willner. 

0:03:08 - Speaker 4

I'm the senior film writer for Now Magazine and I also do some stuff for MSN Great. 

0:03:13 - Speaker 6

Thanks, norm, i'm Phil Brown. You can find me on Twitter at that. Phil Brown and I rate for a bunch of. I rate for Dorkshelf and Now, like Them and I rate for Charmstar and Globe and Mound Remorgen Fingery and Bunch of Anyone will let me? basically. 

0:03:28 - Speaker 8

I'm Jose Roldan. You can find me on Twitter at DEC22CM and I work for one of the major studios. I'm a suit. 

0:03:35 - Speaker 7

I love all movies, i'm all about movies. No, he's not in a suit right now. Yeah, i'm David Follows. I am only from Drink Along with Dave and Jeremy. I play Jeremy. I'm going to steal Jeremy's joke from the last episode. We're on the Modern Superior Network and you can follow us on Twitter at Drink Along and myself. You can follow me at D Fidicus. It spells itself. 

0:04:03 - Speaker 3

I'm trying to spell it right now It would have to. It doesn't really spell itself. Just go to Add Drink Along, then Cool. Thanks everybody for coming out on a hazy Sunday. We are here talking 1974. What better place to start in 1974 than What do you say? we start with Chinatown. Sure, forget it, i'm going to profound. 

0:04:29 - Speaker 6

Essay on the evil. 

0:04:31 - Speaker 3

Chinatown, let's throw in Chinatown. 

0:04:34 - Speaker 4

Profound psychological essay on the evil that men and women do, written by Robert Towne directed by. Roman Plansky, probably one of the best movies in the 1970s. Oops, I may have given something away. 

0:04:45 - Speaker 5

We didn't give away the ending to Chinatown Not a monster. 

0:04:48 - Speaker 4

The title does that. Although you would not believe what men can do when they are pressed. No one really knows, do they Mr Giddish, isn't it Giddish He calls? 

0:04:58 - Speaker 8

him Mr. 

0:04:58 - Speaker 4

Giddish. He always gets it wrong because he doesn't care. So again, John Houston, Best Supporting Actor. That's my Sorry, we're getting ahead of ourselves. 

0:05:08 - Speaker 6

Yeah, no, absolutely. 

0:05:09 - Speaker 7

That's one of the great film performances all the time, and Jack was sleeping with his movie daughter and his real life daughter when they were making that movie. 

0:05:18 - Speaker 6

That explains all that aggression. 

0:05:22 - Speaker 7

Jack was sleeping with Houston's daughter. 

0:05:24 - Speaker 4

Oh, angelica, he and Angelica Houston were in that film. 

0:05:26 - Speaker 7

We were in that film when they were making that film. So it was when he was like are you fucking my daughter? 

0:05:32 - Speaker 8

It was like yes, Jack is so badass in that movie. Though That's when it's still counted After that, it's just like a version of himself In this movie. it's so awesome. 

0:05:41 - Speaker 5

He's awesome, but he's also kind of a wimpy badass. Every time someone confronts him, like the scene where he's confronted by Roman Polansky. He gets his nose cut. It's not really a badass thing. You kind of just fold it. You act like such a badass. But there's these two dudes, and the little shrimpy dude gets the jump on you. 

0:05:58 - Speaker 4

Yeah really, all you have to do is step back, yeah, and Roman Polansky cannot actually reach you. 

0:06:02 - Speaker 5

Yeah, you could just bob you, Even if you're being held back. you could have bobbed your head just enough for him to miss you. 

0:06:09 - Speaker 4

But that is what's so great about the character is that he doesn't. he's a terrible detective. 

0:06:13 - Speaker 1

He's an immediate detective. 

0:06:15 - Speaker 4

The very first scene is he's tricked by someone who isn't who. She says she is into doing something that isn't what he thinks it is. He continues to get everything wrong. It's the Harrison Ford Blade Runner performance, basically, where you just suck but people keep falling over, people keep tripping, you're there at the right moment. It's a really different version of a sleuth than we've been led to believe, although this was just a year after the long goodbye, where Aliakul played a very similar kind of detective, although with Gould you get the sense with Marlowe that he's actually paying attention Yeah, he could actually be good And faking it. And with Giddy he's overconfident. He's a dumbass. He has already gotten people killed before the movie starts or whatever happened in Chinatown. He screwed up. 

And this is what happens when this plan like basically and this is a bit of a spoiler, i suppose conceptually, but the bad guys do win The plan that he's lured into works in the first two minutes of the film And he has played from beginning to end and watching Jack Nicholson be that guy as opposed to the character from The Last Detail or the characters he played before, who were super confident and also competent That was really something That was kind of a statement of Nicholson's at the time. 

0:07:30 - Speaker 6

Is he kind of opening in The Last Detail? Well, yeah, he's a lot of bluster. 

0:07:33 - Speaker 4

He does his job and he doesn't get anybody killed Except for the one that he was supposed to get killed, Yeah but he knows the system is wrong, so there's that He's a cog in a machine, but he cooperates and he's doing a professional In this one. He is absolutely a professional, with very nice suits and a lovely office and he's useless, Which is a very California thing. 

0:07:57 - Speaker 5

He looks very good, he's very flashy And he is very indicative of that period of California history where you could get by on your looks and your swagger And that's fine. The thing that's so well written about it is we just said that it's a great film about someone who's always wrong with everything. Everyone around him knows he's going to screw this up Right to the end. The punchline of the movie is you should have seen this coming, and I think that's what I love about it. 

I think it's one of the best films of the 70s because it's probably the best written film of the 70s And in terms of how that all comes together and how it turns the detective genre on its ear, it's a great California history lesson And I think the reason that several years later because I saw it in the 80s when I was growing up for the first time, i think several years later the reason I liked something like LA Confidential is because I was like Oh, chinatown prepared me for this And I think Chinatown's a great stepping stone movie for anyone that wants to get into film noir in any way, like if you've never seen another movie like that, it's probably a good place to start because you're never going to get another movie like that again. 

0:09:07 - Speaker 4

Yeah, and it's sun drenched instead of noir. 

0:09:10 - Speaker 7

So, you fight to the subversive on every level. 

0:09:13 - Speaker 4

Although, of course, at the time people just thought Oh, what a lovely Robert Evans studio production. It's so polished and gorgeous And it is. It absolutely is. But it's this, you know, it's filled with snakes. It's this veneer of respectability, but much like what was happening in Roman Polanski's life at that time, it's just a rat's nest of ugly. 

0:09:33 - Speaker 3

It's interesting for me. I mean coming at it for the first time for this podcast. Really, yeah, yeah, absolutely. This was the film on the list that least grabbed my attention And not to say that You mean like the title Initially. 

0:09:49 - Speaker 8

No no no, no. 

0:09:49 - Speaker 4

The after-watch experience of watching it. 

0:09:51 - Speaker 3

Pacing was interesting. I think this is where the show, like the do-over, suffers from a context sort of thing. This was the first time I watched this movie And it was the first one I also watched for the 74 series, so you know, i had to sort of get into that different style filmmaking. 

0:10:10 - Speaker 4

Right, like films look different, they felt different, they were paced differently And this is a deliberate attempt to mimic an, to evoke an era that didn't exist, really Like this sort of beautiful, splendid 1920s filmmaking that wasn't there in the 1920s. That's not how they made movies. It's like the artist where it's not really about movies made in a silent era. It's about movies made around seeing the rain. It's like a romantic Romanticized. 

0:10:30 - Speaker 7

Yeah, which is what the-. Yeah, it's a false sense of nostalgia. 

0:10:32 - Speaker 4

What the film makes Yeah but this one's actively working to create that. 

0:10:36 - Speaker 3

So this side of the table, you guys are going to see me, but the left side of the table, big fans, huge fans. 

0:10:41 - Speaker 5

Oh, huge, massive fans. 

0:10:42 - Speaker 7

Over here on the right, dave. I've always enjoyed this movie. Every time I start to watch it and then when I get to the end, i'm always That ending always gets me every time because I always I get so drawn into the film because it's so gorgeous and it is such The pacing is just perfect. It's like it's one of the perfect films for it. It gets you from point A to point Z because it's such a weird ending. But that ending gets me every time, and every time I'm so disappointed by the film. At the end I'm like, oh crap, i hate I forget that. I always I have a mental block on that ending. But I mean, the film itself is just you can't take your eyes off of every frame. 

0:11:22 - Speaker 6

One of the things I love about visually is the way it's all so subtly subjective. Every shot is from Jack Nichols' perspective. You don't necessarily notice it because it's done in a way where it's not point of view necessarily. 

He's in every scene and it's always coming from his perspective, which was a useful tool. And then one of the things I like is it's so handsome, like we were talking before, like carefully mounted, and then that ending is all handheld cameras and ragged and it's incredibly posey and sense-. It pulls you right out of any veneer of old-fashioned filmmaking that you've fallen into. 

0:11:53 - Speaker 5

It's kind of like switching from watching a really polished movie and then for the last 15 minutes or so you just switched over to the news. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. 

0:12:03 - Speaker 4

And it works like tonally. It even works beautifully, because obviously I'm assuming anybody listening to a podcast about Oscar movies from 1974 knows the story behind Chinatown, which is that it's not Town's Ending. 

The original screenplay ended very differently and Rowan Polanski said No, this has to go bad, this has to be worse, and the ending feels like he has like Polanski, the filmmaker has dragged you by your collar into his movie, into the movie that he really wants to make, and it's nasty and it's ugly and it's bloody and it's horrible. And that leer on that one guy's face which I can conjure up in my head right now, perfectly, just, you know, this is what this movie is, this is what these events would end in. 

0:12:42 - Speaker 6

And there's so many helmets in the film that conform to that. Like I always, am sort of struck by Bay Dunaway's performance in the beginning. I find very mannered and awkward, but it's like deliberately so A for Omaj and B for the game that she's trying to play and by the end. 

0:12:53 - Speaker 7

She's entirely naturalistic in a way that she can be Oh, and Polanski is a complete knob to her own set. 

0:12:57 - Speaker 6

Yes, definitely. Oh, there's chapter on it. Oh yeah, there's so many stories as well the stuff that he did. Yeah, delightfully abusive, man. 

0:13:04 - Speaker 7

Yes, yes. 

0:13:07 - Speaker 4

Does have two of the best get out of jail free cards at that point, but still Yeah, as it were. Where are you on the Swarovski. 

0:13:14 - Speaker 8

I don't like Roman Polanski, so it's my only Roman Polanski movie that I like period. I hate that he's in it That kind of part of me. 

0:13:21 - Speaker 7

Yeah, That's like the one thing it's like, it's like I'm incredibly awkward. 

0:13:24 - Speaker 8

It's like Eli Roth and Glorious Bastards, and I don't like you in this movie everybody else in this movie but you. But it's funny that you said that you know how the ending is changing everything, because it's the standard script that they teach you in film school, right? 

0:13:36 - Speaker 5

Oh, this is the perfect one Written by the guy who wrote books on creating the standard script. 

0:13:41 - Speaker 8

Yeah, like literally. This is the canon. 

0:13:42 - Speaker 5

You know like, this is it. Don't look at any other screenplay. 

0:13:44 - Speaker 8

You'll be fine with Chinatown and it's good and it totally works, except Tremors. Yeah, tremors. Well, tremors is a great script. It is technically one of the better scripts, and sorry. 

0:13:54 - Speaker 5

I haven't seen. 

0:13:55 - Speaker 8

Tremors. Maybe during the do-over you should watch whatever year. Yeah, who hears that 90? Yeah, yeah. 

0:14:03 - Speaker 5

That's a bit of a non-conjuring, but don't look at me. I just watched Chinatown today. 

0:14:08 - Speaker 8

What I love about the podcast is that people there are people who don't watch movies like before a certain year and still participate in these, and they're forced to watch these movies, kind of like yourself, jamie. So That's what. I'm doing this show, but I think it's so awesome because it's like Chinatown would be the one old movie that I would show somebody to get into older movies. 

Yeah, it's kind of like the marijuana of old movies. You know It's old enough that it's count as old, but it's still not alien. You know the way that some silent movies just you couldn't watch now without preparing yourself for it. I love Chinatown and Giddies or Gids or whatever is a Giddies. Yeah, giddies is probably. I know, i know, but I'm Giddies. Giddies, i think so bad. And what I meant by him being badass is that that's Jack Nicholson actually acting, you know, at his best, i think. You know, whereas almost every movie after well, not almost every, because there's a few others like Cuckoo's Nest and stuff that he stopped caring, you know, and he's good, he's so good at this. 

0:15:03 - Speaker 3

His performance is, like, really, really good, even something simple, like him wearing that bandage on his nose for the entirety of the movie. 

0:15:11 - Speaker 4

Yeah much yeah. 

0:15:13 - Speaker 3

I was trying to think of another actor that would do that. You see all these superhero movies now where they make the superheroes take off their mask so that the actor can get screen time in here. Jack was, you know, wearing this thing that you know tore to his face and then performing the shit out of the role. Really. And some of it should come across as comedic. 

0:15:31 - Speaker 7

Yeah, and it wasn't. 

0:15:32 - Speaker 3

And I feel like if somebody was directing him now it would be absolutely comedic, But it's part of. 

0:15:36 - Speaker 4

I mean it's on another level. It's part of Giddies' humiliation which we get before he does. And I'm sort of keen into this that, like you, are not coming out of this clean. That's just. you've already been mutilated And we still have an hour and ten minutes, so let's see where else. 

0:15:51 - Speaker 7

But, it's not what. 

0:15:52 - Speaker 4

Yeah, you're right, it's not one of those heroic things, where you know like there's a perfect asymmetrical bruise on his face and he can then fight through it. 

0:15:57 - Speaker 5

Right, exactly. If you can't even follow up a simple lead at a reservoir where no one should be there, you are a shitty detective and you need to quit your job, which is even worse, and this is why a sequel to Chinatown, the Two Jakes is such a terrible movie, because you wonder how the hell he survived this long. 

0:16:18 - Speaker 7

He was planning to be a trilogy originally too. 

0:16:20 - Speaker 4

Yeah, I would have liked to see where that went, because you know, like, maybe he's the first plastic surgeon in the 50s And he's terrible at it, but at least it's an innovation. 

0:16:30 - Speaker 7

Well, he must have been good at what he was doing, which was catching guys cheating on their lives. 

0:16:35 - Speaker 4

Yeah right, So he's like a backup. He found his niche and he was in his comfort zone and this rocked him right out of it. 

0:16:41 - Speaker 8

I love those TMC, so he was good at it. He was the watch on the W. You know what he puts? the watch on the W Yeah, i love that. I don't know. 

0:16:47 - Speaker 1

It's been stolen so many times. I know, I know. 

0:16:50 - Speaker 8

Can't do it anymore really. but No digital watches wouldn't do it. 

0:16:52 - Speaker 3

Well, feel pretty good about this film. 

0:16:54 - Speaker 4

Oh yeah, it's great, i don't get tired of it. I mean, this is a fantastic year. 

0:16:59 - Speaker 6

Yeah. 

0:17:00 - Speaker 4

We really need to say that there's like we could go half an hour on each film. 

0:17:04 - Speaker 5

And I even made a list of like 15 films that could have been nominated for this year. 

0:17:09 - Speaker 3

Let's switch gears. Really briefly, sorry, phil, we'll come back to your point, but I'll listen to your point. I want to jump into Towering Inferno. 

0:17:17 - Speaker 5

Yeah, just jump right into Inferno, Yeah get in there, man. 

0:17:20 - Speaker 4

That's good, you can fall right through and then we're done. 

0:17:22 - Speaker 5

I have the funniest Towering Inferno story Growing up I was. it was on AMC and I was home on a weekend night and my dad just kind of saw that was on. He got really excited. I was like why are you so excited to watch Towering Inferno? He's like son, you're going to watch this movie with me. You're going to see one of the stupidest films you've ever seen. 

And I was like dad, why would you want to do it? He's like trust me, this is a good kind of stupid. And man, that movie did not let me down in the good kind of stupid department, do I think it should have been nominated for Best Picture? Hell, no, never, never in a trillion years. But I can see the appeal of it. 

0:18:03 - Speaker 6

Well, it's kind of an embarrassing like last grasp of the old studio system. is everyone who's voting for it clearly voting? Well they took two studios to mash it together For sure, yeah, they're like, this is what we can do More stars in the sky. 

0:18:15 - Speaker 3

Deeper love than you ever felt. 

0:18:17 - Speaker 6

Bigger thrills than a lifetime. Introduce them and then kill them. Exactly, yeah, and it's sort of interesting the way it pairs up everything else which feels like, even now so contemporary and interesting and challenging that this is just like so. 

0:18:29 - Speaker 3

Square. 

0:18:30 - Speaker 5

How many Doors I've seen it a few times. 

0:18:40 - Speaker 7

Yeah, my little disaster phone collection. 

0:18:43 - Speaker 5

There were a few that year Every month for the final three months of the year was earthquake airport 1975, and then this yeah, this was the big holiday. 

0:18:58 - Speaker 7

Or something like that Hijacking of a boat or something. 

0:19:01 - Speaker 4

Oh juggernauts, oh juggernauts. 

0:19:02 - Speaker 5

Yeah, that one's actually good Juggernauts, a good movie. Yeah, Anthony Hopkins action role Yeah, and I guess if you want to include the taking of Pellan 1, 2, 3, you could you could also throw that in, because they're all kind of like. Pellan 1, 2, 3 is the good disaster film. 

0:19:17 - Speaker 6

That's what you're going by. That Sure. Any movie that puts Walter Mather and Jerry Stiller and a buddy team Is right on my side and like juggernaut isn't a disaster movie per se. 

0:19:26 - Speaker 5

It's more of a heist movie. pictures, yeah, but uh, it's, it's really good. 

0:19:30 - Speaker 7

Like I would. 

0:19:31 - Speaker 5

I would put that up there, if we were, if we were counting that, but I mean it's one of those towering inferno. Is it best like the fourth or fifth best disaster film? Yeah, but it was the biggest. It was the biggest one. It's the one that got Paul Paul Luminosity McQueen, and so it and only one of them is any good And it had to be taken seriously as a result, which is this really fascinating anomaly? 

0:19:51 - Speaker 4

It's like you know what if you made I'm trying to think of a terrible like a Relevant example, like a Roland Emmerich movie that got Bogart. At that point in his career like something that bad with someone that respected. 

0:20:03 - Speaker 6

Yeah, like if Daniel Day Lewis was in the day after tomorrow. Yes, yes, which I would be there in a second, there in a second. 

0:20:10 - Speaker 4

These people are running from frost. They're running from frost. That's more Liam Neeson I have a child. 

0:20:18 - Speaker 3

I abandoned my boy in the new york public library of their walls. 

0:20:23 - Speaker 4

I would watch that and we also there we go, we get the connection to john houston in chinatown. 

0:20:26 - Speaker 5

Yes. 

0:20:28 - Speaker 4

Because that character Yeah it was an impression. Daniel Plain is the bastard love child of mr Burns from the simpsons And john used to be a chanel. 

0:20:38 - Speaker 3

So the bad guy in this movie is Boyle. 

0:20:40 - Speaker 4

Riggs. And the bastards that would darebell the skyscraper and the adulterers who were then immediately punished, and the spring System that was not working on the 81st floor and that's the event that was blocking the. 

0:20:53 - Speaker 5

You know, there's so many villains well and oj simpsons. 

0:20:56 - Speaker 4

It's a long movie. 

0:20:57 - Speaker 3

This is a long movie. 

0:20:59 - Speaker 4

Yeah but eventually that's all. 

0:21:04 - Speaker 6

He set the fire to make himself look like a hero. He saved the cat. No one will suspect me now. 

0:21:08 - Speaker 5

Richard Chamberlain with the Billy zane Oh, richard Chamberlain was phenomenal. 

0:21:14 - Speaker 3

When he, when he pulls everyone off, that that really feeble looking attempt at, uh, an escape. 

0:21:19 - Speaker 6

Yeah, there's some like amazing practical effects for people are actually on fire. I'm just doing the reason to do the movie and some of the worst effects I've ever seen at my age is super bad. 

0:21:27 - Speaker 7

There was one bit. 

0:21:28 - Speaker 6

I had to play a couple times where it was like a model of the building and someone jumped off And it was clearly like maybe a two inch paper. 

0:21:37 - Speaker 7

Oh man so pathetic. 

0:21:40 - Speaker 6

That's the money. We need, that one. 

0:21:42 - Speaker 4

Which is the one scene where, oh, it's gonna be okay. No, it's one of those things 60 yard dash or whatever 

0:21:51 - Speaker 3

he says But he's not even close he hit a table and caught on fire immediately. 

0:22:01 - Speaker 4

That was, uh, sterling sylphan script, right. So that's that's, and I mean, that scene is almost a lot. 

0:22:06 - Speaker 5

That scene's almost a direct call back to trying to be the Poseidon adventure, which was you know another big. Big disaster movie at the time this was made, that was the fourth highest grossing film of all time. 

0:22:17 - Speaker 6

And Terry was the second highest of that year. Yeah, yeah, the second highest but. I love what beat it. I know I had no idea it was blazing saddles. 

0:22:24 - Speaker 5

Yeah, blazing saddles and and the thing that I think is kind of funny is if you watch any old epk stuff from uh, from towering inferno, they're all making it with the, they're very upfront, but they want to make the highest grossing picture of the year and they they came out in December with a lot of fanfare. They were beaten by a movie that came out in february. That was a comedy, a mill Brooksville, which I find uh, i guess you could say in that case towering inferno was a bit of a disappointment. 

But, it's sort of great They're in a number of ways. 

0:22:55 - Speaker 4

Yeah, we've made this movie. It's gonna make all the money in the world. It's three hours long. 

0:23:00 - Speaker 7

It can't do more than three shows a day. 

0:23:02 - Speaker 4

We can't make that much money. Blazing saddles is what? 92. 

0:23:05 - Speaker 7

It looks like a. 

0:23:06 - Speaker 4

It just shoots right past you. You can get five shows in there, and this was at a time when theater space was literally like legitimately limited. Yeah, so All of it, like every element of this film, is just hubris, yeah, just it piles upon itself. 

0:23:19 - Speaker 6

Well, it was the end of something that's trying to recreate A film like what's already dead, because I mean, you know, there were the rojo movies where length was like part of the style. People, it would be an after. That's where you'd go. 

0:23:28 - Speaker 3

What about the new man's? the new man and mcqueen big rivalry there newman. 

0:23:35 - Speaker 5

Getting extra scenes written Queen demanded that he have the same number of lines as paul newman, and the screenwriter got called in on his vacation To write precisely 22 new sentences. So they could have the same number of lines And when I heard that, i was like you should have cut 22 sentences From mcqueen's performance, because the thing about mcqueen is mcqueen doesn't care, mcqueen really does not care. But the thing about newman is man, does he care? 

Yeah but I mean he cares in so much as he wants to. I think he really wants to look like the best thing in a bad Movie. Yeah, that is what his performance really smacks of. It's like man. This movie's gonna suck. I'm gonna act the hell out of this and no one is gonna blame me. 

Yeah, no one can blame me for anything this movie does wrong. Yeah, mcqueen did this. That's the kind of performance that keeps coming back in movies like this, like like kurt russell and posseiden, like in the remake of it, or or like Playing. 

0:24:32 - Speaker 4

Rudy Giuliani, which is a terribly written role. 

0:24:34 - Speaker 2

Yeah, he sells it because it doesn't care. 

0:24:36 - Speaker 8

It's those those kind of roles where it's just like. 

0:24:39 - Speaker 5

i'm just gonna do my best to act through this And no one will ever blame me for this sucking Yeah we're in a sport in everything, yes, show up, do the job. 

0:24:48 - Speaker 4

And and mcqueen, like you could just tell Well, somebody made him do it, it was his agent, it was a divorce, like something Was pushing him to make this kind of money for this kind of role. And he doesn't, like he checked out. I think the script thing is like trying to get more lines or it's just like okay, fuck, you go, go do something else, make another racing movie and we'll get, i don't know. 

0:25:07 - Speaker 5

James garnt like some yeah, like who could also have handled that you could have bumped up anyone from the supporting Yeah or tonight. 

0:25:12 - Speaker 4

Why not? 

0:25:13 - Speaker 8

He was lagging right wasn't mcqueen supposed to be the neumann role, so I don't know if that's actually true. 

0:25:19 - Speaker 5

Like He's like. 

0:25:21 - Speaker 8

I'll take the fireman role But I love I. There's a soft spot for me having like the all star cast of like everybody that just Famed this person, but I hate it and I love astair, like for astair in life But I hated the way they treated him like. every time he'd look in the mirror It's like parking back to like role. 

0:25:39 - Speaker 6

It's so bad. It's so bad so awkwardly dancing. It's so many of any little things or you could show Yeah, the best dancer of like all time is dancing awful. 

0:25:47 - Speaker 5

It's hard to tell who gets the short end of the stick in that movie, whether it's a stare Yeah, it's a stares to pay. 

0:25:57 - Speaker 2

That's just for the throw water out of the water to kind of to pay, yeah, especially for a stare. 

0:26:04 - Speaker 3

Yeah, have some dink with the psa at the end. It almost felt like a psa at the end is as mcqueen, you know, tells all right, only 200 people lost their lives. 

0:26:13 - Speaker 5

I bet you those, the 22 senses that we're at. It's like you want me to pee, fuck your role. You're gonna say the dumbest thing in the movie. 

0:26:26 - Speaker 3

A movie could have been shown at the beginning of any dedication to a tall building after that. 

0:26:31 - Speaker 8

What was going? 

0:26:32 - Speaker 3

on where they built? is that when they were starting to really build. 

0:26:34 - Speaker 8

Oh, the world had just been built, okay. And so it was originally set there, or one of the books that set the tower. 

0:26:41 - Speaker 7

It's based on two books. Yeah, there's the tower and the glass inferno. 

0:26:46 - Speaker 5

Two studios were involved in this. 

0:26:49 - Speaker 3

And there was a director specifically for all the action stuff as well as erwin allan. 

0:26:52 - Speaker 5

Yeah, erwin allan specifically did all the uh action directing. 

0:26:57 - Speaker 4

The other director got the worst job. 

0:27:01 - Speaker 3

The best was watching all the hodya scenes stuff for this. 

0:27:04 - Speaker 5

And the guy who directs the uh, the dramatic scenes can't even really say anything. He's just there with a pipe, like let's do it again. That's all he ever does. He never even comments on his work. He's like, hmm, that was good. 

0:27:16 - Speaker 8

He done away. Look, dausman, this She did. I hate the way she looks in chanatown with the fuzz olden eyebrows? She's not like sexy to me. 

0:27:23 - Speaker 5

But in this one she does nothing. Her dress gives the best performance, Yeah. 

0:27:27 - Speaker 8

I like her entrance too, like she's sitting in the chair. Yeah, that's a really good entrance, but yeah, i watched them in that order. 

0:27:34 - Speaker 3

I watched chanatown, then I watched this one And it was like fate done away, some both, but like really she's it could be the year of the bodies, because no brooks had two movies. 

0:27:43 - Speaker 5

Three of the best picture nominees were from paramount. 

0:27:47 - Speaker 3

Let's move to. Let's move to another nominee, then let's go to Lenny. What do you guys think? I like it a lot. 

0:27:52 - Speaker 5

I love Lenny. It's for him, never seen him before and boy, i think it's okay Love it, it's good. 

0:27:58 - Speaker 8

It's a bad year, though. 74 like my heart is already in another movie like so I can't even look at any nominees right now, but Lenny Right, all right right. 

0:28:07 - Speaker 7

Here's what I'll say about Lenny. 

0:28:09 - Speaker 8

I love Hoffman. Hoffman's awesome And I like until this movie I hadn't seen his range really. I mean, i seen straight time, which is kind of like a badass Dustin Hoffman but the uh, but I don't know. I never thought him to be this sort of edgy. Edgy's not a word that comes to me when I think of Dustin Hoffman. But I've worked. You know, i liked it. I like the girl. I don't know who the girl was. 

Yeah, honey, yeah, but I love Bob Fosse movies, like all that jazz and just feel like the same. 

0:28:40 - Speaker 3

Bob Fosse loved to photograph. Honey. It felt oh yeah, every shot. Oh, she looked amazing in that, yeah, but it He just really was doing her a lot of favors and she did great too. There's the scene where she's being interviewed, you know in the inside, and then at the end of it I forget what she says, but she bites the chip, oh yeah. She's talking about something really serious and then just bites this chip and it's, it just pulls you. 

0:29:03 - Speaker 8

I thought that was great, actually, yeah. 

0:29:06 - Speaker 6

It's kind of weird parallel to cabaret as well, where it's sort of like Are parallel to life and using it, using it as a form of escape and and sort of issue shoots a lot of the stand-up, almost like musical sequences in a really interesting way. I like it as well too, just because Lenny Bruce is obviously an incredibly interesting figure in the history of San Antonio County, but he's not hugely funny anymore. This stuff is very dated, so the way that it Contrasts his material with his life and with the times kind of puts it in enough context So you can at least appreciate what's going on, even if you're not necessarily gonna be laughing hysterically. 

0:29:38 - Speaker 7

Yeah, because I mean he was basically killed by the system. Yeah, totally He was you know doing stuff that we take completely for granted. Yeah, and he was, like you know, being treated like You know Martin Luther King or something. 

0:29:49 - Speaker 5

Yeah, i forget who said it, but someone had a really good quote. I think it was like Time magazine. They said that his cause of death was too many cops. Yeah, Yeah, that's a pretty Pretty appropriate description of how he, how he lived and died. 

0:30:03 - Speaker 4

Yeah, but it's also the thing that I really like about the way Fosse goes into it and he does it with capere too Is he does. Let you see that this is not. He might be a martyr, but he kind of does it to himself His own, like the way the act just turns into him reading his core transcripts, which is actually what happened? 

Yeah, You know some movies would now, especially where you have this vogue of capturing 10 years in a subject's life so you can go out on high. We just go right down there with him And we watch the drug abuse get worse, we watch the persecution get worse, we watch the paranoia get worse And the sense that on some level, through Hoppins' performance, he's getting off on it Like this is he knows he's going to be a martyr, although again it's like you know, there are other ways to leave your mark. You don't have to die, but that's his trajectory And he embraces it. And the movie lets us see that that's not necessarily the best thing to do. So it doesn't linize him, it doesn't think, oh, look at this incredible man who died for nothing or something. Or you get to decide, no, he's wasting his life. We get to see that He's doing valid work, but the cost is preposterous. 

0:31:02 - Speaker 6

Yeah, It's yeah, the complete opposite of what we think of as a biopic being and what you'd want it to be ideally, but it's so rarely, is Yeah? And I. 

0:31:10 - Speaker 5

That's kind of leads into why I think the movie's just okay What you got. 

I think it is kind of the standard biopic in a lot of ways, and the reason is not so much like the content of the movie or how it's being made or nothing against Hoffman or even Fosse, who I think is doing an interesting change of pace here that I think shows him outside of his comfort zone and kind of shows why he's such a great director. 

I think the problem with Lenny is just timing. I think this is a film that if I had seen it then Lenny Bruce would be so fresh in my mind from before that that I would look at this and be like I'm definitely afraid this movie is not telling me anything I don't already know. We talk about how it just it does a good job of recreating the act and it shows it that cuts in with his personal life, but I never really get a sense that I'm not getting anything that I couldn't have looked up in an encyclopedia or a news article or anything like that, and I think, oddly enough, it's a movie that's almost too timely in comparison to the rest of them. I'm not saying it's the worst of these picks, yeah, and I think there were much better movies that year that could have taken this lot, but it's just too of the moment, i think, and too rigidly controlled to try to stick to the story. It's almost too faithful. 

0:32:33 - Speaker 6

I don't know, I find it such a cynical portrayal of him Because I think at that point he was kind of lionized and the movie kind of put it in perspective in a way that as. Norma's saying I think is appropriate sort of saying yeah, he did all this, but at what cost? And who is this guy? Kind of a shithead, as far as I can tell. 

0:32:49 - Speaker 4

I mean biopics at the time were stuff like Funny Girl. 

0:32:51 - Speaker 5

Yeah, no, that's true. 

0:32:52 - Speaker 4

That is true. You were hostrously sanitizing and glorifying and glamorizing everything I think for 1974, as a biopic goes. what Fosse does within the strictures of what biopics were, i think is really interesting. 

0:33:05 - Speaker 1

I mean, yes, it isn't anything more than it doesn't break the genre of it. 

0:33:09 - Speaker 4

But it works for what it is Right, And I mean that's really just me putting it in comparison to everything else. 

0:33:15 - Speaker 8

Right Yeah. 

0:33:16 - Speaker 7

Like I mean it's a good movie in a good year. 

0:33:19 - Speaker 5

I'd seen it twice. I watched it again for this, but I saw it originally maybe about five or six years ago for the first time And even then I was just kind of like, yeah, that's OK, that's another biopic, it's very well done. I can't really take anything away from it. I just didn't really. I don't really feel like it went the extra mile. 

0:33:36 - Speaker 3

I'm always curious about the latency effect, right, like what people bring when they watch it fresh versus what they're bringing when they've watched it 20 years ago or 10 years ago or they're rewatching it or whatever. I think that stuff is really interesting. And if you think about Lenny Bruce, that's where I'll agree with you. I think we knew most of what was in it. I did think he was presented as a horrible person, specifically that scene where he's just berating, where he's berating Honey after the threesome, oh yeah. 

But in a way I think That's such a terrifying scene And coming right after the threesome scene where when Fosse's shooting it there's no sound how disturbing that scene was And just him staring. 

0:34:23 - Speaker 6

Yeah, there's a lot of staring. 

0:34:24 - Speaker 3

I thought there was something wrong with my sound on my TV. I actually got up and I, you know, lost with it for a moment and then realized like whoa, wait a minute, this is supposed to be having this profound effect on me, and it really did. It was just all you could do was stare at these images that were, you know, erotic and awesome. And deeply wrong. 

0:34:43 - Speaker 4

Yes, exactly, and Bob. 

0:34:45 - Speaker 5

Fosse's the master of that. 

0:34:47 - Speaker 8

Yeah yeah, I'm deeply wrong. 

0:34:48 - Speaker 5

I'm creepy, deeply wrong, creepy erotica I am enjoying this for the road, dear God and the person I'm up 

0:34:55 - Speaker 7

with. 

0:34:55 - Speaker 4

But yeah, like you have to, you're like he makes oh man, the idea of like 500 people in a room suddenly questioning themselves watching that movie just kind of starting to shift Because I've seen all that jazz in a theater and the erotica sequence freaks people out. 

And it's because on some level, it's incredibly dated and cheesy, and it really is, and it's a really clumsy way of a filmmaker trying to show you how cutting edgey is He. Just, he like had culture progressed along that line, he would have looked like a visionary, but instead it's like oh yeah, that's cats in five years. 

0:35:26 - Speaker 6

That's what that is That's that thing. 

0:35:29 - Speaker 4

But watching it with an audience now it's just like you can feel people kind of try to lean into it, either for the sexy part or for the cultural relevance part, And it's like figure out where this is going. And when it happens in Lenny it's like being throttled. That's how I feel, Like just doing crap. 

0:35:44 - Speaker 5

Yeah, There's one thing about Lenny that I want I have to give it credit for, and I think is the biggest compliment that I could pay towards it. I think this is how Lenny Bruce would have wanted his life to have shown up on films. 

I mean honestly, even though he looks like a complete shit, we've proven throughout his career that he's not afraid of looking like a shit on stage or exactly like he wanted to become a martyr, and this is the kind of film that'd be like yep, this is you. And I think of Lenny Bruce. it seemed to be like yep, that's me. I think he would have wanted the film to be called cock sucker, though Yeah, the poster is his finger sticking out of his zipper, which is a love in his mom's. 

0:36:21 - Speaker 6

Yeah, yeah. Well, and Fosse and him were friends And I think that was deliberately. What he was trying to make was sort of this is sort of, and I think in a weird way it's probably more fondly remembered than Lenny Bruce's material. 

0:36:33 - Speaker 4

Yeah. 

0:36:33 - Speaker 1

I think you told him right. 

0:36:34 - Speaker 4

Yeah, yeah, because it doesn't give you all the material that didn't last Even in 74, some of his stuff was dating And Fosse left out the stuff that was most you know clunky. 

0:36:46 - Speaker 5

Fosse was more memorable Lenny Bruce than Lenny Bruce. 

0:36:50 - Speaker 3

Yeah, it's an interesting image. Well, it's funny. I went to performance school, i went to the Humber School of Comedy and you know, you go through a period where everybody is talking about their favorite comedians, and comedians that matter, and people would throw his name out in a conversation just to throw his name out, but nobody had ever listened to a record. And if they had listened to a record and you could get them one-on-one over drinks, they would say yeah, yeah, yeah, but the movie was great. 

0:37:18 - Speaker 4

That's the problem, yeah. 

0:37:19 - Speaker 6

It's Carlin and Pryor together. 

0:37:20 - Speaker 4

Pryor They come out to meet. 

0:37:21 - Speaker 6

they're inspired by him, They come out immediately after and they bring a different scope to everything he did. 

0:37:26 - Speaker 3

And they were just starting to really In 74. 

0:37:29 - Speaker 6

For sure, Yeah absolutely, Yeah, yeah, yeah. In fact I don't know, I've never read anything, but I wouldn't be surprised if maybe this movie helped in some way, Sort of probably got a way into the like the Bruce legacy, but they were already fairly big. 

0:37:40 - Speaker 4

They know about albums going to them, that's true. 

0:37:43 - Speaker 5

They existed without Lenny Bruce, absolutely No, no, no, lenny Bruce sort of kicked the door open. 

0:37:47 - Speaker 6

Because you can see their work before him. 

0:37:49 - Speaker 5

Yeah, and it's embarrassing Yeah. And a lot of ways, lenny Bruce was more performance art than he was stand-up. For sure, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. 

0:37:56 - Speaker 3

Reading all the transcripts Not many people bought a Velvete underground record, but everybody who did started it. Yeah Yeah, it's almost like Lenny Bruce would call it. 

0:38:03 - Speaker 1

People respect the performance of Lenny Bruce more than they do his actual sets. Yeah, yeah. 

0:38:08 - Speaker 6

They appreciate the craft more than they appreciate what he was actually saying And he represents something that he always will And that sort of more his legacy than anything else, i want to jump off of craft, and the next two films that we have to talk about are both Francis Ford couple films. 

0:38:21 - Speaker 3

Yeah, so talking about craft, we'll start with the conversation Again. Never saw it prior to this. 

0:38:29 - Speaker 8

Wow, that's so serious. 

0:38:31 - Speaker 7

I want to provide context here. No, no. 

0:38:33 - Speaker 3

The main reason I'm doing this show is I do a lot of training And when we do training we always throw it a random fact, and one of the things that somebody brought up at a training that I was doing was they had seen every movie that had ever been nominated for Best Picture And I was like, holy shit, i have so not seen it. It's been nominated for Best Picture And I wanted to get in on that And I thought what better way to do that than invite people over with microphones and talk about them So I can get the context? So, rather than reading a textbook, i get to listen to people talk about these great films. This was a great film, yeah, holy shit. 

0:39:12 - Speaker 7

I don't know if you've been meaning to watch, but this has been on my list for ages, and thanks for doing the show because it pushed me to finally watch it. Same with Lenny, it had been on my list for ages and I'd never seen it, and so those are the only two films I hadn't seen. The other ones I'd seen many, many times. 

0:39:26 - Speaker 2

So what did? 

0:39:26 - Speaker 7

you think I really enjoyed it. It's a little coppola-esque because I find him a little bit clumsy with his filmmaking sometimes, But I thoroughly enjoyed it And it is a product of its time but it is still timely at the same time. But I think I also enjoyed the technology shots that are supposed to be like oh, look at this piece of machinery. It's like 40 years old and it's like you know it's amazing. I thoroughly enjoyed it because I love conspiracy, paranoia, thriller type things. So Hackman is, and he's great, he's amazing He's spectacular And his character is very interesting. 

0:40:03 - Speaker 6

Aside from Tarrar I'm faring out all the movies kind of. His characters are emblematic of that kind of 70s hero who's not hero in A-Straight. 

0:40:10 - Speaker 7

Yeah. 

0:40:11 - Speaker 6

I could. All four of these movies are about very unheroic kind of terrible people. Yeah. 

0:40:17 - Speaker 7

Who's fucked up in the past? 

0:40:18 - Speaker 6

Yeah, Yeah, he's screwed up and we're just going to watch him screw up again, bigger than it, better than ever before, and there's something, yeah, kind of fascinating about that, in a way that not only could that come out, then they could be successful and they could be up in this situation, it's a situation for Oscars. I mean, what to say? And yeah, and I think Gene Hackman's character in the conversation is one of the more fascinating examples of that, because he's just such a closed book. Like in a movie, your protagonist should be someone you're connecting to and wanting to follow And at every stage of the game. 

It's like going out of its way to make you never quite understand who this guy is, to doubt him, not like him. I find it incredibly fascinating. 

0:40:55 - Speaker 5

It works really well. Yeah, that's why I love the film so much And I think it's probably. I never really gave much thought into how it fits into the conspiracy thriller, surveillance thriller, canon, but it's definitely near the top. 

0:41:09 - Speaker 3

Absolutely. 

0:41:10 - Speaker 5

Without question, and I think a lot of that is credit to how Coppola and Hackman are working together in tandem. One of the things I love about this movie is that it is a thriller, but it's also very heartbreaking to watch because Hackman's character is someone that has spent his entire life being really cold, really distant, has to stay on the outside of everything, not getting involved, not caring, and this is about the movie. It's a pretty classical story about the guy who does that but eventually has to learn to grow a conscience, and I find this to be one of the more fascinating examples of one of those films where a shithead eventually starts to have to learn how to give a shit, and I think a lot of that is credit to Hackman. I'm not taking anything away from the story or from Coppola. I mean I guess you could say it's a B-grade Coppola film in a lot of ways, but I mean Well, i mean in the 70s. 

0:42:06 - Speaker 6

Yeah, exactly, i mean, it's sort of like the anomaly of his filmmaking career Of the four masterpieces. 

0:42:14 - Speaker 4

This is the least masterpiece, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, still a masterpiece, Exactly. 

0:42:18 - Speaker 5

But I mean, it's a masterpiece of a genre film which I find to be fascinating And I love that it's here. I think it won the poem that year. 

0:42:28 - Speaker 8

I'm glad it exists. 

0:42:29 - Speaker 5

Yeah. 

0:42:30 - Speaker 7

Did the screenplay win too? 

0:42:32 - Speaker 3

It was just on the wall Editing, not an Oscar. 

0:42:33 - Speaker 5

Editing It's a merchandise house, yeah. 

0:42:35 - Speaker 4

It deserved me. 

0:42:36 - Speaker 8

You know, I love that this movie exists because it's the same year as this mega blockbuster. right after another mega blockbuster, He's like I'll do this other movie for you, if I can do what I want, which is like the dream right. 

And it's like his traffic to the air in Brockovich And I can't distinguish it from the filmmaking right. So, like when we talk about the story and that's what I first saw, the reason I go back is the fact that it exists. They ran out of money, They changed the ending and the editing That the technology is such a prominent character in the movie. But also the zoom lens wasn't used that way originally until in the 70s, You know, like the beginning, where it sort of zooms in on the first time. 

0:43:15 - Speaker 7

Oh, those are such on The Indian Square. 

0:43:17 - Speaker 8

Yeah, and his raincoat. 

0:43:19 - Speaker 7

that's like this whole thing about like you can see, it's one of those ones that you carry little plastic bags like the world's cheapest raincoat. 

0:43:24 - Speaker 8

Everything about this movie is so fetishistic about this movie, but the fact that it exists is really the reason that I dig it, man. Oh, I love it. 

0:43:31 - Speaker 4

It's just such a beautiful, methodical, careful film about making mistakes About missing the obvious thing And just the idea that you would make a movie where the entire film is predicated. spoiler alert, i suppose, on someone not quite listening right. 

0:43:48 - Speaker 1

Like he hears it, He doesn't get it. 

0:43:50 - Speaker 4

And that's just the idea that, of course, this is why he had to make Godfather 2. Paramount was like no you want money for the movie? 

0:43:57 - Speaker 6

No, how do? 

0:43:58 - Speaker 4

you pitch it, You have to see it. You have to make that movie to get people to understand what you're trying to say And then what the larger statement is about. And also this is, of course, the heart of Watergate is happening all around them, Like the other big conspiracy movie that year was The Parallax View. So you've got that, this Chinatown. All films about noblish investigators just completely getting something wrong or being misled by powerful interests I mean, that's America at that moment And to see a film that isn't about any of that and is all about that at the same time. 

So 40 years later, it still holds up as a completely character-driven piece of movie making rather than self-reflexive political commentary. And the scene's in, I think about something like Good Night and Good Luck, where you can watch it and think, oh, that's cloney responding to the Iraq war and the way the Bush administration pressured journalists, or it's a biopic about Edward R Murrow making a really brave stand. They work either way And you could watch one without the knowledge of the other, Although if you watch it without knowledge of Murrow, you'll just see a new story. For me, The conversation is really not about Watergate in as much as anything. It's about anxiety about surveillance. And that's utterly relevant to the point where Gene Hackman turns up an enemy of the state and they use his ID photo from the conversation, And they're just like ah, Harry's still out there, Of course he is. 

And you know like, come on, Tony Scott, make your own character. 

0:45:20 - Speaker 1

Make your own movie. 

0:45:22 - Speaker 4

But there's this moment of like oh, that's adorable. And then you realize it makes absolutely no sense within the movie And it's just a stupid concept. But how dare you? 

0:45:29 - Speaker 7

Well, the fact that I have that love for the conversation right. 

0:45:32 - Speaker 4

You want it to work. 

0:45:34 - Speaker 3

I don't even know why I love it, but this is my favorite of the five films that I watched That I watched for those. 

0:45:38 - Speaker 8

So it's interesting that it holds up. I was wondering how it would be approached by somebody who hasn't seen it before, Because I'm trying to think of it from your perspective. I'm like god, it's not pretty looking. It's the technologies clunky in the towering. And for now you're like the headphones and all that, but like I can't, Rotary phones Yeah, rotary phones are the villain. 

0:45:56 - Speaker 4

Yeah, i think it's funny. 

0:45:57 - Speaker 5

I think you can watch the conversation right now, and I think, of all the movies on this list, this is the one movie that friends of mine, who are casual movie fans, always find a way to come around to. It seems like every year there are more people that know about this movie and see it And they're like, wow, what did you think of that? I really loved it And I think that really stands to how timeless this movie can be. I mean, this could be a movie that was made today, for sure, with the same technology, and make it a period piece, and it would be just as good if you knew it. 

0:46:26 - Speaker 1

Yeah, it's called The Lives of Others. Yeah, exactly. 

0:46:29 - Speaker 5

But it's not as good of a movie? Definitely not. But the other thing that I really love about the conversation is oh god, i forgot what I was going to say. No, it's a. 

0:46:43 - Speaker 8

Did you think of it like blow up? Did you think No, no, no, no, no, no. 

0:46:46 - Speaker 5

Well, I mean, there is something interesting to be said about how this film can sort of go one better than all of the other surveillance films of the era, and I think there's a lot more to unpack with the conversation on a subtextual level, like Norm was saying, and there's a lot that you can sort of draw on from history. 

0:47:05 - Speaker 8

Is it like blow out? a lot I haven't seen blow out. Blow out is like the conversation. Yeah, it kind of is. It's the diploma going. 

0:47:11 - Speaker 4

Oh yeah, i can do that. 

0:47:12 - Speaker 7

Yeah, no, that's exactly what that movie. The blow up movie Which was done in 68?, 66. 66. Was it like that? 

0:47:18 - Speaker 4

Yeah, It's one of those things where yeah, i mean with De Palma it's always a remake of something, it's always riffing on something, but the conversation stands apart in a way that. 

0:47:26 - Speaker 7

I don't think blow out goes. 

0:47:28 - Speaker 4

Yeah, i just. I have this game that I play these days because there's this Canadian horror film that I think I could make a brilliant case for. I don't think I could do it myself, but I think a Mumblecore remake of Scanners would be the best thing, because the movie is so limited and so minimal that the only way to do justice to it is by keeping it small. If you're going to re like, i don't think it should be remade, but if you're going to do one, that's the one that that genre would fit. So you've been sort of getting consumed with well, what else could work like that? And the conversation absolutely does, because it's something you have to strip down to emotions and motivation And that's how that genre works. And the conversation is already there. Like there's nothing in this movie that is hard to conceive of or impossible to imagine, and the idea that maybe your phone can ring and then you pick it up and it becomes a live microphone. That's not hard to swallow. 

0:48:15 - Speaker 7

No, at least they still talk. You do it yourself on GPS. I don't think they do that. They do it myself on GPS. 

0:48:19 - Speaker 4

Hyperparanoia is your laptop. 

0:48:20 - Speaker 5

We're being recorded right now. Yeah, why. 

0:48:23 - Speaker 4

What, What? Yeah Well, the question is how many of our devices are recording us? Right, right, right. But you could do it and not really change very much And it could still have the same. I would hope it had the same emotional impact if you get the right actors. 

0:48:36 - Speaker 7

I think about Giovanni. 

0:48:37 - Speaker 4

Robisi in a plastic coat. He could do this Like there's no reason this movie could not happen now And for a minimal budget. I mean, obviously the gimmick doesn't work if you're doing tearing in front of you or something, but the idea of the themes and the story playing out at a micro budget always says to me that yeah, there's something here that is bigger than the movie you're watching And it's what you engage with while you watch it. This is absolutely a movie. 

0:49:04 - Speaker 3

I would show people if they said you know you missed the context, You missed it. If you didn't see it at the time of I would slot this movie down and say, watch it right now because I think you're right. The themes are there, The tone is, you would get the same feeling that you got in a movie theater in 1974. Pretty close to it. Oh, thank you, I remember what I was going to say. 

0:49:28 - Speaker 1

That sorry. Those were really good at home. 

0:49:30 - Speaker 5

Before I forget it again, No, I was going to say that this is a good companion piece to something like Chinatown in terms of what takes place that year, because Chinatown, as we were discussing, is a film about someone who's bad at their job screwing up. The conversation is about someone who's really good at their job screwing up. 

0:49:46 - Speaker 7

But who had screwed up in the past too. Yeah, exactly. 

0:49:49 - Speaker 5

But I mean, I find that to be an interesting sort of thing to pair those two movies up against one another. And there's such different movies too. The conversation is a lot. It's weird Tonally, chinatown might be a little bit darker and more disturbing than the conversation is. 

0:50:06 - Speaker 4

Yeah, because it's personal Yeah. 

0:50:08 - Speaker 5

But the conversation is the grittier movie. 

0:50:11 - Speaker 7

Yeah, i think the plot points hit almost at the exact same time. You'd be right up to the lovemaking scene. Yeah, it's kind of true. 

0:50:16 - Speaker 5

It'd be interesting to pair the two up if you watched them immediately, one after the other, yeah, But they're both reactions to the same thing, so that's what interests me. 

0:50:27 - Speaker 4

This is what people were obsessing about enough to get a movie made different coasts, the stuff from the moment he checked into the hotel, though is so nightmarish Ripping to me, yeah. 

0:50:37 - Speaker 8

Like I couldn't Oh the toilet. 

0:50:38 - Speaker 7

Is that the toilet? Yeah, yeah, the whole you know sequence. 

0:50:41 - Speaker 3

I thought it was a dream sequence. Oh man, when the toilet starts backing up. Yeah, it's a dream like this. 

0:50:45 - Speaker 4

It's wrapped up in that. That's so good. That's David Lynch right there. Yeah, he's inventing Lynch, for sure. 

0:50:49 - Speaker 6

Yeah, well, it's one of the great sound design with this ball top which has clearly made massive influence on Lynch. And yeah, and I think that is like inseparable from it. It doesn't have much of a soundtrack on it. It's not the same movie. Sure, because so much of it is in contrast to what you see. So much of it is changing things afterwards. Yeah, and I think it's a great movie that you could watch five times and get five completely different things out of it, yeah, and it's. 

0:51:11 - Speaker 4

It's a hold on him to release a movie with that kind of sound design in 1974 when there was no sound design. Right, like when you've got a mono speaker and it probably shorts out 20 minutes into it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

0:51:18 - Speaker 1

When did it come out in? In? 

0:51:19 - Speaker 3

comparison with the next one we'll talk about, like what was the Conversation? was first He? Oh yeah, it was first Yeah. 

0:51:27 - Speaker 6

And it was like at that time finishing Godfather 2. Right, yeah, because he basically left the entire post-production to Walter Merge. Yeah, so he could do Godfather 2. And Walter Merge is like the second author of that movie. 

0:51:38 - Speaker 3

He's like my hero, yeah. So let's dive into Godfather 2, and I'll preface this by saying there's been a lot said, written, discussed about Godfather 2. I don't know how much more we'll bring. So, I don't know what else we need to say about this really, really, really great film. Yeah, I do welcome you to say some things of course, or that would be pointless. 

0:52:00 - Speaker 7

I have something. I don't know if this has been, but I think watching it again and I'll preface this by saying that I think the first time I saw the Godfather films was as the TV version, the Godfather saga, where they edited together chronologically, which was amazing to watch. So when I watch them now, i still have to like, isn't that in the other one? 

I'm like I'm getting myself all muddled up. So watching this one I realize, why not cut it into two different films? Do the Vito Cardio in Persian and then make that Godfather 2 and then Godfather 3 be the 1959 stuff and fuck Godfather 3. 

0:52:41 - Speaker 3

Is that? 

0:52:41 - Speaker 7

Yeah, it just changed the ending so that his kid dies instead of Godfather 3. So then you get the full circle thing right. It's all Your family's always going to get fucked. 

0:52:48 - Speaker 4

Yeah, but you need the contrast, you need them to play off each other. Yeah, and then you go compromise himself as Michael compromises himself, because otherwise you would spend 90 minutes with Vito. And then it's just like oh well, did you never talk to? 

0:53:00 - Speaker 7

your dad Did you not realize. 

0:53:03 - Speaker 4

And then, because the great revelation here is no, you never did Like, he didn't have that for now, but he doesn't know about the family And they're both the same age, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, so they're the same age doing the same things, but one's obviously better than the other one And it's a different trajectory. 

0:53:16 - Speaker 8

One's going up in their shining star of gangsterism and the other one's going down. And I can't. I'm going to wait until youare you done? 

0:53:23 - Speaker 7

No, I'm done. Yeah, I just played the phone. 

0:53:25 - Speaker 8

I'm going to start by saying this is the bestthis is my favorite movie of all time, so this is like difficult for me to you know tone it down. I hated it when I first watched it Really. Yeah, i was like this is fucking confusing. I was like in great time, Okay, I was like this is confusing And I had. I watched it Godfather's backwards, Like I saw the three first, which is why I don't hate it. 

0:53:42 - Speaker 7

I'm like this is kind of cool, this is great this movie. 

0:53:44 - Speaker 8

And look, who's that young guy, is that supposed to be El Pacino, you know, in the flashbacks. And the third one, anyway. So I saw the first one and I was like awesome, whatever. And the second one was confusing, whatever. And I kept coming back to it and, oh my God, now it's justand, now that I have a son, this whole family thing of like, what's he going to be like when he's my age and, you know, living in thisand the cast is just killer Fredo Like. Is he the best actor that died too soon? Yeah, absolutely I was. I found the plot confusing because Iwhat did I have in Roth do, like who shot the window? You know, but what, you watch it over and over and it's just, you know, it's beautiful, the music works, the acting works, the plot works. Did you watch it again for this? 

0:54:23 - Speaker 3

Yeah, it's so good, i loved it. You didn't need an excuse, but you took it anyway and watched it again. 

0:54:29 - Speaker 8

I mean, i didn't watch the whole thing. You know what killer is the last scene? Brando didn't want to come back and so Coppola stuck with this reunion scene and so he keeps Michael in the kitchen or in the dining room while everybody else goes and sings happy birthday to get. It's the best ending there could be because it's so related to Yeah, no, the Thematically it's amazing. 

0:54:49 - Speaker 4

You'll never live up to your father. You've already Exactly. 

0:54:51 - Speaker 1

You can't get him back. 

0:54:52 - Speaker 4

It's incredible And thatI think that's why you need to experience them just opposed together. But Oh Man, yeah, i'm actually nowI'm pissed at myself. There was a press screening of the restored 4K version Thursday morning and I couldn't go because it was three and a half hours long and there was a 

0:55:06 - Speaker 6

day and. 

0:55:07 - Speaker 4

I had stuff against it. I'm mad at myself Yeah no I. 

0:55:12 - Speaker 6

It is the same restoration that's on the Blu-ray, so Yeah, no, i completely agree that I love them separate and I think Godfather 2, one of the reasons why it's the greatest sequel ever is I think it makes the original one better by virtue of the fact it exists, because I think the original one is obviously a masterpiece, but it is kind of pulpy and like a perfectly executed bit of entertainment. What elevates it is how Coppola shoots it and the thematic eye obviously. 

But what I like about the second one is it's like the subtext of the first one becomes the text of the second one And the way that they play out, the way that it's sort of the prequel, sequel aspect, the way they play out each other, it sort of deepens what you know from the first one, takes your memories from all those indelible scenes that are burning your mind forever, plays with them, toys with them. I always. I think one of the most powerful sequences of all movies is after De Niro does the assassination and then he goes and he picks up the boy and they play the theme song and it's just so heartbreaking and devastating and And the stuff with the oranges, like the business. 

0:56:03 - Speaker 4

Totally Right, the business that's seen throughout the film. 

0:56:06 - Speaker 6

The moment where they play the score on the Like. That only works because you've seen the first one, you know the context, you know we're going to go back to Michael in the present day and see what a tragic state that is And I think, yeah, i think, if you put it chronologically, that's still a powerful moment, just because that whole assassination sequence is so sturdier. But I think you need whatever four and a half hours or whatever it takes to get to that moment for it to hit, and I think that's Yeah, i just think it's. 

Yeah, I think The Godfather would always be a classic movie. I think the reason why people always talk about Intert's second being one of the best to remain is because of the second one, yeah, and how it sort of deepens and expands. 

0:56:39 - Speaker 5

Exactly, i think the first film is an excellent film. First film is great. The second film is not only a better excellent film, but it's also an epic. This is such a sprawling movie. Just the ambition that it takes to even conceive of a storyline like this. That's this fractured and going back and forth. And I'll admit I was never really a fan of the chronological cut because I think it kind of. I think it does dampen the impact of what the second film specifically is trying to do, which is trying to lend context to the first film. And I mean it doesn't treat the Like most sequels, it doesn't treat the audience like an idiot that they have to remind them of everything that happened in the first film, because it's The Godfather, you should know what happened in the first film. 

0:57:29 - Speaker 6

And it's written for the contrast. It's like you were saying how you're not having a cue. But I think if you put it chronologically that's a major problem, because that last hour made no sense, but in this it doesn't I get it now. 

0:57:38 - Speaker 1

Yeah, yeah, yeah Oh man. Sorry. 

0:57:42 - Speaker 8

But it almost doesn't matter, because it's all about the themes, right. Exactly, it's about seeing him Well, the first one, he's building up his family, and the second one, kay, had an abortion. His Michael's family's falling apart. 

0:57:53 - Speaker 4

It's just beautiful. Oh, it's all about the grudges, it's about the history, it's about the shit you carry with you, which is why it's universal, which is why everybody who's ever had a family understands what's going on, even if they don't know the first thing about heroin trafficking, destroying the mob in Brooklyn. But it's, oh man, so good It's. I had this joke that I cannot land. I've been trying for years now to say that the Fast and Furious movies are trying to do what the Godfather movies do, by playing with chronology and giving you characters that you can Yeah, they're template and make. They're template and make sound. 

0:58:29 - Speaker 5

That's the problem. 

0:58:31 - Speaker 7

It's just like. 

0:58:32 - Speaker 4

The joke is that the Fast and Furious movies are the ones doing it. 

0:58:35 - Speaker 6

Well, sadly that's the legacy of Godfather 2 now. 

0:58:37 - Speaker 3

Yeah, it's the Fast and Furious movies. 

0:58:38 - Speaker 4

That's the thing. That makes no sense at all. Wait, I'm talking about the sequel. 

0:58:43 - Speaker 8

Are the later sequels better than the original? 

0:58:45 - Speaker 4

Yeah, Well, the idea of structuring and layering and the idea that, like, there's a guy who died in the third one, who finally dies in the end of the Yeah Yeah, Who comes back and now this movie's gonna take. 

0:58:54 - Speaker 5

This next movie's gonna take place after the third movie, maybe more movies to get to the end of. 

0:58:59 - Speaker 4

Tokyo Drift And it's just like yeah, that's not what Michael Corleone done before. 

0:59:04 - Speaker 3

That's not why this happened. That's a good punchline. That's right, michael Corleone on the Time. This is Yeah, thanks guys. Workshop. 

0:59:13 - Speaker 4

But no, it is. There are so few movies that, first of all, i'm gonna make the sequel how I wanna make it. I'm gonna make an hour in Italian with subtitles. I'm going to cast a guy, nobody knows to replace Marlon Brando's most iconic performance ever And he's gonna be better than Brando. He's not gonna be his hammy. I'm going to just pretend James Cohn wasn't a big deal on the first. 

0:59:38 - Speaker 1

Yeah. 

0:59:38 - Speaker 4

Like he's dead, screw it. We're gonna keep moving. We're gonna find somebody else who's more charismatic Oh, there's no one who's more charismatic Oh, there's his dad. Like the way it knits itself together to find the story on the screen, on the page, like even before they shot it. just the solutions to all these questions are how do you follow up the Godfather? And every answer he came up with was right. 

There are no wrong moves, the villains that got killed in the first one. here's some new ones. You'll like them too. Like just everything works. It's incredible. 

1:00:03 - Speaker 3

Has there been a director that had like a three-year period? Like, we just talked about conversation and you guys are talking about Godfather, It's Cronenberg Sotterberg. 

1:00:10 - Speaker 4

I mean the Bergs. 

1:00:11 - Speaker 3

That's a three-year period, though that is like holy fuck, Well you can extend it to the decades, right? 

1:00:15 - Speaker 4

Yeah, it's a whole decade. I mean, I went from the heart is the movie he wanted to make. 

1:00:19 - Speaker 5

Yeah. 

1:00:20 - Speaker 4

I don't know that it's a masterpiece. I'm pretty sure it's not. But it is what he wanted to do. It's an incredible experiment. It just doesn't. It just doesn't land it. 

1:00:29 - Speaker 6

I think it's just a person in the perfect time and place that he wanted to do. I think it's similar to like, say, I think George A Romero has the same similar trajectory from the 60s and 70s. He's kind of lost her After that lost And I think it's just yeah, time and place. It's just these are guys who, in a weird way, kind of did the same thing which refusing the American genre movie with the European art film. 

1:00:50 - Speaker 7

I think you can even say the same about Lucas in that decade. 

1:00:52 - Speaker 4

Yeah, yeah, couldn't put a foot wrong Until. 

1:00:54 - Speaker 7

Directors with glasses and beards. Yeah, it was the time. 

1:00:57 - Speaker 4

It was the time, well, spielberg's got 1941, so that throws you to the curb, Yeah. 

1:01:02 - Speaker 5

I was going to say Spielberg, and then I remember 1940. 

1:01:05 - Speaker 7

Seeing that movie in a theater, though I thoroughly do. Oh, that's so awesome. 

1:01:08 - Speaker 5

I don't think 1941's a bad movie No. 

1:01:13 - Speaker 6

And that's also like one of the great insane director movies. 

1:01:16 - Speaker 7

Yeah. 

1:01:17 - Speaker 3

Anything with Beletian candy. Yeah, I mean, I was like how much money is this really going to come. 

1:01:22 - Speaker 4

1941 is Spielberg's turn in front of us. 

1:01:25 - Speaker 7

It's like everyone peeped stuff on him. 

1:01:27 - Speaker 4

No, no, no no, no, you need to do this. What else can we get you? Well, i'd like also maybe Stephen Queen. Sure, put him in a fireman's hand. What about this? I think I would like some special effects. Okay, mr Allen, you made the Poseidon Adventure Here you go. What else do you want? 

1:01:42 - Speaker 6

But I also think there's something interesting where, like, what he was going for was to try and basically do what the Zuckers brothers then do Years later. He was trying to He let me boost it Yeah exactly. Like he knew there was a certain, there was something to that Mad Magazine Anarchy that could work in movies. He just had no fucking clue how to do it. 

1:01:58 - Speaker 4

And hiring. It's the last 20 minutes of animal house, Yeah exactly. 

1:02:01 - Speaker 7

Made for two and a half hours Exactly. Yeah, he produced Gremlins, though right Oh yeah. 

1:02:05 - Speaker 4

That was Dante. That's giving him some of the nose how to do stuff. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 

1:02:09 - Speaker 7

I think he's smart enough by that, but definitely. 

1:02:11 - Speaker 4

But also, you know, dante had done it in 1941. 

1:02:13 - Speaker 7

You'd have an imagine, but isn't it interesting that. 

1:02:16 - Speaker 8

It isn't interesting that Spielberg, once you give him, you know, carte blanche in this instance, he totally just fucks it up. 

1:02:21 - Speaker 1

And then this is what Godfather 2, was It's like here's like Yeah, you can do whatever you want? 

1:02:25 - Speaker 8

No, it's the one, and he does this movie. that's unlike almost any other movie before. 

1:02:29 - Speaker 5

Yeah going Never made right. There's nothing quite like. And he was given that opportunity again with one for the heart and later in his career, especially now I don't see anyone second guessing anything that he's doing, or maybe his movies wouldn't be this terrible Right. 

1:02:42 - Speaker 4

But I mean, he's doing what, he's absolutely doing what he wants to do now. 

1:02:44 - Speaker 5

I mean he did what he wanted with this one, but you gotta remember it's still a major studio production. Someone had to fight him on a few things like whether they were minor or not. They probably had faith that he would be able to work through anything. 

1:02:55 - Speaker 4

I had rubberheads. It's just Rupert Hits was doing a lot of coke at that point. 

1:02:59 - Speaker 6

I don't know how much control he really had. He was banned from the set too. And it's also ironically a movie he didn't want to make. 

1:03:06 - Speaker 7

Yeah. 

1:03:07 - Speaker 6

This was supposed to be the commercial movie so I can make the conversation Right, right. And it just ends up being so in the zone that even when he's trying to do one for them, it's really not for him If you watch Godfather 3, you can see why the instincts don't always work. Oh, but the Godfather always needed a helicopter machine gun. Sequence I'm not dissing him, i'm not dissing him. And a dead pope. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's not that bad, Just saying he's an idiot. 

1:03:29 - Speaker 8

That's not what it is. 

1:03:30 - Speaker 4

It is The problem with the Godfather 3 is that it has absolutely nowhere to go. 

1:03:35 - Speaker 5

after two It's not a bad movie. It's a movie that has no reason to exist. 

1:03:39 - Speaker 8

Yeah, yeah, it's just within its universe, though that silent scream at the end is amazing, i guess, but we don't. 

1:03:46 - Speaker 5

It's such an unnecessary movie. 

1:03:48 - Speaker 8

I don't hate it? 

1:03:49 - Speaker 1

I don't. It's just so unnecessary. Yeah, and it's also comparing it to its better looking older brother. 

1:03:54 - Speaker 8

It's the Godfather and Godfather 3. 

1:03:56 - Speaker 2

And those two movies are so like the brothers, That's a Fredo And it's all good happened to Fredo. 

1:04:00 - Speaker 1

Fredo's not around for three. 

1:04:02 - Speaker 6

And it's also everything they're trying to communicate in part three is just that last shot of Mark Parleone and the Godfather 2. 

1:04:09 - Speaker 7

It's all there and one guy why even Yeah? 

1:04:11 - Speaker 8

yeah, yeah. 

1:04:13 - Speaker 6

It didn't need three hours in Andy Garcia to do it again. 

1:04:14 - Speaker 8

No, it's. Sweden needs more hours in Andy Garcia. 

1:04:16 - Speaker 1

We don't need Andy Garcia period. 

1:04:17 - Speaker 7

I want to look at his bank statements. 

1:04:19 - Speaker 4

I want to reel it in and go around the table and hear. I have a good idea. 

1:04:23 - Speaker 3

One movie that's going to be pulled from everyone's ballot. But I want to go around the table and hear, if you guys made the ballot, what would you call from the list and what would you add to the list? I mean, throw in why as well. It's tricky. We'll start over here with you. 

1:04:38 - Speaker 7

Oh well, i definitely take. I leave everything except towering inferno. And then I couldn't figure what to put on. I have like almost a list of another five like taking up helm, one, two, three, four musketeers. It's not brilliant but it's a watchable Sure. It's better than towering inferno. A apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. Get some Canadian films in there Blazing Saddles, why not Dundee or head? I'm going to say apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. 

1:05:11 - Speaker 6

I like this one too, the Canadian cool. It's still like you watching. You still get uncomfortable. 

1:05:37 - Speaker 7

Yeah, 30 years later. 

1:05:40 - Speaker 4

I think we were as uncomfortable 40 years ago. 

1:05:41 - Speaker 6

Totally yeah, yeah yeah, you want you. I mean you watch, bring design still hilarious. I'm not gonna pretend for a second. It's not, it's just blazing saddles, the actually it actually feels like it's. It means something. 

1:05:51 - Speaker 4

Yeah, i think I honestly think that if prior had played yes, it would be as good, but for me I'm just like such a pitch perfect parody. Yeah, everything it wants to do is Is there. And Jean Wilder It's my favorite performance of his and he co-wrote it. So he's writing to a string that he worked on blazing saddles as well, but the young frankincense script is just like it's it endless Stream of pleasures. Also less Brooks, which is a huge thing for me. 

1:06:16 - Speaker 5

Yeah, well, that one seen it out and that's you know. Yeah, i still, i still like His second great performance in 1974. 

1:06:26 - Speaker 4

Yeah, i'm sorry, i saw you conversation. 

1:06:28 - Speaker 5

Oh, jumping to me. Um, i, i definitely would not include towering inferno on this ballot ever for a second. I also. I mean I touched on this before, i wouldn't. I wouldn't do Lenny either. I mean I think Lenny's fine, but I wouldn't have included it in this five. A couple of things that you brought up, but we're also on mine. A Apprenticeship of daddy Kravitz was on mine, taking a poem, one, two, three. Another film that I really love There. There are so many things this year that I could go to bat for. I could even go to bat for something like day for night, longest year Hearts and minds I could. I could go to bat for Murray murder on the Orient Express if I wanted to. But the one that I would I would go for is woman under the influence, with General and greatest performance ever, with unquestionably one of the best performances by any actress ever just any actor. 

1:07:23 - Speaker 8

That's his best movie. 

1:07:25 - Speaker 5

Yeah, it's a it's a career best for everyone involved in Cassavetes is so underrated. 

1:07:31 - Speaker 6

He did get the director nomination, which I was surprised he did and and Roland and she got her. 

1:07:36 - Speaker 5

Yeah, she got hers, but I mean, it's just In comparison to something like Lenny and towering inferno. I'm like there's no. This movie should have been on this, on this final ballot. 

1:07:46 - Speaker 6

So that would be the one that I would really throw it totally agree to you, and I think it's also service name and have the Academy more like that. Clearly should have been in the fifth and they give it. It's fucking towering inferno. 

1:07:55 - Speaker 5

Yeah, because they want to pat themselves on the back to spend so much money. Yeah, there's too much money involved. The towering inferno. I could not be the queen insisting more opposite than the woman in the other influence in towering inferno. 

1:08:07 - Speaker 4

Those are the extremes. Now a woman under the towering inferno. 

1:08:10 - Speaker 6

I Replace McQueen. 

1:08:23 - Speaker 5

Instead of McQueen and Newman. 

1:08:27 - Speaker 7

Adventure to, so you could do. 

1:08:32 - Speaker 8

All right, so. 

1:08:33 - Speaker 6

I also yeah, I gotta go with the four, except for towering inferno. 

1:08:38 - Speaker 7

I know. 

1:08:39 - Speaker 6

I briefly considered dropping Lenny, but I love it too much I can't do it. So for my fifth spot, just to be like there are so many, like California split and so many and Texas chains on masquer even I would put in, although feels appropriate. so The one I'm gonna go with is I bring to the head of Alfredo Persever, oh yeah, just, and every possible way and like and Again. I just think of in terms of this being a year of then it would make it five movies about, yeah, wrendlessly horrible that was on my list too. 

Yeah, and the other one I would consider also, just because I think it's so deeply underrated, would be Shakerland Express Spielberg's first feature problem, which I think is amazing, kind of indicative of a type of Yeah, jose. 

1:09:30 - Speaker 8

I I probably definitely would have dropped towering inferno, that's coming from a suit. 

1:09:37 - Speaker 5

Yeah, yeah, yeah, well. Well, the movie made it to money. That's all you should care about. 

1:09:43 - Speaker 8

From that perspective, i'm like you know I'm in the machine, but I'm not we made the money. 

1:09:47 - Speaker 5

Who cares if it gets the award? 

1:09:48 - Speaker 8

everyone saw it and Lenny, it probably would have dropped, because there's a couple of the movies that came out this year that I Wanted to put in but I didn't realize women under the influence was there. So that's definitely. That's an amazing movie, but I love Allison and live here anymore and I leave fear. It's the soul. So I don't know if I realized to put German movies in this or no, yeah, whatever you love. 

Yeah, that would be my fifth one. I leave fear. Fear eats the soul. It's this really. It's like a weirdo movie but it's fast-finder. Yeah, it's fast-finder. It's about a Maraca. I think he's Maraca is a black man with an older German woman and they have it's like a love story. It's basically like a Douglas Cerk movie done in like German, I guess in Berlin, in the system. 

Yeah, no it is written on the way Yeah, it is, it is written when and it's like it's weird, like it's they do tabloids in the movie like people, but you walk into a scene and they're all sort of frozen kind of in a weird way. It's. It's not for everybody, but as far as like filmmaking, what we should support in the you know, ward season, this is totally one for me. 

1:10:46 - Speaker 7

So did they have foreign film Oscars in 70s? 

1:10:51 - Speaker 8

Yeah yeah they would have one, didn't it? It did I think okay, no, i didn't get nominated for that. 

1:10:54 - Speaker 6

It was one of those weird ones where it didn't get. I think it like Frans didn't put it forward as its movie, so that's why it Everything else. I could be wrong. I do know I could be wrong, but I think it's one of those weird years. 

1:11:05 - Speaker 4

I'm okay, i'm gonna quickly jump into my name because I would keep Godfather 2 and Chinatown in the conversation. I'm conflicted about Lenny. I like it a lot, but there are two other films that I would put on that ballot instead Zardos and Emmanuel. Yeah, absolutely. Women under the influence, absolutely, i think it says. I think it's as radical in its filmmaking as Ali is. Yeah, for its time and for who made it too. But I also want to give a little love to Alice doesn't live here anymore which everyone forgot. 

1:11:37 - Speaker 5

Yeah, I kind of like that was online. Yeah, I'm not accusing anyone of forgetting. 

1:11:40 - Speaker 4

But it's just the kind of movie that never, because it's so calm and quietly crafted and Observational, and because we don't think about Martin Scorsese picture being that kind of movie It just everyone forgets. It's there and it. That's one that I just, you know, i don't want it to slip away, i want people to go out and find it if they listen to this, because it's so good, he's so good in it, yeah. 

1:12:01 - Speaker 6

I tell the titles best performance. It's just one of those words. The competition was so intense I couldn't you know was like six or seven down the list when I shouldn't have been yeah, yeah, that's how good a year. 

1:12:11 - Speaker 7

The towering infernal because they couldn't choose. Yeah, but in Scorsese's photography. 

1:12:16 - Speaker 8

It's really the best quiet movie that he's ever done. 

1:12:18 - Speaker 4

You know, yeah, there's like the good fellas and everything, but as far as the smaller movie with Jodie Foster, we can't find it, yeah, working against his instincts like all the time, yeah, and just letting scenes play and, maybe because of the sitcom, sort of overtook the concept of Alice. I think that's crazy. 

1:12:34 - Speaker 8

I didn't know that that existed until wait after I saw the movie. 

1:12:36 - Speaker 4

Right and for a lot of people don't see other Around us in syndication and everybody just inundated with that opening, with shot like a 50s melodrama. Yeah, it's just a direct poke in the idol, as pictures show, i think. Take the ass cut off and live like it's East Coast, west Coast, it's like that's funny. Yeah, it's just. 

1:13:00 - Speaker 1

And also. 

1:13:00 - Speaker 4

Ellen burst and, coming off the exorcist, who do you want to work with? Oh, the taxi driver guy. Like he's not yeah. I'm trying to make it before you make that, make this for me, and boy, it's good I. 

1:13:09 - Speaker 3

Just looked up for film and no, it was not France. Okay, france, it's a mid a movie. It was a La Cone, lucien, it's what. 

1:13:14 - Speaker 6

I thought because I was a lot. When you see porn films, now many other categories, it's like an apology get this out, if you guys don't have. 

1:13:20 - Speaker 3

It's called meet the awards. 

1:13:21 - Speaker 6

It's okay, it's just a comprehensive Awards happen you can see check off the movies you've seen and it keeps a database for you. Yeah, day for night, which we didn't talk about, that's one of the greatest Making ever made so we got for this here director for that too. 

1:13:36 - Speaker 3

We've all put together our nominees and We have to ask the question does 1974 Require a do-over Around the table? 

1:13:49 - Speaker 8

Jose says no. 

1:13:51 - Speaker 7

I Would give the time down, but I'll say I'll go, okay, it doesn't need no, doesn't need it. 

1:13:58 - Speaker 5

Yeah, between those two, you guys had a lot of love for Godfather, part two. 

1:14:02 - Speaker 3

So I don't think you should feel bad about. 

1:14:07 - Speaker 5

By China town but yeah. 

1:14:09 - Speaker 4

I'm entirely fine with Godfather 2 winning, but China town and the conversation are both yeah just yeah, just as well any other year, They would have one. 

1:14:18 - Speaker 8

Yeah. 

1:14:18 - Speaker 6

I was sure it's just waiting to do. it's got father, Yeah what's gonna do? 

1:14:21 - Speaker 3

it's got father too. 

1:14:23 - Speaker 6

They had t-shirts. There was a reason Um yeah, i just you can't. It's just one of the greatest achievements Filmmaking ever cool. 

1:14:32 - Speaker 4

Yeah, you get out of the way. Yeah, yeah, how do you not acknowledge that No? 

1:14:36 - Speaker 3

Well, thank you for giving me your Sunday. everybody, thank you, it was a lot of fun. 

1:14:40 - Speaker 7

Watch 27 hours of film Like three three-hour films in? 

1:14:44 - Speaker 3

there wasn't. There was one of the most towering inferno. 

1:14:47 - Speaker 7

Oh yeah, it doesn't need to be long. like there wasn't even character development, So I bother. 

1:14:52 - Speaker 3

So if there's one take away from today, it's don't watch towering inferno, i suppose. 

1:14:59 - Speaker 7

Don't give a nosker. 

1:15:03 - Speaker 3

Conversation three times, or watch it twice to and a half, whatever certain. 

1:15:07 - Speaker 6

There's a YouTube montage of everything you need to see in tower. 

1:15:10 - Speaker 8

Right, i haven't looked it up, but I'm sure it's like the trailer, for it is probably good. Yeah, watch it. It's a long ass trailer. Yeah, it's what I did, yeah that's fine. 

1:15:18 - Speaker 3

Well, thanks again. 

1:15:27 - Speaker 2

And just like that, episode one is done. 1974 stays just like it was the Godfather. Part two rain supreme, as is only good, and just Thanks again to norm. Phil, jose, david and Andrew will be back with movies from the year 1975 and on and on Into the future. It's gonna be one heck of a ride for your Reconsideration. We'll talk soon. 

1:16:03 - Speaker 3

For your reconsideration is the production of dover podcast such to subscribe share rate review. Please visit doveracom Do. Ah podcast, some such. 

Join Host, Matti Price as he gives you the lowdown on the 1974 Best Picture nominees and a run down of what you can expect on For Your Reconsideration.

Welcome to For Your Reconsideration an Oscars Podcast. Coming May 7, 2023