6. Reassessing the Film Treasures of 1976's Best Picture Race

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.