For Your Reconsideration - An Oscars Podcast

Reassessing the 1977 Best Picture: Iconic Films and Missed Opportunities

Did the Oscars get it right in 1977? Join me, Matti Price, and our fantastic panellists Karen Gordon, Ryan McNeil, and Leslie Byron Pitt as we travel back in time to the 50th Annual Academy Awards, reevaluating the nominees for Best Picture and presenting our own alternative ballots. From Annie Hall to Star Wars, we discuss our personal connections to these iconic movies and their influence on modern cinema. We delve into the filmmaking techniques used in Woody Allen's Annie Hall, exploring how it shaped modern films like Olivia Wilde's Book Smart and Game Night. Our panellists also analyze the cultural impact of other nominees such as The Goodbye Girl, The Turning Point, and Julia, sparking an interesting debate on overlooked films like Saturday Night Fever and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. As we reflect on the 1977 Oscars. Listen in as we discuss a pivotal year in film history and ponder if the Oscars truly got it right in 1977. Don't miss out on this fascinating trip down memory lane! Transcript 0:00:00 - Speaker 1 In 1928, the first winner for Outstanding Motion Picture was Wings. In a few minutes we'll know the 50th. The films nominated for the Academy Award this year are Annie Hall, jack Rollins, charles H Jaffe Productions. United Artists. Charles H Jaffe, producer. The Goodbye Girl. Ray Stark Production. Metra Goldwood-Mair, warner Brothers. Ray Stark, producer. Julia, a 20th Century Fox Production. 20th Century Fox. Richard Roth, producer. Star Wars, a 20th Century Fox Production, 20th Century Fox. Gary Kurtz, producer. The Turning Point, hera Productions, 20th Century Fox. Herbert Ross and Arthur Lawrence, producers. And the winner is Annie Hall, charles H Jaffe.  0:01:22 - Speaker 2 It's the fourth episode of For Your Reconsideration 1977 has arrived. Yay, apologies to Kermit and the Muppets, i get excited. I'm Mattie Price and along with producer Jamie JD Doe, we are back with a great panel. I'm your host for the conversation once again. Will we need a do-over, or did the Oscars get it right? This episode looks at the mostly American movies of 1977, including Best Picture winner Annie Hall, dance Drama, the Turning Point, unreliable Memoir, julia Star Vehicle, the Goodbye Girl and an obscure film now lost to history, star Wars. As always, our panelists will present their own alternative ballot and winner. Thanks again for listening and downloading.  As always, this podcast is available pretty much wherever podcasts are available, and you can learn more about this and other great shows at Doveracom. That's D-E-W-V-R-Ecom. Join me. Panelists Karen Gordon, ryan McNeil and Leslie Byron Pitt. This discussion was recorded over the interwebs and feels like it happened only yesterday actually, instead of one or two weeks ago, so let's get into it. Okay, this is 1977. I am Maddie Price. I'm joined by an amazing panel. I'm going to go around and give everybody a chance to introduce themselves. Karen, why don't you start? Let the folks know who you are.  0:02:55 - Speaker 3 Hi, maddie, thanks And hello everybody. My name is Karen Gordon, i'm located in Toronto and I'm a freelancer. One of the things I do is work as a film writer and film critic. I'm a longtime film fan, so it's really an exciting thing to me to be able to do this. I've done film criticism, writing on a whole bunch of mediums TV, on the CBC, on radio But I'm also one of the founding critics of a website called OriginalSynca, and that's mostly what I'm doing now.  0:03:26 - Speaker 2 Nice Thanks And thank you for doing this. It's a pleasure. On a personal note, karen Gordon, you are my favorite, maybe one of my top five favorite all-time CBC radio hosts. Thank, you. And I'm so happy that I got to know you really, really, truly.  0:03:41 - Speaker 3 Thank you. I was always freelance, never full-time there, so maybe I should send this to them.  0:03:45 - Speaker 2 The first time I met you, i was scared to go up to you. That's how much I think you're great. I like everybody on the show, but I just needed to say that I needed to level set un-Karen. Leslie, please introduce yourself from across the pond, as it were.  0:04:04 - Speaker 5 Yeah, so my name's Leslie. I am a film writer, podcaster and photographer allegedly all those things in England And I've been kind of freelancing and writing movies for more than I would like to say, mostly blogging, but just I find myself in places like Set the Tape. I've written for Empire, i've contributed to BBC iPlayer and Sight and Sound and Jazz FM and all over the place.  0:04:40 - Speaker 2 And thank you so much Again. This is such a thrill to meet you in person. I know you threw a website called Row 3, which is now defunct. Yeah, But boy, it's been a pleasure knowing you all these years and to get to talk to you in person Amazing. Last oh, me too. Last, and absolutely not least, because of course I am the worst person here, Ryan welcome.  0:05:02 - Speaker 6 I'm Ryan McNeil. I'm in Toronto, canada. I feel like I'm the one at the kids table in this little coffee clutch that we've assembled. My podcast is the matineeca. You can find it anywhere. The podcasts are found. We talk about film from the point of view of passion and perspective and a bribe. Fort Knightley used to write a lot more than I do now. Maybe one day I'll try it again, but these days I live behind my microphone and inside of my own headphones and I'm very, very happy to be here.  0:05:33 - Speaker 2 Yes, this is super exciting. I'm really. This is a great year. I'm really happy to dig into it with you guys.  Just a level set The Best Picture nominees for this year of 1977, which was presented in 78. The winner was Annie Hall, a little tiny film that nobody had heard of, called Star Wars, the Goodbye Girl, julia and The Turning Point. One thing I like to do to start this off is just a level set with everybody and get a sense of your perspective In a way. What I'm curious about is what is your relationship to this year in movies, like, how did you generally encounter these films And this year in filmmaking, were you alive? You may not have been And, for instance, i was six in 1977.  Here's what I remember. I remember other six-year-old kids in my class bragging in September about how many times that summer they had seen Star Wars. I've seen it four times. I've seen it five times And I remember thinking that was dumb. I just remember. I very distinctly remember thinking what Five times, that's just dumb And obviously I was wrong. I did not see any of those other nominated films that year. I didn't see any of them until much later The Goodbye Girl and Annie Hall. I probably saw it in early high school, grade nine or 10, something like that. And then I watched Julia and The Turning Point much more recently, and I think that may be the same for you guys. But I'm curious what were you like in 1977? Were you a thing? And, whether you were or not, how did you come at these movies?  0:07:15 - Speaker 5 It was the first. Well, i think I don't know if I'm the youngest, so I wasn't around in 1977. So how I got to these films? I obviously had seen two of the nominees already in my teenage years, and I do mean my teenage years. I saw Annie Hall and Star Wars when I was in my teens.  I didn't watch Star Wars when I was younger, and that one decision has kind of really dictated how I view movies. I think so many people watch Star Wars and they're in love with it And I am at times indifferent to it, and fans have not made it easier. But the year of 1977, for me, i just went back and looked at some lists of these movies and I just forget how stacked some of these years of film are. And I just had a look and there was a list of films that I had that I thought was just a little bit more interesting at times. I mean, you got Saturday Night Live, you got A Raise A Head and you got Close Encounters, sorcerer, looking for Mr Goodbar and Free Women And I'm like, wow, this is interesting the nominations they picked up, because I would have changed at least three of them.  0:08:45 - Speaker 2 We're gonna hold that thought We're gonna get there. Ryan, were you alive?  0:08:52 - Speaker 6 Not quite. I was conceived Great to go. Mom and Dad.  0:08:57 - Speaker 2 So you, as my parents would say, you did not have a window seat.  0:09:00 - Speaker 6 I did not have a window seat. No, yeah. So I mean, star Wars is one of the earliest films I can remember seeing as a boy. I'm a little bit more into it than, obviously, than Leslie is, but not as into it as some, and so I can understand the angst for lack of a better word. As I got into classic film in my early 20s, i would have come across Annie Hall And then, more recently, the Goodbye Girl and Julia. The Turning Point was the only film that I had never seen before, you know, being approached for this show. So that was the new introduction And I find this to be a really fascinating little cross-section, even more fascinating when you mentioned some of those films that Leslie talked about that are on the outside looking in. But this is a really, really interesting group of films.  0:09:54 - Speaker 2 Yeah, i couldn't agree more. I'm dying to sort of get into it. I will give Karen. Karen, i apologize for in any way referencing your age, but my suspicion is you did see some of these.  0:10:05 - Speaker 3 Yeah, i would really terrified to talk. I considered hanging up. Not only was I alive in 1977, when I was already into my 20s, i'd already had a job and moved to another city. I was living in Ottawa in 1977 and saw was already. It's funny, at that point in my life I didn't think of movies as anything but the thing I did on the weekend. And so I had.  When I thought back, when I started writing about movies and thought back to what, which movies? Annie Hall, for me, changed the game, by the way. It was a huge moment for me, and Star Wars was a novelty, a wonderful novelty, but it wasn't for me. I know I've talked to so many people who are younger and who weren't maybe born that are, who were six or five or something. I know who's become a major figure here. Star Wars just riveted him at the age of four or five. He knew then he wanted to work in movies, but for but I saw all of them.  When I think back at movies that profoundly affected me, it would have started with maybe the Godfather, but I grew up going to the movies on the weekend. You know it was a whole era where if you wanted to see a movie went to the theater. So the movie that I saw three times at the theater was Annie Hall, and so I kind of have a maybe a little bit more of the sort of sociological context of some of these films, because the 70s, i think, is such an underrated era In movies. It was considered in some ways trashy because you ended up with I mean, at that point I was really into music, i worked in radio, i was a newscaster, i did some I still have my scripts for some of my little movie reviews at the time, which is pretty funny, but yeah so so I understand maybe a little bit more from an experiential point of view as opposed to from a film history point of view, why some of those films might have been in that category.  0:12:02 - Speaker 2 When you saw Annie Hall, did you drag different people to see it?  0:12:07 - Speaker 3 I have a I unfortunately is now deceased but my best friend at the time, who I met when I moved to Ottawa and became like he was like my brother from another mother, howard and I went. We couldn't believe what we were seeing And you know it's I have a lot of things to say about it. It's like a talk about it for a long time But effectively I'm kind of Woody Allen And and so it. I'm that kind of personality And it was the first time I saw people talk. When you talk about representation and what that means, it's really that movie really, for me, says a lot about it. It was really interesting to see somebody that neurotic and that I was kind of funny and I was fast and and you know. So it was like looking in the mirror. And then it was.  I loved New York, i love the idea of New York. I always grew up with this fascination for New York. So that era in New York was going through a rough time And Alan encapsulated and captured so much in that movie. So I did not have to drag anyone. Howard and I went back three times in a row because he was also kind of Woody Allen, a more balanced human being. But yeah, i was, definitely it is. I should have been relating to some of the female characters maybe, but that, that, that sort of neurotic And it had it also was kind of of the times you know that was. It did speak to the times in more than just my life.  0:13:35 - Speaker 2 When, and I'm really curious. So I you know, i don't I didn't come at Annie Hall as a person at the time because I was six and I think I probably would have been lost on me a little bit. I Have Marshall McLuhan right here. I don't think a six-year-old would have Would have understood what that meant really. But I do come at it from the sort of cultural specificity of being Jewish and it having this very strong kind of Jewish cultural impact of On me right and and and I am really curious, you know It, i don't think I have. I have no compunction about understanding why it won best picture But we can talk about it more and why you guys think it won or didn't win, but but I do think it's interesting. Like What is? you know, leslie, what was your reaction to it when you saw any home?  0:14:27 - Speaker 5 Well, i remember watching any whole first years ago I think I was probably about 16 and kind of Add to what what Karen was saying. I think there is something about a representation of it in terms of there's a universal Universality of it or so just there's something about the way he encapsulates that neurosis of being Being a person trying to get into dates and and everything and being that kind of the odd person Even in somewhere like New York and having this kind of talent. But not sure about this talent and all these little Things about it, about him as a person, and I really that's shon to that, because that's what Alan was really good at doing and that's why in all his movies There is a Woody Allen type character in those, just his way. But Going back and watching it again this week, what really kind of solidified things to me was the filmmaking itself and And it's quite interesting, quite funny that I think people talk a lot about, like the Spielberg one, so the one, the one camera take, where he can make he just has one Camera shot and it's actually just holding the camera at some point and people kind of block and talk around it. And There's this amazing Moment in Annie Hall where, like, the characters talking aren't even in the frame and having this back and forth conversation and they kind of slowly warp into frame. But it's also Gordon Willis cinematography composed in such a way that you've got a leading line up to them as well, so you can't see them first and then they kind of come in and I was just It's such a simple looking thing in terms of like, how do you do that? type moment.  But one of the things I found is like I look, when I look at especially a lot of modern kind of rom-coms or comedies or anything, i was like no one's putting that much effort into Something so simple, no one's putting effort into those little conversations and Apart from maybe this is gonna be a bit weird, but like I really like to Olivia Wilde's book smart, because I thought that was one of the most well-directed Sequences in something like that and maybe something like game night as well.  But watching Woody Allen, watching Woody Allen watching Annie Hall, what I loved about it is he was just breaking the mold, it from scene to scene, while also investigating his own neurosis, and For someone like myself who was writing about movies at the time of 16 and whatnot, i was like man, i really want to make films. This is really interesting. It was just his ability to use form to Navigate. His personal aspects were the things that really kind of, kind of I would say, shook me to a core. But just I was just flabbergasted by How he made it look effortless and easy.  0:17:43 - Speaker 2 It's. So. I find that so interesting because people rarely have ever talked about the filmmaking itself In Woody Allen. We talk a lot about the characters in the writing and you're right, there's there was a lot of formal invention and not just the stuff around, i think, talking directly to the audience, which you know obviously have been done in different ways many times, but but was done very uniquely here.  0:18:02 - Speaker 5 But but you're right, there's there's an awful lot of visual Ideation going on in how he chooses to sort of expose his ideas right to actually like work them through and that thing I'd say, wow, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's the thing that you realize is like It's a comedy, so how the timing has to be on point and it is cut Yeah, so well, so leanly, and so I Don't feel that you need to have Avert backstory to all these characters because it's already in there. You know, you seem to know so much about these people the moment you meet them, and that is Something quite interesting To see for something. He just seemed to capture those personalities well, and I don't know if Those were the personalities of New York at the time, but I mean, i'm a lot of the writing used to say, well, look what he's doing with these kind of slightly upper-class individuals in New York, and You can only wonder, if you like, how, how good he was right out, how well and how accurately he was putting this together on screen.  0:19:13 - Speaker 2 Um is there something about it. Ryan, is that sort of your take away as well, or do you sort of come out and bring other things?  0:19:19 - Speaker 6 I draw other things out of the I think my experience with it is that it's a film that That moves the form. Like when I, when I was a, when I was younger, certainly before I came to it my taste in comedies were things like, you know, dumb and dumber, or crocodile Dundee or you know, like, like silly, slap-dash, big, broad, make money silly comedies and Just like anything any other art form, any one thing can be many things, which I think is why The Academy stood and stood behind it in, you know, in the face of something Much, much bigger and broader, in the way of Star Wars, was it was a comedy. That, basically said, comedy can be something else. Like a minute comedy can be a lot more cerebral, it can be a lot more, a lot drier. It doesn't have to be slapstick, it doesn't have to be screwball, you know, it doesn't have to necessarily appeal to all audiences, it doesn't make it any less genius. You know, you can see the influences of this Touchstone picture when you watch films by Greta Gerwig and Noah Bombach, and I think it's quite a propo that they were together, considering their, their taste, obviously It's. I think it's saying something that, aside from the artist, it's the last picture to win, the last comedy to win best picture and the artist gets a big lift by playing with the silent form, like it. You know you can say that the artist is using that As a gimmick and that's how it ends up being the next comedy to win best picture.  So that was, that was my thing, was actually the first time I watched it at age 1920. I didn't get everything, which is it was just more my sense of humor at the time. But, like Leslie said, like I certainly, i certainly appreciate the filmmaking was spectacular, like Karen said, like seeing, you know, a story of people who weren't in my immediate community And weren't, you know, it made things far more interesting. And that is everything happening inside of the box. You know there is a broader conversation outside of the box if we are Reconsidering 1977, but inside of the box, that is certainly my relationship with, with Annie Hall. And look, there's there.  0:21:48 - Speaker 2 Oh sorry, karen.  0:21:49 - Speaker 3 I'm just gonna say walking Trier. Trier, who did the worst person, is the director of the worst person in the world in other films. This site also cited Alan as a filmmaker. Alan hasn't, i can't remember if he's talked about this. I'm sure this isn't my own thought, but I think he was very inspired by the French new wave when it comes to the style of filmmaking. He'd made a few films before, on hall, obviously, and he'd been. I didn't realize he'd been a theater director, he'd written a lot for TV, but I think that he probably came of age watching those French new wave Movies in New York and a lot of that I.  I've gone back to them because he's a huge influence on me And as I started to get more serious, that film looked at stuff in that business of people talking off screen. You know some of that, some of his moves are, to me, quite inspired by that and I love the way they work and change American comedy.  0:22:39 - Speaker 4 Oh, he did do fast Yeah yeah, he did do fast with with bananas early on, like first me Yes And it, it.  0:22:46 - Speaker 5 This was the one ways where People kind of turn around with, oh he's actually, he could actually be serious.  0:22:55 - Speaker 2 So he did. He did three farces in a row because he did he very broad. He did one that took off on Sort of revolutionary politics, which is bananas. Then he did one that took off on science fiction with sleeper, and then he did love and death, which is essentially like a parody of Russian literature And and epic movies. And I think he, you know, the thing that's, you know, to me the thing that, like at the time, would have sort of shocked people into realizing Kind of the depths of this guy, was the fact that he had done these movies and they had pigeonholed him. They decided he was a kind of a Mel Brooks the Director. He was a guy that was going to take on genres Maybe they were a little more elevated Genres than Mel Brooks was was taking on, but he wasn't going to take on the genre He was taking on but he wasn't going to turn around and do this. And you know, to be frank, it is astonishing to see the growth between those movies and this.  The one thing that I don't think really gets talked about a lot, that I think is really key to Maybe like for me, what makes annie hall special or lasting or Influential in a way is Alan's background as a stand-up. Yes, he, he might be the best peer joke writer to ever do it. If you go back and listen to what do you all stand up comedian That is banger after banger and Quick and incredible setups, and the thing about annie hall is that it captures. You talk, you know, karen, you mentioned the neurotic quality, but I think what it really captures is he a stand-up persona of this sort of you know, neurotic person and translates it into a story that is super compelling and, in my opinion, like we can talk about a lot of the films like the Like worst person in the world and a lot of other films that I think benefited from annie hall, but frankly I'm not sure, without annie hall, that there's ever going to be a sign felt.  No like like how, how would that happen? How would you know? those scenes with him and tony robber's just kind of walking down the street and robber's keeps calling him that nick name and stuff. It's like that's max, that's sign felt, hmm, kind of you know, like, to me, that's where a lot of that sensibility comes from. Where you go, i'm a stand-up and I have this thing. Now I'm going to turn it into a show like a dramatic form, right.  0:25:08 - Speaker 3 And the sorry I'm interrupting, but the thing.  No no, no about that movie when you look at the other nominees and then the lord and then even go larger to see what was missed. But when you look at one of the reasons that movie might have been compelling beyond all of the sophistication, the quality of it, like it wasn't a toss-off Thing, is that it really did capture the times. It captured a certain point in feminism. It captured, like annie hall was this kind of conflicted character between old and new, like I was kind of I'm a little younger than annie hall would have been, but certainly that were that generation of women that was raised to be one thing. And then suddenly you had all this freedom. There was the youth culture coming in.  It was also hollywood was changing And it already started in the early 70s, but it was changing against you. What you had was new york was decaying, it was a mess. There was racism, all this other Stuff that he touches on in the movie. So I think that when you compare it to the other some of the other nominees there And you compare it to star wars, which now, with legacy, may look different in that year, you couldn't have asked for a movie that seemed to encapsulate so much of the culture.  0:26:16 - Speaker 2 It's fascinating to me that Goodbye Girl was nominated the same year, because it's a very much. We can talk about it, but I feel like it suffers by comparison Very much so.  0:26:29 - Speaker 5 It's not a bad film, it's just Not at all. It's very charming It looks like a sitcom in just an extra, and I think if I remember in production notes I think they were trying to make it a sitcom And it shows Not in a. I'm trying to say it in a kind of negative way, but I'm just thinking of the old couple and things like that.  0:26:55 - Speaker 2 Does the Goodbye Girl feel like the real New York The way that Annie Hall feels like the real New York?  0:27:03 - Speaker 6 I mean it feels like a play. That's the thing. It's not a fluke that Neil Simon wrote. It plays like a play and it feels like a play. It's got those lines that are really, really catchy in that very Billy Wilder, il Diamond kind of way that really really crackle on the screen but where films like Annie Hall and some of the others that we talked about even before that didn't even make the class felt more like they were cut from people sitting around and shooting the shit. This felt very, very. It was like you know well, but very, very rote.  0:27:40 - Speaker 3 He rewrote it in six weeks. He originally made it about something different. He was married to Marsha Mason, so she was the lead in it. Originally cast Robert De Niro in it and it wasn't working, So none of it was set in LA. I want to see that version.  He said that De Niro was not funny. It said De Niro was funny in a different way And of course Neil Simons, as you said. But I wonder if you took Richard Dreyfuss out of that movie. I mean to me, with no disrespect to any of the other people, marsha Mason was okay in it. She was good in it. The little girl Quinn Cummings was good in it. But to me that movie rests on the performance by Richard Dreyfuss. It's so charming, it's a tour de force.  0:28:21 - Speaker 2 Yeah, let me tell you this There is no point in my entire marriage where my wife has not hung up her bra and I have not said I don't like the panties hanging on the line And I can pull like that thing from the bathroom. I just have it in my head constantly. It's just so funny the way he says it And a fun sort of like weird fact. But you know, the sort of the comic set piece of that movie is this horrendous production of Richard III that he gets himself into And the character that Nicole Williamson plays, the sort of maniacal director, is based 100% on Mike Nichols. Oh, yeah, yeah.  Yeah. So I guess I guess Neil Simon had had like a somewhat bad experience with Mike Nichols on a show And like this was his revenge. I don't know.  0:29:14 - Speaker 3 I think that role was played by Paul Benedict.  0:29:18 - Speaker 2 Oh, I'm sorry, You're right.  0:29:20 - Speaker 3 The director which is even funnier. He was hilarious in that.  0:29:24 - Speaker 6 He's got one of those voices that, even if you don't remember his name or his face, it's like oh, it's that guy, he speaks that way in everything. Yes. Thank you for the correction.  0:29:33 - Speaker 3 No, it's okay, I just thought he was to me. That's the point where I thought this guy's so good, he so manipulates that poor actor that played by Richard Dreyfuss and is who's so humiliated by what he's being asked to do, do you?  0:29:46 - Speaker 2 guys think that, like you said, i think it's inseparable to pull that Richard Dreyfuss performance out. Do you think that this was a case of them, the Academy just kind of liking Richard Dreyfuss so much and having seen him come so far with Jaws and other stuff that they were sort of caught up in it and wanted to put the movie in there.  0:30:04 - Speaker 3 I think it's Neil Simon. I think it was. The Oscars has a habit of honoring legacy artists. Like I didn't like the Fablemen's. I know some people did. It's like Spielberg got nominated for the Fablemen's. There's not his strongest work to me. I think Neil Simon is. You know he was a superstar at that point.  0:30:21 - Speaker 2 Yeah, okay.  0:30:22 - Speaker 3 That's just my.  0:30:26 - Speaker 6 It's also the era This is still when Hollywood is really very, very still kind of linked with Broadway. We're not that far removed from when a lot of the big musical productions were dominating nominations and even wins, you know, very, very deep into the 60s and early 70s.  0:30:47 - Speaker 2 So a lot of you had a successful play. They made it into a movie.  0:30:50 - Speaker 6 They made it into a movie and everybody remembered the play, especially if it happens to Neil Simon play. So it's kind of, you know, while on the one hand it is definitely propelled by Richard Dreyfuss And if you put anybody else in, that it does not work as well. It automatically gets that lift from being a Neil Simon play, from being a very successful Neil Simon play, just because that was kind of the nature of things at the time.  0:31:18 - Speaker 5 It does feel like a play. I mean it doesn't really move that far out from anywhere Like. One thing about Annie Hall is at one point you do go to LA, it's never stuck in one place. You're all over New York. You get out into the city a lot. Yeah, And then with this you're it's obviously considering what the film is about. It's quite claustrophobic anyway, But you don't really leave that house And yeah, it shows. It really does show in that movie.  0:31:49 - Speaker 2 There are a lot of movies about New York City, obviously, but there are two that I think captured the geography of New York City perfectly. One of them is Annie Hall and the other one is Diard 3.  So you don't hear those messages together very often Both films you could put like when he takes a car trip from one place to another you're like, yep, that's exactly the direct, that's exactly how I would drive that, yes, it's exactly correct. I do Now a lot of years. I think you know the all five nominees are movies that people still cherish, they still talk about, they're still kind of top of mind. Not so much this year, i would say, fairly or not. 1977 has two film nominees. That I think if you ask the average, even the average, you know, sort of enthusiastic filmgoer.  I don't know how many people have heard of Julia or the turning point, really, truly, and so you know, i watched both of those films a couple of years ago and I will be the first to admit they made very little impression on me. You guys have maybe seen them more recently. What are your sort of thoughts around? So just to put this in perspective, i think the turning point had like eight or nine nominations. It got zero wins, it did not win anything. And Julia had like almost the same amount and it I think got one win for Jason Robards, which he pretty much took away from from Alec Guinness. And say what you want about Star Wars, i cannot believe that they didn't give Alec Guinness. So, like you know, did you. When do you guys want to talk about those two films, maybe together a little bit, because like, or should we separate them out?  0:33:23 - Speaker 6 I will go to bat for the turning point because that film that's the only one of these I had never seen before And you know, if people could see the group chat for this episode, that was the hardest one for a lot of us to source. I'm so much.  That film was amazing. I loved the holy heck out of that film, oh really. Oh yeah, i watched my wife and I watched it together and she was like she, as a Broadway nerd and a dance enthusiast, was like why have I never heard of this or seen this before? Because, holy shit, you know, you can you see influences of all about Eve in this movie. You can see how it would affect something like Black Swan in this movie. The dancing in this movie is just glorious and they take long time. You have to like dance. I will admit that openly. If you do not like dance, you're in for a long two hours. But if you enjoy seeing dance on film, this is a film where I like dance and Baryshnikov.  0:34:23 - Speaker 2 Yeah, now we're really getting qualifiers, yeah.  0:34:25 - Speaker 6 But you know you will hear I don't agree with this. But you will hear a common complaint nowadays that when dance is captured on film, that the editing does not allow it to just play as well as it could play, like it feels the need to to intercut and to really, you know, energize it when maybe it doesn't need it Again. I don't agree with that, but you'll hear that a lot. This is the opposite of that. There are a lot of long shots where, first of all, you just watch Baryshnikov do what Baryshnikov does and it's just stunning to see, but the filmmaking captures the dance in a magnificent way. And then, as if that isn't a treat enough, you watch Kat Ross and White and Miss Kublik's name just drop right out of my head Shirley McClain have this simmering, longstanding rivalry which just plays to the point where they're getting into a catfight in Lincoln Center out in the courtyard And I'm like this is cinema. I was, this was, this was the delight of the of my homework.  0:35:34 - Speaker 5 Nice episode.  0:35:35 - Speaker 6 I love this movie so much.  0:35:37 - Speaker 5 I'm so gutted. I get gutted sometimes when you hear someone talk so passionately about something and I just thought it was so slight.  0:35:43 - Speaker 6 I was really frustrated.  0:35:45 - Speaker 5 The dance is beautiful, the dance is absolutely beautiful And as a Philistine, i only know Baryshnikov from Sex and the City. So sorry, but I just found myself just watching this and really wanting more tension, really wanting more out of it, and I just felt so much. It was so slight, i think I thought Tom Skerrie was in. It was in there and he wasn't anymore. And structurally I got frustrated And by the time it got to the end, where you talk about the catfight, i kind of burst into laughter as opposed to, and then they burst into laughter And I was like OK, well, fine, ok, but I wanted more. I wanted more, more fireiness from it. I can see why. Like I think you hit the nail on the head. You can see elements of something like Black Swan in this, but what I like about Black Swan is it is trashy and it is outrageous.  0:36:49 - Speaker 2 It's certainly more. I think I needed something like that in there. It's more stretched out and theatrical and extreme in its sporadic kind of qualities, right Yeah, at the time. Do you remember seeing Oh?  0:37:00 - Speaker 3 yeah, i think what's interesting. But it's really interesting to talk about this and I haven't seen Turning Point. It's very hard to get and it's interesting too that it and Julie aren't, because they are films that starred women, right, we all talk about where are women? where are women of a certain age? So the thing about Julie at the time is, first of all, it was Baryshnikov's first. I just looked it up again, double-checked. It was his first movie role and he was a huge star then, which of course, you couldn't have access to unless you were in New York. So this was a big thing. I mean, he'd done one or two things on TV, i think.  But the thing about the Turning Point for me was that it's this Again it's about women in the era and you're juggling this changeover between career or family. Can you have both? What does it mean? And there is a little bit of that, well, a lot of that cliche, of that women are never friends, there's always a competition. So I think it attempts to resolve that in a reasonable way. So, culturally, that's where it sat for me is you had superstars in it Anne Bancroft and Shirley MacLean. You had this incredible dancer, baryshnikov, and I think the woman dancing with him I'm sort of just blanked on her name was the principal dancer as well. She was yes, so you had. It had a pedigree. It was Herbert Roth. Everything about it was pedigree, but at the same time, it wasn't groundbreaking. It wasn't. When you look at the films that ended up being groundbreaking, it wasn't really groundbreaking and it was attempting to be all things to all people. In some ways, it doesn't diminish the fact that it was a good movie.  0:38:35 - Speaker 5 I will turn around and say it's got some amazing. This is going to sound really damnemuffering praise, but it's got some amazing blocking in there.  0:38:45 - Speaker 6 No, that's not fame praise. That's really hard to do.  0:38:50 - Speaker 5 It's one of those things where you realise how good the craft of the film is in terms of looking at the blocking and looking at having a crowded table and all these people around it and making sure that the one. If you want one person to feel more diminished, you place them there. If you want one person to feel more empowered in the conversation, you place them there. The way the characters move around is that secret source of what makes filmmaking better for certain movies and whatnot. I think Anne Bancroft is really good as well. I'm telling you, Colleen is always pretty good.  0:39:31 - Speaker 2 I should clarify. It didn't leave a huge impression on me, but I certainly don't think it was bad at all. It's terrific. I think it is Somebody mentioned I think, ryan, you mentioned All About Eve. I think that's a good. The Barbara Streisand remake of A Star Is Born was the previous year.  I think there was maybe a bit of what can we do to look back on some of these older forms in filmmaking, especially the 70s. They blew the door off the rules. There were a lot of movies that did not play by traditional rules and had become very successful. I think there was maybe a sense of let's try to go back and pull some things forward And make them feel modern and make them feel relevant again, and this is probably a good example of that. I agree that I think a big part of why this movie doesn't survive and why it's very hard to get a hold of is because it has female leads. There's no reason The Turning Point shouldn't be in every DVD anniversary collection of that studio and something that is brought back and held up as a great example of a movie from the 70s. It sucks that it's not.  0:40:44 - Speaker 3 Well, then again, when you take a look at There are women's movies, like Tcm. The other day did I think it was Scorsese's birthday or Dinear's somebody's birthday. So Alice doesn't live here anymore as often We see that as an elevator. Maybe we need to have Herbert Ross retrospectives. Some of that, i think, has to do with the director. And it was interesting, ryan, when you were talking about the dance. Think about 1977 and the difference in what people expected to see at the movies and the attention span. You could let movies run, that You could let a dance scene go that long because our attention spans weren't jagged.  And I think that that's really an interesting. I've never thought about that before in that way, but I think that's a really interesting thing. Or, leslie, when you're talking about the blocking, you could do it, then You could hold people's attention. People wanted to be entertained. But I think that it is Maybe it's time to do a retrospective on Ross, and again you're dealing with a time where you've got this young Hollywood pushing against the grain. I mean, star Wars was young Hollywood. It was meant to be a lark, not the beginning of a franchise, and you got a guy like Herbert Ross, who I think came from TV, so even these legacy guys dealing with Hollywood as the changeover. And so this was kind of an attempt to be groovy, or maybe Maybe I'd have to research that, but it strikes me as sort of a compromise.  0:42:15 - Speaker 2 Or at least to get in front of new audiences. Yeah.  0:42:19 - Speaker 6 The interesting thing about Ross is I mean, he's a director who He's got two pictures out of these five, which is really hard to do. He didn't get best director for both, but one director getting two pictures into the class does not happen very often. So I mean, well done, herbert. But it's also this thing that as you go back through Oscar history or even just through Hollywood history, you see this thing where directors are a brand for a decade And then all of a sudden they're really not. A case in point with this is somebody like And I say this as somebody who loves his work is Barry Levinson. Barry Levinson, oscar award-winning director, barry Levinson. If you went to the average film student right now and said, talk to me about the films of Barry Levinson, they probably respond with wait which one was he? They recognize the name but they can't necessarily put the two together. I think in five or 10 years you're going to hear that same response with Tom Hooper, but that's a whole other show. And that's the thing is Herbert Ross in the 70s.  0:43:22 - Speaker 2 You're not going to hear it about Tom Hooper because no one's going to ask about him. All right, Oscar award-winning director Tom Hooper.  0:43:30 - Speaker 6 That's the thing people would be doing a show like this and be like wait, which one was he? So, yeah very much what Karen was saying that when you're looking at, we all do retrospectives of Scorsese and we do retrospectives of Agnes Varda and we do retrospectives of Pick, the Director, but you don't hear about retrospectives of people like Herbert Ross, despite the fact that their work is, by all measures, really really quite good.  0:43:55 - Speaker 2 Yeah, So there is certainly a bias against what I would call artful invisibility which happens a lot in these really good films, which is that the director doesn't necessarily put their style on it, but there are just cameras, always in the right place at the right time or right amount of time. What about Julia? How much time do we want to devote to?  0:44:15 - Speaker 6 I want to award it the best supporting performance by a hat.  0:44:21 - Speaker 5 It was a bit of a slog. I found it a bit.  0:44:25 - Speaker 2 It's just a strange movie, right.  0:44:28 - Speaker 5 Well, looking back at the history of what it's about and realizing that the controversy about it was Julia in real, it's based on a so-called true story but Julia herself may or may not have existed and it was kind of debunked that she did. I found it really really hard Once you also had that knowledge in there. I found it really really hard to kind of sit with a story, especially with the fact that from the tagline and everything that's all about friendship and there isn't that many scenes where the film builds upon this friendship And I kind of just struggled with that. It just seemed to be, i mean, it's difficult because I said at the beginning of this that I would replace three movies and Turning Point and Julia would definitely one of them, and there's something about what Karen says about representation and and women's movies and I'm they're really struggling with these two movies and I was wondering if there was anything I kind of just missed and maybe it's just I was coming from it from a different point of view or or anything and I just think it was just structurally. I just found them just hard to get into and there's elements of the craft that I think is are really good.  I think performance is really good, i think Jane Fonda was really good. But I'm watching that and I'm thinking, well, i like Jane Fonda, include I don't like her in this. There's just so many. There was just so many times where I've just just found myself kind of drifting off. I didn't seem to be that much as I was like. I was like, oh, is that Dashel Hammett? oh, great, and that was about it, like there wasn't much to it for me, like, although I do like Jason Robarty's you know.  0:46:20 - Speaker 2 I mean, i think there is a great. There is a great movie to be made about the relationship between the Liz and Helmut and Dashel Hammett. I just I'm not sure this is it, but it's not really about them, is it?  0:46:31 - Speaker 5 right, it's not it it kind of has him there to say look it is. And when she, when she first says dash, i was like dad, no, oh yeah. And then I was like oh right, okay, and then you're like, oh, this is a. This is an interesting thing and for me a film like this would. I would want to, after watching it, get really involved into looking at the history, looking at those relationships, because I wasn't there at the time and this film doesn't do that for me again.  0:46:59 - Speaker 3 To me a representation. It's great to see women's films, but they are actually good.  0:47:03 - Speaker 4 I mean, there's there is that, like you know, yeah representation isn't you know, it's a.  0:47:07 - Speaker 3 It's an important thing and I think movies should be allowed to fail, like you should be able to make a, have a director with a vision and they make that vision and maybe it doesn't work, like to me. That's you don't have art unless you have failure. It's ridiculous. Otherwise everybody's making just basic standard schlock. I'm not schlock, but it gets to be schlock yeah, if everybody's doing it.  0:47:28 - Speaker 1 So the question that was an attempt to be to be portentious.  0:47:32 - Speaker 3 Yeah, like it was. And there were more reasons that Vanessa redgrave's casting. Oh no, was it Vanessa redgrave?  0:47:37 - Speaker 2 yeah, yeah.  0:47:39 - Speaker 3 I think I would more. I think she was controversial, but I think they had these two incredible actresses and they wanted to do something with them and so so that has, that has its own, you know, that's its own form of hell. It has to still be a good movie. It's great to see women's movie stars with women and they're great to see the industry taking them seriously. But by 1976 and 77 both of them were well respected.  0:48:03 - Speaker 2 So let's just say why it did what it did is the failure on the part of the film or is it the failure on the part of the Academy to think that they needed to elevate this movie into a best picture nominee? definitely on the bad academy. It seems like a weird. Seems like a weird choice. Right, we talked about dancing in movies. I just want to quickly go through some of the movies that maybe, like certainly could have been on this list and and didn't. And I really want to start with Saturday Night Fever, because it is. It is mind-blowing to me that that was not on the list of nominees. That's a movie that I feel like absolutely hit a cultural moment in a in an insane way in 1977.  0:48:42 - Speaker 6 Like I'm not sure there was a bigger even Star Wars I don't think was a bigger cultural moment in that year than Saturday Night Fever because, because the extra boost with the music that's the thing is that it it right, you know bounces over into a whole other art form and captures a moment in that art form, while capturing a moment in film as well. So it's like, but it also does, yeah, the music hides the toughness.  0:49:05 - Speaker 5 The music, yeah, hides the toughness of that movie yeah, i remember never really get an interstate and I the fever. Until I actually sat down and watch it I was like, oh wow, what am I watching? I was kind of shocked by by the again, like some, the racism involved and some of the just the mood.  Yeah, yeah, and you're sitting there and you're like, wow, and it's just a really, really tough thing. And I just recently watched Officer and the Gentleman and it's the same thing. It's just this element where all the little things that kind of made it into the mimification of it and turn them into these kind of pop culture like tabletops or counterparts or something yeah, i don't think it's equally important, necessarily, but you know, saturday Night Fever and also looking for Mr Goodbar the same year.  0:49:59 - Speaker 2 you know they're not celebrating women, but they're certainly looking at the reality, or trying to look at the reality of what's going on with women and what they're facing well, i would have put, i would have put Goodbar and free women in place of Julia and the turning point, and you would.  0:50:18 - Speaker 5 And I think there is much more complicated and complexity there in those films than I see. In something like Julia, which I don't know, it seemed like he wanted to be an espionage film and I don't know. I just didn't get. I didn't get much out of it, just felt like a bit of a slog what other?  0:50:42 - Speaker 2 what other hidden gems or like overlooked movies do you guys think we should be thinking about?  0:50:48 - Speaker 6 close encounters of the film that I, in many ways I wish could have got the love that, are that that Star Wars got to the point where even those two directors made a bet amongst themselves over which one was gonna do better and like each betting on the other, saying, no, yours is gonna be the better one, no, yours is gonna be the better one, and George lost that, that film. I, if I actually had like a time machine and could go back, that is that that would be my by door number three between the Star Wars and Annie Hall divide, as I would just go through the close encounters door.  0:51:31 - Speaker 2 Karen, is there anything that you feel like we didn't get to or that should be on that list?  0:51:37 - Speaker 3 and I'm not without going back and looking at 90, like in 19. In that era, when I was going to see movies, i was terrified of going to see something foreign. I was convinced I wouldn't get it. That was the year of a racerhead, which I took years to watch actually watched it on video and that finally happened and was like no idea what I was watching.  0:51:59 - Speaker 2 Like also also a movie like a racerhead feels like it needs to come out of the discussion only because almost no one actually saw it in the year. It came out like it's a movie that played midnight screenings and sort of slowly over time became well known, but it's not really a movie that got released. Would it make like a grand? like it didn't get, it didn't get put in movie theater story. We think of a movie you know. So it's like it's not really. I'm not sure it's fair to like. I love race with, but it's like that's I'm not. I don't think you couldn't. I don't think there's a way that that movie would have been even talked about in 1977 people were talking about it.  0:52:34 - Speaker 3 But you know, like it it's a kind of kind of quiet hum. It scared me enough to wait. I mean that there are some interesting movies in that year that I haven't seen the duelists, i mean that that you hear. So there there are some ones, i think. I think Saturday fever I've never actually contemplated that before quite in this context, but I think in that era again it was processed as a music film, as a film about dancing and about this character, tony Monero. It wasn't really. It wasn't. I don't know that we had.  0:53:02 - Speaker 2 Yeah, it's funny, distance it's it is. It is a film that has music in it, but like I can't think of a movie that's more about it's, it's it's sociology yeah that movie it's. It's a, it's an examination of something that's going on and that you know the fact that it's based on this rather famous magazine article and that it's really, like, i think, very effectively looking at like an experience in a way that's really authentic, and in New York, in a very difficult era.  0:53:32 - Speaker 3 You know a class with a class and about attempting to. You know what disco it mean. This goes fun. But it was also a place everybody went and got really dressed up. You're coming out of the era down. You know, hippies and all of this stuff. Everybody was wearing this, everybody looked the same, and then suddenly this culture is shifting over and I don't know that.  0:53:52 - Speaker 2 There will be interesting to try and think about whether this people were sort of ready for what was going on there and then there's a movie that opened the same week as Star Wars and I think in any other or in most other years would have been a movie that people were talking about and that's sorcerer. Oh, i think sorcerer holds up pretty amazingly well, considering it is a remake. I think it is maybe that heard it at the time. I think people thought you can't put a remake into contention, but then a Star is Born was in contention the previous year, so I'm not totally sure and then you start as born, as been in contention in its year, right, right and like side story.  0:54:30 - Speaker 6 You know, that's right, right.  0:54:33 - Speaker 2 So, other than the fact that I think people may, maybe, my guess is that people were not really big fans of Friedkin and they were kind of tired of him because he was a bit of a an off on to Rieble in the community and like hard to work with and stuff, and so maybe they were like screw him, but like it's a pretty spectacular, i'm blown away that it doesn't. It gets no nominations, not even.  0:54:57 - Speaker 5 It was a flop, wasn't it? Yeah, it was a huge flop.  0:55:02 - Speaker 2 Yeah, it opened the same day as Star Wars. I think he had a lot riding on it at the time.  0:55:08 - Speaker 5 Yeah, I think he had a lot riding at the time and I think it did knock him for six slightly. I'm always gutted because I met Freakin and instead of saying anything about the water, i just kind of babble because I was like, wow, i just met Winnie Freak.  0:55:27 - Speaker 6 Something we talk about on my show, though, is that we need to remember that, when it comes to Oscars, that it is a game, and some studios are just really a lot better at playing it. You can see this right now with a studio like Searchlight. It's just basically dominated nominations for at least 10 years. I think they're clicking towards 15 years now, and at the time, if a studio just did not want to push a film for nominations, they didn't want the win, they didn't want any extra money thrown at it, because it does cost. That was just the end of it. It seems terrible to say it, but this stuff just does not happen organically. It takes a studio to want to do it, sometimes out of pride, sometimes out of wanting to elevate an artist for work well done. But whichever studio was behind Sorcerer, if they didn't want to enter it into what they thought was a crowded field, with Star Wars already there after having already taken its lumps at the box office, then that was game.  0:56:28 - Speaker 2 Are there any movies that people consider to be blind spots for this year, or movies that you really think you ought to have seen from 1977 and just have not gotten around to it?  0:56:37 - Speaker 6 I mean Sorcerer. Sorry, I was quiet enough for a very good reason.  0:56:42 - Speaker 2 You are in for such a treat.  0:56:44 - Speaker 6 Oh my God, it's so great.  0:56:45 - Speaker 2 I'm so jealous.  0:56:49 - Speaker 5 It would be the Jullis for me as well, jullis.  0:56:52 - Speaker 2 Jullis is great. Yeah, that's a. I did see that a few years ago. I haven't seen Cross of Iron, which is the Sam Peckinpah movie from that year, and Fun with Dick and Jane, which is That was good Seagull. That's a good movie. That's a good movie, yeah. Yeah, that's that year.  0:57:09 - Speaker 3 Yeah, it was caring.  0:57:16 - Speaker 2 Yeah, but I think the remake has no plot points in common. I think it is a remake technically, but it's all the whole story's changed right, so I don't know. I would like to see it. I did see George Seagull recently in Roller Coaster and I highly recommend. I thought Roller Coaster was going to be really terrible. It's actually pretty good, pretty good, so I'm going to go.  0:57:39 - Speaker 3 I wish I could remember A Bridge Too Far. I know I've seen it, but I think that might be another Another. I can't. Sometimes, you know, in that era right You it like in any era you stuff a movie with stars and sometimes their demands on their role can kill it. I mean, i wonder that's what I wonder about, julia whether you have these two people saying yeah, I'll do this movie, but this is how I want to.  0:57:59 - Speaker 2 You're totally right though We didn't talk about A Bridge Too Far and it's a massive World War II film with, like it's, one of those 900 well-known people in the cast movies. You know, yeah, yeah did not. did not get in there. I think, coming off of films like Patton and The Longest Day and like a bunch of other, like maybe it just is, there's some fatigue around World War II movies and maybe because of Vietnam, people Oh definitely because of Vietnam.  0:58:28 - Speaker 6 Like we're right at that, we're right at the turn of war film, like you're the next year you're going to get coming home the year after, you're going to get apocalypse now. So the fatigue for the World War II films was very much front and center.  0:58:42 - Speaker 2 Yes, This year did have a movie where with a very conflicted Vietnam vet, Unfortunately that vet was played by Henry Winkler. It was called Heroes, but it was the number 10 movie in the box office of 1977.  0:58:57 - Speaker 6 He was shell shocked at Mundo.  0:58:59 - Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, him and Sally Field Very strict And it was a huge hit apparently. Yeah, okay, let's let No right, it just totally has to spirit. So let's go around the room and talk about what would we actually have on our ballot. I will, i will participate in this, but I'll go last. Let's go to reverse order. Ryan, what would your ballot look like for 1977? If you had to redo it now?  0:59:24 - Speaker 6 So cast a vote for the winner or my five.  0:59:26 - Speaker 2 You're five, let's start there.  0:59:28 - Speaker 6 Five, i would What would you? keep and what would you throw? I would keep Star Wars and the turning point. Knowing what I know, Oh yeah. Knowing what I know now, i would lose Annie Hall, i would lose the good boy girl for its own merit and I would lose Julia. I would replace those three with three women with I'm going to. I would replace it with searching for Mr Goodbar and close encounters of the third kind.  1:00:08 - Speaker 2 Okay, Leslie, what would you? what would you keep and what would you throw? You've talked about it a little bit, but let's formalize it here.  1:00:16 - Speaker 5 So yeah, i keep Annie Hall. I would keep Star Wars, just because even though I said a week ago I just been, it been the whole franchise, but I'd keep that. And then I would go with sorcerer and I would go with I didn't know this down It was sorcerer looking for Mr Goodbar and three women. Those are the ones.  1:00:45 - Speaker 2 I would go with Karen. what would you keep?  1:00:48 - Speaker 3 I would keep any hall. I would keep Star Wars.  1:00:55 - Speaker 2 And what would you? what would you add back in?  1:00:57 - Speaker 3 Well, that is a question, I think. I think that I would have to spend a bit more time rewatching things because I didn't see the free women film. Is it three women or three?  1:01:08 - Speaker 2 women, three women, robert.  1:01:10 - Speaker 3 Altman.  1:01:10 - Speaker 2 Robert Altman.  1:01:12 - Speaker 6 Okay So she's a space sec post Badlands, pre-kerry Shelly Duvall doing her twee Shelly Duvaliast, all out in this like out in the middle of nowhere.  1:01:29 - Speaker 2 It's set in a like a sanatorium, right Yeah?  1:01:31 - Speaker 6 Sanatorium in this like kind of backwoods Texas area where there's just, like you know, like a Melrose place type apartment complex. I'm so excited about this movie I'm smacking my own mic.  1:01:43 - Speaker 3 Is it 1977, though? Is that the year? I don't see it on any of my lists.  1:01:48 - Speaker 6 Unless I just should be.  1:01:49 - Speaker 2 Yeah, no, no, i think we're right. I think it's 77. Yeah, i believe you guys, yeah, um, well, i would, i, okay, i would. I would also only keep any hall in Star Wars, i think, and I think it's unfortunate because there's some good movies in there. But but yeah, i think the other three do not quite make the cut. I think Saturday Night Fever has to be on that list, close encounters And then I think the fifth one it's. It's a toss up between looking for Mr Goodbar and and sorcerer, but I think I would pick sorcerer And that would be my fifth. The real question is did did they make the right choice with Annie Hall, or do we need a do over? I know Karen thinks we do not. I'm going to just go out on a limb here and say you believe they made the right choice, am I correct?  1:02:37 - Speaker 3 Yes, of this of this group, because at the in that era again, Star Wars was considered, was not considered well, um, i mean, it was really respected and loved and it had huge box office and it was fun and it was a game changer, um. But if you look at what Annie Hall did, it was more refined, it was more culturally. I just think that it was an important film. I think it represented a change in comedies and rom-coms, um, i think that it was beautifully made and and I and I think it kind of hit a cultural nerve.  1:03:10 - Speaker 2 This is a really fun debate and discussion, because I think what we're getting down to is what is, on a weird level, what's more important the hero's journey or observational comedy, and that is, as that is, as tough a choice as you are likely to have, sir.  1:03:29 - Speaker 3 But you know the thing about, about oh sorry, leslie I just the thing about the Oscar awards is that people can teach you how to understand a movie, how to make a movie, but no, there's no course on how to choose an Oscar or not winner, but there's no choice on how to compare apples and oranges.  So so, oh, you know, i mean because it's the, because the distance of history, um, it's possible to say that this is the film that seems to have. Not every year do you get a film that grabs the zeitgeist like this. Well, that's why it's easy for me to say that's why I'm so definitive. Usually I'm floundering all over the place.  1:04:07 - Speaker 2 And not to put pressure on this conversation, but we are in touch with the Academy and whatever we decide here is going to be what's going to be. Leslie, would you change it?  1:04:21 - Speaker 5 Yeah. So I feel that I would give Star Wars best picture, even though I know what I've said. All this episode I'll give Star. Wars best picture and I would give Best Director to Woody Allen, i think. I think I think Annie Halls were better directed movie. Watching the two recently, looking at them I was like I now, i now realize, why they do have Best Director, Best Picture.  I get the feeling that in terms of the success that it came out of it and moving stuff forward, Star Wars is the one that gets it And obviously I've got hindsight with this. But in terms of how the movie is made and what they're doing, I think it's quite interesting and directional choices. I think it would go to Woody Allen And that's how I'll do it. I appreciate that one very much, Ryan.  1:05:12 - Speaker 2 would you do this over?  1:05:14 - Speaker 6 I absolutely would do this over.  1:05:17 - Speaker 2 You are the one person who threw Annie Hall out of your ballot.  1:05:20 - Speaker 6 Yeah, Sorry, i would give Best Picture to Star Wars. I mean, it changed a lot of things, some for better, some for worse. It's fascinating that in many ways it's a complete antithesis to Annie Hall in the way that Annie Hall is such a singular vision where Star Wars is really a film, where it took a village, like that is not George Lucas' vision entirely. It is the editor's helping him, god knows. It is the composer helping him, it is the production designer's helping him. It is everybody making that thing work. Because if it was just George doing what George wanted to do, it would not work nearly that well. But the fact that the village came together in that way, i would celebrate the village and to go with Leslie's extension of this and say I would also then split off director. But I would split director over into Steven Spielberg for Close Encounters because he is directing his ass off in that movie and making it look so simple.  1:06:29 - Speake

The 50th Annual Academy Awards - A Primer

Get ready for a blast from the past as we take you back to 1977, an unforgettable year in American filmmaking. Join me, your host Matti Price, and our fantastic panel of film writers and broadcasters, Karen Gordon, Leslie Byron Pitt, and Ryan McNeil, as we discuss the 50th Academy Awards, the groundbreaking achievements in sound, and the legends we lost during this iconic year in cinema.  We won't just focus on the Oscars – we'll also pay tribute to the likes of the Marx Brothers, Charlie Chaplin, Elvis Presley, and Bing Crosby, as well as the directors and actors who left their mark on the silver screen. From Howard Hawks and William Castle to the tragically short but brilliant career of John Cazale, we'll explore the magic of 1977 together in this episode of For Your Reconsideration. So, visit Dewvre.com for more great podcasts, and join the conversation! Transcript For Your Reconsideration is a podcast. In the next episode, we have a great and diverse panel and really a pretty crazy year 1977. I'm Matty Price and, along with JD, we could not be happier to be able to bring you discussions like the one we have coming up. As per usual, our panellists discuss a specific year in mostly American filmmaking through the clarifying crucible of Oscar's best picture. I'll be your host this time. Our panellists are film writers and broadcasters Karen Gordon, Leslie Byron, Pitt and, of course, a longtime friend of the show, podcaster and writer, Ryan McNeil.  The 50th Academy Awards were actually held earlier than in previous years, in February of 1978. They were back at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and they went back to a single host for the first time in a while, bringing Bob Hope back as MC for the night. Despite Annie Hall winning Best Picture along with three other awards, it was actually Star Wars that had the best night. Overall, they took home six Oscars. Woody Allen did do something that nobody had done for a while, becoming the first person since Orson Welles to be nominated for writing, directing and acting in the same picture. The turning point still holds the record for most nominations without a single win with 11. They are tied with the colour purple and Close Encounters is tied with two films They Shoot Horses, don't They? and The Poseidon Adventure for most nominations without a Best Picture nod, with eight.  There were two special achievement awards that year and actually, both of them were for sound. The sound was in a bit of a major renaissance in the late 70s with stereo, surround and digital sounds all coming to audiences really for the first time. One of those awards went to Frank Warner and Close Encounters for sound editing, and you can imagine the editing in Close Encounters and the specific sounds of those organ notes and everything else that happens. I mean it is an achievement. But the real achievement, I think, went to Ben Burt for creating the Alien Robot and Creature Voices in Star Wars Boy. There's a lot to talk about with Star Wars but I can't imagine it without that soundscape. Just amazing.  Notable presenters, performers and recipients of awards that year included Debbie Boone, who sang You Light Up My Life. Now they decided that when she sang You Light Up My Life they would have deaf interpreters on the stage to sign as she sang. The problem is they turned out to not be real interpreters. They were fakes and their signs were totally unintelligible to the deaf community. Nailed it, Debbie Boone.  The ceremony also neatly defined two sides of a debate that continues and actually probably will never be settled. Vanessa Redgrave used her acceptance speech to address concerns she had with the rights of the Palestinian community and how she was being treated in the press, and Patty Czevsky used his presenter time to essentially rebuke that by saying he was quite sick and tired of people exploiting the occasion of the Academy Awards for the propagation of their own personal political propaganda. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's no end to this debate. Should actors and actresses and others Stand up for things they are important in front of a global, they feel are important in front of a global audience, or should they shut up and dribble? Yeesh? Anyway, lots of special, special presenters, including Mickey Mouse, r2-d2 and C3PO, as the awards got increasingly sophisticated from a production standpoint and they were able to mix in things like remote-controlled robots and animation and live action. Really a big moment in terms of how the show looked.  Jack Nicholson presented Best Picture and the Academy Awards. Chorus brought That's Entertainment back again. They really love That's Entertainment. Anyway, for the first year in several years, they gave OJ Simpson the night off. I'm actually not sure what he did with his free time.  As always, there was no in memoriam until 1993, but for that year it would have been, I think, quite significant. Two of the remaining three Marx Brothers passed away, Groucho and Gummo, and Zeppo would pass really only a couple of years later. So the end of an era in terms of that, and, and kind of interesting that the same year that Annie Hall got nominated, I think there's a pretty direct line between the Marx Brothers and Woody Allen, especially in the early years of his career. Charlie Chaplin also passed away that year, as did Joan Crawford. So some real Titans.  On the character actor side, three huge influential character actors Zero Mustel, most famously from the producers, but also the original Tevea and Fiddler on the Roof. Sebastian Cabot, who just an absolutely wonderful presence in a lot of Hitchcock films and later movies as well, and also Gene Hagen. Now, the name Gene Hagen might not mean anything to you just on the surface, but if I say I can't see them, maybe you'll realize who she is. Gene Hagen is, for my money, the best part of one of the best movies that I know, which is Singing in the Rain. Steven Boyd also passed away. Steven Boyd had a really interesting career. He was the second lead in Ben Hur, starting a lot of stuff. But the reason I bring him up is that he was the star of an absolutely incredible so bad it's a good movie, The Oscar, which I mean. Check that movie out. It is insane to me that they built that movie the way they did. The minute you start watching it you're like I cannot believe that this is the movie they decided to make and call The Oscar And then cut short, cut down in the prime of his life with four incredible performances and we all lost out.  John Kazal, who had been Fredo in The Godfather and The Godfather part two, starred in Dog Day Afternoon and had a very strong role in The Dear Hunter and tragically passed away way too young. Elvis Presley and Bing Crosby both died that year, so significantly they left only Sinatra as the last man standing in terms of the greatest pop hero icons of the 20th century. Directors who passed away that year included Howard Hawks, William Castle, Roberto Rossellini and Bob McKimson, who was a director of hundreds and hundreds of Looney Tunes shorts, as well a couple of people in the history of noir, both James M Cain, who wrote The Postman Always Rings Twice. Tay Garnett, who directed it, passed away in that year. Tay Garnett also and this is just for viewers who want to go down this road He directed one of my favorite movies of all time. It stars Marlena Dietrich and John Wayne and it's called Seven Sinners, or sometimes called Cafe of the Seven Sinners, and I love it and I hope you check it out. Last but absolutely not least, Leopold Stokowski, was quite an accomplished conductor but famously was the conductor in Fantasia. Anyway, I'm looking forward to sharing this year's movies with all of you.  1977 is coming right up. Remember, go to Dewvre.com for all the shows and more great podcasts. Can't wait to talk to you again. On For Your Reconsideration, for Your Reconsideration is the production of Dewvre Podcasts and Such. To subscribe, share, rate and review. Please visit Dewvre.com.

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 ve

5. 1976 Primer

Ever wondered how the Oscars have evolved over time and their impact on the film industry? Join Matti Price and his esteemed panel of guests as we take a trip down memory lane and focus on the awards year of 1976. The upcoming episode will feature series regular Norm Wilner (critic and TIFF programmer), Dave Voight (InTheSeats.ca), and JD Duran (InSessionFilm.com), our insightful conversation delves into the fascinating history of the Academy Awards and their role in shaping the world of cinema. From the original 5 to the current 17 branches, we'll examine the Oscars' journey and uncover some lesser-known facts about these prestigious awards, like the story behind the iconic gold-plated bronze statue and the original intentions of the Academy's founders. Plus, we discuss how the Oscars have influenced the film industry and why certain categories, like stunt performers, still remain conspicuously absent. Don't miss this engaging and insightful conversation about one of the most famous awards shows in the world! 0:00:05 - Speaker 1 For Your Reconsideration, for Your Reconsideration is a podcast. Next week we return with another year in movies and a panel that can't wait to discuss them. I'm Mattie Price, and myself and Jamie Dew, JD, as we like to say are your navigators through the sometimes choppy waters of the past. Once again, we have put together some great panellists to examine and contextualize a whole year in mostly American movies. Alongside the choices the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences made for that year's best picture, we'll be focusing on 1976. I'm in the host chair this time. Joining me are series regular Norm Wilner, a critic and Tiff programmer, Dave Voight from InTheSeats.ca, also a writer and podcaster, and another great writer and podcaster, jd Duran from InSessionFilmcom. It's a good talk. I'm hoping you'll join us. I've been thinking about how we got here this podcast, but also the idea that the Oscars, no matter what you think of them, have this weird special place in the culture. There are a lot of awards shows, but clearly this is the king Name, the winner of a song of the year at the Grammys from 1976. Not easy, it's. I write the songs.  By the way, barry Manilow, the Academy was put together basically to improve the image of the film industry. It was often seen as a kind of disreputable business. Its founders, including Louis B Mayer, cecil B DeMille and Irving Thalberg, wanted to promote this idea that there was artistic achievement of the film community and they basically just wanted to give it credibility. That said, they also wanted to use the Academy to mediate labor disputes without unions because of course they did. They actually spent more time initially working on labor disputes, but eventually they turned the Academy away from arbitrations. There were 230 initial members under founding president Douglas Fairbank Sr. The awards were actually approved in July of 1928 with 12 original categories. Ballots were sent out to the 230 members. Actually, some of those original 12 awards are still around Best actor, best actress, best cinematography, and others have really changed over time. There were separate directing awards for comedy and drama. There was both an outstanding picture award, which was won by Wings, and a quote unquote best unique and artistic picture, which was won by Sunrise, a song of two humans, which is why you'll often see both of those films cited as the winner of the first Academy award. There was also an award for best title writing, which I mean. Who knew that was even a job? Where is that job? I could make a meal out of that job. You put the whole movie together, make it and then I come in at the end and just do the title in. I am in for that.  Most people know that Oscar itself is made of sort of gold-plated bronze and it was designed by Cedric Gibbons, who was the head of the art department at MGM Studios. Just Google Cedric Gibbons His name is on literally 5,000 movies. It depicts the statue sorry, depicts a knight holding a sword and he's standing on a reel of film that has five spokes. There's a spoke for each of the original five branches of the Academy, which were actors, directors, producers, technicians and writers. There are currently 17 branches of the Academy, most of which were actually expanded from that technicians group. As films got larger, studios understood that you needed more people and that films became more of a collaboration of departments. So cinematographers, visual effects, sound, makeup and hair stylists, designers, editors and costume designers all pretty much grew out of that initial technicians designation. The Academy also has branches now for less direct participants in filmmaking casting directors, public relations and executives. But despite the 17, there's still this glaring omission which remains for stunt performers They do not have their own Academy branch and they still have no representation and no award.  The Academy Awards is the world's longest running show award show that is televised live, and today it's actually broadcast live in 76 countries. Over the years there have also been condensed, edited versions of the awards packaged to be broadcast later around the world, which I honestly that might be something home audiences would enjoy if it were possible in real time. I would certainly sign on to watch a two hour condensed version of the Oscars if I had the choice. Anyway, we will be back soon with the 1976 awards year. Hope you can join us. Go to duvercom for all the shows and more great podcasts. Can't wait to talk to you again. On For Your Reconsideration. For Your Reconsideration is the production of Dewvre podcasts and such

4. Exploring the Best Picture Nominees of 1975 and Their Lasting Effects

Welcome back to another episode of For Your Reconsideration! This time, we're taking a trip back in time to explore the iconic 1975 movie season. Join me, Matty Price, along with expert panelists Ryan McNeil, and JM McNabb and our host jD, as we discuss the Best Picture nominees – One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Barry Lyndon, Dog Day Afternoon, Jaws, and Nashville. We'll be offering our own alternative ballot and winner, so be sure to tune in! Listen in as we dissect each of the five nominated movies from 1975, discussing standout performances, unique filmmaking techniques, and cultural impact. We'll also touch on lesser-known gems from the year that could have made the cut for Best Picture. As we analyze each film, we'll share our thoughts on which ones have stood the test of time and which ones might be due for a reevaluation. In addition to our in-depth analysis of these classic films, we'll be exploring the broader movie landscape of 1975, discussing the role of air conditioning in theaters, the impact of blockbusters like Jaws and Star Wars, and the ever-evolving landscape of the Academy Awards. So grab some popcorn and join us as we revisit the unforgettable movie season of 1975 on For Your Reconsideration! --------- EPISODE CHAPTERS --------- (0:00:00) - For Your Reconsideration (0:15:14) - Film Critique and Analysis (0:18:38) - Nashville (0:30:48) - Analysis of "Dog Day Afternoon" (0:39:06) - Jaws and Its Cultural Impact (0:48:49) - Movie Business and Academy Awards (0:53:35) - Cuckoo's Nest Analysis (1:02:40) - 1975 Oscar Nominee Do-Over (1:10:48) - Film Podcast Transcript 0:00:00 - Cold Open The nominees for the best picture of the year are Barry Linden, a Hawke Film Limited production, warner Brothers, stanley Kubrick producer, dog Day Afternoon, warner Brothers, martin Bregman and Martin L Fan producers. So is Universal, xanac Brown production, universal, richard D Xanac and David Brown producers, nashville, an ABC entertainment, jerry Wyenthal, robert Altman production, paramount, robert Altman producer. And one flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, a fantasy films production, united Artists, saul Zanz and Michael Douglas producers. And the winner is one flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. And the winner is one flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, one flew over the Cuckoo's Nest.  0:01:25 - Matti Hey, i'm Matty Price and welcome to another episode of For Your Reconsideration. As always, our expert panel will dive deeply and look fondly at a full year in mostly American movies, ultimately deciding if that year's Oscars got it right or need a do-over. This week we're looking at the films of 1975, including Best Picture Winner One, flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and nominees Barry Linden, dog Day Afternoon, jaws and Nashville, along with many other films made and released in that pivotal year. As always, our panelists will be able to present their own alternative ballot and winner. Thanks for listening and downloading. You can find this podcast through the client of your choice at duvercom. That's D-E-W-V-R-Ecom. A great year and should be a great discussion, so join. Host JD, jamie Dew and panelists JM McNabb, ryan McNeil and oh me, i'm a panelist this time out. Oh, that's a switch. Well, listen, this was recorded live and in the same room, face to face, in the before times when we all could be face to face, geez, i hope I knew what I was talking about, so let's get into it ["Mammo Podcast"].  0:02:58 - jD Hey, it's JD here and welcome to For Your Reconsideration. Let's get right to the panel. Starting on my left, we have.  0:03:05 - Matti I'm Matthew Price of the Mammo podcast. I'm nominally half of that podcast. I guess potentially 49%. I'm the Mammo, i'm No, we're both the Mam. Do I need to go through this again? All right, for folks that are interested, there are probably 55 episodes of Mammo that explain why it's called Mammo, so you can buy all of them, just randomly pick one, you'll find it.  It's in the context And identify those episodes, put them together and, hopefully, tell you We're still working on having some sort of custom price for our contest, but we haven't gotten anything yet. Anyway, that's Hawaii Cool. Thanks, man.  0:03:44 - Ryan I'm Ryan McNeil, my site is theMatin8.ca, which is not nearly as complicated to explain, and I also host the Magnatecast.  0:03:52 - JM Cool. thanks, man. I'm JM McNabb. I'm one of the hosts of the rewatchability podcast. rewatchabilitycom, or the iTunes or whatever fringe websites people get podcasts on, is probably there. Are you on GeoCities? Probably? yeah, we're on Angel Fire now It's pretty big.  0:04:11 - Speaker 4 There are a ton. I did a search just the other day and there were like two sites that I've never signed up for or anything like that that were carrying podcasts, Yeah yeah, yeah, that's weird.  Totally far out, thanks. Well, we're here to talk about an embarrassment of riches, i think, 1975,. We're going to talk about the five nominated pictures today, and then we'll go around the table and we'll hear what you guys have to think, whether the ballot should stay the same, whether it should change, You're scratching your chin?  0:04:46 - Speaker 5 That's my pencil. look, i'm sorry. OK, is that picking up on the mic?  0:04:50 - Speaker 4 No, no, no, I was just waiting for you to say 1975. Suddenly, the panel drinks.  0:04:57 - Speaker 5 I don't have a pipe and a monocle, so that's like I'm going to scratch my chin.  0:05:02 - Speaker 4 You must feel beardless.  0:05:03 - Speaker 6 I have no idea how naked I feel.  0:05:06 - Speaker 4 Three of us have beards, one of us do not. Let's see if you can pick that up.  0:05:09 - Speaker 2 You're trying to groan, it just won't grow Are you even allowed to talk about movies.  0:05:12 - Speaker 6 I know, but that's your thing. It'll be your tour of the war, and so already Here's how we come full circle.  0:05:17 - Speaker 3 In the 1980s, you weren't allowed to make them unless you had a beard Right, You can't talk about them. Yeah, Everyone's sort of seazy. Having the beard like It was like, oh, you have to have one And we're not letting you. What are you?  0:05:27 - Speaker 5 going to get behind the camera without a beard. You'll cut your chin in the view. Peter, that's fine, that's right.  0:05:34 - Speaker 3 You can't have a house, come back and you have a beard.  0:05:36 - Speaker 5 Most people haven't seen the photos.  0:05:37 - Speaker 3 She was pretty quiet, but Nina Burtmuller had a huge beard Yeah, she had a huge beard.  0:05:41 - Speaker 4 She was five.  0:05:42 - Speaker 3 Yeah.  0:05:43 - Speaker 4 We were running a little hot there with that beard talk. I just had to make some adjustments there. It was all right guys. So I got excited 1975, we had as your best picture that year. One flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. The other four nominees were Jaws Nashville, dog Day Afternoon and Barry Lyndon. Is there a particular film that you guys want to start with?  0:06:06 - Speaker 3 Jesus throwing darts Can we start with Barry Lyndon.  0:06:08 - Speaker 4 Yeah.  0:06:10 - Speaker 3 Because I just feel like it's the easy one to talk about. at least for me, I don't know how everybody else wants to.  0:06:13 - Speaker 5 Yeah, let's start with. Yeah, it's a brief movie that's easy to talk about Very long.  0:06:19 - Speaker 3 I mean in the sense that I think, legitimately, if you're looking through the lens of history, it's the one that is the easiest to dismiss as, like this is the least of all the Cooper films. It's kind of not in the same league with the other movies in this year. For me I don't know that it necessarily It feels like a movie that they're giving him because they couldn't give it to him for 2001. Like they're making up to him, yeah, and sort of like no, no, we know, We know Cooper's a genius, so here's a movie he made. It doesn't feel like part of the same cadre. I don't know how anyone else feels. Does anybody really like Barry Lyndon?  0:06:51 - Speaker 4 Okay. So I went into it thinking I was really going to dislike it. I don't dislike it, but I I guess I come in with this weird bias that for some reason I think I don't like Santa Cooper movies, But every time I sit down and watch one I'm like fuck, that's pretty good. It is pretty good, And this was no exception for me, Other than the fact that the narrator sometimes ground on me a little bit. But I suspect if the narration wasn't there I would have been lost a lot of times. Yeah, I really liked it. I really really liked it.  What do you like about it? I don't know that I could put my finger on what I liked about it because, again, there's a lot of components of the movie that I shouldn't like Or, based on my history, I shouldn't like, But I found myself appreciating things that I wouldn't normally appreciate. There's a shot, for example, at one point, where the camera is way up on a hill and it's a countryside And it's just to get this stagecoach or wagon or whatever you want to call it carriage going by, And I'm watching the shot and just like Jesus Christ, like the amount of work that must went into just thinking that up is mind-blowing to me?  0:08:02 - Speaker 5 Well, the one that's cinematography Oscar this year it didn't I think it did.  0:08:07 - Speaker 4 I'm not sure what was it.  0:08:08 - Speaker 3 It went four awards, yeah, i think one of the most cinematography And it's the lenses thing. It's the only movie shot Candlelight in natural light. Or he didn't like the candlelight scenes because he had NASA make lenses for him that could take in enough light to. The lenses were the size of people's heads, Wow.  0:08:26 - Speaker 5 Yeah, so, crossman, i remember in film school when film 101 class, like the first year there when you got to cinematography. I remember seeing stills from Barry Linden. They taught us that to teach us about lens speeds and sensitivity for light And they talked about how they designed those special lenses or cameras to film these candlelight scenes. And it does look distinct. It looks unlike any other movie in those dark scenes and taverns and things.  0:08:56 - Speaker 3 Yeah, and it looks like paintings, right.  0:08:58 - Speaker 4 Yeah, it really does. There's a scene where they're looking at paintings And you know like, yeah, i'll leave it at that, jump on.  0:09:08 - Speaker 6 I'm like, i'm with you. Actually I'm at price where I appreciate it on a lot of different levels, like technically it is amazing And I think that was really where it earned its stripes in this class of five is as a piece of technical execution, but just as a story and as a narrative piece it didn't grab me near as much. Part of it, i think, was this time when I rewatched it for the show. I was seeing the brushstrokes of Napoleon all over this, like this is famously the movie he made when his Napoleon project just fell apart And you can see it a lot Like, especially in those battle scenes you can see, ok, this was going to be used there for sure, and this is where this was going to come in, this was going to come in. I was distracted by that.  But yet no, certainly it's handsome, it's really really well crafted. But just in that terms of emotional lift and engagement, that was where it lost me, especially in comparison to the other four from this year.  0:10:07 - Speaker 3 I think the thing for me is that it's and I do really like it. I don't think there's any Cooper films I don't really like, so it's always like the weird thing about the Oscars for me is that it's partly out of contextual. Where does this fit in this person's ability to achieve? And I don't think that this compares. There's six other Cooper films that I think are better examples of his ability to achieve. But also I think what you're talking about the inability to be emotionally engaged by it is purposeful. I think the movie's tone, what makes it good is that it has this tone of kind of ride detachment about what's going on. That's kind of like reading the best books And in a book I just read Lolita And Lolita has that in spades. Like it has that weird detached, almost commenting through language on what's happening, that this has to, but it doesn't make you root for it, it doesn't.  0:11:03 - Speaker 6 Sivage you. That's why I think you bring that up, because I was much more engaged in his adaptation of Lolita.  0:11:08 - Speaker 3 Where he did it with this, because he actually takes away that language when he makes Lolita. It's weird.  0:11:13 - Speaker 5 But also I think this movie is about a sort of detached sociopathic character. So I think that coldness is also kind of embedded in the character Totally agree, which you know doesn't always work in the movie. I don't think It doesn't let you into it Exactly. Yeah, and it's long. Oh my God it's long. I liked it when I first saw it, but rewatching it this time it was just. It was kind of a slog to get through. I found I watched it in two settings.  0:11:39 - Speaker 2 Yeah, I took advantage of the intermission.  0:11:42 - Speaker 3 I was like it's weird Why.  0:11:43 - Speaker 5 It's not tomorrow, absolutely. That's what I did. I watched the rest of it this morning before my daughter got up The performances.  0:11:51 - Speaker 4 you were just talking about the lead character. What did you guys think of his performance? The out of the O'Brien Right?  0:11:58 - Speaker 6 O'Brien What did you think?  0:12:00 - Speaker 2 of O'Brien, i was like, oh, that's the guy who I get confused the whole time. Was he the married fair fossil? No, no, what. I am the subject of debt here Did you make a pass at your daughter Her mother's funeral.  0:12:11 - Speaker 5 Yes, I Oh, you know.  0:12:12 - Speaker 6 That was both of them. He's This is probably the most I like O'Neal. My experience with him is kind of checkered, which is to say I'm missing, i'm sure, big performances by him. But I was kind of surprised because a lot of time when you get an actor like that and you put them into a period piece, it can seem ridiculous. So I thought that he carried it, especially in the final crux of this movie where he's got, he's got. He's involved in a duel.  0:12:41 - Speaker 4 I could have watched him in that duel all day I could have watched that for three hours. Why did he not pick a boxing duel? And he was so good at the boxing one You know? Yeah, why go on that? No way to go, kid.  0:12:54 - Speaker 6 No, but in that moment where you're just seeing so many things going on all over his face. also, just the other scene that comes back a lot of the time when you talk about this movie is this kind of wordless seduction that happens over a game of cards And there's so much going on both on his face and Shoot. who's the lead actress in this movie?  0:13:15 - Speaker 3 Who's Yeah? like on both of their faces.  0:13:18 - Speaker 6 They're doing a lot of acting without saying a damn thing, and that is really hard, and considering it's Gubrik, i can only imagine how many times he told them nope, do it again. Nope, do it again. You know O'Neill and Marissa. They're both really good in this movie.  0:13:31 - Speaker 4 Not a card playing in this movie, though, now that you say it, yeah, yeah.  0:13:35 - Speaker 6 Of a game that I don't know. There's no way to follow the actual card game they're playing. You're just like.  0:13:40 - Speaker 2 I hope this is It's like early.  0:13:41 - Speaker 3 Bond, where he's playing background.  0:13:44 - Speaker 5 They're like, i know what he's doing, i just assumed it was a fancy. go fish.  0:13:48 - Speaker 4 He's like put one up and put one down, Put one up and put one down, All right okay, but yeah, then I got to play a weird game after that, so I guess everybody wins. So we're sitting sort of are you with me?  0:14:04 - Speaker 5 Chad. I like it okay. I think it's one of the, like you said, lesser Kubricks. I think it's one of the best movies about a guy named Barry. I don't know if I'd put in the five best of that year. In fact I almost surely wouldn't. But you know, you can kind of understand, especially with the Oscars, like they like big, epic, costume-y movies And it is. I like that. It's one of those, but it is kind of a bit off. It's a bit strange. The plot is sort of unconventional, it's very meandering and kind of doesn't really have much of a climax to it. He just kind of fucks off.  0:14:40 - Speaker 3 I feel like if you're gonna do the epic thing well, you have to hang it on some kind of propulsive story Cause the idea of this of a sort of existentialist epic, where it's kind of like an epic about our real life.  0:14:53 - Speaker 5 But you know, like that's not a really as compelling kind of hook for me And that's like again it's like it's not, but it's kind of like it's an epic about a douchebag.  0:15:03 - Speaker 6 Sure.  0:15:04 - Speaker 3 And only Cooper can make that movie, the epic about the douchebag.  0:15:08 - Speaker 2 That is so Kubrickian and his sort of like view of the world, and I totally respect that he would make that movie.  0:15:13 - Speaker 3 I don't love it.  0:15:14 - Speaker 4 I wonder if I went into it. You know, because I went into it just expecting something that I wasn't gonna like and then I liked it. You know I'm digging in a little bit more than I might normally. I can't say for sure. But yeah, i did enjoy it, like I thought for sure when I saw, you know, two hours and 57 minutes.  0:15:31 - Speaker 2 I was like I'm gonna be, terrible watching this.  0:15:33 - Speaker 3 Can I put you on the spot? Sure, of the five movies that are nominated, four of them I would watch again in a heartbeat. This one, i would never watch again.  0:15:44 - Speaker 4 There's one I wouldn't watch in a heartbeat.  0:15:45 - Speaker 3 Again, i don't think Okay but this doesn't pass the watch again. Sort of test for me.  0:15:52 - Speaker 6 And yet the funny thing is like it's almost assuredly coming to the box this fall And in my head I'm like I'm going.  0:15:59 - Speaker 3 Yeah, I don't really want to.  0:16:01 - Speaker 6 But it's one of the Kubrick's I've never seen on a big screen.  0:16:04 - Speaker 5 I'm like you can really see what cards they're playing. Yeah.  0:16:08 - Speaker 2 I understand the game. They'll actually be bad inside that anyway.  0:16:13 - Speaker 6 It won't be watch it, and it won't be far off.  0:16:15 - Speaker 5 I also don't want to say I do like some of the characters, the sort of supporting characters Like I think he stalks them with the interesting character actors and interesting faces.  0:16:26 - Speaker 6 Yeah, yeah, and he's the butler.  0:16:28 - Speaker 5 Yeah, and not the skinny face butler guy.  0:16:30 - Speaker 6 I could not pay attention to a damn thing. anytime he was in the shot, i couldn't not look at his face. I don't know, i don't think I've seen him in anything before or since, but he has one like he has.  0:16:41 - Speaker 3 well, it's just like you know same thing in Pas of Glory, Like when he does do period stuff, he never just chooses from the usual rogues gallery of the 95 people that are always in every period piece.  0:16:50 - Speaker 6 It's always new, it's always different Yeah yeah, i think he yanked this guy out of a rogue painting. It's a here we go, yeah, yeah.  0:16:57 - Speaker 4 I have a feeling if this movie were made now and this is one of the notes that it did take then to say this would have been like a sacrilege, but like I think it would have been a good. You know, over three nights or four nights on television, You know, oh sure, Because you're right, it doesn't have that sort of tightly wound, It feels like episodes, anyway all through it.  0:17:19 - Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah, Like you can tell. Like I don't know when the book was written, but it feels very much of a piece of Tristram Shandy, Like it's a kind of like let's just take a walk through the sky. You know, like there's not really a compelling like thing that's gonna happen, or copper, i think I've ever heard that before. It's just like that. It's just like let's more stuff that's gonna happen you know, that's why there's no, that's why there's no.  good like a copperfield movie really, because it's really meandering kind of episode-based thing. I think that the thing about the what I'm sort of discovering now, is that literature from kind of like the late 1700s or late 1800s is all about the fact that they didn't have TV Right, so it's just it's episodes right, like Three Musketeers, is just fucking episodes And that's how a lot I don't know about Three Musketeers, but like a lot of Dickens books were like serialized.  Like they were written like So Three Musketeers was also serialized. Okay, yeah, there you go. So this kind of feels like a piece of television, exactly So they have little beginnings and endings all through them, but they don't really have and this feels the same, like it doesn't, even though it's illustrating a consistent thing, it's doing it with a bunch of disparate kind of things happening, yeah.  0:18:27 - Speaker 4 Let's start down the road to Nashville.  0:18:29 - Speaker 6 Let's.  0:18:32 - Speaker 4 I'm curious. I'm curious what you guys think of this.  0:18:35 - Speaker 6 I'm curious to think that that's the other one you didn't like.  0:18:38 - Speaker 3 I think it's totally possible to dislike Nashville. It's very possible. It's very possible. I totally love Nashville. I don't think it's my favorite film, but I totally love it. It's hard not to love it. It's so expansive, maybe my favorite ultimate film.  0:18:52 - Speaker 6 Actually, it's out there for me Yeah.  0:18:56 - Speaker 4 I Walk me through this, cause you're right, this is the film that I wouldn't go so far as to say I would never watch it again. In fact, you know, based on what you guys say, it might make me need to re-watch this, right? But yeah, i certainly wasn't in love with it.  0:19:11 - Speaker 6 The one thing I've said, i think, every single time I've sat down on your show, is the way a best picture should be of its time. And if somebody wanted to paint a picture of America in 1975, it's Nashville. It's this place that has got a whole bunch of things going on at once. that is a year away from its great big red, white and blue hoopla being 200 years old and a year apart from its one of its greatest catastrophes for its leader. And it's at this point, in the middle of these two moments, when it doesn't really know what it is.  And meanwhile, in amongst this greater whole of an idea of America, you have this idea of Nashville, which is a very, very conservative place yet at the same time, is very inviting to the common person. So the idea the best way I heard it described is before American Idol, there was Nashville, so where one person with one guitar and one suitcase could go to this place and potentially get discovered and become famous. And that's why you see that happening over and over in this movie to various degrees of success is because that was the way it was And the way it still is, like Garth Brooks, within 30 years ago, was discovered just singing in one of these cafes that we see in this movie. So that's the thing for me is in 1975.  0:20:31 - Speaker 5 America.  0:20:31 - Speaker 6 Nashville sums it up very loosely, and that's Kurt saying he is not gonna be here.  0:20:40 - Speaker 4 I'm sorry. Good timing, kurt. Yeah, that's right at the end of your sentence.  0:20:45 - Speaker 3 You just watched it for the first time.  0:20:46 - Speaker 5 Yeah, i'd never seen it before. I liked it. I'd sort of been saving it because a lot of my friends it's their favorite all men movie or one of their favorite movies. I almost had the opposite reaction to the reaction everyone had to Barry Lyndon. Even though it's almost as long, i kind of felt like I wanna revisit this soon. Now that I've kind of seen the whole thing, i wanna watch it again and really sort of pick out those individual moments where, as the first time I was watching it, i was kind of for the first hour at least, kind of trying to get a handle on what the sort of overall architecture of this movie was or was going to be.  I did end up liking it quite a bit, but it is an unusual movie. I don't quite know how I feel about it And I don't know if I will until I see it again, which sounds a bit strange. But I liked it. I liked the cast, i liked how Audit got, i liked how, like you said, it's very timely Like it is about this kind of almost undefined sort of period in American history where we definitely have a lot of sort of remnants of the 60s. There's sort of this Peter Paul and Mary kind of surrogates in here and they're breaking apart at the seams or kind of. Yeah, it's just this kind of automalgam of things going on, i would say. Actually, what I just mentioned is one thing I kind of didn't like about it was the fact that there were all these sort of stand-ins for a well-known artist. There's like fake Loretta Lynn, fake Peter Paul and Mary. That kind of took me out of it a bit. I wish that maybe all of them Just like the real people.  Or print out their own personalities. Yeah, yeah, but.  0:22:25 - Speaker 2 Ali Aguld in there is someone else, so random right And Julie Christie.  0:22:31 - Speaker 6 I think the one thing, though, is that that's kind of the archetype still to this day, kind of the archetype of what you have in terms of Nashville, in terms of the music, like you'll have, the one thing they didn't have because it was really a thing in 75 was the one that trickles over to being Warhol Rockstar. The closest we get with that is Karateen, because he's the one that they're all fawning over. But they didn't have, like, the 1975 equivalent of, like the Keith Urban, because there was none. But that's the thing, thank.  0:22:57 - Speaker 5 God.  0:22:59 - Speaker 6 But that was. I think that's the thing why they all seem so very Loretta Lynn-like and George Jones-like.  0:23:04 - Speaker 3 It's just the state of the music industry, Yeah yeah, and that was you know.  0:23:08 - Speaker 6 country was compartmentalized into just four by very, very.  0:23:11 - Speaker 5 But I think it does get specific, especially in terms of like her look and what and like her manager, husband, yeah, and that can be a trick.  0:23:18 - Speaker 3 I just think, apart from the specific details of what, the sort of who the characters are, because I think that is all super important, One of the things about Nashville that's so like that, I think, for especially people at the time that certainly feel me watching it, is that there are so many characters and yet they're so delineated and you just totally wanna follow all. For me, I wanna follow all of those characters, and it's a huge group of them. But it also, like it falls into like every culture has a movie, I think, or many cultures in the world in their film kind of history, have like a movie that on some level is like here's everything in the culture in one movie. So, like for French films, it's the rules of the game. Rules of the game has all the French people in the world in one movie. And in Italy it's La Dolce Vida. La Dolce Vida has all the Italians, It has the this level of Italians and it has the lower levels and has the upper levels and has the this movie. Is that for America?  0:24:14 - Speaker 5 I thought it was a man man man world. Well, that's true too. That has many people in it.  0:24:20 - Speaker 3 But that's more about all the people that are in cartoons. You're right.  0:24:24 - Speaker 5 So you're saying you place a higher premium on these actors as opposed to the three Stooges, Correct?  0:24:29 - Speaker 2 yeah, yeah.  0:24:32 - Speaker 3 I just I guess what I am saying is that That that that thing of like being the hinge point of of depicting a whole culture is, is in Nashville. It's the hinge, it's the thing, it's the crucible through which all the other movies before and since, kind of in terms of just how you view, like whatever America is, i can't divorce it from that movie.  So there's before that movie and after that movie, kind of, and it just yeah, like, at least for me It that's how it feels. It feels like like it's like the individual stories are interesting, but it's that. It's that thing where the movie ends and you're like well, that was a sum total of something like that was.  0:25:14 - Speaker 4 Just can't get past the fact that you know, jeff, go blew him in a movie and not let him talk.  0:25:20 - Speaker 5 We're really stop it. I think his wardrobe did the talking.  0:25:29 - Speaker 4 Yeah, i didn't. Yeah, i wouldn't go so far as to say I didn't, i didn't like it. It just it meandered for me it was all over the place and maybe, again, maybe I was not, no, in the right place, my head was swiveling a little too much. I will tell you this I watched that movie on my computer, not on my television.  0:25:43 - Speaker 3 Sure.  0:25:44 - Speaker 4 Maybe, maybe that had something to do with it. Yeah, yeah but yeah, it was.  0:25:52 - Speaker 3 You kind of have to immerse yourself in it, i think.  0:25:55 - Speaker 6 I think it just requires you to be just because so many, so many of the scenes like they've got so many people in them.  0:26:00 - Speaker 3 You're looking what's going on, yeah, and it's, yeah, it's also the movie where he absolutely Perfects that thing of the long zooms and the multiple conversations and the multiple mics all coming at once and the pulling and sort of layering of stuff. Like he got closer and closer and closer and like I think the cave is probably a Really good example of it and mash is a pretty good example of it, but this is like it's the best email that did that thing up. Like we're gonna have a room with 200 people. They're already talking and you're kind of gonna hear them all, not the top.  0:26:32 - Speaker 4 Yeah, it almost feels like one, and maybe this, i don't know, but one Continued. Yeah, you're following your yes.  0:26:38 - Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah, journalists right, and and just like yeah, and just like I mean and I think if you're watching that, on a smaller screen and you're kind of it's it's harder to like Part of like I'm thinking of, like The Orson Welles movie with a really long take at the trial, no, the one with a touch of you. Yeah, like the whole movie of touch of evil is not that good, but that opening shot is so good that it kind of elevates everything else that you see after it And.  I think like when you can establish just that technical level of mastery right away and be like boom, like my drop by, just I own.  0:27:12 - Speaker 5 You know that you, you, it elevates the rest of it. I know what, when I like, i watch it on a you know a larger TV. So, yeah, i wish I could have seen in the theater, but you can pick out like there's always Someone in the background that's doing something that we've seen before, or an actor showing up.  Like it feels like he's created this space where these characters kind of Yeah and so sometimes you do Pinpoint little things, even though they might not be sort of spectacular big screen Things, i think on a larger screen you might sort of notice details, and that's probably why I want to watch it again. I want to. I feel like a lot of those probably went over my head the first time and I think a lot of If we want to just talk influence.  0:27:53 - Speaker 3 A lot of that shows up in a lot of other movies. That thing of weaving in Stuff like Pulp Fiction, like that thing of like stuff happening in the background that you've actually. You can later on you connect the dots and be like Oh, these were all half of Paul St Andersen's career. Well, he's a. You know he's a devote. Yeah, famously, anderson quit for a while just to assist All his last couple of movies. Yeah, so he's absolutely huge.  0:28:17 - Speaker 4 Yeah, you see it in a bunch of movies, but yeah, yep, yeah, i think, yeah, i think that pretty much covers that I mean with that national.  0:28:26 - Speaker 3 There's no Magnolia, for sure. Oh, that's, that's for sure.  0:28:31 - Speaker 2 No, he nights either, probably not it's that's.  0:28:33 - Speaker 3 That was mortis Corsese. I think in some ways It's also the fight.  0:28:37 - Speaker 5 I remember when I saw Magnolia, like when it first came out, i was in high school and I was like, oh, this is what an important, different kind of movie, right. And then, a few years later I think, i saw short cuts. I was like, oh well, this is where that came from. And now I'm saying natural, like, oh well, this is really the origin.  0:28:53 - Speaker 4 Yeah, totally Yeah. So you say that boom. But yeah, switch one off.  0:28:57 - Speaker 3 In my head I I think what's really interesting is this is the year as a total where it's so clear that without television, drama in the 50s like half of these movies don't happen, like Altman and We're gonna talk about Cindy Lumet and dog day and we're gonna talk about Jaws and Spielberg came on the TV and like and like, like it's. It's so beholden to TV as a sort of training ground, so which I'm not sure like the visually. These movies are so expensive and they're so beyond TV. But there's something about those people's ability to jungle actors and kind of get you know Really quickly get great performances out of people. So you can have a movie with 35 speaking roles, major speaking roles, and you can actually direct them all effectively because he comes out of like shooting live Playoffs, 90s and stuff, or it's like I had no time to spend with you on that. That level of economy, i think, is part of what makes this great and what makes him kind of great.  0:29:55 - Speaker 4 We just mentioned dog day and I think that after talking about two giant movies like big epic sprawling movies, dog is sort of our bottle, the bottle episode Where you guys on dog afternoon, i Really love this movie.  0:30:15 - Speaker 5 I I hadn't seen it in a while and I still love it. It's great every time you watch it. Yeah it's just all time So there's nothing I I can say About it really in any kind of negative capacity. I just thought it's really it's a great summer movie too, like it feels so of that, like you feel like you're there watching this very visceral.  0:30:35 - Speaker 4 Yeah, sweaty and Like I was claustrophobic, yeah, sort of claustrophobic, i mean I don't know why it's, it's enough space, but I felt the. you know, it's because of that shot of the dog.  0:30:48 - Speaker 2 Anytime the calendar turns over August, i start thinking about you know, but I'm due to watch dog.  0:30:53 - Speaker 6 Has anybody seen the dog?  0:30:54 - Speaker 3 or whatever.  0:30:55 - Speaker 6 No, I've never heard that so so yeah.  0:30:57 - Speaker 3 I'm only curious because this movie is so good. Right, yeah, there is this, there's this documentary about the actual guy, because it's a real. That's not a real. Right, yes, right. And the weird for me, the weird, amazing achievement about dog day is that totally contextualist, like as a person who grew up in the 1980s and saw this movie on home video and and I know Virtually and certainly at the time I do virtually nothing about kind of 1970s urban history, about New York City, the scene where he shows Attica, you still go fuck. Yeah.  0:31:27 - Speaker 5 I don't know anything.  0:31:29 - Speaker 2 I don't.  0:31:29 - Speaker 3 I still don't really know what he's talking about. It still makes you go like they're right at a cut, you know it just the movie puts you in so Compellingly to what he's doing, he's doing, he's doing, doing he's spectacular in this movie. Yes, So the women, if all the women in the bank are amazing. They're all great Yeah.  0:31:48 - Speaker 5 I, you're Al Pacino, i to show How, how far he's come Or how duty is in this movie. I should say I was. I watched it up at my cottage and we're getting the newspaper, i think the. The day before we watched dog day afternoon and we're reading The tiff announcements and there was a movie with, or I can't remember which movie is Al Pacino And did you guys?  see someone, someone's new movie and someone we talked about was like, oh, this movie is coming to tiff and I was like, oh, who's in it? and then my wife said Al Pacino. And I went, oh, and we're like, yeah, i know Al Pacino. And then we watched dog day afternoon. It was just holy shit. This guy was so Just on top of his game, just sir, when he had more than one registered for his boy.  0:32:35 - Speaker 4 I just love that he let himself be so uncool, you know like, you know, so Raw and vulnerable, yeah, when he's sliding around, when he's running back and forth, when they, when they first, when the cops first sort of Uh, come into contact with him and he's just he's sliding across the bank floor like he's frantic and he's absolutely out of control And there's just something so uncool.  0:32:55 - Speaker 6 Even, just even just the robbery itself, like it's, it's, it's clear, like he had it all mapped out in his head, but the actual execution of it It's not. You know, to use a terrible example as a counterpoint, it's not the bank heist at the beginning of the dark night where they're just, where everything has just been like clocked down to the second.  0:33:11 - Speaker 2 Yes, you know, this is all very okay, yeah, i got this the biggest idea. Yeah, yeah, no words.  0:33:16 - Speaker 4 Yeah, You know, and he's like yeah, and his voice is all like pieces out, like Yeah, so it's just watching him.  0:33:23 - Speaker 6 You know he's got the plan, He knows what he's supposed to do, but what you actually like execute with any kind of level of confidence is just not there.  0:33:30 - Speaker 5 And that's that's so realistic too, like I feel, like anything I try to do with my friends, one of them will bail.  0:33:35 - Speaker 3 Right, yeah, that makes sense, and one of them will be John Kazal, so that's no good, yeah, how have we not talked about John Kazal? Well, we need to talk about, because I think, to your point, was it?  0:33:44 - Speaker 5 Kazal. I've always said Kazaly and now I feel like I'm wrong.  0:33:47 - Speaker 3 I think it's Kazal, but I guess I it's a guy I'm trying to remember from an interview, but I anyway. But yeah, he is the unsung hero of 1970s because he's a dear hunter in this and the two godfathers, right.  0:33:57 - Speaker 2 Yeah.  0:33:59 - Speaker 5 And those were the only kind of movies he made pretty much.  0:34:02 - Speaker 3 You know, if you look at every like there's a guy that had to earn his way on just into front of the camera. He really didn't like go, or people did not go that you need to be photographing, and then he died.  0:34:14 - Speaker 5 And then he died and I think, like he was, uh living with meryl street or dating meryl street for a?  0:34:19 - Speaker 3 long time. I think, yeah, and and it's just like He's. He's this incredible counterbalance to all these Really strong actors like like Pacino and De Niro. Right, and especially in Pacino's case, if you look at what happened, like the progression of him right after Kazal died because he did cruising and like Princess, it like like he.  All of a sudden he became the opportunity that we are talking about derisively And it's almost as if Kazal was like his spirit animal or something like he was the only one keeping it like On the level, like just imagine him doing, cruising, and then Kazal showed up and being like Dude we work so hard.  0:35:06 - Speaker 5 I think what stands, or where this movie sort of stands apart from other Pacino movies too At least the ones that sort of come to mind now, like the godfather and movies around that time Is this almost a one-man show and there's a lot of other great actors but it all rests on him And there's so many great close-ups of him that sort of long takes of him and it's just uh, he is Just the star and the focus of this movie and we really get to see what he can do.  0:35:29 - Speaker 3 And just play scared. so well, like you, wonder why he doesn't play scared more, because he's so You see it like you, just he doesn't have to see it He wants to be, he wants to be cool like all the time.  0:35:39 - Speaker 5 I just see it right. Yeah, How about a movie where i'm the devil?  0:35:47 - Speaker 3 There is a comment to be had about that Pacino playing this movie Like that and being like.  0:35:56 - Speaker 6 How to come.  0:35:57 - Speaker 3 I can only imagine him reading his last will.  0:35:59 - Speaker 4 At best, I'll touch that a lot.  0:36:04 - Speaker 5 I remember reading, uh, or hearing somewhere that, uh, christopher Nolan said that when they made insomnia, uh, when he's directing Pacino, pacino would start out crazy, cartoonishly big And stop him. Be like what are you doing? And he's like, no, no, i do that on purpose. I hit like 11 and then in the later takes I can, sort of new, find the nuances. That's like it. I don't. I don't think he's finding those nuances.  0:36:31 - Speaker 3 But also if you're al Pacino and whoever, whatever director, you're working with now idolizes you. Do you make him? do?  0:36:36 - Speaker 5 take eight, take nine Right you don't let him get there, right, you're just like oh no, i guess this is the best You're gonna like.  0:36:41 - Speaker 3 Unless he tells the person, unless the person has a temerity to go up to al Pacino, i don't think you're doing the best workout like which. Who's gonna do that right? So, maybe the devil, yeah, maybe his path is not And he, i imagine he's a method guy. Imagine he would have lived in this part.  0:37:00 - Speaker 5 He robbed a bank. for this role He went to jail for a long time.  0:37:03 - Speaker 3 He also famously went halfway towards sexual reassignment.  0:37:09 - Speaker 5 And also a great supporting cast uh, chris sarandon, and uh uh Uh. We actually just did the princess bride on our podcast, So it was interesting seeing those two movies within a week. Yeah, yeah, very different chris sarandon roles.  0:37:21 - Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah, uh, charles Sturning. Sturning is so great and this is the perfect part for during. He should always be a cop, right, yeah, and he's so like. Uh, what I like about Charles Sturning is he's he's great at showing sort of like intense, inappropriate frustration. Like even when he's intensely frustrated, you can tell there's this thing in his voice where he's like I'm fucking this up, i can't be this angry right now, i'm gonna bring it down.  0:37:48 - Speaker 4 Yeah, so there's a.  0:37:52 - Speaker 3 I mean, I think it's neat that it comes out the same year as Nashville, because they feel like two different ways of showing something interesting about America Where it is at that moment, and this one feels very much New York.  0:38:01 - Speaker 6 That's what we're talking about. Well, urban, you know we were talking before we went on about how the American cities there's two or three of them that have a very, very distinct character And like I don't see this as being said in Cincinnati, you know, that kind of thing, that kind of closeness of everybody on top of each other, yeah, and like the dead of summer, when everybody's really bloody irritated, you know, and just anybody can like go on edge, that this, this is where the story takes place.  0:38:26 - Speaker 5 It's very, again, it's very much of its time and place And the fact that, like it's an anti-authoritarian hero, Like the reason why the you know this neighborhood sort of rallied around him, This is because he was, you know, saying fuck you to the cops, Yeah.  0:38:41 - Speaker 6 And while cameras rolled and caught it all.  0:38:43 - Speaker 2 Again.  0:38:43 - Speaker 6 This is also where we got everybody really wanting to be famous right Like same sort of thing as Nashville, where everybody all of a sudden really wants to be famous because TV is much bigger than it was and Tablo Journal is much bigger than it was. So, everybody wants to be famous just for doing something. So seeing somebody out there, seeing something where somebody is kind of grabbing their moment in front of you, But I also think it's like like a lot of the best 70s movies are about this distrusting authority.  0:39:06 - Speaker 5 Whether it's the police or the government, And I feel like the fact that everyone was celebrating this bank robber is really we're talking about the other.  0:39:13 - Speaker 6 There's other to cheer him up.  0:39:14 - Speaker 3 Yeah, exactly, and also the fact that, at that point in time, new York City itself is basically bankrupt And that the people who live in New York are so angry about the fact that this city, which is supposed to be the greatest city, is basically like a crumbling ruin, yeah, yeah, when he goes into the vault and there's and there's money.  0:39:32 - Speaker 5 It's a perfect. It's a perfect like I'm showing up in New York.  0:39:34 - Speaker 4 I'm going to be big, i'm going to be big.  0:39:36 - Speaker 3 And it's like there's a thousand dollars here. What just occurred? to me is that which I'm surprised, has never occurred to me before but, weirdly, if you take these two films and mash them together, you actually get do the right thing. Oh yeah, mash Nashville and Dog Day together, kind of get through the right thing. You get this big movie set in one of the hottest days in New York City with all kinds of characters.  0:39:56 - Speaker 4 Are you listening? internet? There's your cue. There's your cue. I want to see a supercut. There's a 35 foot shark in the room? Yes, there is. We're not talking about it all, and I think we should probably give it some, give it some love, give it a hug.  0:40:13 - Speaker 3 I don't care for this. That's good You guys watch.  0:40:17 - Speaker 6 Jaws 4, right, Jaws 2 has been on TV a lot.  0:40:22 - Speaker 4 It's a shark with a water skier in front of it.  0:40:24 - Speaker 3 We had a conversation a while ago where we were talking about maybe it was the Back to the Future one where we were like, oh, we're apocalypse now. And we were like what do we really need to say? Because I feel like everybody kind of knows how great this movie is. I feel like Jaws is in the same. It's so great and I'm trying to figure out a person who is like I don't care for Jaws. Jaws is great.  0:40:44 - Speaker 4 Jaws is yeah, yeah, is that what we're going to do when we're sitting here in Gutch? You're right. if that's the case, Well, I can tell a funny story.  0:40:51 - Speaker 3 Tell a funny story. So my father's not good with scary movies particularly, and Jaws came out in 1975 and so I was four. He and my mother were definitely not going to see the scary movie, so he went by himself to see this scary movie, that he's not good at scary movies.  And then he drove home suitably freaked out And on the way home he kept hearing sounds like water sounds in the car, to the point where he was driving and whipping his head around and turning it around and stuff. But what was happening? And he came in completely Wacken has, completely freaked out, and my mother said, oh, there's a case of apple juice in the car.  0:41:36 - Speaker 5 And then, if this were a movie, he'd open up the trunk to get the apple juice in the car, just a shark bail. Yeah, i mean I was just going to say I feel like, looking back, it's easy to say that Jaws was sort of like the populist choice, like the blockbuster that they stuck on here. But I mean, i think like we all agree, it's one of the best movies of all time.  And I think what people forget or wouldn't maybe acknowledge, looking at this in terms of the other five movies, is how incredibly subversive it is. I mean, we're talking about movies of their time. I mean, i've always read Jaws as an allegory for the Vietnam War.  0:42:16 - Speaker 3 Well, it's certainly the most pop cultural way of getting at the mistrust of authority, much more than dog days.  0:42:23 - Speaker 5 Yeah, exactly, really about saying, and also like the divide in men and masculinity and sort of like reuniting these three men, the sort of pacifist Richard Dreyfus and the war hero Robert Shaw, and then started stuck in the middle is Brody, who's kind of his father, who's willing to defend his family, but he he just has violence because he was a cop and he he killed someone or something. So that's when I took this job. This is an incredibly important movie for this time, if that's sort of the lens we're looking through these movies.  0:42:56 - Speaker 3 I tend to agree. I feel like the Oaks are good.  0:42:59 - Speaker 6 No, i well. The thing when I think about this movie is certainly, like I said, i was an Oscar movie, because that's why we're here. There's two things I always wonder about is one what would have happened if this movie had one best picture? What would that have done to Spielberg's career? You know, it would have been a case of too much too soon, but he just not had gone on. Geez, if only he had been a success. Well, that's like you know, yeah it's, it's.  0:43:23 - Speaker 2 I know I want it.  0:43:24 - Speaker 6 You know how long it kept him hungry doing all of these movies that had a lot going on, that were pop movies that our current pop movies just can.  0:43:32 - Speaker 3 So you think if it didn't recognize more it would have negatively? absolutely Yeah, he would have posted through big budgets and not have to fight.  0:43:42 - Speaker 6 Yeah, that's my thought is is there is something to be said, sometimes for too much, too soon. The other thing I wonder about as well, you know, on the flip side is what would have happened if the damn shark had a warrant?  0:43:55 - Speaker 3 Because, because that's the big city had to shoot around it.  0:43:58 - Speaker 6 That's what I thought, Yeah you know, like that's a lot of what makes don't even remember the stuff that you're talking about for sure, with the emotional resonance of the men in this movie. That's all in the screenplay. Like he had that from the word go, because he was basically tearing up the book and putting it back to me in his own way. That was there from the start, but I feel that that might have been buried if the damn shark kind of worked and we would have been able to see it more and see what he was able to do with it, even though he said famously I don't want to show up for the first act.  0:44:26 - Speaker 5 You know, yeah, you know, and that's the other thing is it's hard to sort of speculate because you know, for they could have had a working, you know, motorized shark, filmed all those scenes, then gone in the editing room and been like, hey, you know what. it actually cuts together better when we don't see the shark Like who knows what.  0:44:42 - Speaker 6 Yeah, exactly, and that's like with both of them.  0:44:43 - Speaker 3 We don't know, i also think, given the state of technology movie technology in 1974, 73, 74, when he was filming this, there is no universe that exists where that shark would have worked.  0:44:55 - Speaker 5 I think people would have told him it could work.  0:44:59 - Speaker 6 Well, it all came down to if he had filmed it in a tank, like Universal wanted him to do. It was because they put it out there and Martha's Vineyard in the salt water that it just started screwing up like no tomorrow.  0:45:08 - Speaker 4 They wanted it shot in a tank. They wanted to show him a tank.  0:45:11 - Speaker 6 Yeah, they absolutely saw that because that was every undersea, like every underwater adventure up until then had all been shot in this tank. That's why, and that's why they look so damn terrible.  0:45:22 - Speaker 5 Well, they did some stuff in the tank right, like the sea worries and the cage which your driver's is down in the tank. Yeah, they did some of that.  0:45:27 - Speaker 6 I think they didn't do something with real sharks.  0:45:30 - Speaker 3 Well, they did, They cut it. but they're not like sharks, but they're like little, but yeah, they were still wanting him to do like sharks, And he's like no, we're gonna.  0:45:37 - Speaker 5 We want you to film it. Jaws the ride. Yeah, yeah, yeah.  0:45:43 - Speaker 3 I do think that the interesting thing for me when you say like if it had won so famously adult field, is both could ever have one in that year, because and they sort of the comparison I would draw is this for me in movies is where music was around 1963. So this is the breaking point. Like for a long time in music what was popular and what was considered highly accomplished were actually mostly the same thing. Like what was what was popular in pop music was also what was popular on Broadway or what was popular in sort of film musicals like those were the popular songs. So what Bing Crosby was singing, which was like a parade popular music, that was also just what Rogers and Hammerstein were writing.  Right, the break is the Beatles. The break is the invasion a little bit before with Rock and Roll, yeah, but the real break in terms of like widespread, it's like in 1963, the biggest songs come out of My Fair Lady. Those are like the big hits, not so much in 1964. That's where it breaks off right Exchange And Jaws is the break. Jaws is where the big, important movies are no longer. They're really the popcorn movies, the movies that we think of as being low culture or popular culture. They're actually the more important movies than the high culture movies, whatever that means. This is the break, so it's not possible for, i think, the people who are voting on it to actually perceive that that just happened.  0:47:04 - Speaker 2 It's a lot of ways. It's actually a wonder that it got nominated.  0:47:09 - Speaker 6 I feel that if that movie came along now that it just it wouldn't happen.  0:47:13 - Speaker 4 Was it an achievement? It was an achievement, non, is that why it was? It was hard to ignore.  0:47:20 - Speaker 6 It became the biggest movie of all time at the box office. And yeah, when I was here on the 1993 show, i said that every film except for one that became the biggest box office phenomenon went on to also get a picture nomination. So it's almost like you can't ignore it. And that was the thing, is that even if they wanted to, i don't think they could, just because it was able to do that And not care what the Godfather, which had happened three years prior.  0:47:45 - Speaker 5 Right, but I think, because of that sort of financial reason, that it sort of started the blockbuster. They released it in more theater simultaneously. All these things have sort of led to the way we sort of digest summer blockbuster.  It established the summer, summer Yeah which, which you know, some people might think is a negative thing, and obviously it shifted attention away from sort of art house films that were the mainstream. Yeah, i think, because we sort of perceive it that way, historically, people forget just. I mean, people know how great JAWS is, but I think when you stack it up against these other movies, i think it absolutely deserves to be there. I even think it might be the best of the five.  0:48:21 - Speaker 3 I think it's a great movie. I think it's easily argued to be the most influential of the five. Sure, for those reasons you just mentioned.  0:48:26 - Speaker 5 Yeah, but even just in terms of the things we've been talking about, in terms of sort of cultural reflections, in terms of even like, some of my favorite moments in the movie are the small moments like where it with Brody and his son, where he sounds like mimicking him And he doesn't realize it's so touching And it's like the small moments, just the fact that, no matter how many times you see this movie, i always forget about the dead dude in the boat.  0:48:49 - Speaker 4 Yeah, I forget every time.  0:48:52 - Speaker 3 And every time I like yeah.  0:48:55 - Speaker 4 I jumped out of my chair I rewatched a few scenes this morning because I hadn't seen it in a while And I absolutely landed on that scene and watched it like an idiot, Thinking I couldn't you know, thinking I would beat it. And I did not beat it even.  0:49:10 - Speaker 3 No, and just every time you're like what the?  0:49:12 - Speaker 6 oh my God.  0:49:14 - Speaker 4 I got this coming up.  0:49:17 - Speaker 5 I don't know if you guys want to re-release recently, but people screamed in the theater, really Yeah.  0:49:23 - Speaker 3 And that was how I introduced it to my son, who was 13, and it's like the perfect movie to show a 13 year old. Yeah, i continue. It's uh, i actually wondered because start with this like the summer movie season, the fact there was no summer movie season. Has anyone put together when the majority of theaters got air conditioning?  0:49:40 - Speaker 6 I'm just, i'm serious because one of the reasons nobody saw movies in the service because it's so hot.  0:49:45 - Speaker 4 No, this is it.  0:49:46 - Speaker 5 I was talking about the future last night That's what I was thinking. They had the advertising for the theater in 1955.  0:49:51 - Speaker 6 I'm delightfully air conditioned.  0:49:52 - Speaker 4 Yeah, that's exactly what I was worried about. Yeah that's May though.  0:49:57 - Speaker 6 They turn it off in.  0:49:58 - Speaker 2 July.  0:49:59 - Speaker 5 It just brights to spines a library but also back to the future, wasn't real. And I just see on your bookshelf you have easy riders, raging bulls. Yeah, i remember in the movie of that that was like the end of the movie. They're like jaws Before raging bullet, like jaws kind of killed it. Like we were making all these interesting movies and then just came along and then the same week I watched there was a new Documentary about Star Wars. I was on TV and it was like before Jaws and Star Wars, hollywood was making upsetting, weird movies that were dark and about Unlikeable characters. So there's two documentaries completely different viewpoints on.  0:50:37 - Speaker 3 I mean, you can argue the good and the bad, but you can't argue the fact that jaws to change the movie business from a kind of money losing vanity business that a bunch of weirdos Like if you one things it's great about that easy riders, raging bulls is that the people that own the studios like the ones Is named blue dwarf the guy that owned Elven Lester Yeah they are weirdos, man.  0:50:59 - Speaker 2 They're nuts right and they don't care what I mean.  0:51:01 - Speaker 3 It's a. It's a hobby for them. It took it from being a hobby to being like a major business.  0:51:06 - Speaker 4 Well, just to give you the box office from that year, just the 240 million bucks. Rocky horror was a hundred forty No.  0:51:13 - Speaker 3 I have to correct you. These are lifetime figures from I am to be their lifetime figures There's no, a rocky horror made 140 million in 1970. It has made 140 million. Okay, you can't make that much, only playing Saturday nights at midnight. Yeah Yeah, it's a misleading figure.  0:51:29 - Speaker 4 So who's this is 112, and then the next movie is 31 million bucks like after that it drops, yeah, yeah. It drops like substantial. I guess that's what I was trying to illustrate, but but fair enough.  0:51:40 - Speaker 3 The jaws made the majority. That's money in that year, and it's just. It's a staggering Considering what the next would be like. Well, it's, i mean. The only other example I have is Titanic, like where one movie makes 1.8 billion and the next closest makes 300 million. There's not even, not even close.  0:51:58 - Speaker 4 Yeah, i thought that was. I was writing it down. It seems odd to me, other than the fact that the pop popular wise it was a it was ranked up there as well. Well, let's, let's go into cookies next, which also was high up there. We're talking about movies that do something substantial. Yeah, at the Oscars, i mean, this movie ran the board of the big big awards for fun and profit.  0:52:21 - Speaker 3 Everyone want to name the other two movies that have run the board.  0:52:24 - Speaker 5 I know.  0:52:26 - Speaker 3 Happen one night There you go only three times. Has a movie, one director, picture, actor, actress and screenplay?  0:52:31 - Speaker 6 Yeah which which tells you, like, how hard that is to do. It's almost, and I almost say like it's, it's gonna be harder that much more now because the Academy seems to See the screenplay awards as a way to throw a bone to somebody who's who's done. There's somebody smaller or somebody who's done a few things at once, so, like this is where, like Quentin Tarantino tends to get it.  0:52:54 - Speaker 5 It's like, well, we're not gonna be director, but that was a great script.  0:52:56 - Speaker 2 It's a great script. Yeah, you know, or?  0:52:58 - Speaker 6 or the ones that are really weird, like a turtle's on China. This bottle's mine. They got it. It's awesome.  0:53:02 - Speaker 3 We can't give you an award.  0:53:03 - Speaker 2 No, you can't give me something up for that.  0:53:05 - Speaker 6 That's the thing. Because they're looking at the screenplay award in that light, it's gonna get that much harder to run the table of the other four. Sorry, the other four plus that.  0:53:15 - Speaker 4 Yeah, are we in the same boat with this movie that we were with Jaws a moment ago? Is this? I don't know, because this was a movie that come into the table I didn't see before really Yeah.  0:53:29 - Speaker 3 All these movies are like movies are like first time, what happened? you know, like it's so great that you fucking loved it.  0:53:35 - Speaker 4 Yeah, i love it right, you had just you just released your episode the day I watched it, where you were talking about Fargo and TV shows. And I tweeted you immediately and was like I would. I don't want to besmirch the movie by saying It should be a TV show, but I mean, like I want these characters, i want to see them, i want to see them over and over again, before you know, before the end anyway.  0:53:57 - Speaker 3 It's, it's, it's not possible. I play poker fairly regularly. Not possible for me to play without at some point in the evening going. I bet it died I just So hard every time, every time.  0:54:13 - Speaker 6 Yeah, we, when I got that message from you and I can't remember you know, it did make it into the show too. I said like I would totally spend 12 hours like watching the characters Absolutely, and like I would want something like six hours or so to be performing her feet and shows up.  0:54:29 - Speaker 3 I want to sit on the boat, nurse ratchet. I want to see that show of her home.  0:54:35 - Speaker 4 Performances. Like I mean it. You know why I ran the board, or we need to give that a term, like I want to say triple crown, but it can't be a triple crown because there's more than three stories.  0:54:44 - Speaker 3 It's the sweet.  0:54:45 - Speaker 4 It just takes fucking every box Did you need a hug when it was over. It was really quite. Yeah, I was yeah.  0:54:52 - Speaker 3 Yeah, it's, the bottomies are not easy to watch like it's just not easy to feel like like that movie, so got punches you with its ending, so effectively built up, i think again.  0:55:07 - Speaker 4 We're going back to Pacino. You know Nicholson, just so good.  0:55:14 - Speaker 3 He made two films this year. The other one is the passenger, with that Game like it's amazing.  0:55:22 - Speaker 5 The thing I love about his performance in this movie is he does the Jack Nicholson shtick And then you see the moments where that doesn't work and it kind of gets deflated.  0:55:31 - Speaker 3 Yeah, and he pulls. It's like he's deconstructing himself right in front of you Yeah. Yeah, oh, that's good, yeah, yeah, and and you know, i also, i read this. It's Amazing to read Oh yeah, how's the adaptation like? I?  mean nothing, not really like it, but no well, because the book is all from the chief's perspective, oh really, and that chief is the narrator But also, which is why he doesn't say anything in the movie, right boy makes that Simpsons episode make a lot worse. The the thing that I like with the book that's different is