Episode 1200 - Mark Harris
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fucksters what the fuck nicks what is happening i'm mark maron this is my podcast wtf and uh it's been exciting lately hasn't it we're
Marc:What does that even mean?
Marc:Why am I opening like that?
Marc:What am I talking about?
Marc:Well, I'll be honest with you.
Marc:Brendan and I, my business partner and producer, got some good news.
Marc:Edison Research.
Marc:is a real thing.
Marc:And this is the Podcast Consumer Tracking Report.
Marc:Now, Brendan and I have been doing this show on our own for 12 years or so, right?
Marc:Been about 12 years now.
Marc:I wouldn't say we're OGs, but we're close.
Marc:We were there at the beginning when there was nothing.
Marc:There was a few.
Marc:There was some history and there was a few and then us.
Marc:And I believe that over time we helped define this medium podcasting.
Marc:But as everything goes over time, you imagine that, well, there's a million podcasts.
Marc:Who knows where we are in the big picture?
Marc:But we keep doing consistent work and we keep showing up for work and we keep evolving, folks.
Marc:We keep evolving.
Marc:But on the most listened to podcasts in 2020, United States Weekly Podcast Listens, we are number 20.
Marc:which is fucking astounding.
Marc:12 years in, still doing top-notch work, still happy to be working and always engaged with our work.
Marc:And it's showing up 20 out of that.
Marc:I don't know whether there's 50 listed here, but we're 20.
Marc:And above us, there's the regular customers, the NPRs and the New York Times.
Marc:Joe is up there at the top, but Joe's doing that thing.
Marc:But I'll tell you, we were both pleasantly surprised and excited and self-congratulatory about this news.
Marc:How long we've been doing it, what we've been doing, and the fact that it sticks and it's consistent and it's evolving.
Marc:And we've been through a lot.
Marc:But this was exciting for us, so I thought I'd share that.
Marc:Now, my guest today is Mark Harris.
Marc:Mark Harris.
Marc:the writer of books, the journalist.
Marc:He's written several books on film.
Marc:Pictures at a Revolution is one that I just recently finished, and I thought it was spectacular.
Marc:It's five movies and the birth of the new Hollywood.
Marc:He also wrote a book called Five Came Back, a story of Hollywood and the Second World War.
Marc:And he also wrote his new book, Mike Nichols, A Life, a huge Mike Nichols biography.
Marc:And I was excited to talk to him because I dug into the book and it it just reignited my brain in so many ways.
Marc:The other thing I want to share is that I'm starting to see results.
Marc:From the meditation, I have fought the idea of meditation for a long time.
Marc:I still kind of fight it, but I do it.
Marc:I generally do a guided meditation with the Headspace app.
Marc:This is not a paid advertising.
Marc:It's just the one.
Marc:Someone gave it to me for nothing, actually.
Marc:But now I listen to the English guy.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Take a deep breath.
Marc:Breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth.
Marc:Eyes open, soft focus.
Marc:Now get ready to lock down because we're going to fucking meditate this shit to death.
Marc:We are going to fucking so deeply meditate that you're not even going to know your name when you get out of here.
Marc:You're not even going to know what day it is.
Marc:We're going to get so fucking deep into it.
Marc:You're not even going to know if you're a man or a woman or a gerbil or a dog or a little piggy.
Marc:Yeah, we're going to get so deep into it that you're going to tap into the big hum, the big frequency.
Marc:You're going to be in the canyon of time, not knowing what God is or who you are or whether or not anything is anything.
Marc:That's where we're going with this.
Marc:All right, now...
Marc:Breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth.
Marc:Now, won't you wank it?
Marc:I'm sorry.
Marc:It's a joke.
Marc:It's a joke.
Marc:You can do that after.
Marc:Anyways, listen.
Marc:I think what's happening is we never know the future, but we usually can plan.
Marc:No one ever really knows what's going to happen, but usually you can hang your future thinking on some things you're looking forward to or some things you have to do, and that's gone because we don't know when we're going to be able to do things.
Marc:I'm not speaking for everybody, but I believe that the dread...
Marc:of really never knowing what's going to happen in the future, which is sort of a mortality anxiety, but the dread of not knowing when we're going to actually be able to do anything outside of what we have to do today and tomorrow, which seemingly has broken into a series of patterns that just maintain our sanity.
Marc:But the anxiety of not knowing compounded by the other thing, the planning thing, I think is a lot.
Marc:So what I've begun to notice about meditation is
Marc:I find that the sitting, the guided meditation, the sitting with the breath, however you want to do it, the ability to kind of work that muscle, that mental muscle, to focus on the breath and be in the present, to let thoughts come and go, to not get too freaked out when you get distracted, but to really sort of sit mindfully and focus on the breath to the point where that's all you're doing is sort of engaging with your breath, that working that muscle,
Marc:enables you to almost instinctively get into the present when you begin to have anxiety or dread.
Marc:And it almost happens without you being cognizant because you've worked that muscle.
Marc:And that muscle is specifically to kind of not get lost in those thoughts.
Yeah.
Marc:Now, you have to decide for yourself whether you rather have a meditative brain or a brain that's on fire.
Marc:Look, if you like firefighting, then you may prefer the burning brain.
Marc:I'm not sure I like firefighting.
Marc:I've been doing it a lot of my life.
Marc:But it turns out that, like, I'm not really fighting fires.
Marc:I'm just sort of like kind of, you know, letting them burn.
Marc:And then when they start to simmer down, I'll throw a little bit more stuff on there.
Marc:But I find that the meditation enables you to kind of like I have a hard time compartmentalizing because one bad thought, if you have a hard time compartmentalizing or if you're missing a small piece of your personality, you know, one small negative thought or one bit of bad news or one kind of nugget, a little anxiety seedling can just grow fucking strangling vines all over your entire sense of being.
Marc:If you get that meditation muscle going, you get that sort of mindful muscle going, you get that quieted down muscle going, you might have a little shot.
Marc:You might have a little shot of compartmentalizing, of keeping things in perspective, of quieting the brain down, getting into the present when necessary.
Marc:You might be able to sort of dam up some of those neural pathways that kind of over fucking flood, you know, just kind of like stop them for a minute.
Marc:Because, you know, when you have no control over the flood of of fear, anxiety, dread, just I'm mixing metaphors.
Marc:There's the brain on fire.
Marc:Then there's the the flood of bad thoughts.
Marc:I guess they can happen simultaneously.
Marc:Right.
Marc:No amount of water is going to put that fire out.
Marc:It's just going to flood everything.
Marc:So you end up with a bunch of fucking moldy, soggy books and papers and toys from your past and pictures.
Marc:They're all soggy and fucked up because you let it flood and made your past look dark.
Marc:And then the fire is the future.
Marc:You got a flooded past with mold.
Marc:And in the future, nothing but flames.
Marc:So meditation helps with that.
Marc:And that was actually a guided meditation that I just did.
Marc:Let's talk about movies.
Marc:Mark Harris is going to be talking to me.
Marc:And the book he wrote, Pictures at a Revolution, is... See, it's been a long time since I read about film.
Marc:And all of us, I think a lot of us who are interested or studied stuff...
Marc:are watching a lot of movies right now.
Marc:And for some reason, now that some of the PTSD from my grief and recent trauma and the general trauma has sort of settled down, I find myself with this quiet time where I'm not pounding my brain with stand-up and compulsively working on material, where I'm actually trying to take things in again in a way that runs a little deeper than just, get me out of now!
Marc:Right?
Marc:Could somebody get me out of now?
Marc:But I think so many of us have lost context that so much of what we put into our brains is to try to get us out of now, get us out of us, distract us.
Marc:But my depth of intellectual understanding is limited, and I don't always trust it because I don't think I'm that smart.
Marc:That's just my nature.
Marc:But reading this book, this book, the one I read, I've read part of the Mike Nichols book, the new book, but he writes a lot about Nichols in Pictures of the Revolution.
Marc:It focuses on the five films that were nominated for Best Picture in 1967.
Marc:And through those films, he's able to analyze the cultural pulse of the nation, the politics of show business, the nature of each production, what went into it on a writing level, acting level, producing level, directing level, and put that into the context of the larger history of film and the history of show business and the business and the people who were involved.
Marc:And the films were Bonnie and Clyde in the heat of the night, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, Dr. Doolittle and The Graduate.
Marc:And through that, he's able to sort of consider and assess the films for what they are in context of culture and criticism, because he cites a lot of the critics, but also how that shift in the culture and in the politics of the culture changed how movies were made, sold, and taken in.
Marc:All levels working, all pistols operating.
Marc:It's a real brain igniter.
Marc:And in contextualizing these things,
Marc:You know, you see the films differently.
Marc:And I watched all the films again.
Marc:And this is dealing with art, dealing with race, deals with gender, deals with age, deals.
Marc:It's all there.
Marc:And it's, you know, film is very rich like that.
Marc:and i think what it speaks to in terms of my laziness as of late or my need to get out of the now or for just general distraction is that i think that cultural criticism film criticism art criticism criticism in general the deep stuff not the review not the this or that uh good or bad thoughts on sounds like now trending not that but sort of true contextualized consideration
Marc:of of art or culture is is a bit waning which is sad because those things are needed they're needed to sort of understand comprehend the cultural conversation and what is happening to slow it down to consider thoughtfully
Marc:And intellectually and historically, a lot of that stuff is falling by the wayside.
Marc:And after reading a book like Mark Harris's, it's like it's so fucking important because it's very easy to get lazy and it's very easy to get shallow.
Marc:And, you know, most people don't think too deeply about anything because everything's moving so fast.
Marc:And even smart people have given up without knowing it.
Marc:You know how you just go to Rotten Tomatoes on 87.
Marc:That's pretty good.
Marc:How many reviews?
Marc:100.
Marc:Let's watch that.
Marc:But if you don't have anything in place to put things into context or to think for yourself, you know, you're just going to be citing other things.
Marc:You're going to be referring to clickbait.
Marc:You're going to be referring to something you heard.
Marc:You're going to be comparing blindly.
Marc:And that's going to sort of pass as thought for you.
Marc:You know, we're volunteering for shallowness.
Marc:You got to go deep, man.
Marc:And that's what criticism can do.
Marc:Whether you understand it or not, it'll take you deeper and make you understand that there is depth to be explored.
Marc:And I'm grateful for that.
Marc:I'm grateful for this guest.
Marc:And I was excited to talk to him.
Marc:He's also married to Tony Kushner, who's probably the most brilliant living playwright that we have.
Marc:And it was kind of hard for me at the beginning because I was like, so is like, is Tony just he's just in the other room just hanging out?
Marc:What do you guys what do you guys talk about?
Marc:Like, it was hard for me not not to do a bit of that.
Marc:And I did do a bit of it, to be honest with you.
Marc:I did.
Marc:So right now, this is Mark Harris that I'm about to talk to.
Marc:And his new book is Mike Nichols, A Life.
Marc:And you can get it wherever you get books.
Marc:How are you doing, Mark?
Guest:I'm good.
Guest:How are you?
Marc:I'm all right, man.
Marc:Where are you, New York?
Guest:I am.
Guest:I'm in Manhattan on the Upper West Side.
Marc:In your apartment?
Guest:Yep.
Marc:Is Tony Kushner in the other room?
Guest:He is in the other room.
Guest:I went and shut the door and said, don't come out while I'm doing this.
Marc:Now, like, you know, he's obviously one of the great playwrights and you are one of the great critics.
Marc:You know, now you guys are spending an awfully lot of time together.
Marc:What do you talk about?
Marc:Is it mostly politics?
Marc:Do you do you watch a movie and hammer it out?
Marc:Or is it just like about food?
Guest:It's definitely not mostly politics.
Guest:I mean, we scream at each other about what's in the news the way a lot of people do.
Guest:But there's a lot of food discussion, a lot of what's for dinner, a lot of what are we going to do.
Guest:And yeah, we watch tons of movies.
Guest:I'm sort of the movie DJ, and he's the food guy.
Guest:So it...
Guest:Balances out nicely.
Guest:And, you know, we were both stay at home writers basically before this all started.
Guest:So it hasn't been that huge a change for us compared to a lot of other people.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, you got me watching movies.
Marc:I decided, you know, they sent me all the books and I thought the one that I could tackle before I talked to you thoroughly was Pictures at a Revolution.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So I read that whole book and I'm very proud of myself that I finished a book.
Guest:Thank you so much for reading it.
Guest:These days, I'm very proud of myself when I finish a book.
Guest:I'm proud of myself when I buy one.
Guest:That seems like a big accomplishment.
Marc:Well, you know what the funny thing is, is this morning I'm thinking about your book and I'm thinking about movies and I'm talking to, I had a conversation with my agent yesterday about Warren Beatty, who he decided he's going to try to get on the podcast.
Marc:And I just read so much about Beatty in your book.
Marc:is that this morning I realized, like, oh, my God, I don't know where my copy of Empire of Their Own is by Neil Gabler.
Marc:I need the book about the Jews.
Marc:I need a new copy of that.
Marc:So right before I got on, I bought a new copy of that.
Guest:I can literally touch that book almost from where I'm sitting right now.
Marc:I love that book.
Marc:Oh, it's great.
Marc:Yeah, I love that book.
Marc:And now there's a book I want to read about the Jews and creating comic books, the Marvel Universe and Stan Lee and that whole crew.
Guest:Oh, you know that new Stan Lee biography that's about to come out.
Guest:Yeah, I think it's called true believer That is a fantastic book.
Marc:Just really really worth your time Yeah, so the new book that you that you're out talking about this Mike Nichols book Nichols Mike Nichols a life like I read a lot about you know the
Marc:Obviously, you wrote a lot about Mike Nichols in Pictures of the Revolution revolving around The Graduate and his New York theater days and everything.
Marc:Now, what I want to know is, and I poked around in the new book as well, is that it seems like quite a passion project to decide to write a 500-page book on Mike Nichols.
Marc:Now...
Marc:Like, I know Mike Nichols is interesting, and I was very compelled by the stuff that you wrote in Pictures at the Revolution.
Marc:And I had no idea about his background, about his Jewishness and non-Jewishness.
Marc:But why that guy?
Guest:Well, I thought...
Guest:I mean, it was a passion project, but I thought also I would never get bored while I was doing it because it really felt like in some ways I was writing about three full careers, like a full movie career, a full career at the same time directing theater, and then the 10 years preceding that where he was this kind of game-changing performing artist.
Guest:So it really did feel like...
Guest:I didn't know it was going to be quite as long when I started working on it, but it felt like, yeah, this is going to be a long book.
Guest:It was a long, complicated life.
Marc:But like, were you able to see?
Marc:Because I noticed that the levels that you're operating at in Pictures at the Revolution and really addressing how Hollywood changed through these five movies, but you're able to tackle it on all the levels.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, the levels of, you know, cultural politics, movie industry politics, you know, what it took to get the films made, the actors, the scripts, the writing, the selling, the whole thing.
Marc:And, you know, to me, it provided a great overview.
Marc:It's sort of like, you know, I read Raging Bulls and Easy Riders, the Biskin book, which is OK.
Marc:But this was like setting the stage for that.
Marc:This is pre that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Now, I assume that, like, you also were able to thread through the Mike Nichols book the arc of history that he represents.
Guest:I think I was.
Guest:I hope I was.
Guest:I mean, it's a really different task because pictures of the revolution I had, you know.
Guest:six or eight or 10 major characters to play with.
Guest:And I was kind of interweaving them through a pretty concentrated period of about five years.
Guest:And, and so this book obviously is one life through 83 years.
Guest:I realized I would have nothing to cut away to, which was a little scary.
Guest:You know, it was,
Guest:The shape of the book was determined by the arc of his life.
Guest:But I did feel I could get into the Chicago comedy scene in the 50s and New York and nightclub life in the late 50s and 60s and Broadway in the mid 60s and Hollywood in the 70s.
Guest:So I felt like, yeah, there's a lot of good cultural history and background for me to play with here besides just Mike and his particular story.
Marc:How much did you talk about Shelley Berman?
Guest:A little bit, because that was a really intense... I mean, that whole kind of boiling pot of Chicago comedy in the 50s when they were all really kind of inventing improv was really emotionally intense.
Guest:And particularly the dynamic between Shelley Berman and Mike Nichols and Elaine May.
Guest:I mean, Shelley Berman really wanted to be...
Guest:the third guy in a trio.
Guest:And he also really wanted to work with Elaine May.
Guest:It's just about every man did.
Marc:I interviewed Shelly before he died.
Marc:I drove to his house and sat there with him.
Marc:For some reason, he had a large knife collection, Shelly Berman.
Marc:And he said that the only reason that he did a foam bit, which was half his bits, was because Elaine May wouldn't do it with him.
Marc:He said that's how he came up with the foam bit, is that he had planned those things to be two people.
Marc:But because Elaine May wouldn't do it because she was with Mike, he had to do it on his own, the foam bit.
Guest:Well, it sounded to me like there were so few women in the Compass Players and that whole scene that...
Guest:And to get with Elaine May meant that you had a chance to do a two-character thing on stage, and so everybody wanted her.
Guest:And Mike Nichols was pretty blunt about talking about the degree to which he kind of stiff-armed Shelley Berman and said, nope, she's mine, you can't go anywhere near her.
Marc:Believe me, that's just one on the large list of the reasons Shelley Berman is bitter.
Marc:Yeah, he's passed away, sadly.
Marc:But boy, get him going about Bob Newhart.
Marc:There's no end to that one.
Guest:Wow, that's amazing.
Marc:These guys, some of them don't get any happier as time goes on.
Guest:Yeah, I don't think so.
Marc:So you were able to... I mean, you knew Mike Nichols, correct?
Guest:I did in the last probably 12 or 14 years of his life when he was in his 70s.
Marc:Now, were you making notes for that then?
Marc:I mean, has this book been in the works that long?
Guest:No, not at all.
Guest:I didn't... First of all, I don't think I would ever try to write a biography of someone who is alive.
Guest:That just seems like...
Guest:I mean, biographies are already such a big mountain to climb, and I felt that Mike was figuratively looking over my shoulder, correcting me, amending me the whole time.
Guest:If there had been someone literally there, that would have been too much.
Guest:So I urged Mike a few times to write his autobiography, which he was not interested in doing, but I never thought of it until after he passed away in 2014.
Marc:And what do you think?
Marc:Because I know that in Pictures at Revolution, what do you think it was?
Marc:Because he seemed to be kind of gifted in a very unique way around how he engaged with actors and what he expected both in theater and in film.
Marc:I mean, what was it?
Marc:How did he change theater?
Yeah.
Guest:You know, this was one of the hardest things for me to reconstruct in the book because, of course, I can't go back and see, you know, Barefoot in the Park in 1963.
Guest:And when you read the play, you think, oh, this is a sort of pretty typical comedy of its time, you know, just in terms of the lines.
Guest:And so I was really surprised to hear from so many people who had seen it that, no, no, no, it wasn't that at all.
Guest:It was something really new.
Guest:And the new thing that they said Mike brought to it was that...
Guest:uh in between these very snappy like one after another lines he would find all these little gifts of realistic recognizable human behavior to give to the actors you know like so that they were saying these lines but what you were looking at was people sort of behaving the way people behave in the privacy of their own apartment and that i guess was really new and that was very mike like finding the the perfect little detail
Marc:That's interesting because that's not really, you know, that's not a method thing.
Marc:That's sort of a choice thing.
Marc:And it's sort of giving somebody something to do.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And something to do that somehow expresses who you are.
Guest:really between the lines of dialogue or under the lines of dialogue.
Guest:I mean, Mike did study with Lee Strasberg and all of that, and he was interested in the method, but I think it more comes from his work with Elaine May.
Guest:And from all those sketches where they kind of figured out as performers that they could do things, even things that were at odds with what they were saying, that would instantly connect with the audience and make people in the audience say, oh, that's just like me.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, I don't think people fully realize just how huge a comedy act they were, you know, Nichols and May.
Marc:And it came out, the Compass Players eventually became Second City, right?
Marc:There were parts of it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:There's some kind of complicated split off where part of it became Second City.
Guest:And, you know, but yes.
Marc:Wasn't Alan Arkin and Ed Asner involved as well in The Compass Play?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Ed Asner was actually the first.
Guest:He was a couple of years older than Mike.
Guest:And he was the first actor that Mike ever directed as he was an undergrad at the University of Chicago.
Guest:And he directed Ed Asner in a very short play.
Guest:That was Mike's first directing.
Marc:I bet you he remembers that this whole life.
Guest:He talked about it.
Marc:Yeah, Ed's a lot.
Marc:I'm sure he always was.
Guest:He was great.
Guest:I said, what do you remember about Mike?
Guest:And he said, he was very effeminate, but he was the kind of effeminate guy who would steal your girl when you weren't looking.
Marc:And then he talked about 9-11 conspiracies for an hour.
Yeah.
Marc:So you're able to interview him?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was a thrill.
Marc:Who else did you talk to the old timers for the book?
Guest:Oh, my gosh.
Guest:Well, from that period, definitely the most important person I talked to was Elaine May.
Guest:I mean, she was hugely responsible for helping me understand.
Guest:exactly what their partnership was and how they worked together.
Guest:She had amazing stories to tell about how the first time they got up on stage and flopped at the worst sketch they ever did and why it was such a failure and what they learned from it.
Guest:Of course, a lot of those people from the early 1950s when this all started are gone.
Guest:I talked to, before he passed away, David Shepard, who was one of the founders of
Guest:the compass and, and was already struggling with, um, the beginning of, uh, dementia when we talked, but he really wanted to talk and, and, you know, you find your way in interviews like that.
Guest:He, he, he found his way to some memories.
Marc:Well, you know, it's interesting because Elaine is still very vital and still working.
Marc:I saw her in that, uh, the, uh, the, uh, play that revival of that, um, right.
Guest:The, the Waverly gallery.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Elaine May was fantastic, obviously like sharp as a tack in, in,
Guest:the interview and just had really great memories to share.
Marc:Well, that's interesting.
Marc:Like how, like, you know, so much of this, cause that was the thing that I got when I was reading, you know, the, the pictures at the revolution book was that, you know, I grew up in, you know, you and I are really the same age, right?
Marc:So we're like three months apart.
Marc:Literally.
Marc:I'm September 27th, 1963.
Guest:And I'm November 25th, right?
Guest:During JFK's funeral.
Marc:Yeah, right there.
Marc:I got in right under the wire.
Marc:Then they got him.
Marc:But so, like, I grew up like our generation.
Marc:It's weird because we're really not boomers.
Marc:We're maybe the tail end of it.
Marc:But we grew up in sort of the crashing wave of the 60s and into the 70s.
Marc:So if you gravitated towards, you know, what the 60s and 70s defined as a young person, which I did, you know, film was very interesting to me.
Marc:So I studied a bit of film in college.
Marc:Did you?
Guest:I did, yeah.
Guest:And I probably had the same experience you did, which is, it's really weird being exactly our age, because you had to kind of choose to, like, for me, I wanted to be a part of the generation that was slightly older than we are.
Guest:So that's what I jumped toward, yeah.
Marc:Because they seem the smartest and the funniest and the most engaged.
Marc:It seemed like so many things were defined.
Marc:Well, I mean, even if you think about rock and roll starting in 1957, which was our parents, that like, you know, the whole idea of modern art, film criticism, you know, taking risks creatively, it all happened just before we became conscious of what
Marc:what was going on, right?
Marc:So, like, there was this idea, there was definitely a feeling of, like, we missed the whole thing.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:It's a strange feeling, all your cultural life, to feel that you came in a little too late, that all the action was just behind you.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And, you know, I had older cousins growing up, and they always seemed to be really plugged into, you know, what was really going on that I wasn't old enough to see or wasn't old enough to do, and that just endlessly...
Guest:Of course, made me want to see it even more.
Marc:Where'd you grow up?
Guest:I grew up in New York City.
Marc:Oh, so you're like a New York kid?
Guest:I am a New York kid, yeah.
Marc:That's amazing.
Marc:How did that happen?
Marc:What were your parents doing?
Guest:My dad was a lawyer and he was a native New Yorker.
Guest:He grew up in the city.
Guest:And my my mother was she grew up in upstate New York in Syracuse and and came to the city to work as a as a doctor at St.
Guest:Vincent's Hospital.
Guest:So so that that was my childhood, a lawyer and a doctor.
Guest:He was Jewish.
Guest:She was Catholic.
Marc:So fascinating to me.
Marc:You know, you're the second guy in a week I talked to grew up in New York.
Marc:I just talked to Azza Jacobs.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's cool.
Marc:His parents were, you know, and still are and were, you know, kind of like edgy, experimental filmmakers.
Guest:Well, I always felt like real New Yorkers were the people who...
Guest:came to the city and chose it.
Guest:I always felt like I landed here and didn't earn it somehow.
Guest:But yeah, I've lived here all my life and I still really love it.
Marc:You didn't earn it?
Marc:Came from where?
Marc:Like the old country?
Guest:That was my grandparents.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, they did the work, you know, and I got the benefit.
Marc:But so you grew up like in all that culture.
Marc:That must have been amazing because you had access, whatever you may have been jealous of.
Marc:You know, like it's like I was talking to Aza about his parents and, you know, like and how he, you know, he would go they would go like look at these like weird film festivals at the Museum of Modern Art.
Marc:The one thing that you got when you grow up in New York is you have access to all of that.
Marc:I remember going to the Museum of Film and Broadcasting.
Marc:Do you remember what we had to do to watch film clips when we were interested back in the day?
Guest:Oh, so much work.
Guest:So much work.
Guest:And if you wanted to see an old movie uncut and without commercials, you just had to wait until it hit one of the revival theaters and then...
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And that was like what was fascinating about reading the pictures at a revolution was that I had no idea about any of that, about how long they kept films in the movie houses and they would wait like a year.
Marc:They just let movies play like a year to see if it would make money.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I read old issues of Variety and The Hollywood Reporter from that time.
Guest:And the first time I saw this, I thought it was a joke.
Guest:But they would say things like, you know, this week in the heat of the night hit the sixth and seventh run circuit of movie theaters.
Guest:And there are apparently like nine circuits of theaters across the country.
Guest:And movies would play sometimes for two years.
Marc:Amazing.
Marc:And you learned all that when you were writing that?
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I did not know that before I wrote the book.
Marc:Let me ask you this.
Marc:Why doesn't somebody make a movie about the making of Dr. Doolittle?
Guest:I would rather see a movie about that than another remake of Dr. Doolittle.
Guest:I think it would be a lot more fun.
Marc:After I read your book, I don't even know why they would make a remake of a disaster.
Marc:Like, it was categorically a disaster.
Marc:I didn't know.
Marc:I mean, I saw it when I was a kid.
Marc:I thought it was all right.
Marc:I can still probably remember two of the songs.
Marc:But but but it was like from everything you wrote, it was a disaster.
Marc:And the making of it just seems fucking hilarious.
Marc:I mean, like, how could you not make that movie to give it the the treatment?
Marc:Like, was that great that great satire that Ben Stiller did the war movie?
Guest:Oh, Tropic Thunder.
Marc:Tropic Thunder.
Marc:Treat it like that.
Guest:You know, when I was working on that book, the only time I had to stop my research was about Rex Harrison.
Guest:Because I thought, the stuff I'm finding out is so bad that I have to go hunt around for people who knew him to see if anybody has a good thing to say.
Guest:And...
Guest:I tried.
Guest:I tried.
Guest:And I found a couple of people who said, well, when are you writing about?
Guest:And I said, 1967.
Guest:And they said, no, no, he was a monster.
Guest:Like, if you were writing about the 50s or the 40s, he was still a decent human being, but not by then.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:So it's so funny because while I was reading it, I interviewed Jodie Foster, who has experience and memories with Stanley Kramer and also like her mother worked for Jacobs for.
Marc:Wow.
Guest:Really?
Guest:I didn't know that.
Marc:That's interesting.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Her mother, like, you know, when he was still a publicist, her mother was in publicity.
Marc:What was his name?
Marc:Arthur Jacobs.
Marc:Arthur Jacobs.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You seem like a character.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I mean, again, like died long before I even imagined the book.
Guest:But but really one of those great kind of what makes Sammy run, you know, I'm going to hustle and pull this thing together, you know, just on scotch tape and a prayer and, you know, making this insane movie.
Marc:Yeah, and he did a lot of stuff, a lot of those guys.
Marc:I watched all the movies again except for Dr. Doolittle, which I guess I should.
Marc:And I've seen The Graduate so many times I didn't watch it again.
Marc:But I wanted to watch – I've watched Catch-22, Carnal Knowledge, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, which I imagine you cover pretty thoroughly in the book.
Marc:Definitely.
Marc:Because you cover Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf pretty well because in pictures at the revolution because it happened before The Graduate.
Marc:But, you know, it seems to me that like the vision that Nichols had.
Marc:Certainly for Catch-22.
Marc:Now, what do you think of that movie in terms of did that get away from him or was that exactly what he was trying to do?
Guest:Well, Catch-22 was the first time that he really had absolute power.
Guest:I mean, it was the first movie he made after the success of Virginia Woolf and the Graduate.
Guest:So he had...
Guest:as much money as he wanted which was more than the budget he hired everyone in hollywood to be in it right in crazy huge cast from alan arkin and um wasn't orson wells in it or orson wells is in it and rode him like two weeks of absolute misery on the set according to everyone who worked with orson wells and um the shoot took forever it was in mexico it was in italy it was in los angeles and um
Guest:You know, I think that Mike in later years kind of went back and forth between finding things to like in the movie and just feeling that he hadn't cracked it.
Guest:I mean, it was hard for him to separate the experience of the final product from the incredibly long ordeal of making it.
Guest:And then sort of the worst thing that could possibly happen happened, which is he finally finishes it.
Guest:They're three months from...
Guest:and MASH opens.
Guest:And the moment Mike Nichols saw MASH, he thought, oh, my movie's dead.
Guest:I mean, this is the movie about another war, but really about Vietnam that everyone is going to want to see.
Guest:And this is the kind of loose, improvisatory, seet of your pants style that I...
Guest:should have gone for, you know?
Marc:Yeah, because, like, I don't know what his choice was.
Marc:I mean, I imagine that the weight of, you know, how Fellini saw things must have been on him to some degree because it was really a surrealistic, you know, disconnected film.
Marc:I mean, there's a lot of great parts to it.
Marc:And I know the novel's difficult, but there's no way that movie came together.
Yeah.
Guest:No, and Fellini, you're absolutely right, was really on his mind.
Guest:I mean, you know, he thought Eight and a Half for a long time was the best movie ever made.
Guest:And he wanted to go to Italy because, you know, he could do Fellini-esque sequences there.
Guest:You know, he just...
Guest:Buck Henry, who wrote the movie, later said that he thought the big mistake was that Catch-22 is all about attitudes, and Mike was all about behavior, and he couldn't find any human behavior to put in that movie.
Guest:Wow.
Marc:Well, that's interesting seeing that, you know, what we were talking about earlier was that was really the new thing he brought to theater was exactly that.
Guest:Right.
Marc:And somehow it got away from him in that movie, probably because he got lost in, you know, just the expanse and expense of it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's hard to find humanity when you can do whatever you want with major movie stars.
Yeah.
Guest:Right, and when you're crashing planes and blowing up boxes of dynamite.
Guest:Mike was never a huge fan of filming outdoors or action sequences.
Guest:That was not his comfort zone.
Guest:The Catch-22 was the first time he really pushed himself there, and I don't think it was a happy experience for him particularly.
Marc:It's a bizarre movie.
Marc:And Carnal Knowledge, I don't think, is talked about enough, because I watched that recently, and it's a great movie.
Guest:I love it.
Guest:I love it too.
Guest:I mean, I think if that movie came out right now, it would be in some ways as shocking as it was 50 years ago.
Marc:Oh, just for that last scene.
Guest:And that was also a very Mike thing.
Guest:Like he said over and over again, if you...
Guest:If you do something big that's like a big public failure, which Catch-22 was, the best thing you can do is go right into something small that means something to you that you don't have big commercial expectations for that you just want to do because you love the people or love the material.
Guest:And that's how he got to Carnal Knowledge.
Marc:Did it do well?
Guest:It did do well.
Guest:I mean, it sort of turned out, you know, it was a big commercial success and incredibly controversial.
Guest:Was it?
Guest:Because of the sex?
Guest:Yeah, there was even an obscenity trial that went to the Supreme Court, which actually, like,
Guest:had to sit down and watch carnal knowledge and rule that it was not obscene um so uh you know it wasn't it wasn't the quiet little movie that that mike thought he was going to make after catch-22 it was a big noisy little movie that he made isn't it those fights it's interesting that those fights were taking place what year was that like 71 70 it was 71 and it was right around the time that um
Guest:porn was going mainstream.
Guest:And obviously Carnal Knowledge is not porn, but it was right in the thick of those fights of what can you show in a movie theater?
Guest:What's okay to show on screen?
Marc:So you're saying it's just shy of Deep Throat showing in movie theaters.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:A couple of years later, I think actually by the time the Supreme Court resolved the Carnal Knowledge case, Deep Throat was open in theaters.
Marc:And arguably ruined culture forever.
Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Now, that's another question about not about porn, but like, you know, in reading the books and in talking to you, you know, and your attention that you pay to critics.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:of the past and when I studied film, like, you know, this idea that there were these feuds between, like, Andrew Sarris and Pauline Kael and that there was, like, weight to them and, you know, the passing of the guard of the old dude at the New York Times and how that affected, you know, the run of a movie, you know, the importance of criticism, both, you know, art criticism, cultural criticism.
Marc:It obviously carried a lot of weight at another time.
Guest:It really did.
Guest:I mean, there were, and you know, people talk about critics as gatekeepers now, but now I don't really think there are gatekeepers like that.
Guest:But back then when there were so few critics and when, you know, like I remember growing up, my parents got Time Magazine and Life Magazine every week.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And if those magazines gave a movie a good review, and if it got a good review in the New York Times.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:They would want to go see it.
Guest:And if they didn't, if everything got bad reviews, that movie was off the list.
Guest:There was almost nothing that would change their minds.
Marc:That's interesting.
Marc:So that, again, speaks to the loss of monopoly and intimacy within the media landscape.
Marc:It was a time where you had three networks and public TV, and then you had a few large magazines.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Really, most of the country was on the same pages, give or take, and the same information was coming in pretty much.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, the funny thing is what what they weren't on the same page about was movies didn't open in three or four thousand theaters at once.
Guest:They they they would have weird distribution patterns where one movie would open Los Angeles and then sort of roll across the country and eventually get to New York.
Guest:One would open, you know, in New York and then Chicago and then Boston and then Los Angeles.
Guest:So there wasn't this big, like, all at once, here's the movie moment.
Guest:But on the other hand, movies stayed in theaters for so long that you really did get to have an ongoing conversation.
Marc:Well, yeah, and everybody wasn't connected.
Marc:You know, you had to write a letter to somebody to tell them to see a movie.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:Or make a long distance call.
Marc:So the actual pace of life was extraordinarily slower.
Marc:And and you could.
Marc:Well, that makes sense.
Marc:That's why you could run a movie for two years, because you could open it up in an area and no one else could see it.
Marc:And the information they got about it would just be a long tease.
Marc:And then you just sort of wait around until eventually maybe it got to your theater.
Marc:There was no other options.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And if you wanted to see the movie the way you were supposed to see it, you did have to see it in the theater because it wasn't like there was cable.
Guest:I mean, you know, it would get on network TV eventually, but it would be chopped up for length and chopped up for content.
Guest:So this was your chance.
Guest:Like, you had to go to the theater.
Marc:So, like, in terms of, like, are there...
Marc:Like, let's talk about like, you know, I've read Andrew Sarris.
Marc:I've read some Pauline Kael.
Marc:I did a history of cinema class.
Marc:And, you know, I really think that you framed a lot of the stuff, not just around, you know, Mike Nichols and the influence of the French New Wave or European movies coming into this country in the 60s and the influence they had in that book.
Marc:I'm sure you talked about in the Mike Nichols book.
Marc:The context you created in Pictures at the Revolution really reframed my entire understanding of a lot about movies in general.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:And I approach movies, I'm randomly intelligent.
Marc:I wouldn't call myself an intellectual.
Marc:I have put a lot of stuff in my brain.
Marc:But I like to know that I'm thinking along the same lines, but I don't know that I ever would have seen Bonnie and Clyde as, you know, for most practical purposes, a European movie in terms of the way it was conceived.
Guest:And that was a little bit of news to me when I researched it, how much French movie making in particular was on the minds of all the people who made Bonnie and Clyde.
Guest:over four years before they made it.
Marc:Oh, yeah, and the whole journey of those writers and that script and everybody involved, it was all very fascinating to me.
Marc:But, I mean, do you feel... Because back then, when you talk about Pauline Kael, you talk about Saris, you talk about... Who was the guy that wrote for The Times, the old-timer?
Guest:Oh, Bosley Crowther.
Marc:Yeah, that they weren't just... These were critics.
Marc:Obviously, there's a difference between a movie review...
Marc:Right.
Marc:And it seems that there are there may be plenty of critics out there, but the outlets are so spread out.
Marc:How do you find them?
Marc:And now, you know, you're really dealing with something that seems to be a byproduct of how we live now is that most people look at an aggregate.
Marc:You're going to look at Rotten Tomatoes, got an 85, 120 reviews.
Marc:All right.
Marc:I'll take a look at that movie.
Marc:Now, what have we lost?
Right.
Guest:Well, it's a hard thing because, you know, you go back to 1967 and you see Pauline Cale not just writing about Bonnie and Clyde, but writing 9,000 words about Bonnie and Clyde.
Guest:And then on the other hand, you have Bosley Crowther, the New York Times guy, who literally said that he thought his...
Guest:And his role was to be sort of a pastor, telling his flock what was suitable for them.
Guest:And I don't think you'd want to go back to that, certainly.
Guest:But...
Guest:And I think there's always the possibility of an interesting conversation being sparked on social media about a particular movie.
Guest:But I think one thing we've lost is time.
Guest:I mean, a movie has such a short window to make an imprint in any kind of public discussion.
Guest:And if it doesn't...
Guest:it doesn't get 15 or 20 weeks in the theater to build word of mouth.
Marc:But isn't that part of the problem, Mark, that public discussion moves at such a pace and that everybody is forced into the position of an almost kind of aggravated passive engagement.
Marc:I mean, unless you stop the clock for yourself to process something, it's just going to go away.
Guest:I think that's really true.
Guest:And people are already coming up with kind of
Guest:I'm always fascinated when I ask people who like movies, do you keep lists of movies that you read about that you want to see?
Guest:And so many of them say, oh, yeah, I have this whole document on my laptop.
Guest:Because there's kind of – I think under that is the sense that if you don't grab this title and write it down –
Guest:you will lose it.
Guest:The noise machine will move on before you even blink.
Guest:And I mean, I do that all the time.
Guest:I write down movies I want to see because I know that in three days, everything will be focused on something else.
Guest:And that's the same with everything.
Marc:I mean, it's really sort of this weird problem.
Marc:And it seems like the problem is happening directly to our minds.
Marc:It seems like the events that happen in the world, like somebody spent...
Marc:you know, four years making that movie.
Marc:It released, it goes away.
Marc:But in our mind, it's sort of like, oh, I heard that.
Marc:I heard about it.
Marc:Was it any good?
Marc:I think I saw a thing.
Marc:And then, you know, you forget about it, right?
Marc:But it happens with politics, too.
Marc:I'm noticing that, you know, that we've all learned how to dismiss trolls, and we've all sort of learned how to, you know, sort of try to rank intuitively what's amateur and what isn't.
Marc:And I think in that process of filtering, you know, everything just sort of, like...
Marc:It's sort of like you don't want to deal with it.
Marc:Once it's behind us, you just don't want to deal with it.
Marc:What I'm getting at is that as somebody who writes about film in a thoughtful way and takes the time to do the investigation, is criticism still necessary in your mind?
Marc:And who is it necessary for?
Guest:Well, I think criticism...
Guest:I'm not going to say necessary, but I will certainly say useful because I think that if you take away all criticism and all you have left is a kind of hierarchy of marketing where movies that have enough money are the only movies that get attention, that's a problem.
Guest:But someone was talking to me the other day and we were talking about this movie that I really love called Nomadland.
Guest:I got to see that.
Marc:I have it.
Marc:I have the screener.
Marc:You liked it?
Guest:I loved it.
Guest:I really loved it.
Guest:And this person said to me, oh, I'm so sorry I missed it.
Guest:And I said, you didn't miss it.
Guest:It hasn't opened yet.
Guest:And it's not streaming yet.
Guest:And they said, oh, yeah, but I feel like I read so much about it from critics in September and October, and then it just kind of went away.
Guest:And so one thing I think critics are going to have to grapple with is you've got to get on a timetable that more conforms to how real people can see movies.
Marc:I thought you were going to say, like, the next part of that sentence was, I'm so sorry, I missed it.
Marc:You did miss it.
Marc:And they said, I will.
Marc:I'll miss it.
Guest:I plan to miss it.
Guest:Yeah, but it's like I understand now the impulse to be first out with a reaction or an opinion.
Guest:But if you're first out on something that people can't see for months and you sort of burn yourself out on the topic by the time the actual movie rolls around and is available, who are you serving?
Guest:I think that's a question that a lot of critics are grappling with right now.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Who are you serving?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And also like, you know, and I think in the time, like I started to think about just randomly before I talked to you, because I'm trying to pull it all together for myself that, you know, another part of the layer of discussion is sort of, you know, it was the struggle for photography to define itself as an art that once everybody could have a camera, you know, how do you determine the intention?
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So now we live in a world, really, where everyone is equipped to do just about anything.
Marc:And production values are sort of the same.
Marc:Right now, I just did the Tonight Show from my backyard.
Marc:So, you know, we're never putting that back in the bottle.
Marc:I don't think so.
Guest:Yeah, I think that's here to stay.
Marc:Like what we're doing right now.
Marc:So, like, how does that fall into the conversation?
Marc:Like, how do you determine...
Marc:The integrity of something, of a piece of art, of film specifically.
Marc:Too big a question?
Guest:Well, it's such a hard question because it connects to this thing that I'm grappling with and I'm sure you are and a lot of people, which is, we keep talking about after this, after the pandemic, after things go back to normal, but things aren't going to really go back to normal, are they?
Marc:No, I talked about that yesterday.
Guest:Yeah, we're going forward to something that will have some more normal elements than what we're living now.
Guest:But some things are changing and are going to stay changed.
Guest:And I don't think we've begun to realize necessarily what that means for movies and for how we see movies and for how we talk about movies and get the word out about movies.
Marc:Yeah, because everything's going to happen at the same frequency that, you know, the outlet, the portal through which we watch.
Marc:It's leveled.
Marc:You know, there's no differentiation.
Marc:I mean, you know, you talk about especially in the books and, you know, premieres and going to movies.
Marc:I mean, that was already starting to taper off.
Marc:But, you know, sort of the you know, you entered that world like I'm going out to do this to see this thing.
Marc:And now everything happens in the exact same way.
Marc:mode or medium or format like everything's coming through whatever size screen you have in your house or if you watch on your phone on the plane whatever the fuck it is so i mean i guess having to wrangle as a critic or as somebody who is dealing with criticism you know what does that mean what is what does that mean for contextualizing this stuff you know
Guest:Every critic I know wants to get the word out to people about movies they love.
Guest:Good critics, bad critics, I think that's one thing they all have in common.
Guest:They genuinely like telling people, oh, I saw something and it's fantastic.
Guest:You have to see it.
Guest:But how you do that and how you get heard above what you just said, which is everything being at the same frequency.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I don't think we have begun to figure out an answer to that yet.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I don't know if there is an answer and I don't know if it's good or bad, really.
Marc:Like, you know, I mean, I've adapted.
Marc:I think you and I are like just under the wire on somehow being able to, you know, figure out how not to have an AOL screen name anymore.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You know, we are the oldest of the people who have cracked it.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Well, you could just sign up for Gmail.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So but I don't know.
Marc:Like, I guess I am nostalgic for when we had fewer choices and I'm nostalgic for when there were fewer voices.
Marc:And I don't know if that makes me a bad person or not.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:It's hard because, you know, I look at a lot of really great indie work.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I think so much of this wouldn't have gotten made before.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:It would be so hard to get these movies made.
Guest:And yet it's really frustrating because I want to tell people about these movies.
Yeah.
Guest:Every time, 100%, the first thing people ask me is, where can I find it?
Guest:And it's so puzzling to me that we don't have, like, the easiest possible system to tell people how to see a great small movie.
Guest:You know, that should be at your fingertips.
Guest:It shouldn't take nearly as much Googling as it does.
Marc:You know, you can't find the original Heartbreak Kid.
Marc:It's not streaming.
Marc:You have to go find a copy on YouTube.
Guest:You can't find Silkwood, one of Mike Nichols' best movies.
Guest:It's not streaming anywhere because of some weird legal problem about who owns it.
Guest:So it can come up surprisingly with big movies like that.
Marc:That's a great movie.
Guest:I love it.
Guest:I love it.
Guest:And I want to be able to tell people to see it without having to say to them first, well, buy a Blu-ray player.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's step one.
Marc:You know who's great in that?
Marc:Craig T. Nelson.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:He's fantastic.
Guest:He's really, really good.
Guest:Right.
Marc:So I guess like, you know, I don't want to sound older or close minded because I think you're right.
Marc:I think that the way things have broken open, that, you know, the number of different types of voices and the number of like, if you think about what you were writing about in the early 60s in terms of the international cinema, you know, having it was inaccessible.
Marc:You know, until the mid 60s in this country that now, you know, the sort of global nature of what we're able to take in, you know, almost immediately.
Marc:You know, I think there's a natural sort of shallow condescension to the tone of culture in general.
Marc:And it's reactive and entitled and abusive that, you know, I think a lot of thoughtful stuff gets lost.
Marc:How do you find the space and time to take in?
Marc:How do you know what the fuck is important?
Guest:Right.
Guest:I mean, I sort of feel like we all have to do our bit.
Guest:I mean, I'm on Twitter, like most journalists I know, and I feel like the one thing I can do is when I see something that I really like, especially a small movie or a small TV show, if I say, hey, watch this, and try to come up with a really short way of saying why it's great and why I think you should watch it,
Guest:You know, you just hope that maybe that will rise above the sea of noise at that moment.
Marc:And yeah, because I think to a few people, the one thing we're finding, though, like really this idea of, you know, not just not necessarily the free market, but that, you know, if everybody has access to expression, expressing themselves that somehow or another, you know, the cream will rise to the top that I really think that is not always true.
Marc:I think a lot of garbage floats to the top and it's promoted heavily and it takes over the conversation.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I mean, money is still a huge finger on the scale.
Guest:So it's not like the democratization of social media communication has led to some beautifully level playing field where only the good stuff wins.
Guest:That does not happen.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then also you're up against the bitterness of the talentless.
Marc:In ways.
Marc:That's the other problem about how do you guys talk about it?
Marc:You and Tony or even you with other people about the sort of the nature of the attack on celebrity culture and the arts in general as as being, you know, somehow perverted or just useless.
Guest:I feel like there's this – I mean, I'm used to that from the political right, you know, all that kind of complaining about Hollywood and Hollywood is like a den of bad morals and bad values.
Guest:But there is also this strain on the left that sort of views –
Guest:Art and artists and the makers of pop culture is fundamentally unserious and corporate, which is, you know, the word that can be used to just cover a whole variety of sins.
Marc:Or as sometimes I've thought of it and have to sort of struggle with myself as being a distraction.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:I mean, and, you know, I get the argument that there's like...
Guest:So much going on in the world, how can we devote any bandwidth to movies and television and pop culture?
Guest:But if we really get to a place where, you know, we decide that art is completely expendable and pop culture is completely expendable because things are just too bad, I mean, that would be...
Guest:Just absolutely dire.
Guest:I don't believe it as an argument ever.
Marc:Oh, because we would no longer be able to see ourselves.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:I mean, we turn to people who make movies and books we love to have little aspects of ourselves and of the world explained to us and shown to us in a new way.
Guest:How can that ever be considered a luxury option?
Guest:To me, that's essential.
Marc:Yeah, it's like theater.
Marc:It's like the overused idea of storytelling.
Marc:I don't know when that word became so prevalent.
Marc:But it is true that even with your book, even going back to those movies that you wrote about, or even thinking about Mike Nichols or Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, that even because of the timestamp on them, you realize that there was a whole other way of perceiving then that has gotten lost.
Marc:The idea that these guys sweated over strips of film to put them together.
Marc:you know, these decisions that we're making, the collaborative process in a way that wasn't completely polluted by marketing yet.
Marc:Although, I mean, you were able to, through the sort of veins of all those movies you captured, you saw all levels of it, you know, and also the kind of mixture of old Hollywood and new Hollywood and, you know, what acting meant and how people weighed scripts.
Marc:And I think the biggest threat to what we're talking about and to criticism in general is that
Marc:Things happen so quickly.
Marc:We're all operating in a certain amount of anxiety, paralysis and PTSD that we only engage passively and things just keep hitting us and keep hitting us that, you know, and it creates a cultural shallowness that if you don't fight personally to go deeper, you know, it's a trouble for the entire culture.
Guest:Yeah, I think it's a hard ask for people, though, to say, like, go exploring.
Guest:Because I get, like, you hear about a movie, you want to see it, you do the work to figure out where you can stream it or whatever.
Guest:But to go also, like, it can be really rewarding to just go put yourself in the atmosphere of a place like the Criterion Channel and say, I'm just going to see where my mind takes me, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:and not be afraid.
Guest:I always say to people, you can always turn it off.
Guest:If you don't like it, stop and watch another movie, but go try something.
Marc:But it's interesting to see the courage of, as a critic, to see the courage of filmmakers
Marc:you know, from the past that, you know, influence independent film now.
Marc:And to realize that all mainstream product movies, most of them for many years and to this day, you know, require closure and simplicity and compelling, but maybe stupid stories.
Marc:If you're going to sell a movie and the reason there's so many cowardly, you know,
Marc:Hits is that's really the business of movies.
Marc:So when you talk about Bonnie and Clyde of The Graduate and you see like, well, these were, you know, outliers.
Marc:I mean, it was a miracle that that things happen because it was really a populist movement of young people to sort of shift the focus of films at that time.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And the critics.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I mean, the only movie of those five that was not going against the grain of what was happening was Dr. Doolittle.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That was mainstream Hollywood business.
Guest:And everything else was a little bit of a push or a big push towards something different.
Marc:But, you know, but I think the weird thing that I can't tell, you know, by we're talking like for me, you know, I there's still things that I need to reckon with as as who I am that I never quite understood that I can keep going back to.
Marc:you know, to sort of go deeper within it.
Marc:Like, I could never wrap my brain around Fassbender.
Marc:And then you got the Criterion Channel, and I'm like, well, we'll just try.
Marc:You know, just start looking at things.
Marc:Like, I knew that Veronica Voss had a profound effect on me when I was younger, but I didn't think I got it.
Marc:And now, like, you know, I can contextualize everything.
Marc:I'm older.
Marc:I can, you know, read a little bit about it and then watch that trilogy.
Marc:What is it, Veronica Voss, Lola, and...
Marc:marriage of maria brown right and and kind of put it into the context of of germany and his career and but that's me you know i'm like i can't tell anyone to do that and i'm not trying to be better than anyone else to do that but for me the art of film demands me to read people like you and also re-engage with the work and and and see why it's relevant as an art form and needs to be championed as such
Guest:Yeah, I love that feeling of going back to a movie every 10 or 12 years or so.
Guest:And in some cases thinking, I wonder if I'm going to like it this time.
Guest:I've never connected with this movie before, but somehow I think maybe this time will be, I'll get it.
Guest:Or it'll just be the right movie for me at the right moment in my life.
Guest:And I always think that's a great gamble to take.
Guest:Even if it doesn't pay off, I like trying.
Marc:Who are you like?
Marc:Who are the critics working now that you respect and read?
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:Well, I read I read everybody because just because I'm on the Internet all day and I'm looking at stuff and I love finding someone who is a resource for you or you like that, you know, you respect their opinion enough to sort of rethink things.
Guest:um dana stevens at slate i think she's a really interesting writer um like i'm always curious to see what uh tony scott and manola dargis have to say in the new york times even if i even if i disagree with someone for me like the measure of an interesting critic is not whether i agree with them a lot or not but but whether
Guest:It sparks an interesting argument in my head.
Guest:And so that's what I kind of look for in criticism.
Guest:Is it a good fight happening?
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And what was your reaction to – like I just did this monologue the other day about how –
Marc:You know, all these award ceremonies and the the the sort of the idea of nominating things for anything in what we're in right now just seems empty and sad somehow.
Guest:It's so strange, like the Golden Globe nominations came out and and.
Guest:My whole crowd of people was fighting about the Golden Globes, and I went on a podcast and was asked to talk about the nominations, and I did.
Guest:And all the while I was thinking, I can't believe the Golden Globes are happening in this world.
Guest:And I can't believe anyone is devoting any energy to...
Guest:trying to win a golden globe or worrying about not getting nominated for a golden globe it's just like in some ways it made me really happy that we could take a big break from everything that is insane and horrible in the world right now to talk about you know best supporting actress or whatever right we're pissed off about at the golden globes yeah and in other ways i genuinely cannot believe that there's going to be a golden globes uh at the end of this month
Marc:yeah it's kind of crazy it's all kind of crazy to me and i think that what we were talking about before and sort of where i was going when i spoke about the golden globes is that you know in the same way you and i were talking about how quickly things go go by and how you have to grab onto things or or take the time to to go a little deeper with things or figure out how to choose things is that you know the possibility that we get through this over the next you know six months
Marc:That there's not going to be any way to compartmentalize this time.
Marc:We're not going to be able to dismiss this year or two years of what we went through.
Marc:And for me, you know, I talk to creative people a lot.
Marc:I talk to artists and comics and writers.
Marc:You know, I'm friendly with Tracy Letts.
Marc:I know that there are people generating, but it's going to be sort of a staggering, hopefully staggering, to see how people depict and integrate what we're going through now into art in the very near future.
Marc:Because it's very hard to see anything now or to make anything.
Marc:But I wonder how this is going to be sort of processed and interpreted.
Guest:Yeah, I've been watching my husband for the last 10 months, who obviously does something very different than I do.
Guest:He tries to...
Guest:create things you know you have to create characters tries and and you know he's
Guest:He gets asked all the time, like, oh, are you going to write a play about Donald Trump?
Guest:Or are you going to, like, how are you going to write about this moment?
Guest:And I know that it's something that he wrestles with a lot.
Guest:It's like the question of even, should I try to write about this moment?
Guest:Or should I go chase something else that means something to me?
Guest:Do I have the, can I afford to do that right now?
Guest:Or should I, you know, is it part of my job to try to contend with this exact moment in my writing?
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah, because it's a hard thing.
Marc:Well, yeah, you know, but you know what the weird thing about that is, is that, you know, it's relative to the outlet.
Marc:You know, if he's going to create something that he needs to workshop, when are you going to do that?
Marc:Like, and also, what about our own denial?
Marc:Like, you know, most of us are sort of like, I want this to end.
Marc:You know, like not, you know, not like, you know, how is this affecting me and my family and, you know, people I know and, you know, what is it doing?
Marc:What is what is the damage, you know, because that's the idea.
Marc:It's sort of like, you know, do I just write this musical or write?
Guest:Right.
Guest:Or do I write something that carries the flag and fights the fight?
Guest:Which, you know, sometimes you can do directly, but sometimes the best stuff doesn't emerge from you trying to kind of make your contribution to the greater cause.
Guest:You know, sometimes it comes out of you just following your own...
Guest:passion even if it's for something strange yeah so like what are the other what are the other movies that you liked this that are you know being talked about did you watch uh judas and uh the black messiah yeah and that's a movie i'm really excited to tell people about um i thought that was yeah it was really powerful and i didn't know much about uh the the case at all going in or the story and um
Guest:I felt like with a lot of these fact-based movies, one of the really hard things to do is catch you up on what you need to know, the historical context and stuff.
Guest:Just give you enough going in so that you can race along with the story and with the characters.
Guest:And I thought this movie...
Marc:did a really good job yeah it was amazing and like you just compare it's so funny to me that like i didn't know much of that story i kind of knew obviously how it ended but you know that character at the core of this thing the one that stansfield played is that his name uh uh yeah i love him stanfield yeah
Marc:You know, that that moral, you know, the lack, the strange moral compass, the idea that the protagonist of this film is the guy is sort of like, I just care about me.
Marc:I don't give a fuck about this.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:I want to get out, you know, that that was who we're seeing this through was like profound and challenging and kind of amazing.
Marc:But what I also like is that so many of these movies that they shoot about that time period, they always look silly, but they really got the time right.
Marc:And I think it was because of a profound lack of white people, that white people in those costumes of that era, it's clown time.
Marc:But for some reason, African-Americans in the 60s always look great.
Guest:They're just like... Well, it's funny because I always flinch when every costume looks like it just got dry cleaned and came off a hanger and it's perfect.
Guest:Like, no one has ever worn this before the second you're seeing it.
Guest:And this movie did not have that.
Guest:This movie, like, it looked a little lived in and, you know, that's pretty great.
Marc:And it's just so weird because you watch the Chicago 7 movie and that thing, like, it was like, there's no way you can...
Marc:Stop making movies about white people in the 60s.
Marc:There's no way you're not going to transcend those pants.
Marc:It's just...
Guest:I like the pants-based theory of the trial of the Chicago 7.
Marc:What other movies did you like?
Guest:I really liked Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:You know, I think it's super tough to adapt plays to the screen.
Guest:And I thought George Wolfe and that whole cast just did a fantastic job with that.
Marc:It's a heavy movie.
Guest:It's a heavy movie, but so rewarding to just see those actors working together and the way they work together, you know?
Guest:yeah like that that's why i love theater you know watching actors yeah and and you don't often see that on screen like a a cast of people working that beautifully oh viola davis oh my god yeah amazing what a performance totally not like anything she's done oh my god so so that's that's what i really loved what else have you liked
Marc:Yeah, I'm trying to think of what other ones that I just watched on a screener.
Marc:See, this is the problem.
Marc:You almost get like a pandemic-induced dementia where days seem like weeks and you watch something, it just disappears.
Guest:I know.
Guest:I used to remember when I was younger, if you named a movie that I'd seen, I would remember exactly where I saw it.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Like what theater, what night, and...
Guest:Now to see everything at home and to be home all the time, it is making it harder to give every movie like a clean, you know, like wipe your slate clean and just try to watch it.
Marc:Yeah, because everything is sort of, it's all framed as like, what can we do today to eat up this time?
Guest:You know?
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:Oh, I watched First Cow.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I really like that movie.
Marc:Like it's kind of, you know, it's cool.
Marc:Did you notice that there was like two people from McCabe and Mrs. Miller in there and that, you know, that, you know, it's got that tone.
Marc:There's definitely a tip of the hat to that weird, muddy McCabe and Mrs. Miller Altman thing going on.
Guest:Yeah, I don't see how you can talk about that movie without using the word mud.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like, it's a muddy movie.
Guest:You know, it's about dirt.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And living in dirt.
Marc:And being buried in it, literally.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:That felt really honest and, you know, like a tough movie to make.
Guest:And they really, I believed it.
Guest:I believed those people in that world.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's all I can add.
Marc:It so reminded me of McCabe and Mrs. Miller.
Guest:Just you saying this makes me want to go watch McCabe and Mrs. Miller tonight.
Marc:Oh, you can always watch McCabe and Mrs. Miller.
Marc:McCabe and Mrs. Miller is one of my favorite movies.
Guest:I love it.
Guest:Last time I watched it, I watched it on DVD and I watched it with subtitles.
Guest:So like English subtitles so that I could actually hear every... That's hilarious.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Well, look, it was great talking to you.
Guest:Great talking to you too.
Marc:And do you feel like we covered everything for you?
Guest:I think so.
Guest:I mean, I love your show.
Guest:I love that I had no idea where we were going to end up going.
Guest:It's like the most fun part of listening to you and was the most fun part of doing this.
Marc:Oh, good.
Marc:Well, thanks for doing it, Mark.
Marc:And thanks for writing the books.
Marc:And I'm excited to sort of really dig in to the Nichols book and also the Five Came Back book.
Marc:Thank you so much.
Marc:They sent me all the books.
Marc:And I loved Picture at the Revolution.
Marc:It really got my brain going again and very excited about film.
Marc:So I appreciate that.
Guest:I so appreciate it.
Guest:Don't watch Dr. Doolittle.
Guest:It's not fun.
Marc:I'm going to have to, though.
Marc:Thanks for talking.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Take care.
Marc:There you go, the new book.
Marc:My brain is ignited.
Marc:Mark Harris's new book, Mike Nichols, A Life.
Marc:You can get wherever you get books.
Marc:You can get pictures out of Revolution.
Marc:You can get his other book, the World War II book, Five Came Back.
Marc:Great writer, thoughtful writer, very engaging.
Marc:And I like doing episodes like this.
Marc:We don't do them that often.
Marc:And now let's drift away on some guitar sounds that I made.
Thank you.
Thank you.
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.
.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Marc:Boomer lives.
Marc:Monkey LaFonda.
Marc:Cat angels everywhere.