BONUS Marc on Movies - Marc's Summer Watch List
Marc:All right, I got your list here.
Marc:How many have you seen on that list?
Guest:Well, let's go through it.
Guest:I asked you what you've been watching up there in Canada and then when you've been home.
Guest:And you sent me a list that's very deep.
Guest:There's a lot on here and there's a lot to talk about.
Guest:So let's get into it.
Marc:Well, it's interesting because...
Marc:Since I figured out how to, you know, hook, you know, use the Samsung TV in my trailer, it's like a game changer.
Marc:God forbid I read, but it's a lot better than sitting around, you know, half napping, going to crafty, picking at food.
Marc:You know, I can just sync up like Amazon Prime or Netflix and at the condo.
Marc:I can get all of my things.
Marc:I get Criterion.
Marc:And, like, it's a good way to... I'm curious as to why I watch certain movies over, especially lately.
Marc:I think that because of the climate of the world, I've taken a lot of refuge in both going to the movies and watching movies I haven't seen, but a lot of movies that I have.
Marc:And I find them still satisfying.
Marc:But I do try to pace it out.
Marc:I'll never forget...
Marc:You know, back when I was friends with Louis, you remember the fart tape, the original preacher fart tape?
Marc:The farting preacher, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, what was that guy's name?
Marc:What was his name?
Marc:We used to talk about him.
Marc:Robert Tilton.
Marc:Robert Tilton.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:It was on VHS.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Ain't that something?
Guest:Ain't that something?
Marc:Yeah, right.
Marc:And I went over to Louis' house after we'd done sets.
Marc:It was 8 at 9.
Marc:He goes, you got to watch this.
Marc:And he put it in.
Marc:And then we watched it.
Marc:We laughed.
Marc:And then he took it out.
Marc:And he just went and hid it somewhere.
Marc:And he's like, yeah, I don't want to know I have that because I want it to stay funny.
Marc:So I don't want to watch it too much.
Marc:I totally get that.
Marc:And I think it's that way with movies in general.
Marc:Like there's movies I don't want to get tired of.
Marc:So I'm sort of, you know, kind of deliberate what I can watch again and when.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Well, then that's interesting because I kind of took your list and broke it down into some categories here.
Guest:And the first category I have are things that you watch all the time.
Guest:in fact you know a few of these we've talked about a lot so we don't have to get too deep into them but it's like you have michael clayton sicario the devil wears prada and then just last night in addition to that is the firm which you turned on last night and also uh um training day so what is it what is it about those that makes it okay to watch them so much as opposed to trying to put them away to not spoil them
Marc:Well, I don't know.
Marc:I was surprised I watched Michael Clayton again because there's some things in there that you just want to see again, like Wilkinson's performance.
Marc:I mean, that moment out there with the bread.
Marc:It's just so good.
Marc:Yeah, it's so...
Marc:Do you have the horses for that, Michael?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:It's so it's so satisfying, the acting.
Marc:But then the story.
Marc:I mean, the fact that, you know, and it's the same with the firm.
Marc:We're going to make comparisons that he figures out a way through.
Guest:at the end that's interesting these are all movies about like and the funny thing is they're not like exactly relatable guys to you these are like you know white collar law firm guys or you know right but at the same time you're still like it's just it's one dude who has to use his resourcefulness to get through this like conspiracy against him yeah and it's and it's corp it's like fuck corporate it's like you know taking down the corporate overlords too a little bit yeah but like
Marc:But I mean, obviously, the firm is crazy.
Marc:That's crazy.
Marc:But, you know, in that movie, too, you've the supporting cast.
Marc:That's crazy, dude.
Marc:I mean, you got Holbrook.
Marc:You got fucking Brimley.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, you've got Stratham.
Marc:You've got Howie Hunter.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:You got an Oscar nomination for it.
Marc:Yeah, Busey's in it before he got weirder.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:And it's like, and Gene Triplehorn, she was great.
Marc:And that guy Keeney, Keeney, Kenny, the Steppenwolf guy.
Marc:Yeah, Terry Kenny.
Marc:Terry Kenny's in it.
Marc:And fucking Ed Harris.
Marc:It's fucking amazing.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:I mean, that thing and the story just fucking churns, dude.
Marc:It's like, I think it's an underappreciated movie, but as you pointed out,
Marc:It's not like it didn't do well.
Marc:But for some reason, those Grisha movies are of a kind.
Marc:But, you know, I would watch... I'm probably going to watch it again now that I'm mentioning it.
Marc:The Coppola Grisha movie, The Rainmaker.
Guest:The Rainmaker, yeah.
Marc:Another amazing cast.
Marc:Mickey Rourke before he was completely lost.
Marc:DeVito.
Marc:Mary Kay Place is amazing.
Marc:It's like there's just these movies...
Marc:where, you know, Sidney Pollack did The Firm, and it's like, you know, The Firm feels a little dated production-wise, but it's good, man.
Guest:Well, it's interesting.
Guest:I was saying it to you that those were the things that passed for summer blockbusters, right?
Guest:And I think a lot of it has to do with the way that studios were trying to absorb IP at the time, in that comic books, that was for trash.
Guest:No one would make a comic book movie.
Guest:That was garbage.
Guest:The Batman thing was a struggle to get off the ground, and when they finally did, it became this stylized Tim Burton Batman thing.
Guest:It had nothing to do with the comics, and nothing ever really worked in the same way that that did.
Guest:And so where were you getting a lot of IP and and, you know, existing things with the built in audience?
Guest:They were getting bestsellers and going right from page to screen.
Guest:In fact, it was a big deal back then to sign a book before it was even published.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like so Silence of the Lambs that was known.
Guest:Oh, this is going to come out.
Guest:It's going to be a huge hit because this guy Harris is a big deal book mover.
Guest:And they bought that move that as a movie before it ever came out as a book.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It was a bidding war for Silence of the Lambs.
Guest:And so then the same thing would happen with Grisham, with Michael Crichton.
Guest:These were the big deal blockbusters of the time.
Guest:And also grownups were grownups.
Guest:Well, but that's what's where I was going with this is that it's interesting that the blockbusters were targeted at grownups first.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then like they worried about the kid audiences with generally with kid films, which within five years, even that became turned on its head where they were like, well, if you want a blockbuster, you got to appeal to all four quadrants.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You need kids, teenagers, adults and older people.
Guest:And like the mentality back then in the early 90s and probably before that was like, no, no, no.
Guest:If you could just get every adult out to the movies, we're good.
Guest:Which is like you think Tom Cruise, he was essentially that for a long period of time doing Rain Man and this, The Firm.
Guest:Like these are R-rated movies.
Guest:Born on the 4th of July.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:This was not like, hey, the teens, come see Tom Cruise be Top Gun.
Marc:Right.
Marc:They shifted into action, action hero, action movies that became the grown up thing.
Marc:Most we meet had dudes and ladies who like the guy's bodies, I think.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I think it just became easily refillable.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So like if you could say, all right, we're going to base a action thing off of a Disney park ride and we've made the Pirates of the Caribbean and now it's a hit.
Guest:Well, not great.
Guest:We can make 20 of these, you know, and keep filling it.
Marc:But did you see, but like, it's also awesome.
Marc:Like, I think I've been on a little Sidney Pollack run just to try to assess him as a, as a director.
Marc:And I probably should watch, um, uh, what's that one?
Marc:Something Hearts with Harrison Ford.
Marc:Random Hearts.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Random Hearts with Harrison Ford and the British woman who's their, their, their partners were both killed on a plane crash and Harrison Ford puts it together that they were together.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's a, that is like a heavy ass movie.
Marc:And that's a Pollock movie.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I watched Jeremiah Johnson.
Marc:And then I watched Affirm.
Marc:And then I watched Absence of Malice as well.
Marc:And he's also in Michael Clayton.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And he's also in that other guilty pleasure of mine.
Marc:That's not I don't know why I say that just because I decide that no one likes these movies but me.
Marc:But that movie Changing Lanes is in that as well, which I've watched a few times.
Marc:But I just wanted to kind of really see, you know, kind of assess him as a director as well.
Guest:Yeah, well, I mean, like, Jeremiah Johnson, that was, like, to kick off a big run for him because, you know, he became, like, the Redford guy, right?
Guest:So you had Jeremiah Johnson, you had The Way We Were, Three Days of the Condor.
Marc:Those are all Pollock movies?
Marc:They sure are, yeah.
Marc:No kidding.
Marc:Jeremiah Johnson's a pretty satisfying movie.
Guest:Oh, sure.
Guest:And that's one of those, like Michael Clayton or any of those ones you're talking about, you can kind of turn it on at any 20-minute point, and you're like, yeah, yeah, this part of Jeremiah Johnson.
Guest:And I feel like that's how I always saw it, because it was just on TV.
Guest:There was no cable when I was watching those movies.
Marc:It's very satisfying, you know, where...
Marc:You know, and it's, again, one of those movies where it's one guy against the fucking world against, you know, it becomes, you know, the military fucks him.
Marc:He makes a deal with the devil, walks them through that cemetery, knowing he shouldn't.
Marc:And he's fucked.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And, you know, you just assume that those guys got killed anyways.
Marc:But then it's just him against any random native assassin that comes from anywhere.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:For years!
Marc:For years!
Marc:And somehow, like, at the end, he just... Him and the original guy, they just threw the little, you know, arguably slightly racist, you know, howl sign.
Marc:And... And everything's okay.
Guest:So, you watched Absence of Malice, though.
Guest:Had you ever seen that before?
Guest:Sure.
Marc:I'd seen it probably many years ago.
Marc:Probably not long after it came out.
Marc:And it was not... I was a little...
Marc:There was something disappointing about it because they kind of let Sally Fields character off the hook and she doesn't deserve it.
Marc:And it's because it was a romantic.
Marc:There was a slight romantic interest there.
Marc:I mean, you're not sure whether Paul Newman's character engages with her romantically as part of his plan.
Marc:Again, it's another plan.
Marc:It's a guy who's got to get out of the thing.
Guest:This is interesting.
Yeah.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:These Pollock movies.
Marc:That's another one where a guy's got to get out of it.
Marc:It's not it's it's not a major bind, but it kind of is.
Marc:But it's very similar to The Firm and also to Michael Clayton, which he didn't direct.
Marc:But but yeah, Newman's character is, you know, mob adjacent longshoreman who gets, you know.
Marc:put on the hot seat by a DA who uses Sally Field in a leak.
Marc:She's a journalist.
Marc:She puts it out there.
Marc:But once she, you know, publishes the story of the mentally...
Marc:ill friend of Paul Newman's character who goes on to kill herself because of the story that you don't come back from that.
Marc:She doesn't get to come back from that.
Marc:And I think that someone made a decision about that ending and they softened it.
Marc:And it was, it was a mistake.
Guest:Softened it in what way to let her, you know, eventually, you know, redeem herself at some point in the undetermined future?
Marc:Well, just half redeem herself because, you know, Newman's character clears his name.
Marc:But eventually, you know, he's like, I'm leaving.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And he shuts down his business and he's getting on a boat and he's going up north.
Marc:And there's a scene on the dock with the two of them.
Marc:And she's like, you know, there's a little banter.
Marc:You go, see, you are a good reporter.
Marc:She's like, well, I'm learning.
Marc:And then there's a slight suggestion.
Marc:Maybe I'll see you again.
Marc:It's like, fuck her.
Marc:Right, right, right.
Marc:Do you know what I mean?
Marc:And it was one of those sort of like, it felt like a note to me.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Well, the whole movie does have it's good.
Guest:It's a weird thing where it's it's very it's written by newspaper people.
Guest:And so it's very like in the weeds of the details of how an actual newsroom is run.
Guest:But then there's something almost romanticized about it and about the job.
Guest:And that, yeah, like there's a lot of ethical lapses on behalf of the characters and they just let them go because they're like, we're in movie land now.
Marc:Yeah, it kind of ruined it for me.
Marc:And then Bob Balaban just eating the scenery.
Marc:Boy, he must have been like, I'm really going to do it this time.
Marc:I don't know where that happened in his career, you know, but he goes full New York Jewish accent.
Marc:He's got a thing he does nervously with a rubber band that was a real choice.
Marc:Because it's in every scene, him fucking around with this rubber band and him going like, you know, with the fucking accent.
Marc:Boy, he was just eating it up.
Marc:And then Brimley comes in, just assassinates the entire scene.
Marc:Yeah, he was just that.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:When Battle Band says, I'm not stepping down, he's like, well, you weren't appointed.
Marc:I hired you.
Marc:You know, you've got 30 days.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, Wilford Brimley at that era was always like, he would just deliver.
Guest:Oh, dude, in The Natural?
Guest:Come on!
Guest:The Natural, The Thing.
Marc:Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:He's just always like, he was a perfect guy for those type of movies.
Marc:Yeah, he was great.
Guest:Now, you have on your list something that I'm not sure you have the right name, and it would make sense that you don't have the right name because you have another movie right below it that also is clearly not the right name.
Guest:Really?
Guest:You said you watched The Negotiator again, which I'm not sure what that is, The Negotiator.
Guest:I don't think it's the actual movie The Negotiator, which is with Samuel L. Jackson.
Guest:Yeah, it is.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Is it like you actually like that movie?
Yeah.
Guest:I'm laughing just because I didn't expect it.
Guest:It's not because I really have an opinion on the movie.
Marc:I've watched it several times.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Yeah, I pick it up in the middle.
Marc:It's ridiculous.
Marc:Yes, I do remember it being very ridiculous.
Marc:At the middle of the movie, it's like, he wouldn't do that.
Marc:And if he did what he was supposed to do, you wouldn't have the second half of the movie.
Marc:It was just sort of like, what are you doing?
Marc:You're just prolonging this ridiculous...
Marc:But the bottom line is, is that, you know, that worm, that guy who plays... J.T.
Marc:Walsh.
Marc:No, he's great.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:And that is one of his best performances.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Bar none.
Guest:Well, there's a great dynamic with him and Jamadi, Paul Jamadi.
Guest:Oh, yeah, it's great.
Guest:Jamadi's great.
Guest:And he's walking you through... That is a great thing about movies, about movies like this where they show a guy who is so good at his job and he can, like, tell little...
Guest:He tells you as the viewer basically how to do his expert job.
Guest:And they then work that into this thing where he's trying to spot J.T.
Guest:Walsh in a lie.
Guest:And he basically enlists Paul Giamatti, who's like the little criminal there.
Marc:Well, he enlists himself.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:I couldn't tell that.
Guest:Look, there's a fucking lie.
Marc:I couldn't tell with that.
Marc:No, there's some great moments in that.
Marc:And and Spacey is actually pretty effective.
Marc:And Samuel Jackson's always good.
Marc:But but there's the guy who plays Frost, the chief, one of the chiefs.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Of the negotiating team or whatever.
Marc:That guy is a very unsuspecting heavy.
Marc:Oh, Ron Riskian.
Marc:yeah ron rifkin great great worm yes you know he and he did it in la confidential too which i'd forgotten yes and he's so good at that where how that guy becomes the bad guy gets caught being the bad guy and has no uh default other than you know i'm gonna kill myself or kill me or you know like right right the epitome of a fucking worm yeah well in la confidential it's russell crow winds up hanging him off the roof
Marc:Oh, it's the best.
Marc:And he pisses himself and he's whimpering.
Marc:It's the best.
Guest:So, okay, we're getting, I like that we're circling some themes here.
Guest:It's like the one guy trying to, you know, make sense of a kind of conspiracy surrounding him by corporate overlords and bad guys getting their comeuppance by being humiliated.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:That is a theme.
Guest:what's the wrong name on the other one uh zone of silence you said i watched zone of silence again which i think you mean the zone of interest right the the john oh yeah one yeah i'm becoming my dad exactly what i thought when i saw it i was like oh there's a dr maron special what would he say about that movie oh it's a real uh real quiet uh piece yes very yeah very slow very slow
Marc:Nothing happened.
Marc:Yeah, I watched that again on the plane just to reassess it.
Marc:And it's an amazing movie.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And well, you would watch that.
Guest:And similarly, right around the same time, you're watching Sophie's Choice and then that Hitler documentary series on Netflix, Hitler and the Nazis, Evil on Trial.
Guest:So you really did your due diligence in that.
Marc:Well, that guy Haas factors heavy in Sophie's Choice, the guy who was the subject of Zone of Interest, the guy who had the house at Auschwitz.
Marc:And Haas factors into, you know, Sophie's Choice.
Marc:Sophie works for Haas.
Marc:And I don't know that I've seen Sophie's Choice since it came out, probably.
Marc:And it's an okay movie.
Marc:You know, she's amazing.
Marc:Kevin Kline's pretty good.
Marc:Whatever, I don't know what even happened to that kid, the guy, the other guy, the writer.
Guest:And that's Alan J. Pakula film?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:But it's a little, what's the word I want?
Marc:It's not a normal, he's made better movies, that's for sure.
Marc:But it was okay.
Marc:I didn't love it.
Guest:Oh, Peter McNichol is the writer.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What happened to that guy?
Guest:He went on to have a big career, mostly in TV.
Guest:He was on Ally McBeal and Chicago Hope.
Guest:But I think he was on Veep for a while.
Guest:But he turns up a lot.
Guest:He's definitely a working character actor.
Marc:I really don't watch a lot of TV, it seems.
Guest:Did watching that stuff then lead to you watching the Hitler doc?
Marc:No, I think I watched the Hitler doc, well, because it was there and I was in my trailer.
Marc:And I got very angry at that doc very quickly, you know, because it was like, if you're just going to use this many reenactments, just make a shitty Hitler movie.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:I mean, I have to assume that actor who got that part, he was like, I'm going to do this.
Guest:I'm Hitler.
Marc:And it's like, yeah, I'm Hitler.
Marc:And he does the haircut.
Marc:And it's just this, you know, and you never hear that actor talk.
Marc:It's just wildly gesticulating, you know, at meals, you know, at, you know, wherever he is, he's got the hands going.
Marc:And they had so much footage of the Nuremberg trials.
Marc:I mean, just use it.
Marc:We're big people.
Marc:I hate reenactments in general because unless they're really effective and they have a point, like I watched Thin Blue Line.
Marc:I was just going to ask, what did you think about him in that?
Yeah.
Marc:Well, they used it very specifically to keep going back to the scene of the shooting.
Marc:They didn't use it too much other than that.
Guest:It was enormously controversial at the time.
Guest:To use reenactments?
Guest:Yeah, people were like, what the fuck are you doing?
Guest:And he was like, blow me.
Marc:Yeah, I thought that was a, you know, in light of what documentaries have become and not really have a full sense of the evolution.
Marc:But I thought that was a pretty, a pretty great documentary.
Marc:Yeah, that, you know, that they were both in jail and.
Marc:And, you know, the way they talk to cops, it was a very kind of intimate, you know, almost low key doc that, you know, ends kind of ambiguously, you know, which is a hard thing.
Guest:You know, I mean, although it ends ambiguously, but the actual reality was they got those people exonerated.
Marc:The one guy, yeah.
Marc:But the other guy was a fucking psychopath.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:The charming guy.
Guest:Did you ever see the parody they did of it on that documentary Now?
Marc:No, no.
Guest:With Fred Armisen and Bill Hader?
Marc:No.
Guest:It's really great because the premise is basically like...
Guest:you know exactly who killed the guy.
Guest:Some guy who's like a sign spinner in the road.
Guest:And they're doing all the reenactments with that guy, spinning his sign and everything.
Guest:And through the reenactments, it's very clear that Bill Hader just murders him.
Guest:And he's the psychopath dude.
Guest:But they pin everything on Fred Armisen just because he's so annoying.
Guest:He annoys the cameraman.
Guest:He annoys the filmmaker.
Yeah.
Marc:What was interesting about that was how well...
Marc:the local police knew the guy, you know, that, that was a really interesting detail.
Marc:It was like, well, I got a call about him and not, you know, I drove out there and I said, well, you know, we've been through this before.
Marc:I'm going to, you know, like, yeah, they just knew.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I think, I mean, I think that was also another thing was like the idea, the concept of the thin blue line is the protection of, of the fraternal protection there.
Guest:That was the open door that nobody really, you know, had addressed before.
Guest:yeah uh yeah hugely influential movie um and then what i didn't know what that there was this ashley madison documentary series sex lives oh my god yeah yeah what was the deal with that it's just like uh going through what that you know the hack of that thing
Marc:Leading up to the hack and leading up to the development of it and how quickly it was really sort of a movie about early tech and what the possibilities were and just how quickly that got huge and how much money was at stake when it went public.
Marc:And what unfolds in it is that by the time the hack happened, a lot of people got compromised from that.
Marc:Marriages broke up, people killed themselves.
Marc:But after all is said and done, it turns out there really wasn't that many women on there.
Marc:It was all just a scam in a way.
Guest:That's a fascinating thing.
Guest:I keep coming back to, did you see that movie Hitman, the Richard Linklater movie that's on Netflix now?
Marc:Yeah, I did.
Guest:You did.
Guest:So the thing- Jesus Christ, I've watched a lot of movies.
Guest:The thing that kind of blew my mind about that was toward the beginning of the movie and they're setting up the premise of how, you know, he works undercover, you know, on these Hitman stings.
Guest:And in his voiceover narration, he's explaining that this is not a real thing like Hitman.
Guest:It doesn't exist.
Guest:It's a myth.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm sitting there in the theater watching it.
Guest:We went to the movie theater to see it, and I'm like, wait, what?
Guest:Hitmen are a myth?
Guest:Like, I consider myself, like, a pretty well-educated guy.
Guest:Like, I just thought there were hitmen out there.
Guest:And sure enough, like, it was, like, the first thing I checked out after I got home and, like, looked it up.
Guest:And there's plenty of...
Guest:You know, documentation of this.
Guest:Things have been written about it.
Guest:And there are no fucking hitmen.
Guest:That's not a thing.
Guest:It's made up.
Guest:And we just assume there is because there's so much in the culture about it.
Guest:Like now, granted, are there people in like, you know, crime families, mafia or gangs or whatever who will kill someone?
Guest:because they've been instructed to do so yes but this idea of the contract killer who's just out there waiting for a job to have you go you're gonna call this guy it doesn't there's no cases of that in fact like murder is the most easily solvable uh crime that there is and it's the most solved it's like over 50 percent of murders get solved which is a way high rate for solving crimes because it's somebody close to you
Guest:Yes, and it's like you wouldn't be able to just be some killer operating in the shadows.
Guest:And not only just one of them, thousands of them, as you're led to believe by movies and TV, that in every town there's a guy there who will kill someone for money.
Marc:Even the guy in...
Marc:I think the way it was really handled best and the most creepy was probably Crimes and Misdemeanors.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Where Landau leans on his brother, Jerry Albeck, and says, you know, he's like, well, we handle it.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:But he was mob connected.
Marc:Right.
Guest:yeah you gotta imagine like that kind of thing probably can happen but it just doesn't typically happen it's very rare it's not like you can't just look it up on craigslist you know even get it from a stripper which is how they always wind up getting nailed in these stings you know and like the fact is of that hitman thing that was a true story that this guy was working in the operations of like you know just because there's no hitman doesn't mean there aren't people that want to get people killed
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:There are going to be lots of them.
Guest:And especially because they feed into the myth of it, which is going back to what this Ashley Madison thing is like, there's, there's never going to be a shortage of people that are looking for some way to have like cheap, quick sex.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So it's like, there's always going to be scams.
Marc:Like there's, it's just, but it was just so huge.
Marc:And, you know, I guess there was some validity to it, but by and large,
Marc:It was a lot.
Marc:I think it was a lot of, you know, sexting and whatever.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:It's like the phone sex operators.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But, you know, that leak was that that breach was huge and it really fucked a lot of people up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Now, what was you?
Guest:You talked about this a little bit on the show, but what was this Judy Sill doc?
Guest:Where did that come from?
Guest:It was just on something streaming.
Marc:Yeah, I forget what that's called.
Marc:It might be on Amazon.
Guest:It's called Lost Angel, the Genius of Judy Sill.
Marc:Yeah, that was a very disturbing story because I'd had the records.
Marc:I never heard of her until you mentioned watching this documentary.
Marc:Well, she was an interesting character because she was part of that whole first wave of Geffen artists, you know, Laurel Canyon, Jackson Brown, David Crosby, Graham Nash, Joni Mitchell.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And she was this woman who, you know, the albums are very kind of enchanting, and she's obviously, you know, troubled and traumatized in a very deep way.
Marc:But I never really connected to the music that much, and I was curious about her.
Marc:And, you know, her as a tragic tale of drugs and the music business is pretty fascinating because she really was, you know—
Marc:a kind of a genius person in terms of how she approached music and where she came from with it.
Marc:And she was singular, but not appealing.
Marc:You know, they, people didn't find her physically appealing.
Marc:The music was a little alienated and a little dark, but that second record, you know,
Marc:you know, when she got the deal and she spent all this time, you know, conducting the orchestra, writing all this music.
Marc:She was a classical pianist, but she had been like, you know, came from, you know, sexual abuse, drug addiction, prostituting herself.
Marc:By the time she's even 21, 22, she had been in reform school.
Marc:And she's just this little kind of slight, thin, you know, woman that kind of...
Marc:kind of landed on her feet and then got swept up in that music business.
Marc:And then that first, that record didn't sell.
Marc:And her second one tanked too.
Marc:And it just, and she got involved with the wrong dude and just, you know, got, you know, battled in drugs and he got in car accident.
Marc:It's just, it's a, it's a little side story of a time of a truly gifted artist that just, you know, disappeared.
Marc:But since then, you know, people like ways blood and, and some of these newer artists,
Marc:female singer songwriters and some of the guys have found her and her legacy is kind of reengaged, but the story is brutal.
Guest:Well, the tragedy of just the like, you know, artistry that's clearly impactful, but completely unappreciated, even undiscovered in some ways.
Guest:And it's like kind of like almost a timeless tale there.
Marc:And such a troubled person.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:And then, you know, another doc, well, it's not a doc film, but the doc series you watched, Chris and I were talking about this on the Fridays, is the Ren Faire thing, which I told you to watch.
Guest:And I told you for the exact reason that I feel like you, basically what you latched onto and took away from it was like...
Guest:This guy is such a, like, wonderful example of, like, the dead end of humanity, this King George.
Guest:The king of nothing.
Marc:You know, because even watching it, you're like, wow, this guy, he is like Walt Disney.
Marc:And then you realize, like, no, he's not.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And but, you know, he's brain fucked all these these people who are it's basically carny culture.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, you've got these vendors, you know, who do this thing.
Marc:This is Ren Fair in Texas that he built.
Marc:But all that stuff about doing what Disney did and incorporating it and creating its own town, you know, to as a tax shelter and all that stuff.
Marc:I mean, it's not dumb, but this guy just basically opened his own fairgrounds.
Marc:That's a yearly Ren Festival.
Marc:a Ren Faire thing.
Marc:And then he's got, you know, all these vendors that it's their, it's their primary nut.
Marc:You know, he's got the pickle guy and the kettle corn guy.
Marc:And then, you know, you get surprised in the third act by the Greeks.
Marc:The mystery is Greeks with all that money.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But the guy himself, you know, it's just, you know, he's so inflated and so in control of this little kingdom and so alone and so, you know, weirdly, you know, in entrenched and addicted to his own dumb little power.
Marc:And, you know, he's got all these people kind of brain fucked around the nature of who he is and what he's doing there.
Yeah.
Marc:And he's old as fuck.
Marc:And all he's talking about is like, I just want to find somebody, a companion.
Marc:I want to fuck.
Marc:I want to do my art.
Marc:And it's like the cheesiest fucked up art.
Marc:He's like one of these guys.
Marc:These guys who have this small amount of power but have a lot of money in relation to their world, if they have no taste, the bounds of it, it's just unbounded.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:The lack of taste.
Guest:It's very Trumpian.
Marc:And it's also like the Gemstones, they do that too.
Marc:Yes, yes.
Marc:And it's also Elvis.
Marc:It's any of them.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You know, what they think is spectacular.
Marc:But he thinks he's a fucking genius and he's reading all these dumb self-help books and pseudoscience books and he just wants control all over these people.
Marc:And he's like on these dating sites and he's talking about Viagra and Cialis and how he's going to do this.
Marc:And then he meets these women who are like...
Marc:You know, look, you know, I've I've dated younger women, but this guy's date.
Marc:He's like 90 and he's meeting these women who are in their 20s.
Marc:And he's like, do you have fake breasts?
Marc:Then it's a no go.
Marc:And it's like this guy doesn't want to fuck.
Marc:He just wants to think that he can.
Marc:And all he can really do is is hold the the the the reins of this dumb little world he's created.
Marc:And everything beneath him, the sort of, you know, this vying for buying it or selling it, they're just all working in relation to this very, you know, kind of small, meaningless power broker that
Marc:who they've gotten brain-fucked into thinking that they have the keys to their life.
Guest:Yeah, well, there's that one point where he's going from vendor to vendor to offer them shares in the fair.
Guest:And there's one woman who's crying uncontrollably because she's just like...
Guest:You know, it's like you see how these how this power becomes so alluring because like he is the king of this dirt town.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so that means something to him that he's just like, you know, ambles in there and this lady can't stop crying over him.
Guest:Like, why is he going to give that up?
Marc:Yeah, but you've got to assume that the hundreds of people that go through that Ren Ferry during season are like, who's that fucking old guy in the rickshaw?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, it's not like the people.
Guest:With his fake medals.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, like Michael Lerner and Barton Fink.
Marc:But it's like, I think the one thing they hit a couple times towards the end, which was great, is that if he's not the guy who's in charge of that place, he's nothing.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Nothing.
Marc:He has nothing.
Marc:I just thought it was a very interesting examination of narcissism, of aging, you know, when you did seem, think you did or actually have a position that was of a status and how one, you know, there's no real, the idea of gracefully accepting or entering your final time.
Marc:It's really a stretch to sort of get that into perspective, you know?
Marc:Yeah, especially when you've spent your whole life doing the opposite.
Marc:But all this Disney business, the thing about that is, and I told you too, is that that's not Disneyland.
Marc:It's really a bunch of people that don't fit in that are not necessarily desperate, but are just kind of...
Marc:You know, figure out a grift, you know, that's that's legitimate, not not a total con job.
Marc:But, you know, selling pickles for three months and making 30 grand or 40 grand and then spending the rest of the year, you know, smoking weed in your above ground pool.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, and when, you know, they have like shooting ranges in their backyard, you know.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, I mean, that's a life and it's off the grid.
Marc:And if that's your idea of freedom, I get it.
Marc:it found freedom at the bottom of the kettle corn bucket yeah uh well there's also i also watched that anita palenberg documentary oh what was that well she was you know she was famously that german kind of model and actress that was dating brian jones and ended up with keith richards had two of uh keith richards kids this is called catching fire the story of anita palenberg
Marc:Yeah, that if you're a Stones fan, there's a lot of great kind of puzzle pieces in there about, you know, the power that she had on, you know, in in the hearts of those guys.
Marc:You know, she was there when Brian died.
Marc:She was with Brian and then went to Keith.
Marc:And I think Mick.
Marc:was with her for a second almost.
Marc:But Keith married her, and he was with her a long time, and she ended up in that sort of sordid situation where a kid who worked on the property shot himself with one of her guns.
Marc:But she's the mother of...
Marc:three of keith's kids you know and and she had written this book that no one knew about a biography an autobiography and that's what the doc is based on so it is a really amazing chapter or two of stone's history from a totally different point of view and it's it's tragic but it's kind of a great little bunch of information
Guest:Now, you're not typically a guy that and this list kind of shows that you don't watch a lot of comedies like you're not like a straight up.
Guest:I'm going to put comedies on all the time.
Guest:And they're only aside from Devil Wears Prada, which I think counts.
Guest:But the Beverly Hills Cop reboot, Axel Foley, you watch that.
Guest:And then you also wrote most of Step Brothers.
Guest:Was that by choice or you just only caught part of it?
Marc:No, I just couldn't, I couldn't get through it.
Marc:I lost interest, but I like seeing those guys.
Marc:It's just so stupid.
Guest:It is a very stupid one, but like, yes, there's like that one works.
Guest:I think best as like individual sketches almost like you don't have to watch the whole movie.
Guest:It's just little vignettes.
Marc:They just didn't know what to do at the end.
Marc:And it just got, I got, I got, I couldn't do it anymore.
Marc:But what'd you think of the Eddie movie?
Marc:It was good to see him.
Marc:And I thought, you know, in terms of aging that character in a big budget movie, they did fine with that.
Marc:I didn't mind the story.
Marc:I didn't mind the daughter father thing.
Marc:And I thought he was he was pretty funny.
Marc:Obviously, he's not going to do what he used to do.
Marc:But it was okay.
Guest:It's just so weird how these things are just vapor.
Guest:These movies that get released on streaming only.
Guest:This is Eddie Murphy, who's one of the biggest movie stars in the history of the world, reprising his role in his biggest film.
Guest:And it just like, people were excited.
Guest:I heard people go, oh yeah, there's a new Beverly Hills cop.
Guest:And it just like comes out and people put it on while they're folding laundry or whatever.
Guest:And it just goes away.
Marc:But that's the nature of the delivery system is not special.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, there's fucking there's a Twister movie sequel that opened in theaters to 80 million dollars to fucking Twister, which is nothing movie from the mid 90s.
Guest:And and it was huge because people were like, yeah, we want to go enjoy something.
Guest:We have an event.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I mean, yeah, the nature of streaming is it's all garbage.
Marc:And if you hit on something, you're like, oh, that's pretty good.
Marc:And I saw it on, I don't even remember, Amazon?
Marc:Or maybe, you know, it just doesn't matter.
Marc:It all comes in at the same intensity.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Marc:You're just so amazed to find anything that you want to watch on streaming that, like, you know, it's kind of interesting in terms of the algorithm how some things, like, all of a sudden pop.
Marc:But there's no other reason other than, you know, like, you know, somebody...
Marc:A bunch of people were scrolling aimlessly and about to be frustrated and turn it off and they landed on something.
Guest:Well, you have gone to the movies a bit.
Guest:There are a couple of things on here that you actually went to the theater to see.
Guest:You talked about this on the show that you saw Daddy-O, the two-person movie with Sean Penn and Dakota Johnson.
Marc:Yeah, I fucking love her, man.
Marc:She's good.
Guest:She is good.
Guest:She's good even when she's terrible, which was the way she was in Madam Web.
Guest:She was still the most compellingly watchable thing in that movie.
Marc:She's so good.
Marc:Good actress.
Marc:And he was good.
Marc:There was weird decisions about that character, but he was definitely the guy to play it.
Marc:You know, I liked that movie.
Marc:It's hard to pull that off.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:That's always with those kinds of things.
Guest:You're like, all right, well that's a tight rope walk.
Guest:How's it going to go?
Guest:Yeah, I liked it.
Marc:You know, you know, it was, it was an unusually long ride home from JFK, but it can happen.
Marc:There's a lot of traffic.
Marc:It sure could happen.
Marc:Oh, they had an accident.
Marc:They had to deal with, there was an accident.
Guest:So, you know, well, speaking of long, you also saw a long legs.
Guest:Did you, did you like that?
Marc:It was okay.
Marc:In terms of devil shit, which I like, I enjoy devil shit in movies, it was all right.
Marc:I didn't feel it.
Marc:It wasn't menacing enough.
Marc:You know, there was a kind of a leap of faith with the devil shit.
Marc:Like I, for me, I think if you're going to do devil shit, you know, the human component has to be pretty tight.
Marc:And this was a little ridiculous because there was a device to it.
Marc:There was, you know, these dolls that, you know, the devil was in.
Marc:And then all of a sudden it's like, I don't know, you know, then it's like stupid.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:That's where I always, it always loses me on that stuff too.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But if you're just going to do devil shit, you know, either do The Exorcist or do a cult thing legitimately, you know, it's worth watching because it's an artfully done movie.
Marc:I mean, it's definitely a deliberate vision, but you can't even recognize Nicolas Cage.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That's what I heard.
Guest:I think Chris was the one who said that to me.
Guest:He was like, it's kind of a waste to have him in there because it just could have been anybody.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, like, why would you hide Nicolas Cage?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You know, but... Another long thing was not in the title, but in the length of the actual film is Kinds of Kindness.
Guest:But you said you liked that quite a bit.
Marc:Yeah, I thought that Kinds of Kindness was great because it's like...
Marc:It's really him doing what he kind of loves to do, which he did with, what is it, Dog's Tooth and some of the other earlier ones which I watched, which were low-budget movies.
Marc:But this is a big-budget movie.
Marc:There's money in this movie, but it's still that fucking crazy weird.
Marc:But there's enough in it to hold on to where the poetry of it and some of the images and some of the ideas kind of like they go in.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And but it's really, you know, top.
Marc:It's really him at his weirdest, which is when he's good, like when he really hangs his weirdness on a, you know, on a story that sort of ultimately is about something and makes sense.
Marc:It's OK.
Marc:But him just sort of untethered to be weird.
Marc:Much better.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And now it's also seems like, you know, he's working with a steady troop of people.
Marc:Well, that one's three movies.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:With credits and same cast.
Marc:It's really three pieces.
Marc:And he runs credits after each 45 minute bit.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I wonder, man, I wonder, I haven't seen anything about this, but I wonder if that was, if it was supposed to be like a streaming thing.
Guest:Like three episodes of something.
Marc:Oh, interesting.
Marc:Maybe.
Marc:That's a good question.
Guest:Well, let's get to the last two things that were on your list here.
Guest:And the reason I saved them for the end was because I wanted to follow up on some of this stuff with some questions.
Guest:Because these are both movies with Owen Wilson in them.
Guest:And I know then you went back to set and talked to him.
Guest:So it was Inherent Vice and The Royal Tenenbaums.
Guest:So did you did he have anything to say about those or were you just like, I watched you in a movie and he was like, oh, OK.
Marc:Well, he talks about he refers to Tenenbaums quite a bit, you know, just in talking, you know, like something came up the other day where.
Marc:You know, we were talking about being on set for a long time and, you know, and how when you get antsy and he was talking about how like like when he's cranky or tired, he'll he'll actually find himself starting to direct sort of like, you know, like, why can't we just shoot this over here?
Marc:You know, like.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And he said Stiller like lost it on him because that's like whenever you get tired, you start directing the movie.
Marc:You know, like.
Marc:Which I thought was pretty funny.
Marc:And.
Marc:Oh, but I talked to him about Inherent Vice, and he goes, he said, yeah, I never understood that movie.
Marc:I mean, I read it.
Marc:I didn't understand it.
Marc:I wasn't sure what I was doing.
Marc:That's great, though.
Guest:That's perfect for the character he plays.
Marc:Totally.
Guest:Totally.
Guest:Did he ever talk to you about why he doesn't work with or doesn't write movies anymore?
Guest:I mean, he wrote those early Wes Anderson ones.
Marc:I haven't asked him that.
Marc:He's definitely on his feet with stuff.
Marc:He'll riff when we're doing scenes and stuff.
Marc:And he's throwing a lot of stuff in with his character.
Marc:And they're letting him do it.
Marc:They're open to that stuff.
Marc:So he's generating.
Marc:And he's definitely a guy that goes like, I don't know about this line.
Marc:It seems stupid.
Marc:He's thinking.
Marc:He's not sleepwalking through anything.
Marc:But I haven't asked him directly why he doesn't write anymore.
Guest:Because I really do think those early Wes Anderson movies are the best Wes Anderson movies.
Guest:I like a lot of his movies, even the ones that are very, very meticulous and are all very controlled and about the kind of dollhouse nature of how he's manipulating the world that it is.
Guest:Grand Budapest Hotel and the French Dispatch.
Guest:I like those movies a lot, but the humanity in Rushmore and Tenenbaums combined with that type of fantasy city living and a world that doesn't really exist but feels real, it's just such a great tone.
Guest:And both of those movies in particular, not so much Bottle Rocket, but both of those, they just really...
Guest:Like, they all work in such... Like, those are the kind of ones where I could put them on at any time.
Marc:Yeah, no, for sure.
Marc:I just was... I didn't know he was in Inherent Vice until he popped up.
Marc:And, you know, I don't know.
Marc:Owen seems to be a guy, like, right now who, you know, he seems to be able to kind of have an okay time.
Marc:You know, he's pretty laid back.
Marc:It was so funny the other day, like, we were talking about me getting all these golf clubs.
Marc:And, you know, he said you should bring them up and, you know, start hitting some balls around.
Marc:I'm like, when am I going to have time?
Marc:And he goes, are you kidding?
Marc:What do you mean?
Marc:All we have is time.
Marc:He's out there hitting golf balls whenever he can.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, that's the thing.
Guest:His brain must be so adjusted to that style of living where he could just, like –
Guest:you know, okay, I'm going to be doing this thing for a few months.
Guest:I'll fill my time with X, Y, and Z. Yeah.
Marc:He's got himself a little, a little electric bike.
Marc:He's always riding around and like, you know, even between takes, he's, he's going to go hit some balls, you know, and he, you know, he's definitely, he seems, you know, he seems okay with it.
Marc:We're not hanging around that much offset.
Marc:Um, but yeah,
Marc:You know, the dynamic is good.
Marc:I can make him laugh.
Marc:And we've had some pretty funny, you know, he's, you know, we've had some pretty funny exchanges, you know.
Marc:He's a good guy.
Guest:Is he like a, is it like a known thing about town?
Guest:Like, Owen Wilson's hanging around, like, and he... Yeah, but I think that that's not an unusual thing in Vancouver.
Marc:Right, right, right.
Marc:I think at any given time, there's always somebody hanging around town.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But...
Marc:But he's a very recognizable thing.
Marc:Of course.
Marc:Like, people get, like, very excited to see him for whatever reason.
Guest:Yeah, he's multi-generational, too, because he's, like, the voice of the cartoon car and everything.
Guest:And so, you know, there's little kids.
Marc:Yeah, if you're hanging out with him.
Marc:And he's so identifiable.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You can't hide that face, you know?
Marc:Yeah.
Yeah.
Marc:You know, when we do have stuff to do together, it's pretty great.
Marc:I mean, from what they're telling me, you know, they just think that the dynamic is great when it happens.
Marc:You know, that, you know, it really seems like we've known each other 20 years, 30 years.
Marc:And, you know, that's all coming off pretty well.
Marc:But it is kind of like a weird thing in learning stuff.
Marc:The nature of this type of supporting role, you know, that I'm there for a reason that is emotional, but it's also to break things up.
Marc:And it's just like out of all the characters, there's just not a lot of backstory on me, you know?
Marc:Right.
Marc:So I was talking to the director the other day quickly and,
Marc:Just that, like, look, you know, the backstory I put in place for this guy is that he didn't want anything to do with golf anymore.
Marc:He's just this guy's friend, and he's been kind of laying low for the past couple decades, kind of grief-stricken and, you know, minding his own business and being an outdoorsy kind of guy.
Marc:But this golf thing's over, and, you know, I tell the director, I say, look, I know how it's written.
Marc:You know, I'm basically the cranky guy with the big heart who, you know, reacts to the clown occasionally.
Marc:And...
Marc:and the director was like oh he laughed he goes yeah I yeah I guess that's I guess that's true but you know I'm I'm settling I'm settling into it okay but yeah I'm starting to think there's probably movies I didn't even mention but you know I think we did a lot of movies well keep the go keep that list going and then next time we we do this we'll we'll run through it again you seem to be getting on a good little routine here of of passing the time yes sir all right man all right
Thank you.