BONUS Marc on Movies - Martin Scorsese and Killers of the Flower Moon
Guest:So, Scorsese.
Guest:That's his name.
Guest:I believe it's actually Scorsese.
Guest:Scorsese.
Guest:Yes, but I have said Scorsese almost my whole life.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, I'm not known for my accuracy with names, as you know.
Marc:But maybe if you're Italian, that's what makes sense.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:So, we've both seen...
Marc:Killers of the Flower Moon.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And you have reactions to it.
Marc:I could tell by your text.
Marc:I wasn't clear on it.
Marc:Maybe you were being a little cagey because you knew we were going to talk about it.
Marc:But going back over his filmography...
Marc:which I did, I've seen almost all of them.
Marc:There are some I don't remember.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But the one thing that stood out to me in retrospect, you know, after seeing Killers of the Flower Moon was the consistency in terms of the spectrum of morality of the Scorsese protagonist.
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Marc:That they're all...
Marc:you know, morally, if not bankrupt, dubious.
Marc:They're all, you know, sort of on some path of willful redemption at a certain point.
Marc:And really, none of them really make it.
Marc:You know, and to create those characters where...
Marc:They're built for you to empathize with somehow, which I think is the amazing thing about all of them for me.
Marc:Maybe not everybody does, but they are.
Marc:They should.
Marc:They're built out of humanity.
Marc:And some of them are really, really shitty people.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:Or dumb.
Marc:Well, there's dumb.
Marc:There's the dumb ones.
Marc:But most of the time, the dumb, it may play a part in the emotional liabilities of the character or his lack of conscience.
Marc:But I still think the focus becomes the compromised conscience.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:And the sort of blinders any of these characters have up that they're not aware of that enables them to never quite get on top of it or be effectively redeemable, at least within the context of the films.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Oh, well, I mean, like, I think what you're, what you're skirting around here is that this guy is a theologian ultimately.
Guest:A Catholic one.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Well, you're getting at it.
Guest:You are getting a catechism.
Guest:Like you as a Jew who has, you know, never gone to Sunday school, like I grew up going to, you are learning all the same shit just by this guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Yeah.
Marc:But there's very rarely is there Jesus in the picture.
Marc:There's one time where he's literally in it.
Marc:And that guy's got problems.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But he's like, it's funny, like he's the least compromised one.
Guest:The whole movie is about how he has this moral conundrum and he's the least compromised because he's Jesus.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:What is that?
Marc:I can't... The thrust of that was basically it was Jesus that didn't want to be Jesus, really?
Guest:And also just the struggle between man and God, right?
Guest:Right.
Guest:That's a fundamentally Catholic thing, that every Sunday you ate this cracker that they told you.
Guest:He's in that.
Guest:We literally just put him in it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's not a cracker symbolizing him.
Guest:You're eating the dude.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that...
Guest:puts a head trip on any kid who goes through that.
Guest:And this guy has dealt with it his whole life.
Guest:And I should say right now, what we're going to do for the first half of this episode is kind of talk about Scorsese specifically and not Killers of the Flower Moon.
Guest:Just in case you haven't seen it yet, you don't want to know anything about the movie.
Guest:That'll be the second half of this.
Guest:And we'll kind of avoid spoilers going forward.
Guest:But just so you know,
Guest:you know, the, the initial part of this is going to be about Scorsese.
Guest:And what I kind of wanted to know from you, Mark was what was your journey with him?
Guest:Like how, what's your memory of the first time you were aware of him?
Guest:Because you're in a very, I think advantageous position that I am not in and that you've been around, you've been alive and you've been aware of movies and culture, his entire life,
Guest:I guess for me, it's like Tarantino, right?
Guest:Like I was a teenager when he made his first movie, I was into it.
Guest:And then I've just followed the guy's whole career.
Guest:I didn't have that luxury with Scorsese, but you did.
Guest:And I'm wondering when he came on your radar as a person who you should pay attention to.
Marc:Well, I think that my, if I have any film nerdom in me,
Marc:It started in high school.
Marc:Me and my buddy Devin Jackson, you know, became kind of like, you know, film heads.
Marc:And for me, I think the first movie that opened the door was Raging Bull because I was a sophomore in high school.
Marc:And I think I saw Raging Bull, you know, before I might have been a senior in high school, before I saw Taxi Driver, before I saw New York, New York, you know, and certainly before I saw Mean Streets.
Marc:And Alice doesn't live here anymore, no matter how many times I see it, does not stay with me.
Marc:I've not seen Boxcar Bertha and I don't know the very early one, but Raging Bull became an obsession with me that lasts until this day because I remember seeing it.
Marc:I remember like this is Scorsese.
Marc:He did Taxi Driver, but I don't think I had seen Taxi Driver before I saw Raging Bull or Mean Streets.
Marc:And when I saw Raging Bull, that sort of opened me up to realizing that
Marc:That that, you know, film was, you know, a profound art and that you could make a film that looks like nothing else and that you could have a guy be the star of a movie that was a fucking monster, but a human monster.
Marc:And I became sort of obsessed with that movie.
Marc:I still watch it a couple of times a year.
Marc:And and I don't even and also I was very into the.
Marc:The idea of actors, of method acting, of great actors and what they would do and what method meant.
Marc:All that stuff was sort of happening for me in terms of being aware of it in high school.
Marc:But when I saw, you know, Raging Bull and I mean, I was totally obsessed with it.
Marc:I got movie stills from it.
Marc:You know, I was obsessed with the work that De Niro put in the weight loss and everything else.
Marc:But, you know, we saw it when it opened and just the pace of that movie, the editing of that movie, the choice to make it black and white, the kind of the force of it.
Marc:Like, I just I'd never seen anything like it.
Marc:And the character of Jake LaMotta, you know, being a guy like me who was sort of also obsessed with New York a little bit, having not grown up there, but not knowing anything about boxing, really.
Marc:was just that this guy was a monster, but when you're kind of a sensitive dude who is not really that type of monster, you like those guys.
Marc:It's like his mobsters, right?
Marc:And his literal hardheadedness throughout the movie
Marc:It was just like nothing I'd ever seen before.
Marc:And certainly the way it was shot was nothing I'd ever seen before.
Marc:But I really like the moment that comes to me the most.
Marc:There's two moments that I always think back on in that movie.
Marc:And one is where they bust him.
Marc:And he's just like in that little jail cell by himself with his big belly hanging out, punching the wall.
Marc:Just going, what'd I do?
Marc:What'd I do?
Marc:Literally caged animal.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:And then the other one was when he tries to sell the jewels from the belt.
Marc:The guy's like, well, do you have the belt?
Marc:No, no, I got this.
Marc:I got this.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But like, and I'm not even registering necessarily the deeper things because I don't think I registered what I told you at the beginning of this conversation thoroughly until I watched, you know, Killers of the Flower Moon.
Marc:In terms of like, I knew the Catholicism was there.
Marc:I knew the idea of sin and the idea of, you know,
Marc:people being imperfect and flaws and the seven deadly sins.
Marc:Like, you know, I knew all that was there in his work.
Marc:But then like, then I go back to Mean Streets and Taxi Driver and, you know, Taxi Driver again, you know, the effect of it, you know, the sort of like the kind of
Marc:ballsiness of building a movie around that guy.
Marc:And by that point, it was sort of the equivalent of a meme, Travis Bickle.
Marc:You're talking to me or whatever.
Marc:But then you start to realize you're not necessarily...
Marc:rooting for these guys, but you're not not rooting for them.
Marc:The fact that he's able to, with his partnership with almost all his actors, to pull the ability for them to be empathetic characters is kind of amazing.
Marc:Because Bickle, out of all of them, is really the only one that gets redemption.
Marc:And he fucking barely deserves it.
Guest:Well, not only barely deserves it, it's dangerous that he got it because he's just going to go do what he's done again.
Guest:I mean, that's the last shot of that movie is him looking paranoid in that mirror.
Guest:Actually, I take that back.
Guest:That's not the last shot of the movie.
Guest:You see that.
Guest:But then the last shot, which is under the credits, is just the street of New York.
Guest:Where you're like, oh, it could be 20 taxi driver guys in there.
Guest:20 Travis Bickles.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it's just like that, you know, the moment where, you know, the cut from when he's on the couch, you know, with his hand covered in blood, you know, and then you cut to, you know, the sort of resolution around Jodie Foster's character.
Marc:It's menacing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I think there's a difference, though, between those two main movies, Raging Bull and Taxi Driver.
Guest:It's very distinct, right?
Guest:And everything you're saying about Raging Bull centers around the idea of the individual and focusing on this guy, like the moral arc of this very, very compromised person.
Guest:I don't think Taxi Driver is about Travis Bickle's moral arc.
Guest:I think that's a movie, whereas Raging Bull is about the individual.
Guest:Taxi Driver is about the collective.
Guest:That movie is very specifically about us.
Guest:And, you know, it's funny.
Guest:You said that, you know, it became almost a meme.
Guest:It was a thing in popular culture of you talking to me.
Guest:It got used anytime anybody in a comedy stood in front of a mirror like...
Guest:and pantomiming with a gun or whatever.
Guest:You talking to me, you talking to me.
Guest:Roger Ebert is the one who pointed out that the line that never gets quoted is the very next line, and it's the most important one, which is he says, I'm the only one here.
Guest:And that's fundamental to Scorsese's understanding of who this guy is and why a movie should be made about him, right?
Guest:Like, if you think about the script of that, it's just...
Guest:you know, Paul Schrader told you, this was what I was worried about becoming, right?
Guest:I was worried about being isolated and disillusioned, feeling disenfranchised from the world.
Guest:I was afraid of becoming this guy.
Guest:Well, that doesn't mean Martin Scorsese was afraid of becoming that guy, but he fully understood why someone would and what had happened around them because of the world we were living in, because of who that guy Scorsese plays in the back of the cab.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Those people are the ones that lead Travis Bickles to becoming who they are.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:And then also the the the higher purpose is that, you know, the fact that there is a crossroads that he's at where it's either assassinate a political figure out of sexual frustration and wanting to make an impact.
Marc:And then, you know, then the shift to to saving the girl.
Guest:Mm hmm.
Marc:to saving the child.
Marc:And they couldn't be further apart, really.
Marc:But yet they're on the same spectrum for that guy.
Marc:And, yeah, I mean, I can see how it's about us.
Marc:And I can see how it is about...
Marc:the kind of id of a city and the id of what we, you know, what we hang our hopes on in culture.
Marc:You know, I mean, in beliefs or how we see ourselves, how we see accomplishment, you know, what is our moral compass around our will?
Marc:Yeah, I mean, I see all that.
Marc:It's a very dense movie.
Marc:And by the time I saw it, I was probably in college and trying to understand things.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And when I saw Mean Streets, that movie never really came together fully for me.
Marc:I mean, I liked it.
Marc:I know it was early and it was raw.
Marc:And I guess Keitel is really the protagonist who's struggling with whatever his versions of the sins are.
Marc:But it's a little more Catholic than the rest of them.
Marc:Yeah, and it feels like Scorsese's starter kit.
Marc:That's how I always like Mean Streets.
Yeah.
Marc:But then, of course, the king of comedy, because I was interested in comedy, you know, that became this other thing.
Marc:You know, again, you know, so then he takes it to this other level where the guy is fundamentally likable and charming and peculiar who has to commit a fairly major crime to get his personal redemption, which he also gets, actually.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:In a weird way, Rupert Pumpkin wins.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:You know, Jake LaMotta does not.
Marc:Travis Bickle does.
Guest:But still... Well, it's funny.
Guest:You say Jake LaMotta does not.
Guest:But I am unconvinced that that fat guy sitting in that dressing room doing the lines in front of the mirror thinks he's a loser.
Guest:Like, I think he's like...
Guest:OK, this is where I am.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But the fact that he's a loser is.
Marc:Yeah, it's it's that it's about a not only a hardheaded fighter, but a stubborn guy to the point of some sort of, you know, narcissistic problem.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:As long as he's not dead, he's he thinks of himself as a winner.
Guest:He's won in some way.
Marc:But that scene where he's trying to hug Joe Pesci.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:And that was so many years later.
Marc:That was the only emotional moment where you do sense that he does have some guilt.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Marc:It's a fleeting moment.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But he's like, yeah, I'll call you.
Marc:I'll call you.
Marc:You called me?
Marc:It's tragic.
Marc:And maybe that is just for the audience.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:Now, did you did you see these later movies, though, went like, did you like King of Comedy and Taxi Driver?
Guest:By the time you saw them, were you like keyed into who this guy was or, you know, you just knew them as movies and you weren't really thinking about them as a tour presentation?
Marc:Because I was rooting for I mean, you know, when Raging Bull was at the Oscars.
Marc:I was watching and I was rooting for it.
Marc:And I knew that because of Taxi Driver, I knew that this guy was a guy.
Marc:I knew Coppola was a guy.
Marc:I was aware of this stuff by that point.
Marc:And then when After Hours came out, to me, it didn't really fit the other ones totally because it was clearly a comedy.
Marc:But again, that's a guy that just wants to get home.
Guest:Well, you know, the backstory of that, right?
Guest:Is that he made it, he was going to make Last Temptation of Christ and it got canceled at the last minute.
Guest:Like he was, you know, the studio got cold feet because of the controversial nature of it and they were worried, which turned out being valid because the movie was protested when it finally was made.
Guest:But but he was he was crushed because he put all this production work into, you know, prep for Last Temptation.
Guest:And then it was pulled.
Guest:And he was like, I have to do something immediately.
Guest:Like I have to do something that requires zero prep.
Guest:Basically, I'm just going to dive into whatever I get my hands on.
Guest:And it was this script of After Hours.
Guest:And he made it in like record time.
Guest:And it feels that way.
Guest:It's to the benefit of the movie.
Marc:Yeah, like run and gun kind of thing.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, I like that movie.
Marc:I think I'd have to rewatch it.
Guest:Yeah, I saw it again recently, and it really plays well.
Guest:It did not age poorly.
Marc:It's very good.
Marc:I do remember the one thing I read into it.
Marc:Um, because by that point, you know, I was started, I had started kind of doing comedy or being interested in it.
Marc:That scene where, you know, he's in that gay guy's apartment and like, I think just to use a phone and, you know, and he's, he's in, he's explaining everything.
Marc:He's explaining, but it's in front of a brick wall.
Marc:And I'm like, this is a comedy club.
Marc:This is a, this is a riff on comedy and the gay guy's just looking bored on the couch.
Marc:Cause I think he just wants to get laid.
Marc:But to me, I'm like, that's what this is a reflection of.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And it's funny because it's like he's bombing, but he won't stop.
Guest:He has to keep going.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:To me, it was like, I know what this is.
Marc:This has to be on purpose.
Marc:That was my whole problem with the film analysis is that I didn't know what you bring to it and what is actually on purpose.
Marc:And as I get older, I realize it's almost all what you bring to it.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Although I will say there's plenty in that movie after hours that is, you know, directly from his like, you know, fully Catholic understanding of hell and purgatory being trapped.
Guest:And as his taxi driver, the first thing you see of that taxi, is it coming through the smoke?
Guest:Like it's emerging from like, you know, a Stygian inferno.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that we will, we will get back to that in killers of the flower moons.
Guest:I just put a pin in that, but this guy's full understanding of hell as it is taught in, in Catholicism is in almost all of his movies.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And like, I don't know, you know, I, the color of money I thought was good.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's a, that's a, that's a good version of a movie that anybody could have made.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:And last temptation, I remember really enjoying because John Lurie was in it.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, but see, it's so funny because like that movie to me was that that was the final straw for me.
Guest:I guess that's not the way to put it.
Guest:But that was when I saw Last Temptation of Christ, which was probably around 1997.
Guest:So roughly, you know, nine years after it was made.
Guest:Yeah, that was when I was like, oh, this is my guy.
Guest:this martin oh yeah oh yeah i mean and i had seen goodfellas by that point i'd seen uh i think cape fear had already seen i i don't know if i watched taxi driver by the time i was that age but watching last temptation was the moment where i was like i see myself in this guy not in his movies in him like in who he is and how he thinks i get this and he's like my guy and it's my new guide to life like i'm gonna i'm gonna pay attention to what he has to say
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, I don't know if I, if I ever felt that connection to him as an artist, other than, you know, I knew that there was nobody like him and what he could do with film and the layers of it.
Marc:And I, it was definitely not a world that I could necessarily relate to, but I always look forward to it and still watch whenever I can.
Marc:what he puts out in the world.
Marc:Like, I'll watch Goodfellas on regular TV.
Marc:Well, I was going to ask you, is that the most watched of his movies for you, Goodfellas?
Marc:Yeah, that and Raging Bull, you know, for sure.
Marc:And I watch King of Comedy, but, like, it doesn't hold up as well.
Marc:But, yeah, Raging Bull and Goodfellas.
Marc:You know, because Goodfellas, it's really, to me, it's about...
Marc:whatever he was able to pull together so thoroughly between the way he shoots, the way he edits, and the layers of music, and the way he shoots violence.
Marc:To me, like, that was...
Marc:Um, everything was in that one for me.
Guest:That's, I mean, you're absolutely right.
Guest:It's, I believe his greatest movie.
Guest:I believe it's probably, it's very arguably the greatest American movie ever made.
Guest:And, uh, and also amazingly rewatchable.
Marc:You could watch it anytime because it's, it's hilarious.
Guest:That's also when you said, you know, about how he edits.
Guest:Obviously, it's in concert with his editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, who I think that's the era.
Guest:Goodfellas is the moment where obviously, you know, there's movies that came before that where they were collaborating.
Guest:But Goodfellas is the moment where you can see how the two of them are symbiotic.
Guest:how you can't really have one without the other, that her understanding of his language and his pacing, it's a gift.
Guest:It's a gift to have a partner like that who just understands you and you don't have to verbalize what your vision is.
Marc:Yeah, I can definitely see that.
Marc:But it is interesting now that I bring that up, that Joe Pesci in Raging Bull and in Goodfellas, arguably a comic character, arguably.
Marc:Oh, sure.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And, you know, and much more violent in Goodfellas.
Marc:But, you know, because when you see the turn that Pesci takes in Casino, it's like, that's a fucking monster.
Marc:And he was a monster in Goodfellas, but he was an endearing little fuck and he got his, but he was funny.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Well, that's, I mean, that's always going to be, you know, if anything, I think that's the knock on casino is that the, the fun is missing.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it's, it's almost relentless.
Guest:Just this, I like, I guess you could argue that Las Vegas is fun.
Guest:So that's always there, this ever-present nature of like, this place, the temptation part of Scorsese's thesis is always there.
Guest:And for the guys in Goodfellas, the temptation is aligned with their personalities.
Guest:These are fun guys.
Guest:They're a good hang.
Marc:So of course they're going to want to live just by their appetites.
Marc:But then you got, I mean, the sin of pride is really what
Marc:goodfellas or casinos about right yeah sure more than anything else yeah because he could have gotten out of that no problem if it wasn't for the fact that he always kept putting himself out there and those the clothes yeah that character that kind of like you know cowardly uh you know mob affiliated guy who relied on the mob i mean that was you know the sort of
Guest:comedic character because he's he's you know he's ridiculous it's so amazing how different it is from the goodfellas character whereas pesci is similar in both right he's he's you kind of map the one guy on top of the other and you just turn the dial a little bit but de niro in casino is such a loser and a schlub and and you feel it every second he's around you're like
Guest:I feel like they make fun of him for it.
Guest:They're like, oh, this sad sack.
Marc:They do all the time.
Marc:Yeah, well, the tightly wrapped guy with his cigarette holder.
Marc:The mobsters are making fun of him all the time.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:Now I got to listen to the Jew, you know?
Marc:Jew fuck.
Marc:Kundun, I don't remember.
Guest:Yeah, you know, there's this stretch here, which are- The Buddha kid, right?
Guest:What's that?
Marc:Yeah, this is the Dalai Lama one, yeah.
Marc:And Bringing Out the Dead, I just watched again.
Yeah.
Marc:Interesting.
Marc:Why did you think of it?
Marc:I think it was like After Hours.
Marc:Like, you know, it didn't, you know, it was episodic.
Marc:Right.
Marc:It didn't really hold together.
Marc:It was a bit, there was an absurdity to it.
Marc:I think it was that time, 99, maybe.
Marc:The way he shot it was punk rock and sloppy.
Marc:And, you know, the frame of reality kind of got bent a lot.
Marc:Sizemore was interesting.
Marc:But it does remind me of After Hours.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I don't think it's worth the sum of its parts, actually.
Guest:Like, I think... Yeah, no, totally.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I think After Hours holds together better as a film, especially as a, you know, as like a sprint, right?
Guest:It's like a 95-minute, you know, no get-up type of jaunt.
Marc:But also, like, there is that balance, I think, in Bringing Out the Dead, where there was, you know, a strong attempt at a comedy through line.
Marc:Because, you know, there was these callbacks to crazy people.
Marc:You know, nobody really gets, you know, nobody really dies.
Marc:And, you know, the kind of callback of the chaotic emergency room.
Marc:It's supposed to be a dark comedy.
Marc:And I don't know that.
Marc:You're right.
Marc:It doesn't really hold together.
Marc:Gangs in New York, I watched 10 minutes of the other night.
Marc:My feeling about Gangs in New York is was it should have been a musical.
Yeah.
Guest:You know, Daniel Day-Lewis could slip into that very easily, I feel like, too.
Guest:Of course.
Marc:It's shot like a musical.
Marc:It looks like a musical.
Guest:Well, I have to say watching Killers of the Flower Moon, one of my reactions was Gangs of New York is absolutely hamstrung by whatever Harvey Weinstein was doing to it.
Guest:And I know that's an easy way out, especially now.
Guest:Like, oh, yeah, blame the monster, right?
Guest:Blame the animal that everyone hates.
Guest:But clearly, the same guy who made Killers of the Flower Moon making a period piece set in 19th century New York could have made a better movie than that.
Guest:And it just feels like interference up and down the line.
Marc:Maybe.
Marc:I mean, I found that...
Marc:The scope of the movie, in terms of what New York looked like and what he was trying to do, it was hard.
Marc:It really felt to me like some kind of technicolor throwback to those kind of fun westerns where everybody's with the big colorful clothes.
Marc:I swear to God it looks like a musical.
Guest:I think you're kind of onto something there because I do think you're entering into this period for him.
Guest:Gangs of New York, Aviator, The Departed, definitely.
Guest:Shutter Island, definitely.
Guest:Where these are all movies, those four movies in a row are...
Guest:are ones where he was, where he was trying to replicate some genre thing that he had in his head, whether it's Cagney style cops and robbers stuff with the departed or the kind of Hitchcock, you know, innocent man who's, who's on the run stuff on shutter Island.
Guest:He's,
Guest:And Aviator is the whole movie is about old movies, right?
Guest:Like you're definitely entering into that phase, which yeah, 10 years before he did with Cape Fear in a much more interesting way.
Guest:I think Cape Fear is pretty, pretty cool movie when you like, especially when you watch it with the other movie.
Marc:When he watched the first one, yeah.
Marc:It's a very menacing movie.
Marc:And again, the Nolte character who is compromised.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:That's the difference is that he allowed the protagonist to be a piece of shit.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And a coward.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And De Niro, that over the top was just pretty spectacular.
Marc:Again, a
Guest:bordering on buffoonery yeah he's i i just watched uh night of the hunter recently and uh i mean he's definitely doing mitchum in that movie right i mean that's obvious he's got the tattoos on the fingers and everything but it's it's it's almost a joke like you could it's border on parody yeah no totally totally and then the the the ending of cape fear is ridiculous the fight you mean on the boat yeah oh my god
Marc:it's just it's like a horror movie yeah oh sure yeah that's what he's doing at that point yeah and the departed like you know as much as i've seen it you know it's not a great movie but i will watch it over and over again part of that's just the dialogue the dialogue is so good and snappy but i agree it's not a great movie i'm the guy doing his job you must be the other guy
Guest:Mark Wahlberg is spectacular.
Guest:He's great the whole movie.
Guest:Like when he's dressing down DiCaprio and he's like, listen to me, you're no fucking cop.
Marc:And Damon was great.
Marc:But yeah, I'll watch it.
Marc:I didn't see Hugo.
Marc:That's interesting.
Guest:You know, Hugo is a kid's movie, but it is absolutely Martin Scorsese basically doing his thesis statement on why he has done what he's done for his whole life in trying to preserve film.
Guest:It's a movie about film preservation.
Guest:And on that level alone, it's fascinating.
Guest:I'm not saying it's going to be one of your favorite movies.
Guest:It's definitely geared for children.
Guest:But it's pretty great as a statement of his.
Marc:Now, I love The Wolf of Wall Street.
Guest:I think it's one of his best movies.
Marc:I think it's in the top three.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Back to Goodfellas form in pacing music.
Marc:And like, I just watched it again night before last in a hotel room with commercials and dubbed and.
Marc:Because they have cable in the room, so I don't even remember what network it was on.
Marc:But I'm watching it, and I'm waiting for stuff.
Marc:But the balance of comedy and horror and, like, that movie's a comedy.
Marc:There's no fucking way it's not a comedy.
Marc:Of course.
Marc:And...
Marc:And that guy, totally morally compromised, but totally excited.
Guest:He's maybe the worst guy that Scorsese has depicted.
Guest:The most irredeemable worst person.
Guest:And the whole movie is about showing at every step of the way
Guest:He's lying that this thing that happened is not true.
Guest:This thing that happened didn't, it didn't turn out well.
Guest:It's like every step he fucked up and it gets you all the way to the end where people are still paying their hard earned cash to listen to him because they think he's such an expert and will make them all rich.
Guest:It's like Trump.
Guest:There you go.
Guest:And then that movie was 2013, three years before Donald Trump becomes the president.
Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And the movie, like the the maleness of that movie, you know, given that I mean, there is definitely throughout almost every one of it.
Marc:He's exploring the male psyche.
Guest:Oh, and like this is this was a this was a movie about toxic masculinity before people were even talking about that.
Marc:But what was known as the fun kind of toxic masculinity.
Marc:Like every shot as the movie goes on of that trading floor.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:At some point there are guys doing acrobatics.
Marc:Yeah, it's like a backflip, like standing backflip.
Marc:Testosterone driven shit show.
Guest:Just the shots.
Guest:Like when they go across that room and he's like ape like guys, especially that one actor.
Guest:You see him all the time.
Guest:Ethan Suplee.
Guest:He's got the huge forehead, the brow.
Guest:He's losing his hair.
Guest:And he's like.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:They're all like that.
Marc:And then the one guy who's got a fish near a middle ditch plays the guy with the fish.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Jonah Hill's like, what are you doing?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Cleaning your fish take now.
Marc:And then he eats the fish.
Marc:It was that movie is insane.
Marc:And it's really when when Scorsese can cut like that and shoot like that.
Marc:And there's that pace to the thing.
Marc:It's fucking great.
Guest:And again, much like my affinity for Taxi Driver, it's as much of an indictment of the collective as that movie is.
Guest:Oh, for sure.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:And Margot Robbie is spectacular.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And Jonah Hill is great.
Marc:He's great with those teeth.
Guest:But everybody's good.
Guest:It's like one of those, I mean, Killers of Fire and Moon is the same way.
Guest:These people show up and they're there for a couple of scenes and you're like, Rob Reiner is the greatest.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Who's calling Reinos on a Tuesday?
Yeah.
Guest:Where he's watching the equalizer as he's furious.
Marc:What happened?
Marc:Oh, yeah, they're all kind of spectacular.
Marc:The two Quaalude scenes, or that one Quaalude sequence.
Marc:Where he drives?
Marc:Where the old Quaaludes kick in.
Marc:But he drives, and then he goes home, and he tries to get Jonah Hill off the phone, and they're both on Quaaludes.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:And he wants to kill Jonah Hill, but then Jonah Hill gets the ham sandwich stuck in his throat, and the Popeye bit, where he sees Popeye, and then he does the cocaine.
Do you like Popeye?
Guest:It's fucking hilarious.
Guest:That might be the best comedy in any one of his movies, like that specific scene.
Marc:Yeah, because it is so...
Marc:It's not like a guy trying to be funny like Rupert, but he's literally like, we're going to shoot a comedy in this movie.
Marc:This is going to be the comedy.
Marc:He's going to be at the country club.
Marc:He can't talk.
Marc:He's got to get to his car.
Guest:There are other people.
Guest:Him crawling down the steps like a worm.
Guest:Trying to roll.
Marc:Yeah, he couldn't move anything.
Marc:He was completely debilitated.
Marc:But nobody comes to help him.
Marc:And I realized that when I was watching the other night, I'm like, oh, he knew.
Marc:I mean, someone would have helped him.
Marc:Always lying.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:No, this is how this is going to go.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And that guy from Friday Night Lights, he's very good in that.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Kyle Chandler.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:Yeah, he's very.
Marc:Is he all right?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Is there something wrong with him?
Marc:Oh, no, I think it was a character.
Marc:No, he had a heart problem in Manchester by the Sea.
Guest:You're transposing the movie where he died in New England from COPD.
Marc:Yeah, is he all right?
Marc:I mean, I heard he had a thing.
Marc:No, it was in a movie.
Guest:It was terrible.
Marc:I heard his brother-in-law, the whole family died in a fire.
Marc:You know, it's funny.
Marc:The other day we were talking about Scorsese and I'm talking to Lipsight, you know, who's, you know, can be one of the great, uh, like it was just, you know, we were talking about Scorsese movies.
Marc:I'm like, well, what's your favorite Scorsese movie?
Marc:And he said, honestly, silence.
Marc:And I said, go fuck yourself.
Yeah.
Marc:fuck you that's ridiculous you really mean it yeah and he's trying to defend it i'm like no you can take that and just blow it out your fucking academic ass you're just saying that to be to what what do you get from saying silence is the best corsesi movie go fuck yourself
Guest:There's always one.
Guest:There's always one.
Marc:It's like that guy who says, I don't really love the Beatles.
Marc:You know, just leave my house.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Guest:What does that even mean?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There's a couple of B sides that are okay.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Fuck you.
Marc:Fuck you.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:That's the guy that's like, what's your favorite Beatles song?
Marc:Rain.
Guest:Not even on an album.
Marc:Fuck you.
Guest:Do you know that that's actually Ringo Starr's answer?
Guest:Is it?
Guest:Yeah, they said, what's your favorite Beatles song?
Guest:He said, Rain.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Well, he's allowed.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But yeah, I kind of remember what silence is about.
Marc:I remember it took a long time to get where it was.
Guest:It's one of those cases where a person...
Guest:It's unlike Last Temptation of Christ.
Guest:I think it was too deeply felt for him to actually make a movie effectively.
Guest:It's like eulogizing someone, essentially.
Guest:It's always hard.
Guest:And yeah, it's unfortunate because it goes a lot with my own personal background.
Guest:I went to a Jesuit college.
Guest:I've known about these Jesuit missionaries for a very long time.
Guest:It just doesn't, I can't connect with it.
Marc:Yeah, I'm trying to remember they get to the place and the guru is disappointing, right?
Marc:Basically.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But then we get to The Irishman, which you love.
Guest:I do love The Irishman.
Guest:I love it, you know, right in the top tier of the... It's of a piece with all the, you know, crime films that he's done.
Guest:Totally.
Guest:Goodfellas and Casino and even The Wolf of Wall Street.
Marc:But it's interesting because, you know, De Niro plays...
Marc:a dumb shit stooge, a loyal, uh, a loyal henchman.
Guest:He's basically playing the DiCaprio part in killers of the flower moon.
Marc:It's the same guy.
Guest:And also a bad liar.
Guest:Like that's the, that's the thing I love about the Irishman.
Guest:It's like the whole thing's probably a fucking lie, right?
Guest:Like this guy is making up that he's, he's like the zealot of American history.
Guest:He's there for every instance of something happening.
Guest:And it's this,
Guest:completely unremarkable, you know, yes man who can barely formulate a sentence at any given time.
Marc:You know, the only thing that he was capable of and honored was loyalty.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And, and, you know, and he, he gave it to,
Marc:that Joe Pesci character who gave him a life primarily because he had no conscience about killing people.
Marc:But it is interesting how the memory works and what happens when you live a certain life.
Marc:Because that character, unlike DiCaprio, seemingly, maybe until the end, it seems that once he lost the love of his daughter, that he did feel bad.
Guest:Yeah, and I think the codas, without getting too much into the ending of Killers of the Flower Moon, the codas of both of those movies are very similar.
Guest:And if you think about the ending of The Irishman, of him just having to kind of sit there by himself as the custodian of his own legacy, which has amounted to nothing.
Guest:He went out and picked out his own casket.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he's just got to sit there by himself with the door open, hoping maybe something redemptive comes by and it never is going to.
Guest:In the form of his daughter.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But like but but the myth he has made for himself that he was the prime mover of the last 50 years of organized crime.
Guest:It's so ridiculous when you say it, but that's literally what the movie is.
Marc:I know.
Guest:so all right so we get to the new one well so yes so i guess you know sometime some other time we're gonna have to go over uh some of these scorsese documentaries which in their own right are great but they could i don't exactly fit into what we're talking about now but i'd love to talk about the last waltz and even this recent
Guest:thing the rolling thunder review uh so many good ones i i remember the one that they did the martin scorsese's personal journey through film i watched that in high school it's just amazing uh but yeah that we'll get to those some other time and right now let's talk about killers of the flower moon i'll tell you what we can just kind of keep it general up front and not have a ton of spoilers or anything but if you're the kind of person who doesn't like to even hear anything about a movie we're going to talk about the movie right now and i will warn when i do want to get into the ending
Guest:We will get a flag up there before that happens.
Guest:But, yeah, so you saw it in an ideal environment, though.
Guest:Giant screen, IMAX, great sound.
Guest:I mean, this is an ideal movie for that.
Marc:It's the only way to see movies.
Marc:Generally, yeah.
Marc:Because, like, it's what I remember movies were, maybe because I was a smaller guy.
Marc:But it was like, that screen doesn't seem big to me.
Guest:No.
Marc:Like, it seems like this is the right size for a movie.
Marc:Exactly, yes.
Marc:Um, what, what was, what, what kind of impact did it have on me?
Marc:Well, what I liked was that, you know, I didn't fundamentally feel it as, um, signature Scorsese, you know, out of the gate because of, I mean, I think because of the terrain and because of, you know, the expanse of it because of the subject matter.
Marc:So I found it kind of interesting that I didn't read it cinematically, um,
Marc:as specifically Scorsese.
Marc:I knew that we were entering a big movie.
Marc:And for the first half hour to an hour where he's laying the pipe and you kind of get a sense of this guy, you know, I don't know how I felt about that movie or Leonardo DiCaprio's real story.
Marc:but I knew that the way it was handling native history was something I never saw before.
Guest:Right.
Marc:That I did not know about their position within the culture of oil in Oklahoma.
Marc:I didn't know the story.
Marc:I didn't know that they were sort of obviously sold a bill of goods, but were enabled to exist at a class that obviously they had never known before with money.
Marc:And I liked that the sort of Americanization of,
Marc:of Native expectations around that kind of early period of capitalism.
Marc:I liked all that stuff.
Marc:But once De Niro comes in as this benevolent fucking Satan...
Marc:I knew that something was up, and then right when that first conversation with DiCaprio, you're like, oh, this is the Irishman.
Marc:This is the loyal lunkhead who's going to do this old man's bidding, his uncle's bidding, no matter what.
Marc:The thing that didn't work for me was that De Niro did not play the love of money that he says he has.
Yeah.
Marc:And for me, that was tricky.
Marc:De Niro didn't play it?
Marc:No, I mean, DiCaprio.
Marc:Like, I thought that he built that character so deeply that, you know, when he actually falls in love with Lily Gladstone's character, which I believe he did, even after you know that De Niro told him to marry her for the... For real.
Marc:No, I believe it too.
Marc:Yeah.
Yeah.
Marc:You know, I believed that.
Marc:But throughout the movie, it became hard for me to believe that
Marc:the greed that was implicit in the script for that character.
Marc:I knew he was afraid of Robert De Niro, and he believed that he was stupid.
Marc:I think that DiCaprio really deferred to the intelligence of whatever De Niro was, and that moral kind of... It's not even a gray area.
Marc:I think that the racism of it, where...
Marc:That De Niro's character, I believed, really thought that he was doing good for the most part for the natives.
Marc:But he also didn't think they were people.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Well, that's I mean, that's the undercurrent of the whole thing is that the, you know, just right from the get go, when you find out that these people have inherited all this oil on the land that they were shunted to this terrible land.
Guest:And the oil money now has made them tremendously wealthy with these head rights, but also they are still kind of wards of the state.
Guest:They have to be deemed incompetent and have money managers, right?
Guest:So the entire structure of the Osage nation with the wealth that they've accumulated is still mediated by
Guest:White racist, essentially like the one guy is ahead of the Ku Klux Klan who is managing the money.
Marc:But that's what's interesting, because the government is incompetent and distant.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:But what you know, but the people that were in power were capitalists.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And I think what's interesting in there is that, you know, right right away, you know, De Niro's character is like, fuck the government.
Marc:Yeah, they're useless.
Marc:And then you have this kind of that the Freemason thing in the middle of everything to me was was brilliant because I would never have seen it coming.
Marc:But that is the brotherhood of capitalism.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:So, you know, so what you're dealing with there.
Marc:Is that these guys were like these guys were the guys that sort of like, you know, manifest destiny is like we're going to we're going to take it all.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And we're going to figure out how to do it.
Marc:And we're going to do it with or without the government's consent.
Marc:And the government will stay away because we're managing this situation that they don't want to manage.
Marc:And then we'll fucking own them.
Marc:Right.
Marc:That was deep stuff.
Guest:You know, a movie like this, it relies on being able to take its time.
Guest:It relies on presenting you with the whole lay of the land.
Guest:So that then when inciting incidents happen and things are occurring, you've had what feels like a lot of time to become adjusted to this time warp that you're in.
Guest:And it's like, I hear people complain about the length of it.
Guest:It's like, I could watch it for another hour.
Guest:And it's like, what else are you going to do with your time?
Guest:I guarantee you that if this movie was two hours, as opposed to three and a half, the other 90 minutes of your day would be worse than the 90 minutes that this genius provided you.
Marc:Like, look, Lily Gladstone, you know, held that thing together.
Marc:Like, she is the emotional core, but also...
Marc:She carries the movie.
Guest:She's the center of the film, absolutely.
Guest:And not just the moral center, but the magnetism of the film.
Guest:You cannot stop looking at her.
Guest:She is luminous.
Guest:She reminded me of Meryl Streep in The Deer Hunter, or just one of these...
Guest:undeniable stars these people with a magnetism that you can't take your eyes off of and and it's also the character she's playing is so regal and such a fascinating part of American history that you know
Guest:This was a person who existed and was deemed incompetent by the government, despite the fact that she's smarter than everyone else around her and and more capable to and intuitive.
Guest:And to be able to hold all that with very little dialogue is a tremendous thing.
Marc:But that was also that was my problem with with what happened is that, you know, everybody started to pale next to her after a certain point.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And and, you know, all the work that that DiCaprio had put into this human knot of a dumb shit that he was, you know, really started to look labored.
Marc:You know, as the movie went on.
Marc:And the problem I have with the script and the way that they decided to do it is that at some point you're like, why is she letting this happen?
Marc:If she is the wisdom, you know, why is she not on to what's happening?
Marc:Why does she not know she's being poisoned?
Guest:Well, I think she did.
Guest:And this is kind of a spoiler.
Guest:But I believe that all the Osage knew that they were getting fucked with.
Guest:I think the point of that scene in the tent when Jason Isabel's wife is dying and she's sitting there and De Niro hunkers in and starts praying over her and she starts crying is because she knows he's killing her.
Guest:They are aware that they are getting fucked.
Guest:And they can't do anything about it.
Guest:They are victims of it.
Guest:They essentially live in a prison.
Marc:But don't you think that the relationship between De Niro and Lily Gladstone had room to have that discussion at some point?
Guest:No, because they feared him like they feared the devil.
Guest:And she tries to say that to DiCaprio.
Guest:She tries to say, do you know your uncle?
Guest:Do you know him?
Guest:And he's like, yeah, he's a great guy.
Guest:Like, she knows he's the bad guy.
Guest:They all know he's the bad guy, but they can't fucking do anything.
Guest:And here's the other thing.
Guest:And again, we're getting into spoiler territory here.
Guest:These bad guys, they all talked a big game.
Guest:He presents himself like a crime lord, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Think about how many times in this movie he, being De Niro, is so goofy.
Guest:Goofy with that fucking paddle, paddle in his ass.
Guest:Goofy with his dumb glasses and his horn, right?
Guest:Goofy with his getting angry about shooting him in the forehead, not the back of the head.
Guest:No, in the front of the head, not the back of the head.
Guest:And he's like foghorn, leghorn.
Guest:These are fuck-ups and liars and boobs.
Guest:Just like all over the Scorsese filmography, these guys exist.
Guest:But they are allowed to get away with it forever because everyone around them is racist and allowing it and abetting it.
Guest:The lawyers, the judges, the money people...
Guest:they're part of it there's that scene where he walks into the room and they're just all standing there doing the bidding the jury is in there with his lawyers right yeah so they are all a part of this and the osage know if we're taking this money in we're in there we're in their grasp that's it and do you want to know when things change like immediately when the law shows up
Guest:As soon as the government engages in this thing, they figure it out in five seconds who the who's the bad guys, who everybody is.
Guest:They're all arrested.
Guest:It takes no time.
Guest:It's like that one scene where the FBI guys all show up to, you know, coordinate on their notes.
Guest:And they're like, yeah, we basically closed the case.
Guest:Like everything's done.
Marc:Well, yeah, because it was such a small group.
Marc:But but that's also sort of like the thing where.
Marc:like, the way the government works is, like, they know, you know, in terms of the nature of the relationship between, you know, early capitalism and the government, that it was like Pesci's character in Casino, when the mob bosses are like, we gotta bring him in.
Marc:But, yeah, I mean, you know, I realized all that, but to me, somehow, maybe because I'm naive when I see a movie once, like, I knew that she knew that there was evil there, but I did not...
Marc:I guess it's the nature of a totally oppressed population.
Marc:It's not really Stockholm syndrome, but it's the realization that there are no other options but the hope that something will change.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:And in fact, like there's nothing that makes her believe she believes.
Guest:OK, so those two doctors show up at the at the house and she won't let them inject her because she's.
Guest:you know, these people are all onto it.
Guest:The Osage, they're like, we're probably being killed.
Guest:What is this wasting disease?
Guest:Like even that's a line of dialogue.
Guest:It's like wasting disease.
Guest:What is that?
Guest:Over and over again.
Guest:So they know that they must, that there's something wrong with this.
Guest:It doesn't add up.
Marc:And they know that they're marrying these guys, that they're marrying them for the money.
Marc:But I think initially that, I don't know how they could think that
Marc:that would protect them at all.
Marc:I don't think they do.
Guest:I don't think they think of it as protection.
Marc:I think they think of it- But they just figure, oh, and also there's the threat of murder everywhere.
Guest:All the time, right.
Guest:So you go along to get along, right?
Guest:And in that moment when she tells them they have to leave, they're not gonna inject this shit in me because they're gonna kill me.
Guest:And DiCaprio pleads his case for why she needs to take this medicine.
Guest:She understands in that moment he is not trying to kill her.
Guest:He loves her.
Guest:Because that's true in that moment.
Guest:He believes this is medicine to help her.
Guest:And because of that, she says yes.
Guest:That...
Guest:that fact that he loves her in that moment is to her more important than the fact that there are people doing malfeasance to her and her people so the turn that he takes when they ask him to put the poison in right which is literally why she winds up walking away at the end it's the one thing well what else was in it
Marc:No, I get it.
Marc:But that was because of De Niro.
Marc:That the pull of that character was to honor this brotherhood of greed...
Marc:and dehumanize the people that he has grown, that he has children with.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Well, you're bringing up the next logical point, is that every step of the way, when DiCaprio is offered an opportunity to do the right thing, he does not.
Guest:He succumbs to whoever's telling him to do the bad thing, right?
Guest:And then finally...
Guest:The reason he decides to testify is because he is so far down the hole of paranoia and criminality that he believes it's quite possible that this guy just killed his infant child, right?
Yeah.
Guest:Well, do we know that he did?
Guest:No.
Guest:Do we know that he didn't?
Guest:No.
Guest:But the Rubicon has been crossed.
Guest:So there's no there's nothing anymore.
Guest:There's no there's there's no trust.
Guest:There's no ability for trust.
Guest:And that's when everything falls apart.
Guest:When this guy's finally like, oh, fuck.
Guest:I don't know the answer to this question.
Guest:I can't.
Guest:There's no one standing in front of him like like De Niro is when he's telling him to sign those land rights to say, this is the thing you need to do.
Guest:Do this now.
Guest:So he finally left to his own devices is like, I'm testifying against this guy because he killed my kid.
Marc:But I'd like to see how that third act is really handled, because once, you know, they blow up Jason Isbell's house and I assume a lot of his guitars.
Marc:They were all wood back then.
Marc:So, yeah, it went up fast.
Marc:All the all the rock guys did good.
Marc:But I mean, that to me, that that's the beginning of the third act.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Everyone's fucked.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, after that natives and the white guys.
Marc:But also you start to realize because of the dumb shitness of it.
Marc:That this wasn't the entire state of Oklahoma.
Marc:This was a small group of fucking, you know, renegade industrialists or capitalist fucks.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Grifting cunts that saw an opportunity.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, which is, you know, these small bands of people that the government allowed to happen because they ultimately put the infrastructure in to systemic racism in the name of capital gain.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's basically the indigenous genocide in microcosm.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's what happened on the whole country, but in this very specific tiny spot.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I guess like, you know, all the plea deals and all the, you know, the not even plea deals, but, you know, guys, you know, turning.
Marc:Um, it, it didn't have, it's probably intentional, but the, the resolution was, was muted, I guess, because there really isn't one.
Guest:Well, sure.
Guest:Now let's get to the ending, this coda in this, which I was fucking haunting.
Guest:And I, I was blown away by it.
Marc:And why wasn't the fucking brother on the stand?
Marc:Why did they abandon that fucking evil character for the third act?
Marc:I don't understand that.
Marc:How did that guy get off the hook?
Guest:Well, he did.
Guest:I mean, I think they tell you in that radio play.
Marc:I know they tell you, but that character was visibly menacing.
Marc:And I don't know, maybe he couldn't shoot for a week or two, but I just don't know why he's absent.
Guest:But I think what you're requiring there, what you're wanting there is some form of him getting his, right?
Marc:Yes.
Guest:Which no one gets in this other than the dumbass who, and the only thing you watch him get is the loss of his love, right?
Guest:She walks away from him.
Marc:And a bit of jail time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, but you don't watch him get sentenced.
Guest:You don't watch him have to walk away and get put in a car and sent off.
Marc:Did you like that?
Marc:What?
Marc:Did you like the device of the radio play?
Guest:I was absolutely haunted by it, yeah.
Guest:And not only the actual use of the radio play, but then having Scorsese deliver the final lines.
Yeah.
Guest:I sat with it as the credits were rolling, and I really was convinced this was the only way to end the movie.
Guest:Like, not specifically it had to be a radio show, but with the acknowledgement that these people, the Osage, through popular entertainment...
Guest:have not been able to tell their story.
Guest:And because of the inability of them to tell the story structurally, we don't give it to them.
Guest:They are not allowed it any more than she was allowed to have her own money, right?
Guest:And instead, what they get is white people interpreting their story and
Guest:And in the mode of the time, the 1930s or whenever that Lucky Strike radio show would have gone on, just looking at the people in that audience in their tuxedos and evening gowns, that was high quality entertainment for them.
Guest:That was their version of a Scorsese movie.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Going out for the night to see a highbrow thing, see this radio show and this fucking horrible story about this mass murder of hundreds of people.
Guest:And it's like a washboard and like typewriter mainstream mainstream entertainment.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And Jack White doing Indian voices.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And like all of that leading up to the guy who made this thing you just sat through for three and a half hours in what I saw as essentially an apology to say we have not done the job that we should have done.
Guest:In fact, her obituary does not even mention these murders.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then what does he cede his ground to?
Guest:The last shot of the movie is a tribal dance and a drum circle.
Guest:And he, Martin Scorsese, as amazing as he is, as we have talked about for an hour now, a guy who has left an indelible imprint on our minds and on American movies, he knows...
Guest:He is inadequate here.
Guest:And he's apologizing for it.
Guest:He's saying, I did my best.
Guest:I told the story as I could, but I couldn't tell your story.
Guest:And I'm sorry for that.
Guest:I was really haunted by that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, you know, because of the elevation, certainly in my mind and understanding of Native culture, you know, there is, at the end of that movie, a very tragic but very real sense of survival.
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Marc:despite the fact that it is so limited.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Well, and the fact that when that last shot pans up and this drum circle is there, what stood out to me was how small it was.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, it's a lot of people clustered together, but there's not a ton filling the space.
Marc:It's pretty horrifying the way that it really focuses on...
Marc:I think the thing that makes it more menacing than other genocide movies around Native people is the military action.
Marc:is what the entire sort of cowboys and Indians mythology was built on.
Marc:But this is really specifically about capitalism and the beginning of a still-existing systemic racism in the name of big business, right?
Marc:Right.
Marc:And this is the amount of human sacrifice that involved...
Marc:in a very intimate way around a culture of people, whereas now thousands and thousands of people, you know, die because of lack of regulation, because of systemic racism in terms of business practices and products and whatever.
Marc:And this is a very intimate sort of understanding of the roots of
Marc:Of not like, you know, these are savages, these are this, these are that, but literally how capitalism was fundamentally built on racist policy and the dehumanization of people.
Marc:And it goes on.
Guest:And in that sense, I agree with you that the De Niro character...
Guest:you know, believes he's just, he's, he's doing the right thing.
Guest:This is what he's allowed to do.
Guest:And he, he, he thinks these Osage are beautiful people.
Guest:And it doesn't matter that he's killed a hundred of them.
Guest:He's just there to be their friends.
Guest:And that's what a devil is.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I also will say the Scorsese hellscape,
Guest:is so perfectly rendered in this movie.
Guest:And it all culminates in that scene where he's committing insurance fraud on his cattle ranch, right?
Guest:And he's lit the ground on fire.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:But it's like up until that, you think about it, it's like everything was...
Guest:basically normal i mean there's murders going on sure but meanwhile like they're having weddings they have drag races there's a parade going on everybody meets at the pool hall it's like normalcy in life then these lawmen show up so it's the first time you really get outsiders in this movie outsiders meaning not just the white men but not the white men who lived there right yeah so this this washington shows up and the pov just shifted 10 degrees this thing looks like a fucking bosch painting now
Guest:right like yeah through the through the window you see this like these black demons these silhouetted demons like this guy this one shot of the guy with like a shovel or a pickaxe over his shoulders and he's got his arms on it it looks like that shot out of fantasia in the the night on bald mountain when the the the demons are are dancing in the flames and also the nature which we see today of of this sort of like
Marc:short money grift that like, you know, they're, you know, they're talking about land rights, uh, you know, forever, but he's still doing insurance scams.
Guest:I think that's probably how he made a lot of his money was through insurance fraud.
Marc:And, and just that, that just still goes on where he's like complaining about $25,000.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:Which, okay, granted, it was a lot of money in there then, but that's the nature of this type of greed.
Marc:It's like the entire Trump administration, all those guys that he put into, you know, those positions.
Guest:They were always fishing for couch change.
Guest:Always.
Guest:Seven grand.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But that's the nature of that guy, that person.
Guest:And corruption, right?
Guest:When corruption starts, then everyone wants a piece because it's unfair to not get it, right?
Marc:Right.
Guest:So that's the chain reaction of corruption.
Marc:Yeah.
Yeah.
Marc:So that's great.
Marc:I mean, I got to see it again, obviously.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like I said, sometime we should talk about his documentaries because I think there's a lot of stuff there.
Marc:And maybe I got to rewatch Silence just to load up a little bit to yell at my friend.
Guest:Yeah, let's have you and Sam on to talk about it.
Marc:It was sort of like, you, fuck.
Marc:You can't.
Marc:Not allowed.
Marc:It's not allowed.
Marc:Not allowed.
Bye.