# "I wonder what percent of people ever actually encounter a work of art that changes them" with Manohla Dargis | The Movie Racket

An episode of [Filmspotting](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/73330112), 19 Oct 2026, 58 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/d28227f8-56d8-46d9-b2c5-b3d3012db5ab/2a060e0d-f9c6-40e0-a68c-b4e800b25c4d/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=83c52568-54c6-438a-8751-b3d3012db5c3

Can a movie change your life? In a 1960s interview, Stanley Kubrick posed a deceptively simple provocation: "I wonder what percent of people ever actually encounter a work of art that changes them." This week, New York Times Chief Film Critic Manohla Dargis joins Michael Phillips to test this proposition against a lifetime of moviegoing. Together, they reflect on films that expanded their sense of what cinema could do — from Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless and Every Man for Himself to Kubrick's own 2001: A Space Odyssey — and discuss the difference between a movie that alters your life and one that offers you a profound experience. Join the conversation by emailing themovieracket@filmspotting.net. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:01] Speaker 1: A star is born tonight, and with it comes a
[0:09] Speaker 1: new love. I'm going Hollywood.
[0:15] Speaker 2: Well, well, here you are, checking out the Movie Racket,
[0:18] Speaker 2: hosted by... Ah, me! Each week in this inaugural season,
[0:25] Speaker 2: we're calling The Laws of Motion Pictures, an extraordinarily special
[0:29] Speaker 2: guest and I, talk about a single piece of Hollywood
[0:32] Speaker 2: wisdom or stupidity, a filmmaker's declaration of principles, maybe a snappy,
[0:38] Speaker 2: sometimes legendary quip with a weirdly long half-life, and then
[0:43] Speaker 2: we turn it inside out and see what it provokes
[0:46] Speaker 2: in our own feelings about the movies and this eternally
[0:49] Speaker 2: collapsing and reforming industry that somehow, either inside the remnants
[0:54] Speaker 2: of the studio system or, more independently, manages to deliver
[0:59] Speaker 2: the occasional masterwork. Miraculously, Stanley Kubrick forged relationships within the
[1:05] Speaker 2: studio system while maintaining a remarkable degree of creative control
[1:10] Speaker 2: over his methodical, fastidiously detailed visions of worlds without pity,
[1:16] Speaker 2: but at their most inspired, full of hypnotic beauty and
[1:21] Speaker 2: images we couldn't forget if we tried to. Five of
[1:25] Speaker 2: his 13 features, the final five, in fact, A Clockwork
[1:28] Speaker 2: Orange in 1971 through Eyes Wide Shut in 1999, came
[1:33] Speaker 2: out under the Warner Brothers banner. One of those five
[1:36] Speaker 2: was Barry Lyndon, which was released in 1975. This was
[1:40] Speaker 2: Kubrick's adaptation of the 19th century Thackeray novel. The filmmaker
[1:44] Speaker 2: told the French critic, editor, and author Michel Simon that
[1:48] Speaker 2: for Kubrick, the cinema had no business trying to change
[1:52] Speaker 2: the world. or even change a viewer's mind about anything, really.
[1:56] Speaker 2: Joining me for this week's show, Manola Dargis. She's the
[2:00] Speaker 2: chief film critic of the New York Times, and as
[2:02] Speaker 2: I found out after we lined her up for our conversation,
[2:06] Speaker 2: she placed Barry Lyndon on her 10 greatest of all
[2:09] Speaker 2: time list for sight and sound. We talk about movies
[2:13] Speaker 2: that did, in fact, change our worldviews, at least on cinema,
[2:18] Speaker 2: and our sense of what the movies could be in
[2:21] Speaker 2: our childhood and adolescence. For Manola, it was a Godard film.
[2:25] Speaker 2: And for me, it was a Kubrick film, actually. So,
[2:28] Speaker 2: let's go. Well, Manola Dargis, it's wonderful to have you
[2:37] Speaker 2: on this thing we call the Movie Wreck. Thanks for
[2:40] Speaker 2: jumping on.
[2:40] Speaker 3: Thank you for having me, Michael. It's a real pleasure.
[2:43] Speaker 2: It's been too long since we've kind of met up
[2:45] Speaker 2: in person, but I've been lucky enough to run into
[2:47] Speaker 2: you here and there on the festival circuit, and you
[2:50] Speaker 2: are now the chief film critic of the New York Times.
[2:53] Speaker 2: co-chief for many years. And before that, LA Weekly and
[2:57] Speaker 2: the LA Times and the Village Voice. And, you know,
[3:00] Speaker 2: you're just one of the greats. So I'm happy to
[3:04] Speaker 2: yak with you about this thing that Stanley Kubrick said,
[3:07] Speaker 2: which was in an interview around the time of Barry
[3:09] Speaker 2: Lyndon in 1975 with the French critic Michel Simon. And
[3:15] Speaker 2: they were talking about whether or not the impact of
[3:18] Speaker 2: his work, did he think about sort of the larger
[3:22] Speaker 2: impact on on audiences and he sort of dismissed that
[3:27] Speaker 2: just out of hand. And he said, I wonder what
[3:29] Speaker 2: percent of people ever actually encounter a work of art
[3:32] Speaker 2: that changes them, changes the view they have. And he
[3:35] Speaker 2: kind of laughs. There's like laughs in parentheses in the
[3:38] Speaker 2: original interview dismissively or something. And he says, yeah, maybe
[3:41] Speaker 2: if they're 15 or 16 years old, but he really
[3:43] Speaker 2: didn't buy it. Do you buy what he's saying? I mean,
[3:46] Speaker 2: he was not putting on an act, I think, but
[3:49] Speaker 2: what's your feeling when you hear that based on what
[3:51] Speaker 2: you think of Kubrick's work?
[3:53] Speaker 4: I wonder.
[3:53] Speaker 3: Well, given that he's dead, I guess we can talk
[3:56] Speaker 3: smack about him.
[3:59] Speaker 2: Excellent.
[4:00] Speaker 3: I love Kubrick's work. I never met the man. But
[4:03] Speaker 3: I think that the framing of the question is odd
[4:07] Speaker 3: to me or it's certainly not applicable to me. And
[4:09] Speaker 3: it's some of the people who I've talked to about,
[4:11] Speaker 3: like my husband and other people who, when we do
[4:14] Speaker 3: talk about art, I think that there are certainly works
[4:17] Speaker 3: of art that have that kind of lightning effect. That's
[4:19] Speaker 3: like you hear about the right spring, right? People were
[4:23] Speaker 3: rioting after listening to it. Whether that's true or not,
[4:37] Speaker 3: I mean, there's a lot of myths that sometimes involved
[4:40] Speaker 3: with how certain works are received and certain avant-garde works,
[4:44] Speaker 3: certain works of high modernism. For me, it's weird, Michael,
[4:49] Speaker 3: because I think it's a funny question, particularly for movie people,
[4:52] Speaker 3: because movie people, I think, have a different relationship to
[4:56] Speaker 3: the object. You know, we're not civilians. We watch many, many,
[4:59] Speaker 3: many more movies in a given year. We probably watch
[5:02] Speaker 3: more movies in a given year than most people watch
[5:05] Speaker 3: in a lifetime. You know, I mean, we know most
[5:07] Speaker 3: Americans are watching like in theaters, certainly like one movie,
[5:11] Speaker 3: maybe a couple of years. I watch hundreds of movies
[5:14] Speaker 3: a year, and I grew up in New York City,
[5:16] Speaker 3: and my parents were really broke. but they were also
[5:20] Speaker 3: avid moviegoers. And so they brought me to movies when
[5:25] Speaker 3: I was a kid and I was a really well-behaved child.
[5:27] Speaker 3: I mean, that all changed, of course, later. But there's
[5:31] Speaker 3: a kind of like, it's part of our family lore
[5:33] Speaker 3: that they took me to see the Vincent Minnelli movie,
[5:37] Speaker 3: Lust for Life, starring Kirk Douglas as Vincent Vengo. And
[5:41] Speaker 3: that when he cuts off his ear, I started crying, apparently,
[5:45] Speaker 3: in the movie theater. Now I was a toddler. My
[5:48] Speaker 3: parents took me to this and was like, why did
[5:50] Speaker 3: he cut off his ear? You know, I was very
[5:53] Speaker 3: upset by this. So my relationship, to movies is it's
[5:58] Speaker 3: like they're just part of the air I breathe. They've
[6:01] Speaker 3: been part of my life since I was a child.
[6:03] Speaker 3: I was brought to them regularly. I grew up long
[6:06] Speaker 3: before the advent of the helicopter parent. There was absolutely
[6:10] Speaker 3: no helicoptering going on with me at all. I went
[6:13] Speaker 3: to the movies by myself from a very young age,
[6:16] Speaker 3: and I grew up next to two movie theaters, one
[6:18] Speaker 3: of which was a second-run theater, so they were showing
[6:20] Speaker 3: movies after they had gone through the first run, Rear projection,
[6:28] Speaker 3: I sound like an ancient person because I am, but
[6:30] Speaker 3: rear projection of old Hollywood movies, so like Fred and Ginger,
[6:33] Speaker 3: et cetera, that kind of stuff. Meanwhile, I'm watching movies
[6:36] Speaker 3: on television all the time, too. Million Dollar Movie, Creature Feature,
[6:40] Speaker 3: or The Chiller, I think it was called. Also, Abbott
[6:43] Speaker 3: and Costello, 11 o'clock on Sundays.
[6:45] Speaker 2: Clockwork.
[6:45] Speaker 3: We watch Abbott and Costello movies.
[6:47] Speaker 2: Excellent. That's a great array.
[6:50] Speaker 5: Exactly.
[6:51] Speaker 6: I just paid 28 of these things. I mean, after all,
[6:53] Speaker 6: there's several offices I got to feed. And I got
[6:55] Speaker 6: just enough to give them.
[6:56] Speaker 5: 13 apiece.
[6:57] Speaker 1: You got what?
[6:58] Speaker 6: 13 apiece.
[6:58] Speaker 1: 13 apiece? Yeah.
[6:59] Speaker 6: Seven offices. Yeah. Each gets 13.
[7:02] Speaker 1: You only got 28. That's right.
[7:03] Speaker 6: I got $ 28 and 713. I got to give them
[7:04] Speaker 6: to them.
[7:04] Speaker 4: 713 is a 28?
[7:05] Speaker 6: Yeah.
[7:05] Speaker 5: That's ridiculous. It's got to be right.
[7:06] Speaker 6: 7 times 4 is 28, not 7 times 13. 7
[7:08] Speaker 6: times 4 is 28.
[7:08] Speaker 1: Sure.
[7:08] Speaker 7: 7 times 4 is 28.
[7:09] Speaker 6: Must have went to a cheap school.
[7:17] Speaker 3: So my taste is very... I like a lot of
[7:19] Speaker 3: different things. So my relationship is very different. But movies
[7:22] Speaker 3: obviously changed my life. But I don't think, again... I
[7:26] Speaker 3: was trying to think of the times that I saw
[7:29] Speaker 3: a movie and I was thunderstruck. Now, did it change
[7:33] Speaker 3: my relationship to movies? I don't know. But I will
[7:35] Speaker 3: say I saw Every Man for Himself, the Jean-Luc Godard
[7:38] Speaker 3: movie when I was 18. I saw it at the
[7:40] Speaker 3: Bleecker Street Cinema. And I was so... I remember walking out.
[7:45] Speaker 3: I literally have a very... distinct memory i feel like
[7:50] Speaker 3: i reeled out you know like i just was kind
[7:53] Speaker 3: of like not stable walking because i was just what
[7:58] Speaker 3: in the world had i just seen i'm not dying
[8:12] Speaker 3: I'd been absolutely fascinated by it, but I was still
[8:15] Speaker 3: trying to process this movie. And it's not even the
[8:18] Speaker 3: most experimental of Godard's works, but it was something I
[8:21] Speaker 3: had never seen before. You know, I'd grown up watching
[8:24] Speaker 3: really kind of Hollywood-style movies, a lot of new American cinema.
[8:28] Speaker 3: I mean, I was watching new American cinema at an
[8:31] Speaker 3: absolutely inappropriate age. I'm not sure that A 12-year-old should
[8:34] Speaker 3: be watching Drive, he said, or Five Easy Pieces. But
[8:38] Speaker 3: I was. Those are the movies. There's a lot of Disney.
[8:41] Speaker 4: Same.
[8:41] Speaker 3: No, it is.
[8:42] Speaker 2: It's the same thing. I mean, we're roughly the same age.
[8:45] Speaker 2: It's the same experience for me.
[8:47] Speaker 3: But I think that seeing a movie like The Godard
[8:50] Speaker 3: was just, it was like, oh, this is also a movie.
[8:53] Speaker 3: And then that way it does change it because it
[8:55] Speaker 3: opens up your understanding of what the art can do.
[9:00] Speaker 3: That movies aren't just like this. You know, it is
[9:03] Speaker 3: not just a Vincent Minnelli movie, but it's also this
[9:07] Speaker 3: other thing. Most of the work, though, that I feel
[9:10] Speaker 3: like kind of rearranged my brain has been really avant-garde work.
[9:13] Speaker 3: So the work of the American avant-garde filmmaker Ken Jacobs,
[9:16] Speaker 3: who died recently within the last two years. that work
[9:19] Speaker 3: really changed because it really, it just, I feel the
[9:23] Speaker 3: work that kind of expands your horizons and, you know,
[9:27] Speaker 3: I love movies, I love genre movies, but these are
[9:29] Speaker 3: movies that are out-of-the-box movies. You know, they are definitely
[9:32] Speaker 3: pushing the boundaries of what we even think of what
[9:34] Speaker 3: is cinema and in really interesting ways.
[9:37] Speaker 1: Dream of purity. Madame Nescience lies on her couch. She
[9:45] Speaker 1: is dreaming. She is dreaming of old musty memories memories
[9:54] Speaker 1: that she thought that she had forgot or so she.
[9:58] Speaker 3: Thought those are the movies that, I mean, did they
[10:02] Speaker 3: change me the way that, again, Kubrick is almost talking,
[10:05] Speaker 3: at least from what I understand this quote, is that
[10:08] Speaker 3: as if somehow you get bonked on the head. You know,
[10:12] Speaker 3: like someone just hits you over the head like in
[10:13] Speaker 3: a Popeye cartoon and you're like, you know, you have
[10:17] Speaker 3: birds fly around and then you change. I'm not sure
[10:20] Speaker 3: that That's been generally my experience. But there have been
[10:24] Speaker 3: a few times where I've just been, it's expanded my
[10:27] Speaker 3: ideas of what cinema could be in a really kind
[10:30] Speaker 3: of wonderful way. And I'm very open-minded about the kinds
[10:33] Speaker 3: of movies that I watch. You know, I saw Bella
[10:36] Speaker 3: Tarr's Saint Tango, which is a seven and a half
[10:39] Speaker 3: hour movie. And I actually had a physical reaction to
[10:43] Speaker 3: the movie because I felt like at some point I
[10:46] Speaker 3: was living in the movie in one way. And, you know,
[10:49] Speaker 3: there's a break. And I did leave. There's a part
[11:02] Speaker 3: where a girl is really mean to a cat. He
[11:04] Speaker 3: promises that the cat wasn't really abused, but the cat
[11:07] Speaker 3: is clearly unhappy, and I had to, like, leave. I'm
[11:10] Speaker 3: really bad when animals are being really hurt. Like, I
[11:13] Speaker 3: will walk out of a movie.
[11:14] Speaker 2: Boy, some of those years at Cannes, that was not
[11:15] Speaker 2: an easy... I mean, you'd run into five movies out
[11:18] Speaker 2: of 20 that were like, wait a minute, again with this?
[11:22] Speaker 3: I was just reviewing Christian Mungi's Romanian director, his new movie, Fjord.
[11:26] Speaker 3: And I remember I was sitting next to our good friend,
[11:29] Speaker 3: Tony Scott, A.O. Scott, as people will know him. And
[11:32] Speaker 3: we were watching Mungi's, his breakout movie, which was four months,
[11:36] Speaker 3: three weeks, and two days, about a woman in Romania...
[11:40] Speaker 3: trying to get an abortion. That's how pregnant she is.
[11:43] Speaker 3: And there's a very long sequence when she gets this
[11:45] Speaker 3: back alley abortion. And I'm not kidding. I almost fainted.
[11:49] Speaker 3: I started leaning next to Tony and kind of sinking
[11:53] Speaker 3: in my seat. And I then had to kind of
[11:55] Speaker 3: like I got out of it, but I almost passed out. So,
[11:58] Speaker 3: I mean, that kind of changed me. But did it
[12:00] Speaker 3: change my life? His sense of, like, the art.
[12:02] Speaker 2: I mean, that's one of the roughest five, ten minutes
[12:05] Speaker 2: I've experienced in modern cinema. I mean, it was rough.
[12:09] Speaker 5: Yes.
[12:09] Speaker 3: And he wants it to be rough.
[12:10] Speaker 2: Right, right. And I still wrestle a little bit about
[12:13] Speaker 2: if I see it again, which I've actually, I mean,
[12:16] Speaker 2: I was quite gripped by the whole game. It's about
[12:18] Speaker 2: every aspect of the film. And you do wonder, it
[12:21] Speaker 2: does make you ask what is a legitimately grueling experience
[12:25] Speaker 2: and what isn't and how cinema works. The aesthetics can change.
[12:28] Speaker 2: And what you're talking about, Manola, is I'm kind of
[12:30] Speaker 2: understanding is that, I mean, you're consumed, of course, by
[12:34] Speaker 2: the aesthetic discoveries or wallops you get from a movie
[12:39] Speaker 2: that is doing something in an utterly new way, right?
[12:41] Speaker 2: The first time you see that, Godard, you know, for me,
[12:44] Speaker 2: it was some of his later stuff in the 80s.
[12:46] Speaker 2: And then just to go back to Breathless, which is
[12:49] Speaker 2: comparatively pretty square, but at the time, of course, the
[12:53] Speaker 2: shock of the new, right? And it took Richard Brody's
[12:56] Speaker 2: book to just sort of explained in a couple of
[12:58] Speaker 2: incredibly judicious paragraphs. Well, the whole point is that he
[13:01] Speaker 2: learned how to edit out the middles of scenes, or
[13:04] Speaker 2: he went straight to the middle and cut out the
[13:06] Speaker 2: beginning and the end, and that gave it this bizarre
[13:08] Speaker 2: rhythm that was utterly new to my nervous system, you know?
[13:11] Speaker 7: Yeah.
[13:20] Speaker 3: But by the time I see Breathless, that was not
[13:23] Speaker 3: my first Godard movie. Every Man for Himself was my
[13:26] Speaker 3: first Godard movie. And by that point, I mean, I
[13:30] Speaker 3: was a very unusual kid. You know, I'm a total
[13:33] Speaker 3: normal person now, except for the movies. You know, I'm
[13:35] Speaker 3: just like utterly, I mean, I don't know, normal. But again,
[13:39] Speaker 3: I grew up on European art cinema so that I
[13:42] Speaker 3: had seen Jules and Jim, and it was one of
[13:45] Speaker 3: my favorite movies when I was eight.
[13:46] Speaker 6: C'est vous, Jim?
[13:47] Speaker 4: Non, Jules.
[13:57] Speaker 3: And I know that sounds ridiculous, but it was literally
[13:59] Speaker 3: my two favorite movies when I was eight was Cocteau's
[14:01] Speaker 3: Orphée and Truffaut's Jules and Jim. Now that's a very
[14:05] Speaker 3: odd thing for an eight-year-old, but I grew up in
[14:06] Speaker 3: New York City, downtown. My parents were like quasi-Bohemians. So
[14:11] Speaker 3: for me, the patterns that I think many people are
[14:15] Speaker 3: used to that they get from a Hollywood and a
[14:17] Speaker 3: Hollywood-esque movie about how movies move. And you're used to
[14:22] Speaker 3: those patterns. Those patterns were already different for me because
[14:26] Speaker 3: I'd already experienced European art cinema, which is different. You know,
[14:29] Speaker 3: it has ambiguity. Maybe it's slower. Maybe it's more mysterious.
[14:34] Speaker 3: It's not as kind of transparent as like some of
[14:38] Speaker 3: the Hollywood movies. I was growing up with both of those.
[14:41] Speaker 3: So I think that I had to kind of expand
[14:42] Speaker 3: in sense of not like it makes me special. It's
[14:45] Speaker 3: just that It was going to be something like Dara's
[14:48] Speaker 3: Every Man for Himself to really kind of knock me sideways.
[14:51] Speaker 3: I mean, it also, I think, had some sex in it.
[14:53] Speaker 3: I don't think that's what I was ready to do,
[14:55] Speaker 3: but the whole thing was like, what? And also, I
[14:57] Speaker 3: wasn't sure what he was saying and doing and what
[15:00] Speaker 3: he wanted me to think. I felt like I didn't
[15:04] Speaker 3: have signposts, you know?
[15:05] Speaker 4: Right.
[15:06] Speaker 2: Yeah, beautifully put. Okay, so how does Kubrick's skepticism, do
[15:09] Speaker 2: you think, regarding this issue of like, you know, doing
[15:12] Speaker 2: art maybe with the intention of changing minds change? Or
[15:16] Speaker 2: is skepticism generally about whether or not a film, a painting,
[15:19] Speaker 2: a sculpture, whatever, can actually change someone's point of view
[15:22] Speaker 2: fundamentally on something big? Does that show up in his
[15:25] Speaker 2: work in any aesthetic or any other way?
[15:28] Speaker 3: I literally have no idea. I mean, I read, you know,
[15:32] Speaker 3: because you had sent me some of the questions that
[15:34] Speaker 3: we were going to discuss earlier, and I read that
[15:37] Speaker 3: one a lot. Like, I read it several times because
[15:40] Speaker 3: I was like, what do I say to this? I
[15:42] Speaker 3: don't know. I mean— Does Kubrick want to change our
[15:46] Speaker 3: minds with Lolita? I don't know. I mean, I think
[15:49] Speaker 3: the book is much more radical than the movie. I
[15:52] Speaker 3: like the movie, but the book is so much more, obviously,
[15:55] Speaker 3: radical for a lot of different reasons than the movie
[15:57] Speaker 3: is because he couldn't cast someone. What is she, eight
[16:00] Speaker 3: in the book? I mean, you know, he couldn't do that.
[16:03] Speaker 3: And Sue Lyons doesn't look like an eight-year-old at all.
[16:07] Speaker 3: It really changes your relationship to the story, I think,
[16:11] Speaker 3: for better or for worse.
[16:12] Speaker 1: Right.
[16:12] Speaker 2: And she's supposed to be something like, what, 14, 15,
[16:14] Speaker 2: maybe 16 or Or 12.
[16:37] Speaker 6: Yeah.
[16:38] Speaker 3: And she looks like a woman to me. I mean,
[16:40] Speaker 3: I don't know. I just, whatever. So that's different. But
[16:43] Speaker 3: does he want us to change our minds about watching Dr. Strangelove,
[16:46] Speaker 3: a movie I love and watched fairly recently again? I
[16:49] Speaker 3: don't know. I mean, I feel like he's commenting about
[16:53] Speaker 3: the world, but I'm not sure that he, I mean,
[16:56] Speaker 3: Kubrick's really an entertainer. You may not be entertained all
[16:59] Speaker 3: the time and certainly not, you know, I didn't find
[17:02] Speaker 3: Eyes Wide Shut particularly entertaining, but you know, his last movie.
[17:06] Speaker 6: Why?
[17:06] Speaker 3: I think it doesn't work. I saw it several times.
[17:09] Speaker 3: I was so massively like depressed to have to, I
[17:12] Speaker 3: gave it a bad review. It just didn't work for
[17:14] Speaker 3: me on any level. I thought Tom Cruise was terribly miscast.
[17:17] Speaker 3: I mean, the thing that I remember the most is
[17:20] Speaker 3: very close to the beginning of the movie when Nicole
[17:23] Speaker 3: Kidman drops her dress, you know, which is like, it's like, oh,
[17:27] Speaker 3: Nicole Kidman is naked and wow. Okay. You know, great
[17:31] Speaker 3: looking woman, very, you know, it's like she's, But the
[17:35] Speaker 3: rest of the movie was completely uninteresting to me and
[17:37] Speaker 3: I thought kind of embarrassing, honestly. And I've never wanted
[17:41] Speaker 3: to revisit it, whereas I have revisited other of Kubrick's movies.
[17:45] Speaker 3: I mean, Barry Lyndon, I think, is a masterpiece, a
[17:47] Speaker 3: difficult masterpiece and something that I haven't really watched in
[17:50] Speaker 3: a while because in rewatching it, I want to see
[17:52] Speaker 3: it big because I think it's one of the most
[17:54] Speaker 3: beautiful movies I've ever seen.
[17:55] Speaker 2: That's what I'm waiting for, too. I'm waiting for a
[17:58] Speaker 2: good print.
[17:59] Speaker 3: Yeah, me too. Yeah, exactly. Whereas, you know, Dr. Strangelove,
[18:03] Speaker 3: I felt very comfortable watching that on my TV. That's fine. So,
[18:08] Speaker 3: you know, I've certainly rewatched the movies. But again, do
[18:11] Speaker 3: you feel like has Kubrick movie ever changed your life?
[18:14] Speaker 2: The first one I saw was 2001 at age eight.
[18:17] Speaker 2: And I saw it a year after it came out. Because,
[18:20] Speaker 2: you know, those are the days when movies stuck around
[18:22] Speaker 2: for a year. I'm a film like that. We drove up,
[18:25] Speaker 2: my mom and I. I got my mom to drive
[18:26] Speaker 2: me up to Milwaukee to see this. I mean, I'd
[18:29] Speaker 2: seen The Love Bug that week, I think, too.
[18:31] Speaker 3: What a double feature.
[18:34] Speaker 1: Everyone has a fantastic story to tell about his car.
[18:38] Speaker 2: Now, get lined up for the one that tops them all.
[18:43] Speaker 1: It's the story of Herbie, the screen's first four-cylinder star.
[18:49] Speaker 6: Dave, do you mind if I ask you a personal question? No,
[18:54] Speaker 6: not at all. I've wondered whether you might be having
[19:00] Speaker 6: some second thoughts about the mission. How do you mean?
[19:09] Speaker 2: And I was really into the Apollo space program and
[19:12] Speaker 2: all that, and I thought, well, that looks interesting. And
[19:16] Speaker 2: so we went, and that drive home was... I had
[19:20] Speaker 2: some questions about the film about... My mom, lovely, pleasant, easygoing,
[19:25] Speaker 2: always supportive. But she, you know, I just was like,
[19:28] Speaker 2: so what's the obelisk? Or I didn't call it an obelisk.
[19:31] Speaker 2: What's that thing? What's that rectangle, the metal rectangle?
[19:35] Speaker 3: She tried to answer and.
[19:37] Speaker 1: I was like, you know, the other thing is I.
[19:41] Speaker 2: Don't get at the end. And then, you know, all
[19:45] Speaker 2: the questions about the ending at age eight or nine,
[19:49] Speaker 2: I forget. And my memory is that she actually pulled
[19:53] Speaker 2: over from the drive down, back down to her scene
[19:56] Speaker 2: and said, Michael, I'm so sorry. I don't have a
[19:59] Speaker 2: single answer for you about this movie. That's beautiful.
[20:03] Speaker 6: Yeah.
[20:03] Speaker 2: And, and, you know, she wasn't like mad or it
[20:05] Speaker 2: wasn't anything, but it was just more like, You know,
[20:07] Speaker 2: I saw it a couple more times. I saw everything
[20:10] Speaker 2: a lot back then, especially, but that nothing, God knows,
[20:13] Speaker 2: puzzled me and really rolled around in my head in
[20:17] Speaker 2: ways I couldn't pin down or even figure out what
[20:20] Speaker 2: we were supposed to feel or think about at all.
[20:22] Speaker 2: And I think that's maybe a little bit of what
[20:25] Speaker 2: Kubrick's talking about in this quote of his is like,
[20:28] Speaker 2: you know, did it change me? It certainly did. as
[20:31] Speaker 2: you say, kind of withheld so much of the stuff
[20:33] Speaker 2: I'd already been spoon-fed, you know, the first few years
[20:35] Speaker 2: of my movie-going life. Beginning, middle, end, rooting interest, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
[20:40] Speaker 2: and all the rest of it. So I was thrilled.
[20:43] Speaker 2: Thrilled and completely puzzled. Maybe that was my Godard two
[20:47] Speaker 2: or three things experience.
[20:48] Speaker 3: But that's great, though, because sometimes people get really angry
[20:52] Speaker 3: when they see a work of art.
[20:59] Speaker 7: So So you had a dream about this place?
[21:04] Speaker 4: Tell me.
[21:06] Speaker 5: They start out that I'm in here, but it's not
[21:10] Speaker 5: day or night. It's kind of half night, you know?
[21:15] Speaker 5: But it looks just like this, except for the light.
[21:19] Speaker 3: I remember when David Lynch's Mulholland Drive came out, and
[21:23] Speaker 3: I really, I loved the movie. And I saw it
[21:25] Speaker 3: at Cannes, and I didn't fully understand what was going on.
[21:31] Speaker 3: I was an adult and actual, you know, I was certified.
[21:35] Speaker 3: I was a professional movie critic. But I think one
[21:37] Speaker 3: of the things that I'm really grateful for, the fact
[21:40] Speaker 3: that I had seen a lot of art cinema when
[21:42] Speaker 3: I was younger, is that I was okay not understanding it. Like,
[21:47] Speaker 3: my relationship to art is that I'm completely okay if
[21:50] Speaker 3: I don't get it. I don't think that I'm stupid.
[21:52] Speaker 3: I figure, oh, how interesting. Let me go back and
[21:56] Speaker 3: let me think about it. You know, I like figuring
[21:58] Speaker 3: out how movies work. That is the most fun. That's
[22:01] Speaker 3: my fun in writing about movies is like, okay, how
[22:05] Speaker 3: is this working? Why is it working? Why is it
[22:07] Speaker 3: working on me? Why didn't it work on me? I
[22:09] Speaker 3: know what they're trying to do. I think they're trying
[22:11] Speaker 3: to do. Like to me, it's a puzzle. I'm trying
[22:13] Speaker 3: to figure it out. But if I don't understand something,
[22:16] Speaker 3: I don't get angry. In fact, I really loved so
[22:20] Speaker 3: much about Mulholland Drive, but it was only on the
[22:23] Speaker 3: second viewing that That I understood how it opens and
[22:26] Speaker 3: how it closes. And I was like, oh, I get it. However,
[22:30] Speaker 3: I had an experience with that movie where I had
[22:34] Speaker 3: people both write in and colleagues who were really angry
[22:37] Speaker 3: at it. Angry at the movie because they didn't understand it.
[22:41] Speaker 2: Look, where's this going?
[22:43] Speaker 6: What do you want me to do?
[22:45] Speaker 4: There's sometimes a buggy. How many drivers does a buggy have?
[22:52] Speaker 1: One.
[22:53] Speaker 4: So let's just say I'm driving this buggy. And if
[22:57] Speaker 4: you fix your attitude, you can ride along with me. Okay?
[23:03] Speaker 3: I mean, maybe, Michael, maybe you were destined to be
[23:06] Speaker 3: a movie person because as opposed to shutting down when
[23:09] Speaker 3: you saw 2001, you were really like, oh, well, what
[23:14] Speaker 3: is that? Like, it actually spurred your curiosity. And I
[23:17] Speaker 3: think that that's perfect for a movie critic, right? You
[23:20] Speaker 3: have to be curious.
[23:21] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[23:21] Speaker 4: Yeah.
[23:21] Speaker 2: You hope that, I mean, I did not have the
[23:24] Speaker 2: singular access to world cinema that I think New Yorkers
[23:27] Speaker 2: have when they're growing up. It was good enough for
[23:29] Speaker 2: me to be in a town that was halfway between
[23:33] Speaker 2: Milwaukee and Chicago, especially by the time I was a teenager.
[23:36] Speaker 2: Because I was like, okay, double features, the fine arts.
[23:38] Speaker 2: I mean, I got my folks, those guys, I really
[23:41] Speaker 2: owe them everything, you know. I mean, we'd go down.
[23:43] Speaker 2: We go down and see like the only Marx Brothers
[23:45] Speaker 2: film out of the 13. And that's not something I'm
[23:48] Speaker 2: proud of. You know, well, you got to go see this.
[23:50] Speaker 2: The last one they made is it never shows up
[23:52] Speaker 2: on TV. And I had the whole argument ready. And
[23:54] Speaker 2: they're like, all right, we'll make it. We used to
[23:56] Speaker 2: go down twice a year and stay at a hotel.
[23:57] Speaker 2: My brother and I would run around. You know, it's great.
[24:00] Speaker 2: And we saw Take the Money and Run. I remember
[24:01] Speaker 2: in the loop and we sat in one of the
[24:03] Speaker 2: back of the enormous checker cabs and all that. So
[24:06] Speaker 2: maybe it's when we see movies like that. You're focusing
[24:09] Speaker 2: on the film and you're consumed by it if it's
[24:11] Speaker 2: any good at all or puzzling in a way that's
[24:13] Speaker 2: completely kind of bamboozling to you. But you're also, you know,
[24:17] Speaker 2: it's just the experience of it. The event of it
[24:19] Speaker 2: was something. And 2001 as a kid, that felt like
[24:22] Speaker 2: an event that I may never understand, right, fully. But, yeah,
[24:26] Speaker 2: it's great.
[24:27] Speaker 3: Do you understand it now? Can I just ask, do
[24:28] Speaker 3: you understand 2001 now? Do you feel like you get
[24:31] Speaker 3: everything that Kubrick was trying to do and what the
[24:34] Speaker 3: star child is and everything?
[24:36] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[24:37] Speaker 3: Hello, Mr.
[24:37] Speaker 4: Kubrick.
[24:38] Speaker 5: Hi. How do you do, sir?
[24:40] Speaker 2: When the audio of his interview with.
[24:43] Speaker 4: My name is Jimmy Aoi.
[24:45] Speaker 7: Can I ask you some questions?
[24:47] Speaker 2: The audio of that call, which is largely about 2001,
[24:51] Speaker 2: it's not a long call, but it's about enough minutes
[24:54] Speaker 2: to kind of get into some detail. And they got
[24:56] Speaker 2: into very... This guy asked very straightforwardly, explain what the
[25:01] Speaker 2: meaning is here. Well, Japanese people.
[25:04] Speaker 5: love your films, but people are wondering what is the
[25:09] Speaker 5: meaning of lost shame.
[25:11] Speaker 2: And ordinarily he wouldn't deal with that, but I think
[25:14] Speaker 2: maybe the sort of extra level of meeting of two cultures,
[25:18] Speaker 2: and he was just on good behavior, I think.
[25:20] Speaker 7: I've tried to avoid doing this ever since the picture
[25:23] Speaker 7: came out, because when you just say the ideas, they
[25:29] Speaker 7: sound foolish.
[25:31] Speaker 2: And he kind of walked through a I don't think
[25:33] Speaker 2: it was like 2001 for Dummies explanation, but it was
[25:37] Speaker 2: probably more about what he and Arthur C. Clarke talked about. Okay,
[25:41] Speaker 2: what are we going to show and what are we
[25:43] Speaker 2: sort of inferring here? What are we implying? And I was,
[25:47] Speaker 2: you know, at age 60-something. I was like, yeah, I
[25:50] Speaker 2: want to hear that call. Just find out.
[25:52] Speaker 7: The idea was supposed to be that. He is taken
[25:55] Speaker 7: in by godlike entities, creatures of pure energy and intelligence
[26:01] Speaker 7: with no shape or form.
[26:05] Speaker 2: So it still does kind of, to answer your question, no,
[26:09] Speaker 2: I don't get all of it. But I do love,
[26:11] Speaker 2: I took my son to it when he was about 12.
[26:16] Speaker 2: And it was fascinating talking to him a little bit
[26:18] Speaker 2: afterwards about the stuff he really didn't have any patience
[26:21] Speaker 2: for and stuff he was like completely gripped by, all
[26:23] Speaker 2: in the same film. And I think that's the first
[26:25] Speaker 2: time that he had had that kind of like wild
[26:27] Speaker 2: swing within a film. He was like everything that was
[26:31] Speaker 2: kind of, and it makes sense in retrospect, 12 years old, hell.
[26:36] Speaker 2: I mean, think of it. I mean, we are dealing
[26:37] Speaker 2: with that kind of nemesis in our daily lives. Right now. Yeah, exactly.
[26:41] Speaker 2: But I mean, of course, that chunk of the film
[26:45] Speaker 2: where it's care du lait versus the eye of Hal.
[26:49] Speaker 2: That's riveting cinema.
[26:50] Speaker 3: Absolutely. Absolutely.
[26:52] Speaker 1: Hello, Hal.
[26:52] Speaker 5: Do you read me?
[26:54] Speaker 8: Do you read me, Hal?
[26:56] Speaker 6: Affirmative, Dave.
[26:58] Speaker 7: I read you.
[27:00] Speaker 6: Open the pod bay doors, Hal. I'm sorry, Dave. I'm
[27:06] Speaker 6: afraid I can't do that. What's the problem? I think
[27:11] Speaker 6: you know what the problem is just as well as
[27:13] Speaker 6: I do.
[27:14] Speaker 2: There's a lot of stuff like that in Kubrick where
[27:16] Speaker 2: you just have to kind of just marvel at. You
[27:18] Speaker 2: can call him heady or cold or remote or anything.
[27:21] Speaker 2: And I do love some films a hell of a
[27:24] Speaker 2: lot more than some of his other films.
[27:25] Speaker 3: Yeah, sure.
[27:27] Speaker 2: But that I love kind of just calling him an entertainer.
[27:29] Speaker 2: I don't think he would balk at that at all.
[27:32] Speaker 3: And that's not an insult. You know, I get impatient
[27:34] Speaker 3: with a certain kind of. Clearly, someone's trying to make
[27:38] Speaker 3: an art film. And so it can be just as
[27:40] Speaker 3: cliched as any Hollywood movie or as any, you know,
[27:43] Speaker 3: indie movie. It's just like you're just using the same, oh,
[27:45] Speaker 3: you know what? You can actually cut now. I don't
[27:48] Speaker 3: need this really, this long take it, you know, or
[27:50] Speaker 3: this long shot is taking forever. It's like, nope, got
[27:53] Speaker 3: the idea. You can stop doing that.
[27:56] Speaker 2: Right, right. Yeah, that's right.
[27:58] Speaker 3: But it's funny mentioning Hal because I think Kubrick did
[28:01] Speaker 3: change our lives and a lot of lives, but it's
[28:04] Speaker 3: a little differently. You know, maybe again, it's how he
[28:08] Speaker 3: phrases how something changes. It's like when I think of
[28:11] Speaker 3: AI in a lot of ways, I think of Hal.
[28:14] Speaker 3: Like Hal kind of is a stand-in in a computer,
[28:17] Speaker 3: the malevolent computer, the brain. You know, like that's a
[28:20] Speaker 3: kind of like that is now this image in my head.
[28:25] Speaker 1: All right, Hal.
[28:26] Speaker 2: I'll go in through the emergency airlock.
[28:30] Speaker 6: Without your space helmet, Dave, you're going to find that
[28:33] Speaker 6: rather difficult.
[28:35] Speaker 2: Hal, I won't argue with you anymore.
[28:37] Speaker 6: Open the doors. Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye. Hal?
[28:48] Speaker 5: Hal?
[28:49] Speaker 3: I mean, that and the Terminators, like, I just keep
[28:51] Speaker 3: thinking that we're just all, like, actually we're living through
[28:54] Speaker 3: the early stages of the Terminator. You know, where it's
[28:57] Speaker 3: like the machines are rising.
[28:59] Speaker 8: The Skynet funding bill is passed. The system goes online
[29:02] Speaker 8: on August 4th, 1997. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense.
[29:07] Speaker 8: Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes
[29:11] Speaker 8: self-aware at 2.14 a.m. Eastern Time, August 29th. In a panic,
[29:16] Speaker 8: they try to pull the plug.
[29:19] Speaker 2: Skynet fights back.
[29:21] Speaker 1: Yes.
[29:21] Speaker 8: It launches its missiles against the targets in Russia.
[29:24] Speaker 3: Why attack Russia?
[29:27] Speaker 8: Because Skynet knows that the Russian counterattack will eliminate its
[29:30] Speaker 8: enemies over here.
[29:33] Speaker 3: I think that movies sometimes, they have an image, an idea,
[29:37] Speaker 3: a moment, and then you carry that with you and
[29:40] Speaker 3: they become the lens through which you look at something
[29:42] Speaker 3: or like a filter. Like, so now, you know, the
[29:45] Speaker 3: scary computer is for me, Hal. I reach for that immediately.
[29:50] Speaker 3: Or ideas about like what's sexy between men and women, like,
[29:54] Speaker 3: you know, all those romantic movies that like our ideas
[29:57] Speaker 3: are shaped by those movies because they're very repetitive. And
[30:00] Speaker 3: as you keep watching them again and again, you know,
[30:03] Speaker 3: and the same thing, Elsa and Rick and Casablanca, you know,
[30:07] Speaker 3: it's just, you know, or you worry about people who
[30:10] Speaker 3: take Vertigo as like an example of love, you know,
[30:13] Speaker 3: like that's really obsessive love. Like that's terrible. Like, you know,
[30:17] Speaker 3: I just think that movies, they change us in a
[30:19] Speaker 3: different way than maybe that quote is. So it's not
[30:23] Speaker 3: that you are Now I am a completely different person.
[30:26] Speaker 3: It's more that they've entered your brain in a way,
[30:30] Speaker 3: and sometimes they become part of your memories, and that's weird, too.
[30:35] Speaker 6: Right.
[30:36] Speaker 2: Is there any movie you remember, Manola, at maybe younger
[30:40] Speaker 2: than 15, since you got the New York movie maniac,
[30:43] Speaker 2: I think you all have to say age seven instead,
[30:46] Speaker 2: where it's more like you remember a reaction, more on
[30:50] Speaker 2: that sort of like emotional sort of... About like behavior or,
[30:55] Speaker 2: you know.
[30:56] Speaker 3: This is a bad thing that someone is doing?
[30:58] Speaker 2: Yes, yes. Or this is, I mean, not like this
[31:00] Speaker 2: is the first time I've seen this, but more just
[31:02] Speaker 2: like less of an aesthetic reaction, but more just like, oh,
[31:06] Speaker 2: maybe before you had the thoughts fully formed about it.
[31:08] Speaker 2: But it's like, I mean, it may not be a
[31:10] Speaker 2: very good movie, but I really love that scene when, or,
[31:13] Speaker 2: you know, that's the sort of change for the first time,
[31:16] Speaker 2: maybe at that age where you just see, I saw
[31:18] Speaker 2: Sounder when I was 11 and I had not seen
[31:23] Speaker 2: I'd seen a lot of black films, a couple of
[31:27] Speaker 2: them in the loop with my cousin, but I had
[31:29] Speaker 2: not seen like a family outing, four of us in Racine, Wisconsin,
[31:34] Speaker 2: surrounded mostly by a black audience for a sounder. And
[31:37] Speaker 2: that was naive as this sounds, you know, at age 11.
[31:41] Speaker 3: No, it's not naive.
[31:42] Speaker 2: And the fact that I was completely a wreck at
[31:45] Speaker 2: that long take that Martin Ridd actually pulled off and
[31:48] Speaker 2: God knows Cicely Tyson did, where they're running, running, running,
[31:51] Speaker 2: running toward each other. And there were things that I
[32:03] Speaker 2: realize now in that scene, because I have gone back
[32:05] Speaker 2: to it, because I've thought about it. It's like, okay,
[32:07] Speaker 2: what isn't there? No music. Okay, so you're not being
[32:09] Speaker 2: told how to feel. Excellent. And that was probably the
[32:12] Speaker 2: first time I wasn't just emotionally kind of cued to
[32:14] Speaker 2: death in a moment like that, that's typically only out
[32:17] Speaker 2: for tears. So I don't know, that was like, that
[32:20] Speaker 2: was a little bit filmmaking, even though that was based
[32:23] Speaker 2: on kind of a, young adult type novel of the time,
[32:27] Speaker 2: that felt like a little tiptoe into the adult film world,
[32:30] Speaker 2: I guess. Just before I started seeing, two years later,
[32:34] Speaker 2: I was, you know, Long Goodbye, you know, all the
[32:36] Speaker 2: Altman stuff. I mean, that was kind of my, you know,
[32:38] Speaker 2: Long Goodbye Chinatown, all the stuff that, and that was
[32:42] Speaker 2: a wonderful time to come of age, right?
[32:44] Speaker 3: The 70s were, I mean, and my St. Mark's Cinema
[32:47] Speaker 3: just had all this stuff. And I just, again, there
[32:49] Speaker 3: was no prohibition about that this is a too adult
[32:52] Speaker 3: movie for you to see. So I was just seeing
[32:54] Speaker 3: things that, I mentioned Drive, he said earlier, but that
[32:57] Speaker 3: was a movie that I literally did not understand what
[32:59] Speaker 3: was going on, but I was interested in it. You know, again,
[33:02] Speaker 3: I saw Sounder probably around the same time that you did,
[33:06] Speaker 3: but my experience was different because I grew up in
[33:09] Speaker 3: New York. I grew up downtown. I mean, I think
[33:12] Speaker 3: I was really upset about the dog being shot. Totally, totally.
[33:16] Speaker 3: It was very upsetting to me. But I don't think
[33:18] Speaker 3: I would have been aware at the time that, oh,
[33:21] Speaker 3: there's no music here for that extraordinary ending, which he
[33:24] Speaker 3: does pull off. You know, I really love that movie.
[33:26] Speaker 3: It's a really, really beautiful movie. They're all great in it.
[33:29] Speaker 3: It's a great dog movie. I just I've written. last
[33:32] Speaker 3: year a piece about dogs and movies because I'm really
[33:35] Speaker 3: interested in how animals are used in movies. But I
[33:38] Speaker 3: don't know. Again, I think I was seeing too many movies.
[33:41] Speaker 3: And I don't know, man. I grew up in St.
[33:43] Speaker 3: Mark's Place between 2nd and 3rd and East Village in
[33:46] Speaker 3: the late 60s and early 70s. And it was pretty rough,
[33:50] Speaker 3: you know. And my school was in a really kind
[33:54] Speaker 3: of really, really rough neighborhood. And so I The behaviors
[33:58] Speaker 3: that I was seeing in movies did not in any
[34:00] Speaker 3: way touch the behaviors that were happening around me, where
[34:04] Speaker 3: I was very aware. Like, I remember going to school
[34:07] Speaker 3: and I knew there had been a mass shooting at
[34:09] Speaker 3: a bar. Like, I remember thinking, ooh, you know, and
[34:12] Speaker 3: the Hells Angels threw a woman off a roof. I mean,
[34:16] Speaker 3: that kind of stuff. So, I mean, it's not to like, ooh.
[34:18] Speaker 3: But it was, you know, East Village was very different
[34:21] Speaker 3: than it is now. And I just think that movies were.
[34:25] Speaker 7: Right. Right.
[34:46] Speaker 2: Did you ever see a film that was ugly enough
[34:49] Speaker 2: or just unpleasant or dull enough or something at like
[34:53] Speaker 2: an adolescence or any time more recently?
[34:55] Speaker 3: Oh, recently.
[34:57] Speaker 2: Okay, that changes my movie life appreciably for the worse.
[35:02] Speaker 2: I can give you mine.
[35:03] Speaker 3: I want to hear yours. Let me hear yours. Maybe
[35:06] Speaker 3: it will spark my.
[35:07] Speaker 2: I was another one from my ute, but my brother
[35:10] Speaker 2: and I went to... the re-release of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad,
[35:15] Speaker 2: Mad World in 1970.
[35:16] Speaker 3: What a bore.
[35:18] Speaker 2: They cut out, and it wasn't just dull for me.
[35:20] Speaker 2: It was a betrayal. And, you know, I mean, they
[35:24] Speaker 2: had cut a half hour out of it for the re-release,
[35:26] Speaker 2: so it was only two hours and 35 minutes. And
[35:29] Speaker 2: I'd never felt so kind of unhappily trapped by a movie.
[35:34] Speaker 2: And I was so just sort of, I knew many
[35:37] Speaker 2: of the people in it from Jonathan Winters I'd seen,
[35:40] Speaker 2: you know, on television a few times. Buddy Hackett, the
[35:44] Speaker 2: love bug, as I mentioned, you know, major co-star in that.
[35:47] Speaker 2: So people I thought were funny. And I knew enough about,
[35:51] Speaker 2: I'd seen it, I'd gone to enough Laurel and Hardy
[35:55] Speaker 2: and Buster Keaton movies at somebody's muscular dystrophy fundraiser for
[35:59] Speaker 2: Jerry Lewis. They would show on 8mm from Blackhawk, they
[36:03] Speaker 2: would show Way Out West, right?
[36:04] Speaker 6: Wow, okay.
[36:04] Speaker 2: For Laurel and Hardy or Hit the Ice. So this
[36:08] Speaker 2: was my St. Mark's place in West Racine. And I thought, Okay,
[36:13] Speaker 2: and I loved Keaton especially. And then you see this,
[36:15] Speaker 2: and I thought that sort of whole slapstick 20s silent
[36:19] Speaker 2: era homage ending with the fire, I was just in pain.
[36:24] Speaker 2: You know, I thought this is giving people a terrible
[36:26] Speaker 2: idea about what the hell slapstick is. And by the way,
[36:30] Speaker 2: there's not one funny line in this thing.
[36:32] Speaker 5: You fellas all right?
[36:34] Speaker 4: Now they show up.
[36:36] Speaker 6: Where were you when we needed you?
[36:38] Speaker 5: Riding parking tickets, I suppose.
[36:40] Speaker 6: Yeah.
[36:40] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[36:41] Speaker 2: And by the way, is this ever going to end?
[36:44] Speaker 2: And then I couldn't believe the unhappiness I felt at
[36:47] Speaker 2: a movie that was just trying to give you a
[36:49] Speaker 2: good time. And then to meet all these people in
[36:51] Speaker 2: my life who have three-generation memories, fond memories of grandpa, dad,
[36:57] Speaker 2: and 10-year-old whoever it was, sitting there just uproariously laughing.
[37:02] Speaker 2: And I thought, not my species. So that's, you know, yeah.
[37:06] Speaker 3: But I bet this was another moment in the beginnings
[37:08] Speaker 3: of your film critic life because... you had been betrayed
[37:14] Speaker 3: by the movie because it has a very madcap poster,
[37:17] Speaker 3: as I recall, and it's kind of near hysteria, like
[37:21] Speaker 3: the way that really painful comedies can sometimes be almost hysterical.
[37:26] Speaker 3: But I mean not hysterically funny, but just like it's manic.
[37:29] Speaker 3: It's just like because they're trying so hard and they're
[37:32] Speaker 3: just throwing the jokes out. I remember watching that and
[37:34] Speaker 3: it was excruciating. But again, I don't think I ever
[37:37] Speaker 3: walked out of a movie as a kid I think
[37:40] Speaker 3: I was just always really interested in them.
[37:42] Speaker 2: Right.
[37:42] Speaker 3: And I think disappointment really comes later, you know, when
[37:45] Speaker 3: I start developing what might be like taste, you know,
[37:48] Speaker 3: and being like, oh, this is not good. When you
[37:51] Speaker 3: start to distinguish, I think movies were just like candy
[37:54] Speaker 3: for me. And I was going to eat every horrible
[37:57] Speaker 3: piece of candy at all because it was candy, you know.
[38:00] Speaker 3: And it's like, you know, the old Halloween, only people
[38:03] Speaker 3: who are of a certain age will remember. The peanuts,
[38:05] Speaker 3: the circus peanuts, the worst Halloween candy you could get.
[38:09] Speaker 2: Worst thing in the world, period.
[38:10] Speaker 3: And you would eat it. You would eat it. It
[38:13] Speaker 3: was terrible. It was like a lot of television. I mean,
[38:16] Speaker 3: if you ever watch TV, I wasn't supposed to watch TV,
[38:18] Speaker 3: but sometimes I would watch it. And it was, you know,
[38:21] Speaker 3: it was TV. So I'd watch it. It was boring,
[38:24] Speaker 3: you know.
[38:25] Speaker 6: I mean, Mr.
[38:25] Speaker 3: Ed is like the worst show ever. It's got a
[38:28] Speaker 3: great opening song like so many 60s TV. It's like great, great,
[38:32] Speaker 3: great song. But you'd watch it because it's TV. And
[38:35] Speaker 3: my parents don't allow me to watch it. So I
[38:37] Speaker 3: need to watch it right now. So anyway, it was
[38:38] Speaker 3: basically movies were candy for me. And it was only
[38:41] Speaker 3: later that I understood that some movies were actually delectable
[38:44] Speaker 3: M & Ms and some movies were circus peanuts. And
[38:46] Speaker 3: that you start to really develop a sensibility and a
[38:51] Speaker 3: sense of like, ah. And then you start thinking, why
[38:55] Speaker 3: is this icky?
[38:56] Speaker 2: When I asked you to jump on the show, I
[38:59] Speaker 2: did not realize at the time that you had put
[39:01] Speaker 2: Barry Lyndon on your 10 best of all time on
[39:05] Speaker 2: one of the sight and sound polls. Why that Kubrick
[39:07] Speaker 2: film over the others?
[39:09] Speaker 3: Because, I mean, again, it's been a while since I
[39:11] Speaker 3: saw it. You know, the thing about the top 10,
[39:13] Speaker 3: there's this great Chris Marker quote, which I'm going to
[39:15] Speaker 3: completely mangle. But at one point, Sight & Sound had
[39:18] Speaker 3: asked Chris Marker, the great filmmaker, Sansolet, among other movies,
[39:22] Speaker 3: French filmmaker, to participate in the top 10. And he
[39:26] Speaker 3: very politely declined. And he said, you know, every day
[39:30] Speaker 3: is different. And so my top 10 today would be
[39:32] Speaker 3: very different tomorrow. And I just can't pick 10. And
[39:35] Speaker 3: I think that that's a really true thing. I think,
[39:37] Speaker 3: you know, every day is different. So my top 10
[39:40] Speaker 3: has changed a few times. But Barry Lyndon is truly
[39:43] Speaker 3: one of the most beautiful movies I've ever seen. I
[39:46] Speaker 3: love the soundtrack, which I actually had copy and listened
[39:49] Speaker 3: to endlessly. I think it's got one of the most
[39:52] Speaker 3: beautiful soundtracks. And it's got the story that really hurt
[40:10] Speaker 3: my heart. And it hurt my heart very deeply. And
[40:13] Speaker 3: it's really interesting because it's Ryan O'Neill, you know, who
[40:17] Speaker 3: I associate with being able to do that kind of thing.
[40:19] Speaker 3: And he's used really brilliantly by Cooper because it's not
[40:22] Speaker 3: love story. Let's put it that way. You know, it's
[40:24] Speaker 3: something very different. But I don't use this word often,
[40:27] Speaker 3: but it was a profound experience watching it. It's the
[40:30] Speaker 3: way I felt about Hou Xiaoshan's Flowers of Shanghai, a
[40:33] Speaker 3: movie I saw at a 10 o'clock screening at Cannes
[40:38] Speaker 3: in not the best room. And I was so exhausted
[40:41] Speaker 3: and I was like, oh, my God, I hadn't actually
[40:43] Speaker 3: loved Hou. And I went and I just woke up.
[40:49] Speaker 3: I had one of those moments where you just are
[40:51] Speaker 3: having an ecstatic experience with a film, you know, and
[40:56] Speaker 3: I had an ecstatic experience with Barry Lyndon and it
[41:00] Speaker 3: settled into my being the way that I think some
[41:03] Speaker 3: movies do in a way that I think 2001 doesn't really,
[41:07] Speaker 3: except for Hal. Hal is just like always going to
[41:09] Speaker 3: be imprinted on my in my consciousness, you know?
[41:12] Speaker 2: Right, right, right.
[41:13] Speaker 3: Whereas Barry Lyndon did everything for me. You know, it
[41:15] Speaker 3: was beautiful. It was mysterious. It was tragic. It was
[41:21] Speaker 3: funny sometimes.
[41:23] Speaker 1: Good evening, Mr.
[41:24] Speaker 7: Barry.
[41:25] Speaker 6: Have you done with my lady? I beg your pardon?
[41:31] Speaker 2: Come, come, sir.
[41:32] Speaker 4: I'm a man who would rather be known as a
[41:34] Speaker 4: cuckold than a fool.
[41:37] Speaker 6: I think, Sir Charles Lyndon, that you've had too much
[41:39] Speaker 6: to drink. As it happens, your chaplain, Mr. Runt, introduced
[41:46] Speaker 6: me into the company of your lady to advise me
[41:49] Speaker 6: on a religious matter of which she is a considerable expert.
[41:56] Speaker 3: It was doing a lot of different things. You know,
[42:00] Speaker 3: it's just it was ravishing. And that's part of why
[42:03] Speaker 3: I haven't wanted to revisit it on my television show.
[42:06] Speaker 3: You know, I do, I think the monumentality of the
[42:10] Speaker 3: large screen was really important to that experience. And so
[42:14] Speaker 3: did he change my life or did he give me
[42:17] Speaker 3: a profound experience? I think that those are two different things,
[42:21] Speaker 3: you know?
[42:22] Speaker 6: Yeah.
[42:23] Speaker 1: Why?
[42:24] Speaker 2: Well, they're close.
[42:25] Speaker 3: Yeah, but did it change my life? I don't think
[42:27] Speaker 3: it changed. I guess when I think it changed, like
[42:29] Speaker 3: when people, so, you know, Duchamp puts our mutt on
[42:33] Speaker 3: a urinal, right? And it presents it as a work
[42:35] Speaker 3: of art. But is that changing people's lives or is
[42:38] Speaker 3: it expanding? Is it kind of making an intellectual argument
[42:42] Speaker 3: about art? Like, what changes our life? I don't know.
[42:45] Speaker 3: I mean, my husband changed my life when I met him,
[42:49] Speaker 3: but at the time it didn't feel like my life
[42:51] Speaker 3: was being changed. It changed later, you know?
[42:53] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. That's how movies are. They roll around in
[42:57] Speaker 2: your life.
[42:58] Speaker 3: And they become part of how you see the world,
[43:01] Speaker 3: how you think about things. Not every movie. A lot
[43:04] Speaker 3: of movies, no. but some of them do and some
[43:06] Speaker 3: of them stay with you. And I mean, I think
[43:09] Speaker 3: some of them set a very high bar. And I
[43:10] Speaker 3: think something like Barry Lyndon is like, I know what
[43:12] Speaker 3: a masterpiece is because I've seen Barry Lyndon. So I
[43:16] Speaker 3: have a younger colleague who is not a movie critic anymore,
[43:19] Speaker 3: but he would use the word masterpiece a lot. And
[43:22] Speaker 3: I said, how many masterpieces are there in a given year?
[43:24] Speaker 3: You know, like it was just something. So then he
[43:27] Speaker 3: started calling them like a higher masterpiece. He'd started basically
[43:31] Speaker 3: kind of, I'm like, really?
[43:33] Speaker 2: It's tier three masterpiece.
[43:35] Speaker 3: I think that Kubrick's work changes my life in the
[43:38] Speaker 3: sense of that he gives me pleasure. He sets a
[43:43] Speaker 3: very high bar for what I understand cinema can be.
[43:46] Speaker 3: So he changes my life in aggregate rather than there's
[43:50] Speaker 3: one movie where it just knocks me on my head.
[43:53] Speaker 3: I just keep having this very cartoon image of myself
[43:55] Speaker 3: like being hit on with a rubber mall I like,
[43:57] Speaker 3: you know, and then little birds tweeting above me. But
[44:00] Speaker 3: Kubrick does because I understand what movies can be.
[44:05] Speaker 4: Yeah.
[44:06] Speaker 2: And one of the reasons I want to see it
[44:09] Speaker 2: in the best possible circumstances, again, I saw it a
[44:11] Speaker 2: lot when it came out. I was really, I just
[44:13] Speaker 2: loved that kind of obsessive detailing of one person's idea
[44:19] Speaker 2: of the past, of that corner of history or whatever.
[44:23] Speaker 2: And I remember reading the Time magazine that had a
[44:24] Speaker 2: cover story on it. I think it was Schickel, Richard
[44:26] Speaker 2: Schickel probably wrote it. talking about the Zeiss lenses that
[44:30] Speaker 2: caught the candlelight for the first time in a new way.
[44:32] Speaker 2: I thought that was interesting. I wasn't really a mechanically
[44:40] Speaker 2: minded kid, but I thought that curious. And when I
[44:44] Speaker 2: saw it later as an adult, seen it once or twice,
[44:47] Speaker 2: so probably half of those times across my life, I
[44:49] Speaker 2: had a Ryan O'Neill limitation problem. I wonder if it was,
[44:54] Speaker 2: I need to kind of get a fresh impression because,
[44:57] Speaker 2: you know, how did the movie get greenlit by the studio?
[45:00] Speaker 2: Ryan O'Neill. Same thing with Cruise and Kidman. I think
[45:03] Speaker 2: with Eyes Wide Shut, there's comfort there. I don't want
[45:06] Speaker 2: to say that I have the same reaction to O'Neill
[45:08] Speaker 2: and Barry Lyndon as I do with Tom Cruise struggling
[45:11] Speaker 2: to kind of find some sort of style or intention
[45:15] Speaker 2: that would fit what Stanley Kubrick's trying to get me
[45:18] Speaker 2: to do. but it's really, he's there for other reasons. Initially,
[45:21] Speaker 2: he's there, you know, and that's what I want to
[45:23] Speaker 2: see Barry Lyndon again for, to see if, is it
[45:25] Speaker 2: a performance that expands once you get your prejudices or
[45:29] Speaker 2: preconceptions out of the way? And for you, it certainly does,
[45:32] Speaker 2: it sounds like.
[45:32] Speaker 3: Yeah, no, it does, actually. I think Ryan O'Neill is limited,
[45:36] Speaker 3: but I think Kubrick is using his limitations very well.
[45:39] Speaker 3: I think Cruise is just a bad fit. I think
[45:42] Speaker 3: Cruise can be a really good actor. I mean, I
[45:44] Speaker 3: think he's brilliant in Magnolia, for example, the Paul Thomas
[45:47] Speaker 3: Anderson movie. I think that's, a fantastic performance. Obviously, you know,
[45:51] Speaker 3: I think he's really good in risky business. I was
[45:54] Speaker 3: not a fan of Digger, but at this point he
[45:56] Speaker 3: would need a certain kind of director and a certain
[45:58] Speaker 3: kind of role to do more than just be Tom
[46:02] Speaker 3: Cruise on screen. Do you know what I mean? And
[46:04] Speaker 3: I think that's, I think that's really hard for actors.
[46:07] Speaker 3: You know, he's Tom Cruise now and it's kind of,
[46:10] Speaker 3: that is who he plays now in movies to a
[46:13] Speaker 3: certain degree.
[46:14] Speaker 2: Right, yeah. And he's made a good living on it.
[46:16] Speaker 3: Right, and you see that. I mean, I think the
[46:19] Speaker 3: same could be said of Jack Nicholson. That was part
[46:21] Speaker 3: of what was so interesting about the Alexander Payne movie
[46:23] Speaker 3: about Schmidt is that he was trying to get, at
[46:27] Speaker 3: some point, oh my God, we haven't talked about The Shining,
[46:30] Speaker 3: but at some point, Jack Nicholson becomes Jack, right? There's
[46:34] Speaker 3: a kind of break in his career where he's Jack
[46:37] Speaker 3: Nicholson doing kind of in roles and then he himself
[46:41] Speaker 3: becomes larger than life And it feels like he basically
[46:45] Speaker 3: does Jack. He starts doing Jack. And that's fine, man.
[46:49] Speaker 3: Earn some money. Totally, totally get it. Whatever. You know,
[46:52] Speaker 3: and it's interesting to think about The Shining, which was
[46:54] Speaker 3: a really, a movie that freaked me out, really. You know,
[46:59] Speaker 3: because it just is a very freaky movie. And I,
[47:04] Speaker 3: for a long time, didn't think it was one of
[47:07] Speaker 3: his best. And now I think it's one of his
[47:08] Speaker 3: greatest movies. I really, I really love it. I think
[47:10] Speaker 3: it's a really brilliant movie.
[47:12] Speaker 6: And.
[47:13] Speaker 3: What it takes you through is really difficult and strange
[47:17] Speaker 3: and uncomfortable. And it's a movie that I've never gotten
[47:21] Speaker 3: tired of rewatching. I've seen that movie many times. Has
[47:24] Speaker 3: it ever occurred to you what would happen to my
[47:26] Speaker 3: future if I were to fail to live up to
[47:28] Speaker 3: my responsibilities?
[47:29] Speaker 5: Has it ever occurred to you?
[47:30] Speaker 6: Has it?
[47:32] Speaker 5: Stay away from me.
[47:34] Speaker 1: Why?
[47:36] Speaker 4: I just want to go back to my room.
[47:39] Speaker 1: What? I'm very confused.
[47:46] Speaker 8: I just need a chance to think things over.
[47:51] Speaker 6: You've had your whole f.
[47:52] Speaker 2: * * * ing.
[47:53] Speaker 6: Life to think things over.
[47:55] Speaker 5: What good's a few minutes more going to do you now?
[47:58] Speaker 2: That one to me got better every time I saw it.
[48:01] Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely.
[48:02] Speaker 2: I think I spaced it out the right number of years,
[48:04] Speaker 2: maybe every four or five years I've given it. And
[48:06] Speaker 2: I did, I'm intrigued by the fact that Kubrick did choose,
[48:14] Speaker 2: you know, multiple, you know, Nicholson was eager mostly to
[48:18] Speaker 2: comply with like, okay, I'll give you dozens of different
[48:20] Speaker 2: ways to do this scene. And he, in the editing,
[48:23] Speaker 2: he did in fact take the most kind of comic operatic, tragic,
[48:29] Speaker 2: extreme take every time. So it does give the film,
[48:34] Speaker 2: you know, a certain, you know, a lot of people
[48:36] Speaker 2: just write it off. I think Cale did, Pauline Cale did.
[48:38] Speaker 2: It's just like, well, he's peaking too early. It's like,
[48:40] Speaker 2: it's like so much so early. Where does he go?
[48:42] Speaker 2: Where does that character go? But I don't know. I think,
[48:46] Speaker 2: I think I buy it now. And I think I
[48:47] Speaker 2: buy almost every puzzlement. And I think I just figured
[48:51] Speaker 2: out the rhythm of it, frankly, over time.
[48:53] Speaker 6: Yeah.
[48:54] Speaker 3: No, it's a really brilliant. And I think Nicholson is
[48:56] Speaker 3: amazing in it. because the performance changes in ways. But
[49:01] Speaker 3: it's funny, I think thereafter, you know, I think it's
[49:04] Speaker 3: kind of maybe his last great performance. But you mentioned Kale,
[49:08] Speaker 3: you know, Kale was really famous, or at least I
[49:10] Speaker 3: remember her often talking about one of her things about,
[49:14] Speaker 3: and I really like Kale. I know that people who
[49:16] Speaker 3: love Kale think I don't like her because I've been
[49:18] Speaker 3: critical of her, but I she was great. You know,
[49:21] Speaker 3: I met her and she was great. I don't always
[49:23] Speaker 3: agree what she says about movies, you know. But one
[49:27] Speaker 3: of the things that I remember she said repeatedly was
[49:29] Speaker 3: that Kubrick was cold, which has always really seemed odd
[49:33] Speaker 3: to me. And I just wondered, what do you think?
[49:35] Speaker 3: Do you even think that like What does it mean
[49:38] Speaker 3: for a director to be cold or.
[49:39] Speaker 2: Movies to be cold? Do you remember? No, I know.
[49:44] Speaker 2: And she was certainly strong on Lolita and not much
[49:48] Speaker 2: else that he ever did, really. The Killing, I think
[49:51] Speaker 2: she was strong on.
[49:52] Speaker 4: Yeah.
[49:52] Speaker 2: And that's about it.
[49:53] Speaker 7: Yeah.
[49:54] Speaker 3: She did not like his work, you know.
[49:56] Speaker 2: Yeah. I think cold is a word like dull or slow.
[50:01] Speaker 2: I understand. But a teacher once said to me, you know,
[50:04] Speaker 2: that's a code word. I think she was talking about
[50:07] Speaker 2: the word dull or boring or slow. That's a code
[50:10] Speaker 2: word for a much more interesting reaction. You just have
[50:13] Speaker 2: to figure out what you really get. Really, the question
[50:17] Speaker 2: is why. Why do you feel that way?
[50:19] Speaker 1: Cold?
[50:21] Speaker 2: I don't know. If Kubrick's not going for conventional movie
[50:24] Speaker 2: warmth ever in any single instinct he's ever had as
[50:28] Speaker 2: an artist, then you're kind of bringing the wrong... ruler
[50:31] Speaker 2: to measuring the success of the thing. It just doesn't work.
[50:36] Speaker 2: I mean, I think that run he had from 56
[50:38] Speaker 2: to 68, what was it, five films? I mean, you know,
[50:42] Speaker 2: The Killing, The Path to Glory, Spartacus, even Spartacus, which
[50:46] Speaker 2: is compromised in many ways. But that's the only movie
[50:48] Speaker 2: with sandals, you know, that I love, that I truly love.
[50:52] Speaker 2: And I mean, it's a great script and strange love.
[50:54] Speaker 2: And then the massive eternal riddle that is 2001. Those five,
[50:58] Speaker 2: I mean, that's a stunning streak. I got more issues,
[51:01] Speaker 2: and I don't know why, Manola. I don't know why,
[51:03] Speaker 2: because I don't easily want to revisit why I really
[51:07] Speaker 2: didn't like Clockwork Orange. Because I have read the book,
[51:09] Speaker 2: and I did think he kind of like, and I
[51:12] Speaker 2: love the fact that his adaptations are so completely free-handed.
[51:16] Speaker 2: I love it. I do love that. I mean, Shining
[51:18] Speaker 2: throws a lot of it away. Barry Lyndon completely changes
[51:21] Speaker 2: the tone and the kind of galloping rhythm of the book.
[51:24] Speaker 2: And when it works, it's for you, for me. It's
[51:28] Speaker 2: completely for the better, because it's like, who says, why
[51:30] Speaker 2: be faithful, you know? So anyway, that's, I don't know
[51:34] Speaker 2: what I think about it.
[51:35] Speaker 3: I mean, one of the things, again, I haven't read
[51:38] Speaker 3: Kale on Kubrick in a long time, so I'm not
[51:41] Speaker 3: going to say what she means. I'm not going to
[51:44] Speaker 3: try to interpret what she's saying. I'm just saying, I
[51:47] Speaker 3: think Cold, I wonder, it's because in Kubrick's movies, it's
[51:51] Speaker 3: not the kind of standard classical Hollywood where there is
[51:55] Speaker 3: a character who... you align with, a character you have
[51:59] Speaker 3: an empathetic, and the most nauseating word, relatable relationship which
[52:02] Speaker 3: is Yuzi's, I just hate that. I mean, let's just
[52:05] Speaker 3: take Dr. Strangelove. Who exactly are you supposed to relate
[52:08] Speaker 3: to there? I mean, the Peter Sellers, you know, British
[52:13] Speaker 3: officer who is completely befuddled. I mean, who's your entry
[52:17] Speaker 3: point to the movie? And I think that that is
[52:19] Speaker 3: a really interesting thing. And that's the kind of thing
[52:22] Speaker 3: that's much more common in European art cinema, where there's
[52:25] Speaker 3: not necessarily like, this is your heroic figure and you're going...
[52:28] Speaker 3: I mean, is Barry Lyndon a heroic figure? Is that
[52:30] Speaker 3: your entry point? And certainly it's not Jack Nicholson. I mean,
[52:36] Speaker 3: and it's interesting to think about this, because Jack Nicholson
[52:38] Speaker 3: is extremely famous at the time that it's coming. I mean,
[52:40] Speaker 3: he's like one of the biggest, if not the biggest
[52:42] Speaker 3: movie stars in Hollywood at that time. But he's the
[52:45] Speaker 3: bad guy. He's the villain. And we watch him fall apart.
[52:48] Speaker 3: And that's actually really interesting. And so if there's no
[52:50] Speaker 3: like entry point, there's no one character. Is that what
[52:54] Speaker 3: people mean by cold? I don't know. But I think
[52:56] Speaker 3: it's part of what makes Kubrick really interesting.
[52:58] Speaker 4: Yeah.
[52:58] Speaker 3: And also, you know, he's not a mainstream director by
[53:01] Speaker 3: any means, by any means. No.
[53:04] Speaker 2: You know, it's funny that he worked the studio system
[53:07] Speaker 2: to his advantage as much as he did. It's kind
[53:09] Speaker 2: of wonderful. And it's also tragic, I think, and maybe
[53:12] Speaker 2: we can kind of go out with this idea that
[53:17] Speaker 2: where are the supporters of eccentric, obsessive, Controlling artists worth bankrolling.
[53:25] Speaker 2: Where are the supporters now in this system, this world
[53:28] Speaker 2: we're living in now?
[53:29] Speaker 3: Well, I mean, this is a very, because of course
[53:31] Speaker 3: Kubrick for a very long time, his movies, you know,
[53:34] Speaker 3: it's still kind of startling that the Warner Brothers logo
[53:37] Speaker 3: comes up and that's where he was.
[53:38] Speaker 1: And.
[53:40] Speaker 3: I think what we know is right now Paramount just
[53:43] Speaker 3: bought Warner Brothers and they're changing the name to Skydance,
[53:46] Speaker 3: which is just it's already like I live in Los
[53:49] Speaker 3: Angeles and I love visiting the Warner's lot. And you'd
[53:52] Speaker 3: go there and there is a big water tower, very
[53:55] Speaker 3: famously water tower, which has the WB on it. And
[53:58] Speaker 3: that's been taken down, apparently. I know, I know, I know.
[54:03] Speaker 2: I would not have even predicted that I would have
[54:05] Speaker 2: that kind of a reaction.
[54:06] Speaker 3: Well, I think what they did is they put the
[54:07] Speaker 3: sky dance, I think, is over it, you know, and
[54:09] Speaker 3: that's really painful. And I think that it's just that
[54:13] Speaker 3: old system has been disappearing for a very long time.
[54:17] Speaker 3: I don't even, you know, system is even perhaps the
[54:20] Speaker 3: wrong word. What we understand Hollywood to be has changed
[54:23] Speaker 3: so profoundly in the last 20 years, but it's been
[54:25] Speaker 3: happening for a while. And this just seems like we're
[54:28] Speaker 3: at the end of that. I think that we will
[54:32] Speaker 3: continue to have movie makers. And, you know, there always
[54:35] Speaker 3: seems to be some rich person who wants to make
[54:39] Speaker 3: a movie. So I'm hoping that will continue. I'm not
[54:42] Speaker 3: worried about the movies. I think people are going to
[54:45] Speaker 3: continue to make art. I think mainstream American cinema is
[54:50] Speaker 3: in a very bad time right now. And I worry
[54:53] Speaker 3: about movie theaters as a consequence and all that. At
[54:56] Speaker 3: some point, would Kubrick have been able to continue making
[54:58] Speaker 3: movies had he lived? Who would have funded him? At
[55:01] Speaker 3: some point, I don't see Warner Brothers necessarily doing that.
[55:05] Speaker 3: Very expensive movies because he didn't travel. Everything had to
[55:08] Speaker 3: be made in England. So I don't know. But I mean,
[55:12] Speaker 3: Warner Brothers, they had a couple of really interesting years
[55:15] Speaker 3: and two great, you know, we got One Battle After
[55:18] Speaker 3: Another and Sinners in the same year.
[55:19] Speaker 2: Great year.
[55:20] Speaker 3: Not just released by a studio, but actually financed by
[55:23] Speaker 3: it is really kind of And maybe it was the
[55:27] Speaker 3: last flicker. I don't think it will be. But I
[55:30] Speaker 3: think that we have to kind of rearrange our thinking
[55:32] Speaker 3: about what is Hollywood. I think sometimes it's just a
[55:35] Speaker 3: kind of an idea rather than a thing so much.
[55:38] Speaker 3: It's so desperate.
[55:40] Speaker 2: Thank you for your time, Manola. Appreciate it. It was
[55:42] Speaker 2: a pleasure.
[55:42] Speaker 3: Michael is so nice.
[55:44] Speaker 6: Thank you.
[55:44] Speaker 1: Thank you.
[55:54] Speaker 2: After we talked, I thought about something Manola said about
[55:57] Speaker 2: how she grew up in Manhattan, seeing every sort of
[56:00] Speaker 2: international cinema, movies, many of them anyway, that didn't spell
[56:05] Speaker 2: out meaning or intention, and that allowed a kind of
[56:09] Speaker 2: roominess of interpretation for a young viewer to respond without
[56:14] Speaker 2: signposts or easily identified morals. If Manola's right about how
[56:19] Speaker 2: we have to change and rearrange our thinking regarding cinema,
[56:23] Speaker 2: contemporary Hollywood and what's possible today in commercial cinema, I
[56:27] Speaker 2: suppose that artists like Stanley Kubrick, whether their careers will
[56:31] Speaker 2: be possible today or not, serve still as the right
[56:35] Speaker 2: kind of signpost, signifying that here is a filmmaker with
[56:39] Speaker 2: plenty of influences, but who does not work visually like
[56:44] Speaker 2: any other filmmaker, and will be wrestling with his films
[56:48] Speaker 2: for as long as there are films. The Movie Wreck
[56:52] Speaker 2: It is produced by Joe Steadicam-Dessault and by Michael Phillips, who,
[56:56] Speaker 2: just like Frank Sinatra, refuses to do any retakes. Adam
[56:59] Speaker 2: Kempinar and Sam Van Halgren are the executive producers and
[57:03] Speaker 2: the only podcast veterans with their own personal commissaries on
[57:07] Speaker 2: their own personal studio lots. And special thanks to our
[57:10] Speaker 2: extraordinarily special guest, Manola Dargis, whose work means a lot
[57:15] Speaker 2: to a lot of us and has for many years.
[57:18] Speaker 2: And thanks to you folks, drop me a line at
[57:21] Speaker 2: MovieRacket at FilmSpotting.net. Talk to me about Kubrick. Hate him?
[57:26] Speaker 3: Love him?
[57:26] Speaker 2: Maybe you love that one? Or that one? Hate that one?
[57:29] Speaker 2: Or that one? Or really don't like that one? By
[57:32] Speaker 2: the way, there's a really good Stanley Kubrick series running
[57:35] Speaker 2: right now over at Turner Classic Movies podcast, The Plot Thickens.
[57:40] Speaker 2: Check it out. I'm Michael Phillips, and this is a
[57:44] Speaker 2: FilmSpotting production.
[57:49] Speaker 7: Bye.

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