November 6, 2024 • 50 mins
LOOK OUT! It’s only Films To Be Buried With!
Join your host Brett Goldstein as he talks life, death, love and the universe with the host of Turner Classic Movies and all round movie head BEN MANKIEWICZ!
TCM is a channel that some non-US folk might not be familiar with, but for those who are it's an institution. Ben is a long term host at the channel, but has a huge amount of dealings elsewhere in the cinematic universe too. If that hasn't hooked you in, you might be keen to learn he is the grandson of the screenwriter of Citizen Kane who was the subject of the fairly recent movie 'Mank'. So you're in safe hands right here, essentially. Ben has a ton to say about a lot of movies that haven't been explored that much on the podcast, but it's also really interesting to hear about TCM and how it's affected his own life. A really fascinating guest for a truly engaging episode - enjoy!
Video and extra audio available on Brett's Patreon!
TALKING PICTURES podcast (links within)
SUPERBOB (Brett's 2015 feature film)
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Look out is surely films to be buried with. Hello,
and welcome to Films to be buried with. My name
is Brett Goldstein. I'm a comedian and actor, a writer,
a director, a TV remote and I love films. As
(00:23):
Stephen King once said, if you don't have time to read,
you don't have the time or the tools to write.
Simple as that. Also, you should watch the Bruisal list
when it comes out. It's fucking magnificent. Yeah, it really is.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Nice good shout, Stephen. Every week I invite a special
guest over. I tell them they've died, and I get
them to discuss their life through the films that meant
the most of them. Previous guests include Barry Jenkins, Amber Ruffin,
Kyl McLaughlin, Sharon Stone, and even Bed Crampbeles. But this
week it is the wonderful mister Ben Mankowitz. Episode five
of season two of Shrinking is out this week. Catch
(00:55):
up on all the episodes on Apple TV. Head over
to the Patriot at patreon dot com. Forwards last Goldstein,
where you get twenty minutes extra stuff with Ben, you
get a secret, you get the whole episode uncut. Adfrey
and as a video. Check it out over at patreon
dot com. Forward slash Brett Goldstein Ben Mankowitz is a
podcaster and a journalist and he's a host for Turner
Classic Movies. I was very excited to talk to Ben.
(01:18):
He's a proper, proper, proper serious film buff and I
had never met him before. We recorded this on Zoom
about a couple of weeks ago, and we had such
a lovely time. He was fucking brilliant and I really
think you're going to love this one. So that is
it for now. I hope you're well, and I very
much hope you enjoy episode three hundred and twenty four
of Films to be Buried With. Hello, and welcome to
(01:51):
Films to be Buried With. It is I Brett Goldstein,
and I'm joined today by a Hollywood legend. He's Hollywood
Royalty's podcaster. He's a writer, he's an actor, he's a presenter,
and he is the keeper of the film flame. He
is the one keeping cinema alive. And without him, I
(02:15):
worry we will die. Please he's here, He's really here,
and he's in front of me. Now, please run to
the show. It's brilliant, but.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
Back it.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Basically, none of that is true except for the podcaster part.
And I do you know, I'm a host at Turner
Classic Movies.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
But wasn't there wasn't there a near riot when they
tried to reduce that.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
There was there was The cinema loving world came to
our defense, the people and then representing the people. You know,
some some fairly big name directors really stepped up and
helped and really, and I have to even praise our
bosses too, because they heard it, they recognized it. You know,
there's a world where powerful people, you know, could easily
(03:00):
say at any moment like, hey, I hear what you're saying,
but I don't tell you how to make films. Don't
tell me how to run my company, right, you know?
And they understood that we're just a slightly different channel
than others because we're sort of the keepers of this
cultural legacy, which is a you know, it turns out
to be a pretty serious responsibility.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Tell me this, would you mind for a lot of
my owners are in England, they don't have TCM, would
you mind telling them what it is that you do
in case anyone is listening it?
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Sure?
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Yeah, yeah, So there was a version of TCM in England,
but it wasn't curated, there wasn't a host. It's my understanding,
so and it's now off. It's not even on the
air anymore there So at Turner Classic Movie started by
Ted Turner in nineteen ninety four in Park because he
loved seeing old movies and when he was trying to
program his superstation TBS, which was at that point or
(03:50):
before that, just a station in Atlanta, I think WTBS,
but I may have the call letters run there. So,
but these movies were inexpensive to buy, and he liked them,
and he sort of theory, which I think is a
really sound one.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
If he likes something, other people will like things, right, But.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
They were inexpensive, and then there was this sort of
people responded to these movies and they were acquirable, and
he bought this big library of old films and classic
films in nineteen ninety four prior to that, and then
started the channel in nineteen ninety four, and we seven
nights a week during prime time and on the weekends
during the day. We showed the movies twenty four hours,
seven days a week, uncut, commercial free, so as the
(04:26):
director intended, never a commercial and seven nights a week
and on weekends during the day we curate them, you know.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
So we have a host. It's me.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
There's four other hosts, all really good. I've been there
twenty one years. Amazingly. It was a job when I
got it, and now it's a career. And we sort
of put the movies in their proper historical context, Hollywood context,
you know. And then because it turns out, contrary to
what every American kid is subtly taught growing up, other
countries also made good movies. So it turns out, turns
(04:59):
out the English, the Germans, and the Russians, the Spanish,
and the Japanese, the French, maybe they knew.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
What they were doing.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
So we you know, Hollywood, most of our movies are American,
of course, but we put them in their proper Hollywood
context or world cinematic context.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Forgive me, I've never met you before, and I have
no idea of what I'm asking you questions that you
get asked a million times and you're annoyed by it,
and if so, please let me know. No never, But
do you write all of your intros or is there
a team that writes them? Is it all you like,
how does it work?
Speaker 3 (05:30):
So from this was true for Robert Osborne, who was
our sort of legendary the Walter Cronkite at TCMRO. He
was there from nineteen ninety four until his death in
twenty seventeen, and I've been there since two thousand and three.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
So the script we do too many.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
If we wrote them all ourselves from scratch, it would
literally be.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
All you did.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
I'd go to Atlanta once a month and I'm shooting,
you know, one hundred movies. Yeah, So we never repeat
a lead, and we have it sort of a team
of people who write them and then they come to us,
come to me. It's and I still spend more time
writing those scripts.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
I guess it's rewriting.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Some of them I start over totally, but most, you know,
I take anywhere from between half of what's there. I
would say sometimes if it's good, eighty ninety percent, but
it's you know, it definitely becomes mine. I'm very comfortable
saying that that I don't go on without.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Yeah, I mean, it's such an unusual position you're in totally.
There isn't really a comparable There isn't there's no one,
there's no other sort of countrywide thing that curates films
and keeps there.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
There's no job like this on television. I mean, I mean,
so I was in a screening last night. I got
to see the new was we're taping. This will betray
the time a little bit, but the recording this the
new Bruce Springsteen movie, which I think comes out on
Disney Plus October twenty fifth, so by the time people
hear this, it'll be out.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
And it's quite good.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
It's sort of a look at this new tour and
examination of death and friendships that are lost because of that.
And it's a great concert film also, and it's read
at the Academy, And it's just one example of what
happens to me. And it's just how I got put
in this position.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
It's amazically.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
I go there and people I don't know, sometimes people
who just love movies, and sometimes people who make them,
and they just come up to me in a meaningful
way and thank me. Right because this channel, most people
don't watch TCM, but the people who watch it, man,
they care deeply about it and it's part of their identity.
Brett like it's crazy, Like you'd think it was a
lunatic if you said to someone here in the States,
(07:27):
you know what chance or you know, what are you
like on TV? And they were like, oh I love ABC?
Speaker 1 (07:33):
What right? He said?
Speaker 3 (07:37):
Like they get it tattooed, they like, they'll be like, yeah,
I'm a lawyer and a mother of four and a
wife and a TCM fan.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Like that's sort of how they define their lives. Yeah,
it's nice. It's really a great place to be.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
Yeah, but it's also like it's a big responsibility. You're
like keeping old cinema alive, the legacy of cinema, and
I guess also having to I mean people ask me
this enough doing the podcast, When do you find time
to watch enough films? But in your case, you're also
trying to keep up with over one hundred years of
I mean, how do you do it? Do you ever
get panicked all the time?
Speaker 3 (08:10):
I mean, even for this, I'm like, what if I
say something wrong? What if I can't recall who directed this?
On the you know, spur of a moment, Because you know,
people have the films they love and they know everything
about those are the ones they want to talk to
me about. And I'm like, I get it that this
is your favorite film but I've seen like eight hundred
and eighty seven other movies since I last saw this,
So yeah, so I sort of you get comfortable. I
(08:30):
do panic, but you sort of get comfortable with And
it took a long long time, like I am who
I am.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
I'm comfortable with what I know. I don't have to pretend.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
It's a huge breakthrough in living in Los Angeles, a
place I love and filled with these smart, creative people.
So I am not bad mouth in LA. But there's
a lot that you go to lunch with people and
they're like, oh, you know, uh, you know Harry Goldwell,
and you're attempting. I was like, oh yeah, sure, sure, sure, sure,
And then you're panicked that they'll ask you something about
this guy who you definitely don't know, and so about
(08:59):
I don't know. Eight years ago, I just started saying, no,
tell me, because they want.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
To tell you who he is, right lovely.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
And when people say, you know, I'm wondering about the ending,
I'm like, no, I don't recall it. You tell me,
tell me and then we'll talk about it and you'll
remind me. But I hate pretending, and I was always
fearful that I wouldn't have to be caught, and it's
so phony.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
I don't like being phony.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
And also, if I may ask, I didn't know this
about you, and obviously I did a tiny bit of research,
but you are like parts of proper Hollywood road to
your Your grandfather wrote Citizen.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
Kane, and yeah, my my grandfather wrote Citizen Kane and
a bunch of other movies. No, it's not nothing, Mark
and Marx Brothers movies. And and he was you know,
he was the he was the subject of the movie
mank that David Fincher film was on Netflix in twenty
twenty one, which is really wonderful.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Can I ask your relationship toward that, like was it
did you just grow up steeped in Hollywood? Like has
there been your net or No?
Speaker 3 (09:52):
No, not at all, because my dad wasn't into that.
I mean, neither was my grandfather. If you saw the
movie Herman, you know that this was a guy sort
of tortured by the fact that the movie bank. You
know that my grandfather Hermann was tortured by this notion
that he was writing, you know, Filler for the Masses. Now,
you shouldn't think less of him. That's all His father
(10:13):
right all his father that you know, you want to
write a play that's serious, you want to be a
theater critic, that's serious, novelist serious, This nonsense yapping for
the camera, this is unseerious. And so he was always
sort of plagued by that. And it's one reason why
when he wrote Citizen Kane, he was very eager to
get credit for it, because he thought, oh, this is good,
(10:35):
this is this is serious, and I want to go
back in time and say, you know, come on, man,
this is you know, shake him like no, this mattered,
like this is you know, if we care about Tennessee Williams,
we can care about Frank Caepra Like it's okay, you know.
But my father didn't want to work in the business.
My dad, I think would have been the highest paid
screenwriter in Hollywood. I like to say, I don't know
(10:55):
idea whether that would have been true. My dad went
into politics. So I was born in Washington, d C.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
I grew up there.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
I cared about and the movie part of my family
was like the other part of the family, Like it
was like this other thing.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
You know. I knew it was a big deal, but
it just didn't resonate.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
And I didn't even start really paying attention to classic
movies until I was, you know, in college, to be honest. So,
and I didn't get this job until I was thirty
six or something, so I had some time to catch up.
But yeah, so I wanted to be in politics or sports.
I wanted to be a sports broadcaster, you know. Thought
i'd be a press secretary like my father. You know,
my dad was Bobby Kennedy's press secretary, ran George McGovern's campaign.
(11:32):
He was a big deal and he was super smart.
So I thought he was the big deal in the family.
Like I thought he was the most famous person in
the family. It turns out, it turns out I was mistaken.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Yeah, how fascinating. And you haven't made films yourself, have you?
Speaker 2 (11:45):
No?
Speaker 3 (11:46):
No, he's funny because you said I'm an actor and
I'm not an actor. I have acted, but I've just done.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Some stung as an act, I mean, but it's playing himself.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
But that's so easy, easy, Yeah, this is what I do.
And you know, Senator, how do you respond to the allegations?
That's the that's my life, that's what I do. Yeah, center, center, center,
how do you respond to the allegations totally, totally. Yeah.
But I've done some stuff lately with some all these
funny people have gotten to know, you know, affiliated with
(12:17):
sort of the Groundlings and UCB, and I've done some
readings and and man, getting people to laugh at things
you say that other people have written. You know that
you put your own little it's good man, people like
you have written it. Like, I'm like, oh, this is good.
So I don't know. I would love to act in
the limited capability that I.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Think I could pull off. I'm not I'm not crying
on camera. Yeah, that's right. It's got to be the
right kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Yeah, Ben, I've forgotten to tell you something. Fuck. Sorry,
it's really bad that I've forgotten study this. I should
have set it up front, but I forgot to Teddy,
you've died. You're dead.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
That's disappointing news. Inevitable, but disappointing.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
How did you die?
Speaker 3 (13:01):
Well, as long as you're giving me the power to
determine this, like it's the time to confront fears, go on.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
So I was buried alive, fucking out.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
This is your choice.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
I mean, it's the thing I'm most afraid of, right,
I mean, claustrophobic, trapped and it got you in the end.
It got me in the end, maybe by one of
the directors whose movies I'm about the bad mouth like
somebody's uh. But yeah, that terrifies me, like that idea
of being trapped and suffocating, that's it.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Yeah, So the Vanishing not a fan of.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
No, No, that's right.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
I mean I can watch it, but it gets me,
you know, it makes me anxious when I see it.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Yeah. I know people who are like truly horrified, you know,
that's the thing. But I'm like, it's not great. I
don't think anyone watches Buried Alive and guys, yeah, it.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
Seems but I mean I think about it like I
would when I was a kid, Like I would pull
the covers up over my head and see how long
I could stand it without panic. Oh fuck, and I
would definitely panic. I mean, there's no question, sweat.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
How are you underwater?
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Water?
Speaker 3 (14:07):
Water is fine? I mean I can that, doesn't you know.
I mean if it's a pool, I can. But I'm
a little afrasey ocean like, I mean, I go in,
but I'm not into it, you know, I'm not.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
Yeah, it's too cool.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Any any idea where this came from? Where this is
the one to your face?
Speaker 2 (14:22):
I don't know. I don't know where it came from.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
I mean, but there's a constant sense of where's the
how am I getting? You'd like movies like sitting in
the middle in a row in a theater, like like,
how am I going to get out of here to pee?
I'm trapped if I can't sit on an aisle. So yeah,
some of it is. Yeah, it's not comfortable, and I
don't I don't. I don't like it, and I have
a kid, and so I don't want to like, you know,
I don't want to be like the weird dad like.
And I always think, what if she gets stuck under
(14:45):
the house? Like that's another thing. I like, why would
she get stuck under the house? And I'm like would
I be able to save her? Like am I going
to be able to overcome this and crawl under the house?
Speaker 1 (14:55):
And so fascinating. So do you worry about death generally?
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Yes, And it's intermittent, you know, there are times when
I do and then times when I think, well, you know,
I wouldn't constantly feel like I have homework like that
would be a that would be a blessing, you know. Yeah,
But yeah, I get scared sometimes. I fly all the time.
I get scared almost every a little moment of like
not into this. I wish I weren't doing this. So yeah,
(15:22):
I definitely think about it, do you.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Yeah, I'm more worried about other people dying. I used
to be really worried about death, and I'm sort of
not as much now, partly because I sort of joke
about this in my stand up side, but I actually
really mean it, which is that I did Sesame Street,
so it's like nothing that like I can die me.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Yeah, I get you.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
I just always thought, like I still think of myself
as younger than I am. I'm sure it's true for
a lot of people, maybe particularly in this business, or
maybe it's just the human condition. But then I recognize
that I'm not that young, and like it wouldn't be
like I'm reaching the point where just on years my dad,
you know, gets for all of us, it's less and
less tragic.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Yeah, I'm getting sad now, right, like, oh, they're not.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
So young, you know, you know, yeah, but now you're
you know, you're in your fifties it's like, oh.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
But my friend messages me because someone I can't remember who, sadly,
someone famous died at like ninety four, and it said
tragically passed away at ninety four. And my friend was like, tragically,
what relief, it's ninety four, Let him go.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
Yeah, yeah, I mean there's it's weird how we make
that adjustment. Like Mitzie Gainer, this wonderful actress who died
this week that we're shooting. And I knew Mitzi through
TCM and she's amazing. But you know, right, you're like, okay,
well it's you know, I don't think she was that
well at the end. So you're like, okay, that's just
you know, you adjust like that adjustment. But yet, if
it's your parent, doesn't matter. My dad died in ninety
(16:45):
I still think about it all the time. You know,
he's been on ten years and he was ninety.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Yeah. It's never a good time, really, is it.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
No, it's not. It's never. It's never a good time.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
But I obviously want to be around for my daughter,
and you know it helps having your dad around helps,
so I want to be Therefore.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
What do you think happens when you die? Do you
think there's enough to life?
Speaker 2 (17:04):
I don't know. I think it's just that's the end
of that. But you know what do I know?
Speaker 3 (17:09):
What do anyways know? I mean, it'd be nice if
there were you do. Oh I didn't realize that. I was, Yeah,
you should talk about this more.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Yeah, there's a heaven and you're going, oh, well, that's
crying for your services to cinema and they're very excited
to have you there. They're fucking excited, and it is
filled with your favorite thing. What's your favorite thing?
Speaker 3 (17:27):
I mean, like if it's totally distilled down, it's the
moment of being done with something that was hard and
not having anything on the horizon.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
And how long does that moment last?
Speaker 3 (17:38):
It could last a night, it could be two days,
it could last twenty minutes. But you know, like come
home and I don't have to do anything. I like
being lazy and like if I you know, and then
i'd want my family around.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
I'm The feeling of achievement isn't just late definitely. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
Yeah, no, if you haven't if that thing didn't go well,
then you won't have that feeling, no question.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Yeah. Wow, Okay, that's brilliant. Heaven is entirely that feeling.
It's that gap, the gap between successful completion and having
to do something else.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
Fuck. Yeah, that's right. That's a nice moment. It's a
nice moment. Yeah, it's not long enough, never is.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
It's great and everyone's very excited to see you in
that special moment. They want to talk their all big fans.
The one talks about your life. They want to talk
about your life through the medium of film. And the
first what's the first film you remember seeing? Ben Mankowitz?
Speaker 3 (18:23):
Which film I remember seeing was in a theater in Washington,
d C. I should have looked up the year seventy three,
seventy four. I think maybe it's later seventy five, maybe
The Champ, the remake of The Champ with John Voight
and Ricky Schroeder.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
I saw it with my brother.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
What a terrible heartbreaking first.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
Yeah, totally, I mean right, like you know, right, he
connects with his dad, his dad dies. It's the I
saw it with my father and my brother. My brother's
twelve years older, so correspondent for Dateline NBC.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
We're very close, and the three of us. It was
the three of us.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
Together, my dad, my brother and me, which was a
rare thing to get all three of us a new movie,
partly because of the age differences, and my dad was
so busy.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
My mom was not there. And it was terrible, the remake.
Speaker 3 (19:07):
I mean, to me, it was just awful because this
terrible thing happened. I was credibly close to my dad
and he's gone, and I must have seen a movie
before that, because I feel like it's too late. I mean,
I always think in my head it's like seventy three,
but I think it's later. I'm going to look it
up while we're talking, but I got to look it
up before. Yeah, So, but it was I remember coming
out of the theater and I remember understanding fully by
(19:28):
the way they were talking because my brother's twelve years
older and my father that they knew that that was bad.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Nineteen seventy nine, so that's crazy. I'm twelve. So it's
not the first movie I remember seeing in my head.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
It is like, no, but I mean it's a lie,
because it's a lie in my head.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
Yeah, but that's the one that stays with you from
the artist.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
But I obviously saw Star Wars, so I saw that before,
you know. So, but The Champ was the one I remember,
and I probably because it was me and my brother
and my father together. But it was bad and they
knew it was bad, and I could tell by their
reactions it was bad.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
That's crazy.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
I thought it was seven years old when that movie
came out, Like, I'm bad.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
Yeah, when you say bad, you mean because it made
you so unhappy.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
No, it was not a good film. It was like, like,
it's a remake of a Wallace Beery movie. And the
original in the early thirties was good, you know, and
is thought of as good anyway, and this was just not.
I mean, John Void's a sensational actor, and Rick Schroeder
turned into be It turned out to be a pretty
good actor. But this was not a This was not
a great film.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Interesting, that is your fast Okay, what about crying then?
If it wasn't The Champ, what's the film that made
you cry the most?
Speaker 3 (20:36):
So as I think it's nineteen forty two, but Random
Harvest with Ronald Comb a couple of year people, Ronald
Coleman and Greer Garson and he loses his memory, she's
in love with her. He loses his memory twice in
the movie. He starts with a lost memory from World
War One and then builds a life with Greer. Garson
gets hit by a car and loses that memory and
(20:58):
sort of goes back to who he was first, but
he's lost the part where in between, and then she
sticks with him. She understands what's happened because she knew
he'd lost the memory in the first place. And then
she eventually gets at job as his secretary just to
be near him. And then through a couple of different circumstances,
he goes to the place where they live together and
(21:18):
it starts to come back, and the last line as
he realizes what's happened, and he sees her there and
she uses the name she'd given to him and the
part that she knew him as, and she goes, oh
Smithy and runs to him, and man, it's it's good.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
It's good.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
It's a great, great, great film, Random Harvest. But also
no question in the movie, I'll probably end up bringing
up a bunch here, but Shawshank, the ending of Shawshank
Redemption gets me as too many it is too many moments.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
In the movie.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
Have you ever seen fifty first Dates the Adam Sandlet,
I have, yeah, Yeah. I think that's one of the
most romantic films I've ever made, and then breaks my heart.
I think the ending of that is so beautiful, and
that's about memory Less.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
It is beautiful and it is it's a really romantic movie.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
Adam Sandler is a very hard guy to typecast because
there's so many good things and then so many like
what is this?
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Right?
Speaker 3 (22:06):
And then there's like this, and then there's something great
and memorable like fifty First States.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
I think there's a little of there's a little random
harvest in wed States.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
What about being Scared? Do you like being scared? What's
the film that's scheduled the most.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
I don't like horror movies in general.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
I mean they have to be great, sort of the
same way I feel about science fiction, Like I'm not
just into the genre, but when it's great, it's amazing, right,
And I would say the same thing's probably true with horror,
like schlocky horror.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
I don't like or the Saw movies, even they might
by the way, I might be wrong, like they might
be really good. I just don't navigate myself to them.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
But I saw Alien, which somehow came out the same
year as the champ, which is now really messing with
my head. But I saw it. I didn't see Alien
in the theater. I saw it whenever it came out
on TV. I can't even tell you when that was.
You know, it took a while for big time movies
to get to television then, so this had to be
you know, it's probably eighty to eighty three something like that.
(23:01):
And I saw it on the TV that used to
be my brother's room, that became my room when he
had moved out. And I was so terrified during Alien
that I kept turning the TV off, like and lying
back on the bed and breathing, and then I'd come
back and I tould it, you know, and I just you.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
Know, I couldn't.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
I couldn't go more than three or four minutes when
there was something would would build and terrify me. So
that feeling of terror and I mean as a combination
in a horror movie add a sci fi thriller d Alien,
in my memory that that was pretty perfect and being
that scared.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
Have you ever watched Buried environ minutes?
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Oh? I have? I was.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
I watched Buried. I had a great experience watching Buried.
I was the only person in the theater.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Oh wow.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
So I made phone calls. I called, I called it. Yeah,
I called my Uh. I did not call Robert pa
ask why I called. No, I called my best friend,
who I called when I was putting together the answering
the questions that you guys that you send out for this,
and you know, and I've heard a couple of the show.
But I knew he'd I knew he'd have good ideas
about like what even though he knows me so well, he'd.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Be like, no, you love this right right, right?
Speaker 1 (24:07):
I do?
Speaker 2 (24:08):
And uh.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
But I called him during Buried just to be like, hey,
I'm watching Buried with Ryan Reynolds.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
He's like, where am I in a theater? He's like,
what's doing?
Speaker 3 (24:17):
I got there's no one here, no one, not some
guy in the back, no one here.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
So we talked for like twenty minutes. He was like,
what's happening now?
Speaker 3 (24:24):
I'm like, Oh, he's stuck on the ground, buried. Yeah,
that's right, still being buried, buried pretty much the whole
time he's buried.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
That is a stressful film.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
Yeah, it's a totally stressful film.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
And and like, yeah, so that's a movie that like
played on my worst fears, but I like sort of
you know, I got into it. I was, but I
was anxious, sweating, no question, my pulms would have been
sweaty that whole time. That's probably why I made the
calls because I was so uncomfortable and I could you.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
Know, what's the film that you love? It is not
critically acclaimed, but you fucking love it no matter what
they say. Well, it's going to bringing down.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
So almost any of Liam Neeson's action films that are set.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
In the real world. Right, I don't I don't care
about fantasy at all. Right, but you put him in
the real world.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
But I was just looking at a list of these,
and a few of them I don't even remember seeing it.
I'm like, oh, I totally want to see it. Like
I loved The Commuter. I loved Unknown with January Jones,
which on this list wasn't even ranked high.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
And I was like, no, that was totally good. What
are you talking about?
Speaker 3 (25:27):
Like Black Light, The Ice Road, I like, honest Thief,
these are good. They're good, and obviously the taking movies.
I just I'm into those. The bar for me is
so low, Like, Okay, this is going to be this
is going to be fun. I like a guy older
than me sort of somehow credibly badass. I love that
that happened to Liam Neeson, like it was so unexpected. Yeah,
(25:48):
he would turn into this. So I like those. I
liked Babylon. I like Damian Jack. Yeah, I don't. I
don't even understand why. I understand people might have thought
it was too long, right, Yeah, their parts, but I
mean there was so much.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
To like in Babylon.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
I like it very much.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Yeah, and he liked it.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
And Margot Robbie, who I interviewed for our podcast about
movies and she's proud of it, liked it. I thought
she was great and it yeah yeah, super underappreciated, underappreciated movie.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Yeah. Do you like The Gray. That's my favorite Lindsen
accent film.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
The Gray is the one with the wolves, right wolf.
Yeah yeah yeah, I mean it's set in the real world.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
It's slam Neeson. Yeah, I totally loved it.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
It's great.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
It's really I mean, I mean, if any of.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
Those movies is longer than one hundred minutes, I'd be surprised.
They know, they got to know, they know what works,
they know what they're doing, they get into it. We
don't have a lot of exposition at the start setting
up why we should care about him. We just put
him in it and we go, yeah, and obviously, and
therefore I must like Liam Neeson.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
But I mean, I just like it, like he's sick.
Speaker 3 (26:52):
I can get behind something about the angular parts of
the face.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
You look a bit like him. Is that it?
Speaker 2 (26:58):
No, I'll take it. I'll take it. I don't think
that's true, but I'll take it.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
I think that's it. You see yourself in it, that's.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
Funny if I see myself in those movies.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
He but you know, those are like you want to
you want to behave like that.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
You want to be as unafraid or appear as afraid.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
You want a particular set of skills.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
You want a particular you want a particular set of skills.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
So I uh, yeah, man, I I just I mean
In Love actually, which is like my least favorite of
those Richard Curtis movies, although I like all of them,
but by far it's him and the adopted son, right,
you know, or his step son. You know, that's like
it's so him trying while grieving, Like there's this little
bit of real life in the middle of that movie
(27:37):
that I like.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
What is a film that you used to love that
you've watched recently and you've thought, I do not feel
the same way about this.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:43):
So there are a bunch of those. Sometimes they're hard
to remember, but I immediately thought of I was not
a big Star Wars fan, and I went to see
it three times, because we all went to see it
three times. But I remember the feeling of like the
third time, like all right, I guess we're doing this again,
Like it wasn't you know, I okay, Sure, it was okay,
(28:04):
But I like Smoking the Bandit better that year, and
I still like Smoking the band and I still have
a soft spot for it because it was the movie
that I thought was better than Star Wars from nineteen
seventy seven again before the champ mind blown. But Smoking
the Bandit is not as lovely, it's not as perfect
as I remember it. I saw it with my I
have my dad come on turn classic movies with me,
(28:25):
and he did some political movies and then we did
Smoking the Bandits.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
I rewatched it van and I was like, oh.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
That's good, but like a movie I would say, like
definitely also like Police Academy, Right, yeah, like which I
the first one was so incredibly funny, and I saw
it again and I was like, I mean, it's just
like one gay joke after another and a string that
are just you know, they don't it's not that the
times have changed. They probably weren't funny then, but we
thought of it as funny and it now seems really plotting.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
So that didn't that that didn't last.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
What is the film that means the most to you?
Not necessarily the film it's health is good, but the
experience you had around seeing that film makes it special.
Speaker 3 (29:04):
Well, there are a lot of those, but I think
so I'd agree. So I was super close case you
can't tell al ready to my father and we shared
a you know, I mean we love politics. He got
me to love politics and want to talk about it,
and certainly baseball. I had a moment in the It
was a very famous in the people, I guess in
(29:25):
England know what the World Series is, right, So.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
It's the you know, yeah, it's the series that happens
in one country.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
That's right. That's the world, that's right.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
The World Championship has decided between two American cities, that's right.
And so in nineteen seventy five, there was this great
World Series between Boston and Cincinnati, and my two cousins
older my dad sister's kids, and my dad's sister had
died young, and they came to stay with us for
a little bit, like it was a couple of years
(29:53):
after a year after she died, but they came to
stay with us and watched they were watching the World Series.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
And I didn't like baseball.
Speaker 3 (29:59):
And here was my cousin two years older and my
cousin four years older bonding with my father over baseball,
like intensely watching this great series between to decide the
World championship between Cincinnati, Ohio and Boston, Massachusetts.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
And somewhere in fraud, that's right, that's right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
That's right, and uh and I think it was I
think Dusseldorf.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
That's right, that's right, Cincinnati and uh right, so we
and I just remember like the conscious decision, like no,
never again, never again, am I going to not connect
with my dad over this while other people do. So
I became a baseball fan, and I became an intensely
serious baseball fan, and I got jealous, I got protective,
(30:43):
and jet like a dog being pet right like like
the other dog comes like, no way, man, this is
not right to let me in.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
That's my dad, right.
Speaker 3 (30:51):
And I willed myself to be a baseball fan, and
then I legitimately became one, right, a big one. I
wanted to be a broadcaster. I wanted to be a
general manager. I thought I would have a career in
baseball and some I really did, not playing, but in it.
So when Field of Dreams came out, I was with
my girlfriend seeing it in my college girlfriend I was.
I went to college back east, but she lived out
in the Bay Area, so there's a time difference back
(31:12):
to DC.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
We saw it at night.
Speaker 3 (31:14):
I couldn't wait to call my dad the next morning
to tell him that I'd seen this movie where father
it's all about.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
It's all about he will come.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
It's all about your father and connecting with your dad
and how much their relationship mattered. And so I say
to him, I listen, man, hey, hey. He always answered,
if we always talked to each other, like we're already
in conversation, every conversation we had started with so right,
he'd answered the phone, hold on, I go. So I
saw Field of dreams last night. All I go is, so,
I'm like, Papa saw Field of Dreams last night. He goes,
oh my god, we saw it last night. They build it,
(31:43):
he will come. Who what was that?
Speaker 2 (31:45):
What was going on? Oh my god?
Speaker 3 (31:47):
Such drivele And it's just like, I mean, I just
felt so horribly embarrassed to fuck it.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
Yeah, and I'm like.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
Oh, you know, I think it was that bad, but
I hear you, yeah, you know, talking about something else.
And then and to the day he died, he was like, no,
what are you crazy?
Speaker 2 (32:04):
I loved it. It was a father and something. He denied it.
He denied that it happened, but believe me, did you
not go it was you? I'm sure.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
Later I was like, that was about us?
Speaker 2 (32:18):
What's wrong with you? But he was such a good guy.
It wasn't. It wasn't he wasn't being He didn't know.
Speaker 3 (32:22):
He didn't know. I didn't he didn't. I didn't give
him a chance anyway. But it was so deflating. But
so I always I'm always moved by Field of Dreams.
That's probably super sappy and such an American answer, But.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
No, listen is on minus too. Everyone it's the father's
son film, Jesus, even in England where we've never made
it to the finals of the World Series.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
You got to you gotta build your system up. Yeah,
what is the film?
Speaker 1 (32:51):
He might relate to.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
The film or the character.
Speaker 3 (32:53):
Well, I guess I can answer it anywhere I want, right,
So like you, so, I'm I'm always drawn to the
heroes who you know, do the right thing when under
I mean that's nature of all movies. But I don't
mean like action heroes. But like I'm, you know, I
love the out of Sight might be my favorite film experience,
(33:14):
you know, pretty it's just so perfect. Yeah, And I
got to tell Steven Soderberg out on our podcast and
it's been talking about it for years and years and years.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
And I left that.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
Theater and I just wanted to I was like punching
the sky like with joy, like like man, if I
could feel this after every movie, I'd go again and
again again. And it's just a bunch of guys doing
solids for each other. That was basically, you know, And
I liked it.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
I liked it.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
You know, Clooney has.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
Taken the fall for ving Raims, and ving Raims is
talking to her sister no matter what and Cloney's like, no,
he's got to do it. I'm not going to get
mad at him, you know, And they're looking out for
each other and all the Steven's on so brilliant in
the film, and don Cheatle i'd never seen before.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
I mean I hadn't he'd been in movies. He'd been
like devil with a blue dress. But I was like,
who is this? What is this right? You know?
Speaker 3 (34:00):
But I'm not that guy, but I imagine I would
like to be. And like Michael Clayton too, that's who like,
I'm drawn to that character. I gamble gambling's lost his money,
He's trying to do right by people around him, but
the stresses of life are making that largely impossible. And
he's like, has this tension underneath because he won't deal
with his emotional issues presently. So they build and build
(34:22):
and build, and I definitely identify with that.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
I know it's wrong, but.
Speaker 3 (34:26):
Then like William Holden in Network Right, you know, constantly
drawn by these temptations and trying to do the right
thing and ultimately does right, but it's so hard that
all the things that are that are drawing him to
go astray. You know that they done away character, and
(34:46):
then also the idea that you know, how man, Okay,
I don't believe this, but boy, we could get great
ratings if we did this, you know, and it's sort
of reluctance and hesitation and then finally does the right thing.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
And that's like age appropriate too.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
That's probably probab pretty close to how old I am now,
you know for network.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
Really good answers. Fuck. I love out of Sight. It's
so good, such a good film. Yeah, one of the greats.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
I watch it.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
I watched Michael Clayton and out of Site without fail
every year.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
Well, what's the sexiest film you've ever seen? What is it?
Out of Sight?
Speaker 3 (35:17):
Well, I mean, I won't say out of Sight, but
obviously that could be the answer, no question, it's super sexy.
Although the part of that, you know, that's you know,
women love that bathtub scene is the dream that Jennifer
Lopez is happening, you know, and she's super sexy in
that and amazing. She's so good in it too, so
such a element. Yeah, and discussing that she was good, good, good, good.
(35:38):
But I got like go back to as a younger,
like Burt Reynolds directed Sharky's Machine.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
She's a pretty good movie.
Speaker 3 (35:44):
Charles Darning, Bernie Casey and Rachel Ward in that like
as a young kid, like that was a like that's
a real woman, Like that's a grown that's a grown
up woman being sexy and then her again and dead
Men don't wear a plaid. Carl Ryner moved Steve harton
Super Super Fun.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
I love that movie.
Speaker 3 (36:00):
That's a big celebration of old movies, old movies in it,
and she's so, you know, so I have this, you know,
I'm super into Rachel Ward for a long time. So
I'll throw those in. But out of sight certainly right there.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
Well, there's a subcategory troubling by and is worrying? Why
don't film you found arousing that you went, sure you
should and mend.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
So, uh you know.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
Emerald Fanel was a guest on our podcast.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
Do you know her? If you met her, you're amazing.
Speaker 3 (36:27):
Yeah, And we got to talk and we did it
before what's the last.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
Movie she did?
Speaker 1 (36:32):
After promising Young Women?
Speaker 3 (36:34):
After promising Young Woman, which was amazing, the one she
just did Slburn, So she was we taught. We had
her on our podcast talking pictures.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
And she's so funny, right, you must find the right
out time.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
She's unbelievably funny, Like she was one of the great
great guests on anything.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
She's amazing. Right.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
And so there's that scene in Sulburn where there's like
a sexual a bunch of weird ones, but there was
a sexual moment with a menstruating woman, right. But I
was like in my seat like, huh right, like you
know and uh. And so I talked to her about that,
and she was like in her amazing you know, her
amazing way of expressing things and in her brilliant accent,
(37:13):
and she's like, oh my god, you're totally permission to
be horny during the move. And then you know, I
grant She's like, I grant.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
You permission to be horny then.
Speaker 3 (37:22):
And then she said, and she saw the answer that
I give that, and I'll give the other thing. She said,
She goes when I watched the remake of Cape Fear
Juliette Lewis and Robert de Niro, and she's underage, and
it's obviously you know it's wrong.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
You're supposed to think it's wrong.
Speaker 3 (37:36):
Scorse says, he wants you to think it's wrong, right,
and you're and she's like, she was like, oh my god,
I was so unbelievably turned off. She goes, I'm turned
on when I just think about it now, you know.
And she's like, yeah, it's wrong. It's wrong. We shouldn't
we shouldn't feel that. But she was like, yeah, but
you know, that's okay, permission granted.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
So if Emiel gives you permission, I figure's all right, Yeah,
that's right. That's what is this? Why for you, of
all people, what is objectively the greatest film of all
time might not be your favorite, but it is the
pinnacle of cinema.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
Well, the temptation is certainly to say Castle Blanca, and
I can make a case for it. I mean, it's
the perfect studio film from this era where studios, you know,
they made a lot of movies and they weren't all great,
but man, they created something pretty perfection there. And all
these immigrant Jews working on the film. We've been forced
out of Germany and it's about so it's pretty perfect.
(38:30):
I think that a movie I don't like as well
as Casa Blanca doesn't move me in quite the same way.
But in a movie I used to make fun of
because I didn't get it. I mean, I didn't get
this whole thing. I'm so stupid. It's a wonderful life.
Like I guess, it's pretty perfect. I mean, you know
that's it totally delivers. Jimmy Stewart's amazing, gives this incredible performance.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
It's moving.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
I mean, there's a reason why everybody watches it at
Christmas and gets moved by it. But the fact is
it works at all times a year. Great performance, it's
top to bottom and it's a wonderful life. But you know,
and then the movies that I saw in theaters, you
know those two I mentioned, I mean again, you know,
Shaw Shank, Michael Clayton, out of Sight. Oh but but
you know, then to go back to Liam Neeson, the
(39:14):
idea of a movie that just starts like Stanley Kubrick's
Paths of Glory, which might be my favorite movie, is
also for what it accomplished pretty perfect.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
First of all, it feels like an epic.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
I mean, it's a World War One story about the
French battalion set into a pointless fight that it cannot win,
right by arrogant, hubistic generals who don't care, who are
just trying to show you know, they're each trying to
impress their bosses and they don't care how many men
they lose in the process. And then the whole back
half of the film's court martial that follows this action. Right,
(39:46):
it's Ert Douglass as the leader of this battalion, and
then he defends his own men in the trial.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
So it's like two movies.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
It's the battles, incredible tracking shouts of the battle, and
then the trial. At the end, it feels like you've
watched Lawrence of Arabia. I feel like you've watched an
epic and it's under ninety minutes.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
It's like eighty nine minutes. It just starts.
Speaker 3 (40:05):
It's the greatest war saving Private Ryan and Pass the
Glory that I think without to me, without the two
greatest war films American war films ever made. And Pass
the Glory is just to accomplish that in that period
of time.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
It's an amazing film.
Speaker 3 (40:19):
Anybody who hasn't seen it, and a lot of people
haven't seen it, they should see pazzal Glory immediately.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
Excellent. What is the film that you could or have?
What's the most over and over again, Well.
Speaker 3 (40:30):
This is a product of my age and the age
that I came of age in. So the answer to
that has to be Shawshank redemption. Because it was on
television all the time and because it's good, you couldn't
stop watching it no matter where you came in, and
it was always with commercials. It was carried by you know, TNT,
(40:52):
TBS first and TNT, and it was always on. And
that's where I don't even know if I saw it
in the theaters, but you know, I didn't do well
in the theater. It was largely a failure, barely made
back its own money, and that was with a re release.
Even to get close to even was with a re
release after it got a lot of unexpected Oscar nominations.
What saved it was television and then the year it
(41:13):
came out on VHS, it was the number one rental
in the country. So it got saved by Blockbuster and television.
And so yeah, I've probably seen it because I keep
watching it more times than any other movie. Cassi Blanket
definitely up there. And then these movies I watch every year,
you know, like the Out of Sight Michael Clayton, but
(41:33):
they won't be up in.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
That list yet.
Speaker 3 (41:35):
Christmas in Connecticut I've seen that a lot with Barbara Stanwick, who's,
you know, my favorite classic movie star.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
It's pretty great. Christmas in Connecticut's pretty perfect. Yeah, I
love that.
Speaker 1 (41:44):
We don't know to speak too negative. Ben Menkowitz, what's
the worst film I've ever seen? So?
Speaker 3 (41:49):
I just did a piece for CBS Sunday morning, as
we speak on al Pacino, who I have now done
a couple of things with.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
And he's impossible not to like.
Speaker 3 (41:57):
I mean, even though you're already you already like him,
but he's also well not to like in person. He's
interesting guy and you know, you know, and he'll he admits.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
It in his book.
Speaker 3 (42:06):
That's his book is out now and Sonny Boy, it's
really good and really candid.
Speaker 2 (42:12):
But he's made some really horrible movies.
Speaker 3 (42:15):
And so part of this is like, so you know,
like is there a competition between like Righteous Kill? I mean,
he makes this movie with Robert de Niro. They want
to recreate the magic from Heat. It's amazing, Oh my god,
it's the whole movie and you're just like, what has
happened to here?
Speaker 2 (42:29):
What has happened here?
Speaker 3 (42:31):
So Righteous Killing eighty eight minutes are in some ways
eighty eight minutes is just Pacino, But like, how did
that happen? How could that guy? How could they be
in a thing that didn't work that much? I was
also tempted to say the fourth Indiana Jones movie, because
it was it left you feeling so bad about this
thing you love.
Speaker 2 (42:49):
But then they fixed it. Yeah, I think with the
fifth one.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
So I'm glad you think that. I agree on that.
I think they fixed it.
Speaker 3 (42:54):
Yeah, I really I think the fifth one is better
than the second one.
Speaker 1 (42:57):
And I liked I think the fifth one was so
underwrite it's great.
Speaker 3 (43:01):
Yeah, I go one, three, five, two, four, It doesn't county,
that's right. Yeah, but yeah, so it's I just pretend
that one didn't happen.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
Yeah, I liked that.
Speaker 3 (43:11):
I thought the fifth one was really super underrated. Yeah,
I'm with you.
Speaker 1 (43:13):
What's the film that made you laugh the most?
Speaker 3 (43:16):
A lot of movies make me laugh, A lot of
whole movies make me laugh. Carry Grant almost always. Just
watching Our senecond Old Lace, I was trying to remember
one scene in our second Old Lace, which maybe doesn't exist,
might just be in my head, like the release year
of the Champ. But you know, the awful truth is
Girl Friday, but basically Fletch, Anchorman and Midnight Run.
Speaker 1 (43:37):
That's pretty good.
Speaker 2 (43:38):
Those are funny, funny, funny movies.
Speaker 3 (43:40):
Groundhog Day certainly, no question, Caddy Shack, Stripes, Yeah, stripes
I adore, and Midnight Run.
Speaker 2 (43:48):
But Midnight Run is yeah, it done. It's pretty perfect.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
Yeah, Ben Mangowitz, you have been a delight. However, when
your daughter crawled under the house because she thought there
were raccoons there, and you went, it's time for me
to be a hero, and you crawled under. You heard
her calling for help, You grabbed your daughter, You saved.
(44:13):
There's the raccoon there. You fought the raccoon. The raccoon
was strong, the raccoon. You throw the raccoon, but it
knocks one of the turrets holding up the bottom of
your house, and the house collapses on you the bottom floor,
and you are buried alive. And as you lie there
with your last breath, you get your phone out and
you tried to call your friend or you called in
(44:34):
the cinema buried, and you go, buddy, being buried live,
and you guys call Robert Patterson and you go, I
think it's too late. And then you died. I'm walking
past with a coffee, you know. I'm like, I see
your daughter. I go where your dad? Where's your dad?
And she goes, he died a hero. And I go, wow,
I got buried alive to me and she goes, yeah,
(44:55):
he's under the house, right, So I go, come in.
We're gonna to smash up this house. How else we
going to get him? So we smash up your house
with axes. And you're there. But it's a terrible state.
You're in a bit. I'm having to chop you up,
but get you all in the coffin and smash you
all in with the word, with all the stuff. With
the raccoon, poor raccoon. You in the raccoon are holding hands,
dead together, smashed in there, and the raccoon's like saluting you. Anyway,
(45:19):
you're in the coffin. It's rammed in it. There's no room.
There's only enough room to slide one DVD into the
side for you to take across to the other side.
And on the other side, in the gap between achieving
something and the next thing, it's movie night, and every
night it's movie night. And one night it's your movie night.
What film are you showing? In Heaven. When it's your
movie night, Ben mencawaits please for.
Speaker 2 (45:38):
Who's enjoyment, for everyone else's forevery just mine.
Speaker 1 (45:41):
That's how you listen. You're presenting the evening much like
you did on Earth. So what film are you showing?
Speaker 2 (45:46):
I mean, I'd be very tempted to just take Castle.
Speaker 1 (45:48):
Blanket with and they'd be very happy to see.
Speaker 3 (45:50):
It because it moves you every time it does. It
doesn't matter. And you know, Humphrey Bogart's got the greatest
nod in the history of movies. Like the band looks
them like they want to play Lamarsier, right, but they're
not going to do it unless the boss tells him to.
And then and in that moment he nods and he's
in it. He's in the fight. That's it, he committed.
Speaker 2 (46:10):
I love it. I love it.
Speaker 1 (46:11):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (46:11):
I can't get enough of it. I can take Midnight Run,
I could take out of Sight that I'm gonna take Casipy.
Speaker 1 (46:16):
Ben Maguwitz, is there anything you would like to tell
people to listen to or look out for with you
in the coming months.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (46:23):
I would also like to point out that at the
beginning of this I got this new microphone, and we
struggled for just a couple of minutes with getting it.
And I'm thinking the fact that I didn't plug the
cord into the microphone might have had something to do
with it. I got the whole thing plugged into the TV,
but there's no connection to the actual mic.
Speaker 2 (46:42):
Yeah all right, well good, So a.
Speaker 3 (46:45):
Podcast I would not similar to this because it's not
hosted by you. By the way, I just let me
say for you know, I mean, for ted Lasso and
for Shrinking like these are Oh my god, to be
such a part of so many big things that matter.
Speaker 2 (46:58):
So well done. Thank you very much at so and
again you know ted Lasso, it's just whatever.
Speaker 3 (47:05):
It's moving. It's moving, it's moving, moving, moving, it's important.
And I don't understand. I don't I don't get. I mean,
i've met the ratio is fifty to one of people
who like it don't but the people who are who
won't even try it, macheaw. I don't know anyth about soccer either.
That's why it's sort of perfect. It doesn't matter.
Speaker 2 (47:20):
This is good. And now I watched the Premier League.
Speaker 1 (47:22):
By the way, fantastic it was done.
Speaker 3 (47:24):
So we have a podcast TCM in partnership with Max
called Talking Pictures. That's where I interviewed Emerald Fanel. That
was season one. Ten of people on season one, including
the Steven Soderberg and Emerald Fanel. A lot of big
names have already forgotten and mel Brooks. And season two
we're producing right now, be out soon. But we've you know,
(47:44):
Bill Murray, Carol Burnett, Margot Robbie and it's just people
talking about their lives and how movies impacted their lives
and the movies that matter to them. We have eight
questions we ask everybody at the end, but it's quick.
Speaker 2 (47:56):
It's not a it's like one little segment.
Speaker 3 (47:57):
It's not your whole thing, but it's you know, and
movie experiences like what's the movie you remember all your life?
Speaker 2 (48:04):
With the theater? It was like real quick.
Speaker 3 (48:05):
Paul Thomas Anderson, there's been a big supporter at TCM,
and he came to our festival and he said, it's
not just the memories of movies that matter, right, it's
not the movies themselves that are we're preserving here. We're
preserving memories about ourselves, right, moments in our lives.
Speaker 2 (48:19):
There.
Speaker 3 (48:20):
You know, we go to a film, and we remember
how the popcorn tasted, we remember what it smelled like,
who we were with, what the theater was, what was
gross about the theater, what was great about the theater?
Like these are important shared memories, these films from and
they've been tapping him for one hundred years and more
than one hundred years, and I like being part of it,
even in this weird way that I'm connected to it.
Speaker 1 (48:39):
I love it. Thank you, Ben Neglis. This has been
such a pleasure. It's been so nice to me you.
Thank you for giving me your time.
Speaker 3 (48:45):
Yeah, it's been a lot of fun. I was really
thrilled to you. We're interested in doing it, so thanks
very much, Brent.
Speaker 1 (48:52):
I hope you have a wonderful death. Good day to you.
So that was Upsode three hundred and twenty four. Head
over to the patre Patreon dot com forward slash Brett
Goldstein for the extra twenty minutes of chat, secrets and
video with Ben. Go to Apple Podcast, give us a
five star rating and writ about the film It means
the most to you, and ye so loveything to read
my neighbor Marie. Nice reading always, christ and thank you
(49:12):
very much for that. Thank you all for listening. Thank
you so much to Ben Wiz for giving me his time.
Thanks to Scruby's Pippin that distracts some pieces Network. Thanks
to Buddy Peace for producing it. Thanks to iHeartMedia and
Milferrell's Big Money Players Network Plays to get Thanks Adam
Riches and Photographics Leads Laden for the photography. Come and
join me next week for an excellent guest. But that
is it for now. Thank you all for listening. But
that is it for now. In the meantime, do you
(49:34):
have a lovely week and please be excellent to each
other seconds an six products us back backs, say back
(50:11):
back
Look out is surely films to be buried with. Hello,
and welcome to Films to be buried with. My name
is Brett Goldstein. I'm a comedian and actor, a writer,
a director, a TV remote and I love films. As
(00:23):
Stephen King once said, if you don't have time to read,
you don't have the time or the tools to write.
Simple as that. Also, you should watch the Bruisal list
when it comes out. It's fucking magnificent. Yeah, it really is.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Nice good shout, Stephen. Every week I invite a special
guest over. I tell them they've died, and I get
them to discuss their life through the films that meant
the most of them. Previous guests include Barry Jenkins, Amber Ruffin,
Kyl McLaughlin, Sharon Stone, and even Bed Crampbeles. But this
week it is the wonderful mister Ben Mankowitz. Episode five
of season two of Shrinking is out this week. Catch
(00:55):
up on all the episodes on Apple TV. Head over
to the Patriot at patreon dot com. Forwards last Goldstein,
where you get twenty minutes extra stuff with Ben, you
get a secret, you get the whole episode uncut. Adfrey
and as a video. Check it out over at patreon
dot com. Forward slash Brett Goldstein Ben Mankowitz is a
podcaster and a journalist and he's a host for Turner
Classic Movies. I was very excited to talk to Ben.
(01:18):
He's a proper, proper, proper serious film buff and I
had never met him before. We recorded this on Zoom
about a couple of weeks ago, and we had such
a lovely time. He was fucking brilliant and I really
think you're going to love this one. So that is
it for now. I hope you're well, and I very
much hope you enjoy episode three hundred and twenty four
of Films to be Buried With. Hello, and welcome to
(01:51):
Films to be Buried With. It is I Brett Goldstein,
and I'm joined today by a Hollywood legend. He's Hollywood
Royalty's podcaster. He's a writer, he's an actor, he's a presenter,
and he is the keeper of the film flame. He
is the one keeping cinema alive. And without him, I
(02:15):
worry we will die. Please he's here, He's really here,
and he's in front of me. Now, please run to
the show. It's brilliant, but.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
Back it.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Basically, none of that is true except for the podcaster part.
And I do you know, I'm a host at Turner
Classic Movies.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
But wasn't there wasn't there a near riot when they
tried to reduce that.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
There was there was The cinema loving world came to
our defense, the people and then representing the people. You know,
some some fairly big name directors really stepped up and
helped and really, and I have to even praise our
bosses too, because they heard it, they recognized it. You know,
there's a world where powerful people, you know, could easily
(03:00):
say at any moment like, hey, I hear what you're saying,
but I don't tell you how to make films. Don't
tell me how to run my company, right, you know?
And they understood that we're just a slightly different channel
than others because we're sort of the keepers of this
cultural legacy, which is a you know, it turns out
to be a pretty serious responsibility.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Tell me this, would you mind for a lot of
my owners are in England, they don't have TCM, would
you mind telling them what it is that you do
in case anyone is listening it?
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Sure?
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Yeah, yeah, So there was a version of TCM in England,
but it wasn't curated, there wasn't a host. It's my understanding,
so and it's now off. It's not even on the
air anymore there So at Turner Classic Movie started by
Ted Turner in nineteen ninety four in Park because he
loved seeing old movies and when he was trying to
program his superstation TBS, which was at that point or
(03:50):
before that, just a station in Atlanta, I think WTBS,
but I may have the call letters run there. So,
but these movies were inexpensive to buy, and he liked them,
and he sort of theory, which I think is a
really sound one.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
If he likes something, other people will like things, right, But.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
They were inexpensive, and then there was this sort of
people responded to these movies and they were acquirable, and
he bought this big library of old films and classic
films in nineteen ninety four prior to that, and then
started the channel in nineteen ninety four, and we seven
nights a week during prime time and on the weekends
during the day. We showed the movies twenty four hours,
seven days a week, uncut, commercial free, so as the
(04:26):
director intended, never a commercial and seven nights a week
and on weekends during the day we curate them, you know.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
So we have a host. It's me.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
There's four other hosts, all really good. I've been there
twenty one years. Amazingly. It was a job when I
got it, and now it's a career. And we sort
of put the movies in their proper historical context, Hollywood context,
you know. And then because it turns out, contrary to
what every American kid is subtly taught growing up, other
countries also made good movies. So it turns out, turns
(04:59):
out the English, the Germans, and the Russians, the Spanish,
and the Japanese, the French, maybe they knew.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
What they were doing.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
So we you know, Hollywood, most of our movies are American,
of course, but we put them in their proper Hollywood
context or world cinematic context.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Forgive me, I've never met you before, and I have
no idea of what I'm asking you questions that you
get asked a million times and you're annoyed by it,
and if so, please let me know. No never, But
do you write all of your intros or is there
a team that writes them? Is it all you like,
how does it work?
Speaker 3 (05:30):
So from this was true for Robert Osborne, who was
our sort of legendary the Walter Cronkite at TCMRO. He
was there from nineteen ninety four until his death in
twenty seventeen, and I've been there since two thousand and three.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
So the script we do too many.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
If we wrote them all ourselves from scratch, it would
literally be.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
All you did.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
I'd go to Atlanta once a month and I'm shooting,
you know, one hundred movies. Yeah, So we never repeat
a lead, and we have it sort of a team
of people who write them and then they come to us,
come to me. It's and I still spend more time
writing those scripts.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
I guess it's rewriting.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Some of them I start over totally, but most, you know,
I take anywhere from between half of what's there. I
would say sometimes if it's good, eighty ninety percent, but
it's you know, it definitely becomes mine. I'm very comfortable
saying that that I don't go on without.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Yeah, I mean, it's such an unusual position you're in totally.
There isn't really a comparable There isn't there's no one,
there's no other sort of countrywide thing that curates films
and keeps there.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
There's no job like this on television. I mean, I mean,
so I was in a screening last night. I got
to see the new was we're taping. This will betray
the time a little bit, but the recording this the
new Bruce Springsteen movie, which I think comes out on
Disney Plus October twenty fifth, so by the time people
hear this, it'll be out.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
And it's quite good.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
It's sort of a look at this new tour and
examination of death and friendships that are lost because of that.
And it's a great concert film also, and it's read
at the Academy, And it's just one example of what
happens to me. And it's just how I got put
in this position.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
It's amazically.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
I go there and people I don't know, sometimes people
who just love movies, and sometimes people who make them,
and they just come up to me in a meaningful
way and thank me. Right because this channel, most people
don't watch TCM, but the people who watch it, man,
they care deeply about it and it's part of their identity.
Brett like it's crazy, Like you'd think it was a
lunatic if you said to someone here in the States,
(07:27):
you know what chance or you know, what are you
like on TV? And they were like, oh I love ABC?
Speaker 1 (07:33):
What right? He said?
Speaker 3 (07:37):
Like they get it tattooed, they like, they'll be like, yeah,
I'm a lawyer and a mother of four and a
wife and a TCM fan.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Like that's sort of how they define their lives. Yeah,
it's nice. It's really a great place to be.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
Yeah, but it's also like it's a big responsibility. You're
like keeping old cinema alive, the legacy of cinema, and
I guess also having to I mean people ask me
this enough doing the podcast, When do you find time
to watch enough films? But in your case, you're also
trying to keep up with over one hundred years of
I mean, how do you do it? Do you ever
get panicked all the time?
Speaker 3 (08:10):
I mean, even for this, I'm like, what if I
say something wrong? What if I can't recall who directed this?
On the you know, spur of a moment, Because you know,
people have the films they love and they know everything
about those are the ones they want to talk to
me about. And I'm like, I get it that this
is your favorite film but I've seen like eight hundred
and eighty seven other movies since I last saw this,
So yeah, so I sort of you get comfortable. I
(08:30):
do panic, but you sort of get comfortable with And
it took a long long time, like I am who
I am.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
I'm comfortable with what I know. I don't have to pretend.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
It's a huge breakthrough in living in Los Angeles, a
place I love and filled with these smart, creative people.
So I am not bad mouth in LA. But there's
a lot that you go to lunch with people and
they're like, oh, you know, uh, you know Harry Goldwell,
and you're attempting. I was like, oh yeah, sure, sure, sure, sure,
And then you're panicked that they'll ask you something about
this guy who you definitely don't know, and so about
(08:59):
I don't know. Eight years ago, I just started saying, no,
tell me, because they want.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
To tell you who he is, right lovely.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
And when people say, you know, I'm wondering about the ending,
I'm like, no, I don't recall it. You tell me,
tell me and then we'll talk about it and you'll
remind me. But I hate pretending, and I was always
fearful that I wouldn't have to be caught, and it's
so phony.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
I don't like being phony.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
And also, if I may ask, I didn't know this
about you, and obviously I did a tiny bit of research,
but you are like parts of proper Hollywood road to
your Your grandfather wrote Citizen.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
Kane, and yeah, my my grandfather wrote Citizen Kane and
a bunch of other movies. No, it's not nothing, Mark
and Marx Brothers movies. And and he was you know,
he was the he was the subject of the movie
mank that David Fincher film was on Netflix in twenty
twenty one, which is really wonderful.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Can I ask your relationship toward that, like was it
did you just grow up steeped in Hollywood? Like has
there been your net or No?
Speaker 3 (09:52):
No, not at all, because my dad wasn't into that.
I mean, neither was my grandfather. If you saw the
movie Herman, you know that this was a guy sort
of tortured by the fact that the movie bank. You
know that my grandfather Hermann was tortured by this notion
that he was writing, you know, Filler for the Masses. Now,
you shouldn't think less of him. That's all His father
(10:13):
right all his father that you know, you want to
write a play that's serious, you want to be a
theater critic, that's serious, novelist serious, This nonsense yapping for
the camera, this is unseerious. And so he was always
sort of plagued by that. And it's one reason why
when he wrote Citizen Kane, he was very eager to
get credit for it, because he thought, oh, this is good,
(10:35):
this is this is serious, and I want to go
back in time and say, you know, come on, man,
this is you know, shake him like no, this mattered,
like this is you know, if we care about Tennessee Williams,
we can care about Frank Caepra Like it's okay, you know.
But my father didn't want to work in the business.
My dad, I think would have been the highest paid
screenwriter in Hollywood. I like to say, I don't know
(10:55):
idea whether that would have been true. My dad went
into politics. So I was born in Washington, d C.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
I grew up there.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
I cared about and the movie part of my family
was like the other part of the family, Like it
was like this other thing.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
You know. I knew it was a big deal, but
it just didn't resonate.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
And I didn't even start really paying attention to classic
movies until I was, you know, in college, to be honest. So,
and I didn't get this job until I was thirty
six or something, so I had some time to catch up.
But yeah, so I wanted to be in politics or sports.
I wanted to be a sports broadcaster, you know. Thought
i'd be a press secretary like my father. You know,
my dad was Bobby Kennedy's press secretary, ran George McGovern's campaign.
(11:32):
He was a big deal and he was super smart.
So I thought he was the big deal in the family.
Like I thought he was the most famous person in
the family. It turns out, it turns out I was mistaken.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Yeah, how fascinating. And you haven't made films yourself, have you?
Speaker 2 (11:45):
No?
Speaker 3 (11:46):
No, he's funny because you said I'm an actor and
I'm not an actor. I have acted, but I've just done.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Some stung as an act, I mean, but it's playing himself.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
But that's so easy, easy, Yeah, this is what I do.
And you know, Senator, how do you respond to the allegations?
That's the that's my life, that's what I do. Yeah, center, center, center,
how do you respond to the allegations totally, totally. Yeah.
But I've done some stuff lately with some all these
funny people have gotten to know, you know, affiliated with
(12:17):
sort of the Groundlings and UCB, and I've done some
readings and and man, getting people to laugh at things
you say that other people have written. You know that
you put your own little it's good man, people like
you have written it. Like, I'm like, oh, this is good.
So I don't know. I would love to act in
the limited capability that I.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Think I could pull off. I'm not I'm not crying
on camera. Yeah, that's right. It's got to be the
right kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Yeah, Ben, I've forgotten to tell you something. Fuck. Sorry,
it's really bad that I've forgotten study this. I should
have set it up front, but I forgot to Teddy,
you've died. You're dead.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
That's disappointing news. Inevitable, but disappointing.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
How did you die?
Speaker 3 (13:01):
Well, as long as you're giving me the power to
determine this, like it's the time to confront fears, go on.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
So I was buried alive, fucking out.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
This is your choice.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
I mean, it's the thing I'm most afraid of, right,
I mean, claustrophobic, trapped and it got you in the end.
It got me in the end, maybe by one of
the directors whose movies I'm about the bad mouth like
somebody's uh. But yeah, that terrifies me, like that idea
of being trapped and suffocating, that's it.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Yeah, So the Vanishing not a fan of.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
No, No, that's right.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
I mean I can watch it, but it gets me,
you know, it makes me anxious when I see it.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Yeah. I know people who are like truly horrified, you know,
that's the thing. But I'm like, it's not great. I
don't think anyone watches Buried Alive and guys, yeah, it.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
Seems but I mean I think about it like I
would when I was a kid, Like I would pull
the covers up over my head and see how long
I could stand it without panic. Oh fuck, and I
would definitely panic. I mean, there's no question, sweat.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
How are you underwater?
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Water?
Speaker 3 (14:07):
Water is fine? I mean I can that, doesn't you know.
I mean if it's a pool, I can. But I'm
a little afrasey ocean like, I mean, I go in,
but I'm not into it, you know, I'm not.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
Yeah, it's too cool.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Any any idea where this came from? Where this is
the one to your face?
Speaker 2 (14:22):
I don't know. I don't know where it came from.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
I mean, but there's a constant sense of where's the
how am I getting? You'd like movies like sitting in
the middle in a row in a theater, like like,
how am I going to get out of here to pee?
I'm trapped if I can't sit on an aisle. So yeah,
some of it is. Yeah, it's not comfortable, and I
don't I don't. I don't like it, and I have
a kid, and so I don't want to like, you know,
I don't want to be like the weird dad like.
And I always think, what if she gets stuck under
(14:45):
the house? Like that's another thing. I like, why would
she get stuck under the house? And I'm like would
I be able to save her? Like am I going
to be able to overcome this and crawl under the house?
Speaker 1 (14:55):
And so fascinating. So do you worry about death generally?
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Yes, And it's intermittent, you know, there are times when
I do and then times when I think, well, you know,
I wouldn't constantly feel like I have homework like that
would be a that would be a blessing, you know. Yeah,
But yeah, I get scared sometimes. I fly all the time.
I get scared almost every a little moment of like
not into this. I wish I weren't doing this. So yeah,
(15:22):
I definitely think about it, do you.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Yeah, I'm more worried about other people dying. I used
to be really worried about death, and I'm sort of
not as much now, partly because I sort of joke
about this in my stand up side, but I actually
really mean it, which is that I did Sesame Street,
so it's like nothing that like I can die me.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Yeah, I get you.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
I just always thought, like I still think of myself
as younger than I am. I'm sure it's true for
a lot of people, maybe particularly in this business, or
maybe it's just the human condition. But then I recognize
that I'm not that young, and like it wouldn't be
like I'm reaching the point where just on years my dad,
you know, gets for all of us, it's less and
less tragic.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Yeah, I'm getting sad now, right, like, oh, they're not.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
So young, you know, you know, yeah, but now you're
you know, you're in your fifties it's like, oh.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
But my friend messages me because someone I can't remember who, sadly,
someone famous died at like ninety four, and it said
tragically passed away at ninety four. And my friend was like, tragically,
what relief, it's ninety four, Let him go.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
Yeah, yeah, I mean there's it's weird how we make
that adjustment. Like Mitzie Gainer, this wonderful actress who died
this week that we're shooting. And I knew Mitzi through
TCM and she's amazing. But you know, right, you're like, okay,
well it's you know, I don't think she was that
well at the end. So you're like, okay, that's just
you know, you adjust like that adjustment. But yet, if
it's your parent, doesn't matter. My dad died in ninety
(16:45):
I still think about it all the time. You know,
he's been on ten years and he was ninety.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Yeah. It's never a good time, really, is it.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
No, it's not. It's never. It's never a good time.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
But I obviously want to be around for my daughter,
and you know it helps having your dad around helps,
so I want to be Therefore.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
What do you think happens when you die? Do you
think there's enough to life?
Speaker 2 (17:04):
I don't know. I think it's just that's the end
of that. But you know what do I know?
Speaker 3 (17:09):
What do anyways know? I mean, it'd be nice if
there were you do. Oh I didn't realize that. I was, Yeah,
you should talk about this more.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Yeah, there's a heaven and you're going, oh, well, that's
crying for your services to cinema and they're very excited
to have you there. They're fucking excited, and it is
filled with your favorite thing. What's your favorite thing?
Speaker 3 (17:27):
I mean, like if it's totally distilled down, it's the
moment of being done with something that was hard and
not having anything on the horizon.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
And how long does that moment last?
Speaker 3 (17:38):
It could last a night, it could be two days,
it could last twenty minutes. But you know, like come
home and I don't have to do anything. I like
being lazy and like if I you know, and then
i'd want my family around.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
I'm The feeling of achievement isn't just late definitely. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
Yeah, no, if you haven't if that thing didn't go well,
then you won't have that feeling, no question.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Yeah. Wow, Okay, that's brilliant. Heaven is entirely that feeling.
It's that gap, the gap between successful completion and having
to do something else.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
Fuck. Yeah, that's right. That's a nice moment. It's a
nice moment. Yeah, it's not long enough, never is.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
It's great and everyone's very excited to see you in
that special moment. They want to talk their all big fans.
The one talks about your life. They want to talk
about your life through the medium of film. And the
first what's the first film you remember seeing? Ben Mankowitz?
Speaker 3 (18:23):
Which film I remember seeing was in a theater in Washington,
d C. I should have looked up the year seventy three,
seventy four. I think maybe it's later seventy five, maybe
The Champ, the remake of The Champ with John Voight
and Ricky Schroeder.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
I saw it with my brother.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
What a terrible heartbreaking first.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
Yeah, totally, I mean right, like you know, right, he
connects with his dad, his dad dies. It's the I
saw it with my father and my brother. My brother's
twelve years older, so correspondent for Dateline NBC.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
We're very close, and the three of us. It was
the three of us.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
Together, my dad, my brother and me, which was a
rare thing to get all three of us a new movie,
partly because of the age differences, and my dad was
so busy.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
My mom was not there. And it was terrible, the remake.
Speaker 3 (19:07):
I mean, to me, it was just awful because this
terrible thing happened. I was credibly close to my dad
and he's gone, and I must have seen a movie
before that, because I feel like it's too late. I mean,
I always think in my head it's like seventy three,
but I think it's later. I'm going to look it
up while we're talking, but I got to look it
up before. Yeah, So, but it was I remember coming
out of the theater and I remember understanding fully by
(19:28):
the way they were talking because my brother's twelve years
older and my father that they knew that that was bad.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Nineteen seventy nine, so that's crazy. I'm twelve. So it's
not the first movie I remember seeing in my head.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
It is like, no, but I mean it's a lie,
because it's a lie in my head.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
Yeah, but that's the one that stays with you from
the artist.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
But I obviously saw Star Wars, so I saw that before,
you know. So, but The Champ was the one I remember,
and I probably because it was me and my brother
and my father together. But it was bad and they
knew it was bad, and I could tell by their
reactions it was bad.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
That's crazy.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
I thought it was seven years old when that movie
came out, Like, I'm bad.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
Yeah, when you say bad, you mean because it made
you so unhappy.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
No, it was not a good film. It was like, like,
it's a remake of a Wallace Beery movie. And the
original in the early thirties was good, you know, and
is thought of as good anyway, and this was just not.
I mean, John Void's a sensational actor, and Rick Schroeder
turned into be It turned out to be a pretty
good actor. But this was not a This was not
a great film.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Interesting, that is your fast Okay, what about crying then?
If it wasn't The Champ, what's the film that made
you cry the most?
Speaker 3 (20:36):
So as I think it's nineteen forty two, but Random
Harvest with Ronald Comb a couple of year people, Ronald
Coleman and Greer Garson and he loses his memory, she's
in love with her. He loses his memory twice in
the movie. He starts with a lost memory from World
War One and then builds a life with Greer. Garson
gets hit by a car and loses that memory and
(20:58):
sort of goes back to who he was first, but
he's lost the part where in between, and then she
sticks with him. She understands what's happened because she knew
he'd lost the memory in the first place. And then
she eventually gets at job as his secretary just to
be near him. And then through a couple of different circumstances,
he goes to the place where they live together and
(21:18):
it starts to come back, and the last line as
he realizes what's happened, and he sees her there and
she uses the name she'd given to him and the
part that she knew him as, and she goes, oh
Smithy and runs to him, and man, it's it's good.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
It's good.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
It's a great, great, great film, Random Harvest. But also
no question in the movie, I'll probably end up bringing
up a bunch here, but Shawshank, the ending of Shawshank
Redemption gets me as too many it is too many moments.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
In the movie.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
Have you ever seen fifty first Dates the Adam Sandlet,
I have, yeah, Yeah. I think that's one of the
most romantic films I've ever made, and then breaks my heart.
I think the ending of that is so beautiful, and
that's about memory Less.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
It is beautiful and it is it's a really romantic movie.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
Adam Sandler is a very hard guy to typecast because
there's so many good things and then so many like
what is this?
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Right?
Speaker 3 (22:06):
And then there's like this, and then there's something great
and memorable like fifty First States.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
I think there's a little of there's a little random
harvest in wed States.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
What about being Scared? Do you like being scared? What's
the film that's scheduled the most.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
I don't like horror movies in general.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
I mean they have to be great, sort of the
same way I feel about science fiction, Like I'm not
just into the genre, but when it's great, it's amazing, right,
And I would say the same thing's probably true with horror,
like schlocky horror.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
I don't like or the Saw movies, even they might
by the way, I might be wrong, like they might
be really good. I just don't navigate myself to them.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
But I saw Alien, which somehow came out the same
year as the champ, which is now really messing with
my head. But I saw it. I didn't see Alien
in the theater. I saw it whenever it came out
on TV. I can't even tell you when that was.
You know, it took a while for big time movies
to get to television then, so this had to be
you know, it's probably eighty to eighty three something like that.
(23:01):
And I saw it on the TV that used to
be my brother's room, that became my room when he
had moved out. And I was so terrified during Alien
that I kept turning the TV off, like and lying
back on the bed and breathing, and then I'd come
back and I tould it, you know, and I just you.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
Know, I couldn't.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
I couldn't go more than three or four minutes when
there was something would would build and terrify me. So
that feeling of terror and I mean as a combination
in a horror movie add a sci fi thriller d Alien,
in my memory that that was pretty perfect and being
that scared.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
Have you ever watched Buried environ minutes?
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Oh? I have? I was.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
I watched Buried. I had a great experience watching Buried.
I was the only person in the theater.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Oh wow.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
So I made phone calls. I called, I called it. Yeah,
I called my Uh. I did not call Robert pa
ask why I called. No, I called my best friend,
who I called when I was putting together the answering
the questions that you guys that you send out for this,
and you know, and I've heard a couple of the show.
But I knew he'd I knew he'd have good ideas
about like what even though he knows me so well, he'd.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Be like, no, you love this right right, right?
Speaker 1 (24:07):
I do?
Speaker 2 (24:08):
And uh.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
But I called him during Buried just to be like, hey,
I'm watching Buried with Ryan Reynolds.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
He's like, where am I in a theater? He's like,
what's doing?
Speaker 3 (24:17):
I got there's no one here, no one, not some
guy in the back, no one here.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
So we talked for like twenty minutes. He was like,
what's happening now?
Speaker 3 (24:24):
I'm like, Oh, he's stuck on the ground, buried. Yeah,
that's right, still being buried, buried pretty much the whole
time he's buried.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
That is a stressful film.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
Yeah, it's a totally stressful film.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
And and like, yeah, so that's a movie that like
played on my worst fears, but I like sort of
you know, I got into it. I was, but I
was anxious, sweating, no question, my pulms would have been
sweaty that whole time. That's probably why I made the
calls because I was so uncomfortable and I could you.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
Know, what's the film that you love? It is not
critically acclaimed, but you fucking love it no matter what
they say. Well, it's going to bringing down.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
So almost any of Liam Neeson's action films that are set.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
In the real world. Right, I don't I don't care
about fantasy at all. Right, but you put him in
the real world.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
But I was just looking at a list of these,
and a few of them I don't even remember seeing it.
I'm like, oh, I totally want to see it. Like
I loved The Commuter. I loved Unknown with January Jones,
which on this list wasn't even ranked high.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
And I was like, no, that was totally good. What
are you talking about?
Speaker 3 (25:27):
Like Black Light, The Ice Road, I like, honest Thief,
these are good. They're good, and obviously the taking movies.
I just I'm into those. The bar for me is
so low, Like, Okay, this is going to be this
is going to be fun. I like a guy older
than me sort of somehow credibly badass. I love that
that happened to Liam Neeson, like it was so unexpected. Yeah,
(25:48):
he would turn into this. So I like those. I
liked Babylon. I like Damian Jack. Yeah, I don't. I
don't even understand why. I understand people might have thought
it was too long, right, Yeah, their parts, but I
mean there was so much.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
To like in Babylon.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
I like it very much.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Yeah, and he liked it.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
And Margot Robbie, who I interviewed for our podcast about
movies and she's proud of it, liked it. I thought
she was great and it yeah yeah, super underappreciated, underappreciated movie.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Yeah. Do you like The Gray. That's my favorite Lindsen
accent film.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
The Gray is the one with the wolves, right wolf.
Yeah yeah yeah, I mean it's set in the real world.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
It's slam Neeson. Yeah, I totally loved it.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
It's great.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
It's really I mean, I mean, if any of.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
Those movies is longer than one hundred minutes, I'd be surprised.
They know, they got to know, they know what works,
they know what they're doing, they get into it. We
don't have a lot of exposition at the start setting
up why we should care about him. We just put
him in it and we go, yeah, and obviously, and
therefore I must like Liam Neeson.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
But I mean, I just like it, like he's sick.
Speaker 3 (26:52):
I can get behind something about the angular parts of
the face.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
You look a bit like him. Is that it?
Speaker 2 (26:58):
No, I'll take it. I'll take it. I don't think
that's true, but I'll take it.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
I think that's it. You see yourself in it, that's.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
Funny if I see myself in those movies.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
He but you know, those are like you want to
you want to behave like that.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
You want to be as unafraid or appear as afraid.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
You want a particular set of skills.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
You want a particular you want a particular set of skills.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
So I uh, yeah, man, I I just I mean
In Love actually, which is like my least favorite of
those Richard Curtis movies, although I like all of them,
but by far it's him and the adopted son, right,
you know, or his step son. You know, that's like
it's so him trying while grieving, Like there's this little
bit of real life in the middle of that movie
(27:37):
that I like.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
What is a film that you used to love that
you've watched recently and you've thought, I do not feel
the same way about this.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:43):
So there are a bunch of those. Sometimes they're hard
to remember, but I immediately thought of I was not
a big Star Wars fan, and I went to see
it three times, because we all went to see it
three times. But I remember the feeling of like the
third time, like all right, I guess we're doing this again,
Like it wasn't you know, I okay, Sure, it was okay,
(28:04):
But I like Smoking the Bandit better that year, and
I still like Smoking the band and I still have
a soft spot for it because it was the movie
that I thought was better than Star Wars from nineteen
seventy seven again before the champ mind blown. But Smoking
the Bandit is not as lovely, it's not as perfect
as I remember it. I saw it with my I
have my dad come on turn classic movies with me,
(28:25):
and he did some political movies and then we did
Smoking the Bandits.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
I rewatched it van and I was like, oh.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
That's good, but like a movie I would say, like
definitely also like Police Academy, Right, yeah, like which I
the first one was so incredibly funny, and I saw
it again and I was like, I mean, it's just
like one gay joke after another and a string that
are just you know, they don't it's not that the
times have changed. They probably weren't funny then, but we
thought of it as funny and it now seems really plotting.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
So that didn't that that didn't last.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
What is the film that means the most to you?
Not necessarily the film it's health is good, but the
experience you had around seeing that film makes it special.
Speaker 3 (29:04):
Well, there are a lot of those, but I think
so I'd agree. So I was super close case you
can't tell al ready to my father and we shared
a you know, I mean we love politics. He got
me to love politics and want to talk about it,
and certainly baseball. I had a moment in the It
was a very famous in the people, I guess in
(29:25):
England know what the World Series is, right, So.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
It's the you know, yeah, it's the series that happens
in one country.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
That's right. That's the world, that's right.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
The World Championship has decided between two American cities, that's right.
And so in nineteen seventy five, there was this great
World Series between Boston and Cincinnati, and my two cousins
older my dad sister's kids, and my dad's sister had
died young, and they came to stay with us for
a little bit, like it was a couple of years
(29:53):
after a year after she died, but they came to
stay with us and watched they were watching the World Series.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
And I didn't like baseball.
Speaker 3 (29:59):
And here was my cousin two years older and my
cousin four years older bonding with my father over baseball,
like intensely watching this great series between to decide the
World championship between Cincinnati, Ohio and Boston, Massachusetts.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
And somewhere in fraud, that's right, that's right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
That's right, and uh and I think it was I
think Dusseldorf.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
That's right, that's right, Cincinnati and uh right, so we
and I just remember like the conscious decision, like no,
never again, never again, am I going to not connect
with my dad over this while other people do. So
I became a baseball fan, and I became an intensely
serious baseball fan, and I got jealous, I got protective,
(30:43):
and jet like a dog being pet right like like
the other dog comes like, no way, man, this is
not right to let me in.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
That's my dad, right.
Speaker 3 (30:51):
And I willed myself to be a baseball fan, and
then I legitimately became one, right, a big one. I
wanted to be a broadcaster. I wanted to be a
general manager. I thought I would have a career in
baseball and some I really did, not playing, but in it.
So when Field of Dreams came out, I was with
my girlfriend seeing it in my college girlfriend I was.
I went to college back east, but she lived out
in the Bay Area, so there's a time difference back
(31:12):
to DC.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
We saw it at night.
Speaker 3 (31:14):
I couldn't wait to call my dad the next morning
to tell him that I'd seen this movie where father
it's all about.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
It's all about he will come.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
It's all about your father and connecting with your dad
and how much their relationship mattered. And so I say
to him, I listen, man, hey, hey. He always answered,
if we always talked to each other, like we're already
in conversation, every conversation we had started with so right,
he'd answered the phone, hold on, I go. So I
saw Field of dreams last night. All I go is, so,
I'm like, Papa saw Field of Dreams last night. He goes,
oh my god, we saw it last night. They build it,
(31:43):
he will come. Who what was that?
Speaker 2 (31:45):
What was going on? Oh my god?
Speaker 3 (31:47):
Such drivele And it's just like, I mean, I just
felt so horribly embarrassed to fuck it.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
Yeah, and I'm like.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
Oh, you know, I think it was that bad, but
I hear you, yeah, you know, talking about something else.
And then and to the day he died, he was like, no,
what are you crazy?
Speaker 2 (32:04):
I loved it. It was a father and something. He denied it.
He denied that it happened, but believe me, did you
not go it was you? I'm sure.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
Later I was like, that was about us?
Speaker 2 (32:18):
What's wrong with you? But he was such a good guy.
It wasn't. It wasn't he wasn't being He didn't know.
Speaker 3 (32:22):
He didn't know. I didn't he didn't. I didn't give
him a chance anyway. But it was so deflating. But
so I always I'm always moved by Field of Dreams.
That's probably super sappy and such an American answer, But.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
No, listen is on minus too. Everyone it's the father's
son film, Jesus, even in England where we've never made
it to the finals of the World Series.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
You got to you gotta build your system up. Yeah,
what is the film?
Speaker 1 (32:51):
He might relate to.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
The film or the character.
Speaker 3 (32:53):
Well, I guess I can answer it anywhere I want, right,
So like you, so, I'm I'm always drawn to the
heroes who you know, do the right thing when under
I mean that's nature of all movies. But I don't
mean like action heroes. But like I'm, you know, I
love the out of Sight might be my favorite film experience,
(33:14):
you know, pretty it's just so perfect. Yeah, And I
got to tell Steven Soderberg out on our podcast and
it's been talking about it for years and years and years.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
And I left that.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
Theater and I just wanted to I was like punching
the sky like with joy, like like man, if I
could feel this after every movie, I'd go again and
again again. And it's just a bunch of guys doing
solids for each other. That was basically, you know, And
I liked it.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
I liked it.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
You know, Clooney has.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
Taken the fall for ving Raims, and ving Raims is
talking to her sister no matter what and Cloney's like, no,
he's got to do it. I'm not going to get
mad at him, you know, And they're looking out for
each other and all the Steven's on so brilliant in
the film, and don Cheatle i'd never seen before.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
I mean I hadn't he'd been in movies. He'd been
like devil with a blue dress. But I was like,
who is this? What is this right? You know?
Speaker 3 (34:00):
But I'm not that guy, but I imagine I would
like to be. And like Michael Clayton too, that's who like,
I'm drawn to that character. I gamble gambling's lost his money,
He's trying to do right by people around him, but
the stresses of life are making that largely impossible. And
he's like, has this tension underneath because he won't deal
with his emotional issues presently. So they build and build
(34:22):
and build, and I definitely identify with that.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
I know it's wrong, but.
Speaker 3 (34:26):
Then like William Holden in Network Right, you know, constantly
drawn by these temptations and trying to do the right
thing and ultimately does right, but it's so hard that
all the things that are that are drawing him to
go astray. You know that they done away character, and
(34:46):
then also the idea that you know, how man, Okay,
I don't believe this, but boy, we could get great
ratings if we did this, you know, and it's sort
of reluctance and hesitation and then finally does the right thing.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
And that's like age appropriate too.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
That's probably probab pretty close to how old I am now,
you know for network.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
Really good answers. Fuck. I love out of Sight. It's
so good, such a good film. Yeah, one of the greats.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
I watch it.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
I watched Michael Clayton and out of Site without fail
every year.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
Well, what's the sexiest film you've ever seen? What is it?
Out of Sight?
Speaker 3 (35:17):
Well, I mean, I won't say out of Sight, but
obviously that could be the answer, no question, it's super sexy.
Although the part of that, you know, that's you know,
women love that bathtub scene is the dream that Jennifer
Lopez is happening, you know, and she's super sexy in
that and amazing. She's so good in it too, so
such a element. Yeah, and discussing that she was good, good, good, good.
(35:38):
But I got like go back to as a younger,
like Burt Reynolds directed Sharky's Machine.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
She's a pretty good movie.
Speaker 3 (35:44):
Charles Darning, Bernie Casey and Rachel Ward in that like
as a young kid, like that was a like that's
a real woman, Like that's a grown that's a grown
up woman being sexy and then her again and dead
Men don't wear a plaid. Carl Ryner moved Steve harton
Super Super Fun.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
I love that movie.
Speaker 3 (36:00):
That's a big celebration of old movies, old movies in it,
and she's so, you know, so I have this, you know,
I'm super into Rachel Ward for a long time. So
I'll throw those in. But out of sight certainly right there.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
Well, there's a subcategory troubling by and is worrying? Why
don't film you found arousing that you went, sure you
should and mend.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
So, uh you know.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
Emerald Fanel was a guest on our podcast.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
Do you know her? If you met her, you're amazing.
Speaker 3 (36:27):
Yeah, And we got to talk and we did it
before what's the last.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
Movie she did?
Speaker 1 (36:32):
After promising Young Women?
Speaker 3 (36:34):
After promising Young Woman, which was amazing, the one she
just did Slburn, So she was we taught. We had
her on our podcast talking pictures.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
And she's so funny, right, you must find the right
out time.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
She's unbelievably funny, Like she was one of the great
great guests on anything.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
She's amazing. Right.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
And so there's that scene in Sulburn where there's like
a sexual a bunch of weird ones, but there was
a sexual moment with a menstruating woman, right. But I
was like in my seat like, huh right, like you
know and uh. And so I talked to her about that,
and she was like in her amazing you know, her
amazing way of expressing things and in her brilliant accent,
(37:13):
and she's like, oh my god, you're totally permission to
be horny during the move. And then you know, I
grant She's like, I grant.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
You permission to be horny then.
Speaker 3 (37:22):
And then she said, and she saw the answer that
I give that, and I'll give the other thing. She said,
She goes when I watched the remake of Cape Fear
Juliette Lewis and Robert de Niro, and she's underage, and
it's obviously you know it's wrong.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
You're supposed to think it's wrong.
Speaker 3 (37:36):
Scorse says, he wants you to think it's wrong, right,
and you're and she's like, she was like, oh my god,
I was so unbelievably turned off. She goes, I'm turned
on when I just think about it now, you know.
And she's like, yeah, it's wrong. It's wrong. We shouldn't
we shouldn't feel that. But she was like, yeah, but
you know, that's okay, permission granted.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
So if Emiel gives you permission, I figure's all right, Yeah,
that's right. That's what is this? Why for you, of
all people, what is objectively the greatest film of all
time might not be your favorite, but it is the
pinnacle of cinema.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
Well, the temptation is certainly to say Castle Blanca, and
I can make a case for it. I mean, it's
the perfect studio film from this era where studios, you know,
they made a lot of movies and they weren't all great,
but man, they created something pretty perfection there. And all
these immigrant Jews working on the film. We've been forced
out of Germany and it's about so it's pretty perfect.
(38:30):
I think that a movie I don't like as well
as Casa Blanca doesn't move me in quite the same way.
But in a movie I used to make fun of
because I didn't get it. I mean, I didn't get
this whole thing. I'm so stupid. It's a wonderful life.
Like I guess, it's pretty perfect. I mean, you know
that's it totally delivers. Jimmy Stewart's amazing, gives this incredible performance.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
It's moving.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
I mean, there's a reason why everybody watches it at
Christmas and gets moved by it. But the fact is
it works at all times a year. Great performance, it's
top to bottom and it's a wonderful life. But you know,
and then the movies that I saw in theaters, you
know those two I mentioned, I mean again, you know,
Shaw Shank, Michael Clayton, out of Sight. Oh but but
you know, then to go back to Liam Neeson, the
(39:14):
idea of a movie that just starts like Stanley Kubrick's
Paths of Glory, which might be my favorite movie, is
also for what it accomplished pretty perfect.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
First of all, it feels like an epic.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
I mean, it's a World War One story about the
French battalion set into a pointless fight that it cannot win,
right by arrogant, hubistic generals who don't care, who are
just trying to show you know, they're each trying to
impress their bosses and they don't care how many men
they lose in the process. And then the whole back
half of the film's court martial that follows this action. Right,
(39:46):
it's Ert Douglass as the leader of this battalion, and
then he defends his own men in the trial.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
So it's like two movies.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
It's the battles, incredible tracking shouts of the battle, and
then the trial. At the end, it feels like you've
watched Lawrence of Arabia. I feel like you've watched an
epic and it's under ninety minutes.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
It's like eighty nine minutes. It just starts.
Speaker 3 (40:05):
It's the greatest war saving Private Ryan and Pass the
Glory that I think without to me, without the two
greatest war films American war films ever made. And Pass
the Glory is just to accomplish that in that period
of time.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
It's an amazing film.
Speaker 3 (40:19):
Anybody who hasn't seen it, and a lot of people
haven't seen it, they should see pazzal Glory immediately.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
Excellent. What is the film that you could or have?
What's the most over and over again, Well.
Speaker 3 (40:30):
This is a product of my age and the age
that I came of age in. So the answer to
that has to be Shawshank redemption. Because it was on
television all the time and because it's good, you couldn't
stop watching it no matter where you came in, and
it was always with commercials. It was carried by you know, TNT,
(40:52):
TBS first and TNT, and it was always on. And
that's where I don't even know if I saw it
in the theaters, but you know, I didn't do well
in the theater. It was largely a failure, barely made
back its own money, and that was with a re release.
Even to get close to even was with a re
release after it got a lot of unexpected Oscar nominations.
What saved it was television and then the year it
(41:13):
came out on VHS, it was the number one rental
in the country. So it got saved by Blockbuster and television.
And so yeah, I've probably seen it because I keep
watching it more times than any other movie. Cassi Blanket
definitely up there. And then these movies I watch every year,
you know, like the Out of Sight Michael Clayton, but
(41:33):
they won't be up in.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
That list yet.
Speaker 3 (41:35):
Christmas in Connecticut I've seen that a lot with Barbara Stanwick, who's,
you know, my favorite classic movie star.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
It's pretty great. Christmas in Connecticut's pretty perfect. Yeah, I
love that.
Speaker 1 (41:44):
We don't know to speak too negative. Ben Menkowitz, what's
the worst film I've ever seen? So?
Speaker 3 (41:49):
I just did a piece for CBS Sunday morning, as
we speak on al Pacino, who I have now done
a couple of things with.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
And he's impossible not to like.
Speaker 3 (41:57):
I mean, even though you're already you already like him,
but he's also well not to like in person. He's
interesting guy and you know, you know, and he'll he admits.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
It in his book.
Speaker 3 (42:06):
That's his book is out now and Sonny Boy, it's
really good and really candid.
Speaker 2 (42:12):
But he's made some really horrible movies.
Speaker 3 (42:15):
And so part of this is like, so you know,
like is there a competition between like Righteous Kill? I mean,
he makes this movie with Robert de Niro. They want
to recreate the magic from Heat. It's amazing, Oh my god,
it's the whole movie and you're just like, what has
happened to here?
Speaker 2 (42:29):
What has happened here?
Speaker 3 (42:31):
So Righteous Killing eighty eight minutes are in some ways
eighty eight minutes is just Pacino, But like, how did
that happen? How could that guy? How could they be
in a thing that didn't work that much? I was
also tempted to say the fourth Indiana Jones movie, because
it was it left you feeling so bad about this
thing you love.
Speaker 2 (42:49):
But then they fixed it. Yeah, I think with the
fifth one.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
So I'm glad you think that. I agree on that.
I think they fixed it.
Speaker 3 (42:54):
Yeah, I really I think the fifth one is better
than the second one.
Speaker 1 (42:57):
And I liked I think the fifth one was so
underwrite it's great.
Speaker 3 (43:01):
Yeah, I go one, three, five, two, four, It doesn't county,
that's right. Yeah, but yeah, so it's I just pretend
that one didn't happen.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
Yeah, I liked that.
Speaker 3 (43:11):
I thought the fifth one was really super underrated. Yeah,
I'm with you.
Speaker 1 (43:13):
What's the film that made you laugh the most?
Speaker 3 (43:16):
A lot of movies make me laugh, A lot of
whole movies make me laugh. Carry Grant almost always. Just
watching Our senecond Old Lace, I was trying to remember
one scene in our second Old Lace, which maybe doesn't exist,
might just be in my head, like the release year
of the Champ. But you know, the awful truth is
Girl Friday, but basically Fletch, Anchorman and Midnight Run.
Speaker 1 (43:37):
That's pretty good.
Speaker 2 (43:38):
Those are funny, funny, funny movies.
Speaker 3 (43:40):
Groundhog Day certainly, no question, Caddy Shack, Stripes, Yeah, stripes
I adore, and Midnight Run.
Speaker 2 (43:48):
But Midnight Run is yeah, it done. It's pretty perfect.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
Yeah, Ben Mangowitz, you have been a delight. However, when
your daughter crawled under the house because she thought there
were raccoons there, and you went, it's time for me
to be a hero, and you crawled under. You heard
her calling for help, You grabbed your daughter, You saved.
(44:13):
There's the raccoon there. You fought the raccoon. The raccoon
was strong, the raccoon. You throw the raccoon, but it
knocks one of the turrets holding up the bottom of
your house, and the house collapses on you the bottom floor,
and you are buried alive. And as you lie there
with your last breath, you get your phone out and
you tried to call your friend or you called in
(44:34):
the cinema buried, and you go, buddy, being buried live,
and you guys call Robert Patterson and you go, I
think it's too late. And then you died. I'm walking
past with a coffee, you know. I'm like, I see
your daughter. I go where your dad? Where's your dad?
And she goes, he died a hero. And I go, wow,
I got buried alive to me and she goes, yeah,
(44:55):
he's under the house, right, So I go, come in.
We're gonna to smash up this house. How else we
going to get him? So we smash up your house
with axes. And you're there. But it's a terrible state.
You're in a bit. I'm having to chop you up,
but get you all in the coffin and smash you
all in with the word, with all the stuff. With
the raccoon, poor raccoon. You in the raccoon are holding hands,
dead together, smashed in there, and the raccoon's like saluting you. Anyway,
(45:19):
you're in the coffin. It's rammed in it. There's no room.
There's only enough room to slide one DVD into the
side for you to take across to the other side.
And on the other side, in the gap between achieving
something and the next thing, it's movie night, and every
night it's movie night. And one night it's your movie night.
What film are you showing? In Heaven. When it's your
movie night, Ben mencawaits please for.
Speaker 2 (45:38):
Who's enjoyment, for everyone else's forevery just mine.
Speaker 1 (45:41):
That's how you listen. You're presenting the evening much like
you did on Earth. So what film are you showing?
Speaker 2 (45:46):
I mean, I'd be very tempted to just take Castle.
Speaker 1 (45:48):
Blanket with and they'd be very happy to see.
Speaker 3 (45:50):
It because it moves you every time it does. It
doesn't matter. And you know, Humphrey Bogart's got the greatest
nod in the history of movies. Like the band looks
them like they want to play Lamarsier, right, but they're
not going to do it unless the boss tells him to.
And then and in that moment he nods and he's
in it. He's in the fight. That's it, he committed.
Speaker 2 (46:10):
I love it. I love it.
Speaker 1 (46:11):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (46:11):
I can't get enough of it. I can take Midnight Run,
I could take out of Sight that I'm gonna take Casipy.
Speaker 1 (46:16):
Ben Maguwitz, is there anything you would like to tell
people to listen to or look out for with you
in the coming months.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (46:23):
I would also like to point out that at the
beginning of this I got this new microphone, and we
struggled for just a couple of minutes with getting it.
And I'm thinking the fact that I didn't plug the
cord into the microphone might have had something to do
with it. I got the whole thing plugged into the TV,
but there's no connection to the actual mic.
Speaker 2 (46:42):
Yeah all right, well good, So a.
Speaker 3 (46:45):
Podcast I would not similar to this because it's not
hosted by you. By the way, I just let me
say for you know, I mean, for ted Lasso and
for Shrinking like these are Oh my god, to be
such a part of so many big things that matter.
Speaker 2 (46:58):
So well done. Thank you very much at so and
again you know ted Lasso, it's just whatever.
Speaker 3 (47:05):
It's moving. It's moving, it's moving, moving, moving, it's important.
And I don't understand. I don't I don't get. I mean,
i've met the ratio is fifty to one of people
who like it don't but the people who are who
won't even try it, macheaw. I don't know anyth about soccer either.
That's why it's sort of perfect. It doesn't matter.
Speaker 2 (47:20):
This is good. And now I watched the Premier League.
Speaker 1 (47:22):
By the way, fantastic it was done.
Speaker 3 (47:24):
So we have a podcast TCM in partnership with Max
called Talking Pictures. That's where I interviewed Emerald Fanel. That
was season one. Ten of people on season one, including
the Steven Soderberg and Emerald Fanel. A lot of big
names have already forgotten and mel Brooks. And season two
we're producing right now, be out soon. But we've you know,
(47:44):
Bill Murray, Carol Burnett, Margot Robbie and it's just people
talking about their lives and how movies impacted their lives
and the movies that matter to them. We have eight
questions we ask everybody at the end, but it's quick.
Speaker 2 (47:56):
It's not a it's like one little segment.
Speaker 3 (47:57):
It's not your whole thing, but it's you know, and
movie experiences like what's the movie you remember all your life?
Speaker 2 (48:04):
With the theater? It was like real quick.
Speaker 3 (48:05):
Paul Thomas Anderson, there's been a big supporter at TCM,
and he came to our festival and he said, it's
not just the memories of movies that matter, right, it's
not the movies themselves that are we're preserving here. We're
preserving memories about ourselves, right, moments in our lives.
Speaker 2 (48:19):
There.
Speaker 3 (48:20):
You know, we go to a film, and we remember
how the popcorn tasted, we remember what it smelled like,
who we were with, what the theater was, what was
gross about the theater, what was great about the theater?
Like these are important shared memories, these films from and
they've been tapping him for one hundred years and more
than one hundred years, and I like being part of it,
even in this weird way that I'm connected to it.
Speaker 1 (48:39):
I love it. Thank you, Ben Neglis. This has been
such a pleasure. It's been so nice to me you.
Thank you for giving me your time.
Speaker 3 (48:45):
Yeah, it's been a lot of fun. I was really
thrilled to you. We're interested in doing it, so thanks
very much, Brent.
Speaker 1 (48:52):
I hope you have a wonderful death. Good day to you.
So that was Upsode three hundred and twenty four. Head
over to the patre Patreon dot com forward slash Brett
Goldstein for the extra twenty minutes of chat, secrets and
video with Ben. Go to Apple Podcast, give us a
five star rating and writ about the film It means
the most to you, and ye so loveything to read
my neighbor Marie. Nice reading always, christ and thank you
(49:12):
very much for that. Thank you all for listening. Thank
you so much to Ben Wiz for giving me his time.
Thanks to Scruby's Pippin that distracts some pieces Network. Thanks
to Buddy Peace for producing it. Thanks to iHeartMedia and
Milferrell's Big Money Players Network Plays to get Thanks Adam
Riches and Photographics Leads Laden for the photography. Come and
join me next week for an excellent guest. But that
is it for now. Thank you all for listening. But
that is it for now. In the meantime, do you
(49:34):
have a lovely week and please be excellent to each
other seconds an six products us back backs, say back
(50:11):
back
Host
Brett Goldstein
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