182. The Kremlin Letter (1970)

[00:00:34] [SPEAKER_02]: Welcome to SpyHards Podcast, where your hosts go deep undercover into the world of spy movies to decipher which films make the knock list. But remember this information is strictly for your ears only. I'm Agent Scott.

[00:00:48] [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm Cam the Provocateur, drawing lions at the zoo for half an hour.

[00:00:54] [SPEAKER_02]: No time extras, only half an hour. Is that how long it takes you to draw one lion?

[00:00:58] [SPEAKER_02]: I think I'm speed sketching. I think that's the way this works.

[00:01:02] [SPEAKER_02]: Is the lion at speed as well? Is that why it's speed sketching? Because he's running away from you as you're trying to draw him?

[00:01:07] [SPEAKER_00]: No, no. It's coming at me, which is why I have to draw really fast.

[00:01:10] [SPEAKER_00]: Ah, yeah. Actually, it's quite a slow lion if it's taking 30 minutes to get to you.

[00:01:14] [SPEAKER_00]: He's very old and his spirit is broken from apparently being in the zoo.

[00:01:18] [SPEAKER_00]: I know what that feels like.

[00:01:19] [SPEAKER_00]: Right? Yeah, we all do.

[00:01:21] [SPEAKER_02]: Welcome to SpyHards, folks. We're old and decrepit.

[00:01:26] [SPEAKER_02]: Can you hear our joints click? Yes, yes you can.

[00:01:29] [SPEAKER_02]: We've got a great film to talk about this week and frankly, I can't wait to get to it.

[00:01:35] [SPEAKER_02]: So Cam, without further ado, why don't you tell us what it is?

[00:01:38] [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, we are talking about 1970s The Kremlin Letter, directed by John Huston.

[00:01:45] [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, yes. The Kremlin Letter is a film that you've actually requested a couple of times, people out there.

[00:01:49] [SPEAKER_02]: We've had a couple of messages on social media over the years.

[00:01:52] [SPEAKER_02]: Why don't you do The Kremlin Letter?

[00:01:54] [SPEAKER_02]: It's got a hell of a cast, so I can definitely understand why you want us to take a look at it.

[00:01:58] [SPEAKER_02]: But I had no idea about the whole film going into it.

[00:02:01] [SPEAKER_02]: This is a first watch for me. Cam, had you any experience with The Kremlin Letter?

[00:02:05] [SPEAKER_00]: Nothing whatsoever. I know the director, John Huston, is obviously a very celebrated figure in the annals of film history.

[00:02:13] [SPEAKER_00]: But this isn't regarded as one of the John Huston films that is really obvious in connection with his name.

[00:02:18] [SPEAKER_00]: People tend to think more, I don't know, Maltese Falcon, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, movies like that.

[00:02:24] [SPEAKER_00]: They don't necessarily jump to Kremlin Letter, but I was aware of it because he directed The Macintosh Man.

[00:02:30] [SPEAKER_00]: And so when we were talking about that movie quite a while back, actually, I became aware of The Kremlin Letter as something else to add to our master list.

[00:02:39] [SPEAKER_02]: About three and a half years ago, I looked it up.

[00:02:41] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it was a long time ago, yeah.

[00:02:43] [SPEAKER_00]: We've been doing this for a very long time.

[00:02:45] [SPEAKER_00]: We've been diving off that boat for many years.

[00:02:48] [SPEAKER_02]: Oh boy, have we?

[00:02:49] [SPEAKER_02]: Okay. Well, if you've never received The Kremlin Letter, here is your synopsis.

[00:02:56] [SPEAKER_02]: I look forward to hearing this because it might help me out.

[00:02:59] [SPEAKER_02]: I don't, I'm actually, it's been a while since I've watched the film, so I might need a little refresher.

[00:03:04] [SPEAKER_02]: Uh huh.

[00:03:05] [SPEAKER_02]: The Kremlin Letter, World War III, in an envelope.

[00:03:10] [SPEAKER_00]: That's so cute.

[00:03:11] [SPEAKER_00]: It is.

[00:03:12] [SPEAKER_00]: It's got a little exclamation mark and dot, dot, dots. It's great.

[00:03:15] [SPEAKER_00]: Is there like a smiley face on the envelope?

[00:03:17] [SPEAKER_00]: It's a winky face.

[00:03:18] [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, winky. Okay, yeah, yeah.

[00:03:20] [SPEAKER_02]: When an unauthorized letter is sent to Moscow alleging the US government's willingness to help Russia attack China,

[00:03:28] [SPEAKER_02]: formal naval officer Charles Roan and his team are sent to retrieve it.

[00:03:33] [SPEAKER_02]: They go undercover, successfully reaching out to Erika Kosnov,

[00:03:37] [SPEAKER_02]: the wife of a former agent now married to the head of Russia's secret police.

[00:03:42] [SPEAKER_02]: Their plans are interrupted, however, when their Moscow hideout is raided by a cunning politician.

[00:03:49] [SPEAKER_00]: Ah, if only it were that simple.

[00:03:52] [SPEAKER_02]: Strap in for two hours, folks, of Wikipedia checking.

[00:03:56] Yeah.

[00:03:58] [SPEAKER_02]: Accurate.

[00:03:59] [SPEAKER_02]: Very accurate.

[00:03:59] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's a note we'll come back to for sure.

[00:04:02] [SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, you've got some experience with John Huston at least.

[00:04:04] [SPEAKER_02]: I think I've seen a couple of his other films and obviously the Macintosh man we've spoken about in the past.

[00:04:09] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:04:09] [SPEAKER_02]: But I'm curious to know how this letter got sent, Ken.

[00:04:15] [SPEAKER_00]: You're going to run out of mail puns real quick.

[00:04:18] [SPEAKER_00]: I always deliver.

[00:04:19] [SPEAKER_00]: We need Kevin Costner to show up as the postman and help you out.

[00:04:22] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think the postman would help anyone out.

[00:04:25] [SPEAKER_00]: Well, no, he didn't in box office, that's for sure.

[00:04:28] [SPEAKER_00]: So the Kremlin letter is based on the debut novel by author Noel Ben, who was also a screenwriter and theatrical producer.

[00:04:39] [SPEAKER_00]: And this story, this book that he wrote, was inspired by his work in the US Army's counterintelligence corps.

[00:04:47] [SPEAKER_00]: And so he basically taken his work from the, you know, the 50s and I'm guessing early 60s, maybe even a bit of the 40s and worked them into this 1966 novel.

[00:04:57] [SPEAKER_00]: He doesn't have a lot of work that's been turned into films.

[00:04:59] [SPEAKER_00]: The only other notable one is his 1977 novel Big Stick Up at Brinks.

[00:05:04] [SPEAKER_00]: I've had one of those.

[00:05:05] [SPEAKER_00]: It was turned into the 1978 Peter Falk drama The Brinks Job.

[00:05:10] [SPEAKER_00]: But he did later write also seven episodes, this is so strange, of Homicide, Life in the Street.

[00:05:15] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh.

[00:05:16] [SPEAKER_00]: Right?

[00:05:18] [SPEAKER_00]: Like, you don't tend to think of Kremlin letter and someone who would have written the book Kremlin letter as being so contemporary.

[00:05:26] [SPEAKER_02]: And I've never actually seen that show, but I'm going to send a free plug out to a friend of the show, Chris Carr, who's come on a couple of times.

[00:05:32] [SPEAKER_02]: He hosts Secrets and Spies podcast.

[00:05:34] [SPEAKER_02]: He's just brought out a new podcast called Homicide, Life on the Set, which is a podcast going behind the scenes of Homicide, Life on the Streets.

[00:05:41] [SPEAKER_02]: And there's a ton of interviews with the cast and crew already.

[00:05:43] [SPEAKER_02]: It's getting a lot of great feedback for fans of that show.

[00:05:46] [SPEAKER_02]: So, Chris, sending a little love to you.

[00:05:48] [SPEAKER_02]: If you're a fan of Homicide, Life on the Streets, folks, check out that podcast.

[00:05:51] [SPEAKER_02]: We'll put a link in the show notes below.

[00:05:52] [SPEAKER_00]: And so, I guess later down the road, or perhaps right now, I'm not really sure, Chris will be getting to episodes that were written by Noel Benn, the author of the Kremlin letter.

[00:06:02] [SPEAKER_00]: There you go.

[00:06:03] [SPEAKER_00]: It's all tied together.

[00:06:04] [SPEAKER_00]: Because, of course, Chris is also the host of Secrets and Spies.

[00:06:08] [SPEAKER_00]: So, all this falls under the spycraft umbrella.

[00:06:10] [SPEAKER_00]: It makes a lot of sense.

[00:06:11] [SPEAKER_00]: Homicide may have seemed like kind of an offbeat project for him to tackle, but it's all connected, folks.

[00:06:17] [SPEAKER_00]: All connected.

[00:06:18] [SPEAKER_00]: Just like a good murder case, right?

[00:06:19] [SPEAKER_00]: It's all connected.

[00:06:20] [SPEAKER_00]: That's right.

[00:06:21] [SPEAKER_00]: All of the events of the Kremlin letter.

[00:06:22] [SPEAKER_00]: They're all connected.

[00:06:24] [SPEAKER_00]: They are.

[00:06:24] [SPEAKER_00]: Somehow.

[00:06:25] [SPEAKER_00]: According to Wikipedia.

[00:06:28] [SPEAKER_00]: So, the rights to this book were snapped up by producer Sam Wiesenthal, who took the project to 20th Century Fox.

[00:06:34] [SPEAKER_00]: And they offered it to John Huston, who was a Missouri-born writer, director, producer, and actor.

[00:06:41] [SPEAKER_00]: And he's the son of celebrated actor Walter Huston, who won an Oscar for Treasurer of the Sierra Madre.

[00:06:48] [SPEAKER_00]: And John Huston started writing screenplays in the early 1930s.

[00:06:52] [SPEAKER_00]: His first credit was for dialogue in the William Wyler romantic drama, The Storm.

[00:06:57] [SPEAKER_00]: But some of his other early credits are pretty notable.

[00:06:59] [SPEAKER_00]: He did the 1932 Murders in the Rue Morgue, which was a universal horror film.

[00:07:04] [SPEAKER_00]: And also, he worked on 1938's Jezebel for director William Wyler, which scored a Best Picture nomination.

[00:07:12] [SPEAKER_00]: And that's a Bette Davis classic.

[00:07:14] [SPEAKER_00]: He also worked on 1941's Sergeant York, starring Gary Cooper and directed by Howard Hawks, also a Best Picture nominee.

[00:07:22] [SPEAKER_00]: And that film was about a pacifist during World War I.

[00:07:26] [SPEAKER_00]: And so, having two Best Picture nominees on his, you know, filmography was, I think, pretty helpful towards pushing John Huston into the limelight.

[00:07:37] [SPEAKER_00]: I think that's certainly a good leg up.

[00:07:39] [SPEAKER_00]: And also, during the year that Sergeant York is coming out, he writes and directs his little debut.

[00:07:47] [SPEAKER_00]: A small little film called The Maltese Falcon, which goes down as one of the all-time biggest classics in film history.

[00:07:55] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's certainly a film I've heard of.

[00:07:58] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and he was nominated for screenplay and picture for that film.

[00:08:02] [SPEAKER_00]: So, he is off and running.

[00:08:04] [SPEAKER_00]: And it's going to do a whole bunch of classics.

[00:08:06] [SPEAKER_00]: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, which we've mentioned.

[00:08:08] [SPEAKER_00]: Key Largo, The African Queen, Asphalt Jungle, Moby Dick with Gregory Peck.

[00:08:14] [SPEAKER_00]: Like, he is someone who is going to work for a long time, right up into the 80s.

[00:08:18] [SPEAKER_00]: He's going to be doing movies like Pritzy's Honor with Jack Nicholson.

[00:08:22] [SPEAKER_00]: And so, he is incredibly prolific.

[00:08:24] [SPEAKER_00]: And he's a fascinating guy.

[00:08:26] [SPEAKER_00]: He was a character.

[00:08:27] [SPEAKER_00]: There's actually a great book called Five Came Back about the five Hollywood directors that participated in creating propaganda films during World War II.

[00:08:36] [SPEAKER_00]: And there are stories about John Huston in a Jeep just bombing around war-torn Europe looking for footage.

[00:08:42] [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I've not really seen any footage of him or like seen any interviews of him.

[00:08:46] [SPEAKER_02]: But my most recent experience was David Lynch pretending to be him in the Spielberg film.

[00:08:52] [SPEAKER_02]: I thought that was quite fun.

[00:08:54] [SPEAKER_00]: That was John Ford, actually.

[00:08:56] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm actually wrong.

[00:08:57] [SPEAKER_00]: There you go.

[00:08:57] [SPEAKER_00]: John Huston, you have seen.

[00:08:59] [SPEAKER_00]: You've seen him many times.

[00:08:59] [SPEAKER_00]: You watched him in The Kremlin Letter, in fact.

[00:09:01] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh yeah!

[00:09:02] [SPEAKER_00]: He's got like four different cameos in this film, doesn't he?

[00:09:04] [SPEAKER_00]: Well, no.

[00:09:05] [SPEAKER_00]: He plays the naval superior that informs...

[00:09:10] [SPEAKER_00]: What letter did I get?

[00:09:11] [SPEAKER_00]: That informs Roan that he's being basically sent to espionage.

[00:09:15] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.

[00:09:16] [SPEAKER_00]: You're right.

[00:09:16] [SPEAKER_00]: You're right.

[00:09:16] [SPEAKER_00]: He's also the director of the opening sections of Casino Royale 67 and is one of the officials

[00:09:23] [SPEAKER_00]: in the Jeep going to visit Bond.

[00:09:25] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh yeah!

[00:09:26] [SPEAKER_02]: So the section where they go to see James Bond Sr. as it were.

[00:09:30] [SPEAKER_02]: Mm-hmm.

[00:09:31] [SPEAKER_02]: Sir James Bond, that's what he was called.

[00:09:33] [SPEAKER_02]: That was all John Huston?

[00:09:35] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it was indeed.

[00:09:37] [SPEAKER_00]: Wow!

[00:09:38] [SPEAKER_00]: He directed all of the sequences involving David Niven and the Bond estate.

[00:09:42] [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't...

[00:09:43] [SPEAKER_02]: See, it's one of those things like...

[00:09:44] [SPEAKER_02]: Casino Royale 67 is such a nebulous film.

[00:09:47] [SPEAKER_02]: Like, he would never have been...

[00:09:48] [SPEAKER_02]: Like, you couldn't pick that out from the rest of the film particularly.

[00:09:50] [SPEAKER_02]: Like, it's such a weird moment.

[00:09:52] [SPEAKER_02]: But...

[00:09:52] [SPEAKER_02]: It is.

[00:09:53] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:09:53] [SPEAKER_02]: The whole film is weird.

[00:09:55] [SPEAKER_00]: It is an incredibly strange film.

[00:09:57] [SPEAKER_00]: And, um...

[00:09:58] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:09:58] [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, he also is one of the lead supporting characters in Chinatown, of course, which was

[00:10:04] [SPEAKER_00]: a huge performance that got him a lot of acclaim as well.

[00:10:07] [SPEAKER_00]: He was...

[00:10:07] [SPEAKER_00]: He wasn't just someone who showed up in cameos like M. Night Shyamalan or something.

[00:10:11] [SPEAKER_00]: Like, he was a legit actor as well.

[00:10:12] [SPEAKER_00]: Did he ever make a film for one of his kids to become a musician slash murderer hunter?

[00:10:18] [SPEAKER_00]: Of course he did.

[00:10:19] [SPEAKER_01]: Huh.

[00:10:20] [SPEAKER_00]: Uh...

[00:10:20] [SPEAKER_00]: Not the, um, hunter slash musician, but his daughter is Angelica Houston.

[00:10:25] [SPEAKER_00]: And, um, the film Kremlin Letter was actually a follow-up to the 1969 film A Walk with Love

[00:10:30] [SPEAKER_00]: and Death, which is a romance set during the Hundred Years War starring his daughter.

[00:10:34] [SPEAKER_00]: I was making a joke, but you actually had a correct answer.

[00:10:37] [SPEAKER_00]: Wow.

[00:10:37] [SPEAKER_00]: There you go.

[00:10:38] [SPEAKER_00]: Hey, he comes from a famous actor, and then he has two famous kids because Angelica Houston,

[00:10:43] [SPEAKER_00]: of course, which I think anyone of, you know, my generation, your generation is

[00:10:46] [SPEAKER_00]: going to know from the Addams family.

[00:10:47] [SPEAKER_00]: That's going to be the big prominent one.

[00:10:49] [SPEAKER_00]: Sure.

[00:10:49] [SPEAKER_00]: But his son is actually Danny Houston, um, who's popped up in tons of things.

[00:10:53] [SPEAKER_00]: He was Striker in X-Men Origins Wolverine.

[00:10:55] [SPEAKER_00]: I just saw him in The Crow this past week.

[00:10:57] [SPEAKER_00]: What is, oh yeah, he's like, is he the villain of the new Crow?

[00:11:00] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, he is.

[00:11:00] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:11:01] [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, he has a long list of credits and I'm only naming kind of the bad comic book films,

[00:11:05] [SPEAKER_00]: but he's a pretty well-known actor.

[00:11:08] [SPEAKER_00]: The Crow.

[00:11:08] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:11:09] [SPEAKER_00]: How was The Crow?

[00:11:10] [SPEAKER_00]: It was not very good, but I'll say this.

[00:11:12] [SPEAKER_00]: Second best Crow film.

[00:11:15] [SPEAKER_02]: Okay.

[00:11:16] [SPEAKER_02]: Okay.

[00:11:16] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:11:17] [SPEAKER_02]: The sequels are pretty much not worth watching, but the original one's still the best then.

[00:11:21] [SPEAKER_00]: Well, the Crow sequels are particularly terrible.

[00:11:24] [SPEAKER_00]: Sure.

[00:11:24] [SPEAKER_00]: So this one, it's not a great compliment, but it does crawl across the line into being

[00:11:28] [SPEAKER_00]: the second best Crow film.

[00:11:29] [SPEAKER_00]: Look at it go.

[00:11:31] [SPEAKER_00]: It crowed over the line.

[00:11:34] [SPEAKER_00]: Ca-caw.

[00:11:36] [SPEAKER_00]: Hmm.

[00:11:36] [SPEAKER_00]: Hmm.

[00:11:38] [SPEAKER_00]: Hmm.

[00:11:38] [SPEAKER_00]: And so John Huston was a big fan of the book and he said, it had all the makings of

[00:11:43] [SPEAKER_00]: a success.

[00:11:44] [SPEAKER_00]: All those qualities that were just coming into fashion in 1970.

[00:11:48] [SPEAKER_00]: Violence, lurid sex, drugs.

[00:11:51] [SPEAKER_00]: Boom.

[00:11:52] [SPEAKER_00]: Sounds like my Saturday night.

[00:11:55] [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it makes a lot of sense because this is sort of the dark side of the counterculture.

[00:11:59] [SPEAKER_00]: Whereas the sixties was all about like celebrating free love and partying and peace.

[00:12:04] [SPEAKER_00]: And then you get into the seventies.

[00:12:06] [SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of like, boy, that went wry.

[00:12:07] [SPEAKER_00]: That was, that did not go well.

[00:12:09] [SPEAKER_02]: The pessimism just like seeps in so quickly.

[00:12:11] [SPEAKER_02]: Like you look at Diamonds are forever in 71.

[00:12:13] [SPEAKER_02]: Like that is a complete whiplash from my majesties.

[00:12:17] [SPEAKER_00]: It's like post Manson murders.

[00:12:20] [SPEAKER_00]: It's like, Oh, the sixties died hard and it was not a good ending to that era.

[00:12:25] [SPEAKER_00]: And now we need to reflect on what a dark period it actually was and how it's, you know,

[00:12:30] [SPEAKER_00]: affecting us now.

[00:12:31] [SPEAKER_02]: It really took them like a decade or so to sort of get out of that.

[00:12:34] [SPEAKER_02]: Really.

[00:12:34] [SPEAKER_02]: I think until the eighties were the film sort of getting a bit lighter.

[00:12:38] [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe.

[00:12:38] [SPEAKER_02]: No, I take that back.

[00:12:39] [SPEAKER_02]: Obviously it's Jaws in 75.

[00:12:41] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:12:42] [SPEAKER_02]: Star Wars in 78.

[00:12:43] [SPEAKER_02]: 77.

[00:12:44] [SPEAKER_02]: 77.

[00:12:45] [SPEAKER_02]: Sorry.

[00:12:45] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:12:45] [SPEAKER_02]: Like that's maybe that's where like the sort of optimism starts to seep back into cinema.

[00:12:49] [SPEAKER_00]: I would say so.

[00:12:50] [SPEAKER_00]: You're still getting things like, you know, raging bull in 1980.

[00:12:52] [SPEAKER_00]: You get a little bit of the hangover of the seventies into the eighties.

[00:12:56] [SPEAKER_00]: All that jazz arrives right at the end of the seventies.

[00:12:58] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:12:58] [SPEAKER_00]: But the eighties things become a little more, you could even say like superficial or packaged

[00:13:04] [SPEAKER_00]: light.

[00:13:04] [SPEAKER_00]: There's less of that kind of rough around the edges stuff going on that you get in the

[00:13:07] [SPEAKER_00]: seventies.

[00:13:08] [SPEAKER_00]: Sure.

[00:13:09] [SPEAKER_00]: So he brings in another writer to help him kind of crack this book, which I'm going to guess

[00:13:13] [SPEAKER_00]: is quite labyrinthine.

[00:13:14] [SPEAKER_00]: Um, and the person he brings in is Gladys Hill, who is his long time assistant.

[00:13:19] [SPEAKER_00]: And she also works on a number of his films.

[00:13:22] [SPEAKER_00]: She was a dialogue director on the Orson Welles film, 1946 film, The Stranger, which is

[00:13:27] [SPEAKER_00]: a very good, and I think kind of underrated film noir.

[00:13:30] [SPEAKER_00]: And John Huston had worked on that film as well.

[00:13:33] [SPEAKER_00]: Um, John Huston directs a 1949 Cuba set thriller called We Were Strangers.

[00:13:38] [SPEAKER_00]: And she works on that also doing, um, uh, dialogue directing.

[00:13:42] [SPEAKER_00]: But her first real writing credit is in 1967 where she works on, uh, John Huston's Elizabeth

[00:13:49] [SPEAKER_00]: Taylor, Marlon Brando film Reflections in a Golden Eye.

[00:13:53] [SPEAKER_00]: Uh, and that film was a pretty high esteemed, highly esteemed drama at the time.

[00:13:59] [SPEAKER_00]: Very noisy drama.

[00:14:00] [SPEAKER_00]: Like it's one people would have definitely been very aware of.

[00:14:02] [SPEAKER_00]: You had the two biggest stars.

[00:14:03] [SPEAKER_00]: I wouldn't shut up.

[00:14:04] [SPEAKER_00]: It's just so loud.

[00:14:05] [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, this is Elizabeth Taylor, Marlon Brando.

[00:14:08] [SPEAKER_00]: This is going to be big, right?

[00:14:10] [SPEAKER_00]: Flashy.

[00:14:11] [SPEAKER_00]: And this movie was actually the follow-up to, to Golden Eye.

[00:14:15] [SPEAKER_00]: And so, uh, not that Golden Eye, but yes, Reflections in a Golden Eye.

[00:14:21] [SPEAKER_00]: And, um.

[00:14:22] [SPEAKER_02]: The Charles Dance one, of course, is what you're talking about.

[00:14:24] [SPEAKER_00]: The Charles Dance one.

[00:14:25] [SPEAKER_00]: Yes.

[00:14:25] [SPEAKER_00]: That's clearly a John Huston vehicle.

[00:14:27] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:14:28] [SPEAKER_02]: He loves slow motion ninjas.

[00:14:30] [SPEAKER_00]: But Gladys Hill also did uncredited work on Macintosh Man.

[00:14:34] [SPEAKER_00]: And she got an Oscar nomination for co-writing The Man Who Would Be King, which is the great

[00:14:39] [SPEAKER_00]: adventure film starring Sean Connery and Michael Caine directed by John Huston.

[00:14:43] [SPEAKER_00]: Well, that's John, that's John Huston.

[00:14:45] [SPEAKER_00]: It is.

[00:14:45] [SPEAKER_00]: Very prolific.

[00:14:46] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I have seen another one of his films.

[00:14:47] [SPEAKER_00]: There you go.

[00:14:48] [SPEAKER_00]: All right.

[00:14:49] [SPEAKER_00]: Did you ever watch Annie?

[00:14:50] [SPEAKER_00]: Yes.

[00:14:51] [SPEAKER_00]: He directed that.

[00:14:52] [SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

[00:14:53] [SPEAKER_00]: I've seen a few of his films.

[00:14:54] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:14:54] [SPEAKER_00]: He's one of these guys, you go through and look at the filmography.

[00:14:57] [SPEAKER_00]: There's tons of stuff in there.

[00:14:58] [SPEAKER_00]: And it's not like following the same kind of pattern of work.

[00:15:02] [SPEAKER_00]: Like it's all over the place.

[00:15:04] [SPEAKER_00]: Um, and she also worked her final credit was some uncredited work on his 1980 box office

[00:15:11] [SPEAKER_00]: dud phobia, which I haven't seen.

[00:15:14] [SPEAKER_00]: Why?

[00:15:14] [SPEAKER_00]: You scared of it?

[00:15:16] [SPEAKER_00]: Terrified.

[00:15:17] [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely terrified.

[00:15:18] [SPEAKER_00]: Apparently audiences were too.

[00:15:19] [SPEAKER_00]: I feel like it's one that isn't exactly bandied about in the physical media circles.

[00:15:25] [SPEAKER_00]: And if it's on streaming, I might be moderately surprised.

[00:15:29] [SPEAKER_00]: The physical media circles.

[00:15:31] [SPEAKER_00]: It sounds like you've got a little like a fight club.

[00:15:34] [SPEAKER_02]: You have to at this point, you lose, you use Blu-rays on each other or something.

[00:15:38] [SPEAKER_02]: And like one guy's like, I've got the 4k.

[00:15:39] [SPEAKER_01]: And everyone's like, Oh, damn.

[00:15:41] [SPEAKER_00]: That's all that exists now because physical media is like purged from all of our stores

[00:15:45] [SPEAKER_00]: now.

[00:15:46] [SPEAKER_02]: So that's true.

[00:15:47] [SPEAKER_00]: That's true.

[00:15:47] [SPEAKER_02]: Support physical media folks by the films that you love and, uh, and then take some chances

[00:15:51] [SPEAKER_02]: and buy some other ones.

[00:15:52] [SPEAKER_02]: And you don't and see if you love them.

[00:15:54] [SPEAKER_02]: Everyone please buy them.

[00:15:55] [SPEAKER_02]: Cause that'll bring the price down.

[00:15:56] [SPEAKER_02]: I think a little.

[00:15:57] [SPEAKER_02]: Yes.

[00:15:58] [SPEAKER_00]: Cam, Cam actually, and he really wants to celebrate physical media just so he can spend

[00:16:01] [SPEAKER_00]: less money.

[00:16:03] [SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.

[00:16:03] [SPEAKER_00]: Yes.

[00:16:04] [SPEAKER_00]: Uh, and so when it came to casting this movie, John Huston wanted Steve McQueen for the lead.

[00:16:10] [SPEAKER_00]: Steve McQueen was unable to do it.

[00:16:13] [SPEAKER_00]: Clearly.

[00:16:14] [SPEAKER_00]: Uh huh.

[00:16:15] [SPEAKER_00]: He also talked to Warren Beatty, James Coburn and David Niven.

[00:16:20] [SPEAKER_00]: All those charismatic actors.

[00:16:22] [SPEAKER_00]: Yep.

[00:16:23] [SPEAKER_00]: They stamped return to sender on the envelope.

[00:16:26] [SPEAKER_00]: Uh huh.

[00:16:27] [SPEAKER_02]: The letter.

[00:16:29] [SPEAKER_00]: Or on the letter.

[00:16:30] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:16:30] [SPEAKER_00]: Um, so stay tuned.

[00:16:33] [SPEAKER_00]: We'll put a pin on that in that one, folks.

[00:16:35] [SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

[00:16:36] [SPEAKER_00]: Uh, there's some other notables.

[00:16:38] [SPEAKER_00]: John Huston, as I said, kind of a wild man.

[00:16:41] [SPEAKER_00]: Uh, you know, was doing a lot of dangerous stuff going on.

[00:16:45] [SPEAKER_00]: Not in World War II to get footage for propaganda films.

[00:16:47] [SPEAKER_00]: Well, he did some, um, guerrilla shooting in, uh, Moscow for this film.

[00:16:53] [SPEAKER_00]: Um, he shot some of the Bolshoi ballet and then smuggled the footage out during a research

[00:16:58] [SPEAKER_00]: trip.

[00:17:00] [SPEAKER_00]: Cheeky bugger.

[00:17:01] [SPEAKER_00]: Right?

[00:17:02] [SPEAKER_02]: I like that.

[00:17:03] [SPEAKER_02]: I like that.

[00:17:04] [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I remember when we had, um, Fred Skepsy on the show, the director of the Russia

[00:17:07] [SPEAKER_02]: House to talk about doing that.

[00:17:08] [SPEAKER_02]: And he did a lot of sort of, uh, you know, fast and loose, just grabbing a camera and running

[00:17:14] [SPEAKER_02]: through Russia and Moscow and just shooting stuff without really any like guards or anything.

[00:17:19] [SPEAKER_02]: And that's how crazy that got.

[00:17:21] [SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, I can imagine, uh, how much fun John Huston had whilst doing that.

[00:17:27] [SPEAKER_02]: Do you think it was like a tense airport customs situation?

[00:17:31] [SPEAKER_02]: Or like Argo or something?

[00:17:32] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:17:32] [SPEAKER_02]: Or do you think he just like strolled through?

[00:17:34] [SPEAKER_02]: I think he just strolled through.

[00:17:35] [SPEAKER_02]: Probably with a cigar in his mouth.

[00:17:36] [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I don't know what the guy looks like, but I picture him with a cigar in his mouth.

[00:17:39] [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, there's a cigar in his mouth for sure.

[00:17:41] [SPEAKER_02]: Ah, cool.

[00:17:41] [SPEAKER_00]: All right.

[00:17:42] [SPEAKER_00]: I got it right.

[00:17:42] [SPEAKER_00]: He has one of the best voices in film history.

[00:17:44] [SPEAKER_00]: That's one of the things that's really notable.

[00:17:46] [SPEAKER_00]: Can you do a John Huston voice?

[00:17:48] [SPEAKER_00]: No one can.

[00:17:49] [SPEAKER_00]: You know who, actually, you know what?

[00:17:50] [SPEAKER_00]: That's not true.

[00:17:51] [SPEAKER_00]: The person who actually approximated his voice in a performance was Daniel Day-Lewis in

[00:17:55] [SPEAKER_00]: There Will Be Blood.

[00:17:57] [SPEAKER_00]: Purposely approximated the voice or?

[00:17:58] [SPEAKER_00]: Yes.

[00:17:59] [SPEAKER_00]: Based the voice on John Huston, yeah.

[00:18:01] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh.

[00:18:03] [SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[00:18:04] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:18:04] [SPEAKER_00]: So, uh, John Huston loved a good milkshake.

[00:18:07] [SPEAKER_00]: That's a There Will Be Blood reference, and that's a film I haven't seen.

[00:18:11] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, you haven't?

[00:18:11] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, wow.

[00:18:13] [SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

[00:18:14] [SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

[00:18:14] [SPEAKER_00]: There won't be Scott.

[00:18:17] [SPEAKER_00]: So, uh, they recreated Moscow in Helsinki for this film.

[00:18:22] [SPEAKER_00]: Mm-hmm.

[00:18:23] [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, set up a statue of Lenin, and it really pissed off the USSR.

[00:18:28] [SPEAKER_00]: And so they put diplomatic pressure on Finland and began denying visas to people who are

[00:18:34] [SPEAKER_00]: associated with the film.

[00:18:36] [SPEAKER_00]: That sounds like Russia.

[00:18:37] [SPEAKER_00]: It does, right?

[00:18:38] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it tracks.

[00:18:40] [SPEAKER_02]: This isn't...

[00:18:40] [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I think every single time we've had Russia involved in making of a film, right?

[00:18:45] [SPEAKER_02]: All the way from, like, the Harry Palmer films to Funeral in Berlin.

[00:18:49] [SPEAKER_02]: Well, I guess the East Germans were not Russians, but they still were communists.

[00:18:56] [SPEAKER_02]: Um, uh, there's some other ones I'm thinking of, too.

[00:18:58] [SPEAKER_02]: The Russia house.

[00:18:59] [SPEAKER_02]: They've always obfuscated.

[00:19:01] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:19:02] [SPEAKER_02]: It's never been particularly helpful.

[00:19:03] [SPEAKER_02]: And it's interesting.

[00:19:04] [SPEAKER_02]: And that's why, like, you know, we spoke about Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol recently.

[00:19:08] [SPEAKER_02]: Why they choose to shoot the entire Kremlin explosion thing completely green screen.

[00:19:12] [SPEAKER_00]: I can see why they might be annoyed by this movie.

[00:19:16] [SPEAKER_00]: Um, I don't know that it paints them in the best of light.

[00:19:18] [SPEAKER_00]: I think it paints them in a sense that they're just as bad as we are.

[00:19:22] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no, that is true.

[00:19:24] [SPEAKER_00]: Um, it does show that, yeah, either side is corrupted.

[00:19:27] [SPEAKER_00]: Because this all could happen, like, yeah, this...

[00:19:30] [SPEAKER_00]: You could flip this completely.

[00:19:31] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:19:32] [SPEAKER_00]: No, that's true.

[00:19:33] [SPEAKER_00]: Huh.

[00:19:34] [SPEAKER_00]: Do you think they read the book?

[00:19:35] [SPEAKER_00]: No.

[00:19:37] [SPEAKER_00]: They saw that book that said the Kremlin letter and they were like,

[00:19:40] [SPEAKER_00]: you get that the hell out of here.

[00:19:42] [SPEAKER_00]: Like, this is in English.

[00:19:43] [SPEAKER_00]: I can't read that.

[00:19:44] [SPEAKER_00]: And then they threw it away.

[00:19:45] [SPEAKER_00]: This book is going straight to the dead letters department.

[00:19:48] [SPEAKER_00]: Mmm.

[00:19:48] [SPEAKER_00]: Well, save that for the Noclip list, alright?

[00:19:51] [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, okay.

[00:19:52] [SPEAKER_00]: Uh, so this movie had a $7 million budget.

[00:19:56] [SPEAKER_00]: It was actually quite pricey.

[00:19:57] [SPEAKER_00]: And it grossed less than $1 million.

[00:20:00] [SPEAKER_00]: It was a critical and financial failure.

[00:20:02] [SPEAKER_00]: And it was referred to with terms like bomb and wrecker.

[00:20:08] [SPEAKER_00]: Wrecker.

[00:20:09] [SPEAKER_00]: Wrecker.

[00:20:10] [SPEAKER_00]: Mmm.

[00:20:11] [SPEAKER_00]: Never heard that used before.

[00:20:13] [SPEAKER_00]: But alright.

[00:20:13] [SPEAKER_00]: As in career wrecker.

[00:20:14] [SPEAKER_00]: I guess.

[00:20:15] [SPEAKER_00]: Or like studio wrecker or something.

[00:20:17] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not sure.

[00:20:18] [SPEAKER_00]: What do you think would be our wrecker?

[00:20:21] [SPEAKER_00]: Um, God.

[00:20:23] [SPEAKER_00]: It'll probably be Boss Baby 3.

[00:20:25] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:20:25] [SPEAKER_00]: That will Despicable Me 4.

[00:20:28] [SPEAKER_00]: That movie's like, I think, more appreciated than something like Boss Baby 3.

[00:20:34] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, maybe.

[00:20:36] [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, Despicable Me 4 is a massive hit.

[00:20:39] [SPEAKER_00]: So, I feel like people have seen it.

[00:20:41] [SPEAKER_00]: You know, they have a little more connection to it in some way or form.

[00:20:44] [SPEAKER_00]: Even if it's their kids.

[00:20:45] [SPEAKER_00]: Or grandkids or whatever.

[00:20:46] [SPEAKER_02]: It's just like, how many times can you have to hear minion jokes?

[00:20:49] [SPEAKER_02]: Like, at some point, you just want to put pencils in your ears, I'm sure.

[00:20:53] [SPEAKER_00]: Stay tuned for the Despicable Me coverage, folks.

[00:20:55] [SPEAKER_00]: It's going to be a wild ride.

[00:20:57] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh.

[00:20:58] [SPEAKER_00]: Despicable.

[00:20:59] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:20:59] [SPEAKER_00]: So, this was a particularly rough period of John Huston's career.

[00:21:04] [SPEAKER_00]: And this movie did not help.

[00:21:06] [SPEAKER_00]: And so, in terms of its financials, like in terms of a top movies of the year, God knows.

[00:21:12] [SPEAKER_00]: God knows.

[00:21:13] [SPEAKER_00]: It's occupying a, you know, forgotten zone.

[00:21:16] [SPEAKER_00]: But the top three.

[00:21:17] [SPEAKER_00]: Number one is Love Story with Ryan O'Neill.

[00:21:20] [SPEAKER_00]: Because, Scott, love means never having to say you're sorry.

[00:21:24] [SPEAKER_00]: It does.

[00:21:25] [SPEAKER_00]: And can.

[00:21:26] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not sorry.

[00:21:28] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not sorry either.

[00:21:30] [SPEAKER_00]: And so, number two was Airport.

[00:21:33] [SPEAKER_00]: The big disaster movie that really kicks off the craze.

[00:21:36] [SPEAKER_00]: Kick-ass film.

[00:21:36] [SPEAKER_00]: And number three, Robert Altman's MASH.

[00:21:38] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, okay.

[00:21:39] [SPEAKER_00]: I've only seen the show.

[00:21:40] [SPEAKER_00]: I've not seen the film.

[00:21:42] [SPEAKER_00]: I've seen the film and not, I didn't really watch much of the show.

[00:21:45] [SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[00:21:46] [SPEAKER_00]: You know, when I was a kid and I was like, you know, seven, eight years old.

[00:21:49] [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm watching, I don't know, Ninja Turtles or something like that.

[00:21:52] [SPEAKER_00]: Mm.

[00:21:53] [SPEAKER_00]: When it cuts to that chopper coming into the horizon, I'm like, change of channel.

[00:21:57] [SPEAKER_00]: Change of channel.

[00:21:57] [SPEAKER_00]: Change of channel.

[00:21:58] [SPEAKER_00]: Change of channel.

[00:21:59] [SPEAKER_02]: It's too real for you.

[00:22:00] [SPEAKER_02]: You're just getting flashbacks, right?

[00:22:02] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:22:02] [SPEAKER_00]: No, no thanks.

[00:22:03] [SPEAKER_00]: No thanks.

[00:22:04] [SPEAKER_00]: Fair enough.

[00:22:05] [SPEAKER_00]: And the only other note I had was just, I mentioned it, but you've got this movie in

[00:22:09] [SPEAKER_00]: 1970.

[00:22:10] [SPEAKER_00]: In 1973, The Macintosh Man.

[00:22:13] [SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, John Huston, despite this movie being a real box office wrecker, he was not

[00:22:20] [SPEAKER_00]: scared off of tackling espionage.

[00:22:22] [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I guess he did three in a row with 67 as well.

[00:22:25] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:22:26] [SPEAKER_00]: No, that's true.

[00:22:27] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh boy.

[00:22:28] [SPEAKER_00]: Is that the John Huston spy trilogy that we've always wanted?

[00:22:32] [SPEAKER_00]: I think he actually has a fourth, a quadrilogy, if you will.

[00:22:36] [SPEAKER_00]: And I don't remember what it is, but I do think there's something else.

[00:22:38] [SPEAKER_00]: It needs to either be in 64 or 76.

[00:22:43] [SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

[00:22:43] [SPEAKER_00]: So then they're all three years apart.

[00:22:45] [SPEAKER_00]: I feel like there was one that's like in the fifties or forties or something.

[00:22:50] [SPEAKER_00]: This isn't helping my math.

[00:22:52] [SPEAKER_02]: No.

[00:22:52] [SPEAKER_00]: No.

[00:22:53] [SPEAKER_00]: No.

[00:22:53] [SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

[00:22:54] [SPEAKER_00]: Well, so it's, it's more like the, uh, I guess late career quadrilogy.

[00:22:59] [SPEAKER_00]: Hmm.

[00:23:00] [SPEAKER_02]: Well, we're really turning this one into a wrecker cam.

[00:23:04] [SPEAKER_02]: We really are.

[00:23:06] [SPEAKER_02]: We are.

[00:23:06] [SPEAKER_02]: Let's move on.

[00:23:07] [SPEAKER_02]: But Cam, let's show the people what we're famous for in Berlin.

[00:23:10] [SPEAKER_02]: Let's talk about the Kremlin letter.

[00:23:13] [SPEAKER_02]: Uh, we've already dropped a couple of nuggets about what we thought, tiny little ones, but

[00:23:17] [SPEAKER_02]: I want to hear from you first as sort of the John Huston aficionado of the two of us.

[00:23:22] [SPEAKER_00]: Uh, I'm not really an aficionado.

[00:23:23] [SPEAKER_00]: He's directed far too many films for me to be an aficionado, but, um, he is someone I appreciate.

[00:23:28] [SPEAKER_00]: Have you seen more than 10 of his films?

[00:23:30] [SPEAKER_02]: Uh, yes.

[00:23:31] [SPEAKER_02]: Then I think you're, you're probably the one who has a bit more perspective than I.

[00:23:34] [SPEAKER_02]: So let's hear it.

[00:23:35] [SPEAKER_02]: What do you think of the Kremlin letter?

[00:23:38] [SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

[00:23:39] [SPEAKER_00]: The Kremlin letter threw me for a loop when I watched it the other night.

[00:23:43] [SPEAKER_00]: You know, it was probably like 10 o'clock at night and I'm like, okay.

[00:23:46] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh boy.

[00:23:46] [SPEAKER_00]: Uh, you know, catch up with the Kremlin letter for the episode coming up.

[00:23:51] [SPEAKER_00]: And, uh, I was never like sleepy.

[00:23:55] [SPEAKER_00]: I will say this.

[00:23:56] [SPEAKER_00]: I was almost on the edge of my seat because I was like, what is going on?

[00:23:59] [SPEAKER_00]: I need to pay attention to this.

[00:24:01] [SPEAKER_00]: My notes were getting frantic.

[00:24:02] [SPEAKER_00]: I was like, okay, I got to piece these, you know, these details together.

[00:24:06] [SPEAKER_00]: But to me, the Kremlin letter actually has a lot in common with a lot of John Huston films where it's like a group of colorful individuals kind of bouncing off each other in a very overcomplicated plot.

[00:24:20] [SPEAKER_00]: Now when it's done well, the Maltese Falcon, for example, it's a triumph and we love it.

[00:24:24] [SPEAKER_00]: And we go back and we watch that movie and it's still confusing, but you kind of don't care because it's more about, you know, the music, right?

[00:24:31] [SPEAKER_00]: It's not the notes.

[00:24:32] [SPEAKER_00]: It's the music.

[00:24:33] [SPEAKER_00]: You're like, I am so immersed in this world.

[00:24:34] [SPEAKER_00]: I think of the movie he did called beat the devil with Humphrey Bogart.

[00:24:38] [SPEAKER_00]: Again, I think Peter Lorre's in that one as well.

[00:24:40] [SPEAKER_00]: Uh, it's a film noir film, very confusing, but it's really interesting personalities that pop.

[00:24:46] [SPEAKER_00]: And so like, he liked to kind of tackle this kind of material or this approach to storytelling sometimes where it was about you are overwhelmed, but because the characters are really interesting, you're kind of enjoying the ping pong game of bouncing between them.

[00:25:01] [SPEAKER_00]: Sure.

[00:25:02] [SPEAKER_00]: It didn't work here.

[00:25:04] [SPEAKER_00]: Um, and that's kind of the problem in that I wasn't bored in this movie.

[00:25:09] [SPEAKER_00]: Um, I think I would even modestly say I appreciated it in a very minor way.

[00:25:15] [SPEAKER_00]: Um, it's different than a lot of the films we tackle on the show.

[00:25:18] [SPEAKER_00]: It definitely, you know, has a little bit of the, almost like the comic kind of darkly comic elements you see in like, um, our man in Havana or the Iger sanction or the Iger sanction.

[00:25:31] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:25:32] [SPEAKER_00]: Um, and so I could appreciate that.

[00:25:35] [SPEAKER_00]: Like, I like how this movie will be silly one second and then just like sucker punch you with something so unbelievably dark.

[00:25:41] [SPEAKER_01]: Mm hmm.

[00:25:43] [SPEAKER_00]: And there are performances.

[00:25:46] [SPEAKER_00]: I'll have very nice things to say about.

[00:25:49] [SPEAKER_00]: Um, but there's also, I think a lead performance that's truly dire.

[00:25:53] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:25:54] [SPEAKER_00]: It's, it's film breaking.

[00:25:56] [SPEAKER_00]: Mm hmm.

[00:25:56] [SPEAKER_00]: That is a wrecker right there.

[00:25:58] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:25:58] [SPEAKER_00]: And we don't run into this too often.

[00:26:01] [SPEAKER_00]: I remember when we watched, um, I believe it was like a foreign correspondent, I think, or a foreign agent.

[00:26:07] [SPEAKER_00]: I, I can't remember.

[00:26:08] [SPEAKER_00]: I always get them mixed up.

[00:26:09] [SPEAKER_00]: There was a bunch of titles that were all the same.

[00:26:11] [SPEAKER_00]: The one where we had a Lauren Bacall show up, uh, and it just didn't work as like the love interest.

[00:26:17] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:26:17] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:26:17] [SPEAKER_00]: It's wildly miscast.

[00:26:19] [SPEAKER_00]: And it like sticks out like a sore thumb.

[00:26:20] [SPEAKER_00]: Mm hmm.

[00:26:20] [SPEAKER_00]: I felt that here with the lead here.

[00:26:23] [SPEAKER_00]: Um, you have, um, uh, Patrick O'Neill as Charles Roan.

[00:26:28] [SPEAKER_00]: And I found that to be a real problem because if the movie is confusing and this movie commits a sin, I don't like at all, which is just throwing names at you because the average person is not going to remember a bunch of names.

[00:26:39] [SPEAKER_00]: And especially in my case, I'm hearing a bunch of like Russian names and I can't keep track of them.

[00:26:45] [SPEAKER_00]: It's, it gets confusing.

[00:26:47] [SPEAKER_02]: I had, I had no idea who was who throughout the whole film.

[00:26:50] [SPEAKER_02]: I had to, the only way I can keep track is by reading Wikipedia.

[00:26:52] [SPEAKER_02]: And it was saying Max von Sydow would do this.

[00:26:55] [SPEAKER_02]: I'd be like, Oh, okay.

[00:26:56] [SPEAKER_02]: So Max von Sydow is doing that.

[00:26:58] [SPEAKER_02]: That's who this character is.

[00:26:59] [SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[00:27:00] [SPEAKER_02]: Like the film is very bad at making the people distinct.

[00:27:05] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:27:05] [SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, you don't even get to kind of know a character.

[00:27:08] [SPEAKER_00]: You're just hearing a name or you're seeing a corpse.

[00:27:11] [SPEAKER_00]: And then they just refer to that corpse to the rest of the movie by a name.

[00:27:14] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:27:14] [SPEAKER_00]: And you go like, Oh, Oh, like, sorry, what?

[00:27:16] [SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot going on in this film.

[00:27:17] [SPEAKER_01]: Mm hmm.

[00:27:18] [SPEAKER_00]: Um, and so like, I found that very frustrating, but it might work if you had a,

[00:27:22] [SPEAKER_00]: a lead figure that was charismatic enough to kind of pull you through that.

[00:27:26] [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, as I said, Humphrey Bogart and beat the devil and in multi Falcon,

[00:27:30] [SPEAKER_00]: that is like the gravity at the core of the madness.

[00:27:33] [SPEAKER_01]: Mm hmm.

[00:27:34] [SPEAKER_00]: And this film doesn't have that core.

[00:27:36] [SPEAKER_00]: And so you feel really adrift a lot of time.

[00:27:39] [SPEAKER_02]: And especially like, and spoiler alert by the final act of the film,

[00:27:43] [SPEAKER_02]: most of the cast is completely sidelined or, or dead.

[00:27:47] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:27:47] [SPEAKER_02]: So really you're just left with Patrick O'Neill and a couple of other characters.

[00:27:52] [SPEAKER_01]: Mm hmm.

[00:27:52] [SPEAKER_02]: And that it just like, I mean, the, the, I'll get back to it in a second, but like,

[00:27:57] [SPEAKER_02]: yeah, there is interesting things to talk about, but that is just a charisma vacuum.

[00:28:01] [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I've rarely seen any performance at the heart of like a spy film that damaging.

[00:28:08] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:28:08] [SPEAKER_02]: And I mean, for me, I'm not far away from you.

[00:28:11] [SPEAKER_02]: I, I wrote down like, you, you think this is like the cast of dreams.

[00:28:15] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:28:16] [SPEAKER_02]: Orson Welles, Max von Sydow.

[00:28:18] [SPEAKER_02]: Um, yeah, keep going.

[00:28:19] [SPEAKER_02]: There's loads.

[00:28:20] [SPEAKER_02]: Uh, Nigel Green.

[00:28:21] [SPEAKER_02]: I'll get to Dalby.

[00:28:22] [SPEAKER_02]: Don't worry.

[00:28:24] [SPEAKER_02]: In a gypsy fight in Acapulco.

[00:28:26] [SPEAKER_02]: What a, what a way to bring him in with, with his bare chest out too.

[00:28:29] [SPEAKER_02]: Just a, what a guy.

[00:28:31] [SPEAKER_00]: Question.

[00:28:32] [SPEAKER_00]: Is he one of the greatest actors who ever lived and we just didn't acknowledge it?

[00:28:37] [SPEAKER_00]: He could be.

[00:28:38] [SPEAKER_00]: I think about it.

[00:28:39] [SPEAKER_00]: We've seen this guy pop up a few times now, right?

[00:28:41] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:28:42] [SPEAKER_00]: Obviously he's Dalby in the Ipcris file.

[00:28:45] [SPEAKER_00]: Mm hmm.

[00:28:46] [SPEAKER_00]: Uh, I think of him as Hercules also in, um, in, uh, Jason and the Argonauts.

[00:28:51] [SPEAKER_00]: I think of him Hercules too, but that's mostly in my dreams.

[00:28:54] [SPEAKER_00]: Of course.

[00:28:55] [SPEAKER_00]: This man is like a chameleon.

[00:28:58] [SPEAKER_00]: Uh huh.

[00:28:58] [SPEAKER_00]: Like this is not the guy that was Dalby who shows up in this movie.

[00:29:02] [SPEAKER_02]: No, he's like the button down, you know, mustache, fine, you know, tooled mustache, British military

[00:29:08] [SPEAKER_02]: man in Ipcris file.

[00:29:10] [SPEAKER_02]: And this, he's like a shirtless hippie slash spy.

[00:29:13] [SPEAKER_00]: It's the craziest thing.

[00:29:16] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:29:16] [SPEAKER_00]: And like pimp and he's like really repellent.

[00:29:20] [SPEAKER_00]: Mm hmm.

[00:29:20] [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, oh my God.

[00:29:21] [SPEAKER_00]: Like the fact that he makes this so seamless, like I completely buy him as these different

[00:29:26] [SPEAKER_00]: characters.

[00:29:27] [SPEAKER_00]: And you can say he's maybe a little hammy in some of his dialogue delivery.

[00:29:32] [SPEAKER_00]: Sure.

[00:29:32] [SPEAKER_00]: Like he definitely has a little bit of a, a little bit of a over the top approach sometimes,

[00:29:35] [SPEAKER_00]: but this man transforms.

[00:29:38] [SPEAKER_00]: It's unbelievable.

[00:29:39] [SPEAKER_02]: It's, I mean, he's one of my likes, which I'll get to, but I'll just bring us back for

[00:29:43] [SPEAKER_02]: a second.

[00:29:44] [SPEAKER_02]: Just to say what I feel about it.

[00:29:45] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:29:46] [SPEAKER_02]: The cost is great.

[00:29:47] [SPEAKER_02]: And I think the story is quite interesting when you can get into it and you can click

[00:29:52] [SPEAKER_02]: into it and engage with it.

[00:29:54] [SPEAKER_02]: Mm hmm.

[00:29:54] [SPEAKER_02]: And you know, I'm, I'm not a big fan of these sort of darker, more realistic, perhaps

[00:30:02] [SPEAKER_02]: spy stories.

[00:30:03] [SPEAKER_02]: The I'm, I, I'm drawn more towards the action orientated or the slightly farcical, the satirical

[00:30:10] [SPEAKER_02]: more than these, you know, the, the, the cold ones, you know, like, well, we had a lot

[00:30:15] [SPEAKER_02]: of fun with our men in Havana.

[00:30:17] [SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[00:30:17] [SPEAKER_02]: And so there are, and that injected some sort of livelihood into it and some comedy and

[00:30:22] [SPEAKER_02]: that was fine.

[00:30:23] [SPEAKER_02]: This is a bit closer to just being kind of a straight up.

[00:30:26] [SPEAKER_02]: This is, you know, more or less a real story.

[00:30:28] [SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[00:30:29] [SPEAKER_02]: Um, so it has me on the defense already, but the story is quite intriguing and the twists

[00:30:34] [SPEAKER_02]: are quite intriguing.

[00:30:35] [SPEAKER_02]: That's all great.

[00:30:35] [SPEAKER_02]: And it's like all these reasons where I could recommend people to go and check out this film.

[00:30:39] [SPEAKER_02]: But ultimately it, it just felt so tedious to me.

[00:30:43] [SPEAKER_02]: Like I just, I was, it was one of the only experiences I think I felt so far this year

[00:30:48] [SPEAKER_02]: where I felt my phone was drawing my attention away.

[00:30:51] [SPEAKER_02]: And that's, that's rare for when I'm watching a spy film the first time around at least anyway.

[00:30:55] [SPEAKER_02]: And I found myself often reading Wikipedia to keep up with the plot, which obviously you

[00:30:59] [SPEAKER_02]: can't do if you're watching it in a cinema in 1970.

[00:31:02] [SPEAKER_02]: But I often found myself like looking at Patrick O'Neill and being like, how did this guy

[00:31:07] [SPEAKER_02]: get the role?

[00:31:08] [SPEAKER_00]: When we're talking about Steve McQueen and Warren Beatty, James Coburn, I can see though, you

[00:31:14] [SPEAKER_00]: know, when you say Warren Beatty, um, I go, okay, I don't really see a similarity between

[00:31:18] [SPEAKER_00]: him and Charles Roan or Patrick O'Neill, I should say.

[00:31:22] [SPEAKER_00]: Um, but when you say James Coburn, I go, oh, I get what they were going for.

[00:31:28] [SPEAKER_00]: Or Steve McQueen.

[00:31:29] [SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of that man, a few words.

[00:31:30] [SPEAKER_00]: There's like a, a cool to him where he just walks on screen.

[00:31:34] [SPEAKER_00]: Clint Eastwood maybe?

[00:31:35] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:31:35] [SPEAKER_00]: Clint Eastwood in that era for sure.

[00:31:37] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:31:37] [SPEAKER_00]: Um, uh, so I can kind of see like what they wanted, but there's like those actors pull

[00:31:44] [SPEAKER_00]: you in when you see them.

[00:31:45] [SPEAKER_00]: They may not say much.

[00:31:46] [SPEAKER_00]: Tom Hardy has it as well.

[00:31:48] [SPEAKER_00]: Like they may not say much on screen, but you are pulled into kind of their, you know,

[00:31:53] [SPEAKER_00]: into their charisma.

[00:31:54] [SPEAKER_00]: Yep.

[00:31:55] [SPEAKER_00]: And that's the problem here with Patrick O'Neill is that he does not pull you in at

[00:32:01] [SPEAKER_00]: all.

[00:32:02] [SPEAKER_02]: He, I mean, cause some films make a point to hold you at arm's length.

[00:32:05] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:32:06] [SPEAKER_02]: And to like distance you from it.

[00:32:07] [SPEAKER_02]: I think of something like, um, the naked runner with Frank Sinatra.

[00:32:12] [SPEAKER_02]: That's a pretty cold film.

[00:32:14] [SPEAKER_02]: Uh, and that this feels like it wants to have kind of this, like you say gun, you say

[00:32:20] [SPEAKER_02]: like man, a few words.

[00:32:21] [SPEAKER_02]: I feel like, you know, a man for hire, almost kind of like Clint Eastwood in Clint Eastwood

[00:32:25] [SPEAKER_02]: in the Iger sanction in a sense, whereas like he's got his own life and he's brought

[00:32:29] [SPEAKER_02]: into this world.

[00:32:30] [SPEAKER_02]: That's a bit weird.

[00:32:32] [SPEAKER_02]: And, but he's a professional and he's engaging and gets the job done.

[00:32:36] [SPEAKER_02]: And that's where the Iger sanction works.

[00:32:38] [SPEAKER_02]: But the problem is the casting of Patrick O'Neill just so fundamentally shifts the engagement

[00:32:44] [SPEAKER_02]: of the audience and sort of the, I don't know if it's him as an actor, not being able

[00:32:48] [SPEAKER_02]: to deliver the goods or if he's not directed well into giving a good performance, or this

[00:32:53] [SPEAKER_02]: is exactly what, you know, uh, John Houston wanted from his lead.

[00:32:57] [SPEAKER_02]: Like this cold, stiff, lifeless corpse of an actor.

[00:33:02] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:33:02] [SPEAKER_00]: Well, and also like there is kind of like a burgeoning love story going on between him

[00:33:08] [SPEAKER_00]: and the character B.A. played by Barbara Parkins, where she is the daughter of a safe

[00:33:15] [SPEAKER_00]: cracker who used to be used on their team.

[00:33:17] [SPEAKER_00]: And the safe cracker is too old and he's basically got arthritis in his hands.

[00:33:20] [SPEAKER_00]: So he sends his daughter in his place on this mission.

[00:33:23] [SPEAKER_00]: And you have the connection between her and Charles Roan, and it just doesn't click.

[00:33:33] [SPEAKER_00]: Like you don't feel any chemistry and that should haunt him.

[00:33:36] [SPEAKER_00]: Like this should feels like someone who, when he walks out of this kind of very messy game

[00:33:41] [SPEAKER_00]: of espionage feels broken by the experience.

[00:33:44] [SPEAKER_00]: And is also feeling overwhelmed at times or, you know, kind of like raging against what

[00:33:49] [SPEAKER_00]: is going on.

[00:33:50] [SPEAKER_00]: And I got none of that.

[00:33:52] [SPEAKER_00]: This guy just kind of walks out as like a piece of cardboard.

[00:33:54] [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I know some things like, you know, you, you, you see an actor and they're not

[00:33:58] [SPEAKER_02]: given their best.

[00:33:59] [SPEAKER_02]: That's absolutely fine.

[00:34:00] [SPEAKER_02]: But I, I, I fear this is his best and this is just not up to snuff and he was not the

[00:34:05] [SPEAKER_02]: right man for the lead.

[00:34:06] [SPEAKER_02]: I would also, I would sooner have swapped some people around and stuck, you know, major

[00:34:11] [SPEAKER_02]: Dolby in the, in the lead role.

[00:34:13] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:34:13] [SPEAKER_00]: I think the problem with like this film is it's miscasting.

[00:34:18] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:34:18] [SPEAKER_00]: Because Patrick O'Neill was someone who worked for a long time and you know, he's in the

[00:34:22] [SPEAKER_00]: Stepford Wives, The Way We Were.

[00:34:24] [SPEAKER_00]: He was apparently a captain in Under Siege.

[00:34:26] [SPEAKER_00]: I'll have to check that out.

[00:34:27] [SPEAKER_00]: But he's someone who was a very capable actor and again, worked for decades.

[00:34:32] [SPEAKER_00]: So I don't think it's necessarily, he's a bad actor.

[00:34:34] [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's fatal miscasting.

[00:34:36] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:34:37] [SPEAKER_02]: I think that, that really is the critical floor of the film, but let's, let's talk about some

[00:34:40] [SPEAKER_02]: things that we did like.

[00:34:41] [SPEAKER_02]: Cause I say there are some pretty good stuff in here.

[00:34:43] [SPEAKER_01]: Mm-hmm.

[00:34:44] [SPEAKER_02]: Well, let's go with you first, Cam.

[00:34:46] [SPEAKER_02]: Something you want to talk about.

[00:34:47] [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the cast of this movie is just like a murderer's row.

[00:34:51] [SPEAKER_00]: And so like, it's almost worth just going through some of them.

[00:34:54] [SPEAKER_00]: Cause we talked about like Nigel, or at least I talked a lot about Nigel Green, but like,

[00:34:58] [SPEAKER_00]: I liked how his character was, had this like kind of roguish charm to him, but he was also

[00:35:03] [SPEAKER_00]: someone who was like one of the darkest characters in the movie.

[00:35:06] [SPEAKER_00]: So he would just offhandedly suggest things, you know, they're talking, he's meeting with

[00:35:09] [SPEAKER_00]: like a drug dealer who may have information that can help them in their mission.

[00:35:14] [SPEAKER_00]: And they're just talking about, you know, establishing a brothel.

[00:35:17] [SPEAKER_00]: And he says, Oh, you know, the factory workers who work in the brothel, they're tired after

[00:35:21] [SPEAKER_00]: a long work day.

[00:35:22] [SPEAKER_00]: And you know, the, the Nigel Green character, the whore, as he's referred to is just like,

[00:35:27] [SPEAKER_00]: well, let's get them hooked on heroin.

[00:35:28] [SPEAKER_00]: And it's so offhand and you like matter of fact, yeah, it's so brutal.

[00:35:33] [SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, just gut punch moment.

[00:35:35] [SPEAKER_00]: You go like, what?

[00:35:37] [SPEAKER_00]: And the fact that like you have one of the most charismatic characters in the movie, just

[00:35:41] [SPEAKER_00]: say that offhandedly and continues to have these moments where you're like, this is a

[00:35:46] [SPEAKER_00]: truly twisted and evil individual.

[00:35:50] [SPEAKER_00]: And he's one of our good guys.

[00:35:51] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:35:52] [SPEAKER_02]: Well, I mean, that's just, just one of the, of the team.

[00:35:55] [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, you've got, I mean, one of the ones that stood out for me was, was George Sanders,

[00:35:59] [SPEAKER_02]: who's not an actor.

[00:36:00] [SPEAKER_02]: I've been particularly a fan of in the past when we've had him on other films, but as,

[00:36:05] [SPEAKER_02]: as the warlock in this, which he plays sort of a fusty, uh, uh, pent up kind of homosexual

[00:36:12] [SPEAKER_02]: man who is used to, to sort of influence and infiltrate homosexual circles.

[00:36:18] [SPEAKER_02]: I'm using the word homosexual because that's the way they use it in the film.

[00:36:20] [SPEAKER_02]: Um, he is a gay man in the film and yeah.

[00:36:25] [SPEAKER_02]: So he gets someone to fall in love with him and uses that man as, as a way of getting

[00:36:29] [SPEAKER_02]: information.

[00:36:30] [SPEAKER_02]: Cause there's in Moscow, there's a group of homosexual men that hang out together and they

[00:36:35] [SPEAKER_02]: spill the tea as it were.

[00:36:36] [SPEAKER_02]: They talk gossip with one another and he infiltrates through that, but he, he imbues

[00:36:40] [SPEAKER_02]: that character with so much life and he's like knitting and stuff like that.

[00:36:44] [SPEAKER_02]: And you know, you first meet him, he's in drag.

[00:36:47] [SPEAKER_02]: This is pretty like forward thinking stuff for 1970.

[00:36:49] [SPEAKER_02]: I was quite nice.

[00:36:50] [SPEAKER_02]: It's quite nice to see it.

[00:36:52] [SPEAKER_02]: Uh, I thought that was great.

[00:36:54] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:36:54] [SPEAKER_00]: And I think only one character says something where you go, Oh yeah, there's one line.

[00:36:58] [SPEAKER_00]: You're like, Oh boy.

[00:36:59] [SPEAKER_00]: That's inappropriate.

[00:36:59] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:37:00] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:37:00] [SPEAKER_00]: Where you go, okay, that's 1970 coming out there.

[00:37:02] [SPEAKER_00]: But like, um, no.

[00:37:04] [SPEAKER_00]: And the fact that like they give his character a pretty honorable death too.

[00:37:08] [SPEAKER_00]: Like he's someone who's going to be caught and it's like, yeah, yeah.

[00:37:11] [SPEAKER_00]: Goes out swinging, commit suicide.

[00:37:13] [SPEAKER_00]: Ultimately is a warning to help our hero.

[00:37:15] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:37:16] [SPEAKER_02]: Uh, I mean, just some other ones just tip our hats to, you know, Orson Welles is here

[00:37:20] [SPEAKER_02]: as a politician who's using his influence over the whole story.

[00:37:24] [SPEAKER_02]: It turns out to be the biggest bad, I think of the whole, of the whole film.

[00:37:26] [SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, I, I've seen Orson Welles turned on a bit more than this, but he's still putting

[00:37:31] [SPEAKER_02]: in a performance.

[00:37:32] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:37:32] [SPEAKER_00]: And Max on sit out.

[00:37:33] [SPEAKER_00]: We've seen him just kill on screen in like, uh, you know, three days of the condor that

[00:37:39] [SPEAKER_00]: which would be, I guess, a couple of years after this movie, but he's great here as ultimately

[00:37:44] [SPEAKER_00]: the antagonist, you know, the Soviet, um, you know, um, intelligence agent that is kind

[00:37:51] [SPEAKER_00]: of tightening kind of the noose around the mission and trying to break it up and is ultimately

[00:37:57] [SPEAKER_00]: driven by a need to, um, you know, advance his own career because he'd kind of had the

[00:38:02] [SPEAKER_00]: movie.

[00:38:02] [SPEAKER_00]: It's complicated, but it is basically set in a world where there used to be independent

[00:38:07] [SPEAKER_00]: intelligence groups that didn't fall under like a government umbrella, like the CIA,

[00:38:11] [SPEAKER_00]: which is how it works before the wall.

[00:38:13] [SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.

[00:38:15] [SPEAKER_00]: And there was a point where it was kind of like a cordial relationship between the U S um,

[00:38:20] [SPEAKER_00]: and Russia or the Soviet Union.

[00:38:23] [SPEAKER_00]: And Max von Sydow was part of that.

[00:38:25] [SPEAKER_00]: Like he kept the peace and to a certain point wanted to advance his career.

[00:38:28] [SPEAKER_00]: And so then turned on his collaborators.

[00:38:32] [SPEAKER_00]: And so like, he's the antagonist of the film, but like, I like how they give him a very human

[00:38:37] [SPEAKER_00]: core because he has a wife played by B.B.

[00:38:39] [SPEAKER_00]: Anderson.

[00:38:39] [SPEAKER_00]: Very good in this film as well.

[00:38:41] [SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[00:38:41] [SPEAKER_00]: Who had been sent in on a mission to actually marry, you know, a rival that would ultimately

[00:38:47] [SPEAKER_00]: lead to that character's death.

[00:38:48] [SPEAKER_00]: Um, and you know, she gets embroiled in this mission and wants to defect at a certain point

[00:38:54] [SPEAKER_00]: and is horrified by what her husband's doing, but you feel the emotion from him.

[00:38:58] [SPEAKER_00]: Like when she goes missing and is ultimately killed by a character I want to get to in a second,

[00:39:03] [SPEAKER_00]: like you can see that it hurts him.

[00:39:06] [SPEAKER_00]: Um, it's, it's not someone who is kind of your cold evil antagonist.

[00:39:10] [SPEAKER_00]: It's someone who is very human.

[00:39:12] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:39:12] [SPEAKER_02]: And I know who you want to get to.

[00:39:13] [SPEAKER_02]: And it's probably one of my MVPs too, but there's one person I just want to shout out

[00:39:16] [SPEAKER_02]: first.

[00:39:17] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:39:17] [SPEAKER_02]: And that is Lila Kidrova as Madam Sophie.

[00:39:21] [SPEAKER_02]: Now she popped up a couple of years before this in torn curtain.

[00:39:25] [SPEAKER_02]: As the lady trying to get a visa to the United States and just like steals the last 30 minutes

[00:39:31] [SPEAKER_02]: of that film.

[00:39:32] [SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[00:39:33] [SPEAKER_02]: Yes.

[00:39:34] [SPEAKER_02]: Yes.

[00:39:34] [SPEAKER_02]: And she's great in this too.

[00:39:36] [SPEAKER_02]: Like, I mean, she, she, she runs the brothel that, uh, is suggested that she uses drugs on

[00:39:40] [SPEAKER_02]: her, her, her workers.

[00:39:42] [SPEAKER_02]: Um, you know, she's eventually turned against them and she's, you know, she's, she hides

[00:39:47] [SPEAKER_02]: some of the people for a little while, but again, smaller part than some of the other

[00:39:50] [SPEAKER_02]: ones, but imbued with far more life than Patrick O'Neill has.

[00:39:54] [SPEAKER_00]: Well, this movie is just populated by character actors, just making people pop, which is a

[00:40:00] [SPEAKER_00]: John Huston specialty.

[00:40:01] [SPEAKER_00]: You know, he works in Maltese Falcon and all these other, uh, great kind of messy movies

[00:40:05] [SPEAKER_00]: he made.

[00:40:06] [SPEAKER_00]: Like when it comes to that aspect, this movie is on point because it's so well cast.

[00:40:10] [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, Barbara Parkins is very good as well as the safecracker.

[00:40:13] [SPEAKER_00]: She's like the sympathetic character because she's someone who's been sent on this mission.

[00:40:17] [SPEAKER_00]: She doesn't know the world of espionage and it's ultimately one of the biggest victims

[00:40:20] [SPEAKER_00]: of it, but you feel for her genuinely.

[00:40:22] [SPEAKER_00]: Rural ending.

[00:40:23] [SPEAKER_00]: Uh, and also BB Anderson, you know, as this wife character who, you know, has like a party

[00:40:29] [SPEAKER_00]: streak to her.

[00:40:29] [SPEAKER_00]: She is someone who's kind of living a counterculture kind of life and is fun, but ultimately has

[00:40:36] [SPEAKER_00]: like one of the darkest moments in the entire film where she's murdered by a character who

[00:40:41] [SPEAKER_00]: I think steals the entire film.

[00:40:43] [SPEAKER_00]: And that character is Richard Boone's ward.

[00:40:47] [SPEAKER_00]: Um, there's a lot of convoluted stuff going on with this character.

[00:40:51] [SPEAKER_00]: A lot.

[00:40:52] [SPEAKER_00]: That depends on you memorizing names that are just tossed off left, right and center.

[00:40:55] [SPEAKER_00]: But every single second Richard Boone is on screen.

[00:41:01] [SPEAKER_00]: He is magnetic.

[00:41:03] [SPEAKER_00]: Mm-hmm.

[00:41:03] [SPEAKER_00]: And the fact that they make, um, the character of Charles Roan share screen time with him

[00:41:10] [SPEAKER_00]: is detrimental to anything going on on his end of the equation.

[00:41:15] [SPEAKER_00]: It's like different ends of a battery, positive and negative.

[00:41:18] [SPEAKER_00]: They couldn't be further from each other.

[00:41:20] [SPEAKER_00]: There is such a twinkle in Richard Boone's eyes and he's not an actor I've seen a ton

[00:41:23] [SPEAKER_00]: of things with.

[00:41:24] [SPEAKER_00]: I know he was the star of Have Gun Will Travel, which was a very, very popular Western show

[00:41:29] [SPEAKER_00]: of its time where he played Paladin.

[00:41:31] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh yeah.

[00:41:31] [SPEAKER_00]: Um, but in this movie he's just always so genial, so friendly.

[00:41:37] [SPEAKER_00]: He's like, okay, you know, I'm your handler.

[00:41:39] [SPEAKER_00]: We're going to make this mission work.

[00:41:41] [SPEAKER_00]: You know, he, he's the one that kind of helps bring together the team with Roan and then

[00:41:46] [SPEAKER_00]: starts to play this very kind of mysterious role throughout.

[00:41:49] [SPEAKER_00]: And when like the big reveal comes that he is this former, uh, US agent who's basically

[00:41:56] [SPEAKER_00]: faked his own death and had plastic surgery, it's very confusing.

[00:42:00] [SPEAKER_00]: It took me a, it took me some reading to really like piece it together, but he is unbelievable.

[00:42:07] [SPEAKER_00]: Like when the dark side of that character comes out in that scene with B.B. Anderson,

[00:42:11] [SPEAKER_00]: I was just like jaw dropped.

[00:42:12] [SPEAKER_00]: And this movie has, look, this is not one of my favorite movies we've ever tackled on

[00:42:17] [SPEAKER_00]: SpyHards, but it might have one of my favorite endings of any movie we've tackled on SpyHards.

[00:42:22] [SPEAKER_02]: Well, it's such a melancholy ending.

[00:42:24] [SPEAKER_02]: Like it, it, it is like, it's the ending.

[00:42:26] [SPEAKER_02]: I think that the Coen brothers were trying to pull off and burn off the reading.

[00:42:30] [SPEAKER_02]: Sure.

[00:42:30] [SPEAKER_02]: Like a, a bit of a, like a, a bit of an F you to the audience in a sense of here, you're

[00:42:35] [SPEAKER_02]: not getting a happy ending.

[00:42:36] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:42:37] [SPEAKER_02]: But also like, you know, you kind of get a happy ending, but it, no one really does.

[00:42:42] [SPEAKER_00]: Really wins this.

[00:42:44] [SPEAKER_00]: No.

[00:42:44] [SPEAKER_00]: And I mean, for people who maybe didn't watch the movie, um, the Charles Roan character,

[00:42:49] [SPEAKER_00]: he's the only one not caught by the group and several of them wind up dead.

[00:42:53] [SPEAKER_00]: Uh, the BA character, the young woman, um, that there's a love interest kind of situation

[00:42:58] [SPEAKER_00]: going on with she's captured.

[00:43:00] [SPEAKER_00]: She's only 18.

[00:43:01] [SPEAKER_00]: I think as well.

[00:43:01] [SPEAKER_00]: I think so.

[00:43:02] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:43:02] [SPEAKER_00]: She's captured.

[00:43:03] [SPEAKER_00]: It was the style at the time, Scott.

[00:43:05] [SPEAKER_00]: Uh, she's captured and poisoned, but she's recovered by Richard Boone who basically says,

[00:43:11] [SPEAKER_00]: uh, I'm going to keep her here because I want you to basically do what I say and to keep

[00:43:15] [SPEAKER_00]: this all under wraps.

[00:43:17] [SPEAKER_00]: And then, you know, Charles Roan says, you know, I'm going to get her out of here.

[00:43:21] [SPEAKER_00]: And Richard Boone realizes that there's like a love between these two.

[00:43:24] [SPEAKER_00]: And so he gives him a note and says like, read this on the plane.

[00:43:27] [SPEAKER_00]: And when he gets on the plane, he opens a note and the note says to kill the wife and

[00:43:33] [SPEAKER_00]: daughters, uh, daughters, I think it was plural of the man whose apartment they had taken over

[00:43:39] [SPEAKER_00]: while they were in the USSR.

[00:43:41] [SPEAKER_00]: And it's just like, you stare at that note credits like home run ending.

[00:43:47] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:43:47] [SPEAKER_02]: Like he, his life is irrevocably changed because of this mission.

[00:43:51] [SPEAKER_02]: And you know, he, he's basically now without wanting to be, he is a puppet of, he's a puppet

[00:43:56] [SPEAKER_02]: of Soviet Russia.

[00:43:58] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:43:58] [SPEAKER_00]: Or, or at least of ward.

[00:44:00] [SPEAKER_00]: Well, exactly.

[00:44:00] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:44:01] [SPEAKER_00]: It's like he either, um, lets this young woman who is very vulnerable and I think feels a certain,

[00:44:07] [SPEAKER_00]: you know, need to protect if he lets her go.

[00:44:10] [SPEAKER_00]: And it's basically, God knows what happens to her under ward.

[00:44:13] [SPEAKER_00]: Or he goes and kills this innocent, you know, young, uh, these daughters and you know,

[00:44:19] [SPEAKER_00]: wife.

[00:44:19] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:44:20] [SPEAKER_00]: Uh, not, not a happy ending for anyone really.

[00:44:23] [SPEAKER_00]: No.

[00:44:24] [SPEAKER_00]: And I like that that is very much in focus in this movie.

[00:44:27] [SPEAKER_00]: Like it's, it's a movie that is often kind of fun, but it also has these dark punches

[00:44:32] [SPEAKER_00]: where you just go like, Oh man.

[00:44:34] [SPEAKER_00]: Like it really, I think is having fun with the idea of espionage being kind of this escapist

[00:44:41] [SPEAKER_00]: genre where people want to come to the movies or read a book and have fun code names like

[00:44:46] [SPEAKER_00]: the highway man, the whore, things like that.

[00:44:49] [SPEAKER_00]: But at the same time, it's saying, no, no, there's a real cost to this.

[00:44:53] [SPEAKER_00]: And human beings are like pawns in this game and horrible things happen.

[00:44:58] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:44:58] [SPEAKER_02]: Like it does seem a bit of a farce at the start when they are getting introduced to people

[00:45:02] [SPEAKER_02]: and they're putting people together like the A team and all those interesting code names

[00:45:06] [SPEAKER_02]: and like training sequences and stuff.

[00:45:08] [SPEAKER_02]: But by the time you actually get there and consequences start to happen, like it actually

[00:45:11] [SPEAKER_02]: is very real.

[00:45:13] [SPEAKER_00]: And also the espionage, it's a little, you know, obviously amped up just for a movie, but

[00:45:19] [SPEAKER_00]: it doesn't feel like it's overly glamorous.

[00:45:21] [SPEAKER_00]: It's not like giving you flashy, you know, fight sequences and things like that.

[00:45:27] [SPEAKER_02]: No, no, no, no.

[00:45:28] [SPEAKER_02]: It's not like a, it's not a stylized James Bond film.

[00:45:30] [SPEAKER_02]: It is like one shot kills and not a lot of, not a lot of pizzazz.

[00:45:37] [SPEAKER_00]: No, there's a Hitchcock spy film that was made around the similar point in time that we

[00:45:42] [SPEAKER_00]: haven't tackled yet.

[00:45:43] [SPEAKER_00]: And it was one when I watched it the first time many years ago, I was like, what the hell

[00:45:47] [SPEAKER_00]: was that?

[00:45:48] [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm now curious when we do get to that one later down the road, if I look at it more

[00:45:54] [SPEAKER_00]: through the kind of the magnifying glass that I look at like a movie like this and some of

[00:45:59] [SPEAKER_00]: the other seventies ones, which are much kind of like messier and more pessimistic.

[00:46:03] [SPEAKER_00]: And they don't give you that kind of big flashy charismatic lead.

[00:46:07] [SPEAKER_00]: It's more about kind of you just being overwhelmed by the pessimism of it all.

[00:46:12] [SPEAKER_00]: It's entirely possible.

[00:46:13] [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe that it just was in the water at the end of the sixties.

[00:46:16] [SPEAKER_00]: It very much was.

[00:46:17] [SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, this movie definitely, uh, maybe there's a reason it wasn't a huge box office

[00:46:21] [SPEAKER_00]: success.

[00:46:22] [SPEAKER_00]: Perhaps so.

[00:46:23] [SPEAKER_02]: But I just want to talk about just how beautiful this film looks like credit to John Huston

[00:46:27] [SPEAKER_02]: for putting this thing together.

[00:46:28] [SPEAKER_02]: Like I know it's shot in Helsinki.

[00:46:30] [SPEAKER_02]: It's not shot in Moscow for the most part, but it just looks great.

[00:46:35] [SPEAKER_02]: And there's some really interesting sets, like some of the training stuff at the start

[00:46:38] [SPEAKER_02]: and weird sets.

[00:46:39] [SPEAKER_02]: Um, but like, you know, they, they have found places and like, it feels cold and run down.

[00:46:45] [SPEAKER_02]: They found the exact right buildings to use the right interiors.

[00:46:48] [SPEAKER_02]: There's like nightclubs and stuff that were really pop on the screen.

[00:46:52] [SPEAKER_02]: There was a lot of thought that went into the, the, the, the visuals of this film.

[00:46:56] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:46:56] [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, they couldn't shoot in Moscow, but they made it feel like Moscow when you watch

[00:47:01] [SPEAKER_00]: the movie and there's like a real, like kind of vibe of kind of ominous danger.

[00:47:08] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:47:08] [SPEAKER_00]: When you just see characters walking around the streets, there's like a sparseness to

[00:47:12] [SPEAKER_00]: it.

[00:47:12] [SPEAKER_00]: A lot of the time.

[00:47:13] [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, John Huston was a great director and even in material like this, which is kind

[00:47:16] [SPEAKER_00]: of overwhelming him.

[00:47:18] [SPEAKER_00]: Uh, he makes this feel like a very atmospheric film.

[00:47:22] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:47:22] [SPEAKER_02]: I, I don't, I can't add more than it being atmospheric, but I just think as much as we

[00:47:27] [SPEAKER_02]: took a couple of pot shots at it at the start, there are so much in here.

[00:47:30] [SPEAKER_02]: It's such a rich text of a spy movie that I don't think it's one people should be necessarily

[00:47:35] [SPEAKER_02]: dismissing, which we'll come back to in a little bit, but, uh, another like from you,

[00:47:38] [SPEAKER_02]: Cam?

[00:47:39] [SPEAKER_00]: I think the only other like, like, which I kind of mentioned is just how it kind of shows

[00:47:44] [SPEAKER_00]: like the darker aspects of what spies might do.

[00:47:46] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:47:47] [SPEAKER_00]: Um, because that's something that we don't, you'll have a lot of spy movies that will

[00:47:51] [SPEAKER_00]: like kind of dance in the gray, uh, and be like, well, what they're doing is kind of,

[00:47:55] [SPEAKER_00]: you know, not great, but this movie really does underline that these people, you know,

[00:48:01] [SPEAKER_00]: especially in like a case like this are, are not good people.

[00:48:04] [SPEAKER_01]: No.

[00:48:04] [SPEAKER_00]: And there's a reason they get the job done.

[00:48:06] [SPEAKER_00]: Like there is, I mentioned the, um, the guy they have to get the apartment from

[00:48:11] [SPEAKER_00]: and they basically set up his young daughter to have this love affair with this agent.

[00:48:15] [SPEAKER_00]: They implant another woman.

[00:48:17] [SPEAKER_02]: I'll add as well that there's, there's an implication in the sense of like this other

[00:48:21] [SPEAKER_02]: woman is coercing his daughter and he's being forced to watch it.

[00:48:25] [SPEAKER_02]: And he doesn't want his daughter to be turned if you will.

[00:48:29] [SPEAKER_02]: Like maybe she already was gay.

[00:48:30] [SPEAKER_02]: He doesn't know, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:48:31] [SPEAKER_02]: You don't know that the implication is that he's trying to protect her from this sadistic

[00:48:37] [SPEAKER_00]: underworld of the homosexuals as it were.

[00:48:39] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:48:40] [SPEAKER_00]: And the way they deal with it is so matter of fact in the movie.

[00:48:43] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:48:44] [SPEAKER_00]: That the audience is immediately like repelled by these characters that we are supposed to

[00:48:48] [SPEAKER_00]: want to follow into this mission.

[00:48:50] [SPEAKER_02]: It's like reprehensible stuff.

[00:48:52] [SPEAKER_02]: They could, they kidnap him.

[00:48:53] [SPEAKER_02]: They're in like white hoods and stuff like that.

[00:48:55] [SPEAKER_02]: Like, it's pretty scary.

[00:48:56] [SPEAKER_02]: If you were, if you were kidnapped like that, um, and your family were basically,

[00:49:00] [SPEAKER_02]: cause they also captured his wife and other daughter.

[00:49:02] [SPEAKER_02]: And he's like, he sees them on screen as being captured like that.

[00:49:05] [SPEAKER_00]: Pretty harrowing stuff.

[00:49:06] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:49:07] [SPEAKER_00]: And I liked the way the movie is kind of undercutting, you know, what I think an audience would expect.

[00:49:12] [SPEAKER_00]: Because when you have these kind of, you know, men on a mission kind of things, let's assemble

[00:49:16] [SPEAKER_00]: a team.

[00:49:17] [SPEAKER_00]: We've all got colorful nicknames.

[00:49:19] [SPEAKER_00]: Now let's watch what they actually do.

[00:49:21] [SPEAKER_00]: It kind of like forces you to participate in this very like dark stuff they're doing.

[00:49:27] [SPEAKER_00]: And I kind of admire the movie for that.

[00:49:29] [SPEAKER_00]: It's like a feel bad spy film that isn't like walking out of the gate, just kind of waving

[00:49:34] [SPEAKER_00]: the flag of we are a dark pessimistic movie.

[00:49:37] [SPEAKER_00]: They kind of like surprise you a lot of the time.

[00:49:40] [SPEAKER_00]: And so I appreciated that John Huston was really going for it.

[00:49:45] [SPEAKER_00]: It's a movie that does not pull its punches and very few movies that we've tackled in

[00:49:50] [SPEAKER_00]: the decades that follow are willing to kind of journey down what this movie does.

[00:49:55] [SPEAKER_02]: Well, it's kind of something that I go back to the Iger sanction again.

[00:49:59] [SPEAKER_02]: I think that film wanted to do more of this.

[00:50:01] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:50:01] [SPEAKER_02]: And it got lost in some of its sort of silliness and lost in some of its climbing and sort

[00:50:10] [SPEAKER_02]: of like disdain for certain groups, if we'll just put it that way.

[00:50:14] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:50:14] [SPEAKER_02]: This takes more of a flat, just like, it's almost like we're watching this world.

[00:50:18] [SPEAKER_02]: We're not, the director isn't influencing our opinions necessarily because the bad guys

[00:50:23] [SPEAKER_02]: are doing good things and the good guys are doing bad things.

[00:50:25] [SPEAKER_02]: You're just watching through the eyes of Patrick O'Neill's Charles Boone.

[00:50:29] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:50:30] [SPEAKER_02]: Charles Roan, sorry, I should say not Charles Boone.

[00:50:33] [SPEAKER_02]: And that's it.

[00:50:34] [SPEAKER_02]: He's your POV character, but he's not leaning you either way.

[00:50:37] [SPEAKER_02]: You feel for him in that plane at the end, but you also feel for BA, who's in the ambulance.

[00:50:43] [SPEAKER_00]: Like, it's a toughie.

[00:50:45] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:50:45] [SPEAKER_00]: And you feel more for him just because of you can put yourself in his place.

[00:50:51] [SPEAKER_00]: And it's kind of like an audience avatar moment as opposed to a compelling character that you are sympathetic with.

[00:50:56] [SPEAKER_00]: It's like, oh my God, like what would I do in that situation?

[00:50:59] [SPEAKER_00]: And that's what you think.

[00:51:01] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, exactly.

[00:51:03] [SPEAKER_02]: I just want to add one thing on top in terms of likes and that is Nigel Green's bare chested look in Acapulco.

[00:51:12] [SPEAKER_02]: You're going to bring that back?

[00:51:14] [SPEAKER_02]: I already am, Cam.

[00:51:16] [SPEAKER_02]: I can feel the breeze.

[00:51:17] [SPEAKER_02]: I'm going loco down in Acapulco.

[00:51:19] [SPEAKER_00]: I wondered why all the lights were off in your room right now for the recording.

[00:51:23] [SPEAKER_00]: You're hiding your Nigel Greenness.

[00:51:25] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm hiding my Nigel Greenness, did you just say?

[00:51:28] [SPEAKER_00]: Greenness.

[00:51:29] [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, I thought Greenness was a rhyming slang.

[00:51:34] [SPEAKER_02]: Canadian rhyming slang.

[00:51:37] [SPEAKER_00]: If you adopt that from now on, you're welcome.

[00:51:40] [SPEAKER_02]: We interrupt this program to bring you a special report.

[00:51:44] [SPEAKER_02]: Red Alert SpyHards, we are shaking things up over on the Patreon page.

[00:51:49] [SPEAKER_00]: That's right.

[00:51:50] [SPEAKER_00]: We are launching an exclusive new show where we tackle the exploits of the small screen's greatest secret agents like Jack Bauer, George Smiley and beyond.

[00:51:59] [SPEAKER_02]: And don't forget every month you also get two Agents in the Field episodes where we decode the adventures of your favorite spy actors in their biggest non-spy movies.

[00:52:12] [SPEAKER_02]: But, Cam, tell the people what we have coming up next.

[00:52:16] [SPEAKER_00]: Scott, what better way to kick off Spooky October than by tackling the 1973 William Friedkin classic, The Exorcist.

[00:52:26] [SPEAKER_00]: 50 plus years later, does the power of Christ still compel us to scream this movie's praises?

[00:52:31] [SPEAKER_00]: Find out.

[00:52:33] [SPEAKER_02]: So strap on your Condor Man wings and soar into the future with us over at Patreon.com slash SpyHards.

[00:52:41] [SPEAKER_00]: But, before Big O zaps us with a red pulsating laser, let's get back to the Spy Jinx.

[00:52:50] [SPEAKER_02]: Well, we've already spoken about some of them, but let's talk about a couple of more dislikes.

[00:52:54] [SPEAKER_02]: I probably will jump in first.

[00:52:57] [SPEAKER_02]: Mm-hmm.

[00:52:57] [SPEAKER_02]: And this might be a like to some other people.

[00:53:00] [SPEAKER_02]: Like, they might like the reality of this, but I don't like how some of the characters are just off-screen and you don't really get a resolution for them.

[00:53:07] [SPEAKER_02]: Nigel Green's, like, not Dorby, that's not his character's name, but Nigel Green is one of those that sort of suffer from that particular phenomena.

[00:53:13] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:53:13] [SPEAKER_02]: Where he is just killed off-screen and you're just told he's died.

[00:53:16] [SPEAKER_00]: I was confused because they, yeah, did not give you a clear sense of who had been captured at that point.

[00:53:23] [SPEAKER_02]: They just tell you numbers.

[00:53:24] [SPEAKER_02]: I think, oh, we got three of them, one, two are dead.

[00:53:26] [SPEAKER_02]: It's like, I just guess it's the other ones.

[00:53:28] [SPEAKER_02]: Sure.

[00:53:29] [SPEAKER_00]: But there's also the confusion going on because you have the Highwayman, played by Dean Jagger, who commits suicide at the start of the mission.

[00:53:36] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:53:36] [SPEAKER_00]: With a body they've taken to make it look like two people have died.

[00:53:40] [SPEAKER_00]: And I have no idea why they did that.

[00:53:43] [SPEAKER_02]: I think it was to be like a distraction.

[00:53:45] [SPEAKER_02]: It was.

[00:53:46] [SPEAKER_02]: On Wikipedia it says it was a distraction, but in the film there's no like feed line that says, oh, I'm going to do this to do this.

[00:53:52] [SPEAKER_00]: I know.

[00:53:52] [SPEAKER_00]: I know.

[00:53:53] [SPEAKER_00]: And the movie does that a lot.

[00:53:54] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:53:54] [SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of cutting corners around.

[00:53:56] [SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, it's funny because so often we're like, we watch something like the union, for example.

[00:54:01] [SPEAKER_00]: And we're like, boy, these movies are slick and surface level.

[00:54:05] [SPEAKER_00]: They can be entertaining, I guess.

[00:54:06] [SPEAKER_00]: But like, these are not brainy movies.

[00:54:08] [SPEAKER_00]: And then you present something like this and we're like, dumb it down, dumb it down.

[00:54:12] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm so confused.

[00:54:14] [SPEAKER_02]: We need context.

[00:54:16] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:54:16] [SPEAKER_00]: The movie doesn't give you a lot of that kind of exposition to give you your bearings.

[00:54:21] [SPEAKER_00]: And so that is a real problem.

[00:54:23] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:54:24] [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah.

[00:54:25] [SPEAKER_00]: So when they are then giving numbers as to who's been captured or killed, I'm like, wait, am I counting the highwayman?

[00:54:31] [SPEAKER_00]: You know, like things like that are not made clear.

[00:54:33] [SPEAKER_00]: No.

[00:54:33] [SPEAKER_02]: And that is one of those, like, it could just be the film is not, you know, force feeding you information, which some people will say is a good thing.

[00:54:41] [SPEAKER_02]: And some people will say is a bad thing because they can't keep up with it.

[00:54:43] [SPEAKER_02]: It is personal taste.

[00:54:45] [SPEAKER_02]: But for me, it was kind of, especially when you're not particularly invested in the film, like it isn't, it isn't pulling you in very well.

[00:54:53] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:54:53] [SPEAKER_02]: You need little bits like that to kind of help you get through it.

[00:54:56] [SPEAKER_02]: And for me, I think that line with the highwayman who went off the side of the cliff with another body in a van was the first time I felt compelled to go look at Wikipedia.

[00:55:06] [SPEAKER_02]: Do you think in 1970?

[00:55:08] [SPEAKER_00]: They had Wikipedia.

[00:55:09] [SPEAKER_02]: No.

[00:55:10] [SPEAKER_00]: No, they didn't have that.

[00:55:12] [SPEAKER_00]: But they were depending on audiences having maybe been familiar with the book.

[00:55:16] [SPEAKER_02]: No, I think they were depending on people having to pay exact attention.

[00:55:20] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:55:20] [SPEAKER_00]: Because I mean, I can understand a little bit like when I say, look at some of the later Harry Potter films.

[00:55:26] [SPEAKER_00]: I remember watching those and I didn't read the books and just being like, I don't understand what's going on.

[00:55:30] [SPEAKER_00]: Sure.

[00:55:31] [SPEAKER_00]: And a lot of that was people who read the books be like, Oh, you understand if you read the book like this, because this is clear.

[00:55:35] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:55:35] [SPEAKER_00]: And I'd go like, sure.

[00:55:37] [SPEAKER_00]: And I can see that happening a little bit here where like, maybe if I've read the book, I understand where this is going.

[00:55:43] [SPEAKER_00]: And all these kinds of details, these names mean more to me than what I'm seeing actually presented in the film.

[00:55:48] [SPEAKER_00]: But at the same time, to the best of my knowledge, the Kremlin letter was not at the same popularity level as Harry Potter.

[00:55:55] [SPEAKER_02]: I don't think so.

[00:55:58] [SPEAKER_00]: They had Harry Palmer.

[00:55:59] [SPEAKER_00]: Harry Palmer led into Harry Potter.

[00:56:02] [SPEAKER_00]: Harry Palmer and the supermarket of doom.

[00:56:04] [SPEAKER_02]: Well, and there you go.

[00:56:05] [SPEAKER_02]: Of course, you know, Harry Potter gets a letter when he turns 16.

[00:56:07] [SPEAKER_02]: He's going to Hogwarts or turns 12 or 11 or whatever it was.

[00:56:10] [SPEAKER_02]: He gets a Kremlin letter.

[00:56:13] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, okay.

[00:56:14] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:56:15] [SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

[00:56:15] [SPEAKER_00]: And I think also kind of jumping off what you're saying too.

[00:56:19] [SPEAKER_00]: It's like the MacGuffin to me doesn't really work.

[00:56:22] [SPEAKER_00]: This letter.

[00:56:23] [SPEAKER_00]: This letter.

[00:56:24] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:56:25] [SPEAKER_00]: It's so vaguely defined like, Oh, well, it's a letter between USSR and America basically saying that they will team up against China.

[00:56:34] [SPEAKER_00]: And this could lead to World War three.

[00:56:35] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, okay, like who wrote this letter?

[00:56:38] [SPEAKER_00]: And no one would question this letter.

[00:56:40] [SPEAKER_00]: Like this seems like kind of a little bit of a fuzzy MacGuffin.

[00:56:45] [SPEAKER_00]: And when I compare that to say John Huston's the Maltese Falcon, there's just like a mystery to the term the Maltese Falcon where you're like, Oh, like what could that mean?

[00:56:56] [SPEAKER_00]: And you ultimately see it and it looks really cool.

[00:56:59] [SPEAKER_00]: Like there's a physicality to the Maltese Falcon.

[00:57:01] [SPEAKER_00]: You see it pop up in once upon a time in Hollywood.

[00:57:04] [SPEAKER_00]: I believe Leonardo DiCaprio actually owns the Maltese Falcon prop.

[00:57:07] [SPEAKER_00]: Like it is a thing that has a very distinct, cool visual to it.

[00:57:12] [SPEAKER_00]: So even if it is a little vaguely defined through the story, you remember what it is when it's over.

[00:57:16] [SPEAKER_00]: Whereas like the Kremlin letter is so ill defined that I go, like, couldn't anyone have written this letter?

[00:57:23] [SPEAKER_00]: Like I need to have a sense as to how official this looks to someone who is stumbling across it.

[00:57:28] [SPEAKER_02]: Well, what they need to do really, the best way to solve this is instead of doing all this convoluted mission, it's just right to other letters.

[00:57:36] [SPEAKER_02]: Sure.

[00:57:36] [SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[00:57:37] [SPEAKER_02]: Multiple letters, endless letters, flood the market.

[00:57:40] [SPEAKER_02]: Well, yeah.

[00:57:40] [SPEAKER_02]: Just cascade them.

[00:57:41] [SPEAKER_02]: Like, yeah.

[00:57:42] [SPEAKER_02]: The Kremlin postman, you know, like just keep it coming.

[00:57:45] [SPEAKER_02]: And eventually none of it will mean anything.

[00:57:49] [SPEAKER_02]: It's like social media.

[00:57:50] [SPEAKER_00]: Like at some point everyone talking just means nothing.

[00:57:52] [SPEAKER_00]: And maybe like a prologue where we see them putting the letter together and why?

[00:57:57] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:57:58] [SPEAKER_02]: Instead of like just that sort of, well, I mean, this film has a really cool tagline.

[00:58:03] [SPEAKER_02]: Did you see this?

[00:58:04] [SPEAKER_02]: Uh, no.

[00:58:05] [SPEAKER_02]: What was it?

[00:58:06] [SPEAKER_02]: Um, if you missed the first five minutes, you miss one suicide, two executions, one seduction, and the key to the plot.

[00:58:12] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that's right.

[00:58:14] [SPEAKER_00]: Yes.

[00:58:14] [SPEAKER_00]: I did see that because I paid attention to the counter.

[00:58:17] [SPEAKER_00]: They've excluded the opening credits from that five minute thing.

[00:58:20] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:58:20] [SPEAKER_02]: That was, that was, that was quite funny.

[00:58:21] [SPEAKER_02]: They did that because the opening credits is about three minutes.

[00:58:24] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:58:24] [SPEAKER_02]: I was like, hold on now.

[00:58:26] [SPEAKER_02]: But those, those things do happen in the first five minutes of the film itself, to be fair.

[00:58:30] [SPEAKER_02]: But like, it does actually hinge all on those five minutes.

[00:58:33] [SPEAKER_02]: Like a lot of the story, if you didn't pay attention in those five minutes or you did miss it, you've not got it.

[00:58:39] [SPEAKER_00]: You have to avoid being distracted by the dead corpse that's breathing.

[00:58:43] [SPEAKER_00]: Well, we all have to do that.

[00:58:44] [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I, I was distracted when they were looking at the body of, um, that Soviet guy, you know, that Soviet agent.

[00:58:53] [SPEAKER_00]: That guy.

[00:58:54] [SPEAKER_00]: He, that guy.

[00:58:55] [SPEAKER_00]: And he's just like breathing away.

[00:58:57] [SPEAKER_00]: And they're like telling us he's dead.

[00:58:59] [SPEAKER_00]: But I'm like, is he, is he supposed to be dead?

[00:59:02] [SPEAKER_00]: I can't tell.

[00:59:03] [SPEAKER_02]: I didn't, they shoot that like in, again, in Helsinki.

[00:59:05] [SPEAKER_02]: Like it's a bit hard to hide your breath there.

[00:59:07] [SPEAKER_00]: No, it's indoors.

[00:59:08] [SPEAKER_00]: It's in like a prison cell because then they have in two separate cells, they have.

[00:59:12] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh yeah.

[00:59:13] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:59:13] [SPEAKER_00]: His, uh, his wife.

[00:59:15] [SPEAKER_00]: And then they also have his parents, parents, parents, parents, and they execute the parents right away.

[00:59:21] [SPEAKER_00]: Mm-hmm .

[00:59:22] [SPEAKER_00]: And then, um, the story rolls out with the wife.

[00:59:26] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:59:26] [SPEAKER_02]: It's, it's, it's a strange one.

[00:59:28] [SPEAKER_02]: Um, I I'll just add in.

[00:59:30] [SPEAKER_02]: I think there is a way of delivering this slightly more concisely.

[00:59:32] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:59:33] [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, breaking down a book to a two hour film is a tough thing to do and even harder to do it in 90 minutes.

[00:59:39] [SPEAKER_02]: Um, I don't know if John Huston is known for his brevity when it comes to films.

[00:59:43] [SPEAKER_02]: I can't really recall that, but there is a lot of hangout time.

[00:59:47] [SPEAKER_02]: And when you're hanging out with Patrick O'Neill, you tend to look at the clock.

[00:59:52] [SPEAKER_00]: Well, my dislikes are maybe a little more specific.

[00:59:55] [SPEAKER_00]: They're not just like, Oh, you know, the cast or whatever.

[00:59:58] [SPEAKER_00]: It's, it's actually like individual moments.

[01:00:00] [SPEAKER_00]: There's details because like we've talked enough about Patrick O'Neill or just how convoluted the plot is and how confusing it is.

[01:00:06] [SPEAKER_00]: But like, um, there's a couple of little things that really did jump out to me.

[01:00:10] [SPEAKER_00]: One of them is Charles Roan, the character we are told can do multiple accents perfectly.

[01:00:17] [SPEAKER_00]: And has like a, you know, photographic memory or however they want to, I don't remember the term they use, but basically he can remember things perfectly.

[01:00:24] [SPEAKER_00]: Sure.

[01:00:24] [SPEAKER_00]: Eidetic memory.

[01:00:25] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[01:00:25] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[01:00:26] [SPEAKER_00]: And so he has this extra role of being the chronicler of the mission.

[01:00:32] [SPEAKER_00]: And so you have all these scenes of him in a hood talking to various members of the team about what they've done, basically taking mission logs.

[01:00:41] [SPEAKER_00]: What was the purpose of this?

[01:00:43] [SPEAKER_02]: I imagine a theory.

[01:00:45] [SPEAKER_02]: This was in the book.

[01:00:46] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:00:47] [SPEAKER_02]: And in the book, it's a way of getting, of getting the reader to know what the other people have been up to because they have to come to Charles Roan and update him.

[01:00:56] [SPEAKER_02]: And they can say, Oh, well, today I've got this information.

[01:00:58] [SPEAKER_02]: And that helps you move along the plot in your head.

[01:01:02] [SPEAKER_02]: But in a sense of the film, these don't need to be there because you're watching those scenes happen with the other characters.

[01:01:06] [SPEAKER_00]: Like, did you get any insight into any character or, you know, plot, you know, like information, anything from these like conversations?

[01:01:17] [SPEAKER_02]: The only one I think I got anything from was just in terms of like building up his character was the George Sanders warlock character.

[01:01:25] [SPEAKER_02]: Like he, his, his, his felt quite like personal.

[01:01:28] [SPEAKER_00]: Sure. Yeah. And his story does, I think, get a little bit of the short shrift in terms of detail.

[01:01:34] [SPEAKER_00]: Although you could also argue that the BA character having the romance with like the black market guy, I don't know what was going on there.

[01:01:41] [SPEAKER_00]: They just, they just have that relationship and it's just there.

[01:01:44] [SPEAKER_00]: And then, then they're dead.

[01:01:45] [SPEAKER_00]: Well, she's not, he is.

[01:01:47] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't really understand what the purpose of the black market dealer was like you didn't, that didn't lead anywhere.

[01:01:52] [SPEAKER_02]: No, I, again, I think that was meant to be something that would come together in the end,

[01:01:56] [SPEAKER_02]: or maybe it was meant to be a complete red herring that because obviously gets captured and it doesn't mean anything.

[01:02:00] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. Yeah.

[01:02:01] [SPEAKER_02]: But you needed to get rid of her because you couldn't have her hanging around with Patrick O'Neill as he went and, you know, saddled up with B.B. Anderson's Erica Kosnov.

[01:02:11] [SPEAKER_00]: Right. Yeah.

[01:02:12] [SPEAKER_00]: Because we have the scene of her confessing she's a virgin before the mission and she has to basically seduce an arms dealer.

[01:02:19] [SPEAKER_00]: And so Charles Rohn's character.

[01:02:21] [SPEAKER_00]: It's like, I'll teach you kid.

[01:02:23] [SPEAKER_00]: That is a, that is one awkward scene, Scott.

[01:02:26] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh boy.

[01:02:27] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[01:02:28] [SPEAKER_00]: Boy, was it awkward.

[01:02:30] [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I, you know, 1970, it is what it is.

[01:02:35] [SPEAKER_02]: 50 years ago now, 54 years ago.

[01:02:37] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[01:02:38] [SPEAKER_02]: Not condoning anything, but just more of a case of like, I'm not going to drag this over the coals for that choice.

[01:02:45] [SPEAKER_00]: It just, it just looking back, it just feels a bit weird.

[01:02:47] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not going to drag it over the coals, but the fact that we are then told that these two have a connection that matters to him.

[01:02:54] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, wait, what?

[01:02:55] [SPEAKER_00]: What?

[01:02:56] [SPEAKER_02]: Like, well, like, I, I got the impression, like he would just like, like, as soon as he got on that plane, he got that letter.

[01:03:02] [SPEAKER_02]: Do you know what I would do?

[01:03:03] [SPEAKER_02]: Hmm.

[01:03:04] [SPEAKER_02]: I'm gone.

[01:03:05] [SPEAKER_02]: Sure.

[01:03:06] [SPEAKER_02]: See you later.

[01:03:07] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[01:03:07] [SPEAKER_02]: Cause chances are, you're never going to get her back anyway.

[01:03:10] [SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[01:03:11] [SPEAKER_02]: Even if you do what he says like 20 times in a row, he'll be like, Oh, she died.

[01:03:14] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[01:03:15] [SPEAKER_02]: And then you're just cut loose.

[01:03:18] [SPEAKER_02]: Just screw it.

[01:03:19] [SPEAKER_02]: Just get out of town, man.

[01:03:20] [SPEAKER_02]: But then, you know, in these days, someone could easily just turn up and shoot him anyway.

[01:03:24] [SPEAKER_02]: So who knows?

[01:03:24] [SPEAKER_00]: That's also true.

[01:03:26] [SPEAKER_00]: I like that.

[01:03:26] [SPEAKER_00]: They set her up as being able to crack a safe with her feet.

[01:03:29] [SPEAKER_00]: And then that never pays off.

[01:03:31] [SPEAKER_02]: That's like the most interesting, like, like bizarre moment in the film where like, yeah, cause they, okay, here's the premise.

[01:03:36] [SPEAKER_02]: They go one of the, when Charles Rohn, Patrick O'Neill's Charles Rohn is putting the team together.

[01:03:41] [SPEAKER_02]: He's hiring everyone.

[01:03:43] [SPEAKER_02]: He goes to hire a safe cracker.

[01:03:45] [SPEAKER_02]: And as Cam mentioned earlier, he's got arthritis.

[01:03:46] [SPEAKER_02]: So he needs his daughter to take over and he's trained her as a master safe cracker.

[01:03:50] [SPEAKER_02]: Like this is the latest safe in the world.

[01:03:53] [SPEAKER_02]: She'll, she'll do it.

[01:03:54] [SPEAKER_02]: You know, do you want to do it with her, like her feet, her hands, tie behind her back or whatever.

[01:04:01] [SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, he goes, Oh, what Charles Rohn goes, whatever.

[01:04:04] [SPEAKER_02]: Sacred goes, I'll do it with your feet upside down.

[01:04:06] [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, and I'll put a bomb on top of it too.

[01:04:10] [SPEAKER_02]: Uh, and then you're like, and Charles, Patrick O'Neill, Charles Rohn is like, uh, okay.

[01:04:17] [SPEAKER_02]: Which is about his acting range anyway.

[01:04:19] [SPEAKER_02]: And, uh, and then, yeah.

[01:04:21] [SPEAKER_02]: So then you watch this very tense ticking time bomb moment.

[01:04:24] [SPEAKER_02]: And she's safe cracking upside down in like a spider position with her feet.

[01:04:27] [SPEAKER_02]: I think it was.

[01:04:28] [SPEAKER_02]: Did she ever crack a safe in the movie?

[01:04:30] [SPEAKER_02]: No, apart from that scene.

[01:04:32] [SPEAKER_00]: No, it's so weird.

[01:04:33] [SPEAKER_00]: It's like, she is the best safe cracker like in the world.

[01:04:38] [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I assume they needed it for when they do the heist.

[01:04:40] [SPEAKER_02]: I would assume so too.

[01:04:41] [SPEAKER_00]: Like when they get the letter, but that's what it's for.

[01:04:44] [SPEAKER_00]: But obviously we never get there.

[01:04:45] [SPEAKER_00]: I just love that.

[01:04:46] [SPEAKER_00]: They're like, okay, you go and like crack a safe better than anyone.

[01:04:52] [SPEAKER_00]: By the way, your job is to like be the seductress and seducent arms dealer or a black market guy.

[01:04:57] [SPEAKER_00]: Like, wait, that's not in the skill set that was set out.

[01:05:00] [SPEAKER_00]: Like that was established.

[01:05:01] [SPEAKER_02]: Well, just, just, just, just stop it there for a second.

[01:05:03] [SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[01:05:04] [SPEAKER_02]: The whole point was he was meant to go and hire the safe cracker.

[01:05:07] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[01:05:08] [SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[01:05:09] [SPEAKER_02]: What if the old boy had come along?

[01:05:11] [SPEAKER_02]: Was he supposed to seduce the arms dealer?

[01:05:13] [SPEAKER_02]: I would love to see that scene.

[01:05:15] [SPEAKER_02]: I want to see it too.

[01:05:16] [SPEAKER_00]: Like with these arthritic hands.

[01:05:18] [SPEAKER_00]: Like massaging his shoulders.

[01:05:20] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[01:05:21] [SPEAKER_00]: Like, ow.

[01:05:23] [SPEAKER_00]: Don't have it like I used to.

[01:05:27] Oh God.

[01:05:28] [SPEAKER_02]: I'm just, that's like a huge bomb in the side of this plot.

[01:05:31] [SPEAKER_02]: I can't believe I didn't see that until just now.

[01:05:33] [SPEAKER_02]: That's awful.

[01:05:34] [SPEAKER_02]: Wow.

[01:05:34] [SPEAKER_02]: Like who's, or if it's not him, who's doing it?

[01:05:37] [SPEAKER_02]: Who's, who's doing that?

[01:05:39] [SPEAKER_02]: There's no woman going on it apart from her, but she wasn't planned.

[01:05:43] [SPEAKER_00]: Which then makes the, um, the whole like, uh, black market guy completely extraneous.

[01:05:49] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[01:05:49] [SPEAKER_00]: Clearly it was not even an important part of the mission to start with.

[01:05:51] [SPEAKER_02]: Like maybe I'm just positing.

[01:05:53] [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe, uh, Patrick and Charles Roan was meant to seduce B.B. Anderson's Erica Kosnov into going with the black market dealer for them.

[01:06:06] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know about that.

[01:06:08] [SPEAKER_00]: No, I don't either.

[01:06:09] [SPEAKER_00]: I was just trying.

[01:06:10] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[01:06:10] [SPEAKER_00]: I think this may be a little messy.

[01:06:13] [SPEAKER_00]: Um, and also this is another dislike different.

[01:06:17] [SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

[01:06:18] [SPEAKER_00]: This is a technical thing.

[01:06:19] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, John Houston.

[01:06:21] [SPEAKER_00]: We're coming for you.

[01:06:22] [SPEAKER_00]: Uh huh.

[01:06:23] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know about the, um, the dubbing of the voices when you would have.

[01:06:29] [SPEAKER_00]: So confusing.

[01:06:31] [SPEAKER_00]: I was, I thought I was having some sort of trip or something when the movie started.

[01:06:36] [SPEAKER_00]: I was so confused as to what was going on.

[01:06:39] [SPEAKER_02]: Like, look at what they do with the hunt for red October and then go look at this.

[01:06:43] [SPEAKER_02]: Uh huh.

[01:06:43] [SPEAKER_02]: Like night and day on how you do, uh, translations in a film.

[01:06:49] [SPEAKER_02]: Because here's, here's a setup for everyone who hasn't seen the film.

[01:06:53] [SPEAKER_02]: That Russian speaking characters start off speaking in Russian, but then they are dubbed over by the same actor in English whilst speaking in Russian.

[01:07:02] [SPEAKER_02]: And so like for a few sentences, you'll get both the Russian followed by the English.

[01:07:06] [SPEAKER_02]: And then eventually they'll be talking the English.

[01:07:09] [SPEAKER_02]: But for those first few sentences, good God, is it confusing?

[01:07:12] [SPEAKER_00]: I thought there was something wrong with my television.

[01:07:15] [SPEAKER_00]: So did I.

[01:07:16] [SPEAKER_00]: And I saw people, I was going through letterboxd after to just look at some people's thoughts on the movie.

[01:07:22] [SPEAKER_00]: And, uh, multiple people said that they had DVDs and they thought that the DVD had like gone out of sync.

[01:07:27] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[01:07:28] [SPEAKER_02]: It just, like, I know what they're going for.

[01:07:30] [SPEAKER_02]: It's interesting, but it just isn't like the way to deliver that.

[01:07:34] [SPEAKER_02]: Especially in the film that's so like, not labyrinthian.

[01:07:37] [SPEAKER_02]: This isn't the most complex thing we've ever read in our lives or watched, I should say.

[01:07:40] [SPEAKER_02]: But it's up there.

[01:07:41] [SPEAKER_00]: Like it's up there and that doesn't help.

[01:07:44] [SPEAKER_00]: No, it really doesn't.

[01:07:46] [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm just trying to imagine like a 1970 audience sitting in a theater watching this.

[01:07:50] [SPEAKER_00]: And there's very few of them, it seems.

[01:07:52] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[01:07:53] [SPEAKER_00]: It was probably just singular audience.

[01:07:54] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[01:07:54] [SPEAKER_00]: Just one person.

[01:07:56] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[01:07:56] [SPEAKER_00]: What do you think like was supposed to pull them in in those days?

[01:07:59] [SPEAKER_00]: Like what's the thing that cost?

[01:08:01] [SPEAKER_00]: They're on the, they're on the poster.

[01:08:03] [SPEAKER_00]: All of them.

[01:08:03] [SPEAKER_00]: I guess what I'm looking at this is like a mostly American release.

[01:08:07] [SPEAKER_00]: And most of these actors aren't big names.

[01:08:11] [SPEAKER_00]: Richard Boone would have been the big one.

[01:08:12] [SPEAKER_00]: I think.

[01:08:13] [SPEAKER_00]: Orson Welles.

[01:08:14] [SPEAKER_00]: Orson Welles as well.

[01:08:15] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[01:08:15] [SPEAKER_00]: George Sanders.

[01:08:17] [SPEAKER_00]: Not Max von Sydow at that point, but George Sanders.

[01:08:19] [SPEAKER_02]: George Sanders.

[01:08:20] [SPEAKER_02]: Max von Sydow may have crossed over a bit at that point.

[01:08:23] [SPEAKER_02]: Okay.

[01:08:23] [SPEAKER_02]: But yeah.

[01:08:24] [SPEAKER_02]: There's a couple of names there that like, I think.

[01:08:26] [SPEAKER_02]: If I look at just checking on the poster.

[01:08:29] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[01:08:29] [SPEAKER_02]: Every single one of them is on that art at the front.

[01:08:32] [SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[01:08:32] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[01:08:33] [SPEAKER_00]: So.

[01:08:34] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:08:35] [SPEAKER_00]: I would say though, the fact that they have on the poster that tagline about, you know,

[01:08:40] [SPEAKER_00]: you'll miss like a suicide.

[01:08:41] [SPEAKER_00]: They're just like trying to sell this movie and they're basically like exciting things

[01:08:45] [SPEAKER_00]: are going to happen.

[01:08:45] [SPEAKER_00]: Don't miss it.

[01:08:46] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[01:08:46] [SPEAKER_00]: Well, it's the psycho thing, isn't it?

[01:08:47] [SPEAKER_02]: Like if you, like you're not allowed in the first, if you don't get there in the first

[01:08:50] [SPEAKER_02]: minute or two, you're not allowed in or whatever.

[01:08:52] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[01:08:52] [SPEAKER_00]: It kind of is.

[01:08:53] [SPEAKER_00]: Although I would say psycho is more inviting as a film than this movie is.

[01:08:57] [SPEAKER_00]: That's just you being a psychopath.

[01:08:58] [SPEAKER_00]: I think a lot of people would see that tagline and be like, oh, this movie is going to be

[01:09:03] [SPEAKER_00]: exciting.

[01:09:04] [SPEAKER_00]: And then they'll sit through two hours of very convoluted spy jinx.

[01:09:08] [SPEAKER_02]: Uh, I don't think you're wrong.

[01:09:10] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[01:09:10] [SPEAKER_02]: Unfortunately.

[01:09:11] [SPEAKER_02]: Uh, just going to final notes.

[01:09:13] [SPEAKER_02]: I've got a couple, uh, forget Kremlin letter.

[01:09:16] [SPEAKER_02]: This is the Kremlin dissertation.

[01:09:19] [SPEAKER_02]: Yep.

[01:09:19] [SPEAKER_02]: Yep.

[01:09:21] [SPEAKER_02]: Uh, one of the songs playing in the film is called stay by Maurice Williams, who I think

[01:09:26] [SPEAKER_02]: did the score for this too, or was at least made this music for the film.

[01:09:30] [SPEAKER_02]: Um, and when I heard it playing in the club, as I've heard this before, I realized it's

[01:09:34] [SPEAKER_02]: on the dirty dancing soundtrack.

[01:09:37] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, okay.

[01:09:38] [SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

[01:09:39] [SPEAKER_02]: Just a little bit longer.

[01:09:42] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[01:09:42] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[01:09:43] [SPEAKER_02]: That's what's playing in the club.

[01:09:44] [SPEAKER_02]: I was like, oh, right.

[01:09:45] [SPEAKER_02]: Dirty dancing.

[01:09:45] [SPEAKER_00]: So fun connection between those films.

[01:09:47] [SPEAKER_00]: How many times have people had double features of the Kremlin letter and dirty dancing?

[01:09:51] [SPEAKER_00]: Well, which one do you watch first?

[01:09:53] [SPEAKER_00]: Uh, I think you have to watch dirty dancing second.

[01:09:57] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think it was, I mean, like, have you left the theater though?

[01:10:01] [SPEAKER_02]: Like at least with like dirty dancing, you'd get through it and then start the Kremlin

[01:10:04] [SPEAKER_02]: letter and be like, well, I'm here.

[01:10:05] [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe I just invest.

[01:10:06] [SPEAKER_02]: But if it starts with the Kremlin letter, there's a good chance I'm leaving.

[01:10:09] [SPEAKER_00]: I just think there's like an energy thing going on where you get to the end of the Kremlin

[01:10:13] [SPEAKER_00]: letter.

[01:10:13] [SPEAKER_00]: It's such a downer and the movie is not, uh, particularly propulsive in its pacing.

[01:10:20] [SPEAKER_00]: And so then you hit them with dirty dancing after and it leaves them on a high.

[01:10:24] [SPEAKER_00]: So I think you have to, have to work it that way.

[01:10:27] [SPEAKER_00]: It does remind me though, Scott, of a time they were doing at one of my theaters locally,

[01:10:32] [SPEAKER_00]: a marathon of the first four Indiana Jones films.

[01:10:36] [SPEAKER_00]: Cause the fifth one didn't exist at that point in time.

[01:10:38] [SPEAKER_00]: Uh, still doesn't.

[01:10:39] [SPEAKER_00]: It still doesn't.

[01:10:40] [SPEAKER_00]: No one knows what it is.

[01:10:42] [SPEAKER_00]: Um, we've turned back the dial on that one, but, um, I wish we could.

[01:10:46] [SPEAKER_00]: I went and it was a pretty packed audience.

[01:10:48] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't remember if it was sold out, but it was close.

[01:10:50] [SPEAKER_00]: I know what's coming.

[01:10:51] [SPEAKER_00]: I can just tell.

[01:10:52] [SPEAKER_00]: And so we watched, you know, the first three and had a great time.

[01:10:57] [SPEAKER_00]: You know, the audience was cheering.

[01:10:58] [SPEAKER_00]: We had an absolute blast.

[01:10:59] [SPEAKER_00]: And then after last crusade ended, it was like an exodus.

[01:11:04] [SPEAKER_00]: It was like clearing out that auditorium.

[01:11:08] [SPEAKER_00]: Now I stayed and watched the fourth one with my friends, but I think there was maybe like 12 people stayed to watch kingdom of the crystal skull.

[01:11:16] [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I would have stayed because it like kingdom of the crystal skull isn't as awful as people think it is.

[01:11:22] [SPEAKER_02]: It isn't.

[01:11:22] [SPEAKER_02]: It's the worst Indiana Jones film, but like, I don't think so anymore.

[01:11:28] [SPEAKER_02]: Um, yeah, you're probably right there.

[01:11:30] [SPEAKER_02]: It's actually not, but like, I would still say, because I think there are some interesting things in there.

[01:11:34] [SPEAKER_02]: And I think, um, Harrison Ford is still doing a good indie in four.

[01:11:40] [SPEAKER_00]: I also thought it was kind of invaluable just from a, in a critical sense to watch them in a row and then to watch the fourth one and really like kind of hone in on just structurally.

[01:11:51] [SPEAKER_00]: Like what are its problems? Because you can really pinpoint issues when you watch them back to back.

[01:11:56] [SPEAKER_00]: Well, it's, it's mutt, isn't it? Like that's like, that's really where it like, that's one of the biggest kneecaps in the film.

[01:12:01] [SPEAKER_00]: Um, I think might mostly works.

[01:12:03] [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's, uh, it's definitely when they go to South America, that's when we just dies completely.

[01:12:08] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[01:12:08] [SPEAKER_00]: But you can see the way they're trying to recreate the last crusade and the way they're using Oxley as the Sean Connery character.

[01:12:14] [SPEAKER_00]: Like there's a lot of just structural things.

[01:12:16] [SPEAKER_00]: They're trying to replicate from the past successes and you can really see just an execution, how it is not clicking.

[01:12:23] [SPEAKER_00]: So I thought it was just interesting from that perspective to watch the two, you know, watch them all back to back like that.

[01:12:29] [SPEAKER_00]: But you know, the fact that the entire audience walked out for that final picture speaks volumes.

[01:12:34] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think that happens if you are following the Kremlin letter with Dirty Dancing.

[01:12:39] [SPEAKER_00]: I think if you follow...

[01:12:40] [SPEAKER_02]: I don't think you're selling tickets to it.

[01:12:41] [SPEAKER_02]: I don't think people are turning up.

[01:12:43] [SPEAKER_00]: I think if you go the other way around, everyone's walking out after Dirty Dancing.

[01:12:46] [SPEAKER_00]: Is it a dirty letter?

[01:12:48] [SPEAKER_00]: Or is it the Kremlin dancing?

[01:12:50] [SPEAKER_00]: Uh, let's move past this one.

[01:12:53] [SPEAKER_00]: Let's let this one go.

[01:12:54] [SPEAKER_00]: All right.

[01:12:54] [SPEAKER_00]: One day when we have a failing movie theater, this will be one of our double feature attempts to try to be, uh...

[01:12:59] [SPEAKER_00]: Sure.

[01:12:59] [SPEAKER_00]: To try to get some attendance.

[01:13:00] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we'll be like, stay! Just a little bit longer!

[01:13:04] [SPEAKER_00]: For the Kremlin letter.

[01:13:06] [SPEAKER_02]: But what about you, Cam? Any notes?

[01:13:08] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I had a couple things.

[01:13:11] [SPEAKER_00]: Um, we have at one point, the Charles Roan character is getting his fingerprints, I think like burned off or something like that.

[01:13:18] [SPEAKER_00]: And the, uh, doctor or specialist doing it is the mobster from Diamonds Are Forever.

[01:13:25] [SPEAKER_00]: The one who, um, you know, tosses Lana Wood out the window and then says, there's a pool down there?

[01:13:32] [SPEAKER_00]: Shady tree?

[01:13:33] [SPEAKER_00]: No, it's not Shady Tree.

[01:13:34] [SPEAKER_00]: That's the comedian.

[01:13:35] [SPEAKER_00]: It's the mobster who also shows up in, I believe, Goldfinger as well.

[01:13:39] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, okay.

[01:13:39] [SPEAKER_02]: I didn't get that connection.

[01:13:40] [SPEAKER_00]: Well done.

[01:13:41] [SPEAKER_00]: I'll try and put that online.

[01:13:42] [SPEAKER_00]: I like that.

[01:13:43] [SPEAKER_00]: And speaking of bodies going out of windows, we have George Sanders committing suicide later in the film.

[01:13:49] [SPEAKER_00]: Uh-huh.

[01:13:50] [SPEAKER_00]: Dummy out the window.

[01:13:52] [SPEAKER_00]: I was so happy.

[01:13:53] [SPEAKER_00]: It was great.

[01:13:55] [SPEAKER_02]: Well, you know, we're trying to make some new jingles on the show.

[01:13:58] [SPEAKER_02]: Uh, the tenotometer is here somewhere as well.

[01:14:00] [SPEAKER_02]: And, uh, I want to dummy out the window.

[01:14:04] [SPEAKER_02]: Do we do it to like the tune of Genie in a bottle or something like that?

[01:14:07] [SPEAKER_02]: Like, uh, I need something that works.

[01:14:10] [SPEAKER_02]: You gotta throw me the right way.

[01:14:12] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[01:14:17] [SPEAKER_02]: Yes.

[01:14:18] [SPEAKER_02]: Someone at home, make that and send it in.

[01:14:21] [SPEAKER_02]: We'll play it whenever there's someone, a body, a dummy thrown out the window.

[01:14:25] [SPEAKER_02]: Uh, uh, that's, that's, that is great.

[01:14:27] [SPEAKER_02]: Well done, Cam.

[01:14:28] [SPEAKER_02]: You're welcome.

[01:14:29] [SPEAKER_00]: You're welcome.

[01:14:29] [SPEAKER_02]: Someone's gonna make that now.

[01:14:31] [SPEAKER_02]: We need to see it.

[01:14:31] [SPEAKER_02]: We need to hear it.

[01:14:33] [SPEAKER_00]: Um, anything else for us?

[01:14:35] [SPEAKER_00]: No, I think that kind of wraps up my, um, assorted notes.

[01:14:39] [SPEAKER_00]: Like so many of my notes, I gotta be honest with you, were all based on plot.

[01:14:43] [SPEAKER_00]: Like tracking the plot, the details, like trying to make sense to put it all together.

[01:14:47] [SPEAKER_00]: What is this?

[01:14:48] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, exactly.

[01:14:49] [SPEAKER_00]: Uh, even things where I had stars, like come back to this, like, did this pay off later?

[01:14:52] [SPEAKER_00]: Are you still confused?

[01:14:54] [SPEAKER_00]: So in terms of like the micro moments that sometimes we really highlight, I had fewer of those.

[01:14:59] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, things like the, the safe, uh, opening scene with the bomb and things like

[01:15:04] [SPEAKER_02]: that will stick in my mind.

[01:15:04] [SPEAKER_02]: Yep.

[01:15:05] [SPEAKER_02]: It's just like bits of insanity in this film, which I think is why it's an interesting one

[01:15:08] [SPEAKER_02]: to discuss.

[01:15:09] [SPEAKER_02]: And I want to finish this off before we get to the knock list with a question that I'll

[01:15:12] [SPEAKER_02]: throw out to the audience and you can let us know online, but just don't want to hear

[01:15:14] [SPEAKER_02]: from Cam.

[01:15:15] [SPEAKER_02]: Um, of the John Huston films we've seen so far, the spy films, uh, let's not include

[01:15:22] [SPEAKER_02]: Casino R67.

[01:15:23] [SPEAKER_02]: Okay.

[01:15:23] [SPEAKER_02]: Because it isn't fully his vision.

[01:15:25] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[01:15:26] [SPEAKER_00]: So it's this and the Macintosh Man, which do you prefer?

[01:15:30] [SPEAKER_00]: This is a really difficult question actually, because they're doing different things.

[01:15:34] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[01:15:35] [SPEAKER_00]: And I think Macintosh Man, I was probably a little more, oh, you know what?

[01:15:41] [SPEAKER_00]: It did kind of lose us at a certain point.

[01:15:43] [SPEAKER_00]: And I remember when.

[01:15:44] [SPEAKER_00]: After the prison.

[01:15:45] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[01:15:46] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[01:15:47] [SPEAKER_00]: Hmm.

[01:15:48] [SPEAKER_00]: That's interesting.

[01:15:49] [SPEAKER_00]: I think the Kremlin letter is probably a better movie.

[01:15:55] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[01:15:55] [SPEAKER_00]: But Macintosh might be the more accessible one.

[01:15:59] [SPEAKER_02]: I was going to say the exact same.

[01:16:01] [SPEAKER_02]: I think in terms of filmmaking, I think John Huston was, was playing with a painting with

[01:16:06] [SPEAKER_02]: broader canvas or something, perhaps some sort of saying, but basically he had a wider

[01:16:09] [SPEAKER_02]: vision for Kremlin letter than he did the Macintosh Man.

[01:16:13] [SPEAKER_02]: But I think there's a, there's a simplification in the Macintosh Man that means most people can

[01:16:17] [SPEAKER_02]: just access it.

[01:16:18] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[01:16:18] [SPEAKER_02]: And you've got a very charismatic lead in Paul Newman.

[01:16:22] [SPEAKER_00]: Which is, yeah.

[01:16:22] [SPEAKER_00]: So important.

[01:16:24] [SPEAKER_00]: I think.

[01:16:24] [SPEAKER_00]: And to me, I think the Macintosh Man kind of falls apart when James Mason comes more

[01:16:29] [SPEAKER_00]: into focus and like what he's up to.

[01:16:32] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[01:16:32] [SPEAKER_00]: And you're kind of like drawing to the end and the Macintosh Man, MacGuffin also isn't

[01:16:36] [SPEAKER_00]: that great.

[01:16:37] [SPEAKER_00]: Like kind of like the letter here.

[01:16:38] [SPEAKER_00]: What was the MacGuffin in that film?

[01:16:40] [SPEAKER_00]: It was like a fake person or something.

[01:16:42] [SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

[01:16:43] [SPEAKER_00]: Something or they'd killed the Macintosh Man.

[01:16:45] [SPEAKER_00]: It's like, they had to like pose as the Macintosh Man.

[01:16:48] [SPEAKER_00]: Again, folks, I apologize.

[01:16:49] [SPEAKER_00]: It was like three plus years ago.

[01:16:51] [SPEAKER_00]: But it was like kind of, it didn't really click in the same way.

[01:16:55] [SPEAKER_00]: Whereas like him going to the prison and also going to that like halfway house that he

[01:17:00] [SPEAKER_00]: had to break out of.

[01:17:00] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[01:17:01] [SPEAKER_00]: He sets it on fire and stuff and he like kills the dog.

[01:17:04] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[01:17:04] [SPEAKER_00]: It was like very Skyfall.

[01:17:06] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[01:17:06] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[01:17:07] [SPEAKER_00]: I haven't made that comparison.

[01:17:08] [SPEAKER_00]: That's a good shot.

[01:17:09] [SPEAKER_00]: I'll see if I can put those online.

[01:17:10] [SPEAKER_00]: That's nice.

[01:17:11] [SPEAKER_00]: And there was like a car chase that was pretty exciting as well.

[01:17:13] [SPEAKER_00]: But when you get to the end and they're in the ruins with James Mason, the energy is

[01:17:18] [SPEAKER_00]: pretty much out of the movie here.

[01:17:19] [SPEAKER_00]: I would actually say in some ways your frustration through chunks of it are kind of paid off by the

[01:17:26] [SPEAKER_00]: just absolutely crackerjack ending.

[01:17:28] [SPEAKER_00]: Like it does leave you with like a holy crap.

[01:17:31] [SPEAKER_00]: What did I just watch kind of ending versus the Macintosh man with Peter's out.

[01:17:36] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[01:17:36] [SPEAKER_02]: I can't really argue with that because I think I would say the exact same.

[01:17:39] [SPEAKER_02]: I think, I think Macintosh man is easy to watch though.

[01:17:42] [SPEAKER_02]: Like if I had to pick one to rewatch, it would be the Macintosh man.

[01:17:45] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm in the same boat.

[01:17:46] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[01:17:47] [SPEAKER_00]: Unless, unless I felt compelled to read the Kremlin letter book and then go back and

[01:17:53] [SPEAKER_00]: watch the movie.

[01:17:53] [SPEAKER_02]: That's adding a whole bit of homework on like, I'm not willing to do that.

[01:17:56] [SPEAKER_02]: That's fine.

[01:17:57] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[01:17:58] [SPEAKER_02]: And Cam, before we get to the knock list, I mentioned the Tenetometer and our hunt for

[01:18:02] [SPEAKER_02]: new jingles because we love a jingle here on the show.

[01:18:04] [SPEAKER_02]: Um, let's bring out the Tenetometer.

[01:18:08] [SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

[01:18:08] [SPEAKER_00]: And for those that don't know, when we covered Tenet, we talked about how baffling that movie

[01:18:13] [SPEAKER_00]: was in terms of its plot.

[01:18:15] [SPEAKER_00]: And then we did a commentary on the Patreon where we were like, okay, okay, everyone sit

[01:18:20] [SPEAKER_00]: down.

[01:18:20] [SPEAKER_00]: We got this guys.

[01:18:21] [SPEAKER_00]: Sit back.

[01:18:21] [SPEAKER_00]: Let us explain.

[01:18:23] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[01:18:23] [SPEAKER_00]: Professor Scott and Professor Cam are here to guide you through the world of Tenet.

[01:18:27] [SPEAKER_00]: And then we just spent like two and a half hours just scratching our heads again.

[01:18:30] [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm still scratching my head so much.

[01:18:32] [SPEAKER_00]: So I haven't got hair left.

[01:18:34] [SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.

[01:18:34] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[01:18:35] [SPEAKER_00]: So, uh, the idea of the Tenetometer was something we'd always kind of kicked around as like

[01:18:39] [SPEAKER_00]: an idea because how do these plots, especially some of these really confusing spy plots stack

[01:18:44] [SPEAKER_00]: up against arguably the most confusing spy film of all.

[01:18:48] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[01:18:49] [SPEAKER_02]: And so, uh, we had a little jingle commissions and we're on the hunt for more jingles.

[01:18:53] [SPEAKER_02]: So, uh, let's play it.

[01:18:55] [SPEAKER_02]: The Tenetometer.

[01:18:57] [SPEAKER_01]: Ten, ten, ten, ten, ten, ten, ten, ten, ten, ten.

[01:19:04] [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, I love a jingle.

[01:19:05] [SPEAKER_02]: Good stuff.

[01:19:06] [SPEAKER_02]: Cam, what is the scoring on the Tenetometer?

[01:19:09] [SPEAKER_02]: Ten being ten net and zero being spy kids.

[01:19:15] [SPEAKER_02]: I was going to say Penguins of Madagascar.

[01:19:18] [SPEAKER_02]: Penguins of Madagascar, Boss Baby One or something like that.

[01:19:21] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[01:19:21] [SPEAKER_02]: What's a really simple James Bond film that's like not convoluted at all?

[01:19:25] [SPEAKER_00]: Um, I'm trying to think.

[01:19:26] [SPEAKER_00]: What's the most simple James Bond film?

[01:19:28] [SPEAKER_00]: Most of them tend to be, especially have their like plot moments that are a little wonky.

[01:19:32] [SPEAKER_02]: They still have twists and turns and things like that, don't they?

[01:19:34] [SPEAKER_00]: Tomorrow Never Dies is pretty simple.

[01:19:37] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, there's no like big switches.

[01:19:39] [SPEAKER_00]: No one like turns face or heel.

[01:19:41] [SPEAKER_00]: The villain's set up right away and you know exactly what he's doing.

[01:19:45] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, okay.

[01:19:46] [SPEAKER_02]: Let's go with that.

[01:19:47] [SPEAKER_02]: I wouldn't say that's a zero though.

[01:19:48] [SPEAKER_02]: I'd say that's still like a two or something.

[01:19:50] [SPEAKER_02]: Two, Maura Never Dies.

[01:19:52] [SPEAKER_02]: Sure.

[01:19:52] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[01:19:53] [SPEAKER_02]: But it's on the low end in terms of Bond stuff.

[01:19:55] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[01:19:56] [SPEAKER_02]: But where is a Kremlin letter sitting on our famed Tenetometer?

[01:20:01] [SPEAKER_02]: It's high.

[01:20:02] [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, it's gotta be.

[01:20:03] [SPEAKER_02]: It's not Tenet.

[01:20:05] [SPEAKER_00]: No.

[01:20:05] [SPEAKER_00]: But it's pretty damn high.

[01:20:08] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm bouncing between an eight or a nine.

[01:20:10] [SPEAKER_00]: I had eight.

[01:20:12] [SPEAKER_00]: I had eight.

[01:20:12] [SPEAKER_00]: So why don't you go for nine and then we have 8.5.

[01:20:14] [SPEAKER_00]: 8.5?

[01:20:15] [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I'm willing to commit to that because I do think like this movie, we were doing the due diligence of reading through the Wikipedia page.

[01:20:21] [SPEAKER_00]: I read it twice.

[01:20:22] [SPEAKER_02]: I read it several times during.

[01:20:24] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I read it after the movie and then I read it before this episode recording.

[01:20:29] [SPEAKER_00]: So there's not many movies I've had to do that.

[01:20:32] [SPEAKER_00]: No.

[01:20:34] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[01:20:34] [SPEAKER_02]: Well, I think we can officially say it's an 8.5 on the Tenetometer.

[01:20:38] [SPEAKER_02]: I hope someone at home is keeping count of these going forward.

[01:20:40] [SPEAKER_02]: This is your first one.

[01:20:41] [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know if we'll do it every episode.

[01:20:42] [SPEAKER_02]: Some films might not warrant the Tenetometer.

[01:20:46] [SPEAKER_02]: But when it gets particularly labyrinthian, we will crack this bad boy out.

[01:20:50] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I don't know that we need it for like, you know, the Union, for example.

[01:20:54] [SPEAKER_02]: No, that's a fairly straightforward spy plot.

[01:21:00] [SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.

[01:21:01] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[01:21:02] [SPEAKER_02]: Okay.

[01:21:02] [SPEAKER_02]: And our other list, the knock list, the famed knock list, what people come here to find out, is this one of the greatest spy films of all time?

[01:21:10] [SPEAKER_02]: Cam, what do you think?

[01:21:13] [SPEAKER_00]: John Huston has achieved greatness many times in his career.

[01:21:17] [SPEAKER_00]: Thus far, it has not happened in the spy world.

[01:21:20] [SPEAKER_00]: And so, The Kremlin Letter, like the Macintosh Man, is interesting in parts.

[01:21:26] [SPEAKER_00]: Like, this is a movie that I think spy hard, like, die hards.

[01:21:30] [SPEAKER_00]: Like, people that really, really love spy movies and want to journey outside of kind of the comfortable confines of the established stuff will find elements to be like, kind of drawn into here.

[01:21:42] [SPEAKER_00]: It'll be one of those movies that they kind of want to obsess over and watch multiple times to try to piece it all together, I think.

[01:21:48] [SPEAKER_00]: But if I'm to look at the all-time great spy films, no.

[01:21:51] [SPEAKER_00]: I would not say the film that was referred to as Wrecker is one worthy of inclusion.

[01:21:56] [SPEAKER_00]: And that's not just because of the box office.

[01:21:58] [SPEAKER_00]: It's a bit of a messy film.

[01:22:01] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, can't disagree with that.

[01:22:03] [SPEAKER_02]: And I think my vote would be around about the same.

[01:22:05] [SPEAKER_02]: I think there is a little bit here for spy movie fans who are deep divers like ourselves that there is some interest here.

[01:22:11] [SPEAKER_02]: And it is a pretty big director doing this.

[01:22:13] [SPEAKER_02]: There are moments of brilliance that do shine through in this film, but it just is not coherent enough to really warrant a place on the greatest spy movies of all time.

[01:22:22] [SPEAKER_02]: And it also features one of the most pieces of poor casting I think I've ever seen.

[01:22:28] [SPEAKER_02]: Catastrophic.

[01:22:29] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, just hamstrings the film.

[01:22:31] [SPEAKER_02]: I've never seen it so bad than in this.

[01:22:35] [SPEAKER_02]: And I watched The Dark Tower.

[01:22:38] [SPEAKER_02]: George Clooney's Batman laughs at this casting.

[01:22:42] [SPEAKER_00]: At least when he's in the Batsuit, he kind of like, you're like, well, okay, that's Batman.

[01:22:46] [SPEAKER_00]: No, no.

[01:22:47] [SPEAKER_00]: He's like, hey, free time Batman.

[01:22:49] [SPEAKER_00]: How's it going?

[01:22:50] [SPEAKER_00]: He's like so not committed to the character.

[01:22:54] [SPEAKER_02]: I would take that Batman over Patrick O'Neill.

[01:23:00] [SPEAKER_02]: That is true.

[01:23:01] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[01:23:02] [SPEAKER_02]: It's just a more fun film to be fair.

[01:23:04] [SPEAKER_02]: I know it's insane, but like, yeah, it's got some good lines.

[01:23:06] [SPEAKER_02]: Well, that's a no from me and a no from Cam.

[01:23:09] [SPEAKER_02]: And as such, the Kremlin letter is officially returned to sender.

[01:23:15] [SPEAKER_02]: The film is not making the not clear.

[01:23:17] [SPEAKER_02]: So dossier on the film is complete and filed as classified.

[01:23:19] [SPEAKER_02]: There you go, folks.

[01:23:20] [SPEAKER_02]: Another one in the bag cruising swiftly towards 200 films coming up.

[01:23:26] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, definitely.

[01:23:27] [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, can you believe how many?

[01:23:29] [SPEAKER_02]: Well, I haven't spoken to you about this, Cam, but at the time of recording our next episode out,

[01:23:34] [SPEAKER_02]: which is not this one, it's a while off, would be our 300th release.

[01:23:38] [SPEAKER_02]: That's insane.

[01:23:39] [SPEAKER_00]: And that's not including the Patreon stuff either.

[01:23:41] [SPEAKER_02]: No, that's almost another 100 on top.

[01:23:43] [SPEAKER_00]: That would almost be, it might be close to like almost 500.

[01:23:46] [SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, folks, you're missing out on some extra bonus goodies over on the Patreon.

[01:23:51] [SPEAKER_02]: Find out more about that at patreon.com slash spyhards.

[01:23:54] [SPEAKER_02]: Help keep the lights on here.

[01:23:55] [SPEAKER_02]: Keep the spy jinx revved up on the main feed by just dropping us some subs every month over on Patreon

[01:24:02] [SPEAKER_02]: and getting a bunch of bonus stuff.

[01:24:05] [SPEAKER_00]: I've edited 500 podcasts for spyhards.

[01:24:08] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, no.

[01:24:09] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, my God.

[01:24:11] [SPEAKER_00]: Hello, darkness, my old friend.

[01:24:18] [SPEAKER_02]: And Cam is going to be dealing with some dark thoughts for the next week until the next episode.

[01:24:22] [SPEAKER_00]: But Cam, what is that episode about?

[01:24:24] [SPEAKER_00]: Well, from one movie that starts with a K to another,

[01:24:27] [SPEAKER_00]: we are going to look at the 2023 film Kandahar starring Gerard Butler.

[01:24:32] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm a bit of a fan of Gerard Butler's brand of B-movie action films.

[01:24:36] [SPEAKER_00]: I've never seen Kandahar, so I'm excited to see what it's all about.

[01:24:39] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I've never seen it either.

[01:24:41] [SPEAKER_02]: It's a pretty recent one for us to go and tackle.

[01:24:43] [SPEAKER_02]: So, interested to see what Gerard Butler does with a spy movie.

[01:24:47] [SPEAKER_02]: So, your mission, folks, should you choose to accept it,

[01:24:49] [SPEAKER_02]: is to join us as we head off to Kandahar with Gerard Butler.

[01:24:53] [SPEAKER_02]: As I mentioned before, join us over on the Patreon, patreon.com slash spyhards.

[01:24:57] [SPEAKER_02]: Do it for the love.

[01:24:58] [SPEAKER_02]: Do it for the bonus goodies or just do it for, you know, keeping the British end up, I say.

[01:25:03] [SPEAKER_02]: That's right.

[01:25:05] [SPEAKER_02]: And if you don't already make sure, you follow us discreetly on social media at spyhards,

[01:25:09] [SPEAKER_02]: that's S-P-Y-H-A-R-D-S, on Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok, threads.

[01:25:17] [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, basically, I have no life anymore.

[01:25:20] [SPEAKER_02]: Welcome to my life in the editing bay.

[01:25:22] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah.

[01:25:23] [SPEAKER_02]: We do it for the love, folks.

[01:25:24] [SPEAKER_02]: We do it for the love.

[01:25:25] [SPEAKER_02]: But until next time, Cam et moi l'en s'paste,

[01:25:29] [SPEAKER_02]: Cam and I will be cracking safes with our feet.