Underrated Talents Week: Filmmaker Michael Cimino Retrospect (with mega filmbuff Joe Vestano)

[00:00:06] It's a Jacked Up Review Show It's a Jacked Up Review Show It's a Jacked Up Review Show It's a Jacked Up Review Show Jacked Up Review Show So I have with me here tonight guys, Joe Vestano here to talk about Michael Cimino. Hello folks.

[00:00:53] Alright, often ridiculed, often bashed, often once praised. Cimino is one of those other guys kind of in the long line of Francis Ford Coppola types making his own kind of epics on his own, sometimes on his own dime. Yes and I'd put him up there too with Coppola.

[00:01:14] I mean, there's so many contrasts. I mean he's using a lot of the same cinematographers, you know, he did the Sicilian, you know, which is also like the Godfather based on a Mario Puzo thing.

[00:01:29] Does so many under scene movies like Thunderbolt and Lightfoot and Year of the Dragon, you know, just half the time he's script writing and yet for the most part people will often just associate him with only Gear Hunter and Heaven's Gate.

[00:01:45] Right. Yeah. Thunderbolt and Lightfoot is a forgotten gem. It was actually the first Clint Eastwood movie I ever saw. I was like 12 years old. So my first glimpse of Clint Eastwood was as a hair slick back creature in a small church. I'm like, who is this guy? Nice.

[00:02:05] And then I think Cimino had a thing for 59 Cadillacs because that scene where the black caddy drives up to the church and just makes a U-turn and it's just the wideness of the screen.

[00:02:26] You're kind of looking at it through the wheat fields and it looks like one of those cars. It's a Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon. And I just love that staging. Right. You hear the truth music in the background. I don't know.

[00:02:42] There's so many strange little quirks in that movie and kind of seems to me that Cimino must have had some fun writing it and thinking of the scene where Clint Eastwood and Jeff Bridges, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, they get in a car with this guy.

[00:03:02] I guess he's huffing gas. I think somehow his gas is filling the car and he's driving all over the place. Finally, I think doesn't wreck the car but almost wrecks it comes to a stop and

[00:03:20] reaches opens up the trunk and there's just rabbits in there like, I don't know, 20 rabbits. He's got a gun and he's about to shoot him. Like who writes something like that? It's just a crazy little quirk. Quirk is definitely the way to put it.

[00:03:45] He's been married to so many different actresses including Devonnie Ski-O, who's probably best known for playing Deanna in the Rose Red Stephen King miniseries. He's majored at Yale University and Michigan State University in both graphic

[00:04:00] arts and painting so I did not know that about him prior to this recording. I just knew that he, I think I just mainly knew about just seeing excerpts from the various endless books on how he just would not compromise and there's so many

[00:04:17] other far worse filmmakers who are known for being assholes and I don't understand why he gets thrown into that whole thing when he's got a vision but he's just very opinionated but I think that's way different than someone who's

[00:04:32] just like Bryan Singer abandoning their movie halfway through or... Right, right. Well, have you had a chance to see some of his commercials? Like there's one called Take Me Along he did for, I forget the airlines, maybe it was United. It's just something else.

[00:04:56] No, I had no idea but I heard he'd done ads but that's awesome. Well, that's the only one I can find on YouTube and the guy had, I mean it's unlike any other commercial I could think of from the era. It was beautifully shot, expertly staged, really imaginative.

[00:05:19] About why Chimino was hated, I mean it was just kind of like he just became the whipping boy for so many things. I saw how Oliver Stone was working on a project with them and he found him too

[00:05:36] difficult to work with which is just so ironic because he scripted his other movie, Year of the Dragon and I just find that so funny as Oliver Stone has no shortage of opinions. Right, right, right.

[00:05:50] Well I wouldn't know what it would be like working with Oliver Stone but I wouldn't consider that a day at the beach either. No, he claimed in 2002 he had 50 scripts written in total. I'm like what? Wow.

[00:06:06] Yeah, I forget what I was going to say but anyhow the other day I revisited the Deer Hunter and it had been a while since I'd seen it. I did too, it's one of those I'm like I re-saw it and I'm like I never need

[00:06:25] to see it again but I'm glad I did just to brush up on it and why I like it. Yeah, I mean I you know just kind of getting ready to do this show and wanting some fresh insights because I hadn't seen it in years.

[00:06:43] What an incredible movie. I mean the character development in that movie is about as good as I've ever seen and it's kind of a magic the way you get to know these characters. You know even with the long wedding sequence I mean and to me it's

[00:07:03] never nothing short of gripping. It's almost a David Lean kind of character piece but I had no idea that he was even attached to movies like The Dead Zone and Empire Strikes Back and like man so he was always going around and I know like William

[00:07:21] Friedkin you know he had some divided politics but I don't think he ever came off as that never entered his personal life or film sets. I love how he's also praised by the likes of Spike Lee, Tarantino. Yeah, yeah. Scorsese.

[00:07:40] Yep, Scorsese, Kubrick, Francis Ford Coppola, Alis Foreman that's high praise and I'm like that's pretty awesome. I was trying to get trying to see if Stanley Kubrick had an opinion of Heaven's Gate and was kind of looking for it on the internet. I didn't find anything did you?

[00:08:02] Other than the DVD there's a few different ones on YouTube but a lot of them are like part of IFC type documentaries and it's just one of the many movies that come up as you know critically divided or reevaluated

[00:08:15] films as well as I mean I think that's just it. I think had he not had a big head on that movie and had he just kind of like Coppola did during the making of The Godfather kind of played

[00:08:28] it cool or even pulled a Conan O'Brien where he convinces the producers that his idea is their idea. I think it would have been. But it seems that's just it if you just constantly are arguing they're

[00:08:42] going to just find a way to just blacklist you before it's out or it has a chance to shine and I mean. Yeah, and it's so easy to make a cliche out of that sort of.

[00:08:56] He was going for something amazing in Heaven's Gate and a lot of it's right up there on the screen. I can understand other often bemused or parodied films like Ishtar or Zanado but I don't understand that one.

[00:09:19] I'm like well there's always three or four hour movies and it was just kind of coming up at that time where they the modern day where we had to make movies you know less than three hours. Yeah, yeah exactly.

[00:09:33] I mean it was it was definitely somebody set the limit somewhere as being right around two hours which seems about right for most films but Heaven's Gate was just such an expansive vision you know you read about the actual Johnson County War and let's just say

[00:09:57] Michael Cimino took some serious liberties with the with the story and the script but it was all in service to this this West this kind of new West he was creating you know I don't think we'd seen

[00:10:13] quite the likes of this as far as quote unquote an anti-Western right and even looking back at some of his other stuff you know I knew about some of his other you know Lenny's Wood collaborations

[00:10:28] revised scripts but I had no idea he was also involved with as one of the co-writers of Silent Running as well as Madden IV. Yeah, well I knew about that but I didn't know about Bette Midler's The Rose or The Dogs of War. Oh yeah right yeah.

[00:10:50] So that's probably where you might have met Christopher Walken back in the day. I can pretty much get for most of his movies it's really just you know Desperate Hours is a like it or hate it but yeah Sun Chaser is very

[00:11:03] indecipherable and I've tried a few times on that one and I just Well I have yeah I tried about five minutes of that one and I just couldn't go there. It has a great cast and everything and it's just always one of those

[00:11:20] things that just kind of leaves me cold and I don't think it's meant to do that. I'm just like this should be interesting. I just don't know what's going on. Well I was afraid of what I might see you know I didn't what the

[00:11:33] little bit I saw of it didn't really even look professional necessarily. Yeah, I don't understand that. What I was afraid of was that I was about to see something from the movie that turned out genius you know with very little if any

[00:11:52] resemblance to the work he'd done which I'd love so much maybe that was. Oh I don't know. It's hard to say. But as far as him being a big old ego maniac and that kind of thing I mean there's there's interviews with Chris Christofferson Yeah, you've seen that.

[00:12:15] I don't know if I've seen that particular one that you're talking about but I'm glad that he stepped it up for him. Well he had nothing you know he said they all felt like they were doing something really important and that Chimino made them feel good

[00:12:37] and free as actors and it was you know even the fact that while they weren't filming they had to go to various schools make how to ride a horse how to roller skate and dance at the same time. And you know I don't think any of those.

[00:12:57] I don't know I don't know if any of those folks would repeat it if they could. Oh hell no. But I mean the Sicilian I've seen only the director's cut. I seem to recall I saw a cut down version on Showtime years ago but when

[00:13:13] you see the full blown version you kind of do get a larger than life Shakespearean you know downfall kind of drama and I looked up his influence you know obviously he had the basic ones like John Ford and

[00:13:26] Akira Kurosawa but I had to look up his third one he mentioned Visconti who's another Italian filmmaker and when I look at all his other stuff and Wikipedia even shows his different castles he's grown up in and like yeah and then these Italians in

[00:13:45] there you know stage dressing they got. Yes sir as a proud Italian I agree. Oh nice. Bastano. I was you know like Vietnam War films that came out in the 70s and early to mid 80s I guess 86 was on Platoon came out to me with the

[00:14:16] exception of Apocalypse Now which is kind of the whole fever dream but each Vietnam War film takes on you know an aspect of the war. Absolutely. Like you have in Platoon you have this this divisiveness and nobody having what you'd call a moral imperative and everybody just

[00:14:39] kind of trying is trying to survive from one day to the next and you have that and most films will also have a sort of a me lie massacre thing going on in the middle of them. Right. No kidding.

[00:14:58] But but I mean as far as and I wouldn't call it Dear Hunter Vietnam film necessarily but just more of a drama with war elements. Well in terms of emotionally shattering I mean looking at looking at the real mental and physical toll that

[00:15:21] that experience put people through you know both those who went through it and those who were waiting behind and and what was expected and what they were when they came back. And I mean it's just and thanks to the acting as well the

[00:15:40] acting is just it's almost documentary. It's so naturalistic. Yeah they really put it yeah and he wanted kind of a documentary style. He aimed for a certain realism and he definitely got that but then there's a kind of realism as well you know like

[00:16:10] like the Russian roulette scene the infamous I mean first time you're watching it it's just almost unbearable. Just don't know what's going to happen now. You can't look away. And then that that explosion of energy when De Niro you know

[00:16:28] starts shooting and I remember seeing it as in a theater when it came out and just the tension and release of that moment. It's it is almost like a blackout down to save your private Ryan moment. But he I'm sorry.

[00:16:48] Yeah no it's just interesting is like it if this were this is all this is the kind of violence where if this movie were an exploitation film it would feel gratuitous and everything but because the intent is so clear it's very clear and war movies are

[00:17:07] like some of the few where you can escape with just graphic violence without getting an X rating. It's really got a it's very clear that he wants to show just the survival instinct all these guys who have no business even

[00:17:17] serving you know in the army but they all come from the you know blue collar landscape of things you know it's just and I'm sorry Christopher Walken you know when people say oh he's now caricature and like yeah but have you actually seen the stuff

[00:17:32] that you can write this heaven's from pennies from heaven or even dead zone the dead zone he was dead zone movie amazing in that film. I was going to say also I had learned just recently that the Russian roulette scene was Chimino really wanting to put you the

[00:17:55] viewer right there in that situation where the choices you're reduced to are you know pull the trigger don't pull the trigger you know life can go really feral when you least expect it. He's not a shabby in terms of any of his dialogue so that

[00:18:14] that's the other thing why I think a lot of his work is kind of due for reevaluation is like if I'm going to say you know you're bad at this and that is like you better be like very incompetent at laying out what you're saying you know.

[00:18:26] Yeah yeah well he was he was talking about the thing that wouldn't have put you in right right there in the situation was another like large scale spectacle tragedy like me lie like I said just about Vietnam film has that but he wanted

[00:18:49] something that was so visceral like like I think he was he's wanting to enter the frame of mind where you were terrified just about every moment of every day you know like what's going to happen next what's coming next.

[00:19:05] Where's it going to come from you know I don't know like true story when I did see it in the theater you know about 12 years old. No I think I was 14 anyways the theater was packed and right during the Russian roulette scene right about the middle of

[00:19:27] it these two really big guys get up and I see these shadows punching each other. I don't know you know I don't know if the tension of that moment kind of kindled something that had already been brewing or whatever but it was something I'll never can't be

[00:19:45] removed from my memory of that scene ever. And the worst thing to do with the deer hunter I think is to make a political argument out of it because. Yeah it's not like Southern Comfort or Apocalypse Now where they have political elements but the filmmakers don't want

[00:20:06] to politicize their movie is like yeah this one is all about all you got as far as politics are just social class chat but that's it. But that's again with all his other movies that's just part of his signature versus I want to make an argument of it.

[00:20:22] I want to have a Sydney LeMay or Aaron Sorkin type dialogue and yeah I think you have you have to have kind of a Shakespearean grasp of irony to pull off some of the things he did. And the irony unfortunately you know that's kind of misbegotten

[00:20:43] irony or misunderstood irony forms the basis of probably a lot of political discussions I think. But you know you have the irony of them singing God bless America. Yeah. I mean you know I'm not going to try to interpret the politics of that.

[00:21:05] I'm going to sit there and be absolutely shattered by it. You know like as as Chimino said what we do is we come through you know we we keep coming through you know people come through families come through situations like this.

[00:21:23] He's a very personal kind of guy and he knows how to kind of surround his different themes elevate them with some actual material and like you say kind of just unflinching just rushes you into it. It's in your face but not in a way where it's objectionable.

[00:21:41] So I think if anything Heaven's Gate is just another example of kind of like Waterworld where people were smack talking at so much behind the scenes and then people magazine type you know PR that it was dead on arrival and I think that's kind of the case today.

[00:21:59] If let's say a celebrity like The Rock or Tom Cruise seen on video punching someone then the movie is dead before it even comes out. Right. It's always it doesn't help also that if people people are just more snobby now if they don't like

[00:22:17] the trailers and they're not going to see it anyway. So I mean yeah many many a trailer has as disguised as many a turkey. Yeah. You know given the amount of well and the amount of revisiting these kinds of movies is like it's hard to

[00:22:38] come up with a top 10 for him since so much of his stuff is either co-written and he's only has like a few directing credits but how would you think you would introduce people to his stuff when you go with Deer Hunter first and then like

[00:22:51] Heaven's Gate or You're the Dragon or start with the movie. I think that's the one I would I would recommend we'll return after these messages. If you like small town mystery crazy news and wild history then the Florida men on Florida

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[00:24:20] Join any time, talk the talk and enjoy yourselves. There's something enlightening for everyone with this crowd of cool cats. Check them out. I think it is the best of the three that I know of. Even for the actors themselves, I mean Meryl Streep and De Niro,

[00:24:40] but yeah, I know what you mean. But as far as like somebody who wanted to just see a fun movie, Thunderbolt and Whitefoot is hilarious. It's just such funny movie. A well done heist movie, essential Jeff Bridges viewing. Yeah, and also-

[00:25:00] It ends in the most inexplicable, explicit way. Most of the time, if you see a heist movie nowadays, it's got a pretentious plot twist that doesn't work or it just comes down to the inevitable cops and robbers crap.

[00:25:11] And this one ends in a way you don't expect it to end and you're like, that's probably more plausible, especially with the scenario he's setting up. Yep, yeah. And there's tremendous irony too in that very last shot. You can have it all, but it's not enough. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:25:30] Well, he had tremendous respect for Clint Eastwood and I don't imagine that you're on the set with Clint Eastwood and you're like a first time director. I don't think you're gonna tell him no too much, but Clint sort of didn't rush him along,

[00:25:47] kind of helped him be efficient directing that film. So, that wasn't a film that just went on forever. I don't know if, I think after the success of the Deer Hunter, he definitely let that go to his head. I'm just gonna put that out there.

[00:26:11] When all of a sudden kind of he was being told that he could essentially do no wrong, that he was a wonder of kind and the up and coming, I don't remember seeing the Oscars the year the Deer Hunter pulled so many awards in,

[00:26:33] but I imagine he was pretty surprised by that. I mean, I don't think that he, oh, every artist has tremendous self doubt. Yeah, he seems like a mixture of someone literally losing his mind. And I don't know about the, anything happening to him. But that's when he's just,

[00:27:05] I think it was just a very personal, he took everything he did personal, but I think you can go with that with all kinds of ego. How serious you take all of this really does depend. And you do have to take a lot of this serious

[00:27:19] if you wanna take it, get it finished on time and everything, but I don't know how much of it was again, just producers being assholes versus him just refusing to compromise like, no, no, I'm not gonna do it if it's not my way.

[00:27:32] Yeah, there's two sides to that story and only one side has really ever been told. And that's- Unfortunately, that does in 2016, so we won't. Yeah, well some quote well-respected critic, I forget who, said there were no good performances in the film, Heaven's Gate. The hell?

[00:28:01] I mean, come on. I mean, Sam Waterston, Jeff Bridges, Isabella Hubbard, even William DeFoe with all his lines cut are still. I mean, Chris Christopherson was- Chris Walken himself. Never more excellent than there. Yeah, and Christopher Walken, I mean- Especially with how what turn his character takes

[00:28:26] where you're not sure he's, if anything much like Deer Hunter, it's literally the same premise. Various people who are either peers or neighboring, neighbors want the same thing but go about different ways of getting it. I mean, come on, you got John Hurt, you got- Yes, indeed.

[00:28:47] And you know what I think Heaven's Gate suffers the most from is that the two places where the really important expository writing is the scene in the beginning, when the Reverend Doctor's giving that speech. It is kind of like the wedding in Deer Hunter.

[00:29:14] He does take his time setting it up. I don't know. It's just- Yeah, but like the speech for one thing is taken verbatim from an actual speech to a graduating class at Harvard. And the speech, what I'm saying is the sound betrays the moments that you really need

[00:29:32] to be getting some of this information to make more sense of the movie because people wonder why, well, why did the Chris Christopherson character, Jim Averill even go out there? Why did he become a man from the upper classes?

[00:29:50] Why did he want to go out and become a marshal in the Wild West? Well, the whole Joseph Cotton speech is about traveling, going out there into the world and exposing it to cultivated minds, I guess he was saying, as kind of civilized, help civilize it.

[00:30:13] You know, I could totally buy that, knowing that information and kind of the character of Jim Averill as you watch it. And the other unfortunate dialogue is really hard to hear is when they're- It seems like that's the main complaint. But now with subtitles and everything,

[00:30:35] it seems like that argument's mute, pun intended. But I know what you mean. I mean, I couldn't find subtitles when I was watching the DVD. Really? Yeah, maybe I just kind of missed it. I mean, I'm not great at that stuff.

[00:30:53] But the other scene where there's a lot of important expository dialogue, of course, is when Averill comes into whatever town that's supposed to represent is supposed to be Casper, Wyoming. And there's all that background noise. And he's talking to Sully.

[00:31:13] And a lot of important stuff's being said plot-wise, but it's very difficult. I imagine would have been, even with the sound being even worse way back then, it would have been really difficult to follow any of that. Here's hoping it gets rediscovered though. Well, I think it is.

[00:31:36] Because there's more pros than negatives. If I'm going to say something is a real big slog, there better be just no coherent story at all. There better be no ambition or establishing shodds. Well, I think, yeah. You can see the movie on,

[00:31:55] you can see the money on the screen. I think if you made something like today, imagine if Christopher Nolan had a movie that grossed barely anything. It would be probably too self-indulgent. I don't feel like this is self-indulgent. No, I don't either.

[00:32:12] It's like Lord of the Rings where he just, the only way to tell it is in three hours. Yeah, plus. You could go back and there's a lot of what ifs. My biggest what if is, what if he had done a Kubrick, what Kubrick did with 2001.

[00:32:35] He could have done that. During the initial screening. Or Lawrence of Arabia, do a Batgirl and Drake intermission. Yeah, well it was, 2001 was bombing at the box office because the critics didn't, gave their non-blessing and spoke about it being like, coloring outside the line,

[00:32:57] something they couldn't understand, the movie structure. And then he just, he left it out there and it started gaining momentum. And finally became a hit. I wish, I wish Chimino could have would have done that. Just let it go, not pull it back.

[00:33:15] And I mean, there's like this kind of heartbreaking sense of his heart being broken at that point. He's kind of saying, oh, they're all right. All of them are right. And I was a real, jerk for doing what I did and all this other stuff.

[00:33:36] At least he's good at just showing kind of what that would have probably been like with ranchers and vigilanteism, let alone corporations taking away land. I mean, but if you did that nowadays, I think everyone would just feel like it was like a gun commercial or something or,

[00:33:53] you know, a production. And he knows how to just show, hey, this was their way of life and how they thought. And how again, nothing could stop them because that's how opinionated they are. And for this to be lumped into say flops

[00:34:10] like battlefield earth or something awful like cats. Oh God, yeah. Cats should not have had a second chance. It should have been, okay, then the effects are going on finished theaters since they don't have anything to do with the story anyway. Yeah, straight to Apple Watch.

[00:34:27] Right, and this one doesn't get a second chance. Well, I think, you know, I hope we're spreading the word tonight, you know, whoever's listening here, if you haven't seen it, dang, you know, check out the Criterion version. Totally. Man, I mean, like for me,

[00:34:50] it's really unfortunate that the original, you know, the color scheme we have wasn't the one back then. I mean, I understand what he was trying to do with the sepia tone, but I think it worked more against him. There was so much natural beauty there.

[00:35:07] Landscapes as big and beautiful as those Montana landscapes in Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. He knew what he wanted. I always get a storyboarded feel from him as opposed to someone who just turned on the cameras and that's what was in the can, you know? It's just... Yeah, yeah.

[00:35:23] Never a moment. Clint Eastwood can do that. He seems to do it pretty well, you know, one or two takes and then move on. Again, we're talking about other old school guys who know how to make westerns accessible, let alone different time spans

[00:35:40] and let alone showing proper passage of time in character evolution. But I get it, you know, this is all subjective. There's plenty of people who are gonna find these movies too long or over-hyped, but at least give some of these a watch, especially Thunderbolt.

[00:35:56] This one's one that I... It's one of my favorite movies. It's on my top 10 list, I'm just saying. When I first saw it, I thought bad movie, but I'm just oddly moved by this. I liked it a lot when I saw it, I think, in college

[00:36:15] on a two-part DVD, but it was one of those. I'm just like, why does... This is very laid back, very easygoing compared to what I've heard, which was, oh, it was too workmanlike or too full of itself and inaccessible. I know exactly what's going on here

[00:36:33] and I wasn't always good at paying attention. So that says a lot. It's interesting how, again, different strokes for different folks. Well, it's a movie that definitely rewards repeated viewings. You see new stuff in it all the time. Average podcasts that I've heard cover it

[00:36:51] usually have nothing but just widespread praise. So I think if you want more fun, I recommend heavily the Not a Bomb or even the genre exposure or film seizure reviews of stuff like this. This is some pretty in-depth material you're going to hear on them.

[00:37:11] Well, there hadn't really been an anti-Western before this, had there? Like anything that dealt with class. The only one I can think of is Unforgiven and that's two decades later. Yeah, later. But it's like the class warfare. I don't think anybody had ever seen that.

[00:37:30] And even if they did, they always had to downplay it to avoid being labeled as propaganda or have corporations that disagreed with that message and who refused to... Because we have this even now where if people see through what's being discussed,

[00:37:48] they're gonna try to not have it be advertised as much. Well, he's kinda... I mean, Chimino's kind of sticking his finger in the eye of the big Hollywood machine, if you will, with the class warfare stuff. He saw it going on,

[00:38:06] but I applaud anyone like that who can see through it. Yeah, yeah. I mean, consciously or unconsciously, maybe it was just too disturbing a look in the mirror or something. They had to make an example out of somebody. And I mean, it's so unfair.

[00:38:27] It is really unfair what was done to Chimino and what was done to this movie. Absolutely. Yeah, well, I think the thing that moved me the most when I saw it the first time in the image that I couldn't get out of my head was the one where

[00:38:47] you see the immigrants. Big, big kind of line of them walking on the dirt road and they're coming out to their land. They're out of the city and they're carrying suitcases. And there's this really big kind of wagon that you see with these big wheels on it.

[00:39:07] And the lighting and the way that thing's put together like a painting, you know? The light that they captured that in is just gorgeous. And the music in that scene just really, really stuck with me. Very powerful image. Yeah, I think that pretty much sums it up

[00:39:31] because this is a man who values integrity and different cultures implementing together, blending in with each other, standing up for themselves. Yeah, and there are a few things that are very hard for me to watch and turn my stomach. And animal abuse is definitely one of those things.

[00:39:55] So the cock fighting sequence is hard for me to watch, but what does come through is kind of a zest for life that these people have. And this is the mythological American melting pot. You know, this is like, they like to say

[00:40:13] that this country is so diverse and it is, but it's quite segregated also. And it's quite, you know, class is a really big thing here. I don't know, it's like, I can't think of any, well, I don't know. When you look at films like Billy Wilder film,

[00:40:42] that'll come to me when I least expect it. Sunset Boulevard. You have that situation where the writer's definitely taking some serious pot shots at Hollywood in that system and just kind of reveling in it. Perhaps you have the same thing going on politically

[00:41:02] with Heaven's Gate, but not funny, ha ha. Yeah. I mean, if I'm gonna talk about something that's the worst movie of all time, I would just call it a disappointment. It's not a movie. I make fun of all kinds of mystery science theater, Joe Bob, Elvira-worthy movies.

[00:41:20] It's too long to riff. And even if I did like, or to be half successful, I was just like, that's good enough. That would not be anywhere near any of these other movies that just have bad visual effects, incomprehensible plot and miscastings.

[00:41:38] And any good elegiac western is a slow film, I think. Like Once Upon a Time in the West, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. There's definitely some Pat Gabbard and Sergio Leone here. But like you say, it's using those elements and then reinforcing them as the anti-western.

[00:41:58] We pretty much summed it up for everyone though. It is definitely, many of his movies are all very powerful narratives. It's just you gotta find four hours to sit down and watch them instead of just say, well, what does the film history book tell me?

[00:42:14] Yeah, you can catch it on the big screen and at least in Austin, Texas, where I live. Oh nice. Yeah. I'm a Dallas guy myself. So yeah, if it's out of Brack House or Angelica Theater or Magnolia, just go for it. Yeah, for sure.

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