Author: Tony

Release date:                           8/8/86
Island Pictures

Directed by                             Spike Lee
Written by                               Spike Lee
Produced by                            Pamm R. Jackson
                  Spike Lee
                  (Credited as Shelton J. Lee)

Cast
Tracy Camilla Johns                Nola Darling
Tommy Redmond Hicks         Jamie Overstreet
John Canada Terrell                Greer Childs
Spike Lee                                Mars Blackmon

Welcome back, David!

Initial comments by the hosts (short and sweet):

David liked the movie, although he expected not to.  Jill liked it, and she’s also a fan of Spike Lee movies.  Sam didn’t like the movie.  Tony thought it was good for an indie movie, it had flaws but it was an interesting character study… he thought he would end up liking the discussion more than the movie itself.

Tony was disappointed in the fact that the three men, who all knew they were in a relationship of sorts with Nola, were “babies” about it.  Each thought they had something more important than the other, some kind of power/control over her, but none of them did.  None of the hosts agreed with Tony, though.  They didn’t see any of the male characters as thinking or feeling as if they “owned” Nola in any way.

While Greer seemed to treat Nola more as an accessory or a trophy than a partner and Jamie seemed to be more the female counterpart of his relationship with Nola, he is also the only one who took a stand and told Nola that she had to make a choice or he was leaving.  Mars appeared to be the only one who had the most realistic view of the relationship, although he also wasn’t too happy about it.

The hosts also discussed the “rape” scene… was it truly a rape scene at all?  Nola never said no to Jamie, never moved to stop Jamie.  She took on the submissive role, for the first and only time in the movie.  Did she force Jamie to play that more violent hand by calling him over in the middle of the night for sex (while he is already in his bed with another woman)?

The hosts discuss what IT might be, but there isn’t a clear answer.  Is it sexual satisfaction, is it a general satisfaction with her life, is it a singular relationship, is it power or control, is it independence?

David brought up the fact that the movie is not presented in a way to portray Nola’s sexuality as negative and was hard pressed to think of other characters treated in the same way.  The only other comparison that was brought up was Samantha Jones in “Sex and the City.”

Tony found it interesting that Nola went to a sex therapist, considering she didn’t have any personal issue with her relationships.  Then Sam brought up the fact that Nola also entered a phase, albeit short-lived, of celibacy.  For someone who seemed so steady in her beliefs and in how she lived her life, she still took in the judgments made by the people in her life and took time for self-examination before returning, again, to knowing that she is who she is.

Tony compared Nola Darling’s character to a precursor to “500 Days of Summer” in that she was always honest and upfront about who she is and how she leads her life.  Sam saw a little bit of a “Chasing Amy” comparison.

Darrell (from the chat room on this night) liked the fact that the actors constantly broke the 4^th wall.  David didn’t like that, reminding him too much of current reality TV.  Tony said it was done in “mockumentary” style.

Tony asked if, at the end of the movie, was Nola truly happy with her life?  David and Jill thought so, even though they show Nola being alone at the end, she is ultimately living the life she wants to live.  She has always known, and after looking deeper into herself, reinforces the fact that she does not want just one man in her life, she is not a sex-addict, she is perfectly fine as she is, and any problems that arise from her multiple relationship are caused by these men, not her.

Jill brought up that, because the film’s budget was so tight, there were no second takes of any scenes.  Also, whenever the cast broke for a meal, Spike Lee instructed them to save their soda cans so they could be turned in for recycling money.  The film was shot in twelve days on a budget of $175,000.

Spike Lee wrote a book detailing the making and distribution of this film, entitled, “Spike Lee’s Gotta Have it: Inside Guerilla Filmmaking.”  His father, Bill (who was also cast as Nola Darling’s father) wrote the jazz score for the movie.

This movie won the “Award of the Youth” Foreign Film award at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival, the “New Generation Award” at the 1986 Los Angeles Film Critics Awards and the “Best First Feature” award at the 1987 Independent Spirit Awards.

Your Producers for this episode were:

• Tony
• Jill
• David
• Sam

This episode was recorded: 3/7/2012

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5^th in this series of four Modern Black & White movies (Yep, 5^th!)

Release date:               5/21/82

Universal Pictures

 

Directed by

Carl Reiner

Written by

Carl Reiner

George Gipe

Steve Martin

Produced by

Carl Reiner

Richard McWhorter

David V. Picker

 

Cast

Steve Martin               Rigby Reardon

Rachel Ward               Juliet Forrest

 

This movie was chosen specifically because it’s a comedy, a parody, a satire, and it uses the movies from the 1940s and 1950s interspersed with the modern actors and dialogue.

Initial comments by the hosts:

Tony thought that this movie was the perfect capper to the last month of movies that they’d been watching.  Tony, who isn’t a fan of voiceovers, thought that they were hysterical in this movie.  Darrell agreed in that it was a “relief” after the four more downer-themed movies and it spotlighted and made fun of the tropes that they’d been looking at in the last four movies.  He also compared watching it now to when he saw it when it came out in 1982.  He didn’t have a lot of knowledge about film noir then, so it was simply a comedy film at that time, and not necessarily a successful comedy. Now, having a stronger base comprehension of noir, he could much more appreciate how funny the movie was.  Sam questioned how did that film, relying so heavily on the audience having a noir background, not make it an automatically successful movie?

This brought the discussion back to who this movie is for?  It was a movie that poked fun of movies made 30-40 years earlier, so the audience would need to have a touch point to those older films.  This would be the equivalent to making a movie today that makes fun of movies from the 80s.  Sam brought up Hot Tub Time Machine as such a movie in that filmgoers would need to have some kind of a memory of movies and culture from the 1980s to understand Hot Tub Time Machine.

At this point the discussion turned to the idea that one needs to have particular cultural references to enjoy certain films. Sam stated that American Pie is not going to make sense in 20 years.  Tony disagreed, but Sam thought that technology would advance enough and social interaction will have changed enough that the perils of American Pie simply will not be relevant.  Please feel free to insert your own personal “pie” thoughts and jokes here.  Tony used Animal House as his comparison, and Lena (from the chat room) argued that if Sam’s American Pie argument held up, no one would ever watch Porky’s again.

Sam brought up the fact that everyone probably has a movie or two that, as you watch it again and again over the years, delivers something new each time.  His examples were Blade Runner and Ghostbusters.  Lena also brought up Tootsie and Airplane as her examples of movies that changed/evolved as she’s seen them again over the years.

Other movies that rely on cultural references?  Darrell brought up It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and Sam brought up South Pacific and Rent.  Tony mentions North by Northwest as a movie that can’t be remade for modern audiences due to technological or social advancements, stating that a simple phone call clears up the whole problem, but things are too far gone by the time they get to that point.

Some of the hosts’ favorite quotes from Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid:

Jimmie Sue’s father: Don’t go near my daughter again. Don’t try to see her. Don’t write her and don’t phone her.
Rigby Reardon: Can I use her underwear to make soup?

 

Juliet Forrest: But what does “FOC” mean?
Rigby Reardon: It’s a slang word. It’s when a man and a woman are in love, the man puts his…
Juliet Forrest: No, no. It’s written here: “F. O. C.”

 

Rigby Reardon: My plan was to kiss her with every lip on my face.

 

Rigby Reardon: I hadn’t seen a body put together like that since I’d solved the case of the Murdered Girl with the Big Tits

 

Cary Grant: You don’t smoke, do you?
Rigby Reardon: No, I have tuberculosis.
Cary Grant: Oh, thank heaven for that.

 

Performers who appear in this film in footage from earlier classic movies include: Edward Arnold, Ingrid Bergman, Humphrey Bogart, Wally Brown, James Cagney, William Conrad, Jeff Corey, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Brian Donlevy, Kirk Douglas, Ava Gardner, Cary Grant, Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake, Charles Laughton, Fred MacMurray, Charles McGraw, Ray Milland, Edmond O’Brien, Vincent Price, Barbara Stanwyck and Lana Turner.

Steve Martin suggested using footage of William Hartnell, Red Skelton, Jerry Lewis, Jack Benny, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.  But Carl Reiner refused, believing it would be funnier if they used footage of actors who spent their careers away from comedies.

Your Producers for this episode were:

• Tony
• Darrell
• Sam

This episode was recorded: 2/29/2012

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4^th  in this series of four Modern Black & White movies

Release date:

10/7/05

Warner Independent Pictures

 

Directed by

George Clooney

Written by

George Clooney

Grant Heslov

Produced by

Grant Heslov

 

Cast:

David Strathairn

Edward R. Murrow

 

Initial comments by the hosts:

For an independent film, the hosts agreed that it didn’t have the look or the feel of an independent film.  Darrell liked the movie and thought it had a nice feel to it.  Even though it’s a serious subject, he thought that you could really sit back and enjoy the film.  Jill agreed and thought it was tight and finely crafted and had excellent acting and an interesting subject matter.  She liked that the story was confined and George Clooney didn’t try to make it a complete biography on Edward R. Murrow.  Tony agreed and thought they made some interesting choices on the stories that were about the people in the newsroom as side stories, but they weren’t necessarily directly tied to McCarthy or Murrow.  He thought it was a subtle way of bringing out those extra stories.

One of the underlying themes of the movie was how much CBS Corp. was so deeply in bed with all of its advertisers and in fear of trying to keep their advertisers to keep their programs on the air.  Darrell found it interesting how relevant the story still is.  How you can remove the word “communism” and replace it with “terrorists” and still have the same story today.  Also, the point still stands that news is driven by entertainment value and advertising dollars.  Jill liked the speech “bookends” of how the story was set up, how it kept your focus.  The hosts also liked the jazz singer, Jill likened her to the Greek chorus who explains the story but this also gave the viewer time to process the information you’d been given between the scenes.

In discussing acting, they all loved David Strathairn’s portrayal of Edward R. Murrow.  Darrell thought he had Murrow’s voice and mannerisms down cold.  They liked that every clip of Joseph McCarthy was the actual footage of McCarthy from that time.  Also, some of the video used in the monitors was actually Murrow, as well.  Darrell found Murrow to be a cold, unsympathetic man, but Jill disagreed and found that to be passion about doing the right thing and telling the truth.  She liked the use of facial expressions, silence, fading to black (to the point of making it uncomfortable for the viewers), to convey his conflicted emotions and his struggles.  Tony thought that as much as Murrow seemed aloof, he also seemed disconnected.  He didn’t seem to know a lot about the things happening directly around him because he was so focused on what he was doing.  The hosts also singled out the performances of Robert Downey, Jr. as Joe Wershba and Frank Langella as William Paley.

Jill believed they did a nice job at incorporating archival film footage into the movie and made it look seamless.  Tony learned, through this movie, some of the underhanded tactics that McCarthy used to get information.  He also gained a respect for journalism during that time.  Journalism today is completely different, the integrity is lost, and no one can (or would) do today what Murrow did then.

In discussing the use of actual McCarthy footage (instead of using an actor to portray him), Clooney said that 20% of the people who saw a test of the movie didn’t know who McCarthy was and wanted to know who was the actor portraying him.  Clooney also thought that no matter which actor played McCarthy, he would be played as a jerk.  Instead, if you’re watching the actual footage of McCarthy, you can see how some people could have understood and took his side.  Clooney wanted this movie to be a conversation starter.  It also shows the “other side” in which McCarthy had a good idea in that there was something to be afraid of with communists infiltrating the government, but he took it to a level of zealotry that became a problem.

As Jill mentioned this speech earlier in the podcast, the text of Edward R. Murrow’s speech bookending the movie was taken word-for-word from the actual keynote address he delivered to the 1958 RTNDA (Radio-Television News Directors Association) convention. The actual conclusion to the speech, after Murrow’s line about television, used strictly for entertainment rather than education, being nothing more than wires and lights in a box, went as follows: “There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance and indifference. This weapon of television could be useful. Stonewall Jackson, who knew something about the use of weapons, is reported to have said, ‘When war comes, you must draw the sword and throw away the scabbard.’ The trouble with television is that it is rusting in the scabbard during a battle for survival.”

The film was shot on color film on a grayscale set, then color-corrected in post.

The entire set was built on one floor. The elevator interior was built on a turntable, so it could be rotated to a new “floor” during unbroken shots.

The American Film Institute named Good Night, and Good Luck as one of the Top Ten Movies of 2005.

It was also nominated for six Oscars at the 2006 Academy Awards:  Best Picture, Best Director (George Clooney), Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role (David Strathairn), Best Original Screenplay, Best Art Direction, and Best Cinematography.

Your Producers for this episode were:

• Tony
• Darrell
• Jill

This episode was recorded: 2/15/2012

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