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What kind of a show you guys putting on here today? You're not interested in armed? Now? No, Look, we're going to do this thing. We're going to have a.
Conversation from Chicago. This is film Spotting. I'm Adam Kempinar.
Okay.
So we hoped when we started planning this that maybe being a Chicago guy, we could get Michael Shannon to come be here at film Spotting Fest. And you know, instead, he's off touring the country doing rim songs. And that was impossible. So we got the next best thing, Matt
Singer as Michael Shannon. Back in March, we celebrated twenty years of the show with Film Spotting Fest, a three day film festival with screenings, a special guest critic, Matt Singer yes, cosplaying as Hawaiian shirt wearing Michael Shannon joined us for a post screening chat about Jeff Nichols Take Shelter. That conversation, plus Michael Phillips and I revisit John Sales Lone Star, which turns thirty in the new year. That more ahead on film Spotting. Welcome to Film Spotting and
Happy New Year everyone. We're still on holiday break, but that doesn't mean we don't have some fresh audio for you. Next week, Josh and I will return with a review of Marty Supreme. I'm being told that Josh may also have a defense of Avatar, Fire and Ash. There may also be a quick roundup of other movies we've caught up with since we record ordered our epic Top ten
Films of twenty twenty five show. Later on in this week's show, you'll hear Michael Phillips and I in conversation about John sales great nineteen ninety six film Low and Star that was recorded after a screening of the film back in November as part of the City of Chicago's fiftieth anniversary celebration of Ciskel and Ebert. Such a thrill to be part of that, but First, we're going to go back to March of twenty twenty five and Film Spotting Fest, our three day celebration of twenty years of
this show. Over that March weekend, we hosted screening of six films at two of Chicago's finest cinemas, the historic Music Box Theater on the city's North side and the
Genes Ciskel Film Center Downtown. Special guests joined us for all six screenings, and over the past nine months we've shared the audio from all of those conversations, including director Ryan Johnson talking about his debut film, Brick Coganata talking about his debut film, Columbus critics Danas Stevens, Alison will More, and Scott Tobias On respectively, Statuget Rays pather Ponchali, Sean Baker's Tangerine, and Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise. That leaves us
with just one film and one special guest left. We've been saving it up. Matt Singer, the Screen Crush critic and author of Opposable Thumbs, How Ciskel and Ebert change movies Forever. We've got a little theme going on this show. He joined me for a screening of and a very personal conversation about Jeff nichols twenty eleven film Take Shelter. The film stars Nichols regular Michael Shannon as a man experiencing frightening apocalyptic visions who goes to extreme ends to
keep his family safe. Jessica Chastain plays his wife, their young daughter, whose death is played by Tova Stewart from March earlier this year. Here is that conversation, which starts with me explaining why Matt is dressed as Michael Shannon. Matt said, if he promised on social media, if you follow him, that if this event sells out and the place seems pretty packed to me, that he would would wear a special outfit.
And indeed, you if.
You google Michael Shannon red carpet, the first thing you will see is him dressed on a red carpet. He didn't have pictures of himself on his I had that made special for you guys. But uh, that was what I said I would dress in that. So I did my best.
As best I could. And here you are, well, such a great comedy. I felt like we should really embrace lighten things up.
Yeah, uh, I'm gonna take these off because I literally I cannot see without my glasses, but that was part of the look.
Make sure you google and so you see I'm not well.
I don't like that you've already broken character.
But sorry.
Sorry.
The met singer I know commits to the bit.
Yeah, well this is yeah, this is a lot of commitment.
Come on, you're right, fair enough.
So let's start, Matt, as we have been throughout the day, a little bit with you before we talk about the film, our relationship to you, why you are here at Film Spotting Fest. You were one of the first guests we had in mind, and that goes back to the fact that I think you were the first, let's say, national media outlet to have anything to say about Film Spotting then Cinecast.
This was just a few months in.
I don't know if iTunes it even launched yet, but we'd been doing the show for a little bit, and I don't know if you just reached out to us one day and said I'm either gonna do this or I just did it. But you did a feature about this on IFC News, like a sixty second hit, and I remember very vividly how you explained there's this new thing called podcasts in your announcer TV guy voice that
you have. So what was your recollection of discovering I guess us discovering podcasting why you felt like it was worth doing a story and I FC news about.
Well, what I remember about that is, yeah, Apple had started the iTunes store.
That was what the impetus was, like, there's this new thing called podcasts, and.
I forget how I found out about.
Maybe it was covered in something else whereas like there's even ones about movies and yours was included. And as someone who loved Cisco and eBird and conversations about movies going back to when I was a kid, I was like,
this is fabulous. And at the time I was working for IFC and we were always we were doing basically at the time, IFC did not have commercials, and so my job was to create news that would kind of interstitials between the movies, because the movies would air, you know, like uncut with no brakes, but then they would show to space things out and sometimes they were sponsored, so they were basically were commercials. They were secret commercials. So I we would come up with ideas and I pitched one.
I think honestly what it was was maybe Ebert and Roper had started a podcast, but it was just the audio version of the show, and I think we did something about just like you know, you were sort of the David versus the Goliath of Ebert and Roper, that they were the bad guys, which is very ironic how things turned out later.
But yeah, that was the impetus for that.
Yes, I don't remember emailing you about it, but at some point we did start chatting. I remember seeing it and that's where our friendship. I was wearing this in the spot. Ironically, there's just a weird coincidence.
So let's talk.
About Take Shelter and why you were the good candidate. You were a good candidate to talk about this movie with us. Back in twenty eleven, we already said it. Josh had it as his number five film of the year. It was my number two film of the year. You had it at number one.
Guy.
You guys blew it, we blew it.
I had this little Terrence Malick movie called The Tree of Life, So did you know Josh did as well. But you went all in on Jeff Nichols and this film. Why was it your number one back in twenty eleven.
I genuinely believe this is like one of the great movies of my lifetime, and hopefully this does not.
You know, I'm not making fun of this movie. I'm making fun of my myself and being silly.
But this is almost like a defense mechanism because talking about this movie exposes all of the realities of my life, which is that to me, this is like the best
movie ever made about living with anxiety. I know, I look like a really cool and put together person, but the reality is that, like, you know, the the that I relate to this character on a on a level that is almost too personal to talk about, you know, like there isn't like a history of schizophrena in my family, but there is a history of really intense anxiety and this idea of fear, you know, as this almost crippling force in your life that can take hold of you
and is almost more dangerous and more insidious and more threatening than whatever it is you're afraid of. I think this movie communicates that idea in a way that is better than hours of therapy that I have taken. Like, I think I got more out of this movie than I have talking to certain therapists in my life and I'm not saying that like facetiously. I genuinely mean that, like there is like a I don't know this movie.
You know, you could describe it as a scary or you know, certainly moments that are in it are disturbing, scary, horrifying, But I almost find something kind of like uplifting about the ending in a weird in a very weird way. I admit that is strange, but I genuinely find something almost hopeful and therapeutic about the end of this movie.
Okay, well, I thought we might build to the ending, but maybe we should just dive into the ending.
What do you say, should we talk about it?
You open the door, okay, Matt, the story, the storm seller, the storm celler door. Yeah, let's see what will be reveal the other side on the other side, shine the light on us. Just tell us your your thoughts on it and it has your take on the ending changed it all over the years if you as you've thought about this film.
Well, I'm curious first, like, because I know people do like this is it is the sort of ending that encourages debate, and so I'm curious to like, do people in the audience think that this is really happening. What is the end of the movie? Is that, like an are we to take that as a literal? The apocalypse or whatever it is.
Is upon them?
Some people feel that way a couple of hands, Oh, okay, you can it's all right. Look, I shared my deepest personal issues.
You can raise your hand at a question, okay.
And then how many people think that it's, uh, you know, this is another dream, or it's it's we're not supposed to take it literally. It's okay, maybe it's maybe more, but it's there's a So to me, like, I feel like the answer, whatever you feel is is correct for you obviously. And I love what Ryan Johnson said yesterday about like, you know, like film criticism is like a documentary of a person's experience of a movie.
I love that.
I thought that was really lovely. So whatever you feel is wonderful. But for me, it's like the answer is irrelevant, Like they're like the debate is irrelevant.
Like to me, the thing that matters is that he's not.
Afraid, and he and his and his and and the Jessica chests, same character sees it too, the daughter sees it too, and that whatever is going to happen. They're gonna face it together, and he's and it and they are a like, you know, visually, they are a cohesive unit.
And so to me, that is like where you find like the hopefulness in this movie, because again, like you can live, you can literally put yourself in a stormshell storm celler and put on a gas mask and just say, I'm just it's too scary out there, something bad is out there or whatever the phrase is to use you, I'm afraid something bad is coming.
Well, there always is something bad right coming, right.
So it's not a matter of that, it's a matter of are you going you know, like, are you going to stay in a storm seller? I can't say that phrase apparently, storm seller, are you going to stay down there?
Or are you going to live your life?
Yeah? No, I think that's a great take.
And going back to the show and when we discussed it, it was actually Dana Stevens, who was on film spotting at the time when we reviewed it, filling in as
a guest host. And I don't think we necessarily talked about it ahead of time or planned to get into the ending, but it was also one of those things where you kind of felt like you had to, and I only had really one line in my notes, but then we devoted some bonus content to it and ended up unpacking it a little bit, and it was a discussion that seemed to be helpful for some listeners who were in a state of kind of going okay, this sort of feels like Jeff Nichols just unraveled everything we saw,
and I ultimately agree with you, Matt. I think I'll just take a harder line, though, and say that I don't think there's any reason to believe, based on the previous one hundred plus minutes, that the vision at the end is anything but another vision. Just the reality of the movie suggests that it is another vision, another hallucination, another nightmare. But what matters is exactly what you said.
And it goes back. It goes back to a couple of lines in the film, and one in particular, when he finally comes clean with his wife at the table, he says, I need you to believe me. But even more pointed, remember when they're driving home and he's got both of them in the car in the back and a lot of activity is happening and he's getting unnerved, and he says is anybody seeing this and the whole film, nobody else has seen it, whether it's Shay Wegm or anyone else.
This is all happening to him.
This is his experience, and it feels as if he's completely alone in it, and he's he's he's building it that way. He won't let her in, he won't let other people in. And so what matters, as you said, Matt, at the end, is the fact that they both see it.
She sees it, they she nods at him. That's what really matters.
And we understand that they as a couple are moving forward and it's going to get harder. As the doctor says, before it gets better, it's going to be harder. And that's what I think for me that image suggests. But at least they're finally they're on the same page. They are, they are in agreement that they're going to fight this together.
Your mother was diagnosed with paranoids in her thirties, I thought before wanderings.
No, it's been telling me how straying Curtis has been acting ly.
Is anyone seeing this? Tell people what you've been doing? I know, I'm sorry you friends.
The other the other thing that I would say.
Is important about the ending that I don't always see talked about, is you know the whole movie is about uncertainty again, fear, anxiety, and so much of the movie it's bouncing between reality and hallucination or dream or whatever you want to call it. And so many times in the movie does this so beautifully where it constantly is messing with you, the audience member, Are we awake or are we hallucinating?
Or are is it?
You know?
The whole movie and that ending, leaving you with a question of is this real or is this not? Puts you into the position of that character this whole movie, the whole movie. He's asking himself, is anyone seeing this?
Am I going crazy? Am I hallucinating? Is you know?
So?
Leaving you in that state is a way is like an almost like an empathetic gesture.
It allows you to feel what this character has.
Been feeling for the whole movie.
I agree, and I'll use that word feeling here as well. He says that to her, right, he says, it's a feeling. He's trying to describe what he's going for, and it's very hard thing for him to articulate because it is a feeling. And I think at the end, even though we have that conversation, the preceding conversation with the doctor, and the doctor explains this is he's gonna have to commit to treatment. He might be away from the family for a little bit. If the movie ends with the
big reveal being him hit. He comes outside and the light shines and he sees it and he says it's fine. After an entire film with him saying what, I'm all right, I got it, I'm fine, it's fine. I'm not and at the end he finally says it's fine, and it actually is fine for the first time, it's fine. If it ended there, I think we'd all kind of walk out of the theater feeling like, Yeah, everything's gonna be great.
They're right, they're they're finally gonna move forward, their their marriage is stronger, they're they're communicating better.
He's gonna get treatment. We can walk out and feel great about the ending.
And Jeff Nichol says, no, I need you to leave with the feeling like this isn't over.
This is an over by a long shot, right.
And again that's very true of anxiety, you know, like, at least as I have experienced it.
You have these.
Periods where you are extremely that or heightened, or you're having these really intent panic attacks, and then.
You know, hopefully you get maybe get it under control. But it doesn't go like there is no magical solution.
You know, Like he has that scene where he's like, I need you to tell me what I need to take.
Get it under to get it under control, fix.
To fix this.
And the answer is not, there isn't The answer is there is no answer. The answer is learning to accept it and to and to live with it a little more, maybe without building you know, spent getting a home loan and building a storm shehelf.
I can't say storm, cellar, what is rot?
That's sorry the moment where you know, I mean, right from the beginning, it's it's ominous, right. It opens on him standing outside in the rain and he's seeing it come down. But when Shay Wigan, when his friend says to him, basically, you have a perfect life. You're a good man, you have a good life. We know what this could be foreshadowing, you know, and and the fact that he he is.
A good man. We see that he on the job.
He doesn't want to stop early, right, just because it looks like it might be rain Like. He seems to be a man of integrity and honesty, and he is trying to do everything he can for his family. But as you've said, in the end, bad things are going to come for you.
Anyway.
You can be a good man, You can do everything right, you can, you know, And these are modest ambitions that these characters have. They want to they want to be able to go to the beach house on vacation maybe once a year. They want to pay all their bills. They want their daughter to be able to hear that. That's about it. But there's just this this fear, this this spear, as you said, that's hanging over him the entire time.
Yeah, you mentioned the daughter, and I what I I had. I saw this movie when a K I had my
number one. I may not have seen it again until a week ago when I rewatched it getting ready for this and then watching it here again today, and really in those two new viewings, really struck by how wonderfully the daughter fits into the one of the other themes of this movie, which is communication and the struggle to communicate with their daughter, and how important that is, and how his fears about that again connect to his mental struggles,
but also again his struggle to communicate with everyone. And there's so much about this movie and about anxiety that is his reaction to it is to I mean, maybe this is too much symbolism or reading too much in but the idea that he's a construction worker and he spends his life building things, and then we watch him in this movie begin to build walls around his issues. He builds a fence, a pen for the dog. The dog is scary. I'm going to put the dog in
a cage and that will solve my fear. Oh there's more fear now, I'm worried about this. I'm going to build. He literally puts up walls, you know. He builds a storm cellar and then he goes into it, you know.
And and so.
He he is trying to solve the problem by just closing it off. I'm gonna I'm gonna seal this thing in. I'm gonna bury it way down deep in the ground, you know. I mean, And that's something I joke about with my wife, is like, you know, I'm gonna just I'm just gonna bury it, bury it way down deep and that's like he almost literally tries to do.
That in this movie and finds out spoiler alert that never.
Word, it doesn't work.
So a couple days ago, as we were doing our final prep for this, we're on a call with producer Sam and he says, you know, at festivals, there always ends up being connections that developed between films, and I wonder what they'll be. And of course we probably should have known that because unlike most film festivals, we've seen all these movies before and we probably could have planned those.
Connections, but we did not.
And here I am, and I'm thinking about Brick last night and Ryan Johnson talking about Brendan and we're having the conversation about his type of masculinity and how did he describe him as self righteous? What's more self righteous than Michael Shannon in that scene right where he finally goes off on all the other people in his community. But also I don't remember the exact lines, but how does Brendan describe the way he loves Emily? For those of you who are there, he says, I love you.
This is how I show my love. I have to protect you, right, And this is what we're getting here with Michael Shannon's character as well. But I think also we just watched Father Ponchali and to your point about walls, we have a mother in that film who is trying the entire movie to get her walls actually fortified. Literally, she needs the walls fortified to try to protect her family. Unfortunately,
she is actually alone. She's unnecessarily alone her husband in this case, the father is kind of mia.
Unfortunately for most of.
The film, he is unnecessarily building up these walls, right, yeah, I.
Mean I get.
I mean it's funny because I'm like, I never again watching it the first time, I don't know that I noticed any of these things. But even this, this this idea of the walls that he's and the structures he's building to contain and hide and protect himself. I mean
it's sort of again obvious. But the ending, the ending is opening opening a door literally being open you know, uh it all it kind of fits together in that beautiful way that that you know, and and that the that Jessica Chesstain's character.
It says him, you have to do this.
I could open I could, I could open the door, but that wouldn't solve the problem. You have to open it, you have to be open perhaps and uh and that and so you have that and what and what a powerful ending that is, which is literally just that that that being the the moment. I think a movie that has these huge apocalyptic visions and that you're you know, they I remember the I remember the first time I saw it being so talk about anxiety, like when they go in there for the first time and you don't
know how that scene is going to resolve. I remember just really like being really white knuckled watching that. Just the amount of tension that they get out of that sequence that ends in such a sort of simple way, I think is just brilliant filmmaking.
Well, that was vulnerable, So I'll be a little vulnerable, right, We've got to be honest, Like I have had probably, oh gosh, ten to twenty at least moments like he has in the film at Night, where you have a panic attack where you wake up in the middle of the night, scare your wife half to death because you feel like you can't bread, you feel like you're choking on something, you feel completely over.
You actually do think you're.
In my case, choking on something that has happened many times dozens of times in my life, right, so.
I can relate in a lot of ways to this character.
And I mentioned earlier the top five things we learned from the movies we did an episode four hundred, I think I want to share this just because it underscores, you know, what we're talking about with this. It's themes of communication and vulnerability and honesty. The scene for me that I talked about an episode four hundred, I think is so important is when he wakes up that one morning after having a panic attack, and he has wept
the bed right. And if you think about all of us in the room, if something like that happened to you, how many of you and let's assume just like in this case, he's got a loving, supportive wife. If he said to her, if he was honest with her and said, I don't know what happened, but look at the sheets, she would say, well, we maybe need to get you in to see a doctor, and we need to try
and address this, and let's clean the sheets. But because of his shame, because of the fear of what he thinks, this is going to lead to the fear that they're going to think that he's losing control. And he's not fulfilling his duties as husband and father, and just I think too, the shame of that masculine sort of shame and that pride.
He what does he do?
He hides it, He doesn't he want her to come over next to him, and he goes and washes the sheets and puts the bed back together in private. I wonder how many of us would do the exact same thing, even if we even if we think we're in a really healthy relationship and we could be as honest as we want with each other, in that moment, wouldn't you also feel a little bit of shame? Wouldn't you want
to probably cover it up? That's that's the kind of questions I think Jeff Nichols is really getting at and exploring in this film and why it feels very personal, and I think why many of us can have that personal connection to it.
Yeah, I know.
And you know, one of the other sort of personal reactions I had this time was when I it's is it twenty ten?
Twenty eleven?
Is when the movie twenty eleven?
So I was not.
I was married, but I wasn't a dad then and now I have I have two kids, so that adds an extra an extra wrinkle of fun. I guess, let's say, to watching this movie is to and having kids really does add that level of anxiety. You know you were talking before about like their extremely modest ambitions and goals and like the things that he wants to protect.
And that's it.
I told again, that's another thing that I think is so beautiful about the movie is that idea of.
I don't have a lot, but what I have is great, this is all I need. I just don't want anything bad to happen. I don't want anything to jeopardize that. And I think that as.
A father, I can really sadly relate to that you know that you know and and and I think again that the movie really it taps into such a beautiful personal way of expressing all of those ideas that you know, Like seeing it now, I had an even more intense
reaction to even knowing you know. As I said, like I find the the ending to be somewhat hopeful and kind of optimistic in a weird way therapeutic, but just experiencing that aspect of it now, it just adds another fun wrinkle of tension and anxiety.
Well, Matt Singer added a fun wrinkle to film spotting Fest. Thank you so much Matt Singer for being here, Thank you for sharing your thoughts on the film that was. Film critic Matt Singer and me at the Film spotting Fest screening of Jeff Nichols.
Take shelter.
For more Film spotting Fest conversations, you can go to filmspottingfest dot com or listen wherever you get your podcasts.
How do you live well?
I live with the conference of I believe in myself, the money will follow.
And what do you plan to do if this whole dream of yours doesn't work?
At it doesn't even enter my consciousness.
Before we get to our conversation about Lone Star, a couple of quick notes. We do have a lot planned for January here on Film spotting Next week we'll have a review of Christmas Day release Marty Supreme, along with Josh talking about Avatar Fire and Ash. Yes, I think I am going to sit that one out. We do expect to have a couple of more recent releases in the mix as well. The following week it's our twenty
twenty five wrap party. That's where we share our favorite scenes and moments of the twenty twenty five movie year, and then later in the month it's our twenty twenty six movie preview. We've got our Oscar nomination reactions, and maybe, well it's not a maybe, we've got it on the calendar. We actually have a Sacred Cow conversation already planned for Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another. Yes, the film
of twenty twenty five. We've got it on the docket for early twenty twenty six to already revisit reflect on that film before we completely close the book on this past year, on that rap party show. In a couple of weeks, we will announce the winner of the Film Spotting Golden Brick Award, our favorite film by a new or emerging director. You get to help choose the winner of that award, and you could do that by voting in the Film Spotting Poll, which is available now at
film spotting dot Net. The twenty twenty five Brick nominees are Julian Glanders Animated Boys Go to Jupiter, which is available now vod. The film whose title explains it all, Grand Theft Hamlet that's available via Movie and You Can Act, says that via Amazon Prime the David osit directed documentary Predators, which is available via Paramount Plus Eva. Victor is Sorry Baby, that's streaming on HBO Max and available via other VOD platforms.
And finally, another documentary being distributed locally or by our local distributor, Music Box Films, Charlie Shackleton's Zodiac Killer Project. Now that is one that may be a little bit harder to see, but you have some time to vote. Your vote actually is in due until I think our deadline's going to be Sunday, January eleventh, and Zodiac Killer
Project comes out on VOD. You can see it digitally starting January six So if you want to do all your homework, make sure you've seen all five of these, and hey, Zodiac Killer Project is a good one, make sure that you make time for it. January sixth is when that movie comes out. You can vote in that poll and leave a comment at Film Spotting.
I thought it was important to acknowledge the new modes that the Ciskel and Ebert format is taking in new media spaces as we celebrate their fiftieth anniversary. And I thought that Adam and Film Spotting were the perfect example of this.
That was Alex Vasquez from the Chicago Film Office. This fall, Chicago Film and the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs celebrated fifty years of Ciskel and Ebert with some special film screenings and events, including a film they invited us to host, and I got to pick. That was what was so wonderful about this. Alex gave me a call said, do you have any ideas on what you might want to screen? And John sales nineteen ninety six film Lone Star was
one of the first movies that came to mine. As you will hear me explain shortly in the post screening conversation. Lone Star is set on the US Mexico border and stars Chris Cooper as a small town sheriff, Sam Dead's who starts unearthing long buried secrets after the remains of a former sheriff are discovered, a former share who disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Mysterious circumstances that may have involved Sam's father Buddy, played by a very young Matthew McConaughey. The
disappeared sheriff He's played by Chris Christofferson. Elizabeth Tania also stars sheriff Deed sheff.
Ded is dad, honey, He's just sheaff Julie.
We found a body out by Fort McKenzie yesterday.
He got any idea who might have put him there?
The hell of a time to bring up old business that badge and didn't come out of a cereal box, started figging holes in this county. Don't telling him what will come up? Be too so did you? I Won'll find out one way or the other.
With Josh overseas, I invited Michael Phillips to join me for the screening and that conversation Michael Phillips, everybody, Hey, folks, Hey, you got them?
Hi Michael.
I'm wondering if everybody out there is really processing the ending of the film. We might, yeah, forget it. We might need to give them another minute or two. But I did want to explain my choice of this film, and maybe we can talk about the context in which you saw Lone Star for the first time. So June nineteen ninety six is when this film came out. I would have been home for the summer right before my senior year of college, sleeping on my parents' couch because I didn't have a bedroom anymore.
And this is before I.
Had written any film reviews or taken any film studies classes or film production classes. My liberal arts school didn't have any film classes. I knew I wanted to do something in film though at this point, and I was watching at the movies religiously. I saw this review. I heard them talking about John Sales. I didn't know anything
about John Sales. The movie looked fascinating. I wanted to see this film, and of course it was not playing at my little two screen movie theater in my small town, and I was so I started scanning the Des Moines Register because we had to look at newspapers. Then I'm dating myself. The Internet was fledgling at this point, so I'm scanning the Des Moines Register constantly to see is this going to come to Des Moines? Am I going to get to see Lone Star? I have to see
this movie, And finally it did. It might have been like two months after it came out, maybe even three, but I eventually did see this movie.
So wait, it wasn't the streaming the week after it opened in the theaters.
No, no streaming. I do remember too, being intrigued by the fact that I don't think I had seen Dazed and Confused at this point. Somehow I missed it when it came out. That was like Matthew McConaughey's first role. But A Time to Kill had come out, or came out just a month after this movie, and it had been promoted. It was a big movie of the John Grisham novel, so i'd seen ads for that constantly. I
think I saw that before saw Lone Star. And what's funny, of course, is that that's the big breakout McConaughey role, and Chris Cooper's in that movie and he's a supporting character. And I remember being I don't know, just kind of surprised by the fact that it's so funny to see this little movie and Chris Cooper's the big star and Matthew McConaughey's in the supporting role. But I did finally get to see Lone Star, and it turns out Roger and jan were right. I thought it was a masterpiece,
and I don't think i'd seen it. Somehow i'd seen the entire film until last night prepping for this and then watching it again now holds up beautifully. At least I felt that it did. So how about you, when did you see Lone Star? What did you bring to it?
So you again you what year in college were you.
I would have been right before my senior year, so I.
Was in fourth grade. So that makes you no, No, it's but I did for Rogeriebert. There's a piece running soon about a similar sort of Ebert and Cisco force of influence in my movie going life, where when I was second or thirty year of college, this little film called My Dinner with Andrei came out and that was in eighty one, I think, And yeah, so it's we're half a generation issue apart on everything on that, Yeah, I saw I saw a Lone Star as a as
a civilian. This was at a period of my life when I was writing about theater, which was about half my career, and seeing it again, and it had been a similar spread of time since since the second watch, and I'm very happy to see it again, not just because it's politically, sociologically just historically relevant in ways that
I wish it weren't. In a way what we're going through now, I don't even know what writer directors who want to write truthfully and from the heart about what they see happening in their country now, what we're going to see in another few years, I hope, I hope something. I really don't want it to be nothing. It's not just that I think watching this now, it's the thing that really hits me is that there's a word. I caught an adjective that one sort of grousy critic, and
I don't remember which one it was. It wasn't Siskel or Ebert, obviously, but a critic who was sort of hot and cold on John Sales use the word civilized to describe sort of the tone, the approach, and the whole kind of humanist outlook here. And it was sort of meant to be kind of a mixed assessment. And now seeing this tonight, I can only really see the value in it. And also just the craft of this writer.
The fact that in his writing career is fascinating. I mean, he wrote all this, really some of it really entertaining trash for Roger Corman, everything from Piranha to I think uncredited work on some Corman films, including I think Black Mama, White Mama, which we see playing at the drive in in that scene and the flashback, and the fact that
he could actually juggle successfully eighteen or so. It's eighteen credited actors on the open credits, So I think basically eighteen substantial roles without seeming crazy overpacked to me, and without its seeming ginned up for melodrama every second. God knows, you know, and and Sales knows what kind of filmmaker he is. He knows that he's a guy that will never be grabby enough for a big audience, for a
big box office boom. You know. He just he cannot change his temperament, which is interesting coming out of the career he coming out of the writing career he with Korman, which is all just like can we you know, just throw the trash at the screen, make an entertaining, make it cheap. But I mean, look at all the great people that came out of working with Corman, everyone from Jonathan demidev Scor says, and here we have John Sales. So anyway, that's the writing is what really Yeah, a
lot alone the acting, but that's a different story. That's a yeah, yeah, I think the writing.
Of course, you saw the clip from Ciskel Niehburg Gene talked about that, and I agree. I think if this was a film that just gave us the kind of murder mystery Charlie Wade storyline and introduced us to a few of these characters. You know, we met we met Big Oh, and we understood a little bit about his backstory because we need to because he ends up being a major player in this mystery. It would have been fairly satisfying. But the fact that we get I think
Alex's word was tapestry. I mean the fact that we get all of these characters. And there are a lot of movies, Michael, that try to pull that off, that to try to weave together all these different characters give us the big ensemble, and they never they never really
have the depth I think that this movie has. And what you notice, I think is John Sales does a really good job of giving every character at least one scene where they get to do something that isn't just their introduction and then the thing they have to do for the plot. You know, they have a scene where we get to just even with a character like Enrique, who we meet him early in the film when he delivers some food to the table with Hollis, and then of course at the end where he shows up at
Mercedes house. But in addition to the other scenes where we see him planning the river crossing, he's waiting outside and he sees her car and he tells her how nice of a car she has. We just get to know a little bit about him in terms of his personality and a sense of kind of his aspirations. And every character has a moment like that, even even as subtle as the Texas Ranger we meet Ben Wetzel.
He's just the love that guy. He's so good and you know, we're talking about the guy who comes to I mean that. It's like I've never seen less acting in my life.
I know, And it's very subtle.
He's there to.
Deliver information right to move the story forward, but Sales gives him that great story about Charlie Wade walking into his dad's hardware store and saying that he winked at me and I wet my pants. That gives that character some dimension. I'll give you another one when he goes to meet with with Roderick's widow and just the fact that she's not just sitting on her porch waiting to
deliver answers to his questions. She's playing the game boy right, and there too, it's emerging of the past and present, this older woman playing with this game boy. But it it just gives her something to do and to joke around about, beyond just again serving the story. Every character has something like that. We get to see, we get to see how they interact with each other and a sense of their interiority beyond just what they're doing there
to serve the plot. Yeah, I suppose, I suppose if you have a car wait, you're disagreeing.
With no, no, no, not yet less than.
Usual, This would be appropriate if he was.
I mean there are there are at times when when you're sort of aware of of of exactly what you're saying that you're not getting. You're not you're not. It's not plot forward in that way. It's plenty ploty, you know. I mean, there's a couple of reversals that you know, we can argue about, you know, the value over whatever.
But Sales is a big fan of Raymond Chandler as a lot of people, right, and who's a guy, you know, Philip Marlow, you know, l a crime all that, and plot was very busy in a in a Philip Marlow mystery without really being as important as anything else going on. I mean, what's Chandler was really into. It was just this weird sort of like, you know, kind of organism that was l A that he that he got to know in the thirties and forties, in the fifties, although I think they lived in La Joya for a time.
Anybody know La Joya? The to Chandler wrote one grade line on that's his hand. He just he just said, ayah, it's nothing but a climate, That's what he said. But I think what what Sales is doing here in Lone Star is is kind of attribute to something like Tandler, because it's like he more than I will say this,
more than a lot of his movies. I think Sales does seem activated by being on location really really down where we're talking about, I mean fictionalized you know, names of the towns, but that that just feels like it's doing a lot of the work we need done and
the actors kind of filling from there. You just you can tell it's And in terms of the writing too, you know this whole business about algorithmic writing where Netflix people, if you're doing just rogic for Netflix, uh, you know, the note is always given that you have to as
a writer. You have to reiterate the stupid single one idea plot over and over, or assuming people are texting while they're watching, they're not really looking, so you have to you know, you can't, you know, and that I meanes Sales would be running a hardware store today if you had to put up on that stuff here, right, yeah, you know.
In terms of the screenplay, dialogue is usually I don't know, I'd put it maybe fourth on the list of things that criteria for a great screenplay.
But there are some really good lines here. We got a great laugh out of it, the.
Great zinger when the character I think it's Mikey who says, yeah, it's always heartwarming to see a prejudice defeated by a deeper prejudice. Come on, that's a good line. But the writing may be the standout here. But where I think Lone Star might be a standout in sales career. And I've seen almost all of his films, but it's been a long time since I've seen a lot of sales films, So I don't know if someone.
Can talk to me after if they've they've seen these films.
More recently, he's he's known as maybe the godfather of American independent cinema. You go back to a film like Return of the Sacaca seven is often a film that's pointed too as the film that launched that movement and the focus. A lot of times, Michael is on independent in that two word phrase independent filmmaker, not so much on the filmmaking. He's not a filmmaker that's known for being ostentatious. He's never trying to draw a lot of
attention to what he's doing with the camera. But when you think about this movie, and when you do think about it in the context of a Western, it makes me think a little bit of a filmmaker like Howard Hawks, who was another filmmaker who didn't move the camera a whole lot, but was always well regarded for being a guy who knew where to place the camera, always knew where to put it in exactly the place it needed to be. And when I watch Lone Star, I feel
like sales one. He knows exactly where to put the camera. But then he also does some interesting things with the camera here, especially in those flashbacks.
The scene that's that's what I want to talk about.
The scene at the end before we even get to the kind of editing and the trick of going between
past and president, which I want to get to. I just needed some of the staging and the blocking of using some of those low angle shots when he needs to to emphasize the authority and the intensity, the intimidation of Charlie Wade cutting in just on a close up when he needs to really to amp up a scene, the canted angle, he'll go to a tilted shot there at the end when when Sam walks in and we're going to get finally the truth revealed, and especially with
otis young. Otis there at the end right looking up at at at Charlie Wade. There, there's some really effective subtle uses of the camera in addition to the great editing tea.
Yeah it took. I mean Sales never had a lot of money, even when he had bigger budgets for him. I mean this was a somewhat larger budget. And I think part of that is you can't really set up complicated fluid what is you know, medium length takes quickly. You cannot set those up and rehearse them. It takes it takes half a day to and and you're looking at days like shooting schedules like nineteen days and a
lot of his pictures twenty three. I mean, I'm amazing that he got anything done, you know with that, But I yeah, what I really love about about the potential narrative moments of like no, wait, who what you know?
You know, there's a little of that here and there, which is almost entirely solved in my in my view, by that ideas simple as as can be and not original, but really beautifully sort of layered in look at let's let's do the flashbacks in this way this time, meaning you know, for maximum clarity and also just sort of a poetic touch that does not to me seem like a like a tick or a gimmick where you just you know, you have an actual without a break person
in the presence talking about something, shift over here to the bar, and then there's a quick shuffle we don't see behind. Okay, we'll remove this stuff, and then okay, younger so and so is there forty years earlier. And that's a very kind of subliminally satisfying way of handling flashbacks for maximum clarity and something just a little different for him, absolutely that was his I mean, there aren't that many camera moments, aha moments with sales in his
entire career, and that might be wonderful. It was like that beautiful, very simple idea, nicely done it.
And as cinematic as it is.
I wonder, especially with your theater criticis's background, I wonder if you thought it was theatrical, because it made me think about moments on the stage where you might have something on the front of the stage, characters acting, and then they'll lights out on them and the spotlight to someone back here, and it might even be characters from their past or a future moment or something like that, where you're shifting to another part of the stage and
it feels like that sometimes here. Even though it also is based on what makes it effective is the way they're hiding cuts effectively, right, I mean, this is based on the fact that the camera is moving, and I think in almost every instance, if not every instance, there is a cut somewhere there to make it seamless. And the reason why beyond I think just being inherently satisfying. If you think about this film thematically, right, this is a place, these are characters.
This is a story where.
The present and the past cannot be separated from each other. Everybody is at every moment haunted by their past, and some are doing whatever they can to try to move past it, but they can't, and some, by the end of the film, we see them making efforts to, like in the case of Delmore and and his father, right, there is some attempts at reconciliation and change, and even Mercedes moves forward a little bit and we see her helping those characters at the end.
But they can't be separated.
And I'm going to use a phrase that the bartender uses in the film sales. I think is exploring in this film this idea of lines of demarcation, right, And if you can't have that separation, if there is no line of demarcation between the past and present, then there can't be a line of demarcation in the editing either. There can't be that clear cut, There can't be that
clear separation between the past and present. It has to be seamless, and we need to feel like the past and present are constantly in dialogue with each other, and I think the.
Editing pulls that off.
And what I especially love Michael is then we get a moment where the past and present are literally in dialogue with each other when they're by the river, right, because then Chris Cooper actually answers his own question and says, is knee neither right? Right?
This is this is the it's it's the two themes sort of formed the right, the two streams into the river where it's like a past and president, you know, the ghosts of the past. How much can we deny and without or bury him or keeping Barry without going crazy as a as a what a son, a family, a society, all of it, it's all there in this in the story. And it's just just the eternal golf, as Shaw said, George Burnshaw, the eternal golf between parents
and children. And the Brits and and other other countries always thought look down on American drama a little bit, saying the usual you know, family family stuff about the classet falls is in the closet, because of course that doesn't happen in England. You know nobody, but you know, it's it's the great quote from Falkner, right. I think it was originally Requiem for a none. You know, the
past is never dead, it's not even past. And that was in fifty one he wrote that, And then I mean O'Neil gen O'Neil long Day's journeying tonight off on the great play about about the past just not able to you know, you cannot shake it, you cannot bury it. The past is, the present is, and it's the future too. We all try to lie out of that, but life will not let us. And that's that's sales from the
beginning of Mister Calucus seven. You know, how can you resolve your sort of counterculture revolutionary recent past with your complacent present? Even brother who's seen brother from another planet here? Really, I love that film. I just resaw that, and that I mean that begins with that first. I mean, I defy anybody not to stick with that movie past the first five minutes because this opening where this Interstellar you know, played by Joel.
Moore Morton from The Colonel, The.
Colonel, Yeah, lands and he ends up H's just fun to find your landing right by the statue in the in the in the river, and and he's sort of flooded with this sort of supernatural ability to hear and imagine voices of the past in Ellis Island. You know, he's over there and it's just like, Wow, he never really shook this theme, you know, He's just found ways over decades of filmmaking to revisit it, and he never
I agree with you on Loan Star. I don't think Sales ever made a better mosaic film, you know, and he made a lot of them, I.
Believe it or not.
We're actually already pretty much at twenty minutes, so we kind of have to wrap this up. So that's the yeah, all right, all right, let's go. Yeah, he's he's given us that we can keep talking sign you know that's dangerous with film spotting, though, Alex.
This means we can keep talking right when you.
Do there you can just talk from the well, maybe we can get to the ending of the film a little bit and not just the twist necessarily, though we can talk about that too, or the double twists if you will.
But what on these.
Rewatches, having now watched it back to back nights as we both have, what what surprised you?
If anything?
What did you discover on rewatch?
For me, it's and this is where I really would love to hear after I speak very briefly to this, I just how many great small, medium size, not just not just scenes has written, but performances there are.
In this.
And how my my occasional struggle with John Sale's work not less so here than almost any film about whether or not the motor is if the motor's a little less than I want sometimes in terms of the story narrative. But all that seems to be kind of solved by the next moment when I realized good line, good act, good casting, you know, like I mean, that's a you know, you know, it's like I would you know, look, we
see a lot of movies in a year. I mean, you after five in a row where that doesn't have either, you know, you just start thinking there was a time when it was a little easier to find something that really was like well written, you know, whether it's for you or not, or whether it's taking on something interesting that happens to be have this weird, sort of unfortunate, sinister layer of relevance to today. You know, it's but the damn thing holds together, you know. So who I mean,
who's for the first timer? Is I'd like to hear from any any one or two first time viewers of this thing right back right there.
We're gonna give them a mic. What would you like, Michael, what was that? What would you like to hear them chime in on?
Well, I just say just what they what they felt about the first few, Like let's let's hear what you thought.
Yeah, I I feel like it's very interesting, especially now with like Paul Thomas Anderson like putting out another film like one battle after another, and like seeing a lot of like Magnolia in this movie, which is like a very interesting thing, and like again with that idea of like the past not being through with you, kind of that famous quote by William H. Macy in that movie, and just kind of like seeing these like small independent things really like channeling up in the nineties and some
of them getting lost. And I'm really grateful for highlighting this because I've never heard of this movie orgon sales before. Wonderful what's your name?
Thank you? Now? No, thank you.
I'm so glad you said that, because as Michael was talking and using some of those quotes, I was thinking of that line and I couldn't place it. I had that in my head and it's that Magnolia, that Magnolia line.
I did want to talk about the surprise for me one of them was that as well, just thinking about like Ron Canada as as Otis I love watching in this film, and Jill Morton, but Elizabeth Pania who who sadly passed away cancer, and I think twenty fourteenth just doesn't have a false moment at all ever in this film.
But then I will say about about the ending, Michael, I think the first time I saw this film, I was so busy processing it, the revelation and the ramifications of it, that I didn't really think about how perfectly it does tie together all of these ideas we're talking about about the past in present. And she says a line about starting from scratch, which is echoing something that said earlier in the film, right between between Otis and Chet his grandson, where he says that his dad says,
you start, you start from scratch when you're born. And so this is that that whole concept of are you able to or are you someone who can separate yourself from your past? Are you exactly who you create yourself to be or are you a product of your environment and your heritage? Can you carve out your own legacy?
And I don't think.
I don't think sales the great thing about sales as a filmmaker is he's not setting a line of demarcation. He's not a simple enough writer or filmmaker to say it is one or the other. He's challenging all of those. He's challenging that idea. He wants to think about that concept. And at the end, at the end, she's saying, we are for the sake of our relationship and happiness, we are going to pretend that the life before doesn't matter.
We are going to try to start from scratch. And just on that point about lines of demarcation, the character the private right who when they're talking with the colonel, she mentions that she wants to stay in the army and why does she want to stay in the army, And it's because the world outside is chaos. She likes having the rules. She needs the lines drawn right and
he understands that. But back to the ending, they are going to try to move forward in their way, and that line forget the Alamo is kind of the It is so great because it's kind of the movie a nutshell in terms of this idea of men.
Look that also, that's enough, that's the other moment of I think it really inspired I mean, you know it's in writing the credits. He edited, you know, it's written, directed and edited by sales, right, it's and that's a really astute final thirty seconds to have that line not hammered with a close up. Just say it, you believe it, Say it like it just bought it. It's a thought. And then it goes camera goes back to a different chat, you know, forty feet further back and then further back
cut boom. You know that's that's that's where you know, that's right. He's a really good editor too. You know, look here, I'd love to hear one more first time or his reaction, just and just quick briefly, my name is John.
Uh.
The one thing that really stuck out to me, first of all, how relevant all this stuff with the with the immigrants are. It was just incredible. But it's the genre, like I couldn't for the life of me place it. Like I kept thinking was falling into a Western, and then all of a sudden I was in a romance and then I was in a history and like what what what do you guys say about about that genre of this film?
I mean the beauty of it, Yeah, I mean it you know, you could get fancy and call it a you know, like a neo Western noir. But he's made you know, he has come back often far more than to a detective genre, or he's done sales. Is always gravitated toward Westerns of different types and often border related. He's filmed both sides of the border, and he has He's done a lot of TV work, some of it's
been Westerns. I think that's where I think he's compelled to find out, how do we get beneath this sort of old mythic easy black hat white hat thing, uh and just get into some issues that are worth talking about, digging into, you know, just just sort of the racial anime and prejudice and you know, politics, all of it. You know, why not? I mean he does it with plenty of modern days, things like City of Hope. Everyone's seen that similar kind of mosaic structure. But this is
very satisfying. I think that this one, this film, you saw the better film. You know, if we've seen City of Hope, we wouldn't have be half as good a discussion.
So just a couple of things to close on.
Food for thought, Michael, you can see if you think I'm crazy here or not? Just a few things I noted tonight maybe an example of what I'm trying to argue that Sales is potentially theorizing here this idea of not separating purely from the past, but a path forward with the past in mind. The very opening of the film, what what do we find out that the characters, those two characters are doing. He he makes art out of old bullets, right, old bullets are transforming them into something new.
The I love the fact that and we get a great line at the end, right. I love the fact that everybody says this idea of myths. Everybody keeps repeating your mother was a saint, right, just like with Buddy. It's just so easy for everybody to just keep repeating the same line over and over again. It almost becomes meaningless because that's that's just what they know. And they
just keep falling falling back on that. Okay, the drive in the fact that it ends at the drive in, and the fact that we get a flashback earlier at the drive in where they're they're they're dragged out of the car, right, and she even makes a comment about when does the picture start? And I think I'm going to argue that Sales is being a little tricky there that like, the old story is over, the old picture
has ended, and the new picture gets to move forward. Right, that story has ended, the drive in is not showing that movie anymore, right, and they get to start a new one. And then here's my last thing. And I did notice this last night, and here again in that very first flashback, when Hollis is telling.
The story of.
Charlie Wade and Buddy Deeds, he the story ends with Buddy saying as Charlie Wade exits with Hollis, it ends with Buddy saying, unomas servesa por right, And then we come out of the flashback with Hollis saying that line. Hollis is telling them that that's what Buddy said. But at that point Buddy is very clearly not I'm sorry. Hollis is very clearly in the past, not in the bar Hollis as the the way Sales has shot it, Hollis in the past would not have heard him say
that line. So is that the myth making and we that's that's a sign sales Is is sneakily showing us that Hollis doesn't really know the whole truth, because he's fabricating that because he would have never heard that.
Or did Sales just make a.
Mistake or was it connutier.
I don't know who'd for thought.
Excellent questions and a good audience. Thank you, and a great please you veramiliar movie here.
Thank you, Thank you Alex and the Department of Cultural Affairs. This is so much fun. Thank you for coming out from this past November. That was me and Michael Phillips in conversation about John Sales great nineteen ninety six film Lone Star. It followed a screening of the film that was part of the City of Chicago's fiftieth anniversary celebration
of Siskel and Ebert. My thanks to Alex Vasquez everyone in the Chicago Film Office and the Department of Cultural Affairs for inviting me and inviting Film Spotting to be part of that celebration. That is our show. You can find me and Film Spotting on Instagram, Facebook, letterboxed of course YouTube where you can watch our video episodes. All of those platforms. You can find us at film Spotting. Josh is at Larsen on film. Film Spotting is independently
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