¶ Intro / Opening
Will you wait, miss.
Exist Sis.
Sis, Welcome back to midnight viewing and potentially the weirdest fucking episode we've ever done. There's no way to justify this episode, hping. It is neither horror nor anthology. It
¶ Movie Background and Cast
isn't genre related in any way. This is the whitest of white movies. As you pointed out just before we started recording, I don't know that we can come up with anything wider. I suppose we're recording it to tie in with the upcoming television series, the new adaptation of it being done by Tina Fey, and we're very much looking forward to that. But really, there is no reason at all to be watching the four season.
I feel like all of this work that we've done, podcasting, all these episodes we've done together and different series, it's all led up to this point. So I'm excited.
This is the culmination. Is that what you're saying?
Absolutely, it's a culmination of our friendship fall?
Really?
Oh god, what he said? All right, here we go, this is the fourth seasons. Everybody, here's the apple.
Trees did cheese, Here's to cheese.
Red and laughter.
And life itself.
Friendship can be happiness and laughter jealousy and envy.
She's wonderful.
Can't even enjoy hating her? Who the hell needs that anger and disappointment.
I fall in love with this man, and all of a sudden, in addition to him, I've got four constant companions.
It all depends on the season.
We owe the depth, breast, and height of this friendship to the world's most ancient emotions, fear and panic. Universal Pictures presents Alan and Carol Burnette in a story of friendships that grow and blossom, of friendships that change, Like the four seasons.
You can make them fall over.
You're pretty munich. If it worse, I don't believe it. At it again? Oh, you never stopped us till we're going to kill himself.
Why don't you let your anger out once in a while.
I'm not pain for this. This is your expense. These people are vicious, vicious and deal.
Try this.
Now that voice carries How come everyone says I'm paranoid?
Is the Muhammad Ali of mental illness? You boys, don't pull on your ankle for a while. We'll be back here more more more?
Is this a fun part?
Are we having fun yet?
Through?
Winter? Spring? Summer?
Oh? My god?
The head.
I'll catch up and fall now. Wonder what other people do on their vacations. Somehow they survive at all.
Alan Alda, Carol Burnett, Len Carrio, Sandy Dennis, Rita Moreno, Bess Armstrong and Jack Weston. Friendship is like The Seasons, warm, cold, constant, changing, beautiful, The Four Seasons, Written and directed by Alan Alda.
The Four Seasons released on April thirtieth, nineteen eighty one. That makes us how old?
Yikes, that's pretty old.
Let's geez, so I'm saying when the movie came out, my friend, oh.
How old were we? We were eight years old.
We were eight years old, nearly eight years old, and actually premiered. It premiered on the thirtieth, but it didn't get released until the twenty second. The movie is written and directed by Alan Alda, starring Alan Alda, Carol Burnett, Len Carrio, Sandy, Dennis or Rita Moreno, Jack Weston, and Bess Armstrong. That's everybody. I'd like to point out that the cinematographer on the film is Victor J. Kemper, who shot the movies Friends of Eddie Coyle and Dog Day
Afternoon and Peewee's a big adventure and this HP. What was your first experience with this movie? Why are we talking about it?
I don't know that I ever Actually this was on cable pretty heavily at that time. That was probably right around the time that we first got cable TV eighty eighty one, and I was far too young to care about the middle aged crises and happy high jinks of
this group of group of friends. So I'm sure that I saw the trailer for it play endlessly at that time, but I don't to be fair, I don't think I actually really saw the movie itself until you and I had some sort of conversation maybe in the last year, where you might have made a joke about the four seasons and Alan and the sensitivity of it all, and I had a flashback to the trailer with Carol Burnett, and I watched it, and I'm obsessed with it now.
I watched the movie on a loop as a kid.
Did you really what did you make of it? As an eight year old?
I was confused by a lot of it. I was worried that this is what adulthood had in store for me. It seemed like a cautionary tale at just these older white intellectuals with no problems, making up problems, just and doing it in like the most beautiful natural settings and not noticing the fucking forest for the trees. Now, having said that, as joking as I'm being, although I did actually feel that way. I maybe it's from an anthropological standpoint.
The movie came out and we were eight, but I didn't see it till it was on cable, which is probably a year or two later. So we're talking maybe ten, ten or eleven years old. That's when I'm watching this movie over and over again, and I'm just I will say the movie did seem revolutionary in a way because I wasn't seeing anybody talking about relationships in any meaningful way like this. You certainly weren't getting it on network television.
It didn't have the time nor the wherewithal to delve into the sexual politics of people like in their forties or fifty forties. I guess is these are just fucking baby boomers, right, and these are basically our parents. So it was interesting. It was like reading your parents diary in a way.
So kind of it's interesting you say that, because it feels I just had a revelation that this was a precursor to a show like thirty something, which was obviously by the name you can tell it's not about forty something year olds, But that is a show that kind of paved the way for the.
Notion of what they've entertainment.
But in that sense, I think you're right. I think this was maybe a bit ahead of its time. Which the weird irony of that is that this did inspire a TV adaptation in nineteen eighty four. Were you did you know that?
Yes? You did?
Which didn't. The only one who came The only main actor who came back was Jack West, and we'll talk about his character. I think Alan Alda guest starred in the first episode, but he wasn't really involved. It was mostly a new cast and unfortunately I couldn't track down an episode to watch it to see if it was how it stacked up to the movie.
Oh, you know, it was terrible, you know it was.
It looked bad and I can't imagine it went in with the same earnest attitude that the movie had.
But I did say earnest, my god shocked. Jim Varney wasn't in this movie.
I did. However, I did take note that one of the other main characters. One of the main actors in the TV show was Alan Arbus, who we can't seem to get away from Father Malone. He's in everything we review, He's in Crossroads, He's in Taxi. What hasn't the Man done?
Mash Yeah, we're not going to be reviewing that one.
No, not at all, but yeah, no. I think Naval Gazing is an interesting wave because really, ultimately we're going to talk about this movie at length, but there's not a lot of action. This is a very episodic movie about these friends who gather for vacations once a season, but they're really just talking about their friendship, to talking
¶ Seasonal Vacations and Forced Frivolity
about how much they love each other, how much they can't stand each other. They're arguing, they're making up, they're kissing, they're whatever. That's really that's basically the movie in a nutshell right there.
Within a year or two, the Big Chill would come out and do exactly what this movie is trying to do in a massively enteraining way.
I'm stunned that I didn't make that same connection, but you're absolutely right. That was another movie about these long friendships. They're looking back on their lives and with some regret and some whatever. Yeah, it's basically the theme of the Four Seasons, but writ large and with a little more panache, And it really hit the cultural zeitgeist in a way that the Four Seasons. I don't it was a success, but I don't think it really hit the bulls eye the way that The Big Chill did.
See The Big Chill was, although the characters are upwardly mobile and mainly successful in their careers, were basically normal people, whereas this is just a bunch of New York intellectuals. This is basically three separate couples, all who think and talk and act like Alan Alda pretty much.
Do you want to break down these couples though, Let's do it. Yeah, So we have Alan. This is like the dating game. So the first couple is Jack and Kate. They're played by Alan Alda and Carol Burnette. Carol Burnett is his wife in it. He is a lawyer and she is the editor of Fortune magazine. If you talk about intellectuals, I mean, you can't get more intellectuals than that, It's ridiculous. Then we have Danny and Claudia. Danny is played by Jack Weston. Claudia is played by Rita Moreno.
She's playing Italian, which I thought she's playing Italian.
She is her character Italian.
She only says it like every other word. Basically, he is a dentist and she is his successful painter wife. She's a painter, although they don't make much of that. That's kind of dropped. Then the third couple is Nick and Annie. It's played by Len Carriw and Sandy Dennis. He is an insurance salesman who likes to brag that he's an estate planner, and she is his housewife who's scattered and not all that interesting is a character. Unfortunately,
she doesn't really feature too much in this picture. To be honest, I think Sandy Dennis gets real short shrift in this because she's dormat for Nick. But so those are the three couples that we have going on all these adventures.
So those are three couples. We're going to get four seasons. We're going to get four separate vacations that they're going to take together, So we can reasonably assume that they do this every year.
I think. So it's at one point.
Is this movie take place over the span of one year? Is this twenty year summer, winter fall for one year.
It is because in certain seasons they make reference to the previous vacation. So yes, it does take place as far as I can tell, over the course of one year in these characters' lives and as far as their friendship. There's a scene where they talk about how they all met. It's a little unclear, but my sense is they've seven years.
And then years. I was shocked watching the movie this time that they said, do you remember when we met? You came you were a client in my thing seven years ago. I remember the date, and I'm like, wait a minute, These middle aged people met each other half a decade ago. I thought they were like college friends. I thought they grew up together. The fact that they're as entwined in each other's lives as late in their lives as they are gave me so much fucking pause HP.
But it makes sense because there's such an emphasis on friendship and how much they need each other that I'm not surprised that they would cling to each other that desperately, because like, at one point, it almost seems like they need their friendships more than they need their married partners, Like they fall over themselves They're always kissing and hugging each other. I'm not talking about the husbands and wives. I'm talking about Alan Alda is forever kissing an hugging,
len carry you with ebulliance and happiness. But you raise a good point because it's seven years. It's not as if they could share that much of their lives. Let's put it this way. That's a very small percentage of their lives up to that point. If they're in their forties, that's not a lot of time spent together.
So it's you and I have been friends for nearly fucking forty years. When's the last time I grabbed you in a hug and held you aloft? I can tell you never, never, never, but and I love you. You know that?
Absolutely the thing of this these characters, they're so white, but they're really sensualists because everything is the best thing ever early. So it starts out in spring and they're going to a rented cabin in the woods somewhere, and the first night the husbands make supposed to be a gorgeous Chinese meal for the wives, and the food it comes out, I thought, honestly, most of the time they were stoned because everything is so good. Oh, I love this.
And they're bellowing at each other all the time. I love you, Dennis, I love you Denny. Whatever. They everything, they're grabbing life by the balls, fa them alone. They every glass of wine is great. Alan Alda's forever making these like pompous toasts to their friendship and all this kind of stuff. So they're sensualists. They love life basically.
And I don't know where to go with that. That's yeah, they certainly are, Okay, I know where to go with it. Over on the or Anthology podcast, Projection Booth, host Mike White has a particular disdain for cinematic portrayals of drunkenness. They just never get it right. It's always grating to him on a sub atomic level, as is forced frivolity is to me. I spent years in the trenches of art house movie theaters. I've heard all the forced laughter
you can possibly imagine. And there's no worse forest laughter than than the kind found in the Four Seasons. Everything, as you said, nothing is just funny. It's the most hilarious head back of fine slapping you on the back, hirity, We're having fun.
There's a scene where they're floating. This is during summer or spring. They're floating on a lake. They're all lounging. They're eating French bread, which they eat a lot of French bread in this movie. It's a little weird. And they're eating cheese and drinking wine and they're all just having a great time and out of nowhere, like I said, Alan all of his character. Jack gets up and says, I want to make a toast to friendship, to wine. I love you all, and then he sits back down.
Then he gets up and he says, no, no, no, I want to create something memorable for this moment because it's so important to me. And then he finishes drinking his wine and he leaps into the lake fully clothed. This is the funniest thing in the world to every everyone else in the canoe. So funny that Len carry you decides he's going to jump into the lake. So they laugh all over again. Then Jack Weston jumps in the lake, and what do they do? They start laughing all over again.
By the end of it, they're all in the lake, they're all laughing, they're all hugging each other, and they're all just it's like that It's the kind of moment in real life someone jumps in the lake. Maybe you laugh a little bit, but then you say, you're a dumb ass, get out of the lake. This goes on for five minutes of forest laughter that like, this is the funniest thing that they've done ever. And there's about five scenes like that in this whole picture.
Half this movie's run time is forced laughter.
His laughter. I really started, like, in my mind, I thought I had remembered a scene where they got stoned, like one of them had some weed on them and they got stoned and they were raiding a kitchen or something. I think I was misremembering that for another movie, maybe Indian Summer, which is also a good picture. But but no, they just love life and they just everything is funny.
Everything is. It's passion. They're so passionate. They're as passionate as white people can get fatherm alone, which is very passionate apparently.
And they're gonna go to all the white people's shit. They're gonna go. They're gonna go to the Virgin Islands, and they're gonna do it on a fucking rented sailboat. When they go, is it wintertime going up to the cabin. We're gonna go skiing, babe. Fall time, we're gonna go collegiate. We're gonna go play touch football and knock the shit
out of each other. Springtime, of course, we're going to just row out into the middle of a lake and just we're just gonna float there and talk about poetry or something or other.
Yeah, look, we can't forget. I think you mentioned that this was written and directed by Alan Oh. This is what he knew. This is a page out of his life. So it's not a surperfa White he is And this is very much like made reference to Robert Altman, Like, this is a little bit like a Robert Altman movie because there's a lot of scenes of them having conversations
that overlap each other, and that's interesting. But really, the other touchstone I had of this and I'm not making a direct comparaily, I'm making a direct comparison, but I'm not suggesting it's inspired by or but this is a little like a Woody Allen movie without the sort of some of the charm that maybe Woody Allen would bring to something like this, the quirkiness of it. Joe, this is right, This is at no time during this movie do you forget that Alan Alda wrote it, because it's
they all sound like him, right? You said that already all the characters sound like Alan, all including Allan al.
He has managed to make the way he talks just different enough in each character's mouths. He's given them all a different kind of tick. And then of course the actors are bringing whatever they're bringing to it. But basically it just sounds like the different personalities of Allen. This is inside out Pixar's inside out Alan Alden.
This is But having said that, though one thing I was struck by is I was watching this is. None of this is to say that the performances are bad. They're actually really good for the most part, because he's got good actors. And I have to say that. So Carol Burnett has a lot to do because she's Alan all his wife in the movie. But she whether it's just the times, but she reminded me of just about every female friend of my parents from around that time.
Every house we would go over, we would hang out, and my parents would have their adult friends. She was exactly like those women that I remember, the same short haircut, the same kind of mousey looks or whatever, and the same sense of humor.
She really needs, the attitude the I'm not going to take that, give me that ticket, fuck you cop like that friend.
Yeah, absolutely, So from that perspective, I actually thought it was kind of true to life, despite the fact that it's she's saying a lot of things that Alan Alda is telling her to say. But it did stylistically and visually. She definitely reminded me of a lot of my parents, the wives of the friends that we would go and hang out at their house.
Over on the weekly roundup. Just this past one. As a matter of fact, I re reviewed Bednoms and Roomsticks from nineteen seventy one, ten years earlier than this film, starring Angela Lansbury. Now, in between those two time periods, Angela Lansbury would perform the part of Missus Lovett and Sweeney Todd on Broadway. Her co star and during that run is Lenn Carrio. In fact, he had just ended his run as Sweeney Todd when he made this movie HP. For the past forty years, I have been listening to
Len Carrio performing that part on that soundtrack. I own it on vinyl, I own it on cassette tape. I owned it on CD and somehow had forgotten or never really made the connection that that guy singing all those years is this guy in this movie, and was kind of knocked out that it was him.
And I got to tell you, he's very good. He is. There's no villain in this movie because they're all villain. He really is because it's his decision to divorce his wife Annie sets basically the main driving sort of inciting
¶ New Love Interest
incident into action. So they get together during the spring and he confides Len Carrier's character Nick confides in Alan Alda's character Jack that he's not been happy with his wife for decades. They just ever celebrated that forever. They just had their twenty first wedding anniversary and that's what he says. They're out oraging for firewood, other white guy type thing to do.
Oh my god, the whitest thing because Len Carrier or alan Alda has one of those canvas stacks that's two sticks and you hold it open and you drop a wood into it. It's like, boh, got this at ll Bean.
So he confides to It's a really good scene because Lenn Carry is a really good actor.
There and they have to walk and talk through a fucking forest. Nice job, Allan, Yeah, but you know you have. What he has to do is he feels like he finally has to divorce his wife. And Alan Alda, I'm just gonna call them by their actors, guy, because yes, come on.
Now, So Alan Alda being Alan all this is why don't you guys try to work it out. You guys can talk it out, and but Len carry you just says, look, I've been trying for twenty years. She's not going to change. And to be fair, everything we know about this wife of his, Sandy Dennis, I wouldn't want to be married to her either. She seems boring, she seems dull. She takes her thing is she takes pictures of sliced vegetables. That's she's a housewife who doesn't really have a job.
And the point that he makes is that she just she's so stable, she's inert, he says, because she's got no fire, there's no spark. She doesn't excite him. She never excited him. So while we have we should have sympathy for him that he deserves to be happy. He was lonely for the last twenty years. At the end of the day, the other couples feel betrayed by him divorcing his wife because they're a package deal, right, He's six couples. These three couples always go on a trip together.
And what happens is the following trip, which is summertime. Now we get introduced to his new love interest, a much younger woman played by Bess Armstrong. She named Jinny.
And I think that Bess Armstrong was like one of the most popular actresses in the world at this moment because she seemed to be in everything right on this time period.
She did seem to be in an awful lot of movies. She was in this she was in High Road to China with Tom Selik. After the fact, she was in Barefoot in the Park with Richard what's.
His name, Richard Thomas.
Richard Thomas, Yes, thank you. She did seem to be on the come up, but then she kind of d just three D with Dennis Quaid. Absolutely, and but she's very charming. I think she's a very winning personality as an actress. Would I wonder myself where she went?
Well, folks younger than us will answer that question immediately and let us know that it was my so called life. She's the mom in that.
Oh okay, there you go. But she sort of went away and then she was in a movie that actually I really liked a lot called Diamond Men. Have you ever seen it?
I have.
She it's a fantastic little I mean this little mini review anyone who's out there. It's got Robert Forrester. People know him from Jackie Brown that was his big comeback role. But she's in it. One of the Wallbergs, Donnie Wahlberg is in it, but he's actually pretty good.
Yeah, he's the one that can act.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So anyway, she that was what I saw the first thing I saw her in in Forever, because I did, I'm not gonna watch, but she's very good in this. So she has she's the younger woman that kind of comes in to replace Annie Nick's wife. And again, like I said, that sets everything in motion because from that point on, she's now part of the deal with this guy, and everybody sort of not only do they resent the
fact that this guy's divorced his wife. They don't think that's fair, but they're all a little bit jealous of Jinny of Bess Armstrong because she's beautiful, she's young, she's half their age for goodness sake. So like I said, she's gorgeous in this she's really.
Gorgeous and she's sweet. That's the other problem that they're grappling with. They want to hate her more than anything, just for what she represents. But as a person, she's actually pretty decent.
Yeah, it would be easy if she was a bubble headed nafe, but she's actually very nice. She's very fair. She tries to be a good person and a good friend to these people.
And yeah, and in that regard, I applaud alan Alda for going that route and making her more complex than just he went and got himself a young dummy, and now I often to deal with a dummy.
Well, he makes the other couples look really bad because they're always making little comments, not even behind her back to the prickery man, right to her face, and he at the same time he the characters take themselves to task like why do we say that? Because I think every just about every other person in the cast says or does something really terrible to her through the course of this movie, and almost immediately they feel terrible about
it because she is such a nice person. This character ginny well.
Dramatically construction wise, it's great because here's here, We've got this character who represents everything that lost in their lives, and in some cases it is spurring jealousy in amongst them. That's the alan all. This character thing isn't even so much like he wants to sleep with young best Armstrong. It's that he wants to be Len Carrio. He wants to be living this care free lifestyle and not part of the unit anymore.
And his wife, Carol Burnette, takes him the task.
She notices it immediately.
Yeah, And there's a scene with them on the boat where she basically says, look, I get it. Your fantasy is to be worshiped by a much younger woman. It's okay, have your fantasy. But he he gets upset, and one of the things that she is annoyed by this character is that he won't ever let himself get angry. So they're having this discussion where he should be his ire should be raised, but because he's this buttoned down white guy, he won't let himself get upset and be fiery, and
that really frustrates her. But through that scene she he's describing the fact that she's younger, and how she notices that Alan Alda's character is sucking his stomach in and he's combing his hair and he's shaving. I swear to you fogg them alone. There's like a tear in Carol Burnette's eye when she's saying this, because she's a little bit sad that she's not the one inspiring all of this, all these behavioral changes. I thought that was really kind of marvelous.
Yeah, I mean, ultimately I'm going to bag on this movie, but not because of the performances at all, and not because of the some of the dramatic scenarios that the movie is able to present. Some of these are tough questions that needed to be asked amongst couples at this time. Everyone has to eventually examine their own relationships and everything. And it may have been revolutionary at the time, at least, like I said, it felt to me it was when I was ten. What the fuck did I know then?
But going back now, it's, yeah, we get it. We all know this, like you can all should have figured this shit out before they got married.
But at the same time, I don't know, we're going to I continue, like you said, to knock this movie pretty hard. I think it's mostly because of the foibles
¶ Sandy Dennis
of the characters. It's the little quirks and the little bits of humor that all the injects, not always successfully. But I do agree with you that the fact that he's having Tom ask these questions and look at life from these different perspectives is very commendable because there weren't a lot of look I told you offline that I watched a ciscl and Ebert review of the Four Sees from that time, and they both really enjoyed it so and they raised the same kinds of points that we are.
That it's kind of refreshing a to have a movie that is is adult in nature and execution, and b have it not be have it delve into some really interesting questions about life and about relates. I have to tip my cap to Alan Alder for doing that. As kind of stereotypically sensitive and white as it is, I still kind of appreciate it on that level.
He was asking pertinent questions about his generation and using his cloud to get a movie made. A movie that couldn't We always say, oh, that movie couldn't be made now because of some sort of subject matter. But here's a movie you couldn't make now, because no one's going to make a movie about naval gazing white people trapesing around the fucking globe and put it out theatrically.
But the Netflix thing is interesting, though.
Right, And I think all of and as I said, there's a lot of good here in this movie, and I think there's a lot to be mined out of the good parts of it, and I'm curious to know what those things are. I have nothing but faith in the team that's mounting the television version. It's just that this one sometimes makes me want to stab myself in the skull before we go any further. But we're not
probably going to talk about her anymore. Sandy Dennis, because she's the's She only appears in one season, Springtime, before she divorced by Lynn Carrio. She's a decade before this movie. A little more than a decade before this movie. In nineteen sixty eight, start in one of my favorite movies of all time called Sweet November with Anthony Newley. It was eventually remade with Keanu Reeves and Michael Rosenbaum. That's not a good movie. Go watch the one from nineteen
sixty eight. It's fucking heartbreaking and she is so good in it, the original manic Pixie dream girl. So that's why anyway, as so, I just want to throw it out of my own little mini review there Go Wants Sweet November.
Everybody, she has the most thankless I already said this pretty much, but she has the most thankless part because her character is for me, she's one of the most unlikable out of all of them because there's just nothing she just and this is why Lenn Carrie you wanted to divorce her in the first place. She's just kind of not a very exciting person, not a very interesting person. We do see her a little bit in Fall. It's true because in Fall we're skipping all over the place.
But in Fall, the same group of couples they go to visit well, first they visit their daughter, their daughters at college. I don't know what college. But when they get there, I think at this point Ginny has been I don't I think she's actually married to Let carry
you now. But Sandy Dennis's characters, they're also it's parents weekend at this college, so there's a little bit of an interesting confrontation between the two of them, and then you find out that the other women, the other wives, have not been keeping up contact with her just because she's kind of not she's not part of the group anymore. And it's an interesting scene because she basically calls them out and says, look, I feel like you guys have
left me. You've left me out to dry, like I'm just I'm history now, and they all feel bad about that, and you find out a little bit more about what she's been up. It's really sad because she the thing everybody's worried about most is when they get this divorce. They're not wororried about him because he's like a womanizer and they don't really care much about that part of it. But she's the one who will be more affected by
the divorce. It's not a divorce that she wanted or asked for, so she's left to pick up the pieces of her life. And you just by her talking, you find out like she she has a pet snake for some reason, because just a set of lost in life and she's trying to figure herself out again. She's making a plan to go to Czechoslovakia because she's never wanted to go to Czechoslovakia, which is weird. But I guess anybody who's been confronted with a life change dramatic like this,
I guess it makes you do funny things. But it is a thankless part. And I suppose she does the best with what she could with it, but it doesn't really engender much interest from me anyway.
I do feel bad for her, but I also know that she spent three years photographing vegetables with no plan on doing anything with it. Yeah, so, and had finally come up with the idea of pairing the vegetable.
And we're supposed to not like, let carry you, because we do find out because when he's had this conversation all around all the time, when yeah, Alan always like you got somebody in the wings, don't.
You, He's like, oh, I swear, I swear I don't have anyone in the wings, and they're just like, yeah, okay, sure pal.
But then you find out that Danny the dentist found out because the guy was under sedation at his dentist office, so he told them these things while he was under the influence of the laughing gas, which is kind of funny, but.
I would like to have seen that scene. Actually.
Yeah, and Jack Weston is really the comic relief of this whole picture, I think there because, yeah, he's the he's sort of the bumbler. He's this sort of anyone who, well, we've all seen Jack Weston. Of course, he was in Wait Until Dark, which we covered in Cable Box Theater. Was Cable Box Theater, was it not?
Yeah? Of course.
Okay, he is a like I said, he's a dentist. But his character quirk is that he's a hypochondria who. He's the oldest one of the bunch, and as he gets older he feels his mortality more keenly. So he's always talking about he doesn't want to do this, he's afraid he gets sunburned, and he's complaining and all this
kind of stuff. And he's also the one and I think every friend group maybe has someone like this who's endlessly keeping track of how much everyone owes in terms of, Okay, we're going out to dinner, you only thirteen dollars, you only twenty five, you only whatever. And they always give him a hard time because of that role that he's imposed on himself.
That would be annoying if they were friends for life, the fact now that they've only been friends for seven years and they're these aren't like I guess they're wealthy enough in all, but shelling out a lot of fucking money on these trips, Matt.
And they're fucking up a lot of stuff too. They're breaking a lot of things on there.
They fucking But they destroy the front of that boat.
Yeah, they destroy the boat because the anchor gets stuck and len carry you fancies himself a sailor, and he tries to back the boat out, but it snaps the railing off the front of it. And then they get beached on a sandbar and they have to sit there with the boat tilted at a weird angle.
Then they shout, all in that boat the sandovar, Yeah to forty nine foot y'all from the oof of Fox collection. It was created in nineteen fifty two.
Those are some good notes. You got their bottom alone.
I go deep when it comes to nauticle.
But in every single vacation destination, I think maybe summer might be the one exception. I don't remember what they did in summertime to destroy whatever they've got going on. I was, oh, that was summertime. Oh, that's right, that the boat was. I'm thinking of autumn. I'm thinking of fall.
Sorry, while they demolished my will to live by talking to their daughters at their uptight Wesleyan stand in universities.
Both daughters, by the way, were alan Alda's actual daughters. Yep, but they're not playing sisters there actually childhood friends. One of them is alan Alda's daughter in the movie. The other one is Lenn Carru's daughter who has been She's depressed because of the divorce and nobody much likes her anymore. She's morose. She talks about the only friend she had tried to commit suicide, and she's miserable.
And she's just like her dad, like this not so failed threat. I'm getting ready to do myself in here, pops. This is where it becomes clear that Len Carrio is actually the villain of the piece, at least alan Alda has decided he is now because his decision has not only fractured their friend group, but he's decimated his daughter's future potential.
True, but as the seasons progress, and by the way, his reaction to her being Morou's whether or not she's being overly dramatic.
She's clearly depressed. Look at the way she's dressed. For God's sake. His response is to do that. I know you're gonna smile in there, that smile Like I wanted to snab him so badly. I wanted to put him in a chair, cut his throat, drop him down, and cook him into a pie.
Yeah, he's not likable. But to be fair, though, what I was going to say was like, it's all of the ire isn't exclusively directed at Lenn carry you, because as the seasons progress, they all get annoyed at everybody else, particularly this guy, Danny Jack Weston's character, because his obsession with all these negative the death and his ailments and the fact that he has to be the being counter
for every aspect of their vacation greets on them. And then Alan Aldack accuses him of being paranoid, which he is, but that just makes him more paranoid because now he thinks that everybody thinks he's paranoid. So it's and it's a mystery to me how someone like him gets married to somebody like Rita Moreno, which was a little odd because look, Rita Moreno was fifty years old when she made this, but she could pass for someone fifteen years younger.
Oh easy, I had no idea. She looks fantastic, and she's Italian.
Which she's not. We all know that she's actually Puerto Rican. That graded on me too because she's not. But because one of her character traits is that she says things without thinking about them, like hurtful things. She will say something and then someone will be very hurt by it, and then when people say, well, why did you say that to her, her defense is well, I'm Italian, which eventually leads to Jack Weston doing a classic bellowing scene where they're in a hotel room and he opens up
the window and says, my wife's Italian. Do you hear that? Now you don't have to ever say that you're Italian again, and he storms off. It's really it's kind of her defining character trait, but she does her mormans despite that, is actually really soulful in a lot of ways. So there's a moment where during the summer vignette Let's call it, where Len Carry You and Bess Armstrong have really been making things awkward. First of all, they're fucking all night keeping every loudly.
Loudly about that HP. If I'd known you for any amount of time and you did that, the next day, you and I would have words.
It was so I didn't understand it because they're all
¶ Seasonal Transitions and Vivaldi's Music
kind of tiptoeing around it, but like.
And like making little tittery jokes about it. It's like, hey, can you two not fuck so loud? We're all here right.
Pretty much, but so that's they're fucking all the time. At one point they go skinny dipping and playing view of everybody, and len Carryu is giving her a little gift every day of the vacation, which is driving most of them nuts. But they have this conversation where Rita Moreno's character actually is the only one to say, you know what, I'd kind of like to be them. I'm
kind of jealous of that what they have. She's the only one who says, because they've all been married for twenty years at this point, they've.
All and follow out of love is awesome. So yeah, she gets it.
Yeah, well knows. She's recognizing the fact that after you've been married to someone for ten, fifteen, twenty years, some of the passion, if not a lot of the passion has probably gone out. It's just it's inevitable. You've been waking up next to this person for twenty years. So for her to say I kind of like to have what they're having, it was kind of like a nice, wistful moment of lucidity from the character.
I agree, it's that's one of my favorite moments. You know, it's not one of my favorite moments of any movie ever.
The Valdi, Well, that's the big hook of this movie, right.
Isn't it? Isn't it? Though? I can't stand Antonio Vivaldi. It's like the Musac of classical music. This is like the most accessible barring tunes ever. It's all fucking strings and all horns. Man, I just I cannot stand it. Well what I don't?
I agree with you to a point. But what makes it worse in this case is that the transition to every new season is depicted by or it's introduced by a montage. So if it's summer, it's a lot of images of flowers, sunshine, lakes and whatever, which, but loudly soundtracked by the Vivaldi piece that matches that season. But it happens in if this were a play, like a theatrical play, you would understand it because they need that time to strike the set, change costumes, get ready. But
this to me is like time wasted. I get it. We transitioned into winter. You don't have to show frozen leaves or ice or icicles hanging off of a snowy roof. That grated on me more than the music in Isolation.
HP. Do you remember Christopher film The Big Picture?
I well not, yes, in the broad Strokes, but it's been many years, and so.
Before Waiting for Guffman and before the improv everything. Yeah, he wrote and directed a movie about a Kevin Bacon stars as a young film school student who has graduated and made his first short film and he's attracted studio interest and he's trying to get a movie made. It's all about the foibles of trying to get that movie made and all the perversions of his original intention, and he replaces his friends on the crew and it becomes
a movie about this, that and the other. It's really, really a great film, and I encourage everyone to see it, if only because Jennifer Jason Lee is so fucking adorable at the end, but the movie, he's trying to make seems to me to be The Four Seasons. If you watch the movie, you'll see what I mean. It's about three middle aged people in a snowy cabin working out their relationships. And it's two guys and a girl, so they've had interesting couplings over the year, and like it's
the Four it's the Four Seasons. And thank god the studio was trying to turn that into Abe and the Babe, where Abe Lincoln and they rules team up.
I don't remember that. That's awesome. Yeah, look, I don't know. The thing of it is, I've watched this movie probably about three or four times over this past weekend, kind of once to just take notes and a few times just to reaquaint myself with the rhythms of it and everything. And the weird thing is, the more I watch it, the more i'm I kind of dig it. It's like a hangout movie to me. Now, like they're they're very
low stakes. I mean beyond the fact that we're talking divorce, and that's a terrible thing, but it's a low stakes movie. It's the actors are good enough that they can sell the fact that they're friends with each other. It's over the top there. There's a lot of shrieky laughter and over the top affection for each other and whatnot. But I don't know. The funny thing happened on the way to this podcast is I was a little armed by it bottom alone.
That's interesting. It was not the exact opposite happened. Everything I thought I liked about the movie turned out to be a grading nightmare, and I'm now able to appreciate basically the performances. I appreciate the movie as a kind of retro time capsule of nineteen eighty one and what
white people were up to. And I will say this, what I did notice this time around is that as kind of elitist intelligentsia literati, as much of that group as we're being shown, what I noticed is everything that they were like eating and kind of obsessed with would eventually settle in with the rest of America. So, yeah, they're making this like making this Chinese dish to begin, and yes, they are going crazy for it. I agree, Oh,
this is the greatest thing ever. But you got to remember in nineteen eighty one, like, where were you getting anything other than regular old American food other than these people who are these defeat snobs, who you wouldn't want to piss on if they were on fire. But at least they were ahead of the curve culturally when it comes to mixing and mingling and fusion.
They're so white that when check questioned is cooking this meal, this Chinese meal, his apron is a reproduction of the New York Times Living section. It's like a recipe printed all.
Wearing the three men in the kitchen, and they all have the individual aprons.
What's up which? But if you think about it, though, that's actually that's also something that's a little enlightened about. It is the men are in the kitchen cooking this epicurean delight while the women are doing what would maybe traditionally at that point been a man's thing, which is they're all chewing the fat, talking about life or whatever while the men are slaving away in the kitchen. That's but at the same time they are defeat snobs, to
your point, so I would expect nothing less. And in fact, when they then transitioned to this idyllic boat scene before they all jump into the lake, what are they talking about? They're the thing we're introduced them to talk about. What we have for our next meal. Oh, let's make an Indian meal. Let's oh no, how about something Hesian? No, no, no, I have it chicken Florentine on it. They're so into
the food, and I think you're right. I think this was sort of presaging that that that sort of idea of the gourmet not really a fad, but gourmet food became a big deal in America. It kind of made its way from the elitist sort of New York dilettants and eventually became, like you would the cookbooks were a big deal at the time. We don't really see cookbooks anymore, but that was cookbooks were like best sellers in the eighties, right,
because everyone wanted to have a unique gourmet. Well, this was kind of an early look at that kind of cool.
Four years after this, Jed Nelson would go sushi. When confronted with a bento box of sushi that Molly Ringwalld is eating. That is how foreign the idea of sushi was. He didn't even know what it was.
¶ The Upcoming Netflix Series
You can get sushi at the mall now and in the breakfast club. It was considered like, oh my god, she's so she's so upper crust she brought a sushi dish to her detention.
Also, can you imagine anything more disgusting? Can I eat? I don't know, Guva du tro? You kidding me? That's all I want to eat? Motherfucker.
So I guess what I'm kind of getting at is there there's This movie isn't for everyone, that much is clear, But.
This movie for HB Nostalt people like us.
Well, I don't know, because I think anyone who might have been a contemporary of Alan Alda and the people in this movie either dead or they're just old. I don't think it's for them because they've aged passed where this is revolutionary. I honestly, well, it's for somebody because Tina Fay saw enough in this that she decided to make a Netflix mini series based off of this idea. So it's for somebody. It didn't just vanish into thin air, so Tina Face saw it and thought it was worth it.
So that just makes me think Tina Fay saw this as a youth and then remember it later and when I think we could do better than that.
I so, I assume you watched the trailer for it.
I have not.
You have not? Okay, Well, then I won't. I will say nothing more, but yeah.
Oh go ahead, noting a fucking podcast for that reason.
Yeah, well, okay, I just didn't want to poison your thinking. I'm I'm always going to be optimistic because I think she's a really good writer and Steve Carell. The cast looks great, right, Steve Carell, Coleman Domingo, isn't it is that his name? And Will Fourte, which is totally bonkers as far as I'm concerned, because he's a weird guy at least that's who he portrayed on SNL a is. But first of all, this is going to be a
mini series. Like it was enough that all four seasons were covered in a ninety minute movie and that was enough. I'm questioning how much it needed to be expanded upon to make this a mini series. First of all, that's not how many episodes. I want to say four maybe four one for each season, but maybe six our each I gotta look this up now, eight part eight eight?
Oh my, two episodes per season? Maybe we get two.
Years seems a little ambitious. For lack of a better phrase, I'm down it might lean a little bit heavy into the slapstick, but I don't know. I'm not convinced. It seems like maybe it's a it's too little to cover over eight episodes, but but I could be wrong. I think everybody involved knows what they're doing. But anyway, I guess ultimately the point is you asked the question, who is this for? Short story long, I don't know who
the fuck this is for anymore. I would not have even thought to watch it again if it weren't for you making some kind of offhand comment about it and me going, I remember that movie. Holy shit? Was that a like awful and sensitive and earnest as I remember it? And yes it is. But despite that, personally I was a bit charmed by it, but you had the opposite reactions, so I don't know.
There are charms to be had there. But overall, it's just as a curiosity I can appreciate. I can recommend it as a curiosity. I don't know it that I would. I would recommend it as anything, but because there is no story going on here. It's just a bunch of middle aged white people examining their lives.
Good for you, guys, But as we already said, there weren't a lot of pictures or movies certainly not TV shows that went into that area or examined the lives of these people. Put aside the fact that, yeah, these are white people, affluent white people from New York.
There weren't a lot of stuff films that were popular at this time either. But why do you have to go there?
Why do you have to go there? Applaud his effort Alan, all his efforts to get the same look. He wrote it, he directed it, and he started it. That's pretty cool, look, man.
I can appreciate what do you appreciate about this movie? But I don't know that I could tell anyone else to go watch this movie thinking they would have that same experience. I don't know that anyone else there's looking for the Alan Alda earnestness fucking extravaganza that is the Four Seasons. If that is your jam, well then jump on in. The Alda is fine.
I think if you go into this thinking to yourself, all this is going to be so bad, It's good. I'm gonna laugh at all these silly motherfuckers, you probably will get out of it exactly what you put into it. In that sense, and there's a lot to laugh at here. This is dated. The fashions are dated, the attitudes are dated,
the music is dated, the cinematography is dated. For Yeah, but I don't know that there's, Like I said, there's an earnest this to the proceedings that it kind of kept it for me from shading all the way into outright camp. This isn't like The Room with Tommy Wiseu, where he was like an alien who didn't understand basic human emotion or how to make a watchable movie. This is somebody who had a handle on the technical aspects of movie making and wrote a good for its time script.
It has some interesting things to say about relationships and life and love during period and maybe even applicable somewhat to modern audience. We'll see what the Netflix series. I don't know.
Yeah, I'm definitely gonna recommend everyone wats the Netflix series and see this if you and have nothing to do and it's a Sunday, very narrow Recommendation's the only way I could recommend them for is if you have nothing to do and it happens to be Sunday. Well, all right, that's gonna wrap this one up. This is just a one off. I don't know, we're gonna be doing this one again, HB. Where people can find you? Where? HB? Where can people find you? If they're looking for you?
Well, when I'm not thinking about my own mortality, you can find me elsewhere. On the weirding Way Network, I co host the Night Mister Walters Taxi podcast alongside my erstwhile co host Father Malone. Over here, I host the Noise Junkies music podcast. That's been fun to do. Check that out if you like music. I'm an occasional guest on the Culture Cast with Christashi and I also have a band camp site. It's Hpissickplace dot bandcamp dot com.
That's it. That's where you can find And how about you Father Alone.
I go to a Patreon dot com slash Father Alone episodes early and commercial free, and other series like Cable Box Theater that HB and I do. As for everything else, I don't know. Just weirding Way Media. That's where all the stuff is. I guess just say something ernest here at the end, something pithy.
I don't know.
I'll just drop something in basically anything from Alan Older.
This isn't a war, it's a murder.
This is a a war. It's avoid.
Still ste siss s s s stasistence,