Casey on Spring Breakers

Um no, I'm doing good. It was it was really fun to revisit this movie because it's been at least five or six years since I last saw it, so and um, yeah, I don't know, it's it's I guess it's it's weird to watch it now in the context of social distancing in Corona and to see man all the sweaty bodies and close proximity and the whole spring break you know thing. Yeah, So, just to catch everyone up here, we are. I am on my daughter's spring

break right now. And I said those two words in case he said, well, hey, let's do spring Breakers because I didn't have an episode for tomorrow, like this is we're cutting it close here. It's Thursday afternoon, day before release. And you said spring Breakers. I had never seen it for some weird reason. I always kind of meant to

and didn't. And uh so I watched it last night and I have re titled it now um and I'm glad I watched it now that I have a daughter because the new the new working title is um every Father's Nightmare, yeah, or just every parent's nightmare parents in general. Probably um youthful debauchery and just uh oh god. It was hard hard to get through, honestly, and you know I was. Here's my deal with spring break and this scene. I went on my high school spring break to Panama

City where one year where it was debauchery. I mean, it wasn't quite like this, but because this is just really over the top and gross. But I'm sure it is this way in places, but it was our version of of high school debauchery. I didn't take part because I was a good kid in high school. I didn't turn bad until later. Uh. And you know it was fine, but like this scene, there's nothing I would want to do less than the stuff I see in this movie. Yeah,

I I feel me, kill me right. I found myself just thinking like this just looks terrible, Like, um, no, thank you. Yeah. Even even if you could like detach yourself from responsibilities and and and all that kind of stuff and find yourself in that place again with the opportunit unity to do it again, at this point, you would not choose to do that. It's like, that looks terrible,

but the young girls no, no, no. Yeah. But at the same time, I think the movie does a really interesting thing where on the one hand, it's it's clearly like it's not presenting it as something that looks all that enticing. I would say, yeah, in a way, it's satire, but I feel like it's not necessarily ironically distanced or

that it's judging the characters. I think it actually adopts their point of view of just youthful naivete and and that for them when they like there's there's a voice over at one point where um, one of the girls says, uh, maybe it's faith. Um she says, you know, I think this is like the most spiritual place I've ever been. And that could be a commentary and a laugh line and sort of like a critique of limited her worldview is or something. But I think really more fundamentally it's

something genuine and true that she's expressing. And I think it's even something that the film is kind of allowing to to pass without commentary as this kind of sincere thing, Like there is something to this like right of spring, release of like pent up sexual energy and all all the rest of it, just the partying and the craziness, Like even though it very quickly turns bad and into excess and all of that, and there's all these negative consequences, Like,

there is just something instinctual and kind of pure about that expression of like youthful energy, even if it gets channeled into all these messed up things. Um, I think the film wants to acknowledge, you know, and and not like condescend towards it necessarily. Yeah, I totally agree. I think it's interesting once you strip away all of the sort of any artifice of this film. And we'll talk about the the music video aesthetic and the color palette,

which is all like kind of cool stuff. But if you strip all that away, to me, it's two things. It's it's a movie about these lost girls who aren't so far off from people in his earlier films. They're not quite the trailer park people, but they're not a million miles away either, who are sort of trapped in

this mundane existence of small town nothingness. So it's that, and it's also just a very straight ahead sort of trophy crime movie like it it hits all the notes of movies we've seen before of the group that gets in over their head and one is kind of the ringleader and one doesn't feel so good about it, and all of a sudden, they're in way too deep and you know, bad things are going to happen, and they do. Like it's very sort of by the numbers, but it's

just dressed up in this MTV spring break party aesthetic. Uh, it's a great effect, I think. Yeah. He he definitely like it's his most kind of can eventually plot driven I think, so you could say, uh, at the same time while remaining very kind of like floaty. And you know, we can talk a lot about how it's structured and the way that it kind of doubles back on itself all the time, and there's all these recurring shots, recurring phrases.

Um you know, yeah, you know. He talks about how he wanted to structure the film almost like a song, you know, where there would be samples and loops and like verses and choruses and um. And that the whole film. I mean, it's almost all waldomal music. You know, there's always like score or source music or something happening and um. And just like the way he uses the voiceover to kind of develop these themes and move from one section

to the next and so on. Um, he does a similar kind of thing that we saw, for instance, in The Limey, where he'll film a conversation and multiple locations and kind of cross cut between them and you get the sense that, you know, maybe this is somebody's hazy memory of a conversation that happened at some point during that day, but it's unclear exactly when, and we're kind

of seeing multiple angles of it. Um. So Yeah, on the one hand, he does use all this kind of as a framework for a pretty conventional crime story of like, like you said, people in over their head and then rival drug dealers and a big shootout at the end and all that. But I think that's just kind of the window dressing. I think you know, what he's really at here is is something different, is trying to find a different way to structure a film or to make

a film or to express these kinds of ideas through film. Um, with the kind of conventional plot just sort of being like a little bit of a backbone, a little bit of something to grab onto. Um. You know, I would compare this film very closely with like a lot of later Malick films. Um. In fact, Malik made a film really just a year or two after after this one came out, although he was shooting it really at the same time that this one was being shot and around

twelve Um called Night of Cups. And yeah, it's it's one of my favorite Malik films. Um. But a lot of people really don't like it, and a lot of people just haven't seen it period. But um, there's a lot of similar ideas about very briefly and Knight of Cups is about a guy who was working in the film industry as a screenwriter. It's based very loosely off of Malik After Days of Heaven, where he was like

playing script doctor for a minute. And um, it's basically Christian Bale plays this guy, and it's it's about him being this womanizing, you know, just living life to the absolute excess kind of character and the complete like emptiness that he feels inside from this where he thinks he's this is what's going to make him happy and it really doesn't. And um it's told in a very similar way where uh, you know, it's it's very musical, it's there's hardly ever any really dialogue scenes. It's all just

kind of fragments and so on. Um he uses like this some of the same cameras, these low grade digital cameras that Korean uses from time to time in this film. Malik also uses in that film, um so I you know that the two films share a lot of DNA. However, Mali's film there is no conventional narrative to like grab onto, So it's just two too and a half hours of like complete just you know, floating from one thing to the next, and if you pay super close attention, you'll

see kind of a development happening. But you know, if you're if you're not like all the way in, it's just going to seem like two and a half hours of you know, people on beaches and people in cars and keep leving meaningless sex and and all that kind of stuff. So I think this is directorially one of Harmony Korean's stronger films. Um and I got like Sofia Copela vibes at times. Although he made this before bling Ring, I think bling Ering is a sort of slightly tamed

down version of this movie. And uh, I also got a little bit of a gust fans and vibe here and there, which I come to think of it, His earlier films definitely evoke guest fans and I just never really thought about it before. Yeah, and Larry Clark, to who, of course, you know, collaborated on Kids and the whole idea of like, what did he write kids? Harmony Crean

wrote wrote Kids. Um, he was just like a skater hanging out in New York City and Larry Clark was photographing skaters and they started talking and Crean told him like, oh, I want to be a filmmaker. I've got this idea for a movie or whatever. And it just kind of developed very quickly from there, and Karina was like, or something, he's really young. I love that movie and I saw it in New York when it came out in the theater, and that really launched him. Is one of the great

young weirdo you know, avant garde experimental type filmmakers. The success of that film, which was made very cheaply and and did you know, relatively well at the box office. It was like an indie sensation, very controversial. Everybody was talking about it, so it got that kind of attention and right up and so on. Um, that got Korean kind of like not a blink check, but a million dollar check anyway to go make whatever he wanted to make. So he made Gummo, which I still think is like

his best film. Um, and spring Breakers kind of comes at a point where his career had kind of been on the decline for a while. He had a period after Gummo where he got really heavily into drugs. He yeah, he Um. I think there was like a couple house fires where you know, he almost died and um, various things that he was working on were like lost in

those fires. Some of this might be Korean's sort of like self mythologizing, because he likes to kind of, you know, been the truth and and invent stories about himself and kind of make things sound a little more outrageous than sometimes they are. At least. Oh man, I love those

I love those appearances. Anybody who hasn't seen there's a compilation on YouTube of like you can see the progression because the first time he's just like this like innocent looking young kid, and then the next time he's like strung out, and you know, he's got this like scraggly beard and he looks like super rough and he's yes, well yeah, So by the time he makes spring Breakers, he um, he's come out of this this long period of like addiction and and almost dying and so on,

and um, now he's like the more matured version of himself where he still has all the same kind of like wacky sensibilities. Um, he's still like very free and how he uh uses creativity and he's not afraid of looking ridiculous or of trying something that may or may not work. But at the same time he has that more like mature minded responsibility, you know. And now it's him as a slightly older person and looking at youth

the way Larry Clark was looking at youth and kids. Yeah, I mean, let's talk for a minute just about the how beautiful this movie is. Aesthetically. It's, um, I mean, obviously all the big the big beach pool side scenes and all that is a little sort of over the top in that slow mobe like kind of day glow fluorescent world. But there's so many gorgeous shots in this movie. Um, early on, the color palette is clearly just one of the things he wanted to lean into on this movie.

And uh, and it's obvious and a lot of this stuff because it's just so bright and colorful. But even in the subtle shots where uh, I'm thinking about, like the stained glass early on coming through the windows and then that cut together with the scene of the girls in the classroom in the dark with everything lit by computer laptop screens of different colors, but just really gorgeous stuff.

That's the stuff that reminded me of Sofia Coppola. Sort of dreamy, colorful, a lot of slow moo and voiceover going on. Yeah. His his cinematographer that he used for this film is a guy Ben wad to Be. Um. He's a French cinematographer and he's most known for his work with gas Bar and Away and films like Reversible and especially Into the Void, which is similarly hard, very psychedelic, colorful, trippy, uh kind of movie. And yeah, as you mentioned, very

very lighthearted stuff. Um. And so he he Krean talks about how he wanted this film to have the look of like candy. You know, that he wanted it to be this like bright neon saturated, just completely over the top. Yeah, and and that it would have this kind of delectable, like iye candy quality to it at the same time that the material can be quite dark. Um, it's not

like a particularly dark feeling film. I feel like in a lot of ways, the tone, even when things get kind of heavy, it has this sort of like just like fun aspect to it. Um. It doesn't get like depressing the way you could say maybe kids gets depressing. Um, it doesn't have as much of a documentary feel. It's it's it's reality pushed a little bit beyond reality so that it's almost kind of surreal and there's almost something

kind of dreamlike or fable like about it. Where this is more about it's it's not talking so literally about youthful access. It's taking that access and then pushing it beyond the point of realism while not completely detaching from reality, but just kind of you know, everything's turned up to eleven. Yeah. Well, because like I was saying, it's still it's hard to movie about these lost young girls who don't know shit, and they don't know what they're gonna do, they don't

know where they're gonna go. They know they're not happy. Um, that's where the Sophia like, it's sort of yeah, recalled sort of virgin suicides a little bit and lingering, like the scene, that beautiful scene in the dorm room when they were that voiceovers going on. They were doing the handstands against the wall and all of their legs were sort of criss crossing, and it's just it's really easy to overlook stuff like that, but those were really beautiful,

beautiful shots. It's he's finding like transcendence in stuff that ought not necessarily be transcendent because it's so fraught with, you know, all these problems of let's say objectification of of you know, male gaze. We could say of um, just you know, youthful like hyper sexuality and corruption and

loss of innocence and all this stuff. But that's not where they're coming from, and they don't necessarily even recognize it to themselves, like how much danger they're in sometimes, well you can hear it in the calls to their parents and grand I know that they're playing it down but you know, everyone here is so sweet and we're just having such a good time, and it's just like I could see the I could see people watching this movie and being horrified, thinking that it is in celebration

of this behavior and objectifying it, whereas I didn't take it that way. I thought it was part satire, part uh what do you call the warning? Like, uh, like a cautionary tale, kind of cautionary tale, a little bit um. Never did I think that Harmony Corene was saying, like, look, how fucking badass this scene, you know, and I think some people, I bet this movie was protested, you know,

like it's it's over the top when it comes. I was going to make a joke at the beginning of this episode that I like smoked weed every time someone in the movie smoked weed, and I took a shot every time there were bare breasts and be like, yeah, yeah, you couldn't make everywhere all the time. Yeah, oh yeah. I mean the excess is like that's the point. If

it were restrained, it would be something totally different. But it's just like it's something that might be fun for like a couple of hours, but then you stretch that into just like this absurd you know, like end of the world apocalyptic kind of you know, exuberance of um, just wall to wall drinking and smoking. And it never shows anyone going to bed at night and came up

and having breakfast. It's like there are the bits of quiet moments as I think when they were they were and yeah, when they're near the pool, or when they were just sort of drinking at the in the parking lot and stuff like that, like they removed themselves a little bit. But um, you know, they had that first robbery scene at the chicken check and it's all right there in those two lines. Just pretend like it's a video game, act like you're in a movie or something.

And that's like it's it's horrifying when you think of those two lines, because it's true like that, I could see something like this going. This could be a news story very easily. Yeah, I'm sure similar things have probably happened, like the sort of the ability when you're that young to detach and compartmentalize and that sense of like youthful immortality that so many teenagers have where they're like, you know, taking huge life altering risks like they were nothing because

they think they're invincible, or they just don't see. Yeah, they've seen in a movie and it worked out fine

for that character. So you know, I don't think Karine is like a social critic per se, but he does have these little notes like you said of like pretend it's a video game, like it's in a movie or something, because I think it's all about how for them they're in this like fantasy world and there's the real world next to that and and underneath all that, but in their own kind of subjective experience, they're living through this kind of like youthful fantasy and they don't realize it's

like how close they are to real disaster. Yeah, and that robbery scene, man, just when there's been a couple of movies, like you've seen it all, like how do you shoot a robbery? How do you shoot a heist? How do you shoot someone breaking into a bank vault? And I remember Sexy Beasts when that came out and they did the underwater than with the bank vault, and I was like, fuck, dude, like someone thought of something new.

And then this showing the perspective of that car pulling around that restaurant very slowly and each time it pulls around a corner, the girls are inside in another part of the restaurant, and I was like, hats off to him, man, he thought a bit of a new way to shoot it. And not only that, but later on you get the interior. Yeah, exactly, You're you're you're getting from You're just getting these little snippets climpse through the window as the cars driving, and um,

it's it's like editing within the within the frame. You know, you get a little bit here, and then you get some wall, then you get a little bit here, and then yeah, like you said, later on when they're kind of in the parking lot and they're recounting how they actually went about the raw bree and intimidated these people and so on, Um, you get like that was handheld inside of the And that's really that's like, it's it's cool because when we're outside and we're a little bit removed,

we have one reaction to the violence, which is like, well that's not cool, but it's it's more of a subdued kind of feeling because we're removed from it. Then when they're kind of recounting it the second time, we're right up in it with the handheld, and you can kind of see how afraid these people are for their lives, even though it's just a game for these girls. But these people don't know that, and they are losing their

money in their wallets and so on. Um and and getting you know, a gun even though it's we know it's a square gun, but it is to them, it's just a gun in their face. So they're terrified. They're so lucky they didn't end up dead, especially open carry exactly. It's just it's crazy that not one person in that restaurant didn't have a gun, like in Boogie Night Style. Oh god, don seetle in the donut job? Oh man, do you know much about the back like how he

shot this? Was this? Did he go to a spring break or did he literally get all these extras and put them in a movie. No, A lot of this is really shot like in and around spring break. Um. I had they used you know a lot of just like real people, real locations. Um. And I think for instance, when they're having that daytime party where they end up getting arrested, um before when you know, as that party

is going on, still raging. Um. A lot of those were just like people off the street that they invited to come there and told them to just go crazy and and they said they basically kind of like lost control at various points where they're trying to tell people all right, cut cut calm down, and it just kept going. And well they were probably really fucked up too. Yeah, oh exactly exactly. And so they're they're in like a real abandoned hotel, um and just like you know, utter anarchy. Yeah.

And so um, that was a real location when they were in like um the jail cell. That was a real location. Um, yeah, a lot. I mean basically he went. He went like for practical locations as much as kid. When they're in that pool hall and h Selena Gomez is really like starting to freak out and being like I don't want to be here. Those were like a lot of real people just hanging out in the pool hall, real criminals, um, some of the like stuff with like the dogs in the back and whatever. That was like

a real thing that was going on. So he was in like a real like shady you know spot when they were shooting, which he that's that's totally hum. He likes to It's always like a blend of the hyper real on the one end, and like the kind of documentary reality on the other. Uh. Let's talk about James Franco. I mean, his his intro is one of the more amazing intros. Uh. He's that guy that I mean, and I know he was based on this too, idiot Twins Twins.

He's really based on um. I would I would argue at least his look is really based on riff Raff. If you know riff Raff, who is this like internet rapper? Um he was huge in in like the early tens. I would say he was one of those guys that that came up on YouTube um and really just became famous completely outside of before. Yeah, you've you've probably seen

like riff Raff memes and um so. But but in terms of like the official story of spring Breakers, supposedly it's based on this other guy who I think is performing next to James Franco on the stage when he's doing that song hanging with the Dope Boys. I think this is guy Danger Russ is his name, which maybe he got like some mannerisms or phrases or something from that guy. But the look is like a riff Raff.

And so after this movie came out riff Raff, like you know, got on Twitter or whatever and said he was gonna sue for like million dollars and and ultimately what happened, Like, I don't think he ever actually filed the suit. I think he was just kind of trying to like create some buzz or whatever. Um. But then like a few years later, in twenty sixteen, James Franco ended up starring as riff Raff in a riff Raff

music video playing Playing Refreff, so essentially playing alien again. Um, so you know that the snake kind of ade its tail there, I think, uh, I think Franco was really good and this actually, um I'm glad that he sort of and he made him Southern and sort of this Florida cultural appropriator. And um, what hits me about most of these guys is they don't actually have any real talent for anything other than like creating well, you know, buzz.

But he's a criminal. He's not like he's trying to be a rapper sort of, but he has no talent for it. But he's what he is is a criminal and he's the scene. I loved them post was and I thought that was so fucking funny was seen in the bedroom. Look at my ship, Look at all my ship. It was amazing, It was funny, it was great acting. It was reprehensible and gross and awful and like you're just like dying for these girls to get out of there.

And Franco's talking like this Florida, you know, trashy beach, bumb breadneck with grills, and I just I don't know to hit all the right notes for me as far as really having a good time watching it. You have everything happening in that same moment, like the kind of if you want to go there, the kind of critique of materialism, capitalism, the American dream whatever, because he cook on it, the American dream. He was living it. He's not subtle about it. But at the same time it

is just on its face totally absurd and hilarious and ridiculous. Um. And it's also kind of scary because he's holding those guns and you know, he just doesn't seem like a stable guy and he like, you know, as we see later on, like the situation can turn. The mood can change so quickly from being like fun and exuberant to suddenly like the guns pointed in the other direction and they're not really sure so intense when the girls like I didn't know, man, I didn't know what was going on.

I mean I was like praising Harmony Green because he fooled me. I was like, I thought that they were really turning the tables on him. You might see this guy like get his head blown off in a second. You know, it really feels like it could assume his lifestyle. Yeah. I totally didn't know what was going on. I think he doesn't in the moment, and that's what made it so like enthralling and like stimulating sexually stimulating for him. And I think he's like because like, uh, he might like, yeah,

he's really in danger. Maybe that's turning him on. Yeah, totally those were stream girls. But then also like I almost kind of wonder like maybe they were planning on killing him, robbing him, whatever. But the fact that he turned it back around again and just embraced it and really starts like going to town on the silencers and whatever,

like like that's kind of the way I took it, dude. Honestly, I thought that they were really serious and that once he started getting into it, because like, Okay, this guy is crazy. We can you know what they're doing. They don't know how to kill a guy. Um. I thought it was interesting. The shift in tone from the movie is kind of in two halves. You had that first robbery, which is kind of crazy, and they were sort of feeling it but still kind of like, oh my god,

what the fun did we do? And then it's just a party time, party time. They get arrested for something else for partying, they get bailed out, and then immediately it is like it turned sinister and they're really in that world and they're like, this isn't playtime anymore. You know, this is the ship. These are the real guys, and like who was gonna blink first? And of course faith is.

I love how they echoed those to get on the bus scenes for both of the girls left early, and each time I thought that that girl has just saved her life and the other ones are going to die, right, which doesn't happen, but I'm surprised that it didn't happen. By the time, you know, we find out what happens to the last two girls. I feel like the film has has fully departed reality anyway where you know, if the film were to remain in that more semi realistic register.

They very well could have died if they had tried to pull what they end up doing at the end of the film, they would be dead. There's no way they would like shoot through that whole situation. I had a bit of an issue with some suspension of disbelief there at that At that point, the film is like moved up to a higher plane of kind of metaphorical

kind of fantasy. Yeah. Um, I think you're right. I think I think the only way anybody who's going to survive that situation was get on a bus and get back home and get away from that that whole crowd, because it was going to relief time one of them did that, especially as the father of a daughter. I was just like, fucking make the right choice. Just get

out of there. And that scene with Faith, I think it was the end of the pool hall scene when she was wanting to go home and they were jump cutting it all around and Franco has that scene with her. He's got her by the face talking about how much he cares about her. I was just coming out of my skin, man, And that's such good like solid filmmaking when you can make an audience squirm like that. He's so manipulative and he knows that. I mean, it's predatory, right,

he knows he's talking to this young naive girl. He's trying to push all the right buttons as far as making her feel like he's really, I don't know, in love with her, or make her feel super important or something to him. The way he says like that, she actually leaves after he says this. He says to her like, you know, you're gonna go home and your friends are gonna stay here. But even though I'm going to be with your friends, I'm still gonna be thinking about you.

And it just doesn't it doesn't land right for her, thankfully, you know, that's not what she wants to hear, and so that's her point where she just like walks out the door, like Okay, I'm just done, you know. Yeah.

It also takes a while to get overtly sexual, Like you see where it's going, and you kind of get the idea that he's he's definitely wants to like to have five some with them, but the sex scene actually comes when it founded just here three of them in the pool, uh, which was a really cool the way they shot. That scene is great. And then the scene though it really makes me laugh though, is proceeding that the piano scene. Oh yes, yes, the Britney spears. Yeah,

I love that man. It was so funny because again I'm looking at as as this character, like this guy, there's no talent. He's got the money to have a grand piano on a on a veranda overlooking the ocean, and like he can't play shit, he can't sing ship and they're just like you see, like his fingers like

hitting a few notes. But it's pretty obvious Franco can't play either, and he's just kind of like, you know, winging it um, which is really funny that they didn't hire like a hand double or anything to make it, to try to sell it. It's very obviously like they're just not showing his hands. They're they're shooting out of the directions. It was pretty bad and corny, but believe yeah, um, I wasn't quite sure too. With the two that stayed, it's Vanessa Hudgens as Candy and Ashley Benson is Britt.

I can never quite tell the endgame with Candy and Britt. Until that last scene, I thought I thought they were just hanging in there a little bit longer than their friends, and that they were going to come around and that they would leave, and they were just sort of I couldn't tell how deep into this lifestyle if they were like, well, this is who we are now. We're gangs to chicks and it's pretty much. And I think they're just like, we're never going to finish school, We're never going back.

This is it for us, you know, Like they were in even even when things well, yeah, because they chose to stay, even when their first friend left, when their second friend got shot in the arm, after all that, after really like being confronted with the kind of real danger that they're in. This is not a game, this is not a joke of fantasy. They chose to stay. So I think they're in it, you know, for the

long haul. But then you know, there is that phone conversation, uh near the end where one of them calls home and is saying, like I want to do better. I want to like get my get my life back together and get back on the right track. So it's almost like they have to go through that final like kind of confrontation climax to to come out on the other

side then yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's just like a sort of I don't know, Joseph Campbell, like you know, it just has to be this final showdown and then they can go back to their to the life, having learned, having passed through all of this, and now sort of like starting starting a new Like I think in my mind, I pictured those girls having this great story to tell one day that their husbands don't even know about. Yeah,

and that their kids, their kids would never believe. Uh, and the fact that they were so in Like I don't know, it was disturbing, but like I think, like you said, like once it hit that movie hits that point in the last third, it's sort of complete fantasy. At that point, Um, when they're when they're you know, when they really get into it with his former friend and who was the guy that played him. He was

he's a real rapper, Adney oh Gucci man. Yeah about this guy, but he's he was awesome in this movie as terrific. Yeah, there's a really funny anecdote from when they were shooting. Um they're doing the sex scene, like the final sex scene in the movie where with him. Yeah, it's the three so he's got the one girls on top of him. Yes, he improved that he had of that.

And but also like while they were shooting that scene, he literally fell asleep and so he's like snoring and she's on top of him and they had to like wake him up, and you know, apparently he woke up and said that line and they just like put it in the movie. So super impressive. You like a composer, Yeah,

that was really funny. Um. But once it gets real with him, uh, and you know it's all there and the if you had the subtitles song because I had to watch it at lower volume than I wanted to because my daughter was sleeping, um, and the subtitles really helped because James Franco was kind of singing What's going to happen through that last third but you can't really

understand him that well. But he's singing the song about two little chickens remain and like I'm gonna go kill my best friend and my best friend's gonna die today and stuff like that, so you see it coming. But I don't know how in he is man when they were calling him scaredy cat and stuff like that, Like I don't think he really wanted to. I think he felt like he had to. Yeah, he might have felt like he had to put up her shut up, kind of like with in front of these girls. Yeah, exactly exactly.

It's kind of a um he had to play that role of like the masculine, tough guy, even if he might have been like, man, this is a bad idea. Um, he just had to go through with it. Yeah. I think that's probably correct. I hope it's not disparaging that I'm saying girls instead of like young women. But they seem like they were teenagers. I guess they're in college. They're yeah, they're in college. Although to me they felt

emotionally psychologically a little bit more like high schoolers. But he may have just shifted it to college just to kind of remove that element of like are they underage or not? Fifty year old guy, they were girls to me, Yeah, oh yeah, exactly exactly. I mean it's the older you get people, you're like you're a kid, you know, so that that that frame of reference continues to shift I

think throughout throughout life. I mean it's like when you're when you're young, when you're like fourteen, you think you're like the big kid. You know, you're looking at like a seven year old. You really, Oh that's a kid. I'm like a grown up. So yeah, it's always changing. You don't become an adult until you're like forty two.

I look forward to it. I did look up the A T. L Twins because I was I remember when this came out and they were all over the news, and I was just, you know, I don't want to yuck someone's young young, but I they're very punchable guys, you know, I had that same reaction to them. Like all these years, I've kind of thought they were just like the epitome of like Vice magazine, exploitative kind of

you know, Internet clickbait circu or whatever. But on the on the blue ray, there's this three part like little featurette documentary thing on the ETL Twins, they're actually pretty pretty solid. Like they have they have a really really hard life story, um and and they actually seemed like genuine real people, as as crazy as that seems, um and they even have like respectable day jobs outside of

all this like hype and whatever. So I you know, just watching watching them sing to them, they're like very self aware. They know exactly how they come off to people. It's it's more of like almost like a character they can play. They can they can amp it up if they want to. Interesting, but they're actually like very kind of like smart, hip, articulate dudes, um who kind of come out. Yeah. They also like disappear from the movie um, which I mean and no disappeared from yeah, yeah, yeah,

yeah yeah. I tried to find out anything like what they're doing now, and it's like I can't find anything. Man. They dropped off of social media like kind of after this. I think they're probably like, you know, this might have been like the sort of the peak, the zenith of their notoriety, and after that, maybe they were just like, all right, let's just like settle into more of a

real life, you know. Maybe. I mean that's I did see a thing on Reddit, which I'm never on Reddit, but I followed their trail there and it said this is from like three years ago. Some guy said, I live in midtown Atlanta. I see him all the time. They live in the Spire building and they they're like

artists now doing pretty good. And I was trying, all right, all right these guys, okay, so you know, yeah, they there's some really cool footage and one of those documentaries of them skating in downtown Atlanta and like the probably early nineties, mid nineties or something. Um, and it was cool just from a perspective of seeing like what the city looked like back then, and you know, some buildings you recognize a lot of buildings you don't. And uh,

and just like the way the city has changed since then. Um. But no, I I had the exact same reaction of like, I hate these dudes. Um. And then after watching I was like, you know what, they actually seem pretty pretty solid. Um. Surprisingly so yeah, or the documentary was just trying to make them look as good as possible. But I think I think just from listening to them, it was like, Okay, these guys like they know what's going on. They're not

just like in a haze of you know, stupidity or something. Okay, maybe they're playing a part because I read I was started to read one in or view with them to try and figure them out, and it said something about whether or not they date much and they said, well, we have nine inch dicks, and I went, all right, I'm not I'm not going to read anywhere there's there's a Yeah, they mentioned that in the in the documentary too, and they're like, so it's like eighteen between us, because

you know, they the whole the whole bit is that they they only date like the same women at the same time and a good stuff. Yeah, yeah, all right, well more power to you. I guess not my bag. So yeah, I mean we're towards the end of the movie now where you know, we feel like the hit is gonna go down. I firmly believe that alien felt like he had to do this to impress those girls and and was scared. I don't think I think he

knows that he may not live through this. I think it's hysterical that he gets taken out almost the second he steps off that boat after that cool shot and like those gay globating suits in the tank top, like all that ship is so cool looking, and the first thing that happens is he dies. Yeah, we should mention like that whole where they're approaching on the boat and everything.

One of the major I think influences inspirations for this film is Michael Mann's two thousand makes Miami Vice, Yeah, which was like that was a real major moment in uh in filmmaking for certain, for his for certain kind

of cinephile, a certain kind of filmmaker. Um that moment in like the mid two thousand's where Michael Mann went digital and started shooting you know in this really different Yeah, like a little bit in Collateral and then full on in Miami Vice and Public Enemies, which was less successful I think artistically, but Miami Vice remains like a real like um turning point I think for digital cinema because here was like this major American filmmaker using digital, not

to try to replace film or to imitate film, but digital for digital. And you could put this alongside something like Inland Empire by David Lynch as well, where he's shooting on like consumer grade digital cameras and he's not trying to It's not that he's trying to save like budget or something. He's using the digital and the flaws in the digital and just like the idiosyncrasies of the

digital um as its own like expressive medium. And even though Spring Breakers a shot primarily on thirty five, that was like a lot of the impetus. When when Korean saw Miami Vice, he was like, Wow, there's like just something about the way in that movie in Miami Vice when they're outside at night, like the sky has color in it, you know, and and the depth of field

is just like going infinite in every direction. So on one hand it has this kind of video thing, but on the other hand, um, there's there's also something kind of like cinematic about it. Um. Yeah, it's just a really really um interest film. And there was all this kind of um discussion and talk in the mid two thousand's about like what is digital cinema, what can digital

cinema become? And I feel like in a way, with the advent of like red and Alexa um and people getting into using more kind of traditional lenses and shooting in a more kind of traditional film style, digital cinema has kind of gotten away from that a little bit where now it's sort of like it's kind of like film, but you can still kind of tell it's digital. But a lot of a lot of films are not really

using digital as its own medium. It's just like we couldn't afford to shoot thirty five kind of thing, right, or or just the that's just the way they're made now and it has nothing to do with the aesthetic of digital. It's not even a question, right, It's just like you're just going to shoot digital. If you're shooting for Netflix or whatever, unless you're Martin Scorsese or something, you're gonna be shooting you know digital. But I mean even Christopher Nolan, I mean some of the you know,

the big his filmmakers are all digital. Yeah, still seventy, isn't he? Uh? I know that the camera he shot uh, nineteen fourteen on Jesus No, not Sam Raimi, Jesus Casey were all over the place. It's Sam American beauty guy. Yes, God, I'm losing it. Sorry, Yes, I'm sorry, I got those confused. He shot nineteen fourteen was on digital because you know, my buddy Scotty he owns that camera. Now. He's like he went all in and I was like, I'm going

to get the best camera there is and just have it. Samendez, Samendz, Sam Raymie hanging in there on film. I don't know is he But that last part, you know, starting with that boat montage, it's like it's got that voice over in the day glow fluorescent and that slow mo and the score and it's just all coming together, man, and that. I was just I was really impressed with harmony Kareem's

filmmaking in this movie. Yeah. I was just like, man, this is a really confident filmmaker making the exact movie that he wants to make. He's he's really like kind of flexing the muscles and showing that like he can hang in there with these big names and filmmaking and and pull off some of these more complicated shots and

sequences that obviously he loves to improvise. He loves to just find stuff on the day, but when you need to like execute a more complicated shot like that, he's also got the chops to do that kind of thing, which is really cool. I haven't seen his last because I was kind of like, where has he been since these This put him on the map in a or not on the map, back on the map in a pretty big way. I think, well, this was yeah, this was like again, this was a pretty successful film commercially.

It made its budget back and then some, and it kind of became like it was a pretty talked about movie. Um, you know, we we haven't really talked about it, but you had the whole crossover thing. Were like Selena Gomez fans are wandering into the theater to kind of see

whats Yeah. Yeah, so there's that weird crossover moment where like, you know, people like me who just love Krene because of Gummo and because of like his real weirdo outsider you stuff um, and then people that are coming from like pop, you know the world of pop music and um, youthful celebrities and so on also coming in. And then people like me, So what is this beach bumb movie? Though he took a seven year break, yeah, which is weird.

I thought, I mean you would think, right, that's very harmony Karene to not parlay spring Breakers into like something a year or two later exactly. I was just reading online on the on the Harmony Cream forum, like the thread from when this movie came out, and they were talking about what the box office looked like, and they were saying like, man like, he's gonna get to make something with like a big budget. Now what are he's

gonna do? And then like seven years passed and he kind of comes out with beach Bum which is uh, Matthew McConaughey playing almost a sort of alien like character, uh, a guy who lives in Key West, and his only goal in life is just to smoke weed and get drunk and all day. Yeah, it's a comedy. It's um.

It's it's like a total like stoner comedy. UM kind of set a little bit in the spring Breakers milieu of Florida, of you know, similar kind of like day Glow Neon kind of look um, but different, very different. I mean, beach Bum is more like, on its face, absurdist and surreal kind of um. Snoop Dogg has a pretty big part in it, and there's like a little bit of a narrative of I'm trying to even remember what the story was. It has to do with he's

like a poet, but he has no ambition. And so this is not a spoiler because it happens like the first ten minutes of the movie, and it's it's really not a big deal. But he's he's married to this rich woman who is sort of like his patron. She's the one who supports him, and he gets just as kind of funk off all day and she ends up dying and in her will it says, in order for you to get like my estate, you need to publish your next book and and by the way, you don't

have a publisher, there's nothing set up. You have to go make this happen. And so it's kind of, uh, it's a story about like a man child kind of trying to mature a little bit um, but but done in a very offbeat, off kilter, harmcake carean kind of way. And uh, it's got a really funny Martin Lawrence cameo. I will say, yeah, it's it's really I mean, it's like probably the funniest thing I've seen him do in a long time. And yeah, I mean it's it's it's

worth checking out. But it wasn't like to me, it was kind of like a companion piece to this film, and this film by far was the more groundbreaking of the two. That one is just kind of like a fun, silly, stoner movie. I would say, I'll check it out. I'm looking at spring Breakers. It did thirty one million worldwide against a five million dollar budget. That's pretty good. Little yeah, yeah, it did better internationally. Interesting. You know, Karine is like

beloved in France and I could see that. And when when when we're talking, by the way about he takes this like seven years sabbatical. That's because he's shooting like all these fashion kind of adjacent things. He's working. He's working, yeah, he he works as like a painter. He had a major retrospective at the Modern Art Museum in Paris, the Pompidou Center, Um I guess a few years ago where they showed like most of his films, uh, tons of

his paintings. He has poetry. He you know, he's like a he's kind of like a Renaissance like mixed media kind of guy. He does a lot of stuff outside of just like his official you know, narrative motion picture releases. So he's always busy. He's always working on something, but a lot of it kind of flies a little bit below the radar. That's his wife in Ko Yeah. Yeah. She played the second when I get shot. Yeah yeah, the one who gets shot in the arm and not

in a good way. And she also acted, by the way, in his film prior to this one, trash Humpers, which is a terrific film. Actually it sounds like a joke. It sounds like, you know, just something something, you know, where he goofed off or whatever. But trash Shoppers is really like his return to cinema because between like Julian Donkey Boy and this film Mr. Lonely. That was when he had his really dark period and he came back with this film Mr. Lonely, which he made in a

more kind of traditional European art house style. I would say, Um, it had what's his name, Denny Lavant, who was in bou Travia that we talked about, the main guy, the dancer. Um, he's in that film as a Michael Jackson impersonator. UM. So like on on the services sounds like it's gonna be amazing, um, but it to me that movie is just kind of so so. But it's good because it got him back making films. And then not too long after that he makes Trash Humpers, which he shot just

all on VHS cameras. It's basically trying to create this kind of like found footage artifact item that you would find, you know, in a dumpster or in the woods or whatever and popping in and they're these people wearing old man masks and just going around and humping trash cans at night, and you know, and that's the movie. Yeah,

it's pretty much the movie. But there's a monologue in that movie which is almost word for word, the same monologue that's in Spring Breakers, where they're talking about these people they just live in the same town and they never leave and they never see the world, and they just go to work and they go to bed. He's always seemingly making movies about these lost kids who can't get out, these sort of lower income children who are

who are stuck in a place. Yeah, and the trash humpers are sort of like, rather than go to spring Break or go somewhere else to try to escape, they just live where they live, and they live in these kind of like you know, trailer parkish kind of environs,

but they don't live a traditional life. They wear these masks, they go out into public, they mess with people, they just get into trouble and raise hell and um it's a similarly kind of like rebellious kind of thing, but um, I don't know, a little darker maybe, but also very very funny. Well, the end of Spring Breakers, you know,

ends with this big shootout in slow mo. That's uh, like we mentioned, it's it's the suspension of disbelief is just tough here that these I mean, it's it's hard to shoot a gun and I imagine I've never shot someone, but imagine it's really hard to shoot someone who has a gun trying to shoot you back and get what they're doing. The thing where they like hold it by the side. I mean, it's it's a pure like music video style, you know. And that was kind of the point.

I don't think he wanted that to be realistic, but they kind of just mow their way through this party and eventually get to Gucci Ma and take care of business there. And the music too is It's cool because um on on one of the extras um Cliff Martinez, who haven't talked about yet, but he's the composer along

with scrill X for this film. Cliff Martinez, he's done a lot of stuff from band Uh well, he was in Red Hot Chili Peppers, like Rum and now he like, you know, he's done everything from the Limi to Drive to the Berg remake of Solaris, which has a really beautiful score. But he's he's sort of like, um uh, he's the guy you go to in Hollywood if you want like a sort of Brian Eno ambient, floaty, dreamy score to kind of like you know, tie everything together.

So Cliff Martinez is talking about how originally that whole shootout they had licensed like a piece of classical music, source music and yeah, and so he looked at it and he was kind of like, you know, I feel like this is gonna this is like the culmination of the film. There's been so much score in this movie. There ought to be like a kind of like a payoff for all those kind of musical themes and stuff.

So he basically wrote this kind of orchestrated version of the scrill X song that is like and it's just kind of like slow, dreamy, floaty, contemplative version of that. Uh. But um, he just put it in there, like they didn't ask him to write it. He just put it in sound. And they watched the movie and Harmony like apparently jumped up and hugged him. I was like, thank you. That is like that's exactly what I wanted. I didn't even know to ask for it, Like, you know, it's

just perfect. Yeah, it really, I mean, I really love the ending, despite it being completely unrealistic. I think that's not what you're looking for. Their Um, I'm I guess I'm glad these girls lived. I mean that certainly didn't want to see him die, I'm kind of curious of the five years on where they are where they end up. There's a uh William Blake quote that came to mind watching this and watching the Terence Malic Knight of cups Um. Basically he says that, uh, the road of excess leads

to the Palace of Wisdom. And obviously that's an easy quote to misinterpret as just an excuse to go buck wild crazy, but I think there is something to it in the way you see it in this film, where they really do arrive someplace different at the end of it, and they really did learn something about themselves and about life and became different people and hopefully better people too.

And so again it's this idea of like finding this kind of like real spiritual, kind of transcendent thing through the most crass material, excessive, harmful, you know, toxic manners possible. It's really interesting idea. Yeah, and I think the big question case he is, who's going to fill that crime vacuum in St. Pete the two going. Somebody's got to step in there. Maybe it's the girls exactly. Yeah, you could,

you could well. And there was even talk of like a possible sequel, which I think would have been the kind of thing where like maybe the producers give it to a different director or whatever, because I don't think Kareein has any interest in like doing sequels and certainly not like a cash crab commercial, cash in kind of thing. This is perfect. It was ninety four minutes long. That's how long it should have been. Yeah, he didn't overdo it.

I mean he overdid everything, but you know it's he kept it tight, you know, kept he kept it, didn't overstay. It's welcome. Yeah, you gotta do that in a movie like this. I think. I think it was a smart edit and um, I liked it, man, I liked a lot. I think it's a really good movie. Yeah, he um. I I look forward to what he's going to do next.

Like I said, beach Bum was sort of like a continuation in this mode, and so I hope whatever is coming next will kind of be a new phase, a new kind of um, you know, a new moment in his in his career path. So we'll see. It would be interesting to see him do something really I guess straightforward still him. Yeah, yeah, we could see that, you know. He I mean, he's almost he's the only couple years

younger than me. Yeah, he's um, he's still in interviews and everything has like that kind of youthful demeanor about him, even though he is a little bit older. Now he's a little bit more slow and deliberate, and like he used to just make a sport of, you know, being absurd and ridiculous in interviews, and now he actually gives thoughtful, like compelling answers to questions and um, while still being himself,

which is great like that. That's that's the really wonderful thing is that he did find a way to remain all the good things about himself artistically while at the same time getting to a place where he's like not gonna o D or whatever, you know, like he yeah, yeah, exactly, that's cool. Alright, Casey, Well, there's a lot of fun

my friend. I'm glad you picked this because he forced me to watch it, and I probably, I mean, it was one I wanted to watch back then, but it's not a movie eight years later that it's still high on my list. So I'm glad I got to watch it. I thought it was really cool. I love the aesthetic of it, and I just thought it was a good way to spend ninety minutes on my spring break. Yeah, I'm glad you. I'm glad you mentioned it. It had

not jumped to the top of my head. Um, I think you had mentioned before if I was going to pick a Kareem film, I think it would have been gumm oh probably, but um, you know that that's the film people can seek out and watch the thing. I haven't seen it. Uh, and but but yeah, this is this, This one was probably a good blend of um, somewhat more accessible yea. And just like the the the intersection

with screen break. So yeah, it's great. And if you're into keg stands and pouring beer all over bare breasts and bong hits out of I don't even know car tail pipes, then this is this. This is your you want to take it that way, then you probably could. Yeah, but I thought it was a pretty good piece of satire and cautionary tale. All right, well we'll think about something. Good luck with your stresses, and uh, we'll handle mine, and we'll see each other soon. Yeah, soon, very soon,

I hope. All Right, thanks everybody, We'll see you next week. Movie Crash is produced and written by Charles Bryant. And Meel Brown. Edited and engineered by Seth Nicholas Johnson and scored by Noel Brown here in our home studio at Pontsty Market, Atlanta, Georgia. For i Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows