You're listening to the Silver Screen Happy Hour. I'm Chris Wiegand along with my brother Jerome. This is our Veterans Day episode entitled All Quiet on the Thin Red Line. We do want to raise our glasses to all the veterans who've served our country past and present. Which includes my son and daughter in law, who served in the army, and my son is currently serving in the Michigan National Guard.
And that also includes both of our grandfathers, that served during World War II, one in the European theater, and one in the Pacific, as well as our father that served in the Navy. Well, if you're not behind the wheel, go ahead and pour yourself a cold one, and I'll get the film reel going, so we can listen to the show. What movies are we going to be talking about today?
Okay, so we picked a couple of classic war films. Well, a classic. One's a new classic. One's a remake of several remakes. Um, What I like to playfully call the war version of A Star is Born. It's the All Quiet on the Western Front, which has been remade four times.
Is this the fourth one or the third one?
it's three times theatrical, and then there was one, I think, made for TV movie that they did a long time ago. But it's one of those, like A Star is Born, that gets remade about every 30 years or So and the other one we paired it with, and I am a genius for picking this film to pair it with, because, as I'm going to illustrate, how similar they really are. And for anyone out there that would like one and not the other,
one is far superior to the other.
Again, I, I, I disagree with you highly, but the other film is the 1998 The Thin Red Line, directed by Terrence Malick. Um, whose only real fault in life is that it came out the same year as Saving Private Ryan. And that will be, seriously, that's gonna be a running theme on today's show. Because... We really could talk about all three of them because the, the, the similarities between All Quiet on the Western Front and The Thin Red Line are unmistakable
.And how much they are different from a movie like Saving Private Ryan. So we actually will be talking about Saving Private Ryan, or at least I will several times throughout today's show. Yeah. But to start things off, I have picked an Irish whiskey. Called Proper Twelve. And I think I drank this on a previous podcast, but the significance of this is that it is Conor McGregor's. Whiskey, like he's like the, you know, it's his, yeah, it's his, yeah, so obviously what is Conor McGregor?
He's a fighter.
He's a fighter.
And we're doing, we're doing two more movies, right?
He goes to war.
Right, so we're doing two fighter movies, and I picked a fighter one.
I'm impressed. I'm impressed you didn't go with a light, a Bud Light.
Oh, no, I have, my beer backup as usual, but okay. All right, are you ready?
Yeah, let's do the pour.
Okay. Did you pick that up?
Oh, yeah. Nice. Sounds tasty.
Oh, it is.
I like me some Irish whiskey.
What are you going with today?
A German style pilsner.
Nice.
Right? And it's made by Warpigs Brewing.
Oh, how perfect is that?
I know, and the name of the beer is called A Light in the black. Which I think is brilliant for the stuff we're going to be talking about today.
Well, and the funny thing is, is I actually tried to find Like a German whiskey or a German alcohol for today because of All Quiet on the Western Front. Yeah. And I couldn't really find one. I mean they're out there, but like, you know, I was pressed for time. So I, you know, and I wasn't at a BevMo or a Total Wine and Spirits where I could like peruse. Yeah. I had to act quickly.
And then... I saw, well, if I can't go there, what if I go Thin Red Line and I thought, well, I do have a Suntory Times right here in front of me. And I thought that was more of a shout out to the movie Lost in Translation. So, I decided against, doing the Japanese liquor. And I just went with the old Conor McGregor because he's a fighter.
Yeah, well done. So let me, before I crack the can, these are canned, it says, A storm of light breaks the spell of darkness. I know what I must do. The light guides my hand onward.
You know, that sounds a lot like Kylo Ren in The Force Awakens. I know what I must do. I just hope I have the strength to do it.
Alright, here we go. Oh!
Jesus!
Did you get that? Oh shit!
That... That... That was a beautiful...
First time ever on this podcast.
Condom broke. The condom broke on that one.
Hey, it's good theatrical, entertainment here for the audience.
God, our poor listeners.
I just spilled beer all over me.
Our poor listeners. I feel bad for them. So while you're cleaning up your mess, it is also duly noted, another film we could have paired with All Quiet on the Western Front, which is actually way more similar to All Quiet on the Western Front than The Thin Red Line, and it was 1917, right? The movie that just was up for Best Picture, what, two years ago?
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, very similar because both really track sort of like the walking journey of a soldier, you know, yeah All quiet on the Western Front. They actually say at the end when they talk about like kind of like a epilogue Yeah, they mentioned how this whole battle Was only over like a couple of football fields. That's it. Like, it just kept...
It was back and forth for like how long where it was just a few couple hundred yards in either direction, you know?
Yeah, and it went on for years.
And thousands of men died over that.
Yep, and it lasted just a few, I don't want to say just, it lasted several years.
Yeah, I finally cleaned up my mess. I gotta pour my beer.
Good. Embarrassment.
Dude, this is a beautiful looking beer.
Okay, we're going to start with All Quiet on the Western Front. So, for anyone that hasn't seen it, now, we battled on this one because we don't talk about endings. But as you remember I text you a few days ago. We're gonna have to talk about endings.
Yeah, well.
Because both of these films have a very similar type of ending when it comes to the hero.
I mean, I don't think anyone's gonna be upset if you tell people that someone dies.
Well, not only that.
In a World War 1 film.
Not only that. That's like saying Titanic the ship sank. What the fuck? But, so, no, but, particularly, The Thin Red Line came out in 98, so, you know, you had your chance, number one on that one. And then All Quiet on the Western Front's been remade so many times, if you haven't seen any of the versions yet, can't help you there either.
Tough luck.
So, the main character of Paul Balmer, Private Balmer, in All Quiet on the Western Front, which, by the way, Can we just say that the actor, his first, first film he's ever done, and as of right now, his only film he's ever done.
Not for long.
Not for long. but, amazing. Absolutely amazing. He was fantastic.
Hold on, let's ask this question right now. Did you watch it, you didn't watch it in German, I know from your response to my text. Because you can watch it in the original language with English subtitles. Or you didn't, so with, you had it dubbed English.
It wouldn't really matter too much and let me explain why. Everything I watch has to have English subtitles because when the girls go to sleep for anyone listening, I have a seven year old and a five, or a a seven and a five and a half year old. So when they go to bed, bed at 830, which is when I usually sit down to do this stuff, I have to turn the volume down anyway, or else the wife will come out and scream at me. It's too loud. And we're watching war movies.
So I have to really turn the volume down, which, but again, as we've talked on previous podcasts about Hitchcock movies, right? When you turn the volume down, you can still tell everything that's going on. This is one of those films. This is one of those films. Actually. So it was a thin red line. I can still. I still had some of the volume up. I still could hear them, you know what I mean?
I don't want to say I turned it all the way down, but pretty much everything I watch after 830 I have subtitles on anyway, so I don't miss anything. But I have to say that the, the, again, the cinematography I did have the sound up enough to, actually I have to, I have to clarify. This was the second time I watched it for this podcast. I saw it about a month and a half ago when the Oscar nominations came out, about two months ago. I saw it in December when it first came out.
Yeah, because it was nominated, so I wanted to watch it, and then I watched it Vy and I watched it together, and we had full volume on, so I did, I did get the full effect.
Wow, I couldn't watch that one with Jessie. She, she doesn't like war movies in general, and then this one, I feel, I felt like, I mean, let me just throw my two cents in here about, like, overall, I felt like this, this movie captured, The horrors of war, like I, I just thought better than almost any other movie I've seen because there's, I mean, there's so many different parts and the way it contrasted or contrasted, contrasted like beauty and horror.
With the cinematography and, and the joy on the young men's faces in one scene, and then 30 seconds later, it's horror.
And, and we're gonna, we're gonna get a similar tie in to that on the next movie as well. Yeah. I don't know if you caught it, if you caught it on the next movie too. But in this one, yes, absolutely. And it's also interesting to note, the film's opening shot and it's closing shot are the exact same. Same shot,
I don't think I caught that
and what's cool about that is almost like saying, you know, because then you know They go into the epilogue about how it's this is really just over a couple hundred yards, right of distance I think what the filmmakers are showing with that because generally in in screenwriting Generally, you start your opening shot and your closing shot are the exact opposite, right?
If your opening shot is the desert Often your ending shot will be the ocean, you know, so just that's just a very broad example Just showing that you know, that growth has happened, right? That there was a journey and your closing shot is completely opposite of your opening shot oh, what was it? There was another movie I was watching recently and I was like, oh shit. That's so cool The movie opened with planes taking off, and it ended with planes landing.
So it was like, okay, so, you know, these are all symbolism shots, right? To use the same shot for both indicates that people died and not much has changed.
Right.
Right? Like, how, what, how would a sad thought that is, you know what I mean? Like, men, 17, 18, 19 year old men died by the thousands, and nothing was accomplished.
I mean millions if you add everybody up.
Yeah. But I mean, just this part of the western front, right? Dealing with the French couple hundred yards of, of space. Thousands have died and we are no further along than we were at the beginning. And that's a sad, that's really a sad take on it. Yeah. So I wrote that down as, as a, as a notation. I, I think, and it's, it really starts off disturbing as well. And I kind of love how they, I, I don't love it, but. I loved it in a disturbing way.
They start off by showing a private, right off the bat, and you think, oh, is this the lead? We're with him for about 30 seconds, and then he dies. Rather quickly, and you're like, nope, that wasn't the main character apparently, and, but the point is why they set that up. I think his name was Heinrich, and they even made a point to say, Heinrich, Heinrich, Heinrich over here. So you're like, okay Heinrich, this is the guy we're gonna follow today.
Nope, he dies, like relatively quickly, and the reason they did that is because they wanted to show What they do with their clothes, right? They take the clothes off the bodies of these dead soldiers. And then they ship them back. They wash them. They get all the blood out of them. And then they stitch up the bullet holes. And then they get it back to the next soldier!
Sew it back up and get it back out there.
Right. And then, and then the main character, Paul Balmer. Comes in, and he gets his clothes, and he goes, Oh, these must belong to somebody else. His name's Heinrich is on here. And the guy said, Oh, no, they must have been too small. And he tears the name tag off, and then they show him dropping it on the floor where all the other name tags are.
That was a great sequence. It was brilliant.
Yes, the whole beginning is great. Now, I have to say as well, these films... And how they're different from movies like Saving Private Ryan, from a screenwriting standpoint, we always talk about script structure. They don't follow generally the same sort of beats, right? As they would a clear three act structure with turning points and plot points and character development and all this. You see that a lot in movies that have more of a linear storyline like a Saving Private Ryan, right? Mm hmm.
And, and, both the films that we're talking about today are way more abstract. And I wrote that word down because both of these films are like an abstract painting, right? You take, you take what you get out of it. It's, it's more art than it is storytelling. It's it's art. Yeah, and and I love movies like this and the thin red line because they're artistic They're they're they're works of art.
They look like paintings almost and both films Wonderful scores and the music plays a key part in both films.
I will I will say really quick here. My boys hated the, Duh, nuh, nuh.
I loved it. Loved it. I loved it.
And they did it throughout the entire movie.
V hated it too. My wife hated it too.
Jonah, I think, my son, he said when I told him they won that academy award, right, for... What was it? Best score?
Yes.
Anyways.
No, well they won, I think they won the sound one too.
I can't remember, I'll have to look it up. So he, he's like, really? For der der der. He was criticizing it. Because it's stuck in his head.
Right, but that, that was the whole point, right? That like, I mean, haunting. It was haunting whereas...
Foreboding.
It is. And when we talk about the Thin Red Line, you'll hear it's almost the exact opposite. The music was played perfectly, but it was almost very sad. It was like a real downer. You know what I mean? Now, it also had haunting music like that during the battle scenes. We'll talk about that when we get to the next movie. But both films used sound and music beautifully to their advantage. All Quiet on the Western Front won four Academy Awards.
Of course, Best International Feature, which is what they call now the best foreign film.
Sure.
Best Original Score. Best Achievement in Cinematography. And, and Best Achievement in Production Design. Nominated I want to say for 7 or 8 total. 1, 2, nominations at 1 4.
Yeah, it was worthy, man. The cinematography, I mean. The shots, the beautiful scenery in some of the shots some of the other shots, it, it captures just the hellscape of what it, what it became. You know what I mean? And it was, it was chilling. And because of the contrast too, cause you could do a whole World War movie and it's just all hellscape. You know what I mean? Yeah. And, but because they had that, that contrast, it was, it was, it was moving. It was so moving.
Well, and, and another thing that both of these films that we're going to talk about today had that, like, say a movie like Saving Private Ryan doesn't have as much, genuine fear.
Mm. Mm hmm.
And sort of that oh, it's the word I'm looking for. It's the the, the, remember we always talk about the emotional tug of war. Some scenes. You mentioned it already, a lot of times in, in All Quiet on the Western Front, there were moments of happiness, right? Like, they were like, this is cool, we're going off to war, right? Things are good. And then the next scene, one dude's shoving another dude's face into the mud, and you're like, ah, he's gonna die, you know what I mean?
And they think, I'm gonna die. How many times did Balmer, we're gonna get to this too as far as the theme, Balmer watched his friends die. He watched one of his friends get set on fire.
Yeah, that was rough.
With a flamethrower. So, and oh, so, I'm getting ahead of myself. So, about. We talked about script structure and how these films, but if you look closely enough, it's still there, is what I was going to get at.
I was, I was wrestling with that too, because like in All Quiet on the Western Front, I was like, what? So the, what's the guy's, what's the guy's name that's the lead? Bomber. Bomber. Private Bomber. Yeah, so, like, I'm, so I'm asking myself, so what's, what's his, you know, what's he gonna learn, in this journey? And basically, what I came up with is he learned, like, he had a romanticism about war. And that was, he learned.
He learned real quick.
He found out.
Yeah, what was that, fuck around and find out?
Yeah, fucked around and he found out. There's no romance, man.
It was just, oh. Well, along with that, I notated eight minutes in, now we always talk about how usually the to the main character. He's usually not the one saying it. But in this case, I actually had a line that he said I wrote down 8 minutes in. He says to his friends, because he has to forge the signature of his parents, to go off to battle. Probably because he's only 17, right? Or whatever.
16 or 17, yeah.
Yeah. And he said, I'm not going to be left behind. Or I'm not going to be left behind here. And at the time I didn't think much of it. The first time I saw it, but when I was watching it again for this podcast, I wrote that down because it occurred to me that one by one, everybody he knows dies and gets left behind, right? And he seems to survive every scene. Right? Everything that goes on, he seems to make it through.
You know, I would say that the first turning point would probably be when he gets his first realization that this isn't fun. Because the whole first half, or the first, I always say that, first half, the whole first act, they're looking forward to this, you know what I mean? They're like, they're like Tom Cruise in Born on the Fourth of July, they're gung ho, right? They're like, yeah, let's go up, it's gonna be like summer camp, let's go and have fun.
You know, we're going to war, this is gonna be great, they're all excited. First moment that he realizes he made a big mistake was the gas mask scene, right? Where he kind of bitches him out because he's putting it on wrong or he's, he tells everybody to about face and he's facing the other way. So he's like, it's almost like the freshmen that joined the football practice and he's doing everything wrong and everybody wants to beat him up for it.
It's like at that moment he's like, fuck, did I make a mistake? Like maybe, maybe I shouldn't be here. And that's where it really takes a jump into the second act. And, I mean, the rest of the first half of the film is met with that, like you said, one moment they're happy. They're stealing chickens, right? And they're all around cooking up the chicken, everything's great. Right, goose. And then, and then, and he's making new friends, and, and, but one by one, shit happens, and people are dying.
I want to say, the midpoint scene as far as timing, it's real interesting because we always talk about, like, something good happens at the midpoint scene, but then immediately turns to shit. This is immediate. At the midpoint scene, they take the French bunker, and it seems like, fuck, this is a huge... part of this war, right? We just, we just captured the French bunker. Everything's going to be a victory. Then they look up and all the fucking tanks are coming in.
They're like, shit, they all get down. The fucking tanks are going into the bunker and crushing people and running over people. And it's like, that turned bad real quick. That went from, that went from. False victory to the bad guys closing in, in like a fucking second.
Yeah, they wasted no time.
Yeah, that was crazy. Yeah so, and then the so then the second half of the second act you know, after the midpoint where we always say bad things start to happen, you start to get a lot of cutaways of the government trying to haggle about ending the war. Right. And then meanwhile, though, these guys are still out there fighting. And he's losing friends, his one friend kills himself, he asks for cutlery.
Yeah, that was rough.
And they bring it to him and he jams it into his own throat because he refuses to go home a cripple. I mean, these scenes are so hard to watch, man, and you're just like, Man, and you know it's just taking a toll on Balmer, right? There's a scene where he's talking to Kat. I can't remember the guy's name, it's like Kataslovsky or something, but they call him Kat. He, he's his, ends up being the one friend that lasts the longest. Oh, yeah, yeah.
And and he, and, and he asks him why, why he joined the army. And he said, I wanted to prove to my mom I could do it. And, and I remember thinking how, how much that ties into Private Witt from The Thin Red Line. About his, his voiceovers in the beginning of that film about his mother dying. Right and we'll get to that about the tie in there, but I just I thought it was interesting how both characters how their mother Was a driving factor in them proving themselves. Yeah. Right.
And then of course you get to the point where Cat dies. And, you know, again, not to ruin much of the ending, but they're practically out of it. Right? Because the war is over, or, or it's going to be over.
It's already been announced. They're just waiting for the clock to strike, right?
No, this, but that's, that's even later. That's worse. Cat dies when they're out of harm's way. They're, they're back, they're back in the village area, and they go to steal another fucking goose. And this time it goes bad. And, and and another, this is a tie in, another tie in to Saving Private Ryan. This really could have been a three movie talk today. Another tie in to Saving Private Ryan. When Kat, they get Kat to the he finally carries him, right? Carries him all the way to the medic.
And the guy says, you shouldn't have wasted your time, he's dead. And he goes, what do you mean? I was just talking to him a minute ago. He says, no, you see that? It's black blood. He got, he got shot in the liver. So, for, for, you know, I am not a scientist or a biologist, but I know enough, I've seen enough war movies to tell you that if you get shot in the liver, you're fucked. Because the liver is what cleanses your body of toxins. So it's really just a big bag of poison.
That's all your liver really is. And if you get shot in it, it all spills into your bloodstream. Right? So, what's the tie in the Saving Private Ryan? Do you remember when Giovanni Ribisi, I believe, is the actor that played Wade. Harlan Wade, the doctor. Mm hmm. Right? He gets shot, and as he's laying there, they're all standing around him, and they're all like, Tell us how to fix you. Tell us how to fix you. And he's like, okay, reach behind me. How big is the exit hole? You know what I mean?
And Tom Hanks is like, oh, it's about the size of an acorn. And he goes, here, put my hand on it. And he puts his hand on it, and right away Wade goes, Oh my God, my liver! Like, he knows. He knows at that point. And I never realized how haunting that scene was until I watched this movie.
Yeah, for the doctor, because he knew.
Right, because the doctor knew the second he realized he took that shot in the liver. He's fucked and if you go back and watch Saving Private Ryan again now knowing that like the way this ties in it's even sadder It's just more heartbreaking And then of course Kat was his last friend and of course he was left behind because he died there I think that to me with the turning point that sends it into act three is what you mentioned They decide the war is over and they're gonna announce at 11 a.m.
Tomorrow ceasefire So what does the asshole general guy do? Oh no, we're gonna have one last battle to stick it to the French!
Yeah, try to take one last piece of ground.
Right! And all the soldiers are like, Are you fucking nuts man? The war is over! Like tomorrow at 11 a. m. It's over. Why are we doing this? No, at dawn we're gonna go attack. What? And you can see it on their faces, particularly Private Bomber. He's like, this is bad. This is bad. Because I know what's gonna happen.
You heard someone yell out, I'm not going! And they started beating him up. I think they even shot him. Because I heard a gunshot go off after he started yelling. That he wasn't gonna go.
Right. And it's so heartbreaking. But eventually, so, so, of course, as you can guess what happens. Private Bomber takes a bayonet in the chest. Hauntingly it ends... Well, actually in the back. Well, yeah, but it goes through his chest. It goes through him, yeah. Yeah, it goes through his whole friggin body. And, and, and, there were minutes away, right? There were minutes away when that happened.
Oh, not even. I think right after he got stabbed, you hear the whistles blowing.
Yeah, seize fire, seize fire, seize fire.
I mean, as he was dying. He wasn't even dead yet. When they, when they announced the ceasefire.
So terrible. And then of course the final, before they get to the final closing shot, one of the final sequences is the guy that has to go and collect the dog tags, right? Yep. And they, and they get to him and that's when you realize he's dead.
And it has almost like, I, I wrote down in my notes an inception type of ending, because if you, you know, the ending of Inception with the top is spinning, and you don't know, you don't know if it's going to fall over, right, to depict if he's asleep, or if he's in a dream or not, or if it's reality. They held that camera on his face so long I kept thinking his eyes were gonna open, his eyes were gonna open, he's not dead yet, he's not dead, he can't be dead, he's not dead yet, and he doesn't.
It actually, you know what, when they did that, it made me think, I think they played some kind of camera magic. Because there's other things in that, in that frame, in that, in that scene that you could see moving.
Snowfall.
Yeah, snowfall. So, yeah.
I thought the same thing.
I'm like, okay, this isn't a still picture, but this man is not moving at all.
Right.
And I'm like, how'd they do that? Because even for someone acting, you still gotta breathe. Yeah. So they must've, oops, I bumped my mic. They must've done, I think they done something where they froze it. Just on him. Cut him out. Photoshopped him into this scene or something.
It's quite possible.
It was seamless though. It was beautiful. I mean, it was horrible, but it was masterfully done however they did it because you actually thought you were looking at a dead... Corpse, you know what I mean?
But, but, I kept thinking His eyes are gonna open, his eyes are gonna open Cause they held that shot long enough And I'm like, come on man, he's not dead yet Come on man, give me something Give me something, give me a little sign of life And it just fucking fades out
That's not how that war went, brother
Exactly So, we already talked about, Okay, so, so, some quick recaps What affected you the most?
You know I think, especially watching it the second time, I was reflecting a lot more about war than I did the first time. So what affected me the most was just the, I guess the overarching Uh, story of basically humans at war and, and we're not, we're still in that story. And, and, and I, I kept thinking about like, what the hell are we doing here with Ukraine? Because I don't know how we're going to get out of this one. You know what I mean?
We keep feeding, feeding arms to a country that's, that's fighting with the nuclear power. If they start to lose, things are going to get really ugly. If, if Russia starts to lose. Which they have. They've lost a lot of battles. And they're just sent, they're just throwing more bodies at it right now. But, it made me really pause, like watching this going.
This was a futile war, and, and, you know, not a lot was accomplished, and basically it set the world up for a World War II, because they, you know, basically, Germany got screwed, and, you know anyways, the rest is history, but.
I think the difference of what we go through now is back then, though I wasn't alive, but just from what I've read and what I've seen, dictators back then really wanted to rule the world. I think dictators today, it's all about money. We make so much money on war, and we send disposable humans to die just to continue making money.
Nod to Metallica. Disposable Heroes.
Right, right. And, and I mean, you could talk about, you know, how many times have we been in wars that seemed futile? Yeah. But, but, we make money on war. War is very profitable. And, and we learn that because of the Second World War. Right? That was an economic boom for us.
Well, yeah, we learn that, and that's what concerns me because... We're just sending billions of dollars over right now to feed the war machine, and... Is anyone actually talking about this? You know what I mean? This is not something that is even talked about at work with, you know, people. We're not even discussing it. And so, you know, we usually...
Because it's not our soldiers dying.
Well, yeah, yeah, exactly. So anyways, but, I don't want to get too dark, but we are talking about world wars here.
We are talking about two That's why when you texted me and you were like, yeah, I get it, war is bad, I'm like, you fucking idiot. Every movie has that same theory, right? Every movie has the same message.
Well, I was ticked cause I felt like So we're gonna get into this, we're gonna get into this in this next movie. But I felt like The thin red line was preachy. I just felt like
I didn't see that at all, though.
So, anyways, we can conclude and move on if you'd like.
Alright, well, like I said, there's so many similarities that we can bounce back and forth as we go. So moving to the Thin Red Line. First of all, do you know the significance of the title?
No, I don't.
Okay, so the thin red line is a metaphor, I want to say, for the British Army. When they were fighting the Russian Empire, I want to say again, I just briefly looked up, I want to say it was the 1850s. And, so what happened was, is uh, oh fuck, I'm uh, there's historians that are probably screaming right now. Because they know it was the Crimean War, I think. But anyway, so they were, they're in this area, the British Army, right? And the Russian Empire is coming. And they're far outmatched.
The Russians are, are I'm sorry, the British are outmatched. The Russians have a vastly larger army, right? It's like 25, 000 to like 4, 000. Some, some crazy bullshit like that. And the British are like, What the fuck are we gonna do? We're screwed. So what they did is they all lined up. across the border, too deep. That's it. Just two people deep.
But by doing it that way, they stretched all the way down so that when the Russians started to come over the hill and saw them, they were like, fuck, and they turned around and they went back. So they called it the thin red line because they were wearing, you know, their uniforms. So it became a metaphor. It became a metaphor for being outmatched, right? It became a metaphor for you are against superior numbers. And that's what the Americans are in the Battle of Guadalcanal, right?
They land there, and I can't remember if it was before or after the Battle of Wake Island. Anybody that knows, the Battle of Wake Island was a disaster. All the Marines died. It was not a very good battle for us. That was one island we tried to take during World War II in the Pacific. Got our asses kicked.
Before you continue with that thought, I'm going to make some noise because I have to unwrap my next beer. I couldn't find a cooler, so I got this little, little ice pack.
This is my brother, folks. He can't, he can't find a cooler.
Look at that. I made a, I made a beer burrito with an ice pack.
His beer was injured, so he wrapped an ice pack around it so it wouldn't, so the swelling would go down. God dammit. Alright, so anyway. I was in the middle of an important thought. But anyway. Oh wait, I'll stop for that. Oh yeah, that's good. So, James Jones wrote the book in 1962. It's a semi autobiographical. Now what's interesting also to note is that James Jones also wrote the book of which the film From Here to Eternity is based on.
And The Thin Red Line was supposed to be a direct sequel. To from here to eternity that was his plan and then he realized that he killed off all his major characters at the end of from here to eternity so he couldn't carry any of them over so he had to create new characters. Again autobiographical on his own experiences in World War II.
So he wrote this book and he used that title because, again, the Americans that land, the soldiers that landed on Guadalcanal, it now became Central Island because there was an airstrip there. And the Japs were going, the Japanese were going to use the island as like a way station. Like, they could get to the mainland, our mainland, and attack us. Easier if they had a stopping point, right? Like you can't, it's hard to fly jet planes from, from Japan to the United States.
They needed an island in the middle to, to, to land on, to fuel up, gear up, weapon up and go. It was essential to take this island. Unfortunately, it was heavily covered by the Japanese. So we were. Outmatch. We were against greater numbers. So that's why he used the title for the book. And of course, Terrence Malick adapted the screenplay and used the title again as, as the film. Now I wrote down a couple other notes, only because you pissed me off with how much you said you didn't like it.
So this film, the film costs 52 million to make, which by today's numbers is 96 million, which is standard for today's film.
That's because they had every freaking name in Hollywood in this fricking film, man.
Well,
it was was so unnecessary
Here, here's the funny part. My gosh. He had to do that.
Come on.
He had no intention. He had no intention of doing that. But the studio said, we need big names. Do you know all the names that read for those parts and didn't get it?
Did he need that many big names? I mean, for crying out loud,
and it made 98 million in 1998, which today's the equivalent of 181 million. Okay. A pretty successful film. Scorsese called it his second favorite film of the 90s. Gene Siskel called it the greatest contemporary war film I've ever seen. That's a quote from Gene Siskel.
Yeah, but wasn't it Gene Siskel that didn't like Die Hard?
No, that was Roger Ebert. That was Roger Ebert. And I tell that to people all the time. I always say, hey, whenever somebody makes a mistake, I always say, don't feel bad, Roger Ebert in 1988 gave Die Hard a thumbs down. I tell that to people all the time. But...
Gene Siskel could make mistakes too, so...
But, but you, to your point, you would agree with Ebert on this. Ebert, on the other hand, liked it, but he said he felt like it was unfinished. But that's abstract art to me. You know what I mean? That it, that it takes a lot of inter It didn't have a linear storyline. Again, the biggest problem with the Thin Red Line is it came out in the wrong year. Right? Because Saving Private Ryan won the Oscars that it normally would have won.
It won the sound, and music, and sound effects, and all that shit. If, if the Thin Red Lion came out just one year later and was matched up against American Beauty, I think it wins all these Oscars.
Oh, yeah, probably.
But, but it came out in a rough year because everybody loved Spielberg that year and everybody loved Saving Private ryan, right?
What about 97? What came out in 97?
Titanic. Nothing was beating Titanic that year.
Oh, yeah.
But anyway um, so, so Again, so a couple of notes. Also, I wrote down that the imagery, right? So what I noticed was where most war films. would depict body parts, like Saving Private Ryan, body parts flying off, people covered in blood. The thin red line would cut to, like, animals, and showing how a bird was affected by the bombing. You know what I mean? There was that shot of the bird that had its wing broken and its feathers were all burnt.
Like, instead, that's Terrence Malick's way of saying, we are destructive to the environment.
Yeah, which is interesting in the, in the, I think it was the first scene in All Quiet on the Western Front. It was a bunch, it was a bunch of foxes in a foxhole. Yes. A little fox den, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And you hear the bombs going off in the background and they're like shaking and stuff. And I was like, oh, that's, that's pretty brilliant.
Right, yes, yes. And again we talked about score. Hans Zimmer did the score for this film. I love Hans Zimmer, by the way. Hans Zimmer has done a million just IMDb Hans Zimmer and you'll see a million films. Yeah, right. You're joking, right? You are joking. Okay. Uh, Most notably, for those of you, the younger crowd out there, he won an Oscar for doing the score for The Lion King. Yeah. So there you go. But anyway, a lot of emotional imagery. I wrote that down. Even in flashback shots.
There's a lot of flashback shots in The Thin Red Line. And they're all emotion driven, heart driven, love driven, to contrast what the soldiers are going through in current present day, right? Like,
I felt like it started off so slow.
True.
And like, to your point though, comparing it to Private Ryan. That did not start off slow. Right. That's right. It grabbed you in the first ten minutes of the movie and you were hooked. Yes. And this one, man, you're fighting to stay awake. I mean, if you're, if you're tired when you start Thin Red Line, you're gonna be sleeping in twenty minutes.
Well, and that was the thing. I, I remember texting you one night. I, I've seen this movie a million times. I have it. I have it on DVD. So I went to watch it again for this podcast, but I had, I... I had to put the girls down myself, which means that when, when V goes to bed early and I have to put the girls down, I'll fall asleep in there and I don't come out until like midnight.
And then I went and I grabbed a drink and I sit down, I put the DVD in and the first 20 minutes I'm like, dude, I'm going to bed. So by no knock of the film, it does start off slow. Don't watch it if you're already tired and drinking. That's a bad combination right there.
And I get like what you're saying. It is art, so... But here's the thing though. I mean, Saving Private Ryan is art too.
Oh, of course. Well, all film is art.
You know, all film is art. And so, some art... Just is more engaging and more, I don't know.
Well, Again, I'll tell you I'll to your point. I'll help you out here One of roger ebert's criticisms was he felt that the artisticness with audiences, particularly in a year where Saving Private Ryan connected to audiences.
Great. I'm agreeing with the guy that thought Die Hard sucked. Great.
Right, right. So, hey man, you gotta pick your battles. Pick your battles. So and, and let me just say, when Terrence Malick, he, he got the option to make this film ten years earlier. Every big name in Hollywood wanted to work with him. Some of them offered to do it for free.
Good lord.
So, I mean, because he's, he's got such a great history. He's such a fantastic filmmaker. So, it starts off with Private Wit, who is played by Jim Caviezel. Uh, For, for, for those diehard Christian folks, you know who Jim Caviezel is. He's a big activist He played Jesus in um, The Jesus
the passion.
Passion of the Christ
the passion.
Passion, the passion. I, I almost drew a blank there for a minute. So
another masterpiece by the way,
whi. Which is, which is, so, it's, it's interesting how the, the most honest. And, and sad and heartfelt scenes are with him and Sean Penn. Yeah. And in, and in reality, those two couldn't be any more different on the political spectrum. Sean Penn and Jim Caviezel. But they have the best scenes together. Yeah.
And I gotta say though, as much as I poo pooed on this movie, there were certain scenes that were just spectacular. I mean, the acting, the dialogue, I mean, there's so many, like. Individual scenes I loved but there were, I don't know, putting it all together and I felt like, what did I say, I felt like it was kind of preachy you know, kind of, I don't know, in an anti war kind of way.
But I didn't get that because the anti war sentiments I feel are in every war film.
Yeah, I know.
You know, like, the people you care about die.
Like you said. Yeah, war, war sucks.
War sucks, yeah. Great analogy, Chris. That pretty much sums it up for every fucking war movie ever. But, but, Saving Private Ryan, 1917 The Thin Red Line, All Quiet On The Front, Hamburger Hill, Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, You go through these films, And the people that you get adapt, that you get closest to, They die, and they do that shit on purpose, So that you can walk away going, War is bad. Like, how many war, how many war movies really glorify war?
Right.
There are uh, Paths of Glory by Kubrick might be the only one. That might be the only one, and that's fucking Kirk Douglas in like 1960 or something. Right. Like, most war films, I guess maybe Patton. You could argue, you could argue Patton does too. But most war films post the Vietnam era, and I think that's important. Paths of Glory and Platoon are both, well Platoon not Platoon, Patton. Patton? Paths to Glory was before Vietnam, Patton was in the middle of Vietnam.
But any post Vietnam war film are downers, man. Even when they're not even about Vietnam. Even when they're about World War II or World War I. They're downers. Right?
Well, the culture changed because I think during World War II in, you know, the, the propaganda that the War Department was putting out and everything. Yeah. Everyone was trying to put a happy face on it. Yep. And that's what the PR was all about, right? I mean. Yes. So, but after, you know, Vietnam was on TV every night.
Yeah. Yep.
You know what I mean?
Yep. Absolutely.
So, you couldn't hide it anymore.
Talk about a downer. Born on the 4th of July is a fucking super downer. Yeah. Right? Especially when you see that the, the main character Ron Kovic was gung ho. He, he was a big pro war Marine, you know what I mean? And then he comes back crippled and he becomes an anti war activist, you know what I mean? It's like most movies have that, post Vietnam movies anyway, regardless of what war they're depicting, have a lot of that.
Anti war sentiment that war is bad and they try to get you to fall in love with characters And then they kill them off in front of you, right? Right? So, So another thing that makes it very, very similar to All Quiet on the Western Front, I said the main character of Private Balmer and the main character of Private Witt in The Thin Red Line. Both of them, when we said the theme generally isn't it's usually not the main character that says it, it's something that's said to them.
I picked one where Private Balmer said it himself. I'm gonna do the same thing here. Private Witt actually says in his voiceover in the beginning of the film, he was talking about his, when his mother died. Right? And he said, I hope I can meet my death with the same calm. And the reason why I think that was a running theme throughout the film is, they, of all the deaths we saw, we saw a lot of deaths in The Thin Red Line. There was this, we talk about emotional tug of war, right?
The give and take. Half of them were met with cowardice. And the other half were met with bravery. And it was sort of that push and pull, right? Like, one goes out really bad, where they're screaming and crying, and other ones were met with like, you know, like when Woody Harrelson accidentally pulls the pin out of his grenade.
Right.
And it's still in his belt. And he throws himself up against the embankment so not to kill everybody else. Right. He just sacrifices himself. Yeah. And although he's terrified now because he blew his ass off, he knows he's gonna die, there's that calm that overcomes him. Uh, I Mentioned another thing uh,
He even said that, though, and I kind of chuckled. I blew my ass!
He's like, damn it, I blew my ass off! And uh, so um,
It's like, oh man, I should be laughing, this is horrible.
But, but there's Another, a little point I wrote in that scene, the cinematography is so great in this film, too, because the cinematography alone, well, I won't say alone, Terrence Malick as the director as well, couldn't you just get the sense They wanted you to know when it was hot, and they wanted you to know when it was cold. And the funny thing was, they're in Guadalcanal in the South Pacific. So it's hot all the time, and they're like off the equator.
But there are moments where you see the wind blowing the grass, and in that Woody Harrelson scene, now he only said he was cold because all the oxygen's running out of his body, right? Because his ass is blown off. So he says, I'm cold, and they start to cover him up. But then, just the way it's shot, you FEEL that cold. You know what I mean? You feel him getting cold. Yeah. You know, it's so great the way it was shot.
Um, But so, so I wrote that down as part of like that back and forth is cowardice and bravery. And then the relationships some relationships are strained and some are strengthened. Kind of in that bravery, cowardice kind of way. So the ones that are strained would be Staros and, and Tal, right? Which is Elias Keteas as the captain. And then the, is he a lieutenant colonel, Nick Nolte's character, the one in charge?
They are going back, their relationship is strong at the beginning, and weakens as it goes on.
Nick Nolte, man, what a character he played.
You know, you know what's funny? That was a huge year for him, 1998.
He was a lieutenant colonel.
He was nominated for Best Actor in that same year for a movie called Affliction, which I think is his best performance. We talked about Affliction on a previous podcast, the, the Mosquito Coast, the Minari, the Minari Coast podcast we did. I mentioned Nick Nolte's character because it was a Paul Schrader script, but that came out the same year as this movie. So he had this movie and Affliction came out in the same year.
It was a monster year for Nick Nolte, and yes, dude, is he not terrifying in this film? Like he's just He just, but again, if you can write good motivation
Oh, yeah
You know they sent, they spend the whole, they spend parts of the first act on why he's this driven, right? John Travolta, John Travolta's character has one bit part. He's the, like the admiral or something, right? He's his boss. Yeah And he's telling them like, Oh, you know, I envy you. This is great. These are, you know, this is great. You're going into battle. And he's thinking, How many fucking times have I been passed over? Like, I have to make this work. Guadalcanal has to be a success.
He knows that right off the bat, so, or else he's gonna be embarrassed again and get passed over for promotion.
Right.
So when they're in these battles, and Captain Starros is telling them, I don't want to send my men up this hill, we're getting killed! This is a suicide mission! He's like, God damn it, Starros! You need to get your ass up there! I'm not gonna have you avoid a straight fight! You know, he's, and it's so, it's like, God, what do you do in that situation when you're ordered? And one guy even tells him, it's not your fault. He's ordering you to. You know what I mean?
Like, there's even a private there that's telling the captain, It's not your fault, we're willing to die. That's what we are. We're marines, or whatever, we're army rangers, or whatever they were. He's like, we're willing to go. He's ordering you to, it's not your fault. And he refuses!
Well, and then, He comes down, right? He comes down to where they are, and everything kind of settled down. He's like, oh hell. Right, good timing.
And he's like, oh, doesn't seem so bad now, does it? And he's like, well, things have just gotten quiet just in the last few minutes. But but one of the relationships on the counteract of that one, that relationship gets strained over the film. One of the ones that's strengthened is Welsh and Wit. Right? Sean Penn and Jim Caviezel, where they are at odds at the beginning, but as the film goes on, There's sort of like a bond and a respect that forms there. You know what I mean?
Yeah. To and I thought, I just thought it was so beautifully done the way those two Sort of really, I mean, like you said, some of the scenes they had, those are my favorite scenes. Are the scenes that Jim Caviezel has with Sean Penn. Those are the best scenes of the whole movie.
Yeah.
Both The Thin Red Line and Saving Private Ryan have this concept of one man. But the difference between the two, and I wrote this down too in my notes, Saving Private Ryan dictates that one man is worth the mission. That one man is worth everything, right? If it's just one soldier you can save, that's enough. The Thin Red Line is the exact opposite. Sean Penn throughout the whole movie is like, What's one man in all this shit? We are nothing. We are nothing. We're disposable heroes, right?
And he kind of dictates that. He's like, What do you think you can do, one person, in all this madness? We're all gonna die here, and it doesn't matter, you know what I mean? So it's like two war movies that came out in the same year. The other thing is the thin red line, I already talked about the significance of the title, but I also think it's got a lot of ambiguity to it. I wrote down this too in my notes. It's the thin red line between human and animal. Right? How that's thin.
It's a thin line between us and uncivilized beasts, right? The one guy is pulling other dude's teeth out after he kills them, or, you know, he actually pulls them out of the one guy that's still alive. He pulls his teeth out, right? To save them, as a souvenir. The thin red line between hero and coward. The thin line between life and death. Between sanity and madness.
Yeah.
Right? Like, I mean, it's just, I don't know man. It's, I thought it was beautiful. I think it's a beautiful film.
Now, this was the first time I ever saw it, so... I gotta say, I should give it another chance, but...
I think you should.
That was my impression.
There's a couple of lines I wrote down that I fucking love.
Go for it.
One of them is Wit asks Welsh. Jimmy Caviezel asks Sean Penn's character, Don't you ever feel lonely? And he goes, only around people. And it kind of dictates that. We're all, oh shit. I hit my microphone. I was getting so excited. It kind of feeds into that. We're all, we're all meaningless. It doesn't matter. We're all gonna die. You know what I mean? So, so it feeds into that. I only get lonely around other people, right?
But my, one of the funniest lines of the whole film, when John Cusack's character is talking to Nick Nolte, it's after they finally take the hill. Right? And he's like, oh, I'm gonna recommend you for an award and blah blah blah. And then he says, oh, this isn't the line, but one of the other funny lines is like, I'm not sure you'll get it, but I'm gonna recommend it anyway! Like, so he's telling him all this stuff, and John Cusack is like... You know, we gotta get water up here, you know?
Yeah, we need water. That's all I kept saying.
Yeah, he's like, you know, they could die from it. And he's all, they could die from enemy fire, you know? Like, he's just going on and on. And then he goes, You're like a son to me, John. And then he looks at him and he goes, You know what my son does? He's a bait salesman. That's just it. And there's like a moment of silence, like right after he says it. But what I love about that line, and I don't know how many people catch this, I thought about it immediately.
What do you think he's doing, that whole scene? He's a bait salesman in that scene. He's trying to sell John Cusack into, this is why we're doing this. This is all that matters. It doesn't matter if the men die from dehydration. It doesn't matter. As long as we take the hill, that's what we need. So, to end it with a rather disparaging comment about his son being a bait salesman.
Right.
That's what he's been doing for the last ten minutes.
Yeah, I didn't catch, that's a great observation. It was funny though, cause at the end of that scene, he, he calls out to get them water. Have some water brought up here.
Yeah, yeah, get, goddammit, send people down to the river and bring them, dude I love Nolte in that movie, he's got that.
Yeah, and I liked, I liked John Cusack's his part in that scene, because he was just, he was just kind of stoned, you know, just like, we need water. And he just, yep, yep, that's great. We need water, but we need water. Yeah. It finally just wore him down.
And as usual, the second half after the midpoint scene, which the midpoint scene again, the false victory is where Ben Chaplin's character discovers how to take out the, the gun. The, the, the, the hidden, the foxhole, right? Right, right. He, he's the one that gets up there, all the way up there, and he's like, Shit, it's just three or four dudes. It's just three or four dudes inside there. We take them out, we got the hill. So, false victory. Everything seems great.
Well, they find that there's still more shit that's gonna hit the fan once they get up there. And once they, even after they take it out, there's a lot of, as far as the story goes, on the second half of that, Staros gets fired, right? There's that real downer scene where Nick Nolte basically relieves him of his command. scene because he's just like, he's been the good guy this whole movie, you know, and he's just like, I just don't like seeing my men die and he even challenges him.
He challenges Nick Nolte. He goes, have you ever had a soldier die in your arm, sir? You know what I mean? Like,
I know, right?
You know, and then, and it's so, and it's so degrading the way he's like, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to recommend you for the purple heart too. And he's like, why? And he goes, that scratch on your nose. You know what I mean? Like, oh god, like, there's, there's been soldiers that have gotten a purple heart for losing limbs and you're gonna give me one because I have a fucking scratch on my nose, you know what I mean?
Like, like just, it's so insulting and then of course we get into the, the Bell Private Bell, who's Ben Chaplin's character, gets the letter that his wife wants a divorce. Right? She's been seeing an Air Force captain or something, you know? That is like, after everything this guy has gone through. And the only thing that's kept him alive is those flashback thoughts of being with his wife again.
And again, if you go back and watch that, one of the last visions he has, or one of the last shots, that Terrence Malick shows of the wife, You see the other man coming in the background. He's coming up the sidewalk towards her and it's not him. It's not ben chaplain.
So So right off the bat, you're like this is before he gets the letter So when you see that shot, you're like who's that dude, you know, and then like a scene or two later he gets the letter and you're like, Aw, she's gonna leave him!
Yeah, that's the worst.
Oh my god, I can't imagine being a soldier in battle and having that fear you're gonna die any day now and you get a, the only thing that's keeping you going is your wife back home.
I feel like it's better to just let him find out when he gets home. So rough, man.
So heartbreaking. And then, of course, we get to the all is lost, which is the river scene. That again, where everything thought, they thought they had it, right? They thought they had, they took the hill. They thought they had the island. But then the Japanese overpowered them at the river. And, private wit has to make that decision. I have to risk myself for the platoon, right? I have to draw the Japanese away.
And he, and he does, and so, and then we get of course to the full circle of his theme, Am I gonna face death like my mother did, with calm? And there's that great scene, it's a terrible scene, but it's a great scene the way it's shot, where he faces his death. And all the Japanese are surrounding him with their guns out. And he's just staring at them. And they're screaming at him, right? They're yelling at him in Japanese. He has no idea what they're saying.
But he's just staring at them and he's like, at this moment he realizes,
This is it.
This is it. Now am I gonna be taken captive? Am I gonna fight and scream like a coward? Or am I just gonna raise my gun and let them shoot me? I've done my part. I've pulled them away so that my platoon can get away. Yeah. And he did. He was successful. You know, and then there's that, you know, of course, the real sad scene where they, they bury him after that and Welsh, Sean Penn's character, is the last one at the grave. Yeah. Right? And he says, where's your spark now?
Like, and he starts to break down. Yeah. You know, this is a private that he hated the whole movie, but they started to build that bond. Yeah. And then at the end he has to bury him.
And I think when, when he said that, where's your spark now, you know, I felt like in spite of hit the persona that, that he carried. Sean Penn's character. Huh. In spite of that, there is something about Caviezel's character that he wished he had.
Absolutely, because what does he say throughout the whole movie? There's another world out there. And Sean Penn keeps telling him in the whole movie, There's no other world but this one. Right. And in this one, a man is nothing. Yeah. We're going to die. And that's just what we do. And he's like, you're wrong, there's another world. And what was that other world he found?
Was the village, where nobody fought, nobody, everybody loved each other, everybody helped build forts, you know, the huts and everything, and they lived in paradise. And then what happens, they start showing these shots in the second half of the film, the villagers are starting to fight each other. They're starting to get in arguments. And he sees that, and he's like, fuck, we are ruining paradise. Right?
And again, we talked about it in the Minari Coast podcast about the destruction of paradise. That is happening here. Right. You know? That they did that to that island and those villagers who lived in peace for thousands of years. And then war comes in. That's not just us, you know, it's the Japanese too. But, it, war comes in and obliterates paradise.
Cause they just happen to be in the right place.
And at the beginning of the film when he's talking to that one village woman. You know what I mean? Mm-Hmm. He's the, the kids are all playful and smiling at him near the second half when he gets back, when, when he sees them again. They're all afraid of him now. Yeah. And he can't go near him.
They, they kind of pull away when he goes near the, when he goes near him and then he sees the other, the adult villagers, that's where they're arguing with each other and fighting something they never did before. Right. So you could see the destruction Yeah. Of, of that paradise. I think it's a fantastic film. I love it. It's so beautiful.
So I guess the point is. War sucks.
You nailed it, Chris. You nailed it. Took us six hours of movie watching and you nailed the point. Yeah. But uh, but no, I guess the point again when we talk about script structures, even in abstract journey films like this, you can still find the points. They're still there, right?
Yeah.
Theme, and, and spiritual goals, and turning points, and midpoint scenes, they're all still there. All the points are still there. Yep. Even with somebody like Terrence Malick, who people consider to be such a whack job when he fakes films, you know, there's a movie called Tree of Life, also with Sean Penn, and people watch the movie and they're like, I have no idea what this movie's about! You know what I mean? Like... Even an abstract filmmaker like that can still nail those points home.
So, if you haven't seen them, folks, All Quiet on the Western Front, 2022, and 1998's A Thin Red Line. We also mentioned, of course, Saving Private Ryan several times. If you haven't seen that, see that one too. But... I think the Thin Red Line and All Quiet on the Western Front are more similar than people are willing to admit.
It is a great pairing. And I will remind everyone that All Quiet on the Western Front is a Netflix film. So you can stream it on Netflix if you subscribe. And we had to rent a Thin Red Line. I can't remember. I think we just rented it on Amazon or something.
I just had to go to my DVD collection and there it was.
I gotta get me a DVD player. I don't even have one in my house. We had an Xbox for the longest time, but they all moved out, so I don't even have an Xbox anymore.
My my, well, it's a Blu ray player, but it plays DVDs, too. But I remember back in 98, man, I was just graduating college at the time, and I remember the poster for The Thin Red Line. I loved it. If you, if you go into IMDb and look up the film, I think the picture they show is the poster. And it's, it's all the helmets. You, you just see, you just see a bunch of soldiers helmets in the grass. And you see one eye, like you see one soldier looking up, like looking up from the helmet. Oh, yeah.
Yeah, it's such a great, that was the whole poster. Yeah, that's a great, I love that shot. And and look at all the names there, man. Read off those names, read off those names.
Sean Penn, Adrian Brody, Jim Caviezel, Ben Chaplin, George Clooney, John Cusack, Woody Harrelson, Elias Coteas. Elias Coteas. Oh, Elias Coteas. Sorry, I butchered that. That's Staros. That's Staros. Yeah, and Nick Nolte, John C. Reilly, John Travolta, and there's a lot more that you'd recognize that aren't even listed there.
So, another thing about Elias Katea, so those of you who don't know who he is, you would know him if you were into 80s movies. He was in Some Kind of Wonderful. He was the uh, he was the guy that's always in detention. He was the, the bad, like like the biker heavy metal rocker guy. Uh, In that movie. He also played Yeah, he played you, basically. Okay, so before we get to Six Degrees. Yeah. I have some I have uh, I wanted to mention
I'm looking forward to six Degrees. I want to see how you pull this one off.
So, well, before we get to that. So, we so a little bit of trivia on uh, Adrian Brody's character of Fife. Private Fife. Huh. So, Adrien Brody is an Academy award winner he won best actor the movie, The Pianist, a film by Roman Polanski.
Right, right.
Which is interesting if you go back to all those names you just read off, how many of them are Oscar winners. It's crazy. But anyway, so so Adrian Brody, the first cut of this film, was five hours long.
Oh my god.
And the studio was like, obviously you're out of your fucking mind because we cannot play this in theater it won't make any money because we can only show like two airings in a day, right? Two or three tops. You gotta, you gotta trim this down, nobody's gonna sit through five hours. So he trims it down to about three hours, right? Adrian Brody's character was supposed to be the lead.
Oh my gosh, really?
Fife. Fife. Private Fife was supposed to be the lead. He knew none of this about it being cut down. He takes his family on opening night on the red carpet to the premiere of the Thin Red Line to say, I'm the lead in this war movie and it's his big break.
Oh man.
He goes in there, they sit out, he's in all of four scenes. And he barely has any speaking parts. Yeah, that's rough. He's got barely any speaking parts. And he walked out of there completely blindsided. He said he felt embarrassed. He had to tell his family. He's like, I had no idea. All my shit was cut. In addition to him, his, a lot of his scenes being cut, Mickey Rourke is in the film too. Bill Pullman is in the film. And their, their scenes are all cut.
I heard that there's a special edition blu ray where a scene with Mickey Rourke in it is is in the deleted scene So I want to buy that so I can watch it. I want to watch that I would love to find if there is the five hour version out there somewhere. I'm gonna buy that and watch that too, right? But yeah, so it turns out that Jim Caviezel Ended up being the lead. Yeah, and he later said that that's the film that launched his career.
Sure Because after that he did that movie frequency Remember that movie?
Yeah, that's a great movie. That's a time travel movie. I love that movie.
Well, kind of time travel. It's through a ham radio.
Yeah, but he's talking to his dad who died 20 years ago or whatever. I loved it. was a great film.
And then, of course, after that was Passion. So, I mean, he credits the Thin Red Line for launching his career. Yeah. So, yeah. I don't know, I loved it. So when you texted me that you were, that you were such, you were so down on this film, I was like, I'm gonna reach through this phone and strangle him.
Well, I had already, I had already seen I had already seen All Quiet on the Western Front. When I saw A Thin Red Line, I was like, oh man, I knew how much I loved, All Quiet on the Western Front, you know, and then when I saw Thin Red Line, I was like, oh my god, this is slow, and then the scene, oh, no, artsy, oh, far.
Okay, one second, one second, I know we don't have much time left, but I gotta do this. Okay, so, because if I keep going on this proper twelve, then it will be, it'll be more than just Conor McGregor kicking my ass. But what I love is that Scorsese named it his second favorite film of the 90s. I think his first one was The Bicycle Thief which I believe is a foreign film. But anyway I haven't seen it.
But that he for him naming this as his second favorite film of the 90s is very telling because Scorsese loves... Movies that draw out emotions simply by their shots, right? And again, like I said, this is one of those films like All Quiet on the Western Front that are very, they're like abstract paintings. They're just artistically beautiful to watch, right? And, and even though they come with... Such a downer of war. There's so much beauty in the human spirit.
Sure. And I think both of these films really show that. And a special shout out, again, to the actor that played Private Bomber for his first role ever.
My God, yeah.
Man, did he nail it. He nailed it big time.
Yeah, Even without dialogue, and like I said, I watched it in German both times. We started out watching it with the English dubbed in, and my boys asked me to change it, so we did. And I, I just loved it, and so I did, re watching it in German, I was, I paused a couple times and jumped back to see what he actually said, because visually you just get caught up in the film. Yeah. You know, and so I wasn't even... I forgot to read, you know, because I was just caught up in the film.
And I had to go back a couple of times, re watching it, saying, Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, reading, reading the subtitles. but yeah, this, the visual, like the, I don't know what it is, I mean, just the, he captures the horror of war right on his face. You know, and it's just brilliant.
Well, and again, to, to that point on Jim Caviezel, he is very, very similar, where that was one of his first big roles, and how, I mean, you see so many times in that film he looks like he's about to cry, right? Like he's, he's, he's got that thing that he does with his mouth, you know where like you're getting choked up but you want to hide it?
He does that several times in the movie, and you can kind of see his eyes getting a little glossy, but he fights it, because he's got to be tough guy, right? He's got to show that it doesn't bother him, that any because he even says to Sean Penn, There's nothing you can do to me. You know what I mean? Like, I'm twice the man you are, he tells him in the beginning of the movie. You know what I mean? Like, so he's got this I got to be tough in front of Welsh, who's his superior officer.
But he has that emotion on his face. Yeah. And I could see why it launched his career because Jim Caviezel's got one of those faces that carries emotion. My god, if we just did a movie, we could do a podcast on Passion.
Yeah.
I mean, he is so amazing in that movie. That was, I mean, I cried. I saw Passion. It opened, not on a Friday, I don't know if you remember, the year it came out, it opened on Ash Wednesday. And I saw it after I got my ashes, and I, I cried in the theater, dude. Like, it was so amazing.
Yeah, we saw it in the theater, too. And that, that's another movie you watch it in a foreign language. You know, on the big, on the big screen. They didn't even have it dubbed. Yeah. I don't know if they have it dubbed now on the, on DVD.
I don't think so. Or if they just... At best, at best it's subtitled.
And what was wild about that one is, like... MeL Gibson, he basically had to get the actors to learn an extinct language.
Yeah.
Because Aramaic is not used.
It's a dead language. Yeah.
It's a dead language. Yeah. And so it was wild to, to see that. So, and you had, you had Aramaic, you had Hebrew, and you had Greek being spoken. As the only dialogue in the film, you know, and it worked. I mean, it was all subtitles, you know. But yeah, that was another one that I just loved.
Another little funny subplot on that one. Monica Bellucci, who plays, I think, his mother Mary, right? No, she plays Mary Magdalene. Oh, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Mel Gibson said in an interview one time, he's like, We had the darndest time trying to make her ugly. We couldn't do it. Cause she's so beautiful, he's like, We put mud on her face, We covered her in these rags, He's like, She looked beautiful in every scene.
He's like, We tried to make her look not so beautiful, And it didn't work at all. Because her beauty just comes right through. So a little funny plot there. But anyway, alright, so you have a six degrees for me.
Yeah, so let me, hold on, let me pull it up.
You made it one crucial, and your, and your attempt to finally win.
I know, I know how you did it. You, you pit. I didn't do it myself, but I, I, so let me just read it, okay?
Let me guess, alright, alright, alright, you, you tell me where you went wrong. First of all, tell, what are the actors?
Felix how do you pronounce his last name? Kammerer?
I, I don't know dude, like I said, first time, first time he's ever been in a movie. Felix Kammerer. He plays Paul Balmer, I think it's yeah, Camerer, Camerer.
Yeah, on the Western Front. Yes. And Will Wallace, who's in A Thin Red Line. Yes, he I don't even barely remember him, because he Yeah, he, he plays Private Hope. He's far down the cast list.
Well, with that cast list, who wouldn't be
Yeah, on IMDb, so
Who wouldn't be far down.
When I was, like, looking at the cast list thinking, six degrees, oh my god, who am I gonna pick? These are all A list actors. And I'm like, come on, this sucks. I start scrolling, on IMDb. Will Wallace. I don't know this guy. What was he in? Oh, these movies sucked. Okay, cool. But there is one movie that he was in that you probably used.
Well, no. He was actually in a few movies. That's not, that wasn't the problem. What happened was you, you said, and generally you don't We don't use the movies that we're talking about.
Yes, true. But, but we had to. We had to with this one because All Quiet on the Western Front is the only movie he was ever in. So you had to use that one for this one.
But he, but you know who was in that film. Who played Erzberger was Daniel Bruhl. He played the, the government politician guy that was trying to end the war. He's been in a lot of shit! He was in Marvel movies! He's been in all the Captain America Civil War movies! He was in a lot! He's been So, and he was one of the main soldiers in Inglourious Bastards. With Brad Pitt, who was in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood with Dakota Fanning, who was in I Am Sam, not just with Sean Penn, but Will Wallace.
Yeah, with Will Wallace. I knew you were going to use I Am Sam, because that's the only other film that guy's been in.
Oh, no, he's been in several others.
Has he? Was he? When I finally got to his IMDB and started looking, I'm like, He has been in a bunch of shitty movies. Oh, wait, I am Sam. Which, I still think was a shitty movie, but at least there were some big names in it.
Yeah, well, yeah. Michelle Pfeiffer and Sean Penn, to name a few.
Sean Penn went full retard.
But also, but, oh, stop, stop. You're not gonna do the Tropic Thunder line. You know what's funny? Since we always go off on tangents. Robert Downey Jr. was in an interview saying, you know, the heat he thought he was going to take for going blackface in that movie. He said, nobody even cared. They were so pissed off about Simple Jack, right, that, that that oh fuck Ben Stiller.
Ben Stiller's movie Simple Jack where he plays a, a, you know, a mentally handicapped individual and he overdoes it and then there's this scene where he tells him, you never go full retard. And then so, they gave more heat about Simple Jack than they did about Robert Downey Jr. going blackface.
Did you mean about saying the R word? Is that what they gave him crap about?
Well, that and just Ben Stiller exaggerating that performance of Simple Jack.
Did you love that, what was it, Instagram reel or something I sent when it was the, it was all the Superheroes from The Avengers. Oh, it's the Avengers scene, yeah. The Avengers scene where they're watching Tropic Thunder on the big screen. So, Jr.
For anyone that doesn't know, there's a scene in The Avengers. Is it, is it Endgame? I don't remember which one it was. Oh, no, it's the one, yeah, it might be Endgame, it was, it was, it was where all the Avengers are sitting around the table and, and William Hurt's character is showing them live footage of all the destruction they do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and they're all like feeling bad, like, and they're all looking at each other like, wow. They got wide eyed going, oh, shit.
Yeah, like wide eyed like, man, everyone hates us. And then the clip that my brother sent me was that scene but on the picture was Tropic Thunder and it was Robert Downey Jr. in blackface and he's going, Oh, I was down San Antone. I could, I could make you some Creole, you know, and he's doing this whole thing and they're all looking at each other. And then there's a shot of Captain America looking at Robert Downey Jr.
Giving him like the shit eye, like what the. What the, what's wrong with you? And I think the thing at the top said when the Avengers had to start doing background checks.
Yeah, you, and you know what? You should include that in the notes, in the, in the, in the podcast notes. And people can still look that up on YouTube. Because that, that is so great. It's so funny. It's just perfect.
Yeah, it was good. Well, well done on your, on your six degrees. I didn't uh, I didn't see that coming. But then again, I didn't do it.
If you really want to IMDb somebody, look at Daniel Bruhl. That dude's been in a lot of shit. And the fact that he was in All Quiet on the Western Front is what saved me. Because there were several actors, this was their only movie. Yeah. And I'm like, well, not that it was their only movie. Everything else they did was in Germany!
Yeah, exactly.
Like, no US films, and I'm like, I'm fine. Fucked. I can't find anybody. And then I saw Daniel Bruhl's name and I'm like, Oh shit, that's right. He played the politician. Yeah. And I knew him from all the Avengers movies. And like, he's been in a lot of shit.
I thought I had you this time, man. I'm glad I'm glad it worked out. But, eh, it just proves your point. You, you believe you can connect any two actors.
Okay, so, before we sound off, will you acknowledge and admit you need to watch The Thin Red Line again after, now that we've talked about it, look at it from a different point of view, and don't be such a stick in the mud.
I'll definitely watch it again. I'll definitely watch again and like I said, like I said, there were some individual scenes that I just loved and I think it's, it's worth it just to get through those scenes again, so.
Watch the Nick Nolte Cusack scene again where he says, my son's a bait salesman. It's so great. It's just him nailing that point and then they stare at each other for a minute with no words.
Awkward pause.
My son's a bait salesman and that's pretty much what I've been doing for the last ten minutes. Right, wow. So it's great. Anyway. Well, that's good stuff.
Well, that's where we landed the plane on this one. Thank you so much for joining us. We have a new website, which is silverscreenhappyhour. com and you can email us at cheers at silverscreenhappyhour. com You can also find that in the show notes. You may have noticed the last episode to post before this one It was our listener feedback and response episode, and we're going to do that from time to time.
If you'd like to send us an email or a voice memo on Instagram, we might respond as a little bonus episode like that one. Well, as I sign off, I just want to encourage you to go support your local cinema and watch some movies. So until next time, for my brother, Jerome, I'm Chris Wiegand.