Get ready for.
December five, twenty twenty four, allegedly according to that thing we call a calendar, And this is the o'celly effect. Of course, you already know that because you found the show. If you were listening to me live, you'd be hearing me just after eight pm Eastern time, and what we used to call America and all that good stuff on a Thursday or a Thursday. But guess what, you're probably hearing the podcast no matter how you're coming to the show.
Welcome to it, And I obviously would love for you to come by and visit the site at ochelly dot com, be cause most of you catch it through your various podcatchers, dajore and all that. So anyway, put it all aside. I've got something completely different tonight. Is chucking to talk JFK stuff some more. No, I think I'm kind of done with that for now. Unless you guys call up on the Friday show and insist on talking about it,
We're going to put it aside for now. Although I had an interesting meeting that I'll discuss with you guys tomorrow night. But I had the meeting today. I have to kind of process it mentally, However, this does connect to my recent activities. I was at Lancer and obviously, and I've been talking about it all well week and
a half since i've been back, about right something like that. Anyway, whatever it is, as we get toward Christmas and everybody's sitting JFK burnout, I thought it would be great to change things up. I met a guy who happened to be hanging around with Mike Swanson at the conference. I think it was a Sunday night. I think it was Sunday, might have been Saturday. Who knows. My days bled together because I was the MC and I was also responsible for a bunch of other stuff at the conference, so
it was what it was. But anyway, at the hotel bar there, it comes up that this guy wrote a book on Jack Nicholson. Yes, that Jack Nicholson, the actor, right, and gee, I'm interested in him and his movies for short. It's classic stuff and Nicholson's a legend and all that good stuff. I don't know too many people who've decided to write books about a guy like that. Plus I'm
from New Jersey. Nicholson has some connections to Jersey. Just saying so you know that that automatically piques my interest. But also he's done podcasts about Stanley Kubrick. Maybe we'll get into both of these things in the next hour. Okay, So Scott Edwards, how are you doing tonight?
Sir? Very good? How are you, Chuck?
I'm okay, And I want to mention the title of that book. It's a Quintessential Jack, I think, is the main title. And let's just take a look at the cover real fast, because I know I just went through the links. I was just at it on Amazon, and believe me, if you check the show notes, you'll find the links to go get the book. Plus it's the publisher's website and all that. Yeah, Quintessential Jack. All right,
So Quintessential Jack. The art of Jack Nicholson on screen there you go, title en subtitle, and it's a light blue book with a picture of Jack Rinning on it. By the way, So Scott, you know, first it was nice to meet you at Lancer. I want to say, you know, a cool guy to hang out with, even if you didn't have a reason for me to bring you on the show. But you do, Jack Nicholson, what possessed you? Because I note there's a lot of guys
who are named Scott Edwards who had written books. But this looks like your only book, is that true?
That's correct. It took about ten years of work and so I was pretty tired. I was done with it, and since then I've been promoting it and doing talks and things like that. So that's the only one. That may be the only one ever, it may not be, we'll see. But I've been a student of film since I as a kid, and then when in college that was one of the subjects I studied, and since then have been attending film festivals and other events that would get one next to some of the players who worked
with Nicholson and other people like Stanley Kubrick. And it just came to me. Since I'm a copywriter for advertising agency here in Canton, Ohio called innes Majority, that is my career. There's your day job, that's my day job. And then so I write all the time. Wanted to do something that would be more permanent and decided to do a book on some aspect of film, and Jack Nicholson was just a subject that came into me. I thought, oh, that's that's pretty good, because he's had a long career.
It's enough to cover he's been working. Oh, he had about a fifty year career, about seventy five roles. What a lot of people don't know. He also had six screenplays that were produced as films and he directed three films.
Ah, now those are things that are unknown. I mean the first thing out of anybody's mouth. My whole life with Jack Nicholson pretty much is what Easy Rider right. And people start talking about that, But is that where we should begin the discussion or not.
That was his big break. He was actually going to quit the business. He had been in the film industry for ten years, started working with Roger Corman, who does all those cheapy films. But the good thing about it that those who work on it is they get the chance to learn how to make films and get some credits, which is really important when you're starting to get into
the industry. And he worked with Corman, had a pretty good start, and then things didn't go all that well as far as his career, and actually he gave himself one last year and that's what Easy Rider hit. It was a complete fluke he'd been working for you know, to think about if you're in your particular career, and after ten years, not only haven't you made it, but things that are actually have gotten kind of worse.
Right, well, and look working with Corman. And by the way, that's a common thread there between Kubrick and Nicholson, right, because didn't Kubrick get his start also with Corman? Or am I mistaken about that?
He did? Not? Francis for Copola?
Did Coppola? That's who it was. I knew it was one of the big filmmakers, and I'm trying to think which one was. It was Coppola, right, And he would direct films that were done in a couple of days, that were done on a next to nothing budget, and those kind of films are where Nicholson started.
That's right. He also was working at the regular studio system MGAMI started there, working their cartoon department, delivering cells from one building to another. And so he was working in these Corman films along with people like Bruce Dern, and there was this group of people who wanted to get a chance, Copla being one, and that's how they were able to get some credits and do some decent work.
Because even though Roger Corman worked often on a shoestring, and he would have a habit of making two films together so that he could use the same suite of actors, the same sets, and economize that way. But it wasn't the case where the films themselves were terrible. They were still good films. It just happened to be low budget, and so really the actors and directors saw there was
a tremendous opportunity. Ron Howard was another one who started as a director with Roger, and Jonathan Demi was another. And you know, many actors worked in his system, and they they always later on thanked Corman as being essential to their careers well.
And Corman metastasizes because you know, even I I was listening to some reruns of the Talking Sopranos podcast right where, you know, you're talking about a TV show that was actually produced in New Jersey, in case you haven't noticed, I got a little thing for things from New Jersey because that's where I'm from. You know, I even followed Kevin Smith's career quite you know, carefully for a while there and all that. But the reality is that you know,
Corman metastasizes into everything. It's like a lot of the people that started with him on those very low budget affairs. You know, legends grew from that. There's allegedly one movie was directed and put out all in the space of like a couple of days on a bet apparently. And yeah, he was well known for sharing the props, the actors, all kinds of stuff, everything, but the story itself shared from film to film in order to economize.
And I don't think we've seen I mean too many.
There's a couple of Hollywood legends like this, right, but not too many when we get more close to like now, like not going into that time period where Nicholson's starting, right, because wasn't it about you know, bigger productions. I don't think indie films and smaller films like that had even been getting a chance.
Around this time.
Or am I reading it wrong because I'm not a film a storian at all. I'm a casual observer. I'm more of a you know, I know about the media, news, media's history. I know a little bit about television history, but when it comes down to films, honestly, a lot of it I just have a vague understanding of. So was it really one of the last sort of ecano things to come around before the independent developments and the technology changed, you know, in recent years.
In a way, yes, in a way, it was the start of the independent system.
Oh okay.
Roger was an independent production company, and his films would often be say driving movies or the second film on a double feature, that kind of thing. But there's still money in that. And his autobiography was how to make I forget how many movies, it said, but and never lose a dime, right, And that's where he was smart about.
But the movies didn't look cheap. They weren't terrible like you know a lot of independent filmmakers where you say, like ed Wood or something, the movies are actually terrible.
Oh yeah, Well Edwood's stuff is so terrible it's hilarious. I mean, you know, Plan nine from out Space is obviously legendary, but I mean everything he did it was just this, you know, terribly like it doesn't matter, just just make it look sort of like it's what it's supposed to be. I mean, shower curtains and cardboard handles and all kinds of weird stuff. Ed Wood is is like a comedy built into every one of his little
sci fi ventures or whatever. Well there was a cross dressing thing he did too, But anyway, ed Wood is an example of somebody doing a cheap and you know it's cheap, uh, you know, funny stuff. I mean, I love the story about Bela Lagosi and the last you know in quotes film he appears in where He's got you know, some of this loose footage that's pretty much meaningless, and then he folds it together with the dentist, right, yeah,
I mean those kind of things. I mean, of course I learned about that, I think in the nineties, but it was it was an amazing cult thing to get a whole of a copy of Plan nine from Outer Space in the VHS days. But you bring up drive ins, and I think because look, I was born in nineteen seventy two, so I'm pretty sure my generation got the last legs of the drive in movie theater experience, like we got to see it go away, We got to see the very last gasps from that sort of thing.
But I love that. And you couldn't project crap like ed Wood on a you know, on a giant screen like that with a playground in front of it and get away with it. I don't think people would stand for it. You know, when I was a kid in the seventies and the early eighties, I don't think people would have stood for it, especially because you know, at a certain point we got Star Wars on a giant
drive in screen. How are you going to put Plan nine from Outer Space, you know, alongside of Star Wars or you know, or something else that has such a a thematic and cinematic effect, like The Godfather, which has that unique look. Like if you tune into The Godfather right now on a cable channel or on a streaming service, you can almost recognize it immediately because of the cinematic style that Coppola used, because of the cinematography, the way the film looks, the way it's kind of dated, even
though it was being shot brand new. You know, he gave an aged look to the film at certain times and everything else. You put that up on a screen, and then you were to slap like an ed Wood feature up there, it would have been a horror show. People would have left, you know. I mean they did put out things like Kentucky Fried Movie and Creep Show too during this time period, which were kind of funny and you know, more low budget affairs than these other things.
But what about that, I mean the drive in movie experience. Even when they talk about Easy Rider, I hear film historians kind of reminist is about that time period with the drive in theater. So I mean, it's definitely a different era when Nicholson gets his big break right right now.
During that period, there were a lot of genre type films made by these lower budget producers like Roger Corman you would have, and biker exploitation films was a category of film that was popular at that time. Easy Rider could have easily been just another one of them, but instead there was something seen in it that was special. It was one awards at the Con Film Festival that year, and that's really what broke it is the news about that and Dennis Hopper also being pulled out as being
first director at CON. So it really fell into that bike exploitation category. Somehow broke out there was something special about it, and it was probably just as much chance as anything else because there were other good biker movies at the time, and some of them had some notable names in it, like The Wild Angels with Peter Fonda and Nancy Sinatra, so they were not just crappily put together things. They were lower budgets. Certainly, you remember the
was it Billy Jack? Remember that series? So you had you know there. They were popular and when you had driving and double features, you had to fill those features. And these were good production values. The thing about Roger Horman that was in contrast to some of the other cheaper ones is did it looked cheap? But he had enough.
He was smart enough, and he was really well educated in economics, and he would find a way to get something that had been used in another film and was about to be torn down and use it right before that. So when you see those Edgar Allan Poe films that he had a tendency to make back then with Vincent Price he'd do too, and other films with Boris Karloff. He would do two films back to back on that same set and be able to burn the thing down in order to have this really insane kind of ending.
But they were going to tear it down anyway, so he might as well burn it down and make it look like it's a big part of the film.
Well, there you go, and you're talking about like the Black Cat and the Fall of the House of Usher, Right, I mean the ones that are named after, you know, some of the most best known Edgar Allen Poe titles that they turned into these weird kind of movies.
Right, And Nicholson was in one of those, called The Raven. Didn't have much to do with the story itself. What Roger tended to do is use the bare bones of what was in the original stories and create something that had the advantage of using the Poe name because it's in the public domain of chorus being from eighteen hundreds, and putting together these ensemble pieces with people like Vincent Price or Us Carl Off, Peter Lourie and so on.
Right, And I mean, let's see now, around the same time period, even that weird compilation movie Black Sabbath, which the band wound up naming itself after, came out and it sort of looked like one of those films as well, you know, similar to the stuff that you should find on the again the old VHS shelf with the likes of the Black Cat and The Fall of the House of Usher and all that. But yeah, I mean, did you ever see the movie Black Sabba by the way, Yes, I did.
Some of those European films are also really great. Black Sunday with Barbara not Barbara Shelley, I can't think for her name off hand, but early there was a period in the early sixties where people like Roger Corman and some English and European directors put out some great stuff that would be considered genre films horror films, but had really excellent production values and come across really well. Even today. They're not really dated, right.
And this is before the age of the slasher film, when you know Black Christmas and Halloween come in the later seventies. This is you know, a decade before that, and more right.
You know, gothic type films they.
Were, Yeah, they were more gothic than they wore horror. Right, It was like sort of semi creepy again, more like Edgar Allen Poe's writing. Indeed, even if it didn't follow the story as composed to say as opposed to say, you know what Clyde Barker winds up doing in the eighties. You know, his horror stuff was much more messy, much more graphic. You know, the weird things going on in some of these other films were just sort of creepy.
And odd, you know, dark and dingy and all that, but really it was an art that was lost though it seems like, right, I mean, coming into the seventies when there's a lot of cheap genres including you you mentioned biker exploitation, Well what about black exploitation films? Right, those things were also made on a fairly cheap budget, and they pumped out a bunch of those as well, you know in the seventies, right.
Right, that correct, that was a big genre during that period of time. And then it came back when Quentin Tarantino did the film with Pam Greer and based on the Foxy Brown character and that kind of thing, right called Jackie Brown.
Jackie Brown. But he was introducing those elements constantly back into along with you know, I'm gonna make you laugh here, along with his constant need to show you a foot fetish, he was showing you, you know, some of the the blaxploitation stuff and stylistically also showing you some of the things that came with the Bruce Lee films even because that's he was definitely wearing his influences on his sleeve.
But let's get back to Nicholson, because he gets his launch with Easy Rider, what is the next stage in his career? Right, that's his big break? But then what happens to him? Because you know, again it seemed like when I was a kid, it went from Easy Rider to here's the latest thing that Jack is doing, or hey, don't forget about what do you call it? The you know, the the the Stephen King movie right where he's the proprietor at the hotel and all that stuff, and that's a whole other experience.
Right, the shining And that was in nineteen eighty. But the thing that happened after Easy Rider, Easy Writer broke him. That was his breakthrough. And then he became a star in his following movie, which was Five Easy Pieces made in nineteen seventy, and that was part of an ongoing collaboration with the director called Bob Rafelson, who got his start creating the series The Monkeys and the actually Monkey
money financed Easy Rider. That was the production company to put Easy Rider together, and then they went on to do Five Easy Pieces where Nicholson played opposite Karen Black and she was also nominated for Academy Award as was
Jack for Five Easy Pieces. Him a star that film at the time, the Academy Awards was a big deal, and leading up to it, the famous scene, the diner scene where he's trying to order something off the menu and the waitress is not allowing him to do so, and at the end of it he clears all the stuff off the table. That scene was on every newscast leading up the Academy Awards. If you never saw the movie, you would have seen that scene fifty times in that
couple weeks leading up to the Oscars. And that was that film, and after that he was in demand and just kept having hit after hit, although no matter what period of his career after that, he still made films that probably a lot of people never heard of nor saw, but are definitely worth viewing. And that was part of
the impetus for me to do this book. It's set up in a way that each chapter is organized by, say a type of genre or a type of character, and you could read that chapter and then look at the three to six films that are discussed in that chapter, and it could just be doing it by random. And there is a chapter, for instance, about what we were just Discussinger Corman years called the School of Roger and
There's another chapter called Hippies and Hogs and Horses. That's all the Westerns and the biker movies and that kind of thing. There's one devoted to rom coms later in his career. That's what he was doing. And so that's the way that the book works. It's organized in the fashion that the reader could use it as a viewing guide.
Pick a chapter that's about a character that they you happen to like, you like westerns, Okay, read that chapter, doesn't matter what order you do it after you get out of the introductory chapter, and just look at those films. But I would say to anybody you think you know I'm not going to say you think you know Jack, you know where I'm going to go with that, But you don't a lot of films out there that are really worth seeing. You've never even heard of even toward the end of his career.
M Well, you know, like I said, a lot of people point to these seminal kind of you know, big hits or cult hits one way or another, like they might mention Chinatown or you know, different stuff like this. But I'm just taking a look myself as I'm speaking to you. You know, it's some of his filmography, right, He did a couple of these biker films that looks like to me, you know, outside of Easy Rider. Before Easy Rider. Right.
One was called Hell's Angels on Wheels, used the actual Oakland Hell's Angels motorcycle club with who was probably the most famous of the Hell's Angels at the time. It was Sunny Barger, who was my first interview subject for the book, and Nicholson was just another to him. Oh, I thought he was another biker. He knew what he was doing, right, I.
Mean, and then you end up with like say Chinatown and even a weird appearance in the movie Tommy, right, yeah, God, and tell people about that.
He actually was replacing Oliver Reed, the English actor who
turned out couldn't sing. So Tommy was a musical of course, based on the Who's album, and they had Who in it along with some other professional singers Tina Turner, Elton John and others, but actors were also singing and Oliver couldn't cut it, replaced by Nicholson, and the director Ken Russell was thinking, oh, this guy, he's not a singer either, But it turned out he was able to avail himself very well and do a good job on the vocals and surprised Ken Russell and others.
Right now, you know, way after the breaking out moment and everything else. I mean, literally two decades later he
HiT's a patch of films that are extremely memorable for me. Again, I told you I'm a gen xer, right, so you know his role in the Witches of Eastwick and Broadcast News and Batman, right, and then in ninety two A Few Good Men, And you know, that's one of the most qu at least for fifteen years at least was one of the most quoted movies around, right, everybody still today, people you can't handle the truth, right, so you know.
And I spoke to a few people who worked on that film, and I heard the same story a couple of times, so I'm definitely going to believe it. And Keifer Sullivan Sutherland was one and while he was another. And the story was that when they were doing the table read, which you've seen depicted in TV shows and stuff,
all the actors get together. It's called that because they're reading around a table and they usually kind of take it a little easy, even though they're learning their role and they're doing it as if they're shooting the scene. But what was described to me was that Nicholson when he came in, he did his that scene, for instance, most famous scene in the courtroom, he did it like it did in the movie. And they said everybody took notice and it wasn't making it easy when they were
doing the table read. He set the standard. And they also said Tom Cruise, Tom Cruise looked like he was about to craft his pants because here he was being made to look like, you know, he was slumming it. So everybody had to step it up to reach the level that Nicholson was committing, even at the level of the table read right, because of his intensity, you know.
And by the way back to the Shining there, there's an intense movie altogether that Nicholson is the centerpiece on. And like I said, you know, if that's like nineteen eighty right, I'm a little kid back then, but that movie was super intense for me because of the weird, creepy aspects of it, all amped up mainly by Nicholson's
you know behavior. And of course we've seen that quoted and repeated everywhere from The Simpsons onto you know, various entries, right you know, the here's Johnny thing, the uh, I don't know if you've probably seen the Simpsons thing, no beer, no whatever, mix Homer blah blah blah. But that's all about, you know, no, no rest and relaxation. Whatever it was he was saying about himself when he was typing that over and over again, right like he was so believable
in that role. And uh, you know, and people of course mimicked the whole thing with him, with the acts and chasing his family. And I mean, obviously if you've never seen these films, you have to. But I'm just pointing to some of the highlights for me as as you know, as a viewer, how does a guy like this actually have these like small explosions. It seems like because throughout this very long career he's either getting massive critical acclaim or big box office or he's part of
a big box office thing. I mean, he's the joker in Batman, and nobody can say that he didn't play a unique joker, you know. Among I mean, I do prefer what happened later, that's for sure. But for a guy trying to bend the comic book into reality, and I thought it was weird when they selected Jack Nicholson, but you know, he pulled that off in a uniquely
Nicholson way. I mean, I don't even know what to say about the man's range right everywhere from being a psycho to being well another kind of psycho, right to you know, being an easygoing character. Matter of fact, I think there was even a movie I once saw where he was kind of a mob boss. But anyway, it just it goes all over the map. The guy's diverse and consistently huge, long career. I mean, is that really
what made you say? I got to lay out this book and give people a real roadmap from beginning to end with his career.
That's a big part of it, because, like you say, you look at the list and it's amazing the ones that you've seen and recognize as characters, how much different they can be, the range of character that he's playing, and in retrospect, it's interesting he brought up The Shining. When The Shining came out, it was a hit with audiences, but was land baseded by critics and most people definitely jumped on Nicholson's performance as being over the top and
totally ridiculous. Now in retrospect, it's considered one of the top rated horror films, and he is an essential part of that, of course, playing the main character. But at the time it was Jack is just playing Jack. He's taking the money. And really that was the key to the role, is how he pushed himself to be that guy who was really becoming unhinged. And I don't know, I mean, how could you not be you say, over the time, Well, what's over the top when somebody's lost their mind.
Well, see, that's the thing. I believed he was a guy who lost his mind. As a kid, I'm looking at him thinking to myself, this isn't you know, overacting or anything. I got sucked into it. I mean the atmosphere of the movie did that too, But Nicholson as the character. I mean a lot of people point to Shelley Winter and how she was reacting, and people have said that, you know, people were making her nuts off off camera, so that she reacted that way and everything else.
I don't think Nicholson needed all that, although probably he was being prodded along too during that filming. But nonetheless, I mean, incredible range and I just now remember where he's a mob boss it's in a movie called The Departed, a totally different kind of character. Again, I don't remember how successful They Departed was exactly, but I think it
was fairly successful with critics. Not necessarily that he was the main character, but he was a consistent character throughout the movie, right, right.
And actually the character is based on Whitey Bulger, who was that guy who disappeared who was a mobster in Boston and he disappeared for I don't know, twenty five years something like that.
Yeah, the Irish gangster that they based the movie Black Mass on. Yeah, and he.
Was finally found. I think it's San Diego or something like that. And one of the funny things is he was seen going to see that Departed because somebody says, hey, isn't that guy who's been missing for twenty five years? Well.
The other funny part about that, of course, is that, uh, you know, when when all the stuff came out, the guy was like cooperating, but he was cooperating to basically eliminate his criminal enemies, right, and Boston based Irish gangster, you know, or I should say, uh, New England based uh gangster Irish though, fascinating and uh, what is it. Johnny Depp is in both of those, right is he in? Uh?
No, he was in that other film. Uh that was bored obviously about Whitey Bulger by name. Yeah, that's it, right, Uh, the Departed Wash Wahlberg.
And right Wahlberg and uh and the other way. The thing was that that thing read as a dark comedy to me. Uh, I don't know what you thought of it, but and I don't know how they classified it, you know, film wise, but to me, it almost seemed like a dark comedy. And Nicholson's a big part of that. I find a lot of what he's doing in that movie to be yeah, darkly comedic.
Right. That was his contribution to that. And I don't think that even the director knew that was going to happen. There was a scene where he pulls a gun in the diner, and that was not in the script. He decided that the day earlier it wasn't intense enough and he wasn't getting the reaction from I think it was DiCaprio and the scene, and so he just pulls his gun out and everybody's looking at h. I really, WHOA. This is a whole other level. And that's the kind
of thing that he would do. He considers himself a method actor, and his costume and knowledge about the era the movie where it is, what was happening at that time, what the characters are like, if there were real people, what they were like, what they sounded like, what they dressed like. And one of the things that I heard from all the people that I interviewed who had worked with him is his commitment to research and finding out
as much as possible and then going for it. That he never pulls any punches or go in and do whatever it takes to make that scene special or to make that character memorable. And that combination of the hard work in preparation and the intensity in giving the performance has been very successful for him. And that diversity of kind of roles that you talk about when you say, well, here's a pretty good year for you. For instance, how about it one year I do Chinatown and I do
One Flow over the Cuckoo's Nest. That's a pretty good year.
See I didn't even mention One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, but I was about to go there and start jumping around because there's another one of these movies that I'm not so certain how big of a box office thing it was, but it became like a huge standard, right. It was one of those movies that it's like they started marking other movies by it. And he's had various time periods where I know, the critics loved him. Then he had other time periods where they didn't love him
so much. But he consistently performs one way or another, which I find interesting. I mean, if you look at the string from eighty one to eighty five, right, I remember very carefully. Now, maybe they weren't into The Postman Always Rings twice, but Red's was a big thing with the critics, and in terms of endearment was huge with
the critics, and I enjoyed Pritzy's honor. Now, I don't know, maybe that wasn't as big with the critics, but it seems to me as though he's got a time period where there's almost a off again and on again romance with film critics, right, where sometimes he's great and other times he's, you know, ridiculous, but you let it sit for a little while, and the critics are proven wrong
on the ridiculous angle every time. I mean, even going back to the Shining nowadays, nobody would argue with you that Nicholson did anything wrong right in that.
Movie except for Stephen King.
Well, Stephen King doesn't like it right, right.
He didn't like it, and he was against Nicholson. And the longer from the production of the movie, the more he would make a big deal out of it. And I think a lot of it's for show. And as the saying is, he takes the money. It probably has made him more money than any single thing that he's done. Is that particular film. They did a terrible TV movie that King was involved in because he always had Oh well,
I didn't like the way it was. I didn't like Nicholson, so he did his own version and it was horrible. It's unwatchable. It's humorous in spots, right, So Stephen King probably should stick to the writing part and not being the film critic part.
Yeah. Absolutely. And I'll tell you something else. I don't take anything Stephen King takes seriously after he did eleven twenty two sixty three. So, uh that that is a ridiculous one. Oh my goodness, Well good on you. I mean, unless you want to watch something about time travel. Uh, And if you want to watch time travel in the
jfk Assassination. I suggest you go and look at the eighties or whatever rebooted Twilight Zone they did on it, because that is more entertaining than Stephen King's movie and won't take up as much of your day. Uh, because they made a little series out of that, I think for Hulu or whatever. But it was almost unwatchable to me. And by the way, the book is almost unreadable. And it's not because they're just blaming Oswald. It's just it's just a pointless waste of time. So there's my critics
criticism for the day. But and he's still still active. It looks like to me he's producing stuff. And if you others right, I mean, how far since your book was published a few years ago, you had to have ended off what around twenty seventeen.
Yes, but he hasn't worked since then. He's last film was really as a favor. It was a rom com and he played a small role in it called how Do You Know? It had Owen Wilson and the Reese Witherspoon. I thought it was terrible, but I was obligated to watch it, you know, three or four times, because that's part of the process of doing the book, but he
hasn't worked since then. He never said he retired. I think because and this is only a guess on my part, that just wanted to with dignity stop working but not bring attention to himself and says, you know, I'm going on on my last tour, you know, like the rock stars do with They're Never ending fur. Yeah, he just bowed out quietly. Yeah.
The Rolling Stones I think was it nineteen eighty nine or something, we're supposed to start their final tour. I think they'll be on tour this year again or maybe next. We'll see if they you know, if two or three of them survive. I think they're gonna try. It just is the way it is. But what's fascinating is there's something called Blue Champagne coming up. I don't know if you know anything about that. It says that he's the producer for it, and I mean I know zero about it.
But yeah, a couple other things where he gets some special thanks in Jill and Jack and supermnch and what's that sound on my head? It's just a thanks from the director, I guess in a short right.
But he hasn't actually worked since I know, twenty early twenty ten something like that, right, right.
And I mean with the retrospectives of Chinatown. I mean there's some new archibal footage out there, but maybe but outside of that, yeah, I mean, but still long, very long career. So let me transition into the other thing I wanted.
To talk to you about, though, because.
Listeners to my show are well familiar with the idea that you know, Stanley Kubrick is the guy who faked the moon landing footage. This kind of thing. Now, I don't discuss that on my show.
Okay, Yeah, let's keep it that way. Yeah, there are two there are two things about Kubrick that I would wish people would just get tired of bringing up. That's
one of them, okay. And the other one is how Kubrick supposedly contributed to the mental illness of Shelley Duvau after doing the Shining, which is easily debunked because after that she continued to work and even a few years after that created it was an executive producer was the one of the writers and host and actors on an HBO series, Fairytale Theater, which ran for about four or five seasons. This was after she supposedly was ruined by Kubrick.
So I think even a logical looking at the situation would say, well, maybe that's not the case. How could you create a series and be the main creative force behind it when you've been ruined by the director four years earlier.
I mean, I do believe that he might have done things to increase the tension, maybe gotten or exhausted, and maybe if you talked to her right after filming The Shining, you might have thought that he contributed to her problems, but.
She would that part is true. And there's a documentary that Kubrick's daughter actually put together on The Shining, and you could see that Kubrick is actually put shoing at her pretty hard and not being all that nice to her.
But every interview she ever did for the subject of Stanley Kuber came up, she always said that she was glad she worked on it, and that it was though very tough, because she had to cry all the time and be scared all the time in the film, So it was physically taxing every day to be in hysterics. Isn't that easy to do? And if you try doing it, you eventually become that way. So temporarily. She was probably
negatively impacted by it. But in every interview I've ever seen or heard about, she always talked about Kubrick in a positive way and said, yeah, it was tough on me, but I was always glad I did it right.
And the thing is, look, if The Shining was released in nineteen eighty, a five year run from eighty two to eighty seven of a fairytale theater you're talking about, you know, they did some basic stuff, the frog prints, this kind of thing. You know, would she have been capable of participating in that production. Probably not if she was really in that bad of shape. So she did continue to work, and I know she had other roles too.
I mean, I'm not going to go pull up her IMDb right now, but you know, okay, so those are the two things that you'd like people to stop saying, right Well, could you just give me one of the best reasons why the Kubrick faking the footage and all that makes no sense? Could you just do me that favor so I have that to keep with my listeners.
For one thing, you wouldn't need a Stanley Kubrick to do that. Oh you would need is some something that technically would make that possible. He's a great director of narrative drama. You don't need that to do that job. Have anybody who has technical prowess and the amount of money that it would take to build a stage set that looks realistic and technicians to pull off shooting it. You don't need a great director to do that. So
where that came from. I know there's little stippets of things like the sweater that Danny Lloyd is playing wearing in the Shining where it's got a Power eleven on it that's supposed to be a clue. But like a lot of those, Paul is dead clues, I think Paul's alive. I'm pretty sure.
Yeah. Well, that's another weird thing where they you know, this guy was replaced by somebody. There was a car accident, oh man, you know, and at the end of the day, I almost want to know what the point of it is. You know, if the moon landing was faked, like you said, you wouldn't need Stanley Kubrick, but you would need a good visual effects guy.
Right right now, there's a book devoted to this that debunks everything, all the all the things that people bring up and say, oh, this is the proof and the why is the flag not moving? And all this other stuff. There's a book by a guy named Philip Platt P L a T. T. And it's about this debunking the hoax, and we used to look at that and he dresses everything with great logic and says, no, you know, it's
different because there's no atmosphere. You know, there a lot of things that somebody who's smart enough, who isn't somebody who just likes making up crap because it sounds interesting. I don't know how it became a big deal, you know, it was I had heard it and then it just never died. But my thought about the final the final point made on this particular subject was you might have seen this footage, but buzz Aldron, who was the same guys stepped on the moon, right and it's still alive.
He was being followed by some jerk off for the camera, endlessly being harangued about this prove that you're on the moon. So one point he turns around and he's, you know, eighty two years old at the time, and this guy's in the prime of his life. He's taller than buzz Old Buzz turns around, slugs the guy knocks him out and walks away. That's the ultimate answer to that particular question. Yeah, I do do a buzz alder, and that.
Guy does a podcast now by the way, and continues on with he does, and it just you know, people ask me about what about this? Oh my god, I it's one of those things I just shake my head at, you know. But anyway, what inspired the work on the podcast though about? I mean, there's a lot of people who've done stuff about that, but you've also done the participated in this podcast. What happened there with you?
Well, I've always been on a couple episodes of it. There are over seventy episodes of the podcast called Kubrick's Universe the Late Yeah Kubricks Universe, and it's any podcasting way that you choose to get yours, as well as
on YouTube. The latest edition was a chat with Shelley Duval that they put together and were able to the sound quality of it wasn't great at the time, but there's been advancements and another overused turn ai Or allowed people to work on that interview and get it so you could hear Shelley's comments during that that was the latest edition, and like I said, there've been over seventy.
There's a segment of a series of shows that have been devoted to each of the thirteen films that Kubrick directed. Four of those have been put out and the remainder of them have yet to be had the post production done on them, and so they'll be out. So my only participation thus far has been in those first couple. I'm on the other ones. But the way it works is it's a group of people were either been a
part of the industry. There's a film critic, they're authors on film, but also people are students of Stanley Kubrick's work get together once a week as part of something called Stanley Kubrick Appreciation Society, and we have a topic each week and go over it. And sometimes it's reading together a book about making a bis Wade shut. Sometimes it's the it will be we'll watch a documentary together and comment on that, take breaks, and the part of the history of this is that we did in an
episode each on the thirteen films. So I'm not really involved in the podcast itself other than being part of the discussion of the round robin discussion that became a couple of these thus far. But every week. You know, it's really great to talk with people who have a really intense interest in the same subject. And you know
this for having been involved and JFK. Lancer and some of the in your show, that there's really something great about people coming together who have a lot of knowledge about a particular subject and respect one another's opinions so that we when we get together, it's by zoom and there might be anywhere between seven to twelve people on a particular week having these get togethers and discussions for about an hour half each week, and we learn from
one another. Everybody's got a different insight. Somebody spoke with somebody who knew this, somebody read this book, somebody saw this documentary, and it's really great to see how it's a complementary process where all these people take a turn and talk about their particular insight and then that I'll bring a thought from somebody else. So well, now that you mention this, there's that, and it's tremendously enjoyable. I'm glad that I really stumbled upon it, and I'm glad
that I'm part of it. Just about every week this discussion and some of which have turned into podcasts.
Right well, I'll tell you if we tried that in JFK Land, though, you can never put seven of us together.
Because real yeah, light with each other.
I'm wondering about, you know, the coverage of Eyes Wide Shut though, because there again is something else that used to come up in what was alternative media a lot because of its you know, connection to the the elites, you know, and this kind of thing. There's been a bit of a metamorphosis in conspiracy culture, i will call it. Over the past few years. Things have changed a lot. And you know, it might have been that they were discussing this is what you know, rich people do and
the sex parties and all that kind of stuff. You know, did you guys do an episode on that yet or is that coming in the future. Do you know?
We've just we've discussed Eyes Wide Shut actually over the last few months, pardon me, and we're doing a group watch. Well, we take a couple of scenes and then discuss the scenes. I mean, it is a Christmas movie after all, so it's that time of year to really joy Eyes Wide
Shut as part of your family viewing. And so we'll be discussing that, and one of the aspects, as you bring up, is the social stratification different levels that we really don't think of as being part of the way things are in the US and think of that, we think, oh, that's something that people in England are like and people in India. But we do have that. And in the film the doctor played by he lives in the upper west side of Central Park, so he obviously has a lot of money.
Oh yeah, yeah, have to live there. I mean, I lived in New York City, but I lived on the Lower east Side and was lucky to have landed there. But the upper west side, forget it. You're talking about a whole lot of cash to own something over there or to even rent it. Yeah. Good.
And even though that's the case, he's the doctor of people who are at a higher level than he is, represented by the Sydney Pollack character. So he who is I think a venture capitalist or something like that. So Tom Cruise is at a high level compared to you and I, but the Polla character is higher level social stratification than Cruise is. And then the people at the party, one of whom is the Sydney Pollack character, are those at yet another high level, which is the people who
run everything. So that's what you're talking about where people are thinking about, say the illuminati and that sort of thing. And that's certainly a valid interpretation of what's going on there because in the scene in the pool room where Sidney Pollack is warning the Tom Cruise character, you don't know what you're up against. If you knew who these people were, you wouldn't be able to sleep well at night.
And that's his way of saying, you know, these are presidents and prime ministers and people who run corporations and so on, and those are the people who are there, right, and that's what they do. And as you see in the movie, you know, some people get killed and then they're forgotten. Well you get away with that sort of thing if you're at that level.
Well see, and there you go. There is the privilege that you get at different levels of the strata, right. And that's an interesting thing that I mean, was that Kubrick's intent with this to really give people a metaphorical glance at it? Or do you think he was going for a literal glance? I mean, what are your thoughts on it?
I think that that's definitely part of one of the subtexts of the film, and it's not the first time
he's taken on that kind of subject. Has a Glory, for instance, which happens to be my favorite of the Kubrick films, had that as an essential feature, which was if you've ever seen the films that takes place during World War One in France, and you have the generals all living in this opulence set up in this palace, and then you cut to the scenes of the people who are really doing the work in the fox holes and they're living, in a literal sense, in mud, whereas
these people are living in these palaces and there's this real contrast between how clean and big and it's all marble, and they have the best food and everything looks like, you know, like a wonderland basically, and then the people in the who are fighting the war are living terribly and they're just being sacrificed day after day worthlessly. Well.
I think there was a lot of nuances and statements in a film that you know, some people often ignore, which I feel like it's two films and one which is full metal Jacket. You know, I wonder if you have any views on that because to me that was that is my favorite Kubrick film, by the way, because it speaks to a lot of the things that that I believe are relevant and have carried through well beyond the period that he's representing there, which is obviously the
Vietnam War and all that. And I feel a personal connection to some of the stuff going on in that film. But he's got various statements going on there, you know in my mind? What do you have any thoughts on Full Metal Jacket?
Yeah, that's an interesting film. I don't hope you've seen any of the part of me analysis film is done by a guy named Rob Ager. He's done a lot of Kubrick and other work, and he does a lot of them are free on YouTube to see, but he also sells them on a site, and he does a good deal of analysis on Full Metal Jacket and the
two film part. One of the theories is that the Pile character, the guy who offs himself in the bathroom, that he is he becomes or is represented by the animal mother character in the second half, the guy played by Adam Baldwin, and that that character represents what Pile could have become if he continued to commit himself because he was becoming a better soldier, he was catching on, but by that time he had been ruined. And so part of the theory is that he's really almost like a reincarnation of
the Pile character in the second half. Okay, a lot of interesting things going on in that film. Yeah, And people sometimes take the second half and go, oh, it's not that hot, But really, when you really think about what's going on there and what's happening to these characters who've become attached to in the first half, it is harrowing and quite interesting. I'm not sure why people write it off so frequently.
Yeah, I mean, I don't know how they could write off the second half, considering we got to follow the Joker character from boot Camp into you know, a position where he's running around, you know, being a journalist. But then he winds up doing that whole thing where he executes the sniper. Who is this you know, lone little girl, you know, the way I interpret it there, who's just you know, hiding among the ruins of a place that once was probably populated and everything else. I mean, there
is a lot of statements going on there. When he you know, turns around and she's saying shoot me and he does it.
Right.
There's a lot happening in that film. I don't see how you can disconnect the two, but it does feel like two films in one nonetheless, right.
And I think that's intentional to have it be a different flavor. But people always say, or very often say, hey, I love the first half and the second half not so much. But I think you have to have that other half in order for the first half to work. You have to see where they go. You see in all this training, you see what it does to them, Well, how do they handle the situations they're in later? You have to get that part of the story and this idea of looking at things in an alternative way, like
you talk about as doing this process. When we're doing analysis of the films in the Stanley Kubrick Appreciation Society and when we did the particular podcast that's not released yet on Full Metal Jacket. Before we recorded that week, I had seen and this was just totally out of nowhere, and it made me think about the film differently in a very strange way that I had just all of a sudden, somebody posted an article on social media about the use of music by Kubrick, and you remember the
end of Doctor Stranger. Loved this ironic ending. We're having all the blasts going off and we hear the song We'll Meet Again by Vera Lynn at the end of Full Metal Jacket. The song being used is the theme of the original Mickey Mouse Club and what we're seeing when that happens is we're seeing the platoon return during the evening. Everything's on fire and it's a very interesting
and eerie effect. Well, in this article, there happened to be a still photo from that scene, and I had this thought that and I have to say, it hit me so intensely that when I discussed it during the podcast, I actually broke down because of how emotionally it grabbed me. Was that My interpretation of it was that if you look at that image, if you remember, since you say it's your favorite Kubrick movie, you've seen enough to know
what I'm talking about. The soldiers are all in silhouette, you don't see them, and they're singing.
And that fire is all in the background, like you said, and they start to sing the Mickey Mouse theme like as they're walking right, this is the scene you're talking about.
Right, And when I saw it as a still image, I interpreted in my mind in a totally different way than having seen it in the movie many times, and it hit me, oh, they're ghosts because the sniper took everybody out except a couple, and you saw what you know, then he had to take out the sniper. Well, it's still daylight at that point, it's still hours left before
this scene happens. Well, I'm looking and going none of them made it their ghost and they returned to their most idealized state of their young lives, which was when there were little kids rushing home to watch The Mickey Mouse Club. So that's the afterlife.
That's That is a heavy thought that I never ever had before.
So I'm not saying that there was any intention on the on Kubrick's part to do this. This is merely something that came into my head as a way of viewing it. But when you look at it and think of it in those terms, it actually makes a eerie kind of sense, which is what he says. None of them made it. They all were killed and their ghosts now and he did that. You know, the Shining was a ghost story and it's ultimate and that's why you're seeing them the way they are, where you're not seeing them as.
People, or perhaps they're traveling, you know, among the fire because they're going to a greater fire. It's all over, and now it's time to you know, might as well sing Mickey Mouse on your way to Hell. I mean that that is the only thing. I remember having that thought at one point, like with the fires all around, But then I thought maybe it was a statement about the devastation. I mean, there's a lot of ways to look at.
This, Yeah, And that's one of the great things that's interesting about Kubrick's films. There's always something there. And he never got to the point where he would do interviews and explain. People would ask, well, what's the meaning of the end of two thousand and one and all that sort of thing, right, and he would, I mean, not
too many interviews to begin with. But then what he did he would avoid getting that specific because he thought that it would ruin it and not be as interesting if the viewer wasn't putting themselves and their own thoughts into it. He actually encourages that wants that, or you're making your own interpretation and you're an active part of the process rather than going, well, you know at the end of the movie meant it's not as interesting, it's
not as intriguing. You wouldn't be talking about it fifty years later, for two thousand and one or nineteen eighty was shine. He wouldn't be talking about these things if they were so obvious, and if he had gone out explained everything or written a book about his films or whatever. And he never did any of those things right.
And for the same reason, I think that David Chase doesn't give you the answer to what actually happened at the end of The Sopranos still right, what is it fifteen years later and he's not answering that question. Why
because people are still discussing it and interpreting it. Is that you know, he didn't hear the shot, so he's dead, just like you discussed in a previous episode, etc. I know it's comparing TV to film, but I feel like it's almost the same thing where I'm not going to give him the answers, let them get him on their own and let them figure it out. And meanwhile people will keep discussing it and rediscovering it and having to examine it and go over it and that might be
what it's all about. So I want to thank you because he spent more than an hour with me. And again you're the author of the book Quintessential Jack The Art of Jack Nicholson on Screen Scott Edwards. And I'm also going to give you a link to a Facebook page, the publisher's page on this and the Amazon link to go buy it, unless you have another preferred link you could send me that for them to buy it from.
The publisher is the best vet because it's actually on sale twenty percent off everything at the publisher's site through the end of the year, and it's just the code is Holiday twenty four and you get that twenty percent.
Great, okay, So you know what, I'll drop the Amazon link and Holiday twenty four all together as one word, right is the okay holiday.
They show it on the site too, so even if you don't remember it, it's easy to find.
Oh excellent, So you can get a discount if you go to the publisher's website and by Quintessential Jack The Art of Jack Nicholson on Screen by Scott Edwards. And again chance meeting at Lancer and I have a feeling that I might want you to return and answer some questions, maybe from some listeners, et cetera. There's somebody in the chat room mentioning that they liked the Billy Jack thing. I think that was back when we were talking about
the biker movies. Let's see, Kubrick may have only advised on the apollo op. Okay, Well, look, you can take it anyway you want, but I don't believe that Stanley Kubrick gave us that footage. I'll tell you that much with absolute certainty. But he did give us a lot of films, and Jack Nicholson gave us a lot of characters, and Scott Edwards gave us a lot to think about.
So there you go, Revelation through conversation.
If you've expressed my caller schools there anyone else who happens to get on the air of Jelly dot com, do not necessarily reflect views little Lly dot com or check Go Chilly, and we are not responsible for any stupidity which might ensued.
Thank you, Revelation through conversation.
Go ahead call it.
Just sit in the truth about the JAFA assassination.
Right, Well, what do you want to know? Dy Baker's wild claim Oswald girlfriends you knew Ruby and Barry answer weapons. Really, I imagine I could claim I have four wheels. It doesn't make me a wagon.
But okay, Oswald was on the bility and I'm trying to prevent the murder of John Kennedy.
Come on now has a real effort on the day of assassination.
Go to Amazon dot com enter Judith Baker in her own words. You'll get the results for a digital copy of a book where Walt Brown utilizes her own words and the known evidence in the case to get at well a different perspective. Let's say you can get Judith Ary Baker in her own words from the author himself, signed if you request it by contacting doctor Brown at k I A S JFK at aol dot com. It's a fun book and it actually dissects the many, many fantastic claims Judith very Baker in her own words.
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Yo yo. This Doug Campbell, host of the Dallas Action podcast presented by Wall Street Window, and you are listening to the o'chill effect revelation through conversation in.
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