Episode 700: Caligula - The Ultimate Cut (2023)

this finish film. We came back together in twenty eighteen to discuss the recent rediscovery of the original footage of Khaligla and the plans Penthouse and Alexander had to restore the film to Tinto Brass's original version. This is where

we left things. I recorded Alexander's interview and then a week later I talked with Kelly and like in the interim is when the bigger news broke about her almost losing the company and then getting the company back, and then the funding it sounds like is going to be

there for this restoration of Caligula. And I just want to make sure that folks understand is that this will probably be Alexander at some point taking that workprint that he's talked about, the work print of Caligula where I think he said like eighty nine minutes of it were done, and then kind of using the original elements to recreate that, and then the rest of the film will be done in the style of Tinto Brass unless Brassless notes or

Brass himself, who is still a very viable filmmaker, unless that happens, It'll be done in the style of Tinto Brass, and I think that Alexander knows his style well enough to be able to do that. It's kind of like Walter murch coming in and redoing Touch of Evil based upon the memos kind of thing. So I'm very very excited about this because it does sound I don't want to get my hopes up, because you know, things happen, but in a world where either side of the Wind

might actually have its premiere very soon. I'm very excited that Tinto Brass's Caligula with name over the title kind of thing, that Tinto Brass's Caligula might finally actually see the light of day. Now we are back when we were talking about the version of Caligula that played in con in twenty twenty three, once referred to as Caligula mmxx or Caligula twenty twenty. But this is twenty twenty four and it's now called Caligula the Ultimate Cut, and

it was produced by a person named Thomas Nagovit. We will be discussing the film as well as what's happened to this project over the last six years. We'll also be spoiling the film as we go along, so if you don't want anything ruin, go ahead and find the movie. It's coming out on Blu Ray a few times, including the Umbrella Entertainment version, which features commentary from our own Heather Train. One more thing, we might get some things wrong as we talk about this, just because we have

been caliguled up one side and down the other. I feel a little bit like Proculus. At my wedding night. I've had a lot of Caligula coming in and out of these eyes and ears, and I get a little bit of details wrong or any of us. Please forgive us, Heather. I'm so curious. How did you get involved in this new release and what did you think when you first saw Caligula the Ultimate Cut?

that's aid infamous film. Even as a little kid, I

knew this is the film. Chirs Malcolm McDowell, Sir John gilgot Helen Mary and you've got these Shakespearean trained actors and it's pehouse and it's lurned And I remember seeing Inside Edition or it's like tabloid shows doing a piece on it, like the late eighties feel like Video Search of Miami and one of their catalogs had some variation cut of it at some point, because I used to get their catalogs even though I was too poor to order anything, and I was also like, well under eighteen,

I couldn't order from But I loved seeing the movies, and when I finally did get to see it, I was not disappointed. It's see the Goociona cut is for all of its flaws, you still get to see there's so much brilliance in the movie that cannot be restrained by any cut of it, and especially McDowell, the Danello di Natti sets, and honestly, I think there are performers there that don't get enough respect that should, including Teresa

and Savoya, John Steiper especially. So I'm a huge fan of Caligula, which is why when I got approached from somebody by Umbrella if I wanted to contribute a commentary, I of course jumped on it. Now I do have to give a shout out to Alexandra Heller Nichols because she threw my name in that hat. I would not have gotten that gig without her vouching for me. So I hope she likes you. When ever happened? Really, Jesus, hope they don't hate it. But I did my best. But and so that's how I got to see the

old Simth cut, and it was fascinating. It is a fascinating thing to see. I think it's interesting and I can't really think of any other film that's white has the storied history of having so many variations of it as far as edits the whole drama of it being basically stolen from the director. Because the other thing that helped me get my name in that hat was I'm a noted Tito Brass fan. I'm a huge Tino Brass fair girl. I don't know as much as Alexander Trushinsky,

who I know you got to interview Bow. Alex is amazing and incredible, but I love Tinta Brass. He's a my kind of artist. So I was curious to see how this cut was going to play out. I knew it was going to be different than the Mission Caligula cut on which may be sad, but it's still okay. Getting to see this footage restored and presented in a different way had be very intrigued. But I'll reserve my further thoughts as we go into it.

a few minutes in. It's an interesting follow up to what we talked about with Mission Caligula, but this is not where we thought we were going to be going. So, Rob, what did you think when you finally got to see this Ultimate cut?

aspects of that are really interesting. Another aspect of this that I like are some of the performances ad depth, and there's even a character in here that I don't remember from the theatrical version that we'll talk about that I think adds a bit to McDowell's performance in his characterization that I think is interesting. So it has a lot of extra things in. It runs an extra I think thirty minutes compared to the original theatricals, so it's

three hours now. And then there are aspects of it in terms of the edit that I find a bit ponderous at times, and editing choices and things like that, And we can talk about all that. That's more for the second half, But for me, it's again like Heather was saying, it's seeing another version of something that you're familiar with, and it still leaves me hungry for that. As close as we could get tinto brass version that

I would absolutely love to see, I would look. That is a hang up that I have, But I went in watching it against what was previously given to us, meaning the gucci Oni version and the Blu ray, which is a little bit different when they cut out some of the softcore or some of the hardcore from what I remember. But it definitely has some merits on its own, and it has some deficiencies on its own too. That's to be expected with any time you tinker with it with any piece of heart.

but it's close. There are some interesting choices, Like you said, even when it comes to the long opening scroll, I understand us wanting to have a scroll at the beginning to talk a little bit about the history of the film, though some of the things that are in that opening scroll, I'm just like, really, then to start it off with the animated and I'm just like, oh, okay, we're going really different because that animated sequence, which not a big fan of the style of the animation, some of it

looks kind of I don't know off to me, but I guess it is a dream sequence, so you can't really put rules on a dream sequence. I'd like some of this stuff that they have when it comes to the little Caligula dance and everything, and I'm just like, Okay, this explains a little bit more. I know we're saving a lot of stuff for the second half of the discussion, so I'm not going to get too far into it. But the dream sequence was there in one version of

course screenplay, it wasn't there in another. But at least it makes a lot more sense to have this dream version here rather than to make it be I remember, and I listened to our earlier episodes on this because I refuse to go back and watch the Gucci one version again. But where it was the dream was nymphocent in the forest, and then it's uh, I had this horrible dream, like what wait what?

covers in the eighties and nineties for Sandman. He has a very specific painter style, and so I like his art. I just it just seemed to me almost like the dream sequence. I understand what he was doing by creating this and putting it in the film, but part of it I don't necessarily know. If it pays off as well,

because really, ultimately what it's about is just paranoia. It's really about the paranoia of power is really the story, and I don't think you need to get that far into it because it's like Poligula as Joseph Stalin, He's just I'm in power and now everyone wants to kill me. Some might but not everyone. There's this I've got to take everyone out before they take me out attitude, and

that just ramps. So that's just the story ramp. But I don't know if the dream sequence really adds much or helps to play in, although it does add with some of the symbology later with the bird and things like that.

before this project. They worked together on a exhibition and that's the thing is like mcgovan has this amazing background as an art preservationist and historian and for something called he did this program called Keno Geist that was this two day event and part of that was called Nitrate and Keino Guys, and that included they had some of like Keyan short films and the whole thing was celebrating basically silent film art too, which is super cool, so

they definitely at cross. I'm a huge day of McKeen fan.

found for that. And it is important to note because I think the whole thing with Colligils's paranoia is it's and I'm trying to remember if this was like touched upon that well in the GUCCIONI cut, But basically, like the whole history is, every emperor dies young and get and does not die a natural death, and his whole family other than his sisters, were exiled. That's the thing. Tiberia's excel his mother and his two brothers off to an island where they starved to death. So you can

understand why he's paranoid and why he's not settled. I think I go a little bit more into the nuts and bolts and that when we get to the Tiberia section.

up with Driscilla next to him and he's had this horrible dream, and that's right out of that opening of that July seventy six script. And so I guess it's just really which version you're reading as far as which one you want to say this is the true one.

But I would say I know. Brass said that there were seven versions of the script written, and that was before Malcolm mcdalbrod and his person too work on the script a little bit as well, and I guess that's what helped cause a lot of friction between Brass and though I don't see those two really getting along too well.

But they are too like strong. Those are two very strong finkers, two very brilliant, and they're very in very distinctive ways. But also one's incredibly American, the one's incredibly Italian. And sometimes those two can marry beautifully, but when they don't, it's, yeah, you get Gorse little bit che quote. Did you guys read where he one of his comments about Tito was, oh, that he should have been called Tinto's z inc And it's that's the best singer you got, Garny, come on like that.

I have not read the play. I understand the synopsis, and the synopsis follows much the same, But really I wonder how much Gorvidal was looking at Camu's treatment and borrowing from it, because ultimately what sets him off in that play from the synopsis I read is the death of Drusilla that basically, once Drusilla dies, he's fuck it. I can do whatever I want. I don't care anymore. I've given up on trying to be nice to anyone, and I'm just gonna be the id and I'm going

to do anything I want. And so that becomes really the push the incident within the Camu play. But here it seems more like what the push for him is more of the paranoia, in that he's more scared of Tiberius and then Jemalus and all these other people trying to turn against him. So it seems more of paranoia and exercise in paranoia than it is a I've lost the love of my life and therefore everyone suffers.

written by the victors. But he sourced a lot of it from Suetonius. There were two main historians of this era, and that was Setonius and Cassio Dio. And like the whole thing with Tiberius, like the whole thing with the minnows so creepy, like the little fishes and all that, and it's and Peter Atole looks he looks like he he looks like he's like the living dead. And that's the already like it looks like a zombie and it's just so appropriately just like ghastly. But that's the thing,

those were real legits. I guess rumors that he was basically like a pedophile. Caligial was brought in as a slave, he treated him as a slave. There is no telling if that's true what Caligula as a little boy, as a young man had to witness an endure also with the full knowledge that this is the man that was responsible for basically slowly murdering his family, like most of his family, including his mother. I don't see how that

would not make any body paranoid and insane. I'm not justifying any crazy, but and I love that there's that touch. I think Malcolm McDowell, who is one of our greatest living actors, I'm a huge I know well he didn't feel like he has performance shined in the other cuts. It's back in McDowell. The man's gonna shine in a subway shop like he's got you put them in a subway ordering a meatball sandwich. Dude is gonna shine. That's

what he does. Because here there are times where he has such a sensitivity in his eyes and such emotion. But he also has that cheeky side to and also just that bratty monster, and he has all of this, but I love I think in some ways the whole stuff with Tiberius in this film is the most compelling.

So there's some historians of ancient Rome that say, you know what, the whole thing with the orgies and the sexual stuff and that's all overblown. They made them sound way worse than they were in order to make them the New Guard, sound much better than they were. There was this balance of making the Old Guard seem like they were just the most evil and horrible people.

things that they thought were correct. We know how easily facing it changed here in twenty twenty four, So I don't know about forty nine AD type of stuff, but yeah, I from what I understand, Wow, Nero actually wasn't that bad of a guy. He didn't play the fiddle while he was burning Rome down, these kind of things. But it's the next emperor or the one after that is look at that guy. Look at his record. Look at

what horrible things did he played the fiddle? Well, Rome was burned, he set fire to Rome and played the fiddles? What are you talking about? So some of these things like oh Coligula was so crazy? What is his horse to be a senator? Maybe he did, maybe he didn't. I don't know, but yes, it's part of this narrative.

And ultimately, I don't care about historical accuracy of as I care about I guess what Verna Hertzog would call it, the asthetic truth? Is it true in terms of how it feels? And you know it reacts as opposed as a true true.

Tiberia stuff goes on for. And even though they added more to the Tiberia section, but they also took away things from the Tiberia section, but that Tiberia section still runs. I think close to a solid half an hour between when Caligula gets told, hey, you need to go to care and after Tiberius is murdered. I think that's a solid half hour of screen time with all of this stuff going on, if not more. And it just takes

fucking forever to get through this. And just hearing Peter O'Toole that you like so saydes it's good to have both, I'm just like, God, this is going on forever.

If it's film, it's not seen, but some crazy stuff going on compared to the stuff COOCCIONI shot, which I know as much as people are like, oh it's poured, it's pretty straight erotica. It's nothing crazy. You've got somebody with a conjoined deformed twins and there's like a weird dildo spinning wheel that looks honestly painful and like it would probably I actually looks like something I saw on a Joe sort of film, and I think about it. Even then I was like, girl, do not get near leaf.

Do not put your vagina near that. It will hurt you, and not in a fun way. But I loved it both for the complete outray of it, but I also to me, I think I like the causeum it sets up, this is what he has had deep year around. It's to me, I think it's essential to see like the origin of Caligula, but the madness, but also just the madness of government, which is really what the film to me is really bad. People say it's about therruption of power,

but it's also look at the nobody. They're all snakes. There's not one hero in any of the political thing a Caligular, if anything, is mocking them. The more he insane he gets, the more it's just it's like, in his own weird way, he's just calling them out and be like my horse. Yeah, and Titus is just as good, if not better than a lot of your sheep, who will quickly put a knife in someone's bag as you will to pat him on it. Wow. I'm glad things have changed though, so that's good.

to kill myself. I'm gonna make you do it. I'm going to make you kill me. I'm not going to kill myself. I want to see how far I could push you.

changes a little bit of that for me. And this is right around now where we're talking about Tiberias of Nerva and I'm glad that there is more Nerva. I actually understand why he's there more in this cut as opposed to the theatrical version. But the thing that I miss, because I'm so used to theatrical version, is where McDowell's like, Nerva, what's going on? Where he's like this little kid and he's all excited that this guy's dying and is do

you see isis? Is she coming for you? And he's all very excited about experiencing death by proxy through this guy, which again also ties into what I was saying before about the bully who wants to be offed by someone, where he's like, oh, tell me about it, And in this version he's much more serious. He's not as in

that child space. He's not in that Alex space. This is what I would call it, where he's so excited by misdeeds and horribleness, and it's like he's getting all excited by wha real horror show.

then eventually I would find like a sink point. But it was interesting. It was like, rather than a close up, I'm seeing a long shot rather than a medium shot, I'm seeing an extreme close up rather than from this angle, I'm seeing it from that angle. But maybe they didn't have other angles for the Nerva suicide scene, because we do get the first part of the suicide scene, which

Alexander told us about from Mission Caligula. Now we get to see that, but we don't get that scene that you're talking about, Like you just said, we don't get that whole Oh do you see isis? And my theory is one maybe that's because Nagovin's gone on record saying we can't show oh colegular murdering somebody at that point,

because he eventually just pushes nerve it down. It's interesting in the script, though, the at least the October twenty, nineteen seventy five script, he and that scene is in there, and he instead of pushing Nerve it down, he kicks him in the head. But by that point Nerv is already dead and he just slides into the pool. So I'm looking at the July seventy sixth script and I'm still seeing that. Tell me about isis scene, because I thought maybe Nagovin was just really stuck to I'm only

going to follow this script because it's definitely shorter. The July one is one hundred and thirty eight pages, whereas the seventy five October one is one hundred and ninety pages, which is closer to the running time of what this movie is now, which is what two hours and fifty seven minutes.

use location audio. Now, the problem is they were building sets while they were filming, and so one of the problems with that is that you'll have someone working and there's hammering in the background. So that's not a noise reduction solution, and it's not even something that you could really do with precise editing. You probably couldn't to some degree,

but it would take forever and be really complicated. Some of the things that happened with AI technology that Peter Jackson was using for get Back that allowed the computer learning to separate human voice from its surroundings. It's not noise reduction. It's not a frequency like it was literally sculpting pieces. The scene with John Gielgood in the bath was a scene that I thought, that's the one we're

going to make the excuses for. We're going to have to put a disclaimer at the front end saying this was made from blah blah blah sources. And by the end of this thing, the length of time that it took just that last year, the technology changed so much that we were able to get his voice sounding immaculate. And the Irony Kevin was our audio magician on this, and he said this to me, this was his idea

that I'm sharing. It's really funny. That was the worst sounding scene and now at the end, it's that's the best sounding scene.

that I can do with AI. So it makes my life a lot easier because I'm in quite a bit and I'm curious to see what AI is going to do to this section as I'm purposefully sticking in ums and US.

of it, because that's not in any version. And there were some some of the sets where they said you could see in the raw footage just black or the sets, the set is ending and it wasn't finished because those that design that film, it's amazing it got made. When you read about the making of Curricula, I don't think the film probably personally, I don't think it needs it. But it doesn't hurt it.

done it. For one in particular, what we were able to do is we wanted.

we get a little more of him. Yeah, and this, and also Gilgood has the best quotes, the two best quotes I have seen about this movie that's not from Tinto himself because one of them, and perversely Penthouse useless in their press releases, which I find sets because he said I've known coffins that were warmer than Roman bats, which is one of Also, he was I think the only major mainstream actors that were okay with the X rated stuff. Helen Mirren had very funny attitude about it.

Can we all she's got? We'll get into hurt a little bit, but God bless Helen Man. But also John, you look Good ran into beca mcdowas while start but running into him and he's own Malcolm. It's wonderful. I'm in a polo. I've seen it three times, that you look good body. It was just hilarious. He loved it. He was so chuffed about being in a dirty movie. Now that's a trooper like divine and John Gilgod, oh, sir John Golgod, excuse me.

It's such as I'm glad we're talking about Thistuf. I feel like there's a lot of smaller performances that get overshadowed by this movie, and it's infamy that these that should get praised.

it's he just keeps telling them to do shit. But in here there's like a lot of there's like size and side eyes, and ah Jesus, you can tell that they're just tired of putting up with his shit, and it gets more obvious as you get further along. And that's what I think is those side characters, those smaller characters, really help to really pave his end. That you can read them more now than you could in the other version.

They were there, but they we didn't get the sense that they were put upon as much as they are in this version.

to latch onto. It was a confusing film. Stuff that was in the middle was at the beginning and vice verse, and I'm just like, what the hell's going on? This version of it lets me have a story, and it does remove we said it's almost three hours long for lack of just for quickness, we'll say three hours long. And you understand what's happening. You get to introductions of these character, you get arcs of these characters. You see Nerva before he commits suicide instead of just a few

seconds of them. You get what Macro's doing, what he's what's happening with his wife. You get more when it comes to which guards are are hurting other people, and what's happening with Proculus and then his soon to be wife and all this. I'm just like, oh, I understand now. This was like a revelation to me to be able to actually follow the story, because I will be honest, I could not follow that original version whatsoever.

wedding gift. So there's like half of that is cut out of the theatrical version, and I think I can't remember timing wise, if this version of the actual scene itself is longer, it sure as hell fell longer, and that it's one of those things where it's I want this to be painful for you as I view, want you to realize how fucking horrible this person is now.

doing this a plug. Thing with the Umbrella is they actually are having like some of the foreign cuts because like they're like the Australian release obviously dismissing some of the works righted stuff and it was missing other stuff, but then had scenes that were in no other versions that weren't in the US versions, that weren't here. It's fascinating.

But this is why GOP bless people Alexander and and Thomas and there for having to make take this bounty, this cornucopia of beautiful mess and try to make sense of it because it's there's so much great stuff there. It's just trying to And I don't think I even fully realized how out of sorts the cut that I was used to the X ray the atrical cut until I started researching both Mission Caligula and then especially diving

into the ultimate cut. And then when you go back to the Gucciani one, you're like, holy shit, some of this is it's almost it borders on random, and there's still good stuff in there. But then you can see we're the Guccioni corner pit house lens for lack of a better term, is coming in there with except that the nymph footage and that pastoral with the misty fog.

Some of that is some of those gorgeous visual stuff in the whole film, like with with Drew Silla and Cligula running around and being playful, but the nymphs it gets a little too Okay, is this about to turn into a loop com Damn Bob, calm down. Okay.

movie that only Guccioni could make. And there's several things that like esthetically connected to those to his magazine and like you were talking about, like the nymph stuff and all of that, and like him trying to elevate this to like some gauzy, gaudy art because really, like Hefner, like all three of them were raised in some sort of culture and some sort of religious background. But the thing is that, as far as I know, they all

threw it off. Larry Flint had his evangelical era that ended, and then he became more of an antithist and even an atheist to be honest. But Larry Flint was always very working class. It was always like, what would the truckers like?

Catholicism written large in its design. And then of course there's that connection obviously with the Roman Empire and then eventually what became the Roman Catholic Church. But it's just even his magazine has the exact same esthetic of just over the top gauzyness to it that when I was young growing up, I couldn't relate to it as much like it was just it was trying to be too pretty and downscale. It's say it was a weird mix.

I don't know if you ever because I worked in a bookstore where we sold all kinds of books, but we obviously had these magazines. You could lay them out and even if I didn't tell you which one they were from, I'd be like, Okay, which photo is from which magazine? You could always tell.

The seventies were very that era of that gauze look though too you look at just Shake and with the fashion photography, but then going into Emmanuel, I feel like Emmanuel has that look. His ver story of THEO or all of its flaws. It has that too. The work of David Hambleton has that. Look, we won't go into that, but I'm sure him a type period. It's all I'm sorry, I just didn't have made that tire. But but it's

such a but it is. I can see why he if he could have just let be because Petrous actually had a production credit on films before this, Benhill says, a production credit on Day of the Locusts, and which thank god he didn't mess with it. He imagined try being like, I need more sexy ladies and David the locust.

He is an art anarchist. Sexuality is anarchy, especially when you were somebody who was raised in an era of extreme repression and religious repression and political repression like you were in Italy, and especially the time period that Tinto grew up. He before all of this, had his film's victim of censorship. He had weathered all that, and to me, it's just he is a true artist and GUCCIONI it was an artist. I'm not going to say he wasn't,

but it could not. He couldn't get its little fingers out of a cookie jar.

on now, I see what he was doing. So it became much more obvious on a new viewing after I watched this new edit, just how much GUCCIONI okay, slow most shot of someone like their ass coming out of the water okay, give me that, and then like the ladies behind the wall looking in on them and all of just all of this stuff. You can see it now, you can see it so much more.

and they were, but he didn't. He wasn't transparent with them about any of the explicit stuff. And that's shady. That's shady, and that's the thing. Those girls, particularly like Anika de Lorenzo and Lorian Wegner, they suffered the reputations. I know Anika sued him, I think two or three times. There's something she seared him a lot, and I get it.

It's funny, Larry, out of all three of those guys ended up, I think having the cleanest reptas so guy because god Dare's like after Happner have a few guys have seeing him the secrets of Playboy stuff. But yeah, it's not good.

I think part of it too, is that I think if Al and Larry never acted like they were perfect, they would both the must go out of their way to show all of their flaws in humanity. And I always trust people more than do that. Anybody tries to act well, I'm above that. Watch your ass because it's gonna get stupid and it's gonna get leath the.

or the sex was? It was just so tacked out just going back, And though I didn't rewatch the original Guccione version of it, I have watched all these other deleted scenes and extras and all this stuff, and listening to our original episodes, I forgot about things like there's that sun statue or placard in Caligula's room and he goes up to at one point and looks through it, and then in the Guccione version they cut to what's on the other side, and it's these two girls looking

through the other side and they just start making out and having sex. It's like one of those and maybe people will remember this, maybe they don't. But lesbian scenes imporn in the seventies, eighties, nineties was so easy because he didn't have to worry about a cumshut. You could just have these two girls making out for hours. It felt just put on your favorite lesbian foreign scene. Go do some laundry, comeback, don't worry they'll still be at it,

and it just felt like one of those. And then some of the other sex scenes where it's like, oh, we're on this boat and here's this orgy, but we'll just cutting in new things and here's more hardcore footage and it's just boring after a while because there just

wasn't anything to it. I don't know, it just felt so unmotivated, even though it's I think Timo Brassan is there's a documentary that David Gregory shot and it's called Orgy of Power, and his line in there and I think he used it even twice, was he was about making a movie about an orgy of power, and then GUCCIONI was about making a movie about the power of an orgy. And I think that's perfectly summing up what Guccione's version was versus what we're seeing now with this ultimate cut.

he's in front of them. You don't see him, but he's over in the corner taking a pee while he's having this conversation with them, which reminded me of the stories of LBJ where LBJ would take meetings in the bathroom while he took a dump. He would make people come in and talk to him while he was on the toilet.

long time to get out of it. And I can't even imagine. Alexander talked about ninety six hours worth of footage and you just to see these outtakes that go on for so long. Oh, here's this woman with a swan and she's touching the swan, or here's this woman with a snake, and you get twenty minutes of this type of stuff and it's all just b roll type of footage. But it's okay. If they wanted to cut into that, they could have. They had that option. But as me doing research on this, I'm just like, oh

my god, I'm calligulid out. My brain is just so such mush. I can't even imagine what had either Alexander or now with this. Why am I forgetting? Tell me the editor's name for Aaron Shaff's version. Yeah, I feel bad for Aaron having to sit through all of this footage, and I would have felt bad for Alexander having to sit through all of this footage, because it just must have felt like some sort of Sisapian.

finished this is a little inside Baseball. When I finished that commentary, I felt like I had run a marathon. I bet I felt sapped, and it was a total thing of love. I am beyond great Bulay got to do it, and I hope anybody that gets to hear it enjoys it. Truly, but it and even then, even afterwards, there are still things that would come to me where I'm like, shit, I didn't get to cover this part of that part because there's so many connected layers and

factors to this story that are just so riveting. Sometimes I'm part of my brain is still shit I write about this at some point? Should I write about this? Does the world need another article about it? Probably not, But because there's already a great Rajet's book out there, and he's he knows way more about this film than me.

I hate saying curse. I hate it when people going, oh, it's a cursed movie, like curse okay, But then there are some times where it's almost like God, there is like some like sticky substance to Calligula where it's like there are people that got hurt, and even after even long after that, even long after fact Guccioni being yah, there's still that weirdness to it. And then you research the history like Franco Russollini Franco got he got just

as boned by Guccioni as Tito did. Franco Rossaus' respected producer one had worked with Arthouse, had worked with Peter Palell Pasolini, and then just god, he was one of people that ended up having to sue Guccioni. And it's just just so many figures. It's not just the Penthouse pets. It's all of the major actors ended up being fine. I think like they've all done right. Got Helen Mirren ended up having this amazing reds which is so cool.

It's so cool to see like all of us already knew because come on, we love Peter Breadaway and we know she was hot. Sam thought to Molly that. But there's like the side people that never really recovered. In some ways, I feel like this film did the Tinto's career what you would say maybe le Bett did to

barad Check. Even though like leb Bette is a brilliant film, it's our house's masterpiece, it took him from being a very respected art house director to being like, Oh, he's a guy that makes fut And I think that's how people even researching for this film. I feel like I would still see not from necessarily the film from Thomas or Eric, but other people writing about, Oh, we're so glat to have this cut, and they'd almost some of this writers would be very dismissive of Tinto and be like, oh,

softcore porn and it's excuse me, do you research? Did you even bother to read as wiki for them trying to like the roma softcore porn and there's not rock the Rottica. But I think it's important for very watching The Ultimate Cut to know the source material and to know and respect the artists that built all of these bones. I know Thomas and Aaron have talked a lot about Danilo Donati the incredible set, and as everybody should, he's a genius. But let's give some props Tino Brass.

That's just such a singular thing to me, This world of Caligula, whether it's the Ultimate Cut or the Extra like, it's it's a mosaic that's compelling and messy and flawed, but it all comes together this just utterly, just extreme way.

I hope that there are more cuts to this because I would like to see some of those longer scenes. I'd like to see some of the stuff that's in the Guccione version married with what's in this version. I love to your point from earlier, Heather, how clean this version is and just how nice it looks. Sometimes the music gets a little ponderous. I think this movie is really missing a lot of the humor and some of the joy of the what would have been in a

tinto Brass film. One of the things that stuck with me that I really didn't like was some of the sound effects that they use in here. There's one when it's Caligula goes out on the town, he comes back and he goes down this there's a slide into the jail.

of the track and stuff. So from what I understand, it's called three Screams Exterior Close Perspective from volume seven of Screams that can be found on the premiere edition Volume one by Hollywood Edge. And I'm going to play the scream when we put this episode out, and everybody's going to recognize it because you've all heard it a thousand times. So when that happens in this movie, I'm just like, whoa, you just took me way out of it.

of the I know it's laur And Wicker's character. I remember what her character, this name now she urinated on it. She reinates on his dead body. And I made a joke because GUCCIONI was a big He was big and a pistol. It's fined. I'm not key shaving. But unless I just have made that joke so much over the years that my memory has complained, which is baby possibility. But I feel like I was in the cut I saw. So maybe are there different ultimate cuts of the ultimate cut?

is signing the orders. Like one of the most for me famous scenes in the guccione version, I'll just call it the Gucciono version, was him saying, by the name of Caesar and all the centers of her own blah blah blah, and he passes the law right, and Jase Stampson, he's doing the exact same thing that he saw Tiberius doing before, which he wanted to do and thought I was going to be a great honor. But then you

saw how Tiberius was just fucking sick of it. You don't get him doing that whole by the power of room, but like how he just goes through it ends before he starts to get crazy with it. That's when he starts to step across the tops of all these recks and is doing his little dance across the racks and starting to really fuck with Longinis. It really feels like in the second half of the movie, it is the

how can I make long Ginas's life miserable? Which is one of the reasons why he gets killed, And yeah, that's where you get a lot of these interesting things, the birth of his quote unquote son and some of these other things you get. One of the things that I like in this new version two is the use of the bird omen and how that comes back quite often. And like you said, Rob, that's in that opening animation as well, So you start off with that, but then

you really carry that through. And that was the thing with the Guccioni version is I just didn't feel like it knew how to tell a story. These bird moments are very important. These are massive omens for him. So when he sees the bird at the very beginning after the dream sequence, he freaks the fuck out. I'm like, Okay, yeah, that makes sense now because it's he's going to see a bird before Drusilla dies, and he's going to see

a bird before he dies. So yeah, that makes a lot of sense, and this one just makes sense now and I can understand this film. Do I think it's the best film.

he's finding companionship with this odd mute character. And it just adds more to McDowell's characterization and just the character Gill as a hole. So I really love that. That's something I really love in this version. That's not that wasn't any other versions.

screen time that didn't before Incitatus. So finally we get to see a lot more of Caligulous Horse, like this major thing, the scandal of like him having his horse in Congress and are in the Senate and boom, here's Incitatas and we get a whole lot more of him, and like even Caligula sleeping in bed with them and bringing him to all of these parties and yeah, he's just he's a major character now, all hail and sata.

way he SLINKs around and he was great. And he was in Salon Kitty if he worked with Tinto off and on up until God was it was it perma FoST He did a lot. I think now it was snack box. But he of course he's also in Mario Baba's Shock. He's in Tinebray, which also so is Lorena DiAngelo, who's wore Proculus's wife. And it's Steiner's great and from all accounts a great guy. Like every even the pets, because I've ever seen every floor riper said that one of the few this is poor curls cut I do.

I'm like, also justice for the pets. But one of the few people that actually was really warm to them was John Steiner, and he had he invited them over for dinner to him and his wife's place in Italy for dinner. Nothing on toureds, nothing, sort of just being like, hey, welcome to Italy. Just and she just said nothing but pracious.

in this? It's like when you watch Star Crash and it's like, why is Joe Spinea right by Joe.

totally the rock. Driustilla is that one rock of lot, like of the rock of a lot of I'd really just say that that Brett Michaels show, Yeah he does. This is ridiculous. Why did they Why did I get that commentary? It's amazing they let me do anything but mentioning Brett Michaels over here. But You'restilla really is like the rock and she is definitely. They think the biggest thread to sanity were Caligula. And what's interesting is and it's you can get that depression here, but it sest

was a big no no in ancient Rome. I know some people are like, oh, those Romans were decadent. The decadences depends on how you went to find it, but they weren't that decadent. And Sest does a major taboo in almost every culture for reasons, which is why she's, yeah, we're not going to marry, we're not Egyptian. If it's and and it's interest because there's that parallel with Osiris and Isis. They give the mythology, they it's an interesting

the relationship has that Egyptian way. He keeps mentioning Egypt and there's a lot of Egyptian and sort of references there, which I.

in the Guccioni version. I really enjoy the whole thing of the washing of the blood and just like, how quickly we're going to cover up this crime. This one does have the let's put the crown onto Claudius and just oh, hey, al Claudius, and that's pretty much where it ends. I really like the whole idea of the cleaning up of the colligular crime and then Incitatus coming out and running around and then taking off, and I was just like, Okay, yeah, I want a little bit more.

I felt like they could have put both of those together. But I don't know if again, if that's I'm only using things from this ninety six hours of footage and I'm not going to use anything that was used before, or what.

And the thing that I do like when I thought about it politically, and we talk about this, is that Claudius throughout this entire film is played up as a bigger fool an idiot in this version than he is in the theatrical Guccioni versions. And because of that, when he's finally crowned by the kingmakers, by the power brokers to keep these emperors, it feels much more like, Okay, we've made our new choice, and it's you know, I get this feeling that it's like, even if you are Caligular,

or even if you are Claudius, that doesn't matter. It's the people who are the power brokers that run the show, and eventually they'll get tired of you and they'll get rid of you and they'll bring the new guy in. So I really like the ending in this one because

with that it felt much more definite. As opposed to the theatre Guccioni version, where he was just like, all right, just throw the crown on him and go this, it felt much more like hail and bring him out, and there was more to do with it, just.

to his feet. He is half e wrecked when Carrea viciously slashes his crotch. Colegular howls and pain. Then Longina stabs again, and that's it. That's the end of the script. It's the other one from October of seventy five war. You get more of the idea around the aale, this new Caesar, Hail Claudius, and you get the death mask of Caligula at the very end, and the last shot

is long shot. The funeral procession has now become fantastic, and the line which should have ended realistically with Caligula seems to be an endless procession. Of grotesquely masked figures of tyrants. And they really talk about those death masks so much in this version, because even at the very beginning of the script there's a little note that says, let's see note. The audience needs to know two things

that the film cannot make clear short of using cards. One, that Caligula and Tiberius were actually first century AD Roman emperors, and that the events shown in the film took place pretty much as recorded. Second, that the Roman funerals figures wearing the death mask of ancestors would proceed over the

dead body. This information could be supplied in voiceover while the camera reveals the ruins of the palace of Tiberius and Caligula as they look today, as well as the Forum, Senate House Circus Maximus, not to mention the still extant underground corridor where Caligula was murdered.

What has she done wrong? The giant, you love the giant, he's just doing a job. And it's just the innocent always suffer. But that's how they would But that's also a very true to form back then. It's like you would kill, you'd often want to kill the family, so there couldn't be a little one waiting to take place.

That's yeah, yeah, so it's brutal. Actually it's funny because we don't really get it in the film, but Tiberia's for ally Counts was a very reluctant emperor for that reason that he didn't want He really didn't want to be emperor, and was that very beloved. But obviously I had a lot of laws. But you can see where somebody wouldn't because it just seems like a way to just basically put a big target on yourself.

sadness about it. Again, It's like, how many because other films that have like different edits and got play films have gotten tampered with that's far from now you ready to look at Eric bon Stroheim and what happened to Greed and see that? But how many films have repercussions years after the fact for people, even researchers like you're talking about or she were they It's like, he's not

going to finish this book. That's it's just it's bonkers to me, Like it's I can't think of any work of art that has that just showed you about it. It's almost there's some bad ju ju with it. I don't know if I believe in that is a proper thing with this film, but there is there's something to it that's I think that's what also fascinates me about it is what is it? What is it with this? What it's all? It's like The Kennedys minus the brain worm.

He purchased the trademarks for the Penthouse Club. We purchased the entire licensing division from the former owner of Penthouse, Kelly Holland, and worked with her for a while running the licensing division. Unfortunately, Kelly file for bankruptcy. We found ourselves in a position to want to work positively with the new owners to maintain some semblance of control over the marks and ensuring that the brand continued to evolve. We were really fortunate and that they were very receptive

to working with us. Ultimately, we ended up pooling the trademarks we had purchased related to the club with the other Penhouse marks and assets, including Caligula, but also things like Omni into one joint venture which is Penhouse Global Licensing, despite non as formal licensing experienced.

others had been thinking about. One of my colleagues knows Tom Nagovin personally their family friends from years ago, and he said, well, if you guys are serious about restoring the film, then you have to speak to Tom. There's

nobody better than to talk to him about it. So we did, and Tom pitched what was originally just a film restoration, because all the materials had been stored in storagelockers and other places in la for decades without anybody you've had checking in on them, and so jump, let me just see what's there and then we can go from there and see what we can do. So what started as an archival attempt to maintain the integrity of the original film assets turned into what we now know

is this incredible reconstruction of the film. I didn't really become involved with the project. I know Tom, and the first time i'm him was at the la Art Show. We displayed a bunch of photographs tinto brass photographs and stuff like that at the Laar Show. And then this was pre COVID and COVID hit and Tom got very busy were he on the restoration And then I didn't really hear from him, not that I needed to, but

he was just busy doing his thing. He did a great job of maintaining updates and letting everybody know how things were going and what was constable. The project did take longer than we thought. We weren't really sure what we were going to get at the end of it. But I remember getting a phone call from Tom, I think it was probably February of twenty twenty three, saying, listen, I finished the movie and I think it's going to

go to can What do we do? And so that was really when I started to get involved, and since then have just helped him manage all the post production involved with bringing a finished film to market, getting in the hands of agents and distributors and all that fun stuff.

an international film agency. So they had read to represent the film, and so we gave it to them and they went out and sold it to different territories and have been really wonderful at just managing all of those contracts and hopefully just start sending us checks now every quarder.

But it was and again my first film, so I have no ability to qualify, but I do think it was more extensive than we were planning on and maybe many people would assume just for a generic film restoration.

very little in person overlap. But yes, I had the pleasure of meeting several people that he collaborated with Dave McKean on the illustrations, the beginning sequences, and some of the musicians who created original scores. I met them in France last year. And like super cool people, a Tom has a rolodex like a million miles long of just super weird, super cool, super fun people.

But personally I love it. I would love to have the opportunity to do this again. I don't know that Penthouse is sitting on any secret footage of any other films that we could possibly restore, but should be opportunity present itself. This has been really fun and I'd love to do it again.

the Tom's world is very small. So we wanted to be really respectful of everybody, especially the actors and members of the crew who are still alive, and so we did, unfortunately run into an issue with Tinto Reth, the original director. His estate has a lot of food out there they're

claiming they have right to which they don't. In order to bring a film to market, Goodfellas, our agency, our distributors did require a lot of contractual information, basically testifying to the fact that we own the film and going back through the chain of title and just looking at the many different ways that it had been moved around from Penthouse entity to Penhouse entity, to the new owner

of Penhouse and another new owner of pen House. It was a lot, but lucky for us, a lot of people within kind House love to keep paper records and stuff, so we did a lot of scaring and a lot of combing through old files and old folders, but we have a pretty robust archive at this point of everything from me contracts to photographs, whatever it is. I think Tom probably used like fifty percent of what we had to make the film. It was an immense amount of stuff.

we've really monopolized his time. I do hope that one day we'll have a documentary that goes into more detail on all the drama, all the juicy bids related to the original film.

is somewhere in between everybody's memories and their stories. And I personally have not spent enough time with those people so that you can begin to say, Okay, I think this is the commonalities because everyone loves to talk about what an eccentric he was, and how extravagant he was, and just all the way in which he was on either end of whatever spectrum, just good bad, nothing even killed her in between. So yeah, the truth about all that,

I don't know, but I know Tom. It's been something that Tom's been interested in for a long time, and he's probably the better person to ask.

human trafficking, stuff like that, which I find academically incredibly interesting. Professionally, I had a hard time figuring out how to maintain the idea of working for the U. Not that I have anything against the US government, more so it was just being a very small cog and a big wheel and having just didn't seem like the best use of my time. I also had lived in Costa Rica for three years prior to grad school, and I really wanted

to move back to Central America. Staying in DC just didn't feel like I was going to be able to do that. But anyway, the truth is I couldn't get

a job after grad school. I couldn't find one that I really liked and that within My dad came to me, and he was in a position with his company where he had spent the past thirty years working exclusively in nightclubs, and rather than thinking about retiring and taking a step back, he did the exact opposite of what probably most meant his age would do, and wanted to figure out a way to diversify within the hospitality space and grow the company.

So he had just purchased a restaurant. I had some international business experience, so I thought, maybe there's a way to turn this into something that I find interesting and it also gets me a paycheck. And yeah, the adult side, it was shocking in a lot of ways, mostly because I didn't even know what my father did until I was like laid into high school. Not in a naive way, just in the way that kids don't really care how

their parents are spending time. But when I did find out, I think if I had been a guy, may had been different. I would have thought all that, it is super cool and I want to do this every day, And I didn't. I just wasn't interested. But then I got into it, and eventually it just becomes I see boobs every day, and I have a penhouse of aversion from Germany sitting on my desk and it's just a

naked woman. And then there for six weeks, every time someone who walks in my office, it's like a jump scare and they're like oh, and I'm like, oh, sorry, I guess I should cover that up at this point. It doesn't really affect me the licensing part. There are aspects of the licensing that are super interesting. Trademark law, ip law, it doesn't it doesn't really matter what what kind of marks they are what. Therefore, that all is very interesting. Every day is different, and I think this

colligular thing is a great example. When we got involve with the new owners of Penhouse, we had no idea that our office or me personally would be managing the release of the film. Could not have imagined and here we are. So every day is different.

would be nice. But It's an interesting time to being in hospitality in America, in the world, really, it's especially in New Orleans. We've got a lot of exciting things coming up. The Super Bowls here next year, so we're super pumped for that. But it's been a really slow summer.

We're seeing a lot of people are getting squeezed and so they're spending fewer dollars out at restaurants at bars, and we're doing a lot of internal kind of questioning what does this model look like, Can we sustain things like this or do we need to make some changes.

me that Tinto Buss participates in the Pentos archive. I had discovered Tinto Bass work print of the film, which essentially goes until the scene in which Macro gets killed with this huge killing machine, and my idea was to finish that work print together with Tinto if possible, and

there was a lot of excitement after that episode. I decided to upload Mission Curricular on YouTube and Vimeo with the permission of the rights holders, which was a good idea in retrospective because I see a lot of people have watched it. However, the project didn't come to pass. There was a change in ownership with Penthouse and it's basically the project to reconstruct Tinto's work print didn't happen. That's what I can say. And that's twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen,

and since then I've done my own films. I've done quite a lot of things since then, but I guess we're talking about the calcular related things. In the immediate aftermath, I did two independent films, Gas Shaped Light and feedsom Lee Even which are somewhat more serious and somewhat more dark than my usual films. And I did this because my mood wasn't the best at that time. And I'm very proud of these films. I'm happy how they turned out. But that's what happened in the immediate aftermath.

it didn't happen to me. It was honestly a bit surprising when suddenly this such other project was brought up, and at first I thought it's related to what I want to do. I remember I had a few discussions back in twenty nineteen where I made clear I'm only interested to participate in a project where I had two conditions. The first condition is that I'm in charge of digitizing the footage. I had a lot of conversations already when discovering the footage and so on with labs how to

do it by degrees. I'm a Bachelor of Engineering Audio visual Media, so I know about that side. And the footage was in a lot of boxes with a sorting that was not that intuitive, but I did know it quite well after a lot of research. So I thought, I have to be in charge of the digitizing to make sure that everything is digitized. Some parts of the film survived in thirty five millimeter negative, some in positive,

some in sixteen millimeter. And the second condition was that there is no outside interference on the editing, and that Tintobuss has to be approached that if possible, he has

to participate. My big dream was Tintobuss turned ninety last year, and I remember I had the big dream for Tinto Brass's ninetieth birthday to release a film that finally says directed by Tinto Brass in the credits, and if Tinto Brass would have said no, my idea was, I would reconstruct the work print, so I have the first half of the film approximately, I would reconstruct the second half based on my research in a style that I feel is very appropriate to his, and then release that as

a reconstruction, as a complete and reconstructed work print, be very honest about what it is. And it was very important for me to try to get Tinto to participate.

do agree. There is a lot of quick cuts. To me, it flows very naturally. There is zooms in it that I think today are not that usual in the visual language of most filmmakers, but they are masterfully done. And it's basically these quick edits that form an impression of the scene. I would say very playful. That's a word that I could use. I think there are two films

to watch. One is called called kore Inngola in English deadly sweet from the sixties, where he went to London doing a low budget thriller crime film where he's just so playful with the camera. The story is very simple, but the style is elaborate. And then there's a film Salone Kitty, which it did right before Caligula Away. He had a bigger budget. And when I first watched Cinto Bass's films, I was so impressed by the style because I thought that's the style of visuals that I like.

I could say I didn't model my visual style after his. It was more I had those ideas and I found him, and that became something I really appreciated. And so when I started doing films, I was very influenced also to use zooms, to use quick cuts, and my own editing style has been sometimes described to be reminiscent of his. So I would say these quick unexpected cuts, interesting camera angles, and an overall flow. Also, the soundtrack often flows very

well with the visual. When I think of Salone Kitty, there is a sequence where a song is played on the morning after which kind of reminds me of the film Cabaret bit. And then you can just see how one pan leads the next pan that leads to a zoom, and it all moved very naturally. When I looked at the raw footage for clicular, I'm jumping ahead a little bit in the topic. But when I looked at the raw footage or clicular in the archive, I got to say I was hard to look at it and not

be able to edit it immediately. Because Tinto filmed multiple cameras. I personally have used two cameras, and some films he sometimes used more than that. And you can see they cover a scene from various angles. There's a lot of footage that was never intended to be seen that just one camera adjusting or so. You have a lot of zooms that look not very well, but then you have zooms that look really good, and those were the ones that were supposed to go in the film. You can

see that. I admired that style very much, and I would say there's one film, The Key, Yeah, that A. Tinto did in the early eighties. It also still preserves this style. He has the style even in his later films, but I would say until The Key, those films really have the most distinct version of his visual style.

It wasn't pleasant, though I did a lot of creative things for myself, so I thought something has come out of it. I didn't do nothing. I did do some of my own films, which makes me very happy. But over the years I never really wanted to talk about this at all. And when you contacted me, I contemplate, but I recalled our conversations and I thought, okay, I'll open up about this. But it's still not easy. I can tell you a moving memory that I don't know

about told people, but it was a very positive memory. Actually, when I went to Penthouse in la in twenty sixteen to look at the archive, and when I discovered a work print which was a video copy of a sixteen millimeter print that had been cut into thousands of pieces.

I explained that in the mission Calicular episode, and then I went to Italy to show it to Tinto and it was I was sa one of the most moving moments I had when since the seventies, for the first time he was able to actually watch his edit, and I was astonished how well he remembered it. That basically, we watch a scene and he finishes a line while it is spoken in the film, and so on. I think he hadn't rewatched Clicular for a long time. The edition that had come out of the theatrical edition has

nothing to do with what he wanted. And at that moment, I was so optimistic we could do something. I can tell you my technical proposal I had back then. Because Tinto is born in thirty three, he is now I think he's ninety one already. How the time passes, So I thought, reconstruct this film. The work print was in black and white, but a lot of the color footage still exists, most of it as negative film, but as far as I was able to see, but I wasn't

able to see all the boxes. Not all the negatives survived, but there was also positive film thirty five millimeter and some sixteen millimeters reductions for the making of documentary they had done in the seventies, so I wanted to scan everything positive negative sixteen millimeter. This would have been a

major part of the restoration. To then find out which is the best footage for each individual shot, then take the sixteen milimeters black and white work print that I had a video copy of and reconstruct that in color. And that my idea was, I would do a preliminary assembly of the rest of the film in the way that I feel Tinto would like because it's such a technical process, going through different materials and then visiting him for as long as it takes for a few hours

per day to sit there with him. He can say any changes, he can say anything should be different, and so on, with hard drives of all the footage until the film is done. And I always had the feeling, if we get to do it that way, he would be the hero. Obviously it would be his film coming out. I would be an assistant editor and those in the know would know what I had done. But I would have been really happy about that, I got to say.

So that was my hope and Tinto is still around, but I think what happened really wasn't easy for any of us. Let's put it that way.

trying to introduce to me? We know each other. To me, this is a very bizarre claim, is the way is Tinto Brass that I watched in twenty thirteen at the Venice Film Festival makes no such claim. Tinto talks about his life, talks about all these things. He was sitting right in front of me. I was sitting in the row behind him. Then at a party people talked to him. Maybe they changed the film after the world premiere, but

I doubt it. And I got to say when I talked to Tinto, when we talked about his ms and all that his memory was so good. And I remember when I first met with him, it was I believe twenty twelve, and I was so excited. I showed him some papers I had written about his film Near was Ubianco and I showed him the Calligular Thesis, and we

talked about so many things. And then there was this retrospective of his works that happened at an independent film festival in Hollywood, where I actually had the idea and told the festival people, Hey, wouldn't it be an idea to approach Tinto? So I had a lot to do with him. His memory was so oh good. When we talked about the work print of Caligula, I was amazed how he was able to finish the lines that are spoken.

He gradually got more excited about this as it went on, and there's a person approaching the scene, and right before the person is approaching, he was like, oh, now this one is coming in, and so on, and he was happy to see the edits again and so on. Once. I wouldn't go around making any claims about the man's mental health based on I don't even know what it's based on. So the film I saw didn't make any claim in that way. If it would have made such claims, Tinto

would have reflected who was sitting there. And I remember he was welcomed as the Maestro of Cinema at Venice Film Festival and to meet was so excited to be a guest there at the screening, and those were good days.

weird occurred to me. He was just a kind, old gentleman who loved talking about the films he had done and who took interest in what I'm doing. Just a nice man. I didn't know if it's anything, so to me, this is all very bizarre to claim Otherwise.

thousand and seven and I wrote my thesis. It stood Gout Media University, who actually had a media in twenty eleven my bachelor thesis. I updated it over the years and on the internet there is a most recent version which is a few years afterwards. Then I got in contact with Tinto. I met one of his friends at an LA film festival and he put me in touch. I gave Tinto a call. I was so nervous, and we met in Rome. It was beautiful and we talked

about his sixties and seventies films. He did a film called drop Out and one called Labakanza, which I had never seen, which I wanted to prepare for the festival in La, which he was very happy to do, and gradually I brought up the caligular topic. There is a documentary around the time that the Imperial Edition DVD box

that was done in two thousand and seven. I remember I was excited of getting it and underwhelmed and I watched it because it was still largely the same cut, though the pieces of the word print there were interesting. And on that documentary called I Believe the Orgy of Power, Tinto is saying that he really has no interest in revisiting Clicula, and that was his stance for a long time.

When I first brought it up, he was skeptical, and understandably, Then I showed him a reconstruction I had done I had attempted with the footage available at that point, which got him more positive about it. And I did an interview with him that was shown on the Internet and people got excited already in twenty thirteen. I believe what he said, if he can get access to the entire footage,

it has to be done. It has to be I think he used even these words, it has to be done, something like that, and though it is a very delicate topic, of course. And then when I got in contact with Kelly Holland, which was say a big coincidence. I got in contact with her shortly after she had acquired Penthouse, and she was so open to this project. She allowed me to go into the archive to actually see what they have at in Mission calicular. We see how it goes.

Because I went to Penthouse in twenty sixteen and I was given a box with a few video tapes basically saying, look, this is the material we have about Calicula. Some hard distant videotapes which are basically the masters for the Imperial Edition DVD box set, and then calling around of your people and so on. It was quite exciting. We were able to locate the warehouse where the entire raw footage was stored boxes up on boxes Mission calicular, you can see the pictures I took on those days. It so

was such excitement. It felt like Christmas and Birthday and all kinds of celebrations in one. And you know there is, for example, the Russ Lloyd cut off a film which is not of such great interest to me personally because I want to reconstruct Hinto's vision. But for example, when Tinto started editing Russ Lloyd and the team apparently started editing the film parallel to his, which she actually wasn't okay with from my knowledge, And when Tinto wasn't able

to continue editing, Ross Lloyd finished his Rosslloyd cut. But then the producers in the seventies didn't like that cut and shelve it and had Nino Barakli I believe, come in to do some more editing. And there were just cans with the Ross Lloyd cuts in black and white thirty five millimeter film. I was thinking, if I did this film, if we succeed with this project, we would include so much bonus feature. It would be the reconstructed

hopefully their director's cut. If Tinto would participate and he has the last word in editing, will do Tinto buses director's cut on one disc. Another disc will be the Ross Lloyd cut just for completionists and completely unknown edit of the film. I found a silent thirty five millimeter and white footage for the Rosslloyd cut. The audio must have been somewhere else. Basically, these boxes were packed, and I would say, if you looked at them as an outsider,

it wouldn't make so much sense. But if you knew the production history, it started to make sense to me. These boxes were packed chronologically. They first packed the footage that they were done with at this point and so on. That was impression I got. So I thought, we'll do the Tinto vas cut hopefully if he participates, then we do the Rouzlloyd cut as a bonus feature. Then we might do the nineteen eighty R rated cut. Was it

eighty or eighty one? Eighty two eighty three? Sian So I had the idea to do all these things to add so much bonus material. There has always been these rumors about a longer cut off Caliculus greening in Caun. I'm not an expert on those rumors, because, as I said, I was mostly interested in the production of the film, not in the post production that happened when Tinto couldn't continue. But I believe that it might be the footage that

was cut out of the con version. To my knowledge, though I never confirmed, the impression was that at the trade fair in cann they did show a longer version of the film which included more hardcore pornography Bob Gucci owners shot after the fact, so from my understanding, it would be basically the regular theatrical version plus more pornography.

But I didn't get to watch that. An exciting and at the same time sometimes somewhat frustrating experience, because when you handle thirty five millimeter film you have to have specialized machines to even view it, and I only had access to such machines briefly, so I was able to unspool some roles for a foot or two and look at the pictures get an impression on was on it. Then I was able to watch a few reels, which was really interesting. Now combining multiple visits to the archive.

This the process of film preser is so interesting, especially when you think about things like the audio, and that you have so many things around audio. You've got the production audio, you've got the ADR recordings, you've got sound effects music. The music in the version of Caligi that we've seen is so different than when I'm sure that Tindergrass wanted and just to be able to bring back

that score would have been a real triumph. When Tinto was in the midst of editing Callig You Love Fjorenzo Kapi, the composer, was assigned as the composer for the film, and Fiorenzo Capi had done music for other films of Tinto already, for example Saloon Kitty. When you watch Salon Kitty, a lot of the soundtrack. The film is set in the late thirties early forties, and the soundtrack sound so period correct. For a long time, I tried to find the waltz from Salon Kitty, until I realized it's an

original composition for the movie. By now soundtrack has been released and from an understand ending when Tinto did the film, there were some temporary soundtracks in place already. I was able to locate them also, which just gave the rhythm for some scenes that had choreographies at them, and then the final soundtrack would have largely been done after the film is edited. That's why I thought I want to have control over scanning and digitizing this archive, because it

was such a complex combination. Of course, we have the final film with the final sound mix as it stands, where you we have voices and music and everything together. Then we have the individual redubbing reels. I remember a lot of them where not in the best condition. They have full code thirty five millimeter magnetic film, basically like a cassette tape, just thirty five millimeter wide with perforation.

They gave off a very vinegary odor, which is a sign that they're decomposing, but those can usually be played back one more time if you bake them at a high heat. So the idea was to also digitized the

entire audio and the onset audio as well. Though in a lot of Tinto Brass's films, in the Italian films of the seventies, the onset audio wasn't recorded with the same care you would record it these days, because oftentimes it was expected that the film would be redubbed, and mostly it's just a temporary track to have a reference.

But the idea was to digitize the onset audio, the post dubbing audio, and so on, assemble the film in the reconstruction I assembled to showed you a few people back then, with the permission of your rights holders, I used some parts of Buono Nikolay's score for the final film, and just some parts I felt are more appropriate, just

as a temporary placeholder. When you watch the theatrical cut of Caliculi, it starts out with procoffee of Romeo and Juliet's with this very grand classical music that wasn't supposed to how the film starts at all. I was able to recover struck the opening. It starts with a blurry frame of Calicular's face. You have the credits underneath, and it's very quiet, just a little bit of soundtrack underneath it. And then suddenly it goes and focus on Calicular wakes

up from the nightmare. So that's the opening of the film, for example, and that sets off a very different tone. And I remember when I talked about doing this project, coming from a technical background. Also, I was very much thinking how do we approach this. I had the hope that for a lot of the actors we would be able to use their redubbed lines Peter O'Toole for example, Surgeon Gielgud and so on. They came back after the film was edited for its theatrical version to redo their lines.

We have very clear deliveries of them, but some of their lines were not redubbed because the theatrical cut got rid of some scenes. So I thought for some other lines, we'll use the on set audio and digitally clean it up. For example, the actor who portrays Mac Crow and the actor Coo Portray's career, they had some strong Italian accents.

They are Italian actors, and they were always supposed to be dubbed by some English or American actor, so I thought some party would have to readub But basically my idea was to rescue as much of the original audio as possible, which was also have. This all explains why this would have been a very big and tough project to do, and I'm very perfectionist. When I look at Tinto Brasse's edits, for example, the work print, my idea was to reconstruct it in color from the negative footage

down to the last frame. So if a shot survives in the negative, two frames short, I'm going to find that shot in the positive and put those frames back there. So I'm really a perfectionist when it comes to that, And I felt that if Tinto is participating, it's his cut anyway, and if Tinto wouldn't want to participate, and if I reconstruct the film, I would do it as faithfully as I can in his spirit, while always being

transparent that this is just an informed reconstruction. And it was important to me that the final result in either case should be a film that represents what Tintobrass was going for in the seventies, as much as it's possible to say. If he had done it himself now after decades, it would have been his film. If I would have done it, it would have been an informed reconstruction.

neutral way. I vastly preferred, but Tinto busted.

puzzle and a hugely exciting research project. Do's imagine when you get the still frames, when you suddenly find the footage in motion and you see it for the first time. It is there are scenes in the film that have waded into intended the film, then Temple of Jupiter in the third act that are not in the theatrical version, where Calicular jumps into all these coins, which is shot in slow motion in the treasury, and so on. And there's one scene which I was able to reconstruct. This

was a tough reconstruction. You see it in Mission Curricular on the ship in the end there is this already seen. Everybody is standing completely still when Calcular walks onto the ship and she asks are we ready or so? And then he shouts back and then everyone starts moving. And to reconstruct that first I had subtitles. Then I found in the making documentary I believe of Calicular from the seventies at some point. I believe it was there. My memory is not as clear about this because I've not

thoughts about it in five years or so. But in the making of documentary, I believe there was a part where you hear Malcolm McDowell's shouting action and then I realized waits from this shot, so I put it there. And with a lot of scenes, I couldn't wait to have the negatives digitized and the positives if some negative footage is missing, and you shall I explain what negative and positive is to some listeners.

the positive. So when you have a film pri and Queen and Theaters, it's made from a copy of the negative, which is positive, and you can project that, and the process has an inherent quality loss to it, because the negative has the highest quality. A positive copy has a loss in quality. If you make an internegative from a positive copy, it is even grainier. And when Tinto edited Callicula in the seventies, they did thirty five millimeters positive

copies of all the footage. You usually don't edit the film with the negative footage initially because when editing you cut it apart, it gets dusty, it gets dirty. You'll put it together, you cut it apart, you work with it, and only when you finalize the edit that's made from positive footage. Then in a lab the negative is edited in a way to conform that on the lab condition so it doesn't get dirty. So the lap is usually the most protected, and in Calicular's case, Tinto edited the

film on thirty five millimeter positive material. I'm pretty certain about that. Then his work print was taken apart and the copy was made on sixteen millimeter film. That was the copy of his work print that I found, And I found in the archived a lot of thirty five millimeter positive material left over from editing, and then there were parts of the negative. But a lot of the negative obviously has already cut apart to include parts used in the theatrical cut. So the negative of Calicula, I

don't know how much survived. Large parts survived, but I figured when I edit the film, we'll scan everything. The negative footage has the highest resolution, the best quality, so we're going to use that wherever possible. But if Tinto chose a different shot in his work print that's no longer available in the negative footage, or of which maybe only half survives negative footage, we'll go to the thirty five millimeter positive footage. We're going to clean it up

and use it substituted from there. It would have meant some shots. It might have been more grainy than others, but I don't think it would have been very noticeable. I felt that a lot of film stock was a much better condition than I had anticipated. To be honest, I was very looking forward to having it all scanned in lab conditions and having a huge database. I was

also thinking about all the bonus material. I can tell you a few ideas that were going through my mind at that point because the archive was exciting or suggesting it to Kelly Holland, if I do this project, I might have a blog or a podcast or something where I show weekly discoveries from the archive, maybe parts of the raw footage that are not used in the film but that are interesting, or paperwork or still photos. There were more than ten thousand still photos in that archive,

behind the scenes photos and so on. Yeah, because my idea used the negative footage the highest quality wherever possible. I guess there are many proper film restorations done that way, where they source footage from various isn't assemble the best possible version that adheres to the artistic intention.

that designed the box cover. By finding the work print the first eighty four minutes, piecing together all of these other scenes that would have been inside of Tinto's version of it, so it feels like you were aiming at your own box cover. In a way.

Tinto and so on. Though I have to say my vast preference would have been to do something and then go to Tinto and if he has completely different ideas, we throw what I did out and do what he wants. That was my idea. I was actually very exciting to revisit it with him. My idea was to do all the preparation work, and as I said, I wanted to do a preliminary edit of the entire film that I feel works well, where I would just have taken his first eighty four minutes and then the second half with

the footage that I found. Because it's such a huge and technical process, you have to go through all the different versions of the material and so on. So that would have been ten hours a day or whatever it takes. When that is done, traveled to him and casually go over it with him day by day. Tell me enough how much I looked forward to that opportunity, and so to me, it was always very clear that Tintobrass has

to be involved. He has to be asked. I felt, if he decides not to do it as I said, I would have done a reconstruction that would have been very clear about what it is. But to me, it was important that he should be in.

to me. And I had also never gotten paid for anything all my calicular research. I can say I never got paid for anything I did over these years. Everything happened out of idealism. Some people actually reached out to me over the years and asked me if I had made money from this. No, not even mission calicular is monetized. It's for free on YouTube. You can just watch it. And so basically I felt uncomfortable handing out the research the work print without knowing what happens to it. I

want to keep Tinto's vision intact. But after my first hesitation, I never got asked again, so no one really tried.

of twenty twenty. I returned to Germany on March thirteen or fourteen, twenty twenty, right into the lockdown, but I went straight at home and started to edit the film for about a year. I had so much time to edit it, and I'm very happy how that turned out. And to me, that's for silver lining, because if I had done Caligula, I couldn't have done that film. I would have loved to do Cliicula, but as I was unable to reconstruct Tinto's version, I just thought, okay, whatever,

I'll go to Paris. I'll improvise a film, and I'm extremely proud of it. It's largely improvised. I tried to make it as elegant as possible, and when I came back, I had a huge bunch of footage and I myself had no idea how to put it together. It was a digsaw puzzle that developed, and that was my idea when doing it. So the first knockdown I didn't even notice much because I was sitting at home. Anyway, I remember there was a meme someone sent me which was

so accurate. You saw a guy in a dark room sitting in front of the computer and it said film editor. Underneath this the same picture film editor in Lockdown.

Then I have those people say, oh, it doesn't matter if you're not involved. It's great that the film comes out in a new cut. But basically, my aim was always to release a film that adheres to the artistic intentions of the director who was assigned to do it, who spent a lot of time to do it, And basically that's why I'm also not interested in the new

cut myself, I couldn't want it. I think I don't want to watch it because to me, it's just another version of the film that yet again does something different than what the director aimed for. And I was always when I looked at the post production in the seventies. That's what I can comment on. When Tinto Bus was dismissed, they tried to change the tone. They re ordered scenes, they removed scenes, and so on. They edited it in a slower way, so the entire film felt more so

though moving. I wondered why no one had the idea to just go and at least attempt to have the same scene order. We have these scenes that the director shot, put them in the right correct order. Though, I feel any editor working on that material has to have a very deep knowledge of Tinto's films. I can tell when I looked at the raw footage. To me, it's obvious because when you look at my raw footage, it's also very similar. With video, it doesn't matter how much to

your film. So very often I just leave a camera running and you have a very beautiful zoom, and then you have a really awkward zoom, which is just setting

it up for a different view and so on. And when you looked at the footage of Calicula, I saw all these incredibly beautiful moments, and then I saw these moments that were obviously never meant to be included, which looked awkward, as on the camera operator readjusting his lens and so on, And I felt you have to watch Tinto's films thoroughly to get an idea of how he

uses that, which shots to use which. When I watched his work print and when I watched the raw footage, I can tell you that there is a very elegantly filmed motion picture there with Clicula, which just hadn't come out. And I've not watched the new edition. As I said, I don't intend to watch it. But if that doesn't adhere to Tinto Buss's intentions, I think the motion picture that Tinto wanted is still hidden.

to say, oh, okay, this is the scene. This is what Alexander was talking about, like with Nervo as far as his suicide. But it is interesting now to finally see a little bit more of what you've brought to light in the past.

The whole film in the second half gets a more satirical tone, which it felt was brilliantly done by Tinto, because the film is very provocative and somehow also funny in some bits and pieces and horrible in other bits and pieces, meaning very violent and so on. Caligula does this stance in the temple, and then he's raising money for the war on Britain, and then all these people walk around throw coins in this box and Calicula in

the little giant. They walk up the stairs and put it in the treasury, and then Caligula jumps into the coins in the treasury, and then we cut to the scene where he's supposed to sacrifice a bull, and instead he kills the priest, and then he goes to bisiness. Treasury is now mine and then he looks Alongina saying,

and you want to raise taxes. There's this entire sequence where he replaces the statues' heads, whereas Longinas talks about taxes that could be increased to fund the war, and Calicula says, if we increase a taxi to people won't like it, so takes a treasure instead.

still and Caliicular walks onto it in short action. This entire block of scenes to me was so important that it was entirely missing from the theatrical cut, because I believe the editors who were hired by Penthouse after Tinto left in the seventies, they wanted to make the film as serious as possible, and they got rid of everything that could be perceived as satirical and so on. So that was my impression I had back then.

Tiberius has returns and so on. And I realized when I looked at what Tinto had done in his work print, you saw shots of musicians with their instrument there. When I reconstructed this work print, I realized would have been in contrast to what we see, but so to say plausible, Tiberius has the structure and his musicians to kind of beat rhythmic Roman music. There while we observe all these things,

I watched it with Tinto, we discussed it. There is also one sequence that was very important to me, when Caligula arrives in the beginning the entire scene where Calcula wakes up from his dream, and in the opening, we have the still frame of his face very blurry, very close up. It's a different take than the theatrical cut. And then he's talking about his dream. The camera slowly moves away, and then he arrives on Capri. We have these slaves working on the rocks and Caligula gets carried up.

And that was a sequence that was missing in the work print. It just wasn't there. The pieces for the scene were gone, so I reconstructed that from scratch. I did have quite a lot of digital raw footage for that bit, and I discussed it with Tinto all so basically we have what I came up with and what Tinto seemed quite pleased about. Though obviously if you would have been involved, he would have gone over it with me again and he would have done it. Basically, Cliicular

walks down this corridor with Nerva. In the theatrical cut, we hear some screams behind the curtain. But the way that I reconstructed it, you actually see a lot of scenes behind these curcles intercut very briefly. Some of them are very violent looking. Some of them are so over the top that they're just taking you out of the illusion, which is part of what was supposed to be done. And you have people running around behind there and getting tortured and so on while Caligula walks up and talks

to Nerva. I wonder how was this done? If I may ask.

Right Soldiers. And I'm very happy that this is out because I put a lot of moments from Sindo's work print in there. So when I pieced back Tinto's work print, as I said, it's a black and white sixty millimeter copy that was transferred to video, and I had that video copy. I made a digital copy of that when Kelly Holland was around the company. Then there was also a second work print on a very old video tape,

which was almost the final cuts of the film. But there were some black and white shots, and by comparing the splice marks, I realized that they're actually also from Tinto's work print. So I had to piece back the black and white w and I believe in the workprint the first shot from Capri is there where actually we see the slaves working with the rocks and so on. So that was certainly a shot that Tinto wanted in it. When you think of the workprint beginning, is there Caligula

waking up and so on. Then when Macro comes in and talks to him, there are gaps. Basically, the workprint got taken apart after Tinto was dismissed, and I believe it was put back into the raw footage and they started to do it, and then someone had the idea, let's make a backup copy. So some shots were already put back into the raw footage, So some shots are missing. So we have a few bits and pieces of arriving

on carpri and on the corridor. Once you have Tiberius as pool, the work print is largely complete, and it had a very good flow to it. Some bits and pieces might have to be just streamlined a little bit. Someone in some angle moving an arm, and in the other angle the movement is starting anew. These were things that Tinto would have done when he went over the

workprint again. And then when we go to the scene where Proculus is on the machine, on the killing machine, when Macro is killed, it's clear that this was a sequence that Tinto was in the midst of editing when he had to believe basically, when he was dismissed from the editing, because that sequence was largely unfinished. There were the same action repeated from a few shots, so it was clear that Tinto, since the midst of editing, had

already gathered the material but couldn't find finish it. So when I did my reconstruction, I reconstructed that scene as much as possible from the work print footage of Tinto, and from that scene on. The rest was done by me in a style that I felt works without access to much raw footage, just as a kind of demonstration.

no one dares to interfere. And I feel the film is not so much about Calicular himself. It's more about the structure of power. And I find it interesting he walks into the wedding, he rapes both the bright and the groom, and nobody including them, try to resist or fight back, even though it's obvious that a lot of people are very uncomfortable, and that's just the structure of power.

People know he can't do this, he is allowed to do this, and as I see the film, until his illness, he might not be insane that he's certainly a very cruel person without empathy. If this is my interpretation, I'm not talking about what Tinto wanted. And he gets swept up in this power and all these acts that he can do, and then she realizes how everybody just does everything he does, and I feel the second half is pretty anarchist, pretty provocative. He tries to disassemble this whole system.

He tries to get more and more outrageous. There's one scene, well, he says, I don't know what else I can do to provoke them at which is very important in the Caesar says, then I think, as these are senators. Well, if there's important, why do they allow me to do all the things? I don't know how to provoke them? And I felt the ending of the film. I've often

thought about it. We have this system that we see that's apparently pretty broken because Curricular can do a lot of cruel acts and nobody stops him, and the people were supposed to act in the interests of the people act in their own interest. The senators and so on. They just do anything Clicular does to be safe. And instead of changing that system, they get rid of him and appoint Claudius, who in real life apparently was quite

different that in the film. He's portrayed as someone with some mental deficits, and they appoint him to have another figurehead. So the whole system stays. So I had the feeling that Curricular that's not only a feeling. Tint To himself said it. Clicular is a very political film. I find it narratively quite well done, the film that Tinto wanted to do. Basically, it starts and we always have hits

that are a bit weird. He has this affair with his sister, but in the beginning he's a scared young man. But again there is something a little bit of or to say narratively, And when we see Tiberius, he tries to behave the best he can and he's scared, So in the beginning I would say there is an element

of sympathy. Then when Nerva commits suicide, Calicular is curious, but at the end he gets this aggressive fit where he pushes Nerva under Liar, where he shows Liar with I feel is showing a kind of more cruel side to him. I feel the further we go, the more hints we get. And when Tiberius is supposedly dead and Calicular stands there with the mirror and Fiberius wakes up again,

it's an interesting scene. We feel that Calicula wants to strike, but somehow he can, And when Macro arrives, we get an impression again that he's more a likable guy who can't bring himself to kill Tiberias. And I found it interesting in the first half a lot of the things he does when he has Macro arrested, even though he has Jamelis arrested, it could be in the frame work of that cruel world there be justified because to him it's killed or be killed in this society that's depicted

in the film. Macro had Siberia's killed, maybe Macro will kill Calicular if Curricular doesn't go the way he likes with Jamelus in his view, removing a threat to his legitimacy and so on, and talking about the film not about real life. My ethics and real life are different. In the film, it might appear from the character's perspective more justified. Then he does these things like the rape. I feel the rape. That's a real culmination to me.

It's a fever dream of power, and it goes to his head and he just becomes cruel to people just because he can.

They just like to stay in power. So he does one outrageous thing after the other to provoke them and to shake up this entire structure. And so i'll talk about mad or not. I think it's a provocative political film. That's what it is, and the main character is serving that provocative political message. Basically in the end, she does all he can to provoke these senators and so on, she acts mad in front of them, but they don't dare to dispose of him, tell him no or so.

Instead they just have him killed and replaced by someone they are not brave enough to confront someone.

calling out Tiberius. But Tiberius does put his hand forward, his fist forward, and I think that what's missing is maybe Nerva kissing the ring, because it looks like he's holding out his fist for Nerva to do that, but you just get a close up of Peter O'Toole's face looking at Malcolm McDowell, and then eventually they stop, takes

back his hand. You don't see what happened to his hand, and then they walk off, leaving Nerva in that bloody pool, and then the scene fades out, so there is no more to that.

that sequence. I guess one of the major differences in the released theatrical cut versus what Tinto intended was it in the initial scenes where we meet Tiberius with the pool and with this reddish structure, he's supposed to be drunk and you see him drinking repeatedly, which was the emphasize in the editing back then. So I feel when Nerva commits suicide. Tiberius is not drunk, he's sober, and we see a much more contemplative side of him, and

it moves in that his friend has killed himself. Well, I find it important afterwards when Calicular gets to Nerva and asks about isis and so on many gets mad. I felt that's a very important moment for the character development. I just wonder why so much as missing? Why is this? I'm partial here, of course I want Tinto's version to be out, But why is this called the ultimate cut if it doesn't include all the scenes?

I would say every listener who listens to this, they should watch Salon Kitty, not for the content, just for the editing style. And I feel from Varsalon Kitty, also from mirosu Bianc, another Tinto film, or from Cocoa Gola. If you just disregard to storyline, if you just follow how is it edited? You can see how quickly a lot of things are done, at how one scene intercuts

to the next. Because honestly, if you didn't know about this, so this cut is longer than the preliminary reconstruction I had, but includes less scenes, it's just interesting, let's put it that way.

actually discuss the footage. There was one article that says that the producer of this new version is the one that found the treasure trove of material that doesn't sound like Mischion caligular whatsoever.

was quite adventurous to finally find this archive. And according to Kelly Holland, the footage was about to be destroyed because apparently it was forgotten about and not paid for a long time. That's what she says in Mission calicular. I don't know the exact quote, but you can watch it in the documentary. So essentially the footage was all there, and they say when this new project happened, the company knew where the footage was because I had told Kelly

Holland and so on. It was not a secret. So I wouldn't go so far to say I discovered the footage. I rediscovered it after many years in twenty sixteen, let's put it that way. And back then it moved me very much when Kelly Holland told me that if I hadn't come in at that time, the footage would have been destroyed likely and that might make me feel, oh, right place, right time. Everything is in a flow, and here's the work for now, we get Tinto involved in.

Tinto is still around, he can still do his cuts, and basically the people who are doing this new cut, but hadn't even heard of them until two years after discovering the footage.

had some memorisons. All that led to the rediscovery of the footage, which is why I'm also saying I helped to rediscover it sort of Penthouse where it was.

as the Nati envisioned. For the transition to Capri, we drew the shoreline has a look from the real Tiberius's villa. In other scenes, Donati painted elaborate backdrops and would never have just hung a pink curtain to represent the landscape. So we're keeping in line with both the rest of this film but also the set designs he'd made for other films. I'm a fan of Danillo Donati and wanted the audience to see what he intended for them to see.

of taste here. Some people would prefer a photorealistic island, some people prefer a more theatrical staging. The film was shot with the sets the way they are, so I think they should stay the way they are. And if they hardly were alive and we could ask him, that might be a different story. But here I really don't see the point in this. And again, why is it called the ultimate cut? If you change the footage, if you remove some These are not angry questions. These is

genuine curiosity. Why do you change things instead of trying to make it the way they were intended to. I'm a historian as well as a filmmaker. I have two degrees, a Bachelor in Audiovisual Media and a Bachelor of Master in history. And with Calicula, I felt I want to preserve what was shot, and I think I know which scene he means with the backdrop with this white cloth, which I felt was a brilliant scene because it shows this morning mood and it looks like a theater stage play.

I know with the Capri scene in the film Yoca Lego, Lie In the Italian edition they put a shot of the Isle of Capri for the transition, But the way that Tinto could have done it wouldn't have involved any look at the island of Capri. It would have been impressionist. It starts with Caligula being carried up the slope, so to be quite honest to me personally, doing any digital trickery with the footage, except for cleaning it up, would be a big no go. Tinto did the film with

a certain vision in mind. Basically what was filmed. Tinto made it work, and the Capri scene works. I just watched a few days ago, just for my reference, the beginning of the work print again and it works well. Macro talks about going to Capri, we cut to Caligula being carried up there. It's very clear where it is. We don't need an establishing shot of the island, and I feel this is the special thing about the film. Clicular,

a lot of it looks quite artificial, quite stagy. And then there is a scene where he walked through the scenes of Rome which were filmed in a thermi carame is the German word thermi in Rome in the ruins, and that looks very real. Again, we suddenly have this dirty surroundings. So I felt in Caligula he's getting from the more artificial looking surroundings into the real world in that scene suddenly, and it all makes sense.

more concerned with how the film was actually shot. Tinto shot the film the way he felt works, and if something in the set didn't work for whatever reason, Tinta would have put around it. So I feel it must be respected the film that was shot. And I think if you just put the film together the way it was intended by the director, which is not simple. But if you do this, it starts all making sense and you don't have to add anything in cgi the idea never occurred to me to add any element.

of the illusion of reality and so on. So when you edit the film the way the director intended to, it becomes quite a complex piece of art that would be discussed very differently.

him until the power gets into his blood. Then in the third act, when he loses the only person in the world he trusts, he loses it completely.

degraded significantly. I was able to see some things from Mission caligular things that you had talked about where I was like, Okay, this is good to finally see this, and then yeah, weird things where yeah, we fade out before we have Caligular talking with Nerva. We've got the treasury scene is missing, so it's just, yeah, it's very

weird what he chose to keep and lead out. So the one thing I found very, let's say, disheartening about this is that even the producer of The Ultimate Cut seems to not necessarily take Tinto Brass and his talent and his reputation very seriously. Someone on Facebook posted, if you were to make a movie called Oriana The Secretary with the Great Ass or something like that, then then listen to Tinto otherwise no, and then the producer responded, Okay,

that did make me laugh out loud. Excellent point.

erotic films. He did a lot of erotic films since the eighties. Tinto's reputation as a filmmaker in the sixties and seventies, he was very highly regarded his talents. His very first film in kilavore E Perduto, screened at the Venice Film Festival in sixty three. I believe then Umberto Eco,

who is very famous. Obviously people know, he commissioned Tinto to do two short films for La Rinaldo di Milano called Tempolbo and Timpo Lavativo, which were screened in La in twenty twelve, where Tinto basically tries his hand as a completely new experimental filmic language, which worked very well. When I think of how highly regarded his films were.

His film Lorelo screened at the Berlin Film Festival, and Tinto a few years later became a member of the jury at the Berlin Film Festival in the early seventies. His film Lover Cancer greened at Venice Film Festival in the early seventies and it received an award that believe it was the Critics Prize. Is that when you see Caligula. At that time, people regarded Tinto as an avant gardistic filmmaker.

Who has done this provocative film salone, Kitty and Caligula would have continued this, and it's something for years I tried to make people aware of Tinto's film career that there's basically two phases, erotic films in the second half of the career and different films in the first half of his career, even though there is a lot of

overlap and his style continues and so on. And I feel if you researched Tinto and his filmography, you immediately find all these films that even at their time of release, were artistically very highly regarded. And I feel that the footage for caliicular that I watched in the work print, it would have continued that legacy of Tinto and his experimental,

often experimental editing that flows. I would say that's something that all of Tinto's films have in common, and his early films and also a lot of his late films is just his brieflowing style. When proach any kind of restoration, I want to approach it with a respect for the artist's intentions and for the artist's talents. And it never once occurred to me too in quotation marks improve upon anything of Caligula. That was something I was very aware

of when I'm working on this. Tinto would have had the last word if he were involved, it would be clear. If he wouldn't have been involved, I would have made a film informed on the work print and on his intentions, without putting my damp onto it. So to say, well, I've felt Caligula would have been released the way that Tinto Dous wanted it, it would be seen as a very different film. It would be seen as a huge

provocative political film, an anarchist film. I think it would have been taken much more seriously artistically because a lot of violence of the film and a lot of the unpleasant scenes, they do make sense in the context that Tinto put them in. And this is something that makes me very sad that this vision beers still unrealized. The silver lining on all this is that I was able to release Mission Curricular, and I remember when I edited that film, and then you and I had our long

conversations about Mission Curricular back a few years ago. I want to put as many interesting moments in there as possible, or people who like the film were really diving deeply into that film. Of course, Mission Curricular state PG. I didn't put any of the violence scenes in it ra

any of that. But if you really study the editing of Curricular, and then if you go through Mission Curricular, you will see in the black and white work print some scene transitions and some things that people just speculated about prior. So at least I find in Mission Curricular you can still see where this project would have been going,

and what does intensions wear. I think I think the only thing I really want people to know is that Mission Curricular and the idea to do a director's cut off calicular to reconstruct one is entirely different from what has come out now.

thorough about getting every frame. But I don't know about the condition of the archive. But I think the excitement could be reawokened, but it would have to be serious because I talk to other people who are very involved in calige. You line various ways, and they all thought told me, there is this up and down. You get a lot of hope up and then stopped the hope and stop. Let's say, in my daily life, I don't

try to think about it too much. I feel this interview is very important to me to get this viewpoint out, and I feel that listeners should also watch Mission calicular, listen to our prior conversations to get an idea of what the film was, what it was supposed to be. Like, I tend to not think about it too often. When I think about it, it's, let's say, a tragic work

of art that exists in a ruined state. To me, when I look at this in a more metaphorical way, like a ruined from an ancient building or so, you can still gauge what the film was supposed to be like. But you don't really see the entire construction. And when you watch the theatrical cut, I don't know the new cut, but I guess this involves any cut that doesn't follow Tinto's intentions. It's basically impossible to see what Tinto was going for because so much was shot, so many interesting

camera angle. When I looked at the work print, some parts just surprised me. When I saw them, I knew they existed, but then I saw them and I was like, Okay, this is how he did it. But I guess with Mission Curricular, there is enough out there so people can get an opinion. Though I find it said that you can't just intuitively watch Curricular the director's cut or curricular that reconstructed to us work print.

have since passed away and so on. So I decided to do a documentary called Cutting Squares, which is not yet released. It did have its world premiere in la a few weeks ago, which is an autobiographical look at my filmmaking and at the people I met there, and I got very positive feedback about it. It features a lot of encounter with interesting people, including hellwert Burger's very

last time in front of film camera. I did a film with hellwood Berger called Revolution, which installed for various reasons. But I put a lot of putag into this documentary, so that is getting quite some interest and it makes me very happy.

Gas Shaped Light I did shortly after the Caligular project fell apart. It's about a relationship where a man is together with seemingly nice girl who keeps twisting his words around and making it more more difficult, which kind of was a darker film than my others. I don't know if I'm going to continue working on Revolution, but now the footage of Family Dagger is out in the film Cutting Square, so I'm happy about that to them. Right now, actually working to get potentially my PhD in history, I

started some family history research. My family is from Covina. Originally it is a completely different chapter. I started to research my great grandfather more and I found so much that I might be able to turn it into a PhD thesis. So I'm working a lot in archive these days. I just spent combined several weeks over some stays at the Vienna State Archives finding so many documents about my family history about who was related to this and so on. This is very exciting work for me.

call him Alex, and I said, oh, that's funny. Then we shot the first season Alex, and that it stay. I would say Gas Shaped Light is look into my mood those days. But there were different things happening. When I did a film called fatsen Leven The Year After, which is also about a relationship breaking apart and being toxic. At least there the lead character doesn't have a name and she looks completely unlike me, which I found nice.

So people WoT we didn't assume that it's me. Basically, I often put my moods and my thoughts into my sholms with but I never put it directly. I never make a film that says, oh, this happened to me. Now I'm going to show you what happened to me. It's more a general gist, a general loot, some thoughts and so on, and things I observe and all get condensed. You cano much see what I'm at or what my mindset is when you look at my films of ich respective time.

we've only had limited interaction on Facebook Messenger. He may have sent me an email back in twenty nineteen, and his email address prefilled itself when I was trying to write to him about this episode, so that definitely holds some water. I know that he emailed Rob, so it makes sense, and he said in his email that he was going to email me. But yeah, I even donated to his calligular book on Kickstarter, and we can discuss that a little bit later in the show if we

feel like it. But yeah, talk a little bit about Thomas Dgovin and what we know about this guy.

didn't know anything was happening. I went back and I looked at the date stamps I'm an email, and it was it was like the end of last year or something like. I wasn't plugged in to the fact that this thing had played at camp. I didn't know that. I'm out of it, Like I don't follow film as close as they used to. And I emailed him and I never heard back. So I just figured dead letter office, you know, as happens with emails. So I always found him to be straight with me, tell me what was

going on. He was asking me for assistance and could I connect him with people, and I said, sure, you know, whatever you need, let me know. And you know, as in the past when we've done commentary tracks or things like that, I was always more than willing to help people if something came out of it or not, because just being a gigantic film nerd, I always want things

to work out as best they can. And this one, being as long and beandering as it's been with all of the various players and facets, as we've discussed over two episodes plus on here, I just thought it would be great to see something coming it. But like I said, I haven't talked to him probably since before COVID so may it's been like twenty nineteen or early twenty twenty, something like that.

happened with that? Because I'm curious. I'm also curious about Negovin's pedigree to your point from earlier, how the as far as him having knowing McKeon and stuff. It feels like his rolodex. And I think Caroline Kirkandhal even says this his rolodex is crazy. He knows a ton of people, and he's been connected through the art world for so long. I know he's made a couple of short films. It just feels like such a strange choice to have Negovin

take this project over. But at the same time, I think, again, right place, right time. He was approached by somebody at the same place that Carolyn Kirkandal works at, as she said, and so it was like, all right, this, let's go ahead with this. And I just one other thing I should say is that I over the years, I've had so many people, especially one person and I can't remember his name because I blocked him on Facebook, because this motherfucker would just not stop messaging me about killing Gula.

Like every few months it would just be like, hey, this is happening, and it would always be like he was angry about stuff. And after a while it's just I am so not invested in this nearly as much as you are. Please stop sending me this stuff. And then it was just more and more, and after a while I was just like I got a block.

interesting guy and it's it is. He's not the most obvious choice on the outset, but it is an interesting one and he obviously the thing I really did admire researching when I was working on the commentary is the amount of time him and Erran and he gives his editor a lot, and as he should, but he does, and I love that because I think sometimes it's easy for people and because I don't even know what you

call him. He's a director of sorts. But it's it's almost a film in some ways, as like a motherless child realistically, just it is what it is. But if anybody hell anything, I guess I should say, usually don't give the editors props, but the editors are the ones that build the spine of the piece, They build the rhythm of the piece. I think editors get vastly underrated sometimes, so it's cool to see that. And I know they'd worked together in some of the short film projects beforehand.

I will I do hate it that he's had a part of this.

We would have I think Mission Caligula probably would have been that cut, just because Alexander studied Tinto and worked directly with Tinto and had him on board with that. And I'm not really privy, Yeah, I'm not. Obviously I wasn't part of any phone calls or anything to know what machination how the deck of cards fell down and got resect on. That's the closest thing I could find. And I found this actually from one of my original

note cards. As far as thom I found this from an interview Thomas did for synaps dot Co, where he said a friend of his who worked at Penthouse Global Licensing, which is a division that handles legacy materials, had changed hands a number of times, including Penthouse itself, which is an allusion to Kelly Holland getting which sounds like that was messy. She's a fascinating lighting. She's one the more I've read up, I would love to talk to her.

I just find her really, especially as she was one of the very few female directors an adult before she

was in Penthouse. She also has done a ton of animal rights stuff and the fact that just to quick aside to give her some major prompts because I feel like she gets disparaged, like when you do find her online about her Penthouse front is that she entered the company loving Bob Gucciani and even with that, when she entered this project with Alexander Reykigni the flaws of what he did, and to me, it's like I almost felt like maybe her working with Alexander was like doing an

alms or something like try to atone for the sins of the father sort of thing, And I don't know, I find I have a lot of respect for people who can look at their heroes and be that objective.

But god, what a cool, what a fascinating thing. I don't know if I could blame anybody for taking such a gig, right, but I do wish we had, of course, I think we all do. If you love a cinema, if you would want that team Doe cut just we all dream about, Okay, where's London after midnight? But like finding that print and somebody's at it, having the full like cut greed dreaming is free at least. Yeah.

order mean within the hole? And the thing is that while it wasn't complete, we at least had a ninety minute workprint to work from, so he could have at least looked at that ninety minutes, and like I say, I have no way of knowing, because I've never watched the ninety minute work print that Alexander has and to compare it against this and to go, Okay, this is where it is, and this is this matches and this

is what it should be. But at the same time, the question becomes if he's basing it against a script. The script is not final film either. For example, you had done Graduate recently, and this was something I didn't know and I can't remember if it was on the show or if it was what I picked up from the Criterion, And when I rewatched it and listening to the commentary, was there were voiceovers in there where those I'man and Garfunkel songs are and Mike Nichols, I don't

need these voiceovers. It gives me real the fucking voiceover. Put the Simon and Garfunkel song in, and that works better than having all these voiceover and offscreen dialogues going on over these driving scenes. Ultimately, even if it's in the script, even if it's on the page, it doesn't end up on the stage. That's the difference between film and a play.

So there's part of me that I give him his props for going, Okay, we're going to work from the Dials script and we're going to try and be as faithful as this, But even that is now guaranteed that you're going to come up with a completed version that is what was intended.

doesn't excite me. I was thinking about this as a comparable and I'm a huge fan of the Stooges, and i had the Stooges Complete Funhouse Sessions, which is eight hours of everything they recorded, and I go, this would be the equivalent of someone taking that and going, I'm going to make my own version of the Funhouse album.

I'm going to take this take and that take the band already say if they couldn't have completed it, maybe they said okay, they sequenced the first four tracks off the album as an equivalent and said, okay, these four songs,

and I don't care about that. I'm sequencing this entirely the way that Icy fit, based on what Icy fit, because that's the thing that I think, really when I look at this against something like what Walter Merch did with Touch of Evil, Grant and it wells wasn't around, but he left a really long memo on every scene

and what he wanted. So I'm in this place where I appreciate this version for all the goal and new stuff that's in it and looks great and all that, but I don't know if it gets us any closer than the Guccioni version in the certain ways. It's confusing at times.

Shots though. The White Shots, I think, and I think one of the one of the biggest pluses of The Ultimate Cut. It is one hundred percent a love letter to Donatis sets. You could tell there is a love But even in a lot of the interviews that I read that with Thomas is like the Ya Dinatis mentioned a lot, as he should be.

all right? Yeah, Tinto seems fine. But everything that Negovin says, is just I watched this documentary in twenty thirteen, and it shows clearly that he has dementia. And I'm just like, what documentary did you watch? Because that's not the version that I saw. I saw a brass acting recounting stories, very clear, very lucid. Of course that's twenty thirteen, right, that's eleven years ago. But I know other people that have talked to him and they're just like, Okay, that's great,

he's doing fine. Of course, Alexander talked with him very recently, and it's not that recently because now apparently Tinto's wife controls all the communications, but a few years ago when this project was kicking off, and that's very different than the story that Magovin tells, where he's just The first thing I did was I reached out to Tinto, and I tried everything that I could, and I was told over a year later that he received all these things, but his wife dismissed it. I was in contact with

her after that. She was open to the idea, but I had been told and later learned from a documentary on him, that he had dementia. I asked if I could speak directly with Tinto. The answer was no, So that's where it stalled. I couldn't encourage the rights holder to send money to somebody who couldn't get on a

phone call. I suspect that it's partially his health, but it's also likely that it is just a terrible sore spot for everybody involved, which I completely agree, and Brass talks about that on the Orgy Power documentary that I don't know what I would do. The ship is sale, but I don't know what the truth is around there. I know that Michelle Levoco, Brass's lawyer at the time, was saying that Tinto Brass did not participate in the

new version of his not made any offers. He is old but very lucid, and any involvement in this new edition is false. Here's Thomas Negavan from the Team Human podcast.

why that got ignored. I didn't hear from them until like eight or nine months later, when I kept kind of pummeling and people were trying to bridge that gap.

in various different ways. Like I say, when we look at that ending, compare the ending of how Malcolm Max versus this new version, two different characterizations. Some of the other scenes within the films obviously, But the thing is that's all commendable. I commend him for going you know what, you know what, the most cheapest part of this entire production is blow and film because blow and film in that era was cheap. Film stock was cheap compared to

paying salaries and building those sets and all that. And when I think about his process up against other filmmakers, So, for example, a guy who's very controlled, Martin Scorsese. He knows exactly what he's gonna get, He storyboards everything. He doesn't really shoot extra coverage. Another guy like that is Clinton Eastwood. He's like the king of the one take. He knows exactly what he wants, he shoots exactly he wants.

He does not do all this coverage. And so there's part of me that feels like Tinto is just a victim of his own process here. And I just think about how there's famous stories throughout film history. One of my favorites, one of my heroes, Melvin Van Peebles, who gave the finger to Columbia when they told him, Hey, you're gonna shoot a different ending of Watermelon Man, Right, Oh, I got it, I'm gonna shoot it. And then he didn't and turns the film and they go, where's that ending,

and he's I'm just shooting that fucking ending. Fuck you, I'm out of here and Forster Murders release the film the way he wanted it. So really for me, what I think why I keep coming back to Caligula, why I'm so fascinated by all these various cuts, and I give Thomas' credit for putting this cut together, is that it ultimately comes down to the idea of like creative expression within a system for filmmakers, and how do you

do it when there's so many things going on? Do you really need to have orson wells ironclad Citizen Kane contract where even Ted Turner couldn't polarize it forty years later? Do you need to be so strict? Do you only shoot what you shoot and get rid of everything and force them to release your thing? Granted he had this film taken away from him, I know that, I know the history of it. Or is there somewhere in the middle where you just got to go?

definitely documents all of those lawsuits. Oh my god. So I think they were like twenty nine or thirty lawsuits that were all around this. Oh, just crazy. And so he won the lawsuit in Italy where the director's right is guaranteed over the producers, and he said, I had a hard time convincing the judges that I couldn't be responsible for a film for which I had shot about one hundred and sixty thousand meters but only four thousand or forty five hundred were ultimately used. And this is

very prophetic what he says. One could have made so many different films depending on who chose the material and utilized it.

he thought he knew what he wanted. With Tinto, I think it's almost like he had a devil and an angel on his shoulder, an art angel was like Solon Kitty. It's a great film. Oh my god, cor Fitzal, Malcolm McDowell, Denalo Donati, oh, FRANKL. Russellini. This guy's produced, Yeah, he can produce with us. He's worked with Pasolini, Sir John Gill. Just getting all of these pieces and then but then the little devils. Some of these extras they're unclay looking,

they're not sexy, they're not pretty. We need that penthouse. She and and I think he also wanted some of that porno chic pie because that was the thing this was like, this was about at the end, at the era where people if there was ever going to be a crossover, it was going to be in the late seventies.

And because this film started principles shooting, I believe in seventy six, and you know, seventy six, seventy seven, and it never happened, obviously, And granted, there are so many adult films that honestly are so much better made than what resulted with any version. As much as I love the altimit cut, but I love the film as a whole. That's not at all a mark against against Aaron or Thomas. It's just like we've all said, you're trying to make a puzzle out of pieces that you're missing.

having us cut. That's what played forty seconds Street. That's what got all the pressed, that's what got all the publicity.

And that's sad, what a sad statement on our culture, right that an actual, just true blue art film that wouldn't get all that, And it wouldn't because a lot of them didn't like I mean, people know about self even reading some of the reviews of Salo and Kitty or how even I read I found news articles when they were making this film from the American press and that at the time they didn't even know what Salon Kinny was about. They were just just no respect and

no understanding even then. America has such we have such a model history of how we regard art anyways from our own artists, much less overseas artists. And that's what I think. That's maybe the biggest fact that breaks my heart. And I have obviously I have no proma explicit Scott. I've been on several projection, but talking about explicit films, I love cinema, but it's done well. I don't care

about the genre. But I may say said that it's like if Tinto had been left alone, would as many people be talking about it.

intelligent and passionate researching this. I gain so much respect for him and the hard work he's done, and as proud as I am if any work I've done about Tinto, because I love Alexander's the man on top of being very talented and respective filmmaker in his own right, I would be proud to be un heard from Czechoslovakia. I I mean, I was like Alexander Trushynski.

and said I think you're wrong on this. There's one where it was Todd Gilchrest and he took this very well, and he actually did went back in his records and looked and was like, no, you're right, because he wrote at one point that in the two thousand and seven DVD released this is the Imperial Edition, he said that it was produced by Negovin, And so I went back to Nathaniel Thompson as well, who actually produced that version, and was just like, did Ntagovin have anything to do

with this? He's like no, I didn't even know who that guy was until a few years ago. So I'm like, okay, so we got that cleared up, which is good, But just some of the things like I can't picking on Negovan a little bit. He just was so pitthy about things, Like he was like, well, the footage wasn't lost. The footage of all this stuff, this ninety six hours wasn't lost because obviously they had it for the Imperial Edition. And it's like, yeah, but then they lost track of it.

Nathaniel Thompson knew where it was, and eventually Alexander was able to talk with him, and then was able to talk with Penthouse, able to talk to Kelly and say, this is where that footage is, and they were able to get it from that Iron Mountain facility. Govan is just like, well, did you see the stuff? Did you see the boxes? You know, this is an interesting, dramatic story. He says, I absolutely believe that's what the owner of Penhouse at the time told and he won't even say

Tushinsky's name told Alexander. If you think about how high end storage facilities work with companies that have a public phone number, you might see some cracks in that story. And I'm just like, oh wow, so now you're calling Alexander a liar. That's great.

would really like to still see. But then I hear, I hear all these spurious rumors about Nagov, and I'm not going to repeat any of them here, but I'm just I hope that bringing the restoration process that all of those materials were kept and kept in really good condition.

to be handled properly and restored. So I just hope that during this restoration process that that stuff was kept safe and that there is an opportunity if we do want to try and again with a version that is closer to tinto Brass, that we can do that.

original master recordings. They're gone. You can't remix that, and you might be able to in the AI world, but still you can't go back to the original digital magnetic masters of things that we're twenty yars ago.

up hundreds of years from now. It's all we won't be alive, but are will continue and once of our culture because we don't care enough because it costs too much.

GUCCIONI cut. For for all of its flaws, there's still some there's great stuff. There's great stuff in all of them.

I wish there was a meeting of the middle. It's part of me wishes we had that too, because man like getting to hear Teresa's voice, getting to see more of the performances, not having to see seeing sex scenes that were far worse than when Kurchie up and he did it to some give him fate praise on that It's the Faint as a praise that shit didn't belong and especially reading about the credit Laurie Wagner, he and the girls use egg whites to look like they were excited,

which I don't think is very sanitary to put in another's It seems like a very good way to get an East infection. So say, everybody's learning from this point, don't preserve a film and do not on another's. But seriously, I hope to God that they preserved a tune, especially because a lot of companies anything that the corporation automatically does not have the best futation when it comes to

film preservation. It's honestly amazing that we even have this or that even Mission Colligula goten as far as it did, and that was thanks to Kelly for them having a CEO at the time that actually seemed to give a shit about art. It's cool, I don't know, it's cool to have the variations of it. I mean, so, I do think the minute Tinto got pushed out of that film is the minute realistically we lost the chance to version. You can't go back like lots wise, at this far back,

I'll just get me a little piles of salt. So I don't know it does. I think, to me, what makes me sad is just all the people that have been hurt by this film now, and I want to say the phil I don't mean just the old bit cut. I just mean this whole thing, and I am but I'm glad at least with those who are still with us we can still hail them. Don't write off Alexander Trushynsky. Don't necessarily write off the Ultimate Cut either, Like, don't

write off anybody. Give everybody, but especially get people like alex Give regime because he did all that work. Thank God for his website, which is an exhaustive tribute and so exquisitely researched perfectly, and to tinto who I feel like, even stuff I've still written about this film now, about this particular cut I feel like still gets disparaged, and

I think that's out of bullshit. All of the beauty, all of the good stuff in here is because of having a director that had that vision and that had faith in his performers, and that's why all of the actors loved Tinto. I mean, Seiner would have been multiple times. Malcolm mcdale got along with him.

I felt like it leaned. Part of it leanked a little too heavy to the persona if that document didn't know what side of the bread it wanted butter because you'd have these great interviews with people and these great shots of some of his like really experimental stuff from the sixties that was so cool to have because a lot of that defined for Americans, and you're like, yeah,

that's cool. And then it's like there's Tinto with his hand on some girl's ass smoking a cigar, and it's like, wait, what, like, come on movie?

A Conza. So I was really open for those because you can find those in real shitty versions with no subtitles, all dubbed Italian, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense because I don't think Vanessa Redgrave's speaking Italian, and I think since they shot those in England that Narro was probably speaking English as well. Because we know we.

of the early works of Potoow Skin a Ball. It's got that energy to it. I mean, it's still in a very teinto way, but it's it's brilliant.

of Nero. What a fascinating couple, and like they did these two films with tintos like so so needs.

are not limited in our choice. I just wish there was one more that had Kushinsky's name on it. But at the same time, at least where they're not saying, well that version doesn't exist anymore, you can never see that. So yeah, we'll be talking even more about that later on this year. I know that my friend Peter Flynn is working on a documentary about lost versions of Star Wars. So those are the ones that you talked about film mode.

You know, this is being suppressed by the artist and the company that owns the rights now.

hear it anymore. She's like, I'll block it, but he's like, I'll be the I mean, yeah, because God, I mean, the man sent of time, like, let him enjoy his golden ears. I can't even imagine. But yeah, no, but I love that Alexander has channeled everything he's gone through into art. And that's what artists do. If anything, if there is a positive thing to be gained from from his story of this, is that to anybody, especially a creative,

always create. Don't let it stop. You, don't let if it's like, Okay, this horrible, shitty thing has happened, your heart is broken, and okay, let's make some mark. Let's channel that. Don't let it fester inside you, don't repress it, don't let it make you bitter, don't let it become like a cancer. You know, you make art, that's what you do, and that's what he did. And I love that to me, just it makes me respect him even more.

That's what we all need to do. It's like, sometimes life is getting his things and you can't know his control it, and some of it hurts really fucking bad. But let's go make some art. Let's go make something. Let's create something, Let's preserve something, let's talk about it. That's healthy. We're all healing in this beautiful mess, the catg and you know, make life your own senate and the people of Rome. There's my ted talk.

But it was hard, and I think the hardest part was trying to not sound like the micro machine but also keep it because I was trying to keep like things in a natural because I want to be conversational anything I do. I told you guys that in text prior, but even like with my writing because I feel like.

You don't just want to be repeating the same shit other people, but there's so much which already out there about it. But also do things. Here's something where I could point out that Thomas and Aaron did that's different here, and I did that, and I go into their backgrounds

a little bit. Then it's like, this is how Egyptian religion was treated when Caligula was emperor because the temple advice, that whole thing in the movie that was at least according as Legitius is any history books are right because of the whole ventory thing, like it was outlawed until he became emperor and he made it legal. So and in fact there were moves that like go on in Cologulis Ran. It made him initially very popular because there were some some a lot of rulings that Tiberius had

done but did not like. Yeah, I'm so trying to do that. Also give credit to a lot of the actors that I don't get, like Teresa, like even some of the everybody's been very sweet, like when you read from the other main actors, but even they sound sometimes sound a little dismissive. And I'm like, she held her own, like, let's give her some part, and she did not do that much after this movie, and she died kind of very early. Yeah, definitely an interesting actress. I think she's

a lot better than people give a credit for. I thought she was great in Salon Kitty too. I always try to uncover layers that others looked at with any kind of film research. So I hope I did that and didn't and hopefully.

which is a compilation of this underground director named Richard Baylor, who was an American director that moved to England, Ipswich in particular, and made in might you know some of the most evocative and just completely unique underground cinema. They're very dark here, you know, a lot of it's very horror jacent, but they all have a very light punk flavor. And he has such a great eye. He gets compared to cinema of transgression. I shouldn't think he's better than

a lot of uh, but he's just different. It's an easy thing to invoke, I think, with underground cinema all but it's like not everything cinema transgressions. But Richard Baylor is amazing. And I do a commentary as well as contributed an essay for that Everything Else Linktrede dot Com, Forward Slash Mondo Hoover and.