Hold yours both it show die.
People say good money to see this movie.
When they go out to a theater, they want cloth, sodas, hot popcorn and no monsters in the protection booths.
Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring? So why did you come to London? Were you bored in Manchester?
Oh? Sash, I didn't see you?
Eh so bored?
No?
I wasn't bored.
I'm never bored.
That's the trouble with everybody, and also bored. Do you want to come in?
All right? What's funny?
I used to be a wearewolf, but I'm all right now?
Do you want to come in?
You've had nature explained to you and you're bored with it. You've had a living body explained to you and you're board with it. You've had a universe explain to your.
And your board with it.
Do you want to come in?
Right? So?
Now you just want cheap thrills and like plenty of them, And it doesn't matter out chargery or vacuous guard, as long as it's new. As long as it's new, as long as it flashes and bleeps in botty different colors, or whatever else you can say about me. I'm not bored see more life in an open grave. Come on, I don't have a future. Nobody has a future. We're not important, We're just a crap idea. You know the sense of jungle out there?
Have you seen it in air?
If God just put us here for his own entertainment, there's some things in this world that you never ever ever understand.
So I was all going for you spitboring, otular.
Welcome to the Projection Booth. I'm your host. Mike White joined me for the first time. Is miss Ellie Levy, Hello, nice to be here. Also making his premier appearance in the booth is mister and Nick Kuyava.
Resolve is never stronger than in the morning after the night. It was never weaker. What do you think of that?
We continue Art House August with a look at Mike Lee's naked No, Mike Lee is not naked in this film, and there's not really a ton of nudity. If anything, it's about naked, raw emotions, especially those of Johnny, played brilliantly by David Doulas. We follow Johnny, who flees to London from Manchester after raping a woman and stealing a car. We also follow Jeremy, who's played by Greg Kruttwell, an
unrepentant bastard and interesting counterpoint to Johnny. I'm not sure if this film can be spoiled, but it really just needs to be experienced, so we're going to try our best to spoil it, though, so you have been warned. So Ellie, when was the first time you saw Naked and what did you think?
I think I first saw in high school. I probably read up about it somewhere in some now forgotten film site in the early two thousands, and I rented it on my own and I really liked how enigmatic it was, but I also wasn't surely able to take it in I don't think as a teenager, especially the character of Johnny.
So it also might have been my very first michaelisim which didn't quite prepare me for the rest of his work, which is quite different because Naked is quite a lot darker and more nihilistic than a lot of his work. So this film. Scholar Professor Nikolai Lubecker has a concept called the shield badge film. I don't know if you know this, and this, like films that deadlock are desired for, Catharsis and I really think that this film can be categorized as a feel bad film, and watching it now
was tough again but fascinating. Mike Lee is definitely one of my favorite British directors, and he really has a naturally showcasing complex humanity and relationship dynamics which are really loved to see. So those are my first thoughts.
And Nick, how about yourself.
Actually, I was.
Working in a bookstore at the time and a coworker of mine kept quoting the film. She said, you, really, of all people, need to watch this film, she said, because a lot of the times when this character speaks, I feel like I'm listening to you in retrospect. I'm not sure whether that was a compliment, but I did certainly take her advice and I rented it. It was a night that I was just settling in. I had an old stack of movies and I'd watched one already, and I was like, Okay, I'm going to go into
this one. You have that first opening scene, and I'm like, well, let's go on one here, and then of course the phone rings and all of a sudden, it was eleven o'clock at night, but I found myself with my own Little Johnny Adventure for the rest of that evening. But as soon as I got back home, I always feel like I've got to see where this movie's going. I got in probably about three point thirty in the morning and immediately just went right back into it and just was intrigued whole way through.
Are you sittings?
Yes?
I saw this one at the Detroit Film Theater back in nineteen ninety three or ninety four, whenever it actually was touring around the United States, and I had never seen a Mike Lee film. I think this might be the only Mike Lee film that I've seen other than the short that was on the Criterion version of this the short and Curlies. Otherwise, I just I knew the titles. He was a pretty big sensation, art house sensation in the nineties, late eighties, even going into the two thousands,
so I know. Before we started recording, Nick was reading some of the titles of some of the other films that he's seen. I'm like, I've heard these titles, I know these titles, but I've never actually sat down and watched them. And I don't know why, because I can't say I enjoy Naked. I was actually dreading rewatching this one for the episode, just because it is such a visceral film and it just kicks you in the gut. I had a friend, Mike Thompson, who's been on the
show many times before. He took his wife to see this on a date not a good date movie. Not a good date movie. And they've been married for I don't know how many decades now, have two wonderful children. But they almost didn't make it after they saw Naked because they were.
Just going at it.
And this film, like you said, it's a feel bad movie for sure. And what a way to start this film in an alleyway with the camera just rushing up to this couple who's having sex, very rough sex turns violent, turns into a rape. Next thing you know, this guy's running away, grabs a car, gets in, steals it, drives off and that's how the credits start. Wow, what a way to start a movie. And it just plunges you
right into this world. And we don't even see Johnny's face, David Doulas's face until I think he gets to London. The rest of it is shot from the back of his head. He's pretty blurred inside of the car and once we get to know him. I can't say this enough, and I know I'm going to be saying it through this entire episode. This movie lives and dies by David Doulass's performance, and he's fucking amazing.
As soon as I saw this movie, then I went purposely to try and find anything else that he was in.
Now.
I had seen Life as Sweet before, and you had that small part in that. I was so like, I just need to know more about this guy after this performance, and I honestly, I would say until he did the recent Fargo television series, I feel like there's never been
another vehicle which spotlights just how incredible he can. May I feel like Naked and the Fargo Show or like his top performance is in my opinion, and just I always feel like there's so much of his potential in other films that just is not allowed to break through.
I think also owes a lot to the way Mike Lee his process, like what he let David Thuliz also do, and his whole improvisation and this whole phase of working together and really collaborating, because that's how Mike Lee works. He works like no one else basically, which is really fascinating. He has this long process of finding his actors without a casting agent, just like purely because he finds something
in them. And then I think letting them talk about a person they know that's his audition and like trying to mimic who they are and getting a shield for them, and then just like months and months of just trying to whittle down like who this character is and basing it off of their own experience is probably Mike Lee's experience.
So I think John he also has quite a bit of Mike Lee in him, I would imagine, So I think it brings something very unique out of all the actors and in his film basically as you say, like he's never been like this but again and never had the opportunity to really show himself like this again.
So it's really sad because Fulis is so amazing in this movie, and just like you, I was like, Oh, what else has this guy been in? I got to see this. I think it was just a few years after this that The Island of Doctor Moreau, the ill Fated Island of Doctor Moreau was coming out. I was like, Oh my god, Oh this is going to be great. Val Kilmer Marlon Brando for us a bulk David Dolist, he's got nothing to do. You could pass the wooden pole in that movie, and that does the same job
that David does in that film. Not criticizing him necessarily, but just he's never had the opportunity to be this amazing again, and he just gets shuttled into these movies. It's sad because I think most people these days would know him from either being remiss loupin and we'll talk about were wolves. So I think that's pretty funny that he's playing a were wolf in the Harry Potter films, or that horrific role as Sir Patrick in Wonder Woman where he turns into spoilers for Wonder Woman where he
turns into aries with that fucking mustache. Oh man, I've never seen him reach these heights. And I agree with you. The Fargo TV show he does a great job in that. Of course, his tiny role in The Big Lebowski he's amazing in. But I've never seen him live up to this height again because he's he's not on screen every single moment. We do have the secondary story with Jeremy, but for the most part, Johnny's on screen. That's say seventy five percent of this film. And he's riveting, and
he's a bastard, he's a jerk, he's incredibly funny. He has turns a phrase are so incredibly quick. I've read so many people just saying I don't know if I want to be Johnny or if I want to punch him in the face. And that's my impression as well.
Be Johnny. Wow, that's the that's revealing, that's the people.
There's definitely elements of Johnny which I would love to have. Certainly, his way obviously is just top notch. But here you've got this is somebody you wouldn't necessarily, just based off of first sight, say this is a charismatic individual. But as he's traveling through the film, he does have this charisma that just comes across to all these people that
he encounters. I mean, he's able to weasel his way into people's homes and travel in their lives for you know, even just a few hours, and that's not something I would ever be able to do. So, I mean there's aspects of this character which usually I wouldn't mind, being that Hair's maggot of an individual that I could pull
something like this off. I mean, I think, how well you could, you know, use that in your workplace, just being able to manipulate things, you know, to your liking, if you have that sort of charisma.
I think that what I enjoy about him the most is that ability to turn a phrase and just how quick witted he is about things. And I'm curious because you were talking about the method that Mike Lee uses and what they say, like, there's one scene in this film that is actually improvised in front of the camera, and the rest of the entire movie has already been plotted out and done through rehearsals and through improvisation and through just figuring out how all this is going to go.
Because when you read about Mike Lee, you read about the process so much because that is it is very unique to him, and just that way that he allows the actors to I imagine that as an actor, it's probably the most satisfaction that you would ever get is by working with somebody like Mike Lee who allows you to find the character and work with you and put
you in these situations. I think about the scene later in the film with the limo driver, the chauffeur and just how quick that scene happens, and just the tension between the two characters, and that's all been worked out prior to this, but it just feels so natural. It just feels so documentarian as far as the way that this film comes together.
I had read actually that during the rehearsals the improvisations that David Thiller said he just had his entire floor of his house was just scattered with all these books, and that he was actually reading the Bible and he was actually reading, you know, about chaos theory, all these things that come up throughout the course of the movie. He was just sat rating himself with information so that
it would just percolaid up when it needed to. Definitely served him well, because you get those riveting dialogues, especially like with Brian the knight Watchman, where that whole diatribe all this stuff that's coming out, and that's in no small part, i'm sure, to everything that he was absorbing at the time.
Like what you said about it being a documentary or some part of it, I feel like that's one of Mike Lee's sets him apart as well as that, I feel like he is focused on the external rather than the internal, so we don't really see characters, you know, looking at the window wistfully and trying to get into their soul. That's really how they interact, is what makes
them up. So in a way, it's like this observational perspective, which in a way makes being in the midst of we're being near and someone like Johnny for so long variable because we're not. It is really looking at what's happening through his eyes. That's at least how I saw it. We're perceiving it or just letting it happen, basically like a documentary, which I think is the right way to go, especially when we're talking about such complicated, tough, unbearable people,
and so also when we talk about Moss's face. Jeremy slash Sebastian I love.
I always got the multiple names because you don't know who this guy is what he is. He claims at one point to be a landlord, and I'm not even sure if I believe that. Which one is the one that's missing? Sondra, right, Sondra the missing roommate who comes back at the end of the film. Sandra seems to be the only one who knows who he is, but she doesn't even know him for who he actually is. He introduces himself in one way, but she's looking at all these ideas, going who is this person? What is
happening here? And they're under the impression that he's the landlord. I don't even know if that's true, or maybe he's like a former boyfriend. I don't know what the story is. Just the way that he comes into this house, shows up there, and then terrorizes these people. With Jeremy, it almost feels like we're getting more into like funny Games territory than the rest of the film. It's almost like a different movie inside of the movie.
First to the names thing, I've always wondered about that as well, and even though still you don't know for certain, I think I read at some point that there was a thing in England where people would get properties under different names for legal reasons, so they would have several different identities within their property holdings. So that's where this
whole Jeremy Sebastian kind of thing comes through. But I also got the impression definitely that he had some sort of dating history with Soundra, even whether it was just a single date or because any date you're going to go on with that guy is going to be burned in your brain for the rest of your life. So even if it was just a dinner, I'm sure she
was here like I know exactly you are. But she also didn't seem to recoil from him, as every other character pretty much does, which kind of indicates that somehow she was able to maintain some control with him, whatever however way they passed before this film, you know, or the events of this film.
I do seem to remember that thing about the property stuff. I think Mike Lee might have talked about that in the audio commentary as well, And that kind of makes sense. It feels so well to do. And this is nineteen ninety three. It feels like we're little north of the yuppie era, but it feels like he's the ultimate yuppie for me.
The way that he.
Enjoys the good life, getting the massage after he's working out of the restaurant, that he goes to, the way that he switches women constantly, that he picks up the masseuse, takes her to dinner, doesn't find her interesting anymore, goes to the waitress, takes her home. Don't know what happens
with her, but I'm shirt it's not good. You see him in the car later on with another woman, and then he shows up at the apartment and you're just like, wow, he is just moving from person to person, probably just ruining all of their lives. He drives a very sporty little car, probably cost a fortune, and just him and his confidence and walking around in those little black bikini briefs and not a care in the world. Hats off to this actor for just being exposed through so much
of this film. The last third of the movie, he just wears these little briefs and that's all and just struts around in that look of condescension on his face, and he just thinks that he's better than everybody else in the world, and they're just all there to be playthings. He just is playing with everybody. And the way that he and it's rough play, the way that he and
Louise interact. Oh, that scene of her whipping him with her hair while he's laying down, that image was just burned into my brain all the way from nineteen ninety three, and I just kept wondering, what's the context of that shot. You don't really get that much context that's cut to her in bed with him whipping him with her hair, and it just feels, oh wow, he started some weird game before we even got here, and this is what he wants her to do and she has no control.
That's actually Sophie, not Louise. It's funny you bring up from a woman to woman. And talking about with Sondra, I almost felt like that scene in the car with the very timid woman when he's just cursing to whoever on the phone in different languages and the bastards cost me fifty thousand dollars or whatever. I almost felt like she was so turned off by that. But she also seemed like she wasn't the waitress type or the masseuse type.
It seems like he almost dates different types of women depending on things like what sort of mood he had. And this woman that was in the car, he had to play a little nicer, but I feel like it didn't go so well for him, and then he probably thought about Sondra and I'm going to drop in Sondra, Sondra and Sophie. But so I feel like he was so like, I'm going to drop in on Sondra, and
that's what brought him into these events. I just always had that is a little bit of the thread of how this happened, because you have to wonder how do these how do all these criss crossings of interactions, how did they begin, how do they end? Where did they start?
Also feel like there's also his scenes are often intercut with Johnny's scenes. Obviously in a way, it lends to us comparing the two kind of spicckle men, And that always made me feel uncomfortable in a way because in a way it's showing this man is really bad, but Johnny does not so bad. Actually, when you think about it, I find that a little questionable, to say the least,
because both of them are rapists. Just because we get to know Johnny better and he has different sides to him, potentially, if you want to look at it that way, it doesn't actually change that shack.
I think that was absolutely intentional. I think that it was definiteent Like if you did not have a Jeremy and you just had a Johnny, you are going to be much harder on Johnny as a character because you
don't have anybody else to make him look good. There's moments at least with Johnny where he almost seems sensitive and soft and almost caring, like when he's taking Maggie around looking for Archie, and even when he's settling down with the waitress from the coffee shop for a little bit, and you know, you can tell that he really fancies her in a way and is going to be softer than he was with Sophie when they first met. So having those little moments and then comparing them to Jeremy,
who's just horrific every scene that he's in. There's not one spec of redemption in that character at all. And it's funny too because there are times when they even frame Johnny out he looks more angelic, like when he's with the waitress and he's got the big clock behind
him and it just frames him like a halo. It plays little tricks with you in that sense where things are trying to make this guy more likable than really we should feel about him, you know, because like I said, he's got a charisma to him, but really at the end, he's a pastard.
But I do agree with you, Ellie, as far as look at Jeremy, look at Johnny, he's just so not that bad compared to Jeremy, but he's awful. He is absolutely awful. If he was cleaner, if he shaved that horrible, scraggly beard off, if he became in outward appearance that yuppie that Jeremy is. I think he could be successful in that same world and just carry himself through that, but he's not interested in that. But yes, I agree he's an awful human being. And he uses violence, yes,
but especially against women and especially in sexual situations. But more than that violence, the violence of the horrible things he says to people, and just the way that he has to tear everyone down, And that's very similar to Jeremy as well. But that scene with the waitress is it's really like this almost domestic bliss that they have going on. Something is going on with her and she's a fascinating character. And the way that when he leaves
he has to just completely tear her down. And that whole thing about.
Top tonight of snug and warm underneath your tears, sudden fucking do in your ankle and Emily b onto your winding.
Sheet is spared apart for me with my head, and I put on a cold dog's.
Piss and I hope that you dream about me, and I hope.
That you wake up screaming, and I hope that all your fucking children are bond blind, bullet and hallette, homeless hunchbacks.
He always has to twist the knife, not physically but verbally, like the thing that he does with the woman across the way from Bryan's building, and how he calls he says that she reminds him of his mother. You know, that just hit her as hard as a slap across the face. But when he grabs her hair and it feels like hair is a real big theme to this movie because when he grabs her hair, that's like his move, his bedroom.
Move, it really is. And stepping back again to when the waitress throws him out and how you know he's not used to rejection, and that's where that outburst is coming from. He's like, I can't believe that I'm being cast out onto the street. So if you're going to cast me out, I'm going to give you something to remember me by. It's interesting, though, because his violence is
strictly sexual violence. Within this film. He's never raising a hand against anybody in any other way, so his violent tendencies are always sexual so in a situation like this where she's kicking him out, you're almost here, like, why is he putting his hands up against the wall and rubbing his head on her belly which is almost tender, like her almost about ready to stroke his hair, and then she pulls it back and thinks the better of it is this way, he's trying to manipulate the situation,
thinking maybe she will take pity on me, or is it just It's almost like he gives himself some sort of code on how he behaves with this. He's not going to raise a hand to a woman, but in the context of sexual intercourse, he can justify, oh, it's just rough, instead of actually outwardly being violent. So in that case, his violence comes through words.
Interesting he said that you don't feel like she ever was rejected. I feel like in a way, he goes around life feeling like a rejected person. Maybe not in this form like with a woman. And it seems like all the women are finding pretty resistible in someway or another in this film. But I do feel like he knows what it's like to be on the margins. He
also wants to be. He chooses to be in a way right, because he's obviously in some ways educated himself, either institutionally or just self taught, and he would technically be able to be a worthwhile member of society, so to speak, But he is not. It's hard to say, at least for me. That's my perspective on it. I don't know if he's really lived life without feeling much rejection.
Talking about the way that women interact with Johnny, I have to say that the one thing, there's a few things in this movie that ring a little false to me, And I don't know if it's via the Mike Lee method or something else, but just you feel at times, like I was talking about the limo scene earlier, you feel at times like, Okay, here's these two actors and they're going to now interact and we'll see how this
plays out. And you get that a few times, like throughout this film, the whole thing is just Okay, here's these two people, these three people, these four people, how are they going to interact and what's this going to
be like? But I have to say sometimes the characters don't feel like they're the same from scene to scene, Like the Catherine Partlage character Sophie She's a very interesting character, but the way that she falls in love with Johnny and just is almost speaking of hair pulling her hair out, just as far as oh my god, I love this guy so much, and Louise, I'm so jealous of you because you had this relationship with him, and oh my god, if only I could have had a year with this guy,
and she just just so overly dramatic about it, and I'm just like, this doesn't feel right, like you fell in love with him like that and just not just in love with him, but just infatuation. And it just every time she gets put into this position to talk about Johnny or to think about Johnny, she just loses her shit. And I'm like, this doesn't feel like the same Sophie that I saw two scenes ago, or in
this scene. It just feels like they shot that maybe early on and said, Okay, your character is obsessed with Johnny after you have this one encounter with him. I don't know that's my feeling anyway. And I feel like this movie's great, but there are certain things where I'm just like, this doesn't really.
Add up for me. I've thought about that sometimes as well. And the one thing I keep coming back to with that is that she mentions later on when she's in the bar with Louise and talking about how she had an abortion by a lover who was a philosopher or something like that, and you hear her say that, and
you like, I don't see you with a philosopher. But at the same time, maybe that's just like this whole other dimension to Sophie that we just don't know about historically, Like maybe she really deep down is like incredibly attracted to intelligent people and this is like the first one that's come her way in a really long time, and that's what's making it for her. This is the moment I've been waiting for, and she falls head over heels because this is what she's built up in head to
being what she's wanted all this time. And I feel like, though, if that's the case, then the entire movie kind of probably is encapsulates everything that her life has been so far within that our realm where it's like I've with the intelligent person, but I lost the intelligent person, so I've just got these assholes who are going to be abusing me and using me for sex to the point where I just lose my shit because everything she's experienced has just happened to her in such a compressed amount
of time. And that's like why she's like screaming and hitting Johnny at the end. You know, you just don't know because he doesn't know what her life is and especially what's happened to her in the past twenty four hours, because he never bothers to find that out. And then she just loses it because it's like I've just watched my entire life unfold over the past few days again, and it is shit, and I need to go. I don't even know where I'm going, but I got to go.
It doesn't feel very it's not like an empowering move. I guess her move out. You're gonna end up maybe a bit like Maggie or something, hopefully not. But it's interesting with Soshi. I also was a little confused about the intensity right away. That's just like you are everything to me. But it does seem like she unfortunately does not have a lot going on currently in her life, and it seems like she really is like a desperate person just needing anything and something, some connection to someone.
And even though she's not really seeing Johnny for who he is, but she's seeing him for maybe the potential he holds for her or a way out of this life, so I think, because obviously she doesn't know him, so it's all about like projection.
Right what And that's actually said between the two of them, where she's feel like I love you, I know you, and he's you don't know me, And she's built who he is up in her own head, so she's not even seeing him, she's seeing what he represents to her,
whatever that is. And unfortunate. I've known people who are like that, not in my own personal relationships, but I've had roommates who have acted like Sophie has, where it's just this is somebody that I just find so intriguing and I need to be with this person, and you, like, you went on one date with this person. Yes, and calm down. In that sense, it's certainly possible, but it is a little problematic as far as for how the plot develops.
I was very grateful for the scene It's Sophie and now I'm forgetting it, Louise, where they and Sophie really does show a lot of in a way reflection about the situation and just like relationships and how you can't really please mend this way or that way, and really has this clear eyed because she is actually quite clear eyed the whole way through a very interesting mix because she knows what's going on, but she also is in this pretend world at the same time. So it's very.
Intriguing when Jeremy pulls her onto the case and she just gets that look of here we go again. She knows she's been down this road unfortunately before, and so it's with a life like that, and it's stated that she's on the doll and she's got nothing going on, and then all of a sudden, you have this person come in and you're speaking with them and sharing an afternoon with them and feeling like maybe I have more than two brain cells to contribute to a conversation. Finally again,
and she's just built it up. This is what it's all been for. Now I've got him.
She gives it to Johnny as well as he gives it to her, as far as the philosophy and the quick wit and all of that, which is surprising because I think there's something that as Americans we probably missed in this film, which is the voices and the class distinctions and what the accents mean. Because obviously Jeremy is very posh and he has that accent, and we can tell that even as Americans. But what does a man Cunion accent bring to us? What does the way that
Sophie talks like, what does that tell us? What's the way that Brian talks like? Everybody has their little thing. We've got a lot about Scottish people and Irish people. We've got ewen Bremer and I can't remember the name of the actress that plays Maggie, but that whole thing about them being Scott's is a big deal in this and all of these displaced people inside of London, this melting pot of all these different I guess London is probably not a melting pot, especially with all of the
things that have been going on in England lately. We don't like the outsiders, but we're okay with ourselves. But yet there's the class distinctions between all of these different strata of accents and people. I am curious if the way Sophie talks in a very distinct way, and that's one of the things I really like about that actress. I'd recognize her voice more than I recognize her as a body. Just to hear that voice, I'm like, oh,
I've seen her before, I know this person. And I'm curious as far what her accent brings to the table, as far as what her class is and what her background is.
That's a good question. I certainly wouldn't consider it an upper level accent or even middle class. And that's funny too, because like outside of Jeremy, pretty much everybody's really like if you're going to say anybody's even middle class in this like the security guards like the closest shot you've got to that, and I wouldn't even say that he's
probably all that affluent. But so you've got all these people who are on the dole, who are working stiffs, but all are showing greater intellect, then you would necessarily expect if you just say somebody's lower class. And I think that's I really like that actually about this film, because it's you can't judge somebody's mental abilities based off of their social stratu.
Michael himself grew up in Manchester and he was middle class when he was all surrounded by working class people. So he went to school with working class kit Ken's he knows this world very well, so I never feel like he's.
Talking down And I don't know what this means other than there's a lot of stairs in England, but this movie's filled with stairs. There are stairs everywhere, so much of the everything that's shot at the apartment, I would say probably a third of it takes place on a stairwell. And then you get over to Brian, and Brian's my second favorite part of this film, or the second biggest memory, I should say, because the hair whipping is not a favorite part, but that was burning my brain. The other
stuff was just the entire Brian scene. And with that, I love how they start while he's on his little stairwell. When they meet, he's sitting outside on the stoop, and so much of their big conversation starts in a stairwell ends in a starewell. And I don't know exactly what all of that is, but just if you watch this movie with stares in mind, you're going to see him like crazy. Between that and the other thing I picked
up on a lot was alliteration. There's so much alliteration in this and I think that helps with the way that Johnny could just speak these lines and speak them so quickly, and he just latches onto a consonant sound and just like starts hitting it over and over again, and it's almost like poetry at ryan'sn No, it's almost like poetry the way that he speaks, which is wonderful
to hear. And that's one reason why I can tolerate Johnny a lot more than I think I could Otherwise if he wasn't as well spoken as he is, I would just be like, get away from this county now, he's awful.
That's really the dialogue is what keeps you riveted throughout it. Like it's not it's not the events even necessarily that are happening, it's how they're how the dialogue that happens in the course the events, that's what makes everything. That's what makes you want to continue to watch it. Because if it wasn't there and you were just watching these events unfold without that kind of banter going on, without those rants, you would shut it off. Let's face it,
it just wouldn't. You would be like, I don't want to watch this. So it's the dialogue and the rants that just help keep you fixed on this film throughout even but it's two hour and ten minute timeline.
I think that's quite the moment in all of his films. The dialogue is what you're there for, really, like just interaction with the people and how they express themselves and are able to really seness what they're about just by talking, because we don't see a lot of interior, so it's really just how they talk to each other, and.
If there is an interior, there's a stare.
And the way that he talks with Uhin Bremer. He's talking and Bremer is just not getting it. He is not hearing him because he's just monologuing and telling these stories and just giving all these quips and doing all this stuff while Bremer is there looking for Maggie, and Bremer is just like, who is this weird guy? And he eventually starts to tag along. I wrote in my note at one point that Johnny is like a dark shadow the way that he follows people along, because he's
following w. Bremer's character. He's following Brian throughout the building, He's following the waitress as she goes home. He's just I don't want to say he's a puppy, because he's not. He's to me he's that dark shadow, and I think Jeremy's the shadow version of Johnny, but he's the dark version. Johnny is a dark presence, and he's I don't want to use the N word. I don't want to say that he's nihilistic, but I think that's as close to Brian gets pretty darn close to call him a nihilist.
And I think that there are a lot of nihilistic aspects of Johnny, but I think more than anything, he's obsessed with the apocalypse, and he will use things like Nostrodamus, like Book of Revelation, spinning all of these things together to try to come up with this very apocalyptic vision of the world and that everything is going to end. No matter what he's talking about, he seems to lean
towards that and just bring things to the bad. Even when he's talking about the butterfly theory and chaos theory and the butterfly effect, it's always something happens here and then something bad happens over there.
Interesting you bring up the whole nihilistic aspect of this, because the one thing that I've done some of my viewings of this movie is just playing Devil's advocate and saying, what if Johnny's dying? What if all of this is so much of his motivation and so much of his reaction is because he's actually dying. He gets that coughing jag when he's reading the chaos theory, which of course lends itself to the butterfly flapped its wings somewhere comment.
Also when he's with the woman from the window, you don't want to fuck me or you're going to catch something cruel, and like his reaction even to seeing the skull and crossbones on her shoulder, like it's taken aback by that. Who's this? How dare you remind me again that I'm not in control and that I'm going to die, And I'm just like, I'm sorry, I have to like this whole notion. I just I follow it sometimes and
thinking is this where this misogyny is coming from? Is he like, is he pissed off that he was born and that he's just like hate fucking anybody with a womb because he's pissed off that he's born and he's dying. And then you get to that scene where he's on the stairs and he's freaking out and Jeremy comes out and Johnny's got this glaze in his eyes. Well he's not seeing reality as it is and reaching out to Jeremy and saying things like, why not, my brother? Is
it going to be quiet now? I'm still wet yet almost sounds like somebody who's seeing Jeremy and thinking, is this the angel who's come to take me? And then when he reaches out to him and he pulls back, and it's just jolted back into this reality and even to the point of the ending of this film where it's like he seems like he's going to be going back with Louise and maybe there's a happy ending after all and all this craziness, but instead he scoops the
money and just goes down the street. Is that because he doesn't want Maybe this is a moment of kindness to her, saving her from what he might be going through. And it would also explain why he's constantly absorbing information and trying to find out what's it all about?
And then he.
Loses his books and as soon as he says, it doesn't matter how many books you read, there's just some things you're never ever gonna understand, And then pretty much the next with him in it, he loses lose books, he's losing his ability to try and understand through the written word. But because of this crazy series of events that he's gone through, maybe he's trying to find meaning an understanding by continuing this journey at the end outside
of books and through experience. Is an interaction just something that I've come to look at and just be know, like, what if this is not such a simple thing of just persecute's just an absolute bastard. Maybe there's some sort of subtext underneath of all this which is controlling him.
I really like what you're saying there, especially because one of the early scenes of Johnny, when he's going up the stairs in order to see I think Sophie, he starts to walk up and he almost falls down and he's just like, oh, bloody hell, and then he moves back up the stairs. I'm like, Oh, that was weird. That was an odd thing to happen, And why even keep that in the movie other than that fitting with your theory? And I really like that.
I see that is just he's just chilling. God. I can't believe I'm going to have to go through this. I slept with her once or I can't believe that I've got to go and suffer checking out this room so that I have someplace to be right now kind of things. And then he goes up and he's just croll and gets out of there and goes right on back down again.
I really like this theory. I think when you say he's doing kindness to Louise, like he's doing kindness either way, whether he's dying, Mark just get away from me, so it makes sense what you're saying. I just feel like he has this relentlessness about Usually people who are so witty and educated, they want a reaction like they're they're also to be impressed by me, and this guy doesn't care. He just does the He's the same with everyone, and
that's quite fascinating. What is this urge? He wants to shake people up and don't you see things the way I do? But also he doesn't actually want to connect with people, so it's just like push and pull thing the whole time. It's really he's quite an enigma.
It's really quite sad too. You're talking about like how a lot of times he's just talking at people, just he was talking at Archie. All of it's going over his head. Times he talks to Sophie and be like, did you get that, And she'll be like, of course I got it, but you don't really get it because you're not really listening. So he just pretty much during most of the film just talks at people.
Oh God, like the guy hanging the posters. That guy barely says a word and is so tired of hearing Johnny that he eventually just kicks his ass.
But the one person he does have a dialogue with is Brian, and it's again sad that it's like the only time he has a dialogue with somebody, it's with another man instead of with woman. Really, but I'm also wondering whether it's because he saw a bit of himself and Brian in the fact of here's this guy and he's got this stack of books. Maybe he's trying to find answers to thing. But once Brian starts talking about the future, his gleeful occupation with the future, then it's
just no glove's off. I'm gonna knock you down and I'm going to tell you how there is no future, and I'm going to not let you ever think that positively ever again, and which then you get the next day when they're in that cafe and Brian says, don't waste your life, and he's like, what he almost took that as an insult, it seems, and again that kind of makes me heel like I don't have a life.
I'm not going to have you now. Whether that's just his apocalyptic view or whether there's an actual medical thing going on with them, that's all to interpretation.
Of course, that thing with Brian, so Brian. The stuff with Brian I absolutely love. Like I said, that could be a movie. Unto itself, is just these two guys doing the back and forth and sharing their philosophies, and it feels like there's almost a moment for people when we meet them to share their philosophy. Things like Jeremy talking about how he's going to commit suicide when he's forty, if he's still alive when he's forty, he's going to
commit suicide because he doesn't want to get old. He doesn't want to be in that future, the future that Brian keeps talking about, and then Brian just being obsessed with that, and then Brian also wanting to be alone, like this whole idea of him being secluded in this massive office building where he's guarding the space. And I love that whole thing about what happens if they come in and steal the space, You're out of a job.
And the way that he has to go around and record his movements inside of the building with that little device, and how he calls that device's boss, and just that he is on a regulated schedule. He has to go around twenty three times every hour and swipe these things in order to keep that job, in order to show that he was a certain place at a certain time and have it recorded for all history. And just I love that he has this whole thing with living in
that future. He wants to move away and go to that isolated cabin that's right on the side of the sea, looks like something out of Emily Bronte or something. And then how he we've got that one round window in the building, and the way that he walks to that round window with Johnny in tow following him like his little dark shadow, gets to that window, and then we see what he's looking at and that he It's very It's funny. There's a couple of Hitchcock references in this movie.
There's one about don't dress up like your mother and stab me in the shower that happens with the waitress. But then there's the whole thing of rear window, and Johnny does basically that Grace Kelly thing by breaking the voyeurism and going from the building over across the street and actually meeting the woman in the window that seems to be obsessing Brian. And that's a real violation for me. The way that he now suddenly becomes the object of
Brian's gaze. Does he know that Brian's watching? At one point, yes, he very much confirms that Brian is watching. And then it becomes the I need to put on a show for Brian, which is just a bizarro thing. And just the way that he interacts with that lady, and is it tender she's drunk off her ass. He knows that he's drunk, she's drunk off her ass. He's going to try to be kind, but then he ends up with
the whole hair pulling thing and then the insult. She's trying to make herself look attracted to him, and he wants nothing to do with her other than to just tear her down.
For sure, Absolutely no reason you have to wonder about that, like why the different reactions to the different characters. Why is it that this woman he just immediately is cruel to whereas the waitress he's showing tenderness too. Is it because that waitress is more attractive to him? Is that he feels like he had some sort of bait and switch situation with looking through the window and he's upset
about that. He seems to genuinely like Sophie at first, but then as soon as she becomes too clingy that he's still he got buyer's remorse on this one now, and then that's when he starts to be cruel to her, and of course poor Luise who just wrote him a postcard. He's just cruel to out until he gets the shit kicked down. You really have to wonder what for him is I'm going to be civil or I'm going to be nasty, because he never really is nasty to Maggie,
never mean to her. If anything, he takes care of.
Her neighbor or character. He tells her that he does not read, which is obviously I can't really believe that.
And then with the litltrice, he is very much talking about his literature and his what he knows and when he doesn't know, and so he feels more like he can be himself and we or feels more comfortable maybe in this more glamorous setting with all these books and nice art and sculptures, and I feel he's able to show different sides depending on as obviously who he is with and with Maggie even felt something a bit like paternal there, which is very weird, because she's like a
maybe soon to be homeless youth or a homeless youth. And that's what I was gonna ask you too as well. Why is he so nice to certain people?
Do you think the one thing I can't help but make comparison. I'm not the first one who've done this, obviously, but I see that there's a kindred spirit between Johnny and look Back in Anger and the main character from that, and how they go on these rants and can be just viciously cruel and within look Back and Angry, It's always been a matter of class. His wife comes from a higher class family, but he's constantly cruel to her.
Still.
It was a great victory for him to steal a woman from the upper class, but at the same time, she's never completely come to his level. He's biting and cruel to her, where he's got this buddy who comes over and reads newspapers with them all through the day. But he's Welsh, He's okay, I can be kinder to him.
He's my buddy. And I wonder if there's a little bit of that with Johnny as well, where it's like sometimes these people that he's feeling more kindred towards somebody like Maggie because this is somebody who just doesn't have a shot, and I'm gonna shield her, I'm going to take care of her other people. I feel like he saw the woman in the window, this is on you.
You screwed up your life on it. And so I don't have any pity s because she's drinking and she's in a place where she doesn't even know that there is a map of Ireland on the wall. So it's obviously this is all your fault. You brought this arms, Whereas I don't think he necessarily feels that same way about Maggie, And I think he's just got this weird way of interacting with people, and it's based off of
his first impressions with them. And a lot of times he will change his attitude towards them as is impressional and changes too. That definitely seems to happen quite a bit as well.
This whole idea of the might Lee method and how these characters come into existence is fascinating for me too, especially because whenever I interview an actor, I'm just like, how do you get into this character? How do you find this character? Is it all just on the page? What do you bring to the party. And some actors, of course, will do the whole thing of I've written a backstory about this character. I want to know everything
that happened before we got to the movie. And this Mike Lee stuff, it really feels like all of these characters have been thought through to the nth degree that we would know if I talked with the gentleman that played Brian, that he would tell me, oh, Brian grew up here and he had this, and his wife divorced him because of this, that and the other thing, and just like, give me the entire life of Sorry for the pund in the life of Brian, but just give
me all of that stuff. So even when it comes to the woman across the way and that map of Ireland on the audio commentary, they're like, oh, she is living in a flat that used to be occupied by a couple of IRA people, and it's like, oh okay, like we know they know all of these things about all of them, Like they probably know what business Brian is protecting from that postmodernist gas chamber that they're talking about.
There's so much to this, So when things don't add up, like with some of the stuff that I was talking about with, I don't buy that reaction type of thing.
That's what makes a little bit more disappointing. But what makes us such a rich story, and what I think makes all of these Mike leevefilms so rich, which now I need to watch more of them, is that these characters are so well thought through and so well crafted, and that we do get those little things like oh, this apartment happened to be this beforehand, which then plays into the troubles in place to this whole idea of people from outside of London and what are these guys
doing here. They're plotting things against the government to do some terrorist acts, which in ninety three that was still definitely going on. The thing too with the woman across the way is fascinating with you were talking about the death head tattoo, and that's when it feels like the worm turns and suddenly he goes from trying to have sex with her to oh, keep away from me, you are a bad omen type thing. And then once he do,
he fucking steals her books. I think it's the only time he steals something other than the money at the end, but definitely showing his lack of moral fiber, but that he steals her fucking books. And she says, that's my favorite book. I've read it so many times, and he takes it. It's what a fucking bastard. Well, he stole a car, that's true. That's true. And let's not forget the rapes, the three big crimes of naked, the car,
the books, and then the money at the end. There's a lot of rape, a lot of fucking rape in here. When he's banging Sophie's head against the arm of the couch, I'm just like, what is your fucking problem, dude?
That one almost is more troubling to me than Jeremy when he rapes Sophie, because it's just like you could just be breaking the personall open. The way you're doing this, It's like that one hits me harder just because I'm like, this is crazy how you're doing this right now. There's a lot of rough scenes in this movie, there's no doubt about that.
Well, it's nineteen ninety three, this is before the era of tattoos really has taken off. So these two female characters have tattoos between the woman in the window and then Sophie, and both Johnny and Jeremy call out that tattoo on Sophie's arm as well, what is this your tribal initiation? Or she says it's a tribal initiation because like I said, she can give it to Johnny as much as he gives. And then later on when Jeremy's
oh did you tattoo hurt good? He's such a piece of shit, Jeremy man, oh man, what an amazing performance to be able to make me hate someone who's a fictional character so much.
We never ever see Jeremy get his come upons at all. He just drives off into another thing. And whereas with Johnny it's and it just seems like there's always this fatalistic thread throughout the whole thing. And cause and effect and almost like an examination of determinism, and even so much so that Johnny came to London because he thought he was going to get a beating, and so he
comes to London to avoid a beating. What happens, he gets a beating, and it's just so it's he can't escape this fate.
That's it. Quite a random beating, totally beating someone he pissed.
Off, just random group of kids, just beat the shit out of them. Seriously, Amy, it's what you're beat Nick friends call karma. The way that he comes to London just to catch that beating that he was going to get in Manchester, that there is that follow through that he does see this as almost a cosmic punishment and
it's well deserved. And him running away at the end, or hopping or limping however you want to put that away from the apartment where so much of this has taken place, and or row House, i should say, and just the beautiful sunrise that's going on, and him limping down the middle of the street, just trying to run away as quickly as he can from everything, because there's no reason why he's running. It's not like Louise is
going to chase after him for this money. He just gets up and takes it and should be able to slowly limp his way around, but instead we have almost the it's almost a triumphant shot, but it's not because he has had the shit kicked out of him, and just the way that he's limping along and the way that his ankle looks in this movie. Holy Kyle, whoever did the prosthetics on that good job, because that's disgusting.
But once again, this is the classest to me. But it's just once again the rich fucker gets away, which everything has no come up in it all. Johnny, he's lower class, so you know he's going to get the
shit kicked down. As rough of a movie as this is, it's always been like ever since I've seen it, it's always been within my top ten, just because the performance is amazing and I really just find it riveting, and so many of the scenes are just shot so well, and even the score that just the cello in that harp, not since the Marx Brothers has a heart been used so well in film. It's just amazing. It just has
so many great elements. But I've never seen it on the big screen, and the time when it was coming around on a revival at my local movie theater two weeks before that, I broke my gulp and so I was sadly no, at least that would have been a better story. So it was just like, that's a little ironic that this movie that I've never seen on the big screen, which has been was something that I used
to make an annual viewing of. I finally get the chance to see it on the big screen, and I can't do it because I've broken my ankle.
So would you say, Jen your favorite? Mike Lee Chung, Absolutely.
Yes, definitely. I think I'd seen Life as Sweet before, and so when this film was recommended to me, I was dubious because I didn't think that film necessarily would be my kind of like it wasn't exactly my kindest film. But then, of course, after I watched this one, then I started delving into a little bit of the back catalog, and it is such a radically different film than see every single other film that He's ever doe, And honestly,
to me, that's probably why it's my favorite. All these other films at least have some note of optimism at the end, whereas this one gatting back to your feel bad movie. You get to that last scene and he's hobbling down the street and he's just framed by that street and you see the house behind and he's just limping along and the camera's getting further and further away
from him because he can't keep up. And then you get to that final chord and it just cuts to black and you just feel like, Ah, what's going to happen next? There's no resolution, makes you keep thinking about it afterwards too. There is no resolution to this at all for any of these care except for maybe Sounder. She's had her bath and she's tied in the house and she'll go back to work as Immerse. It's everything's just so open ended, but it and it leaves you
just with so much to digest. There's so much that happens in such limited period, and a lot of it's very miseral and very rough. It just it's not something that's going to leave you quickly.
This variation, this one unique one off, and also the rest of his bis Law ENSEMBLEI shells too. But I guess if you watch this first in a way, you have this really different idea of what to expect from the rest of the films.
This movie, even though I've only seen it two three times, this movie always tricks me because we have We've got Jeremy, who's just this uncontrollable force of nature, and he's just snoozing in their bedroom. It's basically like they've got a
tiger in their house and he's the tiger. And Louise and Sophie go out to the pub and it's a wonderful scene of those two talking and talking about some of their past romances and things that have happened to them, and finally it feels like Louise is giving some of
the sympathy to Sophie that she needs. Because when Louise comes in and doesn't know that Sophie has been raped, it is one of the worst things ever because she just starts to lay in on Sophie and you're just like, for fuck's sakes, Louise, she just had the most horrible day that she'll ever have and she just comes in and starts picking on her. Once they get through that, once they get to the pub, you've still got Jeremy back at the place and they're like, do you think
he's gone. Now we're not sure. And then you see Johnny coming and I'm just like, oh, okay, great, Johnny's going to walk into the house or go back to the house while Jeremy's there, and We're going to have the biggest rout in the world. But that doesn't happen. He gets shit kicked out of him.
Like we said.
The next time we see me falls into the door, and we still have Jeremy in that house, we still have the tiger in the bedroom. But nothing like that happens. There is no big final confrontation Johnny and Jeremy, Like you said, there's that whole thing where he mistakes Jeremy for somebody else and is just hallucinating through all of this.
That's it. That's the interaction that we get. We don't get them having a conversation like of the two people in the entire movie, where I'm just like, I'm very curious what these two people would interact like. It's a very different situation than what I was expecting.
At least. The one little aspect of cold comfort with Jeremy is when Louise plays him at his own game and just feeds into his narcissism and then grabs the and she'll like, what you don't want me to cut your prick off? And then as he's leaving the room, calling him a maggot dick, and just like the look on his face, it's like, for one brief second, he's
been taken down a moment. It's just going to feed into his misogyny and make him probably even worse, but at least for like that one second, he saw how other people see it, and it's fitting.
Did they take care of it rather than Johnny in a sense.
Oh yes, thank goodness that they're the ones that take care of it. Though he just eventually leaves, it's not like he had to. He could stay there forever.
I think I think Sondra is the one that really kicked him out. And again that's they had some different dynamic than he had with Sophie and Louise definitely.
Undress in a rom com. The way that she comes in is just look at my place. Oh this is terrible. It's don't tell mom the babysitters dead type of thing. It's just what did you kids do to my place? Everything is a mess. I'm gonna have to clean the bathroom and now I'll clean the kitchen and she just becomes this cleaning machine and again doesn't understand what's going on.
I just talked about the way that Louise reacts to Sophie, and now it's the way that Sondra acts when she comes in and she's just like, what kind of crazy antics have you guys been getting up to? Who's this strange man in my bed? I'm so upset because he's got his dirty boots on my bed, and I'm just like, Wow, you are not reading the room whatsoever. And it's almost funny the way she comes in and does that, and
other times it's very frustrating. And it's just an interesting dynamic to have in this movie, this character who just drops in at the end, and she is the one that eventually solves the problem, not with violence, but just hey, get out of here type of thing. And it's her appearance in this movie is not something I was expecting. I didn't expect to see Sondra come back and to have her be this type of.
Character completely by design as well. You've gone through so much rough stuff that you just needed something to break it up with a little bit of levity. And the fact that she can't finish a sentence and just and is a completely different character than anybody else that we've seen in this entire thing. Like she's the one person in this whole film who probably has a happy little life in a way. Everybody else has got their misery
and their darkness. She's able to, you know, take time off of work and go on safaris to Africa, and you know, she has a professional job, and you know, she's the one person who probably can't relate to anybody else in this movie. I always want to say solemn drafts.
Also, it's tiny that you observed this in a way because I read that Mike Lee wanted Claire Skinner the actress thing Sandra, so you wanted but she had another job, so you can really involve her the whole rehearsal process. That he left this space open, like he knew he wanted her to come back, and that's why he made this whole thing of her being on this troop. But then that's why in a way, there's this kind of
amusing clash and it becomes a sort of farce. But it's funny that these styles also maybe are due to this kind of late addition to the whole process.
Doesn't do Let's say, a line in Big Lebowski about Sandra's on holiday in Africa or something.
It's Sandra, look, I have to take this.
Do you still have that doctor's number?
Oh? No, really it's and I've improog anymore.
Oh please, Jeffrey, I don't want to be responsible for any delayed after effects.
See another interesting thing that I found I was very purposeful when I watched this last where I paused the movie to see exactly when Johnny leaves their apartment versus when he comes back, And it's almost exactly at thirty minutes that he leaves, and almost exactly thirty minutes are left in the movie when he comes back. So it's interesting that we have this very distinct structure in a movie that is essentially a series of vignettes, but it
is very carefully crafted. I appreciate that as well. We're talking all about this method and the way that Mike Lee does all these things, but yet he fits all of this into a very cinematic world and is able to make traditional ish movies out of the way that he has these characters interact and that he puts them in these situations where you can have very clean act breaks and say, okay, thirty minutes he leaves the house for that whole dark Knight of the Soul, and even
within that there are little acts between the vignettes of him meeting with Maggie and Archie, and then we see him the next day in front of the subway and watching all of those people, and you get that real London feel.
You get that.
I get the feeling that a lot of this movie was probably stolen or maybe they had permits, but it feels a lot of it like it was just here we are, let's set up the camera, let's go. And I think they talk about that a little on the
commentary too. As far as I want to say, it was Archie and Johnny got into a fight, and eventually Lee intervened, like the police recalled, and Lee came in and was just like, okay, you need to get out of character now, so that they wouldn't continue with this row that they were having in front of the public.
That was actually during the improblemizational rehearsals that happened, because I think that I forget one of them had a screwdriver and was brandishing it on the other one or something that effect as well. But that that whole scene though, Like when they're on that street when Archie and Johnny initially meet, there weren't any extras. They didn't block off the street at all. Same thing for when he's standing outside of the underground. Those scenes were just normal people
walking by. But then you have the scene where he's walking with Maggie underneath a bridge or wherever he's got the flaming trash can and the person with the dog. That was all very contell. I like that aspect. I always think that's funny, Like when you're watching old Monty Python flying circuses and they're obviously on the street, and these are people who are not extras, and they're just like, why is this person in this get up running down
the street this way? You don't have that here obviously, but think about it, and you could be on some street in London and all of a sudden you just here see this guy just constantly screaming by, and then it's just gonna be like, little what was this guy's problem? That probably happens frequent enough that you just you have no idea that this is somebody acting right now, there's so much hacked in there, but I don't know where
else you can go with that. You start picking out little bits of dialogue here and there, but really you can hash that out all day. One of the things that I of course now that it's not nineteen ninety three or even nineteen ninety six, now it's twenty twenty four, and that whole apocalyptic thread of these constellations are going to align on August eighteenth, nineteen ninety nine. And this is good. The end of the world is not because
of this. It's a shame that kind of it was something else to be watching when are you seeing it in the mid nineties and you're, oh, shit, is this really really? Yeah, I gotta look this. Does Wormwood really mean Chre Nobyle? I gotta look this up, because damn this is I don't know about that. And of course we've gone past that, but it aged itself that way, which is a little bit of a pity. But the performances are just still so solid throughout that you can
still get so much out of it too. And again we've touched on it, but the scene between Brian and Johnny and just Johnny's full if he where he's not nihilistic in saying that the apocalypse by definition is that man will cease to exist as he is. But he's like trying to even be a little optimistic for a moment there. But then of course he gets Brian on the stairs and talks about that omelet that stinks because
God hates you. There are so many lines that you could talk about, but really, anybody who's listening to this who hasn't seen the movie, those lines are the lights that you find by watching it.
You could have a whole discussion just about the guy who's putting up the posters and where they start, where they end the Therapy posters, and that it's the band called Therapy is interesting. And then when he comes back by and somebody else has already plastered something over it, and then he plasters to canceled over what somebody plastered over his thing. It's just oh okay, And first off, Therapy is canceled maybe by just that they use Therapy as the Navy as the band, and I realized they're
a real band. I recognized that album art and that was that was That was something I found very fascinating about London is the use of those posters and the way that those posters because people just come by and they post, and then they post again, and then the post again, and you're looking at inches. It's like an archaeological dig with all of these inches of posters that are just stuck there. They would do the same thing
at the University of Michigan. There were these big concrete pillars where people would put up all of their posters and it would just get thicker and thicker. But their solution was to come along with flamethrowers and just burn them off. And I don't think that they're doing that in London.
No, we don't need London's burning for real.
But no, we've had that once already. We don't need it again.
You're talking about and not being so apocalyptic anymore, not relevant. I do feel like watching it also now in twenty twenty four. Of course it's not a popa publish this way, there is the sense of doom that is consistent, and watching it again this past few months, it does feel still quite relevant. Unfortunately, this way of trying to get
people's attentions about certain things in our world. Wendy andess I wanted to mention just about starting this is way back the way the Shilip starts, but for merely watching being introduced to Johnny in this way, this very violent way, also creates this tension throughout the whole show. What are be capable of doing? So no matter who he's interacting with,
I'm always feeling so tense. And obviously it's purposeful and there's a reason why, but I found it really and also just the way it's handheld, which Mike Lee actually never really does, so it really distinguishes like this is its own show. Mike Lee is going through something he wants to show a certain kind of world that he has not shown before, and he's really making it clear
this is like nothing else I have done. You know, he started his career in the seventies or even the late sixties, so he's really been around for a long time. And this is also I guess the question is why was this like his breakout in a way? He won the con for Best Director, the con Prize and David Luiswan for Best Actor, and since then he's also won quite a few after that, but this really was his
breakout film and I wonder why that is. Of course is exceptional, but I also personally think that his previous films like High Hopes and All the Life Is Sweet and Nuts in May, even like you know, waid Back When, are quite special as well. So it's interesting how it struck a chord also in that time that era.
It definitely struck a chord because when it was made, Oh, that's very apparent. It's is funny you mentioned that the tension that Johnny brings within everywhere he goes. But yet he says to Archie, what's it like up in there? Bit hectic, and that it's just what should light being new? That just casting that shadow, like you're saying, like throughout every life that he touches, course in nature.
This one was distributed by Fine Line here in the States back in ninety three, and I think one of the reasons why it hit so hard was because this was such the time of independent films here in the States, and it did get the art house circuit. I don't know if it got outside of that, but that was the time where we were seeing this is right around the time of Reservoir Dogs, a year before pulp fiction was coming out, and it's just like this golden era
of independent filmmakers. And I think Mike Lee, if anything, is a very independent filmmaker, and I think that this hit at the exact right time for us to be talking about this movie still today. Even if it came out a few years earlier, a few years later, I don't know if it would have had the same impact
that it did in nineteen ninety three. But I think just the stars, to Johnny's ploint, the stars were aligning with all of the things that were happening in our cinema as well as with just this movie itself too, And that is such a because, like I said, I take it back as far as not seeing any other Mike Lee, I think I started to watch Toxis Turvy. I don't know why I never made it all the way through that, but I was like, Oh, this is the same guy that did Naked.
What the Fuck's I was reading an interview with Mike Lee that's in the forward of the scripture Naked, and like, at the time when he was making this movie, he was forty nine, so he's just about to turn fifty, and he had been making films since the sixties and the seventies, and even talks about the attitude that when I was a young adult in the sixties, we had all this optimism and we felt like by the time I would get to the point where I was fifty years old, we would all be living a lot better
and the world would have changed for the better. And he said, instead, we got this, And that's where he projected himself into Johnny, that disappointment and that frustration of where the world has gone instead of where he thought
it was going to go. So I think that's another reason why it just was that movie for him at that time, because he was at that point in his life versus where he had been as a younger man, and where the state of the world had gone, and how he was so disappointed when you just take that one line of the interview and then throw it against how Johnny acts and see where he's projected himself into Johnny as far as that just disappointment with humanity, and I think that's good of a place that I can
sum up and finish this discussion as any All.
Right, we're going to take a break and play a preview for next week's show right after these brief messages.
Okay, organist, that's your part in the book. A part, of course, is a good.
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But just call down there list, just get a briefing inmit should.
That's right, We are wrapping up Art House August with a look at Jean Pierre Melville's Army of Shadows. Until then, I want to think my co host Ellie and Nick. Nick, what's been keeping you busy lately?
Sir?
Actually I've begun to put a metaphorical pen to paper again and just finished a first chapter jil new book that I'm rather excited about because I was thinking did I have anything left to say? And it appears that maybe I have one last thing to write about, So I'm happy that's moving ash for me.
Old man Nick, one last thing I have to say. You're not even sixty yet. Come on and Ellie, what's the latest with you?
So I have my own film podcast call Somebody's Watching, which you can find on Instagram and Spottish Eye and anyplace else you listen to podcasts, And I also am the co director of the film festival called Final Girls Berlin's which is showcasing horror made by women and non binary filmmakers. Next year's our tenth edition, so pretty exciting, and submissions are open as anyone wants to submit a horror film or anything like that, very open to that.
Well, thank you so much folks for being on the show. Thanks everybody for listening. If you want to hear more of me shooting off my mouth, check out some of the other shows that I work on. The are all available at weirdingwaymedia dot com. Thanks especially to our Patreon community. If you want to join the community, visit patreon dot com slash Projection Booth. Every donation we get helps the Projection Booth take over the world.
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