Oh he is, folks, it's show tied.
People pay good money to see this movie.
When they go out to a theater, they are cold sodas, hot popcorn in No monsters in the protection booth.
Everyone for tend. Podcasting isn't boring.
Turn it off.
Illegal in forty seven states.
It's the dirtiest sport in the world. Not since The Hustler has the sabbathe underbelly of the gambling world been so nakedly exposed. War Notes stars as Frank Mansfield's profession.
And my bird here he can beat anything you've got, showed.
Man Cockfighter of violent men and the sport that killed. He's got an animal instinct for winning and.
Women to drive.
Drive in in history, be the best.
And he'll do anything to come out on top.
Winning is the name of the game.
Cockfighter from governor's mansions to cheap hotels. It's the big money sport that's dirty, violent and outside the law. From the award winning book, It takes a searing look at the men with the lust to win and the women who spur them on. Warren Os is the Cockfighter right at all.
One hundred seventeen not admitted without Karen.
Regarding Welcome to the Projection Booth. I'm your host, Mike Whitehead. Me once again, is mister Jedediah Ayers?
Do you know there's no two ounce leeway an official a CT hack. Also back in the booth is Miss Heather Drain heleare Helene on this episode weirdscussing Monty Hellman's Cockfighter, released in nineteen seventy four, The film stars Warren Oates as Frank Mansfield. When he came to town with his cock in his hand, all the women swooned, and what he did with it was illegal in forty seven states.
In other words, Frank Mansfield is a professional cockfighter, the ancient game of pitting two roosters against one another for sport. The film was based on Charles Williford's book of the same name, and Williford wrote much of the finished screenplay. We will be discussing his work and ruining this movie as we go along, So if you don't want Cockfighters spoiled for you, please turn off the podcast and come back after you've seen it. We will still be here. So, Jededi,
when was the first time you saw Cockfighter? And what did you think? I was aware of the book first, and I read the book or probably fifteen years ago. I saw the movie probably look Out two or three years after that, more than a decade, but I can't remember exactly what it was I first saw it, But I loved the book and I liked the movie quite a bit, and I've liked it increasingly with rewatches, part of it just being I love warn Oates on screen, and he didn't get to be the star of too
many movies, and this was just a great vehicle for him. Yeah, I love the film, though I don't think i've ever seen it on DVD, like a nice, kind of pristine version of it. I think all the stuff I've seen has been luddy, and I hope I get the chance to get one of those nice copies of it today.
And Heather, how about yourself.
This was a first time watched for me. This was a film that had been on my need to watch list for a long time. Of course I was familiar with it. I also knew that Kailagendiese is a huge fan of it. Of course she has a book. I'm so glad you're going to get to innerwer She is like the grand pouva of this film. So that's very exciting. And of course the quote Jedediah or to cite him, Warren is a god to me, he is an anty god.
If he's in anything, I will watch it, And so I was like, this was the perfect impetus for me to watch it. I still need to read the book I Am super Neophied Calic Fighter Universe. And also kudos for the rampant Dick jokes, so that the introduction.
That's all from Oh gosh, why am I blanking on the gentleman's name? Who produced Thunder and Lightning? And which was another vehicle with Charles Williford in it and David Krdine I guess David Cardyine stars in it and Charles
Williford has a like five minute part in it. Him and Joe Dante and Alan Arkash were all making up the lines for this trailer, and including those that I was quoting above, which I don't know if they ever made it to any of the trailers The Born to Kill or any of those, but we'll definitely be talking about the retitlings and recuts as we go along here. Yeah, this one, I'm trying to remember how I came to this movie because Monty Hellman was a real big cipher
for a long time. People knew of some of his works, but I wasn't aware of him as a person. And I think I got to know him through the producing work that he did on Reservoir Dogs, and then eventually interviewed him for an old issue of Cashiers. And that was back when it was still really tough to find his movies. It was ordering two Lane Blacktop through a video search of Miami. When it comes to this movie, I found a VHS copy of it at Suncoast or
Sam Goodie or one of those. And the back cover of this VHS tape, speaking of shitty quality, Jedidiah looked absolutely awful. But this was the copy on the back of the book. And I think you're both going to enjoy this. Take a dark and eerie walk deep into the Georgia backwoods, where those who aren't welcome don't always
come out. Warren Oates wants to be the king of the roost in the rough and dangerous Southern underground, where moonshine, talk, fights, hard luck, and wild knights are all part of his game. This ain't no place for the timid, and Oates uses his fists, knives, and whatever else it takes to get what he wants and hold on to what he's got.
The plot thickens when Oak crosses the wrong guys and learn about Mountain style justice the Hard Way, a riveting look at a side of life where most civilized people can't even imagine eight but for one law in these parts, and they don't care who lives or dies.
Yeah, it's a much more be shitting the thunder and lightning Bobby than Cockfighter.
But yeah, you know what's.
Weird, that's actually the drain family crest. I can't believe they cribbed our whole Famili's lenneage like that. Good Lord, do you think said brown Rig direct this is a movie? And I say that loving brown Rig, But holy a Purple pros the hell out of the description.
And this was so then the video stopped when they showed the title of it. It was very much like when I watched Disco Godfather the very first time, and the video stops and they put in Chiron over at the avenging Disco Godfather. So they changed the title, but with this one it stops and they pasted board to kill over Cockfighter. But as far as I know, it's the exact same movie that we saw. It is no different.
There were no knife fights, are moonshiners that shit in here? Instead, it was the movie that we still eat these days. And yeah, I have yet to find that alternate cut with like dream sequences and all of these crazy things. But what this was and when I finally saw it, I was just blown away. I'm not that into cock fighting, but I am very much into the Big Three that's
war Oates, Monte Hellman, and Charles Williford. And this movie has those elements in space, including Charles Williford acting in this. So my heart was just all a flutter when I got to see this.
I wasn't aware really of Charles Wilford. I'd seen Miami Blues and I knew it was based on a book. Probably about twenty years ago or so, I first became aware of Charles Wilford and had some friends who were big Willingford heads and started reading I think Cockfighters the first one I read. And I remember reading it because I was sick, and I was so thankful I was sick because I didn't have to go to work and I could just stay in bed and read all day.
I had young kids at the time, and I was just exhausted, and I was like, nope, I have a great excuse just to stay in bed and read all day. And I read probably two or three books over the course of a few days. Cockwriter was one of them, and I really made them impress I loved it, and yeah, it wasn't for a few years after that I realized
they've been a movie adaptation. Williford was definitely my initial interest in cock Fighter, and then about the time I saw the movie, I was really starting to hone in on realizing that I really like Warren Oates as a screen presence. Yeah, but yeah, Williford for me first, and then of course the rest of the cast. Two are heading Stanton and it's just lovely to watch the two of them hang out on screen. Any chance to.
Do that, I'm down for.
Yeah.
I don't remember how I came to Williford, or how Williford came to me. I'm pretty sure my friend rich Osband turned me on to him. I don't remember when that was. So this was Cashier's to Cinema at number five, and by issue nine they weren't a yearly thing. They were a as soon as I possibly can type of thing, which sometimes was two years or more. By issue nine, I was writing about Williford overall, and with that one,
I was so glad. I was able to track down the Cockfighter Journal and read his book about the behind the scenes stuff, which is fascinating as well. But the only thing I really remember from that whole book was him just complaining about Lori Bird so much he just could not stand fair. And then reading Kayla Jennings's book, it sounds like it was a pretty big club that he was part of. When I came to the we can't stand Lori Bird club.
I remember hearing that on the two Lane Blacktop commentary that they were irritated with her, especially because they were musicians and she was singing and she really couldn't pull the tune, and apparently they were chopping at the bit every time she would sing it on screen, and Martiella was having to tell Nope, you gotta take it, you gotta sit there and take it, and they irritated by that. I think she's fun on screen, though, I like her.
I think she's perfect in this movie.
The cast of this film blew me away, and I expected part of that because of who was in it, but the authenticity they nailed it. This phil's so real. You could practically smell this movie, and that's out of way. It's a good smell, but I love that and the fact that it's like, of course it's authentic. We have Charles Williford involved. He's literally in the movie. I found out he was from my home state. He's born in
Little Rock, Arkansas. And it feels authentic because that's the thing you can always tell whenever somebody who's not familiar with the South is making a movie, because it's just like bad he Haw accents, even when they're trying to do serious dramas. I remember seeing the trailer for Hillbilly Elegy. Yeah yeah, god if we knew then, and seeing Glen Clobe, they like, this is a fabulous actress, but her accent,
oh my god. It was about as authentic as Surely C Liquor, which, yeah, it's a deep cut there bating radio advance. But this film that just feels not only authentic to the locale and the actor is still authentic to that, but it feels very honest because there's something about like in rural communities where there's not a lot of money, and it's like you have this necessity that kind of breeds desperation. You have necessity that breeds brutality.
It's a hard life, and it's I feel like this film, even though our protagonist is not a good person and he doesn't brought of really crummy things, he's a human being and everybody this film is a human being, and there's such a respect with that. There's not a judgment with that. And I absolutely love that about this film because that's a I think that's a hard line for a lot of storytellers, whether you're doing pros or film, can do and do it well.
The elements that you would take to sell a picture like this, like you're reading off the jagged copy on the VHS, all that stuff that would be so played up is very much just the day to day reality each year, and it's shrugged off people like when the robbery happens, just prison doing business. We understand this is going to happen. It was an approached and handled like a big set piece, like a suspense sequence or something like that. It was just and here's one more thing
that this life entails. And yeah, so there was a lot of that too. Heather's point of brutality is took part of the life. But again, no, he's not a good guy and there but there's a certain respect given to the people who lived this lifestyle and that it's treated matter of factly and it's not particularly titillating in a judgment was held, which.
I really appreciate because I think even to this day, a lot of people have and our culture looked down upon people that live, especially if they're living in a poor rural area and you don't have access good education. The public school systems dodgy enough in our country and wealth funded areas. And it's like this film does exactly what it showed because it's not justifying any bad behavior. It's not glorifying it, which diet, but it's not condemning it.
It's just here's his story. And I love that with Laurie Bird's character, they could have done more pathos with her because I really get the filling and are a friend of mine and my husbands are friend. Randall has this phrase us like certain people, it's almost like they're like a hamburger rapper in the wind, which is they're living their life in this way and I feel like this poor girl, it's just like this hamburger rapper in the red just floating to and she's ynged, but just
floating to whatever guy and is literally sold. She's property. And just the way that we hear him refer to her, just like, oh she's a pretty girl, she's a good lay. She'll land on her feet and it's good. Crazy she ends up herr Dan Stanton, that's not too bad. Everything is so smartly he in the code of edinboard pathos the whole robbery, which I honestly, if this was a more traditional movie, ye, would you guys have been surprised at one of the guys the mask was Steve Rareil's back.
I totally was expecting the how And I don't know why. I think it's just because I like to see Steve brelsman. My brain was like, get me more reals.
Bat.
It's just all the little touches, Omar hiding his money in the bathtub full of chicken carcasses. Insane, but such a great time.
Yeah, it's really a simple film when you boil it down, because it's this guy who's got this code of ethics right or wrong, what's his code, and he's going to live by it, especially when he shot off his mouth and I was drinking too much, boasting about his cock and how his cock would be undefeated, and yeah, Harry Dean Stanton took him up on it. I was like, all right, let's see it, and they had their little cock fight in the hotel room. He ends up losing
his prize rooster and he's sunk. He cannot go to the Southern what is it, the Southern Cocker Tournament or whatever. It is the big thing that he's living his life for. And then he makes a promise to himself, I will not speak or drink again until I win that medal, and that's his whole thing. Laurie Bird calls him on it. Hey, I heard you talking to your sleep last day. If you can talk while you're sleeping, you can talk while you're awake. He just does not want to explain to
her what is going on with him. He doesn't want to explain to anybody, and he just wanders his way through stuff. And once he loses that initial match that we see in the movie, he's given, Okay, now I got to figure this out. And that's the whole movie is him moving from place to place getting money, trying to buy these chickens from Ed Middleton, this now retired judge of cock fighting and training, this bird up partnering with Omar Bredinski, the Richard Schule character, who I just
fucking love. And they're Pal Buford, who's played by Robert Earl Jones, the father of James Earl Jones, who we just learned passed away today, So that's a real shame. But yeah, I love the chemistry of those guys. And the ending of the movie kind of sneaks up on you because it's just basically them going through all these tournaments.
The next thing they're at the big tournament. It's almost like a Bad News Bears type of thing, like we're gonna go through and pick off all of these smaller competitions, and we get to see all these adventures that they go on. We get to see, yes, Steve Railsback, get to see Ed Begley Junior in here going absolutely ape shit with a fucking hatchet going after Frank.
I love that, and especially because you get the feeling he's his character's a little middlely off and then you hear and he's going after warn Oats with an axe and Warren Oats and them was drowning him and his in his and I've looked that character was his father, right.
Yes, yeah, you might want not to hold him under the water.
So loss it's like, you know that family tree does not have a lot of branches and the baby ed Bailey Junior. Like this film we get Millie Perkins for five minutes and Trey Donnie, who I look like. I kept feel like it's a mad, mad mad world, but with just like cool character actors. It's such a I I think miss it was Joe Spinell, but he's not Southern Wright. We love Jow but Joe's so New York. It's yeah, that would have worked out. But I'm so
glad you mentioned Omar. Omar was absolute my favorite character. He's like the farmer poet, like the way he talks and Schol's performance is so magnetic and he's just looks like this gentleman just sparkle in his eye, gentleman farmer with away with words and just the talking about lightning. And oh I loved him in Viewford so much. I'm like these two were characters. I'm like I wouldn't mind hanging out with these guys. They seem nice, They're lovely. Cockfighting is awful.
It is it loves the book. Of course, you get a lot more out of the Frank character because it is it's all internal, internal monologuing, so you understand him a little bit better. But by god, you get swayed by him. You buy into his bullshit a lot more about what he's doing being in Noble Pursuit, and he's talking about how much he loves, like his real love for these birds, and he's just describing the routine he's going through to train them and things like that, and
then he's just or true to death. He's got two birds that are siblings, and he figures he can push one until it chills him, so he knows what the other one can take, and he can push him. It just tortues this bird to death while he's talking about how much he loves him. And yeah, it was a real Warren Oates is great, but it is different. Having even the voiceover that is in there is a little less. It's less compelling than for making these types of arguments
than really living with this voiceless characters in air. Voice through the pages of the books. I carried that with me into watching the movie. And I'm curious for people who haven't read the book if it's how much of that they bought into Frank's kind of bullshit, because I did bought into it, and then I realized how awfully was and it was hilarious, but it was all.
I don't think you read the book, So how much did you buy into his bullshit?
Let's just say I wasn't one of the I wouldn't be one of the ladies. How was the intro swooning over his massive cock or whatever that the cock talk? But yeah, it's more no to me. That's what helps is you. I think a lesser actor, it would have been tausted, not the movie, because got the movie the whole good Lord, yeah, money Hellman, Lewis tig The editing's great. The cinematography is fantastic, like Mester Almandrose, I know on
Butcher that't sorry, sir, but fabulous cinematographer. But you need an actor to pull up that character who you can't help but just even look at and be like, I like this guy. He's just got a presence about him. Frank's many flaws I think it's what made him interesting. He approaches cockfighting and I maybe I hope we're not talking on my ass with his analogy, but to me,
it's almost like he moves like an addict. He literally sells the house that his brother and his wife are living in so he could get money to keep cockfighting.
I hope he made a little bit more than five hundred dollars out of that transaction.
He sells his brother's house.
Out from my.
I'm sure he made a little more, but yet he wants five hundred dollars to buy ed Middleton's cock.
This violent sport. And that's to say, like the scenes of cockfighting were very hard for me to get through. I feel, especially as I've gotten to the point in my life now, like seeing animal violence in films. It's never that it was easy when I was younger, but it's really hard for me now, Like I'm so sensitive and I didn't have to cover my eyes through some of it just because I just can't. I don't know how. It just hurts my heart to see the innocent suffer.
It is filmed like a dance, and I think the way the film approaches this and it's awful this is such a horrible baby for animals over the dupes, but it films it like a dance, and that is so compelling.
And then also I think helps to what we were just talking about with Frank, because this is a dance he is so invested in you get the feel like he defines his soul almost who he is as a human with his fiancee, Mary Elizabeth, who we meet and she basically you can tell she loves and she's like, I don't want you to doing this.
I don't want to be living like this, and which is more than an understandable, which is more than reasonable, and he invites her to this big, fancy derby so she could see him in the ring, and I was like, what a stunning thing to be like, this is such a huge.
Part of you. That's if you're gonna love me, I want you to see me at my work. Which that that go well for him in the Romhetz department. A little romantic note for any anybody who's sang old out, well, don't do cockfighting.
It's a leak. So he doesn't want to end up like Ed Middleton who is being pressured to get out of cock fighting. He won't admit it to Frank, but he's his wife is okay, sure, I'll do that. I'll sell this prize rooster for five hundred dollars, which Frank is never going to be able to pay me that money.
I know he's not going to be able to. So then yeah, he turns around, sells that house out from under his near Dowell brother, his brother who and I'm sorry, I'm going off of a lot of stuff in the book, so a lot of stuff that doesn't come across in the movie. But he Frank was not the golden child because he was the guy who went off and was doing this whole cockfighting thing. So his dad said, okay, I'm giving everything to your brother, to Randall I think
his name is. And Frank was like, no, that if any court in the cull would read the Bible and know primogeniture and know that I'm the one that deserves all this stuff. So I'm going to fuck over my brother to get this money so i can start this new cockfighting venture because he doesn't want to be poor and he wants to win this thing so much, and yeah, you're right, it is very much like he's got an addiction and it's all so much of the book is how do I get money? How do I get money?
I'm going to go back to this guy, this doctor who sells salves and bones, and he has this new anti indigestion medicine that he's trying to get off the ground. Well, he owes me money, I'm going to go to him. I'm gonna get money out of him. No he doesn't have any money. I'm okay, I'm going to go to my brother and try to get money out of him. No he doesn't have any money. Fuck my brother. I'm gonna just sell this fucking house and take all this money that way.
Yeah.
He is asperate to do this, and he goes through so much. There's a whole character, whole section that's in the book that isn't in the movie where he's going out and playing music at a bar. Eventually gets picked up by this woman, Bernice, who takes him home and he will She agreed to pay him twenty dollars to pay for all of her to play for all of her fancy friends and family, And when she goes to give him a fifty at the end of the night, and he's just, oh, no way, I agreed to twenty dollars,
not fifty dollars. Like, again, those principals come up, So what's he do? He ends up sleeping with her, taking the fifty dollars, breaking his guitar and leaving it on her front porch to be like, this is the extra thirty dollars that you gave me. My guitar is worth about thirty dollars. I'm just like, you are fucking insane. And all of Charles Wildeford's protagonists are insane. They all
are obsessed with things. They're always going after things, they always have weird little works and stuff, and I'm just like, they're fascinating to me to read these characters because they are all fucked up in one way or another.
They remind me of a middle ground between a Michael Man very driven, code living character and a Darren Aronofsky or someone who's who's society thinks they're crazy, but they've got this muse that they're going to follow to the end. And it's that mel ground Frank would see himself. I think more like a Michael Man character, maybe more like the guy in Jericho. Mild is just running and he's not running for it's not competition, it's not whatever. It's just this is how I'm doing my time. This is
how I keep the world from owning me. Is I just brought and that's what he's going to do. But yeah, it's I hadn't really thought of it as as an addict story, but hearing you guys describe it that way, it makes sense. And I do think it maybe brings those two sort of one he's perhaps nobler than the other, but they almost touch and I sink cockwriter. Maybe is the bridge that connects them that way.
Talking about the whole chasing the money, you feel like, what's ever going to be enough? He could win the most amount of money and he's just going to use it to keep the cycle going.
But it's not even the money. I think he earns a thousand dollars for it. It's that fucking medal. He just wants that medal, and that medals what triggers his whole flashback. Like when Middleton shows him the medal, He's just like, this could have been yours, but you talk too much and you drink too much, and then that triggers that flashback, and I love I can't remember if it was Brad Stevens or who it was writing about.
Does Frank ever come out of the dream sequence? Is he just in that dream sequence for so much of this movie, because the way that Hellman presents it, it isn't like a typical dream sequence. It's not like the screen gets blurry or the edges fog up or something.
They're just like, okay, that's interesting. And then this writer, whoever it was, and I apologize if it was Brad or somebody else, was talking about the scene with Omar being robbed, and that's the only time that we really move away from Frank, and we aren't with Frank because almost every single scene he's in, but that's the one time that we go away. And it's also all taking place in a hotel room, which is where Frank's humiliation was.
They all end up taking off their pants at the end of this robbery, and so it's just is this like some sort of weird sexual humiliation that Frank went
through with Jack Burke, the Harry Deedon Stanton character. Yeah, it might be a little bit out there, but it is interesting that this is the only time that we don't see Frank in the movie, that we just stick with Omar and meanwhile they're cross cutting it with Frank and I believe it's the whole scene with Ed Begley Junior where he's cheating and they have rosin up the rooster's feet and all that, and yeah, that seems amazing. And that's all again somebody trying to welch on a deal.
Ed Bigley Junior's father tries to welch on this deal. Oh, sorry, don't have a thousand dollars. I only have three hundred. And then Steve Railsback tries to welch on a deal as well. It's just like, oh, I don't have the twenty five dollars and they have to push him down and grab his wallet and be like, no, you got plenty of money here, Junior. This is what you get for trying to stick your finger up a chicken's ass.
His daddy told him, though, you gotta show him how to stick up finger up the cock's ass.
I love that the way he said, bro, my dad, I don't know. Just here is Steve Railsback say that baby, Steve rails meck of fat. Like this is two years before Helter Skealper. And so that was amazing there's so many great shots in this film too. There's one and this is early on where but one of the early cock fights, you hear a little boy just crying, which, yeah, that's the thing. Why would you take your children too that? And that's what my daddy told me. But yeah, but
the little boy and this shot like haunts me. It's just such a brilliant jode Is. He's covering, he's crying, and he's covering his eyes with what looks like a one dollar bill, and that just ooh, that just hit me so hard. And just this is the horrors of what we do for money, of what just in our society. It's like this, it's the innocent again. To me, it's like the innocent suffer. And even the fact that the robbers aren't they all wearyly President masks a little.
Point blank all those years beforehand.
And just that shot, the way they did the super imposition of Mary Elizabeth sitting by the light. You notice how they're transitioning to him going to the real estate office to how cold his brother out of money. But that's so a position of her lasts longer than it normally won in a movie. It's almost it adds just to this sort of plonning tolle of this is what he's leaving behind. This is having any sense of healthy love, any sense of just normality and gentility is gone.
Yeah.
I really picked up a lot more this time listening to the book, just the way that women are treated in the book, between Dodi and Bernice and Mary Elizabeth. It's like Dody you see this in the movie, that she has started to wash some of Frank's clothes, but she hasn't finished, and so they're just all in a wet buckaville of water, and he throws those clothes at her.
And then later on when he meets Bernice after they have sex, she's just compelled to do something for him, and so she goes in and washes his underwear in the sink. So it's like more wet clothes and they're still wet when he tries to sneak out to just like,
I guess I'm leaving these things here. So I'm just like, how many times is it like women not only were women washing for him, but then they would also cook for him, And you get that also in the movie, but like Bernice cooks for him, Dodie doesn't cook for him. I don't even think she knows how to cook that well. She talks about hungry man dinners, and then his sister in law she cooks for him as well. And it's just what are women just cooking and cleaning vehicles in
this book and movie? And I think they are so I don't think that's going to change my opinion of Charles Williford, but it was just pretty funny to realize just how the status of women is just so low in.
Cockfighter the chickens. They're treated better for the chickens.
But.
Not very much.
I think Dody White is almost a rooster when she comes in and starts attacking him, and she's wearing that bright red outfit. I'm just like, is she a rooster?
Now? Yeah?
And I love how got that line about what are the odds on missus Burst?
I love Omar. Yeah, any of that characters would say that. I'd be like you sex and panted, and Omar says it, I'm just like, oh you like, you're so funny. Oh my god, you're watching a strange man's underwear after a one night stand. That's wool.
He was offender too, because I was clean underwear. How dare she?
Oh, I highly doubt they were clean. Let's be honest, let's let's think about the life freaks living you want. These drawers are about as clean as the little nasty floor that Ed Bagley's chicken died on. Late drawers. Yeah, thank god that wasn't in the movie. I'm glad that didn't make it into the film.
Apparently Bernice was in there for a long time, and there's even an ending with Bernice in there, because she's I don't know if she takes the place in Mary Elizabeth, but I think it's a torn between two lover type of things between Bernice and Mary Elizabeth. Now why I say the book ends that way as well. This whole thing of the ending of the movie with him ripping the head off of the chicken and putting her putting her his cock in her purse, which is always the
Freudian vagina metaphor. So it's just like, okay, we're having sex, I guess here, or is he saying I will give up my manhood for you? Because there is that whole thing of like, how dear these women try to change us men? Middleton's got it, And here's Frank take this
just pah at that moment. Oh, it's bad enough when he cuts the head off of that one rooster, it just so matter of factly, But then for him to pull the fucking head off of a chicken at the end of this movie, hand it to her that disgust on her face, and when she puts it in the
the handkerchief and just reads in the riot act. I love her speech at the end of this about how she just looked at She wasn't watching the chickens, she was watching him and just saw no what was it, No love, no pity, nothing, and just saw what a man he really is. But then she takes that talk from him. I'm just so surprised, and then his little she loves me Omar at the end. Wow, what a
fucking way to go with this. What do you guys think as far as she loves me Omar, what does that mean to you guys?
Hey?
Yeah, I think it signifies just that it's another teller about just how he sees the world and how he sees anybody else would look at him and his life, and most people in the movie too and say what a loser, but an absolute waste of a life, but he's determined not to see himself though way, He's determined not to have the values of the world. And he's decided this metal, this prize, is of value, and I'm going to treat everything as less than that and get there.
And anybody else, including most of the I think they're probably a fair amount of spectators and competitors there, don't give a shit about the metal. They just want to make money. They're gamblers, they're whatever. They want to make money, they want to do that, and they don't care about that kind of standing. But he's decided this is what's worth while in his life.
He's going to.
Sacrifice everything toward that. And yeah, at the end, when she's so angry and disgusted with him, I think, I don't know, it seems more like a spin like him going aha, I've moved her. I've got a real reaction out of her. She loves me.
Was he just nagging her in the parlance of our times.
I don't know. I think it's insight into how he sees the world and how he sees himself, and now he's determined to see himself, and it seems almost like an arbitrary declaration, but it's one he's gonna probably live the rest of his life by whether they're together or not. He'll have something in the back of his head saying, I've got a woman who loves me. She's disgusted. We don't spend any time together. I haven't seen her twenty
years or whatever, but she loves me. I decided she did, so she does really pick up.
The Freudian big at all I have to say with that all scene. But I think I don't typically look at purses like pseudo vaginas. I don't pick up my person be like it'le pudani. I don't know, but I thought it was such a cool ending though. I loved her speed. I love that performance. She and she's really like the only she's not prim but she seems like the most out of all the characters, especially if all the women we meet, she's the one that's got probably a good head on her shoulders. This is a she's
the closest to normal. She's gonna beat. She really will be fine regardless and him tearing the head off. I was to admit. My initial director was like, good, crazy, Have I not seen enough animal cruelty in this fucking movie. Good lord, dude, what is wrong with you? This poor animal, poor little white Lightning Justice for White Lightning the Chicken. But I do love that they name that. That's a
nice little moon moonshine reference. Any George Jones fans out there will immediately get but and then hands and it's almost like he's like chabbing its deceased beak and her palm of her hand because she looks like she's in pain. It's so violent. It's not violent enough that he just tore this dead towered head off its body and then he's got to force it in her hand. And I loved her. I was like her ramping it. That's a power move. That was a power move to me. I
didn't viewed as a sexual thing at all. I viewed it as why you want to get crazy with me? Okay, I'm still going to remain a lady. I am in charge of this situation. You're not the man I thought you were. You probably never were, which I thought was a great and really heavy line. And it also made me wonder like how was he before all those Like how was he? I got to read the book, but do you really get that? I actually sent she both
have read the book. Do you get a sense of who he was before he got into cock fighting in the book or is it just pretty much you're end too the cock fighting journey. He talked tor and he drank.
He makes him mention that the very beginning and the voiceover and it's so close to the beginning of the movie that I think it's all almost in danger of being not heard, where he says something like I got into race cars and I did this and I did that, which of course makes some people think, oh, maybe he was gto from two lane Blacktop and this is like
his punishment for talking too much as gto. Yeah, it's like he has tried all of these other things, but they didn't have the drive to perfection that he thinks that cockfighting has, and that he just knows that if you follow the rules and if you train your bird properly, then you can win this thing, which it doesn't feel like for him at least this is me saying this. I don't think that he admires what he considers the perfection of this and thinks that if he can do
the best job, he will get the reward. It's the American dream. Basically, it's if you do hard work and do everything that you're supposed to, say your prayers before you go to bed, brush your teeth, all that stuff,
you're going to get rewarded. And that's what he thinks, and he finally does in this, But even to that point, I don't know what he's going to do after, like this whole mystery of what was he before and what is he going to be after, because after this, I don't know if he's gonna bite chickens anymore or if he's just going to become a judge. She talks about how, oh, you can get paid one hundred and fifty dollars a match if you are a set medal winner and they
call you up to judge at any of these tournaments. Okay, great, but is that your life now? Is that how you're doing everything? It's I love that it's ambiguous, though, as you'll hear in the interview with Kayla Jennis in a few minutes that there is mention of Frank Mansfield in I Believe Miami Blues and that you find out that he ended up getting married later on. I don't know if it's with Mary Elizabeth. I think probably not, but yeah, it is funny that you hear little Frank's Mansfield and
that will Efferd will make references. Is that nearly that Elmore Leonard connected universe. But you do get a little nod here and there to other things.
But he also used the name Barnice. I know we said Bernice a few times in this, but it's in the book. It's Berenice is the which is unusual name at least sounds that way to me. I don't think I've ever met any Baronice. But she's also the name of the lead female character in bernd Ora Cherisee. He did maybe just have these names that he liked to use. And something else that I think of the warn Oates
and Cockfighter. Frank Mansfield as liked the Chris Cooper character and adaptation, this guy who's like obsessive about things and he masters them and then he's I'm done with that.
Fuck fish. I was really into fish, and then I decided one day, fuckfish, and I'm moved on the you know, the next thing, And that little thing at the beginning about the different things he had pursued and had mastered and in the book, guitar playing really is part of that too, though it's very pretty sure said he goes to grade lengths to say he never took a lesson, He just picked it up and knew how to play.
And one of his memoirs, I was looking for a street, talking about his formative years, he said that his grandmother was a big believer in inherited talents and assumed that someday Charles would be able to play the piano because his mother had and so she kept the piano in the house. He never really had any interest in it, but his grandmother really believed that someday he'll just be able to sit down and play that piano, not take lessons and things like that. But I think that's kind
of a through line a lot of Wilford's books. He has these characters who just have an innate sense, especially
something artistake or creative. I think of The Woman Chaser, where the Richard Hudson character just starts dancing ballet with his mother, who's of course a trained ballerina, but he's just one day, yeah, I'm gonna do that, and he takes up filmmaking, never having been to film school or anything like that, and it makes a perfect movie, right I think these things are relined in a lot of Wilford's stuff, just people with these inborn talents, and they're not too interested in explaining that.
Jamie Figuerreias in the Burt orange Chersee, who paints that perfect painting after the master has passed away. Yeah, I forgot that I had opened. I wrote a piece about Willaford years and years ago, and I opened it with a quote for the Bird Orange Chresee, which was Bernice and our main character talking and he says, a boy who doesn't have a father around doesn't develop a super ego,
and then she says that's silly. Super ego is only a jargon word for conscience, and everybody's got a conscience, and he says, have it your way, per nice, and I'm like, yeah, not all of these characters that Williford writes do have conscience. They can be even Junior. I can't remember Junior's last name, but Junior from Miami Blues, he had no conscience and just Yea was just out
for himself. And God, I love that. I loved all of these books, and just being able to revisit a Cockfighter for this a Cockfighter Journal, I was just tickled to be able to read about that. And even inside of Cockfighter you've got his personal recollections as Frank Mansfield, where he's talking about being in the Philippines and watching cockfights over there, and I'm just like, Yeah, that really
feels like a Woollerford thing, like I think Man's. I think Williford and all of his protagonists share a lot of DNA, which may be unpleasant or not, but I think that. You know, he was a terrific writer and wrote about some really twisted characters.
Man, I know what I'm doing, well, get I need to seriously, why haven't I read it? It's ridiculous. What a wonderful world we live and we do have access to so much great r One can never get bored. This is why I don't trust people that are like I'm bored. Heck, get bored. There's so much to do, there's so much to see.
And it's so much easier to find his books now than it used to be. So many of them have come back in print. I just picked up a new version of The Machine Ward eleven, which has the oh I can't even begin to pronounce the name of it, but it's telling fortunes with chickens. So it's a precursor to Cockfighter in there. I know it s's with an A, but I'm not even going to try to pronounce that word.
Yeah. Also, this isn't aside, But how amazing was Harrydean Stanton's style and this fill his character?
Those shoes, he wears those two toed shoes because he can't make up his mind. He's an ambivalent character, the guy that wears the belt in suspenders in Once Upon a Time in the West. Yeah, how can I trust you if you can't even trust your own damn pants?
Yeah.
I have been my notes and I don't even know what this phrase mean. That just came to me. I was like, he's stressed, like at Kentucky pimp. Apparently in my brain that's what a Kentucky pip should look like.
Amazing, He's so good. I love Harry Dean. He is just so good. Can you imagine because those guys are probably sitting around playing guitar to each other, because war notes could play in real life, and of course we know Harry Dean could play. Those guys probably just going back and forth, trading shots, singing songs. Oh man, oh man.
I how was there not like a tectonic plate shifted with these men being together in the same space. It's amazing. Yeah, this is such a cool film. And one thing that hits me is there's a line of dialogue about where he says the chicken has the brain size of a pee, but they know how to fight. They have that instinct. And it's because I have, and this may be just my own theory, I feel like our species, humanity, we have a really bad tendency to we can justify any sort of act of cruelty.
Doesn't mean we should.
We don't. I'm just the general we obviously, But and because it's like these poor animals and this is but again it's like coming phillies are not judging the people doing it, especially because this also was set in a time period where it was we get whiffs that it's starting to get illegal in the film, but it's still the racist senator. I feel bad for Omar. That's was terrible, which means, of course I can easily believe him being
a senator in real life. He just makes some nasty comment about Polish people or Omar's I'm third generation, he's had to like I just got off the boat. The whole pageantry of a senator and his wife. Everybody does it up and it's cockfighting. It's I don't know, it's such a bizarre j exaposition. Yeah, that of the two tone shoes of Harrding Samton. God bless for.
As good a cast as it is. I'm delighted that Wilford himself held up so well.
I was.
I can't believe he didn't do more acting. I did watch as Thunder and Lightning because he was in the cast. And yeah, it's just the one scene, just a real brief jammio. But like she was, was so great in that role. And I looked up in the book the way the Ed Middleton character is introduced. This is Frank Mansfield's inner monologue. He said, Ed Middleton is one of my favorite people. He's in his early sixties. If I happen to live long enough, I want to be exactly
like him someday. He's a big man with a big voice and a big paunch, except for a bumpy, bulbless nose with a few broken blood vessels here and there on his bright red surface. His face is smooth and white with shiny ligged look of the dog's favorite bone, like he's describing him. So that's he wrote Backfighter came out the novel in sixty two. The movie didn't come out till seventy four, and he was apparently not even supposed to be in it. Like cast very late in
the process. Asked the Ed Meddleton character, and shit, sounds like he's describing himself right there. He had that bulbous nose with broken blood vessels and the big paunch and the big voice. But he's somebody that comes cross very much, very likable, very easy to see someone like Frank admiring him and wanting to be like that. Was he always intending to play this character someday or I don't know, but I think a great presence in the film, and I wish he'd done more acting.
I really liked when Frank comes back and you can tell Middleton's pissed, like you called me on my bluff.
I didn't expect you to sell your house.
Leave him alone, just like he gets mad at his wife because he can't get mad of Frank. And by the way, the producer I was trying to think of is John Davison. We're going to take a break and play an interview with Kayla Denise, author of the new book Akfight, A Fable of Failure. Right after these brief messages.
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Oh, Kayla Jennings, It is great having you back in the projection booth and I'm so excited to talk to you about your new book all about cock Fighter. Please tell me how did this book project come about? Because I know you've been working on it for a long time.
I became really obsessed with the film back where Anchor Bay first put it out on DVD, which would have been like two thousand or two thousand and one. They'd been doing a bunch of Monte Hellman reissues, and so I've become obsessed with the character of Frank Mansfield based on the film. So it was before I had read the book, but I didn't really decide to start doing a book about it until.
About twenty fifteen.
And originally the idea just started as it was like one of those labels I think it was like God, not Midnight Marquis. It was like one of the British labels that does the books that are just about one movie twenty five pages. Wasn't Devil's Advocates, but it was like one of the other ones that Neil Snowden is the editor. Anyways, they were doing a call out for pitches for their book line, so I said, oh, I know a movie I'd want to do a book about
class fighters, and they rejected it. And partially they may reject it because the movies can't screen in the UK, and so if you have a UK specific book label of classics, they obviously can't say some So I could never pitch to the BFI as a BFI classic if they're not allowed to even play it there.
So it was.
Limited where I could even pitch that idea. But then I just realized that if I did get a deal like that, I would be stuck with a book that had a handful of pictures that was all black and white. I would have any control over the paper stock. And I'm way too eat. Maybe I'll just do it myself, and that way I can just do it however I want. And so I didn't try very hard to find another publisher for it. I just decided to start working on it, and then in twenty sixteen was when I did my
first interviews for it. Although I had stayed at Monte Hellman's Airbnb before I had ever decided to do a book of a clockwriter.
It was like twenty fourteen.
So when my book Kid Power came out, I was in l La promoting that book and I was going to be there for nine days and I had to stay somewhere. And my friend Donna McCrae had stayed at Monty Helman's Airbnb and was raving about it, and I was like, oh my god, he has an Airbnb. And I looked it up on Airbnb and there it was.
It was like one picture and he's come stay with me.
I loved talking about movies with people, and I was like, oh my god, this is like a dream. So I went and I stayed there and he made me breakfast every day. He made me the same breakfast every day. I was not allowed to deviate in any way from the menu that he had prepared. I wanted scrambled eggs instead of fried eggs, and he's like, no, scrambled eggs are bad for you.
You have to eat this.
I don't know how fride egg is better than I scrambled egg but anyways, So it was funny.
We had his way of doing things.
He had his routines, and him having these people coming through the house as guests work like his social life in a way. He didn't seem to go out very much. So it was like that was his social life, which people come to him. He would talk about.
Movies except that.
So I was there and he has this big poster of two lank blacktop in the kitchen and he starts talking about it somehow, and I said, oh, my favorite movie of yours is Cockfighter and he just goes, worst picture I ever made?
And I said, worse than.
Silent Knight, Deadly Night three, And he says, I liked Silent Night, Deadly Night greet Silent Night, Deadly Night.
I've got to do everything I wanted.
I got to make the movie I wanted to make, whether or not you like it, but I never got to dog that.
There's the script, re visions were stopped.
I never felt like I really got to finish it, and so I just think it's like my worst movie because of that. So then after that, it seemed like he didn't He was definitely way more quiet around me after that because there was another guest staying in the house and he would just laughed or all the time, and then with me he was really quiet, and I felt like he had just lost respect for me or gone I had like no taste in movies or something, because this was my favorite movie of his, and obviously,
like I kept trying to wear them down. I was there nine more days, and I also interviewed him like several times officially, like after that, because I did not interview him formally while I was there because I didn't yet know I was.
Going to be doing a book.
You know, eventually got to the point where, you know, my last interview with him, he was just like, it'll never be my favorite, and that was as good as it was going to get But yeah, so started in this backwards way where I became obsessed with the film for a long time. I went to clock fites for real, I stayed at Manti Hellman's house, and then a couple of years after that, then I decided I was going to try to do a book about it, and I was also losing people a lot while the book was
being written. It took me so long to write because I work full time and I'm working on all those other things, and so if there's nobody like paying you to view something, it's really hard to prioritize it. But it always ends up being the last priority. So yeah, so I was losing people. People were away that worked on the film. Carried Dean Stanton died like a month before I was supposed to interview him, Like I was coming to LA to interview him and they died like
a month before, So stuff like that. And then one of the casting agents, John Phillips, like he didn't want to do an interview. He's like many people I found just didn't like the movie, like people who worked on it and didn't want to talk about it. And I couldn't get a whole lot of elaboration as to why, whether it was like because of the clock fighting or what. But Don Phillips, the casting agent, was also like Michael Chinnitch and John Phillips both cast it together, and they
both had nothing to say about it. They were just like least favorite movie of anything I worked on. When they went on to do like Fast Times and John Hughes movies and all kinds of stuff like I think the Days in confused. Why of them did too so much bigger things, much bigger and more important things than what they considered Clockwriter to be. But anyway, so yeah, so that's like how it all happened.
When I love the way that you structure the book and the way that you sectioned off into so many of the people that were behind it, the actual sport of cockfighting. You go into so much detail on that that I never would have known otherwise it was super educational.
Well that's great because their eyes actually so much more detail that I could have gone into. It was just getting bought down with like too much detail. So I kept in enough so that people could get a sense of what some of the things were called and what
the rationale was behind certain things. But then also what's really important I think the story of Cockwriters book and the film is the kind of history of the sport and the way that history is still held up by a lot of the people that participate in it as like an important connection they have to their past.
Well then also just the idea of the Southern Gothic in how does cock fighting play into Southern culture, And even when you get into the role of women and cockfighting, or the role of African Americans and cockfighting, it just you dig so deep and have taught me so much more about that than I ever knew. I thought I needed to.
Know, probably more than you needed to know. But yet obviously the thing about women is super interesting to me because it was like, because being a woman having bonte cock fights, I experienced the thing of being a rarity in the audience. Like there's a lot of women at cock fights, but they are working at cock fights. They're working at the concession stands, they're working at the ticket booth,
they're working at the merch tables. So there's like all the kinds of women that are put to work in the cock fighting world, but there weren't a whole ton of them just sitting there and enjoying the sport or making bets or whatever. That said, the audiences were relatively
diverse in terms of ages classes. There was one fight I saw where it was like kid, like a little kid, and then like his dad and then the grandpa all fought the same day, and the little kid was like I don't know, maybe twelve at the most, and it
was like this whole family talk writers. But yeah, the thing about women was just important to me because in the book and in the movie, and actually in Charles Wilford's books, Like I have not read every book that he wrote, but I've probably read like twenty of his books now, and.
Women are just like an annoyance. They're just like in.
The way nagging or annoying the men. And obviously in the film they probably directed by that a bit by adding a bit more character from Mary Elizabeth, like making her a little bit more sassy than she is in the book and stuff and giving her a little bit of humor and stuff. But overall it was like, yeah, I just was interesting did in this kind of absence and curious about whether that reflected the real clock fighting world.
And then of.
Course through researching that, I found that so many of the editors of the cock fighting magazines were all women, so that was super interesting. So I feel like in the future that's something I actually want to look into more. I want to do a bit more to document these women's careers.
It makes total sense that there's a magazine dedicated to cockfighting, or there was, but it just never even crossed my radar. I was like, what, there was a magazine dedicated.
Yeah, there's several. Wow, there's like a Feathered Warrior, Britt and Steel the game Cock. Those are the three I know of. There's probably more, but.
Well, and speaking of people that we lost along the way, it was great to read Roger Corman and some of his thoughts about the movie and his history with it as well. That was delightful.
Yeah, I took Roger was super helpful. I would say I interviewed Roger, I would email him and whenever I just had odd questions. So there are lots of times where it wasn't even like a formal interview. It just some question that I didn't have the answer to, So I would send an email to his assistant or whatever I didn't have his email, and then his assistant would
get back to me. With the answers and stuff. So he was just helpful along the way, and you could tell that he was, like, despite the fact that the movie flopped and that it's famously the only movie he ever lost money on and stuff like that, you could tell liked the movie a lot and thought it was a good movie and that he thought it was shane that it never hit, not financially, not because he was oh,
I wish it made money. Yes, I'm sure he wished it made money, but he just thought it was a shame that it was a good movie that just didn't find its audience, and so he was really supportive. But anything that would celebrate popfire, so that was great.
And the ways that he tried to save it by having it retaught, or the trailers and the titles and what you had four different titles it was under at one.
Point, yeah, well it had so it was like Cockfighter
and then it was. So it's interesting because he claims these titles were never actually officially used, but there are ads that show the titles of Wild Drifter and Gambling Men in some of the different regions, So he thinks that those titles were just like tested serve like they surveyed people asking which title do you think is better, and he thought that those titles were never actually used on the prints or anything, but apparently they were like
occasionally on some prints a few months after it was released as Cockfighter, and then Born to Kill was the title that stuck, and that one came into use. I think it was March of the next year. So it was like they talk about it anecdotally, like when you're
interviewing people, their timelines are really shaky. They'll talk about something like it was immediate or a long time ago or whatever, but it's actually the opposite sometimes, so I think when they tell a story anecdotally, it's like Cockfire flop. We knew on the Friday it was failure. By Monday we had a whole new campaign and it was Born to Kill whatever it's no. Five months later it was Born to Yes, I'm sure they knew right away that it was going a flop, but the new ad campaign
was not in place the next week. It was like many months later, and it did do better as Born to Kill, but not, as Roger said, not appreciately.
So I know you spent a lot of years working on this. It also sounds like you put a lot of miles on your car or on your frequent flyers to go around in all these different places too.
Now I'm like, I do everything to get the miles. I could never figure out. I'm like, how do people get these like free flights everywhere, air miles loyal always to the same airline because I was like, I just go expedient and buy whatever is the cheapest usually, and you can't rack up.
Them miles that way.
So anyway, No, I did not get any benefit from traveling around, but I did travel a lot, Like I went to Charles Wilfrid's archive several times, which is amazing.
It's just amazing.
When you go into any archive like that, you're just like, oh my God, Like it's you're so grateful that people take care to document this stuff and just keep it because some little thing that like two people in the world are going to care about. It's that's the thing that has all the answers or whatever. And whenever you go into an archive, you appreciate like how shitty Google
search are. But you're just like people who rely on Google searches to do all their research for everything, And then you're like, oh my God like when you Yeah, it's like when you're actually handling these like old documents and manuscripts and be able to see. Within the case of Charles Wilfert, his not only revisions to the script and stuff, but also earlier short stories where he has the character of Frank Mansfield and he's like trying to work out what he wants to did with this character.
And then also his step son, Stephen Hooker, wrote some songs for Copwriter because in the book of Pock Fighter, he has this whole detour where he's trying to raise money and he's playing the guitar in the nightclub and he has these three songs and they're like the only songs he knows. He's made up these songs himself, and he just plays the same songs over and over again. And his step son actually wrote song of these songs and they have the recordings of them in this archive.
Wow.
So I was actually gonna ask him for permission to see if I could give them to you for your podcast.
Oh, that would be amazing.
Yeah.
So he feels like he's embarrassed of them, like they're really amateurish and whatever, because I had asked him could I give it to somebody who's like a press scoop or something, and he's like, I don't know so, but maybe he would allow it for the podcast or something. But he said Charles Wilford actually wrote the lyrics, because they do have lyrics, because the idea is that these songs were written by Frank Book four G had his Bow of Silence, and there's both there's lyric versions and
instrumental versions. But yeah, it's just it's so interesting because there's so much world building happening that you can see in the archive, and it goes even as cock leg just the other references, like in the book The Shark Infested Custard, the very opening conversation is a conversation with these four guys sitting around talking about two lang blacked right, and it's clearly a reference to this experience that Charles Wilford had. I also feel like, I don't know if
have you read that book arts that scene. When I was reading it, I kept thinking, I don't want this just reminds me so much of the scene at the beginning of Depth Crew of the Women's and around talking about like vanishing point or whatever. I was like that scene in depth group just seems like this scene. I was like, I wonder if scared you know, read this
and then wrote that see based on it. But there's my point is just that Charles Wilford had all these connections all throughout his career before Clockwriter and after Clockwriter, like linking to it, and so I just found that that was my very last afterward in my book is called clock Fighter Aspires to Endlessness, And it's partially because of that, and partially that's a tribute to Monty in the sense it's a riff on a line from Sigfried crack Hour's Theory of Film is like a chapter that's
called something like that, not a boat clock. But yeah, so I felt like the world building that Wilford was doing was really interesting. And then also just the fact this is a spoiler, so you may want to cut it out, but just the fact that in Miami Blues at the very end she marries Frank Mansfield. It's just little things like that that are like really interesting.
Yeah, you're talking to the other person who would love to go to the Wiliford archives. So I that's definitely now on my bucket list is to make my way down there.
Yeah, they even have a copy of the books that was I can't remember. I think it was side Swipe, and it was like somebody bought a hardcover of Sideswipe and thought they hated it so much they got it like six times and they sent it back to him with a note saying, this is what I think of your shitty book. And that's in the archive, the book that they'll shot.
Up, and you get to talk to Betsy as well.
Oh yeah, Betsy was like the hero of this project to me. She saved me from despair at the last moment. She gave me access to use the stuff from the archive. Because obviously if you read other books about Monty Hellman, they will reference these documents, Like Charles Tatum has a book like in French where he references some of the letters for Our New World and stuff like that, but he doesn't show them. He just like references them, and I think at one point he types out like what one of.
The letters says.
But she let me actually use the letters and print them in the book, which I also thought was important because you get to see what thoughtful notes Roger Forman gives because whether it's him or his assistant Francis dole Or, who was known as Francis Kimbro at the time. So in some cases it's Roger giving the notes, in other cases it's Francis giving the notes, but obviously in consultation
with Roger. But they give such thoughtful and respectful notes to Charles Wilford about ways that you can work on the script, and I just feel you don't get that from studio executives and stuff and agents and producer. Everybody just gives such crappy, thoughtless, clueless notes now, and so I thought it was really important to print those letters in full and have people see what kind of a
creative producer Roger Corman was. That he was not just a money minded producer, even though he obviously had skills with money and was very good at business. But he was kind of rare mix of somebody who was both. He was like an incredibly creative and intellectual person but also very good with money and business, so he really was like a unique individual.
Well, it was great.
Too that you were able to print a couple pages from the script as well and show some of the stuff that had been cut out.
That to me was like the other thing going to the archive was finding first of all, the earliest versions of the script where it still has the character of Bear Nice in it, so that was an important thing. But then the fact that there were these two identical scripts and the only difference was on one of them. They're like an additional two pages with this alterprinate ending that is clearly more of an exploitation film ending. And I was like, wow, I've never even heard of this ending.
And I didn't know if he ever showed it to Rodrick Buurman. I didn't know if he offered it as an option of a more traditional exploitation film ending or what, but either way, it was there in the archive, and I was like, this is really cool, So Betsy, let
me use it. And then the other thing she was happy that I wanted to use was the letter from Kate Millet, the postcard from Kate Millet, who, for people who don't know it, was like a rock star feminist in the early seventies and she was like a household name at the time, and Charles Wilford wrote for a letter saying that he wanted to send her his new book, and he had this theory that women were raping men with foods. Obviously, I go into detail about that in
the book. But then she just wrote him back this like funny letter saying keep meeting. And I just thought that was so funny that he would send a letter to Kate Mirllett. It's like radical feminist. But yeah, so Betsy is great. I'm pretty sure you've spoken to Betsy before too. I think you were the one that was really saying you should really get in touch with Betsy, and I was like really intimidated to at first, but then when I talked to her, she was just so amazing,
and she's so funny. She's you can tell she has this kind of like straight based humor, like really fighting humor. They must have been quite a pair together. But yeah, so she really helped out a ton with the book, which was awesome.
It was nice to read some of the New World guys, they Parkish and Dante and t those guys just superstars and just their role in the making up the campaigns or the editing in the film. Wonderful to read some of those stories, especially the Arkish and Dante's stuff. They must have been together right when you're interviewing them, because comedy team.
Yeah, yeah, that's what it was like. That was the first section of the book that really had a world history element to it because I didn't go in like bamily back and forth between them, and then I ended up doing that a little bit in earlier parts of the book just to balance it out were but yeah,
it was really great talk. Whenever you've interviewed people together, it's fun because they just make they make each other last, and they make each other remember stuff, and yeah, so that was like super fun.
They clearly had.
So much fun in those days, like editing the trailers and coming up with the marketing campaigns with John Davison and stuff. So yeah, it was a real thrill getting to talk to the people who were involved in the kind of post production release of the film. The harder part,
obviously was the set the making of the film. Trying to find every because so many people had died who were on the who were in the film, or had important roles on the film, that like trying to bring that to life was a challenge, and luckily I had a couple of people who had very good memories of a lot of stuff, namely production manager Peter Kornberg and John Wall who was like the first steady, so they
remembered stuff really well. But yeah, that was like and then at the very last minute, I got the interview with Earl mac roush. That was insane because I'd been trying to reach him for five years. And then the book was supposed to go to print. This is like a miracle. Okay, So the book is supposed to go to print on Tuesday night because on Wednesday morning, my
designers leaving town on a victation. So he's about to deliver the files to the printer and then he realizes, oh shit, something went wrong with all the footnotes and like, what do you mean? He's like, all the footnotes have gone totally out of order. I was like what and he was like, and I have to leave. I don't have time to Pikes, like I have to get on plane. And I was like, oh my god, like we're going
to miss our printed line. And I already had Fantasia set up to do a screening there, so I was like, there's no way, We're just that's it. Book's not gonna be ready time. I'm gonna have to cancel the event. And so I contacted the printer. I let them know the book wouldn't be in until the next week after the guy got back, and so I was super bummed out. I'm just thinking, God, I can't believe, like stupid footnotes are making me miss my own book launch. So I
wake up the next morning, I'm all bummed out. The first thing I get is this, like, hang on my phone and it's Earl Rowse. It's his nickname is Mac. I've just been reading it so long that I always say Earl my grouse, but anyway, it's him, and he's just like I heard, He've been trying to reach me. And I was like, oh my god. It was like and so if the book had gone to print when it was supposed to.
It would have that interview in it.
Wow.
So it was like, I said, can you do an interview like in the next two days and he was like yes. So we did it and I got it
in the book and it was yes. And to me, it was great because it cleared up so many questions I had about the script revisions, because I had heard from both frien Ancest Dole and Monty Hellman that Mac had done revisions on the script, but nobody could remember what revisions he had done or when he had done the revisions, like what the timeline was, and the way that Francis spoke about it was almost as though they were on set at the same time, in different hotel rooms,
working on different scripts. So there were so many questions I had, and Monty even remember, especially as it got to the point where as I got closer to the end of the book and as he got older, and he'd also had like an accident at some point and had some brain surgery and stuff. But it was like, as you're getting closer finishing a book, is when you start getting more and more detailed things that you need.
You start off asking these broad, generic questions and then it just gets more and more detailed as you go along. So by the time I was getting into the real nitty gritty of stuff, Monty was not capable of answering
those questions. We just didn't remember enough anymore. Oh, there was a lot of vague stuff originally in that chapter about what girl mac Rouse may or may not have written, And then thankfully I got that interview and it just cleared up everything, including like this speech that Mary Elizabeth has, and I said, I think you wrote this speech that she has by the Lake with war notes, and he was like, I don't know, it doesn't sound familiar, and I said, I'm positive. I just feel positive he wrote
it because, like I read one of his books. He wrote this book called Arkansas Audios, which I've read, and I was like it, First of all, it sounds like the writer of that book wrote this anctim. And second of all, Charles Wolford has never given a monologue to a woman like in any of the books I've read, so it just seems like it'd be out of character
for her to have this funny monologue. And so he's like, what is the story against So I transcribed the story from the film, and then he wrote back and oh my god, he literally wrote, OMG, he is not only did I write that it's a true story.
Oh wow, that happened to somebody I went to high school with.
I've told that story a million times.
I don't know why I didn't when you first mentioned it.
That was great. I felt very validated by having doubt he had written that. But yeah, so it was like it was an adventure. It's the first time I've done a book project that that really required the memories of other people for it to work. Obviously, House of Psychotic Women is so personal that it's really just stated from the outset, this is just how I remember things. Whether it's true or not, it doesn't matter, because this is how I remember it. It's based on my own memories
and my own perspective, my own take on things. But when you're doing the book like this, you're dealing with other people's lives, like experiences they had that you are just recording on based on this disparate information coming in from different sources, some of which does not coear with each other. And so I still am the terror that it's full of things that are just wrong.
For people who are going to be like, that's not what I meant or whatever.
But I worked on it for eight years and I feel like fit my all.
You mentioned the design and the design of the book is beautiful. It just looks so good.
Yeah, So Luke Insect designed it. He also did the FOLKR box set that I did with Severn. He also did the Black A menu of the box set, and he did the Warped and Faded book that I edited about the American genre film arc On And he's like a really versatile designer. But he loves psychedelic stuff. And I also really like the kind of overlay effects and registration being off from the images and stuff like this. So there's like a certain place where our tastes neat.
And I also knew that doing an entire book about one movie fair use of images becomes a problem. Like when I'm doing a book like House of Psychotic Women and i have three hundred movies in it, and I'm only using one picture from each movie, nobody's really going to freak out about that. But if you're doing the entire book about one movie and every picture in that book is from that movie, that's pushing the limits of
fair use. You can't get away with that. So I had to think of some other way to illustrate a book without totally abusing the fair use thing. And like cock fighter images, so it's full of other images that are not from cockwriter, that are like more like atmospheric images are related somehow to the subject matter that's being talked about. But I also like every image is manipulated in some way, so they're not They're usually not just
stills from clockwriter or post or strong clockwriter. There's usually two or three images like overlaid, like interplaying with each other. And so part of that design was like a practical consideration because in fair use, part of fair use is that if people want to sue you, they have to prove that you've somehow I pinned on their ability to
commercially exploit that thing. So if I was to do this beautiful book all about cock Fighter and every picture is like a perfect reproduction of a still from Cockfighter, that would prevent like Shout Factory who now owns it, to make their own book about cock Fighter that's full of images, Whereas a book like this, where there's three images jumbled up together in one, it does not prevent them from doing like a coffee table book of all
these beautifully pristine stills from the movie. So it's just, you know, it doesn't guarantee anything, but it's just one of the considerations I had to not abuse it. And then in the meantime, those kinds of challenges lead you to make creative decisions that ultimately make the book stand out more.
You mentioned the screening up in Fantasia. How did that go and how do audiences react to Cockfighter in twenty twenty four?
There was everally people that came out were like, there was a lot of clockwiting, but other people found it really interesting, and I don't know how much like my I read the introduction to my book before the screening, and so I did have a lot of people that said they were glad I did that because it just put them in the right mind frame to appreciate things about the film. Because the thing is, if you go into the film and you're just focused on how upsetting
the cock fighting is, you miss everything else. If you're just focused on that, oh, this is awful, this is awful, I don't want to see this, then you're not paying attention to everything else in the movie, because that's overpowering you. So hopefully my introduction helped to diffuse that a little all bit, so that they knew other things that they should be looking out for with the characters and stuff like that. For the most part, people seemed to at
the very least respect it when they came out. Nobody was outraged. Nobody was like I'm going to go all the SPCA and report you guys playing this movie or anything, which, like every theater I contacted about doing a book launch, like many of them asked me They're like, do you start protests. I was like, oh god, I don't even think about that. I mean maybe, but the movie's so old those chickens are they would be dead either way now, right.
But also, I don't know. It is interesting it really only plays in the context of Monty Helman retrospective and so you typically don't have the word clupfighter on the marquee of the theater. It's Monty Helman retrospective, so nobody. It's not going to trigger those people who are like gonna get upset about it because it's couched inside this larger retrospective. Because it doesn't actually play on it's all
not often very many places. The Maid Fair in Ottawa I think has actually played it because Lee Demarb, who runs that theater, has his own print of it. So there are these collector prints out there, and so some of those people I think have played it occasionally. But yeah, it does. It's pretty underplay. But I guess lots of Monte Hellman's movies are other than t Lang Blacktop.
It's not like you go see Iguana on a retro screening.
Yeah, but even like China nine Liberty thirty seven, which is another film of his people really love but you never see that anywhere. But yeah, I guess the shooting right in the Whirlwind to Lang Blacktop, those are the ones that get played the most.
Nine years later, books finally out. What's next for you? You are like the busiest person that I know. You put me to shame when it comes to your projects.
That's funny because I always think that about Can Ellinger and Alexandra Heller Nicholas.
I'm like, oh my god, they do so much. I feel like a.
Slob sitting here doing nothing. But yeah, so I am working on a couple more box sets per several and I have two more box sets that are supposed to come out this year that are pretty much finished. They're just like in the last touches of qcing and manufacturing problems and whatever, but my work on them is pretty much done. And then on a script, like an actual
narrative script for an unannounced project. And then I have the Severn options, the book Killing for Culture, the Dave Correcus and David Slater, their book that came out in the nineties, which is like kind of the seminal book studying Mondo film and snuff film and death film and stuff like this, and so we optioned it to make a documentary and that's going to be my next documentary that I make, And it's still a couple of years away because there's a lot of research and reading and
everything I want to do aside from that book. It's not going to be just like a straight adaptation of that book. It's going to be focused on what would I want to focus on from that book, and then a bunch of stuff that's just interviewing different people, so I won't be like just data corrects and David Slater and their book. What's going to be using that as like the center, but then building around it. And partially it's such a grim topic that it has to be
a movie people would want to watch. It's going from the Woodland Stark and Days Bewitched, which has a hopeful ending, but it's got a lot of harsh imagery, but it has a lot of beautiful imagery, no, and it ends on a relatively uplifting note about people being connected and stuff like this, And then I feel like, then going from that to killing for culture is about snot films.
Is the challenge just to make a film that can resonate with people in the same way day, and it's like, how do you do that when the subject matter is so grim and aesthetically that films are so grim. So that's one of the things I'm trying to play with is the esthetics a lot.
And yeah, there's.
Like certain things about it that it's like too early to talk about, but there's definitely like an angle that I'm taking that I think will make it interesting for the average person. Obviously, there's people who love death films and Wondo films and snap films who would watch it no matter what, But I do want it to be able to play for a person who isn't like a collector of that kind of material. So that's the next big thing I'm working on. I also have this book
that I've been editing forever. It's like the cock Writer book. It's been like a real albatross, which is my book about Robert Downey Senors films, and so that's an anthology book and my friend Clint Ends and I started putting it together and like gone. I think it was right around the same time as I started thinking about Cockwriters, so it was like twenty fifteen, and at first we were having trouble.
We just it's like the only book where.
I've had trouble getting people to write the chapters. Like when we first started hitting people up, there was a lot of people who felt that they didn't know his catalog well enough, you know, like they'd see one movie of his and they're like, actually, I don't really know films that well. Or a lot of people who are like they didn't know how to read his films. They were like, I don't know how to understand the humor in his film. And then there was like people who
had written extensively about his films. Many of those people didn't want to write extensively again, you know, they're like I already did that. So yeah, so that's been like a real challenge. And so we have I would say ninety percent of a book, but I'm not one hundred percent happy with it, and so it keeps being delayed as I'm trying to find these missing pieces that'll make me happy and make me feel like, Okay, this is
enough strong material. And then the other thing too, is again dealing with similar with the cop Writer book, is how do you illustrate it when it's all one person's ip. So trying to find a creative way to do that while still being respectful. And the thing too, is, like my book is, it's a pretty much SEMII academic of essays, so it's not the final word. It's not a biography, nothing like that. So there's absolutely room for more studies
of Robert Downey Senior after this book comes out. So I definitely don't want to do anything that makes people feel like, oh, I can't do my book now or whatever. I definitely want it to be just one of the first because to me, his work is so rich and deserving of analysis, even though he's so against his films
being analyzed, but he really deserves it. His work deserves it, and so I feel like there should be five books about his work, and the fact that people have trouble reading his films is all the more reason and why
we need these studies. So I'm still chipping away that, and then also working on a book with my friend Amy Searles about the depiction of horror fandom in film and television, because that's something that's of interest to me because I've seen horror fandom change so much in real life and I've seen those reflections happening in movies and stuff to where you can have a horror fan in a movie now and no one even comments on it.
It's just somebody with the evil dead shirt is like totally normal, Whereas any time before the nineteen eighties, if that were to happen, that person would be pathologized narrative of the film. So we just wanted to do almost like an encyclopedia in a way of films and television throughout the twentieth century depicting these changes in horror fandom. So that's something that Amy and I have been working on for a while too.
That sounds fascinating, as does the Robert Downey Seeing Your Stuff, as does the Killing for Culture documentary. This all sounds amazing.
I still inspire constant. Everything inspires me. I feel like every conversation I have, Elorady book, I read, every movie I watched, just looking at my cat looking out the window, everything is yeah, it's weird, like I live on an island and I never see anybody. But I still feel totally overstimulated, like the world just has so much cool stuff going on that it's like hard to even pick,
like where what to do next? So I'm just glad that like my stuff gets to be a little piece of just like building block of all these cultural studies and everything.
Yeah, and some of the things that you've been behind with not only your book with House a Psychond of Women, but then also the movies that came out from that, And just I told you all those years ago when the first version came out, I was just like, damn you, Kayla for making my watch list so much longer. But then it's great that there's actually releases of these movies now that are tied into the book. That was fantastic.
Yeah, No, I think that's cool, especially with some of the movies, like something like the Mapu Page. I feel totally after my book came out, that movie had a second life. Like Karen Arthur gets asked to come and present screenings pretty frequently since the book came out, and it was like, it's not like nobody remembered that movie A Scorpion. They put it out before my book came out, like somebody had put it out on a Blu ray.
I just don't think it had gone much attention. It was like somebody's pet movie that they wanted to release, but it didn't really get a whole lot of ink or attention or anything, but the book changed it because a lot of the retrospectives around the book, like festivals and things would do like a House of Psychonic Women's series when the came out, and that would be one of the films that played at almost all of that see Secret Ceremony and that laid at so many of
the record respective and then of course like Possession and The Greued were like the staples. But yeah, so some of those films it was great to see, and most recently with the reissue it was like Identicate Liz Taylor movie that seemed to have found a new audience through that book.
So that was cool.
Elogenise, it is always wonderful talking with you. I appreciate your time because, like I said, I know you're super busy, but this was great. And thank you so much for Cockfighter.
Oh, no problem, thank you. I thought you were going to like totally destroy me.
Oh gosh, no, I loved it, els Fan.
I thought you were totally gonna be like you didn't mention this, or you didn't talk about net or whatever.
I got wrong.
No, no, not at all. And I don't think you got anything wrong, and I think everything that you brought to the table was great. So I really cannot recommend the book enough to people.
Thank you, Thank you so much.
That really makes me very happy, coming right at you.
War an Oath Orn to kill. In the Hustler's world, it's pay or duck.
Oh wow, this means that I'm sorry.
You know, I didn't bring no cash on me.
I was so sure I was gonna win and everything. But listen, I got some money at home.
I got a lot of I'm gonna bring you back.
This sus like you know.
He's a redneck rebel with a taste for hot women at fast comes born to be white. The law can't touch him at all.
It's a sticker hands over your heads.
Anybody lose hits a head bless though orn to kill? Wow, two high stake scamblers. How to con every fat cat in the cell. Much old movie the brickichetes off the screen with a double bear election blast.
War an Ah's just born to kill rate it on.
We were back when we were talking about Cockfighter and yeah, we mentioned before this whole thing. And Kayla does a fantastic job in her research of coming up with the whole post release of Cockfighter and all the different titles and went through and I never did find anything that really supported like the Gambling Man, and what's the other one, the Hard Fighter the Yeah, Wild Fights or whatever it's called.
But I do have a Born to Kill poster which I'm very proud of, which changes the artwork significantly and puts an axe in Warren Oates's hand, much like Ed Begley Junior, and it's I guess it's Mary Elizabeth driving the car and he's like in the car swinging this axe and stuff. It's pretty fantastic. I was so happy to find that poster at Records of this Dates at a record store years and years ago and was able
to pick that up. So one of these days I want to get that framed, that and the Cockfighter poster, and I'll just have them looking at each other. That'll be like double Warre Notes. And this was the same year that Warren Notes did bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia. How fucking crazy is that that's one of his all time performances the same year.
I find it so fascinating though about when art house films get pre promoted in these ways. That are so lurid and it doesn't make any sense at all with the natural material. It really makes me think of which just came out a year before Cockfighter, which is tremendous. I call it art House because I think it's brilliant. I think it's a great movie. But that film, at one point it was put out is Daddy's Deadly Darling.
The Vinegar Center release has an alternate intro that was tapped on like poor white trash style where it's applied her father later and it's the incest and then it cuts to the title screen of a woman's ass with the type. It's so boggers and horrifying because this is a great movie. This is legit a great movie, and they've completely like shot potted for that grass dollar. It's such a carny tactic. I don't think we see those
kind of carni tactics as much with film nowadays. Uh, which is which is some ways is for the batter films like Cockfighter and Pigs and what we've talked about before Massacre at Central. Why these are serious films. These are really great films. They should be regarded as such. But it was just a different era and that passage Mike, you reading that VHS box description earlier, I want to make that an outgoing message on my phone that that is like a meditation tape. I love it so much.
It's terrible, but it's amazing.
I wish I could find those other versions. They alternates with Lewis Tegue says, Oh, yeah, I added more stuff, more dream sequences, and I know Monty Hellman is like, yeah, there's shots in the finished film that is called cock Fighter that aren't his, like the speaking of Jack or Burk's two tone shoes, like the blood that sprays on the two tone shoes. Apparently that wasn't a Monty Hellman shot. Doesn't sound like, at least in the maybe they caught
him on a good day. But the audio commentary that was on the old Anger Bay DVD for this, it didn't sound like he was too angry about that, which was good because, Yeah, Kayla's book is fantastic to read just how curmudgeonly Monty Hellman was about his own movie and just like shutting her down, you know, oh, that's the worst thing that I made, and just not even wanting to talk to her after she said it's her favorite I'm like, yeah, no, I got the same treatment
from him. It took a long time for him to warm up to me again after I told him how much I love Cockfighter.
It's always so strange when you get to talk to artists about works that it hit you so hard and they act almost like a vampire. See. But at the same time, if you're dealing with studio interference, it's understandble that I should put a bitter taste certainly in someone's mouth. No, I hate it. I hated it that he This is a fine film. This is a really intelligent, really beautifully made. There's such a harmony with how every element in this
film really comes together. Yeah, the editing, the cinematography, the direction, the writing, the acting, the music. Yeah, every element just really it's perfectly placed. And Yeah, if you didn't anyth about Charles Wiliford, you would just think he was another great character actor.
He is.
He's great. I was like, man, this is a great guy. The mustache and oh my god, it's the author. That's sound cool. I love if. I bet we're getting a book out documenting jiguliarly Kaylas journey with it. This is a story where people need to be talking about this film, hopefully. I don't know what status it's at right now. We're getting like a nice blu ray. It's me it seems like it should be primed for it, but god, there are so many terrible movies out in four.
K that.
Surely, to goodness it would be cool if somebody did, like Charles Williford set.
Yeah, I'd love to get a new version of a woman Chaser over there too.
To circle back on that episode from forever ago, they have re released it, but with a different score because all that original music was so cost prohibitive. So there's a version, but yeah, it doesn't have that awesome score that I talked about. And yeah, I'm looking at a shut factory blu ray of this. I'm not sure when it was released, but there are absolutely no extras on this, which is a real shame. Looks like a very bare
bones blue ray. I think you get subtitles that's about it, or chapter stops on screen biographies of main characters.
Yeah, I'm surprised I didn't mention the menu. And here I was upset that my blue ray of Jackal and Hyde together again it doesn't have any Dude, But Cockfighter come on ruefully.
Yeah, because they had a lot more on that old disc. That was nice. And yeah, Dennis Bartak was doing the commentary with Monty Hallman and I'm trying to remember the other gentleman's named Stephen Gatos who was also wearing the Nixon mask. And yeah, I was working behind the scenes quite a bit.
In this one.
Oh nice, Yeah, Anchor Bay, that's some. They did such a beautiful work on their releases. I still treasure all my acre based.
Off I'm also looking at a from the language. I think this was a French release on Blu Ray and you're gonna love this includes Bond's original, so includes the original trailer. I know that's gonna get you to buy that one.
All the really cheap DVD so I wou'd say interactive venue. It's it's Health Takes Guys, which is okay when it's like Bruce Lee fights back from the grave and you pay literally two bucks for it. Not that I did that, yea.
It Give me a Willaford box set, Give me a Monty Hellman box set. I don't know if Like Iguana has ever been released in a good version. I know China nine Liberty thirty seven. That was another one I had to order from Video Search of Miami. I think that one is a level now in good quality. I don't know about This isn't Monty Hellman. This is another Warre notes, but I don't know if Barcaro has ever
been properly released. There's too many good movies out there that people just aren't paying attention to.
When you think of Warren Oaks and great trailers, though, have you guys seen the trailer for Dixie Dynamite.
I have a copy of that movie, but I don't think i've seen a trailer short.
Imagine an American flag and you're just snorting a big old fat rail of illicit drugs off of it. It's got everything. It's got exploding cars, Warren Oats yelling, which I love him yelling, a cop that literally is on a toilet and it explodes if he flies off the toy. The trailer if you're having a bad day.
I'm watching the trailer right now and it looks spectacular.
Out the voiceovers great since real bomb ass and the guys. Dixie Dynamite is a blast, and it's like it's in ward outs yelling he's drinking there is an a in there, and it's just it's glorious. The only thing missing is like a bikini knife fight or something with some he haw honeys. It's just glorious hicksploitation.
I'm watching the trailer for Born to Kill and it starts with a semi truck coming right at us. US shot that in the movie itself pretty good. Oh man, Yeah, we've got Steve rails Back being taken down ed, Begley running at the camera with the hatchet in his hand. Oh yeah, here's some good car crashes and car chases that. Yeah, oh boy, this is so different. I can't wait for people to hear this.
There's a song about a song by The Damned off their first album called Bourne to Kills. Even bore just does not work for this actual universe in movie.
All right, we're gonna take another break and play a preview for next week's show right after these brief messages.
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Lona as.
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Little that's right. We'll be back next week to kick off a confluence of Patreon requests with Shoctober surprises, starting with Harry Kamel's mail Pertwee. Until then, I want to thank my co hosts Heather and Jed So Jedediah, what is the latest with you, sir?
I'm just partner around on Twitter and a little bit on the Good Little Blog, but low profile and no big projects right now. I finished a project this summer and not something I can talk about, but hopefully we'll see the light of day someday.
Oh nice, all right, So mysterious and Heather, what's happening in your world?
I know I'm not as mysterious, but I did update the Mondoheather Patreon has a new piece on ten Years Island. The Alfred Soul directed Oddity during Denise Winters and that was a fun piece to write. And that movie is complete bonkers, or one could say bananas because it has
an A in it. But that I've recently contributed some supplementary work I can't really talk about, but I will tell you it involves this sat the genre of South Korean horror, and I am working on a video that's a little tribute to the glories of Greg House and Altre Cinema and anytime if the spirit vibs. You can find more on my leak treat lie createleaktreat dot com, Forward slash Mondo Heather.
Thank you so much folks for being on the show. Thanks to everybody for listening. If you want to hear more of me shooting off my mouth, check out some of the other shows other work on there, all available at wirdingweightmedia dot com. Thanks especially to our patrion community. If you want to join the community, visit patreon dot com, slash projection booth. Every donation we get helps the projection booth just take over the.
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We're in a.
Gable oil Chances, who's six twenty of it?
If you don't make a pint count entry for all the blood romans that you.
Know, you can't see that.
All what the the one heads and get the balls he cut.
On we would you see he got his clock gas my hand and down.
If he's confined to this reason Kayser.
He kicks a dive, needs to plant out in the gravel. He's got his resistance to the lesion out red juice.
There's no destruction his.
M anything that I could winnow, as your.
Friend Hildren, it's the worst that you gotta you.
He said this. See this's the funny.
You'll make a t count that tree willer blu brother got a chill now you can't see you know about once never.
Once had say con found.
He's got out who you see.
God has caught this run out and down.
He's confined to the other's can