Episode 719: The Grifters (1990)

is a way of life. Killer, cast killer, script killer, everything. We will be spoiling this film as we go along, so if you don't want anything ruin, turn off the podcast and watch the film. Just as an aside, we just recorded this whole GD episode with the record button off, So if we refer to as I said before, that's what we're talking about. So, yes, you did miss a

great conversation. Hopefully we can do it again. So, Jenniediah, when was the first time you saw The Grifters and what did you think?

little snippets of dialogue sounded meat in the trailers. When I did actually see the film sometime in the early nineties, probably by ninety three or ninety four, anyway, it just seemed like something that had always been part of my life, because it just felt like a piece of me had been captured and put on screen and I got to

see it. And for the last thirty years, I've watched the movie many times, and I've read Jim Thompson books and enjoyed those, and it was just one of those things that when it came out and I saw it, I just I knew it was for me, and it ended up changing kind of the course of my life, defining my interests and things I would pursue and enjoy. Let me tell you a story.

came to say anything. For whatever reason, I just really disliked that film, like the twist of the crime and the father and all this kind of stuff, and just Lloyd always creaked me out a little little bit. But he did feel a little bit like a con man in that movie. This whole thing of kickboxing, the sport of the future and just that he wanted to be with Aoni Sky and kickbox his life.

I was too stupid to appreciate this movie. So now all these years later, I can finally say that I really liked The Grifters. I was really glad to do this dive, really happy to read the Jim Thompson book because anytime I read his stuff, I absolutely love it. It's one of those I've talked about this before with other filmmakers where it's like I don't want to dive in headfirst and see everything, you know. I don't want to check out every single Fellini film all at once.

I just want to every few years, you know, even with Jean Pierre Melville. Okay, there's still a few of his that I haven't seen, but I'm just waiting for that right day to break it out from the wine cellar and be like, ah, here we go, here's the Silence of the Sea. Kind of the same thing with Jim Thompson. It's okay, pretty soon I'm going to be watching Siri Noir. So I need to read Hell of a Woman. I can't wait to finally dig into that one.

This was great being able to read that book and just dive into this film and learn about all the behind the scenes. And then, yeah, now I can appreciate that it's Donald Westlake doing the script. I could have appreciated that probably twenty years ago, but not thirty years ago. It's I just really now am finally falling in love with this film all of these years later. But then also, this movie has everything that I love. When it comes to character actors. There are no small roles in this movie.

Even the four sailors that he's playing against on the train, I recognize at least two of these faces. John Grys as the friend of the drunk guy who costs Angelica Houston, you can barely see Grys's face because he's hidden behind his friend on screen. Or Xander Berkley as the Arizona police detective who takes Cuzach over to see the dead body, just all of those, Every single little part in this movie is so well cast and with so many people that you would just start to see over and over again.

This was like I was really starting to see Tobolowski, who I know I'd been working for a longer time, but Tobolowski going to show up again in a few years here in Groundhog, where Xander Berkeley is going to show up in Leaving Las Vegas, and we're just going

to keep getting these faces. But I think this was honestly the first time I ever saw and at Benny, because at this point I hadn't seen Valmont, and maybe I saw Bugsy before I saw this film, but she was this amazing breath of fresh air because who is this woman and she's able to turn it on and off.

She's got that almost Betty Boop type voice that she uses at times, but then when she does her flashback, she's speaking in a light Southern drawl to it, and everybody from this would be either on their way to bigger and better things, or there were character actors in here like Henry Jones, who probably this was probably one of his later films, if not one of his last ones. Every face in here is just fantastic. The casting of

this movie is so well done. And now I finally feel like I appreciate this movie probably the way that you guys did thirty years ago.

what do you want? And Frears goes through the novels just starts pointing out all these scenes that he really wants to have in there, and Wes like's like, oh you like trash basic. I thought you wanted this elevated as I can roll around the gutter too, So I was just like, yes, this is great. Donald, you did

a fantastic job. He knows enough to get the hell out of the way when it comes to so much of Thompson's pros and being able to put the descriptions inside of characters mouths, like things that Thompson is telling us directly. He will then have characters start to say, so, like the whole thing we're talking about the oranges, like he's writing all of that He's talking about like this is an old thing. You beat someone with one with

oranges and they get these horrific bruises on them. But if you do it wrong then it might burst to an organ and kill the person. But yet he rather than there's no voiceover in this other than a little bit of an intro from courtesy of Martin Scorsesey. There's

not any voice over telling these things. Instead it's Pat Hengel saying, Okay, Lily, tell me about the oranges, and making her say it, and making her think about it and making us think about it, and her just on the edge of hysterics with the catching her voice where she is just about to lose her shit. I love

that kind of stuff. I love how there's other times where it's Henry Jones giving this information that was written in the book, but here he's like expounding it, talking about how all those women they got that little piggy bang between their legs and I don't want any women staying at this hotel because they're just going to be working on their backs. And I'm like, this is brilliant stuff.

And this is the reason why you read Jim Thompson, and now you get to hear these incredible actors deliver this kind of exposition, and I just fucking love it. The acting and the caliber of actors and the quantity and quality of character actors in this movie is beyond belief.

off of Roy's radar. In the book he figures it out, but in the movie they actually show it, but as that flashback, and I want to say it might even be his thought process a little bit as well. There's the one of Moira and oh gosh, JT. Walsh's the Langley might be yeah, leangle called Langley and J. T. Walsh is the one who plays him just absolutely brilliantly, another wonderful character actor. And then the other one is it's not too far in the past. Roy's what twenty five.

It feels like this might have happened when he was eighteen. He doesn't look too different or anything other than this member's only jacket or whatever that he's wearing, and that's the origin of Roy as grifter. We get to actually see him meet his mentor and hear his mentor spiel. Other than that, it's all like in the present, and that I think really helps out quite a bit that we aren't just dealing with Rory's childhood or going back

to earlier times with us. Apparently Weslake wrote all of these flashbacks and fears might have even shot all these flashbacks, and I'm pretty sure that he did because Juliette Landau Martin Lando's daughter, who had a pretty good career of her own. I mostly remember her from ed Wood where she's no no liquids. She's just amazing in that where she doesn't ever drink water. She was playing a young lily.

But yeah, they had all of these scenes that were in there, and I'm glad they took him out because this movie just runs so tight and so taut. But back in Roy's childhood, if he say he broke his arm, she'd be like, oh, it's only one arm, And if he did something, she would just play it down so much. And that's one of the final lines of the book, is when she accidentally slashes his throat, she goes only one throat, so good.

find that fascinating how they did that. There's all those visual cues to those older films, but it still feels quite contemporary in its own way because some respects the grift has just become mainstream now, but we were far less aware of it then, So I to think I found absolutely fascinating about it and how they did that, how they they're dressed kind of nineties.

The idea of this is such an LA story and to have this very I'm not an LA guy, but even I recognize this architecture that's going on. I recognize some of these streets just mostly because of movies. And to have that and have a little bit of color with the credits, the blues and the reds and that nice little voiceover from Martin Scressezi at the beginning, uncredited, but the executive producer stepping in to do that. But to start it off with the black and white I

thought was really smart. It really reminded me of Roman Polansky and the way that he starts off Chinatown with the kind of muted opening credits and then going right to those black and white photographs that Jack Nicholson is showing to Bert Young, with those little squeals that Bert Young is doing as his hard at breaking to see

his wife in flagrante with another man. But yeah, it's the same thing here where we've got all of these black and white photos and then we start with Lily coming into the racetrack and just she's got the white hair driving out that think of lighter colored vehicles, and you've also got that quality of light of the southern California sky that Priers was talking about on the commentary, where it's just everything feels so sun baked and drained.

I know they did some flashing on the film to draw that out as well, But then the whole idea too, that they were avoiding red as their color palette until

the movie went on. As the movie goes forward, they're slowly introducing red until you get this blood bath at the end, but not only just in him Cusac with the red all over his shirt, but then also the red dress that Lily's wearing at the end, which I think you guys mentioned was also moirist dress as well, or might she was wearing red as well, And I love that.

I like that transition. That sematic transition worked very nicely for me. It's also the merging of the Lily and.

that film. One mood shift is when Moira and Roy a talking and Moira confronts him about the fact that you're a grifter. I know you're a grifter. Don't treat me like a square. I'm a grifter to it, And there's a whole shift there. And there's another shift very late in the film when Lily says to Roy, what if I selled you I wasn't your mother? And it opens up the possibility that I can do this thing I want to do that I'm not able to do otherwise,

and Roy's struggling with that. In the book, it's even more for long. I mean, the film, Lily is mortified when she kills Roy, weeps over his corpse, but in the books she's life. I think, what do we say that anybody got study one? You already got one throws? What does he say, yeah, got one throat? And takes the money and just goes. She is one hard, hard hussy.

going down in the elevator. I love the focus on her, how it changes and eventually comes into focus then goes out of focus, because just shooting that type of shit must have been very difficult. But yes has the wherewithal to get out of there, to take his car, to leave that Cadillac of Moira's, and to make it look like Moira killed him or whatever happens, Moira is to blame and Lily gets off scott free and can start

a new life. But to your point, Andrew, I don't know how much of a new life she's going to start because all of the things that you were saying, as far as I can stop whenever I want to, it's such an alcoholics refrain, I can quit whenever I want. Yet the constant draw back to it, and even when he's trying to go on vacation and go down to La Joya with Moira, and yet here it is on the train doing the whole tat thing with the dice and caging drinks and getting more and more money off

of these guys, basically financing his trip. I was thinking about doing the same thing when I go out to Vegas in a couple of weeks, and I wouldn't be surprised that if Lily is an odd to the whole Lilith myth myth as well, I'm sure they didn't choose these character names just out of a hat. And then I love that preres is, Oh, this is all multice Falcon. This is Mary Astor going to hell after betraying Sam

Spade in the maltice Falcon. And he knows that who he's dealing with, Angelica Houston and the legacy that she's bringing to it with her father and all of his work. But you're talking about the white suit before Jededie, and I was thinking about that white suit that he's wearing in Treasure Madre. Yeah, it's just like and yeah, doesn't he wear one in Chinatown as well?

now I get the joke again. Just the what Angelica Houston brings to this role is just amazing the sharpness of her dialogue, the sideline glances that she gets, just the ascid in her voice when she's talking with Moira. I absolutely loved that little moment where she quote unquote accidentally drops her keys and picks those up and basically

shoves her ass and Moira's face. You're talking about the merging, Andrew, and just the time that we see all three of those characters together quote quote is right there at the beginning, with that amazing split screen effect that they're doing, and following all three of those characters and then bringing them together in one frame with the two women on either side and John Cusack in the middle, all with their sunglasses on, all of them checking out the rest of

everybody around them. But that, oh god, that shot is just incredible.

of the color photography of the three characters. But it's that he goes into Benigan's and there's country music blasting on the saying in downtown LA for some reason that firmly puts it in the present for me, or in the nineteen nineties for me.

put out by Mirror Max apparently what was there. There's that story about Harvey bidding against himself because nobody else even wanted this movie basickly. But yeah, there's a great behind the scenes documentary on this that came out on one of the Blu rays. It took me a little bit to fine, but really some incredible stories and it's

really nice. You get to hear from two of the producers, maybe three, but at least two of them, and we'll actually hear from them a little bit later in the show, which is pretty cool that I was able to speak to them, and I hope people don't mind. But I had to ask Barbara defeed out a whole lot of questions about Goodfellows while I was at it, just because when was I going to get that chance again.

the plane Gloria Graham. That was an interesting exercise. I watched The Grifters and the film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool back to back a few weeks ago.

Benning comes in, she's, oh, is there something wrong? Oh, oh, I'm sorry, I thought you were the other lady. Yeah, And then we're gonna get Harry Jones confusing and then luckily the police confusing these two ladies. And it's really just that mark on the hand that tips us off that it's not Lily that is actually Myra. And oh the mark on the hand, the cigar burn, the whole scene with pat Hingele as Bobo justice coming to deliver some bobo justice to her. Holy shit, that scene leaves

a major impression. And what's the best is that, Yeah, there's some really awful violence in there, but I think in your mind it was even worse going in and it's almost a relief when you come to a fucking cigar burn on the back of the hand.

it is really unnerving. Great performances on both but great writing to know that you were going to be able to get away with something if you could show on TV, but have the impact of such horrific violence delivered just in the dialogue. It was amazing.

her medically. So Roy's all happy when he's, oh, have you been with other people? And she's like, oh, yeah, I've had sex before, and she says something like I can't get pregnant, and she's upset about it. Oh, we can never have children together. Roy, like she's already planning the wedding and everything, and he was like Oh, that's great,

let's fuck This is terrific. And then yeah, after they have sex, she talks about her past and she barely touches on it, but in your mind you expanded out to so much because she's talking about her mother and her grandmother and they're trying to see how young a woman can be or a girl can be before she can have a baby. And they found out five years old she was able to conceive, and then they sterilized her. They almost found out when it came to her grandmother, but they killed her in the process.

wretched stuff. That was something the whole Communism angle. There's a real quick mention in the Grifters, and I was like, Oh, he's definitely being ironic here because I knew that he was a Communist because he's talking about he's talking about the fucking Nazis as Roy he's talking about the Nazis, and it's just he gets after he's getting mad at

Carol for her telling him her past. He says, after all, the one time friends, poor fellows were now our friends, and it would be bad takes to show gas stoves on television. After all, you couldn't condemn a people, could you, And what if they had done exactly that themselves, should you make the same regrettable error? After all, they hated the Reds as much as we did. They were as eager as we were to blow every stinking Red in

the world to Helen gone. And after all, those people they allegedly sinned against had brought most of the trouble on themselves. And what he's saying with they had brought the trouble on themselves. He's talking about Jewish people, and I'm just like, holy fuck. And then the next paragraph is it was their own fault, it was her own fault. But with him railing against the Reds, I was like, Okay, we're being ironic here. I'm so glad that it's not.

I'm glad that Roy Dylan is not Jim Thompson. Of course, there's nothing in nineteen ninety that is going to line up with that, And it's not like she's I don't know, like Vietnam survivor or somebody, I don't know what would be the corollary. There's nothing that can be a corollary to the Holocaust, guys, I think that's pretty safe to say.

But that removal was very smart. Again going back to Westlake and his adaptation, what he was doing, making the internal making the descriptions that Thompson is giving us, and then putting them into the mouths of these characters, taking the description of the hotel where Roy is living at and putting some of that stuff into the mouth of Henry Jones as the only I think he's the only guy that works at the hotel basically other than the one maid who he's telling to take any towels that

she finds on the floor and refold rather than launder, because it's going to cost him probably a few cents to launder all those towels. Just refold them. If it's white, refold it. But yeah, fucking Henry Jones, man, he is so good in this. Henry Jones is always great in anything that he's in. At The Bad Seed, him just completely emasculating Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo and yeah, just playing

yet another skeazy hotel landlord type person. I'm trying to remember the name of the actor that plays the guy with the big teeth in Blazing Saddles Taggart's right hand man, but I think he runs the hotel in the Getaway, And it's very much the same idea of these transient people living in hotels, which is funny because I know that's how Charles Wiliford lived a lot of his life, but it was in San Francisco where he's living in

hotels for months and months at a time. And to hear about the Los Angeles transience and some of the stuff that they were talking about on the audio commentary of guys trying to coerce women into prostitution while they're walking down the line at the Actors Strike, just handing out business cards to all the attractive women. I'm just like, man, what a world? What a world does Los Angeles is?

they are as human beings. But the movie, at least on your first viewing of it, actually if you're a teenager like I was, having watched a lot of John Cusack romantic teenage romantic comedies, and I do think that he's who I'm rooting for in this movie into and then at the end what happens to him is really awful in a way that it wouldn't quite be if I really thought he was such a piece of shit, the way I would if Carol's story had been preserved.

I can stop anytime. I don't have I just have a couple of drinks of parties. I just do a couple of grifts on the weekdays when I'm selling match sticks to different bars and things. I just take five dollars here, dollar there. I'll have this weird bet with this guy where I pay him a dime for every quarter that he can set up on end. Yeah, those kind of things were. Yeah, it's like he's penny Ante. But he can never stop.

twenty twenty four. I just don't know. But the idea of the shifting of the odds that she's doing for Bobo and his syndicate, what was it Amusement Eastern AMusA, Adjument and amusements, that she's there with this wads and words of money, shifting all of these odds and making sure these horses don't come in for too much, and that really to me mirrors the Moira scam of the stock market. That's the new horse race, even though that's

been around for one hundred years as well. But the whole idea of the hackers and oh, we have an eight second lead here. It's so much in eight seconds the horse could come in faster than somebody else, that's by like milliseconds. So here they've got this eight second lead. So we can figure this stuff out and put in these buys and puts and all this kind of stuff. It's win place or show for the modern age. And then also that is nineteen ninety. We've gone through eight

years of Reagan. We're halfway through George Bush the first term. It's yeah, these the idea, these predatory lending and all this kind of stuff. Pretty much, Thompson almost comes out and says, hey, whatever we're doing, the government's doing it way worse to you. But we're honest grifters. We're the ones that are looking you right in the eyes as we're taking your money out of your pocket. The government

won't even do that. The one thing that Weslake brings whole cli as far as I know, to the screenplay is the scene with JT. Walsh is the flashback of Moira and this setting up of Charles Napier as this Texas Oil millionaire I presume to be clipped, and that whole scene of them, it tells you so many things. It tells you all about Moira that the voice that she's using, that Gloria Graham voice, is not her voice. We don't know what her real voice. Probably sounds like.

She's got a little bit of a Texas drawl when she's talking with Charles Napier. We find out about JT. Walsh and how he's this Basically, he's the ultimate comment to me, he's that mentor character that John Cusack meant if that mentor just kept getting deeper and deeper until you get off the deep end. And that part of

the flashback where we see what happens as JT. Walsh, I just think that's fantastic that he goes crazy, been double crossed, and has been double crossing people all of his life that now suddenly all seems to be rushing back onto him and he can't even trust that there's a floor. That he can't even step off of his bed. He's just paralyzed with fear, who can trust who, Who's

going to double cross who? It's like he gets to the point in his life where he can't even trust that the floor is going to hold him up anymore.

He just has gone completely off the deep end. And I even though that scene is there is a character, there is a Langley character in the book, and I think he just I think want to say he became a drunk or something and was off the grift and all this, but this whole idea, the elaborate con that they set up, and then also the mental illness that is very Westlake, that is him making these things up and investigating the whole thing with the stock market and stuff.

And that's really his addition to the screenplay is that whole section. I thought that was brilliant and just to show first off, fucking JT. Walsh and Charles Napier going at it. Yes, I absolutely love it. But JT. Wallsh just in and off himself was always just delivered those performances like nobody's business and could just come in and be in a movie for five minutes and just knock you out with his performance, like even his little turn in A Few Good Men, all of that is wonderful.

But yeah, in this movie, he's great, and I just love that he ends up cracked up and unable to even move. He's so paranoid. And I know it's a little thing, but her with her clip on earrings. How she takes the clipy ond earrings off before she leans in to kiss him, and I'm just like, oh, okay, you don't even have your ears pierced. There's not even

that commitment to that. It's just these clip on things. Yeah, the way that when he talks about his mom going to the track, I think it's like, oh, the track. And then there's just like a few beats before she says I want to know everything about you, and I'm like, yeah, I bet you do. I bet you see your meal ticket just coming down the street here. I love that, And I love too that her hair is completely different

in the older in the flashback with JT. Walsh, and also when you can see her getting nervous about how extravagant JT. Walsh is with the con when he opens up the door, he's just like, I got a whole room of hardware back here. Come on back and check these computers out. You can hear them humming, and Napier starts to stand up and she's just like, no, that's okay, honey,

that's okay. And they're like, oh, you're actually really nervous here, and then yeah, just that whole idea of her being so malleable with her looks and things, and then of course when she is in the present with Roy, that her hair and Lily's hair are so similar, just that kind of wild blonde just streaking out. An like the end of the film with having Lily come in and try to steal all of her son's money, it's like the one thing she doesn't ask for it, she just

comes in and takes it every single bit. She's just like, I need that money, Roy, and that becomes that whole inciting thing of that end scene that you're just talking about. I think I can't remember if it's Freeers. I think it might be. Westlake talks about how it's set up like a boxing match. They just keep trying these different angles. She comes at him this way and he won't do it. He comes at her this way and she won't do it.

Then she turns it around like you were saying, Jededie, and starts to do that whole I don't think she says in the movie what if I wasn't your mother? But there's definitely that we can get together. There's a kiss that happens in this movie, and I'm just like, oh, shit, Is it okay? Every angle?

and all that's lifted directly from The Sting. I think it was influenced very heavily by the Sting, who.

so many of them, and they I love them. And when I know, when I've had maybe a string of disappointing reads in a row, like I really need the salvage my reading streak, I'll pull out at Jim Thompson then, or I've got a handful of authors like that where I've I've got some set aside that I can just pull out when I know I got to have a great one portraits.

use in novel The novel Story to Story. Robert Pulito's amazing biography of Jim Thompson Savage Art I just read preparing for this podcast, and it's really great at going through Thompson's each of his books and pointing out which scenarios were retelling of real events from Thompson's life, which characters are based on his mother, his father, which character is supposed to be him, and a lot of those names are Communist Party names that Thompson used when he

was in the Communist Party and had a several identities there, and Dylan was one of the identities that he used, and that name pops up an awful lot in his work.

they think that means they're smart. I think that line is directly Thompson talking about his father, who made fortunes, made he was a millionaire one year, and then would they be destitute and having to move in with relatives. And Thompson as a young man, took it upon himself then to take care of his father. Would be absent for years at a time, just sending a little money or cards now and then. But Thompson would he took upon himself to support his family, support his mom and

his sisters. And yeah, so he took these jobs working. He would work all night at the hotel and then go to high school and fall asleep in class. He was just constantly working. One of the oedipal stuff in the Grifters, and that shows up in Thompson's other books is because that was a lot of them. He's constantly killing his father and attracted to his mother or his sisters,

things like that in the books. And I'm not suggesting that that Thompson really did any of this stuff, but a lot of those themes that come through and motifs that show up throughout his work there are here in the Grifters come out of his real life, and yeah, if you're interested in Thompson, I can't recommend that the Savage Art book by Robert Pluto enough. It was really great.

I'd been aware of it for a long time and wanted to read it for a long time, but took the occasion of this episode to finally do it, and it was amazing.

way that it sticks all up. And then you get that echo again with Moira and that whole idea of yeah, he's just basically sleeping with his mom every time he sleeps with Moira, and that whole thing too of her with the separate rooms. And I want to say that they actually flip that from the book was it. I think it was Roy's idea to have the separate rooms so that he could grift and do whatever he wanted to without Moira knowing. And then and then she he actually,

oh yeah. In the book, he gets up early one morning and he this is not in the movie. He gets up early while they're down in La Joya and takes a trip into I can't remember which adjoining city and goes to a bar and sees this old punchboard

in the bar. He starts up this whole like friendly conversation with the guy who's running the bar, this guy named Bert, and he sees this punchboard and he knows it's an old drifting trick, and he intends on stopping it and tell you, or that's what he is telling himself anyway, that he's going to stop and eventually tell Bert, listen, you got rooked by this and you need to throw

this thing away basically. But before he can do that, wouldn't you know, there's an undercover cop inside the bar who comes over and basically abuses Roy, doesn't arrest him. Roy manages to kno get his record a smirch at that point, but he calls all over the place, including calling Moira, and that I think is really what tips

her off to what's going on. And then when he comes back to the room later on, she's not there for a long time, and she was actually at that point going over and finding out more about his mother because of the race track being right there too. That's a little bit of a twist that's happening in there, and I'm glad that they dropped that. They really didn't need that whole scene because the way that she figures him out in the movie, I think it takes a

little bit of a longer time, or maybe not. I'm curious what you guys think as far as when is the first moment she realizes that what is it? Game meets game? Her attraction to Roy is based probably on the grift and she's, oh, this guy has something else happening with him.

pitch to him now. But yeah, I think that was definitely on her mind for their whole relationship, which I think then mentioned in the film has been about two months.

he's just alert to that. One of the mysteries of the film. Will never knows.

he can have. I think they say fifty thousand dollars in the book, and this is nineteen sixty three money. Guys, he's got fifty fifty two I think thousand dollars saved away. And you know that he he only uses that money. The only time it really comes out, it ever comes out from behind the clown paintings is when he's trying to pay off Lily. He thinks that by throwing money at her, literally, that he's going to pay his debt

because he hates to be in debt to her. He hates her so much because he thinks he had such a shitty childhood and I think he did. He had such a shitty childhood that he's just I don't want her helping me, like it's a dreadful thing. That she was the one that got the ambulance that got him to the hospital, that saved his life. And she says that she gave him life twice birth and then saving him for this, and he's just desperate. I don't want

to owe her anything. So he tries, hey, his own mother off with four grand to be like, there you go, that's gonna be good for the hospital, right, Just fuck you, Lily. And sometimes he wants.

for this, and she goes on her way. But there's this great we in double on Pondra See where the jewelers basically saying, oh, look, I'm sorry about this. The diarlands are fake. I can't give you much. But look, if there's anything else you think we might be interested in, you're a valued customer, just let us know. And she's she basically says, there might be there might be one thing, or I would have to see the merchandise, but you're looking at it. A terrific little introductory scene to Moira.

Her particular anxiety in the book is that she knows she can't keep selling her body. She knows that it's a finite resource. She's getting old. She didn't want you to start with, but she also knows that she gets older, it gets harder, it takes more out of a It's a tough saying in that book, where she's still ruminating that she needs she needs money, and she needs it fast, and she she can't get it selling her body. So what's she going to do?

that are all like written for out of magazine. It's all advertising pattern and talking about like germs and your crevices and things, and it's just like in the movie. I'm like, what the hell is this? And you know, I'm so glad I read the book because now that makes a lot more sense.

handles and the immaculate wires and owners. It's good stuff, good stuff.

worlds seemed exotic and radically different than my own. But I think movies really helped me see and introduced me to the wider world in a way that got planted very early for me. So filmmaking fell into it. There was actually a teacher in high school who had us make super eight films, and it was very odd. This was unusual at the time, but mister Fitzpatrick, there you go, and we'd have fun making them. And I made a little stop action thing of shot glances dancing to the

song Tequila. I wish I could still find it. And then as I went to college in undergrad our town had just started a cable television station, Public Access, so we got to make programming for that, and I started to begin to know more about storytelling, and we also I had film production classes again. Another wonderful professor there named Roger bullis very supportive and helpful. And then I

went to graduate school. It was video TV film got to keep doing more stuff and more narrative based productions, and all I can say is, I knew I wanted to make movies, really wanted to make movies at that point, but I have no idea how I go about it. But I didn't know I wanted to go to New York. I thought New York City was just the coolest place in the world you could be, and I really just followed my instincts. I'm sure much more logical choice would have been Los Angeles, but the big city to Big

Apple called, and I went. When I started working in New York, I actually got a job. My first job was as a receptionist for a company that made corporate films, and within a year I was working as a producer director for them. And all that background and experience I had making films all through those college years actually paid off. There were a lot of people who worked on stuff but had no idea how this was. Like when videotape

was just coming. I'm really strong, and nobody knew how to run a tape recorder, handing that stuff and go to college, and the jobs that I had working through college all involved me dealing with that kind of stuff. That's how I got involved. Starting out, while I was in New York, I met other people involved in the film business, and after a couple of years I was

able to cross over into working on narrative stuff. And then oddly enough I transitioned from doing industrials into helping people prep feature films like for free, helping to learn the skills involved in breaking down movies and strip boards and all the things you do to create a production

shooting schedule. And one night I go to a party and I meet John Sales and Maggie RAMSI there and John had recently made Return of the Sacocca seven, which was, as we know, very popular and tied into the burgeoning start of the independent film movement. John Cassabetti's was one version, and then the next generation was people like John Sales, the Coen Brothers, Jim Jarvish, and I was in New York and started working with John in that period of time.

This was in the eighties, and life happens. There was no big plan. It was an accident. We hit it off that They told me they were making another movie, and I said, if you need somebody to help sign me up, And they asked me to come in and production manage this low budget film called Leanna, which we had fun making in and Hullboken for really a small amount of money. And then after that was done, Magie, who's John's life partner and has been a producer of

his films his whole career. Meggie said, Hey, we've got this other movie when we want to make, called mate One. Would you like to produce it with me?

to read secret messages in graffiti in the subway. And so that went from a dream and that one line concept to John go's ave got two hundred and fifty grand. Do you think we could get a movie like that in the canon. I'm sure we could figure it out. And we made The Brother from Another Planet. Six weeks later we were shooting that was it. That was my first official producing credit, and I just kept going.

those things. What finally happened is that we made that film for a very low budget given the scope and scale of it, which was a period nineteen twenty epic and Virginia, and we got the financing largely based on John's reputations of foreign sales based on what he could

bring in. And then God bless we got James Earl Jones to start in a supporting role as the leader of the black miners who are brought in to be scabs but wind up joining up with the union the local coal miners who are out on strike, and we cast people who were not well known yet like David stuthan new Oscar winner, was in one of the very strong supporting roles. Chris Cooper never been a lead in a film. He was the lead in Mate One. It wasn't a movie that you sold on names particularly. It

mostly wrote on John's reputation and previous track record. And the truth is, by that point he had Skaka seven and Brother from Another Planet, both of which were very successful at the box office, and that helped us get the financing. But it took seven years from me wanting to get financed in John's next movie after that, Eight min Out, which I also helped produce, was made a year later, and that had taken eight years to get financed.

through the production period. I get a call one day, did I want to come in and talk to Stephen Prayers about this movie he was going to make? And

this was when I was living in New York. I go to I forget if it was the Algonquins Hotel and meet with Stephen and it was the most fascinating interview ever because all we did was just chat about movies, favorite films, things that had to do with family relationships, the weird overtones sometimes and on who was a little too flortacious with one of my brothers, all the stuff that starts to touch on incest in a way, but he can't really tell for sure if that's what's going on.

And he never asked me anything, particularly about what do you know about production? It was like and this was actually one of the great things I admired about Stephen. He clearly knew my credits and that I had history before I was coming in. He knew that I had made some kind of mark as a producer in the independent film world, and he respected that. And the dynamic between a producer and a director is a lot about

understanding of shared vision. Do you understand as a producer what the director's going for how can you help support translating that into the actual film and all the many decisions that have to be made along the way about where do you put the money? And I don't know. At a certain point, it's do a sense you can get along, communicate well, and do you have enough experience

to do what's required. All I can tell you is whatever that magic combination is supposed to be, it seemed to happen, and I walked out a little stun going. That was the oddest kind of It was just a great conversation. And the same thing happened with other people. I know because I recommended a friend to be the script supervisor and she came out saying the same thing. Like they started talking about famous Polish filmmakers. Her last name was Polish. All this kind of stuff, and that

was just Steven. And part of the way he treated people on the crew was about respecting what they brought to the table and trusting it. And somehow that just came through without him ever giving you a compliment. He's not prone to compliments, but he felt it more than you needed to hear it, and so people would really do whatever to help support him getting what he wanted on screen.

seemed very what I suspected. She was nervous, but not particularly forth company talking bus and I wish I could remember what happened. But some question he placed because he, I think, really felt strongly about Angelica forever. All something he said flipped the switch and all of a sudden they just went the right direction and was very engaging, and Marty came out agreeing that she would be the best choice for the role, and.

and literally that noir ish look. I think he created a beautiful with a great production team, neo noir look that makes that film when I look at it, and I saw it recently, it still holds up. You can't quite figure out when and where it was set, so it doesn't age itself. Stephon was in love with the language from the book and so all that stuff that would have seemed anachronistic to us. It was like put it in and that great line get off the griff Ry,

you haven't got the stomach for it. Loved all that, and I do think it exsolutely brought that word back into the lex Acount. I never heard it before before, seen the book, and of course reading a screenplay.

understood until after the fact. But the financier was actually getting into trouble. I didn't know that, but I didn't know all of a sudden the movie was getting cut back, shipped away at by a couple hundred dollars, And what happened is we discovered later they went bankrupt. But in this period of time, we're just like, Okay, there's a squeeze. We've got to figure out how we're going to adjust. And one of the things you always look at is

are there any scenes that can be cut? Because as soon as you cut scenes, you can save on shooting time, and you can try to nickel dime your way through it, which you do, but you really at some point go can you cut scenes? Can you compress shooting? Can you save on gays with actors? Those are the big things

you tend to look at. And so there had been a couple of flashbacks written into the script that, personally and lovely as they were, I thought were probably extraneous, that they would probably never wind up in the final

cut of the film. And I went back and forth with Stephen about that for a while, and he, like every good director should, wanted to fight for everything, but at a certain point he saw that the writing was on the wall and if we didn't come back with an adjustment to close the gap of a couple hundred thousand dollars, And so I finally was like, okay, we'll

cut a couple of these flashbacks, So that helped. And then the other thing is always having a good relationship with the people who are heads of the department and to really genuinely create a relationship where they know you're pulling for them. You want them to look good, you want them lovely, to look good. But then there becomes this assessment you have to do about where do you invest it, where do you want to impress the most with production value, and then where do you know you

can cheat it. And with movies like The Grifters and several other particularly period films they've worked on, you realize you got invested in the beginnings of the movie where you're trying to sell the period and really get the audience bought in, and then you can cheat later on and put corners once you've established.

The Grifter was both interior a lot of ways, and yet it had these racetrack scenes and two different racetracks and required traveling to reshout one near Los Angeles and the other one in Phoenix, and so you still had a somewhat ambitious scope to do with certain things, but there's also tricks you try to do when the money is tight, and that's a lot in the area of location scouting married to the production design, try to find places that bring a lot of the look already to

the table. For example, one of those great last shots where Lily's going down in the elevator through that old elevator that was over on wheel Share the east side of town was great Bryce and Something apartments and there it is. I think of the Grifters every time I drive by them. Wonderful.

you wind up talking about. But it also has to be put within the context of what is the most important for the movie and telling this story, and that's also your job as the producer.

same direction. But you look, you had Dennis Gassner, one of the best production designers in the world making that movie, designing that film earlier on in his career, surely one of the most gifted costume designers I ever met. Richard Horning, who regrettably is no longer with us, Oliver Stapleton, who shot a bunch of Stephens films and is great. Mick Budsley, who's cut almost all of Stephen's films that he's directed, who is a gem and very good at his job

of storytelling in the editing room. Vicky Thomas and I have remained friends to this day. I loved what she brought to it now. She also worked with Marty's legendary casting director in New York as well. But this was a great moment in all of our lives. I think where we were still early enough in our careers that The Grifter was a real feather in our caps for moving on from there. And I think that's part of

why I remember it so fondly. And you look at that film, It's crameless, and the story holds up, the telling of the story holds up. It had high production value. My god, we made it look more than it cost. I think he got to meet Ricky Jay who was the consultant on the Grifter schemes? Who is could you get anything better than that? You had Elmer Bernstein doing the score. I still can go that ditty of the Grifter, which that thing starts so fun in the beginning, and

then it just gets darker and darker. Another one of my very strong memories from The Grifters was the scene towards the end of the film wax Roy is manipulating him to try to get the money she needs to run away and winds up killing him by whacking that piece of glass and inadvertently into his neck. And there she is keening over the body and has to pull

herself together to leave. Big shot, big scene, climatic moment, three cameras on it, do it all, And so it was done largely with the coverage of the three cameras. In one take when Stephen coult cut I remember Angelica was sobbing she could not pull herself together, and Stephen basically, I shouldn't be and patted me on the shoulder. Go in and talk to her and help her, and I'm like, okay.

And I remember going in and sitting with her. It must have been there was a bedroom on the side, sitting on the bed, and she just said it reminded her father had not died that long, much before this, and she just kept thinking about her father, and that grief just came over her fully in the moment. And I remember sitting there just trying to listen and be of some comfort and a witness to the moment.

has just grown and grown in its appreciation. There were a lot of leather neil noir films made right around the time The Grifters. There were about three or four, and I don't think anybody respectfully recalls the other ones much, But most books remember the grifters, and it continues to be rediscovered with new generations, so I think it has become a contemporary classic.

are smart. The woman you've fallen in love with, who, by the way, has turned out to kill your best friend. But what was great about Stephen in that story is he always said, it's actually not qsx's characters story, it's not Roy's story, it's Lily's. And that was what O'donald West like into writing script once he said it was Lily's. Donald's like, Okay, I got it. And that's the thing about Stephen's stuff. I think that it is in its own way very feminist, but no one would ever describe

the film as that. But even in little things in the background, like that wonderful Henry Jones character actor that is at the hotel when you check in and all that, he's well, i'd always pontificating. And if you just look in the background, you see a woman just working mopping the floors, doing the hard work while he's there pontific So even in that that was intentional in a statement that Stephen, I know consciously put in women are always doing the work and the cleanup in the back.

really I think pursued Donald. Didn't help convince Donald to do the screen.

we started shooting. Wo we would write out on outline of this is what's going to happen here all that, and we went okay, author from what we needed.

I actually cut to me being in New York. I had just finished up producing a film that actually turned out to be not a pleasant experience for me, and I even got to the point of, oh lord, I don't know if I if this is what it's going to be, I don't know that I want to keep going. It was really difficult in culture, and unlike any of the other films I had made up to that point, which were all really wonderful, collaborative, all on the sun

page kind of experiences. But while I was in New York, I met a very accomplished writer named Eve Ensler who wrote for the stage, the woman who went on to do the Vagina Mounta Logs and all that. And she told me she actually had directed a little show downtown, a one man show called Word of Mouths, and she thought I'd like it, that I should go see it. Snowy night in December, I truned the land and the show was remarkable for many reasons, but within it was this seven minute sketch.

about everything. And what the writter had done that was so remarkable is he made it funny and heartbreaking at the same time, because the character does at a certain point think he should check out and makes an attempt to take his online and so here's this little, heartwarming, poignant comedy about suicide. I can only tell you it marked me. I loved it. I am a white, cis gender heterosexual woman, but I understood that kid, and I understood how it feels and the price of shame and

how much SHAMEE can kill. I just loved it. I had my producing partner and friend, Randy Stone, come in to see if Randy and I had met making Little Man Take together produced that he was THEEP on it, and Randy, a game man, came out and I could see the same thing had happened to him, laughing, and he could still see he had cried, and he just said, look, we got to make a film out of that. And it was like, okay, it was avaran for both of us. Randy and I had both worked in the film world producing.

Randy was a very accomplished casting director in television. He cast Expiles a bunch.

a great idea. So that's what we did, and so off we went. We raised money. What the writer Celestiless Scene had shared with us is that part of what motivated him to write that sketch in the first place is that he had just heard a report on MPR about the higher rate of suicidal risk among LGBTQ plus suits, and it turned out that the government itself had documented that queer youth were three to four times as likely to make an attempt on their life as they're straight peers.

We know now in the years since that risk goes up to it at least ten times as high as raight peers if you'd come from an unaccepting family way. That was shocking to me. And when we made the film. I contacted friends who did educational distributor, and I knew that we would be able to use the film to get it out there in schools as like a teaching kid to help support mental health and talk about wanting to create more accepting environments for gain questioning. That was

the coming together of it. We were lucky enough to raise money, friends, family, and we go ahead and we make the film. The film goes on, it starts winning awards at all these short film festivals and voila, oh my lord, we get a Tenny Award nomination for Best Short and even better when it was quite a remarkable night and I must say a very proud directorial debut for me.

out to be two. But I'm sharing the good news about this event with a friend who just says, there's probably going to be a lot of kids who feel like Trevor watching it. You should put up a number for them to call. And it was like a bolt of lightning hit me and I went, Oh, my god, she's right. And I thought, oh God, I just have to find one. There must be one knowing one a

mental health crisis. There must be one in existence. Looked all around and I found two lines that said they were open on the weekend targeting, or rather set up to serve. If I called both them, didn't get an answer at either. And it was at that moment I said, if there isn't, then we'll just have to create. And that's where the producing chops come in. Producing is the word producings, make something, not nothing. And that's how the

Trevor Project came to be and the driver helpline. So again I found somebody who was an expert in mental help and in sucide prevention. They were running one of the best services actually here in Los Angeles and nationally recognized. Wound up making a deal to piggyback with their counselor the head of it was gay. He had always wanted to do something like this for gay youth, and he was like, Okay, I'll train the counselors if you can

find the funding to pull this off. And that's how we got it off the ground in three months time. In the years since, we were able to build up resources, bring the counselors in house, and up to the pandemic, we had offices and call centers in both Los Angeles and New York. Now we're fully remote, which I think is actually great because you can now champ people and entrained counselors remotely, and we have people who bring all different walks of life in different areas to working on

the crisis center. One of the most striking things about the HBO experience for me, I was actually at the call center the night the film aired and premiered on HBO. I was standing there at five o'clock when the film ended and Ellen did a wonderful wrap up about it, and the number came on screen and the phones started ringing off the hook. Immediately, I started shaking, and over fifteen hundred calls came in that first night, and honestly have not stopped since Trevor's much bigger now it's a

five hundred plus organization. I'm actually in a weird full circle moment serving as the interim CEO right now, and I have been doing that for about the last year and a half as we transition to our next leader. And it's extraordinary to me to be in this position. I've done with it for the twenty five years. It actually started around my dining room table, so it's been a really long journey I never saw coming, never anticipated, but it has truly turned out to be one of

the most fulfilling and rewarding experiences of my life. And at this juncture, I've had a really wonderful career producing film, got to direct few things, which I love. I think producing made me a better director when I started, and directing made me a better producer after I had done it. I took that accrude knowledge and I actually was invited to come set up the creative producing program at NYU Grad Film and I did that and taught at.

position now. I also still work with the me I've been an Academy member since the late eighties and I now serve as the chair of the Student Academy Awards Committee, and I also sit on the executive committee for the Producer's Branch. So I love I still have my foot in the door with the film business, and in some different ways.

mentoring the next generation of filmmakers. I just and what you always try to do, and every good teacher that I know does this. You just try to help them not make the same mistakes you did. They'll make their own, but you just try to help them shortcut not to repeat some of the gaps. I try to fill in the gaps in my knowledge that I wish i'd had when I was starting out.

thought it was just it was a great job. And then Little Murders of course with Alan Arkin and Elliott, and I think it was Marsha Rod was a great fun movie. I was coordinator again, and it's hard to remember all of the every once in a while and one of them pops up. Oh yeah, I remember that Interiors with what He was the only Woody Allen movie I ever did, and he and the DP were fighting. We were trapped out in the Hampton's in the winter. So it was I think that was the last coordinator

job I did. But at that point I said, maybe I can do I'll do something else. I'll try, and so I did. But that was the end for.

to do commercials. Then you shoot the commercials there and for some reason, after a couple of weeks, somebody must have quit or something, and they sent me over there to work, and I met a bunch of the union crew and the place, of course went bankrupt several months later, but one of them said, Hey, my brothers the business agent makeup and hair, so i'll introduce you. He's looking

for someone. So I worked at the makeup and hair local the IA for maybe six months or a year, and then the deal was he was going to introduce me to someone else to help me get into the business, which he did, and he took me down to the actually it was the script supervisors and production coordinators local, and I was lucky. It was busy and they had a spot for me. So they put me on the City Lammett movie and that was how I got in. So it was completely by chance.

take it. And meanwhile, Marty had been I don't know if he was with an agency, but he was introduced to Mike Ovidz at CIA, and Mike talked Tom Pollock into making the movie, and so Marty's out of gratitude, signed with CIA, and that's how the movie got made. And it was just when Tom Pollack had started at He was a great lawyer and had just started with the studio. I don't want to say naive, but freedom of speech, and as a lawyer, I think he had

no idea what problems he had inherited. But we went to Morocco and we made the movie for a very reduced price. Part of the problem was that before I started, the budget was much too high and it was just too much to risk. So we had to do indie budget and do it offshore, and so that's how it got made. Still have problems in the theaters, but Cineplex Audion did deliver and it did get some theatrical release.

But there were people out lined up outside. There were some women in blue who were lined up outside praying every day. Most of the people that were really angry had never seen the movie or read the book. They were just in theory, very upset by it. They also thought there were sex scenes and all sorts of stuff which aren't in the just nothing like that in the movie. But that's what happens.

think has just finished My Beautiful Wanderette. It was an early movie for him and at the time I think we had a deal at Disney, which was when you think of the material, Probably not a good place, but we might have just optioned it because we had the deal, and we might have had a discretionary fund. By that point, the deals were a very lush and we had discretionary money and you had overhead, and it's not so much

like that today. And Disney decided not to make it, and so Cineplex Odeon stepped in the production part of it and they raised the money again, very small budget, about the same Stephen was great because he came from smaller budget movies and he did a wonderful job with it.

odds and people get to't understand what she's doing. And the more we worked on it, and the more we tried to explain the worse of God, so we decided, well just say it and forget it, and people will get she's doing something bad and understand eventually what's going on or not, but that she's doing something that's making it the board change. But I remember going on and on about that, and I asked, one of my fun things is I asked, because it looks sort of period,

but it's not. And I said to Steve and I said, so, what year is it? And he said it's every year, which is a total career's answer. It could be any time.

the rights come back. So we're trying to figure out what do we do on the fifteen years, what do we do with the LLC, and what do we do with because I've never had that experience before.

and send it. And this is like digital. So we had to do the digital thing, and then we had to upload it and there were like three people uploading it, and otherwise it was just send the print. It's really hard sometimes, but I find I think there that a lot of movies don't get the theatrical releases. They don't all have to, but some of them this really should, and I think I'm hoping that might change a little. The Academy changed the rules so it's not so easy

to qualify now as it was. I think it was just a week in the theater, and now it's different. It's more complicated to actually qualify, which I may be happy to see that. I think everybody was hoping that would happen. I have trouble with streaming. I hear about a great show and then I don't know how to I kn'd find it, and then when I find it, I forgot. But then I think there's going to be some contraction there. Maybe there won't be so many streamers

and there won't also be so much material. I think the sort of economics have caught up with some of them.

The guys were everybody got along, thank god, and Paul Serbino was like the master and he was breaking to opera any chance he got, and everybody was having a good time. It was very violent, but and yet when you're making the movie, it's not violent. You see it, it's not real, and so it gets sometimes it gets funny. Yeah, but it was a good experience, and posts was calm. Selma was there, of course, Selma schoonmaker. Most of the time.

I think we're in Queens And it's a story about how the studio were angry I forget what they were angry about. I think we were over scheduled, but not much over budgets. And they said we couldn't go to Florida because there was a scene in Tampa at the zoo. And in fact is we never really we're going to go to Florida. It was toward the end of the schedule and it was a little couple of little scenes, and so we just did it here in New York and the zoo. I forget. Maybe it was I forget

which sue Brooklyn. I think it was the Brooklyn sue. And they got a lot of plants from like tropical plants, and there was a vacant lot and they put filled it up with these tropical plants. And that was Florida and it worked. It was fine. The whole point of it was hanging him over the cage. It wasn't really about seeing the zoo. It's just sometimes the imagination in the audience is more than you need. So, you know, I think we had a good time with it.

went to in La. We went to an area just outside Redundo Beach, I think it was, and we had a screening there and first of the projector broke twice. And finally we finished the movie and there was a point in the movie that women used to walk out. I think it was when Henry was really all wired up, and they would just say I can't take anymore and they would leave. And so that happened, and then it was over and we gave out the cards and people virtual.

People were really riled up about the film breaking and people started writing FU all over the cards. The crowd was not pleased, they're happy. So we were like, this is really bad, and we hit it. We went next door there was a bowling alley, so we went and sat in the bowling alley while they got the audience out. We wouldn't know what was going to happen. There wasn't

any violence that I remember, but it turned out. And then we were terrified, of course, and they had the first screenings that invited some critics, and it's the very first small group and we were waiting. We think, oh, this is going to be like a blood bath, and in fact they were really good. They liked it. So everybody was shocked, especially the studio. But they would say things like, we really got a lot for our money and okay, but it worked out.

That But when you look at the movie, when I look at it now, I think the most disturbing part is not the first time he shoots him in the foot, but the second time when he actually shoots him in the chest and kills him. To me, that's the most shocking. And that's when the movie turns because up until then we're laughing. They're doing terrible things, but we're laughing, and then reality sets in. So that's why the Billy batchling is up front.

morning all of them passed except Roulette Records. And they found out later that the guy who ran Roulette, Morris Leavey, was mobbed up and it was run by the Genovezi family and he had told everybody to back off. So Tommy's like a kid from the Midwest. He signs thrilled, and then he finds out he's working for the mob and so it's about all of the great music he did in that period. Because Morris was very generous with studio time and also creatively let him do what he wanted.

He gave him a lot of hit but he also just kept all the money, so Tommy never got unless when they were on the road that got paid. Otherwise he never got paid. And so it's that's part of the story anyway, And we get a little bit into the de story how they actually sold the music, and also there was a mob war and Tommy had to go into hiding, so he decided at one point he says, I got to get out of here. But his music is just you hear it on TV and it's everywhere

and other artists have covered it all. It's just great again, great energetic music that really moves things along.

I think it's a really good con person film. Do you guys have any favorite con films that you go back to.

a con film. This whole idea of and I know it's more of a heist film, but the idea of at the end of the heist film, you get the moment where you find out that your partner has been tricking you the entire time and they're about to take

the money. And so there's the con at the end that that little pardon the expression, sting seems to be coming in to a lot of the heist movies now, where it's okay, the heist is done, and either you get caught or you find out that your partner's ripped you off and now you have to go after them. It's a cliche too, that this was an independent film, that this was Mirrormax putting this out rather than it being a big studio thing, which was the same thing

for reservoir dogs. And yeah, I would be very curious to look into more because I've talked a lot about the Tarantino clone films, but this precedes Tarantino for me. It helps open up, but then Tarantino also does help open up this neo noir. And we've had neo noirs forever since Noir was over, there were neo noirs, but it really started to come in for me in the early nineties with things like and then I'd say, is this a Tarantino clone or is this a neo noir?

Like something like Romeo is Bleeding, which I have very fond memories of. I should probably go back and rewatch it just to make sure that it's as good as I remember it. Just even things like Palmetto, the one with Woody Harrelson, and just there were like as the tarant you know, wave crashed against the shore, a lot of really good neo noirs were on the Sandy beach

and surviving and thriving very well. So yeah, I'd be curious to see where those intersections are because I know, like the whole thing of the suits with the skinny ties that's coming in from a better tomorrow and a better Tomorrow too. John Cusack's wearing the exact same thing. It looks like you could be part of the Reservoir Dogs crew at the end of this movie.

My Beautiful Word Drets, which was hugely influential, was my second year of university, is hugely influential in that sort of the menu I was in at university because it was certainly one of the first films I can remember seeing that was a consciously overtly gay film, had a gay romance in it, and the gay romance was between a working class Anglo British guy and a sort of up and coming aspirational, entrepreneurial Indian child of the British Indian parents. It did come from India to and I

thought that was a Marvels film. I really watched that recently and I just think it's still quite a masterbl film, but at the very and then prick up areas, which is this weird kind of film without John Orton, the British writer, so he's made lots of different.

It's just he's looked like a giant in that movie and was completely bald. And then, for whatever reason, it was around that same time that I learned that he was in Raiders of the Lost arc too, as a what I thought was a smaller Latin American gentleman. I'm just like, how does this work? How does this tall, bald British guy become this little Latin American job. Hey, this is wild, and I was like, Okay, Molina's got the goods. And I remember really enjoying that film as well.

But yeah, he's so eclectic. And there's that documentary from the BBC director for Hire. I think it might be called because he is all over the map and but yet he can really hit some of these incredible highs. I think the last thing I saw of his theatrically on way back in two thousand and two with Dirty Pretty Things. It might have been the first time I ever saw chew Hotel Edgia four and wow again talk had the performances and who's the woman in that? Was

that Juliet Binoche Audrey Tattoo, oh ad Tattoo. Yeah, that was right after Amlay. That's right that it's an amazing film.

pretty good. Bike. He brought up the Gun for Hire documentary and in it he is pretty so of deprecating talking about his approach that he just takes on jobs. But I do think that there's a real through line to a lot of who he is or what he's

interests in. So many of his films are about women and their place in the world, even something like The Queen, where it's hard to feel sorry for one of the most rich, powerful people in the world, presented very much how she deals with life, the expectations both of a monarch and of a woman, contrasts that to Philomena or pretty things and dangerous liaisons too. There's a whole lot of good stuff. Of his more recent ones called The

Lost King Stirring for Sally Hawkins was good. It was a true Story's done a lot of true stories recently about recent history. I think that was the one I watched that I said, Oh, he's really got this thing about women being very underestimated and pushed down but pressing on and certainly ties into the Grifters if you think of it as Lily's story, how she's very much under the sum of Bobo and bides her time and plays

her part until it's time to make a move. And I do think that's a through line in his work. She'll never be able to get out. You know, this whole thing with Moira is a blessing for her, that she suddenly can have a new life, and that she can pin everything on Moira, even when she kills Roy. Henry Jones is like, oh, hello missus Langtree. No, that's not her.

He's one of those let's go see the new Scorsese film. I don't know how many people are saying, let's go see the new Frears film. But to your point, you don't necessarily realize, oh, it's the same guy that did this one as well. I appreciate that kind of journeyman approached the things. Even some of the biggest names of all times, like Kubrick. Every single movie is a different genre. It's not like he's making, Yeah, there's a couple of science fiction films in there. I guess you could say

that Clockworkcorns's science fiction, and AI was his idea. But it's just like to make the war film, to make the heist film, to make the horror film. He was hopping genres all over the place. He wanted to be perfect, said every single genre. Maybe that was one of his motivators.

and wide expands in so many years he's had. He had a career that spanned so many decades ago, making science fiction classics like Outland all the way up to that absolute science fiction shit of Sound of Thunder. But he was working for a long damn time. It did a lot of different movies, Time Top, Time Cop. There you go, fucking classic cap Cornwill bought good stuff.