Episode 727: Being There (1979)

Rand played by Sherley McClain. He becomes mistaken for the wise Chauncey Gardner and begins mixing in the circles of some movers and shakers, including the President of the United States, as played by Jack Warden. We will be spoiling this film in as much as it can be, so if you don't want anything ruined, please turn off the podcast and come back after you've seen it. We will still be here. So, Morrison, when was the first time you saw being there and what did you think?

I thought, oh, that's too grown up, not interested. At the time, all I knew Peter Sellers for was the Pink Panther films, which I saw every time a knew one came out and the party and later on I do want to talk a little bit more about Peter Sellers as an actor, But the time when that came out, I just thought, Yep, this is not for me. And then I think shortly after this came out, the fiendish plot of Doctor Fu Manchu came out, and that was

sort of like a PostScript. Everyone wanted to think that Being There was the last film that he ever made, but now, sorry, there's one that's not quite fashionable. And I've not seen the finish plot of Doctor Fu Manchu. I have no idea whether it's as bad as people say it is. But yeah, as I said, I saw it about a decade after it came out in the late eighties, maybe the early nineties, on VHS, and at the time I thought, yeah, this is really really good,

but I still didn't quite get everything. Maybe in the two thousands I watched it again. I was recording a podcast with my friend Michael Persh about the album Remote Control by the banda Tubes and fi Waybill had long gone and said that Being There was a direct influence on that album by the Tubes, and I wanted to see what the connection was, and I think that was when I got it, and watching it again a couple of times for this podcast episode, I really get it.

And there's just so much in there that in theory, we could have like a whole ten part podcast series just going through every theme that's covered. In this film. But suffice to say, I've had a journey with this film, going from apathetic to now being almost obsessed by it. So yeah, I really love it. Thanks for having me on for this one.

you're a kid. And I would have been too, Like I loved Peter Sellers as a kid in the Pink Panther movies. That was like huge for me, and so it would have been like a real you know, like I don't quite remember, I know, you know it. It would have been like just a recontextualization of Peter for me.

And I love psychological portraits. So but I, you know, really kind of didn't think about it for a long time and only recently kind of deep dive, really deep dived into it over the last few years, and I had done a discussion of it on a different thing with cartoonist Joe Dator, who's a big Peter Sellers fan, and I'm kind of really like, you know, just sort of I was sort of embarrassed I hadn't kind of like hadn't stuck with me as much as I thought it should, because I really, like I said, I love

psychological portraits of really unusual people, and it's just you know, it's a masterpiece as far as that goes. And Yeah, I'm thrilled to be getting back to it.

like that. But I'm like, oh, okay, but I do remember just thinking what an unusual role for Peter Sellers, Because, like y'all, I grew up watching those Pink Panther movies. I'm more connected with Peter Sellers. When this is going to sound really bad, when he was in Yellow Face, not for the fiendish plot of Doctor Fu Manchu, but for Murder by Death, I really liked him in that. I really just enjoyed that movie. I did enjoy the Pink Panther films, but I do remember it being a

case of diminishing returns. Especially wasn't there one where David Niven was in it? And he died midway through, and so Rich Little ended up doing David Niven's voice for the entire film. So yeah, it was. It was a strange, strange series of movies. But yeah, rewatching this movie, I really connected with it. I enjoyed listening to book. I love the differences that are between the book and the movie.

I read the Aaron Hunter book about the progression of the screenplays, and that was fascinating as well, especially that the end of the movie wasn't in any of the screenplays, and it sounds like Ashby kind of came up with it not necessarily on the spot because they had to do a lot of prep work for it, but it wasn't something that had been planned out as much as the screenplays had. So yeah, I find this really fascinating and years of Kaczinski is a really interesting dude as well.

I never really got into his work and just to find out more about him as a person, And it was just such a great confluence of events where you've got, you know, his book. Peter Sellers immediately glommed on to Chauncey Gardner. He was just like I am, This character tried for years to get made. He loved Harold and Maud and wanted Ashby to direct it. We didn't have the clout until after Coming Home came out, and then he was finally able to get this project off the ground.

And according to pretty much everything I've read, it's like the last great, great, great great hal Ashby film. I mean, he made some other things afterwards, but he was not necessarily firing on all cylinders afterwards. And this was, you know, almost Peter Seller's last role, and he would pass away shortly after this. And I think Kazinsky, well, Kazinsky ended

up committing suicide. More movies have been made out of his works, like Painted Bird from a few years ago, which I missed, but at the same time it sounds pretty harrowing, so I'm not really like, oh, let's go watch Painted Bird. But yeah, to have all of these elements come together with this level of talent, I mean, and it just hits every single thing that I like about film.

very easy read. I recommend everybody read it, actually, but the movie is way way, way better. And and then when you look at yeah, the evolition of the scripts and then what Peter Sellers brought to it, like nobody else could have brought to it, you know. So it's just like you just would have had a completely different movie if anybody on the planet did it, you know,

besides Peter Sellers. So again, yeah, just magical, perfect, perfect combination of things that just by themselves was were great, but together it makes it a masterpiece, like a real masterpiece.

and it's all very subtle. And Yerzy Kazinsky wanted to include scenes of civil unrest and homeless protests and a stronger emphasis on the shady financiers who want to rule the country as it were, you know, like what we see in that final scene towards the end where they're discussing, well, the only way we're going to maintain the presidents that we want is if we get Chauncey Gardner to be

the one with that greater emphasis. You sort of think well, coming back to your points, Susan, I actually sort of

think that the book is rather good. It's just a different beast maybe to the film, but it maintains the subtlety that the film has and that Peter Sellers provides in his role as Chance the Gardener, and I just sort of found it really amazing that he was prepared for whatever political points he wanted to make in the film with extra stuff that was just to say, I think the audience is not smart enough to get the subtlety of hal Ashby's and Robert Jones' a Robert Jones's

script in hal Ashby's direction, let's put this stuff in. But thank goodness that Robert Jones said, no, not happening like that, We're going to be more faithful to your book. I really like that about it.

television and that just keeps he keeps going up and up and up and up, and right around that same time that the government is looking into him. The Russian because we have the Russian ambassador in this, this whole thing about you know, we're so close, yes, look our chairs are almost touching. That goes off into a whole other direction, and you get the Russians also trying to figure out what's going on. You don't really get even though Thomas Franklin I think it is the David Clinton character.

He shows up a few times in the story, but he really doesn't connect to the story again. And then the Richard Deiser character, the doctor, he's not even in the novella. So Yeah, the decisions that they made, I thought were very very smart, and also that they were working in more of the racial stuff, which I've found to be very interesting, especially when you look at something like hal Ashby's The Landlord, which really puts a fine

point on the disparity between black and white. And even in this when Chauncey's out in the world for the first time. Even before he meets Raphael's enemy. You get that great graffiti on the wall that says American shit because the white man's got a god complex. And then later on you hear from Louise and she starts talking about the white man. It's just like, all you have to be is white in this country and look at you know, the success that gets thrust upon you. I'm like,

that's really poignant stuff. And that was found nowhere in the Kazinski stuff.

the subtlety. We really have to make that point, not just with that speech that Louise makes in that home that she's visiting or is in later on the film, and not only just on the graffiti on the walls, but also so on that moment just where Chauncey actually leaves the house, because all the time that he's in the house at the beginning of the film, and I know we're going to sort of speak a little bit more about that, but that moment that he leaves the

house and we hear the dear Dato version of also Sprague Zarathustra the two thousand and one thing. We see that it's urban decay. We got houses destroyed, we've got cars destroyed, we've got homeless people, and all this time he's been isolated in this one, if not necessarily luxurious house the way that the Rams House is, but it's comfortable and he's led a comfortable life living there in these four walls with no idea as to what's outside

that front door. And it also brought me to mind a little bit of another film that we covered on the show Mike, that was The Amiga Man. So whereas Neville played by Charlton Heston, is determined he's going to live in the luxury that he wants, while all around him is just an absolute waste slamp, and we never find anything out about the old Man, as he's called in the film, But why has he stayed where he's stayed?

He's determined he's going to stay in this one place, despite the fact that all around him is crumbling down. And maybe he's a part of that, don't know, But I just found that an interesting parallel.

he's just the cipher in the middle. And clearly they took it to the next step, which was part which is like, let's center this much more on Chance, so we're seeing it more through his eyes, you know what I mean. And it's just like the people are a little more peripheral, and that, you know, that worked really well, and that's how you could have that wonderful opening where he's just walking and you're walking. You're you're walking out into the world with him, going like, how is he

going to take all this in? You know, just taking in this this You don't expect it, of course, because you're in this kind of this rich little house, and then you walk out and it's completely what you don't think it is, and so you're just seeing all this new stuff through his eyes and what the world is really like. And yeah, and that they layered it with this this racial layer. There's not a there's not a

drop of that in the book. And it's just a really really good choice to layer that on top and make it a lot more of a you know, like a substantive point, you know, all together.

years before, but he had no connection afterwards. And I read a very interesting article last night where and this was very tough for me to get my head around, because, like I said, I've been living with this movie for a long time, right since I was fucking seven years old. And they were saying, you know, if you don't know, if you walk into this movie cold, like maybe you just see the posters, you haven't seen the spots. You don't know anything about this movie, and you start watching it,

you don't know that Chance is developmentally delayed. You watch him get up in the morning, watching television, going out to the garden, taking care of things. He's very well dressed, you know. Louise comes in brings him his food, and you think maybe he is the master of the house basically, And it isn't until the story starts to unfold more, especially when the two lawyers show up after the old man is dead, that you really start to figure, Oh, this guy has something going on with him that isn't

quite right. He's not all there. And I found that to be very fascinating because basically Ashby is playing the same trick on us as the character will you know, even though it's not a trick, but we are as clueless about what Chance is as the people later on who meet Chauncey Gardner.

What does that mean? And I mean it may have actually been more appropriate to put that bit into the film, but that might have been really assuming that the audience is that's stupid. But putting Big Bird at the point where the film where Chance is watching the television, I think was no accident. It's not like, oh, will just

take any bit out of Sesame Street. It had to be Big Bird because I think that Big Bird, as a three year old child, is at the same level of development, maybe though with a whole lot more empathy. And that's a word I think I'll be using a bit more in this show. Big Bird has more empathy than Chance does, but I think they're at the same stage of their understanding of the world. Big Bird lives on Sesame Street, nowhere else. That's all he knows. But

well he's three years old. Who knows what happens if he leaves Sesame Street. Well, I mean he did in the follow that Bird film, But that's another story.

this movie is so open to interpretation like that. But yeah, to go back to your point as far as God, when mister Hooper died, it just devastated me as a young person. And yes, Chance has no idea really about death when this movie opens, and that's the growth of the character for me, is that when he goes in front of it, and I know we're jumping all over the place, ladies and gentlemen. Really, I hope you've watched

this movie. But when he he goes in front of the old in front of Ben, and he just says, are you dying?

this your time? And actually sheds a tear after Ben dies. And I think he has grown as a person throughout this movie that he can now understand a little bit more. I mean, obviously you've seen death on television. He probably saw I don't remember when mister Hooper died, but he probably understands it to a point. But to actually have connection with another human being, and Ben basically becomes that father figure that who knows what the old man was

like to Chance? And they barely talk about the old man in the book, and they barely talk about him in here. So again you get to project all of these ideas. You're like, well, was he was Chance the bastard son of the old man? Is that why he kept them around? Is that why there's no record of him anywhere in any of the paperwork. He doesn't have a Social Security card, he's never learned how to drive,

there's no papers. But at the same time, and I know, we'll talk about the religious implications as we go along, But at the same time, he's never been to a dentist, he's never seen a doctor. He says, he's never been sick. Sounds like he's been in perfect health his entire life. The only time that he's ever been hurt is coming up in the next few minutes when he gets backed into by a car.

So clearly, you know, this is part of why he's It could even, you know, in my imagination, could even be why he's slow because if a baby or a little child is not stimulated, you know, it sounds like the mother died at birth like that seems like very likely, and that he just was completely neglected by this horrible man.

That's that's like my take from this. But so what happens is the old man gives them TVs because he's rich and TV is coming out as he's growing up, and he buys them every up to date, fancy TV you could possibly have. So there's a TV in every room, completely up to date, and that's how he learns every single solitary thing about life. And he's practicing shaking hands by watching TV. He's practicing how you back and forth

with human beings by watching TV. And that's what really makes this movie a magical piece of cinema is these who the person and I'm forgetting her name? Who picked out the TV pieces? It was very, very brilliant and very important piece of this movie. Like that Sesame Street scene. That music is like so it's so melancholy, it's so minor key, and it's it's like it adds the sadness to the scene, even though you know it has nothing

to do with the scene. Or when they're driving into the Ran mansion and that that you know, the song that what is that guy's name them Basketball Jones, Yes, chiechen Chok. It's a it's a novelty song, but weirdly enough, it's this beautifully poignant song. It's got a cartoon that's very almost defensive, because it's a depiction kind of in a style of like schoolhouse rock, but it has like kind of very older depictions of black people that you know,

we find very offensiven. It's very exaggerated, but so it has this ugliness to it because of that. But then this beautiful sad song where this kid is just pleading, and it adds to that again, So there's this weird like whimsical there's cartoons there's children's shows, but then there's this melancholy to those scenes, you know, and even like mister Rogers playing when Like is visiting him, you know, there's just a lot of like. It adds a real real it kind of almost a dark side to the

whole thing, I think. But it's all about him. Just that's all he knows is TV, and that's why he carries his flipper around. He's obsessed with TV's he was his best friend. It was the thing that raised him.

But given to Peter Solla's silver hair, let's presume he's in his forties or early fifties or something like that, and he he doesn't have a clue as to what is happening on in the wider world. He's find it unusual that he's learning things like how to shake hands

at this late stage in life. While the film has a lot of really fascinating points to make, but I do struggle a little bit with the notion that even through just having the TV as a guide to the world, that chance isn't a little bit more developed in his knowledge of the wider world. You know, he's very polite, but you know, surely in watching TV, he would have watched situational dramas where there's conflict and there'll be one nice guy and one bad guy, and he would have

known about it or behavior as well. But that could be his choice to only be nice. But surely he's been exposed to more than what we as an audience are seeing that he's been supposed to, if that makes any sense.

I guess it's really it's kind of like dog toothed as well, where it's like we are keeping you kids isolated inside this yard, you know, never go outside of this yard. And it's basically the same thing with Bad Boy Bubby. But he's just kept in this little windowless room basically for almost his entire life until his folks end up dying. I think it is has been a little bit since I've seen it, and yeah, he knows nothing.

He didn't even have television to raise him. He's completely clueless about anything, and he's kind of like the wild and borneo when he goes out on the streets.

Bad Boy Bubby, and yes, you're right. I mean Bobby and Chance both developmentally delayed, and both take their cues from what's going on around them as to how they should behave and things that they say. So the Chance repeats catchphrases that he's heard on television, shakes hands the way he's sent them on television. Bobby takes he doesn't have television, but you know, he goes and gropes women's breasts because that's what he sees his father do to

his mother. When he first leaves his house after killing his parents, he's nearly run over by a truck who tell him to get off the fucking road, and so he does the same thing to a policeman that approaches. And it's two very different characters, but neither have a clue as to what is appropriate to say or do in any given situation. I think the big difference between Chance and Bubby is a Chance is passive. He doesn't know what to say in any situation. People are talking politics,

he doesn't know what that's about. But when they're asking him for opinion. I'll talk about the but is active he wage of thirty seven. He throws himself into things. It's not appropriate necessarily anything that he does, but he's attacking life with zeal, regardless of whether he finds his way into a band. He just does so much stuff. But life is cruel to him. People don't know how to react to him, just the way that people don't

know how to react to Chance. Whereas Chance has fallen into a tub of cream, Bobby, for the first two thirds of the film has fallen into a tub of shit, if I can use that expression, if things are really really difficult for him until the latter third of the film. I won't spoil that because we're not doing that as a as a topic for this podcast, and I think people should go off and see that if they haven't.

But I might be the last person left on the planet who was interested in the film, who hasn't, who hadn't seen it up until now. So the point of similarity is two characters who've lived for a stupid amount of time within four walls and have no idea what's on the outside. But how they approach the outside is very, very diff But I still think it would make a wonderful double bill at a repertory theater for sure.

they you know, they base it on reality. They do research, you know, like Gilbert Grape and rain Man, you know, they studied real people and the actors like really you know, took in what was what it was like to actually be a person with whatever it was they were going for. And here, you know, this is completely detached from reality. As far as the both Kazinski and Ashby and Sellers, none of them, this was not you know, they were not researching this. They were just like coming up with

a character, a simple character. And so it's actually even debatable, like you know, maybe he was born just fine and you know, just pure neglect. He just had no input, no stimulus, you know, blah blah blah. You know, it really does happen to people. You know, there's some terrible tragic stories of children who've been raised like that, you know, and it's generally you actually you know, don't even learn really to speak well and that kind of thing when that really happens.

It is just completely dead down there, which then kind of puts a different, you know, take on this whole thing where it's just like all right, So he he's not even all there when it comes to his body either. He's just kind of this blank slate. So it's not like he's running around like falling in love or whining the fuck or do any of these things having any

sort of urges or desires. And it's it is interesting that in the in the novella, he is the he's supposed to be basically like the young via young man, and here as an older man, it's like, Okay, well you don't really expect that from It fits a little bit better with the character. But at the same time, it's like the way that Eve the Sherlan Claim character falls for him, you would think that he was Cary

Grant or you know, somebody just incredibly handsome. I mean, Peter Seller's just no slouch, but he's in his golden years, you know. And and she's almost taking Melvin Douglas, who's yes, much older than Peter Sellers, even though I think they were both in the war together at the same time they were in Burma, I want to say. But anyway, they she's taking, you know, going for like the let's say, the ninety year old man to the sixty five year

old man, maybe seventy year old man. It's like, yeah, you're not really trading down too much, so but yeah, just that lack of sexuality for the character also puts him on the outside of things and makes him also more of a cipher.

of us. He's three year old mentally or whatever. But he's also well before thirteen or fourteen from a physical perspective, because I mean, I don't really know a hell of a lot in that regard, but I would have sort of thought that every person would have some level of that once the hormones kick in. That would be something that if Eve is making a play for him, that's something that at least from a physical perspective, he would understand.

But intuitively. But maybe, I mean, I've never read or watched The Tin Drum, but I all know.

watch television. And when Eve makes that second play for him, he's been watching something on television where a man and a woman are kissing passionately, so things, Oh that's what she wants, Okay, I'll do that. But he's still watching the television to see if he's getting it right. Not because he's passionate for her, but just because, oh, this is what she wants. I want to make her happy.

And maybe that's actually some level of growth unto itself, that he wants to keep someone else happy, and that's a level of kindness. So he's no longer the blank slate that he was at the beginning of the film. He knows that she's treated him kindly, and that's something that he never experienced. He had the I mean, maybe apart from Louise making him his meals, but we don't really know what her relationship with him was. She might have just left the meals and gone on to do

her work. But here he is with people who don't understand him, and they misinterpret him at every turn, but they're treating him nicely. So at this stage he understands, Oh, that's to be reciprocated. So oh she's oh she wants the case. Oh if that makes her happy, I'll do that.

And then when Louise talks about how Chance was cursed by God. First I thought she was talking about that he has nothing between his legs basically, or that he's, you know, mister micro penis. And then it's like, oh, no, she's talking about the brains. She's talking about up here, not down here. So okay, Yeah, when she's like railing against him and just talking about how he's got what was it mashed.

any good not with that little thing of you. She apparently like maybe knew him when he was young enough that she would change him. Who knows, but I don't know. That's what she's saying, but I mean, let me just say that, like TV back then for people who don't know who are a little younger than us, you know, and they make a point of this, I think in the book or in one of the scripts that they would, you know, when you came to a love scene, it would just cut off, like they couldn't show that stuff.

You know, everything was much much and much more censored. So you could actually be a kid watching TV and never learn what sex is at all, you know, like if nobody ever told him, and so yeah, I think, you know, there's enough of a spectrum of asexuality sexuality that you know, he could have been on the asexual side of the spectrum just naturally, and then nobody ever, you know, he just had, you know, except for that those magazine pictures that guy showed him, which he kind

of chuckles at. You know, he really had no reason to kind of like start up the sex drive, I would think, which is mercifully a good thing probably, you know. And then I think his first real moment is when I think he's always reciprocating. He knows the reciprocation game where you repeat the last thing a person says you know, you do these these things that make people feel happy by you know, repeating, But they just said doing what

you see on TV that makes people happy. But it's the moment when when rand dies or when he says really it's I think it's when he says, you know, you're I'm sorry you're sick, which is a really beautiful moment. I think that's like where you're seeing the character arc change where you're like, oh, this isn't something he's on TV. You know.

and these kind of things. But even then the movie channel was like the only one that was showing anything risque and then eventually like skin him Ax obviously, but it was difficult to see things and especially you know, trying to make it make out things during the scrambled channels, you know what I'm talking about, Like that was my

early exposure to things. I want to say that this is a stretch because sometimes I think people, especially when it comes to Stanley Kubrick, people just go fucking crazy about I mean, see Room thirty, two thirty seven. But Peter Sellers having worked with Stanley Kubrick pretty often, I mean with Alita and Doctor Strange Love. And then to have that disco version of two thousand and one, the diodato version of also Sprocks Zarah Thrustra to be the

song that plays when he comes out. I swear that that's a Kubrick reference, especially when he makes it to the end of the song and he sees himself on

television and there's the whole Moonscape thing. It looks all like the moon, there's a big moon on one side and just like, oh okay, and it just feels very much like that's a real moment for him when he sees himself on television, that he's been watching television for all of these years, and to see yourself on that screen in the TV seller's window, I mean, that's huge.

And I found interesting too that when he gets threatened by that black gang that that's also in front of a television store, a much more run down TV store, and then you know it's like the nicer area I guess he's in. It must be a nicer area if Eve is parking there. But yeah, that was a great moment when he finally sees himself on television and then there's no nervousness. Of course, you know it's probably not

in his core. But when he goes onto a television program, he's like, well, I've been on television before.

the environment that he's actually walking into. It makes the point far better than an orchestral version ever would have. But yeah, I'd love that use and hugely appropriate. I mean, I wonder if two thousand and one hadn't existed, or if he'd use the Blue Danube at the point of the Star Child and the Dawn of Man instead also spars Arathustra, whether they would have found a funk version of the Blue Danube or something like that. But just such a perfect piece of music and so grateful that

it got made into that version. I think it's a really really good version of that piece of music.

And then it's interesting when he's using the remote on the TV that he's on, it's actually changing the channels on a small TV next to him, next to that TV. So it's like this remote does work out in the real world, but it doesn't work on real people.

I've seen this on TV. Someone had a knife and they got hurt. But he doesn't register that.

similar as far as the height and everything, just to see him walking down the middle of the screen, one of them towards the capital basically, and the other one as he's walking back to the mansion and got the Biltmore mansion. I've been to the Biltmore mansion, but I barely remember it. It's funny that I remember seeing being there more than I remember actually going to that mansion, going all the way to North Carolina to go to that mansion, and my mom still talks about going there to this day.

and adding emotion kind of way that is timeless. But then the environment he's in is always just completely out of time, like he could be it could be you know again, like what he's wearing, and it's just you know, you can't put your finger on when when it's happening. You know, it takes a lot to remember you're in nineteen seventy nine.

world within the multiple walls. They live on this hugely wealthier state, and all they know is wealth. They don't

know about the world that Luise inhabits. They would never recognize that Chance walks out onto it the beginning of the film, after he leaves the old Man's house and everything that he said, like, for instance, that there's that moment where they're all sitting down to dinner and there's like about ten thousand waiters and servants bringing them their meal and there's only four people at the dinner table.

There's lengthy dinner table and Chances talking about how he was kicked out of the property, and Ben says, you were kicked out of your business, and Chance, oh, what does that mean. Yeah, sure, it's kicked out of the business. That's his interpretation. His world is different, but it's equally narrow. Just as Chance doesn't understand what certain things mean and how to behave under certain situations, I think neither do the Rams. They live in this bubble, and Chance that

lived in a bubble. So I don't know whether you'd say whether it's appropriate that they all got together, but it's no one's trying to teach each other. Hey have a look at the wider world, because they both live in their own little space. I mean, the rants is bigger, but it's still narrow in lots of ways.

of person. But then when you read some of the or when he says some of the things that Rand had said earlier in his life, you're like, oh, no, no,

he is an Ola Gark Okay, all right. And I don't think it's any coincidence that they chose the name Rand for this, because as soon as I read, I was just like, well, kind of reminds me of the Rand Corporation, which was this you know, government thinks tank that the US used to use and they probably still do, that would do all this research on issues like the space race or Vietnam or the mutually Assured Destruction, you know, and they would like, I want to say, like Robert

McNamara was part of it at one point, just like it's not a really like even Doctor Strangelove, like they call it the Bland Corporation, so it's like, you know, it's a known thing. And I was just like, yeah, I'm pretty sure that they named Ben Rand Rand because of this.

not interpreting each other in the same way. And I think it's a really interesting choice. You don't get too much of a feel, you get a little, you know. I think in the book you're supposed to assume that that Ben Rand is, you know, like your typical jerky corporate guy, and they don't get too into it. It's just like a completely flat, you know, character. And it's really interesting that they make him very sympathetic because it's like the kind of movie where you would have expected

the complete opposite. You'd expected Sherley McClain to be this like materialistic and she probably is, you know, you kind of do. She's wearing these fur coats, and you know, she obviously loves luxury, and she's obviously impressed by this guy that everybody else is impressed with. But yet they make them both like you feel like they're really in love, you know, which is a really interesting take for this kind of movie where you feel a real love between

Ben Rand and Eve Rand. And then also just you feel like it's not judge. This movie doesn't judge them,

you know. And until the end, like you said, during the funeral, you start to hear that's the first time where you're like, oh, he said that, you know, and you realize you know who he really is, and it's sort of like I think the movie's statement is a little bit like it's kind of refreshing maybe, and maybe that's it's a little bit of refreshing that they don't judge, you know, that's it kind of removes that part of it that people are people, that's their role, that's where they are.

He's just like, are you going to leave now? And it's like a little bit of a threat to dice Art's character, just like, hey, you know, I'm part of this household too, but yeah, I guess Rand is dead. I really don't have a leg to stand on. And I'm glad to like you're talking about how this could

have been played so different. It could have been so arch, and it could have just been you know, just these nasty I'm trying to remember, like down and out in Beverly Hills type of people, where it's just like the clueless rich you know, or even like even like my man Godfrey. Right, you've got Godfrey coming in and just how airheaded everybody seems to be. Was that Carol Lombard in that one, I can't.

But he is doing a little bit of that, and David Clennon's doing a little bit of that ironically, like what two years before the thing, when they would be down in Antarctica together, you know, serving on Outpost thirty one, them together, it's like they want to figure this stuff out. But it's not like he blows the whistle on him. I mean, his biggest thing is when he calls Chauncey Chance at the end of the movie, and you get that little recognition in Chances eyes and you get the recognition.

Then back to dice Art.

appoint him to his board and blah blah blah. And in fact you find out, you know, he really wants him to be like president, you know, in the book vice President, but in the movie actual president. And so the I think he does want to be like this is not a good thing. But then then when Brand says I'm dying happy because this guy's in my life, you know, like it's the only reason I'm dying at piece is because of this guy, he stops. So and let me say that I think that, you know, he

has an interesting ending. We should talk about the ending, which I think is like kind of we're talking a little bit about like the future that goes that what happens after this movie, and I think, to me, the way I interpret the ending where he's just walking on water, it's a very nonsensical, almost non sequitor ending. Everybody always puzzles over it, and to me, it feels like it's it's ashby punctuating the fact that this is a fable and there is no future, like this couldn't really happen.

There's no like it wouldn't really last because Eve would find out and everybody would figure out that this but it's just a fable. This is the end. Don't even think any further about this story. Like that's kind of that's my personal interpretation of that ending. Like I think that that's kind of in a way what he's kind of doing with that little fantasy bit there.

If you don't know any better, then there you go. The interpretation I like is just like, we don't know where Chance came from. We don't know. Maybe he was born in a manger, who's never been sick, never went to the dentist, perfect human being. He's been locked away for all these years. Now he's out. Maybe the Messiah has come and this is the Messiah.

But you know, I don't know if I have a leg to stand out other than the whole talk of the old man and all of this stuff. And I love the the misinterpretation of you know, the only thing I have left for me is the room upstairs. Oh, you're too young to talk about the room upstairs. I'm going to go to the room upstairs. And I'm surprised the Chance and be like, no, you can't have the room upstairs. That's my room.

he's going to say at any stage. It's apart from the doctor that's going to make them spend their heads away and think, hang on, this guy really is he's talking literally, he's not talking metaphorically. All he's talking about

is gardens. I like that contrast. I think I was saying in a type message to you, Mike, that another film that I could see that this is similar to is one that we covered on the projection booth a few years ago, was The Big Dig where there's a main character who escapes from an asylum and he's got a passion for pneumatic drills. He comes out, steals a drill and goes into the center of Tel Aviv and

starts digging up the road. And rather than anyone saying, hey, what the hell are you doing, let's take you away, everyone's trying to sort of work out which member of council had asked for the road to be dug up. And you've got a policeman pushing away the cars and say no, this is being dug up. No one's asking anything, And then people are blaming each other and then at the end they're all taking credit for it, and this guy, he's just a simple guy who's just digging up the road.

It's the bureaucracy. It's a misinterpretation. And I really saw that as a good parallel to this story as well. I think I've done a number of films on the projection booth with you, Mike about misinterpretation. Simple simple people. That's my that's my passion.

Each episode of the Chasing chevy Chase podcast brings you expert analysis and nostalgic reflections on Chevy Chase's most iconic characters in classic films like National Lampoon's Vacation.

more in the classroom. It was academic course of study, but we used American culture and civilization, everything from talking about different decades to talking about race in America or education or gender, all these sorts of things as subject matter for them to write about. And it just became clear and clear to me that using film in those contexts conveyed a lot of the messages easier, at least

for me. And so they ended up letting me put together a film class which was on the nineteen seventies. And while I was doing that and putting together the reading list, one of the things I noticed was that at that point, this would have been two thousand and six. I think that there was nothing. There was one article on Senses of Cinema. I think about hal Ashby, and that's what led me to start to think about putting

it together as a PhD project. I was already thinking about going back for a PhD, and I had met my partner who I would eventually marry. She was an English teacher from Hungary who wanted to live in an English speaking country, and it all came together. We ended up first in Belfast and then down here in Dublin.

thousands was about topics that are coming back around now, but male loneliness that sort of disaffected young boomer late Vietnam, post Vietnam, distrust of the establishment kind of person, the Bobby Dupree or Travis Bickle, these kinds of characters. And one of the things that drew me to Ashby is

that his films they fit that, but they're different. Harold is a different Big Year, and even the tough guys in the last detail, I think it's a different kind of projection of toughness that they have than somebody like Popeye Doyle or somebody like that. They're stock and they don't know what to do about it, but they're not.

I don't want to, like overemphasize the differences, but I think he has a foot in that, but he's not fully in it, which is why I think in some of the earlier books he's not even really mentioned, or he's a footnote in a way. But I think, as in the last let's say, fifteen years, as the kind of understanding of the seventies filmography has expanded, and our awareness of the different filmmakers, female filmmakers and filmmakers of color that were making films that people were going to see,

but that just weren't getting canonized early on. Then Ashby fits better or into that kind of broader constellation, if that makes sense.

tool of film by and so on. That the confluence of all of those things by nineteen seventy one or two meant that those savvy filmmakers knew to adopt that mantle and then promote themselves under that mantle and Ashby was resistant to that. In an interview after interview where he's constantly deflecting his role onto his cinematographers or by Taller, his production designer. He's always talking about his role in the look of the film, his performers and so on.

And I think the more we learn about how those films were made, the more we see that well Scorsese was doing that too, and Bogdanovitch was doing that too. They were just better at the time at playing the game of presenting themselves as singular visionary director.

Norman Jewison. He's edited those films of Jewisen's in the sixty Cincinnati Kid and obviously In the Heat of the Night for which he won the Oscar and Thomas Crown affair. Jewison was fairly new too, and he was also, like Ashby, would become invested in using his crew to the best

of their abilities and really letting them make suggestions. I'm working on a piece about the cinematography of In the Heat of the Night right now, and how much decision making Haskell Wexler had on that film to shoot it the way he wanted to shoot it in order to capture most specifically Partier's performance in Partier's presence on screen Jewison, it seems, from both what Jewison said about it and what Wexler said about it, basically let Wexler det up

the cinematography on that choose the cameras, choose the lenses, choose the film, choose the lighting, and so on. So it's in that kind of twelve or thirteen years of working mostly with Wiler and then with Jewison, That's how he learned filmmaking works. And so I think he brought that approach with him because that's how he was trained,

but also he saw the film's benefit from it. He always wanted to work with Haskell Wexler because they'd done a couple films with Jewison and they'd become friends, and they would remain friends until Ashby passed and Jeff Wexler Haskell's son. I think he worked on all of Ashby's films from Harold and Maud, so they were family friends and so on. But he couldn't get him until Bound

for Glory and so on the Landlord. He got Gordon Willis, and then he wanted to work with Willis again all the time after that, but they were like East Coast West Coast Union things, and he was back on the East Coast after Harold and Maud wanted to get Gordon Willis again, but he was maybe working on The Godfather Part two, and so he hired Michael Chapman, who was like Gordon Willis's assistant, who'd never been a cinematographer on a film before. And Chapman was like what Okay talked about,

not knowing exactly what he was doing. The people have praised my use of natural light on that film. I didn't know how to like this. I just used the light that was there and it worked and it looks great and stark and cold like that film does. And then he went on to do Taxi Driver and Raging Bowl and so many other great films. So yeah, I really appreciate Ashby's willingness to do that over and over and with some of his editors who are maybe lesser

known than Michael Chapman. But he did the same thing which would bite him in the ass on some of Zadies films when he brought in some unproven editors who he tried to give a chance to but maybe didn't work out the way he'd hoped they would on some of those last few films.

good because of cocaine. And Nick Dawson's book. I don't know if you've read his biography of Ashby, but he goes into quite a lot of detail about just how burnt out Ashby was from working these kind of sixteen hour days for weeks and weeks because he would let

his editors edit. I interviewed Bob Jones a couple of times, who edited, I think from the last detail Shampoo Bound for Glory and then worked as a writer on Being There and Coming Home, and he said, while he was editing those films, Ashby just let him be for days and days where he'd come down at the end of the day and just look at what was there. But for him it was then the fine tuning. So he would get his editor Don Zimmerman or Jones or whoever it was, would get the film where Ashby wanted it.

And then he was so interested in rhythm and so interested in the precise moments in those cross cutting like so many of his films, and with those great cross cut like Harold and Maud where he's still in the hospital and he's driving the car and the cat Stephens song's playing and you're just shattered, or the end of Coming Home where you're cutting between Dern and John Voyd talking to the kids in the gym, and it's just so intense, and for him, all of the precision of

that was what was important. And he would just spend because he's editing on film, on decks and a long time working on that, and he would feel burned out. And I think he felt really burnt out by the end of Coming Home, which also happened to be his sort of most celebrated film at the time anyway, and so going into Being There, Second Hand Hearts was actually filmed first and the Lorimar deal, which also would produce Looking to get out. That was his idea. He thought,

I can stay fresh. If I start to feel burnt out on this one film, I'll go and work on the other film. I don't think it quite worked out the way he wanted to be because, as I was talking about earlier, the initial edits of Secondhand Hearts didn't work out as well as Zimmerman's editing on Being There. So he had to go back into Secondhand Hearts and rework it from the very beginning, which was a lot more laborious than he had hoped it would be.

but oh, we're on a podcast. But you can see anyway that being their books a lot bigger, both in its kind of dimensions and how thick it is, and so I really appreciate that they agreed to publish it. It was Yeah. So I teach a lot of screenwriting and I still do, like if any of my students listen to this, I still use the end of being there on the first day of class, because I talk about screenwriting is rewriting. No matter what process you have in your head, about writing in your ivory tower or

your own individual genius, hold on to those things. They're great too, But if you want to go into this industry. You're going to get notes and you're going to have to respond to those notes, and those notes are going to help you. Sometimes they're going to be annoying, sometimes they're gonna seem ridiculous, but oftentimes they're gonna help you. So let's look at how this happened, and then the two Jones scripts, and then we watched the end of

the film and it seemed to work. I started doing that around twenty fourteen, and I had a couple scripts. I have the Robert Town published or I don't know who published it, but it's the last Detail in Chinatown, A nice little publication of that script. I have some Hal Hartley scripts that I bought and a few other script books. What if there was not just one script but more. I wanted to put five drafts in, but they were like, you can't do that, met come on, huh.

So they agreed on the three drafts. And there was a lot of talk during the kind of production phase of the book about how much I should include, should

this be a work book? We went through a month or six weeks where it was going to be a workbook, where there were like questions and it was textbooky thing and I didn't really want it to be that because I wanted it, and this is what makes it a hard sell, I think, to be honest, but I wanted it to be a book that students could look at in a classroom but also on their own and track

those changes themselves. So if you've looked at it, in the introduction and in the short intros to each of the scripts, I give a couple examples, but I really want that process of discovery is really important. So when I'm teaching screenwriting, I'll sign a script with the film and they're going to do what they're going to do because they're students. But I asked them read the script, watch the film, and then watch the film again with

the script. And some of them do, I know, because they come to class and we often end up talking about the differences. Is this different in the film than it is on the page? And we can't always because of the nature of scripts and which script do you

find online? And so on, we can't always come to a reason why the change was made, but we can at least talk about the effect of it in class for them as writers, and it ends up being really effective, I think, because I have them at the end of the semester write a kind of critical reflection of the process of writing their own script, and they often write about when I saw this change from the script to screen in this film, I realized the efficiency of dialogue,

or I better understood the get in late and get out early rule of screenwriting, or whatever it might be. And so that was the impetus behind doing that book. It was a movie I love, a movie that I think the script is fantastic. I also had because Bob Jones had been so kind to me when I was just a sort of lowly PhD stud and he was so screwed over by the attribution of that script that I felt like I have no power to go to Hollywood, whoever owns being there now I think Warner Brothers and

say put Bubs Jones's name in the titles. But I could put out a book with Bob Jones's name on the cover and give back a little to him that way, which I felt like he would deserve. The book came out six weeks after he died. I was a little bit bummed out about that, but I had a nice chat with some of his daughters and they were happy about it. That's not why I did it. But when something like that can happen as well, it's a nice side effect or a nice benefit.

archives on being There or the Landlord or whatever. But then when I went back to the hal Ashby archives and then got in touch with some of the Kazinski archives, I discovered that he was teaching a class at Yale in nineteen seventy one on screenplay adaptation, and he used being There as his case study in the class, and so he wrote a script adaptation of his own book.

I'm going to get this date wrong, but I think nineteen seventy one early seventies anyway, and it was a I think it was a summer school course at Yale on yeah screen adaptations, and it was around that time that Ashby and Sellers were interesting. It's a great story in talks about making the film, but neither of them had the wherewithal to get it made, and Kazinsky had heavier hitters in mind. I can't remember right now, but there were bigger named directors that he was trying to

get to make the film back then. And then when Brownsberg, who was friends with Ashby and Kasinski, brought them together after coming home and they went through all of the process of getting Lauramar to agree to make the film, Kazinsky submitted another draft and that's the one that's in the book, and that's the one that's wild, I think, because it's got all of the cutaways to social protests, and it's got backstories of a lot of the minor characters,

the lawyer, and a lot more stuff with the Secret Service agents and whimsical dialogue that they have as they're going around Rams mentioned there's a lot more people trying to find out chances background and it gets goofy and hygiency, and that one is still set in New York, which is where the novel was set. And then in the meantime, and I get this a little bit wrong. In the Ashby book, Mike Caller had gone to d C and he came back and said to Ashby, we have to

move it to DC. I always thought that was Jones's decision, but it was actually Mike Haller's idea because he saw this the corridors of power right now in late seventies America visually are going to be more symbolically represented by the Capitol Building and the disparity of wealth in Washington, d C just still there but was massive, as you see in the film. And so Kazinski actually wrote another script in the summer of seventy eight where he cut out all of that social unrest, and he did said

it in Washington d C at their request. It's his first and his third draft that I also wanted to include. But then even after that third draft, Ashby has said in a bunch of interviews like he wasn't feeling it.

He said, it's really interesting that he felt like Kazinsky was afraid of his protagonist because he kept writing more and more about everything else except chance, and Kazinsky was also getting really frustrated because he wanted to write another novel because that's what he was really and so I don't know how amicable the split was after the film came out and was such a success, because innc he was I don't know much about him, but he was

one of these kind of literary celebrities. When he's going to Studio fifty four and showing up on the Tonight Show all the time acting in Reds. He was just

happy to be in the spotlight. So once the film came out and was celebrated, he was happy to go out and publicize as much as he could and take a lot of credit for it, of course, but he definitely stepped away late summer of seventy eight, and that's when a should be brought in Jones and he did the two drafts, So he did one by December, and then he and Ashby met over Christmas and Jones rewrote it based on that meeting for January, and they started shooting right after that.

I think Ashby was being a sound guy. He was also probably experimenting with his newfound power after coming home, and I like the way this feels. But he said always interview after interview, I made a deal with Sellers if I make this fill he's Chance and I respect him for that, and it made the movie different. It's a whole different experience to have him be a middle aged He's almost a sad sack who's holding it together

because of his simple mindness. But Obviously by the end, when we get to that deathbed scene with rand you can see there's a pain in him that I don't think. I can't imagine Ryan O'Neill, as much as I like him, and what's up, Doc or whatever, he's not going to pull off that deathbed scene with the one tier and the red eyes and just I've seen it before, Robert.

It's wonderful, and the age also gives it a kind of I don't know it somehow makes the hanging out with the Soviet ambassador more believable, going on talk shows and that kind of stuff. So it works in the book. But I'm glad they stuck with Sellers. But yeah, Kazinski, you're right. He was resistant to it and continued to write him almost specifically as young and broad shouldered and that sort of thing in the scripts, which is probably another bone of contention with Ashby.

to you. I think he's in the first draft that he did in seventy one as well, because I think he changed the second half of the story so much, because Rand pretty much disappears from the book halfway through, and the ending of the book is so much different, so that notion of somebody inside the house having to be suspicious, which I think is important. I've been thinking.

I watched it again the last couple of days, and I hadn't watched for a little while, and every time I watch it, my reading of it changes a little. As I'm sure has happened with you in films, you can't believe the story, you just can't believe it. And if the doctor's not there suspicious, of course you're going to have the president investigating him because he's some guide who just showed up. And then when the press finds out, they're going to investigate, who's this guy who just showed up?

But for Alan B he has a personal connection and I think he has to be there for the audience to accept this. He's the outlier of the whole story that makes the story believable, you know what I mean? Does that make sense? And without him, I think the audience would have a harder time accepting it because somebody has to see that there's something going on here. Would you agree with us?

to also be his friend. He goes to the dinner with them and this sort of stuff, and he has to maybe as a man of science, I don't know, has to gratch this itch. But in the meantime, as he's doing that, both Rand, Benjamin Rand, and Ivrand tell him at different points, this guy makes me happy. I feel good with him. Brand says his dying right, this is the calmest or the happiest or something I've felt in a long time. And I think that taps into

Alanbe's sense of concern and friendship as well. If I tell them the truth, I'm gonna take this away from them, and that makes it very gentle. Which the whole film, not the whole film, but much of the film is like this kind of fable and it fits into that tone.

and so there's also a German maid. I don't want to say inga, but it might be ingrid, sorry, And from draft to draft, from the original book, who the maid is in the story keeps changing, and in one of the drafts he actually gives the old man a

deathbed scene. I think this might be the what's in the book where he tells Chance that Chance is the son of the old man and a previous black who has since died, so that Chance, all of a sudden is like the biracial product of forbidden love, because that would have been whatever in the forties or fifties or

something like that. I think that was a mistake, and I appreciate like what Kazinsky's trying to do there and trying to like break some taboos or push the story in different directions, but I don't think that's the story that being there is about, and that just whether his mother was black or not isn't even the issue. It's chances background at all, removing that enigma of it. I'd

call that a misstep. I think in the Jones first Jones draft really a misstep because he had so much work to do, and this comes at the ending, which I talk about with my students. But at the ending of the Kazinsi drafts, you're not always sure if rand has died. Sometimes it's mentioned we don't see him die, but the men who become The Pallbearers in the film are always off site, somewhere in some kind of ancient smoking room around a fireplace, and in this his first draft,

he kept them off site. He did include the funeral, so you have the President giving the eulogy and you have Chance wandering off, but he still has those guys off site, which some of my students actually like when they get to that, because they feel like it creates a greater mystery and they feel like having the puppet masters the Pallbears is a little on the nose, which

I that's a sort of fair reading. But I like the centrality of the location of it all at the end, and I love the way again editing Ashby does that cross cut editing, and the way that the President's voice hangs over it all, and the acoustic depth from when we cut. There's four different volumes, maybe five. I was trying to listen if when he says life is a state of mind at the end, after he's dunked the umbrella in, they'd put some reverb on that or something.

It sounds like another I don't know volume level. Then you have President, you have even Allen b you have the Pallbearers and you have Chance, and those are all four different volumes of his speech. Then I think that life of the state of mind, Life is a state of Mind is a fifth volume, and just that kind of subtle sound mixing is magnifics.

hate it. And if you go on YouTube, I was looking at it today you can see the original film the ending, which is also available on maybe on the criterions blu ray. So it's the ending when Chances off in the woods and Eve has come looking for him, and she says, Chauncey, I was looking for you. I was looking for you too, Eve, and they kiss and they walk off and they fill them with that and

then it went. It was going to go into just the credits with some background sounds, and you can also see this on YouTube, some TV sounds in the background, but then the piano continues, and so down in the comments, everyone was I can't believe they didn't keep this ending. I hope in future DVDs they get rid of that stupid blooper ending. It breaks the spell, which is what

Peter Seller said to it, and Ashby defended it. He continued to defend the blooper ending because it's in a letter that he wrote I put in one of the books. He went to the cinema a bunch of times and watched it, and he said, every time I watched it, everybody stayed at the end to watch the and it wasn't their intention, but they got to see the names of all the people who made the movie. That's interesting. But I was thinking about this breaks the spell, and

this is a film that's come back. Maybe this is one reason why you're talking about on your podcast. Because of current and recent political situations, Chance should not be a leader of the free world. Chance should not be

walking on water. And I think I've always thought that the one of the neat tricks that the film plays is that in the opening sequence, it tricks the audience into believing that Chance is a rich guy, because we have no dialogue and we have him in his silk pajamas and his beautiful estate, and yes he's doing labor, but he's doing it in the way that a retired gentleman might tend to his gardens in his old cars and stuff like that. And then we realize, oh he's Chance. Ooh,

it tricked us. And that's very important, I think, because even though we're only tricked for five minutes, that helps us to understand how everyone else gets tricked throughout the film. And as we watch it, and we watch all these kind of idiots around him, and we were like, how could these people believe it? We also fall in love with him again as Chance, as this sort of furial wisdom maker, and so when he walks on water at

the end, we're like, wow, he could do it. He could do it, and we've been tricked by it again, and I feel like the spell should be broken and we should ask ourselves, why does a Chance appeal to us? Because he does, He's in It's Peter Sell's performance is fantastic, dialogue's great. There's all kinds of reasons, but I think the film taps into something deeper in our own I'm probably saying too much, reading too much into this, but this is what occurred to me. Over the last couple

of days. It taps into a kind of a desire for that simple wise man to save us or something like that, and you can see I'm still trying to figure this out. But and that spell should be broken because that's dangerous. Do you know what chance running the country some people do.

the masturbation scene. But throughout the rest of the film she's just so understated, and she grows into it so much.

From the scene in the limousine where she's like a little worried she's gonna get sued, she doesn't know what's going on, and then as she just develops this fondness for him, she acts it so well, and I really watching it this time felt like what I was saying about Alan b like we need him as the skeptic, but we need her not as the overly enthusiastic Rand and the president and all these people who are like willing to jump onto Chauncey, but just someone who sees

this gentleness. It's probably part of why we fall for him again because she's so good. But her performance is just really lovely. And I think I got in previous viewings so caught up in Sellers and Jack Warden, who I always love, all these the kind of hyjinks of it that sometimes you miss how quiet and really restrained her performances.

production that's still incredibly dominated by men. But Haskell Wexler, who I mentioned, Gordon Willis, Michael Chapman, Owen Roy's mean so many more that I'm forgetting right now, Lasso, Kolbots, Jakmunville, Mosh, these guys who did so much to shape the look of that era. And there was a lot of great stuff going on with new quiet handheld cameras, with the steady cam by the middle of the decade, all that

sort of stuff. And how it was the cinematographers usually who would go to the directors and say, hey, can we try this Bill must Schigmann go into all men, let's flash the film. What Yeah, but it'll look cool if it works Petha, that sort of thing, and the director's going for And that's another part of that collaboration

that we talked about at the beginning. And so that's actually the I'm working on a paper right now in the heat of the night, because I think that film and another film, Gunge and Hesse to Build gunfilm, those were two of the films that really like were the cinematographers.

Clinton was at his name on Gungeon Hess where they decided we're going to shoot black skin in a way that you can see it because there's a whole history of Hollywood cinematography being geared towards whiteness, just in the way it highlighted greens and reds and things like that. And so both of those guys came from a black and white documentary background and when they switch to color, they're like, what is this? This doesn't work and I want this is Sydney Partier. He's going to look good

in this film. And so that might be the first chapter, and I'll write about Lens Flair, so a mix of style and technology and the practitioners who brought it about. And then the other project is veering off in a different direction, and it's about male affection on screen, like mostly sort of platonic male or the lack of platonic male affection on screen. And that's going to be about film and television but in the twenty first century. So

it's all kind of new area for me. But just that sort of I don't know, taboo of men expressing love and affection towards each other. So that's something I'm really excited about. But it's definitely a new avenue of research for me.

We show Friends barely. I really wasn't a big fan. This is how I frame it for some people. There's an episode where joe and this won't be in the book, it might be in the introduction. Joey and Ross accidentally fall asleep on the couch together and they wake up and they're both like, this is the best nap I've ever had in my life. And the rest of the episode is them like, we should do it again. No, we can't do it again, but it's the best n

app I've ever had in my life. I know, like when we get to a certain age, naps are important, and so they finally decide to do it, and they wake up and they feel so good, and they look up and the other friends are just standing there, arms crossed, looking at them with derision. And I find that fascinating because I feel like that's like in a microcosm, how Hollywood treats men being affectionate with each other. So it's just something like that.

movies and that sort of thing. But I'm on Blue Sky, so I've cut the other social media ties for now. If I have things come up, like if one of these book projects gets accepted, I'll certainly trumpet it there.

about the endings he had. But I was thinking, you know, I think other people have said this, but coming home, you know, like it's very similar, you know, that ending of walking into water, that's very like it's kind of poignant when you think about it like that. That was another ending of a really amazing movie that he did. That's kind of weirdly similar.

black screen with white credits going over it. But no, how did you two feel? Do you think it took away from the story? It was, Yeah, HiT's there.

was him. You know that he was kept in chaos, you know, none of this stuff. But I do agree that I think playing this over, playing the credits over black or static would have been a better choice. And I don't know if it cost him the Oscar, like Sellers was saying, I mean, he was up against some real heavy hitters that year. But yeah, I think it totally. It doesn't fit with the rest of the film. What do you think, in Susan, Yeah.

to see, who are Sellers fans. You know, maybe that was the thought. I don't know, but I agree. Yeah, I think it's a shame.

But when he's got the cigar and Rand is smoking the cigar and he's given one to chance, and you see him kind of like we were talking about how he's imitating people, he's kind of you know, monkey see monkey doo, and he still doesn't quite get it. And he just keeps trying to mess with the cigar, and then you get the match going and everything, and it's just like he doesn't know what the hell to do. And I just love that he's got that little bit of puzzlement on his face. He's not playing it to

the rafters. You know, it's just very, very subtle. And that's the thing I like the most about this performance is just how subtle it is. But you know, he's this charric. I mean, he's inhabiting chance throughout the entire thing, and like you were saying at the end, when he's not doing that anymore, when he is flipping back into that character and trying to do the whole what you know,

Raphael's message type of thing. I don't want to be reminded of that, because I've just seen this guy in this body and inhabiting this character for two hours and seven minutes. You know, I don't need the last two minutes to be oh, and here's the guy who actually did it. It's like, no, I know that he's an actor. I know that he has this amazing power. I've just witnessed it for all this time.

his facial expressions. It's a blank slate or where he shows fear because he's being asked a question on television that he doesn't know how he's going to respond, so things, Well, I better bring up the garden. It's the one thing I know. He just has that blank look on his face, and when he says things that the audience finds funny, but he's just saying completely straight face, and he looks and says, oh good, and he just says that little

while everything about his face is perfect. That's where all the acting is not just in the voice. I wanted to sort of bring up one of the Peter Soller's film that I watched a few months ago. I think they were talking about this on the Pure Cinema podcast. They went and mentioned this Peter Solla's film from nineteen sixty one called Never Let Go, And this is one one I hadn't even heard of. And I always sort of associated Seller's with comedic roles, with maybe occasionally something

that was comedic with a slight sense of drama. So like in Hoffman, that's no comedy, but it's not. His character isn't completely sinister or anything like that. He's just creepy. But in Never Let Go, he plays a really dangerous gangster, a really dangerous thug. And I think there's a scene late in the film where the main protagonist comes up against him and they get into a fistfight and they're

beating the stuffing out of each other. I never thought I'd say Peter Seller's action film hero, but he is a nasty piece of shit, I think. I mean, if you just sort of think about Michael Gambon's character and the cook, the thief, he's nasty like that. But if you were to say to me, can you imagine Peter Seller's playing a character like that? Obvious said nah. But you watch this and you realize my god, he's a

really seriously good actor. If he was only a man of multiple voices, he wouldn't have helped that roll up. But he does so well and a film that your affection of Susan as well.

like it like I think it's very powerful acting. But people at the time thought he was chewing up the scenery like he got I don't know, for some reason, it just didn't do well and they felt like like he didn't go back to that because of the I believe that because of the criticism he got.

the top. It was so cartoonish. Yeah, it's a little bit like you know, Jim Carrey, you know, like it's like or Robin Williams, where it's like really really cartoonish and it takes a while to kind of like readjust but then you're like, oh, well, and that's the thing, is that kind of comedian you get so good at at a range being you know, doing arrange, you become an amazing actor people don't realize how hard comedy is, you know, and that's why those people can pull those kinds of things off.

whole career. And I imagine that Robin Williams would have been a huge Peter Sollas fan. And it's just fortunate for Robin that he got to do a range of comedic and dramatic roles in such a shame that Peter Solace didn't get to do as much as he would have liked to have done. But just sort of coming back to being there for a second where he does get to do this so called serious role. I think that another film which won't get the kudos that it

did at one time. It's not seen as being appropriate nowadays. But I love Blake it Wou's filmed the Party and I see a lot of Kharundai v. Bakshi his character in the party, in Chance the Gardener, they're both very humane people and there's chaos of sorts going on around them, but they're both lovely people that don't want to cause

any fuss because of them. I'd like to think that Chance is in if not an extension of his character in the Party, but there's something of that character in his character, his humanity.

But he's so concerned. He's just like, is he going to close up the house. Is this going to happen to me again? He just wants this and he it's not like he's desperate and like, oh what am I going to do just to maintain my position? You know, he just wants to be. You know, I guess that's where the title comes from, you know, just being there. He just wants to be, wants to live, wants to do his thing, which is to watch TV and eat supper, lunch, breakfast whatever. That's it.

movie actually. But one is that they keep he keeps using the word chance as if like kind of like as a joke, Like he keeps like having characters say the word chance over and ever again, which is like kind of strange, like all leading up to even when you're meeting Chance. And the second thing is he inserts himself did you see that he has, like on someone's bedside table, being the book being there, and the author's photo is seen in the movie, you know, in the

script it's you're supposed to see the author's photo. And at one point in another part of the movie, it's like, oh, that we have plenty of great literature. Here's some Kozinski or something. It's just so funny. He just inserts himself right into I don't know, I thought that was hysterical. I've never seen anybody do that before.

even to get into America. I think he like created a foundation and it was like he just was really good at lying. And so it's interesting to wonder a lot of people think, you know, he didn't know English well enough to have written a lot of the English works that he claims to have written. And plus the styles are different from work to work to work, So it is kind of interesting when you think about this story and compared to the author, the original author.

a little bit of what Kazinski was saying. Like I said, I haven't seen The Painted Bird yet, but yeah, from what I understand it was a lot of people were just like, yeah, no, this really didn't happen to this guy, and we have proof of him being here and here and here, not living in those Catholic missions or Catholic churches. So I'm like, Okay, you know, I don't know if it's all apocryphal or what it is, but I think that article was it in the.

would he be actively looking for things? He is not necessarily intelligent or enough to be curious, but it's an interesting question if this if the story was remade and really and set in the twenty first century I wanted to have, that would go.

So it's completely it's the opposite in a way. I mean, you know you could do a flip of this, you know where a person like you know, just I don't know believe like a person who wholly believes every single thing. Imagine something like that where they have no guidance whatsoever, they have no people raising them. They're so naive that they believe everything that they see on the internet and have this like crazy idea of what the world is like before they go out and see what it's really like.

see Melvin Douglas's character watching it. So it's that whole thing, Like you're saying, like we had three channels, three main channels here, you know, like nobody's checking out, UHF, everybody's watching this one particular show. And I'd love to this whole theme of the president becoming impotent when chances on TV that he's so upset that he's when he says, what do you think about the president's stance on economics?

And he's like, well, which one? And the audience loves that, just like, oh, the president can't make up his mind or whatever, and that seems to set Warden off. And then we come back to him one more time later on in the film and he still can't get it up for his wife, and she's just like, well, this happens to people, but maybe you should see somebody kind of say I love that. I love that his power is such that he kills the virility of the president.

Basically the reason why the finance guys at the end are like, let's get rid of the president. I mean, it's not directly related to that, but he's seen as a very impotent human being. After they now have Chauncey Gardner where they can put him up on this pedestal Hey, he's got no past. Nobody knows who this guy is. This is going to be perfect. No one can, you know, dig out any of those things. There's no what was that monkey business with Gary Hart or like any of

these like old scandals kind of thing. Not that they care about that stuff anymore. I mean, you know, you could write people and do all this stuff now and have thirty four felon accounts and still get elected. But back in nineteen seventy nine it was a much different story. And that this is right before the election of Reagan. You know, a person who ends up having dementia. I don't know when he started to get this dementia, but by nineteen eighty eight, full blown dementia. It's pretty funny.

I knew Ran when I'm on the board, Rand wants him to be president of the United States. Like you actually hear them say that, or at least it's in the script. Maybe they changed it for the film, but you know, that was definitely one of the last versions

of the script, and that's such a betrayal. Like you know, you sort of think about like how the President after he sees Rand, he's like, oh, we have all this information on Rand, like find out about this guy Gardner, you know, and then suddenly Rant's just like another person he has information on and then you know, but it's the opposite where he also, like to the president, they they only make a subtle reference to how the entire economy is apparently collapsing and it's just like a really

bad time for America right now while this film is taking place, like unemployment is astronomical and people are paying a million dollars for groceries, and it sounds like, you know, everybody wants to replace this president, including everybody at the top. You know, they want him replaced. They actually say something like we can't have him run again or something like that that actually comes up. So yeah, it's it's even where, you know, I mean, they really want him to be president.

Rand really wants to be president. It's pretty pretty interesting.

His stuff is like ecentric but punctuating this and of course all throughout in a very end, very beautifully is the music of Johnny Mandel, who wrote one of the most beautiful songs in cinema, Suicide is Painless, you know, from mash And this is based on Eric satis music.

You know, if if you can hear that, it's it's sort of like it's based on I think not quite that, but yeah, I mean it's like, you know, he used Eric Satiz's greatest inspiration while I was writing this, and it's just I think it's just another element that makes this a masterpiece. I just think that music is heartbreaking and gorgeous and subtle and not over you know, not overdone.

orchestral music. It was big, it was brash, it was orchestral, and films like the Teknapellam one two three, which used I think a David Shire Funk score. Everything was big, regardless of whether as band or orchestral. And to your point, Susan, maybe apart from the Dear Dato moment at the beginning of the film, all the music there is noticeable, but it's quiet, and that maybe seems to go against the grains, certainly for what ended up being released as a mainstream

feature in the seventies. I mean, I don't know. Probably people listening to this are thinking, you, dickhead. There's one hundred films we can name you without even doing any research that cataract that. But I mean, even if you watch the comparatively art house films of the Woody Allen of that period, they're using wacky nineteen twenties nineteen thirties jazz in a sort of wacky sort of context. It's

there to be noticed. But here the music, you still do notice it, and it is beautiful, but it's not there to take over the story. And look, I'm a big believer in recognizing soundtracks and thinking that they should be a part of the story. I know there's some people who say that a good soundtrack is one that you don't notice. I don't believe that at all. But in this case, the music is heard, but it's subtle,

just like the film is. And I think it would have been a completely different film than a film all the poorer if they would have used music that was there and the emotionally tug on your heart strings, Oh she's falling in love with chance? Oh chances being made fun of on TV or something I agree with you one hundred percent that that was of music. He was absolutely perfect and in a lot of ways went against the grain of what else is going on in seventy cinema.

this is cool. But now having and I'm sorry I'm calling him to Kat Stevens, I'm dead naming him. I'm so sorry because I can never suffer. Thank you. To use use of Islam's music in the way that he did was just oh so good. And yeah, so he

knows what he's doing. And obviously as a you know, the editor that he was, he's just all about like all right, the juxtaposition of these images with this music and I know that he did a whole one of his last gigs I think was doing stuff for the Rolling Stone, So he's just like, very very into the music stuff as well. And yeah, I agree like the score is subtle, but it comes in at the right time,

you know. I love that you pointed out earlier, Susan, the use of basketball Jones of one of my favorite Chiech and Shong songs. And yeah, like you said this, the TV becomes the soundtrack for so much of this that the Mandel stuff when it does come in, it is noticeable. It does enhance, but so much of this is just the TV as that background and commenting on what's happening on. And the other thing that I haven't mentioned is that it's not like a raucous comedy like

I was saying, it's not Canniball run. But it is a comedy and we're there and as the audience, we're the only ones allowed to laugh at this. No one inside of the movie is laughing at Chance. Like you get Louise being upset about Chance, you get Disart being a little bit upset him, and David Clennan, but no one's laughing at him. We're the ones that are laughing at him. We're the ones that see the humor in

this situation. Nobody inside the screen sees that. We're the ones that are privy to something they're not privy too.

a seventies style film. But there's the use of music in the film, the folky music. Thinking, Oh, this is definitely trying to bring the use of Cat Stevens slash use of Islam into this film. There's I can't remember who who composes the songs for this film, but I think actually at one point I didn't remember this, but I was watching the film again this week with Joanne and she said, oh, that song that's out of Harold and mood. So there was a Cat Stevens song in

the soundtrack of that. Did have either of you watched The Holdovers?

Just absolutely beautiful, but very hal ashby and its approach and once again very subtle use of music and even trying to pay tribute through the style of Kat Stevens, slash use of Islam slash whatever. His birth name was, Stephen Georgio.

a genius. That's hal Ashby. I mean, that's totally hawl Ashby came up with that. It's just gorgeous. I just love the opening to this movie. So anyway, that's taking us back to the beginning, and then the ending is perfect muscle. It's got a perfect first few minutes, perfect last few minutes, and everything in between's pretty good too.

on that label, Pat Metheny, Keith Jarrett, John Abercrombie, Gary Burton, Ralph Towner, tons and tons and tons of others. So we pick four albums that we want to discuss and as love that album's way, as we also drift in and out of other topics and other albums from great musicians on the label. In See Here World. We actually took a break this month, but we'll be back in January.

Tim's picked the next film, which is strictly speaking not really a music film, but music plays a strong art in the presentation, and that's nineteen eighty one's heavy Metal, So that'll be a next month's pick. But yeah, another good year, we hope ahead of us for both and Susan, how about yourself.

why I haven't been doing too much. Might do an occasional Kevin Geeks out here in New York City around there, but in Austin, Texas. Get a degree at a very late age. But everybody should give that a try if they can, because it's it's pretty it's pretty amazing actually to do this at this age, and I'm really really enjoying it, to tell you the truth.