Oh geez, folks.
It should die.
People say good money to see this movie. When they go out to a theater.
They want clod sodas pop popcorn in no monsters in a protection booth.
Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.
Ut it off.
Listen.
Listen to the words of Anthony Perkins, one of the stars who stand on the Beach.
Listen, listen.
Oh you don't know, Julian, You just don't know. He didn't see a face when I told her, Sho, you don't thought I was a murderer or something. I know I was was what I felt I had to do. How do you tell a woman you love that she has to kill herself and a baby.
If you never see another motion picture in your life, you must see On the Beach, starring Gregory pet Ava Gardner, Red Astaire and Anthony Perkins as the lover who faced what no other lover ever faced before. You must see you on the beat. You must see on the Beaty, you must see on.
The Welcome to the Projection Booth. I'm your host, Pike White Jermy once again as mister Morrish bursh Sinski.
I'm just wondering how we're going to get through four hundred bottles of sherry in this podcast.
Also back in the booth is mister Jonathan Melville.
They're still time brother.
This week we are taking a Patreon request from John Adam with nineteen fifty nine's On the Beach, based on the book of the same name by Nevill Shoot. It's the story of a US submarine that arrives in Melbourne, Australia after a nuclear holocaust in the Northern Hemisphere. The radiation from the war has started coming south and the people of Melbourne have only a few months left. The film looks at a small group of naval officers and
their significant others during the last days. We will be spoiling this film insofar as it can be, so if you don't want anything ruined, please turn off the podcast. Come back after you've seen the movie and or remake. You have been warned. Jonathan, when was the first time you saw.
On the Beach?
The original one? And what did you think? First time was just a week or two ago. I actually bought the Blu ray years ago. It came out in the UK. I think it's Signal one. I think they're called or Signature one. I bought it maybe five six years ago, so it's just one of those ones that's been sitting on the shelf. I'll watch it one day, and so this opportunity came on to talk about it, so here we are. And I did enjoy it, but I must submit the first time I watched it, I did find
myself drifting a little bit. I think it's the fact that the scenes are so some of them just be like individual scenes that aren't kind of part of a bigger narrative. And I think I was, like my brain, I just wasn't quite engaging with it, so it took me a little while to get into the style. And then watching it again, I think it worked a lot better. But yeah, yeah, I think I'm going to enjoy talking about it and Morrison about yourself.
Like Jonathan and Iley watched it recently for the first time. I think after you said, hey, want to join me from this year from Melbourne, I'd like to get your oppression of it. And I don't know if this was a mistake or not. Bud, I read the book before I watched the film, and I'm actually surprised that I
didn't read this years ago. One of my best friends growing up was a huge fan of On the Beach, and I think probably most Australian kids in high school, not in my high school day or read through a tan like Alice, which was the other big nevill shoot book, over tons of them. Those seem to be the two biggest ones known in this country. And yeah, so I'm surprised I didn't read the book earlier on.
But watching the.
Film, the tone was a little bit different, and there's one big character discrepancy which I know we're going to get into later on in the discussion, and I felt that, if not exactly put me off, but I was questioning maybe the difference between the book and the film, and I've found I was really absorbed in the book and it's tone of maybe, I don't know if you want
to call it the banality of everyday life. After people are aware they've only gone five months to live, are they going to start destroying everything, which is something that happens at the beginning of the two thousand version lawlessness abides or people just going to pretend like, oh, it's another day, And there was a lot more of that
tone I think in the book. I know we're probably going to talk a lot more about the book later on, but just one point I wanted to bring up, where the Peter and Mary, the central couple played in the film by Anthony Perkins and Donna Anderson. There's a lot more in the book of them talking about trees that they're going to plant in their backyard and gee, it's going to look nice one year from now, and they
both know that there's no future. But there's something that I found really intriguing in the book about this denial of what their future is. And that's a common thing amongst the characters in the book which drew me in, and I feel that there's less of that in the film, and it's doesn't that's not what makes it a bad
film or a good film or whatever. But after being used to one thing in the book, I found myself maybe a little bit raising of the eyebrow when I came to watch the film, But that notwithstanding, there was If I had watched the film first, I would have basically thought that it's a very brave film to be made in nineteen fifty nine. It's not the sort of film that you imagine America or Hollywood is going to make the end of the world. I know that the book was very popular at the time, so it was
a golden opportunity for them to look into that. But still, I think for a film that ends the way it does inevitably, it was probably a very brave film for Hollywood to come up with.
This was the first time launched. For me as well, I had heard about this movie for years, heard about the book. I didn't know about the remake whatsoever. Intels it's starting to look into this and yeah, I'm excited to talk about that as well as with some more differences, because this is going to be a little difficult for me as far as keeping everything straight between the book, the movie, and the remake and or I guess I
should say mini series. It was a two parter, just to make sure that I don't misspeak about what the details of one or the other, because yeah, you're right, they are very similar, but there are some crucial differences and it is very interesting how they approach the material so many years later with that mini series.
But yeah, the time between.
The book coming out and the movie coming out pretty short, not just two years between, so I can imagine this must have been a huge hit to be able to just spur Hollywood to jump on that so quickly.
Yeah, I think that's what I'd read as well, was yeah, maybe a year or two and all the more so, I guess because Hollywood, are they going to really be making a film about a country at the opposite end of the globe, and who knows if they really understand what Australia is like nowadays? Is imagine that if they're going to be making a film outside of the American board as, it's going to be maybe set somewhere in Europe or in England or anything like that. Whenever it
was ten years ago, has it been? I think, Mike, since I did my first projection Booth and the first film that you invited me on to discuss was Waken Fright, and both films not Australian produced.
There outsiders views of.
Waken Fright, But I know, having populated a whole bunch of Australian film discussion groups on Facebook, that I think most Australians consider Waken Fright to be an Australian film, despite the fact that it was directed by a Canadian and written by a Breast. But it really has that flavor of what a side of Australian life was like, whereas this is definitely a whole Hollywood film that just happens to have been filmed here in Melbourne and surrounds.
And actually, that's one thing that I thought was peculiar, given that at the time Australia had really just about no film industry to speak of. The film revival was still another ten years away. I was really quite surprised that, for authenticity Stanley Kramer would bring his production to Melbourne,
because outside of Melbourne, who'd have known. So I had something of a little bit of a squee moment all throughout the film, just like I recognize that place I recognize in the early scene with Tony Perkins catching a tram down Elizabeth Street in the center of the CBD making his way to Navy Headquarters, which was at the time the General post Office Sarah and Melbourne hasn't but nowadays it's a shopping center. But looking at Elizabeth Street, how it looked then and how it looks now, there
are shops that are different. One of the shops that they show in the film is one where my wife Joanne worked for a brief period of times. They got very excited seeing that. But you look down there and you flint the street station in the distance and rest of all is it the street And it's not very recognizable to how it looks today. So I know that's a little bit trivial sounding in a discussion of a movie about an apocalypse.
You take what you can get, at the least I did as a.
Non Australian and with another nan Australian here with Jonathan Jonathan, how important or how impactful is the Australian ness of this film, because I've got my opinion, but I want to hear yours first.
Yeah.
Well, actually I when I was five, we emigrated to Australia in Scotland to Brisbane. Oh we didn't last very long, because you can tell by that accident. We only lasted about a year. But then I went back again in two thousand, I think it was two thousand, and I lived in Melbourne for a little while. So I've been down that street and I seem to remember there was a quite cool little comic shot nearby where they get off.
The tram that's no longer there, unfortunately.
Well that was actually where our great friend Lee Gambin worked for period at that comic shop where it moved and was not very happy there.
But anyway dint of the story.
Yeah, so I don't know. I've got a thing about Australia. I love Australia basically, and I love films and TV from Australia. Waking Fright when that was kind of re released and rediscovered, that was a huge thing for me. And also I just remember years ago watching Siege of pinch Gut, the Hammer film. I think that was filmed in maybe sid is it Sydney, which is a fantastic little black and white film. And yeah, seeing Australia on the screen was interesting. But it is that kind of
the American view of Australia, isn't it. The accents? Of course, there's not many Australian accents in there, and we don't see too much of it. So I think it's a mixed thing. I think it's great to have Australia on the screen because there's not enough Australia, I think, on
the big screen. But yeah, just having some sort of experience and being there, just seeing people on the bikes at the start of the film, on their bicycles, I did for a moment I was thinking, it's not really like, then, or are they seeing of course the patrol has run out and everybody's own bikes, and I think it was the lots of It was a long time ago, so maybe there were more bikes that they tell you.
But that's something that they made a big point about in the book, how everyone had reverted to horses and to bicycles because the shortage of petrol, So that.
Was very much part of the story.
I think there's someone in a suit to maybe a buller hot that I saw, which is just it's a very interesting visual.
Yeah, for me, I was interested in this being an Australian story, but as I was watching and I was like, does it matter that it's set in Australia. Could Los Angeles or an American city have doubled for Melbourne, because yeah, you're saying there's very few Australian accents. It took until that scene where that guy is adderwalling waltzing Matilda. There's a beautiful singer inside of the but the guy goes, whoa that guy? Oh, I want to punch that guy
in the face. But it took until that scene for Andrew, my wife sitting next to me, to go, oh, this is Australia, and I said, you couldn't tell by Tony Perkins's thick Australian accent. They just feeds in and out. It's right up there with the great British accent that Kevin Castner had.
I've got to say, probably the worst Australian accent that I think I've heard on screen came from in Evil Angels. Meryl Streep's Australian accent is shit. And this is no disrespect of her as an actress. I think she's absolutely marvelous, But yeah, Australian accent didn't work there at all.
Maybe the dingo wait your baby.
Australian film viewers we tend to be sensitive perhaps this sort of thing. And I know that in twenty twenty five, the whole notion of films being shot in cities that they're not setting is no big deal. I know that a lot of Australian locations are used for American films or Canadian I know Toronto is a substitute for a lot of American cities in the film, So this could have been filmed anywhere, And to be honest, I'm surprised
if they got the budget to make this here. But once again, as an Australian watching this, and as a Melbourneite who loves seeing his city on film, I did get very excited about that, but I thought I shouldn't be making a big deal about what's probably the least important aspect of this film. I will tell one more story that I read and I absolutely loved. Over the last few years, I've been spending a lot of time
with my mother watching old Fred Astaire films. It's something that she absolutely adores, seeing his choreography and the dancing and the musical numbers, and then to see him in this film with something special and I we'll get to the act bit so, but one story I really like when Aver Gardner comes to pick up Gregory Peck from Frankston Station, which really does exist, and they shot it near Frankston Station, even though he wasn't in the scene.
Fred Astair was on set and according to the newspapers of the day, there was a crowd of people who came to watch the actors and the filming and doing their stuff, because to have these Hollywood actors in our hometown was a big deal. So Fred Astare was there on the set and people were calling a hey, Fred, do us do a dance, Give us a dance, sing us a song? And he actually did. I love, love love that story. I mean, he just seems like he
must have been like a lovely fellow. But I'm superficial that way.
The only reason too, I'm saying like Melbourne is very important, as in city at the end of the world kind of thing, end of time and of this whole era for all of humanity. I think I mentioned in the book christ Church might be a few days later, like New Zealand's got one or two more days, and then if there's any poor SAPs living down in Antarctica, they might get like another week. But as far as this movie, in this book, it is so much just about the
human relationships. It is just so centered on these five characters. And for me, it's like it doesn't matter, You're just interested more in the characters. So that's why I was talking about the any city could have doubled for this city.
But I understand it was a very important event for Australia and Melbourne, especially to have this crew coming in and actually using local talent, quite a bit of local talent from what I understand, and just trying to think provided a little bit of injection into that idea of having a film presence in Melbourne.
I know that days there are a few Australian character actors like John Tight and Lola Brooks who we see and the Navy Office scene where Anthony Perkins first goes, and the moment I heard them speak, I thought, oh, they're so obviously Australian as opposed to Anthony Perkins, who is so definitely not. But I found it really weird that Australia's most recognizable of that era Australian actor was John Mellion and he's playing an American.
Why after that guy is incredible?
For years I don't know if you coord any of this while you were living here, Jonathan, But as well as acting in the whole bunch of films, but for about twenty years or so, he was the voice behind a series of TV ads for a particular brand of beer, Victoria Better, and the music was iconic, and you'd have John Mellion basically talking over the music, talking about all these particular activities that one could do to earn himself this beer.
How does it happen you're coaching the crew or printing the news or straining.
Till you thought you would burst. You sure got a thirst.
Harden first needs a big cold beer, and the best cold beer is thick Victoria bitter. You know how you're treating their springs or fixing the trains, or trying too hard to come first, You sure got a first. Hardned first needs a big cold beer, and the best cold beer is big, a long cold bick. It can come at any time you're taking a bow or feeding a cow.
Matter of fact, I got it now.
Horn first needs a big cold beer, and the best cold beer is bigger Victoria bitter.
John Mellian was a so that for like about twenty twenty five years, tons of ads. It wasn't like the one ad. He just just kept on coring, Hey, we've written another series of rhymes for you, John, Yep, I'm up for it. And that was. That's probably what he's mouse known for. Not Crocodile Dundee, not Rider Wild Pony, which was the very first wellt Disney film to be made in Australia, not The Picture show Man.
It's those TV ads for beer.
I actually didn't recognize him the first time I watched it. It was only when I watched it the second time with the commentary on, I realized he was because he's just so young and obviously with the American accent, which was not bad. It wasn't the worst American accent.
No, I think that's better the cumber Batch and the Doctor.
Strange with this myself, just all these character actors that pop up, guy Dorman, who is obviously huge, and things like the Ebcress File and things like that, and I think the Prisoner, I think he was an episode of The Prisoner, wasn't he? And yeah, no, just seeing these guys in the back just odds to the If you're fond of Australian films, it's love wait to see.
The Other thing about the australianness of this all is that there is a level of society that is going on at this point where I think everybody knows that they only have a limited amount of time, but they're still very civil to each other and there still is society. Like when we first see that street shot El Melbourne with all of the people on horses, carriages, the electrotram just going about their day. The one guy who's trying to close the door of the vehicle that's open and
just keep Melbourne tidy type of thing. I don't know if America was in the same position, I imagine it'd just be blood running in the streets. I think it would be way closer to the two thousand version of the story than this nineteen fifty nine version. Maybe that's just because of time. Maybe American nineteen fifty nine would have been a little bit more civil, But I just kept thinking, oh, no, America couldn't handle running while knowing that there's only just a few more months to go.
Yeah, watching it, that was one of the big things that jumped out to me singly at the start of it, was the civility and the just the way everybody's accepted it, really that it's coming. And I'm also slightly changed, going back to something Mike said earlier about focusing on these sort of four or five different characters, and I think that's what maybe caused me to be a little bit distanced from it at the start, was because I wasn't
quite sure who we were really focusing on. And I think it kept it would have quite a long scene with somebody, and then he'd move to Anti Perkins and it would be there scene, and then another character and then it would do this all the time. And I think I was maybe just expecting that kind of Gregory Peck's character would be the hero. And again, it's all just things I was expecting, you know, I'm not saying she should have been, but and that he would just
be the through line in every scene. So that is just something that I just picking up on what you were mentioning about. What maybe yeah, just caused me to pause a little bit and think, what what's happening? Why
are we getting so many small scenes? And it is that thing of daily life though, And I suppose it goes back to that of yeah, they're looking after the baby, they've got to buy make the he's making the milk in the morning for the baby, and yeah, all these different things happening, and people are just so relaxed about it all and whilst terrified inside of course.
Yeah, and just denying everything, like more So was talking about earlier with the we're gonna cut down this tree and we're gonna plant these flowers and isn't it going to be lovely? And just everybody that we meet has something that they are really denying assimbly. Other than Moira the Avid Gardner character, but especially in the book, she just seems to be the one who's most grounded in reality, and she's just blitzed out of her mind the whole time.
She just drinks like a fish. And it's odd that in the book at least there's this whole talk about like, don't you want to get a job, don't you want to have a skill. She ends up going and takes like a stenography course and learns how to take shorthand and all these things, And I'm like, what are you do? Like maybe I would do something like that if I only had a few months, Like maybe I would learn how to play the guitar or something like that. But
I'm just like, what are you doing to her? Dwight the Gregory pet character, Like what are you doing to her talking to her about making improvements in your life and getting your shit together because she's just going to die in a few months.
But I guess that's giving you hope.
So this movie, for me, just presents this real interesting philosophical question as to if you only have a limited amount of time, what are you going to do at that time? And how is society going to handle this type of news.
Well, I suppose what did we do during the pandemic? We're making banana bread and putting you on Twitter. We didn't know where the pandemic was going, but we're all just saying that on going. Hey, look, come learning any skill. So maybe there's something in that.
Is I'll refer to.
The key difference between the book and the film, and they take this even further in the remake is a relationship between the Gregory pet character and the Ava Gardner character. So between Dwight and Moira, and she basically feels I need someone to hold on to. I'm going to seduce you. And like the first part of the film, they're just behaving as friends but trying to deny their lust or need for human contact. And he goes and tells her, look, I still have a wife and children in the US,
and that's just the way it is. But after he comes back from his submarine mission to the Northern Hemisphere to determine if there are still people living, they just fall into each other's arms.
But the charade.
Of him being loyal to his dead family goes all the way through the book. Their relationship is never consummated and not only that, but there's one part of the book where he walks into a couple of department stores to buy toys to bring back for his children. He's going all out on this notion that maybe they're still alive.
I don't think he believes that they're still alive. But if he lives his daily life like everyone else is doing, then they don't have to think about the inevitable end that's coming X number of months from now, And that tells us a lot about his character and the fact that Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner's characters in the film just decide, fuck it, we're falling into each other's arms and goes with the rest of the film.
As a romantic relationship.
It just changes a whole lot about how we see Captain Dwight. If you're a hopeless romantic and think that's Hollywood got it right, fine and fair. But Neville shoot hated that change, and even Gregory peckusonas Stanley Kramer, who I understand was an issues filmmaker, said you can't bring this romance into it. No, we need a romance. And
he's still a Hollywood filmmaker at heart. A nineteen fifties Hollywood filmmaker, and I think that when I was watching the film after having read the book, that relationship was the one really big thing that gnawed at me. Other things that were different. It doesn't matter, films and books are not supposed to be identical, but that character change
really chewed at me. In the nineteen to fifty nine version of the film, the captain decides, right, my men want to go back to die in the US, or to die on the submarine on the way over to the US, but Australia is not their home, and he goes with the ship, which is what a captain would do. But in the final moments of the two thousand remake, Amanda Santi decides, no, they want to go back, that's their business. I'm staying around to be with this hot babe,
Rachel Ward. And the final moment is just seeing the two of them fall into each other's arms at the very end of it, after having lust filled moments the rest of the story, and that just did not ring true. At least on the one hand, you might say, yeah, I'm going to spend the last few weeks that I have with someone who I can have some romance with or some lust with or whatever, But what about the captain always going down with the ship. He's a military man,
bottom line, and anyone else. Yeah, I could have seen them staying behind, but not that character. It just didn't ring true to me. So yeah, there's a lot of good things about the remake, and I'm sure we'll get to that, but that non resolution, that was just not one of them for me.
So, just for the folks listening at home, I just wanted to go through these characters a little bit as far as and got to help you if you haven't seen the movie, because you're probably completely lost by now.
But just wanted to talk.
So we've got really for me the movie, and this talks a lot, I think to what you were saying, Jonathan, as far as these vignettes as we go along, it feels like it really maintains the novel structure as far as we're going to spend some time with this person, then we're going to move over here and spend time with this person, and we just meander through these folks lives and then time will jump a few weeks a month.
Kind of thing.
Now we join them again and see how they're doing with this end of the world scenario. We've got Gregory Pack as Dwight Towers, the commander of this naval vessel. It's called the Scorpion in the book. It's called the Sawfish in the movie of the first movie. At least I think it's called like the Cherokee or something in the remake. But I kept hearing the commenter on the commentary version. I kept thinking he was saying swordfish the whole time instead of sawfish, So I was like, did
they name it something else again? But anyway, he's the commander of that very straight laced, all American boy type of thing. But for me, really the heart of this movie is Anthony Perkins as Peter Holmes and Donna Anderson as Mary Holmes. And they're this married couple that have a little girl, and so much of this for me is the relationship between these two, and it feels like Peter Holmes is the only character, maybe with the exception
of kred Astaire as Julian Osborne. He feels like he's the only one that has a real I'll grasp on life other than like I was seeing that Eva Gardner character Moira Davidson. Now she correct me if I'm wrong. But she's just a friend of the family in the book and in the original movie, like she's not related to Mary Holmes, but in the remake their sisters.
Yeah, if I recall correctly, I thought she was in the book. Wasn't she?
It was John Osborn in the book. Wasn't she John's cousin or something like that? And I have a feeling, but it's been a couple of months. I don't remember what I for breakfast this morning, never mind what I read two months ago. But yeah, I have a feeling that he was like a cousin to her and he doesn't want to see her get hurt. But they changed that too in the nineteen fifty nine version, where she and fred Astaire might have had a relationship at some stage earlier on that didn't work out.
And I wasn't getting that in the book at all. Yeah, because fred A Steer in this role, he looks old enough to be her father. Not that I'm casting expursion that's on any grampy shaggers or anything, but that was I was just like, Okay, yeah, I can't see them being a couple at any point.
Ava Gardner.
Her performance got a lot of flack but I think it's okay. She plays drunk a lot in this movie because that's what she does. She just drinks and drinks, and the use of her character, the use of Moira in the book is very interesting because they bring John and John Peter in the movie. They have a party at the beginning of the book where they're like, hey, commander, you know you're here alone.
Why don't you come to our house. We're going to put on a little.
Shindig, And they keep talking about the last time they invited somebody over, he just kept crying, and they want to avoid this guest of theirs stop crying, so they bring Moira along as a distraction, and then she's the one who ends up crying, at least in the movie.
To Gregory peck once she really gets blitzed towards the end of the night and really let's lose with what she's feeling, and especially in the book, she talks a lot about how she thought there would be time and that she possibly wanted a family one day, but now
there's no time. So again really showing John Slash Peter and Mary as being this idyllic type of thing, and then you get to see inside of their relationship and see that it isn't as perfect as it is because she is in complete denial about stuff.
She says to Dwight to forget who she really is. She doesn't like herself, and I thought that was a really interesting point where it's just all these things are coming to the surface on't it. We all these different characters, which of course it would if you've only got days or months last of your life, so you're going to analyze yourself to death literally, But yeah, No, she's an interesting character and she's fine. She was fine. I think
quite believes that relationship. But I was told too because that was the film.
That's the most surprising thing for me is when you find out that Gregory Peck still is lighting that candle for his wife and kids, because do you think, at least I think when I watched this, when I read the book, I was just like, Oh, this is our hero. This guy is going to be the one that really takes charge, and that we get to follow and really
see how life outside of America is. This stranger in a strange land coming in and then when he reveals that he's like, oh, my wife's name is Sharon, I'm like, oh, something's wrong here, and then the way he talks about how his kids are this age and no war happening at all, and then you start to realize, oh, he still thinks they're alive, or still talks about them as
if they were alive. And then yeah, that scene that you're talking about, Morris, where he's going around to all the shops and he's trying to find a pogo stick for.
His little girl. That's heartbreaking.
He's buying all of these presents for his kids and you're just like, dude, they are not there anymore.
And that trauma.
Really comes out a lot more in the two thousand version, but I don't know if it needs to be as big as it is, and we'll definitely talk about that, but yeah, just when we start to realize, oh, he really thinks about this stuff, and the counterpoint for him is like I said, Tony Perkins, but then also Fred Astaire and the first time we see him, he's just on this tirade.
About how the world is and what happened.
It wasn't an accident.
I didn't say that.
It was carefully planned down to the tiniest mechanical and emotional detail, but it was a mistake, and it was a mute In the end, somehow God at the time for examination, we shall find that our so called civilization was glodiously destroyed by a handful of vacuum tubes and transistors.
That's the thing I like too about the book and also with this movie, is that there's no backstory as far as oh, the Americans did this and the Russians did this, and it's just a whole matter of we don't know what's going on. Like I think Osbourne in the book has a whole theory about how Russia has no seaport and it wanted Shanghai, so it ends up bombing Shanghai with this coule bolt bomb that I don't know if it's supposed to have more of a half life or less of a half.
Life, or how that's working.
But he just has this whole theory and then everybody else is like, no, nobody knows what the fuck happened. And that's what I kind of like, is that they're living in reality where there was no news service. It happens so quickly that nobody knows and the only person that might possibly know what was going on was a guy who was trapped in a submarine, however, many hundreds of feet below the water, and he was just as clueless as everybody else.
I like how Osborne's character fred Astaire's approach to him, but is quite better. Like the scene in the House I think was particularly strong and powerful. Like at the party early on, and he's had a few too many to drink and he's telling the other party guests, this is how things got so screwed up in the world, and your theories are all bunk, and trust me, I
know what's going on. And he does the same thing when he's going on the mission on the Swordfish to the Northern Hemisphere to checker where there might possibly be a sign of life, and only to be disappointed. But a stare I was starting to say before for someone who like me, my perception of him is this one thing. And I never saw Was he in The Towering Inferno or the p Sudden Adventure, I don't remember which he was in one of those.
Two Towering and Bruno I think, right.
I never got to see that, So I don't know what he's like outside of the MGM musical genre, if you want to call it that.
But holy Moley.
If you're not going to use Australian actors in these central bars. And I understand that they couldn't because they wanted to. Hollywood wanted to get its return back with famous actors. But holy shit, Fred Astaire was so good and so believable. He was furious at how the world had gone his character. I don't remember if he said this in the film, but I think he said something in the book about surely people weren't stupid enough to finally go that last distance and start nuking each other,
but they did. And his bitterness at how selfish and stupid the politicians and the warmongers could get. It's just so completely believable, and I just love what he does. Contrasts and I like Brian Brown, who plays the same character in the remake, but he pushes that cynicism and bitterness maybe a little bit too far away. Trying to contrast him between as being the guy who's wanting to tell the armed forces sticky mission up your ass, you don't know what the hell you're talking about. I'm the
scientist in the room. But he's weak at the knees when he sees Rachel Ward and said come and take me back. So he's going from being rational to irrational.
I don't know.
So that's probably a not needed digression, just more to compare Brian Brown and Fred Astaire. But in this case, I think Fred Astare his version of the character, really did it for me. I just loved what he did. I was so impressed.
Yeah, same here. I wasn't expecting. I'd taken a lot of my blue ear discs out of the cases are well ago for space savings, so I hadn't read the cover. I didn't know the film that when I was like, oh my what and I wondered, is this a cameo or what? But no, I thought he was fantastic as well, particularly in that opening scene that he has.
I think he's meant to be English, isn't he in this? I don't think it's ever explicitly studd and.
No, you're right, it's not. I just thought he was putting on an English accent at the start, which then disappears. Like most of the accents of this movie the first few scenes, they try hard and then they give up. But yeah, he makes it a line I wrote down.
I think it's from the later scene in the submarine where he says the war started when everyone decided to protect themselves with weapons they couldn't use without destroying themselves, and it was all just an accident probably, And then he sells that really that kind of yeah, what were we doing? It was all just stupidity, not so much anger. It was just the sadness or he just resigned to
the fact, doesn't he now? Of course again as you have to beat but down in the alcohol and yeah, and then of course we'll talk about the car scenes later, but as the world explodes a rundoms.
You mentioned the mission to Seattle, and that's really the main action of this film. There's not a lot of things that happened, but like you were saying, Jonathan, this scene leads to leads to the scene. There's not like a big thrust as far as like, oh, this is our project or anything, but because they're all just waiting around to talk basically, sorry to laugh, but it's just super cynical. Everybody is just Okay, we know that we have a limited time span. What are we going to
do with it? And so really the mission for Peck gives him purpose and allows us to see how he interacts with the Fredasteric character, with the Tony Perkins character, and with all the rest of the men on the submarine as they go all the way up from Australia to Seattle to try to find out what this radio signal is that they've been receiving these messages that are sent out where it's just random words coming through on morse code and they're wondering, what the hell is this thing.
So they have to investigate, and luckily with Peck, he runs a nuclear submarine and as fuel it can do this. He gives him purpose and allows him to also do some investigation as far as are the radiation levels going down in the northern hemisphere, because there's a theory about how it's rained enough that it's going to clean the air,
clean that the radiation out of the system. And so that's why Fred Astaire is there because he's the well known scientists able to go up there and find out what are the radiation levels and see.
If this theory is really true.
So that becomes like really the thrust of the film. But it's interesting that it doesn't take that long. It's not really that much of this what is it two hour and seventeen minute movie is this mission. You would think as a normal movie watcher, Oh, this is going to be the thing that takes us all the way to the end of the film and what we see there. But no, it's really just a step over in the middle of the movie.
Well, as I think you said earlier on Mike, this film is really more about human relationships. The background is the world is going to end. How do people behave but two hours and seventeen minutes, so that may not have washed, or rather two hundred pages of that might not have washed, so making the character's navy men, which means, unlike say the army, they can travel back and forth. But yeah, I firmly see this as a film about
relationships under troubling circumstances. And even so much as we get the relationships between the characters on the on the boat and I'm trying to remember I think it was in the remake, not in the original one, where two guys are playing a game of cards and one wants to win his money back, and tempers have fled, possibly more than they otherwise would have been if the end of the world wasn't coming, So tempers do flow, and which seems to be more of a theme of the
remake possibly and the if they'd had a card game in the original film, that would have been oh can I get Can I play you again to.
Get my money back?
No?
Sorry, old chap, Oh never mind you unfair and square that way.
I suppose those two old guys again in the club talking about the Porte or the Wayne.
It was port four hundred bottles support, which is what I was drinking tonight. I saw those two guys as pretty much the throwback to the Commonwealth. These were old school British guys. Those two characters may well have been British, the one who said, Oh, I can't believe I've had we got four months to get through four hundred bottles of sharing or port How are we going to do it all? Oh jeeves, all take another buckle home with me to not?
Is that rightly? Just disgraceful? Like I didn't know what the character's names were. I was calling them Stetler and Woldorf.
But good names for them, definitely. And the third guy in there, the guy who's waiting on them, I've found him the most interesting. And that was the thing I like about this movie version is that they have these so like that guy, the port drinker, and the main guy is in the book, but I think he's just there from one scene maybe. And then the whole thing about Anthony Perkins commander, the guy who gives him the mission at the beginning, him and his I guess it's
his secretary. The relationship between them, I don't think is in the book at all. And I love that relationship. I love this whole thing. And there's a question are they in love. I really don't think so. I think they've just been coworkers for so long and there's a mutual respect, and I really like that they have those scenes in there, and especially you're talking about the two old guys Statler and Waldorf, for are perfect names for them them. At the end, they're not there, but the
guy who was waiting on them still is there. And just that empty club in the shots of the empty streets, and just seeing that entropy that happens, especially towards the end, once they do get back from that mission to Seattle, that's when it really starts to play in and you get those things with the Salvation Army and it's oh, now, it's I don't want to complain about this film, because I actually do like it, but it feels like it's very civil for so long, and then the entropy comes
towards the end. It's not I don't think enough necessarily, and then it's also just I don't want to say an afterthought, it's just not as much emphasis put on that. For me, what I'm interested to see is really the destruction. I don't know what it is about End of the World movies, but I'm always fascinated by apocalypse films and just like, all right, what it happened? And just playing those mental games and seeing in Australia is a perfect thing because it's got one of the best End of
the World series ever with the Mad Max films. I think that's where we're going. I'm waiting for Wez to pop up on the beach and just be like, all right, let's start raiding the roads. I'm expecting folks on the beach to be more like the folks that run the village and the cars of the Paris, the roving bands of teens with their crazy cars and just committing atrocities like wild.
So is this basically a prequel to my Marx? Do you think they could be? No?
Petrol. There's no gazzoline.
Some of them must have survived in Sydney or Melbourne.
Brother and spawns the war Boys.
One.
I aspected this that we haven't referred to yet and is part of why I said that this is a brave film in a way for Hollywood to have made in nineteen fifty nine. Is the illusion, even if it's not explicitly mentioned the word euthanasia. So Anthony Perkins character Peter knows he's going on this mission to Seattle to see if there's still life there, but he knows that no matter what happens, they're all going to go. So he wants to make sure that his wife and daughter
don't suffer any more than they have to. So he knows that the symptoms are going to last for days, and they're going to be in pain and vomiting, and it's just going to be absolutely terrible, particularly for their daughter who doesn't know what is going on. So he goes through a few privileged channels to try and get early access to suicide pills, and there's that pretty heartbreaking scene where he has to tell Donna Anderson, his wife, that while he's gone, if she's feeling any of the
radiation sickness symptoms. Then she's to take this tablet and give one or an injection to their daughter, and she goes nuts saying, I'm not going to murder our daughter?
Is that what you want?
And that was one moment, or one of the few moments in the film where we're talking about Ava Gardner being someone who acknowledges the truth of what's going on.
But there seems to.
Be the one moment of the film where a character goes absolutely nuts at the suggestion, look, we're going to die. Whatever you say, I choose to believe in that we're going to survive this. But she absolutely point blank refuses the acceptance of that and is not prepared to do what her husband suggests, which is to youth andize herself and their daughter if he's not there to be with them.
And I know there are a lot of apocalypse films in the nineteen fifties because of Cold War tensions and sci fi was exploring that sort of avenue, but for a mainstream Hollywood film to bring in a topic like youth in Asia, I don't think anyone was doing that sort of thing at the time, And do either review know of anything from.
That era, American or otherwise. No, no, And it definitely is one of the most important scenes of the film that when he's advising her to take the tablets, and also just the fact that it's not even just a passing one scene. Let's talk about it and then we'll never mention it. Really, it's all the way through the film, isn't it. It's right up until they're handing the little boxes. I think in the street, I think towards the end.
But yeah, no, that's amazingly well done scene. I think the two of them worked really well there, and I think almost forgot that the accidents were terrible in that moment. It was so good. So yeah, it just as you say, it really stands out because it's so unique.
The picture that he has to paint for her in the book, with the imagine that you die before the baby dies, and then she would just sit there and suffer with the radiation sickness and probably vomit and starved to death, and it was just like, you will go at this rate of speed, but our daughter is younger, it'll take her a few more days to die. Was just really heartbreaking. And that's where it's like Okay, I think this relationship really is at the heart of the story.
But then it's nice that they have the different relationships to counter post that as well. And the mission to Seattle, that's another heartbreaking scene because it's this whole thing of, well, we're going to go up there and we're going to find out who's typing out these messages because a few things that happen along the way. There's the one crew member who just leaves and goes out.
On his own. In this one, he swims.
I think in the remake he's got a little dinghy that he's going out on not to cast dispersions. When they get up to Seattle and we finally get revealed what had been going on that it's a fucking coke bottle and a window shade that the one guy before says, like.
There's random words.
Whoever's doing this doesn't know how to operate a radio. The whole thing about the ten thousand monkeys all in a room with typewriters things comes up and it's like, yeah, it ends up being exactly that, that they are just chasing ghosts and there's never been anybody. The last person to man that radio, we don't know when they died, but it was probably pretty quickly, and quite a few months ago.
This is a thousand monkeys working at a thousand typewriters.
Soon they'll have written the greatest novel known to men.
Let's see, it was the best of times.
It was the burst of times.
Stupid muddy. It's a clever idea, that, isn't it, Just to have something making a noise and they have to go and investigate. But yeah, so sad when it cuts back to them and he's reading out the reports. It's just as you said, the coke bottle. And then it is that thing of all right, okay, let's go back to the other story now that you're saying about. Not that it should, but it could have been more central,
and that's thriller, I think. And the remake it's a bit more of a thrillery, isn't it, with scanners and whatever else we have down there beeping away? And then this one it's just all right, okay, let's go back to Melbourne now. But I did like watching him walking
through the industrial complex. And it's a Hollywood film, so they're not going to have dead bodies everywhere, but in a way, it might have been nice, if that's the right word, to see a little bit more destruction or cars that had crashed on the road to the way they are or would happen. But at the same time, yes, that desolate Hi Iang and things. Certainly it's impressive, so that is good.
Did they explained it in the film by someone saying, oh, everyone's just going to go hound to die, even do.
Always go somewhere to die? There's some maybe there's some comment about which is true, but anyway, yeah, no, you have to make I think it's John Melly and it goes out who swims, isn't it? Into San Francisco and those are yeah, just all those I love you were talking about Bucklips films. It is those moments where you see the streets of a city that are used to seeing so busy being empty, like in twenty eight Days Later and I guess in London and many other films.
And then listening to the commentary you're talking about they had to stop the chap for thirty seconds film all that stuff, but it just yeah, see San Francisco empty. Haven't been there as well?
It's speaking now I'm trying to remember Mike when we have a the Omega men.
Was that sit in Elior was a send friend?
I can't remember, as I was going to say, oh, another sand Fran empty city film, But certainly the feeling you get from the beginning of that film is just newspapers. It always seems to be newspapers flying around the empty city, and I think that's the case in the remake of
On the Beach as well. Newspapers just flying everywhere. But realistical or not, but there's certainly something that's pretty spooky about seeing a city that you're used to seeing traffic and people going about their daily business that there's no one there. So realistic or not, I think it's cinematically better move.
Yeah, it's ironic that in twenty twenty five there would not be newspapers floating around on the streets because they're just not around it anymore. But yeah, otherwise, please keep your newspapers together a little bit more. I love the story about when they were filming in Melbourne and they were trying to get those empty street shots and the city went out and cleaned up all the streets and they're like, no, we on garbage up here on the streets.
They had like artificially garbage up some of the streets and then clean.
Them up again after they left.
But yeah, those scenes of them looking at San Francisco, and it's really heartbreaking to see all that, and then yeah, the whole thing of them finding that what was sending those signals. And then, like I said, it's a turning point in the film because after that, we've had things like Freda Stairs race car being introduced before, but then
afterwards it just becomes maybe a little too much. Just a lot of people racing cars in this and it's funny that there's a boat race at the beginning and then there's the car races at the end, and they're so different as far as like the boat race is just full of life, and it's Ava Gardner and the Gargery pack just laughing and getting together and just really starting to see that spark of romance between them and just that the way that they could be a couple
when you see that in the book. But then towards the end with Randolph and his race car, it's just a whole matter of self destruction. And there's a really heartbreaking scene in the book where there's been a horrible accident and he still wants to win the Grand Prix. He's like on the way to winning it, and there's this big accident and he realizes that he has no way of getting home because his car has been damaged, and so he was like, I can just take this truck.
He's like, I better not take this truck. I better actually ask the that own it if I can take it or at least borrow it for a little while. And the woman that he talks to that owns the truck, it was her husband's he died in this auto accident, and she's just like, yeah, no, he died the way that he wanted to go.
So everything's fine.
Yeah, you can have the truck, you can have any parts that you want, and just go ahead and pick over these damaged cars, these broken cars, and take what you need. And yeah, that for me was like, oh wow, Yeah, they're just racing themselves to destruction.
The world is exploding around and that's what I expected from a film like this, showing bombs going off for explosions or things. But the pair all right down to just this one track, and he's trying to get through it all and trying to survive. Although it looks quite casual, doesn't he nobody's trying to stop this race. It's just
things exploding in cars, blowing up. And also Anthony Perkins standing beside the racetrack smiling, and I'm thinking, I think I would be a bit further back, knowing how dangerous this race is. But hey, clear enough. But yeah, and then the inevitable or the sad end of that character, but maybe come to that later.
The issue that I found, and there is definitely a contrast between the book and the first film on one corner and the remaking the other corner is the motivation, as I said, behind Joey and Osborne's character in racing. There is no Grand Prix in the original one. It turns out, well, he's always loved fast cars, and hell's the end of the world anyway, I might as well enter into this amateur's Grand Prix and have a bit
of a race. And I really get the feeling that he's not there thinking, well, if I die, I die. He just wants with two three weeks left to live, he just wants to feel excited. He just doesn't want to go out doing something that's merely banal or boring. He wants to feel like he really lived, and how he does eventually die in the film becomes all the more tragic. Has got nothing to do with the race, and in the remake his character almost seems to have
a death wish. Now I'm going to race this car until I fall off the track and I'm going to go yeahoo. And that just did not ring true. All that was absolutely rubbish. But I loved once again that the character in the book and the film was just more I want to do something dangerous, but I don't want to die doing it. But I can only feel like I've lived if I've done something dangerous. Completely different
motivation between the two and the book. Slash original film got that character right, I think so.
Anyway, and just as a little.
Bit of an aside as we are recording, this is the weekend of the Melbourne Grand Prix around Albert Park Lake, which is mentioned explicitly in the book, not in the film.
So I got to go to the ones, which was great. It must have been two thousand and one, found number which you know, but enjoyed that lost my wallets. I got a bark in the end. Anyway, good there's kind of people of Melbourne took care of you.
Yeah, someone phoned it and handed it into the police. Wow, very nice, thank you man. That's what Melbournians do.
What else do we want to talk about with this movie? The thank you?
I was just about to do that.
Walton Matilda used to start Borius in that one, because your.
Soul, that's the point.
It's my fucking song.
So the beginning of the film, we see the credits come up Ernest Gold as a composer, and I thought, oh, the guy who wrote the music for Exodus. Great composer. And like a lot of soundtracks, we get a main theme and then there are variations on the theme and they just someone in the music department thought, isn't Waltson Matilda Australia's national anthem?
Isn't their national song? Yeah, we'll use that, and they.
Hammered it and they hammered it and they hammered it. And I don't know whether I was pissed off that I just kept hearing this fucking tune again, or more the fact that Americans thought that's the only song that Australia has in its arsenal. But if that wasn't bad enough, and Mike's already gone and alluded to this. When Moira
and Dwight go on the fishing trip. There's a bunch of fishermen who was sitting on the shore, standing on the shore and singing all the lyrics to waltson Matilda because it's a national song and every time four or five blokes get together in this country, that's just what we do, isn't it. We sing waltzing fucking Matilda.
I've been waiting to burst into solo episode.
No, it's been like it's not happening. All right.
There's those guys on the street corners around the oil cans, like with the fire, like rubbing their hands and stuff, and they start singing waltson Matilda and every street corner.
Yeah, we won't sing Waltzing Matilda, and we're not going to sing down under it, all right, So I just push it out of your head anyway.
Sorry that mountain when they go off to the mountains, I actually had to pause Meat for about seconds because it's just going, I'm going, what are you doing to me? Is this is painful? Yeah? So that is a flaw in the film, definitely.
From one time to stand the composer didn't like it and didn't want to do it, but Stanley Kramer is just like, yeah, no, Waltson Matilda, come on, I love this song.
This is great.
What to Watson? Matilda is just a great soul. God, we all had to get that out of our system.
I think if this had been an American celt film, would we be hearing Denny Boyle all the way through the film?
Is that what you're saying?
Yeah?
That?
Or kicking it up to Boston.
They get a little heavy handed in the last part of the film with the Dutch angles. Almost every shot for a little while is a Dutch angle, to the point where I was just like watching the movie with my head kicked over. It's like, oh, okay, like we saw a pretty good Canton angle shot.
I think at the beginning in the.
Party scene where Ava Gardner comes up into frame and Gregory pecks on the other side and you've got a pull in the middle that really emphasizes the angle of it. But yeah, towards the end, it's just like every shot, every other shot maybe is can't and it's like, all right, we get it. The world is a skew right now, So little heavy handed with that. But I have to
say that the cinematography in this movie. It looks gorgeous and I really love too, just the age of fred Astaire at this point and just the cragginess of his face. He's got a fascinating face at this point in his career, and I just really was happy to see how he looked throughout so much of this. And yeah, the oh my god, the lighting when it comes to his death scene in that garage is fantastic. And then there's some little things too that they do where I'm like, oh,
I didn't expect that. Where I think it's when Gregory Peck finds out that the guy that they sent to go through the city because you don't send the captain to go through the city. K'm on Armanda Sante Anyway, It's just it's the Star Trek problem, right, and like it would be pretty boring if Kirk stayed on the ship all the time, but so they always have to
send him out. But that actor who tells him about his friend having radiation poisoning, and the way he turns and walks right towards the camera, it's so uncomfortable that they try to black it out with his face basically, like that's a little much guys go.
By, Yeah, that jarred a little bit. That's walking towards the camera a bit, didn't it. And then the thing about him being irritated, And that's the first sign of it coming. He's an interesting character, wasn't he. I suppose the poor guy in this bunk bed who's the first one to drop and he thinks it's just his stomach. Those are nice moments as well. Again I say the word nice. The topic is not nice. It's just well done,
I suppose I should say. But just that creeping horror and terror death is hovering over us, or hanging in the atmosphere around us. And as I was watching, I guess I was also just thinking watching Gray repe because
thinking what you're dying, you know, quite important. We could talk about the importance of the film, the gravitas and what it was saying, and it's obviously quite obvious what it was saying about man and humanity and our obsession with weapons, but of course just to see it in these characters who are dying one by one and tend to work out what to do in their final hours. And yeah, it was very well done. A lot of those scenes.
All right, guys, let's go ahead and take a break, and I'll be back right after these brief messages.
Seven the Sixth Sense, Sweet sixteen, nine Songs, seven Brides for seven Brothers, twelve Angry Men. In the versatile world of cinema, numbers everywhere, and on the Film by Numbers podcast, we explore just about any aspect from the movie world, from film history to filmmaking, to specific movements and directors, and much more. Besides, each topic on Film by Numbers
is dictated by the number of the episode. Brought to you by Outward Film Network and hosted by me Phil Slatter and filmmaker David Woods, we will take you on a journey across the vast landscape of film with interviews with award winning filmmakers and academics, featuring discussion, debate and recommendations. Available on all the main podcast providers. If you love film, join us a Film by Numbers.
All Right, we were back and we were talking about on the beach.
There are a lot of post apocalypse films out there, but the one film that came to my mind while watching this was one from was it the late eighties? I'm wanting to say Miracle Mile and rather than compressing the idea of people living at their lives with five months to goo. Miracle Mile is about people getting five
hours or whatever it is, or one night's notification. And that's also a personal story because Anthony Edwards and Mayor Winningham are desperately trying to find each other because they want to be together when the lights are turned off, as it were. But I loved that there was another store that So, okay, the death of humanity is it's not quite a side issue, but it's not the only issue, and it's about this relationship between.
Two people who feel that they need be together.
And regardless of what I might think about how Dwight and Moira end up in both of these films, they wanted to make the story about them and Peter and Mary how are they going to cope as couples and how.
Do they deal with it? Do they ignore it?
Do we behave shittily knocking over the windows of department stores and stealing what we want like it does a little bit in the remake, or do we just try to be our best behavior with the people that we love. And I think both of these films explore that as an issue, And yeah, I'm a huge fan of The Miracle Mild is heart breaking.
Absolutely, it's a brilliant film, and I think, just thinking back on this film, it's more I think watching it thinking about Miracle Mile and thinking about some off those are real people, Miracle Mile, and we're getting to see how they live in a world that's not hemmed down by authority and by the rules that the Navy puts
on these characters. So I think, now, just looking back on what I'm thinking about the film, I think it is that sort of strict the procedures and this is the way that the captain should act, and this is the way that the privates on the submarine should act, and they have to add this is the routine. And so they're facing the end of the world from that perspective, I guess, of being in the system, a system of
the Navy. Whereas so I just think that sort of affects the way that certainly Gregory Peck's character of course views the world, because he has, as we're saying this, he's the captain of the ship and he has to be the strong one and the person that keeps the rules. And I suppose there's also now just coming to mind Crimson Tide actually and what the characters are doing in there, gene Hack when and are Ig and Denzel. But anyway, so I suppose I would just maybe like to have
seen a little bit more of real people. And I suppose Peter and his wife are a bit more of us because they are so low down the pecking order. But yeah, I just think it would have been nice.
And we do see those little elements of the people in the club and people popping in and out, but I don't know, I just think maybe it would have given it a bit more of a looseness or just a reality, even a bit more of a reality of Miracle Mile, for example, because it's people that are not hemmed in by having to go to offer a mission somewhere. And I have all these board meetings about what we're going to do next and when's it all coming in.
I don't know. Ed has just thoughts coming into my head there about what I might have liked to have seen, as well as what God you.
Talked about apocalypse movies, and most of them are post apocalypse. There are those, like you said, with Mirakle Mile. That's funny because I was the first one that came to mind when I was trying to explain a little bit as far as the end is coming in this one. It's a few months as opposed to a few hours. But this one, really, especially the book, talks about the radiation and just the death deadliness of the radiation, which
we don't really get much anymore. That was the thing with Threads and The Day After and those movies from the eighties where you really just saw the suffering from the radiation. It's like the ones who were killed first were the lucky ones and the ones that are still straggling around, And you didn't really see that in things like the World, the Flesh and the Devil or five or any of these early post apocalyptic films, post war post apocalyptic films. But with this one, that's the whole
thing is the radiation is coming. The radiation is going to kill us all, and yeah, it's like we forget now what radiation is. I'm still just flabbergasted when they start talking about in that Godzilla remake, the one with Aaron Taylor Johnson where they're like, oh, yeah, we're going to drop this nuke on Godzilla and it's like, where are you doing this?
Oh?
Yeah, twenty miles off the coast of San Francisco. I'm like, what the fuck are you guys doing. That's going to kill so many people in San Francisco just from the radiation. It's just like they forget what radiation is. Of course, there's the brilliant idea of dropping a nuclear bomb on a hurricane to disarm the hurricane, and again I'm just like, are you just not thinking about the radiation that's going
to come spewing out of that. Growing up in the eighties and I talk about this a lot as far as like the Cold War paranoia was real, and the idea of like dying in the bomb blast, I was just like, Okay, I guess I can take that because it's going to be over in a second. But the thing that I couldn't handle was the idea of being like out in the wastelands with Steve Gutenberg and all these people, where you just seeing them starting to fall apart because of the radiation sickness.
That's the craziness for me.
I think I mentioned to you a few weeks ago, Mike, that I watched really strangely for the first time, the early nineteen eighties propaganda clips documentary The Atomic Cafe. I remember that was a really big deal in the cinema here when it came out. I think of our old
Valhalla cinema, which had left of center stuff. And I didn't get to see it at the time, but the impression I always had was that, oh, it was a mildly funny look at atomic warfare and what had happened in the fifties with the Cold War and all that. I just found it terrifying, probably more so because these
some of these moments were so ridiculous. There was I think one sequence where these two or three army guys roll up to some park where there's a woman who's saying our government is terrible and they're trying to destroy our European friends and our Russian friends, and they're having a go at her saying, oh, you don't know the first thing about these commis, lady, they've got the bomb. We have to have the bomb because it's what's going
to save us. And there's plenty of those sorts of moments throughout the film.
This is.
I don't know whether it's post apocalypse in the sense that we'd seen what had happened in Japan, at the end of the war, but it's pre thinking we're not out.
Of this yet. People.
It takes us for one idiot in power, and I can't imagine that there's anyone around there who do that now. But it serves like, remember what happened, this could happen. So I don't know if I think I found a
humor more terrifying than anything but terrific film. And to your point, I think before Mike about at that period where no one was really showing skin peeling off from the after effects of nuclear radiation fallout, there was a nineteen fifty two film which I watched good a few years ago, two three years ago called Hiroshima, Japanese film while it was still fresh in their minds. I think they might have even been made before Godzilla.
Hiroshima.
There's like a forty five minute sequence after fat Boy is dropped and we see what's happening to people, and that is the most terrifying thing I think I have
ever seen in a war film. Ever, I don't know whether that film was aimed at the domestic cinema going market saying hey, don't get complacent, this is what happened to us, or whether it was going to be shipped off to the US cinemas, and so, hey, this is what happened as a result of what happened at the end of the war, and we're still suffering the metal trauma seven or eight years later. That sort of approach would never happen even in a well meaning Hollywood film.
But yeah, this was possibly the most graphic thing I think I can remember saying from a film of that era.
So you're saying that people in Japan should buy leadlined refrigerators so they can just survive a nuclear blast like Indiana Jonestead, Absolutely and what they should also. Yeah, yeah, that was my favorite of all the Indiana Jones films. Bullshit, But I think that they should also learn from the Americans and learn to duck and cover in the event of a bomb drop that would have saved them.
Paul and Patty know this. No matter where they go or what they do, they always try to remember what to do. If the Adam bomb explodes, right, then it's a bomb that can cover Sundays, holidays, vacasion time. We must be ready every day, all the time to do the right thing. If the atomic bomb explodes, duck can cover that's the first thing to do. Cover conversion. You duck, and then you duck and cover cover under the table.
It's a bomb.
He did what we all learned to do.
Humanu unu.
We're talking about threads and things like that where you can see the impact, whereas in this one we're imagining the impact because it's not quite happened to these people. I wonder if there was ever any I guess there probably wasn't, but we've been interesting to have. Maybe when they're in there, there's a briefing room footage of what
happened around the world. Not vites all, of course, but I just I wonder if there was ever a discussion about that, because of course, in the remake much opens with just all those shots of the news and what's been happening, and very much what you call it just a brief sort of catch up or where we are bringing you right up to speed in tricks, and that doesn't exist in the original that they just allude to the fact that everybody's dates.
Like I said, I don't think there's any way that they couldn't get the news as far as what actually happened. But yeah, the lead up to it is they probably had some sort of idea unless it was just a random thing that happened. It happened so fast. Obviously, I grew up on things like wargames where you get to see the computer modeling of the nuclear destruction and everything, and this takes place it feels like in a matter
of minutes. But yeah, the lead up to it probably would have been weeks or days unless it was something completely random.
Also, just thinking there about effective radiation on a city. I don't know you watched twenty four, but there was one season of that where nuclear bomb went off in the middle of la and it was forgotten about within a few episodes. In the next season, it was never mentioned again. So anyway, just the past thing I remember watching that, Well, you just nobody's mentioned in the fact this went off ten minutes ago, and.
Looks like some of all fears. They tried to get a little bit better with that one with the dirty bomb that goes off, but it's like over the years nuclear bombs have lost their power. On screen, it's just like, oh, yeah, I just dropped some nukes on it, and it's like, no, I seemed to realize. There's a lot of ramifications from that.
According to a new report from Axio's, President Trump has been very interested in a brilliant plan to stop hurricanes drop a nuclear bomb on them. Trump has reportedly made that suggestion multiple times to see your homeland. Natural security officials paraphrase by a source who was in the room for one briefing, is saying.
Quote, I got it, I got it.
Why don't we nuke them?
Well, San Francisco, it came up for a lot of trouble in the nineties, particularly with for the role, and I do remember there was a lot of discussion in that about what would happen with the cloud and where that we're how many people that would kill?
So the Rock, there we go.
The Rock is the perfect educational film today for people to realize just how bad nuclear weapons are.
But those were those pretty green pearls that they had that looked so they were lovely, They looked so yummy. I want to eat one of those things. All right, guys, let's go ahead and take a break and I'll be back right after these brief messages.
We've just received these podcast from somewhere in the Midwest that says that nuclear blasts have been recorded on North American soil. Ironically, there's almost forty five years to the day since the world was plunged in the Little Last global crisis. While the blockade of Taiwan is a particularly provocative piece of.
Psimanship on the part of the Chinese defense analysts.
Make get highly unplucked with the national pride would make them want.
To take the world.
What I'm saying is the chances is something going seriously wrong or acquired.
Some day.
To a country, would the least the family there too. Reality stick probably would.
Like continue names the Chinese community.
Politicians, and the American letter is very strong.
Sayings unfortunately will be done.
Oh so aways something American.
Matter, stuff, A lot of.
Stuff had you can.
Explained missing million stuff dispays someone who news.
Is trying to get through.
How did you explain the palaces suddenly coming a line mine of the months and the somewhat spent off.
Switch and one time you admit you want to be money wrote.
All right, we were back when we were talking about on the beach, and we want to talk a little bit more about the remake from two thousand. Like I said, it was a two parter TV movie. You can really feel the break when it goes from one night to the next the way that they wrap it up. But if we're to start with this one, let's just say Gregory Peck's acting style is way different than Armanda Sante's acting style. They definitely use Armanda Sante to his fullest
power in this movie. He's not Rico from Judge Dread. He's not chewing up scenery as much. But there are a lot of I am angry Armanda Sante has scenes in here, and yeah, he really lets it fly very different. I can't say that it's all bad. I was expecting it to be terrible, but for God's sakes, I love Brian Brown and I love Rachel Ward and having them in here. Yeah, actual Australians in this movie. That was pretty remarkable.
Just to buck you up in all that, really, Armando Sante interests keeps saying interesting but just yeah, why will maybe my first jokes? But yeah, and just such a different so we can't get any further away from Gregory pet just a different universe here. But yeah, nice to see Brian Brown. I love Brian Brown. That the Hawaiian shirt thing is of course, that's his personality in a nutshow.
Really isn't it. They did a good job with the Moira character being a bit more what the drinking anyway for there's a better ways to say that, I'm sure. But our sort of drinking problem, which in the original film I feel feels to be quite toned down, is there a bit but it's not really in your face as much. But yes, happy to hear other people's thoughts on this one.
I think that you may have mentioned something about this in a correspondence with his mic that this was the only ride of film could be made in two thousand.
The reserve nature of.
The Dwight Towers character that Gregory Peck gave him, he obviously could not be that reserved in a two thousand film, where in this case it was a TV not center of viewing audiences.
But TV viewing audiences.
Had come to expect different behavior from their heroes. They had to kick ass, they were allowed to say fuck where they needed to.
And.
Dwight Towers was going to be that gung ho American.
I think the first time we see Brian Brand in the film, which is like within five minutes of the film starting where I'm under Sanity comes in to take him in saying we're bringing you off this island that you've gone and retired to. We need you back for a mission, and if you give me any shit, I'm going to break your arm. And Gregory Peck would never have said that, and the character in the book would never have said that.
It was a thing.
As I said at the start of this that I read the book before I saw the film. But the whole time I'm reading the book, I'm hearing everything that the Dwight Towers character is saying in Gregory Peck's voice that rang true to me. I would never ever have thought, oh, it is something armand Assante would have done. And yet, as I said in the year two thousand, that's the
way that you had to make that film. I mean, maybe it could have been made different, but the manners of the characters could never have been the way it was in the nineteen fifty nine version. Fred Astaire, even as angry as he gets, he still has some level of dignity. Brian Brand's just a smart ass who is telling everyone you don't like me, get fucked. He's that alaric and Australian character that you see in those type of Australian films.
He's going to be the worst while we see him at parties and just like you're all going to die, you know that, right, Yeah, go ahead and dance, have fun, but.
You're all gonna die. And it's like Jesus chrazy.
Now I'm the smartest guy in this room right now.
Hey, yeah, we believe you, We believe you. Yeah, Hey, Mari coming home with you? Oh god, that was a lot.
And yeah, to have this new love triangle really introduced here as far as is she going to go with the navy commander or is she going to go with the rogue scientists who I guess is Ian Malcolming at times. But oh yeah, it was interesting. And the thing that I really liked was that Mary was a conspiracy theorist, that she's getting all of her information from the Internet doing her own research.
Damn it, that's what happens in the AHA. Does know anywhere in the twenty fifth century.
They've had the internet now for three years, so they are already just like I read about this on the Internet or I heard a scientist talking about this on the radio, and I do like Brian Brown just being like, what was the name, what was the person's name, where did you hear this? It's like that whole thing of like.
What's your source on this?
And even the relationship between Mary and Peter. So Mary's played by a really good character actress, Jacqueline Mackenzie. I think for time she did anything where people discovered was in Rompers Stomper. I don't remember who played Peter Holmes in there, but even their relationship Grant Bowler, thank you.
Even their relationship is I wouldn't say the relationship is different in that he doesn't love it quite as much as Anthony Perkins loves Donald Anderson in the original one, but he's not quite as prepared to put up with her wanting to believe the best. He is trying us out get a grip, we're going just accept it, which is not something Anthony Perkins would have done. Nice little point of trivia I found out. So the actor who's playing the Prime Minister in the two thousand version is
one of our great character actors, Bill Hunter. You may remember him from News Front and the father in Muriel's Wedding.
At least over here. For me, he was one of the faces of Australia. He's so good in Priscilla.
The interesting thing about him, and he already had a connection to on the Beach. Apparently he was Gregory Peck's swimming double in the nineteen fifty nine version when he falls off the boat and he's going to swim after it is Bill Hunter, who was like an award winning swimmer. So there you go. Connection. Maybe the only actor who appeared in both versions.
I kept wondering that was John Million still wive at this point. That would have been kind of cool to bring him back, because yeah, he was the other like, oh, we are watching an Australian film because John Million is an at although mind you, I think really what they should have done with John Million in EA version is put him behind the bar, because that's where he goes.
When I first came on the show and we did Wake and Fright and I brought up another film, Soundstrack, once again his character is behind the bar, but given a lot more of a role to do. But yeah, I hear John Million's voice. He's done other things, of course, but.
I wanted to hear John Million documentary. I really do. I'd love to see even now, just because he was Yeah, he's in everything, and he was so good in everything. He did. If anyone's out, please.
Have a go.
Have you watched I think it's Terry Frost's favorite Australian film certainly, if not his favorite film all that news front from round and seventy four.
Watch that.
He's amazing, absolutely amazing and the get it out, Jonathan, you might regret it.
Brilliant film. It's great.
Listen. I'm just gonna have to drop in my Jack Thompson's story as well, just because we're here. When I was in Australia that second time, they were doing a remake of A South Pacific with Glenn Cloaks up in the Queensland and and Cairn's I think it was. And anyways, short version is I got a part as an extra and I was in a scene with Glenn close and so there was this old guy in the background and I didn't know who he watched. So this was again
two thousand and two thousand and one. My film knowledge was a lot less, and this old guy was in the background and they kept seeing him and he would sitting down and have a cigarette.
Exciting.
Anyway, turns out it was Jack Thompson and I was just so close to him. Now looking back, I think I found only I probably I wouldn't have been allowed to, I guess as an extra. But if I just somehow found a way to say hello to her, just talked to her because he's another one of my favorite actors and amazing and everything. The film's not that great. That was a TV movie as well, so it was like
one episode did like a film. But yeah, there was a lot of that American anyway, that's a whole tangent about American films being filmed in Australia around about two thy nineteen ninet two thousand. I guess maybe tax Maybe there's a good tax breaks at the time in Australia.
I don't know, but in the yikes, I think now it was in the seventies there was I think, and any Australians listening to this will throttle me if I get this wrong, but I probably will be called the ten Ba form, which was all about writing films against tax. But I'm sure after this goes to where my great friend Paul Ryan will pull me aside and say, listen, Morris, we're friends, but you didn't quite get that right.
Listen, if we ever do a say specific episodes, you can get the fights absolutely spot on.
Yeah, yeah, that was two than one.
Yeah, and like he was in Attack of the Clones in two thousand and two, and I don't think he was in the Matrix. But like, for me, the Matrix is the one that really I was like, Oh, they're shooting a lot in Australia, now, okay.
So I think I just missed the Matrix when I was a bit we're filming the new Star Wars and four studios, I think said, anyway, we've got off for the whole time. Doent apologize.
No worries, man, no worries.
They have the baby that they have between Peter and Mary or John and Mary. But it's like she gets introduced so late in the game that I didn't even realize that she was a thing, Like, oh, okay, well this is kind of cool that it's just these two as a couple and there's no there's not going to back about having to murder the baby. But she eventually shows up. I love too just how going back to and you can kind of see this in the movie
that she is so paranoid about that baby. There's one scene where it's really hot in the house and of course they don't have air conditioning at this point, so they take the baby and put her out on the porch and the wife is like, you need to go get some mosquito netting and put that over top of the baby. It's just these mosquitoes bitten by all these mosquitoes.
And he's like, I don't think we need to worry about that, but she's very insistent, and then he'd go and he gets some different type of gauze because they don't have mosquito netting, and she's like, well, the baby's gonnaocate now, and they have to spend all night by the baby making sure it doesn't suffocate with this like muslim over top of it.
It's crib. She's really paranoid.
So when he has to suggest that they're going to have to euthanize their daughter, you can really see just how she breaks down. And there's a whole where it's where she and I think it's in the Yeah, it's in the movie too, where she decides that she's going to take a trip back to England. So like she is completely broken with reality, but to have this one where it's the Internet is breaking her reality is very fascinating. Dude, literally, I don't think she literally says, I do. I've done
my own research. But it was right there far as like why I've heard this, I've heard this, And her husband sees the map of this radiation cloud and he's like, no, honey, the northern hemisphere is not getting better. She's like, well, what do you know, even though he's just seen the scientific map. But that one's interesting too. There's a lot more when it comes to the crew of the sub and some of the relationships of the crew on the sub.
But I have to say most of the guys on the sub just fit the brief of semi hunky but really horny. And the scene of them all singing that boulderezed version of money, money, Oh my god. It was so embarrassing to me. And just like as soon as they find out that they're going to Australia, it's just like they start talking basically like oh we can get some of that sweet Aussie boom tang, and I'm like, what the fuck am I watch that script?
I'd love to know whether it was written by David Williamson, who's a revered playwright certainly and most popular playwright through the seventies and you're talking before, Don'tathan about being on the same set as Jack Thompson and David Williamson wrote a play which became a actor. Most of his plays became films, one called The Club, which was about mckismo at a football.
Club here in Melbourne.
Thompson and not one.
Well, yeah, in the club, absolutely, yeah, of course he was in everything in the seventies.
But I'm trying to think.
I'm sure he was in something else that David Williamson raight, But David Williamson was the guy for a long time. And yet I wasn't sure whether it was either Russell Mulkay's influence or David Williamson thought that some of these moments were appropriate, worthy of the story.
It just didn't work.
That whole machismo thing on the ships, on the submarine, it just seemed like a little bit overblown. I did think it was a good move, and I think they did this on the to break. They broke it up over the two nights where the sailors think that there's a chance that there is life in the Northern Hemisphere and radiation has stopped and they are going to survive. And then by the second part no, they're not going to survive. That was truly heartbreaking. I think that was
well written. I'd like to get your opinions though, on that moment where armand De sante as a captain and comes back to your captain Kirk comment before Mike, Yeah, the captain's going to be the one that goes on shore.
It goes to that investigation, and with only a few minutes to go before they have to be back on the submarine, he walks into a house because it reminds him of the house he had with his wife and child, and he has that moment where he's just imagining that psychedelic moment where he imagines how they've all died, and he just tears apart. He's no longer the captain who's in control of everything. He's the human being with a wife and kid or kids that are no longer there.
But I'm still torn between whether that was well done or whether that was overly melodramatic for the type of film that they were making.
For me, it was a little overdone. I mean, you had those moments like the sky kind of changes behind him where he almost shifts into another reality and it just becomes it's weird, Like the scene of him destroying the house and going into the house and seeing his wife and kid, it reminded me of RoboCop for some reason, just the way that when Alex revisits his home and starts having those flashes, wife, I have something to say to you, like those kind of things. I'm like, yeah,
this reminds me. And then RoboCop kind of fritzes out and stomps out of the house kind of thing. Stomping out would make a lot more sense to me than destroying the house and yeah, Jehan, dude, you know you need to go. But I can understand he's having a very tough time kind of like that he is really having a hard time with his wife and kid, kid or kids being dead, because we get that denial from
Gregory Peck in the first version. This one, it's like he wants to put that stuff aside, wants to keep that at bait, and then it keeps breaking through, it keeps fucking him up. So I was like, I can kind of see where this is going from. But because again it's Armanda Sante, it just felt like if he wasn't going to break up to set, he was going to start chewing it to death.
You can't touched on that. There might the comparison with the Gregory pet character. I don't think it was good on in his head at the time. He just was not accepting what was happening.
Were was.
I guess this was a good way to show rather just to talk about how you're feeling. So I suppose, yeah, maybe a bit over the top, but if you have to visualize it some way, then maybe that's the way to do it.
I also liked the whole thing with the guy who goes fishing and leaves the boat, and especially where that comes in the story with the realizing just I'll screwed up, because even though it didn't look very good, I thought the showing the destruction of San Francisco was pretty cool. And then to see him look out the periscope and seeing his old neighborhood.
I'm talking about the officer.
That leaves the ship to see where he used to live, and he's just like, if only that periscope were a one hundred feet higher, I could see my house, And just that idea again of not seeing the bodies and not seeing the destruction they'd mentioned at one point, Oh, they must have used a neutron bomb or something, because yeah, everything Obviously you're not gonna afford to show everything destroyed unless you have a really bad Matt painting kind of thing.
But to just show everything looks like it's a normal day, just with nobody on the streets kind of thing, and obviously with radiation being completely can't smell it, can't see it, none of this stuff, so it just looks like it's a beautiful day in San Francisco and this guy's I can't handle this and that break with reality. I thought that was really good as well. And I mean that scene works in the first movie just as well as
it does in this one for different reasons. That one in the TV movie hit me even harder for whatever reason.
Yeah, and I think as well, just even go right back to the beginning where it starts off very similarish to the original film, especially when he gets to Melbourne and he's walking through those streets. But of course it's a different take because this one is very brutal, people smashing a windows and things. That was interesting to see you as a sort of parallel, universal almost version of the first film, and it brought it a bit more to life, and I don't know what you thought about that.
Mars again talking about seeing Melbourne on the screen.
As I said at the start, I love watching any film where there are recognizable Melbourne landmarks up until now. My big one for that was film from I want to say ninety ninety I called The Big Stale with Mendelsome playing a real good guy role. But there's a saying of places that are recognized. A car park in Little Burke Street and this one thing where is it a film you've seen, Jonathan, which one the biggest thing, The Big Steer with Ben mendels think.
I bought Thistrelian Blue Ry, but I again, I watched it.
Get it out.
So there's this one moment in the no self respecting mel Bernie and wouldn't scoff at, But everywhere else I wouldn't know where the sneaky car dealer is driving this car with a crappy motor, and I won't go into the whole store how that happens. But he's pulled over by the cops and he's driving over the Swanston Street bridge and he's told by the cops to pull over, and the next thing that we see he pulls over. It's about six seven kilometers down the road in front
of Luna Parkinson Kilda. If you're outside of Melbourne, that means nothing. Dous Melburnie ands we think, what's that all about? But yeah, long answer to a short question, but I do love seeing my home city on film all the ways.
Have The whole thing is just a bit too long, of course, if you're going to have to do with te nights, but it is nice to have more moments of different people dealing with the impending. But I certainly prefer the first version.
Two s You were asking Morris how we felt about seeing Melbourne on screen again. So much of the film felt like it wasn't Melbourne, that it wasn't any place. It felt like it was the studio backlot, Like with some of those scenes of the carnage and you know, destroying the street, the windows and stuff.
I was like, it just looks like a cheap backlot, I think.
And then just some of the effects too, looked pretty ropey, especially Brian Brown's car crash at the end.
I was like, this is how you're going to end this movie.
You're going to end this with this horrible cig explosion, and I love how the tire like bounces across the screen and when they pull up and they've got the helicopter shot and you just see the shitty see cheeks still going the fire. I was like, oh man, this is such a bad way to end this movie. The thing I liked too about this one was the way that Armanda Sante takes Rachel Ward for a helicopter ride. I was just like, Okay, are they going to just
plow themselves? Are they going to do a John Denver here and just kill themselves at the side of a mountain.
But it's like, no, I guess they're going.
To survive this, And yeah, I agree with you Morris as far as the final image of a Sante coming in and joining Rachel Ward.
But at the same time, can you say no to that? She would make me kidnap a kid and murder people.
That's what I'm saying.
If she called me Collie, I would do whatever she wanted me to.
Have a look at you now, because it's just an empty space. I'm not going to seem ful Colin sip, but you should.
You should.
She's almost enough to make me want to watch the Thornbirds which is what introduced her to so many Americans. Was that series really caught fire over here for whatever reason?
I remember it was huge. Yeah, go back to that ending. Yeah, they tried to give the happy ending, didn't we bizarrely bizarre happy ending that is not happy. Right.
So you've got the married couple now in bed with the baby, and you see the needle and you're just like, oh fuck, and then get away from that as quickly as possible. And then it cutting between Brian Brown driving that car. And that was one shot that I really liked, was the bridge where you see him and it almost looks like the colors are saturated on everything other than his red car that he's driving. And then yeah, just him careeming through the turns on this race track.
And that was the thing too.
There isn't that whole racing subplot that we're talking about. He just at the end is like, cool a fast car, rather than I'm to go through the circuit and win this race and stuff. The destruction of the here and the entropy that I was taught out, it happens pretty fast once it does have the street urchins kind of thing.
I was like, all right, but it kind.
Of feels more true to life as far as people just becoming like roving bands. Like to me, I was like, oh, okay, this is more the Mad Max prequel kind of thing more than the original.
On the beach.
But but yeah, then it just looked cheap. The way that they had like dirt smudge around their faces. I was like, this looks like an episode again of Star Trek. It feels like when they arrived on Earth and there's shitty little kids that can have psych powers and they all look dirty and like they've been hanging around an abandoned city.
Ring around around.
Some of these sets look really good.
These exteriors look really good, but sometimes the sets just looked really cheap, and like I said, the special effects looked cheap. I was really okay with the idea of the computer message coming in from I guess that was Alaska, and the whole thing of it being a different type of message coming to them rather than obviously Morse code, which I don't think is going to be sent out in two thousand and did they did they set this in two thousand, because they set the nineteen fifty fifty
nine movie in nineteen sixty four. I don't remember if they set the two thousand movie in any year other than two thousand.
I don't remember anything being mentioned about a yeah, so it might as well have been.
And yet they had that montage at the beginning with all the news clips, which made me think that we were to watch a rapture film. Just also, the production quality of US at times reminded me of those left Behind films.
I was just going to say about just came to mind about that last mentioning the last scene with in the original. We've got that and there's still time brother sign and then that's when we get a poem, and I think I would have I was, actually I'm sure maybe you were as well. Thing to see what they reference that original ending. I sort of do, but I don't think it's It definitely doesn't have the impact of that original, which is strange. I don't know why you wouldn't,
not that you can one up. I don't think that original ending, but you could try, and I don't. This one just goes no, We'll just have them standing there hugging and kissing or whatever, and then a little poem in the side, and it ends, and you've got to read the pot.
You're like what's that saying? It's just strange. What's not even the poem that gives the movie it's title. It's not wasn't it? Was it the Holloman or the Wasteland. I'm trying to remember it was the tsliot one though, right.
I think so? Yeah?
And so it's like, oh, I thought that they would have ended with that, but why do I know?
Right? I was just waiting. I just thought, right, what are they going to do here? They're going to just show the same banner? But no, okay, that's that.
All right, Let's go ahead and take another break, and we'll play a previous for next week's show right after these brief messages.
To Adot, he's my usky, see Tobya. She'sky see Tobya. She'sky see Tobya. Minute silentiary Sash.
That's right.
We'll be back next week with a look at Lahan or Laine the eight, however you want to say it. Until then, I want to think this week's co hosts Morris and Jonathan. So, Jonathan, what is the latest with you?
Sir?
Another book? It's been ten years since I, I think the first time I was on this podcast, certainly the first time you wrote a blurb to the back of my book on Tremors, so thank you. Ten years on. The new one is about a TV show called Hamish Macbeth. If you've not heard of it, it's a BBC TV show from nineteen ninety five round for three years. Robert Carlisle was known at the time, but he wasn't a big name and as he started making this show, he
then got Trainspotting by the second series. By the third series he'd made the Full Monty, so he was huge. And it's basically just a book about the TV show, which is if you like local hero or northern exposure. There's kind of a theme there. It's about little village in the northwest of Highlands of Scotland and he's a
policeman called Hamish McBeth. Crazy name, crazy place, and strange things happen and it's the police drama, but it's also a comedy and it's supernatural and the second side people have visions, so it's been fun. So I've been speaking to lots of people involved.
It's speaking of Robert Carlisle.
I met Carallel and asked him if you would be part of it, and he said he doesn't like looking back, so he everybody else said yes, said the guy who did try and spotting that too, and the full Monty TV series.
Oh of course.
Yeah.
Yeah, So that's why we're working. So as this episode's come, the book should be eight. Yeah.
Oh that's awesome.
Spiritulations and Morris about yourself, what do you up to? So we're recording this in March. So I'm going to release part two of a two part episode of Love That Album, which thank you, Mike, you were very kind to be a part of. I was speaking to a whole bunch of music people and podcast people about their recollections of first going into record shops, and you're in part two, which should be at about a week from now as we record this for see here, I'm very
excited for the next episode. I'm speaking to a guy called Kenny Vance who was part of the group from
the early nineteen sixties, Jay and the Americans. He's gone and made a film call which I think is shown in America on PBS called Heart and Soul, a love story, and I think he's also doing Q and a cinema screenings are But it's basically not exactly like a history of do wop, but more like he speaks to people from Anthony and the Imperials and the surviving members of the Teenagers and all these other great do wop groups about their recollections of being part of the do wop
scene in the late fifties. Now, a lot of these interviews, I'd say they look like about ten fifteen years old because the way the video footage is, and I'm sure that some of these people are no longer with us, but I'm a huge fan of do wop music, so they're the opportunity to speak to Kenny about his film, which is a lovely film.
I must say. Anyone out there who can.
Watch it on PBS or see it at a cinema that's doing a Q and A with Kenny, I urge you to go do it. I'll be speaking with him next week for release a week later on seat here do.
Wop that people sing around those oil cans with the fires inside, not waltson Matilda.
Just yeah over here, that's what we do. We do.
What versions? Am I ever going to see your face again? That really should be Australia's national anthem. Ask any Australian that you made, what is a normal response to that song, Am I ever going to see your face again?
And we do?
What versions of that round the old game?
I thought it would be timey kangaroo down mate, fuck off. Thank you again folks for being on the show. Thanks to everybody for listening. If you want to hear more of me shooting off my mouth, check out some of the other shows that I work on. They are all available at Wirdingwaymedia dot com. Thanks especially to our Patreon community. If you want to join the community, visit patreon dot com Slash Projection Booth. Every donation we get helps the Projection Booth take over the world.
You got do the gods?
Don't try the game? It's top.
Splash us time? Why try then?
So say the problems go bad?
They get the mat.
Side?
Was my god?
What time we get to tell the small until the sound of the South South gets the ma.
Boss a chop sting the.
Rights web, the lad.
Got by and tomato sauce the same again for the second course from Perth to Sydney. They all endorse that hot pie and tomato sauce. They say the cooking in Australia is pretty.
Much of a failure.
But there's one thing they consume with zest. It's the dish the Australians like the best, and it's the hot pie and tomato sauce. The same again for the second course.
From Perth to Sydney.
They all endorse that hot pine tomato sauce. The Prime Minister went to London Town with other Prime ministers to dinner, sat down. They gave you turtle soup, champagne and sat She said, it's not bad stuff, but I don't like it as much as hot pie and tomato sauce. The same again for the second course. From Perth to Sydney, they all endorse that tomato sauce. Billy Jones today is one hundred and three. We congratulate him on his anniversary. He's had three kits since he was ninety five and
you probably wonder what keeps him alive. Well, it's hot pine tomato sauce. Same again for the second course from Perth to Sydney. They all endorse that hot high and tomato sauce. Irad ran with the other day one hundred to one.
Outside I led all the way.
When they held an inquiry to consider the objections, they found that his china had given him injections of hot tomato sauce. Same again to the second course from Perth to Sydney. They all endorse that hot pie and tomato sauce, Hot pie and tamato sauce.
The same again.
For the second course from Perth to Sydney, they all endorse that hot pine tomaross shoot the bottle. Timmy lovet