Oh jeez, books shoot.
People pay good money to see this movie.
When they go out to a theater, they are cold sodas, hot popcorn and no monsters.
In the protection booths. Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.
Or land Elios are not taking us out for the seasons. Amiga Syria. It goes west to Pendaca.
Del menu amasacs, he said, goes to Marilla is.
Let's see become more dee Paris, gabrila, petitoto, miel al mandras, ignasa la signor, turnkeys, curricula media ka extra.
M calm and signors.
They are panic, no innother and as it was you costa man, mister Thomas, cantaos amigo.
It's the noise cartillombrujo mi dagi no ela combe noise.
It sees the mas stalking sliply, said he the younger man. Well you stay, agena, said he say, okay, well you stay again, said.
Sad Vitia.
Sorry in nomine.
Patrick, but conda bakss.
Welcome to the projection booth. I'm your host. Mike White joined me once again. Mister rob sa Mary, you.
Know I think lower classes are less sensitive to pain. It's true.
Also joining us as mister Miguel Janzo.
Hey, I'm here back to the Mediterranean area.
This week we are looking at Louis Benwell's The Exterminating Angel, re leased in nineteen sixty two. The film stars unruly number of actors in an unusual situation. The situation really is the movie. So I'm going to give a spoiler warning before we go any further. If you do want anything ruined, go ahead, turn off the podcast and come back after you've seen the film. So, rob when was the first time we saw The Exterminating Angel? And what did you think?
I have to think that this may have been another one of those that I got deeper in after. They talk a lot about working at the bookstore, and I worked at the bookstore. I had a coworker named Mike who was very much into film. He's the one who got me into Jurowski and Herzog and all of this. So I remember at the time it was always easier to get the later French films, those were much easier to get in the stage, the Mexican air films, there
was a couple you could get. I remember I held off on Robinson Caruso for a long time, so I'm like, I don't know, but there was this, and I believe that if my memory serves, they were. Again we've talked about New Yorker, So New Yorker. I remember those box designs, and I think it was probably I went to Thomas Videos before I worked there, and I remember getting it, and I think at the time, kind of like the first time I watched Discreet Charm, I was like, I
don't know if I get it. I don't know if I like it, but I like some of the humor. Like I say, opening, No, I don't personally feel that lower classes are less sensitive to pain. That is actually one of the quotes from the movie.
Oh.
I thought that's just how you felt about things and really needed to express it here in this podcast. Okay, Yes, I'm glad you clarified.
Yeah, you know, I just want to make sure that people understand. You know, I'm not a class trader. I'm as poor as y'all. When you're not used to a movie that is plot driven. Basically, American film is very plot centric, So to see a movie like this for the first time, or like I said when I said discreet term, you can go back and listen to that episode, I was like, I don't understand what's going on, Like,
why isn't this progressing? I mean this does progress, so seriously it does, but I think even more so than just green Chart. But it was just this feeling of I'm trying to get what's in here, I'm trying to understand certain aspects, and it's like, of course, on repeated viewings, much more really enjoy it. It's one of you know, my favorite suppose going to do a tier of when Will films, But sadly again it's like it's you know,
Criterion has it. You can watch it on streaming or I used to have it on DVD and Blu ray. I think they did a Blu ray of it. But it's like all that Mexican era stuff, there's some of them that are still really hard to get in the States, even like Los Aldadaldos, you know, which should be lauded as an important film, and for some reason that thing is not available. So there must be some sort of rights issues with a lot of these, you know, Mexican era fil because I know that a lot of them
he did for just a job. He was just working, so some of them don't have his quote unquote stamp on it in the way that this does and connects to other movies, like we talked about before we started rolling, and we'll obviously get into that.
And Migaul, how about yourself when it was the first time we saw it? And what did you think?
It wasn't TV in Spain? It was very you know, there was this movie. They were sawing it at night, the classic host Classics, and it was with my mother after dinner. You had this tuesdays that you watch films with your parents on TV, and ah, this is a very important film, they told me, and we were watching and of course I didn't understand the plot, but it was very funny. It was very funny, and somehow, if you're from Spain, I think you understand it. I mean
in another way, because you laugh a lot. You understand the type of jokes, the type of howple get stuck. They are kind of very very kind of classical Mediterranean jokes. Know that they are there. So even if the plot
was not, it was not a thriller, you know. But to be honest, the first time, you know, I think I was fifteen or fourteen, and he was like okay, And then it took me some time, and then I started to study film and I started making my own films, and in the last ten years I really understand it again. You know, I watch it like three or four times in my life, I guess four times, and I really know, I really kind of feel it and understand it in
a very deep way. It's not that you don't have to qualify any symbol, so there is nothing behind the movie. You know, there is nothing secret, But I think I somehow connect with the humor, connect with what is portrayed there. You know, I know why he's doing that, and I kind of feel it and I understand what is it coming from.
This was only maybe second third watch. I remember definitely watching the film before when we talked about this great Charm of the Bourgeoisie, just because I had heard that the two films were so similar. So I definitely checked that out then, but I didn't remember it very well. So it's really glad to be able to go back
to this. I find it very interesting that this is based on I don't know if it was a play or another script, because at the very beginning it talks about how it's based on a cnadrama from Louis el Coriza and Louis Bounoil called the castaways of Providence Street and rob You brought up Robinson Crusoe, which is the
ultimate castaway story. But I find it very interesting how this is the way this movie plays out reminds me of Itchcock's Life Vote, just it's got the little group of people in all of their interactions, any sort of tensions that come out. I mean, with Life Vote, you've got people from all these different strata. Here in this one, you have everybody who's everybody except for Julio the major Domo. Everyone is in the same class, but they still find
things they're right about and a bitch about. And just the way that they're stuck in here also reminded me a little bit of melbur Tweet with the whole thing of all of the people that are stuck in this house and they can never leave. But that's a whole house. This is basically one room where they just cannot escape from.
And it's such an interesting premise as far as the way that people's tensions rise, the way that they handle themselves in here, and then you add on top of it the way that it's being made the whole repetition thing. I find fascinating. It almost reminds me a little bit of Groundhog Day too. As far as the how long have these people been here, we have no idea. Towards the end of the movie. I'm just like, Okay, I've seen daytime and nighttime maybe four times, but it definitely
feels like way more than four days. It feels like they've been stuck in this place for a month or more, just because of the but stink that they have. Of course, there's a dead body that they also are contending with and just trying to even go to the bathroom and the way that they talk about that will definitely talk about the vases in the closet kind of thing. But Yeah, fascinating film, and I was really glad to be able to come back to this one.
I think it's amazing that I think we have to frame in more, yeah movies like the Marx Brothers, all the shortest movies that we have seen, even in the American and Hollywood context that makes no sense, and escalate in a very exaggerated and surreal way. But it happens a lot in Spain that you say, look, I have to leave you no, I have to leave this party, I know. Do you want to stay? Yes? Only five minutes? And next the scene is like six am.
Like you you have to leave? Yeah?
Well yeah, in five minutes, I'm living. No, And then suddenly you realize that it's nine am, and it's like fuck, I had to leave at at eleven pm, you know, and it's nine a m. And you don't know why are you still there?
You know?
And so it's just a very common feeling, you know. It's nothing strange or reality in that sense.
I'm glad that Miguel brought up the absurd in the idea of Camu, but also I would say no exit, you know Sartre and the idea of being stuck in a place and you're like, I'm here, but you know what am I doing here? And obviously that can play into philosophical concepts of just human existence. Why are we here? What are we doing here? How do we get along together? The idea of creating these manners and what happens when the manners fall away? Or what do you do when
you're under stress? Which I think I've talked about this before when we've talked about zombie movies and why I love the Romero films because it's not so much about the zombies, about putting people under a stressful situation and then seeing how they react versus who they think they are, versus what they become. There's a lot of that in there. I brought a couple of books here in my last SI,
which is his autobiography. But as he notes in the front our guest Jehan Claulkerrier wrote with a series of interviews he did he said Exterminating Angel was made in Mexico, though I regret I was unable to shoot it in Paris or London with European actors and adequate costumes. Despite the beauty of the house where it was shot my effort to select actors who didn't look particularly Mexican, there
were certain tawdriness in these aspects. Who couldn't get any really fine tablecloth or table napkins, for example, and the only one that I show on camera was barred from a makeup artists. The screenplay, however, was entirely original. It was a story of a group of friends who have dinner together after seeing a play. When they go into the living room after dinner, they find that for some inexplicable reason that can't leave. In the early stages, the
working title was the Tassaways Providence Street. But then I remembered a magnificent title that Jose Beajureman had mentioned when we talked in Madrid in previous year about a play that he wanted to write. If I saw the Exterminating Angel on a marquis, I told him I would go in and see it on the spot. When I wrote him from Mexico asking him for news of the play, he replied to he hadn't written it yet, and that
in any case, the title wasn't his. It came from a friend from the Apocalypse and therefore was in public domain. Apocalypse is in uppercase, so I don't know what that means. It doesn't seem like a title or anything.
Probably from like Book of Revelation. I mean, the original Exterminating Angel, from what I was able to discern, was from the Book of Samuel. So I made the sacrifice and listened to a audio recording of the entire Book of Samuel, which was actually very fascinating. I was not familiar with Samuel, who actually is in the line of David and all this stuff, so I was like, okay, so it was interesting. There's a lot of stuff that happens in that book.
There were many things in the film taken to directly from life. I went to a large dinner party in New York where the hostess had decided to amuse the guests by staging various surprises. For example, a waiter was stretched out to take a nap on the carpet in the middle of dinner while he was carrying a tray of food. Of course, the guests don't find the antics
quite as amusing. She also brought in a bear in two Sheep, a scene in the film which has prompted several critics to symbolic excess, including that the bear is Bolshevism, waiting to ambush capitalistic society, which had been paralyzed by its own contradictions. As in the film. I've always been fascinated by repetition, which is why certain things tend to repeat themselves over and over again. I have no idea,
but the phenomenon intrigues me enormously. There were at least a dozen repetitions in Exterminating Angel, two men introduce themselves, shake hands, say delighted, and then they meet each other a moment later and repeat the routine as if they've never met each other before, and the third time they greet each other with great enthusiasm like old friends. Another repetition inccurs when the guests enter the Great Hall and the host calls for the butler twice, and in fact
it's the exact same scene, but shot from a different angle. Luis, the chief cameraman, said to me as we were filming, there's something very wrong here. What I asked, the scene where they enter the house, it's in here twice. Since he was the one who filmed both sequences, I still wonder how he could have possibly thought that it was such a colossal error that it escaped me and the editor. Sterminating Angel is one of the rare films that I've
sat through more than once. Each time I regret its weakness, not to mention, is very short time we had to work on it. Basically, I simply see it as a group of people who can't do what they wanted to do, leave a room. It's that kind of dilemma, the possibility of satisfying a simple desire that often occurs in my movies and Lodge Door, for example, two people want to get together, but they can't, and that obscure object of desire.
It's an aging man who can't satisfy his sexual desire. Similarly, Archibala de la Cruz tries in vain to commit suicide, while the characters of the discreet Charm of the Bourgeois he tried hard to eat dinner together but never managed to.
This idea of a repetition, this idea of the failure of will, is a very recurrent thing in the failure of will. Instead of you a how is it calling English the triumph for the lenny of it and starts triumph of the will, drive of the will for us is the opposite. No, it's like the failure of will. And this is like happens every day.
No.
I see my for instance, my father trying to push the whole family to the family car to go on vacation. Nothing moves. He has to call us twenty five times push it into the car. In his word. There is a word here that every family repeats, is what a cross or what the cruciffects? And I think if you think about the end of Simon of the Deserts, there is this discal party where Simon is with the wife. The wife is the evil.
You know.
They finally get together and they are in this party and Simony is really hard and really wants to go. They said to the wife, please can we go? And the wife says, you will stay here until the party is over, and and my father are like, whoa, you know, the failure of will. I really cannot you know, do what I want. I'm always in a family that doesn't allow me to do anything, in a society that is
super catholic, to have any agency. And I think that's why the this Exterminator Angel represents when in all the movies that kind of unbearable repetition of protocol, an unbearable repetition of things that I cannot do, you know that they really had to do because it's, you know, because my mother in law is coming to visit me and I really cannot escape this terrible like like a family dinner.
They're really connected with that type of things, and all they speak cruss effects like impulse into your life every day.
The thing that's interesting to me is, you know, Miguel, you have obviously the connection to your culture, and you know in that way with Gnoel who shares the heritage with you. I look at it as the son of a Scottish immigrant, and you were talking about it from the Kappac angle. I look at it from Protestant angle. My grandmother was very proper. There were certain things you did not say in public. There are certain things you did not talk about, and it was about keeping up appearances.
It was about maintaining manners.
You know.
One of the earliest memories I have, and this used to blow the mind of the workers at the fast food restaurants when I was in high school, was my grandmother sat me down when I don't know, four or five years old at dinner table and said, okay, put a bowl of ice cream in front of me and say, okay, what do we say? Please? May I, yes, you may, thank you, You're welcome, and just will run through manners.
Until recently when I've or to kind of deconstruct some of this and allow for a little bit more flexibility in my life. I used to be like Hannibal Lecter when it came to manners, Like if somebody was very rude, you know, I would just you know, I want to, you know, rip their face off, you know, Yeah, I just have this very visceral reaction to rudeness and to impropriety, and you know, we just still talk about those things.
And so to me, I think this is probably what Bwin wilds films, you know, if I were to get into my psychology, and why they resonate is that he's breaking down those bits. He's looking at the cultures in which we live in and the manners in which we have and going to what end, Like, what do these things do? Do they just cover up the you know, the snarling, vicious animal that's underneath. Maybe if we were a bit more honest with ourselves and with each other,
then maybe we wouldn't tear each other apart. You know, I think he leaves us with those questions, and I think that's what great art does.
Yes, still I think some sort of a comedian anarchist. So he felt all these constrictions, the social manners, as something imposed but that we cannot escape, you know, and it's really like a barden, and he likes to laugh about it. If we think about, for instance, the beginning of the twentieth century, when he was in Madrid, he was studying with Lota and Dali in the student's residency. They were the three of them together, and it was a very strict society, but they were in a very
liberal institution. So they will go every night dressless nuns. As to joke, and an Andalusian dog they use. All these jokes, All these jokes are related to repress desires to do whatever they wanted to do and escape from that kind of very strong Catholic society. You know that makes you, you know, repeat, you can really see the Andalusian dog is a collection of these jokes of how to escape through that very protocol society, which is the
Catholic society. And I have the same grandma that you have Rob saying, Grandma, say, I think I have a picture here I show you. So that's the connection, you know, here he sees.
See, but that's the connection Catholics and Protestants not so much different. There you go see exactly.
Talking about religion. I find it very interesting. Well, first off, I find it interesting that this whole thing's supposed to be a dinner party. We never actually see them eat dinner. We see the one servant come in with the tray and fall over, which is big joke for everybody. Everybody's super happy, and it's all at the expense of this poor servant doesn't like jokes. So she goes into this little room and sees the bear there and these sheep
that are under a table. Is like, yeah, yeah, no, no sheep, no bear, We're not going to play our joke. And I'm like, well, what the hell joke was this that you were doing the way you needed a bear in three sheep.
You know.
And then we come back to the room eventually to the dining room, and nobody's there except for the one woman. And like I said at the beginning, I'm not going to try to give people names because it's just I think it's ridiculous, and I think that it's very much on purpose ridiculous that we have so many characters in this movie and they kind of seem to exchange with
each other as well. But yeah, she picks up something and throws it through a window, and you cut to these two guys who are talking, and the one guy goes, ah, must have been the Jews, and I'm.
Like, what didn't I I'm from And I thought about it as an inversion of like Chrystal knocks right, you know, So that was my you know, it's like, oh, you do it from the opposite angle.
You know, it can be it can be yeah, yeah, something Tom. You know, I think he was a joke collector, so they're probably a joke that comes in the last ten years of his life and say like, Okay, I'm gonna write it down, put it somewhere.
There was a great story that I heard Carrier talk about out when he was working with Bunwell, where they would work all day, they would stop at a certain point, go off, have a drink, come back together, and then they had to tell each other a story, like something completely made up, almost on the spot, and so that would kind of like just continue that cycle of imagination.
Like to hear Bonwell talk about how he trained his imagination and the subconscious and was so into surrealism that he's like, no, I have to do these exercises because my imagination is a muscle and I need to have this muscle very well toned.
You know.
He was very obsessed with muscles. He was a very athletic person and he needed that stamina.
You know.
He was a person obsessed with energy. He was himself saying when I was a kid, there was an atlet do you know, when he was in Madrid, he was really trained. He was one of the leaders of the you know whatever football team. I don't know who was football or no, I think it was running team. He
was an athlete. Basically he was flying in the walls of the resident, the students residency, I mean, and he was really obsessed with that, So I guess he needed that constant confrontation, dialectic confrontation and joking to keep It's like a little bit like, yeah, the third mind in the words of who said that it was Alam Ginsberg or it was William Borrows.
I think it's with the third mind the board to get back to whatever plot we do have here. I just love the fact that all of the help appears to understand something.
They sense it, like somebody says like reds from the sinking ship, though I don't think that's very fair.
And I loved how like in my last side, which I read, he talked about like symbolic overreading. You know, he feels that critics are us, you know, who get into his movies overread. But I do have a feeling like when I look at the range of his work, that it always is those who are the most honest with themselves. This is where I think he shares with John Waller. You know, the heroes are those who are honest about their maladies or their filth or whatever.
You know.
They're into feat or you know, and they embrace it than they're fine, you know. So to me, it's like the animals, the bear and the sheep are the most pure because they're pure instinct, which is what I think the surrealists also wrote about in the twenties, but also that the workers would be closer down to that, that they would be more engaged with their own base instinct, and therefore they could be more honest than those who
have to keep up appearances. So of course they would understand that, oh, well there's something happening, we got to get the fuck out of here, you know. So whatever that thing is that's in the ether, if they could possibly pick up on it better than those who are in the ruling class who have to keep on these appearances and keep up the play. You know, they have to keep up the play even though they're not the play anymore.
FilmLA are kind of inherit from you know. There a next step on another variant of neorealist films, you know, where the humble class are more conscious about the nature of power, the nature of destiny, the nature of faith, you know. And I believe Mediterranean films are very much tragic in the sense that the characters they are always managed by forces that they cannot control, you know, being God,
the powers, political powers, or the rich you know. So I think the humble they cannot control these powers, and they are tragic. They just have to survive, you know, while the rich guys they don't because they are normally in control and they are normally in power, they don't understand that they have been doomed, that they are really
in a situation they cannot control. And only when the film kind of evolves they realize the real condition, the real life content, which is like we cannot control faith, we cannot control anything. You know. There is a strong a force there is stronger than our d This force is kind of disintegrating us, exterminating us, you know, and
this is I think the true exterminator angel. You know that even the richest people, they're gonna die, They're gonna be exterminated, They're gonna be controlled by a bigger force, you know. And if you look at the Spanish literature. We were talking in our chat about the Esque novels, the Big Carrext novel. This hero, the anti hero is a person that tries to survive in a situation he or she never has the control, you know. They yes have to leave. They are conscious that they don't have
any power, and they fight to survive. And the result is not tragic. As many other Mexican films, the result is kind of dramatic or very sad, but the result in the case of Bunuel is really tragic comic, you know, because the humble understands there, hey, well, their own condition.
I think Julio to be a fascinating character because he's a servant, but he's above the other servants, you know, and he's the only one that sticks around, and he's the last one who can leave the room. When he leaves and goes to get coffee and comes back, he's the last one that has left that room to come back in. And then they really find out when they tell him, hey, go get some spoons and he tries to leave the room, just can't do it. And then of course he starts to get into trouble, like hey,
I told you to go get spoons. What the hell's going on. He's kind of the exception as far as the other people are now starting to have problems leaving the room, but yet he's the one that gets yelled at for that. I was also very surprised as far as that we leave the house at one point. I know it's a ways into this movie that we leave, but to have stuff outside of the house and the reactions from the rest of the town, the reactions from
the rest of the servants. I really like that the servants all come back and they're just kind of out there, like I wonder what's going on inside drinking. They've got the little flasks and stuff, and I'm like, oh, okay,
this is kind of nice. But yeah, it's just so unusual as far as you know, we're talking about religion and things, and even to think about I know this is in a religious order, but the guys who recognize each other and kind of give each other the high sign, I guess they're both Masons, is what I would think of.
It's right around that same time that we and over and there's this woman sitting there and she opens up her purse and she's got chicken feet inside chicken feet and feathers and all this stuff, and then that will come back later on when they're trying to basically do magic and they start talking about the kabbala, It's like, WHOA, I didn't see this coming.
Feels like sue yourself as small jokes, not that you know all this in the sense that all these rich people are kind of stuck in some sort of an absurd world that is not the real world, and that's why the servants can come and go while the others are kind of trying to find out what the real world is. And that's why only through their suffering the
destruction of the world. I remember when they start drilling the wall, it's almost like a bustard kit on seeing, you know, to get water, because they don't even have water, and they start drilling the walls like a bastard kitten style. It seems like everyone around is kind of giving them some sort of lesson or saying. Even the service is telling them, like they have to discover by themselves what the real world is about, and the real world is
that small games. They're small shared The scabal of thing means nothing when you have to survive and you are facing the real survival that you will never have to face aristocrats. And this is for me very funny because we empathize with the servants, but we never empathize with rich. We are glad they actually we had a little bit like, yeah, it's good they suffer, you know. And I don't think we are glad because a person suffers, but we are
glad because somehow they realize about something. There is a very interesting painting in Taling. It's called the Dance of Death, and the Dance of Death every skeleton goes hand in hand with It's a medieval painting with a peasant. But if they all also are taken to death, the nobels say like, no, no, I don't have to go because I have this nobility title and I don't have to die. And the skeletons say, yes, you also die. All the rich, the poor, and the peasons they accept it. They just
go with the skeletons. They accepted. The rich they can protest saying like I am accept I have this special paper saying that I don't have to go. They don't really accept the fate. This is funny because I think we take the position of the reality and we say like, yes, you have to pass through this, you have to learn
from this. You also die. You are also weak, and this is something you know that is funny, you know, And we look at the bigger picture of the world and we see these big politicians and presidents that they believe they will never die, you know, and they will never know the truth that they are small and how
and they are not almighty. And I think when you all, it's it's conscious that there is something even if he's somehow anti Catholic, but he's conscious there is something big on the top of everyone and you cannot you know, you are not almighty, and you will have to go through this process. And that's why the film becomes so funny in my opinion, because the rich got totally crashed and destroy.
The thing that's interesting about him in his biography, in his background is that he was part of that class he was raised is, you know, relatively well off, even in a small town. I remember when we did the Discrete Charm episode. I think it's John Baxter who did the biography on him and talked about, you know, kind of his background in that way, and that I think it's probably that tension within him where he was raised
in that probably around some of these types. So he of course is most apt to point at them and be you know, lacerating in his humor because he can point it out easier than I guess if you weren't raised around it, you would just be like, but you can get into the fine grain detail of how these people think, how they are in that way.
But you had to consider as well that he was a war refugee and he suffered from this wealthy you know, because he went to a studying Madrid. The mother was paying him the studies and everything, and everything was going quite well. He goes to parties with Ali and you know, living the great life, and suddenly this Fanny civil war comes and he has to go to America. He goes
to New York. He goes to Los Angeles because he has to find a very simple job, you know, translating films actually from the Golden Age until the next film Great Casino is sixteen years past. Almost he doesn't direct anything sixteen years you know. He helps a little bit with La Sourde and a little bit with a film that is shot in Madrid as a call director, or that he is sixteen years without directing, and he goes to Los Angeles, a guy that comes from a wealthy family,
and he has to work as a translator. And then he goes to ask the help of a Dali, and Ali says, fuck you, you know, because if I help you, friends don't help each other economically, because then you will depend on me, and it's better. We will be better
friends if we don't help each other. While Ali was organizing this big parties in New York, you know, with all the high class, and Bunuel was really really suffering the same destruction then the people from the Exterminator Angel suffering in that room.
I think if the timeline I remember is he went to New York and ended up in la and he worked for MoMA, which this loops back to the Triumph of the Will in that he edited a version of The Triumph of the Will for Museum of Modern Art. I don't know if that's ever been released in some way, if anyone can see it. I heard it was just he did some sort of he just edited it down. He didn't do anything that was bizarre with it or
anything like that. It was just this thing is too long in these speeches, so he condensed it or something like that. But when he was working at MoMA, word got around that he was an atheist, and this led to a scandal and he got fired and then he had to go find something. And then in la As you were saying, he couldn't really make a living, so he was like, where am I going to go? He couldn't go back to Spain because he hated Franco and you know, Larka disappeared and when you read my last sigh,
like just Larka was so close to him. This is the thing that always bugs me about Will that I love so much. I mean, I love him so much as as a creative person, but I guess everybody has their foibles as the personality. Is that he could never get himself to accept the fact that Lorca was queer, Like it was just too it was a bridge too far for him. But in terms of writer, in terms of poet, and you know, they were best friends and he cared about him deeply, and when he was disappeared,
you know, it was just such a loss. And I think that part of why existentialism and the absurd becomes so important is that it was built off of World War One. But it went even further after World War Two, where it was just like we lived through all of these shocks, nothing matters, everything is fucked basically, so would
you lived through those horrible shocks. And he was born in like nineteen hundred, you really see him as kind of the embodiment of what happens when you've gone through that much horror between World War One, the Spanish Civil War, and World War Two. But he ends up in Mexico, and as you were saying, Miguel, it's like he has to be a journeyman. He has to be like, you know, the equivalent in film of like being an electrician or a you know, plumber, where it's just like I just work,
I just have jobs. This isn't really so much about my own personal vision. Like his own personal vision sneaks in for time in some of those Mexican films, but he's not able to do what he did earlier or what he would later do in France, where you know, basically from Verdiana on from like sixty to mid sixties.
Really I'd say, I don't know, maybe like Diary Chamber made forward to the end, you know, his last fifteen years or so of his career where it was just like he had producers and they gave him money and they say, here, just go do whatever you want. That's not what the Makin period was. And I think that's why there's certain movies in there that stand out in that period. And like I say, I haven't seen all of them because they're already your hands.
Up if he calls them survival films, actually they are not. But you know, I had to do commercial films, so we call it the survival films. But it's very it's really amazing because this idea of I cannot do what I want to do in all the films, you know, from El to how is it called in English habit's mostly passion call, which is based on that book Calling, and I don't remember as mostly pasion like a patient
abits or something. There is always this impossibility, you know, but also not only the impossibility or the failure of the will or failure will, but also the people dragged
by their own passions that they cannot control. It's not only the imposition, how you know, power imposts gets on the top of you, but you don't even can control yourself, which is even more interesting, you know, because he was humble enough not to blame others and to say, like, you know, I had all this period, you know, from MoMA and to to you know, where everybody was like, you know, destroying me. No, it was like, it's my own, my own internal flame, for my own fire that destroys me,
because I cannot even control my own films. None. You can see that in I think one hundred percent of his films, you know, from everything, you know, the Obscure of the Laso to this sketto and Canto Laburgacia. You know about the woman that gets you know, she's from the aristocracy and she likes to prostitute herself in order to find certain freedom. In that warhouse no or Burdell no. And so there is always a flame inside and nobody
can repress. And that is sometimes a crazy flame, flame of craziness because you cannot really you know, I think he himself put in control, you know, like if somebody had a little bit more of brains or logic, it will stop. But he was sent to the US and then to Mexico and then try to survive in Mexico. Then he goes to France, make one film in Spain to Franco aloud, which is Prillianna. I think it was
sorted in Spain Piana. But it's as a filmmaker I understand sometimes he's like, God, I mean, I'm totally nuts because you know why I'm doing this. You know, where is this flame burning me? He suffer more than anything else. That's a very interesting thing. No, that he was not blaming. It's a guy. You read the memories. He never blames anyone. Actually, he was one of the best friends of the Franco.
Favorite filmmaker which was a friend of him. That makes this movie about francois it's his name, you know, and they were friends and the end of their life, you know, and he knew he was kind of praising Franco and making all these films for Franco. Still, it's not blaming him.
Abu Moos de Passion is Wathering Heights exactly.
That is based on the novel of Yes.
One of the really nice things that we have in this movie is the whole idea of them being trapped in this room by something they don't know what it is, and it's not like there's a physical barrier. They don't explain it, which I really appreciate that they don't explain exactly what's going on. You mentioned the Romero films. We don't know exactly why the zombies happened in any of
those movies. There's always the theories, you know, when there's no more room in hell kind of thing, you know, to go back to Miguel's painting that he was talking about with the skeletons, it's like, yeah, we don't know exactly what's going on, and so it could be magic. And the way that they get out of this situation feels very much like a magical situation as far as, oh, look, everybody's sitting in the same spots that they were when this initially happened, which isn't true, so now we can
leave again. It just they suddenly decide like, okay, everybody's in the same spots, let's go. But they're trying, like you know, witchcraft and all of these things to try to get out of the space, though it doesn't feel like they're trying very hard or very logically. We see them trying to get the water out of the pipes by breaking through the wall, like Miguel was saying, but they're not trying to break through the wall. They're not
trying to get out that way. It's not like I ever see anybody try to open up a window and try to go out that way. There's no experimentation. They just kind of accept their fate, which I find to be fascinating. There was a movie from twenty thirteen called The Last Days Los Ultimos Dias, which was very interesting
because it's kind of a post apocalyptic type movie. You know, it's kind of like what was that bird bath, bird, Watch bird whatever, where it's just like, Okay, something happens in the world, and one you can't look at these creatures bur alsoll attack you, like some of those things like a bird box, and so this is kind of a similar thing. It's like all of a sudden people
start to not be able to go outside. Like it starts off at this company and there's a guy who's firing all these people, and there's one guy who gets fired. He's just like, no, I can't leave, and they're like what. They're like, this guy hasn't showered in days, he's been at the office, he sleeps here, What the hell's going on? And then they force him out of the building. Security takes him out, the guy dies, and it's again it's
like there's no experimentation. At one point they're like, oh, yeah, this guy who was in a car he died because he's still outsides. I'm like, Okay, I don't know what the rules are, but after a while, I'm like, I don't care what the rules are. And same thing with this movie.
I don't care what the rules are.
They're stuck in a situation and this is all that they have and they have to abide by these rules. It's like one of these puzzle movies where it's like, okay, now, if we turn this thing to the left and then move over here, then something will happen. But with these guys, they're just like, we're stuck in this room. We have to put up with it. And they're stuck there. They don't really try to escape. It feels like they're ants in an ant colony.
I also find funny that the people who society deems can enforce the rules, which are the police right in the military, they're outside, but they will do anything. They're standing around like they're not trying to open the door, they're not trying to figure out a way to get them out, but they're just hanging out. One of the things I find funny it's like their kids come and it's like here, here's the balloons for you. You know, it's like nobody's trying to do anything.
Yes, send the kid in.
But guys, it's not the world like that. It happens every day.
You know.
You don't get divorced or you don't get you know, against some fascists. They don't can take in over the system, you know what I mean, like click like on Facebook, you know, like I know, I don't know, okay this No, no, don't do it. Don't click like you know you're gonna get prosecuted. They put you in jail. You know, you put a like there, oh Jesus Christ, No, I don't not gonna like it really happening, you know. Again, it's
very spunnish kind of attitude we have. We say, like in Spain, there is a guy doing some you know, road work, and there is like seventy five people having their opinions if the guy is doing it well or not. Instead of helping there it's like no, no, but this guy said, no, do it more to the right. No, I mean, you're not doing it right. What is this thing, you know, but everybody is speaking and commenting like if we somehow where And that happens with the people in
the aristocrats there. They are somehow spectators of their own destiny. You know, they cannot just stand up and live the house, because they got you know, they could just stand up or live. But sometimes we got dropped in our mental looks and we don't even say like, you know, like I have to stop smoking, or it's as simple as that on the smoke. You know, that's totally life, you know, it happens like that.
Yeah, the cops are standing around like they've just been called to a school shooting or something. They just don't want to do anything.
Or it's a hostage situation. That's the way I remember the first time I saw it. It feels like a police procedural for a hostage movie. You know, we're all standing outside and I am I waiting for someone to pick up a bullhorn and say, okay, what do you want? And they're like, nobody's doing anything. They're just standing there. They're drinking, they're you know, waiting the servants show up again.
You know.
At one point I find that funny, like it's like eh, come back to work after whatever happened. I guess you know.
That's the probably you delivery of screenplaying Hollywood. That will be pretty I mean the biggest hole. What what is the life? You know? In life we take a road and we don't turn right. You know how many times you go from home to the house and say like, hey, but have you walked left and there is a sub there with a great Ethiopian food. Oh man, I never enter in that sho why. I mean, it is like you could I die it someth.
I just go.
My ex and I were watching I tried to show her film and she made fun of me mercilessly for my love with film. And I remember that she said to me, you know, there's enough ambiguity in life. I don't want it in my art and in my entertainment. I got to deal with enough ambiguous things like this is not helping me. She's like, I want to watch old Case Files or the homicide Life on the Street. You know, Marathon, I don't want to watch this. Yeah.
Wow. How many times people watch Home alone and they keep watching Home alone and there is this sense of security, you know that it is so much needed in the population and then it's a I think very few percentage of the population that are open to adventures, to new stuff. And the movie is about that, you know, everybody. The police could come, that the guys could jump all through the window, but they will never do it, as we will never do and we will keep watching home alone.
And this is ABC, you know, and this is will feel secure. Security sometimes is something it's a very concept that we take like okay, like the police or the army. But security is corn flex in the morning. I don't have my favorite Cristmas. And you know, people you can kill for that, you know, really can cup for that, and you will put it in a movie. And that was that's surreal. It's not surreal. It all is happening every day, you know. So I find the exterminateardy Angel.
It is a documentary. Don thing strange is there, you know, is that we want to see things that are very safe. We want to feel that safety, like your girlfriend. But actually life is like a stern angel. I see it totally normal. I see like a normal movie, like a documentary movie.
I wanted to loop back, Mike to see because you had mentioned up the front things about luge door and there's a couple of great images in here that have stuff with me over the years, and I kind of wanted to get into that, Like I said, a symbolic overreading, but still, you know, does the bear represent the rise of communism Bolshevism.
Yeah, there are some really good images in there, especially it's really quick. But the bear at one point is seen by some other people and he stands up on his back legs and I'm just like, oh wow, I didn't realize just how tall that bear is and how human he looks when he gets up on his hind legs. But yeah, he's interested because he just kind of hangs out.
I kept thinking, like, Okay, that bear's going to eat those sheep, but no, that's the people that eat the sheep, and the way that they bring them in and just get them ready for the slaughter. And the one guy who's like nuzzling up against the sheep that's tied to like a piano leg and he's being super nice to it, and I'm just like, that sheep only has a few hours to live because these people are going to slaughter
this poor thing because they have no food. They finally have water, and I love the whole thing too with the bathroom where they go into the closet and there's all those vases, just beautiful Chinese, huge vasas that are
just stuck in a closet. But I'm the story that the ladies tell about when they go in to use the bathroom and how one saw an eagle and the other one had wind rush up in her face and leaves and things, And I guess I was related to people I guess in Bounuel's town where they would have the bathroom over a cliff and just everything would drop out so you could have these incredible vistas through the bottom of your toilet.
It's a small thing where she talked about what he sees at the bottom of the toilet, which ties me to another absurdist or was another guy that I referenced too much, Bob Downey in Putney Swaped, where it's like we're gonna work gun selling the advertising that can come out of our toilets. But also like you were talking about the buzz so it's like, okay, you can read it symbolism where it's like, yeah, art is a very beautiful thing. You know, we care about art until we don't.
And then the whole thing with them breaking up.
Beautiful for me to coupon.
Or the cello thing you know where they break up the cello and use it for firewood, you know, which to me is a great image. And again I want to say, is it a discreet term? There's some sort of thing with like a cello or you know, and minimum the use of classical music. Again, this this comes up with the conductor who you know, they you called him maestro.
It's in the Golden Edge that suddenly he's listening to that concert and he has a terrible headache and he had to go to the garden. He can of get blots in this kind of bourgeois gardens with like Chauchet garden and start like oh, and he goes and I think finally he started leaking the feet of some statue on on a statue or something like that, because the guy cannot bear this shell or something. I think there
is no serial symbolism there. I think there's surreally kind of these forces same symbolism as paste, Tito, you know what you do, you laugh, There is nothing symbolic there. I mean there is something deeper which is kind of this spontaneity of life these weird connections between the things that make you feel the freedom, freedom of something unseen precisely, the danger of something insecure, something that kind of bursts
like a storm, like a light bulb or something. And I think this is what gets us, you know, in that moment, not that the guy had a terrible headache, you know, like see why why why is that you know that bursting, like like the bird you mentioned, like there is no there is not there is no domestication.
You know.
We trend even when we write, to domesticate our ideas, to make them understandable, to go through logic. Try to kill that domestication or the pure idea as it comes. If it makes you love is powerful enough to be there. This is something as so poetical that it doesn't have our reference now because we are so used to the Bible. Nor there is a symbol and the meaning. But when there is something really poetical, we cannot there is no measure, We cannot pin it down. Something that is happening, and
we are astonished and we are wondering what the hell. No, but we still feel it, still love still say this is wonderful, this is so it goes into our subconsciousness.
The use of sheep throughout his movies keep coming up, and I know that as a kid, they always say, oh, count sheep, you know, go to sleep. So the idea of dreams and things like that, but also you could go, well, you know the sheep, the shepherd praised, you know, all of that piece. But the one in here that I really liked and I have like Sam, did Sam see this is the hand crawling on the floor. I was
like that thing from Adam's family. And then also you know Evil Dead, so I was like, where they go after the hand that's crawling on the floor.
I'm really curious because I heard a story that boon Weell was involved with the Beast with five Fingers. I cannot find anything to substantiate that, but it even came up during the audio commentary where there was comparisons of this with the Beast with five Fingers, and that boon Weell didn't like the skittering of the hand as if it was walking on its fingertips like Evil Dead to like thing those things, and he preferred the sliding hand,
and that's what he's got in this one. And I like how the hand you know, well, for me, the hand is usually symbolic of a penis. We talked about the castration anxiety inside of the Star Wars films. But the hand is the conductor. I think it's the conductor whoever it is that that dies first, who's stuck in a closet in the hand just plops out and then the lady sees that, and she kind of freaks out,
and then I think it's another night. She imagines now the hand is free, free form, free roaming, and comes after and goes up and starts a choker, and then she goes to like stab the hand, and she almost stabs the hand of one of her fellow guests, and it's like, okay, yeah, she's really starting to lose it. But that hand sequence, when it's sliding, I think it is actually scarier to have the hand slide than skid.
Her because, like you were saying, like an evil dead too, it's always you know, walking and then it gets stabbed, you know in the boards. You know, it's always one of those images because like I say, I mean he has hands in Shenandelou, you know with the hand and the ants coming out, you know, oh.
And the disembodied hand there that he's poking with a stick. You know, it's like on the sidewalk and the guy's poking at it.
Yeah, it's just when the traffic accident. Knowing the Yeah, yeah, we had it in the inside the box the biker, I think he had the hand. I don't remember, but I think it comes. It goes with this back biking and inside there is the hand. No again, something the uncontrollable hand again, something that you know, even you cannot control your body.
Know if this is like increasing and they can't, they literally can't control the situation they're in. You know, I love that image that you're talking about with the rich people, because there's always the rich guy who thinks he can buy his way out of any situation. And here we have an entire room of rich people that think they can buy their way.
Out of this.
You know, I'm surprised they're not like, okay, all right, how much you get out of this room, you know, or worried about the stock market and like, oh I need a phone, I need to hear how United Affiliation is doing or whatever.
I think that's the biggest truth. Yes, it's called momentum in Latin, which is remember that you die a little bit like the trumpets of Apocalypse that at the end nobody gets you know, nobody gets safe. Yes, it goes. And it was in the medieval times a way of saying like even these rich guys are fucking you will don't worries they will go. And I think somehow mentality in Spain is very medieval, because the God is kind of the father is not this father which is very cruel,
sometimes loves you, sometimes destroys you. And I think this is also the relation that people have in Spain with the state. You know, we try to trick the state. The state tried to trick us. There is always you know, you will ask for a grant for a film and you always have to trick him. You have the you know, if there is this game of eruption, and you know, at the same time you hate the state or you hate the government, but someono how you love the government.
You know, all this fight I think it comes from fieldalism, you know, like this father that tells you, you know, like now one day it's slopping you in the next day is bringing you the food.
The thing that's really interesting to me also in watching this is that you know, I hadn't seen it in a while, ten years or more. And this thing is more badshit than I remember. Like I thought, it was a bit more subdued, to be honest, compared to even some of the later French film this one is a bit more hung crock, you know, and energetic that I remember. So it seems like when he went back to France. I mean things like Beldejoux or Discreet Charm or even
Fantom of Liberty is a bit more French relaxed. It's not as the hyper. There's definite anxiety in there, I guess for lack but better. It's like there really is a tension in here that in some of the other movies. I don't feel as tensed as I do when I wants this one.
I think Mexico reality was quite more brutal than than the French reality, also the Spanish reality. You know, when you do the most punk films are The Golden Age, and and and The Lucian Dog. You know, he starts really punk talking about passions, and then yes, and then I think the Consecration of the Mexican period is really punk. It's really strong, and it goes a little bit to France and you know, French dyke back in time, they were more intellectualist a little bit after the novel bag.
I mean, they are very strong films and very powerful films, but I found the more elite films or more intellectual films Mexican period that they were more commercial. But you can see this kind of more Latin passion there and more you know, not so domesticated. That's the French period, I believe. I think you are totally right.
Yeah, I guess they're not connected. Maybe they are in certain ways. We're talking about manners. But I was watching a YouTube say about of all things Office Space, and it was talking about like the original ending of Office Space, the character it feels like a loop. There's a character who they cut that would basically be similar to the previous boss that he had at the other place. So it's like, you just can't win, you just loop yourself.
And so to me, the ending of the movie where it's like, okay, they all get out, they go to the church, and now they can't get out of the church. It's happening again, and just that last shot of the sheep heading off towards the church, it's like, oh, we got a duty to do. We got to do our part. Yeah, the whole thing.
I'm like, well, it was three sheep to feed this many people. Now you need this many sheep to feed all of the congregation. I guess that was the explanation that Juan Luis boon Weell provided that he said to his father had said, I'm so curious though, as far as the end scene with what I only can assume is a police massacre, the what's going on? They're shooting a bunch of people and I don't know what's happening
with that. Do you guys? What do you guys make of that whole thing with the shots being fired and all the people running around, Because now suddenly the police are very active, but they're not helping again with any of the actual problems that are going on.
I mean, if I wanted to read symbolism, I could say, well, it's it's those who are wealthy and don't have to
deal with police violence. State of violence, you know, which is usually metered out on the less fortunate that they're locked away somewhere, and I think they're ineffectual, Like they could be effectual, they could do something, they could help start the revolution, but they're not going to You could read again this is the Bear and the Bolshevik piece, where you could read you know, class communist socialists, less
thing in there. But to me, I mean not to say that there weren't violent, you know, revolutions throughout Europe before this point, but this movie, in that scene feels of a piece that maybe sixty eight that would be a commentary. It feels a few years early.
I agree with Robert, I don't think you can find the kind of a political commentary so early. Probably for police sharing or you know, it's probably there's hunting the bear, some sort of you know, these things are not proper. You know, what happened here is not proper. So some some sort of coming back to the you know, most conservative you know forces, because that's what the police represents, like he we had to put some order here. We didn't do a ship, but you know, let's hunt the bears.
Or maybe they couldn't, maybe they didn't even recognize them. You know what it is this you know a bunch of punks getting out of the you know, so much deprivation. You know that, you know, it's some it's somehow unbearable, you know, I won't say it's a simpol it's more like what I what I feel. But you know, to my probation, too much uncontrol, too much anarchy there, like it's not proper somehow.
Before they get out, I think it's one of the last scenes before they actually break through the barrier, there's actual like going around to all of the different people and seeing a lot of their dreams, which you know, I mean, it's surrealist film, but we actually get to see some of their dreams. Some of them are just the one guy's face over the clouds and his face is spinning and the clouds are moving at the same time.
And then I'm just like, oh, okay, this is nice that we finally get to see inside of them and what they're thinking about. And yeah, there's clouds. It's a lot of nature stuff. I wonder if it's just because they are not allowed right now to see nature, so they dream of Oh gosh, there's mountains. There's a whole thing with like some sawing that's going on over lightning
and thunder. I mean, it's just some very strong dream imagery and you even get it almost like it's two people as if they were sharing the same dream.
Which isn't that unusual within well filmed with people waking up in the dreams of others whose reality are we in.
I'm not sure what I make of the whole thing with the cops at the end, in just the way that they're shooting. I like the idea of them trying to hunt the bear because I don't know if we ever see what happens with that poor bear. I just feel bad for it because it feels like such a party favor type of thing. I'm like, who who brought the bear? Did you have to go to a store?
Like?
Okay, who brought the dog?
How do you even get a bear in three sheets? To show up at a party? And that feels like the beginning of a joke.
I just love the fact that, in my last sight he said that somebody actually did that, so he based that on someone. Yeah, about the bear and she do it party?
She's so strange, what a party that would have been.
He was kind of a way surprising people with the weird stuff, you know, like unpredictable stuff there.
Well, it's like when he showed up and Dick Kevin had his little artwork that he threw out and was just like, oh yeah, that's my pet.
I'm like, okay, Well, rich people do this stravagun things, you know, as a way of feeling like the danger because they know everything is under control and they get really out of rail and control. But yeah, you know, it's very common, all this ideas rich people have, you know, like I don't know you have seen an oral, but it's the first movie. It came to my head like lately because of these extravaganzas that the rich people have and like I'm not I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna
do that. For them, everything is a joke, not because they can get out of it with no problems. So somebody brings a bear's like oh fantastic, you know why not, you know, exotic enough. And at the end, the poor animal is hunted by the police. Now the poor wild, innocent animal. But they could start hunting the rich, but not they probably hunt this poor animal.
It's not clear, but the end of the movie it's almost like a triumph when you have the bells ringing and all this. It's like that's what you see and like it's a wonderful life or something that ends with like oh everything's great, now we've got the church bells going, and it's like, no, this is just starting another chapter. And it's like, what is this strange phenomenon? You mentioned the word simulkra and that immediately throws my mind to Philip K. Dick, and I'm just like, yeah, I can
see Philip K. Dick writing a story about this. Just was like this weird thing happened one day. I mean, it's almost a science fiction premise where it's like these people were in this room and they couldn't leave the room, So now what you know, what's the situation. And that's the thing I like, is that butnwell it's like okay, well yeah that's our premise.
Now where do we go with it?
What's happening? And he doesn't talk about the barrier that much as far as the human relationships, and I think that's where it differs from like a science fiction story is they would be like, Okay, now we're going to get a robot or something to go through here, Like somebody you know, hires a chipmunk to try to go up to the house. Can I make it through the barrier?
Like okay, well the rules here and like you know, having a whiteboard where you have to write down like well we tried this, and like no, they don't go through things logically. These people, once this happens, they're more concerned about themselves and more concerned about the relationships that are going on, more concerned about the carnality. I think there's a lot of fucking that happens in this movie. Not to be crude, but that's very true.
Right.
One thing that I sent over because I wanted to talk a little bit. I mean, we've talked a little bit about influences, like cultural influences, like you know when you live through those great shocks, and but one of the things that I noted was a Suvice documentary last fall here in Albuquerque that was the is Tudo servants had they do a Spanish film series and it was called Benito Peris Banouel, and it talked about this writer who I didn't know, a Spanish writer, and talked about
him as an influence, especially in this early era. Like they used footage from Lagdoor and then a lot of it from Extremity Angel. Basically the thesis of the director is basically that like once went back to Europe and he kind of moved away from this direct influence of this writer. So I'm not familiar with this. My Spanish is Galdos.
Is that his name Benitopeter Galdos. Yes. The very amazing thing is that Benito Galdos was a quite realistic writer. You know, you read it in the high school. I don't read it from my high school time. So when you mentioned it, it was like, WHOA, he didn't know. Now I'm going to go back to him. And yes, he has a very fine or a very detailed psychological landscape. I mean he's able to portray psychological relations in a
very deep way. And this is why I think people knew how God all nuances of desire and reluctance and all this kind of human relations. And then maybe that was passed through the real off in process and ex spontaneity and should realism and he got. But yeah, I should go back to Galdos. I don't know. It's a very famous writer here.
The documentary was quite good hy written in terms of what it does, and what the director tries to do is try to blend the two, which is where the title comes from. You know that the idea that they shared these commonalities I found it really interesting. Like I said, I had no idea who this writer was. I only went because, you know, related to Bunuel and was down the street from our lips. So I thought, you know,
this is this is worth checking out. So I would include that, like if you put the trailer up and link to that mic on the show notes, give people an opportunity to check that out. Hopefully it gets a bit of a broader release. I don't know if it's available anywhere else, but I know it's a Spanish director who created it, so and it's been out I think maybe about two years. So I think it was like two thousand and two or three that it came out. The one thing that was interesting that I remember in
there was it wasn't that when Well at him. I guess there was an opportunity for him to meet him, but he didn't go, but Lorca did. And then Lorca told him there's this story that I guess like LRCA shares with when Well and they had been reading his work, like he said, maybe it was part of what they were doing. And you know when they were in the Residentia school or something, because I think it was around that period.
Yes, I read they met once, but I'm not sure. He made two films from his novels. One is Tristana and the other is I don't remember the second one, and I think they met briefly.
The other thing I wanted to point to you, I wanted to thank our old friend of the show, el Goro from Talk Without Rhythm podcast, because many years ago, I don't know how many years ago, and it's been current this thing around. But he sent me this book. He found this Whenwell book. This is from nineteen seventy nine. It was written by Higginbobham from University of Texas in
the late seventies. And so el Goro, who had been on the show many times, he found this in I think like a dollar bin some and was like, you want this book on Bouonewell And I was like sure. So he sent it to me and there's like I read from my last side, there's just a short piece at the end. I wanted to share. This says filmmaker is moralist. It says the division of Bounwell's master works into two groups, character studies and social satires is arbitrary,
but can illustrate some important features of his art. It reveals that Boonwell evolves from preoccupation in the sixties with a series of character as Verdiama Simon Bildejer to a wider satiric view in the seventies, in which he made only one character study, Tristiana. Since then, Buonwell has concentrated upon the bourgeoisie as a social class, rather than representing it as an individual. Even in his last film, which stresses upon the individual, is diffused through two actresses and
portraying the same role, which is obscure object of desire. Thus, Bonwell can be seen as developing away from the creation of characters in a larger canvas of a social panorama. It says, evaluating Bundwell's art will depend to a large extent on which of his films will best endure the passage of time and changes in cinema. Assessment is complicated by reviewers and critics who have for years proclaimed that his latest film, whatever it may be, is his best
so far. Critical esteem appears to favor the films which focus upon a central character. Bounwell's dissect Society best when it looms as a matrix from which springs a personification of the bizarre behavior tolerated or demanded by its codes. The later satires, however, while depriving the viewer of the pleasure of identifying with the central character, continue to amaze by their technical brilliance and the ease in which Buonowell
controls his craft. The originality of Bunwell's contribution has been to translate one of the richest artistic languages of his or of any time, Surrealism, into a film language, and thus make a film a compelling moral force. The era of Discovery, in which filmmakers were enthralled with the technical capacity of cinema, Boundwell never lost sight of this conception of film as a social instrument as well as a
visual toy. He owes his determination to disturb and provoke rather than to merely display to surrealism, sustaining his early achievement over fifty years by making more accessible to the wider public. Bounwell constantly updates his vision of a society paralyzed by a worn out formulae. Like a kaleidoscope, his
art renders his few basic themes in infinite variations. His visual probe into the obsessions of the humankind and the social consequences is as thorough as an inquiry into society today, and it can be that for the first time one of the great moralists of our cententury happens to be a filmmaker. The thing that's interesting about this book is that it was, like I said, published in seventy nine, and of course he is listed as one of the
great film surrealists. But I think that if you want to talk about someone who took film surrealism and surrealism visual further into the mainstream, it would be interesting to take him up against Lynch and see how an American surrealist evolves in that way.
I think both they were tackling very well the society they grow up in, you know, and they find that Lynch an amazing way of describing American society with these two sides, you know, the darkness and the surface. And I think in Buela there is also this shurface and darkness, which is the Catholic environment he grow We know where we were talking about this very strong forces coming from the subconscious to try to dismember and destroy what is
always the conservative, a very conservative environment. And if you see that the two of them together, they don't have anything to do. They are totally different than the way they render the images, but somehow they drink from the same source. I say, it will be for another program, but.
It was just something that I thought about because you know, this writer obviously writing in the late seventies, Bunuel was still live, he in dine till eighty three, and that he represents kind of the apex at that time of what film's realism was, you know, or the use of that type of imagery. The only other person that comes close to me in my mind outside of Lynch is like I said, films have been so scattered and so
small over the years, has been to jodor Rowski. Certain ties I feel between them as well in terms of dealing with some of these issues.
I never put on laoskil together. For me, they don't, for they are not part of the same landscape. For some reason, these seem to play a similar game, but back to they don't because also Mexicans and we were gonna talk about col Kitty, you know, and I think it's a total different landscape because I don't think Yodrowski is a tragic comedy is. He is much more critical, it's much more dry, but it's very funny. His films are really anchoring a Mediterranean culture of tragic comedy of
you know, the survival person. And I don't think this connects at all with Holdowski, even if they are sharing the Catholic tradition, I don't find any similarity way they understand art.
For instance, nine out of ten I would pick a Boomhell film over Dyoorowski film. But I do have a self spot for Holy Mountain.
It was really interesting. I enjoyed a lot. It was amazing. The reference to Robe was bringing totally knew to me and very super interesting perspective of looking at them. Also, Mike, where you were conduct him. But it was great, But I think I'm a bit empty now we really put it was very beautiful because I think we really went to the essence of what brings emotionally from a wider perspective culture and philosophical perspective through I think it's a really beautiful program.
All right, we're going to take a break and play a preview for next week's show. Right after these brief messages, Lack.
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That's a cousin.
You don't a spouse as he does. My girls, I hate to know me.
You don't.
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He has a back load of do man, what he you mind? That's imagine us to about dies. You got air to bother? You just spookt.
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As a kid here?
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To be pushed down.
That's right. We'll be back next week with a look at O Pagador de promise us. Until then, I want to thank my co host Rob and Miguel. So Rob, what's been keeping you busy lately, sir.
I'm just enjoying my time up in the high desert. I think the last time I talked, they finished this novel. I'm outlining a few other things tray and ended that one.
I don't know.
Maybe I'll put it out, maybe I won't. Who knows. Just writing and it's always good to be on the show. I think I've been on the show more this year than I have quite a well, so thanks Mike and Miguel.
I don't think we've really chatted since the release of Infinite Summer. How is everything going for.
You, Cohen, Well, I really want to go to the next step. I'm a bit tired of the film, but I'm reading a lot about Mickey Mouse and about Disney, and about the last days of our Walt Disney, which is very interesting with Epcott and all this corporate utahps. And we were talking about Simulacra before. This is a very big Simulacra and I think and I'm reading a lot about Walt Disney.
Well, thank you again guys 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've worked on. They're all available at Willinglymedia 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 booths take over the world.
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