Episode 761: Pelísky (1999)

The Projection Booth podcast is sponsored by Scarecrow Video. Try out Scarecrow's rent by mail service. Choose from over one hundred and fifty thousand films and get Blu rays, four k's and DVD's delivered directly to your door. Visit scarecrow dot com today.

Oh gez, folks, it's showtime.

People say good money to see this movie when they go out to a theater. They want clothed sodas, hot popcorn in. No monsters in the projection booths.

Everyone for tend podcasting isn't boring.

Got it off.

OSCA then just actually nanso for slash diac smo of oda shall yeah.

M every day you remainder me snaps laps.

Yaku, bait, takuruda so pakamash coskati.

Rasa to guitarus go blutop.

A sma san soda do.

Plan play basic.

Noish love babyropa ah be a girl, Yes, jerosla via blissa you know the love of Yes, clinics lesser.

Shark y ven.

Naru stab heaven, she erected.

Tastyam set dream.

Yeah, let's be shsta bistromashnapay.

A.

Welcome to the Projection Booth. I'm your host, Mike White, join me once again as mister Rob Saint Mary. I give the Bolsheviks a year two with the most Also back in the booth is mister Philip Marinello.

You said we'd always choose dads together.

We are kicking off Cheptember twenty twenty five with cozy Dents. However, there's no fiddle faddle here. Also known as Palishki, it is based on a book called Why Do I Do This to Myself?

Guys?

It's based on a book called joven no hori, which translates as the very simple title shit on Fire. Directed by Jan Erbecht and written by Peter Jarchowski, the film is a bittersweet coming of age tales set in the months from Christmas nineteen sixty seven up to the nineteen sixty eight Prague Spring, which, if you weren't paying attention,

It was about two years ago around this time of year, so August September, and I have a friend of mine who's from Detroit, and I decided to go visit him in Prague.

He always had this.

Hey, anyone wants to come visit. I got extra bedroom. I was like, I raised aunt. So I got to spend ten days in Prague, who was lovely and just had a really wonderful time there. And as part of that, my friend Rick was showing me some movies. He's watched some check film. He's an American and he doesn't speak the language, he knows the culture. He traveled there when he was a kid. He's got friends and stuff like that, and he went there to go work with an artist

Family gets together and watches this, which.

Is really interesting when you consider that the movie kind of jokes about suicide three times, to which my friend Rick would say, you know what, the check they have a really dark sense of humor, and they do, but in a way, this one is kind of light. And I really enjoyed it, and I thought, hey, I don't know, if you know this movie, maybe you should.

Do it for your check series.

And Philip, was this a new one for you?

Yeah, this was absolutely a new one. I was telling you before I recorded as a long Time Projection booth listener. I have added many chick films to my watch list over the years, but I've never watched along. Some are harder to find than others, but I just never had before. So when you're like, hey, this is what we're doing. I went into it relatively blind. I knew that it was about families over a holiday, but that's about it. And I loved it. This was quite a discovery.

This was also a new one for me, and yeah, I'm glad that you brought this to my attention.

Rob.

I really was not familiar with the writer, not familiar with the director. They I think had aired up a few times and also adapted another one of the author's stories. I want to say for an earlier film. I now need to go back and see some of these other things. But I can see why this is a holiday classic, not just because it's set at the holiday time, right at this very critical moment, but also it reminds me a lot of a Christmas story. It reminds me of

I can't remember.

It's been a minute since I've seen a Christmas story, but I used to watch that ever Christmas pretty religiously, and I can see watching a movie like this because it has that same flavor of dysfunction amongst the family.

Real at the end of this, And yeah, it's a real eye opener.

For me and Mary Christmas, God bless us everyone.

The thing is, there is a narrator. There's a little bit at the beginning and the end.

If I take it, it's the kid.

And like I said that, I have a problem with the names of the characters. I just say that the one boy who's the boy in the communist family who in the very first scene is trying to hang himself our protagon. Yeah, and so you get the feeling that everything is viewed through his lens and because he's oh, I was almost sixteen when this happened, and that really you only get him voiceovering in the very beginning of the very end.

That's it.

There's not all this commentary through the rest. And then there's really only one other scene that I can think of off the top of my head where we get his interiority, where it's this is what he's feeling or thinking in the moment.

Oh yes, oh god, I know exactly what you're talking about.

I kind of like that because one of the things that we often talk about is and voiceover can be good. I'm a big fan of when I know we've debated this and go back and listen to the Blade Runner episode, I really like the voiceover Blade Runners. But a lot of times a voiceover in a movie is a crutch.

It's I don't know exactly what they do. So we're going to tie it all together with a voiceover.

Just to clarify, I was not the one who doesn't like the voiceover in Blade Runner, so it was our third person who I believe doesn't like that.

So I'm with you.

You know, Sushi cold fish. That's why my wife always calls me. That's a classic.

The other thing that's interesting in here, and I don't know if I think Mike, obviously you may have a little historical background. Philip, I'm not sure about your historical background. I don't know how much you need to know about check as the area, yeah, or the prog spring. I think it adds. There's a scene later I'll talk about that. It really adds if you get it. But as long as you understand they're under communism, they're under socialism, that's

The first blush too, I mentioned a Christmas story. The other thing this really reminded me of was better Off Dead with that suicide attempt at the beginning, or maybe even a little bit of Harold and Maud when he's laying in bed and his sister's coming in, like lifting his arm up and it keeps flopping down, and then he eventually sneaks up on her and scares her half to death. But yeah, it's got that great dark humor that I love so much.

It was so funny, Like I can see why this would be a regular and if there was a good addition around. I don't know if i'd watch this every year, but I'd watch this. This would be such a fun movie to have people or be like, hey, let me introduce you to something, because I'm sure, like in Letterbox only not that many people have seen it.

I was really confused when it came to the name of this movie being calling Cozy Dends because it's actually in English title. I did not know that because cozy in this case is spelled cos y, so we've got the English spelling of cozy. So for me as an American, I'm like, oh, cozy, coz y. So when I see Cozy Den's, I'm just like, oh, Cozy Dens, like putting an accent on it.

I thought it was a foreign title too. It's like, all right, whatever, I'm not sure what this means, but okay, I.

Like shit on fire. Shit on fire would be good. I think maybe that would cross over and be like, oh, shit on fire?

Was that on fire?

Yeah, well, sign me up for that movie. Two tickets please.

But when you talk about cozy dens, it makes sense because most of it takes place in one building. I don't want to call them capitalists so much, but the anti communist family lives at the top and they have more. And then there's the guy who's body in his family, who's where the narrator comes from, and he lives in

Yeah, that was funny.

Oh the speech that he gives is so good.

And there's a lot of really like beautiful set pieces in here, in the way that they're written. And then the crossover between the three because it's like they're each having a Chris Missus demial and they cut back between the three of them and what's going on and then what's going on within each one. There's certain dynamics depending and that's why I really loved it is I'm just

Yeah, the relationships, like everything felt so like universal, like

The whole influence of the West, with the like you said, the McJagger poster, all the needle drops in this. It's got a fantastic soundtrack and that I found pretty easy. There's a website called I Think It's Super Fun, and that's usually where I go when I want to buy music from some of these movies, which is great and pretty reasonably priced too, as long as I'm figuring out my international exchange rate.

Okay.

And it's interesting I mentioned how these guys had worked together before, the writer, director, and then even the novelist who was alive at the time that this was made. The novelist was the three of them. I don't know how many times they worked together, but they had worked together on a film from ninety three called Sakka le Leta, and that is a musical comedy. So it's in the fifties and just the changing face of the times.

With the whole rock and roll thing.

And yeah, the needle drops in this and all of the musical moments in this are just fantastic and some great songs. I really appreciated that they were not just using Western songs that had made it through the Iron Curtain. These were actual real people from the time. This was almost a little American graffiti esque. When it came to the soundtrack.

And this is where if you understand a little bit of history it's helpful, is that you know, Czechoslovakia was kind of left alone. He had a little bit of openness. It could run its own affairs as well as it could go so far but not too far. And that's what happened with the Prugu Spring was it was finally like Russia was like, no, y'all gone too far, and

It's nice. Yeah.

I think American graffiti is actually a really great parallel for it, where it's like it's a place in time and then just people bumping into each other living life like vignettes like in a movie like that really is timeless. Each person has their own arc and many of them are fulfilling, but there's just really great lines. I don't know how accurate the subtitles were that I saw, but I laughed several times, like good, well written jokes and really good delivery.

That's a good parallel I hadn't thought of because in a way, American graffiti is using Vietnam as the catastrophe.

It's gonna pull people apart.

Yeah, it's like the change in time and how the change in culture also impacts people going through life.

And that's really what the prug Spring ended up doing. Was it ended up being after that clamped down, and you have to get to nineteen eighty nine, the early nineties before all of this finally breaks apart and they get back to where they were in that period right before this. So there's like a twenty year period of darkness that kind of follows right after this. So in a way, like you were saying, that's very stupid, makes a lot of sense in that way.

I read it that way.

Yeah, probably were not playing John Wayne movies in public during that time.

Now, and when it comes to the chickness of it, I mean, there are definitely some very check things. And here the whole thing with the carp and the bathtub, I remember watching the Cremator, and I was.

Just like, what is this thing?

Why is Copper can go like going out and getting this Pike or sorry Pike.

I was thinking of Psycho Pike.

You've been in fact, I've been infected by the fights.

We've gone from Psycho Pike to Christmas carp So there you go.

And yeah, he would he had this pike in his bathtub and I was just like, what is this whole thing is? Oh, it's the Christmas meal.

And then I like this whole thing.

There's a few jokes that play into this whole thing of said an.

Uncle, like the father and the uncle that the two brothers.

Okay, yeah, so he is back.

And forth was hilario. When we first saw the fish, I thought, I was like, is he hallucinating? What is this? I'm I am not a check a fishinado? And I was like, oh, is he did he? Is he like having a hallucination? Did he pass out underwater? Is this fish gonna talk?

Like?

I had no idea what was happening.

I didn't know that either, like I said, until I watched the movie, and then I like, I said. My friend Rick, who lives in Czech Public explained to me, he goes, it's a Christmas tradition, that's the old Christmas tradition. And what it was is they would take they would catch a pike, now like a car a carb. Carp, yes, pike, yeah, carp. Pikes and carbs are off in bottom feeders anyway, So anyway, they take the carp and they put it in the

Yeah, inside and out.

But the brothers, so the one is the father of the narrator, who is the guy who's I guess he's a commissar or something and he's something in the Communist party, is what you get. And his brother, who doesn't agree with him, just are at each other. So like the brother and the mother that comes over, so the grandmother of the boy, and he also has a little sister, so like the whole family. And then it's like the two men in the room, they're just at each other to just constantly trying.

To one up some oh, I know this, and I know that, oh do you? And then it's oh, you can't do this, and it's just.

Ridiculous, and the mother is that the grandmother is, oh, God, come on, guys, don't do this.

Yeah, and they get to do this whole thing about holding their breath, and then that ends up with him in that bathtub holding his breath underwater because he would be cheating otherwise seeing that carp and then it's the whole thing. If that carp is here, what were we just eating? And then finding out that the dad is too chicken to kill the carp.

Well, and I also love the payoff of like bickering, like sibling rivalry. Of the original bet was hey, like up to sixty seconds, I owe you if you can hold your breath for over a minute, like I'll pay you whatever per second, and after the whole thing is out, sixty one seconds, I owe you one. So like he put him through this whole ordeal and then like he gave him like the smallest amount possible. I thought that was hilarious.

All these characters are very at times you're like, oh, God, really gotta be that way. But that father character, the I really love him because he's such a believer, like he wants to believe, Like the whole scene with the glasses, So he gives the wife this box full of unbreakable GLAMs.

He's like, we've done it.

He is so all about that technology that we have here in Europe. Fucked those Americans.

Yeah, he's we've done it. We're one up on them. We've made these unbreakable glasses. And the kid throws it and it shatters, because of course they're unbreakable to a point. But anyway, and then later in the movie, there's a whole thing with the spoons, which is the poster art for the movie. They're these spoons, and he gives everyone these spoons and he says, oh, this is great, great socialist technology.

And they put the.

Spoon in their tea or their coffee, and they're just like disintegrates and melts. And that's what In the end, there's this his arc is. It's just like he wants to believe in this what he wants to say. It may not be a perfect system, but I believe in it. I care about it, and and I want my kids to grow up in it, and I want good things.

Out of it. And so he's bought in. He's really bought in, and.

There's a part of me that just I know he's a little deluded, but I just want to give hi a hug. I'm like, sorry, dude, Okay, I can see your I can see you're a good guy.

Yeah.

Like you said, these characters are all they're like little thumbnails of these people, but you feel like you know them so well by the end of this, and you, just like you said, you want to give him a hug. You love all of these guys, even the cantankerous guy who loves those dumplings so much. But when they're explaining Yoki and he's just getting so mad every time she says Yoki.

Here, and with him too, it's and you get the feeling with all of them that it's like they've all been through something, and especially him, like when he's pushed far enough, he'll fucking tell you he's I was in a camp, like the fucking Nazis tortured me.

I wrote that line.

Now he says, I was interrogated by the Nazis. You can't beat me with something like Nyaki. And that's all the layers of good cinema. That's right, really funny, it's the climax of the scene. But like Rob, you're saying that belies like a very deep, like human truth and like his pain in that.

Moment, And that's really what this is if you understand it. It's like these people in this period are dealing with the aftermath of World War Two and they're dealing with the aftermath of what came with Soviet occupation and it's coming out in these twisted ways because they can't deal with it straight ahead. They're stuck, so they have to figure out a way, like the birds, like that last image in the film, like the birds in the Little

There's that line about we had to have this grit the spirit, otherwise we would have been Germanified like forever ago. And through watching so many of these check films, it's like, yeah, they've had problems for centuries. It's not just over the last eighty ninety years. It has gone on for so long, Like the Czech language itself almost perished from the earth because of all of these other countries that were infringing on them, what be at Austria, be it Germany, wherever.

But not only that. He then goes in to tell this story about how to the kids. He's like, oh, we heard there.

Was a spy and he was rolling down a motorcycle. They had a leather backpack, and we waited for him and we shot him, so heroic. But then there was another guy on a motorcycle with a leather backpack, so we had to shoot him too because we didn't know which one spy. So that kind of thing just shows you this kind of callousness, this kind of we're following orders. Maybe we didn't get it right, but and he's the

Very funny, very dark because like he's telling a group of I don't know, thirteen fourteen, fifteen year olds. We definitely at least killed one guy who was just a guy out in the countryside.

I was thinking about Diamonds in the Night because you were talking about the Germanification and all of that stuff, and there's dayton Land but the Nazi takeover, and I think the links are on that episode.

But I talked about the.

Museum that I went to when I was in Frague to the to the Hydrich Terror, the memory of the Hydrich Terror in Operation Anthropoid, which were the Czech Partisans who killed the number three Nazi in the whole system, who was the He was like the governor of that area.

And he was a right bastard.

Ryan hart Heidrich, depending on the biographies you read, was so into it, like Key scared Hitler, Like Hitler's like oof that guy. And he was like one of the architects of the Final Solution and the extermination camps and all that stuff to use the right. So the Czech Partisans killed him, and then there was horrible reprisals that came.

But in among that, I don't think we've said this yet. The protagonist at the very beginning, his suicide attempt is not because of existential disparates, because he's in love with his neighbor who is not returning his affections. And that's the heart of the movie that sets its off that like we can all get behind and understand, Like immediately he's looking at his neighbor and she even comes by in it, what are you doing?

Helps him out of the rubble, Yeah, out of the rubble of the little goda or whatever they got back there, the gazebo that collapses in them a little bit.

Not sturdy enough for a child to hang themselves on. Thankfully well that his.

Dad does that at the end and has very similar results too.

And I think and that was the fascinating parallel. So like the main kid being into his neighbor and just failing and failing, and two different suicide attempts for unrequited love. But then his father the suicide attempts, after all the stuff we're talking about, he realizes, oh, this is all happening. The world is the bad. So like he goes to do it for a completely different reason but also fails.

I thought that his on the end was an unrequited love for the ideology.

There you go. That's beautiful.

That he was so upset that the Russians came in. He was like, like, he was perfectly happy being a socialist in the way that socialism was, but the fact that the Russians had to come in and impose on top it was like, that was a fucking bridge too far.

He was like, no, too much for one man to take.

But his son doesn't die, he gets he collapses the entire yes, because he's a grown man.

Yeah, his brother comes and helps him dust him off out of the rubble.

So his father and his brother, that was a great relationship, as well as so many of them. I loved how the film showed in the cozy dens like something we often don't have as much anymore, like physical proximity with affect and intertwinement with people who you have strong ideological disagreements on. Like now recording this in twenty twenty five, it's a lot harder to go through the holidays with people who are drastically ideologically different than you. But that

Well, not only are they family, but they become like the whole building becomes family by the end because the single mom who's constantly looking for guys, she falls for the old thing where it's like you'll find love when you stop looking for it kind of thing. So she ends up with the man up in the top floor who sadly becomes a widower because his wife dies.

Yeah, the girl who does not return the protagonists love, her mother dies and then her father marries the But that first suitor, I was cracking up, like the kid was. I was harassing him the whole time.

I'm read teacher, his idea he's referred to I'm read teacher.

I could not believe. And I'm sure that this is thinking about the process of writing this and shooting this. I just thought I came with the offer of quality sex, bamboo chopping, the milk and water position, long hours of homework, all in vain, like he just wanted to get a little bit and this kid would not let him. And just his frustration the milk and water whatever, like I was dying.

It's funny the lead up too, where the like the little boy sitting at the table and he's playing with his erector set or whatever it is.

He's playing with her, screwing these little things again, and.

He's watching this guy try to mac on his mom with the paper weight he's looking at he's gazing at her and paperwaight and all this stuff and just trying to If the kid wasn't there, I'm sure everything would have been very successful. Every thing seemed it was going well. We had a little dance, they had a little music, they had a they had a little danger because he's got that box free of which to me reminded me of an E meter like the scientology. But he's like

Oh yeah, like them.

Yes, well you could tell the mother's frustrated too. It's not just comrade teacher that wants to get laid like mom's. I'd like to get laid too, So is it okay that we do it on Christmas? Takes the boy back to his room and it's keep messing around. I'm going to take your microscope away from you, which was his Christmas gift. Of course, his revenge, as you said, was a massively loud needle drop.

Yeah.

I love the scene with the electricity. I love the speaking of cultural things. I want to know that whole story of the very harsh dead the Yoki dad. Why he's pouring that it looks like pewter or something into water. It almost seems like a decoration or like even fortune telling because when he looks at it, then he says his line about the Bolsheviks again, because that's like his refrain.

I think that is a kind of divination. It may be a cultural thing. I don't know, but basically, he's pouring which looks like silver metal into a bowl of cold water, and it sizzles, and then he pulls the this weird pattern out and he looks at it.

What is it?

What is it telling you?

I think is what the mother assays to him. So to me, I feel like that's like in line with I don't like reading tea leaves or something.

You know, That's what it felt like.

Yeah, But at the same time, just maybe because it was Christmas, reminded me of like a snowflake or something. So I'm like, is this what you do at Christmas time? To make a decoration?

Well, he was so practical too, like it was an odd thing because he was such this like intense guy, and then they had this that scene did come out of the.

Blue a little bit for him.

He's a very intense guy. In that whole scene of him and his family when his wife is doing the Lord's prayer and he's got that nationalistic song on. I don't know if that was the Czech national anthem. I wanted to shazam that to see what was going on there. And especially the daughter has this very pained look on her face, and the mother's just like it's okay, kind of like giving her the little looks.

Like it'll be all right because it'll be okay.

The family dynamic with them, with all of these families, but just the tension and especially that little thing that happens when he goes to try to sit down and she hasn't sat down yet, and he says, would you sit down first so I can follow the korum basically, and then she sits on.

Then he gets to sit down.

And it's just so tense everything with that family gets really tense a lot.

Like I say, I didn't know my grandfather. He died when I was two, but my mom's from Scotland and my grandfather lived through the Blitz and was sunk by the Germans at least twice, maybe three times, well in the Merchant Navy and in Scotland, and he was very like proper by the rules. My mom would say if she's if I looked at my dad wrong, like at the table, he would just lean over.

And just smack me out of the blue like he he was just fucking angry.

And there's just like when you go through that kind of trauma and you don't know how to deal with it, right, it comes out like that. It comes out as just the scene that comes later where like on what is it on Christmas? They're being loud downstairs, so he comes down and starts yelling at Yeah, he's just fucking yelling at each other and he's shoes a yeah, and over what I hope you have another heart attack?

Oh god, vicious And.

It's like over what it's like you could be like, hey, dude, can turn it down.

The music was a little bit loud.

Yeah, it's part they're celebrating, yeah, and it's like it didn't have to escalate that far that fast. But those kind of guys who survive that kind of trauma sometimes have that kind of way of reacting where it's just shut it down, fucking now.

I was with this movie hardcore as I'm watching it. But the scene that you made mention of a little bit earlier on it happens around I think maybe the change from the first act to the second act where we do get into our main characters. Had Michelle I think it is Michael m I c ch e L. So there's no a in there, so is somebody named Michael. I don't know how to how you pronounce that.

He's the main character.

He's the main character, and he is part of that love triangle that we mentioned where you have that very hip dude and that hip dude. They're at like the I don't know if it's the post office or what. But he gets this box and he shows up off these brand new slick shoes that he's got early on in the movie, and they are these pointy boots, these like rock and roll boots, right, and our main character starts making fun of him, like Oh, how freaking girly

It was just the little girl, it was amazing.

And here's the sun.

Here's our main character opening up the Christmas present. He opens it up and there's those fucking boots and he's just, oh, this is great, and the dad's just, oh, I love you, son, and they have this wonderful moment. Looks are exchange. Everyone's warm and happy and then hut, and you get here's what's actually in the package, and it's these Yeah.

That got me.

Oh it was so got me.

It totally got me, because the rest of the movie we haven't had that.

That is the only time that we have that in the movie.

And so when it hits you're like, oh god, it's such a laugh and it's gutting at the same.

Time because the cool kid like you don't he's not like a crummy guy. So it's not like we are on the protagonist's side, but it's not like, oh, this guy he ran him off the road a little bit. But that's also they were being rivals a little bit for her affections, so he never like crosses any lines or whatever. But we do want this kid to do well. And when he that scene, I was like, yeah, like, nice work, and then the cut to oh no, they not these cool cues.

Here's these brown socks and these brown clunky boots that I got.

And instead of his dad just being like starting to sing a.

Rock and roll song and his dad's like, isn't that great?

Yeah, he gives us same words but such a different inflection.

The cool kid has his families in the States. It seems like they maybe send him back to the home country for school or something, or to be near grandma. He's the one who also has the film projector so he's the one projecting the movies out of bed sheet and the neighbors come.

Out and watch and is it Jean Caban? Is that who it is? I think it is in the Grand Illusion.

So the kid Michelle or Michael, he's the one who says, oh yeah, he's uses a homophobic slur to say that, and he looks like your boyfriend. He goes, oh, yeah, because he's just like him. So there becomes this kind of making fun of each other rivalry thing, which leads.

To the poster.

I know that it's Mick Jagger, but he so looked like the main character for Velvet.

Gold Mine because it's very psychedelic colors mc jagger. He tacks it up on his dad's communist corkboard and was with all the information and the the weekly dinner schedule. Of course, because everything is very regimental, it was typed out. Yeah, so he tacks up the mid Jagger posters fuck you to dad.

The very genuine and very hilarious line. I also wrote that down. He said, I wanted to pass this bullet for this bulletin board down to you, you bastard, like like this is the order, this is I was hoping that you would carry on our traditions of posting the schedule of family schedule.

But apparently it's not good. Oh man, it's not good enough for you, son. You gotta be a rebel and tack this poster up on my beloved bulletin board.

And that was funny too, because when he tore it up, he's like, it's whatever this is from this guy who like is my friend, but I'm trying to get one over on him anyway. So that was also great. I loved the moment where they're playing John Wayne movie North to Alaska. Oh yeah, Mikhale's mom comes and just the very simple line delivery of I haven't been to the

To go to a movie.

That was devastating. Imagine going fifteen years without seeing a movie.

The only other person I can think of that did that he may have watched it on TV. But it was a little bit of trivia on our second episode that in the movie Seconds Rock Hudson plays a character called Wilson, and Brian Wilson was so out of it when he saw that in the late sixties in the theater he thought it was about him. He was so paranoid that he never saw another.

Movie in the theater.

They said until Et, because of course he had that whole period in there where he was a little off. So he next movie, Sound the Feord was et allegedly. This is the story there.

This movie is just filled with one great scene after another. While we're talking about this, I've got the movie up in the background, and I'm just like, Yep, this was great, Yep, this is great. And they all run together like we're doing like the greatest hits as we're talking about this, But they're all of these just amazing things that are just strung together and really play well with one another.

How about the magician suitor.

That was great. I was about to say, that's so funny.

I was just about to say, yeah, when they get to the mom doing those dates, and yeah, you get that guy in there with that amazing hair.

Oh my god, he.

Looks like a Kmart discount version of Seventh or Dali.

I He's got this mustache.

It's greasy, stranglery wha, he was Scott, what did he say? He had a great line like about being lonely because he's performance artist or whatever, like he chooses it, but it's lonely and it's hard, like he makes it out to be like he's sacrificing for this great thing. And he pulls some ping pong balls out of his mouth and he legitimately scares her when he pulls out the fake snake and she like screams. She does like a

I am so glad you brought this to us, Rob. This was such a delight watching this.

How about the scene where the widower walks into the classroom when they're talking about the students using profanity and she's got the their version of the F word on the board and he just looks at it and she like goes to stand in front of it because she's got a room full of all these educators and it's just that word written on the board in their language, and he looks at it like really perplexed, and she moves her body in front of it. Like again, that's

The other thing that it becomes that you have these families and these characters are so connected. Where I was talking about like the commissar or whatever, the narrator's dad who's the socialist, and the Christmas dude, this is the second Christmas, I guess, or is it. No, it's right before the prug spring.

Yeah, it might be in New Year's dinner.

No, it's the wedding. It's the wedding dinner.

The teacher, the antie of his gets married to the guy upstairs who's the I was tortured by the Nazis. So he's feeling depressed because the girl he's still pining for the girl who's now literally a cousin now and by marriage, so he's still pining for her.

He's like really upset, I can't really show it or whatever. He decides to stick his head in the oven.

Yeah, he gets hammered on like the gift wine.

Yeah, suicide another suicide joke.

Sticks his head in the oven.

And the man because they're upstairs in his place, and he's what in the electric oven, So they pull him out and he ends up having heat stroke and he has to go to the hospital, but when they first pull him out, his dad faints, Like his dad is so overcome by the fact that his son tried to kill himself because he obviously didn't know about the first one or he was like, whatever you find, but this

You gotta be on it.

So just the fact that he like falls over and faints and then he's like, oh great, he talks on the phone to the hospital. He's gonna be okay. They're gonna keep them a day or two. But it's a simple thing, but it really shows that connection.

It was also very darkly funny that scene at the at When they hang up, they all start laughing about how silly he was for like how poor of a suicide attempt that was. They're like laughing so hard, like, h what a goofy little kid he tried to do this way, and like they're all four of them are laughing at his suicide attempt.

And then about ten minutes later he's on the end of the road follow and.

His brother's doing the same thing for him. It's like, oh, come on, brother, I think about this.

And there was something recently with went onw a writer that I read where it was she was talking about Heathers and how people were like incensed by teenage suicide stuff and Heathers and it's, oh, it's a different time, like you could have those kind of jokes.

Even in the old This is just a silly one office side. I remember not too long ago, what was it the old version of I think it was like the old version of You Got Man, like the Shop around the Corner, which I think also was a Christmas movie. There was a big old suicide attempt in that, and I was like, whoa, it's dark for studio Hollywood, but I mean it's this is probably the Christmas movie with the most suicide attempts, though.

Well, it's a wonderful life. There's our American Christmas movie. It's got a suicide in it, so.

Like a knowing to girl suicide attempt.

Yeah, you can't cut around that one very easily at all.

Exactly. So what is it with Christmas and suicide? Let's look at that Christmas and suicide movies.

It happens a lot around Christmas because it's like you're supposed to be happy, and when you're not, it just feels very discordant.

I just find it funny that the Czech National Christmas movie as suicide in it in the American National Christmas Suicide great double feature.

I've heard that a lot of suicides take place in the spring or like I've heard specifically February, because it's like you just sludge your way through the holidays and then it's okay, nothing's gonna get better.

I'm just gonna end it now.

But I would think, you know, go out on Christmas, ruin everybody's lives.

And that credit card bill, that credit card bill, and go Jesus Christ.

Oh, don't worry, Rob, We're gonna make so much money with these tariffs, We're gonna all get refund checks.

It's going to be great.

I'm just sad I don't live in Michigan anymore. You all have the ten cent bottle return. At least I could be making some money. So Michigan, you get ten cents ten cents?

Yeah, wait a minute, you mean you get five cents here and ten cents there. You could round up bottles here and run them out to Michigan.

Doesn't work. What a minute, It doesn't work. You get enough bottles together.

Yeah, you overload your you're invertory and you blow your margins on gasoline.

Trust me, it doesn't work. Now you're not talking that Michigan deposit bottle scam. Now now I'm off that anyway.

If anyone thinks we're joking about suicide, we're not.

It's a very serious topic.

I've had friends who died from it, and there have been times in my life where I've been suicidal. But everything I always say, you can always talk about something in art, and it's all about context.

And again, like you said, that's touched all of our lives in one way or another, and we can see the humanity in that.

And that's what Ultimately, this movie is about it's about the humanity. It's about these folks.

Even if you didn't.

Live through this time and you don't have the historical context, I think you can really understand who these people are and what they're trying to do. Speaking of a historical piece in here, the little mock up that he makes of the monument to the Pilots in World War Two.

Oh yeah, that's fantastic.

And this was already torn down by then as part of de Stalinization. But they show you a photo of this thing, and if you ever look up the historical thing as the Stalin prog Monument, it is a It was a massive granite monument of Stalin and a bunch of workers, and it was made on prison labor. Is

That monument looks so similar to one that's in Portugal, but rather than all of these like soldier and a farmer and all these things, it's all of these people that would go off to basically colonize other places. And I don't know, but the people who led the tours, let me just say that out of Portugal it was just like, yeah, we went to this place and they have these huge maps where they show like all the expeditions to all these places. I'm like, we're talking about

They got it from us.

And I'm like, oh my god, like they the Japanese people I hated, you get.

It's funny you bring this up because I just watched Silence, which is the Scorsese movie about the fortune. He's pretty such man.

Yeah, I'm looking at a picture of the Stalin Monument right now and it is amazing, like just the scale of it, and it's yeah under an article called the monument that destroyed its creator?

So holy shit, do you ever go you get a chance to go to Prague? They have some beautiful, beautiful things. One of the things that was lovely because of the Nazis loving the check so much and believing they were part of the Greater German project. It didn't get bombed all that hard, so there's a lot of beautiful architecture that's still there that other cities didn't have. And they have a lot of beautiful monuments and castles and such. So it's a very beautiful city.

Prague.

There's a movie I've been trying to remember through this entire conversation because it also had rock and roll in it. It was from probably a little bit earlier, definitely earlier than this came out, what ninety nine, So this was I was in college, so it was probably late eighties, and I'm thinking it's when father was away on business. And I want to say there's a whole rock and

There's a couple of movies that I think I've talked to you about over the years about trying to do from the Balkans that I would love to do that definitely some dark humor working through their trauma.

So we've talked about this before, or as far as seeing people's trauma on screen and just making that universality of it. Just like you were saying before, Philip, you don't have to know about the prog Spring to enjoy this film. You don't have to know all of these ins and outs. You don't have to know about Christmas carp in order to figure.

This movie out.

It is very universal and it's just great to see something from another country from twenty six years ago and just that speaks to us so loudly today.

It's also crazy ninety nine is that long ago? Hearing you say that out loud. Yeah, it's got just over a ten thousand letterbox log. This is right for a like a Radiance or potentially Criterion, but like this would be a great clean it up. I mean, it's got a really good restoration. Put it together, do some interviews, get a commentary like this would be great. This would be a great discovery, like in addition to the international canon.

One of the things that I try to do when I after I watched this movie and Mike decided you wanted to put on the show was I was trying to coordinate with a friend of my friend Rick in Prague, who actually would have been like the sister in here of the of like the Commissar's daughter, because my friend Rick, his friend Yika, grew up her dad was part of the party and all of that stuff, and so there was part of me that was hoping we could have

And why do I like this movie? Why does check people like this movie? Let me tell you what it speaks to.

But us being three guys who are not from there and not connected to the culture in that way outside of the cultural exports. It's really about families. It's really about understanding who these people are. I especially think of myself at my age. I have kids, but I can understand friend's money do I can see my parents, I can see myself. I can see just humanity in general in a lot of these characters.

And that's what makes it beautiful.

I didn't fuck up, did I did? I like, eliminate this possibility? What's that of having your Rick's friend on here?

I asked her to do it, and I thought she would be hip to do it, and she's like, it would be nice, but I don't think so I don't feel like doing it.

And I was like, oh, it's too bad.

She didn't want to speak for an entire nation.

The novelist of this, Peter Sabach, he passed away in twenty seventeen, I believe. But the director and the adapter, the screenwriter, they're still going strong, still making.

It like they're still making stuff. I'm just I just looked that up.

Exactly, and they're both working at Barndov.

So I emailed both of them a couple times to say, hey, you want to come on the show and do this stuff, and never got any responses. There was again only quote unquote twenty six years ago. But yeah, they both have been making films for quite a bit. A little while here, we.

Were talking before we were rolling, and Philip was saying, oh, I haven't seen a lot of Czech film. I'm like, usually the place that people come in or closely watched trains Uri Mensol because of he won an Oscar, and then Milosh Foreman because we know the American Foreman films. Obviously the Cuckoo's an Nest and amideis just those at least, and then all the other stuff.

I didn't realize Cremator was Check. That's very high on my life.

Oh, it's so good.

The thing that's interesting about Check and this is film.

Yeah, the director of this really started his career right around the.

Time of Velvet Revolution.

I imagine that that opened up new filmmaking avenues for both, Like you're saying, people coming into the country but then their own homegrown directors again. And yeah, I think he hopefully didn't have to make a lot of films under that regime and was able to prosper after that because he's according to the source of all truth IMDb, he's directed at least fifty four things between TV and movies, more.

And a lot of his stuff is available, and I don't know if this is connected to any of this at all, but I was just thinking about the fact that out of the Velvet Revolution at the end of communism in Czechoslovakia was BLACKSHAWF Hovel and Hovell was a poet and a playwright, and he was very much into the Western arts. So he was like, like, he loved Frank Zappa, and he loved the Velvet Underground, and he

And if you mentioned that you came from listening to the projection booth, they'll give you a ten percent discount on tickets.

At the door.

Maybe, Hey, it doesn't hurt to ask. It doesn't hurt to ask. I heard about it on the projection booth. They're like, oh, really, okay, Joe Breden.

All right, We're going to take a break and play a preview for next week's show. Right after these brief messages, bring home the all new The Naked Gun on digital Now see Liam Neeson like you've never before as Frank Dreben Junior as he leads police squad in this outrageous comedy also starring the iconic Pam Anderson by the film critics are calling one of the funniest movies of the decade, and get nearly an hour of gut busting extras, including

From Paramount Pictures.

Looking for something superior to streaming a place with more than five times a selection available on all streaming services combined. Check out Scarecrow Videos Rent by mail service. Select from an unparalleled collection of over one hundred and fifty thousand films and get Blu rays, four k's and DVDs delivered directly to your door. Get in on it now at scarecrow dot com and rediscover the wonders of physical media.

At ammond an Arizon scap.

In your.

Charge me.

Arizona, Arizona, yet Nabi.

Who shoos on tissues? Eigo keep su Chi by two, Prince.

Chi Ado hog Fogo, Dravanad's disas is in applesder in garuolad, any policy piety start to such any steps on city.

Barzila best no whiskuit.

In Manito.

And you we m s saviss.

Go kit panjok bestream over sha kid.

As to plan cuts, memory.

Approach, became champion and the duck Badman my the p prosper trig whisky approach.

Enata.

That's right.

We'll be back next week with a look at the old rich Slipsky Cam, the Lemonade Joe. Until then, I want to thank my co host Rob and Phillips. So Rob, what is going on in your world, sir?

Not a whole lot.

Let me say, I've just been writing. I'll have got a couple of novels that I ranked down the last year.

Just a couple of novels. Yeah, nothing too hard, Yeah, nothing too difficulty.

Yeah, I don't do anything. It's just me and my cat. This is what happens. And I'm going to be on the show more this over the next few months. You've missed me in the past. I don't know who's missing me. But I'll be back for a couple more episodes coming up over the next year. And yeah, just enjoying myself. And I'll give you the link because I've gotten off of all the social media, but I am on a letterbox now so you can look at my silly reviews of movies that I've watched.

So I will be sure to link to your name in the show notes with your letterbox link.

Thank you, mister Mike. I hope you're doing well as long as.

You send it over to me, otherwise I'm not going to go search them.

For it, we'll do.

And also good to be on here with Philip. It's good to talk about Karp after talking about Pike.

Philip, what's new with you? Sir? Can find me over at the Substance and Rob, I just found your letterbox followed you there. That's always great when we get people to join the very best social media community podcasting over at the Substance, Mike, is probably about time to have you back again some point. When we do a lot of films under our Substantive Cinema banner, but then we also do like our brand is the Substance, it's pretty broad.

Thanks again guys for being on the show. Thanks to everybody for listening. Do you want to support physical media and get great movies by mail, head over too scarecrow dot com and try Scarecrow Videos incredible rent by mail service, the largest publicly accessible collection in the world. You'll find films there entirely unavailable elsewhere. Get what you want, when you want it, without the scrolling. If you want to hear more of me shooting off my mouth, check out

It's a money and he said jelly stable, so spooking.

Do yeah money? Oh my god, spooky.

What's that?

Jes said, I so shop do thus stay lushing go.

So God loveing.

And basks.

Yeah love me. Oh my god.

This has got.

The book spark pro woos himself as a cinema Brandy mission So granties are located books parking, but as a many book terra terristable