Gid A Peter Hell, are you here? Welcome to You Ain't seen nothing yet? The movie podcast where I chat to a movie lover about a classic or beloved movie they haven't quite got around to watching until now, and today's guest is singer, songwriter, composer, pianist, comedian, writer actor Eddie Perfect.
All below. I want to stay here with you, hey, little jobble, Why hate snake shuck hy.
Hail the happening right?
You ain't seen nothing you.
Eddie Perfect may not be perfect, but he's bloody well close. I think the bloke is an out genius. He has had one of the most well rounded careers in the Australian showbiz landscape. He exploded onto our scenes and our stages in a show called Drink Pepsi Bitch, which he toured around the world. He has appeared on all the shows. He's been a judge on Australia's Got Talent, he was
on The Mass Singer. Recently, he won All of Our Hearts in Offspring, where he played Mick alongside the wonderful Claire Botage and that wonderful cast of Ossie Talent, including Asha Kenny and Kat Stewart and Rick Davies and deb Mailman and Lucky Hume. What a show that was. Some of the stage works include Keeping the Musical. The one that people might know more than others is Shane warn
the Musical. He went there and produces amazing work called Shane warn the Musical, which was massive, made massive on the headlines at the time because everyone was like, oh, well, what's he going to think? Because you know, he delved
into Warney's personal stuff. This is obviously when Warnie was still with us, and Warnie eventually kind of went there I think, perhaps reluctantly and nervously and watched it and gave it his full blessing, loved it, And I don't know for me that maybe maybe I'm wrong, but maybe it was the start of Warny kind of being able to laugh at himself a bit more and to embrace his flaws more publicly. I might be wrong on that, but that was just the timeline and seems to kind
of add up to me. But I think it meant a lot to Eddie that Warney did give it his full blessing too. Around the World won the Helpman Award. It was a staggering success. It is also another It's a Date alumni. He was in an episode which I loved, alongside the wonderful actress Amber Clayton, playing a player who gets outplayed. Also in that episode was the wonderful Dead Mailman and Jim Owen in a date that I also love. Eddie were recently has spent a lot of time in
New York City. He developed a stage musical a King Kong, which didn't kind of work out I think as well as Eddie had hoped. But what he did next has been staggering. He produced and wrote Beetlejuice the Musical, a movie we've covered on this podcast with Nate Velvo, and it has been a staggering a staggering success on Broadway on the West End, around the world, and it is coming to Australia I think for twenty twenty five. I'll find out and at the end I'll let you know
if tickets are on sale yet. But Beatlejuice the Musical has been a smash hit, and I'm so stoked for Eddie because he's a bloody hard worker. He's a great guy, very generous, particularly generous of his time coming in and doing my podcast. It was great to work with on
It's a date. I remember when he started out. I was a bit kind of like, I don't that I have this thing sometimes when you know, new artists come out and then particularly they're a bit cutting edge and irreverent, I'm like, they're not gonna they're not gonna like me. And then when I finally met Eddie, he was he was so kind of respectful and polite and funny and we got along really well. So he is inventive. He's
endlessly creative. He's a joy to be around, and I'm bloody stoked to be hanging with him today.
Hi there, my name's Eddie Perfect and my three favorite films are Aliens. That's the second one. Get away from her, you bitch, Jesus Christ Superstar the original movie seventy seven and Children of Men. One hundred years from now there would be one sad funk to look at ONID.
What keeps you going?
How to test now? I just don't think about it. But up until this week, I had not seen an American in Paris.
It's post World War two and Jerry Mulligan, Gene Kelly and American Gi has decided to stay on in Paris to live out his dream of becoming a painter in the French capital, living in a broom closet that he is rigged up beautifully to serve his needs. Jerry has collected a bunch of friendly French folk to keep his
artistic struggle stay cheerfully upbeat. When selling his artwork in the feigned alleyways of montmart And, heiress to a Suntan oil empire and aspiring sugar queen Milo Roberts, Nina Fosch takes an interest in Jerry and his work, but really more so in Jerry himself. But Milo is not the
object of Jerry's affections. That belongs to nine year old Parisian dancer Lisa leslie Kron in her screen debut, who incidentally is engaged to an associate of Jerry's singer Henri Barrell George Gortore, setting the seeds of a classic, if not slightly bizarre love triangle, winner of six Oscars in nine point fifty two for Best Film Cinematography, costume Design, screenplay, music and Art Direction, Surprisingly no nomination for gene Kelly himself,
shot the year before, Singing in the Rain, which garnered zero oscars, incidentally directed by Vincent Manali, Father of Liza, music by George Gershwin and American in Paris is a big old school MGM musical showcasing the early days of technic color, Eddie Perfect the Gene Kelly's depiction of a struggling young artists compared to your early days of breaking into the artistic community.
A little bit. I mean, it's way more romantic, isn't it. This idea of you know, being an artist in Paris and all of the kind of interesting characters that populate the town. And you can't help but look at his quite crisp chinos and loafers and beautiful skin type hollow shirts and things. This dude's got a bit more money than he's letting on. And it's a very romanticized idea of Paris. But you know, you want to believe it.
Well, I imagine it's if you were watching this with you know, early thoughts of being an artist in your head, this would like to you know, this would take you to Paris.
I think you know, that kind of idea of being an artist in Paris, and the romanticism of that has been explored by lots of different people, both kind of older and more contemporary because it is that place where you know, we've all seen cabarets in No, that was in German.
It wasn't as earlier German. Yeah, yeah, what am I thinking of? I'm thinking of, like I mean, not in Paris. Only He's one that jumps out immediately is.
The Woody Allen film. Yeah, that with Owen Wilson's at the Yeah, the bally Poch and beautiful time. It's gorgeous. But you know, I do, as a contemporary person have to suspend a lot of disbelief watching this film because I kind of am not. I not really received a lot of Gene Kelly in my life, and it only been y clips. So this was the first time I really wanted to watch this film because I wanted to see how the whole thing hung together as a story.
And he lives in this tiny Apartment's his incredible sequence in the beginning where he's getting ready for the day and making I think toast and coffee and the whole it's a bit of a Wallace and Grommet type setup with his studio in and out of things, tables appear and cups, sources go onto tiny little benches that flip up and flip down and things go up into the roof and come down. It's quite.
Yeah.
I mean, I was thinking it could almost be a Lena and Woodley sketch, but more elegantly done in the like Frank would obviously be banging into these things and knocking himself out probably, But it's really like crafty little opening sequence there. So I don't want to go too much into the film yet. So why did an American in Paris? We discussed a couple of films that were on the list and something you hadn't seen, Why did this one jump out?
Well, the great thing about your podcast is an opportunity to plug holes in movie knowledge. And for a start, I just never seen this film, and I am obsessed with movie musicals. I think when I from first, I think I first saw MGM musicals when I was a kid and Bill Collins would present films, and so this one was someone that I had never seen that I always wanted to see rather than just seeing clips out
of context. And because I'm interested in writing musicals, I write musicals myself, and I have an ambition in the tank to write my own and create my own movie musical, even though I'm not quite sure whether they're in vogue or out of vogue at the moment. They always seemed to kind of wax and wayne quite dramatically. But this
is a great example of it. I know, the Gershwin piece, the piece of music called an American in Paris, and I've been at concerts where it's been played, and it's extraordinary and really kind of butts up that musically kind of rams that idea of like you know, American jazz with you know, syncopated rhythms and really bluesy kind of scales up against a much more romantical, almost classical music tradition.
And it was very much George Gershwin thing, the kind of clash of cultures and new art forms coming in and out. And I know gene Kelly was a very masculine dancer and choreographer and as opposed to maybe some of the more genteel stylings of like you know, gene Kelly's and not gen Kelly's Freda Staire, Yeah.
You mentioned that, you know, watching gene Kelly and his loafers like that was even a big difference between fred Astaire, you know, his top hat and tails and it was those musicals always seem to be set on shiny flows and in high society, where gene Kelly was like the first like every man who like wore a polo shirt and loafers and chinos and was dancing on kitchen tables
and apartments and on the streets. And also he was very He's very sexual, like compared to fredis is like pretty high for lutin and innocent and smiling and him and Ginger Rogers. This is like Jean Kelly is here. The fuck he's there?
Fuck and he for modern audiences, it's relentless, is it? Jerry Mulligan? Is that the name of Jerry Mulligan is like has got a lot to learn about consent.
I will definitely get to that because that is a big part of this, and I probably led you back into.
Putting that aside for a minute. Like what it really interests me is the way gene Kelly uses dance as an extension of storytelling. It's not just like, Okay, we're going to stop for a bitting and season, people move around. I was really fascinated by the way he gets into dance and when he chooses to put dance in and a lot of the time, some of the romantic scenes, it's always about being able to express the unexpressible or you know, physically embody the things that can't be said.
So as a result, there's a lot of like I want to be with you, but I can't be with you, But isn't this nice? And what gen Kelly does so well, which you alluded to on the table, is that he explores the space of whatever setting he's in, if it's a restaurant or cafe, they use every part of that. It's about like how can I be here and be here? And it's about imagination and play and bringing objects to life and interacting with the world. And it reminds me of when I was a kid and I used to
watch Jackie Chan movies. That was the thing that blew my mind about Jackie Cham is exactly the same. It's like, you know, whatever he needed in this moment, it was such a beautiful dance. You know, I need this crate, I need this stool, I need to stand on this table,
I need to swing from these rafters. I love that sense of exploring space, and I love the idea that dance is like a physical embodiment of movement and you can get a narrative out of it, and of course the end sequence where they dance to Gershwin's American in Paris Pieces. I think it's sort of the final moment of the film. Maybe it's the last seven or eight minutes of the film and reportedly costs like four hundred and fifty thousand dollars to make, and it's quite an extraordinary standalone.
It's last eighteen minutes?
Is it eighteen minutes? I think O time flies when having technical fub.
We'll move on because I want to talk about your three favorite films. But I don't think I've ever seen a man more in control and Jackie James a really interesting comparison. I don't think I've seen a man more in control of his body and a man who can just float.
And he doesn't look like he's able to do it, does he He doesn't look kind of like a dance just.
Like a movie star, like he's a complete movie star, like he's you know, he's beautiful, but he just floats across. It's it's incredible. Let's talk about your three favorite films because there's a lot to talk about. An American comparison and everything in their aliens as opposed to alien Why why more the more when you accept one alien when you can have aliens.
I found the first film both just terrifying and boring. I just felt I spent the whole time terrified when this alien was going to come out.
And of course he's so young.
I was young, and of course that that scene, that scene where the alien first is born is probably a nice way of putting it. It's just so horrifying as a kid, but cool, the coolest thing ever. And then if they spend the rest of the time in the first one just dealing with that that one alien, the second movie just it's got way more action in it, and it's sort of like Sigourney Weaver in control, so I the pacing of it is just perfect. I just find it like such an extraordinary film. I love it.
It's on.
It's going back when you're older to watch films like Alien. Jaws is another one. They've a mad Max and you kind of realize, wow, not a lot happens, and they're all great films. And part of it is, I think the suspense of waiting for something to happen, and you know, there's the folklore and Jaws that they couldn't have mechanical shark at my fucking up. So that's the reason why you don't see it. It wasn't supposed to be like that, but as a magical accident because it makes the film better.
But you realize that not a lot happens, and I think maybe when you're watch it when you're younger. I mean, for Mad Max, I went along with it, but when I watched it when I was old, I went back and watched Mad Max and I was like, jeez, not what happens here? Like this is it takes a long time for anything. Yeah, really the happen And then when Mad Max two comes along, it's just like I funk, we're in it now.
Yeah, we've done. We've kind of the world building has been done for us. And you know, I think that even as a kid, what I really loved about Ripley is a character. But the second Alien's film was that it's about what happens to people when everything goes wrong. You know, what happens to you know, Bravado and Braggadocio and kind of like you know, this kind of veneer when you're put in a situation where you're losing and you're you know, you don't know what's going going on,
and so it's about hubris, really like about arrogance. And ever since then, I've always been interested in stories that take human beings from being the kind of top of
the food chain and lowers them down. I always think that I think it's a healthy thing for us to see stories that are about our flaws as a species, because I think we we often, if we're honest with ourselves, let's sit around thinking that we're really really important and maybe even perfect, you know, because there's not really anything
else that's a challenging us. But I'm always fascinated with the one you know, you tilt the odds slightly in another species favor, whether that's a you know, a shark or a crocodile or you know something that we know it on this planet, or bear or whatever, you know those stories of wolves, whatever, but you know, or it could be like an alien another species is another planet. But suddenly when the odds are tilted out of a human beings favor, it's a lot about like what is
it that's going to keep his personal alive? What is it that's going to allow us to survive and what are our faults are going to cause us to get killed? And almost all the time it's underestimating the enemy. It's fear, it's panic, it's all those things. And I'm just yeah, whether that zombie films or whatever, I love that kind of stuff.
I love it. And Alien the original one was that Cameron or did he come on for the second one? What was it? Do you remember the ship was really Scott was also involved? Was honest?
Yeah?
Yeah, because I know there's been changed. And then Fincher kind of comes in to do I think the later one, and.
There was a French director on one of them. There was a really big surge in French films around I feel like maybe later of his early nineties, and I remember there were films like Delicatessen and Emily was later. Yeah, Children of Children of Men?
Was that?
No?
Not Children Men, Tom Thumb, you know children something of City of Lost Children, City Lost Children. Yes, Yes, I feel like one of those directors directed one of the Aliens and it was really weird. I don't know if it particularly, but it was good.
So Aliens was directed by James Cameron, and I'm pretty sure the first one was directed by it really Scott, So really Scott directed the first one. James Cameron comes on for the second one, and then the third one I think is David Fincher. It's interesting, isn't it like
a successful you know, a trilogy. I know it when on further and you had Alien versus Predather and Prometheus, and but putting those aside, a successful trilogy directed by three different directors who are massive, massive names, three the biggest names.
Yeah, yeah, And why is this idea? Why? It's because this creature is just terrifyingly unstoppable, and it's something that you know that it's similar to, I think like the Jurassic Park films. You know, he the greed of corporate humanity wants to own it and possess it and exploit it, and it can't really be controlled or contained. And so it's that arrogance to possess something which is too dangerous that leads people into being killed and also leading, you know,
leading other people unwittingly to their demise. So it's got a kind of a strong sense of ethical righteousness about it too. You know, you can't do this to people, you can't lie to people, and you can't put people in danger. So you know, I love that film.
Jesus Christ Superstar.
Also aliens.
Speak to us about your love of I think I've ever seen the film.
I think it's the seventies. It came out in seventy seven, which is coincidently year I was born. Also the year of the Muppet Movie. Original Muppet Movie came out. Good year for films. Yeah, it was shot in Israel. Little film Star was I think came out all of that. Oh yeah, yeah, it was seventy seven. Yeah, it's shotten in Israel. It's shot in Jerusalem. I think the concept of it is really quirky. If anyone that knows the stage musical that basically this kind of it's like a
Priscilla Queen of the Desert moment. At the beginning of this film, this giant bus full of outrageously thin, long haired hippie Americans rocks up in the desert of Jerusalem, nothing around, and they get out of this bus and they're pulling costumes and wigs and props and stuff off this bus and everyone's just throwing them around, and it's like a kind of a community theater group and very seventies and they all kind of just fall into their roles,
which is a very very interesting and smart way of sort of saying that the New Testament story of Jesus, it was almost like it was fated to happen, and that people were fated to play their roles. You know, the pilot was fated to be the one that oversaw Jesus being executed, being crucified, that Judas his best friend, was fated to betray him. That you know, all of these things were kind of preordained, and Jesus knew that and yet still went through that process. And so it's
quite a strange film in that regard. It's beautifully choreograph, beautifully director, beautifully shot, and the music and the singing
is extraordinary. So it's a really great movie musical. I feel like, especially the earlier movie musicals were shot nice and wide and you could see everything, and they went relying on super fast editing, and the music was yet to be over produced, and so you could hear what people sound like when they sing, rather than this kind of very sort of filtered and tuned version of singing that we get nowadays, which I think kind of puts Us at a distance from especially communicating you know, emotion
and ideas with a voice when you're when you're singing and acting at the same time, nothing like like if you compare. The only modern musical that really nailed out I thought was Leamy's a Rabla where they sung live and I just I love that. Not everyone did, but I thought that was really effective. And then something like the remake of Anie with Jamie Fox and Rose Byrne, where they just auto tuned a living shit out of everybody. It's just like watching you know, it's this robotic as
its no feeling in it. So I love that about Jesus Christ Superstars. It's beautiful something. It's a beautiful score.
Obviously you didn't see it in the cinema because you were you were literally shooting your nappy and yeah, other things on your mind. But have you gone back and really, like you how much controversy was there around Jesus Christ Superstar because obviously Monty Python and Martin Scorsese would have tested if you if you do something around in this area that it can draw, it can draw you know protesters.
Yeah, well, Jesus Growth Superstar is not a comedy, so you know, they didn't have to walk that gaunt that I felt Monty Python had to walk, which was, you know, if anybody is laughing during a piece that concerns religion and they're laughing at us, right, which is such a strange, reductive way of looking at it, that almost like, you know, religion has to reject humor and it has to be serious at every level or the whole facade of it will fall apart, which I don't. I don't agree with,
but I think most people don't either. I don't know whether there is any controversy with Jesus Christ Superstar. I know that it was the kind of musical that defined my parents' era. Like they would they would go to parties and put the record on and on the stereo and they would all sit around singing the show.
You know.
Sounds kind of cash what a party Jesus Christ, you know, but it was.
It was a modernization of the of the New Testament story, and I think it was radical because it really humanized the characters. There's not a lot of magic, In fact, there's somebody any magic in Jesus Christ Superstar. It's it's kind of a this song and dance obviously, but it's about the political climate of the time, about the Roman occupation of Jerusalem, about tension with the occupying forces, and who should be allowed, about the controversy that g This
is caused in his teachings. The concept of whether he was a god or just a man comes into it a lot, but is not really confirmed or rejected through any kind of representation of a magical god or anything. It's just about perception and political pressure and expediency. And it's also about what happens when you know you're trying to change you're trying to change things. It's really hard as a group to have a particular ideology and try and change things. And they fight amongst each other in
Jesus Christ style, which is great. I mean it's like people probably know that, you know, trying to tag after bar we try not to turn Everything's all right, Yes, that has a big fight, but I mean an amazing kind of fight between Jesus and Judas, which is about jesus relationship with Mary Magdalene, and also about you know, like whether or not it's worth spending money on oil or relaxation or fun or do we deserve any of that stuff when there are poor people and the kind
of ideological things I think really spoke to a generation the seventies who were interested in ideals of social justice and equity and education and healthcare and all the things that you know we've kind of inherited today and probably take definitely take for granted that didn't we were emerging, I guess in Australia under GoF Whitlam and those sort
of people. This notion of religion was isn't just like a just be good and you'll go to heaven or magical miracle things will happen and take care of you. It's this notion of the where it's more of a humanist thing. Really, we're here to look after each other and wherever we're going, we're going to all go together, and that education is important and that we shouldn't reject
the kind of least of us in society. And there's a miracle of Jesus that he was that he went and spoke to lepers and sex workers and was not judgmental. I think those ideals are really in Jesus Christ Superstyle, which was written by Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber who wrote the music, and Tim Rice I think wrote the wrote the and it's all sung, so it's a rock opera and that was a very big deal back then.
It's funny because a show like Jesus Christ Superstuff becomes its own thing because there's been, you know, countless versions on stage from it, and people if you haven't seen it and what you speak about it, I'm not sure if I have seen even on stage. I one of those things. I thought I had, and then I realized that you kind of explained the story. I think I don't think I have. I remember who was in it.
I remember John Stevens being Jesus all that you know, and I think probably like Rod Laverna like multiple.
That was with John Farnham playing Jesus, of course, and he's the most that recording. I mean, if anybody is like a spare hour and wants to listen to John Farnham singing his face off, and who doesn't. His vocals on that album are extraordinaries, like it's it's it's a staggeringly difficult part role to sing. It's got both Judas and Jesus are like these rock tenor roles, and Jesus is the way it's scored for Jesus just kind of
like in Saints. In the stratosphere of be natural I think quite a lot of be naturals all the way through, maybe a couple of Caesar or a Sea sharp, which is for people who know singing, it's like the top tenor range, you know, like a top seed. So it requires a pretty unique voice. And John Farner is probably one of the best jesus Is the world has ever produced, just Australia, but the world's ever produced. His singing that role was absolutely extraordinary, And yeah, it was him playing Jesus.
John Stephens was Judas.
I think maybe I never saw it, so I remember it was very so big that I kind of felt like in case of Brano, I think was Mary Mary? So by the way, on they're playing back from the Gold Coach. Recently I watched finally, I watched the John Farm documentary Finding the Voice. Oh right, have you seen it?
No, I kind of been avoiding it. I don't know why I'm avoiding it.
I was a little bit of same and I don't know why. I thought maybe was an opportunistic because find his Heady's health concerns and I was a bit you know, I'm not sure if I was subconsciously put off by that. It is extraordinary. It is you know, there wouldn't be too people listening to this podcasts who obviously does don't know who John Farnam is. If you're from overseas, you might not know him. But he's I think the greatest voice Australia's ever produced.
The one of the world's greatest singers.
Yeah, and like Tom Jones, and you know, there's people around the world who who I've got to know him and who will vouch for that he's extraordinary. But he hasn't always had it easy and he got dismissed early because he had this kind of you know, song about a cleaning lady.
That kind of got you know, he was a total matinee idol.
Yeah, and he got to put into a corner. We pigeonholed him and it took him a long time to get to where he wanted to be and to finally make the album that was reflective of Whispering Jack, which just became the album that I remember everyone having it. I was in grade five and I just remember everybody having that album and it's still to hear you're the voice sung I've heard. I don't think I've heard it twice him sing it in a room and it's just spine tingling.
Really, Oh my god, I've never seen John Farnham live. I don't think, even though I'm a big, big fan of just never had the opportunity. He's so extraor that album is so extraordinary. It's an incredible album. But I remember in the days of Hey, Hey, it's Saturday. Every now and then he'd be on the show and there'd
be like a Tom Jones or you know. I think even one time he had to chat to Stevie Wonder and they were talking about their vocal range, how high they could sing, and they're both sort of singing stuff together, and it was like quite extraordinary that John Farnham and Stevie Wonder had a really similar vocal range but totally
different tones. And that was one of the great things about that show, was the kind of cross pollination that happened between artists from here and overseas, and and yeah, John Farnham was no one, no one like John Farnon. I got to see that.
Anybody listening to go see Finding the Voice. I think it's available to rent on some of the streamers now, but we'll move on, the Children of Men. Clive Owen. I feel like this film I find so Coron directed this. I think so this film, I feel like, is getting the further it gets away from when it was made, the more people are finding it almost and it's becoming a like more of a classic that the further it gets away from this.
Yeah, I feel like, now if I bring it up with people, people are like, oh, I love that film. Whereas there was a good kind of a wild I saw it at the cinemas and then you know that thing when you come out of the cinemas and it's, oh my god, it's all this amazing film, and it just people were really into it. People weren't really watching it, and so I was like, did I really see this film? Because it's got so many Julian Moore right and Climber, it's a star in it. It's got a Michael Caine
cameo in it, and he plays crazy. But it's it's so tense and so wonderfully shot in this kind of futuristic place where peop where humans have stopped having babies and there's been pockets of resistance and stuff. But it opens with this I think a terrorst bomb going off in a cafe and that scene is just so alarming, you know, okay where this is going to be a terrify the whole thing. And it's a brilliant film. It's so great.
Yeah, you invested straight away. It is a great thing. I'd love to cover it for this podcast. Actually, that'll be a great one. Okay, great to try to about you. Three fair films, Aliens, Jesus Christ, Supicide, remember a bit of fancy thrown in there for good measure. But we're here, of course the chat about this one.
Thank you? Read music, My gal, who could ask for anything more? Daisy in Green Pasture, My gal, who could ask for anything more?
Old man Trouble, I don't mind him.
You won't find him around my doors.
Six oscars in nine to fifty one in an American in Paris, owned Jean Kelly, directed by Vincent Menali who's going through a bit of a divorce I think with Judy Garland so a bit distracted and Gene Kelly would have to come in and direct some scenes edy perfect. Did you enjoy an American Parish?
I did, Actually I did enjoy it, but I I the Big caveat around that is there is a there is a huge age difference between let's say On and Gene Kelly. Let's just because it's there, it's it's and it does only wanted to work. My god, she's so beautiful because when she's getting described I think we're introduced to her on screen in the film, when she's being described by the French character, Yes, it's his fiance, he's
in love with her. She's amazing, and he's describing her to Gene Kelly, and it's ridiculous that.
Gen Kelly, it's it's to Jean Kelly's composed of the piano friend. Yeah, the piano friend Adam something, Adam Cook, I think his name is. Like, let's have a listen to the sum of the it's And so he's described being her, and then it's we see her dance. She's an amazing dancer, and Jean Kelly in real life is vacationing in Paris, sees her and basically puts it in the movie. Her film film debut didn't speak much English
before this had learnt a bit from the movie. But let's have listen to some of the descriptions and the music as we get introduced to Lisa.
She seems to be a lusty young lady. Oh no, she's sweet and shy, old version girl.
Huh, of course not. She's divacious and modern, always jacking up. Don't be silly. She is incessantly.
There'sn't all that reading meger Moody.
Never, she's the gayest girl in the world.
Yes, she's everything.
She's everything, everything at all. Whatever you wanted to be, she's that.
And every one of those musical breaks is like a fantasy segments where we see her dressed up in a different way and she's either being coquettish or she's doing mod jazz, and she can really Dance's one point, she does a series of fetes on point and you're just like, okay, so she's a proper ballet training, classical dance.
It's extraordinary that her dancing is extraordinary. But when she's reading, she's on the piano and she kind of moved. I don't know how to describe it all. But and then she does like a what I would say is like a kind of a cartwheel off one foot, and then yeah, it's it's incredible.
It's extra extraordinary, and she looks amazing. She's got these big eyes and the beautiful, big smart because her face looks incredible, but she's quite tiny.
So she's doing this amazing work on screen. And then you have these two blocks sucking it up for the rest of us. I know she reads incessantly, one of those series.
Reading must make her moody. You're like, wow, yeah, it's it's look at gender politics are not great?
No, And in this podcast, obviously you imagine it's come up a lot, and so sometimes it's easy the shift of the side. I felt this hung over this movie for me quite a because, by the way, it's the first time I'd seen this movie as well, so I'm still processing it a bit.
He just it's just his the character Jerry Mulligan sees this woman. Where does he see her first at a party or something or.
He's kind of nightclub so he has already met Milo. Yeah, and there's a lot to say about Milo as well. She kind of takes an interest in him, both romantically and eventually his artwork, but it kind of feels like it's more romantic. Takes him out to dinner and he just starts.
Leering, leering. He's leering.
Yeah, And that's also the trouble, says the age difference. And then for me, it's how this relationship begins.
She says no to him so many times. In fact, I think she actually says, leave me alone, go away. She gives him a phone number, and he only gets the right one because the father is sitting next door is oh, silly girl, it's four or five and seven, and he's like, aha, I got your number, you know what I.
Mean, Like, dude, yeah, not reading the room at all.
Was no, And she's very clear about it being no. And I guess at some point you've got to believe that there's a she transitions from you know, a no to a year.
So that seems to happen while they're suggesting. It happens in the jewelry store where he rocks up to her work after he said she said, don't come again. That's right. He rocks up to her work and again she's saying no, no. He helps out with a customer. He recommends some perfume, I think, and she makes her say but she's still that's not the bit that impresses her. It may soften her a bit, but she's still pretty much get out of here. And then he makes it kind of a
weird joke. Weird joke drinking the perfume or putting on his head and that makes her crack up laughing, and then it's all everything's forgotten about and we are on here.
That's a lot of pressure on a joke, rips to like go, You've gone from being like somebody that you would Okay, I think I need to call the police or something at this point because he is so intense and weird. Yeah, I didn't really buy that. Also, I don't think she's written very well that character, and I don't think any of the women in the film are
written very well. And it's the screenplays by Alan J. Lerner, who is a Britant writer who wrote the book for My Fair Lady and the book for Brigantoon I think as well, and the lyrics Camelot as well. He wrote the music the book and the lyrics for Camelot. And he is an interesting guy. I've actually read his memoirs. He's written his memoirs called a Terrible Name called on the Street where I Live, which is after the song
from My Fair Lady. But he's an interesting guy. But I just don't think they really think know or care about maybe the complexities of a female character at all. They're just a sort of someone to be one or lost, or to come or to go to be you know, lovely, and then just sort of flit off with no real opinions of their own. It's weird.
It's really weird. And you might be listening to this thinking are we just being woke? But it's not even about that. It's about the story suffering because you're not invested. All of a sudden, I don't believe this romance at all.
It's interesting, I do feel because the Gershwin. Gershwin writes an American in Paris as a piece in nineteen twenty eight I think it is twenty seven or twenty eight, and then Arthur Freed buys, well, it becomes obsessed with the idea of the title, and American in Paris wants
to make a movie. Arthur Freed is like, I think one of the heads of MGM and Gershwin dies in nineteen thirty eight, and Arthur Fred goes to Ira Gershwin, his brother, and says, I want to buy an American in Paris to music and the title, and he said you can use it, but only if you use other Gershwin music, so then they have to retro fit these bits of music. Ira Gershwin writes the lyrics to his brother's songs or pieces of music. Here ross lyrics, but
they are retrofitting the shoehorning songs into a story. And you can when you know that it makes complete sense and that's how it's happening.
Yeah. Yeah, And it's very theatrical in the way it works, and I think this is one of those films where people don't really recall the plot, all the characters. They just sort of they remember the grandiosity of it. It's huge, and the set pieces the way that they work so well. You know, early on there's a brilliant piece which is by Strauss, which is a song of ersions that I
never really paid much attention to before. It's a great lyric it's just really an ode to Charles Strauss, the Viennese composer, Walt's composer, and so it's got that kind of jauntiness to it. But everybody gets involved from that, chambermaids and domestic servants, and it's beautifully beautifully shot and beautifully performed, and it's really vivacious and fun, and I think people remember that sort of stuff rather than the storyline you.
Imagine when you're shooting those because stream Kelly was a perfection and not the easiest person to get along to and was pretty hard on his fellow actors and people around him. In fact, the lady who played Lisa Leslie Kron, she suffered malnutrition during World War Two. And this is the other thing that blows my mind about movies around his,
like Casablanca, like all these movies have made. Yeah, I think Blank, it's made while the wall is still going, you know, and this is made not long after the war. So yeah, she suffered malnutrition in World War two, so it couldn't necessarily do day after day and the kind of schedule they had it which kind of pissed gin Kelly off. So even though he founded her put it in the movie, eventually, I think their relationship sound because he was like, you can't you know, you know, I
need you to work this hard. But you did watch those scenes. Do you think that this one person to kind of fuck up, like even like you know, a background dancer, to kind of trip or to kind of not be looking at the wrong camera looking at it in there and they have to do it again.
I imagine it's extraordinary and it's not inter cut like we're used to sing with contemporary stuff, and I think that plays so well into dance and the sense of space. And there are a couple of beautiful crane shots where you get to see the whole sound stage and you can even kind of get the idea of where it blends into the big imagine those big painted backdrops of like Monmatra, you know, like the lights coming up and Paris and in his Eiffel Tower. It's all the beautifully
made sets and stuff. It's really loved to see. But yeah, it's quite random. And there are kids in this as well. Like I think you've played a clip before, you know, I Got Rhythm where GM Kelly's getting each of them to say I got before that song.
I thought that was one of my favorites and as close to outside of the American Parish which I've heard of music, that was the one I was expecting more for me to watch this film, going oh, that's where this one comes from, you know, that's why we reference that, That's where that song. That was maybe the only time I went, oh, that's from this movie yeah, right, very little recall. Yeah, any other time I did like that sequence.
Yeah, it's good. Yeah, they're amazing sequences. I mean, I mean, like, just to talk about the Milo character, you know, there is that thing where I reckon that actress is probably younger than Gen Kelly, but you know, they're sort of made to look like the older woman and they're just sort of automatically suspicious from the beginning. Yeah, and you know, she comes in, she's wealthy, she buys his paintings. She wants to help him, and she's interested in his art
and she believes in him. But there's something kind of I don't know what it is. The film kind of makes her suspicious and gross and foolish really, and he doesn't treat her very well either, because he sort of like ignores her. And then and then when things turn sour with the romance with the young lady with Lisa, he just pretends to be into Milo all of a sudden, and that's quite cruel. Takes her out to a party and he's like, you know, we're going to be together now.
And when it doesn't work out with the young girl, he sort of breaks it off with Milo, and I just felt so sorry for her. I sort of used and discarded.
They didn't give her any dignity or like it. I recall the sound of music, you know, where the baroness who is obviously in love with von Shrapp, they give her her mate where she breaks up with him and says, you know, she knows that he's in love with Maria, so she's given that that moment where through kind of you know, holding it together, she holds her shit together. Well, but she she breaks up with him. We know that she doesn't want to do that because she can see
this somebody else. This movie lacks that that moment.
It does. And do you think it also lacks any conversation about art.
Well, you barely see painting.
He's a painter. He's not interested in talking about paintings.
To the point where they forget about it, like to the point where.
He's selling encyclopedias or something, you know what I mean. It's so kind of cold. And he paints like the paints you do see. He's painting like street scenes or
I think he paints one figure. He paints a young girl holding a balloon at one point, but mostly it's paintings of buildings and stuff, but he just sort of every scene is carrying them all these canvases around, is trying to seldom to people, but he never really has a this is what I want to say with my art, or this is why I'm an artist, or it's just he just seems like a rich guy.
And then what happens to his dream like becomes about the girl. Yeah, and there's no like where what was he trying to get to? Like, surely there could have been an exhibition that he was trying to put on, and we see that happen, and you could have instead of gone to that party that we'd kind of black and white artistic party, could it could have been at his exhibition, you know, like have something that kind of informs gives us an idea where his journey, his art
journey's at. And also his friend is the composer who we have this elaborate kind of dream sequence of him playing.
Then nothing happens, Then nothing happens with him.
Does he achieved his dream?
No?
And in fact, I think he has a.
Couple of lines where he alludes to the fact that Jerry Mulligan or Jeffre Mulligan is is not a good painter. Did you get that sense that said?
Or am I early on? Which I love the opening before we even get to we spoke about early all the contraptions and and the way he's designed his apartment to you know, fit his needs. The way the camera moves up to this to reveal the windows, and there's a lot of misdirecting going on, like so, no, that's not me. You know, he's too happy and he comes up. Oh yeah, yeah, you see him in these pajamas. There's a bit where he said, back home they told me
I was no good. They probably said the same thing here, but in French it sounds nicer. Yeah, there's some nice lines in all of that stuff. Actually, the humor in this movie is not consistent, Like sometimes it feels on the nose and heavy hand, and other times it's like it's just quite Yeah, it works quite well.
And I know that, you know, there's there's obviously subtexting them when you look at the period of time in which it was made and where it's set. You know, you just had the second one was horrible, absolutely horrible. He just had the Holocaust. I mean, how do you? I mean, I still think it's almost still impossible for humans to console what happened and the atrocities of the Second World War, and so they're very sort of present and people were recovering from that. So there's a sense
of like, you know, wanting to there. But there could be a lot to say in that film about ideals, about artistic integrity, about what you're willing to do for art. And one point one of the maids is like, are you going to sleep with this woman to get your art?
And she's quite supportive of that in a sort of a French European you know, whatever you've got to do to make it that that was something that was like pragmatism at some point, you know, you need to you want to sell your art, you want to get ahead, you want to put food on the table and survive as a painter. You know, maybe you get into an ethical issue where it's like do I have to fuck this woman?
You know?
Do I have to do that in order to to get a He doesn't. She's like, I'm gonna We're going to give you an exhibition and he's like, wow, hang on, hang on here, you know three months, you can't rush my art. I like, just during some more painting building, what are you doing?
But like you say, I don't believe that Geene Kley or Jerry Mulligan's not fucking it up. He doesn't present as the guy who's so passionate about his art. He basically goes to montmart because he needs some lunch money, I think, he says, you know, so he brows some money. So he's not painting enough. He's not talking about art enough to have these these lines where he's drawing a line and going, no, I'm not you know, you're an attractive woman and you are you're you're you're successful, and
you like my art. Why wouldn't I be attracted to that? You know, like the idea. I mean, you know, I can certainly understand where you know, he's saying, I'm not an escort, and you know I do get that, But it just doesn't marry up to the Jerry Mulligan that we've met.
Yeah, no it doesn't. And when there's a sort of a montage of sequence of him painting, it's like supposed to be like, oh, you know, getting ready, getting rid of the big show, might have to do something, and it just looks like a normal guy going around painting, But it's sort of got this sense of like, oh, he's got a guy has to actually paint now because he's got an exhibition coming up, and then we never get the exhibition.
Do he no?
No, like he really they really do. Forget about the idea that this started off as a guy who had steady parents after the war to pursue his dream of becoming an artist. And one of the very few in fact artistic conversations I have is when he first meets Milow in the streets of mark Mark, Let's have her listen to that.
Do you mind if I look? Or will you chew my head off too?
Nah?
Go ahead, you're okay, Oh, thank you.
She's one of those third year girls. I graped my lever, did you go?
Yeah? You know, American college kids come over here to take their third year and lap up a little culture.
They give me a swift pain.
Why they're harmless enough, they're officious and ball they're always making profound observations they've overheard.
I mean, it's kind of an interesting little you know inside, it's probably talk more to the American experience.
Shut that student down faster, doesn't mean like she's like, what's what is your painting? About and he's like, get the hell out of him. I'm talking about my work with what meaning.
I wonder why you're a struggling artist because you tell somebody the fuck off. Yeah. Seconds into the conversation it was.
A pain adult bah.
I don't know again. I mean, maybe you're gonna that's a counter argument to what I just said. Maybe he is his artist who has his you know, his morals.
And his virues, and part of it is just refusing to talk about any deeper meaning with his work. You know the movie, you know, the movie that does the idea of which is like relocating to a new place, becoming you know, a European city or a town, and becoming sort of healed by the new environment that is different to America. The film that, weirdly is a weird parallel, but I feel like it doesn't better is the Equalizer three? Were you expecting that?
I was, you know, my brain was doing its work and going, well, okay, where's it going with this one? I was going there. The Michael Winterbottom film set in the town in Italy, and I think that's about kind of somebody healing in a in a place in Italy. But that's no I wasn't expecting equalized the threat, right, and I haven't seen it right.
Well, I mean, I won't give anything away, but essentially equalized. He I mean, there's a lot. It's a big world out there, there's a lot, you know, like he's never going to get through it. He certainly equalized. The ship out of that town, he goes to some it's a town in Italy. It's I can't remember the name of it, but it's I don't know, and I don't even know whether that's Alta, Montel de Monte, the hell did I
remember that? And it's beautiful. The town is beautiful. I think it might even there's a couple of months where they go to Naples as well. It's also really beautiful. And he sort of finds peace and meaning amongst these people in this new life and then sort of you know, but then trouble comes and then he has to kind of rise of the occasion, and now he has a purpose of the people that he cares about in this world that he cares about, that he wants to he
wants to have them free from tyranny. So he steps up and does his equalizers. Shit, it's sort of about you can be in a new place, but you still have your wounds and your issues. And I felt that that explored the psychology of how we the notion of how much can you run from who you are? How much can you reinvent who you are? How much acceptance of is there of who you are? But this film sort of feels like he played the American imp Paris, feels like he plays at art a little bit, that
art really is. Art gets dispensed with very quickly in order to make way for the love story, but also for frivolous things like you know, dancing and singing and drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes and cafes and stuff. All the glamorous stuff seems to kind of come first.
Yeah.
Yeah, And another thing I noticed that I'm surprised that Paris wasn't more of a character in this movie, if you like. And I know that Geene Kelly wanted to shoot this on location in Paris and they wouldn't allow him. There was permit problems and also the costs. So I think there was forty four sets built the n GYM lot in California, but you only see the Eiffel Tower once, and it's in there at the end when he's on the balcony in the distance, and then they do an
incredible job painting these sets. And you know, I'm not saying you don't feel a little bit of Paris in there, but like there's a lot of shots in rooms, you know, as opposed to being out in the streets.
Yeah.
Yeah, and the couple of shots there are out in the streets. It's a little it's got a kind of a French overlay, but it doesn't really feel like anywhere in particular. So it does feel like a fantasy because of that. I mean, obviously it's a very well manicured and curated fantasy, but it's like he's living inside a painting.
And there are actually some quite a lot of moment including the sequence at the end to an American in Paris where paintings come to life, and there are a lot of sort of sort of references to French Impressionism and things like that. Yes, so it's it's not really of the real world. Is that it really is a kind of a dream. Yeah, And let's talk about that. Some people listened to this podcast before they watched a movie. They've told me, so, ah waits so obviously the spoilers
throughout all this, but some people don't mind. So one of the important parts of this story is that there is is the Three Men. Who is Gene Kelly, Jerry Mulligan. There is Jerry Mulligan is a weird character name Jerry Mulligan.
It's not the most inspired of names. And there is Adam Cook oscar Levant, who's a comic relief. Have you seen Singing in the Rain, by the way, I have seen singing that. No, he's not in that, but donad O'Connor, I think his name. He plays almost that, you know, they make him laugh and he is so fucking good, like he's like. So I saw Singing in the Rain for this podcast a couple of years ago. Actually I watch it before this part because Tony Martin said it was one of his three fraight films.
So when I watched it, the flip off, the make them laughter them when we got the back flip off, the war.
The whole sequence is extraordinary. And I got to say, because I was so looking forward to seeing because I knew once six oscars, I love Singing in the Rain. It is so good, and so I'm holding this to a very high bar because I think Seeing the Rain is extraordinary, and I think this doesn't reach those standards. In parts it does. I think in parts it does. But you have these three characters, and you have then you have is a composer or a musician. He's got amazing.
Voice and French cabaret singer.
Engaged with Lisa, so they both have these secrets that they don't know. Once once Jerry falls in love with Lisa, and then it's kind of they talk about in a roundabout kind of way, and Henri encourages him to kind of pursue this opportunity with this woman. He doesn't know who it is obviously, and we.
Have to just go tell her how you feel, tell her you love her. Right, And then instead of going, well this is this book, he's.
A no, does he I love you? Yeah? He says, this woman stuck on his shop with you, that's half the battle you've won. Just go go and tell her. Adam Cook he's doing some nice comedic work. He's got a cigare in his mouth, he's undering coffee and he's he can't he can't, you know, he can't say, But what do you think of Adam Blood? Did he did he bring the last for you.
I found myself like Becaure's a lot of like three shots where you know, there's a scene playing out and it's just him trying to be funny, mugging in the background, or you know. And I found myself like being my focus being pulled towards him a lot and watching him a lot. But I did not find him funny and I kind of or really even like enjoyable to look at on screen. I was like, what's going on with you? Like he's like the I'm like, are you seventy years old?
Are you thirty five years old? And like he had that kind of you know, I didn't didn't make the cut for the rat pack or something. You know, he couldn't get in and he's like, you know, if you had that vibe. But I never really believed in him as a character well, and.
I don't think they invested much into his journey. And he was a friend of Gershwin and Arthur Freed, so it was more of a penis and an actor. So I think knowing that, I think he does a pretty good job of it. But I agree, like when you said like it was it wasn't good to look at and that sounds harsh, But like I think, maybe is it Daniel O'Connor in Singing the Rain. He's such a good comic, kind of relief sidekick. I think I just wanted him in the film, to see him and Gene
Kelly together again. But also, like I said earlier, they don't invest anything into his storyline. He's got, like he starts off, we know what he wants, so he's got the starting point of something. He wants to be a famous composer in the Great concert Halls of Europe. We've seen in the dream sequence, but we barely see him again after that.
Yeah, I think he is reduced to a bit of a function, you know, like so that characters don't have to talk to themselves in a soliloquy. He's sort of they're bouncing little one liners, but the one line is a kind of I don't know. I felt myself getting a little worn down, and I was like, am I being unfair? Because this is quite an old film. Maybe all of the dialogue feels really tropy and a little bit on the nose because other people have copied it a lot since then, But even still, I found his
dialogue pretty clunky and his humor pretty layman. Because he's playing somebody that's sort of quote unquote cool, or at least he's trying to be someone that's cool. It's it's less interesting to me, whereas like a performance, like a comic performance like Robert Moose in How to Succeed in Business is not really trying, which is just for a minute, going to be in my top three because I love that film. That's a really weird comic performance. I don't know if you've seen that film.
But no, I think I have Robert Moose. I thought I have it. I think I was thinking of the secret of my success.
Right, Robert Moos is sort of I think I get in the right actor. It's a guy that he just passed away semi recently, and he has played the boss in mad Men. You know, it's a big oh Bert Bert someone he's amazing. That's a really funny comic performance. But yeah, I wasn't loving I wasn't loving Adam Cook.
Yeah I was a bit the same sweet smell of my success, well not not the Michael J. Fox the secret of my success. So we had an email from somebody who thanks yes any podcast at gmail dot Com is where you send it, and this is one of the reasons why I did kind of push you towards doing this movie. And it's it's got a long aim. I won't get to all of it, but it is from Justine McGovern. Thank you, justin for getting in touch
with this. She loves the pod. She's a jen X film graduate, although she never ended up working in the industry, but she's obviously a cinephile and she loves watching musicals with a nana on a Saturday afternoon. Her nana's favorite of South Pacific hers is Singing in the Rain, mainly because it's about the Bierz and who doesn't love Geen Keley Donald O'Connor's being saying Daniel O'Connor good comic Dan O'Connell, but the make him Laugh piece with Debbie Reynolds is
just adorable. She also loves an American in Paris and also Meet Me in Saint Louis pretty much everything with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. So she was hoping we could get somebody to cover an MGM musical. Obviously we're doing that now, So what I would like to be able to do now because we have found a few things that we didn't like about it, but there are some things that are really good. Like Jim Kelly is
so watchable whenever he is on screen. Yes, like you're feel in safe hands, and I felt I always talk about the feeling in safe hands? When do you feel in safe pans in a movie? And to be honest, that opening shot with the into the windows of the apartments, I thought, I actually got excited. I was like, Oh, this is gonna be It's gonna be good. Yeah, I mean, I'm excited here and then I don't know, it fell apart not long after, long, not long after.
I think that what happens with this film? And it's the same feeling I got when I saw a musical On the Town, which is music by Leonard Bernstein, booking music by Betty Comden and Adolph Green. I saw revival of it on Broadway when one of the first trips to New York.
I made Green does the scene in the rain music?
I think, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think Comdon and Green wrote a lot of lyrics and a lot of scripts for things. They were really successful. They wrote On the Town in three months and it's got three dream ballets, in it, which is a lot. Even one dream ballet
is a lot. And the whole dream ballet thing I'm kind of obsessed with and was something that was was I think it could be wrong, but I think it was championed in Oklahoma when Oklahoma premiered, that was that had had a dream ballet in the in the second act where the two main main characters, Laurie and Curly, dance together and she smells some smelling salts from the traveling salesman and she has this crazy dream. And it became a big part of musical theater culture to put
a dream ballet in there. This idea that you could express unexpressed thoughts and nightmares and dreams and fantasies and sort of things like that and would live inside this piece. It really works well with musicals, and you could have two characters who were different who were dances and weren't the actual central characters come in and dance that part. And On the Town has three of those, and it's a similar thing. Even though the music was written, the
songs were written for that piece. It was written quickly and it was one of those things we were like, it's about using the talents of people that you've got around them and using people like Jerome Robbins, the great director choreographer who could tell story through dance in such extraordinary ways. You know, I feel like an American in Paris is a is a jukebox musical in that it's like, let's use all of Gershwin's songs, let's try and create
a story that goes around it. But it's really a support for these moments that are going to be like big song and dance moments, and it's going to be generally a love story. And I think that what happens is because the songs aren't written specifically for each of those moments, there's a non specificity about them that means
it's enjoyable. But generally the action stops, the narrative stops, and we just enjoy, you know, some singing and dancing, Whereas if it was purpose written, you know, you could have you know, what's it mean to fall in love and how difficult it is to fall in love or find the right person, or to be an artist in this town, or.
To choose between art and love, you know, children, art and.
Love, yeah or yeah, money and not money and friendship or love which is more important, you know, following dreams, giving up and all those things that kind of aren't really in there. I mean they're great Gershwin songs. That's wonderful and by Strauss and I Got Rhythm And what's the one they sing when they're down on the banks the river send the two of them. I think it's like embraceable you or like.
Embraced by you. I think maybe it's called yeah, which I think Jim Kelly directed that sequence. In total. I mean, there are some of those scenes by the river which I didn't love. The first one where taking them how pretty she is and you're you're, oh, yeah, you're a body of work or something, and remember me of high school, you know where like yeah, and again it's it's you do see the age you know it is?
You know?
And I know it's a Hollywood thing, which I think they've corrected more recently as far as having more age appropriate couplings in film. So I understand that it was a thing, but watching it now, did it certainly hungover? Hung over it from me?
Yeah, And then the outrageous outfit that he's wearing an American prower that skin tight beij.
What is it.
It's got a little cap on as well.
Yeah.
Yeah, he looks I mean.
He's a fit dude, but he's like got that he sort of he's filled out like a man, you know what I mean.
Yeah, yeah, so that sequence, let's talk about that. I mean, because that is an extraordinary piece of filmmaking to commit to. The studio said they wanted to cut it because it's going to it cost half a million dollars. I think Arthur Freed, the producer, or at least Gene Kelly and Menale all went to the head of MGM, the top head, and said, you know, we can't cut this, and told him all the reasons why, and he eventually said, I don't understand a word you're saying, but I believe in
you guys. Go and do what you gotta do. Get out of here, which is great. That is awesome, And they went and shot this got pretty amazing. Like there were times I was watching going what I think, I'm getting lost in the I'm not sure what the storytelling's I'm the following it, and then I kind of I watched it again and just like let it, you know, wash over me. And they're almost traveling through Paris, like the history of Paris almost.
It's almost almost like all of America and all of Paris sort of smashing into each other and culture clash. And then it's interesting because it's sort of, yeah, it's it's that's what I thought it was. I thought it was sort of his whole story of coming to Paris falling in love, the flower representing the kind of potential of their love, and she sort of leaves it, and when he comes back to it, he's like a ghost
and he can't really pick it up. And then then he kind of becomes more solid and he's like, I don't know what the fuck.
Really, and he's holding these flowers and he drops the flowers and he's feeling sad because maybe love's lost. And then these other three dances and are his sailors or something, and they kind of give him a nudge and then he's like, oh, we can dance, and I'm back there. Yeah, yeah, he's back in a sequence.
I got so distracted with the flowers because I kept thinking about just the kind of technical part of Technicolor, you know, because I think they had to hand pain pain yeah, and like, that's beautiful job they've done. On this like the flowers especially, like, wow, looks amazing. So the whole thing is it's pretty baddy, and it's he looks extraordinarily odd in that first outfit, but it's a vibe.
They go for it. Well that's it. I mean, eighteen minutes. It's no dialogue or dance like it's if you put yourself in the nine to fifty one seeing that must have been pretty mind blowing. I mean this is like, this is I guess one of the beginnings of the modern musical. You know, you went from you know, the Gay Divorcee or your musical is like that and the friend of stair of Ginger Rogers into this kind of kind of sexually charged kind of you know, loafer wearing George Croney dude.
You know, it's kind of yeah, he's nuts, he's old. And I like the French guy that sings the song on the staircase, the light up staircase. It sort of illuminates the women along the on the balustrades, and then there were women are kind of making up a Roman columns and stuff and they were draped around and it's very old school Hollywood, And yeah, I really, I really enjoyed that. It's beautiful.
Yeah. Also, I didn't realize so Jeen Kelly served in the wall, but he served in the film unit, where he made basically education videos and directed like.
Danced in them literally escape shelling.
He did do one good how to assemble and disassemble your rifle. I would love to have seen him this do you know dance moves into that the old kicker on the ground and kicking it up and putting over your shoulder. That that would have worked.
That would have been great. And then.
But it was yeah, it's it's listen. I'm really glad I watched it. There were things that impressed me. I still think gene Kelly is an absolute superstar, but it just doesn't as far as singing in the Rain. How did it compare? Do you like?
Do you have a I much preferred singing in the Rain, I'm gonna say, and I love Jean Kelly's dancing. But I think this is probably like if I was going to run a gene Kelly appreciation course, I would make students watch an American in Paris quite late in the unit, because I did I found the sort of the tone deafness of the intensity of that relationship and the age difference and the kind of sort of coercive control going on really did not do wonders for gene Kelly. But
then he makes up for it when he dances. But he's not the most likable character in this in this movie is like, there's not a lot of sympathy for him or why he should get what he wants. He makes no sacrifices, he doesn't think about anyone else but himself. He is an artist, but he doesn't sort of seem to care about art very much. And then when he works out that the person that he loves is going to marry his friend, isn't back off one inch to.
The point when Lisa kind of comes back, so we come out of the sequence of the rose and all that, and then he looks down and she comes back. It's just like and the guy who gives her a hug and always gives him a ways up.
And then you know, and that was an interesting choice. Why did they need why do they need the idea that the conversation that would have happened in the cab would have been I'm in love with Jerry Mulligan whatever. And while they're doing American in Paris dancing. They would have had a conversation and the cab would have turned
around and would have brought her back. But there was obviously a real need for the friend to not just lose his fiance, lose the love of his life potentially, but also that he had to approve of her going to his friend. And I don't know, I don't know why. I don't know what. Gene Kelly's character doesn't deserve that, really.
No, because he just stands on a balcony like he doesn't even go out and doesn't awkward castaway moment.
Yeah, I did say thanks to his mate.
No, yeah, And he just doesn't feel earned. I think the best moments in movies you earn those moments. And because it's not set up well at the beginning, and it's a bit creepy, you don't buy that love at any point. You know, there's nothing your age difference. She's nineteen, he's thirty eight. Jin Kelly thirty eight. His mate Henri is two years younger. But they had the gray his haird and make him look older, so he's supposed to
be a bit older. There's a little creepy detail about they explain the history like that he hid Lisa on behalf of a parents during the war, and that's a noble thing to do, but for five years, and so he's especially hit her as a fourteen year old and then falling in love with her being at least nineteen twenty plus years older. It's pretty creepy.
Yeah, you'd like you're opening up the trap door every day, putting some bread down in the air, and like you like, yeah, I'll keep you hidden for a few more years.
Was done ever full context? There's been Russell brand in the news this week, so maybe you know, I don't know what we're projecting.
They certainly weren't hoping we were not going to think about that and do the mats on that. But that is super creepy.
There's a few fun facts. Leslie Karan wears some costumes that were warn by Liz Taylor the year before in The Father of the Bride, the original Father of the Bride. Sometimes they shared the wardrobe around and writer Alan Jay Lerner that you mentioned before, wrote this in four months, including finishing in a twelve hour stretch the night before his wedding. You know, sometimes when you hear film has been written quickly, you kind of go, yeah, I reckon, you could have taken a bit longer.
Yeah, he was. I mean from reading his memoirs, he was a big believer in the lock yourself in a hotel room and write the lyric all night. And so that's a lot of his story about like writing, you know, wouldn't it be lovely or whatever? You know, I put myself in the hotel and I wrote on And it's like he's of that era where they're just everybody's cool as shit, Like you know, there's so they're swarming around town and they're smart and they're error diet and they're
funny and everybody's like Oscar Wild in New York. And Alan J. Lerner was very similar to that. But he obviously wrote with Frederick Lowe, who was the composer not on American Paris, but just in their career. They were a partnership Learner and low And there's a great book and there's nothing to do with anything, but it's a great anecdote and it's about Lorenz Heart, who was one half of Rogerson Hart, which was Richard Rogers and Lorenz Heart.
Richard Rodgers left Lorenz Heart after writing many musicals together, and many incredible songs, but which bothered and bewildered. You know, there's like I wish I were in love again, falling
in love with love, like just extraordinary. Part of the American songbook canon was Rogers and Hart and then Richard Rogers left to work with Oscar Hammerstein, and that was a devastating blow to Lorenz's Heart, who was definitely like an alcoholic and had some health problems, obviously a closeted gay man I think at that point, and dealing with a lot of sort of bitterness anyway, and it was quite a difficult personality. Richard Rodgers left to work with
Oscar Hammerstein. The first thing they did with Oklahoma, which sort of rewrote the rules on musical theater. It was such a hit that it was impossible to kind of avoid it. And Alan J. Lerner talks about going over to Lorenz Heart's apartment and Lorens is deeply kind of sliding into the alcoholism, which I think killed him. And they're hanging out and talking and he was trying to avoid anything to do with Oklahoma, and Lorenz is smoking a cigar and there's a blackout in New York and
they don't really want to do. And someone turns, well, let's turn the wireless on, and of course they turn on the first thing that's playing in Oklahoma, and so someone quickly turns the channel on another channel it's also playing Oklahoma. And in the dark all they could see was this red glow of this cigar of Therenz heart is going brighter and brighter and brighter. Him just seething, and I was like such a sad and he died
several months later, which is quite a sad story. But they were part of that incredible era of musical theater making. It's extraordinary works of musicals for the stage. Incredible time.
Yeah.
Absolutely. And one final thing is that there's a film dance scene called I've Got a Crush on You, which Geen Kelly performed in his pajamas, but it was cut due to censorship concerns, And I thought, has he got the morning charb? I think.
It's all down to underwear, isn't it.
You gotta wear. If you gotta wear, you're under this. If you're going outside with pajamas on, you gotta get some under.
I mean he's a dancer. Surely you would have had a dance support. But there is something about the things moving.
But I've read that. The only thing I could think of why it was sensited. Oh you're flopping around.
Yeah, that's surely that's what it is. I'm good. A good call.
Call, a very good call. Sometimes the senses get it right. Yeah, mate, this podcast comes with homework. I really appreciate you're extraordinarily busy. It's great to see you going Beetlejuice. Congratulations. What has that ride? Bean?
Like?
It's been amazing because it was like, you know, that's the that's the show that I you know, in terms of I always wanted to write for Broadway and I was going to New York and I was just sort of taking any meeting I could and trying to keep my ear to the ground and trying to work out how to There's no like, you don't put your name on a list or anything. It's just how do you get on the great big writer list in the sky, you know, And to be honest, I thought, I don't
know if it's going to happen. And all the examples I had of my work were very Australian.
One the musical one.
The musical and the other one. I had an album of a song cycle I wrote called Songs from the Middle, which is about growing up in mentone. And I'm like, that was a niche is a niche, like, hey, can you relate to this? But I found an agent who did, who like who managed to see past the kind of austrainers of it and liked my writing. And I knew that Beadle Juice was going around without it that they were out to pitch for composer lyricists and they were
out to pitch to really fancy people. And I asked if I could pitch on it and they said no, They're like, who's it? No, this is Australian, weird Australian guy with a cricket musical. No, And I said what if I just a my ageent was like, yeah, they don't want to spend any more money, and I had no idea there was money involved in the pitch process, but they do. They pay compose the lyricists to submit a demo, and I think it's just a way of
making it worth people's time, which is lovely. But I was like, what if I just wrote songs for two songs for free and they like them? They like them. They don't, they don't. And my agent was like, oh my god, you do that. It's like, dude, you don't know what I would do at this point just to
get my music in front of somebody. So I got sent the script and I wrote the songs, and I really went, you know, took a big creative swing on the songs, and thankfully they really liked them, and we all got along, Me and their book writers got along, and so it was clear that we're going to be
able to collaborate together. And then what followed was five years of development, extraordinary, all workshops in New York, flying across the New York to do workshops, and sort of three to four years of doing that, and then I'd moved my whole family across to put it up and we did it in Washington, d C. Beatle just opened in Washington, d C. And the end of twenty eighteen and did the show was great, but it's kind of frenetic, and it got reviewed pretty harshly out there, and so
by the time we brought it into Broadway, no one
really thought it was going to be any good. But we'd rewritten a lot of it and it was vastly improved when we opened on Broadway, and in the beginning it looked like no one was going to come, and then we miraculously got nominated for a Bunch of Tony, which gave us the opportunity to perform at the Tony Awards, and the producers allowed me to rewrite the opening number from scratch, write a whole new lyric about Beatle Juice crashing the Tony Awards, and you know, making specific references
to people we knew would be in the audience, people like Adam Driver and stuff like that. I got to write like an Adam Driver joke into the and I was like, this is great. I'm gonna I was so
pissed off with Kylo Wren killing Harrison Ford. You know, it's just like I got to you know, I think there's a I wrote a lyric about, like, you know, Adam Driver, you killed Han Solo not cool bro, and having Beetle Juice like admonish Adam Driver, and the audience was really fun and it worked and that and the cast album took off, and sudden the audiences started coming and uh, you know, we were selling out and breaking box office records, and we went from being nothing to
be a hit, and then the pandemic shut it down, and then we lost our theater, got kicked out of our theater. That's another story. And then we got a new theater, the Marquee. We opened at the Marquee, we did okay, but you know, New York was still and is still recovering. Things are not like what they were, and so it's an expensive show. So it shut down. But then now there's a North American tour that's going
around American cities and it's just an absolute smash. So it's bizarre, Like I saw the show from when people went really into it and to when it became like a cult thing, and nothing about the show changed.
So I.
Have you know, in writing a comedy or writing any musical, you're very interested in the audience and curating an experience for the audience, and I think you get mostly, in quite a creepy way, standing at the back of the house watching the audience more than you're watching the show, Like when are they in, when are they out? What are they responding to? What's funny? Where are the laughs? How do we not trample on the last by creating more more space than I missed the next thing, all
that stuff. It's just sort of like making a ride for grown ups, which is pretty weird, but we did it, and now the show is doing really well and where it's had a South Korean production, I went in sort of Japanese production in Tokyo. It was I didn't understand a word of it and there was just all this weird extra shit in there that I was like, I don't know what's happening. It's just a joy. It's opening in Brazil in Rio in October, coming to Australia in
twenty twenty five. They want to do it in London.
When a ticket's on sale, when when can people stop?
I don't think tickets are on sale ages. Actually, I feel like tickets don't go on sou until maybe middle of next year or something. There's like a waiting list. I think that just keeps people aware of stuff. But they announced things early because I don't know why they announced things early. A lot of it is about just kind of drumming up awareness, but it's also things are
planned so far in advance, especially with theater availability. So it's great that it's happening in opening in Australia and it's opening in Melbourne. I'm really excited to see what Australian audiences think of it. And in the meantime, it's been great to have that be successful enough that i
can just get back to writing the next thing. And I'm loving I'm just loving writing musicals and writing two musicals for three musicals on the go to that are with Americans and going to be be born and developed in the United States. And then I'm writing an Australian musical for my old drama school, the West Australian Academy
Performing Arts over in Perth. I'm being commissioned to write a musical and so I'm writing a musical set in the Tivoli circuit in the mid nineteen fifties, which is an homage religious a love letter to the extraordinary theatrical tradition. Australia has that Vaudeville tradition with all of the good and the bad and the weird that goes at the
time of great variety and change. And similarly, the golden eror of Australias Tivoli was in the fifties after the Second World War, and you know, similar you know, we had a whole generation of men who were either killed in war or returned with extreme post traumatic stress, extreme mental health problems, and then just took them out on their families. And so it was multiple generations after that of of families that had to deal with violence and
alcoholism and sometimes physical disability. You know, you'd see men missing limbs out on the streets, and it was a different time to now, a lot of trauma in the world. And I think that that that that was in the theater, and I think that you know that it reflects what you see on stage almost like the more sunny and optimistic the art form is, or the expression of the art for me is it's it's it's almost like it's
not what is happening, it's what people need. It's a world that people need to enter into.
And they say that, they say, out of out of George Bush, we got West Wing and out of Brack Obama, We've got House of Cards. You know, it is that it is whatever, you know, it's just that, Yeah, we needed optimism out of Bush and we need you know, Obama was giving us all the optimism in the world, so we needed we didn't need that on our screens. We needed you know, we wanted to be dark.
And it's so extraordinary because you know, an idea that we're talking about in a success of Beetle Juice, And it's very hard to predict because I think you can have a great piece, but if it's not at the right time, it won't succeed. If people aren't ready to hear that idea, it's not if it's a time of great optimism, then people don't want a snarky, difficult, disturbing piece that's about machiavellian machinations and politics. But in a
time of political upheaval. But people do, you know, So it's a really like Hamilton and Musical Landed, you know, is absolutely born of the Obama here. You know that the migrant story. You know that anybody can write there, you know, can can write their story and go from being the poorest or the poor to being an influential player in creating the Great American story. And that the Great American story is not just one person or it's not really about wealth necessarily. It's about all of these
people coming together and combining their stories. And it's almost like an improbable expect ferment that the United States is and it fed into that narrative and people loved it. And then by the time it was sort of filmed and made it onto Disney Plus and everyone could watch the stage show on it was really interesting the critical lens that had changed. You know, Trump was the president.
Whatever kind of experiment in optimism was being carried out under Obama seemed to run out of steam, and there was a much more critical sense of what linn Manuel Miranda had done with that show, the way he treated slavery, for example, And you know, it was interesting to see Lin's journey from going from being like, you know, absolute so creating this kind of progressive masterpiece really and creating work for non cast of like completely except for one actor,
maybe a one or two actors in a non Caucasian cast that coming under scrutiny and being challenged down the line. I was like, wow, you know, you cannot fully and you cannot control the circumstances in which the world in which we're judging an American in Paris with it through a twenty twenty three lens. And that's going to happen to all art and as it should. And so you know, when people were going back to Lynn and going why didn't you make it this? And why didn't you make
it that? And why didn't you talk about slavery? And it's like and he was very I thought, patient and gracious, but I think the message of him was bits just going right your own musical, you know what I mean, Like, I didn't set out to save the world. You know, I wrote something that was in my head. I related to that story, and I felt like it was a
hip hop story. It felt related to his experience of hip hop and his own personal experience of being a super smart writer who could take one art form and use it in another in a way that hadn't been done, and to create to take a ginormous book like Churno's book on Hamilton and be able to find an expression through hip hop, which just in terms of its strike rate and getting a lot of narrative the story really quickly. Hip hop does that, you can just boom heaps of words.
And he found an affinity with a with Alexander Hamilton, who kind of wrote his way out of poverty and destitution and Caribbean Island and into being a major player in the creation of America's constitution. And it's an extraordinary story and really well executed. But even that is not free from times changing, you know.
Yeah, And when you sit down to create something, you know, people forget that you are generally an artist in your room by yourself on a piano or with a blank of paper or a computer, and there's nothing on the paper, and you create something and you can you have it in your head what you're trying to achieve, and you
have no idea if anyone's going to see it. And then yes, I imagine and I've I've never had anything that's going like massive, massive, but imagine when it does, coming up like a global hit where everyone needs to have an opinion on it. There are so many projections that get put on that which are never part of the original intention of the piece.
Totally. I also that thing about you talk the blank page. It's a very different thing. It's almost like once you write something down, you can have an empty room and once you you go, you know what this room needs. It needs a chair. I'm going to put it. I'm going to invent a chair. I'm gonna put a chair in it. And then there's a billion people that will come in the door and go, why don't you put the chair over there. No, I think the chair will
really work if it's over here and it's liked. But no one was there, you know, like no one was there when you were like, should there be a chair? You know what I mean? And that happens a lot
in the theater. Doesn't mean that people don't know what they're talking about, but I think there is when I heard I've known Lynn mal Miranda like a long time, because we did we started out in comedy together, like his group Freestyle Love Supreme were doing their thing when I was sort of first doing my kind of comedy
cabaret thing. So I met them in I hung out with them a lot in Edinburgh in two thousand and five and then in Melbourne Comedy Festival and they came out maybe two thousand and six, and I remember talking to Lynn and going, what are you going to do when you go back home? And he was like, I'm writing a musical and I was like, no way, I'm britting to musicals as well. What's the musical you're writing?
Is writing a musical called In the Heights, which went on to be a smash and win him Tonian Wood and is about his migrant experience on the in New York City and Washington Heights. And then I remember talking to him when he was writing Hamilton, and I was like, this is either the genius idea or is the worst idea you've ever heard. It was such a scary idea.
And now that it's like exists, you know, a musical hip hop musical about the founding fathers of the American Constitution where there's no Caucasian actors playing any of the roles, like that seems like a Fatti komplete. But at the time, I was like, this is You've got to pull this off. This is going to be terrible. This could be so bad.
You know.
We had John I think he the first time he sang any of it was at the Correspondence, right, and John Stewart on The Daily Show I think was hosting, or at least was when he was hosting The Daily Show next week kind of took the piss out of it,
kind of going, what is this guy doing this? You know, Stuart thankfully is I think since apologized and said, you know, I was just gonna let you wrong, and I'm been embarrassed, and I you know, maybe had to go with an artist who not just because it became his success, but it's not really his thing that he generally does, where you have a go on an artist for creative expression.
But yeah, like you forget, you forget how bigger hit Star Wars was and you know Hamilton like because they become part of the furniture.
Yeah, that's right. But then when you read anything about like what was the guy that played overyone can be you know his what is this ship? These terrible lines and you're like, yeah, he's right, He's totally right. On the inside. He would have been like this is a total dog. I mean it's Star Wars. This is just terrible and you just don't you do not know. And
that's what I love about writing and creating stuff. I mean, even making this Australian musical, I'm you know, I'm not collaborating in the way I do in America, where I'm just writing the music and lyrics. In there there's either one or two book writers. You know, this is me writing the book and the music and the lyrics. And it's a weird idea. It's an original idea and it's
really scary. So I find myself having to go around and try and you know, I love reading memoirs and biographies of other artists, especially you know, like composers and lyricists.
And I find myself most happy when you know you've rewound the clock and they're creating something that's gone on to be successful or groundbreaking, but just the absolute fear and just this sense of like what are we doing, you know, like we're making There's a great book that James Lapine wrote called Finishing the Hat, which is about interviews with Sondhime and other people about the creation of
Sunday in the Park with George. And it's an extraordinary insight into a collaborative process that made quite an extraordinary work of art in Sunday in the Park with George.
It's musical written by James Lapine in the book Who and music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim about the French Impressionistic painter George Sarah, in particular the one paint that famous painting I think this is Sunday Afternoon Lagrangeet, which is made up of a pointism, you know, all those dots and mixing colors with the eye rather than on the canvas and way I put them together. It's just but about it's about seeing how do we see the
world and what is creation about? And how much do you how much should an artist shut the world out or shut relationships out and make sacrifices for their art and what has gained and what has lost? And YadA YadA. It's a it's a piece of art about art, about making art, which I find really fascinating. But even that, the insight into that is so extraordinary, and how it's kind of collaboratively made and how you know, unfinished, there are moments and how people are like this is this
a terrible idea? Or this is a great idea? Or and it doesn't nobody's really made a piece it's quite like it, so there's nothing to compare it to. And that's really exciting. The doubt having a having an idea and being bold enough to see it through. I have to read a lot about had to remind myself that that the fear that I feel when I'm creating, especially this Tivoli piece, I'm like, is even going to buy this idea?
Or this world?
Or you know, who? Do I know enough about this? All those little doubts that sort of plagued me continuously. You know that that that the great masters that I have studied and read about and formed all over all felt this and that's really important to connect to that feeling of I don't really know what it is.
I'm well, we just recently did making eight and a half if Lenny's eight and a half with Sean Michayla watching for the first time, and that's the whole films about that, the you know, the the great master not fucking knowing what you know, having this director's block, not knowing, and people wanting answers and expecting him to have all the answers and he doesn't have the answer. He's stalling. You know. It's it's incredible, mate. I cannot wait to
see your Beetlejuice in twenty twenty five. But also, you know, if i'mucky platively apply I do hear though there's none in your age difference between the leader, you might you might just want to fix that.
Yeah, well, all of our students, the others of our students is twenty years old. And that's been really actually, it's been really interesting because I have not worked with young people like that. I mean, I've done like the odd kind of masterclass or unit in songwriting where I kind of have gone to a university for a couple of days or a week or whatever. This is a this is a three year relationship with these students, and you very quickly get great affection for them because they're
they're receptacles for so much. They've obviously done a lot of work to get to where they are, but they've got all of this talent and all these skills, but it's just wild. It's all just everything smashing it all over the place, and they make crazy choices and they and or they've got like they've got little blocks, or there's things they can see and things that they can't see, and they're all still trying to put it together. And
that's what drama school does. There's really just kind of like you're working in your skills, but it's really sort of stripping everything away and then putting it back together. It's quite an extraordinarily vulnerable time in a student's life. And I am so excited to, you know, to work on a new musical with these they're kids, and I was in that position myself, and they're dealing with life.
They're dealing with having to pay the bills and working cafes or whatever, they're doing to make ends meet on the other side of this country in Perth, and it's really it's it's really joyous to see what young people are like. I mean, they're lovely, they've got an energy, they're not tired.
I see them all on Instagram.
A lot of napping. I'm doing a lot of napping.
I've been getting to my greens in the afternoon to get me some energy to get through the afternoon these days. But it has been a nactually joy won to catch up with you, but to to kind of follow from a far often on socials you living out a dream. It is really inspiring one way, but even more than that, just really fulfilling to see me to see you go through it and meet your heroes and work with your heroes and see achieve a dream at a really fucking
high level. And I know you're just getting started in this. It's going to be more and more. It makes it's joyous. It's joyous to watch.
Oh thanks, well, I mean you and know what it's like doing comedy as long as you have when you start, you have a very Your relationship with your art form is partly about loving comedy, but there's also a lot of other stuff that goes into the world as well. It's about how to build a career and how to stay afloat long enough. And then if you're really lucky enough to hang around in your art form and make a living out of it, you start to get like much better at it. And then art is not always
actually it's not even really about the end product. It's about the relationship you have with the art itself and how like you do things that when do you go and write? And where do you go and write? And how do you balance like kids and writing, and you know, how do you how do you shut your brain off and be a dad or you know, take care of the things he needs to take care of the in
the real world. And you know, I find that really interesting, especially the fatherhood art thing, because there are not many great examples of like smashing artists who are good dads. You know, everyone's like kind of Miles Davis, like, we're like he doesn't mention his kids until they're like they're like twenty eight, and he's like, who the hell are you?
You know what I mean? Like I want to be and even in my agent's in New York, my agent's office he has this frame thing and he's framed the photograph of a war with graffiti on it and it says, the greatest enemy of art is the pram in the hallway. And I picked it up and I was like, what the fuck is this? And he's like, well, it's true, right, And I was like, I actually challenged that. I think that that my relationship with my art in terms of
just pure efficiency, just getting more shit done. Once I had kids and my time was compressed, everything changed. I just I wonder whether like a lot of like writing a joke or writing a lyric or writing a scene is you know. I think Bernstein said that it's like you need a plan and not enough time, and I think that's kind of what it is you consider around going Should I go left? Should I go right? Should
he say this? Should he say that? Whereas when you're under time pressure, you make decisions really quickly, And I think that's that's the most important thing with art is just make a decision and move on to the next thing and just keep going, and you get quite fit,
you know, quite muscular at making those decisions. And so I really love writing now and I enjoy it now more because I'm less afraid of it, and I know I can sit down and I know how to do it, and I still make things that suck and the world never hears that or that was a waste of a week trying to write that song. But I still have these moments of discovery and I do them all on my own. So it's a very weird solo thing where you're like in a room, going, yes, it's an amazing idea,
and there's no one there to share it with. So I've now got to a point where I really love that. And so I'm at peace with the loneliness and the weirdness and the fear of it all, and I just feel really grateful that I get to do it at all.
Yeah, I completely compartmentalizing time. I've gotten a lot better since I've had kids. And and you also, you're working for something. It's something you're not just working for yourself. You kind of got this. You know, you've got a family who you want to You don't want to give up your dream of being in the arts and pursuing comedy or musical thing, whatever it is. So but you know you need to take it seriously. Whenever I go
to a gig. I never not do new material. Like it's like I'm not saying there's not other material, but there's never not a new thing. I don't try because my attitude has always been if I'm leaving the home and my life with my kids at home, I'm not going out just to be a kind of a rockstark comedian and and be, you know, like have the best time for just personally. I want me audays to have a great time, obviously, but I need to advance what
I'm doing a little bit. Yes, you know, so that's if that's coming up with a new bit, even if it's a premise, so I can come home and go, Okay, that's the next bit I'm going to work on. That's what I do, you know. And yeah, another quote I love is somebody who said, I forgot who said it that. Somebody said, you know, be wrong quick, you know, yeah, and it's right. So you just kind of you're working harder, you working quicker, you're working smarter.
Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's certainly a lot of fun. And you know, I I love movies and you obviously love movies too, But I am not like a film aficionado. I can't like tell you who I'm not great with directors or any of that sort of stuff.
Remired to like I have some some recalling other things I have I blank and I And the reason I said this podcast because people keep on calling me like a cinephile and there's so many gaps in my film and this is why these podcasts exists.
Yeah, it's it's quite extraordinary. When you set me to listen, I'd see all the titles and I'm like, it's weird. I had almost like a not just like a lack of recognition on some of the titles, but a real resistance to it. I'm like, oh, I don't I don't want to watch that one. Because you can get into a thing. When you get older, you start to just churn through things that are familiar and you go back
to things that you've enjoyed before. But I know when a movie comes, I love the you know, I love TV series, but I do sometimes have that feeling of like, oh, I'm going to get into that river. I'm going to be floating down that river forever and it's never going to be anything waiting at the end. It's just like it's just a downstream forever kind of experience, and I'm like,
I want to. I like the structure of a movie, how you know, you get into it and it's enough time to have lots of characters in a whole world built, and for there to be a real kind of a hero's journey, whatever that idea is. I like the format of it. So when a movie comes on, I can't turn off a movie. I don't fall asleep in movies. I'm like this, this movie's on, I'm watching it. I just love them, especially well, actually not especially any but I do love action. Sci fi films are fun to
watch because they don't require that much thinking. But I do really love comedies, and I mean think about I just think we treat comedy movies all comedy in a very disrespectful way where we don't think that they're important. But it's so hard to make people laugh. And when you do, I mean you think about all your favorite films. Often you grab the films that you love the most. You just want to pull it into a big, warming brace.
So the movies that make you laugh, if you think about, you know, for me as a kid, it was like the naked gun movies, you know, or Monty Python, and they're not just like wonderful, astonishing films that often have very deep things to say, but they teach you how to be funny. They teach you what funny is really.
Oh, I mean for me, it's playing strains and automobiles.
You know, an amazing and how sad that film is.
Oh my god, just and it gets me every time. It gets me every time. John Canny's best performance.
Well, I loved Uncle Buck was a big one in our family. And the other one that I really love is Don't Tell Mom the Babysit is Dead. That film that's the nineties film that sort of like Disappear. I don't really know about it. Christina Applegate, it's one of her best performances and it's extraordinary coming of age film. I love that film. You can't find it anywhere. It's not on stream milk. I've got a DVD of it.
So that's anything that very occasionally like Somebody We have Axio Scott from Below Deck and was in the jungle with me with Don a celebrity earlier this year and she nominated. Well, I said to her, why don't we watch Dead Calm? Have you said Dead calm, she gets no. I've never seen Nicole Kid mcbilly's aye sound there amazing, she's a keywa can I find it? And he's not available on an ex streaming sept not even to rent it seems so.
I think some movies fall into a weird rights basket where like there's there's a complication in them, and then they can't go back to them. Like we're trying to get to the rights to develop an old film into into a musical, and it's really hard. The rights process is really hard. I don't know what's taking like years of time to try and get the rights to this film, but it's just like who owns it? I just feel like there's just like a tiny or shrivel old man in an office somewhere that's.
Like, now you can I'll get around to it one time. I can't.
I can't be. It's better to work this hard.
But it's been a delight. We can't wait to see. Like I said, Beetlejuice in all your projects, and mate, thanks for watching.
It, thanks for having me on.
There we go the wonderful Eddie perfect. I was curious as to what he thought of this. Gene Kelly musical from nineteen fifty one six Oscars in nineteen fifty two, An American in Paris. I hope I didn't get too hard on it for some people. I know it's a beloved film. Whenever I don't like a film or don't relate to it does not take away whatever you think of it. It is a much blood film, so keep loving it if you love it, and if you haven't
seen it, I still recommend seeing it particlarly. If you are a in a file and you want to tick off certain movies before you die, there's one of these worth watching. It's got very impressive things about it. Get onto our to speak pipe. It's good to hear some voices in today's show. We'll have some more next week. Follow the pages page at the link speak pipe and leave a message and tell us what you think. Did we get an American in Paris? Right? We had field
of dreams last week. There's plenty of them. There's one that I wouldn't mind playing now actually, and this is from Becky.
Hi Pete. I just wanted to leave a message and say how much I'm really loving Yasi and most recently your interview with pauln y'ao. I really appreciated each of her movie best and I'm intended on looking at those. I'm just wondering that I haven't seen in the list about whether or not you've considered looking at the Before trilogy with Ethan Hawk and Julie Delpy. Before Sunrise was a really formative movie for me, and I'm assuming a lot of other gen xs and the one that followed
Before Sunset and then Before Midnight. Anyway, I just left that with you, and I hope someone gets around watching it because it's certainly one of my coming of age favorites. I just love the wandering through the streets of all these foreign cities that they do, and the almost endless conversation that you'd always imagined having with Ethan Hawk of here was your boyfriend? Anyway, Thanks Pete, bye.
Thank you Becky forgetting on our speak pipe. Great to hear your voice, and I've got some news for you. First of all, thanks, I loved a great reaction to pose Moonstruck episode. She was so great to talk to. Also has some really great reaction to Greg Larsen with Jerry maguire and Sean Mchaelis Feleni doing it and a
half was a huge reaction. So thanks to everyone. Either hear your thoughts and all the movies we cover, and I've got some good news for you because next week, Becky, my good friend Mark Watts will be joining me and he will be covering Before Sunrise Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, the film by Richard linc Later. He doesn't know yet that the onus is on him to cover the trilogy. I'll break that to him next week. But that's next week. Thanks Becky. I hope that puts a smile on your face.
Get on that to speak part. If you have any request for guests or movies, that's how you do it. Next week before Sunrise, Merrick Watts, and you ain't seen nothing yet until then. Take care. And so we leave old Pete save Mansul, and to our friends of the radio audience, we've been a pleasant good name.