Shaun Micallef and 8½

Hello, Peter, Hell, are you here?

Welcome to you ain't seen nothing yet the movie podcast We're outch out to a movie lover about a classic or beloved movie they haven't quite got around to watching until now. Today's guest comic legend Sean mckayliff.

Oh blow, I want to stay here with you, jobber?

Why hate snake shucked? Hi hail could happening right?

So, you ain't seen nothing new.

There's not too much I really need to say about today's guests other than I'm absolutely stoked that he is visiting us. Sean has been a huge presence on the Australian comedy landscape for over two decades.

He is one of the most revered of the comedians.

When Sean hits the stage, whether it be at the Logis Where, believe it or not, people aren't always listening when you go when you hit that stage, but he's one of those few people. When he hits the stage, the industry just shuts the fuck up and they listen. They listen and they laugh. He is wildly inventive, whip smart. You'd know him from many many things. Is on talking about your generation. The first thing you would know him from Hi. If you've been a longtime comedy fan, is

If you listen to this.

Overseas, think a kind of version of the Daily Show. But it certainly had its own, its own thing Seanan Interview. You know, characters as opposed to necessarily real people. It was a parody show, a parody news show, and it was just brilliant. Yeah, absurd, but also very real. There are so many other things I could mention that Sean has done, but I'm just going to say he's brilliant.

We all love Sean.

He's just a very kind man, a very supportive of other comedians, has always been very supportive of me. I've really enjoyed working with him. We did an episode of It's a Date Together. I wrote it, but Sean certainly through a lot of ideas in and came up with basically, his character wrote some of his dialogue. It was with Roe McManus and Adriana Pickering and it was a lot of fun. If you can catch that episode.

It was great.

So yeah, I love Sean. You guys love Sean. I'm bloody stoke to be hanging with him today.

Hello, everybody, I am Sean Mcaloff and my three favorite films are in order. It's a wonderful life with James Stewart.

You see, George, you really had a wonderful life. Don't you see what a mistake it would be to throw it away? Light Runner, The.

Light that burns twice is break burns half as long, and you have burned so very very brightly?

Why and pee wee speak adventure.

Do you have any dream?

Yeah, I'm all alone.

I'm rolling a big donut in the snake wearing a best.

No, not that kind of dream.

And up until yesterday I had never seen Federico Fellini's Eight and a Half.

Yes, Italian maestro Federico Fellini is in full flight in his nineteen sixty three surrealist comedy drama Eight and a Half, a semi autobiographical dreamscape off Elini's life and career and the manners in which those two things become entwined. Guido is a successful avant garde director who has pushed back production on his latest science fiction film by two weeks because he's suffering from direct block. He has forgotten what the film is about. He has a launch pad, but

Can I just can I just pick up on one mistake during the end version It'll be flawless, shan, but please, well, just just the score done by Nino Roti, right, I said, Nino ro You said, Gino Conti, I said, who is?

I mean maybe when this goes away, I mean it will I will have I will have, said Nino Rotty.

It's very interesting, Nino Rotten. So the soundtrack to eight and a half very similar to the soundtrack that Danny Danny Elfman did for PE's Big Adventure. It's absolutely that carnival less that that's all the way through. In fact, I'm sure there are the same cues. I'm sure that Elfman has been influenced by by Rotty or Conti, and it's it's very similar. So you know, there's there's a nice there's a nice natural segue there.

Well, I mean, I want to get the pee Wee's Big Adventure because that was one that leapt out three favorite films. And I'm sure listeners are wondering if your tongue in your.

Cheek over fairly removed.

We'll get to it.

OK, But why hadn't you seen eight and a half?

Full disclosure, I had not seen it, and I've seen it twice now, twice this week in preparation. It's a film that's has loomed large. You know, you know that this is a film if you love film, I have seen Yes, what did you know about it? Why hadn't you seen it?

Well? Yeah, I love film, And it surprised me that I hadn't seen it because I thought I had, right, but I hadn't. I'd actually watched about ten minutes of Lestrata by Federico Fellini, yes, nineteen fifty eight, I think, and I hated it so much that I just.

Turned it off. I think it was probably on it.

It would have been so long ago, it would have been pre DBD, so I must have seen it as a like a film festival on television sort of thing, and I just couldn't stand what's her name, Julietta Massini playing kind of a chaplain esque character, and just she was so annoying. And also Anthony Krim was in it, so and that was annoying too because I find him

Right, so he did have something to do with it.

He cast it, yes, right, and I mean women obviously in eight and a half play obviously a big role.

And he's got problems.

He's got he's got some problems and he's working through issues, which is basically what that film is about, I guess in the end. But let's talk about your three favorite films will come back. There's so much to discuss about eight and a half as we try to get our heads around it.

Let's start.

Let's start with Peewee's Big Adventure.

Great film.

I think like it's comedy films go. It's one of the perfect comedy films because the comedy sequences and the comedy in it actually drive the plot forward.

Often.

The problem a lot of people have with comedy films been good films is that you get these set block comedy pieces where the where the plot just stops or the progress of the film, or the narrative stops for the person to be funny, or the character who is the main comic voice in the film works against the plot.

A little bit. You know, they stop and they straight things. But this is not that.

This is a very smartly written film, a bit like A Night at the Opera, The Marx Brothers film, and that each comedy sequence, if you leave out the music of Numbers, actually pushed the plot for it. Same with The Court Jester with Danny Kay. Again, each comedy sequence is actually part of the narrative. So that's one reason I really like it because I think it's a really well written and well constructed film. Also, it looks beautiful because it's Tim Burton's might even be his first feature film.

That's kind of that.

It's understandable because most of the film is pe we try to reclaim his bike. You would have thought the bicycle Thief by by Deseko would be the inspiration, but no, it's not. So yeah, so there's a lot of and also I just find it very funny though. The comedy sequents are hilarious, and Peewee's a very funny comic character.

And you've got so full disclosure, I haven't seen the movie. Oh okay, and and I have I will admit I very rarely have discussed peewee. He very rarely comes up, like, you know, I feel like I'm sure I'm not alone that I have put peewee into a corner. Yes, that he maybe does not deserve to be like I just kind of gone, I don't think it's for me.

Well he didn't really, he never really How old are you forty eight? Okay, forty eight, Well you're considerably younger than I am. And I came across him in the eighties as a sort of video what are we going to watch tonight?

Thing?

You're down at the video shop and there's this thing in the corner. He was speaking of Vega, which I think was probably come out about a year after the film was made on video. So I had never heard of him. No idea who Tim Burton was. I don't think he was anything at that point, No idea. Pee with him was just look like a funny cover.

That's one of those purchases you do for your children.

And so yeah, absolutely, It's like when Steve Martin's The Jerk came out in Australia.

We'd never heard of him.

So I took it home, and my wife and I watched it and pissed ourselves lasting, and I took it to work and gave it around the law office I was working, just loaned it around. Everyone watched it and then and then everyone sort of caught up after that. So I like to thinking I was the one who introduced it virally to Australia.

Yeah, well, because I always saw him as like like big in America, you know, didn't really cut through here. You know the name, yes, the idea of the characters. Is he a simpleton? Or well, what's his vibe?

I guess all comic characters who are a certain extent are degrees of simpletons. He's a perpetual child. I suppose he kind of lives in this called proto Where's Andersen world of the nineteen fifties. So the colors and everything that are chosen for that Tim Burton has chosen.

It fits fits that palette that he uses.

Everything's big and glossy and shiny and bright, and that's the world that Pee Wee inhabits. And you know, he started off as a heart of as a stage character, I think, part of an improvisational troop. In fact, you've seen the Blues Brothers. Yes, okay, the waiter in the Blues Brothers that turns up to take the order from from Jake and Elwood when they're trying to get the mater d to join the band. That's Paul Rubens. That's pee Wee Herman this first film appearance, and.

So you know he exists.

He's in that group, he's in that sort of Chicago second city, in the orbit of that, and he turned up on Letterman. This is so when the film came out, we hadn't seen Letterman, we'd only seen Steve Wisart.

Lehman did a great impression.

Ads later on you realize just how much how much lettermanos de vis Art.

So there was there was that.

So he turned up and he beat this odd character in this modern urban world of Letterman, and he was the dissonant note. You know, he was a strain weird character. But of course in pee Wee's Big Adventure, the whole world just accepts that Pee Wee is wonderful and they love him and everything, So you know, it's a it's a it's a bit of a flip on that.

He's not the outsider.

He's pretty much the central human focus of the world that he created. I have to, well, I need to because it's it's such a I think you'd appreciate As a writer.

I think you would really appreciate it. I think I think you'll find the set piece is funny. It was co written with Oh it is.

His name Hartman, Phil Hartmon, Phil Hartman and Paul Rubens were friends and they both wrote that movie together. And it's also there's a great cameo by Milton Berle. There's so much, so much to recommend it to.

You, Okay, I mean in Twist and Sister, Well, Milton Berle and Twist assistant together at last Pee Wee's Big Adventure. I'm putting it on the list. It's a wonderful life. I covered this with Broden from Annie Donna.

Oh that pleases me that that's this one of his favorites.

Well, he hadn't seen it. Oh you haven't seen it, so in the same way the Eight and a Half you haven't seen that. So that was a film we discussed.

Did you like it?

He did?

He did. It's a lovely film.

It's a great film. You've seen it, yes, And I think, funnily enough with that jumping ahead. I don't like to talk about that. Maybe he had discuss too early, But I think in eight and a half, the woman who plays his wife, Louisa, I think is maybe the best

Agreed.

I'd say that of a few of them, but definitely you're quite right about her. So it is a very modern performance. So that film with the It's Wonderful Life is nineteen forty six one of those one of those post war films, a very dark film. As you would have discussed with Brydon. It's a favorite of mine. It's the only film that makes me cry. So I find it very difficult to watch it every year because I know that I'll be a mess.

Do you watch it?

When you do watch it is at the back end of the years a Christmas is it?

Yeah?

Yeah, it will kind of be Yeah, it'll kind of be around that time, because that just feels I think probably that's when I was introduced to it. It was one of these films that fell into the public domain, and so it was on television quite a lot when I was growing up, usually around Christmas time, so it was one of those ones that you could just count on would be on in December.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's funny when people haven't seen it. I think Broden kind of got a bit of a shock of how dark. Oh yes, yeah, well people don't remember. Even people who have just seen it think that it's a wonderful Christmas film. It's actually a nightmarish. It's a bit like Back to the Future too. There's a lot more dark and terror in it than there is fun.

I mean the.

Setting up of the character, which takes maybe very quick ten fifteen minutes, and the rest of the film is this nightmare where he doesn't exist. So it is about suicide and it's about I guess it's about what a lot of families faced post war, where someone came back shattered or not at all, and it's about duty. And he's quite grumpy for most of it because all of his ambitions are frustrated he doesn't get to.

Do what he wants to do.

But then he goes, oh, yes, of course, it's not about me. It's about paying it forward. And in a way, it's a kind of it's a flip or an inversion of Christmas Carol. So you've got the Henry Potter character's kind of Scrooge, but instead of him having his intervention by the angels or by the ghosts or by the.

Spirit, it's Bob Cratchett. Instead.

It's kind of the character who's quite good either. He's done all the good things, so you know, and I Think back to the Future actually owes a bit of a debt to its wonderful life, because you might remember I think back to the Future too. They discover George McFly's grave, which is.

A bit similar.

It's a bit similar to where George Bailey, George Bailey, George McFly, George Bailey goes to the cemetery and sees his brothers that he's saved when he was young when he fell through the ice.

He said that he died as a child.

So yeah, but the other thing is it's just such a wonderful performance by James Stewart as well, I mean you mentioned Donna Reed, and she's fantastic in it, but he is a revelation.

He's just so good.

That's Frank Capra, who would have probably you know, ten years earlier, have been making films that were just more fun and more funny.

And there's that in it, but none of the dark stuff in his earlier films.

So Missus Smith comes to Washington, goes to Washington's one of my favorites as well. It was that pre date.

It's a wonderful life. That's a good question. I notice a good question.

I don't know. I think that might be pre war. I think that might be before Capra and Stuart went and played a reasonably significant role in the Second World War.

It's Jimmy Stewart.

For those who may not be aware of him, I think the closest actor who comes close to him these days would be Tom Hanks.

Yeah, yeah, Tom Hanks. I can see Tom Hanks playing a few of those roles. Yeah, there's a sort of it's a very American thing, kind of that idealistic. There's a goodness I think in Tom Hanks that he brings to every role regardless of what it is, even when he I don't know. Actually, James Stewart played a few villains in westerns, and I think Tom Hanks I think he's done any villains, but he could, I imagine, play a villain very well for the same reason because he's

But there's a film recently a man called Otto.

Oh yeah, he's grumpy, yeah, and you do kind of go at the start of that, I was like, Okay, Tom's made a movie where he's going to be a bit grumpy and then he's going to be good, and it's kind of exactly what happens. But it is a much more enjoyable film than you think it's going to be.

I think that's right if that was your elevator pitch. But yeah, you're right.

As soon as you cast Tom Hanks and you know he's going to turn good. Yeah, maybe it's more interesting if it's Jack Nicholson.

Yeah, yeah, all right. Blade Runner is a movie.

Funnily enough, I've never seen Wow, I know no, actually, sorry, I take that back. I've tried to watch twice. I know both times, one many years ago, one kind of more recently. And I forget the first time why I stopped watching it. The second time, I was like, I was like, no, I'm not in the mood. Wow, when did you bail out?

Do you remember?

I reckon, I wouldn't have got passed. I couldn't tell you that the scene or anything, but around about the half hour.

Okay, that's interesting.

So that for me, Chi Chia Bang Bang is that film I can I have tried to watch it several times because I have three children, so I've made a few runs at it since I was young, and I bail.

Out about halfway through. I can't get past it.

Yeah, well I am covering it now. I reckon I would have gone back to it. Funnily enough, my son, my son is going to a fancy dress party this week dressed as Dearhanna Harrison derrelanda from Splash from.

From Harrison Ford. Another character's name.

Deca Decker Decker.

I'm going to spoiler for you when someone's going to not see it, they're going to want to see it on the show.

I'm literally doing it in a few weeks. So Cal Wilson has never seen Blade Runner, so.

I will be I will have no respect for her.

Now I'm talking behind her back into a microphone. Why why do you love Blade Runing? Was say great about Bade Running?

Well, I love Blade Running because it's a well, it's a beautiful looking film. That's always the first thing that has to win me over. I mean, it is a gorgeous film. A lot of films made since use the grammar, the art department grammar of it. I suppose you know, so you watch Batman, you know, you watch the more recent Batman's for example, and you can see what's been borrowed, you know, the sort of futuristic view of the city. It's been this mishmash of Japanese and Western influencers and that.

That into it.

Then there was that saying that might have been the version that was released in Australia. And then there was the next version that didn't have any narration on it, So you don't get that film noir Philip Marlow kind of hard boiled cop kind of narration.

Don't get that at all.

And then there's a couple of other versions where they've done a director's cut, and then there's a final cut and that sort of thing, and then there's a work print. And when I watched, as I did because I'm such a nerd, all versions of it on this five disc DVD set, I said, oh, that's what I saw at university in nineteen eighty one. It's very different and it's actually got temp track music which has been taken from Planet of the Apes.

Wow.

Yeah, so that was the I don't know how they got it, but that's how does that even get the same with Brazil.

I saw Terry Gilliam's kind of pre release print of our university somehow had access to these weird versions of it.

It's amazing. Yeah, what did you set a sequel?

That was done, you know now maybe five years ago so now with Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford, Ridley Scott.

I think it was a film of a director. It was very good. It was a kind of standalone piece. I enjoyed it.

I don't I didn't have any of these purest objections to it. I thought it was I thought it was very well done. It's hard to imagine enjoying it as without having seen the first one, and not just in terms of knowing what the story is, but just going well. It owes so much to so there's a kind of secondhand quality to it, and I guess maybe it gets lost because when Blade Runner came out, it was so startledly original, whereas this one looks like part of a brace of films that look a.

Bit like Blade Runner. Yeah, yeah, okay, all.

Right, it's the Frankenstein myth, you know, it's it's the idea of a crash and coming back and seeking. It's like it's our story. It's the story of man and God and that sort of thing. So again, that's why that's why it works for me.

I'm actually I am looking forward to sitting down I think sometimes doing this podcast, sitting down. Knowing I'm going to have to talk about a film makes you pay attention and invests in different ways.

I think, yeah, yeah, well I guess. I guess it's a bit like having to study The Great Gatsby in year twelve.

Yeah.

Quite, you wouldn't have read it otherwise you don't quite enjoy it as well as you might if you've just drifted or fallen into it. Yeah, it's going to be no pee wee's big adventure just because you're saw the cover in the video shop.

Okay, let's get into it. I've avoided as soon as I saw you.

When you arrived, I wanted to ask even one of the text you, but I'm very strict on not knowing what my guests thought about the film until this moment.

Sean Mchayley, you enjoy Federico Fellini's Eight and a Half.

I absolutely loved it. Oh, it was fantastic at first. They tick that box in terms of visuals. I mean, it just looks fantastic. And I don't know which version of news saw, but it was a very crisp print and betiful black and white photography. I'm not sure who the director of photography is, but there's that there's a beautiful choreography of the camera work with the crowd scenes. Fellini has this wonderful I noticed this even in the

Music being in there.

Also thought, because I remember seeing Woody Allen start US Memories when it came out, I thought, oh, well, I knew that he liked Fellini, but this is a good STARTUS Memories is a complete ripoff of Eight and a half.

I mean that this film has a massive legacy, doesn't it. I mean US Memories even pulp fiction. You know that the dance at Jack Rabbits Slim's yeah, basically basically the dance he's seen here.

Yes, yeah, it's so it's loos likee for a lot of people watching The Simpsons. My children saw that. You watch the Simpsons and they go and then they see Psycho and they go, oh, that's from the Simpsons. So it's a you kind of have to get rid of the the lens through which someone else has seen the film when you're watching the film itself for the first time. But yeah, I mean what he Allen's just basically, I mean, it's not homage. I knew that it was homage to Fellini,

Absolutely, it really is. And Martin Scorsese obviously became well. He saw Lestrada when he was twelve and had a very different reaction than what.

He loved it.

He loved it and banging on about it with his quick voice. It's fantastic, it's great.

I love you.

His recall.

He's amazing. Yeah, I think eight and a half he became his favorite film. It's it's Terry Gilliam's favorite film. Who was I think Terry Gilliam said he hasn't seen a example of a movie that makes you feel like you are the one trying to make a film, but this is what making film actually feels like.

Yeah, I can see it really appealing to filmmakers, absolutely, especially filmmakers with some legacy behind them, which I guess Gilliam and Scorsees definitely have have that. And you know, if someone like me who's not a filmmaker, I kind of got where his head was at. Yes, I guess I understood what it was like to have to well lectu. He says that there's a line in the film there where he says, I have nothing to say, but I still want.

To say it.

I've wrote that down and I think that's It's.

Like McCartney writing music. You know, you think McCartney's a genius, but quite a few of his songs aren't about anything.

No, no, but they're still worth doing.

Absolutely, And I think that's what there are so many things about this film because it's about about a filmmaker who has lost his inspiration. He's kind of forgotten and apparently feeling he would often go into his productions with half written scripts or you know, these vague ideas, had this fear that he would actually arrive on set and he wouldn't be there anymore, he would forget it.

And so that's what I ate nasserally about. Yeah.

Well, and also just the way in which because watching the film. The thing is with the foreign film is you can really fool people who don't speak the language into thinking the acting is good because because you're you're reading it, and you're also as you when you read a novel, you tend to project a little bit onto the onto what you're reading. So you're kind of doing that a little bit with with any foreign film where

There's a rewrite.

Sometimes there's they're literally different, completely different lines.

That's why so many of the scenes I'm assuming are on Guido while he's listening to somebody else, because they've they've just got the dialogue in me And I guess I know, I guess he knows where he's going generally, and the ultimate the ultimate thing that Guido says, of course, is you know, he says, happiness is being able to tell the truth without other people suffering, and then he comes up with a beautiful solution to that at the

Sometimes I feel I feel I'm not sure if you feel the pressure of liking a film. Sometimes I really want to like this film. What I realized is it's actually quite a simple film. It's a very simple films, and it's it's a film that I think you just want to have washed over you. And that's why I watched it twice. I just kind of stopped making notes and I was just like, Okay, I'm just going to let this film wash over.

I think that's right.

I think I don't think there's an intellectual process that helps you get through it. In fact, I think Fellini even's pushing that this is a lovely little fantasy moment where he he orders the execution of his writer, you know, in the theater. He just sort of flicks his holds his forefinger up and suddenly his writer is hung from a noose.

Yeah.

I do love Flenny wanted to basically represent the past, the present, and the and dream or fantasy and you know, and that so I do love that. It becomes harder to pick when the fantasies are like you can argue him to the at the end, at what point is the fantasy? And obviously the harem with all the women and his wife happy, that's all fantasy.

Yeah, there's a little visual cue, there's a slight overexposure before we get into the fantasy. And other times he's he taps his nose a little bit.

And there's one point where he's where he's mistress is sitting by herself and his wife has now known, and she's she's angry and she's you know, calling her a cow and all that, and then he just goes but yet and yet, and and he kind of SLINKs to his chair and all of a sudden, the wife and the mistress are getting along and commenting stylish as she is, and the mistress is singing in what a beautiful voice she has, and he's got his son.

He's on, yeah, very nice. Well that's in Startus Memories. There is a similar scene, of course, where what he is trying to he's got two women in the same sort of way. There's a there's a perfect woman and then there's an earthy woman who's attracted to and he's playing a mad side, just trying to switch their brains around, I think in an operation. So again, very similar in terms of well, fantasy daydream film. What's the difference film

First sexual awakening, I guess.

So.

Yeah, so you're given some clues, but you've got to watch very closely.

Yeah, I probably didn't pick those up. Why didn't you feel comfortable that you were going to? Like I said, I kind of was like it was being a little pressure on myself and then eventually put the notes down and it's watched it and loved it. But do you feel comfortable straight away? Like I mean the opening sequence, I must say, I thought, was this incredible?

Yeah?

Yeah, that's just the cars and being trapped and.

Yeah, I wondered, I wondered, Yes, that's right.

Well, for those of you listening I haven't seen yet spoiler alert, it does open with her kind of it's kind of like a traffic jam. And if you if you've seen Startus Memories, Wady Allen's in a train looking at another train and seeing all these people looking at him and anyway, it's a bit similar. So but it's a kind it's a he's suffocating because there's smoking the car and he escapes through the roof and he flies away.

Yeah, but there's still a rope.

Around his legs and hauling him back down down to earth, and that's a it's a suffocation dream. And he wakes up from that and he's in a kind of wellness center where he's trying to get better. He's obviously having some sort of nervous breakdown. That's right, yes, yes, yes, So there's this kind of fantasy location where everybody comes to him, much in the way of the Stardus Hotel, and it's start us memories. But yeah, look, I was

We may be able to work it back up. You might find things that you are.

He obviously changed his mind in the edit. Sweet thought we have to linger on the face a little longer.

I did, like he I know, he moved the camera kind of forward, like a like a really tiny kind of bit with a bit of a stop, which kind of made it feel like you were actually kind of in that traffic jam.

I'm assuming that movement all those cars and at the very end when they go to the site of the launch that never happens. They seem to be on the same journey. So I'm assuming the whole thing is a flashback.

Well, I mean I just saw it as which both both can be both.

It can be true.

Obviously that's Fellini feeling the anxiety and the pressure of the world, kind of waiting for his next thing.

You know, he's and that's what he said his traps. But as we know from the press conference, that happens once they arrive at the launch side. He spoiler alert, he apparently ends his own life. A gun has been supplied to him by the producer, which is in his pocket, which in your pocket.

That's very interesting.

Again, sat ups memories very similar scene where where Woody Allen is killed by a fan at about the same time and meets the Martians because he just complete.

Ripoff watching I'm watching People's Big Adventure, and then I have sees of those memories. I don't have the recall that you do on that, but I'm going to be watching both of those films later on. Today he shoots himself in the head. Does he shoot himself in the head?

Well, we don't hear it, I don't think, do you. I don't think so.

See, that's interesting. I can't remember hearing the gunshot because I was listening for it, but I don't remember it happening.

I reckon you do, Okay, we have to watch it again? Yeah, watch it again? Were speed up?

And so do you think he's dead or fantasy? At the fantasy?

I think that's another It's a version of the suffocation fantasy. I think the idea that the step beyond that is to kind of end it all, because you might remember the press conference is slightly surreal and that the desk they're sitting at as a mirror, and he looks down, he sees himself and he may have.

These conversations with his wife that I assume it's not happening in real time.

Yeah, although you know, you could argue either way.

I think that's the maybe that's the beauty of it is that at the end of course, he abandons the idea of the traditional ending that he was going to have, and everybody's this probably is more fantasy where everybody else lines up and they're all going around in a lovely circle holding hands, which is the it's art rather than life, and he joins them, and I'm thinking, oh, well, that's his solution to the idea of telling the truth where there's no suffering, is that he just becomes part of

He just willingly accepts it and embraces it. So everybody from his.

Past, including himself in the now, are kind of this never ending conger line where they're going around to Geno knock his music whatever it is.

Where where his younger self is playing a flute.

And I love that he was almost directing his younger self.

Yes, yes, he was going over and whispered in his ear and then he's marching to the beat of his youthful memories. Is happy that that be the film rather than taking what the writer has been suggesting a lot. No, you need literature or you need history to inform what you're doing. You don't, you know you're what does he say? How do you do you really expect people to learn anything from your squalid catalog of childhood memories where you got things wrong.

I write some of that down because I thought, because he got he's got this kind of critic who he's employed.

Well, that's his critic writer, I think, or at least somebody somebody who's maybe not writing, but he's always constantly on him to be more intellectual or to be more I took it. I took it as being a Yes, he's definitely a critic, but I took it as being somebody who was basically writing the script for him or.

Yeah yeah yeah.

I thought I wasn't know if it was writing or consulting on it. But he also says it at some point, if you want to make a polemic piece about the Italian Catholic consciousness, you need a much higher degree of culture.

And he says you need logic and clarity. You know, your naivety is a massive failure.

Yeah, but then they go onto that scene with Oregon.

Oregon's been quoted in it, and of course everyone's dressed up like Roman senators in that sauna.

Yes, so that's that.

That is in contrast to the earliest scene where the large woman, the large prostitute I assume, is dancing at the beach for the for the boys, like, that's not good enough. What you need is something drawn from history. You need something, you know, more August. And so that's interesting that he puts those two scenes right next to each other, and then of course that it forms the Harem scene later where he's even in his fantasies, it doesn't work out. He's got to get the whip out.

It turns against him.

Yeah.

There's a film called What's New pussy Cat which was made in ninety sixty five that stars Peter a Tool and Peter Sellers. So this is like, okay, two years after eight and a half. If you watch that one again, put this one on your list. You'll see Peter Otol dressed up pretty much like Guido cracking the whip.

You know who wrote What's New? Pussy gap. He doesn't, he's in corrigible.

I hope you're listening to this woody album.

Never said I wasn't influenced by Fellini.

I love it, but that kind of because i'd heard a lot of people think that Eight and a Half. It's critics will say it's very stylish, but it's got nothing to say. But I think that's sometimes the point.

That's what the movie is about, really somebody who doesn't have anything to say, but he still wants to say. As you mentioned earlier, but I think there are things in this film that feel like really relevant and that feeling he's got this ambition to do something, but he's been made to feel like intellectually you are not. This is not your playground. Go back to making your fun little films. And I really responded, I really responded to that. It kind of got me a little bit.

Yeah, I think Guido is forty three in the film. He's got a body of work behind him. In fact, he's got eight films behind him. That's why it's called eight and a half. He's halfway through this other thing. He has to fit into the machine of expectations in order to make the film that's the thing that's causing great frustrating as well as whatever the hell is left

It's I know what it's like.

I wish I was funnier. I wish I was funnier, But you know, there we go. You know, you've only got what you've got.

And no matter who you are, whether you are fully fleeing himself or a Scorsese or michelib Er, a HALLI you are. Basically, it would be something well, no matter what lever you're at, whether it's intellectually or logistically, that there's something that you want to make and you can't get it done.

Whether it's fine.

I mean, in these dying days, Lenny was trying, you know, it was raising money to get a series of films made with Scorsese. They got it done in the end, but like he, even the great, the great Maestro revered fifteen thousand people go to his funeral I think it was ninety three, was scrapping around to raise money.

So there's there's always well.

That's the machine. At the end of the day.

It's a business and there are people you have to work with, and he parades them before us in eight and a half, who he doesn't like, he has nothing in common with, but who he needs to This is a transactional relationship. I mean, in our small way in the Australian television industry, most of the relationships you have with people are transactional, you know, and most of the friendships that you I mean, if youre lucky enough to have them and build them and have them exist outside

Yeah, I mean, Jacques Tarti.

Has a similar story. By the end of it, he didn't own any of his own films. I think he had to sell most of them off. A beautiful filmmaker, just a wonderful, wonderful sort of again, he's scrabbling around. Awson Wells another one, scrabbling around.

It was kind kind of sad, you know, to have to have to do that.

But yeah, it's not the days of the medici where you would be Yeah, whatever, however much money you want, to make, whatever you want. I think maybe Kubrick is the only filmmaker I can think of who was indulged to that extent right through to the very end, right from the very beginning probably, I mean, what was his first film, Spartacus, He was a kind of came in as a replacement, it might have been, was it Spartacus came in and did Spartacus, and he replaced Anthony Mann,

And then every film since then was an event, was an event. You know.

The sad thing though, I think if you are indulged in that way, like having sort of sponsorship from some medici, is that you end up making like Chaplin did and Kubrick did. You're making oh, one film every ten years.

You know. That's the thing.

Sometimes it's more interesting to see what you have to make under pressure, and all the solutions that you come up with to work around and navigate the difficulties that are in your way. You can end up actually with

It's a gag.

It's a cartoon gag that would fit in Indiana Jones. Even in Amistad. There's a moment where there's a whole there's a sword fight going on in a move behind some sail on a boat. Sudden there's a big splash of blood all over the back of a sail. Again, it's a cartoon joke. Shindler's List. They're coming down the stairs and others are going up the stairs, and he just holds on the staircase, the stone staircase. You hear the machine gub blast and all the blood hits the wall.

Yeah.

So I wonder if he had, you know, fifty million dollars less, whether we'd get a kind of a more interesting film.

I was seeing that recently in regards to Where's Anderson?

Whose new film. I really enjoyed Asteroid City, but.

I would love to see him do a Rushmore again, a Rushmore, just do a two hand or a three hander.

You know, there's this, you know that, please everyone stopped working for unders for Where's Anderson for a little while. If people say no to him, and this make him write a film or make him you know, well.

Where's the shooting?

I think to be able to build a studio so that you can do your lovely pan shots or it's an elevator shot or whatever it is. Whereas he had any of that and rushmore, he had to kind of the symmetry that he so enjoys and works acting actually made more sense when you're watching a film about somebody who's putting on a stage production.

It's kind of what it was.

It kind of makes more sense that way, the abstract nature of a lot of it. And there's a kind of simplicity in seeing Bill Murray asked to go out with the female lead and she says yes, and he's so happy that he just runs that scene where he kind of just turns it. He runs, He runs right into the background and then maybe falls over a fence. I was reading a story about that. He said, like, that's what was Anderson wanted Bill Murray to do. And

Yeah.

So I think if maybe if Wes Anderson got back to doing stuff where he was losing the light and you know, I had to get something done and wasn't controlling the environment so much, maybe.

Everything would look like fantastic mister Fox enjoyable though that film.

Is very good film, very good film I listened to sometimes when I'm doing this podcast, particularly big films, and I will drive around, I'll find another podcast and maybe discuss it.

This is to keep it in my head. I'll listen to YouTube interviews with the directors or.

You know, creatives.

I found a podcast about this, and I never listened to podcasts before. It was young Americans, one woman and three guys, and one of them enjoyed it, and the rest they were deflated and depressed about what they had.

Seen because they felt it was it was full of misogyny.

I listened to about twenty minutes and I had to I had to stop because I bailed out lestrata style. I bailed out ye because they young, well young nineteen and you know, in their early twenties, and they seem to completely disregard the fact that one this was made in nineteen sixty seven. They all, of course and are very articulate, and they all seem like sixty three sixty three.

Sorry, Gino Contie was very well researched, you know, nineteen sixty three.

They were doing the thing without putting today's values and half af come instead of because you do have these women in eight and a half.

Well, you've got a you know, a guido on any reading. Whenever you looked at it would be somebody who you would say, this is a guy doesn't treat women very well.

Exactly, And I think they're the character is a misogynist, yes, yeah, and we need to betray those darker bits of people's lives.

And I don't, Yeah, I don't think they're They're not. Fellini isn't holding himself slash Gino up as an exemplar of how to treat women. He's My reading is that he was quite critical of that attitude that he had.

How unfair it was.

You saw how Louisa was so depressed and hadn't enjoyed the experience at all after how many years they were married, and the only way that she could be happy was in his fantasy.

Yeah. So I don't know.

I guess I guess people read things differently. And if you're younger maybe and you haven't had a midd lofe crisis and you maybe haven't experienced how gray areas are, then maybe that would be enough to shut the door on the film for you.

Because I also think that he's this fantasy woman who appears throughout it's Claudia, is it, yes, Claudia, so that she is seen as the ideal, this vision of beauty, and you know something to strive for, and then he.

Drives off with her and he realizes that doesn't exist.

Well, yes, he in his way as being a casting couch kind of guy. He invites her over on the pretense or the pretext of getting a film role, and she's not quite as pliable as she as he thought she would be. In fact, I think she laughs at him and cause him an old man at one point. And so the fantasy disappears as soon as you shine enough light on it. You know there's a payoff, there's some sort of self awareness, and yeah, I think films

So, Claudia, so you have the vision and then you have that aging actress. Are they connected?

No?

I just thought that was somebody who he remember he was he first came across, who first saw her? When you're speaking of the aging Oh, the aging actress, the one that wanted the role I.

Wanted, deseritly wanted the role. I kind of is only like the second viewing that I kind of thought, hang on, is that supposed to be?

I think a suggestive of a pattern in his life. I think that he probably, yeah, you could probably wind back twenty five years and he might have done the same thing to her, But he never gives it the role.

He never gives it a role.

But he always says, you're beautiful, You're beautiful.

And I had this in my mind that he thought he had followed her career for a while, maybe when she was younger, because they're very similar looking. You can imagine that that would be a fit as far as you know that, the vision being that Claudia being the younger version of that aging actress and.

That fili or Guido.

The reason he wasn't really discussing the film not giving her a role because he still had the younger version of her in his head, the ideal version of her in.

Oh, okay, so you think we're going back to the past. I'm not sure about that, because I think Claudia is not buying any of it from him. I don't think she's She's not somebody.

Who's been away a younger like they say they both Claudia, because I forget the other okay, like a younger Claudia probably wouldn't put up with Guido, but now, when parts maybe few and far between, she is. I think that's potentially a comment on the aging and in that industry and not getting the rolls and you know, you keep saying I'm beautiful, but you don't give me the roles.

Yeah.

I think my reading of it is that's his pattern, that's what he's done, and it doesn't work anymore. I think Claudia is representative of that. That's either that or she's not that sort of person, whereas the older version is somebody who did hang on and did hope that he would eventually pay off. And there's a there's a kind of middle ground there where Ry asks the guy with a bucket to dance for him because he might get a part in this film, and the guy guy

Is a bit of a flake in that regard.

Claudia is the has come up, so I guess in a way because he's not going to sleep with her, because she's just not interested in sleeping with him.

And there's also women who I think have you know it, kind of own it. The wife, you know, she comes and she has drawn a line in the sand. And again I'll repeat it I said earlier when we discussed It's a oneful life. But I think that performance is this. I think I thought the film was better when she was in it, like it went up a level.

You're right, she's got a very there's a very modern performance in that. There's a great independence, there's this grey honesty to it. Whereas Carla, who plays the kind of more earthy, blousy woman who's probably informed by his experience as a young boy with Sagarina on the beach. She's more of a comic figure in fact, he does her eyebrows like.

The eyebrow, so he's till inxteen too, isn't it When he's this is real and he's getting her to indulge in his fantasy of coming into the room and pretending she's found somebody new and she goes down to the room and in the town and that the owner says, do you want to do you want to drink?

Or something like that.

But that's an interesting element to where is again playing with you know, real and fantasy.

Guido's a director, so he's saying, I'm going to put your makeup on, You're going to go ahead, and you're going to come in. And he's does that quite a lot in the film, and it's going to reorder things so that they work. It doesn't work in the real world, doesn't work, as he finds out again and again and again, that does just doesn't work as neatly as it would in a film, and that's why this abdication of reality by the end of it, when he goes we're all

Rosette again was Louisa's friend. She was really interesting as well.

Again, you know, I look at you know, I want to concentrate her performance as being her face, but really interesting, right, really wonderful, angular looking. You know, this is able to cast really well. Yeah, she was a very strong, you know, real modern character. And then they're kind of contrapuntal castings going on there where you see like the relationship with his friend Mario and the I think her name of the actress is Barbara Steele. She did a lot of

And I think also just to go back to the women, I mean, I think they also does a good job of almost explaining where his attitudes to women come from. He's got he gets put in the bed, there's two women saying, you know, who do you love the most?

Am I your favorite? You know?

His first sexual kind of awakening is with a sex worker on the beach, you know, and he gets told she is the devil by the priest.

And what does he do? He goes back to her, like.

Well, he has to go into his classroom with a sign on his back that says shame and Italian, and he's wearing a conical hat and one's laughing at him. And it's not fair because he was encouraged to go

Needs in order for him to feel comfortable in love. Yeah.

The shot of the after he helps his father into his grave and he kisses his mother, which becomes like a turns into Luis's.

Right of course, so he's making it very clear.

There's also another libeby of dialogue which I thought was fascinating and I think today it really was interesting. It was about being on the left or the right. I thought i'd write it down. They say, what is right and left? Mean he's such an optimist to believe in a world this confused and chaotic, that there are people so lucid to know whether they are left or right. And I thought it was really interesting in today's confusion of what the left is now and what the right is?

And I just I don't know.

I just kind of wasn't expecting a comment about even though obviously Italian Italy has always been a very political country, but I wasn't expecting a comment on left and right politics.

I wasn't thinking it was political. Really, No, I didn't take it that way. I mean, I see now that you've said that, I can hear that that is perfectly valid.

It's been trained over the right means maybe, yeah.

I mean I thought it was a question of where are you in good or bad or you know, over there or over here, rather than say good or bad and make a judgment about what you might be if you're over there versus over here. I just I don't know, I just read it as being a binary way of looking at things.

Whatever it was.

But yeah, there's clearly a lot of Catholic stuff going on there, like in a way that I don't quite understand how it could possible.

And of course he's he's the same. There's this kind of weird weird is like he is very religious.

If Leanie wasn't as religious, and he knew he was kind of poking the bear a little bit with the church, but then when he was, you know, he was buried and given all the religious kind of ceremonies upon.

Well, yeah, yeah, look there he might not have been a devout Catholic, clearly he was when he was young, or clearly he was expected to be when he was young. I mean, however, whether you reject it or not, if you reject it to the extent that he's rejected it enough to put it in seventy percent of that film, you know, it's clearly weighing heavily.

It's informed who he is.

It's absolutely informed who he is, even if it's a reaction against it. Yeah, and there's something about there's something about the shame and.

The guilt that is still clearly with it him.

Yeah, you know, he's still having to work his way through through it, which is a pity because it's such a pointless stone around your leg.

You know, it's.

Have any religion in your life, No, I need to the extent.

Where there are people in my life to whom it's important. So therefore, if it's important to them, and they're important to me, it's important for me to know respect what they want to do. And I like to think I did that with everybody. But yeah, my personal view is that it's terrible nonsense and causes more trouble than good. To be perfectly honest, Yeah, and even in even in a lot of the good that has done in the name of God, it's got a string attached to it, significant string.

You know.

We'll give you some water and well and maybe a school, but first we build a church. We build a little chapel for you. In the first book you're going to read is this one here, which we It's a popular favorite. The Gideons love putting it in the drawers in the

No.

No, but I was raised Catholic and have similar feelings to you. But I have, like you mentioned people around me and my grandparents in particular, who I and I did. I don't know you've done this before as well, who do you think you are? At the end of last year, went to air in June, and I learned a lot about my great grandparents. And it's interesting when you see faith, you know, and how it can work and get people

Well, yeah, it's a pity it's connected.

A pity that God is connected with faith, Yeah, because it's just that's kind of a different thing.

I think, you know, I did.

I did a series called Stairway to Heaven, which was essentially an exploration of faith in God versus religion.

Right, it wasn't versus religion.

It was just trying to ignore religion a bit because it was more about whatever personal relationship people had with some higher authority, and yes, I can definitely see it being a very, very human need to believe there is a life after this one, because often for many people is so miserable, and so in order to get through the shit, you're going to have to think that thing you're going to there's a reward, or there's a better, more perfect version. And we think that of ourselves, Otherwise

Years, right give or take.

But the reality is, it seems highly unlikely that there's any sort of verdant garden for us to walk in after we shuffle off.

I do I mean whenever I'm in the air a plane.

I look over the clouds and I look for it, but no, it's nothing here.

But you know, I reckon it's healthy to think we only got this, because otherwise it's not precious. If you think you've got an inexhaustible supply of happy life coming up, you're not going to give a fuck about what's going on now. I think our job is to try and make life a little less miserable for firstly ourselves, because we're very selfish creatures humans, but you know, for your family next, and then maybe for your friends, and then

Have you ever had or do you have ambition to direct at all? Because you are well versed obviously, Yeah, I.

Don't know whether at my age I'm sixty one now, you know the only thing I mean, I definitely I'm absolutely completely sick of myself as a as an on screen performer. I don't know if you've ever had that experience where you go, oh fucking how if I see my if I see that look on my face one more time? Sitting in the edit, sweet mad as Hell, I used to sit and go, Oh Jesus, I'm sick and tired of seeing that shit eating grin and I would like to move behind the camera again. If I

Yeah, you don't have to be first on set, but you know you can't be.

You know what, I couldn't do it any other way. I think I would have to probably be the first on the set. I would have to one hundred and ten percent or nothing.

You know, I can't.

It's one of the problems I've got at the moment, having finished Man as Hell, which was you know, pretty signiaving a workload for a weekly turnaround show. Now it's only a TV show, but you know, it's sort of occupy most of most of the week, if not all of the week. But the idea of trying to think of a version that I could do where I wasn't doing seven days a week to say, and you see, I couldn't do it. I'm like one of those fish that grow to the extent that the aquarium will allow,

Yeah, I've directed some episodes of It's a Date, which you were amazing in and directed your episode.

But that's why I was amazing. It's funny though he wrote it, though.

There isn't terrible performances in there, and the other ones that I directed, John would have never been so bad.

No, that was that was if you haven't seen it, Sean plays.

Offer my offer, Smith Row, good Way, Pete and Rover worked with those guys and Adriana yeah you're pickering. Yeah, so that was a really good opportunity and my offer. I thought, well, this character is interesting, could I make him hungarian? I had to do a voice that I couldn't act.

And yeah, you basically play is playwright hung your own playwright who works in the theater restaurant, but basically draculas and you would quote Peter Laurie and you wrote your own did you work?

Because there's a song in the performance in it? So did you do you think I had lived that one?

You had lived it?

Yes, yeah, and then you put music on at the end, music on the as reason too. It was directed by a wonderful director by the name of Jonathan Brow, and Jonathan had said to me, I think that he would vape, and I thought, oh, that's interesting. This is very the very early early stages of vaping coming. And I thought, okay, that's interesting. So I was vaping in one scene and I really went for it, and I was really a

So because I wasn't even aware of that.

And there's but occasionally there's a little bit of mist, you know, just just floats across the rope's face as he's doing a line.

So I wonder what the audience must think, you know, what's going on there? Bit of sulfur? Is this satan?

Well, it's a jacular. There's smoke machines probably around.

If Fellini didn't have this problem, he would have just had the guy vaping. There's a lot of smoking that goes on, and I'm sure it was the cause of those young people turning off on their podcast that they didn't like the smoking going on.

It does look cool, doesn't it.

I was told when we may I met a movie kind of Love You Too, which Dana Reid directed, who has gone and to have great success in American TV. And Petered English is in the film and really droad show we're making that and they they they it wasn't a demand, but it was like very They were very.

Big on those smoking in their films unless it was absolutely necessary.

And you have to do if you have it, you need to have a scene or a line that's critical of the person. Is that right? Yeah?

Well so yes, and The one thing in the script was that my character was going to be smoking, but then I basically put it that straight away and I quit. And the joke is that I only took up smoking that morning, so they were that got through. But yeah, I forget we even got on to all of that.

I was directing.

That's right, directing, So I think I think it'd be amazing. I think age is no barrier.

Sean sixty one, you're still very young, and yeah, I'd love to see behind the camera.

Yeah, look, that might be.

I think what I would like to do is to I've had a pretty good run, you know, in terms of being able to realize what I want to write or perform, So it would be I'm attracted to projects where I'm helping real like somebody else's vision. I think that would be nice. So yes, perhaps directing somebody else's script where I get to collaborate with the writer and the producer and the creative people behind that, people I haven't worked with before, you know, that would that would be appealing And.

I think I probably. I don't know.

I used to think again, you'll get back to Wody Allen because he said that somebody asked him whether writing and.

Three he probably said it first.

Yeah, probably did, he probably did. I think Alan actually appeared in a Felleni film which I haven't seen. It was a version of King Lear where Woody Allen played a character called mister Alien and I haven't seen it, but it's it's king Lear, and I think Alan plays a kind of Jester, plays the full character in this whatever this version is of king Lear.

I've read that. Anyway. Somebody asked Woody Allen whether writing and directing. You know that must be hard.

You know, you come in, you know you've got to you know, you've got to set the cameras up, then you've got to change your clothes and you can come back on.

And what they Allen said, No, you're you're editorializing with intimation. It's it's not a question of doing that. You just go in and you set the cameras up and you change your clothes, and you were going to do the lads. It's not place the work, it's half the work.

So for him, for him, it was a lot easier. And I guess you know, as a stand up you would know this being able to go on and just with you and the mic. I think the only person you're relying on is the sound guy. Yeah, to be able to tell the joke, you know where it is, you know where the emphasis is, you know how to tell the joke. You know where you need to be, you know where your head needs to be. Directing is a comedy?

Is that as you are, you are going well.

I want the audience to be in this comic environment. I need the person to kind of lean in and emphasize this thing which you do visually with your Mazon scene or whatever your cutting patterns are.

And that is not hard.

There's about ten ways you can get it right, and there's about probably a million ways you can get it wrong.

And there it's just to avoid them absolutely.

And there's so many different there are so many different kinds of directors. I mean there's the boody ol on the approach, and then there is the you know, the Paul Thoma sanders An approa, which will be a very different approach. And you can be a different You could be a collaborative director or you can be like, this

You know?

It was really amazing. And I got to work Joanna Beck with Donaghue and fist recently and done.

She did, she didn't news type, She's great.

Jo's great, and more recently Matthew Temple, who is amazing. And to be able to say to them, you know, usually the first thing you do, you arrive on set, you have breakfast with them, you know, and you say, okay, you know this, this is what I'm thinking for the scenes.

Does somebody else have any other other ideas?

And there were some scenes where you know, I got to the point where I was just like, I'm not sure about this one. I don't know, you know, and we will talk about it and then you know, and it would collaborate and and it would be you know, I would shoot the scenes and I go, okay, I think we can move on, and they'll go listen, have you thought of about this shot over here? And there were times where I said, I don't think we need it. It could be a time thing, yeah, or it's like, yeah,

You know, Yeah, I look, I think I think I find it fascinating. I recently did a thing in New Zealand where I was just an actor and it was a budget that I have not experienced.

You know.

It was kind of really big sets, and you know, so I was I was just in for you know, a week or so. So I'm helping out with this thing as a as an act not which I learned my lines, you know, and I treated the text a lot more respectfully than I would treat anything I wrote myself. So what was really interesting was watching the director's work and thinking, oh, okay, so that, yeah, that's okay. Now we're running out of time. I can till we're runing.

Out of time.

I can tell this is And then at the end of the day, it's just like an episode of It's a Date or an episode of Mad as Hell. You've got half an hour left, you've got two scenes to shoot, you're losing the light, someone's not around, you're acting to somebody's hand.

You know, it's it is the same thing. No matter what the budget.

This thing would have had a decent budget, but it doesn't buy you any more hours of the day.

Yeah, I love I love the expression. I'm sure you had it gone with the wind in the morning, neighbors in the afternoon.

Yeah, I guess.

I guess that the skill of the director slash producer is to is to say this doesn't matter. Not everything has. In Fellini's case, I would argue every frame is a work of art. You could probably screen grab any moment from that film, and if it was sharp enough, it had looked like it'd be a beautiful picture on the wall.

You know.

There's just something astonishing about his ability.

And whoever his dop is, who would he Ellen's probably work with sins would probably Gilliam I think worked with a few. I might have even worked with Fellini's dop.

Yeah, there was.

I did love the Felleni the casting, by the way, and the actor because Felleni I had no idea what Feleanni looked like. He actually looks like Joe Hockey's kind of struggling brother.

You know.

Yeah, he's kind of flattering himself when he casts. Yes, Marcello Mastroiani, Yes.

I was just his name yes, and and I like that.

I think those all flourishes he has of the dancing down the hallways really lovely.

Yeah, he's a pretty cool guy. Yeah, pretty cool guy.

All his flaws we recognize those, Yes, but yeah, I mean I mean the black and white and as sunglasses and the suit helps it's pretty cool. Yeah, there's one more bit I just wanted to Actually, we have a lot of grabs today. Obviously there's usually we play grabs, but played many.

Because I think our description of the film, I don't think people need to see it.

No, this is this is ten out of ten.

This.

There's one quote as well, which I thought was also pertinent to today's society. We are surrounded by sounds and images that have no right to exist, coming from and bound for nothingness.

That's that's Instagram. Yes, yes, you're quite right.

Yeah, I did love that. There's a couple of little fun facts we like the throat. We've already covered some.

Actually, the fact that eight and a half gets its name because he had made six features, two shorts and was making this film. The dialogue. No dialogue was recorded on set. He'd often play music or shout directions on set. That often he would rewrite dialogue, which meant that that's part of the reason why it doesn't match.

Often, Yeah, it was.

Kind of working like a painter. You know, well, I'll do that and maybe cover it up later. Yeah, that's really interesting, and that knowing that he's yelling out at you while you're performing. Apparently bes Leman works that way. Apparently I heard a story where he's just sort of yelling out and maybe and then his assistant comes to, look, we have to be quiet for at least one of the takes.

Actually know how this works.

I don't think he wears job person uses allowed halo, but and apparently I remember reading a story about a film that Olivier directed. Lawrence Olivier directed Marilyn Monroe in a film called The Prince and the Showgirl. And the best scenes, apparently are the ones where he was just yelling directions off like a lucky would to in a fashion shoot or something like that. So I look up,

You often hear of directors or reviews and movies it's like it's like a it's like a canvas and it's almost like it's like painting as an artist. But I think I've seen a film that that fits more than eight and a half.

Yeah, he really does.

I really feel that the imagery is that of an artist with the brush.

Yeah.

Yeah. And particularly there's three, I think almost three sixty pans where where choreographing extras and actors woving in the foreground or popping up in the background or whatever. The camera's constantly moving and people are turning on and acknowledging the camera, acknowledging Fellinia, knowledging us, acknowledging Guido.

However you want to look at it.

And there's even one little bit where there's a woman who blows a little kiss, a little kiss to the camera. Again startus memories. Sharon Stone in the train blows a kiss to the camera.

Is okay.

I think some legal proceedings are going to have to begin now. I'm not sure how he's gotten away with this, But there's also going back to Gino Conti.

Nino Roddy that you can hear of Bill Conti, who did the Rocky music Bill Conty.

That's right, Bill Conti, No Nino Rota Roter.

We've fakedout Nino Rotter before because we've covered to Godfather films with Luck McGregor. There's a part of the Godfather score is heard on the playing on the piano, which I think was the reason why he was not able to be nominated for an Oscar because part of that music had been used.

So was the best original screenplay?

Yeah, okay, obviously original, but he uses a bit of in eight and a half Nino quotes. In fact, just he uses a whole bunch of the saber Dants by Katchaturian. I think it's there at one point, yea and quite and right of the Valkyries.

Yes, is there?

Yeah, probably the first time it was used in a film. Possibly it probably influenced Capola deciding that's not a bad bit of music.

I think.

I assume a se Stardust memories as well. This is this is I found fascinating this final fact. There was a strike at the print lab during production, so Felenny wasn't seeing Russias at all, so he only saw what he had shot when he hit the editing suite, which, considering, wow, what we see and what we've just been talking about is amazing like, I'm amazed. Franch for a couple had

He was seeing them when he got back to the stage. Also equally amazing.

He might have had the advantage of video assist. Possibly, Yeah, some idea, but of course Feleni wouldn't it.

No, you've been completely blind. So I do wonder how many I mean, there's long there's long shots here. I wonder how many takes. I'm not sure how long it took them to shoot. Actually, I'd love to know how on the shoot I went for.

But there we go.

Well, mate, this podcast comes with homework, and you know it's not a short film. Sampang deliberately chose the cast because of the eighty eight minute running time.

But yeah, nearly a three hour film. I'm so glad you enjoyed it.

Yeah, well, it would have been awful having to sit here for this long and say how much we hated it.

Well, we've had the occasional episode.

Hami smec donald did not enjoy punch Drunk love Greg Larsson wasn't necessarily on board the Jerry Maguire Express.

They're probably the better ones, you know where you like them and they don't. Here we are in furious agreement for almost an hour and a half.

Well you know, I thought we butter the heads a bit with the Pee Wee's Big Adventure. But no, they're both equally you know, fun because as long as we can have a chat. But it does coming home, So I do appreciate. I love that you liked it. And do you think you're visit with some more Fleannie.

I won't watch Lastrata right the feelings that I had as a fourteen year old what happened. What happened was just I just it was so nothing worse than watching somebody trying to be funny or thinking they're funny. Actually is even worse because everyone thinks she's so funny. Clearly the director thinks she's funny. She thinks she's funny.

To me, she wasn't.

Other people may disagree. Other people may love the film. Is there nights in Cabria? Yes, I might see that, I think he might. Yes, Okay, oh well there's then I have I have continued studies ahead of me.

Excellent. And is there anything you've got coming up that you want to You got to.

Know, I'm here just a new joy of spending time in your car. Do you love that he's not selling anything?

Not selling a single thing?

There was Fleannie had a sign on the camera which it said a reminder, this is a comedy, which I thought, did you find it funny?

Like, did you you have?

Yeah? I found the I found the actor playing Carla was very witty. Yeah, yeah, I didn't.

I thought, at no point did I think the actor talked down to the character, which I really liked. She found the humanity in the kind of ludicrousness of her, which I think is good because you do see a lot of films where they go, oh, yeah, we're not supposed to like this character. I mean, there's there's a certain amount of cruelty in Fellini's use of certain people in the foreground or the extras, or something's going, well, that's that's a weird face.

I'm going to use that one. Yeah.

Apparently people would like extras would arrive and the crowds would gather to because whenever he made a film in Italy, who became a massive event.

And he just just grabbed people off the street with well, no but people.

I'm not what he's casting process was where he found these people, But people would arrive to the set to see who he was using and people he was using.

Rightly a realist style at Victoria. The secret I think for we talked about just briefly with the bicycle the I think.

He would just go you you.

Standing by that ice cream cartter, come up, come here.

Well, the freedom of those shooting back then with permits probably weren't a thing I wouldn't imagined.

I don't imagine it even today, even today, if you watch any documentary about some nightmare Gilliam shoot China Chetta or something like when he was doing a baron Munchaus, there's a film that you should get somebody to watch and talk about.

But yeah, look, it'd be a nightmare. Yeah, it'd be a nightmare. Mate, Thank you so much, and yeah, see you around. Okay, bye, there we have it.

An episode of You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet and one of my favorites. That was so nice chatting to Sean about Fellini's Eight and a half. It was a big film. It's one of those films that if you love films, you feel a little bit guilty, Like if you're a real cinephile, you feel a bit guilty, a bit unworthy of being named the cinephile.

If you haven't seen Eight and a half, now I have, and I can judge other people.

I loved it. I really did.

Enjoyed it the first.

Time, loved it the second time. I think, if you are watching it, just let it wash over you, just bathe in it. It is a beautiful looking picture about an artist trying to work out we're trying to navigate the hurdles in his own life, hurdles that he has placed them himself and his career to avoid or to please to people around him. It's fascinating the thing. It was made in ninety sixty three and then later on by Body Allen Stardust Memories.

Incredible. Thank you.

I really hoped you enjoyed the show. Please let me know what you thought of it any when anything, any thoughts you have about Fellini, please let us know. We really want to hear them. Go to our speak Part. Follow the pages our page there'll be a link to speak Part. It's like an answer machine message. Just leave us a message We'd love to hear your voice, or you can write to us at Yasney Podcast at gmail dot com. Thank you everyone for listening. Please go to

It all helps with the.

Algorithm, helps push this little podcast out into the world. Next week on the show, very good friend of mine. Don't catch up with him as much as I would like. I'll work with him many times. He had a small role in my film I Love You Too.

He played a.

Waiter, a small role, didn't have a name. I made a short film and he was good enough to jump in and be the lead in that film, Call Christmas Clay. He is was in an episode of It's a Date.

And you wanted nothing yet until then?

By for now, And so we leave old Pete Steve Man sul and to old friends of the radio audience, We've been a pleasant good name.

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