When I was six, I saw Jurassic Park for the first time. I believe we saw it in the theaters. And it was the first movie that opened my eyes and made me say, wow, not just as a kid, but kind of as this young filmmaker, eager to burst out of his shell and make movies. Ever since then, I've wanted to be involved in the movie making process.
I started when I was 14, I went attacked and I grew up and I said, well, I like being behind a camera. I like directing. And beyond directing and beyond acting and beyond being involved in movies, I love talking about movies. My name is Anthony Trebeket and welcome to the first of what I hope to be many podcast about movies.
My general idea or thought process for this podcast was to create a podcast that I can speak openly and freely about film. I've accumulated all this knowledge and this big opinions structure about actors and directors and the good movies and the bad movies. And I think it's time that I broadcast that opinion. Over the past few years, it's been hard to get motivated to do a podcast.
Mostly for the fact that there's so much content and so many opinions out there. And I love the internet for that, but it's hard to get noticed and it's hard to build a fan base. I think my ideas and my opinions are great and my friends tell me, you know, oh, you got to do this, you got to do that. It's hard to get motivated to do it because you see the numbers, you see that there's nobody listening or barely any people listening.
You're like, well, why am I producing this content? Why am I spending time doing this when nobody's listening? It's taken a great group of friends to kind of derail the demotivation and to encourage me to do these, to do these podcasts and to get my opinions out there. One of my friends, Chris, said, and it's been in my head for a while now, he said, you have to do things for you.
No matter if nobody's listening, if nobody's watching, you have to do things for you. So if you guys want to come along for the ride, that'd be great and I'd appreciate it and I love you forever. But if you don't, it's all right, because I'm doing this for me. This is important to me.
Now, let's cut the bullshit and let's start talking about movies. For the first episode, I kind of want to touch upon what people consider to be the Golden Age of cinema. Or more importantly, what I consider to be the Golden Age of cinema. You know, those first couple of years, or those first couple of semesters of college, you're always looking for those EZA classes and a lot of people take a film class because you figure out like movies, I'll just sit there, watch the movie, maybe hand in a paper and that's it.
And that's usually the case. For me, it was a little different. I was in the movies and I loved watching them. So I was in discussions and I was excited.
And as the years went by, I've taken more and more film classes and I've taken about a dozen or so by now. And as I've taken more of them, I've started to realize how much teachers or professors rather, how heavy they rely on teaching and showing movies from before the 1960s. Now by definition, the Golden Age of cinema is seen as the 1920s to the 1960s. Now when I think of Golden, I think of the Olympics, I think of Ron's silver, gold, gold is best.
So it should be that the Golden Age of cinema is the time that we produce and made the best movies possible, right? Well, then I'm baffled and I think it's total bullshit that we think the 20s and the 60s are the best we can do because they're not. And it's bullshit that these film intellectuals, these elites in the film world have to embed in our brain that these are the best that we have, that you have to study these and admire these because these are them. This is the Golden Age of movies.
Now I can respect the fact that Hollywood during that time was at its peak, was that that was its golden time for Hollywood. Because of the studio system and the fact that everything was running so smoothly, but to say that that was the time where we produced our best work is bullshit. So challenge the people that say that. The challenge of people that say that birth of a nation made in 1916, a silent film that's way too long and that is racist beyond any shadow of a doubt and is just that is so far off from reality that you have to study those films and you have to consider those films.
You have to write papers about those films. No, it's bullshit. Why can't I write films about more modern movies? Why can't I write films about the real Golden Age of cinema, which is the 1970s?
The 70s is when we produced and made the best movies possible. Now don't get me wrong. I'm not throwing away every movie from 1920 to 1960. There are movies in that time frame, that quote unquote Golden Age.
There are movies in that time frame that I love and admire and that should be viewed and respected and should be kept in the highest regard possible. There of course are movies from there that are some of the best of all time. Some, a select few. I just believe that there are films from the 1970s that are better than anything that came out of the 1920s, the 1960s or the mid 1950s.
But there of course are so many that I hold in such higher regard. Movies like Wizard of Oz and Casablanca and Gone with the Wind and Citizen Kane and anything that Hitchcock made. He was a genius and visionary and I'll forever admire his work because he could be alive today and make those movies and they would be amazing still today even if he made them. He was so ahead of his time and that's why even though he was only alive during that, you know, he made movies during that time frame, his movies should have been in the 70s.
That's how I kind of see it. But of course there are movies that I love and admire and respect so much from that time frame, but they're just better ones. Citizen Kane is not the best movie ever made. It is in a category which I'm kind of shaping.
It's in this category which I call the perfect date. It's one of the perfect date. But there are better movies and they came out of the 70s that are better than Citizen Kane. I just can't stand going on top 10 lists and there are these kind of these film critics who picked, oh these are the best movies of all time.
I was on this website before and it says according to 846 film critics, they made their list of what the top 10 movies would be and eight movies, eight movies of the 10 were before 1960. And there's really only two movies on that list, vertigo and Citizen Kane that really should be on there. These other movies were made in 1939, 20s, 1927, 1936. I mean, we've come such a long way in film.
Stop looking so far in the past just to please these intellectuals. There's so many better films and there's even better films. There's even better films so much as 2000s that can beat out movies from the 20s and 60s, but definitely the 1970s. And to quote Roger Ebert, who I have the utmost admiration for, I think he will forever be known as the best film thinker.
He was amazing and he's one of my idols. He said, blockbusters run the mainstream industry. We may never again have a decade like the 1970s. Now I disagree with the first part of that.
I disagree with the fact that we, yes, mainstream, blockbusters do run the mainstream. But there are different streams, there are different streams and there are different avenues that me as a filmmaker and admirer film that I still go to to look for those real, real movies. I know how to brush out the blockbusters and I know how to go and find my independent movie or maybe a movie that was from a big studio that they care about and they know it's a good story and they get good actors and a good director and they're really in it for making the art. I do find those movies still and I don't think that we are totally run by blockbusters.
I don't think so. That's where the money is, yes, but we still have film. We still have good, really, really good films and they're still coming out. But the second part of that is what really gets me.
The 1970s were directors were able to find such freedom. We had so many challenges before the 1970s with McCarthyism and censorship in film. So how can we regard that as the highest? How can we call it our golden age when the 70s when we really found ourselves?
There's so many amazing films that came out of that era and that so many films that are still coming out today. Just to highlight a few from the 70s, the Godfather, the Godfather, the Part 2, Andy Hall, Taxi Driver, One Floor Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Star Wars, The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now, and my personal favorite of all time, the 1975 classic Joss. Some of these movies, I mean, I think at least seven movies in here can easily be on the best movies of all time list. This is our golden age, the 70s.
And even five years before and five years after, I would say 1965 to 1985 is when we made the best movies yet. It's when we produced and made the best movies we can. And there's filmmakers that are still making amazing motion pictures and amazing movies. And we can only hope that we find another golden age.
We can only hope that there's another golden age of film about the surface. That's what we strive for as directors and actors and everything else. I think we came close in the 90s, especially in the early 90s. I think we came close to resurfacing that golden age.
With movies like Goodfellas and Schumler's List and Pulp Fiction and Shoshank Redemption and Science of the Lambs and Unforgiven, I think that early 90s we came close to resurfacing that golden age. So maybe that's like the Silver Age. I don't know. I haven't really thought too much about this.
But I know that our golden age is certainly not the 1920s to the 1960s. And you should really regard 65 to 85 as the time where we made our best movies. The problem after 96 or 97 is that we did become too mainstream driven. We did become too blockbuster driven.
And that caused the problem. And it's been a problem for movies ever since. But then you get these times where you get these movies that are kind of intended to be blockbusters but are so good. Movies like The Dark Knight and Movies Like The Lord of the Ring franchise.
Whatever the intentions of the studio or the people involved in the production of the movie were, they wound up turning out great movies. And I think that just goes to show you if you find the right director and the right interested parties, you can make an exceptional movie. Even if it's intended for the mainstream audience. You can still make an exceptional movie.
So that's my rant on what I believe to be the Golden Age of Cinema, 1963 to 1985. And if you think there's a golden age, maybe you think that 2000 to 2010 was the Golden Age. Surely it produced great, great movies. I think as far as my favorite movies of all time go, I think about three or no, maybe five or six are from 2000 to 2010.
Movies like Boogie Nights and Drive and Mystic River and Catch Me If You Can. Those are movies that I consider my favorites. They're all in my top 10. So let me know.
Maybe we are in the Golden Age. Maybe there are definitely some exceptional movies from 2000 to 2010. And I think 85 to 90 is a little iffy. I don't really think there's that much wonder in it.
There's a couple but not the best. I don't see the late 40s as anything to really be jumping around about. So there's these five or six years fans that we get of burst or spurts. I don't know.
But we get these couple of years of wonder and then we get a couple of years of... But I think from 65 to 85 we had an era that we can call a real important time and what I would consider the Trumpet and Golden Age of Cinema. So that's my rant on that. And yeah.
Alright so now let's focus on a particular movie. We're going to the opposite side of the spectrum. We were talking about the best of the best in movies. I'm going completely off the road from what I was just talking about.
Because this movie doesn't even scrape. The barrel doesn't even eat the shit that the godfather had if the godfather was a person of shit. And that is the end. It came out recently.
It's got this big cast of all these comedy stars from the past five or six years that have been really making their ways and doing really well. Seth Rogen directed it with his partner Evan Goldberg. He wrote and directed it. James Franco's in it's Joan Hills in it's Dan McBride and Craig Robinson and Jake Barram's original.
And so many other comedians and other people take some cameos in this movie. And critics are loving it and fans love it and my friends love it. I just can't get a handle on it. There's a lot to the movie.
First of all, why don't we know what to start here? It's so, there's so much to really talk about when we talk about this movie. I saw the trailer about eight months ago and I was so excited for it. I love Seth Rogen.
I think he's such a funny guy and he writes such great material and you love him and knocked up and you see him throughout all these other movies like Zack and Miriam and other stuff. The other guys too, Joan Hill in Superbad and all these other guys have made such big strides in comedy and they make you laugh. So of course I was excited about it. I was loving it.
I couldn't wait. Then it came out and I saw it in the movies with Florida with a couple of friends. I didn't get it. One of the arguments that will come against me is that, oh well, don't take a movie like this too seriously.
Well, I'm not taking it seriously. I'm not thinking it's going to be the next godfather or jaws. I'm not thinking that. I'm not going to go into a movie with that expectation, especially having seen the trailer and knowing a little bit of history about it.
I'm never going to. I'm not taking the movie seriously. But nevertheless, it's still a movie and I still have to look at it in the narrative structure, the plot, the characters, the plot, progression, the character, progression, the ending, the beginning. I still have to look at those things.
That's not overthinking or going into it with high expectations. That's just breaking down a movie like it should be broken down. It still has a decent sized budget. It still has a script.
It has to be regarded as a film and as a movie with a story. For starters, the actors in it, and obviously it's going to be plenty of spoilers here, it's about this doomsday scenario where there's this party at James Franco's house and Seth Rogan and Jay Baris shall go and all these comedians are there and see them in the world. For starters, Craig Robinson will start, I guess they could have found any other black comedians to be in the movie as a lead, but he's in it, he's a TV actor, he shouldn't be in that movie. If anything, he's a supporting, supporting, supporting role in a movie.
He's the comic relief for a couple of scenes. He was great in the office and I loved him in the office. I forget what else he was, oh he was great in Zack and Miri, another supporting, supporting, supporting role. To put him at the forefront of an ensemble cast was stupid for a big reason, not for his acting abilities or not for his comedic abilities, but for the fact that they tried to give him this punch line or this saying about, I forgot to take your panties off or something like that throughout the movies where I'm just taking your panties, shirt off, he's singing the song, he says it at the end.
It's like you're trying to force people to walk out of the movies and say this line. That turned me off immediately. The fact that you're trying, there's the lines that are in the script that come naturally and that you remember because it was such a great line, not because it was forced down your throat. Smile you son of a bitch from Jaws or we're going to need a bigger boat which was improvised from Jaws.
It wasn't, oh we need a line or we need a catchphrase. That's what it's where I'm looking for. We need a catchphrase that's really going to make, that's going to make people remember this movie and it was forced down my throat. So the handle Craig Robinson, he's out of the way.
Jay Barrichel's a bum, he's a horrible actor, he was annoying and stupid in the movie. I don't think he even was acting. I don't know where people are, I could see why we're starting to, you know, that whole mainstream talk I was talking about before because we're just putting anybody in these fucking movies. Barrichel's an idiot.
Jonah Hill had this, whatever he was playing in the movie, I don't know what he was doing. I was trying to figure it out. He was playing like, you know, I guess he has this persona outside of the movies where he's an asshole. So in the movies he was playing, was he gay?
Was he just like, what was he trying to do? I didn't get that. Seth Rogen was himself again, you know, I credit him for directing it and I credit him for writing it and using and keep going and getting all these people involved. Franco was good, Danny McBride is always funny in anything that he does, who else is in it.
There's a lot of cameo appearances. What's that kid's name from? Oh, Michael Cera. Michael Cera stole the movie.
He was hysterical in it for the 15 seconds that he was in it. But in general, I found it to be a shitty B movie. I didn't laugh as much as I wanted to laugh and that upset me. That upset me the most about that experience was that I didn't get to laugh as much as I wanted to.
Now I'd like to talk about a movie that was actually good and not shitty. The movie that I think was one of the most original, and I don't know how I could say it was original, but one of the most original horror movies that I've ever seen and that was the most thundering. It was interesting because it involved all, it wasn't necessarily original in its content. It was more original in its filmmaking and in its story, but it's kind of hard to say that because the story is based on true events and the content is based on things that we've seen in other horror movies.
It had exorcists, it had exorcism in it, which we've seen, obviously, exorcists. It had ghosts, it had creepy houses, it had possession, it had all of that kind of stuff that we've seen in all of these movies, but the combination of all of them together and the story and I think what made it work was the fact that the script was good, the acting was great and the directing was great. That's what made it original is the fact that you had all of these things work together. I think James Wan did an incredible job and I think we found our savior of the horror genre because horror movies have gone so far off the road and they've almost disappeared.
We don't have serial killer movies anymore or slaughter movies anymore. We have these kind of just ghost movies and psychological thrillers and I think Wan can save that. I think he started with Saw in 2002, I want to say. I think he did an incredible job in Insidious and Insidious is an original movie.
That's a movie that I can see as an original in its content, even though it had the ghost and everything, it still had this original storyline and the story arc. The Conjuring was so good and then a couple weeks later I saw Insidious in Chapter 2, which definitely didn't get as much praise as Insidious 1, but in a way it was quite good. It really rivalled Insidious 1. I think the story was so interesting and what they did to connect Insidious 1 and Insidious 2 was so like what am I really watching this right now in a horror movie?
It was really good, but I think the Conjuring was the best horror movie I've seen in a long, long time. It's definitely a favorite of mine in the horror genre. I'd like to see somebody really tackle not necessarily a reboot of a remake, but a new character like Freddy Krueger or Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees. I'd like to see somebody tackle something new.
I think the last one we had was that Miley Luddie Valentine, 2008, and we had a remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which was horrible. Actually it was a sequel that takes place in our time. Nobody has really wowed me in a while for the horror movies, but James Wan, his hit after hit after hit, has managed to really sustain my attention. He also makes other great movies outside of the horror genre.
He made Death Sense, which was great and he's working on Fest in Furious 7, which believe it or not, these Fest in Furious movies are still critically acclaimed and well-liked by critics and audiences, even though we're on number 7. Somehow the stories have still been good and the actors that have signed on have still been good. But the Conjuring, definitely an A+, really, really original, really good directing. I admire the directing in that film because it's so hard to make people who, even if you were born in the 70s or even if you've lived through the 70s, it's so hard to make people believe that you're in that moment and to escape.
Movies are all about escapism. It's all about being lifted into the movie world, not into your own. I mention the Conjuring is because I hope to do more of these podcasts, obviously. Since we are in the month of October, we're on a new month, October 2nd.
I thought as we get closer to Halloween, I'd talk about some of my favorite horror movies. I wanted to start with the newest favorite of mine, which is The Conjuring, and definitely as other viewing pleasures outside of The Conjuring would be the other James Wan movies, which would be in City of Seven, City of Seven, and City of Seven, too. Get The Conjuring, go see it wherever it is these days. I don't know what it comes out on DVD.
As these podcasts go on, we'll talk about some of my real favorite horror movies, which are movies like The Exorcist and Halloween, and so many, so many others, and movies that maybe you haven't even heard of. I guess that's the plan. It's the decision from this microphone and just talk to you guys about movies. Hopefully you guys think about my opinions and respect my opinions and I respect yours.
I hope to get some people on here that I definitely admire and respect their opinions on film. I hope to get them in here and we'll banter or we'll just talk and we'll agree and we'll just talk about this great art form that's filmed. It's overtakened me. It's become my most expensive hobby.
It's become what I've studied in school and what I've been doing my pastime. I love talking about it. I'm glad that I finally found the motivation to start doing a podcast. Look out for the episodes every Wednesdays and Sundays.
There'll be available on iTunes and there'll be available on a website that I've been babying and trying to get up off the ground, which is fansandgeeks.com, another website where you can go and just look through and look at different movie articles and lists and all that. As we go on here, there's going to be new stuff to talk about every time. I'll try to highlight different actors and directors and I'll try to keep a lot of different things involved in my talking. I'll try to talk about what I think are the better movies and movies you should stay away from, but even the movies you should stay away from, you should see because you have to develop your own opinion and you have to, you have to, I don't admire anything Tim Burton does, you might.
I might hate everything you say and I might throw a tantrum and I might yell and I might get angry and I might even hit you. I don't know what would happen, but at the end of the day I'll say, wow, that was a great debate. That was fun. I was excited.
I learned a lot and I'll respect you and I'll respect your opinion as long as you come with some knowledge, as long as you come at me with some knowledge. That's it. That's the episode, the first episode. Thank you.
I hope you keep coming along for the ride. That's it. Thank you very much. Keep talking about movies and keep living your life and remember there's one thing I learned over the past few weeks, so you got to do things for you.