All right. Here we go. Hi guys. Welcome back to the big picture podcast where we take a look as always the latest movie news, the films of today and yesterday, and we put them all into some sort of context.
I've yet to figure out what that context actually is, but seated across the microphone from me as always. It's film of online editor in chief rich trees and seated across the microphone from me is film of online contributing editor and doubting comments. No time to be good. Well, no.
I mean, we talk about older films and how they connect with newer films. In fact, that's kind of going to be the theme, I think, a little bit of the discussion, at least, for our retro review today of Scarface, which will be coming up in just a few minutes, which was oddly enough, a first time watch for both of us. But we'll get into that in like I said, in a few minutes. But first off, how are you doing today?
I'm doing okay. That's everybody just wants to tune into a podcast to hear somebody yawn in their ear. Hopefully they're not driving. So, but I've survived my crazy busy week last week.
I had four screenings since the space of 26 hours. Yeah, that's not spam. I know. Can't talk about any of them because I forgot to look at what the embargo dates on some of them are.
So I don't want to screw that up. I will say this. We will be talking about all four of these movies once they come out as they get closer to their release, at least saw some great performances. Or would you say they are all going to be awards contenders?
In one way or another. Yes. All four, all four films have things to recommend them for the Academy Awards. They're not all going to be necessarily competing against each other in some of the bigger categories.
Yes, you did. I know exactly what you're talking about. You two realize we're just being cocked to our audience. It's terrible.
I feel bad. I've sometimes grinded my teeth when I heard it on other podcasts. So I apologize right off the bat for that. But some exciting stuff coming up.
One thing I did see this weekend that I can talk about as a Saturday Night Live fan. I was looking forward to it. The group, please don't destroy who currently are writers on SNL and they do the short films for Saturday Night Live right now. They have a feature link film that they shot a little while ago that just came out on Peacock called The Legend of Foggy Mountain.
And it's OK. It's not honestly overall. I don't think it holds up together as well as some of their shorter stuff. And it's funny.
As I was watching this, this is going to sound like a really deep, weird, obscure comedy cut because you know me about deep, weird, obscure comedy. Yeah, it's a problem. Yes. It reminded me a bit of back in the aughts.
There was an internet comedy team called Derek Comedy that did a lot of shorts. And then they made a movie called Mystery Team, which was kind of like a satire about those young adult books, like the three investigators, where you know, they're preteens or teenagers who solve mysteries and they're fun read. Like, you know, it was an evolution of the Hardy Boys or the Nancy Drew idea. And, you know, so they made a movie called Mystery Team about a group of these kids, three of these kids who are now in their early twenties and still think that they're 13 and solving lost dog mysteries and stuff like that.
But they actually stumble on to something very big, like a vast conspiracy with murder and everything else. And it kind of reminded me of that in terms of the vibe. Now, I should say Derek Comedy who made Mystery Team. One of the three members was Donald Glover, who of course goes on to community and everything else.
Great fame and fame, yes. And so, you know, it's not entirely obscure. But as I was watching Foggy Mountain, I was kind of thinking along the same lines of like this sort of feel vibing the same way. You know, there's a lot of comedy ideas that they're exploring the basic nugget of the comedy idea is good.
I like some of the themes about three friends who feel like they're kind of growing apart and going in different directions. I'm not sure it all gels completely, but it was a lot of fun at parts. You know, there was some, there was some good laugh out loud moments. Conan O'Brien shows up as one of the kids dad.
Oh, I'm sorry. In a mustache and like little scruffy van dyke beard. So yeah, it's, yeah. How did it feel seeing Conan, knowing that Conan O'Brien is now old enough to be another comedian's dad?
Well, speaking as someone who stayed up that first night back in 1990, whatever, to see this fresh-faced kid take over David Letterman's spot and sitting there thinking, who the hell is this weirdo? He's tall and weird. Yeah. It's a little disconcerting because then I start doing the math and thinking again about how old I am and I don't like those numbers at all.
But again, I think it kind of speaks a little bit. I mean, okay, Conan O'Brien was somebody, you know, I would watch all the time, especially on his NBC show. Because he always has really, whoever was booking his musical guests on that show deserves their very own honorary Emmy because they were always booking really cool alternative bands. And watching him over the years, you kind of get that I've aged along with him.
And, um, Tann, gently, I've also been watching a lot of clips and stuff on David Letterman's official YouTube channel. And on that, they have like crew members talking about their favorite moments from the show, like little 15-minute segments, and they'll show like little bits and pieces of this and that. And in the space of a couple of days, three different people mentioned working on that last montage from David Letterman's last show on CBS that starts all, you know, that was just like still photos and that moved around and stuff from his, all his years in late night. And they would show a bit of that montage each time somebody brought it up, but they always showed the last portion where you've got Foo Fighters cramming away.
And then it goes from like a picture of Dave on his very first late night's episode, and then through like, and then it kind of zooms through all these pictures over the years. And you see basically him aging in that time. That happens. Yes, but see that all at once, you know, in the space of like that 32 years condense down into about 32 seconds.
It's really interesting. And it's kind of like how I think about, okay, Conan O'Brien, I was able to, you know, experience his aging in real time as opposed to you see somebody from a TV show. You watch a TV show that was filmed in the 90s, then you don't see them in anything else. And then yeah, and then they show up at the Emmys or something like that for a retrospective of said 90s TV show and you're like, holy crap, they got old.
Well, of course they got old, but you don't connect to it. Yeah, you don't connect to it because it's kind of trapped in their trapped in amber in your mind at a certain age, whereas other celebrities we kind of follow along. We age with them. And, but then to kind of, you know, suddenly look back at, you know, when we started watching them and seeing that holy crap, that difference.
It's like, it's like when I worked on, um, on that Nora Efron film that John Travolta was on. I'm sorry. I feel like I'm dropping a name here. Kind of.
But, you know, yeah, you spend two days on set with John Travolta standing right there. And then you go home, you know, and this is 99, 2000, somewhere in there. And then you go home and you throw on Nick at night. And oh, welcome back, Connor is on.
And 1978, John Travolta walks into the, walks into the scene. It's a bit of a, oh, yeah, that's right. That was John Travolta. Not that.
It's a weird disconnect sometimes. How we have. Or like me and Harry Potter growing up with, you know, watching Daniel Radcliffe. Yeah, watching Daniel Radcliffe.
He's a hell of an actor about it. He's fantastic. I'm so glad that he has that kind of financial freedom to just choose whatever weirdo project strikes his fancy. Yeah, but he's definitely done more than just the odd little weird indie project.
But I have a great appreciation for the fact that he said, you know, I'm not going to just be a star actor. And I want to try doing different things because that's what helps him to grow. And I think he has become all the better because of it. Yeah.
I mean, he'll, he'll show up in, um, now, the, now you see me sequel. Yeah. And then he'll show up. He was funny in, uh, in a lost city.
Oh, yeah. He was great in a lost city. And you know, he'll show up in something like that weird action film. Uh, was it Guns and Kimbo?
That was amazing. I know. It was so weird and I loved it. I, I'm so happy that he can afford to do stuff like that now and just, you know, not kind of care and just go off and do that stuff.
And because he's built his name beyond Harry Potter at this point. Yes. So he, he is looked at for, you know, would you like to do this project? It took Rupert a little while, Rupert Grant, Ronald Weasley, a bit to get to that point.
But I think he's starting to develop it. But it's, it's definitely going to be more niche, horror based stuff because of Shervin or working with Guillermo. And now I'm not sure. Um, I mean, there was a Rupert Grint film.
I'm trying to remember it was from a couple of years back where he was like, it involves something about faking the moon landing. I can't, I can't remember what it is now. Uh, but I remember watching it. And so I think it was kind of like this little weird manic little British indie.
And I really liked it. He needed some good ones. Yeah. He did, he did one with Bill Nighy and Emily Blunt.
It was this quirky little comedy about like a female grifter who got herself embroiled in some sort of theft. And she's got a case full of stuff. And next thing you know, she's rag tagging along with a just a freaking kid. She like jumped in his car to get away from being chased.
And now he's a part of it and Bill Nighy's after. And I wish I could remember the name of it, but it was cute and quirky and fun and wild target. I mean, it wasn't a great movie, but it was, that was the one I was talking about. I mean, it wasn't good, but it was, it was cute little watch.
But Emma Watson, I think her name, I've grown up with all three of these, but I think they've all kind of come out of it in, in different ways. Emma, when I was younger, loved her as I've gotten older. I realized she's not as great of an actress as everyone likes to think she is. I'm going to get shot now.
No, she is what I would call a personality actor. She's a star. She, she plays something similar in every single world that she's done. And the times where she's tried to branch out.
You can still see that she's just playing Emma Watson or playing another variation of Hermione. Whereas Daniel, Daniel's not there. And Rupert's getting to the point where he, I can see that as well. It's, it's, he knows how to separate character from himself big time.
And in Moonwalkers, the Robert Grant, Rupert Grant, excuse me, in Moonwalkers. His co-star was Ron Perlman. Oh, yeah. Oh, now I got to find this.
I was just about to say, hunt that down. Yeah. So it's, it's weird that, you know, how certain actors and such get calcified in our memories and others do not because we're constantly exposed to them, which is, which is interesting. But it's still, yeah, it's still kind of weird though.
It is a reality check when you go from 30 years or so of watching Conan O'Brien late night goofball to Conan O'Brien comic actor shouting fuck constantly in this movie. Well, well, actually I thought it was interesting because using Harry Potter as an example, yeah, I grew up with a lot of kids, but then some of them disappeared after the, the show was over. Some still try to do things like Matthew Lewis did a few films, Neville Longbottom. The twins, Fred and George really haven't done much except for like showing up in as a twin pretty much a gag in last night's Soho.
Yvonne Lynch just kind of disappeared. She promotes for like Harry Potter and all that. And it's the same with Tom Belin. Like they kind of just got calcified as their characters from Harry Potter and they weren't really able to grow as much after that.
He was in the first of the plan of the Apes new cyclophils. That was 10 years ago. I know. It was literally right after Harry Potter ended.
He was good though. He was fun. He was great. He got them.
It's a madhouse line originally shouted by Chuck Heston in the original plan of the Apes. God bless them for that, you know. No, I, I agree with you. But even then I did so much time as past that I don't really think that did a dent for him at all.
No, it might be a case where some of those actors, you know, they did this as kids, you know, I was like, oh, I want to be an actor. Oh, I can be in a Harry Potter film. Fuck you. And then afterwards they're like, you know, maybe I don't want to be an actor.
Maybe I want to pursue this other thing and for as an adult. And I have no problem with that. I mean, chunk from Goonies did the same thing. Became an entertainment lawyer and God bless him for all the good work he's done over the years.
But then I also, I had to come back last year when HBO did their 20th anniversary special. It wasn't just the kids. They seen Robbie Coltrane on that. For me, he's calcified in my memory, not just as Hagrid, but as like the character he did in like, Golden Eye.
Okay. Yeah. The Russian general. He showed up in a couple of the Bond films as that character.
Yes, he did. For me. And then seeing how old he's gotten. For me.
My Robbie Coltrane memories go back to like high school for when he started in the double feature of heresy, the Pope must die and then nuns on the run with Eric Eil. I just like the titles. I don't really, not really interested, but I like the titles. Sister Act came second, but nuns on the run is kind of a gender swap sister act where the two guys are like on the run.
They're like low level mob guys who cross their boss and they're trying to hide out. A version of nonsense? Yeah. So they wind up hiding in a convent and dressing as nuns.
And the Pope must die is that's another comedy about where after a pope has passed, the most unlikely candidate winds up getting elected pope, but there's this whole conspiracy going on. I said, God, I hope it's the janitor. It's kind of like King Ralph, but yeah, another. Oh, John Goodman's King Ralph.
You've never seen that? Oh, his love interest in that is the woman who plays Rose's Mom on Doctor Who. And she's like so young there that when she popped up in Doctor Who, when that restarted in what 2006 or whatever it was 2005, I didn't recognize her. And it wasn't until I looked her up on 90 B and went, oh, yeah.
So we're really tangenting off on these like weird 90s, 80s comedy. You're the one tangenting on this. Yeah, I know. Yeah, I know.
Yeah, I mean, you're down a rabbit hole that I don't speak the language. I know, I know. Some of these movies I think I do have on the plex, so. Yeah, I will not be watching them.
You won't watch the pope must die. No, that's funny. None's on the run. No.
You don't want to see Robbie Coltrane teach. Eric, I don't have to do the make the sign of the cross. Spectacles, testicles, wallatin, watch. Well, you just did it for me now.
So why do I? You guys are better. It's funnier. Oh, geez.
Well, here's an 80s movie you did watch. Nice transition. Very nice. Yes.
Today are retro review. Wait, we were supposed to watch the 80s one? I know you watched it. Don't even start.
I thought we were supposed to watch the Howard Hawks. The 1932 version? No. We were watching Oliver Stone written.
Ryan DePalma directed 1983. Well, we have to postpone that. We have to postpone this another three hours. Oh, no.
I just sit and watch it. I'm kidding. Of course I watch the Alpatino. Yes.
Okay, so let's just dive right into it. It's a remake of the original film starring Cagney, directed by Howard Hawks, written by Ben Hecht, the great Ben Hecht, and what were your first impressions? No, half a step back. Had you seen the original?
I've seen bits and pieces. I've not seen it in its entirety. Okay. And so you're just taking the movie as a film piece?
At face value. Yes. Okay. What were your impressions?
I know you messaged me one thing while you were watching it. And I want to get to that in a minute. I want to get to that in a minute because I'm like, I'm not sure what she means here, but I'm dying to find out. But yeah, so overall for some impressions though.
I think it is a brilliant masterpiece. I like how it talks about the American dream. There's great little bits of kind of tongue and cheek. So for example, when our wonderful Tony Montana comes to America, the first time we see him, he's being interviewed by, I guess you could say, Immigration Services.
And they ask him, how do you speak such good English? And he goes, my dad used to take me to the movies when I was a kid. You know, Bogart, Cagney, I love those guys. And I kind of like, I like the idea that those films, those gangster films at the time imprinted on this kid so much that of course he tries to follow that trajectory as his idols did as a kid.
It works on a metal level too, the fact that it is a remake of one of those films. Yes, it does. But I know I thought that was very interesting. Michelle Pfeiffer, holy crap, she is good in this.
Yeah, I think it might be one of her best performances. I think it's actually her second major performance, the year prior she did Grease II, which kind of introduced her to the world. But this really showed that she can do a lot without having to say a word. And it's a shame really because this movie kind of got totally snubbed at the Oscars.
What's nominated for anything? And I think it definitely deserved looking back, you know, a best adapted screenplay, best supporting actress for Pfeiffer. I'm not sure. Al Pacino needs the best actor in the nation here.
No, he does not. Because at times it feels like he goes a little over. Yep. But there is still plenty of other things that, you know, they could have at least considered this movie for it.
Because I didn't get nothing. Production design, absolutely. Especially considering they shot the entire thing in Los Angeles and not on location in Miami. But no, I think it's fantastic.
I understand how it can, is still even 40 years later, part of the cultural zeitgeist. It has stood the test of time. I think it's, I think the themes in the storyline of this are timeless. I like how it plays with race in like the Cuban community, kind of, it feels relevant even to today is what I'm getting at.
And it does carry an interesting relevance because of, you know, the tiny themes of the American Dream mixed with the glamour, the glorification, maybe not glorification, but the allure of a life of crime, even though it can end suddenly, tragically, violently, horrifically. People, when the film came out, critics were negative about it. They were like, oh, this is too violent. This is, yeah, all the profanity.
And yeah, I see you rolling your eyes and I agree with you because I think they were kind of taking this movie at a surface level. Yeah, there's a lot of violence. Yeah, there's a lot of profanity. People are not, yeah, this is not a movie about a church group here.
This is, you know, and I think, you know, came out, you know, I mean, we still had like that whole 70s. Gangster wave with Godfather and all that. And the rise of altruism and stuff like that through the 70s, the new Hollywood. And critics should have been kind of, I don't want to say educated, but, you know, used to or understanding of that kind of wave.
And I think this movie, you know, even though it's a remake of, you know, some regular studio stuff from the 30s, I think, you know, critics should have been able to see, you know, what the pama and stone in his screenplay were trying to do what they were trying to talk about. It's very rooted in, you know, the current events of the last couple of years. You have like the rise of cocaine as the popular drug of choice among the rich people. And we're going to see that over and over.
In fact, Oliver Stone wrote this movie on cocaine. I really love that when you think about the specific moments in history where you've had an influx of immigrants coming into, let's use America as the example, obviously. Fleeing from a place of poverty, a place where they were oppressed. You have the idea that in America, you could be anything you want to be.
So when you had, say, like, the Irish coming over in the 1800s during the potato famine, what film do we get that kind of puts all that into perspective? It's called Gangs in New York. Yeah. Then you look at like the 1920s, you have prohibition, you have bootlegging.
That was another influx of Irish and Italian immigrants as well, all trying to get to America and build their own lives and build their own hierarchy. It was a time of excess during the prohibition. You have so much wealth that is being thrown about, probably even amongst the wealthy, not obtained legally. And it's always kind of, I love how it's always followed up by some sort of a crash of some sort.
So obviously you had the 20s with prohibition and then you had the Great Depression. And I think putting this film in the 80s, bringing in, showing, okay, yes, we have another wave of immigrants coming into the country. I'm not saying that immigrants coming into our country are not a bad thing. No.
But I understand how certain pointers can all feed into each other because they're all kind of clamoring to be seen, to build their lives. And if crime is the only way they feel that they know how, then they're going to jump at the first thing that they can see because it's what's being offered to them. But here we see cocaine, we see the 80s wealth and rise of the yuppy culture and everything. And then what did they talk about in the third act?
We're in a recession. Yeah. So I thought those parallels through history were quite interesting and fascinating to kind of analyze. Oh, yeah.
Like you kind of said, when you mentioned immigration at the beginning of the 20th century, that kind of fed a lot of this social and cultural conditions that the gangster cycle of films from the 1930s from Warner Brothers that the original Scarface is a part of were commenting on. Those films were talking about people like Al Capone. Yeah. Literally Al Capone.
John Dillinger. Yeah, there's so many gangsters at that time. And that period not only was littered with them, but we couldn't get enough of reading them in the papers. They became famous.
And that became a point where Warner Brothers had to kind of be like, okay, we got it because they were getting heat from moral crusaders about you're glamorizing this kind of lifestyle. And so, we're like, okay, we kind of have to like show that, you know, they're getting their cupboards. That's one of the factors that came in in 1932, 33, 34 with the production code where you can't glorify criminality. You can't let criminals get away with their crimes at the end of the movie.
They have to, you know, meet some kind of justice and usually it's being gunned down by the cops. But if you go back 50, 60 years, everyone was enamored with, you know, the rebels of the old West, but Billy the Kid and just games and all of these. I don't think that cycle ever ends. I think there is something seductive about crime and someone who's willing to buck the system.
Yeah. It's a weird dark side of the whole American, you know, personal independence theme that is part of our country's fabric. It is kind of a fuck the system, fuck the patriarchy I'm taking them on. Yeah.
I think people enjoy that. It's like I've said before though, you know, American individualism is often at odds with American society and, you know, and I often say it in terms of, you know, political discussions. And I think kind of you're having, we're kind of having a in general political discussion right now about this movie, not specific saying, oh, Reagan was the president of the time and he sucked. But more of a how it affects these films and the times that they were commenting on and that frision between the two.
It's amazing. And I'm sure somebody might have written a doctoral thesis that dies far deeper into this than we've just discussed right now. If you find one, send it to us. I'd love to read something.
I'd love to read like a really nice in depth thing on this. Because, you know, I saw this for the first time, what, two weeks ago during a fathom event screening and as I was watching it, I was like, okay, it starts off with that kind of news real news story footage of the Cuban boat people coming over and inflexing into Florida. And I was like, 11 of that. It was funny because I was seeing the movie with a friend, our friend, Andy, and he's like, and he at one point, he referred to it as a vintage movie.
And I said to him, I was like, son, I remember the incidences talk about in the prologue. I was 11. I remember when this movie came out. I didn't go see it then because my parents certainly weren't going to take me to it.
But please, please, please, for the sake of me not feeling like an incredible man who should crumble into dust and blow away in the wind at this moment, stop referring to it as a vintage movie. And he laughed. He's like, okay, okay. He got my point.
But again, speaking to the cycle of how things age in our culture and how we perceive that age. But I'm glad I finally did catch up to it. It's one of the few Oliver Stone films from that era that I hadn't seen it. And I know I need to do a deeper dive into Brian De Palme's work.
But this is one of his best films, I feel. I know some of De Palme. So actually one of the films that I have seen is, oh god, here we go, Dionysus in 69. Okay, that's one I have not seen.
I think you can find the whole thing on YouTube and it's split screen. It's not really so much a film as it is a recorded performance from a stage production in New York City. I can't remember the name of the performance group. Okay.
Justin was about ready to come out of the woodwork and just smack me because I could remember this. Like four or five times with him. It's brilliant. It's live.
The movement that the audience, not the audience, the actors on stage are doing is some of the best physicality I think I've ever seen. But I went in exactly called a Brian De Palme film. It's not a film. Yeah, he was there supervising the recording of it.
Yeah, pretty much an archive film, but it's not an archive film. It's done nicer than that. Yes. I'm trying to think if I have seen many of Brian De Palme's work, well you've seen the first mission impossible.
Yes. I didn't really realize that was him though. You've seen Carrie? Yes, I have.
I've seen Carrie. Dressed Kill? No, actually I was trying to get to it when I was on Criteria and channeled a couple of channels. No.
Okay. Blowout. I know you haven't seen Phantom of the Paradise. And I've not seen Bonfire the Vanities.
Oh, that's... Bonfire the Vanities is interesting. If you've read the book and then you see the movie, it's an interesting example of everything that can possibly fucking go wrong with an adaptation of a book, including missing the main themes. There is.
There's a great making of Bonfire the Vanities book. We're quickly tangenting here. You're the one quickly tangenting? Yeah.
It's called The Devil's Candy. And it's one of the best books about how a movie can be made badly. And they turned it into a podcast at TCM a couple of years ago. And it's an amazing listen.
So there is a movie on the list I have seen that I wish was better? Oh dear. Oh yes. Oh dear.
Is it right? What? The Blackthalia. Yeah.
Okay. That's fair. But if you like Scarface and I know you did, this is kind of like his entry point into his... I mean, okay, De Palme was always kind of like derided as being like a Hitchcock wannabe, which I think is reductive and unfair.
He's definitely drawing on a Hitchcock influence, but I think he's wanting to do his own thing as well. And he's getting to explore some things like in Dressed to Kill, the Darker Side of Sexuality, that Hitchcock can only kind of hint at in his movies. So I think he may be benefiting a bit from a looser time in terms of what you could discuss and film that Hitchcock did. But I think he's also interested in his own things too, as casualties of war would let you know about.
But this is kind of like in the midst of a cycle where he's doing some very interested in the idea of crime and gangsterism and get Carlito's way in a few years, you know, like I said, Dressed to Kill, Blowouts, we're all, you know, kind of thrillers in a similar way that this is a thriller. So it's... He's worth checking out and I've only kind of like dipped in and out of his work over time. I've never kind of like taken a month and done a Brian De Palme or something like that.
And I feel like she was at some point probably soon. So I said something to you the other night when I was watching this. Yes. Yes.
I wanted to circle back to this. Go ahead. I'm going to surprise me. Okay.
And again, this kind of relates to a classic Hollywood and how this movie is viding off of things. You said you were getting a lot of Gilda feelings off of this movie. Ah, that'd be indefinitely within the first act particularly. The relationship between Frank, Ovira, and Tony is essentially a mirror of the same relationship between Baden, Gilda, and Johnny.
Okay. Okay. You kind of like that weird, vibey love triangle. Yeah, but the love triangle of I work for your husband and then all of a sudden their husband has an accident and I not only take over the business, but I take his wife too.
Yes. And it had that kind of parallel. I could definitely see that. I was thinking as I was watching it because it's been years since I saw the 32 version.
But one thing that stands out in that is there's a drive-by shooting at one point as Cagney's like running down the sidewalk and the car's going along and gangsters leaning out with Tommy Guns and innocent people are getting hit and all this other stuff, which probably was criticized for that level of violence in its day. I was going to say for 1932, that's impressive to throw a drive-by in there. Yeah. And it reminded me of the attempted assassination of Tony in the club.
As Tony's running along through the club, the guys are standing there by following him around with their submachine guns, whatever they are, and innocent people getting caught in the crossfire. Yeah. I think that's where I was really thinking about the flexibility that Oliver Stone takes in adapting, well, the original 1930 novel and the 1932 film. And reimagining it.
Usually when you hear, oh, we're going to reimagine something, it doesn't work. But I think there's a lot of thought and care into, okay, how do we retell this story, this character arc, these themes, these specific incidences even in a different milieu? I think even some of the parallels of how things are staged in this, so the bits and pieces I've seen from the 32 version, there was a theme of exes and crosses running throughout the film, whether it was built into the set or if it was a lighting effect at one point, someone is shot and they fall on the sidewalk in the shadow of this giant, almost like a black cross. Yeah.
And we did not really see any of that in this film until right at the end, which, and it wasn't done in terms of, oh, we're going to do it with like lighting or we're going to build it into the set or something like that. No, it's literally just how Tony freaking lands in the pool. And I went, yeah, yes, I pointed at the television. I think it gets a little heavy handed when they pull back out and you see like the light up globe that says the world is yours.
But that's from the original movie, yes, yes, there was a giant billboard. So I like that they kept that theme going because that's kind of what this movie is about to begin with. It's about the American dream and how much, how much of yourself are you willing to lose to go after it and get it. So I like the idea that the world is yours.
It's this, it's this huge kind of, it's out there and it can be everything that you want, which I think is kind of this also, this idea of greed that stemmed in the 80s. And I would say too that, again, American exceptionalism, American individualism, and it was the early part of the Reagan administration and everybody, and Ron was just there going, we're all great. And everybody was just like, okay, Ronald Reagan said we're great. So we're great.
We gave us bedtime for Bonzo, which is the cheapest of cheap shots to level at Reagan, honestly, because everybody kind of in the 80s latched on to that. And everybody's impersonation of Ronald Reagan was also rich little impersonation of Ronald Reagan. Well, there you go again. But there was a, I don't know if it was misplaced or not, but there was a pride that the country kind of had in itself that maybe overlooked things like the AIDS epidemic, which was happening, which Reagan wouldn't acknowledge for another year or two until Rock Hudson finally died.
But he was friends with Rock and I was like, oh, we should do something about this then. Because he was just like, everything's sunny, he was kind of a Pollyanna president. And the fact that this movie comes out in that time and basically says, yes, the world is yours and you could die while you try to get it. It's such a slap in the face to that idea that I could see why some critics at least were rebelled against it.
Yeah. Yeah. But they didn't want to engage with it on that level. So they instead shifted their, oh, it's violent.
Well, I love, one of the things that I really love about this movie and why I think you kind of root for Tony is even though he loses himself to the money and the lifestyle and he falls apart by the end, his, the reason why he does what he does and his connection with his family, his little sister, his mom, which is not the greatest relationship with him and his mom, but he does try to be a good son in his way. I think everything he does stems from this idea of family, the family that he has, the family that he wants to create for himself. The way he propositions, though, if I were to become his wife and the mother of his kids is not an I love you kind of proposition. It definitely feels a, you're in power.
I want to be in power with the right woman by my side. Nothing could stop us. I want you to be the mother of my children, which is, it's, it's kind of contradicts everything else that he has tried to do with his family and how he looks at many as like a brother. I mean, don't get me wrong, he's an underling, but he is his brother, which is why I love the whole semblance of betrayal.
I think the whole third act goes off the rails and not in a bad way, but I mean, his breakdown is because of family and kids. His lack of being a good son. That's the, that's the excess part, but when you throw in like the car bombing, potential car bombing that could have, you know, a woman and her kids in it, when you deal with the fact that he hasn't been the best of sons, he cannot father children currently. There's just, there's so many things that happen, the betrayal of Manny marrying his little sister.
You could see he's just sees red when he pulls that, that gun. It's not even a case that he actually is angry with him. It was just all the dominoes had stacked at that moment. I think he always saw his little sister as a great performance from Mary Elizabeth and that's what she's showing you.
Yes. As kind of like. A little girl. As a little girl.
She's something pure. She's something innocent, something he's trying to protect from that world that he's in. He almost knows he's made a deal with a devil to get these kind of riches. He doesn't mind, but he wants to use that money to elevate her, but he also wants to insulate her from it.
And you can't do both. You can't do both. And that's, I think, one of the minor tragedies of this overall story. Now, as I was doing some research, I came across a quote from that Martin Scorsese apparently said is somebody in the middle of the premiere of this film.
It's like screening. And Scorsese reportedly said, you guys are great, but be prepared because they're going to hate it in Hollywood because it's about them. So do you see this as a potential critique of Hollywood Hollywood and the the excesses of Hollywood? Absolutely.
I think Hollywood is one of those places where you really think the world can be yours. And all I have to do is get up on that screen and it will be not just in America, in the whole world. It will go global. Everyone will know my name.
Everyone will know who I am. It does not, it doesn't judge, it doesn't critique, it's just, I just need to get on it. But once you do that, you can make a deal with the devil. You get what you want, but how much are you going to have to pay in return?
So yes, I absolutely believe that if you really read into this, this is a critique of Hollywood. It's not just a critique of the time period, but of Hollywood itself. And the American dream is also kind of a, you know, runs parallel to the idea of the Hollywood dream built up by the studio system in the 30s and 40s of, you can come from anywhere and if you got it, you can make it in Hollywood and be a star. And like I said, that's a kind of a product of the PR systems at Warner Brothers, MGM, Universal, et cetera, et cetera.
Whereas, you know, that worked really hard to protect this, this shiny fantasy image of Hollywood. And you realize, you know, a lot of these people were flawed human beings. And you realize you go back and read a book like Mommy Dearest or, you know, or even like slow. Just the amount of influx of people that you had go into Los Angeles in order to try their luck at the American dream and try to make it in Hollywood.
And all of them have somehow ended with either giving up, moving back, moving on to something else or, you know, the people who had become strippers, prostitutes, whatever they could to make a living for a while during this time period. Even worse. Yeah. So we're talking about this.
This is reminding me of the story of Pig and Twistle. Do you know who that is? That name sounds very familiar. Why does this happen?
She is the actress who kind of very despondent over how her career in Hollywood was not going. She jumped off the Hollywood sign in, in 1932, I just looked it up as we were talking the same year that the original Scarface came out. And so what's tragic is she had a movie coming out in a couple of weeks where she had like a major supporting role and the studio wound up trimming a lot of it out. You know, they were like, uh oh, what can we take out of this without totally damaging the film because they didn't want to have like any kind of adverse publicity about it.
And what's left is, according to some folks, a really good performance and she could have, you know, that could have been her turning point. She, you know, if she had just been able to, you know, go another couple of months until this film came out, which is doubly tragic. I, the reason why that name was ringing a bell for me, but I couldn't freaking place it because I haven't watched it in three years. Kind of an inspired by piece Hollywood, the Ryan Murphy miniseries that came out on Netflix several years ago, um, not all of it is real in the story, but it, it does kind of address the pig Antwhistle, um, incident, thank you by also saying we're, we're creating a movie about said tragedy.
They called it Meg because no, because they didn't really want it to, to be shown as this is absolutely about this person. Not the pig and whistle story. Yeah. And we're not glorifying it, but we are inspired by it.
And we are inspired by the underbelly of Hollywood. And I like the idea that, um, in, in that world, they took, they took like a black actress and had her play peg and all that. And of course that would never be seen in the 1930s, but, you know, it was, it was a great old whole story. And I think it kind of helped lay to rest some of the, uh, the skeletons in that closet.
And that's, that's something I do. I watched like the first episode or two of Hollywood and I was kind of like, I don't know, I was in a mood where I was like, they're kind of dancing around left and right here with some of the historical facts. And it kind of got under my skin just a little bit. And I, I should have just, you know, kind of taken a step back and just let it do its thing.
You should have, because we took, we only Tifa shows up as Hattie McDaniel. And she tells the story of the night that she went to the Oscars. Okay. Okay.
I'm in. Okay. I will. And I got a Bruster to play to the little bankhead.
That's a nice casting. Um, I will put that on my 2024 to go back to yeah list. Yeah. It's okay to dance around.
I'm still working on my 2022 list, by the way, but I, I, what you have to realize is it's fiction. Yeah, it's not a true story. And if you can pull back and just look at it as fiction, like, for example, like I like confidential. Yeah, it dances around with some of the actual facts, but it's of its own thing.
True. Or, or better yet, and this is kind of in my head because it just came back for its fourth season for all mankind, which takes a, an actual point of historical fact of the moon landing and goes, what if the Russians beat us to it? And then kind of spins out an alternate history from there. I feel like someone was talking about that the other day, like when I was at work.
Oh, I work. Okay. Cause I know I was talking about it to a couple of people and I've probably mentioned some stuff to you about. No, I think I think your husband would really like it.
Just from the Apple, right? Yeah, it's on Apple plus. Okay. So, um, but that's back for its first season.
I just watched the first two episodes last night. Me. It's just finding time to fit everything in the crown. The first part of the final season of the crown just dropped on Thursday.
I'll be lucky if I can get one episode of that in the day. Cause that's just how booked my day. I understand. I have a list over here that I've written out.
This is the list of email screeners I received in just two days. Jesus Christ. And out of that list, there are four that I'm like, uh, one, two, three, four, five. Excuse me.
Then I'm like, Oh, I should really watch. So what's on the, what's on our agenda for next week, fridge? Okay. Next week, another historical piece, but one for which none of us were.
Oh, yes. This is another great film director at his, uh, that we're actually looking forward to seeing, uh, we're talking about the brand new film coming out this weekend, Napoleon. So I'm so excited for this. Um, we will be back next weekend or actually next week, next Monday or Tuesday.
Um, so you will have something interesting to listen to while you're reading your Thanksgiving leftovers. But on that note though, I think that about wraps us up. And if you want to check out the 1983 version of Scarface, you can find it on Netflix or Apple TV, Redbox, Amazon Prime, YouTube, Voodoo and Google Play movie. Remember, you can find us online at big picture pod.com.
And we are available on iTunes and Google Play. So I didn't use the link in the show notes post or head directly there. Search and hit subscribe. And if you like what you're hearing, please leave a positive review, because that always helps us connect with new listeners.
Like we said, we'll be back next week with our look at Napoleon. And that's all right here on the big picture podcast. Happy Thanksgiving, guys. Happy Thanksgiving.