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It's Bigass 70s month on the rewatchables. You missed that footage last week. What is that? What's Bigass?
Do you want to weigh in Bigass movies? Did you weigh in any justice while we have your? I believe in it. I believe it's the right course back.
It's the right course back. I know how to take. We're doing Close Encounters this week, a movie that maybe needed more time in the oven, but we're pulling it out anyway. Like a beautiful thing in the day, bread.
This is pre-ocean, it's a little soft. It's just hoping it's delicious. Holy shit was this undertaking, but Close Encounters of the Third Kind is it. Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the experience of an ordinary man shared by people from all over the world, drawn to a single spot by a compulsion that don't understand to witness the most dramatic event in the history of human race.
And when the communication between cities fantastic, close Encounters of the Third Kind. All right, I'm Bill Simmons at Sean Fantasy, the Big Picture. Chris Ryan, the watch. What else are you up to?
You know, just top three draft picks. Watch a lot of tape. Watch a lot of highlight. Mixed tapes on YouTube right now.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the Sott and the Theater. Whoa, did you? Yeah. Tell us about it.
Was this a? Not only I seen the theater, I think I saw the re-release in a drive-in, vague memory. The 1980. The 1980 re-release.
The 1980 re-release. 1980 re-release. I think I saw it in a drive-in, but I'm not. Don't confirm.
Don't confirm that to the watch and post-90. Yeah, it's just a vague memory. I'm at the Library of Congress. Vague, Vague, right over there.
It's OK. Yeah, I saw this movie in 1977. I'm going to be honest. I was six years old.
I was seven years old. Kind of freaked me out. Yeah, understandable. Didn't really love the ending.
And then I had no, you know, the dads going on the UFO at the end. I'm like, what the fuck are they? Yeah. Dad, are you going to go?
It was one of those. I think that was the intention, right? Yeah. I think Steven Spielberg agrees with you right now as well.
This movie is just incredible. What was the re-watch like for you, Sierra? Dude, this might be like one of the best directed movies I've ever seen. Is there a bad shot in this movie?
You could freeze frame any single thing from this film. And it's a painting, but it's Spielberg kind of at his tools have matured by this point after Jaws. But he's still 29. Yeah.
And he's got so much energy. And all of the things he's trying and all the things he's doing and even the stories about the way he made it, which almost sounds like more like the way sometimes he makes movies where it's like, we're going to try this. We're going to try that. We're going to try this.
I wrote something the night before or Kovalent. That kind of has that energy. It has that pure, oh, tourist energy, which I know he obviously is one, but often relies on screenwriters to contribute to the story and stuff like that. This really feels something different in his catalog.
Yeah. It's breathtaking. It's one of only three movies that he has a screenplay credit on. And you can tell that it comes from a deep part of his soul.
And it's hard not to watch the movie enough he's making connections that maybe he doesn't even ultimately realize are there in his life, in his heart, in his mind. And his quest for something bigger than himself is just a big part of all of his movies. His child like wonder. Yeah.
Yeah. And we kind of make fun of that, right? Like the Spielberg face and has always seen the world through a kid's eyes. But this is also just a very dark and sad movie about kind of losing your grip on reality and obsession and becoming consumed by something and not even fully understanding why.
So it's just bizarrely mature for a 29-year-old, fairly like sheltered kid from Arizona. You know, it's just an odd thing. I wrote my notes. They don't make them like this anywhere.
That's why you're you. Just we say this sometimes with the rewatchables. They don't make them like this. They don't.
The pace is just not like it would be made now. The actors, the patients that he has with like the wide shots where now they would have just CGI chip. But like I watched with my wife and daughter last night the second time in a week. And my daughter was like, did they put those stars in?
And I'm like, nah, they can really do that back then. I think they were just caught lightning in a bottle with Muncie, Indiana in this house. And just everything about it, just everything in the way it moves and watching Dreyfus just lose his mind over the course of 90 minutes. And he's staying aside somehow.
And then the last 20 minutes is unbelievable. It's like the ultimate payoff where they go over the mountain and then they look and wind the dill and space kind of does the jaw drop. And then it's like, wait, what's going on here? It ties in a bunch of 70 shit that we'll talk to.
But it's just such a cool, constructive movie. So this came out like six months after Star Wars. And you were saying when you saw that in theaters that there was a divide that there was like the jocks and there was the Star Wars kids. Did this movie like bridge that gap?
Because this is a really big hit as well. Yeah. Or do you guys like kids where like what the fuck happened here? This wasn't like Star Wars.
This was kind of its own thing. And the cache habit was that the guy from Jaws made it. That's the only thing I remember. But it tapped into all this UFO stuff that my experience with UFOs, I think everybody's was up until this time was aliens were potentially evil.
They're coming to get us, they're going to invade us. That was like all the programming from the radio stuff in the 30s and 40s and 40s and the movie shows in the 50s and 60s and it was all like, watch out, they're coming. And this movie just flipped it. And they're like, what if they're not coming?
What if they're just really interested in finding out more about us? Which now seems like the easiest flip to make. But Pac-Man was like a crazy movie. The movie is way more optimistic and romantic about the otherworldly of the extraterrestrial than it is about the human.
Like I think it's actually a pretty cynical movie about humanity in a lot of ways. But about the wonders that could be above us and out there. It's incredibly wide-eyed and affirmative. You get that?
Well, but think about 20 years later, it's where an arm and get an Independence Day mode where it's like the only thing that's coming there and fucking get us again. And that's kind of the generational response to whatever was going on here, where it was way more hope in outer space, I think. Yeah. I think don't fear the unknown seems to be the thing that Spielberg was driving towards.
But Trifus talks about what attracted him to it. That there had never really been a science fiction, large scale movie that was about the potential hope and optimism of connecting with other people. But I don't think the movie is necessarily down on humanity. That might be a little bit cute to say it that way.
But I think that ultimately, it's more just that you associate with Spielberg and almost saccharine view of the family unit or something like that. And everything is rooted in the relationship between children and parents. And I think that it's a little bit outside of that. Like even though there were obvious elements that he would continue to refer to of, of course, his career, it just feels like a different group of people than I find in most Spielberg movies to me.
Well, there's also no villain. Yeah. Even if he has villains. I don't know if there's a villain in this movie.
I don't think there is. He said that he wished he could have made this before Jaws in part because he was inspired by Watergate. That the idea of like a mass government cover up was compelling him and kind of blending that with his interest in genre movies. But you could tell like in the time that passes between Watergate and his opportunity to make this movie, like he kind of loses interest.
Like this is one of the softest government conspiracies of all time. Like people find their way onto this platform at the end of the movie like civilian and they're like, you should join in. You know, like it's such like an open, not conspiratorial way of seeing that what happened if this happened and the whole thing that the government's doing to the people around Devil's Tower is putting them to sleep. Like it's like they're very it's like kind.
Yeah. Well, you talk about the paranoid 70s, which we've discussed in the past over this whole genre that I love. By the way, this should be a two be category. Conversation, all the president's men, parallax view, three days of Condor, Cap Corwin, Shanna Syndrome, the body snatchers, all of its response to Watergate and Vietnam and not trusting government.
By the way, there's 20 more movies. Those are the headliners. So it feels like this is part of that era. But I agree with you, it feels like Spielberg also lost interest in something along the course of making this in 1973.
And that's right around the time you would have started thinking like, what's the government hiding? Yeah. What else are they doing? JFK assassination is previous decade.
But it also like starts this whole sci-fi era that's like the modern sci-fi or with Star Wars because we get those two. We get Superman and Star Trek in 1881. We get Alien, Empire, Superman II and Flash Gordon. We get ET Blade Runner, Star Trek II and the thing just in 1982.
So something flips and it's like modern sci-fi all of a sudden, but I think it starts with Star Wars in this movie. Yeah. I mean, this movie to me also is like I remember we were doing days of thunder. We were talking a little bit about it kind of ushering in the 90s and getting out of the 80s, but still having like 80s residue.
Is it docked over to the 90s? Fair way about close encounters too. There's obviously a lot of 70s in this and there's a lot of the neuroses and stuff that was in the air in this movie, but there also is an element to where it's so predictive that it feels like it's 1983 in this movie, even though that six years later, yeah, there's like a six year window where this movie could have come out. Yeah.
Because the ET and this movie are pretty close, but there's a five year difference when those came out. Yeah. It's the same kind of childlike wonder, what if the aliens are here to be buddies? It's the government's a bad guy, but not really.
It's just not pessimistic. And all of those other movies that you talked about ultimately end on these moments of like, I guess we're just kind of screwed as a society. And this movie doesn't feel that way at all. Like, body snatcher.
That's a world where everyone has been consumed, you know? Like that's the bleakest ending of all time. Yeah. And this one, even though I think it's so sad, the end of this movie, it's not, you know, he doesn't seem, he seems excited.
Yeah. He gets what he wants. He's like, do they have same game parlays out there? You guys have HBO?
Yeah, so he blends the paranoid 70s with the modern sci-fi era, but as a Steve Spielberg movie, I call him Steve. Love Steve. And it's an unbelievable follow up to Jaws, which is the other piece of this. He makes Jaws, which basically we talked about in Star Wars.
Star Wars gets all the credit for kind of ruining movies and where we went, but Jaws kind of started it. Yeah, pre-jaws happens. Everyone wants to be Jaws and wants to own all the movie theaters. And he starts that and he's 27 at that point.
And he's in what's next mode. And he's probably the most scrutinized director of that era, other than Kopla at that point in 75. Scorsese, straight, all those dude, Department, they're all kind of like indie bands underground. But he follows it up with this, which it feels like a ballsy move.
Yeah. To follow up Jaws with a way bigger, more ambitious movie. He's got this great knack, though, don't you think, of knowing when to capitalize on his previous success? If you look at going from Jaws to this, this is a real blank check kind of a movie.
You've written your ticket or launching DreamWorks when he does. We're doing Jurassic Park and Schindler's list in the same year. Or knowing when to flip back to Blockbuster's after making an awards film. And he just has this fascinating sense of career navigation that I think it alludes a lot of his peers because they're so driven by their artistic inspiration.
And he is art in Congress. He makes movies for people. He doesn't make movies for himself, even though the movies are often about himself. Yeah.
There's a Dreyfus quote that's on one of the posters for Close Encounters. They might have even been a press release announcing its production or something like that. And Dreyfus talks. What quote can I snort that out with that?
Did he go on the record? That one's street surface. That was a quote about how Stephen Spielberg is basically able to balance the big picture and be able to be like, I can tell this huge story for as many people as possible to enjoy, but also is super concerned with the detail of every shot. And you can feel that in this movie.
You can feel that in all of his films, but especially his best ones, where it's the thing that's all the way in the back of the frame that on the fifth time you watch it, you're like, he did not fucking do that, did he? That's in there? But when you're just watching it just to watch it at a drive-in, it still works. You don't have to have a key to understand this movie.
It can just play as this guy has an experience, chases it all the way across the country, gets into fucking spaceships. Pretty cool. Or you can watch it and be like, did Vilma Zigman do that? Like that's crazy.
Yeah. Well, Jaws, this movie ET, three movies that have now been all out for at least 40 years. Jaws will be 50 years this year. And you can still watch it.
Producer Craig will probably have a kid at some point I'm guessing the next 10 years. And 10 years from now, we'll be able to watch all three of those movies with that kid. And they'll probably hold up, even though a lot of it's dated and the clothes are weird and there's no phones. But it's something like a turnal.
You don't think producer Craig's child will have an AI visor surgery implant in the middle of his side of his head. As he drinks his oil in. Very fine. He's making bets.
Yeah. He's betting on the outcome of each scene. Spielberg. So inspiration came from him and his dad watched a media or a share once in New Jersey.
Somehow that led to this movie. Can I ask were you a big space kid and you a full kid? Really wasn't. No.
OK. There was a couple of TV shows. Lost in Space was OK. Yeah.
Never like Star Trek. What about the Twilight Zone? Twilight Zone, I kind of always freaked me out. I was an only child.
So that I don't know. OK. She's never got there. OK.
I never really had a space to do with the Twilight Zone. I don't know. You can show you to talk about with some of these. Yeah.
Yeah. Your personal shut up. I'm talking about the Twilight Zone. Let's watch back on.
I don't know. Just never got there. How about you? I think when I was a kid, I probably was a little bit more dinosaurs and knights in armor.
But these movies, no. Yeah. And I didn't know it's an armor. I don't know.
Do you try it? Yeah. You live when a knight just kind of gets in there. You get there.
You get there. You know what I'm saying? He's the backside of the T-rex. Missy Raptor.
Were you a space guy? I was interested in UFOs. Yeah. Sure.
Yeah. That I never really made the UFO crossover even when X-Files was happening. And even on like what was the most more interesting I liked-opsie shows on HBO than the UFO side. OK.
I think it's the DNA stuff. It's entirely possible to me, though, that this movie coming out before I was born while you seeing it at its release, almost like dictates the way that we saw, like our relationship to space in UFOs. Like this being a warmer, softer idea around that makes it not something that like your parents feared or that you feared. And also, we talked about this with ET.
Like ET came out the year I was born. And I think also ET just made every kid want to have a friend who was an alien. Like that just felt safe. Well, that's what depends on when you see it.
Like I saw ET and we talked about what we did with ET pot, but like when they're on the bikes and the air, you're just like this is the greatest thing. I'm like, this one I saw I was probably a little too young. But could still see it. But also mostly it's about a middle-aged man.
I mean, there's not a piece of you. OK. But he was right near his 33. Yeah.
Well, because it's 1977, he looks like he's only five kids and owns a house and has been doing his job for 12 years. But he's not as old as you think he is. He's carrying older. No stakes though for him.
Yeah. Unfortunately. Sorry guys. Sorry guys.
It's kind of surprised Ronnie didn't pop a couple of menthols. But look, it's not a look. So Spielberg does his own science fiction film called Firelight, which he made out his own was 18. Then used some shots for this movie.
He wrote a short story in 1970 about a Midwestern farming community in a light show group of teenagers on the sky. So he had all these little weird Spielberg pieces. Then did the Columbia Day on 73. Initially it was about UFOs, Watergate, and government cover up.
That's how they sold it. As Sean said, it flipped. And then a bunch of writers came in, including our guy Paul Schrader. Yeah.
We've got some intel on that. Yeah. Roy was into some escort service. That's how we met Melinda Dillon's character.
He was always mixed with a guitar. He was small and whiskey together. Yeah. No, it was a military movie.
Yeah. There's a really, I found that interview with Schrader. This was going to go in internet research. But I guess technically it's a newspaper.
So Schrader said Stephen wanted to make a film about a common man. That was my argument with him. Who the fuck wants to see that? This is supposed to be the greatest event in the history of the Earth.
At least make the character equal to the event. But Steve fell audiences wanted to see movies about ordinary people. Shakespeare's audiences wanted to see Macbeth. They didn't pay to see a play about a porter.
But Steve wanted to make a movie about the porter, a guy who would go off to Mars and start a chain of McDonald's. Always like the backhand of compliments from the other directors for him. Yeah. Pretty funny.
There's a lot of him. But he went back hard at Trader. He had the worst script he'd ever read. He said it was the worst script that's ever been turned to be.
Yeah. It's available online. I thought what super because in many years later was interesting about this, which is that his idea first was that it should be a copper soldier and that sense of authority and trust that comes from those figures could be powerful in telling the story like that. And that's why he presented it that way to Schrader.
And then he thought about it some more after reading Schrader's script. And he was like, people in uniform are not relatable to regular people. They're figures that exist outside. And they manage society.
They're not in society. And this is one of the reasons I was proud of him. I mean, we're sued every day. Couldn't relate.
There's something to it. Yeah. And if you just put on an Oxford and on top of it, you know, half step. But just making it a guy who works for the power company completely changed the perspective when you're watching the movie.
I don't know that I really like intellectualize what's the job of the guy who I'm following in the story that much, but it's conscious. I watch 77 and then I watch the directors. They cut out a scene when he's about to get promoted from the theatrical. Yeah.
And it's not in there. We don't really know anything about his job in this movie. He's just like off going to do. So I guess the point Spielberg I guess wanted to make when his final cut was just doesn't matter.
What does that mean? Yeah. I think everything you need to know about him is that he seems incredibly frustrated as he is like sitting in a cramped living room with three children and his wife. Well, the lesson really is don't have three kids.
Peter Bicken from Peter Biskin, who's big month from him in the rewatch. Yeah. He wrote in a easy writer's raging polls. He had a whole thing about this movie and said Spielberg's movies in particular are colored by longing for the absent dad and nostalgia for authority.
His families are often fatherless. The plots are set in motion by the moral and emotional vacuum at the center of the home and resolved by father surrogates. Little harsh, but not untrue. Well, this is the Old Testament that I've done.
I don't. But I don't. Do you want to get into it? Now, I mean, I think we understand his story very differently now.
And his relationship with his parents is completely different. And so you've got 40 years of Spielberg movies that are more or less in that dramatic name that Biskin is writing about. But he learned a lot of things near to the last 10 years about his parents that indicated that it was actually like his mother who was the cause of his parents' breakup and his father did not abandon them. But in fact, there was an affair and like it's all in the fablements.
And if you watch the fablements, you understand his life completely differently. And now to watch all of his movies where he's got all this frustration and regret and anger about the way that his dad like a quote unquote abandoned them. But that isn't actually what happened. It puts such a strange lens on all these movies.
Because like when you're a kid, you think you know what's going on in your parents. You have no idea. You have no clue it's really between them. And so for him to be like processing this for 30 years, the most popular movies of all time is so interesting.
You agree with that? Yeah. Yeah. I think that the crucial thing that he said is that he would not have made the same movie if he had children, which I'm sure we're going to talk about a lot about Roy's decision-making throughout this movie.
Have a couple spots. But that is like one of the most important things that he brings up. So it's like, yeah, I think you're right. He's making a lot of these films relating to his parents, but he's also making a lot of these films with his own kind of self-perception as a parent.
Or he's making three versions of the same film because that's what happened. He released the Atronome 77. It did amazingly well. It saved Columbia.
Columbia was going broke. Their whole bake independent on this movie doing well and it did. But they rushed it. They rushed it.
I think six, seven months ahead of when he wanted to do it. So then when they said they were releasing and he's like, I'm cool. I'll get behind it. Isn't this fucking crazy that I do?
But I have to redo it. But I have to redo it. Of this year and two of the biggest movies of the last 40, 50 years are Star Wars and closing counters and both directors are like, this was just the version that I was ready. That was ready at the time when I had to turn this thing in.
I think it's a good lesson in creativity though. Turn that sometimes maybe you're over thick of it too much. Maybe turn it in because even like the stuff they had in the special edition in the studios like, we'll pay for this. We'll market it.
That's why you do the redraftable. But they say to him, you have to show the inside of the spaceship, which they do. So if you get the 4K Blu-ray, I bet they have the three versions. So we see the inside of the spaceship in that version.
And I don't want to see the inside of the spaceship. The whole point of this movie is you kind of don't know what's out there or what's in there. Yeah. You get to fucking vaporize the second step in that ship.
So Spielberg agreed to it because he wanted to make all these other changes and cut all the fat from the movie that always drove him crazy. And then that he agreed to the spaceship, that drove him crazy. So now we get the director's cut in 98, which is the kind of official version. And I think that's the best version.
I think that's the one that features some new stuff from the 80 version like the coat of packs either finding the ship. It's good edits. It's cleaner. And then you get the little bit more than you do in the theatrical cut, but you don't have the spaceship interior, which I don't really get the appeal of that sequence at all.
Ebert loves that sequence. Yeah, I don't get it at all. Yeah, he really did. Well, Spielberg said, I think I have a 1.5 million to work on the special edition, which is a lot of money back in 1980.
Anyway, huge hit for Steve. Falls it up in 1941, which was not a huge hit, but leads to everything that happens in the 80s. I know you did the book of basketball 2.0, but is there any part of you that wants to go back to the book of basketball and take a chapter out and add two more chapters in the middle, redo it. Say, oh, like I now did.
I would change so many things about it. So I've had 10 more years of LeBron. I want to say this, you know, like, so many years don't work. Why don't you do it?
Because my fingers don't work. Is that the only reason? Yeah, that's the only reason. That's the only reason.
That's the only reason. That's the only reason. That's the only reason. That's the only reason because I totally agree with you.
The compulsion of Lucas and Spielberg to just keep going back to these movies that at release were five star all time masterpiece classics. Yeah. Where movies that are like these movies will live for 100 years. And they're like, I got a couple of notes on for myself.
Yeah, I got to get a jab at any. The only thing I can mention of Jabbaers is an R2 underneath the station. The only thing I can identify with because obviously the film and be a book I wrote wasn't remotely like these two movies, but you get you go down the line with something where you have a deadline. And at some point there's no going back and you kind of have to finish it even though deep down you're like, like in that case, I just should have split that into two books.
And it was so obvious now. Like why don't I just do the first book and then the pyramid could be the second book. Yeah. But when you're like 75% down the road, you can't stop.
And I assume sometimes that happens with a movie too, where it's like it's got to come out November 77 and you're just like, all right. And you just put your head down and you try to get to the dead. Is that how you felt having to recap the Alexander De Dario episode of your detective? Yeah.
I mean, I was like, oh, I'm going to say that just as far as the tinkering, you know, obviously we'll get to the part where, you know, eight different writers worked on this movie and tried to help him with it. And clearly like he was relying on a collaborators, but I do get the feeling like as he, you know, he would wake up and be like, Hey, I wrote something last night. And so while we're here, let's shoot this and let's go try this. I wonder if the nature of the way he made the movie led to him wanting to kind of endlessly tinker on it.
And because it was never, this is Tony Kushner's script and we are going to nail it. Right. This is David kept scripted and we are just going to honor it. There's a lot of fun stuff about how much he actually wrote and whether he's even a good screenwriter.
And it seems like there was like eight, nine people involved. There are two people helping him rewrite it. One of the ways people dang him when the people weigh in is like, ah, he can't read a script. He doesn't know what fun he's doing with that.
So Julia Phillips put that in a very colorful way. Yeah. I forgot about that book. I actually, I want to read that this summer because there's an uncut version to the Julia Phillips.
I think they expanded it. She just, she's just became directors. Yeah. You'll never eat lunch in this town again.
Well, and she never worked again. She was one of the producers her and her husband Michael, right? It's a scabbarous memoir for time in Hollywood sorting so much cocaine. She started so much cocaine during the filming of this movie that they bounced her from post production, right?
Early on the cocaine thing to 1977. Like that's pretty early to ruin your career with cocaine. It's like that tale. I'm sure there's some start of it.
Yeah. Guys out there. Yeah. It's like the first year though where people were really doing that.
Anyway, Dick Dreyfus, Jaws 75, close encounters and goodbye girl in 77. And it's best to act or for goodbye girl. A good example of that category we always wanted for the Oscars. Best year.
Best year. You have to have big things at least two movies. The all time easiest, but it could be anybody. It could be a director, it could be a screenwriter, anyone.
I don't know why they don't do that. We've never found out a good reason. I just added to the list of the three categories I've given for free to the Academy Award. Best year.
Yeah. Brainer passes on Jaws 2, a movie that we will do on the rewax. Okay. It was a movie.
And then from 78 to 81, the big fix, the competition and whose life is in any way a movie that he says afterwards, he has no memory of making because by that point he was doing so much cocaine that it actually burned a hole in his brain and he can't remember. He kind of gets it back with let it ride and stake out. He gets a couple of things. Big, what about Bob?
Big, Big, Big, Difus come back. 86 range out. Would you never would have predicted because he's such an unlikely star in the first place. Yeah.
So him like having a comeback, he's like being a more netish Dustin Hoffman is an incredible way. Well, it starts at the American Graffiti, which I should have mentioned. He also passed on the China syndrome and he left all that jazz during rehearsals. He didn't even like a Douglas part.
What part was he doing? Well, we were playing all the jazz shaggers part. He left the Shider part. Get out.
Really? He left the Shider part and they replaced him with Shider. Couldn't get the hang of it. That's so much better.
That's terrible. Yeah. That's a rough one. Who's Difus in the last 25 years, this version of his 70s?
70s Difus. Who is it? God. Because now I just feel like they would have put like Jonah Hill in this movie.
No shots fired at Jonah Hill. Jonah Hill. They would have started as a comic actor. This time was like a dramatic actor.
But don't you think they would have just put like comic actors in here now? They don't want ugly people leave blockbusters anymore. That's true. He's just way too normal looking.
He just looked like a guy at the grocery store. A lot of the guys who I would be like, oh, maybe it would have been this person. They just get made into superheroes and eat like three times their body weight and protein to look better. But Toby McGuire has a little bit of Difus-ish vibes.
But it's all people that also could have played a superhero. Yeah. It's like Paul Rudd. Yeah.
Right. Right. But these are all guys who like after six months in a lot of creatine slash HGH literally put a fan down. Like Richard Difus can't do that.
But I mean Spielberg has said it multiple times. And I think this one's the best example of it. That he is like his ultimate emotional stand in. That when he's making a movie that he feels personally connected to.
Obviously Jaws, this film always. There's a handful of movies that he makes where he's like, I need to get something across about how I feel. This movie is about how Steven Spielberg feels. And Difus is the best at that.
Even though this is like one of the greatest casting one of some all time. The list of people that he went to for this part is amazing. I also watched The Good Buy Girl recently. Which is six months.
No idea how he won Best Actor. It's just inexplicable. Solid movie, but basically a really well written rom-com and Difus is just. Which should be the March Amazing Wind?
Like it shouldn't have been the one who is like the focus of the awards campaign. Difus just comes in. He's coming in hot. He's like a dick at work actor.
Yeah. She's got a kid. Yeah. But he's like Full Fledge, Russell Westbrook 2017.
He's like, I'm also going to grab all the rebounds. He's doing everything. 2017 that's when against Westbrook was published. Right.
So he's got that performance. But then he's got this one which is so much more interesting over performance. And of course he wins for the other movie. But I think he's just fantastic in this movie.
This movie is pretty criminally overlooked. I thought. Yeah. But like this is his best performance.
I really do. Like I've seen all of the Difus movies. I think this is his best one. He's like unravels over the course of 90 minutes in a way that I don't know.
I think there's some real art to it. He was nominated for Mr. Holland, right? He's great.
He was nominated for it. How many Oscar nominations does he have? Did you guys do that? Yeah, we didn't invite you because you don't like that.
That's a great pod though. That was me and Van. That was really fun. I think that's when Van, that was his initiation to get it.
It was the first one. That was the first one. Yeah. That was a very fun episode.
Yeah. I think I thought it was an initiative. You got to go kill a guy. I'm just going to be up a strong dopest with us.
Explain the word we know part. Is this like this is one of the most egregious best pictures of all time? Isn't it? It's amazing to me.
It is not nominated. Especially given the crop of what it's up against. I want to talk about that right after this break because this episode is brought to you by Save Farm. Life is about choices, including the Oscars when they screw up some best actor stuff and some best movie stuff.
We love to go back and wonder why they made the choices they did, which as we get in the 70s and 80s is pretty crazy with the Oscars. At Save Farm, there goes to help you make decisions that you feel good about. That's why at the Save Farm, personal price plan, you can choose the right amount of coverage to help create a competitive price. Talk to a Save Farm agent today to learn how you can choose to bundle and save with the personal price plan.
Like if your neighbor's Save Farm is there, prices are based on rating plans that vary by state coverage options are selected by the customer availability amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state. Okay. Annie Holl wins for Best Picture. We covered this in Star Wars.
Star Wars is nominated, the Goodbye Girls nominated Julia and the Turning Point. I haven't seen that. I don't think. I have because we did a 1977 draft on the big picture and I watched it and it's a perfectly adequate drama about ballet.
Oh yeah. And it is just the way I work back then. But Close Encounters was like two popcorny and two... But this movie got nine Oscar nominations.
Actually, Oprah got nominated for Director, which is the weirdest part of it. It's not like it's on again where it got all the effects and sounds. It's like it got a supporting actress nomination. It won for cinematography.
There was a special achievement Oscar for the sound effects editing for this movie. So it got... It was acknowledged as an important film. So for it to not hit Best Picture is so strange.
It's also a strange... It's not a kid popcorn movie. It's like asking really deep questions and it's going places that you film with. And it's the biggest movie of the year.
So Goodbye Girl got for Best Picture, not for director. That's in Spielberg, not for director, not the movie. Turning Point got both, which I think is the year's pass. And then Dreyfus doesn't get nominated off for this movie.
And I guess is there a role you can't be in the same category twice? I don't know. Or has that happened? Has anyone ever been Best Actor for two movies out of the five spots?
I believe it has happened. But the reason that the director of The Goodbye Girl wasn't nominated is because it's the same director of the Turning Point. It's Herbert Ross. They're both Robert Ross.
So that's why Dreyfus couldn't get the double Best Actor either. No, you can get nominated twice in the same category for this performance. But it's usually very hard because there's a lot of votes splitting historically. Yeah, he has to be Best Actor.
You couldn't have been the only actor that got nominated was our girl Melinda Dillon. Yeah. Can't wait to talk about her. Anyway, Dreyfus, he ends up winning.
So it works that great. True Foes in this movie? He is, man. Oh, yeah.
Break. Your boy. Obviously wasn't understanding the significance of 1977 as I was holding on to my dad terrified. Wondering where the dad of three kids was going on spaceship.
But do you want to do the belt for True Film films? You know, like does it go like Wild Child and then Ben Bored, Stolen Kisses, The Last Metro? Like, what do you think? Where does it end?
True Film month? Should we do True Film? Yeah. That'd be great.
Jules and Jim. Well, 400 blows. Yeah. Well, this was his only role in an English language film and his only acting role in a film that he did not direct.
And he checks up all time, who's barely done anything. It's like, I'm going to get this guy in my movie and he's just going to act in it. It worked. Yeah.
It got like, I don't really act. Like I just do my thing. Yeah. And he was like perfect.
He's also like, I don't speak English. I can't really understand what you guys are thinking about. And also half of the acting he has to do in this movie is basically like just look at that wall over there because we're going to put these special effects in later. Yeah.
And I don't know. I like him. He's tremendously effective in this movie. He's really good.
Helps of Balaban is just like, like, that's a great interpreter to have for him. Yeah. Yeah. I was like, so I went to Dylan and UFO.
You have to alien just kind of rat it. That would be very, very true foe. What? John Williams did this for this movie.
What do you refer this guy? He sure did. He sure did. Talk about best your start was it close encounters in the same year.
Did the score and then Spielberg added the film to match the score. Insane? Cause you said John Williams was blacked out during started were so bad. It'd still been blacked out, yeah.
It's like fucking grinding it out. He said they did 305 note combinations to get to the place where they wanted to go with this score and that this is the one that they landed on and he wrote the movie around the comments I don't even know He's an alien, you know, we're just like he just sees and understands things that everybody even people who work really closely with him Or just like how did you know that this was gonna? Yeah, like there's certain things where I'm like did you build this entire film around the people in the Indian like the Indians Pointing at the sky like does the film itself like explodes when that happens Yeah, but I'm like did you have that in your head when you were writing it? Did you know you were gonna get that image?
Yeah, John Williams 75 78 Jaws close to counter star wars Jaws to in Superman Pretty good. Just five of the highlights pretty good Then he's like I'm gonna come back in 81 and 82 with Raiders and you teet back to back This is low-key even John Williams much too. I guess yeah, and then he's like I'm gonna rip off another 40 plus years He's a score for death wish as well I didn't ask them. Yeah, I heard he had corrected it.
That'd be great if he was a student It was her behind cock when I like to do a little jazz Killings would you be surprised if John Williams had an alter ego that like Garth Brooks said I know it was just like yeah I love they can love low-budget horror movies. Yeah, will John yams 19.4 million dollar budget me 306 million third biggest movie of 1977 she's rad gave it four stars when it came out Then another four stars in 1980 and wrote I thought the original film was an astonishing achievement Capturing the feeling of on wonder we have when considering the likelihood of life behind the earth this new version gets another four stars It's quite simply a better film so much better that it might inspire the uncharitable question Why didn't Spielberg make it this good the first time said that much? What do we do then you know like when when Melter has a five star match But then he visits the tape and see he missed a couple of holds and he's like can we do a five and a half star match? Yeah, I didn't go from higher than four.
I didn't realize that went through the spanners to not their table This new match do you think this is Spielberg's greatest achievement? I still think it's Jaws Um Jaws is 99.9 out of 100. I still understand how they made that movie There's a lot of he's in the ocean for like how many months when we did that like he said the ocean for sure I think that there are better movies that he's made I think visually this is like as virtualistic as it gets like there are things in this movie and I know a lot of that could be Zigman then it could be like the different people working in special effects the totality of the visual achievement for me is like the best he gets Because of my age there's something about Jurassic Park and Schindler's list and then soon saving private Ryan where it felt like he was kind of coming back for his middle age to be like Just so you know, I am the greatest of all time that those three movies in three completely different ways Yeah, or they stand alongside. Yeah, sure this and Jaws to me Well, it's a different question right degree difficulty It's got to be Jaws though just have fucking crazy that movie was this is feels like the most majestic movie made yeah ET is probably the most relatable Like it's just ET was a phenomenon.
Greaters is maybe the most fun. Yeah, most fun and then Schindler's list is the most meaningful Jurassic is like he learns all the lessons from his earlier movies and throws into that and then saving private Ryan's like probably the best Pure filmmaking like that the battle's in the first 20 minutes. It's probably the peak of his career, right? Dobbins and I were just saying this on the pod though.
I genuinely think 50 years from now People will also look at West Side Story and Fablemans as part of this like Twilight yes him kind of in his final stage understanding how to make a movie better than anybody and still pouring himself into it So I don't know you know who else I like this movie or girl Pauline Kale How about that? Yeah, it's a very few movies have ever hit upon this combination of fantasy and amusement the Wizard of Odds perhaps in a planar down Homeway. She's a big fan Steve. There are haters out there on this movie.
I'm gonna get to that. Okay Well, can I point something out about Ebert and Siskel because I went back and rewatch their segment about it and they both did something that we do all the time I think it's really interesting and I think it's important to clock commentary about movies even movies that are considered all-time great in real time They both are like this movie kind of drags a little bit Mmm the second act is a little soft in the middle and it's not that great Which is something you would say about just kind of any movie that you see on a boy making the mashed potato mountain kind of Yeah, I think you're going to devil's yeah, and I don't know that's like I'm not saying that's right or wrong But now when we talk about a movie like this is so sacred and so important You're asking is it literally his greatest achievement arguably the greatest American filmmaker out since John Ford ever? Now we like genuflect at it But even in the time it came out critics have this desire to be like nothing's perfect like just so you know even though you stole our breath You could have like tightened this up a little bit which I find very funny for a movie that is so meaningful to so many people that endures 50 years later That that's not even really found in e-birts review in his written piece He doesn't say like oh kind of sags a little bit in the middle But on TV he found himself like reverting to this comment that you can make about any kind of movies We just did it on Star Wars where we're like there's a lot of droids in the first 30 minutes of this movie I'll say this I kind of agree with him about close encounters where it's like okay that that 15 to 20 minutes Oh, it's love Roy losing it is slow But there are even in those sequences moments visually where you're like with Roy on the phone with Ronnie And the fucking towers on the TV and the towers on the table and you're like turn turn turn you realize like the way He's blocked at the way he's framed it is literally taking over your brain because you're like she just has look at the TV Just look at the TV before it's too late look at the TV and you're like oh my god That's just like a really small domestic scene and he's still at the top of his game doing it I can only judge it with the my version of PR and basketball There's always Simmons looking down versus looking upscale and there was a lot of looking down at our phone the first 20 minutes Uh-huh, but then when he gets to the the crowd In the first car behind then the second car the lights go up. It got definitely this is her first time.
Yeah 4k Yeah, yeah This movie is arguably the case for physical. I can't this isn't really important to say when do you want to do this? I mean whenever you want but just like this movie in 4k or 3 do your 3 movies What I forget what I said what did I say the three movies that have three different versions of them? It's this it's Blade Runner and it's apocalypse now Yeah, that the great thing obviously one of the great things about physical We get to see these various editions of the movies that are made over time But those are also three movies that kind of didn't look great on TV and don't look great on streaming But when you put those three discs those three 4k discs in your machine and you can watch any of the versions you want to You ascend to heaven, you know, you're like this is how we're supposed to be seen I think it's a really we make this point all the time This is one of the all-time best examples of it This is like we got killed by square TVs and crappy quality It did not it was not a movie that was on TNT and TBS for a hundred years the same way some of these other ones were and then when you watch it With the wide TV in the light and it's fucking like a great shock or do I ever like compiled and I don't know if I've ever seen it Look at this good like I I might have actually been watching Close encounters like ten times out of the house with the stars is like breathtaking Yeah, but there's like 40 of those yeah Roy and Jillian meeting as all the people are swarming by the way and the India sequence and just the detail of the hordes moving in the background while there's action happening in the foreground I mean the entire final 20 minutes the first five minutes.
Yeah, yeah The clouds behind the devil's tower. Yeah, they figure out like they add those clouds when they climb over the mound Yeah, and the camera goes up with them and it shoots up just very opening the door and the wave of orange light It's just so many moments in this movie. We're there jaw dropping Most we watchable scene. I really like the air traffic controller scene.