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Man, Hunter, 35th anniversary, next. Somewhere between dreams and reality lies the key to a killer's identity. You want to know how it's chosen, don't you? Hunting in that dangerous place is FBI agent Will Graham.
What is it you think you're becoming? The closer he gets to the film, the more deadly the dreams become. Thanks, Hunter. It starts Friday at a theater near you.
Check local listings. All right, Chris Ryan is here. Sean Fenniss is here. 1986 was when mainlander came out.
So basically celebrating our 35th anniversary now, it is the second theatrical Michael Man release. We have quickly run through almost all of the Michael Man movies. This is the last one, unless we decide to do Alay or Black Hat. Chris, the ending, the Inagata Divida.
To me, that is like heroin in your veins. I can't imagine a scene that you would like more than that. We're gonna get to it in a second. But why do you love this movie?
Where does this rank in the Michael Man rankings for you? This is top three. It's some, I mean, he is in a class of one, and then there is jockeying between Man Hunter and collateral for two for me. And then my advice, my advice is my mistress.
You know what I mean? This is the lady I go to see, even though I know it's really bad for me. Right. No, this movie, and I really wanna talk about Man Hunter relation to Silence of the Lambs a lot, because I think they're kind of like two sides of the rewatchables going.
Like, Silence of the Lambs is this really in comparison brisk, very entertaining movie, I think. And it is like incredibly well made and well told. There are parts of Man Hunter that are kind of inscrutable. Like, there's parts of where you're like, I don't know what part of America this is set in.
But it is so poetic. It is so beautiful. And it bores so deep into you that you can't, you're like Will Graham at the end of this movie. You're like, I got cut deep.
Fantasy? Well, I think it's obvious that it's a brilliantly made movie by a person who's completely obsessed and it's a movie about obsession. And so it's fascinating in that respect. I'll say it's fun to be on this episode with you guys.
Bill, your love for this movie confirms for me that you have the soul of an artist. This is an artist's movie. It's a really fun serial killer movie. It's a good cop movie.
But it's, I mean, this is like an art piece surrounded by serial killer stuff. And I'm sure we'll talk about the colors and the music and the sound, but I mean, this is a really sophisticated, kind of strange movie that also has all the hallmarks of like an entertaining rewatchable. So it's a cool movie to talk about. So you're saying it's an artsy fartsy English lit kind of in college.
Somebody's in my door. It's a real toy from reality bites and likes Manhunter of More Than Silence of the Lambs movie. It is, it really is. For me, it's really hard to separate this movie.
And I mean this in a positive happy way from Miami Vice. Because obviously Miami Vice is one of my five favorite shows ever. It's equally as influential as Manhunter is. And it's basically happening simultaneously.
Michael Mand does the first two seasons of Miami Vice, basically he puts his style, his vision. He's pushing the envelope in all these different ways. And the lead guy in that is Sonny Crockett, who easily just could have been in this movie as Will Graham. Like they have different jobs, but they're very similar.
There's even stuff kind of ripped off from Miami Vice. Like he's got the one sun, he's on the water. He's got to put his family away because they're in danger. There's these little things.
And then they use, there's six people that were in influential Miami Vice moments in this movie. So there's overlap all over the place. He's got the Miami Vice, the Sonny Crockett stubble, Will Graham, same thing. He's kind of breaking down emotionally a little bit.
It's just, to me, this is like he took all the stuff he was doing on Miami Vice. He blew it out and he made this incredible movie. And I think one of the reasons I'm surprised that took so long for us to do this is this movie was way more influential than I think I realized. It invents all of this stuff, right?
Like what is an action thriller before this movie? Basically, thief was about as far as you're pushing the envelope. But for the most part, movies were either action, where they were horror, this is, I don't know what this is. This is a new genre.
But then you think about the forensic profiling and all, and this has become a huge part of not just TV and movies, but podcasts, true crime podcasts, things like that. I don't know, Chris, was there anything like this before this? So I think that this film is largely credited with popularizing, popularizing, not serial killers per se, but this type of investigation into serial killers. This criminal profiling is deeply empathic way of trying to think like a killer.
But when you say popularizing though, the movie didn't do well. That's what's so weird about it. It becomes this fanatical cult movie that leads all these things, but also didn't succeed. Which I think is why five years later, you can make sounds in the lambs and people are like, this is grand, I've never seen anything like this.
And it's like, they do a lot of the criminal investigation stuff in manager. A lot of the stuff where he's walking into rooms and he's just like, you wanted them to see you. When you first watch this movie, you're just like, what the fuck is happening? I do think that there are some precedents for movies that have this kind of tone.
There are a lot of Charles Bronson movies from the 70s that are like action thrillers, and then there's some Bert Reynolds movies that are action thrillers. Yeah, these movies are action thrillers, but they don't have this tone. They don't have this like sort of like monomaniacal kind of crazed sense of like, everyone is kind of coming apart at the seams. Like it's so high tension, and every single person that you see in this movie, and obviously especially Will and the Tooth Fairy, and this like duality between the profiler and the investigator, like something that is this psychological, it was really rare.
And it's funny that like the way that the profiling stuff became popularized, because even though it is in many ways, exactly the same in the case of William Peterson, like literally he played a guy who did this job later, the tone of that stuff has nothing to do with this. Like to Chris's point, Silence of the Lambs, even though it features some of the same characters, is a totally different universe in some ways. So this kind of stands on its own to me too. Yeah, it's funny you mentioned Bronson.
The movies that I was thinking of that came out before this that have DNA that we're trying to get to here, but are just not as well made or anything. Tightrope with Clint Eastwood, where he's in New Orleans, which is for the people listening, kind of an interesting movie, it's on HBO Max. It's definitely one of the weirdest movies Clint ever made. I think that and play Misty for me are probably the two wild card weirdo movies he made, but in that one, he's investigating this person who's strangling prostitutes in New Orleans.
Charles Bronson made a movie called 10 to Midnight. Good movie. And I think it's actually a good horror movie. It's with Lisa, my girl Lisa Albackar, isn't it?
Who eventually tried to seduce Axel Foley and Beverly Hills Cop can pull it off. Axel just wasn't interested, she's lying on the bed. He was doing Jimmy Russo. Yeah, he's still morning because of his love of Russo.
But that movie's got a lot of the same elements, right? Serial Killer and the Loose. It's a little scary, but what he does in this movie and how artistic it is, it's a real achievement. And what's interesting is he's doing the Red Dragon Book, which was a monster book in the early 80s, 1981, I think.
And he's trying to adapt that, but really stay true of the book. And I think what was horrifying for me was when they did Red Dragon, which is the reason we're doing this podcast. It was on TV the other night. And I was watching it.
I'm just like, why the fuck did they do this? Why did they make this? Why would they remake Manhunter 16 years after Manhunter when Manhunter was a masterpiece? Which led me to watch Manhunter again and then text Chris.
And Chris was basically like, I've been waiting for this text my whole life. But we might as well talk about Red Dragon now. Was Red Dragon a violation to you, Chris? Yeah, I mean, I think that the thing that people have to understand, we talked about this a lot of the signs of the lambs, is the rights issues with this Thomas Harris universe are so complicated and involve probably like five or six different dealer-entices.
That, you know, it's one person owns Lecter and one person owns the Clery Starling story. And then there's like, so there's a lot of different stuff and there's a lot of people exercising their options, making sure they're making movies before, like the rights expire and stuff like that. But Red Dragon just sucks. It's a Brett Ratter movie.
They took basically a perfect movie and no matter how good anybody in it could possibly be, it wasn't gonna be Manhunter. I just really wanna say quickly before we get more into this. Another dope movie for people to check out that I think is a little bit of a building block going into Manhunter is another William Peterson movie called To Live and Die in LA, which comes out in 85, William freak interacted. One of the great cop movies in the 80s.
I really hope we do one of the watchables one day. It's a little bit more kinetic and like verite than Manhunter is, but has some of the same amazing wang shung soundtrack. So deep like out there, new wave soundtrack, great villain in Willem Dafoe, and a great kind of like the only way to understand the thief is to think like a thief, I'm going undercover thing from William Peterson. That led to one of my favorite Adam Curl jokes when I worked with Curlow where he had this pitch where it was like, to catch a serial killer, you have to be calm on a serial killer.
And then it would just be this show about this guy who was a serial killer who was trying to catch other serial killers. But to live with that in LA, there's an interesting Michael Mann William frequent thing, which came up in the internet research, I'll just do it now. Michael Mann was so mad about To Live and Die in LA, he sues freakin' and actually has a plagiarism. You've stole from Miami Vice, I'm suing you.
Loses the lawsuit, they somehow stayed friends. And then freakin' was one of the people he thought about for Hannibal Lecter. It's a classic 80s, I don't know if there was cocaine involved. What's going on?
You're using to sue me, but we stay friends. Go on, you see somebody and stay friends and then try to cast them in your next movie. The mid 80s are off the rails. I don't wanna spoil the end of this pod, but I do have my lawyer waiting outside your door for this interview as soon as you've done recording.
It's really funny, though, because I feel like the arc of the Thomas Harris novels and the way that they're adapted is you have this great legacy all the way up till Red Dragon. You have three different filmmakers, all three very specific spins on the story. You've got, obviously, Michael Mann kicks it off, then you get Jonathan Demi, the late great Jonathan Demi, and then you get Ridley Scott with Hannibal, which is a controversial movie and not as good as those other two movies, but does have a lot to recommend it. And I think it's kind of an interesting rewatch in light of having seen these.
I started watching it again last night. And I was like, wow, this is, it's actually the most Tony Scott-esque movie in a lot of ways. And then you get Brett Ratter and Brett Ratter just sucks, like he's not a good filmmaker. And so aside from the fact that Mann Hunter did something like and really invented a subgenre in so many ways, the idea of revisiting it feels like just such a wasted opportunity.
And there's so many great people in that movie and you know Bill that cast is so stacked that it's hard to understand why they did that. Yeah, Hoffman is playing the reporter in that. And it's just, it's like wasting a vintage Hoffman year where he could have been making six other movies that he probably would have gotten nominated for an Oscar for and instead he's in that crap. Hopkins is now 11 years older than he was in Sounds of the Lambs, but it's a prequel to Sounds of the Lambs, including the Dr.
Anthony Heald, who's 50 pounds heavier and 11 years older, but it's supposed to be earlier. And the whole thing is like, why? Why'd you do this? Ed Norton's doing this, William Peterson, I don't want to be like William Peterson.
And in a lot of ways, to me it made me like Mann Hunter Moore. It really rebelled against Red Dragon. So just quickly on the style stuff, it really starts with Vice, which is weird. There's this movie called Thief of Hearts that I don't think even exists.
It's with Stephen Bauer, who was Manny from Scarface and David Caruso, and they're these two thieves and they steal somebody's jewelry, but they steal the ladies' diary. And I think I told you about this movie and Stephen Bauer reads the diary and decides he's going to try to win this woman over. But the style of that movie, and then to live and die in LA and then this movie, visually something's happening that I don't feel maybe risky business in 1983 a tiny bit, but other than that, when you're talking about like mainstream, bigger movies that also try to look cool, am I missing anything else? Cause Risky Business was another one where there's just scenes of that movie that just moved differently than an 80s st movie.
I think it's worth mentioning Blade Runner, right? Like I think Blade Runner is probably the most visually rich studio genre movie that like people had seen at that time. Like I mean, obviously there's lots of other examples, but that is like, you know, I feel like we talked a little bit about Blade Runner and feet with thief. Blade Runner is like a real page turning moment.
We're in a new decade now. We've got new, like there's a different vision for what the world could look like in these movies and it's bringing in all this stuff from German expressionism and shit. There's this really great man quote, I just want to drop for people because I think it kind of explains what we're talking about here when he was talking about Manhunter and he said, it bores me to present the events of the story in a realist style. My approach instead is to conceptualize the elements of the plot, taking into consideration the various torments that arise the spiritual and the expressionist manner.
And this always leads me to reject realism. I think he eventually embraces realism later in his career, especially with Mohicans, like even though it's deeply romantic, but like he's comes back to realism, but this movie is not realist. You know what I mean? Like in the way that silence is, I think very realistic, very human.
This movie is way more about the construction of compositions and frames to like show you how people are feeling when they won't tell you. Well, that first scene on the beach, which you know, and we talk about this sometimes on the pod where the TVs couldn't properly show how cool some of this shit was and you had these TVs that were square forever or I'm not clear enough. And now 10 years ago, the TVs ran in a shape or whatever it was. And that first scene on a widescreen, if you have any sort of an HD type of situation going on, it's so fucking cool.
It's really amazing. Like, you know, the furina sitting one way toward the ocean, Peterson sitting the other way, he's got the cheesy gray cut off T-shirt that I know Chris owns. And there's that there's sitting on that piece of driftwood and the way man shoots it, it's just like, it looks like the most beautiful place on earth. You could be in St.
Bart's, you could be in Mexico, you could be in no idea where you are. It turns out we're in Florida. But just, it's so striking. If you remember, Red Dragon starts with Will Graham going to meet Lechter.
It's the story they tell the fights. We never see that scene in Manhunter. And we'll get to whether we should have or not, but it just starts with violence. Manhunter doesn't have violence until the end.
They intentionally withhold all the violence, which I think Sean's a really smart decision and pretty unique. Totally meditative movie in so many ways, that opening scene, what I thought of when I was watching it last night was in the insider, there's a scene near the end of the movie when Lowell Bergman is fighting to get in the air. He's on the beach. I guess he's in the Hamptons, we don't really know where he is.
And I remember when we talked about this on the pub, we were like, why the hell is he at the beach? Like, did this actually happen? Did Lowell Bergman have a summer home? Or did Michael Mann just want to return to the infinite and the nothingness of the ocean?
Like that, he goes back to it over and over and over again. You know, we saw him beef. Same thing, James Kahn with his family on the beach. Like that is a space of salvation for him.
And he'll talk about the algae. Yes, yeah, over and over again. He has these tropes, he has these themes that he loves. And I mean, the quote that Chris shared is why I'm like, I'm ribbing you guys about this being an art movie.
I mean, listen to the way Michael Mann talks about this stuff. Like this Thomas Harris book is a pretty good book and it's a really good page turner, but I wouldn't say it's like a sophisticated work of art. It's pop fiction. And in the pop fiction, he pulls out these super heavy themes and makes this meditative movie that you're describing, Bill.
So it's a really unusual circumstance. Yeah, he does, he does some stuff with the cameras. The way he shoots the scene the first time he goes to see Lecter with the weight and the bars, but somehow the angles of Lecter, but then the other side of Will Graham, it's exactly the same angle. I don't know how he does it.
If you want to know like, you could teach that scene in film school because if you watch that scene, if you don't know what's happening and you just watch that scene, you don't know which one of them is in jail. You don't know which one of them is behind bars because every shot of Will Graham, he's closed in by the bars from Lecter's perspective. So Will is caught. Even though Lecter's in jail, Will's the one who's caught.
Will can't escape this guy and this guy's voice in his head. And he knows that he has to basically embrace that if he wants to catch the tooth fairy. There's a lot of mirrors and glass and William Peterson staring into a mirror, then the killer finally breaking the mirror with his fist and using the piece of shards. Peterson running through the giant glass door slider in the key scene, but over and over again, it's, you know, he really tries to make the point of Will Graham is actually kind of losing it.
One of the most, I didn't have this in most rewatchable scenes, that really effective scene in the grocery store with his son. Oh yeah, I got that scene. That's my one. Yeah.
Yeah, here's what happened to me. I kind of lost my mind. It's just matter of fact, telling his son this whole story in the cereal. Is that how you tell Ben about Grantland?
You guys are walking through Gelsons. Yeah, I'm like, so Roger Goodell. I can get fired from ESPN. He's like, actually, I didn't.
I think I fired. There's a mutual, but here's the thing, Roger Goodell and maybe I got carried away. I kind of lost my mind to Patriots. Yeah, so everything that's laid out, everything that's shot, the way he does the story, the fact that you can watch this movie nine times and then 10 times see three other things you didn't really notice.
You could argue this is the best movie he's ever made. I personally, I'm always going to be loyal to Heat. But from Venice's point of how artistic this is, it's either this or Heat, I would say. Right?
I mean, as not the, I'm not the man expert that you guys are. I still think he is the most purely enjoyable movie that he made. It kind of hits every theme. It's really exciting.
There's big action set pieces. You've got romances. You've got these two iconic actors going against each other. But this is like the concretization of the Michael Man thing.
You know, like all the ideas that we talked about in Thief, this is where he's like, this is who I am. I'm not as big of a Miami vice fan, so I know that a lot of that stuff was being forged like you're saying a couple of years earlier, Bill. But you couldn't put a movie like this on network television. You know, this is something that is way beyond that, both kind of intellectually from a violence perspective.
I mean, the Tooth Fairy is a pretty fucked up character. That's a very intense serial killer figure in a movie. So I don't know if it's, and I don't even know if it's necessarily the most rewatchable of his movies because there's so much of it that it's just Will Graham staring at a screen? I think that the first two thirds of it are incredibly rewatchable.
I think once you get into Francis Dallerod's dating life, it slows down a little bit. Yeah. You know, I think just as a rewatch, like personally, like there's a version of this movie that's just nine minutes of pure Farina that I think is maybe the best American film ever made. It's just fucking Farina being like, get me a chopper the next thing smoking.
Then there is like the Will Graham and the FBI doing the hardcore investigation. And then there is an hour of like, what would a serial killer's first date with a blind lady look like? And like just kind of like, once you get to Inagata Vida, it gets back ramped up again. But I think in rewatchability terms, it's more of like a once every two years thing for me, even though it was like going to church.
Man, first of all, it got the rights, but then he started talking to this incarcerated serial killer named Dennis Wayne Wallace. He was a paranoid schizophrenic, who'd become obsessed with the women he met briefly and started killing other people to savor and was convinced that Inagata Vida had special meaning to him. And that's how that song ended up in there. But man, really threw himself in this, like he does with anything.
There's a little bit of parallel with him and Will Graham where I think man finishes this movie and that doesn't do that well. And you look at his career after this, it's a bizarre IMDb because he's out of Miami Vice. He basically helps launch crime story, directs like one episode of that. Then he does LA takedown, which was a TV movie that eventually became Miami Heat, which are Miami Vice, which he basically says now was my trial test run for what I want to see.
Yeah, right. But doesn't make another movie until Mohicans, which was Fallen 92. So we have this guy who made this incredible movie that I think has become one of the most respected cult movies of the eighties, maybe even the eighties in the nineties combined. That doesn't work again for six years.
And I wonder like, Chris, you're the number one I'm like a man expert, but like, did the lack of success of this movie maybe send him in a tailspin a little bit? I'm not sure in terms of his personal like relationship to filmmaking, but I think that he's somebody who's only gonna make the movie he wants to make. And we're kind of in this zone right now with him, where five years ago he made Black Hat. He was supposed to make a Ferrari by a biographical film, but I think that the Christian Bell Matt Damon movie also happened, there was like a bunch of competing Ferrari movies at a time.
So that never really got anywhere. I think he was supposed to make a Vietnam mini series for FX. I'm not sure what the state of that is. It was the Mark Bowden book who in 1968.
And now I think he is working on, although I don't know if he's directed every episode of this Tokyo crime show for HBO. So he's like working on stuff, but I think he's somebody who does not make something unless it's exactly what he wants to make and he gets control over it. And so you will have five or six, seven year gaps here. Like you do before he gets to make Mohicans.
Now when he goes back and makes Mohicans, he gets a huge budget. He gets daily Lewis. He gets to make more films in North Carolina. And everybody loses their mind on the set because he's got them pretending like it's actually the colonial era.
But he's not the most prolific guy. Sean, do you wish he was like Soderbergh where in like 1989 he just made 48 hours, the 48 hour sequel, just spent four months on it, moved on, just crafted it and just kind of kept going? Well, I do think it would be fun. We talked about this with Spike with Inside Man.
It would be fun if he took a genre gig. If he just took a gig where he was like, what I will do is take all of my skills on a script that I didn't write and see what I can do with it. I do think one time it would be neat if he did that. I mean, have we mentioned Luck and his involvement in TV show Luck?
That's another thing that he did that was short-lived and I think he only directed the pilot pilot but was a producer of that show that also was in many ways an amazing show and obviously the circumstances under which it didn't continue were unfortunate, but. For horses, yes. For horses. And I do think he's directing multiple episodes of Tokyo Vice that show you're talking about Chris.
So that'll be exciting to see. But I don't know, how can you not respect a guy? He was like, I only want to do what I want to do. And the only thing that matters to me is making my best version of that thing.
There's so few people in Hollywood who can operate that way these days. So I dig it. That said, would it have been cool if he made Halloween five? Yeah, it would have been fucking awesome.
Right. Another good comparison for man's filmography is really Scott's. Where really Scott makes a movie every 14 months, basically. And some of them are good and some of them are not so good.
And then sometimes the not so good movies wind up being really good when you rewatch them or like way better than you remember them. Michael Mann is just like a closer to like once every four or five years he's gonna get something off the ground. It's like, would you rather have the really Scott career where you have some real valleys here and there? Or would you rather have the Michael Mann career where people freak out every time it's an event when you release something?
Although I guess Black Hat not so much. Well, that's been the sad thing about the last 10 years is that public enemies and black hat were just a disappointment. They just were not up to par with the rest of his stuff. And so if you're only gonna get two movies every 10 years and those are the two movies you get, it is a little bit disappointing.
There's a black hat click out there on Twitter especially where they like, sometimes I get tweets that are like, here's what you don't understand about this masterpiece. And I'm like, is this how I sound to other people when I talk about Miami Vice? Black hat we might end up doing at some point on this podcast. It's gonna take me five more times to understand what happened in the first hour and a half.
And once I solve that, man, I know there's like that a little bit too. It's confusing unless you've seen it 10 times. There is some, especially when it just basically shifts the last 30 of the movie all of a sudden you're in a different movie and it's like, wait a second, now I'm with the serial killer, which I can't really remember seeing the other thing we should just mention before we take a break is the serial killer in this movie is unlike any serial killer any killer we've had in a movie. It's just nobody was like this.
It was people wear masks, it was horror franchises or was Jack Nicholson in The Shining losing his mind. This is just like a fucking weirdo. The first time we see him, he's got the stocky mask over two thirds of his face. It's absolutely terrifying.
And then we get to see him in a normal life having a job. He's six foot five, he's a fucking freak. And Tom Newton is so good at this guy that I actually think had hurt his career. It was impossible to see him and not think of this guy.
And even like when he pops up in heat, he's like, Tom Newton, this happened a little bit to Ted Levine too with James Gumb, where it was just like, the role kind of overpowered how you watched him and anything else, right? Yeah, but it's not like Tom Newton was gonna play Lloyd Doubler. You know what I mean? Like Tom Newton is an odd looking dude.
And he looks like he's like six five. I'm not sure what Paul actually is. And I think he was always gonna be more of that like New Yorker Chicago kind of underground art scene rather than. You would've said that about Peter Boyle though and then Peter Boyle ended up doing every 10 years of everybody lives Raymond.
Yeah. And it'd been in like a, like King of Queens like I guess I would have improved wrong. Right. Why did we get that?
Season nine episode five, he just loses it and starts killing everyone on the show. We should just recut like Tom Newton in the Affleck part and the way back. With that, the other thing is aside from him, you know, seeming like such a freak, this is really one of the first movies I can think about that considered the psychological history of serial killer because of what Peterson's job was that he explains like this guy was likely abused. This guy comes from a difficult upbringing which has created these violent and distorted tendencies.
And you know, sometimes you would have like a character and it's like, oh, come in and kind of like briefly explain what's going on with a villain to kind of like put an end cap on it. But this movie, it kind of creates like empathy for the most awful person in the world. And that also was kind of unique in and of its time. Yeah, there's a couple of different points.
I mean, Joan Allen wanting to touch his face. Then them sitting, he's like, hey, let's have a date. I'm going to take the blind girl back to my house. I'm going to watch some home movies of the next family.
I think I'm going to kill, but she won't know because she can't see. She, he gets so excited watching it. She gets turned on, she feels the spheromones. They start going at it.
Then we see him crying in the bed because he's had this emotional moment. Then she's on the deck. He walks out. It's basically like, can we order some Postmates?
Want me to get an omelet? It's like, it's turning into this domestic thing. I have 150 questions about that date. Oh, well, also how did she walk out on the deck when she was blind?
There is a Lewis. Where's her deck? Right, good point. But then it all leads to him in the car waiting for her, semi-creepy, but like, you know, he's trying to turn his life around in the relationship and the car starts pulling up and she, and he has that weird smile he does?
Oh my God. Where he's like, oh, hey, she's here. And then he sees the guy get out of the car and he just flips and that's it. But you do feel like kind of invested in the guy.
It's really weird. I don't know how he pulls this off. There's no other serial killer where I'm kind of like rooting for him to get the girl. It's the exact thing you were just describing, Bill, because he bifurcates the movie and the second half of the movie is essentially Dollar Hides movie.
You get the same experience that you got with Peterson. Or you're like, we need this guy. We see that he's a little bit damaged. But hey, who knows?
Maybe he's into some weird shit, like serial killer profiling or serial killing. Let's just see where he comes from. Let's learn a little bit more about him. Let's see that he's in a relationship with a woman that makes him seem more human.
And he gives as much time, as much like of the movie's energy to that character. And because he does that, obviously the tooth fairy is a psychopath and should be killed, set to the beautiful sounds of iron butterfly. But he creates this sense that it's like, we deserve to see as much of this guy as we deserve to see of William Peterson. Which is so cool.
But you know what's funny about everything you laid out? Would you laid out perfectly except for one part? We meet him with the stocky mask on and then he sends a guy on fire on a rolling chair down a parking lot. And then we come back to him after that and we're like, I hope this guy figures it out.
That's if he had a girlfriend. I'm like, what are we doing? It's like a Jedi mind trick. Tough day for tabloid journalism.
Freddy is not the greatest ambassador for the media. So this movie, $50 million budget, made $8.6 million, barely made even half of it. Mixed reviews, I couldn't find a Roger Ebert manhunter review that was in the moment. Now maybe my research skills were not great, but unfortunately I could not find his take on it.
I'm guessing belatedly when he did like his, your guy Sean, he would go back and revise history about how he thought about movies if they became cool. So maybe he liked it retroactively, but I couldn't find anything. Coming up, we do the categories right after this. Before we get to categories, we put it up during the break and Roger Ebert gave Red Dragon three and a half stars.
What? Very flatteringly about it. It's unclear if you ever saw me in Hunter. Most of you watchable scene, the nominees, the opening scene with Peterson and Farina.
If you can't look anymore, I understand. I'll try to run a game down on you too. If I really didn't need you to come back, I wouldn't ask. This guy's on a lunar cycle.
I have three weeks and a few days until the next full moon. We have a better chance to get him fast if you help. It's pretty much everything you want from a scene, Chris? Was anything missing?
Yeah, this is how you talk me into doing the rig. Maybe and be shooting threes from in the distance. CGI'd in would be the last piece for you. It's a piece of driftwood.
It's William Peterson and Dennis Farina being in Chicago as shit, even though they're in Captiva, Florida. And it's just like immediately. The thing I love about this movie, Sausen Lambs brings you into this world very well because Clarice is the fish out of water character. So like she's brought into this world that she's just and you're being introduced to it with her.
With Will Graham, he's recovering from this world. So you're always playing catch up with these characters. And this scene is great because it's just like, what happened to Will Graham that you so fucked up that he needs to just be super tan hanging out with his wife and kid in Captiva. And if the Farina thing just completely draws him back in.
Well, also, it starts out in the happiest, lightest, bluest place you could ever be in. And then at about the hour 20 mark now, it's just darkness everywhere. Everything is dark, every room. It's dark outside constantly.
And then at the end, it comes back and all of a sudden the sun's back out again. I don't know. It seems intentional. My favorite part of that scene is when Kim Grease's character starts walking towards Farina and freezes.
Hey, Molly, and she just looks at him and doesn't say anything. But then hangs out with him. And they have dinner? Yeah.
New York, who was the real-life cop turned actor, turned the funniest person to watch in any movie ever? Yeah, that New York can have that version, right? No, you know, I was texting Chris last night about Farina because obviously we're both obsessed with him. Can I tell a bit quick, Farina story?
Yeah. So I interviewed him in 2011 before I came to work for you, Bill. And we got on the phone. I was working at GQ at the time.
And I wanted to have the interview where he was like, me and him are going to talk for two hours. And I'm going to get the whole life story. And so I opened with a very obvious question about him working on Thief and then crime story. And I was like, can you just like, let's start from the beginning.
Like, let's start. When did you meet Michael, man? And he goes, ah, Sean, I'm not telling that fucking story. I've told that story a hundred times, god damn it.
I'm not talking about it, okay? And I was like, so rattled. Oh my god. I was just drowned myself.
I was so all thrown off my game. And then the rest of the interview, we just talked about the movie that he was promoting, which was not at all what I wanted to do. And he was a powerful dude. Wow.
Me, he was a real-life former cop. And you're a guy who grew up in a family of cops so we're still somehow intimidated by him. Well, I thought I was going to be able to relate to him. I thought I could throw a little New York on the voice and he would relate to me.
He was like, listen, you fucking clown child media member. I don't respect you. Go read the papers. I had this in what stage of best, but we can do this now.
This is really, this is the Farina Sants, is all happening here. It starts with Miami Vice, where he's Lombard, which was one of the five best episodes. He's this kind of evil crime boss that then pops back up in the last episode of season one where he starts working with Crockett and Tubbs. And that episode's amazing.
He's amazing in it. And you just see him in that and you're like, oh, it totally makes sense. This guy would be in some really memorable movies. Goes from that to Main Hunter, does crime story.
And then everything peaks with Midnight Run, which we'd covered in The Rocha was before. But then he spent another one. It's like he was in out of sight. He was J-Lo's dad in that.
And he just keeps popping up. And it was always great to see him. And I'm with you. He's a unicorn.
They needed to make there's a more version of him. They needed to make 10 more Elmore Leonard movies for him. Just put him in every single one of them. Love him and get shorty.
Yeah. Love him and snatch. He's just a great crime movie figure, plays a great cop, plays a great villain. Sydney, shut the fuck up.
Get a cream soda, do some fucking thing. That's a milk. More re-watchable. We might have to do the Midnight rerun.
I'll come down. Was that just me and you when we did that? Yeah, I think so. Maybe we just do the Midnight rerun and we invite two other people and just break that down again.
I could easily run that back. Next we watch, we'll see. We'll go to the victim's house. Yeah.
Intruder cut Charles Lee's throat as he was rising. Then shot, and this is Lee's. Pulled it under the right of her navelin lodge in a lumbar spine, but she died of strangulation. Moderate elevation of serotonin and marked increase of free histamine level and gunshot wound indicates she lived at least five minutes after she was shot.
All her other injuries were post-mortem. Direction and velocity of blood stains on East Wall indicate arterial spray. Even with his throat cut, Lee's tried to fight because the intruder was moving to the children's room. Which is such a harrowing scene and nothing happens, but the whole time you're convinced like the killer somewhere in there, the way they do it, it's so unsettling.
And then he's doing the weird William Peterson thing talking in the recorder. He's a bathroom. I think he went in here. And he's just like motoring to him.
He's intermodal logging it basically. What do you like about that? Well, that's how I break down tape when I watch basketball. I sit there with a tape recorder.
I'm like Danny Green, but why did he want that corner three? But he's thigh bull. He was tired that night. He was always used to pass him in.
It's like nobody else. That's good. You should do it that way. And just like upload that as the answer.
I gotta be honest, if you told me that's how we're still a watch basketball games, I wouldn't be shocked. Oh my God. I still had a little recorder which is buttery comments into it. Corner action's coming off a pin down.
I bet he's tried it. Look, the thing is is that like even in 86, but if you were watching this movie for the first time now, you've seen hundreds of movies and TV shows where like this is the best cop. This is the best investigator. It's hard to like actually make that seem to be the case.
You know what I mean? Most of the times it's like this guy's hard driving. He'll do whatever it takes. But Will is actually showing you how he is going to put himself in the mindset of the guy did this crime.
And that really comes to fruition when he, you can tell he's holding back a little bit and it really comes to fruition when he goes to a hotel room. Yeah. Next one, Graham versus Lechter. I call this Graham versus Lechter one.
Yeah. Like the Ali Frazier one. You want to know how it's choosing them, don't you? I thought you might have some ideas.
Why should I tell you? You can see the file in this case. And there's another reason. Right now.
I thought you might be curious to see if you're smarter than the person I'm looking for. Then by your location, you think you're smarter than me, since you caught me? No. I know that I'm not smart.
Then how did you catch me? I'm just like a psychologist, you're insane. We talked about it at the top, but all the shit they do in this scene is out of control. This is really one of the great, this is one of the best Michael Man scenes, just period in any movie he's done.
Cominating with, if you don't think you're smarter than me, then how do you catch me? You're at disadvantages. What disadvantages? You're insane.
That exchange is unbelievable. And Lechter's like, ah, good point, I haven't seen. You're right. So like the Brian Cox thing, man.
I personally, I understand like it's sacrilegious. Hopkins is like, Hopkins is so incredible in silence. I'm not taking away from that. There's something a little bit more.
Yes, Chris, just fucking go for it then. I had this up for later, but just the right take. He's one scarier and more realistic as Lechter. And he says to Graham, when he goes dream much will you fucking kidding me?
Like that is the scariest thing Lechter says throughout any of these movies is when this dude's like, I own your head. How about smell yourself? Is this the best? Smell yourself, just throw a way line.
Hopkins would have, look Hopkins is amazing. It sounds the lambs. We did that as a pod. All of us thought that's a tour divorce.
We all thought he should have won the Oscar. Cox's, there's stuff Cox is doing with the Lechter thing that is just less cartoonish and creepier. I think fantasy, you're on this side, it sounds like. 100%.
I mean, it's, they're basically two different characters in a lot of ways. The Cox character, I read that man told him to play him like an English school boy, which he does. He's like, he's mischievous, but not in a playful way in a dangerous way. Like he might hurt you.
And Lechter is scary, quote unquote, scary, but there's something, it's become too, it's become too much of a pop cultural. The father beings and canty, yeah. And Cox is doing something where you genuinely think he might, he might send the tooth fairy to Kill Will Peterson. Like, you know, that could happen.
The other thing is that with Hopkins, and it once it becomes kind of calcified as the performance that he's giving and everybody's sort of like doing jokes about it, you can't really separate the legacy of the performance with the performance itself. The Cox version of Lechter is a guy you like, wouldn't be shocked to see at like a restaurant. You know what I mean? Like he seems like a guy who is incredibly smart.
Whereas Lechter, you're like, if you spoke with Anthony Hopkins' Hannibal Lechter once, why would you think he was anything else but a serial killer? Yeah, it's a good point. I really like that scene. I think that scene's awesome.
It's, I don't know what the top five scenes of Michael Mann's career, but it has to be on that list. Well, there's another one coming up that's in the top five too. The airplane scene I have as a rewatchable, just cause that's in the wrong hands in the mid 80s, that scenes a disaster where he's on the airplane, dream sequence, and it goes from the dream sequence right to the photos of everybody with their eyes cut out and the little girl sitting next to him like, ah, Bobby, like that scene is weirdly terrifying. But just imagine I'm in that seat in the aisle seat with my daughter next to me and all of a sudden there's this fucking weird with all these photos.
How do you explain that after? But hey, sorry about that. So I worked for the FBI and tried to catch this guy. I like that scene.
Can't believe FBI's flying Will Graham coach especially since every line for you has, it seems to be like bragging about whatever piece of air line he's got. I got a weird jet, it's gassed up. We'll get you there in an hour. The killer torturing Freddy, we have to put his, it's not going to win, but it's just we have to mention that scene.
Do you see? Look at this, William Blake, the great red dragon and the woman close and raised his son. Do you see? Mrs.
Leeds, do you see, Mrs. Jacoby? Do you see? Yes.
The next family has their look when I go to visit them. Do you see? Really good. In red dragon, which I finally stopped watching because I got mad, but I did get through this scene when he's torturing Philip Seymour Hoffman.
I gotta say, Philip Seymour Hoffman's amazing in that scene. He's like completely terrified, horrified, and Ray finds he does the tattoo thing with his back, which they do not have in this movie and I actually thought it was effective. That's what made me stop watching it because I kind of enjoyed the scene. I'm like, what the fuck?
No, you're not, no, Brad or no. And I just turned it. The tiger scene? Oh my God, so good.
Joan Allen blinds heading the sedated tiger and Noonan's in the background making the same face that Chris made during the Philly special during the Super Bowl and it's really cool and it's a real tiger. Yes, sedated tiger. I did some research to save animals were harmed in the making of this film or whatever, but apparently you can sedate tigers like that and just do it. Yeah.
Michael, man, not a great history of animal. With animals. Yeah. If he comes on the re-reheat, we're probably not going to bring up animal stuff.
The wheel figures everything out scene, which is corny, but I still like it. Which is watching. Yeah. And Jackie Farrinas in the background.
And he's just like, and it takes him. It just feels, I had this in pick and it's fine as we'll do it now. I just feel like you're the best at this. It took you two years to do it.
Maybe this dude is watching different home movies of the families. And that's how maybe we should go check out who manufactured the home movies. You're the Michael Jordan of criminal profiling. It's like two months.
I don't know. I will say I had been back pocketing that scene to talk about that's how Chris breaks down tape. And then Chris got way out in front of it. Like I had an indeed joke all lined up and then Chris just jumped right in there.
It's tough. It's really tough. I do like that scene. It's not the best scene.
But Peterson will litigate Peterson in a second. Then the ending, which is going to be my pick. Yeah. Yeah.
Where the movie just completely goes haywire. It's an unbelievable five minutes. And that's my pick. So tell me if I'm crazy.
You didn't say the scene that I was going to say. I mean, the Lector Graham first cell scene. That's like in a class by itself. My most rewatchable scene is definitely the note relay that the FBI runs where all the different experts work on the note and are running up and down the hallways.
He's like, you're so sly. You're so sly. It's so am I. And then they have like the conference.
I think that thing is that is incredible watching like all of them marshal their 1980s tech to figure out what's the missing text in between these two pieces of toilet paper. Gail Council, of course, eyes of the hair match the blonde hair found in the Jacobis. That note was written by your man. Aside from the hair, three blue grains, dark blacks went to Brian's end.
The grains are commercial granulated cleanser with chlorine from the cleaning in several particles of dried blood, but not enough to type. You like the conference room because it's basically the prototype for 15 years of CSI shows. That's right. It's true.
I've seen with Chris Elliott becomes, yes, what 300 episodes of CSI. That's such a good call. It's true. What do you have for most rewatchable shot?
It's got to be Lector and Will Graham. Graham Lector one. Yeah. I like the ending.
The last one. I really like the last 20 minutes of this. It's not. I'm just watching.
You're such an artist, man. The ending is so interesting. It's like all this weird montage, you know, new wave cutting and editing. It's really odd.
You know, I think one of the reasons why the movie is not a hit is because while it is kind of exciting ending, it's really unsatisfying because it's very artistic. It's very unusual. Him running toward the slider window, whatever the fuck that is, and his dollar head jerking up, and then you just see him like slow motion, like he's like rich eyes and in front of the 40-yard dash. And he goes through, what if he jumped through and he just was like, that was metal and he just bounced off.
I was thinking that there could have been an amazing naked gun movie, basically just parroting every part of this movie. He's running and boom, bounces off it. All right. What's the best?
We mentioned the blend of cutting edge forensic science and criminal profiling. Look, this just didn't happen before. I remember, I think I was in college. Maybe right after.
Somebody wrote a book called Mind Hunter. Remember that? It became like a best, best, best, best-seller. Somebody did this for a living and it was like how he broke down.
And I think I read that, but it was one of those times where I read the entire book in one sitting. I was just like, and it was like, what is this world up so fast? And there just wasn't a lot of stuff out there. Now all of a sudden, it's the opposite.
There's a glut. There's documentaries left and right. There's podcasts left and right. There's 17 different CSI ripoffs.
But I got to say, until the mid 90s, there just wasn't anything. So you just kind of glommed on to this stuff. But Mind Hunter was at the forefront of it. Chris, I have Red Seven's heartbeat as what's aged the best.
Yeah. You have a counter? No. I mean, I don't think so.
Heartbeat. So this is going to feel my heartbeat. Do you think that Demi saw this scene and did goodbye horses off of it? Do you think he was inspired by the vibes of that montage for the goodbye horses?
I feel like the song call out is the prime mover song. Right? That was good. Strong as I am.
That's what the pan fluted to be getting. That's right. I like the tiger. That's really good.
The Beach House is what's aged the best. Filmed in. Seen about Captiva Florida. A place that Chris owns a third home in.