The Music of Longing in “Amadeus” (1984) – Part 2

Are Mozart’s gifts a glitch in divine accounting? Or are his flaws attendant on or even the result of his genius? And how can we account for the glitch in Salieri’s design, which permits longing to go unanswered by talent? Wes & Erin continue their discussion of the 1984 film “Amadeus,” directed by Milos Forman. Upcoming Episodes: Susan Sontag’s On Photography; Withnail & I; Waiting for Godot Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website Transcript 0:12 Erin: Okay. Welcome to part two of our discussion of Amadeus. We just got done. Sort of are still talking about Mozart's relationship to the divine and whether or not he might be something like a Christ figure. And I just wanted to talk about Salieri's own relationship with his father. We hear that his father is a man of commerce. And so Salieri, he seems to relate to God in this way, in this economic system kind of way where every prayer should be immediately rewarded and the hard work of self denial should result in God's favor. That, you know, he's making these sort of long term investments in asceticism and self denial that should see a return through the genius that God will give him and the ability to sing to him. And so some of that seems to be a result of his relationship with his father, who is not at all interested in music. And Salieri seems to think, and even asks the priest, who we haven't even mentioned is his interlocutor through the entire film, because the whole thing is one long flashback told from Salieri's perspective. You know, wouldn't you have thought this was a sign that this miracle had happened? And the miracle, of course, is his father choking on something, probably a meatball and dropping dead. And that frees Salieri up to pursue his musical career, which his father had previously denied. So I don't know. I just. I don't know that there's. There's much to be said about this that we haven't already said. But I'm so interested in this paternal relationship with Salieri and God, Salieri and his father, of the two being so diametrically opposed to each other in one way. Well, in terms of Salieri's relationship to them, right. Like he so doesn't care for his father that he thinks of killing him off as this huge convenience. And yet he's so in love with God and with wanting to sing to God that he gives up his whole life for his love of that paternal figure. Of course, it's also about his own narcissism and self glorification and looking like a really big and important person. But I don't know, I find it really knotty and difficult to untie that twin strand of these two father figures in his life. 2:40 Wes: The two father figures being his father and the. 2:43 Erin: And God. 2:44 Wes: And God. Okay. 2:45 Erin: Yeah. 2:45 Wes: Yeah. It's interesting, he says about his father. How could I tell him what music meant to me? That's when, you know, he tells his father he wishes he could be like Mozart. And the father says, why? Do you want to be a trained monkey? You'd like me to drag you around doing tricks like a circus freak? Sam, I have a homicidal feeling. How could I tell him what music meant to me? And, yeah, music is everything. Music is a religious experience for him. It's his way of connecting to God. And so it means more than commerce or a practical profession. And the miracle is that. Yeah, the first miracle is that his father dies. And we get no sense that he's sad about his father's death or that he has any sort of familial feeling, you know, typical feeling towards his. Towards his father, any love. And it's interesting he uses that word, that little transition, you know, where it's. Do you know what happened? A miracle that occurs twice in the film. The second time is when Joseph yawns. Emperor Joseph yawns, so he says. And then. And then. Do you know what happened? A miracle. With that yawn, I saw my defeat turn into victory. Mozart was lucky the emperor yawned only once. And before that, he's really getting into the music. It's the Marriage of Figaro. So he says. The restored third act was bold, brilliant. The fourth was astounding. I saw a woman disguised in her maid's clothes, hear her husband speak the first tender words he has offered her in years simply because he thinks she is someone else. There's another really great song that. That is premised on this idea. You know the song where someone puts out a classified ad to find love and it turns then the person who responds to it is his wife. 4:45 Erin: Oh, you mean if you're into peanuts in pina coladas 4:51 Wes: getting caught in the rain. Yeah. So, anyway, I don't know which one is better. Marriage of Figaro or that one. But anyway. 4:59 Erin: So, yeah, it's hard to talk about. Okay. 5:01 Wes: So offered. We hear her husband speak the first tender words he has offered her in years simply because he thinks she is someone else. I heard the music of true forgiveness filling the theater conferring on all who sat there perfect absolution. God was singing through this little man to all the world, unstoppable. Making my defeat more bitter with every passing bar. There's this really interesting juxtaposition in Salieri between his ability to appreciate the music and to feel almost gratitude towards it. To have this very, very authentic, appreciative relationship to Mozart's music and yet to have crippling envy at the same time. And you see it at various points in the film where Mozart asks him, what'd you think of that? And he responds honestly, like, it's amazing. He doesn't hide that. He doesn't try to conceal that. And as part of his revenge plan against Mozart, he can't help himself. He can't help but completely appreciate and inhabit the music and even see its kind of divine nature. Right? One observation was that it contains longing. This other observation is that it contains forgiveness another sort of divine element. He makes the immediate switch from that to his envy and desire for revenge. And the miracle, of course, it's not a religious miracle. The religious miracle in this is replaced by the miracle that serves envy or malice or the eradication of whatever gets in his way. Whatever gets in the way of his plan to make music his life. In the first case, it was his father, and now it's Mozart. His father was the impediment. Mozart is the impediment. And the miracle is the removal of that impediment. The miracle is an expression of divine authority, right? Divine power. Something that shows up in the world and breaks the rules of the laws of nature or something like that, and so forth and therefore is illustrative of God's power. The miracle is just some chance circumstance that gets rid of an obstacle. So I thought you were talking about Father. It's not like Mozart is a father figure to him exactly except insofar as he worships him as an artist and a musician. But they do certainly stand in parallel here in being these impediments to his success which he has. To which she has to remove. Very Oedipal, as they would say in the psychoanalytic community. 7:49 Erin: Right. 7:50 Wes: Kill. Kill the father. 7:51 Erin: Right. Yeah. Well, that's a really interesting idea, that. It's almost as if Salieri is so unbothered by his own father's death because God is his. It's like a case of secret parentage, right? God is his real father because he has this extra hereditary gift that doesn't seem to really come from his father. Right. It's almost this sort of switched at birth type of thing or. And, of course, Salieri's whole identity. Well, switched at birth is maybe right, because it's as if Salieri's whole identity is about actually being this secret, divine, anointed, special boy, right. Who likes himself because everybody likes him. He's following what he thinks is this divinely appointed mission. And then maybe the entrance of Mozart. I like this idea that he's almost kind of like a father figure, but maybe it's also this. He was really the one who was. You know, Salieri maybe really was his father's son all along. And it was like Mozart again, the sibling thing. Like, you know, oh, suddenly you have this. You find out God had a second family or something like that. And those kids all, you know, like, we're these super high achievers. And you previously at the very. Thinking of yourself as being at the very end of the bell curve, you know, suddenly look to your left and discover that there's a whole lot more empty space. And then that other kid from that other family way into it. 9:32 Wes: The people who this has happened to kind of. But, yeah. 9:35 Erin: Oh, gosh. 9:36 Wes: Well, not finding out they have a second family, but when the parent moves on and has another family with a different, you know, with a stepmother, and then that new family is all shiny and pretty and highly accomplished, and the one that the father left is. Is not. 9:53 Erin: Of course. Of course. Right, well. And that. That would stand to reason, especially if the first family was a. Was sort of the means by which the father established himself. Right, right. Yeah. And then. Then he gets to sort of start over with a fresher. A person he feels he deserved. I just rewatched First Wives Club, so the. 10:12 Wes: I don't think I've seen it. 10:13 Erin: Oh, my gosh. And it's like, it's good. It's one of those movies that I just. I discovered that my best friend had never seen it. And I was like, how do you even know anything about me if you've never seen this movie? It's so, so important to me. 10:27 Wes: This is from 1996. Okay. 10:29 Erin: Yeah. If you look at the cast list, you understand Keaton. 10:33 Wes: Yeah. Now I. Yeah, I'm looking at. Yeah, it makes sense. 10:37 Erin: It's kind of like the ultimate boomer movie. But I Love it so much. It has nothing to do with anything. I'm so sorry. Maybe just to switch gears a little bit. There's also a lot, I think, being said here about criticism. I mean, really, Salieri's gift is this gift of appreciation. It is like a divine appreciation that nobody else has because they're too stupid to get it. Like, Salieri is just smart enough. I mean, this is the torture, right? He's just smart enough to really get the divinity of Mozart's talent but not smart enough to produce it himself. And that's kind of the. It's kind of the critical sweet spot. You know, if Salieri wanted to become a critic, a music critic I don't know if they had those in Vienna or. 11:20 Wes: He could have been a producer, you 11:21 Erin: know, or a producer. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. 11:24 Wes: I'm gonna make you a star. That would have been the positive way to deal with the situation. 11:31 Erin: Right, right. And that, too, I think, you know, the idea of criticism, I mean, this is a thorny one too, but there's a parental kind of relationship which criticism or the role of the critic maybe reveals. Or there's a sort of similar mechanism, the role that he ends up playing with the Requiem to kind of bring out what he's not, really bringing out the best in Mozart. Mozart doesn't really need him to produce the Requiem. He doesn't. Certainly doesn't need him to produce anything of greatness. But that semi collaboration that happens at the end is a really interesting moment. But there's. There's something where the first thing I thought of, and I thought the first thing that you would. You would think of in that scene is there's something vampiric, of course, about Salieri. He really is kind of a vampire figure. And I'm sure our listeners were expecting us to say this seeing as we've talked about that vampiric mechanism of envy in other episodes. But he does seem to be sucking the life out of Mozart. And so the film doesn't seem to be very appreciative, shall we say, of the role of criticism, on the one hand. But on the other, there does seem to be this sort of lost or forgotten trajectory or abandoned, maybe, trajectory that Salieri might have had of being the person who, of course, it would just be within the court of being the champion of Mozart. The one who. And this is an important critical function, not just to criticize. Right. But to bring greatness to other people's attention. And to say, this is worth holding up, this is important. 13:07 Wes: It's an interesting Paradox. In the end. Because he wants him to produce the Requiem so he can pass it off as his own. And so he needs to keep Mozart alive long enough to do that. But he's also somehow aware that he's using this to kill Mozart. Right. Which. It's an odd way to go about killing someone. 13:29 Erin: It is, Right. 13:30 Wes: Giving them. I'm gonna psychologically torture you to death. How about that? By pretending to be your dead father and asking for this commission. Right. He's not doing anything else I. I don't know about. Right. He's not poisoning. 13:45 Erin: No. And this is. Yeah, this gets back to my opening question. Like, what is he doing here? Is he killing him? Is what is really happening? 13:54 Wes: Oh, was that your. Was that what you meant by that? 13:57 Erin: A little bit. But also other things. Sorry, it's a complicated question and there are a lot of different elements to it, but I think. 14:04 Wes: Yeah, I mean, that's a very good point. He thinks he's killed him at the end of the film. But was that ever. Does he state. We don't. In the flashbacks, we don't really see him state that intention, do we? He wants to ruin him, but we don't. Yeah. Right. We don't ever see. Or do we. Do we say that he's right. We see the old Salieri say he wanted to kill him. But do we ever see the young Salieri say that? That's the question. 14:31 Erin: I don't think so. 14:33 Wes: Yeah. I don't remember him saying that. He wants to ruin him. He wants to get an opera passed off as his own. 14:39 Erin: The Mass passed off as his own. Yeah. And then he'll have this great joke. He does say. There is the implication somehow that Mozart will be dead and so he won't be found out. 14:50 Wes: Okay. 14:50 Erin: So that is part of it. I'm trying to find the exact moment. 14:55 Wes: So much of this is in the narrative. And the voiceover of old Salieri that does create the opportunity to wonder what's actually going on. Anyway, obviously he has ill intent and he cares about ruining Mozart. Or he doesn't. He certainly doesn't care about preserving Mozart's life except to the extent that it'll help him. 15:15 Erin: Yeah, here's the. Here's the Finish the opera. 15:18 Wes: But yeah. 15:18 Erin: The old Salieri voiceover. My plan was so simple that it terrified me. First I must get the death mass and then I must achieve his death. Achieve his death is actually a really great verb. His funeral. Imagine it. The cathedral, all Vienna sitting there. His coffin. Mozart's little coffin in the Middle. And then in that silence, music. A divine music bursts out over them all. A great Mass of death. Requiem Mass for Wolfgang Mozart. Composed by his devoted friend, Antonio Salieri. And this is where he almost does that. Hannibal Lecter, Salieri, like, you know, like he's sucking the life out of him. What sublimity. What depth. What passion in the music. Salieri has been touched. Touched by God at last. And God forced to listen. Powerless to stop it. I, for once, in the end, laughing at him. The only thing that worried me was the actual killing. How does one do that? How does one kill a man? It's one thing to dream about it. Very different when you. When you have to do it with your own hands. And so that sort of left open. I mean, this is total insanity. This is really why we, I guess, see him in the insane asylum because he otherwise seems sane. But the idea that he's pulling one over on God, like, you know, it's really funny. 16:34 Wes: But it does make it seem like killing would be a separate step. And then maybe he'd never had to do that just because Mozart did the job of dying beforehand. 16:46 Erin: Yeah, maybe. Something about embodying the father. Right. And hounding him. 16:50 Wes: Yeah, that's the impression I got, that the. That was. But it's an odd way to try to kill someone. I mean, so that does this. If we wanted evidence of a unreliable narrator in that sense, then that would be it. 17:04 Erin: Right. 17:04 Wes: He's recasting this whole project as. You know, it's not just, I'm gonna get the Requiem for myself but it's coming. And not just that I'm gonna ruin Mozart or interfere with his fortunes, but that I'm gonna. That I killed him as well. 17:21 Erin: Well. And in the end, he's the one who feels killed, in fact, because old Salieri tells the priest, he says, you're a merciful God. He destroyed his own beloved rather than let a mediocrity share in the smallest part of his glory. He killed Mozart. And kept me alive to torture. 32 years of torture of slowly watching myself become extinct. My music growing fainter. All the time fainter till no one plays it at all. So it's as if Mozart actually has sucked the life out of him. You know, there's a sort of reverse vampirism going on in that. Mozart getting the last laugh. But then Mozart outliving him and Salieri becoming sort of undead. 17:59 Wes: He does have that quality. 18:01 Erin: Yeah. Yeah. 18:02 Wes: Well, we are talking about the vampiric quality. 18:05 Erin: Yeah, definitely. 18:06 Wes: In a way. 18:07 Erin: Yeah. 18:07 Wes: I see the Film, in a way, is about mediocrity. And that's. You know, it's a great scene at the end where he's. He's being wheeled out and mediocrities. I absolve you. As if he's the. As if he's the priest now. Priest of the high priest of mediocrity. The torture of being mediocre. Maybe almost being a genius, but not quite having it. How do you live with that? 18:34 Erin: That's the most compelling line in the film for me. Why did God give me the longing if he wasn't going to fulfill it? Salieri has some really twisted ideas about his relationship with God in which he's been almost, if you like, set up by God in a way. I mean, part of it is his own structure of thinking, but he's also been set up to believe that his relationship with God is one of wish fulfillment. But granted, he has a lot of really parsimonious, really false, really twisted ideas of who God is and what our relationship should be to the divine and magical thinking and narcissism and all this other stuff. But that. That's the one really unanswerable question I think, that. That he asks in the film is why do I have the longing? And with that, I think, implicated in that is the just enough talent to know where you aren't. And that, I think, is a really torturous thing about being human. I think we all understand this on. On a certain level. Like on. On a level that maybe isn't still close to Salieri's. 19:48 Wes: But we didn't write 40. 40 operas. 19:51 Erin: Right, right, right. Or really understand and study and give up so much. 19:58 Wes: Right, but that's the. In a way, that's the answer to the why be given this longing if he's not going to be able to fulfill it? And the answer, in a way, is that he wants it too much. And Mozart is sort of the poster boy for not wanting it too much. And the longing goes into the art object and into what he creates, rather than stifling the act of creation itself. 20:21 Erin: Well, yes, and as I've already suggested, I think there's very little in Salieri's when he's not talking about Mozart and the beauty of Mozart's music. There's very little in Salieri's speeches talking about his own relationship to music that isn't actually just about status and wanting to be. Wanting to be the greatest. Wanting to get all the gold stars and be the smartest boy in school. And he's at the top of the heap and everybody likes him and all his teachers love him. And then of course, this exchange student comes in who's doing high level calculus in his head in the third grade and just ruining his life. Right. So in a way, it's. He deserves it, but that, you know, I wanted to just talk about that a bit and that relationship to the other members of the court and the fact that Salieri, when he's asked whether the opera that they're commissioning, for instance, should be in German or Italian, Salieri won't offer an opinion. He doesn't. When solicited for these types of musical opinions, he offers a political answer designed to keep him in with everybody else. So he's really good at being an operator. He's really good at keeping his post and being in this really cozy and obviously extremely wealthy position. He wants everybody to love him and to think that he's great and that he's this beloved son of God. And he has this obviously tremendous admiration for Mozart, but for him, the relationship with music seems really tied up in politics. And then we see Mozart's own relationship to politics on scales both big and small, and how inept he really is at controlling himself to get along in order to make any money. Like he has no understanding of how to deal with people. And he's also not interested in the political in his work, which is a point made when they talk about the Marriage of Figaro being banned, which is kind of an interesting scene we could go to. 22:11 Wes: Sure. 22:12 Erin: The emperor confronts him about how the Marriage of Figaro shouldn't be staged. It stirs up hatred between the classes, I think the emperor says. And Mozart says, well, I hate politics. You know, this isn't about politics. And then he goes into just the structure of this one musical piece that he really loves and where he keeps adding more and more people into the harmony and ultimately says that he sustains this for 20 minutes of continuous music. And he says, in a play, if more than one person speaks at once, it's just noise. But with opera, with music, you can have 20 individuals all talking at the same time. And it's not noise, it's perfect harmony. 22:52 Wes: Yeah. 22:53 Erin: So I love this idea. Like the idea that music is about harmony, not political strife, not about separating people. But of course, Joseph is talking about his sister Antoinette and how things are going really badly for her. So there's also something to be said for not inciting any more political strife than what he wants to deal with. 23:14 Wes: Get my sister killed. 23:15 Erin: Right, right. Salieri is Writing operas with the themes that the academy approves in air quotes. Academy approves, you know, these mythological subjects which are extra historical, which don't really get into the weeds. And Mozart is about the personal and the ignoring kind of the political in a way, or being oblivious to it. 23:38 Wes: Yeah. Joseph pivots from the whole politics objection to the idea that this is rubbish or vulgar. 23:47 Erin: Right. 23:47 Wes: He says, Mozart, music is not the issue here. This is in response to the whole 20 individuals in harmony. Music is not the issue here. No one doubts your talent. It's your literary judgment that's in question. Even with the politics taken out, it would still remain a vulgar farce. Why waste your spirit on so much rubbish? Surely you can choose more elevated themes. Right. And this is sort of in line with Salieri's idea that Mozart himself ought to be more elevated as a character since his music is. Right. So the content of Mozart's character and also the content of, you know, the libretto or the play it's based on should reflect the beauty of the music. Mozart says elevated. What does that mean, elevated? I am fed up to the teeth with these elevated things. Old dead legends. Why must we go on forever writing of gods and legends? And Salieri says, because they do. They go on forever. 24:44 Erin: That's van Swieten. 24:45 Wes: That's not Salieri. 24:46 Erin: Yeah, that's right. And Joseph. Yeah, and Joseph also isn't the one who says this. This thing about the vulgar farce. That's van Swieten, too. 24:55 Wes: Okay. Yeah, yeah, that's an error. I created a transcript using AI and I had to get speaker attributions. I had to get it to guess them. And for the most part, it did a good job. But. Yeah, it did. 25:08 Erin: Really. 25:08 Wes: All right. 25:09 Erin: Yeah. 25:09 Wes: So. Yeah. So they represent the eternal in us. Opera is here to ennoble us, Mozart, you and me, just the same as His Majesty. Rejection of the elevated theme in favor of, you know, what's going on in the Marriage of Figaro, which is something more, I guess you put it, it's more personal. 25:25 Erin: Yes, I suppose, because Don Giovanni, the reading of Don Giovanni. Yeah. 25:30 Wes: Oh, is this Don Giovanni? 25:31 Erin: Sorry, no, no, this is Marriage of Figaro. But I just mean in general, in Mozart's work, it seems that he wants or he includes or values a personal connection in the material. You can argue here. Well, he's sort of about farce and he's a farcical character, so perhaps that's the personal element that he connects with. But I'm. The Salieri interpretation of Don Giovanni as being a Very personal statement about his father that. That must be characterizing all of Mozart's work. And there must be something in this that's really speaking to him that he really loves, which he kind of indicates in his description of the scene that he read. So maybe not personal, but just. He likes it. He thinks this is something he can work with. 26:15 Wes: There's more, maybe, about human relationships. Right. It's a very. The way it's portrayed by Salieri. The relationship between the husband and the wife, for instance. Or Mozart himself gives us an account of the way it begins with the measuring for what, the bridal bed. 26:33 Erin: Yes. 26:33 Wes: Yeah. It's more involved in direct human concerns. It's more down to earth than just mythology that turns out to be actually a very good vehicle for the sublime. Right. For longing, unfulfilled longing. And the things that Salieri appreciates. You don't need the elevated themes to get the elevation, let's say. The content doesn't have to reflect that. 26:57 Erin: Yeah. And that seems to me a really good and important element of how the film understands art overall. And just Mozart as an artist. I think it's really smart about what really excites artists and how maybe how Salieri is lacking in ways which he doesn't even appreciate. He's very much coloring within the lines throughout his career. And this doesn't seem to be even a question for him of what he really connects with, what he really wants to be writing about. You know, that doesn't seem to cross his mind at all. Is there something big that we're missing here? I guess we haven't really talked about Stanzi much. 27:35 Wes: Good old Stanzi. 27:37 Erin: She's. She's kind of. Kind of great. Poor woman had to deal with a lot. Oh, I know. The too many notes idea, too. We should really get to. I wanted to talk about that, actually, in relationship to this whole criticism thing. Right. You know, this idea. You could only hear so much at once. 27:57 Wes: Yeah. So it's Orsini Rosenberg who brings this up earlier. Right. So calls his piece tiresome. And let's see. A young man trying to impress beyond his abilities. Too much spice, too many notes. The way Salieri characterizes us later on. This is the premiere of the Abduction, he says, showing off like the greedy songbird that she was, he's talking about is the woman he's into. Ten minutes of ghastly scales. Arpeggios, whizzing up and down like fireworks at a fairground. And then he's worried about the fact that Mozart slept with Her. And then when we get Joseph's reaction, it's good. Of course, now and then. Just now and then it seemed to touch. And then Orsini Rosenberg eventually fills it in, you know, with the whole. Too many notes. Very well put. Too many notes, Mozart. I don't understand. There are just as many notes as I required, neither more nor less. Joseph, my dear fellow, there are in fact only so many notes the ear can hear in an evening. And then he asks Salieri if he's right and then Salieri agrees. So this is one of those times when Salieri is, in fact, not honest. And Mozart said, this is absurd. Later on, Salieri. Yeah. As you pointed out, casts that in terms of the fact that Joseph is easily bored. He doesn't. What is it? The royal attention. 29:23 Erin: Too many demands on the royal ear. 29:26 Wes: Royal ear, yeah. Yeah. So Salieri understands that. Yeah. This is really a matter of their inability to appreciate. Not anything that Mozart's doing wrong. 29:39 Erin: Yeah, the too many notes idea. I suppose it's suggestive of restraint or keeping things simple. You know, Joseph is accused by Salieri of needing. Or maybe the people of Vienna, or the court, rather, of Vienna of needing to have that bang at the end of the song. So everyone knows when to clap. Or maybe that's his friend from the lower. The theater who makes that observation. I can't quite remember now. But, you know, at first we think that this is about them just being stupid, like musically stupid or Mozart being beyond all of them. But then we discover that, in fact, the common people are really into Mozart and there's a sort of, like, class distinction being made, which is odd. So the court of Vienna is more like the. A parallel would be something like the French Academy and then, say, the Impressionists rebelling against that and portraying the common people and being interested in more lowly subjects. You know, ordinary people as subjects rather than classical myth and great heroes of history and things like that. And so something about Mozart's subject and his interest in the common people seems also to be borne out by his appreciation by the common people that we see later in the film. Though I'm not sure I buy that. I mean, he did die poor. But anyway, you know, as we close 31:05 Wes: out here, a little history. What? Yeah. Why did he die poor? Too many notes. 31:13 Erin: I'm not 100% sure. I haven't refreshed my memory on that. I mean, he wasn't. He did feel that Salieri was pushing him out of certain things. That there was a cabal at court of people who were pushing him out of appointments. He was passed over to be the music teacher of that woman. I forget who it was. Joseph's niece. Maybe he was passed over to be her teacher. I don't think there was really a guy with a lot of dogs that he had to resort to, but certainly he was passed over for things as a result of jealousy. I don't know how much of that. I mean, Mozart was in the letters, a really intelligent and sensitive guy. So I doubt that he had the sort of social problems that Mozart seems to have in the film of not being able to get along with people at all and being kind of a jerk. So I'm not quite sure. Well, Wes, it's time to leave genius behind and go back to mediocrity. Is that. Is that what we're all doing? This is one of my favorite movies. I love this movie so much. So I hope you enjoyed it and weren't put off by the length. I know you were. I made you watch the Director's cut. 32:21 Wes: No, I actually. No, no, I enjoyed it. 32:25 Erin: Oh, great. Great. Yeah. The stagings of the opera scenes are also just incredible. I love the Queen of the Night. 32:32 Wes: Yeah, it's really funny. 32:33 Erin: Twyla Tharp staged it, so. All right, thank you. 32:37 Wes: Thank you.