The B.E.E. Podcast - 9/13/19 - Matthew Specktor - SILVER

Popeye is awesome.

mortal trash

Ah, '79 the year I was born. I actually haven't gone back to watch many of the movies that came out that year except for Alien and Breaking Away (which I really liked). I saw Apocalypse Now many years ago, but haven't had a desire to watch it again. I did watch American Gigolo for the first time about 4 years ago after hearing about it my whole life. And another classic comes to mind from 1980 that was a regular video rental back in the day for us. The Kurt Russell comedy Used Cars. A favorite in our household and I'm sure a treasured classic as well among this podcast group :-)

Phoenix

There's only 1 Godfather book (covers the stuff in 1 and 2) and it's fantastic. Last Don doesn't hold a candle to it

David Schur

NO

David Schur

Was the remake of “Things To Come” as overtly pro-fascist as the original?

Lunchbox

I’ve always wanted a “redux” of the rules of attraction with the pre-title flash-forward sequence moved to the end. (It wouldn’t be possible to pull off with a fan edit, and i think it’d be a delicate balancing act and would be even more different than the book) but it would be so much more subversive to not know where it’s going... it would work like Carrie (if you hadnt seen the poster) and it would start as much more of a “shes all that” with the happy title music but then the slow devolution of the characters and deconstruction of the genre would be so shockingly subversive without that trigger warning. Any thoughts?

Lunchbox

I was a senior in high school during the fall of 1999, and I thought it was a knockout year for movies! I don't know what Maslin was thinking? Plenty of people that year thought it was a great movie year at the time, and to this day feel that was probably cinema's last cultural peak.

Billy Schafer

Is this Tarantino? 😮

Chase

I believed he said he had a crush on Matt. No?

Jorge Espinha

On the subject of bad novels vs good movies. I haven't read the godfather books but I read "the last don" by Mario Puzo, probably the worst book I ever read.

Jorge Espinha

Yes on Bret’s recommendation and I found it really quite bland and uninteresting with characters and situations you really struggle to care about. Very surprised Bret likes it so much.

Mark Cleary

Agreed!

Andrew Lapointe

Ralph (Johnny Firecloud) Meeker!

Andrew Lapointe

QT and Bret — stop the foreplay and do another epic interview! ❤️

James Reeves

Ralph (St.Valentines Day Massacre) Meeker!

Q.T.

Ralph (Kiss Me Deadly) Meeker!

Darcy O'Connor

Speaking of 1979, that was when Peter Bogdanovich's "Saint Jack" was released. That's one of my favourite films and the novel it's based on is pretty great too.

Andrew Lapointe

Didn't the actor who played the alien in "Without Warning" also play the alien in "Predator?"

Andrew Lapointe

I watched a revival screening of Rosemary's Baby recently at the theatre where I work. The film holds up beautifully, but it is hard to watch these classics with a "too hip for old movies" audience. One guy remarked at the end that was movie was like "cinematic blue balls" and he complained that you didn't get to see the baby. Pfft! People always have a tendency to laugh at old movies, like they're too hip for the room-- It's irritating.

Andrew Lapointe

Disco Godfather is the weakest of the two main RRM movies, (not counting Petty Wheatstraw) , but to see it in a neighborhood theatre during its original release and not with a bunch of snide white folks at a hip revival house made the difference . Jennifer Lawrence would be great in a Lady in Red remake, but use the exact same John Sayles script.

Q.T.

No Shape of things to come was a crappy remake of the thirties sifi classic during the time they were doing every known sifi property. But do yourself a favor and watch Lady In Red, great John Sayles script, great direction by Lewis Teague ( he was the New World guy I was rooting for during the Joe Dante/Allen Arkush years. He did do Cujo, but his big studio property was the awful Romancing the stone sequel Jewel of the Neil) , and Pamela Sue Martins performance is one of the great exploitation performances of the seventies, if not of all times. Without Warning predates the story of Predator by ten years and it has one of my favorite actors Ralph (Paths of Glory ) Meeker in it.

Q.T.

Bret, you've always got terrific guests on and I appreciate the conversational deep dives. Any chance you can get Donna Tartt on the podcast, not just to chat about the college years but also Hollywood, and her approach to her fiction etc.?

Martin Aguilera

1979 was a terrific year for American movies. Out of that long list above, there's lots that I haven't seen but THE LADY IN RED is an unsung gem. Really gritty and tough little movie, maybe the best of New World Pictures' gangster films.

Andrew Lapointe

I actually watched DISCO GODFATHER on Blu-ray last night. It has some funny moments, and he's terrific as always, but it's the weakest of Rudy Ray Moore's films.

Andrew Lapointe

I saw Bear Island--don't remember a thing about it. I saw The Lady In Red--don't remember anything about it. I saw California Dreaming--but don't remember anything about it. Rock'n'Roll High School I saw later at a revival theater. I saw Penitentiary in 1980, and Zombie in 1980 as well. Silent Scream was 1980 for me, too. Was The Shape of Things To Come retitled Without Warning? I saw that in 1980.

The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast

In 1979 (I was 17) not only did I see all those movies, I saw so many exploration movies at the theaters. Here’s some, no studio released films, no Fastbreak, no The Fish That Saved Pittsburg , no Skatetown USA, only independent distributors . And no exploitation films I didn’t see theatrically that year. Just a list, no preference . THE IRON DRAGON STRIKES BACK (Bruce Li) RAVAGERS (Post-apocalyptic w/ Richard Harris) BEAR ISLAND (Donald Shuterland) VAN NUYS BLVD (Crown-International ) JAGUAR LIVES (martial arts) MALIBU HIGH (Crown-International great one off performance by Jill Lansing) PENITENTIARY (blaxploitation prison film) THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME (sifi w/ Jack Palance) THE LADY IN RED (great! One of the great scripts by John Sayles) DISCO GODFATHER (Rudy Ray Moore. The box office girl warned me it was terrible and if I wanted my money back no problem. I did not get my money back, it was hysterical) ROLLER BOOGIE (saw twice) A FORCE OF ONE (chuck norris ) CITY ON FIRE (not the Ringo Lam, but a Canadian disaster movie w/ Barry ( Vanishing Point) Newman H.O.T.S. (Cheerleaders ) DAWN OF THE DEAD PHANTASM (I thought it was awful then. And never looked back as fondly of it as my eighties friends did) MAD MAX (w/ a dubbed Mel Gibson) CALIFORNIA DREAMING (w/ Dennis Christopher the same year as Breaking Away) ROCK N’ ROLL HIGH SCHOOL (which I saw at a sneak preview with The Kids are Alright) LOVE AT FIRST BITE (which I thought was okay, but the audience loved!) THE BROOD (the Samantha Egger tumor sack birthing scene was one of the most shocking images I’d ever seen of my young years) ZOMBIE ZULU DAWN (which I loved and still loved, and think is way way better then the highly thought of first film ZULU. On a double feature with .... THE SILENT SCREAM (which was okay, but it did have Mario Bava’s leading lady Barbara Steel)

Q.T.

Nice interview! It’s always good when Bret gets another writer on the show. Have you looked into booking Emma Cline?

Graig Gilkeson

Yeah there's also a Charlie Rose interview with Janet Maslin when she's leaving the New York Times in 1999. She says in 1999 that film just isn't what it used to be. Now you look back at that year and you're just blown away by all the great stuff.

Alex Waller

I love comics and don't like the MCU all that much, but I do pretty much agree with your statement. The culture celebrates The Goonies every bit as much as Apocalypse Now, which I think at the end of the day is a good thing. MCU and stuff like it is having its moment in time for both good and bad, but like everything else it won't be on top forever, and when franchises no longer can pull in the crowd they'll be plenty of cool directors waiting for their moment to shine, and cool stuff that got ignored in the last few years will be probably be celebrated by the masses in the next forty. To Bret's credit it seems like he actually wants to debate these topics with his guests, but they always trip all over themselves to agree with him, at least when it comes to the state of film.

Alex Waller

Coincidentally, I just recently watched Sneak Previews with Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel, where they picked their best of 1979 and they both agreed that it wasn’t a good year for great movies. It’s funny how distance and memory can really reshape the films of our past. Anyway, here is that episode for anyone curious: https://youtu.be/yyfuTQVhs0o

Jason

I realize this will be unpopular, but here it goes. In 40years, we're likely to be celebrating Kevin Feige's Avengers opus. Personally, I like those movies. Not all of the MCU offerings. Certainly not as they're shouldering this unconvincing air of social justice in more and more of its material. However, there is something exciting about what was executed in the last decade of films, certainly as a kid growing up with these characters and comics. I doubt Feige is going to have the same batting average going forward as the feeling of "been there, done that" swells for one part of the audience while the other bickers about the relevance of making Magneto and Professor X either black, hispanic, female, gay or trans. (It seems unthinkable that one or both will be left Caucasian.) Yet for this block of however many films, with actors from a period of Hollywood where films reigned supreme with top shelf actors like Robert Downey and Scarlett Johansson, there is a sense for many film geeks like me of something accomplished. Whether that's really so or not, I suspect that's the narrative going forward into the history books. I suppose the question is really more like will be watching Marvel movies the way we watch Godfather 2 or Chinatown today? Now that does seem unlikely, if not laughable, I admit. On the other hand, wasn't it also laughable to suggest that of Star Wars and Blade Runner? Jaws and Alien? Weren't those just audience movies and cash cows? Snobbery ages as poorly as the opposite. Who knows what comes next? The Killing probably didn't anticipate what Kubrick became. Maybe the same will be said in retrospect for the Russo's or the guy who wrote Dredd and directed Ex Machina, Alex Garland. At this point, I'd settle to know that people still care about movies in 40 years.

bpvalentine

Sadly, Jill Clayburgh passed away in 2010.

Andrew Lapointe

So funny you mentioned Jill Clayburgh. I just watched An Unmarried Women. Loved it. The 70’s were the best.

Mary Walker

JD

Altman's Quintet has actually aged well you should try it again

JD

I would love to hear a conversation between BEE and Laura Kipnis. Also, did BEE watch Olivier Assayas' Non-Fiction? It's available on "Apple".

John Doe

is there a movie we'll still be celebrating in forty years? -- my money's on Midsommar!

Chris Wright

Matthew's book sounds really interesting. Has anyone read it?

Andrew Lapointe

What was 1980? Little Darlings was 1980. Maybe, you had to have been a girl and slightly younger than these guys. No crushing on Matt Dillon, Bret?

BUtterfield8