Full Cast And Crew

It's my annual Oscar Recap. And Killers of the Flower Moon wuz robbed!

All of Leonardo DiCaprio's scenes as Rick Dalton in Quentin Tarantino's movie-making love-letter 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood'

If you're new to the podcast, there's an episode just for you.

Previous All Their Scenes episodes:

Phillip Seymour Hoffman in 'Charlie Wilson's War'

Michael Keaton in 'Jackie Brown' and 'Out of Sight' as Special Agent Ray Nicolette.

Paul Newman in 'The Verdict'

Sean Penn as Jeff Spicoli in 'Fast Times at Ridgemont High'

Warren Zevon on David Letterman

Alan J. Pakula deserves more attention and respect as one of the grestest American film directors of any era.  His run of films in the 70's, from 'Klute' to 'The Parallax View' to 'All The President's Men'...all brilliantly shot by Cinematographer Gordon Willis (The Godfather films)...are as impressive and of their moment as any films made in this thrilling period of American filmmaking.

In this episode, I dive into Pakula's understated persona and genius for working with actors, the period details and psychological explorations that result in a layered, non-showy film that rewards repeat viewings.

Carol Reed and Graham Greene's iconic post-war neo noir classic 'The Third Man'. A perfect movie. Steven Soderbergh calls it the only movie you need to watch in order to learn how to make a movie. In this episode I cover the making of, the battles between David O. Selznick, Alexander Korda, Reed and Orson Welles, the happenstance score to end all film scores and MORE.

Director Toby Amies and I discuss his excellent and unexpected documentary 'In the Court of the Crimson King: King Crimson at 50'.

Ridley Scott's brilliant 1979 sci-fi/horror classic 'Alien' burnished his deserved reputation as bold re-interpreter of techno-dystopian futurism and exploder of genres.

But it made a lot of money and dollar signs in the eyes of 'Alien' producers Brandywine Productions led them to turn for a sequel to James Cameron, who had already done a similar turn on the Rambo franchise, penning a "rewritten" script for the sequel 'Rambo: First Blood Part II' that paved the way for the ridiculously over-the-top guns 'n poses Rambo films that followed.

Discarding with the quality actors and brilliantly lived-in future of the Nostromo and the original 'Alien', 'Aliens' is a box-office-pleasing symbiotic mutual masturbation effort where both audience and filmmaker are complicit in a liason that leaves both dirty and discredited.  It should be noted that I am fairly alone in this opinion, and  many 80's blockbuster-loving film fans revere 'Aliens' as even a superior 'Alien' film to the original!

One such fan is my frequent guest Bruce Edwards. Previously we've digested our love for 'Bladerunner' and 'Alien' on episodes of the podcast.  Here we get into 'Aliens' from our differing perspectives and find more common ground in a discussion about David Fincher's very first feature film, 'Alien 3', which he directed at the ripe old age of 27 and which was and is a legandary troubled production resulting in several competing alien babies; various cuts of the film exist and Fincher himself disavows the film. 

Billy Friedkin's iconic 1971 game-changing NYC police procedural/car chase classic 'The French Connection' has a fascinating backstory and making-of history, and, hey: that's what I'm here for! To bring you all the best stories behind the scenes on the streets of New York and all the context and color that helps place this movie in the pantheon of the films that came before and after it.

The NY Times article about this summer's censorship of the film is linked here.

Mark Kermode's very well made BBC documentary about the making of The French Connection can be seen on YouTube.

Owen Roizman, the film's brilliant and prolific cinematographer's IMDB page is here.

Do yourself a favor and watch the films of the brilliant French director Jean-Pierre Melville.

Listen to David Shire's iconic score for The Taking of Pelham 123 on YouTube.

Don Ellis' haunting end credits music from The French Connection.

Peter Yates was quietly one of the most interesting film directors of his time. His seminal 1967 British train-robbery film 'Robbery' got him noticed for the job directing Steve McQueen in 1968's 'Bullitt'.  In that film, Yates turned in a car chase frequently mentioned as second only to the iconic one filmed by Billy Friedkin in 'The French Connection'.

By 1973,  Yates was in Hollywood, working under a three-picture deal with Peter Bart and Robert Evans at Paramount.  Two of those didn't work out. The third turned out to be 'The Friends of Eddie Coyle', which is one of the very best 70's crime films, one of the very best Boston-set films ever made, and features Robert Mitchum's very best performance amid a wonderfully constructed neo-noir shot entirely on location in a series of blue-collar and working class Boston spots.

In this episode, I talk about 'Robbery', 'Bullitt' and 'The French Connection' and how they compare and contrast to 'The Friends of Eddie Coyle', an underappreciated little masterpiece of the sort Peter Yates specialized in throughout his career.

Martin Scorcese's new film 'Killers of the Flower Moon' is in many ways his magnum opus; it's a film carefully wrought with all of his and his production team's highest possible creative efforts, and it also marshals all those resources in the furtherance of a greater collective understanding and reckoning with yet another dark chapter in America's history.

Links

Marty's interview with Edgar Wright.

'The FBI Story' 1959 Film version of the Osage Murders.

The many Osage artisans behind the scenes of the film.

Vogue magazine article about the Osage constumers.

The legal issues surrounding the return of Osage head rights and lands.

Article about Robbie Robertson's score for the film.

Music from the film:

 THE PIPE: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3Oz4to8y_Y

OIL: 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fR-lyorY25Y

They Don't Live Long: 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAImXzdgZ2g

Tulsa Massacre:  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=px1mvSgKh-0

Heartbeat Theme:  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X83uF0IPobs&list=PLLv3qeuV3YDpYbdqu3rKy-KbpA3HxcPtN&index=4

Production Designer Jack Fisk.

Article about the Production Design of the film from De Zeen.

A particular interest of mine is phone calls in movies. I'm interested in them as plot devices, as examples of good or indifferent screenwriting, as opportunities for actors to show different sides of themselves in scenes where they're not opposite other actors, and on and on.

In this episode we'll take a look at a few different genres of Movie Phone Call scenes: scenes where actors are onscreen portraying both sides of the calls, scenes where we only hear the audio of the other side of the call, and then, finally...the Holy Grail of Movie Phone Calls: The One-Sided Phone Call.

Clips

The YouTube channel BurgerTime's excellent Supercut of Movie Phone calls.

Bob Newhart is the master of the One-Sided Phone Call.

The entire Bob Newhart one-sided call between Abe Lincoln and his Press Agent.

Some truly one-sided phone call scenes:

An appreciation of Phillip Seymour Hoffman and his brilliant portrayal of real-life CIA Most Interesting Man Gust Avrokotos in Mike Nichols' final film 'Charlie Wilson's War'. 

'Lost In America' was Albert Brooks' 3rd film as a writer/director/star and remains probably the most broadly-appealing of his films.  It's one of two of his films to have been given the Criterion stamp of cineaste approval, the other being the often-underrated 'Defending Your Life', and now,  and perhaps even more important, it's the first of his films to be given the Full Cast and Crew treatment.

Links:

Albert Brooks:  Famous School For Comedians 

Hilarious clips from Lost In America

Criterion essay by Scott Tobias on Lost In America

'Across 110th Street' is a 1972 Harlem crime film that contains many of the tropes of the exploitation films of the era...but it also contains incredible performances from black actors whose skills rise far above the material at hand, people like Paul Benjamin, Yaphet Kotto, Richard Ward, and Marlene Warfield.  And Bobby Womack's title song was used to great effect in 'Jackie Brown', as discussed in my last two episodes.

In this week's episode I use the verses and choruses to explore Bobby Womack's amazing, tragic, and incredible life story, his relationship with Sam Cooke, his struggles and his surprisingly central role in the American popular musical landscape for almost 60 years.

Elmore Leonard's cocky, energetic ATF Agent Ray Nicolet is a key protagonist in his book 'Rum Punch'.  For Quentin Tarantino's film adaptation of 'Rum Punch', 'Jackie Brown', the character, now named "Ray Nicolette" was embodied by the brilliant Michael Keaton with a perfectly cocky, energetic physicality.

While cinematic universes are commonplace nowadays, in 1997 it was a surprise to see the character appear, uncredited, in Steven Soderbergh's adaptation of Leonard's novel of the same name, and even more rewarding to get a couple of additional character dynamics revealed by Keaton's similarly smart and self-aware performance.

In this episode, much as I did in Episode 157 with Paul Newman's scenes from 'The Verdict' and in Episode 152 with Sean Penn's Jeff Spicoli scenes from 'Fast Times'...I go through all of Keaton's scenes from 'Jackie Brown' and 'Out of Sight' and offer up full appreciation.

Also: a quick look back at Keaton's first real starring performance in 'Night Shift' with Henry Winkler and Shelly Long.

Quentin Tarantino surprised fans with the release of his third film, 'Jackie Brown' coming as it did on the heels of the global phenomenon that was 'Pulp Fiction' in all its unprecedented Tarantino-ness. 

Devoid of gory violence, 'Jackie Brown' is a thoughtful, hilarious, insightful and moving crime story that manages to be incredibly faithful to the ethos of the Elmore Leonard novel 'Rum Punch' (on which the film is based) while also mining Tarantino's own deeply personal connection to the blaxploitation films that made Pam Grier a genre star in the 70's and to the more working-class parts of Los Angeles, towns featured in the film like Carson and Hawthorne, CA and iconic now-gone locations like the Cockatoo Inn.

"I treat movie stars like actors and actors like movie stars" said Tarantino, and that approach is well-represented here, with Michael Keaton and Robert DeNiro turning in perfectly-pitch supporting turns and industry vets like Forster and Grier getting plenty of runway to inhabit roles they weren't usually given during their heyday.

This episode covers those locations,  the incredible soul and r&b tracks that populate the soundtrack, and the brilliant acting from everyone in the cast, as well as the sure-handed filmmaking from Tarantino's growing collection of go-to crew and production staffers.

One of my very favorite films, it's a pleasure to share my 'Jackie Brown' episode with you all!

Billy Friedkin, maybe the weirdest (in a good way) major American director of his generation, almost doesn't make sense on paper; wait...the same guy directed 'The French Connection' and 'The Excorcist'?  But the ups and downs of Friedkin's storied and somewhat haphazard career are what makes him one of the most interesting directors to consider.

And 'To Live and Die in LA' is some kind of crazy masterpiece, punching WELL above its weight as a non-studio, non-union middling-budget (6 million dollars) independent LA neo-noir.

Filled with superlative near-first-timers like John Turturro, William Petersen, John Pankow, Willem Dafoe and stellar supporting work from the likes of Steve James, Robert Downey, Sr,  Darlanne Fluegel, Dean Stockwell, Jack Hoar, and Debra Feuer, TLADILA is easily consumed as genre fare...or more diligently dissected as the incredible example of top-tier filmmaking and production design and location and stunt work that it also is. Needless to say that's where I'm taking my cues!

Available now on a newly restored 4K UHD and blu-ray disc, TLADILA has frustratingly not been available to stream but my plea here is that you avail yourself of the physical media and set aside an evening to appreciate this great work of FUN and ART.

Buy the new release here.

Listen to Wang Chung's excellent TLADILA soundtrack here.

A deep-dive into the semiotics of 'Barbie' and its post-feminist critique of corporate capitalism and American mores.

Just kidding, I went and saw 'Barbie' with five 12-year-olds. Six, if you count me.

But seriously, this episode unpacks some of the things I found interesting about the film, its very existence, its brilliant marketing and repositioning.  Also: supporting cast wins and losses, why the filmmakers missed a perfect opportunity to put the idiotic 'Barbie Girl' song to great use, and a plea for an Allan spinoff.

I'm joined by legendary ad-man-turned brand-identity guru, author, screenwriter, and producer Ernest Lupinacci to talk all things 'The Godfather' and 'The Godfather, Part II' (with a sideways glance at 'The Godfather, Part III'), including our preferences, what II gained and lost in terms of casting and production, returning Mario Puzo to center stage credit for creating this universe of indelible characters.

Follow my guest Ernest Lupinacci on Instagram.

Check out Ernest and illustrator Alex Ogle's excellent graphic novel about the making of 'The Godfather', 'The Godfather Gang' here.

Watch the Paramount+ scripted series that about the making of 'The Godfather' here.