1941 (w/ Zachary Lee)
In 1941, the 1979 WWII comedy, we have a prime example of a powerhouse director putting out a complete flop. Steven Spielberg along with writers in Robert Zemecki & Bob Gale and producer John Milius were trying to ride the train of troublemaking comedies that came before them. While the film did fine commercially worldwide, it was not well received by audiences and critics alike. Our discussion delves into why this movie was a failure and what we can learn from that.
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Guest Info:
Zachary Lee
Website: https://muckrack.com/zachary-lee-4
Twitter (X): https://twitter.com/zacharoni22
Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/zlee729/
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Other Links:
My Letterboxd Ranking of Spielberg Films: https://letterboxd.com/eliprice/list/elis-ranking-of-steven-spielbergs-directorial/
Research Resources:
- Steven Spielberg All the Films: The Story Behind Every Movie, Episode, and Short by Arnaud Devillard, Olivier Bousquet, Nicolas Schaller
- Steven Spielberg: A Life in Films by Molly Haskell
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Eli Price (00:00.95)
Hello and welcome to the establishing shot a podcast where we do deep dives into directors and their filmography I am your host Eli Price here on episode 42 of the podcast We are in the middle of our early Steven Spielberg series going through the movies of the 70s and 80s Directed by Spielberg. It's been a fun ride so far
And today will be an interesting discussion to say the least. But before we get into that discussion on Spielberg's movie, 1941, I wanted to introduce our guest today, Zachary Lee. He is a returning guest. He joined me for the Dark Knight Rises episode. That was a really
fun discussion. But yeah, Zachary, it's good to have you on again. How are you doing?
Zachary Lee (01:00.981)
I'm doing well. Thanks so much Eli. It's such a joy to be back. And I just already I love the diversity of the films that we're tackling, you know, to go from Dark Knight Rises and now to 1941, you know, so it's great. It really speaks to diversity of what you're choosing to cover and of the directors that you're choosing. So it's great.
Eli Price (01:21.918)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, and yeah, it's quite a difference between these two movies. I guess the similarity would be the amount of things that explode maybe.
Zachary Lee (01:29.942)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (01:37.341)
I was the... I know. Maybe we missed that part in the Dark Night Rises production notes where Chris Nolan was like, actually guys, let's be real, 1941, that's what really inspired me when you see the bats just blow up the tumblers or whatever, you know.
Eli Price (01:41.387)
Uh.
Yeah.
Eli Price (01:53.586)
Yeah. Explosions per capita, I think is like the inspiration there maybe. But yeah, Zachary is he wears a few hats. He does some freelance writing about films. He does some
Zachary Lee (01:59.441)
Exactly. Yeah, that's right. You know, you never know. Yeah.
Zachary Lee (02:09.221)
That's right.
Eli Price (02:14.41)
some writing and editing work with Think Christian, which is a faith and pop culture, I guess you would call it like an online publication, I guess. And then, yeah, you do some other work too. Why don't you share a little bit about some of your recent work that listeners might be interested in.
Zachary Lee (02:26.573)
Yeah, that's a good description.
Zachary Lee (02:35.553)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, I'm trying to think of most recently what I've been doing. Yeah, I think one piece that was exciting was I was able to interview director Adam Wingard who directed Godzilla and Kong, The New Empire. And so we chatted a little bit about that. That was for Roger Ebert. So that was just super fun. I'm like a sucker for...
Eli Price (02:56.536)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (03:03.801)
for kaiju movies, no matter their meta-critic score. Maybe that'll come up later, we'll see. But that was great. And I, what was the other one? Oh, I saw this A24 release, Love Lies Bleeding. That's a Rose Glass did that one who did Saint Maude, which might be of interest because there's some religious and interesting ways that talks about religion. But I wrote a piece about that for a national Catholic reporter. So it's just been fun to kind of compare and look at different.
Eli Price (03:08.908)
Yeah.
Eli Price (03:16.718)
Mm-hmm.
Zachary Lee (03:33.145)
different movies and I don't know, I feel good about 2024 movie year. I don't know, I feel like there's a lot of fun, good stuff coming out. And so I don't know how you feel about the year, Eli, and if you've been able to catch up on newer releases, I know you're doing all these great retrospectives and directors, you know, looks, but yeah.
Eli Price (03:37.483)
Yeah.
Eli Price (03:41.686)
Yeah, for sure.
Eli Price (03:49.494)
Yeah, yeah, it's been hard this year so far. I've caught a few here and there. But yeah, it's been tough to catch these new 2024 movies. There hasn't been like a ton of like big movies that are like, oh, I've got to go like see this. It's a lot of stuff that's like, oh, I'll get to that eventually kind of stuff. I like, I want to see it, but like
Zachary Lee (04:09.666)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (04:13.366)
Yeah.
Eli Price (04:16.602)
kind of falls down in priority. It's been a slow start but it's starting to pick up. Like I was looking at April and May and I'm like, oh there's some good stuff coming. So, yeah.
Zachary Lee (04:19.847)
Yeah...
Zachary Lee (04:25.109)
Yeah, some good things. Yeah, I feel like we got our Sand movie with Dune, you know, in March, we'll get another Sand movie, you know, with Furiosa in May. So that has to just be a consistent theme, you know, throughout this year, hopefully. But yeah.
Eli Price (04:35.246)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Oh, yeah. For sure. Yeah. And by the time this episode comes out, there would have, I think, Civil War would have released. We're recording before that releases, but I did get to go see Godzilla Kong in theaters. That was really fun. It was really fun.
Zachary Lee (04:48.726)
Yep, that's right.
Zachary Lee (04:57.966)
Nice.
Zachary Lee (05:01.313)
Yeah.
Eli Price (05:04.65)
I've been telling people like, is it a great movie? Like not, not really, but is it a ton of fun to watch? Like, absolutely. You know? So, um, yeah, I had a lot of fun.
Zachary Lee (05:14.217)
Exactly. Yeah, exactly. You know, and it's funny, I feel like even that movie probably doesn't even has have as many explosions as 1941 does, you know, so despite it being, you know, about giant monsters and them destroying everything. So if that gives you, gives the listeners any teasers for what we're about to discuss later. But yeah. Yeah.
Eli Price (05:27.31)
Probably not. Surprisingly. Right.
Eli Price (05:38.822)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, I'm hoping to get out some, some kind of for people that kind of support the podcast. Financially, I'm trying to get some like bonus episodes going where I'm like reviewing like doing little 10 minute reviews of new releases. So hopefully, by the time this comes out some if you if you want to hear my take on Godzilla Kong, you can
Zachary Lee (05:54.49)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (05:59.589)
That'd be awesome.
Eli Price (06:06.954)
go support the podcast and hear some of that bonus content. But yeah, it's really exciting to have you on. I'm always excited to get people that are actually like boots on the ground doing some film criticism. And so it's great to have just different perspectives and different minds. But yeah, let's...
Zachary Lee (06:08.989)
Yes, yes. We love that.
Zachary Lee (06:25.452)
Mm-hmm.
Eli Price (06:35.47)
Transition to Spielberg. Zachary, do you remember the first like Spielberg memory like movies that you saw? Like do you have any memories of that?
Zachary Lee (06:37.09)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (06:45.493)
Yeah, you know, it's a great question because this might be, I think my first answer might be a bit of a cheat, but I'll get to expand it out a little more. I think like broadly speaking, we think about like the first movies that Spielberg touched or had an influence on. It's really funny, probably not super glamorous. It was, you know, the iconic 2007 Michael Bay directed Transformers. And which funnily enough, which like for some reason, I remember watching
Eli Price (06:51.598)
Mm.
Eli Price (07:01.857)
Yeah.
Eli Price (07:10.119)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (07:14.937)
the trailer for that, I think. I mean, you know, with, and my dad was very shocked. He's like, wait, does that say produced by Steven Spielberg? And, you know, for me, I'm like, at that point, you know, I haven't, my cinephile journey and watching movies, it's like, we went and saw that, but at that point I hadn't even seen, I don't think a proper Spielberg movie yet, you know? And so it's kind of a funny, like, he was this name, you know, and like.
Eli Price (07:16.939)
Mm-hmm.
Eli Price (07:23.382)
Ha ha ha.
Eli Price (07:36.416)
Yeah, yeah.
Eli Price (07:40.373)
Mm-hmm.
Zachary Lee (07:40.589)
that element of like already juxtaposition that my dad's like, wait, that's curious that he would put his name on something like this, you know, no, no dis to transformers, but I think it was just a surprise. And so I'd say that was like my, okay, like my first foray into this is Spielberg. Like he clearly was willing to put some of his, his name on this, you know, say produce it. I didn't know what producing meant, but you know, it's like that's significant that it's there. And then probably
Eli Price (07:49.471)
Yeah.
Eli Price (08:00.892)
Mm-hmm.
Zachary Lee (08:08.649)
I think I was, I'm just trying to take a look at what I watched. I think Jurassic Park was the, was the one that I caught. I remember. And so that one was great. And, you know, love dinosaurs. I think let's, you know, I think seeing that was really cool. And I hadn't seen other dinosaur movies, I think at that point. So like the effects were great and, you know, I, I was really, really went over. So the spectacle, if you can already tell the through line between Transformers and Jurassic Park, you know, what, what was there? Yeah.
Eli Price (08:16.532)
Yeah.
Eli Price (08:37.254)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's really cool. You know, Jurassic Park was an early one for me. I think in ET probably was an early one. It's hard to remember. I remember the Goonies going by like produced by Spielberg. The Goonies was a big one for me. Back to the future too. Yeah, Back to the Future was which there's a connection point there because the
Zachary Lee (08:53.199)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (09:00.337)
Oh, okay.
Eli Price (09:05.666)
You got the Zemeckis partnership and Bob Gale, Bob Zemeckis and Bob Gale, the two Bobs, as Spielberg referred to them in the Making of documentary for this movie. Yeah, so was this your first time watching 1941? Because it was for me.
Zachary Lee (09:07.361)
Yep.
Zachary Lee (09:12.874)
Yep, the two bombs, yep.
Zachary Lee (09:21.045)
That's right.
Zachary Lee (09:29.213)
Yeah, it was. No, and it was funny. I remember Eli when you were like, yeah, just to sorry in advance if you haven't seen it, but what it was, but yeah, no, it was honestly like there's a lot I'll admit of school breaks I still haven't seen like you mentioned
Eli Price (09:44.201)
Yeah, same.
Zachary Lee (09:52.157)
If I was, I didn't even hear about it. So when the topic was suggested, I was like, oh, like at least I'm slowly building out the filmography. Although the fact that I've now seen 1941 before, you know, ET or first encounters, I'm like, or close encounters. I'm like, what does that say? Am I, is that good? Is that bad? Who knows what that does? That's right. Those will just be even more of masterpieces, you know, than I have. So yeah.
Eli Price (10:00.311)
Mm-hmm.
Eli Price (10:04.555)
Yeah.
Eli Price (10:10.494)
It means, it means you're starting out the bottom and it's only up from here.
Eli Price (10:17.454)
Yeah, yes. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, you know, this was my first time seeing 1941. And there's a reason it's not like, on people's list of, oh, I've got to get to this movie, eventually, I think. But yeah, we'll get into that sort of talk at some point. But let's kind of start at
Zachary Lee (10:20.938)
Exactly.
Zachary Lee (10:33.454)
Mm-hmm.
Zachary Lee (10:37.751)
Exactly.
Zachary Lee (10:43.799)
Yeah.
Eli Price (10:47.946)
Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale meeting at USC film school. They met there. Zemeckis got connected with Spielberg because at a screening for Sugarland Express, which was Spielberg's first theatrical release, Zemeckis was there. It was for the university, I think. And he rushed up to Spielberg.
at the end of the screening and gave him a copy of a short film he had done. And Spoolberg watched it and was like impressed by some of the visuals. And it was kind of like some dark comedy and he, he liked that. And so, um, yeah, there, there was kind of like an early connection there. And so, um, as soon as the two Bob's graduated, um, which I'm by the way, side note, I'm really happy that I get to say the two Bob's a lot in this episode.
Zachary Lee (11:46.454)
Yeah, exactly.
Eli Price (11:47.182)
Uh, um, but yeah, the two bobs go, um, in contact, John Milius, um, who, uh, probably most notably wrote, uh, the screenplay for Apocalypse Now. Um, and so that's kind of, I would, I would say that's Milius's kind of claim to fame. He wrote some other really good screenplays too. Um, but that's definitely like the most recognizable.
Zachary Lee (12:03.429)
Oh, okay.
Zachary Lee (12:13.521)
That's right.
Eli Price (12:17.302)
Um, of, of all of them. Um, but yeah, they, they contacted him. They're like, Hey, we have some projects that we're interested in doing. Um, Milius had gone to USC. So that was kind of, um, the connection they had, uh, with, with him being an alumni and them fresh out of school. So, um, they gave him like this idea about this, uh, it was like a vampire horror comedy and like, he was like, not for me. And.
Zachary Lee (12:42.716)
Mm-hmm.
Eli Price (12:46.15)
And then, um, they gave him a second project called tank, which was set in war, war two, um, and Milius was more attracted to that one. He had reservations, but he was like, Hey, like, do you have anything else like along these lines? Um, and so that's when, um, the first, uh, screenplay was presented to him. Um, that turned into 1941. Um,
Zachary Lee (13:03.059)
Mm.
Eli Price (13:14.546)
And so Milius, uh, he, he likes the script. He actually like renames it. I don't know what, I never heard what the original name they had for it was. Maybe it was just untitled, but he gave it in the name the night the Japs attacked, which is probably a problematic name in and of itself. Um, yeah. Uh, but yeah, he, um, he liked it. Uh, he, he goes and.
Zachary Lee (13:33.601)
itself yeah it's 100% yeah
Eli Price (13:43.298)
takes it to MGM who he had a contract with at the time and they don't really go for it. So, you know, they can't move forward with it. Um, but, uh, but Milius does also like introduce it to Steven Spielberg. Him, uh, Milius and Spielberg were, were pretty good friends. And, um, they, I think they actually like shot, did like shot skeet at a shooting club, uh, together, which is something like.
You don't hear a lot about Spielberg these days, but apparently he was like super into like shooting clubs and had a big gun collection and stuff. Um, but, uh, but yeah, so, you know, they're at the shooting club and Milius tells them about this script. And, um, yeah, so, you know, Spielberg kind of is interested. Um, and, uh, Milius is interested. They, they eventually do. Um,
Zachary Lee (14:20.497)
Thanks for watching!
Eli Price (14:40.982)
get kind of a go-ahead on it from, I think, Columbia Pictures is who Milius transitions to, and so they get the go-ahead from Columbia, and so yeah, they start kind of writing. The two Bobs had done all this research for Tank and had found all these interesting historical events. So a few of the main ones...
that the movie is kind of the concept is based around is that there was this event that happened early in 1942 in LA where it was after Pearl Harbor and there was a lot of like kind of hysteria and nervousness you know and rightly so and so there was someone who had thought they had seen
fighter plane flying over LA and so they like blacked out the city for six hours and people were like shooting into the sky at apparently nothing. And it was like this kind of hysterical crazed event that happened in LA. And so that's kind of like the launching point for the concept of this movie is that historical event. Which is it is like.
Zachary Lee (15:38.51)
Mm.
Zachary Lee (15:43.321)
Hmm
Zachary Lee (16:03.481)
Mm-hmm.
Eli Price (16:07.682)
to be fair, like a pretty interesting event to like start an idea for a movie. Um, and, uh, and so, yeah, they have all these other events too. So if you haven't seen the movie, you know, this will make more sense once you see it. Um, but yeah, you have in February, 1942, a Japanese sub, uh, actually did, um, do some shelling off the coast of California. Um,
They, the Japanese had apparently plans to shell like the entire West coast. Um, but, um, but that one, I think it was Bob Yale was telling this story about a Japanese man who had become a general, but had like done some work in California, um, like with oil and stuff. Um, and had like accidentally fell on a cactus and humiliated himself and like people laughed at him and he became a general and like,
Zachary Lee (16:42.921)
Mm.
Zachary Lee (16:56.218)
Hmm.
Thank you.
Zachary Lee (17:03.258)
No.
Eli Price (17:06.466)
kind of as a vendetta came took his sub and like shelled this, you know, near this factory where he had been humiliated. Yeah, so I, you know, I'm taking this, this is like, I guess there's truth to that. Like he said it in the making of documentary that he had read, read this story. So I assume it's true. So you have that, which, you know, I guess a lot of the
Zachary Lee (17:16.317)
Oh wow. Did not know that.
Eli Price (17:36.066)
the content in the Japanese sub is based off of. You have in 1943, there was something called the Zoot Suit Race Riots. I don't know if you, have you ever heard of those Zachary? Yeah.
Zachary Lee (17:50.325)
No, this is all I've you know, it's when I was hearing like a another like podcast where they were sort of breaking down some of the history and I was just like, yeah, they were mentioning all this I was like, man, my knowledge of this is just not up to par right now.
Eli Price (18:00.055)
Yeah.
Eli Price (18:03.326)
Yeah, they apparently there were, um, you know, it's LA. So there's a, there's a high Mexican population, but at this time there was like this, um, just kind of, I guess, I don't know if it was just like a fashion movement or what, but a lot of the Mexican men were wearing like these flamboyant suits and then there were a lot of white servicemen that thought it was like, I don't know, disrespectful or something, I don't know. It's a weird, like, I guess they're like really grasping to find something.
Zachary Lee (18:10.308)
Mm-hmm.
Zachary Lee (18:30.348)
Right.
Eli Price (18:33.102)
to be racist about. Yeah, it's like, I don't like your suit. It's like, oh, okay, dude. Yeah, so there were like all these brawls that like turned into riots in 1943. And so that's kind of like the Wally character wearing like the, he kind of has like a flamboyant suit and then there's like a riot in the streets. And so you got that influence.
Zachary Lee (18:34.517)
Exactly. Channel their pent up frustrations and energy. You know, yeah. We're going to start a bar brawl right now. Yeah.
Eli Price (19:02.582)
There actually was a guy, not in California, but in Maine that, um, had an anti-aircraft gun placed in his backyard. Um, uh, something that didn't make it. And, you know, thank goodness it didn't. It would have been one more terrible thing was that life magazine at the time actually put an article out teaching the difference between Japanese and Chinese people, um, and it's
Zachary Lee (19:12.145)
Yup.
Eli Price (19:32.078)
Spielberg, I guess, I guess Spielberg had some, I guess, lines he wouldn't cross. And he kind of like drew the line there, thank goodness. And so that would be too far to include that. But yeah, that was apparently a thing in Life magazine. It's like, man, this, things were, things were crazy back then. And then the final like,
Zachary Lee (19:45.039)
Yes, like that. Yeah.
Zachary Lee (19:56.233)
Yeah, exactly.
Eli Price (20:01.83)
actual historical thing that I had written down that I thought was great was that General Stilwell, who was a real person. I think that's like the one character in the movie that is actually based on a real person. He actually did go and see Dumbo when he was stationed in LA. So yeah, you got, there's a whole long cutting back to Stilwell watching Dumbo.
Zachary Lee (20:08.952)
Mm.
Zachary Lee (20:14.857)
Mm. Yep.
Zachary Lee (20:22.353)
Thanks for watching.
Try it.
Zachary Lee (20:30.177)
Yep.
Eli Price (20:30.942)
through the movie. But yeah, so, you know, Spielberg comes on, one of the things he says towards the beginning of their process was, quote, I will not make this film if it costs one penny over $11 million, unquote. And as we'll see, he did not stay true to that statement.
Zachary Lee (20:54.724)
Yep.
Eli Price (20:56.458)
But yeah, he thought it was a great opportunity to make a movie where he could make a bunch of stuff blow up and explode and break a bunch of stuff, which turns out he was right. It was a good opportunity to do that. And yeah, he really like, I think in one of the documentary interviews I saw, he was kind of saying at the time, he really didn't have anything going on.
Zachary Lee (21:10.725)
Yeah, exactly.
Eli Price (21:27.55)
And which is kind of true, like they actually like the two bobs came to set for Close Encounters and were like basically living with Spielberg and Michael Kahn, his editor for like five weeks kind of working on the scripts. When Spielberg would come, you know, come home from, they would be working during the day and when he would come back from, you know, shooting Close Encounters.
Zachary Lee (21:36.616)
Mm.
Zachary Lee (21:47.409)
Mm.
Eli Price (21:55.542)
He would kind of like read what they had done and give them notes and stuff. And so like he did kind of have something going on. So, but I guess he meant more like, you know, when this was going to be shot, he didn't have anything going on. He didn't like have anything necessarily like lined up to do next. I guess is kind of what he meant. But yeah.
Zachary Lee (22:03.236)
here.
Zachary Lee (22:10.541)
Yep.
Zachary Lee (22:17.774)
Mm-hmm.
Eli Price (22:23.758)
Robert Zemeckis said that the writing process was the opposite of disciplined, which I guess you could probably say the same thing about the movie itself. And so yeah, the writing process really, they stayed true in the filming of it to the writing process. Yeah, it's interesting. What's interesting to me is originally the script.
Zachary Lee (22:30.105)
Here we go.
Zachary Lee (22:35.297)
There we go, yeah.
Eli Price (22:53.246)
um, that Zemeckis and Gale had written, um, was, had a much more like kind of dark comedy tone to it, which I would have, I would be very interested to, if they would have stuck to that, to see how that would have turned out. Cause, um, I don't know, just the, the story and kind of the atmosphere kind of feels like it's primed for like a dark comedy.
Zachary Lee (23:01.035)
Mm-hmm.
Eli Price (23:22.09)
maybe in the, I guess like I'm thinking like Coen Brothers, like a Coen Brothers style dark comedy in this like setting with these characters. I could kind of see that being a pretty decent movie if not like a really good one. So I'm kind of sad that we didn't get that movie. And what were you gonna say?
Zachary Lee (23:32.832)
Mmm.
Zachary Lee (23:40.402)
Oh for sure.
Zachary Lee (23:47.977)
Yeah, it's fun. Yeah. Oh, it was just, it's funny. I was just looking back at your notes about like the, uh, the writing process. I think I forgot in that, in the Jaws episode, I remember who was the actor who like showed up so drunk on set or something that like he couldn't.
Eli Price (24:06.45)
Yeah, yeah, that was, um, oh man, my, my mind is blinking, uh, on the actor's name. That was, if you give me two seconds, um, that was, uh, yeah, Robert Shaw, um, playing Quint. Yeah, and so
Zachary Lee (24:19.21)
Oh yeah, you got it.
Zachary Lee (24:23.393)
Robert Shaw, yeah. Which is so funny, because it's like, I remember, it's like, Spuver was like, yeah, that's not good. And I'm like, I wonder if he took a couple, too many notes from Quinn, and maybe that was the inspo, as they were kind of making this movie. But all to your point, yeah, it would have been interesting to see it, like as a more dark comedy, Coen Brothers thing, but yeah.
Eli Price (24:35.245)
Hahaha.
Eli Price (24:39.789)
Yeah.
Eli Price (24:44.794)
Yeah. Well, part of the reason, so Spielberg kind of had a different, I guess, approach. He wanted it to be, I guess, more like screwball and crazy. And they started casting guys like Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi. And so once you have like those guys, it's like, you're kind of set up to do screwball, more screwball kind of comedy. And so it really like
started taking off down that path. Um, once Spielberg came on board and then especially like once they started casting those sorts of guys. Um, so yeah, it, it ends up being like the, so it's Spielberg, the two Bob's and John Milius are just kind of like, it's a, you know, Spielberg even said in the documentary, his philosophy was anything goes.
Zachary Lee (25:40.397)
Mm-hmm
Eli Price (25:40.746)
And so, um, it's these guys just kind of like throwing all their ideas in the kitchen sink and seeing what, what happens with it. Um, and I don't know, I guess like there's instances where maybe that sort of approach to writing turns out well, but, um, I don't know when you're doing like a comedy, it almost seems like a more singular focused thing puts out.
Zachary Lee (25:50.289)
Mm-hmm.
Zachary Lee (26:08.585)
Yeah.
Eli Price (26:10.23)
the better comedy, um, then like just throwing everyone's ideas against the wall and seeing what sticks. Um, it kind of feel like the writing process seems like it was very disjointed and there wasn't like a real like thread, um, that was like tying everything together. And that really to me comes out in the final product. Like the movie doesn't feel like
It has a thread tying everything together. The movie feels like it's just a bunch of ideas thrown against the wall. Um, and so, you know, I think, I think really like, to me, it, everything goes back to that, like writing process, like Milius and Spielberg kind of, I guess, maybe influencing maybe too much. Um, like what
Zachary Lee (26:45.555)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (26:56.485)
Mm-hmm.
Eli Price (27:07.506)
what the script turned into. And then like two probably just, you need like, you need a more unified front, I would think, when you're writing. Then like, I don't know, they just seemed like they didn't all have the same goal with where they were headed with the movie. Which is unfortunate, you know. But they were also like pretty young.
Zachary Lee (27:09.722)
down.
Zachary Lee (27:28.065)
Yeah. Right. Yeah.
Eli Price (27:37.506)
Like Spielberg at this time, so this, this came out in 79. They were probably like riding it in like 77, 78. So Spielberg would have been in his early thirties. So still fairly young. He had a lot of experience on his, on his hands at that point, but, but still young. And then, you know, the two Bobs are basically like fresh out of college.
Zachary Lee (27:37.538)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (27:53.169)
Mm-hmm.
Zachary Lee (27:57.945)
Right.
Eli Price (28:04.97)
So, you know, they're young. And when you're that young and you're working with Spielberg, it's kind of like, uh, yes, sir. Mr. Spielberg, you know, you know, I mean, what are you going to do? If Spielberg wants you to do this with the script is gone and he's directing, it's kind of like, okay, yeah, I guess we're doing that with the script now. Um, but, uh,
Zachary Lee (28:16.394)
Exactly.
Zachary Lee (28:23.425)
Yeah. It's interesting too to think because it's like I think what you're saying about this writing I mean when you think about like they're pulling all these historical events, like that's really what it was like. It's like well
Eli Price (28:35.48)
Mm-hmm.
Zachary Lee (28:36.369)
There's not even a story. It's just like, here are things that happened as a result of this communal fear of maybe the Japanese might attack again. And it's like, let's just make a vibes movie and just talk about, it's almost like they wanted to recreate each of these crazier than real life scenarios. And they're like, oh wait, we actually have to make a movie and find some haphazard way to like, why does-
Eli Price (28:45.198)
Mm-hmm.
Eli Price (28:59.501)
Right.
Zachary Lee (29:03.589)
the blacking out of a city somehow connect with the race riots connect, you know, and it's just like making it work. And I, yeah, it just felt like, yeah, they're like wanting to recreate these like admittedly, like really interesting moments of history, but it's like, it's not a documentary. It's like,
Eli Price (29:08.266)
Yeah.
Eli Price (29:17.838)
Mm-hmm, but like the in a in a screwball comedy form, which is like, you know, it's Maybe like focusing on one of those things might have been better But they were like, oh all of these ideas might be funny. Let's let's try to do all of them And I think that's maybe Another way they went wrong, you know Like just trying to do too much
Zachary Lee (29:42.425)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (29:46.916)
Yeah.
I think also there's that element of, I think at this point, you know, what this is, this would have been Spielberg's third movie. And like, when you do like a Jaws close encounters thing back to back, it's like, you, oh, this would be four. Oh, is that right? Yeah, four. So before, that's right. Yeah, I always like, I'm going off of the other, a wrong, other wrong list here. Thanks for that fact check. But it's just like, it would be four. And it's just like, after you've done certain movies, it's like, you're kind of like the it director. So I wonder if some of the,
Eli Price (29:57.93)
Yeah, this would be four, sorry. Yeah.
Eli Price (30:16.275)
Mm-hmm.
Zachary Lee (30:17.683)
that, like you were saying, Young, you're like the hot shot director. It's like, I'm untouchable. And then it's like, oh, this, we'll test that theory to, to its breaking point. And we'll see, we'll see what happens, you know?
Eli Price (30:22.091)
Yep.
Eli Price (30:27.662)
Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah, and it's, it probably was, because I mean, at this time too, like Spielberg is, he's got a relationship with Amy Irving, who he had met on the set of Close Encounters. And if you like, if you read anything about that relationship, it was very much like,
Eli Price (30:57.818)
her frustration was he like didn't spend an appropriate amount of time like with her. It was just like he was just working non-stop on his movies. He was you know which I guess you know makes sense for a guy like him that's just like in love with filmmaking but um but he was just in a point where it's like work like I'm going to make as many films as I can and you know you
You build up from like dual, which was his TV movie that was really successful. Um, but then like, as far as theatrical releases, sugarland express did really well, then you have jaws, like the first ever summer blockbuster made the, like the most money ever, um, at that point. Um, and then like you follow it up with close encounters, which was a big hit. And yeah, it, like you said, it's kind of like, well, I guess like
Zachary Lee (31:29.465)
That's right. Yep.
Zachary Lee (31:36.226)
Mm-hmm.
Zachary Lee (31:43.252)
Yep.
Eli Price (31:54.038)
whatever I put my hands to is going to be great. And so I think this kind of comedy would be really fun to watch. So it's just interesting like how that can happen to even like the very best directors. And also like interesting to see how other directors might avoid that to kind of like seeing that happen to other directors.
Zachary Lee (32:09.694)
100 percent.
Eli Price (32:23.65)
trying to avoid it for themselves. Like just, like I'm thinking of like, you know, a covered Christopher Nolan's filmography and he doesn't really have a movie that's like a huge flop like this. It's pretty like, he has some that like are more loved than others, but like, he doesn't have anything where like all the critics were like, this is the worst thing ever. And so.
Zachary Lee (32:42.341)
Mm-hmm.
Zachary Lee (32:48.566)
Right. Exactly.
Eli Price (32:51.85)
And like none of them are really commercial failures, um, which we'll get to that with this one, it, it wasn't, you couldn't call it a commercial failure, but, um, but definitely like pretty blind from, uh, you know, I think critics, I think audiences were, weren't, weren't too big on it either. Um, but yeah, you know, there.
Zachary Lee (33:05.162)
Oh yeah.
Zachary Lee (33:13.269)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Eli Price (33:17.494)
There were, like I said, things Spielberg said was too far, the Life magazine thing. Um, originally this is, we'll, we'll get into this a little bit more later, but originally Betty, they had Betty like losing her virginity to stretch like under a truck, like while the tank rumbled by. And it's just kind of like, like just kind of the Spielberg was like, no, too far. Um, it's like, okay. You know,
Zachary Lee (33:21.968)
Mm-hmm.
Zachary Lee (33:27.348)
Oh yeah, for sure.
Zachary Lee (33:46.583)
Right.
Eli Price (33:46.978)
Um, but yeah, uh, you know, he did, um, and then the idea to start the movie with the parody of jaws was actually Spielberg's idea. Um, and I think it starts off like, I think that with that beginning, it's kind of like, Oh, I see what he's doing here. It kind of like, he's kind of making fun of his own movie, but then like it quickly takes a left turn and it's like, Oh, it's.
Zachary Lee (33:59.352)
Yeah.
Eli Price (34:16.054)
this kind of movie.
Zachary Lee (34:18.729)
I, yes, that's what I thought. And it's so funny, because it's like, I guess background content, or like when I was sharing, like having gone to a couple more film festivals now this year, there's kind of that a certain element when you know like it's like a movie from a particular director or like, and like the crowds just ready, you know, it's like they're chomping at the bit to like use that metaphor of like, for what something's gonna happen. So it's like, I can totally imagine like,
Eli Price (34:30.627)
Mm-hmm.
Eli Price (34:37.418)
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Zachary Lee (34:47.513)
say, you know, if Spielberg ever wants to, you know, open at a South by Southwest or a Sundance, you know, not that that's what that would happen. But like, imagine like way back, you know, when this movie came out, they like show that and like, I can imagine like you're seeing like the crowd probably being like, this is so funny. He's like spoofing his movie, like, you know, like, it's just a fun like getting that audience reaction. And then you just see it just goes on. And then you see, you know, it's like, okay.
Eli Price (35:06.486)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (35:16.793)
this is just not what we were expecting. That energy just immediately going down. So it was just funny to look at it through that lens. Like you were saying, I'm sure when it started, like really funny homage, you know, I have the same actress, right? You know, doing her thing.
Eli Price (35:28.878)
Mm-hmm. Right, yeah, the same actress from the opening of Jaws, yeah.
Zachary Lee (35:34.829)
of JAWS, yeah. And then you're just like, yo, like, wait, what's going on? This is a bit much. So yeah.
Eli Price (35:38.534)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Because I mean, you have like, because honestly, like when it starts, I'm like, oh, this is kind of funny. Like I wasn't like rolling on the floor laughing. I was like, oh, I see what he's doing. Like, you know, haha, kind of, you know, parody of Jaws. But then like you have like the woman's like, like naked and it's kind of like a little bit like male gazey. And then you have like the like over-stereotyped
Zachary Lee (35:47.926)
Right, exactly.
Zachary Lee (36:04.042)
100.
Eli Price (36:06.914)
Japanese soldier like yelling Hollywood looking at her. Um, and it's just kind of like, Oh, okay. Like I see like right off the bat, like as soon as it takes that turn, you're like, Oh, this is why this movie is maligned, you know, if it's going to be, uh, if it's going to be this the whole time. Um, yeah. Yeah. But, um,
Zachary Lee (36:09.733)
Hollywood, yep.
Zachary Lee (36:14.566)
Yep, yeah.
Zachary Lee (36:24.305)
You're like...
Zachary Lee (36:28.217)
We're in for a rough watch for sure. Yeah, no, that makes sense. Yeah.
Eli Price (36:34.59)
Yeah, let's talk a little bit about the crew. So we already mentioned the screenplay written by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale, the two Bobs. The DP cinematographer was William A. Fraker, who has some good work. Rosemary's Baby, he was the cinematographer there for the movie Bullet with Steve McQueen.
Zachary Lee (36:37.456)
Mm-hmm.
Eli Price (37:02.898)
which we talked about on the car chase draft. He was the cinematographer there. And then also in Tombstone, the popular Western. Yeah, probably one of my favorite Westerns, just a fun movie. But yeah, so he has some good cinematography work under his belt.
Zachary Lee (37:18.383)
right.
Zachary Lee (37:23.009)
Yeah, that's awesome.
Mm-hmm.
Eli Price (37:29.578)
We can kind of talk more about him as we get into the production. Um, of course you have the John Williams collaboration. Um, and, uh, Michael Kahn, um, is, is the editor, um, who, um, you know, I've mentioned this to my past, to my past guests, but he, I think starting with close encounters, which was the last movie, um, he direct, he edited every Spielberg movie except ET and the fabled men's.
Zachary Lee (37:36.267)
Of course.
Eli Price (37:59.83)
which is just like a crazy long lasting, that collaboration, the John Williams collaboration with Spielberg is just like really incredible. And so, yeah, I think this was a Michael Kahn editing failure alongside Spielberg, but a lot of great work to show that, you know, this isn't what you can expect from him.
Zachary Lee (38:10.299)
Wow.
Zachary Lee (38:23.236)
is it.
Eli Price (38:29.754)
Um, yeah. Yeah. Um, production design was Dean Edward Mitzner, which I thought was interesting cause he did production design for the 80s movie Tron, which is, you know, interesting to look at, um, and then the special effects, um, you have, uh, I'm missing a name here, um, 80 flowers. And, um, I forgot there was another guy. Uh,
Zachary Lee (38:30.669)
all the time, yeah.
Zachary Lee (38:51.866)
Yeah, yeah.
Eli Price (38:57.794)
Funnily enough on letterbox, they're not, AD Flowers is not credited and neither is the other guy. But if you like watch the making of documentary that's on the like the blu-ray disc, you basically like it's AD Flowers and this other guy that they're talking to about special effects. So, I don't know, maybe somebody...
Zachary Lee (39:08.537)
Mm-hmm.
Zachary Lee (39:13.293)
Mm-hmm.
Eli Price (39:25.03)
Maybe somebody needs to go on TMDB and update their database to add 80 flowers. But he had like a huge, long last, like I think his special effects work goes all the way back to the Wizard of Oz. So he has like, at this point he was like special effects legend, I guess, in Hollywood.
Zachary Lee (39:29.012)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (39:45.273)
Oh, okay.
Eli Price (39:53.102)
Uh, and so, um, yeah, if you, it's weird, if you go on his IMDB, there's not like a ton of movie credits. Um, but it, it makes it seem like maybe he just didn't have, wasn't credited on a lot of stuff. Um, and I think it's because like in this movie, he does some inventing of new stuff to make, like make some of the special effects happen. So I almost wonder if like,
He doesn't have a lot of special effects, like supervisor credits, because he wasn't doing that. He was just like the one that was actually like making stuff work, maybe. But yeah, so shout out to 80 Flowers, even though he doesn't have credit for the movie on Letterbox. I think he does on IMDB, thankfully, but...
Zachary Lee (40:28.406)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (40:36.433)
the street.
Zachary Lee (40:45.745)
That's right. It's funny. I was just doing a quick research and I realized that, and you'll probably get to this later, but his work was nominated for the awards. And I was like, what did it lose to? I'm like, well, Alien, that seems like a good, you know, that makes sense. I'd much rather Alien get remembered in history. So it's funny. I realized like, oh yeah, all these movies are coming out at similar times, I guess, and everything, but yeah.
Eli Price (40:54.902)
Yeah.
Eli Price (41:01.135)
Yep, yeah, yeah Yeah
Eli Price (41:11.806)
Yeah, which I mean to be honest the special effects is probably the best part of this movie. You know it so you know big you know shout out to 80 flowers he did some good work. And yeah it I'm glad you reminded me about awards because I forgot to put that in the notes. So I'll make sure to pull that up when we get there. But yeah.
Zachary Lee (41:38.391)
Oh yeah.
Eli Price (41:41.974)
That's kind of the main crew I wanted to point out. As far as cast goes, we already mentioned Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi, who play Sergeant Frank Tree and Captain Wild Bill Kelso, which one of the things that is so disorienting about this movie is trying to keep up with all the names. I was constantly like.
Zachary Lee (42:05.486)
Yeah.
Eli Price (42:09.118)
looking back down at like the cast list on letterbox to like try to keep up with who's who. Because it's yeah it's it was so difficult to keep up with all of that. But yeah so Dan Aykroyd you know Spielberg kind of poaches him and Belushi from SNL. They were big at doing SNL at that time. You have Bobby
Zachary Lee (42:12.237)
Mm-hmm.
Eli Price (42:38.262)
Bobby DeCicco, I guess is how you say his name. C-I-C-C-O. That's how I would think you say that, but I should have looked it up, but I didn't. He plays Wally Stevens, who's kind of, he was intended to be like the, I guess the character that like ties everything together and is kind of like the main protagonist. That...
Zachary Lee (42:47.662)
Mm.
Zachary Lee (43:00.589)
Hmm.
Zachary Lee (43:03.921)
Good day, units.
Eli Price (43:06.71)
of gets lost in the edit I think. But I mean you do get the sense that like he's one of the more important characters. But yeah I don't really know a lot about that actor. You don't, you don't, he's not very even high up on the, like in the casting list and he doesn't have like any other like big notable movies.
Zachary Lee (43:08.852)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (43:15.409)
Sure.
Eli Price (43:35.714)
that I really saw. Like he was in Splash by Ron Howard in the 80s, but that's not like, that doesn't seem to be a very well known movie. I don't really know anything about it myself.
Zachary Lee (43:46.079)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (43:49.597)
I know I'm like doing a quick look and I'm just like this is all yeah that's tough.
Eli Price (43:52.042)
Yeah. Yeah, but he was fine in the movie. Diane Kay as Betty, you know, basically, I don't know if like, she read her script and like all the highlighted parts were just like scream and run, but that's basically all they had her do in the movie, which is unfortunate.
Zachary Lee (44:13.611)
Yep.
Zachary Lee (44:18.122)
Yeah, or like dance, but like, you know, minorly dance, you're like also escaping because, you know, I don't Yeah, it's an interesting character.
Eli Price (44:19.81)
Yeah.
Eli Price (44:24.306)
Yeah.
Eli Price (44:28.926)
Yeah, uh ned beady, isn't it? By the way as we read through this you're gonna be like wow that person too Wow that person too. Yeah, it's a it's a huge castellist ned beady plays. Um diane k's character betty's dad Um, there's kind of like a little family the douglas's Um, he plays ward douglas, which is the dad character um You have uh, yeah, he's also the one that the gun
Zachary Lee (44:36.033)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Eli Price (44:56.662)
The anti aircraft gun gets put in his yard. Um, so yeah, you have John Belushi while Bill Kelso, um, who they, you know, Spielberg was really excited to get John Belushi on, um, he, he made Spielberg laugh so much that like Spielberg expanded the role, gave him, you know, more time in the movie, they started using him cause he was just a huge name at the time, they used him a lot in the marketing materials.
Zachary Lee (45:23.459)
Mm.
Eli Price (45:26.334)
Um, and, um, I wrote this down, you, you kind of mentioned it earlier a little bit, I think, but, uh, John Belushi or you mentioned, uh, this was something that happened with Robert Shaw, but also happened happens again here with John Belushi who shows up one day all drugged out. And so Spielberg assigns one of the assistant producers to kind of babysit John Belushi, uh, making sure he's not getting, I guess,
Zachary Lee (45:40.811)
Yeah.
Eli Price (45:55.006)
stoned or whatever out of his mind. So yeah.
Zachary Lee (46:00.753)
Yeah, it's just so funny. Like when you're talking about like, you know, with Spielberg, how like there's certain level for talent where you're like, there's not really much you can push back against. It's just like, just work it, make it work. You know? And I just find with him, they're like, it's not that we're going to say you can't drink or you can't do drugs. It's just like, make sure you only do the amount that won't impede a good performance. You know what I mean? And I'm like, it's just weird to think about like, oh, wow, like even just dealing with.
Eli Price (46:14.4)
Mm-hmm.
Eli Price (46:23.314)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (46:28.869)
these personalities on a film set and everything. Like it's just, you know, what's changed in some ways and what's, you know, it's all kind of there still, but yeah.
Eli Price (46:34.19)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. And his character too, like he made him more prominent in the movie, but his character doesn't really like. Do a whole lot and like I didn't find that character funny at all. He just kind of like grunts and throws stuff a lot, which maybe was like people were into that in the late 70s, but.
Zachary Lee (46:50.073)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (46:53.909)
Yeah. Right.
Eli Price (47:00.142)
I was just, and, and maybe like in a different context, it would have been funny, but like, there's a lot of like short sequences where he's just like in his plane alone, kind of like looking at a map and grunting and, you know, I'm just like, I don't really get the hue, like how this is so funny, but, um, uh, yeah.
Zachary Lee (47:19.653)
Yeah, or he's just like, you know, like spitting out his drink or just like it's very like vulgar and crass and I'm just like this is an interesting like character to make one of the leads or like one of the narratives that we're kind of following, you know, so yeah.
Eli Price (47:32.646)
Yeah. Yeah, but um, but alas, this is what we got. It's John Belushi in the late 70s. So Robert Stack was cast as the one, like, character that was supposed to be based on a real character, Major General Joseph W. Stillwell. So I think Stillwell was a general who was assigned with
Zachary Lee (47:40.917)
Yep. Mm-hmm. Yep.
Eli Price (48:02.638)
kind of monitoring the West Coast after Pearl Harbor, just like being prepared for any attacks that might come on the West Coast. So they wanted him in the movie. Spielberg originally wanted John Wayne really bad. He had met John Wayne at a tribute to Joan Crawford and they kind of hit it off and would like, you know,
Zachary Lee (48:15.363)
Mm-hmm.
Eli Price (48:31.982)
call each other and stuff. Um, which is kind of cool. Uh, and, uh, Spielberg was like, Hey, you know, I have this, uh, general still well and Wayne was like, Oh yeah. You know, I love that care, like general still well, you know, send me the script. And, um, he was, John Wayne was like horrified by the script. He called it, he told Spielberg that it was anti-American and that he highly recommended that he didn't make this movie.
Zachary Lee (49:01.571)
Wow.
Eli Price (49:01.862)
Um, and, uh, you know, Spielberg, you know, just kind of, you know, he was just kind of like, well, you know, I'm going to make it, but, um, he also wanted, uh, offered it to Charlton Heston, who felt similarly to John Wayne. Um, but, um, but then he, he connected with Stack, um, Robert Stack, who, um, apparently frequented the same gun club as him and Milius.
Zachary Lee (49:25.061)
them.
Eli Price (49:31.17)
Uh, yeah, I guess that's how they kind of met him. And, uh, yeah, stack, uh, takes the part and, uh, Spielberg thought stack was like one of those really good humorists that kind of, um, just plays well, like doing a straight, like playing a straight character while like chaos is going on around them. And, um, I think that's true. I think out of all the performances, uh, Robert stacks is probably like.
Zachary Lee (49:31.875)
Okay.
Zachary Lee (49:52.746)
Yeah.
Eli Price (50:01.122)
the one that feels the most humorous to me. And he even like is in that more of that dark comedy kind of vein throughout the movie. That playing gets straight, you know, while there's like just madness going on all around you is kind of like has a dark comedy feel to it. Yeah, I don't know.
Zachary Lee (50:24.472)
Yeah.
Eli Price (50:28.618)
Did you, what did you think about stack as general still will.
Zachary Lee (50:32.965)
No, I was just looking at a note here because I was wanting to double check the transcript because I made a note where I forget the character. I think you will probably get to him later, but it's when the Japanese soldiers capture that one character. And I remember the character was basically saying, oh, you want to go to Hollywood, you want to defame or do something to John Wayne's. I don't know. And it's just like when you mentioned John Wayne, I was like, oh, I wonder if like
Eli Price (50:46.926)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Zachary Lee (51:01.881)
that Spielberg trying to like keep him in the film or be like, I know you think this is anti-American, but like we gave you a shout out in the movie, or something like that. But no, Stack was great. It's like, it reminds me a lot. Well, we might get to this later when we talk about influences, but there's so much like, I know Spielberg and Kubrick had a professional relation. And there's just, there's a lots of like, I don't know, Dr. Strange love elements here that I was kind of picking up on. I don't know that I thought was interesting. So.
Eli Price (51:04.386)
Yeah.
Eli Price (51:08.242)
Yeah. Right.
Eli Price (51:21.905)
Mm-hmm.
Eli Price (51:28.151)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (51:31.733)
Stack kind of reminded me in some ways of the way the, I think it was the president or whoever in the, Dr. Strangelove, like kind of like, you know, everything's completely bonkers and crazy. We got, you know, tanks through the streets, dog fights in the sky. And I'm just, I just want to watch Dumbo, man. I guess there's something that's really all I want to do. So he was great. He captures that really well, but I didn't, it's interesting to think about the other people who.
Eli Price (51:39.626)
Yeah.
Eli Price (51:47.05)
Uh huh.
Eli Price (51:51.396)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (52:00.453)
could have played the role too. So yeah.
Eli Price (52:01.702)
Yeah, yeah, well it's funny because there's actually a character that is like, um, that Spielberg did cast, uh, kind of wanting to either like parody or do, um, some like homage to, uh, Dr. Strangelove, which was Slim Pickens, um, who played Hollis P. Wood. Um, and so Spielberg, yeah, um, which I pulled it up just to make sure, but he plays, um, in
Zachary Lee (52:19.137)
Oh, interesting. Okay. Yep. That's right. Yep. That's the guy. Yep. That's great.
Eli Price (52:31.51)
Dr. Strangelove, he plays Major King Kong. Um, yeah, really funny. Um, yeah, Slim Pickens plays Hollis Wood. Um, which the idea for that name was suggested by Brian De Palma, who was friends with Spielberg. Um, you know, he was like, oh, you know, they're, they're wanting to go to Hollywood. Why don't you have a character named Hollis Wood? And then you can like do like a whole who's on first routine, which is
Zachary Lee (52:35.921)
It's so funny.
Zachary Lee (52:57.93)
Yeah.
Eli Price (52:58.486)
You know, ends up in the movie where he's like, where's Hollywood? He's like, I'm right here, you know? Yeah. Uh-huh. And so, and he actually was originally not even having any speaking lines. Spielberg just wanted them to kind of pay homage to Strange Love, but then they kind of do some rewriting and expand that role a bit, um, you know, and end up having him sitting on the toilet as Christopher Lee's
Zachary Lee (53:02.925)
That's right. Oh, that's funny. Yeah. That was a good bit.
Zachary Lee (53:15.929)
the strength of.
Eli Price (53:27.414)
characters like shouting at him and like...
Zachary Lee (53:29.705)
Yep, yep. I really, it's one of those things where like, I want to know what set was like, you know? I mean, just like seeing like, all these bodies that are there and like, I know you'll, you'll get to Kurosawa's favorite actor later, but it's just like, what directing those like, that cramps, you know, I don't know, it's just like, it just seems insane, you know? Like, like you said, it like carries the ambiance of the energy that was put into it, you know?
Eli Price (53:36.635)
Yeah.
Eli Price (53:40.675)
Yeah.
Eli Price (53:46.405)
Mm-hmm.
Eli Price (53:50.784)
I don't know.
Eli Price (53:58.478)
Yeah, and I mean, you know, like I said, Christopher Lee is playing the German character, the one German in the movie, Captain Wolfgang von Kleinschmidt, which is, you know, which is something. Of course, you know, you've got to cast the British actor to play the European character. And so that makes sense. Kind of standard practice in those days.
Zachary Lee (54:03.887)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (54:09.073)
Mm-hmm.
Zachary Lee (54:20.561)
Of course. Yeah.
Eli Price (54:26.602)
Um, still, I feel like it still is sometimes. Um, uh, but yeah, but yeah, like you said, the other, he's on the, the submarine, the Japanese submarine with, um, Commander Akiro Mitamura, um, who was played by Toshiro Mifune, um, who, um, Mifune is like, he was like, he was a, a very like, um, go-to actor for.
Zachary Lee (54:41.847)
Yep.
Yeah, that's right.
Eli Price (54:55.798)
Akira Kurosawa in his movies. I'm trying to pull up his IMDB, but yeah, I mean, just like, I mean, I can just go down the list. I mean, he's in Seven Samurai, Rashomon, High and Low, Yajimbo, Throne of Blood, Hidden Fortress, Sanjuro, Redbeard. I mean, just like a ton of great Akira Kurosawa movies. Yeah, but I mean, Mifune is a great actor.
Zachary Lee (55:19.284)
Yeah.
Eli Price (55:25.922)
Um, so I mean, that's a huge get to get, you know, uh, a well-respected Japanese actor to play this part. Um, and he did not disappoint as far as like taking charge. He, he, he actually like changes some of the details in the Japanese sequences. Um, and then he, he basically like a lot of the Japanese extras were just kind of like doing their own thing, not working well. And he.
Zachary Lee (55:29.669)
Totally.
Eli Price (55:55.818)
went to the Spielberg and was like, Hey, I'm going to take charge of the Japanese actors. And so it was like, okay. And he like goes up, I think one of the guys in the making of said he like, goes up and like slaps one of them. And like, just like starts like, basically, like, y'all, I'm directing you now, you're gonna listen to me. And they're all like, they all like stand out attention at that point. Like, he like, demanded their respect and
Zachary Lee (56:16.93)
Alright.
That's right, they listen.
Zachary Lee (56:24.421)
That's... yeah.
Eli Price (56:25.766)
Yeah, which is like when someone gets slapped by Toshiro Mifune, it's like, okay, he's in charge now. Yeah.
Zachary Lee (56:34.245)
He is in charge, yeah. It's so funny to think, yeah, there's like multiple layers of direction and, you know, going on in these scenes and the collaboration that's required for something like that. So, yeah.
Eli Price (56:40.245)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, it's really interesting. Um, we didn't talk about uh, tim mathison plays, um a character captain lumis burkhead who is spending the movie um trying to uh You know You know have his Yeah, it he's uh, yeah, he's trying to have sex with um nancy allen's character donna stratton who?
Zachary Lee (56:52.725)
Oh yeah, that's right.
Zachary Lee (57:04.593)
Oh, this guy, see, this is one where I'm like looking at the names.
Eli Price (57:15.69)
um her thing is she can only like she can really only be turned on when they're in the air I guess in an airplane um was like which again this is something like we'll talk about later but like all these characters are like one note characters it's like this is this character's thing Nancy Allen's character she can only have sex if they're up in the air in an airplane um you know
Zachary Lee (57:25.902)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (57:36.504)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (57:41.73)
Yep.
It's very... I was like, cause seeing that I'm like, didn't... was it, was it David Cronenberg or something, like his movie where...
Eli Price (57:45.535)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (57:54.153)
it's about like car crashes or something like that. And people can only, they get aroused when there's like, I don't know, car crashes or something like that. I don't know. I think it's crash. Yeah, that's right. Sorry. Yeah. Crash. So it's just like, so, I mean, obviously like they're separated by, you know, lots of time, but it's just like funny. I don't even know if there's even a connection there, but I'm just like.
Eli Price (58:04.446)
Is it, I think, is that Crash? Yeah.
Eli Price (58:12.354)
Right.
Zachary Lee (58:18.993)
It's like I have all these other movies in my head as I'm watching this and I'm like, oh, it's making me think of this or it's making me think of that. Yeah, so.
Eli Price (58:19.551)
Yeah.
Eli Price (58:24.582)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's cool. I didn't I haven't seen that movie and I had forgot that was like part of the concept of that But yeah
Zachary Lee (58:32.533)
Yeah, I haven't seen I don't I'm like, maybe we've gotten enough getting aroused through being on a different vehicle for today in terms of films, I think. But yeah.
Eli Price (58:43.723)
Yeah. I mean, it's pretty wild. But yeah, so I didn't mention that. So the Bobby DeChico's character Wally and Diane Kay's character Betty are kind of like boy, have a boyfriend girlfriend thing going on. But then you have the introduction of Treat Williams, who apparently was a pretty good actor at the time who plays Corporal Chuck Stretch-Sitarsky.
Zachary Lee (59:01.913)
Yep.
Eli Price (59:09.046)
and talking about like their characters one notes so stretch actually gets two. I think one is he hates eggs and two is he's a rapist. So there's that character. That's all you need to know you know for his character. He hates eggs and he's basically a rapist for all intents and purposes. And I don't I just don't get it like
Zachary Lee (59:20.145)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (59:27.461)
Yep, exactly.
Zachary Lee (59:34.208)
Mm-hmm. Yep.
Eli Price (59:39.082)
Everything that he does because he's trying to steal the Betty character from Wally the whole movie, but like I mean it's just I mean for yeah for all intents and purposes like he's Raping her and sexually molesting her and it's just like I don't this is not funny
Zachary Lee (01:00:00.133)
Yeah. And it's just and that's where we get to the tone where it's like, you know, it's one of the main ways this is happening. You know, it's like there's this giant, you know, it's like set in this dance sequence, which like on theory should be fun. And like, there is some fun choreography. But when you step back, you're like, at the end of the day, it's like you have this character who's trying to force himself. You know, and like, it just makes the whole thing like.
Eli Price (01:00:04.963)
Mm-hmm.
Eli Price (01:00:13.367)
Yeah.
Eli Price (01:00:24.511)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (01:00:27.593)
Am I, I'm like, I want to enjoy this fun, well choreographed, like, where there's like all these extras and they're doing whatever and you're just like, what, who, who did not say no to, or like who approved it, like what's going on with this. So yeah, it was, yeah.
Eli Price (01:00:39.255)
Right.
Yeah. And it's, it's one of those things where it's like, you know, that happens in movies, like men forcing themselves on women's happens in movies. And it can even happen like in a kind of parody way where like, maybe there's some dark humor going on or there's some like, but this is like played as just straight screwball comedy and it just doesn't work in that tone. Like you were saying, it just,
Zachary Lee (01:01:06.015)
Mm-hmm.
Eli Price (01:01:11.242)
it comes off as kind of gross. Like really, like every time those two characters were like, he was like going after her, I was like, this is just gross. I don't like, I don't, you know, if you're laughing at this, if you're the kind of, if you're a person that laughs at this, like I'm calling you out. You're gross. Like if you think that's funny, you know.
Zachary Lee (01:01:13.621)
Yeah, yeah.
Zachary Lee (01:01:23.638)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (01:01:26.986)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (01:01:33.177)
Yeah. And it's one of it's like what you're saying with like the tone where you're just like what like how yeah, like if this was dark humor, like if it was played differently, you know, the overall tone. But it's like when you start, it's like you start the movie, you have, you know, this woman in a state of undress and it's like very male gay, you know, it's like that set the tone and then it just like kind of, you know what I mean? It's like
Eli Price (01:01:47.184)
Mm-hmm.
Eli Price (01:01:58.363)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Zachary Lee (01:02:02.377)
At every at every turn when you could do something different, there's this point of like, well, actually just keep that same energy throughout and I'm like, oh, yeah, no, so it was it's there.
Eli Price (01:02:08.255)
Yeah.
Yeah, it was rough. Yeah, just I'll rattle through the rest of these casts. Lorraine Gary, a big actress plays Joan Douglas, the mom character of the little family I was mentioning. There's a little brother too, kind of they don't really like come much into play.
Zachary Lee (01:02:18.349)
Oh yeah, for sure.
Eli Price (01:02:35.094)
the movie. But yeah, you also have the pair of Murray Hamilton playing Claude Cruman and Eddie Deason playing Herbie Kazimski as the two guys sitting in the Ferris wheel, you know, kind of doing some patrol of the coast. Murray Hamilton, he's kind of like a returning, he's kind of like, I guess, an homage, another homage actor to
Zachary Lee (01:02:53.965)
Yeah.
Eli Price (01:03:03.958)
Jaws. He plays the mayor in Jaws. I don't know if you remember that character. So that's another, I guess, like homage character. And then Eddie Deason, he kind of plays this like wacky dude that has a ventriloquist dummy. Which I think I remember in the making of documentary, Spielberg mentioned that Mary Hamilton told him like, oh, I'm going to have no problem playing
Zachary Lee (01:03:11.114)
Yeah, yeah.
Zachary Lee (01:03:21.317)
Yeah, that's right.
Eli Price (01:03:32.694)
gets on my last nerves talking about Eddie Deason.
Zachary Lee (01:03:34.777)
That's so funny. You're like, you're like, there's not even, yeah, it's not even acting. It's just, you're seeing my live reaction to this. That's right. Oh, that's so interesting.
Eli Price (01:03:42.797)
Yeah.
Yeah. Warren Oates makes an appearance as Colonel Madman Maddox. He's pretty briefly in the movie. But yeah, I mean, you also have people like John Candy, who's barely like, you see him a few times. He's not in the movie a whole lot. I guess this is kind of before his career really breaks out. But.
Zachary Lee (01:03:54.969)
Mm-hmm.
Zachary Lee (01:04:00.75)
Yeah...
Eli Price (01:04:15.186)
Yeah, Perry Lang, J. Patrick McNamara is in the movie. Frank McRae plays another one of the tank guys. Him and John Candy and Dan Aykroyd, they're all these guys rolling around in a tank. Yeah.
Zachary Lee (01:04:19.557)
Got it, yep.
Zachary Lee (01:04:30.458)
Yeah, it's like what you were saying before too, like there's so many, like even when you're naming, I'm just like, wait, what role are they playing again in this? So yeah, you're right. Mm hmm. Yep.
Eli Price (01:04:34.634)
Yeah, exactly. Joe Flaherty plays this like nightclub owner where they have like the Jitterbug contest. I can't even remember his name. It's like, I don't even remember. It just doesn't even matter. That's the thing. And then Patti LuPone is kind of a woman that's there with him who I didn't write this down. I wrote her name down because I'm pretty sure
Zachary Lee (01:04:51.961)
Minnesotans, yeah.
Eli Price (01:05:02.998)
She was like a relative of Spielberg's or something. But there was a lady that's like talking to the Joe Flaherty character that's like a, related to Spielberg and he just like cast her because why not sort of thing. But yeah, just like a huge stacked cast, just like name after name after name. And just like, I don't know, like.
Zachary Lee (01:05:16.816)
Yeah.
Eli Price (01:05:32.258)
It's too many characters. It's way too many characters. You can't, like, if you watch this movie in preparation for this episode, like, first of all, like, I'm sorry. But second of all, like, you are totally aware of how impossible it is to keep track of who's who, where they are, what they're doing. Yeah.
Zachary Lee (01:05:35.707)
It is...
Zachary Lee (01:05:46.202)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (01:05:58.211)
Right.
Eli Price (01:06:00.266)
It's just really unfortunate that all of this talent, like the sum of all the parts is just like, totally like incomprehensible.
Zachary Lee (01:06:12.049)
Yeah. It's fascinating too. I don't know if you've felt this, Eli, but like, you know, I think for the most part, it's like, okay, it's a lot, but like, I can kind of divide out who's playing who by the certain sequences or, you know, it's like, you have the club scenes, you have the, you know, the
Eli Price (01:06:23.278)
Sure.
Zachary Lee (01:06:31.397)
the planes you have, the submarine. But it's like, once they try to do it all together and it's like everyone's on, you know, it's an everything everywhere all at one situation where everything's there. That's kind of where I'm like, any even thread of like, I could distinguish who's who or who's playing who, like just gets lost. When, you know, to their credit, they're trying to like make it all make sense. But it's like, once again.
Eli Price (01:06:37.172)
Yeah.
Eli Price (01:06:43.692)
Mm-hmm.
Eli Price (01:06:47.762)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (01:06:57.441)
a better script could have probably like either cut out some of the characters or really taken better advantage of the talent that they had to make more memorable characters, you know, even in that sense.
Eli Price (01:07:07.398)
Yeah, yeah, it's like, it's kind of just whiplash the way it ends up in the edit. You're just like, you're picking up character threads and dropping them like in the middle of something happening and going somewhere else. And yeah, it's just impossible to keep track of it all. But yeah, let's talk a little bit about the production because
This is where there are some like interesting things that like there was some, I guess, good stuff going on with this movie that I thought was interesting or cool. The production design was actually like not bad, pretty good production design. They did a ton of work with miniatures, recreating Hollywood Boulevard with like
Zachary Lee (01:07:57.703)
Mm-hmm.
Zachary Lee (01:08:03.534)
Yeah.
Eli Price (01:08:06.126)
cardboard and small cars for the plane aerial pursuit, which those planes are like miniatures when they're going through Hollywood Boulevard, which is pretty amazing. There's, oh, this is something that I wanted to point out. You have the gag with the clothes hanger in this movie, where Christopher Lee's German character pulls out.
Zachary Lee (01:08:17.483)
Ah, that's cool. Yeah.
Eli Price (01:08:34.762)
I can't remember if this is in the movie or if it's an outtake, something that got cut for the final release. But there, at least at one point, there was, he pulls out like the Slim Pickens characters on the toilet and he pulls out this like thing that looks like nunchucks kind of. And then it turns out it's like this like weird hanger for his clothes. And Spielberg reuses that in Raiders with the...
Zachary Lee (01:08:40.646)
Mm-hmm.
Zachary Lee (01:08:54.851)
Oh, okay.
Zachary Lee (01:09:02.574)
interesting.
Eli Price (01:09:03.258)
German character there, the German antagonist. But yeah, he said it didn't really get any laughs when people saw it. So he was like, I want to reuse that gag. They built a miniature of the Pearside Fair with the ferris wheel and everything. And the ferris wheel crashing into the water is done with a miniature. There's a miniature of the sub.
Zachary Lee (01:09:17.029)
Right.
Zachary Lee (01:09:29.91)
Yeah.
Eli Price (01:09:33.186)
for some sequences, there's just like a ton of miniature work and it all looks like really good to be honest. Some of that comes from some of the things that Fraker, the DP did, which is one of the things he did was he used a lot of smoke for texture and then it kind of masks like the unreal feeling that you can sometimes get from miniatures.
Zachary Lee (01:09:33.597)
Mm-hmm.
Zachary Lee (01:09:58.915)
Oh, yeah, that's right.
Eli Price (01:10:00.862)
And then like, you know, for like the Hollywood Boulevard stuff, like he did some perspective, um, shooting to like give illusion of bigger city, um, sort of thing. Um, yeah. And then like the bigger sets too, or just like, like they're really good sets. Like you have the main big set that's like out in front of the, um, the theater, the cinema where the big riot happens. And like, it's a.
Like it's honestly like a really well made set. I think it has a lot going on, but like it's, it looks really good. Um, in my opinion, at least, um, but yeah.
Zachary Lee (01:10:45.601)
Yeah, no, it is really cool. I feel like, yeah, just like the life and like it's, that's one of those things like I'm just so curious like what it must have been like to be there and be surrounded with all these, you know, props and sets and everything, you know, while it was all going down.
Eli Price (01:10:57.578)
Yeah.
Yeah, one of the other cool things with the camera work, the fraker, again, the DP, he brought in something called the Luma Crane from France, which I don't know if it was like the first American movie to use this technology, but it was definitely one of the very first. But it's basically like this huge like.
Zachary Lee (01:11:14.137)
Hmm.
Zachary Lee (01:11:21.059)
Mm-hmm.
Zachary Lee (01:11:24.399)
Yeah.
Eli Price (01:11:28.718)
crane that goes up to 50 foot that allows that you know the camera is mounted on the end of it you have controls you know at the base of the crane I suppose and you can like swing it around and get 360 shots you can like move the crane very easily like in and out of like windows and through stuff and it ends up like
Basically, they end up using this as like one of the main cameras for the movie is mounted on this Lumicrane and so it makes for some like really cool shots. I think you know, so Think about like the shots and like when the house so when he's like firing the anti aircraft gun at the submarine and he's shooting through the house and Like the cameras like kind of going through the holes in the walls Like that was done like with the lumicrane
Zachary Lee (01:12:00.145)
Interesting, okay.
Zachary Lee (01:12:07.259)
Hmm.
Zachary Lee (01:12:16.482)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (01:12:22.643)
Mm-hmm.
Eli Price (01:12:25.75)
Um, and then you have like shots like in the jitterbug contest where you get that really, really actually like really good 360 shot kind of where the camera's kind of like floating up above everyone as they're dancing around them. Um, the loomer crane made that sort of shot possible. Um, and so I think that's like a really cool thing about this movie. Um, it's I guess like trying to find some silver lining to it.
Zachary Lee (01:12:25.765)
Fascinating.
Zachary Lee (01:12:35.27)
Mm-hmm.
Zachary Lee (01:12:55.249)
Six seconds.
Eli Price (01:12:55.822)
is like getting a new like technology into this into Hollywood and um getting some cool different shots that haven't been able to be captured in that way before um so yeah I thought that was really cool um have you did you pull up a picture of it the luma crane like get some context yeah I had to look up the a picture of it too
Zachary Lee (01:13:17.589)
Yeah, I was trying to like find it right here because I feel like exactly
Eli Price (01:13:24.534)
If you're listening, pull up Google and just search Luma. I think it's, is it L-O-U-M-A or is it L-O-O-M-A? Yeah, just look up Luma Crane and it'll pop up some pictures of it. It's really cool. It's a really cool technology, which I assume they're still using that sort of, if not that exact kind of crane, probably similar.
Zachary Lee (01:13:29.269)
This is crazy. Yeah, that's dope.
L-O-U-M-A, yeah.
Eli Price (01:13:53.902)
cranes to it in movies today, I would assume. I mean, it feels like something that's still very practical to use for, you know, certain shots that you want to capture.
Zachary Lee (01:14:03.299)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (01:14:08.673)
And I didn't realize, I think was it Jean-Marie Lavalu, the French, I think he was the pioneer for it, I was just reading it here, I think he passed away at, and like at 70, I think it was in 2022, so not too long ago, but it's like his name's forever tied with this film, you know, with making it happen, so yeah.
Eli Price (01:14:15.802)
Okay. Oh yeah.
Eli Price (01:14:21.038)
Gotcha. Yeah. Pretty recently. Yeah. That's one of those guys that like probably was in like the in memoriam at the Oscars that like you would never recognize, but like made this huge innovation that like, yeah, really cool. I wish they would do the in memoriam a little bit differently for the Oscars for the, for the telecast. But, um,
Zachary Lee (01:14:35.382)
100% yeah.
Zachary Lee (01:14:40.136)
100 percent.
Eli Price (01:14:49.718)
But I do like appreciate that they like show all the names, uh, even like the ones that people don't really know because those, they, like a lot of those people are doing like really important stuff that like you just would never know about unless you looked it up like for something like this. Um, but yeah, yeah. So Luma crane was a cool thing. Um, they did, uh, one of the things I thought for as far as like the,
Zachary Lee (01:15:07.862)
Yeah, yeah.
Eli Price (01:15:19.778)
Camera work, which is something that like it's probably like a it's it seems like a very Spielberg idea is There was this outtake which you can see in the making of documentary And I think also like in the deleted scenes on the on the DVD or blu-ray but it's during the jitterbug dance kind of where he's chasing or stretches chasing Wally around and there's a part where Wally like
jumps off the stage and onto a long table and he like kind of tap dances down the table. Well that's like an actual dancer that they had, because you can only like see like his knees down kind of. And so they have like an actual dancer like tap dance down the table. But Spielberg didn't want to cut away, but he wanted like the, he wanted the Chico to drop down as Wally off the end of the table. And so they had like
Zachary Lee (01:15:58.959)
Oh, interesting.
Eli Price (01:16:17.686)
they had the Chico sitting up on this thing up above the frame of the camera. And so the stand-in that was doing the tap dancing jumps up out of the frame. And then the Chico drops down back into frame as Wally so that they didn't have to cut. And I was like, oh, that's a really cool Spielberg idea.
Zachary Lee (01:16:35.313)
Thank you.
Zachary Lee (01:16:40.819)
Uh.
Eli Price (01:16:43.626)
that we didn't get to see because it didn't make the final cut of the movie. Um, so, uh, yeah, maybe you can look that up on YouTube if you're, if you're interested, um, if you're, you know, listening and interested in seeing that, um, how I guess you would maybe look up like. 1941 Spielberg outtakes or deleted scenes or something, or you can just get the, I wouldn't recommend buying the disc like I did. Um, I try to like buy all the blue rays for the series I cover.
Zachary Lee (01:16:43.989)
Right. Cause... Yeah. That's unfortunate.
Zachary Lee (01:16:53.783)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (01:17:02.489)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Eli Price (01:17:14.358)
I would just recommend maybe checking it out at the library. And don't use your money on it. It was pretty cheap on Amazon. So I'm happy about that.
Zachary Lee (01:17:18.257)
It's like... On it.
Zachary Lee (01:17:27.257)
Right, yeah. Well, I'm curious, did you get the directors cut by chance and what you get? Because I didn't, yeah. It was, okay.
Eli Price (01:17:31.634)
So the director's cut was on the disc. I did not watch it though. I watched, I try to watch the theatrical version and I don't know if I could have taken another 20 minutes.
Zachary Lee (01:17:38.713)
Yeah, that's fair.
Zachary Lee (01:17:43.729)
I was about, I'm like, dang, I'm like, allegedly it makes it better. I'm like, is it going to redeem all the things we just talked about? It better be like a messianic 20 minutes there, you know? I don't know what's going on, but yeah.
Eli Price (01:17:49.71)
Uhhhh...
Eli Price (01:17:54.058)
Yeah Yeah, 20 minutes is not gonna fix the huge problems with this movie Yeah The the last 20 minutes they are like we were just kidding wouldn't know we didn't mean anything that we said in the first two hours of the movie
Zachary Lee (01:18:03.561)
I know, it becomes all of a sudden more like politically correct. It's like, whoa, okay, you know, I'm like, okay.
Zachary Lee (01:18:14.529)
I don't... Exactly. We really, we're not misogynistic, cruelly. Don't, don't, don't take us as this, yeah.
Eli Price (01:18:20.238)
He he yeah. Yeah. So the special effects, the special effects were another like really cool thing about the movie. Spielberg loved working with A.D. Flowers, who we mentioned earlier. And yeah, there's a there's a ton of cool special effects stuff they do like. So there's the scene where Tim Matheson and Nancy Allen's characters are in the plane and it's she's doing like spins and they're like.
Zachary Lee (01:18:27.706)
Mm-hmm.
Eli Price (01:18:50.346)
spinning around and you know Matheson's characters like going up and down in the plane as it's spinning. They did like a Fred Astaire and swing time style thing where they had like the little plane like set spinning actually spinning I guess like on a big gimbal or something for that scene which is that sort of like practical effects thing. I always love that sort of stuff. You know it reminds me of
Zachary Lee (01:19:10.33)
Mm.
Zachary Lee (01:19:16.965)
Yeah.
Eli Price (01:19:19.734)
You know, I mentioned in Close Encounters, there's a scene where, uh, there's a, like a encounter with the UFO and while, um, he's in his truck and stuff starts kind of like floating around in his truck and it's just basically they just like, we're lifting the truck up, like on a, on a lift, like vertically. So to give the illusion of like gravity being strange, um, just like practical effects kind of stuff like that.
I just always appreciate that. Yeah, and I already mentioned the miniatures of the planes. So like that was one thing that Flowers like kind of innovated typically like stuff like that was shot with like the planes attached to like these wires and stuff. And, but they, Spielberg really wanted the planes to be doing like those rolls.
Zachary Lee (01:19:50.933)
100% yeah.
Eli Price (01:20:14.038)
You know, the plane kind of spinning around as it goes down Hollywood Boulevard. So, A.D. Flowers like rigged up this new kind of wiring technique where he could have the plane like spin as they, you know, flew down Hollywood Boulevard. So that's a cool like little probably underappreciated innovation. You know, today it would just be CGI'd, no problem. But yeah.
Zachary Lee (01:20:16.291)
Yep.
Zachary Lee (01:20:40.499)
Right, right.
Eli Price (01:20:42.802)
I think the miniature work looks really good in this movie. Yeah, they, the, so you have the captain, Belushi's character Kelso, his plane with the like teeth, you know, the teeth or whatever on the nose, it crashes in the middle of Hollywood Boulevard. They basically, they built this like huge ramp that basically like, it looked like it was probably like 50 feet long.
Zachary Lee (01:20:58.374)
Yeah, yeah.
Eli Price (01:21:12.354)
And they launched the plane off of it with some sort of like, I don't know, pulley launch system sort of thing. Maybe even like similar to what they use on like aircraft carriers to like give planes momentum to take off. But yeah, they launched it off of this ramp to have it like crash into the street. So another great like practical effects. They had to do it in two shoots though. They had to like.
The first shoot, something went wrong. And so they had to like reset up everything and try again the next day. Yeah. One thing that didn't make the movie was something that when Spielberg at one point brought in Chuck Jones, who if you don't recognize that name, just Looney Tunes, he's the Looney Tunes guy.
Zachary Lee (01:21:47.869)
Oh gosh. That's tough.
Zachary Lee (01:22:05.226)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Eli Price (01:22:06.994)
And so he wanted that kind of Looney Tunes quality some in the movie. And so Chuck Jones was like, uh, he kind of did some, I guess you would say advising or, um, whatever for the movie. And, uh, he, he suggested that like a torpedo makes it onto the streets of Hollywood and it's like chasing around people, um, and Spielberg wanted to do that, um, but just like, they did do some tests with a torpedo on some tracks that they built.
But then Spopo was like, Oh, I want it chasing a motorcycle. And then a truck passes by and all this. And they're like, okay, like what you want to do with it? Like it's impossible. Like we can't like the torpedoes on tracks. Like we can't have stuff going in and out of the tracks. Like it won't work. So, um, so that doesn't end up making it. Um, but yeah, uh, flowers at one point in the documentary, it was like,
Zachary Lee (01:22:52.93)
Right.
Eli Price (01:23:04.746)
making special effects for miniatures is like a nightmare because you're trying to make explosions look to scale. So how do you make like a miniature explosion? And I was like, oh, that's a good point. I never like thought about that before, but yeah, you've got to like scale the explosions down to the right size too. Yeah.
Zachary Lee (01:23:14.632)
Oh.
Zachary Lee (01:23:22.082)
Right.
Zachary Lee (01:23:29.041)
That's crazy to think about.
Eli Price (01:23:31.302)
And so they made it work Spielberg had this idea to use like some air cannons and flash bulbs So they had like these little air cannons that would like spit up, you know debris and glitter and whatnot And then they would simultaneously have these like flash bulbs of like orange and blue or whatever Kind of go off to give like the explosive explosion effect And I think it works pretty well
And then, you know, the last big special effects thing was the house rolling off the cliff, which was very obviously a one shot take. They had one shot to get it. But yeah, they so they had the whole house on rollers and just rolled it off the cliff and had, you know, you got to you got to capture it or you don't or you don't get it sort of thing. Yeah. No.
Zachary Lee (01:24:04.421)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (01:24:10.711)
Yup.
Zachary Lee (01:24:24.521)
Yeah, it's not like the ramp, you know, and we know second one here. It's just the one or it's done. Yeah
Eli Price (01:24:30.398)
Yeah, it's the house is gone after it falls off the cliff. Yeah, just a wild set. You have one of the funny things on the set that ends up making it in the film is you have Belushi when there's one point where he's climbing back into his plane. And he gets up on the wing and then like falls off onto like one of the guys, like standing by the plane.
Zachary Lee (01:24:35.824)
right.
Eli Price (01:24:59.518)
And that was like a total accident. He just like, he legit fell on this guy and, um, they were rolling and Spielberg was like, Oh, we'll keep that in the film. That was great. Um, but yeah. Um, and then just like, not only are they like, uh, kind of spitballing like kitchen sink writing this movie. Um, sorry, hold on. Let me, um, I just knocked.
Zachary Lee (01:25:00.117)
Oh yeah.
Zachary Lee (01:25:24.239)
Right.
I'll hear you.
Eli Price (01:25:28.63)
Knock my water, I need to soak that up real quick.
Zachary Lee (01:25:30.857)
Oh no, you're kidding. No, dude, do what you gotta do.
Eli Price (01:25:55.074)
Sorry about that. Yeah, I like kicked my water over. It was just a little bit though, so no worries. All right.
Zachary Lee (01:25:56.493)
No you're good. You're trolling us. Yeah, no you're good.
Eli Price (01:26:06.214)
Yeah, like not only are they like kitchen sink writing this kind of movie with gags, just throwing everything up against the wall, but they're like, you know, adjusting it as they go to like, they didn't even have like a solid ending. They kind of like played around a lot with the ending. They had a point where like everyone goes off to war at the end of the movie. Um, and they didn't feel like that was right.
Zachary Lee (01:26:31.42)
Mm-hmm.
Eli Price (01:26:34.51)
Uh, they had, um, an ending where Wally is like the Wally character is like one of the ones dropping the bombs on Japan. And it's like his revenge for them messing up his chance to win the jitterbug contest or something. It's like, I'm glad they didn't go down that road. Uh, that would have been horrible. Um, and, uh, there was an ending where.
Zachary Lee (01:26:35.115)
Interesting.
Eli Price (01:27:02.698)
Stillwell orders the Japanese like son to be painted on the plane that went down in the tarpets. So to make it out that it was a Japanese plane and not one of their own. So that it makes like the, the John Belushi character out to be a hero.
Zachary Lee (01:27:16.121)
Oh, interesting.
Zachary Lee (01:27:21.101)
Right. See, and that would have been like, and you know, when you're talking about like dark humor and like all these elements, it's like, you kind of see a parts of that in this too, you know? Yeah.
Eli Price (01:27:22.328)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Eli Price (01:27:29.106)
Yeah. So none of that ends up in the movie. They, they, what would the end movie ends, you know, with the house falling off the cliff, um, as he's like putting the Christmas wreath on the door, um, the Ned Beatty dad character. Uh, and, uh, that was originally supposed to happen like during the gunfight. Um, but they end up, um, kind of in there, they're figuring out the end decided, oh, that would actually make a good ending.
Zachary Lee (01:27:33.286)
here.
Eli Price (01:27:59.306)
Um, to the movie at one point, I think they actually were planning on having everyone, like all the characters there when it happened at the end. Um, and they ended up cutting that part out. Um, but if you look at like the, you have like the big 360 helicopter shot, um, that the movie ends with. And if you like look real close, you can see like the, uh, slim Pickens character there and the Christopher Lee character, like you can see them like really little.
Zachary Lee (01:28:17.85)
Yeah.
Eli Price (01:28:28.374)
kind of dancing around where the house was. And that's because like they had originally shot that when they thought all the characters were gonna be there at the end. So that's interesting. Yeah, really the only other thing as far as production goes is like the music. The, you know, the Williams score. I.
Zachary Lee (01:28:29.969)
versions. Yeah.
Eli Price (01:28:54.67)
I didn't think it was that anything that special. I've heard, I was listening to some other people talk about this movie and, uh, they really liked the score. Um, I thought it was fine. Um, you know, really the only thing that stood out and kind of was stuck in my head, uh, for the few days where I was like watching the movie and then the making of documentary was like, like the little March, um, kind of kept getting stuck in my head and, uh,
Zachary Lee (01:29:01.585)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (01:29:20.951)
Yeah.
Eli Price (01:29:24.078)
Spielberg actually said it was like his favorite march John Williams ever made, even more like than the Raiders march, which I think is like a very hot take from Spielberg. But yeah, the score is fine. It's a John Williams score. I didn't...
Zachary Lee (01:29:32.903)
Oh, interesting. Okay.
Yeah, I know.
Eli Price (01:29:48.61)
Yeah, you know One of the other interesting things was Williams For the jitterbug contest There's a song Called sing by Benny Goodman. It was like a really popular song Like at the time of the setting of the movie and Just kind of like a you know, like a big band like jazzy kind of song that like
Zachary Lee (01:30:04.601)
Mm-hmm.
Eli Price (01:30:18.154)
Everybody liked dancing too. So they rehearsed to that song. Um, and they ended up not using it. And John Williams wrote kind of like, uh, somewhat of a parody of it, I guess, called swing, swing. Um, so I thought that was like a fun fact about something, uh, some of the music in the movie. Um, but yeah, um, they, they finished shooting. They have, uh, I saw two different ways of seeing it.
Zachary Lee (01:30:18.961)
video.
Zachary Lee (01:30:38.597)
down.
Eli Price (01:30:48.026)
equivalent of 186 miles of film or over a million feet of film shot. Um, so, uh, there was like a brief part of the making of documentary where you could see like the pain on editor Michael Kahn's face as he reminisced on. Uh, the painful experience of editing this movie.
Zachary Lee (01:31:11.945)
Yeah, that's a lot. I thought it was like minutes or something and that would still be a long movie, you know, but I'm like, oh gosh, that's a lot.
Eli Price (01:31:15.659)
Yeah.
Eli Price (01:31:20.246)
No, yeah. 186 miles of film is what I, you know, it's probably give or take, but I mean, it's wild. So yeah, they did a lot of categorizing and cutting and just like, I'm sure, you know, when you have that much footage, I bet it's just like.
Zachary Lee (01:31:25.025)
I don't even wanna, yeah, that's...
Eli Price (01:31:45.026)
There's no way you can make a good movie out of that. I was trying to edit all that together. But yeah, you know, we got what we got.
Zachary Lee (01:31:56.845)
Yep, we did. Yep, that's right. It's very.
Eli Price (01:32:02.07)
So let's talk about the release. So the budget, I mentioned the budget was originally about 11 million, Spielberg was like, I'm not making it if it's over 11 million. Well, over time it grew into 31 and a half million dollar budget, which at the time was one of the most expensive movies ever, which I didn't realize until I read that. But yeah, they released it.
Zachary Lee (01:32:24.989)
Oh yeah.
Eli Price (01:32:32.33)
They did a premiere in October of 79. Um, it was a two hour and 26 minute version of the movie, um, that premiered at a theater in Dallas, which is the same, um, it's the same place. He premiered Jaws and Close Encounters, I think. Um, uh, and so he wanted. Yeah. Yeah, that's what he thought. Um, but, uh, unfortunately it was a very.
Zachary Lee (01:32:50.321)
Oh, home court advantage maybe, he thought.
Zachary Lee (01:32:58.317)
Yeah, it's really funny.
Eli Price (01:33:01.37)
embarrassing, unhappy experience for him. He recalls there being very little laughter. And he was looking around at one point and people were like covering their ears, which is never a good sign. And so, yeah, he mentioned that. Sheinberg, who was like a big person in his life, a big producer, kind of Hollywood studio head.
Zachary Lee (01:33:03.456)
Eeeh...
Eli Price (01:33:30.222)
Kind of came up to him afterwards and like patted him on the back and reassured him that like maybe they could find a good movie in there somewhere Yeah Milius said ackroyd and Belushi said like screw everyone if they can't you know take a joke kind of that attitude about the movie but yeah, it was it was just a unhappy experience all around Zemeckis even was like
Zachary Lee (01:33:49.069)
That's... Uh-huh.
Eli Price (01:33:58.366)
said he felt responsible for the result. Yeah, it's...
Eli Price (01:34:08.51)
Yeah, it's something. They ended up going back and cutting 17 minutes or so, which I think they cut more than that. Because if it was two hours and 26 minutes, the version that you end up with, I think, is like a little, is it a little, maybe it is like just over two hours. So maybe 17 minutes is right. That isn't, let's see.
Zachary Lee (01:34:26.825)
Yeah. Well, I saw, I think because I did a rental and it was like a little under two hours from, if I remember correctly, but maybe they cut out more. Yeah.
Eli Price (01:34:34.602)
Yeah, that's what I thought. Yeah, 118 minutes. So yeah, they cut more than 17 minutes, but that's what I read somewhere. So, whoever wrote that they cut 17 minutes, you're wrong. Unless you are wrong about it being two, two hours and 26 minutes. Maybe it was a little less than that. But yeah, they cut that. And apparently it becomes even less intelligible after they cut that.
Zachary Lee (01:34:42.294)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (01:34:46.785)
Yeah, exactly.
Zachary Lee (01:34:50.493)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Eli Price (01:35:03.978)
that bit out. But yeah, they have another disastrous... go ahead.
Zachary Lee (01:35:06.561)
Yeah. Do you?
Zachary Lee (01:35:10.625)
Oh, I was wondering, do you know who, cause I know you said Zemeckis felt responsible. Do you know who, I'm assuming was it Spielberg who just chose to cut the minutes or do you know what the editing, what do you have any, I'm just curious cause I'm like, especially.
Eli Price (01:35:15.329)
Yeah.
Eli Price (01:35:22.73)
I don't, I think it was Spielberg just taking note of like, okay, obviously like there's a lot of stuff here that people aren't laughing at. And so they kind of like adjusted to try to, Spielberg is actually like up to this point in his career, at least like pretty good at trimming the fat. Like when he, well, like when he does a screening of something and like it doesn't work.
Zachary Lee (01:35:34.202)
Yeah.
Eli Price (01:35:51.33)
He like change, he's like, oh, I'll change it. You know, some directors are like, oh, this is how I made it, that's how it's gonna be. But Spielberg is pretty like flexible as far as that goes. Like if something doesn't work, he'll change it, which I appreciate. He kind of like, you know, he wants to do what's right for his audience, I guess, sort of thing. But yeah, they do,
Zachary Lee (01:35:56.389)
He's good about that.
Zachary Lee (01:36:06.309)
That's right. Yeah. To sure.
Eli Price (01:36:21.41)
They do have another disastrous premiere in LA in December of 79, just like one week before the film went into wide release. The press shot down the film completely. And I think I read Spielberg totally skipped out on that premiere and was in Japan with Amy Irving. And I think even they announced while they were in Japan that they were engaged and going to be married, which was shortly after called off.
Zachary Lee (01:36:48.849)
..
Eli Price (01:36:51.898)
Um, and, uh, yeah, yeah. Uh, reception of the movie was not great. Um, the LA times called it Spielberg's Pearl Harbor, which is, uh, I guess, dark comedy film criticism. Um,
Zachary Lee (01:36:52.435)
Oh boy.
Zachary Lee (01:36:56.197)
That's tough.
Zachary Lee (01:37:00.318)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (01:37:06.938)
Oh man.
Zachary Lee (01:37:11.629)
I get it. Yeah, they're like, this is what you should have, you know, they're like, we just gave you an example of what your movie should be. That's brutal. Oh, man.
Eli Price (01:37:21.822)
You're right. Yeah, brutal. A lot of...
Zachary Lee (01:37:25.829)
Dang, LA time- okay, shoot, LA times, don't get them mad about it going forward, that's funny. Yeah.
Eli Price (01:37:35.139)
Yeah, Bob Gale said in the making of that a lot of critics were really nasty to Spielberg about this one. And that's probably one example of that. I heard a clip of the Siskel and Ebert talking about it. I haven't listened to them enough to be able to recognize whose voice is who. I didn't watch a video.
Zachary Lee (01:37:41.745)
Hmm.
Zachary Lee (01:37:50.021)
Yeah.
Eli Price (01:38:03.542)
Basically Animal House Goes to War, which makes sense because you got, you know, Belushi and whatnot. And This this is a quote that one of them said it he was going for non-stop slapstick comedy But only hits the non-stop part Which I was like, oh yeah, that's a good one
Zachary Lee (01:38:07.669)
over.
Zachary Lee (01:38:20.969)
for it. Yep. Yeah. There you go. Hey, you know, at the very least, it got it gave us some good zingers, you know, to talk about there's nothing quite like getting film critics going when they can they can have a fun they can, you know, throw a jab in there. So yeah.
Eli Price (01:38:32.904)
Yeah.
Eli Price (01:38:41.39)
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, but here's the crazy part. This was not necessarily a commercial failure. So you had like a 31 and a half million dollar budget. It basically made that back domestically, which I think I think if you take that alone into account and in that like domestically, it only made back its budget. Like you could consider that a flop.
But it did actually pretty well internationally. It made like another 60 million or so internationally. Which, so I mean, it ended up with a total worldwide box office of around 90 million. So that's actually like pretty good return on a $31 million movie.
Zachary Lee (01:39:22.438)
Mm.
Zachary Lee (01:39:31.397)
Mm-hmm.
Eli Price (01:39:33.966)
Spielberg said that Europeans loved it apparently, which maybe is where a lot of that 60 million came from. I don't really get it. But I'm not also not European. So I don't, I don't know why they loved it, but that's what Spielberg said in the making of documentary. So
Zachary Lee (01:39:47.142)
Right... I'm curious?
Zachary Lee (01:39:54.633)
I don't know if you'd happen to know this, but it makes me curious. Like, do you know, because I know we had, oh, let me scroll back up to actually remember the character. Oh yeah, Toshiro Mifune, right, was in this. So do you know if the, A, if the film was released in Japan, and then B, how people in Japan either received it, mainly just because I'm like, I could see them of course being like, this is not, you know, we're not gonna release it. But I'm like,
Eli Price (01:40:04.962)
Mm-hmm.
Eli Price (01:40:11.502)
I don't know.
Zachary Lee (01:40:20.641)
On the other hand, you have this famous actor, so I wonder if that's like a Trojan horse in a way for release there, but I don't know.
Eli Price (01:40:22.081)
Yeah.
Eli Price (01:40:27.83)
Well, it says on IMDb, it says March 8th, 1990, Japan. So yeah, I guess it did release in Japan. I didn't really see anything about the reception there. I would imagine not great, but also I'm not Japanese. Maybe that maybe that's like, maybe they went for that, like style of comedy. I don't know. Comedy is a weird thing. You never know like what's going to work for who. Um,
Zachary Lee (01:40:35.989)
Yeah.
The reception, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, that's true. We can probably... yeah.
Eli Price (01:40:57.054)
especially like if it's a different culture, like I don't, I don't know what like a Japanese sensibility is for, for like humor. Um, so yeah, uh, it, but yeah, it was apparently released, um, about a month later in Japan. Uh, so there you go. Um, it w yeah, it was, uh, oh yeah. I did want to point out to.
Zachary Lee (01:40:57.114)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (01:41:03.289)
Who knows?
Zachary Lee (01:41:16.333)
Yeah, interesting. There we go.
Eli Price (01:41:26.93)
It did get reappraised 15 years later with the release of the director's cut that you mentioned, which you can get on the, the disc. Uh, if you want to, um, like I said, rent it from the library, don't, don't spend your money on it. Um, and, um, yeah, Spielberg, just like every time, everything I've seen of them has really like mixed feelings looking back, which we'll get, we'll get into that shortly. But before we do, um,
Zachary Lee (01:41:42.009)
Yeah.
Eli Price (01:41:55.326)
I did want to point out that it did get three nominations. It got nominated for best cinematography, best sound, and best visual effects. So yeah, it did actually get some Academy recognition, which, you know, for sound, I think the sound is a little bit much.
fine, I guess, but it, you know, like Spielberg said, people were covering their ears in the theater, which isn't a good sign for sound. Cinematography was fine, I think. I think like, I guess the innovation of using the Lumo camera, the Lumocrane and some of the stuff they did to like make the miniatures look as good as they do. I could see like cinematography being recognized.
And then yeah, I think the visual effects is probably the best thing about the movie there the visual effects are actually like pretty well done Alongside like the production design and the miniature work Yeah Yeah, let's talk let's dig into the movie a little bit This is a flop it's
Zachary Lee (01:43:16.14)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (01:43:21.593)
Mm-hmm.
Eli Price (01:43:22.114)
considered by everyone as Spielberg's like worst movie, which I guess spoiler alert for how we rate this movie, but I agree. And the ones I've, for the ones I've seen so far, I still have a decent amount of blind spots, but yeah, Spielberg, this is a quote from Spielberg.
Zachary Lee (01:43:35.514)
Yeah, yeah.
Eli Price (01:43:45.614)
Quote on about the 145th day of shooting. I realized that the film was directing me. I wasn't directing it unquote And man that I feel like that really sums up the problem with this movie. No one No one had control of it It seems like the writing the direction Even like the product like the producers
Zachary Lee (01:43:52.471)
Mm-hmm.
Zachary Lee (01:44:00.581)
Yeah.
Eli Price (01:44:12.422)
no one really had control of it. It just got way out of hand. No ideas were off the table. Even Spielberg in the making of Doc, like I said, his philosophy was anything goes. And that's just like, turns out not a great philosophy for a movie, even for a comedy. But yeah.
Zachary Lee (01:44:33.402)
Mm-hmm.
Eli Price (01:44:40.954)
looking back it seems like Spielberg doesn't have... I don't know, it's weird. So I'll say these few things about... because in the making of documentary towards the end, those four main guys do some like reminiscing. And it's really strange. It's mixed. You know, the two Bobs said they...
Zachary Lee (01:44:49.465)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (01:44:58.604)
Yeah.
Eli Price (01:45:08.106)
You know, they, they kind of wish they would have remained faithful to like the dark comedy direction. Um, but Spielberg, you know, had different aspirations for it. Uh, you have Milius, Milius talks about like how it was a terrible premiere, you know, kind of like humiliating, but they like survived it. And now, you know, for the, you know, they did this making of doc the 15 years later when they released the director's cut.
Zachary Lee (01:45:36.459)
Okay, yeah
Eli Price (01:45:37.694)
And so, you know, he's looking back and he's like, Oh, well now it's getting reappraised with this director's cut. And, um, it's like, okay, yeah, but it's still bad. But, and then he talked about, he talked about how they all had this idea of social irresponsibility, um, kind of this idea of like, not being politically correct on purpose, um, so that you could kind of push back against the system.
Zachary Lee (01:45:48.992)
Right, right.
Eli Price (01:46:06.906)
And I don't know, like to me, there is a way to do that correctly. Um, this movie to me doesn't push back against the system. It pushes back against it. Like it, it's like racist and sexist and that sort of like.
Zachary Lee (01:46:07.158)
Mm-hmm.
Eli Price (01:46:29.554)
not being PC is like not doing anything for the system. It's doing things against the people that the system is already oppressing. And so it's, you know, it's like kicking people while they're down. And that's like, that's not, to me, that's not funny. If you want to make this a movie about like, how terrible Hollywood is and make it about like the hysteric, like make some sort of comment on
Zachary Lee (01:46:37.937)
Exactly, exactly.
Eli Price (01:46:58.946)
the state of Hollywood in relation to the hysteria of LA during this event where they thought Japanese bombers were flying over. You know, that I could see like, okay, yeah, there's something there. But this is like, this doesn't feel like that movie to me. Maybe that's what they intended, but the result you get is not that at all. And I do think that there maybe was some intention there.
Zachary Lee (01:47:19.369)
Alright.
Zachary Lee (01:47:23.349)
Yeah, right.
Eli Price (01:47:28.082)
which is why they set it in Hollywood and focused on that part of the story. Um, maybe they did have intentions to kind of have some social commentary about the state of Hollywood, but man, it does not, it doesn't come across in the, in the end result at all.
Zachary Lee (01:47:32.965)
Mm-hmm.
Zachary Lee (01:47:42.753)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (01:47:48.505)
Yeah, this is this is secretly Steven Spielberg's Babylon, you know, that's really what your take away is from this is what I'm hearing. I don't know, because like there are moments like and we'll probably get to the theater too, but it's just like, you know, there are a couple of funny lines and you're like, I think I think of that one scene where they know they're like, what are you guys shooting at? And he's like, I don't know whatever they're shooting at, you know, like, and it's like, a couple things where I'm like, it's like
Eli Price (01:47:57.958)
Yeah.
Eli Price (01:48:07.406)
Sure.
Eli Price (01:48:16.283)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (01:48:16.845)
there are these sequences you're like, okay, you are trying to get at, like the banality of war, the like, you know, you're spoofing on, like, so it's like, you can have that, but it's like what you're saying, Eli, when it's like, but just what we're seeing visually. And I feel like that's just the biggest thing, you know? It's like, you can have these dialogue moments that are funny, but like, at the end of the day, what are we actually as viewers witnessing since film's a visual medium? And it's like, you're right, it's just more fulfillment of like the...
Eli Price (01:48:21.461)
Mm-hmm.
Right.
Eli Price (01:48:31.98)
Yeah.
Eli Price (01:48:43.566)
Mm-hmm.
Zachary Lee (01:48:45.921)
how awful the Hollywood entertainment system is. And it's like, you know, there's no like, in a way, no visual rebuttal to that. It's just like you're saying, it's just a continuation and like living into it. And we're supposed to be like, look at how bad it is, because you're just perpetuating it, you know, or they're just perpetuating it, yeah.
Eli Price (01:48:49.623)
Yeah.
Eli Price (01:48:58.445)
Mm-hmm.
Eli Price (01:49:04.226)
Right. Yeah. And even like that makes me think of, uh, the something that Bob Gale said looking back was that he felt that it was underappreciated. Um, and he like even pushed back on it being a flop. He was like, well, it wasn't a flop, you know, it made the studios a lot of money. Um, and I'm like, yeah, but that's part of the problem. Like it's, it's part of the, like the fact that this movie
Zachary Lee (01:49:28.569)
That... yeah.
Eli Price (01:49:32.79)
made studios money, like means that they're more willing to make this sort of like terrible movie again. Um, and, and just give like directors a blank check that have had success in the past and have no, like, I mean, you, you have so like close encounters or so Raiders let's go to like jump forward to Raiders, something that we'll talk. Actually already had that conversation.
Zachary Lee (01:49:58.986)
Right.
Eli Price (01:50:02.374)
and recorded that episode but um something we'll talk about is Spielberg intentionally bringing in Frank Marshall Because he had seen how Frank Marshall as a producer worked. He respected him He knew that he was going to like be good for him and keep him disciplined And in this movie, it's like oh, I'm making this movie with my good friend and we're just like having fun and that lack of discipline
Zachary Lee (01:50:10.33)
Mm-hmm.
Zachary Lee (01:50:20.532)
Interesting.
Eli Price (01:50:31.846)
Uh, is and kind of the blank check, you know, this is a budget that slowly grew over time. It wasn't originally a 31 million, but they were like, Oh, it's Spielberg. We're just keep giving them money. Um, and that, that can be a big problem. Um, you know, it's, it was more beneficial to the studios to, to take a chance on Spielberg with this movie and it potentially being a flop than to give. Money to like smaller films.
Zachary Lee (01:50:43.039)
Exactly.
Eli Price (01:51:01.386)
And that's a problem we're still seeing. You know, um, in fact, uh, Oh shoot. Um, American fiction director, uh, core Jefferson. Yeah. Um, his speech, like I loved his acceptance speech for, uh, for adapted screenplay, um, at the Oscars where he talked about, you know, instead of a, you know, instead of, uh, you know, 200.
Zachary Lee (01:51:03.966)
Oh, for sure.
Zachary Lee (01:51:13.329)
Oh yeah, is it Core Jefferson? Yeah.
Eli Price (01:51:30.566)
million dollar movie budget let's have like 10 20 million dollar movies or let's have 20 10 dollar million dollar movies um because you know that's the sort of budget his movie was working with and it's a great it was a great movie you know let's get more people give more people chances with like i mean a 10 million 20 million dollar budget like that's a pretty good
Zachary Lee (01:51:37.83)
Exactly.
Eli Price (01:51:58.294)
budget to make a good movie if you're a good filmmaker. And so, I don't know, it's like this problem that started, that was like starting back in the mid to late 70s, like has perpetuated itself. And it's still a problem now. Like we just are pumping out like bad to mediocre MCU movies with these huge budgets instead of like giving more people chances. Like
Zachary Lee (01:52:00.653)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Eli Price (01:52:27.662)
to, you know, for something to like really cool, you know, really great. Um, so yeah.
Zachary Lee (01:52:35.745)
Yeah, no, and it's all like to this point about, like what you were saying, the risk aversion, I feel like just, like you're saying, yeah, I don't know, it's just, I feel like there's better ways to distribute resources and all of that, and it's just, but we'll have to see what comes.
Eli Price (01:52:46.065)
Mm-hmm.
Eli Price (01:52:57.378)
Yeah.
Eli Price (01:53:02.455)
Yeah. Well, let's take a different turn and let me ask this question. Are there things that worked for you in the movie? You mentioned a few jokes here and there. Was there anything else? I have a couple of things, so maybe we have some overlap on the things that we did like.
Zachary Lee (01:53:06.041)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (01:53:10.858)
Mm.
Zachary Lee (01:53:18.057)
overlap yeah let me i'm trying i was looking at my notes too it's like i think the what was it there was yeah i feel like that what you're saying like the like jump like that sequence where there i'm once again it's like always top like mediated by the fact that like there's still a lot of
sexism and misogyny happening. And then there, but and then the, that dance sequence, of course, like I just feel like the way that was choreographed was really interesting. I think like, yeah, that tablecloth being pulled and then the, you know, we kind of, we talked about, like, I remember noting that, I'd be like, that's really cool that, that sort of happened. And I think it was back foot, exactly. Yep, that part was really great. I think the...
Eli Price (01:53:56.394)
Yeah.
Eli Price (01:54:02.078)
Yeah. Yeah, he did the little back flip or whatever off the table. Yeah.
Zachary Lee (01:54:10.689)
What was fun too, and maybe this is just, it's kind of like what you were saying with like looking at other films later, was just sort of like seeing potential connections and maybe like Spielberg doing like a trial run for other things he might do in later projects. And like, I think even of like the Ferris wheel rolling and I'm thinking, you know, and.
Eli Price (01:54:24.833)
Mm. Yeah.
Eli Price (01:54:30.531)
Mm-hmm.
Zachary Lee (01:54:31.653)
the opening for Raiders and like it's the giant boulder and I'm like, Oh, is that a potential visual or thematic, you know, like connection there and, Oh, there was another one that I was right. I think, well, we talked about the, the Dr. Strangelove connection too, but just, but even that, like the plane and like they're shooting at their friends, you know, and just like those visual parallels. So all that sort of stuff, just personally for me, I was like,
Eli Price (01:54:37.202)
Oh, that's a good point, yeah.
Eli Price (01:54:46.079)
Yeah.
Eli Price (01:54:52.579)
Mm-hmm.
Zachary Lee (01:54:57.901)
It was one of those like, I'm happy I can see this. And like, I've seen enough of those movies where I can like, maybe wonder, oh, like what if there's a connection here or not? So, yeah.
Eli Price (01:55:00.19)
Yeah.
Eli Price (01:55:06.846)
Yeah, yeah, I, um, the scene that really stuck out to me, you know, you, you mentioned it is the jitterbug dance sequence. Um, yeah. And it's kind of like a half dance, half like chase half fight. Uh, well, it breaks into a fight. Um, it breaks into a fight at some point. Um, but yeah, it, that whole sequence to me is like the best part of the movie. Um,
Zachary Lee (01:55:15.781)
Yeah, generally, yeah.
Zachary Lee (01:55:23.521)
Yeah, that's right. It's all these elements.
Eli Price (01:55:35.638)
And apparently at one point, Spielberg was like, oh, this would actually be really great if it was a musical. And he was thinking about infusing it with a bunch of musical numbers, where people start breaking into dance and song to tell the story. And I almost kind of wish we would have gotten that version of the movie. It would have at least been.
Zachary Lee (01:56:01.578)
Yeah.
Eli Price (01:56:03.858)
a little more interesting maybe. But Williams, he said that Williams, or actually John Williams himself was like saying that he was telling Spielberg like how much work that would take. They would kind of have to put things on hold and do a lot of like reworking of stuff and preparing. And then Spielberg came on and then making of and was kind of like, yeah, I just didn't have the courage to do that at that point in my career.
Um, but this jitterbug sequence feels like kind of the remnant of that idea that still made it in the movie. And, um, I, I feel like, so like so much of this movie you have, you have, like we were saying earlier, you really don't have, you're jumping around so much. You there's, you don't have a good sense of where you are. You don't get a good sense of like who is in the scene, who you're following.
Zachary Lee (01:56:47.281)
It's so interesting.
Eli Price (01:57:03.65)
Uh, you don't have a good sense of geography. Like where are we now? Where are they going? Um, where is this in relation to everything else? Um, and this like self-contained sequence, uh, in this little dance club or whatever, um, is like the opposite of all that. Like you, you have a really good sense of where everyone is the, a good sense of geography of the layout of this place.
the camera follows the characters really well. You know exactly who's in the scene and what they want because it's simple. Wally wants to dance with Betty, Stretch wants to apparently rape Betty and also like knock out Wally. And so it's simple. Like you understand like the motives and who you're supposed to be paying attention to.
Zachary Lee (01:57:47.139)
Mm-hmm.
Zachary Lee (01:57:51.822)
Right, right.
Eli Price (01:57:59.006)
as they like are going throughout the crowd and stuff. Um, and then like, so you know, you have all that, uh, which is great. It's, it's very Spielberg. Like that's what surprises me about so much of this movie is like, how do you go from making this where you have no sense of anything to making a movie like Raiders where you always have like a really good sense of where you are and, and the geography of everything.
Zachary Lee (01:58:26.055)
Yeah.
Eli Price (01:58:26.41)
But this sequence is a good example of the good Spielberg the good like sense of geography that Spielberg usually has And the and then to just like the camera movements the crowd using the luma crane to get that really cool like 360 shot of everyone dancing It I couldn't help like I was watching and I was like, oh this is like this is like the inception of his
Zachary Lee (01:58:33.797)
That's a good way of putting it, yeah.
Eli Price (01:58:56.202)
Um, and, and I was thinking even of like the, um, the gymnasium sequence in West side story, which I'm not sure if you've seen that, but, um, uh, but just like such a great sense of space and the camera movement through the dancing, like I thought was like, just like so well done. Um, and I think it all like goes back to, to this like sequence in this movie, which you see a lot of like similar.
Zachary Lee (01:58:57.08)
Oh, interesting. Yeah.
Zachary Lee (01:59:05.925)
Yep. Yeah.
Eli Price (01:59:26.082)
camera work and similar sense of like geography and knowing that like to make a good musical number on film you can't just like sit the camera and watch people because then it's just like you might as well watch them dance on a stage um to make it like to make it where like it needs to be seen on a screen um it's all about camera movement and Spielberg knows how to move the
Zachary Lee (01:59:42.842)
Mm.
Eli Price (01:59:54.87)
the stance sequence. So I just, I loved that. I actually like really liked that sequence. Like I probably gave the one and a half stars on letterboxed to like some of the special effects worked and this, and this sequence. That's what my one and a half star rating went, all went toward. But yeah, so I liked that.
Zachary Lee (01:59:54.871)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (02:00:08.097)
You're right. That's funny.
Zachary Lee (02:00:14.865)
Right, you're like, we're gonna be very clear about what this is for. That's right.
Eli Price (02:00:24.042)
And then like as far as jokes go, I was told, I told my wife after I watched it, I was like, I don't really remember ever laughing in this two hour comedy. Um, and, but one thing that I did kind of chuckle out was you keep having these sequences, uh, or these like little, uh, inserts going back to general still well watching Dumbo and there's one time where it cuts back and they're.
Zachary Lee (02:00:33.038)
Yeah.
Eli Price (02:00:51.778)
It's the mom singing Baby Mine and it cuts the still well's face and he's like tearing up and I actually thought that was kind of funny. Like there's a war going on and still wells in here like tearing up to Dumbo. And then there's one point where it cuts back to him and it's the you know the birds singing to Dumbo and like he's singing along and like.
Zachary Lee (02:00:59.256)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (02:01:08.997)
He's like... Yeah.
Eli Price (02:01:19.318)
dancing in his seat and um actually like I was like okay that's actually pretty funny like um that's the that's the movie that I wish the whole thing was doing more stuff like that um because it's like it's a different sort of joke the rest like I think literally the whole rest of the movie is just like let's blow something up and let's like I don't know let's
It's all just like really dumb comedy and I feel like that was actually like a little kind of smart comedy. And so I did appreciate the Dumbo sequences like he is like bound and determined that he is going to see Dumbo. And I thought that was really funny. But I think that's one of the only things that I that I actually like chuckled out in the whole movie.
Zachary Lee (02:01:56.232)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (02:02:05.939)
Exactly.
Nothing will disturb it. Yeah.
Zachary Lee (02:02:15.861)
Yeah.
There's a lot of, I don't know if you felt this, there's just a lot of lines where I feel like it was funny in the sense of like, this sums up the whole movie in like this interaction. Like I think at the beginning, it's like, I forgot what character, it might've been the general, where he's like madness, it's the only word to describe it. It's like a line, I'm like that's the thesis for the movie or like the Ned Carrot, whereas like the army gave us a gun, I think it's high time we used it. And the kids are like, yeah.
Eli Price (02:02:26.122)
Yeah, sure.
Eli Price (02:02:36.098)
Yeah.
Eli Price (02:02:39.411)
Exactly.
Zachary Lee (02:02:47.351)
You know, I'm like that's like if you see that I'm like you have the you know His entire house and like almost did blow his wife like apart because of the way the guns, you know I'm like it just it's so like to me. It was funny in retrospect I'm like they probably weren't even meaning this but it's like you can just pick certain lines from the script and you're like There's that's 1941 if you want your letterbox review. It's like you can just put one of the full quote from there exactly
Eli Price (02:02:50.51)
proceeds to destroy his house.
Eli Price (02:02:59.047)
Yeah, yeah.
Eli Price (02:03:03.531)
Yeah.
Eli Price (02:03:11.502)
Mm hmm. Poor quote. Yeah.
Zachary Lee (02:03:17.137)
from the script. So there are some parts of that. That was interesting.
Eli Price (02:03:18.39)
Yeah. You know, it's, it would be really hard even to like do a plot walkthrough. Like, um, like there's some podcasts I listened to where they'll do like a plot walkthrough of a movie. And I would be very interested to see how they do that. How a podcast like that would do that for this movie. Um, I don't usually do plot walkthroughs. It's, I feel like it's kind of laborious, but I do like listening to people that do it well.
Zachary Lee (02:03:28.717)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (02:03:46.405)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Eli Price (02:03:48.902)
Um, but I just don't even know how you would do that for this movie. It's, it's so all over the place. Um, I, I.
Zachary Lee (02:03:53.826)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (02:03:58.017)
Yeah, whoever wrote the Wikipedia summary deserves hope they got well compensated for that. You know, yeah. It's pretty long. I was kind of like even looking. Yeah, the synopsis. Yeah, I'm like, that's a lot.
Eli Price (02:04:03.098)
Oh yeah. Oh yeah, for the synopsis. Yeah. Yeah, man. Yeah, it's, there's a lot of things that went wrong. We've talked about a lot of it already. I wrote down a few things. One of them is just like, you have that relentlessness of like a Looney Tunes cartoon screwball kind of comedy. But it just
It works for a short time for like a Looney Tune, but it doesn't work for like a feature length movie. Because this movie is just like non-stop, just like either Siskel or Ebert, one of those guys said. It's like non-stop without the comedy part. Yeah, and it doesn't...
Zachary Lee (02:04:48.734)
Exactly.
Zachary Lee (02:04:53.957)
Just non-stop, yeah.
Eli Price (02:04:57.046)
It doesn't help that it's just like a series, like I said, of like basically the same kind of jokes over and over. Yeah. And then like another thing is just like it's extremely like sexual and perverse. Which like there's a lot of like sexual and perverse comedies that like are actually funny. You know, I mean we can all think of.
some off the top of our head. But this one, like I said, is just kind of, all of it is a very like, it's just all weird or gross the way it's portrayed. I mean, you have base, like talking about like cartoons, you basically have Betty being like olive oil being fought over by Popeye and Bluto the whole movie. And it's just like, it's just not
Zachary Lee (02:05:49.366)
Mm.
Eli Price (02:05:53.662)
I wrote in my notes, rape isn't funny. Yeah. Anyway.
Zachary Lee (02:05:57.349)
Yeah, and it's just like, yeah, I know. Yeah, well, and it's like what we were kind of tying back to. It's just like why, of all the, like, what does that, if it's like a spoof, if you're parody, like, what are you trying to use with this, you know? Like, what are you trying to say?
Eli Price (02:06:14.598)
Right. What are you trying to say? What are you like? It's not saying anything. It's just like, it's just like, I've, I want to try to give them the benefit of the doubt that there was, they were trying to do something with it, but it doesn't, doesn't come across on screen. It just comes off as like straight played for laughs. This dude is like dragging this girl under a truck to try to like.
have his way with her. It's like, it doesn't play for straight laughter. Like you've got to do something with that. Like, um, I mean, I'm not a writer, a screenwriter. So like, don't look to me for ideas, but, uh, so you've got to do something with it.
Zachary Lee (02:06:48.51)
it.
Zachary Lee (02:06:55.473)
I'm gonna go through it.
Zachary Lee (02:07:00.129)
Yeah. Well, and it's like, it made me think about, you know, I was like, I think I was, I was looking at my notes. I think I wrote, I was like, clockwork orange question mark, you know, like, I was just like, you know, we talk about the Kubrick Spielberg and I'm just like, what's the, yeah, like you're saying, like, I don't really, yeah.
Eli Price (02:07:12.671)
Yeah, yeah.
Eli Price (02:07:19.394)
Well, like the Doctor Strangelove parallel, it's like, Strangelove had a very specific tone. It was like, it was very tongue in cheek, sarcastic, and you kind of know that, and there's that tone through the whole movie. You're never wondering if there's something you're supposed to laugh at or something you're not supposed to laugh at.
You just are aware of what the point is. Like you know what the point of the movie is too when you watch Doctor Strangelove. And this one, it seems like the point is like, let's just like do a bunch of stuff that we think is funny and see if other people laugh too. And they don't, they didn't laugh. But yeah, I guess just kind of like
Zachary Lee (02:08:14.239)
Exactly.
Eli Price (02:08:19.15)
We've touched on a lot of this stuff. There is, you know, not being very funny. I think one of the things is that I heard, I don't remember who I heard this from, but they were talking about how Spielberg, based on this movie, doesn't really have good comedic timing, but he has really good thrill timing. And I was like, that's a good point. But like, I think,
Zachary Lee (02:08:41.755)
Interesting.
Eli Price (02:08:46.066)
I heard someone also say that for a long time, Spielberg just thought like he wasn't, he couldn't be funny after this movie, after making it and like, but like that's not true because like, I think it's just that he can't make straight, he's not a good straight comic director. Cause like you think about like some of the one-liners and raiders and there's like some really like funny, well-timed one-liners that like
And maybe that was like Harrison Ford riffing. I don't know. But, you know, you've got to give Spielberg some credit for it. But yeah, it's more like throwing in one-liners here and there in the middle of, you know, the thrills, I think, is like where he shines with his comedy. But yeah, it didn't work for comedy all the way through.
Zachary Lee (02:09:32.47)
Thank you.
Zachary Lee (02:09:44.353)
Yeah.
Eli Price (02:09:46.578)
Yeah, we've talked about some of the great images that there are in the movie, our favorite sequences. We've talked about the characters being very thinly conceived, which I feel like is very unlike Spielberg. Usually his characters are pretty full and even like he even really efficiently builds character, usually.
Zachary Lee (02:10:03.125)
Yeah.
Eli Price (02:10:13.11)
Um, like you can even think back to Jaws and how like every time a character is introduced, like he's just so efficient with building who they are, what their motivations are, and you don't get any of that in this movie. Um, like almost at all. Uh,
Zachary Lee (02:10:32.997)
Yeah, it's like, and I am curious, like, if we got the who was always let me look at the list here again, the Oh, oh yeah, Bobby's character, the Wally Stevens character, like, if that was actually able to be like a narrative connector, you know, for the project, because you're right. It's like
Eli Price (02:10:34.423)
Yeah.
Eli Price (02:10:47.274)
Yeah.
Eli Price (02:10:52.629)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (02:10:56.397)
Investing in some characters like and it just kind of gives a point like you just if you certain characters you don't like I'm just Like I'm just not invested like anytime. I think we talk. Yeah anytime like John Belushi's character was on like I don't I'm kind of checked out. I'm like, I don't really want that, you know, so But then like I would have been you know, if like maybe for some of the others, you know, so it's just like
Eli Price (02:11:04.459)
Right.
Eli Price (02:11:10.986)
Right. Yeah. No, I agree.
Eli Price (02:11:17.902)
Sure. Yeah. The, the Wally character, you know, was supposed to be the glue, which makes sense because he is kind of like the most like outcast guy, which is like Spielberg's thing, the outcast character, you know? Um, and then you get a little bit of like Spielberg's typical like broken family dynamic with like the Neb BD, the more Douglas character and his family is kind of like
Zachary Lee (02:11:29.817)
Yep.
Zachary Lee (02:11:44.036)
Yep.
Eli Price (02:11:47.246)
It's a wild dynamic going on. Um, but it's again, it's all very thinly conceived. Um, and then like, as far as themes go, I just, I don't feel like there's a whole lot to go off of. Um, if they were going for a war as idiotic chaos, um, then maybe they, they got that sort of, um, but the movie comes off as kind of being idiotic chaos too.
Zachary Lee (02:12:11.383)
Yeah.
Eli Price (02:12:16.598)
So it doesn't really hit as hard as it could have. So I don't know. Yeah, I wrote down, you can see a lot of effort on screen, but you end up asking, what is it all for? And I don't think there's a very good answer to that question. So.
Zachary Lee (02:12:19.206)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (02:12:25.305)
Yeah...
Zachary Lee (02:12:32.371)
Mm-hmm.
Zachary Lee (02:12:36.461)
Yeah, I think like the one element that I did, I mean, and maybe this is like once again, it's just like trying to find it's me and my madness trying to like, I want to find something I can connect with the relate with here. And I'm curious your thoughts on this. I think like, one of the interesting kind of connectors was like, everyone's pursuit of their own kind of selfish goals and like desires.
Eli Price (02:12:51.371)
Mm-hmm.
Eli Price (02:13:03.475)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (02:13:05.437)
in the ex in like the against the backdrop of war and like how those two couldn't like conflict with each other i mean in like a rather you know like the more crass scene between where like well i see once again i'm forgetting the characters it's the nancy allen's character and who's the male that she's that tim matthewson's character yeah it's like
Eli Price (02:13:20.339)
Yeah.
Eli Price (02:13:24.482)
Mm-hmm.
Tim Matheson's character, I don't remember their names in the movie.
Eli Price (02:13:33.767)
Yeah, yeah.
Zachary Lee (02:13:35.713)
Like that scene where they're like trying to, you know, hook up essentially and like the, like all the, they're like dropping bombs from the plane when it's on the runway. Like I will say, I did think that was funny in the way it was executed. I'm like, I don't know. But like to me, that's like one of those themes where I'm like, they're just trying to get together or have their own selfish things they're trying to do against war, you know, in war time. And...
Eli Price (02:13:43.954)
Yeah.
Eli Price (02:13:50.946)
Yeah.
Eli Price (02:14:02.294)
Mm-hmm.
Zachary Lee (02:14:02.913)
everything's kind of going on and it's crazy, you know, or, you know, like, there's this big a lab, like, they're sold, the soldiers and the Navy, and they're fighting when they should be united, but they can't put aside their differences because there are no, you know, so it, those were some elements from like, oh, it's like kind of silly how, like, even when they're like, America should be united on whatever, because we're trying to fight against another enemy, it's like, well, we're still gonna
Eli Price (02:14:16.77)
Right.
Eli Price (02:14:27.351)
Mm-hmm.
Zachary Lee (02:14:32.801)
have our desires and things we're trying to do and it's going to get in the way of that. Whether it's like, sure that can be a good theme, is that something that we needed to get out of this movie necessarily? I don't know. But yeah, that's something that I thought was interesting.
Eli Price (02:14:35.861)
Right.
Eli Price (02:14:48.094)
Yeah, maybe not. Yeah, no, that's, that's good. Um, trying to find some silver lining to this movie. Um, I, uh, I have a final thought that's maybe trying to find a silver lining in a different way. Um, um, Spielberg talked, uh, about reading reviews five years later. Um, after making this movie and kind of being like fascinated.
Zachary Lee (02:14:59.609)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (02:15:05.165)
Yeah, yeah.
Zachary Lee (02:15:11.537)
Mm.
Eli Price (02:15:15.55)
uh, by the reviews. Um, and he didn't really elaborate on that. Um, but I just kind of wanted to take that idea and just like talk about, um, you know, learning from your mistakes or failures. And. You know, it seems like Spielberg really like took, took that and ran with it. Um, like when this was a failure, um, like, yeah, maybe it made some money.
Zachary Lee (02:15:30.106)
Yeah.
Eli Price (02:15:45.862)
But that's not really like, you know, for a filmmaker like Spielberg, it's like, okay, it made money, but everyone hated it. Like, I don't really feel good about it. And so, you know, for him, it was something he had to really like, learn from and grow from. And, you know, it's one of those things where like, okay, yeah, he went on and he made Raiders of the Lost Ark. Like, so.
Zachary Lee (02:16:13.634)
Great.
Eli Price (02:16:14.066)
He learned something from this. Um, and you know, it, it feels like it's probably a lesson. You, a filmmaker like Spielberg who's had such a long career has had to learn a few times, um, like over the course of your career, you have a movie that you really are excited about, but like kind of gets away from you, um, and with a, with a career as long as Spielberg. So that's happened probably, you know, two or three times.
Zachary Lee (02:16:28.363)
Right.
Eli Price (02:16:43.742)
Um, and, um, but yeah, just learning from that and growing from it, I think is something that like, I guess we can maybe all take away as a lesson from this at just as Spielberg did. Um, I mean, he went on to have like an incredible run in the eighties, um, you know, following this. So, you know, I don't know it, it just may, and then too, like
He obviously had like a hunger and desire to like make something that spoke to into like World War II. And like he went in on to make like two really phenomenal World War II movies, um, and Saving Private Riven and, uh, and Schindler's List. Uh, and so like, you know, that hunger, he didn't, he also like, didn't let that desire die. Um.
Zachary Lee (02:17:21.547)
Mm-hmm.
Zachary Lee (02:17:26.857)
Exactly.
Eli Price (02:17:39.842)
just because he failed with this in comedy form, he still had that hunger and desire to speak toward that era and went on to make two phenomenal, successful movies. And so, yeah, that's kind of my final thought takeaway from this is when you fail, don't let it be the end.
Zachary Lee (02:18:03.338)
Yeah.
Eli Price (02:18:08.894)
It's not the end. It's just another step along the way. You learn from it, you grow, uh, and you go on to have, I guess, one of the best filmmaker careers of all time. Um, Oh, that, well, that's spillbar. I guess not us, but, uh,
Zachary Lee (02:18:10.229)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (02:18:22.609)
Yeah, that's right. Yeah.
Zachary Lee (02:18:27.389)
Yeah, all right. But it's like a good point of like, I think people, you know, it's interesting to think about, like, yeah, like you said, what the films that came after this and when you're a filmmaker or like any creative, I mean, you know, even for it's funny, like, you like we were talking about, like, how there's the new things you're trying to do with like the podcast and for me as a writer, and there's something about I mean, I don't think our
either of our work is being read or consumed at the level of Spielberg's films, fingers crossed, maybe, unless you don't want that, right? Maybe. Sure. But it's like to work, to have to learn what it means to grow and evolve under the public eye is like difficult, you know? And it's like, it's just given me a lot of thought of like, you know, as I'm developing a craft of writing or speaking, it's like, it's tough if it's like...
Eli Price (02:19:01.586)
Far from it. Yeah, maybe eventually. I mean, sure.
Eli Price (02:19:13.339)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Eli Price (02:19:22.38)
Right.
Zachary Lee (02:19:25.461)
every single time I was like writing or putting something out it's like it's like potentially changing the scape of you know American journalism or cinema you know or cinema or something like that which I'm sure Spielberg like all eyes were on him and some mechie the two bobs and everything so yeah it's like interesting thing what does it look like to grow and to change when you're you don't have the benefit of maybe doing it with as much privacy as you'd like so yeah
Eli Price (02:19:40.247)
Right.
Eli Price (02:19:53.138)
Right. Yeah. And, um, and, you know, I was thinking too of like, they looked bad when they were looking back on the movie. They, it was like very, like I said, very mixed, like Spielberg, like was kind of had unhappy memories of it and stuff, but also like still remembers, like enjoying making it and having a great time and really like enjoying watching it even.
Um, which I guess sometimes like, it's like, well, I guess that one was just for, for us and nobody else liked it. So, um, I guess like, I think it's like an objectively, I don't know. It's hard to say some, uh, movie is objectively bad. This feels to me like it is, but you know, some people might like it and, you know, it's hard to like, tell them they're wrong, uh, they enjoyed it.
Zachary Lee (02:20:29.726)
Yeah.
Eli Price (02:20:52.682)
Um, but I mean, like just rolling with the punches and being like, well, that one, that one didn't work. I still enjoyed it, but I'm going to keep going. Um, and then another thing is like having people around you and your community to like, kind of pick you back up Spielberg after this movie was like super down and Lucas was like, Hey, I've got this idea, uh, George Lucas. And, you know, then you get Raiders and it's like,
Zachary Lee (02:21:11.422)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (02:21:18.446)
Yeah.
Eli Price (02:21:20.47)
having a friend that comes along and is like, hey, let's make something together. That's pretty cool too.
Zachary Lee (02:21:33.269)
Exactly. Yeah, I was just trying to find something where I was like, the... Oh, what was I trying to say? The... Oh, you continue. The thought's gonna come back to me. But yeah.
Eli Price (02:21:34.606)
Um.
Eli Price (02:21:45.094)
Yeah. Oh, I was just going to move into ratings. Did you, I had mentioned, I gave it a one and a half star rating on Letterboxd, which is a three out of 10. Did you, did you come up with a rating?
Zachary Lee (02:21:52.305)
That was that was like you do I'm actually oh that was actually it was related to my question because I was trying to find if any of my mutuals had watched it Did you did you a lot any of your mutuals have been had they seen the film on letterbox before you logged it? Okay?
Eli Price (02:22:09.158)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's, you know, I kind of like follow a lot of people on Letterboxd. But yeah, I had actually Dave Lester, who has been on the podcast a couple times, also gave it a one and a half star. And let's see. Brian Tellerico, who's a critic,
Zachary Lee (02:22:19.279)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (02:22:24.578)
Yeah, yeah.
Zachary Lee (02:22:38.101)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Eli Price (02:22:40.19)
Uh, let's see, I follow a few critics. Um, Matt Singer gave it a one and a half star. Uh, Daniel Howitt gave it two stars. Um, those are really the only like notable people that, um, that people might recognize as critics. Um, Mariah E. Gates gave it two stars.
Zachary Lee (02:22:49.656)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (02:22:58.602)
normal people.
Zachary Lee (02:23:05.538)
Yeah.
Eli Price (02:23:08.458)
Yeah, I mean, nobody gave it. I mean, I follow a couple of people that's like seven stars or eight stars. And I'm saying seven, I mean, like three and a half stars or four. Um, and I don't really, they didn't write anything about it. So I don't know how they came, how they got there, but, um,
Zachary Lee (02:23:20.511)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (02:23:32.593)
I'm just seeing someone right now just gave it a fiver. I will not disclose their name on this just to leave them from any potential harassment. But I'll ingest. But no, I was just curious because I'm wondering where your rankings fell with your group. I'm probably more with you. I'm wavering between one and one and a half. I think I'm just kind of like thinking. It's like what you said, the jitterbug scene and a couple of the things. It's just like thinking about...
Eli Price (02:23:41.227)
Uh.
Eli Price (02:23:47.149)
Yeah.
Eli Price (02:23:52.427)
Yeah.
Eli Price (02:23:56.87)
Mm-hmm.
Zachary Lee (02:24:02.053)
the impact now. We'll see how it would marinate. I feel like I'd seen it somewhat recently too. I think I caught it on, I watched it Friday and so I was just like, oh I want to like think through this a little more, you know, like more time. But yeah.
Eli Price (02:24:14.999)
Yeah.
Eli Price (02:24:18.622)
Yeah, yeah, I have it like at the very so I'm like an obsessive list maker on letterboxed. Which is I don't know if that's like a disease. But, but there are those of us that have it if it is a disease. But so I like have rankings for like a bunch of directors. So, of course, I have my Spielberg's ranking list of all of the movies of his I've seen and this is
Zachary Lee (02:24:26.037)
Letterbox, it's great.
Eh? No, no.
Zachary Lee (02:24:41.861)
great.
Zachary Lee (02:24:47.183)
Mm-hmm.
Eli Price (02:24:47.286)
This is at the very bottom. Um, and I even have like his TV movies in there, um, like something evil, which isn't that great, but was more interesting than this at least. Um, and so yeah, it, I just really didn't go for this one. Um, but yeah, I kind of expected that going in because it seems like most people don't go for it. So.
Zachary Lee (02:25:00.046)
business.
Zachary Lee (02:25:09.205)
Yeah, no that, yep.
Eli Price (02:25:17.238)
At least I didn't go in and get disappointed by it. So there is that.
Zachary Lee (02:25:24.871)
Yeah, that's right. You're like we knew what we were going to get here perhaps.
Eli Price (02:25:27.614)
Yeah. Um, I did want to, to bring up, uh, cause we, you know, we're coming out of the 70s. This is movie released to 79. We're going to be rolling into the 80s with Raiders soon. Um, I had put out a poll on, uh, on various social media platforms, um, a while back, kind of just, I had asked what is the most important movie of the 70s and I put three options and an other option.
The three options were The Godfather, Jaws, and Star Wars. Um, so those were the three options. What would you, or would you pick a different one just off the top of your head? Um, the Godfather, Jaws, Star Wars, or, or something else for the most important movie of the seventies. So you, you kind of have to interpret what most important means, I think is part of it.
Zachary Lee (02:26:10.878)
Yeah... Wait, can you-
Zachary Lee (02:26:19.105)
Oh!
Zachary Lee (02:26:23.189)
Yeah, man. Dang, that's tough.
Eli Price (02:26:27.054)
So I'll tell you this, the final results came out, not a ton of people voted in this poll, but I think it was kind of what I expected. It was like somewhere between 12 and 14 people voted Star Wars. You had like five or six votes for Jaws and like two or three votes for The Godfather. So that was the final results, but I wanted to see what you thought, kind of our transition out of the 70s.
Zachary Lee (02:26:29.122)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (02:26:45.989)
Dang.
Zachary Lee (02:26:49.558)
Oh, that's interesting.
Zachary Lee (02:26:53.917)
I was out of the 70s. I was like, let me go back and vote for that. As a sidebar, you can totally cut this out of the recording if you want. My algorithm is just not, it just does not give me things. This is content I would have wanted to see, but I just did it. I need to turn notifications on for establishing shot now, I realize, so that's a good reminder. But.
Eli Price (02:27:08.807)
Right. Yeah, I don't know.
Eli Price (02:27:14.157)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (02:27:18.381)
I would have said Jaws for the blockbuster thing alone. I know I'm looking at it now. I know it didn't get either any or maybe got very little votes, but I just, even though I'm more Star Wars and that's more of a world I'm familiar with, I feel like Jaws for like what it did for the blockbuster. I don't know. I just feel like it coming out and like how to do more with less, which this prop movie, not to bash the 1941 more, but it probably could have learned a lesson from.
Eli Price (02:27:19.922)
Okay.
Eli Price (02:27:41.323)
Right?
Eli Price (02:27:46.026)
Right. Yeah.
Zachary Lee (02:27:46.905)
doing more with less, you know? More is not more. More and being more is not always good, you know, as the film shows.
Eli Price (02:27:51.23)
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I, um, so like out of those three movies, Star Wars is my favorite. Um, and a lot of people, I guess, so I kind of interacted with a couple of people just DMing some of my friends and they were, they were voting Star Wars. Um, and they were just kind of saying like it, so they weren't making this argument. It did like
Zachary Lee (02:28:01.614)
Yeah, yeah.
Eli Price (02:28:20.938)
make it did overtake Jaws as in the box and like box office when it came out but they weren't making that they were more like thinking about like the staying power in culture and I think that's true I think I think Star Wars of the three has the most staying power in culture in like popular culture so like if you're thinking about it in that way it's like yeah that that's the obvious choice.
Zachary Lee (02:28:41.617)
sure.
Eli Price (02:28:48.814)
I was thinking about it a little bit in a different way. And so like, I think like, I see it kind of as like the Godfather like walked so that Star- Jaws could run so that, you know, Star Wars could be like the sun that like really like flies to the moon, you know? Because the Godfather did a lot of things that Jaws kind of-
Zachary Lee (02:29:08.423)
Good.
Yeah, exactly.
Eli Price (02:29:17.994)
replicates. You know, Coppola really like, he was in this friend group with Lucas and Spielberg, De Palma, all those guys were like hanging out and were friends and showing each other their movies. And I really think Coppola like, paved the way with the Godfather for Jaws and Star Wars to do what they did. It made
the most, it was the most successful box office movie until Jaws came around. Um, and, um, it made like over two, 240 million, something like that. Uh, at the box office. And, um, it was just like, I just kind of saw it as like the Godfather. Like was this young filmmaker. Coppola was still pretty young at the time.
relatively, you know, who the studios took a chance on, let him make this like epic. It's an epic movie, like Jaws and Star Wars are, it's just an epic mafia movie with like a largely like unknown cast. At the time, like a lot of those guys were like young, they hadn't hit it big. And then you have like maybe one or two guys that people saw as like over the hill.
Zachary Lee (02:30:25.594)
Yeah.
Eli Price (02:30:43.754)
Um, and so just like making that movie and it being so successful, I think like paved the way for studios to be willing to give those young guys, like, you know, chances, um, like they gave Spielberg with Jaws and like they gave Lucas with Star Wars, um, to make these big epic movies with like casts of largely like unknown or like.
Zachary Lee (02:31:06.809)
That's interesting.
Eli Price (02:31:13.098)
just like burgeoning careers, actors, with kind of like really big aspirations. All three of those movies have like big aspirations. And so, I don't know, I was just kind of like tracing the thread all the way back to the Godfather kind of being the thing that like sparked something that Jaws like ran with and that like Star Wars like.
Zachary Lee (02:31:16.229)
Yeah.
Eli Price (02:31:42.506)
you know, took off into galaxies far, far away with, you know. Um, so I don't know, like, I think you could make an argument for any of the three, to be honest. Um, but I just liked, I liked going the contrary route and saying, well, the Godfather, you, if you just trace it back all the way back to that, like, I think like really influenced, but, um,
Zachary Lee (02:31:45.824)
Of course.
Eli Price (02:32:09.174)
But it's hard to argue with the people. They voted Star Wars. Star Wars won the poll. So you know.
Zachary Lee (02:32:17.093)
Hey, don't when Megalopolis drops this year, everyone will be like, how could we, we forgot about Coppola's genius. You're right. You throw the pole up again. Once the Megalopolis trailer drops, you know, we'll see the numbers change. Yeah.
Eli Price (02:32:20.433)
Yes.
Eli Price (02:32:24.256)
a
Eli Price (02:32:28.466)
Yeah, I'll have to do that. Well, uh, that's, that's all we have where we're officially out of the seventies. Now, uh, we are going to take inspiration from this talk of 1941 and next week we are going to do, uh, an interesting, uh, movie draft. We're going to be doing famous directors flops movie draft. Uh, so, um,
Zachary Lee (02:32:53.474)
Yes.
Eli Price (02:32:55.894)
Make sure you're subscribing so you don't miss that when it drops in your feed But I'm excited to do that. Me and Zachary is gonna be joining me for that Directors flops movie draft. Well, we'll hopefully be picking some great flops for you to watch That we really like So yeah tune in for that next week. And then of course, we'll be picking back up with Raiders of the Lost Ark in a couple weeks
looming Spielberg's career into the eighties officially. Uh, so excited about that conversation. Zachary, why don't you, uh, tell people where they can follow you so that they can kind of see what you're up to, uh, make sure they're catching your work. Uh, hopefully you're, they follow you and you make it onto their algorithm. Uh, but yeah.
Zachary Lee (02:33:48.141)
Of course. Yes, no, this will, I do wanna, I'm sad I missed the poll, so it's, I wanna make sure I keep dropping them, Eli, and I'm happy to throw my voice and vote in there. But yeah, on Twitter, or X, you can find me, at Zacharoni22, so Zach is Z-A-C-H. And then on Letterboxd, you can find me on
zlee729. So that's those are usually two of the places you can find either my writing or my film coverage. I'm not a serial list maker the way Eli is but you you've inspired me now so maybe I'll maybe you'll see an uptick in lists after this convo goes you know.
Eli Price (02:34:26.89)
Yeah, yeah, it's a disease, I think. But yeah, I'll make sure, yeah, I'll make sure to drop those in the episode notes so that you can just click away, go follow Zachary. I might even try to drop maybe those two reviews you mentioned at the top, links to those in the episode notes so that people can just go and click those.
Zachary Lee (02:34:31.501)
It's... It's, I mean... Yeah...
Zachary Lee (02:34:49.902)
Yeah.
Eli Price (02:34:56.714)
And and see some of your most recent work, but uh, but yeah, that's really all we have for this week It's been a great conversation on a bad movie first bad movie covered on the Podcast so it's a high honor that Zachary has Been the first to discuss a bad movie with me But yeah
Zachary Lee (02:35:13.674)
Oh wow.
Zachary Lee (02:35:20.002)
Yeah.
Zachary Lee (02:35:25.775)
Hey, talking with you makes it all the worthwhile, redemptive in that way, it's great.
Eli Price (02:35:30.524)
That's great. Yeah. Well, I appreciate you coming on Zachary. That's all we have for this week. I have been Eli Price for Zachary Lee. You've been listening to The Establishing Shot. See you next time.
Zachary Lee
Freelance Journalist
Zachary Lee is a freelance writer covering the intersection between faith and media. With his spare time, he happily evangelizes about and logs films on Letterboxd, collects and poses action figures, and often writes down the funny and/or profound quotations the people around him say (that they’ve probably forgotten about).
Favorite Director(s):
Damien Chazelle, James Wan, Luca Guadagnino, Sofia Coppola, Ava DuVernay
Guilty Pleasure Movie:
Transformers: Dark of the Moon
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