(upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Hello and welcome back to Hit Factory, a podcast about the films of the 1990s, their politics, and how they inform today's film landscape. I'm Aaron. - I'm Carly. - And we are pleased, blessed, exceptionally fortunate to be welcoming back to the show. The cowboy himself, our good friend, Seamus Malekofsali. Seamus, welcome back. - Glad to be back on Hit Factory, of course. - We're happy to have you. I'm very thrilled to be talking about the movie that we're talking about today. - Seamus, you know, we got in touch. We decided that for all of our sakes, for all of our collective sanity, we needed to talk to one another and see each other's faces and talk a movie. And that movie you said could only be one title. It needed to be the film we're discussing today, which is the 1995 cyberpunk thriller directed by the artist Robert Longo, written by the excellent author, William Gibson, and starring the fantastic Keanu Reeves. It's Johnny Mnemonic. (upbeat music) - I'm waiting for me, Ralphie. - Time is running out. - I'm a dead man if I don't get this out of my head. - If I can get it out. - How? - The cranial drill in a pair of four sets. - The future is most wanted future day. (upbeat music) - Keanu Reeves, you can't shoot me. - Not in the head. (upbeat music) - Johnny Mnemonic. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - So, Seamus, as we always do at the top here, I need to know. What is your history with Johnny Mnemonic? Why did you pick it this time around? What was it about Johnny and his film that called to you and made you want to discuss? - Well, I mean, I had read Johnny Mnemonic, the original story in high school. That was one of the only things I had ever read by Gibson, and typically the literature that I read, it's more like slow paced. It's more, I don't know, it is more nonfiction, more analytical, but when I read this story, it was just done my limit. Just all action, all the time, you could feel the speed of this story, just filled with different sci-fi details, total rush to get into. And I put that on the back burner for a number of years. And then, I think during the pandemic, I first saw Johnny Mnemonic, and of course, in this film, the dreaded NAS pandemic has taken over the entire world in the year 2021. And I watched it first. I thought it was pretty bad, but I was having so much fun with it that I didn't really mind it that much, but then I kept watching it another time and a third time, and I just kept getting more on board with it and what it was getting to me, and just every element of it I was rocking with, wholly and completely. But I hadn't seen it up until today. We watched it in, what's it like, three years? Since I think I watched it last on the day that it takes place. I love that. Yes, of course. Yeah. And this is my first time revisiting it. And it was, oh, it was so so good. It was wonderful. Like the phrase, like, underappreciated gem, under, like, unseen gem, whatever the fuck, that's thrown out a lot with a lot of memories. This is absolutely an example of something that has been unfairly aligned and needs, like, a critical reevaluation. 100%. I completely agree. I have to ask so famous, what about it initially made you feel like it was bad? Well, you see, well, you come across Keanu Reeves acting in it. And Reeves is, like, famously, like, he's great in the Matrix. He's great in speed. But he's very much like a one note guy, I think, too many people. When he tries to do something different with, you know, like Dracula, Francis IV Copeland. People made fun of that to death. So it's like, oh, ha, ha, ha. Keanu Reeves is doing so poorly in this movie. But then when you rewatch it, the intentionality of performance comes out. And you begin to really appreciate it for what it is. But I still saw the intentional absurdity in some respects on the first watch. Like, the dolphin. Yeah, absolutely. You're own Mr. Jones. Yeah. Like, I got most of it, but it's like, maybe the execution is wrong. No. Everything Robert Longo intended with this. Everything that was bad about this was forced upon by the studio. This is the work of a man who is trying against every aspect of the system to, like, do something with this. Do something magical with this. And I think that that is key to understanding the film. And thankfully, I had that pretense when I went into the movie, because this is my first time watching it. I think I'm the only one on the pod today who was seeing it for the first time. But I knew from what I had read and from other people whom I trusted, checking out their letterbox reviews, understanding that there is intentionality behind the stiltedness of the performances. You know, Gibson himself saying that his initial conception with the script was to be kind of a satirical commentary on sci-fi films, how sci-fi films are made, and that he and Longo very much envisioned a lot of the film to pay homage to some of the B pictures that they enjoyed to have a certain kind of, like, undeniable aesthetic quality to it, but to otherwise be kind of funny, intended to be something that you can sort of have a laugh at in a way that lets you know that the film is in on the same joke as you, kind of, and you're taking it in. And every moment that that doesn't happen does very much feel like a compromise. It feels like the studio getting its claws in the thing and cutting it apart or changing something up or demanding a particular thing be included. That is a disservice to, I think, the ultimate vision of the movie. That it persists. I think that that's important and why I loved it so much is that that vision persists and is actually almost more compelling because of the compromises. As you said, Seamus, like, it feels like a 96-minute battle of wills between something far stranger and something much more wrote, something much more kind of traditional and cinematic, and becomes an incredibly fascinating artifact in that way because of it. Yeah, and also it's even stranger because there are these studio in positions that are pretty clear. These clear notes to, like, you can't play all of these scenes, like, ironic, satirical. We have to play some of this straight so it can maintain, like, a broad appeal. We shouldn't work. It was a bomb. It was a box-ups bomb. But the studio, even then, the studio in positions, like, Dolph Langer was on the original plan. Henry Rollins was not in the original plan. Right. Like, but still, they get shoved into this movie and Longo and Gibson are able to work out, I mean, there's some of the best parts of the film. They're able to make it so wonderful, iconic performances. I can't envision myself enjoying this film as much as I did without Dolph Langer as an insane cyborg preacher assassin. And Henry Rollins being a underground doctor slash tech phobe who is crucified by the Christian priest slash assassin. Oh God, no, there's so so many great this cast is stacked. Oh my God. We got Keanu, we got Ice-T as the anarchist low-tech leader. Henry Rollins, everyone is in this fucking thing. It's everyone is coming together. They all, I think, understand the score, like, like, the intention of this. They're all hammered up. It's great. It's great. Everybody's having fun. Everybody's having fun. Absolutely. Absolutely. I was literally just going to say, one of the key indicators that you're watching a movie that is clearly understanding what it's doing and trying to meet you on a particularly weird wavelength is the presence of Udo here. Like, if you put Udo here in a movie, that director is signaling to you, "What I'm doing, please, trust me on this, take my hand. I promise you will have a good time." He's just, like, being, like, extra eastern European and in, like, a gilt sheenwah's jacket. Like, it's just so good. Johnny. Johnny. And then he's surrounded by this coterie of a caddy gay bodyguards in this whole thing. Oh, my God. They're all great. No, someone, this is someone, yeah, a director who is, like, clearly in on this. He knows what scene he's playing to. It's great. Oh, how I forget? Takeshi Kitado. Yes, of course. Like, he's another one where, like, when I first saw this movie, I didn't know who he was or anything about his filmography and have since watched, like, sonatine and know more about his work, sort of outside of film as well and his work as a comedian and a musician. And seeing him in this movie, I had that same thought where I was like, "Oh, him being here, this film absolutely knows, like, what it's doing." And is, like, you know, commenting on the sort of Takeshi's, like, whole deal being that he is often, I would say, like, not just operating within the realm of satire but also, like, inviting the audience to think metatextually while experiencing the work that he's doing, like, in the thing he made. I brought that to the film this time, like, realizing, "Oh, this man is in this," and watching it. I couldn't help but, like, approach the movie with the thing that he often engenders in me, and, like, he's, you know, he's barely in it, but just his presence is so delightful. Like, the thing that I know about that I notice about Kitano the most is, like, the screen presence that he brings to basically everything that he's in. Battle Royale, especially. Like, he's just tremendously imposing this very stoic acting style, very intimidating, always memorable. And when he's in this movie, like, I don't think he's totally, he's not as into it as the other actors, I think. This is a new frontier for my understand, but still, he can't, even when he's, like, phoning it in, quote unquote, he can't vote it in. Like, he, he's, it's always there, this quality about him. And it both, like, brings you out of the film by seeing him in it in this strange situation, but also just, I don't know, it envelops you in this whole atmosphere. Like, the strange clashing of worlds. Yes. Oh, amazing. And the, the only version I haven't seen, I told, I was talking to Erin about this, there was a Japanese cut of this, where Kitano was in it for, I think, like, a few more minutes, and they do a whole new soundtrack with it, which was not, I don't think that was, Longo's vision for it. That was just for Japanese people to get, to get worth Kitano. But there's a reason why they only did it for Japan. Kitano has that, he has that effector. You got to get him in there. 100%. And, you know, I think that that's an interesting kind of thing about this casting, is that Kitano feels like yet another studio mandate, because he was kind of, Longo was sort of ordered to put Kitano in the movie, so that it would appeal to Japanese audiences. And, you know, there are many versions of this film. There's the Japanese extended cut with more Kitano. There's a black and white version that was released just a handful of years ago, officially, on Blu-Ray, which I think you watched and will definitely talk more about. But even that being the case, like, Kitano's presence is, as we've all said, like, just seismic in it. Like, he says a handful of lines in that first interaction with his henchmen. And then, after that, is really just, like, this stoic figure who is being talked to by a ghost in the machine, a sort of, like, artificial construct of a dead woman, you know, trying to compel him to do the right thing. And still, like, it's like, it almost works better that he is sort of, like, an absence, rather than, like, a distinct animated presence in his, sort of, like, beat-to-keshi mode. Well, something I zeroed in on with his performance on this watch because of experiences I've had in my own life since the last time I saw this film is that he is a man who's grieving. And I think that Kitano is a person who just, like, his mere presence evokes a sense of grief for me. Like, he just seems like a person who understands grief in ways that I think just go beyond, sort of, the material. And he evokes that in just, sort of, his aura, no matter what he's in. And I felt like that essence of his experience really well in this film on this watch for me. And his, sort of, like, absence, as you're saying, and being this man that we understand from the outset of meeting him to be grieving makes his presence menacing, yes, but also feels like it matches a tenor of the people living in, in a way that just, I found really profound. Yeah, I mean, it's like, we say, you know, maybe he's not having as much fun as everyone else, or he's kind of phoning it in. Well, his character is, like, now phoning in his life, right? Like, this leader that he needs to be this person that he's supposed to be at, sort of, the top of the pecking order, he doesn't give a shit anymore. And this is only child to this disease in the film, N.A.S. And, yeah, I mean, I think it feels very intentional, that he doesn't speak very much, and that he keeps kind of to the sideline. All of this, though, would be for not, I think, without Keanu Reeves in the lead. And I know that we've, you know, talked about him a little bit already, but, like, holy shit, I found myself really enamored by Keanu here, and immediately identifying that he is doing an affect, that he is, like, playing up that sort of stiltedness that had almost kind of become part of the Keanu brand by this point in 1995. And there's a part of that that makes the proceedings really fun to watch, and, you know, when you're in on it, you get to kind of embrace and enjoy that. I kept thinking, though, sort of, like, fearless, that is, as a performer in Keanu's shoes, who, when this movie comes out, is celebrating, like, the high point of his career with speed, just the year before this, he's finally making a name for himself, he's finally sort of seen as, like, an it guy in Hollywood. And then to do something that is this strange, and to do something like this that has so much built into the performance and into the proceedings could easily be criticized by an audience that is looking for a more palatable version and presence of him on screen. I was just like, oh, like, this is really cool that he's willing to go to this length for the sake of the performance and for the film and have all that potentially, like, blow up in his face or be met with the criticisms that he's been getting for a lot of his career already. I was just like, this is what being a movie star is about. Yeah, I'm sure that this was uncomfortable for him considering, I mean, just, I mean, it's immediate from the outset the absurdity of his performance when he's in bed with the call girl, or whoever it is. Yeah. And she asked him, and he's like, this won't be communicated through the audio meeting, but he's like, yeah, like, it just whips it all back. Like, like, it's like, okay, all right. All right, we know what he's doing. But, I mean, it's not just Keanu in this. I remember reading, I think, years ago about Dolph, in particular, and what they asked and what he wanted to do and what was asked of him. Like, this performance, I mean, just from the outset of his, you can tell, this is way bigger than anything that Dolph had done before this. Just going all cylinders. And apparently, this was also like pretty neutered from what he had filmed. Because, apparently, and I've never seen footage from this. I wish, I hope to God that this exists somewhere. He had a whole monologue in this that was cut where he talked about, like, transhumanism and, like, Christianity and he delivered it nude on film. And it's just not any, like, they cut it from the final movie and I'm so, I'm so frustrated because I bet that was amazing. They probably cut so much more good stuff that Longo and Gibson had written out and planned and had tried to just mold this back from being just like a studio product into something really strange and weird and alienating to a general audience who wants a key out of a black buster. And, I mean, it succeeds. It succeeds in some respects, but it's still like you have to wonder like what could have been. Johnny? Yeah. Never mind. N.A.S. Nerve Attenuation Syndrome. So, where is home? Johnny? Home. Home. Yes, sir. Would you believe I don't even know? Yes, I would. Going out? Just getting some ice. We've got... us. ♪ Pick it up, Ralphie. How about it, Ralphie? You said you'd lock down a date for the procedure. And hello to you, too. Ralphie, the date, when? I'm sorry, Johnny. Said she by no assertions have changed their quote. You told me 800K would cover it. The fee for removing the implant is not 1,000,0005. That is complete memory recovery. If you don't want it all back, I think they will come down. If I just wanted the silicone dug out of my back brain, I want a full restoration. I want it all back. Johnny, the cheaper box, they're set the prize. I've done what I can. Come on, Ralphie. One more run, Johnny. And then you could cover it, provide it, it's a rich one. So what have you got? It depends. Did you get that upgrade we were discussing? Yeah. Very good. Pickup is in Central Beijing tomorrow night, 10 o'clock. This is a big one. Don't be late, Johnny. I love these movies, particularly from the 80s and 90s, that are apocalyptic visions of the future, because I really just delight in seeing how the people that bring them to life for film conceive of the world and do all of the world building in the details, and in the costuming and the flourishes of the characters, and this film was no exception. I just relish in the details of the club that Udo Keir's character is in, and who's performing, and what they're drinking, and what everyone's wearing, and the language they use. There's just so much of that in a lot of these films, like Strange Days, The Fifth Element, Twelve Monkeys. I was thinking of Robocop. I was thinking of Carpenter. There's a cohort of films by artists who care deeply not just about the story, but about the politics that the environment, the story takes place in, the things that those details can communicate about the world that they live in, and about the power structures and people's relationships to power. Keanu's performance in particular, I just find just so electrifying because I think his sort of affect and his stiltedness is an indicator of this man's relationship to the environment. He's in. He's a courier, and he's carrying information in his brain, which memories have been scooped out of so he can carry this data. It's incredibly dangerous, it's incredibly alienating, and his mind is fucked up, so yeah, he's going to be fucking weird, and maybe not fully emotionally operating at peak level when he's interacting with other humans because he has an incredibly antagonistic relationship with not just the people who keep him alive, but also with anyone he encounters. And so understanding that, the delivery of his makes sense. And I also felt like Dina Meyer's character, Jane, was a really good corollary for that as well. She's also awkward and kind of strange and feels, you know, like she's this island and doesn't quite know how to interact with Johnny herself, so she's clearly drawn to him, and it makes sense for her character too. She's, you know, been shot up with like, what do they say? It's like sheep, sheep, blood, or something. Probably, but she's got so many different like surgical, like tech implants, and she's also got early onset NAS. Early onset NAS. She's got sheep implants that make her shake up. She's not good enough. Yes, that's what it was. Yeah. And you're something with sheep. I think what you're getting at Carly is just like, broadly speaking, what is this sort of sci-fi subgenre of cyberpunk, right? That like so many of these movies take influence from authors, namely William Gibson, who is the author of Johnny Mnemonic, and the screenwriter of the film, he adapted his own short story. I mentioned to you, Seamus, that, you know, this was like really fortuitous timing because when you had asked to talk about Johnny Mnemonic, I had just started reading Neuromancer. I'm still reading Neuromancer because I'm a very slow reader. But what I love so much about these worlds and about Gibson specifically is the material and political dimensions that he adds to everything. And, you know, his dystopia is very clearly informed by logical extensions of capitalist impulses. And so with his particular brand, there is so much of this like bodily modification, and so much of that is informed by precarity. And by the need to augment your body in order to do something dangerous to make a living, you know, like capitalism, you know, now and always has demanded incredible bodily sacrifice from its subjects. And what I love so much about Neuromancer, what I love so much about Johnny Mnemonic, and like this idea of a mnemonic courier who has to get like parts of his brain scooped out in order to carry data is like, is that really so far-fetched, an idea that like, in order to survive in this unforgiving world, one would have to destroy part of themselves. Namely, I mean, the perfect sort of like allegory in this completely kill their own childhood and their memories of their youth in order to survive in this dystopic capitalist hellscape. He finds it entirely fortuitous to scoop out any long-term memory as because I think he says that he doesn't want, maybe he doesn't want to remember it in the midpoint. I mean, it's not even about like practicality, because you could just, because like, if you wanted to be, I don't know, like hard sci-fi, you want to be, I guess, realistic to a certain extent, you would say, "Oh, why can't they just figure out new ways to send data over these different data streams or whatever the hell?" But like the idea of someone, like the exploitation is so deep-set into the system that the idea of finding a way in which the exploitation is not possible, that it can be overcome, that doesn't enter into the equation. No, like if there is a way to load data directly into human being, to make them indebted to a business owner or to a client, that's where it has to go. That's the future of this style of corporate espionage. Don't have them carry a letter, don't have them send something over the wire. No, just like, of course, load it into their brain. I also wish I understood, I love the details of like the doubler that Keanu has, just like on him. He can only store 80 gigabytes, which, you know, in the 90s was incomprehensible amount of data. And then it's like 160, and then the actual data that they put onto its brain, it's like 300 something, like 350 something gigabytes. I think it's 320, I think it's exactly double what he's got storage size for. And of course, he can't give up, he can't say no, he just smiles painfully, and it's like, "Oh yeah, no, no, I can take it on." And then he has to go to Newark from Beijing, and the security system tells him, you have a septic seepage. What do they call it? I think it's called Synaptic Seepage. Synaptic seepage. And you will die in 24 hours, the airport security system tells me this directly. And it's like, "Yeah, get this job done, I'm not going to panic." This is just how it is. It's great. I also love, just as a minor segue, how Newark is depicted in this. Yeah, it's a free city, my view. Free city, the airport is completely empty. And then when they drive around it, you can see the bridges into New York City have been blown up and then deteriorating. Just total hellhole. Everything is miserable, everything is corrupt. The only good medical care you can get is through back-backstreet surgeons. And it's all being held hostage by these pharmaceutical companies, these evil pharmaceutical companies. I love pharmaceutical companies as villains. I feel like that came about a lot in the '90s. I mean, the big one that I think of immediately is The Fugitive. It's a very different kind of movie, but one where like, we'll literally kill your wife and frame you for it because the knowledge that you possess. But I love your point, Seamus, about kind of like the idea that the brutality of the system is so ingrained that there is no even conceit of an alternative to it. That we have to brutalize people because that is sort of ultimately the point of it is keeping everyone beholden to it by making their lives precarious, making them the agents of all of our systems. And then being able to exploit that. One of the big key things that comes out of the story is that the reason they want a mnemonic career and they want a transporter who's a human being is because, well, it's easier to make sure that there's no loose ends and no actual breadcrumbs of this data transfer because we can just kill him at the end of this. And it seems clearer and clearer as the movie goes on that killing mnemonic couriers is sort of like the whole point of their existence. Is it a maybe more secure way to transport because we don't have data trails in systems, but also we can tie up our loose ends that much easier. That is ultimately why we do it this way. Well, and this is what makes Johnny mnemonic, I think, a perfect hologram for just like human existence under capitalism and kind of strips him of his, you know, lauded position as a martyr, which he is because of what he's carrying. But you also get the sense that like he could be anyone, right? Like, he could be, it could be any other mnemonic career that has this information. At the end of the film, there are things that indicate it is maybe sort of predestined that it's him specifically in his relationship to, you know, pharma-com potentially, which like we can discuss. But I like this idea that Johnny is special, yes, because he's our protagonist and we're invested in him, but in the world of the film, he's very much not. And his sacrifice, his bodily sacrifice, the wiping of his childhood, the complete like rejection and like purging of all childhood wonder and belief in anything. That that is demonstrative of, you know, everyone living in this world to a certain extent, even if they're not couriers. And I think that, you know, it makes his character that much more compelling. I was so much more moved by him as a character on this watch than I have been previously because of, I think, the allegorical, you know, things that you can extrapolate from who he is and how he's situated in the story. The intentionally blank slate definitely helps with that. There's a lot of Christ imagery over this film, but I'm still hesitant to like apply too much to it, though the idea of like having no father and then this very ghostly mother figure that obviously permeates the whole film and then within the memories that Keanu is able to recover at the very end. Is it, am I crazy? Is that supposed to be the ghost in the machine, like the woman at the very end? So I was kind of confused on this until I looked it up and the actress's name is Barbara Sukova, who plays Anna Kalman, the ghost in the machine, and I looked at a photo of her, you know, unaltered by CGI or whatever they're doing to her, you know, in the cyberspace of the film. And it is 100% the actress who shows up as Johnny's mother in his vision at the end. Whether that is, you know, something implanted, you know, and there's like some sort of like enmeshing of the two experiences happening there or not. I think we are, to some extent, led to and meant to assume that Anna is both like the former head of Farmacom and that she's also Johnny's mother and that he has forgotten this part of his existence. Yeah, so there's some level of predestination there, maybe some more subtle level of Jesus imagery directly with that. What I appreciate about this is that there are so many details to this. There are so many world building aspects of this, but it crucially never feels like overly explanatory. You're supposed to love the details, you're supposed to be intrigued by the details, but it's not a tremendous puzzle box to try and get to. It's not setting up anything. It's just wonderfully self-contained within this space in which you can just, I guess, think about all the other different ways in which this world extends outward from this environment. Yes, absolutely. I act like I'm an authority now while I'm like 150 pages into a book, but I'll say this is classic Gibson. As I'm reading Neuromancer, I was talking to some friends who are big fans of Gibson, sci-fi and Neuromancer specifically, and they're like, "What do you think of it?" What I told them is one of the things that I really admire and appreciate about it is how intently it forces me to read it because of how arcane and opaque the language in the world building often is. It is told in a very experiential third-person, it's almost a first-person experience from the character of case, and along the way, everything in the descriptions are informed by cases, experiences, and by his knowledge set. So you're hearing about Microsoft implants, and you're hearing about SimStim, and you're hearing about Cobra, all this stuff that you don't really have a read on, and that is a construct of Gibson's imagination. And sometimes you'll go like 10, 20 pages, hearing about a particular thing or detail of this world and not really understanding what it is until it becomes like a functionally necessary part of the story, and then you're like, "Oh, that's what SimStim is. You've been talking about SimStim sticks for the last 30 pages, and now I see that you plug it in when you're jacked into the matrix, and suddenly you can see through somebody else's eyes and see the experience of somebody else." And I'm like, "Okay, that's cool, and before this I was confused by what this was." The movie can't quite do that same thing because you're not kept at a distance by just language and having to fill in the pictures yourself, like you actually see it happening, but still, to your point, that first scene where they're implanting the data is super cool because of all of these distinct things that it does. And he's pulling out all these little items from his briefcase, and he's plugging something into the back of his head, and he's handing off the TV remote, and he's pressing these buttons when this counter goes to this. It's just like all of these very deliberately kind of abstracted details that aren't explained exactly like, "Well, this does this, and this does this, and this does this." It's just like, "Okay, your part in this is to push the controls on the TV, and it will create a code that we will then send to the other side and to your receiver so that they know what it is, and I don't know it." And I love it, it's like one of my favorite sequences in the entire movie. I'm like, "This feels like neuromancer feels," which is like all of this shit just getting thrown at me and expecting me to just kind of ride the wave and go along with it. It's also never fully explained, but when you get to the very end, and that very abstract piece of code-breaking technology, that becomes this huge emotional finale and catharsis, and it's wonderfully, wonderfully done. Again, as a minor segue, the hologram, how the ghost in the machine is depicted throughout the film, one of my favorite parts of the entire thing, and in the black and white version in particular, the way Gibson films it, edits it, shoots it. It's a magnificent, beautiful, genuinely beautiful thing. It's one of my favorite depictions of a hologram in a sci-fi film, period. But I think we should, I think we would be remiss if we did not talk about the one thing that anybody remembers from this film, which is the scene in which Johnny sends a long-distance phone call. Yes, yes, because it's such a good example of what we're talking about where things are not explained, and you just like are in it, and you understand what's happening as much as you need to. I think I would love for you to talk about this scene, Seamus. Yeah, I mean, he says that he needs to get to a computer, so they go into the side room in this tunnel, and he immediately starts telling his new bodyguard, "Get me a Thompson iPhone, get me all these different computer parts that we, of course, know nothing about what they are." It's like this neural touch interface where he has a visor on, and then he has like a Nintendo power glove type situation, full tactile, he's just moving through a virtual internet space as a physical being, essentially. It's like a first-person perspective as he's navigating all these different sites, and I think back in the 1990s, and this was depicted in Jurassic Park, the name is Casey, but there used to be a file system in which everything was depicted as a three-day iconography, right? So the real thing that existed, that people were really interested in this, even though it was entirely inconvenient, just from the face of it, but very visually interesting, and here it's just exploded in terms of its speed, its complicatedness. He is able to contact the hotel in Beijing through a computer-generated image of the lobby. He tells someone to make a phone call, goes to a pyramid puzzle that he asked to solve, and then he talks to... I don't remember who he asked to talk to, but he's depicted as this visually garbled goblin-esque villain who just lives inside of a cube. He talks like a lone shark like Johnny. Johnny, what are you doing? You can't see that, Johnny. And he has to do battle with him inside of the interface. Every single second of it is gold, it's pure gold. It's with us for only a few minutes of the actual film itself, but it's completely electrifying. It is, and I love the way that that sequence takes us in and out of the interface, so we're seeing what Johnny is seeing and doing inside this virtual world, the internet. And then we're also seeing him just be bopping his hands around in mid-air and looking to the left, and Nina Meyer's character Jane is just like... She's so confused. Call me, I think we gotta fucking go dude. Like, where? No, no, but he has to do it at one point. At one point he has to do like a kung fu move, like he has to like... It's the friend, like you'll... It's like a spider, it's like the spider monkey move or whatever. It's so good. Keanu is just so perfect for this role for a million reasons. I think he's doing a combination of the action star personality that he's evoking some of that, but then he's also doing some proto Neo stuff in this film as well, and also leaning into his more comedic tendencies, which we know now, especially later in his career, he's very good at. So it's sort of all in this character, and he has a sequence in the bathroom when he has a fucking nosebleed, because he has all this synaptic seepage, because he's carrying four times as much data as he is able to or whatever. And then he just does Tai Chi in front of the mirror in order to like chill out and like find his center, and it's like, I can't imagine any other actor doing it and having it work the way that it does. I need to sign on Logic 60, SOGO 7 Datagloves, a GPL stealth module, one verdine intelligent translator, and Thompson iPhones. [Music] Last word, enter. Welcome to BRT Online. Global Med, selected. What are you doing? Making a long distance phone call, Beijing Hotel. Beijing selected. Access denied. Access granted. Hotel Beijing selected. General account selected. The fax charges 32571, 15 January 2021, 715 PM till 30 PM. You'll try to make a move. You'll use his connections on the net. Narrow the bandwidth. Go low rent. On my translation, translator, selected. Shit. It's just an all night copy shop. They were sending the fax to a copy shop here in Newark. Local net, selected. Hold it. Command terminated. Come on. Away back to Newark. [Music] Yeah, it's here. The fax buffer selected. Part of it's here in the buffer of their fax modem. [Music] Nothing but a name. Dr. Alcom. Nothing came through. Shit. [Music] Let me tell you something about this scene because I love this detail. There's a interview or like a three-way kind of conversation between Keanu, Robert Longo and William Gibson. That's featured on the black and white DVD or Blu-ray version of this film that you can find on YouTube right now in full. It's very good. And they're talking about Longo and Gibson both are admiring Keanu's sense of movement in these two scenes. And that they just kind of had him design how to do all of that. And what he sort of said was part of it was playing with shapes and symmetry because I'm like a human robot. And just the idea of how my body can manifest specific geometric patterns seems cool to me. But he also mentions that what he was trying to do was sort of a stilted like robotic version of Robert Longo's classic "Men in the Cities" artwork, which if you're not familiar with is one of the things that got him very famous. It's a series of like black and white photos of various men in suits. And they are in like these very expressive kind of movements, you know, looking like they're flailing or falling, what have you. If you aren't familiar, look it up, you may actually be familiar with it. It's very like madmen opening credits a little bit. But he mentions he's like I was thinking of how could I as this like robotic, hyper-structured subject evoke your previous work, Robert, while also doing something that felt like true to what we were doing with evoking this idea of cyberspace from William Gibson. And it's like that level of thought and consideration is something I always admire. And an actor when he decides like here's what I'm actually doing in this scene that otherwise like I mean it looks great and is very cool to watch. But it's just like how neat, how neat that you have all of these different like little influences that you're drawing from in order to get there. There's so much thought put into this film that has just been completely sidelined by its reputation. And like seeing the black and white version especially because I know that you said you wanted to talk about that at some length. Like you see like if Longo had been allowed to fulfill his vision as he intended it, even not really changing too much about the film's content itself, this would have absolutely been treated differently by time, by audiences for sure. I will hardly agree I think that you know as we've already mentioned like there are significant compromises. But there's also something about this film that I think is rendered in a way that to use a word that you already use Seamus is alienating to some extent. And I think deliberately so like it is meant to be sort of experimental and we spend a good deal of time on this show kind of talking about general audiences relationship with things that are you know not like quote unquote like good. You know like a standardized like templated cookie cutter version of like what a good movie is, what good cinematography is, what good acting is, what good like production design is. And I you know we talk about on the show and Carly had a really great comment on this when we were talking just about cruel intentions a handful of weeks ago about like meeting a movie on its terms rather than addressing every film from your preconceived notion of what makes a good movie. And so while I think that there is certainly a movie here that could have been made better by allowing long go his full artistic vision without compromise. And so there is also something here that would have just probably been to a certain extent kind of dispossessed by people who thought it was just kind of is a little out there it's a little too weird. And we would probably love that about it but I think about this in terms of like a $30 million studio picture you know being released to the public uncompromised and I feel like I just wonder I wonder what the critical reception to it would be. And even then or if people would still be in this particular mindset of well it doesn't meet XYZ criteria and therefore is not a good movie. So that's a good point. I guess I think a little bit about how Michael Mann I hate because this is our favorite everybody's favorite pet subject on the set we all frequent. Like Michael Mann's like digital cinematography films. Not just Miami Vice which I'm a bit middling on honestly but like the reception of public enemies. And this came out the criticism that was directed at directing style. Like maybe there was no real way to avoid this but I do wonder if it could have at least avoided the fate of being seen as like just just plain bad, not in any sort of interesting way, not in any sort of like artistic way. Like is it worse is a large artistic like debate like is it worse to be seen as bad because you didn't try hard enough or to be seen as bad because you tried too much. Like which is more damaging to reputation which is more I guess contemptible in the wider audience to be. Because there is no like like what like this changes throughout the years but like what it like what what produces more like anger in someone. And I feel like people hate hate they used to hate it more when an artist came across as like too pretentious it's like trying too hard in that respect. And I think with Jamiel Monix reception and reputation nobody talks about it in that way. The way that they talk about it is that looking out bad Keanu is looking at how stupid and outdated all this CG is how fucking stupid is it that there's a dolphin and there's hacking your own brain. None of it is about the actual effort that went into it and as a result it's not. People don't they don't take it they don't take it at all seriously as a pretentious a theoretically pretentious picture and then they don't think about it at all. Really outside of maybe like a passing remembrance that this came out which is unfortunate. Yeah I agree with all of that I mean I think the thing that is always challenging about art you know in any sort of like violent economic system that's prioritises capital over everything else or some sort of like exchange value and doesn't necessarily hold. Art in doesn't necessarily imbue art with like inherent exchange value in the markets that we operate in is that like. Longo and Gibson are working under the constraints of systems that might otherwise prevent this like more platonic ideal of their work being made at all. And so like that we even got this as like a 30 million dollar picture I think is remarkable. I agree with you though Seamus like I do feel like especially you know in increasingly exigent times it's like okay well like what is going to get made like ever. If it's just going to be harangued then like what is it really doing and at a certain point like how can we move beyond the sort of systems of control and the power structures in order to make art that you know brings our minds and our hearts past the limits of that experience. And that's something I think about constantly because I do think that art and culture have a place in some sort of revolutionary project I don't think they're throwaways I think they're tools. But I want to just say about long ago you know you mentioned that Gibson is really wonderful in neuromancer at sort of like delivering these details that then become relevant later and you know there are some elements to that in a lot of the world building or I also think like as a director, long ago is doing this and I'm thinking specifically about the opening sequence with Johnny in the hotel where we see several if not like I don't know at least 10 maybe 15 shots of Keanu Reeves just from the shoulder up right it's just his head. And that becomes material later when we know that he is trying they're trying to be head him and preserve his brain so that they can you know maintain the durability of the data but they don't have to keep him alive and they can dispatch with him. And I didn't like catch that I noticed these shots that were like very directly just Keanu's head and was like oh that's striking and what a beautiful man that is which is the thing you always think when you're looking at him. And then later I was like oh like they're trying to fucking chop his head off like we open with that those shots and so like that's an example one of many where long ago is also you know through his directorial decisions and the framing of certain things and where people are in you know in a shot and the angle he's coming at it with he's also delivering narrative details that become material later. It's not just like the term vulgar autism gets thrown around way too much. But in this instance you know this guy is not like Paul W.S. Anderson or you know someone in that category like this is a real artist, someone who is very involved with the unified artistic scenes professional artistic scenes. And even if he is trying to do something satirical he knows what looks striking and what can be communicated by subtleties. I think about like like this I mean the way in which Keanu is framed when he has to actually like he's doing the hacking scenes he's doing the data upload scenes and all you see is you see the machinery on top of the new see is his mouth and everything that has to be communicated from that it's so rich in detail just like the facial acting the Keanu has to do. Like all full of pain and rage and anger and it's all communicated through the clenching of his teeth and how it's shot in different ways. And in the black and white version especially in the final scene we asked to hack his brain. There's all this like like almost like Tetsuu the Iron Man. Absolutely. And at the time it's disgusting, it's sweaty, it's just it feels like machinery that is built to interact with a bodily function and it's all into his head. And I don't know if like I wish there were words in the English language to describe the feeling of it but it just feels visceral. It's like people unfortunately like audiences remember the strange CG of like him hacking his own brain which is still cool but like people I think it looks kind of like kitschy obviously low quality it's older. But when it interacts with these real elements all that's based in these really brutal human experiences that you're seeing. I don't know it's a great contrast it's a great like everything worked like oh I'm sorry I feel like I'm the way in which I'm speaking is a bit disconnected because I'm getting very excited about rant away. No that's what the movie evokes please. The finale of this especially in black and white I loved it before but when you get this glimpse of how long go wanted to see this when it's graded properly by the original colorist. Everything about it is spectacular. The shots are beautiful they're gorgeous. The dialogue in mean in every scene hits differently. You feel the actual intent behind the performances when it's in black white but here especially. Like the way I would compare it to is like again Tetsuo this sort of and also like the way in which people talk elsewhere it reminded me a lot of like the feeling I had from like Kevin Smith's films. Not like how funny they are sorry I need to be more specific like independent low budget filmmaking. Realistic human beings in a situation it grounds it. The kind of thing that I guess the appeal that clerk said even though they share no similarities and almost anything else. Everything is working for it. Everything is working for it and I brought this up on Twitter like when the ghost in the machine comes out and tells Takahashi to get she kitano what the deal is and it is just a shot of her face. And it's framed in like this 1920s esque vignette where the background fades out and it's just her expression this pure white expression against the black and it's like he's got it. Like it's so like how can you not watch this and not be blown away by what logo is trying like how can you not be swept up in this in some manner another how can you not be on board. I don't know. Completely agree Seamus and I think that the point that you're getting at with the black and white version of this film let's just take a moment to talk about it. We'll get back to some of like the actual stuff in the movie but I think it's a good time as any to discuss Johnny mnemonic in black and white. As you mentioned like color graded by the colorist for the film like done as long go says like in a way that is distinctly black and white. Like he mentions in many of the interviews that he didn't want it to just be like a grayscale version of the film that he wanted very distinct contrasts and for the blacks to like really really be black and to stick out. And when you watch it like Tetsuo was one that immediately comes to mind especially in those last moments there. And as you said like the performances that stiltedness feels all of a sudden more authentic. And it feels more deliberate and there's just something about it that grounds everything in the work. To make no mention of like as we're kind of talking around here like how exceptional long go is as a visual stylist with his art background like. It took me about 90 seconds into the movie to be like this is the best thing I've ever seen and it's when he walks into the hotel. To meet with the client to get the data and there's the giant spherical fishbowl. And he sees the little girl like reflected through it and then finds the twins and everything and just the light coming off of it and the way that shot is sort of framed in Keanu within the water kind of stretched. I was like oh this is gorgeous and those scenes already look great in the color version but I was like oh this is something else entirely this feels almost like otherworldly in how distinctive it feels and how intentional it all feels which is the thing to me that really blows me away is like. It's very clear watching the movie that it was lit for color however when you watch it in black and white you're like this must have always been the vision. There's no way that it was ever conceived otherwise and of course that is how long go says that it was that he wanted this film to be in black and white from the outset. And that color and a lot of the things were sort of studio impositions that they had to kind of roll with in order to make a marketable film. But yeah I mean it's to me it's a vastly superior work of something that's already very good I really really enjoy this in color but watching it in that black and white edition all of a sudden. Everything just coheres in a way that it didn't before and part of this because of the anachronisms of it like it feels at once like distinctly of and apart from any place. And especially in those CGI sequences too like the 90s CGI rendered in black and white to me is like a very strange and very fascinating experience it feels like something again all of a sudden that is like not. Dated because of the era in which it was created but something that's like intentionally abstracted and strange and done in a particular style. I think about in particular while he's in the hotel when I see breaks into the communications first and you just see the eyes and the mouth disconnected. And in the color version it evokes this aesthetic of like I guess the best example would be the you wouldn't download a car. Ask ads, like lots of TV static, I don't even know what the exact style would be but it's immediately identifiable. But when it's in black and white like I started thinking of like Fritz Lang. I started thinking of metropolis. I started thinking of I started thinking of the great Gatsby like the ways in which I mean there's a particular shot. When he's on his way to the data center where we see Beijing and there's just these eyes that emerge. And in the color version it's a cool shot but it doesn't really evoke anything in particular. But as soon as you see in the black and white you feel all of this like cinematic history that is bearing down on long ago as he is formulating this. And it's just like it changes the atmosphere. I no longer think of like a blockbuster action scene that's about to come. I feel like it's like above itself. It's a very strange and wonderful thing. And then of course like you're talking about when we go into the full CG scenes and the rendered in these exquisitely graded black and white filters. It doesn't look right but also when I think about going back to the original color scheme I feel like something would be lost in that equation. Like you lose something that makes this film unique and unlike any other film of its type it wouldn't be what the film needs to be. Yeah I mean I completely agree with you on that. I was curious what you all make of this I was just thinking again about that scene in the hotel lobby with the little girls. And he realizes like oh there are twins here. I'm trying to like catch the significance of this scene because it feels significant and I'm trying to come up with anything other than this being the moment that Johnny thinks about the idea of like doubling himself once he's inside farm a comm in order to like allow one of him like his double his duplicate to be destroyed so that he can remain and do everything he needs to do in that final like CG hacking sequence where Jones the dolphin comes swooping out of the sky. I don't know but like there's there's something about it you know where there's obviously like a kind of breath in that moment. That makes me feel like this scene with the twins and the duplicates is really meaningful or intentional. And I'm just trying to think of what else it might be or maybe there's something on the cutting room floor that had more to do this more to do with this. I think it might have been whatever more connections I imagine would have made maybe it was on the cutting room floor. It does feel too intentional of a shot to like entirely be like perfunctory you know not really into the story but it feels a bit thin to connect it to the doubling thing for just that one shot at the very beginning. I do wonder about that shot though like what what's its ultimate significance. There are no children in this movie at all except for a dead one. And and this sort of ghost of Johnny's childhood right those are the two times that like children are evoked other than at the very beginning in this moment when he sees these twins. And so to me the presence of a child in this movie I think is precious both for us the audience but also as an indicator that like children are precious in this world. And you know what we know about just sort of like existence under a punishing I don't know like state that knows only violence and nothing else is that like children are not taken care of in you know a myriad of ways. And so seeing one is special seeing two is incredibly special. And that we see them in the beginning of the film and then you know the rest of the film is this sort of odyssey right between Johnny and and the world that he's unwittingly trying to better by completing his movie. I think there's significant there that maybe you know would have like had more fruit if things weren't on the cutting room floor but I did find the evocation of twins specifically to sort of like emphasize this preciousness that children have in this world. And you know henceforth then they're their literal ghosts right. Again I don't want to I don't want to connect too much outside what I already know about long ago and in this film. But these things are like the devastation of this whole world how desperate and decrepit it is. It's it's very much in the foreground but also like the full implications of it just kind of like similar in the background like I think someone I think Rollins or someone like that says that like 50% of the world has NAS. And it's this this slow death where everyone just loses all their motor skills shaking coughing. It just puts the world in the state of Stasis that farm a con can of course exploit for its own nefarious dealings and also we haven't even talked about the whole thing about how technology is killing everyone. That's supposed to be the main cause, especially the main cause of NAS I mean Henry Rollins does this whole freak out where I can't ask him like what is what causes this. He's like this causes it. This cause just hitting all these machines in his office. And then it like all of these these new fangled technologies that were taking over in the 1990s it's it's going to destroy everything. It's going to ruin us. It's going to make us sick. It's going to make us it's going to destroy our social our social societal fabric. Yeah, no, no, the whole there's no there's very little instances of hope in this world. And there's a very subtle notion of what you're talking about with the children but also the only way that anything is signal is changing is that, you know, there's no. I don't even what you call there's no reconciliation between the two parties at the end of the film. They don't shake hands. It's not like I don't want to get too much into the metropolis comparisons but at the end of the metropolis, you know, the mediator of the head and the hands is the heart. They all shake hands, a new system is created here, farm a con. Once it's revealed that they have been hiding the cure, the people burn it down. Yes, fire to the building. Yeah, everything is about like a violent like violence is the way that the system operates how it oppresses the people. And the only way out of it is like the destruction of that system. That means technology that means, you know, the pharmaceutical industry that means pretty much everything. Yeah, the I will just say, I texted this to Aaron because we are in separate places when we were watching this. I just said, I love when Henry Rollins is in things because like I just, he's just always a welcome presence in anything that he's in, particularly his film career, which I always just find fascinating like where he ends up in movies. But he is so good in this film. What he's doing is, it's different than what everyone else is doing in this movie. He's the only character to me that feels safe, like really safe. I felt like I was just like in good hands with him, but he doesn't feel saccharin. He doesn't feel, he feels still very entrenched in the practicalities of their world. And he plays it honestly like a refugee doctor, like a person who is has to carry a certain amount of hope with them in order to do what they're doing, but is so immersed in the horrors of the catastrophe that has been created by the powers it be. That like, there's a matter of factness to the way that he like talks about things that just felt incredibly authentic to me. And he evokes it beautifully in the moments that he's on screen and I just like was so affected by it, watching him. And when he sort of explodes into these moments of anger when he's talking about NAS, he uses a very specific phrase and the phrase is information overload. And I don't want to like be too much of a pedant here, but unpacking that phrase, the fault lies with the consumer and the corporate entity, right? Not the thing itself, not like information and technology existing being a problem, but the way it's being dispatched and the way it's being consumed, moderated, not moderated by, you know, the population. And I think that's important because the film, Henry Rollins' character is a technophobe to a certain degree, but he also utilizes it when he needs to in order to save lives and help spider, sorry, help J bone, and their whole project is very entrenched in sort of like counter technology. And so like the fact that NAS is, you know, resultant of like over consumption, over production, and like this just total saturation of technology into everyone's lives, I think is an important detail, again, of the political landscape and not necessarily, you know, an argument that like technology inherently is evil. And the only other thing I want to mention briefly, just back to something you were talking about, Seamus, with the black and white version, I think the metropolis comparisons are totally apt and I'm really glad you brought them up. And I was thinking when I was, you know, watching the color version, that something that was evoked for me was anime, like particularly a lot of the shots, like you mentioned the clenched teeth and there are these sort of like shots of like Keanu's neck where like a vein is bulging and like, you know, then he's like implanting this thing into a skull and like the sort of like extremeness of some of these panels, I'll call them, just felt very anime and even his styling, he's got this sort of like angular suit and this like haircut that felt like Japanese and of course the Yakuza is in this plays an important role in this film and and I quite liked that about the color version and I don't know that that's necessarily there with the black and white because I think the black and white, you know, evokes these other things. I mean, the thing that strikes me about Rollins is that he, his character in this, he's like forced to be competent, he can't afford to like give himself over to his emotions that often. Like, when Keanu, he's like, you know, we're gonna have to do like a manual scraping out of this memory like, yeah, you'll lose some fine motor skills and maybe you won't be able to remember things for like three minutes at a time, but there's a larger thing at stake here, one that Keanu eventually has to like get through his skull, that this is the cure for NAS. This is like far more important than you and we like, we have to get back on this on this path to fixing this issue, to changing the system that has caused this problem. But of course, like he's not, like you're saying, he's not saccharin about it, but he is also very, very courageous when he goes up against Dolph Plankritt. And he's like spitting up blood, insulting him, and then he gets crucified in his own surgical suite, sacrifices himself for the cause, so that so that Keanu can get out of there. The most honorable man in cinema. He's like, oh yeah, that's the guy who fucks your mother. Like, it works coming out of Henry Rollins' mouth because you know he fucking says that to everyone. I mean, it's hard for someone who shaped like Henry Rollins to look overly saccharin or sound like feeble, you know, he's a big guy. And yeah, he works really well. Now I remember there was like a three-month period where I had Henry Rollins in the Liar music video when he's painted red screaming at the camera, because I remember looking at it's like, his neck is so wide. Oh my God, yeah. It's wider than his head. That's fascinating. When he's able to let out the black flag voice in this, when the mannerisms of a punk front man, that's of course when he's at his best, when he can release that anger that is always simmering within. But it doesn't feel forced. It doesn't feel like it's intentionally like shoving these elements in. It's a fully rounded character. It is. All of these characters have, they are, thank God, they are all distinct. They all have their own individual personalities. I know what lines go with which character neither of them feel like they're Mexican matching. It's a world. It's a whole thing. Thank God. It's really just so special that movies like this took, and the people involved with them took the time and the care to give the dolphin face tattoos the way that the other low techs have. You know, like I fucking noticed it, and I appreciated it. I was like, of course, the dolphin would fucking have low tech face tattoos. He's their, he's their, he's their profit. He's their leader. Like, of course, he would have face tattoos. But like, that's the thing, right, is like, I think movies like this too. Not only is it a disservice to say, "Oh, they're not good." But it prevents you from like going back to them, which movies like this always, always reap benefits for rewatches because they're so rich, not just in the details of, you know, the set design and the costuming. I mean, we haven't even talked about the costuming. The costuming is incredible. But also, you know, in the narrative flourishes, the dialogue, like there were so many lines this time that I caught where I was just like, "Oh, that's beautiful." Like, at the beginning when Johnny says, "I want full restoration." I was just like, that desire is such a pure, like, it's a pure desire of a person who has lost their childhood to a system that seeks to obliterate him and it. Like, just saying, "I want full restoration. I want to go back to this version of myself that is totally unmarred by any of this." It's not just the memory that he wants back. He wants this bodily, like, regeneration, this spiritual regeneration. And it's just in that line. And the reason I'm able to extrapolate all of that from, you know, those handful of words is because the film tells me that's how to read it, right? Right. I mean, going back really quickly, just to Jones the Dolphin, like, lesser movies would not have a Jones the Dolphin in here, you know, with, like, all of these tech implants that were commissioned by... Full puppet work. Full puppet work, designed by the... Yes. Like, in a tank. It's incredible. And like, I mean, it is in lineage with the Quato reveal near the end of Total Recall, right? Where it's like, "We hear about this guy." And it's like, "Oh, he's like a little tiny, like, guy that's a growth on another guy's stomach." You know? Like, Jones is that to me. And when it happened, I was like, "Fuck." Yes. Like, this is what I came for, something fucking weird, like, a teched-out dolphin that sends, like, radio waves that can melt Dolph Lundgren. Like, that's what I came to a movie for, is that very thing. I want to zone in to on what you were mentioning, Carly, about, like, Johnny's desire and, you know, this idea of, like, full restoration. Like, he's on the spiritual journey to reclaim part of himself. And I think what's interesting about the film is that it grapples with the sort of dichotomy that existence is for a lot of people. And that, like, we want something that is, like, spiritual restitution and a regaining of, like, not an innocence, but a sense of self that feels pure and more whole. And that along the way, there are temptations that are more fleeting and more material that, like, seek to keep us complacent. And we haven't talked about it yet, but there is this scene near the end of the film, right before Johnny hacks his own brain and uses Jones and what have you before the big final climax. Uh, kind of colloquially known as the "I want room service" monologue. What the fuck is going on? What the fuck is going on? You know, all my life, I've been careful to stay in my own corner, looking up for number one, no complications. Now, suddenly, I'm responsible for the entire fucking world, and everybody in his mother is trying to kill me, if, if my head doesn't blow up first. Maybe it's not just about you anymore. Listen, you listen to me. You see that city over there? That's where I'm supposed to be. Not down here with the dogs and the garbage and the fucking last much newspaper is going back and forth. I've had it with them. I've had it with you. I've had it with all this. I want room service! I want the club sandwich! I want the cold Mexican beer! I want a ten thousand dollars a night of hunger! I want my shirts laundered. Like they do at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. Carly and I were talking a little bit about it before we got on, and just like how good it is. And I know that it, I guess, has been sort of a point of derision for people who are a little bit more critical of this movie. But I think it's beautiful, and I think it's like a marvelous microcosm of that same push-pull that we all feel under capitalism. That's like in moments where we are tested, in moments when it is required of us to do something more than just the status quo, it's very easy to fall back on the material pleasures of life. I want room service. I want my shirts laundered the way they do in the Imperial Hotel. And all of these little luxuries that are used to keep us docile and inert to the system. And I think it's very succinct and I think it's really, really incredible. Yeah, when I first saw this film, one of the things that I didn't get initially was that monologue. I remember seeing it and keeping in line with my first hand analysis of his performance was like, "Oh, this isn't working. This is very out of nowhere. All right, all right, let's keep going with this. They all can't be winners." But then I re-watch, I re-watch. And now I'm with almost everything in this. Now I'm on board. Exactly what you're saying. It feels honest. It feels real. It feels like within the confines of this purposefully, intentionally ironic and still performance, like this is how the character would honestly and truly react. And it's still impassioned. Like he's doing a lot with it. No, again, there's very little here in this film that I would truly honestly consider wrong. Or wrong-headed or done with the incorrect or wrongly applied intention. Everything continues to work better every single time I see it once I pay more attention to it. Going back a little bit to what we were talking about with going back and re-evaluating all these details that become more parrot on re-watch. Aaron, there's a director that I think you and I pay attention to a lot. Alex Proius, I think. I'm not super big on Proius, admittedly. Every time I watch one of his films, I'm like something's wrong here, deeply wrong with it that goes beyond something critical as I'm working here. But I'm still drawn to them. Like I just re-watched knowing for the first time in years that just re-watched my robot. I'm going to see Gods of Egypt in a little bit. Gods of Egypt is fun. I really loved Gods of Egypt. It can feel a little tedious at times, but it's a really, really good time at the movies. Just think of Jason and the Argonauts and it makes sense. $150 million is crazed. The amount of money that they're giving this fucking guy. And then he's stopped getting movies made after that point. But the things that I noticed with Proius is that when I first watched these movies when I was a little bit younger, they kind of just glide over you. There's an atmosphere that you enjoy with these. Oh, what am I saying? The crow. Another Proius. I was going to say I was under the impression that you were quite fond of the crow. You are in your crow era right now. I'm in my crow era. The thing is that when I watched the crow, I didn't really like it. But then I kept thinking about the crow. Yes. It's like this is the coolest thing that anybody has ever made. And it's the same thing with knowing. When I watched it initially, none of us is working, but I thought about it more. And I'm like, the ways in which Proius sets up this world, how he embraces inevitability and death and how he stages these set pieces, and how grim they are, how brutal they are. Yes. Like even if he's like, what is missing from a lot of filmmaking today, something that Johnny Milano does well, something that Proius does well despite all the disagreements I have with them about everything, is that he takes a big swing. And you are always rewarded in my mind at least by taking a big swing, even if it fails. Proius's stuff is full of that. And Johnny Milano, big swing happens every 20 minutes, 10 minutes. Something new is on screen that no other film would ever attempt to make. Like, we're missing like current filmmaking. It's not necessarily about like, I don't know, overlaps of superheroes or like IPs or biopics or whatever. That's a problem, but it's not the main issue at hand. It's all downwind of like, blunting of the edges, around 100%. It has to be safer. It has to appeal to as many markets as possible. And this is trying to appeal to a lot of markets. Like you're trying to get both the longer in market and the ketano market in one film. But they're trying to like, they're not trying to do anything like, like with a great example of this is the mummy. Tom Cruise, the mummy. The one that nobody remembers anymore. What are you talking about? They're kicked off of the dark universe. A famous cinematic universe that we all know and love today. They wanted Johnny Depp in that, right? Am I crazy? Yeah, he was going to be the invisible man. Javier Bardem was going to be Dr. Jekyll. Russell Crowe was Dr. Jekyll. But Javier Bardem is the Frankenstein, I believe, was what he was going to be in that. I mean, as much as I would have actually liked to see that. The mummy was like, people took notice at the time. Like the storyline has been so simplified. So that like both an American and a Chinese market and whatever markets it's trying to get to. Everybody can understand that it's not taking any huge risks with its story structure or anything. It is purely there to make a lot of money and then stop existing. But here, it's long ago it was doing everything that is physically possible to make this memorable to you. Whether or not it's succeeded is a different matter entirely. But you cannot look at this and look at the costume design and the antagonist and the dolphin. And like the internet, the way it's depicted, everything here is meant to make like an imprint on your mind. That's what's important to me. That's what makes this so important to me as a film. Absolutely. I have been on record, I believe, you can find a tweet of me saying exactly what you said about Alex Prius. I think the phrase I use is he is the king of the big swing bass hit. Which is like he puts every ounce of power he has behind what he's going to make. And he gets on bass. I mean he doesn't knock it out of the park every time but he adds to the stats. You know, if I have to use like a sports metaphor here. Like, you know, he's doing something really grand and really interesting and at the end of it you clap because you're like that was good. Nice work. Hey, like, you know, I took issue with this. I may not have particularly liked this or I'm confused by that. But literally all the ones you mentioned, you've seen dark city as well, Seamus or not yet. I'm going to see dark city. I've heard dark city is like the one that everybody broadly acknowledges is good. Like this dark city is pretty fantastic. I really enjoy that one. I think that you'll be pleasantly surprised if you're in your crow era right now. Just one thing. Very briefly because I don't think I will ever have another opportunity to say this. Qualified praise for I robot. Which is a film that nobody wants to remember. I'm so happy you, Seamus. I'm not. I'm not just saying that. Eternal loyal supporter, Carly, as always. James Cromwell in this in I robot is so good. He's so fucking good. Great. That detect like that detective is the right question. That's all time line reading. Very good. And also the scene where the robots all are all rising up and they're in the police station and the police chief has like a shotgun and he's just shooting the robots and the windows are shattering. It's like Prius put all like this is the move like when he's playing this movie, you can tell that's a shot that he always wanted to film in some manner or another and he got this opportunity and he fucking took it to the bank. He should be able to make more movies, maybe not ones that are nearly two hundred million dollars, like something given like thirty million given like forty million. See what he does with that shit. Well, the thing about big swings is like even if you just get to first base or whatever analogy we're using, there's enough in the swing that you are, as you say, Seamus, still finding things to appreciate about the swing after after the base hit, right? Like there's enough in it that you can ring so many things from that effort. And I think that's why a protagonist played by someone like Keanu Reeves works so well in a film that is full of big swings because Keanu for all of his faults is an actor who's willing to take risks. He's willing to evoke the men in the cities when he's doing this like digital internet like virtual reality like you know phone call or whatever like he is. It's why the room service monologue works. It's not just because the message is one that I think we can relate to where it's like it's not just about you know, wanting these material like comforts. I think it's also about like the guilt that we have over our own helplessness and like Keanu is able to evoke that in that monologue because he is like impassioned. He is like manic. He is fraying at the edges and he's taking a big swing. And so the words carry more weight because he's just he's he's taking a risk and he maybe looks a little silly but like who cares and also like the environment that they're in is completely absurd. So like people are going to be absurd in in that context and it's it's why I think he works so well in this movie and and why you know as we're talking about Proyas and and Longo and this film like and everyone in it. It's just like even even Dolph like he's a cartoon character just like as an actor right but then also like in this role and it works the way that he dies is cartoonish. It's like it's so absurd and like you just you can't help but I think if we go back to this idea of meeting a movie on its own terms like you can't help but be enthralled and it's what like I think you know movie making is about. And you know the other thing I'll say about Longo as an artist I like that you mentioned that Keanu was evoking the men in the city's piece. It's also evoked at the very end when Johnny has his like neo battling Smith like moment when he like you know goes into the into this final like virtual landscape in order to deliver this data package the image of him that is rendered in this virtual world is a man in a suit who's sort of like doing all these like weird mannequin movements and it's absolutely explicitly Robert Longo evoking his own work. And I just like that the film ends with that and I also like if we're thinking about metropolis and you know I was also like sort of thinking about Magritte when I was watching this movie like there are images of sort of like the modern man and his like relationship with modernity and like a technologized landscape and like spaces and Magritte was very interested in that and I think that this image of the men in the city's is something that you know evokes that and and that Longo was interested in and I think maps really nicely onto Johnny Mnemonic as a character in you know this this whole odyssey and those are the details that like if you just decide this movie's trash you're never going to experience or understand. Well said I think you know we were talking earlier about which is the worst sin right like making something that tries too hard or does too much and fails at it or something that doesn't do enough and if you are an artist or filmmaker listening to this podcast and I was discussing Johnny Mnemonic I hope that you maybe have arrived at what I believe is our conclusion which is it is always better to swing for the fences and to try to do too much rather than too little with your work to be ambitious and to pursue everything to the ends that you can possibly it's to every end that you can possibly conceive and who knows in like you know 30 years maybe someone will talk very lovingly about it on a podcast despite its contemporaneous reception it's good Johnny Mnemonic is good is all I'm going to that I mean that's my closing thought on this is this is a a very good movie with a lot going on that is very interesting about it I think I think that's that's that's a broad and very very concise conclusion one one that I would of course wholeheartedly agree with and I think it's very sad that long ago other than I think a short film this is the one this is his whole filmography basically we never got anything else from him yeah I think he hated the experience of Hollywood so much that he just like never wanted to go back I know that like even the brief faux resurrection of Lundgren's character was a studio in position some some suit was like wouldn't it be cool if like burnt crispy doll like came back and they had to fight him again and so like he just did that instead was like I'm gonna tease you and make you think he's coming back to life and then throw him off the bridge and apparently it worked for the studio at that point to go actually that's fine we like that but I mean thinking about that level of scrutiny on your work long goes very open about the fact that he felt literally every day making this movie like they were trying to were about to fire him I can't imagine that it's an environment super conducive to like really enthusiastic and really rewarding artistic expression so you know I don't fault him but it would be wonderful I think now given you know just how much the movie's been reappraised to see what he might do behind the camera given fewer constraints I think about again I mentioned this you know Michael Mann and the ways in which he was able to experiment but that was only after he delivered hit after hit after hit for the studios and even then like it wasn't a successful enough venture when he started experimenting around with different elements that it didn't work out permanently for him he had to take what was like a decade long break before Ferrari where he just wasn't able to make anything yeah after making one of his very best movies contentious perhaps but black hat is phenomenal I love black hat I still I still need to see black hat people were telling me that I only see the director's cut but then the director's cut was only available to like what like dish networks subscribers someone someone told me this really stupid thing it's it's been long unavailable it was like a thing that there was a cut of it approximated by a critic film writer Twitter person and what's that show remain nameless don't I mean we can say his name I it's well Ryan Swen actually there's there's a swen cut on on line that was like an approximation of this but it does exist now in a like physical media form the arrow release of black hat includes like the 4k theatrical edition as well as a blu ray with the director's cut on it so you can finally see it in high death and and all pretty packaged and wonderful but again I don't know I'm I can't verify the quality of black hat as I have not seen it but I imagine it's also like in the same vein of the other films that he's made recently like lots of digital cinematography nothing yeah yeah yeah it you can't you can't experiment for too long unfortunately well folks hopefully we have been able to compel you to check out giant mnemonic in at least one iteration whether it's the theatrical color version the Japanese extended version the black and white version shout out to friends of the show Jake Trapeela and Chris Woodward actually for helping to locate all of these different versions they are compiled and Jake's been lovely enough to put them all in one place and tweet about it so you can probably find that if you're listening to the show shout out to the uploaders but with that I think that we have said all that we feel like saying for the time being about Johnny mnemonic with our good friend Seamus Malik of Sally Seamus thank you so much for gracing us with your presence again and hanging out with us on the show always appreciate the opportunity where can people find you in your work Seamus they can find me at a Seamus hyphen Malik F. Sally dot com I write about Middle East politics there subscribe to Seamus's sub stack it is well worth the money and then some co-signed on that Seamus thank you for all you do and thank you for all the things that you write about and just your thoughts and perspective on the chaos of the global order at the moment has been clarifying informative makes me feel a little bit more sane every time I engage with it so very much appreciate the work that you do from our end of things you can follow along with the show at hit factory pod that is Twitter that's Instagram that's sort of blue sky we also have a patreon patreon.com/hitfactorypod where for just five dollars per month you get bi-weekly bonus episodes the full hit factor experience is there you also get invited to the hit factory discord where the conversation is always popping off you don't want to feel the foam of not being in the discord all your friends are there at the moment great things are happening all the time in the discord tell your friends if you liked what you heard today you can also leave us a nice review with some stars and some words on apple on Spotify wherever it is that you listen to your podcasts if you didn't care for this that option is actually not available to you they took it away so don't go looking for it carry on with your day I will give a shout out to our overlords their names are Linda Jared Murray Jeff Zang Andrew Eaton thank you so much for your continued support of the show and we will catch you all on the next one take care everybody [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [ Silence ]
