[music] I've decided to keep a journal. Hey everybody welcome to Paul Academy for me, the podcast about film culture, politics, and Paul Schrader where we watch every film written and/or directed by American filmmaker Paul Schrader and explore how they speak to their moment. And this one shows us by two guys, I'm one of the guys, my name is Jake Serwin. I'm one of the guys, my name is Ian Rine, Jake, how are you doing? This is a film I think about exhaustion in some ways, emotional exhaustion. I think that's right. Emotional exhaustion. Getting to the end of your rope. Alienation. Yeah. Reaching the end of your utility, I would say. Yeah. Yep. Totally foreign to you. So to me, am I, I am that. Yeah. I'm feeling so weakened spiritually, mentally, physically. Oh no. We're going to substantiate you today, we're going to renovate you. That sounds great, is there like a nice looking Turkish man to kiss me on my lips? Yeah. Oh. God willing. Yep. Exactly. How are you, man? How are you doing? It's unusual for me to find myself the less substantial of the two. Yeah. That's true. I won't take that as a slight, I often want to, another plane as we record where I walk most of my life. Oh, I was going to say they have incredible life on there. Yeah. The plane. Had to happen. So he's still got it, folks. Don't worry about it too much. He's still got it, folks. I mean, he's going to be a little bit like, I mean, we're going to talk about today. Folks, do you remember when the phone was in the back of the seat and you had to, remember when you had to swipe your credit card on a phone? Don't even have to remember that strongly because this was happening in like 2018, still. You would see a phone on a plane sometimes. Well, I, yeah, I mean, in 2018, when you weren't yet flying to Mexico or to and from Mexico regularly. It was in 2018, flying to and from Mexico. Is this perhaps, or perhaps the airplanes of the global south, maybe less new? I think it's possible, but I also feel like I saw it in 2015, flying to not Mexico. So I feel like I've seen anything that you can imagine. Wow. What are you feeling weak in my friend? So well. It is. Not good. Oh my God, it's full of stars or whatever. That's it. Saw them all. Imagine that's. You said you were good or something? I said I was good. I was going to tell you that I would have delighted in seeing, because sometimes Jake does a visual bit that has very little payoff for the listener, except me doing one of my classic silent chuckles that the listeners love so much. And that's what he does. I was hoping that Jake would lift off his whole hair today and reveal something. Yep. I mean, sometimes it feels like that's happening, you know? I find in terms of how much hair we're losing, you mean? Yeah, you just lose a little more of it. Yep. And it's not. It's not. I don't think I even have the MPB. I think I have just. I think that as well for myself coming out slowly. And I kind of got mad when I realized this and felt like we had been cheated and not being told about it. And then you know what? Change my mind. Full 180. I think it's good to just not worry. Testosterone heavy people about, I mean, it's just going to happen, just going to start happening eventually. I think if anyone is listening to the Walker episode of this podcast, they are in for. That's. A pound. Yeah. As it were. Yep. Perhaps a relaxed eritor. Oh, I'm, I, you're not having a drink. One of the most of the conversations that's something that will never not make you laugh. Any person saying it any time. Yeah. I mean, look, if it may be, especially for non penis hammers, this might be news. But sometimes you think you're done and why do you get older? I'm just imagining taking a pain, like a loose disembodied penis and smacking it against the side of a tandoor. You said non penis. It's like bubbling up. Yeah. Oh, a stewed. Yeah. Some people like the, they like the garlic penis, but I'm more of just a classic. Give me the classic buttered penis. Is that true? Let's set aside the silliness for a second. You prefer a buttered non? I prefer regular non. The fuck? Show's over. Yeah. It's been over. I look, I've, I've probably expressed this on the show before. I've been a simple, simple food man for much of my life. Yeah. You're, you're a little bit of a buttered pasta. Not fully, but no one I've come so far. But I think now it's more just a treat for me to have like plain bread with nothing on it or something. Like I'll, I'll eat some real complicated stuff, but I, it's, it's like a little, it's a little special Jake moment to sometimes have, for example, plain non with nothing else. Plain non by itself. Yeah. That's also a Jake moment. Just to be eating bread. That's a, that's something I know about my friend. I think that's great. I'm not trying to take this away from you. Just fascinating to me what I'm, I'm definitely a more is more guy. Flavor wise. More is more guys going to be the guest on next week's episode. God, I'm feeling good now. I'm ready. I'll meet you at the turbines are doing that thing where they sort of open up as they expand. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. I sure do. I sure am pretending to do. So we were talking about something about your penis gets looser as you're an old man. Yeah. And you get a little, a little spots of urine in your shorts. The Walker is a film by Paul Schrader, is kind of a film about that. So I think this is right for us to have done. This is one of the main things keeping me from becoming like a suit guy that and post COVID rapid waistline expansion. Okay. I'm bordering on like sonic fan art. Absolutely not. Inflation. No. Actually incorrect. It's fine. It's fine. But I have often fantasized about like what if I got like three nice suits and that's all I ever wore. Are you? I mean, you've been talking about this since I met you and I was also, I had a little deliance with being a Thai guy, just day to day sprinted away from that trouble learning the language. Thanks for standing by me in that time, by the way. On the one hand, like, you know, conceptually, I envy the Carter pages, the third of the world. But these are some shitty suits. These are bad looking suits. He looks like there was one double rested gray suit that I liked the rest of them. I'm not a double-breasted guy. I feel like a double-breasted suit looks good on good in a kind of... It looks good on Michael Caine in 1979. It does that. And I think also when women and femme presenting people wear a double-breasted suit, that looks cool. Oh, yeah. Yep. But I think especially out of man, it just looks so fuddy-duddy. Yeah. That's a big part of this. I think you're... This is a film about a fuddy-duddy. Exactly. That was the working title of the fuddy-duddy. Didn't capture the imagination quite as much. Yeah. Fairness to you. I was a 16-year-old who definitely thought about being a guy who just reads "Suitonius" all the time. Ooh. I had a Latin teacher who sits sway-tonius. Is that... What the heck? What? Look. Hey. I mean, maybe. He's probably right. My Latin class, one of the teachers, we sort of had dual teachers that traded off sometimes. And he was definitely one of these guys doing a lot of classical study in his free time. But he was otherwise not that type of annoying guy, not a class assistant, these scary white supremacist style. I mean, this was a... You know what Catullus would have to say about this situation where he experienced a guy? A lot of Catullus, huge amount. Mostly what Catullus would have said is talked about his erection at the side of a woman, basically. He's a really filthy man. Many men have trouble finding the Catullus. That's right. Okay. My soundboard is not working today, everybody. We should do the two questions really quick, though, if you like this and you want to pay money for it, we do have a Patreon. We do stuff about Clint Eastwood over there. We do Clint Ephemera. We're doing some Paul Schrader Ephemera. If you'd like more of this and you want it less structured, head on over to patreon.com/podcastieforme. Slap down a cool $5 a month. We are making it worth your while, in some people's opinion. It's like one of those subscription services that you pay for, for streaming video, but it doesn't use like one-eighth of the energy on the whole earth to make it. Exactly. Well, I mean, I think Patreon broadly might have a pretty negative impact, based on how much they're hosting and stuff, but our small sliver of it. You're right. You're crime-obsessed, or something. They're probably... You're right. You're right. That's a great point. That's like a woodchipper. Well, then what about this? We've had some great guests recently. We have some terrific guests. We have had some great guests. Peter Raleigh, Jesse Hawkins, both joined us recently on that. Find Patreon. So go on over there. Check it out. You will not regret it? Nope. Let's jump into our segment. The two questions is where we ask each other two questions relating in some way to the film, or not, and I would like for you to go first. Okay. Be happy to. I just have... I had to whittle this down. I had a bunch of genuine DC questions because I've spent about six days in DC total. So my question is just going to be... Five, two, many. Yep. Mining for Jake's story time of the types of stories you're allowed to say. So I'm going to just say what is the most DC event that you've ever been to? Dinner. Oh. Gala. Oh, yeah. Okay. Preschool charity event. Whatever. You know? Well, my mother's wedding to my stepfather, who was a legislative director for a U.S. senator at that time, was attended by a U.S. senator, so it was a senator at the wedding. Yep. I was in... The wedding was in the President Church. I forgot what it's called. The one that all the presidents have gone to, with a little look at the political church. I've never known. I've never known. Seattle, St. John's maybe, or something like that. Sure. And then the reception was in like some kind of hotel. DC... I grew up outside of DC, and so things that were in actual DC were confusing for several reasons, right? Because it's the city where adults are, and they're doing adult lives. And then there's also very much the DC social scene, as written about in the Washingtonian magazine that arrived in our mailbox, once a month or whenever, alienated me, disgusted me, frightened me. Right. Smart kid. Like this kid. Yeah. So there was, I would say that, and then also just combining a lot of DC stuff altogether, I went to, it was the summertime, I was back in DC for a couple of weeks in college, and I was trying out, it's being a fashion, trying out being a bit more of a fashionable man. Yep. And so I was wearing like white kids with no socks. Okay, yeah. Summer boy. Sweated boy. Sweated boy. Yeah, and they were brand new, and I wore them to the National Mall to go to like the Smithsonian or something with my friend. And we were caught in a famous DC thunderstorm, DC monsoon, in the afternoon, all of a sudden it's just pouring on you. Yeah. And I was, we were trying to hustle. How did those kids fare? I got blisters like you wouldn't believe. I got, it was, I mean, it was, it was apocalyptic blisters. I mean, I was considering taking them off and walking barefoot on the street. Oh, man. And then we did have a kind of lovely experience actually of ducking into the National Botanical Garden. That's great. That's wonderful. And then like a greenhouse section of it that's rainforesty with rainforest inside and outside. Rain, yeah, rain pounding on the glass, but we're inside, protected from it. Very interesting. Wish you had had a little bit of a steamy romance, a brief steamy romance with your friend. This would have been a treat. I had like a steamy, a steamy undercarriage at that time from hustling through the humidity. Humidity. Yeah. That being said, I think if the whole place were raised to the ground, it would be a fresh start. Yeah. A net positive. Also, I guess on next week's show, we're gonna have to. Yep. But yeah, I found the film, even though it was largely shot in the Isle of Man, apparently. That's correct. Yeah. British production, basically. Yeah. I found the film mildly triggering whenever they showed these, these big brick houses with like, uh, shutters affixed to the brick next to the windows, like every house in Northern Virginia. I believe this. Yeah. What did you do in DC? What were you in DC for? Oh, yeah. We're on a little trip with my parents once after a breakup in my life. So I was quite sad, but I was also looking at a little plaque that talked about the team my grandfather was on designing the navigation system for one of the Apollo's. ICBMs. Oh, okay. Yeah. Cool. That's fun. Nice. Nice little distraction. You got a spy museum? Uh, we didn't go to the spy museum. Yeah. Especially growing up in DC. It's really hard to justify paying money to go to a museum because all the Smithsonian's are free. It's true. That's cool. Yep. Extremely cool. That part we like. You can duck in there when it's raining, for example, and you're getting bad blisters from your kids. Yep. Perfect example. They might have been like American apparel brand kids. Can knock off. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Great question. Thank you Ian. My question for you. So including this film, we got 10 Schrader's left. That's right. How are you feeling about Paul Castie for me at this moment? How are you feeling about Schrader? How are you feeling about the progression? We haven't really done this. I like this. We do a different kind. Yeah. Every episode. Yeah. Have you noticed? I have begun to notice a pattern. I am enjoying it. I have learned a lot about my friend. I think the first third, I was over the moon basically deciding that maybe Paul Schrader was one of the most interesting guys to have ever made a movie basically. Oh well. And I was, even the movies that I disliked, I was struggling with them in a way that I found enriching, artistically satisfying. The most recent third, not because of the famous fallow period that we've addressed or mentioned on the podcast before, but mostly because I think I get more of why people are sometimes reductive about Schrader. I don't think it's because he actually does the set of things that people accuse him of doing, right? That's kind of the way you talk about him. If you go on Letterbox and read a review or 10 reviews of a Schrader film, the lonely man, the existential man, the man trying to figure things out, this is most of what people will be talking about. I do find it a little bit boring because I think you're turning a guy who's doing a lot of visually interesting things, trying to cover a lot of thematically interesting things, reducing it to basically one observation. However, he does do a lot of these things a lot of times. So I think that is where I am coming around on feeling a little bit sympathetic to these people, although I still think it's unfair and a disservice to themselves in terms of what they could find if they dug a little deeper. So I think this film in particular, sort of relit that feeling for me, which is probably why I'm expressing it now in this moment. It relit the feeling of being excited about Paul Schrader or relit the feeling of being the feeling of feeling frustrated with him returning to things without maybe having a totally clear idea of what he wanted to add on top of those, sometimes what new things he was trying to explore. I still think I love this, I'm appreciative of the fact that our two directors have been so, directing is what they have in common, have been so different in terms of their approach and yet I think we can talk about them in similar ways, which I think I always say that I think you're a brilliant man for having suggested Paul Schrader. I'm not sure I could think of a better option for us and I also have a better counterpoint to Clint Eastwood. I appreciate that. I mean, thanks for letting me know where you are with the man. I think you have been generally hotter on him than I have. I think so too. I find him, well, to borrow a word about Clint Eastwood beguiling, I find him, I want to understand the man better, but I often find the actual works to define my expectations in how much less expressive they are, how much less, I mean, I think I said this about light sleeper, affliction, I liked pretty well, but with that one as well, I think I was waiting to be bold over and I was maybe left with something subtler to deal with, to contend with. That's so interesting because I think those two are the picks of the middle period, if we can identify it that way, that I would put as pretty high standouts form in terms of still works of note and understated in a way that I enjoyed. But I will agree with you and I see where you're coming from comparing that to the first third, which is more bombastic, more explicitly experimental, more challenging, sometimes I think perhaps because of his collaborations with other people. But I see where you're coming from. If you're coming off taxi drive, you're coming off blue collar, you're coming off even at Mishima. Yeah, or why in like Mishima, Patty Hurst, Comfort of Strangers, we're all like, holy shit. Comfort of Strangers is bold. I think up there for me is a big surprise compared to how people talk about it. Right. Well, on a lot of people, they say, they call him Mr. bombastic, say me fantastic to me on the back. That's what they say about her, I mean him, and so bombastic, sorry, look, I'm all out. I'm the walker. I'm the walker. I've been put through, I feel like I've been, I feel like a sponge that's been left out, you know, a little bit. I feel like a dry sponge. Well, it's pop you in the sun, get that bacteria out of you, and then, yeah, put me in the microwave, just think up the microwave, and then, yeah, it is fun when you, when you get the really dry sponge and you put it in the water and it expands, you get like a little grown up version of the, the foam dinosaur and the pellet. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, yeah, we're in some doldrums. I'm feeling some doldrums myself. We're here in the, is it the dog days of summer, or is it, I think it's the dog days. Yeah. Just rough rough, August, yeah, August, um, so, you know, I'm excited to get to the stuff everybody likes. You have to get back to school. Oh, okay. Oh, yeah. No, I am excited to get to like first reformed and stuff, but yeah, we got to make it through some dying of the light, um, before that, yes, and then I have also like a silly two questions. I have the three questions today. Right. Sometimes it happens. Yeah. That's okay. Uh, great. Thank you. Do you agree that because the addition of ice makes it nice to drink, they should actually call it nice to coffee. Do you agree with that? I find myself in the unusual position of agreeing with that. Yeah. I mean, it's not what it has against it is that if you saw that on the menu, you would not know necessarily what it was and when you see ice coffee on a menu, your questions are answered. What if they did one of those things that is more confusing than the clarifying world will do like an end dash iced coffee or an end dash ice? Oh, yeah. Like nice cream. Yeah. You sort of walk away. So is this a whole, am I, is there something I'm unaware of or is this, are they just trying to say that it's nice and ice ice cream? Like, is this from, is this from a click language, am I going to be pronouncing this for all? Yeah. No, no disrespect. Yeah. Yeah. Um, cool. Thanks, man. I think so too. I think whatever you said. I think, I think that as well. The Walker directed by Paul Schrader. Hey, Paul Walker. Oh my God. Paul's Walker. Yep. Uh, drive safe everybody. I don't know. Yeah. Hey, brick mansions. You mentioned brick mansions earlier in a way. I did mention brick mansions. That's crazy and Washington DC is a district and I be 13 when I was there. Brick mansions is a remake of a French parkour film called district B13 for anyone listening at home. Right. If you're in your car or whatever that wasn't for you, this was directed by Paul Schrader and written by him as well, released December 7th, 2007, a day that will live in infamy. This is often pointed to by reviewers, by Schrader as the fourth and final film in the tetralogy made up of taxi driver, American Jigolo, light sleeper in this film. I had them put them in to put them in proper release order. He's also mentioned that he sees light sleeper as sort of a bookend to taxi driver. This film is sort of a bookend to American Jigolo. So not only is it a tetralogy, it's also two sets of bookends. That's a classic double bookend book shelf situation. Yeah. Right. Uh, I do think that the clarity of that metaphor matches the profundity of his observation, which I do wonder because of the quality of this film, whether it reaches any deeper than those to the first bookends, we're both about guys in New York going around and guys in New York. And these two bookends are both about guys who wear nice clothes and may be a little bit gay sometimes. No, no. I mean, it's more than that. You're being, you're, you're exaggerating for comedic effects. That's correct. Yeah. For theoretical, potential comedic effect. Yeah. The reason I'm a little testy about the film, I, I will, I'm going to say right now, I, it grew on me. I also will reveal right now that I had already seen this. Sorry. A little test. He grew on you. Okay. Are you saying? Yeah. I don't know. I did not remember that I'd seen this film. Did not make it. Oh, you haven't seen it before? Oh, yes. This is what I realized watching it. Watch that. I realized it a couple of weeks prior because you had mentioned what this film is about. A little didn't register for me that I'd see it when he describes it as like a, it's a biopic of the man who invented putting tennis balls on the bottom of a walker so that it doesn't scuff up the floor. I would be interested in watching this film under 60 minutes, particularly. No, what I was going to say is I had forgotten about this. You were describing it as like a continuation of this idea of a male escort or something. You had said something to that effect in an early episode and I just didn't click for me that this was this film because I was thinking of escort in the stronger sense of the word. Right. This is a very literal escort. We're talking about it. Yes, exactly. It's not a euphemism. Right. So I had seen this film before, didn't particularly enjoy it the first time I saw it. This time, the first five minutes, I wondered if this was going to be the worst Paul Shader film that we had yet watched. That's how much I disliked them. Right. And my girlfriend has famously proclaimed that she can tell within one minute of a Paul Shader film, whether she's going to like it or not. This one, she said, actually, she couldn't tell yet. Ooh, see, I think she was, and I think I, like I said, it does some interesting stuff. I'm excited to talk about. I think it finds its feet as the film goes on. Remind me what the first five minutes are. Is it the kenaster game? Correct. Yes. Some of this, so this film is about a gay man by the name of Carter Page the third. We're not going to get the actual plot summary, but that's the explanation I need to say. This is a like a guy with an aristocratic background, extremely openly gay and stereotypically. He's Truman Chipotle. But when you say that he's not just Truman Capote, that's the problem is that he is Truman Chipotle specifically in a sense of like his relationship to Truman Chipotle to Truman Chipotle's relationship to Mexican food, is that what you're saying? This is exactly what I'm saying. Yes. Where it was some of the, I mean, the hand gestures, the voice, the fake Oscar Wilde style, clever little quips, some of the most off-putting stuff I could imagine seeing in the first couple minutes of a film. A lot of people don't realize that the Elizabeth Banks character in the Lego movie, her full name is Oscar Wilde, so. Wow. Her name's Wilde style. Did you remember that? I had some wine. We saw the movie together with your parents. Whoa, is that true? I'm pretty sure they were there, yeah. I believe you. Not weird. That is weird. I held both their hands because I was scared. Sounds really nice. Didn't know what was going to happen with the little boy, yeah, the little boy. Will Ferrell got mad at him for touching his toys. Yep. Yeah. I mean, this is, well, I have a trigger to pull here. In terms of Schrader's more recent statements about the film, and I'm wondering if I should save them for the end, or if I should do them now, I guess we're now, you know, so we should. That's true. That's undeniable. Discuss the film from the perspective of now. Okay. So Paul Schrader in February of this year, February 1 of this year, he's set on Facebook.com. Watched Capote and the Swans tonight, which I very much enjoyed, although it brought to mind the Walker in parentheses 2007. He makes sure people know which one he's talking about. The most distressing failure of the films I've written and directed. Yes, I knew he felt this way. It was meant to be a man in a room film, but I choose not to include journal writing, error his. At the time, I saw it as a variant of American gigolo, but what I was doing was Capote and the Swans. At that time, financing realities kept me from casting a gay actor in the lead. I wanted Rupert Everett or making his mannerisms too queer. I cast Woody Harrelson and Woody did the best he could, but he wasn't right. When you miscast a character study at the top, nothing can save it. And even if I had been allowed to play the lead more flamboyantly gay, I probably would not have been the right director for that film. Yeah. No shit. His desire was to play the character more flamboyantly gay. Is that what he just said? He also talks about how Woody wanted to do him, wanted to play the character. I think the phrase that Schrader uses presumably quoting Harrelson is that he wanted to play him more fluffy. Okay. And Harrelson was so dismayed by the way that the film came out that he refused to do any press for it until he saw the people were responding positively to his performance at which point he then became fonder of the film. And Schrader describes this as happening with Ryan Gosling in the film Half Nelson around the same time as well. Interesting. I remember enjoying Half Nelson when I was 18 years old and discovering independence. I'm not going to enjoy it, but when I come down there to visit you, I'm not going to be enjoying it. Imagine the two of us getting a razzle on listeners. I think that's why most of them tune in. Yeah. Great. Great. So here's the thing. I'm going to lay out the extremely murky territory. We're in. We're ready for this. Yeah. There are all different types of gay people, all different types of gay men specifically. Wait, speaking of types of gay men, can I just play a clip that I have of Paul Schrader talking about? Okay. A type of gay men. Yeah. This is for you. He said this to Empire magazine, I believe, doing press for this film. These men are the kind of lubrication of society. These are the guys who get these events going. It's not really because they're being paid. They love this world. They love the superficiality of it. They love the gossip of it. So many parts of that world would make another person wince with agony for a certain kind of homosexual man that is endlessly entertaining to sit and listen and watch this world. The homosexual man kind identifier, Paul Schrader. Yeah. You know what? I'm going to give him a little bit of credit, was relieved to hear him say a certain kind of homosexual man. Yes. Me too. Great relief to me. Yeah. So this is, this is part of my objection. There are absolutely gay men. I've encountered some in my life who do enjoy gossip, who do enjoy non heteronormative hand gestures. And obviously I'm not here to police gay men's behavior. I think in 2007, based on the responses that I was reading to this film, I think lots of gay men just appreciated having a gay character on screen apparently. This film, we'll talk about it more, but this film got a lot of coverage from the advocate magazine. Yes. Yeah. I think it was totally anticipated. I think in part because of its, of the, this sort of presumption that it was American Jigolo too. Right. I think that is a huge part of it. And as the film goes on, this is maybe part of it for me. I think Woody Harrelson moves away from what to me is a rather extreme portrayal. I think it's hard when your character, a huge aspect of his character is that he is a gay man. And the film begins with some of the most stereotypical things you can imagine a gay man doing on screen and have seen, I mean, if you sucking, fucking, I mean, hand stuff. Yeah. I mean, the way he talks, the thing he wants to talk about and again, the other difficult thing is like he, he meets Lily Tomlin at the, uh, the upholstery place. I mean, it's like Lily Tomlin, he's hanging out with old Hollywood star, like old Hollywood female stars. It seems almost impossible that this conjunction of people. Yeah. I mean, we have to talk about the real guy that the film is about because it's about a real thing. But here's part of the problem. I think the other issue for me, this, this real man that you're referencing, Jerry Zippgen, Jerome Zippgen, who has also been portrayed in fiction before with Razor's Edge by W. Summer said, Mom, we're talking about going to talk about that. However, this type of person, even if he has existed in a single person, I don't think it makes it less potentially offensive to have it be played up so clearly on screen, particularly by a straight actor. And we're not really like a show that investigates whether these films are offensive or something. It's not that's that's a little say superficial to quote the quote, the film, but exactly. But I think of all the films we've watched, this is the one where I most felt a real sort of like clenching my seat as the film began because I just thought, is this what we're in for the whole time? I mean, it's a bit like saying there's also the classic conversation of if there's a dearth of representation and the only representation is extremely stereotypical representation, and it's more frustrating. And I will say that I also enjoyed later. You mentioned we get his sort of on and off again boyfriend appears in part of the film and he is distinctly less stereotypically gay, which again, not bad to be stereotypically gay. But I think it was relieved to see okay, Schrader is aware that this is not yeah, just presentation of this. Exactly. Right. Also, you know, as my famous podcast girlfriend pointed out, I think let's see, I quoted her exactly. She said, Schrader is so gay, it's crazy because, you know, as we've talked about, I mean, this is, I'm going to quote from the advocate, this is an article, a sort of feature with him called the Jigalow grows up from the press cycle for this film. Okay. To imagine the straight man who created Taxi Driver Travis Bickle is an unabashed homophile. As comfortable quoting gay film critic Parker Tyler, as he is discussing his years spent hanging out in the gay scene of 1970s Los Angeles, Schrader says it was a grand time because of my upbringing and the fact that I had no female siblings. I always had sort of a hard time socially with women, and he was introduced to a group of gay friends by a renowned production designer Ferdinand d'Oscarfiati. And you know, we've talked about it before, but Schrader was going to gay clubs and dancing with a shirt off and hugging other men through experience as a form of physical closeness and intimacy that he had not hitherto had in his life. And that's beautiful and perfectly lovely way to sort of have your own specific unique experience of the sexual orientation spectrum. That's exactly right. Something that does not distinctly make you gay or not gay to have enjoyed that very unique opportunity. But certainly it's not like he's just looking in on this world for the first time to milk it for artistic milk. But oh, oh, wait, do you hear that? Oh, oh, is that, is that Merritt McKinney's music? I think it might be time for a Merritt McKinney fun fact that throughout this episode we'll be dropping in fun facts about Woody Harrelson's character Merritt McKinney from the Now You See Me series of films. I remember when we had the big meeting about this segment. Yeah, he remembers agreeing to this and expected it to happen. Yeah. So here's our first Merritt McKinney fun fact Merritt McKinney is a skilled hypnotist and mentalist, but he's also handy with physical illusions when called upon. Now, that's not a new fact to me, but that is a fact that I love about him. Yeah, every episode of someone's first episode. That's right. All right. I think it's good to start from the top of Merritt McKinney for love it for a fourth horseman. I consider him the fourth horseman. He's one of the my top four. Yeah. So where, what were we talking about? What the fuck? Whether it was okay for Schrader to depict this cast a straight character in this role. Yeah. Look, I also think, you know, give more roles of gay men to gay men and it's good for straight men. Sometimes to play a gay man. That's part of acting. I think that's fine as well. I do think regardless of Schrader sex, well, that's about the rub and tug thing. Yeah. Yeah. So handsome was going to play a trans man who owned a chain of-- Tug boats. Hands-on massage, well, I guess all massage places are hands-on, a chain of happy ending massage parlors specifically. Yes. Yeah, I was very upset about that. No, what I was going to say is that it's not as if gay men can't be homophobic. You know this, right? Right. So men can't also be insisting upon one way of being gay or closing doors to what is or isn't acceptable as either straight or gay people. So I don't know that that's like a perfect write-off to say, okay, well, he's been in this world. Some people are fully in this world all the time and like all humans. They engage in extremely over-pattern identifying behavior that means that they limit the possibilities for other people. Yes. But I think because the character sexuality is so central to his whole life, his whole way of existing in the world, because we should explain, the Walker is a kind of professional escort in the literal sense that I think the name was coined by the editor W Magazine to describe Jerry Zippken. I had seen women's wear daily. Yeah. Oh, sorry. Yeah. Yes. Something like that. That's A.W. Magazine. I'm going to. That's one of the big ones. Yeah. I've got a big one, two of them on the front. Mort Steinman wrote an article, at least that I read from 1995 that I'm going to quote from when Zippken died. No, I'm not going to quote from it now. I'm going to quote from as we once you get into the real Jerry Zippken section. But it is seemingly a real role that the guy who inspired this character really did fulfill. These are professional, almost professional friends for the wives of very high-powered men to accompany them to various social events, specifically for women who are active on the social scene, but whose husbands cannot accompany them because they are, for example, President Ronald Reagan. That's right. So Jerry, Jerry Zippken was the best friend and professional attendant of Nancy Reagan. Yep, was in society with the Vanderbilts, the Rockefeller's, all sorts of people. But that these men were gay was a crucial part of the job because then there is no sexual threat to when they're seen out with the wife of a powerful man. No one's going to think anything untoward is going to happen. And I wonder if the Schrader quotes Rupert Everett, who, apparently on the set of the Comfort of Strangers, asked Schrader to let him know if too much of the pink dress was showing? Okay. But what she meant is if the performance is coming across to gay. I see. Yeah. And so I think perhaps a little extra, a little more obvious display of pink dress might be part of the calculation, the social calculation, in order to maintain one's position as this peripheral figure, you know, it makes it a fascinating figure for artistic investigation because of course, particularly if we're talking about when Jerry Zippken was actually doing this, starting in the 50s, basically, this is a period when it was distinctly less acceptable to be gay in any other context. And yet, here is association with the exact type of high-powered people who would normally distance themselves from any kind of subversive to generate behavior. And it's embraced, like you're saying, precisely because it facilitates their lifestyle. And because all gen-general these men come from a background where maybe classes beating outs their queerness in terms of what is being prioritized to the fact that they're gay is less of a threat because they share, as the film calls it, breeding. Exactly. Now, if I know my friend Jake, I'm sure you already investigated the Cheechies Bayo. Did you investigate the Cheechies Bayo? I did not. What is that? Oh, wow. Okay. So this is maybe the historical origin of this figure of the Walker. Wait, is that the thing that John Podesta kept writing in his emails from Comet Pingpong? I don't know where Cheechies Bayo. I think the cheese pizza was a central to pizza gate, I think a cheese pizza was taken to be code for a young person, a person, yeah, children to abuse and extract or drain a chrome from. But anyway, sorry. Continue. You were saying Cheechies Bayo. I sure was. I said it several times. Oh. Oh, oh. Hold on. Okay. It's time for another Merritt McKinney fun fact. Presumably due to his baldness, Merritt McKinney is often seen wearing a pork pie hat. That's right. Now, you've added a little bit of editorializing in there and then the sense of, I don't know that the film text tells us it's because it's famous unless I'm not recalling it. I think now you see me two ads. Oh, does it? To the mythology, but that might come up in a future Merritt McKinney fun fact. You were talking about Cheechies Bayo. I sure was. So this was a figure in the 18th and 19th century Italy who was a lover. So often this was not necessarily a gay man, but a man who would accompany a high society woman to events and was seemingly this is in some ways like more in origin of a what the hell was that? Hate your wagon style, Thruple, acceptable Thruple where the man would often even embrace the existence of this lover. Sometimes they were gay, sometimes everybody just got along and there was a quote. The husband and the Cheechies Bayo live together as sworn brothers, you know? So they are enjoying each other's company in a pretty challenging way. So this has been around for a long time. That actually reminds me of a kind of brothers, a tradition of brothers practiced by the Inuit peoples of northern Canada and Alaska. Yes. Yeah. This is one that you mentioned a lot in college. Is this a joke that's okay to have made it? I hope it's okay because the joke is mostly that anybody who says that isn't an idiot, right? Yeah. Yeah. So now we have the 20th century version. It's this the man who inspired this character Jerry Zipkin. You've already mentioned some of his famous relationships. Sometimes, sometimes described as the third most powerful person in the world because he was the, he had the, the ear and the trust of Nancy Reagan, presumably the second most powerful person in the world because her husband, President Ronald Reagan, had a thin soup for his brain. He had a sort of, with the Italian call, like a brodo, where his, where his brain should have been. It's heavily sieved. It's when the chef says, well, we can't go back now. It's a, you made a terrible mistake. Yeah. Some detailini floating in the, in the brodo up there. It's a little bit unclear how much influence this guy really was wielding because there's also discussion of the fact that most of his interest as Schrader himself, but it was in the social aspect in the novel The Razor's Edge, the character called Elliot Templeton, who was heavily inspired by Zipkin as well. It's a crazy day novel written in 1949 was also the inspiration for something that films were being made about in 2007 and they, they, uh, quote in the Women's Wear Daily article, some, some things from Zipkin and he said things like, I'm allergic to the outdoors. I'm at my best in small, noisy, crowded rooms after six o'clock at night or talking of his female friends. They're all regular gals, fun, interesting and attractive, not full of malarkey, not full of any four letter words. And there's all sorts of, uh, things attributed to him, you know, little nasty remarks about people's dress, making, uh, socialites cry in public because of his cutting remarks, things like this. Uh, so. He in fact, feuded with the Truman Capote to the point of like Capote, he had this famous black and white party or whatever. Yeah. Black and white ball. Yeah. Black and white ball. And, uh, Zipkin was not invited. And to show that he was on phase by this Zipkin would regularly leave the country on that date. So he would be out of the entire country. Yeah. He supposedly ended friendships with women because of bad seating placement at an important social event. And to your point, uh, he was also strangely loyal in a way that we can presume won him more favor of somebody like Nancy Reagan when Capote was at the end of his career publishing chapters from his eventually unfinished novel, answered prayers, uh, Capote was revealing all sorts of personal secrets of the same people, like William S. Pailey from CBS, Gloria Vanderbuilt and our friend Jerry Zipkin thought this was an extremely poor taste and basically cut all ties with Capote, you know, sort of said, the idea of betraying secrets. And I'm a little bit sympathetic to both sides because I do think turning your actual human relationships into a novel for personal gain is borderline sociopathic behavior. But also this is Gloria Vanderbuilt and happy rock fella, or some of the most, uh, people least deserving of protected privacy, a bunch of women who go by muffy social. Exactly. Right. Did you read the razor that she read the book? I did. Yes. I have it here. I was a little traumatized from the time that I accidentally called my literature professor W Somerset, mom. Now, if this were NPR, my friend, we're getting Collins about how good this is. This is the funniest thing anybody's ever heard in their whole life. Yeah. That's extremely good. Double go over. Yeah. Crashing their cars. That's an illustrative having a stroke. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I can't quote to have. I mean, the he's like the third main character, perhaps second main character in this book. So there's dozens of pages about him. But to give a sense, it's fascinating that Schrader ends up writing a film about this character because the main character in the razor's edge is a young man searching for a spiritual meaning in the world and going, going around and talking to like a Benedictine hermits and coal miners with spiritual insight. And he eventually basically achieves enlightenment because he has contact with like Eastern religions and so the fact that that was not the person that Schrader was drawn to, I think fascinates me. Well, I mean, you mentioned the film, we should do a plot summary in just a second, but you mentioned that the film is on some level, perhaps kind of a thin rehash of American jigalow. And Schrader describes the character, you know, his man in a room, his return to protagonists as the peeper, the wanderer, the voyeur, the loner, and says that the thing that sort of the thing that is most him about this character is the looking in on a society that he cannot fully join, which, you know, he relates to his experience coming from Dutch Calvinist Grand Rapids to Los Angeles and always feeling like an observer, like a almost like an anthropologist or something. And so I think that's a great point. That character, again, I haven't read the book, I don't know how I don't read that book. I think that he relates to the to this inherently gay figure is it complicates the question, first of all, of whether or not he should be the one making this film, because I think we would all be better served by straight men finding ways to relate to the experiences of gay men, for example. Yep. But I think that the person that he really identifies with in that story would be this kind of person in the world, but not of the world. That's a very compelling argument. And I will tell you that this makes sense. The more clearly protagonist of the novel Larry is distinctly a guy from a sort of traditional background, traditionally like upper middle class white background, who is sort of like fighting his way out of that, which I think you're right, is totally opposed to generally, even though the spiritual strivings are very much in line with what, you know, Schrader likes. I think that's a great point that he might be more fascinated by this guy and that he has, I will also say, to spoil this 75 year old book. Larry has basically a happy ending, effectively finds peace with himself, but that's like the aforementioned Robin Doug, whereas Elliot Templeton, the book says that he achieves his goals on a deathbed in the sense that he's fought his way into social acceptance. But there's a distinct feeling that that may have not have given him the fulfillment that he expected it would and that his friends don't really stand by him on his deathbed, which is the type of thing that we see in this film. So again, to quote very briefly, just to show how closely aligned this film is to the character, we have lines like he was at his at this time in his late 50s, a tall, elegant man with good features and thick waving dark hair, only sufficiently graying to add to the distinction of his appearance. He was always beautifully dressed. He had taste and knowledge and he did not mind admitting that in bygone arrows, when he first settled in Paris, he had given rich collectors who wanted to buy pictures the benefit of his advice. And later it goes on to say, one would naturally suppose that Elliot profited by the transactions, which is the kind of sort of mysterious payments that we see in the film, sort of unclear how he's getting his money from these relationships, but seems to be getting it somehow. But he also works one day a week at a real estate office. Exactly. Exactly. That was not to say he took an immense amount of trouble to make himself agreeable to aging women. And it was not long before he was a me de le meson, the household pet in many an imposing mansion. His amiability was extreme. He never minded being asked at the last moment. He was charming and amusing. And there's another line about he was great company as long as you didn't get him started about dukes and duchesses. So when this is the character in the film, pretty much like unquestionably to me, should we do a quick plot summary then? Let's do it. Would you like to do one? How's that? Oh, fuck. I just wonder getting started. If only we had a measure of control over this. Yeah, we look folks, we're just making the best of a rough situation is a merit McKinney fun fact. And now you see me too, merit is revealed to have a twin brother, Chase McKinney, with whom he performed as a double act called the magical McKinney's as children before merit went solo at age 12. Now Chase can be distinguished visually from merit McKinney because he has hairplugs and dental veneers. Yes. And so this is why I think that the hat is related to the ball. I see. Okay. But we only maybe put this together upon the revelation in the second film. As the mythology develops. Yeah. But I'm sure there's a big, there was a big series Bible concoct when they first put the, yeah, David Chase wrote the whole thing out ahead of time. Yeah. Yes. All right. So would you like to tell us about what happens in the film? Dave Franco is chased in the film. There's a David. He's, he's right. The Walker 2007. So we have a, we have Carter Page, the third, the male escort who is, he seems to kind of be in the lives to varying degrees of these, the three main women with whom he plays Canasta, which I learned was invented in Uruguay. Did you know that about Canasta? I didn't know that. No. And it's considered like the, the most recently invented game to card game to achieve global dominance or whatever. I'm cooking something up. Stay tuned. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. It's Disney Lorkana. Isn't it? It's a variation on Disney Lorkana. Yeah. We'll get to it. Uh, so I don't know if we go, these three women are, uh, Lynn Lochner, played by Kristin Scott Thomas. Yes. Natalie Van Meiter, played by Lauren Bacal, the very one, the very same. Yeah. She says penis in the film. She says it to great effect. And I thought she, when she thinks of that word, one of the ones she might think of is Humphrey Bogart's. Absolutely. Isn't that weird? Definitely. That's pretty weird. Yeah. Respectfully. I thought this. To have her have not, you might say about, you know, just like that. Yeah. Uh, let's see. What's another sometimes if it's, you have a, the big sleep happens after. Sometimes that happens. Yeah. The refractory period. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, how do they fall? Oh. Yeah. It's an aging thing. Yeah. Uh, uh, Lily Tomlin as Abigail DeLorean. Yes. No relation. And then there's also, uh, occasionally appearing, Mary Beth Hurt, illustrator's wife, as Chrissy Morgan. Right. It was just another, another of these ladies who lunch, who play the Kennasta together. Yes. Now Carter is always on the phone with these women. He's always keeping up with the gossip, attending the opera, things of this nature. One day he is driving, he's giving, uh, Lynn Lochner, the Kristen Scott Thomas character, a ride to the home of her lover. And she walks in, uh, comes back, very dismayed and says that he's dead. He's been stabbed. Yes. Sorry. So to cover for this, because not only is he a dispenser of gossip, he's also sort of a hoarder of, of secrets. He gets her out of there and he returns himself to the scene. Um, we are sort of American Jiggalo style are not exactly privy to how much he's involved with this. I like this is a good storytelling choice, I think. And he, you know, it does help to be a sort of dandy, if you're going to be potentially involved in a, in a murder, because you will have a handkerchief on your person, which to open a doorknob. So he looks around and then he's leaving the house and as he's leaving this guy's house, he is spotted by a neighbor at which point he like visibly makes the decision to call in to call the police, which I appreciate that. And he calls the, he calls the police and he is a, he becomes a suspect and Lynn Lockner's husband is Senator Larry Lockner played by William Defoe, old friend, in what can only be described as a favor. Uh, he's got nothing to do in the film. I think he let in fairness lends more character to this film who is extraordinarily underwritten than what you would think possible from almost any other actor. So he's page is being targeted by a US attorney named Mungo Tenant, yeah, played by William Hope. Loved a lot until they did the thing that we, I, at least I consider for Bowdoin, we talked about on. Right. Someone says, what the fuck kind of a name is Mungo or what it's like. It's the one you made up, dude. Correct. That's not funny. Get out of here. I also wrote in my notes is William Hope also playing gay or just Southern hard to tell. Yeah, it is. But then we get in, we get sort of another view of the DC social scene in the way that people are using one another and using the potential scandal of a senator's wife being either involved in a murder or simply revealed to have been having an affair because her, her lover was murdered. We, we see all the, the, these players shifting their relationships with one another to cover their own asses, uh, Tenant is, is like widely understood to be looking for a big case in order to make a name for himself justice or whatever is far from the minds of all these people, uh, as they deal with this crisis. That's exactly right. And there's also a bit of an element that is, uh, teased out as the film goes on about Carter Page's family. Yes. He is, he is the, of course he's the third. He's like the son of slave owners and then like tobacco plantation owners, that's sort of another form of indentured servitude and kind of tightens of industry. And then here is this guy who comes out looking like them, but is gay and interested more in, uh, social niceties than in traditional like moving and shaking of the world. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Played by Moritz Blibedrew, who will return in Adam resurrected. He's also, he played undress butter in the bottom mind-hoof complex movie. Exactly. He's also in Run Lola. I mean, to me, one of the- He's a speed racer, German actors that you recognize basically, uh, Steven Spielberg's Munich. Yep. A film that, uh, I watch all the time, okay, I don't, uh, uh, so he's, he's sort of investigating. He takes it upon himself to investigate. He's also a, a photographer who's doing a series on the, like, kind of re-depicting, uh, Abu Ghraib, which is interesting given that, that will come up in the card counter. Yes. But also it's sort of like Mapplethorp. Yeah. It's, uh, in terms of like, uh, intentionally provocative in your face. Provocative, visible penises. Yeah. And anarchy symbols and things that look like semen. Yeah. Looks like bad art. And so he's looking into things and is being threatened, uh, and eventually Carter and Emmick are able to photograph the man who's been hassling them. He gets hit and killed by a car, uh, while giving chase. They end up sort of tracing things to Abigail DeLorean's husband, Jack DeLorean, played by Ned Beatty. Right. Who gives a kind of underwhelming network style speech about how, you know, none of this matters and knowledge isn't power for some people. Yes. You're less than, less than a cog or less than a pawn. Um, and it's kind of a noir, the, the noir angle of the plot is resolved in a way that suggests like, Hey, fuck you, none of this matters. Like, I mean, we know our friend Ned Beatty basically played a John Houston Chinatown riff character in the film of Toy Story three. No, the film of Rango. I think no, yes, we watched Ragno on our Patreon. Check that out. Uh, if you want to hear me have a full breakdown. Yep. And I think he's doing something very similar here. Yes. He contrives to have Carter jailed for leaving the scene of a crime after, uh, the, the guy. Or Mungo Tevint did. It's a little bit easier. Yeah. And so then we have the Perfunctory scene of Carter in prison and at the end of the film, he has recovered the, there's this whole element where Lynn Lochner runs away. She leaves her husband at the end of the film, Carter has, has recovered this photograph of Lynn with her lover that was so dangerous to her reputation. And he misses lover lover. What? Forget it. Okay. Uh, is that from the shaggy song? Yeah. Okay. Look man, do my best here. Okay. All right. That's the match. And then, uh, we were really close. When the four protagonists of the film, now you see me each receive a mysterious tarot card inviting them to join together as the four horsemen. Yeah. The card sent to Merritt McKinney is the Hermit didn't remember this. This is very interesting to think about. Yeah. Speaking of hermits though, Lynn Lochner has been in hiding. That's right. Uh, in a, uh, hotel room close, so close to an airport that I don't think that they have those anymore because of nine of 11 or whatever. You're wrong. They do. And I love the idea, sometimes there's pieces of this film that I think are genuinely great. The art direction is so much better than it deserves to be at many, many points in this film. Well, we'll talk about the look of the film in a second, but. All right. Well, I just wanted to comment on this scene then to say this is where Schrader will make a weird choice, very intentionally unsinematic choice. This is maybe one of the two emotional climaxes of the film, and it is played in a hotel, an airport hotel room, which looks like an airport hotel room with planes landing outside the window in like total flat or lighting. It's, I like this. This was cool choice for me. It's not ineffective, but at the end of the film, he returns to the, the hotel where they play canasta. Yes. He's hit the doors close to him now, but he asks if he can speak to Lynn privately, returns this photo to her. And she's taken aback by this because after, after all that's happened, after she used him and used him and she said, why did you stand by me? And he explains that he, you know, he spent his whole life trying to understand other people and never understood his own psychology. In his own life, that's a mystery he says. He's living under the shadow of his breeding. His domineering father, his own expectations about what he should be. Right. Yes. And, and in this moment, I think he, he understands that one of the things that is essentially Carter Page is his loyalty and his politeness. He mentions at some point in the film that he, some people deal with the chaos of the world by emphasizing politeness. And so he's made this decision to. Yeah. I would even go so far as to say to me, this, this is a discovery of a deepening of that the film, at the beginning of the film, he knows he deals with things through politeness. And now he discovers that there are maybe sort of, uh, depths to that virtue that, that to go beyond just like the social niceties of politeness and maybe reflects something like loyalty, genuine loyalty, even to people who treat you badly. Yeah, and then we get some windows, movie maker ass and credits and the film, I don't know if you saw it, if you notice, is dedicated to Leonard who had died, uh, prior to it's, you know, I didn't see that actually. I missed that kid to his brother Leonard. Um, there's, I mean, there's a, there's a, you know, it's a Hector Elizondo is a hard act to follow. Uh, but the investigator, the detective in this played by Jeff Francis is Detective Dixon. Yep. He doesn't make much of an impression granted he doesn't have a lot to do. No, here's where I'm going to be a little caddy. The film is playing with some interesting ideas. I think it's extraordinarily first drafty in its, uh, we've, we've identified this before, but sometimes Schrader is not afraid to go really explicit with the dialogue. All texts, not subtext, that happens a lot in this film. You were nice enough not to mention how often the film basically says the Bush administration. When you believe what it's taught us about the either degradation of American values or the reality that they never existed. And then it goes as far as to just a time of cruelty or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He, I have the quote here somewhere. Let me climb it. Yeah. Exactly. I've had some illusion. Chattered thought we weren't an aggressive nation thought there were separation between church and state, even thought the people elected the president. This is like a Sorkin speech. I've had some illusion. Shattered. Yeah. Thought we weren't a aggressive nation. All you got to do to do Harrelson is stick your lower teeth out. Your lower jaw out and also in this case, he's doing kind of a Georgia accent, not his little Texan draw. Now I had a disagreement with my famous podcast girlfriend as to whether this performance was better. My position was that this performance was better than Kevin Spacey in Midnight in the Garden of Good News. And she seemed to think they were on the same level. I think this character is more interesting. So that helps a lot. Hard for me to pull them apart. I don't know why he wouldn't just let him be Texan because Harrelson is Texan. I wondered that same thing because it adds to the weirdness of it. I assume it's because Texas doesn't have quite the same aristocratic feel of like Georgia style. I guess so. But there's plenty of like, you know, oil barons and stuff. But they're all, yeah, you're right. They're all the guys who have like a million dollar cowboy hat and like wear six shooters to a exact meeting of the board of directors. Yeah. Yeah. So Iraq comes up. They call it Iraq. I think every time, which is what these people would have said. So that's not wrong. So it's, it's just to me, sometimes painfully unsettled about the sort of big issues that you should be thinking of in addition to this character study. And you mentioned Truman Capote, Truman Capote is a book, the book about Truman Capote's black and white ball, famous text, uh, calls, I haven't been here somewhere. Um. And I think it's going to be pretty isn't over. Oh, the part of the century, fabulous story of what they music, no, I didn't hear the music. Oh, it's time for another Americani fun fact. All right. Uh, based on his behavior toward fellow magician, Henley Reeves, the viewer can presume that McKinney has a thing for redheads. Okay. This is Isla Fisher's character. Am I? In the first film. She's not in the second. Yeah. Is it because she's, she's dead or she betrayed them or something? Is that what happens? She, I believe had a scheduling conflict and or did not wish to return because she, uh, nearly drowned to death shooting the first film. I didn't mean Isla Fisher, I didn't think I, I wouldn't have described Isla Fisher as betraying that. The character of Henley Reeves is, is revealed through dialogue to have, uh, I think gotten out or something. Yeah. Well, they're, they're, they're, they're going hiding into hiding for a year after the events of the first film. And I think she got tired of waiting is the, and also, I believe her relationship with Jay Daniel Atlas, the character played by Jesse Eisenberg, I believe the relationship has soured. So she, of course, she left him and left the horseman at the same time. And this is, of course, uh, replaced with a wonderful Lula played by Lizzy Kaplan. That's right. That's right. That, that, uh, she's been called the female Paul Rudd because she has looked the same for so long. Yep. Don't disagree. So the film name drops Tennessee Williams, it name drops Oscar Wilde and name drops Truman Capote, it is, it may be, maybe some people would say this is to his credit. It's making no bones about like where this guy comes from, what his lineage is, what you should be thinking about. I think sometimes it makes it difficult because even in real life, some of those guys quips and clever ideas don't land totally the way that they would like to imagine they did. But you know, I still enjoy them sometimes. But in this, I think the epigrams are, are like so intentionally written that sometimes it's difficult for me to totally feel like this is worth doing. What's interesting in thinking about this film as a first draft is, uh, reading about the production context, Schrader is sort of like, I think this and, and Adam resurrected are both set to go. He's got two horses in the race and he's willing to see which one pulls ahead to get made. Yeah. In this film, he's, for a long time, he's got Kevin Klein in mind for the role. And so the film in and out has once again returned to our conversation. Yeah. Kevin Klein has played gay before, or played almost any certainly played like slightly annoying wreck on tour guy who thinks he's clever than he is. So this is, you know, in the world, and I love Kevin Klein. I like Kevin Klein. Have you seen the ice storm? I have seen the ice storm. He's good in that. Fish called Wanda. Yeah. That, to me, that's a perfect example of, I like Kevin Klein. The fish called Wanda. Interesting. Interesting. And then, uh, there's like a sort of a revolving door of almost leading men. And Schrader at one point says that the film was financed even without a leading man, which that, at that point, I'm confused by the remark that he couldn't. Can't get a gay actor. Yeah. Yep. Um, but he says, uh, and this is some wonderful shred area. He's an open nastiness, but she's caddy. He's a big caddy. He sure is. He says, I had four actors originally, Steve Martin. Yeah. And then I couldn't close the deal with Steve. That would have been very interesting, I think. Probably disastrous. But very interesting. I know. I think it probably would have been a disaster. Yeah. I think if Steve Martin had played it without an accent and without playing a gay, could have been really interesting. But I don't think he was going to do either of those things. Mm-hmm. And Bill Gayle. You know? Yes. Yeah. Yeah, I do. That's very much interesting. There is a, there is a sequence in, I think it's the Pink Panther Returns. I think it's the second Steve Martin Panther film. Yeah. There's a sequence where someone is, they're, they're in France and the Tour de France is going through like the little village where he is. And there's some, someone eats a hot dog and starts choking. Okay. And there's a Heimlich maneuver sequence. And the Heimlich maneuvers performed on whoever ate the hot dog, the piece of hot dog flies out of their mouth out an open window, hits the helmet of a Tour de France rider who loses their balance, steers into a hot dog stand, which then explodes. And it's very funny. It sounds quite good. I cannot, that's for the rest of the film. I don't remember it at all. Yeah. That really knocking me out. Anyway, so he had, he had Steve Martin, and then I had Kevin Klein, and then Kevin decided to do Cole Porter in the film to lovely. So Kevin Klein decides to play a different gay character. Yeah. Which is the same character. That's what's right. Which is the same here. And then I had Tim Robbins, very interesting. This was last year. Tim didn't want to go to Berlin, which is where I had it set up, interesting. And then I had Michael Keaton, who just dropped out six weeks ago without explanation. That is also very interesting to me, because Keaton, people may not remember, at this point was like a stand-up comedian. He started as a comedian, the whole objection to his playing Batman was like, who's this fucking funny guy? Right. Yeah, Beetlejuice guy. Yeah. But so I think this counts as- He's also pretty rough. I think I kind of like that idea, except that I'm not sure I imagine this well-bred elegance. But again, Jerry Sipkin, in real life, went to the Hun School of Princeton, and then he went to the Princeton University of Princeton, and then he dropped out, which is the ultimate rich guy thing to do in his senior year to go limit his parents, one of their many real estate investment properties in Florida. So I'm not sure if Michael Keaton totally reads like that to me. No, I mean, I think that would have been bad, but I like thinking about who Schrader's is looking at. Also, Cole Porter is not the same guy. That is more concerning. That's where I do feel that there's strong evidence for him flattening the distinctions between some of these people, because Cole Porter is also a not hetero man. Is that what he means? Is that what he means? Why is the same character? He lived in New York for a long time. Yes. Is that what he means? On screen, we don't hear Carter Page mention educated fleas at all. He never comes up, yes. That's from the song, let's do it, which is not the song. Let's do it from Walk Hard, which is also a funny song. Two funny songs. Two funny guys. The fuck are we talking about? The film? Yeah. So yeah, it's good to get a good at least a good 10 minutes about the film straight. I think it's always a nice goal. It is. I think there's something interesting that Shader is at least circling and pecking at. I'm imagining him as a vulture, a Turkey vulture circling pecking at the way that understanding the world through gossip and having mastery over people through their secrets or trying to have mastery over people through secrets, especially as a figure who's outside. We've got not only the wives, but also the gay men, the certain kind of gay men in the highly regimented and traditional city of Washington, D.C. This is like a way that people can get power or can wield a certain kind of power. And if I may, I also think that part of the point here is he's revealing initially we're supposed to feel, oh, is this guy so superficial? Maybe we can condescend to him. And as the film points out, so many of the other people operating in D.C., including his beloved father, right, who was an elected official and made great change in the nation. You know, he says he was as corrupt as anybody. He left the left office 20 times wealthier than he entered. And we see characters like Ned Beatty, who ultimately are either in it out of self-interest or preserving the order, the status quo, Washington, D.C. So I think there's this idea that instead of feeling like what he does is lesser, it is nasty in maybe a more harmless way. So he may be actually picking the higher road, and he's doing that with real insider knowledge. So I think there is a sort of eye-opening sense we get as the film goes on that maybe he's not as low or despicable in his flightiness as we might have initially assumed. Right. He does have a special chest for his hairpiece. He's got a little toupee cabinet. He does. And we get the, to me, terrific repeated song of which way to turn by Brian Ferry. I love this. I love Brian Ferry in this, which is a little, I mean, I think it speaks to Schrader's age and maybe disconnectedness from the experiences of people in the, to that. Like he's just sort of stuck in the, it doesn't help the American Jigolo to comparisons. No, it doesn't. Like we're turning to a guy from the 80s and 90s strongly, but I will say it's the melancholy cent 80s. It's like it takes a muscle to fall in love or something. I don't know. I like this type of stuff. I do also like the repeated mention of a zip drive. I think that sort of locates it in time in a way that's pleasant to me. We should talk about the visuals of the film and I was thinking, this reminds me of, I mean, I hate, I don't, I don't love a DC movie, obviously, for obvious reasons. I do love a, you know, I love a spy, a spy craft thing. I love a thriller, two big spy crafts fans seeing DC never my favorite thing. And often nowadays it's Cleveland because Cleveland looks a lot like DC, but it's easier to film in it. So like all the Captain America shit is filmed in Cleveland. Right. So I was thinking, this kind of reminds me of like state of play that the film with Russell Crow and Leonardo DiCaprio, oh, wait, no, is that, that's Ben Affleck. The Gabriel's body of life, state of play and body of life are the same fucking movie. He's right, folks. I'm defending my friend Drake on this. He's this is great. And they might both have Russell Crow in them. I think they do. Maybe neither does. Okay. But anyway, so I look up who shot this movie. Yeah. I got him Chris Seager, who has shot every television show you've ever seen or heard of from like, I mean, all the ones that shoot in England, particularly because it's a British guy. So he's shot some Game of Thrones, but he's also shot Call the Midwife. And he's also shot like the Alienist, which we mentioned that the guy who wrote that novel wrote some of the dominion, dominion, yeah, drafts of yeah. He shot the White Princess. He shot Watchmen. He shot Monarch Legacy of Monsters, which my father and sister insists is a real show that you can watch and they have never provided any evidence to this effect. But he indeed shot the TV miniseries state of play on which the film was based is some kind of interesting. All right. And he shot the Michael Keaton film, White Noise. So Keaton would have been comfortable with this guy and he shot a film. I'm going to take a guess that this was an Ian interest, Alex Ryder, Operation Stormbreaker. Now, if you mean the books, yeah, you're right. That's correct. You like the books? But you didn't watch. Had you fallen off by 2006 when the movie came out? This is why there's so much that can pass on spoken between us. There's just no need to explain the course of my life. That's exactly right. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I had the first one of those bored by it. Interestingly, given our recent conversation about Forever Mine, Chris Seager was the cinematographer of an adaptation of Madame Bovary for television British television starring Francis O'Connor as Emma Bovary herself. It also features Hugh Bonneville, just, you know, classic British production. Got it. Fancy, isn't he pretty, and Jessica O'Yellowo, the wife of David O'Yellowo, who is a cute little guy. That's right. I watched a video of, I was watching a bunch of, I think, Men's Health magazine does this video series that's like my gym and fridge where they go to famous men's homes and they show you what's in their refrigerator and what their home gym or the gym they frequent looks like. And I guess I was feeling particularly high tea, and so I was watching this. Okay. And like, you learn, for example, that Arnold Schwarzenegger, an old bodybuilder trick is not only do you crack a raw egg into your shake, you just put the shell in there too for a little extra calcium. Oh, man. That's tough. That's cool. And I learned that, like, what's his name, what's Dennis's name from, always Sonny? Really? Dennis. Oh, my God. Glenn Howardton. Glenn Howardton doesn't know why any of this stuff is in his fridge, but his wife, like, buys it from him and he's in good shape, so he doesn't ask questions. Yep. Great. But David O'Yellowo had, he did a very interesting one. Apparently, he's a real, he's been like a fitness freak his whole life. There was a picture of him as like a 16 year old, and he's totally shredded, but he's like, you know, I guess like five, five and like 120 pounds or whatever. I like that. But he mentions at one point, he was talking about the different things he's had to do for roles. And he said, you know, I did a film called Selma, where I had to play Dr. Martin Luther King. Yes. This is a classic. And just the idea of, I have to, that damn it, I got to play Dr. King in this one. Yep. Yep. Really, really tickled me. Yeah. No, it's a great quote. Yeah. Check out YouTube.com/menself, I guess. Check out YouTube, check out YouTube.com. Some of the stuff they have on YouTube is crazy. That's right. No, you're right about that. Makes me sick. That's a good point. We should get back to what we're talking about, which is of course the Merritt McKinney Fun Facts. Now while the four horsemen are in hiding for a year between the events of Naussimi and Naussimi 2, I think I mentioned this actually, McKinney has been teaching mentalism to fellow horseman Jack Wilder in exchange for lessons in Wilder's specialty, cardistry. Yeah. This is nice. Friends complimentary abilities. You think this is just going to be kind of color, sort of background for what this goes on. Oh, come on. Come on. Why are you sucker? Yeah, it actually, it does come up later in the film. That's crazy. That's the craziest part. So the film, I think you were talking about this guy who shot it. I was talking more specifically about the art direction. I think the cinematography, different question for me. I find the art direction, I mean, it's between very like naturalistic and... Sumptuous. Drap, artistically drab, and then, yeah, his home is 2007, Sumptuous, and also like Ferdinando. Scarfieri. Scarfieri has long since died at this point, and also 2007's style is not the Armani style of 1981, and you can really tell. There's a lot of satin finishes in this. Not nearly as beautiful as American Jigolo or something. But to me, I think it makes it interesting to see a film that is otherwise shot like the born identity or something, but less shaky cam. And then suddenly, there is holding on just a piece of elegance, but faded and clearly sort of like class aspirational furniture. That I think totally, it reminds me why this guy is a pro, because otherwise, I'm going to be honest, I think this film is largely unremarkable. I don't think it's bad. I don't think it's very good, but there are these little moments. And then there are also little moments, like I said, that really frustrate me. Two explicit lines, there's moments where there's one dutch tilt that happens that I was okay with. The second use really felt like, are you imagining this is more of a Mishima type, like explicitly playing with the form? He also goes handheld toward the very end of the film in a way that, and I really dislike that. I thought, we ought to lock this fucker off, none of this handheld shit, none of this born supremacy bullshit, this is Paul Schrader, this is slow and thoughtful and gesturing toward a Danish film you've never heard of, and people at the time didn't even like it. See, that would have been my prayer. And then sometimes you get like a rear window reference in the form of camera flashes to stop a bad guy. That was cool. He's got a Kamalno over his bed that made me think about Mishima. Yep, that's true. That's true. I don't know, I think to me, if you watch this with a careful eye, I bet you could pick out that this was not made by some sort of like standard studio filmmaker who shoots for efficiency. It's not a rainy, hard one, film for us. I almost said that, but then I felt a little bit bad about how hard we've come down in the morning, but that was who I had in mind. And I don't know. It almost makes me want to forgive the bad dialogue. It almost makes me want to just appreciate the parts I enjoyed. Lauren Bacall, I think, is doing Lauren Bacall. It's funny because maybe you're aware that I think historically when she was in her air with Humphrey Bogart, people talked about her like a bad actor. She didn't really know what she was doing. And I think in this film-- Which is crazy. It's like watching somebody who was born to do this job act. I mean, she reads a line, she's the right line, you reference, where she said-- What's like the humble brew thing? It's like a professional basketball player showing up at a street game. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. She reads this line. And she's old. Also, she's old. Oh my god. Okay. Yeah. Sorry. All right. She says, "Memory is an unreliable organ. It's right up there with the penis," as we mentioned earlier. And it's somehow the funniest thing in the movie and has actual gravitas and ends up being a kind of significant commentary. Because a lot of the stuff we haven't addressed, because this is like a society of women, they're touching on something that Jerry talked about in real life, which is the fact that women because of maybe social misogyny pits women against each other, and there's this inability to trust, but also there's this sense that other women are the only ones who maybe understand your experience. There's this very difficult relationship between them all. And on top of that, you have the traditional aisle across the aisle, which gets at the weirdness of DC, but ultimately, I don't think it really plums any interesting ideas about it. But the sense that, okay, these people spend time together, but maybe they hate each other, but maybe they're glad-handing all the time. And does this mean that they're insincere, or does this mean that they are just canny enough to play the game and to operate? And what does this say about their moral fortitude or something? It doesn't feel like it really lands on anything in the same way that just showing a picture of Abu Grave doesn't, in the context of a Paul Schrader film, necessarily generate actual analysis for me. And I don't think that's one of the fascinating things about this Jerry Sippkin's life. You mentioned his friendship with Nancy Reagan, wife of the man who is perhaps most responsible for seeing the rise of HIV/AIDS in the United States and condemning it, turning it into a moral disease, then doing nothing to prevent his spread. Don't forget laughing about it also. Exactly. And arguably facilitating its spread in some ways, which is totally insane. And then I think anyone who's listening to this who is to the gay community probably already knows this, but I don't think I realize that the person who finally got Reagan to actually do something and for example say the word AIDS was Elizabeth Taylor. Elizabeth Taylor came in like a goddamn bulldozer and just forced his hand and that's cool. Shout out to Elizabeth Taylor. Yeah, I mean a little bit of a study in contrast of being a high society person and ally to gay people in either a manipulative way in the form of Nancy Reagan or maybe being an actual advocate in the form of Elizabeth Taylor. But that also speaks to the kind of weird ways that women who are not officially empowered in this system are nonetheless able to use other means of power and influence to make change. Exactly. And then the question which the film does generate maybe slightly more interestingly of whether their complaints about this world are founded on like a desire for justice or they're founded on a desire for like power, but they wouldn't be able to manipulate in the same way that men are able to manipulate, right? Is it because they're actually focused on creating a better world or because they're resentful because it's sort of like personally stifling for them, which I think is a genuinely challenging question. Something that I was thinking about during the film was it's so concerned with the film and the world that it inhabits the characters. They're also concerned with perception and suspicion and appearances and reputation that there's a way that like politics especially is when you think about it, it has a lot of traits that are that are typically feminized. Yeah. Oh, yeah. For sure. Yep. And you know, it as much as it's maybe maybe that's the what the Ned Beatty characters sort of role in all this is because he's not elected and he there's some line about how, you know, why would I run for office I'd be less powerful because he's a he's a behind the scenes like money guy, phone call maker guy, apparently, you know, we see him. He just goes home and closes himself in an office and continues to make phone calls presumably all night to and changes the course of American history more than somebody that we would imagine like a traditional elected official here. And so perhaps perhaps what the film is trying to indicate in some ways that the politics both elected and social politics are powerful in some ways, but also limited in what they can actually do because at a certain point there's there's rich men pulling the strings who don't have time for your feminine silliness and they're they're going into their office and closing the door and are not to be bothered. Right. Yes. That's exactly right. Yeah. So adding to that the confusion about the casting, I forgot to mention there's been two filmic adaptations of Razor's Edge. One was like a 1949 Tyrone power film, which starred Clifton Webb as the Elliot Templeton character, a famously confirmed bachelor guy who's you know in films like Laura and stuff. So I think that's an interesting choice later. There's the Bill Murray adaptation, which is maybe 84 or something like that. And that stars Dan home Elliot, our old friend Marcus Brody from Indiana Jones, who I think was a... India and the Jones. India and the Jones and he was like a I believe a closeted bisexual man who eventually died of AIDS related to tuberculosis. So to be honest, even just imagining Marcus Brody in this role, much more interesting film to me. I was thinking of course of the, what the fuck is that guy's name, from all about Eve, George Sanders, Addison Dewitt, a classic character of this type. Exactly. Sure, sure. I mean you also mentioned a man who came out in the same year as this release. Yes, he was released from heteronormativity. That's right. In the same year that this film was released, David Hyde-Pierce, Niles Crane. Yeah, and I texted you phrase here. Maybe the character of Niles Crane is a better version of this to me, precisely because he shares almost all of the same qualities, biting in caddy, vain and interested in fashion, wealthy in a showy way, maybe cares more about gossip, but pretends to be a guy who cares about high art. I think, you know, there's lots of classic phrase or jokes about going to the opera for such and such a thing, but really you're going to be able to make little nasty comments about people. Right. Right. And use the little binoculars. Exactly. And let's use those little binoculars. Oh, yeah. The treat. When I was a kid, if we ever went to the baseball game, my dad would bring binoculars so we could like look at the guys. Yeah. I think that's a dad move. Yeah. That's cool. I mean, can we say it? We're going to break the cone of silence. It's often hard to see what those guys are doing down there. It can be difficult, depending on where your seat is. Yeah. And you can tell what the baseball, sometimes honestly, if you're too close, it becomes difficult again. There's like a bell curve situation. There's a bell curve, exactly, which is something that Lauren Bacall talks about. I'll read to to guess that she is maybe undergoing early signs of dementia when she says up there with the penis because that's not it's a down. It's a famously down a package, you know, relative. Yeah. Yeah. Below the belt. She should have changed the whole expression in order to convey this. Yeah. Yeah. Just to finish off the thought about David Hyde Pierce. I think if you're in the... Oh, dude. I'm sorry. I mean, I feel like they're fucking with you at this point. They don't want you to talk about it. I feel like somebody is fucking with me. Yeah. Yeah. At this point, they're probably what we really needed. It was to have less cohesion to been talking about the Walker. That is... You're right about that. I... This is the last Merritt McKinney fun fact on the list here that was provided to me by... Well, that's okay. It's made by... It's almost over. So that makes sense. Yeah. It's provided to me by, of course, the eye, the mysterious shadowy... Ah, yeah. ...organization of magicians that is, I guess, leading these guys toward the, ultimately, like the sort of anti-corporate social change that they enact through their magicians. Ah, improving the world. Yes. Anyway, it says here, "The beginning of Now You See Me finds McKinney applying his trade in New Orleans, Louisiana." Isn't that fun? That is pretty fun. I like to... I think it's a place again at the end. Just for this one. Yeah. For the final. So you're saying something about David Hyde Pierce, the guy who, of course, provided the voice of Dr. Doppler in Treasure Planet? That's right. Yeah. I think that now, if we include that one, I think four interruptions ago. Yeah. So I think one of the only things that I was trying to say, which truly not worth returning to at this point, was that I think the fact that he's written as straight takes away some of the frustrating over-emphasis on... I'm going to use this word knowing how offensive it is, like the swishiness of a character. Sure. If you put in all those things and then it's the '90s, so you have to pretend that he also has a wife, you're just going to tone it down enough to make it seem like a real guy, instead of whatever this is to me. But I think there are a surprise. I'm always surprised by the apparent gayness of men I meet who are straight, like, confirmedly straight. That's why it's good to not say that this is one or the other. Yeah. Right. But now, I recently re-watched Prometheus and Alien Covenant because the new Alien Film came out. Of course, Chronicles, yeah. And I was reminded how much the David character, the sinister Android played by Michael Fassbender is... He's, like, canonically obsessed with Lawrence of Arabia? Yes. Right. And... He has repeats. Yeah. Right. He is dying his robot. He's bleaching his robot hair. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. And he is also doing, like, sinister gay, like, like, Peter O'Toole, but in a way that is... because he's an android, he would appear not to have sexuality and merely just want to kill God, essentially. Yep. Yep. I mean, I think that is genuinely more interesting, because it's also adding this idea of... I don't know that there's... I actually don't know enough about T. Lawrence to say, was he gay in real life the way he's played by Peter O'Toole sort of, to me, becomes more a question of, like, this is a guy who didn't fit into the military organization. He didn't fit into assumptions about what this kind of, like, gentleman officer should be acting like. Yes. He also maybe is selfish and ambitious in his desire to be, like, a leader of this uprising. Right. So it's not like he's a force for good. He's just a force beyond the strictures of how we expect people to operate. And I think, in that way, being a non-header normative is interesting to me, because it's sort of like, it's not demonizing his queerness, whether he is queer or not, but it is making it a part of this sort of question of, like, it's not because he's a saint, it's not because he is a sinner. It's just sort of this guy who's operating on his own terms all the time. And to bring it back to the Walker, if you would let me talk about the film for even just a moment. Yeah, sure. Sorry. Sorry. God. We're going to have to talk about this after the episode. Well, maybe. Uh, you know, he's, I think he's found a way for his own, you know, his own interests and his own, like, uh, affinities, his own expertise, so to speak, in, uh, social niceties. Carter has found a way to exist in some way in this world that his family has, has been like powerful. Yeah. So it makes it all the more tragic because it's not like he ends up like a bohemian counterculture guy in Greenwich Village or something. And he's, you know, we see him, he's in a relationship during the film. So he doesn't, he doesn't get to have that, that transcendent moment of like romantic love that, that colors the ending of, uh, light sleeper and American Jigolo. Um, no, but weirdly, I think he sort of has a, there's a more mature realization where it's sort of like, I've been, uh, disregarding my relationship and also maybe have been caught up more in my own psychological trauma, basically has been overriding my ability to engage with this person who is genuinely interested in showing love to me. So it's sort of like further down the road, what happens if a Latour or any of these guys has been rejecting love, uh, which maybe is a little bit of part of light sleeper, I suppose. Is it okay to say, um, no, I don't think so. Okay, then we'll bleep it and the listener will have to wonder what I said. Yeah. I did want to shout out the script supervisor or whoever was responsible for making sure that, uh, Carter's hairpiece was less and less well-quoffed as, as his life was coming apart. I really appreciate it then. A rare non showy thing in the film. It's pretty subtle. Yeah. It's just like a little fucked up. Yeah. Yeah. He's just not, it's not exactly as perfect. To the toothbrush, like it is the beginning of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anything else you wanted to talk about? It's the walker? No, I think just to sum it up again, storytelling wise, I think there are some interesting choices that are outweighed by less interesting choices, which to me fall into that same first draft category where I think when you're looking at it again, hopefully you start to catch those things. And I've loved some pure Schrader pictures, but maybe this is also one of the benefits of when he's collaborating, because maybe the second eyes of a Scorsese or whoever might be, maybe help to soften some of those edges. I don't know. Your speculation. Let me look at the, let me look at the filmography here. I have a theory I would like to test. Okay. I mean, the last time he wrote and directed something without like that he, it was an idea generated from him was not from a novel you're saying. Not from a novel was forever mine, which was not good. Yeah. Yeah. Before that light sleeper, which good. Yes. But in between there, we've got a lot of affliction bringing out the dead, which are all three novels. Which hunt. Yep. Yeah. And he's a dominion, particularly exorcist. So he's, he's been on a, he's been a little bit in the wilderness. He's been exploring some things that are just not quite reaching the same heights. I mean, we're, we're talking 15 years as light sleeper. Yeah. That's a long stretch. That is a long stretch. Yeah. Um, but I'm sure it'll all turn around with Adam resurrected. That's right. I haven't seen it. I haven't seen it yet. Yeah. We'll see. We'll see. I've seen all I've seen is the image of Jeff Goldblum in clown makeup and that excites me. Mm hmm. Yeah. It's up there with the penis, um, we have, I, we, we should, uh, we should do our check in here. That's two. Um, give me one second sexual obsession.mp3. While you're looking it up, there was another brief political reference in the form of Susan McDougal, who anybody wasn't alive or paying attention to politics in the nineties would probably flow right past them. But I think a fascinating example of what is on straight her's mind in terms of like incidents that are revealing of virtues or lack of virtues. This was a woman who was involved with the Clintons and her ex-husband in, in like a weird real estate scam or scheme of some kind. And they all got caught. This is generally, I think generally for it was the whitewater scandal and she refused to testify against the Clintons while her husband became like a, you know, whatever collaborated with the prosecutors or something. So she served, I don't know, two years or something like that in prison and gets named checked in the film as an example of very peculiar, like DC or DC adjacent commitment to your, your morals. And I think it's funny that, uh, although perhaps our friend Paul Schrader is not interested in big ideas, like maybe what is, uh, wrong with Zionism and, uh, what the treatment of Gazans, but he is extremely interested in a Susan McDoule style, sort of like unsung hero of a certain kind. There's also sort of a flavor in the film, although it's not very thoroughly investigated, but there is the kind of question of like, which scandals can't be made to go away or which ones, which scandals aren't made to go away specifically. Yeah. Yeah. Because Ned Beatty sort of says like half the time it seems like these things are totally swept under the rug and nobody's wrongdoing is revealed and other times it seems to ruin people's lives. Right. I was, um, reminded of, um, when I was living in, in DC, there was, uh, the, the, I guess scandal of, of the death of Chandra Levy, who was, uh, an intern at the Federal Bureau of Prisons whose skeletal remains were discovered in Rock Creek Park. I don't know about this. And, uh, yeah, I mean, I don't know why you would in Northwest DC, there's like a blue urban park called Rock Creek Park. And the remains of this woman who was an intern, um, were discovered and then it was revealed that she had, uh, been having an affair with a congressman, married congressman Gary Condit from California, actually, um, and he was also on the house permanent select committee on intelligence. He was like a, you know, he's a guy with, um, with power and, uh, he was, he wasn't named as a suspect, but obviously, and, and Lewinsky is at this point, like, right, just a couple of years prior. This is in 2002, um, and, uh, you know, he, he is never named as a suspect and, and is eventually cleared of, of suspicion by the police, but he loses his bid for reelection, I think, okay, because of the, the scandal. Um, and so, you know, there's, there's things like this going on, but then, uh, so like, I, I married man has a, has an affair with, uh, like a 24 year old intern who is then unrelatedly murdered and that is a, a big problem, but like dick chinese investments are not, you know, exactly, or even in a similar category, like an ed buck, you know, famous, like LA, uh, power broker guy who, I think it was like a weirdly open secret that maybe he was tempting black, young black sex workers into his house and injecting them with, uh, for like 30 years, basically, yeah, this guy would just, he would have, he'd have young black male sex workers come to his house and he would inject them with drugs and they would, uh, sometimes die. Not infrequently die. Yeah. Yeah. And it, this is the kind of thing that didn't, like he continued to be an operator until whatever just recently enough that it became the type of issue or maybe he was just out of the inner circle. Yeah. I would imagine, yeah, the, the only reason that it, it suddenly became an issue was because he was no longer convenient or it would help someone's career for it to suddenly be a right, whatever, having Jackie Lacey, famous, one of these career people was involved as well. Uh, so Los Angeles D, a former D.A. Yes. That's exactly right. Um, I'm not going to say what should happen to any of these people. Nope. No. Have no painting on the subject. Yep. Uh, the sexual obsession check in is where, uh, we examine something that Paul Schrader said, Paul Schrader said in, uh, Q and A following a screening of Patty Hurst earlier this year. I'm never written a script about the sexual obsession and so that's what I'm doing now. And you're on the show, we've endeavored to determine how many of his films are not about sexual obsession. Yep. The number is certainly more than zero. Yeah. Hovering around 50/50 without having actually calculated it. Yeah. I would say this is, uh, not about sexual obsession. This film is, is pretty sexless. I think so too. I think so too. Yeah. In fact, I think it's, if anything, it's, uh, focus on the fact that everybody else seem to see him in terms of his sexuality and that's like the least relevant part of his life. Same thing. Right. And he's, yeah, he's, he is very unthreateningly gay, the fact of his gayness is specifically unthreatening, which also tends to be, uh, sort of neutered when gay men are unthreatening. It's because it's often not explicitly sexual. Yeah. You and I should get neutered. Yeah. Look at the vent. Yep. And get newticals, get the, those testicular implants that, uh, people put in dogs, you know what this is. Speaking of bottom, I learned about this about five days ago. Creepy. That's crazy. I, I learned about it from, um, an episode of iced tea loves cocoa. Okay. Is that what that show was called? I think that's right. Yeah. Uh, because yeah. Ice loves cocoa. Excuse me. Okay. Uh, because they got their dog neutered, but cocoa felt that the dog would be embarrassed to be visibly without testicles. And so she had some, they're like, uh, silica, they're like tiny, like breast. This is absurd. I mean, this is, this is, uh, insane masculinity, or, I don't know what category this falls into. If you want to learn more about this, uh, the podcaster and comedian and streamer, Tom Walker did a Twitch stream where he read the entirety of the inventor of neuticles is, uh, self published book. So check that out. Check out. I think it's, I think it's Twitch.tv slash Tom Walker. Great. This is a free plug, uh, really insane. It's also on YouTube. Okay. Um, that is probably going to about do it for us for the episode on the Walker. Yep. Um, we thank you so much for listening. Remember to subscribe, rate us, write a review, helps us on the algorithm. If you like the show, tell a friend, tell your dad, um, uh, what's, uh, put on a zip drive. Yeah. Show on a zip drive. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram at podcasty for me. If you have any questions, comments or concerns, or you're interested in co hosting a two-person pulse rate or podcast, you can email us at podcastyfermi@gmail.com. Thank you to Jeremy Allison for our artwork. We will return next week with a supremely comfortable and pleasant episode on the film. Adam resurrected Adam resurrected until then. We beat you a goodbye. [inaudible]
