A Geek History of Time - Episode 214 - Film Noire with Beowulf Rochlen Part II

Episode Date: June 4, 2023

So thank you all for coming to Cocktalk. He has trouble counting change, which is what the hands think. Wait, wait, stop. Yes. But I don't think that Dana Carvey's movie, um, coming out at that same time, was really that big a problem for our country. I still don't know why you're making such a big deal about September 11th, 2001. I mean, Fuckin' hate you.

Well, you know, they don't necessarily need to be an anthem, but they are indefinitely on different ends of the spectrum. Oh boy, fucking hate you. Well, you know, you necessarily need to be anathema, but they are definitely on different ends of the spectrum. Oh boy, how do you say I have a genetic predisposition against redheads. So because you are one, yeah, combustion, yeah, we've heard it before. The only time I change a setting is when I take the hair trimmer down to the nether reaches, like that's the only time. Other than that, it's all just a two I'm joking I use feet after the four gospels what's the next book of the Bible?

okay and after that it's Romans yeah okay and if you look at the 15th chapter of Romans, okay, you will find that it actually mentions the ability to arm yourself That's why worth it. This is a geek history time. Where we connect an earth into the world, my name is F.A. Lamont, a world history of English teacher here in northern California. And today, my inner 13 year old has been vibrating at about500 hertz like all day because a model kit went on pre-order today. That is a character from the Warhammer 40k setting that I have been waiting to see on the tabletop since I was 13. And yeah, and it went on pre-order today. And I got confirmation from our local, friendly local gaming store that my pre-order was put down. And as soon as it arrives in the store, I can show up and have it in my palsy little geek boy hands. And yeah, so while I was busy working in my backyard all day today, that was going on in the back of my head. That was what that was the

happy place that kept me from basically wanting to die while I used an axe to cut tree roots and and try to wrestle with a rototiller. So yeah, I'm about you. Well, I'm Damien Harmony and I am my kid's dad. No, I'm Damien Harmony and I am a Latin and high school US history teacher up here in Northern California. And my big news is my daughter came home today, you know, as you know, we split homes. And she got right to cooking because she is hosting D&D tomorrow. And so she made Halfling chili.

She made the Oatix skillet potatoes. And then tomorrow she's getting up a little early to make some sort of bacon asparagus spears, which is apparently an elvish dish. And she's also making something else that I've forgotten what. So it should be good. I did tell her, yo, if you're hosting other people are supposed to make food for you. I said, but you're also trying to get newbies into the game. So this is good, but start encouraging them to bring other things. So where's the mountain do? Right, exactly. I should go get fun. I should go. Yeah, there you go. Though, but they love the cooking last time. So I think they're right.

They're the heck out of it this time. The other thing that is just really weird to me, years and years ago when we started this, okay, back in the Halcyon days of April of 2019, that's when we started recording. Or that's when we started releasing. Yeah. Yeah. Which means we started recording in February or March. I'm trying to know. Like, oh, even further back than that, I think we started recording in the summer of 2018

and we had 20 in the hopper as a result. Okay. Yeah. But anyway, when we started recording, we were downstairs. I'm upstairs in my office. We were downstairs at my'm upstairs in my office. We were downstairs in at my dining room table. Yeah. And then COVID hit and we figured out a way to go digital. And I think in some ways the sound might have improved.

But it created a situation where it was harder for me to bang on a table. Also true in the middle of recording. So that's an improvement, I suppose. So to our dozen of fans, you're welcome. But also it did change, it changed the dynamic in a lot of ways. And we adjusted and we've, I have adjusted by just doing more research and hoping that that does it. But Ed is presently at that table. When I'm upstairs in my office,

I assume Ed is at that table because he needed a break from being in the garden. And normally he records in his garden. And so with all the digging, you need to let things settle. I assumed. You okay? Either way, Ed's at my house. And yes, I'm still not at the table with him recording. And the weirdest part is, is the background that he has is the background that I had or recall it for recording all the lessons that I did on YouTube or my students when COVID hit.

So it's just very strange to see the grammar. You're seeing your own your own background. Yeah, yeah. It's it's it's really weird. It's like going to your grandparents house across the country and finding that they also have jeopardy on TV, but it comes before wheel of fortune instead of after and then you start to realize why is because it you want to leave old people with a good taste in their mouth. So they don't know anything and then it's like, well, no, you can't buy a comma. Um, yeah.

And so yeah, that's how it feels. Yeah. So it works. I kind of want a fudge bar now that I will sneak the rapper under the bed. So my grandma doesn't find it. So but Fun fact with us as as before the host of face palm in America, Mr. Beowulf Rocklin. Hello. Hey, thank you so much for having me. How are you? Thank you for being here. I'm doing okay. You talk about Jeopardy. Sure.

Visiting Grandfathers, I visited, strangely enough, the town where I live now. I was in the Bay Area in California where I grew up, and I went to a friend's house who lives in the town where I live now in Oregon, and we went to his grandparents house and they were watching Jeopardy, which I imagine is something that grandparents all across the country still do. I know because my, my daughter and I will often call my parents and like we, we do

it between six and seven because we know once seven hits, the conversation has to stop because Jeopardy comes on. Unless it's Sunday, in which case it's 60 minutes. Don't get well, yeah. There you go. That makes sense. I can see that. So there may be time shifts, you know,

especially in that problematic central zone of the country, because I know it's a different time there, but it really seems to be universal experience, and I feel a sense of fellowship with you. Yeah, Damien, because we're all part of, you know, we're all grandsons of something. And by that point, Levar, Levar Burton's daughter will be hosting. There you go. There you go. Well, uh, so last time we had so much fun and left so much undone, uh, when trying to explain why Nor is a, uh, noir, pardon me, nor is a different topic entirely. Why New War is a worthwhile genre and I figured we

should continue and finish with that because you are the at least in this group, the expert on it. Sort of. I mean, I took a college class in film war and I guess we sort of saw, you know, one or two like neon wires, but, you know, I could jam about it, you know, I mean, noir has proliferated. Noir has had many children. It has been fruitful. It has multiplied across the cinematic landscape of America and indeed the world. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And I can't argue against that. Yeah. So much so to the to the point where you said there's a thing called neo-noir. Yes. Yeah. When does that hit? So I, you know, it sort of develops in as the 60s progress, I get the sense that it almost started in a way as sort of a hybridization with the French new wave.

I mean, even if you look at Breathless with Jean-Luc Adard in 1960, you can see it calling back to elements of film noir, even though you couldn't buy any straight of the imagination, call the movie itself a film noir. Because Jean-Paul Belmondo's character is constantly referencing, you know, Bogey and Humphrey Bogart and their posters for his last film, the harder they fall in behind him. And then Goudard does another film in the the harder they fall in in behind them. And then and then G'dard does

another film in the mid 1960s, Alphaville, which begin to which incorporates those elements more more heavily. But I think it's really in the 1970s. I don't know whether it's that it's just a cultural moment caused by, you know, all these, you know, unsettling elements or in part to do with the film industry and independence coming up, but they're whole bunch of movies that come up that either one refer back to that era to draw on the same Canon of film noir, hard boiled detectives. And in some cases, our direct remakes of movies that were done in the 1940s that were part of the film noir canon. Robert Mitchum, who we discussed in some depth last time who did, gosh, you're like any number of things, but out of the past is by far an away, my favorite one. He comes back and he does a farewell my lovely place, Philip Marlow, in a remake of Murder My Sweet from 1944, you see? So, okay, so the original hard boiled novel

by Raymond Chandler was called Farewell My Loveling, but it starred an actor named Dick Powell, and he had been famous in the 1930s as a singer, as a musical guy. He was in the gold diggers of 1933 and the gold diggers of 1935. And he wanted a career change. He wanted, didn't want to be thought of as the young singer anymore. So he tried to do a crime thing. So they took an adaptation of Raymond Chandler's farewell my lovely. However, it wasn't clear from the title that this was not another singing thing.

So they said, let's change it to murder my suite. If it's gotten murder in the title, okay, people are gonna know, right? This is the crime thing. So, I mean, that's a classic early film noir, but Robert Mitchum comes back in the 1970s and remakes that movie based on the same book, but actually calls it by the name of the original book, Farewell My Loveling.

And he does also a remake of The Big Sleep, which Humphrey Bogart did in 1946, which is another Raymond Chandler adaptation. And then there is the Long Goodby, which is done by Robert Altman, which is another Chandler adaptation, which hadn't been done before. And there's body heat, which is an adaptation of double indemnity.

And Chinatown is one of the classic neo-noires. It is set as the other ones are in the 1940s, but it's a new creation that Jack Nicholson started in. Can I, can I, can I feel free there? Please do. So is the, is one of the things that makes it a noir, the fact that it is set at that, in that period, or is setting in that period

just kind of a shorthand because it seems like the originals were set in that period because they were contemporary. Right. So, you're not stuck in the 40s and with that style of clothing, like you could still hit the same themes. Yeah.

And you could have done Chinatown with Leisure Suites, which would have been funnier. Yeah. And you could have done Chinatown with leisure suits, which would have been funnier. Um, but, and there were movies like that that were like night movies with with with Jean Hackman was was contemporary to the 1970s, but it developed on these same themes. So there were a bunch of them that were literally set in the 1940s. Sure. Uh, said, uh, said in, said in that area that were, uh, like a period pieces, the long goodbye actually was, was, was set in the 1970s, even though it's, it's, it's the character that comes out of the 1930s and the 1940s. But you have a whole bunch of these that are literally throwbacks and, and out

of that bloom, all these other movies. And you said in the 70s, I mean, Ed and I have talked about this lot. 70s is the era of the auditor. Yeah. The kind of the new wave of how to do movies, getting completely getting away from the studio system and going in a different, it's essentially like, okay, fine, you can get away from the studio system, but you still have to abuse your actors, are you okay with that? Well, yeah, of course. Okay, cool. Well, you know, when you mention Robert Altman and Alon DeFi, and like, there we are, you know, when we talk about our tour. Yeah. So I have a question though, in regard to the 70s being when this happened, do you get any sense that this revival

being kind of late 60s or early 70s thing is because of, of the late 60s or 70s thing is because of Vietnam and Watergate or do you think there's some other kind of force at work? My sense is that you have a whole bunch of different things going on at once. You have you have the wrapping up of the studio system with a rise of of independence and you've got a bunch of directors that come to prominence at that time, that time who grew up on this sort of thing. Who who thought this stuff is neat. I want to I want to do some of this. I want to I want to go back and make some of my favorite films. I think that you're also reacting, you know, sort of as you did to folks coming back from

World War II, you have, you know, folks coming back from from Vietnam, you have, you know, what is the way that I want to put it? You know, a lot of cultural crises going on and, and, and, and reaction to it. And you have, I think in general, a darker tone in filmmaking, which, which definitely flows through these film wires. And also a lot of other movies of the time. So I think you have multiple different strains pushing you toward it. In the same way that you have multiple different things, you know, pushing you towards film war, well, some of which were cultural and some of which were economic. I mean, you answered almost all my follow-ups, actually.

I was actually... I mean, I forgot, damn it. You damn right. You just cleared it. Sort of. for sure. I read the Wikipedia page. I did more than just open the search engine. All right.

I actually clicked on. Come on, man. Yeah. Oh my God, my students are doing that all the time. Go like, okay, so I think it's this. I'm like, did you click on the Wikipedia link at least? Well, no, it just says right there in it highlights the words. It makes click on

the link. I can't believe I've read the article. Yeah, I can't believe I've heard you to go to Wikipedia. It's a great resource. It's wonderful. You know, I used to, you guys grew up with the Encyclopedia's there. And they were junky things. And they'd never changed. And they never updated. And when it comes to historical stuff, maybe not like contemporary stuff, but like when it comes to history, it's a really good resource and it sends you off and it provides you with a lot of ways to follow up and check on it. It's great stuff. All you have to do, click on the link. Right, exactly, I tell them all the time. It's a great starting place. Yeah, start So yeah, but okay, so a couple things I do want to throw in there though to ask about

I we're talking in the 70s So you already hit the economic button for me cool. Uh the the same crisis of Masculinity is happening. Well, you have another crisis of masculinity. I'm not going to say it's, it's a different one, but yeah, it is another one. So you have that. You have, like I said, you know, the economic thing, there's a lot of destabilization or, what's the word I'm looking for, dysregulation in terms of what's going to happen next, right? Because when noir gets started, like, we're building a global world on purpose for once.

And then there's a big leap back and the world order is changing. It's being dismantled. Everybody caught up. Yeah. We're, we're started threatening to catch up. Right. Yeah. But I, I am curious.

There's, there's a couple things that are also developing at the same time. One, I think I know the answer to, because when Newark got started, so did a lot of horror films. Like you saw a boom in the horror industry and we did this a couple years ago now I think it was somewhere in the teens of episodes That as people's and I found charts and I found I collated a lot of data on this as people's faith in the government dropped Possession movies rose And that starts in

It's an interesting thing that has. Interesting. Because I was watching, uh, hereditary, um, right first came out. I'm like, why are we watching a possession movie? It's 2017. Like, what's going on? Like the last possession movie that was anywhere near popular is extra. Oh, I get it. Okay. His Trump is in the White House. Right. Um, but, uh, because, and so you got put, I'm wondering where they're, oh, I get it. Because Trump is in the White House. Right. But because and so you got put, I'm wondering where they're, uh, do you see that parallel? But also, I noticed that there is a new thing happening as well. And that is black exploitation films. Hmm. And I'm wondering if there was something commensurate in, in the opening stages of noir that I missed on that, if you know.

So, so you're talking about the initial noir boom, where you're talking about my own, a war. So in the initial noir boom, we saw a commensurate rise with horror films as well. Like, you had psychological thrillers, you had monsters who were, I mean, again, it wasn't quite the atomic monsters yet because you don't get to that until the late 40s and 50s, right? And maybe I'm wrong here. You see, I see the big and believe me

because I'm a huge universal movie monster fan. I literally had a universal movie monster fan. I literally had a universal movie monster lunch box that I brought to school. I had universal movie monster action figures. So like a why in the early 1980s, this was the case. I don't know. Oh, I think this is grad school. Okay. It might have been, but it happened to books when I was so, I had seen like five different versions of the Phantom of the Opera by the time I was like seven years old. I was like a huge nerd of that sort of thing. Wow.

But it strikes me that if you look at like the height of the initial monster boom, it's in the early 1930s. It's in the depths of the depression. Right. If you want to talk about a lack of faith in the early 1930s. It's in the depths of the depression. If you want to talk about a lack of faith in the government, that's really when the biggest monster boom is by the time you I mean, I mean, you have other monster things going on in the late 1940s. I don't want to say that they weren't around, but I think it was bigger at that time. Sure. And at least, and then you move into the 1950s, somewhere is still going.

And I think you start to move into science fiction in a big way and, you know, the things that the body stacker step of stuff. What year was the creature from the Black Lagoon? So that again, yeah, that is one of the ones that is, I think it's like 50 or 55 or something like that. I'm okay double. So I'm off. That's that's that's like that's the last one. I remember because the creature from the Michael Goon was one of the action figures that I had. Nice.

That movie scared the bejesus out of my father. Really, okay. At age 10 or 11, he went with a friend to see it. And he had a hard time getting to sleep at night for a week afterward. So yeah, you see, it was, it was, I liked it when I was a kid. And it was pretty cool. But then I saw it again in college with a professor who was just talking about the phallic objective correlatives during it. And it's like it became something completely different than me. So I just do, we just do bad. But no, I think

there are these cycles in which it culturally, in which you have like crises of faith, crises of masculinity, crises of government, and it's reflected on the screen. And I think part of it has to do, again, it's economic, it's trying to tell a story and there's a different generation of people who are gonna tell a story in a different way and they're gonna recombine things. But ultimately, the angst that people experience

on a political level makes it to the screen. And I think when you're talking about people coming home from Vietnam and not knowing what, like what is the United States? Who are we? What are we doing in the world? What, how is the rest of the world finally starting to impact us, us again?

And you have a lot of that uncertainty expressed in these movies. I don't know if you would call it a neo-noir necessarily. It's it's on one of the lists that I came up with on the internet, but dirty Harry certainly exemplifies like many of the visual aspects of that. I think it transcends neo-noir because you're talking about a whole reactionary like film and that touches off. I mean, you could almost have a subgenre of just like reactionary

cop films, and that would be in itself. I don't think that's neo-noir per se, but it has a lot of the visuals. It has a lot of the themes like underlying it. So I think what you're seeing is Hollywood responding to all of those things in in a big way. And you see it cycle through in a bunch of different ways. But you know, even afterwards, even in the even when we seem certain of ourselves as a culture, as a country, in the 1980s, you still get all sorts of stuff. You get, you know, blood simple.

You get, I guess it was still in the 1980s. But, you know, the one with horrible things like Sharon Stone. Basic instinct. Basic instinct. Or do we mean body of evidence? I was thinking basic instinct, but maybe body of evidence. That one I haven't seen. You still see that profile come up again.

It doesn't go away because it's proven itself as a popular shot. So stylistically, what is, is there, I guess, actually even, even more basic question? When we talk about noir versus neo-noir, is it strictly a chronological distinction or is there a stylistic difference between the two? I think it becomes increasingly hybridized stylistically as it goes along. I think I mean, some of them, again, the early ones in the 1970s, I think a lot of them are straight up throwbacks, but you incorporate other things into them. They're not, I mean, obviously, they're not black and white. You know, they don't all have the low lighting, although Chinatown does have a lot of that. And they don't

necessarily all have a classic femme faital. But you see these things come up that you didn't see before. You see the visuals. You see the theme elements and and they they might be in color. They they might be modern. You might see a more powerful a woman come to be, but you can still see enough elements there that you know that it's that it's probably any onoar. Okay. So was there any comment? Because I also mentioned black exploitation films coming up at the same time. Was there a commensurate type of film film film like event happening like that or a cultural film like, you know, confluence is what you mean. Yeah. Well, I mean, I would, in the early, in the original The Wars, like, was there something going on at the same time or no?

And it would make sense that no, because of how segregated everything had gotten. Well, if you, again, if you wanna go back to the 1940s, I think you're talking again about a lot of men coming back from World War II and trying to figure out what again is our place in society. What's my job going to be? What's my relationship to the women in my life? You know, it's a big, scary time for white males. And whenever that happens, they then films get made about it. Because guess who controls the resources in the film industry?

It's what males. Right. Yeah. So you know, no, I think it's just a different set. Like as we were talking about last time, it's after World War II, we're a new power in the world. And yet like, I remember

an old line from the life of Riley, reconversion is going on. The industry is, people are not making war products anymore, they're making fords and Chevroletes. There's a lot of turbulence women in the workplace. Are they going to stay there? And one way of expressing this is like, is a kind of movie in which you're going down this dark, uncertain path in which there are people at every turn, especially women who can be treacherous to you. And it's a reflection of the psyche of the folks at that time.

Sure. Most mostly guys coming back from the war in my opinion. Right. Oh, that, you know, that, that makes a lot of sense. And that, that fits with. And not necessarily, I would expand it. I would actually say not just guys coming back from the war, but in fact, guys who were promised jobs and those jobs are drying up for the first time.

Like you had damn near guaranteed employment for white guys after the war. There was huge labor action going on in the late 1940s, which is why they passed the TAPT Hardly Act. So there was, there was, you know, a lot of things to be arranged in how work was going to take place, how industry was going to be formulated. And basically what you ended up with on a political level was a more reactionary regime that led into not only economic conservatism, but the McCarthy era. And it's interesting to me because I think Film Noir provides a kind of space in which we're exploring that prior to that all kind of clamping down in a way. Because you get to be, you know, a little dirty, a little

criminal, a little gritty in a way that a few years, a little gray, yeah, in a way that a few years after that, you wouldn't have typically seen on the screen. Yeah. It became a little cleaner, And then like they had to compete with television and they blew up with, with Apex and everything. But it seems to be one of those interesting points of flux in which kind of like the rules change. And also I will mention that in 1948, the ruling from the Supreme Court came down

about vertical integration in the film industry, the ownership of the theaters and the method of distribution and the studios, which was ultimately what caused the studio system to fall apart. So you had that going on at the same time, and that cleared more room for independent producers who, if you're looking at, you know, prime dramas, those are cheaper to produce than the big studio films that they might have done, you know, five or 10 years earlier.

Well, and I'm also thinking in terms of comic books, like, you know, in the 1950s, you have, I mean, go all the way back to episode one of our podcast. In the 1950s, you have the no more gray. There need to be black and white. There need to be good and bad. And you can't do horror anymore as a comic book.

You can't do, there was, there was like, no, no, there are children here. And you need to make sure that you are not eating to their delinquency. And then I'm thinking those kids grew up and had kids. And now you've gotten you in a war. And there's not nearly as much of a pushback saying, Oh, no, no, can't we just keep it like good guys bad guys? And that's it. There was much more allowance for for that gray zone. And you know, it's it's kind of weird because like once you reach the 1970s, it's like a throwback to the 1940s. And in a way that might almost be embraced by reactionaries. But if you look at the things that are actually being talked about, the basic themes, they are a little bit, I think, subversive, and

they explore a space that is not your traditional, you know, very structured, haze office, moral, black, and white sort of thing. Right. Yeah, by the way, I just, I'm going to go off the beam here. And I saw a babyface with Barbara Stanwick not too long ago. And that is just like just prior to the the the advent of the the the haze code. She Barbara Stanwick plays a woman who like her dad basically in his speak easy puts her into like, you know, prostitution.

And then she has a friend like he dies when it still blows up. And he has a friend who is a cobbler and a worker. And he introduces him to, he introduces her to Nietzsche. And he's like, you've got to go out and exploit people. You have a power over men. And basically she goes to the big city. She sleeps her way to the top. And and in the original version of the movie, she isn't punished. She makes a choice that, you know, she develops an attachment to want to one of them in that that that she finally forms an emotional bond with. And and she says, well, maybe money isn't everything. But in the version that they later put out, they had to take out the stuff about Nietzsche.

And they had to like have her go back to her hometown and basically have it, having failed at everything. And I just, I love those moments in cinema before the rules clamp down. Right. And it's an opportunity to explore those gritty little moments. I mean, like they're these moments in that movie where she's like in a box car

and she like the guys gonna turn her over to the cops because they're, you know, they're riding the rails and he says, nah, you come over here and like they, you know, they do all this, you know, and clearly she's, you know, giving herself to him in order to make sure that they don't get arrested her and her friend there's all sorts of subversive stuff you know in in that and you see that in in film war too before they come down with this 1950s shit and I just love opportunities when when film gets to say something that's that's a little dirty, a little gritty, a little subversive. And that's why I like film more.

Now I got to ask you with this movie because this came out what in the 30s, right? This was 33 babyface was 33. And that's definitely definitely that a film. That's that's prehase code too, right? It just barely. Yeah. Yeah. Although they've made edits to it. And the version that I saw was the prehaze code. Okay. Okay. If you if you if you get stuff that plays on. I have an app that plays stuff for like the last 30 days through Turner, classic movies, if you get a chance to see that, I highly recommend it. Okay. Okay. So so this this is 33 or so, right?

Like it's just, yeah. Okay, so it's before Hayes Code is just after talk, he's got started. They're starting to add music to a score under the dialogue, so that's pretty cool. Yeah. So you can hear the soundtrack, you know, the kind of soundtrack in the background.

But part of those wonderful early years of sound. Yeah. Yeah. And I've got the whole interest in that that I'm trying to chase down. But, but for this question. So that's telling a really gritty story. And I'm just trying to think, because I know that at that time, given the research that I've done for Birth of a Nation, totally unrelated, but cities had the ability to ban movies.

I did, yeah, I believe that happened. Yeah. So and that happened. Like they straight up like the NAACP in some cities actually got the mayor to be like, no, we're not going to. Oh, that's awesome. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. I can't remember which cities it was. I got that list because it's part of a lecture. I'm giving to my students and five weeks. But and it was, you know, basically, no, this will cause violence toward our black citizens. That's not that's not okay. Like they knew at the time, did this movie get banned for all of this sex type stuff? I don't think so. I think it was one of the one of a batch of movies, including, you know, another couple with Gene Harlow, that sort of

touched off, you know, this sort of moral panic about, oh my goodness, like, all these horrible things are going off, where we're depicting gangsters and films, you know, with stuff like, I remember the names, I tell you, 10 years ago, you should have had this interview. My memory was much sharper back then, but you had like, you had games who were selling themselves and you had gangsters who were shooting people up. And this was something that the religious organizations were all riled up about. And so they imposed on themselves Hollywood through the, through the Hayes office, the set of, this,

this set of rules. And it wasn't, you know, in specifically in reaction to that, but there was a whole bunch of films like it that, that, that, that caused this reaction. And they said, okay, so that we don't get banned, so that we aren't in that situation. We're going to have this, I don't even remember who he would work for before, but he was a well-known and respected figure. And they brought him in and said, OK, you're going to we're going to set these rules in place. And we're not going to let these kinds of script elements

go through anymore. And so by 1934, when that went into place, films had to deal with things differently. And that's how you get the sort of repression, which can be very funny if you have a good writer in it in the screwball comedy, which I know you are something of an expert in. Yeah, or a lapsed expert.

I find that I'm very modular now, like it's same as you. Like my memory's not what it used to be. Yeah, I know, I'm very modular now, like, same as you. Like, you know, like, yeah, my memory's not what it used to be. Yeah, yeah, I know, I know. I can refresh and get really expert on something. And then like three weeks later, Ed will ask me. He's like, so you remember when we did the G.I. Joe thing? No, I don't.

I, what are you talking about? I remember the thing that happened. I just don't remember what to call it. Right. That's the way my memory is degraded. Okay. So, okay, so there weren't remember what to call it. Right. That's the way my memory is degraded. So, okay, so there weren't individual cities that sought to ban this.

There's no role. Not as far as I know. No, no, at least, yeah, I haven't done any sort of in depth research on that, but as far as I know, there weren't there weren't asserts of things. I've always heard it depicted as a national thing that there were these national religious,

especially Catholic organizations that were protesting about sex and violence in films in the early 1930s. And you look before pre-code post-code and you see a lot of differences. I mean, it's, it's, I was, I was seeing something just today that was what from 1939, the Roaring Twenties with Jimmy Kagney Humphrey Boe Gard. And they made this, so they're these guys that are, were World

War II, they're coming back from the war trying to incorporate themselves back into the society and the implication that particular film is that okay, they're all these forgot men coming back and they all decided to sell booze. You know during grow vision. Okay, so that's that's the basic plot, but he Jimmy Kagan is coming home and he's telling us but talking his buddy, telling him how stuff was. And just before the scene cuts and they walk out of the door, he said, did you learn to parlay Vu? And Jimmy Kagan, he says, pauses for a moment, and says, just enough. And he said, and his friends goes, oh, and you know exactly what they're talking about, but they don't say a goddamn thing.

And that's the effect of the haze code. It can be very clever, but it means that everything is suppressed. Yes. And only done by implication. Well, that's where screwball flowers. Yeah, yeah. And you know, I mean, creative minds can think of very cool stuff, even under circumstances like that. And it isn't necessarily the death of creativity,

but it does set a particular set of circumscribed. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Fun fact, that particular movie, one of the reasons that I was asking about that and I kind of had an idea of when was because I, if I recall correctly from another podcast that I listened to John Wayne was in it. Yes, that's right.

He plays like one of the minor all the function areas that Barbara Stanwick like like lures into her clutches and I forget whether it's him or somebody else in the movie, but it might have been him. I think he like throws himself out of window or something like that because he's been so like, you know, damaged, but it's it's it's it's this very like, very young, very slick backed her in a suit, John, John Wayne from 1933. It's very funny to see almost as funny as his whatever movie he was in where he was like a singing cowboy, which is absolutely fucking hilarious to listen to.

John will say almost almost probably truly believed in Clint Eastwood after that. And Grand Torino didn't help. Sure. No kidding. Okay, so Neon or noir gets going in the 70s. And apparently it does well enough. And also it's at a time where what the epic blockbuster isn't well, the blockbuster didn't exist yet. But the epic is kind of dying away as an art form. And they're getting into disaster movies in the 70s. That's that's a thing. And then and then jaws and then yeah, Star Wars. That's you really, you know, yeah, you get into all these summer tent pole movies and and the focus goes to stuff like that. And I think the modern editor of that is the is the Marvel movie. And you know, as much as I would like to complain about how Marvel has as ruined everything. I mean, look, some of our movies have been usurping, you know, screen time and audience time

for quite a while, certainly as long as I've been alive. So, you know, the good stuff shines through. Sure. It'll be okay. There's wonderful stuff that we're making now as a country in and internationally. And it will survive as long as it knows how to love. It'll be great. It knows it'll be all right. Yeah.

Yeah. I will say this though, that with the confluence of the Marvel movie franchise thing like that That is a forgive the pun juggernaut unto itself but That combined with the fact that movies are so god damned expensive Might actually change the difference in degree to the difference in kind here, though. Like, I love Marvel movies. I take my kids to every one of them, but that's about it. As far as movies I take them to,

because I don't have a small home loan that I can take out to go see the other five movies that month. Yeah, I know. Yeah. And so, and the way that we see them has, I mean, it, it, it, it, it changes because I mean, it's the, I, I always wonder like how that impacts the content of the movie and the form of the movie.

Because basically, most of what we imbibe in terms of even feature-length films is either in our homes or a lot of the time, just on our phone or on our tablet. And that is not the same experience. And it's got to mean that they're designing films in a different way. I started deciding if a movie is worth taking, like a Marvel movie, let's be honest, if a Marvel movie was worth taking them to 3D or not.

Okay, any Spider-Man movie? Yes. A Doctor Strange movie? Probably. Others? No, no, not unless I get a discount, but like, you know, maybe a big, big, big one, but even those, no. And the two that I've seen this year, I will tell you are the new Avatar movie, which I saw twice. And then just this last week, the 20th anniversary showing of the return of the king, which I saw 20 years later in the same movie theater. And I had to see that again on the big screen, even though I've seen each of them theatrical

and extended release each one of those movies like dozens of dozens of times, I love them, but I had to go back and see it on the big screen. I am so envious. I didn't get to do that. And I wanted to so badly. How is it possible that like in Little Old Medford, Oregon, they show it, but not in Sacramento, they don't have it? Well, it's not that it wasn't showing. It's just that I have a five-year-old. showing it's just that I have a five year old. Yeah. And, and, you know, trying to, try to arrange time to go. What they need to do, and they must have done this somewhere before, is, is, and this look, I realize people's schedules are crazy. It might not not be workable, but they need to take the theater, just clear out everything and show each extended version back to back.

They've got to do that, you know, and then you know, like have, have a half an hour break in between each movie or what have you, but that would be a full day. I would love that. The only way that I could see that happening is if Peter Jackson is getting divorced from his wife and needs to change the movie by about 10% so that she no longer gets the royalties for the editing credit of the original version. Oh, like so they have some godfather type thing right? Yeah, and George Lucas re-release Star Wars

and change them just enough with special effects that his his ex-wife was no longer entitled to royalties because these new versions was and I thought you mean yes, and I was thinking his ex-wife was no longer entitled to royalties because these new versions. And I thought it was a bit. Yes, and was that? Yeah. I thought it was just a bank role the new episode, but it turns out no, he changed it just enough and she got taken off of the editing credit

so she no longer gets royalties. Oh, talk about economics and the crisis of masculinity. Boy, impacting film. Yes. Wow. Yeah. I, I, I really enjoyed watching them either. I really enjoyed watching those when they came out.

Now I feel bad. Well, shit. Well, good artists can do monstrous things. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeahous things. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Oh, um, damn it. Yeah, I know. Okay. So Neonawar gets gets arise in or comes comes about in in the 1970s. Um, in the in the 1980s. Um, and these are, you know, I don't mean to cut it into neat, tidy chunks of decades

because that's not how things work. But in the 1980s, do we see noir edging into anything else or does it pretty much just completely fade away? Well, I mean, you got stuff like, um, you got stuff like blade runner. Um, and in, uh, yeah, you know, we, there don't seem to be as many in the 1980s. I, you know, I, I think they're more in the 1990s because maybe again, the 90, but, but I, but again, you still see them from, from time to time. I mean, you still see the elements of them come up in different in different films. They they but yeah, I would say that the 1980s is again one of these more conservative. Sure. Eras of film like, you know, you had starting in the the the middle 1950s

after you know, the war starts to to fade away. So there's blood, there's blood simple too. I mean, it's the start of the coin brothers. And they do a lot of what I think could be classified as neon war. And blood simple is an excellent example of that. But yeah, I don't think you see as many till you get to the United States. Do you think that Bruce Willis,

because he hits big in the 80s, do you think in some ways that his beginnings in film, as well as on TV are a subversion of noir? Because I'm thinking about moon lighting. And it's very much the set pieces of the war. And then he goes and does die hard. Right. Which there is some hard boiled detective shit going on there.

He's a great kind of character. And it's comedic on some level. And then, and he gets the shit kicked out of him. You got the reddening of the flesh. And then he does Hudson Hawk, which is probably the greatest movie he's ever made. And so I'm just, I'm wondering if, like he is just a response, he'll get there.

And I think so. I think so. It's just, it's just, when I, when I, when I hear the truth put so, so blatantly, it creates that kind of reaction. You see, to me Bruce Willis' films from the 1980s are more, I mean, they come out to me of a more reactionary tradition than film more.

That's what I see. Like, for example, I mean I almost like out of the dirty hairy tradition because even though I would consider dirty hairy to be a borderline sort of sort of neon war, I think you're talking about a different genre, not necessarily where there's a femme, they tell, and the main character is at the whim of forces beyond his control leading down what is typically a dark path. Usually these characters are are reimposing order, and they, and they like overcome their obstacles by, by the end of their particular path. And I think that's something that risked her just towards the I think that's big in the 1980s and and and aesthetically, it is influenced by noir. I know what you're talking about, but but I see it as a separate

ranching off that has different cultural influences. Okay. yeah, because yeah, I was thinking of the aesthetic, but at what point does, at what point does the aesthetic no longer kind of act as shorthand into it? If that makes sense. I don't know, I mean, like, I think the aesthetic is just a big part of the popularity. I think I think it gained so much like recognition and and and a coolness factor that that has stuck

around longer than the genre itself did. But but but but but But you see like dirty Harry and the characters that Bruce Willis plays, certainly in the I Hard movies, are they're relentlessly moral. They're trying to reestablish order. And I guess maybe the dividing line would be between the 70s and the 80s, because although visually you have those references, like your typical noir hero, whether they're in the 40s or the 1970s, they are typically they are doomed from the start. They like either, either morally or literally they're going to die and they know it from the beginning. They're either dead or they're dead inside and they're going down a dark path. And that's then that to me is the key subversive thing.

If you're going out and re imposing moral order and you have a happy, if you have a completely happy ending, that is not a film noir. Sure. You are watching a different kind of film. And if long order wins, you're... If long order has an unmitigated triumph then you are not watching a film noir. You see, Dirty Harry comes a little bit closer

because at least in the early films, it admits that, wow, this is like maybe he's going too far, but I mean, but it's basically still cheering him on. And with the successive movies, it starts almost like parodying itself. Like where you have Dirty Harry and the Deadpool and the last thing, like shoots a harpoon through the guy at the end for God's sake. It's just, I mean, it becomes ridiculous, but he becomes, but, but nevertheless, like the basic force there is a moral force. Basically, dirty Harry and Bruce Willis both bring their own haze code along with, yeah. Okay. I mean, their own moral structure.

Maybe not. It's weird because it's like, bring the suppression with them. They do bring the suppression. It's so funny because they still the blood, they still the sex and they're used in the service of this of this repressive morality. It's just, it's just weird stuff that you get into the 1980s. It's just weird shit. Right. What about Deadman, where plaid? Oh, I love that one. That is like that.

That's that was such a good idea. I have like I wanted to do with like a radio version of of Deadman, uh, don't wear plaid. And And for those who are not familiar with the film created by, I think with director by Carl Reiner, starring Steve Martin. And what they do is they have, he, it's done all in black and white. Right. Steve Martin is the protagonist

and he acts against all these other actors that are cut out of film wars from, yeah, from the 1940s, like he's talking to Barbara Stab, Stan Awaken, double in that demnity and they cut back and forth. And it's just a fantastic parody and homage to the genre. I just, I love that they went in and and like literally took all those pieces of film. I think that's there was an incredibly creative thing to do. I need to I need to watch that again. Thank you for reminding me of that. Sure. Sure. I am literally writing that down right now. It had men don't wear plaid. Okay. It had a very similar, I don't even want to say it's certainly not aesthetic, but like it had a similar vibe as what's up Tiger Lily did. Yeah. Yeah. No,

I was totally thinking. Yeah. Because I'm sure this Kentucky fried movie without the Zuckerbrother's zaniness. Yeah. You know, it's that absurdist, clearly a send-up of it. And it's just like, you know, it's very reiner and Martin too. Like they work together on a number of things. But you're messing with the conventions and you're using a previous movie or style of movie to insert your own parody and content. And it's such a great structure.

And I wish people would mess around with stuff like that more. I suspect that they don't do it more because of IP. I suspect that they are, God knows how they got away with it when they did. But it must have like the legal for that film must have been very complicated. And I can't imagine that happening today. I mean, God Mickey Mouse is still under copyright for for the next year. Yeah. Although really isn't. So well, just barely. I think if if I am reading what was it? It was it was last week tonight John Oliver and he's he's testing the limits because I guess it's a little later this year that that technically he goes out of copyright, but he's

peace pushing it. He's pushing it. I wish people had the opportunity to mess around and remix films like that. Cause I think that's an awesome thing to be able to do. And it's a source of creativity that we lose. Yeah, it's a collage meets found poetry on film. Yeah, fun fact, Jean Lebel was in that. Jean Lebel, it's funny, like the little things that touch off is like, you know, connected to other weird histories that I know. So Gene Lebel was the referee in the boxer versus wrestling match with Antonio and Okie

and Muhammad Ali. Gene Lebel was the referee. He's also known as judo gene labelle. Um, and he was a pro wrestler in the L area, uh, in the 1950s. And, uh, he is, he was this really super tough, like, he's the only one that could have kept Ali and Anoki in line kind of thing. And that's not hype. That's like, he, he was one of the first, the first guys to ever enter into a mixed martial arts fight. Um, and, but yeah, he was in that interestingly enough. Everyone's while he would do a movie just to keep his sad card active. Deep cuts, man. Yeah. Yeah.

So I'm gonna, I'm gonna push the timeline ahead fairly dramatically. And I have a question for you. When we talk about film noir, we're 90 plus percent talking about movies. But on television, I want to ask you about one of my absolute favorite TV series of all time that was described and I think in my own head that it fits the description, but I want to see what you think as somebody who has more of an expert, Veronica Mars. Josh, I would be lying if I said that I had seen it. So I do not know how to respond. I would have to look at it and then I would have to tell you,

because I'm not sure. Okay, because what's the matter? Tell me about it. Well, okay, so, and then there's another film that is kind of a kicking off point when you think about concepts for Veronica Mars, the movie Brick. Yes, I think that would qualify. That I think is like, I mean, the big Lebowski is an homage to the hard boiled detective.

The big comes from the big sleep. It's almost a direct tribute to Philip Marlowe. But yeah, having seen brick, I mean, it's that same structure. It's just like set in 1990s, 2000 or whatever. Yeah. And the conceit of it is, we're going to do a, we're going to do a noir movie about a, the title comes from a, from a brick of heroin that, you know, is, is the McGuffin for the whole storyline. And, and we're going to set it in a high school. Yeah. And, um, so Veronica Mars is a TV series about the eponymous detective, Veronica Mars.

And the very first season follows her obsessive efforts to find out who's really responsible for the murder of her best friend. Okay. And her father was the town sheriff until he accused somebody very powerful in town of being the killer or being behind the murder. And all of a sudden he got hit with a recall election out of nowhere and he got kicked out of office and now the sheriff is a suck up to all of the wealthy families in town. The dad is now working as a private investigator. Her mom couldn't handle the stress and disappeared and skipped out on the two of them. And she has all of the emotional baggage and complex PTSD that you would associate with that. And so it's high school age protagonist and supporting characters. It's a female protagonist.

And the bow fatale is one of her classmates who is the son of a famous actor who's played by a famous soap actor who turns out just to be this complete pile of shit of a human being. And like it has all, all of the elements, but it, it sounds like I'm feeling part of being. Yeah. But it, but it, but it, it plays with them in some ways. And it, and it, like it, it inverts a lot of the a lot of the gender stuff fairly frequently. Right. Um, and so I don't want to see that now. Oh, my, my education on noir is incomplete. My, my work here is, is rapidly approaching in middle then. Um, it, it, it, it, genuinely, it was, it was one of my favorite TV series while it was on.

Um, and I, and I was And I was so, so, so sad that it went away. But she winds up doing all kinds of morally gray sketchy shit to try to try to get answers. And yeah, no, it's amazing. Yeah, no, that sounds like more. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Yeah. But so I guess my follow up question to that would be, what else have we seen in television as a medium that you think would fit within the genre? Do you think there has been very much television done and why or why not? What is the how the medium of TV?

Right. So a couple of different. I mean, the one thing that I can think of off the top of my head and it's obviously very different than noir, but it has a lot of the noir aesthetics is twin peaks. That goes to that goes to a lot of the noir aesthetics is twin peaks. That goes to a lot of different places and and David Lynch has made some some some very neon noir type movies that you know velvet probably you know counts if counts if you're talking about that. As far as that's the only other one that I can think of and I've got to see Veronica Mars now, I can't think of anything else. And certainly, if you're talking about when, like in the 1950s, 60s, 70s, I can't think of much of anything that goes, that comes as close. I mean, it's on television, like, at least until fairly recently, typically, it's much more conventional. There are just not as many risks taken because you're talking about

what you're trying to put across as an ongoing series as opposed to, as opposed to your one-time thing. So I don't think until recently, they've taken as many risks. I mean, you've gotten a lot more in the 1920s. I'm surprised there haven't been more. But as far as I'm aware, there haven't been. I mean, you get a lot of cop stuff. You get a lot of procedural. Exactly. You get a lot of prime from the good guys win in the end. Yeah, exactly. And that's what you have. Exactly.

There's not enough room to be as complicated. You've got, you've got to deliver a formula, you got to deliver a product and you got to deliver it every week. It would be a lot more effort and a lot more complicated. And you could probably old much smaller audience if you tried to follow a, a, a, a noir pattern for, noir pattern for a regular television project. Now, given the structure that you have today, I mean given that you have netflixes and HBOs and the setup that you have, you could have something like that. Maybe the time is right for it to come,

but I'm not aware of it. Okay, what about, well, we're jumping ahead a bit, but we were in the 80s and you touched on Twin Peaks, so that in many ways will bring us into the 90s, where lo and behold, you see a resurgence in a screwball comedy's again too. Steve Martin and Goldie Hahn, Steve Martin

and Queen Latifah by the end of the decade. And then there's like four of those. He's got all the genres, Kevin. He really, I mean, you know, also like the fifth best banjo player in the world. Yeah, I know. And he has said it's because he keeps living You know, also like the fifth best banjo player in the world. Uh, I know. And he has said it's because he keeps living and the other ones keep dying off.

Like man. Um, but, uh, you taking your vitamins. See, yeah. But, um, you, you see that resurgence and, and you had spoken a bit of, of, of, that, of, of noir coming or neo noir or neo maxi zoom noir. I don't know what the next generation of noir is, but noir headroom. I think it's the very good. Yes. Nice. So, so, and I'm kind of cutting in here, but I need to get I need to get this out before I, before I forget it. Where would you draw the line because because Max Headroom the TV series had all kinds of noir elements to it.

You know, I said that and I wasn't even thinking about it, but it kind of is. I mean, it was it was pretty short lived thing. And again, it's like, it's cultural impact has really been just kind of that, that visual and that, that, that weirdness. But you're right, if you look at the actual show, it was kind of a noir show. You're right. No, no, no, no, that's a, that's a good point. I should have, that should have occurred to me. But you're, you're right. It was kind of a flash in the, in the pan kind of thing, but it was, it was a mystery. And he was like, go and get down all these dark paths.

It doesn't fit perfectly, but from everything that I remember, it's been a long time since I've seen the series. It was, it was, it was that sort of thing. Yeah, you're right. Okay. We come up with another one. All right. So Twigs is not because Agent Cooper and Harry Truman both represent the forces of good.

And there's also a triangle shit that you would never find in. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, it's David Lynch trying to war maybe. But, yeah. But I certainly see the aesthetics there. You see the aesthetics there. Yeah. And just the, the, the, the, the use of sound in that series. Like, I'm especially sensitive to sound, I think, when it comes to stuff like that, because when they pull out the music completely. And then you hear Laura Palmer screaming, like it just, oh, it like, my ex wife, I got her to watch it all with me.

And she said afterwards, she's like, I think you watched this when you were too young. I think it actually monetized you. And she left her mark on your site. Yeah, and she might be right because I would have trouble going about after that. But as an adult, even, like it just, you know, sense memory. But so I could see certainly aesthetics of it. Is there, you said there's kind of a revival in the

90s? What are we looking at in the 90s? You know, to the extent that I can think of more that fit that profile in the 90s, and I can, you know, I mean, like the Cohen brothers, you know, to the certain extent, Quentin Tarantino. I think I could see that because Vincent Big is not a good guy. Sam Hill Jackson's not a good guy. And yeah, in many ways, there's that very great. And obviously, you've got the Reservoir Dogs. Yeah. And what do you call it, chasing or raising Arizona? Yeah, you know, all of that's, yeah, that's, yeah, again, like the funnier and more,

like, and the same is through a Fargo too, because it's like, you don't see like, humor is not a big thing in original film lore, but I, there's so many efforts of the Cohen brothers that I, I, I have to put it into that category. I mean, they're clearly influenced by it in so many different ways. And again, the big Lebowski, I mean, it's, it is a, it is a love letter to write a Chandler. It's a love letter to film noir. And it's just setting it up.

And you don't have to know about film noir to enjoy that movie, but it makes the experience of it so much more interesting because they are following the same kind of serpentine path that Raymond Chandler. I'm trying to remember specifically what the story was because Raymond Chand, when they adapted the big sleep, if I'm recalling this correctly, maybe I'm getting my facts wrong, you know, I'm 47 years old now, so forgive me. I believe it was okay. So something happened and a car went

over the edge of a pier in the 1946 adaptation of the big sleep. And Humphrey Bogart is trying to get his motivation or whatever. And he says to, he says to, well, what happened to this guy? Because he doesn't really ever show up again. What happened to him? And he asks, I think it was actually William Faulkner, who was writing this, the screenplay. And he asked him, well, what happened to this guy? And he says, I don't know. And he goes and he asks Raymond Chandler, who wrote the original book, well, what happened to this guy?

Raymond Chandler didn't know. It's like, there are all these dead ends and like a circuitous paths that go on. And when you think about it in the context of the Big Lebowski, it's stupid and ridiculous and there are all these weird like red herrings and nothing really connects. But that's how like a lot of the original stuff was. And it's loving in addition to the great,

sort of pastisha of the 1990s, it is a really kind of accurate tribute to the tone and style of both film war and the hard boiled detective novels of Raymond Chandler. It reminds me of when you'll hear Jimmy Fallon sing as though he's Neil Young, but he'll sing and he does such a good job of it. It is brilliant. He'll sing as though he's Neil Young and he'll sing the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Yeah. That's a good way of describing the big Lebowski.

It's a genre bender, if you will, you know, because I'm thinking about it, I'm like, there's nothing about it that on paper isn't new or. Right, yeah, yeah. You know, like nothing. That's right. But what's funny is when I go and I see it,

I just go and get so immersed in it, I never think about that. I mean, I think about it afterwards and I'm thinking about it now, but I just like get immersed in what that movie does and the dialogue in that movie is just so fantastic that it's easy to get caught up and not think about the structure. But the structure is there when you step back and look at it

It's the it's a twisted set of mean streets down which you know our hero goes. Yeah, I mean he's he's motivated by You know, he's assaulted in his own place of business, you know, because he's unemployed so it's in a home So it's just like that, you know, they keep like jamming at it, but like, you know, his whole relationship with Maude, I mean, there's your femme for the towel, but he's not that fatale, you know? No, no, no, no, yeah, it's it's it's it's gentle and loving. And yeah, there is there is like, you know, a death at the end, it's just not like really who you, who you, who you expected it to be. And there's a rating of the flesh, somebody loses their toe. You know, that's right. That's right. Yeah. No, it's, oh my God. And you have

bunny offering to fillate him first $1,000. So you have the sexual part aspect of it, too. Like, yeah, there's, yeah, man. Yeah. I think there's just no, like, I'm just trying to picture him in like a Fedora and a Princess Mara tie and it's like, well, 1947, the Pell's or something like that. That would be horrible. But, I mean, but basically, yeah, everything else is there. And that's and the point, don't as a as a film

more, because it because it does such a good job of like hitting all these like 1960, 1990s, Southern California cultural benefits in such a great way. So, okay, by the 90s, I mean, noir has kind of in as much as it is existing at all, it exists as a send up of itself. Like, it has become a formula, a structure, it has become so far more than what it was. It's been adapted by so many other films. Like, there are a few films that I think you could call like out and out film noir, norz, or even neo-noires

unless they're like specific, like, you know, reboots or something like that. Although, like, once you get to 2000 and you get to Memento, that's a pretty strong one right there. And, I mean mean if we're going in Nolan, we're also looking at insomnia as well. You have a cop who is dirty, who is questioning his moral compass. And I mean, it's literally I mean, it's in Alaska. And he's he's talking it's too fucking bright in here. And she's like, it's dark in here. That is that is noir. I mean, that's living in a twilight type thing. Oh, yeah. So, so the

night and he uses it's, you know, he uses it stylistically, you know, in the dark night and and many of his many of his other films, but but you're right. Those those two specifically, I think come within the canna. Okay. So, so the 90s, the economy is doing pretty well. There's no real crisis of masculinity that I can point to that's as universal for white men. Because, you know, welfare reform is for the poor's and enough white men weren't the poor's, so it was okay. And then you get to the 2000s and we're back at war. Yeah. And, and, and

interesting. There's an, there's an uptick in Neocons, which is a shittier version of the liberals of the 90s. And, uh, bro, we are to Neocons. Right. And, and there is some doctrinal important differences there. So I'm not I'm not trying to say It's interesting because yeah, I don't see I don't see a similar noir resurgence. I mean, yeah, we're probably looking at like Yeah, maybe there's some other kind of film, but I yeah, and I'm not I'm not seeing it. I I haven't I mean, I guess brick really is the the one that I can think of most, most recently, but I'm not seeing a response to 9-11 and the crisis that, you know, of the war on terror that that film war is, is the response. Maybe it's because the war on terror is still going on. The boys never came home and we just we just never

reasserted our cultural hegemony and there was no crisis in coming to that because we just never got there. Well also there weren't that many boys going off too. I mean there's an all-volunteer army by this point. Yeah. There's not a universal experience. That's, oh, we thank them for their service. There's TV commercials of them coming home, and we all applaud them. And now let's go back to the game. Like there's, there's that going in. I am wondering though, like there, there are a few like, there are a number of addiction-based movies that come out in the 2000s. I'm thinking Requiem for a Dream, I'm thinking Blow, I'm thinking things like that. Not Newar at all.

Yeah. And it's almost like that gray area is now taken up with uh, polemics about drugs and drug culture and addiction. Yeah. Yeah. That sounds... Sounds about right. So Newar ceases to be a movement then and it becomes.

Garnish and aesthetic maybe. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Do we see anything come? I mean, you mentioned Blade Runner from 81, which is what got us into this whole noir. Yeah.

Mess to begin with. In the first place. And then let's see, there's a new blade runner that just came out. What a year 20. Yeah, you have blade running 20 49 from what it said. One of the 19. And then yeah, no. Shit, now I'm trying to remember.

It was either 17 or 19. Yeah, it was before the pandemic. That's what I saw in a movie. Yeah. Yeah. And in fairness, 17 and 19 blend a lot. My dentist told me the other day, yeah, we haven't seen it since the 2017. I'm like, no, no, you mean 2019.

He's like, no. So apparently those two numbers are easily blended. Yeah. But okay. So, I mean, you've got that. But again, they're just little pop ups or their remakes or. Yeah. What happened to the man?

We needed an war. Resurgence because, yeah, I am not saying much of it recently. I did have this thought. Okay. We know, speaking of intellectual property. Yes. Speaking of steamboat, Willie, we know that the copyright on Winnie the Pooh has a run out.

And we just saw Winnie the Pooh blood and honey. So we got the horde genre taken care of. We need to say, yeah, I'm for a poo noir to be released upon the globe. I like it. Somebody killed the time has come. Well, I think what Kanga can, you see Kanga is such a ten-general character. I almost

think they're going to be the make her the the the Diabolique though make her the the she's the only one that fucks in the entire the only one that's reproduced yeah exactly like her and goofy. Oh my god, we need a movie noir like it's good. That's going to be decades, though, man. Like, yeah, true. Goofy, goofy noir, but, but we can do winning the poo. Okay. Like, like your, your fits the pessimistic tone.

I think, I think we, I think we, Piglet becomes the equivalent of the, of the femme fatale somehow. And, and, and rabbit is doing some nefarious shit. Yeah. I like it. I think piglets, Tigger dies. Obviously. Yes. Yes. Yes. Over. One bounce too far. Yeah. You want to do a bump? Who? Did you mean some bounties? All right. No. Don't. But okay, have you or be the main character then? Yeah. Yes, yes, you're right.

Yeah. Totally. Yes. No, you're absolutely right. Okay. Yeah, he is the protagonist. Yeah. And have have. Down these dark streets say down these mean streets, a donkey must go who is not necessarily

himself mean. The kind of the kind of place you could drop your tail and not notice for three blocks. Yeah. Oh, I can hear the voice, man. I can hear the voice, right? Oh my God. And you could you could absolutely have the go for show up as like one of the heaviest. No, okay. So here's the thing though, go for as a creation of Disney that came from the

Stefan the 19th century. Since this is based on the idea of the books, Gofer is non-canonical. I don't think you could do it with the Gofer, unfortunately. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Okay. But yeah, I think I think we got to play by the Hayes Code rules here. Yeah. And rabbit rabbit in his family are clearly the mob. Totally. Yeah. yeah. Absolutely. His friends and relations. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

No, I like this. I like this. Is there anything else we should noir up? Oh, man. Yeah. Now that I think about it, we haven't. Marvel is great about doing genres within Marvel, right? So you have high movies.

You have espionage movies. You have cool. They have not done a new war. And they think on some levels, we're about to see that because secret invasion, Nick Fury and the secret invasion, with the scrolls and all that kind of shit. I mean, it's going to be more espionage. Yeah. And he's still protecting Earth, but aesthetically there's a lot of darks. Yeah going on in there as far as the lighting goes. I don't know. I But I do think you could introduce a character and do a noir Uh, that. Oh, yeah. You know, it occurs to me. I did not see this in the in the theaters and it went by really quickly But Liam Neeson actually did a movie called Marlow, which was, which

used the Raymond Chandler character. I've got to see it. I have not yet. I have a feeling it's going to be absolutely atrocious. I just have that by giving the trajectory of Liam Neeson's career. Yeah. Got to that so sad too. I know. I guess we should probably look for Star Wars noir as well. Star noir. Star noir. I like that. I like that. Yeah. Yeah, that could easily be done. Oh, well, okay.

Big galaxy. Yeah, well, here's the deal. That needs to be an adaptation of the land of Calarice and stories. That's good. You got you got to get the bar on Yeah, the wing in there. Yeah, he's down and find some spice on some girls nose. Hello. What have we here? Yeah, you're Yep, I can see that I can see that. Okay. Has has Donald Glover. Yes. Obviously.

And yes, and have Billy D Williams to the voice over. These Yeah. Meadows this planet that never stops raining. Yeah. Every person looks just like the last

largely because they're cloners. Oh, okay. I like this. I like this. You see there are possibilities. Hollywood, we have the ideas. Yeah. I don't know if it's so ready to pop. Yeah. I fully agree here. But beyond that, it seems like noir has died. Like it's it it's passed its usefulness, which is, which is, it's been absorbed. It's been absorbed into the board. It hasn't died. It's just become this, this set of cultural references. Okay.

And people, and people know what they are, but it's, but the genre itself and what it really was and what it represented. And, and the, um, the counter-hedramonic stuff that was in there, the challenging things, those of what's eaten away. But the fedoras and the cigarettes and the cool dresses and the Loki lighting, that stuff has been grabbed and it's been thrown to a thousand different places. So we'll always have, you know, LA in the 1930s. So does it. But, but we need to revive the heart of it, not just the look of it. Well, I think, oh, go ahead. I think part of the part of the thing is the the anti-Hedgimon spirit, the the cynicism, the all of all of that stuff. I kind of, I'm tempted to say that the torch for all

of that kind of got picked up by punk as a movement. And in genres of media, I know that a lot of that has been absorbed by cyberpunk. Like when we talk about, when we talk about, you know, Blade Runner, obviously, it's kind of the kind of the pictotification of a lot of those, a lot of those kind of tropes. And then William Gibson was writing his sprawl trilogy, the first novel of his sprawl trilogy, when Blade Runner came out. And he wrote to a friend of his going, there's no way the book is ever going to get fucking published now, because everybody's going to think I'm ripping off Blade Runner, like son of a bitch, you know. But all of that suspicion of corporate interests, all of that, you know, the viewpoint of Cyberpunk

that the world is not going to be a utopia in the future. You know, all of that, I think, is the, is All of that, I think, is the, is that that same set of anxieties, or a related set of anxieties, and a related set of cynicism's, picked up and translated by a new generation, if that makes sense. Yeah, no, I think you're right.

I think that is the core. That to me is the essence of noir, like that, that, that, that grittiness and digging in and finding out what's really going on with in the power structure off. And, and, and literally, and this is how like Raymond Chandler novels, I mean, certainly haveiddler, and this is how like Raymond Chandler novels, I mean, certainly have the big, big sleep begins. I mean, you're, you're digging into, you know, a mystery at the behest of a, of a really wealthy person. And, and you find out,

out like the family secrets, and eventually people want you to stop, stop digging, because you're digging up things that, that you shouldn't be. And that absolute, that, that, digging because you're digging up things that you shouldn't be. And that absolute, that that and that absolutely that and the violence and the dirtiness and the corruption that actually that torch is absolutely taken care of, taken up by the sort of, you know, cyberpunk of Johnny that you're talking about. I think it's getting excited that he's finally going to get to cyberpunk on the podcast. So, okay, so I said that it was dead and you said no, it's been absorbed and it's a part of, you know, the film like lore.

Yeah. It's become the wallpaper. The crisis of masculinity has also become our wallpaper. Like there's no big event that's causing that now. Now it's just fucking there all the time, right? It's just ambient. I know, man. I've been already, I come ambient and no, no, I definitely has.

I think the crisis of masculinity is constantly being hashed out in one, one way or another. If a soup, if a super, I'll be damned if like, like superhero movies are, I don't somehow express the crisis of masculinity. I mean, there's all sorts of stuff going on there. I mean, I know, I know it's a lot more complicated than that, but like the whole concept of a superhero and a big, you know, muscle, you know, I mean, that's going on. And it's not just Marvel movies. I mean, no, no.

But yeah, no, we're constantly in crisis. I don't know. We're so emotional. We're so emotional. Once we're with us, why can't we just calm down? Just calm down. But that's that's kind of what I'm saying. That was like, I mean, you know, I'm a teacher. So of course, I look at every shooting. But which is busy. But we have constant lockdown drills. And there's, I mean, there's so much stuff about men trying to control other men and women

and everything in between on both sides. And make sure that like, coils or coils and men are meant exactly. And so it just seems like that crisis has no longer been because of a specific trauma and disaster, it is just a part of our culture now. It's a, yes, it's an explicit part of our culture and it's an explicit part of our politics. And it is like, it is what one political party is essentially like using to that how they would wrap stuff up to decently cling to power anyway it possibly can.

Yes. So is that being so? It would make sense then that noir wouldn't come in as a big like six years of noir movies again. Yeah. Because there's no crystallization. Yeah, where does it seem for condensation? Yeah, it's where does it seems it's like it's it's kind of too subversive.

I mean, like, like we yeah, well, yeah, but doesn't seem weird at all. We get rid of subversive shit right away. You know, I mean, the word revolution was used to sell sprite in the 90s. You know, like hair was hippie chic. revolution was used to sell sprite in the 90s. Hair was hippie chic and the hippies were already a bit of a problem. Um, you know, he's stuff like that. I mean, there's just you remember when, uh, Kylie Jenner or one of the Kardashian. Oh, yes, that's right. It's a black light is better protest. Here is Pepsi. Right. It's okay. Yeah. You know, it's like, oh,

thanks for that. You know, thank you. Thank you, fellow billionaire. Yeah. We will keep your property safe. Don't you worry. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, well, shit, that was bleak. Uh, yeah. There's a, there we are. I don't know. Like, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's better, I think, when we can look to our screens for bleakness, as opposed to our streets and, and our halls of government because that seems to be where the bleakness is emanating from at the moment. I would rather do some psychic working out of things

on the big screen and being that position and being a more hopeful position in terms of the landscape because even though there was a hell of a lot of stuff going on in the 1940s, and there was some really shitty things going on in the south, and they were trying to crush the labor market. It seemed like there was more ambient hope, at least from what I know of the history. And right now, we seem to be on the downslide. Yeah, I think that's a fair read. Ambient optimism, if not hope. Yeah, at that point. You know, you had activity

because we had just kicked Hitler's ass. Yeah, but I mean, you had the, okay, now let's roll up our sleeves and do something about it here at home. Yeah, and interestingly, our movies now provide an escape from the bleakness that you're talking about. Right. And provide an escape to such an extent that they are completely unattainable escapes. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. They're too distant for, they're too fantastic. That's the thing. Yeah. Yeah. And they're getting more so. Yeah yeah, so well good stuff. Thanks for that

It's already on such a butter man. Yeah, well, you bring you in for film the war. It's not like you know, I mean Yeah, we knew we were getting into with that so Snake when you picked it up. Thank you for having me on guys. It's it's it's a blast I didn't think I was gonna be able to talk about anything this time right I figured I had It's a blast. I didn't think I was going to be able to talk about anything this time. I figured I had blown my load because I did the college class on the one thing. And then I'm coming back on neon war to talk about something that I didn't take a class on. But you with your guys help your incisive questions and a little bit from Wikipedia. We made it all happen because you read the article.

You clicked on the link and you went to the article. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Do you have any any books you would want to recommend to people? Books. Oh my gosh. I have just started a fantastic book, an audio book form that my daughter recommended to me today. Not because she read it, but because somebody recommended it to me. And it is fantastic. It is called health communism. And I am really, really digging it. I tell you, I've read a couple books on leftist, socialist, like political theory,

the last couple of months. And I have never read such dense stuff like since my college days. And I'm getting back into it again, and it's completely like reshaping my mind. Health communism, it is really good stuff. It's the kind of book that uses words like praxis and imaginary as a noun. So be aware of that.

It's dense, but it is good and it just makes so many doors open in my mind, highly recommended. Nice. Ed, how about you? What do you recommend? Well, I'm going to recommend a, well, maybe not foundational, but an important work within the cyberpunk genre, because again, I'm looking forward to getting to talk about it. And it's, listeners may remember the name from another recommendation of mine, by Massimo Nishiro from Japan. It is a manga entitled Apple Seed, in which the two main characters are, well, one of the main characters is a cyborg, and they both are part of the police force for an engineered utopia, and it gets into a lot of the backstage, no, no, really, what dirty tricks would you

have to do to make a utopia work? So it's, yeah, it's a great series. I devoured it when I was in high school. And so, yeah, highly, highly recommended, the art is amazing. Shiro is really great with technical details. So when he designed a power suit or a cyborg, yeah, there's just an amazing level of imaginative detail to it. So highly recommended. How about you?

What's the title again? Apple seed by Massimo Nashiro. Excellent. You can find that in an antique bookstore since Ed Redett and High School. The robot's good to me and so I think the robot. I'm gonna recommend a screwball comedy and film noir unexpected connections by Thomas C. Renzi.

Nice. Specifically analyzes the lady even his girlfriend a and compares them to Gilda and Sunset Boulevard, but there's also a lot of other things that are brought into it. So yeah, I'm gonna check that out. Yeah, all right. Cool. Let's see, Ed, where do you want to be found anywhere this week or no? No, I do not want to be found this week at all. Thank you. I will tell people you can find me.

Let's see, as of this recording, I'm going to say the June 2nd show of Capital Punishment. You probably just missed it. So hold on to your money for the July 7th show of capital punishment up here in Sacramento. It's going to be at Luna's. It's going to be fantastic. Got some really good people booked on it. So bring $10, bring another $10 for merch and nachos and support Luna's and enjoy the ride as far as that goes. Beowulf, where can people find you if you want to be found? You can finally on the podcast, Face Palm America, and you can go to FacePalmeAmerica.com to look through past episodes

that connect with us on social media. And you can actually call us, text us if you want, and you can find the number at FacePullMAmerica.com. Very cool. Excellent. Well, on behalf of Ed and myself, Bill, thank you so much for joining us for these two episodes.

It has been an absolute pleasure. I really enjoyed hanging out with you guys. And thanks for having me on. And now I got a bunch of movies to see, and a bunch of books to read. And let's do another episode in five years and see what we've read, see what we've observed, see what we learn, and see if the crisis of masculinity

has finally been solved. I like it. I like it. I like that plan. And if not, we'll just throw some raw meat up and eat it. Oh, be good. Yeah, there you go. Well, brother, for a geek history of time, I'm Deemey Normany.

And I'm Ed Blaylock. And until next time, keep rolling 20s.