Blank Check with Griffin & David - Barry Lyndon with Karina Longworth

Episode Date: October 23, 2022

NASA-quality lenses, a himbo canon-worthy performance from notoriously “chill and normal guy” Ryan O’Neal, and some flirty ribbon games all combine to make what we consider to be Kubrick’s warmest and most sumptuous film - 1975’s “Barry Lyndon.” Karina Longworth of “You Must Remember This” makes a long-awaited first appearance on the pod to wonder - did Barry actually end up sleeping with his cousin? What are the rules of dueling? Should children be allowed to ride horses? And more! Join our Patreon at patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter and Instagram! Buy some real nerdy merch at shopblankcheckpod.myshopify.com or at teepublic.com/stores/blank-check

It was in the reign of George III that the aforesaid personages lived and quarreled. Good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all podcasts now. So you're starting with the last thing in the movie. I am, and I'm essentially equating podcasting to death. I'm saying that it's the ultimate fate that lies before all of us. It's unavoidable. Right, we'll all have one. Yeah, that makes sense.

Right, that's basically the new Andy Warhol line that everyone will end up having at least 15 episodes of a podcast in the future, right? Right, right. And God bless him. And yeah, that's my favorite thing in the movie, in one of my favorite movies ever, is the title, the end title. Is that silly?

No, you sort of spoiled it for me, but I didn't understand how it was going to play out. What did I say to you? time recently playing at the Paris Theater in anticipation of doing this episode. We were lucky enough that like things timed out where we could actually see it on a big screen for the first time before recording. And you were talking about it to some other guests of ours. I can't remember if it was on mic or off mic about why it was your favorite Kubrick movie. And you just said, you know, the ultimate point of this movie where it doesn't matter, we're all going to end up dead anyway. Right. And I didn't realize it was literally going to be an epilogue like a title card saying what does this fucking matter um yeah do you remember we were just talking about this

uh what why it was playing at the paris we were trying to remember yes no i can tell you it was they are doing a director select series okay it is that. Sure. I guess it's like four or five of the directors who have Netflix movies coming out this fall and winter. And this was one of Bombax picks. Oh, cool. OK. But his picks were weird. I want to pull them up because they were not what I expected. And it feels like different people took the assignment differently where some people were very much curating.

And it feels like different people took the assignment differently where some people were very much curating. These are the films that were the inspiration for my new Netflix movie. And other people were just perhaps using it as an opportunity to get movies they love projected on a big screen. Sure. Right. Yeah, I was saying that I think my husband did one of these, but I don't know what movies he picked. But I think one of them was the last of sheila correct for him it was like he wasn't going to be in new york so it wasn't like he it was movies that he was excited to see yeah yeah his picks all were very uh benoit blank adjacent they were very much like mood board mystery ensemble films um i'm trying to get the last of sheila that's on

a boat right that's like and there and there's a boat in Glass Onion And a very young Ian McShane I should see the Last of Sheila, I've never seen the Last of Sheila It's fun Herbert Ross, yeah Diane Cannon is playing Sue Mengers, basically And she's That sort of characterization

Is very influential to the Way that Kate Hudson plays her part In Glass Onion. Sue Menger's R.I.P. The bomb back list was Barry Lyndon, high and low, mash, network, shoot the piano player, world according to Garp. I guess now that I've seen White Noise, that list makes a little more sense. That's a good list.

It is a good list. If I had more time on my hands, I'd be going all these things. It's tough. It is a good list. If I had more time on my hands, I'd be going to all these things. It's tough. I feel bad that I missed some of these, you know, these chances for nice film.

And it's a nice theater, the Paris Theater. And it's great that you saw Barry Lyndon there. Introduce our podcast and our guests. Sorry. It's a podcast called Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. I'm David. Podcast about filmographies,

directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. And sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce baby. And today we are talking about a film that was that was a bounce when it came out. I feel like I keep on thinking, well, of course, he had this miracle run. Pretty much everything from Dr. Strangelove on is this like miracle run of classics but this is the one that was the most poorly received at the time right i suppose it's more that it didn't do very well financially i mean it did i mean this i was just saying to karina like it did get a best picture nomination like and i guess eyes wide shut was maybe well that's received

but wasn't eyes wide shut like number one at the box office the weekend it opened? But then it was just, like, completely ignored by the Oscars, which is... Yeah. It also dropped, like, a stone at the box office after the first weekend. But it's still... It opened big in the middle of the summer. It did okay. Yeah.

Yeah. This movie is a bit of a bounce. Sure. That's fine. Or, I mean, that's so silly to say about Barry Lyndon. Yeah, well, this is a bit of a bounce sure that's fine or i mean that's so silly to say about barry linden yeah well this is a bounce at the time it is obviously a movie that has been completely i feel uh vindicated i think so but and uh karina introduce karina so i can ask her a question our guest today a phenomenal uh film critic and uh film host from, you must remember this, Karina Longworth, one of the most overdue, long-demanded guests,

years over us doing this show. Hi, thanks for having me. Hi, Karina. Thank you so much for doing this. We've so badly wanted you to do the show for a long time now, and you very much wanted to do Barry Lyndon. Is this your favorite Kubrick, or is this just sort of the one you're most interested in talking about? This is my favorite Kubrick. And I mean, for me, it's like this,

Eyes Wide Shut, and then there's kind of a drop. It's like those two are the top. Yeah, I'm with you. Right. Yeah. So for a long time, I mean, you know, people are always like, what's your favorite movie, Karina? You must have seen every movie. And I think that's kind of a stupid question because I'm just always watching movies. And, like, how could it be kind of fixed in time, you know, what my favorite movie is? And so in order to avoid having to give an actual answer, I say that I have three favorite movies, which are A Star is Born from 1954, Barry Lyndon, and Ghostbusters. Because that just, like, covers all the bases. Although I think I'm going to replace Ghostbusters because that just covers all the bases. Although I think I'm going to replace Ghostbusters

with Back to the Future. I think Back to the Future is a more perfect movie. But yeah, so I would just sort of drop Barry Lyndon's name in that context, but I actually hadn't... I had watched the movie a lot in my early 20s, but I actually hadn't seen it in probably 15 years until last night.

Oh, wow. Oh, wow. Oh, cool. Was it fun to revisit? It's so funny. It's a comedy, guys. It's so funny. Oh, yeah. It's so funny.

Oh, it's so funny. Barry's the best. Ben had a real, I mean, we've talked about this, I think, on the episodes leading up to this. Ben had something of a life-changing experience

watching this movie. I feel like this immediately leading up to this, Ben had something of a life-changing experience watching this movie. I feel like this immediately shot up to the list of your favorite of the movies we've ever covered on this show, like within the top five. It's just nice to see yourself on the screen. Karina, like five minutes in, Ben turns to me and he goes,

these are my people. He's just beaming. Are you Irish? Yeah, I'm an Irish scoundrel. Yeah. Yes, Ben related heavily to the mid-talented Irish liar, Barry Lyndon. And who hasn't? Who doesn't watch this movie and kind of go like,

huh, you know. We've all been there. Life's some breaks, you know. Sometimes they break this way, sometimes they break that way. Nice work if you can get it yeah yeah i mean i it is this is a comedy this is one of my favorite movies and i've seen it many times um it is very funny but the question i was gonna ask karina i feel like this is true it's like i feel like this was the epitome of when the critical community was like yeah kubrick makes like coffee table books he

makes the i i cannot deny its beauty but i am left cold right like when that becomes that that's sort of like uh you know slightly uh unfair read on kubrick's filmmaking like becomes codified around here again i don't agree with that it's certainly certainly not in relation to Barry Lyndon, but like, I do feel like, I do feel like that was the reception. It just seems so strange in hindsight because all of his movies are satires. Like, I can't think of one.

I was at, like, after we watched it last night, I was like asking the people I watch it with, like, is there one I'm forgetting? And the consensus was like, well,

Spartacus, maybe, but is that even really a Kubrick film? Spartacus, right. Spartacus is not satirical. And that is not really a Kubrick film. And that is maybe the only one. I think, yes.

I mean, it depends on what you say about The Shining, I guess. But The Shining is very funny. Yeah, maybe The Shining is a satire of the novel. I don't know. Sure. Yes. I forget which episode it is. One of the ones we've recorded already, but hasn't come out yet.

watching these movies is that I find the comedy in most of Kubrick's other films funnier than Dr. Strangelove. Not because I don't think Dr. Strangelove is funny, but because I find him putting comedy into a movie like this that is not presenting itself as comedic, but is comedic from beginning to end. It is the thing that surprised me because I feel like the last 10, 15 years, I've heard, you know, major critical reevaluation of Barry Lyndon, where it started to become more acceptable to go, that's his best film. Before, I think that was viewed as a contrarian opinion. You know, this and Eyes Wide Shut are the two that it really feels like have gotten their due in the last 10 or 15 years and sort of a sea change. And I would always hear people say,

the secret to Barry Lyndon is that it's like really funny. And I assumed it was going to be one of these things where it's like, well, it's operating satirically on a very quiet wavelength. It must have been missed by audiences at the time. And then you watch this thing and it's pitched like a comedy from beginning to end. It is so plainly a comedy. I don't understand how it was ever misread. Well, I do think that the events that happen,

especially in the last half hour, are tragic. And I do think if there is any sort of genuine emotion to be had, it's in Brian dying and sort of understanding that whatever good is in Barry Lyndon was in

him as a father, although so many things have to go wrong for that kid to get to the horse. Like so many people have to fall down on the job. Just don't get him the horse. He's so small. He's a slight child. It's not just that he's nine years old. He's small. He's a little kid. It's the gone with the wind thing. If a little kid mounts a big horse, I just start covering my eyes.

Nothing good will come of this. There's a reason ponies exist. And he had one, but he wasn't satisfied with his pony. It's like the whole metaphor of the whole movie. Not to jump to the kid, but that's one of my favorite kid performances. And obviously, I don't usually, I don't like a my favorite kid performances. And obviously, I don't usually, whatever. I don't like a lot of kid performances. And I've always loved little Brian.

And I think he never acted again. If he did, he barely acted. He's just a perfect little Fauntleroy with his little hair. The one I was astounded by and felt is one of the best child performances i've ever seen is little bullington yeah little bullington is also good is incredible because he really has to set the stage for the entire second half of the movie he doesn't have that much screen time but in a couple scenes a couple lines and more than anything just his glances his body language the tension he creates like this kid just has such absolute contempt

for this fucking guy. And the next hour and a half of the movie is just going to spin off of that. Karina, when did you first see Barry? Or, Karina, what's your Kubrick take, I guess? Yeah, your general relationship to Kubrick across your life. It's so hard doing this guy on our podcast

because it's like, what are you supposed to say? Yeah, no, I mean, I just think he's one of the greatest and like one of the most fascinating characters. And the fact that there aren't that many movies makes each one kind of more important and more interesting. I'm actually not sure if I've seen every single Kubrick film or not, but I've definitely seen most of them. And yeah, as I said, like it's this and Eyes Wide Shut. And then, you know, it it's like there's kind of two empty stairs maybe. And then it would be like for me, The Shining and Dr. Strangelove. And and then again, there's like maybe two empty stairs and then there's kind of everything else.

Yeah, I'm I'm with you on that, I think. Oh, well, 2001. are you less you're less well 2001 is like 2001 i think maybe i just kind of burnt out on it when i was a teenager like i was a pretty precocious teenage stoner and um like you know at age 13 hanging out with 17 year olds and doing things like getting really stoned and going to midnight shows of 2001. And so it's like, it's something where I, I probably haven't seen that movie since I was like 26. So that's 16 years. And I just don't know that I will have a reason where I feel like I need to

revisit it. So it's just not something I think about very often, but of course it's a masterpiece. It's like, I'm saying like, Oh, there's a couple of empty stairs, but it's like, it's just because they're all like on Masterpiece Mountain. Pretty much. Yeah, there's there's like a collection of the bulk of his movies in the middle for me where I feel like, well, this is undeniably Masterpiece. I recognize the excellence of this film. But Barry Lyndon and Eyes Wide Shut are the two that feel like they sort of cut through to me on a deeper level where i feel genuine warmth and affection for them that's the other funny thing about this movie is

you saying david this notion of oh this is him at his most austere distant painterly again i don't agree no no no it's more like when you see the reviews yes or whatever yes no no i know but i feel like this is kind of his warmest film in a bizarre way. And especially if you look at it being buttressed by 2001 Clockwork Orange on one side, Shining Full Metal Jacket on the other side.

There is like a gentleness to this movie, despite it being deeply, deeply cynical. And sad. It's a sad movie. And sad. Yeah. But I think there is a greater sense of human emotion in this film than the ones on either side yeah i would agree but i also think this is like one of my most this movie gets such an emotional reaction out of me in all ways like it's this is barry lyndon this is my favorite it's uh i i you know i had a friend i had a wonderful

experience with barry lyndon recently which i i think i first saw it in college and glommed onto it for i i you know i glommed onto it immediately but i had a experience recently i have a friend who loves the shining he's not like a big movie buff and we were at in vermont it was late there was like a fire roaring and he was talking to me about the shining and i was like have you ever seen barry lyndon he's like no and i'm like i'm just gonna put it on and i put it on and you know the first scene obviously is him digging in a woman's uh boobs for a ribbon yeah and he just looked at me yeah and he looked at me just like what is this like why did you and i was just like i just just you know let's just stick with it and he like within the next month watched barry lyndon like five times like he caught the bug and like that i do feel like this movie has that weird

hypnotic quality or or however you want to maybe it's just it's entrancing like it's just so easy for me to to have this thing on and to to be you know just sort of drinking it in until the last half hour when i get unspeakably devastated devastated especially now that i have a kid um but uh but anyway don't let her ride a horse it's very easy don't let her ride a horse it's the one thing ben's parents clearly did correctly was not letting him ride a dang horse until his 30s. When I was ready to. When you were ready. When you were an adult.

No horses, no skiing. I don't like any of that stuff. No. No. David, can I ask you a question? Yes. So when you first saw this movie, was it on two VHS tapes?

It may have been on DVD. It may have been on the white DVD. You remember the sort of the uh the white director the masterpiece collection or whatever it was called did you watch it on vhs karina yeah i worked at a video store um and i i decided that i was just gonna like take home all the movies one by one that were on two tapes because those were like probably important and so they always looked because they were so big, those like brick, you know, and a lot of them I had seen before, you know,

like my dad had had like the two tapes of the Godfather and the two tapes of Once Upon a Time in America, and stuff like that. But there was, you know, some that I hadn't seen. And Barry Linden was one of them. And so I took home the twohs tapes and um like we i kept because at the video store i worked at like you could take home whatever you wanted you didn't have to check them out on the computer and um i just kept it at my house for a really long time because i just kind of kept watching it and so nobody could check out barry lyndon for a while were people coming up and being like hey do you have barry lyndon you were like, no. Every now and then, yeah. And I would be like, oh, yeah, it's lost. I don't know.

This is also a movie that has its proper intermission, its proper break, where the separation of the two VHSs is clean, I would imagine. Like, it works as two meals. Yeah. I know. The separation in the story is so perfect. Right. That's what I'm saying. It's designed to be split up into VHS. It's almost like that was Kubrick's intent, the ideal way he wanted to be watched.

I definitely did first watch it on like a 10-inch TV, though. That would be relitigation with Kubrick's films is what is the correct aspect ratio. Because he was often trying to account for making images that would work well both on a big screen and on a TV. As much as he was framing for theaters, he would sort of make sure there was the contingency plan of it will work on VHS, especially once that took off. And I feel like it's always you would hear about Vitaly fighting Warner Brothers, fighting fans over what was the way he wanted it to be seen. And should home video presentations of the movies now be the theatrical presentations or what he approved for home video now that home video is obviously much higher fidelity and screens are bigger and all of that uh yeah they had like pan and scan that was like the only way to see it uh right these like sort of carefully

put together pan and scans for like 2001 or whatever but that was he would the video yeah right so uh barry linden uh kar, do you know where this comes in his... Let me look at our research here. Yeah, you know where this comes in Kubrick's career? Obviously, it's after Clockwork Orange. And right, it comes out of he's trying to make Napoleon. That's what's happening for him in the early 70s. He's ready to make his period epic.

Right. Right. him in the early 70s he's ready to make his period epic right right and uh i feel like we talked about this on the 2001 episode griffin right the or we've been going wildly out of order so it's hard to now chart when we've talked about what um but mgm you know was going to fund the napoleon movie that didn't end up happening obviously this movie is warner brothers right yes this is um but uh they were gonna start i we've talked about all of this but like you know he read every single book he wanted jack nicholson to play the role uh he had was scouting locations for the poleonic battle scenes everything like that and it just never came

together because mgm got spooked because big costume war epics were just starting to flop over and over again at the box office there's these movies like waterloo and charge of the light brigade and sailor from gibraltar like all these movies that just didn't work yeah hollywood never really got over the failure of waterloo it was kind of their waterloo all right um yeah uh so um there's some i guess there's always been like because this movie has people in tricorner hats i think people have long thought that lyndon like took his napoleon research and started putting it into lyndon but that's not true at all obviously this is set way before napoleon research and started putting it into linden but that's not true at all obviously this is set way before napoleon was alive and it's just kind of the classic thing

every time you dig into like hey why did kubrick make this next he's always just like oh i really like the book like because he's always drafting off of a book and he's always just pulling things off of the shelves and finally saying that you know he like tapped into the story has anyone read karina have you read barry lyndon by thackeray no i have not i've read vanity fair um so have i yes uh vanity fair is the only one but like uh the only thackeray i've ever read but like that he is i feel like he's the king in the victorian era of like the anti-hero or whatever or the the non-heroic novels, right? That's sort of his thing.

He would dare write these big epics that were not about particularly sympathetic characters. Yeah. Trollope did that too, but Trollope's stuff was like serialized and then became novels largely. God, this is – I had a major Trollope phase as a kid. I had a major trollop phase as a kid. What's that whole series, the Pallister novels, right? I read like four of those. Pallister Goes to Camp, Pallister Scared Stupid.

Exactly. The Way We Live Now is kind of great. The Way We Live Now. I mean, it's like this big, but. I think I saw like a bbc way we live now possibly with david suchet is that right that i think that checks out yes i think i that is my only yes david suchet here he is oh yeah this looks fun matthew mcfadden shirley henderson killian murphy i'm sure this rules i should rewatch this. But anyway, no, I've never read Barry Lyndon, but Kubrick picks it off the shelf. He had said at one point he considered turning Vanity

Fair into a film, but he couldn't figure out how to compress it into a feature length because it's so sprawling. But I guess Barry Lyndon, because it's focused on this one guy and it's got the through line of his journey through life, he was much more able to pick it. This is one of the rare, like, written and directed by Kubrick's. Like, no co-writing. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, you're right. He's not handing it off to someone. someone yeah you're right david that's you know linden as a fictional text and napoleon as a real guy are not so similar beyond being different eras their narratives are different there are certain

you know commonalities but it does feel similar to full metal jacket coming out of him trying to make a holocaust movie like his head is in a very general space. He's obsessed with a subject. He cannot totally figure out how to get his mitts around. And then he finds a sort of simpler, cleaner narrative that allows him to explore some of the subjects he's been thinking on, but perhaps with a lot less of the pressure, you know, like he's able to make a period film about society and hubris here with this guy without the having to stage Napoleon's entire life and read 8000 books, as you're saying, like the years he spent trying to figure out to give himself the confidence to feel like he was ready to make Napoleon versus just reading Barry Lyndon once and then going, oh, I could just adapt this. I could just take this book, copy it into a screenplay and make this right now. This narrative is ready. Just. Just, you know.

Easy. Yeah. Yes. He got, this is very cute. He got a big pile of art books for the references for everything they wanted to make, all the clothes, the furniture, the vehicles, and everything like that. He said that, quote, he had to very guiltily tear up a lot of beautiful art books. They were all fortunately still in print, so it felt a little less sinful. It's just funny to think about Kubrick feeling guilty doing this. Just ripping pages and crying.

Right. And yeah, this is one of those things where because he's the only credited screenwriter, no one really saw a script. It's not like The Shining or Eyes Wide Shut or whatever, where he's handing it to someone, they make a script for him, and then he starts tinkering on it uh himself based numerous people involved in the movie just say like he was just working from the book um you know clearly he did write a script he had a draft or things like that but i guess uh you know his his he really was just taking the book i know i really want just taking the book. I know, I really want to read the book. But he did change the ending. In the book, Barry gets pensioned off

and Bullington comes back after that happens and finds Barry and beats him up. Which sounds fun. So the whole duel is Kubrick's creation. Yes. He just thought it was not credible. I think he wanted a slightly more poetic ending, I guess. The ending in the book is truly just like, Bullington beats the shit out of him and Barry dies in prison a drunk, which is just maybe just a little too bleak maybe i don't know yeah uh and he really

liked the idea of having a big duel in a barn with pigeons that was that was what he wanted the ending to be but then also like the last image we have of barry is that like a freeze frame of him bent over i mean it's like entering a carriage it's a pretty funny punchline freeze frame always startles me i don't know if you guys felt the same like because it's it's so out of out of nowhere in the visual like it's out of the language yeah it is i i understand where he's coming from where uh it it feels too clean to have this guy end up behind bars in that way. Like the notion of the greatest punishment for this guy isn't being held accountable for his crimes in a prison. It's being sort of made meaningless. Yeah. You know, it's like here you go off in a carriage off to

the countryside and you're just no longer allowed to speak to any of these people ever again. Also, he's like crippled and living with his mom. Right. I also just feel, though, I like that it's like if Barry Lyndon blows through your life, you're going to end up writing a check to him guiltily at the end of the year. Like every year being like, God, Barry Lyndon. Remember that? You know, like that should be the the the impact of barry lyndon right but the fact that you end with the check writing yep you know how how much he hates it right oh yeah you're not seeing you know you don't end the movie with him opening up an

envelope getting a check and going yes it's that time of the month again no i mean the indignity of this all he ever wanted was to leave where he came from and he just ends up right back where he started but worse off than ever and the money's not gonna make him feel any better no of course not he's he's miserable and he has one leg and he's not famous anymore he's not cool anymore yeah um yes the but no the other massive change that he makes is that the novel is told from barry's first person perspective uh and he is like a classic unreliable narrator who's always going on about how great he is and kubrick decided that was not going to work in a movie and he wanted the you, the objective narrator in the movie

and Ryan O'Neill despised that and it's why Ryan O'Neill hates the movie. Because Ryan O'Neill didn't know that was going to, I guess, be put in the movie. He didn't know that would be the narrator. Yes. Was that a change that was made midstream

or did O'Neill just not know? I think O'Neill just didn't know. It's very odd of Ryan O'Neill to hold contempt for anyone. He's such a notoriously chill, collaborative guy. Now, Karina, has Ryan come up on You Must Remember This, right? Surely.

Well, yeah, because I did a whole season about Pauly Platt. You did the Bogdanovich, right? You did the Pauly Platt season. He wouldn't talk to me. I tried to interview him, but he wouldn't talk to me. I tried to interview him. What a surprise. I mean, I just have the impression that he is possibly like the most unpleasant star in history, or at least the most famously unpleasant guy to work with in Hollywood history. Maybe there's a top 10.

I almost don't want to give him too much credit for being the worst. But, you know, I just find him so funny in this movie because it seems like he's not in control of his performance. And because it just feels like Kubrick is like, OK, Ryan. So in the next one, do less. And you just see like there's some shots where it's just like Ryan O'Neill, like looking confused and like not really understanding what's happening. And it's just so perfect. It's I mean, it's such good metacasting or not even metacasting. I mean, you know, I think there are clever ways in which he's using Ryan O'Neill's baggage as a movie star up until this point.

But it also is you're casting a guy who basically feels the way that Barry Lyndon does. He so badly wants to prove that he is a serious actor worthy of being the lead in a Kubrick movie. And Kubrick's essentially saying, like, just just be yourself. Just sit there and I'll use you the way I want to use you. Totally. And it's like I mean, and then it's like this crazy thing where like this model is in the movie with him. And it's like she comes off as giving almost a better performance. Absolutely. Undeniably.

But he's perfect in this. It's, I mean, the other thing I'd heard about this movie for so long is, oh, Barry Lyndon would be good if Ryan O'Neill wasn't so bad in the lead role. It's like one of those movies marred by terrible casting in the lead role. And it's one of those things where it's like no one else could have played this. He is perfect. You can argue that he's not a great actor, which I would say. And I don't think this is one of his best performances, but it's the best application of him in any movie. Yeah. I mean, you know, I think Bogdanovich got like better performances out of him, but I agree.

Yeah. Paper moon is probably his best performance, right? Yeah. And what's up doc. He's great at, those are the two best, like I give him credit for what he's doing performances in his career,

I would say. But I think that, you know, because the casting is so perfect in this, even though, you know, what he's showing off is not like virtuoso acting. There is a star power that comes through.

Yes, I agree. And so, you know, some of the people I watched it with last night, like, were not that familiar with his filmography. And they're like, did he make any movies after this? And yes, in fact, he made quite a few. But they're just none of them are classics on the level of this or the Bogdanovich movies. I think when he's playing Bogdanovich in Irreconcilable Differences, it's really funny. But that's that's kind of the only one I would point to as being something, you know, worthwhile. This is the end of like his lucky streak decade.

Yeah. The only other movie I like him in is The Driver. And that is a similar which is that is it. Sorry. That is after Barry Lyndon. And that is a similar like give me nothing ryan like blank blank blank like you know just be a good looking guy uh which he is good at there's that anecdote i think about all the time uh interview david fincher did talking about the girl with the dragon tattoo casting process and how belabored

that was and it was you know it was like the scarlett O'Hara thing of a year of the press breathlessly writing about every single actress who had tested or read for that. And all the people who got close, like Scarlett Johansson, Natalie Portman, until he landed on Rooney Mara. And he said, the thing was, I saw these people who are really, really good actors and were giving really good auditions and were transforming themselves into this character. But Rooney Marr was the only person who felt fundamentally weird in the way I wanted the character to be just in her basic being. And I think you need to cast people based on whatever the core fundamental quality you need is for that character. Because if it's three o'clock in the morning and you're

on a 200th take and you're 100 days into production, you need the thing that's still going to be there in them that cannot be, you know, beaten out of them, that they'll never going to be too tired to deliver the core essence. And it's like, that's the Ryan O'Neill casting here. I forget who it is.

I've quoted this before, but some entertainment writer, it might have even been just a tweet asking, is Ryan O'Neill the most fundamentally unlikable actor to ever become an A-list star? And it is funny to think about because outside of Love Story, which is almost bizarre that the movie is such a big hit with him in it,

the things like the Bogdanovich movies kind of riff off of him being a shitbag, you know? And it's not like he was this sort of cad where it's fun to watch him, like, work his way through situations. It's not like he was Gene Hackman where it's like, oh, he's a compelling son of a bitch. He just always was this guy who was kind of annoying and insincere and arrogant. Yeah, but in a weird way, that sets up really good, interesting female performances. Yes. You know, as like in just in these, like, four movies

that we just mentioned, like, Pretty Woman, Paper Moon, What's Up, Dog, Barry Lyndon, and Irreconcilable Differences, it's, like, all of them have female performances that, like, pop out, and that he's kind of, like, what he lacks,

it allows, like, the actress provide that's that's an amazing point i think even love story you could say that yeah yeah yeah yeah no and it is i mean you know i i think i don't give him credit for it i don't think it's out of generosity you know but people talk a lot about major a-list male stars not wanting to take roles where they're secondary to the female lead where they're secondary to the female lead, where they're supporting her story. I mean, certainly he didn't think that that was what was happening in Paper Moon. And, you know, allegedly he punched Tatum O'Neill when she got an Oscar nomination and he didn't. On the set of this movie. I mean, I believe the reason we know that

story is because of Kubrick's wife telling it. Yeah. No, yeah. I mean, I think it was a thing that drove him crazy that every time he made a film, the other person popped harder than he did. But it is then crazy that he had this run of working with good directors on wildly, you know, beloved films with incredible performances. And then, yeah, it does feel like he just sort of self-destructed after that. And yeah, it is this weird combination. I'm talking about like, is he the most despised actor in the history of Hollywood?

Is he the most toxic movie star ever? Maybe he's not number one, but it's the odd combination of there are people who were really charming and compelling on screen, and then you hear nightmare stories about them. It's rare that there's a guy like this where his basic movie star quality was being kind of unlikable. And then also you hear that he was even worse off set.

And yet he was a leading man. He wasn't playing the heavy, you know? He's an odd, odd fucking figure. Yeah, he is. I do love him in this movie. He does seem like a huge asshole. Um, he hated that he wasn't narrating it. He said, I didn't see the movie for a year and a half. When I did, I didn't know what I saw. I still don't. Some people like it. Some people fall asleep, but his take is I was supposed to narrate the movie. Kubrick got some bored englishman to do

it and if he's bored what's the audience going to be weird take but okay what's the audience going to be having a great time laughing at you that's the answer having a fucking ball rolling in the aisles uh stanley he said kubrick wrote him a mean letter because he was mad that uh ryan didn't like the movie and I wrote him back saying look the movie I saw was like walking through a museum which is alright but we shot an adventure story and that was it

but Ryan O'Neill's he thought he was making an adventure story well the guy does have an adventure he joins the army and then he's in a different army there are duels. There's romance. But like, does he think this movie is like an inspirational tale of this guy on the come up?

Yeah, maybe he does. I mean, on some level it is. Like on some level it is like, you know, you know, like the scoundrels, you know, triumph and tragedy. Yeah. Right. I don totally understand why he would see that he's like i mean he learned how to sword fight you know yeah sure i thought he was errol flynn he goes pretty far he becomes a gentleman i mean he does when you meet him in the beginning you don't see him as a gentleman and then his mom fucks everything up for him. Kinda, yeah. I still like his mom, though. She's fun. Oh, she's cool.

It's another thing that maybe helps this performance is that he fundamentally thinks he's in a different movie than he is. That he is playing it so thoroughly as the hero of the picture. Like, he does not play conniving. It's in his core being, perhaps, his competitiveness. No, but he needs to be stupid enough to do the stuff he does does that make sense like he is kind of smart and clever in some ways but he also needs to be so stupid that he'd be like yeah i'm like a captain you know i'm captain i'm captain soldier and i'm gonna give some papers to Army. Having no idea where Bremen is.

Right, exactly. He's got to be a little dumb. At the end of the day, by the way, O'Neill's major take on this movie is, I was very well paid. My deal was for 18 weeks. After 18 weeks of work, we'd done about four pages of the script.

And so everything after that was overtime. And I was just like earning. Hey, that cool. That cool. It's one of the reasons that a quote unquote better actor in this role would be to the detriment of the movie is that there's something kind of inscrutable about Barry and that he's just kind of operating on animalistic instincts, right? Like he wants to move up. He wants to get rich he wants to get laid and you never can see the gears turning in his head i mean what you're saying david about he kind of needs to be this stupid to believe that he can get away with everything

and every time he makes a move it just feels impulsive it feels reactionary there's no strategizing in his head he's never thinking big picture he's just constantly trying to move forward and move up uh let's yeah let's talk about the plot of the movie right i don't know let's go through it a little bit um i want to ask one fundamental question before sure go ahead we get into the plot of it just as we're, you know, closing the book on, on Ryan O'Neill's anger about not being the narrator. I can't speak for how the novel works on its own, but I think the version of this movie that is narrated by him from his perspective would be so oppressive. Like I do not want to live in this guy's head.

I want to observe him almost from an anthropological level which the narration in this movie provides you like it feels like you're watching a nature documentary about this resilient species but could you imagine having to like listen to this guy's inner monologue no it'd be so boring what if he was no i mean yeah it would just exhaust not function i don't know karina i don't know i don't know how much of a inner monologue he has you know right um i don't know that he i i mean i think it is like basically ryan o'neill saying like i was it was an adventure then i had another great idea yeah exactly yeah and women love me

right then i met this lady and she thought it was super cute. This guy was loving all my stories. He was eating it up. In your research, did Ryan O'Neill say, like, I read the book, and I thought it was going to be like that? Or do you think he didn't bother reading the book? He certainly is citing the book that, you know, like in the book, Blinden narrates his own deranged view of things.

And I thought that's what made the story work. He was an 18th century crackpot. So that makes it sound like he read the book. Now, maybe he just read a script that was going off of the book. I don't know. But like, I guess he certainly had a picture in his head of, quote unquote, playing an 18th century crackpot and as you said like he took it seriously he sword fought he's obviously attempting an accent uh you know sort of not that well in my opinion i don't really care but uh and

i but i kind of wonder like i feel like kubrick's the kind of guy where, like, if O'Neill came in with, like, a thick accent, Kubrick would be like, Ryan, stop doing that voice. And, like, maybe they just compromised on what is in the movie. It seems like a lot of Kubrick's direction was, like, chill out and be yourself. Yeah. Which is fine uh kubrick's kubrick's quote here is he looked right and i was confident he possessed much greater acting ability than he'd been allowed to show in any of the films he'd previously done classic kubrick quote classic like weird neg where he's like he's like i mean you're not good in movies that you've done but i assume you can be um

and kubrick's very much just like we got on fine i mean the funniest story in this research is that like and you hear this about from a lot of people who work with kubrick it's like when we hung out we would just talk about sports like that's what we did uh we just talk about football or whatever and then marissa berenson says like he he barely talked to me he approached me with great hesitation he would write me letters instead of coming up to talk to me with ryan o'neill they would talk about sports and quote this is her exact words the way men do among themselves uh but for marissa berenson he would send letters that were very personal and arrived whenever that he felt it was necessary to communicate with me

so uh stanley kubrick a bit of a shy guy with with uh absolutely stunning striking ladies i don't know yeah but also most actors i mean the anecdotes we found on Eyes Wide Shut feel like the only time we're reading stories of him actually feeling comfortable talking to actors. No, he mostly, yeah, seems fairly shy with actors. Not bossy, exactly. Although, obviously, he would make them do it over and over again, but that's different. That's sort of him searching for whatever it is he wants. searching for whatever it is he wants it's it's almost him searching for the thing he cannot figure out how to communicate to them you know the the take after take after take is i'll know it when i see it i don't know how to put it into words i mean we haven't really talked about the we could we should talk about the movie but like i i feel like people know the other side of things more which is the movie took a year to make it It was entirely shot on location. So it was extraordinarily expensive for the time.

And obviously it's shot with like natural light and candles and they had to use insane like NASA lenses. Well, we can get into this stuff later. But I feel like this is what Barry Lyndon almost became notorious for in a way that almost obscured what's so wonderful about the movie. notorious for in a way that almost obscured what's so wonderful about the movie um is that it's like oh did you know like all of the sort of like herculean technical effort that went into making it uh and obviously all that stuff is fascinating but it also helps it feel like this hermetic art you know hanging on the wall in a museum right but it's also but it's not the four movies you know on either side uh 2001 clockwork or in shining full metal jacket are all movies that are so crisp like so kind of like knife sharp ice cold uh incredibly controlled you know uh absurdly sharp focus. This movie has this warmth to it visually

that isn't just the use of candles and everything, but the fact that they're, you know... The low light gives it this softness and this warmth. And I do think the compositions in this movie, as much as they're painterly, don't feel as controlled. They do feel a little more organic

and romantic to me. It feels bizarre for this to be the movie where people finally got fed up and said, oh, he's too caught up with his images. Yeah, I don't know. It's the best. It begins with Barry Lyndon. In 1750s Ireland.

His dad is dead, killed in a duel, right, over the sale of horses or something. He's a bit of a mama's boy. God bless. You know, his mom's great. And he's in love with his cousin Nora, and he's, you know, playing flirty ribbon games with her, but she's got to marry um a very

priggish captain uh i love that guy leonard rossiter um who plays captain quinn he's got such a face you know the whole time when he's like i'm trying to do his face him dancing yeah he's so good there's such good physical comedy he's such a goof and then the the incredible joke later where ryan o'neill where barry lyndon has to say like wait are there two captain quins the idea that this guy makes such a distinct impression that there could be no other guy with this name you know with who could be mistaken for this man, possibly. I, the ribbon scene is, you know, the moment where I was surprised by how immediately the movie is playing

fully in a comedic realm because Kubrick just lets that scene go on forever. Right. It's really long. That is what my friend is turning to me being like, what have you put on? Right. What the fuck is this? Can I ask you guys a question? Which like, long that is what my friend is turning to me being like what have you put on right what the fuck is this can i ask you guys a question which like i don't know how horny this podcast gets but

oh very please go ahead yeah do you think that he has sex with his cousin or do you think he's a virgin when he meets the german lady i i he does not operate like a virgin in that scene with the German lady. Yeah. I wonder if he has sex with the cousin or not, but I don't feel like that's his first time. If I know Barry the way I do, I have a feeling. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I think he's fucked somewhat. Or at least they, like, roll around. They're rolling around in the hay, right? Like, doesn't the whole Barry Lyndon, like, you roll with that guy in the hay at the very least. Maybe you're not going all the way. He's not stopping at ribbon stuff. He's going further than that.

Yeah, definitely. The scene with the German lady, he is so masterful in his manipulation of that situation. That is not someone who feels the pressure of, fuck, fuck, am I about to lose my virginity? Like, that doesn't have the urgency of some high school idiot. But I wonder if he's, like, such a sociopath that he's like, I'm going to play this. Like, I do this every day.

He, to me, has the sociopath energy of someone who, like, lost a virginity at 12 though i mean look my whole thing is there was nothing to do back then it's so boring it's so boring that you can have an afternoon just like putting a ribbon on someone and then trying to get it um like surely people were just having sex, right? I know it was against the rules, but, like, what else are you supposed to do all day? Yeah, sure. Don't go having sex on me.

But, Karina, you think he's a virgin who's such a gifted liar that even if he loses his virginity at the age of, you know, whatever, 25, he's still just kind of like a smooth operator. Well, first of all, I have no idea how old he's supposed to be at any point. Neither do I. But I assume that when we first meet him, he's somewhere between like 16 and 18. But who knows?

Because Ryan O'Neill's, what, 37? So, yeah. So basically, like, one of the things that I love about the character and also why Ryan O'Neill is perfect casting is that he becomes this guy who's like, I know I can just get it. Like, I know women just, like, I know how to just get it from women. But it's what's interesting is that Kubrick, like, doesn't show us any kind of transition between, like, him being sort of an absolute goober with his cousin. Trembling. And then, like, like you know being this stud

who can just get it with the German lady and so you my question is like was he having sex with the cousin like in scenes that we don't see and so he knows he does have this ability to like manipulate women sexually or is he faking it until he makes it with the german lady and then he that unlocks um a new level of the german lady is so nice the german lady is so like open and friendly to him that he can almost like practice like with her like without being as scared right yeah and what i think what makes him so nervous about the whole cousin situation is the transgression and and the fact that it is happening in the middle of everyone's view well also i mean where's the really a terrifying question i mean if he's

gonna go through with the duel i would say that he's you know pretty infatuated right and maybe you know going all the way right is gonna like really motivate him you're are you saying having gone all the way will motivate him or the prospect of getting to go all the way once you win the duel wow yeah like is he gonna kill to get it in right Would you get killed to get it in? It's a really good question. I don't know. I don't either. But I wonder if it's like we're seeing his origin story.

It's like this is the last time he was scared rooting around in a woman's bosom for a ribbon. Like, yeah, we all have our first time where we're scared of doing that. But after that, Barry Lyndon was great at three things. Dueling, fucking, and I don't know, lying.

Gambling. Yeah, sure, gambling. Yeah, right. Is he good at gambling or is he just good at cheating? No, he's terrible. He's good at lying. He's good at cheating.

There's also something to, I mean, at the beginning of this movie, he's, you know, you're in this, there's no social scene in this time, right? There's not a TGI Fridays he can go to to pick up women. There's a pub.

There's a pub, but it's still like, what are my options? Fuck, I really want to fuck my cousin. Yeah. You know, to some degree, he needs to get out there and find some other people. Well, there's also the class system too, right? Which is like a big way of how you decide who you're going to get with in the first place. Right, so it's like this is where you are. And he's just high enough that he doesn't have to take care of cows all day, but like no higher.

And he doesn't get to marry his cousin. It's all the more torturous to him. Like the only woman in his immediate vicinity who he is interested in is the woman that he should not be with by any means and there's no way to keep it a secret you know everyone knows they know what the fuck he's up to uh yes and uh what happens is he has to fight in a duel with the priggish john quinn uh and he shoots him and so he has to run away uh dueling obviously kind of the funniest thing in this very

funny movie yeah uh and kind of the best representation because like barry lyndon is basically about how like you know 18th century europe is just medieval and barbaric but everyone is dressed up and has fancy wigs and has powdered faces and is like, well, after you, sir. Right, this performative sophistication to let themselves believe they've evolved as a society. Muck, you know, just evil, amoral muck. And so, of course, the funniest thing is the idea that when we duel, we're just like, well, I shall shoot at you and then you shall shoot at me. You know, this is all very proper.

shall shoot at you and then you shall shoot at me you know this is all very proper it's also just so funny that this is a work that everyone in barry lyndon's life conspires together to be like we got to get rid of this fucking guy what will actually get him to stay away and it's like we got to make him think that he will face serious repercussions for a death that in fact never happened and his only recourse is to run as far away as possible and never look hey but barry's doing it for love whereas they're all doing it for money so who's right and who's wrong do you see what i'm saying pro barry sure you know i'm still maybe a little leaning a little pro barry you're playing barry's advocate we're all i don't know if you feel this way,

Karina, but like early in the film, you're fairly pro-Barry because Quinn is such a jerk and Barry seems like more of an honest boy. Yeah, I mean, it's complicated because you don't want anybody

to fuck their cousin. That's true. Even back then when options were limited, especially in England, I can say this as a half-English person, you know, I mean, certainly entire families were started amongst cousins, but it's not what you want. Certainly not a first cousin. for the first time as a teenager. And then, you know, I think that oftentimes you can have completely different experiences

with films as you age. And I think that when I was much younger, I did sort of feel like, you know, like Barry is a romantic hero in the beginning. And then watching it at age 42, I feel somewhat differently. But then I also am just so annoyed by the children in this movie now.

I mean, there is this puppy dog quality to him up until the duel, where even if he's not sympathetic, he doesn't quite seem like a monster yet. You know? The movie, I would say, tricks you. Well, he just seems stupid. He seems so stupid. That's the thing. And he's got this dumb fucking look on his pretty face where you can sort of feel bad for him by default because you're like, well, this guy doesn't know any better. Yeah.

And so the first couple of times he starts strategically lying, it's almost surprising that this guy has the wherewithal. He's so honest when he's being robbed, you know? He just, like, completely tells the truth and it doesn't work out for him. So why wouldn't you start lying? Right. It's just, like, this guy, at the beginning of the movie, feels like he doesn't know how to take care of himself.

He doesn't know how to protect himself. And then he becomes the most incredible sort of strategic thinker. Like, right after the duel, his mom and, I don't know, his friend, they're talking about him like he isn't there and he's sitting right next to him. You know what I mean? They're letting the viewer know, like,

this guy is such a moron that people talk about him like this. And also, once again, everyone in his life conspired to get him as far away as possible. Like, they all teamed up. And we're like, we all agree we want him out of here as possible like they all teamed up and we're like we all agree we want him out of here mother included everybody was like we just get him fucking out of here bad news the the guy who robs him captain feeney by the way is a real highwayman who wrote uh an

autobiography that thackeray loved so much that he was like i'm gonna put you in my book wow so he's being robbed by like a famous highwayman like that so when that guy's like look i've heard a lot of stories yours is pretty good but uh money please like that does not change um so captain feeney the highwayman steals his money so he has no recourse except to join the british army uh and the first thing he does well no i guess the first thing he does is he he he fights the guy the other guy in the army right is that is that before the battle we must yes right square yes right another example of ridiculous gentlemanly rules being imposed on like brute violence but also just immediately wanting to

stir up shit when he gets there, you know? It almost feels like he's fresh meat at a prison trying to prove his worth so everyone backs off. I love the guy feeding him lines. He's so great in that scene. Yeah. I also love his captain. What's his, you know, his captain Grogan. Godfrey Quigley is the actor.

That guy's a G. He's also kind of a scoundrel, and that's why they like each other. Right. I believe he's also, he's a prison warden in Clockwork Orange. There's a lot of overlap with Clockwork Orange in these casts,

and with The Shining as well, you know, Kubrick reused guys. But it does feel like all these supporting actors are giving Monty Python performances. Totally. In like a good way. You know, like they're all on this wavelength that everyone other than Barry is. They're sort of all playing the humor that Kubrick recognizes and Barry is very straight and steadfast in it. Corporal Tool is the one he fights at the beginning, right?

That sounds right who's pat roach who's like that stuntman who exists five times over the indiana jones movies plays like the german mechanic and the thuggy guard whatever it's just this ultimate like big british unit tough guy for smaller heroes to fight he's he was also uh he's in he's the bouncer at the milk bar in clockwork orange yes yes i really like all that but i mean the thing i like the most just is the depiction of the seven years where it's just it's just just walk that way slowly don't even run just walk while we play the fife and the drums and they're just gonna keep shooting at you until you get to them and that's when we'll then that's that's when we unleash our deadly counterattack.

Songs catch you though. Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. I was whistling it this morning, getting set up for the episode. Ben was air drumming in the theater. I was headbanging too. And then you turned to me and you said, you just never get a good timpani in movies. You don't but yeah i don't know any what would anyone make of all the sort of british war stuff like it's it's really just that he deserts pretty quickly he deserts in like the first skirmish right once grogan is dead yeah i don't blame him i mean i do you know every time i we have to talk

about a war movie on this podcast and I just spiral at the thought. But it's like, yeah, do what Barry Lyndon does. Do anything you can to get out of there as quickly as possible. Also, there's no internet. Nobody's going to be able to Google him and find out who he is. Yes, yes. It's true. And that's when he encounters the beautiful Frau Lieschen.

Who's that actress? She's great. Gay something? Is it gay yes no no no no gay hamilton is uh is nora cousin yeah yes yeah yeah i don't oh diana corner is her name yeah she's a nobody it's it's not a nobody that's rude but she she didn't do a lot of movies this is maybe her only english language film. It seems like she mostly did German films. But I feel like that is the first scene,

like Karina was saying, where suddenly it's like, oh, Barry is like flexing his charm muscles in ways we haven't seen before. Yeah. Even though he is still a dope who barely knows how to, you know, stay one step ahead of a conversation.

But he's weaponized it. Yes. And then after that is when he encounters Captain Podsdorf and briefly pretends to be on his level, but is arrested, essentially, and enlisted in the Prussian army. Okay, it's not that easy to impersonate an officer. Right. Giving some credit.

I feel like, I feel like I'm just, I'm going to keep defending Barry a little bit here and there. Like, I don't think we could pull that off necessarily. I also just think it's, it's kind of stunning to watch how quickly he swerves. Yeah.

He's arrested for impersonating an officer and he's like, okay, but hear me out. What if I started fighting for you guys? Right. Well, that's all you can do really. I mean, it's, it's that or be shot. I don't think he's left with much, but hear me out. What if I start fighting for you guys? Right. Well, that's all you can do, really. I mean, it's better be shot.

I don't think he's left with much of a choice. Yeah. But you're saying you're impressed that he just... Well, he makes the most of the situation, right? I mean, then he saves the guy's life. And then the guy is like, okay, well, we're just going to make you a spy. But he's like a hermit crab of status. He just constantly needs to find the next shell that he can fit into and ride that out as long as he can until something new presents itself.

And it's truly just move forward, move up. Well, he truly can't go home, especially after he knows that his cousin, like, did marry that guy and everybody in his town conspired to get rid of him you know like you can't go home after that happens yeah that's true there's no looking back yeah he can't go home and be like i found out that you guys staged an elaborate duel just to make me leave like that's too embarrassing yeah so uh instead he joins the Prussian army, which is worse. Yes. I mean, it's almost like, you know, again, like being a British person, like I have it like very deeply in my DNA, this class consciousness and this understanding of how for most people in British history, this feeling that like where you're born into is where you die and it's hopeless. And like, there's so much discouragement to even try to rise. And so when you are somebody like him, who's like, I can't go back to where I'm from, so I have to scramble to something else. On one hand, it's like there is even more of a desperation than there would be in another society. But on the other hand, you're also

hated by everybody else. Karina, I did not know you were British. I am also British. Wait, I'm sorry, what? On my dad's side of the family, Longworth. Sure. It should have been a tell. So it's like I'm Eastern European Jew on the maternal side. Karina, we're the same.

I mean, we're not exactly the same, but my mother is an Eastern European Jew and my dad was an Englishman. Yeah, so I have, you know, I'm short. I don't know what to say. Oh, I'm tall. I have potato farming legs on both sides. Okay, sure, sure.

Yes, I am English Griffin. Did you know that? No, I hadn't heard that. I can't believe it's only coming up now eight years into the podcast. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, anyway um you're right of course i mean and like barry linden's class like you say it's not like he's not when the movie's beginning he is not like a peasant obviously like he has enough status that he can sort of see into you know the the higher echelon of society that's he has enough to

know what he doesn't have right he's scraping more acutely aware right and i guess one thing i love is it's like he's very good we you know he wins a medal in the prussian army for like saving his uh captain's life but like we never see him being good at being a soldier i feel like kubrick's like that's irrelevant like i'm not interested in that heroism. Yeah. He should shut the window. Yeah. Yeah.

Right. We get that one thing. The portrayal of war is funny in that no one's screaming. Everyone's just kind of like, just like it's matter of fact in a weird way. They get shot too fast to scream. Yeah. And I think it's also

what David's saying of like, this is a time when they are really trying to dress everything up in an air of civility and class to act like war is no longer barbaric. It is just so funny to watch a movie like this and think about like, people in war used to dress so fancy you had to be a gentleman

of war right you know whereas now everything is like tactical functional practical it's like no one looks better than the soldiers on the front line of a war they have very nice jackets it's true yeah gold buttons yeah and they're just gonna be shot and fucking pushed into the mud well it was partly also like they wanted to to you know get you into it they wanted to recruit you right it's like hey you're gonna get a nice uniform you're gonna look fancy you're gonna be a hero it's the best clothes that a lot of people ever had right 100 and and it does of course work for barry like it's enough for him to at least get a foothold again. Obviously, the Prussians just want to use him as a spy.

And it makes sense that they do. But he is also the worst spy ever. Because on his first spy mission, he, like, two sentences into his spy, like, you know, cover story is like, I have to tell you something. I'm an Irishman like you. And I think you're just grand. And they want to spy on you, but I think you're great. I think he does that on purpose, though. I don't think he's being dumb.

He sees an opportunity. Absolutely. I think so, right? This is to the Chevalier, Patrick McGee, as the Chevalier. Great look. Love it. Every performance in this movie is great. Yeah.

He's kind of my favorite, though i do like doc i do like um john quinn and then liam batali is amazing and then marissa berenstain's amazing everyone's really good in this movie i feel like he the chevalier like he he almost looks like a wizard or something like does that make sense like the way he's styled it's like it makes sense that he's a famous gambler because he he almost looks like a wizard or something. Like, does that make sense? Like the way he's styled, it's like, it makes sense that he's a famous gambler because he, he almost looks like just sort of like a magical being. Like why else would he be so good at this, this game of chance?

It's so great when Barry dresses up like him. Yes. So a couple of diamonds on the face and we're done. Right. Little red cheeks. they become, so yeah. So instead of spying on the, this guy, he becomes a cheeks. Uh, they become, so, yeah, so instead of spying

on this guy, he becomes a confederate of his and they just go around cheating at cards, cheating the richest people on earth at cards and anytime they're

accused of cheating, Barry duels with them and wins, right? That is, that is essentially their con. Yeah. Right?

Is there anything more to it than that? I mean, that's, this is the part of the movie that would be a TV show like if somebody was like let's reboot barry linden like that's where you start probably so like every week it's like a new foppish count that they have to get one over on yeah but also yeah i mean like i i do think paper moon is probably his best performance in terms of him consciously knowing what he's doing. He is incredibly good at playing con men.

It is a thing that Ryan O'Neill is a perfect fit for. The combination of charm and sort of ruthlessness. Yeah, 100%. And he's low-key very funny. And these scenes are very beautiful. This is where there's so much of the candlelit, indoor, warm, dark atmospheres. And just the way, like the negative space, like just these gigantic empty fucking houses

where basically none of them are being used. Like every time you just see a little table set up in one of those rooms and there's just nothing around anyone for a mile. It's it's I feel like I'm I mean, I'm always laughing. Like it's it's always it's so hilariously impractical to live in these houses. It's also got to be really cold inside. Like those fireplaces can only heat up so much which gives them excuses to wear these coats indoors i mean that's my favorite thing about lincoln the spielberg movie is how everyone's got like blankets on all the time because it's so

goddamn cold like the i wish we saw more of that in these periods also everyone's just wrapped in blankets he's also cloaked in immense power. I mean, it's both. It's blankets and power. Yeah. So, yeah. So, wait, wait. Why does this all fall apart? I guess they eventually get rumbled and that's when he dresses up as the Chevalier and gets, like,

escorted out of Prussia. But then it gets better. Right. Then they're just going around Europe having fun. And they go to Spa. Y'all ever been to Spa? Spa, Belgium?

The town Spas are named after? No, no. Is that really where the Spa comes from? Yeah, that's where he meets Lady Lyndon. That's where he meets Marissa Berenson in Spa. It's literally called Spa. It made the list of great Spa

towns of Europe, which is good. It would be embarrassing if they didn't make that list. You gotta keep your legacy upheld yeah but uh yeah uh so this is you know this is when the high times are about to be over is the part one's about to conclude that you know the barry lyndon experiment is going to enter the aristocracy but as ben said he's become a gentleman that he pulled it off. He gets married. But this is pretty much, everything is pretty much bad times, right, in part two.

There's no, the comedy is very bitter in the second part of the movie, whereas I feel like it's much more straightforward in the first part. Yeah, he's also reached the ceiling of how high he can possibly go. I mean, this guy's survival has been based in just moving forward, right? No one can really catch up to him

because he never stops. And now he's forced to stop. Is he so shitty at being an aristocrat because he knows he's not one? Like, is that why he resents Bullingdon so much? Why he's so abusive? Why he's, you know, like, is it just because he knows, you know, like, is it just because he knows,

you know, this isn't him, like, inherently? Is it a sort of a self-doubt kind of thing? I think it's part self-loathing, and I think it's also, this guy is insatiable, and now he has nowhere further to go. You know, and he starts sort of self-destructing.

I don't think he really even thinks about it that way i think like like the scene behind you griffin like that scene to me is him being like like i already have everything i want um i will not like i can't lose it um and then i don't think he really thinks that he has to try to get more until his mom is like, you need a title. Yes. But his mom is sort of right in a way in that she's sort of like, you're not, you know, everyone wants to get rid of you. She's not wrong to notice this. You need an insurance policy.

Right. But I just don't like, why be so mean to Bullingdon? Like, if you just. Bullingdon sucks.. Bullington's trying to get rid of him. I know he's annoying. The kids in this movie are just like that's when like Barry gets my empathy back is like every time he has to deal with a kid because they're all terrible. I mean, even Brian is like, where's my pencil? Like, oh, where's my pencil? Yeah, but also, David, you asked, like, why is he so mean to Bullington? Bullington is born into a status higher than Barry can ever achieve. Like, Barry's made it basically to the top of the mountain, as far as he can go. And here's this little shit kid, and this kid is already a step ahead of him, a step further than he'll ever be. ready a step ahead of him a step further than he'll ever be i mean obviously the big breaking point for lyndon is that he like beats up bullingdon in public uh and that is when he

basically has to exit high society but like but if you're this guy and you've like killed and lied and cheated to get to this point and then here's this little shit and this is his starting point this is like home plate and also the little shit is like you know clearly incestuously in love with his mother um and like you know barry can spot that from a mile away it's competition yeah but you also think know thyself like barry's like yeah yeah i know from being a mama's boy all right i know your game uh we haven't really talked about marissa berenson yet she's incredible in this movie but she is just kind of like you know this like this painting person like she's so incredible to behold and she's so sort of sad and uh impressive i don't know i mean he obviously, in Cabaret a couple years before this, we talk about her much in the Cabaret episode,

but she's excellent in that as well. I love how her hair gets bigger as she gets sadder. Like her emotions are feeding up her skull. It feels very real to me. It feels like how women, as they're trying to hold on to their youth and feel things slipping away, get more plastic surgery and start looking like alien monsters.

It feels like that time period version of that. Right. Let's just make the hair bigger. That'll draw the eye. Yeah. Yeah, he loved her in Cabaret, and he called Stanley Donen, I guess, who knew her, and basically grilled Stanley Donen on everything about her. And then he just offered her the part, kind of classic Kubrick. He doesn't even, he just sort of like talks to you for a while.

And then he's like, anyway, you're in Barry Lyndon. She had to stay in Ireland for the first part of the film. She's not in the movie. She literally stayed there for three months while they were making all that part of the movie and he demanded she'd be on set yes well okay if she's on set then it's not well we're available i know i don't think she was on set yeah and as i said he would write her little letters to talk to her uh but she loves him she says uh they have his people have an image of stanley's this difficult ogre. He wasn't at all.

He's a perfectionist, but every great director I've worked with has been a perfectionist. You have to be to make extraordinary films. And, uh, yeah. Whereas Rhino, and she says, Ryan O'Neill was okay and would crack jokes and try and make me laugh,

which she didn't appreciate. Uh, Ryan O'Neill said of her that she was vacuous, giggly, and lazy. Uh, Ryan O'Neill said of her that she was vacuous giggly and lazy uh ryan o'neill just a huge asshole and that's a contemporary interview in time magazine he's given that interview the week this movie's coming out back i mean karina i'm sure you encountered this a lot for your own podcast but people really went off in like on like press day like back then because it was just going to be in a magazine and not get further i guess spread around the internet or

whatever like yeah it'd be so mean i think there was an element of that but they're also like they didn't do junkets the way they do junkets now where you're just like doing a hundred interviews in a day and you just like memorize the thing to say and then you can kind of go to the other place in your brain and go on autopilot. It wasn't media training. Yeah. But I do think there is that thing where it's like even if you're being interviewed by Time magazine, you know, a magazine with this humongous circulation, anything you say in your mind. Next week, there'll be another issue like there's no permanence to this. Maybe people remember it, but it'll probably move on the idea of these things being sort of like cataloged forever

and not only that that in our modern world any outlet you talk to essentially has the same circulation as any other because it's all ending up on the same place it's ending up on the internet which everyone has access to i will say that like i think I think from the 70s, 80s, 90s, like something was happening that wasn't happening in Hollywood media before that, which was that if you did like give an incendiary interview to Time Magazine or Rolling Stone or something, then they would start talking about it on the radio and on TV. And so it would have more of a media lifecycle. And, like, if they start talking about it on, like, you know, Nightline or 2020 or what, like, the Today Show, then it becomes national and it, like, is broadcast to people who would never see the magazine. That's a good point. I mean, obviously, like, when the studio system had total control over everything up through about, like, 1967, then that disappears.

everything up through about like 1967 then that disappears and but then a new control is attained basically by around the late 70s right the new hollywood shift of you no longer have eddie mannix type people who are doing everything they can to manage a very specific image they want each star to represent but then you get pat kingsley's yes that's a great point yeah i mean also like again to be clear ryan o'neill is a special brand of jerk like it's not like everyone was just dissing their co-stars right in time magazine um but i do think berenstain is amazing i and you know it is one of those like it's such a quiet performance so much of it is like still much you know like but like when the movie is in its sort of desperately sad final act like she feels very human like she doesn't feel like some you know picture perfect countess like her her breakdown does feel like very like romantic and operatic but it is it is uh believable it's a it's a very soulful performance i mean she does

not have that much dialogue in the film but it's not like kubrick is just using her as a model you know as an object i mean you there there is bone deep feeling and so much of her arc plays out over looks you know it is her reaction i mean when she catches barry in the act she plays that so incredibly well you see you know whereas barry's kind of inscrutable and you cannot figure out what this guy is thinking i do think you see play across her face her running through her lack of options i i guess my frustration with barry in act two is it's like obviously he's never had any class that's not the barry lyndon experience but couldn't he have a little class about how he's gonna cheat on his countess wife or you know be mean to his stepson like he's going to cheat on his countess wife or, you know, be mean to his stepson.

Like, he's just making out with ladies in public. Like, he can't, you know, act the part as required for, you know, high society. He's new money and everyone knows it. He's the newest damn money that could ever be money. He's so new. But I also just think that he correctly assesses that she's not going to divorce him. Right.

You know, she's not, like, no matter how much Lord Billington, like, says, Mommy, you must get rid of him. She's not going to unless, like, something catastrophic happens.

Yeah. Or unless she meets another dude, which clearly she doesn't. In lieu of him having any further social strata that he can climb, the only way for him to grow is to flex his power within that position, which is just pretty much being flagrant about everything he does. He no longer needs to hide it. But he's like a squatter in like some luxury apartment. But that's what I mean. He's a guy. He can't leave and he's like no

he's a guy who's constantly pushing up against the walls of wherever he is right um yes and so he just gets to this point where he's basically challenging them what karina said of like what are you gonna do you're gonna kick me out no you're not i can do whatever the fuck i want you can't touch me you think that's what it is he yeah sure i don't think it's i don't think he's he could ever verbalize that i don't think he's thinking about it that way i think that's what it is he yeah sure i don't think it's i don't think he's he could ever verbalize that i don't think he's thinking about it that way i think he's animalistic though i think it is what drives him he needs more he needs some new rush when he's conquered something he needs a new challenge in front of him he also knows the system's rigged yeah so i mean like why

like why not cheat and lie and do all these things if it's like rigged against you. So, I mean, like, why not cheat and lie and do all these things if it's, like, rigged against you in the first place? Why play it fair? Why play it straight and end up like a blacksmith or whatever? Not that there's anything wrong with being a blacksmith. No, it's pretty cool, actually. Hard work. A lot of hammering. Seems like

a lot of work. I don't want to say I want to do it, but it looks cool. Burning your skin. Yeah. No, it looks cool, like, for, like, an hour. an hour i mean you know there's an open question as to like we see what happens when barry lyndon is like the the most nouveau nouveau nouveau riche guy like at like the top level of the class structure would he have been happier being like the big fish and like on the lowest level? Like just being like the hottest guy that like everybody thinks is super cool amongst like the working class? I don't think this guy would ever truly be happy. That's the thing.

I think he just always will want more. It's why he sort of starts self-destructing once he finally gets to the place he thinks he wanted to be at he would be good though as what karina's talking about which is essentially like the coolest guy at the soda shop in like the 50s or whatever like that yeah i mean he that probably would be his biggest strength because like he can't handle it he can't his even as a father he's a bad father too it's his most sympathetic you know uh badness or what you know his most sympathetic negative quality because he is at least an indulgent father like he's not like a complete asshole to his kid but he's still bad at it he's he's not he's not making any kind of long-range thinking. And you feel for him when his son dies terribly. I actually found it difficult to watch this time.

I've seen this movie a lot of times. Because I forgot that it was drawn out. I forgot that the boy goes back to the bed and all that. Don't you think so much of his love for his son, though, is that his son represents... It's the opposite of everything he hates about bullying. Yeah. Right.

It's his. Sure. Here's this. Narcissism. It's narcissism. And it's also I think he like. He views him as an object of success. Look, I created someone who was born into a higher class than I. Absolutely.

It's not just my insurance policy but it's like what an amazing accomplishment he'll be raised into a higher class he'll be educated yeah you know he'll have everything you know that barry didn't have he's this tangible evidence that like barry beat the system and once he's dead it really is like what is anyone doing here all of this is meaningless right everything just kind of collapses into super depression uh and it is i do find i find that the the last act of this movie like painfully sad like it does work on me and then i i think it kind of has to right like otherwise you would really detach from the movie yeah i agree uh we should talk about fatali both like in this movie in this performance and also just his legacy within the the kubrick sort of world uh especially

because he's so recently passed having not seen this movie until recently and just knowing the narrative of oh here was this promising up-and-coming actor and he completely abandons his acting career to become k Kubrick's personal assistant. I did not realize within that that he is, like, the third lead of the movie. I always assumed, oh, he's got some small part in the film. That was the level his career was at. And he was so compelled by Kubrick

that that's what he was giving up, versus this is really kind of a low-key star-making performance. Yeah, I agree. I think he's excellent in this movie i mean it's what i think of when i think of liam vitale obviously but i do think he's really good basically carries the last hour of the film i mean the most important thing bullingdon like the most important moment for bullingdon is when he accidentally shoots when when he you know when he he prematurely discharges. Truly, perhaps, one of the funniest things I've ever seen in a movie.

Right, the real fear and embarrassment on his face. Especially since this whole thing has been designed to, like, they've summoned him back. Can you please get rid of this guy? Can we be done with Barry Lyndon? And he blows it. And the, like, brilliance of everyone having to be like, well, he is allowed to shoot at you now, sorry.

And Barry finally does, like, his one magnanimous act of not shooting. Like, Barry should shoot Billington in the head. I don't know what you guys think. Right? I mean... Yeah. Yeah, no, it's the one time he stops operating from a place of self-defense.

He's trying to be a classy English gentleman, right? Even the English gentlemen present are impressed, even though they hate Barry Lyndon. Also, Barry Lyndon's been drinking all night. And they woke him up at dawn in the chair that he fell asleep drinking in and like he can have that you know that this is how he behaves so i do think that that is a moment where you can um be like you know what maybe he learned something but uh it doesn't work out right i mean he pays the price for it right like you know, you know, his one moment. the bill's gonna come due it's just much like the the ribbon sequence at the beginning kubrick just draws out bullington's reaction to the misfire for so fucking long so i think i think

fatali plays it so well right it's so it's very funny and also a little scary yeah it just truly feels like you're watching him for five minutes as the tension builds of knowing it's Barry's turn next. And him puking, him shaking. I mean, all of it is so incredibly funny. It's played so beautifully. And so straight. And so, you know, right. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, obviously, he's very pretty. He was a very pretty young Englishman. Really feels like one of those sort of like swinging London looks. Yeah, and then he pretty much transforms into looking like an incense salesman for the rest of his life. Yeah, he looks like a roadie. I mean, God bless him. It was always so odd the last 20 whatever years when he was the spokesperson for the Kubrick estate and he would come out,

you're just like aesthetically and vibe wise, this guy feels so different from our cultural impression of Kubrick. But yeah, I mean, by all accounts, it was just he was so enamored with Kubrick and his process and his art and his mind that he just kind of felt like serving this guy will be greater than anything i could do on my own fair which is just a thing it is it is hard to even think about anyone doing that today i mean i was trying to explain this to ben in the theater and he was like what do you mean he did this movie and then he stopped acting and became the guy's personal assistant. He also, you know,

he worked on, um, the Todd field movies, right? Like he even, he would pitch in for like the Kubrick acolytes. He was kind of a mentor to, yeah.

The people who are trying to follow in the, in the footsteps. And obviously, you know, we will cover in, in future episodes, other tasks tasks but him being the main person who had to find danny torrence for the shining being the main person

coaching arlie ermy to be comfortable on camera and then playing like seven different roles in eyes wide shut i mean you know a lot of his time was spent being this guy's body man in like years and years and years of development in between movies but then once the movies were actually going he was very integral to the productions in all these different ways yeah um anyway yeah so yeah i don't know you know barry fucks up his entire life he his son dies his wife essentially first turns to drink well no barry turns to drink his wife sort of turns to religion tries to kill. We didn't talk about her sidekick. Oh, the reverend.

That weird-looking priest guy. His face. Oh, my God. He looks like a rat man. Also, by the way, like, I just want to say again, like, so many people have to, like, be laying down on the job for Brian to get to the horse. And one of those people is runt you know

like yeah he sucks even barry is like he walked through your bedroom like to get out of the house and runt was like i guess i was asleep i don't know i don't know bro um and where's the mom like no servant stopped this nine-year-old boy from walking out of the house everyone fucked up but is it a commentary on like obviously barry at all are terrible parents they're not like keeping an eye on him but because he's like the little lord like no one else dares say like now master brian you can't be riding a horse like like no one can actually say no to him yeah also at the stable like i mean maybe it was so early that everyone was asleep but like how does he get to the horse once he gets to the stable

look again there's nothing to do even if you're the richest people in the world in 1773 there's absolutely fucking nothing to do all day and so maybe Brian's been watching people ride horses just for a year and is like, yeah, I know how to do this. Like, I know how to get the horse. I know how to get on it. I know how to ride a horse. I love horses. Also, like the only way Barry really knows how to express love to his son is to give him every single thing he wants, you know, and it is that sort of time loop thing of him trying to give this kid the childhood he could not have. that sort of time loop thing of him trying to give this kid the childhood he could not have.

So it's like he's never going to say no to this kid because he as a child wanted everyone to say yes to him. Even if it is not in the child's instinct. He has no protective nature. What could you do back then? You could play the harpsichord and read the Bible?

What is fun? You play cards. Stick and Hoop? Had Stick and Hoop been invented at that point? They might not even have stick and hoop the original fidget toy shadow puppets are kind of fun shadow puppets rule yeah you could play that game they play in marie antoinette where you like stick the thing on your head yeah right oh like yeah ellen degeneres's heads up yeah i don't know what else you could do. Go look at paintings again. I guess the house is really big. Hide a ribbon on your cousin.

Maybe that's the problem. This kid doesn't have a good cousin to hide a ribbon with. Yeah, there aren't any girls around. No. Yeah, well, because you can't have women around Barry. He's got to go off estate to even make out, maybe. Or maybe that's the problem. They didn't even have

cards against humanity god could you imagine the fucked up things that barry lyndon would say if you gave him a cards against humanity deck well he would cheat though because he cheats at cards so he would find a way to cheat right he's very even in first act, he is genuinely horny. In the second act, he almost is going through the motions, right? Like, he feels more passionless in every respect, right? Like, you know, even the affairs, it doesn't... Like, we don't really see any, like, any of these women or... He's dead inside. I do think that's the ultimate reason he gives Bullington the shot at the end.

think that's the ultimate reason he gives bullington the shot at the end it's sort of this moment of like what am i even fighting to keep at this point his life is joyless it's more joyless when he gets sent back home to his mother missing a leg but he doesn't seem to get any enjoyment out of anything does barry get another shot at him or is it over once barry gets shot in the leg that's it that's my memory right i shot in the leg? That's it. That's my memory, right? I mean, in the movie, obviously, we don't see anything past Barry getting the shot in the leg. But like, by all accounts,

like, shouldn't he get a shot back? Like, you know, one shot apiece? If you can't stand up, do you still get your shot? Yeah, do you have to be able to stand up? I don't know the rules of duels. Lie on the ground and go like, all right, stand still. I mean, one thing we observed when we were watching the movie last night

is that it seems like the rules of the second duel are different from his duel with Quinn. And so somebody asked me, do they just make up different rules for every duel? And I was like, well, maybe just like, because it seems like maybe 25 years have passed so you know maybe dueling changed i don't know but so many of the rules feel so arbitrary like it is funny that when bullington misfires they're like well you know the rules checking here in the guidebook technically you are it is his turn now what is any of this i i mean i do think like the duels they're carrying out

right they're not like uh the duels we think of from like hamilton or whatever where or like you know the old west where you're both turning and firing at the same time right right like instead it is this weird like you shoot then he shoots turn-based gameplay. You really want to win the coin flip, right? Like that's like huge. But, um, but I too,

Karina was wondering like what changed in between these two duels and maybe because it's a Kubrick movie, it's like you're, there's no way it's just like narrative convenience. Like I'm sure he dug into just how this all worked right like i also wonder since the first duel was basically a sham and because it is of course and they know that they know that barry like who is then redmond like will not be able to like tell if they make up rules that are not conventional you know and then maybe in the second duel like those are

actually the way duels go okay all right sorry i was reading about duels yes first blood would end a duel first blood ends a duel okay so even if a wound is minor once someone is wounded it's over so uh there were other duels where it had to be like to the death right it's funny the way that shifts from it being like no one person leaves like two people enter two people one person leaves to just being like it's more symbolic you can scrape a guy and and win um the the method of turning and firing at the same time is called the French method. Whereas what they're doing here is more of the British method of dueling, where you're basically just standing still and agreed upon distance and firing at each other. It's so stupid.

I would say no. I would say no. I decline. I will not be dueling you today. I refuse to provide you with satisfaction right what can i do okay i'll draw you a picture do you you know do you want an oil painting uh i'll give you money i do not want to just stand 20 paces away from you while you shoot a musket at my face what's one of those things you have some rando like at tweeting you trying to start a fight you're like i have nothing

to gain from engaging with you yeah i will not be going to the field of glory with you i walk away it's not happening i'm unfortunately unfortunately barry lyndon could not just block lord bullington so is barry lyndon a shit poster is that at the end of the day is that lord bullington's more of a shit poster practically a troll like he's showing up to parties and being like barry lyndon you suck but barry does what a bore barry does kind of have posters disease even if bullington's more of a shit poster i would say yeah it's just for a while i guess barry is at his most successful when he's kind of coasting a little under the radar and once he's above the radar he really just pings everyone's yeah it's not it's not good yeah barry lyndon he doesn't

the more eyes on barry lyndon the worse he's doing what's that problem of like the type of person who will do anything to make it to the top and then once they make it to the top there are so many eyes on them and so many witnesses to everything they've done to make it there i think he's the type of person people don't like for no reason whatsoever and so well it's just okay unfortunately part of who well i think it's just he's that type of person though where it's just like people inherently don't like him so when he succeeds they kind of want to see him fail yeah he also fucks over a lot of people yeah he's a dick he is he is essentially unlikable and he's much like ryan o'neill he is both fundamentally unlikable and an asshole who mistreats people but also like

has enough charisma that he can you know sort of coast around for a bit. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I was, for reasons that are hard to even trace back, trying to explain the jinx to someone last night who didn't know about the Robert Durst story at all. And I was basically outlining the series of events for them. And they just said like, but wait, how did the guy keep on getting away with this for decades?

Is he like the most charismatic guy you've ever seen? You're like, no, the guy is incredibly off-putting. But yet there is something undeniably captivating about him. And part of it is, despite the fact that he's operating from a very high status and doing insane things and committing like horrible crimes around him, he keeps on making you feel like he's the victim. Yes. And there is this fundamental sad sack quality to Barry. Yeah, he's got a sad face.

Even as he's manipulating the situation, I think it's partially what you said, Karina, too, of just like he comes off dumb. Like you do end up feeling bad for him because you almost question, does he not know any better? Yeah. It's part of what makes this movie interesting

is you can never totally crack him. He is a little bit of an enigma, and it's why this movie needs to have an impartial third-person narrator. Yes, and of course, he's going to win at the end of the day in the final title card because he's going to be dead like everybody else that's that's only when barry truly triumphs when everyone is dead that's the great

equalizer the great equalizer but i just i think one reason this movie has such a powerful grip on me is i always can't believe barry is fucking it up at the same what a life you're married to a beautiful countess you live in a nice home there is nothing better you could expect in society at this point just chill just be a chiller but but yeah david to throw something back in your face that you said to me not in a vindictive way but just to repeat words to repeat back to you a very salient point I think you made some months ago. When everyone was fucking losing their minds trying to analyze the slap at the Oscars. And what happened and what caused Will Smith to snap in that moment, right? And you said, like, it's the fact that he was so close to pulling it off.

Sure. Right? He's sitting there. He's about to be crowned. Everything's ready for him. Here's everything this guy's about to be crowned yeah everyone's everything's ready for him here's everything this guy's been working for for decades and the pressure of being that close to it like broke him sure it's that same thing where i think like the fear of losing it fucks up barry to a certain degree once he's gotten everything he thinks he wanted he cannot find peace in it

i don't know if you guys have ever done this but whenever i watch a medieval movie or whatever i always had the thought of like who do i want to be here because you don't want to be like the king because that's like responsibility and people want to you know get rid of you maybe but like you also don't want to be some favorite who's going to fall out of favor. And the King's going to be like, execute that guy. He sucks. Like,

you know, like where do you want to be? And I just feel like what Barry's got going on where it's like, he's on some estate. No one's bothering him. He just, he just is. He's just,

if only he could like stay at that level. I mean, you're the one who keeps saying that there's nothing to do. So he's bored. He's bored. Yeah, you're right. I'd be a wizard. You'd be a wizard? Great call, man.

No, I mean, to quote another one of our favorite movies on this podcast, for Barry, the action is the juice. And the life that he's risen to... Barry could be played by Tom Sizemore in a different movie but you know what I'm saying

the life that he's risen to has no action anymore outside of him just stirring shit up outside of him just fucking making out with other women in public I mean that's why like that he would probably like live the happiest version of his life

if he just kept on like being part of like the card con and like going from town to town cheating rich people he could still fuck women like marissa berenson in every town but you know he starts to you know he gets in this situation where he like makes her husband have a heart attack and then i guess he feels like he has to stick around That is a crazy scene When that guy is so mad at Barry Linton Who isn't even in the room He's like I'm gonna fucking die right here

You ask like why he can't chill Like he's chilling in that scene That's the coolest he ever is Talk about cousins marrying each other That guy is looking rough Oh yeah Oh man He looks like a little potato man hey those are my people to your point yeah ben please watch your language uh yeah to to your

point about like his happiest life is probably him remaining a hustler forever compare this character to moses prey in paper moon a guy who does not want to be a father because the idea of being a father is having to settle down and live a respectable life and create a consistent environment for a child. And it is when his child learns how to play the same game as him and he can just bring her along and use her as an additive to the work he's already doing that he's finally comfortable being at that. He's like, oh, if my daughter can be more like me and I don't have to change any aspect of my lifestyle,

then it's fine. But he's a shark. He wants to keep moving forward. Yeah, and, you know, she'll come with him, so that's fine. All right, yeah, we're almost done, I feel like, but is there, yeah, is there anything else we want to say about Barry Lyndon, his his life life and luck well just the ultimate joke the final mic drop of this

epilogue card is just like and by the way none of this mattered everyone ends up in the dirt who fuck what a waste of time and energy you fuck over so many people to what end which is just the final commentary on like the British class system, right? It's like, we lived our lives like either in anxiety or depression or constant striving over this thing that we're born into and whether or not we can change it. But what does it really matter? Because you can't take anything with you. And you have at best like 100 years.

Right. And especially in this era, you're almost definitely not going to get to 100 right right uh especially with those uh inbred genes but um i i also feel like you know the the basic like core cynicism of stanley kubrick i think sometimes people misread a disdain he has for all of his characters. And I actually think he is fascinated by people and he has a certain love for any individual, but he has a contempt for humanity as a whole. Like what he hates are the structures we create. He hates the society we build, the rules we create of how to interact with each other. And this is a time and this is a person who is so obsessed with those systems and working them i i think he does feel some sympathy some

empathy for this character and how broken he is that he he cannot be happy right that he needs to work this system to to an ultimate end but uh but yeah it's it's you know at the end of the day it's like what are you what are you gonna fucking do it doesn't matter none of this matters uh yeah um i like philip stone who is the butler i'm sorry though you know not the butler the you know grady the caretaker the ghost of the caretaker, the ghost of the caretaker in The Shining, and the dad in Clockwork Orange. He's like the guy at the end of the movie who's helping Barry. He's got the sideburns?

Yeah. He kind of looks like Dennis from Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Sure. Sure. Well said, Ben. I just like that he's in sort of a weirdly sympathetic role here. He's usually kind of scary. Mostly, I think of's in a sort of a weirdly sympathetic role here. He's usually kind of scary.

Mostly, I think of him as the, you know, I corrected her, you know, in The Shining. My wife has seen this movie because I've seen it many times. Humblebrag. Yeah, but I was watching it yesterday. While my daughter was rampaging around, my wife was like, is this suitable for her? And I'm like, like i was sort of like it's a very gentle movie visually yeah like it's not really that intense uh but anyway um but uh and then my wife like was sort of coming around at the end she was

like what happens at the end and i was like you know they basically pay him to go away like and the final shot is practically just them writing a check being like barry lyndon uh and she went like oh and i was like you know but it's poetic it's sad it's it's funny like it's everything you know this movie should end with it shouldn't end with some dramatic thing should end with just like barry go away like god damn it how often does this happen to this day in our modern society where someone who has ascended to the top of a company, you know, or the highest heights of fame, finally their behavior catches up with them and they're forced to accept a giant golden parachute to essentially go away and never work again, right? quote unquote canceled men who are furious that they're stuck alone in their giant mansion with a 80 million dollar buyout as a punishment for being shitty for decades and they're like why won't people let me do shit anymore and why am i forced to be on my mega yacht for the rest of time right right there's there's no ability to enjoy the fact that you basically got away scot-free outside of the fact that you have lost the love or respect of any people around you.

I mean, you could have more empathy for Barry because, I mean, he lost a leg. Yeah. Yeah. At least he lost a leg. Kevin Spacey still got two. All right. I had to pick a specific name. I had to put one person on blast. I think he's a fair target. Yeah, he's... Les Moonves has two legs. Yeah, these people, they took my career away from me.

Oh, I'm so sorry you had 70 years of being at the top of the fucking anthill and now you have to stay in your giant mansion. One of your eight mansions you own that will never be taken away from you. Some final thing. Obviously, this movie does not have a score it just has 18th century music the chieftains uh yes uh the guy who you know uh helped this movie won four oscars it won for uh cinematography costume design and art direction but it also won best original song score and adaptation, back when they had a best adapted score category.

That's wild. So Leonard Roseman won, and he was the guy who helped pick the classical music. And I just want to read his quote on this because it's funny. When I saw this incredibly boring film with all this music that I picked out going over and over again, I thought, my God, what a mess. I was going to refuse the Oscar. So he didn't like Barry Lyndon. That's all.

Movie comes out, doesn't do well. The tagline for this movie is essentially four Oscars. If you look at the poster, it says, four Oscars, Barry Lyndon. I love the way the songs repeat, though. It's funny. It's actually really funny. Oh, yeah.

It's amazing. It's incredible every time. Yeah. And Kubrick does that so well. I mean, that's what Eyes Wide Shut as well uses every cue so powerfully. Women of Ireland is such a good track though whenever i hear any of these songs in any other context i just immediately think of barry lyndon yep yeah and and the songs immediately become funny um it was nominated for best picture maybe

aren't maybe the most stacked best Picture year of all time, Griffin. So 76 is... Yeah, 75 Oscars. Is this Network, Jaws, Rocky, Barry Lyndon? Am I mixing up two years here? You're mixing up two years. But yes, Barry Lyndon, Jaws are two. Right, Network and Rocky are 76.

Right, they're the following. Yeah, okay. No, yeah. Nashville, Dog Day Afternoon, and Best Picture goes to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which is probably the worst of those movies, and it's still a pretty good movie. Yeah, that's a pretty incredible lineup.

Right? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I mean, the 70s are a largely exciting time for the oscars because even you know you're looking through it's like isabella johnny gets an oscar nomination for the story of adele h you know like there's like fun weird pics in there like carol kane and hester street lee grant and shampoo you know like there's a lot of vert miller probably got her nomination sometime around then as well yes Yes. Like 74 maybe?

When is Seven Beauties? That's the next year. Yes, 76. Yes, that's Seven Beauties. Yeah. I'd argue it's maybe the best decade for the Oscars in terms of most of their choices holding up pretty well. And a lot of them feeling kind of bold. Especially with a movie like Lyndon where the reception was mixed at the time it did poorly

domestically it didn't make its budget back it did better in europe apparently it grossed three million in paris alone which is sort of funny to think about um but the best city in the world for watching american movies so makes sense yeah but very true um and uh in fact i think i saw barry lyndon in paris at one point not to brag um but uh yeah like just it does it does get enough of a foothold to endure um do you want to play the box office game griffin uh yes i do this movie did not do well we're not doing the box office game for par, I assume. No, that would be good if I could summon the box office game for Paris. No, this movie came out Christmas time, 1975.

It is not in the top 10. And the number one movie of the year, sorry, of the week, is an action thriller starring James Caan and Robert Duvall. Do you know this movie, Griffin? Yes. Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh. Thank you.

It's new this week. It's a fairly famous director, late in his career. Okay. He was seen as a bit of a sellout picture for him. Is it like a Peckinpah? It's a Peckinpah. You nailed it. Yeah.

What's this movie called? It's not called The Specialist, right? Is it a The title? It is a The title. I was reading this article. I went on a Duvall rabbit hole. I feel like I've been talking about him a lot lately. But there's a really interesting people magazine article from i

think when tender mercy is about to come out that refers to robert davala as america's number one number two and it was basically about this era of the 70s in which he was like the most reliable and valued second lead or support but he was never able to make that leading man jump that all of his contemporaries were able to do unconventionally. So I fucking know this movie. It's not called The Specialist. What's it called? It's called The Killer Elite.

Thank you. Right, because it has the same title as that insane fucking recent Killer Elite movie. Yeah. Yeah, James Caan, Robert Duvall. So that's number one at the box office christmas 1975 number two is a spy thriller uh starring a very very sexy robert redford the plot of the movie is basically robert redford is just so hot that everyone is after him uh in my opinion i

think that's how you should three days of the condor it's three days of the condor yeah uh karina do you like three days of the condor i assume you don't have an opinion on the killer elite oh you should see it it's so sexy i actually like robert wedford is somebody who's i haven't seen a lot of his movies it's very strange the ones i've seen are like you know inside daisy clover like i haven't seen uh some of the big hits. You haven't seen, like, The Natural or... Oh, no, I've seen The Natural because I'm a baseball... I'm a baseball guy. Right, it's the best baseball.

Yeah. You haven't seen the... Well, you must have seen The Sting. I've seen The Sting. I've seen Butch Cassidy, but, like, you know, you get to, like,

the B-plus level. Yeah, I've never seen Downhill Racer. He's just, like, an actor who, you know, for whatever reason, like, I've sort of had... I just haven't gotten who, you know, for whatever reason, like I've sort of had, I just haven't gotten around to like doing the filmography.

I have watching that Paul Newman documentary. Honestly, I realized how few of his movies I've seen as well. I am also bad on Paul Newman. I should, is that documentary good? The, the,

I thought it was great. I thought it was really good. I'm going to, but you have to, you have to not find Ethan Hawke annoying. I find Ethan Hawke, like, endearingly... I think he's a great actor, and I enjoy him on screen, but, like, Ethan Hawke the guy,

I find him endearingly annoying. I was going to say... I feel like he's sort of self-aware about being kind of annoying. I pretty much come all the way around to finding everything annoying about him kind of charming. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I feel like he's like, yeah, look what I write novels. So what? They're kind of

bad, but who cares? Maybe they're good. He's such a big dork about all this stuff. He's never trying to play it cool, I find. Yeah. Yeah. I'm pro Ethan Hawke. And I'm pro Paul Newman, another hottie. But like I think Redford, it's like he's like a goy god to me.

I've just always been kind of like, oh my God, imagine looking like that guy. You could do anything. And that's what The Way We Were is about. Right. Right, exactly. Yes. And I mean, if you're Jewish, you grew up going like, well, Paul Newman, that's what we can be. He feels, you know, even though he's the best of us, he's earthier.

There's a sense of hometown pride. Yes. Yes. Number three, Griffin at the Box Office is a comedy. Neil Simon comedy based on his play. I'm giving you that clue because there's just so many. California Suite, I'm just going to pick one. No.

Let's see. It won an Oscar for Suite, I'm just gonna pick one. Nope. Let's see. It won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor this year, in fact. Is it... Fuck. Fuck. For its cigar-smoking supporting actor. Oh, oh, oh. It's the Sunshine Boys.

It's the Sunshine Boys, yes. Okay. With Walter Matthau and George Burns. I've never seen The Sunshine Boys. I don't know if you have. I haven't either. I feel like it's a movie I would like a lot. Number four is the Best Picture winner.

I just mentioned it. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Yes. Okay. Classic movie I haven't seen since college. Yeah. I think I watched it in high school and and you know probably on my tiny tv while half paying attention to homework i should have been doing

i should give it another spin yeah do you have a cuckoo's nest take karina do you care about cuckoo's nest i don't really care about it it's another one of those movies that i watched like in the 90s when there was sort of a like a renaissance of the 70s um yes and uh and also like neil shorman kind of came back in the 90s and um you know there was sort of an impetus to catch up on his filmography yeah he was making fun biopics in the 90s yeah um number five griffin is a comedy starring one of your favorite guys and directed by him as well and i imagine you maybe have seen it i have never seen this movie it has a very long title 75 comedy starring and directed by one of my favorite guys huh who who are your favorite comedy guys start there right i mean i i i'm like thinking of the

people who either pre-date or post-date this period so it's like i think i know who is it is it is that a mel brooks movie it's not a mel brooks movie although it has a lot of mel brooks guys in it this is a mel brooks guy it Brooks guy. So is it a Gene Wilder movie? It's Gene Wilder. Okay. And Madeleine Kahn and Marty Feldman are in it. It's The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' Younger Brother, whatever it's called.

I have not seen this movie. It's The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother. Right. Which was written and directed by Gene Wilder and starring him. I've never seen it. The Wilder-directed movies are a weird blind spot for me considering how much i love him you do love gene and he had a pretty successful run of

films he directed starred in and wrote none of which feels like lover woman red right those are the ones i know yeah like most of those were hits at the time and it feels like none of them have really lasted culturally this film was a hit. Yeah. Not a huge one, but it did okay. Anyway, that's number five. Some other movies, you've got The Story of O, which is an erotic foreign film.

So that's sort of probably like an exciting Euro entry at the 75 box office. You've got Swept Away, speaking of Burt Muller, the Giancarlo Giannini classic. You've got Mahogany, which we've talked about before, the Diana Ross movie. I don't remember why, but yes, that came up in some episode. It came up in some episode, directed by Barry Gordy

with Diana Ross and Billy Dee Williams. You've got a reissue of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. And then you've got Let's Do It Again, the Sidney Poitier, Bill Cosby movie. The second Cosby trilogy movie. It is my favorite thing about playing the box office game, the web version that a listener of the show so wonderfully built out when you'll see one movie in the top five that has been playing for

4,000 weeks and you're just like okay which Disney reissue is this but yeah so that's it's a weird top 10 Barry Lyndon not in it but it does endure and in the end we're all gonna die anyway so we're gonna die anyway that's the point kirk doesn't give a shit if his movie isn't hit at the

time he's gonna end up dead he may have given a shit he got another movie made i don't know who cares yeah yeah that's true his next movie was the shining he does he does swerve towards best seller after this yes that i think that was notable and i think you did want to make a successful film like he wanted bestseller with huge beloved star in a genre that is easier to market right yeah but uh yeah that's the story ben as the resident uh irish scoundrel do you have any sort of final takes you want to throw out on this movie? I guess it's not easy to make it out of being just a regular peasant you know like he traveled the world he did amazing things i mean i think the guy had an okay life all things considered the way you describe it it's like barry lyndon's a dude wearing a live laugh love shirt

being like yeah i can't complain i mean probably, like, after that freeze frame, you know, he probably goes and lies down in, like, his old childhood bed with his one leg and just, like, thinks about, like, that time where he had, like, a shirtless fight and that time where, you know, he had a sword fight that he won and, like, that weird threesome he had, like, in the middle of the room with all the other people and, like, you know? I mean, he did have some good times. He bought some paintings.

So it's a pretty incredible greatest hits reel. If you play it back in your head like that. Yeah. You cut out the bullshit in between. Yeah. God bless him. God bless him. And God bless you, Karina.

Thank you so much for doing this. Thank you. Thanks for giving me a chance, an excuse to watch this and talk about it. Happy to provide it. And truly, you know, I mean, your podcast, I feel like it's such an invaluable research for anyone doing anything in the world of film. I certainly find myself citing things you've said, you know, both facts that you've pulled up that I hadn't heard before otherwise, but also some of your opinions. I mean, you were talking, you briefly mentioned Ghostbusters at the beginning, but we did the whole Ghostbusters franchise on Patreon. And I tried to, I probably misquoted and butchered a lot of your points about just the weird magic of why that movie works, despite all better logic. And yeah, there's just a lot of things you've said about all sorts of different movies and

movie history over the years that will rattle in my head forever. We jokingly refer to ourselves as connoisseurs of context, but you are the person who truly deserves that title. Well, thank you. That's really sweet. And I'm glad I can. I hope that other people also like the podcast and I'm glad I can, you know, be a helpful resource. that I can, you know, be a helpful resource. Oh, yeah. It's the best. Our listeners have been furiously demanding you end up somewhere in some episode for years, and I can't think of a better movie for it to finally shake out on.

Absolutely. Yeah. Well, people should listen to You Must Remember This if that isn't enough of an endorsement. So, the best movie podcast. You're between seasons right now, but Erotic 90s coming up, right? Erotic 90s is coming up. I wish I could tell you an exact date. We were going to launch it in November, but now it looks like we might launch it in March instead.

It just hasn't been decided yet. Part of the problem is that I can't stop adding episodes. There's a lot of eroticism in the 90s. It was supposed to be 10 episodes. The last erotic decade. Yeah, it was supposed to be 10 episodes. Now it's 21. So it's just going to take a really long time to make the episodes.

You make me realize Y2K really killed horniness. Yep. It's true. We weren't worried about that. It drove it underground. It drove it out of Hollywood. I mean, I'm working on the thesis that Eyes Wide Shut kind of killed a certain type of movie. All right.

I'm interested. Yeah. There's an argument. Certainly, I think especially so much of the ire of that movie was people going and expecting the horniest movie ever made and being so furious when it wasn't. I mean, they thought it was going to be like Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise, like, having real sex. Yes. Right. Yes.

Yes. I talk about this in the episode. I remember Entertainment Tonight going, we're hearing there might be unsimulated sex in this movie. An insane thing to think about Entertainment Tonight reporting on as if, like, and there might be a cameo from Robert Downey Jr. back as your favorite Iron Man. Yeah. There might be a cameo from Robert Downey Jr. back as your favorite Iron Man. Yeah. There might be a cameo from Tom Cruise's penis. Yeah.

Going into Nicole Kidman's vagina. Give me a cameo. Come on. Yeah. Just, yeah. It's been too long. We haven't seen his penis on screen for decades. It's true.

Anyway, thank you all for listening. Karina, thank you for being here. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Thank you to Marie Barty for our here. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Thank you to Marie Barty for our social media and helping to produce the show. AJ McKeon, Alex Barron for our editing. Lane Montgomery and the Great American Owl for our theme song. JJ Birch for our research.

Pat Reynolds, Joe Bowen for our artwork. You can go to blankcheckpod.com for links to some real nerdy shit, including our Patreon blank check special features. We are finishing up the Roger Moore Bond films, but have also been doing some Kubrick adjacent bonus episodes. We got Dr. Sleep coming up and we'll just have done 2010. Yep. Sounds right. Tune in next week for The Shining with our buddy,

Tim Simons, the great actor long overdue on the show. A very tall man. One of the few guests we've ever had on who is taller than you. Is that true? He is taller than you. He's very tall. He's definitely taller than me.

He's like 10 foot 15. Yeah, he's very tall. The lankiest man in the world. He's built like Jack Skellington. And I love him. And I'm glad he's finally on the show. So thank you all. in the world. He's built like Jack Skellington, and I love him, and I'm glad he's finally on the show. So thank you all,

and as always, Barry Lenz is just kind of a dang-ass freak when you get down to it.