Blank Check with Griffin & David - Paths of Glory with Sarah Marshall

Episode Date: August 21, 2022

Perhaps the most humanistic of Kubrick’s films, PATHS OF GLORY is a blistering study of injustice, middle-management, and anti-war sentiment. We’re down in the trenches this week with Sarah Marshall (“You’re Wrong About” and “You Are Good”), and we’re asking the big questions. Like - what crazy scheme did Timothy Carey pull during production that caused him to be fired as soon as all his closeups were filmed? Did Kirk Douglas take his hefty salary (a third of the total budget!) to pay for tennis lessons for son Michael? Why do American schools gloss over World War I? How does Ben weigh his love of ditches against the concept of trench warfare? 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 explodes in the no man's land. No podcast ever dared cross before. Is that the tagline? That's a great tagline. Isn't it? That's why I wanted to do it. Oh, yeah. I love that. It's such a good poster, too.

And the poster makes you think that it's a movie about a badass military operation in no man's land. You know, like a bunch of fucking heroes. The old switcheroo. Right. You're tearing it up land you know like a bunch of fucking heroes right you're right tearing it up you know right it's it's i mean the poster is like kirk douglas in like action pose his hand like gripped up near the grimace it makes it feel like this whole movie is going to be him in the fucking trenches wrestling people to the ground uh yeah uh i'm trying to get the full image version of this because it's it's one of your

i've got it i've got it it's got a two tagline i've got the other one now this i i'll butcher this as well now the podcast blasts open the bombshell story of a colonel who led his regiment into hell and back while their madden general waited for them with a firing squad i mean you know that's a good tagline and it's not inaccurate it's not it's not yeah it just makes it you know like a tale of daring do it makes it seem like a kirk douglas action epic which this movie is uh fascinating fascinatingly not i would say sure i love this movie yeah can i throw it a hot take? Really fucking good. Yeah.

Yeah. I think it's great. Yeah. Had you ever seen it before? I'd seen it before. I hadn't seen in a while. Can I ask what was your favorite part? Oh,

when it ended, when you were done, that's your favorite part. Just, I get, you know, it's been discussed much on the show. I get very stressed out watching a war films,

even when I think they're good. I find it to be a somewhat unpleasant experience. So I, you know, I think the whole movie is very well made, but the moment when it ended and I could start breathing normally again and working on lowering my heart rate, even for a movie that's not that combat heavy, although the one big combat sequence is harrowing.

It's very impressive yes yeah uh our guests can talk anytime by the way oh openly invited to yeah just chat encouraged i'm used to the construct where it's like we have to pretend that i'm coming to the door like the the mr rogers neighborhood version we do the opposite of this. Even though your name is in the title, but right now, I love the early break-in from the guest. It makes me very happy. The call is coming from inside the house. That's what we sort of go for.

They've been here the whole time. Yeah, now it's creepier because I was silent for a couple minutes and yet I was here. Right, that's what... We're looking to... Yeah, love to make a creepy entrance. ...to shock and terrify our listeners at every turn.

And settle. Good. Yeah. Ben, I'm curious, Producer Ben, did you have a favorite part? It felt like you were asking because there's a part you wanted to spotlight. Oh, not in particular. Well, how about, you know, I like a good ditch, but I think there's too much of a good thing, right? Yeah. World War I was certainly too much of a good thing on the ditch front yeah that's a good yeah like it's fun to

hang out in there for maybe an hour but like a year no thanks it's important for you to watch world war one movie so that you you are reminded that there is such a thing as too much yeah yeah yeah you can take it too far i mean there's nothing more brutal and you know depressing than trench warfare and any image you see of it you're like good god like this is horrible but then like i also right i also did grow up like watching black adder which is a critique of world war One, obviously. That is not like pro World War One. But when you're a kid, you're like, oh, they've got their little like houses, you know, like their little beds in there.

And so I don't know, when you're a kid, I think there's some charm to trench life that is obviously, you know, only in sanitized sitcoms. I was kind of thinking that while watching this, which immediately was a thought I felt very guilty for. Right, me too. I feel a lot of guilt. But if it's in a set, then like, yeah, there is that childlike part of you that's like, oh, of course. And yeah, I was just thinking of Blackadder as well,

because like any enclosed space, that Lego they sleep in in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, these are all exciting for a child. Right. I think I would like it if the war wasn't happening. I, you know, it's really, I think we're getting actually to the breakthrough here, which is, it's not that World War I had too many ditches, it's that the ditches were the respite from the war that you had to stay

in. I think I happily live in a trench if when I crawled out of it, I could just take a pleasant stroll and not have to spend 10 harrowing minutes blowing my whistle trying to dodge bullets. A lot of whistle blowing.

It is wild that in World War I they were like, how are we going to fucking convince people to do this? And they were like, I don't know, blow whistles. Blow whistles. So many whistles. When I was like 13, I grew up in Britain here. Sarah, I don't know if you know that, but I did. I grew up in the United Kingdom. I don't know what

this is. I don't understand why you're taking the time to ask Sarah if she knows this and not ask Ben and I. Okay, Ben, Griff, are you aware of that absolutely not first i've ever heard this ever brand new information you don't have an accent yeah where'd it go i know i know i get that a lot it went it went away i was born in america you know where's your chimney sweep hat i my chimney sweep hat is in my coat closet i don't know where's your teacup my tea it's in like the kitchen what are you talking about you think i have to carry that shit around all the time where's your friggin biscuits yeah i could do with a biscuit around here that'd be

nice um i went when i was i guess what you'd think like eighth grade or whatever i went on a um went when i was i guess what you'd think like eighth grade or whatever i went on a um a battlefield so world war one battlefields trip with my history class so we went to belgium and you know you go see some trenches and you go right you know you're you're visiting all these battlefields and they show you the graveyards which are crazy i mean it is crazy so many gravestones and then they'll show you like the enemy graveyard. Like this is where we buried the Germans. And they're like every headstone. There's like 40 bodies, right?

Like because they were just like piling them in without any real care. And I remember I took so many pictures of the graveyards because we are like 13 years old. And we were like, oh, my God, this is crazy. And I came home and my parents were like so like tell us about your trip like show us the pictures and i was just like uh this is a graveyard with no people in the picture uh this is the german graveyard and they were just like who cares like what this is all you took pictures of that's all that's my story how are you going to take a picture that a ghost shows up in if you don't?

That's how I thought that was going. Was that your parents were like, there's a strange light. There's this blur on the image here. Yeah. I don't know. Don't give a 13-year-old a camera. A 13-year-old boy on a graveyard. On a battlefield trip, a camera.

He's not going to get you anything good. I don't know. We should test that hypothesis. Let's get together a sample group. A bunch of 13-year-old boys on a battlefield trip. That's a great found footage movie. There you go. What are all these 13-year-old boys doing on the battlefield with iZone cameras?

I don't know. A fucking blank check sent them here? They got those Polaroid sticker strips? Don't you think that a successful podcast, like The Natural natural next step is to expand into more reenactments? Because I've often thought that. There are the steps of just, you do the podcast, you start a Patreon, TeePublic page, war reenactments. Your Patreon goal is like,

we will reenact the Battle of Ypres, right? You know, that's it. 9,000 subscribers. We're getting everyone on a plane. We're sending them to Belgium. You're going to dig trenches. You're going to jump at each other. Oh, man.

Wow. There were apparently five battles of Ypres. I just remember going to Ypres. We went there. Must be nice. Horrible war. Horrible war. I think it was just a nice, boring trip.

Oh, I'm sure that this is something that uh other graduates of the american school system will echo here but i feel like growing up world war one we did have a unit on it in seventh grade but until then there was this pattern of like it's it felt like we were going chronologically through american history and we would like waste a bunch of time in the industrial revolution and then it felt like the were going chronologically through American history and we would like waste a bunch of time in the Industrial Revolution. And then it felt like the teachers were always like, skip ahead, World War II. And at the time I was like, they're not managing their time well. And now I'm like, I think there's a reason we didn't really do much World War I in school because it's like, yeah, and then everybody died for no reason.

And that's hard to put a spin on that. Also, World War I maybe got Terminator 2'd a little bit, where the sequel is just so fucking big. It's true. And memorable. It's huge. And the stakes and the, like, iconic villain, you know?

It has a great villain. It's true. It's got an incredible villain. It's so easy to just sort of like, get your mind around. There's a second Terminator. I get it, this guy's unstoppable. Whereas, like the villain of World War I, it's like, uh, you know,

European alliance structure, and every country kind of had a guy with a mustache who was rich and kind of evil and you're like oh okay and what happened afterwards nothing everyone still didn't like each other and they just did it all over 20 years later like yeah that's that's kind of what's most insane is you feel like the takeaway from world war one should have been let's never do this again that's the war to end all wars that was literally what they said

yes they should just call it world war in a way they were dooming us by calling it world war one it's like don't call it fucking remo williams they didn't call it that they did and the audacity fucking doug's first movie over here yeah they dug no no but they did mess up because they called it the great war and everyone maybe mistook that after a while for like great war all right can we do a greater war sure um i don't know it became i don't know we're making fun of a thing that is just an absolute moral calamity that resulted in the deaths of tens of millions but what are you supposed to do how do you grapple with these things? Yeah, war's terrible. Every time we fucking watch a war movie on this podcast, I just go, why is anyone doing this?

Ever. I frequently feel like I'm begging whatever listeners I have on any show I'm on forgiveness for like becoming too giggly when things are depressing and for like my very well-developed sense of gallows humor. And this is the most appropriate movie we could talk about talk with gallows humor about because it's literally you know most of it takes place on the eve of an execution so there's i feel like there's no more appropriate subject for this demeanor we're all exhibiting already kind of nature's

gallow you know yeah it could be called Yeah, it could be called trench humor. It could be called trench humor. This is not like a funny movie, obviously, but it is a movie about, you know, absurdity, right? The sort of like dark, surreal, like behavior. There is something like very darkly comical about this movie. Like, Dr. Strangelove pushes it into a level of absurdity where you can actually have jokes.

Right, it's cartoony. But I feel like there's a much greater connection between those two films than I had considered before. And this just feels like it's sort of a clenched humor at like, this is so fucking stupid. It's very stupid. Griff, introduce our podcast and our guest. Listen, the thing is that this is a podcast called Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. I'm David. It's a podcast about filmography as 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 this is a miniseries on the films of Stanley Kubrick. Kubrick. I saw people on the Reddit fighting about this the other day, because Brits say Kubrick, but apparently it is Kubrick. I say Kubrick. Apparently that's English of me to call him Kubrick. Right. Kubrick. Apparently it is Kubrick and then when he went to England, people assumed it was Kubrick and he didn't correct them.

Huh. What an interesting guy. For a man who you imagine if they mispronounce his name, he'd go, can we get 100 more takes of that until you say it correctly. While crying, ideally.

Absolutely. The main series is called Pods Widecast. Today we're talking about Paths of Glory, which is sort of the guarantor to the guarantor in his career. Sort of. Yeah. I mean, it's certainly his first hit, right? I guess it wasn't even a huge hit,

but it's a well-regarded movie with a star that's a big deal. It was certainly his first A picture in terms of sort of classification and working with a big star and studio and everything, and then it opens the

door for him to make a giant blockbuster later. But our guest today is the host of You're Wrong About, but I would say almost more relevantly, You Are Good, a movie podcast that is about movies and feelings. Is that how you would put it? It's sort of about the relationship between movies and emotions and our emotions to them and how they help us process our emotions. Am I totally butchering this? I've been listening to a lot of episodes recently, but I'm trying to figure out how to present

this. This is certainly a movie that makes me feel emotions. Yes. Oh my God. This movie is like 40 pounds of emotions in a 20 pound bag, I would say. And I am also looking forward to talking about how much you can get done in 87 minutes. Kind of incredible. But yeah, we have like refused to succinctly describe that show and left it up to other people.

And it started off being about dad movies and dads and movies and working through dad feelings by watching movies. And then last year we were just like, let's just have it be about all feelings. But it's I think it also has a function of like a lot of the movies we talk about are sort of like feel good movies or movies like aimed at or specifically beloved by tween girls. And there's also an element of talking about how like there is important things to discuss about practical magic. Oh, I mean, you're preaching to the fucking choir here. David, this is David's. This is the snare drum that David's beating all the time. Practical magic is a fantastic movie. Thank you.

Not everyone knows that. It's very sad for them. And the thing about practical magic is... Sarah Marshall's our guest, by the way. I didn't get to the point where I said the name. Sarah Marshall's our guest today. Oh, yeah. That's my name.

Yeah. Oh, hi, Sarah. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me. I can't remember if I've said this on Mike, but I don't think I have. I'm a big fan of that movie and of Griffin Dunn's movies in general. You've always been pushing for a Griffin Dunn miniseries. And I've always said there can only be one Griffin on this podcast. and I saw it in theaters at the age of 12. Like I was a little young for it, I think. And also I was like a 12 year old boy, you know, like I don't know if I was like totally locked into this,

like, you know, to the, but I was excited for it. And I saw it and it really freaked me out when I was 12 years old in a theater. It's kind of a dark movie, which is sort of the secret of many a Griffin Dunn film. There's a zombie in that movie. People forget that. There's a fucking zombie.

They raise the dead and it goes very poorly for them. Like, it's not cute. And so, and then when I came back to it years later, I was like, yeah, God, there's nothing like this. It's such a strange tonal mix. And then I realized I felt the same about Addicted to Love. And like, I was like, oh, right. Like, Griffin Dunn's kind of, that's kind of his thing, I suppose. Yeah.

Anyway, love Practical Magic. Would love to live in that house. Did he just direct a new film or am I mistaken? He made a film called uh well he worked on no no he worked on some kind of anthology film called okay that didn't go anywhere but i believe the last thing he made was that joan didion documentary that went to netflix yeah but but i thought perhaps i'm mistaken here and perhaps it was something he was acting in. But I felt like I was seeing him post online what felt like maybe his new film as a director. Like he just maybe finished something.

Maybe I'm wildly wrong. Let's see. I mean, he has this segment in this thing called Within. That must be it. Yeah. But that's, yeah, I don't know. You know, it's got like Don Cheadle in it yeah i don't know and you know it's got like don cheadle in it i don't know it looks like julianne moore you know it's got some real people in it it's the kind of thing that premieres at tribeca though not not to be rude incredibly rude

uh found dead in a trench um sarah you are someone who uh many many people have been telling us to get on the podcast for a very long time. I feel like a lot of our mutual friends and our shared guests, like Dana Schwartz and Chris Gethard, Josh Gondelman and people, whenever they would go on your show, they'd reach out to us and say, like, have you had Sarah Marshall on? She would have a good conversation with you guys. And this is long overdue. It's been in the books for a while. It took a long time of back and forth to schedule and everything. But I'm curious, just because it's been pinned for so long, what made you choose this movie? I think I gave you three options. And I forget what the third one was. But one of the other ones was Barry Lyndon. you picked this one and I was

very relieved because I do love Barry Lyndon but like just the idea of watching it you just like kind of you know it's like taxing in a different way and this movie um is I don't know if you guys have this but this is one of my favorite movies and one of my formative movies and until watching it to talk about it with you I had only seen it one time because I saw it once and the it was at the Portland Art Museum which used to have free admission for Portland State students and so I saw a lot of movies there I saw this there and was just like once was enough like the entire thing is like tattooed onto my brain now. It's like entered into my soul, like an expanding bullet. Um, I, and just, I was like, yeah, that's, I'm good. That was my shot or whatever. And so it's, yeah, it's, that's rare for me to not really

revisit stuff like that. And I think, I mean, I was excited to talk about it because I remember like seeing it alone in a theater and not really meeting a ton. Like it doesn't come up that much in conversation, but it feels my personal thought is that this is, this is my personal Kubrick or Kubrick movie, however you want to say it. And I think, and I watching it now, I was like, I feel like he just like got what human emotions were about and then was just like, I'm done with that.

That was terrible. I'm going to make other stuff now. It is funny how much his movies become more and more anthropological

with every film after this, right? It's sort of like he creates a greater distance between him and the subject and the microscope. And this one, it feels like he's really there. I don't know. I mean, doing these episodes,

it's been really interesting to chart. And we haven't been doing the Kubrick's in linear recording order, but sort of his start as a photojournalist into then becoming a documentary filmmaker, into becoming the most controlling fictional filmmaker, and the way the sort of documentary approach and styling and attitudes seep away with each film, you know? Yeah.

He stops being someone who wants to capture something and starts being someone who wants to create and control a thing. And watching this made me, I mean, this is a tendency of his that I have very conflicting feelings about, and I have conflicting feelings about The Shining, which I've talked about on You Are Good. But watching this, I was like,

yes, like, go, Stanley, go be free. Like, go identify with the robot. Like, yes, like, go, Stanley, go be free. Like, go identify with the robot. Yeah, I guess this is his last human drama in a way. In a way. People would maybe object to us saying that. But it is funny how this is certainly like,

I don't think I saw this film until I'd probably seen all the later classics. I had seen Strange Love 2001, Clockwork Orange, at the very least, The Shining, right? Probably Barry Lyndon as well. And I came back around to this one and I was, I think I had a different, I think I thought this was, I think I thought it was what the poster was telling me. I think I thought it was, you know, like a really epic war movie with Kirk Douglas, probably similar to Spartacus in terms of like scale. Right. And then when I found out that it was basically like a legal drama of sorts, like which is basically like my favorite genre of movie, like people talking shit out in a courtroom and like, you know, maneuvering.

I know that it's sort of an absurd legal drama and it's set within a legal system that makes no sense but you know you know what i mean like that did surprise me and i almost yeah i guess he the closest thing he's made to this since this is strange love because strange love is also people talking through absurdity by and large right that's what i'm saying they're very paired movies oddly yeah you know you're no you're absolutely right and then of course in strange love he's you know he's turning the dials up and you know everything is ridiculous but this is a ridiculous movie too this is this is it's just that this is also rooted in reality uh not not total absurdity. It's strange when you think about Kubrick as this guy

who would just jump from one genre to another, a different style of film. I have to make my this. I have to make my that. I want to play in all these different sandboxes. And then you're like, he made like four proper war movies. He kind of kept coming back to war, you know? And Barry Lyndon is kind of a war movie, too.

Other movies outside of those four that touch on war seriously, but there are four films, This, Strange Love, Fear and Desire, and Full Metal Jacket. I would count Spartacus as a war movie. But that's what I'm saying. There are four movies that are explicitly war

as main genre. You're right, you're right. And then you also go, like, Lyndon touches on war, Spartacus touches on war, you know? It is kind of the dominant theme,

or at least interest subject for him. And I think part of it is the way that, like, war exposes these odd aspects of the human condition and primal desires, fears and desires,

if you will, and all these sorts of things. But this is the only one that's like through and through a war movie in a bizarre way. And the fact that it's a weird kind of legal drama, watching this again, it's because I had seen it the first time, I don't know, 12 years ago, something like that. So it's like meeting who I was when I was much younger and sort of seeing how the way I felt about this movie predicted the kinds of things I would do with my adult life. And I was like, oh, of course I love this because it's all about injustice, which I'm fixated on. And it's a legal drama. It feels like, in a way, one of the few truly accurate legal dramas because you have an incredibly short trial that you have three hours to prepare for. And the prosecution is extremely condescending and throws out everything of value that you have to say, which, as far as I know, is how actual trials tend to go.

And we don't get to see it that way because it makes for unbelievably depressing media. Depressing. Right, right. Yes. Did you folks see that like David Simon cites this regularly as the number one influence on The Wire? That makes sense. Sure. That this was the movie he saw. Yeah, right. He's like telling a story about how the institutions fuck over its people and and the people on the ground versus the people in the offices and all that sort of

shit that like this is the sort of rosetta stone if you will for him uh but also yeah and also right the life of being a middle manager in an institution that can be violent and oppressive, which is always such a strange position. Because the best thing about the wire, well, there's lots of good things about the wire, but is those middle manager characters who are often adversarial and villainous, but then also at the same time,

you know, are kind of just of just you know like they're just being doing the bidding of forces above them that are even more villainous and amorphous and all that i don't know anyway it's sort of the most fascinating thing about this movie though is that it is like a a middle management movie it is a movie about middle management yeah you know kind of you guys ever you don't you don't know griff about kardashians i know right you know you never really got into the kardashians and star trek the next generation i'm sorry to bring this up i'm sorry we're doing this episode we're doing this episode over zoom and you know it's a regular zoom technical what have you both times you said

it i thought you said kians. Well, they sound... I mean, I did too. They sound very similar. It sounds like the alien race... There's only so many Armenian characters in pop culture. The alien race in Star Trek, the Kardashians,

who are villains in The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine especially. There's an episode where... I think it's in Deep Space Nine where a character is being put on trial. I can't remember which. It doesn't matter. he's being put on trial in the kardashian legal system and they're you know because it still sounds when you're it sounds like you're saying the robert kardashian legal system go on well imagine the kardashian legal system that'd be pretty bad

too it's probably not that different and the federation's like look okay fine like we'll we'll get him a lawyer like just tell how does it work and they're like no no you don't understand in our in our legal system the trial is just an arena for us to yell at you you're already guilt like the guilt the guilt has been decided and the trial is just where we now tell you that you're guilty and why and what's going to happen to you and the federation's like well come on surely is there an objection we can raise you come on like what are the maneuvers we can do they're like no no no like and so that's over with that's dispensed with and so that's what

this is like yeah you know he's like well i'll defend my guys at the trial and they're like yeah sure buddy you you go ahead and do that like that's fine like nothing's nothing's gonna change it is a big part of i think what makes my brain unravel whenever i watch war movies as opposed to uh also you know the the many other things like a light breeze that can make my brain unravel but um that when i watch war movies i'm like what are these fucking rules who decide this fucking shit and everyone has to follow them and then i extrapolate from there and i'm like what are these fucking rules who decide this fucking shit and everyone has to follow them and then i extrapolate from there and i'm like wait but the rules outside of war also make no sense and are so arbitrary and i'm like what the fuck are any of us doing but every time i watch a war movie i'm like it says you why do i have to fucking do this like anytime anyone's

commanded to do anything that certainly would be my reaction to be you know to be told go over the top i would be like i don't know about that how about no that doesn't serve my interests in any way this is why falstaff is such a great character he's like war i'm not sure about that that sounds bad for me and it's a sensible response. Yeah. I mean, Falstaff's take is also like, well, I know that tents go with war that are filled with food and drink. So I can, you know, I'll be in those. Like, if you want me to come to the war, like I can hang out there maybe. But yeah, that'll be the extent of it.

It's weird that like Falstaff isn't shorthand for having the right opinion, you know? You're like this Falstaffian genius who figured it out. This free thinker who didn't get murdered like all of his friends and who died a lovely, peaceful death of lifestyle reasons. Right. You watch this movie. I mean, you know, I think it illustrates this very well. But the idea of just like I have a really smart move.

I have this brilliant fucking eight dimensional chess move in my head for how to win this war. Just push a bunch of human beings towards it. This is take a bunch of human lives and just push them all in one direction and hope that ultimately more of our guys are alive than their guys? And then like that doesn't work. And they're like, well, shrug. I don't know.

What a shame. Yeah, I've been on an action movie bender this summer, I guess, because it's summer and like that's what you do. And I was watching Die Hard the other day and enjoying or like really noticing the fact that the fbi are like yeah we're gonna lose 25 of the hostages but like that's pretty good for us like that's fine and just how it's unusual throughout history to not you know see all this as a numbers game yes it is absurd i mean they those are my favorite side characters in Dino. Because when they show up, it should be like, oh, great. The feds are here.

They've got helicopters and stuff. They'll kick this up, too. They'll deal with this. And instead, they show up and they're like, yeah, let's just fucking do it, man. Let's go guns blazing. And there's that moment where they're in the copter and the older agent is like, this reminds me of Nam. And the other guy is like, I wasn't in't in mom man i'm too young for that and you're like oh they're just idiots like

they're just completely violence addicted idiots yeah and how the older agent like this wouldn't be real for audiences for many years but now the older fbi guy is like for me and many other people he's the guy from Showgirls. He just is the guy from Showgirls. So that also helps. Yeah. Anyway. Makes me laugh when he says this reminds me of Namu. The other guy's like, what? I mean, Die Hard is

like what this movie would be in a way. The whole premise of Die Hard is like what this movie would be in a way. Because like the whole premise of Die Hard is like how much good can like one good guy manage to get done? And in Die Hard, the answer is all of it. And in this movie, the answer is none of it. And aside from that, they're the same. So in 80 years, you know, some progress made. Paths of Glory.

I can give you some context, Griff, or do we want to talk about the plot? No, let's get into some context. Give me some context. I'm a connoisseur for it and of it. I know you are. So the killing had come out. And even though it wasn't a big hit, it was just, I think, like universally regarded internally, like in the industry. Yeah.

As like, this is someone to watch, right? Like this is a filmmaker. This is a real filmmaker. Yeah. And so Harris Kubrick Productions, who, you know, James Harris is Stanley's producer for all these early movies. They get a deal at MGM to write, produce and direct a film in 40 weeks for a fee of $75,000. That's basically it. Do whatever you want, but that's the budget.

That's the, right? Like that's the fee. That's the timeline. They want to make a war movie because even though they've done Fear and Desire, Kubrick is just still completely fascinated by war. He calls it one of the few remaining situations where men stand up and speak for what they believe to be their principles he says it's pure drama so that's an interesting perspective on war i'm not sure i would agree

with that but i guess i know what he means that like it's just like so pressurized that environment right i don't know that you're like, like reality TV cohabitation competition shows now. Yes, exactly. That's where your principles come to the fore. People start getting real. No, I think that's what... It's that I think it strips people down to the primal instincts. I think that's sort of what he's getting at, right? Yes, right. Yeah.

And there's this book, Humphrey Cobb's Novel Paths of Glory. Kubrick had read it in high school, found it in his father's office and just it was burned onto his like he'd never forgotten it. He says it's one of the few books he read for pleasure when he was like a teenager. It actually has been made into a play before. So it's, you know, it's like a known thing. um so it's you know it's like a known thing and there have been attempts at cinematic adaptations but you know what the problem with paths of glory is guys it's a bummer it's a huge bummer that's the reason the studios would be like well why are we doing this it has like an unhappy ending and it's like about how bad war is and what idiot generals are it's like should we be doing that i guess i guess that's what the problem is. It's up there with bicycle thieves, I would say. Kubrick saw bicycle thieves

and he was like, hold my beer. Yeah. Nobody is interested. They bring in Jim Thompson who writes, you know, who wrote, wait, what did he write?

Killer Inside Man. Well, no, I know, but he wrote The Killing, right? Yes, he wrote The Killing. Right. So they're bringing back Jim Thompson. He adapts it. No one is interested except for Kirk Douglas,

who liked The Killing, reads the script, and he says, Stanley, I don't think this movie is ever going to make a nickel, but we have to make it. So Kirk Douglas is the one guy who's basically, like, I guess got enough clout at this moment that he's like, well, I want to do something interesting. And he reads the script and he's like, like, I can get this made and I'm sure no one wants to make it. So it is kind of impressive. One million dollar budget based on Kirk Douglas's name.

Three hundred thousand dollars goes to Kirk Douglas. Correct. He got basically he got a third of the budget. That's right. But hey. Michael needs tennis lessons. Right. Michael's backswing sucked at that time.

No, he didn't. He was always slicing it. At one point, Kirk Douglas is busy and maybe can't do it and they try to get Gregory Peck involved, which also makes sense.

Like, he's also pretty logical for a movie like this i'd say sort of a a guy with a backbone right like a guy where you're like i could see him sticking up for who you know these guys right well it's so but it's so much the as the atticus finch thing of like oh gregory peck is the most moral immovable man he is the great good of American culture. Whereas there's something about this. The exact thing that I feel like Kirk Douglas actually shows a lot of restraint

in playing against in this movie, but that we carry over as sort of legacy for him of the clenched teeth, the gripping hands, the fucking poster image. It gives this movie an edge where you're like, I know how big this guy can go. I know the histrionics. Whereas Gregory Peck always felt kind of selfless, you know?

And Gregory Peck is like more conventionally handsome. And Kirk Douglas is handsome in his way, but he has this very weird, intense, angular look. I don't know. What are your, yeah don't know what are your yeah sarah what's your kirk douglas take do you like kirk douglas as an as an actor seems like an intense human being as an actor yeah i feel like gregory peck's green presence is the sort of like safe daddy feeling where like if you're like a child on a lifeboat with him he'll like keep you singing songs and like not panic whereas if you're on a lifeboat with him, he'll like keep you singing songs and like not panic. Whereas if

you're on a lifeboat with Kirk Douglas, like you're going to be drinking seagull blood and singing sea shanties and like he's going to level with you. Like there is something it's like I think he's playing like a an immovably good man, but not a paternal one. Yes. And you're going to be drinking and carousing as much as you can out there. Both ways you learn stuff. You do. You do. They're both teachers.

Yeah. I think we've talked about this, Griffin. We probably talk about it a little more on Spartacus. But he's like a new Hollywood star before new Hollywood. That's how I've always thought of Kirk Douglas. Right. Yes. He's almost a man out of time, right? When you see him in things like this or the bad and the beautiful or

ace in the hole or whatever, you're like, this is there's no one like this in the 50s. Right. Like this is a harder edge. He feels like almost like a 70s actor or he straddles it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

My insomnia YouTube rabbit hole of this week has been watching inside the actor's studio. And I watched the Harrisonrison ford one last night and you know harrison ford is like so loathe to talk about his process and his craft and all that sort of talk at all right and and like even lipton is like we really appreciate you doing this because we know this is not the kind of thing you like doing. And at the end of the interview he goes in really tight for a handshake with Lipton. It's clear that he's

like, thank you. But there's a stretch of it that's really interesting. It's sort of what you're talking about where they talk about the Mosquito Coast, which I think he says is his favorite movie he made. Lipton is trying to sort of, not prod him, but push him on the like,

you've obviously lived a very lucky life. You're a very wealthy man. You're very famous. You're very successful. You're very respected. Does it ever feel like a burden that you are Harrison Ford? And sometimes when you try to make a movie like Mosquito Coast, people will not let you

or they will not accept it. They will reject it because they have such a specific idea in their head of who Harrison Ford is and what he represents. And Harrison Ford, in a very unself-pitying way, is like, yes, yes, that is the thing I fight with. And he said, I have always gotten the sense that you use the fact that you have these big franchises and these blockbusters to single-handedly get these movies made that would not get made otherwise, but you kind of

know selflessly that you're not really going to get credit for it, that people will struggle with you being seen or wanting to be seen in that way, and the movies will lose money. And he just sort of says, like, I think there's the assumption that when I make a movie like that, I'm hoping it performs like one of my blockbusters. And the reality is I'm making it so that it can be made. And Douglas, like, Harrison Ford was kind of trying to keep the Douglas tradition going.

But the difference is, by the time you get to Harrison Ford already, and obviously things go so much further afield in the decades past that. Yeah, but it's, right, you're already, the opening weekend is already, you're a slave to it or whatever. Right.

It's bifurcated. Because he's fucking Indiana Jones and he's Han Solo and whatever. And there was this moment where Kirk Douglas could be a guy who could, like, pick interesting directors, pick thorny material, but work within these major genres of the war picture, the historical epic, the Western, what have you, and make these morally ambiguous movies that still basically could be sold as mainstream to mainstream audiences. Some of them worked

hugely, some of them didn't work, but he was able to constantly try to make the challenging movie rather than being like, I got to make a dumb one to justify making the tricky one, you know? Well, everything you've said, let me now tell you what happened when they started to shoot the movie

because this feeds into that perfectly, which is that Douglas shows up there in Munich. I think they shot the movie in Germany and he's greeted greeted by stanley and jim thompson they had rewritten the script and kirk douglas says it's a catastrophe they'd taken this beautiful script and they'd ruined it they had stupid dialogue the dialogue he quotes sounds really funny such as you've got a big head you're so sure the sun rises and sets up there in your noggin, you don't even bother to carry matches. I mean, this is all from Kirk Douglas. That's a thinker.

Such an overcomplicated metaphor. But by the way, that's like the kind of dialogue that like rules in The Killing. You understand when they're coming off of like two fucking hard-boiled noirs. Yeah. Of course. Hard-boiled, weird dialogue. Right. But the most important change is that the movie suddenly has a happy ending.

The general's car arrives screeching to halt the firing squad. He commutes the death sentence. And Douglas calls Stanley and Harris to his room and says, why did you do this? And Stanley Kubrick, which he says, this is how Douglas puts it. He had a very calm way about him. I never heard him raise his voice. I never saw him get excited.

He just looked at me with his big wide eyes and he said, I did it to make a commercial. I want to make money. And Kirk Douglas just flipped out at them and was like, I only wanted to do this because of the script you showed me. We are shooting that script where I'm walking off this picture. And Stanley Kubrick was like, that's fine.

And they made the original picture. So this is, you know, yeah. Right. It's fascinating that like, yeah, Kubrick had sort of gotten in his head of like what a Kirk Douglas movie needs to be. And Kirk Douglas was like, I don't want to make Kirk Douglas movies.

I want to be Kirk Douglas and use that to make other movies. Yeah, exactly. This reminds me of a story I love from the production of Titanic where like they were going over time, they were going over budget. Fox sent down somebody to talk to James Cameron and was like, listen, just cut these scenes. Like, don't shoot them.

You'll get back on schedule that way. It'll be great. And James Cameron, according to Legend, was like, the only way to change my movie is to fire me. And the only way to fire me is to kill me. I believe I've heard that story and I believe it. I believe it 100%. Him just staring someone down

and being like, do you have a gun? That's the only way you're going to make this happen. I have a tough neck, so you're not going to be able to strangle me. Even a knife will bend. The thing is that's interesting and I feel like our researcher JJ has found this in a bunch of these dossiers, a bunch

of the research for these movies, like even the later ones. Stanley Kubrick always seems more concerned about making films that are commercial and successful than making films that are like he doesn't care about critics respect that much. No, he's not like, oh, my God, I have to please that, you know, like he seems a lot more concerned with like, well, I want it to be a hit because then I can make more movies. Like, yeah, it's interesting because it was it felt like that was the most important thing to him. But in a weirdly practical way of like, if the movie bombs, then it's over.

And I think more than that, that he knew he had such a particular way of making movies was so demanding that the moment those films stop being profitable, it's it's sort of the Cameron thing of like, what's a worse fate for him than not being able to make a movie is not being able to make a movie the way he wants to. Not being able to demand that level of control, that scale, those resources, that time.

And the only way he keeps justifying that is if the last thing worked. Yeah. But yeah, seem to not give a shit about critics or awards at all uh no not really no yeah not someone who really cared about the oscar or whatever they shoot it in germany in munich uh kubrick's marriage to ruth sabatka is on the rocks and he meets christian uh suzanne harlan uh who is the singer at the end of the film. Oh, wow.

I don't think I'd put that together. Yep. Who he marries, and they are married until he dies. So they are married for 30 plus years. That is his longtime companion. And it's incredible. And the ending of this movie is incredible. I mean, it's so sort of

unexpected and amazing. And so that whole like divorce and then kindling of a new romance plays out in the background of him making Paths of Glory. And then, you know, a lot of the other stories from the set of this movie, I don't know if it's going to shock you, Griffin, is about Stanley Kubrick making actors

do lots of take to their increasing frustration. Have you heard about this yes i've read i've read about this a few times now i'm not dragging jj i know like this is what always comes up is like you know whatever people recollect like what was like to work with stanley kubrick they're always like really serious played a lot of chess kind of cold behind the eyes lots of takes like you know that's what always comes up yes so yeah paths of glory let's let's talk about it it's a it's a great war film it's the great world war one film i don't think there's any disputing that right like what would its competition be like all

quiet on the western front i can't even think of another film yeah well that one i haven't seen that one yeah i'm out i i haven't seen it either have you seen it david i have yes it's very good uh and i feel like that is sort of that is it's it's obviously it's from like 1930 right it's it's uh you know a pre-code movie uh that it's just sort of the definitive like here is a fairly unsanitized Hollywood vision of what, like, you know, how tough it was doing,

you know, in world war one, it's, it's not jingoistic or sanded down. It's, it's, it's a, it's a really intense,

sad movie. And it's good. It's good. It's, it's like, you know, it's good. I'm a film critic,

professional film critic. I keep pointing as if that's gonna help it's good he's saying it's good it's very good david gives it one point uh one point i just think then i think of things like the lost city of zed or you know movies that have world war one sequences that are very impactful but but are not entirely about the war. Like it's more like the aesthetics of the trenches and the gas attacks and all that, I guess like 1917, you know,

became, look, I mean, I, I thought about 1917 a lot watching this movie just because the amount of trenchy shit, right? Like that,

that's the most trenchy movie we've had in recent history. But the one, the one whistleblowing sequence with Douglas for me is so much more harrowing and tense than anything in 1917, which is all about, oh, it's fucking unrelenting,

one shot doesn't end, you're stuck there with him. And he's not doing any cinematic trickery of that style. It's a very unfussy, he's just sort of tracking with him,

you know, at a relative speed. But there's something about, and with cuts, like, but it's somehow the way the tension builds in that. You feel, at least for me, I felt a greater sense of, without trying to put you in a sort of you are there place. Oh, how the fuck do you get out of this? Right, right. I don't know. You just hope to survive, right? You just hope your number doesn't come up.

I don't know how else to think about it. Yeah, no, truly. You just fucking walk in with a whistle just going like, look, how many more steps do I have to take? All I have to do is avoid 35 more bullets and I'm good. Do you guys have any relatives that fought in wars? My grandfather fought in World War II.

Might as well. Yeah. My grandfather, I think, organized the USO shows in World War II. That's such a Griffin Newman grandfather thing. Yep. Oh, my God. Wait, that's incredible. He fought in World War II, and then you cut to this guy being like,

all right, so you're going to open, and this guy's going to middle, and it's a rough crowd out there tonight. Hey, Bob Hope was very rude behind the scenes. That was a tough gig, all right? You got PTSD from that. The wildest thing about it is my grandfather absolutely looked like someone who personally strangled 50 people to death on the front lines in the war.

My grandfather looked like fucking Bob Hope as a thug, was like a big stocky guy with like a mean face and then when i say oh he organized uso shows you're like oh it was just griffin in the war and i was like no my grandfather like looked like an angry man uh i don't you like i don't know about world war one i think my my guess is that for my dad's like my dad's dad was too old to fight in world war two my dad was born during world war two and so my guess is like there was a similar generational thing where like maybe but i don't i don't know about my father's side of the family and then my mom's side of the family during world war one they were like you know penniless

immigrants or whatever so i don't you know i know so i don't have any world war one uh family stories for sure sure i don't know that i found out my family it's like pretty much up until well just not the vietnam but like korean all the way back um they were even revolutionary war they yeah serves in all these wars and it's just like you got one of those American families that goes all the way to the Revolutionary, right? You're all the way back. Well, there's the house in New Jersey that has been in your family for like six generations, right? Yeah, it's a house in New Jersey. Okay.

What are you going to do with that? A lot of buried jeans. Buried some jeans. That's true. I think my future invention is going to be a time travel app where you can like go back in time to visit your relatives and pressure them into buying real estate and you're like here's 20 bucks buy a bunch of acres i'll check in on it later you don't know what the east village is just trust me i i talk about this all the time the movie brooklyn where like they're like we're

gonna get out of here we're gonna sell this brooklyn heights brownstone disgusting and move to long island and i'm like no hold on to it oh my god that thing is a gem you're gonna get millions also but like those stories you always hear about like an artist who had like a fucking studio in soho or like chinatown in the 70s or the 80s and the landlord's like i don't know you want to buy this whole building what do you got in your pockets right now i don't know i can't be bothered with this thing it's a hassle owning it you might as well take it but yeah i just asked because it's like world war World War I, they seem justified. It makes sense why our relatives did this heroic, honorable thing. But then we've been discussing throughout this episode,

why would anyone ever fight in a war? Especially the way this movie presents war as just, like, the sort of nasty side of it. The, like, I don't know, probability, the math, the, like, the coldness of it all. i don't know probability the math the like the um coldness of it all i don't know like growing up as i was always like i don't know i don't get it i'm not a boy so i won't be drafted so i don't have to make peace with it at any time not that there's been a lot of drafting in our in our lifetimes. Um, but yeah, no, I, I never, something I've never gotten is like the, like the initial appeal of

it, you know, the like first 20 minutes of born on the 4th of July or whatever, where it's like, where you're like, I'm going to go to war and I'm going to fight and I'm going to have adventures and I'm going to distinguish myself. And then you get there and you see what it actually is. and I'm going to distinguish myself and then you get there and you see what it actually is and I'm curious about like I guess I've like never understood what illusions do people have going into it specifically as infantry it's like like you must know that the odds are that you will die horribly almost immediately and yet and so like what is the and like knowing that on some intellectual level like what do you think will happen to you that allows you to actually do it right why will you be why will you be invincible for whatever i mean i do think from what i studied just in world

war one i feel like it's widely you know like uh covered that like everyone going into that was like this is gonna be fucking six months flat like we are gonna be in and out like just like with covid just a bunch of celebrities sing a song six weeks playing monopoly we're gonna we're fine yeah everyone in germany and britain especially was just like come on boys let's all sign up we're gonna oh we are they are telling me that these guys basically just have pickles in their hands. We are going to wipe them out and it's going to be great. And we come home and we're heroes.

And then instead, everyone's like, yo, everyone seems to have machine guns and tanks all of a sudden. We got to dig holes and really hunker down. This sucks. And like, you know, it's this. Now I'm just like imagining like Fatty Arbuckle making like the Nickelodeon version of the Imagine video calling in like Rudolph Valentino. And there's no sound All those guys

were there. I'm sure they sound great so And you know obviously World War II is different because World War II is like there's this global evil we have to confront World War I, everything I ever studied about it in school and in school basically i was taught about the origins of world war one and then you we jumped right to afterwards like they were like we're not gonna actually teach you about the war it's too

complicated and boring at the same time like right that's not for high schoolers we'll just so we'll just do origins you know well you'll learn about france ferdinand and all that and then we're gonna do the treaty of versailles and all that like yeah and then we go right to world war ii we have the depression and all that um but yeah yeah it's like when you watch titanic at your grandma's house and you finish the first tape and you're like and then what you're like and and then they got safely to their destination i guess and then and yep it it arrived, and everyone got off in the normal way, down the stairs and so on and so forth. So it was great.

All I got was this lousy T-shirt. No, it's a... Look, I like Full Metal Jacket more than you, David, although we haven't gotten to that episode yet. I'm curious to rewatch it. But it is the thing that I think Full Metal Jacket does particularly well is you sort of understand the way these systems

are built to hype these young men up into not only is this a noble thing to do, but like, you're gonna come out of this being so fucking powerful and badass, you know? And the imaginary world of boot camp

where, yeah, hey, yeah, learn to put your gun together learn to march yeah right and then like the reality of it being just this like hell all the jelly donuts you want right right but it's this idea not just like i mean the way in our society obviously we like pay we we're told to pay such reverence to soldiers you know uh without necessarily properly supporting them. But also the sort of idea of like, this is going to turn you into such a high functioning person, you know, that that's so often, I mean, we're talking in modern terms, the military is, this is your

pathway if you can't afford college and you don't have a career path and you don't know what your thing is and you're going to come out of here and you're going to be able to do anything, you know? And I do think you talk about why these people show up and they get to war and they're just like, I'm going to fucking win this. I'm going to be a hero. It's because, yeah, there's a whole system built up for these kinds of things.

I mean, what this movie is so good at depicting is when the sort of, the illusion falls apart for these people. When the sort of narrative that they've been sold starts to dissipate and people start

actually critically viewing the things around them and questioning the orders and all of that. Paths of Glory. This movie is about a general who wants his soldiers to take over a position called the Ant Hill. It's French soldiers. They're all French.

Everyone in this movie, of course, is French. And it's very obvious that they're French. That's a joke about the accents. They're saying, the whole time. It's great. They hated this movie in france it's funny to read just like how vicious the fucking reviews were mostly because of that they were just like

he's taken so much care and effort to replicate all the details and it's all american actors making no effort to seem french but it wouldn't i mean this is like such a device like everybody attacks us differently but like it's i don't know. I think just having them all sound sort of generically American is the least obtrusive thing you can do. But I agree. I agree. I think it's way better than watching Kirk Douglas or whoever, you know, try to, you know, pan European accent sounding like Christopher Lambert and Highlander. Right. Because I think when I see that happen, it makes even less sense to me where I'm like,

why are they speaking English with French accents? Like, I pretty much think there are two ways to go about this. There's the inglorious bastards way where you're just like, everyone's actually going to speak the language they would speak.

And I will cast actors of that nationality for the roles. And very few people are given the creative and artistic freedom at that budget scale to get away with doing that. And otherwise, I think pretty much always the best approach is actors, bring your own accent. We just are going to tell you where they're supposed to be from and everyone just do your thing. I mean, like it's the huge problem with Valkyrie i mean that's not like gonna that movie is just okay anyway but you know everyone is just using their accents in that movie see i kind of like it in valkyrie i don't like it in valkyrie because i don't know why cruz is american and everyone else is british everyone should be british like

british people playing nazis that's fine that that happened for a decade that's how they you know that that's cinematically essentially how americans represent nazis on screen but then to have tom cruise in there makes it odd like anyway it doesn't matter uh the weirdest approach of course is what oliver stone did with alexander where he was like uh the macedonians will speak in irish accents that's why colin farrell can use his natural accent but then i will make val kilmer put on a bizarre irish accent right and then everyone else will speak in english accents except for angelina jolie who will do like a russian accent and you're like but none of these people wait wait a sec you know like you're like you

can't just like you know say that irish means this like it doesn't anyway you know what i want to see i'm sorry i'm like dragging us further on this tangent but like no please we love Hollywood loves doing Boston accents so much i do feel like we backed off in the past couple years yes yeah like let's do the you know the trojan army but they all sound like they're in The Departed. But that's right. That's what it is. You're doing some ancient war

and half the people talk one way, but you have all the Spartans are Boston, all the Trojans, whatever. You pick a country. You remake Paths of Glory with Mark Wahlberg and everyone else has to do a reverse Wahlberg, reverse engineered walberg accent that's what the people want well they're all french and uh general broulard who is a sort

of friendly fellow friendly kind of you know what older guy with a mustache is like can you please take the anthill and this guy general miro who's got like a big scar and it's kind of scary looking it's like well i don't want to do that like that's fucking impossible and brulard's like yeah but you could get like a promotion out of it and he's like all right well we'll just do it and that's that's the best part to me is it's not like okay well i'm gonna figure out how we'll do it he's just like yeah okay well i'll just go tell them to do it and they better fucking do it because otherwise I'll be embarrassed. Right? Like, he doesn't really have any more to offer them.

It's the weird, like, corporate ladder thing of war, where, like, all of these people fought at some point, right? Sure. And have now been promoted to the cushy office where they're not at risk anymore and immediately when you get the security of the four walls around you you no longer have any empathy for the people who are in the position that you just escaped right i did it how hard could this be and it's like well you didn't fucking live in a trench like we do. Yeah, right. How many people do I have to throw at this problem to increase my sense of security in

my current position or even rise to a higher position? George McCready, who is McCready, McCready, who is the scarred gentleman, as you were saying, Miro, this this is a real scar that he had. I was trying to get a sense of this because I was looking up other films of him and headshots, and it feels like in other films, they tried to downplay it

and cover it up a little bit, and in this film, they embellished it, but it is basically a real scar that size that i think they made a make look a little more intense that he got like driving in college he like got into like a car accident as like a frat boy but it makes him it so looks like a dueling scar right exactly it's like fucking perfect for this and this fucking guy owned an art gallery with Vincent Price. He and Vincent Price were best friends. And the two of them in Beverly Hills owned an art gallery that was half them being like, well, this is like fun. We have like a place to hang out rather than buy a bar.

Let's buy an art gallery. But they also were like big supporters of like up and coming young artists. And their place was like this fucking celebrity hot spot to buy art where like fucking greta garbo would come out of her cave that she was living in seclusion to look at the fucking paintings that mccready and price had on display could you just imagine walking into an art gallery and hearing those two voices talking to each other and it was just these two actors with their pencil-fin mustaches and slicked-back hair and fucking monster voices. You're looking at modern art in Beverly Hills.

And then what if you're in the, like, weird celebrity business district? And you're like, okay, this is great. This is really great stuff out of my price range. I'm going to go buy some socks from Peter Lorre now. Yes, yes. You're right. I'm going to lorry's knitting emporium yes i've been working on some scarves he's just like behind the behind the thing

with two needles i don't know this guy also george george mcready the guy you're talking has just a fabulous wikipedia Griffin. Are you seeing this thing? It's unbelievable. Yes. It's a headshot from this movie called Johnny Allegro, which is a great movie title. That's a great title. Some George Raft gangster movie.

And he just looks very patrician, but he looks great. He's got this bow tie and this kind of tweed jacket. He looks great. This is the IMDb trivia fact from Victoria Price, Vincent Price's daughter. They opened their gallery. It was called The Little Gallery. They opened it in 1943.

Their customers included Charles Lawton, Tallulah Bankhead, Barbara Hutt, and Fanny Bryce, Catherine Hepburn, and Greta Garbo. I know they probably weren't all there at the same time, but I just like to imagine an opening cocktail hour with those fucking voices. Like, that's like, that sounds like, it sounds like a premise for like a fucking SNL sketch

where everyone gets to show off the impression they have in their back pocket. I mean, I all, look, I also love Adolphe Menjou, the guy playing the top general guy, the sort of Frenchie guy, who is another absolute legend. He was in The Shake,

the old Rudolph Valentino movie. He was in A Star is Born. He was nominated for an Oscar for the front page. He looks kind of like serious Peter Sellers. is that crazy for me to say no that's yes that's fair yes you know kind of like dramatic peter sellers with a with a stash and all that he looks like what how peter sellers tries to make himself look apparently salvador dolly was a big fan of his and uh declared that he had one of the best mustaches so and that's from a mustache guy yeah that's a huge compliment he was also a total uh politically he was a a huge jerk who was

very republican and was very fond of the house on a committee on un-american activities i do i do should acknowledge that he was uh anti-polio vax he also he he he's the one who tore it up with with kubrick the most because i guess he's probably the biggest veteran uh where kubrick at one point was like all right take 42 guys and he was like you don't know what you're doing you're 29 years old like you don't know how to direct actors and kubrick listened to him and then just said quietly it isn't right and we're gonna keep doing it until it is right and we'll get it right because you guys are good. Where's the one I found here? He did

17 takes, Manju, and then he said, that was my best reading. I think we can break for lunch now. Kubrick said he wanted another take. Manju went into like, he fucking tazzed out, right, was yelling at everyone like full Christian Bale onset breakdown and he just let

him stop and then kubrick said all right let's try the scene once more he's just a stone wall even though he's like a baby just ice cold and manju went like okay and it just did it again like he would just fucking outplay people just by being unwavering. I think the casting of that guy is fantastic because he is likable. Like you are genuinely kind of charmed by him. He's this avuncular fella and he's just, he's maybe not just as evil as Mero, but he's, you know,

this benign evil person, right? Like he's like, he seems more sane than Mero, which makes him more evil at this point yeah because moroga seems to be fully losing it accountable to no one right moreau is so lost in his own like vanity of like i cannot be proven to be i can't be embarrassed by yeah he's our trump he's like let's fire on our own you know yeah right right i mean that whole so that's the

whole sequence that plays out in the movie obviously is they try you know yeah right right i mean that whole so that's the whole sequence that plays out in the movie obviously is they try you know uh general sorry uh colonel dax who is kirk douglas is like we're just gonna die if you do that like if you send us up there and he's like well jolly good you know pat on the back it's that it's that way it's about east southeast from here so you know give it a shot think of england or france or wherever we're from right yeah um and the attack on the ant hill is a complete failure and moreau uh orders his guys to open fire on his own troops to force more of them onto the battlefield and right i mean that's the main thing that happens there's the there's the sort of side plot about the nighttime mission that goes wrong but the main thing is just moreau losing it over them not following his orders.

And he's like, great, we'll just court-martial them all for cowardice. And the insane decision is made to try three men as sort of as proxy for everybody. Right. To make an example out of them. Yeah. And that is mostly what this movie is about. The main cinematic, like filmmaking conceit of this movie,

which is very simple, but just executed so well is like in that whole opening office sequence, you Kubrick's doing what later kind of becomes his definitive style of this sort of icy remove, super wide shot deep focus focusing on the silence you know the only other ambient noise you hear is the echo of the people's voices in these rooms and you know such clarity in the details of every fucking bobble on their walls on their desks and then when you go into war it is the most claustrophobic thing. It is this like

constant barrage of noise, the drums and the gunshots and whatever. And the disparity between the people making these decisions and the people who are forced to actually live through them. You know, the remove that the people in the offices have away from the people who are on the battlefields. And even, I mean, I just think he's so deliberate about when you get to the execution at the end, not to jump ahead, he shoots it with the same sort of intensity and claustrophobia of when they are on the battlefield

or when they're in the trenches, even though they are outdoors. And even something like the jail cell where they're being kept before the execution, he shoots more like one of the general's offices because there is actually a sense of security there, even though they know their death is imminent to like, well, but they're safe from the fucking shooting, at least until they are marched out and shot. But I just think the use of sound in this movie is so smart.

And the sort of the Kabrickian control of the language of, it's so much about the spaces and the energy of the spaces and the difference between where you are safe and secure and have the most power, you know? Even just the calm

with which this whole opening dialogue scene plays out. How casually they get to talk about everything, that when you first cut into the trenches and you're introduced to Kirk Douglas, a man who never, ever seemed chill. You know, whose

face is tense. I think that the sets are doing such an incredible amount of work here. I was noticing that just watching this again for today, and yeah, just how there's like one of the questions that I feel like anyone making a movie should ask themselves is like why is this a movie why is this not a play

or a book but like the the amount of work I think that and this is what seems one of the things that seems so smart to me where it's like you can can like, if you're doing any creative project, you can like feel like you're really getting something done because you're doing it in a very laborious way. And possibly many, many takes is one way of doing that, arguably. But like, just, I feel like it takes a lot of creative security to let something be easy for you. And just like the amount of work that those interiors do in the opening minutes for the audience of just like you just know in your bones you're like these people have no idea what they're talking about because how could you if you're surrounded by beautiful rooms and beautiful things and like no part of you is even thinking about whether this gash on your arm is

going to get infected any second now yeah Yeah, it's incredible that it actually, as sort of banal as those opening scenes are, it's building tension because you just know the second he actually cuts into the battle, it's immediately going to feel so absurd. Yeah. It's like the opening of any horror movie where the family's having a great vacation.

And you're like, this isn't going to last. And you're like, I'm so stressed out by this great vacation. Right. And if you're setting this as one end of the polar extreme, you know? God, it is so crazy, though. Why did they do this? It's so dumb. Why would they be doing this shit, man?

It's really dumb. It is the dumbest. It's the dumbest war of all time. Like, I think any military expert probably agrees with this. Yeah, well, right, exactly. But in terms of, like, we're solving this, right? We're doing it, guys. We're fixing it.

We are, yeah. Okay, great. You know, in terms of amount of people dead versus, like, goals achieved. Yes. Like, the disparity. Even if you think any goal achieved in war is bad like this one is really like no goals so many dead um no but yeah i was just i was just literally watching a clip of paths of glory like just to remind those those shots of him stalking through

the trenches with all the guys lined on either side and they just all look so miserable and then like there are moments where he sort of goes into maybe goes under a bridge or something and it gets really dark for a second that's that's the kubrick shit where you're like you know this is it's not just attention to detail and it's not just recreating something fairly accurately like the experience of it but just it's it's so like chillingly, awfully atmospheric. It's so cool. And you know, not cool.

Cool is the wrong word. Upsetting. Yes, yes, yes. It's the, I mean, this is the movie where he really starts to develop the understanding of how I can use cinematic technique

to make the audience feel a very specific thing, very viscerally. You know, which so often with Kubrick is, how do I make them feel uncomfortable? How do I make audiences miserable? Yeah. But then, of course, the whole movie

is these general guys being like, you guys are really embarrassing me up there. And they're like, did you just watch what they, are you kidding me? The worst thing that could ever happen to you just happened to all these guys. And the general's like, I'm going to have to put you on trial. I mean, and we're going to have to talk about this.

And just the extreme absurdism of them being like, could I say something in my defense maybe? And they're like, no, no, I don't think so. It's pretty obvious. You got, you know, that it makes it, uh i don't know it does make all that like very gentle dialogue it's toxic power dynamics okay like i'm sorry i've gotta say it it's very toxic can i say you're right it's very toxic what they're doing is very war is toxic very problematic it's so problematic sir i mean you were saying that this is like your Kubrick movie.

This is the one that really like has stuck with you in your life. What is your relationship to war movies in general? Like, do you feel like because I mean, I think David is more interested in war films than I am. And I struggle with them just because of the amount of panic they give me. It's a good question. I mean, the first thing that makes me think of is I remember going on a trip with my friend and her family when I was 13. And we were like, we were on a boat, but it was like a houseboat boat that you can move

around a lake. And it had a little TV and VCR and like the sort of like standard cottage selection of VHS tapes. So I remember watching thelma and louise and uh finding private ryan which i almost just call goodwill hunting but that's not no saving private see i can't even remember what it's called they made a huge impression they do find him my favorite movie they do also they should have done Saving Good Will Hunting, the Damon verse. Yes. And Saving Bobby Fisher and yeah, all of it. And I remember just like not knowing how to find a way into that movie. And I have not attempted to watch it again since I was 13 or however old I was at the time but yeah and just that being my assumption about how war movies are gonna go that it's like gonna be like I think that movie's depiction of D-Day right that's in there yes I'm very great grasp of what's in this movie and just this sort of and it's funny because I love horror

movies and I actually last night was watching Predator because I'm doing my homework before watching Prey, the Predator prequel, I guess. It was a very PR-heavy sentence. Prey, the Predator prequel, yes. Right. That should have been the full title. And I feel like Predator is as close as I get to a war movie where it's like these people are, you know, they're doing special ops. There's like a military element to it.

Right. Essentially, it's like a finite number of people at a remote location dealing with a scary thing. Like, that's what I love to see. Half of the movies I watch boil down to that in some capacity. And war movies, I feel like like I don't consciously seek them out I think war itself is like feels so complicated to think about and just the sort of you know what we've been touching on in this whole conversation of like that in America

we have a culture of like extreme reverence for people who are veterans of combat but also this like sense of like obviously it's very like we revere you because we would never dream of asking you to stop doing that and that's what you get in exchange and like that's a lot of so it's a complicated ethical situation to think through in entertainment i guess and it's just less complicated if it's like Arnold versus a guy who's like clearly a dick even for his planet. That's what I want to see. But that's the thing, like Predator, I think of as more of a combat movie than a war movie, you know, and like Commando is the same. And it's the reason why the two Top Gun movies are so wildly successful, because they sort of abstract the war so much

that you're like, this is combat. Right. Or they're like peacetime play acting. Right, right. This is just about fighting. You don't have to think about the larger structures of play. You don't have to think about what the greater goals are. It's about like how many.

It's about skirmishes. It's like playing Asteroid, you know? It's like, how many things do I have to shoot down or whatever? And I do feel like, I mean, the fact that you bring up the horror movies, but like, as a child, even probably into my teen years, when I would go see a horror movie, it would feel to me like those moments before going on a roller coaster, where it's like, I'm miserable right now. I'm shitting my pants.

I hate this. I don't want to do it. And then when you're on it, it's simultaneously punishing and thrilling. And then I feel good when it's done. Right. And then now I think I enjoy horror movies pretty thoroughly without that tension, without that fear, the anticipatory dread. But I do feel that way watching war movies where I'm like, God, I don't want to fucking watch this. Even if I know this is good, I don't want to fucking watch this. And the whole time I'm watching it, it's driving me insane.

And then when it's done, I'm like, I'm very glad I watched that, which is like how I feel about this. Saving Private Ryan, which is a movie I had avoided my entire life until we had to cover it for the podcast. It took me six hours to finish watching it. And then I was like, well well i love this movie

this movie's a masterpiece i'll buy it on fucking steelbook i will never watch it again because i was like oh it's a great film i want to study this i want to watch this again sometime and it's like i fucking can't i can't not just the immediacy of the combat because yeah it's a great steal it's a great fucking steal i'm happy to have it on the shelf but i i remember i put that movie on and forky was like this is so sad and i was like yeah i guess so i haven't seen it 50 times it is sad very sad uh sorry go ahead no i just i i i spiral out on those things and i i feel like this is a movie that is kind of explicitly about that, which is perhaps why I was going to say enjoy it more, but enjoy it isn't the word. I do think this is a great movie, but I am just clenching the armrest the entire time, equally in the battlefield sequences and in the fucking conversation dialogue scenes.

I guess I just love there's like a certain gratification of seeing a movie that's like, yeah, death is horrible, right? And like dying in combat is also really bad and being executed by your own side for basically no reason is even worse. And we're not going to console you with anything. That's just it. Like I've also been on a Rennie Harlan kick and I've been noticing how there's at least two of his movies deep blue sea and cliffhanger where someone who's about to die horribly says i don't want to die i assume so the audience doesn't think like well maybe they were cool with that happening and just like they're kind of like yeah i gotta go sometime also right tragic be the super shark. My greatest dream in life is to not die.

I hope it never happens. Oh, fuck, the guy just died. Right, it's like fucking Scully and McBain talking about wanting to retire to his boat. My dream? To keep living. I want to say a couple of things. One, Predator,

one thing I love about Predator, though, it is somewhat of a satire, like so many post-Vietnam movies, right? Where it's like, these guys are like are like well we could deal with this problem we have such big guns like surely all of our big guns will kill the predator and then obviously like they don't know how to handle someone who actually knows how to use their the environment against them um and then they eventually figure it out but you know like until they do a lot of bushcraft arnold got the merit badge for that exactly eventually eventually you know they get their noggins in gear saving private ryan i think is an incredible parallel to paths of glory because it's

also about a very absurd mission in that it's like hey guys you got to go get this one guy in world war ii because his brothers died and everyone in the movie is like well we're all struggling here you know like this it's not like this doesn't suck for me what this guy's brothers did so like i have to and they're like i don't know man we're drawing a line somewhere and you're gonna go get this guy we can't go back to his mom's front porch a fourth time and give her bad news again. Yeah, it's too fucked up. And in Saving Private Ryan, of course, there is there is like this because it's a Spielberg movie, partly, but also because it's a World War Two movie. There's this sort of like stirring good to it, even though it is a movie about the absolute

absurdity of like, how do we define heroism in these circumstances and then paths of glory is world war one so it's like yeah we did that for no good reason we accomplished nothing and one of you has three of you have to die because we're embarrassed about it i guess like because because in retrospect it was even stupider well they're like they're in an interesting way. They're kind of inverse movies because Saving Private Ryan is like we need to follow through on this mission. A, because it's a symbolic victory and B, because the the absurd awfulness of this thing has gotten so macro that at least there's kind of a micro. We can we can apply a micro empathy to one person who is outside of this thing and go wouldn't it be nice if we didn't have to give her bad news again whereas this movie is just like how am i supposed to fucking explain this to my boss someone has to fucking pay for this

and and then of course like the brilliance of having it's like, okay, well, three of you have got to get put on trial. And so it's like, well, let's pick this one guy who is no good. He's played by Timothy Carey. And it's like the most extreme man who's ever existed. Right. This guy's just obviously no good. We'll pick this guy. Then let's pick this second guy who kind of knows that I, you know, about the fuck up scouting mission we'll try and get him off the board to to burn one stone um fuck up he shot uh

his fellow soldier i would i would label it a little bit stronger than a fuck up okay it was a snafu okay you're right it was a snafu it was very it was very bad um and then they're like third guy they're like oh i don't know pick the third guy randomly and they're like third guy. They're like, Oh, I don't know. Pick the third guy randomly. And they're like,

okay, we picked a, it looks like he's a war hero. Who's been decorated a bunch. And they're like, uh, okay, fine.

We're doing on trial. And so then there's that moment where Kirk Douglas is like, Hey, can I point out that this guy like, is an absolutely like decorated hero. And they're like, shut up, sit down.

We're trying to get through this. We got lunch to get to. Don't, you know, come on. Don't even bring that up. That's like the most legally accurate moment in any movie. Just like, can I say something highly relevant and exculpatory? And they're like, no.

No, no, thank you. We don't want to hear it. Move it along. We should also mention that this is Kubrick and Tim Carey's second movie together and very much their last. Fully their last. Yes. This is where Kubrick is fully sick of him. Right.

He like fired Tim Carey. Despite his incredible face. And incredible performance. I think he's amazing in this. He's really good. He's so fucking captivating. But they essentially fired him the moment his final close-up was done and they were like everything else we can get done with a double

let's just prioritize the things that are on his face and then we'll turn some guy we'll get a fucking dentist the cape to bella lugosi him but but one of the things i mean like tim carrey just every take wanted to do something different, so continuity was a fucking nightmare. And I think he was so sort of, like, primal and behavioral in how he worked that he drove all the other actors up the wall. But during the making of this film, he fakes his own kidnapping. He did. He did.

And look, Griff, you don't like to, you know, he's trying to get some publicity going what's wrong with that it's the easiest way to juice up your imdb star meter numbers we all know this and it works out great for everyone who's done it he got himself tied up and gagged and put on the road in munich and the cops found him and were like what's up with you and he was like i was kidnapped and they're like okay and it became like a news story and he just fucking made it up right like new york times front page story yeah can you just imagine how fucking angry kubrick was where it's just like

first of all i can't get this guy to do what i want and now also he's fucking kidnapping himself he's making his own side movies i'm equally stressed out when he is on and off set so yes as you said they fired him uh when the last scene that his face would be in was filmed uh yeah they fired him the next day uh also the guy who played the priest emily sorry emile mayor uh really hated timothy carey because in the death scene, which is so powerful where he's saying, I don't want to die, you know, and he's being dragged. Timothy Carey would do things like bite his arm and like, you know, wrestle around and like, you know, harass him essentially. And the guy playing the priest really hated it. But but I guess Timothy Carey was like, hey, it's acting.

I don't know. Yeah, I mean, I kind of can't argue with the results as much as I am kind of happy I never had to hang with this guy. He's got a great face. The other guys are a little more anonymous, right? I don't know. Joe Turkle, who people would know from many Kubrick movies.

Becomes the bartender in The Shining, but also he's Tyrell in Blade Runner. Yeah, I mean there's an interesting cross-section of him finding some new company players in this film and him disposing of some old ones. Right. Who plays the other guy? Because Turkle

plays Arnaud, the war hero, the guy who's so beaten up at the end that he basically just gets tied to the post to be shot, because he can't stand up, which is horrible. It's incredibly brutal. I wrote a quote down. If he's still alive in the morning,

pinch his cheeks a couple of times. The general wants him to be conscious. Like, this shit sucks. Why the fuck does anyone do this? I'm not saying, why do they enlist? I'm saying like, why? Why? Why does anyone do it? like don't let him die we gotta kill him like this is all still basically happening except for the duck i don't think you're gonna get duck out of an american prison uh the duck looks good uh timothy carey of course ate that duck uh i want to find the exact number uh because it's because kubrick did so many takes of course uh he ate that it's pretty much a whole duck right right? Uh, 86 times.

That's the thing. The way he's eating it, they have to reset with a clean duck every time. It's not like he's just pulling a drumstick off and they can cheat it to camera. He would eat it different every time. Somehow, you know,

in that miraculous Timothy Carey way. Duck is gamey. Like I couldn't eat, like I couldn't eat two helpings very rich yeah yeah very rich really yeah it'll really that'll really uh put you to sleep at a certain point it's ralph meeker is the other guy right and he's he's from uh kiss me deadly and he's he was in the he's in the dirty dozen later and so you know he's he's a guy he's got a real you know sort of nice clean face

nice square jawed guy um but i don't i feel like we've talked about pretty much everyone in this movie now yes yeah we've yeah we've i don't think we really missed anyone here the execution is uh yeah is is very very powerful and horrible and then i really do find the next two scenes just as incredible the scene where dax has the showdown with broulard right where he's like i wasn't doing this for like politics like i i genuinely thought this was like a miscarriage of justice and broulard is like ew like what i thought i understood you gross you're right horrible Get out of my sight. And then the scene at the end with Kubrick's future wife singing this folk song, like,

is the best ending. And apparently Kubrick was really embarrassed about it because he was like, I know I have a crush on this girl. I'm not putting her at the end just because I like her. I promise you guys. And I would have been like yes Stan no I know it's a good ending yeah it's a really good ending

I mean there's also just that thing with war movies where you're like watching this she shows up and you realize oh I haven't seen a woman in 80 minutes right you know this is like a weird stance of mine I come back to a lot is that like I love it when movies like don't pretend to be interested

in women when they clearly aren't, you know, and some movies like, you know, this master thing stand by me. Yeah. Where it's just like we're living in a world of men and it's like, great. Thank you. I'm happy that you're admitting that's what you're interested in. Yeah, because then when they're like, it's a world of men, but also there's three women and they're horribly written and they're always like whipping their hair out of ponytails.

Yeah. And it's like, that's like if somebody is going to film something in Portland, Oregon, my hometown, and like get the geography all wrong and get it just like, it's like, just don't just, just admit that you're filming it in Georgia, which is where I, Tanya, was filmed because of tax incentives or something. It's like, just be like, we're filming it in Georgia, which is where I, Tanya, was filmed because of tax incentives or something. It's like, just be like, we're filming it in Georgia. It's set in Georgia. We're not saying this is the Pacific Northwest.

We're not claiming to know anything about women. It's like, thank you. Good. Go know things about men. You rather people are sincere in their shortcomings or their lack of interest rather than the sort of the token. Well, look, look. Yeah. Well, come on.

What if Guinevere was a Celtic warrior? There's this thing like, I mean, I keep on coming back to it because it's just the most fascinating cultural object of the year 2022, year of our Lord. But in the offer, of course, I've been fully Offer-pilled. Jesus Christ. Every episode ends with the people who made The Offer

talking about how great the episode you just watched was. Sure. I do love that. I do love the propaganda show. Yeah, the clip show that airs afterwards. It's maybe better than The Offer is that the sort of mini-sodes I get at the end of each episode of The Offer. But the co-showrunner, I forget her name, she was also the showrunner on the Al Pacino

Nazi Hunter show. Sure. Hunters. Yes. Oh, yeah. The show whose promo engines made me think, oh, Fisher Stevens is looking more and more without like Al Pacino. No, that's just Al Pacino.

But there's one of those things where she said, like, when I came onto this project, it was really important to me that the female characters weren't just accessories to the men and that they actually had their own victories. And then you're like, but they but they didn't. That's not accurate. You failed. Right. Right. It was important to me that we do that. And then we were unsuccessful.

Well, they're like she's like she's she's taking in breath to say the rest of the sentence and then we cut away uh what female characters are even in the offer griffin well there's like juno temple is al ruddy's assistant there's a character who's like the head of casting for Paramount. There's Al Ruddy's ex-wife who was the woman who owned the Chateau Marmont later joined the Wild Wild Country cult. Like there are a couple primary female characters like

that and they want to really build up like what they accomplished in this time. But she's stuck fighting against the reality of like it was Hollywood in the 70s. They made The Godfather. Right. And like meanwhile the show is like, it was Hollywood in the 70s. Like a very, very- They made The Godfather. Right.

And like, meanwhile, the show is like completely uninterested in like Talia Shire or Diane Keaton or the people whose like work on The Godfather was like tangible, right?

And I think maybe those two characters have three lines of dialogue between them. And like Talia Shire exists just to kind of be like a victim who's embarrassed on set.

It's, yes, it is that thing though. It's like, if you're dealing with the actual historical reality of this thing, but also the world this thing existed in, and especially when

the project is so much about, like, I don't know, the ills of masculinity and whatever, to put a woman in there being like, I just want everyone to know that i am making 67 cents for every dollar that yeah is making and it's like yeah it's

right and then if there aren't meaningful roles to give people then it just feels like another it's like you're being asked it's like you're getting an artificial sweetener you're like i'm not i know that this tastes like something but I'm not getting any energy from it. Right. Michael Gandolfini's in the offer. I'm seeing a lot of names here. Danny Nucci. I haven't heard about him in a while.

Everyone's in the offer. Danny Nucci. Paul McCrane's in the offer. The star of Titanic. Yes. Paul McCrane. The only gay person at Performing Arts High in fame. You guys, you got gotta take the pill.

You gotta accept the offer. The iceberg is on the show. Yeah, the iceberg's on the show. You gotta, you must accept it. I will, however, never forget describing to my brother, having just seen Titanic when I was 11 years old, and he was like, what happens?

And I was like, well, at one point, the smokestack falls on this Italian guy, and he goes, Mamma and i was like well at one point the the the smokestack falls on this italian guy and he goes mama mia before it kills him then i re-watched the movie and i was like oh he doesn't say mama mia but i just as an 11 year old i just imagine that he did in your mind he was spinning a pizza on one finger rightling his mustache. Yeah. He's like, it's a me, Fabrizio. I'm looking for Wabrizio. I mean,

I mean, the film's portrayal of the, of, of the Irish American community is, is, is pretty much that nuance. So I guess that's what I was going for. But Danny Nucci,

what a name. Here he is. I'm happy for him. Yeah. I'm happy for him. Yeah, I'm happy for him too. Paths of Glory. I don't know. It's a blessedly short movie, Griff. We were saying this.

Yes. Because the works of Stanley Kubrick is a lot of long ones. You got Spartacus and Lolita coming up after this, which are both over two and a half hours long. But also, I mean, this is in many ways a punishing movie. It is able

to thoroughly explore its subjects and its themes and you know, really place you in this world, but get you out within 88 minutes, which is kind of blissful. You like appreciate that it didn't, uh, it didn't torture you for the sake of it. You know, this goes to my very strong belief that like for a horror movie to be like over 90 minutes

and like really 80 minutes, I think is typically the ideal length, but like, I'll give you up to nine on top of that. and then if you're like 90 minutes long or longer it's like okay you've got to be really high concept for this to be worthwhile because I and I do think that this like in terms of the emotions it creates for me it's to some extent a horror movie because it's like you sit down you know that things are not going to go well unless you've like only seen the poster in which case maybe you think they'll go great for everybody and you're just like you're you're like okay i'm just watching everybody be ground down by this relentless unstoppable wheel and that's what i'm in for and like if you're watching

a movie where like there's the idea at any point that there's real hope for people, I think you can endure that for longer. But this is like... I was curious also. I wonder if there's behind-the-scenes information that you guys have about... Was it just what... Well, I guess they had a pretty good budget, so it's not like they were forced to make something short. It's interesting to me that Kubrick made a short movie. That's interesting to me that kubrick made a short movie that's interesting it is interesting that this movie is short although as griffin says it gets it all done and it's quite punishing to what like you know a two and a half

hour version of this movie might be unwatchably brutal right right yeah i i think it would become numbing yeah but maybe it is a budget thing in terms of like we have a moderate budget and we have the scale we can do the scale of the big battle right but that's it like there's not going to be like multiple you know it's going to be one big battle and then a lot of chatting and uh prison stuff and yeah right that's the thing, knowing the budget of this movie relative to the budget he gets on the following films, I was surprised by how big the battlefield sequence felt. You know, how wide it is, how many people there are, how many explosions there are, how extended it is.

It goes on for a long time. And the answer is, like, that is the money sequence. And then the rest of the movie takes place in ditches and offices yeah i do think it's a great film that's really i did too on paths of glory yeah yeah i really have uh not anything bad to say about it yeah i i think it's one of his best films and i think it is unusual that it's, you know, I think even people who love the killing, the sort of fear and desire, killer's kiss, the killing run feels like, well, that's the

developmental, that's him figuring out his stuff, right? The killing is when he finally has sort of like a real grasp on the language. And then this somehow gets stuck in this zone where it's not thought of as one of the important ones, I think. Because from this movie on, it's like everything he does is huge and iconic and historic to some degree, you know? And I feel like this sort of sometimes gets lost in the shuffle, but I think it's one of his best films. I think Ebert even argued it was perhaps his best film. I'm not a Kubrick completist, so I can't say.

I need to see, you know, you have to see everything before you can pronounce. But I mean, to me, it feels the most complete and coherent and like this sort of like perfectly crafted box, you know, where you're like a puzzle box. Everything fits together. Everything's tight. Everything works. And then I feel like once you've made that you might be kind of bored by the idea of doing that again because you've already done it and then you would be like okay like what happens if we get baggy what happens if we really like play with boredom yes yes the film came out in 57, Christmas 57. Although we're going to do the box office game from like early 58 when it went live.

Zero Oscar nominations, but he gets, it gets BAFTA for best film nomination. He gets a Writer's Guild nomination, Kubrick for the script. Yeah, so that's right. It was a well-received film that probably broke even-ish. You know, it like did okay. It's big problem, of course,

was it was not really released in Europe. It was apparently not even shown to the French censorship board. Wow. Because they knew there was no chance that France would allow it. It was shown in Berlin, but there was so much protest

that it was removed from the slate of the Berlin Film Festival. What were people protesting? That it didn't make them look like cool badasses? I don't know. I guess it's basically just like, this is too touchy for us, even now, I guess. Yeah.

I do appreciate it as a war movie where everybody comes out looking terrible. You don't get a ton of those. No. That's the thing about the idea of like kirk douglas saying like oh he wrote this happy ending script i'm like what you know supposedly the general comes in and is like forget about it but like there's no character here to turn to yeah like there's no one in this movie where you're like well if kirk douglas could just talk to this guy who clearly has some moral backbone then maybe it's like no, the guy doesn't exist.

Like, it's just there's no one around. You haven't set up a little rel who can show up at the end in the cop car and save you. Yeah, we need to do the National Lampoon Christmas Vacation ending where Brian Doyle Murray shows up and is like, OK, you guys, I've sorted it out. It's going to be fine. It would be great if it was literally Brian Del Murray shot early

he might have been alive yeah it is like I think it's you know what I am gonna say I think it's the

best movie ever made about the American legal system and it's a war movie set in France so I mean and that's a good

argument for everyone doing an American accent you know not attempting to play French. Like, it might have been someone intentional. It's just, they're just doing a Ratatouille. It's just like, why is Brian Dennehy in France? Who cares?

It's fine. Forget it. Yeah. Kubrick, of course, also the other thing is he makes no money on this movie. Yes. Which is one reason he's going to Spartacus. Because he really needs to make some money. Daddy's got to get paid. Because he

deferred his salary based, you know, hoping it would grow some money and it doesn't grow enough to pay him. Should we play the box office game, Griffin? Yes, please. Okay. So Sarah, this is the segment where I try to guess the box office of the weekend the movie came out,

which is based on the fact that my father and I would read the box office together every Monday as, like, the equivalent of him doing that with the sports scores with my brother. That's lovely. I will say it gets exponentially harder when the box office weekends are from 50 years before I was born. 50 years before you were born. I'm doing the math. It's not the best. Whatever. You're very well spoken for a

14-year-old, I must say. I don't know how old I am or what year I was born or when this movie came out. The only math I understand is at the box office. Yeah. Well, Griffin, number one at the box office the week that Paths of Glory goes wide is the Best Picture paths of glory goes wide is the best picture

winner of 1957 which is still just dominating in theaters the winner of also a war movie it's a war movie it's also a war movie and it's about the futility of war but it is an epic war movie in, you know, beautiful technicolor with all kinds of great performances. It's a really good movie. It's from a Technicolor? From a major... Oh, oh,

is it Bridge on the River Kwai? It is the Bridge on the River Kwai. Yes. By David Lean. It's with Alec Guinness and William Holden. Have you guys seen Kwai?

You guys gone to the bridge? I have not crossed the bridge. I saw like the first 20 minutes with my dad once because like he was a Technicolor war movie guy. But we would often watch the first 20 minutes and then become bored. It's very much a movie. I have been waiting to catch a rep screening of

that I'm just like, I should see that in a theater and I've never had the right opportunity. Incredible Alec Guinness performance. Obviously he wins the Oscar. Number two at the box office is a literary adaptation of a Russian masterpiece. Okay. And I feel like one reason that this movie is getting made is that the star is a russian there is a russian actor who is a major star at the time

y'all brenner y'all brenner himself so i guess they were kind of like uh okay let's i don't know is there some russian stuff we could put you in right like you know because i i did not i did not know about this movie. I actually was unaware of this one. Huh. But it's a Yul Brynner picture based on a great novel, great Russian novel. It's directed by Richard Brooks.

Huh. Griff, who made, you know, In Cold Blood. Yeah. And Elmer Gantry. What genre is it? I don't know. It's sort of like an epic family drama. It's about a family.

All right, I'm just going to tell you. Yeah, what is this? It's the Brothers Karamazov. There's a Yul Brynner Brothers Karamazov movie? Yes, starring Yul Brynner and Lee J. Cobb, who was nominated for Best Supporting Actor. Wow. Pretty cool. Yeah, I mean, as Cobb, who was nominated for Best Supporting Actor. Wow. Pretty cool. Yeah.

I mean, as you said, no idea this movie existed. I think of Russia. I think of Lee J. Cobb. Yeah. Right. Listen here, Dimitri. And William Shatner. Shatner's in this.

Yes, a young William Shatner. You've also got Maria Schell, who I feel like people might know, Austrian actress from, you know. Wow. Some classics. Yeah. a young william shatner uh you've also got maria shell who i feel like people might know austrian actress from yeah wow uh some some classics uh yeah so that's number two number three uh is a great courtroom drama from a great director one of his sort of straightforward noir dramas uh it's not judgment at nuremberg no no it's not the director

made a lot of comedies that's why I sort of say it's like one of his dramas is it a Wilder but this is like yeah it's a Billy Wilder film it's a Billy Wilder courtroom movie not for best picture it's got a really good performance this will probably give it away by Charles

Lawton as the prosecutor he's the lawyer fuck what's it called it's got one of those legal sounded titles yes yes it's called Witness for the Prosecution

I knew it was something for the prosecution yes okay thank you Tyrone Power, Marlena Dietrich and Charles Lawton swinging in as the big lawyer guy. And Elsa Lanchester, your favorite. The Bride. The Bride of Frankenstein herself.

Yeah. Good movie if no one's ever seen it. Well, the Bride, excuse me, the Bride of Frankenstein's monster. Frankenstein was actually the name of the scientist who made the monster. Thank you. Number five at the, sorry. Number four at the box office is a Best Picture winner from 1956 that's been re-released.

Whoa. And is just making more money. One of the worst films to ever win Best Picture, supposedly. I've actually never seen it. A Great Show on Earth? Nope. Right by. Three-hour epic comedy. Around the World in 80 Days. With a bunch Three hour epic comedy.

Around the world in 80 days. With a bunch of stars. Yes. Around the world in 80 days. Yeah. Never seen it. Me neither. Anyone seen around the world in 80 days?

I watched the opening sequence once. It was like five minutes long. It's like an early Saul Bass sequence. That's all I got. I saw the Jackie Chan version. the jackie chan version a lot shorter uh sure sure coogan's in that one right yeah frank caracci picked her picture that's got a weird ass cast it's it's schwarzenegger's last movie before he becomes governor yes yes i remember that what a life um number number five gr Griffin, you will never have heard of.

It is a documentary film shot in Cinerama, which is the Cinerama. No, yes, yes. Three screen. No, just for our listeners. Curved thing. And it's about the search for, well, you know what?

It's called Search for Paradise, and that's what it's about about like looking for shangri-la is it an ad for the city of trenton of course of course of course it's about trenton new jersey um no griff it's about like some air force guy who retires and goes looking for you know paradise in his fighter jet, I guess. And so it's a lot of like aerial photography and stuff. I don't know. It sounds boring as fuck,

but it was enough of a hit to chart. The other movies in the top 10, you've got Rain Tree Country. Okay. Which is like a Monty Clift, Elizabeth Taylor, like a Southern romance,ift Elizabeth Taylor southern romance big civil war gone with the wind kind of thing, never seen it

you've got a farewell to arms the movie adaptation of the Ernest Hemingway classic one of the many adaptations I guess and you've got cowboy, Delmer Dave's movie I've never seen that with Glenn Ford which I've seen, I think I have I guess. And you've got Cowboy, a Delmer Daves movie.

I've never seen that. With Glenn Ford, which I've seen. I think I have the criterion of it. Isn't there a criterion of it? Oh, boy. With Glenn Ford and Jack Lemmon, which is a blast and was famously written in a bathtub.

Oh, boy. Splish splash. It was written by Dalton Trumbo. It was Trumboed and then and god created woman which is that roger vadim movie yeah yeah bardo that like i remember watching when i was a teenager like a little teenage cineast being like all right this thing's gonna be really raunchy and then you watch it you're like oh i see it's raunchy by 1950s standards. Yeah, this movie has a full on neck. This movie's got so much hair over boobs.

You're going to go crazy. That's why it's called necking. The neck is the sexiest part. It was rated X for two shoulders. There's something so weird about this period where color has existed comfortably for a while but there is still a lot of black and white co-existing like you have like technology like Cinerama you have black and white as an artistic choice even if it's becoming less commercial you have huge sort of modern epics and smaller intimate things where like

that grouping of movies you just listed off don't feel like they exist at the same time for me. It's true. They feel like 20 years on a spectrum of like 20 years. It is crazy.

Somehow some of those movies feel like late 40s movies and some of them feel like early 60s movies and all of them are in the mid to late 50s. It reminds me of when in the Hudsucker proxy I think they mention at some point, they're

like, yeah, it's like 1958 or something. And you're like, oh, my God, you guys have you're like very close to all of this being completely different. That is the best movie. We love it. If we ever do the Coen's, it's mostly for like the Hudsucker and Hail Caesar episodes, in my opinion. Yeah, I feel like Hudsucker

is the episode I want to do more than anything and Hail Caesar is the one that you want to do more than anything and we like all of their movies but those are the fucking two that we're like jonesing to talk about right the movies that when they came out the critics were like this is very accomplished but why did you do this

and for who and the answer was for all of us who found it over the years right the oh this is this is a a smaller effort from the codes love to call things a minor effort it is the best best thing that critics do and i'm among them where i'm like minor effort i'm like you know what what do i fucking know you don't fucking know sir i've been listening to episodes of you are Good and really enjoying it. And as I said, we have so many guests. If you are a listener, blank check, who have been on this show, have been on your show, Julie Klausner, recent guest. Gether, as I mentioned, Dana Schwartz, Josh Gondelman.

We haven't had Julia. Oh, no, we did have Julia on. Oh, my God. We have to have her on again. That's right. She talked about Pretty in Pink. I'm like, have her in my, like, to get back on category. You should make the show. You know more about it than I do.

Hey, hey now. But also so many great movies and actually like auteur driven movies that we have not gotten to cover yet. It was really fun listening to like the Groundhog Day episode with Gondelman is is great. That's a movie that's very ripe for exploring through the prism of human emotions. But I highly recommend it. And I feel like we don't need to recommend You're Wrong About because it's a humongous show that everyone loves. That's one of the commonly accepted higher art podcasts in the world. Naturally. Yeah, I mean, I do.

I feel like You Are Good is my like second child who like people. It's like my Gordy and stand by me. I'm like my older child is a big ballplayer. But, you know, my younger child writes stories and I'm very proud of them. This is if Gordy had supportive parents. But thank you so much. That that means a lot to me because this is a wonderful show. And I feel like it's true. And I feel like it's like I actually I'm curious what you all think about this. I feel like when I introduce my show, I'm like, I would never call it a movie criticism show because I feel like the term criticism, at least on the Internet, has come to mean like nitpicking something to the point where you're like daring anyone to admit that they're capable of enjoying it regardless of what it is and i feel like movies are something

where like if you're entering the conversation without checking your own baggage and being like i am admitting like these are the things that i love and irrationally just like want to experience and we're not going to have an entirely rational critical conversation because like to be willing to talk about a movie for an hour is like either you hate it so much that you have a ton to say about it or you're a fan and there's some I feel like some amount of love has to go into a conversation about movies and I appreciate you making space for that yeah I mean well it's very nice of you to say and I don't want to speak for David

who is a professional film critic but I feel like we always just try to remind ourselves that like oh right the function of this show is the two of us specifically as people and whoever the guest is talking about their relationship

to that movie, rather than trying to offer the definitive history or complete analysis for any of them. Yeah. I love that. Um, yeah. Also,

we just like talking about movies. We don't, I like talking about movies and I do, I agree. Like, you know, I just, I don't know.

And sometimes there's bits to, we, we, no, we don't. No, no, no, no, no. But we don't. You're right, you're right.

It's a no-bits podcast. It's very serious. Sarah, thank you so much for being on the show. And I thank you to Heidi Vander Lee for helping organize this, along with all the other people I've mentioned who recommended that you be on the show over the years. And thank you all, you listeners out there,

for supporting the show. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Thank you to Marie Barty for our social media and helping produce the show in countless other ways. Thank you to Joe Bone and Pat Reynolds for our artwork. AJ McKeon and Alex Barron for our editing. Lane Montgomery and The Great American Novel for our theme song. JJ Barron for our editing, Lane Montgomery and the Great American Novel for our

theme song, JJ Birch for our research. You can go to blankcheckpod.com for links to all sorts of nerdy shit, including our Patreon Blank Check Special Features, where we do franchise commentaries and other sorts of bonus things. We're doing the

Roger Moore Bond movies right now. And some fun little Kubrick bonuses as well coming down the pike. Tune in next week for Spartacus with Richard Lawson. Although a lot of other people stood up and announced that they were the guest

on that episode. Like Richard did say, I'll guest on Spartacus. And then other people went, I'll guest on Spartacus. I'll guest on Spartacus. But I do think Richard Lawson was the guest on that episode I think so I think so we're still unpacking it if memory can be trusted yeah uh and as always war is fucking stupid