Blank Check with Griffin & David - Spartacus with Richard Lawson

Episode Date: August 28, 2022

I am Spartacus! I am Spartacus! Heck, we’re *all* Spartacus today as we talk about the “sword-and-sandals” epic that solidified Stanley Kubrick’s hit-making potential…and soured him on Hollywood forever. Vanity Fair’s Richard Lawson returns to the pod and we’re covering all the major topics: How did a young Kubrick manage all the different stars on set - many of whom were accomplished directors in their own right? Was Kirk Douglas’ chin cleft real? Did Dalton Trumbo write the script for this in a bathtub? Why does Tony Curtis always sound like he’s ordering something from a deli? 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

i am podcast i am podcast i am spartacus i mean podcast i am podcast. I am podcast. I am Spartacus. I mean podcast. I am podcast. I am podcast. I thought you might say podcastist or something. That was my only question.

Well, it could have been the name of the miniseries. Podcastist? I want you to say, I also podcast in the way that Tony Curtis says, I also juggle. I also podcast. I juggle as well. I juggle. Whatever he says. It's so good.

I feel like that's weirdly become this movie's lasting legacy is just impressions of how much Tony Curtis sounds like he's ordering a sandwich at a deli every single line of this movie. Which way to the G train? I just think that one second moment in Clueless where they're watching it you're not as big a Clueless head as me I like Clueless every time I watch it and I'll maybe watch it every couple of years I wait for it to hit me the way it hits you

and it still has yet to but there are other movies that take a while I used to be able to recite that movie and of course Christian brings christian brings over sporadicus which is some like it hot and sporadicus is what she says yeah he brings over some tony curtis movie christian is is the closeted yes guys she's crushing and they watch him again you know i don't know that that guy ever like really amounted to he's one of those 90s guys where you're like he should be he seems like he's gonna be a star yeah he didn't. I don't know where he went.

But the sporadic joke. I'm saying to him, you think Sammy Davis Jr.'s death left an opening in the Rat Pack? He's got the hat. Such a brutal omen. I have a 45 and a shovel. Nobody would miss you.

I can really quote the entirety of it. We watch Clueless together many years ago. I think that's right. We did. I came over to your apartment on 13th Street. Remember when you lived in Park Slope? That was years ago. Yes.

Yeah, that's right. When I was like a baby. Was Becca in town? Is that your? Yes, Becca was in town. You were nursing David, right? Yeah. I was a true baby.

I had just moved to New york yeah you i think you were like did you even have an apartment then i think i didn't i think i was still living like i was crashing on a couch you stayed at our place once i believe did i i mean i did yeah yeah i mean wait wait what's christian's justin walker is the name of that guy and he just never really it was his first movie but he never really wow it was so surreal seeing the actual scene because i'd never seen spartacus before yeah but i'd seen that one little clip from clueless like hundreds of times yes and it really does stand out in the movie well because you are like holy shit who is your face tony curtis like i mean he's so pretty yeah he was a pretty guy there's that story i mean tony curtis i believe would

tell this himself tony curtis would tell stories about himself show me tell you a story uh i mean he's a big star at this point or not a big yeah yeah he's a pretty big while i wait for the sandwich here on green point avenue is this one of those where I have to run to get it? Russian dressing. He has a story. What's Tony Curtis's story? What acting school was he a part of? I'm trying to, he was part of one of those legendary acting classes or acting schools. Oh, let's see. Okay.

I'm not sure. I'm not seeing that here. But he was in the group with Matthau and like a couple other fucking like hang dog rumpled suit actors sure when they were all the same age right and they would all shit on him for being a shitty actor yeah apparently like part of the crew rock uh hudson piper laurie james best a lot of these guys his joke is i was a million in one shot i wasn't the low man on the totem pole i was under the totem pole in a sewer i don't get the respect. Yeah, I don't know why he's Dangerfield all of a sudden.

It was Matthau and someone else I'm forgetting would really pick on him. Sure. And just be like, you can't fucking act. You can't fucking act. You're never going to make it. You can't act. Do you think Matthau's negging him because he's like, Tony Curtis is like 40 times prettier than him? This is the thing.

Right. So then like four months later tony curtis is like starring in movies sure and tony curtis was like the first thing i did when i became a picture star i bought a fancy car i put a woman in the in the passenger seat and i drove by and i went hey fuck you math and that gave way to grumpy old men right and he was like math i was just jealous because he couldn't get pussy. But the incredible thing about that story is just to think that Matthau was sitting there

and he's like, now I'm going to will myself into being one of the leading men of a generation. That Matthau didn't just become like some fucking show. Show him. Yeah, no, you're right.

That Matthau became like an action star and a comedy star and a drama star and won Oscars and was a box office draw into his 80s. Yeah, Matthau probably

has him beat, but they're both pretty big. Yeah. But Tony never got an Oscar. And Curtis's run was a box office draw into his 80s yeah method probably has him beat but they're both pretty big yeah but tony never got an oscar but and curtis's run was a lot shorter never had it shorter yeah yeah yeah and then and he also had the weird dual thing of like being the gay icon that he and he kind of always like pushed that away like but also then embrace it yeah yeah it was a weird wasn't he one of the people who like was really vocal against Brokeback Mountain? He's like, yes, disgraceful. John Wayne would be rolling in his grave. And they were like, Tony, what's your best picture pic?

Harry Potter and the gun. I remember that in the same year. Those kids went to the prom. It was great. They were like, I mourn his loss. For some reason, that's the funniest one for him to like but just the idea that he was shitting on broke back so much and they were like so what are you gonna say capote are you a crash guy and he was like i give it to that pot of kids fifth time's the charm

but that's really funny it was like a liz smith interview and he's like love that pot of kid radcliffe is really growing into a fine young actor i mean my favorite thing did you watch um the potter reunion thing and i know this is just a huge i did i did sadly um i watched it and i had just re-watched all the movies because it was like with whichever fucking strain it was the omicron one or whatever i did the same yeah and um you know i'm goblet is my one of my favorite of those books and what always been one of my least favorite movies because they kind of just squeeze it in and you're like yeah this one's not that good it was a bad and it's like newell and then in that documentary you're like now goblet and you're like well they'll just skim

past this one right and everyone's like mike newell had the energy of a guy on cooking who just stole their car yeah and like you see these set clips of him where he's charging at the actor. He's like, and you're like, this is not what I expected. Goblet has that insane concert sequence where it's Jarvis Cocker. Yes. And it's got the Jarvis Cocker

is part of the Weird Sisters. You know, it's at the prom at the Yule Ball. And they do the World Cup. And they do the World Cup and they do the tournament world it's a sequence of like what would a wizard rock concert be like that has the subtlety of like the b-52s playing the bc-52s and the flintstones right right right um anyway it just is really funny that like rad clip you know they're just cutting all these talking heads with like yeah mike was really intense and yeah fucking mike newell you would you think he's the sleepiest guy he's just like whispering instructions to jim broadbent on like the set of whatever tony british movie he's

making right you know that's that's what i imagine from mike newell i think that's the worst one but it weirdly just like it has the lasting legacy of like that's the the first of all the mart and and and fucking and patents patents and fines kind of like that's the the first of all the mart and and and fucking and patents patents and fines kind of keep that movie relevant this to go back to tony curtis this picture is not as important as we make it it's nothing unique the only thing unique about it is they put it on the screen and they make them gay cowboys howard hughes okay and john wayne wouldn't like it i i don't think we should be guessing what howard hughes also and john wayne wouldn't like it i i don't think we should be guessing what howard hughes also by the way the list of things howard hughes didn't like very long notoriously

germs when asked hated them when asked to name his favorite film of the year curtis replied harry botter and the goblet of fire so thank you i will never forget that why would you what a thing right because it was so many people so many actors of that generation were saying that same shitty stuff about brokeback but he was the only one to counter with harry potter yeah ernest borgnine didn't come up with anything i don't think yeah yeah i just like why did they bring up john wayne like john wayne wouldn't like a lot of shit right now yeah you know what i mean like most shit 2006 and you'd be like here's what's you know what do you think of transformers it would drive him insane curtis what what is the sort of curtis run

i guess i didn't realize and it didn't really come out until after he died that he was just completely fucking dubbed in uh some like it hot is he There was always the thing of like, oh, some of it... Because he's talking like that. Well, for the... When he's in drag. Oh. That he couldn't do it. And I think they always said, oh, some of it's done.

And after he died, they were just like... He did a Cameron Diaz thing where he did a patois, like a Caribbean, and they were like, oh, that's just a dozen words. One of them was like,

Brianna, I'm gonna fuck this car. Let me fuck this car. So, he comes to Hollywood in the late 40s Like we said He was a universal guy And they taught him how to You know, whatever

Act He's a Bronx kid, right? But he was one of those guys Where it's just like This guy's so fucking pretty He doesn't even matter Just put him on screen So good looking

And he does like You know, he did a Douglas Sirk movie He did Houdini with Janet Leigh who he was married to playing Harry Houdini and then let me get out of this jacket real quick oh no my appendix

I feel like too much water one of his first huge hits weirdly is that movie trapeze with burt lancaster uh which i've never seen this jacket ain't straight keep doing it guys right so he does back gotta walk this rope real quickly i'm on a trapeze right he does that and then the next year reunites with lancaster to do sweet smiles etc which is probably his best movie and his best performance yes And it's such an incredible

movie, but it's obviously a box office failure because it's too dark. But it gets good reviews. Some Like It Hot's the other one that sort of solidifies him in film history, even though it turns out half the performance isn't him. But then it's Defiant Ones the year after that. That's his Oscar nomination. I believe it's his only Oscar

nomination, which is a little rude. Sure. And then Some Like It Hot the year after that, which he's great in. I believe it's his only Oscar nomination which is a little rude and then some like it hot the year after that which he's great in he talks like this the shell stuff is really good when I was like 9 and I saw that movie

the first time he held up the shell I was like this is a good bit it's one of those things I was a little kid I was maybe younger than that and my parents were like we went i was a little kid i was maybe being younger than that eight and my parents were like we went over someone's place for dinner and they were boring and my parents were like you kids like sit in the room watch a movie and we're like what movie and they looked through and it was like the only movie they had on vhs they thought would appeal to us

anyway was some like it hot and i was like i don't want to watch this boring fucking movie that is exactly my mom was like we're going to the national film theater but we're gonna see it in britain in london yeah of all places yeah and i was like this movie's like black and white i'm like nine years old i was like this is gonna be boring and she's like you're gonna like it also has the 80s action comedy thing where like the opening five minutes or 10 minutes are like straight and they're just like this is just some gangster movie this is not my kind of thing and then i was like it's gonna be funny i swear to god and then the moment the jokes kick in i was like you're fucking right this thing plays what year was that uh 50 that's 59 right that's 15 so spartacus is the year after then sporadicus

uh which of course this movie we're talking about today was the biggest hit of 1960 it was a gigantic hit huge hit uh and then the outsider know, we're getting in trouble here. You know, it's immediately, it's like movies I don't really know that well. So it's like a 10-year run. Captain Newman, Paris When It Sizzles. He was also one of those guys who sort of aged weirdly. Like, his face made sense at a very specific age range. Yeah.

And then when he's, like, got wrinkles on his face, but he's still got those eyelashes. I mean, he looked weird later in life. He had work done too. No, but I'm saying even before the work done, he was a guy who was like, was so boyish. The second he got older, it didn't really click. We have to acknowledge in 68, he takes out his own money or like takes a giant pay cut or whatever to do the Boston Strangler. Oh, sure. And that was seen as a comeback at the time.

It was like, oh, this is like a dark a dark movie yeah but it didn't really pay off like it doesn't it doesn't lead to like another huge right run for him and then he just becomes fucking you know kind of this just like he'd go on like he would just be like a guy who'd tell good old hollywood stories yeah you know like even kirk douglas i feel like acted more post-stroke than tony curtis did the last 20 years of his life yeah right douglas at least did like three or four movies post i was trying to think about like what i would have seen kirk douglas in when i was like growing up because like i know he was acting like in the you mean like what you would have seen right like what's the first thing because it wouldn't have been in one of his older movies

there's that movie greedy with michael j fox the first thing? Because it wouldn't have been in one of his older movies. Right. There's that movie Greedy with Michael J. Fox. Oh, I mean, that might have been it, honestly. Greedy, that's 94. Well, of course, he's Chester Lampwick

in that Simpsons episode. Right. That's probably all of our first... Really? The rocket car and solid gold. And like a great performance.

Yeah, that's like a classic Simpsons episode. Solid gold. That's a great performance. Rocket car, it is a great performance yeah that's like a classic seasons episode that's a great performance it is a great performance did have that period of time where it was like days well incredible but i but also that thing where it's like where where foggy is at now with marvel where he is like who are the actors who would never fucking do a superhero movie and can i get them in this just to prove that we're undeniable? Where Simpsons would be like, we'll get people out of retirement. We'll get Elizabeth Taylor to say one word.

Right. Yeah. Was it Kathleen Turner as the Malibu Stacy? Yeah, the Malibu. They used to get them and then they would give them actual roles and it was really good. And if that was now on television and they were filmed, everyone would be like, that's the best performance of the the year but it was like a little one-off on

the simpsons right simpsons performance is similarly like incredible it's like they would write incredible characters to these people i did the talking simpsons podcast which is a good podcast i recommend but i did that a year or two ago and i somewhere deep in the pandemic and the episode i picked is this one with michael keaton from like season 13 so it's like after the glory days and it's not particularly good episode total disaster times right well but it was also like keaton and fallow period and my whole defense of the episode because i tried to watch every fucking simpsons during the pandemic and i think i got up to 24 25 before i tapped out um was like this might be the last time they hire a star and have them play a character rather than right do a character that is a caricature of the celebrity what are you doing

here well lisa you know it'll be like it's keitel meeton and he's like yes uh i'm a banker right like like don't have ricky gervais play someone who isn't ricky gervais but it'll look like ricky gervais and he'll do the rickyervais routine. Right. It becomes Larry Burns. Yeah. I mean, but was the turning point, was that the Alec Baldwin, Kim Basinger episode

where they like move to Springfield? That episode's weird. That episode is funny, but it is kind of, and it's also weird how that episode was my first impression of Alec Baldwin.

Yes. And I was like, so Alec Baldwin's like a really skinny, cool guy, right? Sure. He's in the getaway. You're like hollywood's greatest couple right everyone loves these two and ron howard is like a drunk fun guy like that episode like frames them like like even in that moment they were seen as tom hanks and rita wilson rather than these two hotties married each

other right right they're like well of course the pillars of the industry right like a romance that will last the test of time yeah uh sporadicus oh you just sporadicus spartacus douglas yeah but what else is what 82 in this movie judging by the looks of it what was the forky was like does he really did they do something to his chin i'm like no his chin just looks like that it's like someone just put a thumbtack in it it's also one of those things i was looking at wikipedia and they have like i i think like a high school or college photo of him yeah and you're like his face is frightening when he's young oh i can imagine it's like he needed like six lines to come into play he oh my god he looks like the joker right oh i, you know, those old photos are very smooth, but his nose is like the penguin. Isn't that

the guy from Deep Space Nine? It looks like Odom. He sleeps in a bucket. But it is, it's like he's way too smooth, and then in this, it's like, once he gets a little bit of, like, sandblasting in there... When I was doing theater in college, there was

one guy who, you know, he was good- was good looking enough but he looked old and basically every acting teacher was like just wait until you're like 40 and you'll start working and he's starting to work right now it's like happening right right right you need to sort of grow into i may think john ham is another guy like that when you see like 25 year old john ham you're like this doesn't really make sense he just kind of looks like a lot of guys back then. Like, you know, it's just, but it was like, you're going to be such a good man.

Yeah. Kirk Douglas was one of those things where like he had to become like a man. Yeah. He had to have like an earned grimace and then his face

completely made sense on screen, but looks unreal. It's right. It's one of those things where you look at him and you're like, that must be the result

of some bizarre surgery. Right. Like certain really golden Hollywood stars where you're like, they had a very bizarre nose job that looks like no one else's nose, but it's iconic.

Well, it's like when you look at photos from World War II or something, and you're just like, everyone's face is not what faces are now. And he has one of those, I wouldn't even call him handsome by today's standards, but he was kind of viewed that way, right?

Oh, 100%. Yeah, but he's striking. He's one of those classic people you call striking which means that he looks like he could hit you over the head with a baseball bat or something but also like his head is like 50 of his height yes yeah everything is like at an angle he's got like all these insane angles to his chin he looks like hieroglyphics like he looks like... Have you ever seen Lust for Life? Yeah. I feel like he was primarily cast because he kind of looked like Van Gogh. Let me do this painting. I've got to paint some flowers.

Sorry, you were saying? He just looks so much like Van Gogh. Yes. The hair looks so good in that movie. They make his hair all stringy and spiky. I love him as an actor i know kirk douglas was probably a sort of you know bad person right like it's one of those like it's decades lost now but i mean at the very least he was intensely complicated there are some real positive things you can point to in sort of his life and his advocacy things and there are a lot of horrible horrible whispers about him that

you can google um but uh but certainly he is he was a very unique screen presence and like those you know like the bad and the beautiful is one of my favorite like you know manelli movies i love that movie he's also one of those guys who at that level of stardom actually used his stardom in pretty fucking interesting that's what's interesting about him in general we're going to talk about it we talked about it last week he so easily could have just been heston a hundred percent uh and like you know ace in the hole is like that was a big early movie for me as a teen where i'm like i didn't know movies were this dark like i mean the fact that played a depressive van gogh Van Gogh in this movie that's like, there's no action in this, it's just this,

is fascinating. He did Cuckoo's Nest on Broadway? Yes, and his son fired him. He fought the rights. Had Michael produce it, and Michael was like, you can't fucking do this. He's one of those classic cases of like, he had a great career, obviously,

and he was in a lot of great movies but like when new hollywood comes around he actually struggles to adapt like and he didn't right where but like whereas he actually had been kind of the cutting edge guy in the 50s doing the darker stuff and then when hollywood is catching up to it he doesn't catch up he was and he's instead doing like that mob movie the brotherhood right that everyone cites is like oh this is like the the godfather but bad like this is like before they figured out that you should cast italian people and like you know right have real sense of verisimilitude like you know it's just like not as good uh but was sort of like i mean the model of of what becomes

like sort of dicaprio cooper yeah the guys who are really handsome and get the movie star breakthrough and are like I'm gonna use this to elevate cinema higher on conventional people right get weird material adapted rather than just play the hits because even something like spark I mean even when he would do these big epics the things that physically he

seems like such a good fit for he would often approach them kind of a weird way his acting style was just so rooted in that time. And I think even Heston was able to make a shift to grizzled. Yeah. Even if it went a little bit into self-parody. And Heston was also smart about the fucking sci-fi shift. He was.

Heston did trash, like good trash. He picked good trash. Kirk Douglas is a better actor than Charlton Heston, which Heston has trash. Like, good trash. He picked good trash. Kirk Douglas is a better actor than Charlton Heston, which Heston has, you know, screen presence. But they're interesting guys to compare. They are, and of course... Because Douglas was arguably a better actor. Well, and also, and you probably know this,

like, Douglas was the runner-up for Ben-Hur. And this movie is kind of... Yeah. This is... He's been drafting off of Ben-Hur. Kirk Douglas is Darkman. He's like, I'll fucking wear leather. Right.

I'll do it myself. I'll put some sandals on. He won't just, you wait. Yeah. But like, it's just funny that this is the biggest movie of the year. It's a huge hit.

Doesn't get pictured director or star, which like, what is that? That's weird. Do we know why that is? I need to, I mean, maybe there's something in the research,

but like he never won an Oscar in general, which is wild three nominations never won um but like this movie did not get a best picture nomination but they really famously bad i can i can give you the um is that the gg year no no it's not it's the uh it's a it's um it's a good year because it's uh the apartment wins right but right theamo, which is this famous bomb. That's the one that's weird to get in there. Where John Wayne played Davy Crockett. But everyone knew it as this kind of crappy

vanity project that didn't really work. That sneaks in because that's the one John Wayne directed. And that sneaks into picture. And then it's Elmer Gantry, which I guess was like a big movie at the time the jack cardiff movie yeah sons and lovers which i've never seen sorry and then the sundowners this like you know robert mitchum deborah cart like i don't know maybe spartacus was like almost seen as too like trashy like

poppy yeah then the alamo thing is the thing that's confusing if the fifth slot was something that was similarly already i would get it more it's also this is here that psycho gets snubbed for best picture it gets director and director and supporting actress yes it's it's a wild year i mean the rudest thing do you know that the golden globes did give this a best actor nomination but for olivier they. They nominated Olivier in lead. That's funny. I mean, he's really good. He is really good, but it did not,

and it won the Golden Globe for Best Picture. Right. So that's also weird. They nominated Woody Strode for Supporting Actor, which is, look, an incredibly striking, effective performance, but very small. Woody Strode is probably not who I would nominate. Who is he playing? He's Draba.

He's the one who fights. Oh, the former athlete. Yes. Right, yes, who gets killed. And then Ustinov wins Best Actor at the Oscars. Best Supporting Actor. Supporting, sorry. Peter Ustinov.

I think that is a pretty deserved win, especially when you look at the competition. It's an awesome win. Yeah. The only thing that's interesting about it is when you watch at the competition. It's an awesome win. Yeah. The only thing that's interesting about it is when you watch this movie, I don't know if you come away

in a total vacuum and I'm like, do you know who won the Oscar of that cast? No. I would probably say Lawton over him. Yeah, you would probably

say Lawton or Olivier. But then when you know that, you're like, well, no, he's really good. He comes around at the end. That's the thing. And it's kind of like

such a great button on the movie. Yeah. And he's changed and he plays it well. He's really good. He comes around at the end. That's the thing. And it's kind of like such a great button on the movie. Yeah. And he's changed and he plays it well. Like, you know, he's really good. When the movie starts, you certainly don't think that guy is going to be in the final scene of this movie. No. And then there he is.

He disappears for truly an hour and a half, maybe. Like, he's in like the first hour in the last half hour. And he has that great scene with Lawton where they're just kind of talking about their like philosophies for life that doesn't need to be in the movie at all, but it's just so well done. I've talked about this before, I think, but Ustinov, one of the all-time great raconteurs, almost no one was better at telling showbiz stories than Peter Ustinov, and the thing that was

incredible about it is when he would tell these stories, he would do immaculate impressions of every guy, and there's some YouTube video of, a long-form video of him telling stories about the set of this film sure because you just go like putting a fucking olivier lawton you know yeah fucking ustinov like just the dinner table conversations must have been fucking incredible and he tells all the stories about working on this movie and when he does it

he not only perfectly impersonates charles lawton's voice but he transforms his face he like does this right he like sinks his face it's like jim carrey where like the bone structure of his face changes and it's unbelievable and it's clear it's just like such a party trick that he's so proud he can whip out at any point he's one of those guys that doesn't exist anymore like like an actor who is just like well-read yes intelligent could go on like a talk show and smoke a cigarette like you know like a real like kind of a comedian yeah he would go on a talk show and he clearly have prepared material right like he wasn't just a guy who was like charming have you ever seen top cappy i've never seen top cappy that's what he won his other oscar i need to see that never seen. Because wasn't Verhoeven was going to remake Topkapi as a sequel to Thomas Crown Affair?

You're right. The Topkapi Affair. It's a very weird thing. MGM was trying to, 10 years later, sequelize the Brosnan-Russo-Thomas Crown Affair by taking Topkapi and giving it to Verhoeven, which sounded like such a bizarre project. Brosnan's in Black Adam this year. Are you hyped? He's Dr. Fate. What's Renee Russo in? That's what I want to know. I don't know. Not enough.

She should be in Shazam, too. Yeah, bring her in. Yeah. Look, this is, we're talking about so many things. It's Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. Jesus, we haven't introduced the podcast. I'm David. It's a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever

crazy passion projects they want. Sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce, baby. This is a mini-series on the films of Stanley Kubrick. It is called Pods Widecast. Today we are covering Spartacus, which is what we like to call a guarantor. Classic guarantor.

This is the film that gives them the blank check that they run off of for the rest of their career. He made the most successful film of the year. Yeah, it worked. And it was like he had made four movies that didn't connect to the box office. Essentially, yeah. In a row, and this is the one.

That had gotten rising acclaim, but not financially. But not only that, he comes away from this movie and he's like, okay, that's the last time I ever been to anyone else's whims ever again. Yeah, because he kind of proved himself as like a studio like like reliable you know douglas brings him in after firing the original anthony man or whatever and then he's like okay so i did that i can do that but i'm never gonna do that ever again right this is his

only hired gun movie arguably ever right right not arguably like inarguably inarguably this is his only he directed the whole first season mad about you but that's that's television that was passion project right that right yeah he did that he paid out of pocket to do that actually yeah funded the whole thing himself i felt so bad for those live studio audiences because they come in every night and it would be one camera set up and he'd do 400 takes. Screaming at James Burroughs. Wow. Good riser. Thank you. No, but it is interesting because like Cooper talks about and he's like, this was the first and last time I did what anyone else wanted me to do.

Like the first four movies, he's doing exactly what he fucking wants. Pretty much. The first three movies, he has a very limited canvas, limited resources, and he's doing exactly what he fucking wants pretty first three movies he has a very limited canvas limited resources and he's learning but he's making everything exactly how he wants to no one is preventing him he just is on a learning curve then paths of glory is like i fucking arrived but it underperforms at the box office and then this one he knew he kind of had to play the game a little bit but also yes was incredibly difficult yeah he was a huge pain in the ass old stan the man 32 yeah he was a baby that's true i mean the whole thing is he died young like that's the whole like i i had the conversation that i bet you've had with friends where they're like what are you guys doing next and i was like kubrick and they're like

are you gonna break that up or something and i'm like no it's not a lot of movies no it's 13 films in total yeah like it's not gonna be that hard i mean it's gonna be hard to talk about these totemic movies but like it's not it's it's pretty quick but people think that because it goes from the 50s to the 90s oh but he died when he was like you know in his 80s right he's like no he was like 67 or something like you know he was he was not it was kind of the 70 he was 70 it was like a bizarre sudden surprise made more movies yeah i mean we're gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna hone my impression of tom cruise being asked on the eyes wide shut making of which i've seen so many times yeah where they're like what was your reaction to hearing that he had died and he just

looks at the camera like a maniac and goes horrified but i can't i need to get it exact horrified horrified horrified says it twice yes um so good. There's an amazing quote from Kirk Douglas that JJ, a researcher, pulled up. Okay. Not jump ahead, but I think it's what we're talking about right now. Give me the quote. Kubrick was signed to a five-picture deal with Douglas' company, and this ended up being the second one. They were supposed to do three other movies after this. Kubrick really wanted to do Lolita next.

He was developing before this film. Douglas was like, I'll let you out of your contract. And Douglas, in some quote after Kubrick tied, talking about what a pain in the ass he was, was like, by the way, if I'd kept him in his contract, he only made six movies total after Spartacus.

From 1960 to 1999, he makes six films. Half of his remaining filmography would have been under my contract is that no okay all right right isn't that crazy yeah let me give you some context speaking of our dossier by the way our guest today oh you didn't introduce our guest yeah richard lawson for very fair in the little gold men podcast hi i feel like every time I come on this podcast, we're talking about a movie where Kirk Douglas drowns someone in a cauldron of soup. Don't you feel like that's a

recurring theme for us? It happens in Lady in the Water. It happens in Spangler. I mean, it's most of Lady in the Water. Is it in Trolls? Well, it happened in the experience. It's not in the film. But it was offered to us in the experience. Gretchen flew off the handle at one of the employees. Well, who was Kirk Douglas?

He was like, welcome to the experience. It's crazy to think that Kirk Douglas lived to 103, which on paper seems like a very full life. But he never got to do the experience. Never did it. He didn't live. That's why Michael Douglas does it every day in his honor. Sometimes Catherine comes, not always. Give me the experience.

This is your one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. This is your 11th episode. Holy shit. 12 if you include the experience. Sure. Okay. Yeah. Wow. Ver. Okay. Yeah. Wow.

Rarified air. Did you know that your blank check Wikipedia page now includes your tweet to Katie Rich after both Kelly Reichardt and Wolfgang Peterson had lost asking if they should do a five month Wolfgang Peterson Kelly Reichardt series and you said air first cow.

That's pretty good yeah that's just on the wikipedia so there you go that's why he's back baby i'm glad that's all dickie lawson yeah uh so kubrick makes paths of glory but he doesn't make no money yeah movie doesn't make no money and he's like sure i got my critical plaudits, but quanto dinero per stand. Right, and he's been validated by this big major star. Put him on a bigger stage. It's like, I think this kid's got it. And the movie was well-respected,

but it's still, you know. Yeah. No one's banging down his door. But beyond that, I think he truly just needs moolah. Yeah. He just doesn't have any money. Especially because the first three, they were essentially putting their own money into their family. He doesn't make any fucking money from any of this shit.

I think Paths of Glory's salary was deferred or whatever. One of those classic Hollywood things where they're like, we're going to defer your salary. It's a good idea. It was deferred, and then the movie didn't make money. So he was truly like, I kind of haven't made a dollar directing and i'm five four movies in um so one thing he wants to make apparently is a civil war drama called the downslope uh-huh that he wrote with shelby foot um that mark forster was going to adapt into a trilogy correct but it never happened you know it's always he wanted gregory peck to be in that Mark Forrester did which is part of the problem

Mark he's dead I don't care if he's dead I'm wearing a big scarf Spielberg's the only person he is German Spielberg's the only person who survived trying to make an unmade and at the time he was butchered for it

it was the sort of the millstone around the neck of them but it almost feels like a cursed thing anytime a guy's like i'm going to open up the archives don't touch some stanley kubrick script because people will just compare you to right like a mark forrester maybe couldn't dare you know but carrie fukunawa is saying like and now time for napoleon is that what he's doing well he's well this is my point it feels like don't open that fucking box um ai right ai is the is the kubrick screenplay that spielberg made that's right one of the 27 dresses was him that's true but i feel like a lot of people don't know that

well he had a very different take on the material it was 28 what if they right right they shaved one dress what if it was like ai and and they like, well, she really lightened it up. Annie Fletcher was like, no, no, no, no. My version was much darker. Yeah, right. I added all the dark stuff to 27 Dresses. It was my idea to cast Heigl. Marston's so good in that movie.

You know who's good in everything? James Marston. Other than X2. Go on. He's not right in X2, though. He's bad in X2 and it pains me to say. He He's bad in X2, and it pains me to say. He's bad. He's bad.

And it pains me to say. I think he's just fine. I interviewed him during the pandemic because I was watching. He was on like 18 shows at one point. He's done a lot of stuff. And I was like, what's his deal? And so I just literally emailed his publicist. I was like, can I talk to him?

I just wanted to figure out what his deal is. Very nice guy. But he was like, yeah know i was in uh i was living in where i grew up in like north south dakota or whatever kansas and uh you know and i finished school and i got in my car and i drove to california and i started working later that week it was like cool good for you he's from oklahoma oklahoma city and indeed he just uh drove on sounds like he basically just drove on to the set of The Nanny and they were like, sure, you want a recurring role?

I have often contended from my vantage point. He held it Walter Matthau. Yes. Fuck you, Matthau. I'm an Alan McBeal season four. Why is this guy rubbing pussy in my face? I don't even know him.

Oh, no, go ahead. No, James Marsden, in my mind. I don't even know him. Oh, no, go ahead. No, James Marr's, in my mind, a perfect career. I think it's a great career. I think I'm right. I'm with you, though, that even though I don't think he's bad in the X-Men movies,

it's weird that he played a fairly iconic comic book character and no one remembers that or wants to talk about it. He did it before it was a thing to do. Yes, exactly. When it was like, well, who's going to play fucking Cyclops?

Get some Canadian TV actor. Yeah, just get someone with a jaw. We just need a jaw. Another movie Kubrick wanted to do is a movie called I Stole $16 Million. Which is a good title. It is a good title. Even now.

I'd be interested to know about someone who did that. He wrote it with Jim Thompson, his old collaborator, and it was about a Prohibition-era safecracker, and it's another one of those movies, scripts, that people keep claiming they're gonna revive.

No series or movie has been made. People love taking things off the Kubrick shelf and being like, I can make this. Who do you think could make it? Not that specifically, but who could be the heir apparent to his style? The problem is, I think anyone who could be the heir apparent to his style understands it's stupid to literally pick one of his unmade projects. Right.

I mean, people will bring up like Wes Anderson or PTA or Nolan or anyone who's famous for control. Or Kukanada or Todd Field or any of these people. But it's, right. Fincher, even, I would imagine. Yeah any of these people but it's right it's venture even i would imagine yeah all these people you know right it's a millstone to try none of them would fucking touch it like right i think the only reason ai works by the way is because they already were working on it together yeah and spielberg actually knew stanley cooper it's a little different from like whatever you know someone who's obsessed with his movies right i think it's like it's a fool's errand to be like i'm gonna try to make the movie he wanted to make and it's a fool's

errand to be like i'm just taking this material and doing my own thing with it but material that's mostly known for being an unmade stanley kubrick thing who's on the level as far as intensity uh nancy myers fincher's intense but more friendly it seems like more personable fincher seems like i mean like i think it's sort of similar though with kubrick and fincher maybe not fincher does seem nicer just in general but it's like everyone who loves fincher like they'll go to war for him right like and then when you say like doesn't he make people like take 80 takes a fucking opening a door and they're like that's just like good work that's just getting good work out of you know like they'll they're just like that's just discipline and also just he runs like a really professional set he doesn't like fuck around but i cooper doesn't strike me as

particularly charming no i don't think it was like pleasant right whereas fincher is like nice like it's like a funny guy yeah i mean i interviewed him and who else isn't i mean like wes anderson's very exacting but all the actors are like he's it's it gets a little meticulous it could be a little maddening sometimes he like directs you by the centimeter but he like creates a great environment all the actors are in the same hotel and they host big dinners every night so part of the appeal is like you go to some European country and there's like a banquet with 20 of the best like character actors in the world you get custom luggage your initials on it like all these other guys who are that intense some of those pajamas maybe with a collar yeah yeah successful there's a there's a notion of it being more fun and then

the guys who really sort of fashion themselves after kubrick and the intensity are guys like mark romanek who end up sort of being their own worst enemy right where it's like why would anyone take it down yeah yeah you're taking too long to do anything uh okay marlon brando had seen the killing and had seen paths of glory and thought kubrick was great he's working on a western called the authenticentic Death of Henry Jones. And they were working on it with Peckinpah, I guess, writing it. And he wants Kubrick to direct it. Peckinpah?

Sam Peckinpah. That's a good name. It would be cool if his name was Peckinpah. Like he was some sort of chicken dad. Right, yes. David, can you read the quotes that JJ pulled up from Brand brando about cooper because i thought these were really good uh sure uh just to say yeah right well cooper comes aboard wait the quote uh yes i'll get here's the here's the quote stanley is unusually perceptive and delicately attuned to people this is the quote you mean right he is an adroit intellect and is

a creative thinker not a repeater not a fact gatherer he digests what he learns and he brings a new to a new project an original point of view and a reserved passion is that the quote yeah i thought that was really fucking good it's true well it's just like a very um precise and intelligent quote from a guy that i think now we think of as being like i like stanley cooper because he seems like a real cool guy i don't know like you know now we have this cartoon version done got shot in the throat have you been offer pilled yet richard uh i watched i think the first two or three and so at that point if you cut off one of your limbs you can stop the infection right right right you made the sacrifice but i feel like i keep hearing people do the

matthew good voice it's and it's like oh i want to spend more time with that i want to watch more of it it's genuinely a good performance i love that everyone says he's the good performance but he's not the star right it's like it's ruddy is the main character yeah but he i would he's in it a lot he's the second lead okay and especially in the latter half of the season, they kind of start to pin the emotional arc on his sort of overcoming the heartbreak of Ally McGraw, and he's pretty fucking effective. I love Matthew Craig. But it's also, while being the only tasteful performance in the show,

it's also so over the top that it's also fun. Who plays Brando? Justin Chambers from Grey's Anatomy? Why do you even have to ask? Alex Karev, obviously. Why do you even ask? When you saw Karev in season one of Grey's Anatomy. Why do you even have to ask? Alex Karev, obviously. Why do you even ask this? When you saw Karev in season one of Grey's Anatomy. I mean, I guess I get the look a little bit.

Who else could possibly? That's wild. There's a scene where he comes up with the look for the Don in real time. Right, that is like David's impression of Brando right now. What if I put tissue paper in my cheeks right now? I gotta watch that. i gotta watch that you gotta watch it i guess he kind of kind of looks like brando like it's one of those things where you're like what and then you see pictures of him yeah and you're like this isn't great but it kind of

looks like brando if you put the makeup on him but there's also when when the when the steve jobs uh ashton kutcher movie came out i remember someone tweeting ashton Kutcher movie came out. I remember someone tweeting, Ashton Kutcher, Steve Jobs, great casting, an idiot playing a genius. And it does feel like one of those things where it's like,

you can't cast a guy who's an okay TV actor as Marlon Brando. No offense to Justin Chabot. No offense. But that is, I mean, he was never in the top 10

of good Grey's Anatomy actors anatomy that's the thing you can't you can't just cast that part on look what if he's listening he's a big blankie sorry he's a hos hawk um i didn't say shit all right yeah you love chambers and you've watched the offer clips i've watched clips and i love your work i showed ben clips and he said i feel like i'm losing it um marlin and peckin marlin and kubrick start working on this movie rando and kubrick they fire sam peckinpah because kubrick wants to rewrite the movie which was maybe a mistake uh and everything starts getting crazy um uh Once over the summer, Kubrick and Brando are writing together.

Over the summer, they're working at Brando's house. Brando required that anyone entering the house take off their shoes to not damage his teak floors. Kubrick took off his pants as well and would work in a dress shirt and underwear. Sort of a weird look. But very Brando-y look. Brando would sit in a lotus position

on the floor and strike a gong with a leather mallet if he thought discussions were getting off track, which maybe we should introduce to Blank Jack. You guys are sitting in your underwear, so you might as well. And dress shirts. And we're not wearing shoes. And this would apparently cause dishes to rattle in brando's kitchen so

that's the vibe that's going on what do you guys think i mean it sounds like season two of the offer that's what i'm saying this sounds like something out of a tv show yeah and then uh kubrick gets the rights to lolita which he wants to make as you said like he's fucking crazy about it from the word go like the second this book comes out and so they're they're obsessed with that uh this movie of course is one-eyed jacks the movie that uh brando is working on uh eventually people start leaving because it's getting really annoying at a certain point kubrick says he doesn't know what the film is about uh so he quits uh brando reaches out to ilia kazan then sydney lumet and then decides to direct it himself have you ever seen one-eyed jacks i've never seen no i know people love it i mean it's

bizarre yes yeah um but you know for like a 1961 movie i think it's like interesting sure what makes it bizarre uh it's like a weird like comic western that's you know god brando in it i don't know i've never you know i've never seen that tone yeah right yeah for the material sort of gonzo um but the the moral of this story is stanley kubrick just wasted two more years hanging out with brando banging a gong and he comes out of it with like maybe i want to adapt this unadaptable book right and i'm not making that movie and he's still under a douglas contract but douglas has no interest in making lolita no even producing it uh i mean he's sort of in the territory potentially becoming mark romanic now where it's like is this little precious director

man who can't get anything off the ground is too difficult is too exacting he does say that like when brando decided to direct it himself he felt like that was a real mitzvah because if he had successfully hired someone like kazan or lumet or whatever it would have looked like well cooper couldn't cut it right and instead it's like no brando's crazy brando's just crazy he wants to do his own thing it's like he lost two years of his life but it didn't damage his reputation that's fair on the other side of things kirk douglas is working on stuff he starts working on a spartacus movie and then there's a race because yul brenner is also working on a spartacus movie called the gladiators and they're in a race of like who can get this movie going first it's two different books adapted yes exactly right uh and

so wait what's that i hear what's that I hear? What's that I hear? Splash, splash, splash, splash, splash. That's the sound of a typewriter in the bathtub, Griffin. Oh, Lord. Who does Kirk Douglas hire to write this movie in two weeks? I am the one who types in the bathtub. Dalton Trumbo himself. Did you know Dalton Trumbo wrote this movie, Ben?

Oh, I saw the name and I thought Tubfucker. Tubfucker. To be fair, no name one forgets. Dalton Trumbo. Dalton Trumbo. No, it's a good name. It's a great name. But this is one of the things that gives Douglas a good reputation.

That ages well. He was super against the blacklist. Ended the blacklist, essentially. He hires a blacklisted writer. He gives him the name of Sam Jackson after his future favorite actor. Well, they were going to do Charlton Dumbo, but they were like, I think people might figure that out.

But the studio sniffs it out because all the screenplay pages are covered in bathwater. Who the hell is Bryan Cranston? who the hell is brian cranston um and uh he churns out a script so fast which you know good for him especially a fucking long ass like historically sourced script like this or whatever also you know like the nathan's hot dog eating contest where they dip the hot dogs in the water so they drown fast right he's got the water all around them right fingers are lubricated he's like sliding all over that fucking thing um and so uh they decide the gladiators are supposed to shoot in europe douglas decides to shoot it in los angeles which is easier and so uh he gets the

rights to spartacus being made essentially the other movie dies right they do a thing too where like variety uh who's the other studio that was doing the yule brenner one i think it's ua right yeah yeah they they announced like we are going ahead with the gladiators starring yule brenner a budget of five and a half million dollars correct and then kirk douglas bought out and had variety and he was like universal is doing spartacus at a budget of five and a half plus one dollar right right at five million five hundred and two dollars is how he put it exactly yes yeah um and anthony man as you mentioned richard is hired to direct the film saul bass is brought on to do the titles titles are incredible incredible also is actively involved in pre-production on the Anthony Mann version and is helping design the look, is doing location scouting, is setting up a lot of the aesthetics.

He goes to Death Valley. Right. This is him looking at Death Valley. Right. He's got his hands over his head. But they ended up in Spain for some of it, right? They did. Yeah.

That comes later, yes. He, because they, when- It's Kubrick who insists on spain i believe right when kubrick takes over at that point the the big battle sequence was supposed to be more uh uh what's the word i'm looking for i don't know i suggestive sure suggested rather than a full-on epic thing sure sure you don't really see the battle right and it was like sort of abstract and he was like we have fucking kirk douglas with a sword you need to have him ride a horse and you'd have people going to battle and whatever and universal say you couldn't afford it and so he was like what

is the cheapest possible country where i can get the most people and so then the argument one we're skipping ahead here was that like i'll do all the exterior stuff in spain i'll do all the interior stuff in hollywood but at first they're in death valley they're shooting this with anthony mann douglas hates anthony mann says he's letting peter yusinov take control of the production a weird i mean i don't know it sounded like they shot it chronologically because they're doing at least the gladiator but those tensions between actors was apparently like the kind of animating force of the whole production, right? Look at the fucking above the title on this movie.

And you're just like the amount of ego that must have been thrown around at every possible moment. And then this young director who's just like, I want the entire world to bend to my whims. I'm dealing with like six guys who all want to be the loudest voice in the room. But Anthony Mann essentially directed the first 10 minutes of this film. Yes, a good chunk of those early gladiator scenes certainly like i think the very opening it's it's two weeks of work you know it's it's something uh they fire him supposedly kubrick had always been douglas's first choice or whatever who knows calls him he's in a poker game and he's told you have 24 hours report to the studio you'll be directing like it's like saturday and it's like you'll start on monday yeah and uh stanley kubrick

did it because he wanted money money and because he wanted to start moving out of this contract he had with kirk douglas yeah uh and he's like 32 years old and so he's showing up to this gigantic production looking like a baby yeah and i think the whole crew is like who is this fucking twerp like you know he has to deal with that you know yes um especially because he's already tony curtis carrying himself they all screwed him around right yeah he's not a big bossy guy tony curse was the only one he seemingly got along well with and tony curse had that bizarre quote where he's like we got along because we were only interested in talking about two things how pictures are made in our dicks maybe they love talking about their dicks yeah i didn't realize stanley kubrick was

david simms look as always uh-huh who does stanley kubrick fight with the most the fucking cinematographer yeah it's always this like this Yeah. It's always some old, in these early films he makes, some old grizzled film cinematographer who's like, you can't tell me what to do. And Stanley Kubrick's like, if you don't change that lens to a long lens, I will assassinate you immediately. There's that story.

Can you read verbatim the story with the DP kicking the light? Do you know the one I'm talking about? It's in here uh as you're looking for this i am somewhat surprised that kubrick never went like full soderbergh and just shot the movies himself right especially because he had a photography background yeah and you assume that he if he wanted to become an a-level cinematographer he could have taken the time and he essentially won a cinematography oscar for this but couldn't right accept it because it was in the other guy's name right like why wasn't he operating the camera

himself it just feels like it would have saved him a lot of it probably would have i'm sure union rules were one reason right but you know um the light story is in the one of my favorite scenes in the movie when herbert long playing the merchant guy comes to meet with spartacus i really love that scene. Yeah. Oh, yeah, that is a good scene. Where they make the deal, and then he's like, you're going to lose.

And Spartacus, you know, I just love that scene. But they're talking about that scene, and, you know, at a certain point, you know, Kubrick's fucking with things. He goes over to Russ Meddy, and he says, I can't see the actor's faces. And Russ Meddy, his face turns purple. He goes over to Russ Meddy and he says, I can't see the actor's faces. And Russ Meddy, his face turns purple.

He's fuming in his little chair, so angry. And he lifts up his foot and gives one of the lights a kick. And it just falls, or I guess it skids into the scene. He kicks a light on set. Yes. Right? And then it rolls in and he looks at Kubrick and he says, now is there enough light and kubrick looks at it and looks back and he says now there's too much light which is great yeah it's pretty funny um but i mean like curtis says like we we were

only interested in our dicks and how a picture was being shot i guess he's saying like we were only interested in our dicks and how a picture was being shot. I guess he's saying like we were in our 30s. Sure. So it's like we were boys around town. I just feel like. Or maybe they were specifically interested in their dicks and only that. I'm interested in both interpretations. Sure. I could imagine Stanley Kubrick very clinically talking about his own penis

and what fascinated him about it. Not too long. Bends. You know, whatever. He's like, no kidding. We're both from the Bronx. We got real Bronx dicks. Honest dicks. Come on. Hard work.

Not these Hollywood dicks. You know, with all kinds of... These are dicks that haven't worked a day in their lives. These dicks got city miles on them. My grandfather's dick was a longshoreman i know i want my son's dick to be the first dick that goes to college kubrick's been married three times already at this point or is out of his second marriage at this point sure i mean it's some of those marriages so there's like you know they got

married so they could be roommates type things but yeah he's he's on his third marriage yes he obviously final right third marriage at 32. he obviously liked women i still just imagine the way tony curtis talks about going out in the town and cruising is very different than the way it doesn't seem like a natural it's ryan gosling and steve carell and that's what is that movie he's crazy yeah um and uh olivier is the classic uh big boss sure where he's basically directing the actors himself like in any scene that he's in and was gene simmons famous for kiss already oh my goodness why did i invite you on this august and she wanted to do in the full makeup right she did she asked and they said no and she's like well i could be the star child

if you look in the back in some scenes she's going ah cat man yeah i mean she had listeners richard i feel like her biggest movie is guys and dolls she's won the oscar already at this uh and she had is it that she won the oscar one best actress. And she had... Had she won the Oscar? She won Best Actress for Guys and Dolls? No, she did not. No, am I wrong? She did win a Golden Globe. Okay. But not Best Actress at the Oscars.

I think her only Oscar nomination is for Hamlet, which she's in with Mr. Lawrence Olivier before this. And then she gets another one for The Happy Ending. I don't think she ever won an Oscar. No. But yeah, you have... I mean, Night of the Hunter has has already been made lawton's already directed and has directed a lot of theater olivier obviously has directed a best picture winner a hundred percent he's a big director douglas is the producer on this movie is the guy getting this made and it sounds like ustinov is throwing his fucking weight around too like you know even he's no king. This movie has like five potential directors on it.

Or at least five people comporting themselves as one. And you're having scenes like there's this Norman Lloyd who had worked with Kubrick before, like described as a scene where like, you know, Lawton is doing some speech and Olivia is like, no, you should do it like this. And Lawton's like, well, what do you mean? And then Olivia just like sits in his chair and it's like here's how i would do it and acts the scene you know like they're just all doing it themselves because they're all these big shots those those guys that generation i feel like was incredibly competitive um yeah there weren't yet no it's

true and yeah it's thrilling to watch olivia and lot and like do their kind of you know trod the boards sort of old salt theater shit and then tony curtis and the guy who john gavin as caesar no the other guy who plays um the one who loses initially doll something john doll yes yeah like he sounds kind of just like 1950s american guy like it's just like a really funny mix of styles and i i mean obviously kurt or kirk douglas is on the tony curtis side of things but but he kind of blends it a little i mean he's so theatrical yeah it works though that they that the you know the the slaves all have like american-ish accents yeah and then when we're in the senate it's all these british like

it's just wild seeing tony curtis in a bathtub with lawrence olivier and it's like and like them talking to each other and they could not be more different and right they are they're the one and they're the ones who cross over the most of the two sides like they have the most scenes yeah it's true you still weirdly to me feels like the most modern performance i i fully agree it's like it i mean it feels like oliver reed and gladiator it feels or like watto he does the opening chunk the opening hour i was like and and this is not a criticism i was sort of astounded that it worked and it didn't break the reality of the movie but it's like oh it feels like he's giving a performance out of history of the world part one no i know what you mean he's a lot he's kind of camping it up a little bit early part

and then the surprising thing and it's a lot of fun the surprising thing is in the last half hour when he's able to bring like a real pathos to it that's when he fucking brings the hammer down and you're like okay i get why there's oh there's a bottom remembered performance yeah whereas like olivier is so fun to watch but you're like yeah sure he's he can do this shit anytime like that's why it's like the fact that yusnoff is able to be like the hammiest and the most grounded of all of them is kind of astounding yeah um i i do love olivia though because he can just literally say a word like here and he just says the word and it sounds like a sentence and you're like isn't there some story about is it lawton and uh olivier dragging out a scene that's

not in the movie but they had three lines of dialogue, like call, response, call. And they dragged it out for like 20 minutes because they were trying to one-up each other. I think I read that. This is that competition shit. I feel like these guys, if you put two of them in a movie, it would be like a power game. Right. And if you

put four of them in a movie, it would be calamitous. Yeah. It's surprising that this movie didn't become cleopatra um it is especially given that it had brings in a new director in the middle basically a production like and has like so much pressure on him and that its budget more than doubled its schedule went way over it cost 12 million dollars which is like the equivalent of like 110 million dollars now which obviously movies cost more than that now but that is not the kind of budget you see

on these movies apart from something like cleopatra which costs like a fortune upon fortune it's a disaster and nearly tanked the entire studio and also cleopatra is one of those movies where it's not like the gray man no offense which we were just discussing we were like how did this cost 200 million dollars like cleopatra're like, I can see how this was the most expensive thing ever made. They're basically dragging pyramids around. Cleopatra feels impossible. You watch it today, and you're just like,

I don't understand how any of this was constructed. I don't understand how they got this many bodies. I feel this way about this sometimes, too. These sets are really good. There are some shots in this when they're either in a battle, but really just kind of like migrating south or wherever they're they're going where you're like that's so many people and that's not cgi obviously like it they just the scope feels impressive there's some matte painting stuff obviously there's lots of that you know but

like yeah the crowds are huge there's sort of nothing more impressive than just like a wide shot that is full yeah right where you're just like oh you're not faking that there's sort of nothing more impressive than just like a wide shot that is full yeah right where you're just like oh you're not faking that there's that much in frame right now you think about like the fucking end battle of end game and the big lineup of everybody right and you know that most of them were on set at the same time for that part at least right and you're just like if that was not shot in a green screen space if they had shot that in a random field rather than in like a void that shot would be so much more impressive it'd be very cool because when you get to the battlefield in this and you're just like god

look how many fucking people there is isn't in spartacus so that's a count against spartacus can you imagine thanos and fucking lot and trying to one-up each other? Rome is on its last legs. Thanos is like building some sphere. I don't know. But you know, Charles Lawton did enter the Speed Force later in his career. Yeah, and it was a big cheer moment for us all. But have you ever seen the photo of when... Of him entering the Speed Force?

Yeah. No, I mean, it's just a blur. I mean, but of... It's actually just someone dropped a camera. Later they said like what drives all engines this being someone made up the weirdest lie about just a accidental photo but um they were they put he put um numbers by all the extras who were playing dead bodies right and he would call out like hey 76 like be more dead or whatever you're dead the wrong and then

they would take all the numbers away and then shoot it like but it's just like you see the photo and it's like, there's over 100 people just lying on a hill, waiting to figure it out. It sounds exhausting to even be told that. Just that thought process exhausts me, just thinking about how that would have worked. I saw this on Wikipedia, but cited to a Kubrick book.

What? So I think this is a verifiable source. kubrick book uh so i think this is a verifiable source um uh that universal was like you know he's joining this movie a couple weeks in right he's a fucking young buck filmmaker who hasn't made a hit yet and they're like so just so you know in terms of just like workflow we'd like there to be like 30 camera setups a day and kubrick was like okay i'm gonna give you two like 30 camera setups a day. And Kubrick was like, okay, I'm going to give you two. Yes, and they compromised on

eight, I believe. To go from 32 to two, and that they landed closer to his ass. Much closer. Yeah. How long did it take to shoot? A couple days. Let's see.

But it is the thing, you look at big sequences like that, and you're just like, how long does it fucking take to reset this? Right. The act alone of putting all those numbers out and taking them away again. And there's fucking horses and shit. There are horses. Those flaming barrels. What are those weird logs?

The fire logs? Those seem effective, yeah. I wouldn't want one of those coming at me. Obviously, so much of this movie is like ridley scott went yoink yoink yoink like i'm taking all this oh it's like way more than i realized when i was watching you you had never seen this i'd never seen this before yeah really i'm like this is really the main thing the gladiators are riffing on oh hugely 100 the first half is why are there no flaming rolling logs that was the coolest one of the gladiators tigers chariots yeah you guys aren't impressed i i look i feel like i'm gonna say this now i've always had

a hard time with gladiator and i had a bit of a hard time with this movie and i wonder if there's just some block there you don't like in both cases i watch it and i'm like this is very impressive well crafted i can't believe you got this much. You know, you put all these elements there on the day. I find the story is a little hard to crack into. It did make me appreciate Gladiator a little bit more. I think like I understand why Gladiator became such a big hit that it found sort of more emotional ends. big hit that it found sort of more emotional ends. There's the

line that Kubrick had about this movie where he was just like, my fundamental regret of the movie is this central character who I never fucking figured out. He's got no flaws and no quirks. Right, because he's like, Spartacus is just this absolutely divine figure. Yeah, he hated the I Am Spartacus stuff, you know. Which I think

the I Am Spartacus works, but that line really... It's so much more subtle than I thought it would be because I'd seen the clips and I was like, oh, it be this big rousing oh it's short exactly it's short and it gives way to a much more important scene it's also not the last moment in the movie which it could be like you don't really need 20 extra minutes no like i mean i like the end of this movie a lot but like it could just be like and then no one gave spartacus up and they all marched off and they all fucking died right you know but um the uh i i read through the dossier before i watched the movie brag it's not a brag i'm saying it was a mistake because then when i landed on

that quote of spartacus has no flaw no flaws and no quirks that was ringing in my head the entire movie where i was like he fucking nailed him i'm i'm i disagree with stan the man i love this movie this movie's great um but because it's because like spartacus is just supposed he represents the collective like that's what this movie is about like what is frightened to the roman empire the roman republic is that like they are bonded these are these men like you know this and all of the the people the underclass and and perversely by their own do it you know like like it's the romans fault that all of these just people from disparate places have now formed this thing and i love that old bathtub boy you know dalton himself who even though they call him like uh you know whatever a

cocktail communist or right they'd be like he wasn't even that fucking lefty you know like you know sure he was on the blacklist but um he's like sure you want me to make a movie about this like it'll be about like the rot of slavery and like how it like eats away at institutions and things like that i respect this movie i don't have to respect it i just yeah uh you can danger field this movie no i'll give it some respect i'll give it some respect if this movie i'm gonna ladybugs this movie i don't know what that means but i'll figure it out we. If this movie. I'm going to ladybugs this movie. I don't know what that means, but I'll figure it out. We'll go back to school with this. Going to put a wig on.

I think you want to meet Wally Sparks this movie. Oh, wow. I forgot about that movie. It took a second. I had to dig through the bottom of my bag to find that one. But but there's I think just certain things gladiator also. I think you're right. I think the sword and sandals thing has never really connected with me.

I think the Heston movies of this era have just a little more bombast to them, which breaks through for me. Do you like those? Do you like Ben-Hur? I understand that this movie is better. Ben-Hur is pretty fun. But even like Ten Commandments, which isn't a great movie, but is very compelling. Ten Commandments is also bananas. It has magic in it. I like that. And Heston is so fucking over the

top in these things. And he's really doing that with the Red Seat. You know, like he... They got him. They did it for real. They shot everything for real. Have you guys seen... There was a tweet that went around, I don't know, a couple weeks ago at this point of like someone being like man tv in the 80s really took its time or is in no hurry and it's like the opening minutes of an episode of magnum pi and it's like it's just

him getting out of his car taking his shoes off walking down the beach like nothing happens and you're like you know obviously now it would be right like you'd be right in the action and watching this i'm like okay so you go to the theater you're like this is this big expensive hollywood epic action swords all that stuff and then there are these long scenes with two old british fruits talking about like yeah yeah yeah right and it still was the most successful movie of the year i know it was like like it's fascinating like even for the oscars just sort of be like oh it's not best picture material but i think like back then it was like we're going to the goddamn pictures we're gonna sit in a gorgeous movie house and we're gonna see like a thing with an intermission that's got like so much yeah yeah and it's loaded with stars but it is why cleopatra was like the end of an era

because it was just like it was it was the moment of escalation of just years and years of being like if you pick a name from history that everyone knows yeah you load every fucking star and heavyweight actor into it you throw all the fucking money at the screen right you essentially take over a country to film it for four years it will work and cleopatra was the moment where it felt like the bottom fell out it's always actually cost three times as much as this that's that's 35 31 million yeah which would you do watch it and you're like i don't know if any movie it's on the screen looks more expensive than this in history right i feel like when i was growing up like cartoons like animaniacs or or but also not cartoons well animaniacs cost three times obviously they actually make those they lived in that tower yeah um

there was always a gag if they're on a studio lot there'd be in the background like a roman soldier walking by and i never really i was like what like is that a movie thing you know i didn't so it's just so interesting to look at that like oh no there was an era when i mean this was so ubiquitous they were like the biggest fucking thing one of my favorite hollywood movies ever i'm safe saying this now that i've seen it so many times hail caesar which is mocking that like yes the self-important like well we're making a fucking picture here right about issues where people are going to get big speeches about like you know god and death and life and all that and i mean the silly self-importance of it there are so many big examples of this and even the

ones that were sort of like mocked and been forgotten by time where you're like oh there was a movie where that guy played that character played that historical figure most of them did well often it's what people wanted i guess but like you said and then the pendulum was always going to swing the other way then it's like why don't why aren't we making short punchy movies like you know it's always gonna do too much of one you're gonna yeah here's some other stuff kirk douglas and stanley kubrick are not getting along they got along in the last movie but i think kirk douglas is under immense pressure with this movie it's so big budget and he's putting all that pressure on kubrick they're fighting all the time i think the

other difference was like paths of glory maybe he's like i like you yeah i want to be in a movie that you're making and this one doug is like, you're working for me. I hired you. And Kubrick comes in and is like, no, I'm making this a Stanley Kubrick movie. At one point, they're told to sit together, to take a session together with Kirk Douglas' psychiatrist. So that Kubrick could better understand Kirk Douglas. The psychiatrist tells Kubrick to read Traum Novel or Dream Story the Arthur Schnitzler book that he's going to turn into

Eyes Wide Shut 30 plus years later which Kirk Douglas called the lousiest picture rude he was like 100 million years old by that point right he was 100 years old for like 30 years in my head also in Kirk Douglas' defense

he didn't live long enough to see Jurassic World Dominion that's true. That's true. He missed it. The true lousiest picture. Kubrick and Douglas both liked the silent film technique of playing music on set

to set the tone for the actors. So Gene Simmons would perform when she wasn't shown. She wanted to rock and roll you all night. Do you strut her? Do you like Kiss? No. I like Kiss.

I know you like Kiss. Are you into Kiss because of the merch? You know what? Honestly, that probably was the gateway for me. I'd walk into comic book stores and I'd be like, what's this band doing here? What was that movie in the late 90s about the kids who were obsessed with Kiss? Detroit Rock City. Detroit Rock City.

And the kid from Jungle to Jungle was in it, which is why I wanted to see it. Sam Huntington. He wanted to go to that jungle. God, Richard, he makes so much sense as an early Lawson crush. I like that replacement cover of Black Diamond. I made an impassioned plea to R...

I put forward my thesis that the Fast and Fur furious movies are the kiss of film sure okay where you're like this is probably poisonous in some way but it's also very well executed and like and there's like a weird earnestness and attention to detail that like overcomes everything else sort of like also right super macho but weirdly family friendly and nerdy right right and and he was like no the difference is that like kiss fans still get mocked for liking kiss like it's not cool to like yeah right and i'm like the fast and furious movies are like the most popular movies in the world and yet they're still like the punching bag there's still a bit of a punching right before we move on from kiss i just want to

share this thing it's one of my favorite things on the internet of all time. It is audio of Paul Stanley doing kind of crowd work between songs where it's like just his vocal track isolated. And it is some of the most insane stage banter and just crazy shit that you have ever heard in your entire life i highly recommend okay we'll link to it on the on the feed yeah i just i really like this story about it's about woody strode who we mentioned um who was yes who's really good in the movie is i mean is like captivating you're genuinely like oh no i don't want to i wanted more of him it's one of the i mean it's a thing where it almost feels like watching gladiator ridley scott was like what if we keep him alive the whole movie right like if we have that character or whatever right like it goes a long way in that film and

obviously what he's thrown uh if people don't know like had been one of the first black uh football players in the nfl yeah and like then you know transitions to acting and so alexander singer puts it as he was this man of innate dignity right so you just put the camera on and you're already getting something he's one of those guys who just it was honesty on screen um and so in that that you know like and but he was like but he wasn't someone that you would like traditionally direct uh where you're saying like you know is this what i'm? I'm going to kill my friend. So instead, apparently Stanley would just play music and he says,

I'll never forget the power of the music, what happened to Strode's face as the music played. You could watch his face as it was happening. The music was a Prokofiev concerto, a haunting passage. It was filled with infinite longing,

a kind of love story, and the effect on Strode was visible. Was this for his final close-up presumably? I think it must have been. Right? Like, you know, a kind of love story, and the effect on Strode was visible. Was this for his final close-up, presumably? I think it must have been. Right? Like, you know, which is such a good, and he does get that Globe nomination. Or maybe a win?

No, just a nomination. He looks fucking incredible in this movie. It is one of those things, even from that opening scene where Spartacus tries to introduce himself, and he's like, I don't meet people. I'm gonna have to kill you later.

You're just like, let's spend more time with this guy. I was so excited when they get into the ring and then it's kind of a bummer when he dies. Well, and also when he throws the trident into the crowds and it's like, or into the stands. And it's like,

that's literally in gladiator except, except Russell Crowe does it. And it's like, come on, come on. I understand the real story here, but just like, I was just like,

I want to watch this guy. This is the guy i want to follow oh fully yeah yeah because he also like it feels like more leader like i don't know it just it feels like in a short time or like no that guy would could do this yes uh he his last movie ever it's quick in the dead uh is that right we recently covered him he had a very long career uh he did have a long career. He's in lots of things. Last Voyage, he's in Man Who Shot Liberty Balance, which is a great movie.

He gets credited as being the namesake for the character in Toy Story. I think Pixar has admitted that. Is that funny? Because he was the cowboy Woody of his time. There you go. Yeah. I just rewatched Four.

It's really good. Thank you. Love that movie. Good movie. Boss Baby's been been toy story gets one of the few things that will keep her eyes on screen well those bath toys too those are like her bath toys you know i'll say this i would talk to my friend derek who i similarly bought a bunch of toy story toys for his daughter when she was born and those are her favorite movies and i was like

did i successfully indoctrinate by placing these characters in the home so that when you put it on the tv the boss baby is recognizing like oh the bathtub friend right back to sport i guess then i think that's why she loves her jesse she's kind of jesse she plays with that a lot um anyway uh as you say kubrick doesn't like the movie right he says it had everything but a good story uh he says it feels like it was written in a bathtub i don't know why he said that's a weird quote hey why is my script so wet um uh trumbo's script only alluded to the final battle right and kubrick was like we need a fucking battle scene like which is funny because you almost think kubrick might be

the guy who's like oh that's interesting and instead kubrick's like i'm making an epic over here let me have some guys running it speaks to him knowing that he needed a hit and he's just like people are gonna fucking i'll never get hired again if this movie doesn't show a battle uh so saul bass helps with that sequence that you guys are kind of talking about where it's like you see these squares right these geometric roman legions that are like charging as like units and then the slaves are like a much less you know uh regimented force and they're like throwing fire at them and like the contrast is so striking like visually and paul bas apparently was uh huge on that he wanted to have that like dichotomy between like the soulless romans and they like soulful

slave army that's a salt bass king of shapes so silly to just line up like that for to fight to the death i just they were really good at it though i mean they kind of like conquered the known world i don't know if you know i just always romans yeah i'm aware i just always think i'd walk i think of like the wet hot american summer scene where they just go like this feels trite let's I'm aware. I just always think I'd walk up to the front lines. I think of like the Wet Hot American Summer scene where they just go like, this feels trite. Let's just not do this. Where they give up the baseball game. Like I would march

to the front lines and go like, how about we both just fucking take off and enjoy our afternoon? Rolling some flaming logs at you. What were you going to say? Oh, I was just going to say that I was reading about the guy that Olivier is playing, the real guy, and shortly after these events,

he died in the worst Roman defeat ever because he made his troops get in a square and it was the wrong strategy to take. Should have done a fucking Pentagon. He messed up. And that's why the Pentagon is shaped that way, by the way. They knew. If you're up close, it's all the Pentagon is shaped that way, by the way. Yeah. They knew.

If you're up close, it's all people. There's not really a building. Yeah, there's no walls. Human walls. No, Crassus is interesting because he was like, that's who Olivia plays. He was like the richest man alive in Rome when he lived. And you're like, oh, that's interesting. Why was he the richest man alive?

And you look it up and it's like real estate speculation. And you're like, fucking 3,000 years ago. She's like fucking trump yeah he was like i'll buy this yeah it is like it's worth that now it is what's sort of depressing about this movie like as we're dealing with like this constant question of like is society collapsing and you watch a movie about ancient rome this like famous societal collapse and you're just like we kind of keep making a lot of the same mistakes i mean as much as we this was the most like fucking enlightened civilization up until that point in time and they completely fucking did themselves in and it feels like we're similarly like overthinking ourselves 500 years before it all fell apart though don't worry no we look we've had a couple good centuries yeah but we based our system of government on the Senate. Uh oh.

Whoopsie. Who is the Joe Manchin of Ingenrude? Just a devaluation of people. Like, you know. I don't think... I made this movie today about Starbucks employees walking out. You made this film today and i have to go

i'm sorry no it's okay you're gonna come with me i gotta go too okay cool uh warren solivier playing howard schultz he'd probably be good at that he would um the portrayal of politicians too it's like they're just always been sleazy i know and like it's so funny anytime they refer themselves as the senate in this movie i am the movie and even with gracchus the charles lawton character who's like the better one is still kind of i mean he's kind of corrupt he wants to kill spartacus too yeah no one is pro spartacus it's just how anti-spartacus everyone is but even you're saying how funny it is every time this movie will cut to these like old bored treaders hamming it up in this room deciding the fates of all these like crazy epic people on a battlefield and whatever and you're like yeah it's insane we just let a bunch of old

guys go into a big room and just wear suits and ties and just decide everything yeah the fuck are you talking about they're not wearing suits and ties in this movie they're wearing nice yeah but maybe if we put them in robes, things would be better. Yeah, they'd be better. They'd feel a little looser. They'd feel a little... Yeah.

Air it out. That's a pretty nice fucking thing. Clammy. It's hot down there. Yeah. So, they make this movie. At a certain point, apparently, Edward Lewis, who's like the guy guy standing in on this for the script right

like he's lending his name he starts to feel uncomfortable about it and he says i don't want to be you know i don't want to use my name for this and kubrick apparently at one point was like look i hate the script but if you want to put my name on it no like why don't we just do that and olivier i mean sorry and kirk douglas is like no i'm actually gonna you know break tradition bring dalton trumbo's name into the foreground but like i guess there's the suggestion of maybe he was like fuck you stan right like i'm not gonna do that no i guess we'll just yeah right and the fact that this movie was a hit and that most famously john f kennedy went to see it exactly when he was in office it flips the

whole thing around it's like enough of this that broke the whole thing around this movie single handedly essentially breaks the blacklist by putting Dalton Trimbo's name on it and having it be such a hit they were just like oh we can't lord power over these people anymore it doesn't matter they're not afraid anymore

there's no onus on this Kubrick these are contemporary contemporary press complained about how he hates directing. There are thousands of decisions that have to be made. If you don't make them yourself and you're not on the same wavelength as everyone else, it's very painful, which this was.

And he says, shooting a movie is the worst milieu for creative work ever devised by man. It is noisy and physical. It's difficult to concentrate. You have to do it five days a week you know 10 hours a day it's not an environment an artist would ever choose to work in i mean these are all fair points it makes like you go off to paint a picture you're like i'm going into my

room yeah for weeks don't talk to me like i'm gonna slowly paint a picture and so this is like hey stanley do you want like the yellow flowers or the red flowers? You know, like every five minutes, right? It makes sense that he spent so much more time in his life designing movies that he would never make than making movies. Not because like, oh, he couldn't get these things made, but probably because for him it was like almost as fun to plan everything out without having to deal with the day to day logistics of doing it. And I mean, the longer his life goes on, there's a larger gap in between movies. Yes. Every, progressively. Right, right.

He's deeper and deeper into his armchair, and he's like, okay, every time he gets to really pull himself out. How does he talk about his movies? I know how he feels about this one, but was he fond in reflection no i don't know i don't know was he i think the other thing is as time goes on he talks less and less publicly right but i mean like there's the famous thing where he was like right before he

died he was like i think eyes wide shut's the best thing i've ever made like yeah i do feel like he was always striving for like some perfect creative process right and that's why it's shut where he's just like we're gonna do this thing for years right we'll do as many takes as i want and no one's fucking with me right right like it's right it's like but also those stories start to become secondhand stanley told me in the editing room that he thought this was the best movie he ever made like we're still in the the days in which jj is able to pull up tons of quotes from him right and it's probably going to get harder and harder that's true right because it's not like for full metal jack he probably wasn't like sitting down with premiere magazine or whatever like there's probably less of that yes um it's funny yeah can you imagine collider frosty

asking stanley kubrick his favorite karaoke song? And who do you think is going to be in phase four of the MCU? Would you ever direct Fantastic Four? That's going to be the next Feige. I hear Feige's going for it. He's going big. Stanley Kubrick sitting in a director's chair is like someone from Nintendo Power Magazine introducing him.

Just like, uh-huh. Stanley Kubrick to make Splatoon. i love and i love that and i feel like we will get a lot of these which is quotes from actors who worked with him later right arliss howard who is in full metal jacket and is my boyfriend um i love arliss howard uh the great arliss howard inexplicably british in the lost world yes um said when he did spartacus stanley kubrick said he was astonished at how many people were allowed to have opinions on the content of the movie which is like a hilariously naive thing for him to say in one way and also like totally sums up stanley kubrick he's like arliss you

wouldn't believe it all these guys had some sort of opinion on what spartacus should look like he was like talking about like studio notes and his attitude was almost i expect them to tell me to make the movie differently i'm not going to listen to them but i expect them to say that to tell me what the movie should be about how fucking dare they right um but curtis tony curtis says they never shoved him around like you know he got what he wanted uh you know he wouldn't shoot a scene if he didn't think he had enough, right? Like, if he's like, I needed 20 extras for this and he gave me 10, like, we're not shooting it. Like, you know.

In that Arliss Howard quote, and not only that, but Tunker said, like, he'd come back the next day and ask for more. Yes, he'd write. He'd be like, I want 100 extras. They'd give him five, and he's like, no, I want 200 extras, fuckers. Is it in that same Arliss Howard quote

where he tells the story about seeing a rep screening of Spartacus where the marquee said Stanley Kubrick Spartacus? And he took a picture and sent it to Kubrick and Kubrick was really touched because he felt like, aside from the fact that he... This is actually Gregory Novitz, not Stanley Kubrick. Sorry, Arliss Howard, but you're right. Yes. He went to see the restoration and stanley was like well go see it you know i'm not gonna go i'm not crazy about it i have regrets um and it said right he took the picture of the marquee and he loved that because kirk douglas thought of it as his film so he did

ask for a photo of it so right so he has some sentiment even in the 80s he was sort of like that movie is viewed as douglas's victory rather than my film right not even the movie isn't as good as i thought it would be but people don't even think of it i mean when i've been running down what you said david the conversation of people going like stanley kubrick what is that 87 movies and i'll list the 13 for them they're like he made spartacus oh it's weird i mean it's really weird right you have three early movies that people haven't heard of. Right. But outside of that, every other movie is pretty famous for being a Kubrick movie, and this movie's legacy is not that much on Kubrick. No, not at all. I mean, it's so...

I mean, there are interesting things in it, but it's so conventional. I mean, because it was for hire, and it was supposed to, you know, have to be. It is conventional. It's a movie you could hurt yourself trying to find the Kubrick in. And I think the morals of it are pretty straightforward, you know, it is conventional like it's a movie you could hurt yourself trying to find the cubric and i think the morals of it are pretty straightforward you know where his movies after this get much more complicated on that front and um but you see these little touches of of personality you know and signature in there but weirdly i think they're they're they're in ways that are like positive

like like he'll pause on like a little kid like his grandma like squirting him with the goat smells or you know these this kind of charming scenes between um gracchus and uh usanov you know where they're just kind of like you like women you know like they're just kind of bonding and you're like it there's a softer side to it but those are the moments when i kind of feel like oh this there's a personality behind the camera well jj our beloved researcher uh had a little editorial ization in the dossier which i appreciate and he was tweeting something similar uh this week uh and unsurprisingly you know jj spends a lot of time doing research for this show and then he'll go on his twitter account he'll tweet errant thoughts about whatever he's deep into in the research.

And it seems like for the first time now, Twitter bros coming at him because they're like Kubrick heads are the most annoying legion of people of any of the directors he's had to sort of research for us in the last year and a half. And they've coming out of the woodwork people don't even follow him whatever but he was sort of talking about his jj's own interpretation of the kubrick process versus how it's often talked about and he wrote this i thought very well in the dossier but the the notion of his obsessive takes the legendary sort of always doing a hundred takes of every fucking thing and that the perception of it was he has this perfect thing in his mind and he's relentless and he won't move on until he sees the thing exactly how i envisioned it and jj's like when you read people work with them it sounded so much more that the thing he was waiting for was for something to surprise him it wasn't that he wanted to see what was in his head he wanted to see

something that he could never come up with right and it goes back to the fact that he wanted to see what was in his head he wanted to see something that he could never come up with right and it goes back to the fact that he starts out as a documentary filmmaker as a photojournalist that he was capturing real life that he was able to find these organic sort of lucky moments all of those sequences when you see sort of like um the the life of the rebellion you know them sort of traveling together the things these stolen moments yeah a lot of children that you're like i thought this was all going to just be men you know but the children is pretty fascinating because it feels like docudrama it feels like a refugee crisis that he's filmed yeah right right and and they're very sort of

well observed but very slight underplayed moments of humanity that feel very organic. And they hearken back to that as sort of his, I don't know, his starting point. Gotta be real. Oh boy, was it me saying that bullshit? No, don't worry. It's never a video.

It's just a photo. Okay. I like when they laugh together. I especially like seeing Kurt Douglas laugh. laugh go on because he doesn't seem like a big laugher in general not at all and also just because it's like a period piece i don't like i don't i don't i mean i haven't seen really truly any of the epics classic epics but it you made me think of humanity i mean like that was like a moment that stuck out to me there's like i think two they're the egg on the face moment yeah and then i think the two of them laughed together when they're reunited because she was able to run away yeah that's a good

like that stuff feels like it really stands out but kirk douglas also looks like like a fucking cigar store wood carving right yeah and like he he barely talks for the first half of this movie like i i think i really clocked at like an hour 20 minutes is the first time he has an extended dialogue scene yeah yeah up until that point it's pretty much monosyllabic or one isolated line at the end of a big scene and he's just kind of standing there with gritted teeth, stoic, where anytime he is a motive, it is bizarre. Like it does sort of strike you. There's sort of a Garbo laughs thing going on, especially when he's in this patina of the like the epic and playing the sort of square jawed hero. He's like a Hall of Presidents robot.

It's odd when he starts doing anything out of character. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, when he starts doing anything out of character yeah yeah no i mean that when he laughs in that scene you're like wait what right was this i don't think they meant to leave this in like this was like between takes or something it feels like like yeah like jackie chan bloopers that is why i love the scene i already mentioned with herbert long too because it's like allowing him to be retrospective or introspective right where he's like you guys are gonna lose like yeah there's six legions massing outside you know and spartacus doesn't have any bravado he just like is like calm

and he's like yeah i don't know like and they like look out together and he has that whole thing where he's like death for a slave is like good in a way it's like you're free of pain like you know it's not like that's later i think where he says that to olivier maybe well yeah and not to jump ahead but it's what's interesting about the whole end chunk with Tony Curtis of the, like, what's the better outcome here? Is it me stabbing you so you don't have to go up on the cross? Right.

Or you stabbing me, but then you have to... Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's a sad ending. Right, they're just like, we're fucked either way. What's the way you want to die? Yeah, like, they didn't Hollywoodize the ending at all. all i mean i guess maybe inventing it's the only character but like right that is just is just her showing him his son but like that's it and even that is pretty fucking and who the fuck knows where they're gonna go you know like it's not there's

like the whatever is day yeah yeah because i mean like gladiator at least sort of lets him go to heaven right you know it gets all sort of like right go to heaven. Yes. You know, it gets all sort of, like, in your spiritual... And in Gladiator, we go back to the wheat field. He suffers the immense tragedy of the start of Gladiator,

so it's like, he's already... He's, like, dead. Like, his wife and children are dead. He's like, I might as well be dead. And then he's, like,

building himself back up from there. But he doesn't want to be on the earth. This is what I'm saying about, like, and it just speaks to me probably being, like, a conventional sap or whatever,

but Gladiator, a film I've never fully connected with. Watching this for the first time, I understand the value of like the amount of emotional endpoints that Ridley Scott was able to create in the setup of that movie. Yeah.

I love Gladiator. I think it's great. I gave you my steelbook. You sure did. I got some. I'm going to watch it again now. Yeah, I want to watch it again after that. Fucking rules. And much like this movie,

as Ridley Scott recognized about this movie, it's loaded up with supporting actors who are just thespian gems. That's what Gladiator, All the Reed, and Richard Harris. That's where All the Reed fucking finally did itself in.

Didn't he keel over in a pub or something? Yes, he should have that's how all the reed was supposed to go out yeah on some fucking movie and he's just like i think i'll have a 16th and the guy's like all right he's like well that'll do it it was also one of those things where they were like you can hire oliver reed as long as you have someone by his side at all times making sure he does not have a single drink. And two weeks in they were just like, what are we going to fucking do here? Two weeks in they were like, well he's dead,

but we can make a CGI version of him that kind of works. It's also wild that it works better than most. It does. They spent a fortune on it, but it works. Gladiator, an actor died, an old guy died, and they replaced him with CGI. It's the same year as the fucking Sopranos thing?

Yeah. I mean, the Sopranos thing was peanuts, price-wise, compared to CGI. Absolutely. But still, it's like, watching Gladiator, it's hard to find the scenes. You don't know where it is, right. It's hard to notice the CGI. It's true. It's cool.

It's cool. Just the thing you mentioned is true. They get out of the Douglas deal essentially because he wants, I want to make Lolita. Douglas is like, I don't want to do that. And also Douglas is like, he's an annoying little shit.

That's the thing. Well, this is the quote and I do like it. You don't have to be a nice person. This is Kirk Douglas. You don't have to be a nice person to be extremely talented. You can be a shit and be talented. And conversely,

you can be a nice guy and not have any talent. Stanley Kubrick is a talented shit so that's his assessment of him is the quote in there the cooper quote about uh head versus heart where he's sort of talking about the notion that people in hollywood don't care and that everyone's a hack just looking for a paycheck yes the reason hollywood movies are often so bad isn't because the people who make them are cynical money hacks most of them are doing the very best they can they really want to make good films the trouble is with their heads not their heart that's an incredible quote because brutal there's there's a surprising generosity in him saying like no it's

really hard to make movies people think this is like a careless business and the people are like cynical about it but really everyone's trying their hardest yeah and then the kubrick punch comes at the end where he's like, just most people aren't smart. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I was thinking about that weirdly when I was watching where the crowd ads

sing. Oh, sure. We were like, okay, so this book that's watching, you were hearing, you sat your ass down and listen to the crowd.

That's right. Yes. I was experiencing the crowd ads. And by the way, where is it? Did you find out new carolina i've been trying to find it's around the corner from that one swamp you know um right the second star straight out till morning right and like that book like was written by a crazy

person that's currently involved in her own murder mystery a real life murder murder mystery um but i've read snippets of it there's like style and you go i went to see the movie it was the premiere at moma did they give you the coloring books no oh no no they've been doing screen i just i saw that and then people are walking out and the studio is handing out adult coloring books oh god yeah well we didn't get those but like it has this pedigree it's one of the best-selling novels of all time yeah they have filmed in in louisiana it's not like fake it's like real bayou kind of thing and you're watching it and you're like and the director spoke before in for like 25 minutes

reading like a thank you list whatever it's not incredible and it's just like so kind of like that it's like everyone went into this with the well intentions. They really wanted to make it as good as it could be, but it's just not smartly made. Yeah. It's just, and it's like

that there is absolutely, all the component parts can be there except if the people who wrote it and directed it don't get it, you know? And it's crazy to like see what a director like Kubrick can do when brought in to help a studio thing get finished, you know and it's it's crazy to like see what a director like kubrick can do when brought in to help a studio thing get finished you know like um yeah it's a real testament to that sort of a tourist kind of talking about i mean look a lot of its taste and judgment right

which kind of can't be taught yeah but you talk about the kubrickian standards and the quest for perfection and control and all that sort of shit. And once again, you want to compare him to someone like Wes Anderson, who is certainly one of the most controlled directors working today. And once again, all the actors who work with him are like, yeah, it's difficult.

He's like very precise. The timing is like there's no room for error. He wants word perfect. It's to the for error. He wants word perfect. It's to the millimeter, all this sort of shit. It's very meticulous work. Everyone who works for him likes him as a guy. But I read some interview once with him that was very telling where he said when he watches Bottle Rocket, he cannot get over the things that he looks at where he caved to the pressure of, Wes, we really need to move on.

Where he's like, it drives me crazy anytime I look at anything in that movie where it's off by like one degree or whatever it is. And he just said, after he made that movie, he said, I am just never going to have anything I regret because I didn't take the time for it in one of my movies ever again. He's like, I won't sleep if that's what it takes, if I need to work all night to figure out the way to do it, whatever it is, I'm never moving on because someone says we're out of time or money. And I think there's that sort of thing with Kubrick where it's just like it's so much more painful

to have to watch the movie later and constantly be haunted by the things you surrender. Might as well get it right now. You might as well get it right in the moment when you can. Well, Kirk Douglas disagrees because he said at the time, Stanley will be a fine director someday if he falls in his face just once, might teach him how to compromise.

So Kirk thinks the opposite. He thinks Stanley needs to be on his face. Don't think Stanley ever learned how to compromise. No, arguably. Which is probably one reason he's so distinctive. His biggest failure was the one that came after he died like if he had had to make a movie after eyes wide shut that would have been the first time that he was really reacting to like a bad possible when he died he was signed on to do wild hogs is that right he was and he was gonna do it with hayley joel osmond right and at first he wanted

to do with four robots he spent years developing hog bots let's call them what they were robo hogs he had drawings filling his london flat of hog bots some blankie tweeted at me this week that the bar that they constructed for wild hogs which was not a real bar still stands today as a tourist attraction. They built a bar in the middle of the desert. Specifically see the bar where... It's like Hobbiton. This film premiered at the Panathenaic Theater.

John F. Kennedy attended. President of the United States. Crossed the picket line. That was the fucking thing. It won four Oscars supporting actor, cinematography, costumes, and production design. It was nominated for score. Incredible Alex North score on this movie.

The score is unbelievable. This really good mix of truly melancholy, proper emotional score that's still big. The romance scene is pretty incredible. There's brass all over it. There's tubas, French horns, and Trump is just blasting your ass. One of the Roman legions should have tubas and stuff. Do you think? It's all the spearmen charging in,

but then one of them is just a big brass band. There was no human dartboard with an instrument walking around with the troops. Yeah. There were some boys playing instruments in the bathhouse, but that was it in terms of... That would be good, though. Trying to play trumpet in the bathtub!

We haven't really talked about... This movie is pretty homoerotic. I know, it's so homoerotic. David, don't get to the premiere of the fucking movie. Let's back up the train and talk about... And the Tony Curtis of it all. We got Dickie Lawson. Tony Curtis, for years, was this kind of gay icon.

Not gay himself, though there were always rumors. Would almost, like, lay it on too thick about how much he loved women. Exactly. Maybe it was just a protest too much. Sure, maybe there was a protest too much element to it. It was, like, pretty crass about... Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Absolutely. And, you know, in this movie, he's... He's also married six times, which is a fair amount of times to be married. Sure, go ahead. He was in his mid-thirties in this, you know, because I always thought, oh, he was like, new on the scene, nobody really knew that. And he still looks

cherubic or whatever. But this being the year after Some Like It Hot is pretty wild. It's hard to process. But you would kind of think that like in 1960, like we're out of hayes code barely or no uh it's dying it's dying right but i would say the case code doesn't technically end till like bonnie and clyde but even so you have it's going away the bath scene is like the bath scene astounding there are other scenes where men are sort of intimately professing

love to one another and they're like they're're always – like a father, like a son, you know. But it's like, come on, you know. And I'm just – the bath scene though is almost explicit about the fact that this guy is bisexual. You cannot believe how little it is coded. And yes, it's villainy and it's the old thing of like – you know, it's Scar from The Lion King or whatever. scar from the Lion King or whatever. But I didn't mind it because it's fascinating and it's done in such an interesting

snails and oysters. And Olivia's also not kemping it up any more than he usually does. He's not putting additional... He's not twirling his ruby ring and adjusting his wig. Twirling or whatever.

It would be funny if he adjusted his wig. She maybe could have done that. Ironically, Yusnov is Prince John in the animal animated Robin Hood. Of course. It's sort of what all of this becomes. Exactly. The simpering villain.

Because Yusnov in the beginning where he has the boy carrying the umbrella and he's like, the sun's that way. And he's kind of bitchy. And then that character sort of changes. That's the thing. That's in the first scene of the umbrella and he's like the sun's that way and he's like a kind of bitchy and then that character sort of changes that's like that's in the first scene of the movie and you're like oh this is like gay from the right from the outset you know when no one involved was gay as far as i know you know in in the major parts of the film and like i just think it's funny to have heard about this movie mostly through clueless but also just joked about in community for years, about oh, that movie's so gay. And then to watch it,

I thought people were exaggerating, and it's like oh no, no, they were not at all. There's a reason that it's the fucking joke in Airplane and that the joke still works so well. It's arguably... Billy, have you ever been to a Turkish prison?

But it's one of those things where you're like, that's kind of the you ever been to a Turkish prison yeah but it's one of those things where you're like that's kind of the best way to put it gay joke in a straight comedy ever that also doesn't

feel offensive it's a very funny euphemism yeah yeah I mean and you know when 300 came out

and made so much fucking money I remember there being trend pieces where they're just like yeah like underserved gay audience this isn't being talked about that loudly right right and and zach snyder was sort of going on trumpeting like well we like amped up the lena lena heady character from the

book because we wanted this movie to relate to women because these movies only usually relate to men and we think that's why the film's overperforming and it was like no it's over performing because of gay men right Right, it's abs. Yeah, and it's just really funny to think about, you know, nine years before Stonewall, like, gay guys in West Hollywood or, you know, the village being like, have you seen Spartacus? It's great. It's fun. Like, this was like. Yeah, they're like, they kind of did it.

Like, oh, Larry Olivier is, you know. They're like, they kind of did it. Like, oh, Larry Olivier is, you know. You imagine there must have been screenings of this movie that felt like the fucking story of Sweetback's badass song where the Black Panther Party shows up to the screening and it's just like fucking finally. Right, right, right. You know, in San Francisco, this movie must have just played like the end of Endgame. You can. It was not made. It was not made.

Every scene was fucking catching the hammer right yeah like i don't think it was made with this intention but you can if you like pivot a little bit to one side it view this movie as like camp you know it allows for that in a way i don't think it's a campy movie per se but like it has that ability to and there's something about the weird balance of kubrick being so literal minded and straight faced about everything and then having all these old theatrical actors who have the clout to do whatever the fuck they want because like every old british theatrical actor from from the mid-century was like a raging queen even if he was straight yes this is and also but it's

that all those fucks each other yeah but that's the thing there's that class of actor the olivier types where you're like right is he he's either gay or whatever right like and then there's the i want it like james dean monty clift rock hudson who actually of course was gay you know like marlon brando burt lancaster carrie grant. Yeah. All those guys where it's like they were either gay, bisexual, or the Tony Curtis thing where you're like, there's no evidence, but I don't know. Like, you know, like, just like there were always whispers becomes the story about this. Like, those 50s leading men who were so pretty and so adept at comedy. And so, like, you know, whatever, like, it's a swinging time in post-war hollywood i mean look these things are all cyclical yeah it it did feel like that was the first wave of like

or perhaps second wave but but like true fluidity in hollywood and it was sort of like don't ask don't tell but it was like a lot of these people you go tell. But it was like, a lot of these people, you go like, wait, so it was like the Catherine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy thing. Was that a sham? Was that like a fake for pressing? You're like, no, they very much did have a thing. Even though he was married to a different woman. And he also, by all accounts, had sex with a lot of men. And all these people were sort of like, why are we, why do we need to define anything?

Everyone fuck everyone. Yeah, James Dean and Sal Mineo were probably doing something on Rebel or Giant or whatever but it just felt like kind of everyone was fucking everyone for 20 years yeah yeah and i think i think what's such a bummer about that is that like obviously there were pains of the closet and all that stuff and like but it's there were there were there was community there people had community and they were they were they were living foolish lives you know and then you get one thing about that which which is that goddamn Ryan Murphy show, which he decides to depict it as this like descent into the house of horrors. Right.

When one of the characters goes to one of these Noel Coward dinner party things or whatever. Is that what that show is like? There is one episode that's all, yeah, Hollywood. There's an episode that's all at a dinner party at Jim Parsons is playing some nightmare, an agent or something. And it's just, It's just this absolute

haunted house full of miserable old queens. I'm sure that was there to some extent, but also it wasn't all that, I'm sure. Look, I'll just say some blankies understandably got upset with what they viewed

as a flippancy with how we talked about bisexuality in the Cabaret episode, which I think was, to defend ourselves quickly, our interpretation of that specific character and not extrapolations about a larger spectrum of sexuality. Yeah, but whatever.

We didn't need to be so glib or whatever. Right. We didn't need to be glib. We were sort of talking offhandedly about these things. But when you dig into, especially this era of those actors, there are things like,

Charles Lawton was married for decades through his death, to his death, when you dig into especially this era of those actors yeah there are things like charles lawton was married for decades through his death to his death uh not through his death uh to elsa lancaster who was the bride of frankenstein the titular bride of frankenstein a fascinating fucking couple right and there's the story that she walked in on him having sex with a man one time and so then people for a long time framed as like, oh, he was a closeted gay man. And it's like, no, there are people like Rock Hudson who, by all accounts, seem to be a gay man who was closeted. Right. Had to keep up with the garage. Struggling with that. Yes. And it's informs his performances in this crazy way.

Right. You read about fucking Lancaster and Lawton and it's like, no, they were in love with each other and they were married and they had like a sex life right right it these guys and and gals in this era were very like boundary lesson yes and this movie feels weirdly reflective of that i i agree i agree there there is a sort of energy to the movie that's that is speaking a lot to what was going on down the street from where they were filming you know you can whatever not even quote sneak it by but you can just present it to a mainstream audience at the time and it won't really register with them they'll be like i don't know it's rome sure right yeah people took baths it's the material right like i'm not gonna even think you know like there's this sort of plainly homoerotic material that can both be easily

interpreted and also just sail over heads enough at the time i guess because it's whatever it's like this was like a movie that would get adapted into a comic book that would be sold to kids right you know this is the biggest hit of the year right right this was like a movie you would take your child and fucking christian can go show it to uh you know share and clueless and she can be like, when are we going to fuck? He can be watching Tony Curtis with his hands in his chin. His chin in his hands.

In that way, this is a true four quadrant. There's something for almost everybody. Which is rare. He sings songs to the children. And I juggle as well. I wish I had the exact line and i juggle as well what i want i wish i had the exact line i juggle as well i can find the flintstones episode right dang you think i'm

gonna have that information at my absolute fingertips i was just always fascinated it's gonna take a couple google i feel like flintstones would play well there was just that washington post article about the tony curtis's flintstones it's big news yeah the oral history that uh yeah he did a flintstones episode character called stoney curtis thank you first off i just remember his face one of those things that when we're kids we're watching that and you're like i know this is a reference to something this is why i'm bringing it up. First off, his face... Like how Peter Lorre's in Louis Tern. His face in that episode is so bizarre

and does not match the Hanna-Barbera art style. And you're just like, this has to be a real person because they wouldn't design something like that. And this drawing is so weird. What does the real guy look like? And then you look at the real guy and it's exactly the same as the other drawing. Oh, they nailed it.

Literally, it's like a masterwork. But they did like Ann Marg Rock. I think there was a Rock Hudson. I just remember Simpsons would play like, Simpsons, Flintstones would play in like the Simpsons syndication slot on early Cartoon Network at like 5 p.m. every single day, back-to-back episodes.

And I'd watch them. They have these episodes that were treated like Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger showing up in Springfield. Right. Where I'd be like, what the fuck is going on here? And of all of them, Tony Curtis was the one as a child where I was like, what's this voice? What's this face?

Right. What's this energy? What's this fucking persona? What is being parodied? I don't understand. He doesn't fit in here. This isn't a type that I understand. He doesn't fit into ancient Greece.

No. But he does though. Now I really want to hear him say yabba dabba doo. But he did. Let me see if there's a YouTube clip. He mocked uh fred flintstone for not getting enough pussy he peddled by in his footmobile hey fuck you fred god the flintstones is so weird like look at the other thing every other guy in this

their head is shaped like an ice cube and has four like this like if it goes out like two inches long curling eyelash do you remember the flintstones push pops yeah it's like they didn't have to change the shape of the characters to fit like a popsicle no they all were shaped like a push pop did not see us going to tony curtis's uh

flintstones guest spot not objecting to i'm gonna do a flintstones rewatch podcast called the podstones or some shit the flint pots before we wrap to the the premiere which i must discuss of course in the box office game is there anything else we want to discuss we haven't really talked about gene simmons's character verena but she's not the most interesting character again uh probably kubrick thought this way of like not not much fairly saintly he wanted john

moreau to do it which would have been fascinating that would be pretty cool that's like a year this is like a year after jules jim or whatever like right like this is like i think it was a visa thing i was look uh i saw that somewhere that that was like years this is two years before jules jim so she's really yeah yeah uh would have been sure um there are a couple scenes here that are pretty striking i mean that first scene where they push her into his that she's very arresting and the silent sort of yeah right yeah and then the reveal of like they're watching above like a great like this is all you almost don't understand why because whenstinov is sort of giving them all like the opening ceremonial introductory welcome to being my slave, here's how things work here kind of thing. He's like – and he behaved well.

We let you have sex with people. Right. So then you're wondering why he's being rewarded that quickly and you realize it's all part of this weird fucking game of like, oh, no, we want to watch you fuck this person. This is still for our titillation. This is still dehumanization. Yeah. Especially because neither of them have really talked that much in the movie at that point they don't really have an extended conversation until they meet up again and even then i mean they get to i love you

pretty quick but like whatever they do pregnant like immediately yeah but you know those great little kind of scenes that you know where uh you know they touch they they hold hands sort of or brush fingers you know and that's this big moment for both of them and then she gets sent off to be with the spaniard which that felt like gladiators you know um as punishment and then the next day he kind of mouths like did they hurt you like like those are small intimate moments that you wouldn't necessarily expect in a 62 year old no epic like this no i also think she's incredibly good in the big scene with Olivier where he's like, I'll fucking kill your son if you don't sleep with me.

And she's like, why do you want me to hate you so much? He's like, no, I want you to love me. And she's like, so you're going to threaten to kill my son? You think you can force me into liking me through intimidation? You think you can force me into liking me through intimidation? Well, it's a good way because he has won, by all accounts, in that movie. He stole her. He killed everybody else.

And yet, it's a good scene where she's just kind of reminding him, like, oh, no, you didn't win this. Or me, at least. But also, he didn't win, right? Because he thinks, right, I'm now on top. And the whole point of having Caesar in the background background played by very very pretty john gavin is like it's like no this is a guy who people actually like and will like like this is a person who actually will have a cult of personality like will actually command people through charisma which is what spartacus it's the whole thing with this movie it's why it needs to be someone like kurt douglas playing

spartacus because the thing that completely enrages them is the people like this guy yeah right that's why they're they don't understand how it's it's it's like the juice that's giving this rebellion some some real momentum is that like people they find him appealing they want to listen what he has to say yeah and like and crassus the real guy would would go off to his death trying to basically do what Caesar did in Gaul, but in the East. And like, because he was like, I have to keep up with this guy. And then he completely,

he got 30,000 of his people killed, including himself. This weird sort of like Dick Cheney, fucking Steve Bannon figure, where it's like, I can see the whole game and the problems that no one likes me. I'm just, I'm horrible.

I'm boring. Yeah. And unappealing. Yeah. And Olivier is good at that in that he is, of course, an incredibly magnetic actor and you love to watch him talk, but he can play like the most unlikable, like sort of slimy guy as well, like without losing any of that charisma. Yeah. So good. It also helps there like that he's not doing like, you know scream level villain camp be funny if he was too

yeah sort of if it's too much it's too much and i i think that i i like that star scream was a roman senator he was that was a thing oh no famously yeah yeah um but like there are moments even in the in this movie where you're like okay is he that bad and then you're like oh no he no he is he just he's not playing it that way. Oh no, he is. I just got confused because he seems like an intelligent person. That's what it is. He's pretty measured. Because the guy screws up

and basically lets Gracchus nominate him to take half the garrison. And then that's it. And Crassus knows like, oh, that was an error, strategically. And someone like Lawton, in his final moments, is like, I should do one good thing. Like, Olivier kind of never makes the human choice.

But, like, when in that scene where he's kind of berating the younger guy for making that error, he then softens and is like, oh, it's okay. Like, you'll be fine. You know, whatever. And you're like, oh, is he a villain? But, you know, of course he is. you're like oh is he a villain but you know of course he is it's just it's a good performance remember when that guy's gonna get like was it 400 miles there's like a 400 mile ring around him that's the punishment no one can give you food yeah so where does he go i don't fucking know yeah uh apparently this film took two years to make

wow people were asking that earlier that's a long time a production or or just it's one of those things where it's like variety calls that it took to so my guess is it's like production and post right like it's like the whole thing i'm gonna film this for a year um it got good reviews although bosley crowther that old that old grump in the times hated it um which i guess is maybe the best sign of like how this is not seen as an upper crust movie or whatever it's even though it's a hit bosley in the times is sort of like yes yes very good very good like you know very fancy but you know even though it's got lots of fervor and you know historical you know stuff like it's not he's not that I wasn't making this as an offhand reference.

Heroic humbug is what he calls it. It was the thing I saw on the Wikipedia that this had a Dell Comics color adaptation, which was kind of like the video game tie-in of its era, in the same way that the Marvel movies are like, adults go see them. Let's be honest, these are movies meant for kids.

But Dell Comics was like, oh. it's interesting to see what films got that framing at the time. Because some of them are things like The Searchers where you're like, it's weird that that movie was meant for kids. And other ones are movies that have completely fallen by the wayside where you're like, oh, these are just little boy fighting movies. But they almost went out of business when they did the one for Lolita. That was a misstep uh you mean this peter sellers movie isn't for kids um okay uh as we may know some of this movie was cut down right including the uh oysters and snails stuff and like you know that was objected to initially by the key league of national legion of decency when the film was restored the dialogue was missing tony curtis re-recorded the dialogue even though he was in his 60s for his part olivier was dead fuck what do we do anthony hopkins impersonated him really because anthony hopkins does a perfect olivier i will say watching this

i i realized and i did not know that fact that it was done i was like oh olivier was in the hopkins phase of his career yeah like olivier playing this role is very much like 90s because how many years away was he from like uh marathon man you know or right yeah right you you end up at jazz singer marathon man which is like hopkins doing red two right right or or whatever but this is like right oh you hire olivier to just lead lend the gravitas and he does so wait the bath scene was not in the original theatrical release yes okay when was it put back in? 1991 was the restoration. So really no one had laid eyes on that for 30 years. That's a big fucking chunk of the movie missing in character motivation.

There's also some of the bloodiest stuff had been cut out. How did they explain where Antonius came from? Yeah, why he left that job. I don't know. It may have just been specific stuff that was cut out. I don't know. My old boss used to ride my ass. That's all he said.

And the big re-release. Literally. It was one of those things. Good, good, good, good, good. It was one of those things where Kubrick was like, look, I'm not interested in it being re-released. And Spielberg knew him then. Yeah.

And was like, well, they're American Cinematheque or whoever wants to do this. And he sort of talks him into it, and Kubrick eventually then does the thing he almost was doing in the 90s, which was sending lots of faxes. You ever remember, like, Spielberg talks about it a lot, right? Kubrick was always

sending faxes from his estate in London. So that was how he supervised the restoration. This thing looks incredible. This was notoriously like, there was this important. There's a very bad Blu-ray of it. Yeah, it was like historically the worst Blu-ray transfer. They were like, what the fuck is Universal doing?

This looks like a VHS put on a disc. Right. And now the 4K. I have this deal. Right. Yeah. It's now the proper, I think, 8K scan of the restoration work that was done. Of the 91 restoration.

Correct. And it looks unbelievable. It looks wonderful. You just cannot believe the level of detail in this image. 100%. You see every pore in everyone's face. I feel like its lasting reputation is as a good movie. That is not a masterpiece, but it's a good movie. And it's not would you agree like that is not a masterpiece but is a good movie and is not nearly one of kubrick's better films but is you know a good move right you know like

it's still well regarded the the 4k steelbook weirdly when the movie ended and yeah this movie doesn't really have end credits but then there's like restoration credits on the end of it another thing like look it's embarrassing we've been doing the show for so long it's taken us this long to get to movies from the 50s and 60s which hopefully will start moving even further back uh but this and sweet charity close together it's nice just watch two movies that have fucking on tracks love and intermissions oh yeah you know and all that sort of shit um it's an on track it's like it's like the overture but f when you're coming back from intermission oh so you're walking back in you've got your cracker jacks you got your nachos i just love the thing you immediately fast forward through when you're at home that's

next chapter please yeah yeah yes which ben by the way saw bass a big thing he spearheaded was like before him opening credits would often just be projected on the closed curtains because they'd be like, this is before the actual movie. Anything actually happens or matters. And he was like, this is like could be a part of the film. You could make this storytelling. And it was like, oh, when Saul Bass started designing opening credits sequences, they would open the curtains up. But a lot of that where there's just the overture playing it was like when and you're looking at a blank screen or you're looking at just a color with no detail or whatever it's because they literally

weren't opening the curtains yet it was just sort of like place setting music um there's the fucking end credits they add on to this just for the restoration and then weirdly i don't think i've seen this before the 4k disc just started playing special features yes it just let it literally i let it run and then suddenly kirk douglas was there being like and now special features so there's a very old like 98 year old you know two decades post-strike stroke kirk douglas and he says this thing about like i made 90 movies in my life right people will probably only for the rest of time remember at most 10 of them and of those 10 spartacus is the one that will probably last forever and he's sort of saying with a little bit of surprise where he's even like he knows that's neither the best movie he

was ever in nor one of his best performances but this movie does have some weird cultural it's true staying power and so even when you're a little kid, you know about I'm Spartacus. You know what he looks like? You know the shots, you know the lines. It just sort of has, yeah. And it's certainly not as special. Because it became one of the chief things cited when people were talking about a Hollywood cliche.

Oh, you know, the epics. Right. Spartacus, Ben-Hur, those two movies. That's what gets referenced. Maybe Ten Commandments or whatever, you know. Those are like the three of this era and genre that they represent like a major era of film you know in america so we could talk about like you can parody and everyone understands what you're parodying even if they haven't seen 100 yeah and i think it's why when gladiator came out and was obviously such a massive hit and then there were attempts

to do more and even ridley tried to do kingdom of heaven more times exodus exodus and none of them really stuck because they're i think the reason gladiator well it was like yes yay one fun throwback and we don't need anymore this is the thing with all these things where it's like well you'll never make a successful pirate movie it's like we can make the pirates movies it's just that there won't that won't be it doesn't mean it's a trend a blank check for right every studio to have a pirate movie or whatever right yes right um you're right i mean i guess like after gladiator you got troy you got like movies that did well at the box office but you didn't get any more good or well-received and in a way troy was like, okay, Troy is the one

that coasts off of the goodwill from Gladiator, but people don't like it, and then when Kingdom of Heaven comes out, people are like, no, we're done. Troy is the Pearl Harbor to Armageddon. Titanic. Oh, true. No, that's fair. Yes. It's just like, it's someone who's talented, but not as talented, and

not as thoughtful, and it's way worse. And it was like, we're at one strike here. The audience is gonna... Someone who's talented but not as talented and not as thoughtful. It's way worse. We're at one strike here. The audience is going to... One bad version of this and we'll never go see it again. I thought it was so bad when I saw it. I was anti-Troy. I thought it sucked. Now I bet if I watched it, I'd be like, it's pretty good.

I think so too. I also feel like it's one of those movies where there's an hour cut back into it where people are like, oh, it makes sense. Yeah, that's probably true. Kingdom of Heaven is the one where notoriously it goes from being a disaster to a masterpiece. I have heard that Director's Cut is really good.

But I think Troy is at least a B-plus in the Director's Cut. Kingdom of Heaven's big problem, God bless him, is Orlando Bloom. Also in Troy. Well, he's well cast in Troy because he's the dipshit in right where and troy has the advantage of pit and vana at least where you're like you know these are like very robust on-screen

it was such a fascinating thing when orlando bloom's entire filmography was like uh a black hawk down three lord of the rings uh troy and pirates the caribbean and they were like this guy's gold the biggest actor right and now we're gonna let him be the guy right kingdom of heaven here we go and people were immediately just like no and camera crow was like not not this no absolutely not you're done forever don't want it yeah now he's like slightly back he's around now what's he doing is he on the show the amazon show which show the lord of the rings show no no he did the fucking he did the weird carnival show yes like where it's like fairy detectives or whatever with caradela carnival road that's right that was like a

blacklist script that never got made and then it's one of those shows it was kubrick's idea first absolutely yeah it's one of those shows that got a second season that we've still never seen i think because of covid and maybe we'll get it one day or whatever but that's the thing he's around he's around he's around i feel like there's a lot of things though where you're like oh he was supposed to play the um dominic cooper role in an education dropped out a week before filming started they're like some of those where they're kind of interesting supporting parts and good projects that he was signed up to do and dropped out at the last second.

Okay. Spartacus came out in late October 1960. Okay. Opens at number three in the box office or I'm doing its first weekend of the box office where it is a new entry essentially. But number one of the box office is it is a new entry, essentially. But number one at the box office is

the biggest hit of last year, the best picture winner of last year, one of the most financially successful films ever made, and we've talked about it a lot on this podcast. We've talked about it a lot on this podcast? On this very episode. On this very... Is it The Ten Commandments?

Nope, but... Ben-Hur? Ben-Hur. Okay. In its 50th week. Number one. That's the movie where the wheel hits the other one. There's a spike on it.

Yeah. Sick. Pretty cool stuff. There's other stuff too, right? That's about it. Okay. Did you ever see the new Ben-Hur? I did not.

With, what's his pants? I kind of liked it. Jack Houston. Really? I think I reviewed it and i was like it's not bad richard i dare you to do a fucking reclamation project i should i'm the jack houston houston and toby what's his name kebel toby kebel oh yeah it's like two of those it's the movie cast is weird because it's not two of those guys who never quite got over the hump or whatever wasn't it also

like Christian there was like some Christian money there well they tried really hard to get the Christian audience it's been her baby that's another one of these things you talk about this phenomenon of the passion of the Christ everyone's like here we fucking go

and when they did like the nativity story anything like that didn't fucking work noah was the only other one that even i feel like crossed 100 million dollars and if people want to make the christian movies now they're like the war room or like fireproof where it's like you make it for a million dollars a little boy named colton burbo's trip to heaven is for real like but don't do the epics no no one wants to see the epics no they well they would if it was some fucking australian psycho like beating someone to death on on camera like that that was what they liked about it they liked how violent i know but they were just like easy print money we'll just get people in the desert and virgin mary like a girl from what was it whale rider right yeah yeah none of those exodus didn't work uh the runy mara smoking a

cigarette on the crucifix what was that called mary magdalene that was the that was the guy from the lion director did that garth garth and then it got delayed because of garth right garth garth yeah party on garth um number two at the box office is a sort of sexy thriller. A noir? Not really? I wouldn't call it a noir. I've never seen it. It's a Doris Day movie.

Huh. And it's sexy? Well, it's like a thriller. It's like she's being stalked by a creepy guy. You've never seen it, but you know of it. You know the title. I know the title, yes. Is it called The Stalker? No.

It is referring to a lacy dress that she wears. Negligent? No. No, good guess. It's a good title. Someone should make a movie called Negligent. It's Doris Day, Rex Harrison, and then Julius Caesar himself, John Gavin, and Myrna Loy, Roddy McDowell.

Good cast. Solid cast. Yeah. You know? Who directed the thing? David Miller, who is not a director I know particularly well. He did Lonely or the Brave with Kirk Douglas. Which is a great fucking movie directed by Dalton Trumbo.

Written by, excuse me. A bathtub joint. Yeah, it's a bathtub joint. It's called a bathtub joint. That movie's so good. Matthew, Jenna Rollins. A guy. I've never seen Lily.

You never have? No, I've never fucking seen it, okay? I love that movie. Why don't you nail me to the cross like Spartacus himself? David, stay in the bathtub. Stay in the bathtub. Yeah, and I'll hold the boss baby up to you.

Forky was like, they're going to crucify him. And I was like, yeah you know the robin's kind of famous for doing that there was this one guy they got you know it kind of was a big deal it's pretty bad um the movie's called midnight lace oh that's also a good pretty good title right yeah yeah i don't know i feel like if it was really good i would know it well sure the movie with doris day about and rex harrison about a stalker called midnight lace like that sounds good okay you just remind me there is one thing from the movie i wanted to talk about when everyone is saying i am spartacus i would have been like backing out just like i'm ben for the record right yeah actually hey guys i'm gonna stick with my producer ben ben doosan uh number three spartacus they'd be like matt go on sorry yeah that's a good call

back call back patreon episode i believe if you guys want to know what that's about uh number four the box office three is spartacus four is it's a. It's a huge hit. I saw it when I was a kid. Probably haven't seen it in many years. 59. The movie came out in 60. It came out in October. It just came out in fact. It's not Magnificent 7 is it? It is. Okay, I was trying to think of one that you would be shown as a child.

Right? Like I feel like that's an early starter Western for a kid. Absolutely. And then you get to know Eli Wallach and Neil Brenner and Steve McQueen and Charles Bronson. One of the best themes in film history, musically. So you walk up to a movie theater. I mean, I know that these didn't really exist in the same way back then. And you're like, should we go see Ben-Hur, Spartacus, The Magnificent Side?

Like, that's wild. But the reality is there's one theater that has 4,000 seats that's playing Spartacus and if you want to go see Magnificent Sevens on the other side of town. And also, I don't know, maybe not with Spartacus,

but with some of these things, it's like you're not just going to see the Magnificent Seven, you're going to see like The News and Daffy Duck. I know.

You're going to see like all kinds of great stuff. You get to see fucking Duckamuck or some shit. Yeah, and like someone's walking around making pastrami sandwiches.

And a beef feature too. Yeah, Tony Curtis would make you a pastrami sandwich yeah talk about his dick with you and ask you about yours if you were interested and also the way pictures were shot okay but it was also hot it probably was hot there was a lot of fans going i mean it's like my favorite thing in matinee the great joe dante movie which we will hopefully someday cover and and scorsese talks about this as well but there was so much reverence for like a golden age of cinema this and that and it's like you'd go to it and it was like a fucking insane asylum children were like ripping up seat cushions and throwing jujubes at the screen you know and sit there for seven hours people would show up halfway through a movie

not know what happened and i'm sure people were drinking like crazy in secret yeah anytime in like mad men they go see a movie and that's what they're doing they're just like they're going in between you know sex sessions at the local motel just to like drink a martini and like they don't even care what's right man is this movie about like the beauty of film going and he's like it was chaos there was no reverence right it's not a cathedral where everyone is silent or whatever this was like seen as like oh it's a babysitting tool but like i remember that when i was a kid and my mom took me to the nft for example like which is you know serious and now called the bfi yeah she had to buy a plane ticket just to take you to a specific movie theater for

just for a bored ape the nft and i was green i'd be worried about that theater getting stolen i remember my mom just being like look i don't i don't think you're gonna be annoying or anything but like you gotta be quiet like we gotta be like you can't mess around at this screen he's like this is people are gonna be kind of strict yeah and she's like i don't even think they sell popcorn and i was like what are you fucking i was like my mom took me a film form as a child and be like no butter here how the fuck are you talking about no butter on the popcorn the fifth film is a film we mentioned it's a film that

beat out Spartacus to a best picture nomination the Alamo it's the Alamo I mean here's the other thing Richard you talking about like the embarrassment of riches of your options of movies to watch right now the other other difference is, like, the number one movie in America at this point

has been playing for a year. So it's not like, oh, Ghostbusters and fucking Gremlins were released on the same day. That's wild. Right, because they would just kind of re-license it, right? And, like, theaters would be like, we're going to play Ben-Hur for the next month, even though it came out

a year ago. Right, so it's just like, the cream would rise to the top. Yeah. Because if something was shitty, it would be out of theaters pretty quickly. It wouldn't last, or it wouldn't get bookings nationwide. And then you would never see it again. Right. So you're like, the top five can have a movie from a year ago, a movie from six months ago, a movie that came out this weekend, a movie that's been playing for a month and is starting to rise.

Well, I mean, isn't it why Gone with the Wind is still the highest grossing movie ever? Because it was just like, they just never stopped playing it, obviously. But also people were going again and again because it was like it's not like, oh, I'll see it when it's on television. They're like, I might never be able to see this again. Yeah, and the other crazy thing was like

they'd play Gone with the Wind on television once every 10 years and then it would get like the ratings of the super bowl yeah these things were just like i mean star wars was the same thing where kids would be like i saw it 30 times because i needed to remember it because it wasn't i couldn't just go and watch it again i had to commit it well mike ryan actually had that interesting point too where it's like when people went to see empire strikes back which he remembers seeing he was writing about this recently and it says episode five on it yeah and like star wars the original cut of it does not say episode four and he was like we didn't have the internet we couldn't be like what was that fuck is that we missed three episodes or

was the last one four right and it's like and then no one fucking told us like you know we can just speculate right lucas gave an interview and answered it it wouldn't immediately get aggregated And it's like, and then no one fucking told us. We can just speculate. If George Lucas gave an interview and answered it, it would immediately get aggregated by 87,000 websites. You might read that. And he was like, we didn't know the answer to that until they re-released Star Wars the next year and they had added episode four onto it. And then it was like, oh, okay.

So we're in the middle of a story. But that's when they found out. Right. This is cool to think about. But in their mind, are they like, is he going to make a middle three movies so we're in the middle of a story but like that's when they found out right this is cool but in their mind are they like are is he gonna make a middle three movies between star wars and empire it's just crazy to imagine to be like figure it out yeah uh some other movies in the box office movie called song without end which is a biopic about franz list That's thrilling. Starring Dirk Bogard. Oh, that's

interesting. A movie called A Great Title, Let No Man Write My Epitaph. Oh, boy. Starring Burl Ives and Shelley Winters. That sounds handy. Ricardo Montalban and Ella Fitzgerald. Oh. I don't know. It's a crime drama about

the son of an executed criminal who aspires to escape his crime-ridden neighborhood with the help of his mother. All right. Then you got a movie called, I love this title too, The Dark at the Top of the Stairs. That's a great title. Delbert Mann picture.

Isn't that a... It's a play. Yeah, it's based on a play. And then a movie called Surprise Package, starring Yul Brynner and Mitzi Gaynor and Noel Coward. Oh. About an American gangster living on a Greek island and an opposed king, and they try to steal some jewels. Wow.

Sounds pretty good, right? Yeah, it sounds pretty fucking good. I just like that when Yul Brynner's such a big star with a, like, okay, so we need some movies for you. I guess, could you play a king who does a jewel robbery? The thing you couldn't do is have like Yul Brynner play like a real estate lawyer. They never did the Schwarzenegger thing

where Schwarzenegger's like, I'm an average guy who is pregnant. I'm stuck babysitting. There was, I feel like 10 years ago, this was like a trend of people photoshopping like Golden Age movie posters for modern films and casting like who would have been starting. Sure, sure, sure. Right.

Yeah. And I always remember the Fast and the Furious one was Paul Newman playing the Paul Walker part and Yul Brynner as Vin Diesel. Sure. And I was like, that's a really good identification of yul brenner not feeling human right like this guy's incredibly striking but he can't just play anybody right and then like when these epics go out of fashion they're like you want to play a killer robot cowboy the only way we can contextualize you now is if you're a robot. That's it. That's your best bet. He's so good in that movie. We're done with Spartacus.

Spartacus. The next episode's Lolita. Uh-oh. Blank check will be cancelled in one week. It's a joke. Yeah. Look, I'm not looking forward to it. I know. I should stop making jokes about how we're dreading the episode.'s okay though because you know the episode is dropping on a very normal date september 11th oh sorry ben ben just gave me the look of what why now i gotta

make some fucking note that you blew out the microphone yep i i shifted away from the mic i did this but i don't think it was good yeah no i i went sideways you should just you should just say it's the Lolita episode, but only talk about the movie Remember Me or whatever that movie's called. You know, the Robert Pattinson secret 9-11 movie. Just talk about it. That should be the Lolita episode

so you don't actually have to deal with the movie. Well, be like Remember Me was a twist at the end as it was Remember Me the whole time. Or we look out the window and we're like, it was Lolita. More movies should end like that where you watch an entire film and then the last five minutes they pan over to a camera that reveals it's september 11th the calendar someone just told me an insane twist in a movie um do you know the john cho movie with uh it's like a road trip movie yeah do you want to hear

do you want to hear are you gonna watch that to watch that movie? Tell us off, Mike. I'm main feed. I want to hear it. I want to hear it too. But take us out, Griffin. Unless there's anything else anyone wants to say about Sporadicus. No. Thank you for providing the opportunity for me to watch this. I probably never would have watched this movie.

I never would have gotten around to it. Three hours and change and whatever. But I think it's such an interesting... I'm so excited to listen to the rest of this season of you guys because, like, I'm just really curious to hear, like, this is it. This is... After this, he's off on his own thing.

It's the historic run. You know, and I think that's fascinating that this was what it took. Yeah. Yeah, the cash like the the check never bounced after this he never they never took the checkbook away from him right he continued to just be like here are my fucking terms and he's only like real like people didn't really know what to do with it was barry lyndon right like everything else really connected even still it's like that got a bunch of fucking Oscar nominations.

Something like The Shining, which a lot of critics dismissed, was a big-ass hit. He never had an outright what-are-you-doing-Stanley until Eyes Went Shut, and he didn't live to see that. Richard, anything you want to plug? Oh, no. You can read reviews at VF. This is probably coming out. This is

early September, right? Yes, September 4th. I will be in venice italy reviewing from the film festival and then i'll be in toronto yeah you're gonna hang out with julianne moore um yeah probably she's been texting me while we record i i'll get back to her eventually she keeps texting texting me more Bart Franklich scripts. She keeps texting me telling me she juggles as well. Text me PBS. You said, don't text me, lady. And she's like, don't call me lady.

Anyway, arrivederci. Welcome to the 11 Timers Club. Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Thank you to Marie Barty for her social media and helping produce the show. Thank you to AJ McKeon, Marie Barty for our social media and helping produce the show. Thank you to AJ McKeon, Alex Barron for our editing. Pat Reynolds,

Joe Bowen for our artwork. JJ Birch for our research. You can go to blankcheckpod.com for links to some real nerdy shit, including our Patreon. Blank check special features. We're doing the Roger Moore Bond movies, but we're also going to do some fucking Kubrick tie-ins.

We're shifting around the schedule a little bit in terms of doing some three commentaries back to back to back in order to time Kubrick things out. But the ones that we think we're doing are 2010. Yes. 2010. We'll do that in October, I think, and then Doctor Sleep in November.

Isn't there a third one? I'm forgetting. I think for September, we kind of want to do the F and then Dr. Sleep in November isn't there a third one I'm forgetting I think for September we kind of want to do the Fletch movie oh yes we got it we're gonna do this month I'm sorry it's called Confess Fletch so it's coming out later so that will be the September 21st episode

we're gonna do Confess Fletch otherwise you're gonna get uh I think it's dropping today great fantastic um probably the best one. And the third one you were referencing, because we will do a third Kubrick on the Patreon, but do we want to say it now or do we want to save it

as a surprise? I'll say this. It'll be when we're talking the walk. We have a Kubrick themed talking the walk. That's all I'm going to say. That's for December. And I think it's a real corker of an idea. And as always, next week is Lolita.

Good, good, good, good, good, good, good.