The Big Picture - Top Five Movies Time Forgot. Plus: Why the Beatles Movie Is No Longer a Movie.

Episode Date: June 18, 2021

Sean and Amanda discuss the news that Peter Jackson's Beatles documentary will stretch into a limited documentary television series (0:30). Then, Sean is joined by writer-director Alex Ross Perry to talk about the phenomenon of the lost movie, specifically great works from well-known filmmakers that have fallen out of circulation, critical celebration, and general viewership. With the advent of so many streaming services, it’s shocking how many once high-profile movies can’t be seen easily. So Sean and Alex list five memorable examples and explain the contexts of their releases and how they may have slid into obscurity (14:32). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Alex Ross Perry Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Bakari Sellers podcast tackles the most pressing current events through conversations and interviews with high-profile guests. Building upon his experience in South Carolina government and politics, and his experience as a lawyer, Sellers will talk to his guests about all topics from the world of politics. Check out the Bakari Sellers podcast on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Sean Fennessey. I'm Amanda Dobbins and this is the big picture a conversation show about slipping into obscurity later in the show I'll be joined by Alex Ross Perry the great filmmaker behind her smell and listen up Philip among others we'll be talking about hard to see movies or classics that have fallen out of favor and why that might be. But first, Amanda, we got some big news in the world of movies, and that news is that a movie is no longer a movie.

Apparently, Peter Jackson's The Beatles Get Back is not a film that is coming out in movie theaters in August, but is in fact a miniseries that will be appearing exclusively on Disney Plus over the Thanksgiving weekend. How do you feel about this? I don't want to be ungrateful. I love Beatles content. I love six hours of anything, I guess. I mean, more Beatles is sort of the, you know,

animating principle of this entire documentary. So I guess just like show us what you got. But I did read this news in my email first thing this morning, like, you know, 705 phone straight to my nose. And because I don't have my contacts in yet. And I was sad because number one, Thanksgiving is a lot later than August and I need things to look forward to. All my favorites are getting delayed. Number two, like, could we have a movie, please? Does everything good have to be a TV show now? Could we have a movie, please? Yeah. I had the same reaction. On the one hand, I'm torn because in the same way that I want the

Oscars to be nine hours long, in the same way that I'm utterly content with The Irishman being five and a half hours long, I love the idea of more Beatles. Peter Jackson showed us a sneak preview of the footage he was working with during the pandemic. Not like you and me, just the world. He called me and he said, Sean, can I come over? And Pete came over and he sat me down and he showed me the treasure trove of archival footage that he has. And I was like, Pete, this is incredible stuff you've got here. I think what you should do is expand this into 12 hours or 18 hours. So he went with six and I am excited to see six hours. On the other hand, I do love a good film, love a good documentary, love a good music

documentary. And this is no longer that. And also to me, the really the issue is I wanted to see it in theaters. I have not actually had a lot of experiences where I've been able to hear Beatles songs at that volume in that surround, on IMAX. I mean, that just seemed like a really cool opportunity. And now it's the opposite of that. It's sitting in your house over the Thanksgiving weekend and watching it on your TV. And no matter how good your TV is, it can't match an IMAX. Yeah. And we talk a lot about how sound is kind of like the most underexamined part of

the theater and the homegoing and versus the home viewing experience. And like, I think it was Pavarotti you and I both went to see, which was like a nice documentary, but it was just like Pavarotti at full volume for however long. And that was great. And, you know, I'm reminded of A Star is Born and just shallow at full surround sound volume. Take me back. So, yes, that's an important part. That said, I think you and I are probably like wrong on this particular take.

Not wrong, but like, I think this is like a bad take from us on this issue. But on the larger point, I think we're right. And of course you and I could only interpret this in sort of an angsty referendum on the future of movies, as opposed to, to Beatles nerds, getting more Beatles content in our home over Thanksgiving. So we don't have to talk to our families, you know, like it's it. And by the way, it is like perfect family viewing. I bet I can even get my in-laws to watch this,

which is like really exciting because they like to talk more than they like watching movies. But I do see it as indicative of a larger thing of just like they don't, no one cares about movies. Have you seen Starstruck on HBO Max? I have not seen it. It was recommended to me by a couple people, including Juliette Lipman. And it's just a completely charming romantic comedy. And it's six parts, each are like 30 minutes. lipman and it's just a completely charming romantic comedy and it's six parts each are like 30 minutes so i think it's three hours total and i i haven't finished it yet i've been saving it but watched the beginning was like wow this is so delightful romantic comedies they're back and then i was like oh and it's a tv series because like no one wants to make a movie of just no one no one one likes movies. What the fuck are we going to do?

Yeah, I don't know. I think, unfortunately for The Watch, this is a TV podcast now in many ways. You know what it is? It's ultimately a series podcast because everything is a series now. Now, that's not new. In fact, when the Beatles announcement came through this morning, the first thing I thought of was that this is just the Beatles anthology all over again, which was, of course, for those of you who've never seen it, I would recommend it. It was a three-part miniseries that aired on ABC, I believe in 1995 over the Thanksgiving weekend. So that's 26 years ago. Now that series tracked really the progression

of the Beatles' whole career, effectively, that whole kind of 10-year span where they dominated music. And it showed a lot of never-before-seen footage. And then there were the accompanying albums that featured outtakes and different compositions and recordings from their time in Germany and a whole bunch of stuff, really in a sweet spot for you and I as Beatles fans coming of age. And so that was a powerful document. Get Back is covering, obviously, a very different time in the Beatles' career, but it's effectively the same thing. I mean, that was six hours of Beatles documentary,

and this is six hours of Beatles documentary. And I loved the anthology. I'm sure I'll love Get Back. It's not so much about the form as it is what we were led to believe something was, and then having the rug pulled out from under us a little bit. It also, it raises a question that has been at the top of my mind lately which is have we lost our ability to edit you're an editor you are a person about concision so funny because as you

were talking about it i was just like peter jackson known enemy of things. He does like a long thing. He likes a long film. He likes multiple endings. I really love Peter Jackson's movies for the most part. And I'm sure he will do a great job with this. He seems to have the same kind of admiration, adoration, and excitement about the Beatles that we do.

But everything is so long now. I've seen so many new movies, even just these standalone films in the last few weeks or so. So many of which are two hours and 20 minutes. And I do not understand. I don't get it. I do get why Starstruck is a six-part,

three-hour TV experience rolled out over time. That's about engagement. That's about streaming services trying to keep you locked in over a period of weeks. But why is Cruella two hours and 20 minutes? Why is the forthcoming The Tomorrow War two hours and 20 minutes? Why are these movies so long right now? I think it's the same thing. It's engagement. I think that you and I and purists and people who like editing are the only people still concerned with the, you know, form and certainly beginnings and endings. No one cares about an ending anymore. They give you five and

then they give you five more in the next one. And then they're like, surprise, there will be three more sequels plus a TV show. And you know, like a whole comic book thing for you to, to buy. But also I think that people are just trying to get big streaming services. We're trying to get bang for their buck money wise and time wise. And it's just like, well, we don't really need to cut it. We've got the time. We'll just put it on. And maybe you want one more weird fight like that no one needs.

It's always some one more just weird fight. Yeah, it occurs to me that part of the reason for that is because one of the lessons that movies have taken from TV and that I think the Marvel movies in particular have bred throughout the world of movies is you need to build a world. And if you're not building a world that allows you to tell stories in the future, you're not doing a good enough job of keeping your consumer on the line. And the best way to build a world is to just keep giving backstory and exposition and that extra fight that you're talking about and more more more more more and so ultimately then you wind up with a film that probably should have been an hour and 55 minutes or at least conventionally would have been in 1991 and has now been extrapolated into this series of trapdoor endings where every time you think there's been a conclusion or a climax of some kind, we have to go to another place and do another thing.

And it is, of course, we're always kind of, there's always a sense of false panic around conversations like this. But it does feel like it has generally changed the expectations around like the three-act structure of a movie for me. I now feel like most movies are four acts where you get through, you know, like the rising action and you get through the climax and then you get to the conclusion and then you get to conclusion number two. That feels like it's, I mean, am I, am I? Conclusion number two that also sets up, you know, act one of the next thing. It's like they've brought, they still do the stinger, but they also bring the stinger into the movie itself and expand it. Yeah,

I agree with you. I think a lot of it ties back to the conversation that we were having earlier this week about streaming services and the idea that the movie or even the TV series at this point is just like a vehicle for other forms of content and time spent. And that's like, it's the homework that you have to do before you go read 40 other things or, you know, go online and do your threads or, or, or whatever that the form itself kind of gets lost because no one really cares. They're just trying to find out like what happens so that they can move on to the next, like stop on the monopoly board. So do you think that this is just the way things are now do you think do you think that there will be an evolution in the form i i probably should have

anticipated this when iron man came out in 2008 because when you see iron man you're like oh i see they're setting up all of these dominoes so they can knock them over over the course of the next 10 years do you think that there's do you think that we are just on this ever growing chain of content that is interconnected to each other forever? Have you looked at your, in my lives? Yes, we are. We, daddy made you some content. Okay. Every week. I mean, yes. And also we're being absurd, right? Like the thing that started this six hour Beatles documentary, cause Peter Jackson had some extra footage and a place to put it on Disney Plus. Like, why are we whining? You know, like, who cares? The last dance was 10 episodes because they had all the footage and they had Michael Jordan with his iPad. Like,

great. Show us what you got. So that's silly. And in some ways, and in this case, we just have new places to put things and new ways to tell stories and you fit it to the medium. But do I also think that especially in kind of mainstream big studio franchise content, we're just on a never ending train of, and here's the next chapter and here's the next chapter. Here's more content. Like, yes, absolutely. I do. I watched the second episode of Loki this week, and that episode, even more than the first episode, resembled a podcast.

And it was like a live action commentary on things that could happen in alternate universes. And the whole show, in many respects, and I'm sure I'm misunderstanding it in some ways, but it's just an opportunity to talk about what could be happening in these branched out realities that may or may not affect the future of the storytelling. So then I really, like watching this series, which I think is well-made and pretty funny. I'm like, we're totally through the looking glass. Like you can just say, not only do you have to pay attention to every single storyline in this entire MCU experience, but you also have to think about potential other realities that may or may not matter to the long-term story. I already stopped listening.

I already stopped listening. I just, I don't care. I mean, my head started hurting. I know. Okay. But do you think like just the normal, lovely MCU fan who's just like, it's Wednesday. Is that a real person? I'm trying to be generous.

It's like my mid-year resume. So me, you're saying me, a lovely MCU fan. No, this is what I'm saying. The person who's not you, who doesn't spend their whole day listening to or thinking about podcasts. It's Wednesday night and they're like, oh man, new Loki. I'm like, psyched. Do you think that they turn it on and they're like, wow, what a profound commentary on podcasting? Or are they just like, this is pretty cool. I never thought about time and space like that. I don't know. I need to make friends

with more people who are not in my line of work. I think, I think that's the thing you realize is I've just bubbled myself off into a series of conversations about how all TV shows are podcasts now. Um, so you're saying nothing is ever going to get shorter. Yeah. Oh, definitely not. I mean, editing is dead. This is a new thing, but this is also not a new thing. Like people have not known how to edit and have just been like, well, I don't know.

I'll add another 30 minutes here because I feel like it's time immemorial, right? Did you watch the Soderbergh movie? No, I haven't seen it yet I can only watch like I don't do all the good movies in one day Sean I gotta parcel it out I can't just sit there for 15 hours I'm not like Loki or whatever you know you truly are not Loki let me tell you I could be the god of mischief is that a role that you want don't you think it's one that I play fairly often? Yeah. What do you think the application process is like there? What kind of references do you have to provide to become the god of mischief? Something to consider. I only bring it up because

I was like, oh yeah, right. You can still edit a movie effectively. Steven Soderbergh. We'll talk a lot about No Sudden Move, the new Soderbergh movie on July 1st when it comes to HBO Max, fittingly. But that was a rare case where I was like, oh, hey, this movie is one hour and 50 minutes, closes all the loops on the story, and it's immensely enjoyable. God bless that man. Soderbergh forever. Can't take it away from me. Okay, Amanda. Well, enough kvetching for now. We'll be back next week. Thanks for chatting. Let's go to my conversation now with Alex Ross-Perry. Welcoming back to the show, The Great Filmmaker. Are you the first five-time guest, Alex Ross-Perry? Well, only you would know that. I guess I'd have to

see if I could remember. I know I promoted two movies and I know that I did one other appearance. I think you also chipped a horror themed appearance on that I was in the Criterion episode.

You chipped in on the Criterion episode too. So this is your you're the first five-timer. You're like the Steve Martin or Tom Hanks of Saturday Night Live to the big picture.

Does that make you feel good? I'm happy to hear that. I feel like, you know, for me, your sort of network if I can be in the company of like a Chuck Klosterman in terms of frequency and for me, the excitement when you're like, oh, that's a guest that delivers or, you know, we were just watching, of course, as everyone was, we as a culture, the Charles Grodin talk show appearances. I mean, that's kind of what you aim for. And I think podcasts are mature enough that we have those guests now. Do you feel Grodin-esque?

No, it's too high of a compliment. Much pressure. I'm glad you're back. We were having an interesting email exchange about how we watch things, where we watch them, and what we're watching. And I was just saying on the show earlier this week that I feel like more is at my fingertips than ever has been. You're somebody who is a relentless consumer of movies. You've worked in video stores. You know what it's like to be on the hunt for things. And so on the one hand, I feel like, yes, I can watch anything I want until the day that I die. And on the other hand, there is still all of this stuff that feels out of touch, that feels unable to be seen. What's your sense of things now that all of the streaming services seem to have arrived, now that all of physical media is starting to evolve?

Are we in a great moment of availability or is there still like a scarcity out in the world? Well, I think everybody like ourselves, and I assume many of your listeners knows, for 10 years now, when someone says, oh, well, everything is streaming, people like us know that that's wrong. And that's just clearly inaccurate. And you can put, there's 50,000 things available. And that's, to most people, that sounds like an infinite number. And it is. I mean, that's like an infinite number. And it is, I mean, that's enough to watch a movie every day of your life until you die. Um,

but most people don't just watch things alphabetically from, you know, a Leonard Moulton book. So like, it, it just seems like it, this is like the same thing that Nolan talks about when he talks about how the biggest threat to his preferred method of theatrical exhibition is misinformation and how as soon as people started saying it's cheaper to

shoot movies digitally and it's cheaper to show them digitally, everybody who knows nothing just said, I'm sure that's true. And this is the exact same thing for people to say, well, everything's available. The person who's hearing that, unless it's you or me or somebody with our mindset, is likely to go, yeah, that seems right. Do you think that that affects a lot of the kind of fake work that we do on a show like this? The kind of canon building, the idea of creating some sense of history in the medium because you're right that there's a lot that I just can't see without a bottomless set of resources.

And is that materially hurting our ability to maybe properly understand movie history? Well, I always think, and this is kind of what we started emailing about, and I don't remember why, but that's exactly what it is because it goes without saying that things can be cultified and they can be in the cult canon. Maybe that's why we were

emailing about cult movies when you did that, but it goes without saying that in order for something to be just above ground canonical, the key to that is is unlimited access to it and you look at something as basic as an afi top 100 or things like that that you know that list is from 1998 that's 100 movies that are always accessible and you And the thing like this that we just lived through is a month or two ago around the Oscars, my wife and I, we always put together little programs at home. We were like, let's each write down six best picture nominees that we've never seen. Maybe you've seen a couple of mine, maybe I've seen a couple of yours, but six that are new to each of us. And let's just watch those. And it was fun doing that for a couple of yours, but six that are new to each of us. And let's just watch those. And it was fun doing that for like a couple of weeks because every time I was like, oh, these movies are all

just the easiest ones to get. Like half of these are just on Netflix at no extra cost. And then a few of them are on HBO at no extra cost. So it's like, these are the movies that people want you to have access to because they're the greatest and the most acclaimed, but they remain the most accessible because they're so great and they remain so known because they're so accessible. And if you step off that path, then suddenly you're just lost. And I think that's really crucial. And most people don't think about that. And you look at like the work that a video company streaming or physical does in sort

of shaping a canon and you look at the way that something it slips through the cracks or what i'm always fascinated by now and this is happening a lot more is like even criterion putting out streetwise a documentary that, you know, I would be hard-pressed to find someone I know who hasn't seen that film and has considered it an absolute masterpiece for 15 years since you first discovered it. And to most people, this is a non-existent movie

that you have at best heard about, and that will change from now on. And I just feel like that relationship is very under-analyzed. In some cases, entire bodies of work slip through the cracks. So a director of massive importance,

canonical value to people like myself who spent their entire 20-scene, 35-millimeter screenings at every venue in New York, I know the value of these filmmakers, but if they miss the DVD era, they're missing from history and now they can maybe catch up. I mean,

this is like the fact that like criterion now has Jacques Rivette films in the collection, which when museum of the moving image did a complete Jacques Rivette retrospective in December of 2016 or 2006, that was like opening King Tut's tomb. Like that was like 12 lost films that had not been screened in some cases ever in America. And suddenly everyone who was there, 300 people at each sold-out screening,

had an entire new body of work that you could grapple with and understand. And then it takes 15 more years for his most famous film, Celine and Julie Go Boating, to be available to anybody outside of probably New York or LA who has access to a revival theater. I remember being made aware of that Museum of the Moving Image screening, I think because there was a screening of Last Days of Disco and I ran into a friend at Last Days of Disco

and they were like, you know what the real shit is going to be is when they start showing these revet films. And there was a sense of word of mouth. And I wonder if, not just the fact that we haven't had movie theaters for the last 15 months, but the fact that just the culture around

for lack of a better word kind of art house independent movie going has also reduced some of that and I you know I feel a bit torn because on the one hand when you don't have those experiences it and you make something available more widely more people get a chance to see it but it also

it removes like a little bit of that cult specialness that I think allows a movie to kind of grow in the estimation of people like me and you which then gives it a different like a different valence you know a different kind of a critical acclaim for lack of a better word do you see like a correlation between those two things where if something remains rare and scarce and untouchable is that in a perverse way kind of better for its reputation it is until that reputation needs to cross a line like it's better for its reputation maybe that there wasn't you know some like those sort of i think they were fox lorber dvds of all the eric Romer movies that were the only way to see them for

15 years. It's better that these revet films were not available in these really indifferent transfers because then their emergence became this sort of magical thing like an eclipse or a comet that happened on screens in New York off and on for like 20 years. But then that can only go so far, especially, well, now, when I say now, meaning a year and a half ago, and especially now again, because those habits change and you'll always, up until it came out on DVD, you would always sell out a screening of Celine and Julie go boating anywhere in New York. And then there are know, that would pop up on a calendar in 2005 through 2014 or whatever. And it would be like, if you haven't seen that, you have to go.

That's the only way to see it. It's over three hours long. There's an old New Yorker tape of it. No one can access that. There's a BFI DVD that's only for the most devout physical media collectors. So you have to just give yourself to it for 200 minutes and you have to go do it in 35 millimeter. Eventually everyone who wants to see that we'll see it and I'll always be new ones every three years, but it is like, because otherwise no one knows that those movies are important enough to restore and reevaluate. But then on the other hand, there are things that for me,

like, and this is just a New York thing or an LA thing, like classics like that, that I never have seen or had never seen until I caught them on video. And I just said, it screens all the time. So I'll just catch it at some point. I mean,

that's just like a, I live in a city with a great revival culture thing is to say, well, that screens all the time. So I'll just catch it at some point. I mean, that's just like, I live in a city with a great revival culture thing is to say, well, that screens all the time. So that's why I've never seen it because it doesn't screen once every three years. And that's why I have to go that day. It's like, yeah, like once a year, X or Y movie pops up in one series or another. So I'll catch it at some point.

And that happens to me all the time. Whereas like, it's always been like, if you miss this screening of The Mother and the Whore, you will not see that movie for four more years. So don't miss that screening because the movie doesn't exist otherwise. Talk about filmmakers that have an entire body of work that is largely invisible to the canon and to the culture due to access issues. John Eustache, everyone in New York knows that that movie is the real deal. And it's a movie that many filmmakers have cited as being hugely influential. I mean, there's a poster for it hanging up in Squid and the Whale in the ping pong room. And yet, it has never been made available in this or any country past VHS.

And that means it's not in the canon, even though in my mind, it's one of my top 10 favorite films of all time. It is the canon. It is the totality of French cinema up to 1972, 1973. And yet, say, I don't even know what that is that's kind of an amazing thing can you give me a couple of examples of some of those oscar films that you you and your wife watched oh geez the list is downstairs i mean i'm gonna try to remember i mean it's just like every one of these is an embarrassing thing to never have seen so So I won't say who hadn't seen which. I'll just list the ones I remember.

It's okay. We watched Ghost. Okay. We watched Moonstruck. We watched Dangerous Liaisons. That was a double revisit. That we had both seen. That just felt worth checking back in on.

We watched Rain Man. both same that just felt worth checking back in on we watched rain man we watched something else from that like 88 year maybe that was ghost um so you were mostly watching american films that were mainstream kind of crowd pleasers you know know, dramas in some respect. But yeah, and there is like a radical difference there between a movie like that and a movie like The Mother and the Whore. You know, obviously one is a foreign film, an art film in some respects. And so I think that like why some films are made available

and why other films are not made available is an interesting topic. Because on the one hand, there are all of these movies that are available that are obviously available. Movies like Ghost is always going to be available because it's an award-winning film. It was a box office success. It's made by, it features movie stars. And then there are, of course, like art films that maybe you're not going to be as widely

available. They come from different countries. The distribution is confusing. But then there is a third category that is sort of like films from major filmmakers or major artists from the 60s 70s 80s even 90s that are hard to find and hard to get and i'm trying to wrap my head around the idea of availability and scarcity as as much as i can lately i'll give you like an example yes please true lies from james cameron it's a great example this is a great movie or at least as a movie that i remember to be great i lately. I'll give you an example. Yes, please. True Lies from James Cameron. Great example. This is a great movie, or at least it's a movie that I

remember to be great. I have not seen it in a long time because it's not available on Blu-ray. I don't believe on a streaming service at the moment. I think it's one of those that's not, yeah. And True Lies was never going to win Best Picture, but it was a huge hit. And it feels like True Lies has just

exited the culture. It's no longer a part of movie culture. Now, that also strikes me as a movie that might just be on cable a lot. As someone who doesn't have cable, I can't say that, but maybe it's out of rotation there too. I feel like it is. I'm not sure. Speaking of that, I had written down

half of Catherine Bigelow's filmography. Speaking of, you could say the same thing about. I'm always shocked to check back in and find out that neither Strange Days nor Near Dark are ever available in any form. It's crazy. Near Dark was one of them. Those were both DVDs of such ubiquitous nature as to be valueless. Yeah. I mean, I think Strange Days was literally a budget DVD that

retailed for $8.99 and to my knowledge has not been streaming in any capacity for quite a while if at all. I wonder if there is some correlation between Cameron and Bigelow there in terms of the rights to their films because it's odd that the two

of them in particular have so many examples of that. I just rewatched Blue Steel for the first time in a long time. And I think I watched it on Tubi TV. Are you familiar with Tubi TV? Of course, only for reasons like this. Yes, which is bizarre, but you can, for free, you can just watch Blue Steel with some advertising, which is kind of a miracle. I wouldn't say it was the greatest transfer I've ever seen in that movie. That's a movie I would love to see on a big screen again. I've only seen it in the theater. Yeah, I saw it at a Catherine Bigelow series. There you go.

But Strange Days is one of those movies that pops up on 35 millimeter in New York no more than once every 16 months. Yeah, so like, I guess why does that happen? From a filmmaker's perspective in terms of why some things are shared and other things are not shared, why some things become a part of,

you know, how does something get into a video store? How does something get into a streaming service? How does something get cable rights? Like help people understand a little bit of how some of this stuff works. Well, one of the things that, you know, not to sound like, you know, like a conspiracy theorist or like someone who buys into like an Adam Curtis theory of media and culture, but like, if you think that you are making a choice when you choose what you watch, you are buying into one of the greatest scams of all time. Like if you think you're making a choice of your own free will, when you go to a four screen art house or a 10 screen art house, or when you load up a streaming service and you think

I'm making a choice, you're not making any more of a choice than you are if somebody says, what do you want, a green apple or a red apple? And you think, wow, this is so nice to give me options. And it's like, it would never occur to people to say, it doesn't really feel like I have too many choices here. And this is the same thing. I mean, you know, the way that movies are exhibited to believe that this is based on merit, of course, you know, you discuss often things like that. We know that that's not true.

It's based on advertising dollars and how much money has been invested in this. And this applies to tent poles and festival acquisitions. And that from the minute those things are birthed, that basically decides the rest of their life. And something remains visible because it carries with it the aura of respectability or success or popularity. This is why some of the only movies you ever see on Netflix that are not Netflix movies that are recent are all A24 movies. Because those just from the minute they're released with the correct marketing seem like relevant films, whether they make 1 million or $10 million, then they're on Netflix,

so they must be important. And then they're on Netflix. So they must be important. And then they're on Netflix. So people watch them and then people watch them. So Netflix pays money to keep them there. And then it's just like, that must be one of the most important movies. Cause when I loaded up Netflix, it's like rain man dances with wolves, which is another one that we watched and then like lady bird and moonlight. So these must be like as much of the greatest movies of all time as these things i've been hearing about from before i was born and if you think that that is called having free will you're completely mistaken and that's why you know the agency of

as you discuss like having five streaming options and theatrical options and in the past, human interaction to sort of shape these things for you is clearly what it takes to build your own understanding of things. Because if you're just relying on what you're fed, then you only get what the lunch lady serves you, not what you want. Have you longed to have one of your films with one of those distributors so that your film could seem more important than maybe it otherwise would be as if it had a kind of numerical grade or financial grade attached to it? And that's all anybody wants. It's not because the people who run any one company or another have like a magic wand. It's just this sort of mass deception that logos that are applied to a movie after it's been finished and premiered are instrumental in defining its quality or its

value. And, you know, I mean, we grew up like, I mean, you know, when you were younger, you knew what an Orion film meant, because that meant something fun like RoboCop. And later, you knew what a Canon film meant. And later, later, you knew, or maybe in the middle, you knew what a Miramax film meant. And those things do have meaning. It's not that these are fake. These are not fake symbols, because they have real meaning. But the meaning is manufactured in a way that is much more overt than it ever was before. Which is why it's interesting that streaming services have done everything they can to decentralize their own identity to the extent that a Netflix logo means absolutely

nothing because it could mean one of a thousand things. Do you feel like fan culture has the quote-unquote power to change some of that because we're obviously in a moment now where people can loudly demand things and sometimes they get them, like the Snyder Cut. And that didn't seem to be necessarily operating in exactly the same way. And this legitimately, I think, affects what movies are made and how they're made. Obviously, the mother and the whore is not going to hit Netflix because 500,000 people on Twitter demand it. Although, if you want to get that campaign going right now, obviously the mother and the whore is not going to be hit Netflix because 500,000 people on Twitter demanded.

Although if you want to get that campaign going right now, we can certainly try. I mean, I have gotten too deep into it with every distributor about like what can be done about this. And the French distributor that I've worked with on at least four or five releases of my movies, they said they came closer than anybody

to getting the complete Eustache catalog from his son. And then it all fell apart. And I said, do you think it'll ever happen? You just went through this for two years. And they said, no, I don't think these movies, I don't think his estate will ever come to terms that are agreeable. And I believe these movies will remain unrestored,

undvd'd, unblurayed, unstreaming, un2k. Like, they really were like, I just don't think it's going to happen based on what we just went through.

What about for... Like, let's say some of the movies we're going to talk about here today. We both made some lists. We're going to talk about some films that have either fallen out of fashion

or maybe never in fashion. Maybe you're misunderstood. I think I've been using the phrase lost classic, which is inadequate, I think, for the kind of conversation that we're having. But I'm trying to find a way to describe these very particular kinds of films.

The Eustache films, that's a little different. I think those are films that are widely understood to a certain audience that has been exposed to them to have a a meaningful reputation and to be these kind of objects of adoration when people are exposed to them but like what what we're talking about is like a little bit different you know there's there's that feeling of like something slipping through your fingers with some of these things it's not a rare object it's something that was once not necessarily mainstream but accessible

and now is vanished. Well, like, how do you think about those things? Yeah. Well, I, you know, I had at one point emailed you and we were kind of trying to come up with what to talk about a phrase that, and again, in my, in my younger and more vulnerable years of repertory, you know, three, three movies a day,, film going, the phrase we would use was the one to see, which I mentioned to you, which meant if, and you know, this is fluid, but that meant if today there was a, if, you know, Alamo Drafthouse was doing an all 35 millimeter James Cameron series, based on what you just said, True Lies is the one to see. Because the Terminator movies pop up often,

maybe you don't care about revisiting, you know, Avatar, whatever, The Abyss, who knows what version they're playing. But then there's this one that was never changed, there's only one version of it, it's on, you know, that's the one to see. And for us, this always kind of, you know, even in a new stash series of films that never popped up, still Numero Zero, the documentary about his grandma, was the one to see because that was the one that really never popped up. And in any series, there would be the one to see, the one that sort of is revived the least, the movie that would only appear in a complete retrospective. If you're doing, you know, Cameron classics for four days, you're not going to get to true lies. If you're doing, and some of the directors will talk about, you know, if you're doing an abbreviated series, this is the move. This is one of you draw a line somewhere, and

this is underneath it. Always. The only way these movies would ever pop up is if it is a complete retrospective of everything. And therefore you can say, you know, that's kind of the one to see because it never screens. Nobody cares about it. It's rare because it's bad or it's bad because it's, or it's seen as bad because it's rare. We don't really know used to be on tape.

I never got around to it because it doesn't matter. This is not something I'll talk about, but like, you know, when Metro graph opened, one of their first series was Complete De Palma. And I finally saw Get to Know Your Rabbit, which was never rare. I had just never bothered to watch it. But for me, that was like, this is the one to see because this will never screen again. There's no reason this will ever play outside of a leave nothing out De Palma series. And all I can say about it is I crossed it off my list

and it had one really great overhead shot that kind of moves above a building, the kind of thing Tarantino later started doing a lot of. And De Palma did more of, but as far as I remember, it's the first time De Palma did the thing where you lift up over the set and you move from rooms. And I was like, okay, it's got one great shot in in it i think it was the first time he had any money which is probably why he was able to experiment a little bit until tommy's brothers decided he didn't want to make it yeah exactly um i think that's a really good description of what we're doing here and so to me in terms of excavating and figuring out who fits the bill here you know most of the directors that I thought of were filmmakers who have long careers, who made a number of films across a number of decades and who's,

who have frankly, like so many good films that it's easy to forget some of the mediocre ones. And then they, they develop into having that reputation that you described as bad. You know, it's like, well, this movie,

nobody's really seen, thought about much, talked about much it wasn't reviled it was just forgotten and ignored is that more or less yeah thought of it it is but also you know the other thing to bring in my own experience of what you were saying like to kind of go back into the fallacy that people just in the marketplace are sold about how movies are released. I remember when Her Smell came out, the actors are promoting it on social media and Cara Delevingne was posting something about it a couple of times. She did several posts. This is a movie, here's a clip. And every time some of the

top comments were... The movie, we had a four-week exclusive theatrical release, which at the time, some of the top comments were, you know, the movie, we had a four week exclusive theatrical release, which at the time people were like, I know this is kind of weird. It's neither here nor there, but I think someday more movies will do this. And now it's essentially the norm. And every single time somebody said, um, this movie wasn't even really released. It must be bad. Or, you know, um, this didn't even play in, in theaters. So obviously it's bad. And that perception is still there. And in the way that if you just said, you know what, we're going to sink a lot of money into this

and do a 700 screen wide release and see if people click with it and then go wider, then people wouldn't be able to make that criticism of something. And there is still exactly what you're saying, this perception that, oh, well, X factor TBD, so therefore it must be bad. This has never been on Blu-ray, so it must not be worth it. This has never been streaming, so it must be bad. This was never put onto DVD, so it must not have deserved that. As though these are such wonderful, lofty accomplishments that only the deserving films receive them.

I don't know how to explain that, though, that my lizard brain, if I can't find something on Blu-ray, it's a paradox for me. Because on the one hand, I'm like, well, this must not be important. And then on the other hand, I'm like, the fact that I can only get a version of it on DVD that was printed in Korea in 1999 actually makes it seem sexier. Somehow that always makes me go. Yeah, man, that makes me say, well, this must be special. There must be something about this. There must be like too, too hot for the marketplace that if they like, if they put possession or out of the blue on Blu-ray, like that will be bad for American children to like have access to those films.

So that must be why those movies, despite being like two of the most undeniable classics in, you know, to even to the point that I feel ridiculous, even citing these as important films, because that's like saying, you know, the Godfather is important to some. It's like, yeah, possession is canonically one of the greatest films ever made. And then other people would go, oh yeah, I've never been able to track that down. I guess it's good, says somebody. Instead of like, yeah, it's just clearly too hot. You can't put that movie on Blu-ray.

It would destroy people. You have to leave it at the cinema. Let me give you a counterpoint to that, though. I don't know how you feel about this movie, but take a movie like She she hate me so that's a movie that's not available on blu-ray it's widely considered one of spike's least effective movies and kind of a down moment for him as a filmmaker is the fact that it's not available there enticing to you does it make you re-evaluate what you thought of that movie originally well i've never seen it so in this case yes um only because yeah i mean now i don't know i couldn't tell you why i didn't see it but yeah i mean two years ago my wife said

she'd never seen bamboozled and i was like well that's easily top three spike like that's that do the right thing and then fill in the like you know malcolm x maybe but like if you can't deny that this is one of the best and And at the time, it wasn't streaming, which I later learned was because Criterion was obviously doing a new edition of it. So we got in the mail from Netflix, the DVD of it, which looked pretty gnarly, especially for a movie shot on consumer video. But that was just like, well, this was just perceived as a bomb. And I'm sure that because of the way it was shot they can't easily do it and then of course the reason was they're doing it right but um yeah i mean to me i would never be like yeah it's probably fine that a film at all by a major filmmaker is just

not a bit like i would never be like yeah we don't need she hate me it's like you either need everything or you can survive with nothing and like like, it just, yeah, that's a, that's a compelling, totally oddball example that I never would have thought of, nor would I ever think to look up is that movie available because I just assume that it is. And now it's just like, you know, that's the exact kind of movie that is not. I mean, the other thing is that a lot of movies, you know, beyond studio, studio movies and certainly European films. is that a lot of movie you know beyond studio studio movies and certainly european films and i have quite a few of those on my list um you know like there's just companies don't exist anymore

like i don't know movies from what 2005 like oh she hate me is released by like a new market or like a palm picture or just like any of these companies that it's just like what happened to their assets like they don't exist and now they they're, I mean, the company that released Listen Up Phillip doesn't exist anymore. And we're trying to figure out how to put the movie on Blu-ray. And it's just like this whole thing of like, there are people in charge of these things, but like, this is how things disappear. So if you think that it's not on Blu-ray because it didn't sell for $10 million at Sundance and didn't get released in more than 70 screens, you're right, but you're also wrong because it's not on Blu-ray for a very didactic reason. The company that released it didn't have the money to do that because they were nickel and dime, and now they're gone.

And one wonders, if they had released ListenUp Philip on Blu-ray, would they have had enough money to stay in business? Are you saying that I should potentially try to purchase this company? Should I try to buy all their assets? If you're so inclined, I imagine you could probably do that. I'm not so sure about that. You pointed out two movies to me when we first were having this email exchange. I think one was The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and one was Death Proof.

And you were saying like, you know, these are movies that are not necessarily the most acclaimed in the oeuvre of the filmmaker, but they, in a maybe more conventional way, do still kind of fit the one to see. They may eventually become the one to see. You know, they may become the one over time.

When you look at the arc of the filmmaker's career, when I first, when I first met Quentin, I was like, I want you to know that I think death proof is fucking incredible. And I still feel that way. And I think maybe I'm also just attracted to these movies that quickly gain the reputation of like,

this one isn't as great as the classics. Were you thinking about it in the same way? Kind of. Yeah. I mean, I think your email yesterday when we were finalizing these plans sort of like this one isn't as great as the classics. Were you thinking about it in the same way? Kind of, yeah. I mean, I think your email yesterday when we were finalizing these plans sort of threw a small wrench, but I was able to kind of split

into what I was initially thinking and then what I think you were looking for. But, you know, picturing, I feel like IMDb main page used to do this like in the late 90s, early 2000s. Like here's a director's complete filmography, which movie is your favorite. Right. And you picture that and you picture whichever one has 3% of the vote. And you're like, what 3% of people look at the Tarantino

filmography and say, death proof is number one. What, you know, like there's, it's not a wrong answer. It's not like, that's just so insane, answer it's not like that's just so insane but it's more like yeah i'm interested in the in the mentality of someone who's like yeah i mean i love pulp fiction and jackie brown but like death proof is the one for me and it's just like okay that's interesting so i like the ones that sort of would seem like they're some it's just it's likely that they would be but a sliver of that pie chart. And that, that is just a visual way of thinking about the, the, basically all of the ones that I have, I have come up with here, but by no means, like the only criteria I was thinking of, because

some of these, I, you know, probably wouldn't be that necessarily, but only because some of these are from filmmakers with 50 movies. So why don't you kick us off? What's the first one you want to talk about? So should I go from the oldest to the newest? Yeah, let's do it that way. All right. So the first thing is, so I have two categories.

One is what you said, which is like, this movie kind of has a dodgy reputation. Maybe it's actually worthwhile. And then the other one is movies that I think like Mother and the Horror are just basically not in the conversation or completely obscure because they're not available. So those, that's kind of like a side thing. I can just list those because that's kind of not what we're focusing on. But the first thing, 1958, Nicholas Ray's Wind Across the Everglades. And I'm hoping that a lot of the, I'm hoping that at least three of these,

you'll go, I haven't you'll go I haven't seen that I haven't seen that because that's what you want from these movies and you know Wind Across the Everglades is not not the greatest movie it's you know I wouldn't even say it's one of the 10 greatest Nicholas Ray films but again that's a pretty lofty thing to claim that you could even crack that that list of his masterpieces but it's written by Bud Schulberg, who's a famous screenwriter and a famous novelist, stars Christopher Plummer, who is now regarded as one of the finest actors of the second half of the 20th century. And it is this sort of slow, somewhat dull, but kind of beautifully shot Florida location movie about conservationists and bird watching. And I think there's a character in

it that carries a raccoon the entire movie. And it's just this sort of odd what's it kind of, not terribly late in the Nick Ray filmography, but towards the back third of his film, certainly, that is like a lot of these for completists only, not available. As far as I could tell, perhaps there was a tape, certainly no DVD, no Blu-ray, no streaming on this one. And I saw it in the Film Forum Nick Ray series in 2006, probably. And everyone was like, don't miss Wind Across the Everglades because that one's never going to pop up again. And sure enough, as far as I know, it never has. I've never seen it. I don't even know where I would see it.

Maybe it would run on TCM or something from time to time. I feel like a couple of years ago, I might've seen like Richard Brody pointing out that it was popping up on TCM. I mean, that's where it would turn up now. And it would just be like, this is on at 2.30 in the morning for some reason, set your recorder because this is i

mean you know again all these things are probably on torrents but like who understands or has time for that he's he's a really interesting example of what you're talking about too because he's someone who you know in pretty short order after he kind of moved out of out of fashion out of work he had hits you know he had um he had rebel without a cause and things like that in a lonely place which is like 55 so we're like not it's not that far not that far removed from like but exactly where he wants to be but he's he also had i feel like a second life where johnny guitar and bigger than life gained a kind of like more kind of mainstream for lack of a better word appreciation but there still are all of these films that he's made this is a warner brothers film yeah and this is as i predicted the last film on the second line

of his wikipedia you know portal but it is kind of i mean there's nothing after this that i think is you know a major film right i think bitter victory right before this is probably his last major film but even i, that's another masterpiece. I mean, that was like one of the, that's like a movie that broke Godard's brain in half. That like he talks about seeing like every day for a month in the theater or something. Like, so he's in a great period in his career. But yeah, at this point, his movies have not entered the canon beyond, I would say, Bigger Than Light, which is 56. So that's a great pick.

My picks will invariably be more conventional than yours. Maybe. I mean, you know, these are a couple of these are just, you know, Hollywood movies. So one Hollywood movie that's kind of an interesting movie in the career of a very famous 70s filmmaker is Health, the Robert Altman movie from 1980. That was the one to see at the Altman series in MoMA. I caught it there.

I think it remains the one to see. You know, Popeye usually has the reputation of being the movie that kind of sunk him for good given the expenditures

on that production and the challenging nature of that film. But, you know, that was a Paramount movie and it's got all that lore because of Robert Evans and everything that was

going on there. This is the last movie that he made with Fox after making a string of really interesting movies, some of which are great, some of which don't work that well, starting with three women. And Health is like a parody and a satire of, frankly, something that would become pretty dominant in our culture, this kind of like self-care, health care culture. The movie is pretty funny, not very funny. It's certainly not also in the top

10 Robert Altman movies, but it's a movie that I don't know if you don't go to a retrospective, I don't know how you see this movie. The video store I worked in had a tape of it that may have been a bootleg, but I think was, I'm sure it was released on tape, but I feel like now this movie is just more famous for Ronald Reagan calling

it the world's worst movie. That's right. That's exactly right. But yeah, I mean, I remember when, you know, 2014 or so. I mean, this turned up when I was scrolling through here. And I feel like I saw that movie. Is it 13? Or is it 15?

I feel like when I saw that on my list, I was like, it's crazy that I saw that movie on New Year's Eve, I think. That's a rollicking New Year's Eve night. No, okay, I saw it on December 21st, 2014 at MoMA on a double feature with A Wedding. Oh, that's good. Which is like, you know. Contemporaneous. I mean, that's like a cursed double feature. That's like,

that's like, you know. Not if you're a Paul Dooley head, it's a great movie. I mean, that's just like a buried Altman double feature, but yeah, health is perfectly valid. And again, like I prefer it to Popeye. I remember watching it and being like, this movie is not bad. Like in the context of a series where I was in the groove of these films, I was like, this one, this is just right. I mean, there's nothing, there's nothing wrong about the tone of this movie, like in the way that there is with with Popeye especially if you're coming to it for an Altman film and yeah this I just remember being like yeah this was fine I mean thought it was going to be a train wreck it's like maybe like a two and a half or three star movie and now I can move on it's interesting what happens to him you know shortly after this and Popeye you know he basically goes into this like visible obscurity making tv movies um so it's an interesting artifact I think of like the end of a fruitful relationship with this and Popeye, you know, he basically goes into this like visible obscurity making TV movies. So it's an interesting artifact. I think of like the end of a fruitful relationship with

a filmmaker. What else you got? I mean, another one just real quick before we move on is like Brewster McLeod was not available until like three years ago. And that's a movie that unlike this was a lot of people's favorite Altman. And again, when that, when that would screen, it would be like, you have to go see it because you're not going to get it any other way and yeah it's just weird that he could have a film from that miracle run that became so invisible um and now is completely accessible but anyway um that one is even more egregious though because it was between mash and mccabe so it was like there's this mystery item that somehow is invisible if you want to rent a DVD. Anyhow, continue. Next one, I have 1963 John Ford's Donovan's Reef.

Oh yeah, sure. I've seen this. Okay. So now I still only have three more slots to hit one. And I suspect that that was my last ace that I thought. But, you know, I saw that in like a John Wayne Centennial series at MoMA. And it has like the old John Wayne collection DVD where every DVD, no matter how much he's in the movie was 90% his face.

And then a couple other pieces of clip art. I don't think it was ever in any of the like nice Warner brothers or Fox equivalent John Ford box sets. And it was, you know, the only non, uh, undisputable masterpiece in the John Wayne it was like six or eight movies it was the big trail the searchers exactly what you would want and then this one and I was like Donovan's Reef and you go watch it and it's just like what if there was a movie where John Wayne and Lee Marvin just like hung out in the tropics and ran like a pub or like a sort of like speakeasy on the beach and got drunk and got into fistfights. And then like looking it up today, I was like,

I guess there's like a whole plot of this movie. I remember this movie being like borderline meditatively plotless. And it's just, again, like what, I mean, you know, you couldn't name five more significant 20th century director-actor collaborations than John Ford and John Wayne. And here's one of them that is, for all intents and purposes, inaccessible right now. That is a great pick. And true to your word, on the poster, there is not one, but two illustrations of John Wayne throwing a punch. Yeah. I mean, they're just like friends like friends and they work together and they hate

each other and i think they served together and now they just kind of like get drunk and get into fights and go on adventures and get into fights and it's like it just kind of seems like a movie that would be like a thing on the simpsons um or the critic i guess more specifically but i remember thinking it was like kind of the the discovery that series, which I just had no expectations of and was pretty shocked to find out that it's still kind of just not accessible. And therefore, just kind of a curio in the late John Ford filmography. Okay, here's one for you that I know you're going to have some familiarity with. And frankly, I want to hear you talk about a little bit more. This film is available on Blu-ray,

but I don't think very many people know it. It's called Patty Hearst. It's a Paul Schrader movie from 1988. It's a kind of a biopic docudrama about Patty Hearst's abduction and then, I guess, infiltration inside the Sibini's Liberation Army. And it's from one of our great American filmmakers, a filmmaker who you made a documentary about. And I like it's is it is it the least discussed of all of schrader's films do you think no i mean there's touch the elmore leonard movie which is borderline unwatchable and i mean schrader he's got a couple scraping the bottom there i mean there's like the made for tv ones i don't want to look i just want to see if i can think of any others that would be that. It would be lower than Touch. I mean, I feel like nobody remembers that The Walker is a movie. Yeah. But that's the thing. I mean, all of his movies, I think the one exception of Touch,

when I ended up seeing them, I was like, this is a very valid and serious and worthwhile film. But Patty Hearst was on DVD. I remember the DVD. I never saw it. And then two years ago, I was a guest at the Harvard Film Archive. And I was showing all of my movies and speaking in a bunch of classes at Harvard. And they sent me the list of their complete archive. And they said, while you're here, we'll show four of your movies and we'll do, you pick four films from our entire archive. And one of the things in their archive was a pristine release print of Patty Hearst. And I said, you know,

this is when I was working on the documentary. And I said, you know, this is one of like two Schrader movies I've still not seen. Let's watch it. And I'll just watch it for the first time on this print. And I was so excited by it because it's so mysterious and evocative.

And the first third of it basically takes place in a black box. In darkness, yeah. With slits. And seeing a print of it was really exciting. And then I guess, yeah, there was like a Twilight Time Blu-ray. And then it was on Criterion when my documentary went up. So maybe I can claim a bit of credit for that movie not being purely invisible. But I think it was like made, It's one of those movies that was made by a Japanese electronics company. I think it's literally... Whatever it is, I'll look up. I mean, it literally might as well start by saying a Magnavox production. This is an interesting example of both of those cases you just gave. One, it was made available on Criterion Channel for a period

of time, and then it was removed again. And it was produced by twilight time in this really nice edition on blu-ray that's the blu-ray that you that you're referring to that's the blu-ray i'm referring to but twilight time ceased production last year they are now defunct so there's only this limited edition number of blu-rays so now this movie that it seemed like had been saved from obscurity is now probably going back into obscurity in a strange way that's on imdb that it is on to be on to be on this while we're on the subject i mean i guess that's a thing you have to check now yes when you want to say something bold like you can't track this yeah this is a zenith entertainment film incredible so like you know why were they why were they producing biopics

about the patty hearst kidnapping probably because they thought it would play on tape i don't know i mean like i feel like mystery train or one of the early drummers movies is a jvc film and it's just like that's a vcr company why are they like but but yeah i mean you know but that's the thing like once something kind of slips in to disc or slips into streaming, it can never fully go away. And, you know, Criterion channel, we see this, like a movie expires and it comes back six months later. Right.

Right. So keep an eye out for Patty Hearst. What's up? Yeah. I film my like, Oh, I film my, and then, yeah. So I saw it in the theater and then my wife had never seen it. She wasn't there with me that weekend. And then when it appeared on the channel with, with my documentary, I said, let's watch it again.

And she said, you saw this like three months ago. Yeah, but it's really good. And she had just listened to an audio book about Patty Hearst. And it was very compelling, but a worthy film. Okay, what do you got next? 1971's The Touch by Ingmar Bergman. Never seen it. Which again, like I wouldn't have included this

until we started going in a slightly different direction because this also is just on the Criterion channel, which previously was unthinkable. This movie had caused Elliot Gould to have a nervous breakdown. And somehow, despite that or because of it, he purchased the rights to it. And I believe still to this day, Elliot Gould owns the film.

And there must have been a tape of it. I'm certain that there was a tape. No DVD. And then at some point, MoMA did their Save and Project series where they would just say, we restored 20 movies. There's no rhyme or reason to what 20 they are. We're always doing different things. Here's a new print of the touch.

And I went and saw it thinking like, Oh, this is one of those famous, what the hell movies. And I was like, this is a masterpiece. This is easily, you know,

it's hard to say your favorite Bergman, but like, this is a four-star Bergman film along with, you know, the virgin spring and, and cries and whispers. And like, why do people not care about this movie?

And then I don't know if it got a blu-ray, but it, I think maybe criterion did put it out physically. I can't confirm that. I think it's in the big collection that they, okay. But then it's on stream, but you know,

as accessible as anything, but similar to what we were saying, because it's on streaming, you would, if you were interested in Bergman, you would have to have made it through 40 other films before you think, all right, it's time to finally be a completist here. You would never go, I'm a casual Bergman fan. I've seen the seventh seal and I've seen, you know, whatever my summer with Monica time to watch the touch. Like, so that can sit there on criterion for until the end of time. It doesn't mean people are going to finally say, I bet this Bergman movie starring Elliot Gould and then everyone else who's in other Bergman movies

is secretly an absolute masterpiece, but I think it is. And then recently, this is a tangent, but The Serpent's Egg is kind of his other English language film and that was in the mgm box set like the kind of sand and salmon colored box set with shame passion havana hour of the wolf so i was and those movies are all on criterion so i was like serpent's egg must be was not on criterion not streaming anywhere i got the dv DVD from Netflix. We watched it. It's terrible. It is just a catastrophe. Nothing in it works. It has one of the carotene

in it. I don't remember which one. Total, the tone is wrong. It just does not function at all as a movie. I thought you were going to go when you said Bergman with all these women women which I feel like is also it's like the comedy one or the one the devil's something that's the come yeah I mean

that one's like a the parody of eight and a half sure right I've never seen that when you get into the forward you know when you're talking about people with 40 to 60 movies you'll land on one that is largely unknown but this is what I wanted to say, people either consider this a catastrophe because it was seen as such at the time, and then it was never available. So by our faulty logic, it must not be good. But I want to say The Touch is great. And peak early 70s, Elliot Gould, really just a terrific film with,. I think a brutal and emotional final scene, line,

and shot that has stayed with me. I've seen it since, but it has always stayed with me from my first viewing of it. That's a great shout. I will now check it out. I've never seen it. I think if you were interested in Gould, really at the height of his fame, that's right after MASH. Pure Gould.

White hot Gould. What do you think about my next pick, David Cronenberg's M. Butterfly? fame yeah that's right after gold pure yeah white hot gold what do you think about my next pick David Cronenberg's and butterfly that's an interesting one that is one that I have seen because Cronenberg is one of the handful of filmmakers with a

substantial amount of films that I can say I've seen every single film same that was only on tape when I was completing this project it may still be is it what's the availability of that? I don't think it's available on DVD. It's virtually impossible to see these days.

Yeah. So maybe it never moved beyond tape. I just remember seeing it as one of the penultimate Cronenberg followed only of course, by fast company. Oh yeah. Well, that's like his,

his earliest film. Yes. The race. No, no. It's after rabbit and shivers okay yes it's him making a different again i want to try something different i like cars i'll make a car car culture movie and it's more like the ron howard you know grand theft auto or whatever that movie is called then it is like a cronenberg movie but he you know he finally figured out how to tell his car story with crash but uh but and butter penultimate and i just remember watching it

and thinking you know there's some stuff in here about the agony of the body yeah and that's clearly his thing so this movie has something and um it's jeremy irons right it's jeremy irons and john lone and ian richardson i mean i feel like it was criticized at the time because it kind of extracted some of the social import of of the original piece but I remember it being kind of kind of consistent with with the Cronenberg canon at that time but it just it doesn't feel like it's a part of the conversation and you actually can rent it on Amazon which I did not realize but it's like it does not feel like it is why would you i mean unless you're working your way through or you've that's seen the show where you think oh this sounds like this is based on a famous piece of theater that of course i can't see the theater so i'll just watch the film i mean i'm sure

more people have come to it that way than from an auteurist perspective um okay what's next but again like a lot of these movies it it's like, there's not a lot to say about them, except they're pretty worthy. And, you know, I think it's an Ebert quote that I'm either paraphrasing or misattributing, but a master, only, you know, only a master can make a masterpiece and a master can never make a truly bad film. So, like, there's some, I'm either misquoting or again, maybe it's not Ebert, but somebody like that said something like that. And I think about that a lot. Um, because yeah, I mean, he is a master. He has made a handful of masterpieces and therefore

no film he makes can just be without any value and therefore catch them all. And, uh, you know, fast company I held off on forever, even though I believe the DVD of Fast Company, disc two was how you got Stereo and Crimes of the Future. So I had to rent Fast Company and take it home in order to watch two other movies instead of Fast Company. And then the only reason I finally saw it is I was in a film festival in Slovenia in 2011. And many of the films were presented without subtitles that I could accommodate. And the retrospective in the Slovenian, the Ljubljana Kinoteka was a complete Cronenberg retrospective. And I saw like five or six movies and I thought, I guess I'm finally seeing Fast Company. And I did. Congratulations. With Athena Rachel Asangari. Wow. To just make

this story sound more like I'm describing a dream I had after falling asleep on the couch. What's next for you? So for number four, I have two options, and they're both pretty close together. But I'll ask you a question. How many problematic-ish filmmakers am I advised to include? I thought of including one as well. Okay. So I can have one.

So have one. Maybe it's the same one. Maybe. So in that case, number four is Coppola's one from the heart 1982 is he a problematic filmmaker no no the one i because i number five i got it you're saving it number five we're walking into some deep water got it um one from the heart is a great pick this is this is a film that probably is the biggest reputation out of all the movies i i only included it because i was looking at what else i had put there and thought I can't have two in a row. There are people that,

that people are perfectly valid to say, I just can't enjoy those person's films on an artistic level anymore. So I didn't want to end with two of those. So I thought that's reasonable, but this is, again, this is the, this is the 2% slice on that pie.

Who is going to say, you know, I mean, of course the Godfather apocalypse now conversation. Yeah, great. But really one from the heart is the Coppola that I returned to more often than any other. Who is going to say, you know, I mean, of course, the Godfather Apocalypse Now conversation. Yeah, great. But really, one from the heart is the Coppola that I return to more often than any other.

And I just think it's such a, like a lot of things. It's a famous misfire that the all you heard at the time was, oh, he bankrupted himself on this movie. And, you know, it's he's lost everything again. You know, what is he like just a few years away from just back to back to back Palme d'Ors and Oscars. And now he's just making this impressionistic fake musical with sets and music, Tom Waits music that makes no sense and doesn't even have huge stars in it. And just a total whiff at the time that it was,

this was always available. I mean, this was never hard to track down, but I never saw it until it popped up on 35 millimeter. And I just sat there and it washed over me with the lights and the sound. And just I thought, man, this is like easily upper half of his body of work instead of what most people think of it as, which is nothing. But people love that movie. It's not like I'm really going to bat for a know a lot of people are like that's a great movie people know that's a great movie now but um not not not everybody but this one i bet it's pretty easy to to find now i think they have issued it recently on a really nice blu-ray um it

feels like it's in the ishtar category where it's well known for being a huge bomb and thus accumulated a kind of like disastrous reputation. But anybody who really cares about the filmmaker or the film sees that there's something very special. I mean, that movie is just from a formal perspective is really cool. It's really interesting the movie that a lot of filmmakers go broke, either literally or financially or creatively making or trying to make. I want to do this Fantasia, this musical, this Fellini-esque journey into the emotional imagination. And you'll either go insane or you'll knock one out of the park. I suspect this movie may be talked about a lot when people see Annette. Interesting. That's a good call.

If that happens, let it be known that I thought it first. You were there first. Yes. Okay. How about Daisy Miller from Peter Bogdanovich? Is that your number four? That's my number four. I had a lot of Bogdanovich. I had your number four? That's my number four. I had a lot of Bogdanovich. I had St. Jack as a maybe. See, St. Jack now, I feel like everyone has arrived at the opinion that

that film is in fact good. Right. But it also seems to currently be out unavailable. Yes, it's available. I have a DVD somewhere in my house. It's similar. It seems to have had a Blu-ray and then it's out of print. Yes. It's a Patty Hearst situation. Daisy Miller, I just don't think is good. And I've seen it like four or five times, including twice in the theater. And you come to it and you're like, this is kind of known as where he went South. I'm sure it's got something. It's him and Sybil again. And I watched it on video 15 years ago. And I thought the biggest Bogdanovich fan in the world right now, this one just doesn't do it. And then it popped up in theater in a Henry James series, and I saw it again, and I thought, it just doesn't really work for me. And it's one of those things where for me, it's like, all the things people

say about this movie that don't quite work, I just kind of have to agree. So here's where my mind flipped on this one. I was with you. I went through a huge Bogdanovich phase, watched everything, got obsessed the way that one does when they're in their 20s and watching movies from the 70s. Watched this one. It was probably my least favorite, even less than Nickelodeon at Long Last Love. Then I saw the movie Irreconcilable Differences. Have you ever

seen that film? No. I've always wanted to. Okay. It's really fun. Amanda and I did a big Nancy Meyers revisit last year for the pod. That was one of the first films that Nancy co-wrote with her husband, Charles Shire. And the movie is,

you know, widely considered this kind of parody of what happened between Ryan O'Neill. Yes. Drew Barrymore, I believe. Yeah. Yes. And there's a whole set of the whole sequence in the film in which Sharon

Stone, who plays the Sybil Shepard esque figure in the story is making a period costume drama. And she is an absolutely abominable actress and is making hell out of, making mash out of this classical form. And it's really funny and really clever and gave me actually a little more empathy for Sybil Shepard. I don't think it's a disaster.

It's not like I cannot even make it through that. It's more just like, like a lot of these things, if you're you or me, you come to them thinking, maybe this is secretly a masterpiece. And when it's, it's just basically just simply a two-star movie, you know, which is kind of like health. Like I was saying, it's like, maybe this is secretly the best and you watch it and you're like, well, it's not the world's worst movie. In my opinion, it's not even the worst movie he made in 1980. I think Popeye is the same year, right? Yeah. So it's like, yeah,

my opinion is his, it's his best movie of that year, but it's not secretly a masterpiece, but it's also not like a catastrophe of just ungodly proportions that you just have to see to believe what's um what's next for you uh so number five i'll use my my my problem card 2010 uh polanski's the ghost writer so polanski was also the filmmaker that is that i had on my list but i i was going diary of of Forbidden Dreams here. Okay. I don't even know what that, what is that? So that's, it's what?

Oh, okay. Yes, I had what written down as well. I also had that, but then I was like, if we're going to talk about just the fact that he made this movie in this miracle run, then we can talk about what.

But what is not great? It's just a ghost writer is the definition of a late period masterpiece. Is that, is it Pierce Brosnan, Ewan McGregor, Kim Cattrall, Olivia Williams,

John Bernthal, just like incredible film. Again, mileage may vary on one's ability to give themselves, give two hours of themselves to filmmakers with complicated personal and social histories but this is just one of the fine i mean you know i don't i guess 2010 so i guess that would if i made a best of the decade list this was a shoo-in really it's just it's just a masterpiece and everybody i know in new york flipped out for it played in the theater

for about two weeks everyone i know saw it two or three times. It's just a rainy, wet movie set on Nantucket, filmed in Germany. We rewatch it like every other year when it's pouring rain in the middle of February. It's just a tense, claustrophobic, weird, sinister movie that is, you know, if you are willing to still watch these films and you like the mood and the atmosphere of something like Chinatown or something like Rosemary's Baby, that atmosphere is back in this film. And, you know, I've not really seen any of his movies since then, because I feel like they're all either unreleased or, you know, just not supposed to be good. But this really, if you want, and if you, and if you are okay with yourself,

this is just a terrific film. And I can't recommend it highly enough for those who would be willing to give it a try. I mean, it's really like the great Pierce Brosnan performance. I mean, it is like an actor's performance. And I think the movie premiered at Berlin. When I met Ewan McGregor on the set of Christopher Robin,

I was like, well, I walked up to him and I was introduced to him. And we had a mutual friend and he said, that person is one of the best actors I've ever worked with. And in my head, I was like, don't make a Jar Jar joke. Don't make a Jar Jar joke as badly as I want to, just to break the ice.

I can make that joke. And then I said, I want to, you know, you want to say something that maybe is not the two millionth time someone's hearing. And I said, you know, I just have to say that film, the ghostwriter is just a total masterpiece. I've seen it. I've watched it many times. I've rewatched it. I suspect you don't hear that very often. He said, no one has ever said that to me. I haven't seen it since the premiere. Is it really that good? And I said, it's better than you.

Huh? Maybe I'll watch it again someday. And I said, yeah. I mean, I said, really? No one's ever mentioned that. He said, no. Wow. It just didn't exist.

And now, you know, it has even less reason to exist. I don't know it's Blu-ray or streaming status. I suspect it's probably somewhat available, but yeah, it's recent enough that there's probably a way to get your hands on it.

I wanted to mention what just as a very similar circumstance to Bruce Summer Cloud except it's not good in that it comes between

Rosemary's Baby Macbeth and Chinatown and the Tenant and it's like four really interesting films, some of which are like among the greatest films ever made. And then this really like a,

what's it, you know, like a, how did this happen? I mean, that's, you know, 1941 in between,

right. Is it in between close encounters and rears of the lost ark? It is indeed. I mean, that's just like, how can this be? Like, how can,

how can this be? Can I, can I actually read you what Ebert wrote about what? Sure. So it's to your point about the quote that you were making it, but it runs a little bit counter. He wrote, there's probably a level of competence beneath which bad directors cannot fall,

no matter how dreary their imaginations, how stupid the material, how inept their actors, how illiterate their scripts. They've got to come up with something that can at least be advertised as a motion picture released and forgotten. But a talented director is another matter.

If he's made several good films, chances are that sooner or later someone will give him the money to make a supremely bad one. That's this. We should all be so lucky as to reach that point. Pretty amazing.

But that's the thing. Like, you know, I don't think, I mean, you could, you could debate this for hours, but like somebody like Scorsese or even Spielberg with 1941, you know, like most people do not make a supremely bad film in the way that Altman did and Bogdanovich did and Polanski, you know, like some people make a supremely bad film. Some people just kind of skirt by without ever really stepping on that landmine yeah the filmmakers who vex me with this stuff as i try to conquer all of the filmographies are people like lumet who has made similarly you know 10

essential american movies 10 pretty good movies and then 25 other films that are like so take it or leave it and like i i talked a little bit about bye-bye braverman when um when uh i think when george seagull passed um because both george seagull and jessica walter have passed in the last few months and that's a movie that just like i don't know anybody who's seen it like have you seen bye-bye no like i i've never met a person who's ever seen this movie i don't't know where you can watch it. It featured a huge movie stars. It was written and produced by Lumet, you know, concurrent basically to you know, the group and the pawnbroker

and you know, the Anderson tapes like around really good, really good films and it's like it may as well not exist and I find that so fascinating. Yeah. Well, I go to bat for Night Falls on Manhattan. Good movie. That's also streaming right now. Totally good movie. Yeah, it's to bat for Night Falls on Manhattan. Good movie. That's also streaming right now on Amazon Prime. Yeah. It's always popping up on streaming.

Alex, any closing thoughts on what we do with the unavailability of all this shit? Well, if I can, like I said, I have this other short list that we sort of ended up not being the topic, but movies that I think are by major filmmakers, this is just five quick movies, and three of them are by the same director that are like everybody here in New York who sees movies at rep houses knows that these films are worth it. These are totally canonical, great films in these filmographies. And this is what I kind of thought we would talk about, but then we pivoted. So I'll just read these. The first one is Howard Hawks' Road to Glory. Never seen it.

Which is one of my favorite Howard Hawks films. And Glory. Never seen it. Which is one of my favorite Howard Hawks films. And I've seen it once. I've seen it on screen. It has, much like The Touch, just a truly phenomenally devastating ending, final moment, final shot, leaves you with such an overwhelming feeling. I don't think you could leave Hawks out of a list of the top 10 most important directors of American cinema in the 20th century, pre or post studio system. And this is just a great film. And, you know, he's known for nothing, if not his depictions of men in combat. And no one would say Only Angels Have Wings is not canonically massive. But then you have other movies like air force that it's like,

that one was kind of always harder to track down. And then there's just this other one, which I think is a world war one trench movie made in between world war one and world war two, obviously. And it's just like a classic Howard Hawks men under pressure in war movie that I was shocked to learn when I looked it up has no availability whatsoever. It's crazy. Okay.

That's a great. I recommend all these movies, but what are you supposed to do about that? Hope that they appear someday? Yeah. I mean, you never keep your eye on 2B. Maybe it'll show up. Yes. Well, the next three are not going to show up on 2B

unless 2B is different than I think it is. This is a Fassbender triptych of Whitey, Jailbait, and Lily Marlene, which I think are like three of his better films. Whitey, I would put below the other two, but his filmography is largely, I mean, to what we were saying a minute ago, he does not have appalling catastrophe in his 40 films. And these are three films, Lily Marlene, especially, we have a foreign DVD of it. I think it's British or German or something.

The movie is almost exactly like Van Houten, Carice Van Houten in black book the lily marlene character and the hana shigola performance so much like verhoeven's black book and a great film and a real like big budget fassbender film like it has you know like it feels like it was made to be a kind of international war film uh you know two years before he's dead or just a few years before he's dead and uh and jailbait is like a made for TV movie about the exact subject matter you think it is when you hear the title, young male hustler. And when that played at MoMA in the Fassbender series, however many years ago, people were like, Jailbait is... I mean, we might as well just close schools that day. No one's doing anything

when Jailbait plays because like that's a 16 millimeter print. Who knows where it came from? It's in terrible condition. No one's going to restore this one. Subject matter does not lend itself to reappraisal. This is like a real, you know, thing in the night, but so was World on a Wire before Criterion issued it. And everyone was like, oh, I guess that's a masterpiece. And it's like, well, you know, some are, some are, so are some of these other things that have just kind of drifted away. But without that, you know, you have these situations like, like what we were talking about where you just kind of tap something with a magic wand and suddenly it's, it's

canonically available and canonically important. You know, like we were talking about this recently at home here uh with like with wanda which is another thing where it's like you know for years that was just like oh yeah like have you seen this movie it's kind of x y you know here yeah i have to describe it and now to say that to people they'd be like isn't that like considered one of the greatest american films of the 70s like i don't what do you tell you don't have to explain to me what Wanda is. Everybody knows how important that film is.

And it's like, well, they didn't used to, but then suddenly it became available. And then everybody saw it for what it always was. And now, you know, do you see the word Wanda on t-shirts or Barbara Loden on t-shirts? And it's like, yeah, great. Like all people needed to do was have access to this to know what it was sometimes it's as simple as getting tapped on the shoulder by criterion

you know and it enters it could be anything you know whatever they're obviously they're the largest and most prominent but it's by no means their job to save everything from the you know bin of history but my last one i think would be a great a great pick for them which is godard's 1987 king lear now you could do five you know esoteric godard films but this one his canon film every canon film is available why isn't this one this is like you know such a major and important film in his body of work and it's such a weird movie and it's kind of great and it does all the weird, tricky stuff he does. And Molly Ringwald is in it, as is Woody Allen around the time that I think O'Dard made Meat and WA, the short about him.

And, you know, there's many reasons that this movie might not be available or many reasons that people might not want it to be or to rewatch it. I think Woody Allen was in it for about two minutes. But it's a great film. It's a major film, a major curio by one of the most important filmmakers of all time. And it pops up in New York probably like every year or two on 35 millimeter for some reason. And I guess it's just the same old Canon print

that they keep showing. And speaking of Annette, it's also features Leos Carricks. Yes, that's right. And it's sort of young. Yeah. I mean,

the connections are being made there with the new generation of French, French filmmakers. And it's, it's worthy. These five that I just listed, obviously four foreign films from major auteurs. And then a Howard. I mean,

these are, these movies are totally important and worthy and it just goes to show like you'll never access everything. You'll never canonize everything that needs to be. And there will always be these things that are so historically important for one reason or another that just vanish. And it's kind of up to people like yourself who have a platform to just kind of say, well, if we talk about these, maybe they won't vanish. I mean, you say Snyder Cut, obviously, there's got to be some arthouse example of like, people just kept asking for this thing and then suddenly it appeared. I mean, it might be that when Tom Anderson first made Los

Angeles Plays Itself, no one had seen Killer of Sheep or The Exiles since the month they were released. And then he put those in that movie. And everyone who saw that documentary said, what the hell are those two movies? What are these? Like, what am I looking at? And then now those movies are restored and available and soon to be re-released or streaming or, you know, it's just, sometimes it takes something as weird as a major starring role in an academic essay film to rescue something like The Exiles. And

other times, if you just, you know, yammer on about these things, who knows? Who knows what can happen if people refuse to forget that some of these movies exist? We talked about Come and See last year on the show, and I felt like that's a film that went through that same life cycle. You know, there are, there are, that was never not on DVD. I mean,

that was on Kino DVD and that was just available. And you know, some things are just like that. I mean, I, I have like 20 other things I wrote down. Uh, I mentioned all the,

you stash, uh, Argento's four flies on gray velvet, which I don't like at all, but I've seen twice on 35 millimeter just to make sure I didn't like it. I think that's on Shudder at the moment. Is it really? Because when I looked it up, I was only searching Blu-ray and it's not physically available. Once upon a time it was on Shudder. Well, that used to be a real tough one to track down. Fuller's White Dog had the same trajectory,

went from being nowhere to being on Criter we were talking about inland empire which is just like a weirdly missing piece of the puzzle of a major major film artist well straight story was the same thing until disney plus weirdly just got straight story it's bizarre to me that there's a david lynch film on disney plus but they didn't have to get it they made it they owned it it was already right there but there's just you know this is just a list I put together, you know, quickly and you could come up with 200 others and almost every major body of work will have one or two things hiding under a rock. And what can people do if not lift it up and see, hey, maybe this, you know, Wells is the trial. I think I wrote to you about that when you did

the Orson Welles episode, Like that has not been available. And now it's like streaming on Metrograph's app. So it's like, who knows? Like these things just kind of come back around and it's all very mysterious. Alex, thank you for bringing your hard-won scholarship to the show. I really appreciate it.

Happy to help. Happy to have made this huge list. You did a brilliant job. I appreciate you. Thank you to Alex Ross-Perry, of course, Amanda Dobbins, and of course, our producer, Bobby Wagner, for his work on this show. We'll be back on The Big Picture next week with one of our most important movie drafts of all time, The 1975 movie draft, Amanda CR and myself talking about films from many, many years before Amanda and I were born. And Chris was about 38 at the time of the release of those films.

So tune into that. We'll see you next week.