This Had Oscar Buzz - 253 – Moby Dick (with Emily St. James!)

Episode Date: August 28, 2023

We’re going back further than ever before this episode and we’ve got writer/critic/author Emily St. James along for the ride! After a consecutive run as an Oscar favorite in the late 1940s to early 1950s, director John Huston gave us 1956’s Moby Dick, an adaptation of perhaps the greatest novel of all time and often … Continue reading "253 – Moby Dick (with Emily St. James!)"

Oh, oh, wrong house. No, the right house. We want to talk to Marilyn Hack, Millen Hack and French. I'm from Canada water. Dick Pooh. Ever since the beginning of time, man has pitted himself against the power of the sea to learn its secrets, to solve its mysteries.

Many stories have been told of ships and the men who sail them, of sea beasts and the men who hunt them. And she blow! But none has captured the imagination through the years so much as Herman Melville's immortal story of Captain Ahab, who lost his very soul in the bitterness of vengeance against the great white whale, Moby Dick. Hello, and welcome to the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast,

The Only Podcast Dancing to Disco with Gloria Graham. Every week on this head Oscar buzz, we'll be talking about a different movie that once upon a time had lofty a Academy Award aspirations, but for some reason or another, it all went wrong. The Oscar hopes died, and we're here to perform the autopsy. I am your host, Chris Fyle, and I'm here, as always, with my master and commander, Joe Reed. Ah, thank you. Thank you.

You are the master and commander. I am the far side of the world. Very good. I was wondering where you were going to pull. What of the many epithets that Ahab hurls at, uh, the mighty whale to refer to me. So I'll take Master and Commander. I'll take Burley Russell Crow.

That's fine. I'll deal with that. Listen, I think listeners should be expecting if they are not already. Lots of boat references, boat jokes. Sure. Waterlogged. Harpoon. Harpoon humor.

Does that exist? Harpoon humor, something like that. Harpooner. Yes. Didn't work. It doesn't work. It's fine. Midway through this episode, Joe and I are going to play a little duet.

That is true. An old shanty for all you to enjoy. Yes, exactly. Since the shanties have been brought up, there are a lot. Like, this is, I wouldn't say borderline musical, but it was a lot more shanty music than I was expecting, and a lot more old-timey religious music than I was expecting. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You get a full, it almost feels like, you know how sleep.

Sleeping Beauty is like 15 minutes of music montage before any story happens. That's true. It felt like that. Yeah. We'll get into it. Different times, different times. Those seafaring. I do feel like, go ahead.

I do feel like if you're going to go to sea, that's where you should be least surprised to hear a shanty, you should do, oh, yeah. Well, that's just like all that time, all that space, like nothing to do. and all of a sudden it's just like then all of a sudden the spirit moves ye somehow. So, yeah. The water spirit.

Right, right. And by that you mean Trish, I imagine. Yes, Trish. Moby Dick is Trish. It is Trish if you have wronged Trish. Right, right. Trish becomes a white whale.

Eventually white whale. Yeah. Yeah. What if they made a new version of this as a movie and Reba McIntyre did like the mocap for Moby Dick. Yeah. That would perhaps move more gracefully

than the Boston cop worthy human, like rocket-shaped projectile that Moby Dick sort of looks like in this. That's like all I could think of was when Moby Dick was cresting above and all I could think of was that cop going down the slide like a

like a log on a flu or something. Oh, my God. Still so funny. It's still so hilarious to watch. I'm willing to bet because we are recording this a couple weeks in advance. I don't think that the cop slide is going away in the discourse

in that time. I've seen people taking photographs at the slide and putting it up on social media. Like, I'm at the cop slide. And since becoming a tourist destination, I feel like that's a good sign. But yes, if Moby Dick is played by Reba McIntyre, the end credits would end

with Orson Wells and Reba McIntyre as Paya Khan Perfect Would pay to see it Would absolutely pay to see it Listeners as you know by now We have a guest today We sure do

Hello First time guest writer, cultural critic and novelist Emily St. James is here Yeah Hi everyone I'm so glad to be here

I've been agitating You have I'm just like, I have Oscar books. I was trying to remember how far back was the first time you were like, I could do Bicentennial Man on your show, and I was like, I wish you could. Although, now that we've opened things up on the patron, we should have you on the Patreon to talk about Bicentennial Man because... No, you got to have my wife on, because I have made this deal for her.

She hates, but she has to go on every movie podcast to discuss Bicentennial Man. Honestly, it's an event. in the making. Yes, we've been, I have been, of course, I say this to everybody, and it sounds like I'm just making excuses. I really tend to drag my feet when it comes to booking guests, and it's just a failing of mine, but we're so happy to finally have you here, especially because you have sprung this somewhat format-breaking film on us, which I love, sending us

careening back into the 1950s, which is very exciting. I was like when you sent me the list of films that you're considering, and there were so many good ones on there, and I had a couple other pitches. And then I was like, I want to find like the oldest movie could realistically say you could cover on the show, where you could like prove it had Oscar. Yes. And then got totally blanked, which is so hard to do. It is.

And this movie, I can't say definitively it had Oscar buzz, but it got a DGA nomination. So, like, somebody was. It's a pretty good indicator, I would say. And you look at old critics groups, too. I do think that in the history of the New York film critics circle, that is always kind of a good indicator as well, maybe more than something like early Golden Globes would even be. Just because that influence, I think, has always been there in terms of the academy. The community was smaller back then. The ways things could influence things were more direct.

I think critics had more of a. Specific critics, I guess, even, you know, your Bosley Crowlers and whatnot would have more of an impact on things like the Oscar race. So, yeah, I think that's a good indicator. And it opens up a lot of interesting conversation. I was reading the Inside Oscar chapter on the 1956 Oscars, which the farther you go back in time with that, there's less detail because it's just sort of harder to mine. But, like, a really fascinating Oscar year that we'll definitely delve into later on in the episode because a lot of interesting things going on at the Oscars in 1956, none of which, unfortunately, was Moby Dick, because it did get blanked. Poor John Houston. Poor John Houston.

Well, okay, I think another indicator, too, is like, we know the type of, this is true then, is true today that, you know, when somebody is on a run. with Oscar and like being nominated or considered you know the next project always has some type of anticipation in that regard and I didn't realize that like John Houston's Oscar record is so consecutive it's like just directing alone four nominations in the span of five years which is I guess I had never put two and two together in that way John Ford esk in that way yeah Yeah. I mean, that's a pretty rare thing. And even today, I mean, there's not a lot of people working as often, which I think was true of a lot of directors and studio directors of this time. But even on, you know, say, a four out of five run of movies, even if it's spread over a wider calendar. Because it's what? It's Treasure the Sierra Madre, uh, asphalt johns. Angle, African Queen, and Moulon Rouge. No exclamation point. Right, right. Which is the namesake of the production company that produced this film and then quickly, perhaps

appropriately, went underwater in terms of budget as the budget more than doubled as this movie was made, somewhat unavoidably, I imagine. I'm always looking for, like, directors from this period whose filmography is are like manageable. Right. Like you could never watch all the Howard Hawks movies. John Houston,

he made 20-some films. You could watch all of them pretty easily. I think there's a couple that are really hard to find. But like, I was like, is it going to be hard to find this movie?

No, it was on FreeVee. Freevy, yes. Freebie really is the way to watch this movie. It kind of looks like shit on FreeVy. Like this movie clearly needs some type of restoration.

Yeah, I would love to see it on a big screen and like a really nice print of it. Yeah. Because you get these kind of, you know, mid-century practical effects that sometimes look absolutely absurd. And in the next shot, there's actually a really cool practical effects shot.

Yeah. And then the next shot is, you know, close up of three guys in a pool waving their arms in the air and yelling. Right, right. But it's also... And then the sort of... Immediate hard cut to, like, pharmaceutical ads. Yes, yeah, that's the thing, is the free-vis, the free-vis ads really do come out of nowhere. It's very funny. It's also the color palette of this movie is so distinctive and striking, where he overlaid the black and white print over the color print. So it has this sort of like of two worlds, but also of no-worlds kind of effect to it as you're watching it. It's mesmerizing. And,

odd which i love it does it does look so shitty the print that they have right now and like but the kind of thing i liked about it was it gave me big like middle-aged dad feels to watch it on freebie because it's just like you're sitting there and this movie that's been beat to hell but it's just randomly showing on television is on and you're you're just gripped enough by it to not want to change the channel and then every so often somebody yells at you about how freebie has the emoji movie For a different podcast, I watched Tender Mercies last night. That's a fucking great film, but it's also on FreeVee. And free, like, the way these services work is they algorithmically insert the ads.

So they have an AI decide where a good break is, and the AI doesn't always know. It really didn't know with Tender Mercies, a movie where kind of nothing happens. And it just would be like, there'd be like a scene of, like, Duval, like, singing a song, and then suddenly you'd be in a truck ad. Wow. It was great. I can't believe my wife was like doing all the

Bruce Beresford movies. I can't believe you've given me this scoop. That's fantastic. I am on an upcoming episode. We're going to talk. I'm going to ask you about that after we're done them because I don't know what their next miniseries. Ooh.

I need to find out. The, I think I've talked about this on Mike before. The Betty Buckley scene of Tender Mercies. I don't think I'm as big of a fan of that movie as you are, but that Betty Buckley scene where it's the Oscar nominated song for it but she

rips it in that scene it is just so good like on a break from cats she goes and shoots this American independent film about country western music and she's incredible that scene is amazing

there's like one of the things I was struck by watching that movie is every Christian movie of the 21st century. It's trying to do Tender Mercies. And can't, because Tender Mercy is, like, is very sincere and very, like, invested in its character being a terrible person. Yeah. You know, before the film starts. And, you know, Christian movies just, they don't, they don't have the juice. They just can't do it. They just can't pull of Tender Mercies. Yeah. Tender Mercies made me really want to watch

the Apostle, which I've never seen. I'd be curious what you like. It does feel like, those feel like bookend movies a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm kind of obsessed with movies about Christianity that don't treat it like that either don't treat it as a laughingstock or as like the solution to all your problems. Right. And they're like outside of Scorsese, they can be kind of hard to find. Yeah. So I, yeah, the apostles are really good. Like Duval was kind of on this like one man quest to like make movies.

Yeah. Along those lines. And the apostles are really great ones. Did you ever see the Vera Farminga movie Higher Ground? He's going to bring this up. It's a good movie. about, in my estimation at least, about

grappling and wrestling with religion without being like, oh, watch as this like, you know, this woman's religious upbringing sort of ruined her life. It's much more interesting than that. And I'm surprised, has she never directed anything else,

Chris? I thought she, much like Patrick Wilson was also moving into directing horror movies, but that's not a Um, but it's a really interesting sequels, uh, that nobody seemed to latch on to as much as I wanted them to higher ground. So I'm, I'll, I'll check it out. I love the Michael, I think it's Michael Tolkien movie, The Rapture. Oh, I've never seen that. That's, that's, uh, that is a kind of a fucked up movie. Yeah.

But it's very much like, very much in the grounds of like, we're going to take Christianity seriously and so seriously that we like, show you some of the horrific elements of it. Sure. Sure. Yeah. I'll do that one for the show. Did that have Oscar buzz? It feels like it must have. Critics liked it. Maybe. What year was it?

91, I think. Okay. I'll look into that. It's very possible. 91, I was too young to like remember things like on my own. So I have to like dig into the. Yeah. I just remember it from Roger Ebert hyping it all the time, which like, yeah.

Roger Ebert was always a good bell weather for stuff like that. There are definitely certain movies. from back then that I remember, mostly because, like, Roger was kind of, like, writing, uh, writing for it, which is, yeah, good legacy to have. It looks like he was the one guy who did, but there was some, like, interest in if, um, Mimi Rogers might make the, make, make, oh, I do remember actually hearing about, uh, the, a Mimi Rogers movie that got her Oscar buzz. I bet you that's the one that I'm remembering. So, yeah. Um, Chris, what else, what other table?

setting. Should we talk about, we should promote the Patreon before we get to the part of it. I was going to bring this up before we get into Emily's Oscar origin story. Listeners, we've been hyping this all month. We have launched our Patreon. This had Oscar Buzz turbulent brilliance. For $5 a month, you can get two bonus episodes at patreon.com slash this had Oscar buzz. One of those episodes will be what we call exceptions, movies which usually fit that This had Oscar buzz rubric of great expectations and disappointing results, even if the movie got one or two Oscar nominations. These are the episodes that our listeners have been asking for for a long time.

They're here over at our Patreon. We've already got one episode on nine, and in a few days from when this episode airs, we'll have an episode on Pleasantville. I think you all want to hear the Pleasantville episode, so head on over to Patreon. Our second bonus episode every month will be more of a departure from the format, We are calling those excursions.

We'll talk about different Oscar race check-ins. We're going to be doing e-fall movie preview flashbacks. We'll watch some old award shows and talk about them. We'll be doing actress roundtables. Patreon-only mailback episodes. It's going to be a good time. We already have our first excursion episode up talking about my experience, going to the great, the wonderful, the theatrical event of our lifetimes,

Magic Mike Live. So to sign up for This Had Oscar Buzz Turbulent Brilliance, go to our Patreon page at Patreon.com slash this had Oscar Buzz. Yay. I'm so excited for people to hear about your trip to Magic Mike Live. It's such a, it's a good time had by all.

I ascended to a higher plane of existence. I truly, I don't remember if I said this on Mike, but one of the people I was with a family member took a video of the show. And apparently in the background, you can hear me just screaming, I'm so happy. Yeah, it was a great night, great night, go listen to it on the Patreon.

You got to send me that video, by the way. I do need to watch that, but yes. I might have to ask for the video. I don't know if I have it, but I have a million other videos from there. Anyway, here we are, Emily, we're so happy to have you. Hi. Whenever we have guests,

we like to talk about what we call the Oscar origin story. So tell us and our listeners, When did you first get familiar with the Oscars? Were you super into them when you first became aware of them? Or, you know, were they just like kind of a part of the movie ethos for you? I know that I knew, like I had always known about them. I, my adoptive mother, the woman who based me, loved movies. But she loved, like, she grew up in the 60s, so she loved, like, the big movie.

be musicals of that era. So I've seen My Fair Lady, more than anyone who could claim to be millennial, should reasonably have seen my Fair Lady. I've probably seen it seven or eight times. And I love that movie. And when I tell people that, they're like, really? And I'm like, you know, it's, it's, I don't have a lot of nostalgia for things because I didn't get to see a lot of movies growing up.

But my Fair Lady, I'm like, yeah. My Fair Lady is your Goonies or your labyrinth or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. But, like, because of that, I sort of became aware of, oh, there's this thing called Best Picture. Right. And it's, you know, a prestigious award. So I think the first year that I really remember, like, being cognizant of the Oscars is a thing that happened. Was the year that Rain Man won? Sure. I didn't, like, pay attention to the nominations or anything like that. But Rain Man won, like, I think, four Oscars. And I was like, oh, that's, that's the best movie of all time. You know, like, I, I hadn't seen it, but like, and then, you know, the next year was driving Miss Daisy, which was a big deal because it was the first movie my grandmother had seen in theaters since Gone with the Wind. She, like, evidently only liked watching Best Picture winners that have deeply creepy.

Right, right. It's a narrative. All right. Okay. And then she saw fried green tomatoes because she became a Jessica Tandy stand, and that was it. She saw those three movies in theaters her whole life. So I love the idea. She got lesbians in their song.

Yeah. Driving Miss Daisy is a gateway drug to fried green tomatoes. Like, there are worse things. That's maybe the best thing you can say about that movie. So that's good. Yeah. I think the big breakthrough year was I grew up in South Dakota and Dances with Wolves was mostly shot there. And then it's this huge Oscar sensation. And it became like a point of pride for the state of South Dakota that this movie was shot in South Dakota. Like you can still, to this day, if you're driving along Interstate 90s. through South Dakota. It's this long, desolate stretch of highway. There's not a ton especially once you get past the Missouri River, but there are these like little gas stations that are like, come see dances with wolves props. And it's like how the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company

still exists. And you're like, this is a weird remnant of a time. So I was keenly aware of dances with wolves, but that was also the year I had the first thing you could reasonably call like a favorite current movie. Before that, I

only liked old movies and then I saw Home Alone in the theater and was like this this is the movie that should win best picture yep and I remember when the nominations came out I was so sure it would get like 18 you know yeah and I pull out the newspaper and to this day I can remember that it got score and song which is the thing I think not a lot of people think about when they think about home alone and mostly because John Williams was involved in both but like I was so irate. And then everyone around town was excited about, you know, Dances with Wolves because it was filmed there. And then I read the rest of the movies. And I was like, good fellas. What the fuck is that? It's not home alone. Yeah. I think I've told the story on this podcast before. But I remember

watching because for a while there, I was able to watch like the first hour of the Oscars and then I had to go to bed. I was, you know, 12 years old or whatever. I was 11. And I could watch until 10 o'clock or 9, from eight until nine, and then come nine o'clock, I had to go to bed because the Oscars were on a Monday night, so it was a school night. And I remember the year after Joe Pesci won. Of course, he comes out to present supporting actress the next year. And so they introduce him as last year's winner for Best Supporting Actor, Joe Pesci. And I don't know if I even said it to anybody, but I remember thinking it in my head of like, oh, he won for Home Alone. Of course. That makes sense. That, you know, that's that.

That's, that's only logical in my mind. Like, of course he went for Home Alone. He was the best supporting actor last year. Like, that makes sense. Okay. And, you know, to some extent, I bet that, you know, obviously he won because he had a long career. He'd worked with Scorsese all those times. He's amazing in Goodfellas.

But being in Home Alone when the voting was happening. Couldn't hurt? Yeah. He's very good in that movie. He's having, you know, he's clearly not having a great time, but he's pushing through it. Who can't relate to that? Who can't relate to that in the workplace? Home Alone is one of the big Christmas season movies in my family.

We don't necessarily all watch it together, but at some point over the season, we will all have ended up watching it at some point. And I imagine if you asked my mom who her favorite character is, it would almost certainly be Joe Pesci's character, because his reactions to everything are the funniest. his sort of, you know, grumble mumbles as he's, you know, cursing under his breath or whatever. Which apparently, Joe Pesci did, like, invented that on the spot because he kept cursing for real. And they're like, this is a family movie, this is a kid's movie. You can't just curse as you're, as, you know, you're reacting to these things. And so he sort of started that sort of like Yosemite Sam-esque, like, reciprocity. Which is a great story.

Yeah, yeah. So I, you know, I was kind of a great spot for a movie obsessed kid who couldn't see a lot of movies. I grew up 45 minutes away from our nearest movie theater. And the rental selections were like just like there was one half wall in each of our convenience stores that had a little collection of titles. Generally, just close to new releases. Occasionally there would be like an old movie, by which I mean a movie from 1980. or something you know yeah um and i was i was very heavily policed in what i could watch so i couldn't rent a lot of them right but like i got very into disney for that reason i saw a lot of their animated

movies especially as they were re-released so the next year's beauty in the beast yes and like that's that was like a really good like streak for me because that year got nominated for best picture right and i still hadn't seen it but i could be like well i know disney and this must be the best movie of all time and it lost to the silence of the lambs but i was like cognizant of Silence of the Lance because people I knew had seen it and had really liked it and like my parents had seen it which is weird for them in a horror film yeah I think people forget what a huge hit that was yes and yeah from there I just was like I got up I was a movie obsessed kid and I needed a way to learn about film history and the Oscars became that yeah my other grandmother my mom's

mom who kind of gave my mom her love of movies I would go visit her she lived a couple hours away from us. I would go visit her for a week every summer and she would just take me to the Lewis drugstore of here on South Dakota, which had endless like amounts of videos you could rent. And we would just rent everything I wanted to watch. We'd watch all of it. And that's how I saw a lot of the formative movies I've seen. Like I still weirdly have a lot of blind spots from basically the year 1980 to like 1993. Sure. Because I was, you know, I grew up in that time. and grew up in a house where I wasn't watching a lot of stuff. But, like, I saw a lot of the best pictures from the 60s and 70s.

You know, she, she would, like, not let me just sit down and watch Midnight Cowboy, you know, but she, she definitely was like, here, this is good. Let's watch, you know, Bridger in the River Kwai or, you know, American in Paris. So, like, I became, like, the Oscars, as much as people complain about them, I cannot not have affection for them. because they gave me my love of film to a real extent. I watched a lot of bad movies that have won Best Picture, but, you know, Lawrence of Arabia remains one of my favorite films.

Like, every so often they get it so right that they keep you coming back. It's the thing we talk about Chris and I a lot on this podcast, which is for all of the Oscars' faults, they are an ambassador to the rest of the country for, and like, this is why I'm always harping about the Oscar telecast, not getting away from the movies. They keep acting embarrassed about the awards part of the show and the movies part of the show. And I'm just like, even in a world that has, you know, become so much more interconnected than when we were all younger.

But like, it can still be an ambassador for especially now in a public, which is like watching less and less, you know, types of movies. Love that he cut out in a world. I don't know. Soapbox and all. We have the most delayed gratification Ray LaFontaine right now. I'm going to finish this. Oh, he's back. What happened there?

Jesus Christ. I was just joking that you cut out at In a World. Perfect. Perfect. I don't know. All of a sudden, like, it didn't even, like, it just went away. Zoom just, like, cut out on me. That's crazy.

You can just, you can splice the audio together. by just throwing in a big splash audio. Yes. Yeah, exactly. Well, that's a good indication that I should shut up and we should transition to talking about Moby Dick then. Back to more Moby Dick. I do want to sort of like, I generally agree with you. I, you know, a lot of like Oscar bloggers or whatever complained about everything everywhere all at once winning.

And it was not my pick of those movies, but it was a great like a great exemplar of the movie year that was 2020. I was so happy that it won a bunch of Oscars just because, you know, it made people who wouldn't have checked that movie out, check it out, and really like it. And, you know, you can sort of already feel happening that Oscar night 20, 23, 24 is going to be like, we're just going to be continue in the long tale of Barbenheim. Right. And that's going to be great. Yeah. Because it's this, you know, I haven't reached the end of the year yet. I don't know if either of those films will be my favorite of the year.

Like, I love living in this moment as a movie fan. And I think the Oscars celebrating that with too critically loved box office beloved movies is great. They should do more of it, is what I'm saying. Well, and when the Oscars can be also, you know, a yearbook of, you know, and in that way where it's, this is why I'm never mad that the Oscars don't choose my own number one movie of the year as they're one. It's just like, I don't need it to be, I don't need it, need it to match my taste exactly. I need it to feel like a, you know, a fitting retrospective to the year in some way or another. You know what I mean? And, you know, tell us a story of what the last year at the movies was like.

And I think if it is the Barbenheimer Oscars, then certainly that would fit that bill. It'll feel like the past year of movies if they change the Oscar statue to be. pink. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Our first pink Oscar statue. You're to look for a white

whale. Hey there, friends and Gary's and party people. We are just popping in for a little message. And that message is, Chris, want to say it with me?

Let's not, no. We can't, we can't sync our words. We're on Zoom. It'll sound insane. But the fantasy movie league is back in

town. I just want to say that she's back. She's back. And I'm scared for these girls. Are you doing Tiffany New York Pollard? It's my favorite Tiffany Collard Club. On this day, that is a high bar to clear. That is a deeply high bar to clear. Well, I mean, favorite single quote. If you're talking like monologue of which there are many, it's Gemma Collins. It's also, wait, I'm trying to think of the thing on Big Brother UK where, She thought that Angie Bowie was saying that, that, David is dead. Yeah, but the wrong David, the David, who was, what was his name, Liza Minnelli's husband?

David Geff. No, not David Geffin. David Guest. David Guest, right, who was asleep in the next room. But I guess there's no, like, single quote from that. Also, I tend to, I like, like, what's the one she says in Flavor of Love Season 2, where she's goes you're a dreamer you dream a lot like that's a good one you're a dreamer you dreamer you dream a lot um and then uh when uh buck wild throws her shoe at her at the flavor of love to reunion and she just

goes and you missed and you missed like that whole thing oh my god all of it's so good um anyway all of this is to say that um much like boots in the at the end of her run on charm school um Vulture Fantasy Movie League is back and better than ever, hopefully, is what I will say. We are here earlier than we were last year. We are here, the gameplay is much more interesting because we are making picks throughout fall festival season. There's a lot more guesswork.

There's also the added obstacle of the fact that a writers and actor strike is happening in Hollywood, which is causing the bullheaded studios to move their films to 2024 rather than pay their professionals because they are dumb. We have already seen a few movies move to 2024, including, as we are recording this, just a couple of days ago, June Part 2 was moved to 2024, which I think some people who may have drafted early in the league may have already drafted Dune Part 2, and that is bad luck for them.

So what I will say, as I'm saying to people, is be aware when you're drafting. And also, maybe not the worst idea to like, we draft, drafting can go on through September 28th. Maybe strategize and hold on your horses a little bit and wait so later in September to draft your team because you'll know more then. You'll certainly know more about festival buzz as well. But the other flip side of that coin is, and Chris, I think you agree with me on this one, is don't miss it. Don't let the date go by where you've missed signing up for the league entirely. You will regret it. Put a little Google Cail.

I will also say to those of you who embrace chaos, madness, and confusion and want to draft early, we do respect it. We do respect the risk, the challenge, and most importantly, potential bragging rights. The chutzpah. We appreciate chutzpah in this place. the other thing that we want to mention is for the Vulture Movie Fantasy League this year is they are offering an option when you sign up for your team to enter in a league name

and so with a league name you can then when you look at your scores click on a button and it'll show you where your scores compare to people who are also in your league so our dear Gary's we are offering you guys the info of a Gary's

Gary's exclusive league within the Vulture Movie Fantasy League. So when you sign up for your team after you put in your email address in your name, there is a field that says league name which is optional. And

for the this had Oscar Buzz loyalists out there we are saying put in the following as your league name. All of us Gary's. All one word because only alpha numeric characters count. So capital A for all, capital O for of, capital U for us, and capital G for Garry's, but make it all one word.

You know that, you know. Gary's with a Y-S. Gary's with a Y-S, G-A-R-Y-S. We will put it on our Twitter feed if you want to go and check the spelling before you do it. We will have it. Maybe we can pin it to the top of our Twitter. Maybe we can do that. But that way you can compete with the Gary's throughout the season in Vulture Movie Fantasy League.

We will make this available to you. Bringing people together. Bringing people together. That's what we are about. Get a rivalry going with your fellow Gary's. One million percent. You know what we also might do. Get a friendship.

Get teams going among the listenership. We could put each other. We could put a thread into our Patreon section where people can talk about the Fantasy League in the comments on the Patreon, which gives you yet another reason to sign up for our Patreon. But anyway, all of us, Garys, is going to be the league name for everybody who wants to compete with other Garys, who are fans of this had Oscar buzz. Otherwise, or to that end, you can go to vulture.com. slash movies dash league to join up with the Vulture Movie Fantasy League. From there, you can also check out the massive draft kit that I wrote in preparation for the league, where I talk about different strategies that you can use while drafting

your team. I give capsule reviews for a capsule previews, rather, for a bunch of available movies. Everything that's available is on this draft guide in one way or another, whether it's a capsule preview or I have some of the lower, lower priced items designated into some lists in the bargain bin. So everything that you could possibly want in terms of how should I draft a team, what is this about? What's a good strategy? I tried to throw it in there into that draft kit. I just want everybody to have as much fun as possible. I think it's going to be a good time. The other thing I should add, as far as rule changes, there have been a few rule changes in terms of some of the points have been tinkered with, but the big one is, last year we sort of had a rolling system for box office points where, depending on when you signed up, you were able to start accruing box office points right away. This year, we are making it more hard and fast.

If a movie opens before September 29th, when the league starts, that movie will not be eligible. for box office points at all so no matter when you sign up there are movies that are box office eligible and there are movies that are not box office eligible all the ones that are box office eligible which is to say you can earn points based on those movies box office performances all of those movies will open on or after September 29th so be aware of that otherwise Chris what else is there to say I'm excited I'm I am also very excited. I am eagerly looking forward to doing much better than I did last year.

And I'm excited to see how, you know, the Gary's team does. Yeah, yeah, same, same. So, like I said, sign up for our Patreon and you can throw us some feedback in the comments there. Otherwise, tweet at us. Check out our Twitter feed for, like I said, we'll put the All of Us Gary's team name up there. sign up, have fun, keep one eye on that release calendar and make sure that everything you're drafting

is indeed opened or set to open in 20203. Hopefully the studios will get their shit together and end this strike soon, so we don't have to worry about any more movies bailing to 2024, and we're going to have a very good time. And back to your regularly scheduled aquatic adventure for Moby Dick. Let the games begin.

Let the games begin. White, not to be a segue man or whatever, but you look at the 1956 Oscars, which Moby Dick was not able to crack the lineup for. That was a year that told a particular story about the year-in movies, and that story was big movies.

Every movie that was nominated for Best Picture that year was this sort of like big sweeping massive affair, even something like a movie called Friendly Persuasion, which I've never seen, but I never assumed that it was this like Civil War epic or whatever. I always imagined it would, it sounds like, friendly persuasion sounds like either a romantic comedy or like something that's sort of like smaller and not this, you know, Gary Cooper movie about the Civil War, whatever. but there's, you know, around the world in 80 days is your best picture winner. Giant and the king and I and my beloved Ten Commandments. This is also a year where I've seen three of the five Best Picture nominees. From 1956, that's pretty good for me. Like, I'm still filling in, I'm back filling in my movie history. I think I've seen four of the five. I haven't seen Friendly Persuasion, which you're right.

It sounds like a Billy Wilder film that is, like, kind of about homosexuality, but kind of not. Right, right. But, yeah, like, I'm the only one I haven't seen either. Like, you know, you can't live in this country without having seen 10, at least part of 10 commandments on TV in Passover season. And, like, yeah, Giants, I saw that. And I watched all the best picture winners at one point, so I've seen, although ones I could find easily in South Dakota, so not all of them. But, like, I've seen around the world in 80 days. days. A friend of mine knew I was watching this, I knew I was watching Moby Dick, and he was like, well, you know, did it, did it, was it snubbed? And I was like, I, for some reason, I thought it came out in 1952. And I was like, well, absolutely should have beat greatest show on her. Right. Like, one of the worst movies to ever win Best Picture. And then I realized it came out in 56. And I was like, oh, a different one of the worst movies.

So, like, I do not know that I would nominate Moby Dick for 1956, but I feel, I do not know that I would nominate Moby Dick for 1956, but I feel. confident it's better than around the world in 80 days. I will say reading up on these Oscars did make me at least want to watch around the world in 80 days just to see what it's like. Because the fact that it was this massive blockbuster hit played for 14 months in theaters and Mike Todd, who I only really knew of as Elizabeth Taylor's husband before Eddie Fisher, was this, like, mega-producer who, like, really took this, you know, took this chance on this, like, massive movie. Essentially invented the concept of the cameo in casting that movie, like, invented the concept of, you know, big movie stars taking these small roles. And it just made me, you know, very curious to see.

And because the other thing, the only really thing I knew about around the world in 80 days was that it's regarded as one of the worst. best picture winners. So I definitely would like to check that one out at some point. But the other thing about friendly persuasion before we move on, because I did make note of this as I was reading through, like I said, Inside Oscar earlier. There's a quote from Gary Cooper. Gary Cooper is the star of Friendly Persuasion about Anthony Perkins, who was, you know, early to mid-20s at this point. And he said, I can't remember, oh, life. It was a life cover story about the movie. And it Quoted Gary Cooper, saying about Anthony Perkins. Anthony Perkins, who, of course, was gay and closeted and has a really fascinating life, actually.

I think he'd do well to spend a summer on a ranch. It would toughen him up, and he'd learn a lot from another kind of people. That's so fucking loaded and coded, and I hate it. I hate it for Anthony Perkins. It made me sad for Anthony Perkins, as I read that quote. I think that ranch might have actually could have been a boat. because it seems like the filming of this movie might have been that level of experience.

Yeah, maybe Anthony Perkins could have spent a summer filming movie dick. Exactly. All right, we should move into the plot description before we get too far ahead. All right, let's set the table then while we do that. Once again, listeners, we are here to talk about Moby Dick directed by none other than the one and only John Houston

written by John Houston and Ray Bradbury will get into it adapted obviously from the Herman Melville novel starring Gregory Peck Richard Basshard Leo Jen James Robertson Justice Harry Andrews

many more and then Orson Wells the movie premiered June 27th 1956 a 4th of July movie before really the 4th of July movie was a thing That's honestly a perfect date

Yeah yeah Like, that's when they launch perfect storm. You know, that's when people want to see a lot of men die and see. It's very true. Very true. Yes. All right, Emily, as our guests, you are charged with doing a 60-second plot description of the film. This is a high task considering, you know, the thousand-page novel that it's based on.

But are you ready? Let's do it. All right. Then your 60-second plot description of, you know, of Moby Dick starts now. Call me Ishmael. Ishmael's a guy who wants to do something with his life, so he goes and joins a fishing voyage. He meets a man named Queak Wagon and an inn.

They become friends. They listen to Orson Wells tell them about how death is around the corner and everyone needs to respect God. Then they go to sea. At sea, they have many adventures. They're very episodic. They're going out whaling. They hunt some whales. They meet other people.

Their captain is named Ahab. He's played by Gregory Peck. He's like, we've got to kill this whale, Moby Dick. He took my leg. and he killed the son of this other boat and we're going to go get him and we're going to go kill him. They chase Moby Dick all across the Pacific, I think yes, all across the Pacific. At the bikini Atoll, a detail added for this film probably because of the recent age bomb tests, they catch up to Moby Dick and they go on a long chase after him and they finally hunt him down and they are going to kill him.

Everyone almost abandons Ahab and Ahab's like, no, listen, I know this has cost me my life. Anyway, here we go. We're going to kill the whale. They don't kill the whale. The whale kills all of them. Ishmael escapes on a floating coffin. The end. With one second to go, you got it all in there.

That is, I think, one of the 60-second plot description achievements of this entire podcast. Very good. Well done. I mean, like, I know the book really well, so that helps. But the thing about Moby Dick is, in both literary and cinematic form, it is, like, very ploty, but doesn't really have much of a plot. You know? It repeats. a lot, which is part of its charm.

But. Yeah, Mobiotic is one of those movies. I've never read it. It feels like one of those movies where if you, or one of those movies, one of those books, geez, this is why. This is why I've never read it because when I start to talk about books, I unconsciously say movies. Yeah, exactly.

It seems like one of those books that if you didn't read it in the course of your education, you know what I mean? Then when you do read it as a story. an adult, if you do, it becomes a project. I remember so many people who, like, I'm reading Moby Dick, here's my thread about it. You know what I mean? Like, you have to almost, like, turn it into a venture because it's, it's, you know, such an undertaking. And to do it outside of, you know, the bounds of a formal education, you know, structure, that it feels like you almost need some sort of like, you know, a superstructure to get you, not to get you through it.

It's not like, I don't know, it sounds like people enjoy it, but it also feels like a book that people need to process as they go along. I don't know. What do you, am I talking out of my ass about this, Emily? No, no, no. I read it. So I, in 2018, I randomly bought a copy of it at the last bookstore here in L.A. I just, it was on some for sale table. And I was like, I have only read the like classics illustrated version of this i'm going to sit down and read moby dick because moby dick like in the popular imagination is kind of basically this film it is like a high adventure high incident plot but then you're like but the book is like 850 pages and it is uh like all novels of that period you know it just takes breaks from the plot to have these long digressions

on like whatever herman melville's thinking about i that was the summer right after i'd sort of I've sort of come out as a trans woman. And so I was reading it. I take the train a lot of places in L.A. I was reading it on the train a lot. I wasn't on hormones yet. But one time this man walked past me pointed at the book and said, that book's about a whale.

And I was like, is he reading me as a woman? Like, is this already happening? You've been mansplained to. Congratulations. Yeah. And that was like really my first, in my first experience with that. I think that man was just trying to make some sort of weird joke. But like, thank you, random man on the L.A.

up but yeah I think I took me a long time to get through it as you'd expect it's a very long book and the thing that trips a lot of people up is that what Herman Melville is most interested in outside of you know like sin and God and all of this is whale facts there are long stretches of the book that are just him talking about the nature of whales and you're like Ishmael I don't give a fuck tell me more about how you tell me more about how you and Quiquewe were in love yes It is, like, I think I made a tweet, because I did do a threat to, like, get me through it. At the time, I did a tweet that was, like, Ishmael. Now, the do-a-decimil, Quig, putting his hand over Ishmael's.

Ish, come on. And there is that scene of the movie that, like, comes to bed. There's the whole sequence in the movie, too, where they, like, render down the whale blubber and it. It's like shot like it's in some type of dirty factory. Yeah, that is such a classic part of the book. And there's a musical coming up from Dave Malloy who wrote Natasha Pierre in The Great Comet of 1812 that I'm like really excited for. And like one of the songs that's been released from it is a stage adaptation of that number of like how people breaking it down and getting down to the blubber and so on.

But one of the things I think works about Moby Dick where a lot of novels at the period get lost in those digressions is. Melville is presenting Ishmael's obsession with figuring out everything about whales as a kind of trauma response because he was on a boat and everybody died and he survived and he's going to tell us this story and he keeps getting you know he's sort of preventing getting from the end of that story by telling you everything about whales but it's also like he's trying to understand the thing that killed all these men he lived with all these men he knew and also arguably his lover the book is pretty pretty I think pretty intentional it's how it codes him in Quikwegg as an interracial gay couple, which of course at the time would have been hugely scandalous. But of course, there are readers who don't read it that way. It's funny how

you get that in literature and then the movie, if you've only ever processed it as a movie, especially a movie made in 1956, you're like, oh, I didn't get that. Or like, oh, I would have had to maybe work harder for that. Or I was paying more attention to the fact that they got this

Austrian actor Who was, what's the Right, this Austrian actor to play Quikwegg And apparently it wasn't The tattoos were not Drawn on or painted on But it was a

Like skin tight prosthetic almost That's what I read at least I could be That does not sound comfortable It doesn't, it doesn't sound comfortable It is like If I have a complaint about this film besides that they cast an Austrian man as Quicquake.

It is that, like, in the book, Quakex, arguably the fourth most important character after Ahab, Ishmael, and Starbuck. And in the movie, he's basically not a presence. He pops up when he's vital to the plot. But he, yeah, he's just not really there. Yeah. I'm trying to, like, get a sense of how I feel about the story just from the, from the movie, which feels almost like there are certain movies where you watch the movie,

and you're like, well, I feel like I get, unless it's this notoriously like don't think you understand the book from watching that movie. The John Houston Mobie Dick is said to be one of the more faithful adaptations of it.

That was sort of the line on it at the time. Watching the movie, I'm like, if I'm going to, if I wanted to read Moby Dick, I would still need to read it as much as I ever did after watching this movie because like it just feels like a completely separate venture to try and make this as a movie. It feels very much like its own thing, even not having read the book. But it's such an interesting object as a movie. I understand where people at the time

were so weirded out by the idea of Gregory Peck as he had been up until this point in his career playing Ahab and it's fascinating to me that a lot of the criticisms of Peck and the role

are like he's not he's not crazy enough he's not big enough he's not and I'm just like that's not big enough because watching this movie I'm like he is on he's not on one

he's on like eight and it's he's so over the top to me, who, like, knows Gregory Peck for, like, you know, to kill a Mockingbird or whatever. I would say that's true of the final stretch of the movie, because up until, you know, when Moby Dick is actually attacking the boat, et cetera, and they're attacking Moby Dick, it's, I thought it was kind of a drab performance for the most part. And then when the story really amps up and it becomes, you know, this, like, terror at sea. narrative then he becomes even when he's not talking to me like even when he's silent his like his facial expression his posture just the way he'll like you know like bug out an eye at you or whatever like

it's so big everything is so big to me i don't know um yeah yeah i think um i think that people had this idea of ahab in their minds because one of the things about moby dick is it is published and is a flop and the book kind of falls into obscurity for a long time is rediscovered in like the mid 20th century and begins building its reputation as the great American novel around then but this is a point in time when like the book is still like a sort of new phenomenon if you can call a book that had been written a hundred years before new right so like there is this conception that ahap should just be you know how like stephen king hates the movie of the shining because he feels like jack Nicholson is just crazy the whole way through. Like, um, it's kind, it is, it is kind of like that where like, I think people expected like, like, Ahab to just come on and be like a raving lunatic, but in the book, what's compelling about Ahab is that like, all of us have those obsessive tendencies where we're like, this is a thing I need to get done.

This is a, uh, I need to avenge my leg. We've all done that. Yes, we've all. And like, the thing about him is he does get to that. And I think Peck plays that pretty well. The first couple scenes, I was like, is he miscast? And then by the end, I was all in. I haven't seen the 98 TV miniseries, which I understand has replaced this as the movie you watch in high school at the end of reading the book.

But, yeah, like, Peck apparently thought Patrick Stewart was a better Ahab than he was. And, like, I don't know. I could see it, but also. So who is Peck in the miniseries then? He plays Father Mapple, the Orson Welles character, which is very much like if you need a cameo role for like an established older guy who has like a relationship with Moby Dick because Orson Wells tried to stage a stage version of Moby Dick for many years. Yeah. You just pull in them for Father Mapple because he like gets the one scene at the start of the book and he gives this big memorable sermon that's like, well, I'm obsessed with that concept for Broadway shows. I'm obsessed with, like, the teen angel role in Greece, where it's just like, this is the role where we're just going to, like, just stunt cast it for the entire length of its run. I love the concept.

We're going to plaster Taylor Hicks on a billboard to come in for one scene of this show. Yep, exactly. That's exactly what I mean. You're, you're, who does, I imagine, I'm trying to think of who would that be for, like, a wicked. Like, is that, is that sure the wizard, I guess, right? You can just sort of, like, bringing, I imagine they, they stunt cast that role for a while. or like, I don't know, Madame Morrible or something like that. Not to bring back Betty Buckley, but like Grizzabella from Cats has kind of traditionally.

Yes. Well, now Grizzabella has moved on to people like Leanna Lewis and who else played Grisabella? Nicole Scherzinger. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. That's perfect. I bet Nicole Scherzinger was a wonderful Grisbill. Wells is funny in this movie, obviously.

Like, I was, I, I, I don't know why whenever it's like later, like, this isn't even like late Wells, but it's like later Wells, right? I always expect the version of Orson Welles from The Critic, the, who's the, God, who's the voice actor who does all the, who does the brain, who does essentially, Marisle March? Yes, Maurice LaMarch, thank you. Whose voice of the brain and Pinky of the Brain is essentially also his Orson Welles impersonation on the critic. And they would always do, like, the takeoffs of, like, Orson Wells doing those, like, frozen dinner commercials or, like, the, you know, the wine commercials. The critic was the best. I loved it. So this isn't quite that version of Orson Wells.

But it's still, like, I mean, you know, the man can be a ham sandwich. And we do looking for it. Well, and also, the way that he shot in this movie, it definitely feels like a completely different set. than the rest of that church. It's like they had one shot of him to use the whole time. He just did the whole monologue on this pulpit.

Yeah. And it's just incorporated strangely in a way that makes you feel like, ah, Orson Wells was probably a real piece of work while they were filming this movie. I will also say, sorry, go ahead and more. Like most

children of my generation, my first introduction to Orson Wells was in the Transformers movie. Of course, yes. And I just like, I love that Unicron has been portrayed on screen now by Orson Wells and Coleman Domingo. So, like, that feels like a rich tradition. The two greats.

Yeah, for any commanding actor with real stage presence to like, it feels like it's going to be our new Joker. You need to do a Unicron. You need to do a turn on it. The Transformers movie and G.I. Joe, the movie, the one that they released theatrically, were very, very big for me when I was a kid. And to the point where I like, reading about it afterwards is so fascinating. The fact that in the Transformers movie, Optimus Prime dies.

And it threw children for a loop. Like kids fucking freaked out. And because of that, the G.I. Joe movie, which released after, was re-edited so that Duke would not die. That Duke would be like, oh, he's, by the way, Duke's alive, everybody. And, like, yeah, that was, like, the final scene of G. I.I. Joe the movie. But the other thing about G.I. Joe, the movie that I didn't find out till, like, years and years later, of course, is that, like, the main bad guy is voiced by Burgess Meredith, which I had no idea. Like, finding out, putting together the pieces and, like, my late teens of the fact that, like, Burgess Meredith, one man was able to be, what's his face in Rocky? What's his character's name in Rocky? Mickey. The trainer. The trainer and Rocky. Something like Mickey. Yeah. The cartoon villain Globulus in the G.I. Joe movie. The penguin in the old Batman TV show. And Jack Lemon's dad and grumpy old men.

I was hoping you were going to get there. I blew my mind that one man could be that many different iconic parts of my childhood. So, good for Burgess. Meredith should have like six Oscars. Right. Yes. Yes. Like, he got twice over. Three of them should be for Grumpy Old. Men. Gene Herscholt Award for his performance. But just for the credits, outtakes, reels of him saying filthy, filthy things after filthy things, yeah. Looks like he's going to enter the Holy of Holies, Coetis uninterruptus. Looks like Chuck's taking the old log to the beaver.

Yeah, it looks like Chuck's taking the skin vault to Tuna Town. Looks like chucks Taking a ride And the wild baloney pony I just looked him up on Wikipedia And they say he won several Emmys Was the first male actor To win the Saturn Award

For Best Supporting Actor twice Wow Nominated for two Academy Awards He got those two Saturns in a war God bless it Good for Burgess Meredith What a life, what a career Fantastic

What a guy What a guy Was one of the Oscar His Oscar nominations for Rocky And the other one I assume is something like it's not like the sand pebbles but it's like one of those

something like that right right I think so I gotta I gotta look him up okay so he um was nominated for Rocky he was nominated two years in a row for for Rocky in 76 and in 1975 for the day of the locust

oh okay which I've never seen but apparently he's in it today one million percent he would win an Oscar for Rocky because all of the The supporting actor trend now is lovable old guy. Lovable, like grandpa, lovable dad. Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.

I guarantee you, you would never guess the two times he won a Saturn Award, because I would not have guessed. I do not associate Purchase Meredith with a rich history of being in sci-fi fantasy and horror films. I mean, if it's not for, like, the Batman Penguin back then, which I imagine there were not Saturn Awards back then. No. I have no idea what they would be. He won for Magic, the creepy...

The Anthony Hopkins movie? Yeah. And he won for Clash of the Titans, which, like, I knew he was in, but I wouldn't have been like... Yeah. Cool. Wow. That's fantastic. Perseus, you gotta go back to Earth and get to...

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. That's amazing. Can I tell you my favorite of the Pequod crew, though, of all of them is Stubb, who seems like the... He's the captain of the grunts, essentially, who has his fun little Tamoshanter hat throughout the entire thing that somehow never gets blown off by, like, a typhoon or, you know, rough seas or anything like that. It is just a kick of the hat. And every single time Ahab yells something down to him, he's just like, the men are trying to

process your latest orders, sir. It's just like, everything is just sort of like, we're kind of thrown for a loop by that thing you just said, that's probably my favorite guy. I love that guy. Good for him. A thing that, like, I think this movie misses about the novel that is probably impossible to do in a two-hour movie is this sense of living on the ship and these people as different characters and getting to know them and the community of this ship. And honestly, like, that's hard for any cinematic adaptation of something like this to do because there's something in to spending that much time with characters on the page in a way that, you know, even like a 10-hour miniseries would, would struggle with.

That said, like, you know, I think that a two-hour movie does not do, does not do the best, does disservice, that's what I'm looking for, does disservice to these supporting characters who in the book are so rich and vivid and in the movie are reduced to, yeah, he has a little hat and he yells things. And you're like, okay, got it. If you read the book, you can, like, read all of him on the page onto him. He's so fun. He is a fun performance. Yeah. I'm curious to know, in terms of a book versus film thing, does, is the Starbuck character changed much from the book to the movie? Because the moments where Starbuck feels like he is important to the narrative, a little bit like quique, like, kind of come and go, where all of a sudden it's just like, oh, now is the part where Starbucks.

is conflicted about the, you know, the quest that we're on, and, and, you know, we have a little moment of that. And then by the end, because he becomes, he sort of picks up Ahab's vendetta in the final minutes of the movie, it's meant to be so powerful. And, like, I think it is to a point, I think if Starbucks may be a more consistently central character, but, like, I don't know if that's not the case in the book. And he is a, he is, it's a fairly similar arc. I don't remember everything about the book, but it is very much like Starbuck is sort of functions as, I mean, Ishmael's literally the reader insert, but Starbuck is close enough to Ahab to be like the guy who's like, you know, this sounds a little crazy, my dude. Let's just tamper it a little bit. Yeah. But yeah, it very much is like the way that that, that attitude infects him and the other people on the ship becomes a core. principle one of the problems with adapting this for the screen is that you know ishmael's an

interior character you put him in the movie and he kind of just stands there and watches things happen yes so they've kind of like invented stuff for him to do where he's present but it's he it's it's i was talking about this with with uh my wife last night uh but it's in a harry potter problem where in the books harry potter is just kind of there people tell him what to do and he goes to do it and in the films that's really not a satisfying character art because you're like okay. And so I think Ishmael kind of has that issue here, but everybody knows the first line of this book, so you can't get rid of Ishmael at all. You also need the one guy who survives. Right. But the book is sort of loosely structured around these two diads of Ishmael Quig,

who's like a more intimate personal diad, and then Starbuck Ahab, who are like the two poles of like how we could approach, you know, getting our vengeance upon nature. Right. Starbuck is the sort of more responsible. responsible sailor, and Ahab's lost it. I also liked the scene where it feels like for a second, like Starbucks is going to be able to mount something of a successful mutiny among, you know, the other character, of the other, you know, people on the ship.

And then what is it that happens? Oh, it's after the, I think it's after the St. Elmo's Fire bit, right? Where, I can see a new horizon underneath the place in the sky. Starbock goes to Stubb, he's like, so about that mutiny we were going to do, and Stubbs like, eh, you know, Ahab's maybe got something here. Like, did you see the way he, like, calmed that St. Elmo's Flyer, it's not bad. And it made me think of that tweet that comes around every once in a while, the one where it's like,

correction from my previous statement about ISIL, you do not, under any circumstances, circumstances, got to hand it to him. And that's sort of what it made me think about Ahab, where it's just sort of like, eh, you know, maybe he's got a point. I don't know. That made me laugh. No, I like what I love about Ahab, both in the movie and in the book, is he's like, he is every guy that's like currently running our country.

And so many countries around the world. He's like, we're going to get our revenge on this whale. And you're like, really? why is that the thing okay i guess we have to get our revenge on this whale right and like you know melville's writing this in the buildup to the civil war and melville is um from what we know of him he was uh pretty uh staunch uh abolitionist type and like there's you read the the book the character of pip who's the black cabin boy is like a more important character in the book there's a whole meditation on life and death from his point of view that like ishmael is imagining pip must have thought about

which is kind of strange but yeah but like yeah so it he is like he is sort of writing about the people of his time who are like dragging us into calamity over this like incredibly inhumane desire to you know uh subjugate people and he sort of like pours all of that into this like well why do we keep doing this why do we keep trying to uh control things that we cannot control um and you know I this movie has that in there but this movie is very much like this movie is kind of the classics illustrated version of Moby Dick and the thing that's fun about Moby Dick is it's a big rollicking adventure right you can put that on screen and it's a great time it's just yeah if you've read the book you're like oh yeah there's there's texture missing here but at the same time the texture is so specific to the page yeah I don't know the best choice probably just is to make the rollicking adventure version right it's fun well that's the thing that sort of seems to arise with so many of these books where we can adapt just the story, but the reason why the book is the book is the digressions. It is the, you know, the sort of cul-de-sacs that the author sort of finds themselves in. And that's how you end up with this idea of like an unadaptable novel.

And it's not necessarily that like you couldn't adapt it. It's like you can't adapt it. It's like you can't adapt it in the way that it's going to be as impactful as what people love about the novel because, you know, and this is also why people run into the trap of like, but I could make it as a 10-hour TV show. And it's like, you know, it's so funny, not to like take myself down a Melville-esque digression, but like that whole idea, we are so now so despairing of the idea of the TV show that never you know what I mean that like drags out

an adaptation or whatever way too long and that's become sort of like the bane of our existence but like I remember back in the day when like people would talk about I always bring up like Neil Gaiman's the Sandman and they kept trying to make that as a movie and

it kept running into problems and people kept being like I oh oh I wish HBO would just buy it and adapt it as a super long miniseries. And that was like the salvation of hope for so many people who wanted these sort of big, unwieldy things to be adapted as projects. I think in the wake of like something like Angels in America, where like, which is done well, which is like miraculously, you know, done well in the HBO version. People were like, yeah, that, do that, but for this book that can't be made

into a two-hour movie because it's too unwieldy. And now we are, you know, 20 years hence. And everyone's like no put the genie back on the bottle for god sake another another of my favorite books is war and peace and the only really good cinematic adaptation of that is the 1960s soviet version that is like i think eight and a half hours long it might be a little it might be a little under eight yeah but it's just like it's four in four parts it's effectively a miniseries yeah um but it had a huge budget you know the soviet government was like we're going to give you everything you need to make this movie right because america made a version of it that was apparently not very good.

Right. But, yeah, there is something to the idea that these books need sweep and scope. But you can't just throw it on, on, you know, television, like you need somebody with a vision for what it's going to be. Whether that's a really strong showrunner or a really strong director. Yeah. And too many of these books have just been like, we're just going to do a new war in peace. We're the BBC. You're going to like it.

And it just, you know, it's fine. Who knew that decades later, all it would take is a bunch of songs in Josh Grobin to make it really sing. well part of it really 75 pages right right that's the yeah that's my I got to do this aside but my biological mother was here recently to to talk to my child and

the only one who will the rest of us are just like oh gosh got to get someone else in there she yeah yeah she was here and we were talking about war in peace for some reason and she was like didn't they make a new TV series of that and they looked at that and was like

yes, and Paul Dano was in it. And she looked at me and she nod and she said, you never know where he's going to turn up. I was like, that's really true. Speaking of Paul Dano, watching, this is a roundabout speaking of Paul Dano, because Paul Dano was in, There Will Be Blood.

And I found a video clip of Ed Sullivan, of all people, on location, on set in Ireland, talking to John Houston and Gregory Peck about the filming of this Moby Dick. And every single time I see John Houston speak, it is newly surprising to me where I have the thought of like, huh, he sounds like Daniel Plainview a little bit.

And it's just like, right, right, right, right, right. That's intentional, yes. But it's like, it's every single time, I'm just like, oh my God, it's so that. Well, I mean, Sierra Madre is so influential for there will be blood. Yeah, on multiple levels. Yeah, yeah. There's a moment in that interview, though.

Ed Sullivan starts off talking to John Houston, and then he pulls Gregory Peck aside. And he just says, how'd you come to play Ahab? And Gregory Peck just goes, John Houston threatened to shoot me if I didn't. Which is an interesting bit of like Apocrypha, too, because I think later on it sort of came about that the studio sort of imposed Gregory Peck on Houston. It was just like, if you're going to make this movie,

were going to make you cast somebody, because, like, the, you know, the legacy of this movie is like, ah, yes, Gregory Peck was so miscast. And, like, Peck has even said that in the interim, in the intervening years, or had said that when he was. And I think one of his comments was that John Houston himself should have played. Yeah, Peck thought Houston should have played it. Houston thought his own father, Walter Houston, should have played it, which is, says a lot about a father's son relationship, where you're just like, you know what, dad, you know what, It would be perfect for you, Dad, as Captain Ahab. Yeah, no, I like, what are your feelings on John Houston?

Because I was, like, looking through his filmography. I haven't seen every movie. Yeah. I like John Houston movies. Yes. Like, it's like that feels like a non-controversial thing to say. And yet, like, I don't know that people think of John Houston at this point in time in the same, at the same level of some of his other contemporaries who, you know, John Ford continues to be this, like, huge figure. Howard Hawks, et cetera.

Yeah. And, like, people certainly remember John Houston, but very much, like, for individual projects and not necessarily as. And I think it's because he was, shall we say, a problematic figure? He had some issues. He had a big, he had a lot of personality.

I don't know. Chris, I've probably seen fewer John Houston movies than you have. So, uh. I mean, I haven't seen them all either. Um, I really have wanted to revisit the dead. And I keep missing it when it was on Criterion Channel. Because I think I probably saw that movie at the wrong time when I did see it in college.

But, I mean, Treasure of Sierra Madre is incredible. I only, I think I've seen that for the first time in the past few years. I mean, like that enough right there is kind of enough to at least instill a creative legacy. Yeah. And, like, I think African Queen is fun and kind of corny in a really enjoyable way. African Queen kind of shaded what my expectations for this movie would be. Because, like, they shot on location for that movie, and, like, everybody's getting sick left and right. Yeah.

And I was expecting, I was like, oh, okay, well, John Houston shooting Movie Dick, especially after that shoot. I'm probably going to be watching people like drown on screen in real life. I'm going to watch John Houston probably killing these people which is kind of why I was surprised by how at least in the way that the movie is shot there's really cool

and inventive shots immediately followed by incredibly corny and hokey looking mid-sensory shots. I don't know. I think there's something about the sensibility of especially big studio movies and, like, studio adaptations of this time of Hollywood history, that is, I would say, you know, the things we've been talking about in terms of like the spiritual qualities of the text and the, you know, just like the diversions and the almost philosophical things that Melville was doing, that I just think in the studio system was just absolutely. not the sensibility of that kind of filmmaking was never going to capture those things. But I do think that Houston gets them in there in small ways, if not, you know, with the depth of, like, the text does.

But, you know, the first 15 minutes of this movie is basically a religious diversion, you know, kind of setting this stage through this whole church service, basically. in a way that I think even a movie today wouldn't include that sequence, you know, it would move past it. So I guess in terms of like Houston's voice in this movie, I don't know. I do see, I feel like there's as much as a movie could be made at that time, there is a distinctive stamp on it. versus, like, some of, you know, his peers at this time. Because, like, this is also the era of, like, big studio movies of, like, and of a thousand days, where it's, like, these things could not be more boring, whereas I think this is kind of a counterpoint to a lot of the movies it might get lumped with. Of the John Houston movies that I've seen, I'm sort of looking through taking a quick perusal of his filmography, I still.

I still do need to see Treasure the Sierra Madre. I feel like that's the big sort of like a hole in my John Houston. Also, Pritzie's Honor. I've never seen Pritzie's honor. I don't love that movie. I think I'd like to see it just to, you know, just to see it. But Maltese Falcon I saw for the first time recently, it's nothing like what I expected.

I was expecting this sort of kind of, you know, this thrilling detective story, like putting the case together. And it's just, it's so many just scenes in rooms of Bogart, you know, getting, getting the truth out of, you know, slimy, weasily characters or whatever. It's a fascinating movie, but, like, definitely nothing that I thought was going to. Of his sort of, kind of island movies, right, Key Largo feels like the one everybody likes better. I really love Night of the Aguana, which is kind of the less well-regarded one, perhaps. perhaps, mostly because of Ava Gardner, who I think is just tremendous in that movie.

I love her so much in that one. That's one of the ones I have to see, and I'm surprised I haven't seen it. Check it out. It's Richard Burton, Deborah Carr, sort of like the focus of it, but like, Ava Gardner's like, you know, the cool island lady. I love her, where she's just like, I'm just going to, like, operate my little shack on the island, and this is fine. So he's, the thing about Houston, though, Emily, that. the more personal aspects of him is reading through even just the stuff about Moby Dick in his, you know, the stuff you can read about him online is every little story about people he interacted with is punctuated with in the book that they wrote about their time working with John Houston, X, Y, and Z says, like, this man might have set the record for like being such an ordeal to work with. that he inspired people to write books about it.

Like Catherine Hepburn wrote a book about the making of the African Queen, the cinematographer on Moby Dick wrote a book about that. And then I think the most applicable, and maybe we can pivot to this, is Ray Bradbury wrote like 12 different things about the experience of working with John Houston specifically on Moby Dick because it was so contentious and difficult, which I imagine John Houston was used to sort of running roughshod over screenwriters, and Ray Bradbury, who was already a success in his own right at this point, was like, well, no. And so there was contention.

He's a success, but he's not yet Ray Bradbury. Right. He's in that weird penumbra zone where he's written a bunch of stuff that people love. But, you know, I always grew up with Ray Bradbury. American icon and like at the time he was just in the very early days of his his iconic status so it is but yeah he like Ray Bradbury was also a very um he was not John Houston levels of cantankerous and hard to work with and stubborn and piece of shit but he was very stubborn and he was like I'm gonna have it this way I was always shocking to me that these two men wrote this movie because it's it's yeah I love I love a lot of Houston movies I especially Love Late Period Houston. His last film, The Dead, was on Criterion for a while, and I watched it as beautiful. Everybody should have it in their Christmas movie marathon. But yeah, John Houston is just a nightmare. And yet, isn't that Clint Eastwood movie kind of about

him, White Hunter, Blackheart? I think it's supposed to be, yes. I've never seen that movie, but I think I haven't heard that, yes. I feel like the things that I hear the, or at least the things that I've internalized about him being somewhat of a monster, comes through the lens of Angelica Houston talking about him, because it seems like a lot of people are like, so your dad was a monster. Would you like to elaborate on that? And because she gives some of the best quotes in the business, it's always kind of somewhat deflecting, or at least the ones that I've kind of internalized. Yeah. But yeah. The one that I made note of is the cinematic. Oswald Morris, who's the cinematographer on Moby Dick. The book that he wrote is actually called Houston We Have a Problem, which it feels like one of those like a thousand monkeys on a thousand typewriters. Eventually somebody would have come up with. Houston, we have a problem for that. It's perfect. I love it. I kind of miss when like there were people who were so notorious that you could sell a book just by being like, I knew this. person. Right, right, right. What a terror. The Angelica Houston thing, though, Chris, that you mentioned, is definitely real, where she'll talk about, like, they'll ask her, because she became, like, very good friends with Gregory Peck sort of later on. And so she would always talk about, like, oh, Gregory and my dad, you know, they were great together. And it's like, and in real life, it was this thing where, like, they just, like, had a rift after the movie that, like, never got repaired. And at one point, Peck apparently, like, approached John Houston to, like, reconcile and Houston was like, fuck this, no. And just never, they never made up before

Houston died. So it's one of those things where with enough distance, you can sort of look back and be like, at what point can I just be like, that guy was a character, you know what I mean, versus, you know, that guy is a problem who needs to be dealt with or whatever. It's sometimes nice to have that distance where it's just like, well, there's nothing to be done about it now. So now we can just sort of, you know, watch the movies and, you know, enjoy at least of that. Yeah. I always struggle with how to do this because obviously we live through this era of like a real reckoning with people who are making movies or making television who are with us right now. But then, you know, you look back at people who made art across millennia and they were terrible people. Yeah. And I don't know. I find it hard to watch.

movies Harvey Weinstein produced, and he was less of a presence on his movie than John Houston was. I'm not saying there are levels of badness are equivalent at all. Harvey Weinstein went to prison. But it is definitely, you know, everything I, the first thing I knew about John Houston was that he was a director who made his stars lives a living hell and made everyone who worked for him a living hell. And yet, I'm like, I like his movies because he died before I was cognizant to me. Well, it's that to me, I always think of it as the sort of the Woody Allen Roman Polansky problem where I feel like I can watch Roman Polanski movies because by and large he's not in them. I know he's in some of them, but he is not in most of them. And so I can watch

them and sort of like, you know, compartmentalize my mind and take myself out of a space. And it's harder to do that with the Woody Allen movie because he's always just right fucking there that whole time and it's just like well okay um that's that's how we're going to play it that's we're going to play it and and there we go but yeah yeah i uh and houston like is in a lot of his movies but always in like a weird place sure you know he's never like actually like playing um one of the central characters he's always like off to the side somewhere yeah and uh it's uh yeah i'm looking up his acting credits now because i'm i think the thing because he played such a monster in Chinatown also, that like it allows you to sort of envision this monstrous

version of John Houston and sort of slot that in to then these stories you hear, because he's sort of put that version of himself on celluloid, and now it exists out there in the imagination. My favorite is that he, in his movie, The Bible in the beginning, which is a terrible film. I haven't seen everything he made, but almost certainly the worst thing he ever made. uh he plays noah slash god slash narrator sure and uh there is a scene in which noah talks to god and it's just john houston talking to himself and you're like this is kind of his ideal on stream it would be ideal especially ideal if john houston talks to god voiced by john houston and then the narrator has something to say in that scene the narrator also voiced by john houston yeah just

The Charlie Kaufman-esque layers of that would be defined. Speaking of narrators, reading about the other 1956 Oscar movies, I think it's around the world in 80 days where they said it was the prologue was narrated by Edward R. Murrow, which feels like another reason why I really want to see around the world in 80 days, just like such a just shameless spectacle of a movie. I can't, I kind of, uh, can't begrudget that. Yeah, it's, uh, around the world in 80 days is such a weird movie. But like, like, the fact that it invented the cameo and like it was like, like everyone was like, well, it won because every actor in Hollywood was in it was in hell. Yeah, not a bad strategy. It's kind of true. Actually, the Warren, I was looking through the this year's Oscars and the war in peace that I alluded to earlier. Is this one? Is the King of Vyroar one?

Yeah. And it was nominated, he was nominated for best director. He gave a quote. that I read where he was like he was talking about um I think he was talking about George Stevens and Giant who George Stevens wins best director for Giant I probably would have also given best picture of the ones that I've seen I think Giant is tremendous um but King Vitor had this quote where he's like oh man like I kind of wish George Stevens would make Giant next year so that I could win an Oscar for Warren Fees this year like that'd be nice um the other thing that I learned

is reading about the 1956 Oscars is that Ingrid Bergman who wins the Oscar for Anastasia had been like drummed out of Hollywood because she had an affair with Roberto Rossellini and conceived a child out of wedlock and you know the

the cluckers in Hollywood and had a hopper and all that whatever like ran her out of town for a decade or whatever which I had no idea about like it's so weird to think about like these Hollywood stuff Who Rossellini's talked about it, too, and the effect that that had, like, the emotional effect it had had on. I imagine so.

Like, Jesus Christ. For some reason, I don't know why I'd never heard that story, but I'd never heard that story. And it's, it's a fascinating one. I, like, my Oscar, um, my Oscar history, like, I would go to the library and check out books on the Oscars. And there was a whole section on Ingrid Bergman winning for Anastasia because it was such a, like, watershed moment. This is, like, a weird year for the Oscars, uh, deal. with recent controversies because it's also the year Dalton Trumbo wins, although at the time he was not known as like, it was under some pseudonym, I don't remember, and eventually

it was, but people knew it was Dalton Trumbo. So it's kind of like the first cracks in the blacklist in terms of how the industry responds to it. And I do wonder if Houston and this movie did not receive any nominations because he was outspoken against Huac and communism simultaneously. And so he was like, fuck that. I'm moving to. Ireland. And that was like the early 50s preceding this. And his Oscar, his Oscar run kind of went off a cliff after that. And I wonder if that was like, yeah, he was already a person who had enemies. And I wonder if that played into, oh, he's, you know, he's essentially telling all of Hollywood to go fuck itself with that statement. So that was the other thing I wanted to

mention when we were talking about Houston is the John Houston parts of five came back. the Mark Harris book turned Netflix series, which of all the things, you know, we can say about Netflix being bad, that series was really well done. And the Houston parts of that are really interesting. But yeah, a fascinating Oscar year. The other thing that I read was that Jack Lemon had won the Oscar in Supporting Actor for Mr. Roberts the year before. And that was somewhat controversial because he was a leading man winning for a supporting performance. And there was a real sense back then that the supporting categories, even beyond like a type or like screen time, we're like these are categories, these are not categories for the actors who we have designated as leading men.

And so the next year, this year, 1996, when Robert Stack for Written on the Wind and Don Murray, who is the male lead of bus stop opposite Marilyn Monroe, and there was one other person, oh, Mickey Rooney for The Bold and the Brave, like all of these were, in one way or another, leading roles or leading men in the case of Mickey Rooney, all decided, what? Well, if Jack Lemon did it, we're going to do it, too. And it essentially, like, this is the year that popularized category fraud at the Oscars, which is kind of amazing. Like, in the same year, the cameo and category fraud at the Oscars were introduced. Like, it's wild. That's great. I love that you can pinpoint the year of category fraud. Yes, yes.

I'm looking through these nominations and, like, I was thinking about this watching Moby Dick. Because I don't know that it's a great film. I don't know that it's one of the best John Houston films I've seen. I don't know that it's one of the best films of its year. But you look at the actual nominees for Best Picture and like, I love Ten Commandments. You can't have, again, you can't have grown up in the United States and not love it a little bit. But I went and saw it in the theater a couple years ago. And boy, Cessal Bidemill just plunks down his camera and just like,

sure. It's it at some actors and says, here you go. Have a great time. The thing that I love is that when he does that, the actors are like, all right. like crack their knuckles and just like here we fucking go and so i at least appreciate that yeah yeah and i was watching moby dick and i was like whatever you think of this movie there is there is intent behind all of these shots even the ones that again are like kind of cheesy yeah yeah um and you know there is a real attempt to like grapple with this book and grapple with you know how they the prospect

of making a moby dick movie and having a giant whale that kind of just kind of just looks like a like a barrel that occasionally pops up out of the water. Yep. A floating piece of styrofoam. In a good way, but yeah. My, I was, my friends who was asking me how the movie was, he works in VFX, and so, like, I was showing him some of the photos of the props. And he was just like, that's so cool because, like, you know, he's interested in the history of visual effects. And, like, this is an important history of visual effects movie as his Ten Commandments. It's just like, yeah, there's this, there's, the 50s at the Oscars are, I think, my least.

favorite decade. There certainly are some good movies that won at that period. The best stuff that Hollywood was making is often relegated to movies that aren't even nominated, or they're often, like, often other categories, like the Cirque movie written on the wind, which is fantastic, is nominated a bunch of places this year, but not, you know, not really a big player. And then the bad seed, which is, I don't know that it's a great film, but it's a lot of fun. I watched it for the first time a few weeks ago, and it is a lot better than I was expecting it to be. It was a lot of fun. I mean Hecker

especially. I talked about this. What podcast were we on where we were talking about? Oh, it was on a hundred snubs. We were talking about it for a hundred snubs. Eileen Hecker is doing some A-plus drunk acting in that movie. It's really fun. That movie got two supporting actors nominations. Yeah.

This is the year the Red Balloon wins original screenplay, but also like Lustrada is nominated there. It's like, this is a period in time when everything is changing, but the Oscars are kind of not acknowledging that. Yeah. And so I'm very frustrated by that divide. And, of course, that becomes more pronounced in the early 60s

when they're just, like, giving it to every big musical that comes along, including, of course, my fair lady, the goonies of its time. I don't, I mean, like, as much as this movie, like, even in the way we shot, even though, the way that it's shot, even though we watched it on, like, a shitty transfer on freebie, Like, as much as it feels like, you know, cinematic book mold at times, there's, there, I thought that there was really as, as, like, crusty as some of it can feel and it can feel like something you're watching on a 60 millimeter print like the apple dumpling gang in an elementary school. There's also, like, stuff that felt really form pushing to me, like there's a shot in the final sequence where you're, inside Moby Dick's mouth for like two seconds, and then it cuts to some bad acting of drowning.

But then there's the visual effects shots of like Moby Dick flipping kind of in the air. I don't know. It does feel a little bit like the movie as much as, you know, it got shit on for Gregory Peck, who I actually think is fine. it feels like it is along the lines of what you're describing, Emily, it's more forward-thinking than it maybe appears on the surface, so it might not have been appreciated for those things at the time. And like the thing, first of all,

we need to see Gregory Peck and Orson Welles in an Apple Tumpling Gang, like a sequel. Let's resurrect them both. Let's make it happen. It's a weird pull, but like that's the type of thing you watch on like an ancient VHS in an elementary school, right? This is what that felt like to me. I do, like, I think one of the things that any adaptation of Moby Dick has to contend with is that you have to create this giant whale.

And in theory, like, using computers to do it now would make it much easier. But I think you have to have a tactility to that whale. You have to feel like that whale is going to come out and bite somebody's leg off in a way that, like, I think, is not really as possible with, like, even the best computer effects. it's tricky to do that sort of tactility. I want to see Christopher Nolan's Moby Dick because I do feel like I literally had that thought watching this of like I'm surprised Nolan hasn't attempted to do

a Moby Dick because it feels like the kind of monomaniacal sort of story that's telling its own story kind of a thing I mean we're a few years removed less we forget from Ron Howard's version of Moby Dick in the heart of the sea

I sure saw that. Based on Melville's inspiration for whatever. Everybody figured it was a Moby Dick movie. No one saw it. There's a whole section in Moby Dick the book where Ahab, they talk about Ahab's, I think, dead wife. So Nolan's got the inn there.

Uh-huh. There we go. But I think I, you know, I read somewhere that this was like re-released after the success of Jaws, which makes sense. And you can see in the way that Houston shoots around the whale, like so,

some of how Spielberg approaches shooting jaws. And for Spielberg, that was out of necessity, and I don't know how much it was for Houston. But, like, when you see the whale, it looks fake, but it looks fake in that good movie way. And, like, that's a really cool. I just love this kind of shit. I love old visual. Here's a question I had, as literally as we're talking about this. The Rankin Bass, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer special.

The Yukon Cornelius character, when he goes after the abominable, a snow monster and they go over the cliff together that's a conscious Moby Dick homage or am I crazy? I think so. Right? Because isn't the whole thing

where he's just like obsessed with the Bumble and he's got to, you know, catch it? Or maybe he's obsessed with no, he wants silver and gold. He doesn't, he's afraid of the Bumble. I don't know. It kind of makes sense. Just the way that like Gregory Peck as Ahab

sort of like goes riding off into the sunset that down into the deep on the back of Moby Dick. I'm like, oh, okay, I get it. Yukon, Cornelius, and the Bumble. Okay, all right, understand now. I can process culture. My favorite thing about, my favorite extra thing about the book Moby Dick is that basically the ending of this plays out the same way in the book.

And the last 50 pages of this book are just some of the most terrifying, beautiful stuff you'll ever read. And then at the end of it, Ishmael's like floating away from the wreckage and the ship is going down and the mast is going down and this bird that's been bothering them for like 200 pages that's like a death omen is flying overhead and somebody's hand reaches out

of the water grabs the bird pulls it down to the mast and nails it to the mast somehow while drowning so the bird has to die with them and like it's symbolism of like the way that you kill the thing that you're trying to like capture but and then also kill yourself in the process

but it's so funny it's so extra it's so much like when I die, I want to nail a bird to something in the process. I like in the movie, the narration at the end as like this ship that

Ahab had spurned is the one that comes and rescues Ishmael, this ship where Moby Dick had killed the captain's son, or had taken the captain's son, and the captain's like, Hey, Ahab, surely you as a good person will help me go and search for

son, and Ahab in this sort of moment that, you know, reveals exactly what he's all about is like, yeah, I'm good, I'm going to go try and kill that thing on my own because, you know, this isn't about people, this is about my obsession and sorry about it. And the other captain sort of whatever promises, essentially just like God will take care of you or something like that. Yeah. It feels, of course, very poetic. And I felt so bad because all I could.

think of as this like ship is coming upon them. I'm like, oh, it'd be like too bad if it's too bad. It's not this like, I don't know, like gay party boat or something like that that comes along and rescues Ishmael to continue your metaphor about Ishmael and Quikwegg's romantic life together. Genuinely, I was going to say that one of the like one of the few like elements of the book's queer subtext that survives to the film is that he surf, he escapes on Quakewag's floating coffee. Yes. Yeah. Which Melvin himself was probably gay. Um, and so like there is this element of him writing about what it is to be in a relationship with another man at a time when like that's very much

underground or it is happening on whaling ships, but people are like basically, well, that, of course, that happens on a whaling ship, but it better not happen. Right. On the mainland and all this stuff. Right. And then, you know, living because your lover has died is like this thing that in queer spaces recurs. It recurs in queer art all the time. And so that is one of the things that survives here. And so, yes, Quicquake's Coffin is the original gay party boat. There we go.

Yeah, the Piquad capsized in Puerto Vallarda. Should we go around for final thoughts before we move into the IMD game? Yeah. I guess my final thought, since we didn't talk a ton about Gregory Peck, he had already had four nominations at this point, all in lead actor, which I think, you know, a few years removed from this when to kill a mockingbird happens, considering what the role is and how iconic Gregory Peck's performance eventually becomes. That feels like maybe the most inevitable Oscar win of all time in terms of these like, well, we would now call career Oscars, i.e. people who have, you know, a sizable amount of nominations or have had a sizable career and never won an Oscar. Yeah. This makes him, I think, the second Academy precedent we have ever talked about on this podcast, the first of which who did not say dick poop on national television first thing in the morning. We got to do a Carl Mulden movie at some point. Oh, I love Carl Maldon.

This year, he was in that movie Baby Doll, which is a Tennessee Williams adaptation, and is sleazy. Highly controversial. Yeah, it is a sleazy movie. 1950s sleazy, but sleazy nonetheless. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I, uh, yeah, no, I, have you read the book Oscar Wars that came out?

Yes, I have. There's a lot of Gregory Peck in that book. a great Gregory Peck stories in that. Yeah. Even after he's a president, like, there's callback to Gregory Peck's term as the Academy President in the chapter about the Alan Carr Oscars because Gregory Peck, who, like, previously had been seen somewhat as left-leaning and forward-thinking was one of the people who condemned Alan Carr's Oscars, I believe.

My favorite story about Gregory Peck as Academy President. is how he sort of unilaterally made the decision to invite Barbara Streisand into the academy before Funny Girl, which was her screen debut, was even released. And people were like, why don't we wait until she's actually in a movie before we? And he's like, no, no, it's going to be a big deal. And sort of spearheads that pushing it through. And, of course, that best actress decision was a tie. So had Barbara Streisand not presumably voted for herself, she would have lost best actress.

So Gregory Peck quite literally engineered the best actress tie of 1968, which is... Thanks, Gregory. Fantastic work all around. Speaking of Ingrid Bergman, one of the great Ingrid Bergman moments of all time. All right. Obviously, the most famous Gregory Peck part is Atticus Finch, and I do think one of the reasons to kill a mocking bird is not as frequently read as a white savior. a narrative is it probably should be is because Gregory Peck plays Atticus Finch.

And if ever there has been a better match of like character and actor, I don't know of one. Yeah, I, uh, you just get, it's inevitable. Because at the time he was like overdue for an Oscar. Yeah. And then he wins and it's just, it's like Leo in the Revenant, except, uh, Gregory Peck didn't kill a bear or whatever.

Right. That we know if, that we know of. Yeah. Yeah. All right. I suppose we should move on to the game portion. Yeah, Joe, would you like to explain the IMDB games? Yeah, why don't I?

Every week we end our episodes with the IMDB game where we challenge each other with an actor or actress and try and guess the top four titles that IMDB says they are most known for. If any of those titles are television, voice-only performance or non-acting credits, we mentioned that up front. After two wrong guesses,

we will give the remaining titles release years as a clue, and if that is not enough, it just becomes a free-for-all of hints. That is the IMDB game. Sure is. Okay, so Emily, as our guest, you get to choose whether you would like to give or guess first, and also what direction you want to give in. So say you want to give first, you get to choose whether you're giving to me or to Joe. I would, I think I'd love to give first.

Okay. And I'm going to give Hugh Joe, I looked on your list of people, the big list, and I did not see this name, but if you've done him before, let me know. Ahab in 1998 was played by Patrick Stewart. I don't think we've done Patrick Stewart. This is a good one. I would love to hear your Patrick Stewart picks. And honestly, I think these may be very boring, but we're going to find out, because I just looked up. Any television?

Yeah, there's one television. Okay, so Star Trek The Next Generation has got to be the television. There you go. You got it. You got it. Okay. The first X-Men movie? No. Okay. See, this is where it's going to become a challenge.

Is the X-Men's versus the Star Trek's. I feel like of the TNG cast Star Trek movies, the one that I've seen at least a few times is First Contact. So I'm going to say Star Trek First Contact? That's on there. All right. Okay. X-Men 2? No.

All right. Okay, so what years? All right, 1998 and 2017. 2017 is Logan? Yep. Okay. 98, and the Moby Dick remake was a TV movie, right? It was a TV series, so it's not that.

Okay. 98 Patrick Stewart, is it maybe another of the Star Trek's? I feel like, One of them was 99, though, so it wouldn't have been 98. Patrick Stewart. I think he's the bad guy in conspiracy theory, but that's 96. Yeah. I'm just going to guess and say Star Trek Nemesis.

No, but very close. All right. Nemesis, I think, is 2000, because Nemesis, I believe, is the one with Tom Hardy. Okay. So Generations is earlier than 98. Yes. And I already got first contact, so there's a fourth one.

It is, I will say it is truly bonkers this movie is in his four. Like I, even if you're just, if you were just picking four times, he's played Picard, I would not put this in the four. Okay. All right. So Generations first contract, first contact, first contract, first contract is also an interesting Star Trek first contract. That's about Starfleet's contract negotiations.

Yeah, they're collective bargaining with the with the association of the engineers go on strike. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Nemesis is the one about the Borg? Yeah. Okay. And that one's 2002.

Like this movie almost killed Star Trek as a theater. historical experience. And then Nemesis actually does for quite a while. Rescues it. Okay. Yeah. Now, Nemesis actually, like, is a huge flop. And then they have to, the next one is the JJ Abrams Star Trek. Right. It's seven years later. And it's like, we have to reboot everything. I know this title lurks in my brain. It's, um, insurrection? Yes. Oh, okay. All right. It's good you got there, because my next

hint was going to be about a very important. Yeah, Star Trek, January 6th. Perfect. Okay, so that's three Picard's and a Professor Xavier. The only Professor X being

Logan is so unfortunate to me, personally. Yeah. The fact that an emoji movie in which he plays the poop. Right. Isn't in there. Yeah.

No, I like, I love him and Logan. I think he's really great in that movie. But yeah, like, I he's so good in that role. And it is a little unfortunate. He has a wonderful career. It is a little unfortunate. It gets boiled down to those two franchise parts. Yeah. Also,

what do you expect? Yeah. Right. Right. He is above the title in Dune in David Lynch's Dune. So that is, that's good. Oh, yeah. All right. Chris, for you. Yes. I talked a bunch about

Ingrid Bergman talking about the 1956 Oscars, so I thought, why not just give you Ingrid Bergman for the, for the MTV game? This is the first time we've done this in years, but we can't do Ingrid Bergman, because I've picked Ingrid Bergman? Okay, all right. Yeah. Okay, so you can still... We'll save it.

I will give Ingrid Bergman to Emily, but I will choose someone else for you. So you'll get a few minutes to sue on that. So there was somebody else I was going to do, and then it has turned out to be hard, but maybe you'll... do better than I expected. I've been mean to you the past few weeks. You can be mean to me today. Okay. So another Oscar nominee from 1956, his only nomination, and watching the HBO documentary about him really bummed me out that it was his only nomination because he really is fantastic in this movie. Rock Hudson. This documentary is a lot of fun. I love the Rock Hudson documentary. I thought of the confession of one of Rock's former lovers. But, I do think Giant is on there. Yes, giant.

Pillow talk. Pillow talk, yes. You got the two easy ones. Now they're too hard ones. Really? Yeah. That makes me feel like the CERCs aren't there. I will, well, no, I'm not going to give you hints yet, but, yeah.

I'll just say magnificent obsession then. No, not magnificent obsession. Okay. Maybe it's another Doris Day movie, or is it, what's that? I didn't particularly love this movie. I think it's called Grass is Greener. Not Grass is Greener. Okay, so. Maybe that's not the type. Your hints for years are 1961 and 1966. So for context, Pillow Talk is 59. So 61 and 66. Okay, yeah, this is past most of what I would have guess. One of these is mentioned in the Rock Hudson documentary in a way that really made me be like, I would like to see this movie because it seems fascinating. Because it's gay. Kind of atypical.

Subtextually gay. Subtextually gay, yes. But also, like, genre-e in a way that you would not expect from Rock Hudson. It's an action movie, right? it's a sci-fi sort of quasi-horror like thing oh here's a big hint i i watched this last year oh what did you think of it's a hint i actually i really liked it there was um a job uh my wife and i were up where they were thinking about making this a tv show i don't know fantastic but they had they had a room for it and they were like there should probably be a trans person in that

room but in the end i wasn't the trans person in that room but uh there should be a trans person in that It absolutely seems very intriguing. Directed by John Frankenheimer. Oh. Oh my God, it's right there. I'm going to need more hints. You can think about the title when you're having

more of your dinner. If you've been served dinner and you're like, that was so good I could go back for. Seconds. Seconds. It's my favorite kind of title where it's a terrible title until you've seen the movie and you're like, oh, that's a clever title. Oh, interesting. Yeah.

Oh, fantastic. Because it's, you know, the premises you get the second chance of life, basically. Yeah. Yeah. I want to see it. It looks really fascinating. All right. The other movie, not Doris Day, but another person who is name checked in a Greece song.

about Sandra D. Yes. I actually don't think I've seen any Sandra D movies. I'm guessing this is the 61 and Seconds was the 66. So it's going to be relatively close to pillow talk in terms of age. What was he in with Sandra D? She's actually third build to an Italian actress. This movie is set in Italy.

and it's not Sophia Loren. Nope. Didn't think so. The actress's name is Gina Lolo Brigida. That doesn't help. I may not get this one.

Okay. Hold on. What else about this movie? Bobby Darren is in it? I'm Hudson in Italy. Is this a war? set movie like is this is he like in the navy if he is i can't tell by the description it's uh it seems to be a romance about uh young folks and older folks i haven't seen a rock hudson italy movie

it's the movie that bobby darren won the most promising newcomer at the golden globe for um uh it's got a month of the year in the title Okay, uh, April. No. I think you don't know this one. Yes, September. I've never heard of this. It's called come September.

I've never heard of it either. It's bizarre that it's in his note. Truly never heard of that movie. Same. Okay. I'm, the plot summary on Wikipedia includes the phrase. And finally, the current guests of the hotel, air quotes around that, are a group of young American girls trying to fend off a gang of over-sexed boys, led by Tony,

who are laying siege at the outer walls of the villa. Wow. Sounds great. Joel Gray is in this movie? in a small role. Deleted White Lotus subplotin. Honestly, yeah. All right.

I have never heard of that movie. All right. I hate that I had to essentially give up on Rock Hudson, though. I know. I know. All right. Well, anyway.

All right. Well, that brings us to the final round. And with our guest, Emily, for you, as we mentioned, we have Ingrid Bergman. Hell yeah. Okay. I'm going to do the gimmie first. Castle Blanca, I'm guessing. Correct.

Is Anastasia No, her Oscar win Well, one of her Oscar wins Not there Yeah, that's She didn't win for Gaslight But I'm going to guess it's it Gaslight, correct

Did she win for Gaslight? Um, no, because I think she only has No, she does have three Maybe she did win for Gaslight, hold on, oh please. She did win for gaslight, yes. Wow, good for her. Good work, Ingrid.

I didn't remember her as having three. She has three. When I was an old movie obsessed kid, Ingrid Bergman was like, I thought she was the most beautiful woman who'd ever lived. And you know what? I think that was a good call.

You were not wrong. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Okay, so I'm going to just do her other Oscar then, Murder on the Orient Express. Incorrect. So you're going to get your years. 1945 and 1946.

That might help you get it. Oh, yeah, these must be, as one of them. Oh, notorious? Notorious, my favorite in group performance. That's 46. Yeah. Is the other one suspicion? No, but you're getting there.

Oh, God. Is she in lifeboat? She might be, but that's not the correct answer. So I'm assuming it's another hitchcock. Yes, correct. Okay. Fuck. I, like, this is the thing, is like, I will be so mad

if I don't get it, but also, like, one word title or two? One more title. Okay. God damn it. The problem is all those titles are like notorious. Yeah. Yeah.

Give me another hint. This one, this is a pretty, even when I watched this movie, I was like, this is a weird Hitchcock movie. It's got hypnosis plot. Oh, God. Yeah, this is one of the ones I haven't seen, but I've read about it. It shares a title with a sort of recent, not too recent, documentary about kids who are really good at one kind of thing.

Oh. It also, her co-star is an actor we've talked about a lot this episode. Oh, yeah. Is it Peck? Yes. It's Peck. Oh, wow. God.

Yeah, I've definitely never seen this. Hitchcock Peck Bergman movie about kids who are really good at a thing. Yeah, like, what are like the kind of things? Like, if you're like... Spellbound. Yeah, there you go. Spellbound is a weird movie. You should definitely see it.

Yeah, yeah, I've seen the doc. So I'll, I was going to say, I hope that my dumb clue helped you out at least a little bit. It did, it did. I enjoyed the doc. I don't remember anything about it. I should see it. this. I've seen, I've seen, I love Forty's Hitchcock, I can't believe I haven't seen

it, so, I love, like, fucking adore Notorious, so. I love that we're all walking away from this, uh, this podcast episode with movies that we want to watch. It's always, it always feels like a success when we do that, so. Yeah. Who was it that you were saying Joe does

good drunk acting earlier in this episode? Eileen Huckert in the Bad Seed. Bergman in Notorious is like my favorite drunk acting. Oh, fantastic. Ever. Ever. Fantastic. She's so good. I'm sure she does it elegantly.

Very elegantly. She does incredibly well that person who is way drunker than they think they are, but they're still trying to keep it together. Nice. I love it. It's exquisite. Emily, thank you so much for joining us. This was a complete pleasure. Thank you.

I had a great time. I'd love to come back and discuss any number of things. I realized I don't actually think that The Shining had Oscar buzz, but y'all should do it anyway. way because it feels like it should have. Honestly, we'll take it. That sounds fun. Absolutely. But yeah, I had a great time to, and thank you so much for having me out.

I've been wanting to do it for so long. Oh, it's our pleasure. A hundred snubs was a great delight in our household. Oh, I'm glad you liked it. We love hearing. Yeah. Well, it was our pleasure having you on. My wife is also Oscar obsessed.

Hi, Libby. An awards writer for the rap. So, yeah, she and I are both Oscar nuts. Fantastic. Enjoying and listening to this show. Thank you so much is what I'm praised. All right.

Thank you. Well, that's our episode. If you want more, ThisHad Oscar Buzz. You can check us out on Tumblr at thisheadoscarbuzz.com. Also follow us on Twitter if it still exists at had underscore Oscar Buzz and on Instagram at This Had Oscar Buzz. And please also join us on our Patreon.

That's patreon.com slash this had Oscar buzz. Emily, tell our lovely listeners where they can find more of you. I am Emily St. James on basically. all platforms that matter, including the currently dying Twitter and Blue Sky. I do most of my socials on Blue Sky now. So, but yeah, and if anybody needs an invite code, I've got them. All right, Joe, where can the listeners find more of you? Twitter and letterboxed at Joe Reed, read spelled, R-E-I-D.

And I am on Twitter and letterboxed at Chris V-File. That's F-E-I-L. We'd like to thank Kyle Cummings for his fantastic artwork, David and Dallas and Gavin Meevius, for their technical guidance and Taylor Cole for our new theme music. Please remember to rate, like, and review us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Play Stitcher, wherever else you get those podcasts.

Five-star review in particular really helps us out with Apple Podcasts visibility. So yo-ho-ho, a new review shall be our. Great, fantastic. That's all for this week. We hope you'll be back next week for more buzz. Oh, bye.

Thank you.