This Had Oscar Buzz - 341 – Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead (Festival Fever!)

Episode Date: May 12, 2025

estival Fever continues this week with a forgotten adaptation and the Venice Film Festival. Tom Stoppard earned his first Tony Award for Best Play for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, an absurdist spoof of Hamlet and various theatre tropes from the perspective of two of the Bard’s minor characters. A film version was long delayed … Continue reading "341 – Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead (Festival Fever!)"

Oh, oh, wrong house. No, the right house. We want to talk to Marilyn Hack, Maryland Hack and French. Dick Pooh. Guess what? I got a fever. And the only prescription is... The festival, the festival.

The festival. The film festival. What's your name? What's yours? You first. Statement. One love. What's your name when you're at home?

What's yours? When I'm at home? Is it different at home? What home? Haven't you got one? Why do you ask? What are you driving at? What's your name?

Repetition, too love, match point. Who do you think you are? Rhetoric, game and match. Match, match, match. Hello and welcome to the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast, the only podcast hosting a firefighter dance party. Every week on This Had Oscar Buzz, we'll be talking about a different movie that once upon a time had Lofty 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 Chris File, Joe Reed.

You're Chris File, or I'm Chris File. Wait, I'm Chris File. Okay, so let me just start off by saying the, we say a lot about people not being able to tell us some part. When was the first time you ever saw yourself represented in media? Joe Reed, when was the first time you ever saw your podcast representative. I don't know, Joe Reed. When was it? Two guys that no one can tell any of, you can not tell them apart who are, you know, often observing great art from a distance. Yeah, observing art from a distance, espousing nonsense, waxing philosophical, um, on a road to nowhere, uh, on the fringes of the real actual things happening. Yep. Um, um, um, um, And then put to death by their former friends, I guess. I don't know. I did think it would be really funny to make a bit out of calling you, Chris, this whole episode. We'd really send our listeners for a loop.

We'd set things back at least two years. We would just be all this progress we've made. We've already set it back another year just by this intro. Exactly. We've made such progress with differentiating ourselves on Mike. You know, sometimes I really worry. that I'm too mean, too dismissive, too bitchy when I'm on mic. And then I remember our listeners can't tell us apart.

And then I'm like, oh, it's fine. They think we're both awful bitches. They'll blame it all on me. That's fine. Yeah. Of the two, with taking it that Gary Oldman is the Rosencrantz and Tim Roth is the Gildenstern. Which one are you and which one am I? I mean, aren't we both interchangeable?

No, because I think in the movie, you do, the joke is that their names are interchangeable. Like, personality-wise, they have very distinct personality, isn't this? Like... I mean, I guess I'm the Gildenstern because I'm shorter than you. And I'm the Rosencrantz because I am... Sillier. I am more easily distracted, let's say. I mean, that's probably fair. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I thought a lot about that, this whole viewing of this movie, which somehow I had gone through theater school and all of the bros always loved doing scenes from this show, but very little other than, yes, this is essentially tracking along at the same exact pace of Hamlet. Beyond that, nothing had really landed.

You know, stayed in the ether for me about this. Even to the point where I'm like, oh, this is Stopper just basically doing waiting for Godot.

Right. And, you know, kind of making spoof of theater convention. So as somebody who's never seen or read,

And waiting for Godot. Is Waiting for Godot similarly a meta commentary on storytelling in theater? Not really, but it's like Godot is like the er text of absurdism in the theater. Many would say. Yeah. Because I feel like that was the thing that I walked away from Rosencrantz and Gildenstern are dead mostly, is that it's stoppered sort of using the great sort of Shakespearean. as a way to deconstruct, like, theatrical storytelling. Right, right.

In a way that I find really interesting and probably would have found more interesting in a play than in a movie, but... We'll certainly get into it, and we'll certainly get into this as a talking point about movies and the complaints about that for this movie in particular, that it is very stagebound. Yes, yeah. And Stopper being the choice to make... To adapt his own play. Right.

Never make another movie since. Yes. I think where this movie is left wanting is for some type of visual definitiveness. You know, I wouldn't call Stoppard a stylist in any form beyond the written word. Right. I also want to get into, well, we'll get into it when we talk more about Tom Stopper. I would say that maybe the most distinct visual sequence in this, for me, was the, like, the spa day? I made some notes on that, yes.

The, like, Castle Bathhouse that they have. Yes. And then there's Bathhouse Ghosts. Happy World Pride. Go visit your local Bath House Ghost. I did like that every time that the movie was able to sort of poke into the margins of Elsinore Castle and sort of do the kind of sleep no more but it's Hamlet thing of you know you're in the wings you're in the stairwells you're in the nooks and crannies

you know of you know out just outside the room where you know Polonius is getting stabbed or you know all this sort of stuff is happening um I do think the movie maybe it's weird to say it because this is the part of the movie that like is the movie but like I think we maybe have one or two more two too many scenes with the players right because that

ultimately feels a little dated of a device because it feels like that brings in so much meta-commentary well and it's just sort of telling you what the what the point is and I feel like if that exists maybe a little more sparingly

and you end up, here I am telling Tom Stopper how to do his job. Like Tom Stopper, the legend Tom Stubbard. Right, right. But, like, I feel like if you get maybe a little bit less of that and a little bit more of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, again, sort of like arriving at these points via, you know, nosing around the events of Hamlet, then, I don't know, maybe things feel a little bit more sprightly bouncy, because I think they're very funny playing off. each other. I think Roth and Oldman are both

really, really good in this movie. They've worked together previously before this, which I'm sure we'll talk about. There is a little bit of mustiness around this. And I don't think it's just this movie, but I think it's like where we're at with this

type of play or this type of meta commentary on art forms. Because since this play, you know, this movie's from 1990 or premiered in 1990. but the play was decades old at this point.

Early 1960s, right? Yeah, so at that time, I thought it was the late 60s, but either way, at that time... It is, 1966, you're right, yeah. This idea of meta-commentary and spoof on theatrical conventions at that point would have been a lot more fresh and new, and since then there's been umpteen different versions of that, you know, looking at different types of theater,

Even till today, we have most recently Pulitzer winner Fat Ham also does its version of Hamlet and comments on theatrical conventions. Fat Ham, I saw locally recently, great play. Really? Awesome. Loved it. Had an amazing time. What's the conceit of Fat Ham? Fat Ham is Hamlet set in a black family's backyard.

Barbecue wedding funeral situation Gotcha And then it breaks into just different

queer conventions Oh, fun It's What a fun show Is the titular Hamlet A big gentleman

Is that the deal? Yes Okay Yes Okay But yeah We've seen A lot of

what this play is trying to do in the decades since. And at this point, you know, I think Rosencranton-Gilden-Stern are dead is so part of the lexicon that it's left to like colleges and community theaters and, you know, that we haven't really had that big, meaty revival of this play that has like stars and such. I know Benedict Cumberbatch did a reading during COVID, I think. But, you know, we don't really see this like in a robust, big Ballyhoo'd production on, you know, the West End or Broadway of late. And like you also see rep companies performing this play in rep with Hamlet and using the same cast, which is kind of a fun idea. Oh, definitely.

Like, there's a lot of fun to be had with an idea like this. And I think a lot of it comes down to casting, and I do think this movie is ultimately cast really well. Yes. Yes. With a lot of, obviously, I mean, you know, not only just Roth and Oldman, I do think, God help me, that Richard Dreyfus is quite good in this. I think it's one of my favorite Richard Dreyfus performances. I think it, as ever, the best Richard Dreyfus performances capture an essential quality of his that in real life, I imagine, must be very irritating. I think the goodbye girl is also like this, where the goodbye girl essentially is just like, what if you had to live with an actor and he was the worst?

But like, and then it sort of like does the Neil Simon thing of like, then they fall in love. But like, what about Bob is like, what if you had a psychiatrist? who was so full of himself and unpleasant and then had one of his patients follow him to vacation. And in this case, this is another one where it's just like, what if you had like the most sort of, you know, outwardly pompous, you know, actor kind of a thing?

He's not quite pompous. He's just sort of, he's, you know... He's just kind of Richard Dreyfus. He's just kind of Richard Dreyfus, but I think it really works. Richard Dreyfus, Gary Oldman, Tim Roth, three headliners in this movie who are, you know, not known for being fun guys. Like, we really hit the triple whammy in this movie of unpleasant actors. What's interesting is that initially Daniel Day Lewis was supposed to be Gildenstern. Yes, was supposed to be the Tim Roth role.

And this is when he was taking his acting break because, he had an on-stage breakdown while playing Hamlet. So I was trying to look into that to get more information because it's like he's playing Hamlet and then goes and does this movie. That's kind of wild. But the reason he didn't do this movie is because that's when the he has that. He leaves the stage in the middle of Hamlet and has not gone back to the stage since. I think one of the things that we don't talk about enough, because especially we, in America,

we experience so much crossover between English actors just sort of like come here and they, you know, do their American voices and whatnot. And every once in a while we'll send one of ours over there, and it's Renee Zellweger or whatever. But I think we don't often here in America have an an appreciation of just how different the English and American approaches to acting are. I think even with your sort of more studied American actors, when you talk about the people who have really invested in your Stanislavski techniques and the method and all this sort of stuff, this very kind of experiential

and you have to essentially like live the parts and whatever. And when you look at English actors, it is a much more I don't want to say academic, but like much more studied. Have you ever seen somebody like Ian McKellen

give a sort of Shakespearean tutorial? I feel like the, I feel like English actors tend to go through this gamut of just doing the great works of theater. So many of them come out of Royal, you know, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and all have done all of these sort of great works of Shakespeare in some way or another. And it acts as a kind of boot camp in a way, not necessarily boot camp, because boot camp is also like in a very American sense of, you know, the way that you do it.

Boot camp feels like you have, you know, inoculated. your body against physical pain or whatever, whereas, like, in the way that they sort of approach these works of Shakespeare, they kind of break them down and build them up and sort of, you know, really intensely sort of study the language and the meter and the, you know, the meaning. And it's all incredibly, like, when they sort of make it out of that, it's you have this like very finely tuned instrument of acting. And I think something like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern or dead really reminds me of that. That at this point, they're sort of like they're doing it backwards and blindfold it. You know what I mean?

They know these works so well. And all this stuff can be happening on the periphery. And still we can do like a whole other like grand theatrical work in the middle of it. I think to some of what I was saying of like this has grown some must around it, it's a completely, that may not be true for a British listener, but for us in America, this has a certain veneer that isn't, I think, that far off from the different type of acting quality or different acting approach that you're describing to. It's just a way that they have of sort of approaching the language with a strategy, with a game plan. And I feel like so much of American acting is taught to be instinctual. Philosophical even. Yes, yes. Whereas just like in, you know, this approach to Shakespearean acting feels very much like you have to put in the work.

You have to put in the time. You have to really understand what you are, you know, what you are saying, but also how you are saying it. And I don't know, I like, I'm endlessly fascinated by any of this. It's also like when you watch like Stephen Sondheim teach somebody how to sing one of his songs on some of those YouTube videos. Have you ever seen any of those? Where it's just sort of like, and it's so incredibly finely tuned to like, you have to be sure that you hit this line, particularly this way, not because I'm so fussy about my own work, but because, like, there is, there's meaning in doing it this way. Doing it this way makes it mean something

that it wouldn't, if you sort of ignored this and sort of, you know, brushed past it or whatever. And you see that a lot in the way that Shakespearean actors do, you know, perform these shows, too. And yet still can, like, approach them. any number of ways. Like, that's the other thing that I love to do on YouTube is watch, like, a certain soliloquy from a particular show

in a supercut where, like, many different people perform it, like, back to back to back and watch them sort of, like, do it very differently. The Alpha Bob Battle Cry. Kind of, yes, but with, like, tomorrows and tomorrows. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.

100%. Except all those Macbeths are green. They're painted green. Carrie Ellis does an incredible Lady Macbeth's speech, I'll tell you what. But really, the one you've got to see is that one time that Seikon Senblow played Symboline.

Honestly, Seacon Sanblow could kick the shit out of Simballin. I would love that. Like, that would be amazing. But I don't know. That's the kind of stuff that fascinates me when I watch, you know, something like Rosencrantz and Guilden Stern or dead, which isn't to say that it's not a movie that

really held my attention, but it is a movie that meanders, by its nature, by its actual, like, purpose at meanders. We'll have this discussion when we talk about Stoppard as a director, because, like, I think one thing you're on to here is while I felt like, I think maybe it held my attention more than it held yours, but there is a certain quality to watching something like this, like I was saying in theater school, like, all the bros loved pros and Katzen Guild and Stern are dead. sure um there is a quality to do this hanging out playing video games but it's like they're both sitting in the hot tub five feet apart because they're not gay like that's what this

is like but it's also sort of like the uh it's the 40 year old virgin scene it's not quite i know how i know you're gay but it's just like two guys just sort of like sitting around playing like their version of call of duty is the fucking inventing question burgers and right but they're they're like volleying the question game back and forth to each other and they're you know calling each other out on rules violations and whatnot. It's that kind of thing. It's a very bro-y. They're bad-tapping each other.

Exactly. They're not tapping each other. But there is a quality where I'm like, oh, I want to see, like, all of the actors give us their version of this. Sure, sure. You know, it's so easy to just be like, well, imagine two actors. Well, they're your Rosentrants and Guildenstern. I like that your immediate reaction to this is just like, what about two actresses? What if we made them actresses?

What if then? Rose and Cranes and Gilda. Rose and Gilda is your play that you are going to write that is essentially Rose and Gilda are fantastic. And it's just these two ladies. It's essentially Barb and Star Govista Del Mar, but in Elsinor Castle. Right. But it's absurdist, you know.

They're talking existence. eventual guan. Right, of course. Listen, so they're doing that in Barb and Stargo to Vista Del Mar. They truly are. They truly are. They are. Joe, before we get too far ahead, we're here doing something special.

Festival fever. We are smack dab in the middle of our May miniseries. We're calling it this had Oscar buzz festival fever. Yes. We're going to be going in calendar order throughout the award season with very, various festivals, and this episode, we have landed on the Venice Film Festival and the Golden Lion. Yes. Top prize of the Venice Film Festival.

Rour, the Golden Lion. That's what we're doing here. Believe it or not, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. One, the Golden Lion. But before we get into the Golden Lion, before we get further into the film, what else have we talked about so far? Well, it began over on our Patreon, for our exception episode, where we talk about a movie that received Academy Award nominations, but maybe still had a patina of disappointment. We talked about the Sundance Film Festival, Grand Jury Prize winner American Splendor. Splenda. Last week on the main feed, we talked about Cannes and Palm Door winner Titan.

American Splenda is the Flamen Hot movie, but for the invention of Splenda. It's about how Elizabeth Marvel and What's His Face or Husband together invent Splendor? Who would sing the Diane Warren song for American Splendor? Like F.K.A. Twigs? For American Splenda, FKHA Twig singing, but the song is like sweeter than sweet or something like that. Like it's, you know, it's... Brackets, nothing sweeter unbrackets than you. But no, because it has to have some kind of like a feminist, like, angle to it.

So it can't be, you know, like, you know... Okay. I was trying to literally put it in the film American Splendor. Oh, see, I'm already casting American Splenda. You're doing the actual Splenda. I'm doing the Splenda movie for Hulu, yeah, right now. Elizabeth Marvel, Bill Camp, they're married. The spark has gone out of their marriage, and what are they going to do to get it back? They're going to invent an artificial sweetener that takes the country and the world by storm.

That's what it's going to do. I'm into this. uh we are at the midpoint of festival fever what else do we got coming coming later this week over on the patreon our excursion we'll be talking about telluride telluride doesn't have a jury so what's the what's the excursion episode going to be we're going to make one we're going to force a jury upon them including uh our listeners the garries are going to serve as a member of this jury come hang out we're going to award films from the 20s 2015 Telluride Film Festival.

15th anniversary of Telleroyer, or 10th anniversary of the 2015 Telluride. Guys, I am, I'm in a glass case of emotion right now. I don't know what's going on. My brain is fried at this point. Speaking of glass cases of emotion, then we're going on to Toronto, and we're doing People's Choice Award winner,

Strictly Ballroom. We're not getting into it. We're saving it for that episode. but, Joe, I've already watched that movie again. And that's gonna, that's just, it's just gonna be so much fun. It's gonna be a lot of fun. I can't wait to talk about it. And then Festival Fever is gonna wrap up with New York Film Festival

and their opening night selection, white noise. White. Noah Bombax, Don DeLillo's white noise. That's right. That's right. Four weeks, five films, six festivals, all for the seventh annual, this had Oscar Buzz May miniseries. Joe, let's keep it moving.

Let's keep it moving. All right. Speaking of our Patreon, would you like to tell our listeners a little bit more about what they could expect from our Patreon if they go sign up? Sure. Well, we've already talked about our American Splendor episode covering the Sundance portion of Festival Fever and our telluride extravaganza of which I don't even know what to expect because we have not recorded it yet, but already the mind boggles as to what we're going to do for that. It might be a little chaotic. It might be a little chaotic. But also, just in general, $5 a month gets you that and much, much, much more.

We have a giant, at this point, library full of exception episodes, which are episodes where we talk about movies that we would have normally done for this had Oscar buzz, but they got a nomination or two. But they were still disappointments to their parents who wanted more Oscar nominations out of them. We're talking about movies like House of Gucci and Knives Out and My Molly's game, and The Mirror has two faces with Barbara, and Phantom of the Opera, which we recorded with our friend Natalie Walker, and the Coen Brothers Inside Lewin Davis, and Madonna's W.E. Just so many movies, so many really great discussions. We've had a lot of fun over the last

couple years almost now doing our Patreon exception episodes. So I cannot recommend that highly enough. I think that enough makes the $5 a month worth it, but we also give you, our second episode every month, which are excursions, where we go outside of the bounds of a traditional movie commentary, and instead we're going to talk about weird pieces of award season ephemera like EW fall movie preview issues and old Golden Globe episodes and Carl Maldon and the Oscar's Greatest Moments VHS. So again, you've got such a backlog of stuff there. It's all very, very, very, bang for your buck coded and if you go on to patreon.com slash this head Oscar Buzz you can sign up today and be a

real today and be a Gary of highest standing I will say a Gary who who's really getting the most out of their Gary ship so who wouldn't want to do that Gary Oldman

is a Gary. He could subscribe to our Patreon. That need to be a super Gary. That's quite possible. Yeah. The Gary of all Gary's. All right. Yes. Patreon.com slash this had Oscar Buzz. Go sign up today. Joseph. Yes.

Josin Krantz and Christenstern. Fildenstern. Are dead. Uh-huh. But are they? Reven and directed, well. Are they? Are they dead the whole time?

Are they alive? They're dead. happens off screen. I will say that. In the show, right. This is a line, Rosencrantz and Gilden Stern are dead as a line from, of course, Hamlet towards the end. Yes. They are minor characters in Hamlet

that... The Lenny and Carl of the Shakespearean universe. They are brought to court in order to lighten up the Sad Sack Hamlet. They are former friends who are supposed to bring levity.

Bring levity, but then also spy on him, but then also escort him to England where he's supposed to be killed. There's a lot that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are supposed to do in this. And they're also supposed to, by the end of Hamlet, die along with, you know, everyone. Everyone, right, exactly. Which begs the question, why is it so important that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead when everyone dies. Who really dies? Who truly dies?

Who truly lives? Not going to quote Hamilton, moving along. What if we started quoting Hamilton again in the year of our Satan 2025? Who would be the... Are we back in the place of needing to quote Hamilton to get through the day? John Adams and Lafayette are dead. And that's the... They're two major.

You'd have to have... Ariana DeBose as the bullet and the guy who reads the proclamation who gets clowned on are dead. Rosencrantz and Gildenstern are dead and Andre isn't here. No idea what cul-de-sac I've walked us into. I don't know, man. Do we want to maybe set the stage, do the plot description? We can talk about Venice and more about the movie. Let's do it.

Again, listener, we're here talking about Rosencrantz and Gildenstern are dead, written and directed by Tom Stoppard adapted from his own Tony winning play, starring Gary Oldman, Tim Roth, Richard Dreyfus, Ian Glenn, Ian Richardson, Donald Sumpton, Donald Sumpter, Joanna Miles, and Joanna Roth. You know, you've got a real British movie when you got two Ian's credited back to back. And two Joanna's back to back. Yeah, yeah. The film world premiered in competition at the Venice Film Festival in 1990, went on to play TIF and New York Film Festival, and then opened limited February 8th, 1991. Indeed. Indeed. At the time of its limited box office release, it opened on two screens, but the number one movie in the country was sleeping with the enemy.

Yes. Which, and kind of, if you think about it, when Hamlet gets sent. on the ship to go to England with Rosencrantz and Gildenstern. He, too, is sort of sleeping with the enemy. A little bit, a little bit, kind of, when you think about it. When you also look at the top five of its box office opening, you have Home Alone and Dances with Wolves in their third month of release. So they are kind of, you know, Richard Dreyfus is like the Kevin McAllister in this movie.

Well, yes, yeah. Telling the stories that we all want to, we all want told, yes. Marv and Harry are dead. Marv and Harry are wandering the streets of Chicago. I mean, Home Alone could also be titled, Marvin Harry should be dead. They should have died. Home Alone could be called Marvin Harry are dead,

but Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead could not have been called Home Alone. Discuss. All right. Joe, are you ready to give a 60-second plot description for Rosencrantz and Gildenstern are dead? Sure. Let's say sure. Try to avoid saying the title of the movie because that's going to suck up three seconds of your time. Okay. Well, we'll figure it out. All right. Your 60-second plot description for Rosencrantz and Gildenstern are dead starts now.

Rosencrancer is at Gildenstern, and Gildenstern are wandering through the woods and they're sort of aimless and they're headed somewhere, but do they really know where they're going? and they're flipping a coin, and it turns up heads like 90-something times in a row. And Gildenstern starts talking about fate, and they wonder about the nature of life and purpose and all this sort of stuff. And then they're come upon by a band of traveling players led by Richard Dreyfus, who put on a show for them, and then they sort of disappear. And then all of a sudden, Rosencrantz and Gildensterner and Nelson Ror Castle. And then the events of Hamlet begin sort of transpiring. But they are on the outskirts of that, but still they are commissioned by King Claudius and Queen Gertrude. for 30 seconds, but 40 seconds.

God. To hang around Hamlet and to figure out why he's being such a fucking weirdo. And so they do for a while, and then they play the questions game. And then they're sort of wandering around and are behind the curtain when Polonius gets stabbed. And the players come back and the players do their little play thing. And Claudius, you know, has a guilty conscience. And then ultimately Rosencrantz and Gildenstern are sent with Hamlet to England with a note that says, hey, kill Hamlet.

But Hamlet gets the jump on them and changes the note. And so the note then says, hey, kill these guys. And then Richard Dreyfus and the players are on the ship again. And are they dead the whole time? Who's to say? But they get hanged, but then they end up back alive again. And everything starts or ends up back where they began in the woods. And ultimately, the realities of life, but also storytelling, are deconstructed and reconstructed.

And we all learn a little something about ourselves the end. 32 seconds over. All right. I'll take it. I mean, how do you describe what's actually happening in Rosencrantz and Gilden's stern or dead, like. Without being like, so here's what's happening on, here's what you missed on Hamlet. Well, but it's also like all these things are happening, but ultimately none of these things are happening because ultimately they're just sort of at a production of Hamlet and they're

sort of both in it and not in it. And they are simultaneously observing while also being sort of like called to do things every once in a while. And then they have all these conversations with Richard Dreyfus about what it means to sort of, what it means for a story to have structure, sort of. That's sort of when I find it very, very fascinating, is when you get to the part about two-thirds away into it, where Richard Dreyfus and the players have now showed up at the castle, because, of course, they have a part to play in Hamlet as well. Like, that's a whole, you know, that's a very integral part in Hamlet, of course. And Rosencranton, Guildenstern are, you know, not really cooperating. And ultimately, Richard Dreyfus is like, look, like, this is how this stuff works.

Like, these are the stories we're in a tragedy. And in a tragedy, you know, bad guys get what's coming to them. And the good guys, you know, get bad luck be followed on that. And ultimately, no one makes it out of these things alive. And that's just sort of the story that we're in. And you sort of, you accept that and you play through it, essentially. You sort of, you find your way through, you know, and that even makes it sound a little bit more just like, you know, heartwarming and uplifting. And it's not supposed to be either one.

It's not supposed to be depressing. It's not supposed to be uplifting. It's just sort of like, these are the way that we have decided to construct. stories forever and ever and ever and ever. And, you know, does it mean that we don't have any agency because every story sort of resembles another story and every, you know, or is it in the telling of it, in the playing it through? I don't know. Maybe that's not even the thing, but that's sort of, those are the things that I think when I watch this. I mean, like, I think those are all interesting. I'm always down, I mean, like, that's part of why this

movie held my interest. I don't think it really brings a lot of those themes. home, even though, you know, it's this kind of robust actor and Richard Dreyfus delivering a lot of that, you know. But I also think, I'm trying to get, I'm trying to avoid falling into the trap that I think a lot of the reviews for this movie that I read fall into the trap of because it's a thing that I hate. Which is this movie shouldn't have existed. No, it's, it's, oh, well, it's so stagey. It's like, you made a movie that's basically just. to play. And it's like, well, no, because decisions are still being made, like, when you cut, when he shows you this actor, when he shows you that actor, where the camera is placed. Like, those are still choices. Do I think Tom Stoppard makes the most interesting of those choices, no. Do I think Tom Stoppard gets maybe a little lost in his own words? Yes. Well, but I also am sympathetic to the idea of, There are certain, like, this is something that I think exists better or more naturally

or more successfully within the realm of the live theater than it would. You can tell, you can tell when you're watching a movie where you're like, that would have been, it would have been really fun to be in a theater full of people laughing at these lines. You know what I mean? Just like, there's a way in which certain things that come across sort of lightly rye on screen are raucously funny in a in a in a theatrical setting and um you could tell that a lot in this movie it's just it's like one of my least favorite words to see in a review stagey i agree with you i just think it's i think it's a lazy criticism i think i think if

you're going to make that criticism then say the things that aren't working say the things that aren't interesting but like i do also think that this is somewhat of a trap that you have when you have a playwright who's never directed a movie before adapts their own work. What I think, so here's what I want to ask you about Stoppard, though, because you're right that after this movie, he's sort of like, you know, retreats from the filmmaking realm. But, of course, the first time I ever heard the words Tom Stoppard was in connection to Shakespeare in Love when he, you know, wrote the, and with Mark Norman, of course, wrote the script for Shakespeare in Love and then won the Academy Award for it. And I sort of, I think I knew that he was

like a playwright, but I didn't know he was like the playwright, you know what I mean, when that was all happening. And the more you sort of look at the film career, and not to drag John Madden, of course, but I do feel like Shakespeare and Love is one of those movies where I don't necessarily subscribe to the idea that, like, the director was the ultimate author of that film. Obviously, that like Harvey Weinstein had a lot of, you know, say in, you know, what was going on there and, of course, his sort of bullying ways. But I do feel like it does feel like there's a lot of Tom Stoppard in that movie and not necessarily like visual choices, of course. But I feel like Shakespeare in Love feels like a much more cinematically inclined Tom Stoppard, you know, version of a Tom Stopper. play. Do you know what I mean? Where all of a sudden, things are incredibly, you know, very lively,

very intimate, very sort of, you know, it allows the actors to have small moments. And just in general, I wonder if like that's the ultimate triumph. We never really talk about Tom Stoppard when we talk about Shakespeare in Love. We talk about the Oscar race. Or we talk about Miramax, or we talk about Gwyneth Paltrow or even Judy Dench. But I don't feel like Stoppard really gets maybe the credit that he deserves for being maybe the main authorial voice behind that movie. I don't know. I don't know. When you're talking about some of the, like, minor things, the levels of Shakespeare and love, that to me is directing.

Like, I totally hear you. I understand, like, Tom Stopper deserves more credit for that movie. But, like, that's kind of what's also missing in. the movie version of Rosencrantz and Guilden Stern are dead in terms of the capturing of that. Like, the actors are great. But, I mean, we could maybe be more impressed with a more interesting directorial vision for this movie. I just, I think someone could make a cinematic movie out of this. Someone could make something that doesn't feel stagebound to so many viewers.

Maybe the playwright is not the one to do that. One of the things I thought during this movie was, oddly enough, setting the thing in a real castle makes this, and I don't want to say stage in this either, but like kind of works against making this thing feel more creative or more feel, a little bit more of that unreality that you want because I feel like so, like, the unreality is so much the point of this, that ultimately you're, you're not supposed to feel like you're ever really in a real place because you're not. You're in this sort of like realm of the stage. And so they, you're in actual forestry. Right. But they set this thing in like, you know, you're in exteriors in the forest. You are in like, they found a, you know, location to shoot at that's an actual castle. And so the scenes,

kind of play out with a lot of air to them, a lot of space to them. And I wonder if it works against this idea that, like, ultimately they are in this sort of inescapable story. Mm-hmm. Right. And, uh, yeah, and this also feels like a real location that an actual, like, banquet could be happening on the other side of the wall. You know, it doesn't, It lacks a certain level of character that you would expect, given the script. Like, the version of this that's filmed on some set where it's not necessarily a realistic set, one that's not this, like, drab realism. Or, like, if it's going to be this drab realism where they're filming on some set,

like, that building should be crumpling. Yes. You know, it should be, it should look shittier if you're going to do that, you know. It needs to be pushed into some type of extreme. Well, and what you say, when you talk. about how the baths is the most interesting sort of, you know, location in this movie. It's the most unexpected one, right? It's the one that feels like it was pulled in maybe from something else, from some other movie, from some other show. It's not, I don't, you know, I don't think

it's textually in Hamlet at all, or is it? I don't know. I don't remember Hamlet that well. But maybe it is. But the biggest point of comparison that I thought about, a lot while watching this movie is the movie version of doubt which is directed by its playwright, John Patrick Shanley. And there's a certain level of doubt that it feels like that

movie is overcompensating for its wordy script where it's like, we have to make this feel like a movie. Dutch angles, Dutch angles, Dutch angles! And it feels like as much of a sin because that like self-consciousness of making that movie feel all

caps cinematic really strips that text of a lot of ambiguity. It strips it of a lot of this could be about things bigger than what is explicitly being talked about in this play. It could be about lower case doubt. Yeah. You know, the idea of certainty and evidence and such and how we relate to that as a society because I think about seeing that play on Broadway in a post-9-11 world and it was so much about how we talk about

and dissect fact and evidence and knowledge and certainty and like none of that is at play in the movie version. Sister Aloysius and Sister James are dead. They're walking around

the Bronx and they're wondering, why is everything so crooked? What's going on? Why is everything James? I have such dead. It doesn't even make sense. Okay. Can we back out to the 1990? Maybe let's treat this a little bit like a like a Russian doll from the inside out. Let's maybe back out to the 1990 Venice Film Festival, where this did win the Golden Line, which is interesting because I expected at the very least to go back and read that, like, well, the reviews at the time were at least good at the time. But they weren't. Like, this was a movie that once got sort of released in America, at least. The critics really did not care for this movie. So then you're like, well, what was going on then? And then you look at, first of all, the jury president is

Gore Vidal, which I... And I was like, well, that's... Who did that... That explains everything this movie winning the Golden Lion. Does it, though? Because, like, I mean, I guess in that, like, Gourvedal not being a filmmaker, although he's certainly been a screenwriter before in that kind of a thing. He's, you know, more sort of, he's an intellectual, he's a provocateur, he's a, you know, political theorist, he's all these sort of things. There's not a ton of politics to Rosencrantz and Gildenstern or dead.

There's not a lot of, I was trying to think of, like, what about that movie would Gourvedal have, like latched on to. I mean, I could see him as someone who, I mean, like, he worked in the film industry as well, you know, writing movies and such, but also clashing with some of his directors. Right. I could see him as someone who would highly value the written word above other, you know, filmmaking elements. Sure. Above the perhaps because he's also not like he's not necessarily a snob so I don't know if I would necessarily see him

as turning up his nose at the violence in something like Goodfellas which was I think the movie that you look at that was in competition this year at Venice because also it's not a very like all killer no filler lineup at Venice A lot of the global cinema

in this lineup I haven't seen a lot of these films and I think some of them at least for American audiences are probably lost to time. They're not particularly accessible. Even the Claire Deney film, No Fear, No Die. Like, I had to eventually find that on, like,

a very, very, very shitty DVD. Interesting. And I was like, Claire Deney would not like me see this movie in this condition. What's that movie about No Fear, No Die? No Fear No Die is semi, it's semi-based, in fact. It is this, like, kind of character. character study on an immigrant

who gets into cockfighting, basically. Oh, okay. It recently got a restoration but I don't think anybody had, like it made some festival circuit

in the restoration, but I don't think it's been made available on like home release state side. Yeah. But that's one of her early movies, too. But you could see, you could watch that movie and be like, oh, Gorvidal would not understand this. Sure. Gorvadol would not be the audience or respond to this. And you could even think that about Goodfellas, even though they gave the best director prize to Scorsese for Goodfellas.

I think the other movies that like that people listening to this, you know, may have seen or may have heard of, Jane Campion's an angel at my table, which is very early, again, very early Jane Campion. Good movie. I've never seen it, but isn't the reputation of it that it's just like a thundering bummer? Like, isn't it just like incredibly sad and hard to watch? It's a biopic about the writer Janet Frame and her life experiences. I believe it takes two or three of her memoirs and makes them into one movie. Because it's three different actresses playing the character, right? Yes, including Carrie Fox as the adult version and then younger children throughout. She wins basically second place at this festival.

You also have Spike Lee's Mo Better Blues, which is another example of like it's an early Spikely. You could have seen them awarding it, but also like knowing what we know about Spikeley's career. Like, although I guess this is the year after do the right thing, which is interesting. So maybe you could almost see it the other way around then as it being, you know, a little bit of a, not a, I mean, I guess anything after do the right thing is maybe going to be a little bit of a letdown. But certainly it doesn't... Well, it's between do the right thing and Malcolm X. And I think for that, for that exact reason, Mo Better Blues gets under-discussed and maybe under-evaluated. Yes.

I really like Mo Better Blues. That is a gorgeous movie. It's beautiful. Yes. But I think, yeah, I think with a little hindsight sort of knowing that, it is very under-discust among Spikeley movies. And then you have James Ivory, who is there with Mr. and Mrs. Bridge, which is a, Despite the Joanne Woodward Oscar nomination that it gets, is a Merchant Ivory movie that does not get, you know, very widely discussed. You know what I mean?

And I think it was somewhat of a disappointment at the time. I could see that. On a movie level. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and this is Merchant Ivory after a room with a view, but before Howard's End. Uh-huh. Exactly. So you're getting a lot of these directors sort of at a, not at the moment for them, right?

You're getting a lot of these like master filmmakers, but not at the moment for them. I will confess that like. Koresmaki has a movie in this lineup. Koresmocki is usually a can. I don't like Khorasmock's movies, even though I respect them often. Swedish filmmaker, right? Finnish, most recently a fallen leaves. Oh, okay.

There we go. Yeah. People like Fallen Leaves. I don't really care for Fallen Leaves. I didn't either. Wait, that was the one that I saw. Wait, Fallen Leaves is the, um, wait, remind me what Fallen Leaves is about. I think this is the one.

Fallen Leaves is the like pseudo-romantic comedy. I did not care for this either. I thought it was kind of boring and everybody disagreed with me. I think God, you did not just agree with me. I did not care for it. My favorite Koresmaki that I've seen, and I've seen maybe a half dozen is the other side of hope. That one feels most outside of his style, and maybe that's why I like it the most. So the other big awards, you mentioned that Scorsese wins best director, The Silver Lion, for Goodfellas.

Jane Campion and Angel at My Table wins essentially second place, grand special jury prize. The Volpe Cup, which I learned today, is named after the founder of the Venice Film Festival, who was an avowed fascist. And we still keep the name. Bulpy Cup went to Oleg Borisov for a movie called The Only Witness, which I don't know what that is, but I imagine it is a Russian movie. That movie also won an original music prize. It's a Bulgarian movie. This jury decided we are giving away craft category prizes.

And then Best Actress went to an actress named Gloria Munkmeier for a movie called The Moon in the Mirror, which. is a Chilean film. So, yeah, I think I will admit, I will fully admit, that, like, the international movies on this lineup are not movies that I have heard of, much less seen, and that is probably on me, but also, I do feel like, well, you haven't more. Not necessarily, though, because, I mean, when you get into this, this, like, this is 1990, obviously, when you get this far back in some of these festivals, a lot of these movies

are just flat out not available. Just on, you know, access. Like, you know, you can't really blame us if we don't have the access to the movies. Yeah. Just sort of looking at where the movies are coming from. It is a very European lineup, which I know that, like, again, you go back far in can and Venice, and, like, international cinema was still sort of limited at these things to mostly Europe.

There is a film from Turkey. a film from India. There is a film from Chile, of course, as I mentioned, the moon in the mirror. There's a film from Israel, and there's a film from Japan. But it really is like, that's it. Everything else is from, well, and Jane Campion, of course, from New Zealand. This is part of why I'm glad that we have something so far back in this miniseries, too, because I think in the aggregate, basically, of this whole month and talking about these festivals. Obviously, we're not going in sequential order of the festivals. Right. But you do ultimately see the growing influence on the current structure of where festivals matter in terms of the awards conversation.

Like for now, you're obviously talking about world respected autours or people who are, you know, beginning that. Like, Claire Deney is definitely at the beginning of her career. but people who have kind of global respect, like a Spike Lee or a Martin Scorsese, you have a Jane Campion as an emergent voice in that, too, who is like, an angel at my table is a movie that, you know, critics loved. Roger Ebert was a huge proponent of that, and like, Roger Ebert is probably one of the most influential critics, you know, during his lifetime for awards. And, you know, that movie received awards recognition for other things as well. Well, the other thing about when you're looking through the Golden Lion winners is trying to pick one was a little bit of a challenge because you either have movies that did go on to get Oscar nominations, especially recently. We'll talk a little bit in a few minutes about the sort of recent trend towards Venice being very, very important among movies that are lining themselves up for Oscar contention. But also you get things like Brokebeck Mountain in 2005, Vera Drake, 2004.

The very first Golden Lion winner to be Best Picture nominated was 1980s Atlantic City. Atlantic City. Louis Mouth's Atlantic City. Robert Altman's shortcuts in 1993 was one of them. But then you also get a lot of years. It's an interesting sort of, you know, when you get into like through the 2000s and into, where it's like big Oscar movie like Brokeback Mountain or very like foreign off of the path entirely like Socorov's Faust or like the return in 2003 or like Lebanon in 2009 and then you'll get a handful of things that would have been great examples but we've already done them like lust caution and like somewhere somewhere would have been like the quintessential Venice movie to do. but we've already done our episode.

Yeah, we've talked about a lot of Venice movies. But we're also in this moment where basically almost all of the Golden Lion winners of the past decade have been Best Picture nominees. It's how many six? If we did this a few years from now, we could do the room next door because that would have been a perfect one. It would not be a good movie for me to talk about this year. Sure, yes, correct. But the 20 teens especially feel like, you know, juries that are awarding things. very outside of the sphere, like Roy Anderson's, a pigeon set on a branch reflecting on

existence. Yes. Fun movie, I like Roy Anderson. Well, and when you talk about, like, how do we characterize Venice as different from these other festivals? Venice is one of the harder ones for me to sort of encapsulate, in part because it feels like it follows, every year it seems to follow one of about two or three different impulses. of like cycles through, where sometimes it is the more sort of a touristly daring with something

like Roy Anderson, with a Lav Diaz movie, with, you know, Laura Poitriss's All the Beauty in the Bloodshed, which was an Oscar movie. But of course, it's a documentary and it's very sort of, you know, confrontational. Something like Ja Jan Kaye for still life. Even like Peter Mulan's Magdalene's sisters in 2002. That is probably not a movie that Cannes is going to touch Mira Nair's monsoon wedding around that time. And then that's sort of one path that Venice has taken, which is essentially we're going to do can, but maybe a little more daring and a little more envelope pushing. They have also, I think, made more more more more. More of a concerted effort, especially in the, like, into like the 2010s, to honor movies from

outside of Europe, from South Korea, and, um, the, the Lavdias is from Philippines. Um, the Lorenzo, uh, Vigas movie is from Venezuela, I want to say. Um, uh, but you do have this like sharp contrast that they go from Lav Diaz doing four hour black and white movies. I just watched the woman who left, and it was my first Love Diaz, and I really liked it. Yeah, good. But going from a Love Diaz movie to the shape of water. Well, the shape of water into Roma, into Joker. So, but that's the other thing is like, and I feel like Joker almost feels like a brand new third thing, because the second thing is we are going to help shape this year. And I don't know how conscious it is, of course, but like we are going to

help shape this year's Oscar race in a very sort of concrete way where shape of water, Roma, poor things, nomad land, things like that, where you sort of feel like they are they are very much

an active participant in the Oscar race. I think that's a thing that I feel like you see them. That almost feels like an offshoot of Toronto. It feels like, remember when Toronto became like the kingmaker in Oscars? And that was sort of around the time of sort of slumdog millionaire, but also sort of like Silver Linings Playbook and that kind of a thing. But you look at, oh, I noted this. It's around 2013 when Venice

world premieres gravity. That's the first year in like a while for them that they have multiple, that there are multiple best picture nominees that premiered at Venice. Gravity and Philomena was the other one that year. But then you get this like, I don't think they've, they've had, I do not think they've had a year where there have been zero Venice premieres in the best picture lineup since that year. So you get Birdman in 2014 was a Venice premiere. Spotlight in 2015, Venice premiere. 2016, Arrival and La La La Land and Hacksaw Ridge are all. Venice premieres. 2017, the shape of water, which ends up winning,

but also three billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri. They are big, they also are very, as can is, very filmmaker loyal, right? Where they will do the Sophia Coppola's. They will do the Martin McDonnas. They will do, you know, the Alfonso Quarones, that kind of thing. They will do the Yorgos Lanthamos.

You can plant a pin writing Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein as going to this festival. Begonia. As silly as it might see. Yes. Yeah, Begonio will be here, this year, yeah. Yep. 2018, the favorite, speaking of Yorgos, and Roma, and a star is born.

This is when you get into, well, the next year is when you get into, because Marriage Story premieres there. This is when you get into the We Are Can for Netflix movies, because Netflix movies don't premiere it Can. Joker and Marriage Story were 2019. Nomad Land, Best Picture winner, was 2020. Power of the Dog was 2021. 2022, they had Banshees of Inashiren and TAR.

2023, they had Maestro and Poor Things. And then last year, they premiered The Brutalist, and they premiered, I'm Still Here. So, and the Brutalist, I think, is a great example of, like, that, that feels like a Venice movie to me. And I don't know if I can necessarily explain it, but, like, a sort of muscular. They're Brady loyal, though, because I think all Brady movies have been, like, he's a good example. I'm pretty sure even childhood of a leader premiered at that Venice. That makes sense. But if...

The Vox Lux was a competition Venice movie. Yeah. There is a sort of character to the kind of the Western Autorist movies that they sort of latch on to, which is why Joker of all the... If you were to say that there's one festival that premiered Joker and gave it its top prize, Venice probably would have been my guess of the major film festivals. Because... I would have guessed Toronto. Well, it did play Toronto, but... It did, but only after.

Right, right. Venice, you're right to say that Venice is of the fall festivals, probably the one that, you know... I feel like we'll get into the New York conversation. New York feels like the festival for a certain type of filmmaker, but Venice feels like the big guns for a lot of these movies. to the point that a lot of movies that maybe enter the season at Venice at this point, the way Venice feels at this point is it can feel like Venice is an Oscar dud immediately after the festival sometimes. Like last year I'm specifically thinking of Joker 2 and Maria not landing and kind of queer. That it's like these are the movies that are really jockeying for it and that's what we end up talking about.

But in the long run, Venice gets to say they had I'm Still Here and the Brutalist. Yes. And they premiered those movies, though maybe at the moment those weren't the ones we were talking about. But over the course of the season, we get to talk about. Well, Venice and Telluride were the two festivals that made the active decision to try to essentially hop the line in front of TIF, right? After TIF became the Kingmaker, Venice and Telluride were like, what if we just do this because we're before Tiff? What if we just like aggressively try and acquire these, you know, big American movies that are looking to, you know, place themselves in the Oscar race? And why don't we take them? Why are we allowing Toronto to sort of, you know, get all this, get all this shine? And I think, I think telling the difference between a telluride movie and a Venice movie is sometimes difficult. But I think what what the difference is is there's a little bit more to be crass, like slapping your dick on the table. with a Venice movie, where it's just like, we're going to premiere this thing in front of

the, like, glitziest, biggest audience. And the telluride movies are the movies that you almost feel like, they feel like they have to, like, be a little bit careful, and they have to be a little bit more cagey with. And they have to, like, manicure those a little bit more. Venice is more starry because, you know, Venice has red carpets and they have canals and boats there. Yeah. Yeah. So, like, those are maybe the two contrasts. But But, like, it definitely, I think the thing about TIF is when a movie dies at TIF, it really does die. Yeah. And that's not true of somewhere like Venice, you know, I mean, because the lid is on that festival.

Yeah. Yeah. The lid is more on movies at that festival in particular because, you know, it's more. Less and less as time goes on, though. You know what I mean? That's fair. That's maybe fair. Like, you know, when a movie plays at Toronto, it can play to a lot of people.

And there can be a lot of opinions about your movie when it's months ahead of it, you know, really actually playing for a real audience. And I don't think that's true about Venice. So Venice gets to keep this kind of rarefied air. Well, it is literally like separated on a little island. Like all the premieres happen in this little island in the lagoon off of Venice. Yeah. And like the three big European festivals, there's Berlin, which we're not doing in this mini-series, because I think if you have an Oscar conversation about Berlin, you're going back to the years where it was like a movie premiered in America and then plays Berlin? Do you want to tell me, can you guess the last best picture nominee to have premiered at Berlin before the Oscar nominees?

Ooh, before? Yeah. Like not one of these, like we'll premiere at Berlin after the fact. but, like, premiered at Berlin as, like, that was its world premiere. And won the golden bear. No, not necessarily won the golden bear, but just, like, a best picture nominee that was a Berlin premiere. Grand Budapest Hotel? It is Grand Budapest Hotel.

That's an incredible guess. Yes, not guess. You knew it. But, like, that's an incredible get. Well done. God, I would not have. I only got that at the last second because I was like, it had to have been from the 90s. But no, Grand Budapest.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, very good. Berlin is still, you know, out there doing, you know, programming, like, much more avant-garde stuff, much more, you know, boundary-pushing cinema. And, you know, they're, like any other festival, they have their names, too. I think we talk a lot about Cannes pushing more into this westernized, Oscar-friendly, like, realm. for lack of a better word in terms of the films they program in their competition. And I would not, I would strongly argue Venice has kind of already well leaped past that. Venice is definitely chasing that type of thing.

And they probably can because of when they fall in the calendar and when these movies are going to be released. It's a much bigger gamble to go to Cannes when there's also not a bunch of other major global film festivals going on. Well, particularly because you can succeed at Cannes and still have to relaunch your movie if you are going to then launch it in the fall. But it's hard to relaunch a movie that kind of dies at Cannes. Right, right. There's so many eyeballs. Whereas even if you die at Venice, you know, I wouldn't say the reception to Maria was particularly warm, but they kept the gas in that tank all season, and they ended up getting a cinematography nomination. Right, right, and almost an actress nomination out of it. Have you noticed in doing your research for this, this idea of the Big Five festivals? I see this all the time now, where there is a sort of a festival is known as one of the Big Five by the international film community.

And of course, they're talking about Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Toronto, and then somewhat recently they have admitted Sundance into that, which I think is kind of funny. or no, what did I say? Can, what I say, Can Berlin, Venice, Toronto, and Sundance? Yes, yes, those five. Which I think is kind of odd in that, like, certainly I think if you were talking about how things are now, Telluride is ahead of both Berlin and Sundance.

And I would still put New York Film Festival in there ahead of both Berlin. I mean, Sundance, Sundance is kind of its own thing. in that sometimes it will premiere an Oscar movie, but I feel like it does not function the way that the other sort of toned festivals. A lot of movies are going to Sundance and just falling off the face of the earth, especially the world cinema movies that go there.

Although, as I've been making this list of looking up which festivals, the best picture movies, premiered at, there are certain years that are very Sundance-heavy. Like, obviously 2020 was a special case where they premiered The Father and Minari and Promising Young Woman

and then around the next year they premiered Judas and the Black Messiah all before the Oscar nominations came out but you're looking at years like 2017 with you know get out and call me by your name where both Sundance premieres and like that kind of a thing so Sundance kind of waxes and wanes in a way but we'll talk more about this.

It's definitely in a waning stage. Yeah. Am I using a... do I know those words correctly? Yes, waxing is the good one. We'll talk a little bit more about this, I think, when we talk about New York Film Festival, because there is a sense that, like, New York Film Festival sort of exists in a little bit of, like, a shadow at this point. But, like, I mean, maybe I'm, it's the homer in me talking. But, like, I root so hard for New York Film Festival. And I really, for as much as that is, that's an oddly shaped festival. We'll talk about it then, the shape of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's going to be such an interesting conversation. Yes. Venice, though,

Venice is it's so strangely placed because it begins before Telluride does and ends while Toronto is going on. But by the time you've gotten to that portion, like the big Venice stuff, like they'll announce their winners

while we're at Toronto, but that's really, everything will have mostly been out of the gate at Venice by that point. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And... I don't know. They definitely feel more Oscar hungry than can or New York do. And I genuinely think like it's just in competition with Toronto. I think it really is. I feel like that's, I feel like it's just sibling rivalry there where I think Toronto got such good press for so long for being, you know, the Oscar launcher that Venice really was just like, the fuck you are. We've been around for decades long.

Toronto, I mean, like, we'll obviously talk about Toronto next week, but Toronto is like, you know, if Venice or Telluride is a yacht, Toronto is like an ocean barge. Like, that festival is so huge, plays so many movies that, like, and so many people attend. Well, and also, they will premiere, they will, like, screen movies from all the other festivals. Like, I know there's always this sort of, you always hear about this. being the festival of festivals. Right. But you'll always hear about this jockeying about like, you know, they want to get a good handful of world premieres and, you know, they don't want to be seen as having just the

leftovers from Telluride, although from Telluride in Venice and Cannes, I should say, and Sundance. But like, I think the insularness of Telluride actually helps Toronto in a way because sometimes they'll like, they'll be something and I'll be like, oh, this is a world premiere and somebody will be like, no, it premiered it. Tell you right. I'm like, okay, so for all intents and purposes, it is a premiere. Right. It played to 1,500 billionaires. Who, like, half of whom aren't talking about it. You know what I mean? Like, most of whom aren't talking about. Half of whom don't watch movies outside of that festival. So you get the little, like, sort of insider, like,

critics, the handful of critics who were there, we'll talk about it. But like, this is the first time, you know, when something premieres at Toronto. We're spending all their time talking about the other festivals. But like... But I think that makes sense for Venice, because Venice, feels like it's trying to eat everyone's cake. You mentioned that Venice is in direct competition with Toronto. I think they would never publicly admit that. They want to say they're in competition. They're the granddaddy of the mall.

They're the oldest festival. Yeah. The oldest festival, but they have had long breaks when it was running. I want to talk about this. And they were also started by fascists. So, well, and it's the, I think if you look now, I think the, the, the, the, the The festival that most often feels embroiled in politics is Cannes, right? Where in global politics, in sort of the politics of the filmmaking world, Terry Furbos is always doing something.

How we position can. I think if you talk to any film person, what's the number one film festival? It's Cannes. Venice would like to believe that they're the number one. But Venice is the one that has the most rich political history, not only founded by a, fascists and essentially as we mentioned last week when we talked about in our

titan episode that can was essentially founded as a reaction to the Venice film festival going hardcore pro-fascist Lenny Riefenstahl, Mussolini's cousin or whatever the fuck, Mussolini's brother and being

essentially a propaganda arm for European fascism in the lead up to World War II But then, in 1969, Venice embarks upon a 10-year period where they do not screen commercial films and do not have awards and are generally like, we are going to be an underground experimental, like, you know, non-commercial film festival because they did that out of a sense that of the sort of late 60s student protest. in, you know, France and Western Europe. And essentially, there were, like, prizes are fascist, commercial movies are capitalist. We're going to completely go the other way. We are going to be essentially a sort of like Marxist film festival, and we are not going to

buy into any of this. And for 10 years, they didn't have commercial films and they didn't have prizes. And then they come out of that, and then it's the 80s, and they're like, yeah, maybe we'll go back to commercial films and prizes. I will not pretend to know the ins and outs of European politics as well, but I found that to be fascinating. That essentially they were like, this is the way the winds are blowing, and we are not going to get caught once again being the bad guys in the face of history. So we are going to, where the students lead, we will follow. And I thought that was kind of fascinating.

I mean, and it's also, you talk about contemporary politics, too. A lot of pressure is put on can, and rightly so. know, it's not letting can off the hook. But, like, Venice is the one that's still putting, like, Roman Polansky in competition. And is sort of... They're still putting Luke Basso. And are not making a big deal about it. They're just like, do, do, do, do nothing to see here.

Hey, look, there's a Sophia Coppola movie. Look at that one. And don't look at... Don't look at this Roman Polanski movie that he made on his, like, French, you know, vineyard or whatever. And is he the one who lives? No, I guess that's Ridley Scott, who has the French, who has the French vineyard. Ridley Scott's fine.

Don't, don't conflate the two. But anyway, yes. I think the funniest thing about the Joker Golden Lion is that the jury president was Lucretia Martel.

Which apparently she was asked about it and nonchalantly was like, yeah, that wasn't the movie for me. She wanted to do like the weird animated movie

where there's like weird sex and stuff. And she's like, Yeah, but the jury just really loved it. And I was like, whatever, man. It's, you can never. I'm like, you're the jury president. You get to say no.

You can never. Like, this is one of the things that I love. Speaking of Roman Polanski, he was the jury president the year that Michael Collins won the golden lion at camp. You really cannot ever really tell. Who was the president the year broke back one? Dante Ferretti. That's fun. Dante Ferretti on a jury that also included Claire DeNee,

and Christine Vichon, fuck, can you imagine? Can you imagine? Oh, incredible. Incredible. I love, that's my favorite pastime is clicking on through, like, seeing what won the big prize of the thing.

And who gave the jury president is? Because here's the other thing of like, I'm sure we talked about it last week. The reputation that like the legends, the great directors, never give good like top prizes like the one that always sticks out to me is spielberg was the jury president for the palm for blue is the warmest color um which like um yeah i do kind of want to rewatch that movie to be like do i do i hate that movie that much i love leis you do love leis they do

and i do love adelex or cup of those too but i'm like how much do i hate this movie do i have enough time to devote three hours to being like to what degree do i hate this movie um But also, like, people who are like, why are they are the jury president, give these, like, you know, rarefied hoity-toity wins. Like, the Lav Diaz golden lion was awarded by who? Sam Mendes. Yeah. Well, a pigeon sat on a branch. What is it?

A pigeon sat on a branch reflecting on existence. Reflecting on existence. I've been called worse. Alexander DeSlai jury that included Joan Chen, Sandy Powell, and Tim Roth. that's a jury that's a jury right there i would believe that tim roth likes that that's a jury right there um speak so bringing it back to tim roth and bringing it back to rosencgilden's turn or dead you can see the and again maybe this is just like gorvadal fucking loved that play that play came out in 1966 this is the height of gorvadal public

intellectual maybe he just like rode for that play and you know saw it three times and was at the, you know, opening night gala for it or whatever. I don't know. Maybe he's just like, maybe this is just his taste. Who else was on this jury? This was, um... Um... It's in the outline somewhere.

Hold on. I didn't think that was... Gorvado. Maria Louisa Bamberg. Eduardo Bruno. Gilles Jacob. Uh, very famous French critic. Alberto Latuada,

Kira Muratova, Omar Sharif, and Ula Stalkl. Oh, and Annalina Weebaum. Yeah, not a ton of bold-faced names that I would know off the top of my head. Again, I am a classic dumb-dum when it comes to this. So, see, I don't want to shit on Gorvidal too much because, A, I'm like, where's our gay Gorvadol in this culture? I know.

You know, someone who can often, who can be the provocateur, but also be wrong, but also, like, you know. I don't know. Take us away from the gay... You just want gay bitches. You want more gay bitches. I want gay bitches who are also like smart. Intellectual gay bitches.

Right. Yeah. We're in a horrible age of dumb gay bitches. We need some smart gay bitches. Who think they're intellectual. Yes. A couple of... I do not think I am intellectual.

I am a dumb gay bitch. We need less of me. I don't like a deep control toe, nor a man whose voice is alto. I'm a heterosexual. See, but I also love when they have... people who are not film... I mean, Gorvidal was a film person, but, like, people who are known for being writers.

Other things than filmmakers, yes. We have that on the Cannes jury this year. Layla Slamani is a Moroccan writer. Nice. Uh, and intellectual... A couple of films that premiered out of competition at the 1990 Venice Festival

that I thought might have shaken things up, um, Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy and Philip Kaufman's Henry in June, which... Can I tell you when I saw Dick Tracy, which would have already played in theaters? What did it have? Did it open that early? Summer movie. Oh, wow. Okay. That was famously a summer movie. Interesting.

I saw that, and I immediately went and bought a Blu-ray. I was like, I have to watch Dick Tracy at the soonest opportunity. Dick Tracy is so good. It really is. I love Dick Tracy. Are you kidding? All right, so Rose and Kranson Guildenstern are Dead doesn't really do much of anything when it sort of... It gets a Independent Spirit Award nomination for Gary Oldman, which, again, I think Oldman kind of rocks and rolls in this movie. So I like that. Although the winner that year is, I mean, slam dunk winner. One of my favorite performances.

River Phoenix in my own Private Idaho should have not, I mean, we talked about this in a hundred snubs, right? Should have not only been nominated for the Oscar, but probably should have won that year. I don't know if I can think of a better lead actor performance. Jeremy Irons is great. Jeremy Irons should have already had an Oscar for Dead Ringers, so. Although I guess Private Idaho doesn't release specifically until 91, so it's actually Anthony Hopkins. Well, okay. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. So yeah. But at least get nominated. Like that, that should be River Phoenix's Oscar nomination to sort of live on in perpetuity. I would not take away that running on empty nomination. Oh, right. He is nominated for running on empty. It's totally true. I always forget about that one. I've never seen it. I should see it. Dougie Doug nominated for a movie called Hang In with the Homeboys. Robert Duval for Rambling Rose, which, sure. And then William Russ for a movie called Pastime. I love old indie spirits. They really just sort of like go all over the board. Was Tim Roth known at this point? Cook the Thief, his wife, and her lover is the year before. But they, what's interesting, and like Gary Oldman was definitely known from Sid and Nancy at this point.

What's interesting is both of them broke out together in Mike Lee's meantime, which would have been a TV movie. I was going to say, it must have been a TV movie. like among his theatrical efforts though like Michael's TV movies a lot of them are so good meantime's incredible they're both very young when they're doing that

Gary Oldman's playing this skinhead who basically has a you know influence over Tim Roth's character who's one of two sets of brothers in this you know Thatcher like you know it is

a generational drama about like well you can go in two different paths two brothers basically going on two different paths under the thumb of Thatcherism and like really really kind of the the like pushing the what do I want to say not the firing gun

of Mike Lee's cinematic career sure sure um because he'd worked in television for a while and would continue to work in television, but this is the one that really kind of gets him in that type of consideration. Yeah. Oldman not only has Sid and Nancy before this, but also, have you ever seen Prick Up Your Ears? It's been on my list forever, and I've never seen it. It's been on mine as well. Noted Queer Film, Prick Up Your Ears. Alan Bennett's script, Stephen Freer's directing Gary Oldman and Alfred Molina as a pair of gay lovers in

1960s England and yeah it's been on my list forever maybe this is the year I think I'm going to try and do for Pride this June what I normally try and do in October for horror movies and try and watch as many first watch

you know queer movies that I've never seen before in June as possible so I will help you contribute to that list I will get the ball rolling Oh I've got a ton I've got a ton because of course like I always feel so incredibly relict when it comes to sort of, even this, like, it's, I'm embarrassed to say

I've never seen prick up yours. I'm embarrassed to say I've never seen, what's the Steve Bussemi one? Parting glances. Parting glances is amazing. I know. I know. I've never seen the Watermelon Woman. Like, all of these things. Like, I've got so many, and I'm in a very sort of like 90s indie place. So there's a ton of 90s Indies, especially from the early 90s that I want to see. Do you have any Iraqis you haven't seen? I've done all the

Iraqis. I've got even, well, I got the box set. But yes, there are a handful of Iraqis. I've still never seen Nowhere, and that's... You're going to lose your mind when you watch Nowhere. Nowhere, it's just like Greg Iraqi is like the keeper of a certain era of time. And like that's not all of what his movies are. If I were born five years earlier, I really like to believe that I would be a completely different person because I really would have come of age in a very different time.

in terms of like finding I would have found new new queer cinema at a at while it was like thriving mm-hmm you know as opposed to you seen swoon no again on my list that's that's got go on I know my god I know I know see because the queer movies that I like revere from this time are these sort of like are the chinty rom-coms that would have aired on like HBO at like 1230 in the morning have you seen go Fish. Oh. Go Fish is really dated.

GoFish is fun. GoFish is fun. Yes. After watching the Chasing Amy documentary, I remember being like, oh, Go Fish is going to the top of my list. No, I know. It's embarrassing. I'm embarrassing myself. This is embarrassing.

I don't think it's embarrassing. Everybody has things they have to catch up on. For as much as I revere the 1990s and, you know, I don't know. It's whatever. I'll fix it. Fixing it this year, everybody. I'm fixing it. You're fixing it, Steve.

It is really interesting watching this performance. They do seem, maybe not as young as they seem in meantime, but they do still seem really young. Yes, they do. And they're very close to, like, in the span of three years, we have reservoir dogs and Bram Stoker's Dracula. Like, Mom, I'm throwing it all away to go wander the woods with these two young English haughties, is what I would have said, had Rosencranton, Guildenstern. And then you would have realized you made a huge mistake. I would have. You just put yourself with two of the most unpleasant people.

But they're both so handsome in this. Tim Roth with the big hoop earring. I mean, my goodness gracious. I saw that hoop earring. I was like, Jost. Joe's done for. Absolutely done for. Jost.

Yep. They're both great in this movie. They really are. They're very funny. I think they're, I, Oldman does a really, really good job in playing the sort of guilelessness of Rosencrantz, and that, like, he really is just sort of like a dumb-dum. And, like, Roth plays Guildenstern's, you know, sort of frustration with him very well. I think Guildenstern seems to

have a little bit more of an awareness of what's going on, and in that he feels a little more sort of wary. I think you can, Roth does a good job of sort of allowing you to see into the parts where you see where Gildenstern is just like, oh, we're maybe not real people right now. You know what I mean? Like, we maybe don't exist right now. And what does that mean? And Rosencrantz gets it too, but, like, does not let on. And it's an interesting vibe between them.

I mean, they're both giving performances that are, like, the quintessential. because of course they're like childhood friends of Hamlet or whatever they're like college what would equate to college friends of Hamlet and it's like they're both playing the quintessential like oh yeah I was friends with that guy

in college. Yes you know like it's cringe emoji yeah it's that like they're still those guys from college they can't grow up and like they're giving very much like that performance and it's it's funny it's

also interesting to see that. Like, you know how, well, you're less familiar with Waiting for Godot, but you know they're doing Waiting for Godot basically as Bill and Ted this fall? I was aware of that, yes. Which is just wild. And I'm like, so that's, so they're doing Rosencrantz and Guild and Stern or dead. That's what this movie is. Basically, yes.

Yeah. I feel, let's talk a little bit about Dreyfus because Dreyfus is doing the Dreyfus thing. I don't think he's bad, but I do think that there's a power imbalance there between these two younger actors and this established Academy Award winning actor. Sure. It reminded me. Maybe there should be some power imbalance there because, you know, Dreyfus is playing someone more all-knowing and they're both the two goons. Well, you know how Kenneth Branagh would always cast American actors. in things like Much Adieu or like his Hamlet or whatever. And you would get like Robin Williams or Keanu Reeves or Michael Keaton, you know what I mean? Just sort of like popping up in these movies.

And they're out of place, but they're out of place in a way that seems to communicate this idea that like Shakespeare is endlessly malleable and you can sort of, you know, find a space for anybody's style within it. I like the idea that Richard Dreyfus is playing essentially the, you know, the player from Hamlet as a college theater, you know, fuckboy a little bit, or an actor studio, Bradley Cooper asking Sean Penn Quest. No, because he's not, he's not Bradley Cooper, he's not inquisitive about this. he's the guy who has been asked back to give a talk to the actor's studio several years after he has graduated. And that's the vibe. And I like I think he takes himself very seriously. He sells it very well. Dreyfus is not a bad fit for that. It's just I think opposite these two actors, there's something that's not quite working for me. Sure. And maybe it's just an age difference thing. Maybe it's Dreyfus seemingly. There's something vain in the wrong way about this performance. Like, you're from a traveling band of malcontents and miscreants.

Like, you, it should be dirtier. It should be grungier. Do you think that's why Tom Stoppard never made another movie is because he had to work with Richard Dreyfus and Gary Oldman? Just sort of opposite each other. It says, no, thank you. I will not direct again. It's interesting that Tom Stoppard has more Tonys than Olivier's. That is interesting.

I wonder if he doesn't have as much of the reputation in the UK that we would think maybe he does. Because he was relatively a young player. This is his first play on Broadway when he won the Tony for Best Play for this. Have they ever tried to make Arcadia into a either film or miniseries? I don't know if miniseries would really work. I think so, no. Do you know why? It's also interesting because there's not a lot of stopperd adaptations.

There's not a lot of stopperd adaptations. And, like, I don't think Arcadia is particularly hard to film. It's very narrative. You know what I mean? Like, it's certainly more narrative than Rosenz and Gildenster. It's cross-generational. I just feel like it would be a really interesting, you know, project for somebody to take on. I don't know.

Maybe I don't even know who I think would do it well. But I certainly think, like, there's more story to it than there is to Rosencrantz and I think that's one of the things that kind of hobbles this as a film is just, like, it's so plotless. It's so incredibly plotless. And the plot that exists is Hamlet, but it's just sort of like, it's Hamlet, but, you know, it's not Hamlet. It's not really happening. It's sort of sort of happening. So you feel sort of foolish for investigating.

And it's also an imbalance for a contemporary audience watching this, because the famous people, are the people who are on the sidelines of Hamlet and like we don't recognize the I mean all respect to Ian Glenn but like well you're recognize it's almost like you need you need more of an unknown actor giving a great performance which I guess you know they were kind of doing that at the time yeah as Rosencranston Guilden Stern and then you have like hot fuckboy famo right should play Hamlet well you not being and I know this is all in hindsight anyway so it's not like anybody would know this at the time but like you not being a game of thrones person you don't have the experience of watching this movie i think i've walked myself into this corner multiple times where i'm like we don't know who this person is and they're game of well we certainly didn't know back then but like obviously now i'm watching this and i'm like oh like jora mormont is hamlet and maister lewin is uh is claudius that was uh that was an interesting realization yeah sorry not if you hit me over the head but prank man am i watching game of thrones sorry

But none of the other people, like, I didn't know. Joanna Miles sounds like a name I should probably know. But I don't know what I would have seen her in. So, I don't know. And ditto with Joanna Roth as Ophelia. I don't know if she's known for things that I would know. It's almost so thankless for all of those other actors who are performing Hamlet, because, like, that's, that's part of it.

Some of these scenes are the text from Hamlet. Yeah. But given the position of what's, of what we are actually watching, those, those roles can be so thankless. Yeah, it's true. It's true. What did you think of the kind of spookiness of, of, you know, the kind of spookiness of, the players, particularly when they're doing

the dumb show, the sort of the silent, masked, you know, I think there was something that was approaching kind of creepiness at that point in a way that I found to be decently effective. Well, they, they end up, I mean, that's part of the play,

I forget what it's called, the murder of something, the play that they put on in Hamlet. Is the mouse trap, right? basically and it's I think the effect that it has in this is like what you're talking about with the spookiness of it is they enter the play when they meet Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead

as kind of this buffoonery and through them and I would say also Dreyfus there it gains more of a sinister quality There's a little Mephisto action to Dreyfus right where like he might be the devil He might be, you know, a representative of the afterlife come to take them with him. He does sort of come along, like, leading a caravan through the woods.

Like, that is not a, you know, sort of metaphor for, like, you're picking up the spirits, the lost and wandering spirits through the woods, right? And yet, that's where they end up, right? They end up right back where we started, of course, which is where they had to end up. And do they end up flipping the coin again? They should. They should flip the coin again at the very end of that. I like that.

If I was going to do this on stage, I would be flipping the coin the entire show. But then you'd have to not drop it. Can you imagine the pressure of like having to flip the coin the entire show? I guess you don't have faith in my physical faculties or my acting ability. Did you ever have to do that like business while you're performing a role? I'm trying to think. Did you do any Shakespeare? When you, in your college theater.

Like I said, I am stupid. Was that something that you could, like, opt into or out of? Like, there were some people who were doing the Shakespeare show and some people who were doing it. Oh, I was opted out, not of my own choice, not of my own volition. Did you go, did you particularly go for any roles? No. No. That's not how that works, baby.

I don't know. I don't know how it works. What do you mean that's not how it works? People don't audition for things in college theater? Well, I mean, like, you can have, like, student productions and do. your own thing. But, like, I'm not going to be like, yes, I'm going to be King. No, but I mean, like, I imagine, like, you would audition for a certain, or is it not audited? It's like everybody sort of plays around and then the person in charge, like,

you will be Hamlet. No, it is a very, very regimented, uh, procedural, faux educational process. Okay. That is out of your control. Fascinating. I have no idea. The only way I know anything about student theaters what I'd know through watching television shows. So if it didn't happen that way... What was that show that is no longer available on Max? That was, like, the, like, the masterclassy show that we've talked to. Oh, Young Arts Masterclass, yes. Yes.

With... Bring it back. Anna Devere Smith and also the Paci LePone one, the best ones. Yes. All right. I'm revisiting my notes. Have I mentioned how Sleep No More coded this is? I did, right?

That everybody's going up and down, backstair chases. Did you ever go see Sleep no more? I didn't. For two reasons. Good use of your money. One, because it was such a hot ticket. But also, once people started talking about it,

like it was like the cruisiest place to go in New York City, I'm like, well, now I'm not going to go to this, because now I'm just going to feel inadequate when nobody tries to, like, fuck me in the best. bedchamber or whatever um uh what else did i write down there's some again i wrote down a bunch of lines that i imagine like were like huge last lines in the stage show we are actors we're the opposite of people like that's a meat and that's gonna just like they're gonna eat that up um yeah the bad end up happily the good unluckily that is what tragedy means i really liked that

I really liked that line. It was good. Yeah, I liked it. I understand why people were underwhelmed by it, particularly with the, like, it's this great play from 1966, and the playwright is directing it, and these two hot young actors are in it and whatnot, and it won the Golden Lion at Venice, and then it premiered stateside, and you're like, huh, okay, all right, I guess. That is why it made under a million dollars in North America. What would you say makes a good or bad golden lion winner? What is representative of the golden lion? I do like when it seems like they are taking chances.

That's why I love the somewhere win. I know for as controversial as that was and how much people got on Quentin Tarantino's case and all that sort of stuff. I love that somewhere won the Golden Lion because it is And I think it's a decision that shows up I think it has aged very well I used to be the only person I know who said That was my favorite Sophia Coppola movie And now there's so many other people who agree with me including you

If you don't agree with us revisit that movie Yes Because I think the rewatch is the thing that locks it in Because I wasn't anti somewhere But when we rewatched it for the show I was like oh no This is her best movie Them giving, I know it was a tie, but shortcuts in 1993, which tied with three colors blue.

Right. That's a heck of a year. Who was the jury president that year? Peter Weir, along with James Ivory and some other folks gave it to those two fantastic movies. Yeah, I love that shortcuts, you know, Altman, obviously, he's got his palm door for MASH. and, you know, has, you know, succeeded with all these other movies, but shortcuts is really, really great. I love with that. I also think there's, it's not just awarding directors who are certainly not going to be awarded by Oscar, but, like, there's even directors that Cannes hasn't gone there for.

I'm thinking, you mentioned Giazanka's Golden Lion's Still Life. Yeah. Siming Lang won or Tide for Vive Lamour. Yes. There's directors like that who've, I mean, Zhang Yamu has multiple golden lions. Yeah.

Those type of directors, that's always a cool golden lion when Panahi has a golden lion. Well, we'll see. Maybe Panahi will get the problem. Aronovsky's golden lion being for the wrestler is interesting because you could easily see it being for somewhere else the same year that somewhere won. He was at Venice with Black Swan. If any festival, you could have, if you would say what's the most likely festival to have given their top prize to mother, Venice would have been the one I would have chosen. I certainly they didn't.

Annette Benning's jury didn't like that movie? Is that who it was? Yes, it was. Annette Benning, Rebecca Hall. I thought they gave it some prize. Maybe they did it. Hold on. Let me see.

Wait a second. Damn, you got to scroll through a lot. You really do. No, I guess not. That's too bad. Did any of the independent prizes go to Mother? I guess not. That's too bad.

But anyway, I love that they gave the Golden Lion to the Magdalene Sisters in 2002 for Peter Mulan. I've not seen, I wanted to watch, I sort of ran out of time. I wanted to watch before this episode. I wanted to watch Rashomon. I wanted to watch Battle of Algiers, and I wanted to watch Monsoon Wedding, and I ran out of time to watch I mean, Altimers. Um, but they're on the list. I will watch them at some point after I watch all the game movies. Three favorite golden lion winners. Uh, well, I said somewhere. I said shortcuts. And then the third one is

Brokeback Mountain. I, you know. I mean, as much as I love less caution to, I have to put Brokeback Mountain in mine. I also have Rashomon in mine. Um, Battle of Algiers is like, I mean, that's an all-timer movie. But like, I have to, I have to give my third slot to all the beauty in the bloodshed. I know. That's a Chris File movie right there. I mean, I think it's the movie of the decade. And also that it's a nonfiction movie. Venice has awarded nonfiction movies before, but like, Cannes won't even, for the most part, put a nonfiction movie in their competition lineup. Right. Right. And when they do, it's Fahrenheit 9-11. I mean, they had the Kauffer-Banhania four daughters.

That's true. That's kind of like a hybrid-y... It's not quite Jafar Panahi, but it's not that. Well, and Panahi is also kind of hybrid, non-fiction, fiction stuff, and we'll see what this new one is going to be. But, like, he's gone the full spectrum, you know, from, like, quite literally documenting his own home imprisonment, and then also doing completely fictionalized work. work as well. But all the beauty in the bloodshed.

Julianne Moore's jury, by the way, my fave. You have to understand that every time I see the title, all the beauty in the bloodshed, I do say it in the Celine Dion cadence of... This one goes out to all the beauty and also the bloodshed. The bloodshed. My faves, better than your faves. Julianne Moore's jury gives it to all the beauty in the bloodshed. Izzy's, Izzy who bears, jury gives it to... to Almodovar with a room next door.

I mean, I mean. Chris Files stays winning, apparently. I do stay winning. After I've just said all of this, like, judgment on Venice, I'm like, but you put my faves in there, and I don't question you. Now, is Rosencranton Guilden Stern a good golden lion winner? It's so interesting for how it sticks out, but I'm going to have to say, well, I'm positive on the movie, I think it's a bad golden lion.

I'd have stuck up for it. I'd have made the case for it had Goodfellas not been in that lineup. Goodfellas is an all-timer, not to be such a cliche, not to be, you know, a film bro about it. But like, you can't, you can't deny it. And while I understand the impulse to be like, well, then if it's such a slam dunk, why don't we give it to somebody else? Martin Scorsese has won his, you know, festival prizes before. doesn't have a golden lion, though, unless he has one of those golden lions. That's like a career tribute, which is like the fact that they handed out no golden lions throughout the

entire 1970s really does kind of put them behind the eight ball in terms of like the great autos that have not gotten golden lions, right? Because they could have been giving all of those people golden lions in the 70s. But they were too busy cozying up to the French student radicals. Timothy Cholomey and the French dispatch got to them and said They were affected by his electrocution death on top of the On top of the building I mean there's no worse golden lion winner than the golden lion for Joker That's just

I've not seen a lot of these ones from the last 10 years Or the last maybe 15 years I haven't seen I haven't seen Audrey Dewan's happening I haven't seen Well, the Lav Diaz, but I'll trust you. I haven't seen From Afar. I haven't seen SacroGRA from Gianfranco Rossi. Also nonfiction, I believe.

He's a nonfiction filmmaker. I've seen his other movies, but I haven't seen that one. That's the most recent winner I haven't seen. And then I haven't seen Pieta from Kim Keduk and Alexander Sukharov's Faust. I have not seen. From afar, I watched in preparation. for this. It is not good, but then when you look at that lineup, it's like, you could see that, you know, if they had strong feelings about it, then that it could have won, because it's not in a strong...

A wealthy middle-aged man who gets involved with a young man from a street gang. Okay, interesting. Is it? Considering this is a 2015 movie, and we're going to be having a 2015 conversation, I won't say my thoughts on other movies that are in this line. All right. But this is the same lineup that includes movies like the Danish girl and Drake DeRemus's equals. So it's not a great line. Wow.

Yeah, that's tough. That's real tough. And yet, a bigger splash was in that lineup. Would that have not been a more interesting Golden Lion winner from that year? Like, come on that. Luca is a Venice regular. I don't know why. why anybody ever predicts him going to Cannes, but they keep predicting him going to Cannes,

and he shows up at Venice all the time. I'm looking forward to his movie this year showing up at Venice. I bet you we could probably populate a good chunk of the Venice lineup just from... Venice is going to be more predictable this year than Cannes was. It'll have the Luka, it'll have the, it'll have Bagonia, it'll have, what was the other one that you said? The Noah Bomb Back. Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. Um, they'll have the Guillermo del Toro. They'll have, they'll have the Chloe Jow.

Yeah. Um, yeah. Ham net. Ham net. It's, it's about, it's a movie about, uh, placing a ham inside a net. Would you pull that ham with a net? Fuck up. Fuck, I'm going to be saying that all, yeah.

I am so sorry. I hate that you said that, though. Oh, my. I hate you Oh, stupid. Please, if this movie is Best Picture nominated, please have Stockard Channing present the Best Picture Reel for Hamnet. Well, get Patrick Vale on the horn about that since he and Stockard are besties now, so.

Incredible. you pull that ham with a knife. Sometimes I just make it stupid. Okay. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Please cut out all my laughter. Absolutely not.

All right. Anything else you want to say before we move on to I don't know, the IMDB game, I suppose. Go watch all the beauty and the bloodshed show. Yeah, good movie. Real good movie. Great movie. All right.

Now you have to give me a half a second to pick an IMDB game because I forgot. Sorry, sorry. Joe, should we move on to the IMDB game? We really should. All right, would you like to explain the IMDB game to our listener? Yeah, every week we end our episodes with the IMDB game, wherein we challenge each other with the name of an actor or actress,

and we try and guess the top four titles that IMDB says they are most known. known for. If any of those titles are television shows, voice only performances, or non-acting credits, we mention those titles up front. After two wrong guesses, we get 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. What's happening? You giving first? You guessing first? I'll give first. All right. So I ventured down the Tim Roth path. Tim Roth A great actor should probably have been nominated a handful of times for an Oscar, has only been nominated the once, though, for his villainous performance in Rob Roy.

Rob Roy, he starred opposite not only Liam Neeson at a time when I really thought Liam Neeson was hot stuff in Rob Roy, I will say, but also opposite Jessica Lang. Now, we have not done Jessica Lang since 2018, so I'm going to put her back. in the hopper, and have you guess the known for for Jessica Lang. Is it wrong to want to look at a little Lang? Okay, Jessica Lang. Yes. No television.

No television. Thank God. Francis. No. I love that your first guest for Jessica Lang is Francis. First of all, that's fantastic. Tutsi. Tutsi, correct.

Unfortunately, King Kong. King Kong is correct. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Which one of her, I guess, blue sky? Not blue sky. Two wrong, so you'll get your years. Your years are 1979 and 1981.

Hmm. Hmm. Is one of them, the postman always rings twice? The postman always rings twice is 1981, yes. Wow, okay. So even further back. So 79. Yes.

Can I ask the year for King Kong? 76. Okay. That's what I thought. So, she's not Oscar nominated at this point. I'm pretty sure her first nominations were Francis and Tutsi. I believe you're right.

What? What, like, big movie would this be? Late 70s. Did she ever work with Scorsese? I don't think she had. Oh, your face. Your face, your face, your face. What is Scorsese's 79 movie?

No, it's not Scorsese. That's not why I'm making a face. Are you trying to be like he doesn't work with women? Why are you even thinking that? No, no, no, no, no. I am, when you get this, it's going to be. funny. Oh, okay. So it's not going to say, it's um, lynch, loach, my win. One car why. Very funny that we did not mention that in the Cannes episode. I know, I know, revert to that in

this episode. Um, maybe I'll end that episode with the, uh, the Monica Balucci. Maybe that's, that'll be a good one. Okay, so what's, I might need another hint. I believe this is, I'm pretty sure this is the Best Picture nominee. This was the... Oh, it's all that jazz. There you go. Jesus.

Now you see why I was making the faces. Yeah, because that's like one of my favorite movies. Uh-huh. I just, you don't think about Jessica Lang when you think about that movie. And if you do, why? Like, there's no. Nine million other things to think about before you think about Chescalang. Well, here we are.

All right. So for you, I went back into previous cinematic Rosencrantz and Guildensterns. Oh. Who played, I believe it was Rosencrantz, in the Kenneth Branagh Hamlet, none other than Mr. Timothy Spall. Oh. Who was the other one? I forget. All right.

Okay, Timothy Schpahl, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Ascaband. Incorrect. Okay. Secrets and lies. Can I get you to say that as he says it in the film? I don't know how he says it in the film. Secrets and lies. That is correct.

I will say Mr. Turner. This is the Turner. Yes, is correct. Okay. You do a good story. ball. Damn. Thanks. All right. So we got two Mike Lees. I suppose

there could be more. The Harry Potter one not being in there is kind of surprising, but we carry on. It'll be dumb if it's another Harry Potter because he's only really featured in the one. And also it would make it impossible to guess which of the other ones, because

whatever. All right. So spall, spall, spall, spall, spall, vanilla sky. Vanilla sky is incorrect. Your years are 2007 and 2009. It is one of the fucking Harry Potter ones, isn't it? Is it Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix? No, there's no Harry Potter.

Oh, there's no Harry Potter's. Oh, okay. No Harry's Potter. No Harry's Potter. You know, I do kind of, when we first started this, we, when we first started the show, we used to say, no Marvel, no Harry Potter. Right. A lot of those people have, a lot of those people they're known for as have backed off of those.

Not all of them, but a lot of them. Less so Marvel than Harry Potter, but like Harry Potter is not showing up anymore, and thank God. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Okay. Timothy Spall. Okay, so I'm going to probably need some kind of hints. The 07, it's not, I mean, this is not a Harry Potter movie, but like, aesthetically...

It's franchise? Is it Nanny McPhee? Is it a... It is not, neither of these are franchises. Okay. Though the 07, you could, you could consider this director is like the name brand appeal. and I think there's some visual adjacency to this era of Harry Potter. So is it about like... Though I think this movie looks better than any Harry Potter movie ever did. A lot of those movies do look pretty good.

I was going to say, the Harry Potter... Listen, I will continue to say that you do not have to pretend that you have not found value in the Harry Potter things just because J.K. Rowling sucks. Some of this is also me being like people People didn't really dog on this movie But I'm like, no, that's a really visually accomplished movie It's 07. 07. And part of the reason they wanted to dog on it is It is Sweeney Todd.

Okay, okay. The last movie that Tim Burton tried. I mean, the thing about Sweeney Todd is the visual aesthetic is so just purposefully so, like decidedly gray. It's like detox at that one finale, where she just sort of painted her whole self black and white, like that kind of a thing. It's just like everything is very decidedly gray. And because he's used to that palette in things before, I think a lot of people were just like, oh, okay, typical Tim Burton. You know, there's a lot of things in that Sweeney Todd adaptation that I feel like are.

not necessary to that movie. And I think if Burton had not indulged in, say, casting another big-eyed, wide-eyed, you know, waif or whatever, as Joanna, I think you probably get a little more. Well, I mean the leads, too. I'd stick up for Helena Bonham Carter. I do too. I think for that moment in time, I think that depth casting makes all the sense in the world. Probably also the last time he tried. Yeah. Yeah. And I think he's, I think he performs it well. And the menace of it well. I think, well, whatever, we don't have to talk about. Yeah, right.

He's also age-appropriate, but, like, he's still in a vibe that makes him feel like he's not age-appropriate. Right. No, I know what you mean. Last movie, 09. This is an Academy Award-winning director, but this is before they won their Academy Award. Nobody talks about this movie when we talk about this director. Martin McDonough? No.

Tom Hooper? Yes. So, oh, nine, Tom Hooper. Is it Pirate Radio? No. That, I believe, is... That's not Richard Curtis, isn't it? It is Richard Curtis scripted.

I don't know whether he also directed. Oh, it's Mike Newell, isn't it? It is Mike Newell, I think you're right. Yes. All right, what's... I know, so Tom Hooper did John Adams, but that's TV. John Adams is good, by the way. Yeah, probably the best Tom Hooper.

So, oh, 9, Tom Hooper. nobody talks about it. It's a sports movie. Yes, it's a soccer movie, right? It's that winning season or something like that? No. It's the damned United. The damned United.

Yes, yes. The damned United being in Timothy Spalls known for. It's weird, right? And not any of the Harry Potter movies. That's weird. Yeah, it's weird, man. Okay. All right.

Well, another festival wrapped up by the old this had Oscar buzz crew. I wish to go to the festival. I do wish to go to the festival. Speaking of Sondheim. I enjoyed, I, I tickled myself. Speaking of making yourself laugh, I enjoyed that little intro I've made for a little... I'm still laughing at my stupid joke. I'm going to be laughing about it until the Oscar ceremony. Did you pull that ham with a net? You're stupid idiot. All right. Bring us home. That's our episode. If you want more this head off,

You could check out our Tumblr at this head oscarbuzz.tumlr.com. You can also follow us on Instagram at this head Oscar buzz and on Patreon at patreon.com slash this had Oscar buzz. Joe, where can listeners find more of you? I'm on letterboxed and blue sky at Chris File. That's F-E-I-L and I'm on whatever else you say. And there. What about the other pod?

Well, isn't that yours, Joe? no we're not going to do this we're not going to pretend that we're each other for oh jesus christ sorry i didn't realize what no this we'll do it again it was stupid it was a stupid joke all right i'll just be me uh thank you for fine i'll hype you you can find joe at joe read uh on your socials and uh you can also follow his other podcast de me myself and i on patreon dot com slash de me pod following the works of one to me more We would like to thank Kyle Cummings for his fantastic artwork, Dave Gonzalez and Gavin Movies for the technical guidance. Taylor Cole for our theme music.

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that's all for this week we hope you'll be back next week for more buzz and more festival fever yeah would you pull that ham with a knit