Unclear and Present Danger - Mission: Impossible

Episode Date: March 2, 2024

For this week’s episode of the podcast, we watched director Brian De Palma’s 1996 adaptation of Mission: Impossible, starring Tom Cruise, Jon Voight, Henry Czerny (Kittridge!), Emmanuelle Béart, Jean Reno, Ving Rhames, Kristin Scott Thomas and Vanessa Redgrave. It was shot by frequent De Palma collaborator Stephen H. Burum and edited by Paul Hirsch. Screenplay by David Koepp and Robert Towne. Mission: Impossible, based on the television series, was the inaugural project of Tom Cruise’s production company, and the Mission: Impossible franchise has become a core part of Cruise’s celebrity career. The film was generally well-received by critics, although there were complaints about its convoluted plot, and was one of the biggest hits of 1996, grossing nearly $181 million on a budget of $45 million.In Mission: Impossible, Cruise plays Ethan Hunt, a member of the Impossible Missions Force who is on the run after his entire team — including its leader, Jim Phelps, played by John Voight — is killed in a failed mission to obtain a secretive list of every undercover CIA agent. When Hunt learns that the mission was actually a staged hunt for a mole within the IMF — and that the real mole is still out there, seeking the list — he goes on the run in an effort to obtain the list for himself, expose the mole, and regain his freedom. To do so, he recruits his own Impossible Mission Team — comprised of Ving Rhames, Jean Reno and Emmanuelle Beart — and stages a break-in at CIA headquarters in Langley. What unfolds next is a series of twists, turns, surprises and betrayals.The tagline for Mission: Impossible was “Expect the Impossible.” You can Mission: Impossible to rent or buy on Amazon and iTunes, and to stream on Amazon Prime Video and Paramount Plus.Our next episode is Michael Bay’s action thriller, The Rock.Connor Lynch produced this episode. Artwork by Rachel Eck.Contact us!Follow us on Twitter!John GanzJamelle BouieUnclearPodAnd join the Unclear and Present Patreon! For just $5 a month, patrons get access to a bonus show on the films of the Cold War, and much, much more. The latest episode of the Patreon is on the 1961 film “Judgment at Nuremberg.”

Good morning, Mr. Phelps. This is your mission, should you choose to accept it. Simple game. Is he serious? Always. It's much worse than you think. We're being ambushed. Abort, that's in order.

They knew, they knew we were coming. Do you read me? I don't care how he did it. I want to know why he did it. You worried about me. Why you survived. I'm sure we can find something I have that you need. I'm sexually.

You know what's suddenly. These guys are trained to be ghosts. Let's not waste time chasing after him. Just make him come to us. Find something that's personally important to him and you squeeze. This whole operation was a decoy. I can understand you're very upset. You've never seen me very upset.

This tape will self-destruct in five seconds. Welcome to Unclear and Military Thrower's about the political and military thrillers of the 1990s and what they say about the political and military thrillers of the 1990s And what they say about the politics of that decade, I'm Jamel Bowie. I'm a columnist for the New York Times opinion section. My name is John Gans. I write the Substack Newsletter Unpopular Front. And I am the author of the forthcoming book, When the Clock Broke, Conmen, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s, which will be out in June. Be out in June, pre-order, if you can. I recently saw a comment somewhere. I think I had mentioned that we were doing this movie. on the podcast, the movie I'm about to discuss, and someone commented that they really like the podcast, and they were telling someone else that they shouldn't expect it to be a movie recap podcast, but they should expect to learn a great deal about politics in the 90s and

how it's influencing our lives today. I thought that was a great little recap of this podcast, and I think it's a great little way to describe what you hope to do with your book. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. so for this week's episode of the podcast we watched the great and i understand that me calling this guy great might be a little controversial i think he's great uh you watch the great director brian de palmas 19 you can't even you can't even say that with a straight face to bell i know you wanted to but yeah okay i really like trying to palma i know we watched the palmas This 1996 adaptation of Mission Impossible, starring Tom Cruise, John Voight, Henry Zerney, Kitridge, people will know him as, Emmanuel Beart, BART, Jean Renaud, Ving, Ving, Rames, Kristen Scott Thomas, and Vanessa Redgrave.

It was shot by frequent diploma collaborator Stephen H. Burham and edited by Paul Hirsch. We did a previous episode that was edited by Paul Hirsch in a movie, Falling Down. I think I recommended Paul Hirsch's memoir on that episode, which I will recommend again, it's quite good. Screenplayed by David Kapp and Robert Town, Mission Impossible, based on the television series, and this movie in particular is a sequel to both the 66 series and there was a brief series in like 84 or 85, which was like a sequel to all the Mission Impossible stuff. This movie was the inaugural project of Tom Cruise's production company, and the Mission

Impossible franchise has pretty much become a core part of Cruz's celebrity career. The film was generally well received by critics, although there were complaints about a convoluted plot. I don't think it's plot to convoluted. That's not that bad. And it was one of the biggest hits of 96, grossing nearly $181 million domestically on a budget of $45 million. So this was like a smash hit.

In Mission Impossible, Cruise plays Ethan Hunt, a member of the Impossible Missions Force, who is on the run after his entire team, including its leader, Jim Phelps, played by John Voight, is killed in a failed mission to obtain a secretive list of every undercover CIA agent, the knock list. When Hunt learns that the mission was actually a staged hunt for a mole within, I guess the IMF, I guess the CIA, that part is unclear, in that the real mole is still out there seeking the list. It goes on the run in an effort to obtain the list for himself, expose the mole, and regain his freedom. To do so, he recruits his own Impossible mission team, comprised of Big Rames, Jean Reno, and Emmanuel Fiat,

in stages of break-in at CIA headquarters in Langley. What unfolds next is a series of twists, turns, surprises, and betrayals. The tagline for Mission Impossible was, Expect the Impossible. I think this is a good tagline. And you can watch Mission Impossible, rather, it's available to buy or rent on Amazon and iTunes. You can stream it.

I believe on Amazon Prime Video in Paramount Plus, or you can be like me and you can buy the Blu-ray set. When Dead Reckoning 2 comes out this year, actually, they will probably release a new, like, $200-7 movie set, and I'm probably going to buy that. Sign up for the Patreon and help Jamel afford a $200. Mission Impossible was released on May 22nd, 1996, so let's check up in New York Times. from page for that. Okay. Well, there is not a lot of news because it is the middle of the 1990s when everything seemed fine. But here, I'll see what they got. In new challenge to peace plan, Bosnia may pull out of election. Bosnia and Herzegovina May 21st. And a new challenge to the,

I've been given to understand that I read far too fast. So I'm going to start, try to slow down a lot. So if it sounds too slow, I'm sorry. I don't know what to do. In a new challenge to the American brokered peace in the former Yugoslavia, the Bosnian government threatened today to withdraw from elections unless voting rules were drastically changed and NATO arrested the most prominent Serbian war criminals. The elections scheduled for September 14th are intended to underpin a stable democracy here and allow the withdrawal of 60,000 NATO peacekeeping troops. In an interview today with Aup Gannich, I think that's how you say that, the vice president of the Muslim-like government said the elections would not be held unless Radvon Karadzic

and Raqomladic, Bosnian Serb leaders indicted for genocide were removed from power. He also insisted that voting rules be changed to prevent Serbs from getting electrical control over Muslim towns and villages they seized during the war. I don't know how this all worked out, to be honest with you. My history of the Bosnian and of the former Yugoslavian conflicts is limited. But there was a peace brokered in the United States, actually, between Bosnian Serb leaders and Serbia and. the state of Batsia and Herzegovina that led to the end of the war. Of course, listeners

probably know that during the war, NATO intervened. There was instances of genocide and ethnic cleansing, which were eventually punished. I think both Radivankarovych and Raqomladic faced trial for, eventually would face trial for their part in. genocidal acts. So, yeah, that's that. I don't know exactly how this one situation panned out, but that, you know, this is part of the winding down of the post-Yugoslav civil wars. Or they're not, I guess they weren't really civil wars.

Well, in Bosnia, it was a civil war. And let's see. What do we got here else? Sicilian mafia loses another one. Italian policemen wearing ski masks to prevent possible identification. by the mob, escorted Giovanni Brusca from Palermo police hoarders, headquarters to a maximum security prison yesterday. The 90s were big for Italy cracking down on the mafia.

The mafia tended to fight back. When I was in Rome, there was some building I was in where it could have been in the Vatican, could it? It was damaged by a mafia bomb. They left the damage to show the examples of it because the mafia underwent a bombing campaign to kind of defend itself from the state. The mafia in Italy really doesn't fuck around.

They're very, very, very, very violent and really have no compunctions about killing people at large numbers of people even. Anything looks interesting. It's mostly domestic news. And also, there was a blackout at this time in New York, which I vaguely remember. And there is a piece about privacy issues

and psychotherapy practices. There's a picture of Clinton because the chief admiral of the United States. I don't think that's a real title. Secretary of the Navy died and it was his funeral. Anything look interesting here to you? The only thing that looks interesting to me is that there's his plan to refit Medicaid. And I can't quite figure out what the plan was. I'm assuming it's just going to mean it just was a major cut to Medicaid that Republicans wanted to pursue in addition to the major cuts to welfare or aid to families with dependent children.

As listeners may or may not know, AFDC was ended this year, in fact. Let me check when that actually happened. Yeah. So the law ending AFDC was signed into law. was signed just a couple months after this, in August, August 22nd, 1936, and aid for families with dependent children became temporary aid for needy families. And so what happened with that program is that AFDC was entitlement to cash assistance. So you, much in the same way that every American is entitled to food stamps, if you fall below a certain income, you get food stamps

and there's no, like, set budget for it. It's just sort of the government spends as much as is needed by eligibility. That's how AFDC worked. There was no, there was no set budget necessarily. It was just if you fell below the poverty line and you were a mother or children, congratulations, you got federal aid. And so that ends. And temporary aid for needy families is a bounded program, and it's a block grant,

which I think we've discussed this before, but that basically means that instead of the federal government directly sending you the check, the feds instead give each state a set of money, a block set of money that they kind of spend however they please to finance the program. The main effect of block grants is to just cut the program outright. It's just, it's like it's a backdoor cut because what the amount of the block grant has to be basically increased every fiscal year to adjust for inflation. If that doesn't happen, the real value of the black grant decreases, and that's the real value of the aid decreases.

And these days, TAN of aid in many states is like basically, it's like, it's like a couple hundred bucks per month. It's like it's not, it's not really worth much. So that's what happened with welfare. Medicaid is a much more positive story. They didn't accomplish cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act in 2009 or signed until in 2010 ends up being a massive expansion of Medicaid. You should think of the ACA, for those of you who remember this battle, and those of you don't. You should think of Obamacare as less of a, like the exchange, the health care exchanges and the subsidies are sort of like the marquee part, the part that everyone I think knows about.

But the actual significant thing about Obamacare was it was a gigantic expansion of Medicaid, basically expanding it, I think, up to like 150% of the poverty line, maybe 200% of the poverty line, and like increasing health insurance, federal health insurance coverage by like, you know, millions and millions of people got on the federal rolls for health insurance. And under its original, under how it was originally written, states couldn't really choose. The way it was originally written, speaking of mafia, the way it was originally written is like the feds will go to you and say, listen, if you expand Medicaid to cover 150% of people living above the federal poverty line in your state, we will cover all the cost of that for the next five years. And then after that, you only owe like 10 cents on the dollar. but if you don't do it, you lose all Medicaid funding. So it's either you do the new federal program or you don't have Medicaid anymore. Yeah. And the idea was that you just wanted to coerce states into making the great decision.

The Supreme Court in, what was it, King, King v. Burwell? No, Sebelius, the Supreme Court, in an opinion by John Roberts, kept the least in part of the ACA, the individual mandate, which in fairness at the time, everyone thought that this was the most important part, and then gutted the Medicaid expansion and said that actually states have to be able to choose whether they're going to really choose, really have a real choice about whether they're going to expand Medicaid. And so what ends up happening is that basically every blue state expands Medicaid. And for the last 10 years, it's been kind of a grinding state-by-state battle to expand Medicaid. Virginia, I know, expanded it in 2018 after

elected Democrats the previous year. In there are a bunch of states, most of them in the former Confederacy, which have not expanded Medicaid. North Carolina just did. Louisiana did a couple years ago. And they had a Democratic governor. Florida has not. Georgia has not.

South Carolina has not. I think South Carolina may have just done it, though. Anyway, Medicaid, interesting program. Probably if America ever gets single payer, it's going to be through Medicaid because it's a little easier because it's a little easier because it's a time. state administered to just, like, begin raising eligibility thresholds. So you can have, like, you know, you can raise the eligibility threshold to 200% of the poverty line.

You can have, you know, entitlement for children, Medicaid for children. You can sort of like, you can do lots of stuff and cover a large part of the public through Medicaid. And then, yeah. That's what I found interesting. Nothing relating to the movie, but that's okay. Because there's a lot to talk about with the movie. Again, we watched Mission Impossible, 1996, directed by Brian DePalma.

Brian DePalma, if you are somehow unaware of who the guy is, is a very famous director. One of the kind of a contemporary of the 70s, like, boys. Of the actually good directors for the 1970s. Right. Like Martin Scorsese or Francis Ford Coppola, Brian DePaulma is also Italian. He was very much part of their social circle. Yeah. Friends with George Lucas.

George Lucas, that's more his way. I'm sorry. I'm not going to shit on Brian DePaul. It's okay. De Palma's story I find funny is that like Lucas sent DePaulma the script for Star Wars. And DePaul was like, what the fuck is this shit? Okay. To his credit.

And I think actually De Palma wrote, like rewrote the opening text crawl for Star Wars. Oh, interesting. Because he had seen it in early showing. It was like, George, this is terrible. This opening crawl. So De Palma, one of these guys, part of this social circle and was a really sort of major director in the late 70s and through the 80s. His big sort of breakout hit was his adaptation of Carrie, starring Susie Spacic and John Travolta.

And he has a couple other movies around this time that, like, people like obsession, The Fury, Sisters is kind of weird. It has, what's your name, Lois Lane, Margo Kidder in it. It's pretty good. But then he has a bunch of, like, really kind of popular and well-refer. regarded, often kind of divisive movies in the 80s dressed to kill, blowout, scarface, body double, the untouchables, casualties of war are kind of the big ones. And kind of his whole thing is, he's very inspired by Hitchcock. My wife describes De Palma as like, what if Hitchcock was really in the tits? He takes Hitchcock sort of interest in double identities and, and, and, voyeurism and kind of like amps it up a lot in addition to having his own preoccupations with sort of like sexual transgression and double lives um so what you're

saying is it's a trashier yes it is trashier it is a trashier hitchcock which is something Jamel Bowie likes okay uh and the big thing the Palmer thing is lots of sort of like stylistic things that people who have seen any of his movies will immediately recognize. In addition to graphic violence and, um, uh, and, and, lots of, uh, uh, you know, salacious stuff. Um, he is very much into the Dutch angle, very much into the, the, uh, the, uh, the canted angle, uh, which is another kind of form of the Dutch ankle. He has a very distinctive palette, color palette.

Film stock or whatever he's choosing, I've noticed. His colors are very rich. Yeah, yeah. Very rich and sort of, often vibrant. He likes the split diopeter or the split screen. So in the Langley scene, there are a bunch of scenes in movie, like the Langley scene is the Langley seen as the most prominent one, I think, where the foreground and the background are both in deep focus at the same time.

And that's called a split diopter shot in which, because normally if you have the foreground in focus, the background is out of focus. The background in focus, the foreground is out of focus. But if you have basically like a lens on top of the lens that keeps them both in focus, it creates this kind of unusual, this unusual effect. which is an old effect. You can see it in Citizen Gaglia, actually. But the original

version of this kind of original version is he do split screens with two kind of things happening on both sides of the screen simultaneously. What else? He likes the 360 degree pan, but I don't think you see one of these in this. And he likes long takes

quite a bit. So a lot of this stuff, mention all of this about the palma because i think mission impossible despite being this franchise film despite being the spy movie is also very much brian de palma movie um very much part of his like represents so many of his preoccupations and especially with double lives and double identities which is sort of perfect for the kind of movie this is they're apparently i mean you can kind of tell uh if you're paying attention but there's a whole kind of subplot involving tom Cruz and

Eminuel Beart, them sort of like having a sexual relationship that tiny bits of it are left in, but like the bulk of it, I think, is cut out of the film for time reasons. But that's, you could very, you know,

Tom, Ethan Hahn, sleeping with his boss's wife is like very much a diploma kind of thing. So yeah, that's a little background on him. This movie, like, I said, it's really much like a sequel to the two Mission Impossible television series. There was an attempt to make a Mission Impossible movie in the 80s that didn't get off

the ground. And really the reason this happens is because Tom Cruise specifically was looking for a project. He has his new production company. He wants a project. And this is a thing that he attached himself. too in part because he was a fan of the show. Cruz worked on a story with Sidney Pollock for a few months, and then Cruz got Brian DePaulva. The thing about this franchise, especially in this early episodes, its early entries, is that it's very much a cruise directed thing.

So Cruz is like, I want to work with John Wu. I want to work with J.J. Abrams. I want to work with Brian Bird. And that's, that's. And then he gives the directors, like, a lot of leeway to be themselves. Sort of it's kind of an unusual franchise in that regard. Uh, but, but, bah, so the, the thing to know about it being based off of the television series is that a lot of the actors in the television series were fucking mad. Yeah.

About this movie. Yeah. Because of its vibe and because of, uh, what happens to, uh, some key characters. I believe Martin Landau was very upset. Peter Graves is quite upset. Somebody walked out of the premiere. Yeah, people walked out. I think Peter Graves walked out of the premiere.

So that's just, you know, this was, and you'll still find some people who are like, I don't like that movie very much because it's not the same as the television show. But, yeah, critics thought it was pretty good, thought it was convoluted. I don't think that's the case. And that's, I feel like a good segue into, into a few more plot details. The movie takes place in kind of post-Cold War Europe, very much post-Cold War Europe. It's, I believe it takes place mostly in Prague and makes its way Prague to Langley to London are kind of the places where the film goes. And it involves this attempt to get this list of undercurrent.

cover agents. Our opening kind of sequence, our opening opening sequence is sort of like the tail end of a mission where you kind of meet a lot of the key characters, get a sense of what this movie is going to be, and then we move to the plotting for the mission that kind of a step, like sets the story into motion in which Jim Phelps, who is the leader of the impactful mission team, assembles the team to steal this list. As the mission unfolds, everyone is killed.

but Cruz, and it becomes clear that something is awry. Cruz's handler, Kitridge, played by Henry the great Henry Zerney, informs him that this whole thing was a mole hunt and they think he's the mole. And he goes on the run. And then we basically have sort of like, it's, I think this movie is very well structured. And we move from basically Cruz, Ethan Hunt, trying to figure out what to do to meeting Vanessa Redgraves character who sort of be the dealer who's trying to get this list to assembling a team to leading that team to steal the list from Langley CIA headquarters, which

that scene, everyone knows, Cruz suspended from the ceiling, maybe kind of the most iconic action scene of the 1990s, like very, very memorable, parodied everywhere, sort of like it was just like it was a huge deal this scene. After stealing the list, the team is sort of betrayed by Jean Renaud's character. And Cruz goes to deliver or goes to stop this arms dealer or this dealer who wants the list. While also letting Kidridge know that this is where he will be and this is where the list will be. And everything kind of converges on a confrontation on a train at a London or out of the UK to Paris where all the various players are trying to get ahead.

It's very straightforward, but, you know, as far as this podcast, first the subject of this podcast goes, the thing that struck me on this watch is how much this movie, I think, kind of really does capture the exact tone and vibe of kind of like the post-Cold War thriller, which is that sort of like, everything is dingy, nothing's all that glamorous. and it's sort of like this overwhelming feeling. And this is what this is what Phelps' character says. He's talking about Kidridge, but really he's talking about himself or rather

John Boyd's character, Phelps says, you know, there's this line he says where it's like the Cold War's over. The president is doing his job without your permission and you have like a lousy marriage and like $60,000 a year. And this sort of like sense of kind of a pointlessness to all of this. is I think very much like it's it's it's it's it is the post cold war vibe and I think this movie kind of captures it so well John thoughts I've been talking a lot uh no that's okay I think that's you're right so um what was it what did I want to start off with I think

you're you're absolutely right like this kind of I think this is what also disturb some of the people who who were like in the original cast of the TV show which I've never really watched so I don't really give a shit about but Like, I think the cynicism of the movie, which is partly De Palma, and partly, yeah, this post-Cold World kind of post-historical moment where, you know, the Cold War's orientation for these intelligence ops no longer exists. They're, you know, in the, they're in Kiev, they're in Prague. They're kind of in the former East. But, but there's, you know, everything, everything's about money now, essentially. they've become sort of mercenary things are less not about ideology um so it it is very much in that

vein uh and you know that that part of the world was kind of a curiosity at this time i think we've talked about like the kind of chic of prague after the cold war you know where it became inexpensive and easy to visit um so yeah this is it's it's sort i think like well i don't know there's probably like five or six movies that are like the like the highlight of our of the genre that we're trying to cover on the podcast and this is like one of them you know like if you're going to do like this is just like an actually um you know exemplary movie for the type of thing we're talking about and i think that you know it's it's a it's a step of quality above some of the other action movies that we watch and you know frankly it doesn't feel dated like i think the effects still look cool the movie's still exciting I like this movie I mean I know that this is an action adventure movie

I know Brian DePaul is kind of a schlockmeister from a certain point of view but like actually Mission Impossible this first one is less about explosions

is kind of and like everybody complained about the plot like I think it's a pretty cerebral espionage movie I mean it's got great action scenes but like yeah

the plot is kind of fun to follow it's got like you know actual spy craft stuff going on Like, I think it's like, for De Palma, it's also, I mean, there's some gore and some violence and stuff like that, but, but it's pretty restrained and like he does a good job with this genre. Like, I think, and I think what bugs me about the later mission impossibles is they just turn to like, I don't know, shh, like, how many times are you going to, I don't know if this is ever having a mission possible, but it's just like my annoyance with action movies.

Like, dude, I've seen a fucking helicopter crash into a building so many goddamn time. you know like it's just like action for me like action sequences start to get dull after a while because I'm like yeah these these are like cliches or like a motorcycle drive off something and the person fly off it just becomes and I don't I feel like this movie does not have I mean I guess the hanging from the ceiling scene became a cliche and copied but it doesn't have that many action cliches the script is pretty snappy like it's just it's just a total joy to watch and yeah I think that the cynicism of the movie and the and the slight i mean the good guys win is not as bleak as the 70s thrillers that we've talked about right there's still kind if they're still and i don't think it's

as bleak as the outlook of buying de palma's movies from that from that era but there is a certain hard edge to it or cynicism that i think uh comes through and it's kind of makes it's kind of like fun and adventurous more than like, oh, this is a bummer about the human condition, which I think is also kind of like a little way of post-hist history being like, well, you know, the end of history has happened. We don't have these ideological conflicts to register yourself into, and now we're just all in business. But at the same time, in this post-modern condition, you can kind of create your identity

in a new way you can go off on your own you have this adventure that's outside of the structures of the corporation or the country you live in like i think that movie movie really spoke to that like sense of openness of the 1990s which is like yeah you know like new possibilities you can be different kind of guy different kind of girl like and i think that that's sort of like that was the upshot of the feeling of being kind of uh you know let loose from the from the previous way of organizing the world. And I think the movie was kind of reveling in that as much as it shows it the kind of bleak or darker sides of that.

I think it's it's sort of like this movie was like, it's weird to say that it reflects the optimism of the 1990s, but this movie did in a similar way that almost golden eye does too. It was just a fun moment when this movie came out where everyone was just like, that is a great movie. That was so much fun. The 1990s, what a wonderful time to be alive. And the movie really captures some of the, there's something very, I don't know what the joyful about the movie or something. It's really take, it doesn't take itself too seriously. It's really enjoying itself. And I think that's Brian DePaulma at his best. I think Brian DePaulma is like, can make a lot of fun

stuff happened. I think he gets bogged down with his like, he's like, he gets, he overindulges sometimes in the gore and the trashiness. But he had to like keep that under wraps for this movie. And I think it made it really work. Like he was like, I'm making it like a big Hollywood movie that's going to people are going to bring their families to. Right. I saw this with my pair. Yeah. So I think like under those constraints, you know, like he really, it really becomes like a pretty fine film. And like, yeah, like a good, a really good spot. movie. I think that's right. I don't disagree with any of that. I agree with you on very much on this sort of sense of I guess I would call it optimism. But that the movie, this is not a movie that's sort of like down on the country necessarily. Like the Jim Phelps is, Jim Phelps' assessment is not presented as like the obvious truth. It's just sort of this is a, this is a cynical person. This here it is. This. Here it is. This old.

Cold Cold Warrior is cynical and can't see any life after it. Right. Can't see any life after it. It is unappreciative. It is really unable to adjust to a new world. But we have Ethan Hunt who can't, who is patriotic, who is duty bound, but also has an energy and kind of an enthusiasm. him for the future that will that will serve the organization well because as you see at the end, he becomes kind of the new leader of the IMF. Right. Or not the IMF as much as the top agent, the guy who they go to for the hardest assignments. And that's sort of, that's the, that is, I think, the contrast that is in the film. And it's noteworthy, right?

that's sort of like the movie begins and they're headed to Prague, they're headed to old Cold War Europe and it ends and the next assignment's in Jamaica. It's in the global south. It's in this new, brighter part of the world compared to rainy, foggy Prague. Yeah, that's a very good point. It kind of moves out of the fog of the east, the dark and fog of the east. The dark and fog of east another thing about the movie that that places it in that moment it's like he has to go out the bureaucracy is sort of like he needs to break with it like he needs in order to be patriotic in order to do his duty he actually has to break with this institution we see this in a lot of different movies but it happens in a lot of 90s movies it's like well it happens in 70s movies

too but usually there the differences in the 70s movies is like the guy's like on the outside he's on the disavowed list or whatever or you know the institutions let him down. And then there's no getting back in. Like he's out in the cold. Right. Like in three days of the condor. When he's out, he's out. Yeah, exactly. He's out. He's out. He's out. He's out. And there's unsure whether institutions are ever going to work for him again. And basically, like, the lesson here is, you know, Ethan Hunt has to break the rules. But he's like, he's doing. He's following his duty. He breaks into the CIA something, you know, highly criminal. And arguably a betrayal. his old loyalties, but he does it all, and it looks as if he's become a criminal.

He adopts the behavior of a rogue agent in order to actually uncover the plot that, you know, of the actual rogue agent. So he has to go rogue, which is, you know, arguably kind of an action-adventure cliche a bit, but it is interesting to think about in terms of, well, you know, what does it mean, you know, that he can't trust that the the thinking process of like Henry Cerny, his handler, who's always this kind of evil Reaganite bureaucrat guy and does an amazing job at it. He's also in clear and present danger in that role. That's right.

And almost the same, almost the same role. And yeah, I think that also speaks to this like that entrepreneurialism. And like the entrepreneur, there's like there's a bad entrepreneurial. of, you know, the 90s where someone just cynical and is like, I'm going to cash in, I don't believe in anything anymore. And then you've got the, you know, Ethan Hunt's entrepreneurialism where he has to go off on his own and start his own little firm, but then it somehow comes and serves the universal purpose again. He says he's out, but then he realizes, okay, you know, I'm going to go back and do my duty. I'm not going to become, you know, I'm not going to be a lifelong

mercenary or so or like this other guy yeah and I think it's just like these are all figures also his little team they're all figures who have been like well they're on the disavowed list so they're like agents who've lost their cover and they just you know say like we have no knowledge of them so it's very they're like in this they're like individuals totally cut off right they have no institutional support they're floating they're homeless they're rootless cosmopolitans to use the coin a phrase and you know they have to kind of make their way in the world and we see this in a lot of movies of this era where characters are like kind of we saw it in sneakers that there's like a little entrepreneurial figure and the guy had to disappear and recreate

his identity so yeah i mean de palma's whole thing with recreation of identities is just going very well with like you know where people's consciousness is at this point about what it means to live in society and and what is a hero and what's what's heroic behavior and what's dutiful behavior and and I think that you know the 90s have has a mixture of an omni meaning like lawlessness lack of institutions, self-directed behavior, but also a lot of optimism that that was going to actually produce something interesting and good. In some ways, I suppose it did. Like, if you look at the way, if you look at the way people like craft their identities and lives today, I mean, obviously our material circumstances are different, but we're still living in just the extent

in 1990s. Like, that I think, I mean, our generation is the one that's like adults now. right, or young adults who are starting to get, you know, control over the culture industry, I suppose. So I think that some of the, some of the styles, I mean, there's also a lot of 90s nostalgia right now, but I think it's telling that like, yeah, we're still sort of developing the threads that happen in the 90s, but under, I mean, under different economic conditions. I think there was an expectation that prosperity would continue. that easy prosperity would continue and it would eventually spread to everybody right i think that's right um easy prosperity would continue i mean this again is that the the kind of fundamental hopefulness

represented by crews that the future is going to be bountiful um it's going to be a future of triumph and not one um for which we will have to look past longingly look longingly back at the past And what's sort of interesting about, you know, modern day 90s nostalgia is how much of it takes this, like, it is the perspective of this kind of movie, this perspective of this kind of character. It's the perspective of, yeah, the 90s were this period of boundlessness, this period of broad prosperity. It's something to look back to with envy that the future did not actually hold all the things we wanted. it to hold. And I, you know, I would hope that one message of this podcast is to sort of complicate that notion of the 90s as being somehow, um, a time of, you know, general peace and prosperity and stability. Like, in fact, the 90s were this supremely unsettled moment, right?

Um, um, um, this time where there was a sense of prosperity, but there was also sort of like a real kind of like reactionary current, a real conservative current running through the culture that I think it's underplayed in the present, but it's very much, very much there. Yeah, I think another interesting frame on this movie. This movie is considered to be, so this guy, David Rudnick, came up with this incredible concept called Nokia Wave, which he, it was like a kind of subgenre that he concluded, which includes Golden Eye, Mission Impossible, and Ronan, which are like, I think, the three, oh, in the first three-born movies, which are like the kind of canonical Nokia Wave movies.

And there's an article on anything, I think it's just very interesting description of these kinds of movies. Nokia Wave describes a sub-genre, investigating common cinematic motifs and tropes, touches borders in motion, espionage and paranoia, city grids and network infrastructures, technology, and the role of administration. Essential to the fabric of Nokia wave films is the time of profound identity crisis and disorientations in which during which they were produced. The 1990s and early 2000s from a Western point of EU

were the post-Cold War pre-9-11 years in which the balances of geopolitical power and with them identity narratives were foundly destabilized. I mean, this is what we're talking about. With this struggle as backdrop, Hollywood, the greatest exporting entity of American cultural imperialism, played a crucial role in attempts

to constructing new narratives to fill the void. In need of an updated plot device among these newly dissolved geopolitical certainties, Nokia wave films construct allegories which project their protagonists, often preemptively, hence often over the top and unconvincing technology scenes, onto emerging digital networks, geopolitical ruptures, and yet to be, well, I'm not going to use this word because I think it's stupid. I'll just say it, determine rhizomatic infrastructures, suggesting new ways of enacting statecraft and influencing the built environment in their wake.

Yeah, I mean, I think that's exactly right. I think that this movies, these movies, to me, are really charming in the way that they show this kind of data technology. Because at the time, it was really exciting, like the birth of the internet and the movies that they show like the possibilities of the internet. And you were like, oh, now it seems really sort of, you know, all the things that they use seem really clunky and dated. But at the time, you were just like, oh, that's so cool. You know, like being able to use your cell phone as a modem with a laptop. And, you know, right, you know, and all of this kind of stuff at the time just seemed incredibly cutting edge. And like computer hacking features into these books, I mean, into these, into these films, you know, it was just considered to be that the internet was also going to be a place of kind of infinite self-expression and self-creation.

I don't know if it is really how we relate to it anymore. I think people find it to be really exhausting now. like and a trap and I think that you know this movie kind of like you know Ethan Hunt pretends you uses an anonymous sends an email and there wasn't even like I remember just like having email in the movie was like wow email but I mean I think I must have had America Online by this point actually I don't know I think that might have been a little bit after that but yeah and he is able to use technology to mask his identity and to impersonate somebody else and this and anonymity is a big sub theme of the movie um you know and i

think that that was very exciting was the idea that you could kind of create new identities and new selves through the use of technology and i think now most people's experience of that has turned kind of sour and has become pretty it's pretty awful i think like we all desperately want to log off, you know, but we can't. And what these movies didn't anticipate was, you know, these movies like, oh, yeah, like logging in and messing around and then kind of escaping. They didn't, and like evading surveillance. They didn't suppose that we would be constantly logged on and surveilling each other

in ourselves all the time. It was very difficult to imagine exactly what the internet would become. And the kind of almost creepily ontological change it's made to human beings when you kind of reflect on it. And you're like, you don't want to think about it too much. It makes you kind of weird. It makes you kind of crazy if you think about it too much. You're like, damn, like people are so interconnected. Our thoughts are so interconnected.

You're sharing so much. Like people know so much about each other. I think that this was something that like everyone was like, oh, the internet's going to create a possibility of anonymous being in which you can kind of create selves and that's cool and that's like a freeing, a liberating thing. I don't think people thought of it as a place where like yourself would become trapped. And like, you know, we're both, we're both online quite a bit and people think they know who we are. I mean, I'm not going to start complaining about digital celebrity now. But, I mean, you know, your identity becomes fixed a lot more through the internet than it becomes open or free. Right.

In part because there's there's a total flattening of time, right? Sort of like there's no temporal distinction on the internet between past you and future you and present you. It's all kind of like if someone sees something you did 15 years ago, that has the same kind of like, wait in terms of how it's presented, how it's received, how it's interpreted as something that happened today. Yeah, exactly. It was like, oh, you're the same, you're the same people change. Like, that's the other, the strange thing about the internet is like, it's so, it's so evanescent moving so quickly, but it also is like extremely static. You're like, oh, people, this person is just like the same person they've always been. Yeah, it's, it just does

very strange and just having records of people's thoughts is very weird of a very mind i mean you know writers and historical figures kept diaries and journals and you can kind of go back and look at it but just seeing the minutia of people's i mean i'm not i mean i do this too like i'm a total hypocrite i have to criticize myself but just seeing the minutia i try to do it in a kind of ironic funny way but maybe that's a cope but like seeing the minutia of people's lives in in that way. It's just like the adventure that these movies posited of life in the digital world is really not how it turned out. And I think like it's very actually hard. I mean, I guess horror might be even a better genre now to deal with like some shit with the internet I was

thinking the other day. It's like, you know, sci-fi, yes. But, you know, espion. Well, espionage, I think, could still be a really interesting genre. But, like, you know, the possibilities of surveillance are kind of like, you know, we all know them. There's not that many, you know, like we know how intrusive surveillance can be. We know, you know, just how little privacy one could have with very little. You know, we bring all these things into our homes and there are cameras and microphones, you know. And it's sort of freaky if you begin to think about it. But I think, yeah, it's sort of hard to make art about.

You know, there's been a lot of, I don't know if there's been a really great novel. I mean, no offense to, no, I have friends who've written, I think, very fine things about what it's like to live on the internet and the fucked up things it does to you. But it's very difficult to make artwork about. And these sort of like movies from the 90s that don't have a full conception of it yet, I think are fun to look back because there's still possibilities open. Like, you know, when the technology is, I think that's like what's cool about old technology, which I think both you and I kind of, I wouldn't say fetish eyes, but both really like is like there's something freeing about it because it's less determined. It doesn't determine every possibility, right? It's just like, dude, this is like a prototype. It's not like, like the future isn't written already.

It's like, and I think that's like what's so weird about AI is like it filling the world up with more stuff, right? It's not like, it's like filling every gap. You know, it's like, well, eventually like AI will just fill everything up. It's like, you know, the thousand monkeys typewriter thing. Right, right. And it's just like, but that's actually, it's actually happening. It's like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll just like, it's just going to like generate things.

and then there won't be any problems. Like every problem will be solved. You're like, well, that's kind of terrifying. And like old pieces of technology are like, well, this is like a tool that's like suited to some purpose, right? So like I know you love cameras and, you know, and this like even these old computers and these old pieces of technology in the movies. There's like a tool suited to a purpose.

And it's like these technology, the way it's getting now, social media and AI is like it's not a tool. It's something else. Like, it's, we're the, I mean, not to, not to be overly whatever, but, but we're the, we're the tools, man. Yeah, kind of. I mean, like, we are, you're, you're, you're like, the social media is like, website is like, please log on. We need you to run the machine. Like, it's like, it uses you. You're not using it. I mean, I guess you do get out something out of it, but, but it feels much. more it's not the same thing as like possessing a piece of equipment that's like built for a specific purpose in mind one specific job right a camera takes a photo a record player plays music a CD player plays music now it's like what the fuck is this man like what is this doing so I think that these movies that still show technology show the excitement of technology but it's still kind of like a tool and not this like weird amorphous thing that God knows what it is, I think are a lot of fun and nostalgic and kind of feel be like, yeah, that wasn't such a

horrible time before everything went really strange. It's funny that you mentioned AI, right, because the most recent Mission Impossible movie, the villain was like a sentient AI. And in the movie, AI is sort of like, I guess, like traditional science fiction depiction of AI, which is it's achieved sentience and now is doing things of its own accord. It's doing new things of its own accord. And that is like really the striking contrast with actually existing AI, which as you said, it's sort of just like it's just it's churn, it's not even remixing existing things. It's sort of just like churning existing things together in an effort

to create sort of like the closest representation to what you've input. But there's no, there's no creative process happening there either for creation or or for or for destruction um uh in that that that that that to me to maybe they kind of to bring things back around that to me is it's like it's like a it's like an expression of cynicism as technology you know like there's no there's nothing new to be made anymore it's there's nothing new to experience thing new to create. It's simply remixing the old thing or recapitulating the old thing again and again and again until until death. And it's it's quite it's quite a it's quite a bleak vision. And it makes for such a contrast to the kind of technological hopes of the 90s, right? Whereas technology,

becomes a vehicle for limitless possibility. Earlier today you sent me a photo of an old digital camera from like 2002, 2001. And it's like a crazy funky design. It's sort of like it's very clear

the designers are like we have all these new technologies. What can we do with them? How can we think beyond like the normal or the typical vision of what the camera is in order to use these new technologies. So like that's to me like a very 19 like very turn of the century kind of way of

approaching things. Like look what we can do with what we have, right? We can put a mini disc player into a camera and have that record the images. Even though as I said to you, it doesn't really make a lot of sense. It looks cool to me. I don't know why. Yeah. I like that goofy shit. I like that goofy shit. I love that clunky. There's something that about that. It's so charming to me and so innocent because it's just like that's so dumb in a certain way it's just like it's like yeah we you know our engineers put it together it looks kind of beautiful but it's also like that's never going to take off you know and then you bought these things when you were a kid or or saw your friends have them you're like whoa this is the future and then you're like it's

really not it's never going to be like this ever again like and i just i just find that kind of technology that obsolete Sony Twitter account, I just find it endlessly fascinating. I'm like, man, this stuff is so neat. All this stuff that just like goes at, just like went out, came and went and seemed really cutting edge and cool, but dated so fast. And I just find that that stuff. I mean, dude, if I had infinite space and money, I would be in big danger of just like starting a bizarre collection of obsolete electronics. I'm not even that much of a tech person, but some, like, there's a, there's a store here. And it's the same thing with these movies.

And this movie is very much scratches that itch for me. There's a store here that sells like old video game systems. And even ones that were like not even popular. Like, they were just like the, the, the, the, the Atari Jaguar, like, things that, like, failed. And the things that failed, I'm so attracted to. like these they're almost like pieces of junk and I'm like this is so cool like what what this is totally forgotten and no one cares about this stuff anymore I don't know what it is about it but I think it has something to do with like living in a world that felt slightly more manageable

or tangible or human I don't know right I mean I like a lot of old stuff but or just one that felt more distinctive you know sort of like yeah different you mentioned the 3DO because it's sort of like, again, another similar thing, we have all these new technologies. We have all these new things we can do. So let's, let's throw us something together and see, and see what makes sense. Well, things keep getting flatter. I mean, you know, like, we just have screens now, essentially. I mean, like, apples are still pretty beautifully designed. I mean, Apple, that was Apple's, like, claim to fame, right? Like, and there was Apple. Apple was actually, like, did product placement and Mission Impossible. Like, it was, it was famous for that. But, like, apples were like,

oh, we're the cool design company. And now Apple's like, they're still cool design, but like, they're kind of like as minimal as possible. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, it's just like, we're getting to the point where it's just like, and then now they want to give you those goggles. It's just like, it's just like screen.

And you're like, well, I just don't like, I want more than the screen. You know, like there's no, there's no frame anymore. You know, like there's no kind of like device that makes you feel like you're on earth. I mean, you mentioned cameras. And the pleasure of using a camera is that it is just like a specific thing that you hold in hand and that like it's it's a specific device. Yeah. And I think when I was watching this movie too, even the print that they have on whatever, I mean, it's obviously 35 millimeter film stock. And it's the weird color palette that De Palma uses. But you can see when you, I was watching this and I was like, you can see the scratches in the print on the fucking. TV like and I was like whoa that's pretty crazy I didn't know and that itself is like I was like wow that's like you can see that this is a 35 millimeter print like they I'm surprised I didn't did you

notice that oh yeah yeah it's cool and it's like well this is a real movie it's a real it kind of gives it an older feeling I saw something recently that tried to recreate that feeling I digitally added like scratches and stuff and I just don't think I don't like that no you can it's so stupid. I hate that stuff. That's the other side is like when you try to when you try to fake it like making fake vinyl sound like fake vinyl humming just either make it real or not. I don't like it when they try to fake it. Yeah. But but yeah it was it was fun watching this movie on like HD. I don't know. I don't know if I have that fancy of a TV but I noticed I was like wow that's the film stock. I can see it. All right. I think I think this is a good place to wind down.

And I think we've already said our piece in the movie. So we'll just head over to wrap up. That is our show. If you're not a subscriber, please subscribe. We're available on iTunes, Spotify, Sitcher Radio, and Google Podcasts and wherever else podcast are found.

If you subscribe, please leave a rating in a review. It helps people find the show and you can reach out to us on social media if you want to. After all of that, you can reach out to us on social media if you want to. Yeah, yeah. We're addicted to it. It's beyond addiction. It's like being a fish in the water.

It's just where we live. You can also reach out to us over email at unclear and present feedback at fastmail.com. For this week in feedback, we have an email from Sean with an email that had no subject, but it's a legitimate email. So here's Sean. And listening to the episode on The Substitute got me thinking about lean on me and stand and deliver. These are both films that my social studies teachers would play on the last day before Thanksgiving

or when they were hungover and didn't want to teach. even at the time Lean on Me bugged me One of the main plot points is Morgan Freeman's character chains the school's fire exits closed so drug dealers can't get in When the fire marshal shows up and tells him to stop This guy is presented like the meddlesome EPA official

And Ghostbusters Whatever you think of a substitute It's ultimately just death wish in a school Which is, we have to admit, that's fucked up But Lean On Me is based on a real high school principal who actually did chain door shut. This means most people in Hollywood heard his story and thought, yeah,

actually turning a large public building into a death trap is a responsible way to deal with drug dealers and this guy should be celebrated. I watched Leon on me last week, and I had the same thought. It's like a major plot point of the movie that, right, like he's chained the doors and this is like a good thing. But like, no.

it's 10 and in that movie Morgan Greenwood's character is constantly berating children it's sort of like yeah it's it's it's you know what it's like it's like that Dave Chappelle skit that was

it was like this absurd thing that he actually cut from the show but it was like Nelson Mandela's boot camp have you remember that where he's just like kicking kids asses and like that was like oh yeah

this whole like tough love idea was big and then you like take a step back and you're like you're just like abusing kids it's just you're like frustrated you're frustrated with a bad kid and you're like I'm going to karate kick him yeah um yeah i you know watching lean on me I kept thinking about Bill Cosby and there was that there was that was that sort of those years when he gave that speech called the pound cake speech when he's like railing against yeah pull up your pants i kind of thing and it should have lean on me i feel like it's a great systematic representation of the real like hostility that's in that sort of like kind of like you know fed up angry wanting to fix a dysfunction but also sort of like a profound hostility towards like

people yeah kind of sadism yeah like sadism involved in all of it not not a good movie but beyond my ideological critique not a particularly good movie but Morgan Freeman is, of course, quite charismatic, but like... Doesn't he, like, almost throw a kid off the roof or something? Or he, like, threatens to throw a kid off the roof? Yeah, I mean, it's a very famous scene. Yeah, he's like, yeah, he's like, you know, this is, like, your life is going to be worthless. I should just throw you off the roof right now.

Well, he takes to get up. And it's just poor, this poor actor who's like kind of chunky, kind of chubby. And so he's always been picked on in the movie. I always feel bad when that happens. We're like, yeah, we're casting you because you're a fatty. And that's the way your character's going to endure. but it's actually a very famous scene for what Morgan Freeman says

and I believe I have this right my friend Adam Sir were past and hopefully future guests used to joke about this when he worked and worked together at the American prospect Morgan Freeman says to this kid looks him dead in the eyes and goes

you smoke crack don't you? Oh yeah yeah so bad bad movie very at the end it gets very like smallsy and terrible um i think i'm going to watch stand and deliver this week i john i have been watching all of these movies i'm a little bit obsessed yeah continue yeah you know you're really into it you got to write an essay i kind i kind i kind i kind to do because i watched i watched a couple days ago only the strong which also takes place in miami like

the substitute interesting that miami is a recurring city in these movies but it takes place in Miami. And in this one, it's, uh, Mark DeCascos plays a copier, copierra, uh, capillera, a teacher who, uh, who, who, uh, gets the school clean through the power of martial arts. And also he beats up drug dealers. And the thing about this movie, John, is the drug dealers presumably are armed and no one thinks to themselves, let's just shoot this guy. Let's shoot the guy. They let him do his funky little dance and kick him in the eye and shit. you guys move cocaine just just shoot this guy just shoot the guy yeah i that's really funny i don't know jemelle that's that movie sounds a little too high bro but there's there's

dangerous minds obviously and then there's one eight seven those are the three standing delivered dangerous right to one eight seven of one seven you know but they're kind of a reversal of to sir with love which is the opposite right because he's a black teacher in a white school i mean it's a bad white it's like on the east end but like these movies all flip it right right um okay thank you sean uh for the email um uh yeah in in lean on me you get a real sense that they're going to shoot this guy if they can not a not in not in not in not in only the strong okay um don't forget our pastri our pastri on i wish uh our patreon uh dear listeners don't forget the or sign up for Patreon.

The latest episode of the podcast is on the 1961 film, Judgment at Nuremberg. You can listen to that and much more at patreon.com slash unclear pod for $5 a month. In our next episode after Judgment at Nuremberg will be Sydney Lumet's failsafe. Episodes of the main feed come out every two weeks, roughly. So we'll see you then with an episode on Michael Bays, The Rock, a movie I love. I haven't seen it in a long time. Looking forward to that. And we'll have a guest for that episode.

So stay tuned for that. Here's a belief pot synopsis for the Rock. FBI chemical warfare expert Stanley Goodspeed is sent on an urgent mission with a former British spy, John Patrick Mason, to stop General Francis X Hummel from launching chemical weapons on Alcatraz Island and San Francisco. General Hummel demands $100 million in war reparations to be paid to the families of slaying servicemen who died on covert operations. after their SEAL team is wiped out,

Stanley and John deal with the soldiers on their own. I've always thought of this movie as being sort of like what happened to James Bond after everything. He got thrown in to Alcatraz. We'll talk about that. So that's The Rock. It's available for rent or purchase on Amazon and iTunes. I haven't checked for it streaming.

It might be shipping somewhere. It might not be. Okay. That's the episode for John Gantz. I'm Smell Bui. And we'll see you next time. Thank you.