WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1200 - Mark Harris

Episode Date: February 11, 2021

Mark Harris is a writer, journalist, critic and lover of film, which is why Marc wanted to talk with him. After months of at-home movie watching, Marc is convinced that artistic appreciation and critical thinking around film is more important than ever. Mark Harris has devoted a large chunk of his life to doing that kind of work, including his books on Hollywood after World War II, filmmaking in the late 1960s, and his new biography about Mike Nichols. They also talk about censorship fights, pandemic award shows and being married to Tony Kushner. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category,

and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. Lock the gates! Alright, let's do this. How are you, what the fuckers? What the fucksters, what the fucknics?

What is happening? I'm Mark Maron. This is my podcast, WTF. And it's been exciting lately, hasn't it? What does that even mean? Why am I opening like that? What am I talking about? even mean how why am i opening like that what am i talking about well i'll be honest with you uh brendan and i my business partner and producer got some good news edison research is uh a real thing and this is the podcast consumer tracking report now brendan and I have been doing this show on our own for 12 years or so, right? Been about 12 years now. I wouldn't say we're OGs, but we're close. We were there at the beginning when there was nothing. There was a few, there was some history, and there was a few within us. And I believe that over time, we helped

define this medium, podcasting. But as everything goes over time, you imagine that, well, there's a million podcasts. Who knows where we are in the big picture, but we keep doing consistent work and we keep showing up for work and we keep evolving, folks. We keep evolving. But on the most listened to podcasts in 2020 united states weekly podcast listens we are number 20 which is fucking astounding 12 years in still doing top-notch work still happy to be working and always engaged with our work. And it's showing up 20 out of that. I don't know whether there's 50 listed here, but we're 20. And above us, there's, you know, the regular customers, you know, the NPRs and the New York Times.

And, you know, Joe is up there at the top. But, you know, Joe's doing that thing. at the top, but Joe's doing that thing. But I'll tell you, we were both pleasantly surprised and excited and self-congratulatory about this news. How long we've been doing it, what we've been doing, and the fact that it sticks and it's consistent and it's evolving. And we've been through a lot, but this was exciting for us, so I thought I'd share that. lot but this was uh this was exciting for us so i thought i'd share that now my guest today is mark harris the writer of books the journalist he's written several books on film uh pictures

at a revolution is one that i just recently finished and i thought it was spectacular it's uh five movies and the birth of the new Hollywood. He also wrote a book called Five Came Back, a story of Hollywood and the Second World War. And he also wrote his new book, Mike Nichols, A Life, a huge Mike Nichols biography. a huge Mike Nichols biography. And I was excited to talk to him because I dug into the book and it just reignited my brain in so many ways. The other thing I want to share is that I'm starting to see results from the meditation. I have fought the idea of meditation for a long time. I still kind of fight it, but I do it. I generally do a guided meditation with the Headspace app. This is not a paid advertising. It's just the one

someone gave it to me for nothing, actually. But now I listen to the English guy. Okay, take a deep breath. Breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth. Eyes open, soft focus. Now get ready to lock down because we're gonna fucking meditate this shit to death we are gonna fucking so deeply meditate that you're not even gonna know your name when you get out of here you're not even gonna know what day it is we're gonna get so fucking deep into it you're not even gonna know if you're a man or a woman or a gerbil or a dog or a little piggy. Yeah, we're going to get so deep into it that you're going to tap into the big hum, the big frequency. You're going to be in the canyon of time, not knowing what God is or who

you are or whether or not anything is anything. That's where we're going with this. All right, now breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth. Now, won't you wank it? I'm sorry, it's a joke. It's a joke. You can do that after. Anyways, listen. I think what's happening is we never know the future,

but we usually can plan. No one ever really knows what's going to happen, but usually you can hang your future thinking on some things you're looking forward to or some things you have to do, and that's gone because we don't know when we're going to be able to do things. I'm not speaking for everybody, but I believe that the dread of really never knowing

what's going to happen in the future, which is sort of a mortality anxiety, but the dread of not knowing when we're going to actually be able to do anything outside of what we lot. So what I've begun to notice about meditation, I find that the sitting, the guided meditation, the sitting with the breath, however you want to do it, the ability to kind of work that muscle, that mental muscle to focus on the breath and be in the present, to let thoughts come and go, to not get too freaked out when you get distracted, but to really sort of sit mindfully and focus on the breath to the point where that's all you're doing is sort of engaging with your breath. That working that muscle enables you to almost instinctively get into the present when you begin to have anxiety or dread. And it almost happens without you being cognizant because you've worked that muscle and that muscle is specifically to kind of not get lost in those thoughts. Now you have to decide for yourself whether you rather have a meditative brain or a brain that's on fire. Look, if you like firefighting, then you may prefer the burning brain. I'm not sure I like firefighting.

I've been doing it a lot of my life, but it turns out that I'm not really fighting fires. I'm just sort of like kind of letting them burn. And then when they start to simmer down, I'll throw a little bit more stuff on there. But I find that the meditation enables you to kind of, like, I have a hard time compartmentalizing because one bad thought, if you have a hard time compartmentalizing or if you're missing a small piece of your personality, you know, one small negative thought or one bit of bad news or one kind of nugget, a little anxiety seedling can just grow fucking strangling vines all over your entire sense of being. If you get that meditation muscle going, you get that sort of mindful muscle going, you get that quieted down muscle going, you might have a little shot. quieted down muscle going, you might have a little shot. You might have a little shot of compartmentalizing, of keeping things in perspective, of quieting the brain down,

getting into the present when necessary. You might be able to sort of dam up some of those neural pathways that kind of over fucking flood, you know, just kind of like stop them for a minute. Because, you know, when you have no control over the flood of of fear anxiety dread just i'm mixing metaphors there's the brain on fire then there's the the flood of bad thoughts i guess it can happen simultaneously right no amount of water it's gonna put that fire out it's just gonna flood everything so then you end up with a bunch of fucking moldy soggy books and papers and toys from your past and pictures they're all soggy and fucked up because you let it flood and it made your past look dark and then the fire is the future

you got a flooded past with mold and in the future nothing but flames so meditation helps with that and that was actually a guided meditation that i just did let's talk about movies mark harris is going to be talking to me and this the book he wrote pictures at a revolution is see it's been a long time since i read about film and all of us i think a lot of us who are interested or studied stuff are watching a lot of movies right now. time where I'm not pounding my brain with stand up and compulsively working on material, where I'm actually trying to take things in again in a way that runs a little deeper than just get me out of now. Could somebody get me out of now? But I think so many of us have lost context that so much of what we put into our brains is to try to get us out of now, get us out of us, distract us. But my depth of intellectual understanding is limited, and I don't always trust it because I don't think I'm that smart.

That's just my nature. But reading this book, the one I read, I've read part of the Mike Nichols book, the new book, but he writes a lot about Nichols in Pictures of the Revolution. It focuses on the five films that were nominated for Best Picture in 1967. And through those films, he's able to analyze the cultural pulse of the nation, the politics of show business, the nature of each production, what went into it on a writing level, acting level, producing level, directing level, and put that into the context of the larger history of film and the history of show business and the business and the people who were involved and the films were bonnie and clyde in the heat of the night guess who's coming to dinner uh dr doolittle and the

graduate and through that he's able to sort of consider and assess the films you know for what they are uh in context of culture and criticism because he cites a lot of the critics but also how that shift in the culture and in the politics of the culture you know changed how movies were made sold and taken in all levels were working all pistols operating it's a real brain igniter and in in contextualizing these things you know you see the films differently and i watched all the films again and this is dealing with art dealing with race deals with gender deals with age deals it's all there and it's a you know film is very rich like that and i think what it speaks to in terms of my laziness as of late or my need to get out of the now or for just general distraction is that I think that cultural criticism, film criticism, art criticism, criticism in general, the deep stuff, not the review, not the this or that, good or bad, thoughts on, sounds like, now trending.

good or bad, thoughts on, sounds like, now trending. Not that, but sort of true contextualized consideration of art or culture is a bit waning, which is sad. Because those things are needed. They're needed to sort of understand, comprehend the cultural conversation and what is happening, to slow it down, to consider thoughtfully and intellectually and historically. A lot of that stuff is falling by the wayside. And after reading a book like Mark Harris's, it's like, it's so fucking important because it's very easy to get lazy and it's very easy to get shallow. And, you know, most people don't think too deeply about anything because everything's moving so fast.

And even smart people have given up without knowing it. You know how you just go to Rotten Tomatoes on 87. That's pretty good. How many reviews? A hundred. Let's watch that. But if you don't have anything in place to put things into context or to think for yourself you know you're just going to be citing other things you're going to be referring to clickbait you're going to be

referring to something you heard you're going to be comparing blindly and that's going to sort of pass as thought for you you know we're volunteering for shallowness you got to go deep man and that's what criticism can do whether you understand it or not it'll take you deeper and make you understand that there is depth to be explored and i'm grateful for that i'm grateful for this guest and i was excited to talk to him he's also married to tony kushner who's uh the probably the most brilliant living playwright that we have. And it was kind of hard for me at the beginning because I was like, so is Tony just, he's just in the other room just hanging out?

What do you guys talk about? Like, it was hard for me not to do a bit of that. And I did do a bit of it, to be honest with you. I did. So right now, this is Mark Harris that I'm about to talk to, and his new book is Mike Nichols, A Life, and you can get it wherever you get booked. Be honest. When was the last time you thought about your current business insurance policy? If your existing business insurance policy is renewing on autopilot each year without checking out Zensurance, you're probably spending

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18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. How you doing, Mark? I'm good. How are you? I'm all right, man. Where are you,, Mark? I'm good. How are you? I'm all right, man. Where are you, in New York? I am. I'm in Manhattan on the Upper West Side. In your apartment? Yep.

Is Tony Kushner in the other room? He is in the other room. I went and shut the door and said, don't come out while I'm doing this. Now, he's obviously one of the great playwrights, and you are one of the great critics. Now, you guys are spending an awfully lot of time together. What do you talk about? Is it mostly politics?

Do you watch a movie and hammer it out, or is it just about food? It's definitely not mostly politics i mean we we scream at each other about what's in the news the way a lot of people do yeah but there's a lot of a lot of food discussion a lot of what's for dinner a lot of what are we gonna do um and uh and yeah we watch tons of movies i'm sort of the the movie DJ and he's the food guy. So, so it, it balances out nicely. And, you know, we were both, uh, stay at home writers basically before this all started. So it hasn't been that huge a change for us compared to a lot of other people. to a lot of other people. Yeah, I mean, you got me watching movies. I decided, you know, they sent me all the books, and I thought the one that I could tackle before I talked to you thoroughly

was Pictures at a Revolution. Oh, wow. So I read that whole book, and I'm very proud of myself that I finished a book. Thank you so much for reading it. These days, I'm very proud of myself when I finish a book. I'm proud of myself when I buy one. That seems like a big accomplishment.

Well, you know what the funny thing is, is this morning I'm thinking about your book and I'm thinking about movies and I'm talking to, I had a conversation with my agent yesterday about Warren Beatty, who he decided he's going to try to get on the podcast. And I just read so much about Beatty in your book is that this morning I realized like, oh my God, I don't know where my copy of Empire of Their Own is by Neil Gabriel. I need the book about the Jews. I need a new copy of that.

So right before I got on, I bought a new copy of that. I can literally touch that book almost from where I'm sitting right now. I love that book. Oh, it's great. Yeah, I love that book. And now there's a book I want to read about the Jews and creating comic books, the Marvel Universe and Stan Lee and that whole crew. Oh, you know, that new Stan Lee biography that's about to come out. Yeah.

I think it's called True Believer. That is a fantastic book. Really? Just really, really worth your time. Yeah. So the new book that you're out talking about, this Mike Nichols book, Mike Nichols, A Life. Like I read a lot about, you know, obviously you wrote a lot about Mike Nichols in Pictures at a Revolution revolving around The Graduate and his New York theater days and everything. Now, what I want to know is, and I poked around in the new book as well,

is that it seems like quite a passion project to decide to write a 500-page book on Mike Nichols. Now, like, I know Mike Nichols is interesting, and I was very compelled by the stuff that you wrote in Pictures at the Revolution, and I'd had no idea about his background, about his Jewishness and non-jewishness and but um what why that guy well i thought that uh i mean it was a passion project but i thought

also i would never get bored while i was doing it because it really felt like in some ways i was writing about um three full careers like a full a movie career, a full career at the same time directing theater, and then the 10 years preceding that where he was this kind of game-changing performing artist. So it really did feel like, I didn't know it was going to be quite as long when I started working on it, but it felt like, yeah, this is going to be a long book. It was a long, complicated life. But like, were you able to see because i i noticed that the levels that you're operating at in pictures at the revolution and really addressing how hollywood changed through these five movies but you're able to tackle it on all the levels you know the levels of uh you know cultural politics

movie industry politics you know what it took to get the films made, the actors, the scripts, the writing, the selling, the whole thing. And to me, it provided a great overview. It's sort of like, I read Raging Bulls and Easy Riders, the Biskin book, which is okay, but this was like setting the stage for that. This is pre that.

Now I assume that you also were able to thread through the Mike Nichols book, the arc of history that he represents. I think I was. I hope I was. I mean, it's a really different task because Pictures of the Revolution, I had, you know, six or eight or ten major characters to play with. And I was kind of interweaving them through a pretty concentrated period of about five years. And so this book, obviously, is one life through 83 years, I realized I would have nothing to cut away to, which was a little scary. You know, it was the shape of the book was determined by the arc of his life. But I did feel I could get into the Chicago comedy scene in the 50s

and New York nightclub life in the late 50s and 60s and Broadway in the mid 60s and Hollywood in the 70s. So I felt like, yeah, there's a lot of good cultural history and background for me to play with here besides just Mike and his particular story.

How much did you talk about Shelley Berman? A little bit, because that was a really intense... I mean, that whole kind of boiling pot of Chicago comedy in the 50s, when they were all really kind of inventing improv, was really emotionally intense, and particularly the dynamic dynamic between shelly berman and mike nichols and elaine may i mean shelly berman really wanted to be the third guy in a trio and and he also really wanted to work with elaine may it's just about oh i know i i

interviewed shelly before he died i drove to his house and sat there with him. He's, you know, for some reason, he had a large knife collection, Shelly Berman. And he said that the only reason that he did a foam bit, which was half his bits, was because Elaine May wouldn't do it with him. He said that's how he came up with the phone bit is that he had planned those things to be two people but because elaine may wouldn't do it because she was with mike he had to do it on his own the phone bit well it sounded to me like there were so few women in the compass players and that whole scene that you know to get with elaine may meant that you had you know to get with uh elaine may melt meant that you had you know a chance to do a two-character thing on stage and so everybody wanted her and mike nichols was pretty blunt about talking about

the degree to which he kind of stiff-armed shelly berman and said nope like this is she's mine you you can't go anywhere near her believe me that's just just one on the large list of the reasons Shelly Berman is bitter. Yeah. He's passed away, sadly. But but boy, get him going about Bob Newhart. There's no end to that one. Wow. That's amazing. These guys, some of them don't get any happier as time goes on. Yeah, I don't think so. So you were able to. But I mean, you knew Mike Nichols, correct? I did in the last probably 12 or 14 years of his life when he was in his 70s now were you making notes for that then i mean has this book been in the works that long uh no not at all um i didn't uh first of all i don't think i would ever try

to write a biography of someone who is alive that that just seems like i mean biographies are already such a big mountain to climb and I felt that Mike was figuratively looking over my shoulder, correcting me, amending me the whole time. If there had been someone literally there, that would have been too much. So I urged Mike a few times to write his autobiography, which he was not interested in doing. But I never thought of it until after he passed away in 2014. And what do you think? Because I know that in Pictures at Revolution, what do you think it was? Because he seemed to be kind of gifted in a very unique way around how he engaged with actors and what he expected both in theater and in film. I mean, what was it? How did he change theater? You know, this was one of the hardest things for me to reconstruct in the book, because, of course, I can't go back and see, you know, Barefoot in the Park in 1963.

Right. And when you read the play, you think, oh, this is a sort of pretty typical comedy of its time, you know, just in terms of the lines. And so I was really surprised to hear from so many people who had seen it that, no, no, no, it wasn't that at all. It was something really new. And the new thing that they said Mike brought to it was that in between these very snappy, like, one after another lines he would find all these little gifts of realistic recognizable human behavior to give to the actors you know like so that they were saying these lines but what you were looking at was people sort of behaving the way people behave in the privacy of their own apartment and that i guess was really. And that was very Mike, like finding the perfect little detail. That's interesting, because that's not really, you know, that's not a method thing.

That's sort of a choice thing. And it's sort of giving somebody something to do. Right. And something to do that somehow expresses who you are, really, between the lines of dialogue or under the lines of dialogue. I think as, I mean, Mike did study with Lee Strasberg and all of that, and he was interested in the method. But I think it more comes from his work with Elaine May and from all those sketches where they kind of figured out as performers that they could do things, even things that were at odds with what they

were saying, that would instantly connect with the audience and make people in the audience say, oh, that's just like me. I get, yeah, I mean, I don't think people fully realize just how huge a comedy act they were, you know, Nichols and May. And it came out, the Compass Players eventually became Second City right there were parts of it right I think there's some kind of complicated split off where part of it became Second City and you know but yes wasn't Alan Arkin and Ed Asner involved as well in the Compass Players yeah Ed Asner was actually the first he was a couple of years older than Mike

and he was the first actor that Mike ever directed. He was an undergrad at the University of Chicago, and he directed Ed Asner in a very short play. That was Mike's first directing. I bet you he remembers that this whole life. He talked about it. Yeah, Ed's a lot. I'm sure he always was. He was great he i said what what do you remember about mike and he said um he was very effeminate but uh he was the kind of effeminate guy who would

steal your girl when you weren't looking so and then he talked about 9-11 conspiracies for an hour and so but so you're able to interview him? Yeah, yeah. That was a thrill. Who else did you talk to at the old timers for the book? Oh, my gosh. Well, from that period, definitely the most important person I talked to was Elaine May. I mean, she was hugely responsible for helping me understand exactly what their partnership was and how they worked together.

And she had amazing stories to tell about, like, how the first time they got up on stage and flopped at, like, the worst sketch they ever did and why it was such a failure and what they learned from it. So, you know, of course, a lot of those people from the early 1950s when this all started are gone. I talked to, before he passed away, David Shepard, who was one of the founders of the Compass and was already struggling with the beginning of dementia when we talked, but he really wanted to talk. And, you know, you find your way in interviews like that. He found his way to some memories.

Well, you know, it's interesting because Elaine is still very vital and still working i saw her in that uh the uh a play that revival of that um right the the waverly gallery yeah yeah yeah elaine may was fantastic obviously like sharp as a tack in in the interview and just had really great memories to share well that's interesting like how like you know so much of, because that was the thing that I got when I was reading, you know, the pictures at the Revolution book, was that, you know, I grew up in, you know, you and I are really

the same age, right? So we're like three months apart, literally. I'm September 27th, 1963. And I'm November 25th, right during JFK's funeral. Yeah, right there. I got in right under the wire, then they got him. But so, like, I grew up, like, our generation, it's weird, because we're really not boomers, we're maybe the tail end of it. But we grew up in sort of

the crashing wave of the 60s and into the 70s. So if you gravitated towards, you know, what the 60s and 70s defined as a young person, which I did, you know, film was very interesting to me. So I studied a bit of film in college. Did you? I did. Yeah. And I probably had the same experience you did, which is it's really weird being exactly our age because you had to kind of choose to like for for me i i wanted to be a part of the generation that was slightly older than right than we are exactly so that's what i jumped toward yeah because they seem the smartest and the funniest and the most engaged it seemed like so many things were defined well i mean if you even if you think about rock and

roll starting in 1957 which was our parents that like you know the the whole idea of of modern art film criticism uh you know taking risks uh creatively it all happened just before we became conscious of what what was going on right so like there was this idea there was definitely a feeling of like we missed the whole thing exactly it's a strange feeling all your cultural life to feel that you came in a little too late, that all the action was just behind you. Right. And, you know, I had older cousins growing up, and they always seemed to be really plugged into, you know, what was really going on that I wasn't old enough to see or wasn't old enough to do. And that just endlessly, of course, made me want to see it even more.

Where'd you grow up? I grew up in New York City. Oh, so you're like a New York kid? I am a New York kid. Yeah. That's amazing. How did that happen? What were your parents doing? My dad was a lawyer and he was a native New Yorker. He grew up in the city. And my mother was, she grew up in upstate New York in Syracuse and came to the city to work as a doctor at St. Vincent's Hospital. So that was my childhood, a lawyer and a doctor.

He was Jewish. She was Catholic. That's fascinating to me. You're the second guy in a week I talked to who grew up in New York. I just talked to Aza Jacobs. Oh, really? Yeah. That's cool his parents were you know and still are and were you know you know kind of like edgy experimental film

makers well i always felt like real new yorkers were the people who came to the city and chose it you know i always felt like i landed here kind of and didn't earn it somehow. But yeah, I've lived here all my life and I still really love it. You didn't earn it? No, yeah. Came from where? Like the old country? That was my grandparents.

Yeah. Yeah, they did the work and I got the benefit. So you grew up in all that culture, that's the, that must've been amazing. Cause you had access, whatever you may have been jealous of, you know, like, it's like I was talking to Aza about his parents and, you know, like, and how he, you know, they, he would go, they would go like, look at the, these like weird film festivals at the museum of modern art.

The one thing that you got when you grow up in New York is you have access to all of that. I remember going to the Museum of Film and Broadcasting. Do you remember what we had to do to watch film clips when we were interested back in the day? Oh, so much work. So much work. And if you wanted to see an old movie uncut and without commercials, you just had to wait until it hit one of the

revival theaters and then go. Yeah, and that was what was fascinating about reading the pictures at A Revolution was that I had no idea about any of that, about how long they kept films in the movie houses and they would wait like a year. They just let movies play like a year to see if it would make money. Right. I read old issues of Variety and The Hollywood Reporter from that time. And the first time I saw this, I thought it was a joke. But they would say things like,

you know, this week in the heat of the night hit the sixth and seventh run circuit of movie theaters. And there are apparently like nine circuits of theaters across the country. And movies would play sometimes for two years amazing and you learned all that when you were writing that yeah i did not know that uh before i before i wrote the book let me ask you this what why doesn't somebody make a movie about the making of dr doolittle i would rather see a movie about that than another remake of dr doolittle i think it would be a lot more fun after i read your book i don't even know why they would make a remake of a disaster like it was categorically a disaster i didn't know i mean i saw it when i was a kid i thought it was all right i can still probably

remember two of the songs but but but it was like from everything you wrote it was a disaster and the making of it just seems fucking hilarious i I mean, like, how could you not make that movie? You know, give it the treatment, like, what was that great satire that Ben Stiller did, the war movie? Oh, Tropic Thunder. Tropic Thunder. Like, treat it like that.

You know, when I was working on that book, the only time I had to stop my research was about Rex Harrison, because I thought, the stuff I'm finding out is so bad that I have to go hunt around for people who knew him to see if anybody has a good thing to say. And I tried. I tried. And I found a couple of people who said, well, when are you writing about? And I said 1967. And they said, no, no no he was a monster like

if you were writing about the 50s or the 40s there he was still a decent human being but but not by then wow so it's so funny because while i was reading it i interviewed jody foster who has experience and memories with stanley kramer and also like her mother worked for jacobs for um wow really i didn't know that that's interesting yeah her mother like you know when he was still a publicist her mother was in publicity what was his name arthur jacobs arthur jacobs yeah yeah he seemed like a character oh yeah i mean again like died long before i even yeah imagined the the book but But really one of those great kind of what makes Sammy run, you know, I'm going to hustle and pull this thing together, you know,

just on scotch tape and a prayer and, you know, end up making this insane movie. Yeah, and he did a lot of stuff, a lot of those guys. I watched all the movies again except for Dr. Dolittle, which I guess I should. And I've seen The Graduate so many times I didn't watch it again but i wanted to watch um you know i've watched catch 22 carnal knowledge who's afraid of virginia wolf which i imagine you cover uh uh pretty thoroughly in the book definitely because you cover who's afraid of virginia wolf pretty well because in in pictures

at the revolution because it happened before the graduate but you know it seems to me that like the vision that Nichols had you know certainly for catch-22 like now now how did he what do you think of that movie in terms of did that get away from him or was that exactly what he was trying to do well catch-22 was the first time um that he really had absolute power. I mean, it was the first movie he made after the success of Virginia Woolf and The Graduate. So he had as much money as he wanted, which was more than the budget. He hired everyone in Hollywood to be in it.

Right. Crazy huge cast from Alan Arkin and... Wasn't Orson Welles in it? Orson Welles is in it. Grodin. Grodin. Like two weeks of absolute misery on the set, according to everyone who worked with Orson Welles. And the shoot took forever. It was in Mexico. It was in Italy. It was in Los Angeles. And, you know, I think that Mike in later years kind of went back and forth between finding things to like in the movie and just

feeling that he hadn't cracked it that that um i mean it was hard for him to separate the experience of the final product from the incredibly long ordeal of making it and then sort of the worst thing that could possibly happen happened which is he finally finishes it they're three months from opening and mash opens and like the moment mike nichols saw mash he thought oh my movie's dead i mean that this is the movie about another war but really about vietnam that everyone is going to want to see and this this is the kind of loose, improvisatory, see-through-your-pants style that I should have gone for. Yeah, because I don't know what his choice was.

I mean, I imagine that the weight of how Fellini saw things must have been on him to some degree, because it was really a surrealistic, you know, disconnected film. I mean, there's a lot of great parts to it. And I know the novel's difficult, but there's no way that movie came together. No. And Fellini, you're absolutely right, was really on his mind. Right.

I mean, you know, he thought Eight and a Half for a long time was the best movie ever made. You know, he thought Eight and a Half for a long time was the best movie ever made. And he wanted to go to Italy because, you know, he could do Fellini-esque sequences there. You know, he just, he never, Buck Henry, who wrote the movie, later said that he thought the big mistake was that Catch-22 is all about attitudes. And Mike was all about behavior. And he couldn't find any human behavior to put in that movie. Kind of an interesting theory. Well, that's interesting seeing that,

you know, what we were talking about earlier was that was really the new thing he brought to theater was exactly that. Right. And somehow it got away from him in that movie probably because he got lost in, you you know just the expanse and expense of it like it yeah it's hard to find humanity when you can do whatever you want with major movie stars right and when you're crashing planes and blowing up boxes of dynamite and you know

like mike was never a huge fan of filming outdoors or action sequences. That was not his comfort zone. The Cat 22 was the first time he really pushed himself there, and I don't think it was a happy experience for him particularly. It's a bizarre movie. And Carnal Knowledge I don't think is talked about enough, because I watched that recently, and it's a great movie. I love it.

I love it too. it i mean i think if that movie came out right now it would be in some ways as shocking as it was 50 years ago oh just for that last scene and that was also a very mike thing like he said over and over again if you if you do something big that's like a big public failure which catch 22 was the best thing you can do is go right into something small that means something to you, that you don't have big commercial expectations for, that you just

want to do because you love the people or love the material. And that's how we got to Carnal Knowledge. Did it do well? It did do well. I mean, it sort of turned out you know, it was a big commercial success and incredibly controversial. Was it?

Yeah. Because of the sex? Yeah, there was even an obscenity trial that went to the Supreme Court, which actually, like, had to sit down and watch Carnal Knowledge and rule that it was not obscene. So, you know, it wasn't the quiet little movie that Mike thought he was going to make after Catch-22. It was a big, noisy little movie that he made. Isn't it? Those fights, it's interesting that those fights were taking place.

What year was that? Like 71? It was 71, and it was right around the time that porn was going mainstream. And obviously, Carnal Knowledge is not porn. But, you know, it was right in the thick of those fights of what can you show in a movie theater? What's okay to show on screen? Okay, so you're saying

it's just shy of Deep Throat showing in movie theaters. Exactly. A couple of years later, I think actually by the time the Supreme Court resolved the Carnal Knowledge case, Deep Throat was open in theaters.

And arguably ruined culture forever. Yeah. That's another question about, not about porn, but in reading the books and in talking to you and your attention that you pay to critics of the past. And when I studied film, like, you know, these, this idea that there were these feuds between like Andrew Sarris and, and Pauline Kael, and that there was, there was like weight to them. And, you know, the passing of the guard of the old dude at the New York times and how that affected, you know, the run of a

movie, you know, the importance of criticism, both, you know, art of a movie you know the importance of criticism both you know art criticism cultural criticism what did it obviously carried a lot of weight at another time it really did i mean there were and you know people talk about critics as as gatekeepers now but now i don't really think there are uh gatekeepers like that but back then when there were so few critics and when you know like i remember growing up my parents got time magazine and life magazine every week right and if if those magazines gave a movie a good review and if it got a good review in the new york times yeah they would want to go see it and if they didn't if everything got bad reviews that movie was off the list there was almost nothing that would change their minds. That's interesting.

So that, again, speaks to the loss of the country was on the same pages give or take and the same information was coming in pretty much yeah I mean the funny thing is what what they weren't on the same page about was movies didn't open in three or four thousand theaters at once they they They would have weird distribution patterns where one movie would open in Los Angeles and then sort of roll across the country and eventually get to New York. One would open, you know, in New York and then Chicago and then Boston and then Los Angeles. So there wasn't this big, like, all at once, here's the movie moment. But on the other hand, movies stayed in theaters for so long that you really did get to have an ongoing conversation well yeah and everybody wasn't

connected you know you had to write a letter to somebody to tell them to see a movie and i mean or make a you know what i mean or make a long distance call so the the actual pace of life was extraordinarily slower and and you could i well, that makes sense. That's why you could run a movie for two years, because you could open it up in an area, and no one else could see it, and the information they got about it would just be a long tease, and then you just sort of wait around until

eventually maybe it got to your theater. There was no other options. Right. And if you wanted to see the movie the way you were supposed to see it, you did have to see it in the theater because it wasn't like there was cable. I mean, you know, it would get on network TV eventually, but it would be chopped up for length and chopped up for content. So this was your chance. Like you had to go to the theater. So like in terms of like

are there like let's talk about like, you know, I've read Andrew Saris. I've read some Pauline Kael. I did a history of cinema class. And, you know, I really think that you framed a lot of the stuff, not just around, you know, Mike Nichols and the influence of the French New Wave or European movies coming into this country in the 60s and the influence they had in that book. in that book, I'm sure you talked about it in the Mike Nichols book, that there was the context you created in Pictures at the Revolution really reframed my entire understanding of a lot about movies in general. Wow. And I approach movies, I'm randomly intelligent. I wouldn't call myself an intellectual.

I have put a lot of stuff in my brain. But I like to know that I'm thinking along the same lines. But I don't know that I ever would have seen Bonnie and Clyde as, you know, for most practical purposes, a European movie in terms of the way it was conceived. And that was a little bit of news to me when I researched it, how much French movie making in particular was on the minds of all the people who made Bonnie and Clyde like over four years before they made it. Oh, yeah.

And the whole journey of those writers and that script and everybody involved, it was all very fascinating to me. But I mean, do you feel like because back then when you talk about Pauline Kael, you talk about Saris, you talk about who was the guy that wrote for The Times, the old timer? Oh, Bosley Crowther. Yeah. That they weren't just, these were critics. Obviously, there's a difference between a movie review and criticism, right?

And it seems that there may be plenty of critics out there, but the outlets are so spread out. How do you find them? And now you're really dealing with something that seems to be a byproduct of how we live now is that most people look at an aggregate. You're going to look at Rotten Tomatoes, got an 85, 120 reviews. All right, I'll take a look at that movie. Now, what have we lost? Well, it's a hard thing because, you know, you go back to 1967 and you see Pauline Kael not just writing about Bonnie and Clyde, but writing 9000 words about Bonnie and Clyde. His role was to be sort of a pastor telling his flock what was suitable for them. And I don't think you'd want to go back to that, certainly. And I think there's always the possibility of an interesting conversation being sparked on social media about a particular

movie but i think one thing we've lost is time i mean a movie has such a short window to make an imprint in any kind of public discussion and if it doesn't it doesn't get 15 or 20 weeks in the theater to build word of mouth but doesn't but that part of the problem, Mark, that like, you know, that public discussion moves at such a pace and that everybody is forced into the position of an almost kind of aggravated passive engagement. I mean, unless you stop the clock for yourself to process something, it's just going to go away. I think that's really true.

And people are already coming up with kind of, I'm always fascinated when I ask people who like movies, do you keep lists of movies that you read about that you want to see? And so many of them say, oh yeah, I have this whole document on my laptop because there's kind of, I think under that is the sense that if you don't grab this title and write it down, you will lose it. The noise machine will move on before you even blink. Right. And, I mean, I do that all the time. I write down movies I want to see because I know that in three days everything will be focused on something else.

And, you know. And that's the same with everything. I mean, it's really sort of this weird problem. And it seems like the problem is happening directly to our minds. It seems like the events that happen in the in the world, like somebody spent four years making that movie, it released, it goes away. But in our mind, it's sort of like, oh, I heard that I heard about it was any good. I think I saw a thing. And then, you know, you forget about it. Right. But it happens with politics, too. I'm noticing that, you know, that we've we've all learned how to dismiss trolls and we've all sort of learned how to sort of try to rank intuitively what's amateur and what isn't. And I think in that process of filtering, you know, everything just sort of like it gets it's sort of like you don't want to deal with it. You know, once it's behind us, you you don't want to deal with it. You know, once it's behind us, you just don't want to deal with it. What I'm getting at is that as somebody who writes about film in a thoughtful way and takes the time to do the investigation, is criticism still necessary in your mind? And who is it necessary for?

Well, I think criticism, I'm not going to say necessary, but I will certainly say useful because I think that if you take away all criticism and all you have left is a kind of hierarchy of marketing where movies that have enough money are the only movies that get attention, that's a problem. But someone was talking to me the other day and we were talking about this movie that I really love called Nomadland that is – I got to see that. I have it. I have the screener. You liked it? I loved it. I really love called Nomadland that is... I got to see that. I have it. I have the screener. You liked it? I loved it. I really loved it.

And this person said to me, oh, I'm so sorry I missed it. And I said, you didn't miss it. It hasn't opened yet. And it's not streaming yet. And they said, oh, yeah, but I feel like I read so much about it from critics in like September and October, and then it just kind of went away. And so one thing I think critics are

going to have to grapple with is you've got to get on a timetable that more conforms to how real people can see movies. I thought you were going to say like the next part of that sentence was like, I'm so sorry, I missed it. You didn't miss it. And they said, I will. I'll miss it. I plan to miss it. Yeah. But it's like, I understand now the impulse to be first out with a reaction or an opinion. But if you're first out on something that people can't see for months and you sort of burn yourself out on the topic by the time the actual movie rolls around and is available who are you serving i think that's a question that a lot of critics are grappling with right now yeah who are you serving yeah i and also like you know and i think in the

time like i started to think about just randomly before i talked to you because i i'm trying to pull it all together for myself that you know another part of the layer of discussion is sort of you know it was the struggle for photography of discussion is sort of, you know, it was the struggle for photography to define itself as an art that once everybody could have a camera, you know, how do you determine the intention? Right. So now we live in a world really where everyone is equipped to do just about anything. And production values are sort of the same right now. I just did, I did the Tonight Show from my backyard. So, you know, we're never putting that back in the bottle.

I mean, that's... I don't think so. No. Yeah, I think that's here to stay. Like what we're doing right now. So, like, how does that fall into the conversation? Like, how do you determine the integrity of something, of a piece of art, of film specifically? Too big a question?

Well, it's such a hard question because it connects to this thing that I'm grappling with and I'm sure you are and a lot of people, which is what is – like we keep talking about after this, you know, after the pandemic, after things go back to normal. But things aren't going to really go back to normal but things aren't going to really go back to normal are they no no i talked about that yesterday yeah we're going forward to something that will have some more normal elements than what we're living now but some things are changing and are going to stay changed and i don't think we've begun to realize necessarily what that means for movies and for how we see movies and for how we talk about movies and get the word out about movies. Yeah, because everything's going to happen at the same frequency that, you know, the outlet, the portal through which we watch is leveled. You know, there's no differentiation. I mean,

you know, you talk about, especially in the books and, you know, premieres and going to movies. I mean, that was already starting to taper off, but, you know, sort of the, you know, you entered that world. Like, I'm going out to do this, to see this thing. And now everything happens in the exact same mode or medium or format. Like, everything's coming through whatever size screen you have in your house or if you watch on your phone, on plane whatever the fuck it is so i mean i guess having to wrangle as a critic or as somebody who is dealing with criticism you know what does that mean what is what does that mean for contextualizing this stuff you know i mean every every critic i

know wants to get the word out to people about movies they love. Good critics, bad critics, I think that's one thing they all have in common. That they genuinely like telling people, oh, I saw something and it's fantastic. You have to see it. But how you do that and how you

get heard above what you just said, which is everything being at the same frequency yeah i don't think we have begun to figure out an answer to that yet i don't know i i don't know if there yeah i don't know if there is an answer and i don't know if it's good or bad really like you know i you know i i mean i've adapted i think you and i are like just under the wire on somehow being able to you know figure out how not to have an AOL screen name anymore. You know, we're the oldest of the people who have cracked it.

Right, right. Or you could just sign up for Gmail. Yeah. So, but I don't know. Like, I guess I am nostalgic for when we had fewer choices and I'm nostalgic for when there were fewer voices. And I don't know if that makes me a bad person or not. I don't know.

It's it's it's hard because, you know, I look at a lot of really great indie work. Yeah. And I think so much of this wouldn't have gotten made before. You know, absolutely. It's so hard to get these movies made. And yet it's really frustrating because I want to tell people about these movies. And every time, 100%, the first thing people ask me is, where can I find it? And it's so puzzling to me that we don't have the easiest possible system to tell people how to see a great small movie you

know that should be at your fingertips it shouldn't take nearly as much googling as as as it does you know you can't find the original heartbreak kid it's not streaming you have to go find a copy on youtube uh you can't find silkwood one of mike nichols's best. It's not streaming anywhere because of some weird legal problem about who owns it. So it can come up surprisingly with big movies like that. That's a great movie. I love it. I love it. And I want to be able to

tell people to see it without having to say to them first, well, buy a Blu-ray player. That's step one. You know who's great in that craig t nelson he's fantastic he's really really good right so i i guess like you know i i don't want to sound older or close-minded because i think you're right i think that the way things have broken open that you know the the number of different types of voices and the number of, like, if you think about what you were writing about in the early 60s in terms of the international cinema, you know, it was inaccessible, you know, until the mid 60s in this country that now, you know, the sort of global nature of what we're able to take in, you know, almost immediately. You know, I think there's a natural sort of shallow condescension to the tone of culture in general, and it's reactive and entitled and

abusive that, you know, I think a lot of thoughtful stuff gets lost. How do you find the space and time to take in? How do you know what the fuck is important? I mean, I sort of feel like we all have to do our bit. I mean, I'm on Twitter, like most journalists I know, and I feel like the one thing I can do is, when I see something that I really like, especially a small movie or a small TV show, if I say, hey, watch this, and try to come up with a really short way of saying

why it's great and why I think you should watch it, you just hope that maybe that will rise above the sea of noise at that moment and connect to a few people. The one thing we're finding, though, like really this idea of not necessarily the free market, but that if everybody has access to expression, expressing themselves that somehow or another, you know, the cream will rise to the top that I really think that is not always true. I think a lot of garbage floats to the top and it's promoted heavily and it takes over the conversation.

Right. I mean, money is still a huge finger on the scale. So it's not like the democratization of of social media communication has led to some beautifully level playing field where where only the good stuff wins that does not happen yeah and then also you you're up against the the the the bitterness of the talentless in ways that's the other problem about how do you guys talk about it, you and Tony or even you with other people, about the sort of the nature of the attack on celebrity culture and the arts in general as being, you know, somehow perverted or just useless. I feel like there's this. I mean,

I'm used to that from the political right, you know, all that kind of complaining about Holly weird and Hollywood is like a den of bad morals and bad values. But there is also this strain on the left that sort of views art and artists and the makers of pop culture as fundamentally unserious and corporate, which is, you know, the word that can be used to just cover a whole variety of sins. Or as sometimes I've thought of it and have to sort of struggle with myself as being a distraction. Right, right. I mean, and, you know, I get the argument that there's like so much going on in the world.

How can we devote any bandwidth to movies and television and pop culture? But if we really get to a place where, you know, we decide that art is completely expendable and pop culture is completely expendable because things are just too bad. I mean, that would be just absolutely dire i don't i don't believe it as an argument ever you know oh because we would no longer be able to see ourselves right right i mean we we we turn to to people who make movies and books we love to to have little aspects of ourselves and of the world explained to us and shown to us in a new way how can that ever be like uh considered a luxury option to me that's essential yeah it's like theater it's like you know and it's like the overused uh idea of storytelling like i don't know when that that word became so prevalent, but it is true that even with your book, even going back to those movies that you wrote about or even thinking about Mike Nichols or Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, that even because of the timestamp on them, you realize that there was a whole other way of perceiving then that, that has gotten lost. You know, there was a, you know, the idea that these guys sweated

over strips of film to put them together, you know, these, these decisions that we're making, the collaborative process in a way that wasn't completely polluted, uh, by marketing, um, yet, although you, I mean, you were able to through the sort of veins of all those movies you captured, you saw all levels of it, you know, and also the kind of mixture of old Hollywood and new Hollywood and, you know, what acting meant and how people weighed scripts. And I think the biggest threat to what we're talking about and to criticism in general is that things happen so quickly. We're all operating in a certain amount of anxiety paralysis and ptsd that we only engage passively and things just keep hitting us and keep hitting us that you know and it creates a cultural shallowness that if you don't fight personally

to you know go deeper you know it's it's a trouble for the entire culture yeah i think i think that's a hard it's a hard ask for people though though, to say, like, go exploring. Because I get, like, you hear about a movie, you want to see it, you do the work to figure out where you can stream it or whatever. But to go also, like, it can be really rewarding to just go put yourself in the atmosphere of a place like the Criterion Channel and'm just gonna yeah see where where my mind takes me you know and not be afraid you know i mean i always say to people you can always turn it off like if you don't like it stop and watch another movie but but go go try something but it's interesting to see the courage of you know as a critic like you know to see the courage of filmmakers you know from the past that you know that you know, as a critic, like, you know, to see the courage of filmmakers, you know, from the past that, you know, that, you know, influence independent film now and to realize that all mainstream product movies, most of them for many years and to this day, you know,

require closure and simplicity and compelling, but maybe stupid stories. If you're going to sell a movie and the reason there's so many cowardly, you know, hits is that's really the business of movies. So when you talk about Bonnie and Clyde of the Graduate and you see like, well, these were, you know, outliers. I mean, it was a miracle that that things happened because it was really a populist movement of young people to sort of shift the focus of films of films at that time right and the critics right i mean the only movie of those five that was not going against the grain of what was happening was dr doolittle right that that was mainstream hollywood business and everything else was a little bit of a push or a big push towards something different but yeah but i think the weird thing that i can't tell by talking, like for me, there's still things that I need to reckon with as who I am that I never quite understood

that I can keep going back to, to sort of go deeper within it. Like I could never wrap my brain around Fassbender. And then you got the Criterion Channel and I'm like, well, we'll just try. Just start looking at things. Like I knew that Veronica Voss had a profound effect on me when I was younger, but I didn't think I got it. And now like, you know, I can contextualize everything. I'm older. I can, you know, read a little bit about it and then watch that trilogy.

What is it? Veronica Voss, Lola and Marriage of Maria Brown. Right. And kind of put it into the context of Germany and his career. But that's me. I can't tell anyone to do that. And I'm not trying to be better than anyone else to do that. But for me, the art of film demands me to read people like you and also reengage with the work and see why it's relevant as an art form and needs to be championed as such. Yeah. I love that feeling of going back to a movie every, you know, 10 or 12 years or so.

And, and in some cases thinking, I wonder if I'm going to like it this time. Like I've never, I've never connected with this movie before, but somehow I think maybe this time will be, uh, I'll get it.

And, and, or it'll be just be the right movie for me at the right moment in my life. And, you know, I always think that's a great gamble to take. Like, even if it doesn't pay off, I like trying. Who are you like? Who are the critics working now that you respect and read? Oh, wow.

Well, I read I read everybody because just because I'm on the Internet all day and I'm looking at stuff and I love finding someone I haven't read before. Who is a resource for you where you respect their opinion enough to sort of rethink things? Dana Stevens at Slate. I think she's a really interesting writer. I'm always curious to see what Tony Scott and Manuela Dargis have to say in the New York Times even if I even if I disagree with someone for me like the measure of an

interesting critic is not whether I agree with them a lot or not but whether it sparks an interesting argument in my head and so that's what I kind of look for in criticism is it a good fight happening?

Right. Yeah. And what was your reaction to – like I just did this monologue the other day about how all these award ceremonies and the sort of – the idea of nominating things for know in what we're in right now just seems empty and sad somehow it's so strange like the golden globe nominations came out and and my and you know my whole crowd of people was fighting about the golden globes and i went on a podcast and was asked to talk about the the nominations and and i I did and all the while I was thinking I can't believe the Golden Globes are happening

in this world. Right. And I can't believe anyone is devoting any energy to trying to win a Golden Globe or worrying about not getting nominated for a Golden Globe. It's just like in some ways it made me really happy that

we could take a big break from everything that is insane and horrible in the world right now to talk about you know best supporting actors or whatever right we're pissed off about at the golden globes yeah and in other ways i genuinely cannot believe that there's going to be a golden globes uh at the end of this month yeah it's kind of crazy it's all kind of crazy to me and I think that what we were talking about before and sort of where I was going when I spoke about the Golden Globes is that, you know, in the same way you and I were talking about how quickly things go, go by and how you have to grab onto things or take the time to go a little deeper with things or figure out how to choose things is that, you know, the possibility that we get through this

over the next, you know, six months, that there's not going to be any way to compartmentalize this time. We're not going to be able to dismiss this year or two years of what we went through. And for me, you know, I talk to creative people a lot. I talk to artists and comics and writers. You know, I'm friendly with Tracy Letts. And like, I know that there are people generating, but, you know, it's going to be, you know, a sort of a staggering, hopefully staggering to see how people depict and integrate what we're going through now into art in the very near future, because it's very hard to see anything now or to make anything. But I wonder how this is going to be sort of processed and interpreted. Yeah, I've been watching my husband for the last 10 months, you know, who obviously does something

very different than I do. He tries to create things, you know, you have to create characters tries. And, and, you know, he's, he gets asked all the time, like, Oh, are you going to write a play about Donald Trump? Or are you going to like how how are you going to write about this moment and it i know that it's something that he wrestles with a lot it's like the question of even should i try to write about this moment or should i go chase something else that that means something to me do i have the can i afford to do that right now or should i you know is it part of my job to try to contend with this exact moment in my writing? You know, it's a hard thing. Well, yeah, you know, but you know what the weird thing about that is, is that, you know, it's relative to the outlet.

You know, if he's going to create something that he needs to workshop, when are you going to do that? Like, and also, what about our own denial? Like, you know, most of us are sort of like, I want this to end. You know, like, not, you know, not like, you know, how is this affecting me and my family and, you know, people I know? And, you know, what is it doing? What is the damage, you know? Because that's the idea. It's sort of like, you know, do I just write this musical or, right?

Right. Or do I write something that carries the flag and fights the fight? Which, you know, sometimes you can do directly, but sometimes the best stuff doesn't emerge from you trying to kind of make your contribution to the greater cause. You know, sometimes it comes out of you just following your own passion, even if it's for something strange. So, like, what are the other movies that you liked that are, you know, being talked about? Did you watch Judas and the Black Messiah?

Yeah, and that's a movie I'm really excited to tell people about. I just watched it. It was really powerful, and I didn't know much about uh the the case at all going in or the story and um i felt like a lot with a lot of these fact-based movies one of the really hard things to do is um catch you up on what you need to know um the historical context and stuff just give you enough going in so that you can race along with the story

and with the story and with the characters and i thought this movie did a really good job yeah it was amazing and like you just compare it's so funny to me that like i didn't know much of that story i kind of knew obviously how it ended but you know that character at the core of this thing the one that stansfield played is that his name uh uh yeah i love him stan Stanfield. Yeah. You know, that that moral, you know, the lack the strange moral compass, the idea that the protagonist of this film is the guy is sort of like, I just care about me. I don't give a fuck about this. You know what I also like is that so many of these movies that they shoot about that time period, they always look silly, but they really got the time right. And I think it was because of a profound lack of white people.

White people in those costumes of that era, it's clown time. But for some reason, African Americans in the 60s always look great. They're just like... Well, it's funny because I always flinch when every costume looks like it just got dry cleaned and came off a hanger and is perfect.

Like, no one has ever worn this before the second you're seeing it. And this movie did not have that this movie like it looked a little lived in and and you know that's pretty great and it's just so weird because you watch a chicago seven movie and that thing like it was like you there's no way you can that it's just stop making movies about white people in the 60s because it's just there's no way you're gonna over you're not gonna transcend those pants you know it's just i like the pants based theory of the trial of the chicago seven what other movies did you like i really liked um ma rainey's black bottom oh yeah um you know i think it's super tough to adapt uh plays to the screen and i thought

george wolf and and that whole cast just did they did a great job fantastic job with that yeah it's a heavy um so that it's a heavy movie but um so rewarding to just see those actors oh my god the way they work together you know yeah like that that's why i love theater you know watching actors yeah and and you don't often see that on screen, like a cast of people working that beautifully together. Viola Davis? Oh, my God. Yeah, amazing. What a performance.

Totally not like anything she's done. Oh, my God. This is great. So that's what I really love. What else have you liked? Yeah, I'm trying to think of what other ones that i just watched on a screener like i can't like see this is the problem you almost get like a like uh like a a pandemic induced dementia where you know days seem like weeks and things just you know you watch something it just disappears

i know i used to remember when i was younger i, if you named a movie that I'd seen, I would remember exactly where I saw it. Yeah. Like what theater, what night. And now to see everything at home and to be home all the time, it is making it harder to give every movie like a clean, you know, like wipe your slate clean and just try to watch it. Because everything is sort of, it's all framed as like, like, what can we do today to eat up this time? Exactly. Oh, I watched First Cow. Oh, yeah.

I really like that movie. It's kind of, you know what's cool? Did you notice that there was like two people from McCabe and Mrs. Miller in there? And that, you know, it's got that tone. There's definitely a tip of the hat to that weird muddy mccabe and mrs miller altman thing going on uh yeah i don't see how you can talk about that movie without using the word mud yeah like it's it's it's a muddy movie there you know it's about dirt yeah um and living in dirt and being buried in it literally yeah yeah

yeah that felt really honest and and you know like a tough movie to make and they really i believed it i believed those people in that world yeah that's all i can it so reminded me of mccabe and mrs miller just you saying this makes me want to go watch mccabe and mrs miller tonight oh you can always watch mccabe and mrs miller mccabe and mrs miller is one of my favorite movies i love it last time i watched I watched it, I watched it on DVD and I watched it with subtitles. So like English subtitles so that I could actually hear every... That's hilarious. All right. Well, look, it was great talking to you. Great talking to you too. And do you feel like we covered everything for you? I think so. I mean, I love your show.

I love that I had no idea where we were going to end up going. It's like the most fun part of listening to you and was the most fun part of doing this. Oh, good. Well, thanks for doing it, Mark. And thanks for writing the books. And I'm excited to sort of really dig in to the Nichols book and also the Five Came Back book. Thank you so much. They sent me all the books

and I loved Picture of the Revolution. It really got my brain going again and very excited about film. So I appreciate that. I so appreciate it. Don't watch Dr. Doolittle. It's not fun. I'm going to have to though.

Thanks for talking. All right, take care. There you go. The new book. I love, my brain is ignited. Mark Harris's new book, Mike Nichols, A Life. You can get wherever you get books. You can get pictures out of Revolution.

You can get his other book, the World War II book, Five Came Back. Great writer, thoughtful thoughtful writer very engaging and um i like doing episodes like this we don't do them that often and now let's drift away on some guitar sounds that i made Thank you. © transcript Emily Beynon © B Emily Beynon Boomer lives. Monkey. Lafonda. Cat angels everywhere. We'll be right back. Almost, almost anything. So no, you can't get an ice rink on Uber Eats. But iced tea, ice cream, or just plain old ice? Yes, we deliver those.

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