Rogue One: A Star Wars Story was a breath of fresh air into the somewhat stale Star Wars franchise, especially after the painfully derivative, completely uninspired, by-the-numbers The Force Awakens. New characters took center stage, including yet another female protagonist, and with some support from some legacy characters including Darth Vader and CGI versions of Grand Moff Tarkin and a young Princess Leia; and it turned out to be for most fans, a very satisfying film.
At the helm of this epic film was a little known director by the name of Gareth Edwards.
So who is this Gareth Edwards we speak of? How did he make the jump into hyperspace and become part of the Star Wars universe as well as reboot one of the most popular monster film franchises of all time (read Godzilla)?
Gareth Edwards 101
Gareth Edwards was a Star Wars fan from the get-go. In fact, in an interview, he shared the story of seeing Star Wars for the first time and wanting to join the Rebel Alliance. Unfortunately, according to him, he learned that the Rebel Alliance was a “lie” but become hooked on filmmaking and decided it was going to be his career path.
The directors he considered to be his major influences were George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and Quentin Tarantino. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University for the Creative Arts in Farnham in 1986, and would later receive an honorary Master’s degree from the same university.
From there, he moved into visual effects and his work showed up in various programs that eventually showed up on the Discovery Channel and BBC. During that time, he made the leap doing visual effects; he admits that the first directing gig was for a TV episode on a TV series that hardly anyone watched and had a budget under $90,000.
In 2008, he took part in the 48 Hour Film Festival, and as luck would have it, they gave his group the Science Fiction Genre. It was game on. Forty-eight hours later, he and his crew delivered a complete short film that took top honors at the festival.
The film depicts a sentry hunting down a man of interest while remembering a small child-headed through the corridors of what seems to be a hospital, but is revealed in the final moments as something completely different. From viewing the film (below), one can see his cinema style influenced by his unofficial mentors.
About Monsters
The idea for Monsters was born during a trip to the beach.According to Edwards:
“I remember being abroad on the beach and watching these guys really struggling to pull a fishing net from the ocean. I couldn’t understand what they were saying, but you could tell they were teasing each other about it and I thought it would be funny if, when they finally pulled it out, it had a giant sea creature on the end or something… Yet they were carrying on as if this was part of their everyday life.” (Empire Magazine, Issue #257, November 2010).
He ran with the idea, and over time, it morphed into a romantic Science Fiction drama feature film centering around a cynical photojournalist responsible for the safe passage of his boss’s daughter through the “infected area” of South America, overrun with massive octopus-like creatures from another planet.
His pitch received the immediate green light from Vertigo Films and his budget was $500,000. What Edwards did with that 500 grand was nothing short of remarkable. What was even more remarkable is that he would deliver the film under budget!
Finding the right combination of actors to play the photojournalist and the daughter would be essential in conveying the emotional gravity of the film.
As luck would have it, he found the actors who were an actual couple. The photojournalist would be played by Scoot McNairy, and the boss’s daughter would be played by Whitney Able. At first, Edwards wasn’t sold on Able; he thought she was too pretty, but then after some discussions, he realized that if he could deliver even a fraction of their real-life chemistry that it would be an incredible plus for the film.
Scriptment vs Treatment
Edwards eschewed the normal filmmaking conventions of writing a screenplay and settled on just a scriptment consisting of points the actors need to cover within the scene.While this approach would result in a much more organic, realistic performance from the actors, it also proved to be problematic when it came to reshoots, as the actors had no point of reference.
Guerrilla Shooting During Guerrilla Warfare
Principal Photography lasted three weeks and was shot on location in Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Texas, most of the time during a drug war raging all around them.
The production was the epitome of guerrilla filmmaking, with Edwards serving as both Director and Director of Photography, which the rest of the crew consisting of the Sound Operator, The Mexican Fixer, who was responsible for ensuring safe passage as well as other logistical issues, The Line Producer, and the two lead actors.
While the crew was running and gunning their way through the jungles and villages of South America, the Editor and his assistant were busy at the hotel, downloading the footage from memory sticks to the computer so that they could shoot the next day.
The supporting cast were all played by locals with little or no acting experience.
This shoot was by no means smooth; it fraught with peril as they encountered all sorts of crime, including shootings, a street market attack, a prison riot, and a mass shooting at the cafe the day prior to their filming at the location.
Gareth and company shot a total of 100 hours of footage. Editing and sculpting the story would be a massive undertaking. Turning 100 hours into 90 minutes would be a daunting task for Edwards, but once the film was locked, the next five months would consist of creating over 250 visual effects shots.
Sitting Up and Taking Notice
Vertigo Pictures’ $500,000 investment paid off handsomely. It premiered at South by Southwest in 2010. The critics were split on the film, but it didn’t matter as the film went on to gross $4.2 million at the box office.The movie garnered six British Independent Film Award nominations and won for Best Director, Best Technical Achievement, and Best Achievement in Production.
Monstrous Review
Monsters, is at its core, a Science Fiction relationship drama. The lead characters, played admirably by Scoot McNairy and Whitney Able, take us on quite an emotional journey as they meet have to travel to through the “infected area” in order to return home to the United States.
During their journey, they grow closer together as they realize the lives they’re going home to isn’t all that.
There’s no doubt that Spielberg’s JAWS and his Tom Cruise centric remake of The War of the Worlds provided a cinematic blueprint for the characters’ path forward.
Edwards uses money shots sparingly, creating tension by the use of ominous creature sound effects, gives us terrifying glimpses of the creature during the prologue, mid-way through the movie, throws in a tentacle or two for good measure, and then saves the best for the last at the climactic scene at an abandoned gas station.
The ending, while unexpected, seemed to be anticlimactic and climactic at the same time.
The film shares many of the themes of District 9, in terms of being quarantined, and the references to illegal immigration. Edwards portrays the military as a malevolent force when in all actuality the creatures just might be misunderstood, and wouldn’t you know that near the end of the film, five years before Donald Trump would take place, there would be a discussion of a wall along the southern border to keep the bad things out.
While the film was beautifully shot by Edwards, with some arresting visuals and with some undeniably winning performances by its leads, Act Two seemed to be more of a travelogue than a race to the border, which diminished the dramatic tension of the piece. Let’s just say that if I was in an area that was overrun by creatures that could kill me, the last thing that I would do is stop to take a nap.
The monsters themselves are extremely reminiscent of Steven Spielberg’s remake of The War of the Worlds. There are a lot of questions surrounding Earth’s new visitors, such as where they came from, what was their agenda, and what was their endgame. Ultimately, the tentacled creatures turn out to be a bunch of slimy Greta Garbo, who just want to be left alone.
Monsters doesn’t pretend to be a Hollywood Blockbuster. Despite its small shortcomings, the protagonists in this film are believable and relatable, with its unexpected final seconds of the film giving Mankind hope for the future.
Gareth Edwards, The Big Green Lizard, and Darth Vader
While it wasn’t a billion-dollar blockbuster in the mold of a Star Wars or a Marvel movie, Monsters substantial calling card for Edwards during a time that studios were hungry for up-and-coming directors to direct the latest opus of their franchise.
Enter Godzilla. Legendary Pictures had purchased the rights to the legacy characters of the popular franchise and it was full speed ahead with Godzilla with Edwards helming the first film.
Based on the success of that film, he was immediately signed to do the sequel but eventually bowed out (an amicable split according to the trades) when another small gig came along, from a small mom-and-pop shop called Lucasfilm to do a little trifle Rogue One: a Star Wars Story, which ended up grossing over a billion dollars at the box office.
Gareth Edwards’ Indie Film Hustle
There are several takeaways from Edwards’ journey.
First, filmmakers need to start off small and shoot small films (which Edwards did during his film school experience). Next, he worked within the constraints of what he had at his disposal, which he learned throughout his 48 Film Festival experience. Once he proved his mettle, then he would gain the credibility for someone to invest half a million in his talent.
Additionally, he knew he had a good story and wasn’t afraid to take the road less traveled in creating a scriptment instead of toiling for years, crossing the t’s and dotting the I’s in a traditional screenplay.
He also learned that the luxury of having a large crew can be an actual impediment to the creative process and that you can create an epic story with a small cast and crew
When you look at Edwards’ trajectory, there seems to be a real sense of urgency; he went from shooting a 48-hour film project to creating his feature film in the span of two years. While it may not be documented, one can also surmise that his willingness to shoot one hundred hours of footage and then go through the painstaking process of editing it down to 90 minutes meant that his focus and vision changed along the way and that his flexibility was his pathway to Monsters’ success, and ultimately realizing his dream of being part of the Star Wars universe.
Everyone who has ever seen a movie has at some point in time, seen a section of films were a series of shots that indicate actions over a span of time, usually without dialogue. This is what is referred to as a Montage, which is French for assembly or editing.
This cinematic device originated during the Silent Film Era as part of a movement called the Soviet Montage Movement.
While the most notable director in the Soviet Montage Movement was director Sergei Eisenstein, the chief architect of this movement was director Lev Kuleshov.
Eisenstein declared in
“A Dialectic Approach to Film Form that to determine the nature of montage is to solve the specific problem of cinema.”
Moreover, though, Montage created a cinematic language that helped overcome the illiteracy of the Soviets at the time, using images rather than words, in order to adequately communicate the precepts and the ideals of the Communist Party. It also served to create a clear distinction between American and Russian filmmaking styles.
Soviet Montage Movement Film Characteristics
Without getting too far into the weeds, Montage’s theory brought a set of rules and structures to film. While American film would stick closer to the script, Montage directors and theorists preferred, as one writer referred to, as a “collision of images” to achieve meaning. It relied on images rather than words on title cards.
Further exploration of the Soviet Montage Style and how it affected filmmaking throughout the ages can be found below:
Influential Soviet Montage Movement Directors
Perhaps the greatest example of the Soviet Montage movement was the film the Battleship Potemkin, directed by Sergei Eisenstein. The story was told in five acts and focused on the 1905 incident where the crew of the ill-fated ship mutinied against its officers.
The Acts were entitled Men and Maggots, Drama on the Deck, A Dead Man Calls Out, The Odessa Steps, and One Against All. Other notable Soviet Montage Movement directors included Dziga Vertov and Vsevolod Pudovkin.
Popular Soviet Montage Films
Kino-Eye (1924)
Battleship Potemkin (1925)
The Death Ray (1925)
Mother (1926)
Zvenigora (1927)
October: Ten Days That Shook the World (1928)
Man With a Movie Camera (1929)
A Simple Case (1932)
Soviet Montage Movement Films
While the most prolific film of the time was the Battleship Potemkin, other movies of the time included Dziga Vertov’s documentaryKino-Eye (1924).
This documentary follows the joys of life in a Soviet village centers around the activities of the Young Pioneers who are always busy, pasting propaganda posters on walls, distributing fliers, and helping poor widows.
Lev Kuleshov’s The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks (1924), featured the travels of a character called Mr. West who learns the truth about how America perceives the Soviet people.
German life in the 1920s wasn’t exactly all sunshine and rainbows and dancing until the cows came home. It was more like War was Hell, we lost, life really sucks, and we’re just going to wallow in it for the next seven years or so. German Expressionism pulled out all of the stops to view life through an extremely dark lens.
Characteristics of German Expressionism Film
If you thought movies of the French Impression Movement were dark and disjointed and at times pretty psychotic, lookout. The movies of the German Expression movement were extremely dark, like really, really dark, and were the things that nightmares were made of, and did I mention that they were depressing as Hell and downright disturbing.
Can you imagine walking out of the theaters of the time? Talk about feeling unsettled and needing a drink!
It’s little wonder that this movement blazed an eerie path leading to the famous Universal Studios horror films. The movies were dark, stark, with angular, shadowy characters like in the classic Nosferatu.
The atmosphere was everything, and keep in mind that we’re talking about this movement as being part of the overall Silent Film era.
German Expressionism Movement Movies
Some of the more notable movies of the German Expressionist movement include Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Destiny, Golem, Fury, and Dr. Mabuse and the Gambler, just to mention an unsettling few.
Influential German Expressionism Directors
Some of the most prolific directors during the German Expressionism Movement included Fritz Lang, Robert Wiene, and F.W. Murnau. It’s also interesting to note that both Lang and Wiene were also actors from time to time.
Fritz Lang was given the moniker of The Master of Darkness by the British Film Institute.
Storytelling
As stated before, life wasn’t a picnic. They were an exploration of our darkest selves and our deepest fears.
Metropolis gave audiences a nightmarish glimpse into the future, where a heroine tries to unite the working classes together. H.G. Wells himself dismissed it as trite and simplistic, while others were not too crazy about the Communist subtext. Its running time of 153 minutes turned out to be a bit of a slog, and it was trimmed for length immediately after the premiere.
One can easily see the film’s visual style reflected in many modern-day science fiction masterpieces such as Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Nosferatu (1922)
starring Max Schreck as the bug-eyed, long-fingered Count Orick, was an unofficial and unauthorized “adaptation” of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Stoker’s estate sued the filmmakers and all copies of the film were ordered to be destroyed, but a few copies managed to survive, and to this day the film is heralded as an influential masterpiece of cinema.
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
The film told the story of an evil hypnotist who uses an unwitting sleepwalker to commit murder.
Spoiler Alert: It actually turns out that the whole story was a delusion, and the subtext seemed to imply the German psychological need to place their will and their trust into the hands of a madman (AKA Adolf you-know-who). Ironically, Dr. Caligari ends up becoming an inmate in his own asylum.
Roger Ebert hailed it as the first true honor film, while another reviewer called it cinema’s first cult film and the precursor to art house films. It is also widely considered to be the quintessential work of German Expressionist cinema.
Sometime after the runaway success of 2012’s DJANGO UNCHAINED, director Quentin Tarantino was taking in a viewing of John Carpenter’s horror classic, THE THING (1982). He came away from this particular screening with complicated feelings– an impression that compelled him to take to his writing as a way to process his reaction. The idea that would eventually become his eighth feature film, 2015’s THE HATEFUL EIGHT, was initially envisioned as a novel he called “Django In White Hell”, a sequel of sorts to his previous film.
Naturally, a director with as feverish a cult following as Tarantino’s is going to be the subject of intense scrutiny during the creation of a new project; somehow, an early draft (complete with his signature hand-scrawled title page) leaked to the internet and was widely circulated amongst the filmgoing public. A despondent Tarantino hastily announced he was canceling any further development of the film in light of the leak, but after a warmly-received live table read at the Ace Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, he was ultimately persuaded to continue forward with the project.
Having dropped the “Django sequel” aspect early on in the writing process, Tarantino structures THE HATEFUL EIGHT as a chamber piece in the vein of his 1992 debut, RESERVOIR DOGS— albeit filtered through the prism of a harsh Wyoming winter in the post-Civil War era. He began with a basic premise: what would happen if you stuffed eight hateful and untrustworthy miscreants into a room and slowly started turning them against each other? The answer, obviously, is a total bloodbath.
Though the film’s shoot in Telluride, CO during an unseasonably warm and pleasant winter might suggest otherwise (1), the story finds a monstrous blizzard forcing several shady and unpredictable characters to seek shelter at Minnie’s Haberdashery, a rustic cabin in the woods outside of the fictional town of Red Rock.
A perennial Tarantino repertory player since 1994’s PULP FICTION, Samuel L. Jackson is finally given top billing for his performance as Major Marquis Warren– a taunting and tempestuous bounty hunter whose journey to Red Rock is cut short when he’s stranded out in the middle of the storm. He hitches a ride to Minnie’s with an old acquaintance and fellow bounty hunter, John Ruth The Hangman, played by Kurt Russell in his second collaboration with Tarantino after 2007’s DEATH PROOF. Russell enthusiastically hams it up with his best John Wayne impression, turning in a performance that, in any other director’s hands, would steal the show at every juncture.
But this isn’t any other director’s film– it’s Tarantino’s, and both Jackson and Russell have stiff competition in the gallery of murderous rogues drawing ever closer around them. The remainder of the titular gang of disdainful scoundrels is comprised of the likes of Jennifer Jason Leigh, Bruce Dern, Demian Bichir, and longtime Tarantino players Tim Roth, Walter Goggins, and Michael Madsen.
Leigh was nominated for a Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance as Daisy Domergue, the stubborn and vicious prisoner chained to John Ruth’s hip. As the ringleader of a roving gang of bandits, Leigh’s devious presence unifies this seemingly-random assortment of killer oddballs into something resembling a cohesive conspiracy that plots to free her from the clutches of The Hangman.
Fresh off the heat from his acclaimed turn in Alexander Payne’s NEBRASKA (2013), Bruce Dern gets to spend the entire shoot reclining in a cushy chair in his role as a cranky Confederate general named Sandy Smithers. Initially, a happenstance visitor at the Haberdashery, Smithers’ personal history is found to be intermingled with the other guests in surprising fashion, but none more so than his “intimate” connection to Major Warren– the man who murdered his son. Also seemingly thereby total coincidence, Roth, Madsen, and Bichir’s characters are revealed to be members of Domergue’s gang; Roth being the well-dressed executioner with a British accent, Oswaldo Mobray; Madsen being a gruff and reclusive cowboy named Joe Gage; and Bichir being the squinting ranch-hand, Mexican Bob.
After a minor supporting turn in DJANGO UNCHAINED, Goggins receives an increase in screen-time with his role as the goofy hayseed Sheriff-elect of Red Rock, Chris Mannix. His folksy drawl helps sell his background as a Confederate rebel, an affiliation that initially aligns him with Dern’s General Smithers before forging an unlikely alliance with the person who by all accounts should be his mortal enemy, Major Warren.
Tarantino’s cast is slightly larger than the eight advertised on the marquee, incorporating James Parks (son of another Tarantino regular, Michael Parks) as an irritable cart driver named O.B, DEATH PROOF’s Zoe Bell as a bubbly frontier Kiwi named Six Horse Judy, and Channing Tatum as the rakish Francophile bandit (and Daisy’s brother), Jody, amongst others. Tarantino engineers his films entirely around the interactions of these characters, strategically employing surprise revelations and backstabbing double-crosses to ratchet up the tension until it explodes in grandiose, bloody fashion.
Tarantino initially broke out on the strength of his unique voice as a screenwriter– a voice that fueled highly-identifiable energy and visual style. As his voice has matured, his aesthetic has mellowed out; relying less on kitsch and pop flash and more on beautiful, technically-accomplished cinematography. This shift began in earnest with 2009’s INGLORIOUS BASTERDS and continues with THE HATEFUL EIGHT by retaining Tarantino’s regular cinematographer Robert Richardson.
The affected retro vibe of his earlier work feels uniquely organic here, owing to the fact that Tarantino and Richardson shot the film in the Ultra Panavision 70mm format– the first film to do so in fifty years. The decision to utilize an otherwise-extinct format subsequently informed every technical decision down the line. Shooting on 65mm film stock that would later be projected in 70mm, THE HATEFUL EIGHT boasts an ultra-wide 2.76:1 aspect ratio (the widest around). Tarantino’s compositions and camera movement are tailored accordingly, framed into a wider panorama to compensate for the snow-capped vistas that tower in the distance behind Minnie’s Haberdashery.
Majestic crane and dolly movements appropriately evoke the sweeping scope of westerns past while also enabling modern stylistic conceits like split-focus diopter compositions, slow-motion bullets that hit home with the sonic force of bombs, and Tarantino’s own signature low-angle POV shots.
Tarantino’s old-school approach continued on to the film’s post-production. While 35mm prints for the shorter theatrical version were struck from a digital intermediate, Tarantino specifically avoided the D.I. suite when it came time to color the 70mm Roadshow version, which means the cold blue exteriors, warm amber interiors, and the rich hues of the period costumes are the result of organic photochemical color-timing.
THE HATEFUL EIGHT also marks Tarantino’s second consecutive collaboration with editor Fred Raskin, who stepped in to replace Tarantino’s longtime cutter Sally Menke after her unexpected death in 2010. Raskin proves an invaluable ally in helping Tarantino achieve the unique retro flavor of the bygone “roadshow” presentation format.
A staple of midcentury American cinema, the “roadshow” is a term typically ascribed to 3 hour+ epics that adopted a presentation style not unlike stage performance, complete with an orchestral overture and intermission. Whether its due to dwindling audience attention spans or a desire to cram more screenings into a single evening, the roadshow has long fallen out of fashion. The last high-profile roadshow presentation was relatively recent, for Steven Soderbergh’s s CHE (2008) — a sprawling, 4 hour portrait of the eponymous revolutionary fighter — but even then, it was regarded as a once-in-a-lifetime anomaly.
The 187-minute 70mm roadshow presentation, containing an overture, intermission, alternate footage and six minutes of extra footage over its shorter 35mm sibling, is Tarantino’s preferred version of THE HATEFUL EIGHT— yet it’s also the least-seen. Tarantino and his producers (Stacey Sher, Shannon McIntosh, Richard N. Gladstein, and longtime collaborators Harvey and Bob Weinstein) knew that the considerable cost (reportedly $8-10 million) to retrofit enough theaters with analog 70mm projectors capable of handling over 250 pounds worth of film reels was going to be an extremely limiting factor in distributing Tarantino’s intended vision (1).
Instead of simply giving in to the realities of the market, however, they aggressively pushed to install the necessary equipment in 50 theaters around the world while promoting the roadshow version as a special, must-see limited engagement. The 35mm version saw a much wider circulation, and as of this writing is currently the only version of THE HATEFUL EIGHT available on home video. However, Tarantino does manage to nod towards his preferred vision within the 35mm cut by using the occasion of his opening credits to allude to an informal overture via a long, glacially-paced shot that allows the music to take prominence.
In addition to THE HATEFUL EIGHT’s considerable technical innovations, the film also marks Tarantino’s first time using a wholly-original score, courtesy of legendary spaghetti western composer Ennio Morricone. A longtime idol of Tarantino’s, Morricone had lent some pre-recorded cues to the director for use in THE DJANGO UNCHAINED, only to publicly express his displeasure at how his music was handled and vow to never work with the provocative auteur again (1). Morricone obviously changed his mind somewhere along the way, as THE HATEFUL EIGHT boasts a suite of new cues that would land the venerated composer his first-ever Academy Award.
Combining a grandiose, lumbering new sound with a few of his unused cues from THE THING, Morricone’s score benefits from the total creative freedom afforded him by Tarantino. This being a Tarantino film, however, THE HATEFUL EIGHT would be remiss not to include a few choices, anachronistic needle drops (and to drop them just as suddenly in transitioning to a new scene). Towards this end, Tarantino incorporates an inspired mix of tracks from the likes of Jack White and Roy Orbison and even throws in a poignant piano rendition of “Silent Night” to hammer home the film’s Christmas-time setting.
There are few voices in cinema as singular as Tarantino’s, each of his films proudly bearing his unique stamp. THE HATEFUL EIGHT is undoubtedly a piece with Tarantino’s efforts to expand his interconnected cinematic universe while simultaneously drawing it closer together (see the surprise revelation that Roth’s character is actually an ancestor of Michael Fassbender’s Lt. Archie Hicox from INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, or Madsen’s musings that “a bastard’s work is never done”, also from the 2009 film).
Like his previous films, THE HATEFUL EIGHT is structured in his distinct format– self-contained sequences that are partitioned off into book-style chapter intertitles yet presented in a nonlinear fashion as a means to bring further illumination and context to previous events. Within the story itself, his characters are gifted with an almost metatextual awareness about the greater universe around them. They seem to know they are inside a Tarantino film, readily breaking the 4th wall as if acknowledging their shared creator. Indeed, Tarantino himself is often a character in his own films, deploying himself into a range of capacities from full-fledged characters (RESERVOIR DOGS, PULP FICTION), to cameos (DEATH PROOF, DJANGO UNCHAINED), and even as an omniscient narrator, as seen in THE HATEFUL EIGHT during the feverish “Domergue’s Got A Secret” sequence. The characters within THE HATEFUL EIGHT— like Tarantino’s other iconic creations dating all the way back to RESERVOIR DOGS— all possess a sharp wit, a profanely florid speaking prose, and a gleeful eagerness for borderline-sadistic violence against their fellow man.
Tarantino has always worn his B-movie influences on his sleeve, and the trajectory of his career has seemingly organized his favorite genres into distinct eras. His love for 70’s crime and heist films is evident throughout RESERVOIR DOGS, while his passion for Blaxploitation pictures from the same era fundamentally inform PULP FICTION and JACKIE BROWN. Schlocky kung-fu and bloody grindhouse flicks merged with westerns to create a distinct hybrid of styles that gave us KILL BILL (2003) and DEATH PROOF (2007). Starting with INGLORIOUS BASTERDS, however, a very curious thing is unfolding. The western genre continues to inform Tarantino’s storytelling, but rather than simply homaging that particular period, he is actively deconstructing them to discover the nature of the engine that fuels them. INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, DJANGO UNCHAINED, and now, THE HATEFUL EIGHT come together to form a loose trilogy of Revisionist revenge westerns that directly confront America’s ugly racial history. Tarantino’s longtime, almost-casual use of racial and sexist epithets in his work has earned him several enemies in addition to a reputation as a deeply divisive and controversial voice in mainstream American cinema.
A truly equal-opportunity offender, he has never shied away from carpet-bombing his narratives with some of the most egregious profanity known to man. However, it’s hard to argue that Tarantino lacks empathy with his minority characters– they are frequently empowered to take up arms in their own defense or to right the wrongs of their persecution, and nowhere is this more evident in his last three features. INGLORIOUS BASTERDS reveled in depicting a coalition of American soldiers hunting Nazi scalps to avenge their Jewish brethren. DJANGO UNCHAINED showed a slave rising up to annihilate his white masters without losing his own humanity in the process. THE HATEFUL EIGHT evokes the profound racial tensions between Union and Confederate ideologies while simultaneously suggesting they might be more alike than they are different. Tarantino’s usage of contentious terms like the N-word in this context, while coming at great risk to his own personal character, evidences his unwillingness to shrink away from the ugly racial nature of America’s engine, pointing it out plainly for all to see. His placing of these interactions firmly in the past only highlights their importance to our modern times, and considering the fact that America’s first black president will be succeeded by an openly racist, xenophobic sentient tangerine, the conversation is far from over. Tarantino’s voice may be abrasive and offensive to a lot of people, but it’s hard to argue that his voice isn’t more relevant than ever.
Another aspect of this period in Tarantino’s career has been the huge critical and financial success of his work. After a long awards-circuit dry spell, INGLORIOUS BASTERDS marked Tarantino’s return to the Oscar shortlist– a return he cemented with the even-larger success of DJANGO UNCHAINED and its subsequent win for Best Original Screenplay. THE HATEFUL EIGHT was similarly praised, earning mostly-positive reviews that noted his continued excellence in both writing and direction. The film grossed $155 million against its $44 million budget– a notable downturn in the recent trend, but far from his worst showing.
Well-earned Oscar nominations for Jennifer Jason Leigh’s performance and Robert Richardson’s cinematography followed suit, calcifying THE HATEFUL EIGHT’s reputation as an excellent addition to Tarantino’s canon. As the eighth picture in what Tarantino vehemently insists will be a filmography totaling only ten films, THE HATEFUL EIGHT’s warm reception positions the controversial auteur for success going into what is expected to be his last two films. Rumors that his ninth film will be about Australian outlaws in the 1930s suggests that Tarantino plans to continue his run of revisionist westerns, but one thing we know for certain is that, whatever form the film takes, it undoubtedly will shock, surprise, and outrage.
Author Cameron Beyl is the creator of The Directors Series and an award-winning filmmaker of narrative features, shorts, and music videos. His work has screened at numerous film festivals and museums, in addition to being featured on tastemaking online media platforms like Vice Creators Project, Slate, Popular Mechanics, and Indiewire.
THE DIRECTORS SERIES is an educational collection of video and text essays by filmmaker Cameron Beyl exploring the works of contemporary and classic film directors.
The Australian New Wave Film Movement (1975-1985), starting in mid-1970 and ending about a decade later, is unabashedly and completely Australian and doesn’t shy away from poking fun at their colloquialisms and the Australian way of life, otherwise known as Ozploitation.
Australian film was pretty much dormant from World War II until about the end of the 1960s, where the Australian government stepped in and revolved the art form, especially through the Australian Film, Television and Radio School. More than 400 films were made between 1970 and 1985, more than the rest of the decades combined.
Filmmaking Styles and Storytelling
Gone were the days of stodgy filmmaking, and this resurrection of the film industry expressed the freedom to tell more daring stories.
Notable Directors and Talent
A staggering number of well-known directors and versatile performers emerged during the Australian New Wave Movement.
Directors such as Gillian Armstrong, Bruce Beresford, George Miller, Fred Schepisi, and Peter Weir would not only make their presence known in Australia but also on the international stage as well. Bruce Beresford would come to America to direct Driving Miss Daisy; George Miller is well known for his hardcore Mad Max series of films, and Peter Weir ended up directing such American films as Witness and Dead Poets Society.
Emerging actors who would also take their place on the world stage included Mel Gibson, Nicole Kidman (Moulin Rouge, Eyes Wide Shut), Sam Neill (Jurassic Park), Judy Davis, Bryan Brown, and who could forget Crocodile Dundee’s, Paul Hogan? Australian New Wave Movement Films There are so many outstanding films during the Australian New Wave Movement.
1970’s Movies
Walkabout
Directed by Nicolas Roeg and adapted from the book by James Vance Marshall, it follows the journey of two white children who find themselves alone in the Australian outback until they find an unlikely ally in a teenage aboriginal boy. It was entered into the Cannes Film Festival.
Stork
Based on the play The Coming of Stork by David Williamson and directed by Tim Burstall, this romantic comedy follows the exploits of a 6 foot 7 hypochondriac who falls in love, loses his virginity, and gets the girl.
Picnic at Hanging Rock
Directed by Peter Weir and based on the 1967 book by Joan Lindsay, the plot centers around the disappearance of schoolgirls and their teacher during a picnic in 1900. It was a huge success and was the first breakout hit during the Australian New Wave Movement.
The Last Wave
Peter Weir’s next film, starring Richard Chamberlain, is about a white solicitor in Sydney takes on a murder case and experiences an eerie connection to the local Aboriginal people accused of the crime. The film’s budget was a little over $800,000 and went on to gross $1.25 million and won the Golden Ibex at the 6th International Film Festival.
Mad Max
The biggest film of the first decade of the Australian New Wave Movement was undoubtedly George Miller’s Mad Max. With Mel Gibson in the title role and with a budget of $400,000 (Australian), it earned $100 million worldwide and busted the international doors wide open for other Australian New Wave Films.
My Brilliant Career
Directed by Gillian Armstrong and starring Sam Neil and Judy Davis, this film, based on the book by Miles Franklin, this film about a late 19th-century writer and social limitations, premiered at the New York Film Film Festival and resulted in a BAFTA award for Judy Davis, as well as a Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Film, and an Oscar Nomination for Best Foreign Film.
Movies of the 1980s
The Australian New Wave Movement was a deluge of incredible films, ranging from period pieces to ridiculous comedies.
Breaker Morant
Directed and Co-Written by Bruce Beresford and adapted from Kenneth G. Ross’s play, this film revolves around the 1902 court-martial of three lieutenants who were accused of murdering the enemy combatants and were charged with war crimes.
Gallipoli
Starring Mel Gibson and directed by Peter Weir about young soldiers during WWI, won 8 AFI Awards including Best Film, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor, Best Screenplay, and Best Cinematography.
Mad Max 2
George Martin and Mel Gibson teamed up once again for another Mad Max romp; it became a cult film and is considered to one of the greatest sequels and action movies of all time. Distributor advertising and renaming the film in the United States result in approximately 30% of the box office than the original.
The Man From Snowy River
Based on the Poem by Banjo Peterson and directed by George Miller, and with a cast including Kirk Douglas and Jack Thompson and Sigurd Thornton, this Australian Western grossed A$50 million at the box office. It’s a sequel, aptly named The Man From Snowy River II, was released by Walt Disney Pictures.
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
The final Mad Max movie starring Mel Gibson and the formidable Tina Turner as Aunty Entity, and co-directed by George Miller and George Ogilvie, and was hailed as one of the best films of 1985. It wasn’t impervious to criticism and for some fans of the earlier films, felt that it was slicker and less gritty than its predecessors.
Crocodile Dundee (1986) and Crocodile Dundee II (1988)
These films made Paul Hogan a household name in his films inspired by the life of Rod Ansell. The first movie was a monster hit, grossing 328 million dollars at the US Box Office, and Part II grossed $239 million.
Decades before Black Lives Matter existed there was another movement, which was heavily influenced by the Civil Rights Movement and the L.A. Watts Riots.
The period between 1967-1991 served as a reaction against the 1970’s blaxploitation movies and helped usher in the work of John Singleton, The Hughes Brothers, Robert Townsend and Spike Lee, and the movement as a whole seemed to be determined to depict the black experience in a realistic light.
The UCLA Film school of the late 1960s created a slew of incredible, visionary, powerful African-American filmmakers who would be later known as the LA Rebellion and also the “Los Angeles School of Black Filmmakers”. Their filmmaking style was much more artistic and was rooted in Latin American Films and Italian neorealism.
The Music
Music played an integral role in the films of the time and would experiment with combining classical, jazz, and urban music. Burnett’s Killer of Sheep (1977) mixed music from the likes of Rachmaninov, Etta James, and Earth, Wind, and Fire. Other movies incorporated the music of legendary musicians such as Charlie Parker and John Coltrane. Below are some influential directors from the film movement.
Charles Burnett
Perhaps the most prolific director of the time was Charles Burnett, whom the New York Times hailed as “the nation’s least-known filmmaker and most gifted black director.“
Burnett, who was born in Mississippi, and then moved to Watts and started to go down the path of being an electrician at LA City College, but ultimately found himself at UCLA’S film school. From there, he collaborated with his peers on their films as a writer, crew member, and cinematographer.
Killer of Sheep, which was Burnett’s thesis film, with a budget of $10,000, centered around life in blue-collar Watts suburbs, has also written and produced short films and documentaries, has directed many TV movies, and has won numerous awards, including the Freedom In Film award.
Billy Woodberry
Billy Woodberry, born in Dallas, Texas, who moved to Los Angeles to be a part of the UCLA film program, is considered to be one of the pre-eminent directors of the LA Rebellion. His early efforts include his UCLA student films The Pocketbook (1980) and Bless Their Little Hearts (1984).
His short film The Pocketbook, adapted from Langston Hughes’ short story, “Thank You, Ma’am,” centers around an abandoned child who must re-evaluate his life after a botched robbery. He went on to appear in one Charles Burnett’s films as well as provided narration for his own later works.
Julie Dash
Julie Dash, born in Queens, New York, was the first female African-American director whose work received a national theatrical release.
She was raised in the Housing Project in Long Island City, Queens. After graduating from CCNY, she moved to Los Angeles and studied at AFI under directors such as William Friedkin before doing her graduate school work at UCLA.
She has done extensive work in television, and in 2019, announced that she will be directing the Angela Davis biopic through Lionsgate Pictures.
LA Rebellion Filmography
Other films of the LA Rebellion Movement included:
Emma Mae (1974)
Directed by Jamaa Fanaka and also known as Black Sister’s Revenge, finds its lead character robbing a bank to secure bail money for her potential boyfriend, and was released by International Pictures.
Harvest: 3,000 Years (1976)
Passing Through (1977), directed by Larry Clark, starring Nathaniel Taylor with a supporting role from The Jefferson’s Marla Gibbs, and with a budget of $13,000, centers around a Jazz musician joins a revolution after being released from prison.
Bush Mama (1979)
Penitentiary (1979), directed by Jamaa Fanaka, and starring the iconic Leon Isaac Kennedy, centers around the all-too-familiar issue of wrongly imprisoned black youth; the protagonist finds himself in an illegal underground boxing tournament and is forced to fight his way to freedom.
The film also spawned two sequels.
Your Children Come Back to You (1979)
A single mother ekes out a living from welfare check to welfare check, struggling to provide for her daughter. She is faced with the decision to look after her personally or to allow her sister-in-law to provide “more than enough” to go around. Director Alile Sharon Larkin’s film masterfully presents a child’s perspective on wealth and social inequality.
Ashes and Embers (1982)
ASHES AND EMBERS tell the story of an African-American Vietnam vet wrestling with a turbulent past and a chaotic political climate to make a future for himself. Haile Gerima’s rarely seen cinematic achievement ASHES AND EMBERS, winner of the FIPRESSCI Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival.
Illusions (1982)
The time is 1942, a year after Pearl Harbor; the place is National Studios, a fictitious Hollywood motion picture studio. Mignon Duprée, a Black woman studio executive who appears to be white and Ester Jeeter, an African American woman who is the singing voice for a white Hollywood star is forced to come to grips with a society that perpetuates false images as status quo.
This highly-acclaimed drama by one of the leading African American women directors follows Mignon’s dilemma, Ester’s struggle, and the use of cinema in wartime Hollywood: three illusions in conflict with reality. Directed by Julie Dash.
Bless Their Little Hearts (1984)
Billy Woodberry’s UCLA thesis film, which cemented his status as a key player in the LA Rebellion, and was written by Charles Burnett, about a man struggling with joblessness while struggling to keep his family intact.
She’s Gotta Have It (1986)
Spike Lee’s breakthrough feature is a provocative portrayal of an independent 80’s woman struggling to maintain her identity while the men around her strive to control and define her.
School Daze (1987)
Directed by Spike Lee. An off-beat musical comedy that takes an unforgettable look at black college life. Amidst gala coronations, football, fraternities, parades, and parties these characters find themselves caught up in romance and relationships, rituals and rivalries during one outrageous homecoming weekend.
Do the Right Thing (1989)
Directed by visionary filmmaker Spike Lee and featuring a stellar ensemble cast that includes Danny Aiello, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Samuel L. Jackson, Rosie Perez, and John Turturro, DO THE RIGHT THING is one of the most thought-provoking and groundbreaking films of the last 30 years.
Hollywood Shuffle (1987)
Directed by Robert Townsend and starring Robert Townsend, Robert Townsend, Robert Townsend, Robert Townsend, Robert Townsend. An actor limited to stereotypical roles because of his ethnicity, dreams of making it big as a highly respected performer. As he makes his rounds, the film takes a satiric look at African American actors in Hollywood.
Boyz in the Hood (1990)
John Singleton made his debut with this gritty coming-of-age story that earned him Academy Award® nominations for Best Director and Best Screenplay. Young Tre Styles (Cuba Gooding, Jr.) has been sent by his mother to live with his father, Furious Styles (Laurence Fishburne). Their South Central Los Angeles neighborhood is beset by gang violence and drugs, but Furious managed to avoid their ill effects and is determined to keep his son out of trouble.
He can’t, however, protect Tre from the influence of other forces, including his friends, Doughboy (Ice Cube, in his acting debut), who’s drifting into drugs and run-ins with the law, and Doughboy’s brother, Ricky (Morris Chestnut), a high school football star and teenage father. When a chance encounter leads to gunfire and tragedy, Tre must decide whether to accompany Doughboy on a dangerous mission of revenge.
To Sleep with Anger (1990)
Directed by Charles Burnett and starring Danny Glover, Carl Lumbly, Vonettta McGee and Sheryl Lee Ralph, was hailed as a masterpiece by some reviewers; others like Roger Ebert said it was too long, but it nevertheless won Four Independent Spirit awards and the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.
Daughters of the Dust (1991)
Directed by Julie Dash, who was the first feature film directed by an African-American, and was about three generations of Gullah women, was part of the 1991 Sundance Film Festival’s dramatic competition and was the first movie by an African-American woman to receive a national theatrical release.
Sankofa (1993)
Menace II Society (1993)
Directed by The Hughes Brothers (Albert Hughes & Allen Hughes). In an unflinching look at the mean streets of the contemporary urban American ghetto, a Black youth–despite his dreams for a better life–ultimately succumbs to the cycle of violence that pervades his community.
The Glass Shield (1994)
Directed by Charles Burnett was a crime drama about two officers who discover a conspiracy surrounding the arrest of a black man, played by Ice Cube. The film also starred Michael Boatman and Lori Petty and featured Bernie Casey and Elliott Gould, distributed by Miramax Films, grossed $3.3 million at the box office.
Adwa (1999)
A documentary directed by Ethiopian Director Halle Gerima tracked the Battle of Adowa.
Compensation (2000)
Directed by Marc Arthur Chéry, a period piece depicting a multiracial couple at the beginning and the end of the twentieth century, had its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival.
The death of the Hollywood studio system in the 1960s gave way to possibly the most prolific filmmakers in movie history; the likes of Robert Altman, Hal Ashby, and Peter Bogdonovich were falling stars and a new group of directors was on the way up. You might have heard of them. They had a thing for beards apparently their names were Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, Paul Schrader, Brian DePalma, John Milius and Steven Spielberg.
They were affectionately referred to as The Movie Brats.
These brats didn’t cut their teeth as part of the Studio System. They learned their craft at film school. They were raised for the most part on TV. Coppola went to UCLA, Lucas, and Milius at USC, Scorsese at NYU, and De Palma at Columbia.
Spielberg was a different kind of brat; he didn’t wait until college to start making movies. He started at age 11. This group of talent took Hollywood (and the world) by storm and their box office success boggles the mind.
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The brats didn’t stay in their lane. They weren’t divas who couldn’t be bothered. They cross-pollinated (from a creative standpoint that is), and other creatives threw in as well. For example, composer John Williams was all over the place. (Raiders of the Lost Ark, ET, and Star Wars to name just a few scores). George Lucas shot the second unit for The Godfather. Scorsese asked for input from Spielberg for Taxi Driver.
Everyone was all in to help George Lucas finish Star Wars. In fact, Brian DePalma with the rewrite of the iconic opening crawl. They weren’t averse to sharing profit participation points. Sometimes it was extremely profitable and sometimes… well, Big Wednesday comes to mind.
The Impact of The Movie Brat Movement
The work of the directors of the Movie Brat Movement can be felt today in the work of Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson, and Danny Boylewould have not been possible without the likes of Scorsese.
The Movies of the Movie Brat Movement
The Movie Brats created one blockbuster after another as well as critically acclaimed films, including:
The Godfather (Coppola)
The saga of the Corleone Family, based on a book by Mario Puzo starring Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, and Talia Shire, and won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director.
American Graffiti (Lucas)
A coming-of-age comedy set in the 1950s, starring Ron Howard, Candi Clark, Richard Dreyfuss, Cindy Williams, and MacKenzie Phillips. It came up short at the Academy Awards (four nominations, no wins), but won Best Musical or Film at the Golden Globes.
Mean Streets (Scorsese)
The first of many Scorsese crime dramas, starring Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel. While it was a critical darling, it ended up making only $41k at the box office.
The Conversation (Coppola)
A thriller about a surveillance expert who finds out his recordings reveals a potential murder, starring Gene Hackman. Although it won the Grand Prix at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival, it lost to The Godfather Part II at the Academy Awards.
Carrie (DePalma)
At the center of the terror, is Carrie (Spacek), a high school loner with no confidence, no friends… and no idea about the extent of her secret powers of telekinesis. But when her psychotic mother and sadistic classmates finally go too far, the once-shy teen becomes an unrestrained, vengeance-seeking powerhouse who, with the help of her “special gift,” causes all hell to break loose in a famed cinematic frenzy of blood, fire, and brimstone!
Jaws (Spielberg)
Based on the runaway best-seller by Peter Benchley, the epic man against shark thriller starring Richard Dreyfuss, Roy Scheider, and Robert Shaw. The film, which spawned three unnecessary sequels, was budgeted at $9 million and was a box office smash, taking in $470 million at the box office.
Taxi Driver (Scorsese)
A psychological thriller starring Jodie Foster, Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, was a critical success and made a respectable $28 million at the box office.
Conan The Barbarian (Milius)
Orphaned boy Conan (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is enslaved after his village is destroyed by the forces of vicious necromancer Thulsa Doom (James Earl Jones), and is compelled to push “The Wheel of Pain” for many years. Once he reaches adulthood, Conan sets off across the prehistoric landscape of the Hyborian Age in search of the man who killed his family and stole his father’s sword. With beautiful warrior Valeria (Sandahl Bergman) and archer Subotai (Gerry Lopez), he faces a supernatural evil. Screenplay by John Milius and Oliver Stone.
Star Wars (Lucas)
The iconic space opera starring Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, and Harrison Ford, with an assist from Anthony Daniels, Kenny Baker, David Prowse, and James Earl Jones, made a staggering $775 million. The film spun off 8 sequels and prequels, numerous TV series, and enough merchandise to fill a galaxy far, far away.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Spielberg)
Starring Melinda Dillon, Richard Dreyfuss, and a young Cary Elwes, about extraterrestrials coming to earth while the world holds its collective breath and learning to communicate, was the second Science Fiction film blockbuster of 1977 and pulled in $288 million at the box office.
Every director experiences a misfire at some point in his/her career. Even Stanley Kubrick, widely considered to be one of the greatest directors that ever lived, felt the bitter string of failure once or twice. It’s as inevitable as the sun coming up each day. For a director as strong-minded and controversial as Quentin Tarantino, it was only a matter of “when”, not “if” his misfire would occur. It’s arguable that he may have had more than one of these ill-advised projects within his filmography, but I feel that most would agree his first brush with failure came when he involved himself in the 1995 anthology feature, FOUR ROOMS.
All but forgotten within Tarantino’s own canon, FOUR ROOMS is only talked about now in hushed whispers in dark corners of movie nerd chat rooms. FOUR ROOMS features the work of four directors—Allison Anders, Alexandre Rockwell, Robert Rodriguez and Tarantino—each contributing a short sequence that when put together, presents the story of Ted (Tim Roth), an anxious bellhop, and the eccentric characters he encounters during his first night of employment at a fictional Los Angeles hotel. While the film admittedly possesses an intriguing executional premise, the film didn’t perform well at the box office, and was met with heaps of scorn by critics. While Tarantino can’t claim 100% of the blame here, his work can certainly be viewed objectively outside of the context of the larger project.
Tarantino’s section, entitled “THE MAN FROM HOLLYWOOD”, occurs as the film’s climax. Rightly so, as Tarantino is arguably the biggest name in the film. His section finds Ted nearing the end of a long, crazy night and called up to the penthouse to deliver a few very specific items to its guests. Upon entering the penthouse, Ted is roped into the aftermath of a boozy Hollywood bender, hosted by film director Chester Rush (Tarantino himself). It’s New Year’s Eve, everyone’s drunk, and their wealth has left them bored and restless. Rush and friends devise a treacherous game- if one of the guests can successfully light his lighter ten consecutive times, he wins Rush’s cherry red Chevy convertible. If the lighter fails to light even once, he loses his pinky finger. Soon enough, Ted finds himself in big dilemma when Rush coaxes him into wielding the hatchet intended for the aforementioned pinkie. Will he take the $1000 offered to him for going through this morbid gamble, or will he cave to fear and lose out on an easy payday?
This is the kind of story that’s perfect for short films. A simple, one-off scenario that creates natural conflict between characters who don’t need a lot of fleshing out. Roth, once again collaborating with his RESERVOIR DOGS and PULP FICTION director, assumes the effete, nebbish expectations of a stereotypical bellhop. It’s not much of an acting challenge on its face, but it certainly pays off in the piece’s ending moments by a huge subversion of audience expectation.
Tarantino has a penchant for casting himself, and he takes advantage of the opportunity afforded by a lower-profile project to give himself a starring role. His Chester Rush character plays like an exaggerated, in-on-the-joke version of himself in real life. Rush is a motormouth with a short temper and a sense of self-importance that isn’t entirely earned. Roth’s PULP FICTION co-star Bruce Willis also makes a glorious, uncredited appearance as one of Rush’s freeloader friends undergoing severe marital troubles. Willis wasn’t credited because he violated SAG rules by appearing in the film for free. Unexpectedly liberated by the constraints of Willis’ public image, Tarantino plays with his celebrity persona by dressing him up as an intellectual type boiling with impotent anger. It’s a deeply funny turn by Willis, the kind I’d like to see him do more often.
Despite being an anthology film with a singular through-story, each director is allowed to collaborate behind the camera with whomever they want. To this end, Tarantino recruits his regular collaborators—producer Lawrence Bender, director of photography Andrzej Sekula, and editor Sally Menke. Taking a cue from Alfred Hitchock’s ROPE (1948), Tarantino strings along a series of long takes to construct his film. Sekula and Tarantino utilize a Steadicam rig to wantonly careen around the penthouse set. Tarantino and Roth also repeatedly break the fourth wall by talking directly to the camera, but the effect is jarring and counterintuitive rather than inspired.
THE MAN FROM HOLLYWOOD is most definitely a Tarantino creation, what with its creative profanity and numerous pop culture and film references. It’s worth noting that a very striking corner has been turned here. Now that he is in a position to directly influence pop culture, Tarantino’s signature references have begun referring back to himself and his creations. For instance, Tarantino’s character not-so-casually mentions that a particular drink was a “tasty beverage”. Of course, Samuel L. Jackson made the line famous in PULP FICTION. It’s a very specific collection of words, first spoken by a black man and now—like so many arbiters of “cool” in our culture—appropriated by a white man trying to trade in his inherent nerdiness for an effortless swagger.
THE MAN FROM HOLLYWOOD also exists as a distilled example of Tarantino’s most potent signature conceit: the slow-burn suspense sequence capped off by a short explosion of violence. This is manifested in the film’s pinkie bet centerpiece, and is a classic Tarantino creation. We see the elements of this absurdly-complicated bet slowly come together throughout the entirety of the piece, with Tarantino’s character verbally building anticipation with each passing minute. When the inevitable moment of violence comes, it still arrives with a great deal of surprise and unmitigated glee.
While they aren’t working directly with each other, THE MAN FROM HOLLYWOOD finds Tarantino in his first collaboration with fellow independent maverick and close personal friend, Robert Rodriguez. Tarantino would go on to script and star in FROM DUSK TILL DAWN for Rodriguez, beginning a decade-long fascination with each other that would result in shared directing projects like SIN CITY (2005) and GRINDHOUSE (2007).
When all is said and done however, THE MAN FROM HOLLYWOOD, like the larger FOUR ROOMS project encapsulating it, is a dud. Tarantino’s contribution is most likely the strongest part of the film, but it’s dramatically/comically inert. Rather, it feels more like an indulgent victory lap celebrating Tarantino’s ascent into the Hollywood elite, painted in the broad strokes of caricature as a means to veil said victory lap. The aftermath of the pinkie bet is easily the best part about the film, but it only comes after a long, bloated slog through boring-town. Thankfully, the low profile of the film upon its release didn’t have any sort of long-term negative effect on Tarantino’s career. Ultimately, THE MAN FROM HOLLYWOODis forgivable as an act of experimentation, but shows no real growth on behalf of Tarantino besides more practice with long, complicated Steadicam takes.
Author Cameron Beyl is the creator of The Directors Series and an award-winning filmmaker of narrative features, shorts, and music videos. His work has screened at numerous film festivals and museums, in addition to being featured on tastemaking online media platforms like Vice Creators Project, Slate, Popular Mechanics, and Indiewire.
THE DIRECTORS SERIES is an educational collection of video and text essays by filmmaker Cameron Beyl exploring the works of contemporary and classic film directors.
Film noir is a term in filmmaking that’s used predominantly to refer to classy Hollywood crime dramas, mainly the ones that emphasize sexual motivations and cynical attitudes. The Hollywood classic film noir era was said to have extended from the early 1940s to the late 50s.
During this period, Film Noir was associated with a discreet, Black and White graphic style that has roots in the German Expressionist film making techniques.
It is also a French term which means, “black film,” or film of the night, which was inspired by the Series Noir; a brand of cheap paperbacks that transformed hard-boiled American crime fiction authors, and discovered a modern audience in France.
If you’re confused and believe that every black and white movie that you’ve seen is Film Noir, the following features would clarify it for you;
• It’s a film which at no particular time misleads its audience into believing that there’s going to be a happy ending.
• They usually use locations that reek of the night or have shadows everywhere, show lots of alleys, apartment buildings with high turnover rates, and bartenders and taxi drivers that have seen it all.
• The women in it would just as soon kill you as they’d love you, and vice versa.
• Almost everyone in Noir films is always smoking; as if they’re trying to convey the message to the audience that says, “Added to everything else I’m supposed to do, I’ve been consigned to finish three packs of cigarette today.” ‘Out of the Past’ was deemed the greatest smoking movie of all time, in which Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas were seen smoking furiously at each other.
• For women, the following were the order of the day; wearing floppy hats, mascara, lipsticks, high heels, red dresses, elbow-length gloves, showing low necklines. Calling doormen by their first names, having gangster boyfriends, mixing drinks, developing soft spots for alcoholic private detectives, and last but not the least, sprawling dead on the ground with every hair in place and all the limbs meticulously arranged.
• And for the men, the following were the order of the day; wearing suits and ties, fedoras, staying in shabby residential hotels with neon signs blinking through the window, having cars with running boards.
Going to all-night diners, being on first-name basis with almost all the homicide detectives in the city, protecting kids from the bad guys, knowing a lot of people with job descriptions that end in “ies,” like cabbies, junkies, bookies, alkies, jockeys, and Newsies.
• The relationships usually depicted in these movies portray love as only the final flop in the poker game of death.
During the World War II era and afterward, audiences responded to this adult-oriented kind of film simply because it was vivid and fresh. Shortly after this, a lot of writers, directors, actors, and cameramen joined the trend because they were eager to a more mature and world-view to Hollywood.
This situation was fueled by the artistic and financial success of Double Indemnity; Billy Wilder’s adaptation of James M. Cain’s Novella of the same name. Following the success of the movie, several studios started pumping out murder dramas and crime thrillers with a uniquely dark and poisonous view of existence.
Very few of the artists that created movies that fit the description of a Noir film ever called it such at that time. But in later years this theme of film-making proved to be hugely influential, both among industry peers and future generations of literary and cinematic storytelling.
Film Noir managed to portray issues like; vivid co-mingling of lost innocence, desperate desire, hard-edged cynicism, shadowy sexuality, and doomed romanticism among other things.
Until this day there’s still a raging debate on whether Noir is a distinct film genre, defined by its contents, or a brand of storytelling recognized by its visual attributes. And since there is no right or wrong answer for this debate, the genre is always kept alive and fresh for subsequent generations of film lovers.
A lot of individuals dislike watching Black and White movies and prefer the colored ones; forgetting the fact that a lot of the most famous movies are in black and white. Also, these types of movies can not only do just as much as the colored ones but could even appear better.
Film Noir is the best place to prove this point. This style of filmmaking continues to influence modern cinematography everywhere, including Breaking Bad. In some cases, comic strips are the real embodiment of this cinematic theme.
The dynamic range of shading in black and white films makes for a more interesting composition of shots. And it also depicts how this particular color can make for an interesting look with higher contrast.
The simplicity of black and white means that the eye can absorb more key features in a shot without getting distracted by other images. While color is great, sometimes simple is better.
In the era of color, film-makers trying to depict that Noir feel to their movies have two options; the first is to mimic noir but in colors. They can blast the screen with bright, vibrant colors to give it the same level of contrast and aesthetics as black and white movies.
Or the second option which is, filming in colors, but then making it so monochromatic that it almost looks black and white.
Black and White filming accentuate contrast, so it can be used to emphasize visual storytelling. A lot of colored films these days subtly make use of the Noir style. Some scenes in the Breaking Bad can be mistaken for some old Film Noir flicks.
And a lot of its gorgeous cinematography owes itself to the techniques that shine strongest in black and white movies. You can even find several film noir lightening everywhere in the series, starting from the blinds, the good side and the bad side, high contrast, and smoking. Smoke looks incredibly gorgeous in Black and White films.
The movie, ‘The Big Combo,’ shows all the beauty of black and white in a specific scene where silhouettes, smokes and high contrasts were depicted in the shot.
They Live by Night
This astonishingly self-confident, poetic debut of Nicholas Ray’s film opens with lush illustrations of a guy and girl in blissful mutual absorption. These characters were never introduced properly to the world. All we see is their shocked faces turned toward the camera when a loud horn suddenly goes off, obliterating every other sound. Shortly after that, the title appears: They Live by Night.
Kiss Me Deadly
This movie which is a black-hearted apotheosis of Noir is an essential film of the 50s, which embodies the most profound anxieties of Eisenhower’s America. Its ending depicts the detonation of a nuclear bomb on Malibu Beach, which then presumably leads to the end of the world. The moral universe created by Robert Aldrich is so violently out of balance that even the opening credit scene is shown upside down. While the protagonist of the movie, Mike Hammer is an amoral, proto-fascist bedroom investigator, and scumbag, the villains are a hundred times worse than him. Hammer is a cynic who’s aware of everything concerning human weakness, but nothing regarding the frame he’s in, at the end of the movie.
Blood Simple
This film is perhaps the most straightforward film of the Coen brothers; even though it’s ironically not that simple at all. It takes its atmospheric title coined from a line in the novel Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett. The film can be referred to as a sort of preparation for their breakout work, Fargo, which similarly features a plot where an evil plan goes sideways. It also marked the first use of literary genre elements in the “real” world. Quentin Tarantino eventually refined this formula. And just like in most noir films, the basis of the story is a case of Cherchez la femme.
Lift to the Scaffold
This action film by Louis Malle was based Noel Calef’s 1956 novel. While it heralds the imminent arrival of the French new wave, it still qualifies as film noir for its appropriation of US postwar cinema in its portrayal of lovers gone corrupt.
The Third Man
The legendary Steven Soderbergh once wrote about this movie, and I quote, “One of the remarkable things about the film is that it’s a great story regardless of what people say about it.” And he was right; The Third Man is one of the greatest, wittiest, steadfastly compassionate, and elegantly shot thriller in time. The movie is about more than its plot. Betrayal, disillusion and misdirected sexual longing are a few of my favorite things, and The Third Man blends them all impeccably with an unquestionable plot and a location that blurs the line between decay and beauty.
I’m here to finally put to rest one of the greatest cinematic arguments of all time, is Die Hard a Christmas movie? I thought I’d tackle this epic question with my good friend Stephen Follows. In this Special Christmas Edition of the Indie Film Hustle Podcast Stephen and I use data to finally put this debate to rest.
I believe without a shadow of a doubt that Die Hard is the greatest Christmas movie of all time. Stephen is not so sure so we go to the data to find out. Stephen wrote an EPIC article about this a while ago where he does what only Stephen does. Below are some of the graphs he created for his dissection of this issue.
“Ok, enough bickering and fighting. Let’s settle this once and for all in the only way I know how – going into a topic in way too much detail. As we prepare to enter the year 32 ADH (a.k.a. After Die Hard), the world is gripped by a constantly nagging question. No, it’s not “Why does everyone call Hans Gruber and his gang ‘terrorists’ when they were clearly bank robbers?” – Stephen Follows
From google trends to actual frames from the film that we see actual Christmas references. We leave no stone unturned in this debate. I promise you after this episode you will be armed to debate and film nerd at the next Christmas party. I wanted to create a fun episode for all the film geeks out there.
Alex Ferrari 0:04
Now today we have a special special Christmas edition of the indie film hustle podcast because I am here to put to rest once and for all the greatest debate in cinema history is diehard. A Christmas movie. I say yippee ki yes, I believe that diehard is by far the greatest Christmas movie of all time. But other people out in the world. I don't know who these people are. But they believe that it's not even a Christmas movie movie, let alone the greatest of all time. So today we brought on a guest returning champion Steven Follows who if you guys know from my past episodes with him. He is an insane man from England who loves to dig into film industry data to find everything out you can about what's going on in the film industry. So he put this lens this data driven lens on to Die Hard to truly see if the data proves once and for all. That it is a Christmas movie we can debate whether it's the greatest Christmas movie or not. That's another question. And we might talk about a little bit of in this episode. But in this episode, we're going to check the data and see once and for all if diehard is a Christmas movie. Now this is not my normal episode. But I thought it'd be good to have a fun episode every once in a while because there's been a lot of heavy stuff going on over the course of the last six months to a year with the distributor debacle and all sorts of other things going on. And I just wanted to put a little levity into the holidays. So this is a super, super fun episode we are going to geek out so sit back and enjoy my conversation with Steven Follows. I'd like to welcome back to the show returning champion Steven Follows How you doing sir?
Steven Follows 4:46
Very well. Thank you. It's nice to know I won on my previous appearances.
Alex Ferrari 4:49
You are. Yes you are. You are a returning champion sir. There's there's a handful. There's a club of guests who get to come back in multiple times on the show. It's a small club, believe it or not, there's not many people that I bring back on the show even after they've been on. But as as continue to grow my numbers as far as episodes are concerned, I gotta keep finding people to come.
Steven Follows 5:12
You've got to find people who want to come back on as well. Because remember, there might have been people who've been on the first time who've gone. You know what? I'm not doing that again?
Alex Ferrari 5:21
I haven't. I haven't I haven't I have not heard that yet. Sir. I hope that never have give you a list. They email me. They email you. Who's this guy? I swear to God. So I wanted to do this kind of special Christmas episode. This is something I've never done in the history of the show before. And it was when we actually came up with this idea. The last time you're on the show after after we were done recording your last episode, which I think I don't know whose idea it was yours or if it was mine. But it was like, Hey, we should do an episode on why Die Hard. argue the point that diehard is the greatest Christmas movie of all time. I'm like, Yes, we need to do this. So shall we? Shall we jump right into it. So what is your head? What is your thesis? In regards to die hard being? The best? I mean, arguably, I mean, I'm not even. I'm not. I mean, there's elf. There is it's a wonderful life. There's many of
Steven Follows 6:15
you jumping in as in like, you're already sentencing the person assuming they're guilty. And yet they have to put up a case there has to be a prosecution. There has to be a defense. Absolutely independent witness and you are absolutely not an independent.
Alex Ferrari 6:29
I'm an independent filmmaker, but not.
Steven Follows 6:32
Yet, Indian indie film hustle has nothing to do with your independence on this topic. Yes. Okay. So Alright, well, yeah, let's not run before we can walk. Is it a Christmas movie? Let's, let's figure that out. And then let's talk about how we might figure out if it's the greatest Christmas movie, if we indeed decided is a Christmas movie, okay, because, believe it or not, that is not the most obvious thing in the world, or at least there are many people who do not believe it is a Christmas movie,
Alex Ferrari 6:58
Including Bruce Willis. Bruce Willis says it's not a Christmas movie. But
Steven Follows 7:02
He says it's a Bruce Willis movie. So I don't think he's he hasn't got a deep thesis there. He doesn't have a very independent point of view either. Talking about Bruce Willis in Bruce Willis movies, yeah, independent isn't the strong word that comes to mind.
Alex Ferrari 7:17
I think I should start. First of all, I think I should start talking about myself in the third person more often. So like, I think Alex Ferrari believes that this is an allegory podcast. So Alex Ferrari believes that it's the best Christmas move for Alex.
Steven Follows 7:29
You're the one person in the film industry who has not been a guest on your own podcast?
Alex Ferrari 7:33
No, I actually, I actually have been a guest on my own podcast I had. I had one tribe, I had a tribe member interview me on my show, because they request he requested like, Can I interview you? For you For the tribe on your show? I was like, Okay, if you want to. So I had Rob Alicia. Come on. And he interviewed me. So yes, I have been a guest on. Alex Ferrari has been a guest on Alex Ferrari.
Steven Follows 8:00
I've been a guest on your show more than you've been a guest on your show, at least. Yes. Yes. Iranian champion. Well, okay. Let me let me start it off by asking you what, I'm assuming you think it's a Christmas movie? Why do you think it's a Christmas movie? What makes it a Christmas movie?
Alex Ferrari 8:13
Well, before we start, I wanna I want to ask you, I want to I want everybody to know if you do not know Steven follows is Stephen. Just because somebody be like, what? Who's this Stephen guy? Was Alex talking to him? Excuse me? Why is Alex Ferrari talking to him? So. So I just want to know Stephen is is probably he is a unicorn in our industry. He there is nobody else like him. There, he does something that nobody else wants to do, nor has the ability to do, which is dig so deep into data for films, that I mean, he's a data cruncher for filmmaker for filmmaking in general, and goes into just obscene minutiae. These reports he puts out on these amazing, amazing reports about filmmaking and horror reports and all this stuff. So I thought that if there's anybody who can put up an argument for this topic, I thought, Steve, it would be a perfect guest. Did I miss anything? So would you like to represent yourself in this nation?
Steven Follows 9:15
Well, you know, normally, my British sense of sort of self effacing ness is just making me go No, no, no, I don't go too deep and stuff. But I'll be honest, even I think I went too deep on this topic. Last Christmas, I kind of got carried away what was was meant to be like, my articles take me half a day at most, maybe some take longer. But then sometimes I build up databases that I can use multiple times. And it feels much more like a hobby. It doesn't take crazy amount of time. This one took a crazy amount of time, because I kept thinking of new threads. And also because I happen to be I don't do huge amount of teaching just because of time, I'd love to do more. But I was talking to a group of ma students in Birmingham. And I had to come up with a topic to talk to them about film data and I wanted to get them interested And I thought, oh, his diehard Christmas movie was the topic, I thought that'd be great because it will allow me to think about movies, as we'll talk about later on in different ways. And so I asked them and then they brought up loads of good threads. And then I've talked to other people. And every time I answered one part of the questions, I'd come up with two other threads. And the only reason that I published the articles in the end was because it was coming close to Christmas. I could still I would still be working on it today if I could, like a year later, so yeah, this time, I did go too deep when I went.
Alex Ferrari 10:32
Okay, so So your first question is, is diehard a Christmas movie is your mission? Alright, so for everybody who is listening who does not know the movie, Die Hard, it is a film that was done in 1988 is an action thriller with starring the legendary Bruce Willis. And arguably This is the movie that made him the legend. This is the one that pretty much launched his career as a action star as as the movie star that we, you know, we know who he is, at this point. He's done other movies, but this was the one that really put them on the map, because he was a romantic star right? He was in before this TV, lighting and also blind date with Kim Basinger in 86 if I'm not mistaken 8687 so he he already kind of started doing some feature work but he was known as a TV actor for for moonlighting. I think he did two or three episodes of that when when that that show was like the show everybody was watching and that's kind of where we were introduced to Bruce. But diehard like I still remember going into the theater in 1988 I'll never forget it and I and I came in late and it was a it was it was already a big blockbuster at the time that I went to go see it was probably a week or two and and everybody was talking about it. This is pre internet pre everything Of course. And I went to the I got in late so I had to go to the front of the theater so I sat like I think in row one or row two, and I just sat there looking up at it which probably affected my impression of the film. And when I saw it I'm like this is like the greatest thing I've ever seen in my life it was just like such and it is it is spot that movie spawned every other kind of movie when it's Die Hard on a ship Die Hard in a plane Die Hard in the sub Die Hard in a hockey rink, Die Hard like if they just use the concept of terrorist taking over something and the lone hero prior to to die hard. I don't know if there was a a film a film a film about something like this specifically with the the you know, the smart cracking detective who was extremely human. He wasn't like, which was also something that stood out about that movie at the time was you know his contemporaries Stallone and Stallone john Claude Van Damme shorts negra these were all muscle bound hyper real human beings they were not the everyday man where Bruce wasn't particularly you know, a huge dude by any stretch he just looked like an everyday guy. And that's also something that stood be stood made this film stand out even more but there's multiple reasons why this film stood out even more so to go back
Steven Follows 13:10
It was it was one year after Lethal Weapon so Lethal Weapon had a very similar vibe a different movie because that was more on the comedy side less on the action in my opinion, both action comedies but this one putting more emphasis on the action and the comedy being important but not the essence isn't this isn't a comedy it's a funny Oh, no. Where is a lethal weapon you could argue is more of a comedy with action. I don't know.
Alex Ferrari 13:32
It's it was a good it was a good run there have amazing films in the 80s that were just some of the best action movies predator diehard Robocop Lethal Weapon lethal weapon to you know the other mother. Welcome, welcome. Well, Kate, let's Okay, let's just calm the hell down here for a second. The other films I listed off in that list were there they're actually really really good films that actually hold up their stories are good. Their commentary like Monday, Okay, stop it. But I my friend, he's dead tired. Oh my god, it was so good. But commando is good for it's kind of commander was good. Like, the room is good. Like it's it's so like, there was cardboard cutouts of people being blown. You know, so it's, it's, it's very interesting. And it's so funny. I actually met one of the stunt guys from Commando. He lives in he lives in the in my area. And I met him on the street. And he's like, yeah, yeah, I've been doing stunts forever. I'm like, well movies up and I was like, Commando. I'm like, Where? Where? Where are you in commando? He goes, I'm the Mall Cop that gets elbowed. And it was a great shot. It was a really good shot. And he's like, yeah, that was me. I'm like, Oh my God. And then we start talking about Fall Guy and all the other shows and movies he did. But anyway, I would. I just asked them about all sorts of stuff about commander. But anyway, this is not the command Yo Yo, this is diehard so.
Steven Follows 15:02
Okay, I have a trivia question for you though Alex. put you on the spot. Go for it. You know what die well the origins of the diehard script?
Alex Ferrari 15:10
Yes, it's it is from a movie adaption from the 1968 book The detective
Steven Follows 15:17
Which is a sequel to what?
Alex Ferrari 15:19
It is a sequel to it was actually wasn't that a movie with Frank Sinatra?
Steven Follows 15:24
Yeah, so the originally there's a book called nothing lasts forever. And then there's a follow up called the detective and then a detective was made into a film with Sinatra. And then Sinatra had the rights to play McClane. And they had to offer this to him. He was 73 at the time, and he turned it down, but there's a part of me. I mean, I want to see that as well as the as the Bruce Willis version. Not in today's please. Yes, please. Yeah, I also we're now in the kind of era of you know, older audiences and movies being remade. Why can't we have the version where we use the technology from stone? You know, you see people but we use a 73 year old Sinatra who's drunk through most of it and we really
Alex Ferrari 16:03
My god, yes. And we have savages. We have Do we have Dean and Sammy in it too? Oh, it'd be fantastic. A Rat Pack diehard fantastic.
Steven Follows 16:11
We can make this between you and me.
Alex Ferrari 16:14
That would be amazing. But yes, that Yeah, that was and that's the funny thing about this movie that that book was no like, it wasn't jaws it wasn't the Godfather. It wasn't this big, best selling situation. There was a specific magic that happened in diehard where the director who arguably for his time was one of the greatest action directors ever john McTiernan who who made diehard and also made the predator or brachyury predator which I still argue is one of the greatest art one of the greatest action films especially that easily in the top three action films of all time. And then you know he made I think that hard three as well which is you know, the next best one I think in the in the in the run to was to was horrible. We don't talk about too we don't talk about too I enjoyed for though I did enjoy for it that that was an interesting an interesting submission into the but then it would completely went off the rails,
Steven Follows 17:12
Which is the one where he takes down a helicopter with a car
Alex Ferrari 17:16
that would be I think that might be four but I know he took down a Harrier jet in fourth with a car I think that was one of them. And so yes, it was a little but the but the script was so well written like it was a really good script, and they just threw john McClane in it like it was it was a pre existing script that they rewrote as a die. Whoa, yeah, it was cool. Like it was something that was a meltdown wasn't it? It was Yeah, it was attack it was a cyber attack. Yeah, so it was it wasn't an official diehard film but they just like well, this is a die hard when this pajama clean in it and that's the end of it. So that was a really good one as well. But But back to the original back to the original on on diehard. Why do I think it is a Christmas movie? Well, first off, it takes place during Christmas, which does not automatically added into the into the list of Christmas movies. But that helps. Because could you kiss Kiss Bang Bang? Is that a Christmas movie? You know any? Basically it's Lethal Weapon a Christmas movie? Because it was during Christmas? There's still the 80s Yeah, because I think there's a lack it was seemed like he did mostly
Steven Follows 18:22
Exactly. I think it's kind of I don't know, I don't want to be I don't mean this in a mean way. But it's a lazy irony, you know, the happiest time of the year where the status things are happening. It's got a natural ticking clock. It's got like something visual. So the reason for choosing Christmas is not inherent in the story. It's inherent in the medium. It's you know, action films work better at Christmas. Yeah,
Alex Ferrari 18:42
there and I think you know, I think lethal weapon was one of the I don't know, it's I can't say it was one of the first that was one of the first times I remember Christmas being a thing. But even then Christmas was not a main focus of the lethal weapons stored. I mean, there was is elements in the background while diehard has a lot of iconography. That is really Christmas. There's dialogue. Whoa, whoa, whoa, there's the Christmas tree. There's the Christmas hats. There's it was just there's a lot more Christmas in diehard than there isn't a movie like lethal weapon. In my opinion, though,
Steven Follows 19:18
You'd have to worry about your opinion, because I actually counted all the references and I'll talk about that, of course. You just sort of remembering things. I've got the stats. I've even got the timecode anyway, do you see?
Alex Ferrari 19:29
Do you see it? Do you see what I'm talking about people do you see what
Steven Follows 19:31
I'm talking about? I want to interrogate this further. So your argument it's a Christmas movie comes down at least in one part that you said it wasn't the whole argument but there you get some points some Christmasy points. Yeah, that being said around Christmas and having some Christmas elements All right, what else makes it what what tips over the edge and actually makes it a Christmas movie rather than just a movie that happens around Christmas time?
Alex Ferrari 19:52
Well, there is a there is a redemption of of the main character. There is a there is a I feel that redemption of the of the main character with the relationship with his wife, which is really kind of brings a family together at the end, where at the beginning, there was no family. So like there was they were divorced, they didn't like each other. But then past all of that, it was this experience that brings them very close together. And it brings the family back together, you know, so I thought that was a really nice way of
Steven Follows 20:25
That's nice. But come on, let's do that. We need to be a bit more empirical about this. Like, there are so many movies that do that. I mean, and there are so many movies where people do get together and it could have been a Christmas movie. They didn't they, if they hadn't got together at the end, it wouldn't be any less of a Christmas movie with it.
Alex Ferrari 20:40
Well, no, it wouldn't be of less of a Christmas movie. But you know, there's also that whole, you know, okay, Christ like and then oh the Christ Christ like sacrifice, if you will that john McClane by walking on broken glass. And, you know, if you want to start going deep into it, we can go deep.
Steven Follows 20:57
No, no, if we're gonna go deep, I don't think the Passion of the Christ is on a par with that bit where she says shoot the glass. Like, I mean, I like the scene. The level of suffering, can we at least agree is not comparable?
Alex Ferrari 21:12
No, obviously, obviously. But I would argue that diehard is much more of a Christmas movie.
Steven Follows 21:19
Now listen, look, we're gonna we're gonna take this seriously enough, so far, you've only got one reason I'm willing to even allow in, which is it has Christmas elements, the other reasons to generic assistant, you know, but also
Alex Ferrari 21:31
But also, there's a very heavy use of Christmas music in it, which is something very, very heavy use of it from the end that from the opening to the end through I think throughout a little bit, they there's some sort of, but there's like, a god, there's so many different, like, you know, like, Whoa, whoa, whoa. And it's like the, when they when they kills the one on the terrorists, it puts the Santa hat on them. And there's just so much of that kind of like really, really tipping their hat toward the Christmas thing that I found it, you know, it just makes okay. That's that's one elements of it.
Steven Follows 22:09
So you've got Christmas songs, and you've got it being set at Christmas. All right, is that the is does the prosecution rest or if you have other evidence?
Alex Ferrari 22:19
Well, so I'm gonna say, I'd love this. This is great.
Steven Follows 22:22
I'm not letting you get away with this. Because I'm not saying it's not I just want you to make a cogent argument so that we can
Alex Ferrari 22:27
Okay, so there's Christmas on its merits. Alright. So there's Christmas music. There is a lot of Christmas references in the movie. There's a lot of tips of the hat to Christmas, regarding dialogue regarding action in the movie that is around Christmas. So it's not just a background element, like a Christmas tree in the background. So there's, there's a bit of that there's a bit of that as well. And it and then there is the whole, I mean, just to add it on as a cherry on top, this kind of bringing together of the family after added out of it as well. So I think that, in my opinion, and then also just the bottom line is I enjoy watching it at Christmas time. So there's a lot of Christmas movies that people watch at Christmas time that aren't particularly Christmas movies. Interesting. Interesting. So, so it's
Steven Follows 23:17
Talking about the perception of it as well then. Okay, that makes sense. Okay, I have a couple of questions. I would like to ask the witness. Yeah. I love it. So we've established that the film came out in 1988. What month did it come out?
Alex Ferrari 23:33
It was I think was September was it? No, no was it was it September around that time?
Steven Follows 23:37
July? It was July. Summer in February in the UK February 89. So not Christmassy. Now, obviously you can get from Christmas. The poster? What Christmas Christmas Christmas elements were on the poster? None. None. Okay. And the tagline Well, you know, like okay, so you've got the Polar Express the tagline is this season believe, you know Krampus You better watch our elf this holiday discover you're an elf. What was the tagline for diehard
Alex Ferrari 24:05
40 stories of sheer adventure, sir. So not very Christmassy then Well, no, not very Christmassy at all. But that's the thing that is so wonderful about it because if you sold it as a Christmas action movie, which I don't think I don't remember of a film being sold that way you lead with the action and the Christmas is a bonus sir.
Steven Follows 24:27
So hold on, hold on. You've gone from the definitive Christmas movie two Christmas is purely a bonus.
Alex Ferrari 24:33
Oh no, no, no, no, no wait a minute. Don't use my words against me sir. Do not use my words against me sir. I do still believe it is a definitive Christmas movie because for me, I watch it during Christmas. So a lot of people can watch predator during Christmas and my find it to be Christmassy I don't know why but they might. There is certain elements with it because of the music. So the music and the in the kind of call outs to Christmas in the movie. During Christmas time make sense this movie gained its real popularity on home video. It did not. It was a big hit at the theater. But where it really took off, because of the time period that it came out in was rentals, video stores, and cable, just like Terminator and Lethal Weapon and those movies of that time period. That's how it became such a roaring success just because of that.
Steven Follows 25:27
I thought for a second that you and you didn't. So I'm not accusing you of this, but I thought for a second one of your reasons was going to be the people gave it to each other as Christmas presents.
Alex Ferrari 25:35
No, I don't think I don't think I think it's one of those. I think it's it's not it's not an overtly Christmas movie, meaning that it's not going Wait a minute. Wait a minute. No, no, no, no, no. This is for me. I for me, it is a it is a definitive Christmas movie for me. And for many people that I know of, because it's obviously a thing because we're talking about it. But it is not. I mean, maybe you give it as a friend a gift to a friend at Christmas time and only somebody that understands the inside. You know, joke a bit of it will go Oh, I get it. This is of course a Christmas movie. It's not so. So it's a secret Christmas movie, but it's clearly it's a secret. It's a It's a secret Christmas movie. That is the definitive Christmas movie, sir.
Steven Follows 26:25
Wow, I do hope you are never defending me in court. Oh, boy, this horrible. As a Christmas present to you, Alex. Yes. And assuming that you may get into further debates, because I get the sense you are the kind of person that has these conversations. Off mic as well. Oh, yeah. Let me help you. Because there are a few things that you perhaps could have
Alex Ferrari 26:47
Used in my defense?
Steven Follows 26:48
Yes, brought into the record and you haven't. Okay, so let me help you. This is my present to you. And then maybe at the end, we can we can test your argument for other people. So, alright, so this is I love this, because this is such an interesting question. Because it makes us think about what is a movie? Like? What is the concept of a movie? Like? And also you touched on it before? Like, is it the cultural understanding of it? Is it we're in it? So I think there are three different ways that you can think of a movie. It's our, to like culture, you know, like it's, so it's a it's a creative thing. It's a it's a piece of art, the visual the audio, the 90 minutes, or however long it is that that's something we could look at. And that's what we talked about. There's secondly, there's the commercial side of it, like, how is it sold? How is it marketed? You know, what, what is Fox? Think of it? And then the last one is the cultural one, where it's the movie is the story of the story, if you will, like it's what we think about it and the perception. Exactly, and and that can shift like the movie can't shift, because it is a fixed movie, unless you're George Lucas. But other than that the movie is fixed, right? But the commercial side of it that shifts but then again, we all know that they'd stick anything I mean, you can get Whoa, whoa, hold on T shirts for Game of Thrones. So let's not, you know, the Christmas side of the commercial part is not the definition. But the cultural stuff shifts. So um, let's let's start with easy one. Let's start with the one that you were talking about before. So I counted all the words in the script. Take a guess how many times the word Christmas comes up?
Alex Ferrari 28:17
Christmas comes up? I don't know. Let's say 20 times maybe
Steven Follows 28:25
18. Okay, yes. Okay. So that that is more times than the words explode, Die Hard, shoot kill or blood, but it is fewer than the words gun, the word gun comes up 73 times that makes sense. And also interestingly, if you want to talk about like how the how you could look at a script and determine the genre, the word suddenly comes up 45 times so it shows that there are reveals and you know moments and it's not a slow pace drama, in other words, suddenly is quite important to it. Anyway, okay, so yeah, Christmas is quite a lot. There's a lot of Christmas in there. There's also a matter of reference where they're talking about whether the song Christmas and the holidays by Run DMC is Christmassy enough,
Alex Ferrari 29:06
but it's another argument to be had I actually believe Yeah,
Steven Follows 29:10
yeah, Christmassy it's matter. Okay, so, the one of the writers Steven D'Souza said it is it is awake is a Christmas movie. He said, if it's if this isn't a Christmas movie, then White Christmas isn't a Christmas movie. Which by the way, if you've ever re watched is absolutely horrific, like Holiday Inn and movies like that, that we think of as classics. I went to go and see one years ago like they did a rerun in theaters a Christmas and so as they mulled wine and mince pie, and I'm sitting there watching those on a day I watch this like old classic Bing Crosby Christmas movie. And then there's a sequence in it where they all black up and dance. And you're like, yeah, wait, what? Yeah, what what's going on? Like I didn't and you just, I was there on a date. I brought wine. It did not look good. Anyway, so yeah. Official References 21 distinctive Christmassy elements, Santa hats, Christmas trees, a piece of Christmas greetings tape, which, I mean, I was about to say spoilers but if you're listening to this, I mean you and you haven't seen it. We haven't spoiled your life. You've sport your life. The tape with the gun on his back? Yeah, yeah, yes. Okay, so that helps, right.
Alex Ferrari 30:27
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show. You mentioned
Steven Follows 30:38
songs. So, I, I used this is where I'm embarrassed the level I did go to so I looked at a database of, of songs that are in movies and references and I pulled loads of different databases together. And I tried to look at how many movies have Christmas songs and how much don't and, and but 95% of movies don't have any Christmas songs. And so between you know, the diehard is more Christmassy than something like 99.2% of movies released over the last 30 years just from the music alone because he got Christmas and the holidays winter wonderland Jingle bells, let it snow, all that stuff. So as a piece of art, yeah, probably quite Christmassy. Probably quite Christmassy. Although that said, Do you know the number one song cross all movies know the number one Christmas song that's in the most number of Christmas movies.
Alex Ferrari 31:31
I'm going to guess Jingle Bells.
Steven Follows 31:34
It is jingle bells. Jingle Bells is not a Christmas song. It was written for Thanksgiving.
Alex Ferrari 31:39
Yeah, it is. You're right. Absolutely. There's nothing Christmassy about it. Exactly.
Steven Follows 31:43
And yet, that's the most Christmas song. So we're already discovering that. Every time we when we lose, there is an underbelly of lies among.
Alex Ferrari 31:53
So are you so arguing that point that there's so much Christmas music and music is such a very powerful indicator of the tone that you want to set with a movie? Can we agree on that?
Steven Follows 32:06
Well, I would go one further, I'd say it's more deliberate. If you sent a movie at Christmas time, you have to have Christmas decorations in the background, because that's just the nature of it. Right? If you have more and more of them, it doesn't mean it's more Christmassy it just means it was set a Christmas in the same way. He's wearing the same, you know, trousers the whole time. He that doesn't change because it's set on the same night. But the songs that's deliberate. And that's very thought through and it's done in the edit, and they have many more choices. So I would argue as evidence of art, it's a stronger piece of evidence than the set dressing.
Alex Ferrari 32:37
Yeah. And there was another movie of that time period called Cobra, starring Sylvester Stallone, that also took place during Christmas time for no apparent reason. And you watch that movie, and it has absolutely nothing to do with Christmas or Christmas time. And like even though there is a Christmas element to it and everything. It was just kind of jammed in there for no reason it does not incorporate in the story. I don't even think they make a reference to it in the movie. I was just actually watched it the other day. And I was just like this is well, first of all, it's absolutely amazing. But secondly, I mean, it's no commando seriously. I mean, come on. Listen, all I got to do is when I saw commando, how many of us went out and just I mean, it was just such a cool movie. I can't say I'm sure it does not I'm sure it does not age well. And if I watched it today, I'd be going What the hell is this? So there's certain movies, like Bloodsport, I can't watch. I don't want to watch Bloodstone watch it just remember it is your version is so much but my version of it is fantastic. I might want I actually fast forward to some of the action sequences. I'm like, Oh my god, they're just so lame. Or tame comparatively to what is going on today, but at the time, Oh, fantastic. Anyway,
Steven Follows 33:52
let's move on. Alright, so So talking about like the second way of thinking about movies as a commercial product. And as we talked about, it came out in July it's got nothing Christmassy on the poster. Nothing Christmassy on the on the liner and it basically Fox clearly did not think it was a Christmas movie at the time. There is absolutely they didn't and the fact that they're selling Christmas specials now it says more about their marketing opportunity marketing opportunity opportunism than it does about anything inherent in the movie. So if our Yeah, probably a Christmas movie, cult crate. Commercial? No, definitely not. So not looking good for Christmas, right? So we've got this last lens to look through, which is culture. So I thought about this and I was trying to think about how could you measure our perception of the movie and I came up with more ways and actually came up with another one that after I published the article, which annoyed me because I could have made it longer, but anyway, maybe I'll do a director's cut another time. And so I thought okay, why don't I look at IMDb lists. So any user for free who's got an account with IMDb can set up a list and say in Name the list anything they want, and then link any movies to it, right? So you could say, favorite action movies from the 80s or whatever. So I found all the lists that had anything to do with Christmas, which is just over 2000 and I looked at all the movies that were on these lists. So my question to you Alex is what movie was the most cited movie on? lists about Christmas?
Alex Ferrari 35:24
I mean, either like l for home alone or something like that. I'd imagine Oh, yeah, home
Steven Follows 35:28
alone is number one. elf is number two. Okay, that's pretty damn good. It's funny because home alone again very Christmassy but not so much like the core story is not about Christmas. It's obviously made the ironies made stronger that he's lonely at Christmas and he hasn't got his family and whatnot. But it's not like alpha alphas are really quit or the Santa Claus real Christmas.
Alex Ferrari 35:48
Those Yeah, those are specific you know, mythologies of regarding Christmas and stuff. So home alone, I'm this is an interesting, this is an interesting topic now. So home alone, which is I also consider a very high list Christmas movies, something I watch every year. My other favorite is family, man, but we'll get into that later. But Wow. Yeah, we haven't got time to get through all your issues that I said that I love. I love the family, man. I was Nick Cage at Christmas. I mean, come on. Boy, you can cut you can cut this out before it goes. No, no, no, no, this is good. This is going in and I had the writer so I had the writers of the family man on the show, sir. And I just geeked out for 30 minutes. But that's all Oh, I didn't realize they were writers. I thought it was all improvised. Oh, wow. Do you buy Do you buy the haterade by the case or the pallet sir. So um, so this is an argument to be made with home alone. Home Alone is your right does not have a specific story specifically does not include Christmas as far as like you could take that story and put it in the summer for a summer vacation. And it's in the movie plays. But because of the Christmas because of the the left at home at Christmas time with the snows out. There's not a lot of people. And then also all the Christmas imagery and all the stuff that regarding Christmas in that it is considered a Christmas movie and sold as a Christmas movie. If I'm not mistaken. It was sold as a it came out of Christmas time. And I think even the poster had he was wearing a Christmas sweater. So it was a Christmas movie were diehard, obviously was not in that sense all that
Steven Follows 37:26
way. Oh, in that sense. You're right. I mean, I think you're right. If you took home alone, and you made it into a summer holiday movie, I think he would be less effective, the story would still hold up but it'd be less than it would be less dramatic because the irony wouldn't be there. Whereas diehard set in July, you wouldn't miss it. You wouldn't think of it. I mean, obviously if you've seen the motion Now you might say it's missing that extra little touch but I still think diehard set in July would still be a damn good movie, whereas I think home alone is set in July's is.
Alex Ferrari 37:54
Right. So and then let so let me let me throw this argument out at you. Do you believe that if you take Die Hard out of the Christmas time, because of our cultural attachment to Christmas, what that means culturally to us family, which means about family being together. And the two main the two character the main character and his wife are separated at the beginning and are brought together at the end. Does that have the same emotional impact that it would in July then it would that it would have in December? Maybe not
Steven Follows 38:29
July? But let me make you two counterfactuals one it could happen on Valentine's Day. That would be more effective.
Alex Ferrari 38:34
Because you know for romance, yes, but I'm talking about family there's a difference and that's true. It's I'm not talking about romance. I'm talking because there's no romance. There's very little very little romance in that movie, they kiss at the end and that's pretty much it. But he buys her a bed I mean what's more romantic than he does by her bear but that's the end you know, but in all honesty though, it's about bringing a family back together. And I think that family aspect of it means a lot more because it's Christmas time there is a there's a basically I feel that Christmas is another character in that movie without that character I don't know if it's as impactful is a still a kick ass action movie absolutely but there's this this layer it's a kind of like a tapestry diehard where it just you know that Christmas layer really just adds to the flavor it's a seasoning that makes the movie all the all that much better. I mean Same thing with I mean arguably Same thing with Lethal Weapon lethal weapon in the summer like obviously I think in lethal weapon to what didn't they didn't take place at Christmas time did it and might have I don't remember that's not a good side. But Lethal Weapon one did take place during Christmas. And it added a little extra something at that time, even though it's not as nearly as heavy handed as it wasn't diehard.
Steven Follows 39:52
Well, what I think is pretty sad is that you know you can talk about families and obviously there are literal families but then there's also you know, friends, you could argue that The limo driver and they all become like a fan. Yes about the group again. They might have been literal family, they certainly would have planned this. They've been through lots of things before this. Like that's the movie I want to see diehard from the group his point of view, like a sad story of lack of redemption. It's like conair you know the story. What's, what's his name Ed Harris's character plays. I want to see a version like
Alex Ferrari 40:24
Aaron's man, first of all, Ed Harris is not in there. It's the rock, sir.
Steven Follows 40:30
Sorry, rock, the rock. I'm thinking of like the beginning opening scene where he's putting a medal on the rain on it.
Alex Ferrari 40:36
I'm gonna, I'm gonna divert for Chuck, because you brought it up. I'm gonna divert for one second from our diehard conversation because I need to put this out there. Do you agree with this thesis? I believe that regardless, do you like Michael Bay or not? I think he's still one of the one of the great action directors of the modern era. Without question unquestionably.
Steven Follows 40:58
I mean, it doesn't mean everything he's done is perfect. No, he definitely has defined a genre. He's defined a style. He's got a very clear, visual way of telling a story, which isn't everybody's taste, but it is. It is our it he is he has a voice.
Alex Ferrari 41:10
Now, would you? Would you agree with my thesis that after the rock came out because he did bad boys first, and bad boys had elements of it, but I think he really honed into something with the rock, and then Armageddon afterwards, which is kind of like the commando of it's dead. But but not the rock, the rock is and actually, the rock is an actually fantastic, wonderfully Active Directory is written with the 90s. It was wonderful. But do you agree that that from that point on every other director, action director was chasing Michael Bay Area, you could start seeing a shift in the way action movies were directed and produced after the rock and you could see it clearly with films right after the rock because everyone started doing that same thing happened with Tony Scott. When Tony Scott showed up, action movies changed like when when Tony Scott started doing action movies, everyone was like well, I guess this is the way we do it. And Tony and Michael have that you can see that they went to the same school but they have different different flavors without question. But yeah, we're just going down we're going down a little rabbit hole I don't want to go too deep but I just wanted to kind of bring that let's let's Yeah, let's
Steven Follows 42:21
go let's get back on track. Let's talk about this. Let's not talk about frivolous things. So I talked about how diehard shows up. Also, I didn't tell you where it shows up so diehard shows up in the like some of the most cited movies, it's the 22nd most cited Christmas movie, but what's interesting is I haven't got the data of when people added it but I would guess that if I did the research again this year or in a few years time it would be moving up the list and I don't know if it'll ever knock off home alone or elf but there are loads of movies in there that I think it would it's become more Christmassy.
Alex Ferrari 42:58
So then in time as time has gone on it is that in that concept of it being a Christmas movie it is actually becoming more of a Christmas movie purely by the culture society and the fan actually.
Steven Follows 43:10
And that's and that's what's so fascinating is that the movies themselves the actual movie that they've celluloid the images in the audio don't change but our perception of them change massively and so there are movies that you know whether it be Birth of a Nation some of our minds you know, things that we push away and there are other things that we pull towards us and they got undiscovered classics you know so I had a look at you can anyone can have a look at the page views for any Wikipedia page so I went and had a look at like the page views for films like Lethal Weapon Raiders The Lost Ark Seven Samurai aliens, and they've got they're all their views are spread out pretty much evenly across the year. And then I had a look at films like elf Home Alone Love Actually the Polar Express and almost, you know half of all their views are in December. So then that where does diehard fit so what was so fascinating it's it's it's almost exactly halfway between the two, about 25% of all the views to the diehard Wikipedia page are in December. So it does have that skew. By
Alex Ferrari 44:11
the end January I'm imagining as well in
Steven Follows 44:13
January as well, which is unusual because most Christmas movies January's is really not important. But for diehard it actually kind of is. But then the big one, the one that kind of nailed it for me where I was like, Okay, I can see what's happening here is I looked at the Google Trends data for the word diehard. And so over the last sort of 15 years or so you see these big spikes, when they have 4.0. And the good data they have came out that's not relevant. But other than that, if you look at the spikes, you can see an increasing spike around Christmas. Each year. It's growing in size. And so what's happening is if regardless of whether you think diehard, a diehard was a movie, a Christmas movie when it was made, maybe you do today, but it almost definitely will be in 510 years, maybe two years to the speed the culture changes. So Die Hard. is becoming a Christmas movie, regardless of whether it was or wasn't. So it might have been, it probably is now, but it definitely will be in the future. Which is amazing because we're living through this cultural shift. And even the fact that this is a legitimate question, you know, no one's asking if Alien is a Christmas movie. It's not taking up anyone's time. No one's doing podcasts about it, no one's doing data analysis. So the very fact that we're talking about it proves that it's culturally relevant to Christmas, which I think is amazing. It just really shows you movies are what we think they are, when and like you said, actually, one thing she said the beginning, which I gave you some stick for, but actually is a pretty solid answer, which is, it is to me, and that's what that's how culture works. You know, culture is, can be defined as the stories we tell ourselves, about ourselves. And so if that's a story that you tell yourself about Christmas for you, then it is true for you and increasing numbers of people are doing that. So that's brilliant.
Alex Ferrari 45:53
No without without question, and as we continue to go through if you go throughout cinema history, there's movies that find their audience or find their thing later in life. I mean, Shawshank Redemption, which I've I've in nauseum have spoken about on the show, being one of the greatest movies I've ever seen. It's probably in the top of my list is my favorite movie of all time. And we could do an entire podcast about just the structure contemporary, which I'm not sure if there's a there's a Christmas movie, that's obviously it's a Christmas movie. No, no, but that but how a movie like which is the worst marketing of all time called The Shawshank Redemption, how that still gets for like, I don't know, seven Oscar nominations. It did horribly in the movie theater. But then all of a sudden, over time, it overtook the Godfather on IMDB is the greatest, most highly rated movie of all time. And how is that happened because of perception over time. Same thing happens with the room when the room first showed up, you know, Tommy was so his masterpiece. He, you know, that showed up? And everyone's like, this is ridiculous. But slowly the perception of it was like, This is so bad that it is genius.
Steven Follows 47:03
And yeah, sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead. Well, I think this is because we're living in this age now, where social media and all this stuff is we get so much more news, so much more culture, we're living in a time where we're seeing cultures shift in a way that they always shifted. Obviously, we don't not still living in the Victorian era. But they did it sort of imperceptibly every now and then there'll be a moment a war, or a particular event or something that would remind people things have changed, you know, but actually, we're seeing it almost in real time. If you think about me, too, and things like that. You think about how people look back. I mean, what people were doing in the past, there was a defense that someone had on the news recently about Boris Johnson was accused of touching the knee of a journalist, and his defense was it was 20 years ago. Well, that's not a very good defense. But what he's saying is the culture has shifted, I'm not defending him at all I'm saying we can feel it shifting, and diehard. Using the example of Shawshank and the Godfather. Both those movies were locked in time, By the mid 90s. Both of them have not a single frame has changed. And yet the the general agreement about which is better, although, obviously a false binary choice, because they don't, they don't have to have a winner. But if we, you know, in the sense that we have to, then that's changed. It hasn't got better, it hasn't got worse, our understanding has changed. And I find that absolutely wonderful. I find it was so interesting, because it keeps movies alive, you know, and it also says that no one person can decide, you know, as much as we're joking, no one person gets to say it is or it isn't even Bruce Willis doesn't get to say it is or it isn't we we dismissed his opinion pretty damn quickly.
Alex Ferrari 48:41
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
Steven Follows 48:42
Because it's about shared culture. And I think that's the joy of movies is that we can share the same experience we can share different experiences of when we saw the movie and how we saw it. And also, like we said, going back and watching old videos in the 80s perhaps don't do that other movies you overlooked and I mean, I remember as a film student, skipping out of being very sort of not so much smart but very pleased. I had got an afternoon off because I snuck out instead of watching brief encounter, and then as an adult, discovering it re watching it again, this isn't one of the most beautiful films I've ever seen. This is beautiful, and then realizing that the film hadn't changed, but my readiness to watch it, my understanding of it. And perhaps if I had been forced to watch it, maybe I never would have rediscovered I would have remembered it as something different or whatever. And so that's fascinating.
Alex Ferrari 49:27
Well, it's exactly what happens with every single Kubrick film ever made. When it first comes out people don't understand it or don't accept it or every single one of his movies had some sort of real negative you know, attachment to it like when they when Eyes Wide Shut showed up. Everyone's like this is the worst of his career, blah, blah, blah, then 10 years later, oh, it's a masterpiece. Because of perceptions because of the way things are look like for me personally when I saw Eyes Wide Shut. When I first came out in 99. I walked out of the theater with my other film my film snob for And then go, what do you think? And I'm like, I don't know what it means I will in about 10 years, I had enough self awareness to know that like, I don't get it right now, but I will in about 10 or 20 years. And that's exactly what happened. 10 years later, 1012 years later, 15 years later, I watch it again after I was married, man. And I was like, Oh, I understand what he was trying to sit here. Like, oh, I guess.
Steven Follows 50:22
So what movies of the last couple of years do you think to for either a revival? Or? For a? I mean, like at the time diehard came out, it would be kind of laughable. In fact, I think it would be incredibly incredulous to say, it's gonna be on people's list of Christmas movies, correct. Whereas now it doesn't. So what movies in the last couple of years, do you think a Jew for a reimagining?
Alex Ferrari 50:41
Jeez, that's a great question. Um, it's like, there's certain there's certain, you know, there are certain films that hit you at a certain time in your life, where there's a nostalgia to it, you need to give the time you need to give it time to marinate over over minette over a few just a couple years, I would have this argue maybe 510 years later, where you can go, oh, there's a nostalgic aspect of it. So you know, someone watching lethal weapon or Die Hard for the first time today would not have the impact of me watching it in 1988, before any other media had done anything like those two films did at the time. You know, when predators showed up, there was nothing like that. When aliens showed up, there was nothing like that ever made prior. Now, it's been like the matrix when you watch the matrix for the first time in 1999, in a movie theater, your entire right now you're talking
Steven Follows 51:43
like if I didn't understand. I mean, it wasn't that I was confused. It was like, What was that?
Alex Ferrari 51:49
No, it was. Okay. So that's, that's a movie that, you know, that's an argued argument that needs reimagining which they are actually going to go back into the matrix world. We'll, we'll see what happens with that. But, you know, when I saw the matrix in 99, when it came out in the movie theater, your mind explodes. Now you sit there today, and you show it to somebody who has never seen the matrix, it doesn't have the same impact, because it's been ripped off so much, that it seems tame. But at the moment that it was released, it was so powerful, that those vibrations are still hitting us today. The waves of that, that, that that movie still affect cinema into until this very day. So that's there's a difference between I think, you know, pulling going back in time, like you watch Pulp Fiction, I saw Pulp Fiction in the theater while I was in film school, and said, Oh, my God, what the hell just happened, as most people did when they saw that movie, where now you go back to it, like it's a good movie. But it doesn't seem as powerful as it did then, because it's been so ripped off. And now we have so much more reference to Quentin Tarantino. And his dialogue and the way he did it, but at the time, that was mind blowing, The Exorcist when it showed up. People were fainting in the theaters, people were being pulled out. Well, there's a there's a really good example, because I saw the exorcist when it was released must have been late 90s or somewhere that and there was a lot of talk at the time about it being a very scary movie. And yes, yes. Loads report about that. And I was going to see it in the cinema. And I remember my mum saying something like,
Steven Follows 53:31
she wasn't exactly warning me and she she's not at all prudish. She was just making sure that I knew it was a really scary movie. And I and I was like, Yeah, I know. And I watched it. And I remember thinking, what is this? I there's nothing here. And then when I re watched it for a few years later, I was like, this is a piece of art. This is a brilliant film. Oh, it's so the problems. The problem was I was I was queued up for it to be a terrifying thing. And and to me as a teenager, it just it wasn't because that wasn't what terrifying was at the time.
Alex Ferrari 54:00
Yeah, but in 1973, or whenever it came out, it just it broke every single, you know, cultural Moray at all. I mean, it was just completely like a little girls pea soup. It's all this guy. Yeah. It was exorcism. It was it was much simpler time that movie is tame in today's world
Steven Follows 54:20
complete. Well, this would be my this is my argument why we should ban trailers. Hmm. Well, I mean, obviously, that listen, it's not an exact plan. It's Christmas. No, but genuinely, I used to watch all the trailers I used to read all the film magazines. I was really kind of a film geek and certainly as a kid, but it was there was the internet but not really in certain not the way it is. Now. There's certainly no kind of community that the way you have now. And I stopped doing it very consciously in my late teens, because I realized that every bit of the best bit of every movie, every joke, every explosion, I already saw. And so by definition, the only things that were left were less than that, you know, by deftly Initially, I can only be disappointed. So I stopped watching them as much as I could, you know, which pretty much meant just not, I don't close my eyes when they're in the cinema. But that tends to be pretty soon they're going to they're going to be out, as opposed to these long lead times you have nowadays. And it massively improves my understanding of movies, I don't know what quite what to expect. And obviously, I still pick up the hype, and I still get a sense of the reviews without reading them, because people put the stars in the headlines, but you still, you feel like you're keeping the best of it. So you can discover it as much as you can for yourself.
Alex Ferrari 55:32
I do that I do that every time. There's a huge movie that I want to see like Avengers end game. I didn't watch any trailers for that. I don't think the star the Star Wars movies, like I try not to watch anything of it purely because it was just like, I just want to, I just want to be surprised when I'm in there. And it's, you know, and you have to rush out opening weekend. If not, you can't go on social media, because everything's gonna be ruined for you within a matter of minutes after the movie. But like, you know, to argue about, like the exorcist, because I remember watching The Exorcist when I was in high school, as well as in the in the 80s. And I watched it. And I watched it with the lights on in the middle of the day. Because I was I was I was told it was so terrifying. And I mean, it is a scary movie. No question. Oh, yeah, no doubt, I didn't know that. It's a scary movie. It's not like terrified, like the movie that terrified me. And still, like, I've watched it a million times. So it doesn't have the same impact, but still gets under my skin is the shining. Like you watch. You watch the shining. It's the music. And there's a specific reason why there's those four notes. I saw a whole documentary on just the four notes that he uses, and why to use and everything that regards to death and everything like that. But that the music, the environment, the performances, it's just eerie. It just gives you like the Emmy jeebies on a psychological level, not on a because arguably, the imagery is not terrifying. No, it really isn't. It's like it's the suspense. It's the, you know, at all. It's everything all thrown in together. It's Well, let
Steven Follows 57:12
me let me ask you, then I think I've missed this is just a personal theory. You'll be disappointed here. I have no data to back this up. I maintain that there are only two films, a horror film is made for children. And I think they were made around the similar. I don't know the exact time but there's similar sort of time certainly in the history of film. What would you say? horror films made for children? Oh, God. It's not like Hotel Transylvania. It's not anything that uses the Halloween aesthetic, because that's not horror.
Alex Ferrari 57:41
No, no, no. What age group are we looking at? Oh, I
Steven Follows 57:45
think children I think, you know, sort of five to 12. Wow. Man, I
Alex Ferrari 57:51
mean, other than maybe some Harry Potter films that are you can argue, oh, that dog the last couple with so many children died? Well, I mean, it's a prisoner. Prisoner of Azkaban still my favorite of all the Harry Potter films. And that's a pretty dark I mean, that's when the the soul sucking guys. I forget what they're called. They come out. Yeah. dementors. I mean, it's pretty intense. It's an intense.
Steven Follows 58:13
That's not what I was thinking of. But you're absolutely right. That stuff is meant to be for kids. But I mean, I don't know how kids can maybe kids are completely fine and was just as adults. But yes, you're absolutely right. I take your point that that's certainly a darker series than I think anyone would have expected. For me, the two that I was thinking of are Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. And actually Chitty Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, because I will agree with Willy Wonka. So Willy Wonka, they increasingly get they get killed in a way that you would in slasher horror, one by one. The foreign ones get first, you know, first, creepy and weird and then there's that tunnel sequence with the rival. And then there's the just like, the whole thing is just that basically they're in the woods with a mad person they think is killing people and people are dying one by one. And then they're these weird small people who seem to be like one of us, one of us, but two different lyrics. Like Yes, that's a horror movie. And then Tennessee's you. Bang Bang. The child snatcher is the most terrifying concept for children. Yes, he actively hunts children. And he tricks them with the things they want and then kidnaps them, and does it without any sense of humanity. Like there's no purpose to it? And obviously, you you imagine, I mean, as an adult, the idea of a land without children sounds pretty damn good. But as a kid, it's like you're being hunted and there could be anywhere.
Alex Ferrari 59:39
Well, I would argue to other movies I could throw in there before I forget Matilda. Oh, yes and no and and Pinocchio
Steven Follows 59:47
Roald Dahl I mean, if you read the the witches the raw books are dark, but the witches like they, I mean, again the spoiler, but they die on the roof like they and also um Danny, the champion of the world. That's quite Dark like there's a lot of darkness, in in Roald Dahl stuff that like it's not Spielberg or my dad passed away in the past, Donald like kids are killing people and they and the adults are genuinely evil. And like, Matilda is a great example.
Alex Ferrari 1:00:13
Yeah. And that's it. It's scary or having a set of parents like that. And the school that she goes to than anything else is much scarier than a ghost or anything like that. But we I mean, obviously, this podcast is about diehard being a Christmas movies Oh, sorry. we've, we've, we've gone off the rails a bit, because this is what's happening when Steven and I get on a call to start talking movies, this is gonna happen. But I think I think that the, we've wrapped our case that it is a Christmas movie and will become more of a Christmas movie as time progresses. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show. The key,
Steven Follows 1:01:00
I think the key thing here is that you, if we start if we were to argue, or you would argue with anybody else about the content of the movie, you're never gonna win, because you're both seeing the same movie. So unless one person is really not paid any attention, like you're arguing over money shy, but the point is, that's not what movies are really there for. It's there for. Yeah, it's about stories. It's about culture. The reason that we all win, we love the same movie, and we have the same feeling. And we share that. And it's incredible, is because it brings us together, and it unites us. And so our understanding of movies is the definition of a movie, and so, diehard if enough people think it is then it is
Alex Ferrari 1:01:36
exactly and you know you you watch Birth of a Nation now and you're just like, I can't believe these people did this like this. It's so for our culture and our time period. That movie seems so racist. So everything is clickable. It's like this, how did this and and not only how did it happen? But how is it held up as one of the greatest, you know, movies of its era? If you pass beyond the concept of the movie, what dw Griffith did with the cameras and so on. You know, he was one of the founding fathers of cinema language. Unfortunately, it's with a film like that. That's why Citizen Kane is really taking up that mantle much more than even when I was in film school, my film teacher in film history class where like there was Birth of a Nation. And and then let's just fast forward to Citizen Kane. So then that's basically the way it was. But that's a perfect example of a film of its time. That meant so it did so well, at its time, because that was all completely acceptable. There's things that were done in the 80s. And in the 70s, that you would do think Blazing Saddles would come out today.
Steven Follows 1:02:49
They actually Mel Brooks said that recently, he was being interviewed in Britain, this is killing comedy. I don't know if he if it is or not. But his point was, it is. And he was saying that would never get made today,
Alex Ferrari 1:02:59
there would be no way in hell like when I saw Blazing Saddles for the first time I said this movie would never get made today. But then board I came out. And I was like, Okay, well, boy, that was a movie that she you know, you look at board, and you're like, how in hell did this get made? But boy, it was one of those films in recent years was just I don't know how lisec 10 years. 1015 years old at this time, I don't even know how old it is now. But when it came out, it was still we're still in a very politically correct time. How that movie got through was fascinating. But Blazing Saddles. I mean, can you imagine Can you imagine that coming out today?
Steven Follows 1:03:34
It would be impossible. I there were other things that are shifting. And we talked about this a bit earlier on today. I mean, I can remember with what you and I talked about this on the previous podcast or not, but there's a movie from the mid 80s called blame it on Rio. It's starring Michael Caine. Yeah, I just I just looked it up on IMDB and the plot the one the one line sentence summary is best friend's and their daughter's vacation in Rio de Janeiro only for one of them to fall for the other one's daughter. And so basically, Michael Caine falls for an 18 year old or 17 year old she is she falls over him. He's obviously a grown man with his own teenage daughter and and also the two actresses in a topless within the movie. So not only is the plot wrong, it's also got a male gaze to it. It's got a very kind of, well, oh, you know, she's attractive and young, so that it's all the definition we need. And I do wonder what other movies that we, perhaps our children will look at us and go, how did you watch that? Now? We're probably we're not people that went to go and see blame it on Rio. And I'd like to think it wouldn't get me today. But there must be movies out recently that we'd all go and maybe Brad's the one or it's probably something more innocuous because when a movie is trying to be offensive, it's it's almost more okay because he by definition, you're trying to push boundaries. It's the boundaries that we're not challenging the ones that we think this isn't an outrageous statement. This is fairly normal. That's the bit
Alex Ferrari 1:04:58
when if you're terrified. If you Want to see films that are completely out of date in many ways just go to AFM go to or go to the Cannes Film market, go to those places and you you walk around and you see these movies which have exploitation of women exploitation of action and violence and it's just this kind of like primal kind of cinema which was made famous in the 80s You know, this kind of primal muscle bound guys and TNA and you know, I still have conversations with distributors like is anybody naked in it? If they are I can sell it to Germany reconcile it to this country because of the nudity involved in it. So there that's still going on very much so today throughout the world, and it is still in films like that are being made are they made by the studios? No, they're not made by the studios anymore that studios have figured out that R rated movies of that matter, it's not something that the culture here at least is really looking at and they also know they can make more money in pG 13 films. That's why it's so difficult to get a really adult film made in the studio system things like Logan or even Deadpool for that matter even in the in the superhero genre. You know, those are those are you know, hard are movies.
Steven Follows 1:06:16
Well thank god Deadpool made so much money because that's kept it alive for another 510 years and it will constantly try and kill that but thank God there was one that got through and Logan they don't look like Yeah, but they've all performed the way that Hollywood thinks they have they just will become received with wisdom that they can't make it anymore. So okay, bringing it back on topic. Is there anything in diehard that you think wouldn't get made today? If diehard was a script in development and obviously diehard in the original didn't exist, but everything else is the same? Do you think it would get made who would get cast like how would it get changed? I mean, the idea of him rescuing her surely That's very kind of male male
Alex Ferrari 1:06:53
male he there is there is a male gaze to it. There's no question about it. Would that movie get made today in the way that it's written? I don't don't i don't think it especially would have get done in the in the in the Hollywood system because first of all, a movie like that with a star of his caliber. You have to remember this is a star of his caliber at the time. Bruce Willis was nobody. He was just like a TV actor. And he had one you know romantic comedy. With Blake Edwards called blind date with Kim Basinger. If I'm not mistaken. I don't think there was anything else. diehard is what made him so to release a studio movie with an unknown or very mildly known actor. That's not going to happen today. So you would need a big movie star would a big movie star let's say we throw Tom Cruise in it we throw Will Smith in it right there. Okay, now the rock or the rock? Yeah, but the rock did this movie. It was called sky sky sky sky. Right. But yeah, right. And it was horrible. It was horrible. So the the rock is a really interesting character because I'm a huge fan of the rock. I'm a monstrous fan of the rock. I love what he does. And I just all his films, even though some of them are really, you know, like, I didn't like the earthquake film or whatever that thing was called. And yeah, there's certain films that I watched was like, Dude rock, really. But there's other times he's like, Oh, well, that was genius. He's a really great performer great actor great personality. But he's one of the last kind of like you couldn't throw the rock in into the heart and make it work because they tried doing that with skyscraper and it didn't work and the reason why is because diehard makes works because it's Bruce Willis is the every man. If you throw Stallone in that you've got daylight you've got, you know, because daylight was Die Hard in a tunnel. And you know, you know where you've got Swartz negar, you can't throw sreekanth throw Arnold in that movie. It doesn't have the same energy Bruce brought this every man aspect to it. That made john McClane what john McClane is if it was a hyper real human being like the rock is the rock is a hyper real human being. He does not represent the mass audience by any stretch. He is a superior physical specimen. Bruce was not. So do you think it has to be like Paul Rudd? It has to be like it would. It would have to be kind of you know, if you would do it, it would have to be someone like Paul Rudd. You know, because look, they did look, Paul Rudd came out with Ant Man, and he was in great shape because nowadays you can't release a movie like a die hard with a dude that's out of shape, because then it becomes humorous, and people don't buy it. People are way too savvy nowadays. So it would still have to be a dude that works out like you know, Paul Rudd. He has a six pack. Chris Pratt, you know, he's a beast now.
Steven Follows 1:09:38
Okay, okay, so here's my here's my studio pitch. diehard remake, but with all the gender roles flipped and Anna Kendrick is the star.
Alex Ferrari 1:09:46
So you see now that's a comedy to me, because I don't see Anna Kendrick being able to pull off the the action aspects it's she's not believable in that point, though. You just said but it's a comedy. Let me know. But there's a difference. But there are women actresses out there that I would by doing that like you give me see sir at least Sharon is just she's too beautiful. You know or Angelina Jolie as well? Yeah,
Steven Follows 1:10:14
I think we're getting there eventually. I think if we just carried on this conversation long enough we'd end up where we all know we'd end up which is Meryl Streep.
Alex Ferrari 1:10:21
Now Meryl Streep, I would buy in diehard. Why? Because Meryl Streep can read a telephone book and I would buy it. It doesn't matter what salutely By that, I mean, it doesn't matter what Meryl does, she can do no wrong. But with that said, Could Meryl pull off diehard? I think she could. I think she I mean she's a little she's the crowdfund. I mean, she is a bit she is a little bit you know, older now. So I'm not sure but maybe Merrill 10 years ago 15 years or no, she's timeless it's a role she's playing. I there is a physicality to it, but you know what? Okay, Helen Mirren let's throw Helen Mirren in there let's I mean, I think Dame Dame Helen Mirren. Let's put her Maggie Smith Mikey Smith could do okay, you see now we're just going off the rails. There is a point where Yes, the talent is there but the body just as a carrier, you can't
Steven Follows 1:11:09
physically carry this this you know, computers and stuff. You just you get some people to press some buttons on the box, and then they make the body Okay. All right. So
Alex Ferrari 1:11:19
let's I think the bottom line to a remake of diehard is like the remake of any movie. There is a magic that happens at the time that it's released with a group of people that are putting it together that cannot be recaptured. There's never been a remake that is as good or even then than the original. It does. Disagree Just give me give me give me a remake. Thomas Crown Affair. Oh yeah, gotcha. Well, I'm in the gym and there's there's James Bonds as well. But okay, but yes, that's a remake but Okay, okay. But first of all, Thomas Crown Affair, which I love Thomas Crown Affair. The new one the one with Pierce. The difference is that the Thomas Crown Affair there was such a long time I like him look at look at the stars born. You know, I love the recent remake of that. But something that's so iconic because you could argue the Thomas Crown Affair is not as iconic as a diehard. It's not as I you can't remake the Godfather. Okay, I'll give you another you can't remake Shawshank Redemption like it's not possible not in the way it is.
Steven Follows 1:12:23
I love Infernal Affairs. It's a great movie, but the part that is a better movie now maybe it's my cultural understanding that maybe the subtitles and yes,
Alex Ferrari 1:12:30
but it's also but it was also it's a remake from a foreign film. There are many foreign films that had remakes that mean look, the entire Sergio Leoni run with the man with no name is a remake of Yojimbo, which arguably to me is a better film than Yojimbo, because of just Leoni and Eastwood at that time it appeared, though I do love I'm a huge Kurosawa fan as well, so they're just different. They're in front of affairs and departed are completely different because you've got the energies of Scorsese in that movie made Mark Wahlberg I made mark warner and word see Mark Wahlberg stole every scene he was in that movie. How was that humanly possible?
Steven Follows 1:13:11
Okay, I got three, three other I'll give up if I can't convince you with these three. last ones. The one I'm going to get you on so Okay, my next bet to see if a sequels better Ocean's 11
Alex Ferrari 1:13:23
Yes, of course it is. But that was a bad movie to begin with. I didn't like oceans. The original Ocean's 11 I thought it was just it's just not well done. So they just took the concept and remade it into much, much better.
Steven Follows 1:13:34
Okay, all right. Okay. Yeah. Number two. I'm going to get you on this last one. But number two, the mummy.
Alex Ferrari 1:13:40
What that again? They're just, you could say me, come on. The original mummy was made 100 years ago, literally. So you know when they remade the mummy. With Brendan Frasier. Is it a better movie? No. I thought those movies were the only thing that was redeemable about those movies was Brendan Frasier. At that time in his career, he made them fun. The director Steven whatever his name is. He's a horrible director. I'm sorry. He destroyed he did Van Helsing. He's done a good director. He's not a good storyteller. In my personal opinion. Are they fun movies? Yeah, the mommies fun? I wrote the writing universal. It's great. It's like in the new mommy. Oh, god, that was just Oh, it was.
Steven Follows 1:14:21
Okay. Here's my lesson. Here's my final final offer. Okay, so you were saying how some of the film was like, Ocean's 11 just took the concept and changed it. Yeah, you're not gonna get away with this. This last one. Go for it. Go for it. Gus Van Sant psycho.
Alex Ferrari 1:14:37
Well, that's a that's a literal frame by frame remake. It was. It was not good. No, it's not. It's not good. It's not that it's not good. You know, cuz it's literally the same movie with updated accuracy that he understood that you can't remake psycho like you can't remake psycho. It's, it's, you
Steven Follows 1:14:56
would acity to remake Hitchcock but then the humility to appreciate You can't improve it. So you're just going to shoot it in color
Alex Ferrari 1:15:03
in color with it with these new actors. But you've watched both of those movies and you just can't recreate the magic. Like, can you remake Star Wars? No. Can you remake Rocky? No, like creed is a fun movie. But it's not rocky nor will it ever be because rocky was the first of its kind back in 1976 when it came
Steven Follows 1:15:23
out. Well, okay, then let me take that this let's make this the final thought for this Christmas podcast because I want to make a suggestion that next year, in 12 months from now, we have not the topic of is diehard, a Christmas movie or the best Christmas movie? Yeah, the thesis I want to put out which I don't have the data for yet is that Rocky is a love story.
Alex Ferrari 1:15:42
It is a love story. It's a it's absolutely a romance film. Are you kidding me? Of course it's a romance Where's your data, my data, the whole damn thing revolves around him and Adrian, the background is the fight. The fight is the background that which he doesn't win. So that's a subplot. The main plot is rocky finding love. And finding that whole relationship with Adrian, the second movie has to do more about Rocky and his fame, and then eventually beating Apollo. But then he it the without without Adrian, it becomes a very different movie. Like the whole movie. Look, they spent, they spent so much time like in the ice rink at the pet shop. That's not an action movie. It's their dates. This is a date movie, Rocky is a date movie with a question. It's a romance film I want I would completely 110% argue with that. Now is rocky three and four date movie apps a frickin movie? Not they're not they have now then,
Steven Follows 1:16:41
I think to was that little transition before it became the hyperreal you know, amazing films that they were in the A isn't this some kind of really clever meta comment on relationships, that when you first meet somebody, you're excited by them, you go on dates to the ice rink, you know, bad things happen in your life, but you don't mind but then very soon, life starts to feel like rocky three and rocky four, you know,
Alex Ferrari 1:17:06
and then the divorce happens at Rocky five. But then but then 10 years later, but then 1015 years later, you find yourselves again and then Rocky Balboa comes out. So it's like, because Rocky Balboa i thought was a fantastic film. I couldn't believe that it was just it had no business being as good as it was. It really did. I mean, seriously, it was outrageous. But what Stallone did with Rocky Balboa, the the actual movie called Rocky Balboa was fantastic. You know, and then what they did with creed, because he had read put it he put rocky to bed. And then what's his name came up. The director of Black Panther I forgot his name. He came up with creed and said I want to do this in Rockies. Like, I mean, still, I was like, Okay, and now they've created a whole new generation of people following creed, which is a great story in its own right. But if you remember Rocky Balboa was not about Adrian's Adrian's past at that point. So she's not with him anymore. So now it becomes a story about his own redemption with his own son, and it becomes all this kind of stuff. But a side note, a quick note. Do you remember in Rocky that
that rocky had a pet two pet turtles? Yeah, they're still alive.
Steven Follows 1:18:20
Whoa, so you're saying we could make a note with the same actors? No, no,
Alex Ferrari 1:18:24
no, no, wait a minute. They're still alive. They're 44 years old. I just read they're a bit old for Hollywood them Yes. The younger ones. We have to obviously have to go for a younger turtle because on this on this shelf, yeah. Yeah, like but the point is that they're still alive and they they live with Stallone and they were both in creed he brought them back on the set he put them in the in the in the thing he's like, yeah, keeping them around for 44 years. It's it's I when I saw the picture of it, I was like, I can't believe those things are still alive.
Steven Follows 1:18:54
So are we not giving him enough credit if this like boyhood, were
Alex Ferrari 1:19:01
okay, I want to just talk about boyhood for a second because guys now we're going full full film geek. So if you're still listening, please just just endure it.
Steven Follows 1:19:09
If you're listening to this on Christmas, gave the Christmas day go and talk to your family.
Alex Ferrari 1:19:13
Yes. Bobby's around forever. Yeah, exactly. I Where are you boyhood? If you take the elements of what Linkletter did over the course of how many years he did this, if you take that out and just shot it normally, with different actors. It's not a good movie. It's not a good movie. But because of every scene that you watch, you're like, I want to see what the kid looks like. I want to see what Ethan Hawke looks like I want to do a purchase. Like that is what kind of carries it for me. At least I didn't I'm never gonna watch boyhood again.
Steven Follows 1:19:49
Yes, evil can evil basically. It's not that you want to hear what he's got to say but you want to see if he makes the jump. That's a
Alex Ferrari 1:19:55
great analogy. That's a really good there are films like that there are films like the one like I I'll watch Birdman again because I thought Birdman was fantastic. But you want to see like, how did he pull off? That the technical as gravity? You know, you watch gravity like how did they pull off avatar, or you know, like these technically insane films you're like, I just got to see how they did it, you know. And then if you're lucky you find a movie that's technically insane and also has a good story that you could watch again and again. Like I'm fascinated to see what James Cameron does with his next four avatar films that he's doing. From what I'm hearing through the grapevine. It's it's something that's so insane that we can't even can't even grasp at this. Well,
Steven Follows 1:20:35
I hope that our grandchildren who around when they come out, will enjoy the movies. And I know I really appreciate
Alex Ferrari 1:20:41
your my I'll be 70 when that comes out Jesus Christ. I mean, you look, you're rebuilding technologies, just what he does. I mean, he's he's what he did an avatar worse, not worse that we started using, as you know, like the capture in the face for visual effects and stuff that that's a standard now, before then there wasn't like nobody had done that. I can't tell you a quick Can I tell you quick Cameron, your avatar story. Alright, so I had a friend of mine, who was he, he was shadowing Cameron on the original avatar. And he walked on the set, and he was there for a few days. He's a jerk. He's a DJ director. And he asked to be on the side, it's like, she'll come over and see what we're doing. So it gets to this soundstage that has, you know, it's just, it's the mocap stage. And behind camera, there's literally 60 to 70 people in this kind of arena style seating arrangements with 1000s of 1000s of computers and cables and everything. Because the technology was literally being designed as they were doing it. And he had this one camera that he saw everything. So in that one viewfinder, he saw everything the entire world around him rendered, rendered. So he could just move the camera to the left and whatever is supposed to be there would be there for us to, you know, a tree or whatever. So there was a scene where he's jumping off a helicopter. And then he you know, like when they when they land like with the avatars land and they jump off and they run a little bit. He does that. And then he runs into a tree. Like he literally runs into a tree. There's no tree there. But he runs into a virtual tree. And he yells, cut, cut, Jimmy, Jimmy, move this tree over 30 feet. And you see this mouse come in from the heavens, grab the tree, lift the tree up with roots and all and moves it 30 feet the other way and plants it and you're just sitting. We are in the presence of somebody who's playing at a completely different level than pretty much anybody else on the planet.
Steven Follows 1:22:48
You're absolutely right. Although I have a gentleman and what I'm about to say might sound cheeky or deliberately rude, but I mean, it is a genuine, genuine question, given the huge amount of money and the fact that he had to invent entire departments technology. Why didn't anyone work on the script?
Alex Ferrari 1:23:05
Oh, Jesus. Here we go. Anytime I hear it, but I saw ferngully I didn't need it. I wasn't missing a dimension. Okay, I saw Dances with Wolves as well. Listen. Okay, so so this is the deal. Well, I'll let me finish the story. And then I'll tell you my my feelings. Oh, sorry. I thought okay, sorry. No, that story's not that. The other story. The rest of the story is that he walks up to Jim James Cameron afterwards like, hey, Jim, you know, it's pretty impressive, man. Yeah, it's pretty, pretty cool. What you got going on. And James Cameron turns in, well, you don't wanna be effin amazing. Is everything to have this damn cable? That would be impressive. This cable that's always hooked up to my camera. I don't like that. And that's, that's the mentality of someone like James Cameron. He's like, for us. We look at a going, Oh, my God, you've got godlike technology. And he's like, Yeah, but the cable.
Steven Follows 1:23:57
You know, I don't know how true this is. But I heard a story and not through someone who was there. But there may be apocryphal, but I understand that to be true. When he was planning Terminator two. He was he went to the chat to the VFX people. This is in the planning stages. And he had all these ideas. And he was like, Oh, can you do this thing where you don't like this? And they were like, yeah, we can do that. And he's like, Okay, can you do this thing? where like, we did that? And they were like, yeah, yeah, we can do that. And he's, and then he said, What if it was like, I don't know, liquid metal and it was walking through fire. And they're like, we don't know. How did he I want that. I want that. I want the thing you don't know how to do figure it out. And you can kind of see that like it but that's him. He didn't do anything that's been done before because that's
Alex Ferrari 1:24:36
boring. Right, exactly. And now to answer your question in regards to the script. I don't care what anyone says about his his writing his script. Every one of his films is I mean Titanic included in carrying an avatar avatar may two point some billion dollars at the box office. It wasn't from marketing. It wasn't from you don't make a movie that big. On a franchise that is not afraid. franchise you have to educate the people about it. So it's a non existent IP. And he was able to do that purely on spectacle to a certain extent. But in the world that we live in spectacle only takes you so far, if the visual effects that we are, it's not like Jurassic Park, where you were like, Oh my god, there's dinosaurs like, we're past that stage at this point. So for whatever reason, and he might be tapping into something that we don't understand, maybe never will, that hit a chord internationally with so many people that have generated 2.7 billion or whatever, it doesn't make it
Steven Follows 1:25:36
it doesn't make it a good script. It means he's a good director, and he's very good with concepts. He's very good with the two
Alex Ferrari 1:25:41
in it, but now it's perception. But no, listen, I Agreed. Agreed it whether you agree with it or not. Excuse me, I don't agree. The thing is this. Is it. Look a Shawshank Redemption a better script and Avatar? Absolutely. There's just no question is the Godfather a better script and movie than avatar? Absolutely. It is his Sausage Party a better script and Avatar? Yes. Yeah. Okay. But the point is the point is this it is the perception of the audience. He does not make movies for you to or movies for me specifically in regards to like, is this a perfect script? If you go back and look at True Lies, if you go back and look at aliens, if you go back and look at the Abyss or even Titanic people will like crap it on Titanic people still crap on Titanic, but I can watch that movie anytime of the day I watch it because of
Steven Follows 1:26:32
but my my genuine question is honestly I mean this is a real question considering the unbelievable lengths he goes to in the way that he films them the the unbelievable brilliant visual storytelling, the the the digital stuff, so much of the his movies are pushed to the most the absolute limit. And then the script is written on a Thursday afternoon because he had nothing else to do and then locked. Like, what on earth? Why aren't you putting it to Why isn't he got teams of writers? Why isn't he because why isn't he doing what Pixar does to a script
Alex Ferrari 1:27:00
because he the way he makes his films, he's able to tap into something that audiences react to whether you agree with it or not. He doesn't he doesn't have to make look our Pixar movies, arguably most of them amazing. Absolutely. Some of them are just, I mean, just Masterworks, their Masterworks, the way he was able to, they're able to write their scripts and the system that they write it in. But James Cameron writes it, you know, writes avatar, the way it just it just touches people, in a way that's unexplainable. If you look at the script, is it the best written script of all time? Absolutely not. It is why not? Why not? Because it is ever he doesn't have to. He doesn't have he doesn't have to know Wait a minute. He doesn't have to because he knows. Because in his mind, he has beaten it up. And in his mind, it is aiming at the audience that he wants to tell the story that he wants to tell and react to the message that he wants to get out is exactly what that script was for him. I don't think he's lazy. I don't think he's not doing the job. It's a perception issue. That's all it is just like the guy Hardee's I want the only
Steven Follows 1:28:11
reason he made Titanic was they could get in a ship and go down and look at the real one. And he loves playing with toys. You know
Alex Ferrari 1:28:16
what Michael Bay plays with a lot of toys in his films can't hold a candle to any of James Cameron. Sorry, sir.
Steven Follows 1:28:21
Also, I'm enjoying this. So okay, listen, we're coming to the end of the podcast, because it'll be it'll literally be Christmas Day at some point. Some people, maybe just three or four people and maybe one person who left it running by mistake, or listening to this right now. an hour and a half in, we have to give them something special. I have no idea what but thank you. I don't know what's going on in your lives that you have dedicated two hours to this and I'm sorry, but I am appreciative. So we have to bring it back to die hard. We have to say a thank you and Merry Christmas to the people listening but what can we give them? What can we what wisdom Can we give them that they no one else is going to get this is exclusive to them?
Alex Ferrari 1:28:59
Okay, so this is the this is the this is the order of which you need to watch diehard films if you're going to watch them 11131113 Okay, so obviously, one many times, but 1342. And then if you want to keep going down the path, you watch the other two at your leisure. But that's, that would be where I would that's how I would watch.
Steven Follows 1:29:26
Okay, I would I would suggest that you watch them in American, that you drink heavily. And you go 13452 because by the time you get to five and two, you'll probably be in the right state to watch them.
Alex Ferrari 1:29:39
And every time every time he says every time they say the word gun, you you take a shot.
Steven Follows 1:29:46
Exactly. And the second one starts you take three shots. Yeah, exactly. Oh,
Alex Ferrari 1:29:52
God, but but arguably one and three are there Masterworks. I love three I think three was fantastic.
Steven Follows 1:30:00
Three is a great movie, I really enjoyed it as a kid, I've watched it now and it's good. I do enjoy it. It's it doesn't transcend that so few films do. And obviously, that's not the criteria for a good movie transcendence, but the idea of MOOC book, you know, stepping out of just being a good time into something.
Alex Ferrari 1:30:17
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show. Okay, so I mean, I'm gonna give you I'm gonna ask two questions of you, and then I'll answer them as well. And this is where we will leave it for your top five Christmas movies of all time. And your top 580s action films of all time.
Steven Follows 1:30:44
Well, diehard is topping both those lists, but that's cheating, I guess. I think elf is an unbelievably brilliant movie. Like, I watched it. I think I avoided it when it first came out. I just don't think it was for me. And the first time I watched it, because I think I'd watched it after reading screen, screenwriting books and things and thought, okay, I should watch it. And I was like, This is so good. And he even has a moment where it looks like he's going to kill himself. And it's so universal, it's so quotable. You know, and it's, you know, Hi, I'm, what's your favorite color? I actually, I want to answer the phone like that everyday. It's got two stars in it, who were both brilliant, but weren't as well known as they are now. Right. And I just, that movie hits me every time. And I sort of keep it back. I don't watch it too often, you know, maybe once a year, just so that I can really, truly appreciate it and not make it too familiar. I think home alone is is as a kid, you know, I had it as a video as a VHS and I loved the idea of it. I think it's not aging too well, insofar as it's as a kid you just go with it as an adult. You know, the violence is slightly shocking.
Alex Ferrari 1:31:51
But yeah, well, I mean, it's, it's, it's it's it's cartoon violence. It's it's Yeah, it's there's no real damage done. So it's kind of like, it's kind of like Marx Brothers or three stooges kind of violence.
Steven Follows 1:32:03
Yeah, although it feels slightly more real just because of the deep, powerful performance Joe Pesci gives.
Alex Ferrari 1:32:09
And Daniel stern. Both of them. Yeah. Hi. Yeah, he's in it. Ah, come on that scream. Ah, that's amazing. Come on, hit scream is the best.
Steven Follows 1:32:20
Okay, I'll give you that three seconds of screen time. I think I tell you what I think love actually isn't Oh, you think oh, excuse
Alex Ferrari 1:32:30
me. I'm sorry. What was that? It's an awful movie. It's okay. Okay. We're gonna end this right now. I mean, if you can't Love Actually, I mean, come on.
Steven Follows 1:32:39
It's cheating, because it's got loads of half stories and moments, of course, you're gonna like little bits of it. Because it's the best bits. It's like going, instead of having a proper meal. You're gonna get sick. At the end, you're eating all the sweets and all the candy. Like, it's just No, it's lazy. Because it's got no through line. It's just loads of fun things like, here's the thing. Here's the thing. Here's the thing. And then, and some of them are just, I mean, also this the the column first story is just a bit weird. But I tell you what the Laura Linney thing is some of the best story and performance I've seen in such a long time and moment with Emma Thompson. And the question, ah, justifies the entire movie, and is just the most hot, you know, I saw her on a plane. Not too long ago, I didn't talk to her obviously, because I'd be really mean. But when I saw her and the first thing I flashed in my head, all the things she's done, and I think she's terrific. As a writer. She's incredible. as a performer, she's brilliant. She seems like a lovely person. But the thing that came to me in my head was just that moment that one shot where her performance destroys you. And yet she does it. And I just that will. I mean that for that moment alone. Obviously, there's loads of fun things in the movie as well. I do like the bit on the bench where I sort of, you know, I'm in love. Oh, that's fantastic. Wait, Didn't you hear what I just said? Oh, yeah, good point. That's terrible. That's kind of sweet. I mean, an unnatural, but also that thing with Keira Knightley is just creepy talking about aging poorly. That's that's that is stalkerish. That's just yeah. Also, it's all done as a cute thing. Like, it's like, Oh, don't worry. It's your man. You're allowed to be like this. Like, no.
Alex Ferrari 1:34:20
Okay, okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay, so, what are the next ones?
Steven Follows 1:34:25
So I think bad centers kind of incredibly Christmassy. I think it's kind of fun. Okay, I think it's a muscle. I'd watch it many times, but it's certainly fun. And then the last one, you have to go with the Muppets Christmas, Carol? Because, like anything better?
Alex Ferrari 1:34:42
Obviously, if you add them up, is there anything it does make it better? I mean, there's no question. All right. So I will I will, I will concur. That diehard is on the list. In no particular order, I would say scrooged with Bill Murray. Very good, fantastic film. I'm gonna say, I'm gonna say the fit. I'm gonna say the family man. I love the family, man. I don't care what you say. I love the family, man. And I'll say, I'm so proud. This is being recorded. Alex, I understand. I'm very proud of it. I'm gonna be on the record at the moment. I've been on there. I was on the record when I interviewed the writers. Yes, there were writers on that movie. Yes. And it did very well. It's a nothing right. There's nothing wrong even though even though it was directed by Brett Ratner, which I still think it wasn't I think it was somebody else who did it. Because there's way too much heart in that film that Brett Ratner would direct it. But anyway, that's a whole other story. I would say. So was that three? I would say love actually would probably be another one on that list. And I would say it's a tie between elf and the holiday because I love the holidays. Well, I've never seen it. I know. But I have never seen it. It's a it's a one. It's really wonderful film as well. So those Oh, it's a wonderful life. No, I don't I don't like I don't like I don't like it. I don't like it. I'm sorry. I don't like it. I watched it. I recently watched it again. I was like, I don't get it. I'm sorry. Everybody waits. It hates me for saying that. I just don't get it.
Steven Follows 1:36:07
I didn't think anyone hates you for it. I think everyone just feels for you, Alex, you know?
Alex Ferrari 1:36:12
I'm very depressed. I'm very happy that we can get them. Don't worry. We can we can. Maybe we should have a session about this later. But yeah, definitely talk to somebody. Maybe I shouldn't watch it again. But I've watched it twice. And both times. I was just like, okay, okay, sure. Sure. It just doesn't. You know, I would rather watch Nightmare Before Christmas or home alone. Without question.
Steven Follows 1:36:37
Yeah. Okay. But that's, you know, there's there's very few things in the world. I would like to do more than I'd like to watch home alone. So that's, you know, it's whether you'd watch nothing, then anyway.
Alex Ferrari 1:36:46
Yeah, I would watch nothing. I would watch nothing rather than watching.
Steven Follows 1:36:48
Okay. Your question about at the best 80s action movies. I have a process question. Do you count the two Indiana Jones films as one choice or two on my list?
Alex Ferrari 1:37:00
Oh, I'm gonna give you I'm gonna give them to you as a winner. Okay, I was a winner cuz that because I know because there's, well, alright, so hard.
Steven Follows 1:37:09
Because they're, they're a marathon. You know, they are a movie together. And yeah, and also because you said 80s we don't have to include the Crystal Skull madness. So that's good. That's a really, I'm glad you added the timeframe because that's
80s 80s 80s.
Alright, so obviously, Die Hard. I think the original Terminator is just so much better than it needs to be. Like, it's just such a slot schlocky idea to schlocky time with a low budget and it had nothing going for it and it everyone involved made it so brilliant. It's just terrific. I think you're talking before about john McClane being Jesus, I think you meant Robocop?
Alex Ferrari 1:37:53
Obviously, obviously, Robocop?
Steven Follows 1:37:55
Yeah, I think the because I rewatched that. I didn't realize how good it was because I saw it as a kid. And I obviously I really enjoyed it. But then I rewatched it when it was I was released, or I saw it in a cinema. I know I saw it at like Soho house, one of those screenings that was just like, Do you want to come along? And that Alright, fine. And I took a friend of mine who is someone I've worked with before, who's sort of in his late 20s. And he had never seen this version. And both of us came out for obviously, he'd never seen it. So he was like, Oh, well actually, that's really good. And I came back I Yeah, actually, I I thought it would be sillier. And actually, it was really quite profound.
Alex Ferrari 1:38:31
It's It's It's such it is such a social commentary with a hidden inside of an insane action film.
Steven Follows 1:38:40
And then I think the best 80s action film better than diehard better than the Anna Jones better even the commando has to be The Empire Strikes Back.
Alex Ferrari 1:38:52
I'm gonna I'm gonna disavow about I'm not going to allow an empire strikes back because that is a sci fi action. So because then you could throw aliens in there as well. As but I would say you have another choice it I agree with you. It's on the list of the top five films of the 80s without question, but let's let's keep keep this genre as pure as possible. The predator I would argue is much more action than it is a sci fi film. But that's just makes sense.
Steven Follows 1:39:25
All right, well, Return of the Jedi no I'm joking. will ignore deathwish One, two and three. And also raw deal and
Alex Ferrari 1:39:36
Wow, invasion USA Jesus. What are we doing? American Ninja American Ninja. What are we going let's, Blood Sport?
Steven Follows 1:39:43
The wolf McQuade No. Yes. I'm gonna go for Batman.
Alex Ferrari 1:39:48
Okay, okay, the Tim Burton Batman. Okay, all right.
Steven Follows 1:39:51
Shit. I forgot one. Can I have a bonus one please? Sure. The Running Man. That was so good.
Alex Ferrari 1:39:57
So good.
Steven Follows 1:39:58
It's a good movie.
Alex Ferrari 1:39:59
That's such a great Basically basically predicted the reality with reality genre in general, and it hasn't gotten too far away from killing people on screen. So I would argue that my top five is diehard predator. Lethal Weapon Terminator two. I'm gonna say it's I feel it for Don't forget 84 I was in fourth grade 89 I was in cotton in high school. So arguably Terminator two, how are you? Doing film numbers with me? I am I'm arguing it from the point of view of when I watched it. It had much bigger impact on me in 89 when I was working in a video store than I was in fourth grade in 84, which I didn't see it so
Steven Follows 1:40:49
Well. I was born in 82. So I haven't seen any of these films in the 80s.
Alex Ferrari 1:40:52
So you're much younger than me. So thank you for Thank you sir. You have an old soul.
Steven Follows 1:40:59
That that is because you brought in Terminator two to a list of 80s movies and just made the whole mockery of the whole concept.
Alex Ferrari 1:41:06
Okay, so it's Terminator so there's four of them and I said Lethal Weapon right so the lethal weapon predator diehard and I want to say I mean, the Indiana Jones is are good. Always a good, always a good pick. But you know, I'm gonna go off genre a little bit and you could kind of argue it's still a little heavier on the sci fi but I'm gonna say aliens, man, I think aliens is so so so so good.
Steven Follows 1:41:35
That it is good. But if you're gonna start picking films that you have disavowed yourself I think this has been a supreme waste of your time and mind. I think we're playing so disingenuously maybe the reigning champion but I'm not coming back. Oh yes. Don't do this. This is outrageous.
Alex Ferrari 1:41:58
To me. How dare you Sir, how dare you? I shall now go drink some tea. So
Steven Follows 1:42:06
Film tribe, please email Alex and inform him when the 80s ended. And also what?
Alex Ferrari 1:42:14
Well, first of all,
Steven Follows 1:42:15
It's not an action film.
Alex Ferrari 1:42:16
First of all, okay, now we can have a whole other episode about aliens actually being an action film. But secondly it is I mean it is it's it's it's Rambo First Blood part two, basically, well, that's you know, that's why there's Marines and aliens. Yeah, that right? Yeah, because he gamelin Cameron wrote Rambo. I don't want people let people know that Cameron wrote Rambo. Part Two, which is also arguably an insanely wonderful action film. And we could just start going down the line of revenue. We haven't got time for that. No, we don't for next Christmas. Next Christmas. We'll do it'll same bat time. Same bat channel. We'll we'll find we'll find we'll do another Christmas special. Maybe we'll start doing this yearly Steven. I think
Steven Follows 1:43:00
It'll take the full year for me to do the work and then for us to talk for three days but all jokes aside, Merry Christmas Alex Yeah. Merry Christmas. It's been really fun and to everyone listening thanks for you know supporting Alex in the work he does. And also for just joining us on a rather mad ramble which had very little to do with diehard but
Alex Ferrari 1:43:22
That's not true. If we if we go back to the tapes we can actually if you want to do the stats on it we spoke about diehard most of the time.
Steven Follows 1:43:29
My memories that you spoke mostly about your inexplicable love for the family man, but you know what? You're gonna see it's not too late. Just cut it out. No one will no
Alex Ferrari 1:43:38
No, no, no, no, no, I stand by my stand by it sir. I stand by Nicolas Cage a Christmas stuff. Well, first of all, did you hear about that new Nicolas Cage movie what's called pig. Where he he's chasing? He's He's in search of a truffle pig that someone stole from him.
Steven Follows 1:43:56
Let this be a career be a lesson to anyone who thinks they can evade taxes. Wesley Snipes, this pay your taxes ladies and gentlemen. Otherwise you will have the same fate.
Alex Ferrari 1:44:09
Yes, thank you, Steven for coming on. Merry Christmas. Anyone and for anyone listening. Stop listening to us and go talk to your family.
Steven Follows 1:44:17
Yeah, you may not like them, but are the only ones you go. Thanks. Bye bye.
Alex Ferrari 1:44:23
Well, the verdict is in and Die Hard is in fact a Christmas movie. It's undeniable. You can't argue the facts. And now you have so much ammo to debate anybody at the next Christmas party on whether diehard is or is not a Christmas movie. I hope you guys really enjoyed this episode. I truly like to geek out every once in a while I always talk so much about business and the craft and and you know doing all the serious stuff about filmmaking and building a business and being a film shoprunner all of that stuff but you know under all of this, guys after on All this shrapnel their lives, a film geek, a 15 year old kid who worked at a video store and has seen 1000s and 1000s of movies. I am a film geek. I am a cinephile. And I like geeking out like anybody else. So every once in a while, I'm going to bring somebody on. And we're gonna geek out about stuff. But I hope this episode really was enjoyable to you guys. I really hope that this Christmas gift to the tribe was enjoyed by all. Now if you want to get links to anything we talked about in this episode, including, including that insane article, proving all of this data and breaking down all this data for diehard as a Christmas movie that Steven wrote, head over to the show notes at indiefilmhustle.com/367 for the show notes, and for the members of indie film hustle TV. We have brand new courses that I just uploaded, including story blueprint, the heroes two journeys, an hour long breakdown of the story and script of Erin Brockovich by Michael Haig and Chris Vogler. And it's available for purchase or part of the subscription. And if you want to check all that out, plus a bunch of new stuff that I have coming up, including exclusive film shoprunner training that I am working on right now that would hope hopefully it will be done by the beginning of next year. And I'm going to be adding new courses and new mini courses on filmtrepreneur on micro budget, filmmaking and a whole bunch of other stuff that I'll be working on on indie film hustle TV. So check it out, head over to ifhtv.com. Thank you guys so much for listening. Merry, Merry Christmas. Have a great holiday season and I wish you and your family a fantastic new year. Thanks again guys. As always, keep that hustle going. Keep that dream alive. And you become Yippee ki yaayyy Mother!
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Another aspect of this period in Tarantino’s career has been the huge critical and financial success of his work. After a long awards-circuit dry spell, INGLORIOUS BASTERDS marked Tarantino’s return to the Oscar shortlist– a return he cemented with the even-larger success of DJANGO UNCHAINED and its subsequent win for Best Original Screenplay. THE HATEFUL EIGHT was similarly praised, earning mostly-positive reviews that noted his continued excellence in both writing and direction. The film grossed $155 million against its $44 million budget– a notable downturn in the recent trend, but far from his worst showing.
