Film Trace

In the first episode of our new cycle Set in the 1950s, we take a look at Wes Anderson's new film, Asteroid City (2023).

Both Chris and I are devout Wes Anderson fans, and covering Asteroid City was really the impetus for this cycle's theme. As we have traversed this cycle, we are seeing how the 1950s setting can be used in a variety of ways with varying degrees of historical richness. Wes, quite predictably, uses the Eisenhower years as mostly set dressing for his story of grief and isolation out in the red desert. Of course the film looks gorgeous and is filled to the brim with exquisite detail, but the film does deviate significantly from the typical Anderson film. Here the meta impulse is greatly indulged with a play running intertwined within the main narrative. The film has become quite divisive even amongst Wes Anderson aficionados.

A great counterpoint to Asteroid City is Steven Spielberg's autobiographical The Fabelmans (2022). Both works are about directors turning the lens inwards. Whereas Anderson deconstructs his own style and voice into a kaleidoscope of detail and paratexts, Spielberg lends his own story a hyperrealism he often evoked in his most classic work. Both films are honest reflections.

Note: This podcast was recorded and produced during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strike. Without the labor of writers and actors currently on strike, Asteroid City and The Fabelmans would not exist. Support the artists who make the art you love.

The sixth and finale film in our Stranger Than Fiction cycle is Richard Brooks' true crime magnum opus, In Cold Blood (1967).

Often overlooked by the infamy of its origin source, In Cold Blood enormous value as a film: the beautiful and stark cinematography of Conrad Hall (who went on to shoot Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Road to Perdition), the unsettling and rapturous performances of leads Robert Blake and Scott Wilson, the surgical plotting and execution of Richard Brooks. It sits snugly inbetween the post-war studio system and the auteur anarchism of the 1970s. Despite these creative high marks, In Cold Blood could be a thesis statement for this cycle: exploitation and true life film are inseparable. The moral weight of retelling this grisly murder of a family by two drifters is too much for the film, even with its progressive anti-death penalty ideology. But we find interest and discourse in the cracks and fissures of great art. Perfection in film would be a negation of the medium.

For our chaser film, we trace the lineage of true crime back to Compulsion (1959), a mess of a film that is salvaged by wonderful performances from Orson Welles, Diane Varsi, Dean Stockwell, and the truly creepy Bradford Dillman.

The fifth film in our Stranger Than Fiction cycle is Sidney Lumet's provocative bank heister, Dog Day Afternoon (1975).

Special Guest: Good friend of the show and dedicated film nerd, Riley.

Dog Day Afternoon is certainly a film you hear about before you ever see it. The film has had a stellar reputation since its release in the mid 1970s. It is considered one of Sidney Lumet's most important and best films. As we approach the film's 50th anniversary, we reappraised both what is on the screen and what happened in real life, not all of which is easy to reconcile with the aura of prestige surrounding the film. As we explore about how true life overlaps with fiction, Dog Day Afternoon becomes hornet's nest of contradiction, exploitation, and high art craftsmanship. Featuring stellar performances from Al Pacino and John Cazale, we face the question that always arises when great stories are told about terrible people: can we separate art from reality?

For our chaser film, we reclaim a lost 70s classic, Straight Time. Dripping in 70s malaise and alienation, Dustin Hoffman plays a man on the edge of all things prudent.

The fourth film in our Stranger Than Fiction cycle is David Cronenberg's deep trip twin thriller, Dead Ringers (1988).

Special Guest: Rob from the awesome Smoke & Mirrors Podcast

David Cronenberg was evicted from his home after his early film, Shivers, sent shockwaves through the Toronto intelligentsia. Cronenberg has always been an outsider with a deft ability to contort himself into the good graces of the monied class over his now fifty year career. Dead Ringers is one of his most grounded works but it is also one of his most confounding. The film closely follows the journalistic essays written about the life and death of twins Stewart and Cyril Marcus. As Cronenberg himself said, “The art of The Fly was to make the fantasy absolutely real, whereas the challenge here was to make the realistic seem fantastic.” But by the end, even Jeremy Irons' spectacular performance can't quite conjure the truth that lies between the tragedy of these twin brothers.

For our chaser film, we dissect Wes Craven's ballsy attempt to adapt a notorious account of real life zombies in Haiti, The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988).

The third film in our Stranger Than Fiction cycle is Terry Gilliam's visual extravaganza, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998).

Special Guest: The crew from There Are Too Many Movies podcast - Chris Collins, Josh Rodriguez, and Alex Wilshin.

Hunter S. Thompson was the paradigm of Stranger Than Fiction journalism. He helped create the entire genre of creative nonfiction by telling the world what he saw we his own two eyes instead of assuming some fake omniscient third person perspective, also known as "reporting." Terry Gilliam saddled up with Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro to bravely attempt an adaptation of Thompson's classic work of gonzo. It fails spectacularly, but the film is absolutely a high mark in visual experimentation. Not for nothing, Gilliam captures altered perception in a way never done before or since. It's too bad the film mostly misses the moral and political polemics underneath the book's narcotic blatherings.

For our chaser film, we travel to the fourth dimensions with Peter Jackson's wonderfully macabre Heavenly Creatures (1994).

The second film in our Stranger Than Fiction cycle is Nicolas Winding Refn's left field take on bio pics, 2008's Bronson.

Special Guest: Katey Stoetzel is co-founder and TV Editor for InBetweenDrafts. She hosts the “House of the Dragon After Show” podcast and can be read on various other places like Inverse and Screen Speck.

Refn's conspicuous filmmaking style lends itself well to the crazy and violent life of Charles Bronson aka Britain's "most violent prisoner." Shot as a performance art piece rather than a narrative film, Bronson was certainly a calling card for both Refn and the magnificent lead performance of Tom Hardy. Looking back on the film some fifteen years later, the boldness feels oversaturated and worn, like an overly compressed mp3. It blasts loud, but the dynamic range is so blown out that little emotional timbre is left. Especially troubling is the tightrope Refn chooses to snap in two instead of traverse. Refn claims he is making a movie about man he knows nothing about. Charles Bronson is a real person who did very awful things to real people. Refn gives us a barometer with which to measure the level of exploitation that true life films can conjure. Here lies the bottom.

For our chaser film, we lounge with Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg in 2004's The Terminal, a comfy mid-aughts dramedy filled with max schmaltz and min edge.

The first film in our new Stranger Than Fiction cycle is Elizabeth Bank's gonzo misfire, Cocaine Bear (2023).

Elizabeth Banks is an almost household name who likes to stay busy as an actor, producer, film director, and now gameshow host. While prolific, the quality of her output has been uneven. Her 2019 film Charlie's Angels spectacularly bombed, and Banks, always the press whisperer, jumped on the grenade and blamed sexism. Here she returns to the director's chair for a loosely true concept about a bear who eats a lot of cocaine. Clearly a joke by people who are too well connected to truly fail, Cocaine Bear is tonal salmagundi: black comedy, creature feature, coming of age, postmodern pastiche. None of it really lands beyond the basic concept of bear being turnt up on coke. Considering the large production budget and the talented people involved, the final result is an embarrassment.

For our chaser film, we discuss The Bling Ring, Sofia Coppola's blasé docudrama of young thieves obsessed with celebrity consumption. Despite its glassy surface, Coppola suggests a deeper abyss lies below.

The sixth and final film in our Risqué Romance cycle is Luca Guadagnino's meatlovers romance, Bones and All (2022).

Coming off his break out art-house hit Call Me by Your Name (2017) and his wonderfully bizarre remake of Suspiria (2018), Luca Guadagnino rejoined with white hot Timothée Chalamet to adapt this young adult novel about the ills of eating human flesh. The book, a vegan polemic, is translated here by Luca with his normal grace, poise, and naturalism. Joining Chalamet is the splendid performance of Taylor Russell as the two young lovers crisscross the eastern half of the US. Also strangely a 1980s period piece, Bones and All becomes a gumbo of genre, style, and tone. It doesn't really work, but there is a joy in the experience of trying to make sense of it all. Mark Rylance shows up to piss off Chris and for me to fall in love again.

For our chaser film, we reconnect with Her (2013), a techno-romance that captured the thirty something zeitgeist of the late Obama years as we became soulmates with our iPhones.

We decided to do an end of the year show for 2022. Life has been hectic so we haven't been able to post on our normal schedule, and we have a longer break coming up before Season 10 of Film Trace kicks off. So we decided to do a one-off show to give the people what they want: Drama!

Chris and Dan present the top five behind the scenes dramas in film for 2022. The goal of our show is to tell the listener the story of how a film came to be. Sometimes everything goes right, and we get Top Gun: Maverick. Sometimes it doesn't go right and we get Morbius. The successes are fun to talk about but the abject failures are truly delicious.

Join us as we trace the lives of five films that face planted in 2022.

The fifth film in our Risqué Romance cycle is Ang Lee's western romance, Brokeback Mountain (2005)

Special Guest: Amanda Jane Stern - writer, actor, and producer from New York City. She wrote, produced, and starred in the new erotic thriller Perfectly Good Moment, soon to be playing at a film festival near you!

When Brokeback came out in the mid-Aughts, it was supported by effuse buzz and whispered homophonic jokes. This was not unlike the release of The Crying Game in the early 90s. Both films were from smaller studios and gained traction due to their misperceived salaciousness. Looking back on Brokeback, the film's reputation is bizarre and totally ill-fitting. The film is a quiet and slow mediation on how love blossoms quickly but then withers for decades only to constantly reemerge through turned soil, like a perennial bud. Its loss to Crash at the 2006 Oscars for Best Picture feels more and more criminal with every passing year. Brokeback Mountain is one of Ang Lee's enduring masterpieces alongside Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

For our chaser film, we reexamine the 2002 film Secretary, which felt like a slight curiosity on release but plays totally differently now. Very much a hidden gem.