Out There in the Dark

increasingly, the court of public opinion through social media has the power to make or break a film. and the ubiquitous exposure of artists' personal foibles now serves as a legitimate form of film criticism. "Bad" people, so the argument goes, are not deserving of our attention, regardless of the quality of the work.  Some questions that arise in this discussion are:

-is it fair or right to equate the artist with the art?

-Does the art stand on its own, despite the biography of the artist?

-Can a film that has ideologically questionable aspects, still be a worthwhile work of art? 

-Is the censoring of artists, because of their personal flaws,  a form of social control, limiting what we can see, enjoy or find meaningful, or is it a necessary corrective to toxic masculinity, racism and cis conformity that has been allowed to run rampant for many decades?

Azed & Tom, discuss these questions and more, while focusing in on two specific films, Louis C.K. unreleased I Love You, Daddy and Andrew Dominik's much maligned, Blonde.  In Louis C.K.'s case his movie was cancelled following the news that- without consent-he exposed himself to numerous women.  Dominik's Blonde, a surreal meditation on Marilyn Monroe, was perhaps the most derided film from 2022, citing it's apparent misogyny, social media mobs ripped the film to shreds.  

Listen in and join the conversation or don't and just cancel us based on Azed's continued defense of The Dukes of Hazzard and their Confederate flag topped car named The General Lee. Just leave Tom Wopat alone!!

For our second episode of Out There in the Dark, Azed & Tom take a look at the films honoured by this year’s Academy Awards. Yeah, we know it’s months after they aired but hey, this is largely a vanity project for Azed and Tom, so shut it! 

As much as we find the Oscar’s an increasingly cringe-inducing affair, we figure if you’re going to do a movie podcast, you can’t avoid talking about them at some point. Everyone seems to have a love / hate relationship with the Oscars, and Azed & Tom are no exception. From an industry perspective, they have an incalculable effect on box office, peer recognition and they can make or break careers; from a cineaste’s perspective, they invite endless debate and controversy around the films that win, lose or are completely neglected.

Listen in and take a deep dive into why these films were honoured this year; if they deserved their awards or not; and what made them connect with audiences: the level of excess in Everything Everywhere All At Once, the pointed narcissism of the titular character of Tar, the empty pleasures of Top Gun: Maverick, the polarizing profundity of Triangle of Sadness, problematic representation in The Whale and the beauty and intelligence behind The Banshees of Inishirin - think on all of these as well as many other films and ideas. The Oscars are and always will be a cracked mirror, giving us a skewed, shattered reflection of cinema both as an industry and as an art form.

Note: Tom slapped Azed during the recording of this episode, in honour of last year’s best Oscar moment.

Welcome to the inaugural episode of Out There in the Dark.  In this episode, Azed & Tom discuss Sight & Sound's decennial poll of the Greatest Films of All Time and the seemingly out of nowhere elevation of a little known, 1970's experimental French feminist film to the number one spot.  Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, was released in 1975 to quiet acclaim within the halls of critical film discourse. A comfortable in-crowd of elite cineastes wrote, discussed and championed the 3+ hour film as a major artistic breakthrough in feminist cinema.  But whereas previous S&S top spot films, The Bicycle Thief, Citizen Kane and Vertigo are all accessible narratives, Akerman's film is not.  A 3+ hour film where there is very little dialogue, the camera is mostly still and the "story" unfolds through a highly structured look at the domestic chores of a largely inscrutable protagonist isn't necessarily going to appeal to the Marvel crowd. While the synopsis of Jeanne Dielman may make it sound like a chore, it really isn't.  Akerman's masterpiece holds the viewer in a state of hypnotic suspense.  it is almost impossible to make a film that captures the audience's attention to this degree, it is a miracle when it is achieved by a 24 year old female artist.

As Jessica Winter wrote in the New Yorker, "The Sight and Sound tabulations are a striking turn of events, representing a consensus that one of the pinnacle films ever produced in an overwhelmingly male-dominated art form was made by a young woman, with a crew mostly made up of women, starring a middle-aged woman, about women’s work."

The recent death of Peter Bogdanovich prompted the Preverts to record an episode to explore the career of what might be the most neglected of the major directors to emerge from the New Hollywood movement of the 70s. Despite sharing an intense love for the cinema with peers such as Scorsese, Coppola and De Palma, Bogdanovich clearly had a more single minded focus on the early days of Hollywood from the silent era up to and including the 40s and his films reflect a desire to explore the basic forms established by his personal favourites like Welles, Hawks and Ford.

He had a somewhat sad story having both direct and indirect connections to some of the more tragic Hollywood deaths of his time. And his reputation also seemed to wane after some poorly received films in the 70s and never fully recovered, but his contributions were undeniably substantial and he had a unique style and perspective that persisted throughout his career.  His representations of love and sex are particularly refreshing and may even give him some claim to being one of the horniest Hollywood directors of all time.

Although his career was hindered by poor critical reception and an inability to get funding this episode makes the case that he still made a significant number of truly memorable films.

The recent release of Denis Villeneuve's adaptation of  Frank Herbert's Dune got us Preverts thinking back to a simpler time. A time when neo-liberalism was just a babe in the crib, when rap was a mere novelty genre and getting laid was in the realm of possibility. Yes, 1984! The year that David Lynch's version of Dune was released. Long pilloried as a colossal flop, Azed and Jay find a lot to admire in Lynch's mess of a movie, and also a lot to admire in Villeneuve's solemn, faithful update. Luckily, Azed's son, Ishmael (Recent U of T graduate-BSC with High Distinction and the only one among us who has read the source material) is along to school us on the whole Dune ethos and to set us straight on how recent accusations of "White Savior" syndrome miss the mark of Herbert's Magnum Opus.

Still, while Villeneuve's film is a beautiful spectacle, some of us prefer Sting in a leather diaper to Timothy Chalamet attempting to act tough. It's a question of which is more believable?

We have a special treat for you Mutiny of Preverts listeners who have long grown tired of the format and are now only listening as a result of A) losing a bet, B) being related to the hosts, or C) out of the sheer ecstasy you feel from hate listening to us and fantasizing about what incredible horrors the Devil will reign down on Azed and Jay when they are inevitably banished to Hell.

We will not only be discussing an excellent new film called Drunk On Too Much Life, but for the very first time, we have the makers of the very film we are discussing, Michelle Melles and Pedro Orrego, on the show to discuss it with us. The film is a very personal one about their daughter Corrina and her experience with "madness"  or what she referred to as being "drunk on too much life." We go deep with Michelle and Pedro on their family's search for something more than the biomedical diagnoses and medications that proved inadequate for Corrina and discuss everything from the history of mental health through the centuries, the influence social power has on mental health and the central role that art, poetry and music has played for Corrina, Michelle and Pedro in the healing process.

We also dig into a few of the greatest and/or most notorious examples of madness portrayed on film including Titicut Follies, Warrendale, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Grey Gardens, Crumb and others and discuss some of the ethical considerations that have often been ignored, especially in the case of documentaries.

The first in our series called Our Lives in Movies where we revisit different stages in our lives and choose movies that impacted us at that time.  In this the first of the series, we explore a movie from childhood that made an impression on us. Azed & Jay, being from different generations, have very different selections but, as often happens, there are overlapping thematic tropes in both of their individual choices. Azed, being a child of the 70's, remembers the impact of Ken Russel's film adaptation of The Who's Tommy, while Jay being a child of the 80's remembers the impact of Robert Altman's Popeye.  Other topics covered here: How VHS changed the whole game with movies, How kid's today just don't get it, Shelly Duvall in the Multiverse, and Anne Margaret as Azed's 12 year old masturbatory fantasy woman.

Welcome to the sequel to our wildly popular episode on the most underappreciated comedies of the 2000s except with a radical new twist; instead of the 2000s we cover the 1990s! Upon writing that sentence I recognize its probably not that radical, BUT WE DID IT ALL THE SAME!

Joining us is the crew from that 2000s episode, filmmaker Omar Majeed and Mongrel Media bigwig Tom Alexander with films ranging from Clifford (yes, that Clifford), The Watermelon Woman, Joe vs the Volcano and The Butcher Boy (yes, that The Butcher Boy).

So strap on a scrunchy, pull out your Reebok Pumps, tell an authority figure to "eat your shorts" and let's all go back to that bygone era when MTV still played actual music and Leonardo DiCaprio played second fiddle to boob tube superstar Kirk motherf***ing Cameron.

If you're anything like the Mutiny of Preverts crew, and you've spent decades watching and appreciating all the great cinema of the world, there is one question you find yourself returning to time and again: What exactly does it look like when Rip Torn has vigorous, athletic coitus with a coed? Well,  lucky for you the films of Nicolas Roeg have the answer.

And they also have the answer to similar copulatory questions about Donald Sutherland, Julie Christie, Theresa Russell, David Bowie, Candy Clark, James Fox, Mick Jagger, Rutger Hauer... We could go on.

Despite the wealth of boning related topics, Azed, Jay and unofficial third host Omar Majeed also make time to discuss many of the formal and thematic elements of Roeg's films that make him one of the all time great directors. Azed, in particular, makes an astute connection between Roeg's fragmented visual and auditory style and the deeply alienated and traumatized characters that inhabit his films that you will not want to miss.

“He’s More a Painter, Maybe, Than a Director”: Jean-Luc Godard on Jerry Lewis

Jerry Lewis, as a filmmaker, entertainer and celebrity persona, was constantly polarizing.  In America, he was loved by audiences, hated by critics. In France he was placed alongside such filmmakers as Howard Hawks, Hitchcock and Chaplin.  New Wave luminaries  such as Godard, Resnais and Chabrol, cited Lewis as a cinematic genius, while in America the critics maligned him as puerile, infantile and vulgar. 

In this episode, Azed & Jay discuss the work and persona of Jerry Lewis and argue that his work is best understood by  re-contextualizing him as an experimental artist who used cinema as his personal psychoanalytic couch.  From the early Martin & Lewis days through to his increasingly bizarre but fascinating auteurist films, Lewis is the embodiment of a fragmented psyche searching for a coherent subjective position. A project which both in front of and behind the camera, Lewis consistently, but interestingly, fails to achieve. Speaking of using media as a personal therapy session, hopefully this episode will finally put to rest Azed's concerning obsession with Jerry Lewis and finally free him to concentrate on his other obsession: the music of John Tesh.