Phi Phenomenon

With the existential change to theatrical filmgoing after last year, many filmmakers are doing their own existential rethinks of why they do what they do. In a wide-ranging conversation, writer/director Julio Quintana is on this episode to discuss one of the more popular trilogy of non-fiction books of the last few years: Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Homo Deus: A Brief History of the Future, and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, and the philosopher/historian’s theories on why humans tell stories. On this episode, we discuss:

- (spoiler: why storytelling might, potentially, be the organizing principle of all human civilization);
- mimicry and worship in terms of the inspiration of art;
- how human brains think in terms of narrative, consecutive images/sounds, and disparate events;
- and Quintana’s origins coming at filmmaking from both his father’s engineering background and, academically, religious studies.

Also:

- How narratives sustain institutions around nations, religions, and corporations;
- why Quintana felt his first film was a narrative worth dying for and passing on;
- the sacrifices he made for audience narratives on his most recent film;
- and how money and currency correlates to society’s idea of value or purpose?

Yuval Noah Harari’s books include Sapiens (which has sold more than 12 million copies worldwide), Homo Deus, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, and his most recent, the graphic novel Sapiens: A Graphic History. His books and more can be found on his website.

Julio Quintana recently co-wrote and directed Netflix’s Blue Miracle, which stars Dennis Quaid, Jimmy Gonzalez, and debuted in its Top 10. He also wrote and directed 2017’s The Vessel, starring Martin Sheen, currently available on VOD.

After a teenage publishing career of film fandom and criticism, Sam Irvin’s first professional job came on the set of Brian De Palma’s The Fury. Quickly, and for the next few years, he would become De Palma’s assistant and a jack of all trades on movies from Fury to Dressed to Kill, before starting his own directing career and eventually coming back to film writing. On today’s episode, joined once again by Ted Haycraft, we discuss:

- Irvin’s early career writing about Hammer films and interviewing actors like Vincent Price and Emma Peel;
- his first contact with De Palma, then casting Carrie alongside George Lucas (who was then casting Star Wars) by inviting him to a film festival at his college;
- and how that led to Irvin braving a phone call asking to work on The Fury.

Also:

- Interacting with the established crew for The Fury’s Chicago crew;
- why it’s difficult to see the first film one worked on objectively;
- his work with a young filmmakers Mark Romanek and Keith Gordon on Fury, Home Movies, and Dressed to Kill;
- how Irvin progressed this to his first short and feature films.

Sam Irvin is a veteran director, producer and screenwriter for movies and television who began his career as the assistant to Brian De Palma. His directing credits include Guilty as Charged (Rod Steiger, Lauren Hutton, and Heather Graham), Out There (Bill Campbell and Billy Bob Thornton), Elvira’s Haunted Hills (Elvira, Mistress of the Dark), and Fat Rose and Squeaky (Louise Fletcher and Cicely Tyson). Irvin also co-executive produced Bill Condon’s Academy Award-winning motion picture, Gods and Monsters, and wrote the book, Kay Thompson: From Funny Face to Eloise. Irvin also teaches graduate courses on directing at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic arts and resides in Los Angeles.

The Fury is currently streaming on Starz and available on VOD and Blu-ray.

Director Jonathan Demme had the reputation as one of the most humanist filmmakers — meaning his films had the ethos of “no one is evil” and everyone had their reasons. In that regard, Rachel Getting Married might have been his masterpiece of this ethos. On today’s episode, I’m joined by the film’s editor, Tim Squyres, in an episode that double as both a career retrospective and a deep-dive into the film. We talk:

- his second feature as editor being Ang Lee’s first as feature director;
- how he’s since edited every Lee film except one;
- the sequential art origins behind Lee’s Hulk film adaptation;
- the tech specs and future of High Frame Rates.

Also:

- why the freeform shooting of Rachel led to many technical challenges;
- why Demme, like Lee, never gave him notes during shooting;
- his other work with Demme, an adaptation of Ibsen’s A Master Builder;
- and how close Squyres came to editing Demme’s final film, Ricki and the Flash.

Tim Squyres is a two-time Academy Award nominee for Best Editing (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Life of Pi). Along with a career-spanning collaboration with director Ang Lee, he’s also edited for Jonathan Demme, Robert Altman, Akiva Goldsman, Angelina Jolie, and Stephen Gaghan. He lives in Maplewood, New Jersey.

Rachel Getting Married is available on VOD, digital, and Blu-ray from Sony Pictures.

Quentin Tarantino's ethos was once described, efficiently, by the online writer Film Crit Hulk thusly: “Never hate a movie.” That ethos never had a better distillation than the film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood except for one joyous example — its novelization. On this episode I’m joined again by Tyler Coates and Ted Haycraft to discuss the expansion of the beloved movie. We talk:

- the “literary” value of Tarantino’s prose;
- how Tarantino mixes film criticism with that prose;
- which character benefits most from the novel’s expansion of the film;
- and why part the value of Tarantino releasing something new is his promotional circuit interviews.

Also:

- The reputation the 2019 film has developed two years out;
- the (innocuous?) oddity of there being no people of color in the movie;
- how the movie will likely age if its historical context is forgotten;
- and the fates of the characters after the end credits and last page.

Tyler Coates is currently an editor for the Hollywood Reporter. Past work has appeared in The Awl, Brooklyn Magazine, Esquire, GOOD, Gothamist, Nylon, Out, Town & Country, and the Village Voice. His work can also be found out at his website.

The paperback novel of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is currently available from Harper Collins.

With Charles Grodin’s passing two weeks ago, an appreciation of his under-appreciated career can’t neglect what is most inarguable his finest cinematic (two-)hour(s): Martin Brest’s 1988 buddy comedy co-starring Grodin and Robert De Niro, in his first studio starring comedy role. Ted Haycraft and I are joined by the film’s editor Billy Weber on this episode, which triples as not only an appreciation of the film, but also the careers of director Brest and Weber’s. We discuss:

- what childhood movie inspired Billy’s only directed feature;
- how his circuitous path through older editor’s union rules led him to watching The Exorcist 150 times;
- why helping a then-film student Brest while working in Taxi Driver’s editing room didn’t necessarily lead to future work;
- but being rejected by a director for not having “box-office success” opened up his schedule to edit Beverly Hills Cop for Brest.

Also:

- why the film’s centerpiece scene is the reunion might be the key to the genre “gumbo” that makes the film so rewatchable;
- how Billy’s interest in improv acting helped him blur the line between editing naturalistic and star-making performances;
- the version of Brest’s Gigli that was a good film before studio reshoots;
- and how stupid it is that that film’s questionable reputation has left Brest where “no one will take his calls.”

This one’s full of some great stories.

Billy Weber is a two-time Oscar nominee entering his sixth decade editing features. He’s worked on multiple films for such directors as Terrence Malick, Martin Brest, Walter Hill, Tony Scott, and Warren Beatty. His credits include, among others: Badlands, Days of Heaven, The Warriors, Beverly Hills Cop I and II, Top Gun, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, The Thin Red Line, Bulworth, Rules Don’t Apply, and The Predator.

Midnight Run is streaming on HBO Max and available on Blu-ray from Shout! Factory.

As an editor and a drummer, I’ve been banging the drum — literally in many instances — about the connection between the two. Director/drummer combos range from Stanley Kubrick to Bob Fosse to Damien Chazelle. On today’s episode I’m joined by Heath Metzger, drummer for the beloved Evansville/Newburgh band Mock Orange, who edits some of the band’s projects, and Christopher Roldan, an editor who used to drum for the Himalayans, which featured a pre-Counting Crows Adam Duritz. On this episode, we discuss:

- Why drumming concepts like rhythm, release, syncopation, and sustains overlap in film editing;
- Metzger’s ever-expanding “hobby” of editing the band’s projects being informed by his drumming;
- how Roldan overcame a youthful need to be “perfect” to come back to playing drums in recent years;
- and how an interest in guitar players and melody really opens things up when figuring out more colorful rhythms and beats.

Also:

- Why Chris thinks this topic is obvious
- (spoiler: he’s worked on projects where every editor is also a drummer);
- if editing is has more in common with live music or studio playing;
- similarities in pacing setlists, album tracklists, and feature films;
- and how Mock Orange’s new guitar player, also a well-respected local drummer himself, is changing live playing for Heath.

Heath Metzger is drummer for Mock Orange and had a hand in editing their newest concert special, the “Virtual Intertainment Computer Special.” Tickets for the event are currently on sale and the special will be available VOD for 24 hours starting May 25. You can find out more about Mock Orange at their website, where their latest releases, The Record Play 20th Anniversary Reissue and The Bridge EP, are available.

Chris Roldan has edited on narrative films for directors Richard Linklater and Terrence Malick, documentaries (A Brave Heart: The Lizzie Velasquez Story, Abortion: Stories Women Tell), along with television shows for HBO, Facebook, Jerry Bruckheimer Television, TNT, Oxygen, TLC and the Discovery Channel. He is also an editing instructor at the University of Texas and was voted one of its top ten professors in 2015. You can find out more at Roldan’s website.

The podcast’s first Pulitzer Prize-winning guest! (/brag), author Glenn Frankel joins me (and, once again, Ted Haycraft) to discuss his new book, the third and final of his trilogy of cowboy movies and the historical era from which they emerged — 1969’s Best Picture Oscar winner and its only X-rated one, Midnight Cowboy. On this episode, we talk:

- why Frankel was drawn to the movie as a way to write about the homophobia and New York City of the era;
- how his book works as one of the first biographies of Cowboy novelist James Leo Herlihy (and a touching one as well);
- the nuts and bolts of researching and writing a book like this;
- and Frankel’s remarkably concise, compartmentalized, yet encyclopedic style of writing the biography of a film’s creation, life, and legacy.

Also:

- the intensity and serendipity of the chemistry between Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman;
- the story of why United Artist’s head Arthur Krim actually secretly rejected Cowboy’s initial R-rating;
- why director John Schlesinger deserves to be considered in the pantheon of Bogdanovich, Coppola, or Scorsese;
- and why, despite its Best Picture Oscar, why Midnight Cowboy is to this day an underrated film.

Glenn Frankel is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of two other books on film and the eras in which they were made: The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend and High Noon: The Hollywood Blacklist and the Making of an American Classic. A former Washington Post reporter and bureau chief in London, South Africa, and Jerusalem, his other books include Beyond the Promised Land: Jews and Arabs on the Hard Road to a New Israel and Rivonia’s Children: Three Families and the Cost of Conscience in White South Africa. You can find out more at his website.

Ted Haycraft is film critic for Evansville’s WFIE-14 and co-hosts Cinema Chat on its Midday show. He can also be found on Cinema Chat’s Facebook page.

Shooting Midnight Cowboy is published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and is available online or at brick-and-mortar bookstores. Midnight Cowboy the film is currently streaming on Cinemax, available on VOD, and on DVD and Blu-ray from Criterion.

The one entry in Michael Mann’s filmography that the director rarely speaks about is his second theatrical feature and his one foray into fantasy, an unfortunate experience both with its production and post-production. On this episode, I’m joined by Ted Haycraft and Lani Gonzalez as we discuss:

- why a movie can’t necessarily be categorized as a “mess” when the studio cuts its director’s cut by over half its length;
- how, maybe, Mann “bit off more than he can chew” from a production standpoint;
- Tangerine Dream’s amazing ethereal proto-’80s synth score;
- why Mann’s filmmaking is so expressionistically visual or existential brilliant to some;
- and why it’s so humorless, turgid, or joylessly masculine to others.

Also:

- How this movie mixes so many genuinely impressive FX shots with cheesy, incomplete ones;
- all the mythological early acting of now-seminal actors like Gabriel Byrne and Ian McKellen;
- a deep dive into the number of times Mann has recut his films;
- and a deep dive into the number of times there has(n’t) been scripted humor or lightness in a Mann film.

Ted Haycraft is film critic for Evansville’s WFIE-14 and co-hosts Cinema Chat on its Midday show. He can also be found on Cinema Chat’s Facebook page.

Lani Gonzalez writes about film for both Book and Film Globe and, alongside her husband (and former guest-host) AJ, their blog Cinema Then and Now.

The Keep is available on VOD to rent and is also available on DVD in Australia.

Deliverance author James Dickey’s final novel, an intense and primal WWII story about a crashed Air Force gunner trying to make his way through the Tokyo firebombing north to Alaska, was published in 1993 and promptly given to top shelf screenplay attempts at this nearly dialogue-free story. The first was in 1996 by David and Janet Peoples, fresh off the critical and commercial hit 12 Monkeys, with David himself having solo won a Best Original Screenplay Oscar (Unforgiven) the year of the novel’s publication. The second was in a soon-to-be legendary adaptation from 1998 by the Coen Brothers, set to star Brad Pitt, follow up The Big Lebowski, and be their (then) most expensive film. On this episode, I’m joined again by writer/director Tyler Savage, as we discuss:

- the legendary status of the Coen Brothers’ version for its dialogue-free silence;
- how the Peoples’ version accomplishes the same non-verbal silent cinema;
- the Peoples’ uses of the intrinsically cinematic storytelling technique of the reversal;
- if either team felt trapped by their past of writing overt violence;
- how many of the elements of this elemental, task-oriented novel ended up in the Coens’ other literary adaptation, Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men.
- and if this movie will ever be made.

Also:

- the difference between how an accomplished screenwriter (team) who won’t direct writes versus
- how a writer/director team who might eventually direct writes;
- how to write visuals for a visual medium where the blueprints are in textblocks;
- if the screenplay format is really designed for making a good film or simply pleasing agents and gatekeepers;
- and my problems with the format (spoiler: the “play” part of the word screenplay).

Tyler Savage’s second directed-feature, Stalker, which he also co-wrote, will be released by Vertical Entertainment in the United Kingdom on May 21 and in the United States on June 18. He also wrote and directed Inheritance, along with associate producer credits on Song to Song, Knight of Cups, and Voyage of Time.

Both screenplay drafts are available to find with some judicious Googling. An adaptation of the book is still in development from Vertigo Entertainment. Dickey’s original novel is itself still in print and available everywhere.

Two filmmakers’ filmmakers, ones who both honed their craft in ’60s low-budget B drive-thru movies before achieving gradual and undeniable acclaim, died this past week: Monte Hellman and Richard Rush. I’m joined by Ted Haycraft to discuss Hellman’s most celebrated film and, arguably, Rush’s most interesting one. On this episode we discuss:

- how Two-Lane was greenlit in the wake of Easy Rider, only to be abandoned by the studio on release and for decades after;
- its European vibe as a race movie where no one wants to win;
- the chiseled minimalism of its screenplay by Rudy Wulitzer;
- Warren Oates’ rambling, engaged performance;
- and Hellman’s varied resume, including everything from RoboCop to Head to Reservoir Dogs to an added prologue for the network television premiere of A Fistful of Dollars in 1977.

Also:

- If Richard Rush invented the technique of racking focus;
- how Getting Straight is depressingly still relevant today;
- my seesawing views on this admittedly literate film over repeated viewings;
- and whether or not the movie is speaking for itself through Harry (Elliott Gould) when he’s yelling at women who talk back to him.

Haycraft is film critic for Evansville’s WFIE-14 and co-hosts Cinema Chat on its Midday show. He can also be found on Cinema Chat’s Facebook page.

Two-Lane Blacktop is not currently streaming or available on VOD. Physical media is available from Criterion.

Getting Straight is available on VOD, with physical media is available from Sony.