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A BIGGER BOAT E4: WEST SIDE STORY AND OSCAR PICKS

Jack and Ken watched West Side Story, Spielberg's 2021 passion project and ode to the  "conservative" musicals of his youth (not in the political sense). It flopped! Big time! Why? Because it is terrible? Or is it good and simply failed to connect in the current theatrical market of multiverses and reboots? Ken and Jack both went in dubious about WSS - how did it turn out? Surprises guaranteed!

Then special guest Annabel, an actual honest to gosh dancer, pipes in to discuss the dancing in West Side Story (she skipped through the talking parts).   

Finally we are joined by co-host Thomas (who opted out of watching West Side Story) as we make our Oscar picks. Listen to this episode  before the Oscars to compare our (100% uneducated) picks or listen afterwards to laugh at how bad we did. 

WEST SIDE STORY: 0:00

THE DANCE OF WSS: 28:50

POD SQUAD OSCAR PICKS: 43:13

THEME SONG: WEIRD A.I.

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A BIGGER BOAT: DO NOT TRUST YOUR AUDIENCE

For this week's episode we talk to film expert, screenwriter and 80s connoisseur Erik Van Der Wolf about Spielberg's growing cultural impact as the predominant name director on the planet. We talk his filmography from 1981's Raiders  to 1989's Always along with his extensive executive producing and imprimatur-bestowing to a variety of projects and directors.  His creative journey from a guy wanting to make people happy with savant-level skill at staging and craft to a guy in desperate need for artistic validation takes root in this decade.

Two things you can expect from studio film-making in the 1980's (besides cocaine): Spielberg and bad hair.

THEME SONG: WEIRD A.I.

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A BIGGER BOAT: THE ERAS OF BEARDO

We are joined once again by cinema expert Rick Patt to discuss Spielberg's three eras, along with the successes and errors within each.

1. ASCENDENT: 1971-1993. DUEL - SCHINDLER'S LIST
Spielberg's blatant need to be respected and lauded had a lot of speed bumps in the 1980s and early 1990s but Jurassic Park AND Schindler's List in the same year, 1993? Perhaps the greatest year financially, artistically and critically of any director ever. Our favorite guy-with-a-beard finally made it to the top!

2. RESPECTABLY RELEVANT: 1997-2008 LOST WORLD - CRYSTAL SKULL
In this second era we find Spielberg almost desperately trying to recreate the alchemic balance of '93 with varying results.  Some of his most adventurous material is nestled within in the 00s.

3. RESPECTABLY IRRELEVENT: 2011-2022 TINTIN - THE FABLEMANS
In the third era, Spielberg, having made that hugely successful fourthquel to Raiders of the Lost Ark, simultaneously lost credibility and cachet with longtime fans. Like a balloon popped. We ghosted him and moved onto the Nolans, Reeves', Peeles, PTAs and Marvel nonsense of the mainstream film world. From there he has made stately dramas for the retirement home set or attempted to make the kinds of films he was known for decades ago (Tin Tin, Ready Player One) with, again, widely varying results. Longtime fans no longer talk of him reverently and rarely do his films tap into any sort of zeitgeist, a zeitgeist he at one time owned. With the promise of an autobiographical film later this year, he is not going anywhere, mining the mid 20th century like it was somehow in danger of being forgotten (Narrator: It wasn't).

Rick helps us track it all.

THEME SONG: WEIRD A.I.

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S6 PREMIERE OF "A BIGGER BOAT"

Season six will focus on the SSCU, the Steven Spielberg Cinematic Universe. Spielberg,  a director who once reigned over Hollywood but has since directed himself into respectable obsolescence has had as many cinematic lives as Batman, a new version trotted out every so often with mixed results. Our guests will walk us through their experiences with Beardo's films and what Spielberg meant then and what he means now.

Co-host Ken picked this inaugural episode consisting of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981) and KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL (2008) as his best and worst Spielbergs. 

Raiders is both one of the most enduring and best-looking films of Spielberg's long career.  Paired with the misbegotten, foul-looking Crystal Skull (which made more than any other Indiana Jones movie - people, c'mon!), is a stunning double bill. We'll chart how the mighty king of popular culture has fallen from the tippy top of Devils Tower to whatever the hell was happening in Ready Player One with some surprising theories.

Jack and Thomas moderate a lively convo to kick this season off!

THEME SONG: WEIRD A.I.

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ONE IN THE HOPPER - DENNIS HOPPER'S MADMAN ERA   

Between 1969 and 1980 Dennis Hopper directed three movies he also starred in. The first, EASY RIDER (1969), is one of the great Hollywood success stories. Made for peanuts by a studio who didn't know what kids wanted, it tapped into the zeitgeist and remains one of the all-time great road movies and soundtracks with indelible characters tripping toward an iconic ending.

Hopper was given complete control over his next film, THE LAST MOVIE (1971), which was a long-simmering idea Hopper had hatched in the sixties and was very nearly made before Rider. The film shoot in Peru was fraught with drug-use, improvisation and stunning Laslo Kovacs' cinematography at 12k feet. Then Hopper retreated to edit and it kept getting delayed and... delayed. During this time LM Kit Carson and Lawrence Schiller made a documentary about Hopper editing  The Last Movie in New Mexico called THE AMERICAN DREAMER (1971) and, folks, some of it may be performative but it is a gonzo portrait of epic indulgence. So much that the final result of The Last Movie makes more sense.

The failure of The Last Movie sent Hopper into movie jail for the next decade, periodically popping up as a bit character or appearing in low budget or European films to bring an unnerving sense of real danger (Mad Dog Morgan, Tracks, The American Friend, Apocalypse Now, etc.) until he was cast in a sedate Canadian family film called CeBe. Hopper took over a troubled early production, reimagined the entire film as a nihilistic spiritual sequel to Easy Rider over a weekend - literally basing the new narrative on the titular Neil Young song - and swooped in as director and made one of the greatest, darkest films of the still-nascent 1980s, OUT OF THE BLUE. 

If you have not seen Out of the Blue, we highly recommend you do so before listening to this portion of this episode.

Hopper went into rehab in '83. He would direct four more movies but they were yeoman, journeyman works of a pro, not his legendarily transgressive earlier work. For his family, friends and loved ones, his relative health and financial stability the next three decades brought was a blessing, of course, we would never say otherwise. For cinema fans, however, the unhinged genius that made Rider, Movie and Blue... was never seen again. 

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NEON & SHADOWS

We have reached the endpoint in Season Five! We have watched every Michael Mann project he directed. We even watched his episodes of Police Woman and Crime Story so you know we went further than those *other podcasts*,  who just covered the stuff they found on one random list on Letterboxed. Amateurs!

We end with LA TAKEDOWN (1989), the retooled TV Pilot for HANNA, a proposed TV program about police detective Vincent Hanna, played here by the late Scott Plank, *not* Al Pacino. Mann had been working on HEAT for nearly a decade and repurposed about half of what would become his landmark 1995 crime saga here on TV six years earlier. A true curiosity for any true Mann fan. It's roughly the same plot as Heat with a few scenes exactly the same but... for TV and on a clearly limited budget.

Then we talk to fellow Mann-Sized Big Mann Fans, podcast all stars Erik, Ryan, Rick and Patrick about their thoughts on Mann's filmogrpahy (or Mannography, if you will).

We end with Ken, Jack and Thomas all counting down Mann's work, all 16, from worst to best. Spoiler: We all have the same film as #1. 

This is a big episode and it is recommended to consume in at least three servings, maybe more! Fantastic season! 

CH. 1 LA TAKEDOWN

CH. 2 THE WORLD OF MANN W/GUESTS:

49:30 ERIK
1:18:45: RYAN
2:01:48: RICK
2:36:30: PATRICK

CH. 3: COUNTDOWN OF MANN’S WORST TO BEST & FINAL THOUGHTS: 3:25:06

G.O.A.T THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.

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BROTHER, YOU ARE GOING DOWN 

The one where they talk about Heat.

HEAT (1995) is about two middle-aged men looking for something to give their lives meaning. They have their conflicts, of course, buts pend one special night in a diner. You want to see them as partners having adventures after the movie ends. Maybe solving crimes on the open road in an RV with dogs named Val and Caan.

That is not to be because of The Job.  The action is the juice and the juice is the action, as the Jamba Juice slogan and Tom Sizemore tell us.

One of the best American crime films ever and worthy of the worship. Can we find something new to say about a movie that has had more podcast talk spilled over it than any other movie possibly ever? Probably not but you won't know unless you listen! Thomas, Ken and Jack are joined by theme song maestro Ryan to discuss.

BONUS: A special HEAT summary by Annabel, who has never seen the movie.

THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.

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NOW I HAVE A MACHINE GUN HO-HO-HO  

We take a break from Michael Mann to present our 2nd Annual Christmas-Adjacent Episode with Jack and Ken.

THE RULES:

A film that has Christmas in it but is not a classic "changed by the season" film using Christmas as a crutch for facile change in facile characters that was initially released during the Christmas season. No Santa unless he is a deranged murderer or has salmon in his pocket. DIE HARD can't be used because it is too obvious and we already watch it Christmas Eve, well after we recorded the episode. NO SHANE BLACK FILMS. They all take place during Christmas and it's a bit boring by this point. C'mon, Shane, there are 11 other months in which to set stories. Other than that, anything goes. 

Last year Ken chose LA Confidential, which has a brutal murder on Chritstmas, and Jack chose In Bruges, which has numerous brutal murders around Christmas. Two GREAT movies that capture the true meaning of the season! What will they choose this year??

HINTS:

KEN'S: The John Landis comedy made after his disastrous and fatal Twilight Zone shoot but before his equally disastrous conception of Max Landis.  

JACK'S: A depressing Danish drama from the director of last year's best movie . It stars Mads Michelob (sp?) and is about a tight-knit community being torn apart by a lie.   

INTRO: SPECIAL GUEST!

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DANNY DAY-LEWIS AND THE NEWS    
 
Pt. Two: Russell Crowe was still a year from being a worldwide superstar starring as Maximus in Gladiator when he puffed up and got gray hair for The Insider (1999). It's about tobacco and old-world journalism (based on an epic piece in Vanity Fair) without a mention of clicks, blogs or website banners. One of Mann's most critically praised film with his most Oscar noms. Al Pacino plays Johnny 60-Minutes trying to get Crowe (as Johnny Tobacco) to, well, crow about big tobacco in what would be a watershed monent in America after a lot of hemming and hawing about the truth and corproate timidity/complicity. Crowe wears a convincing wig, by the way, it ain't real.   Christopher Plummer swoops in and steals the show as Mike Wallce, grinning a lot like Timothy Dalton in Hot Fuzz, weirdly. Big time disagreement on this one, folks. Again, a fight almost ensues. 

Theme Song by: WEIRD A.I. 

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DANNY DAY-LEWIS AND THE NEWS    
 
Pt. One: After Manunter and a number of false-start projects, Michael Mann swerved hard from modern crime and neon into the historical epic LAST OF THE MOHICANS (1992).  Daniel Day-Lewis built a time machine to go back in time to 1757 to research his role as Hawkeye (not the M.A.S.H. character or the superhero) and it shows! Between Mann's notorious  attention to detail and Day Lewis's hardcore method acting prep, Mohicans still stands out as a stone cold period piece classic that is also the most effectively romantic of Mann's films. 

Pt. Two: Russell Crowe was still a year from being a worldwide superstar starring as Maximus in Gladiator when he puffed up and got gray hair for The Insider (1999). It's about tobacco and old-world journalism (based on an epic piece in Vanity Fair) without a mention of clicks, blogs or website banners. One of Mann's most critically praised film with his most Oscar noms. Al Pacino plays Johnny 60 Minutes trying to get Crowe to, well, crow about big tobacco in what would be a watershed monent in America after a lot of hemming and hawing about the truth and corproate timidity/complicity. Crowe wears a convincing wig.   Christopher Plummer swoops in and steals the show as Mike Wallce.

Theme Song by: WEIRD A.I.