Trylove

You’ve seen movies like Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1996 directorial debut, HARD EIGHT. In fact, if you called it part of the PULP FICTION (1994) neo-noir craze, you wouldn’t be wrong. Sydney (Philip Baker Hall) is an avuncular elder hustler who takes John (John C. Reilly) and Clementine (Gwyneth Paltrow) under his wing, keeping new blood small-timer Jimmy (Samuel L. Jackson) at bay while he sets up a better life for the young lovebirds. When things go south, Sydney goes to extreme measures to preserve the fiction he’s built so he can stay the person he thinks he is – the person he wants John and Clementine to see.

In this Dry Run discussion, we compare and contrast different takes about what HARD EIGHT is trying to ‘say,’ if anything, and the value of a frictionless story if it’s competently told.

“Meet Sydney: On Paul Thomas Anderson’s Hard Eight (1996)” by MH Rowe for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2024/01/14/meet-sydney-on-paul-thomas-andersons-hard-eight-1996/

Get tickets to “THE FIFTEENTH FILM NOIR FESTIVAL: NEO-NOIR” (Winter 2024 at the Trylon and the Heights Theater): https://www.trylon.org/films/category/neo-noir/

#NoirFestival #DCP

Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/trylovepodcast and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at https://www.trylon.org/.

Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Closing audio: “Sydney’s Work Walk” by Jon Brion and Michael Penn from the HARD EIGHT soundtrack.

Tim Burton’s debut feature feels a little bit like a filmmaker finding his footing. At the same time, it’s a trial by fire for Paul Reubens and Phil Hartman as they brought their creation, the capricious Pee-Wee Herman, to the big screen. It paid off, of course, cementing Pee-Wee as an icon of character comedy and a mainstay of American children’s programming. Depending on your history with the character, you could find in PEE-WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE a constant, dull, childish annoyance or a charming work of self-aware bliss.

“Things You Shouldn’t Understand, Things You Couldn’t Understand: A Love Letter to the Cast of Pee-wee’s Big Adventure” by Sohpie Durbin for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2024/01/07/things-you-shouldnt-understand-things-you-couldnt-understand-a-love-letter-to-the-cast-of-pee-wees-big-adventure/

“I Lived It: The Joy of Pee-wee’s Big Adventure” by Alex Kies for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2024/01/07/i-lived-it-the-joy-of-pee-wees-big-adventure/

“Pee-wee Herman- Unedited Interview (Big Adventure) 1985 [Reelin' In The Years Archives]”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4X4KbsLuzY

#OtherProgramming #35mm

This film was presented at the Trylon by the Cult Film Collective: https://cultfilmcollective.com/

Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/trylovepodcast and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at https://www.trylon.org/.

Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Closing audio: "Breakfast Machine" by Danny Elfman from the PEE-WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE soundtrack..

Timestamps

0:00 - Episode 261: PEE-WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE (1985)

3:35 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary

5:11 - Our mileage with Pee-Wee

18:01 - Unpacking what the joke is

29:21 - When the nuance started to hit

42:23 - The disappearing “character” in comedy

45:30 - When the bits go on too long

49:51 - Our favorite bits

55:40 - The Junk Drawer

59:24 - Other Loves We’ve Tried: 1985

1:01:32 - Cody’s Noteys: IMDB’s Dig and Then Search (shared cast and crew trivia)

We’re kicking off 2024 (THE YEAR OF THE #BIG #BALLER - "Let your nuts hang!") with William Richert’s gonzo political paranoia thriller WINTER KILLS!

It’s kind of funny, but not funny enough to be a laugh-out-loud comedy. It’s kind of serious, but not serious enough to demand attention. Riding behind the unluckiest motorcade in American history, WINTER KILLS pitches Jeff Bridges as Nick Kegan, the half-brother of the late president, who’s suddenly clued into a vast conspiracy – and then promptly given the run-around from literally everyone. Along his circuitous route to the truth, he meets the archetypal figures: The lusty femme fatale, the omniscient information broker, the trenchcoat Italians, the horny capitalist dad who couldn’t POSSIBLY be pulling the strings.

Depending on your point of view, it’s either a unique parody or kind of boring – but nobody can say it doesn’t try.

This film was presented at the Trylon by the Cult Film Collective: https://cultfilmcollective.com/

“Slapstick for Paranoids” by Cole Seidl for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2023/12/29/slapstick-for-paranoids/

“Winter Kills: If You’re Not Paranoid, You’re Not Paying Attention” by Bob Aulert for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2024/01/04/winter-kills-if-youre-not-paranoid-youre-not-paying-attention/

Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/trylovepodcast and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at https://www.trylon.org/.

Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Closing audio: Just the whole original trailer for the theatrical release of WINTER KILLS.

Timestamps

0:00 - Episode 260: WINTER KILLS (1979) + Aaron is hungover

11:11 - The episode actually starts + the Apologia Corner

14:23 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary

16:13 - Biting satire or garbage?

27:39 - Sublime comedic sensibility or debilitating cynicism?

40:28 - The MGS2ification of WINTER KILLS

55:15 - The Junk Drawer

1:05:31 - Good Grief, Give Me a GIF!

1:12:42 - Cody’s Noteys: 2024 Movie Resolutions

Dozens of movies. Hundreds of hours of talking. Fifteen categories. No ties. The Golden Barrys return.

Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/trylovepodcast and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at https://www.trylon.org/.

Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Outro music: A song I don’t want to name in case some algorithmic corpo-cop somewhere decides to victimize me and my little unpaid podcast.

Timestamps

0:00 - Episode 259: The 2023 Golden Barry Awards

6:59 - The episode actually starts

11:52 - Jason’s personal favorites of 2023

16:40 - Harry’s personal favorites of 2023

22:30 - Aaron’s personal favorites of 2023

28:23 - Cody’s personal favorites of 2023

35:15 - Trylove’s Best Dry Run

54:59 - Trylove’s Best Wet Run

1:06:48 - The Rashomonies

1:11:19 - The Best Animated Feature

1:27:29 - The Best Film Series at the Trylon

1:43:22 - The Best “The” Film

2:02:23 - The Best Non-Series Film

2:07:33 - The Best Cult Film Collective Screening

2:14:44 - The Best Director

2:20:33 - The Best Cody’s Notey

2:28:51 - The Year of the ___

2:52:17 - The King of the Trylon

3:03:33 - The Queen of the Trylon

3:21:12 - The Best Picture 2023

4:08:00 - Recapping the winners

4:12:05 - Thanking our guests

Content warning: Discussions of sexual assault.

Twenty years after a string of murders in rural South Korea, Bong Joon-ho made a movie about the people who tried to catch the country’s first serial killer. What resulted was a harrowing chronicle of a trail slowly going cold, people who were unequipped for the heuristic exercise of catching a home-grown monster, and a government that cared more about defeating unrest than protecting its citizens – all told with the director’s signature balance of light, dark, and the humanity that contains both.

Get tickets to THE FIFTEENTH FILM NOIR FESTIVAL: NEO-NOIR (Dec 2023 - Feb 2024 at the Trylon and the Heights Theater): https://www.trylon.org/films/category/neo-noir/

Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/trylovepodcast and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at https://www.trylon.org/.

Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Closing music: "Memories of Murder" by Taro Iwashiro from the MEMORIES OF MURDER soundtrack.

Timestamps

0:00 - Episode 258: MEMORIES OF MURDER (2003)

3:30 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary (under exclusive license from AG Enterprises, Ltd.)

4:54 - Watching and rewatching MEMORIES OF MURDER

11:04 - An explicitly political movie

12:45 - Intense watchability despite dense cultural context

21:58 - Small towns and a rot at the heart of a country

40:55 - The ending and a stare that implicates us all

59:18 - The Junk Drawer

1:07:38 - Other Loves We’ve Tried: 2003

1:09:37 - Good Grief, Give Me a GIF!

1:16:35 - Cody’s Noteys: Love Joon-ho (Bong Joon-ho movie trivia)

Juzo Itami’s “ramen western” TAMPOPO is… just a delight. The lines that separate class, sex, and generations are broken through the lens of food in vignettes that surround a sweet, satisfying A plot. The mundane and universal is elevated to indulgence through the presumption of taboo, with each character’s indulgence – a meddling supermarket crone, a wealthy, browbeaten elder, a gangster’s hedonist escape – building them as more human than caricature.

Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/trylovepodcast and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at https://www.trylon.org/.

Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Closing music: "Sonata for Bassoon and Cello in B-Flat Major, K. 292-196c - III. Rondo (Allegro)" by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart from the TAMPOPO soundtrack.

Timestamps

0:00 - Episode 257: TAMPOPO (1985)

4:01 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary

13:26 - The vignettes

21:45 - A movie about indulgence

27:17 - The silly and the serious living together

32:31 - The gangster subplot and life as a short film you watch at death

45:12 - Treating everything with respect, whether silly or profane or deadly serious

48:29 - The birth of the “ramen western”

53:44 - The Junk Drawer

57:41 - Other Loves We’ve Tried: 1985

59:47 - Good Grief, Give Me a GIF!

With returning guest and Perisphere senior editor Finn Odum!

Alejandro Jodorowsky’s best-known film, THE HOLY MOUNTAIN, is a psychedelic hero’s journey from rags to riches, from shit to gold, and from iniquity to enlightenment. It follows “The Thief” as he gives up his search for material wealth to join a cast of sinful sages on their way up the titular mountain and, hopefully, beyond the boundaries of human mortality.

Its provocative antics and theatrics have made it a staple of arthouse cinema, and its never-ending jabs at every corner of taboo give it a provenance few other movies have shared. Joined by returning guest Finn Odum, we dive right in with a discussion of what “works,” what “doesn’t,” what “matters,” and what might be quietly brooding under Jodorowsky’s loud, panicked, off-the-rails storytelling style.

“iPhones Will Also Be Sex Vibrators: An Ode to Little Freaks” by Finn Odum for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2023/12/01/iphones-will-also-be-sex-vibrators/

Find Finn…

- On Twitter at https://twitter.com/Finnematic

- On Letterboxd at https://letterboxd.com/finnofthedead/

- On Trylove episodes about THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD (1951), DIABOLIQUE (1955), and CON AIR (1997)

Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/trylovepodcast and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at https://www.trylon.org/.

Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Closing music: "The Tarot Will Teach You" by Alejandro Jodorowsky from the THE HOLY MOUNTAIN soundtrack.

Timestamps

0:00 - Episode 256: THE HOLY MOUNTAIN (1979)

2:51 - The episode actually starts

4:45 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary

6:26 - Jodorowsky and the Panic Movement

9:58 - A movie that rewards broad interpretation

18:55 - Cynicism and sacrilege

24:13 - The planets as flawed and penitent people

31:13 - The ending

37:56 - The provenance of this movie vs. the reality of watching it

49:16 - What’s gonna stick with us from THE HOLY MOUNTAIN?

53:43 - The Junk Drawer

58:50 - Other Loves We’ve Tried: 1973

1:00:33 - Good Grief, Give Me a GIF!

Takahide Hori’s one-man masterpiece-in-the-making is fun, sweet, and terrifying. In the distant future, after losing a war to the synthetic life forms they created, humans who’ve lost the ability to reproduce in a viral pandemic launch a last-ditch effort to correct the course of their species. Parton – a lonely prole who lives a vicarious, virtual existence – enlists in the effort to find a cure from the denizens of the depths… before catching a missile on the way down, losing his body and memory in the process. Adrift with a mission to secure humanity’s future, Parton finds himself instead audience to the weird, rich lives of the creatures below the surface.

Watch JUNK HEAD (2017) on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyCCWHhH6R4

“Move It, Take a Shot, Easy: The DIY Magic of Takehide Hori’s Junk Head” by Luke Mosher for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2023/11/24/move-it-take-a-shot-easy-the-diy-magic-of-takehide-horis-junk-head/

Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/trylovepodcast and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at https://www.trylon.org/.

Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Closing music from the JUNK HEAD soundtrack.

Timestamps

0:00 - Episode 255: JUNK HEAD (2017)

1:46 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary

3:08 - Takahide Hori, MAD GOD (2022), and worldbuilding

21:43 - Disney, Dreamworks, Laika, Ghibli, and JUNK HEAD on the animation landscape

35:55 - Toyetic characters in a terrifying world

46:08 - Ideas tackled vs. what’s shown

57:31 - Alexander, Francis, Julian, and the ending

1:05:35 - Nico

1:10:06 - Other Loves We’ve Tried: 2017

1:10:20 - The Junk Drawer

1:13:42 - Good Grief, Give Me a GIF!

1:17:33 - Cody’s Noteys: Sci-love (2017 sci-fi movie trivia)

With special guest and former Trylon volunteer Celia Mattison!

In the small town of Bomont, dancing and rock music are illegal – but on this podcast, they’re literally our favorite things. FOOTLOOSE positions dance as not just a metaphor for self-expression, but the act itself. With writer Celia Mattison, we put our Sunday shoes back ON to discuss the place of FOOTLOOSE in the dance movies landscape, Reverend Shaw (John Lithgow) as the antagonist-turned-sidekick, and the and fear of the future that binds two opposing generations in common confusion.

Find Celia…

- On Twitter at https://twitter.com/CeliaMattison

- On her Substack, “Deeper Into Movies”: https://deeperintomovies.substack.com/

Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/trylovepodcast and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at https://www.trylon.org/.

Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Closing music: "Footloose" by Kenny Loggins from the FOOTLOOSE soundtrack.

Timestamps

0:00 - Episode 254: FOOTLOOSE (1984)

1:56 - A bit about Celia, the Trylon, and dance movies

6:13 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary

8:33 - Celia’s mileage with FOOTLOOSE

11:47 - Our entry points into FOOTLOOSE

25:18 - John Lithgow, Shaw, and the Bomont theocracy

45:44 - Ren x Willard

57:52 - Ariel, the music box, and a bridge between generations

1:05:43 - Other Loves We’ve Tried: 1984

1:06:45 - The Junk Drawer

1:15:22 - Good Grief, Give Me a GIF!

1:19:43 - Cody’s Noteys: Trylog (Kenny Loggins-adjacent trivia)

TWILIGHT (nope!) can be considered in the same conversation as other works of slow cinema, but György Fehér’s detective story has a bit more of a direct, even darkly comic, edge to it. A girl is found violently murdered in the woods, kicking off a slow-but-frenzied search for the perpetrator. In this discussion, we talk about how TWILIGHT leverages the slow cinema toolkit (slow pans, long takes, minimal action) to what Fehér called the “ridiculous contrast” between the search for justice and the eternity of nature.

“Waiting for Something to Happen: György Fehér’s Twilight” by Luke Mosher for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2023/11/10/waiting-for-something-to-happen-gyorgy-fehers-twilight/

Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/trylovepodcast and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at https://www.trylon.org/.

Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Closing music: "Main Theme" from the TWILIGHT soundtrack.

Timestamps

0:00 - Episode 253: TWILIGHT (1990)

3:21 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary

7:41 - “It’s always giving us something, even when it’s giving us nothing”

21:15 - Shots so slow they eradicate meaning

29:44 - Detective Felügyelõ and what the movie wants to focus on

39:59 - Perpetrators, victims, and small moments that implicate

43:48 - Voyeurism

51:57 - Viewing notes (or, Everyone Gets Mad at Jason)

1:00:41 - The Junk Drawer

1:12:04 - Other Loves We’ve Tried: 1990

1:14:03 - Good Grief, Give Me a GIF!

1:18:57 - Cody’s Noteys: Twi-love - TWILIGHT (series) trivia