Trylove

The Trylon’s playing movies we already recorded on earlier in the pandemic, so we’ve changed the rules for a short Non-’Lon Series on movies we HAVEN’T seen and may never see at the Trylon!

They say it’s not tragic to die doing what you love, which is why the Non-’Lon BoysPick series is dying with POINT BREAK (1991), the most Dudes Rock movie ever. It’s a thoughtful exploration of a cop’s ability to find a soul, what he has to give up to find it, and the people who help him do it. In our discussion, we focus on how the movie compares and contrasts the core motivations of the unbelievably hot leading men Johnny and Bodhi, the political statements the movie makes in the broader context of its release, and whether or not it matters that the stakes in a 1991 surfing movie don’t feel very high in 2021.

Also, the name “Bodhi” is pronounced two different ways in this episode with startling consistency. Apologies to all affected listeners.

Support organizations fighting for the survival and protection of Minnesota’s marginalized communities:

- DocumentingMN https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/documentingmn

- Minnesota Freedom Fund https://mnfreedomfund.org/

- Take Action MN https://takeactionminnesota.org/donate/

Watching resources:

"The Grace of Keanu Reeves" by Angelica Jade Bastién https://www.rogerebert.com/features/bright-walldark-room-february-2016-the-grace-of-keanu-reeves-by-angelica-jade-basti%C3%A9n

“POINT BREAK: Kathryn Bigelow’s Subversive Surf Western” by Priscilla Page https://birthmoviesdeath.com/2017/04/12/point-break-kathryn-bigelows-subversive-surf-western

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: “Skydive” by Mark Isham from the POINT BREAK soundtrack.

2:50 - Why POINT BREAK?

4:42 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary

6:41 - Jason’s thoughts

9:44 - Cody’s thoughts

13:21 - Harry’s thoughts

17:58 - Aaron’s thoughts

22:37 - Expectations going into POINT BREAK

29:26 - 29:35 - Chaco makes an appearance

29:47 - Busey Unchained

34:02 - Does it matter if you don’t find POINT BREAK “thrilling”?

36:00 - Investment in the stellar cast

46:04 - Is this a Joker movie?

46:12 - No

46:49 - Back to the thing about whether or not it’s thrilling

50:08 - The symbolism of the point break and the risk of being close to death

55:08 - Johnny and Tyler

59:25 - Cody’s Noteys (“D’YouKneau Reeves?”)

The Trylon’s playing movies we already recorded on earlier in the pandemic, so we’ve changed the rules for a short Non-’Lon Series on movies we HAVEN’T seen and may never see at the Trylon!

Aaron’s pick takes us to the dystopian UK of 1982’s PINK FLOYD – THE WALL, a musical journey through not just one man’s steady decline into fascist individualism, but that of all of Western society. In this discussion, we consider what the visual story structure does for the music it’s based on, what elements of the movie have been blindly co-opted by the international conservative front, and what the movie’s use of viewpoint does to communicate its story.

Support organizations fighting for the survival and protection of Minnesota’s marginalized communities:

- DocumentingMN https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/documentingmn

- Minnesota Freedom Fund https://mnfreedomfund.org/

- Take Action MN https://takeactionminnesota.org/donate/

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: “Another Brick in the Wall” by Pink Floyd.

00:45 - Talking about Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater for some reason

3:06 - The actual start of the episode

3:59 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary

5:37 - Why Aaron picked THE WALL

9:07 - Jason’s thoughts

11:29 - Cody’s thoughts

14:39 - Harry’s thoughts

17:17 - Aaron’s thoughts

22:27 - The interior viewpoint and why the first two acts feel like Banksy

26:31 - Pink Floyd’s rising popularity and alienation from their craft

30:46 - “Margaret Thatcher is in every frame”

38:44 - Repackaging and repurposing THE WALL over the decades

42:26 - How THE WALL leverages gender and sexuality

49:59 - Animation in THE WALL

54:26 - The final act (or, “where things get really real”)

1:09:02 - After the wall falls

1:13:09 - Final thoughts: Self-references and Roger Waters’s socialism

1:16:07 - Cody’s Noteys (PINK FLOYD – THE WALL: The Game)

The Trylon’s playing movies we already recorded on earlier in the pandemic, so we’ve changed the rules for a short Non-’Lon Series on movies we HAVEN’T seen and may never see at the Trylon!

Sports correspondent Cody chose MONEYBALL (2011), a baseball-centric movie that fits so well in his wheelhouse, it’s a wonder we haven’t talked about it until now. Over the course of our conversation, we discuss the movie’s unique focus on the system of baseball as well as the game; the staid status quo of pre-Moneyball baseball; and what exactly an “anti-sports” sports movie looks like.

2:31 - Cody’s summary and why MONEYBALL?

6:35 - Cody’s thoughts

10:24 - Jason’s thoughts

14:09 - Harry’s thoughts

19:53 - Phantom Aaron’s thoughts

22:35 - Where MONEYBALL wants you to focus

31:32 - Baseball as an engine for stories

41:11 - Billy Beane, the system of baseball, and determinism

49:53 - Sympathy for Beane

57:48 - The Oakland As’ 20-game winning streak

1:05:20 - Great lines in MONEYBALL

1:09:15 - Cody’s Noteys (For Trylove of the Game)

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: “The Mighty Rio Grande” by This Will Destroy You from the MONEYBALL soundtrack.

When we announced our "Non-'Lon" Series last week, how long did you wager it'd take before one of the boys chose an anime? If you guessed "immediately," we have good news!

This week, Harry selected the late great Satoshi Kon's debut feature film, PERFECT BLUE (1997), an eerily prescient psychological horror film about a J-pop idol's reality unraveling that proved so visionary and influential that Western directors like Aronofsky and Nolan made careers out of ripping it off.

In this episode, we unleash our full fanboy powers on Kon's masterpiece, spending just over the actual film's runtime attacking it from as many angles as we can find. Catch us dissecting how the film speculates about the ways in which the internet will change or exaggerate human society, all while weaving an insightful critique of won't WON'T change, and how the forces of misogyny and celebrity have always robbed women of their agency. Our discussion of the film's many intersecting themes converges in a climactic (and somewhat contentious!) debate about where Mina and Rumi end up, what the movie is suggesting about the internet and the self, and, ultimately, it even means to be "yourself" when all selves are fundamentally constructed.

Stay tuned for a particularly provocative episode of "Cody's Noteys," too. Or… you could just skip to it. We know why you're really here.

1:52 - Why Harry chose PERFECT BLUE

3:11 - The patented Grossman Summary

4:42 - Harry’s thoughts

8:37 - Jason’s thoughts

11:58 - Cody’s thoughts

15:02 - Aaron’s thoughts

23:06 - Satoshi Kon’s ambition pays off in PERFECT BLUE

25:09 - Where do you even start discussing PERFECT BLUE?

27:03 - Predicting the impact of the internet on culture and identity

39:22 - The scene that marks the point of no return

45:14 - Me-Mania, Rumi, Tadokoro, and the Madonna/Whore dichotomy

52:51 - PERFECT BLUE’s loose ends

1:03:25 - Terrace House, The Great British Baking Show, and the false promise of intimacy

1:08:26 - PERFECT BLUE’s ending

1:24:27 - Cody’s Noteys (“Trylibs: Identity Crisis”)

1:25:19 - Chaco’s appearance

1:32:08 - The Trylibs story

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: “Ai no Tenshi (Angel of Love)” from the PERFECT BLUE soundtrack. (Lyrics by Imai Kiko; composed and arranged by Ikumi Masahiro; performed by MISA, Furukawa Emiko, and Shimizu Mie.)

Ghost in the Machine by Harry Mackin: https://unwinnable.com/2019/09/24/ghost-in-the-machine-119/

RagnarRox’s YouTube essay connecting Japan’s economic bubble to otaku culture to Perfect Blue to the megacorporate leveraging of fan culture today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHWSlSyjK5c

“Anchors Aweigh: The Aesthetic of Surface in the Films of Kon Satoshi” by Alexander Kirst: https://digitalcollections.wesleyan.edu/islandora/object/ir%3A675/datastream/PDF/view

Spinsters by Haley O'Shaughnessy & Jordan Ligons: https://www.bluewirepods.com/podcast/spinsters

The Trylon’s playing movies we already recorded on earlier in the pandemic, so we’ve changed the rules for a short Non-’Lon Series on movies we HAVEN’T seen and may never see at the Trylon!

Jason kicks us off with RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981), a seminal action-adventure ah hell, you know what RAIDERS is. It’s 40 years old in 2021, so we’re putting on our goggles and giving it a close contemporary read.

Of course, we all kinda gush about it (and simp for Karen Allen [really hope she doesn’t get cancelled, we kinda put all our eggs in one basket this ep]), but we also really pick apart what the movie’s really saying about the archetypes and tropes it famously dug back up. What it says about how our heroes embody our virtues, what happens when both of those things change, and which parts of our national identity we choose to cling to through our shared myths.

3:53 - Aaron’s fine, fine summary

8:07 - Jason’s thoughts

12:37 - Cody’s thoughts

16:30 - Harry’s thoughts

20:56 - Aaron’s thoughts

37:46 - Indy, Belloq, and “shadowy reflections”

46:33 - Why we build heroes and what we choose to remember about them

56:35 - The complicated (i.e., gross) Indy/Marion relationship and their general dynamic

1:04:39 - Douglas Slocombe, texture, and what we see in RAIDERS

1:11:29 - From ZACK SNYDER’S JUSTICE LEAGUE (2021) to RAIDERS

1:13:50 - How the way RAIDERS came together influences what we think of it today

1:17:20 - Harrison Ford is hot Humphrey Bogart forever

1:21:21 - The Year of the Simp: Karen Allen

1:26:49 - Cody’s Noteys (Indiana Knowns)

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. You can guess where the outro music came from. I don’t need Walt’s shambling corporate corpse breathing down my neck.

Content warning: Pubes.

So much of Béla Tarr’s DAMNATION punishes. It tries to convince its characters (a crushed singer, her husband, her drug-running boyfriend, the hellish bartender at the point of their intersection) that words aren’t worth speaking, that any distance is too far to cross, and that what change you do make to the world will be undone by someone close to you. But in between particularly long long takes, the way it frames communist Hungary is a rebuke of that: words being spoken, people moving together, love being won and lost.

3:29 - We start talking about the movie

8:50 - Jason’s thoughts

10:24 - Cody’s thoughts

13:26 - Harry’s thoughts

17:46 - Aaron’s thoughts

27:14 - Existentialism in DAMNATION

35:25 - The contrast between high scripting and low characters

40:31 - The effect of languid long takes

51:21 - The performances of DAMNATION

56:54 - Focusing on visual textures in a grimy world

1:03:43 - PubeGate

1:07:42 - Cody’s Noteys (Hungary Dungarees)

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: “Kész az egész (Over and Done)” composed Mihály Víg and performed by Vali Kerekes from the DAMNATION soundtrack.

Featuring special guest and Trylon volunteer Ben Savard (https://twitter.com/itbenjaminscott)!

A crime thriller with shades of coming-of-age set in New York City on the cusp of the AIDS crisis, CRUISING’s depiction of S&M was rightly met by the skepticism and distrust of the gay community during its production and release. In retrospect, it advocates for the recognition of both the S&M and LGBTQ communities through a tragic, terrifying, ambiguous tale of loss, betrayal, and the poisonous conservatism embodied by the then-impending Reagan administration.

Follow Ben at https://twitter.com/itbenjaminscott

1:13:18 - Cody’s Noteys (Our Pal Pacino)

1:24:23 - Benny’s Noteys

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: “Heat Of The Moment” by Willy de Ville from the CRUISING soundtrack.

If you squint, there’s something behind the curtain of Terry Gilliam’s TIME BANDITS (1981) – but you really gotta squint tight. Seth Zarate joins again to help us take a closer look at what it’s saying about curiosity, how long is too long for a bit, and the lessons of history.

1:03:41 - Cody’s Noteys (Timelove)

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: “Dream Away” by George Harrison from the TIME BANDITS soundtrack.

Wong Kar-wai reconciles with his own masterpiece in 2046, a reflection on the characters, places, and relationships he displayed over a decades-long career. Chow, the writer protagonist of IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE (2000), takes up the playboy lifestyle after his near-affair with Su Li-zhen and moves into a new apartment, where he begins weaving his real-life interactions with his fellow tenants into his unpublished sci-fi novella.

Part hobby and part therapy, the exercise slowly turns the pen back on Chow as he realizes how his self-image changes with the people he lets into his life, how they change in response, and how the myth of the self is located somewhere in between.

1:11:22 - Not the Aaron Grossman Wong Kar-wai Filmed Apartment Quality Index (AGWKWFAQI)

1:18:23 - Cody’s Noteys (The Sci-Fi Travelogue)

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: “2046 Main Theme” by Shigeru Umebayashi from the 2046 soundtrack.

CW: Discussions of sex work and abuse.

In Wong Kar-wai’s short film THE HAND, released recently for the first time in its extended cut, a touch lasts forever. While it’s a compressed version of the director’s style, THE HAND is still a classic tragedy of love and loss across class divisions, exploring the hand – and a person’s entire being – as a tool for connection. At just 59 minutes, THE HAND is stitched together with a care that belies both the aloof professionalism of its titular call girl and the naivete of her would-be suitor.

28:25 - Aaron can’t grow a moustache, and that’s funny

44:53 - The Aaron Grossman Wong Kar-wai Filmed Apartment Quality Index (AGWKWFAQI)

54:20 - Cody’s Noteys (The Short King)

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: “Concerto Alevta” by Peer Raben from the EROS soundtrack.