Trylove

SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE doesn’t ask for much of its titular compassion – instead, it uses director Park Chan-wook’s sense of style and space to tell complementary stories of grief.

By separating intent and action through a series of salacious plot twists, Park unites the players in grief across classes: deaf-mute laborer Ryu and his corporate superior Dong-jin and the left-wing terrorist Yeoung-mi and organ-stealing mobster families (and and and…) by reminding the audience that socioeconomic context initiates the snowball effect that drives a series of calamitous accidents, actions, and reactions.

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: "복수는 나의 것” (“Vengeance is Mine”) by 어어부 프로젝트 (The Uhuhboo Project) from the SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE soundtrack.

Timestamps

0:00 - Episode 233: SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE (2002)

4:39 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary (under exclusive license from AG Enterprises, LLC)

6:28 - Balance of comedy and cruelty

19:53 - A fatalist world that feels larger than its inhabitants

37:43 - How it brings the audience into that world

40:44 - Dong-jin + intent vs. effect

52:22 - The Junk Drawer

59:24 - Good Grief, Give Me a GIF!

1:06:27 - Cody’s Noteys – Trylibs: Vengeance (Madlibs)

"But when I became a man, I put away childish things." - 1 Corinthians 13:11

Richard Linklater’s breakthrough film is a cultural touchstone not for the 1970s, but how people who grew up in the 1970s remembered the 1970s in the 1990s. It’s a little bit preservationist and a little bit precious, but it’s remembered as a fun portrait of teenagehood post-Summer of Love and pre-Reagan – whatever that was like.

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: "Slow Ride” by Foghat from the DAZED AND CONFUSED soundtrack.

Timestamps

0:00 - Episode 232: DAZED AND CONFUSED (1993)

2:24 - The episode actually starts

6:00 - What resonates and what doesn’t

13:48 - A movie more about the ‘90s than about the ‘70s

22:35 - Linklater’s personal take on his stories

29:09 - Seeing real characters through the sentimental lens

33:26 - Pink as a subversion of the typical HS quarterback

39:28 - Cycles and the “intimate authority” of older generations

54:09 - The Junk Drawer

1:04:02 - Good Grief, Give Me a GIF!

1:07:49 - Cody’s Noteys: Try-lost in the Woods (Frederick Forrest trivia)

WAITING FOR GUFFMAN does something The Office and Parks and Recreation could not: It walks a line between mocking life in Blaine, Missouri, and memorializing it without getting all sentimental. In this episode, we cut away for a few talking head segments that dive into the mockumentary’s pacing, focus, and empathy for the weirdos whose talent is outweighed by their desire to be somebody.

“For The Love of Small-Town Community Theater” by Lucas Vonasek for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2023/06/09/for-the-love-of-small-town-community-theater/

“Sisyphus, Make Way for Corky’s New Philosophy of Failure” by Veda Lawrence for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2023/06/09/sisyphus-make-way-for-corkys-new-philosophy-of-failure/

Parker Posey’s deleted audition scene from WAITING FOR GUFFMAN: https://youtu.be/7jQ0SbWYdgQ

“Waiting for Guffman movie review” by Roger Ebert: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/waiting-for-guffman-1997

Get tickets to ALL HAIL PARKER POSEY (June 2023 at the Trylon): https://www.trylon.org/films/category/all-hail-parker-posey/

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 composed by Harry Shearer, Christopher Guest, and Michael McKean and performed by Christopher Guest, Eugene Levy, Fred Willard, Catherine O’Hara, Parker Posey, and the Blaine Community Orchestra (Jean Fuller, Paul Robertson, Richard Macowell, Johnny Reno, Tracy Rosenkrans, Jeffery C.J. Vanston, and Tony Edwards) from the WAITING FOR GUFFMAN soundtrack.

Timestamps

0:00 - Episode 231: WAITING FOR GUFFMAN (1996)

2:56 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary

3:59 - Our experiences in community theater

5:31 - The pointlessness-cum-pride of Blaine

15:27 - Poking fun without delving into the hateful

21:45 - How GUFFMAN skirts the cloying sentimentality of mockumentary TV series

33:34 - The dumbest, purest version of Waiting for Godot

44:51 - The inverse relationship of desire and talent

45:56 - The Junk Drawer

58:09 - Good Grief, Give Me a GIF!

1:04:33 - Cody’s Noteys: Waiting for Prop-man (movie memorabilia trivia)

Sometimes, you just gotta feed the content monster… ‘cause he’s got the freakin’ MUNCHIES!

Join us for a fun experiment in covering current-run movies – just stuff all three of us saw within the last month or so. Cody’s the only one who actually saw any of them with MoviePass, so the pun still works.

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/.

Music: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"What I’ve Done" by Linkin Park.

Timestamps

0:00 - Puff Puff MoviePass: FAST X, SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE, + TRANSFORMERS: RISE OF THE BEASTS (2023)

3:15 - Why are we doing this?

6:35 - FAST X

21:36 - SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE

46:15 - TRANSFORMERS: RISE OF THE BEASTS

1:08:10 - Our MoviePass diaries

With special guest Kelly Krantz (https://twitter.com/kransekage_)!

You may love THE DOOM GENERATION for its gonzo mix of sexploitation, comic violence, overacting, and non-comic violence, or you may hate it for… exactly the same reasons! Director Gregg Araki says he makes films “for” queer folks – and in this episode, we dig into what that means for a movie where people are getting their limbs blown off, their convenience stores robbed, and worse.

Find Kelly…

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

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

- On Trylove episodes about WINGS OF DESIRE (1987), ARREBATO (1979), and PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE (1974), and REVOLVER (1971)

“Apocalypse Then: Gregg Araki on the queer chaos of newly restored The Doom Generation” by Mitchell Beaupre for Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/journal/apocalypse-then-gregg-araki-doom-generation-restoration/

Get tickets to ALL HAIL PARKER POSEY (June 2023 at the Trylon): https://www.trylon.org/films/category/all-hail-parker-posey/

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: "Alison” by Slowdive from the THE DOOM GENERATION soundtrack.

Timestamps

0:00 - Episode 230: THE DOOM GENERATION (1995) with Kelly Krantz

0:45 - Quadlove (quadball talk) (Cody won his series)

2:58 - The episode actually starts

5:02 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary

6:34 - Kicking off the discussion

26:21 - Who Gregg Araki makes movies “for”

28:18 - The punk rock grating is the point

43:04 - The sights and sounds of THE DOOM GENERATION

51:21 - The Junk Drawer

58:29 - Good Grief, Give Me a GIF!

1:04:01 - Cody’s Noteys: The Doom-Trylove-ation (THE DOOM GENERATION cast trivia)

Content warning: Depictions of sexual assault and suicide.

During the Meiji period, Japanese society was seemingly split between those who desired the modernization that came with Western influence and those who insisted on upholding a “pure” Japan marked by tradition and classical thought – all in the borders of one country. LADY SNOWBLOOD is two things, too: It’s a stylish manga adaptation about a demonic daughter exacting revenge for her family’s suffering AND it’s a finger in the eye of both ideals against which Japanese society was measured at the turn of the century.

And yeah, it inspired KILL BILL (2003), but I haven’t seen that, so let’s talk about it more on its own terms, okay?

Get tickets to A DISH BEST SERVED COLD (June 2023 at the Trylon): https://www.trylon.org/films/category/a-dish-best-served-cold/

Read “The Sound & Fury of Lady Snowblood” by MTT, lecturer at the University of Minnesota, on Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2023/05/29/the-sound-fury-of-lady-snowblood/

Watch LADY SNOWBLOOD on the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/lady-snowblood-1973_202211

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 Flower of Carnage (修羅の花)” composed by Masaaki Hirao and performed by Meiko Kaji from the LADY SNOWBLOOD soundtrack.

Timestamps

0:00 - Episode 229: LADY SNOWBLOOD (1973)

2:52 - Chapter 1: THE STORY SO FAR, FROM THE LIPS OF ONE WHO WAS THERE

4:46 - Chapter 2: MATERNAL BLOODLUST AND INK INSPIRATION

16:08 - Chapter 3: FIRST SIGHT OF THE RED SNOW MURDER MAIDEN

21:18 - Chapter 4: DEATH SPIRAL ON A BLOOD-SOAKED BUTTERFLY WING

26:02 - Chapter 5: A DEMON CURSED TO CLEAVE PAST AND FUTURE

34:18 - Chapter 6: EXPECTATIONS UNDERCUT ONCE MORE?

42:15 - Chapter 7: STYLE AND SUBSTANCE SINGING IN CHORUS

50:21 - Chapter 8: A HIDDEN CONTAINER CAN HOLD ONLY HIDDEN CHAOS

54:04 - Chapter 9: WITH NO GIF TO GIVE, WHO IS LEFT TO REMEMBER?

1:00:21 - Chapter 10: NOTES FROM CODY: THE BLOODLESS BROTHERLY FEUD

Content warning: Depictions of domestic violence and suicide.

THE GETAWAY follows a pretty conventional structure. Depending on how you look at it, that might flatten it a little bit or it might make its jagged edges a little more interesting! Either way, it’s worth examining as Sam Peckinpah’s most commercially successful movie – and another weird example of his incisive take on toxic masculinity as told through the conceit of a high-stakes heist.

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: "Love Theme" by Quincy Jones from the THE GETAWAY soundtrack.

Timestamps

0:00 - Episode 228: THE GETAWAY (1972)

3:25 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary

6:42 - THE GETAWAY and Peckinpah’s career-long obsessions

14:05 - The intro sequence

22:47 - A movie told in implied chapters

27:45 - The Cuckening of Harold Clinton

52:06 - Casting and WWII veteran tropes

57:33 - The Junk Drawer

1:06:48 - Good Grief, Give Me a GIF!

1:12:25 - Cody’s Noteys: Trylove to Get Away for a Little While (getaway trivia)

Highly stylized, dark, and often gross, THE HEROIC TRIO is kind of a dark, inverted portrait of superhero movies that would come to dominate box offices in the 2000s. In this episode, we trace the impact of movies like THE HEROIC TRIO through the decades, from Tim Burton’s BATMAN (1989) to Sam Raimi’s DARKMAN (1990) and beyond. We also talk about the pissing kids and so much more!

Get tickets to “MAGGIE CHEUNG, LUMINESCENT AND DANGEROUS” (May 2023 at the Trylon): https://www.trylon.org/films/category/luminescent-and-dangerous/

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 Heroic Trio Theme" by Wai Lap Wu from the THE HEROIC TRIO soundtrack.

Timestamps

0:00 - Episode 227: THE HEROIC TRIO (1993)

0:45 - CanTalk

4:34 - Episode starts

6:18 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary

7:59 - Pissing kids, superhero cinema, Nobuhiko Obayashi, and redemption

15:11 - Johnnie To’s style and Raimi comparisons

23:43 - THE HEROIC TRIO as postmodern pop art

35:24 - The horrible finality of death

47:43 - Blood, whooshing, and tropes that rock in this movie

56:50 - The Junk Drawer

1:03:31 - Good Grief, Give Me a GIF!

1:08:27 - Cody’s Noteys: To-love (Johnnie To trivia)

Content warning: Discussions of attempted sexual assault.

Reprehensible and unrepentant, BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA trades in the same extensive violence and fragility-masked-by-corruption that became a trademark of director Sam Peckinpah. Running a seedy bar in Mexico City, small-time lowlife Bennie sees a chance to elevate himself above his station when the titular job lands in his lap. His white-collar employers give him just enough rope to hang himself – and his partner, Elita – as they travel the Mexican countryside to deliver the head of a dead man to the crime boss he crossed.

In this episode, we discuss seeing ALFREDO GARCIA at the Trylon after so long; Bennie’s tenuous, poisonous drive to assert himself over the people and land around him; and the movie’s bizarre, humorous, rage-addled final act.

Watch BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA for free on the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/bring.-me.the.-head.of.-alfredo.-garcia.-1974.-remastered.-1080p.-blu-ray.-h-264.-aac-rarbg

“Scent, Sense, and Senselessness in Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia” by Sophie Durbin at Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2023/04/28/scent-sense-and-senselessness-in-bring-me-the-head-of-alfredo-garcia/

“A Head’s Tale: The Emotional Journey of Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia” by Lucas Hardwick at Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2023/04/28/a-heads-tale-the-emotional-journey-of-bring-me-the-head-of-alfredo-garcia/

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: "El Jefe" by Jerry Fielding from the BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA soundtrack.

Timestamps

0:00 - Episode 226: BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA (1974)

2:46 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary

5:01 - “Unfortunately, it’s a masterpiece”

13:31 - A third-act shift

23:57 - A cuck fear movie

38:13 - Commenting on the nihilism of ‘70s cinema

45:37 - Set design, privilege, and perfect ridiculous symbolism

54:37 - The Junk Drawer

1:02:58 - Good Grief, Give Me a GIF!

1:07:19 - Trylibs: Presented by Peckinpah

Another entry in the “what do you even say about that movie” category, THE PRINCESS BRIDE is a seminal fantasy comedy that came smack in the middle of director Rob Reiner’s insane 1980s run. Anyway, a couple of us have incredibly strong nostalgia for it and a couple of us are more measured in our enthusiasm-cum-respect for the quirky comedy. It’s literally one of our most approachable episodes ever and there’s still room for a good few hot takes.

Just listen for the popping before the flames!

“Sick Day Story Allegory: The Princess Bride Integrates Grief on the Sly” by Jake Rudegeair for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2023/04/21/sick-day-story-allegory-the-princess-bride-integrates-grief-on-the-sly/

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: "Storybook Love" by Mark Knopfler and Willy DeVille from the THE PRINCESS BRIDE soundtrack.

Timestamps

0:00 - Episode 225: THE PRINCESS BRIDE (1987)

2:13 - The episode actually starts

4:47 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary

6:27 - False nostalgia and movies that are just in your bones

13:01 - Appreciating more than liking

18:46 - Leaving an impact by normalizing fantasy

23:47 - Why Aaron hates this movie

29:12 - What THE PRINCESS BRIDE taught movies about parody

33:12 - Da performances

42:47 - Rob Reiner’s 1980s streak

44:46 - Junk Drawer

50:57 - Good Grief, Give Me a GIF!

54:34 - Cody's Noteys: The Princess Try'd (Buttercup-themed trivia)