Home Sweet Homer, Pt. 1 — O Brother, Where Art Thou? | Next Picture Show

26:51It feels like they kind of take what they want or feel the story needs from the Odyssey, and then it's faithful to the degree it serves their needs. Like, Jungman plays Big Dan Teague, who's obviously the Cyclops, but other than being a big guy with one eye, doesn't really map onto the Cyclops from the Odyssey all that well. But of course, you know, things like the sirens and the baptismal scene, I think really do kind of square up. So I think if you're looking to make a really neat one-to-one match on everything, you're going to go crazy. Or at least, you know, I think you're maybe looking at the movie wrong.

27:30But the parallels, I think they matter, though, insofar as they're there. Well, they do matter very much for me in the sense that O Brother Bartha was like really kind of a formative Odyssey experience for me. I've told the story on the podcast before, so apologies if it's familiar. But it came out in the year 2000 when I was a senior in high school. And I don't remember if it came out before or after when my humanities class did a basically a semester long project on the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Aeneid. And we part of that project was adapting the Odyssey. We all had three different classes and everyone came up with their own adaptation that they put on as a play.

28:12And there was a winner in my my class one. So the fact that like, oh, brother was like so huge in the culture at the same time that I was experiencing the Odyssey, reading the Odyssey and also adapting it on my own as part of a class project. I imprinted on this movie in a really profound way. Like I can't think of the Odyssey without thinking of O Brother Where Art Thou, which is why I've been stumping for this pairing, even though we've done a lot of Coen Brothers movies recently. It's just like it is the Odyssey movie to me up until Nolan's, which I will admit is more perhaps definitive.

28:52but watching it again for this pairing you know there are obviously like specific parallels like the cyclops and the sirens and penel you know and penny and ulysses and there's lots of characters and plot-based parallels but they aren't they don't go that deep but where the biggest parallel for me is kind of on a meta level which is the whole stuff about song and oral tradition and the the line of Pappy Daniels saying, you know, we're mass communicating now. It just, it feels so of a piece with the oral tradition and how stories are passed forward outside of the written word. I struggle. I mean, I do, I do really like this movie, but with, with regard to it's thinking about it as an adaptation of the Odyssey, it doesn't feel like it has a tremendous amount of weight so much as it does i you know kind of appeal i mean this is such as kind of this wild you know boulea base of influences and sort of touches and you've got you have some historical references here too and obviously the music is its own thing and and uh it references films like you know i was a fugitive on a chain gang is also part of the the mix uh here and as well as earlier sort of forms of slapstick or vaudeville comedy all that kind of plays into it so as far as like It almost feels like when you see the credit that it's based on Homer's The Odyssey, it feels a little bit like a joke.

30:20Like one of those Coen Brothers jokes where they're extremely clever and wicking at you a little bit. Like the Fargo, this is a true story. Kind of like that. But I like it. I mean, I think it at least leads to encounters that are full of surprise and fun and are strange and actually kind of digestible in a way that's surprising. We showed this movie to our 15-year-old that watched this with us and just accepted everything that happened. I was thinking, like, is she going to get stuck on the sirens or what is she going to think about that when it happens? And it just works. The whole thing somehow works.

31:01The audacity of this film is kind of amazing to me. It's a weird thing that sometimes happens for me with adaptations where if you don't know the source material at all, the movie probably goes down a lot smoother, you know, because it can just be its own thing instead of being something that, you know, I cannot turn off the part of my brain that compares the source material. And in this case, you know, I accepted kind of the merging of the Sirens and Cersei conceptually and in terms of like what they do, how they behave. You know, I accepted any level of, sure, let's meet the Oracle at the beginning of the movie instead of at the midpoint of the story.

31:45And, you know, we don't have to go on a perilous journey just to find him. Like, any adaptation, like, choices made like that can just kind of, like, you know, roll off the brain. But I find myself getting a little stuck here looking for parallels in things like Babyface Nelson turning up. Like, is that just a historical reference in the way Tommy Johnson turning up might be or in the way some of the political chicanery feels familiar? I suspect that Keith already answered this question by saying, you know, if you're getting tripped up by these things, you're watching the movie wrong. I might just be watching the movie wrong.

32:22I mean, I don't think it's a matter of wrong or right. I think I kind of think of it as just like a little added layer of fun on top of like what is already a really fun movie. Like I keep catching things that are like maybe a reference to the Odyssey or maybe they're just something that I can kind of loosely connect to the Odyssey because I'm watching it in this frame of mind. like the baby face nelson stuff i didn't realize until this viewing the stuff with the cows the the livestock you know george not the livestock you know but he's uh which is very funny you know on its own wow but but then you also have the the cattle you know of um helios yes yes so you know it like it whether that was intentional on the cohen's part i can't say and I don't really care to find out if they've spoken about it.

33:14But I just, as a viewer, and as someone who knows this movie quite well, I have fun when I spot those little micro connections of, oh, yeah, there's cows in both. Maybe that was intentional. You're blowing my mind. Of course it works. I mean, Babyface, he's ill-fated after gunning down that livestock. It doesn't work out for him. That's hilarious. even having just seen nolan's odyssey i did not make that connection that's great thank you the thing about this movie too just just generally is like i was looking forward to this episode just to hear what everyone else had to say about it because i have so much difficulty kind of breaking it down but it just works in a way that's so magical almost mysterious to me i mean obviously there's certain surface pleasures the comedy that is low comedy and very funny and all and there's great chemistry there of course and uh but there's something too about the the music and the way it's incorporated and and uh the look of the film and the whole thing just kind of combines it feels soulful in its way you know and it feels it i i find myself moved by it every time i watch it and it but it's it's so hard for me to unpack this film as i would normally a coen brothers film because it's so stuffed full of references it's so it's so layered but but like specifically the Odyssey stuff, what it all means, I don't know a lot of the time.

34:42I just know that it works. I think it's an incredible act of confidence to assume this will all work out. To assume that a musical set in the 1930s, American South, packed with historical references, that also kind of overlays the Odyssey on top of everything, and is sort of a Three Stooges film on top of everything else, and also has like that emotional weight to it that you're talking about because I think it is a really moving film, especially as it goes along. Yeah, just it's, I guess chutzpah is the word. I mean, just this like, you know, we can pull this off. Just to say nothing of the look of the film, which was itself was his own kind of experiment as well.

35:24That's what you were saying, Keith. Like I was going to mention that because this is something that gets talked about in the Roger Deakins book is just how they were kind of flying blind with this film in terms of the look of it, right? Are you talking about reflections? Yes, reflections. Yeah, I mean, the short version is it's the first feature film to use a digital intermediary. So it's shot on film and then transferred to digital where you can manipulate the color and such. And it was done in such a way that they did all these tests before they started filming and the technology wasn't there.

35:58But they kind of took a gamble that by the time they actually had shot the film and were doing the digital work on it, the technology would have advanced to the point where they could pull off what they wanted to do, which of course they did, which is just basically to manipulate the look of color in every single frame of this film to match what they wanted to look like in their head. And it's a remarkable looking film. I think I was struck by that at the time that it just kind of looked like nothing else. I, at the time, had no idea how much it was digital work, which is basically all of it, but it's a painstaking process.

36:32It's basically how now every film is made. It advances to the point where it's not such a painstaking process anymore, but it was revelatory at the time. It really does look like nothing else out there. That includes a scene, like the scene with the flood and the Dapper Dan cans floating around. Did you run across anything about, that looks like it might be entirely digital, possibly a montage of elements. I think the dog is real rather than a digital creation, but I don't think he's underwater. I don't think a lot of those things are physical objects. Did you talk at all about that scene and the Coens embracing digital, potentially entirely digital elements in a movie?

37:14Not really, and I assume that is a digital set I can safely say they're not dragging a dog through the water For this film But you get a little bit of that sort of effects-heavy work In Big Lebowski I'm sure there's quite a fair amount of digital effects in that As well Some of the big sets are shot in an airport hangar So I don't know So that was a long, short answer. I can't really answer that definitively. Well, I want to steer back to kind of talking about, you know, bringing up the fact that this movie was kind of an act of hubris, assuming that would all hold together. One of the reasons it holds together, you know, besides the music and the look of the film, both being so spectacular and memorable, is George Clooney's central performance, which, you know, this is a movie full of hucksters and snake oil salesmen.

38:10And I think almost entirely men, except for the sirens. You know, people who lie and lie to other people for grifting purposes. And then heavy handed overseers who punish them for these things. Ulysses is a liar. He's a con artist. He's a manipulator. You know, we know that he ended up on a chain gang because he was practicing law without being a lawyer. Towards the end of the movie, he announces he's got a great new scheme to become a dentist without going to school for it. He is like on paper, almost the villain of the piece. You know, he kind of ruins Pete and Delmar's lives and they tell him so.

38:55He's also the reason that Sheriff Cooley can track them because he's so vain about his hair that he won't stop using this pomade that the dogs can detect. He, even more so, I would say, than Odysseus, brings down his fate upon them and can only be redeemed through an act of, you know, begging the gods for forgiveness and for intercession. And yet he's still, you know, he's such a charmer. He's just kind of the hero of the piece. how do you balance your sympathies in this movie? Like given all of the kind of terrible things that he does versus, you know, just what a charmer, an inveterate charmer he is, how do you end up feeling about this character?

39:36Well, I mean, Odysseus is complicated too, right? And in some of the same ways, like he's, he's primarily, he's most notable for coming up with schemes more than any other quality. And he certainly, and we'll definitely be getting into this when we talk about the Nolan film, it's like, you know, other people's fate are kind of tied up in his in ways that don't always work out well for those around him. So I think in some ways, some of the strongest parallels are between those two characters. And I think in Oh Brother, Where Art Thou, it's just at the point where when you are realizing and when Pete and Delmar are realizing like just how terrible Everett has been to them is kind of when you get the reveal of his him trying to get back to his wife and daughters, which is a fairly significant change to the source there.

40:22But the fact that like he's doing all this to get back to his wife, you know, it turns it from a scheme into like a scheme with heart or like with emotion behind it. And it doesn't change what he's done, but it gives an emotional core to it that you can kind of understand. And it's romantic and I think makes everything he's done to that point feel a little more palatable in that context. For me, it's almost the opposite. When we find out how he's kind of, I mean, he's inadvertently abandoned his wife with seven children. But I end up with more sympathy for her, you know, seeking out a suitor. He's a suitor and he's bona fide.

41:02You know, she's found somebody who's bona fide and is has like a legitimate job and seems to care about her and is willing to take care of this like fractious singing brood. It may be romantic that he wants to make his way back to her, but I'm not so sure that she's better off with him in her life at all. Yeah, I mean, I'm not saying it absolves him in any way, but it just feels like a more human motivation than this lie of money, of buried treasure. I guess the one thing I will say about Everett is this is why you have a George Clooney cast in that role. I mean, this is something where you might have doubts about this character based on his behavior, based on his actions, based on his selfishness and how it impacts his two companions.

41:51but you know when you have a star of of george clooney's charm and warmth really it forgives a lot and it allows you to kind of pivot to his side right along with his companions too i mean who who who are do have their lives ruined but never really leave his side either um and are with him for this whole adventure as much as as much as they can and tell the law interviews here and there but uh and and then one of them turns into a frog maybe but doesn't you know this is all this This is all star power. And I think it's a nice showcase for George Clooney, who's not always not always the most convincing comic actor in my in my view.

42:29But I think, you know, quits himself well in this movie and is somebody that the Coens would turn again to as, you know, a comic lead for good reason. Well, it sounds like you're saying he's bona fide. He's a suitor. Let's take a quick break and then we'll come back and get into what I think is the movie's biggest departure from Homer being turned into a horny toad or not a side.

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43:31What's up, fam? I'm sports journalist Ari Chambers. Hey, what's up, y 'all? It's your girl, Sam J. And we're the hosts of Everyone Watches Women's Sports, a new podcast from Together and I Heart women's sports. Because let's be real, women's sports is giving us way too much to talk about these days. So Kelsey Finler, she became the first female solo rower to go from California to Hawaii. My first thought is like, what's up with the snacks? Like, what are we eating? The highlights, the rivalries, the breakout stars, the moments that take over your entire timeline. And the conversations that start during the game and somehow keep going all week, every week, we're breaking down the biggest stories across women's sports.

44:09Naomi Osaka showing out. She beat Sabalenka. Shout out to you, Naomi. You get the palm, Naomi. You get the palm for that. Because we're not just interested in what happened. We're interested in why everyone's talking about it. Because everyone watches women's sports. Listen to Everyone Watches Women's Sports on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

44:31Hey, Portlandia fans. Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen here. You know us, or rather, you know them. Tony and Candace, Nina and Lance, Spike, and yes, the chicken. We've played a lot of iconic characters over the years, but today we're showing up as ourselves to tell you about Podlandia, AO Rewatch, our brand new podcast. Each week, we'll revisit an episode of Portlandia from the very beginning, breaking down the sketches, exploring the backstories of our most iconic characters, revisiting the Portland locations you know and love, and opening up about our creative process. How did any of this get made?

45:04Why do we think that was a good idea? We're ready to talk about it. And we'll also be joined by the people who helped bring it all to life. Guest stars, collaborators, and friends, including director Jonathan Kreisel, the mayor himself, Kyle McLaughlin, legendary musician Amy Mann, and many more. Kyle is going for it here. You fully improvised not just words, but a song, a melody. Well, I thought he was going to write. I thought you were all going to write a song. I remember you thinking that. Listen to Podlandia Ayo Rewatch on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

45:59It's like a way to say, hello, friend, hello, best friend, hello, sister. What up? Look, I've never talked to anyone. Except with my children. My children know. I'm my lover. That's incredible. The movie is the only person I know that loves the yellow starburst. It's lemon. There's someone who's missing you. You say, I'd like to collaborate with this person. This is Sweet 305. Listen to Sweet 305 with Lele Pons as part of my Cultura podcast network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, Daddy! Daddy! Daddy, he ain't our daddy. Hell, I ain't. What's this, Warby gals?

46:50Your name's Miguel. No, sir, not since you got hit by that train. What are you talking about? I wasn't hit by that train. Mama says she was hit by a train. Bluey, nothing left. Just a grease spot on the LNN. Damn it, I wasn't hit by any train. That's right. Now Mama's got us back to war. That's a maiden name. You got a maiden name, Daddy? No, Daddy don't have a maiden name. That's your misfortune. That's right, and now Mama's got a new bow. She's a suitor. Yeah, I heard about that. Mama says that he's bona fide. You give her a ring? Yes, sir. Big and he got a tune. Mama checked it. It's Bonafide.

47:30He's a suitor. What's his name? Vernon T. Waldrop. Uncle Vernon. Till tomorrow. Then he's gonna be daddy. I am the only daddy you got. I am the damn paterfamilias. But you ain't Bonafide. So we talked about, you know, the departures from the Odyssey or, you know, what this film does pick up thematically from the Odyssey. But it does interest me that the ending takes such a sharp turn. You know, kind of the core of the Odyssey at the end is Penelope is loyal to her husband. She's been putting off these suitors for more than a decade. She is loyally waiting for him to come home, kind of like his dog, ahem ahem.

48:11But let's gloss over that. Penny, on the other hand, has made a new life for herself that she seems fairly happy with. She seems like kind of a sharpish woman who maybe hasn't had a whole lot of happiness in her life, definitely not trying to raise seven children on her own. One sort of gets the impression that he fast talked her to begin with, and she's kind of had a hard life since. So that departure to me is maybe the sort of the biggest thematic swerve in this movie. The idea that it isn't about loyalty or about love. It's about the kind of the fantasy that he's got in his head. Or, I mean, as he puts it, I'm the damn powder familius.

48:58Like, it's like his status matters to him as much as anything else. I do think that he loves these girls. By the way, the difference between, you know, I left behind a single brave son who will be king shortly thereafter versus I left behind seven small children, seven small girls also seems like a big departure, but in different ways. Anyway, I'm just curious what you make of that that swerve in terms of what this movie is trying to do differently from the Odyssey. Well, I mean, I think it is wrapped up to a degree in this being a comedy and sort of the comic payoff of him reaching his goal and it being more or less denied to him.

49:43But it does also, to a degree, tie in to the Odyssey. And I'm talking about later at the musical event where they come in disguise as the Soggy Bottom Boys and perform and Penny sees him. So you get sort of that connection to Odysseus returning in disguise and defeating the suitors, you know, so it does still kind of track the plot beat of the Odyssey. But the character of Penny not pining for him like Penelope, like I said, I think that is just like a Coen's comedy thing more than, you know, trying to say anything about the source text that they obviously are not trying to say much about to begin with.

50:29So I think it's like the payoff is Holly Hunter brushing him off after this, you know, and not swooning in response to him. Although it's kind of her personality too, though, Penny's, is to be pretty stubborn and practical, focused on things that are practical, focusing on things that she wants and that she needs. But at the same time, there's a playfulness to her as well in that relationship, even when you get to the issue with needing to find the ring. And the other thing, of course, is that you just don't spend time with her and the suitors or anything like that. that shouldn't even appear until much, much later.

51:10Um, uh, and I think it's just the Cone's kind of making a choice in terms of, they've only got so much they can put into this movie. And, uh, I think it's a, it's a matter of, of pace to kind of just hold, hold this, you know, focused entirely on the journey on, uh, of the, of the hero's journey and then, and then just bring her in as part of sort of the destination at the end. I think also, I mean, the reunion and the very end, but also just the whole relationship is part of what makes this film moving to me. And I think one thing that Hunter does so well, and in the script as well, it gives a sense that, you know, all things being equal, she would love to be with this man.

51:49But, you know, all things are not equal, and there are practicalities to consider. And maybe, you know, this might be a hard choice for her to turn him away, but it's also maybe the right thing to do for her brood of girls, basically. So it's a nice bit of tension there, I think. I just love Hunter's, like, her facial expressions during that performance of the Soggy Bottom Boys. And she's just like, you can tell she loves that man, you know? That expression when he kind of, like, tugs at his little big beard, she's just so delighted. That's one of my favorite, like, small moments of the movie.

52:28And not to mention the fact that her suitor is named Vernon T. Waldrip. he's got drip right there in the name like he's he is not meant to be a uh an aspirational figure and at the same time he is capable of kicking ulysses butt like he's a he's a better fighter and uh you know he's bonafide he's just uh he's he's a smart man he's also principled as we see when uh pappy tries to suborn him and uh lure him over to the other side he's not the worst man uh He gets the short end of the stick here a little bit. Yeah, but he sticks by his candidate potentially longer than he should have. Yeah, I was going to say, there is the matter of what side he is on to begin with.

53:12The officers are kind of bad there for his candidate. Yeah, that's a good segue into something I really wanted to talk about, which is just this movie's view of politics. We have two frontrunners for governor of Mississippi. They're both corrupt. They're both scheming. One of them is a Ku Klux Klan leader. One of them is, well, Charles Dernay, which kind of speaks for itself. Doesn't have a whole lot of ideas. He is in bed with the interests. I love that speech. But, you know, it's very clear that this, you know, fat, indolent man and his fat, indolent family who do not appear to be very bright but are very good at taking advantage of things when they see them in front of them are not doing a whole lot for the people of Mississippi.

54:03And when a man comes along with a diminutive sidekick that enables a kind of a flashy campaign slogan, you know, he doesn't really have a ground to stand on anymore. Everything about the politics in this movie is about manipulation, about, you know, dismissing people's actual needs and opinions in favor of a slick snake oil salesman kind of line. The campaigns are all built around gimmicks and bandwagoning. And then we have the use of the mass media, which is to say driving around on the back of a truck, playing music, standing up on the bandstand with a little man with a broom and going out over the radio.

54:53There's nothing positive about politics here at all or about politicians, is there? It's a well-run campaign. I always think about that. line all the time it's a well-run campaign i mean i think there's a certain amount of affection that you at least i developed for charles jurning and his it is kind of shameless opportunism you know uh i mean it's he's he is corrupt he definitely he's he's uh you know an entrenched very typical politician he is not trying to run as an outsider he's very much an insider uh he rejects the idea of they can't get him any of that reform he's not going to be not that kind of candidate all that stuff is he's the incumbent he's the incumbent he can't really do that he can't be a reform candidate was the incumbent uh all that stuff is really is uh tremendous uh fun but it is a film that is you know pretty cynical about politics and i think if you're if you're really thinking about if you're getting more serious i guess even than the film gets about the time period and people being in need it being the great depression I think you could probably look at this race and feel like neither of these gentlemen are going to be able to do anything to solve anyone's problems that they can try to campaign on reform, which people would want.

56:13But what is that going to ultimately mean in practical terms? The film is pretty cynical about that. And it's certainly a lesser to evil situation because I'm going to vote for the person who's not in the Klan in this situation. you know maybe uh craven versus actively evil given the choice i'll go with craven every time but um uh but yeah it is not not a flattering uh portrait and in the end uh despite his his well-run campaign also just not very savvy you know he he gets up and outs himself as a belligerent racist because he just assumes that everybody's going to be on his side like of of course the fact that there's miscegenation happening up on stage, a word he does not seem to know what it actually means.

57:00The band is integrated because one of their members is black. He just assumes he's going to turn a group of cheering fans into their enemies, even though they can see that perfectly well for themselves. He has enough of a deep-seated racism that he assumes that that is the natural order of business, which is very strange for a guy who has to do his business while masked. I would say that Keith saying that he would not vote for the person who's associated with the Klan is also a very 2026 sentiment as well. Well, and also the universality of everyone responding to Stokes outing himself with universal horror feels maybe a little optimistic for the time and place but for what it's worth i definitely don't see them responding in that way because how dare you be racist against uh you know this this nice fellow who's playing music so much as why are you stopping yeah you know us from having fun right if anything if you want to be optimistic it's about the transformative power of of song to be people really he misreads the moment in such a significant way because this song is a sensation and having the actual Soggy Bottom Boys make a surprise appearance at this event and play it after being sort of shrouded in mystery is a thrilling moment for them and I think a moment that from a filmmaking perspective is just so galvanizing and wonderful that any disruption to that feels criminal.

58:43We should talk about the music in general, especially given that that was where my keynote focused and kind of where the fandom initially for this film focused. I'm curious what stands out for you. Obviously, Man of Constant Sorrow was the big banger hit, but there's kind of like wall to wall, as they say, old timey music in here. And it covers a pretty wide range of of grounds in terms of a specific musical roots that it's coming from. What sticks with you? Before like getting into a couple of like specific songs, I do just have to say like in the pantheon of songs written for films that are supposed to be a hit in the film and are actually a banger.

59:29Like it's like this and that thing you do. And that's like they're on the same level. That's a really good point. I've had a longstanding grudge just in terms of any movie that claims a particular piece of art is vitally important and moving for everybody. As soon as they show you what that art is, you know, whether it's Mark's film in Rent or Roger's song in Rent or, you know, Mr. Holland's Opus, the opus itself. or gosh, just about any example you can think of, you end up in a place of all that for this. But you're right. You can easily see why Man of Constant Astero is an in-universe hit as well as a real world hit.

1:00:17Not on the level of Man of Constant Astero, but I do. The recent John Carney from Power Ballad has a song that you will believe is a top 40, could be a top 40 hit on it as well. One thing I love about the soundtrack is it's just how, what a rich array of music you get. from gospel to blues to bluegrass and traditional folk and, and, and just Appalachian music. It all fits together so well, which I think is part of what's going on with the film as well, because there's so many different types of characters. There's so many like little subcultures you visit over the course of this film. And I think the, the way the races meet in, in music is certainly another sub, you know, strand of this film that gets explored and that's all over the, all over the soundtrack as well.

1:01:00Yeah. It's, it's, So it's crazy to me in a way that it was such a, it was a huge hit. I mean, a huge popular hit, the film and also the soundtrack. And the precedent for that is what? Like this, I mean, maybe a little bit like American Graffiti resurfacing all these hits from at that point, not even 15 years ago. But just sort of like, here's a whole bunch of great rootsy American songs and you're going to love them. and then the American public did. It's really quite extraordinary. One of the things that fascinates me about the music in this film is just the way it's kind of all split up in time, you know, because of where some of these songs originated versus like Man of Constant Sorrow itself, I believe was first put down in published form in 1918, if I remember correctly.

1:01:54But the version that they're drawing, so that would potentially be the version that they're drawing on in the movie, which takes place in 37, or it was first recorded in 27, which might have been where they're drawing from. But Burnett was drawing on a popular version from the 50s. So, you know, decades after this movie takes place. So there's a lot of that where, you know, in some ways, when Burnett was doing the arrangements for these songs, he was drawing, you know, in some cases on things going back to the 1910s, and on some cases, things that were a lot more recent, but were themselves drawing back on these origins.

1:02:38And it kind of goes back to what Genevieve was saying about the folk tradition and the oral tradition. A lot of these songs are things that had cycled and been, you know, performed and recorded and arranged in different ways in different eras, but he's reaching back for a lot of those different eras. You know, if you track sort of the history of some of these songs, it's kind of all over the musical map, even if the earliest origin points for a lot of these songs was in around the same place. I also really just quickly want to call out a couple of acapella numbers, including Poe Lazarus, which begins the film, what the chain gang is seeing, specifically the use of pickaxes as percussion in it.

1:03:26One of the things I found interesting on this watch is the way that even non-musical sequences have a really specific rhythm to it. I'm thinking of the blind prophet on the rail car when he's giving his speech and you have this steady metronome of the, I don't even know what you call it, the little pump handle thing that he's using, you know? And again, the pickaxes, like I mentioned. So there's just like a very deep down musicality to the way this movie moves and sounds, even when there is not actual music happening, which I find really satisfying. You know, the Cullens are the one, other filmmakers where you notice like who the sound editor is it's like skip livesay is the guy you know skip livesay is a name that people know because it's also a great name i mean that's yeah no i i remember that from back in college there was a a friend of mine in undergrad who actually went on to become a a sound editor in hollywood who was just worshiped skip livesay so there you go yeah i suppose when we're talking about uh kind of standout scenes and songs i mean for me It's Nobody But The Baby, which I listened to just obsessively on repeat in 2000 when it came out because of the harmonies and the way the three lines kind of wind in and out of each other.

1:04:52And it turned me into a big, you know, Alison Krauss and Union Station and Jillian Welsh fan. Same. I listened to a lot of this music in the year 2000. But one of the songs, going back to the acapella idea that just really stands out for me is Oh Death, which is kind of an interesting point. When T-Bone Burnett was looking at arrangements of Man of Constant Sorrow, the version that he drew on most was recorded by the Stanley Brothers in the 50s. And they, Ralph Stanley of the Stanley brothers actually appears in the soundtrack on O Death. And he was the one that persuaded the Coens to let him do an acapella version of it for the big clan march number.

1:05:38Another fun thing about that sequence in particular is they got a marching group, like a coordinated rhythm marching group, I guess, to portray the clan for those, you know, the distance scenes where you're seeing them, you know, marching and arranging themselves. Another percussive element. Which, God, you know, one of the things that I read in the Coens, just kind of talking about the history of this movie, was that before they hit on the Odyssey connection, they were thinking of it more as Wizard of Oz. And that sequence just feels so Wizard of Oz to me. They really are practically going, oh, we, oh.

1:06:20But instead, we have Ralph Stanley singing O Death. But the synchronizing marching group that they use, like an existing group, a significant percentage of those people were black. And they talk about just seeing a bunch of black men lined up for the porta potties in between sequences, wearing full Klan robes and with their Klan hoods tucked under their arm and just saying, okay, this is really weird. We acknowledge that this is really weird. Movie magic. Well, as always, there's a ton more to talk about in this film, but we're already running long. Thanks. Lengthy sequence where we caught up with what everybody's watching.

1:07:05Just as a quick round robin, and then we'll get to a lot of the rest of the things we need to talk about in our next episode when we talk about connections. But before we fully transition out of a brother, just give me a favorite thing, a favorite shot or character moment scene just anything um that that really sticks with you in this film i wouldn't commit to this as like my favorite scene like forever and ever but in this moment uh not even a scene but the line that comes to mind first is i'm gonna r-u-n-n-o-f-t and specifically like the way it comes back during the escape sequence when it's spelled out earlier in front of the kid and then the kid saves the guys and says he's going to argue NNOFT.

1:07:50It's just a great little comedic callback and one of many many many great lines in this film that stick with me. You know what tickled me this time was when Ulysses gets in the fight with Waldrop in the Woolworths and they're thrown out and he says, he's unclear if it's just this Woolworths or all Woolworths that he's been from at this point. For me, it has to be the little dance that Charles Sterning does on stage. It's a wonderful dance. And there's something about how the action, just the look, I guess, that he's given to by Everett at that moment. It all pauses and he's having his moment to come on stage and he just gives this magnificent dance.

1:08:38I just love Charles Sterning in this movie. We really haven't talked nearly enough about Tim Blake Nelson and John Turturro in this movie. But shout out to the little knee dance that John Turturro does on stage during the Sagittabodden Boys performance as well as Durnings. And, you know, it's a little hard to beat Clooney repeatedly talking about how he's a dapper Dan man. But for me on this watch, what really stood out, what just really stuck with me is the shot where Delmer and Ulysses are in the back of the truck riding along through Mississippi, and they pass the chain gang again. And standing in the middle of them is Pete, just staring daggers at them.

1:09:23And Ulysses thinks that maybe he's seeing a ghost, or maybe Pete had a brother. Maybe the heat's gotten to him. He doesn't know what he's seeing. But Pete knows exactly what he's seeing. And just the beauty of that shot from the point of view of the truck pulling away, where kind of everything is in motion. The background's in motion because the truck is in motion. Everybody in the chain gang is working hard on their rocks. So they're all in motion. And John Tortura just standing perfectly still in the center of all of that and receding into the background as we wonder, you know, how Pete is eventually going to catch up.

1:10:01Love that shot. Love this movie. I love having a chance to revisit it. We did talk about whether we should go back to the Coen's Brothers as well. Let's keep doing it. Wait so soon. And then in the end, we were just like, no, we just want to revisit this movie. Intolerable Cruelty is next. Let's go. I'm up for it. Let's figure out what we can pair with every Coen Brothers movie. And when we run out, we'll just go back to the top. Hopefully, we'll make some new ones in the meantime. Until then, we're going to take a break and then get into some feedback.

1:10:41Now it's time for feedback. But first, let's dive into what's happening elsewhere in the extended film spotting cinematic universe. There's a lot going on. As we record this episode, film spottings Adam Kempinar and Josh Larson have just released an episode covering the top five films of 2026 so far, which is an argument starter if I've ever heard one. On FilmSpotting SVU, Matt Singer and Jordan Hoffman discuss the state of streaming movies, taking a deep dive into the streaming service Tubi, recommending titles to watch, and evaluating the service's movie collection, reliability, and interface.

1:11:14And this one's particularly exciting to me. The latest edition of the FilmSpotting Network is a new podcast called The Movie Racket, where industry vet Michael Phillips, my old top ten movies of the year buddy, tests the supposed laws of cinema and discusses whether they still hold water. In the first episode, he talks with actor Michael Shannon about whether the old quote commonly attributed to Francois Truffaut is accurate and whether it's true that every film about war winds up being pro-war. And in the second released episode, critic Amy Nicholson joins Michael, Phillips, not Shannon, to discuss Preston Sturge's possibly apocryphal 11 rules for box office appeal.

1:11:49You can find all of that, plus the latest Next Picture Show episodes, at filmspotting.net. Now it's time for feedback, where we normally address some of the responses we've gotten to recent episodes, but this week we've got a question from the Anything Else in the World of Film side of the mailbag. Here's a general question about a recent movie we haven't discussed on the podcast. Normally we reserve these for Patreon bonuses, but this time we're just going to jump in. Scott, could you read this please? Sure. JB writes, I know Keith wasn't a big fan, but I'm curious what Tasha and Scott thought about Obsession.

1:12:20I found a cryptic, but I assume positive note from Tasha on Blue Sky, but can't find anything from Scott. I don't have anything particularly intelligent to say, but for me, this was the first internet-hyped horror movie to live up to expectations for quite a while. I guess Red Rooms did too on a smaller scale, and I haven't seen Back Rooms yet. I was lukewarm at best on Long Legs, Talk to Me, Bring Her Back, Smile, Black Phone, etc. One of the things I appreciated most was how natural and real the friend group seemed. I'm in my 50s, but spend a lot of time with young folks at work. They felt like real people to me, rather than the movie version I usually see.

1:12:54And I'd be curious what Keith makes of its bonkers box office too. What a time for indie horror. What a time indeed. Scott, I'm giving an understanding you just saw Obsession. What did you think? I did. I saw it because I'd been wanting to see it with my 15-year-old who's a big horror fan. Who just could never get out of the theater, never get out of the theater. And finally it found its way onto home video and watched it at the first opportunity. I hate to defy my newsletter mate, but I really, really liked it quite a bit. It has some issues for me in the final third, but I think it's got two or three kind of all-timer scenes in it.

1:13:31I think the lead performance by the, I can't remember the actress's name, but the lead actress is really astounding. And I just found it very metaphysically a very interesting movie. this idea of a wish, you know, having this wish that somebody love you more than anything in the world, and that not being something that is real or true, and kind of the impact that it has on both parties involved is just so fascinating to me. You know, in addition to being creepy and funny, and yeah, I really, I was a fan of this movie, for sure. Indie Navarette, by the way, is the actress's name. Yeah, Indie Navarette.

1:14:13wonderful performance uh because because it's kind of it's creepy and funny but also very human uh you know i think that was the thing that kind of really persuaded me about about the the movie is just you know the sense of just how being locked into this feeling that she doesn't authentically have is becomes its own hell basically that they have to try to work themselves well so themselves out of or they work themselves out of it a very grisly fashion but i thought um i thought it was quite a good piece of work. I did like it. Natasha, what'd you, what'd you think of it? The blue sky post that Jimmy's referring to here came from just sort of a moment of like, after being, after being finished with the film, just reeling some friends of mine saw it for the first time a couple days ago.

1:15:02And we're talking about how terrifying it was. And I kind of looked back and I was like, you know, I came out of that movie feeling like I'd been assaulted, feeling like I'd been like physically grabbed and shaken uh which I I can't say is a good thing per se um but I was I was really um taken by how effective the film was how how visceral and jolting it was you know there are some moments of pretty extreme gore yes but it wasn't the gore that shook me it was the the depth of the emotions involved There are a lot of jump scares, but it wasn't the jump scares that shook me. It was the death of the emotion involved.

1:15:42I feel like the almost comic aspect of kind of the classic quirky store where you get a monkey's paw that takes over your life and makes you rue it with this kind of idea of somebody holding on to the thing that is destroying him no matter what happens. It just gives it all a really fascinating element. I just thought it was tremendously effective. I'm still sorting out the degree to which I enjoy being that unnerved and unsettled because I like a movie that makes me feel something. But this one went so far in the direction of like making me feel terrified and sad. far beyond it has moments that are funny which helps I think about the two scenes I really love the scene in the restaurant the no no no no scene and then the scene and this is something that JB is referring to when he talks about the friend dynamics in the movie where they're all together at a bar and one of them has to kiss the person to their left and the way that scene plays out is so you know creepy and terrifying and also hilarious and i just i i thought it was dynamite i wish we were a video podcast so y 'all could see the face tasha made in response to scott saying this movie was funny and then just froze in that face the entirety of his response i mean but the thing is he's not wrong uh the the sequence where the protagonist goes back to the quirky store, which just making the mysterious store that probably isn't going to be there the second time you go back into a new age kind of place, like full of, you know, crystals and books about like psychic healing is just so choice and so hilarious.

1:17:46Yeah. And some of the elements as he tries to explore what it would take to get the curse broken, Like there's a scene in a car where he has a phone conversation that's tremendously sad and frightening and hurtful. And then every time he goes back to the store, it just all gets funny again. But the fact that this One Wish Will has like a customer service line is really funny in itself, too, right? Yeah. There's a number that you can call with complaints. It's a very dark sense of humor, but I think it's very funny. But anyway, I think we've both said our piece. Keith, the question directed directly to you was, what do you make of the box office for this movie?

1:18:25Yeah, it won't be a wet blanket. This one just didn't connect with me for whatever reason. It connects with every other single person. And to the point where, like, yeah, I'll have to revisit it at some point. I actually think my daughter is watching it as we record this podcast. But that said, there's things I liked about it. Indian Everett is really good. But I'm also just very pleased that it is, regardless of my mixed feelings on it, I'm very pleased that it's doing so well. I love to see the small, the scrappy, the unusual, the non-franchise, the original ideas, et cetera, et cetera, get some eyes on them.

1:19:01And I love Backrooms too. So that one I'm really into. So those two together, burning up the charts, good for them. And I think it bodes well. Although I do kind of worry that it's sort of like, well, what YouTuber can we promote next? instead of finding the best idea, it must be the medium that's producing this thing, not any sort of artistic movement. But whatever, we'll see. I think we'll get some interesting stuff will come to the surface. He cannot wait for the Skibbity Toilet movie. I'm more of an Italian brain rock guy. Keep in mind that Talk to Me and Bring Her Back, we're also both from YouTubers.

1:19:43We're years into the mining successful YouTubers for horror movies in specific era. And, you know, until it goes terribly wrong, I'm fine with it. Also, I feel like, you know, film snobs like us don't necessarily get happily ever afters all that often. So the happily ever after of Backrooms and Obsession making a ton of money while the live action Moana remake is kind of circling the drain is just like, you know, the happiest, happiest ever after we could possibly have for this particular summer. Next letter, why does Tasha hate Moana so much? I don't hate Moana. I just hate people doing the same things over and over.

1:20:29She's a scrappy girl who wants to help her people out and she goes on an adventure. What's not to like there? The stupid chicken.

1:20:40That's it for this episode of The Next Picture Show. In our next episode, we'll talk about Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, which takes a much more literal approach to Homer's epic. Look for that episode next Tuesday on your podcatcher of choice. For ad-free versions of the podcast and extra content, find us on Patreon at patreon.com slash nextpictureshow. You can find us at nextpictureshow.net and on Blue Sky at Next Picture Show if you want to keep track of when new episodes drop. In the meantime, if you have a treasure out there that you're looking for, do not seek the treasure. It's an ambush.

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