"If my fanny squirms, it's bad. If my fanny doesn't squirm, it's good" with Dana Stevens | The Movie Racket

24:39They just want you to stay on Netflix. It's essentially, you know, that's the passivity is that you're continuing to consume something on that platform, whether or not you remain nailed to whatever mediocre streaming series you first sat down to watch. So the industry now has a completely different relationship to capturing viewers attention. I mean, in large part because of just the monopolization of these huge companies, right, is that all they want you to do is turn on their platform and keep it on, which is a really depressing way to think about content consumption, as we now call it, because it's actually good for these series, these streaming series to be really padded out.

25:16You know, this was something that on my podcast, The Dearly Departed Slate Culture Gap Fest, we would talk about all the time when it came to TV to the point that I just got tired of making this point. But it was so frequently true, which was, why does this need to be this long? Oh, my God. The Netflix documentary, right? That's for some reason four hours long, although it could easily be a 90-minute, very good, you know, movie-length documentary. But in order for it to, you know, gather more eyeballs and have more viewing time and just sort of seem more like a full Netflix documentary, whatever that means, it needs to be padded out to four-hour length, right?

25:51So again, there's just, there's something going on. I mean, as William Goldman, the screenwriter, famously said, and maybe this could be a movie racket quote sometime nobody knows anything we're working on nobody knows anything yeah and nobody knows what audiences want and everything is a constant and always has been i would add i'm sure throughout the history of the medium everything has been this juggling of different things to try to figure out what audiences want um but i feel like we're at an unhealthy moment in that relationship between the creators you know the studios and the people that are consuming it because it doesn't seem like the same contract has to be signed, the same unwritten contract that, okay, I will pay you$20 and sit in a dark room and in exchange, you need to give me roughly two hours of something entertaining that makes it worth my time and worth my$20.

26:38Instead, it's all, not all, but to a large extent, been offloaded to this home space where you pay per month, not per experience, and all that company wants is to keep you paying per month. right so if all you do is watch half of an episode of a mediocre series that you're never going to finish but you don't cancel your netflix then in their mind you know they've succeeded at fulfilling their part of the contract so that does not seem like a recipe for creative work to

27:06Michael Phillips:continue to get no no yeah it's wild to me that if you just not the hammer on the odyssey over and over but the film everybody seems to be watching and writing about and arguing about which classicist or academic is more correct than either loving it or hating it right now. But Christopher Nolan is doing exactly what the industry as a whole thought they had to do in response to the threat of television in the early 50s. You know, go big, cinema scope, 3D gimmicks and an enormous screen, you know, in a wider, bigger process. And that's the only way to compete is that way. And Nolan, with a very, to me, an endlessly fascinating mixture of kind of a cool, thoughtful temperament married to P.T.

27:52Michael Phillips:Barnum squared, he's sort of figured it out. He's figured out how to make a three-hour movie that has a prestige epic, that has everything people want, and whether it's simply just the size of some of the images or sequences. And I do take heart from that you know I mean just like you know a lot of the movies that came out from the studio machines in the 50s were junky and not very good but then now and then you get a director who knew how to use the screen properly this bigger wider screen and I just hope some of it trickles down to like a more of a you know we've hammered I've hammered on this forever I know everybody has where did the medium budget picture go and you know the kind of medium modest whatever you know the kind that harry cohn would have put out i mean his dictum and when he was running columbia was i just need one good picture a year to kind of just for my reputation which he loved that he was known as kind of like the meanest crudest guy in hollywood but you know he loved the prestige too but he says look if i gotta play and he used the examples of like what i make the money on is the bread and butter stuff, Blondie.

29:05Michael Phillips:You know, Blondie Boston, Blackie. Yeah, B-pictures, right? B-pictures. I mean, that's how he came up, and that's where he made it. And then suddenly, in 1934, you got a B-picture that Clark Gable was loaned out, you know, sort of spitefully didn't want to do, and Claudette Colbert, whatever, that happened one night. Perhaps you're interested in how a man undresses. You know, there's a funny thing about that. Quite a study in psychology. No two men do it alike. You know, I once knew a man who kept his hat on until he was completely undressed. Yeah, now he made a picture. Years later, his sequel came out.

29:40Michael Phillips:He wore a toupee. Won every Oscar, huge success, almost an accidental bit of class right in his lap. Great. It's a lot of things we're talking about here, but I love what the Odyssey's doing for just getting people in. and I was paying attention to the audience more than I ever have at a film lately. I wasn't reviewing it. But I thought, it's working for this crowd. Now, why is that? Harry Cohn is basically, in that anecdote, was like blowing off what somebody told him about, hey, the audience loved it the other night. I hate it. And Cohn hated it. And he said, well, I don't need an audience to tell me what I like or I don't like.

30:20That's true. And another part of that anecdote is that Harry Cohn says, when I'm alone in the screening room, and then goes on to talk about squirming, right? But of course, I'm glad we got to this, because I think this is a huge question. How important is it to see something with an audience? To what degree is a critic when you can't see something with a big packed house as you ideally would want to? Can you project what that would be? I did see The Odyssey with a big audience, but it was largely an audience of critics. And I still have yet to see it a second time, which I really want to do for the movie itself, because it's so big and so much to take in.

30:50But also because I really want to see it with a bunch of paying customers. I mean, there was a fair amount of hooting and hollering and audible enjoyment even in the mainly press screening that I saw it in. But I really want to hear what that movie does to audiences because it's really got the body horror, right? And the big action adventure and the stuff that people come to far less prestigious movies to see. And I'm just very curious to hear how they react to that. For example, when the suitors get murdered at the end. Did you have a lot of hooping going on in your screening?

31:22Michael Phillips:Yeah. Yeah. Although I have to say that's when I could not, did not want to. I can't really learn how to turn the critical response off in my head. I thought that that to me was the inevitable cheapening of the myth itself because it's shot like Christopher Nolan suddenly discovered gaming. And I just don't like that. I I think that scene's satisfying on a level that I think helps people get through a three-hour movie because they know, they've been shown in the trailers and everything else, they know it's going to end with a triumphant bloodbath. And we're going to see exactly why Matt Damon makes a little sense in this part for once.

32:04Michael Phillips:To me, it was a little bit of a struggle for him with me just because there's so little. I mean, he's not going for rhetorical heights of flourish or anything in that performance, and it's all very naturalistic and under, because I don't know if Damon can do the other thing and that's not the movie for it. But at the end, he makes sense, you know, because he's a good physical presence on the screen. I don't know, did that scene work for you? I mean, it's funny. I saw the movie with my editor by my side, who I always love seeing movies with because, you know, he's one of the few people that I'll actually bounce ideas off afterward.

32:35If I'm with another critic, we're almost never, right? It's sort of the unwritten code that you don't really share too much because you're getting your thoughts together and you sort of want to save it for the page, right? Right. But my editor is going to be looking at that page. So we often walk out kind of breaking down what worked and what didn't. And one thing I said to him is that I thought the very ending, the last third of the movie or so, was the weakest part. But both of us agreed that the audience absolutely disagreed with that. And I think, in fact, the moment we were on the escalator leaving the multiplex, and I think the very moment after I said, yeah, you know, I really loved the first two thirds, but I thought the last act was a little predictable, the action was a little muddy, and the people in front of us who were not listening to us at all were saying, that ending was so awesome when he shot the dude through the neck.

33:19And I realized whatever my critical finicky feelings may be about The Last Third, that is the part that to the audience feels like a huge payoff. And that's part of why I do want to see it with people who don't have to put pen to paper and have thoughts about it, who can just physiologically respond to the movie in real time. Yeah.

33:37Michael Phillips:I kind of want to talk about things like physical reactions we all have to films. Not so much itchiness when we're bored or a lack of it when we're really engaged, but like what physical reaction can we actually trust when we're having it watching a film? Like, I don't know for myself, a laugh can be many things. If it actually gets a laugh out of you, to me, it's something that's actually harder to argue with. Like, yes, yes, you know, because it got that going from you. Tears work differently for me. I mean, things that make me cry are often in some of the worst films, you know? I mean, but it just hits certain things, you know?

34:20Michael Phillips:And I don't feel the same way about laughs. and they're both physical reactions, you know what I mean? I see. You mean you trust your laughs more than your tears? I trust my laughs more than my tears. And I mean, when Argos, the dog in the Odyssey, it's the one emotional moment that everybody can seem to agree on that didn't, that everybody sort of had that moment because it's actually remarkably restrained and quick, which I appreciate. And you don't need much when you have a dog that waited 20 years for your master to get home and then say sayonara. You know, I mean, that was actually very good.

34:54Michael Phillips:And I did feel like, wow. And then it's like, is that a good sign that it's the dog that always gets the tears? And were any of the human interactions tend not to in this film, for me anyway? A laugh is different for me. Do you trust one more than the other or what? Ah, I never thought of that. I mean, I will say, now I will pay attention to which one I trust more, but I think it's easier to get the tears, which is why maybe you feel that they're less trustworthy. right? Because it can happen, I mean, as everyone always says in an AT &T commercial, right? Or it could be something related to your life that has nothing to do with the movie.

35:27You know, maybe you recently lost your own dog. And so that moment completely gets you. But maybe it was, you know, way too rushed through for somebody who is just trying to depend on the story. I mean, I think a dog is a little bit of an exception, because that's so surefire, right? Basically, almost every viewer is going to have some sentimental association with a dog. But then there's other reactions, like I'm a big gasper in movies, which is somewhat embarrassing. If you're in a somewhat empty screening.

35:52Michael Phillips:I think it's asleep. Like with jump scares, right? Or with some, especially certain kinds of violence, like blunt force trauma. You know what I mean? Somebody falling out of a building or something. Anything, any kind of splat related, you know, body horror. So splurge as well as splat. Yeah, just those kind of like George Romero grows out effects, you know?

36:19those will get a gasp out of me that's almost a physiological response. I might even be cynical mentally and, you know, be thinking, well, that's that moment was so predictable or, you know, these special effects are terrible or whatever, but still the sound of the crunching bone in the, you know, karate movie or whatever is going to get me gasping. So, I mean, I think some of those things you can't really blame the movie for. You know what I mean? It might happen if you were watching a TikTok video of something happening that would make you gasp. I mean, it might be such an inwardly wired response that the filmmaker's sophistication or skill has nothing to do with it.

36:53I have a whole tradition. I've written about this before, where before I sit down for a screening that I am going to write about the movie, I do almost a little, it's not a prayer, but it's almost like a little ritual, you know, to try to focus my mind. I'll sort of get my pen and paper that I have ready and like touch my pen to my forehead and kind of think for a second, like, Let me just clear my mind and watch this movie as attentively as I can and not think about how I only have 24 hours to write something about it. How, you know, I've already seen another movie today and I would love to go home.

37:22And also even not bring in the baggage of, well, I've never liked a movie by this director or, you know, this is really not my favorite leading man or whatever. You know, to just try to watch it as a blank slate to whatever degree possible. Yeah. And I do think that, again, was not what Harry Cohn was suggesting. suggesting, but in the sense that he was talking about a successful movie keeping you locked in, you know, that is kind of what I aim for. And I feel like we all need to have our own version of that sort of ritual, whether you're sitting down to a movie or a play or even a TV series, you know, to have a moment of just sort of saying, right now my body and how it feels and how it responds is not the most important thing.

38:01I'm going to enter into this common shared psychic space with this work of art and try to engage on its own terms.

38:07Michael Phillips:Yeah, that's a good reminder. And it always kind of really ticks me off when I see someone reviewing for whatever it is, you know, for on assignment or just for their own sub stack or whatever, posting things on Blue Sky or Instagram or whatever, just sort of actually pre-announcing their loathing of the filmmaker, like, ugh, good luck, you know, and just sort of like trying to get a laugh out of it. It's like, it's five minutes to seven. You don't do that. You know, I mean, there are. Oh, you mean from the screening room, the person is posting? Yeah, that's bad form, bad form. Terrible form. And this is a minor issue, but it's like you have to meet these things halfway.

38:44Michael Phillips:You have to. And I always take heart what someone like, it's hard enough to kind of see past whatever is going on in your own life and just sort of park it, you know, park it outside and give it that minute or two. And that's why I, in a way, I just, I don't really like to talk much before the screening, you know, even if it's surrounded by friends. I just kind of want to just sort of see what's up. And now every three times a year, you are going to be surprised, three out of 150 or whatever it was at the peak viewing, where a director whose previous work maybe did not click for you, something is different with this one.

39:21Michael Phillips:It doesn't happen often. But you have to be in the state of readiness for it. And I take heart from when I hear those at Scorsese when he was president of the jury at Cannes. And he just said, you know, I mean, between the jet lag and five days in, I didn't know if I was looking at a masterpiece or a piece of shit. He actually said that. And, you know, if a guy like that is acknowledging that, you know, your physical state can change like that, depending on where you, you know, how much sleep you've had. if you just had too heavy a meal, all of it. You have to kind of, it's all part of this sort of physical reaction thing that I do find, you know, that's why I tell people with certain films that work on a certain rhythm that I really love, please, you know, yeah, if you have any interest in it, please see it.

40:06Michael Phillips:Don't watch it at 9 o 'clock after two glasses of wine. Don't. I mean, I just think that you're just asking for trouble, you know. It doesn't mean get all jacked up on espresso at 9.30 in the evening, but try to help the movie out just by helping your own state of mind out. And then you make your call in an honest way. So I don't know. Right. And that way, if you do squirm, you can't blame it on the movie. You have to remember that you yourself are bringing a particular state of mind to the experience. I know. I'd love to interview at least the ancestor of one of Harry Cohn's doctors just to see what kind of physical shape he was in when he said that.

40:41Michael Phillips:He's a guy that just had a basically squirmy ass or was he squirming constantly or What actually made him calm down? He died of a heart attack fairly young. 66. Yeah, well, I mean, I'm old enough now that that doesn't feel so very old. And yeah, he kind of drove himself. I think he definitely was a dude who drove himself very hard. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, I don't want to say it's great to have paid tribute to Harry Cohn and his utter venality as a human being, it sounds like. But I like that this anecdote and this crazy incidence, you know, that is sort of secondhand reporting that somebody said, well, according to Herman Rehnquist, this is how it went down.

41:22Michael Phillips:Somehow I'm glad that Harry Cohn's keister is kind of part of Hollywood lore and is kind of in the Hollywood, you know, unofficial rules for Hollywood success. Yeah, his ass has gone down in history. I have two little factoids about each of them that I learned from just doing a brief bit of research before our conversation. So my Harry Cohn factoid that I didn't know is just that the Hollywood mogul character in The Godfather is based on Harry Cohn, which I did not realize, but very much kind of goes to the coarse cigar chomping vision that comes through from this anecdote we're talking about.

41:55Michael Phillips:Right. Just tell him he should ask me anything else. But this is one favor I can't give him. He never asked a second favor when he's been refused the first. Understood? You don't understand. Johnny Fontaine never gets that movie. that part is perfect for him it'll make him a big star i'm gonna run him out of the business and then my little mank tidbit which comes from al jean harmitz's great book uh the making of the wizard of oz one of my favorite books about the making of an individual movie is that well i mean as i'm sure you know the wizard of oz had countless passes from scripts from different people and one of those people was herman mankiewicz and it was mankiewicz's idea according to al jean harmitz to have the black and white in the kansas scenes and make the switch to color in the wizard of oz which is essentially the sort of spiritual core of The Wizard of Oz.

42:40And it's hard to imagine the movie without it. And apparently it was Mank's idea.

42:45Michael Phillips:I did not know that. It seems like such a crazy mismatch of temperament to have Herman Mankiewicz taking a pass at a screenplay adaptation of The Wizard of Oz. I think it's very likely that not very much of his dialogue made it in, right? It doesn't sound like Mankiewicz's dialogue and it's not really his style. but even if he just had the vision for that one switch, it's an absolutely brilliant contribution to the script. It could be apocryphal, but if it's in her book, I tend to believe it. Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore. Dana, for 18 years, you were an anchor, just a great, great, steady, vibrant voice of the Slate Culture Gab Fest.

43:27Michael Phillips:18 years. I'm so sorry that has gone away. I mean, I'm really bummed about that. Yeah, me too. I really, really miss the show. I still haven't even absorbed that we're done with it. It's only, I guess, a month since our last episode was released, but we've gotten such great listener response on it. And it makes me feel like, yeah, I mean, maybe it will be one of those one door opens and then another window, whatever that expression is, that something else professional will be coming along to take its place. But for the moment, yeah, that's a big hole in my life too. So thank you. But on a better note, did I just read that you had how many?

43:59Michael Phillips:1 ,400 people at a screening of Buster Keaton's The General tied into your excellent, excellent book on Buster Keaton. And that was out in Seattle, right? There was a screening of The General that just killed. Yeah, that was a nice surprise. It's four years now since my book, Cameraman, it's a book about Buster Keaton and his lifespan came out. And this wonderful theater, the Paramount Theater in Seattle, which is an old picture palace. It was built in 1928. You cannot imagine the level of just ornate, you know, little naked golden babies in the ceiling and red velvet curtains and the whole deal.

44:31They had had me out back when the book came out to host a Keaton screening. And I had such a good experience that I told them, if you ever want me to come back again, and it so happens that they have a summer silent movie series, or I guess a seasonal silent movie series. Every season they show a series of silent movies. And so they had me out for their summer season to introduce The General, which is always a fun Keaton movie to show, probably the most screened of his movies, but always, always kills. And they actually sold, I'm just so moved by this, 1 ,400 tickets on a weeknight for people to go and see a 100-year-old movie.

45:02So it was a very heartening evening as to the state of rep cinema around the country.

45:08Michael Phillips:I mean, not just a weeknight, but a Monday, which is like the weakest of all weeknights, you know, by most measurements. Fantastic. Yeah, it was glorious. There was a live organist. There was a live Foley artist who was doing things like, you know, shaking a box of Tic Tacs to get the sound of the train wheels. It was so, so fun, Michael. I love it. If the Paramount ever invites you to do anything, say yes right away. But you're continuing as Slate's film critic, as you should be. Yeah. People who miss the Gab Fest can still find me writing on film at Slate. And I'm cooking up an idea for a future book.

45:36So if that becomes anything, I'll be trumpeting it far and wide. But yeah, for now, I'm just a week to week movie critic as I have been for 20 years now. So still churning out the review minds.

45:48Michael Phillips:And I mean, one of the very best of the very best. So thank you for It's just giving us so much good stuff to read and to listen to, including, I hope, the last, you know, 45 minutes or so on this thing. So thanks. Thanks again for coming on. It was a pleasure. Oh, I'm just wild about Harry. And he's just wild about me. The heavenly blisses of his kisses fill me with ecstasy. After Dana and I talked, I realized that everything I love about her effortless seeming writing on film is inseparable from her conversational voice and actual conversation. What stuck with me and what Dana wrote about for Slate back in 2017 was her routine of settling into a screening, getting things in order internally before the film actually starts.

46:38Michael Phillips:This is what she wrote for Slate. When I get to a screening with a few minutes to spare before the film starts, I'll sometimes close my eyes, take a deep breath or two, and in some pre-verbal and staunchly atheistic form of prayer, ask for the blessing of the movie Gods, that is, of whoever or whatever it is that allows a group of strangers in a darkened room to collectively embark on the common dream that is a theatrically projected movie. That's what I wish, she wrote, for us all as viewers and reviewers this year, that we enter into each movie with a kind of renewed innocence, so that without abandoning our critical faculties, we leave a part of ourselves open to chance, fate, seduction, and surprise.

47:25Michael Phillips:I love that. As for Harry Cohn's ass, well, I mean, humans are humans. We all have our little tells. Cohn certainly did, and his came from a man who once said, I don't get ulcers, I give them. His came from a man who redecorated his office, just like Mussolini's, which he marveled at in person when Cohn graciously accepted an invitation from Mussolini to hang out in Rome in 1933. This was shortly after Il Duce saw and loved the pro-fascist Cohn-produced documentary, Mussolini Speaks. We don't all run movie studios, but we do all have are physical indicators when we're losing patience with a movie or just bored.

48:09Michael Phillips:On the other hand, my conversation with Dana reminded me of something a friend once told me about the best teacher she ever had. In class one day, everybody was discussing a play or a film or a book. I don't remember the particulars, but one student in this class just said, ah, it's boring, slow, dull. And there were nods of agreement in the room. And then the professor said, watch out for words like that, words like boring. Boring might just be a code word for a much more interesting reaction you're experiencing. You're responding to something that makes you bored, okay, or restless, yes. But maybe there's anger or serious frustration you're feeling, and that is worth looking into.

48:54Michael Phillips:You have to follow that to get to the real reasons why you're thinking and feeling what you're thinking and feeling. Or you can just follow Harry Cohn's method and listen to your glutes.

49:12Michael Phillips:The Movie Racket is produced by me, but mainly by Joe Dessau. Adam Kempinar and Sam Van Haugren executively produced The Movie Racket. Special thanks to Dana Stevens, who's writing on film you can find on slate.com, and whose Buster Keaton book, Cameraman, is widely available and just terrific, that's all. I dare you to email me at movieracket at filmspotting.net with your thoughts and whatever else you got. Thanks for listening. I'm Michael Phillips. This is a Film Spotting production.

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