Take Shelter with Matt Singer, Lone Star with Michael Phillips

30:48Lone Star is set on the U.S.-Mexico border and stars Chris Cooper as a small-town sheriff, Sam Deeds, who starts unearthing long-buried secrets after the remains of a former sheriff are discovered. A former sheriff who disappeared under mysterious circumstances, mysterious circumstances that may have involved Sam's father, Buddy, played by a very young Matthew McConaughey. The disappeared sheriff, he's played by Chris Christopherson. Elizabeth Pena also stars. I'm Sheriff Deed. Sheriff Deed is dead, honey. He's just Sheriff Junior. We found a body out by Fort McKenzie yesterday. You got any idea who might have put him there?

31:27A hell of a time to bring up old business. That bad, Jim. Didn't come out of a cereal box. Started digging holes in this county, no telling what will come up. You two saw it, didn't you? I'm going to find out one way or the other. With Josh Overseas, I invited Michael Phillips to join me for the screening and that conversation. Michael Phillips, everybody. Hey, folks. Hey, Adam. Hi, Michael. I'm wondering if everybody out there is really processing the ending of the film. We might, yeah, forget it. We might need to give them another minute or two. But I did want to explain my choice of this film, and maybe we can talk about the context in which you saw Lone Star for the first time.

32:14So June 1996 is when this film came out. I would have been home for the summer right before my senior year of college, sleeping on my parents' couch because I didn't have a bedroom anymore. And this is before I had written any film reviews or taken any film studies classes or film production classes. My liberal arts school didn't have any film classes. I knew I wanted to do something in film, though, at this point. And I was watching at the movies. religiously. I saw this review, I heard them talking about John Sayles, I didn't know anything about John Sayles. The movie looked fascinating. I wanted to see this film and of course it was not playing at my little two-screen movie theater in my small town in Iowa so I started scanning the Des Moines Register because we had to look at newspapers then.

33:09I'm dating myself, the internet was fledgling at this point. So I'm scanning the Des Moines Register constantly to see, is this going to come to Des Moines? Am I going to get to see Lone Star? I have to see this movie. And finally it did. It might have been like two months after it came out, maybe even three, but I eventually did see this movie. So wait, it wasn't streaming the week after it opened in theaters? No, no, no streaming. I do remember too being intrigued by the fact that I don't think I had seen Dazed and Confused at this point. Somehow I missed it when it came out. That was like Matthew McConaughey's first role.

33:46But A Time to Kill had come out or came out just a month after this movie. And it had been promoted. It was a big movie. It was the John Grisham novel. So I'd seen ads for that constantly. I think I saw that before I saw Lone Star. And what's funny, of course, is that that's the big breakout McConaughey role, and Chris Cooper's in that movie. and he's a supporting character. And I remember being, I don't know, just kind of surprised by the fact that it's so funny to see this little movie and Chris Cooper's the big star and Matthew McConaughey's in the supporting role. But I did finally get to see Lone Star and it turns out Roger and Gene were right.

34:23I thought it was a masterpiece. And I don't think I'd seen it somehow. I'd seen the entire film until last night, prepping for this and then watching it again. And now, holds up beautifully, at least I felt that it did. So how about you? When did you see Lone Star? What did you bring to it? So you, again, what year in college were you when you started? I would have been right before my senior year. So I was in fourth grade. So that makes you... No. No, but I did for RogerEbert.com, There's a piece running soon about a similar sort of Ebert and Siskel force of influence in my moviegoing life where when I was second or third year of college, this little film called My Dinner with Andre came out.

35:21And that was in 81, I think. And yeah, so we're half a generation-ish apart. On everything on that. Yeah, I saw Lone Star as a civilian. This was at a period of my life when I was writing about theater, which was about half my career. And seeing it again, it had been a similar spread of time since the second watch. And I'm very happy to see it again. Not just because it's politically, sociologically, just historically relevant in ways that I wish it weren't. In a way, what we're going through now, I don't even know what writer-directors who want to write truthfully and from the heart about what they see happening in their country.

36:19Now, what we're going to see in another few years, I hope. I hope something. I really don't want it to be nothing. It's not just that. I think watching this now, the thing that really hits me is that there's a word I call an adjective that one sort of grousey critic, and I don't remember which one it was. It wasn't Siskel or Ebert, obviously, but a critic who was sort of hot and cold on John Sayles used the word civilized to describe sort of the tone and the approach and the whole kind of humanist outlook here. And it was sort of meant to be kind of a mixed assessment. And now, seeing this tonight, I can only really see the value in it.

37:18And also just the craft of this writer. Yeah. The fact that, and his writing career is fascinating. I mean, he wrote all this really, some of it really entertaining trash for Roger Corman. Everything from Piranha to, I think, uncredited work on some Corman films, including, I think, Black Mama, White Mama, which we see playing at the drive-in in that scene, in the flashback. And the fact that he could actually juggle successfully 18 or so, it's 18 credited actors on the opening credits, basically 18 substantial roles without it seeming crazy overpacked to me and without it seeming ginned up for melodrama every second, God knows.

38:10And Sales knows what kind of filmmaker he is. He knows that he's a guy that will never be grabby enough for a big audience, for a big box office, boom. He cannot change his temperament. which is interesting coming out of the career, coming out of the writing career he had with Corman, which is all just like, can we just throw the trash at the screen, make it entertaining, make it cheap? But, I mean, look at all the great people that came out of working with Corman, everyone from Jonathan Demme to Scorsese to, you know, and here we have John Seals. Anyway, the writing is what really, let alone the acting, but that's a different story.

38:51Yeah, I think the writing, of course, you saw the clip from Siskel and Ebert. Gene talked about that, and I agree. I think if this was a film that just gave us the kind of murder mystery, Charlie Wade storyline and introduced us to a few of these characters, you know, we met Big O and we understood a little bit about his backstory because we need to, because he ends up being a major player in this mystery, it would have been fairly satisfying. But the fact that we get, I think Alex's word was tapestry. I mean, the fact that we get all of these characters, and there are a lot of movies, Michael, that try to pull that off, that try to weave together all these different characters, give us the big ensemble, and they never really have the depth, I think, that this movie has.

39:40And what you notice, I think, is John Sayles does a really good job of giving every character at least one scene where they get to do something that isn't just their introduction and then the thing they have to do for the plot. You know, they have a scene where we get to just, even with a character like Enrique, who we meet him early in the film when he delivers some food to the table with Hollis, and then, of course, at the end, where he shows up at Mercedes' house. But in addition to the other scenes where we see him planning the river crossing, he's waiting outside and he sees her car and he tells her how nice of a car she has.

40:21We just get to know a little bit about him in terms of his personality and a sense of kind of his aspirations. And every character has a moment like that, even as subtle as the Texas Ranger we meet, Ben Wetzel. He's just... I love that guy. He's so good. You know what we're talking about, the guy who comes to, I mean, it's like I've never seen less acting in my life. I know. And it's very subtle. He's there to deliver information, right, to move the story forward. But sales gives him that great story about Charlie Wade walking into his dad's hardware store and saying that he winked at me and I wet my pants.

41:00That gives that character some dimension. I'll give you another one. when he goes to meet with Roderick's widow. And just the fact that she's not just sitting on her porch waiting to deliver answers to his questions. She's playing the Game Boy, right? And there, too, is a merging of the past and present, this older woman playing with this Game Boy. But it just gives her something to do and to joke around about beyond just, again, serving the story. Every character has something like that. We get to see how they interact with each other and a sense of their interiority beyond just what they're doing there to serve the plot.

41:43Yeah, I suppose, I suppose if you had a car... Wait, you're disagreeing with him? No, no, no, not yet. Less than usual. This would be appropriate if he was. I mean, there are times when you're sort of aware of exactly what you're saying, that you're not getting, it's not plot forward in that way. It's plenty plotty. I mean, there's a couple of reversals that we can argue about the value of or whatever. but Sales was a big fan of Raymond Chandler, as are a lot of people, right? Who's a guy, you know, Philip Marlowe, you know, L.A. crime, all that. And plot was very busy in a Philip Marlowe mystery without really being as important as anything else going on.

42:38I mean, what Chandler was really into was just this weird sort of like, you know, kind of organism that was L.A. that he got to know in the 30s and 40s and the 50s, although I think they lived in La Jolla for a time. Anybody know La Jolla? Chandler wrote one great line on that. I saw a hand. He just said, La Jolla, it's nothing but a climate. That's what he said. But I think what Sales is doing here in Lone Star is kind of in tribute to something like Chandler because he, more than, I will say this, in more than a lot of his movies, I think sales does seem activated by being on location, really, really down where we're talking about.

43:25I mean, fictionalized names of the towns, but that just feels like it's doing a lot of the work we need done, and the actors kind of fill in from there. You can tell. And in terms of the writing, too, this whole business about algorithmic writing, where Netflix, if you're doing a project for Netflix, the note is always given that you have to, as a writer, you have to reiterate the stupid single one idea plot over and over and over, assuming people are texting while they're watching. They're not really looking, so you have to, you know, you can't, you know. And that, I mean, sales would be running a hardware store today if you had to put up on that stuff.

44:13Right. Yeah. You know, in terms of the screenplay, dialogue is usually, I don't know, I'd put it maybe fourth on the list of of things that criteria for a great screenplay. But there are some really good lines here. We got a great laugh out of it. The the great zinger when the character, I think it's Mikey, who says, yeah, it's always heartwarming to see a prejudice defeated by a deeper prejudice. Come on, that's a good line. But the writing may be the standout here, but where I think Lone Star might be a standout in Sale's career, and I've seen almost all of his films, but it's been a long time since I've seen a lot of Sale's films, so I don't know if someone can talk to me after if they've seen these films more recently.

44:54He's known as maybe the godfather of American independent cinema. You go back to a film like Return of the Sakaka 7 is often a film that's pointed to as the film that launched that movement. And the focus a lot of times, Michael, is on independent, in that two-word phrase, independent filmmaker, not so much on the filmmaking. He's not a filmmaker that's known for being ostentatious. He's never trying to draw a lot of attention to what he's doing with the camera. But when you think about this movie, and when you do think about it in the context of a Western, it makes me think a little bit of a filmmaker like Howard Hawks, who was another filmmaker who didn't move the camera a whole lot, but was always well regarded for being a guy who knew where to place the camera.

45:44Always knew where to put it in exactly the place it needed to be. And when I watch Lone Star, I feel like sales, one, he knows exactly where to put the camera. But then he also does some interesting things with the camera here, especially in those flashbacks and in the scene. That's what I want to talk about. The scene at the end. Before we even get to the kind of editing and the trick of going between past and present, which I want to get to. I just mean in some of the staging and the blocking of using some of those low angle shots when he needs to to emphasize the authority and the intensity, the intimidation of Charlie Wade.

46:22Cutting in just on a close up when he needs to really to amp up a scene. the canted angle he'll go to a tilted shot there at the end when when uh sam walks in and we're going to get finally the truth revealed and especially the with otis young otis there at the end right looking up at at charlie wade there there's some really effective subtle uses of the camera in addition to the the great editing yeah it took i mean sales never had a lot of money even when he had bigger budgets for him. I mean, this was a somewhat larger budget. And I think part of that is you can't really set up complicated, fluid, medium-length takes quickly.

47:07You cannot set those up and rehearse them. It takes half a day. And you're looking at days, like shooting schedules, like 19 days in a lot of his pictures, 23. I mean, amazing that he got anything done with that. But, yeah, what I really love about the potential narrative moments of like, no, wait, who? What? You know, there's a little of that here and there, which is almost entirely solved, in my view, by that idea, simple as can be, and not original, but really beautifully sort of layered in. Let's do the flashbacks this way this time. meaning for maximum clarity and also just sort of a poetic touch that does not, to me, seem like a tick or a gimmick, where you just have an actual without a break person in the presence talking about something, shift over here to the bar, and then there's a quick shuffle we don't see behind, OK, we'll remove this stuff, and then OK, younger so-and-so is there 40 years earlier.

48:15And that's a very kind of subliminally satisfying way of handling flashbacks for maximum clarity and something just a little different. For him, absolutely, that was his, I mean, there aren't that many camera moments, aha moments with sales in his entire career. And that might be wonderful. It's like that beautiful, you know, very simple idea, nicely done. And as cinematic as it is, I wonder, especially with your theater criticism background, I wonder if you thought it was theatrical. Because it made me think about moments on the stage where you might have something on the front of the stage, characters acting, and then they'll lights out on them and the spotlight to someone back here.

48:57And it might even be characters from their past or a future moment or something like that, where you're shifting to another part of the stage. And it feels like that sometimes here, even though it also is based on what makes it effective is the way they're hiding cuts effectively. right i mean this is this is based on the fact that the camera is moving and i think in almost every instance if not every instance there is a cut somewhere there to make it seamless and the reason why beyond i think just being inherently satisfying if you think about this film thematically right this is a place these are characters this is a story where the the present and the past cannot be separated from each other.

49:42Everybody is, at every moment, haunted by their past. And some are doing whatever they can to try to move past it, but they can't. And some, by the end of the film, we see them making efforts, too, like in the case of Delmore and his father, right? There is some attempts at reconciliation and change. And even Mercedes moves forward a little bit. And we see her helping those characters at the end. But they can't be separated. And I'm going to use a phrase that the bartender uses in the film. Sales, I think, is exploring in this film this idea of lines of demarcation. And if you can't have that separation, if there is no line of demarcation between the past and present, then there can't be a line of demarcation in the editing either.

50:35There can't be that clear cut. There can't be that clear separation between the past and present. It has to be seamless. And we need to feel like the past and present are constantly in dialogue with each other. And I think the editing pulls that off. And what I especially love, Michael, is then we get a moment where the past and present are literally in dialogue with each other when they're by the river. Right. Cooper. Because then Chris Cooper actually answers his own question and says, me neither. Right. Right. It's the two themes sort of form the two streams into the river where it's like past and present.

51:09The ghosts of the past, how much can we deny him or bury him or keep him buried without going crazy as a son, a family, a society, all of it. It's all there in this story. And just the eternal gulf, as Shaw said, George Bernard Shaw, It was an eternal gulf between parents and children. And the Brits and other countries always thought, looked down on American drama a little bit, saying, eh, the usual, you know, family stuff about the closet, the phalluses in the closet, because, of course, that doesn't happen in England. You know, nobody... But, you know, it's the great quote from Faulkner, right?

51:53I think it was originally Requiem for a Nun. He said, you know, the past is never dead. It's not even past. and that was in 51 he wrote that and then i mean o 'neill eugene o 'neill long day's journey tonight often the great play about about the past just not able to you know you cannot shake it you cannot bury it um the past is the present isn't it it's the future too we all try to lie out of that but life will not let us and that's that's sales from the beginning i mean it's a caucus seven you know how can you resolve your sort of counterculture revolutionary recent past with your complacent presence uh even brother who's seen brother from another planet here really good i love that film i just resaw that uh and that i mean that begins with that first i mean i i defy anybody not to stick with that movie past the first five minutes because this opening where this interstellar you know played by joe morton joe morton yeah from the colonel the colonel yeah lands and he ends up just landing right by the Statue of Liberty in the river and he's sort of flooded with this sort of supernatural ability to hear and imagine voices of the past in Ellis Island he's over there and it's just like wow he never really shook this theme he's just found ways over decades of filmmaking to revisit it and And he never, I agree with you on Lone Star, I don't think Seals ever made a better mosaic film.

53:29And he made a lot of them. Believe it or not, we're actually already pretty much at 20 minutes, so we kind of have to wrap this up. Let's do five minutes. Yeah, at least. Let's go. All right, all right, let's go. Yeah, he's given us the we can keep talking sign. You know that's dangerous with film spotting, though, Alex. This means we can keep talking, right? Wouldn't you do that? Yeah. You can just talk from the tech. Well, maybe we can get to the ending of the film a little bit, and not just the twist necessarily, though we can talk about that too, or the double twist, if you will. But what on these rewatches, having now watched it back-to-back nights as we both have, what surprised you, if anything?

54:10What did you discover on rewatch? For me, and this is where I really would love to hear after I speak very briefly to this, just how many great, small, medium-sized, not just scenes as written, but performances there are in this. And how my occasional struggle with John Seale's work, less so here than almost any film, about whether or not the motor is, if the motor's a little less than I want sometimes in terms of the story narrative. But all that seems to be kind of solved by the next moment when I realize, good line, good acting, good casting. You know, it's like I would, you know, look, we see a lot of movies in a year.

55:04I mean, after five in a row that doesn't have either, You know, you just start thinking there was a time when it was a little easier to find something that really was like well written. You know, whether it's for you or not, or whether it's taking on something interesting that happens to be have this weird sort of unfortunate sinister layer of relevance to today. You know, it's but the damn thing holds together. You know, so I mean, who's for the first timers? I'd like to hear from any any one or two first time viewers of this thing. Right back right there. We're going to give him a mic. what would you like who's playing who here michael what's that what would you like to hear them chime in on well i just i just what they what they felt about the first funeral like let's let's hear what you thought yeah hi i i feel like it's very interesting especially now with like paul thomas anderson like putting out another film like one battle after another and like seeing a lot of like magnolia in this movie which is like a very interesting thing and like again with that idea of like the past not being through with you, kind of that famous quote by William H.

56:08Macy in that movie, and just kind of like seeing these like small independent things really like channeling up in the 90s, and some of them getting lost, and I'm really grateful for highlighting this because I've never heard of this movie or gone sales before. Wonderful. What's your name? Well, thank you. Nell. Nell. Thank you. I'm so glad you said that because as Michael was talking and using some of those quotes, I was thinking of that line, and I couldn't place it. I had that in my head. and it's that Magnolia line. I did want to talk about the surprise for me. One of them was that as well, just thinking about Ron Canada as Otis.

56:45I love watching in this film. And Joe Morton, but Elizabeth Pena, who sadly passed away cancer in, I think, 2014, just doesn't have a false moment at all ever in this film. But then I will say about the ending, Michael, I think the first time I saw this film, I was so busy processing it, the revelation and the ramifications of it, that I didn't really think about how perfectly it does tie together all of these ideas we're talking about, about the past and present. And she says a line about starting from scratch, which is echoing something that said earlier in the film, right, between Otis and Chet, his grandson, where he says that his dad says you start from scratch when you're born.

57:35And so this is that whole concept of are you able to or are you someone who can separate yourself from your past? Are you exactly who you create yourself to be or are you a product of your environment and your heritage? Can you carve out your own legacy? And I don't think sales, the great thing about sales as a filmmaker is he's not setting a line of demarcation. He's not a simple enough writer or filmmaker to say it is one or the other. He's challenging all of those. He's challenging that idea. He wants to think about that concept. And at the end, she's saying, we are, for the sake of our relationship and happiness, we are going to pretend that the life before doesn't matter.

58:24We are going to try to start from scratch. And just on that point about lines of demarcation, the character, the private, right, who when they're talking with the colonel, she mentions that she wants to stay in the army. And why does she want to stay in the army? And it's because the world outside is chaos. She likes having the rules. She needs the lines drawn, right? And he understands that. But back to the ending, they are going to try to move forward in their way. And that line, forget the Alamo, is so great because it's kind of the movie in a nutshell in terms of this idea of myths. Well, that's also, that's the other moment I think really inspired.

59:06I mean, you know, it's written, directed, and edited by Seals, right? Yes. And that's a really astute final 30 seconds. To have that line not hammered with a close-up, just say it, you believe it. Say it like you just thought it. It's a thought, and then the camera goes back to a different shot, 40 feet further back, and then further back, cut, boom. That's where you go, oh, that's right, he's a really good editor, too. I'd love to hear one more first-timer's reaction, just quickly. Hi, my name is John. The one thing that really stuck out to me, first of all, how relevant all this stuff with the immigrants are.

59:51It was just incredible. but it's the genre. I couldn't, for the life of me, place it. I kept thinking I was falling into a Western, and then all of a sudden I was in a romance, and then I was in a mystery. What do you guys say about that genre of this film? It's the beauty of it. Yeah, I mean, you could get fancy and call it like a neo-Western noir. But he has come back often, far more than to a detective genre. He's done, Sayles has always gravitated toward Westerns of different types and often border related. He's filmed both sides of the border. And he's done a lot of TV work. Some of it's been Westerns.

1:00:42I think that's where, I think he's compelled to find out how do we get beneath this sort of old mythic easy black hat white hat thing and just get into some issues that are worth talking about digging into you know just just sort of the the racial animus and and prejudice and and you know politics all of it you know why not i mean he does it with plenty of modern days things like city of hope everyone's seen that uh similar kind of mosaic structure but this is a very satisfying i think this one this film we you saw the better film you know if we'd seen city of the hole we wouldn't have be half as good a discussion so just a couple things to to close on food for thought michael you can see if you think i'm crazy here or not just a few things i i noted tonight maybe an example of what i'm trying to argue that sales is potentially theorizing here this idea of not separating purely from the past but a path forward with the past in mind the very opening of the film what what do we find out that the characters those two characters are doing he he makes art out of old bullets right old bullets but transforming them into something new.

1:02:04I love the fact that, and we get a great line at the end, right? I love the fact that everybody says this idea of myths, everybody keeps repeating, your mother was a saint, right? Just like with Buddy. It's just so easy for everybody to just keep repeating the same line over and over again. It almost becomes meaningless because that's just what they know, and they just keep falling back on that. Okay, the drive-in. The fact that it ends at the drive-in and the fact that we get a flashback earlier at the drive-in where they're They're dragged out of the car, right? And she even makes a comment about when does the picture start and I think I'm gonna argue that sales is being a little tricky there that like the old story is over The old picture has ended and the new picture gets to move forward right that story is ended the drive-in's not showing that movie anymore right and they get to start a new one and then here's my last thing and i did notice this last night and here again in that very first flashback when hollis is telling the story of of charlie wade and and buddy deeds he the story ends with buddy saying as charlie wade exits with hollis it ends with Buddy saying, uno más cerveza, por favor, right?

1:03:27And then we come out of the flashback with Hollis saying that line. Hollis is telling them that that's what Buddy said. But at that point, Buddy is very clearly not, I'm sorry, Hollis is very clearly in the past, not in the bar. Hollis as the way sales has shot it Hollis in the past would not have heard him say that line so is that the myth making and we that's that's a sign sales is sneakily showing us that that Hollis doesn't really know the whole truth because he's he's fabricating that because he would have never heard that or did sales just make a mistake or is it continuity or I don't know.

1:04:14Food for thought. Excellent questions and a good audience. Thank you. And a great pleasure to see a movie here. Thank you. Thank you, Alex, and the Department of Cultural Affairs. This was so much fun. Thank you for coming out. From this past November, that was me and Michael Phillips in conversation about John Sale's great 1996 film, Lone Star. It followed a screening of the film that was part of the city of Chicago's 50th anniversary celebration of Siskel and Ebert. My thanks to Alex Vasquez, everyone in the Chicago Film Office and the Department of Cultural Affairs for inviting me and inviting Film Spotting to be part of that celebration.

1:04:50That is our show. You can find me and Film Spotting on Instagram, Facebook, Letterboxd, of course, YouTube, where you can watch our video episodes. All of those platforms, you can find us at Film Spotting. Josh is at Larson on Film. Film Spotting is independently produced and listener supported. You can support us by joining the FilmSpotting family at FilmSpottingFamily.com. You get to listen early and ad-free. Plus, you get a weekly newsletter, monthly bonus episodes, and access to the entire show archive. You can also get merch by visiting FilmSpotting.net slash shop. T-shirts, stickers, magnets, hoodies, you name it, all there.

1:05:33FilmSpotting.net slash shop. film spotting is produced by golden joe de so and sam van hallgren without sam and golden joe this show wouldn't go our production assistant is sophie kempenar and special thanks to everyone at wbez chicago more information is available at wbez.org for film spotting i'm adam kempenar thanks for listening this conversation can serve no purpose anymore goodbye

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