Together Review, Sunset Boulevard at 75, AngelHeaded Hipster

22:06Josh Larsen:And at odds with what Franco is trying to do too. I wanted to ask you this, and I don't know how this played in your alone viewing in the theater, but at what point did you find this purposely funny, unsure whether it wanted to be funny or not funny? You shouldn't be laughing, but you were. And it relates to Franco because the level of shouting he's frequently doing here to me feels a little bit like sweaty trying to make something funny. And it works in one scene. The clip I believe we heard where they're contemplating with this sawzah actually having to cut their own flesh. This isn't spoiling anything, I don't think.

22:50Josh Larsen:And he notices, you're right-handed. And I think she's got it. She has to have it in the other hand. And that to me felt like, okay, that's a good line. He delivers it with like exasperation. It's the ridiculousness of this situation. And we can laugh in terms of release. Um, there are a couple other moments though, uh, one involving her hair, which struck me as unintentionally funny. I wasn't sure how to, how to gauge his performance. And I will say too, I think some of the effects, the special effects, although they're practical and I always appreciate that were a bit dodgy to me. And that was fell into the same bucket of, should I be laughing at this?

23:31Josh Larsen:Am I meant to be laughing at this? Is it because of how it looks and it shouldn't look that way. But anyways, in general, where did you land on, you know, together as a comedy?

23:39Adam Kempenaar:I didn't have any issues with unintentional humor and I didn't have any issues with bad special effects until one moment near the end of the film. And without getting into spoilers, and I promise we won't, I will mention something else about that scene. So you'll know what I'm referring to, at least there, Josh. And I think other listeners who have seen the film will know what I'm referencing. And I even have a hard time, honestly, talking about Franco's performance and separating it from Brie. I just see them as such a pair in this film. And I like the performance. I feel like it's a unified performance in this movie.

24:17Adam Kempenaar:But as far as the comedy, nowhere in this marketing of this film have I seen it tagged or referenced as a comedy. And that makes total sense, but I do think it has a lot of humor to it. And I even used the word absurd earlier. I think Shanks and company get the inherent humor in some of these scenarios, as you said, even a bathroom quickie that results in getting stuck together. That's funny. You mentioned it. I never thought I'd say this about a scene involving a sawzah and human flesh, but it's neither played for humor or horror yet it's both awkwardly funny and distressing and when i say play josh what i mean is i don't feel like and i watched that scene again we played it coming in right i don't feel like it's either ramped up for comedy's sake or ramped up for terror and gore's sake they're just letting the natural tension of the scene and the suspense of are they really going to do this?

25:20Adam Kempenaar:Are they really going to cut their flesh? And the dynamics of their relationship, like how they naturally talk as a couple, the way they banter with each other, what they know about each other's idiosyncrasies and their failings as people, that's all coming to bear in that scene. So without ramping it up, it is funny. And if I was in a theater with other people, maybe we would have been laughing. I was laughing and yet I was also terrified watching it. So I think that's a really effective scene. I think it translates to other set pieces too.

25:54Josh Larsen:That is, let me just say quickly, that is the highlight for me. I think that scene works perfectly in terms of balancing tone, even performance. I'll give you, as I said, Franco's line delivery and, and the pacing and the editing there too. The way that scene comes to a conclusion is, is just chef's kiss. So, so yeah, I wish the movie had had more of that, But I do agree. That's that's a great scene.

26:17Adam Kempenaar:Another good one, though, for me is when they are not too long after that, very intentionally sleeping in separate rooms. And this force sends them flying towards each other. And Franco's being dragged across the floor. I really like the filmmaking here. And I'll give you one specific instance why he's being dragged across the floor in what I have to assume is a very clear homage to The Exorcist. Brie is doing a spider walk, essentially, not downstairs, but out the door towards him. And it does also seem like the way they're being led, the way their bodies are being led, it's as if certain pieces are meant to fit together intentionally like puzzle pieces that they're trying to fight against.

27:04Adam Kempenaar:And what I like in particular, Josh, is the use of sound here. And I think there are some other nice filmmaking touches throughout that show that Shanks knows what he's doing with the camera. But the sound, the way that sequence starts, they go to bed and close the door. And then what happens next? It's darkness and we hear sound. We hear the sound of him being dragged. And that cues us in that, oh, no, something terrible is happening, but we don't know what. And so we're anticipating the lights being turned on, so to speak, figuring out what's actually happening. But it also makes sense because he doesn't know.

27:39Adam Kempenaar:He hasn't woken up yet. His eyes haven't opened yet, right? He's just being dragged across the floor. So we're in the same situation as viewers that he's in, where he has to open his eyes. He's just waking up to the sound of him being dragged in the dark. So I really do like that. I will say though, Josh, all of that established. The humor surprised me and surprised me in a good way. I'm not sure that when you add in all of the other elements, and I do want to talk about some of these more, when you add in all those other elements that are introduced into the plot, I'm not sure that they find the right balance.

28:16It's a little bit of too much for me.

28:18Josh Larsen:And I don't want to explain exactly what I hinted at this cult subplot. And let's just say that it does take on more prominence as the movie goes on. It also, to me, it goes back to my simplicity idea. It strikes me as wholly unnecessary. This movie, if it had devoted the time it gives to the cult elements, for me, to the relationship dynamics. just given all that screen time and moved over and given us more scenes of them as a couple, even more scenes just being there in the countryside before they drink the water. That would have enabled the movie to be more focused and richer and deeper. So I think that was, and the other issue I had with the cult element is just some of the logic that goes into it as well.

29:09Josh Larsen:Again, not being nitty gritty about horror movies. I give them a lot of leeway. I know, I think one that we split on was It Follows. And you had many logical concerns, some of which were valid. I agree. One big overarching one. Yeah. And I agree it's a valid question, but for me, that movie engrossed me to the point where I was like, yeah, okay, but whatever. Here, it became increasingly hard to say, yeah, whatever. I agree with you.

29:34Adam Kempenaar:And so much so, Josh, that maybe I'm being too apologetic, though I'm not willing to quite go this far. I at least want to throw it out there. There's a part of me. I have this in my notes. The more I thought about it, I wondered, it's so underdeveloped. In fact, the logic is so faulty in some ways and so flimsy that I actually wonder if that's part of the joke that they want us to pick up on. And if it is, is it too clever for its own good, where there's no mystery to it. If you think about it, a lot of other films would have actually built up to the reveal. And there is a bit of a reveal, don't get me wrong, but this has a prologue.

30:17Adam Kempenaar:We know ahead of what the characters do exactly what's happening. And we're not idiots so that when we see certain symbols and everything and we see what's in that cave, we kind of know just based on other movies that we've seen what has to be happening. And then we hear a conversation that occurs and we're like, okay, we know what's going on. It almost feels to me like they want us to have a meta experience where we're ahead of the characters. We know based on other films that we've seen, other horror films, that the joke is actually, no, nothing's a mystery. It's exactly what it appears to be.

30:53And we're not even going to build it out. It's possible.

30:55Josh Larsen:I don't think the payoff, if that was the intent, is worth it. And also, I did sense a desire, without this cult element, you wouldn't get the ending we get, which I'll say doesn't go substance big, but feels in that vein. Feels like it's trying to swing that big. I think of other recent horror movies like Malignant or a horror movie like Barbarian. We're going to be discussing the director's follow-up film, Weapons, next week. And Barbarian similarly builds to this gonzo-gorzo climax. And in some ways, it feels like together, at some point, the filmmakers wanted to head that direction as well.

31:45Josh Larsen:and just having a movie about this couple might not have enabled that possibility in the way they wanted to, but you add in these elements that the cult brings in and maybe we can get there. Again, I don't know. Maybe it was a more holistic process as a viewer. That is what it feels like. And it's still, that's fine if you want to go there. But even something like The Substance, which I liked better, had some reservations about, at least it had complete focus and commitment on what it wanted to be about, right? The horrors of aging as a woman in Hollywood. And it took that as far as it could go.

32:17Josh Larsen:And it was insane how far it took it, but it did the work before it got there, um, was my feeling on it. And, and together the work is a little, the homework is a little messy and all over the place.

32:31Adam Kempenaar:So I want to pinpoint a couple of things in particular, when we talk about maybe the world building or some of these other elements. And for me, it might be a downside or a byproduct of actually devoting as much time as they do. And it's a positive to Tim and Millie and their relationship. I know you see it differently, but that world building then doesn't feel quite as robust. There is that prologue I mentioned. Again, I'm dancing around all the details. I promise I'm not going to spoil anything, but there's the prologue. There's a cave. There's a missing couple. I don't think we've mentioned there's a pair of dogs.

33:05Adam Kempenaar:This all connects to a cult. They all factor into the story in major and in some minor ways. And when I do try to envision a version of together that leans into these elements even more, I don't necessarily see a better movie. I see one weighed down by a lot of plot, but the version we get also does feel, as we've discussed, too flimsy. And there's a reveal. Here's a minor one, or actually a bigger one for me. I'll get to the minor one. There's a reveal near the end involving the missing couple that only opens up more questions than answers. And not the good kind of questions. The wait, what variety of questions?

33:48Adam Kempenaar:The questions where you start worrying about the strength of the foundation the story is built on rather than opening up new ideas to consider. Did not get that at all. That's also the same moment I was referring to earlier when I talked about the effects being perhaps questionable. Here's the minor one. The only direct reference to the dogs from the prologue, which by the way, felt to me like an overt homage to the thing, John Carpenter. The only direct reference to the dogs from the prologue happens about midway through when things are really kind of starting to get truly weird for Tim and Millie.

34:25Adam Kempenaar:She's a teacher and one of her young students, this young girl leaves a troubling drawing on her desk for Millie to see. And it opens the door for us to consider something very traumatic involving a character who is otherwise a complete non-factor that the movie is using just to add a little bit of ominousness. and it's not ominous. It doesn't serve any purpose. And here again, it's a minor issue. It's a nitpick perhaps, but it does connect to a larger one for me that I wanted to open up and see what you thought of it. And I kind of already know what you think of it because I know that you think overall the movie just has too much going on and this falls into that.

35:09Tim's trauma,

35:10Adam Kempenaar:what he is dealing with coming into the issues that they start dealing with in the story proper. The recent loss that he has suffered and the grief he is still wrestling with, he's lost his parents, we learn. And this is information given early on in the movie. This isn't uncommon in horror movies to have a character who has recently experienced a loss or gone through something painfully traumatic. Parental loss, I think about midsummer right away. And it can be very effective. It can be powerful. Sometimes the horror they're facing is a manifestation or it can be read as a manifestation of these feelings and this trauma in some way.

35:52Adam Kempenaar:From a relationship standpoint too, this grief adds to Tim's rudderlessness. I think it's impacting his sexual desire. Once we get some insight, we get more insight into the exact nature of what he saw, what he experienced, it becomes clearer. And I think it's even articulated at one point in the screenplay why he would fear, legitimately fear, not just be skeptical of or be hesitant about entering into marriage or long-term commitment, but really fear the idea of being bound to someone forever. And sex, sex is going to be seen as part of the gateway to that commitment. Still, Josh, the scene he describes is grisly.

36:41Adam Kempenaar:And I wonder if it doesn't undercut the movie and my defense of it in some way, the way the filmmakers have stacked the deck. And this concept is introduced that the movie is definitely having some fun with. Plato talks about it in the symposium. Aristophanes raises this whole notion that we all were originally creatures that had four arms and four legs and Zeus thought we were too powerful and he split us and we're all really searching for our soulmates. That's the other main conceit of this film, really. Soulmates isn't just a concept that comes from romantic comedies. What if it's real? That's what this movie is, basically.

37:23Adam Kempenaar:That's the question it's posing. and that of course ties to the central anxiety about commitment as well and the idea of it being real and universal those are not only enough to build the movie around but arguably that's that's kind of the entire point we all face loss sure but most of us hopefully hopefully never go through or never confront anything as horrific as he does which doesn't make tim then representative of all of us. It actually dilutes the power of the universality of the concept of the film in some way by adding this element of the really horrific trauma that he's faced.

38:03Josh Larsen:So I'm going to go the other way and say that is the one sub plot, sub thread that I do think the movie that is connected to the movie's main concern, which is relational anxiety. As you described. I think you described it well. And if the movie had spent more time connecting those two, forgetting about the cult, forgetting about, I mean, it nods. I'll just say it nods to like non-binary implications here and there, which are also potentially very interesting. But if you're not going to really explore them, just don't bother with that. But if it had just kept with that subplot, which is Tim's trauma, I think you're right.

38:44Josh Larsen:It's very directly related. The The grisly element, and again, I'm dancing around spoilers, the grisly detail we discover is a direct parallel for his greatest fear relationally and the actual physical reality of what begins happening to them. So I think there's a great horror movie there, but the family trauma is sort of dropped about halfway through. After we get that reveal, I don't know if it's even referenced again, and it doesn't have to be talked about. I don't even think the filmmaking returns to it again. I don't know if we get another flashback or a dream sequence. Again, maybe those aren't the right choices to make.

39:30Josh Larsen:Those are kind of cliches. but some way visually even, maybe even the eyes that you mentioned, Adam, somehow bring that back so that we're connecting Tim's trauma with what we're now seeing in the latter half of the film. And that's where I do feel, I'm usually one who defends horror trauma. I know a lot of people these days roll their eyes as soon as there's a story that, oh, it's a horror movie, but it's really about grief. Oh, it's a horror movie, but it's really about this terrible thing that happened. I think those are instrumental ways to make a horror movie. The problem is if you just drop it in as a device, right?

40:12Josh Larsen:With any sort of filmmaking device. If you're just going to say, well, I'm going to kickstart my movie and try to give it more importance by referencing this and then going to kind of forget about it. Yes, that's cheap. It does happen occasionally, maybe more so recently than it did before. But I still think there are good horror movies being made today that take the trauma seriously. It's a through line through the character's experience. And that makes them richer for me. I see what you're saying about the particular experience that Tim had not being universal. Thank goodness. But I think that doesn't bother me as much because it does kind of take it into this really disturbing realm that horror sometimes can push things.

40:55Josh Larsen:I'm okay with that. Again, for me, it's just pair away some of these other potential avenues that you kind of tiptoe on and instead focus on Tim's past, how the body horror reflects that, and how it reflects the current relationship. I think they could have had a really strong horror film there.

41:15Adam Kempenaar:And for me, it's more something I'm still considering. I'm not really sure where I land on that question, but it's not so much a matter of me wanting the filmmakers to invoke that trauma more consistently or again throughout the film. I always felt like I understood, Josh, that it was underpinning his behavior and Tim's actions. It might come back to that balance question. And even what you said about there being a really compelling horror film in there, the one you wanted to see, I think you're right. Even though I like some elements of the humor, there's something about that antithetical nature of the absurdity and the cult elements and the flimsiness of some of the areas this film goes against the real terror of that trauma that's introduced.

42:06Adam Kempenaar:And you know what, if the movie had actually gone even to go back to your setup question, if the movie had really leaned into that even more, that might be a film, ironically, I'd enjoy even more, even though it might actually be a tougher sit. Yeah, tougher watch. Yeah, probably. You know, Together is out now in wide release. If you see it and agree or disagree with our thoughts or have any other comments you'd like to share, we'd love to hear from you feedback at filmspotting.net. Whiskey for the pain.

42:38Josh Larsen:Listening is the number one thing you can do to support an independently produced show like ours. There are a couple of other things you could do. You could take a minute to give us a rating or a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Doesn't matter if you're brand new or have been around for 20 years. Every new review helps us reach new listeners. Another way to support us? Join the FilmSpotting family at FilmSpottingFamily.com. Thank you very much to Family Plus member Jake Thurman in Indianapolis. If you want to follow Jake on Letterboxd, his handle is Mr. Underscore Thurman.

43:12Adam Kempenaar:And as we're going to hear in a moment, he really does need to be called Mr. Thurman. Josh, Jake says, I found film spotting in 2012 and I was devouring podcasts while remodeling a house in my summer off from teaching and I was instantly hooked. I'm shamefully just now signing up for the family. I added film history and film criticism to my course load as a high school teacher in 2015, and I've used film spotting as a resource many times. So I guess I also kept listening to be better at my job.

43:39Josh Larsen:I mean, Jake, it sounds like you should be getting your school to pay for your film spotting family membership. Good point. If you're putting it to use at work, I mean, come on. Yeah. Professional development.

43:50Adam Kempenaar:I'm sure their budget is about as big as mine is right now. We need to compare our syllabi for film criticism. A favorite review or segment. I really enjoy the anniversary reviews of older films and the sacred cows. The longer end of year review episodes are also something I always look forward to every winter. A review we got wrong. The original Roadhouse is a masterpiece and Josh has rarely been more wrong.

44:16Josh Larsen:A masterpiece, Jake. Yes. Okay. Yes. Well, that's fine. Mr. Thurman. Hey, I can take it if I learned. What did I learn from Roadhouse? Pain doesn't hurt. Pain don't hurt. hurt pain don't hurt pain don't hurt bring it on jake a letterbox top four for mr thurman cool

44:32Adam Kempenaar:hand luke do the right thing heat and et you can't argue with that that looks good favorite movie he revisited recently hot fuzz and it's still perfect a random film or filmmaker he loves david lowry and both a ghost story and green night a movie jake credits with becoming a cinephile i fell in love with watching movies with et indiana jones and marty mcfly as a kid in the 80s seeing pulp fiction, probably way too early at 13 was the first time I realized that I loved thinking and talking about movies also as much as watching them. And finally, a book about movies or movie making. This is about as impossible as the Letterboxd Four favorites, but I would say that I recently read and really liked Adam Naiman's books on the filmography of the Coen brothers and on the filmography of Paul Thomas Anderson.

45:17Adam Kempenaar:Good stuff. From Mr. Thurman, thank you so much for writing in and for your support of the show. If you, like Mr. Thurman, would like to be a family member and support us here on Film Spotting, you can visit filmspottingfamily.com and get all the details and all the benefits of being a Film Spotting family member, including our monthly bonus shows like the recent conversation about Burn After Reading. We just dropped into their family feeds, Josh. We have upcoming here in August, a bit of blind spotting, three candidates that family members are voting on right now. It's either going to be Gaslight, Stray Dog, or Rocky Horror Picture Show.

46:02Adam Kempenaar:And no, we didn't just pick those all randomly. There are reasons behind all three of those choices. And then in September, we've got trivia spotting. So always something fun going on with the Film Spotting family. Again, filmspottingfamily.com.

46:20he was the pioneer of the glam rock movement he deserved universal atonement he was the biggest selling poet in britain and he loved that it's time for adam's documentary corner i don't know you want to should we call it adam's alcove you like that better documentary alcove yeah that sounds more pretentious exactly you got you got to have that pipe and and the cardigan when you're

46:44Josh Larsen:sitting in there. That clip was Ringo Starr. It comes from the new music doc, Angel Headed Hipster, the songs of Mark Bolin and T-Rex. And if that name and that band, if you're drawing a blank there, I've got three words for you. Bang, a gong. And no, I'm not going to sing to help you out any further. Adam, this documentary, which is currently playing in very limited release and is scheduled for a September VOD release. It's both a profile of Bolin, who's credited with launching the glam rock movement and who died at 29 in 1977. And it's a document of a Bolin tribute album that was released back in 2020.

47:22Josh Larsen:Artists as diverse as you two, Kesha, Father John Misty, and Nick Cave appear. Were you a Bolin fan before this, Adam? And if not, did the documentary make you one?

47:34Adam Kempenaar:That fandom or lack of fandom is really what drove my interest in seeing Angel Headed Hipster. in addition to the fact that I'm just a sucker for documentaries about artists and especially documentaries about musicians. If I want to appear credible as a music fan and musician, Josh, I can always point to the fact that the first albums I ever listened to and loved, the first needle drop I ever had on my first stereo as a young kid with a record player and a cassette deck and speakers in my bedroom were my parents' copies of The Beatles, Rubber Soul, and The Wino. Unquestionably, two of the greatest albums ever.

48:16Adam Kempenaar:Of course, I didn't really get that as that young kid. I just thought the songs were really catchy, which of course they were. But it is also true that it would be a good eight to 10 years after that before I would realize that that Paul McCartney should be my bass playing idol and not Nikki six of Motley Crue, but so be it. Nikki six of Motley Crue was my first music explains a lot. And in interviews, it might in interviews, whenever he'd get asked, because I read all those heavy metal magazines when I was in junior nine what were those called again metal edge metal edge parade circus circus that's the one i was thinking of whenever he'd get asked about his biggest influences mark bolan and t-rex would immediately come up and it was true for all those hair metal rockers of course it was they they weren't really imitating bowie nobody could really sound or look like david bowie but with the poofed up hair and the makeup and the crunchy guitars, they were all kind of doing Mark Bolin.

49:26Adam Kempenaar:Despite that, I never dug deeper. I knew Bang a Gong and that was about it. Maybe Sam can help me out here a little bit and give us a little sound underneath. The song, 20th Century Boy.

49:46Adam Kempenaar:I'm not sure I even knew the name of it. I just know the riff. We all know the riff. It's been used in a ton of movies. I think it's one of the greatest rock riffs of all time. And yet, as I said, I'm not sure I knew the name of the song. And if you asked me, I probably would have needed five to ten guesses to tell you it was Mark Bolin. Somehow he's just been off my radar despite knowing the great influence he had on a lot of my idols as a kid. So this was my chance to atone for my adolescent ignorance. It's a very straightforward documentary. Boland's prolificness and eclectic spirit beg for a documentary as daring as his look and sound but while the film plays it safe it reminds us why the rocker poet's influence still reverberates that's what I learned I didn't know he was as prolific as he was I didn't know he was the poet that he was I wasn't even fully aware of the eclectic spirit Josh, all of those things are things I didn't learn ultimately from the documentary I kind of thought he was this flash in the pan and this light that was snuffed out too soon, like a lot of rockers are.

51:00Adam Kempenaar:And I didn't know why so many musicians revered him the way that they did. It's archival footage, it's talking heads mixed with footage of the making of an album where they have artists performing and recording some of his songs. And that element isn't very revealing. U2, for example, does a cover of Bang-A-Gong. And unfortunately, there's nothing very interesting or personal about what The Edge has to say about Bang-A-Gong or what they bring to the version of the tune that they do. and I'd say that's true for most of the musical renditions we get in the movie, but then you also get one like the song Nick Cave performs and it's really kind of wondrous.

51:51Adam Kempenaar:I am glad I saw it and I'm glad Boland's getting the exposure he deserves and I will say we're dropping this show in people's podcast feeds on Friday, August 8. if you are in New York, because this is getting a limited release here just in New York and LA. It actually came out in the UK a few years back. So some of our listeners, Josh, may have already seen this back in 2022 or 23, but it's just getting released here now. And again, that VOD release on September 5th. But the Roxy Cinema in New York tonight, Friday, 7.15, the director, Ethan Silverman, is going to be doing a Q &A with John Cameron Mitchell.

52:34Adam Kempenaar:of Hedwig and the Angry Inch fame. And Mitchell has a performance. He has a song on the album in the movie as well. That's certainly something I would want to participate in or go see if I was in New York. So I wanted to make sure I mentioned that with that film coming out now, New York, LA, and rolling out to a few other cities over the next week or two.

53:02Josh Larsen:Next week on the show, Adam, It looks like we're doing more horror. Are you up for this? Weapons. It's from Barbarian. I think I'm up for it. Okay, good. It's from Barbarian director, Zach Kreger, referenced that film in our discussion of Together. Basic idea here. Talk about just one premise that's going to hook you. Kids mysteriously flee their houses late at night and don't return. Pretty good cast, too, including Julia Garner and Josh Brolin. So we'll have a review of Weapons. also you're back on the music doc beat my it's yes never over jeff buckley is opening in limited releases this weekend you're going to check it out and report back on that now that is an artist i can say i'm truly a fan of so that will be a little bit of a different viewing experience all right next week for that as well as some massacre theater and maybe a horror themed top five from the archives to pair with weapons.

53:59Josh Larsen:We're still thinking about that for a current show schedule. Just go to filmspotting.net slash episodes. Are you ready, Josh? For cinema interrupt us for this? I am. Believe it or not. I am. I'm not doing any more viewing research. All my notes are in order. No, I'm not going to watch the player for what the fourth or fifth time in the last three months. I will when interrupt us begins on August 11. That's our first day when we watch the player in its entirety at Chicago's Gene Siskel Film Center. And then we're going to get back together three days in a row after that through the 14th to go through the film, a scene at a time anyone can participate with a comment or a question.

54:39Josh Larsen:So yeah, it's last call to get your tickets. You can purchase a four-day package if you want to do the whole thing, or if you can only make it for one of the days, just pop in. Single-day tickets will be available. Again, Cinema Interruptus, the player at the Siskel Film Center, August 11 to 14, siskelfilmcenter.org slash interruptus is where you can get your tickets. Well, it's time to say goodbye, Betty. Been so nice traveling with you. Thank you, Irene. I was so excited and nervous. Sure great to have you to talk to. Remember, I'll be watching for you on the big screen. Okay, Irene. Won't that be the day?

55:21Adam Kempenaar:Time for some deeply flawed film spotting poll results. Wait, Sam wrote that. Does that mean he's calling our listeners deeply flawed? I mean, it gets dicey between Sam and the listeners on some of these polls. They hold him to such high standards. Sometimes he's got to push back a little bit, you know? I don't think there's anything flawed about these results. Naomi Watts there in Mulholland Drive. A couple of weeks ago, Josh, you and guest host Michael Phillips asked listeners to choose one and only one actress playing an actress. going through it. That was inspired by Norma Desmond and this week's revisit of Sunset Boulevard.

55:56Adam Kempenaar:The options we gave you, and we gave you many great ones. Betty Davis, All About Eve, Jenna Rollins, Opening Night, Gloria Swanson, Sunset Boulevard, Julia Binoche, The Clouds of Sils Maria, Laura Dern, Inland Empire, Naomi Watts, Mulholland Drive, Natalie Portman, May December, Scarlett Johansson, Asteroid City, or despite all of those options, you could write in other. How did it come out?

56:22Josh Larsen:Well, Adam, you were worried about Juliette Binoche's chances, and indeed, she came in behind other in last place. 1 % for her, 2 % for other, 3 % for Scarlett Johansson, 4 % for Laura Dern, 6 % for Natalie Portman, and 9 % for Jenna Rollins, all packed together at the bottom. And it was a bit of a fight, a closer fight here at the top for the top three. With 21 % of the vote, it's Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard. 24 % of the vote went to Bette Davis for All About Eve, which means Naomi Watts won the poll with 30 % of the vote.

57:00Adam Kempenaar:Here's Jeremy Webner-Berman. The first person I thought of when I saw this prompt was Naomi Watts. Her scene where she auditions for the film combined with her jokingly doing the bad reading is some of the best and most riveting acting I've ever seen.

57:14Josh Larsen:Here's Will, a murderer's row with representation from two movies that might be in my all-time top 10, Sunset Boulevard and Mulholland. And still, it's Bette Davis without a second thought.

57:26Adam Kempenaar:Dave Allen says, A lot of good options, but I literally just watched Whatever Happened to Baby Jane last night. So that's all I can think about. Bette Davis is so haunting and terrifying as Baby Jane Hudson in this, but still somehow evokes empathy for her fragile mental state. It's scary and confusing. And I loved it. Josh, quick question. is whatever happened to baby Jane possibly a blind spot for you? Oh no, I've seen it.

57:50Josh Larsen:I think two times it's wild, a lot of fun and a little disturbing as well. So yeah, happy to revisit. If we ever want to do a blind cow of that one, another comment from Daniel here, who's backing up my choice. Daniel says, I have an accusation. Jenna Rollins isn't getting more votes because many have not seen opening night and it is the only thing I can think of to justify her being so low granted she's behind some legendary performances and she's far from last but I guess I just don't care I'm deciding to be outraged just for the heck of it go watch opening night if you haven't yeah well I'm not

58:26Adam Kempenaar:going to argue with the last part go watch it if you haven't great film Kristen says I'm going with Natalie Portman but from her performance in Black Swan ooh her spiral into the darkness after getting the role of the black swan is mesmerizing. Definitely worthy of her Oscar win. So maybe going more performer than actress, but that could also be semantics. Sure.

58:48Josh Larsen:I'd accept it. Here's Nick with an other vote. Nobody was going through as much as Heather Langenkamp playing herself in Wes Craven's new nightmare. Okay. Nice, Nick.

58:59Adam Kempenaar:RMP writes, honestly, I can't even say if Jules Daston's 1978 film A Dream of Passion is even a good movie, having seen it exactly once in 1982. But, and this does sound really intriguing, speaking of blind spots, Josh, the movie has stayed with me to this day. Melina Mercouri is a malaise-ridden actress trying to find something to interest her in playing Medea on stage. She meets with Ellen Burstyn's Brenda, the American wife of a cheating Greek husband, imprisoned in Greece for murdering her children and christened the modern Medea by the Greek press. For an actress going through it, getting in touch with your inner Medea is about as primal as it gets.

59:38Josh Larsen:Whoa. Okay. How about, how about our last comment here is another burst in performance. One listeners are maybe a little bit more familiar with. It comes from Aaron. He went other Ellen Burstyn in The Exorcist. I'd say that counts as going through it.

59:53Adam Kempenaar:A little bit. She's definitely an actress. Time for a new poll. 2025 is the 50th anniversary of one of the great movie years, 1975, a greatness that's pretty easy to measure with a look at the films nominated for the 1976 Best Picture Oscar. We have Josh Kubrick's Barry Linden. We have Sidney Lumet's Dog Day Afternoon. Jaws from Steven Spielberg. The eventual winner, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Robert Altman's Nashville. So we gave Jaws the sacred Cow Treatment back in 2020 for its 45th. We just talked about Cuckoo's Nest last week. Both love that film. We're going to be talking about Dog Day in a couple of weeks.

1:00:38Adam Kempenaar:Those three films are in the film spotting pantheon. Safe to say we're fans of those three films. And then you throw in Barry Linden and Nashville, pretty formidable roster of films. What we're doing is we're throwing out Jaws. We're saying we just think Jaws would annihilate the other four as good as they are in this poll, especially knowing what we think we know about our listeners. So without Jaws, which one is the best film? Do you have a clear pick here, Josh?

1:01:08Josh Larsen:I mean, it's tough because Barry Lyndon, I watched for the first time just a few years ago. It's fairly fresh. Cuckoo's Nest obviously is fresh. Dog Day in Nashville, it's been a while. And And sometimes the archives I have at my Larson on film website are helpful in this case, but I looked at all four of these titles. They're all three and a half out of four star movies for me and probably ones I've mostly seen only once. So it's really tough. I mean, do I just go with recency bias and say cuckoo's nest right now? And maybe I'll regret that when we do dog day, our review coming up here. But yeah, I guess I lean that way.

1:01:49Hmm.

1:01:50Adam Kempenaar:I'm, I'm still reeling from the thought of dog day and cuckoo's nest only getting three and a half.

1:01:55Josh Larsen:I knew you, I knew you were going to take this to letterbox where, where they have like a star commissioner file it with file a grievance. Actually, that's, that's a position I want to apply for. I bet star commissioner sounds great. I bet. What benefits come with that, Josh? I mean, just the pleasure of annoying people by dissecting their star ratings. I think that should be enough.

1:02:18Adam Kempenaar:I think I would rank them in the exact order they appear on my screen at the moment. Dog Day Afternoon, Cuckoo's Nest, Barry Lyndon, Nashville. Nashville could very easily move up ahead of Barry Lyndon if I gave the film a rewatch. I've only seen it once, and it was many years ago, 20 years ago. I think I watched it back in the early days of this show for the first time. And I do have some recency bias with Cuckoo's Nest, so it's very tough to choose between those two films. But I know I love Dog Day Afternoon. So after we talk about that, I'll feel like I've given them both the treatment they deserve, Josh, and this poll will have already been closed down and it will all be for nothing.

1:03:01Adam Kempenaar:But right now I'm going to go Dog Day, just slightly ahead of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

1:03:05Josh Larsen:To satisfy the star commissioner, let me file something. I did give Cuckoo's Nest, and here maybe this supports the vote I just made, four and a half out of five recently after our rewatch. So it is now bumped a little bit ahead of those others. And now you're going to say, why isn't it five out of five? The star commissioner doesn't work overtime. You're done. Your business is done.

1:03:31Adam Kempenaar:I was going to move on, actually. I can tolerate a four and a half out of five, Josh. You can vote in that poll and leave a comment at filmspotting.net. We will share your results and your feedback in a couple of weeks.

1:03:48So they were turning after all. Those cameras. Life, which can be strangely merciful, had taken pity on Norma Desmond. The dream she had clung to so desperately had enfolded her.

1:04:08Josh Larsen:Sunset Boulevard is ready for its close-up, but are we? Billy Wilder's Hollywood Noir came to theaters 75 years ago this month, August 1950, and it went on to become the director's most Oscar-nominated film. 11 nominations, including Best Picture. So most nominated, but also appropriate for a tale about Tinseltown disappointment, the Wilder movie with the most Oscar losses. It won only three of those 11 for score, art direction, and for Wilder's screenplay, which he wrote with Charles Brackett and D.M. Marshman Jr. You may be wondering, okay, what picture could have possibly beat out Sunset Boulevard?

1:04:51Josh Larsen:Well, it makes sense that it was another showbiz-related tale. The 1951 Best Picture winner was all about Eve.

1:04:58Adam Kempenaar:You maybe shouldn't feel too sorry for Wilder, though, after the relative disappointments of two films released in 1948, The Emperor Waltz and Foreign Affair. He did before that win Best Director, Best Picture and Best Screenplay, plus Best Actor, maybe one or two others for The Lost Weekend in 1945. So, you know, pretty well respected in Hollywood by the time Sunset Boulevard rolls around. As far as the plot goes, should we start at the beginning, Josh, or at the end like Wilder does with William Holden's down on his luck screenwriter, Joe Gillis dead in a swimming pool? We then flashback six months earlier with Gillis fleeing repo men when he turns into the driveway of a Sunset Boulevard mansion.

1:05:41Adam Kempenaar:That's where he meets Gloria Swanson's Norma Desmond, a reclusive, silent movie star who is eager to boot Gillis from her home until she learns his occupation, which conjures up dreams of a career comeback and maybe of romance, too. Here's a clip. She'd sit very close to me, and she'd smell of tube roses, which is not my favorite perfume, not by a long shot. Sometimes, as we watched, she'd clutch my arm or my hand, forgetting she was my employer. just becoming a fan, excited about that actress up there on the screen. I guess I don't have to tell you who the star was. They were always her pictures.

1:06:24That's all she wanted to see. Still wonderful, isn't it? And no dialogue. We didn't need dialogue. We had faces. There just aren't any faces like that anymore. Maybe one. garbo those idiot producers those imbeciles haven't they got any eyes? have they forgotten what a star looks like? I'll show them, I'll be up there again so help me

1:06:53Adam Kempenaar:so Josh I do think this is yet another example of those beautiful bits of coincidence spotting that we get sometimes totally random where we review a new movie together about codependency the same week we discuss sunset. No kidding. On this viewing, what did you discover? If anything, any revelations? I mean, codependency.

1:07:19Josh Larsen:I think it's probably what I realized the first time. This is no blazingly new reservation, but sunset Boulevard takes a perversely codependent relationship and blows it up to Hollywood proportions. And by that, I mean, we've already described it in a couple ways, a classic noir, a Hollywood noir. It is that. It's beautifully that. And we should talk about the ways it's a noir. It's also a backstage studio drama, which is something entirely different. And it's brilliantly that. And maybe the observation I had watching this more towards the beginning, but this is equally a Tinseltown Gothic horror.

1:08:05Josh Larsen:And I'm watching this movie, Adam. And maybe it's just because, you know, we got Robert Eggers Nosferatu, um, a few months ago now. And I'm looking at Norman Desmond sitting like Dracula in this high backed chair in the midst of this dark cavernous room. It doesn't really click for me there, but then I notice as she's interviewing Gillis, their first meeting at her desk and she's trying to, she's trying to hire him basically. And her one knee is up on her chair. She's clutching her knee. This is so funny. I'm going to start with this same scene, but maybe go in a different direction. Okay. To me, it's a Nosferatu style claw.

1:08:43Josh Larsen:And then you've got her servant, Max, played by the director, Eric Von Stroheim, closing the drapes so that all sunlight is being shut out. And we have her entombing her guest, proposing a deal that's going to end with her living on at the cost of his life. and I think there are other great little touches. There are the rats in her pool. There is the coffin for her chimp. You've got a coffin even. As the movie went on, it seemed to drop. Who knows how much any of this was intentional. It did seem to drop some of the Dracula stuff. Gillis does call her a sleepwalker at one point. And then there is that great bride of Frankenstein shot of her when she stands up in her private screening room.

1:09:33Josh Larsen:She's backlit by the projector. and she's going off and I'm thinking, oh, this is Bride of Frankenstein. So anyway, the larger point I want to make is not that Sunset Boulevard is a Dracula movie, but that it is also this gothic horror in so many ways. The filmmaking, the filmmaking leans into this, but it's also these other things. That's the brilliance of it is that it can explore all of these genres fairly equally and equally well.

1:09:59Adam Kempenaar:Yeah, part of the brilliance of Wilder is that he made films within almost every type of genre. And some would argue he made perhaps the best film in all of those genres or some of those genres. And here you've got a film that is kind of not any one genre and it wraps up a bunch of different ones very well. And as I said, it's so funny because we cued into one scene in particular, but are going to perhaps use it for different reasons, even though I'm not going to take issue at all with your reading, including even the mention of her as a sleepwalker. That gothic element is undoubtedly here. But for me, the thing that stood out to me this time, or at least what I as a viewer tapped into that I never had before.

1:10:49Adam Kempenaar:And Josh, maybe it was just about me opening myself up to this possibility. It doesn't even have to be so much about Wilder's filmmaking. It's just about me allowing myself to have this experience. I really tapped in for the first time to Norma's humanity. It's been 15 years since I've seen this film. I believe it was part of a Wilder marathon back in 2010 that corresponded with a Graham school class that Maddie and I were teaching at the University of Chicago about Wilder. And part of it as well as maybe just appreciating Swanson's performance even more than. Yeah, I want to talk about that. Did it's so easy to see her again, rightfully the way you're describing her and to see her as this relic, not just figuratively, but literally as a sort of object and see her as inhuman.

1:11:39Adam Kempenaar:That's consistent with being a vampire, right? The fact that she's always in character, she's in costume. It seems, it seems like she's always performing that description of her as a sleepwalker. Well, a sleepwalker, in addition to conjuring the idea of a vampire, it just makes you think of a spirit and she's not even Norma Desmond really in that same bit where Joe talks about her as a sleepwalker, he calls her the great Norma Desmond, the subject that makes her crazy, her celluloid self, the great Norma Desmond. So she's not a person. She's a thing. And when he starts reading her lousy screenplay, he says, as for her, she sat coiled up like a watch spring, her cigarette clamped in a curious holder.

1:12:28Adam Kempenaar:And if you notice even there, the way he's describing her, the way Wilder and his co-screenwriters are describing her. They're dehumanizing her. They're describing her coiled up like a watch, like an object. But I had never paid attention, even though the narration is calling attention to it. I had never really paid attention to how she is sitting and how odd that is for a character of her stature and status to be sitting like that. And I almost felt like Josh going really the complete opposite direction of a vampire or any other creature. I saw her sitting there almost like a little girl, the way a little girl would sit in a chair with her legs up in the chair, with her knees up by her neck.

1:13:14Adam Kempenaar:And so she's still on some level performing the role of Norma Desmond, but she's also betraying the fact that a handsome man is in front of her and she's hoping to impress him because he's good looking, but also because it's her script and she wants to impress him with that script. And so, so the body just kind of, kind of does that and betrays that fact. So that is something that, that I, I tapped into this time. And I think, you know, throughout Josh, we can geek out and we will about probably some lines and some shots, but, but just to, to really put a bow on this thought about her humanity, my God, that staircase descent.

1:13:53Oh, what a shot. And the way she carries the moment too.

1:13:57Adam Kempenaar:The way she carries it, the staging so that the police and the cameraman and the reporters all basically freeze. So it's like one of her oil canvases of a legendary figure or a mythical figure come to life. It's Norma though being Norma. It's Norma being a star. So what does that mean? She transcends. She transcends space and time. She gets to glide down the stairs past the glued onlookers. And that line, her line at the end, it's one of those classic Mandela effect moments, right? We all think, don't we all think that she says, I'm ready for my closeup, Mr. DeMille, but she actually says, Mr.

1:14:36Adam Kempenaar:DeMille, I'm ready for my closeup. And she underplays it. She undersells it. She does. You're so right. But that line, because of the way it's been used, overused in popular culture, that is another factor, I think, in distancing us from Norma as a person and seeing her as this capital T tragic figure. but we don't really see her as a person, as a tragic figure. And so just watching at this time for the first time for me, as mad as she clearly is, I didn't gawk at her as she walked down those stairs. And I didn't think about her in a sensationalistic way and her tragic fall. I actually really felt, I felt sadness.

1:15:20Adam Kempenaar:I felt sadness for Norma in those final moments in a way, As I said, I haven't before. Even if, did you notice, Wilder denies her the close-up. He blurs the camera lens before she fully moves into the close-up. And you could read that on some level, like a coldness or maybe a meanness to Norma. I do know that in my research back when I taught this as part of that class, that Brackett thought throughout the film that not even so much Norma the character, But to Gloria Swanson, Wilder was often too mean with how he staged some of those shots, the harshness of the lighting, all the mirrors, the close-ups, that they were too garish, that they emphasized her oldness, and they were maybe too mean.

1:16:05Adam Kempenaar:But I'll just say at the end, it goes back to something I talked about during the apartment, Josh. It's more about just kind of Wilder's clear eyed matter of factness about the world. And it actually kind of for me just further amplifies the tragic nature of the fact that even in that last moment, she still she doesn't get it. Not only does she not get her film, she doesn't she doesn't even get that close up she's asking for there.

1:16:28Josh Larsen:Yeah, I think I would put it in the category. Completely agree with you about her humanity being at the fore. And I'll talk a little bit about how I think the performance is key to that. But I think it's key in the direction and the filmmaking too. So for me, that final shot, the lack of a extreme close up that we might be expecting, that's maybe in our memories because of how the line is quoted, choosing to go otherwise to me is a bit of deference to her and a distinction from what we do get earlier in the film where she does look scary or monstrous. You know, rather than using a similar shot and expecting, uh, Swanson to do all the work of making that distinction, the filmmaking here is helping her.

1:17:11Josh Larsen:And then she's doing the work, as I said, by underplaying the line. I, in my memory, it's shouted, it's declared. It's this, it's this camp moment. And it is not, as a matter of fact, it stands out. It's one of the only lines that she speaks softly where she isn't performing for anyone. And I think it's because she has found her space. Now it's a false space, but she's found the place she's been seeking to be on set in her mind, doing good work. And so she can be relaxed and she can be herself. And that's why she just says the line quietly. Another touch in terms of the filmmaking, the crane, which is probably what was used as she comes down the stairway.

1:17:51Josh Larsen:I think it's crucial that the crane follows her because we're with her. This again is putting us aligned with her, not gawking at her. It's not making her look ridiculous. It's making her look regal and noble. Is there some irony there? Of course. And maybe Wilder means it to be sarcastic. But for me, on this viewing, it felt almost honoring, actually, how that final sequence played out. I can't go on with the scene. I'm too happy. Mr. DeMille, do you mind if I say a few words? Thank you. So it is interesting that you picked that early interrogation scene. And as, as the jumping off point for her humanity, for me, it came in another sequence that I feel is so crucial.

1:18:34Josh Larsen:This is after Norma has pushed her way onto the Paramount Pictures lot. And she's forced this meeting with Cecil B. DeMille, her former director, DeMille playing himself, of course, while he's on his set. And not only in the sequence, Adam, is DeMille so gentle with her, not trying to squash her deluded dreams, but finding a way to, yes, move her along, but without making her feel foolish. But how about the choice Wilder and working with cinematographer John F. Seitz here, they anoint her in this angelic air by having this veteran spotlight operator recognize Norma on the set. And so he turns the beam onto her as she sits in a chair and she exults in it.

1:19:16Josh Larsen:Again, this could be a gawking moment. There are gawking moments of Norma in this movie, but to me, this is more about her regalness, her nobility, her history, her place in Hollywood history. This attracts the attention of the crew. They're delighted by the surprise appearance of this legend. And then we get after their effusive praise, she weeps in gratitude. And there's something I find deeply touching and genuine about that moment and not sarcastic or even ironic or biting at all. So I think that's in the filmmaking, the humanity. But maybe another revelation I had, Adam, is in Gloria Swanson's performance.

1:19:57Josh Larsen:Again, don't know how long ago it was that I saw this. Certainly had not seen enough movies or thought deeply enough about performance. This is something I feel like sometimes I'm still trying to get better at. what makes a good performance in different tones and ranges and styles. And we certainly have one of cinema's grand melodramatic performances here from Swanson, but I think it works beyond just being entertaining in a gawking way. And what helped me is having seen between my first viewing of Sunset Boulevard and now a lot of the work of Betty Davis and Joan Crawford. Now, Swanson, And I had to remind myself had already been nominated for two Oscars before she was nominated for this in her heyday.

1:20:40Josh Larsen:She had made silent pictures. She had produced silent pictures. So her heyday was before Crawford and Davis were in their professional pride. So for them, it was like late 30s into the 40s. So you have to think Swanson's early work had to influence them, especially the deliciously vicious women. I think of them as plain, right? And without a doubt, her Norma Desmond is in that cauldron of whatever happened to Baby Jane, which has Davis and Crawford. And so Swanson is largely remembered for Sunset Boulevard despite that earlier career. But it's hard to imagine the careers of two other Hollywood legends without the totality of her contributions to Hollywood, all of which informs the pathos she brings to Norma Desmond.

1:21:26Josh Larsen:So you have someone here who is rooting these outsized gestures and these grandiose expressions, which she gives. She's rooting them in real character because Norma Desmond feels like every day she's performing in a silent movie. Exactly. And what do you do in a silent movie? Her house is a set. Her house is a set. I understand not all silent movies did actors perform this way. But there was a certain strain of silent cinema where, yes, your gestures were broad, your expressions were exaggerated. And that is the kind that Norma Desmond, we understand, had made. She's still making them, to your point, in her home.

1:22:03Josh Larsen:And so this is where the melancholy madness, for me, is really rooted in this, yes, melodramatic, but also effective method where we see her as a person, as a human, deluded, but once regal, once noble, and perhaps deserving to still have more of a shred of that than she actually still has. Hey, Miss Desmond. Miss Desmond. It's me. It's Haw Guy. Hello, Haw Guy. Let's get a good look at you.

1:22:39Adam Kempenaar:I want to touch on a few things that you mentioned there. Reportedly, at the movie's premiere, Barbara Stanwyck speaking to Swanson, not only the performance that she gives here, but her standing. Barbara Stanwyck bowed down at her feet at the premiere and literally kissed her. There's another legend. But when you mention the end and the way she underplays the line about her close up, it occurs to me that whether intentional or not on Wilder and Swanson's part, it's another little bit of tragic irony, perhaps, that she can't exist as an actress in this modern age of talkies. that she doesn't belong in this space or they won't allow her in because she seems to belong to this bygone era where they overacted.

1:23:30Adam Kempenaar:And as she says, they didn't need words, right? They had faces. But in that moment, just like a great talky screen actress, she's effectively able to modulate her performance and speak the lines to the camera exactly the way she needs to. So that occurs to me as you were saying that. And I also think about the heavy lifting that is done as we're touching on this point and the bygone era of her former performances. How much heavy lifting is done by the scene where we watch Joe and Norma watch her old movie? He, in his narration, is disparaging it. He views the whole thing as pathetic and pitiful.

1:24:17Adam Kempenaar:but Wilder's camera lingers on that movie screen. And what do we see on the screen? There's nothing pathetic or pitiful about it. We see an astonishing face. And I think it reinforces for me, Josh, that, that what she's hanging on to and what she's trying to recapture so badly, it's not, it's not even so much her youth. I'm trying to think of the words, something, something greater than youth. Is it, is it a life force? Is it a certain vitality that she's emanating? And then I realized that, of course, the word is stardom. It's whatever makes up the essence of a star. It's there in that shot that we're watching on the screen that she has.

1:25:00Adam Kempenaar:And you watch it and then you somehow understand, well, of course she doesn't want to lose that. That's something she's not going to want to give up. And what do you need for stardom? You need an audience. and that's what she's lost. You talked about that amazing shot where the light shines down on her, the spotlight, and she basks in it. And I do think that's so important. I'm really glad you said it only because I had a line in my notes that, you know, this happens sometimes you write something and then you look at it later and you go, oh, I'm not entirely sure what I was referring to.

1:25:32Josh Larsen:Yeah.

1:25:32Adam Kempenaar:My line was tough that the indignity of DeMille's denial follows her return. And I had return in single quotes. We'll see. I need to take better notes that are less oblique or whatever. Her return that I'm referring to is that return. The return that she gets is that moment where the light is on her and the crowd adores her. And to your point, it is genuine in that light, in that moment, the audience that isn't just for show, they aren't pitying her. those people genuinely do know who she is and they come up to her and they show their gratitude to her and she's grateful for it. So we know that in the grand scheme of things she's not the star she once was that she's a has-been that Max has to write the notes.

1:26:19Adam Kempenaar:We know all of that's true but two things can be true at once that in that moment she gets the reverence that she probably deserves. And so the indignity part is that soon after this of course DeMille is going to deny her. She's not going to get to make this movie. And that's already hard enough for Norma to accept, considering what she believes about herself. But imagine how much harder it is after she's actually felt the basking in the glow of the light again. And it's real. Yeah.

1:26:51Josh Larsen:And then that's maybe why she falls as far as she does mentally, at least, is getting a taste of it and then not having the rest makes it even worse. so we've talked about you know a number of shots here and and i do think now i haven't seen all of billy wilder's films but this has to be one of the more visually ambitious of those that i have seen we spent some time in our discussion of the apartment uh about how that is visually ambitious but i think this is an area wilder is sometimes not given enough credit for and man are there so many aesthetic flourishes here i want to talk about a few that aren't related necessarily to Norma Desmond, but just the fact that this movie opens with that unbroken reverse tracking shot, moving down a road and then lifts up to reveal these squad cars racing toward her house.

1:27:39I mean, that's the American beauty shot essentially with the narration. Right.

1:27:43Josh Larsen:I mean, yeah, it is. It is definitely echoed there. That's not something, you know, that comes to mind that a Billy Wilder movie would open with. And of course you referenced the shot of Gillis face down in the pool, but there are levels of artistry to that shot because the camera at the bottom of the pool looking up, we see his face. And then behind through the water, we see the police sergeants or investigators standing at the pool's edge. It's incredibly unnerving. And another great use of a crane as Gillis is walking up the steps to her outdoor terrace, the dilapidated terrace. And then we see her through this slow zoom, we see Norma behind some blinds creepily watching him.

1:28:29Josh Larsen:I mean, these are, these are all kinds of crime and horror techniques that are blended to create something that's very eerie, very unnerving, goes back to the noir idea, goes back to the Gothic idea. Um, but it also has this faded glamor of old Hollywood to it. So yeah, the filmmaking here is, is on his top tier level for Wilder, for sure. Absolutely.

1:28:53Adam Kempenaar:Yeah, I have a section here on just the filmmaking, but then I have a separate section that's just elements I love. And they're all part of the filmmaking. They're Wilder touches, if you will, that I think really reflect his brilliance and his cleverness as a writer and a director, but they kind of go above some of the more common things that you may notice in the film. For me, those elements I love are things like Joe Gillis is a screenwriter, and yet he's absolutely horrendous at picking up on foreshadowing. The fact that he shows up, and even though it's misdirection or it's a mistake, they think he's someone else.

1:29:35Adam Kempenaar:The fact that they have been expecting him, right, suggests that there's almost something faded about his appearing. The fact that he does show up and there's this dead monkey which the the insanity of that we grew up in a time right remember we we grew up in that time with michael jackson at his neverland ranch and knew about like monkeys and stuff and bubbles was it bubbles does that sound right but like that that to us even that was in the 80s and we thought about what that was like to have animals around your house and what that said about, I don't know, your, your state of mind. Well, you know, this is the 1950s and here she is with her pet monkey.

1:30:20Adam Kempenaar:But the fact that that monkey is carried out in a coffin and it, it suggests, you know, this, this pet monkey is the role he probably is going to fill. And the fact that Mac says, I made your bed this afternoon before he's agreed to spend the month. And I even love just the fact that he refers to himself as a, as a ghost writer. Ghost Rider in this case takes on a little bit of extra meaning. I think especially as from the beginning of the film, we know that he's dead. And then when his car gets taken away, that's another moment where the car is almost like the monkey's coffin. That's when he's officially being left behind.

1:30:58Adam Kempenaar:It's like, okay, Joe isn't going anywhere. But the other little wilder touches, Josh, are things like when he goes to leave at one point in a huff. And I think it might be that first one on New Year's Eve when he gets mad at her and goes. His pocket watch that she gives to him gets stuck on the door. It's only wilder would think of this, right? It's almost like Norma's hand is somehow there to just snatch him back for a second before he goes. But it's the pocket watch.

1:31:34Josh Larsen:Notice that. Can I give you another one just like that? When she's on DeMille's set sitting in the chair, how about when the boom mic floats over her head and hits the feather on her hat? It's like a fly.

1:31:46Adam Kempenaar:It's like a fly antagonizing her. She looks up at it and annoys her.

1:31:48Josh Larsen:The sound era forced her out of business, and now here's this mic hitting her classy costume.

1:31:55Adam Kempenaar:The moment she sits down, the annoying fly, the microphone starts buzzing around her. It's beautiful. And then even from a little editing standpoint, there is the moment where he says, just whenever she noticed that I was getting bored, that she would go back to her favorite bit. And it was like the Max Senate bathing beauties. And when he cuts on that, it's on, on her umbrella twirling. And it feels just like one of those kaleidoscopic cuts that you got in a lot of those old timey movies. And then one other one I want to give you is near the end with Betty, the, the meta element here, the screenwriting element that he is a screenwriter.

1:32:39The, the fact that it's all rooted in, in Hollywood and Hollywood lore, the way he finally comes clean with Betty.

1:32:46Adam Kempenaar:he tells her everything they're they're writers together and he's finally he's giving her the backstory he's filling her in on everything and what does she say the way she phrases it is really interesting she says no no i haven't heard any of this i never got those telephone calls i've never been in this house get your things together let's get out of here so betty the screenwriter is basically saying, nope, I'm taking these pages that have been written. I'm throwing them in the garbage can. I don't care what we've written before, what you've written before. We're starting with a blank page. We can now just walk right out of here and we can start a new story.

1:33:33Adam Kempenaar:And he doesn't say yes to that because it turns out we think in the moment that it's because he feels too guilty and that he's succumbing to the fate, the hand that he's been dealt. We realize actually that, no, he is starting his new story. He's just starting it alone as a solo screenwriter. But I love the fact that she is a writer saying, we can write a new story, Joe. Promise. I promise we can.

1:33:57Josh Larsen:There is that meta element with Betty, the screenwriter played by Nancy Olsen, which I do think is nice and feels a bit like a wilder touch as well. but I found on this viewing that their scenes did drag a little bit. You know, I, I don't know if I, I just didn't need as many. You've got to get out of the mansion at some point. I understand that. But the romance with Gillis, I don't know where are we on hold in in this film? Let me ask you that because I, I, I think I liked his presence best as a narrator, his voice and his delivery. And again, this is where a noir element comes in. I think he evokes that well as a screen person.

1:34:35Josh Larsen:In his scenes with Gloria Swanson, he works, I guess is what I'd say. But the power dynamic is not supposed to be equal, but the performance dynamic maybe should be a little more equal in some way. I did like though, and here's another noir thing I'll throw at you. I did like Holden's Joe Gillis is essentially the femme fatale. When you think about it, he shows up and he's mysterious and he's maybe useful, maybe not. You can't quite trust him. And how about the fact that he's absolutely a sexual object, that pool scene when he gets out of the pool and towels off in front of her. so I realized that okay well this is this is interesting about his character that he's basically playing the femme fatale in the noir um otherwise you know I don't know maybe just a little bit more there from Holden might might have gone if you know I'm nitpicking here this is this

1:35:35Adam Kempenaar:is a masterpiece but you know I like Holden and I like Holden in wilder movies for the most part I agree with some of the scenes with Betty with Olsen in particular and those moments where for example, he's kissing her nose and we're supposed to believe that they're falling madly in love with each other. Something about that dynamic always feels a little bit off and we need to believe that they're really falling in love with each other. I never really got it. Part of it was, I just felt like, and I looked this up at one point, but now I don't have it in front of me. It felt like one of those classic Hollywood cases were just, there was a dramatic age difference.

1:36:11Adam Kempenaar:I don't know if there was, but it feels like it on screen.

1:36:14Josh Larsen:You know what? I'm glad you brought that up. I meant to throw this out there because I was thinking about it while watching and had forgotten. But for those curious, Gloria Swanson born 1899 and William Holden born 1918. So like 20 years, right?

1:36:28Adam Kempenaar:If my math is correct there. 50 when she was making this film. Yeah. So I felt a disparity in those characters that didn't serve those scenes necessarily very well. And I'll agree with you that maybe that entire storyline feels maybe a little bit more rushed in a way that the rest of the film certainly doesn't. We need the plot mechanics of their relationship to fuel the end of the film. I still love some of those touches like the one I mentioned and really just the overall, the cleverness. And I'll use that word again, the, the irony, the way Wilder and, and bracket, they've constructed this story.

1:37:10Adam Kempenaar:The last film he worked with bracket on where they've constructed this entire thing around this notion, as we see in the beginning, that all Joe wants to do is write something that will sell. That's all he's trying to do. And he's failing miserably. And then what happens? He stops writing and he becomes embroiled in a story that's the best, most sensational story maybe of all time. Think about how well this story is going to play, right? He's not going to reap any benefits of it, you know, but it is going to sell like hot cakes and is probably going to get turned into a movie at some point, right?

1:37:48Josh Larsen:Maybe even win a couple Oscars. Who knows?

1:37:50Adam Kempenaar:It might even win a couple of Oscars. How about some of the lines, right? I mean, besides the fact that you've got the poor dope, he always wanted to pull just of course. And, and that goes with the shot, as you mentioned. And I think they used a mirror, some kind of effect that they pulled off there. That was amazing. I love the way he describes her still waving proudly to a parade that had long since passed her by. you can write lines like that right yeah and another one later when he's filling betty in and he says an older woman who is well to do a younger man who is not doing too well can you figure it out yourself is pretty good and even just what he does with the narration the way not only do we have the aspect of a narrator who is clearly dead that's telling the entire story in flashback but i like the fact that there's a moment josh where the narrator cuts himself off at one point.

1:38:42Adam Kempenaar:It's as if, even though it's all happening in the past, it's as if it's happening in real time. He says, uh-oh. He says, uh-oh, and stops himself. And that adds just another bit of excitement to the whole proceedings.

1:38:55Josh Larsen:Yeah. I do like the narration in this quite a bit. I'll end us with one more line, and it brings us back to what we started talking about at the beginning, which is Norma's humanity, really, which we see in this film. And at one point she says, great stars have great pride. And I think that's key to the performance because I do think that's something Swanson deeply intimately understood and is able to bring it to the fore and make, again, Norma someone who's maybe a has-been, but her feelings about that are real and genuine. And that comes through in the film.

1:39:31Adam Kempenaar:Yeah, it does. And I want to end with mentioning the iconography, which you talked about a little bit at the beginning. And the way the film is established in this setting, we've got Schwab's. That's part of the iconography of Hollywood, the storytelling, the classic story of the discovery of certain actresses at the drugstore and the Hollywood pools, which, of course, has to be a key part of this story. Like people who come, normal people who come from the Midwest out to live their dreams. And they do. Right. And of course, where is he going back to? He's going back to Ohio. It's always the Midwest where we come from.

1:40:11Adam Kempenaar:Right. Where they come from to go out to Hollywood and live their dreams. And the beginning of the film, it's not like it is in so many Hollywood films that are about this dream where you're seeing the Hollywood sign and you're seeing the movie premiere and the studios and all the lights and stuff. Right. It is the dingiest street you've ever seen and the abandoned tennis court covered in leaves. And it is so dirty and grimy. And the fact that the title of the film isn't Sunset Boulevard in some kind of radiant way, right? It's just the words in writing on the street. It immediately clues you in to what kind of movie this is going to be.

1:40:50Adam Kempenaar:And that it's going to have some fun with your expectations. It's going to subvert what we think of as the classic Hollywood dream kind of tale. And we get that with the fun he has as well with the waxworks, with characters like Keaton bringing some of those classic Hollywood folks into there as well. Pass. Keaton's one line. That's it. And you add those elements in with the cleverness and with the economy of the filmmaking. Even like we get the moment where we learn why there are no doorknobs on the doors. And then when Joe leaves and she goes upstairs, the camera just shows us the door closing and focuses on the door.

1:41:35Adam Kempenaar:And in that moment, we know exactly what's coming next. We don't need anything more. We don't need to go inside. we know exactly just by that simple establishing of what that door knob means and the fact that the camera shows us that as she closes it we know what is coming next and he's just so as i said economic and smart as a filmmaker and then there are those grand touches like you've mentioned as

1:42:03Josh Larsen:well effective use of you know the lack of doorknobs throughout with the lighting as well When the light comes on, it'll then shine through the open holes. Or when it goes out, it's extra ominous. So yeah, employs that motif quite well throughout.

1:42:17Adam Kempenaar:The last one I just thought of is when you were talking about the fact that the whole place really is like this silent film set that she's created. At New Year's Eve, it feels that way when you've got a live orchestra playing. But how about the fact that - Those poor guys. They reference in that early scene that the wind comes in and it makes the organ play. So it's like the whole place is alive and you get these moments of music accompaniment to whatever is happening within the space. He just doesn't overlook anything, Wilder. And actually what we haven't even touched on, I'll leave it here. We don't need to get into it.

1:42:52Adam Kempenaar:But having just talked about the apartment, and I know the apartment comes 10 years after this, but there is very direct overlap in the concepts of opportunism. And Wilder very directly said, everybody in this movie is an opportunist. If you think about it, even Betty, who's kind of playing like the wide-eyed, naive, or she seems like the very ideological. Well, no, she's in this certainly at first because she wants to get a screenplay published. Yeah, it takes priority over art.

1:43:24Josh Larsen:Her fiancé, you get that sense for sure.

1:43:26Adam Kempenaar:Yeah, she wants to move up. She doesn't want to be a script reader anymore. She wants to be a screen writer. And in the end, what Joe shows us, I think, Josh, by leaving, by trying to leave, is that he finally figures out what Jack Lemmon learns at the end of the apartment. He learns how to be a mensch. He learns how to be a human being. He finally learns that it's not good for him or for her, for Norma, to continue using her. He also knows it's wrong for Betty and Artie, his friend, for him to run off with Betty. And he decides he's going to be a human being. He's just going to leave. He's not going to blame anyone else for his problems.

1:44:08Adam Kempenaar:He's not going to try to cause any more problems for anyone else. He is just going to go and he's going to live his life. But it's too late. And that's the tragedy of it. I think he learns the lesson.

1:44:17Josh Larsen:Yeah, there's the added layer in this, you know, it involves suicide as the apartment does, but there's the added layer of what responsibility might he bear for leaving at this point, you know, to, to your point about him trying to get what he wants and being a bit of a player in all of this and a striver. he carries something of a burden, even though you feel like these aren't empty threats, but they are threats she knows she can make. There is a level of complication there that I think is interesting, which is it's perhaps the right decision, but maybe not necessarily a noble one. I don't know.

1:44:56At the same time, how can you put that burden on him? Because she was in this state before he arrived as well. Yeah. Yeah.

1:45:06Adam Kempenaar:Sunset Boulevard is available VOD. If you agree or disagree with us or have any other thoughts you would like to share about that conversation or the show, we would love to hear from you. Feedback at filmspotting.net. That is our show.

1:45:18Josh Larsen:You can find Adam and the show on Instagram, Facebook, or Letterboxd at filmspotting. I'm at those places as well as Blue Sky as Larson on film. We are independently produced and listener supported. you can support the show by joining the film spotting family at film spotting family.com that way you'll be able to listen early and ad free you'll also get a weekly newsletter monthly bonus episodes and access to the entire show archive for show t-shirts and other merch you can go to film spotting.net slash shop we did just discuss the apartment on episode 1022

1:45:52Adam Kempenaar:double indemnity was on episode 899 889 excuse me part of the summer of stanwick marathon and back Back in 2010, we did that Billy Wilder marathon streaming this weekend. I wasn't that excited to see this movie, Josh, as I started initially reading the blurb here, even though I love Eddie Murphy. Eddie Murphy and Pete Davidson are armored truck drivers who get ambushed by a group of ruthless criminals. But then I saw who that group of ruthless criminals was led by, and it's Kiki Palmer.

1:46:24Josh Larsen:I know. I was in the same boat. the screening invite came for this and I was like, eh, and then, oh, maybe I'll have to go to this. Couldn't make it work, but I'm intrigued. And Kiki Palmer is reason enough to catch up with it at some point.

1:46:38Adam Kempenaar:And you can do that on Amazon prime in limited release. The new documentary from Amy J Berg, who made deliver us from evil and Janice little girl blue. It's about the singer songwriter immortalized by his cover of Leonard cones. Hallelujah. Jeff Buckley. The documentary is It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley. My Mother's Wedding is also out. Three sisters return home for the third wedding of their twice-widowed mother. It's directed by Kristen Scott Thomas and stars Scarlett Johansson and Sienna Miller. In wide release, Freakier Friday. I'm told, Josh, that it's another Freaky Friday, but just a little bit freakier.

1:47:14Adam Kempenaar:I mean, how could it not be? Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan team up. Again, Weapons is also out. This is the new one from Zach Krager, who did 2022's Barbarian. Every kid but one from the same class vanish on the same night at the exact same time. Julia Garner, Josh Brolin, Alden Ehrenreich, and Benedict Wong. We are going to have to get to the bottom of why every kid but one vanishes from that class on the same night at the same time and talk about that next week. I'm definitely going to see the Jeff Buckley doc. We'll see what else comes up on next week's show.

1:47:50Josh Larsen:Film Spotting is produced by Golden Joe Dessault and Sam Van Halgren. Without Sam and Golden Joe, this show wouldn't go. Our production assistant is Sophie Kempinar. Special thanks to everyone at WBEZ Chicago. More information is available at WBEZ.org. For Film Spotting, I'm Josh Larson.

1:48:06Adam Kempenaar:And I'm Adam Kempinar.

1:48:07Josh Larsen:Thanks for listening. This conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.

1:48:29Adam Kempenaar:film spotting is listener supported join the film spotting family at film spotting family.com and get access to ad free episodes monthly bonus shows our weekly newsletter and for the first time all in one place the entire film spotting archive going back to 2005 that's a film spotting family.com Panoply.

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