Top 5 Kubrick Films with Ben Mankiewicz; 'Heart of the Beast' Review; Warner-Mount Going Forward; NYFF Preview

9:29Ryan Lattanzio:NYFF also has the world premiere of Tom McCarthy's new movie, A Statement, which I know very little about that one. And I'm actually trying to keep myself in the dark a bit.

9:38Anne Thompson:You want me to tell you? Sure.

9:40Ryan Lattanzio:Let's tell us. Tell us.

9:41Anne Thompson:No, all I can say is it's a little bit like Spotlight in a way, because it's about a period of time when people figured out that climate change was a real threat and everybody came together and they were prepared to do something about it. And something derailed it. What happened? Why did it get derailed? That really could be upsetting.

10:04Ryan Lattanzio:Yeah, well, we're already primed to go that way. We had a shot at survival. Other than the Telluride secret screening of You Can See Everything, the Oppenheim fielder, Elizabeth Holmes dog, no one else has really seen that movie. So that's going to be a really hot ticket, artificial, and you can see everything. They're only playing once. I mean, who knows? They may add other screenings, but it's those two screenings without any press screenings. Now, last night I was at the press screening for Ken Russell's The Devils in 35 Millimeter. Of course, I've seen it, but I haven't. I hadn't seen it reconstituted in this restored, recently burnished format with the added footage.

10:41Ryan Lattanzio:And it looks great. It's such an entertaining movie. It's a true assault on the senses. The audience was really into it. There was visible, audible gasps and reactions from people. So I can only imagine what that'll be like in a full screening room in Alice Tully Hall.

10:57Anne Thompson:I love it. I love it. That movie is really transgressive. I mean, it really gets to you. It's frightening and upsetting and it digs under your skin. And he's a very effective filmmaker, Ken Russell. I mean, you may not like what he does, but he knows how to manipulate you. So I was impressed by the trailer for Fincher's The Further Misadventures of Cliff Booth, starring Brad Pitt. And I love the fact that in the trailer, he tells someone why he quit being Leonardo DiCaprio character Rick Dalton, the stunt double. It was because he got too fat for him to be the double. That's why Leonardo isn't in the movie.

11:35Anne Thompson:It looks really good. It looks like a kind of a thriller. It looks like an action movie in a way. What did you get from it?

11:41Ryan Lattanzio:Does it look good, literally? I don't know. It seemed a little severely, anemically underlit, like everything that Vintra has been doing for Netflix. Honestly, I do feel, I'm hoping there's some redemption here. I do think he's kind of been on a downswing since setting up this deal at Netflix. I mean, man.

11:56Anne Thompson:I like the Michael Fassbender movie.

11:59Ryan Lattanzio:Yeah, that was a trifle.

12:00Anne Thompson:It was an exercise.

12:01Ryan Lattanzio:Amusing trifle. Yes, it was an exercise and maybe slightly self-indulgent one. I mean, this is apples to oranges. It certainly looks better than the first look images from Greta Gerwig's Narnia movie, which the main, you know, goddess, heroine, whatever she is, is like styled like a glitter ball disco quaalude demon. I did not understand the.

12:24Anne Thompson:Jadis. Her name is Jadis.

12:26Ryan Lattanzio:Thank you, Jadis. I have not. I have no relationship to this material.

12:29Anne Thompson:Meryl Streep is playing Aslan, and Aslan is like Dayglo, too, with all different colors. Well, yeah, apparently Greta Gerwig has said that she is inspired by glam rock and David Bowie,

12:41Ryan Lattanzio:and that that was the right language to tell the story in for this movie that's coming to IMAX in late February from Netflix. So I'm not going to make any presumptions based on some exclusive images that were published in Empire magazine, but it raised some flags.

13:00Anne Thompson:Okay, well, she's got to take some swings, as she did with Barbie. And the other thing that I found interesting, this is a little anecdote, there was a big opening for the Lucas Museum here in LA, and it pulled everybody and their mother, everybody showed up. Spike Lee showed up. I mean, Guillermo del Toro will go to the opening of an envelope, but it was, you know, Chris Nolan, Spielberg, all of them, you know, and but there was a picture of all the directors. and Greta, if she had gone into the picture, would have been the only woman. She was there. She ran away. She did not participate in that photo.

13:38Anne Thompson:I love that. I love that. Making a statement. Okay, tell us about Heart of the Beast.

13:45Ryan Lattanzio:Yeah, so Heart of the Beast is a Paramount Pictures movie that is opening again on the day that you're listening to this podcast, directed by David Ayer, where Brad Pitt plays a very lone veteran special forces guy who was in some Middle East war you kind of see pieces of in flashback. He's a man of wounded valor who reads Jack London with his trusted German shepherd named Odin, and he is trying to go on this sojourn in Alaska on his Cessna plane. But then he suffers a medical event, and his plane crashes, and he and the dog are forced to survive and brave the elements, which include whitewaters, which include stalking packs of wolves and a giant bear, with utmost respect to how animals cannot be enslaved in movie filmmaking anymore as the way they were in something like Come and See.

14:42Ryan Lattanzio:The CGI here of these animals isn't super great, but weirdly, the movie works pretty well. It's quite well-directed, And it's mostly just Brad Pitt and this dog or just Brad Pitt alone. It's almost experimental in that way. It's like Castaway. So we haven't really seen something like that in a while. But in this one, he's traversing different locations, whereas in Castaway, he's kind of stuck being marooned. This does sort of curdle into being a pro-militaristic PSA. But it's David Ayer. He did Fury. He did End of Watch. I mean, he's also a former Navy man himself. He has a fondness for the military experience.

15:19Anne Thompson:He's a good director, though. I've been wanting to see this. I bet it does really well. I bet it plays between the coasts and does well.

15:26Ryan Lattanzio:Oh, yeah. It's going to get an A Cinema score. I'm betting money on it. People are going to go crazy for this movie. I think you'll really enjoy it. Honestly, I went into it with a heavy heart. I went in not wanting to be there, and I was riveted. Yeah, it's well done. So, and obviously, we're all trying to wrap our heads around the news that the Warner Mount merger is forging ahead thanks to a consent decree with the 12 states forming a lawsuit that now are able to close. Who's coming out ahead here?

15:56Anne Thompson:Well, David Allison won. You know, he won. Rob Banta, the AG from California, he lost. What's fascinating to me is the idea that there are all these people here, especially in LA, who really believed that there was a possibility that they could fight this merger off. And maybe I'm cynical, and maybe I have good sources. Because I heard from the beginning, they would settle that they had to settle that that would be the solution for this situation. And one of the reasons why Bonta had to cave in the end was because all the different groups had agreed to this merger. All the, you know, the exhibitors, AMC, DGA, PG, all of them.

16:46Anne Thompson:And then in the end, the WJA came around too. So they got a bribe. They got like$18 million for their health fund. So everybody needed something, you know, everybody got something, but Ellison didn't give up anything. Maybe there's going to be a so-called advisory board over CNN and CBS. You know, he's supposed to stay neutral. He's supposed to not do anything bad. But he still owns those companies. In other words, nothing has changed. He has to come up with 30 movies in the first two years. It's a five-year deal now this time, so a longer length of time. So that's good, you know, 32 in the last three years.

17:29Anne Thompson:I mean, Warner's has been churning out more movies, and Paramount has been churning out a few. they haven't been very successful neither of them is cleaning up at the box office right now so it's gonna be very interesting what's the quality of these okay they came up with five million dollars for the what is that

17:49Ryan Lattanzio:that's nothing and that's for acquisitions right yeah yeah well a question I have is so it's like the for the first few years they have to come up with a minimum of what is it 32 films so and then 32 yeah so are we gonna get like hastily AI abetted studio slot movies to just fill a quota. I mean, the filling of a quota has always been a thing, but it's definitely more dire now in this situation.

18:13Anne Thompson:It's not going to do anybody any good for them to churn out B movies that are going straight to theaters and dying. And that doesn't help anybody. That's not going to get us anywhere. But I have no confidence that they're going to make good movies. None. None.

18:28Ryan Lattanzio:and clockwork which is also handling sean baker's first movie post anora this is christian parks formerly from neon so i wonder if was clockwork all along is that like mike de luca and pam abde were they sort of building a life raft knowing that this was coming what's going to happen to them is a huge question for me i don't know no one has given me that answer i don't read that

18:51Anne Thompson:anywhere i don't know supposedly each studio stays separate each studio does its own thing They can't sell the lots or anything. They're not going anywhere. They were never going anywhere. Those are empty threats. I don't know how to explain this. There's a lot of saber rattling that goes on in these negotiations in public. And then there's other stuff that goes on behind the scenes. And the politicians were playing for this to work. You know, Karen Bass and Gavin Newsom in California, the governor and the mayor of LA, We're totally pushing for this deal to go through.

19:27Ryan Lattanzio:Well, absolutely. And there's going to be a lot more discussion and untangling in the weeks ahead. And before we get to our guest, Ben Mankiewicz, what's your recommendation for this week?

19:39Anne Thompson:This is an odd thing to do, but I'm going to recommend the first half of Not Hongjin's Hope. You and I both saw it in Cannes. I think we were both wowed by the action in the first half. and what happens is that as you see more and more of the monsters that everybody's running from you get thrown out of the movie at least we did I got thrown out of the movie by the really sketchy VFX I have high standards for VFX as you do when they're not good I react you know I pull back but that first hour of action is as good as it gets and I recommend it to any cinephile out there who cares about that sort of thing a lot of people liked it a lot of people really liked this movie And it could be a very big, it's doing well, isn't it?

20:23Ryan Lattanzio:It is. And it already has done really well in Korea. I mean, I think there's a lot of people who are charmed by the sort of jankiness of the special effects. But I agree with you. The first hour, I was totally.

20:33Anne Thompson:I would say the Jar Jar Binks of the special effects.

20:35Ryan Lattanzio:Yeah. Yeah, exactly. No, they actually have very similar physical carriage. And like I've said before, there's a blue alien humanoid creature, which I'm like, you just can't really do that after we've had Avatar. That was a bold decision that doesn't pay off. but I agree the first hour before they show any creatures, that's spectacular filmmaking. What's yours? Well, I mean, prime time's coming out. I recommend that to the degenerates out there, which I am one, but you know, I have mixed feelings, complicated feelings about that movie too. I'm just going to jump ahead to next week so that maybe I can drum up interest in advance because I'm a little worried about this show, which is East of Eden from Zoe Kazan, which is coming to Netflix on October 1st next week.

21:17Ryan Lattanzio:blew through the whole thing this past weekend had an interview with kazan and florence pew i don't love paired interviews in a junket and i think i had a different take on the character than they did which is that florence pew is playing kathy the matriarch in the original steinbeck story east of eden who is a very cold sociopathic uh calculating woman who does a lot of terrible things but in this show she's humanized a little bit more with some choices that deviate from the source material, but it's extremely well acted, really well directed. If you liked the movie Wild, I'm talking to like the five people who liked this movie.

21:54Ryan Lattanzio:If you liked the movie Wildlife that Paul Dano directed and Zoe Kazan. I did not like that movie. And I love that movie. It's in a register of that in a way. And that's for good or bad. In fact, I said that to her and I don't know her eye kind of twitched. But there's a lot of us that really like that movie. and it's pretty faithful to the Steinbeck text, but takes a few things in new directions. Yeah, it's seven episodes. That's all going to be on Netflix next Friday. I really hope people watch it, but I'm a little worried that they're not going to.

22:24Anne Thompson:Okay. I will definitely look for that. I'm back to my old friend, Slow Horses, my buddy, Jack Loudon. You know, I'm happy. I'm on the sixth season of that and Lanterns, which I love still.

22:36Ryan Lattanzio:Yeah, I've got a lot of TV to catch up on and movies at the New York Film Festival. But for now, why don't we sag into our guest, Ben Mankiewicz. We're very pleased to welcome film historian, critic, TCM TV host for 23 years. And of course, podcast host Ben Mankiewicz to screen talk with his erudite but accessible and very richly voiced and deeply researched podcast, The Plot Thickens for TCM. He has for six seasons dived into the untold stories of Hollywood from the rise and fall of Peter Bogdanovich to the very troubled making of Brian De Palma's Bonfire of the Vanities. And, of course, the operatic scandals and the chaos behind making his grand uncle Joseph's 1963 epic Cleopatra.

23:23Ryan Lattanzio:And now going into the seventh season of the podcast and time to this new Criterion Collection of release of all Stanley Kubrick's films, he's digging into the life and career of the great filmmaker for an 11-episode season that's kicking off on September 24th.

23:38Anne Thompson:Welcome to the podcast, Ben. I love it whenever I run into you at parties and I love the idea of sort of taking you on and arguing with you about things. So here we are in a situation where we can do that. Do you do that? I had not noticed. I give you a hard time sometimes. That's all, it's all, it's all good. All affectionate. Yes, absolutely. As Ryan and I were just saying, we're feeling totally inadequate. critic. Well, I want to, you know, I'm not a film historian. I get that the host of TCM seems like a film historian. You come off well, Ben. And I hated being a critic. I was not good at it, and I'm so relieved not to do it anymore.

24:18I know there's value in it. I still have a lot of friends, close friends who are critics. But man, I just felt like I was imitating a critic almost all the time. And as soon as I was freed from having to do that, I felt a lot. I thought I was going to love it, but I did not love it. Mostly because I felt like a phony.

24:33Ryan Lattanzio:Well, Ben, I want to know a little bit about what we can expect from the season of The Plot Thickens. I've only heard the first episode, but I understand there is this never-before-heard interview with Kubrick. And essentially never heard interview. People have heard it, but nobody has written about it. And a journalist named Joe Gelmas talked to Kubrick, I think, twice around the release of Clockwork Orange. Maybe one of them was the end of 1970 and the other the beginning of 1971. And, you know, Kubrick was not an easy person to interview, even if you were ever in the position to interview him.

25:08He didn't really like interviews. I don't think he was creating a mystery surrounding him. I don't think that was really his intent, but that's what he did. And I think it plays a significant role in the manner in which he is revered, that he successfully went through life as this mysterious figure that we could not figure out. Well, I like this story early in that episode,

25:32Ryan Lattanzio:the first episode where a journalist, somebody comes to his door and they're like, is Stanley Kubrick here? And he said, no, he's not home. But it actually was him that answered the door. Yeah.

25:42Anne Thompson:And people had these long phone relationships with him, which I always thought was cool. Yeah. Like Steven Spielberg. Steven became a big part of this. And, you know, Steven Spielberg would send his whatever his movie was to Stanley and sending it meant some employee came, got it, got the film canisters, took it on a plane, landed at Heathrow and drove out to Stanley's place at Davidsmead and then waited for him to watch it, whether he watched it that day or not, and then took it back. And then Stephen would, like a little boy, wait by the phone and wait for Stanley to bless it or not, you know, but it's nice.

26:22Yeah.

26:24Anne Thompson:If you interviewed Sofia Coppola and Matthew Modine and Josh Safdie and George Miller, was there anything that one of them told you that really blew your mind about Kubrick? First of all, the respect is so raw. Josh Safdie, you know, for Marty Supreme. We were most interested in that because we know Safdie's a big Kubrick fan, but also that film is set during the time and in the exact location where Stanley was sort of becoming Stanley Kubrick, you know, in the village in New York in the 1950s. Stanley was actually a really good ping pong player, which blows me away. I'm a big sports fan, and so all the sports stuff about Stanley surprised me.

27:05One of the frustrations of living in England was his inability to watch the NFL, watch baseball, watch the World Series. And he would have his sister record games, baseball and football, and mail them to him so that he could then watch later. and like working on his curveball with Jimmy Harris on the roof of Kirk Douglas' office. Like, you know, I just don't think of Stanley Kubrick as a normal guy, you know? Again, that's the mystery. That's the mystery part. But yeah, I think I'm just supposed to tell the story. So like there's one thing that Spielberg's going to talk about. And when Steven tells the story, it's better because he's got details that I've already forgotten.

27:47But they've developed this nice relationship on the phone. They talk a lot. And I think they'd met once. in person right and so um steven says hey look you know i've been talking about this a lot and you know there's a rumor then he said we didn't know that it to be true as we do now that at the end of dr strange love you shot the this huge pie fight and that it went well and it was huge and it took days and it the studio left the cream over the weekend and so the room smelled the monday and, you know, cream curdled and that you loved it, but then didn't use it. Is that true? You know, and Stanley says, why do you want to know?

28:32And Stephen, just a little vexed by that question, because, you know, because I just, you know, the movie's so great and how you could shoot this amazing scene and it worked and you loved it, but you had to let it go. Like, that must have been tough. And is that true? He's like, well, I still don't quite understand why it matters to you. And, you know, and that goes back and forth. to Steven. He's like, it matters to me because you're Stanley Kubrick, right? You know, and then Stanley ponders and he goes, and I'm making up the company, I don't know. He goes, you know, Sennheiser has these new amazing microphones that you're using and apparently it's a boom mic but it captures everything or does something that Stanley was interested in.

29:08He loves tech. And he's like, I can't get them here in England. Can you get those to Steven Spielberg in like 1990 or 88? Steven's like, yeah i have access to those microphones right i get i get he's like would you send a couple of those to me and steven's like yeah sure now stanley never says in exchange but it's very obvious and steven sends him the microphone stanley doesn't talk about the pie fight gets somebody he says i got the microphones they're very good so i shot the pie and then he tells the story like like it's this incredibly transactional relationship but included in that is his like not quite getting why someone would care that much.

29:51And that was one of the quirks about him that in many ways now make him, in addition to being regarded as a genius, also make him weirdly lovable, I think.

30:05Anne Thompson:We have an exciting gimmick for this week's episode. And we're going to break down the three of us, our top five Stanley Kubrick movies. Starting with number five, Ben. You want to go first? Number five, I put Full Metal Jacket. I sort of knew coming in that I'd want this somewhere in the top five. I love it. It would have been the first Kubrick movie that I saw contemporaneous with its release. Right. That I saw it as a whatever. Well, I was 20 year old in 1987. And it had a profound effect on me. And coming in here when there were that series of Vietnam War movies in the late 80s. Good ones.

30:44But this was to me the best. And it felt different. I don't know that I was at that time pretty sure I wasn't thinking about what it meant that it was a Stanley Kubrick film. But all the things I thought about it, that it felt different, that it felt like I was seeing something I wasn't supposed to see. And not just in the terms of war, but like that I was seeing a massive mental health issue made worse by exposure to guns and violence. And then what war can do and what demeaning behavior can do, what bullying can do. I realize I probably sound woke I'm not trying to sound that way at all I just meant like it was like wow you know watching what happened to Vincent D 'Onofrio's character and seeing the consequences of this and then there's still a whole half of the movie to go you know it struck me as wow he just gave us two movies he gave us a double feature but it moved me it moved me it still moves me so that was my number five pick

31:39Ryan Lattanzio:yeah I love the structure of that one and how we do kind of get these two films in one and you know it goes back to like Paths of Glory and fear and desire that the movies, they aren't just anti-war, but they're also anti-military in this way, right? Right, that's right. I just spent the morning at a bunch of college students talking about MASH, and they were trying to figure out who the villain was in the story. And like, yeah, the villain is military authority. There you go. And that's true for Full Metal Jacket as well.

32:09Anne Thompson:And Paths of Glory. Oh, yeah. So, Ryan, what's your number five?

32:14Ryan Lattanzio:well my choices are just kind of the basic millennial choices you know kubrick is the probably the first director where i saw i saw the shining when i was 12 and then i wanted to see everything he did and i tried to be a completist about it that was kind of the first instance of that for me i mean number five will be clockwork orange uh just because i feel like for kubrick cool detachment wasn't really a style choice or an affectation but a way that he really saw the world through a camera. And, you know, he was a cerebral filmmaker in the way that like Nabokov was a cerebral writer, which is why I actually think it's odd that the only Kubrick movie that doesn't really work is Lolita.

32:54Ryan Lattanzio:But I digress anyway. I actually find Clockwork Orange to be very emotionally powerful. It's another movie that's anti-violence with a really great Malcolm McDowell performance adapting an Anthony Burgess book I've never read. But it's putting forth this idea that when you try to police and contain immorality or you're trying to prevent evil by these extreme means, doesn't that then become its own sort of evil? Because then you look at what becomes of Alex by the end of the movie and he's this totally debased automaton. And yeah, you could say maybe he deserved that or not based on everything that we just saw in the rest of the movie.

33:30Ryan Lattanzio:But it's a very powerful and ambiguous message. Yeah. And it makes you think like he manages to create sympathy for Alex, right? Absolutely. Which is really, it's an impressive trick and a great way to tell a story. But it is all you think at the end, like, you know what? I like the old Alex. It wasn't so bad.

33:50Anne Thompson:The old Alex. So my number five is The Shining, 1980. And the first time I saw this movie was at the Magno screening room, the late lamented Magno screening room in New York. I was in New York then. And I didn't like it. I was put off. It surprised me. It was unexpected. I had read the Stephen King novel, so I had expectations of what the movie would be like. And obviously, anyone who knows this movie knows that Kubrick did a whole other number on that story. It is hardly a religious adaptation of the Stephen King novel. But on subsequent viewings, I was brought around to admire and to love. I've seen this movie many times, this take on a blocked writer, memorably played by Jack Nicholson, holed up in the Overlook Hotel, surrounded by ghosts.

34:45Anne Thompson:And the big scenes are so many, so indelible, so frightening. Anyone who has struggled to get words on paper can relate to all work and no play, makes Jack a dull boy. No one here will forget here's Johnny and the axe, The twins. I mean, they're almost cliches at this point. But this is the power of the movie. The blood surging out of the elevator. The kid running, riding down the hotel corridors in his go-kart with the wheels making noise that Kubrick decided to leave in at the last minute. He was going to take it out. He didn't like it. And then everybody on the crew said, hey, this is cool.

35:25Anne Thompson:You should leave it. And, you know, the frozen maze. I'm just making a list here of these extraordinary moments in this extraordinary movie, which I love deeply. Yeah, I think The Shining would have had it six. Like it forced a bit. But, you know, again, it's the terrible thing about lists, right, is the thought that, like, I'm now dissing The Shining because I didn't put it on here. Right. If we look at this a different way, Kubrick made 13 feature films. and between 1964 and 1980, he made six of the greatest films in a row of ever. I mean, they were all incredibly good. So it's hard to come up with five, I have to say.

36:07It is, right? Yeah.

36:08Ryan Lattanzio:Well, we are going to end up back at The Shining with my list, but what about your number four, Ben? I'm taking his second film because I adore it and I hadn't seen it until well into, I don't remember, not that long ago, the first time. Killer's Kiss. And I had been saying on TCM pretty regularly in talking about The Killing, which was his third film, that that's really generally seen as the first Kubrick movie. And I thought, you're not paying attention to Killer's Kiss. I think it's amazing. The fight scene between the hero and the villain in a mannequin, in like an abandoned mannequin factory.

36:45And they're just making do with the weapons there. A lot of throwing of mannequin heads and hurling mannequins at people. I love fight scenes between people who aren't prepared to fight. And in this case, one of them's a boxer, but he still is not prepared for this kind of fight. One of the reasons I love the Soderbergh film Out of Sight so much is because of the awkward fight between Don Cheadle and George Clooney. I'm like, yeah, this is how guys would fight for their lives. You know, it doesn't feel choreographed at all. Anyway, Killer's Kiss is dramatic. I think it's rather beautiful and eerie and scary because of the parts of New York when it's deserted.

37:19I think it's a great story. It moves, you know, it's like 80 minutes long. I think it's a thrilling story. And Kubrick didn't love this movie, but I imagine he would have grown to love it the more times he met people, you know, he'd spent more time around, like, TCM fans, you know. People like us, like, who would have told him how much, how great it was that he would have come to appreciate it. Most of the listeners will have seen everything on this list with a couple of exceptions, and I imagine, for some people, that's a killer kiss.

37:49Ryan Lattanzio:Yeah, that one was a discovery for me in college. And it's a great, nasty piece of noir. And I actually had a feeling you were going to pick that one. And so I almost, if I had time, I was going to rewatch it. Yeah, I really, I love it. It has an unexpected ending. I don't want to say more about that because I don't want to spoil it in any way for anyone. But it's a totally unexpected ending. I mean, every time I see it, it surprises me. I think I'm so ready for something else to happen. And I'm surprised by the ending he chose. I really dig this movie.

38:17Anne Thompson:Yeah, that was an example of something I had seen too far long ago to be able to come up with it right away. Ryan, what's your number four?

38:27Ryan Lattanzio:Again, I'm continuing with the picks of movies that I think the younger listeners, probably a lot of them, have seen. And it's a movie I came around to more later in life, which is Barry Lyndon, where you have Ryan O 'Neill as a feckless, pathetic, really social climber who is fighting to rather embarrassingly so with many a pratfall to enter a world that is of a higher station than his as we go from the late 1700s Ireland and into England. And it's a world that is just as savagely cruel and pitiless as the one he's been trying to leave behind. And I think we talk about cool detachment. This is a really good and technically impeccable example of what I think is, especially in this period, Kubrick's skepticism of the human capacity for good.

39:16Ryan Lattanzio:and a lot of people think of this maybe as his sort of Oscar period piece movie but it's decidedly very much not that and a good comp maybe is Age of Innocence by Scorsese which that movie is just as cruel and savage as any of the gangster movies that he had done at that point and has done since and you also have this extremely innovative cinematography by John Alcott which is working without electricity and entirely by candlelight and it's just filled with one painterly image after another.

39:49Anne Thompson:Beautiful. Beautiful film. It is a beautiful film, and it's a film that I've grown to like a lot more. I don't respond visually the way I'm supposed to and the way you guys do and certainly the way directors do. So for years, the way people talked about Barry Lyndon was off-putting to me. I don't care that it was candlelit. I mean, that's interesting as a fact, but its interest lasts as long as you talking about it. Like, oh, that must have been a big challenge and it does look cool. But if they don't say things to each other that interest me, then I could care less about that. I'm not taken by it in any way.

40:26Anne Thompson:That's not a dialogue film, Barry Linden. No, it's not a dialogue film, but it is funny enough. And I am totally charmed by him, as charmed as you can be by a feckless loser, right? Like, I got to care about the people. I got to care what they say. hey, I care what they do. And the lighting never, if you talk about the lighting, I shut down. We lose you. Yeah, that's right. Well, you've got that Mankiewicz gene pool. You're a writer at heart. So my number four is Paths of Glory, 1957. And I would argue that this was the movie that put Kubrick on the map, actually, the sort of breakout film. It's one of the great anti-war films of all time, adapted from a very intense Humphrey Cobb novel that nobody thought could ever be made into a movie.

41:15Anne Thompson:And Kirk Douglas is the colonel defending his soldiers from trying to escape, this is World War I, certain death. This black and white portrait of the trenches is hypnotic and horrific. I mean, he really pioneers some of that photography, that kind of point of view photography that we have become very familiar with in photographing this kind of thing. And when Douglas faces off, I mean, that's what we love about Kirk Douglas is when he gets pissed off, when he gets angry. He faces off against his corrupt general, Adolf Mongeau, and you just want to cheer, you know. But the film was reacted too badly in several countries.

41:57Anne Thompson:It was banned because they were, especially the French, they were incensed by its anti-war and corruption message. And it didn't get any Oscar. It sort of surprised me. And, I mean, he plays a French officer. I mean, the French generals were the villains. Were the bad guys. And they are villains in Paths of Glory, yeah. I'm saving more. Paths of Glory is coming later. I knew that one would be coming from you. Yeah. What about your number three then, Ben? Number three is a movie that I imagine is on both your lists. I'm positive it's going to be on Ants. Dr. Strangeload, you know, you can make pretty powerful arguments.

42:38Funniest movie ever made. I think that argument can be made and holds up. I think that for me, that Sterling Hayden's time as General Jack D. Ripper, who touches off a nuclear war because the Soviets are draining us of our precious bodily fluids. That scene then with Peter Sellers as Colonel Mandrake, a British officer who has to pretend that what Hayden is saying is not insane. It's the greatest scene for me in movies. It's just perfect. Sellers is so funny with his like, oh, yeah, that's interesting. I get bodily fluids. Yeah. I wondered, though, if we might make a call and return the bomber that you've sent to drop a nuclear payload on Moscow.

43:30I just think Hayden's amazing in it. And as great as Sellers is in his two other roles, as Dr. Strangelove, the former Nazi scientist, and as the president, those moments with Sterling Hayden are just the greatest scene for me, like in almost any movie ever.

43:46Ryan Lattanzio:Yeah, Dr. Strangelove was on the bubble. It didn't go into my top five. and you probably saw that coming. I imagine it'll be pretty high on.

43:53Anne Thompson:You're going to hear more from the creators.

43:56Ryan Lattanzio:The rest of the list for me, number three being The Shining. Like I said, it was my introduction to Kubrick and actually when I saw it, I was 12. I had to sleep in bed with my parents at the age of 12. So embarrassing. But I was obsessed with that. I just kept going back to it. I couldn't get enough of it and I've seen it so many times in the theater now. And people complain that Kubrick movies, especially this one, are drained of humanity. But I would really argue that the Shelley Duvall performance injects some of the most humanity of any Kubrick movie into this one. And it's so unfortunate.

44:34Ryan Lattanzio:I'm glad that the performance has been reappraised, you know, and the organization that does the Raspberry Awards, they rescinded that quote unquote prize that they gave her. And it's kind of unfortunate everything that sort of happened to Shelley Duvall. She went into reclusion, even though it does seem like she was happy there at the end. But I actually think that's one of the great performances in any Kubrick movie. I don't really care for that documentary Room 237. It's actually doing that thing, Ben, that we were talking about before. It's too academic. It's doing all these close readings that are like looking for patterns in the clouds that are just going to be there if you're looking for them.

45:09Ryan Lattanzio:And I just don't really find that interesting. It's more like you're superimposing something onto the movie. But it is a movie that has a ton of mystery, and there's a ton in there to discover. I never run out of things that I realize are fine for the first time in that movie. I'd forgotten that she got the golden raspberry. Like, it's crazy. It's such a great performance. And you know who thinks it's a great performance? Jack Nicholson. Like, so, yeah. And he knows from great performances. I do feel bad that her hair was falling out, as you see in the Vivian Kubrick documentary. one of the best making of behind-the-scenes documentaries of any movie.

45:43Ryan Lattanzio:She's very distressed, and Kubrick's really, he's driving the nail in to see how far it's going to go, which is not really a morally good directing tactic, perhaps. But I suppose, and perhaps it worked, but I think it wouldn't have worked if it wasn't her.

46:00Anne Thompson:So my number three is A Clockwork Orange in 1971. And this prescient movie, it's Malcolm McDowell's Alex and his droogs who are in love with the ultraviolence. It just seems to presage what is going on in our world now. The kind of bro culture, the degradation of culture, you know. Indelible again. You can't forget it ever, ever, ever. Eventually, Kubrick himself had to pull the movie from UK cinemas because of reports of copycat violence. But it did manage to score four Oscar nominations, including Best Picture Director, Adapted Screenplay and Directing. And I think Malcolm McDowell gave one of the great performances of his career, for sure.

46:51Anne Thompson:I mean, one of the images, of course, that you never forget is Alex with his eyelids propped open, you know, as they try to change his mind about what he thinks about sex and drugs and rock and roll. Yeah, and you did it for The Shining And when I talk about my lack of Refinement on visual Storytelling, the way you did it For both The Shining and there for Clockwork Orange You talk about moments And the moments that last And that they're invariably, in Kubrick movies They're visual moments, like that's That excites me, that makes me want to be like Maybe I can go back and watch Barry Lyndon again By the way, which I like a lot, because you're right That image is so unbelievably Seared into our, even I'm certain there are people who've never seen Clockwork Orange that that scene.

47:40Anne Thompson:They've seen that image. They've seen that image, yeah. In the world of today with everybody scrolling through short video bits, you know, people have seen short video bits that, you know, they may not have seen the whole movie, but they've seen that one. Right, and oddly enough, a lifetime spent with short video bits is sort of like, you know, that's part of what Alex suffers through, too. Exactly. And also what happens to us, like the notion, yeah, I get it. Technically, we're blinking, but we're kind of catatonic. We're making some progress. What is your number two? So number two is the other Sterling Hayden movie.

48:14So I think you're right in some ways that Paz of Glory was the movie that made Kubrick but like in hindsight when you look at him growth as a filmmaker The Killing is an incredibly sophisticated movie and maybe the best heist movie ever made and American heist movie ever made. I just think it's pretty perfect and we get, you know, this horse, this racetrack robbery told through everyone's perspective again and again. It makes sense. The studio, United Artists, was freaked out because they thought no one would be able to understand this. Even after the first time they saw it, they told Kubrick that no one would be able to understand it.

48:55And hey, he had to recut it. He had to make the story linear. and Kubrick and Jimmy Harris went back and recut the movie, telling the story in linear fashion. And the way Jimmy Harris tells it, and you can hear it in our podcast, he was like, yeah, we just looked at each other and were like, this sucks. And they put it back the exact same way and gave it back to the studio, like without really saying anything. And now everybody knows that you can tell stories this way, but it was, you know, really inventive and bold in 1956 to do it. And for a struggling, for a filmmaker who needed not just a hit to make his career, he needed money.

49:31Like he was borrowing money from basically Jimmy Harris's, his inheritance was what was keeping them afloat. And Kubrick borrowed so much money from Harris. But he maintained against studio pressure again and again, what his vision was, was right for the story and for the film. If you like crime films, it's the best. And there's a great femme fatale in it, in Marie Windsor, who I still don't understand why she wasn't a giant star under the studio system in the 40s and 50s. Because she's just dynamite as poor Elijah Cook's wife. I couldn't love the killing more.

50:10Ryan Lattanzio:It's weird that this one's kind of an obscurity, even still, right? I mean, I think for a certain generation like mine that reveres Kubrick, it's just not one that comes up a lot. And I wanted to put it on here to be kind of edgy because I think that movie is great. I'm in the same boat as Anne of, like, I haven't seen it in a while.

50:28Anne Thompson:That's right. That's my problem. And I need to go back to it. I mean, the great thing about Killer's Kiss and The Killing is that combined, it's going to take you two and a half hours to watch these movies. Because they're tight? Yeah. I mean, they're so tight. You said it with Paz of Glory, but like Paz of Glory, you know, I feel like I've been punched in the face after Paz of Glory, except I'm outraged every time I see it. I'm so angry after Paz of Glory. And you feel like you've just seen a three and a half hour war epic. That's been great. Right. Except it was 88 minutes. And that was true for The Killing and Killer's Kiss.

50:59They're shorter than that. I can't say enough about about The Killing, and it's certainly worth revisiting. And it won't take you long.

51:06Anne Thompson:We will both do it. But Ryan, what's your number two?

51:09Ryan Lattanzio:Well, speaking of being outraged, I know this one's going to piss both of you off, I feel like. It's maybe Anne, at least. And this movie I bring up a lot. But number two for me is Eyes Wide Shut, which I have a very personal relationship to just as a young cinephile. And talk about a movie that's not tightly compressed and is probably pretty bloated and has a third act of over-explication and exposition that is starting to work for me more than it used to as I get older, but I used to have a real problem with it. But I think that the first 30 minutes of this movie are some of Kubrick's greatest work, if not his greatest work in the second half of his career, which is when you follow Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise, who are very much married then and interestingly are very much divorced shortly after the movie comes out.

51:56Ryan Lattanzio:So you do have to find some causality there, potentially, which is the kind of thing that feeds all these Kubrick conspiracy theorists, right? And then it feeds conspiracy theories about what's he trying to say about Scientology with this cult society that's in the Hamptons. That is this sex cult that Sidney Pollack's character, who's some kind of politico, has a deep entrenchment in. These are very interesting performances from these two actors that I don't think ever did work quite like this ever again. There's obviously a fantastic bedroom confessional scene where they reveal their private worst selves to each other while they're smoking pot.

52:31Ryan Lattanzio:And it's a brilliant scene. And then he gets a call from a patient. It's either the dream of the movie ends and the reality sets in, or you can look at it as the opposite way. But the movie changes tones and then becomes this nocturnal odyssey through Pinewood. He created this very dreamlike version of New York City that has gotten a lot of criticism for not really resembling New York. But I think that's totally missing the point of the movie. I will say that this Criterion new re-burnished transfer that came out in the fall, IndyWire we did a whole week dedicated to the movie and the release, it doesn't look as good to me as my old standard definition Academy box ratio DVD that I will never get rid of.

53:16Ryan Lattanzio:I actually prefer the experience of watching that version. dead silence when I said Eyes Wide Shut complete dead silence I have nothing to

53:25Anne Thompson:I can't defend it I thought Anne was going to say something about it and I was being polite I really didn't like that movie I really didn't think it was well but look we're talking relative to greatness that's my feeling it's funny because here's a couple things I learned a lot about Eyes Wide Shut and I like it much better than I thought I did So I wouldn't have made a top five. I obviously didn't make a top five, but I'm glad it's on here. You know, he went to enormous expense to recreate New York, right? I don't know who was a nostalgic trip down memory lane, but I mean, you know, he crafted the Cruise Kidman apartment as his last apartment had been in New York.

54:12And he had Lisa Leone, who ended up doing everything for this movie. she went around and bought the tin trash cans or metal trash cans and she would say to people can i have your trash can i've got a brand new trash can for you and then she would ship those trash cans 30 40 50 of them to pinewood so that kubrick could have the new york trash cans wow uh in the film you know this is the strangest job anybody's ever had in movies knocking on people's doors asking to have their trash can and offering them a brand new modern trash can as a replacement. So constantly looking for stuff to try to replicate it.

54:51So I didn't know that he'd been criticized that it was not a real New York because there was great effort made to have it look right to him. The novella is set in Vienna. So he could have set it anywhere. He could have set it in London, right? He chose to set it in New York. And obviously, in case anyone knows, he didn't go to New York to make it because he hadn't gotten on a plane since like 1963 and wouldn't fly anywhere.

55:18Anne Thompson:One of the things that I don't like about the movie is, of all his films, it's the one that feels fake to me. And, you know, there are all these stories about how many times he would shoot every shot, how many takes he would take, how long he sort of tortured his two leads. You know, Cruz and Kidman were sort of, you know, in prison for a really, really, really long time. Months, almost a year. Over a year, almost a year and a half. Yeah, a year and a half.

55:45Ryan Lattanzio:They could go home for the holidays. They were kind of permitted to leave for holiday breaks.

55:50Anne Thompson:So all of that may have made an impression upon me. But honestly, the movie itself just feels, as you're saying, even if he did go to that length to try to recreate the city, he didn't get there. It feels fake to me.

56:05Ryan Lattanzio:The artifice I find fascinating about the movie because I do feel like by the end, the veil is lifted on the artifice. And by the way, it has just so great that the last two words, the last words said in a Kubrick movie ever were there's something we need to do as soon as possible. Fuck. And that's the end.

56:21Anne Thompson:All right. So my number two is Dr. Strangelove, 1965. This one, the Oscars did respond to. They went for it. Writer, director, picture. As you said before, Peter Sellers is playing multiple parts. I remember especially the gleaming black and white war room, which, of course, is the location of the unforgettable line. Gentlemen, you can't fight in here. This is the war room from President Merkin Muffley. So Sellers on the phone with the Russian president is one of the funniest scenes ever, ever done. He's like, Yuri. Angry. Of course you're angry, Yuri, but imagine how I feel. I miss all of it.

57:10Anne Thompson:I don't mean to do it. The whole thing is just, as you've said, it's just one of the most hilarious, sophisticated satires ever done. I don't know if either of you had a chance to see the Kubrick exhibit that was at the L.A. County Museum a few years ago. It was huge, and it was sprawling, and it was marvelous. and a lot of the stuff around Dr. Strangelove was fascinating. Some of the cameras they used were very sophisticated there. You already did the bodily fluids. I'll let that go. So what is your number one, Mr. Ben?

57:47Ryan Lattanzio:It's going to be the same for all of us, isn't it? Isn't it?

57:49Anne Thompson:All of us have the same one, obviously. No, I didn't even consider what you guys have as number one and it's pretty obvious what you have as number one. It might be 12th for me, but I get it and I don't like being a guy who diminishes that movie. But anyway, no, mine's Path of Glory because it might be the best film I've ever seen. Ever, ever, ever. The greatest movie ever. And talked about the plot and did a nice job summing it up. I just want to add that the sort of the casual indifference to human suffering of the generals, of which you're standing in for a sort of elite society, because they care more about their standing, you know, that they can go to parties and say, oh, we tried, you know.

58:28In this battle, I'm not an expert on, you know, the history of armed conflict, but we all know that there have been a lot of stupid wars, that the number of stupid, pointless wars vastly outnumbers the number of just wars. But certainly in modern history, you can argue that there was never been a war dumber than World War I, a more pointless slaughter. The entire generation of European young men slaughtered over 78 yards. And so the idea in this movie that Colonel Dax, that's Kirk Douglas, is told to take a hill over there that's incredibly well defended, the anthill. And he's like, why? Like, I'm going to lose so many men and then we'll be over there.

59:15What difference does it make? What are we doing? What's the point of this? And they don't care because they want to be able to tell people that they made an effort and they're noble. And sure enough, Douglas does his job. They lead the assault and his men are slaughtered. And then the blame for that is sort of what the movie is about, is the generals will accept no fault whatsoever for this. And Douglas, first half of the movie is this incredible, from being in the trench and seeing the charge, it's unbelievable what he shows us. You feel like you are experiencing World War I with 3D goggles. And then the second half of the movie, similar to the movie I put at number five, Full Metal Jacket, is a courtroom drama.

59:54where three people who do not deserve to be on trial are going to be executed for cowardice. And then Kirk Douglas, who was their commanding officer, defends them. And it's just the movie makes me so angry. I'm angry at the world, angry at every injustice that we see. Today, very few movies get me as moved as Paz of Glory. And the person who got me interested in Paz of Glory, thanks to TCM, was John McCain. We had four politicians on in 2004 before the election, like in the fall of 2004. And we had two Democrats, two Republicans. We had Orrin Hatch as one of the Republicans and John McCain as the other one.

1:00:36And McCain picked Baza Glory and talked about how pointless war is and how leaders shouldn't be trusted. And this was during the Iraq war.

1:00:43Anne Thompson:And he should know. And he should know. And then off camera, he was talking about how the Bush administration had bungled this and how outrageous it was and how incompetent they were. And then shortly thereafter, he's on a plane flying around. I really thought after that, I was like, oh, this guy's going to he's going to endorse John Kerry or be his vice presidential pick. So we must have shot this in June or July because they're in June or May or June. because then on the Democratic side, the two people we had was John Edwards and who then became Kerry's vice presidential nominee and then proved to disappoint all of America shortly thereafter.

1:01:16He picked Dr. Strangelove, by the way, as his one movie that mattered to him. And that's what we asked everybody to do, pick a movie that matters to you. It didn't have to be about politics. And Joe Biden picked Dead Poets Society because it was like, you know, shot in Delaware. And it made him nostalgic for his youth. Orrin Hatch picked To Kill a Mockingbird but Edwards picked Dr. Strangeloven talked about you know growing up in the Cold War era and having to hide under your desks doing the drills as a student to hide under a desk at school and he had never done that his wife had and it became clear that she picked the movie and then he I don't even think he'd seen it he's a fraud from stage one And everybody afterwards was like, what's up with that guy?

1:02:04That guy's weird. So anyway, Paths of Glory affects me more than any movie ever has. And so it's number one as a Kubrick movie, and it's in my top five movies ever.

1:02:17Ryan Lattanzio:I definitely can't argue with any of that. I do feel that Anne, our number one, is probably the same, which is a movie I've actually seen in theaters more times than any other movie, which is 2001, A Space Odyssey. You are correct. and I've seen it with people on various levels of drugs which is very interesting I've never done that myself that's my opening line too it's way too scary for that to me honestly much of it owed to everything that Douglas Trumbull the VFX man by the movie everything that he pioneered for this film a lot of it's owed to that but this movie looks better than any other outer space set movie does today even I would argue and I think all of them are chasing what this movie does and they don't quite get it.

1:02:59Ryan Lattanzio:And you think about this Stargate sequence, which is this terrifying journey to Jupiter. This is how a lot of people time their drug trips, apparently, for this movie, is for this scene, which would be very overwhelming to me personally. And then you learn that so much of it was achieved by just dropping chemicals and paint and other things into tanks full of water. And it looks so surreal and otherworldly and crazy. And then you realize that's just what they were doing. I mean there's so much I could say about this movie just beyond his technical innovations I recently heard a Kubrick interview that I never heard before another one of his late night phone calls with somebody I think a journalist where he basically explains the entire epilogue of the movie which kind of took the piss out of the whole thing for me I wish I hadn't heard it because I kind of never understood it really and I liked Who does?

1:03:53Ryan Lattanzio:I preferred being in the realm of that ambiguity and confusion. And then he's like, no, it's literally this is what it is. And then when he said it, I realized, oh, actually, that completely makes sense. But that said, there's maybe like five or six American movies that I think rival 2001 in my book. It's interesting, Ben, that it wasn't on your list at all. I'd like to know why. Because I don't respond to it the way other people do. I don't like being I don't like vertigo either. I'm not being a contrarian. I'm like, in general, I always think like, if I like something, America will like something too.

1:04:28I am an average Ben. But one, because it's visual, right? And so I don't care about the stargazer sequence. Like literally, I'm like, what's happening? This is irritating. But I have my appreciation for 2001 has grown enormously because of talking to people like you. And then I think more than any other movie. like I just remember in one day I had both Denis Villeneuve and Hans Zimmer were on TCM we did interviews with them and they both talked about the profound influence that 2001 had on them the life-changing and why the movie that has influenced more directors I think modern directors than any other is that movie so you guys are right I'm wrong I just don't have an emotional response to it so it doesn't make my top five but my appreciation for it uh has grown and it has a great line i mean it has a couple but it has one particularly great line and any movie that that that has a line that is so chilling um like that is is worthy of my of my of my respect but

1:05:31Anne Thompson:i can't put it in my top five what's the line oh you know i'm sorry dave i can't do that or i'm bastardizing it now you know like it's so and it's so scary you know um and prescient again Again, and prescient. So it's... And prescient's a word that I run from normally,

1:05:48Ryan Lattanzio:but in the case of this movie, no. It's there. When you talk about movies for your living, old movies, I'm sure Anne does too, when you love A Face in the Crowd and you love network, you can't not use the word, or we have to come up with another word. Because those movies are so...

1:06:04Anne Thompson:They saw the future. Yeah, that's right. Those movies saw the future. They saw an ugly future and captured it perfectly. And they saw where humans were heading. That's right. It's so human. Alas. That's right. So this is the movie I've seen more than any of the others. And as Ryan was suggesting, in various stages of consciousness, I remember being in the Lowe's 83rd Theater in New York in the balcony. Smoking dope. This is what we were doing in those days. Altered states. The very first time I saw it, it was at one of the East Side cinemas. And I was on a date with a guy from Andover. who was very friendly and touchy.

1:06:45Anne Thompson:And I basically had to turn to him and say, I'm watching this movie. Right, yeah, yeah. Later. This is who I am. Free buddy. Yeah, yeah. Very sad. It won one Oscar out of all the ones that it was nominated for. Do you guys know what the, which one? Oh, sure, I know. I know, yeah. The effects. The effects. Visual effects. And Kubrick took that Oscar when it almost certainly should have gone to Doug Trump. I don't think he went to the ceremony, but I guess it got to him. Oh, I'm sure he didn't go to the ceremony. Unless they held the ceremony in his backyard, he wasn't going. Obviously, those VFX were mind-blowing then, and they still are.

1:07:29Anne Thompson:And it's not just the way the movie foreshadows our world. Rich people in space, a man figuring out an anti-gravity toilet. Governments covering up things that they do not want us to know. Hal taking control of the ship, as you say. Of course, it's the elegant cut from flying bone to spinning spaceship accompanied by a Strauss waltz, which is so iconic that Greta Gerwig made fun of it in Barbie. You know, that's a sign of something. My favorite moment in the movie is the humor of a floating pen scooped up by a stewardess. which is itself a clever physical effect. Everything was physical. Everything was done in the camera, in front of the camera.

1:08:16Anne Thompson:I mean, it was extraordinary. And my other favorite one is the landing of a ship with a face on the moon. You see, I am visual, Ben. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Well, it's, no, you guys are, again, I knew you'd make me consider things differently. We include in the podcast Stanley Kubrick, according to Jack Nicholson, Stanley Kubrick told him that he counted the walkouts from the first screening in New York, which he went to, but not in fly. He went, took a boat with his family and they're all decked out. Stanley Kubrick, the least likely guy to wear a tux, in a tux. And 241 people, he says, walked out of the movie.

1:08:53And he was crestfallen. And then the reviews were bad and it had cost so much money. And then, you know, people who don't care about reviews, college kids and young people were like, they saw it and they told their friends and they got stoned and they watched it and they watched it again and again and they started talking about it and it became the movie that it is now. Kubrick also grew his beard during production. The Kubrick look wasn't yet the Kubrick look until 2001. He asked his wife to draw. She was a painter, Christiana who he met during Paz of Glory. She's the singer at the end of Paz of Glory and a beautiful ending to that movie that he improvised or added book when Jimmy Harris thought that he was adding it just because he wanted to get his girlfriend in the movie and then realized, oh, no, this is the perfect ending to a movie.

1:09:38But he had her draw a beard on him with an eyebrow pencil and then he was like, I look great. I'm going to grow a beard. All Jewish faces should have beards.

1:09:49Anne Thompson:He said, yeah. Have you ever had one, Ben? Mine just comes in as like, it can get scruffy, but it never really gets full enough. And now it's like almost totally gray. So as soon as I shave it, I look, you know, seven years younger. There you go. Well, you had a goatee earlier in your career. I know that story. Oh, when it started. Yeah, I had a goatee. That was crazy. My wife said that she would never have hooked up with me in the first place if I'd had a goatee, but I believe I had it indeed the first time that happened. Thank you for doing this. This was really fun. I knew it would be. I knew it would be really, really entertaining and stimulating and challenging and all those things.

1:10:28Anne Thompson:We learned a lot. Thank you. No, it was my pleasure. It was a lot of fun. And the first episode of the podcast is available. 11 episodes on Kubrick, the plot thickens, and, you know, stuff I just, there's so much stuff I didn't know, including great stuff about Eyes Wide Shut. I talked just yesterday, earlier this week, to Todd Field, who played the blindfolded pianist. And he's got nothing but great Kubrick stories. And great stories about Tom Cruise, too. And it all is, like, how much Cruise loved working for Stanley and how patient he was. Todd Field said one story about how his, like, first scene with Tom Cruise at the bar, where he tells him about the sex club, basically.

1:11:03Right. And they did 18 takes, Todd said. He thinks of that one. And Stanley was like, God, that 18 take was just perfect. Why were the first 17 so terrible? And they were laughing a little bit and Field was like, I don't, do you understand that like, I'm barely an actor, right? Kubrick hired him, no audition. And he's like, and I'm here and I'm in London and I'm doing a scene with Tom Cruise and Stanley Kubrick's directing. Yeah. I needed to get warmed up a little bit. And he's like, well, you crushed the 18th, but you're good from now on, right? And he was like, yeah, I'm good. I'm good from now on.

1:11:35And he was. And then Todd had an incredible time there and learned a ton and loved being in Stanley's presence.

1:11:41Anne Thompson:The first time I interviewed him for In the Bedroom in Sundance and he talked about that, he cried. He had a lovely moment where he was said there, you know, Stan, I said, what did you guys talk about when you weren't talking about the movie? And he was like, well, and that was also part of like asking him about, do you remember when you got the news that he died in Tom Cruise? called him and said, I have horrible news. We lost Stanley. And he stopped and he was clearly about to get emotional. And I, you know, and I sort of let the moment hang there a little bit. And he said, you know, I just, I, I don't want these things to become anecdotes.

1:12:16So I'm going to keep them. And I was like, you know, and Steven, when I asked him about the funeral said, I'm going to keep that to myself. That, that means too much. And in both cases, these are people not answering a question in a way that is unbelievably a beautiful answer to the question. Right? Like it makes it even better. So I love those moments from both Todd and Stephen. And those will both be in the podcast.

1:12:41Anne Thompson:Well, I look forward to listening. Can't wait. I'm going to put it. I'm going to deal with it. I'm going to do it in my car. That's what I'm going to do. I'll do it at the gym. All right. Thanks a lot, Ben. Thank you, Ben. Thank you. It's a pleasure. Anytime. Thank you.

1:12:57Anne Thompson:Kelly Clarkson here with Wayfair. I know holiday magic starts at home and Wayfair makes it easy.

1:13:03Ryan Lattanzio:They have everything from Christmas trees and mantle decor to outdoor lighting and inflatables that I'll use year after year. Head to Wayfair.com today.