The Gene Hackman Hall of Fame

In one of the most requested episodes in the history of the show, Sean and Amanda are joined by Tracy Letts to honor the incredible actor Gene Hackman by building his Hall of Fame. (0:00) Intro (0:44) What made Gene Hackman so special (24:23) The Gene Hackman Hall of Fame Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Tracy Letts Producer: Jack Sanders Production Support: Lucas Cavanagh Get a Sausage McMuffin with Egg, PLUS hash browns AND a small coffee, for just $5. Only at McDonald’s for a limited time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:15Sean Fennessey?

  I'm Sean Fennessey.

• 0:16Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm Amanda Dobbins.

• 0:17Sean Fennessey?

  And this is the Big Picture, a conversation show about Gene Hackman. The great Tracy Letts is here today on the show and we are building the long awaited Hall of Fame for Gene Hackman, one of the greatest screen stars of the past century. This is one of the most requested episodes in the history of this podcast. We have put in the work today. We will dive into Hackman's career and select the 10 films that best represent his work right after this. This episode of The Big Picture is brought to you by Amazon Prime. What pairs with a good comedy? The cozy blanket arriving with Prime. What pairs with a nail biting thriller? Snacks arriving with Prime. What pairs with big game on Prime Video? That new couch arriving with Prime. Whatever feeling you're after, Prime helps bring it to life with great entertainment

• 1:01Sean Fennessey?

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• 1:46Sean Fennessey?

  Just go to LinkedIn.com/thebigpicture. That's LinkedIn.com/thebigpicture. Terms and conditions apply. Okay, Letts, did you ask for this? Because it's been some time since Hackman passed and we, I did a brief video on YouTube back in 2025 when he passed away, but we never did a proper episode dedicated to him. So was the origin of this episode, you saying, let's do Hackman?

• 2:13Speaker 02

  The, it really started with the people. The people in the streets, the people in the middle of America. They came to me after the Duval Hall of Fame that we did and they said, we need Hackman.

• 2:25Sean Fennessey?

  They knocked at your door? How did they approach you?

• 2:27Speaker 02

  They let me know. They, they tell me in the streets. I ride down the street and they, they talk to me as I ride down the street.

• 2:32Sean Fennessey?

  In the back of a convertible?

• 2:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. I talked to the people.

• 2:37Sean Fennessey?

  Careful riding that way. You know, it can happen to beloved men in this country.

• 2:40Speaker 02

  The people tell me that they needed Hackman and I communicated that to you. The people are asking for Hackman. And here we are.

• 2:47Amanda Dobbins?

  And also I'm going to be in LA for, for this window of time.

• 2:51Speaker 02

  This was the time it worked out to do it. Yeah.

• 2:53Amanda Dobbins?

  We, you were requested for Diane Keaton. And yeah, we asked you and you said that you didn't really feel that it was going to work with your schedule to watch the back half of Diane Keaton's catalog. So I did the work solo.

• 3:09Speaker 02

  And you, and you guys did it expertly.

• 3:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Thank you so much.

• 3:12Speaker 02

  I thought it was really good. For me, there was a real steep drop off on the Keaton filmography after a certain point. And I thought, this isn't, I'm going to go in and just really be pitching for these early things. It was like, it should be more across the board than that.

• 3:28Sean Fennessey?

  Amanda did do the work on that episode. And, and, and these episodes are, I think, an interesting social experiment at this point in terms of what we're trying to accomplish. When we started doing them, we were doing them with a lot of.

• 3:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Living actors.

• 3:41Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, a lot of Gen X, early boomer types, you know, your, your Tom Hanks's, your Julia Roberts's. And a lot of that was about our affinity for a certain kind of movie that was maybe in the crevices of a very well-known contemporary career. And now as a lot of these great screen stars of the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s are starting to pass away, there's a heavy workload involved here. And I think what is the value of that workload is something I'd like to explore through some of this conversation. But one of the things that is very clear to me, after doing Keaton, after doing Duval, after doing Meryl Streep, and now doing Hackman, is that these, these actors have so many movies that no one talks about ever.

• 4:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:22Sean Fennessey?

  And some of them for good reason and some of them for not good reason. Some of them are real discoveries and really exciting. What did, what did, just earliest takeaways before we start getting into the biography of Hackman and where his career starts? Like what did you, what do you take away from this?

• 4:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I said very, I said yes to this very confidently. I was like, because I know all the work of Gene Hackman. I've, you know, I've, I've seen the greats and then I looked at the list and it was like, oh, boy, I'm, I'm in some hot water here because there are a lot of movies in the 70s and 80s that surround the greats that I've seen and that are, you know, classics of, of cinema and I had just never heard of, to your point. And there was a little bit of like picking and choosing and trying to figure out, okay, which of the five movies in 1970, whatever, should I seek out here? And did I, and even at some point, I realized last night that I was watching a different movie than the movie that I intended to watch.

• 5:20Amanda Dobbins?

  And I was like, well, I've checked this DVD out of videos. It's too late. I guess I'm like, I'm on the journey of prime cut now. Um, so it, I knew that it was expansive, but I really had no idea how expansive it was. And you know, it's interesting, we came of age in the 90s. And so I feel like we do know all the films that slipped through the cracks in the 90s and great undiscovered work, but you know, you forget there was life before us. And in the 70s, they were just turning stuff out.

• 5:49Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 5:49Amanda Dobbins?

  There's just like a lot of stuff and I, I didn't get to all of it. I'm hoping that you're going to be our, um, our red box captain for this part.

• 5:59Speaker 02

  I got to almost everything.

• 6:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 6:02Speaker 02

  Almost everything. Just a couple of blank spots.

• 6:05Sean Fennessey?

  So Hackman made 80 total features, roughly 75 features in which he prominently figures.

• 6:13Sean Fennessey?

  I think, because you know, he has like a couple of uncredited parts, you know, he's, he's got a couple of parts where he's just doing voice work. But I've seen now 69 of them and I feel really accomplished, but right before we started recording, you said, I'm, I'm just missing a few and I'm, I'm just missing a few as well. And now I feel derelict in my duty. And yet, man, I feel like I have a total picture of his work and, and the kind of actor that he is and what he means to Hollywood. And something I was saying to you yesterday was that I really see him, and I'll bet you feel this way too, as a, as a bridge to movie history because he is one of the very few people, unlike say Al Pacino, who never took a break. He never took more than two years off from making a movie.

• 6:56Sean Fennessey?

  He was pretty consistently in a meaningful box office or awards film through every five to seven years, starting in the late 1960s, all the way through 2004. And so that body of work is, he's just so present persistently through almost five decade period of movie history. So just general thoughts, you've seen almost all the movies now. Did you change your mind about Hackman? Did you think anything different?

• 7:25Speaker 02

  Not at all. First of all, it's, you know, his choice of material is very interesting and one of the reasons he's a bridge that you're talking about, because he chooses work in the 90s that really speaks to you guys and your generation. You have different associations with Hackman than I do. In a, in a way that I don't think Robert Duval quite did, right? Robert Duval, uh, receded to, to some extent, uh, just in the roles he was choosing, right? They paid him his money and he showed up and he played a, a smaller part in something. Or he did something that was a passion project, but that just didn't have very wide appeal. Whereas Hackman found himself in some really huge movies from the 90s and clearly was choosing that material.

• 8:09Speaker 02

  It's a very different thing than watching Robert Duval or watching Robert Redford, watching all these Hackman movies. I mean, for one thing, Hackman just doesn't have the, the, the range of Robert Duval. You, you, you don't see him playing, uh, Watson in a Sherlock Holmes movie. You won't see him playing, oh, who's the, the Nazi he plays and the.

• 8:33Sean Fennessey?

  The eagle has landed.

• 8:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. You, you won't see Hackman taking on those kinds of parts.

• 8:38Sean Fennessey?

  Doesn't really do accents.

• 8:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 8:39Sean Fennessey?

  Very often, doesn't really transform, you know, you don't see his hair being different. He has a mustache sometimes, but no wild facial hair.

• 8:48Amanda Dobbins?

  He's just, he's always rumpled and I was about to say, he doesn't do costume dramas. He does a ton of westerns and he does a ton of time periods, but always looks the same.

• 8:57Sean Fennessey?

  It's true.

• 8:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Just kind of, the, the suit is hanging off him just so. And he's kind of, he's visually unremarkable, which is the point.

• 9:05Speaker 02

  I, I watched a lot of these movies with the nanny. She's, as I've mentioned before, she's 35 and she said to me, you know, normally when you put one of these on, I kind of know what, what year, roughly what year this was made. She said, I can't tell with Hackman because he always looks the same. It's like over a 45 year career, he had 20 years where he was a 40 year old and then 20 years where he was a 60 year old.

• 9:28Sean Fennessey?

  That's exactly right. I was going to make the same point. It's just so fascinating. And I think it's one of the reasons why he was pretty consistently, I'm not sure if box office draw is the right word for what he was, but he was bankable in a way. There was something reliable about him because he seemed to not change. He seemed to be the same kind of person. And that is, there's an interesting point there. And he made this point in an interview with Larry King that I watched the other day. He gave very few long form interviews in the last 25 years of his career, but after he made his last movie, he talked for about an hour on King's show. And he talked about the difference between movie stars and great actors and that there are some great actors who are great movie stars, but most movie stars get by on the strength of their personality. And he was trying to say that he tried to be a great actor while also being a movie star.

• 10:13Sean Fennessey?

  And I wonder, I, I wonder if he did. He did, he's clearly a great actor, but, and his sense of what kinds of parts he should be picking, I think is one of his great superpowers because he knows what he can play and can't play. So the fact that he's not trying to do a Victorian drama.

• 10:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 10:32Sean Fennessey?

  Really benefits him. He never exposes what he can't do in a smart way.

• 10:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Or he's not doing the way we were with Robert Redford. And the closest he gets to it goes pretty wrong, I would say. And so he is. He's sort of the anti-movie star where he has a great deal of presence and charm, but it manifests itself in more in like villainous and or dodgy or can't quite trust it ways. And, you know, certainly fits with like new Hollywood and the type of protagonists that you would see in those movies. And so gives him a real lane. But he's never debonair. He's never, even when you're rooting for him, there is an ambivalence

• 11:17Amanda Dobbins?

  to what's going on with most of his characters. That I think, I mean, he plays beautifully and is like absolutely needed in movies, especially the types of movies that were starting to be made in the seventies. But it's, you know, it's not the classic Redford thing of like, okay, get my light just so. And here I am, and I'm gonna just carry you all on my like, you know, my golden age of cinema charm.

• 11:43Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, yeah. He's a very different kind of an actor. Do you remember the first time you ever saw him?

• 11:48Speaker 02

  I was trying to think of that. It might have been Bite the Bullet in a movie theater or at a drive-in.

• 11:54Sean Fennessey?

  Wow, I just saw it for the first time yesterday.

• 11:56Speaker 02

  I probably saw it in a drive-in and maybe didn't know fully who Hackman was. Or it was Poseidon Adventure on TV was, man, they ran that thing on network TV a lot. That was a real staple. Somewhere around there, I think.

• 12:13Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. And what about for you?

• 12:15Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm guessing Hoosiers, just kind of timeline wise and what movies I would have been exposed to. But so it's definitely Hoosiers and then pretty soon in the, oh, and then Birdcage. Yeah. I mean, I remember seeing Birdcage in the theaters and being like, I'm an adult now because I get to watch this comedy.

• 12:38Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, right.

• 12:39Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, some, some, some jokes that I'm not supposed to understand.

• 12:45Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. Yeah. I mean, for me, it's obviously Superman.

• 12:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 12:48Sean Fennessey?

  Superman is a, you know, that that was a portal to understanding the Hackman persona, which like, he didn't maybe exploit as much as you would have thought he would. And he's so good at Superman. And we can talk about that. But, um,

• 12:58Speaker 02

  I was maybe 13 when Superman came out. So I saw it in the movie theaters, but I had an awareness of who Hackman was by the time I saw that.

• 13:05Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. And it was a big deal that he was cast in that part. Um, well, let's talk about his life a little bit before we start getting into the filmography. The filmography is very long. We'll try to be efficient in our time.

• 13:17Speaker 02

  Man, can't wait.

• 13:19Sean Fennessey?

  So he's born, of course, Eugene Alan Hackman on January 30th, 1930. He's from California, San Bernardino.

• 13:27Speaker 02

  By the way, Duval, Hackman, Redford, Keaton, all born in California.

• 13:33Sean Fennessey?

  That's right. What does that tell you?

• 13:36Speaker 02

  Maybe nothing. Maybe it's total coincidence. I don't know, but it's notable.

• 13:40Sean Fennessey?

  But I feel, and I also feel like they're all sort of on the outskirts of Hollywood in terms of where they're born. They're not born in Hollywood proper.

• 13:47Speaker 02

  Right.

• 13:47Sean Fennessey?

  They're born.

• 13:48Amanda Dobbins?

  They're not nepo babies.

• 13:50Sean Fennessey?

  Not, not exactly, though, when you look through the histories of like Redford, when you look through the history of his career and some of the connectivity that he had to certain people in the business, that always helps. But Hackman had no connectivity to the business whatsoever.

• 14:03Speaker 02

  And mostly grew up in Illinois, right?

• 14:05Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, grew up in Illinois. His father left when he was young. He was raised by a single mother, left home at 16, joined the Marines, spent four years in the Marines, claimed he was not a very good Marine, always had a problem with authority. And Waltz in the Marines got interested in the idea of acting. And so he moves to New York and, or excuse me, he studies journalism at the University of Illinois after school in the GI Bill. And then he moves to New York to go study acting. And he pretty quickly falls in with a group of young actors who turn out to be a generation that changed movie acting.

• 14:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:42Sean Fennessey?

  And there's this famous story where he's, while spending some time in Pasadena at the Playhouse, he meets Dustin Hoffman. Eventually, he, Dustin Hoffman and Robert Duval become friends and they all live together in New York City, which we briefly mentioned when we talked about the Robert Duval Hall of Fame. But, you know, that seems like three fairly complicated guys sharing space with a lot of big opinions and maybe bad attitudes.

• 15:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Like, what's the allocation of chores in that apartment?

• 15:08Sean Fennessey?

  It seems like a messy house.

• 15:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Is anyone taking the trash out at all? Is it, they're just?

• 15:14Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. I, I, I'd like to see, you know, a real time 24 hour documentary of the way that they shared space.

• 15:23Amanda Dobbins?

  What's the access to the bathrooms like?

• 15:25Sean Fennessey?

  They weren't terribly successful.

• 15:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 15:28Speaker 02

  Who was scoring? Which one of them was really scoring the most?

• 15:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Hoffman, Hackman and Duval.

• 15:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:36Sean Fennessey?

  They've all got their positives and negatives.

• 15:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 15:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I'm thinking through it. I mean, I, I don't think it's Hackman with love and respect, which he then turns into a career.

• 15:46Sean Fennessey?

  He's got a real wily charm, though.

• 15:47Amanda Dobbins?

  He does.

• 15:48Sean Fennessey?

  And in his 50s and 60s, there's a sexiness to him that is very unusual for a guy like that.

• 15:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Totally. But you do have to wait. And we're asking about in their twenties and he's up against Hoffman and, and Duval. I mean, Duval, probably.

• 16:03Sean Fennessey?

  He might have been the most classically handsome of the three of them.

• 16:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 16:08Sean Fennessey?

  But Hoffman obviously eventually goes on to very quick kind of fame and explosion. And there's something interesting about that, too. And the way that he took off as an actor and maybe what that meant to Hackman and some of their competitiveness and their, and their friendship.

• 16:22Speaker 02

  By the way, Hackman roughly my size, roughly my dimensions.

• 16:26Sean Fennessey?

  Big guy.

• 16:27Speaker 02

  You know, he had to keep the character actor belly off of him a bit, but roughly the same size, dimensions as me.

• 16:33Sean Fennessey?

  And imposing. And because of that, I think could play a lot of different kinds of parts that certainly somebody like Hoffman couldn't play. He couldn't, you know, he could play cowboys, he could play cops, he could play military men. And that, those are the kinds of parts that he either was sought out for or sought out as his career goes on. And so he comes to represent, I think, a slightly different tone of American man. We talked about this with Duval a bit. And Duval played a lot of historical figures.

• 16:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:59Sean Fennessey?

  Hackman doesn't really play a lot of real people. There's maybe fewer than five real men that he played in his career, which I find interesting and maybe makes you a little bit more singular as a movie star when you're not stuck trying to imitate our expectation of someone we know from history.

• 17:13Amanda Dobbins?

  He also seldom takes roles that lead to like the really big speech, which I guess I associate with a Duval and a historical figure and just kind of like, everyone clear out because I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna do some oratory at the top of my lungs. He more just does stuff. I was struck by how many of his movies, and we're gonna talk about all the professions that he played, but where he is just like taking apart a car or, you know, or running or trying to figure out how a machine works or just like using his hands and not wore his body and not speaking and jumping up and down a lot. He is like quietly way more of an action star than I had understood based on kind of like the films that I'd seen in the nineties. But, you know, he doesn't, not a lot of dialogue

• 17:58Amanda Dobbins?

  often in a lot of his movies. And when it happens, he makes it count. But he just is, is in motion.

• 18:06Sean Fennessey?

  One of the things that jumped out to me is truly one of the great voices in movie acting history.

• 18:10Speaker 02

  It is a great voice.

• 18:11Sean Fennessey?

  Unmistakable, powerful. You can sense exactly how he's feeling by the way he communicates. You were saying something yesterday about what he does with words that I thought was very insightful.

• 18:21Speaker 02

  Well, just, his line readings are impeccable. They're impeccable, impeccably delivered, timed, his, whatever his operative word, his inflection is, it's, that stuff is always in the sweet spot. And, and of course, mostly accomplishing that idea that this is all spontaneous, right? He's communicating and I, he's, well, he's telling a story to an audience, right? It's not necessarily the way people actually speak in conversation, but it is a way to deliver a story effectively, efficiently.

• 18:59Sean Fennessey?

  I think part of the way, between his voice and the way he looks, he also seems like a person who's lived, who has experience, who understands things that maybe you don't understand. So he's often in these sort of like untrustworthy, patterfamilious roles where there's like a younger person who's beside him and he knows something that they, they don't. And so he's going to take them through the world, but the thing that he knows is illicit. And so like, he's constantly being cast in this role, even in early age, even when he's, you know, in films like Bonnie and Clyde, he's still kind of the older brother. He's still kind of the guy who knows a little bit more than the other guy, which is an interesting general idea when you're being perceived that way, because then he can't ever play the, the exciting up and comer, you know, like even in Hawaii,

• 19:41Sean Fennessey?

  one of his very first movies, he's like a learned doctor who's extremely angry with everyone around him.

• 19:47Speaker 02

  Right.

• 19:48Sean Fennessey?

  And so there's a limitation to that, but there's also a reliability in that, that is this paradox of movie stardom that I think is always so interesting to find. You know, you mentioned that he's not Robert Redford, right? And that he couldn't play the way we were. But he does do, he does do romances. I mean, he has movies where he's expected to be in love stories.

• 20:06Speaker 02

  More, more than Duval. You see him in romantic situations a lot more than Duval.

• 20:10Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 20:11Amanda Dobbins?

  And he, there is an appeal to him, as you, as you said, and like, and a charm, especially as he ages. But it's, he doesn't lead, he doesn't lead with it. And it's not kind of like, hey, spotlight on me while I'm like the most handsome person in the room. And that was, you know, that's maybe a fault of Redford's performance sometimes where he's just very aware of how he looks, which is, as you like to say, a special effect. And the movies center around him as opposed to Hackman where it was always a little bit surprising. And that is part of the appeal of like, you're like, oh, okay, Gene, I didn't, you know, I didn't know that you had this, but here it comes.

• 20:48Sean Fennessey?

  That's one of my favorite things in The Firm is when it appears that he is, you know, ensorcelled with Jean Triplehorn and, and wants to bring her down to the Caymans. And you're like, oh, wow. That's in your bag, Gene. Good for you, buddy. Big reach, but why not?

• 21:05Sean Fennessey?

  Anything else specifically about what makes him a special actor that you want to highlight before we start going through?

• 21:10Speaker 02

  No.

• 21:11Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 21:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Can I ask you a question about acting?

• 21:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Though, and about line readings, since you identified this? How long does it take to come up with a line reading? For you?

• 21:23Speaker 02

  Usually, your first instinct is the best.

• 21:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, that's what it is.

• 21:28Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, okay.

• 21:29Speaker 02

  Usually, when you read the line off the page, the instinct is, a good director will say, I think maybe the emphasis is here and not there.

• 21:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 21:36Speaker 02

  You know, but for the most part, your first instinct is the best. Well, we talked about that a little bit, too, his relationship to directors. These guys, Duval and Hackman, they didn't like directors. They didn't want to be directed. They wanted to go out and give their, mostly their first take, and then they felt like they were done. Well, they both grew up in TV. You'll be glad to know I didn't do review any of the TV work of Gene Hackman. But they both grew up in, first in theater, and then in TV. And of course, in TV, the job of the director is to put the camera somewhere and stage the action and get the hell out of the actor's way.

• 22:11Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 22:11Speaker 02

  And to get it done quickly and efficiently.

• 22:15Speaker 02

  Hackman constantly fought with directors, bristled at being directed.

• 22:20Sean Fennessey?

  The stories are legion of his irascibility and his directness with how unhappy he was with certain sequences while making movies. And it is fascinating, because this is the sort of thing that, in the contemporary times, rises to the surface and gets talked about on podcasts like this. And for whatever reason, and I think part of it is because of what his manner was as a star, you kind of expected it. He always seemed kind of pissed off in movies.

• 22:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 22:46Sean Fennessey?

  So it's not shocking that he would be kind of pissed off making movies, but he made so many good movies that we were like, well, it's all right. I like these movies. But directors were terrorized by him, and if they were not confident, they could be really felled by him. He could really, I don't know if he could take over, per se, but if you go through the CV, and there are not many directors he worked with multiple times, and that's always a tell. Arthur Penn is one of the very few, he made three movies with him, one Bonnie and Clyde, Night Moves, and Target. And Clint Eastwood is the other one.

• 23:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:19Sean Fennessey?

  And Clint, he made two movies with Clint Eastwood, and I'm not sure if there's another filmmaker.

• 23:23Speaker 02

  I think Frankenheimer. I think he made two movies with Frankenheimer.

• 23:26Sean Fennessey?

  French Connection 2.

• 23:27Speaker 02

  And, uh, what's the skydiving movie? That's Frankenheimer.

• 23:31Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, of course. The, uh...

• 23:33Speaker 02

  Gypsy Maudes.

• 23:33Sean Fennessey?

  The Gypsy Maudes, that's right, two with Frankenheimer.

• 23:35Speaker 02

  But by the time they get to, they fought terribly on French Connection 2, so...

• 23:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 23:40Speaker 02

  That relationship spoiled.

• 23:41Sean Fennessey?

  Also worth noting, Eastwood and Frankenheimer, two mean motherfuckers, you know, two guys who didn't suffer fools either, so you could see to them at least being able to hang together. But I found that so interesting, and that's so different from, I would say, Amanda, 80% of the people who we've done Halls of Fame with, where it's like, the recurring work is so frequent.

• 24:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, because that's how, as an actor, you find a lane and a career. And, I mean, even now, that's true. I was thinking also, he works with, um, he works with Warren Beatty a few times, though only once as a director, and then said he hated it so much that he didn't do Dick Tracy?

• 24:14Sean Fennessey?

  That's right.

• 24:17Sean Fennessey?

  He said, he said Warren made him do 50 takes, and he was none too happy about that. So, you know, he works in local theater, effectively, in the 1950s, and eventually starts getting real parts on stage in the early 60s, and then he makes this transition into, as you said, series television. Roughly 59 to 67, he's doing a lot of series television, mostly guest spots, he never really has a recurring series part. And this is, he was a working actor. That was, that was his gig, and he probably saw himself as hopeful to become a star, but more likely to become a character actor. And then, this great thing happens where Hollywood flips, and a guy like him can become...

• 24:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:58Sean Fennessey?

  I think he's one of the 10 most bankable male stars of the 1970s.

• 25:01Speaker 02

  And he, and he gets the part. He gets the part that launches him, right?

• 25:04Sean Fennessey?

  That's right.

• 25:04Speaker 02

  Which is, you gotta have that part, or it doesn't happen like that.

• 25:07Sean Fennessey?

  And the interesting thing for him, too, is that he is recognized by his peers very early on in his film career. Three of his five Oscar nominations come within the first five years of his movie acting career, in Bonnie and Clyde, and I Never Sang For My Father, and then he wins in 72 for The French Connection, which basically just mints him. I mean, it makes him a movie star for 30 consecutive years, and he gets two more nominations after that, he's won three Golden Globes. But we should talk about the films. Are you ready to talk about the films?

• 25:36Speaker 02

  I'm ready.

• 25:37Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm as ready as I'll be.

• 25:40Amanda Dobbins?

  I thought I was at maybe 70% scene, and then we're scrolling through, and I'm like, oh, maybe it's more like 60?

• 25:46Sean Fennessey?

  There's a lot of stuff here.

• 25:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, a lot of stuff.

• 25:49Sean Fennessey?

  Some really interesting stuff, some not interesting stuff.

• 25:52Speaker 02

  We don't have to spend a lot of time on the not interesting stuff.

• 25:54Sean Fennessey?

  Did you watch Mad Dog McCall from 1961?

• 25:57Speaker 02

  Mad Dog Cole, it's actually called.

• 25:59Sean Fennessey?

  Mad Dog Cole, excuse me.

• 26:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I did.

• 26:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 26:03Sean Fennessey?

  Tell us about it. I have not seen this. This is an uncredited part in which Gene Hackman plays policeman.

• 26:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 26:07Speaker 02

  It's a pretty good little gangster picture.

• 26:10Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 26:11Speaker 02

  Starring a guy named John Davis Chandler as Mad Dog Cole, who was a real guy, who went up against Dutch Schultz. But the casting's pretty good. Vincent Gardenia plays Dutch Schultz, Jerry Orbach is ingenue.

• 26:23Sean Fennessey?

  Wow.

• 26:25Speaker 02

  Telly Savalas making his big screen debut.

• 26:28Sean Fennessey?

  No kidding.

• 26:28Speaker 02

  Gene Hackman, in his big screen debut, No Lines, with Telly Savalas, he's a cop.

• 26:33Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 26:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 26:34Speaker 02

  We can mark that as one cop.

• 26:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, tally that for the cop.

• 26:36Sean Fennessey?

  One cop.

• 26:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 26:37Sean Fennessey?

  We're gonna go through how many cops, military men, political officials this man plays over the course of his career.

• 26:45Speaker 02

  And...

• 26:45Sean Fennessey?

  And cowboys.

• 26:45Speaker 02

  The female lead is Brooke Hayward, and she's interesting. She's worth exploring. Had a fascinating life, she was married to Dennis Hopper.

• 26:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 26:52Speaker 02

  Childhood friend of Jane Fonda's, and she wrote a...

• 26:54Sean Fennessey?

  Terrorized by Dennis Hopper.

• 26:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely terrorized by him.

• 26:58Sean Fennessey?

  Horrible story.

• 26:59Speaker 02

  And wrote a memoir called Haywire, which became a big bestseller. And she's, uh, she's the female lead in Mad Dog Cole. It's not going in the Hackman Hall of Fame.

• 27:07Sean Fennessey?

  Good to know.

• 27:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 27:08Speaker 02

  But not a bad little gangster picture.

• 27:11Sean Fennessey?

  Here's an important movie.

• 27:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 27:13Sean Fennessey?

  1964's Lilith.

• 27:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Speaking of Warren Beatty.

• 27:15Sean Fennessey?

  Speaking of Warren Beatty, one of Warren's early starring roles, a Robert Rossin film. Apparently, Robert Rossin saw Hackman on stage and liked his work, and cast him in a small but important part as Norman, who I guess is the husband of a former flame.

• 27:33Speaker 02

  Yes, Beatty's gone, Beatty's character has gone to war.

• 27:37Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 27:37Speaker 02

  She was his girlfriend before the war, then he came back and he hasn't kept in touch with her, and she's married.

• 27:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 27:43Speaker 02

  The Hackman character.

• 27:44Amanda Dobbins?

  It's always the way.

• 27:44Sean Fennessey?

  He only has one scene, right?

• 27:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:46Sean Fennessey?

  It's just the one scene in their home.

• 27:47Speaker 02

  But it's good.

• 27:48Sean Fennessey?

  But he jumps.

• 27:49Speaker 02

  Good effectiveness.

• 27:49Sean Fennessey?

  He pops, and you can see there's something, he's got some power, and obviously, this is a very, very important thing to have happened in his career, because he encounters Warren Beatty, who then helps him very, very soon thereafter in a critical role.

• 28:04Speaker 02

  And he's kind of a dumb guy, too, and, which was something he had in his bag. He doesn't pull it out a lot later in the, in his career. But he's a very good, believable dumb guy.

• 28:14Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 28:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, and the guy opposed to Warren Beatty, which is also, you know, he is playing against the typical Hollywood handsome guy.

• 28:24Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, and Warren Beatty has kind of an odd part in this movie where he's, you know, he's come back from war, but he's become a therapist, and he's learning about this...

• 28:32Amanda Dobbins?

  What's wrong with emotions?

• 28:34Sean Fennessey?

  There's nothing wrong with that. I wouldn't say Warren Beatty accesses them in the movie.

• 28:37Speaker 02

  At a time with no experience at all, you can just go into a mental institution and say, I'd like a job caring for the patients here.

• 28:43Sean Fennessey?

  A little strange.

• 28:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're hired.

• 28:45Sean Fennessey?

  Incredible cast in this movie, though. What a great snapshot of the early 1960s and the specific kinds of actors that are coming out, because it's not just Beatty, but it's Gene Seberg, it's Peter Fonda, you know, it's Jessica Walters playing his ex-girlfriend, who's now married to Hackman, Kim Hunter, it's just, really interesting movie, I think maybe one of the last movies Robert Rossin made.

• 29:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, his last.

• 29:02Sean Fennessey?

  The Hustler, his last film. But worth seeking out, I think, one of the few that I saw for this that I was like, oh, okay, I'm really glad I checked that out.

• 29:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Is it going in?

• 29:10Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think so.

• 29:11Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't think so either.

• 29:11Sean Fennessey?

  It's too small a part.

• 29:13Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I just watched his scene.

• 29:14Speaker 02

  Got it.

• 29:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Which is unfair, but, you know.

• 29:16Speaker 02

  Well, it is interesting, because I guess Beatty was fighting terribly with Rossin, and, and Beatty actually sabotaged some of his scenes by mumbling or not doing anything.

• 29:26Sean Fennessey?

  He's really muted in the movie. It's a very odd part, and to think that that's how you would make a point to a film director by being not good in a film, it's just really strange.

• 29:34Speaker 02

  He's still good, he's still very compelling.

• 29:36Sean Fennessey?

  He's so charismatic. It's 1966 Hawaii.

• 29:39Speaker 02

  I didn't see it! No way!

• 29:41Amanda Dobbins?

  I didn't either.

• 29:42Speaker 02

  I didn't see it!

• 29:42Amanda Dobbins?

  No way! But you did!

• 29:44Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, I did, yeah.

• 29:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, good, so, you know, we're still covered.

• 29:47Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, I want to make sure I'm getting this right. This is based on the James Miesner novel, I think it is?

• 29:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:51Sean Fennessey?

  It's a George Roy Hill film, it's a really classic, technicolor, old-school, long melodrama about missionaries who come to Hawaii, who come to bring the good word of God, one of whom is played by Max Von Sydow. And Hackman plays a man who's been living on the island with the native people of Hawaii, and he's a doctor. And of course, what do the Christians bring when they come to bring the good word? But they bring pestilence, you know, they bring disease, and they start fucking with the lives of the Hawaii, the native Hawaiians. And Hackman is really good. He's only got two scenes, really, of note, one in which he is sort of railing against Sydow, Von Sydow, and, and, and the missionaries, and one in which he's literally holding dying people in his arms. But it's very dramatic.

• 30:36Sean Fennessey?

  The movie is okay, it's a little bit of one of those kind of bloated, overdrawn, mid-60s films.

• 30:40Speaker 02

  It's long, right?

• 30:41Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's two hours and 40 minutes about. But, again, just like in Lilith...

• 30:48Sean Fennessey?

  It's a real like, who's that guy? Kind of moment in the movie. Um, cause he kinda just starts stealing scenes from much better known actors and more accomplished actors. Um, it's, I don't think it needs to go into the Hall of Fame. But it's interesting that he was getting cast in a part like this. Because I think most people think of 1967 as the year he breaks through. Because of one very big part that we hinted at with Warren Beatty, but he's, he's working. He's, he's clearly got a reputation now as a comer, based on the next few movies that we have coming. So 1967's banning is the next movie. I have not seen this movie.

• 31:20Speaker 02

  I saw it.

• 31:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 31:24Speaker 02

  It's supposed to be, it stars Robert Wagner and Jill St. John and James Ferrantino. And it's set mostly in a, at a golf club, uh, golf, uh, what a resort, a golf.

• 31:37Sean Fennessey?

  Country club?

• 31:38Speaker 02

  Country club. Thank you.

• 31:39Sean Fennessey?

  Wow. Clearly not a member of a country club.

• 31:41Speaker 02

  Thank you for your words.

• 31:44Speaker 02

  Uh, Hackman plays a character older than himself. There's a, there's a golfing scandal in Robert Wagner's past. And now he's come to this country club as a, as a golf pro. Somebody, I have to say, on Letterboxd, somebody referred to it as golf noir, which.

• 31:59Sean Fennessey?

  Wow. A subgenre that intrigues me.

• 32:02Amanda Dobbins?

  And you didn't watch this. This is also why I did not watch this.

• 32:05Sean Fennessey?

  This was a hard film to track down, I thought. Did you rent it? How did you watch it?

• 32:08Speaker 02

  Uh, I own it.

• 32:09Sean Fennessey?

  You own it? Yeah, I think, I think that's the only way to watch it, right? Is it on Blu-ray?

• 32:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:13Sean Fennessey?

  Cause it's not available on.

• 32:14Speaker 02

  It's in an imprint box.

• 32:15Sean Fennessey?

  On YouTube or Apple. And that's the thing is some of these movies are very hard to find.

• 32:20Speaker 02

  It's very, uh, soapy, pot boiler. It's supposed to be sort of in the Harold Robbins tradition, you know? Jill St. John is very, uh, bitchy, witchy, uh, right? Sleeping with the guys at the, at the country club. It's not as fun as that.

• 32:37Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 32:38Speaker 02

  Hackman plays a character, he's, he's a, he's a drunk. He, after the golfing scandal, he's, he's descended into drink and he's sort of, and they've actually put some gray at his temples.

• 32:50Amanda Dobbins?

  He was a golfer?

• 32:51Speaker 02

  He, he was, he was involved in this golfing scandal that Wagner was involved in.

• 32:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I'm just kinda for the profession. Are we putting him under golfer or drunk?

• 33:01Speaker 02

  Uh, drunk. He's a drunk.

• 33:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, alright.

• 33:03Speaker 02

  No, you can put him, he's a golfer. He plays golf in the movie. Golfer.

• 33:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 33:07Sean Fennessey?

  You know, it's not the last time we'll see him play golf in a movie. Do you recall the opening? Well, I won't spoil it. We'll get there.

• 33:14Speaker 02

  Uh, this should have been more fun. It's pretty dull.

• 33:17Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Well, I'm relieved that I didn't watch it. Uh, it's not going in. We've got four consecutive reds to start the career.

• 33:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 33:24Sean Fennessey?

  Of Gene Hackman.

• 33:24Amanda Dobbins?

  But we've spent, what, 15 minutes on them? So this, the pacing is going really well.

• 33:28Sean Fennessey?

  We're not doing well. Um, the next film is A Covenant With Death. Yeah. A film I did watch, which is currently available on Tubi.

• 33:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 33:35Sean Fennessey?

  Thank you to Tubi for their continued service, sharing the films that have been lost to time. He plays, uh, Harmsworth, a local police chief. Um, who is responsible for, I guess, investigating a murder poorly?

• 33:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 33:55Sean Fennessey?

  This movie, which stars George Maharris. I think features Hackman's single worst performance.

• 34:03Amanda Dobbins?

  What is the problem with the performance?

• 34:05Sean Fennessey?

  He's doing an accent, which he shan't be doing.

• 34:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 34:08Sean Fennessey?

  He has changed the tonality of his voice. He's, I think, very clearly attempting to be a bit more bumbling. He has talked about this movie and how it's a little bit of a turning point for him where his primary role in the movie is to discover the suicide note slash confession of the person who's actually responsible for the murder. The film has a very kind of ornate plot. You watched this?

• 34:31Speaker 02

  I did.

• 34:31Sean Fennessey?

  Where, um, a man is accused of murdering his wife. When she, when her body is found, he's drunk on his, on a bed in the same room. Eventually he's convicted of the murder and he's meant to be hanged. And right before he's hanged, he, he somewhat accidentally kills the executioner. And so he's then convicted of killing the executioner. And so he's been, basically been a double murder convicty and then it turns out that he didn't kill his wife and the man who killed his wife confessed to it. And the whole town is like, well, what do we do? George Maharris plays.

• 35:09Amanda Dobbins?

  What do they do?

• 35:11Sean Fennessey?

  Well.

• 35:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Did it work out well or poorly?

• 35:14Sean Fennessey?

  I don't, the movie turns out poorly. It's a bizarre movie. Um, but the movie is not focused on really that story at all. It's much more focused on George Maharris's character. Who I guess is, is a, is he a half Mexican, half American guy whose mom is Mexican? And he's got this beautiful blonde fiance, but he's drawn to his Mexican roots and a beautiful Mexican woman. And it's all about like the exploration of his identity, but not really talking about it in any sophisticated way.

• 35:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, is it done with sensitivity or is, okay.

• 35:43Sean Fennessey?

  It's not insensitive. It's just kind of drab and dull. And it's like, this is a murder mystery movie. Why are we spending all this time with this guy's feelings about this hot Mexican woman?

• 35:51Speaker 02

  Uh, there's a lot going on. It, it feels like they tried to get too much of a novel into a, into a movie. And it's just way, it was spread way too thin. Katie Horado, who was a great star of golden age of Mexican cinema. She plays his mom, even though she's only a few years older.

• 36:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 36:06Speaker 02

  She put on 25 pounds to play his mother in this movie. Maharris is also, I, I gotta say.

• 36:12Sean Fennessey?

  He stinks.

• 36:14Speaker 02

  He stinks. He was a TV actor. He belonged on whatever it was he was on. Was it Route 66?

• 36:20Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 36:21Speaker 02

  You know, a few years later.

• 36:22Sean Fennessey?

  He's one of the three Georges, as Quentin Tarantino very famously noted, that there were three actors named George who were up for all the parts in Hollywood at the time that like Steve McQueen was going up for. To me, Maharris, oh, is the third of the three.

• 36:34Speaker 02

  I think he was the first real star to appear, uh, fully nude in Playgirl magazine.

• 36:39Sean Fennessey?

  No kidding?

• 36:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 36:40Speaker 02

  So.

• 36:40Sean Fennessey?

  Did you track that down for this?

• 36:41Speaker 02

  Uh, rock out with your cock out, George.

• 36:46Sean Fennessey?

  Covenant With Death not going in. You don't need to follow up on this one. Very weird movie. Now, I did not see 1967's First to Fight. I assume you didn't see that either?

• 36:54Amanda Dobbins?

  I did not either.

• 36:54Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 36:55Speaker 02

  I did. I saw it.

• 36:56Sean Fennessey?

  This is the first military man. Let's make a note.

• 37:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, because Hackman had, as you mentioned, he was a Marine himself. He'd spent four and a half years in the Marines. Part of Operation beleaguer, which is where they went into China. There were so many Japanese forces in China. And so they had to go in to those occupied forces and they had to disarm them and repatriate them. And there was some, there was some fighting and he maybe saw some combat, some skirmishes as part of that. Uh, and so he's playing a Marine here. Uh, Chad Everett is the star. You guys probably know Chad Everett best from his great scene in Mulholland Drive.

• 37:36Sean Fennessey?

  Hmm.

• 37:37Speaker 02

  When, uh, right, when, uh, Naomi Watts is auditioning and she auditions against a a very handsome gray haired actor who's very lascivious. Uh, well, I know him as the star of Medical Center, which was a show that was on TV for a lot of years.

• 37:51Sean Fennessey?

  Medical Center?

• 37:51Speaker 02

  Medical Center.

• 37:52Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. What do they do there?

• 37:57Speaker 02

  And it's a World War II drama about a guy who, uh, is awarded, uh, the Medal of Honor for his heroism, the Battle of Guadalcanal. And, uh, he gets sent stateside. He, he gets married, but he can't hack civilian life and he asks to go back. But when he goes back, he starts experiencing, uh, the shakes, cowardice.

• 38:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 38:17Speaker 02

  In the face of battle, because now he's a married man. And Hackman is the guy, uh, that he is paired with when he goes back into fight. And Hackman's like, what's going on with you, man? I thought you had the Medal of Honor. Get out there and fight. But he's a coward and, uh.

• 38:31Sean Fennessey?

  Wow.

• 38:32Amanda Dobbins?

  We have two full pages of credits to get through single space.

• 38:35Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, he plays Sergeant Tweed in the film. Obviously First to Fight is not going into the Hall of Fame.

• 38:40Amanda Dobbins?

  What is his profession in A Covenant With Death?

• 38:43Sean Fennessey?

  He is a police officer, so that's two police officers.

• 38:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Two police officers, first military.

• 38:47Speaker 03

  We already have that marked down, don't we?

• 38:48Sean Fennessey?

  Thank you very much.

• 38:48Speaker 02

  Uh, First to Fight is pretty dull.

• 38:49Amanda Dobbins?

  It's pretty red. Okay.

• 38:52Sean Fennessey?

  1967, Bonnie and Clyde.

• 38:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Seen it.

• 38:55Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Welcome to the party, pal.

• 38:57Speaker 02

  Uh, green.

• 38:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 38:59Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 38:59Amanda Dobbins?

  I think you have to. No, yeah. I, I rewatched at least his parts.

• 39:04Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 39:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Cause I hadn't seen it in a while. I would say that there's like a little too much mustard on the death scene, personally. I think that he's really, really going for it a little more than he needs to. But, you know, it's a, it's a, a big movie, so.

• 39:20Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. I mean, I think for its time, it's obviously very purposefully transgressing from the expectations and that kind of a scene. There are a few other movies that he makes that are similarly brutal. And I think he sought out a kind of brutality in the depiction of violence across his movies, which is an interesting thing. Not sure if there was so purposeful in this one, but Beatty, of course, remembers him from Lilith. He plays Buck Barrow, Clyde's older brother. Um, he does do a bit of an accent. There's a real performance. It's not the typical Hackman tone and personality that you expect. He's very good in the movie.

• 39:51Speaker 02

  And, and dumb guy.

• 39:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 39:53Speaker 02

  Right? Buck's also a dumb guy. And he's married to Estelle Parsons.

• 39:56Sean Fennessey?

  That's right.

• 39:57Speaker 02

  Were all four nominated for acting awards and I think only Estelle won, uh, supporting actress.

• 40:02Sean Fennessey?

  Um, he speaks extremely fondly of this experience. He loves Arthur Penn. He loves working with those three actors and Michael Pollard. Um, he said that the five of them together, he thought that this is what making movies was gonna be like. That it was gonna be him with people that were his age, having a lot of fun, doing something creatively with like old, old timey cars. And making contemporarily relevant stories. And he comes to find out movies are kind of, kind of suck and are annoying, even if you're high on the call sheet.

• 40:27Speaker 02

  Probably, by the way, in terms of the Academy Awards, probably he and Pollard split the Bonnie and Clyde vote. Cause they were both nominated for supporting actor.

• 40:35Sean Fennessey?

  Let's take a look at that slate very quickly.

• 40:39Speaker 02

  You can read more about this in Mark Harris's excellent book, Pictures of a Revolution.

• 40:44Sean Fennessey?

  That's right. So, best supporting actor in 1968 for 67, the nominees are Pollard and Hackman. Cecil Kellaway, for Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?

• 40:54Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 40:55Sean Fennessey?

  I'd forgotten he was nominated for that. John Cassavetes for The Dirty Dozen. And the winner, of course, is George Kennedy in Cool Hand Luke, which is a great performance.

• 41:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 41:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:03Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Bonnie and Clyde, going in, green.

• 41:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Green.

• 41:06Sean Fennessey?

  No debate, green.

• 41:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 41:07Sean Fennessey?

  1968's The Split.

• 41:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 41:09Sean Fennessey?

  One of my favorite movies that I discovered for this episode. Um, a very interesting adaptation of a Richard Stark novel that has one fatal flaw. It is effectively a Parker movie, but Jim Brown is playing the Parker character.

• 41:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 41:28Sean Fennessey?

  The cast in this movie.

• 41:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Is unreal.

• 41:31Speaker 02

  Unbelievable.

• 41:31Sean Fennessey?

  Is sick. Did you watch this?

• 41:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I did. Because of the cast. And I was like, oh, a heist movie? With these people? I'm in.

• 41:38Sean Fennessey?

  Um, Jim Brown stars with Diane Carroll, Julie Harris, Ernest Borgnine, Jack Klugman, Warren Oats, Donald Sutherland, and Gene Hackman. The music of this movie is by Quincy Jones. It's directed by Gordon Fleming, who never directed another feature film again. It is based on the Stark novel, The Seventh, even though they changed, they changed the name from Parker for the Jim Brown character.

• 41:58Speaker 02

  They always do. I don't know why.

• 41:59Sean Fennessey?

  It's a very odd thing that they do. One of the early films produced by Chardoff Winkler, who went on to produce Rocky, among many other movies, and will be dramatized in a film that you star in, I Play Rocky, later this fall.

• 42:09Speaker 02

  Star in.

• 42:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 42:11Sean Fennessey?

  You star.

• 42:11Amanda Dobbins?

  You're in it.

• 42:12Sean Fennessey?

  You steal.

• 42:13Speaker 02

  I'm in the movie.

• 42:14Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, you're in the movie. Um, pretty fun movie.

• 42:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 42:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:19Sean Fennessey?

  Pretty fun heist movie.

• 42:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:21Sean Fennessey?

  Um, Hackman once again plays a police officer, a, a.

• 42:25Speaker 02

  Police officer.

• 42:26Sean Fennessey?

  Police officer.

• 42:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 42:27Sean Fennessey?

  A, a rather untrust, unseemly police officer.

• 42:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:30Amanda Dobbins?

  That's right.

• 42:31Sean Fennessey?

  I'll say, who does some very untoward things in the film. Um, I quite enjoyed this movie.

• 42:36Speaker 02

  I did too. A lot of fun.

• 42:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I liked it. He doesn't show up until very late in the movie, so I don't think it's gonna go in his Hall of Fame.

• 42:43Sean Fennessey?

  I agree with you.

• 42:43Amanda Dobbins?

  I kept being like, okay, Gene, Gene, you know, but that's, that's the downside of watching these with such like a purpose-driven.

• 42:49Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 42:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Experiment, but.

• 42:51Sean Fennessey?

  But there are a lot of good scenes of just Warren Oats and Jack Klugman and Julie Harris yelling at each other. I was like, this is, this has got some, got some heat. Uh, okay, that's out, The Split. 1969's Riot. The Blu-ray that I acquired on eBay for this film arrived today.

• 43:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 43:05Sean Fennessey?

  So I have not seen the film.

• 43:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Tough break.

• 43:06Sean Fennessey?

  Tell us about it, Tracy Letts.

• 43:07Speaker 02

  Uh, 1969's The Riot, directed by Buzz Kulik, uh, and it is a prison, uh, hostage, then escape, uh, drama starring Jim Brown.

• 43:21Sean Fennessey?

  A reunion with Jim.

• 43:21Speaker 02

  Uh, Jim Brown and Gene Hackman and, uh.

• 43:24Sean Fennessey?

  You think, you think they got on?

• 43:26Speaker 02

  Um, probably.

• 43:27Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 43:27Speaker 02

  Uh, I doubt Hackman would have signed up straight away to do another movie with him. Uh, Jim Brown did not get along with, uh, Buzz Kulik, the director, and so sometimes, uh, Jim would stay in his trailer too long to piss off the director.

• 43:43Sean Fennessey?

  See.

• 43:44Speaker 02

  Uh, Alan Rudolph was the first A.D. on this movie.

• 43:47Sean Fennessey?

  No way.

• 43:47Speaker 02

  And so he talked about the experience of making this film. They shot it at a prison using real prisoners as the, uh, supporting characters.

• 43:55Sean Fennessey?

  It seemed safe, yeah. Although I wouldn't fuck with Jim Brown, even if I was a prisoner.

• 44:00Speaker 02

  It, it has its moments. It's not, it's not great. It's not a great example of the genre. There's a dream sequence. Jim Brown has a dream of freedom, and there's a dream sequence in this movie that is the highlight of the film.

• 44:12Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 44:12Speaker 02

  It's just a great moment.

• 44:13Sean Fennessey?

  I guess it's gonna go into my to-watch stack, even though I've already done this work. Can I ask you a question about this?

• 44:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 44:19Sean Fennessey?

  When you've done one of these episodes, and now that you've done a few as well, do you feel like maybe you're done with this person for a while?

• 44:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Of course, yeah.

• 44:27Sean Fennessey?

  Like, I'm not sure I need to see another one of their movies for a good long time.

• 44:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I feel like I'm done with the person, and also a little bit with the concept of historical research. Like, I, I do then just go watch like a lot of crappy, modern movies for the next, you know, four days.

• 44:42Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, you need a cleanse.

• 44:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Just, well, and like a change of, like, the literal pacing of the films and what I'm looking for. Uh, yeah, I don't know if I'll be sticking out Riot.

• 44:52Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 44:52Speaker 02

  I, I feel the same way, and yet I have to say, watching things since then, if Robert Duvall or Robert Redford pop up, I, I go, oh, hey, like, like I know them.

• 45:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, of course.

• 45:03Sean Fennessey?

  That's true.

• 45:03Amanda Dobbins?

  It's true.

• 45:04Sean Fennessey?

  It breeds a real familiarity with their, I, I feel like I know Gene Hackman right now, for sure. Uh, Riot is Red. He plays a man named Red Fraker, so he's a prisoner in the film.

• 45:12Speaker 02

  He is.

• 45:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 45:13Speaker 02

  We never find out what they've done to get into prison.

• 45:16Sean Fennessey?

  1969. Now, this is a man coming off of a, an Academy Award nomination, one of the biggest hits of 1967, and some, you know, a little bit of a, little bit of a rough patch here. Um, this movie was fascinating to me. 1969's The Gypsy Moth, Moths, the aforementioned John Frankenheimer movie, in which he stars with Burt Lancaster and Scott Wilson as a trio of skydiving stuntmen. What, the what, the what, and the what is this movie?

• 45:44Speaker 02

  Kinda liked it.

• 45:44Sean Fennessey?

  It's kind of interesting.

• 45:45Speaker 02

  I kinda like it. It's pretty good. It is really weird, but it, it does capture something about small-town life. They settle down in this one town where they're about to do their stunt show.

• 45:54Sean Fennessey?

  A July Fourth extravaganza.

• 45:56Speaker 02

  Lancaster is just, he's in a mood, man. It's, it seems like the sequel to The Swimmer. He almost feels like the same kind of melancholic character. He's just carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.

• 46:08Sean Fennessey?

  So he stars, this is a reunion with Deborah Carr from, from Here to Eternity, and the movie almost feels like it picks up 25 years later after From Here to Eternity, because it's about this kind of unspoken attraction that the two characters in the movie have. Hackman plays kind of the, you know, the hot foot, the wildfire guy who's the number two in command, and he's got a lot of big opinions, and he likes strippers, and he's, he's, he's doing a lot, Gene, in this movie. He's given a lot to do. Um, I thought he was perfectly fine. The movie, I didn't know this movie existed before we did this project.

• 46:41Speaker 02

  I didn't either.

• 46:42Sean Fennessey?

  And I'm glad that I learned about it. I'm glad that I saw it. I did watch it on a plane on the way home from Telluride. There's an extended sequence in a strip club that I didn't expect in my 1969 drama about strip, skydivers.

• 46:52Speaker 02

  Uh, Deborah Carr getting naked in this movie.

• 46:55Sean Fennessey?

  There's literally a sex scene with 55-year-old Deborah Carr. I was like, what, what is happening?

• 47:00Amanda Dobbins?

  So I did not watch this because I was going through and trying to pick my spots, and this felt like that, what's the Redford Aviation movie, where it's just him like, fly, Great Wall? And I was like, oh, this is the Great Waldo Pepper, which is like, they're, they're in the air, they're doing a lot of things, but I, I didn't understand that there was gonna be a whole strip club subplot, because then maybe I would have, there's not that in Great Waldo Pepper.

• 47:21Speaker 02

  The story on the ground is a lot more interesting than the story in the air.

• 47:24Sean Fennessey?

  Agreed.

• 47:25Speaker 02

  Although the, the movie takes great pride in that story in the air. There's a lot of, I guess, amazing stunt work for the time that people hadn't seen.

• 47:32Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 47:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 47:33Speaker 02

  But it's pretty, pretty missable, as far as I'm concerned. The drama on the ground is where it's at.

• 47:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, so, skydiver and red.

• 47:41Sean Fennessey?

  Skydiver and red.

• 47:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 47:43Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting movie here. The one and only time he plays a man named Eugene, his given name, in 1969's Downhill Racer.

• 47:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 47:49Sean Fennessey?

  Now.

• 47:50Speaker 02

  I don't think that's the only time he plays a man named Gene.

• 47:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I don't think so either.

• 47:54Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, I said Eugene.

• 47:55Speaker 02

  Oh, well.

• 47:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Well.

• 47:56Sean Fennessey?

  I see Gene coming, but not Eugene. Uh, Downhill Racer, as I've said five or six times on this show before, one of my favorite movies of all time, one of Michael Ritchie's first films.

• 48:05Speaker 02

  I believe we put it in the Robert Redford Hall of Fame.

• 48:08Sean Fennessey?

  It is. One of the great sports films ever, one of the only good winter games sports films.

• 48:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Totally.

• 48:12Sean Fennessey?

  Gene Hackman in this film plays the coach to Robert Redford's taciturn, unknowable, gifted skier. Um, Hackman, not a big fan of his time on this movie, felt like he was really playing a supporting part and didn't have a whole lot to do. I think his performance is good.

• 48:29Speaker 02

  I do too.

• 48:30Sean Fennessey?

  He's, he's doing what he needs to do in the movie.

• 48:32Speaker 02

  He's a real value add for this movie. It's like, oh, and I get Gene Hackman too.

• 48:35Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. Um, I'm not sure that this really qualifies for the Hackman Hall of Fame.

• 48:40Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I don't think so.

• 48:40Speaker 02

  I would say it does not.

• 48:41Amanda Dobbins?

  I think Redford, yes, and then.

• 48:43Speaker 02

  Maybe it goes in the Dabney Coleman Hall of Fame, but not in the Gene Hackman Hall of Fame.

• 48:49Sean Fennessey?

  Dabney will come up again.

• 48:50Amanda Dobbins?

  So, Coach and Red.

• 48:52Sean Fennessey?

  Coach and Red. This is his first coach.

• 48:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 48:55Speaker 03

  So we're also monitoring coaches as well.

• 48:58Sean Fennessey?

  Well, he plays multiple coaches.

• 49:00Speaker 03

  Okay, so policemen, military officers, coaches, anything else we should be keeping track?

• 49:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, athletes.

• 49:06Speaker 03

  Cowboys and athletes.

• 49:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, drunk athletes.

• 49:09Speaker 03

  Drunk athletes, okay, understood.

• 49:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, because that's what the, we're not, we're not, I thought we were like being comprehensive here.

• 49:16Speaker 03

  You want, you want us to track 76 professions across the entire world?

• 49:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, we're tracking.

• 49:20Speaker 02

  Well, what the hell else are you doing, man?

• 49:22Speaker 03

  I'm doing nothing back here. I'm just hanging out. Sounds good.

• 49:25Amanda Dobbins?

  We've got a doctor?

• 49:27Sean Fennessey?

  Well, we're about to have an astronaut.

• 49:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 49:29Speaker 02

  Just back, you know, back there smoking cigs.

• 49:31Speaker 03

  That's what's going on.

• 49:33Sean Fennessey?

  1969's Marooned. The great John Sturgis makes one of the goddamn boringest movies of 1969.

• 49:39Speaker 02

  Really, really boring.

• 49:40Sean Fennessey?

  What the hell? This is one year after 2001: A Space Odyssey, and John Sturgis says, I wanna make a space movie. We got space mania here, NASA at the top of mind in America.

• 49:51Sean Fennessey?

  Gene Hackman even plays a guy named Buzz.

• 49:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh huh.

• 49:53Sean Fennessey?

  And this movie is, is.

• 49:55Amanda Dobbins?

  I turned this off.

• 49:56Sean Fennessey?

  Dull.

• 49:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Real fast.

• 49:57Speaker 02

  It's really dull.

• 49:58Sean Fennessey?

  Um, Hackman is pretty good, I thought. Um, giving a solid performance.

• 50:02Speaker 02

  The actors are innocent.

• 50:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 50:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Remind me, who is, who are the other stars in this movie?

• 50:06Speaker 02

  Richard Crenna.

• 50:07Sean Fennessey?

  That's right. Richard Crenna. Not the last time he collaborated with him as well.

• 50:10Speaker 02

  Uh, James Francisius.

• 50:12Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. They, that is, those are the three marooned astronauts.

• 50:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:16Sean Fennessey?

  Who are trapped in space. Um, but there's another notable man on the ground. Who's?

• 50:21Speaker 02

  Gregory Peck.

• 50:22Sean Fennessey?

  That's of course, that's who it is. Uh, not a memorable movie. Gosh.

• 50:26Speaker 02

  No, it's not.

• 50:27Sean Fennessey?

  What a dud.

• 50:27Speaker 02

  It is a dud. It's a long dud.

• 50:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. Astronaut and red.

• 50:31Sean Fennessey?

  Red.

• 50:33Amanda Dobbins?

  We got that in the booth?

• 50:34Speaker 02

  Yep, we got it.

• 50:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, thank you. I see the thumbs up from Lucas.

• 50:36Sean Fennessey?

  1971, Doctor's Wives.

• 50:39Amanda Dobbins?

  You just.

• 50:40Sean Fennessey?

  Nope, I'm sorry. I skipped a movie. I always do this.

• 50:42Amanda Dobbins?

  You skipped a movie also that I watched.

• 50:43Sean Fennessey?

  1970, I Never Sang For My Father.

• 50:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 50:48Sean Fennessey?

  To me, this is a legendary, never seen it movie. I've known about this movie forever. I've known that Gene Hackman, for his work as Gene Garrison in this movie, was nominated for an Academy Award, stars the great Melvin Douglas as his father, the titular father. And, uh, I'd never seen it. And I'm really glad I have now. Um, what did you think?

• 51:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Um, I was pretty moved by it. And this is maybe the most surprising of the Hackman performances that I saw for this round because he is doing something different. First of all, he is not just like accessing emotions and displaying them, but talking about them, which is something that basically does not happen in any other movies and in most movies in the seventies.

• 51:32Sean Fennessey?

  A true psychological drama where the psychology is out loud.

• 51:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes. It feels very like now in terms of just a product of therapy and everybody being like, this is what my dad did to me and blah, blah, blah. So it was interesting to, to see him in that register. I think he does it really credibly. Um, and I think also, you know, it was funny to watch, I've watched countless, the entire history of cinema is, uh, men talking about their complicated relationships with their fathers, but like not saying anything. And instead of robbing a blank, like, you know, men will do anything except go to therapy.

• 52:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, and that, this was just straight ahead. Like this is, uh, an overbearing father and I'm having a hard time and I can't get past this. And there's that extended scene with Estelle Parsons again in the, in the garden where she's like telling him what to do and, and bossing him around. And he seems so vulnerable in a way that I don't really associate with many other Hackman performances.

• 52:33Speaker 02

  Right.

• 52:34Amanda Dobbins?

  So I liked it a lot.

• 52:36Sean Fennessey?

  Very good movie.

• 52:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 52:37Sean Fennessey?

  Um, directed by Gil Katz, who didn't direct many movies, probably best known for directing the Academy Awards for many years. Uh, one of the more unusual examples of category fraud in Oscars history, in which Melvin Douglas was nominated for best actor and Hackman was nominated for supporting actor. And they are clearly the opposite.

• 52:53Speaker 02

  Clearly.

• 52:53Sean Fennessey?

  In the movie. Hackman is in almost every frame of this movie.

• 52:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Why do you care?

• 52:57Sean Fennessey?

  It's.

• 52:58Amanda Dobbins?

  How does it change things?

• 52:59Sean Fennessey?

  Well, it's notable because it says something about how Hollywood sees itself. And Melvin Douglas, who's an iconic figure from the 1930s, 40s, 50s cinema, would get first billing in this movie and would be positioned as the center. But the whole movie is about how this guy feels about his dad and how his dad has completely changed the way that he lives.

• 53:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 53:16Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I liked it a lot. I think there's a case for green here.

• 53:18Speaker 02

  Based on a play, uh, of course, and it's a good play. My dad, I remember my dad doing this, but playing Gene in this when I was a kid.

• 53:25Sean Fennessey?

  No kidding.

• 53:26Speaker 02

  At like a community theater.

• 53:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, really?

• 53:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then we did it at Steppenwolf. Uh, Kevin Anderson played Gene and John Mahoney played, uh, the Melvin Douglas part.

• 53:33Sean Fennessey?

  Good casting.

• 53:34Speaker 02

  Uh, uh, yeah, really good play. I mean, a little old fashioned, I suppose.

• 53:38Sean Fennessey?

  But at its time, it must've been so forward thinking.

• 53:41Speaker 02

  Yeah. Really? Well, he was a great playwright and, uh, it's, uh, I, I love the performance and I love, I love Hackman in quiet mode. I mean, we'll get, you know, the, the anger that he displays so often, right? A lot of it's a mask for sadness, which is also there. And when he gets a chance to just tap into that and play that, I, it's very effective.

• 54:05Sean Fennessey?

  He never explodes in this movie.

• 54:07Amanda Dobbins?

  He does at the very end.

• 54:08Sean Fennessey?

  Does he?

• 54:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, like that when he is, right before he leaves the house and I, and, and leaves for good and they don't.

• 54:16Sean Fennessey?

  I don't even remember that.

• 54:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, like they're in the room and they're kind of shouting at each other. Um, and it, but it is, it's a very quick boil over moment after a movie of sadness and restraint and, and like being kicked around, which is the other thing. You don't, Gene Hackman does not get kicked around in many movies. Uh, and so it's, it's memorable.

• 54:37Sean Fennessey?

  I'd like to proffer a yellow.

• 54:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Absolutely. A yellow for sure.

• 54:40Sean Fennessey?

  Great. Academy Award nomination for the film.

• 54:42Amanda Dobbins?

  What does he do in this movie?

• 54:43Speaker 02

  He's a teacher.

• 54:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Teacher. That's right. Teacher, yellow. Okay.

• 54:48Sean Fennessey?

  Doctor's Wives, 1971. I haven't seen the film.

• 54:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Skip this one.

• 54:52Speaker 02

  Uh, another.

• 54:53Sean Fennessey?

  Doctor's Wives.

• 54:54Speaker 02

  Basis for a, a trashy romp about wives of doctors at a California hospital.

• 55:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 55:01Speaker 02

  They're all screwing and, and that's the, the language of the time. They're screwing and drinking and shooting up even. Uh, Diane Cannon tells them, tells all the wives at the beginning, I'm gonna fuck all your husbands. And then she is shot, uh, by her husband while she's in bed with another man. And so there's some suspense for a while, finding out which of the doctors it is who, who's in the hospital waiting. It's only being kept from us, the audience, who that person is.

• 55:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 55:29Speaker 02

  But eventually it's revealed. Uh, Richard Crenna, once again.

• 55:34Sean Fennessey?

  That's right.

• 55:34Speaker 02

  Uh, Gene Hackman here is in the, uh, there's a kind of a Virginia, who's afraid of Virginia Woolf relationship with his wife, played by Rachel Roberts. So they get a couple of marital scenes. It's, it should be so much fun. And it's, again, it's just not, it's just, it's just a snooze.

• 55:51Amanda Dobbins?

  And he's a doctor?

• 55:53Speaker 02

  He's a doctor.

• 55:53Amanda Dobbins?

  He is one of the titular, he's one of the doctors.

• 55:56Speaker 02

  He is one of the doctors.

• 55:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 55:57Sean Fennessey?

  Won't be his last.

• 55:58Amanda Dobbins?

  So Doctor Red. It's not his first. He was a doctor in Hawaii.

• 56:01Sean Fennessey?

  That's right. Um, Diane Cannon in 1971, though.

• 56:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Well.

• 56:07Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 56:07Sean Fennessey?

  You're good.

• 56:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Good job.

• 56:09Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I'll have to track this film down. 1971's The Hunting Party, clearly the most shocking movie that I've seen.

• 56:14Amanda Dobbins?

  I did, I watched this also. I watched this because you both watched this fairly recently and so I saw on Letterboxd and I was like, okay, I guess, I, and I didn't have like a DVD.

• 56:24Speaker 02

  Nice to see you on Letterboxd.

• 56:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Thanks so much. Yeah.

• 56:27Speaker 02

  Nice to have a Letterboxd pal.

• 56:28Amanda Dobbins?

  I was, it's nice to see you too. I'm finally your friend. It was great. Um, yeah. So then in the DVD or the Blu-ray that I was gonna watch, it hadn't made it to video yet. So I was like, well, I guess I'll just click on this. Excuse me? And also I was like, oh, Candace Bergen. Love Candace Bergen. I was like, this is not good. What is happening to Candace Bergen?

• 56:50Sean Fennessey?

  The three collaborations with Candace Bergen. Candace Bergen, who, uh, routinely gave Gene Hackman enormous credit for helping teach her how to act in movies. Um, this movie is about a bastard bandit played by Oliver Reed, who abducts and rapes, uh, a cattle baron's wife.

• 57:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 57:13Sean Fennessey?

  The wife is played by Bergen. The cattle baron is played by Hackman. Hackman and his cronies go set out across the American West, which I believe is shot in Madrid and attempt to track down.

• 57:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Outside Madrid.

• 57:24Sean Fennessey?

  The hunting part, outside of the, the hunting party to track down this bandit and retrieve his wife and murder these, these, these bandits. Um, a truly one of the most bracing movies of the early 1970s. I mean, violent, uh, upsetting. Its sexual politics are bizarre.

• 57:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Really? Yeah.

• 57:42Sean Fennessey?

  Oliver Reed. He's got something. He's got, he's got something.

• 57:48Speaker 02

  He said to Candace Bergen early in the shooting, he said, we're either going to have a sexual relationship or I'm not going to speak to you at all. And she said, well, I'm not interested in a sexual relationship. And for the rest of the shoot, he addressed her only through an intermediary. He would never talk to her directly.

• 58:03Sean Fennessey?

  Which is so bizarre because of the turns that this movie takes.

• 58:07Speaker 02

  I know. And she talks in her memoir, she talks about the fact that she was raped a lot in the early seven, in the movies of the early seventies. And she cites, this is the example, like, here's an extreme example of how often I was raped. And, and did audiences want to see me raped? Or did, was it the filmmakers who wanted to see me raped?

• 58:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Three, four times at least, just her. And then, you know, there's just some like sideline, you know?

• 58:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Rapes as well.

• 58:33Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. I mean, the film is dotted with lots of very memorable, you know, L Q Jones and Mitchell Ryan. Mitchell Ryan, one of Oliver Reed's great drinking buddies. There's some great talk about that and, and some of the trouble they got into during the making of this movie. You know, it's well made. It's, it's just a really mean spirited movie.

• 58:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Hackman is either raping someone or, um, shooting someone like from long distance.

• 58:57Speaker 02

  Joy, joyfully killing them.

• 58:59Sean Fennessey?

  It's kind, it's kind of a great sniper movie. If you want to look at it a slightly different way.

• 59:02Amanda Dobbins?

  And I think his profession is cattle baron sniper.

• 59:05Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 59:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, for this, for the purposes of this movie, but.

• 59:09Sean Fennessey?

  Wouldn't say I recommend it.

• 59:10Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 59:11Speaker 02

  No.

• 59:11Sean Fennessey?

  It's not very good, but it is an artifact of a time and it's red and it's not going.

• 59:16Speaker 02

  Clearly made in the wake of Wild Bunch. This movie doesn't happen if the Wild Bunch hasn't been.

• 59:20Sean Fennessey?

  That's right. 1971's The French Connection.

• 59:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Well, the greenest green that has ever greened.

• 59:26Speaker 02

  That's the most green we'll get.

• 59:28Sean Fennessey?

  It is. Popeye Doyle, based on the real life police officer Eddie Egan. Gene Hackman was somewhere between the eighth and 14th choice for this part, uh, in William Friedkin's legendary movie, which went on to become a huge hit. I think it plays a huge part in changing American movies in terms of, you know, some of that brutality that we're talking about in The Hunting Party is a lot more accessible when it's in contemporary times in an American city. And so, you know, part of the.

• 59:54Amanda Dobbins?

  And less rape.

• 59:56Sean Fennessey?

  There's less rape. Yeah. Although, you know, lots of.

• 59:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, no.

• 59:58Sean Fennessey?

  Violence and hate speech and, and, and realism, you know, and, and, and thrill in terms of the way that the movie is made.

• 1:00:04Amanda Dobbins?

  And vulnerable, like, uh, people in vulnerable, dangerous positions and no, like, true white knight, golden character. I mean, there are the good guys and the bad guys, but there is a mania to, to Popeye. So.

• 1:00:19Sean Fennessey?

  So confession time for the Friedkin expert. Never been one of my movies.

• 1:00:23Speaker 02

  Really?

• 1:00:23Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:24Speaker 02

  Why is that?

• 1:00:25Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know. I just never really clicked with it. I admire it. I think it's obviously brilliant. I think Hackman is great. I adore Friedkin and I consider myself like a real scholar of his work. It's just never really been one of my movies.

• 1:00:36Speaker 02

  And is it one you've visited and revisited many times?

• 1:00:40Sean Fennessey?

  Probably seen four or five times. Yeah.

• 1:00:42Amanda Dobbins?

  That's weird, man.

• 1:00:43Sean Fennessey?

  I know. And I'm not really saying anything negative about it. It's just sometimes you don't click with something. And for whatever reason, it's just not one of my things.

• 1:00:51Speaker 02

  Well, it's one of mine. And if you're listening to the big picture, you should familiarize yourself with The French Connection. Because I think it's a goddamn five star masterpiece.

• 1:01:00Amanda Dobbins?

  I was thinking that I don't think I've ever seen it projected. I've never seen it in a theater.

• 1:01:04Sean Fennessey?

  I have not either.

• 1:01:05Amanda Dobbins?

  I would really, really like to.

• 1:01:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, maybe that would swing.

• 1:01:07Speaker 02

  I have.

• 1:01:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Because it is electric.

• 1:01:08Speaker 02

  Mighty good. It's mighty electric. So let me talk for a minute about Friedkin's relationship with Hackman on this movie. So Friedkin and his producing partner, Phil Dantoni, had been trying to get this movie made for a couple of years. And everybody had said no to it. Dantoni had the rights to Robin Moore's book, The French Connection, based on the true story of The French Connection. And in those two years, Hackman got to know Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso, his partner, very well. And their police work very well. The movie's researched. I mean, Friedkin was a documentarian and it's researched with documentary accuracy. Accuracy. There's my new word.

• 1:01:52Speaker 02

  Eventually, Xanick calls them and says, I've got, they're about to fire me. And I've got one point so many million dollars left to spend and I have a feeling about your movie. Why don't you come and do it here? Let's talk about who you're going to cast. Dantoni says, I want to cast Paul Newman. And Xanick laughs him out of the room and says, there's no way. That's a third of the budget. You're not going to get him. Friedkin wants to cast Jackie Gleason, but Jackie Gleason had screwed them over and had been difficult for them. And so Xanick said no to Jackie Gleason. Then he wanted to cast Jimmy Breslin, the columnist. And Breslin was like, what are you doing?

• 1:02:31Sean Fennessey?

  Long Island icon.

• 1:02:31Speaker 02

  I'm not an actor. I don't know how to do this. They had a week of rehearsal with Jimmy Breslin. Friedkin said he was great on the first day and got worse as each day went along. And then Sue Mengers, who represented Gene Hackman, called Breslin personally and shamed him into quitting the job. Saying, you're taking a part away from a real actor. And so Breslin quit and Friedkin was relieved. Dantoni wanted to cast Gene Hackman. They had a meeting with Gene Hackman. And Friedkin sat down with him and found him humorless and not at all a character and did not want to cast him in the part. But Dantoni finally said, look, he's free. He's willing to do it for $35,000. He's got two Academy Award nominations. I think we should do it.

• 1:03:12Speaker 02

  And Friedkin relented, basically. They go to work on the movie. The first day is the, do you pick your feet in Poughkeepsie scene? They start in on that scene and Friedkin had scripted it very carefully. He had just been working with Pinter and so he had scripted it very carefully. And he wanted the language very precise. And Hackman was not getting it and they had a terrible day. They did 35 takes of that scene and Friedkin walked away. They both walked away. And Hackman called his agent and said, get me off this movie. It's a disaster. The next day, Friedkin got Hackman in a car and he talked to him and he said, this is my mistake. It was my mistake. I tried to be too particular about the language. I need you to make it yours. And Hackman said, I just don't understand this guy. I don't know. I'm not a racist. I'm not, I don't.

• 1:03:58Speaker 02

  We'd never heard cops use racist language in a movie before. It was just not, it was not heard of that the hero would speak like that. Hackman begged to get off the picture. Obviously, they fought through it. They fought the entire time. In his memoir, Billy says, I never found out what Hackman thought about the movie. If he liked the movie, I don't know it. But he wins the Academy Award and he becomes a goddamn movie star. I mean, a huge movie star. It was a huge movie.

• 1:04:32Speaker 02

  All right, I'm done.

• 1:04:34Sean Fennessey?

  That was spirited.

• 1:04:37Sean Fennessey?

  I think that one of the reasons why I think this movie changes movies is because this is a very unlikable man, a very charismatic man.

• 1:04:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:44Sean Fennessey?

  But a very rough and at times evil person. You know, eventually working towards what is right, but.

• 1:04:54Amanda Dobbins?

  But also still sort of hyper fixated on it and, you know.

• 1:04:59Sean Fennessey?

  Obsessive.

• 1:04:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Has blinders and is not really taking in the whole picture before him.

• 1:05:03Speaker 02

  That obsessiveness was just absolutely Bill Friedkin's calling card. That was really what so many of his movies concerned themselves with. And so to put Hackman behind the wheel of that car in the car chase, that's the secret ingredient. If you've got the wrong actor that you're cutting to in those quick shots during that car chase, it doesn't, it doesn't work the same way.

• 1:05:24Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. It's so interesting because, you know, he's so celebrated and the movie is so celebrated and it's such a tough movie. And it leads to this series of really tough movies. At least in Bonnie and Clyde, you could say, well, Beatty and Faye Dunaway, they're so beautiful. They're so charming. Or you think about The Guys in Easy Rider. They're so, you know, they represent this kind of youthful vigor and the way that the country's turning over. This is a mean, hard movie.

• 1:05:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:45Sean Fennessey?

  And people loved it. And that doesn't really happen very often across 100 years of American movie history.

• 1:05:51Speaker 02

  And how many movies were changed, were inspired by this or made in the shadow of this movie? I mean, we're talking hundreds, if not thousands. I mean, just real game changer.

• 1:06:03Sean Fennessey?

  100%. So it's green.

• 1:06:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:05Speaker 02

  Cop, green.

• 1:06:06Sean Fennessey?

  A cop. Speaking of mean movies, 1972's Prime Cut, a reunion, I forgot, his second feature film with Michael Ritchie. He made two movies with Ritchie. This movie, what is this movie about again? Remind us? This is a.

• 1:06:20Amanda Dobbins?

  I saw this one too, because I thought this was something else. I thought this was one of the other Candace Bergen movies.

• 1:06:25Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:06:26Amanda Dobbins?

  And then it was too late and I already had the Blu-ray. So I just kept watching it.

• 1:06:30Sean Fennessey?

  Crime film, one of his earliest villains.

• 1:06:33Amanda Dobbins?

  And he's, is he a rancher or he's a, is he a rancher or a meat processor? Like a, yeah, cattle, a cattle baron, I guess, again. And also.

• 1:06:44Sean Fennessey?

  Two cattle barons.

• 1:06:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Related to the mafia and a human trafficker.

• 1:06:51Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. So I think it's going to have to be like a slash there, like cattle baron slash human trafficker. Yeah.

• 1:07:00Speaker 02

  How'd you like Prime Cut?

• 1:07:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, well, a lot of those images will stay with me. I mean, it starts with a lot of like literal meatpacking. And which is pretty gross, but pretty interesting. And then the two, all of the chase scenes in the fields were very exciting and reminded me of a movie to be released later this fall. I was like, oh, I wonder whether this was a reference point. But so, I mean, it was, it's tough stuff. And he's like Hackman is just, you know, in peak villain ham mode. I don't think it's like a particularly, there's not a lot of depth in the performance.

• 1:07:41Amanda Dobbins?

  But, you know, they really got up to stuff in the seventies. It's kind of what I learned from my hunting party, prime cut, like double header. It's like, wow, there was not, not that many notes, I guess.

• 1:07:54Speaker 02

  I love Prime Cut. I mean, the first time we see the naked girls, the drugged naked girls in the barn stalls. It's just like, what the hell is going, what am I watching here? And the fact that all the language is used in this metaphor of meat and rotting meat.

• 1:08:09Sean Fennessey?

  It's a very political movie.

• 1:08:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, the rot underneath the American heartland. Lee Marvin, total badass. I will say that Lee Marvin, you know, the scene where he takes Sissy Spacek out to dinner?

• 1:08:24Speaker 02

  Carrie and I are considering that for our Halloween costume this year.

• 1:08:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, good.

• 1:08:27Speaker 02

  I will wear the Lee Marvin with the white patent leather shoes. And she'll be in the booby, booby Sissy Spacek blouse.

• 1:08:34Amanda Dobbins?

  I think that's great. Will you go trick or treating with your children in that costume?

• 1:08:37Speaker 02

  And I hope, and the first people who recognize that we are in prime cut. I think that they'll get something, they'll get a little treat of their.

• 1:08:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:46Sean Fennessey?

  This is Sissy Spacek's first movie.

• 1:08:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:49Sean Fennessey?

  And when I watched the movie, I was like, oh no, is that girl 16? Unfortunately, she's in her early twenties and during the performance of this movie. Prime Cut, I don't think is going in. I think it's one of the, one of the, certainly one of the more interesting movies that he made. His performance is a little one dimensional.

• 1:09:07Sean Fennessey?

  But is it red or is it yellow? I guess it's, I guess it's red.

• 1:09:10Amanda Dobbins?

  I think he doesn't have much to do. This is in the Hackman universe.

• 1:09:14Speaker 02

  It's red.

• 1:09:14Amanda Dobbins?

  It's pretty limited, but.

• 1:09:16Speaker 02

  Conceivably could be a blue for me at the end of this.

• 1:09:18Sean Fennessey?

  Intriguing.

• 1:09:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, right. Okay.

• 1:09:21Sean Fennessey?

  1972's The Poseidon Adventure. Is this the second biggest hit he ever appeared in? Quite possibly.

• 1:09:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:09:30Speaker 02

  It was the second highest grossing movie of 72 after The Godfather.

• 1:09:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:09:35Sean Fennessey?

  He plays a reverend in this film. He's very heroic. He's very ornery. Just not a fan of this movie. It feels like it's nine hours long. And I wasn't there when it took over the cinemas in 1972, but you, you saw it on television many times in the immediate aftermath, as you said.

• 1:09:51Speaker 02

  I did. In competition with the Halloween costumes from Prime Cut, Carrie and I are also considering Ernest Borgnine and Stella Stephens from The Poseidon Adventure as our.

• 1:10:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:10:02Sean Fennessey?

  So you're just going. Decolletage is a big part of these, no matter what.

• 1:10:06Speaker 02

  I mean, you know, why not?

• 1:10:08Sean Fennessey?

  Sure.

• 1:10:11Sean Fennessey?

  Poseidon Adventure, I mean, any thoughts?

• 1:10:14Sean Fennessey?

  The classic seventies disaster movie, you know, it was celebrated with some Academy Award nominations at its time. Lot of big stars. It led to this wave of films like The Towering Inferno, Airport, that all came in its wake. The Irwin Allen, you know, surge of a certain kind of movie. I find most of those movies fairly unwatchable these days.

• 1:10:32Amanda Dobbins?

  I was going to say, I felt about this the way that I felt about Towering Inferno when we did it for Newman, which is like, it's, you just can't hand it down across generations because the pacing, the set pieces, what we expect from action. If you weren't there, it's just boring.

• 1:10:46Speaker 02

  It's a marvel of production design. The building of the upside down ship that they're navigating is really something to see.

• 1:10:54Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:55Speaker 02

  Maybe won an Academy Award for that too. I'm not sure.

• 1:10:57Sean Fennessey?

  I think that's right.

• 1:10:59Speaker 02

  And Shelley Winters, god damn it, man, she's.

• 1:11:02Sean Fennessey?

  She does a lot.

• 1:11:02Speaker 02

  She's just great.

• 1:11:04Sean Fennessey?

  It's very big. She's very big. Even by her standards. What do you do with a movie like this? Which is, I think is pretty important to his stardom, you know?

• 1:11:13Amanda Dobbins?

  You can yellow it.

• 1:11:14Sean Fennessey?

  You know, this, this movie comes out one year after The French Connection and he probably got paid a nice sum of money for it.

• 1:11:18Amanda Dobbins?

  But look what you have coming in the next three years. Yellow.

• 1:11:21Speaker 02

  Do you know the story of Ben Stiller going up to him on the set of Royal Teddy Moms and saying how much this movie meant to him? And Hackman sort of shrugged and went, money gig.

• 1:11:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Really good.

• 1:11:33Sean Fennessey?

  It's very funny. I don't know who that says more about, that story. Ben Stiller or Gene Hackman.

• 1:11:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, so Yellow and Reverend.

• 1:11:40Sean Fennessey?

  Yellow and he's a reverend. Nineteen, I don't know if we're gonna have a reverend category, if that's ever gonna come up again for Gene.

• 1:11:47Amanda Dobbins?

  We're doing a full accounting.

• 1:11:48Sean Fennessey?

  We are.

• 1:11:50Sean Fennessey?

  Here we have another police officer. Sergeant Leo Holland in 1972's Cisco Pike. What an odd movie for Gene Hackman to have taken at this time in his career.

• 1:12:00Speaker 02

  Agreed.

• 1:12:01Sean Fennessey?

  A hangdog, hangout, drug. Sort of a dramedy, but mostly just a drama, an existential drama starring Kris Kristofferson, who at that time is not really an actor, just a singer songwriter.

• 1:12:14Speaker 02

  I think it's his first, or at least he has an introducing credit.

• 1:12:16Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's his first movie as well. Karen Black plays his girlfriend, very faithful girlfriend. And Gene Hackman plays the police officer who is blackmailing him to sell a large amount of drugs that he has come into ownership of. And this is a very, this is another movie that is like kind of a totem of what people love about 70's cinema that also has never quite been one of my movies. I think it's just a little too loose to love. I do really like Hackman in this movie, though, where he's playing a pretty coki kind of cop. Like, his energy in the movie is quite weird. There's that sequence near the end of the movie where he comes over to Karen Black's apartment and is like as hard as racing and it feels like he's kind of losing it a little bit.

• 1:12:57Speaker 02

  Don't you feel like he's a character that Paul Thomas Anderson would readily put in a just?

• 1:13:03Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, the movie is so Inherent Vice. It's, Inherent Vice is pulling so much specifically from this movie. And I feel like The Big Lebowski is kind of a riff on this movie in some ways. A lot of movies from the 90's filmmakers who we love clearly had a relationship to this movie as a hangout LA movie, but it's not one of my faves.

• 1:13:23Amanda Dobbins?

  I didn't get to this one.

• 1:13:25Speaker 02

  I like it. I think people should watch it. I don't think it's going in the Hackman Hall of Fame.

• 1:13:29Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, some great Kristofferson songs.

• 1:13:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, a lot of good music.

• 1:13:32Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, so and, and.

• 1:13:34Amanda Dobbins?

  I do like that.

• 1:13:34Sean Fennessey?

  Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee, a bunch of their songs are in this movie. Yeah, some good music in the movie.

• 1:13:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, so.

• 1:13:39Speaker 02

  It's a good hang. There's nothing wrong with sitting with Cisco Pike for 90 minutes.

• 1:13:43Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's not bad. And Pike is like a failed musician, basically, who has turned to dealing drugs because he'd never quite made it as a rock star.

• 1:13:50Amanda Dobbins?

  And Red.

• 1:13:51Sean Fennessey?

  Cop and Red. 1973 Scarecrow.

• 1:13:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:53Sean Fennessey?

  Now, spoiler alert, Tracy and I have recently made some.

• 1:13:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, good, okay.

• 1:14:00Sean Fennessey?

  Content about this movie. I won't say anything more than that.

• 1:14:02Amanda Dobbins?

  That's exciting.

• 1:14:02Sean Fennessey?

  Our extended thoughts will be available on this movie at some point.

• 1:14:06Amanda Dobbins?

  And I did watch it.

• 1:14:07Sean Fennessey?

  You did?

• 1:14:07Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, it was amazing.

• 1:14:09Sean Fennessey?

  Great movie.

• 1:14:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I'm glad that there's gonna be extended content. I guess you guys can't have this be the blue, so this can be my blue.

• 1:14:15Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's a strong case for being green.

• 1:14:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, sure, yeah. I mean, I think, I guess that's true.

• 1:14:19Sean Fennessey?

  You know, this is a movie, Jerry Schatzberg movie, the co-star is Al Pacino. I think it's the one time they worked together. Two icons of this period in movie history. And they play a couple of drifters, two guys trying to get from one place to another, hanging out, wandering across America, encountering people and expressing their vulnerabilities or not. Max is sort of the older character, who is a little bit, a little bit more of a caretaker to the Pacino character, who's trying to get back to his family.

• 1:14:51Sean Fennessey?

  Amazing performances by both of them. I mean, and, and in a slightly different register.

• 1:14:55Amanda Dobbins?

  And the chemistry also between the two of them. And that, you know, Hackman is the more reserved and I guess he's like this, the straight man or the, the older person, the experienced person.

• 1:15:08Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:09Amanda Dobbins?

  But Pacino brings out those moments of softness and like humor in him that are so lovely. I mean, devastating movie. That's the other thing. I just really didn't expect from the, the opening is incredibly funny and I, but I didn't know where it was going or that it was gonna be that tough. So, yeah, this was amazing. I'm great with it being green.

• 1:15:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, me too. I, I, I love it. As you say, we, we talk more about it, we talk a lot about it, but it's a, I, I've always loved this film.

• 1:15:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, one of the great gems of the new Hollywood.

• 1:15:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:40Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, we're greening Scarecrow.

• 1:15:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, so drifter and green.

• 1:15:43Sean Fennessey?

  What is Max's job again?

• 1:15:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Drifter, but he wants to open a car wash.

• 1:15:47Sean Fennessey?

  That's right.

• 1:15:47Amanda Dobbins?

  But he hasn't opened it yet.

• 1:15:49Sean Fennessey?

  That's right. Drifter, okay, maybe his last drifter. 1974's The Conversation.

• 1:15:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:53Sean Fennessey?

  Harry Call. This is also green.

• 1:15:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:15:56Sean Fennessey?

  What a, what a run he's on right now.

• 1:15:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Unreal.

• 1:16:00Speaker 02

  Quite a run.

• 1:16:00Sean Fennessey?

  What can you say about The Conversation that hasn't already been said? A paranoid thriller from Francis Ford Coppola made between the two Godfather films about a surveillance expert who is driven mad by a particular case that he's on and maybe the summation of all of the work that he has been doing over time. And he represents, I think similarly to Prime Cut, kind of the rot that's happening in our culture of surveillance and knowingness and in the aftermath of several assassinations and the sense of guilt that maybe sits right underneath.

• 1:16:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:16:33Sean Fennessey?

  The American psyche. And he is amazing as a saxophone playing depressed man who doesn't really know how to express himself, doesn't really have any strong personal relationships, is committed to the work. Devastating movie, a masterpiece.

• 1:16:51Speaker 02

  After, all the experience he's amassed at this point, allow him to have to, to such a, such an inner life, right, that he can communicate so much of his inner life without dialogue. Now, he does have dialogue in this movie. He's got a sort of an extended monologue at, at one point, but so much of what he's communicating here is just through the eyes, through his stillness, through his sadness. And it's an extraordinary performance. Is he not nominated for an Academy Award?

• 1:17:22Amanda Dobbins?

  He wasn't. I, I looked this up last night, which is insane. I mean, but it is, there is no confidence in this. I mean, there is confidence in the performance, but no confidence in the character, which is a real departure from everything that he is doing. And it's, as you said, a person who's so shriveled up that, you know, he just is, he's watching other people on the, on the cameras and in the tapes. And like the one time he tries to venture out, doesn't work and just pushes him off a cliff. So it's, it is untypical of Hackman in an amazing way.

• 1:17:58Sean Fennessey?

  This movie was nominated for Best Picture and yet he's not nominated for Best Actor. And this is the famous year.

• 1:18:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:03Sean Fennessey?

  In which your boy, Art Carney, defeated Albert Finney, Dustin Hoffman, Jack Nicholson and Al Pacino and Hackman not even nominated.

• 1:18:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:12Speaker 02

  Should've been nominated.

• 1:18:13Sean Fennessey?

  We were, we were, we were living good back then and I was not alive. The conversation's in. 1974's Young Frankenstein. Now, this is an indication of something that I think would become a hugely important part of his career in the final 15 years of it, which is this is his first proper comedy. He plays a blind man, Harold, in a very brief but very funny scene opposite Peter Boyle, that is a very, you know, very clearly inspired by the James Whale original in which Frankenstein encounters a blind man. And, you know, it's a one day part. Hackman famously was so funny improvising lines during this scene that he was breaking the crew and that there's a reason the movie has a hard cut when he does the espresso line, because everybody laughed and they couldn't do it again.

• 1:18:58Sean Fennessey?

  You know, I don't know, I never know what to do with something like this because he's not essential to the movie. It's a very small part, but it's very memorable. And I remember when my dad showed me this movie, how much he loved this part of the movie. So it sticks in my mind in terms of his career.

• 1:19:12Speaker 02

  It's great. You know, we talk about how he doesn't have the, the range of characters, say, that Duval does, but he can play a style. He can play into different styles. He can play the broad comedy of satirical comedy of Young Frankenstein. He can do farce in the birdcage.

• 1:19:34Speaker 02

  There, there are a couple of other style pieces we'll get to where he can re, oh, Mamet, right?

• 1:19:39Sean Fennessey?

  And Heist.

• 1:19:40Speaker 02

  He's absolutely playing the style there and he kills it. He just kills it.

• 1:19:45Sean Fennessey?

  True.

• 1:19:45Speaker 02

  Well, Tenenbaums too, right?

• 1:19:47Sean Fennessey?

  Same thing.

• 1:19:48Speaker 02

  He can find that he's, he can be the voice of the style.

• 1:19:52Sean Fennessey?

  It's a great point.

• 1:19:54Sean Fennessey?

  This may end up being my blue, so I'm, I'm gonna say.

• 1:19:57Amanda Dobbins?

  It can yellow for now, for sure.

• 1:19:59Sean Fennessey?

  Yellow, because it's a huge hit. It's another thing where it's like, god damn, Gene Hackman is all over the movies in the early 1970's. 1974's Xandies Bride.

• 1:20:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:20:07Sean Fennessey?

  Now, I asked you to watch this. I had not seen it when I asked you to watch it. I was seeing it for the first time as well. Jan Trolls, follow up to his diptych of Scandinavian dramas that were much celebrated in America. And he makes a movie with an American movie star, which is something that a lot of these filmmakers at the time were doing, opposite Liv Ullman. And it's about a man who gets a mail order bride, a mean man who gets a mail order bride.

• 1:20:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Very mean.

• 1:20:35Sean Fennessey?

  And, and they have a mean old relationship and they teach each other something about living and surviving in the, in the, in the old frontier.

• 1:20:44Sean Fennessey?

  Wasn't a huge fan of this movie. What did you think?

• 1:20:49Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, I guess in the context of, I watched many westerns for, for this project, more than I traditionally do. And in the context of mean old man played by Gene Hackman on the frontier, there is slightly more evolution in character than some of the other performances.

• 1:21:12Sean Fennessey?

  That's true.

• 1:21:13Amanda Dobbins?

  And I guess I learned that life is, you know, survival and hard for everybody, which is the point of this movie, but no, I don't think it'll stay with me.

• 1:21:25Sean Fennessey?

  How do you think you do as a mail order bride?

• 1:21:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Kind of like this of just like, get your shit together, sir. Which, you know, I appreciated that, that there is a little bit of, you know, backbone in the Liv Allman character, but.

• 1:21:41Sean Fennessey?

  Thoughts? You saw this for the first time as well?

• 1:21:42Speaker 02

  I, I saw this, uh, as a kid on TV.

• 1:21:46Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, you did?

• 1:21:46Speaker 02

  I did not, I did not re-watch for this, so I, I'm trusting you guys on this.

• 1:21:52Sean Fennessey?

  There is a very memorable sequence in which Gene Hackman fights a bear.

• 1:21:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:56Sean Fennessey?

  And there are a couple of moments where I'm like, that's a real bear? In the shot with Hackman?

• 1:22:02Amanda Dobbins?

  I, it, I mean, it looked like it.

• 1:22:04Speaker 02

  Well, you can train a bear. Bears are trained, trainable.

• 1:22:07Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think that you would never see a movie star have a scene like that. I mean, the fangs are bared. It's a, it's kind of a shocking moment.

• 1:22:16Amanda Dobbins?

  And they cut, they cut around it a little bit.

• 1:22:18Sean Fennessey?

  They do. And there's, there is a fake bear. There's, there's a man in a bear suit at a, at a point.

• 1:22:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:22:22Sean Fennessey?

  But there's one shot where I'm like, that bear's mouth is open, face to face with Gene Hackman.

• 1:22:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Like we used to be a country.

• 1:22:28Sean Fennessey?

  This is fucking Popeye Doyle. We can't kill, this guy has to live. What are we doing? Anyway, uh, Xandies Bride is not going in.

• 1:22:34Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 1:22:34Sean Fennessey?

  In that film, he plays a farmer. Farmer?

• 1:22:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Farmer or?

• 1:22:39Sean Fennessey?

  Not quite cowboy.

• 1:22:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Rancher? Are we sure?

• 1:22:43Sean Fennessey?

  Rancher cowboy?

• 1:22:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Are we sure he's not, he, once again, he's like, he's doing something with cattle.

• 1:22:49Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:22:50Speaker 03

  So could we put down cattle baron?

• 1:22:52Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know if he's a baron.

• 1:22:53Speaker 02

  He's not a baron.

• 1:22:54Sean Fennessey?

  No baron.

• 1:22:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:55Speaker 02

  He's a farmer.

• 1:22:56Sean Fennessey?

  He's a farmer. 1975 is the French Connection 2. He reprises his role as Popeye Doyle. I'm not a big fan of this movie.

• 1:23:06Amanda Dobbins?

  It's, no, it's a no for me.

• 1:23:07Speaker 02

  It's a no for me too. I mean, the funny thing is if you watch it and you don't know French Connection, you go, that's a cop movie. That qualifies as a cop movie.

• 1:23:16Sean Fennessey?

  Fernando Reyes back in the film.

• 1:23:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, right. People are doing cop things.

• 1:23:19Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, John Frankenheimer doing some set pieces.

• 1:23:21Speaker 02

  Connection, you're like, oh, French Connection 2 is garbage.

• 1:23:24Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's not very good. And it's not a hit. It doesn't really work, which is quite interesting because this is at the sort of dawn of the sequel, people getting hip to sequels, you know? And the idea that this kind of thing can and should work.

• 1:23:37Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, the original French Connection does, I guess, leave the door open on all of the characters, but it's not a movie where you watch it and you're like, well, what happened next? You know, it's about.

• 1:23:49Speaker 02

  It's purely a money grab.

• 1:23:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:51Speaker 02

  Which is why Friedkin hated this as well as Exorcist 2. He hated it. And he, he had some, he had some thoughts about Mr. Frankenheimer and Mr. Borman because of it. He, he felt it was bankrupt of them to, to take these things on.

• 1:24:06Sean Fennessey?

  Just want to note at this time, Hackman is working a lot.

• 1:24:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:24:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:10Sean Fennessey?

  In 1974, he's in three movies. In 1975, he's in four movies. His second movie is one of the worst movies I've watched out of this bunch, which is Stanley Donan's Lucky Lady.

• 1:24:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:21Sean Fennessey?

  Which is a three-handed showpiece for Liza Minnelli, Burt Reynolds, and Gene Hackman, in which they play a trio of rum runners in, is it 1920s America? And you'd think this would be a delightful film, given the star power, the filmmaking, the idea.

• 1:24:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Rum running?

• 1:24:43Sean Fennessey?

  Rum running? That sounds fun, whatever that is.

• 1:24:45Speaker 02

  It's a real piece of shit.

• 1:24:46Sean Fennessey?

  What a dud.

• 1:24:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:47Speaker 02

  It's a real piece of shit. You know, sometimes these movies, they get this reputation, you guys talked about it some on the bombs draft you did. And sometimes you go back and you look at, right? You can go back and look at Heaven's Gate and go, oh, that, you know, there's a movie, you may like it or not like it, but there's a real movie there. This was a piece of shit when it came out, and it's still a steaming piece of shit.

• 1:25:09Sean Fennessey?

  It's just not good. And Hackman isn't great. Reynolds isn't great. Liza isn't great.

• 1:25:14Amanda Dobbins?

  I had to make hard decisions at the end. And like Stanley Donan, you know, I,

• 1:25:17Sean Fennessey?

  Sure.

• 1:25:18Amanda Dobbins?

  I, you'd think I would at least want to check it out, but.

• 1:25:21Sean Fennessey?

  He had some real dogs at the end of his career, though.

• 1:25:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly. And it, it read as one of those. And then Liza Minnelli's quote about, like, all we ate was shrimp and we were miserable. And I was like, okay, well, this doesn't, this doesn't sound like fun was had.

• 1:25:33Sean Fennessey?

  No, it's a tough one. Uh, 1975's Night Moves.

• 1:25:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. I mean, this is a green situation, right?

• 1:25:39Sean Fennessey?

  Absolutely, absolutely banger.

• 1:25:41Amanda Dobbins?

  The most green of the greens.

• 1:25:43Sean Fennessey?

  What an absolute banger.

• 1:25:44Amanda Dobbins?

  That's unreal.

• 1:25:45Sean Fennessey?

  Just one of the saddest, darkest movies you're ever gonna see.

• 1:25:50Speaker 02

  Why did we not get five Harry Mosby movies? Why did we not get five Harry Mosby mysteries?

• 1:25:56Sean Fennessey?

  A Reunion with Arthur Penn, a seedy detective movie about a man moving through the American South trying to solve a crime.

• 1:26:06Amanda Dobbins?

  The Florida Keys.

• 1:26:08Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, The Florida Keys.

• 1:26:09Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, it's a slightly different.

• 1:26:10Sean Fennessey?

  It wasn't Sherman's March.

• 1:26:13Amanda Dobbins?

  It's just, you know, whatever's going on down there is, I've been to the Keys a couple of times, had a nice time, and it's complicated, and this movie gets into it, but it is slightly different from the American.

• 1:26:23Sean Fennessey?

  I didn't revisit this movie.

• 1:26:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:25Sean Fennessey?

  I did watch this in COVID and I was like, this is the shit.

• 1:26:28Speaker 02

  So you haven't watched the new 4K?

• 1:26:31Sean Fennessey?

  Haven't. I own it. I haven't popped it in.

• 1:26:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:26:33Speaker 02

  You gotta watch it.

• 1:26:33Sean Fennessey?

  This is one of those things where this was a sacrifice I had to make to watch stuff, like Bite the Bullet, where I was like, what I'd really like to be doing right now is watching Night Moves. I didn't do it, but I, I love this movie. Um, and I don't, any additional thoughts you want to share about it? It's a great crime movie.

• 1:26:50Speaker 02

  If you're listening to the Big Picture Podcast and you haven't seen Night Moves, yeah. you need to see it. I will also say about, I should say about Night Moves, this is a movie that definitely benefits from repeated viewings.

• 1:27:02Sean Fennessey?

  Agreed.

• 1:27:02Speaker 02

  There is a, if, the first time you watch it, the kind of anti-mystery quality of it, where there are things about it that don't satisfy in the traditional mystery sense.

• 1:27:16Speaker 02

  The second time you watch it, all of that will, will be gone, and you can just enjoy the movie for exactly what it is. And it's a great movie and a great performance. Hackman's great in the movie.

• 1:27:26Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:27:27Amanda Dobbins?

  This is Melanie Griffith's debut, but it's the same year as The Drowning Pool, which is, it occupies like a similar place. It didn't make our Newman Hall of Fame, but I think it was my blue. And Night Moves is better, but still just in terms of 70s noir.

• 1:27:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, I love Drowning Pool.

• 1:27:46Amanda Dobbins?

  The vibe and the hang is part of the, um, it is the experience, even if it doesn't make you feel great.

• 1:27:53Sean Fennessey?

  So it was a bomb at the time and opened one week before Jaws.

• 1:27:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, well, you win some, you lose some.

• 1:28:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:28:00Sean Fennessey?

  1975's Bite the Bullet, a big roiling Western from Richard Brooks, um, one of his last films as well, uh, well-known for his, uh, his westerns, his stories about, uh, strong-willed men of the American character, writer-director, unusual writer-director.

• 1:28:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:28:19Sean Fennessey?

  Not a lot of them in this kind of pre-auteur times. Uh, I was a little mixed on this one. I, I guess that you liked it quite a bit. Maybe you can talk about it.

• 1:28:28Speaker 02

  I rem, I, I was patting my 10-year-old self on the back because I remember as a 10-year-old seeing this in a drive-in and really liking it. And then I watched it again with much lower expectations and went, oh, I was right. It's great.

• 1:28:40Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:40Speaker 02

  I thought it was just great.

• 1:28:42Sean Fennessey?

  So.

• 1:28:42Speaker 02

  The nanny loved it too, by the way.

• 1:28:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, good.

• 1:28:44Speaker 02

  So the nanny was gonna vote for it.

• 1:28:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, now, now I feel bad that I missed it.

• 1:28:48Sean Fennessey?

  It's about a big.

• 1:28:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Because you were okay, but when the nanny weighs in, my gosh.

• 1:28:51Sean Fennessey?

  Much, movie is much kinder to Candace Bergen than, than The Hunting Party.

• 1:28:55Speaker 02

  Candace Bergen's very good.

• 1:28:55Sean Fennessey?

  She is a very good movie.

• 1:28:56Speaker 02

  Ben Johnson is very good.

• 1:28:58Amanda Dobbins?

  I guess this is what I thought I was watching when I watched Prime Cut instead. I don't really know how that happened.

• 1:29:03Sean Fennessey?

  Really good cast. Uh, it's like turn of the century, big horse race, across many, many miles. Um, movie's pretty shambolic. It's not, there's not really a lot of story, but there's a lot of great character moments. Um, I'm gonna say it's red.

• 1:29:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:18Speaker 02

  Why are you so mixed?

• 1:29:20Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, it was a little, a little baggy to me. Like, The Professionals is such a tight action, like brilliant action Western. And I think I went in expecting something along those lines. Or like In Cold Blood is like such an, I like Brooks's movies a lot. Um, and this felt just a little like unpolished to me.

• 1:29:43Speaker 02

  Jan Michael Vincent stuff.

• 1:29:45Amanda Dobbins?

  What does he do in this?

• 1:29:47Sean Fennessey?

  Carbo. Jan Michael Vincent, yeah. Carbo the Young Buck.

• 1:29:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:29:51Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, it's okay. What is, what does Hackman do?

• 1:29:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, what's his profession?

• 1:29:56Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, that's a good question. I mean, he's a cowboy.

• 1:29:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:29:59Speaker 02

  I want to put it in yellow because when we go back, I may, it may be my blue. I really like it.

• 1:30:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yellow for Bite the Bullet. 1977, The Domino Principle.

• 1:30:07Speaker 02

  Whewee.

• 1:30:08Amanda Dobbins?

  So this, I, because of the Candace Bergen, I rented it to watch on the flight home from Venice, and this is when I fully fell asleep. So I don't even think that I can count as having watched this because it was so instantly like, oh, this is not, not happening.

• 1:30:25Sean Fennessey?

  Stanley Kramer thriller from the late 70s. Hackman famously did not enjoy making this movie. This is his third and final feature with Candace Bergen. Um, it is widely considered forgettable. And, um, I, I'm not a fan, so I feel like this is not much to.

• 1:30:40Speaker 02

  I believe, now, this could be apocryphal, so don't, don't come at me. Uh, or I should say, don't send emails to thebigpicture.com complaining about this. But I believe that Gene Hackman turned down One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, uh, Jaws, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind because he got paycheck to do The Domino Principle and March or Die.

• 1:31:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, well.

• 1:31:08Speaker 02

  This is part of the career of Gene Hackman. He was a guy who, who was gonna get his paycheck. Was always gonna get his paycheck.

• 1:31:16Amanda Dobbins?

  And listen, we, we already have five Greens and we're only at 1977. So in that sense, he did okay.

• 1:31:24Sean Fennessey?

  He's got one of the most awesome slate of 1970s movies of any actor from that time. Things go a little downhill from here.

• 1:31:31Speaker 02

  He's better casting, by the way, for R.P. McMurphy than Jack Nicholson. He's closer to, to Casey's conception of the character than Nicholson.

• 1:31:41Sean Fennessey?

  It's a very interesting idea. And when I mentioned that bridge note to you yesterday, I thought the only other person who I think serves the same function for us is Nicholson. Where he was as resonant a movie star in the 90s as he was in the 70s. I'd have to give that some thought.

• 1:31:57Speaker 02

  Domino Principle is terrible.

• 1:31:59Sean Fennessey?

  It's really bad.

• 1:31:59Amanda Dobbins?

  I fell asleep before I, what does he do? I don't remember.

• 1:32:03Speaker 02

  What does he do? God damn, I just saw it and I can't even tell you. It's a conspiracy thriller. Oh, is he a prisoner? He's a prisoner.

• 1:32:12Speaker 03

  I believe that is correct.

• 1:32:12Sean Fennessey?

  He's a veteran who is offered his freedom if he kills someone for those who imprisoned him. And it's Richard Widmark is in it as well. And apparently all three of them were miserable in the making.

• 1:32:23Speaker 02

  Oh, such a slog.

• 1:32:26Sean Fennessey?

  Um, Domino Principle's out. A Bridge Too Far, he's got a somewhat small role in this long endless war feature.

• 1:32:35Speaker 02

  I feel like we're always talking about Bridge Too Far on these goddamn things.

• 1:32:39Sean Fennessey?

  Cause everybody's in it. Everyone's in it.

• 1:32:41Speaker 02

  And it stinks on ice.

• 1:32:42Sean Fennessey?

  We're not a fan.

• 1:32:44Speaker 02

  Sorry, Chris. Sorry, Chris Ryan.

• 1:32:45Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I know, he enjoys this movie. Uh, not going in, that's two duds in 1977. Although Bridge Too Far did pretty good business.

• 1:32:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:32:53Sean Fennessey?

  And then 1977's March or Die, which is also an absolute dud.

• 1:32:57Speaker 02

  Just a dud.

• 1:32:58Sean Fennessey?

  Three really lousy movies coming off of this incredible stretch in the first half of the 1970s are all red. And he plays a military man in March or Die. He plays a military man in A Bridge Too Far. And he plays a military man, a veteran in The Domino Principle.

• 1:33:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:33:14Sean Fennessey?

  1978 Superman, Lex Luthor.

• 1:33:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Green.

• 1:33:18Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's green.

• 1:33:19Speaker 02

  All right.

• 1:33:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:21Speaker 02

  I mean, just historically, yeah, I don't, it's not my, I mean, it's.

• 1:33:24Sean Fennessey?

  It's the Hall of Fame. It's not the Hall of Good.

• 1:33:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I, I, I, I'm not, do you hear me fighting? I'm not fighting.

• 1:33:31Sean Fennessey?

  Well, first of all, I love Superman. Second of all, it's an important movie for a performance he gives later in his career, which we can talk about.

• 1:33:38Speaker 02

  At the time, comic book movies were much more in the camp of the 1960s Batman TV series than they were in the realm of.

• 1:33:47Sean Fennessey?

  There were no comic book movies.

• 1:33:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:48Sean Fennessey?

  Right. This is the comic book movie.

• 1:33:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:33:50Sean Fennessey?

  This is the one that breaks the dam.

• 1:33:51Speaker 02

  His performance would have been fine on the old Batman TV show.

• 1:33:54Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's big, it's, it's very humorous, it's a bit absurd. Um, he and, he and Reeve have great interplay. They're like this, this kind of sternness and the uprightness that he has and that, that Hackman gets to bounce off of is great. I think it's really fun. I don't know.

• 1:34:10Speaker 02

  There's a, there is a one problem, which is that if he is the greatest super, what is he? He keeps telling everybody, right? He's very, he's got a sort of Trumpian ego.

• 1:34:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:22Speaker 02

  And, uh, he's telling everybody what a great mastermind he is. Why is Otis his second? And his, his set, the person who's doing the work for him is a complete bumbling moron.

• 1:34:32Sean Fennessey?

  Very easy to understand. He needs to feel superior at all times.

• 1:34:36Speaker 02

  So he, but this is his downfall, right?

• 1:34:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, yeah, that's.

• 1:34:41Speaker 02

  Person he's employed is a, is a moron.

• 1:34:43Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. And his girl is such a babe.

• 1:34:45Speaker 02

  His girl, girl is a babe, but she's also, she's not, uh, she's not, uh, she's not loyal, right? She betrays him.

• 1:34:52Sean Fennessey?

  No, no, but I love her.

• 1:34:53Amanda Dobbins?

  This is big in our house, this.

• 1:34:55Sean Fennessey?

  This movie rocks.

• 1:34:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Even a four-year-old really likes it.

• 1:34:58Sean Fennessey?

  Obviously a sentimental favorite. I saw this at a very young age.

• 1:35:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but it also then like sets the template because we grow up on him being the, the big, broad arch villain having a lot of fun in a lot of movies.

• 1:35:10Speaker 02

  Richard Donner cut or Richard Lester cut?

• 1:35:12Sean Fennessey?

  For the second film.

• 1:35:14Speaker 02

  Oh, that's the second.

• 1:35:15Sean Fennessey?

  That's the second film. We can talk about that for the second film.

• 1:35:17Amanda Dobbins?

  To that.

• 1:35:18Speaker 02

  Fair enough.

• 1:35:19Amanda Dobbins?

  As a, as a, as a family.

• 1:35:21Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:35:21Sean Fennessey?

  It's hard to judge because.

• 1:35:22Speaker 02

  Two's better than one. I mean, as a movie, two's better than one.

• 1:35:26Sean Fennessey?

  Two has Terrence Stamp being incredible.

• 1:35:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:35:28Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, Zod is like that. If we're talking about supervillains, that's one of the great committed performances in a comic book movie ever. The, it's hard to judge them because the Donner cut is just sort of incomplete. Like some of it just doesn't look finished. So you don't totally get the feel for what it was supposed to be. I mean, I saw the Lester cut a million times on TV.

• 1:35:44Speaker 02

  What's the one with the cheat where he flies around the world so fast?

• 1:35:47Amanda Dobbins?

  It's the first one, isn't it?

• 1:35:49Sean Fennessey?

  Where he goes back in time? Maybe it is the.

• 1:35:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I think it's like the end of the first one. And again, he's flying a lot, so we've watched that.

• 1:35:55Speaker 02

  Can we have a little science corner on that?

• 1:35:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, well, sure. But here's the thing, I tried the science corner at home with a four-year-old. Mom, stop.

• 1:36:03Sean Fennessey?

  Didn't go over.

• 1:36:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Mom, stop talking. He's going really fast. I want to see him flying again. I was like, okay, great.

• 1:36:09Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, get used to that.

• 1:36:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:10Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, Superman two's not going in. Big hit though.

• 1:36:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:14Sean Fennessey?

  Hackman, um, basically quit the movie after Donner was fired. And so there's a lot of scenes of him shot from behind. His voice was dubbed, not a complete Lex Luthor performance. He does eventually come back for Superman four. We can talk about that when we get there. Uh, so Superman one is in, Superman two is red. He plays a supervillain in both of those films. 1981's All Night Long, just seen this film for the first time yesterday.

• 1:36:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Same.

• 1:36:38Sean Fennessey?

  The aforementioned Sue Mengers, who was the super agent who represented both Barbra Streisand and Gene Hackman. And also, uh, the director of this film, Claude Tremont.

• 1:36:47Speaker 02

  Um, was her husband.

• 1:36:49Sean Fennessey?

  Was her husband.

• 1:36:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:36:50Sean Fennessey?

  And what the fuck is this movie? Well, how did this happen?

• 1:36:53Speaker 02

  Not very good.

• 1:36:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Pretty strange.

• 1:36:55Sean Fennessey?

  What a weird movie.

• 1:36:56Speaker 02

  It's, it's, it was pretty big bomb at the time. I don't think it's that bad. I don't think it's just like.

• 1:37:03Sean Fennessey?

  It's bizarre.

• 1:37:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. This scene when they, when Gene Hackman comes back home and finds Diane Ladd with Mr. Feeny.

• 1:37:13Sean Fennessey?

  At the very, very end.

• 1:37:14Amanda Dobbins?

  And then they're all at the table and then, uh, Dennis.

• 1:37:17Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, 30-year-old Dennis Quaid playing a 17-year-old.

• 1:37:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but did I care? No, I didn't. I thought that scene was kind of fun. That is also, you know, the scene where Hackman, who's playing sort of like a beleaguered, fed up, um, trying to like start a new life and find some happiness. But like a, a relatively sincere person in his, in his canon. And then he turns a little mean at the table and you're like, oh, okay. You know, and rightfully so, but.

• 1:37:45Sean Fennessey?

  Well, Hackman got divorced in 86 from his first wife. And he takes on a few parts where he clearly is kind of working on some of that stuff and the thinking about being married and getting into the second half of your life. That is kind of interesting. Can I just share a Streisand take? I think hotter in her late 30s than in her 20s.

• 1:38:02Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:38:03Sean Fennessey?

  I think she's beautiful in this movie.

• 1:38:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Incredible. I mean, she's also just wearing like, you know, Marilyn Monroe dresses the whole time.

• 1:38:11Sean Fennessey?

  She's just hot in this movie.

• 1:38:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. That is possible for women to get hotter as they get older.

• 1:38:16Sean Fennessey?

  Never seen it before.

• 1:38:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, okay.

• 1:38:18Speaker 02

  Good point. I agree.

• 1:38:20Sean Fennessey?

  But I think particularly with her, I think she's thought of as like the funny girl, the ingenue who kind of explodes onto the scene. But she's like very sexy in the movie, I thought.

• 1:38:28Speaker 02

  Um, I believe, again, Sue Mengers' super agent, I believe it's the highest paycheck ever for a person, Barbra Streisand, on this movie.

• 1:38:37Amanda Dobbins?

  For a person?

• 1:38:38Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, adjusted for inflation, you mean?

• 1:38:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Uh, up to that point.

• 1:38:43Sean Fennessey?

  I think it was $4 million she got paid.

• 1:38:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:38:45Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that makes sense. 1981's Reds, um, a classic film, a five-star film.

• 1:38:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Wonderful film.

• 1:38:52Sean Fennessey?

  Hackman's a pretty small role as Pete Van Weery and hated his time and, uh, never worked with Beatty again.

• 1:39:00Speaker 02

  And not going in his Hall of Fame.

• 1:39:01Sean Fennessey?

  No, too small.

• 1:39:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Did it as a favor to Beatty and then was like, that's, you get one?

• 1:39:06Sean Fennessey?

  Why did I do this?

• 1:39:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, you get one favor.

• 1:39:08Sean Fennessey?

  It should have been one day and I did nine days. Um, 1983's Under Fire, I had not seen this movie before. A, a pretty interesting movie about three journalists in Nicaragua in, uh, the late 1970s. Played by Nick Nolte, Joanna Cassidy and Hackman. Hackman is playing, um, an anchor, a TV newscaster, was based on a real person who was, uh, shockingly murdered. Um, and I would say pretty solid drama.

• 1:39:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I think it's Roger Spottiswood, right? And it's a good, maybe one of the better movies that Roger Spottiswood made. I saw this in the movie theaters in 83 and I revisited for this and yeah, it's good. It's a little shaggy, uh, story-wise. Uh, Ed Harris, uh, great turn as a mercenary in this movie.

• 1:39:58Sean Fennessey?

  He pops in this one. Wild-eyed military man, yeah.

• 1:40:01Speaker 02

  Uh, Nolte's great, Hackman's great. Uh, uh, it's a good movie. I, I like Under Fire.

• 1:40:06Sean Fennessey?

  I liked it too.

• 1:40:07Amanda Dobbins?

  He's also two journalists in a row, because we didn't know that in Reds.

• 1:40:12Sean Fennessey?

  You're right.

• 1:40:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:13Sean Fennessey?

  Two journalists in a row.

• 1:40:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Two journalists, two Reds. Even though he trained as a journalist.

• 1:40:17Speaker 02

  All Night Long, he's a, he's a shop manager, grocery store manager.

• 1:40:21Sean Fennessey?

  He's downgraded.

• 1:40:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, drugstore. He's a, I'm basically.

• 1:40:25Sean Fennessey?

  Previously employed at a higher level and is demoted in the movie.

• 1:40:29Amanda Dobbins?

  He was a drugstore, he like executive?

• 1:40:32Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:40:32Amanda Dobbins?

  And then, so not quite pharma executive, but just adjacent.

• 1:40:37Speaker 02

  Middle management.

• 1:40:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:40:39Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, so Under Fire, I think is red.

• 1:40:41Amanda Dobbins?

  In Superman, he was supervillain?

• 1:40:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think we.

• 1:40:44Sean Fennessey?

  We got that. Uh, Under Fire, one of those classic movies where it's like an automatic red, but I would recommend it to people.

• 1:40:50Speaker 02

  I agree.

• 1:40:51Sean Fennessey?

  Um, this, three movies this year.

• 1:40:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:40:55Sean Fennessey?

  He makes Uncommon Valor next with Ted Kaczynski, which is a movie that's coming in during this wave of, in the aftermath of Vietnam. Um, people reckoning with what had happened in the previous decade and, uh, the angst and pain over a lot of loss experienced. This is a movie about a man going back to Laos to find his son. And he puts together a military force of his own to return and, and save him and.

• 1:41:25Sean Fennessey?

  I didn't think this was very good.

• 1:41:27Speaker 02

  It's not very good.

• 1:41:28Amanda Dobbins?

  It's not very good. It's, it's part of the Brian Raftery's Vietnam series. And so I didn't revisit it, but I remember it being not something, it was more of like a historical dat- trend point in the types of movies that were being made than a movie that stayed with me.

• 1:41:46Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. I mean, memorable early appearance of Patrick Swayze. Hackman kind of disappears from the movie for about 45 minutes when it becomes sort of this basic training preparation for the rescue. But it's, it feels like really more of a shoot them up. I would say it's not very sophisticated about the complexities of Vietnam in any meaningful way.

• 1:42:04Speaker 02

  Kotchif was on a run too. It was a real misfire for him. And also around the same year as Let's Get Harry, which we talked about in the Duval draft, which has kind of drive in fun about it. You know, Gary Busey going off and stuff. This movie doesn't really have that. I mean, Tex Cobb, come on.

• 1:42:20Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So Uncommon Valor is red.

• 1:42:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:42:25Sean Fennessey?

  Do you guys watch Eureka?

• 1:42:27Speaker 02

  I've seen it before.

• 1:42:28Amanda Dobbins?

  I meant to this morning and I, I just didn't get there.

• 1:42:30Sean Fennessey?

  Never seen it before.

• 1:42:31Amanda Dobbins?

  I really wanted to.

• 1:42:32Sean Fennessey?

  Really interesting movie. Considered a big bomb that has developed a modest cult following. It's one of, it's Nicholas Rogue's biggest movie that he ever made. It is based on a true life story about a gold miner who struck it big and was eventually mysteriously, spoiler alert, murdered, named Harry Oakes. And Gene Hackman plays the Harry Oakes-esque figure. It co-stars Rutger Hauer and Teresa Russell. And the first 45 minutes of this movie are astonishing. The design of the movie where he's a gold miner in Alaska, in Alaskan territory, who stumbles upon a

• 1:43:16Sean Fennessey?

  brothel in the middle of the night and then has this kind of mystical experience, not a sexual experience, but a mystical experience.

• 1:43:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Which is a lot of, a lot of brothels in Hackman's filmography.

• 1:43:25Sean Fennessey?

  That's true. That's true. And then leads him to the discovery of this gold, which then cuts straight to the future. And we see that the movie becomes this kind of parable about the quest for wealth and what it's all about and the, you know, lie of the American dream. This movie has clearly got to be an inspiration for There Will Be Blood.

• 1:43:42Speaker 02

  Oh, right.

• 1:43:42Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, there is so much in the lie of the American family and the, you know, getting rich from what's in the ground and, you know, the, the child who doesn't totally understand the father and the fraught relationship between those two. Anyway, it's a little all over the place. The ending is a little rough. Features one of the most savage death scenes you'll ever seen a film. But I thought it was pretty cool. And I would recommend people check it out.

• 1:44:09Speaker 02

  Red, check it out.

• 1:44:10Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:44:11Amanda Dobbins?

  And he's, his job is?

• 1:44:14Sean Fennessey?

  Gold miner billionaire.

• 1:44:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. So gold baron.

• 1:44:19Sean Fennessey?

  Sure. Yes. Who moves to the Bahamas.

• 1:44:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:44:23Sean Fennessey?

  The Bahamian resident.

• 1:44:24Speaker 02

  I love that James Bond movie. Gold Baron.

• 1:44:28Sean Fennessey?

  1984's Misunderstood, haven't seen it.

• 1:44:31Speaker 02

  I saw it.

• 1:44:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. All right. Saved, saved by Tracy once again.

• 1:44:35Sean Fennessey?

  Dark period for this.

• 1:44:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I'm, I'm on the outside a little bit.

• 1:44:39Speaker 02

  It's based on something else. It's based on an international film that I don't have in front of me right now. He plays a shipping magnate who, whose wife has passed away and he has a troubled relationship with his son, played by Henry Thomas. Is this what Henry Thomas did right before ET or right after?

• 1:45:00Sean Fennessey?

  Right after. I think it's his first movie after.

• 1:45:02Speaker 02

  What a great child actor. He may be a great adult actor too. I don't know. But he was certainly a great child actor. And he steals the movie from Hackman here. Hackman, it's directed by Jerry Schatzberg, so a reunion with his scarecrow director. And he's a very sad man who can't, who doesn't know how to talk to his son. His son doesn't know how to talk to him. And Hackman's, Hackman, it's, he wallows in this movie. He's, he's maudlin in this movie. He's allowed to be maudlin and weep. And it's not good.

• 1:45:36Amanda Dobbins?

  So you said shipping magnate?

• 1:45:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:45:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Is he very wealthy?

• 1:45:40Speaker 02

  He is.

• 1:45:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. Yeah. Is it, is it on a yacht?

• 1:45:43Speaker 02

  It's in a, it's where they live in Egypt. Somebody, one of the financiers of the film was Egyptian and convinced them to reset the movie. I don't remember what, where it was set originally, but convinced them to reset it in Egypt. And the Egyptian setting is really one of the more interesting things about the movie.

• 1:45:59Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting. Okay. Misunderstood is red?

• 1:46:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:46:03Sean Fennessey?

  1985's Twice in a Lifetime.

• 1:46:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I did watch this. Yeah.

• 1:46:08Speaker 02

  Did we skip Two of a Kind?

• 1:46:11Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. I guess he is in Two of a Kind. It's an uncredited part in which he plays the voice of God.

• 1:46:17Speaker 02

  I didn't watch it. It's a, is it John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John?

• 1:46:21Sean Fennessey?

  Is their reunion from Greece?

• 1:46:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, I forgot about this. I've seen this a thousand years ago. I didn't rewatch it.

• 1:46:28Sean Fennessey?

  Like a movie that very clearly was not going in the Hall of Fame and.

• 1:46:30Speaker 02

  And it was, if I had to skip something, I was gonna skip Two of a Kind.

• 1:46:34Sean Fennessey?

  I think a good choice. Let's go to Twice in a Lifetime, which is a movie about a Seattle Seahawks fan who really wants to fuck Ann Margaret. And really, who could blame him? Who could blame him?

• 1:46:44Amanda Dobbins?

  So can I tell you, we were watching Bye Bye Birdie at home and Ann Margaret is one of my gals. And Zach was like, Ann Margaret, not really my type. And I had to rethink my entire marriage. Isn't that insane?

• 1:46:56Speaker 02

  That's insane.

• 1:46:57Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I didn't want to dig deeper because whatever I found doesn't speak well of Zach and also like, doesn't reflect well on me then as his choice, you know? It's like, me, yes, Ann Margaret, no, is not a conversation you want to be in.

• 1:47:12Speaker 02

  There's no accounting for taste. You know?

• 1:47:13Amanda Dobbins?

  I guess so.

• 1:47:14Speaker 02

  People like things. People don't like things they should like. Like Ann Margaret.

• 1:47:20Sean Fennessey?

  She, yeah. Yeah. No, she's in my, she's in my Hall of Fame. She's quite beautiful in this movie, playing an older barmaid. And one night, a man on his birthday stumbles into a bar to celebrate with his buddies, including Brian Dennehy. And he makes a connection with this barmaid. And he's a married man who's got grown kids. He's a grandfather. He's a 50-year-old grandfather. That was a little chilling to think about. And this movie is somewhat well-known for being Amy Madigan's first Academy Award nomination. She's since has won for her role in Weapons last year. And Ellen Burstyn plays his, his, his wife, his, his humiliated wife. Kind of a fascinating little drama. And you don't

• 1:48:04Sean Fennessey?

  see many movies like this anymore. Not totally effective because it is so nonjudgmental so as to not really be about anything. It's a little bit of like, hey, yeah, sometimes you do fall in love again. And that's okay. And it doesn't totally.

• 1:48:18Amanda Dobbins?

  It's the same template also as All Night Long.

• 1:48:21Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Where the guy is, he's, he's not having a breakdown in the same way, but it's like a kind of, a spark has gone out marriage with a great actress of the screen. And then another, a Daffy bombshell shows up and then off they go into the night and that's it?

• 1:48:44Speaker 02

  I like it. I saw it in the movie theaters at the time and I revisited it for this. And I think it's pretty interesting in, in context of divorce dramas. They were making a lot of them at this time. It's so rare to see the man who's making this decision or woman making this decision be so clear-eyed about what it is they're giving up. Like he sees the satisfactions of marriage, long-term marriage of a family and says, he says to his wife, I've got a chance. I've got a chance for something else and I'm gonna take it. He says it to his wife in the most honest and, and uncruel way possible, but he's just

• 1:49:27Speaker 02

  telling her the truth about the way. And you see his life outside of this, a shitty little apartment?

• 1:49:33Amanda Dobbins?

  That's true.

• 1:49:34Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. He plays a construction worker in the film.

• 1:49:36Amanda Dobbins?

  The movie, no, he's in a factory.

• 1:49:39Sean Fennessey?

  Factory worker.

• 1:49:40Amanda Dobbins?

  The movie opens with his birthday party where his adult children and his entire family is surrounded him. And they're just like reading him greeting cards that they got him. And this is the birthday activity. And they're reading the messages in the greeting cards, which to me was just the, like a very, very sharp and depressing evocation of how boring this life is. Yeah. And how small. And he is visibly like very bored at the head of the table. And Amy Madigan is reading them so loud, all caps, you know? It's, it's a very big performance from young Amy Madigan. But, so they do also show his dissatisfaction,

• 1:50:22Amanda Dobbins?

  you know, in a way that I guess is pretty bracing for the time. I mean, it's not like the rosy nuclear family. It is a nuclear family, but he's, he's bummed about it.

• 1:50:33Speaker 02

  And she says to him, sex? And he says, of course, there's sex. Of course, but that's not why, that's not the reason. Of course, that's a, it's a part of it. It's a feature.

• 1:50:43Sean Fennessey?

  Hey, I, I, I'm a little skeptical of this movie. It's a little bit of a like, have your cake and eat it too movie to me. Where it's trying to affirm something about the masculine idea of pursuit. And make it more emotional than I think maybe it actually is. Especially, here's the problem. You know what? People can of course, fall out of love and fall in love and get remarried. That's not what the point I'm trying to make. The point I'm trying to make is they cast Ann Margaret.

• 1:51:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:14Sean Fennessey?

  And he's like, sure, there's sex, but it's not about sex. But it's like, you cast Ann Margaret. And Ellen Burstyn is dowdy in the movie and not glamorous.

• 1:51:21Speaker 02

  And they didn't give Ann Margaret much of a life outside of being a barmaid who is attracted him, right? We don't see any of her friends. We don't see any of her.

• 1:51:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Her husband has died, so she doesn't have any of the family baggage. I mean, All Night Long is probably more sophisticated, even though it's playing it for comedy in terms of it gives the Diane Ladd character, Mr. Feeny and, you know, like, and motivations outside of this. You're, you're right that it's just about Harry being like, I want more. And then the movie's like, good job.

• 1:51:53Sean Fennessey?

  It's, it's produced and directed by Bud Yorke, and who also paid for it. Which is interesting and strikes me as extremely personal. And then, you know, Gene Hackman gets divorced one year later.

• 1:52:03Speaker 02

  And it's written by Colin Welland, who wrote Chariots of Fire. It's based on a British TV movie, I think.

• 1:52:11Amanda Dobbins?

  It is, it is very much like the movies that get made 10 years later and then forever. But as a woman in the main role, just being like, this new, you know, this traditional life that was handed to me is not enough and I want more. And everyone's like, you go, girl. But it is funny that when it's a, and a man just being like, this is not everything I wanted, you're like, you don't go, girl.

• 1:52:32Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I think it's in such stark contrast to Shoot the Moon 2, which we talked about on Dian, The Dian Key, which is this kind of like, the emotional volatility of that movie is part of what makes it such an interesting movie. And this movie is like, sorry, hon, I gotta go. And that's okay. What the fuck is this? Is this the stuff of great drama?

• 1:52:48Speaker 02

  I think we're safe to say that it's red.

• 1:52:50Sean Fennessey?

  It's red.

• 1:52:51Speaker 02

  And Tracy says you should check it out.

• 1:52:52Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, 1985's Target, the third and final.

• 1:52:55Amanda Dobbins?

  And she's a factory worker.

• 1:52:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, the third and final feature film with Arthur Penn, in which Gene Hackman plays a, what appears to be a mild-mannered, middle-class man, whose wife has disappeared. And Matt Dillon plays his son. And it turns out that this mild-mannered man is in fact, a former CIA agent. And so he needs to go to Europe to retrieve his wife who's been kidnapped. Kind of a dud.

• 1:53:23Speaker 02

  A dud. A dud and a totally implausible third act. It just really goes off the rails in the third act.

• 1:53:30Sean Fennessey?

  CIA agent.

• 1:53:32Speaker 02

  Did you watch this?

• 1:53:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, no, I didn't. Because after CIA agent, I saw, uh, his son was played by Matt Dillon, who like, no respect, no disrespect, but I was like, I don't really think this is gonna rise to the level of.

• 1:53:43Sean Fennessey?

  They don't appear to be related.

• 1:53:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:46Sean Fennessey?

  They're pretty good together, though.

• 1:53:48Speaker 02

  Matt Dillon's a terrific actor. So is, so is Mr. Hackman. But it's just, even the action scenes are not handled well. It's not good.

• 1:53:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:53:57Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, 1986's Power.

• 1:54:00Speaker 02

  I saw this in movie theaters. I re, I'm moving my microphone. I re, so, because I, and when it's over here, I have to look at Sean all the time. And I like to look at Amanda more.

• 1:54:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, no, the, the middle spot is, it's not great for your neck.

• 1:54:15Speaker 02

  Uh, so you, you sit over there. I'm gonna sit here and talk to Amanda about the movie Power.

• 1:54:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:54:21Speaker 02

  I saw this in movie theaters when it came out. I rewatched it for this perplexing. I can't believe it's a Sidney Lumet movie. I don't fucking get it. What happened? It stinks. It stinks.

• 1:54:33Amanda Dobbins?

  I think I watched part of this several years ago when we did the Sidney Lumet 100 Years. Did we do a Hall of Fame for Sidney Lumet?

• 1:54:42Sean Fennessey?

  It might have been for Denzel.

• 1:54:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, is that when I watched it?

• 1:54:45Sean Fennessey?

  A somewhat early Denzel performance.

• 1:54:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:54:47Sean Fennessey?

  It's a movie about, um, political operatives and, uh, a certain kind of race to power.

• 1:54:55Speaker 02

  And it, and in terms of that stuff, it's so old fashioned. It's so out of date. None of it applies anymore.

• 1:55:01Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. Um, Claire Hastings won the Golden Raspberry for performance in this film.

• 1:55:07Speaker 02

  Who's she?

• 1:55:08Sean Fennessey?

  She is the fifth lead?

• 1:55:12Speaker 02

  I don't even remember. I mean.

• 1:55:13Sean Fennessey?

  No, no, excuse me. Kate Capshaw was nominated.

• 1:55:17Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:55:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Hmm.

• 1:55:18Sean Fennessey?

  No, sorry, misspoke. Beatrice Straight was nominated for playing Claire Hastings in the movie.

• 1:55:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:55:24Speaker 02

  Beatrice Straight is not good in this film.

• 1:55:26Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Uh, yeah, it's not a good movie. And it's a pretty small Hackman part, too. So it's red.

• 1:55:31Speaker 02

  And it was supposed to be Burt Reynolds in the Richard Gere role.

• 1:55:35Sean Fennessey?

  Is that right?

• 1:55:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, he hurt himself and he, he had to have cer, he had to drop out. And so they hired Richard Gere, who was 15 years too young for the part. So they just made him grow a mustache, like Burt Reynolds. It's just not good.

• 1:55:50Sean Fennessey?

  Um, 1986 Hoosiers. So, again.

• 1:55:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:56Sean Fennessey?

  Not to be too counterintuitive here, but not one of my movies.

• 1:56:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:56:01Speaker 02

  Not one of my movies.

• 1:56:02Sean Fennessey?

  Now.

• 1:56:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Why are you looking at me like I'm just like?

• 1:56:05Speaker 02

  Maybe it's your movie.

• 1:56:06Sean Fennessey?

  It's, it's an iconic movie and a beloved movie and a successful movie and an important movie in Gene Hackman's career.

• 1:56:12Speaker 02

  Is it?

• 1:56:13Sean Fennessey?

  I think so.

• 1:56:13Amanda Dobbins?

  I think, I mean, I do think that this was probably the first time that I saw it because I was handed down, like, this generation of sports movies, you know, with a feel-good ending.

• 1:56:27Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:56:27Amanda Dobbins?

  And.

• 1:56:27Sean Fennessey?

  We do work at The Ringer, of course.

• 1:56:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:29Sean Fennessey?

  A movie like Hoosiers foundational to the Bill Simmons text and story. And he wrote about this movie many times over the years.

• 1:56:35Speaker 02

  Is it one of his movies?

• 1:56:36Sean Fennessey?

  For sure.

• 1:56:37Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 1:56:37Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:56:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:38Speaker 02

  I didn't know that.

• 1:56:39Sean Fennessey?

  So it's, I, not a bad film.

• 1:56:43Speaker 02

  Um, I don't say it's a bad film.

• 1:56:45Sean Fennessey?

  But it's not a movie that I love, but I think it would be, I think it's quite hard to tell the story of his career without this movie.

• 1:56:52Amanda Dobbins?

  It does, it pivots a little bit.

• 1:56:54Sean Fennessey?

  I always feel like I'm the one guy in the room who's like, I'm not really a Hoosiers guy. But now I'm in a room with three people who are not really Hoosiers people. Jack?

• 1:57:02Speaker 03

  I have, I saw it when I was a kid and I liked it, but I think the point you're making about it feels like instrumental to his legacy checks to me.

• 1:57:11Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, it does, but he also pivots back away from it, you know? This is kind of the one, and he's still, he's gruff and direct with the, with the kids. And then in the end, is won over. So it, but it's not like he's playing like lovable coach types.

• 1:57:30Sean Fennessey?

  No, Norma Dale is a, is a, is not, not a lovable type at all. He's, he's a tough motherfucker.

• 1:57:35Amanda Dobbins?

  And, but he's not playing characters that like get won over. He's not doing sincere, like heartwarming things or even really picking heartwarming movies for the most part after this.

• 1:57:45Sean Fennessey?

  I think if we did not put it in, it would be considered a wild zag.

• 1:57:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:57:49Sean Fennessey?

  I think it is one of his most memorable performances. Yeah.

• 1:57:52Amanda Dobbins?

  We did that with Redford, though. What did we not put in Redford that everyone was like, what's wrong with you?

• 1:57:58Sean Fennessey?

  Let's yellow it and come back to it.

• 1:57:59Amanda Dobbins?

  All right.

• 1:58:00Sean Fennessey?

  Um, this is so interesting to be in this position.

• 1:58:02Speaker 02

  Let's think about a bathroom break.

• 1:58:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:58:05Sean Fennessey?

  Off we go. This episode is brought to you by McDonald's. Even the greatest movies you can only watch so many times. Breakfast, on the other hand, every day the same craving. Something hot, something filling, and a moment to enjoy it. The sausage McMuffin with egg pretty much covers it. Adding hash brown and coffee for just five bucks, even better. Get a sausage McMuffin with egg, plus hash browns and a small coffee for just $5. Only at McDonald's for a limited time. Price and participation may vary. Promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing.

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• 1:59:20Speaker 04

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• 1:59:24Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, we've returned. We've got less than 20 years left in this man's career.

• 1:59:29Speaker 02

  Let's rip.

• 1:59:30Sean Fennessey?

  1987 No Way Out.

• 1:59:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:59:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, to the movie or to the performance?

• 1:59:37Speaker 02

  Uh, look, I didn't revisit. I saw it in the movie theater at the time and, you know, it was fine time. It was a fine little popcorn movie, but it didn't have any resonance for it.

• 1:59:47Sean Fennessey?

  Dead, dead wrong.

• 1:59:48Amanda Dobbins?

  I love this movie. I don't know whether we need to put it in his Hall of Fame. I only saw it during, I only saw it during the pandemic and somehow I didn't know.

• 1:59:57Speaker 02

  You guys are blowing my mind. No Way Out, really?

• 2:00:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, listen, I was three in 1987. Come on, that's so crazy.

• 2:00:06Speaker 02

  Isn't it like really long? Isn't it a long movie?

• 2:00:08Sean Fennessey?

  Hour and 54 minutes.

• 2:00:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:10Speaker 02

  All right.

• 2:00:10Sean Fennessey?

  Roger Donaldson, steamy, sexy, stupid, very fun.

• 2:00:17Amanda Dobbins?

  And.

• 2:00:17Sean Fennessey?

  He plays the Secretary of State as a complete horn dog murderer.

• 2:00:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:21Sean Fennessey?

  Very enjoyable stuff.

• 2:00:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Show me the lie.

• 2:00:23Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Kevin Costner, probably the hottest he's ever been in a movie.

• 2:00:27Amanda Dobbins?

  I think so.

• 2:00:27Sean Fennessey?

  Sean Young.

• 2:00:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:28Sean Fennessey?

  Just seems nuts, loving it.

• 2:00:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Perfect casting for Sean Young, in my opinion.

• 2:00:33Sean Fennessey?

  Will Patton, doing all kinds of crazy shit.

• 2:00:35Speaker 02

  Great. I love, I love your enthusiasm.

• 2:00:38Sean Fennessey?

  It's a fun time at the movies.

• 2:00:40Speaker 02

  Great.

• 2:00:40Amanda Dobbins?

  It's an amazing time. And, and he does not, Hackman does not hold back. He is willing to be as.

• 2:00:46Sean Fennessey?

  It's the start of a new era.

• 2:00:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Desperate and weird, yeah.

• 2:00:48Sean Fennessey?

  It's the start of the horny Hackman era.

• 2:00:51Speaker 02

  Does it go in your, uh, your Hall of Fame?

• 2:00:54Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's a yellow as a, as an act of gratitude.

• 2:00:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure. And may, and maybe all blue. Maybe it'll be a blue.

• 2:00:59Speaker 02

  All right.

• 2:01:00Amanda Dobbins?

  But there's another blue that.

• 2:01:02Sean Fennessey?

  It's not a deep film. It's not thematically rich. It's just the thrill, you know, it is a, it's a remake of, um, The Big Clock.

• 2:01:10Speaker 02

  Right, yeah, yeah.

• 2:01:11Sean Fennessey?

  And, and, you know, it's kind of amusing about.

• 2:01:13Speaker 02

  It's not as good as The Big Clock.

• 2:01:16Sean Fennessey?

  Well, different strokes.

• 2:01:18Amanda Dobbins?

  You like to have fun?

• 2:01:21Sean Fennessey?

  It'd be really funny if we put Noah out and then Hoosiers out.

• 2:01:26Speaker 02

  Let's just mark the time when Amanda officially said, "You don't like to have fun?"

• 2:01:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Also, Jack reminded me that it is, we left The Natural out of the Robert Redford Hallmark. But again, like another sports movie that just doesn't really-

• 2:01:39Sean Fennessey?

  No sense of humor.

• 2:01:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, okay.

• 2:01:41Sean Fennessey?

  That feels a little bit faded to time. 1987 Superman 4: The Quest for Peace.

• 2:01:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:01:46Sean Fennessey?

  A return to Lex Luthor, a favor done for Christopher Reeve and also the paycheck.

• 2:01:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Did they get the piece?

• 2:01:54Sean Fennessey?

  Disastrously terrible movie. One of the worst comic book films ever made.

• 2:01:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think I knew it had that reputation and for that reason, I have, not only have I not shown it to the kids, I did not watch it for this draft. I didn't think this would make it in. If, if a Lex Luthor was gonna make it in, it wasn't gonna be Quest for Peace.

• 2:02:13Sean Fennessey?

  No, this movie is, uh, is terrible and bombed and ended Christopher Reeve's run as Superman. Gene Hackman also voices the character of Nuclear Man in this movie, who is a supervillain who Lex Luthor creates.

• 2:02:26Speaker 02

  Who would later go on to sell, sell products for Lowe's.

• 2:02:32Sean Fennessey?

  1988's Bat, Superman 4 is red, by the way. 1988's Bat 21. This is the other film I watched on my plane ride home from Telluride.

• 2:02:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:02:41Sean Fennessey?

  Um, this is another film in which we see Gene Hackman golfing. He's golfing at the very opening of this movie and golf is used as a central metaphor for his retrieval after he is shot down, uh, behind enemy lines and is eventually saved by an endeavoring pilot played by Danny Glover.

• 2:02:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:02:58Sean Fennessey?

  This movie is a stiff piece of ham and I didn't much care for it.

• 2:03:05Speaker 02

  I had a good time.

• 2:03:06Amanda Dobbins?

  A stiff piece of, I'm just thinking through. Okay, yeah. So it's more like jerky?

• 2:03:12Sean Fennessey?

  Not quite.

• 2:03:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:03:13Sean Fennessey?

  It's not aged in that way.

• 2:03:15Amanda Dobbins?

  How's his golf swing?

• 2:03:16Sean Fennessey?

  Pretty good.

• 2:03:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:03:17Sean Fennessey?

  I, he looked, he looked like a golfer.

• 2:03:19Speaker 02

  Considering he retired to Arizona, I assume he could swing a golf ball.

• 2:03:23Sean Fennessey?

  One assumes he's a golfer. Uh, not a bad movie, but just not a movie I loved.

• 2:03:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:29Speaker 02

  Better than I was anticipating.

• 2:03:31Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 2:03:32Speaker 02

  Certainly red.

• 2:03:34Sean Fennessey?

  Bat 21 is red. 1988's Split Decisions. Now, this was news to me that this was a film.

• 2:03:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's one of the very few times you'll see him in a, a, a non-studio film, right? It's an independent production.

• 2:03:47Sean Fennessey?

  Um, he plays the father of a pair of boxers played by Jeff Fahey and Craig Sheffer.

• 2:03:52Speaker 02

  He's a cop.

• 2:03:53Sean Fennessey?

  He's a police officer. That's very right. You didn't see this movie, did you?

• 2:03:57Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 2:03:57Sean Fennessey?

  I believe it's like currently available on Pluto.

• 2:03:59Amanda Dobbins?

  This is one of five movies in 1988. So, once again.

• 2:04:03Sean Fennessey?

  Hash in check. Sort of. We'll get to that.

• 2:04:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, it seems like a favor. Feels like a favor to somebody.

• 2:04:09Sean Fennessey?

  Um, Jeff Fahey plays a hot-dogging Irish boxer who refuses to, uh, go down and is killed by the mafia and his brother must seek revenge, his brother Craig Sheffer.

• 2:04:24Sean Fennessey?

  It's just red.

• 2:04:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:04:25Speaker 02

  It is red. Again, didn't know about it, watched it, kind of enjoyed it.

• 2:04:30Sean Fennessey?

  It's not bad.

• 2:04:31Speaker 02

  Ham? Yeah, definitely ham. But yeah, it was fun.

• 2:04:34Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, another stiff piece of ham.

• 2:04:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:04:36Speaker 02

  Uh, the, the boxing choreography is terrible. The boxing choreography is kind of ruinous. It's like designed maybe by a little kid. I, I, I don't know. It's like nobody has ever had a boxing match like the people are having in this movie.

• 2:04:52Sean Fennessey?

  So interesting. I, I really feel like I have my arms around a lot of movie history and then something like this pops up and I'm like, what is this? Anyhow.

• 2:04:59Speaker 02

  Jennifer Beals too, right? Early Jennifer Beals.

• 2:05:02Sean Fennessey?

  She's prominently displayed on the poster despite not having, being the fourth lead of the movie. Uh, 1988's Another Woman.

• 2:05:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:05:10Sean Fennessey?

  Is one and only time working with Woody Allen.

• 2:05:13Speaker 02

  Which I would imagine he loved because Woody doesn't like to do a lot of takes.

• 2:05:17Sean Fennessey?

  One take.

• 2:05:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yep.

• 2:05:19Sean Fennessey?

  And he plays a very interesting part. He plays the former lover of Jenna Rollins, a woman who is an author who has moved to a, uh, a new apartment to do some work. And in the apartment next door, there's a psychoanalyst and, and his patients. And so she's overhearing all of these conversations amongst people. This is a very unusual movie in that it is a portrait of a woman in her late 50s having a bit of an existential look at her life and what it meant. And Hackman, once again, a very subtle horny Hackman, is kind of like what could have been romantically. And there's a real chemistry between the two of them.

• 2:05:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Half the performance is like dream sequence or, or fantasy, like in a way. Uh, he's really, really good in it.

• 2:06:03Sean Fennessey?

  Very good. Only in a few scenes. Um, this is one of, I think, only two Woody Allen movies that I'd never seen before. And the other one is his most recent movie, Coup de Chance, which I had just haven't seen. And I thought it was all right.

• 2:06:18Speaker 02

  Oh, I, I love it. I think it's gorgeous. And I love Jenna Rollins always. And, uh, and Hackman is kicking ass in this movie. He just knocks it out of the park. Just brings such an easy masculinity to the thing. He's just what's called for in the movie.

• 2:06:36Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:37Amanda Dobbins?

  There's no ham in it, in the, in the best way.

• 2:06:39Sean Fennessey?

  Very subtly played throughout the whole movie. It's a very, I mean, Woody is so strange, you know? The, the, the idea of this movie coming from him is so fascinating because of everything that you think about him from the movie scene making before this and then the, and this is kind of about to be in that Crimes and Misdemeanors era where he's.

• 2:06:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:57Sean Fennessey?

  Much more searching, I would say, in, in a lot of the parts that he writes. But writing parts like this for women and, God, he's such a, such a cultural conundrum.

• 2:07:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. I mean, if you imagine this as just as Woody in the main part and it's just about a man, then, then there are a lot of similarities and it's just played in different ways. And probably with Woody Allen, we played, you know, more self-lacerating and more comedy. But I see the, I see the common thread. I think some of it is just that it's Jenna Rollins and like, and that he either writes the part or lets her tailor the part to her particular strengths.

• 2:07:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. Did you like it?

• 2:07:32Amanda Dobbins?

  I did. I did like it. Even though at some points I was like, what's, what is happening? Or not in a, um, in a, in a plot way, but just kind of in a, am I watching Jenna Rollins just sit here do voiceover of what's going on in another therapy session?

• 2:07:48Sean Fennessey?

  What's real and what's not.

• 2:07:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, but I did like it.

• 2:07:51Sean Fennessey?

  A modest movie. I mean, it's 80 minutes long. It's very short.

• 2:07:54Speaker 02

  Uh, it's red, but you should definitely watch.

• 2:07:57Sean Fennessey?

  Worth checking out.

• 2:07:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:07:58Sean Fennessey?

  Um, 1988's Full Moon in Blue Water.

• 2:08:01Speaker 02

  You watched this?

• 2:08:02Sean Fennessey?

  I did. Another movie I'd not heard of before. Um, about a man who, his wife has gone missing in a swimming incident of some kind, played by Becky Ann Baker. He plays a bar owner, um, who comes across another woman in town, played by Teri Garr. And I guess it's a, is it a dramedy? Is it a drama? I mean, I, it's a bit of an odd duck of a movie.

• 2:08:26Speaker 02

  It is. Directed by Peter Masterson. We talked about him on the Duval draft because he's Horton Foote's cousin.

• 2:08:33Sean Fennessey?

  That's right.

• 2:08:33Speaker 02

  And, uh.

• 2:08:34Sean Fennessey?

  Didn't direct a lot of movies.

• 2:08:35Speaker 02

  Didn't make a lot of movies. I think probably Trip to Mountains is his best-known film. And, uh, it's, this is, almost feels like a stage play. It's so bound to this one location. Uh, it's, it's a, it's a hangout movie. It's not a bad hangout movie.

• 2:08:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:51Speaker 02

  Teri Garr, goddamn man, just.

• 2:08:53Sean Fennessey?

  They're good together.

• 2:08:54Speaker 02

  Uh, reunited from the conversation, right?

• 2:08:57Sean Fennessey?

  And from Young Frankenstein.

• 2:08:58Speaker 02

  Yeah. And Young Frankenstein. She's just great. She's just great. And just so, you can just always watch Teri Garr. So if, if, if it's Teri Garr and Gene Hackman you're looking for, they're in this movie. It's red.

• 2:09:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Is it a happy ending?

• 2:09:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:09:15Sean Fennessey?

  Ish.

• 2:09:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Ish? I mean, he doesn't really do traditional happy endings.

• 2:09:19Sean Fennessey?

  This also has a kind of dream sequence, fantasia quality to it as well. He's really haunted.

• 2:09:23Speaker 02

  Magical realism going on here. Burgess Meredith, uh, in, in a wheelchair, playing his father-in-law, right?

• 2:09:30Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 2:09:31Speaker 02

  Elias Coteas, early Elias Coteas.

• 2:09:33Sean Fennessey?

  His young son.

• 2:09:35Speaker 02

  It's not a bad hang. It's not, it's certainly, it's not a bad.

• 2:09:38Sean Fennessey?

  Another movie I'd never heard of.

• 2:09:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:09:39Sean Fennessey?

  Um, okay, 1988's Mississippi Burning. Uh, I was, I was shown this film in AP American History.

• 2:09:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh.

• 2:09:49Sean Fennessey?

  Which I think is interesting in retrospect because my AP American History teacher was a real lefty, a real woman of the revolution. Um, but this movie, you know, famously centers all the white people in the story.

• 2:10:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 2:10:01Sean Fennessey?

  Um, and, you know, a very kind of a tony and celebrated docudrama in its time directed by Alan Parker. Hackman and Willem Dafoe play a pair of FBI agents who go to investigate the murder of some, um, student activists and.

• 2:10:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's based on Chaney, Schwerner, Goodman. Do I have those names right?

• 2:10:23Sean Fennessey?

  I think that's right. Um, I didn't revisit this for the movie.

• 2:10:28Speaker 02

  I didn't either.

• 2:10:28Sean Fennessey?

  Did you?

• 2:10:29Amanda Dobbins?

  I didn't, I didn't either. But I, I do remember that it, it, it centers the white people. And again, Hackman is playing the kind of.

• 2:10:40Sean Fennessey?

  The older gruffer.

• 2:10:41Amanda Dobbins?

  He's older and he, like, he knows things. He's like, I know Mississippi. And Willem Dafoe is the, the by the book guy. And then, but I, it's, it's not a perfect film, but I do remember it being like, it, it's hard to watch. It has a lot of upsetting, you know, bracing things in it. So.

• 2:10:56Speaker 02

  It's both hard to watch and entertaining.

• 2:10:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:59Speaker 02

  It is an entertaining movie. And it was a, it was a popcorn movie. I think if anything was, people are like, you know, not sure this subject matter really should be a popcorn movie.

• 2:11:10Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 2:11:11Speaker 02

  Right?

• 2:11:11Sean Fennessey?

  Right. It might be too conventionally entertaining.

• 2:11:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:14Sean Fennessey?

  And it's also a very famous launchpad for Frances McDormand, who kind of pops in this movie in a big way as the wife of one of the men responsible for the murder, um, who plays a pivotal part. Uh.

• 2:11:27Speaker 02

  Red.

• 2:11:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah?

• 2:11:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Listen.

• 2:11:30Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 2:11:30Speaker 02

  Was he nominated for this?

• 2:11:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, I believe so.

• 2:11:37Sean Fennessey?

  He was, he was nominated for an Academy Award and for a, for a Golden Globe. Um, that's why I ask, is it like, are we sure it's not yellow?

• 2:11:47Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, you can yellow it if you want.

• 2:11:49Sean Fennessey?

  It does feel like this is kind of where his performance style goes for a while. This particular kind of part. Um, let's just yellow it for the sake of conversation. Okay?

• 2:11:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:11:59Sean Fennessey?

  1989 is the package.

• 2:12:02Speaker 02

  A lot of fun.

• 2:12:03Sean Fennessey?

  Andrew Davis, action picture. Um, that I rewatched very early, maybe a year or two ago with the idea of doing this. Um, but remind me of the, the setup of this film.

• 2:12:14Speaker 02

  Uh, Hackman is a military officer. He's charged with, uh, bringing Tommy Lee Jones. It's a prisoner. He's moving a prisoner from one location to another. And he loses Tommy Lee Jones. Uh, turns out Tommy Lee Jones isn't the prisoner he was supposed to be. There's been a, there's been a body switch at some point. And Tommy Lee Jones is on the loose and he's, uh, in the United States to assassinate somebody. And Gene Hackman's trying to track him down. Joanna Cassidy, again.

• 2:12:43Sean Fennessey?

  Reunion.

• 2:12:43Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, reunion. Uh, great Chicago movie, a lot of Chicago locate, the whole thing shot in Chicago. A lot of Chicago actors. Nathan Davis, who you may recall me referring to on this podcast before. When the bathroom door is closed, I'm taking a shit. Nathan Davis is in this movie. Andy Davis is his father.

• 2:13:04Amanda Dobbins?

  I think that was, wasn't that during the Chicago draft?

• 2:13:07Speaker 02

  It was, yeah.

• 2:13:09Sean Fennessey?

  Great moment in podcasting history. Uh, I like the package just fine. I wouldn't put it in the Hall of Fame.

• 2:13:15Speaker 02

  Agreed.

• 2:13:15Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, people should check it out.

• 2:13:17Speaker 02

  People should check it out. It's fun.

• 2:13:18Sean Fennessey?

  Tommy Lee and Gene didn't get on so well.

• 2:13:21Amanda Dobbins?

  What a shocker.

• 2:13:23Speaker 02

  Uh, they only had, they don't have enough time together. There's, there, they only have a couple of scenes together. Those scenes really pop. They're really good.

• 2:13:30Sean Fennessey?

  They're, it's funny cause they're, yeah. Would we do a Tommy Lee Hall of Fame? I think is an interesting question. We probably would. They're kind of similar. I feel like Gene is considered more iconic, but they have a similar quality.

• 2:13:41Speaker 02

  I don't disagree with that. The Hackman has more good movies than Tommy Lee.

• 2:13:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, that's kind of the, and more like stone cold.

• 2:13:50Sean Fennessey?

  Where do you stand on Men in Black?

• 2:13:52Speaker 02

  I enjoyed it when I saw it in the movie theater.

• 2:13:55Amanda Dobbins?

  You went to see that in the movie theater?

• 2:13:56Speaker 02

  I did. It's one of two Will Smith movies I've seen in my life.

• 2:13:59Amanda Dobbins?

  What's the other?

• 2:14:00Speaker 02

  Uh, Independence Day.

• 2:14:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. So you did not see.

• 2:14:02Speaker 02

  No, no. Uh, Six Degrees of Separation. I've seen three.

• 2:14:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:14:06Sean Fennessey?

  That's hysterical.

• 2:14:09Amanda Dobbins?

  So we'll be filling in on Enemy of the State is what you're saying?

• 2:14:11Speaker 02

  I'm saying I won't be doing the Will Smith Hall of Fame.

• 2:14:15Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe I've already done that. I truly can't recall.

• 2:14:18Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know. And then, and then everything changed.

• 2:14:21Sean Fennessey?

  1990 Loose Cannons.

• 2:14:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, I didn't watch, I didn't watch this.

• 2:14:25Sean Fennessey?

  Possibly his worst movie.

• 2:14:26Speaker 02

  Oh man, it's really bad.

• 2:14:27Sean Fennessey?

  Possibly his worst movie.

• 2:14:28Speaker 02

  You know, it doesn't need to be this bad.

• 2:14:30Sean Fennessey?

  Another cop.

• 2:14:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. He's partnered with Dan Aykroyd, who has multiple personality syndrome. Or what he's really got is like SNL syndrome where he's just doing a lot of funny voices and stuff. It's just, it's such a misguided. If they were, if they just made a traditional cop buddy movie without that element, they might've had some fun in this thing.

• 2:14:53Sean Fennessey?

  A truly annoying movie.

• 2:14:54Speaker 02

  Uh, it's not good at all.

• 2:14:56Sean Fennessey?

  Red.

• 2:14:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:57Sean Fennessey?

  1990s Postcards from the Edge, a small but pivotal role.

• 2:15:01Amanda Dobbins?

  He's wonderful in this.

• 2:15:02Speaker 02

  He knocks it out of the park in this. He knocks it out of the fucking park.

• 2:15:07Sean Fennessey?

  He plays a film director, uh, with an affinity for Meryl Streep's character. And, uh, he based this performance on Richard Donner, who he worked with on Superman and Superman two. And if you've ever seen Richard Donner speak, you can kind of see what he was thinking. Um, I like that he does stuff like this all the time. He takes a lot of supporting parts where he's like, I'm just going to take over the movie for eight minutes.

• 2:15:33Speaker 02

  It, it's very much in conversation with the another woman, I think. And that it's very much the woman's picture. His role is to come in and just do this thing. And he just does it and just nails it. Both Carrie and the nanny had never seen this movie before. And we all watched it together and they, they enjoyed the movie, but they mainly came, I mean, the movie's. It got, there's a lot of things we could talk about in this movie, but.

• 2:15:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, I'd love to.

• 2:16:01Speaker 02

  Well, some of it's a little, some of it, Shirley MacLaine is an ass kicker. She's just fantastic. She's always great. Some of the, uh, the drug stuff, some of the, uh, the addiction stuff. Uh, I don't know that they really dug in to, to that. It feels a little bit like just a surface, a little, a little bit sitcommy. The addiction issues and the way they're, they're.

• 2:16:26Sean Fennessey?

  We should say, obviously, you know, Carrie Fisher's life and her relationship to her mother Debbie Reynolds is very much the framework for this movie. And inspired by, this is the first of two Mike Nichols movies that Hackman makes.

• 2:16:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, and it's Dennis Quaid in the, again, right? As the, as the druggie boyfriend.

• 2:16:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:16:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, you're right. That's not handled in the same way. I mean, I, I just think of the, the scenes with Shirley MacLaine perform, you know?

• 2:16:51Speaker 02

  Oh, fantastic.

• 2:16:52Amanda Dobbins?

  The singing and, and all of the, the mother, daughter showbiz stuff. Um, which is, and I love a Mike Nichols movie.

• 2:17:02Sean Fennessey?

  Postcards from the Edge not going in.

• 2:17:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:17:05Sean Fennessey?

  I would say.

• 2:17:06Speaker 02

  Nothing.

• 2:17:07Sean Fennessey?

  So a small part. Red? Do you, do you read a film like, I think you do.

• 2:17:11Speaker 02

  I think you read it and you say, you should watch Postcards from the Edge.

• 2:17:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:15Sean Fennessey?

  1990s Narrow Margin, another remake of a 1940s film.

• 2:17:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:17:20Sean Fennessey?

  Um, a pretty interesting one.

• 2:17:24Speaker 02

  Great fun. Yeah. Good. You like it? You see it?

• 2:17:27Amanda Dobbins?

  I didn't, I didn't make it to this much. I feel bad about it cause I like Ann Archer.

• 2:17:30Speaker 02

  It's a pretty good thriller and it's a weird thriller in that like Ann Archer is the youngest person in it. Probably like 45 when she makes the movie. It's not a young person's movie for the kind of movie it is.

• 2:17:42Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. Written and directed by Peter Hyams. Um, and yeah, it's kind, I guess it's ultimately a neo noir about, um. Hackman plays a man trying to keep a witness to a murder safe. The movie has a very exciting, upsetting murder sequence at the beginning of the film, featuring JT Walsh. Um, a lot of train action in this movie.

• 2:18:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:18:08Amanda Dobbins?

  So it's witness, but five years later.

• 2:18:11Sean Fennessey?

  No, no Amish, no Amish community.

• 2:18:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. No barn raising, no Sam Cooke.

• 2:18:15Speaker 02

  Witness and Silver Streak, uh, matchup.

• 2:18:18Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Uh, just a perfectly solid movie.

• 2:18:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:18:22Sean Fennessey?

  Um, that is red.

• 2:18:23Speaker 02

  He plays an attorney.

• 2:18:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:18:26Sean Fennessey?

  1991, he also plays an attorney in Class Action.

• 2:18:31Speaker 02

  Uh, what a dud.

• 2:18:32Sean Fennessey?

  A dramedy in which, uh, he plays a crusading attorney opposite his daughter, played by Mary Elizabeth Mastantonio. And this movie is forgettable.

• 2:18:49Speaker 02

  Michael Aptedman, just one of the most important filmmakers because of the Up series. And he sure may, and, and he made a couple of good movies too. I don't mean to say he didn't, but he also made some really undifferentiated studio poopy.

• 2:19:08Sean Fennessey?

  That's true.

• 2:19:08Speaker 02

  Class action falls in that category.

• 2:19:11Sean Fennessey?

  He made The World Is Not Enough, the James Bond film.

• 2:19:13Amanda Dobbins?

  I forgot about that.

• 2:19:14Sean Fennessey?

  He made Nell.

• 2:19:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:15Sean Fennessey?

  He made, uh.

• 2:19:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Very strange.

• 2:19:17Sean Fennessey?

  He made The Chronicles of Narnia, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

• 2:19:21Amanda Dobbins?

  What happens in that one? Is that before or after the magician's nephew is born?

• 2:19:25Sean Fennessey?

  Way after. Ozon is like, he's really cooking. He did. He also made Thunderheart, which I like. Um, Girl is in the Mist.

• 2:19:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:33Sean Fennessey?

  It's a films. You don't, you don't like those films? You don't like?

• 2:19:35Speaker 02

  I like it. I was thinking of, you know, I worked with Graham Greene, one of the last times Graham acted before. Yeah, it's true.

• 2:19:41Sean Fennessey?

  Drop that name there. Jesus Christ.

• 2:19:43Speaker 02

  And, uh, I just remember asking him about Thunderheart and he did not have a good experience.

• 2:19:47Sean Fennessey?

  Did he write that?

• 2:19:47Speaker 02

  Working with Val Kilmer. No, Graham Greene.

• 2:19:49Sean Fennessey?

  Graham Greene, the actor.

• 2:19:51Speaker 02

  No, I never knew Graham Greene, the writer. He's before my time.

• 2:19:54Sean Fennessey?

  Graham Greene, Jesus Christ, when did you work with Graham Greene?

• 2:19:55Speaker 02

  Graham Greene, the.

• 2:19:56Sean Fennessey?

  Well, nobody had a good time with Val Kilmer, unfortunately, but Graham Greene, I loved him. He's a wonderful actor. Okay.

• 2:20:02Amanda Dobbins?

  I forgot that Michael Apted also made Agatha, which is my dream movie, except it's not good.

• 2:20:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:07Speaker 02

  I feel, I feel you.

• 2:20:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:08Speaker 02

  I'm with you on that.

• 2:20:09Sean Fennessey?

  Very spotty career as a feature film.

• 2:20:11Speaker 02

  Aren't they redoing some, isn't there like a TV version of that happening now?

• 2:20:15Amanda Dobbins?

  I think so, or maybe it's been released already.

• 2:20:18Speaker 02

  Already out there in the world.

• 2:20:19Amanda Dobbins?

  But in, only in the UK or something. I gotta look into it.

• 2:20:23Sean Fennessey?

  Here's a funny one. Um, 1991's Company Business.

• 2:20:27Speaker 02

  It is funny.

• 2:20:28Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, Gene Hackman and is a CIA, CIA agent again. Um, Mikhail Baryshnikov is in the film as a Russian prisoner.

• 2:20:41Speaker 02

  It, it, here's why it's a funny film. When you watch Company Business, you go through a portal. And at the end of Company Business, you realize I've never seen Company Business.

• 2:20:51Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:20:51Speaker 02

  That's how little impact it makes, that you actually watch the movie and the experience of watching it is not watching it.

• 2:20:58Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:58Speaker 02

  Not having watched.

• 2:20:59Sean Fennessey?

  I shot you my list of movies of his that I hadn't seen for this. And the last one was, I think maybe I've seen Company Business. I could remember parts of it.

• 2:21:08Speaker 02

  You might've seen it this morning and you've already come out of the other side, forgetting that you've seen Company Business. Totally forgettable nothingness.

• 2:21:16Sean Fennessey?

  Nicholas Meyer said that.

• 2:21:22Sean Fennessey?

  In his book, The View From The Bridge: Memories Of Star Trek And A Life In Hollywood, about the making of this film, that the decision to try to keep up with the changing political environment with the, in the USSR during the making of this movie was suicide. And while on paper, the troika of Hackman, Borishnikov, and Meyer might have appeared promising, in reality, we were all pulling in different directions, and my bouts with Hackman just about wrecked me. And you hear this a lot in this phase of Hackman's career.

• 2:21:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Does Borishnikov dance in this film?

• 2:21:53Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think so.

• 2:21:54Amanda Dobbins?

  That seems like a missed opportunity.

• 2:21:57Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:21:58Sean Fennessey?

  Gotta watch White Nights.

• 2:21:59Amanda Dobbins?

  I have watched White Nights. We did Dance Trash, or Trash Dance, on this list.

• 2:22:04Speaker 02

  Trash Dance.

• 2:22:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Trash Dance.

• 2:22:06Sean Fennessey?

  Company Business Is Red. That's another CIA agent, I think his second.

• 2:22:10Speaker 02

  How many greens do we have, may I ask? Cause we're about to get into a...

• 2:22:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm. One, two, three, four, five, six.

• 2:22:18Speaker 02

  Oh, I think we're gonna be alright.

• 2:22:19Sean Fennessey?

  I think we're in good shape.

• 2:22:20Speaker 02

  I thought we were gonna...

• 2:22:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, here we go.

• 2:22:22Sean Fennessey?

  1992's Unforgiven. Little Bill Daggett. Academy Award-winning performance, a movie that Gene Hackman did not want to do. After the failure of a couple of the movies in the late 80s, he said he no longer wanted to make any violent pictures, and he was compelled to participate in this movie as the heavy in Clint Eastwood's revisionist western masterpiece. Um, auto-green.

• 2:22:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, it's a green. This movie all means a lot to all of you, and I support that.

• 2:22:53Sean Fennessey?

  He's so fucking good, though.

• 2:22:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I mean, it's, it's the quintessential. I feel like I didn't see Unforgiven when I was in 1992, because I was too small. But the, Hackman's performance and just the sadistic nature of it.

• 2:23:09Sean Fennessey?

  But there's something...

• 2:23:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Identify, like...

• 2:23:11Sean Fennessey?

  But there's something really good about this, in that he's also playing a politician. And the way that he kind of patrols the town with this mixture of this sadism and the charisma that he has. He's very charming at times in the movie, and at times, he seems almost like warm to the people of the community, which is undergirded by all of this malevolence that's inside of this really violent guy, is really impressive. I think this is world-class shit from him. And I watched his Academy Awards acceptance speech, and it's one of the weirdest Oscar acceptance speeches you'll ever see. He's, seems surprised, he's very quiet, he thanks five or six people, including the screenwriter and Clint and the actors.

• 2:23:52Speaker 02

  But didn't I hear you wanted to give the Academy Award for Unforgiven to another movie from this year?

• 2:23:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, because he thinks that everybody should only get one. That's kind of his operating principle.

• 2:24:04Speaker 02

  You wanted to give it to another film from this year, and I was just...

• 2:24:08Sean Fennessey?

  Did I?

• 2:24:09Speaker 02

  I was so sad.

• 2:24:10Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, A Few Good Men?

• 2:24:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:24:12Speaker 02

  Let's not get into that.

• 2:24:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. We are who we are.

• 2:24:15Sean Fennessey?

  Well, this is an amazing, that's an amazing...

• 2:24:17Amanda Dobbins?

  You wanna be third chair.

• 2:24:18Sean Fennessey?

  No, no.

• 2:24:19Amanda Dobbins?

  You better revisit A Few Good Men.

• 2:24:21Speaker 02

  If that's the, the bench, I'm not gonna care.

• 2:24:24Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, this is the year of The Player, a movie that I adore. In this race, he was up against Jay Davidson for The Crying Game, Jack Nicholson for A Few Good Men, Al Pacino and Glenn Gary Glenn Ross, and David Paimer and Mr. Saturday Night.

• 2:24:37Speaker 02

  The right person won the award.

• 2:24:39Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting. 1993 is The Firm.

• 2:24:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, this is very important to yours, truly.

• 2:24:47Sean Fennessey?

  Avery Tolar, one of the leaders of the titular firm, who becomes sort of a mentor to the Tom Cruise figure. This is the first of, and not the last, John Grisham adaptation that Gene Hackman would participate in. And yeah, horny Hackman is back in this movie.

• 2:25:03Speaker 02

  What's the, I was just listening to the podcast, and you were saying that you have a phrase.

• 2:25:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 2:25:11Speaker 02

  What is your phrase?

• 2:25:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, "It's not for me"? It's not for you.

• 2:25:16Speaker 02

  It's not for me.

• 2:25:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:25:18Sean Fennessey?

  Mitch McDeer?

• 2:25:19Speaker 02

  It's not for me.

• 2:25:20Amanda Dobbins?

  So 90s, so I think we're learning 90s legal thrillers, because A Few Good Men would also fall courtroom drama, you know?

• 2:25:25Speaker 02

  I think maybe, maybe there's something...

• 2:25:27Amanda Dobbins?

  That's just not where you are.

• 2:25:28Sean Fennessey?

  You don't like Tom. You don't like Tom. You say it, just say it out loud. Say it with your whole chest, if they say. You don't like Tom.

• 2:25:36Speaker 02

  What's the, say it again, the phrase?

• 2:25:39Amanda Dobbins?

  "It's not for me".

• 2:25:40Speaker 02

  "It's not for me".

• 2:25:41Amanda Dobbins?

  I think it's important for everybody to know what is and is not for them.

• 2:25:44Speaker 02

  You know?

• 2:25:45Amanda Dobbins?

  You know?

• 2:25:46Speaker 02

  I don't want to take anybody else's joy away. "It's not for me".

• 2:25:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Let me tell you, this is for me. This movie is so good. Also, I mean, I think that I read The Firm, the novel, at age eight or nine.

• 2:25:58Sean Fennessey?

  I did, as a kid.

• 2:25:59Amanda Dobbins?

  And I have vivid memories of taking it from my parents' room and being like, "No, no, no, I'm old enough for this". I mean, I learned about the Cayman Islands from this. It's the Caymans, right, or the Bahamas?

• 2:26:11Sean Fennessey?

  It's the Caymans.

• 2:26:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, I learned about male fraud, for sure, that probably the mafia. And my parents were lawyers, so I remember a time of being like, "Oh, no, is this what's happening at their firm? Is their firm also this evil?".

• 2:26:27Sean Fennessey?

  Great question. Was it?

• 2:26:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, in, in many ways, yes.

• 2:26:30Speaker 02

  Wow. I, I really like Gary Busey and Holly Hunter in this movie. I wish the movie was about them. I would have enjoyed that movie more, I think.

• 2:26:39Amanda Dobbins?

  I like Jeannie Triplehorn.

• 2:26:41Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 2:26:42Amanda Dobbins?

  A north star for me.

• 2:26:43Speaker 02

  I love her. I worked with her on, she's from Tulsa. She's my gal. I love her.

• 2:26:49Sean Fennessey?

  Wilford Brimley?

• 2:26:50Speaker 02

  You could say that.

• 2:26:52Sean Fennessey?

  You open your mailbox, and what do you find? Heartbreak?

• 2:26:55Amanda Dobbins?

  The backflips, this, I mean, this movie's called The Score.

• 2:27:00Sean Fennessey?

  It's like two and a half hours, it's ridiculous.

• 2:27:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Are you kidding?

• 2:27:02Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, The Score? Oh, Dave Groson? Come on.

• 2:27:05Amanda Dobbins?

  And like Hackman, to your point.

• 2:27:07Sean Fennessey?

  Open your eyes, Les.

• 2:27:09Amanda Dobbins?

  He can play.

• 2:27:10Speaker 02

  All I said was, "It's not for me".

• 2:27:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:27:12Speaker 02

  You could sit there screaming, "This movie fucks", in my face for an hour. "It's not for me!". I saw it when it came out, I revisited it for this draft, I showed it to the nanny. "It's not for me".

• 2:27:24Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, listen, and Hackman makes the case that Mitch is not around, you know?

• 2:27:32Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:27:33Amanda Dobbins?

  He's not home, he's not attending to his lovely wife.

• 2:27:35Sean Fennessey?

  He seems like a sensitive lover.

• 2:27:36Amanda Dobbins?

  And he, yeah, the Caymans are available.

• 2:27:39Speaker 02

  You think this should be green, not based on Hackman's performance, per se?

• 2:27:42Sean Fennessey?

  No, both. I think, I think he's critical to the movie, because he gives the movie a sense of emotional depth that it otherwise would lack, as just like a conspiracy drama about a malevolent organization, that the, our lead doesn't totally understand and becomes stuck inside of. And he's this guy who's like a flawed guy, who's doing all these terrible things, but he's got a, there's an emotionality to his performance that is unusual in a movie like this.

• 2:28:07Speaker 02

  So you guys have this as green? This is green?

• 2:28:09Sean Fennessey?

  I think so.

• 2:28:10Amanda Dobbins?

  It's very important to us.

• 2:28:11Speaker 02

  Then it should be green. This is, "I'm only here to help you".

• 2:28:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:28:15Sean Fennessey?

  Does that even think about it?

• 2:28:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, "I'm here to help you guys. You guys have a show, and as third chair, I step on to help you out".

• 2:28:23Sean Fennessey?

  Wow.

• 2:28:24Speaker 02

  "I'm here to help facilitate".

• 2:28:25Sean Fennessey?

  Well, we'll get to there later. Geronimo, an American legend. You know, I haven't seen this in a long time.

• 2:28:31Speaker 02

  I saw it recently for the Duval draft.

• 2:28:33Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, tell us about it. I mean, I know what it is, obviously. Walter Hill film.

• 2:28:37Speaker 02

  For a movie that makes a claim that, "Now, we're finally gonna see things from the natives' point of view", you don't really see things from the natives' point of view.

• 2:28:47Sean Fennessey?

  Another military man performance from Hackman.

• 2:28:48Speaker 02

  Uh, it's not great. There are good things about it, but certainly, it's not going in the Gene Hackman Hall of Fame.

• 2:28:55Sean Fennessey?

  Red.

• 2:28:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:28:57Sean Fennessey?

  1994 Wyatt Earp. He plays the father of the Earp brothers. This is Lawrence Kasdan's nine-hour feature film.

• 2:29:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm still watching it. I think I'm still watching it.

• 2:29:06Amanda Dobbins?

  This is...

• 2:29:07Sean Fennessey?

  A long, boring movie.

• 2:29:08Speaker 02

  I just watched it for the first time for the draft, and it's really long, and it's really inert. It's really dramatically inert.

• 2:29:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Really very boring, yeah.

• 2:29:16Speaker 02

  And I don't, I don't know why. Hackman leaves early and then doesn't come back, and I was surprised not to see him again.

• 2:29:24Sean Fennessey?

  Small part for him in this movie.

• 2:29:25Speaker 02

  Certainly with the shootout we're anticipating at Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, the movie, I think we put it in the Duval Hall of Fame, open range.

• 2:29:35Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 2:29:36Speaker 02

  The shootout at the end of that movie is hair-raising.

• 2:29:39Sean Fennessey?

  One of the best ever.

• 2:29:40Speaker 02

  Spectacular.

• 2:29:41Sean Fennessey?

  Absolutely. Well, that movie's directed by Costner. This movie's directed by Lawrence Kasdan. Wyatt Earp is red.

• 2:29:47Speaker 03

  Is he a cowboy?

• 2:29:48Sean Fennessey?

  He's a cowboy.

• 2:29:49Speaker 02

  He's a sheriff. Oh, no, no, not Hackman.

• 2:29:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, Hackman's a cowboy.

• 2:29:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:29:55Sean Fennessey?

  Or rancher, or whatever. 1995, The Quick And The Dead.

• 2:30:00Amanda Dobbins?

  The cowboy cattle community is gonna have a lot to say to you.

• 2:30:02Sean Fennessey?

  Well, most of them are dead, so, you know.

• 2:30:05Speaker 02

  The Quick And The Dead. We were talking about style pieces.

• 2:30:08Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:30:09Speaker 02

  And here's a place, right, where Hackman finds the style, elevates the style, fits into the Sam Raimi way of doing things.

• 2:30:17Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, and he's good in this movie. I don't feel that this is a Hall of Fame film for him. He not in it very much. There's a nice little piece of trivia about how, because he worked so few days, he's got to spend a lot of time practicing his quick draw, and so he was the quickest draw on the set of this movie, which is a film that's all about the quick draw. Very fun movie. Fun Sam Raimi kind of revisionist slapstick western, starring Sharon Stone and Leonardo DiCaprio, but I think not going in.

• 2:30:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a killer cast. I had not seen it before, actually. It was a hole in my Sam Raimi filmography, and I...

• 2:30:49Sean Fennessey?

  Cool movie.

• 2:30:50Speaker 02

  I didn't anticipate liking it, and I did. The first 15 minutes, I was like, "Oh, this just seems like a movie about westerns". But then I got into it, and such a good cast, and, and yeah, he's terrific in the film. Red.

• 2:31:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:31:06Sean Fennessey?

  Red.

• 2:31:07Amanda Dobbins?

  That's my "not for me".

• 2:31:08Sean Fennessey?

  It's a huge stretch for me right here, because I saw all three of these movies in movie theaters, and I absolutely love all three of these movies. Now, this, there may be some divergence here with Tracy Lutz, so let's talk about them.

• 2:31:19Speaker 02

  "I'm here to help you".

• 2:31:21Amanda Dobbins?

  All right. Crimson Tide.

• 2:31:25Speaker 02

  You know?

• 2:31:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, yeah, I mean, just, once again, you don't like to have fun?

• 2:31:32Speaker 02

  I love having fun. I enjoy having.

• 2:31:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Space or submarines? Go.

• 2:31:38Speaker 02

  You mean, would I rather be in space?

• 2:31:40Amanda Dobbins?

  I say to you, space or submarines, and your answer is?

• 2:31:44Speaker 02

  Space, I suppose.

• 2:31:45Amanda Dobbins?

  I think me too, but this is.

• 2:31:47Sean Fennessey?

  Who the fuck wants to go in a submarine?

• 2:31:49Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't, yeah, I agree.

• 2:31:51Speaker 02

  The scenes with Gene Hackman and Denzel Washington, you have two guys at the top of their craft.

• 2:31:58Sean Fennessey?

  Electrifying.

• 2:31:59Speaker 02

  And they're really doing some good work. Some of the plotting of the movie with the multiple mutinies. Oh, now it's our turn to mutiny. Now it's our turn to mutiny. And I have to say, the ending of the movie in which, oh, the, we've destroyed a Russian nuclear submarine. We have barely averted nuclear holocaust, and yet we're going to resolve this with Jason Robards and a three-person committee talking to Gene Hackman saying, I've known you for 30 years.

• 2:32:28Sean Fennessey?

  I enjoyed that.

• 2:32:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, well.

• 2:32:29Speaker 02

  This isn't a problem.

• 2:32:30Sean Fennessey?

  That's how I think it works.

• 2:32:32Speaker 02

  All right.

• 2:32:33Sean Fennessey?

  I think just for the commandeer, the exocommandeering control of the subscene alone, this is some of the best, some of the best shit you'll see in a movie in the 90s.

• 2:32:45Speaker 02

  That's a great scene.

• 2:32:46Sean Fennessey?

  The movie was very famously sort of rewritten in real time. Tarantino was a part of rewriting this movie after Tony Scott made True Romance. And, you know, some stories there for sure.

• 2:32:56Speaker 02

  You can feel the Tarantino.

• 2:32:57Sean Fennessey?

  A lot of pop culture stuff, the Silver Surfer stuff. But Hackman and Denzel are phenomenal together.

• 2:33:04Speaker 02

  I think they're just great. The, the, and the very end of the movie, the coda, you know, I got, a lot of people gave House of Dynamite shit for its open ending. Will there or won't there be a nuclear holocaust? Yeah, they did.

• 2:33:20Sean Fennessey?

  Wow.

• 2:33:20Speaker 02

  They, they did.

• 2:33:22Sean Fennessey?

  Wow.

• 2:33:23Speaker 02

  Give it a lot of shit. And I want to say that part of the problem with, with saying, well, this is what happens as a result of this, will they or won't they, nuclear holocaust? Well, in the case of Crimson Tide, oh, there is no nuclear holocaust. And Hackman goes walking off with his fucking Jack Russell terrier, and it's just a seeping wet fart of an ending to a movie. It's just, you, the, you just, all the air goes out of the balloon.

• 2:33:50Sean Fennessey?

  America and this podcast disagrees with you. This movie was a hit.

• 2:33:54Speaker 02

  I'm here to help you.

• 2:33:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:58Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's green.

• 2:34:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Do you think that we can do The Firm and Crimson Tide?

• 2:34:04Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know. We're gonna try.

• 2:34:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, I mean, listen, we're speaking to my childhood here, but I do think that they're.

• 2:34:12Sean Fennessey?

  We have to keep moving.

• 2:34:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Now we have to keep moving. We talked about cowboy movies for like three hours. And now, once it's The Firm versus Crimson Tide, this always happens. Go ahead.

• 2:34:24Speaker 02

  By the way, that's a conversation you guys are having.

• 2:34:26Sean Fennessey?

  We will have it when we get down to the end.

• 2:34:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:34:28Sean Fennessey?

  1995 gets shorty. If this were just the Sean Fantasy Podcast, this would be in my Hall of Fame as well, because I think he is hysterical as Harry's in this movie.

• 2:34:38Speaker 02

  He's great. He plays a lot of guys named Harry.

• 2:34:39Sean Fennessey?

  He does play a lot of guys named Harry. You're right about that. He is, in this movie, a schlockmeister independent movie producer. And Chili Palmer, the Miami mafioso, finds his way to Hollywood, and he loves movies, and he stumbles into the life of this guy who knows a lot about low-rent movies. And this is like Hackman, Hackman does this a lot more for the rest of his career. Much more broad gestural comedy, which is something that he did not do a lot up until this point. He's having so much fun in this movie. I absolutely love him. I understand that it is not an essential work in his career, but as a, as a movie-loving 13-year-old, when I saw this movie in theaters.

• 2:35:21Speaker 02

  We should yellow.

• 2:35:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:35:21Sean Fennessey?

  I loved it.

• 2:35:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Absolutely yellow.

• 2:35:23Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, 1996 is The Birdcage, another supporting performance, but a very memorable thing, a big movie. And he's really funny. He really only figures prominently into the third act of the movie, but, but, a very good movie.

• 2:35:36Amanda Dobbins?

  And he's having a good time.

• 2:35:37Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, obviously a remake of La Cage aux Folles.

• 2:35:39Speaker 02

  I watched this movie for the first time last night in my hotel.

• 2:35:42Sean Fennessey?

  Shocked to hear that.

• 2:35:44Speaker 02

  It's true. I just never seen it.

• 2:35:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:35:46Speaker 02

  I had a good time. I enjoyed it.

• 2:35:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:35:48Sean Fennessey?

  It's a very fun watch.

• 2:35:49Speaker 02

  It's a very fun watch.

• 2:35:50Sean Fennessey?

  It's not as, um, out of fashion as I might have expected. Like, I didn't think it was like.

• 2:35:56Speaker 02

  The Hank Azaria.

• 2:35:58Sean Fennessey?

  At the time, that was a little bit, but he's, he's been accused of doing that in many different directions.

• 2:36:05Sean Fennessey?

  But he, you know what? They sought him out for that kind of thing, too. So it's one of those things where it's who's really, who's really to blame.

• 2:36:10Speaker 02

  Robin, Robin Williams is fucking great.

• 2:36:12Sean Fennessey?

  Incredible.

• 2:36:13Speaker 02

  He's really good.

• 2:36:13Sean Fennessey?

  Incredible. And surprisingly restrained and specific. Yeah, he's really, really good.

• 2:36:18Speaker 02

  I mean, they're all good. It's a really good cast, and Hackman's very good.

• 2:36:21Sean Fennessey?

  Bransky, yeah, it's a fun movie.

• 2:36:24Speaker 02

  You know, I don't know that it earns the turn that the kids make at the end, where they step forward to say, actual, you know, here, now we'll reveal, it's like, it was their idea from the beginning. And I don't know that it earns their turn. It's a minor point. I, I, I, well, I like it. Thumbs up.

• 2:36:47Sean Fennessey?

  He plays a senator in this film.

• 2:36:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:36:49Sean Fennessey?

  Yet another politician.

• 2:36:50Speaker 02

  Elaine May, I have some, some laugh-out-loud moments.

• 2:36:54Sean Fennessey?

  One of the greatest. 1996, this is his second film that year, Extreme Measures, a paranoid thriller, doctor, drama, co-starring Hugh Grant.

• 2:37:06Speaker 02

  Produced by Hugh Grant.

• 2:37:07Sean Fennessey?

  Hugh Grant and Elizabeth Hurley.

• 2:37:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well-produced, I want to say. I have, I noted it, watching it, it's like, somebody producing this was paying attention. It's not a good movie at all.

• 2:37:18Sean Fennessey?

  Are you trying to get into Elizabeth Hurley's good graces right now?

• 2:37:20Speaker 02

  Not at all. I'm just saying.

• 2:37:21Sean Fennessey?

  I would too.

• 2:37:22Speaker 02

  It's well-produced.

• 2:37:23Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, I hate, this movie's terrible.

• 2:37:25Amanda Dobbins?

  It's not good.

• 2:37:25Speaker 02

  It's not good.

• 2:37:26Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, that's right. It's not going in. 1996 is The Chamber, the second of three John Grisham adaptations that Gene Hackman would participate in. This is kind of an inversion of Mississippi Burning, in which he plays a racist KKK member on death row. His enterprising grandson, played by Chris O'Donnell, is attempting to get him off of death row, and learns a lot about the history of his family in the American South. This movie stinks.

• 2:37:52Amanda Dobbins?

  It's, it's hard now.

• 2:37:53Speaker 02

  It stinks.

• 2:37:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:37:55Sean Fennessey?

  The Chamber's out. 1997's Absolute Power. Gene Hackman plays the President of the United States of America for the first time. And he is a bad man. And he does bad things in this Clint Eastwood thriller. It was a nice, nice hit at the time. I think it is not considered among the best of the Eastwood-directed pictures, but I saw it in a movie theater and I had a grand old time when I did.

• 2:38:18Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't think I saw this in movie theaters. I think this, I think by late 90s is when I got off the train of the airport thriller to movie pipeline, because it was first half of the 90s really treating us beautifully. Then, you know, diminishing returns.

• 2:38:34Sean Fennessey?

  I like, gets worse.

• 2:38:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:38:35Sean Fennessey?

  Thoughts?

• 2:38:36Speaker 02

  There's a great Clint Eastwood, Ed Harris scene in this movie, where they have a little cat and mouse

• 2:38:44Speaker 02

  detective suspect scene, and the rest of it's pretty forgettable.

• 2:38:51Sean Fennessey?

  Not going in. Red for Absolute Power. 1998's Twilight, another movie I quite like. This came up in the Paul Newman Hall of Fame conversation, late period, it's a Robert Benton movie?

• 2:39:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:39:04Sean Fennessey?

  About an aging detective, an aging movie star, and I think, you know, a kind of soft metaphor for Hollywood of a certain generation nearing the end. Hackman plays the movie star, surprisingly, opposite Newman, who is not the movie star. I think gives a good performance, but the movie is really more Newman's than Susan Sarandon's.

• 2:39:27Speaker 02

  Pretty muted, is my recollection of it. I haven't, didn't revisit.

• 2:39:31Sean Fennessey?

  Not for Reese Witherspoon fans.

• 2:39:33Amanda Dobbins?

  I think I watched this for Newman Hall of Fame, and kind of felt that, you know, Newman and Gene Hackman had very purposefully switched roles. And listen, sometimes you gotta, life is long, you want to try new things, but also, we'd mixed it up.

• 2:39:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, Newman's kind of playing Harry Mosby.

• 2:39:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:39:53Sean Fennessey?

  And, and Hackman is playing a beautiful, but not beautiful, movie star. I like this movie a lot. I recommend it to people sometimes, but I don't think it's going in the Hall of Fame for Hackman. 1998's Ants, yet another military man, one of the very few voice performances from Gene Hackman's career. You rewatched this film about six times to prep for this. What'd you think?

• 2:40:13Amanda Dobbins?

  We haven't done Ants yet with the kids.

• 2:40:15Sean Fennessey?

  Nor have we.

• 2:40:15Amanda Dobbins?

  So.

• 2:40:16Speaker 02

  Nor have we.

• 2:40:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, because I think the real ants that are in our home every time there's a heatwave have freaked the kids out.

• 2:40:23Sean Fennessey?

  Well, this was the movie that was in The Great Race with a Bug's Life, the Pixar movie that came out, I think, in the same year.

• 2:40:29Speaker 02

  And there's some real advance in technology with ants, too. Wasn't there, wasn't that the first of a certain kind of animation?

• 2:40:36Sean Fennessey?

  It wasn't the first digitally animated, but I think it was a very sophisticated style of animation. And yeah, it's a Katzenberg movie. Woody Allen is the lead voice.

• 2:40:46Speaker 02

  I've, I've not seen it, and I haven't shown it to the kids.

• 2:40:48Sean Fennessey?

  Ants is red. 1998's Enemy of the State.

• 2:40:52Speaker 02

  Oh, I have, I guess I have to add this to my Will Smith list as number four for me. I watched this in anticipation.

• 2:40:59Amanda Dobbins?

  And?

• 2:41:00Speaker 02

  I wish that Regina King had played the Will Smith part. I think it would have been a much better film.

• 2:41:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:41:06Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting take. A reunion with Tony Scott after the success of Crimson Tide. This movie in which the name of Hackman's character is Edward Brill Lyle.

• 2:41:20Sean Fennessey?

  Is that a front for Harry Call?

• 2:41:23Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:41:23Sean Fennessey?

  Or is it not? Is he playing?

• 2:41:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 2:41:25Sean Fennessey?

  Is this a, is this a sidequel, a legacy sequel to the conversation? Or is it not? There's a photograph that is shown of Hackman in the movie in which he is very clearly in his Harry Call garb.

• 2:41:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. Way to

• 2:41:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Was it?

• 2:41:39Speaker 02

  besmirch your legacy.

• 2:41:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Was it marketed this way at the time? Like this was kind of before.

• 2:41:45Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:41:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. But it's like now it would be a whole Easter egg thing.

• 2:41:49Sean Fennessey?

  That's right.

• 2:41:49Amanda Dobbins?

  And they would build a whole. And it wasn't in 1998.

• 2:41:52Sean Fennessey?

  Benedict Cumberbatch con.

• 2:41:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:41:53Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:41:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, that's exactly the reference I was thinking of.

• 2:41:56Sean Fennessey?

  You know, as a devotee of Tony Scott, I enjoy this movie.

• 2:42:01Amanda Dobbins?

  I do as well.

• 2:42:01Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's a lot of fun. It was a very early edition of the rewatchables. You know, I like Will Smith. And I remember, I'm trying to think of who are, is it Jack Black and Jason Lee? And there's a number of like rising actors who are all playing like quants and surveillance nerds in the movie that I found to be very entertaining at the time. I like it. I don't think it needs to go in.

• 2:42:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, it does not need to go in, but I also had a good time.

• 2:42:27Speaker 02

  See, when we get to

• 2:42:28Sean Fennessey?

  You're giving us space.

• 2:42:29Speaker 02

  The Firm and Crimson Tide and Enemy of the State. I just kind of turned to you guys and go, which one of these are you gonna fight for?

• 2:42:37Amanda Dobbins?

  All right.

• 2:42:38Speaker 02

  So.

• 2:42:38Amanda Dobbins?

  What were you doing, doing during the 90s that was not enjoying studios? Yeah, okay.

• 2:42:43Speaker 02

  I'm on stage.

• 2:42:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:42:46Sean Fennessey?

  Must be nice.

• 2:42:48Amanda Dobbins?

  When you're, when you're in a show, like when you're, when you are on stage, do you, when do you see movies? Do you watch a lot of movies?

• 2:42:57Speaker 02

  No, not a lot.

• 2:42:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:42:59Speaker 02

  Not a lot.

• 2:43:00Amanda Dobbins?

  It feels like it would interrupt the flow.

• 2:43:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:43:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:43:03Sean Fennessey?

  So that could be an issue for third chair status.

• 2:43:05Speaker 02

  Well, I know. It could be.

• 2:43:08Sean Fennessey?

  2000 Under Suspicion. I'd never seen this movie before.

• 2:43:12Speaker 02

  I had not seen it either. I watched it for this draft.

• 2:43:14Sean Fennessey?

  This is the only film that Gene Hackman produced in his entire career. And it is a turkey.

• 2:43:22Speaker 02

  It is.

• 2:43:23Sean Fennessey?

  It's about a wealthy tax attorney who is meant to give a big speech. And before the speech is called into questioning by two police officers played by Morgan Freeman and Thomas Jane. He's married to Monica Bellucci. Must be nice. And

• 2:43:42Speaker 02

  John's too horny on this pod.

• 2:43:45Sean Fennessey?

  The twist of, the twist of this movie is so stupid.

• 2:43:50Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know. Why did Gene Hackman want to make this? No one saw it. It made like $85,000.

• 2:43:55Amanda Dobbins?

  I ran out of time.

• 2:43:56Speaker 02

  I think he, look, I can picture a 1950s version of this movie, right? That you just, it's kind of a B movie, you know, which

• 2:44:07Sean Fennessey?

  Sure.

• 2:44:07Speaker 02

  The limited sets and sort of the idea is that it's a bit of a boiler room atmosphere. While this interrogation is taking place, he's reunited with Morgan Freeman from Unforgiven.

• 2:44:22Speaker 02

  It just doesn't work. It's just a, you know? And the problem with a suspicion movie like Hitchcock's Suspicion is kind of the problem with a nuclear war movie. It's like, if they didn't do it, it's a bit of a, oh, all right. Well, never mind. Never mind, it's all right. He's innocent.

• 2:44:41Sean Fennessey?

  Well, Suspicion solves that problem by using ambiguity as a tool as opposed to this movie, which does not.

• 2:44:49Sean Fennessey?

  Under Suspicion is red. 2000's The Replacements.

• 2:44:56Sean Fennessey?

  This is a sports comedy, his third and final coach, in which he portrays Jimmy McGinty, a retired professional football coach, or retired college football coach. He's brought out of retirement to coach a collection of scabs during a professional football strike. Keanu Reeves plays the quarterback. This is the star of the film.

• 2:45:23Sean Fennessey?

  This movie has a nice reputation amongst younger people, not, again, not really ever one of my movies. I watched about 45 minutes of it this morning just to refamiliarize myself. It's a little breezy and it's not inoffensive, but I didn't think it was great.

• 2:45:35Amanda Dobbins?

  I saw it, I guess, in high school and did not revisit it and don't, it didn't stay with me.

• 2:45:41Speaker 02

  Uh, they're scabs.

• 2:45:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, they are also scabs.

• 2:45:44Speaker 02

  They're fucking scabs. They're the fucking lowest form of, fuck these people.

• 2:45:47Sean Fennessey?

  The movie has like no relationship to the idea of, actually, I would say is very ungenerous towards the professional players who are on strike. It's a very weird idea for a movie.

• 2:45:59Speaker 02

  I hope they all get their legs broken. Fuck these people.

• 2:46:02Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Copy that.

• 2:46:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:46:05Sean Fennessey?

  The Replacements wasn't going in anyway.

• 2:46:08Sean Fennessey?

  2001's The Mexican.

• 2:46:09Speaker 02

  I watched that for this.

• 2:46:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. Yeah, no, it doesn't, doesn't, doesn't work. Yeah.

• 2:46:16Sean Fennessey?

  No, it's a dud.

• 2:46:17Amanda Dobbins?

  It did not go in the Julia Roberts Hall of Fame either.

• 2:46:19Sean Fennessey?

  Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts play

• 2:46:21Speaker 02

  My cousin, Julia Roberts.

• 2:46:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, really?

• 2:46:24Speaker 02

  You know, I did that Finding, Finding Your Roots.

• 2:46:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, that's so exciting.

• 2:46:28Speaker 02

  The final reveals that Julia and I are cousins.

• 2:46:30Sean Fennessey?

  Is that true?

• 2:46:31Amanda Dobbins?

  That's so nice. Are you guys in touch now?

• 2:46:32Sean Fennessey?

  Was that before or after August, Osage County?

• 2:46:34Speaker 02

  That was just last year I found that out.

• 2:46:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, yeah.

• 2:46:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:46:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, weird.

• 2:46:39Sean Fennessey?

  Have you spoken about this?

• 2:46:40Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:46:41Amanda Dobbins?

  All right.

• 2:46:41Sean Fennessey?

  Should we call her?

• 2:46:42Amanda Dobbins?

  It's not like a find a friend situation after on Finding Your Roots?

• 2:46:46Sean Fennessey?

  I think we get to her. She's been on this podcast.

• 2:46:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:46:48Speaker 02

  You know, next time I see her, I'm gonna say, hey, cuz.

• 2:46:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:46:52Speaker 02

  We didn't put the Mexican in the Gene Hackman Hall of Fame.

• 2:46:56Sean Fennessey?

  The Mexican, even though it comes from my beloved Gore Verbinski, is one of the most annoying movies of the 2000s. The two, the register of performance that both of those actors are doing is just feels way off to me. 2001's Heartbreakers. Now, this movie has Jennifer Love Hewitt.

• 2:47:11Amanda Dobbins?

  It does. But it's still not going in.

• 2:47:14Speaker 02

  It's not going in. Hackman's pretty, pretty broad here. It's not as broad as you'll see him get.

• 2:47:20Sean Fennessey?

  The Replacements, Heartbreakers, these are very broad performances that he's giving. 2001's Heist.

• 2:47:28Sean Fennessey?

  Movie I love.

• 2:47:29Speaker 02

  Banger.

• 2:47:30Sean Fennessey?

  I love.

• 2:47:31Amanda Dobbins?

  I ran out of time for this one too. I know. I'm really sad. This was

• 2:47:34Sean Fennessey?

  Great.

• 2:47:35Amanda Dobbins?

  This is, I did this.

• 2:47:36Sean Fennessey?

  Great Mamet movie.

• 2:47:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Prime cut instead of this.

• 2:47:39Sean Fennessey?

  Delroy Lindo, Danny DeVito, Sam Rockwell, Rebecca Pigeon. Absolute gem of a movie.

• 2:47:44Speaker 02

  And Hackman is really good. And he's really kicking ass with the, with the Mamet speak. He's just nailing it. It's great.

• 2:47:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. Your weight or your fate? I always remember that line. Uh, that's, I think Delroy says that a couple of times. To me, it's more of a blue than a Hall of Fame thing.

• 2:48:03Speaker 02

  Agreed.

• 2:48:04Sean Fennessey?

  So maybe we'll just yellow it for our purposes here. 2001's Behind Enemy Lines. So strange that he made this movie because he made Bat 21. And this is just Bat 21 and he's moving into, I can't recall who plays the older general in Bat 21.

• 2:48:22Speaker 02

  Guitar player, Jerry, Burt Reynolds guy, Jerry.

• 2:48:30Speaker 02

  If only I had a computer in front of me.

• 2:48:33Sean Fennessey?

  You find that. This movie was a modest hit. It spawned, I think, something like nine sequels that were direct to video movies. This was an Owen Wilson led project. Do you see this movie at the time?

• 2:48:46Amanda Dobbins?

  I thought I did, but now I'm confusing it maybe with Enemy at the Gate.

• 2:48:51Speaker 02

  Jerry.

• 2:48:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Which is also 2001. Yeah. And I went on, I went on a Enemy at the Gates, which is 2001, and then Enemy of the State, which was 1998.

• 2:49:01Sean Fennessey?

  Right. Behind Enemy Lines certainly has its fans. Not, not a huge favorite of mine, and I don't think a particularly special movie, but it did pretty good, pretty good business.

• 2:49:10Speaker 02

  Some of the, some of the early action stuff is, is well handled, is kind of visceral, like whoa.

• 2:49:16Sean Fennessey?

  Is it Bosnia?

• 2:49:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:49:17Sean Fennessey?

  I believe it's set in Bosnia.

• 2:49:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:49:20Sean Fennessey?

  That's red. He plays a military man again in that, Jack.

• 2:49:23Amanda Dobbins?

  He's an admiral now.

• 2:49:25Sean Fennessey?

  An admiral. He's rising in the ranks. 2001, The Royal Tenenbaums. Now, there's a big line of discussion here. Obviously, this is an automatic green. This is one of his very best performances. He is hysterical in this movie. I just rewa, I didn't rewatch the whole movie, but I only rewatched my favorite scene in the movie, which is when he takes the boys out for a wonderful afternoon set to the Simon and Garfunkel song. And then Chaz drags him into the game room and he starts yelling at him. And he says, are you listening to me? And he says, yes, I am. And then, you know, he says he thinks his son is having a nervous breakdown. And Stiller leaves the game room, very upset after turning the light off.

• 2:50:05Sean Fennessey?

  And Hackman turns the light back on and he picks up the boar's head and he looks at the boar's head and he says, there you are, old friend. Just a quiet little weird moment in a very particular movie. The line of discussion that is really interesting, which Tracy and I sort of started off Mike yesterday is Is this the thing that is missing from the contemporary Wes Anderson movies? Which is to say, the actual friction between the style of acting and the style of performance and the just general tone of Gene Hackman, somebody who's an outsider to the Wes style, versus everyone who is conscripted into the world now that makes it feel a little bit more enclosed, so that there's no chaos or, you know, that that energy that is in

• 2:50:50Sean Fennessey?

  Ten and Bells.

• 2:50:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. I mean, missing is one word for it, and that would indicate that it's not really connecting, or the audience is not connecting in the same way, which I guess, you know, is true in a box office sense, that the the late period Wes Anderson feel more closed off, and you just go like further, further into Westland, and there is no Hackman character kind of bringing you back to how other people speak. I'm happy to go further and further into Westland because we've grown up with him. And also, you know, where else are you gonna go? I think if you have a Hackman character and a Hackman performance in every single Wes

• 2:51:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Anderson movie, then it loses its luster, the more that. And there's something about the surprise and the tension of this that's just, you know, a perfect storm. But yeah, it's it's the best. It's one of the most important movies of of our lifetime, to me, anyway.

• 2:51:50Speaker 02

  I love it. It's my favorite Wes movie, this and Mr. Fox. And and Hackman is a large reason why. I adore Hackman in this movie.

• 2:51:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:52:00Speaker 02

  And, you know, he's the title, he's the, it's the titular role. It's a, he's superb in the film and hilarious in the film and heartbreaking in the film. So good.

• 2:52:10Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, he's really terrific, and he hated making it, hated making it. Didn't get Wes, didn't like it, didn't understand it, didn't think it was gonna be any good. You know, Hackman famously didn't like to watch himself on screen. He often was surprised to find that people liked certain movies of his that he had a bad time making. I often wondered in all the time that we've been doing this show, or in all the time I've been a movie fan, because he barely has been working since I've been an adult, does he know that this movie means so much to multiple generations of people? And I think we're now finally hitting the generation where they're like, the Royal Tenenbaums, is it that good, which happens for every movie?

• 2:52:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 2:52:46Sean Fennessey?

  But for the last 25 years, been a real generational above cult classic. And for some people, it's the last great Wes Anderson movie. There's a lot of people who think that something is kind of lost.

• 2:52:58Amanda Dobbins?

  That's crazy.

• 2:52:58Sean Fennessey?

  After this stretch, because he gets a little bit more diorama-esque in in Life Aquatic, and then never really looks back from there. But fantastic movie, perfect movie.

• 2:53:09Speaker 02

  Green, yes?

• 2:53:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Green, absolutely.

• 2:53:11Sean Fennessey?

  Two more movies.

• 2:53:11Amanda Dobbins?

  A must.

• 2:53:12Sean Fennessey?

  Runaway Jury.

• 2:53:13Speaker 02

  See you.

• 2:53:14Sean Fennessey?

  His first ever, his first ever collaboration with his old friend Dustin Hoffman, his third and final John Grisham adaptation. He plays a jury rigging expert.

• 2:53:23Speaker 02

  It's so dumb. It's just a dumb idea.

• 2:53:26Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, didn't work. He lamented on Larry King that he didn't understand why this movie wasn't a success. Thought that was interesting. And then 2004, the film that, I guess, encouraged him to leave the business, Welcome to Mooseport.

• 2:53:40Speaker 02

  You know, it's a charming little comedy.

• 2:53:44Sean Fennessey?

  He's good.

• 2:53:45Speaker 02

  He's good in the movie.

• 2:53:46Sean Fennessey?

  Did you watch this?

• 2:53:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 2:53:48Sean Fennessey?

  He's good. The movie is not very good, but he is playing a puffed up president who moves back to his hometown, and it's conscripted into a mayoral race opposite Ray Romano.

• 2:53:59Speaker 02

  More tyranny.

• 2:54:00Sean Fennessey?

  And she's thrown at him like crazy. The eyes, yeah, they have, they have some chemistry.

• 2:54:05Speaker 02

  Uh, I, but I have a theory that it's not Welcome to Mooseport. My theory, I mean, Friedkin said about him after he retired, or Friedkin said about him much later, said, he hated acting. He always hated it.

• 2:54:20Sean Fennessey?

  He did say that.

• 2:54:20Speaker 02

  He hated doing it. He didn't want to be an actor. He all, he said to Billy, I have a very bizarro relationship to this. I don't know that I, I don't know that this is what a grown man should be doing. He always, he always held it in some contempt, which is one of the things perhaps that made him a, you know, a very compelling performer, that and his life story. Have you seen the Inside the Actors Studio, where he talks about his father leaving? He's talking, he's telling the story about his dad leaving when he was 13 years old, and his dad left, and Hackman was playing down the street, and his dad drove down the street and waved goodbye to Hackman.

• 2:55:00Amanda Dobbins?

  That's.

• 2:55:02Speaker 02

  And he, when he's telling the story on Inside the Actors Studio, he's a, he's doing, he's so close to crying, to sobbing. And then he laughs and he says, it was only 65 years ago, you'd think I'd be over it by now. And he even suggests, maybe it's one of the things that makes me a good actor. And of course, one of the things that does make you a good actor is life experience. They don't all have to be horrible, tragic moments like that.

• 2:55:26Sean Fennessey?

  But he's able to access something that is real pain.

• 2:55:29Speaker 02

  He's able to access that pain, that that hardship. I think about it in terms of, uh, uh, twice in a lifetime, right? Probably one of the things that compelled him to do that movie was the idea of trying to get into his dad's headspace, so he could just.

• 2:55:43Sean Fennessey?

  Accepting his dad's decision.

• 2:55:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:55:44Sean Fennessey?

  For sure. I think there's definitely something to that. You know, he received the Cecil B. DeMillemore Award from the Golden Globes in 2003, and he makes one more movie after that. I want, I imagine Mooseport is probably shooting after he receives that award. And that speech is really interesting. And he says a couple of things that he had said throughout the entirety of his career, and he talks about how he always wanted to be an actor, and it's the only thing he thought he could do. And if he wasn't gonna do it, he would have been like an insurance salesman or something like that. But he puts himself, as a kid, going to see films with his mom, and going to see Errol Flynn movies, and going to see Edward G. Robinson movies. And then he says Jimmy Cagney, James Cagney, that is my person.

• 2:56:26Sean Fennessey?

  That's my actor, that's the person who I saw on screen, who alighted me to this entire world. And I never really thought about him before as a model for what Hackman did. But there is something to it, where Cagney could play anti-heroes, villains, but he could also play like broad comic song and dance man. And when you look at the whole shape.

• 2:56:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:56:47Sean Fennessey?

  Hackman did a lot. He didn't, his register's somewhat narrow in terms of what he's able to accomplish, but he did get to be in a lot of different kinds of movies despite having some of those limitations. So I was really struck by those comments, and it does feel like when he's giving that speech, he's kind of like, I'm done. Like, you can almost feel him being.

• 2:57:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Now I'm.

• 2:57:06Sean Fennessey?

  Finished.

• 2:57:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Now I'm going to Santa Fe.

• 2:57:08Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 2:57:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Which, more power to you.

• 2:57:10Sean Fennessey?

  And he does, and he disappears from Hollywood for 20 years. He writes some historical novels, some some historical fiction.

• 2:57:16Speaker 02

  Rides his bike and lives his life for 20 years.

• 2:57:18Sean Fennessey?

  And he's seen around town, he shows up on a diners, drive-ins and dives episode in Santa Fe, and Guy Fieri interviews him about his favorite diner in town, and and that's pretty much it. And we don't see him for 20 years.

• 2:57:30Speaker 02

  Continues to do those Lowe's voiceovers.

• 2:57:33Sean Fennessey?

  That's right.

• 2:57:33Speaker 02

  Right?

• 2:57:34Sean Fennessey?

  That's right. He does a couple of documentaries as well about the military, and lends his voice to that, but really from 20, 2009 onward, not a peep out of him. And it's a loss, but at the same time, I respect a person being like, I'm good. I did what I needed to do.

• 2:57:49Speaker 02

  There aren't a lot of comps. Thinking back, I thought Spencer Tracy, maybe, is also, if you're talking about Cagney, Spencer Tracy, a guy who was always a little older than, right, than a traditional movie star.

• 2:58:02Sean Fennessey?

  I always think of him having like the moral character of the country on his mind, though, and Hackman is kind of the opposite. There's something a little dastardly going on with him.

• 2:58:09Speaker 02

  Bogart, a little bit, actually, in that not a traditionally handsome Hollywood star.

• 2:58:15Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:58:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:58:17Sean Fennessey?

  He was resistant to Bogart in the interviews where he was, people would compare him to Bogart, I think for that reason, and he would always, he used Bogart as an example of a guy who he was unsure of how skilled an actor he was, and how much he was using his per, his natural personality to get a, get across and make him interesting. I always thought that was interesting, though. It was almost like him being complimented, and he was resisting the compliment.

• 2:58:37Speaker 02

  What's the difference between Gene Hackman and George C. Scott? Why is Gene Hack, why does Gene Hackman continue to be a movie star and George C. Scott doesn't? Because they occupy some of the same territory for a long time.

• 2:58:54Sean Fennessey?

  I think one is fiery and the other's volcanic, and there's something different. And volcanic, I think, doesn't age as well. The size of Scott's performances.

• 2:59:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:59:04Sean Fennessey?

  He kind of takes everything over, whereas like in Postcards from the Edge or Another Woman, like Hackman can kind of just glide into a movie, and it's, it can be very elegant. I don't know. Let's do the list really quick.

• 2:59:15Speaker 02

  Who's Gene Hackman right now?

• 2:59:17Sean Fennessey?

  Not, not a, not an archetype we follow anymore. We don't, we don't let unclassically handsome people become male movie stars anymore.

• 2:59:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. I mean, I'm trying to think of.

• 2:59:29Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, I love Driver. I've always loved Driver, and I think he is, while he's very strapping, and also a person who has served in the military, and has some unusual instincts in terms of the variety of parts he wants to play.

• 2:59:40Amanda Dobbins?

  And, you know, has the heft.

• 2:59:42Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:59:42Speaker 02

  But he's kind of exotic in a way that Hackman wasn't, right? Hackman was every day. Hackman was a guy standing next to you in the hardware store.

• 2:59:49Sean Fennessey?

  That's very true. I mean, there's not, there's not, we don't have an actor like that. That's not what what we're, and something that we lament.

• 2:59:55Amanda Dobbins?

  And also certainly not one who's won multiple Oscars so early in the career, and is so like embraced and and celebrated.

• 3:00:03Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, I mean, let's talk about the haul really quick. So here are the greens we have right now.

• 3:00:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 3:00:08Sean Fennessey?

  Bonnie and Clyde, The French Connection, Scarecrow, The Conversation, Night Moves, Superman, Unforgiven, The Firm, Crimson Tide, The Royal Tenenbaums. That's 10.

• 3:00:20Speaker 02

  Done.

• 3:00:20Sean Fennessey?

  I feel like it's done. Am I crazy?

• 3:00:23Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 3:00:24Sean Fennessey?

  Now, we've not, we've not put in, here's some, here are some genuine contenders I think people will look at and say, why is that not in? Hoosiers, Mississippi Burning.

• 3:00:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 3:00:34Sean Fennessey?

  The Birdcage. Those are the three movies that I think for some people.

• 3:00:38Amanda Dobbins?

  I think we've explored it. Hoosiers is not our movie. That's okay, just like The Nashville was not our movie, this is our list. Mississippi Burning, we have other films that he won Oscars for, so, and The Birdcage, we have the late period comedy turn represented in a, in a larger and more historical form. So, you know.

• 3:01:04Sean Fennessey?

  What's your blue?

• 3:01:06Amanda Dobbins?

  I guess I'll do No Way Out, just to spite Tracy.

• 3:01:08Sean Fennessey?

  Love it.

• 3:01:08Amanda Dobbins?

  I'd love No Way Out.

• 3:01:09Speaker 02

  It's not spite, I don't consider that spiteful.

• 3:01:12Sean Fennessey?

  What's your blue?

• 3:01:14Speaker 02

  What's your blue?

• 3:01:15Sean Fennessey?

  I asked you. I'm hosting this episode, goddammit.

• 3:01:18Speaker 02

  I'm only here to help.

• 3:01:19Sean Fennessey?

  That's right.

• 3:01:25Amanda Dobbins?

  You've previously identified prime cut and Bite the Bullet as two possible Blues for you?

• 3:01:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm gonna take Bite the Bullet.

• 3:01:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 3:01:33Sean Fennessey?

  Good for you. Bite the Bullet and I'll take...

• 3:01:39Sean Fennessey?

  I'll take Get Shorty.

• 3:01:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, that's nice. Okay.

• 3:01:42Sean Fennessey?

  Movie I love, performance I love.

• 3:01:44Speaker 02

  Good one.

• 3:01:44Sean Fennessey?

  Movie I recommend to people. Uh, I mean, that was startlingly efficient.

• 3:01:49Amanda Dobbins?

  What's the... What's the job count at the end?

• 3:01:54Speaker 03

  Okay, we have 11 military men, 10 cops, eight government agents/officials/politicians, five dudes named Henry, four attorneys, five criminals, three supervillains, three cowboys, three doctors, three filmmakers/movie stars, three coaches. Then you get into the twos, two cattle barons, two journalists, two surveillance experts.

• 3:02:14Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't think I would have expected military to outstrip cop or cattle baron.

• 3:02:20Sean Fennessey?

  11 military men and 10 cops? My goodness.

• 3:02:23Speaker 03

  Makes up nearly a third of his entire filmography.

• 3:02:25Sean Fennessey?

  Wow.

• 3:02:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 3:02:29Sean Fennessey?

  And yet he hated authority. The irony.

• 3:02:32Speaker 02

  And now we can watch things that don't have Gene Hackman.

• 3:02:35Amanda Dobbins?

  That's so true.

• 3:02:36Sean Fennessey?

  We are free. Uh, we have one more Hall of Fame on the list for later this year.

• 3:02:41Amanda Dobbins?

  We do.

• 3:02:42Sean Fennessey?

  We haven't discussed too much, but though I think we need to pursue. But we'll talk about that at a later date. In the meantime, hey, Tracy Letts, where can we find you?

• 3:02:51Speaker 02

  I don't care about any of that. But, you know, as I say, I'm just here to help you. As the third chair. I'm the Anita Baker of the Big Picture Podcast.

• 3:03:05Sean Fennessey?

  What do you mean by that?

• 3:03:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 3:03:06Speaker 02

  Giving you the best that I got.

• 3:03:08Amanda Dobbins?

  All right.

• 3:03:09Sean Fennessey?

  Anita Baker, one of my mom's faves.

• 3:03:12Speaker 02

  Who doesn't like Anita Baker?

• 3:03:14Sean Fennessey?

  I agree with you. Thank you, Tracy Letts, for honestly a tremendous amount of work to be done for this. Thanks to our producer, Jack Sanders. Thanks to Luke Scavino for his production support. I don't know when this is running specifically. I have some idea, but maybe I want to run it sooner because I just thought this was a nice conversation.

• 3:03:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, that's exciting.

• 3:03:32Sean Fennessey?

  So I don't know what's coming next. Maybe the next episode we do will be about...

• 3:03:39Amanda Dobbins?

  The Social Reckoning? Which traces...

• 3:03:41Sean Fennessey?

  That'll be so soon.

• 3:03:42Amanda Dobbins?

  I know. Are we sure? Have we heard anything about The Social Reckoning?

• 3:03:45Sean Fennessey?

  No.

• 3:03:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. I was thinking about that the other day.

• 3:03:48Speaker 02

  You've heard things.

• 3:03:50Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, we've heard things, but...

• 3:03:51Sean Fennessey?

  And I won't be sharing them. We'll see you soon.

• 3:03:53Speaker 02

  We love you, Gene Hackman.